ndot 
 

A ROMAN TRAGEDY AND OTHERS 
 
Ail rights reserved 
 
 A Roman Tragedy 
 and Others 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN AYSCOUGH 
 
 AUTHOR OF " MAROTZ " 
 MR. BEKE OF THE BLACKS " " DROMINA " ETC. 
 
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 BRISTOL 
 J. \\'. Arrowsmh II, II Quay Street 
 
 LONDON 
 SiMPKiN, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company Limited 
 
 1CJ09 
 
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 CONTENTS. 
 
 rage 
 A ROMAN TRAGEDY 7 
 
 THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY . in 
 
 A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP 187 
 
 A SHADOW OF DEATH 2;; 
 
 REVERSIONS ... 281 
 
 A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE . . . .363 
 
 LOVE'S MONUMENT 385 
 
 y 
 
 
A Roman Tragedy, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The situation contained no promise whatever of 
 tragedy ; in fact, there really was no " situation " 
 at all. 
 
 To start with, they were all Romans, and all be- 
 longed to the upmost stratum of society ; and for a 
 long time the microbe of tragedy has languished in 
 Rome. When the Eternal City w^as mistress of the 
 world, and later on while the popes remained masters 
 of Rome, there was nothing at all alien to the tragic 
 spirit in Roman hfe. But Rome, become the capital 
 of a state instead of an idea, is merely municipal and 
 inimical to tragedy. 
 
 To all intents and purposes there were only three 
 persons in the play, and between them they scarcely 
 made a group — certainly not a situation. There 
 was Luigi CriveUi, Prince of Rojate, in the Sabina, 
 whose sisters called him Lulu; whose wife called him 
 Gigi and Gino and (at specially tender moments) 
 Gigino, whose mother called him Lewis, and whose 
 mother-in-law called him Luigi. There was his wife, 
 whom everyone called Ascania. And there was 
 Ascania's mother, the Duchessa di San Stefano, who 
 had reached that time of life in which, unless one 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 obtrudes provocation for a nickname, one is usually 
 spoken of by one's legal titles and additions. 
 
 There was to be a fourth actor in the tragedy, but 
 as none of the others had the sliglitest knowledge of 
 his future bearing on their fortunes, and were 
 scarcely, if at all, cognisant of his existence, it is 
 not at present necessary to introduce him more 
 particularly. 
 
 In spite of his name and his huge castle in the 
 Sabine hills, in spite of his lineal descent from the 
 father of Pope Urban III. and his very ancient title 
 of Prince of Rojate, I.uigi CriveUi was, as the Romans 
 declared of him in various tones of voice, an English- 
 man. The Cardinal Secretary of State remarked it 
 (to the Cardinal Vicar) with a severe tolerance. 
 Luigi's aunt, the Dowager Princess of Rojate, was in 
 the habit of stating the fact, uncontradicted, about 
 four times a week, with acrid intolerance to anyone 
 who would hsten ; but then her only son had died, 
 and it was natural that she should attack the only 
 very vulnerable place in her nephew's panoply of 
 perfection. When Ascania's mother, fresh from 
 confession and anxious to get sans accident to Com- 
 munion next morning, was in an unnaturally chari- 
 table frame of mind, she would plead that her son-in- 
 law was English, as an explanation, though, of course, 
 not a justification, of his pecuHarities. Ascania 
 herself, who was secretly bored by her compatriots,, 
 had an inward and unavowed delight in her husband's 
 unlikeness to the other Roman young men. But to 
 his face it was generally made matter of railing 
 accusation. 
 
 I.uigi's grandfather, who was never Principe di 
 Rojate, but had the title of Duke of Segni, married 
 an Englishwoman, and had three sons by her, of 
 which the second was her favourite and her living 
 
 8 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 
 
 
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A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 image. This Luigi Crivelli lived much in England, 
 where he also married, and, his wife having large 
 estates of her own, both in England and Scotland, 
 they lived upon them, and made their home altogether 
 in Lady Stornoway's country, for Don Luigi's wife 
 had a title in her own right. Their only son was 
 destined to succeed his uncle as Prince of Rojate, the 
 other uncle having become a priest and cardinal 
 under Pius IX. ; but this succession did not take 
 place till Lady Stornoway had been five years a 
 widow, and her two daughters were old enough to 
 get married had they been in any hurry, Luigi him- 
 self being four and twenty. 
 
 How it was that old Luigi Crivelli's grandson came 
 to be Principe di Rojate does not belong to this 
 story, though one may say in passing that it was 
 a humdrum though rather melancholy story of a 
 good many deaths and one horrible disgrace. 
 
 Anyway, at four and twenty a young Englishman 
 almost suddenly found himself the head of a great 
 Roman house. For it was true that Lewis, as his 
 mother called him, was entirely English. His father 
 before him had been fair, with grey eyes and chestnut- 
 brown hair. As Lady Stornoway was also a pale 
 blonde, it was not surprising that their boy should 
 reproduce their fair, northern type. What was more 
 surprising was that his sisters should both have re- 
 curred to the ultra-dark Crivelli face, wdth sombre 
 eyes, clear ohve-brown skin, and heavy masses of 
 intensely black hair. 
 
 The Duchessa di Segni had been to her death a 
 Protestant : still, she had tried loyally to teach the 
 Catholic faith to each of her children — so successfully, 
 that one had become a priest and a cardinal. Never- 
 theless, certain enemies of His Eminence had been 
 wont to declare that there w^as a northern flavour 
 
 10 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 about his Catholicity. This flavour was naturally 
 stronger in the second son, who settled and married in 
 England, whose wife was also a Protestant, though 
 also loyally anxious to teach her boy what his Church 
 would have him believe. The girls were given to her, 
 and them she taught as she herself believed. 
 
 For these reasons Ascania privately regarded 
 her husband as little better than a Protestant, 
 though he went to Benediction much oftener 
 than she did, and went to Mass quite as often. 
 Ascania's mother beheved her son-in-law to be 
 an atheist, by which term she understood nothing 
 (her attitude of mind tow^ards many subjects), 
 but had a general impression that it was a sort 
 of Protestant who read difficult books, and thought 
 that the original heads of the Roman princely 
 families had been monkeys. She believed this 
 chaotic mental state to result from reading the Bible 
 and " Victor Hugo," by whom, it may be explained, 
 the Duchessa meant Voltaire. 
 
 She herself knew that God began creating the world 
 early on a Monday morning, and finished just before 
 twelve on a Saturday night. She was never so really 
 happy as when listening to a Redemptorist preaching 
 about hell, though it terrified her beyond measure, 
 and sometimes caused her to retire to bed, with really 
 terrible neuralgia, for a day and a half afterwards. 
 Hell she believed to be situated in the middle of the 
 earth, and earthquakes she knew were caused by 
 unusually violent dissensions among the inhabitants 
 of tliat much over-populated dominion. Almost 
 everyone, she thought, except the regular clergy and 
 contemplative nuns, went there, including many of 
 the popes, ninety-seven per cent, of the cardinals, 
 and all the prclainra. 
 
 II 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 " What on earth ! Gigi, what next are you to 
 do? " 
 
 It was Ascania. vShe often spoke Enghsh to her 
 husband, of which in a way he was glad ; for 
 though he talked Itahan quite fluently, and with 
 a good accent, it was always a foreign language to 
 him. And yet at times his wife's English was 
 almost unbearable. 
 
 He looked over his shoulder at her with a glance 
 of mild interrogation. 
 
 " Don't you know," she demanded, " what a 
 dreadful thing it is ? " 
 
 She pronounced the "th" and the initial " d "" 
 alike as " t." 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " To teach Gianpaolo to look by the window." 
 
 The young Prince laughed. His laugh was very 
 restrained, and not at all suggestive of hilarious 
 mirth. It was singularly patient, and obviously 
 intended as a good-tempered substitute for argument. 
 Sometimes Ascania accepted it as such. 
 
 " Good heavens, Gigi, how English you are ! " she 
 continued. " No one in all Rome does it." 
 
 " Except Gianpaolo and me," her husband sug- 
 gested with another gentle laugh. 
 
 They had been married nearly five years, and she 
 had never been clever enough to learn that, with 
 all his gentleness, he was, and always would be, 
 a law unto himself. 
 
 12 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 He was the last man in the world to set up as an 
 adversary of established customs ; in dress, in 
 manner, in speech he was singularly free from any 
 efforts at achieving a cheap originality by being 
 merely unusual. But it was quite useless to try and 
 shake the rod of convention about his ears. 
 
 " Marly often looks out of the balcony window," 
 observed Gianpaolo. 
 
 " The balcony is different thing," replied the 
 Princess. 
 
 The omission of the indefinite article can, in the 
 course of five years, become far more irritating than 
 the commission of a graver offence. And she came, 
 as she spoke, behind her husband and pinched the 
 child's ear. 
 
 Ostensibly the pinch might have been intended 
 as a caress ; but it left a bright red mark, and though 
 the child betrayed by no overt sign that it had hurt 
 him, his father felt him recoil a little. 
 
 The Prince understood. His quiet grey eyes, 
 which sometimes seemed rather far away and un- 
 observant, always did see and understand every- 
 thing. 
 
 Gianpaolo was pinched not merely for confuting 
 his mother, or for looking out of the window, in 
 defiance of Roman convention, but also for standing 
 on the window-seat with his father's arm around 
 him, and his own small, round head pressed back 
 against his father's shoulder. 
 
 Ascania was doubly jealous. She thought Gigi 
 was fonder of the child than of her — so she assured 
 herself ; and the boy, she would boldly add, loved 
 his father better than his mother, tliough the former 
 was incapable of adoring the child as she did. So 
 she pinched him. 
 
 The young Prince understood it all ; but no 
 
 13 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 outward flame of anger flushed up from the quiet fire 
 within. He still looked over the boy's head down 
 into the street. 
 
 " You said you had letters to write," Ascania 
 remarked presently. She often got temporarily 
 bored by her own grievances, and would desert them 
 for a time for the sake of variety. Not even to harry 
 her husband would she consciously bore herself. 
 Ultimately she would return to the original grievance, 
 unless, as happened occasionally, she simply forgot it. 
 " Yes, I had." 
 
 " Then why in heaven name's do you let Gian- 
 paolo keep you . . . Gianpaolo, go to the nursery. 
 Your father is busy." 
 
 To the child she never spoke in English, though 
 he much preferred talking it to his parents. 
 *' I have written them." 
 
 As a matter of fact they lay on his writing-table, 
 and, as he was fully conscious, his wife was now 
 examining their addresses. While he wrote them 
 the child had played very quietly on the floor. If 
 Ascania had been in the room she would have cross- 
 questioned him as to what he was saying in each 
 one. 
 
 " Oh, good gracious ! What a thick one to your 
 mother ! What in heaven can you find to tell her ? 
 All about our last row ? " 
 
 He did not answer. She knew quite well that he 
 would not write complaints of her, nor be willing to 
 admit that they had " rows." She knew also that 
 to talk hke that before the child was annoying to 
 him. 
 
 ** What is it ? My brothers never write big letters 
 Hke that to our mother." 
 
 All the same, it was a crime of his that he scarcely 
 ever wrote to the Duchessa di San Stefano wlien she 
 
 14 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 went to Sicily, but found his solicitude on her 
 account sufficiently allayed by the almost daily 
 news he received of her through his wife. 
 
 "It is about the property in Scotland. You 
 know I often have business to write about. The 
 letter contains a paper I had to sign." 
 
 " I should think you would write about those 
 thing to the agente . . . " 
 
 On this remark no commentary was forthcoming. 
 
 "... and no letter to Janet or Barbara ? 
 What a wonder ! But you will write to them from 
 the club . . . so as for me not to know." 
 
 " You might ask the hall-porter at the club, you 
 know," suggested her husband. 
 
 " Plioo ! What ideas for a gentleman ! " cried 
 Ascania, with a top-heavy assumption of dignit^^ 
 " Do you think I would ask a servant ? 
 
 He had several years ago made the discovery that 
 an^'thing in the way of sarcasm was thrown away 
 upon her. If a thing was susceptible of a hteral 
 interpretation; she so understood it ; if not, it merely 
 puzzled her, and appeared meaningless. Her 
 husband, when much goaded, was apt, she thought, 
 to say very foolish things. 
 
 As he looked down over Gianpaolo's head into the 
 street Rojate smiled a little. There was nothing 
 more melancholy than this smile of his. If his angel 
 guardian was fond of him, he must have grown sad 
 to see it. 
 
 " I believe you write to one of them or other every 
 day," pursued Ascania ; " either to your mother, 
 or else Barbara or Janet." 
 
 Her husband moved a little, a movement not of 
 impatience but of weary patience. He was deadly 
 tired of her outrageous jealousy of his mother and 
 sisters. As he moved Gianpaolo pressed a very 
 
 15 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 little closer. He was only four years and one month 
 old, but he understood. 
 
 " It is six weeks since I wrote to either of the girls," 
 remarked Rojate. 
 
 " Why does Barbara ask me to thank you for your 
 letter, then ? " 
 
 '* I suppose because she was grateful. No doubt 
 she will answer it sometime. We are not, as a family, 
 great correspondents." 
 
 " Phoo ! What people ! Do you care two and 
 a halfpence for each other ? I don't believe." 
 
 All this time the Princess had been moving to and 
 fro, fidgeting with photographs, books, anything that 
 could be picked up from one place and dropped down 
 in another. Rojate did not watch her. 
 
 Now she came to the window again. 
 
 " Dio mio, che educazione ! gua.rdare per la 
 finestra ! Gino, I will not let it to go on. Send 
 Gianpaolo away ; besides, I want to speak to you." 
 
 In some mute fashion father and son took leave 
 of one another. There was no ostensible farewell, 
 and certainly no caress. But before leaving the 
 room the child kissed his mother's plump hand. 
 
 16 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 *' Well, Ascania, what is it ? " 
 
 He spoke with a sort of good-natured freshness of 
 tone, as though a new conversation were to begin, 
 and the captiousness of the late one to be considered 
 an old story. 
 
 " Oh, nothing. Only I was tired of seeing you two 
 like that ; and I determined to make it stop." 
 
 He looked at her indulgently, without the slightest 
 arriere-pensee of sarcasm in his smile, as he stood 
 opposite her, with his hands in his pockets, and said 
 persuasively — 
 
 " My dear child, what a child you are ! " 
 
 She laughed and pulled one of his hands out of his 
 pocket. She always envied him his hands. Her own 
 were broad, and of an ugly brown, of a square, un- 
 aristocratic shape. 
 
 She had two laughs : one was that of the laughing 
 hyena, the other was not unpleasant. It was not 
 particularly suggestive of mirth, but it was meant to 
 proclaim embarrassment and a certain percentage of 
 good temper. 
 
 " What a hand — hke a woman's ! " 
 
 It was not in the least like a woman's hand, but 
 for several years he had lost the habit of correcting 
 any innocuous mistatements of hers. 
 
 " Gigi ! " 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " What are you doing this afternoon ? " 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 ^7 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 " \Yi\\ 3'ou drive me ? " 
 
 " Yes, of course." 
 
 He had another plan, and she knew it. Though 
 she never pumped servants, she knew it from her 
 maid, whom she had instructed to obtain the infor- 
 mation from the Prince's valet. Had he refused to 
 break his engagement for her pleasure, she would 
 have made his life hideous for a day or so. As it was, 
 she was not in the least grateful. 
 
 That she had married the most unselfish man in 
 God's great world she never knew — she did not choose 
 to know. At least five times a week she brought 
 passionate accusations of selfishness against him, 
 when something she demanded of him was impossible. 
 When he agreed to her outrageous demands, at the 
 expense of all his own wishes or convenience, she was 
 never grateful. She told herself he did it to save a 
 row. That all his marvellous indulgence was com- 
 placently set down by her as mere moral cowardice 
 he had always known. 
 
 It was true he had a shrinking dread of seeing her 
 expose herself — her littleness and vulgarity of mind, 
 her folly, her unreason, her undignified lack of all self- 
 control — even though he were himself the only 
 witness. He had paid for five years a daily price of 
 giving up from hour to hour what he wished to do 
 himself, to save her from so lowering herself before 
 him. 
 
 " Where do you want to go ? " 
 
 " Oh, anywhere." 
 
 ** Do you mind coming out to Villa Fieschi ? I 
 have some business with Sinibaldo." 
 
 Ascania made a face. 
 
 "To be the greatest bore on earth one must have 
 been born a Fieschi, and I shall have to talk for half 
 an hour with the old Marchesa." 
 
 i8 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 Rojate laughed. 
 
 " But the Marchesa was not born a Fieschi," he 
 reminded her. 
 
 Ascania was obstinate, like most very weak people 
 with httle or no mental capacit\'. 
 
 " No, wild cows will not induce me to go to Villa 
 Fieschi." 
 
 Of course, it ended in the eternal drive round the 
 Pincio and Villa Borghese. In former days Lady 
 Stornoway and her daughters would no more have 
 thought of trying to capture him for a drive round 
 the Row than of asking him to take a mothers' 
 meeting for them. But the old Countess was a wise 
 woman, and her daughters were wise too : it never 
 struck them that to force Luigi to do what he most 
 dishked was the best way of testing his affection, or 
 displaying their own. 
 
 " Turn your hand by the other way," Ascania 
 commanded presently. 
 
 She had just been reading a book about palmistry. 
 Her husband did as he was bidden. 
 
 " Well, shall I live till I 'm ninety-nine ? " 
 
 " Phoo ! What a hand ! Why, it tells nothing. 
 . . . Good heaven, dough ! you — you have to 
 commit a murder. You have really, Gino. There ! 
 You see it, that line across ! Really, really, I assure 
 you ! " 
 
 Luigi returned his hand to his pocket. 
 
 " I am beyond measure interested. Who is the 
 distinguished victim ? Does your power go as far 
 as that ? " 
 
 " I wish," laughed Ascania, " it would be Mathilde. 
 Good gracious, I hate her ! How she made this 
 gown ! " 
 
 19 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Who is that ? " demanded Ascania. 
 
 Her husband had just taken off his hat in re- 
 sponse to the bow of a lady unknown by sight to 
 the Princess of Rojate, and she plumed herself on 
 knowing the name and antecedents of everyone 
 in Rome. 
 
 " Do you mind my stopping the carriage a 
 moment ? " he said, and leant forward to give the 
 order to the footman. The other carriage stopped 
 also, though it had already passed a little. 
 
 Luigi jumped out and went to it, turning first to 
 his wife and saying — 
 
 " She is a very old friend of ours. I Ve not seen 
 her for years — since her marriage. Do you mind 
 waiting a moment ? Or if you would rather, drive 
 on and I will meet j^ou over there as you come 
 round." 
 
 They were in the Villa Borghese. It was still 
 early, and there were not many carriages. 
 
 x\scania looked sulky. 
 
 " Drive on ! " she called out to the coachman, 
 without replying to her husband at all, or waiting 
 for the footman to get back to the box. 
 
 " Lord Kilbeg ! " she heard the strange lady call 
 out, " what excellent luck to meet you ..." 
 
 Her own carriage moved away too rapidly for her 
 to catch the rest of the sentence. But the t'rinci- 
 pessa di Rojate hated to hear her husbanc^ called 
 by his Scotch title, and, as it happened, she had heard 
 
 20 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 it pretty often. For he had belonged for years to 
 a Highland Militia, and he had been for three years 
 at Oxford, so that it was not uncommon for him to 
 meet men who had been acquaintances in the regiment 
 or the university ; and they often failed to remember 
 his Roman title, and found the old one, as his mother's 
 heir, rise natural^ to their lips. 
 
 Prince Crivelli laughed. 
 
 " I 'm glad," he said, " you forget my new name, 
 for I have forgotten yours." 
 
 " Lady Benbecula. My husband's new coronet 
 came home about five months ago. You know he 
 is the Governor of Van Teufel's Land : or probably 
 you know nothing about it. But he is . . . And 
 you — you are the Prince of — of . . . " 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 " Rojate." 
 
 " Yes ! Rojate. It 's not so easy as some Italian 
 names to remember. But why shouldn't we stick 
 to our old ways. You always called me Priss. I 
 think everyone called me Priss till I became a 
 Governor's wife. And I 'm afraid I always called 
 you Kilbeg." 
 
 " I dare say, I was very cheek}^" 
 
 " You mean / was. Most likely ! But it really 
 is delightful to see you again. I 'm on my way home 
 with this young person, who is now five, and the 
 Van Teufel climate is not good for children. So 
 I 'm paying a short visit to Europe, and taking her 
 to her grandmother. We landed at Brindisi the day 
 before yesterday. I wish you 'd show me Rome." 
 
 " Let me show you one house in it to-night. My 
 wife has a reception. Do come." 
 
 " Certainly. Where do you live ? " 
 
 He laughed again. He felt sure his wife's absence 
 at that moment was providential. Ascania would 
 
 21 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 have been hard to convince that anyone in honest 
 ignorance could think it necessary to ask the head 
 of the CrivelH for his address in Rome ! 
 
 But the Prince gave the fullest information, know- 
 ing well it was wholly unnecessary. 
 
 Meanwhile Ascania had driven out of sight, nor 
 did she reappear. After a very short chat Lady 
 Benbecula and her little girl drove away, and Luigi 
 walked across the grass to the place at which he had 
 suggested that his wife should pick him up. From the 
 time he had got out of the carriage to the time he 
 reached this place just seven minutes had elapsed. 
 Driving round by the palace, it should have taken 
 the Princess about the same time. But Ascania had 
 not the least intention of coming back that way for 
 her husband. At the turning close to the palace 
 the coachman, who had, of course, heard his master's 
 suggestion, prepared to take the necessary direction, 
 but the Princess leant forward and bade him turn 
 the other way. 
 
 " . . . drive on the Pincio for quarter of an 
 hour," she said, " and then to the Palazzo Castagna." 
 
 Five minutes afterwards she spoke again. 
 
 " It is going to rain," she called out. " I will have 
 the hood of the Victoria put up." 
 
 Then while the footman was doing this she added — 
 
 " If it rains I will not go to the Pincio. Tell him 
 to drive straight to the Castagna Palace." 
 
 On the little seat in front of her were her husband's 
 overcoat and umbrella, which of course he had not 
 taken with him when he left the carriage — for five 
 minutes as he thought. 
 
 He had a horrible cold as it was, being, in fact, 
 very liable to most severe colds ever since he had 
 come to Rome, and a wetting was certainly not hkely 
 to improve it. 
 
 22 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 Ascania was quite aware of this, but at present 
 her intentions were punitive. 
 
 As for Prince Crivelli he was not long in guessing 
 them. The petty experience of five years was not 
 likely to be thrown away on so clever a man. For 
 though the fact has not yet been mentioned, the 
 young Prince though he had married Ascania, was a 
 very unusually clever person. 
 
 For nearly ten minutes he waited. Then, fully 
 understanding what had happened, he turned to 
 walk back into the city. 
 
 Ascania was keenly alive to the fact that her 
 method of punishment was singularly well chosen. 
 For, except for the exigencies of sport, her husband 
 detested walking. Some people look upon gratu- 
 itous fatigue as the noblest of all pleasures, but 
 Luigi thought it senseless, and never willingly suffered 
 it. 
 
 To tell the truth, he was always fonder of riding 
 than walking, and in the saddle it was hard to fatigue 
 him. 
 
 Nor did he enjoy getting wet through merely 
 because it was a stormy-tempered woman's whimsey 
 of petty revenge to drive off and leave him. 
 
 The physical annoyance, however, was light in 
 comparison to the disgust it gave him to think that 
 it should be a pleasure to the woman he would wish 
 to respect so to treat him. 
 
 The shower was a very sharp one, and, before he 
 entered Rome again by the Flaminian Gate, the 
 Prince of Rojate was exceedingly wet. His suit 
 and boots were thin, for when his wife carried him 
 off driving it usually ended in his being taken for a 
 round of calls. He was probably the only husband 
 in Rome who was ever dragged round on this 
 duty. Ascania scarcely ever did it alone, and no 
 
 23 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 other five-years-married lady ever did it except 
 
 alone. 
 
 Of course, Luigi did not forget that he might just 
 as well have gone to the Villa Fieschi as he had in- 
 tended, and settled his business with Don Sinibaldo. 
 But what he particularly dishked was walking with 
 neither stick nor umbrella in his hand. To a man who 
 always carries one nothing is more uncomfortable 
 than to walk without. 
 
 24 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 When Lady Benbecula began her instructions that 
 evening as to the address to which she wished to be 
 driven, the hall-porter of her hotel looked com- 
 passionate. 
 
 " Everybody in Rome knows the Palazzo Crivelli/'^ 
 he assured her. 
 
 And when she saw how big it was, she realised that 
 he had probably told the truth. As it had stood 
 there ever since Urban III. built it, in ii 86, its where- 
 abouts would, perhaps, have been well known even 
 had it been no bigger than the Palazetto Castagna, 
 where Ascania's mother lived. 
 
 So many English writers have described Roman 
 palaces since Mr. Marion Crawford set the fashion, 
 that by me the reader may be spared. 
 
 Though large, the Crivelli Palace was by no means 
 among the largest in Rome, and for the rest it was dis- 
 tinguished chiefly by the surprising cleanliness of its 
 grand staircase and by the comfortable, inhabited 
 air of its apartments. 
 
 Ascania received Lady Benbecula almost with 
 tenderness. It was her habit to squeeze people's 
 hands, whether she liked them or not, and her short- 
 sightedness caused her to adopt, while talking, a 
 proximity that seemed very intimate, especially as 
 such proximity made it natural for her to speak in 
 quite a confidential tone. 
 
 The young Princess was not yet fat enough to be 
 coarse, and though already alarmingly altered from 
 
 25 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 Ihe almost beautiful girl she had been half a dozen 
 years ago, was still pretty enough to be sensibly 
 attractive. And her dress and her diamonds were, if 
 anything, a thought too princely. Lady Benbecula 
 made up her mind to like her, as Rome had done, 
 and with much the same careless, superficial in- 
 difference. 
 
 The scene was novel enough to be amusing, and 
 Lady Benbecula soon found a comfortable post of 
 observation. Hard by two ladies were talking in 
 English, and she unscrupulously played eavesdropper. 
 As she perceived, the elder woman's knowledge of 
 Rome was extensive and peculiar, like Mr. Weller's 
 of London. Both were English, but the didactic 
 lady had evidently been a Roman by adoption for an 
 almost geological period. Her niece, as the younger 
 shortly proved to be, was a visitor. 
 
 " That man is Don Paolino Scolari. His brother is 
 head of one of the great papal families. Clement HL 
 Avas their pope. And the lady he 's talking to is the 
 Principessa di Corsignano. She was Donna Claricia 
 Scotti, and both she and her husband are of papal 
 families." 
 
 " You mean families that want the pope to get 
 b>ack the temporal power ? " 
 
 " Oh, no ! We all want that — Protestants and 
 all — whatever we may pretend or our principles may 
 be. The Quirinal and the King utterly spoil Rome.* 
 . . A papal family means one of those that have 
 given a pope to the dynasty of St. Peter. The 
 Corsignano princes are Piccolomini. TEnesiS Sylvius 
 was their pope : he wrote novels and things. But 
 that was a good while ago ; it 's all less amusing now." 
 
 * The date of this story is supposed to be the last decade of 
 the last century. The White Party in Rome have achieved a 
 great social advance in the last eight or ten years. 
 
 25 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 " Are the Crivelli a papal family ? " 
 
 " Yes ; Urban III. was their man. Those are his 
 arms up there ; and up in the vault you can see him 
 and the emperor bully-ragging. Any self-respecting 
 pope in those days spent his time excommunicating 
 the emperor." 
 
 " And the Princess ? Who was she ? " 
 
 " She was Donna Ascania della Castagna, and her 
 father is Duke of San Stefano. They w^ere a papal 
 family too ; but not much of a one, for their pope 
 only reigned twelve days, and with the best intentions 
 in the world, could not carry nepotism very far in that 
 time." 
 
 " She 's pretty, don't you think ? " observed the 
 niece, whose interest appeared to lie more in the 
 present day. 
 
 " She was, if 3^ou like. But they 're both altered a 
 lot since their marriage. She 's getting pillowy, and 
 will be hopelessly fat in a year or two. She 's not a 
 bit like a Castagna, but like her mother's people. 
 They 're Sicilians, and that means that after youth 
 thev are either brown bags of bones or brown bladders 
 of fat." 
 
 "Oh, Aunt Maria! Don't!" 
 
 " I can't help it. I tell the truth as God reveals it 
 to me ; the language, however, is mine. I don't 
 pretend to verbal inspiration. 
 
 " Aunt Maria ! " 
 
 " Well, what 's the matter ? Ascania, as you see, 
 is bound for the port of fat : her mother — there she 
 is, talking to a Monsignore — has already attained the 
 bone-bag alternative. She likes chattering to the 
 priests, for she can then gossip as badly as she wants 
 and still go to Communion in the morning, for she 
 pretends to herself she only does it to get them to 
 pray for the poor sinners." 
 
 27 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 ''Aunt Maria/ / 1" 
 
 " It 's no use going on saying Aunt Maria. I 'm 
 only describing the types. Under me you '11 learn 
 your Rome without prejudice and without waste of 
 time. Duchessa di San Stefano's type is common 
 enough all over Italy ; it 's not particularly Roman. 
 When she wants a new under-housemaid she prays 
 to Sant Espedito. He 's a new saint, and she thinks 
 he '11 not have so much on hand as the old ones ; and 
 so far he has only been taken up by the poor people, 
 so she feels sure he '11 be rather flattered by her 
 notice. If the new housemaid is a success, she gives 
 the smallest and thinnest silver woman she can buy 
 to his altar. For all the Castagna are stingy." 
 
 For a very brief interval there was silence. Then 
 the younger lady remarked contentedly — 
 
 " I must say it 's all most interesting ... so 
 Roman." 
 
 " Wei], it 's as Roman as anything you can get 
 nowadays. Nothing 's really Roman now. The 
 Casa Crivelli was never very Black, either, and no one 
 knows whether our host is Black at all. He never 
 goes to the Quirinal ; but he always takes off his hat 
 to the Queen and the Princess of Naples if he sees 
 them in the Corsa or the Villa Borghese." 
 
 *'' But surely — doesn't everyone ? " 
 
 " Of course not. Your true Black looks along his 
 nose, and takes no notice." 
 
 " As if he was a black elsewhere." 
 
 " . . . Though, of course," added Aunt Maria, 
 with a side-glance, " the pope no longer insists on 
 their putting out their tongues at the Royal Family 
 of Sardinia." 
 
 " I don't believe a word of it," declared the niece, 
 who took life very seriously, " and after living such 
 years in Rome, I never thought you 'd be so bigoted. 
 
 28 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 You seem to believe every absurd story they tell you 
 against the Catholics." 
 
 Aunt Maria was obviously delighted. She was 
 a cheerful old heathen, who did not take life seriously 
 at all. 
 
 " Bigoted, my dear child ! After nearly thirty 
 years in Rome I defy anyone to be bigoted. One has 
 to be a Cathohc or nothing." 
 
 " And, Aunt Maria, you 're not a Catholic. Do you 
 mean to say you 're nothing ? " 
 
 But Aunt Maria laughed cheerfully. 
 
 " Far from it, I 'm Lady Anna Maria Boleyn, 
 and that 's far from nothing here, as you will fmd 
 when you know your bearings better." 
 
 There was another rather longer silence, during 
 which the younger lady looked depressed, the elder 
 urbanely serene. 
 
 " Look ! " she said at last, " that 's the Prince." 
 
 " Prince Crivelli, our host ? Which ? The 
 haughty-looking, very dark man by the door, just 
 shaking hands with a lady ? " 
 
 " No ! That 's Giulio Papareschi . . . but 
 the Prince of Rojate is close to him, leaning against 
 the door-post . . ." 
 
 " With his hands in his pockets ? " 
 
 Aunt Maria laughed. 
 
 " Yes. Rome is nearly as much shocked by it as 
 you : or, rather, it used to be. Everyone hkes him 
 so much that they are beginning to condone it. In 
 fact, some of the very Anglophile young men are 
 trying to learn it." 
 
 " He doesn't look a bit like one's idea of a Roman 
 prince." 
 
 " What do you think he looks hke ? " 
 
 " Oh, anybody — an English officer, perhaj)s — an 
 English officer with a university quahfication." 
 
 29 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 " Gladys, you 've kindled hope in my breast. I 
 like the ' university qualification ' . . . Five 
 minutes ago I was afraid we 'd at last got a fool in 
 our family. I ought to have known better." 
 
 Lady Benbecula wondered if the girl was sharp 
 enough to realise that Lady Anna Maria Boleyn was 
 being unwontedly complimentary. She had never 
 seen her before, but she was fully alive to it. 
 
 " Don't you think him good-looking ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, he is certainly nice-looking," replied 
 the niece without conviction. She could not at once 
 pardon his fair skin and neutral colouring : moreover, 
 she was a blonde herself. 
 
 " He could not look as nice as he is," declared Aunt 
 Maria with fervour, " so it would be absurd to expect 
 it. But in all my life I don't remember any man 
 whose appearance seemed to me so satisfactory. 
 Certainly none so interesting." 
 
 The young lady looked surprised. She was herself 
 so young as to be seldom enthusiastic ; and the Prince 
 of Rojate, it seemed to her, was an odd person to be 
 enthusiastic about. Lady Benbecula listened 
 approvingly. 
 
 *' His face," continued the old lady, " is eloquent 
 and reticent. It hints at how much there is to tell, 
 and stops short at telling anything." 
 
 " It does not seem to tell much." 
 
 " It doesn't mean to. He never will. Some 
 people tell everything — I do. Because there 's 
 nothing that matters to tell. Other people scarcely 
 take even themselves into their confidence ; they are 
 too — well, * shy ' is not a good word." 
 
 " The Prince certainly doesn't look shy." 
 
 " There is one sort of sensitiveness that is shyness 
 boned of its vanity. He is cruellv sensitive." 
 
 " ' Cruelly ' ? " 
 
 30 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 *' I mean it makes it so easy to be cruel to him — 
 for his wife, for instance." 
 
 As it happened, the Princess of Rojate was moving 
 towards them. Lady Gladys bent a leisurely glance 
 on her. 
 
 " That sort of immovably selfish woman finds a 
 perennial pleasure in small cruelties," she observed 
 quietly. 
 
 Aunt Maria looked dehghted. Lady Benbecula 
 felt herself surprised. 
 
 " Who told you," demanded the old lady, " that 
 Ascania was selfish ? She hasn't been particularly 
 found out." 
 
 " She tells me herself." 
 
 Lady Gladys sent another glance to meet the 
 Princess, and Lady Anna Maria followed it. 
 
 " I 'm glad you 've taken a prejudice against our 
 dear Ascania," she said. 
 
 " Oh ... it isn't a prejudice." 
 
 " No, my dear. You 're not such a fool as you 
 look. It 's a revelation." 
 
 Lady Gladys laughed. 
 
 " A fool does as well as anyone else for revelations : 
 one only has to sit still and be receptive enough." 
 
 31 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Lady Benbecula was interested. She watched 
 Prince Crivelh as he leant against the door-post, and 
 began to reahse that he was a very uncommon 
 person. What it was that made him so she was 
 trying to understand. Then she looked at his wife, 
 and without relinquishing the easy sort of liking 
 she had taken for her at first, felt that she was 
 adopting towards her that attitude that Lady Gladys 
 had refused to call a prejudice. 
 
 Lady Gladys herself was in the receipt of another 
 revelation, but this time she kept it to herself. 
 For a dozen seconds or less the Prince of Rojate had 
 watched his wife as she came towards him. 
 
 " She is his crucifixion ! " the girl told herself. 
 
 He brought his eyes away from his wife's face, 
 they passed by those of Lady Gladys without pause, 
 ior he did not know her, then met Lady Benbecula's. 
 
 He came forward immediately. As he did so, a 
 peculiar air of fatigue seemed to be cast aside, an 
 air that almost always was noticeable about him 
 when standing still. 
 
 Prince Crivelli had a singularly perfect figure — so 
 well proportioned, that one never asked whether he 
 were tall or no. He was slight rather than thin, and 
 in his slimness there was no suggestion of weakness. 
 But for the last five years an unmistakable air of 
 being tired had come upon him : one could not 
 -decide whether it meant actual physical weariness 
 
 32 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 or a fatigue of spirit : whichever it was, it slowly but 
 steadily increased with time, and it was always 
 most apparent when he was doing nothing. 
 
 " I have been looking for you for a quarter of an 
 hour," he said, looking down into Lady Benbecula's 
 face with friendly satisfaction in her company. 
 " I was afraid you hadn't come." 
 
 " I came nearly twenty minutes ago, and most of 
 the time I 've been listening to your praises. I saw 
 the Princess though I didn't see you : or, rather, I 
 saw you but you didn't see me." 
 
 It sounded as if she had been subjected to con- 
 jugal laudations. He felt incredulous, but said 
 nothing. Perhaps Priss had acquired the habit of 
 this sort of, not uncommon, mendacious compli- 
 ment. As the wife of a Colonial Governor, a 
 soothing insincerity might not seem to her out of 
 place. 
 
 " I am waiting here," he explained, "to go down, 
 as soon as they tell me he is at the door, and receive 
 Cardinal Crivelli, my uncle." 
 
 " Is that the etiquette ? " 
 
 " Yes. You will see. It is rather a picturesque 
 custom. My wife receives him just there." 
 
 At that moment the Princess espied her husband, 
 and she instantly commanded his presence with a 
 slight but very unmistakable gesture. 
 
 " Excuse me," he said, " I must join her. We 
 must have a good talk later on." 
 
 Lady Benbecula smiled and nodded. He turned 
 at once to Ascania, and looked down into her eyes 
 with his habitual indulgent friendliness. It was the 
 effort of his life to take her for granted as a child, 
 and never to be betrayed into judging her as one 
 would a reasonable adult human being. Yet 
 Ascania was twenty-seven, and had been no child at 
 
 33 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 seventeen, except in perverse, intractable naughti- 
 ness. 
 
 " Of course, you 're always out of the way when 
 you are wanted ! " she burst out. 
 
 Still he smiled, with patient refusal to notice her 
 peevishness and unreason. 
 
 " It 's flattering to be wanted so often," he 
 remarked. 
 
 " P-foo ! What nonsense you do talk always. 
 How tiresome it is to be never serious." 
 
 The raildest of men object to being lectured, even 
 deservedly, in public ; and they were surrounded by 
 listeners who could mostly understand English 
 sufficiently to recognise a scolding when they heard 
 it — not that Ascania's tone rendered even the most 
 superficial acquaintance with English necessary to 
 enable them to recognise that much. And if the 
 reader has supposed that Luigi Crivelli was the 
 mildest of men the writer is to blame. He was 
 sweet-tempered to an uncommon degree, but meek 
 he was not. Only he had long ago decided that for 
 him, being a man, a patient indulgence of his wife's 
 unending irritations was incumbent. This, he 
 thought, was the destined daily exercise of his 
 manliness, to bear and be silent, as the rock is 
 silent for all the noisy fretting and assault of the 
 ever recurrent tide. 
 
 He may in reality have been wrong, but it was 
 a fine delusion. If Ascania could have married 
 a handsome navvy, with a big, lusty body and a 
 profuse expression of animal affection for herself, 
 she would have made him a good enough wife of her 
 type, and would not have thought much the worse 
 of him because he vented his occasional outbursts of 
 passion in blows and obsecrations. While being 
 beaten she would, no doubt, have wept very noisily ; 
 
 34 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 but when he had beaten her enough, he would soon 
 have been able to dry her tears with a few equally 
 noisy kisses. 
 
 Such a husband might very possibly have played 
 her false as frequently as opportunity might present 
 itself. But his infidelities would have been easily 
 condoned and soon forgotten, especially if she had 
 found that any attempt at resentment on her part 
 drew down swift physical chastisement and a sub- 
 sequent period of punitive neglect. 
 
 As it was, the refinement of her husband's nature 
 was a perpetual offence to her. It positively annoyed 
 her that he was not the mere sporting character, and 
 no more, that superficial acquaintance fancied him. 
 His devotion to literature bored her, and she would 
 always interrupt his reading if she could. Almost 
 everything he did was wrong. And though he had 
 been without exception ever since their marriage 
 the most loyally faithful of husbands, she spent her 
 time rushing from one furious jealousy to another. 
 
 If she had married the navvy, this tragedy would 
 never have had to be written. 
 
 No doubt the scolding would have been much 
 more protracted — Ascania had got together quite a 
 rosary of disagreeable things to say ; but before she 
 could get out half of them the Cardinal's arrival was 
 announced. Still, she had time to inform her hus- 
 band that Lady Benbecula was vulgar and as hideous 
 as a devil, that she certainly dyed her hair (what 
 little of it grew on her head), and her feet were like 
 boats. With these and a few other equally flattering 
 criticisms of his old friend scratching his memory 
 like dirty pins, Luigi Crivelli went downstairs to 
 receive His Eminence the Cardinal Bishop of 
 Sabina. 
 
 35 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The reception of the prince of the church was, as 
 Liiigi had said, picturesque and interesting. But 
 what interested Lady Benbecula most was to contrast 
 and compare the two principal figures concerned 
 in it. 
 
 A cardinal created by Pius IX. was not likely to 
 be young in the year of his successor's second or 
 episcopal jubilee. But Cardinal Crivelli looked 
 a little older than he was. He had no appearance of 
 feebleness or senility. His step was firm still and 
 decided, though gentle and deliberate ; his eyes were 
 singularly clear, and their outlook upon the world 
 was direct, observant, and calm. He held himself 
 well, and in his really princely bearing there was 
 none of that rather sad suggestion of fatigue, whether 
 of body or spirit, that has been noticed in his nephew. 
 His hair, though white, was still abundant, and his 
 slim hands had none of the claw-like leanness of 
 old age. 
 
 But there were certain signs of age that are not 
 the commonest. And some of these made people, 
 who were fond of tracing likenesses, declare that the 
 Cardinal was like his late master, Pius IX. 
 
 There was, in truth, no resemblance ; but they had 
 in common an expression of sweetness and tender- 
 ness that would have rendered beautiful any face ; 
 and both Pope and Cardinal had beautiful faces even 
 according to the ordinary standard, that is not guided 
 so much by the meaning as by the features. One 
 
 36 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 very rarely sees, except on the countenance ot the 
 old, just that look of all-indulgent benignity. It 
 comes, one would think, with the patient learning of 
 years to those who draw so near to God as to love all 
 men. It grows out of no indolence of optimism, but 
 from the quiet, humble, gradual faculty of interpre- 
 tation of the great human secret to which each of us, 
 best and worse, is part of the much twisted clue. 
 
 " Are they not alike ? " asked Lady Anna Maria. 
 
 Her niece laughed softly. 
 
 " Yes. It 's really conceited of them to be so fond 
 of each other." 
 
 That they were so a stupider person than Lady 
 Gladys might have perceived. 
 
 " But," she added, " the Cardinal has a more 
 peaceful expression." 
 
 " His Eminence," retorted Aunt Maria, " is a 
 bachelor." 
 
 " What is it so — so unusual in both their faces ? " 
 asked Lady Gladys. " Something singular ? Ah, 
 yes ! an absolute reluctance to give pain." 
 
 The old lady turned swiftly to her niece. 
 
 " Gladys," she said, " you 're a jewel. I '11 eat 
 as much dirt as you choose to offer me." 
 
 The young lady laughed. 
 
 " Aunt Maria, I believe you 're in love with the 
 Prince of Rojate." 
 
 Without doubt Lady Anna Maria blushed. A 
 woman who can still blush at sixty-five must have 
 some good in her. 
 
 " I 'm not the least ashamed of it," she declared 
 stoutly. 
 
 " Only," she added savagely, " it 's a pity it 's not 
 his wife." 
 
 " Isn't she ? 
 I dare say she thinks so. She likes his good 
 
 37 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 looks, and she 's not without attachment to his long 
 legs ; but she has never loved anyone but his wife, 
 and she never will." 
 
 After another brief pause, she added — 
 
 " They are, as you pointed out, a very well-assorted 
 couple." 
 
 " I ! ! ! " 
 
 Aunt Maria nodded. 
 
 " Exactly. In all Rome no one is so reluctant to 
 cause pain as he, and no one so willing to cause him 
 pain as she." 
 
 " Dear me ! " exclaimed the girl, " I should be 
 extremely jealous of you if I were the Princess." 
 
 " Not you ! I was quite wrong about your being 
 the fool of the family . . . and though I hate her, 
 as you say, I also rather like her : everyone does in 
 Rome." 
 
 ** I suppose," hazarded Lady Gladys, ** she 's 
 good-natured." 
 
 " Not a bit. I 've heard her say the most wantonly 
 unkind things about her chosen intimates. But she 
 laughs so much (never at anything humorous) that 
 she has a spurious reputation for being cheery. I 
 expect Luigi could tell a different tale." 
 
 " I must admit she has no appearance of de- 
 pression." 
 
 " She never opens a book, and has nothing to fall 
 back upon. Out of the giddy throng, she sinks into 
 querulous ennui." 
 
 " To my knowledge," observed her niece, " I 've 
 never been in company with a saint ; but if you told 
 me Cardinal Crivelli was one I shouldn't mind." 
 
 " And what surprises me is that I find nothing 
 offensive in it." 
 
 Both women laughed — the old heathen, who 
 looked back on life, with a half bitter, cheerful grin, 
 
 38 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 and the young believer in life's possibilities, who 
 looked forward with a solemn hope. 
 
 They had long ago moved away from their station 
 near the door. Presently, in another room, they 
 found themselves near a secluded and umbrageous 
 balcony. 
 
 " There," whispered Lady Anna Maria, with a 
 verbal nudge that was so unmistakable as to be 
 almost physical, " there she is, sitting there in the 
 dark with young Fairfax, the most flirtatious man 
 south of the Alps." 
 
 " Really," observed her niece, " it 's not our 
 business." 
 
 " Of course, that 's why we mind it. But I am 
 speaking on behalf of abstract justice. If poor 
 Luigi sat in a sequestred balcony with me — nay, I will 
 go further, with you even, when w^ould he hear the 
 end of it ? " 
 
 " I must say by your showing the Prince seems 
 amiable but a little weak." 
 
 The old lady turned savagely. 
 
 " Don't say that again," she commanded roughly, 
 " or I shall go back to my first position about your 
 acumen. Aren't you, after all, clever enough to 
 realise that a man may be so unusual as to bear 
 things because he is strong ? " 
 
 " Dear Aunt Maria," said the girl, " have patience, 
 and I will learn to admire him as much as you. He 
 must be worth it, or he could never have earned 
 such a partisan." 
 
 " All right," said Lady Anna Maria, adding with 
 barefaced inconsistency, " All the same, if he had a 
 grain of sense he 'd (excuse the word ; I seldom sink 
 into slang), he 'd wallop her ... As St. Pau 
 says, it might not be lawful, but it would be admir- 
 ably expedient." 
 
 39 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 " Is that the local version ? In my translation 
 St. Paul ..." 
 
 " Oh, my dear child, St. Paul and I understand 
 each other perfectly. For goodness sake, don't 
 explain him to me ! " 
 
 As it happened, Prince Crivelli himself, five 
 minutes later, passed the arched opening on to the 
 balcony. A curtain usually looped back had been 
 in the meanwhile loosened out, so that one could no 
 longer see Ascania or her friend from the room. 
 But as he went by Luigi heard her voice. 
 
 "... Donna Barbara — Gigi's sister — is going 
 to be married," said Ascania, " to a Lord Strach-an- 
 garroch. P-foo ! What names ! I don't know if 
 you pronounce it that. Eh ? It 's a secret, and Gigi 
 does not know I know . . . " 
 
 He walked on quickly, having no desire at all to 
 surprise her secrets as she had done his. He did 
 not know, or care much to know, who was her com- 
 panion. But he was sure it was a man. Ascania 
 never wasted nocturnal tete-a-tete confidences on her 
 own sex, though she didn't dislike them in the fore- 
 noon. So far it was a good thing — a man might hold 
 his tongue ; it depended, of course, entirely on the 
 man. Had he known it was Fairfax he would have 
 been easy enough on that score, for that diplomatist, 
 though flirtatious, was not talkative or indiscreet. 
 But Luigi was too proud to pause even the brief 
 necessary moment to hear whose voice came in 
 response to Ascania's. He walked on, and he was 
 undeniably angry. It was extremely annoying that 
 she should have come to know this, and unpardonable 
 that she should betray her ill-gotten knowledge. 
 For it was quite certain that she had only got hold 
 of the " secret " by reading a letter never meant for 
 her. 
 
 40 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 She had often read his private letters before, and 
 he knew well enough that she was always on the 
 alert for chances of peeping into them and into his 
 diary. But he seldom gave her the chance. Of 
 what carelessness had he been guilty ? It was 
 strangely characteristic of his weary patience of her 
 that even now, in his strong annoyance, his irritation 
 was chiefly against himself for some supposed 
 stupidity or lack of care. That she should be the- 
 prying, inquisitive poor creature she was, it was no 
 use thinking of that ; but it was unpardonable in 
 himself not to have guarded successfully his sisters* 
 confidence. 
 
 When Ascania said : '' Gigi's sister, Donna- 
 Barbara " (she would have said Lady Barbara had 
 she been speaking to a Roman), " is going to be 
 married," she knew she was going beyond the facts 
 she had nefariously got hold of. But it was impossi- 
 ble for her to restate anything without addition. 
 
 Her husband's sister was not even engaged ; but 
 she wished to be, and there were difficulties — that 
 was why Lewis had been begged to regard all he was 
 told as a confidence. Neither he nor his mother and 
 sisters were people to make gratuitous " secrets." 
 
 Much as Ascania detested her sisters-in-law, it w^as 
 not, to do her justice, because she detested them that 
 she betrayed their confidences. She would have 
 done the same had she loved them ... to call 
 " love " the sentiment she had for her own family. 
 This feeling chiefly showed itself in an habitual 
 craving for the society of her mother and near 
 relations in their unavoidable absence, and a speedy 
 weariness of their company when present. She 
 found them really dull and tiresome, but would have 
 been furious if Gigi had hinted that even conceivably 
 they could be tedious. 
 
 41 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 He was far too wise, and was hospitality itself 
 towards all his family-in-law. So that sometimes 
 Ascania would roughly step in and refuse to permit 
 their acceptance of his invitations, when anyone 
 more lively happened to be expected. 
 
 She was much more proud of belonging by marriage 
 to the Illustrissima Casa Crivelli than of being by 
 birth a daughter of the Most Excellent House of 
 Castagna, a sentiment she was at no pains to conceal 
 when alone with her own family. But with her 
 husband's she affected to call the Crivelli of his 
 branch "mongrels" and "three-quarters English," 
 from which Englishness, again, in general Roman 
 ^ociety she took no little glory. 
 
 42 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " We have not had our talk, after all/' said Prmce 
 Crivelli as Lady Benbecula took her leave of him. 
 
 " No ; it was always impossible. We should not 
 have promised ourselves so unreasonable a pleasure. 
 With the number of guests you have had here to- 
 night, quarter of a minute was more than the due of 
 one." 
 
 " Much more." 
 
 ** I suppose," said Lady Benbecula, " it would be 
 quite out of the question for you to come with me 
 to-morrow morning (or is it this morning ?) to some 
 of the places I have to look at — say the Vatican, or 
 the Colosseum ? Then I could kill tw^o birds with one 
 stone — see what I ought to see, and hear what I want 
 to hear." 
 
 " This is the proper time to see the Colosseum," 
 observed Luigi, " and there is the proper moon." 
 
 " Shall we go ? " laughed Lady Benbecula, no more 
 meaning it than he did. 
 
 " It would be delightful. But I m afraid I can't 
 even come to-morrow morning either. But won't 
 you come to luncheon here ? 
 
 After she had gone away, Lady Benbecula had a 
 misgiving that she had accepted this invitation rather 
 too readily. She was herself a singularly direct 
 person, without arricre-paisce, and, indeed, without 
 forethought on occasion likewise. Her diplomatic 
 training out in Van Teufel's Land had not been very 
 severe ; there was much good-natured vice-loyalty, 
 
 43 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 to herself and her husband, and she had not found the 
 task of pleasing very arduous. 
 
 But now it did strike her that her old friend had 
 rather asked her to luncheon as the easiest way of 
 eluding her own proposal for a meeting than because 
 he had himself desired her company. 
 
 Yet she was sure he was as nice as ever, and did 
 not for a moment accuse him of unfriendliness or 
 chilliness to an old acquaintance. 
 
 About the same time Ascania was making herself 
 singularly unpleasant to her husband in his own room. 
 He had never dreamed of resenting her habitual 
 invasions of his peculiar territory, but he disliked 
 it none the less. " At home " they had always held 
 their own quarters sacred, and mother, sisters and 
 brothers each had their own sitting-room. Of course, 
 they often were in each other's, but never without 
 some sort of implied invitation. Roman custom was 
 not Ascania's excuse, for though a young husband 
 might often enough be found in his wife's boudoir,, 
 the wife was not apt to trespass into her husband's 
 private room. 
 
 If Ascania's invasions had been less belligerent, 
 they might have been somewhat more tolerable. 
 
 On this occasion she affected surprise at finding 
 him. 
 
 " Yes, here I am. Did you want me ? " 
 
 " P-foo ! What should I want ? But I came to 
 see if you were here." 
 
 Luigi was reading, an exercise of his that invariably 
 determined his wife to interrupt. He did not see 
 that any particular good was to be got by making any 
 rejoinder to her remark, and read on a line or two. 
 
 " So you didn't go to the Colosseum ? " 
 
 He looked up in annoyed surprise. 
 
 44 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 " With Lady Ben . . . p-foo ! I can't say her 
 name." 
 
 " It seems obvious I did not/' he answered quietly, 
 *" if you can beheve your own eyes ; though really, 
 Ascania, it seems to me sometimes as if you would 
 rather not believe even them if they insisted on your 
 not being foolish. I perceive you are already jealous 
 of Lady Benbecula." 
 
 " Jealous ! of that craggy, ugly, vulgar peasant ! " 
 
 " It does make it a little unreasonable, I admit," 
 he said. 
 
 Evidently he was tired out. Scarcely did he 
 argue even to this extent with Ascania. That young 
 woman was watching him through her pince-nez, 
 which had a giraffe-like leg covered with diamonds. 
 
 " Gigi, how ugly you become ! " she observed 
 candidly. 
 
 " I never laid very loud claims to personal beaut}^ 
 did I ? " he replied, welcoming the diversion too 
 obviously. 
 
 " Poof ! You 're as conceited as an ape of your 
 hands, and your expression." 
 
 " What an overrated man was Job ! " laughed 
 Prince Crivelli, and his wife gauged his tone well 
 enough to feel that she had not been very successful. 
 At the same time, it is not pretended that he really 
 enjoyed these acrid personalities. 
 
 " You will have to write to that woman and put her 
 off. I am engaged to lunch out." 
 
 Prince Crivelli knew perfectly that the engagement 
 was a figment of the brain, and that his wife would go 
 and breakfast with her mother if he yielded to this, 
 or barefacedly remain at home once her point was 
 gained. 
 
 " Look here, Ascania, I can't be rude, even to 
 please you, to Lady Benbecula : she is one of the 
 
 45 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 oldest friends I have. If you are lunching out, I will 
 get Zia to come and chaperon us ; and she can bring 
 that toady of hers as well, if she likes." 
 
 Zia was the dowager princess, his uncle's widow. 
 
 " Pfoo ! How I hate Zia ! She bores me so, and 
 she is so ugly I cannot eat with her, there." 
 
 Luigi was too merciful to point out that this could 
 hardly matter, as Ascania was not to be present. 
 
 " Your mother would do even better, only I 
 thought, perhaps, you were lunching there." 
 
 In plainest English, this meant that the very fullest 
 opportunities for espionage and critical chaperonage 
 were being offered. But Ascania did not intend to 
 accept anything short of unconditional surrender. 
 
 " I have changed my mind," she said, and an 
 expression he knew very well hardened in her eyes : 
 it was mulish, but it was serpentine. " I will not go 
 out to luncheon : I will receive this woman since she 
 has to come . . . and you will see how she enjoy 
 herself." 
 
 He certainly had no difficulty in recollecting 
 occasions on which she had made herself so objection- 
 able to friends of his, that even now he could not 
 think of it without a hot sense of angry shame. 
 
 He had got up from his low chair some time ago, 
 and was standing with his back to the huge open 
 hearth, on which a log smouldered. He put his book 
 down now, open, upon a table where the light of the 
 shaded lamp fell on it. 
 
 His wife was moving about the room, fidgeting 
 with everything she could handle. Over his head, 
 above the fireplace, hung a peculiarly lovely portrait : 
 it was of a woman, young, slender, graceful, tender, 
 and exquisitely refined. Nothing could be prouder 
 than the lips, but nothing more sensitive. Was 
 Luigi's mouth like that behind his moustache ? For 
 
 46 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 the likeness between them was marvellous — mar- 
 vellous because it triumphed over difference of sex, 
 difference of colouring — for the lady was sombrely 
 dark — and some difference of feature. 
 
 Out of the gloom the pictured lady looked down 
 upon him with a sort of sad approval, an angry 
 tenderness. 
 
 "My dear Ascania," said the Prince, ''you shall 
 certainly not have the opportunity of being dis- 
 agreeable to Lady Benbecula in your own house. I 
 will put her off." 
 
 Ascania laughed like a hyena, and yet had time ta 
 notice with complacency that he called the house hers^ 
 where another man would certainly have called it his- 
 
 " P-foo ! What a fool you are, Gigi ! " she cried, 
 " That is all what I wanted." 
 
 " She shall certainly not lunch here," he added 
 quietly, and still the pictured lady watched with 
 melancholy approbation. " I will give her luncheon 
 somewhere else. We shall be able to have our talk, 
 about old times without boring you." 
 
 Ascania turned sharp and fixed him with her 
 gleaming glasses, then burst out — 
 
 " You — you most horrible beast ! You filthy,, 
 beastly pig ! How I hate you ! Good God, how I 
 wish I could tell you how I hate you . . ." 
 
 That was but the prelude ; nay, the mere tuning- 
 of the instruments. For ten minutes she raved. Her 
 stock of Billingsgate, even in Italian, was dull and 
 monotonous, but it was full-flavoured. It always 
 made her husband feel that he was being pelted with 
 rotten eggs and fish. 
 
 There was, of course, nothing tragic in the position. 
 An angry, railing woman intruded by a destiny that 
 had certainly been blind into liigh position ; a young; 
 
 47 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 man in modem costume with his hands in his pockets, 
 .as patient and as silent as a sad, lonely rock in a cold 
 hurricane. But the pictured lady watched with eyes 
 that were full of tragedy, and for all their blackness, 
 they were like her grandnephew's grey ones. Behind 
 their hopelessness lay a worse misery of scorn ; and 
 far behind the patience of Prince Crivelli's face there 
 crept a shadow of scorn too. 
 
 They both annoyed Ascania — the living man and 
 the dead woman's picture. They had secrets from her, 
 secrets they could not tell her if they would — how to 
 be what they were, how not to be what she was, how 
 to look like that. For Ascania would have given 
 more than all the beauty she had ever possessed for 
 a certain air that breathed about the face and figure 
 of Donna Lucrezia dei Crivelli — by marriage Princess 
 of Torre Nero — even if she had to take the air without 
 the princess's passionate loveliness. 
 
 In her hand Ascania had a book : she had picked 
 it up just now from one of the tables, and held it still, 
 inadvertently. Suddenly Prince Crivelli saw that 
 she had become aware of it, and that at the same 
 moment it had come into her head to fling it at his 
 face. 
 
 It was not a large book, but it had sharp silver 
 comers, and was somewhat heavy for its size. It 
 would certainly strike one a very disagreeable blow. 
 
 But her first intention was changed almost in- 
 stantly, and the book was flung, and with considerable 
 force. Not, however, at Luigi. It flew higher. 
 
 " There ! " cried Ascania. " That woman of your 
 family how I can't bear her look ! She was a 
 beast, and so she looks ! She murdered her husband, 
 and you have her in your room ! The Crivelli might 
 be ashamed of her, but you . . ." 
 
 48 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 " None of the Crivelli have ever been ashamed of 
 her," interrupted the young man's steady voice, 
 *' and I admire her very much. I am proud of her 
 for murdering her husband." 
 
 The book had struck the picture just upon the 
 fingers of the right hand ; and the position of this was 
 unusual, for it seemed as if the lady were lifting it to 
 lay her finger on her lips, as one commanding, not 
 beseeching, silence. 
 
 49 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 As it happened, Prince Crivelli did not give Lady 
 Benbecula luncheon on the following day, nor did he 
 have to make her any excuse for which his wife was 
 responsible. 
 
 About half-past ten the Princess drove out, and 
 she had not been gone ten minutes before a telegram 
 was brought to her husband, which made it, in his 
 opinion, necessary that he should leave Rome at 
 once for Rojate. The message was to tell him that 
 the old parish priest there was dying of a sudden 
 seizure, and Don Pippo, as his people called him, 
 was a favourite with the young Prince. While his 
 things were being packed, he wrote a note to Ascania 
 explaining his departure, and promising to return to 
 Rome on the morrow, or at latest the day following. 
 It so fell out that there were several matters of 
 importance for him to transact at Rojate, and it 
 seemed sensible to take this opportunity of attending 
 to them. That the Princess would care to leave 
 Rome at present was, he knew, so far out of the 
 question that he did not suggest it to her. 
 
 He also wrote a note to Lady Benbecula, and as 
 he was directing it a servant informed him that, if 
 His Excellency pleased. Professor Doctor Gianelli 
 would wish to be received by His Excellency. 
 
 The doctor was admitted without delay or question, 
 his presence occasioning no surprise, for Gianpaolo 
 had been out of sorts for a week or so, and no doubt 
 
 50 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 it Vv'as in reference to the boy the physician desired 
 to see the Prince. 
 
 " Six hundred pardons, Excellency," begged the 
 doctor. " But as I was about to leave Don Gian- 
 paolo his nurse chanced to mention that your Most 
 Illustrious Excellency was on the point of leaving 
 Rome for a few days. Now, if I may be pardoned, 
 I was desiring more than anything that Don Gian- 
 paolo could conveniently be taken to the country for 
 a short change of the air . . . It is not anything 
 at all he has . . . Nevertheless, he is debilitated, 
 and the air of the hills would be like a miracle for 
 His Excellency. If it could be arranged that he 
 should accompany your Most Illustrious Excellency 
 into the Sabina." 
 
 Yes, certainly it could and should be arranged, 
 for Prince Crivelli readily perceived that the doctor, 
 a straightforward, decisive young man, was quite 
 in earnest in his desire that the boy should leave 
 Rome for a day or two. 
 
 None the less, when Luigi was left alone, after 
 giving the necessary orders, he was quite alive to 
 the fact that there would be trouble. 
 
 There was then a train which left Rome for 
 Valmontone at noon, and that train he meant to 
 catch. But to communicate with Ascania before 
 it should have departed would certainly be 
 impossible. He opened his note to her, and added 
 a postscript explaining what he was doing. But 
 there was no chance of her getting it before half-past 
 twelve : she would probably be shopping all morning. 
 
 On the way to the station Gianpaolo peeped out 
 apprehensively. It was abundantly evident that he 
 dreaded catching sight of his mother in every 
 carriage they met. Still, it was only near the palace 
 there was really the least chance of this. Ascania 
 
 51 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 would assuredly have no business in the wilderness 
 of new streets, called by malaprop North Italian 
 names, that branch off from the Via Cavour or the 
 Via Nationale. 
 
 Even at the station the boy had the air of a 
 half-escaped captive ; and when the tickets had 
 been taken, and lie was really allowed to get into 
 the train, he did so with a sigh of relieved anxiety 
 that was rather pathetic, and was by no means 
 lost on his father. The child's spirits rose the 
 moment the train began to move. The Claudian 
 Aqueducts were scarcely left behind before a 
 brighter colour seemed to have come into his cheeks. 
 Once out on the Campagna, it seemed as if the 
 closeness and oppression of the city were forgotten, 
 and their effect cast off. 
 
 Of course, it was a slow train, or it would not have 
 stopped at Valmontone ; but Gianpaolo was not 
 at all impatient. At every station he saw something 
 to amuse him. A.t Ciampino there w^as an 
 astounding contadino trying to make two pigs 
 and a goat go where he wanted, instead of forcing 
 him to go where they wanted. At Palestrina a 
 cardinal - bishop got out. There was a State 
 carriage with gorgeous footmen waiting to drive 
 him away. 
 
 At Valmontone their own carriage and footmen 
 were waiting. Half a dozen people got out ; the 
 carabiniers saluted the Prince ; the capo stazione 
 chatted with the guard ; an old woman arrived, 
 running, and reproaching two entirel}^ innocent 
 saints for the delays which had made her late, and 
 was stuffed into a carriage just as the train began 
 to move and " Partenza " was called out for the 
 third time. The train strolled gently off towards 
 Naples, and Prince Crivelli and his little boy took 
 
 52 
 
A ro:max tragedy. 
 
 their places in the handsome old-fashioned carriage. 
 Gianpaolo enjoyed the drive as much as he had 
 liked the short journey in the train. 
 
 They had no tenants in Valmontone — it is all 
 Colonna and Borghese property ; but they were 
 well known, and the contadini all saluted. The 
 farocco was being shaved just inside a salone at 
 the end of the street, where it melts into the country 
 road. He came out to the doorstep and bowed 
 repeatedly, with a dignity not consciously impaired 
 by the lather that still covered one side of his face, 
 or the rather dubious linen cloth the barber had 
 fastened under his chin. 
 
 Gianpaolo laughed ; but the Prince called out a 
 friendly word or two of greeting, and the old 
 priest was quite satisfied. Had he known that it 
 was his own odd appearance that had made the 
 child laugh he would not have cared. " Laugh 
 at me if you like, only do not spit in my soup ! " he 
 would have said imperturbably. Don Cico, the 
 parocco, was a philosopher of proverbs. 
 
 They left the little town, with its ramshackle 
 cathedral perched on the flat summit of the rock, 
 behind, Luigi pointing out the prehistoric Pelasgic 
 foundations to his boy. 
 
 In the country they drove at first between high 
 banks : on either side were woods with netted 
 undergrowth, where brigands frequently harboured. 
 Two footmen rode beside the carriage with carbines. 
 
 The road mounted continually ; the valley in its 
 windings became more visible. Southwards, where 
 the train had gone, one could see Anagni — the old, 
 old feudal town a grim stronghold of romance and 
 history — Segni, Paliano, each mounted like a 
 sentinel (as sentinels they had been) on its craggy 
 steep. 
 
 53 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 Over there, a little north by east, was Genazzano ; 
 high, high up on the skyline, San Vito ; yonder 
 Olevano, flinging itself headlong from the mountain- 
 top into the valle}^ 
 
 They had got so high up now, that to the left 
 they could see, through the broad mouth of the 
 pass, the Campagna, like a heaving, though deathly 
 silent, green sea, rolling away towards Rome. 
 Behind them, across the wide valley, towered the 
 empty Heniican hills ; in front the still lovelier 
 range of their own Sabines. 
 
 No mountain road in the world could be much 
 lovelier ; and the sharp clear air helped the 
 sensation of freedom and escape that both the child 
 and his father felt rising like a tide within them as 
 they left the lowlands farther and farther behind. 
 Rome seemed to recede into indefinite distance, 
 though in reality there was scarcely more than 
 forty miles between it and them. 
 
 From Valmontone Station to Rojate is nearly 
 thirty kilometri, all uphill ; and though the horses 
 w^ere fine, like those of most of the Roman princes, 
 the drive was a long one. They left Valmontone at 
 quarter to two, and did not reach Olevano (the 
 only village one passes between the two places) 
 till nearly half past three. Outside the little town 
 they stopped at the albergo, which stands at the 
 end of its narrow vineyard, half a mile from the 
 entrance of Olevano. Here Prince Crivelli decided 
 to rest his horses and give Gianpaolo tea. 
 
 While they were waiting for it, in the queer little 
 paved drawing-room upstairs, a neighbour walked 
 in — Ercole di San Vito, the second son of the old 
 Duke of Santo Speco. The two young men in a 
 manner mutually explained their presence. 
 
 " Of course, our people are all in Rome," said 
 
 54 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 Ercole, " and I hope to be by Thursday. But these 
 affari to attend to at Santo Speco, and my father 
 sent me. It would have been fairer to make Taddeo 
 come, since he is the eldest. But catch him leaving 
 the circolo ! " 
 
 " I too had to come out to Rojate on business," 
 said Prince Crivelli, " and the doctor begged me to 
 bring Gianpaolo, who has been wanting a change 
 of air." 
 
 Presently he asked Ercole to come back to Rojate 
 with them, and the young man accepted with 
 alacrity. He liked Luigi much better than the 
 latter liked him. The fact was that Prince Crivelli 
 was rather bored by young San Vito, who was an 
 incorrigible chatterbox. 
 
 " Certainly I will come back wdth you. I only 
 rode down here to get the letters for something to 
 do. Santo Speco at this time of year is about as 
 lively as when San Vito lived there." 
 
 Ercole alluded to the tradition that their feudal 
 castle in the mountains took its name from a 
 cavern hard by, sanctified by the residence in 
 former ages of a local saint and hermit. 
 
 Luigi laughed. 
 
 " I can't promise that you will find Rojate very 
 lively. There will only be Gianpaolo and myself." 
 
 As they passed the post office at the entrance 
 of the paex. Don Ercole stopped to get the letters 
 he had come for. The postmaster came out with a 
 small bundle of circulars and such - like for Luigi. 
 He was already known as an improving landlord, 
 and they were mostly price lists of agricultural 
 implements, patent manures, and drainage 
 specialities. A telegram, said the official, had arrived 
 an hour ago, but had been sent to the castello. 
 
 Driving through the indescribably picturesque, 
 
 55 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 but inexpressibly dirty-looking little town, they 
 turned abruptly to the right near the Camp Santo, 
 and soon Rojate itself, perched on a spur of the 
 mountains, came into view. 
 
 It was growing dusk, and the valley was already 
 dark. Up here in the sky the last pale farewells of 
 day were being said. The mountains loomed out 
 against the steely blue of heaven, with their feet 
 in a black sea of darkness. A dozen lights already 
 crept into the windows of the little town. Over it 
 and behind it hung the enormous black mass of 
 the feudal castle, that seemed itself an outgrowth of 
 the rock whereon it stood. 
 
 " I must say," observed Ercole di San Vito, 
 " your place looks about as cheery as our own." 
 
 Luigi laughed, but did not join in Don Ercole's 
 implied disapprobation. He liked Rojate, and in all 
 its moods it interested him. Englishman as his 
 Roman friends were half disposed to consider him, 
 the inherited sympathies and affections of a thousand 
 years bound him to these wild hills. 
 
 The Castello of Rojate is entered by a long 
 drawbridge, and over this the carriage was soon 
 rumbling. It did not span a moat, but the narrow, 
 precipitous ravine which rendered a moat unnecessary. 
 
 At the end of the bridge stood a bronze statue of 
 Urban III., of heroic size, standing in an attitude 
 rather of menace to the hostile intruder than of 
 benediction to the peaceful inhabitant of this 
 eyrie of his race. 
 
 56 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 As the postmaster had said, there was a telegrnm. 
 awaiting Prince Crivelli. It was from the Princess, 
 and had been dispatched in one of her mildest fits 
 of passion. Few people are willing to expose their 
 violent temper in an open dispatch : it is the object 
 of most of us to conceal in a telegram all that we 
 may feel of anger or joy, grief or anxiety. No such 
 delicate sense of reticence restrained Ascania. She 
 had written the words in a fury, and she wanted 
 their recipient to be fully alive to the fact. That 
 others through whose hands the message must pass 
 would also be aware of the same thing did not deter 
 her at all. 
 
 She had been angry with her husband to start 
 with, his determination to give luncheon to Lady 
 Benbecula having infuriated her. His decision to go 
 to Rojate, which she learned sooner than he had 
 expected, had simply driven her out of herself. 
 
 Scarcely quarter of an hour before the train left 
 the Roman station she had suddenly decided to go 
 home for something, and had then been given 
 Luigi's note. It instantly made her furious. 
 
 She suddenly became aware of the following facts : 
 (i) that there could be no business whatever for 
 Luigi to do at Rojate ; (2) that he had some secret 
 affair there to attend to ; (3) that the air of the 
 mountains at this season, so far from being likely 
 to benefit Gianpaolo must do him harm, and would 
 probably kill him ; (4) that she herself needed 
 
 57 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 change, and that no one had asked if she would hke 
 to change the air of Rome for that of the Sabina ; 
 (5) that there was some mysterious connection 
 ^between the sudden spiriting away of Gianpaolo 
 and his father's real business at Rojate. 
 
 At which moment her surmises, if so calm-sounding 
 a word can be used in reference to Ascania's 
 passionate excursions into the realms of absolutely 
 lawless conjecture, were interrupted — or shall we 
 say assisted ? — by the entrance of Gianpaolo's 
 Sicilian nurse. 
 
 The child had two, the elder by a few years 
 being this woman, who came from San Stefano, 
 near ^lonreale, in Sicily, an importation of the 
 Duchessa's, Ascania's mother. The younger nurse, 
 Marasca, was from Rojate. 
 
 For a couple of days Giazza, the elder woman, had 
 declared herself to be ill, and this morning had 
 remained in bed. When the Prince had decided to 
 go to Rojate, she had been not only in bed but asleep. 
 He had therefore taken Marasca, and was possibly 
 quite content to do so. He knew nothing much of 
 either girl, but felt a certain repugnance towards the 
 Sicilian, of which feeling she herself was much more 
 aware than he was. He quite remembered that 
 Marasca's home was at Rojate, and was not sorry 
 she should have the chance of seeing her relations. 
 For the sake of all concerned, it was as unlucky as it 
 'was true that Marasca was a very beautiful girl. 
 
 When Giazza awoke, which she only did when they 
 brought her her dinner in bed, she was told of the 
 departure of the Prince and of his son for Rojate, 
 and of Marasca's having been taken thither in charge 
 ■of the child. This was not many minutes before the 
 Princess herself arrived at the palace ; and Giazza's 
 
 58 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 fury was as unrestrained and really a few degrees 
 more vulgar than the rage of her mistress. She 
 instantly dressed herself, and betook herself to the 
 nursery, where she found the Princess with her 
 husband's note clenched in her hand. 
 
 Within five minutes the woman had given Ascania 
 a theory as to the reason of Luigi's flight, and the 
 reason for his having taken Gianpaolo — to take 
 Marasca away into the unobserved seclusion of the 
 mountains. Of course, the Sicilian did not say this 
 but she not only made Ascania believe that she felt 
 it, but made that astounding noblewoman say so. 
 
 It was already twelve o'clock. The train for 
 Valmontone, as Ascania well knew, was even now 
 due to start. It would be impossible to get to the 
 railway station, at the other end of Rome, before it 
 should have started, making all possible allowance 
 for the unpunctual departures of southern trains. 
 Also Ascania wanted her luncheon. She ordered it 
 up at once, and by half-past twelve was eating it 
 with considerable appetite and enjoyment. Mean- 
 while she had telegraphed. 
 
 That night she was engaged to a ball, and this the 
 Prince had forgotten. She did not really mind going 
 without him, but at present she chewed the end of 
 that additional grievance till it choked her. Driving 
 to her mother's after luncheon, she saw a certain 
 Ginlio Gonfalone, on whose allegiance she generally 
 counted, in a carriage with her own cousin, Donna 
 Ginta del Torre Nero, whom Ascania detested. 
 Donna Ginta was certainly like Princess Crivelli, 
 but two years younger and undoubtedly slimmer. 
 
 Her mother was in, but laid up with a migraine ; 
 and Ascania, who liked fresh air and hated to have 
 to sympathise, would not stay long in her mother's 
 stuffy room, where there was no fire, but where all 
 
 59 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 Does the reader suppose the Princess of Rojate 
 beheved a word of this ? Or does he think it 
 unnatural to ascribe to her such feehngs, when in 
 her heart of hearts, if she had had one, she would have 
 known how baseless and monstrous the whole vulgar 
 accusation was ? 
 
 62 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 Early in the forenoon of the next day a second 
 telegram was dehvered to Prince Crivelh from his 
 wife. It was a httle shorter than the first, but not 
 less impassioned : the Princess herself was coming ta 
 Rojate, and the train leaving Rome at midday was 
 to be met at Valmontone. 
 
 To say that Luigi was surprised would be to asperse 
 his intelligence. What reasonable person could be 
 surprised at any unreasonable thing Ascania might 
 do "^ He had long ago learned that to consider any 
 ordinary motive of conduct or decision, in reference 
 to what his wife might do or decide, was a profitless 
 irrelevance. 
 
 Otherwise it would be astonishing that Ascania 
 should tear herself, even for a day or two, from the 
 pleasures of Rome at their height in the month of 
 February^ 
 
 He ordered the carriage which he thought she 
 would prefer to be at Valmontone by half-past 
 twelve. The horses would thus have an hour in 
 which to rest before beginning the long, uphill return 
 journey. At the same time the men could get their 
 dinner. He decided not to go and meet his wife. 
 It would mean starting almost at once, and not 
 being back at Rojatc till dusk. The whole day 
 would be thus wasted ; and he fully realised that \\'ith 
 Ascania on the scene he would be able to do very 
 little business. Her talent for wasting other 
 people's time was much more surprising than her 
 
 63 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 •determination to waste her own. And in such a 
 temper as her present one, the whole day would 
 scarcely be long enough to pacify her. 
 
 He decided, therefore, to do as much as he could 
 before her arrival, and immediately set to work with 
 the heads of the different departments. The estate 
 was a large one ; and its management, if any real 
 attempt were made to manage at all, involved real 
 labour and attention. Half an hour after the depar- 
 ture of the carriage for Valmontone came a third 
 telegram from Ascania : 
 
 " Send Gianpaolo and Marasca to meet me at 
 Valmontone." 
 
 Of course it was too late. And the Prince was glad 
 that it happened so. The drive to and from Valmon- 
 tone was long, and the child might be knocked up by 
 it after his journey yesterday. And his father 
 wanted him to get as much as possible of the more 
 bracing air of the actual mountains up here at 
 Kojate. 
 
 Ercole di San Vito had remarked only an 
 hour before how much better Gianpaolo looked 
 already. 
 
 " The last time I saw him at Palazzo Crivelli — only 
 a week ago — I noticed how pale and stanco he looked. 
 He seems as bright as a hawk to-day." 
 
 At luncheon Prince Crivelli told Don Ercole that 
 the Princess was coming, and both young men ex- 
 pressed their astonishment. Gianpaolo was having 
 dinner at their luncheon. Presently the Prince 
 added that his wife had sent a further telegram 
 demanding that Gianpaolo and Marasca should be 
 sent to meet her at Valmontone, but that it had not 
 arrived till after the carriage was gone. 
 
 64 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 " Is Marasca that very handsome nurse ? " in- 
 quired Ercole. 
 
 Luigi looked annoyed as he answered. A moment 
 later Gianpaolo exclaimed — 
 
 " She wanted to take us back to Rome. How 
 glad I am you did not get the telegram in time ! " 
 
 Both young men felt an instant ccnviction that 
 the child's shrewd guess was correct. And Luigi 
 felt his face flush hotly with anger. 
 
 A train from Naples stops at Valmontone at 
 two o'clock. Ascania with her captives could return 
 to Rome by it in time for her own tea ; and she would 
 only have to wait half an hour at Valmontone, and 
 send back the carriage to Rojate with a message. 
 
 Ascania loved plots ; and a plot that should turn 
 the tables on her husband — leave him alone at Rojate 
 (she, of course, did not know that Ercole di San Vito 
 was there) without Gianpaolo and without Marasca — 
 had suddenly struck her in all its brilliant fascination. 
 It had not occurred to her till sometime after her 
 first furious resolution to go and beard Luigi, and 
 at the same time flee from infection. 
 
 She now resolved not to be bothered by going to 
 Rojate at all, if Gianpaolo and Marasca were sent 
 to meet her at Valmontone. She would simply 
 deport them both, and take up her quarters with her 
 mother at the Palazetto Castagna, till it was certain 
 that her maid's illness was nothing infectious. 
 
 Much of this plan Luigi could imagine, once the 
 idea had been suggested to him. Of his wife's 
 jealousy of Marasca he had no suspicion : it was 
 quite a new thing, and he had heard nothing of it. 
 
 The design to kidnap Gianpaolo and drag him back 
 to Rome made Luigi angrier with his wife than 
 almost anything she had ever done. 
 
 I cannot pretend he would be less angry when he 
 
 65 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 came to know that she also suspected him, or pre- 
 tended to suspect him, of making love to one of his 
 own servants. 
 
 Some accusations fill us with disgust of the coarse- 
 ness and vulgarity which alone can prompt them, 
 and Luigi was presently bitterly ashamed, utterly 
 sickened, at the notion that his wife, his wife, could 
 stoop to such a rummaging in the kennel as to 
 raking up suspicions of himself — himself, Luigi 
 Crivelli, Prince of Rojate — and a nursegirl. 
 
 Ercole di San Vito had sharp eyes and a glib 
 facility for " putting two and two together," and he 
 watched his host with keen avidity. He was an idle, 
 talkative, by no means high-minded, young loafer of 
 the Roman clubs. 
 
 He guessed more than Luigi had, and was certain 
 that Ascania's jealousy of Marasca had much to do 
 with her anger and her unprecedented flight from 
 Rome in the midst of the season. Whether her 
 suspicions were ill-founded he really did not care. 
 He merely decided to consider the handsome Marasca 
 with more attentive interest next time he saw her. 
 
 66 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Ascania's idea of asking that Gianpaolo and his 
 nurse should be sent to meet her at Valmontone, 
 and that they should all three return to Rome, instead 
 of Rojate, had been an afterthought, a trifle belated, 
 hence its miscarriage. But until she herself arrived 
 at Valmontone she did not know it had miscarried. 
 In the train she had been busily enjoying it in 
 anticipation. 
 
 Then she arrived at Valmontone, and found it 
 could not be carried out. Her anger on discovering 
 this she made less effort even than usual to restrain 
 or disguise. It was displayed passionately before 
 the coachman, the stationmaster, the footmen and 
 the carahinieri. Perhaps the capo-stazione, who w^as 
 from Caserta, in the " regno," rather admired her for 
 it. Thus he himself was used to conduct himself 
 when displeased with a ticket collector. But the 
 carahinieri were not Neapolitans. One was a Tuscan, 
 the other two from Lombardy and the servants were 
 all Romans, or from the Roman state. None of these 
 were edified by the lunatic scolding of the Princess. 
 
 Giazza looked on with extreme enjoyment, but 
 despised her termagant lady all the same. 
 
 " Is the Princess returning to Rome ? " she in- 
 quired presently. 
 
 For her own sake Ascania would have loved to do 
 so. But to do so would be to spare Luigi ; and in 
 her present state she would rather lose somc^ pleasures 
 of her own than miss spoiling his. 
 
 67 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 The long drive was far from soothing the passionate 
 Princess. She had ahvays been indifferent to scenery, 
 and honestly disliked the country. She would have 
 much preferred stopping all the year round in town 
 had fashion and climate allowed. Convention and 
 an impossible temperature alone drove her from 
 Rome between the end of June and the beginning 
 of October. As it was, she always insisted on re- 
 turning thither nearly a month earlier than half 
 the world. 
 
 To catch the midday train she had been obliged 
 to lunch at eleven instead of half-past twelve. And 
 Ascania was a lady w^ho thoroughly enjoyed her 
 meals, and liked to enjoy them without disturbance 
 or irregularity. 
 
 She rather liked her own maid, who was now ill, 
 and did not care at all for Giazza, whom she only 
 supported in a partisan way as coming from her own 
 home in Sicily. She wished Giazza had taken the 
 fever instead. 
 
 As the carriage went slowly up the long hill to 
 Olevano, a young man dressed like a gamekeeper 
 passed them. 
 
 " Who is that ? " demanded Ascania as he saluted. 
 
 She always expected to be told everyone's name. 
 
 " That is Carluccio, brother of Marasca," replied 
 Giazza. " A briccone ! " she added in a low voice. 
 
 " He looks a scoundrel ! " declared the Princess, 
 speaking fully loud enough for the young man to 
 hear. 
 
 As to that tastes might differ. There was nothing 
 about the young man's extremely handsome face 
 suggestive of a scoundrel. Nevertheless, there was 
 a fire in his beautiful angry eyes that might blaze 
 in;o very dangerous conflagration. 
 
 He had heard the ugly word " briccone " applied 
 
 68 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 to himself by the Princess, and he made up his mind 
 he had been intended to hear. 
 
 Poor Ascania ! Utterly foolish, beyond all suffer- 
 ance, blind and deaf and mad, she thrusts forward 
 to destruction, as if nothing short of it could soothe 
 her irritated fancy. 
 
 Look round upon the lovely hills and bid farewell 
 to them ; turn westward to yonder setting sun, and 
 mark well the last thou shalt ever see ; watch the 
 black wings of night unfold, soon to wrap their 
 never-loosening pall about thyself . . . treasure 
 the last pale relics of the day, for never another day 
 shalt thou have, and to-morrow thou shalt be as 
 little concerned with this trivial fragment we call 
 time as any other whom yesterday's breaking wave 
 flung out upon the dim shore of eternity. 
 
 69 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Ercole di San Vito was not a sensitive person, nor 
 morbidly tactful ; but he honestly wished himself a 
 hundred miles from the Castello of Rojate within 
 half an hour of Ascania's arrival there. Before bed- 
 time he was resolved that he would take the earliest 
 possible opportunity of departing on the morrow. 
 The Princess had come to make herself disagreeable, 
 and had no objection that he should perceive it. 
 Everyone in the castle who came across her did 
 perceive it. He knew her rather well, and with the 
 best intentions in the world, out of sheer friendliness 
 to Luigi, tried to flirt her into good humour. But 
 though he was not a bad hand at the process, and had 
 often known it succeed with her before, it did not at 
 all succeed now. It takes two to flirt, and to-night 
 Ascania would not take a hand. 
 
 Ercole also knew Luigi well, and he remembered 
 ever after that on this occasion Crivelli was quite 
 unlike himself. He made scarcely any apparent 
 effort to ignore his wife's eccentricities, hardly any 
 apparent endeavour to salve the wounds of her 
 temper. San Vito began to suspect that the tepid- 
 seeming Englishman had an Italian temper himself, 
 and Ercole's respect for him rose immediately. 
 
 Both young men were in the smoking-room when 
 the noise of Ascania's carriage rumbling over the 
 drawbridge announced her arrival. They flung 
 aside their books and went down to the great haU — 
 originally a stanza di guardia — to meet her. 
 
 70 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 The Prince of Rojate had always treated his wife 
 with almost ceremonious courtesy, and he now went 
 quickly forward to open the door of her carriage him- 
 self. Her brothers would have thought it a degrada- 
 tion to do this. 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances he would have been 
 hugged before everybody. 
 
 " You beast ! " she said, leaning out of the carriage. 
 " Why did you not come to meet me ? " 
 
 " My dear Ascania ! You know very well I came 
 here to do certain business. If spending the day with 
 you would have done it as well, I should have stayed 
 in Rome. As it is, I have been hard at work all day." 
 
 " That is true," put in the well-meaning Ercole. 
 " I have scarcely seen him " 
 
 " I dare say you have not ! " interrupted Ascania, 
 who was now standing with a passionate face, and 
 tearing off a fur cloak as if it were her resolve to rend 
 her clothes like an indignant Pharisee. 
 
 " Where is Gianpaolo ? " she then demanded. 
 " W^hy did you not do as I ordered, and send him and 
 Marasca to meet me at Valmontone ? Why did not 
 you ? Why " 
 
 " Your telegram asking me to send them did not 
 arrive till long after the carriage had started," replied 
 her husband. 
 
 Ascania simply shrieked. 
 
 " That is a lie ! " she yelled. " I sent it at eight 
 o'clock . 
 
 Ercole literally jumped. Never in his life had he 
 heard a woman call her husband a liar ; and here was 
 a Roman princess screaming out accusations of lying 
 against the head of one of the proudest princely 
 houses in Rome, with half a dozen of his own servants 
 to hear. 
 
 He glanced involuntarily at Luigi, and saw on liis 
 
 71 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 face for the first time that expression that he after- 
 wards remembered so well. 
 
 '* On your telegram," said the Prince, " it said it 
 had been handed in at ten o'clock. If you wrote it 
 at eight there must have been a delay in sending it." 
 
 He spoke in a very clear voice, and not at all 
 hurriedly. His intonation betrayed no heat, but a 
 most intense coldness. 
 
 Ercole knew that Luigi had been a very devoted 
 lover, a very much attached husband. 
 
 " He will never care for her again," he told himself. 
 " Dio Mio ! I should not like to see anyone despise me 
 as Luigi's eyes despise her." 
 
 His gentleman's instinct had been to get away ; 
 but how ? Ascania had not even returned his greeting 
 yet. He was standing literally with his hand out when 
 her first explosion made it drop as if it had been shot. 
 
 How could he get away without his very retreat 
 being a declaration of disapproval ? He had hoped 
 to be able to ignore, to affect to notice nothing. 
 
 The servants were even more miserable. They 
 felt it was a treason to overhear. 
 
 *' I must say you might say * How do you do ? ' 
 Ascania," observed Ercole, with a rather forlorn 
 attempt to take his hostess's blind passion lightly. 
 
 " Ercole ! " she retorted, " if you don't care to hear 
 me tell my husband what I think of him, you had 
 better go where you cant hear, for I shall certainly 
 not hold my tongue because you are here." 
 
 All this time Luigi had been held to the spot by the 
 fact that he had been trying to help his termagant 
 Princess out of her wraps — another courteous service 
 that her brothers would have left to the footmen. 
 
 During tea Ascania's temper was more and more 
 freely indulged, until at last poor young San Vito 
 
 72 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 really could not stand it any longer, and fled un- 
 disguisedly. 
 
 She had been so outrageous already that it was, 
 thought Luigi, impossible for her now to become 
 worse. But he was mistaken. 
 
 "As if I did not know%" she cried, leaping 
 from her chair as if about to leap on him, " as 
 if I did not know what brings you here, you and 
 Gianpaolo . . ." 
 
 He looked at her, not in greater, but in a new and 
 deeper astonishment. 
 
 " What brings me here ! " he repeated. " I told 
 you what brought me here, and what brought 
 Gianpaolo." 
 
 *' And you thought I believed ! You thought me 
 such a holy fool ! " (To do him justice, Luigi did not 
 look as if he, at all events, thought her holy.) " Do- 
 you think I do not know about you and Marasca ! 
 she yelled. 
 
 Luigi did not jump as Ercole most certainly w^ould 
 have done had he still been in the room. But some- 
 one else did, someone of whose near presence neither 
 Ascania nor her husband knew. 
 
 As for him, he stood as still as ever. And his 
 deep, cold scorn hardly seemed intensified. He 
 was not given to exclamations, and he made none 
 now. 
 
 " Are you going on ? " he asked. " For both our 
 sakes I hope not. Some things can never be 
 unsaid . . ." 
 
 " I want nothing to unsay. I tell you I knew all 
 along what made you bring Marasca away here to 
 Rojate — and Gianpaolo as your excuse." 
 
 " Listen ! " he interrupted, and to interrupt was- 
 another thing to which he was most unused. " Listen, 
 Ascania ! Finish saying what you have begun,^and 
 
 73 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 1 tell yon plainly that no power on earth will induce 
 me to go on living with you." 
 
 That at all events she might not say it then — then 
 in her mad, uncalculating fury and passion — he left 
 the room, so abruptly, so unexpectedly, that in a 
 moment she found herself alone. 
 
 74 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 During dinner Ercole still assured himselt that the 
 gold of the Indies would not keep him at Rojate 
 an hour next morning. 
 
 Luigi was a little more silent than usual, but not 
 less courteous. Nevertheless, San Vito noted that 
 change in him which has been mentioned. 
 
 " If she had one grain of reason left she would be 
 afraid of him," he told himself. 
 
 In his heart he had sometimes accused Crivelli 
 of being afraid of his termagant wife. Ercole was 
 not the only Roman who secretly condemned him 
 as henpecked. He suddenly realised how much 
 they had been mistaken. 
 
 " She is mad ! " he decided, and tried to remember 
 if there had been any talk of madness about these 
 San Stefanos. But as Sicilians they were not really 
 well known in Rome ; and Sicilian saints and Roman 
 madness might be much the same. 
 
 Ascania had a certain beauty, and sometimes 
 looked brilliantly handsome ; but to-night he thought 
 her simply ugly. 
 
 She needed adornment, and was generally much 
 concerned about dress, and, if anything, over-given 
 to splendour. Ercole and Luigi were both in 
 evening dress. Ascania still wore the gown in which 
 she had travelled, and it was neither smart nor pretty. 
 Her hail had certainly not been attended to since 
 her arrival, and her face had apparently not been 
 washed : it bore the evident trace of abundant 
 
 75 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 tears, for Ascania seldom flew into a passion without 
 copious weeping. 
 
 Ercole did not scruple to tell himself that the 
 Princess looked dirty. Her skin had sometimes a 
 muddy quality that made any neglect of these 
 matters the more unfortunate. 
 
 " What a fool she is ! " he thought. " It takes a 
 lot of beauty to carry off ill-temper. Luigi never 
 could have cared for her except for her good looks 
 and cheeriness. One sees how much the latter is 
 worth, and anyone can see where the beauty will 
 have gone in a year or two." 
 
 Before dinner was over the fated woman had 
 flatly insulted her husband half a dozen times, 
 as little heedful of the presence of servants as of 
 that of Ercole. 
 
 That she left them after dinner both young men 
 felt to be " an uncovenanted mercy," and they 
 sat longer than they would otherwise have done. 
 Neither, of course, made the smallest allusion to 
 her, but Ercole said he should return to Rome 
 on the morrow. 
 
 " Perhaps we may, too," remarked his host. 
 " I Ve done about all I had to do here : a couple of 
 hours in the morning will finish it. I dare say we 
 shall meet at the ball to-morrow night at the 
 Palazzo Nuovo." 
 
 Ascania was not in the room that on occasions 
 like these they used as a drawing-room, the actual 
 reception rooms being enormous, and difficult either 
 to light or to warm. The whole castle was still 
 almost entirely mediaeval ; at least, nothing much 
 had been done to it for two or three hundred years. 
 The most valuable pictures had been attended to, 
 the very splendid furniture of the State apartments 
 had been restored, tapestries in some instances 
 
 76 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 repaired and rehung, and the scagliola flooring 
 renovated and even relaid in places. And all this 
 had been the work of the present Prince. Scarcely 
 anything new had been added. 
 
 Ercole, feeling rather a poltroon, took early 
 advantage of his opportunity and went off to bed. 
 Prince Crivelli returned to his papers and business. 
 Nevertheless, his mind was entangled with the 
 thought of his wife. 
 
 On an occasion like this he had never known her 
 fail to bring the day to a climax by a final row. 
 After which tears and sometimes a proclamation 
 of peace, or at least of an armistice. 
 
 Presently came Gianino, his own valet, an old 
 Roman of the Trastevere. 
 
 " Signore Principe," he said, " I am ill. I never 
 am ill, but now I am ill. I cannot stand, and I am 
 come to ask. Excellency, if Sisto can attend to the 
 Signor Principe for this one night." 
 
 The young Prince looked up and gave the requested 
 permission very kindly. Gianino was a very old 
 servant, having'served the Casa Crivelli nearly fifty 
 years. He looked wretchedly ill, and his master 
 bade him make haste to bed. 
 
 Between the servants of great Italian families 
 and their masters there is usually more respect and 
 less distance than is the case between an English 
 nobleman and his household. 
 
 Luigi liked his ancient valet, and was sorry he 
 should be out of sorts : he was a strong old man, 
 and, as he had just said, was never ill. 
 
 Sisto, who was to take his place, was not a Roman, 
 but a Sicilian from San Stefano, another importation 
 of the Principessa's. 
 
 Presently a hospitable idea came into Luigi's 
 head to go and see if Ercole di San Vito had all he 
 
 77 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 wanted. He had felt peculiarly absent-minded 
 when his guest left him, and had perhaps neglected 
 to inquire as to anything further he might like. 
 Prince Crivelli was a most scrupulously attentive 
 host. 
 
 Ercole seemed glad to see him. He was smoking, 
 and had not yet undressed. The two young men 
 stood by the huge window together and looked out 
 on the exquisite night. The moon was full, and 
 swung in the chill heavens like a gold and silver 
 lamp. From their feet the mountain fell, precipice 
 after precipice, slope after slope, down to the valley 
 miles below. In the valley lay a white ocean of 
 what looked like wool — cold, impenetrable, deathly 
 mist. 
 
 Ercole's was a slight, superficial nature, but he 
 was not a bad child ; and he was to-night oppressed 
 by the burden of sympathy. To say anything was 
 out of the question, and he did not dream of attempt- 
 ing to say anything. But he stood by Luigi's side, 
 and longed to make him feel how sorry he was. 
 And Luigi did feel it. 
 
 " Ascania will be better to-morrow," he said 
 quietly : " rushing off here has tired and upset 
 her." 
 
 They shook hands and said good night. Ercole 
 gave the tiniest little squeeze as he held his friend's 
 hand in his own. Then he stood at his own door 
 and watched the Prince go quickly — he always 
 walked with a light, swift step — down the stone 
 corridor, like a tunnel, as all the corridors at Rojate 
 were. At the corner Luigi turned and nodded a 
 final good night and disappeared. Ercole never 
 saw him again. 
 
 He turned back into his own room and began to 
 undress, tiiinking all the time of Luigi, whom he 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 found he liked much better than he had ever sup- 
 posed. Then he thought of Ascania, whom, on the 
 other hand, he reahsed that he had never cared for. 
 He recalled her monstrous behaviour since her arrival 
 to-night, and abruptly found himself repeating the 
 old, ever-quoted tag : — 
 
 " Quern Deus vult perdere, prius dementat." 
 
 " Those whom the gods would slay they first deprive 
 of sense." 
 
 That he must meet Ascania again in the morning 
 before he left he knew ; but he made up his mind 
 to see as little as possible of her in the future. Such 
 wild cats, he told himself, are dangerous. 
 
 In reality he would never see her : would see only 
 such torn remnant of her as her murderer would 
 leave. 
 
 79 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 When Luigi got back to the smoking-room, he 
 found his wife there. She had opened the big 
 window and was leaning out. Like many southerns, 
 she was much more susceptible to heat than to cold. 
 
 The candles on the table were guttering in the 
 draught. 
 
 Luigi took a book and sat down, though the 
 flickering of the light made it difficult to read. 
 The eyes of the only picture in the room seemed 
 to watch him, and their expression was sad, devoted, 
 outraged, horror-stricken, tender. 
 
 Almost the whole room had been by his own 
 arrangement hung with tapestry, literally " hung." 
 That is, the tapestries were not stretched, but 
 depended loosely, falling in some places into full 
 folds. 
 
 These tapestries he had discovered rolled up in 
 a dusty gallery that had long done service as a 
 lumber-room. There he had found much beautiful 
 old furniture only needing renovation and repair. 
 
 The tapestries had not yet been restored, having 
 been hung here after merely beating and cleansing. 
 They were frail, and in places ragged. Much 
 faded, one could still make out the subjects, taken 
 from the life of Urban IIL, the Crivelli Pope. 
 
 Behind them were the six-feet-thick walls of 
 stone. On the floor of scagHola lay an old but very 
 thick Oriental carpet. Over the fireplace hung the 
 only picture, a portrait of the same Donna Giuha dei 
 
 80 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 Crivelli whom we have seen before in the Palazzo 
 CrivelH in Rome. 
 
 She had been an only daughter of most devoted 
 parents, and the most beautiful of the Crivelli. 
 It was not surprising that her portrait had been 
 painted more than once. As a matter of fact, both 
 these had been the work of the same great artist, 
 and nearly at the same time. One had been painted 
 for her parents, that in the Roman palace. This 
 had been for her husband, and after the tragedy of 
 his death and her own had been sent back by his 
 family, the Papagalli. 
 
 Except for one very huge and heavy table, a 
 smaller one for writing, some equalh- massive chairs, 
 and a couple of tall dark screens, there was little 
 furniture in the room. 
 
 Presently Ascania turned and looked at her 
 husband. It always irritated her to see him 
 read. 
 
 " I should think," she said, the passion still 
 bubbling in her throat as at the lips of a caldron, 
 " I should think instead of coolly reading that 
 nonsense — whatever it is " 
 
 " It is the nonsense of a certain Italian called 
 Dante," he informed her parenthetically. 
 
 Sometimes this would have pleased her — her 
 husband hoped, against hope, that it might now. 
 Ascania never read poetry herself, or saw any object 
 in it. But she was very chauvinist : and if there 
 were to be poets, it was a good thing that an Italian 
 should be recognised as the greatest. 
 
 To-night she merely ignored all this. 
 
 " I should think," she repeated hotly, " that 
 instead of reading you would take the first 
 opportunity of our being alone to apologise." 
 
 He looked up for a moment only. From the unusual 
 
 8i 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 expression of his face the wretched woman might 
 have taken warning. 
 
 " Should you really ! " he observed, immediately 
 dropping his eyes upon the book again. 
 
 He did not, as she had intended, ask " for what." 
 So she had to tell him without his asking, which 
 was irritating. 
 
 *' A gentleman begs his wife's pardon when he has 
 misbehaved himself to her," she spurted out. 
 
 Ascania was often delivered of her diatribes like 
 a leaky syphon. 
 
 To this general principle Luigi offered no objection, 
 and subscribed no adhesion. 
 
 " Do you hear, Luigi ? 
 
 Again he looked up, and looked also into her face. 
 
 " Of course I hear. Look here, Ascania, this 
 has now lasted seven or eight hours. Let us 
 consider the episode closed. Even you, I should 
 think, would appreciate by now the charm of 
 variety." 
 
 He stood up, and his expression was good-natured, 
 pacific, all for conciliation. Did she for one 
 moment hesitate ? He watched, behind his smile, 
 to see. That she did not herself believe in the 
 least her monstrous accusation as to her husband's 
 infidelities was at once its best feature and its worst. 
 But the Angel of Destruction stood behind her, 
 and his fatal shadow fell black between her and 
 common reason, common sense. 
 
 No doubt before going to sleep she and her husband 
 would have kissed again with tears. She loved those 
 kisses and thoroughly enjoyed those tears. Anger 
 and embraces are much akin, phases of the same 
 sensual craving. Meanwhile, she would have her 
 row, whereof the torrents of weeping, the final 
 kissing should be the climax. 
 
 82 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 She reiterated all her grievances : that Gianpaolo 
 had been brought to Rojate ; that he had not been 
 sent down to Valmontone to meet her ; that Luigi 
 had come to Rojate himself ; that she, Ascania, had 
 lost a dinner-party and a reception by coming. (In 
 this she was not strictly accurate, for the dinner- 
 party was at her own house, and she had merely 
 put off the guests at the last moment. The 
 reception was a true bill, but it was at a dull house, 
 and she had never had much intention of going.) 
 
 With a patience that might have turned Job 
 green with envy, Luigi proved again and again the 
 baselessness of these accusations as matters for 
 reviling of himself. 
 
 Then, like a cracker that seems to have sizzled 
 out, did she burst forth again in a final explosion 
 about Marasca. ■%- 
 
 And now the cold, white anger of her husband's 
 face might have warned anyone, even any maniac, 
 but her it did not warn. 
 
 She stood close to the table where the huge beeswax 
 candles flickered and guttered as the cold night 
 breathed in on them, then burned straight again as 
 the sighing gust died down. 
 
 Sometimes, as these puffs of wind came, the 
 tapestries upon the wall rustled like leaves, fell silent, 
 and stirred again like the sound of a woman's dress. 
 
 But Ascania, never perceptive, though sharply 
 watchful often and inquisitive, noted none of these 
 things. In heaven above, in earth beneath, in that 
 last hour of her life she noted nothing, heeded nothing, 
 but her own passionate, unreal, counterfeited 
 grievance. Once it seemed to Luigi as if the whole 
 night sighed. And he sighed too — the inaudible, 
 stilled sigh of immense patience pushed past its limit. 
 
 Above Ascania, on the wall, stood the other, 
 
 83 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 pictured lady. But now her gaze was not for him, 
 but all for Ascania. Her she watched with a 
 scrutiny that seemed as full of pity as of scorn. 
 Her finger still seemed as if about to command 
 silence, still about to be laid upon her lip. She 
 enjoined silence, and she promised it. 
 
 I have seen that picture a hundred times, and I 
 know there is only one other like it in the world. 
 Only one other portrait ever painted thus embodies 
 a secret never to be revealed, horror and pity, 
 exquisite beauty and poignant misery, unfathomable 
 pathos, and a scorn so infinite that at first it looks 
 no more than sorrow. 
 
 On the table were two objects that had belonged 
 to Sinibaldo dei Crivelli, only son of that first 
 Sinibaldo, Prince of Rojate, whom Luigi had himself 
 succeeded. Had this young Sinibaldo lived he 
 would have been Prince of Rojate now. But he had 
 been killed in Eritrea, and his widowed mother was 
 that " Zia " whom Luigi had wanted to invite to 
 luncheon. 
 
 The objects on the table that had been his were 
 a whip and a knife : both rather peculiar, as was 
 natural, seeing that Don Sinibaldo had brought 
 them from Abyssinia. The whip looked like agate, 
 yellow and almost transparent, about as thick as a 
 finger at its thickest part, and w^onderfully flexible. 
 The knife, or dagger, was rather roughly made, 
 horribly sharp on both edges, and protected by a 
 handsome sheath. Neither of these articles were 
 generally on the table, but on a high shelf over the 
 writing-table. Ercole di San Vito had taken them 
 down and neglected to replace them. 
 
 Ascania was always given to fidgeting wdth things : 
 she picked up the dagger and half pulled it out of 
 its sheath. She seemed so inattentive and so careless 
 
 84 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 that Luigi took it out of her hand. Then she 
 picked up the whip. 
 
 "Ascania," her husband said, in a voice so low 
 and yet so clear that it sounded remote and yet 
 within himself, " for once yoti must listen to me. 
 To be accused — that I, Luigi dei Crivelli, should be 
 accused of making love to a servant, and that servant 
 one of our own people from Rojate here, your servant 
 and mine, the attendant of our child, your child 
 and mine, that of this you should accuse me in 
 your own mind, in most un worded suspicion, would 
 fill me if I could have divined such a thing with 
 horror and disgust. Horror of you ! disgust of 
 you I What sort of mind must yours be ? What 
 sort of person must you be to be capable of such a 
 sort of suspicion of your husband ? What sort 
 of a princess thinks her husband likely to prefer 
 a nursegirl to herself ? What sort of a lady ? 
 But this accusation, monstrous and grotesque as it 
 is, you have not harboured silently, but proclaimed 
 upstairs and down, before half our servants here, 
 before Ercole di San Vito ; and yet you do not believe 
 one word of it. Disgusting as your shrieking the 
 accusation abroad is, it would be fifty times more 
 disgusting if you did in truth believe it. I do you 
 the justice to feel certain that you don't. But, 
 Ascania " 
 
 " Don't I ! " she burst forth, " don't I ! I do ! 
 And by heaven I swear I will not' have the dirty 
 leavings of a nurse ! " 
 
 The whip was in her hand : his face, pale and 
 bitterly scornful, a yard away. Like a flash of 
 hghtning, the long, slim, very flexible thong of 
 rhinoceros-hide rose and as swiftly fell, and with 
 a stinging cut it had struck across his lips and across 
 his cheek. 
 
 85 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ercole di San Vito did not dance at the Palazzo 
 Nuovo on the night of the twenty-fifth of February. 
 Neither did he leave Rojate so soon as he had in- 
 tended, though more than ever he would have been 
 glad to leave it, and never see the dreadful place 
 again. 
 
 Early in the morning he was roused by his own 
 servant. The man's face was pallid with horror. 
 
 " Eccellenza ! " he stammered, with scarcely an 
 apology for his rough awakening of his master, 
 " Eccellenza, it is fearful ! The Princess has been 
 murdered ! The Prince and Don Gianpaolo are gone 
 — nowhere to be found . . ." 
 
 He burst into tears, he beat his breast, and walked 
 round and round crying — 
 
 ''It is horrible ! In all the world there was 
 nothing so horrible ever ! Eccellenza, it is horrible, 
 horrible ! The Prince gone, Don Gianpaolo gone, 
 the Princess murdered ! They found her . . ." 
 
 Then he poured forth in a dreadful torrent of words 
 a description of how the maids whose business it was 
 to attend to the smoking-room had gone thither to 
 begin their work, and of what they had seen ; of how 
 almost at the same moment the nurses had come 
 running out to say Don Gianpaolo was nowhere to be 
 found . . . 
 
 It was all too true. Ercole di San Vito dragged on 
 his clothes, and through the many hollow passages, 
 like cold tunnels in the chill February morning, 
 
 86 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 hurried to the horrible place. It was full of servants, 
 some weeping, some whispering, some loudly ex- 
 claiming, some in stony silence, others wailing and 
 wringing their hands. 
 
 There lay Ascania rolled in torn tapestries, them- 
 selves darkened with her blood, as was the heavy 
 carpet, as were the other rent and tattered hangings 
 on the walls. In the last death-wound the Abyssinian 
 knife still stuck deep and fast, but there had been 
 many other previous wounds. 
 
 Chairs had been overturned, the cloth w^as dragged 
 from the table, the candlesticks lay bent upon the 
 ground. 
 
 Here and there, it was clearly to be seen, the 
 wretched lady had clutched the loose folds of tapestry, 
 had tried even to pull herself up out of reach by 
 means of them. In places they were torn down, and 
 the bare walls showed behind. In others they hung in 
 flimsy tatters. From the chimney the pictured lady 
 looked down and watched, with her hand advanced 
 to her lips, keeping silence and enjoining it. 
 
 Already Ercole noticed that scarcely any of the 
 servants, even the most talkative, alluded to the 
 quarrel the dead Princess had fastened on her husband 
 from the first moment of her coming yesterday. 
 
 Giazza and Sisto, the two Sicilians, tried to speak 
 of it, and Marasca and her brother the keeper, who 
 was also there, looked up with startled eyes to listen 
 to what they should say. But Gianino, who had 
 dragged himself from his bed, oblivious and in- 
 different to all sickness of his own now, silenced them 
 fiercely. And the other servants, all Romans or of 
 Rojate, murmured approval. 
 
 Then Giazza and Sisto shut their mouths, but with 
 a sullen anger, and Ercole knew that hereafter they 
 would speak. Everyone in the castle would be 
 
 87 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 examined, and he knew what they would say. Nay, 
 he himself must be examined, and on oath, and what 
 he must himself say he also knew miserably. 
 
 There were many people to summon. The legal 
 authorities local and Roman, the Cardinal dei 
 Crivelli, and Ascania's mother. By telegram he 
 informed the Cardinal, charging him with the task 
 as regarded the old Duchess of San Stefano and the 
 Roman authorities of justice. Mounted messengers 
 were sent to Olevano and Valmontone. 
 
 Except that Prince Crivelli had disappeared, no 
 one all day long brought any word of him. That he 
 should have taken Gianpaolo with him Ercole found 
 at once most astounding and most natural. He knew 
 that Luigi adored his child. Flying thus, and knowing 
 as he must know that such flight must be from Italy 
 and for ever, it was pitifully natural that he should 
 carry away his son into his own hopeless exile. And 
 yet how senseless ! In such a flight a child could not 
 fail to be the weightiest encumbrance, must inevitably 
 make identification easier, capture more probable. 
 
 That no news came from anywhere in the moun- 
 tains of the fleeing Prince, either then or as the days 
 went by, did not at all surprise Ercole, or anyone else 
 at Rojate. No peasants of the mountains would 
 inform of the Prince if they had seen him, or ever be 
 driven to admit that they had seen him. Perhaps 
 he had taken refuge with the brigands ; for there is 
 always talk of brigands in those ranges of the Sabina, 
 true talk often, oftener imaginary or exaggerated. 
 
 Weeks afterwards it was declared that the Prince 
 and his son had been seen, seen on board a steamer. 
 But some said it was at Naples, others were sure it 
 was at Palermo, others again knew it was at Messina 
 or Catania ; it was on a vessel of the Navigazione 
 Generale Italiana, it was on a Messageries boat for 
 
 88 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 Marseilles, it was on a Norddeutscher Lloyd ; but 
 all were convinced that by now the Prince must be 
 safe in America. 
 
 Meanwhile, the old Cardinal, much broken and 
 visibly aged, had arrived long ago at Rojate, and 
 the Duchess of San Stefano had utterly refused to 
 come. She instantly took to her bed when it v;as 
 suggested, and remained there till all such suggestion 
 had ceased. 
 
 The Cardinal was the head of the Casa Crivelli now^ 
 and its only male member, at all events in Italy. 
 When he should die the haughty race of mountain 
 princes founded by Urban III. would be extinct, or 
 so he himself believed. 
 
 He was doubly a prince now — prince of the churcli 
 and Prince, by default, of Rojate. 
 
 89 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 For a long time Rome had much to say. That 
 Ascania had brought her fate on herself many 
 allowed ; for Ercole di San Vito's account of her 
 behaviour from the moment she arrived at Rojate 
 was well known, and the account also given by the 
 servants in their examination. 
 
 And previous misbehaviours of this sort on the 
 wretched woman's part got known mysteriously, 
 possibly exaggerated. Her own flirtations were 
 raked up and lost nothing in re-telling. 
 
 But, after all, she had been murdered, and whatever 
 her provocations had been, she had paid for them 
 horribly. 
 
 To trace Luigi had been quite impossible. Some 
 said not nearly enough pains had been taken to trace 
 him. 
 
 His mother and sisters came no more to Rome, 
 remaining thenceforth entirely in Scotland. The 
 Palazzo Crivelli was shut up, for the Cardinal con- 
 tinued to occupy his apartments in the Via Giulia. 
 And the Crivelli began, not to be forgotten, but to 
 fall back into the mystery and romance of the past. 
 
 Meanwhile Cardinal Crivelli grew older and more 
 broken, more frail and ghostlike, till at last people 
 called him, in fact, the " Ghost of the Crivelli." 
 
 Ercole di San Vito was kind to the old man, and 
 often went to see him. Noticing how his expenses 
 had been in nowise increased, Ercole decided that the 
 
 90 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 Cardinal knew his nephew's whereabouts, and by 
 some means supphed him well with money. 
 
 But of the tragedy whose shadow had fallen so 
 near them both they never spoke to one another. 
 
 At last, however, it was destined to be discussed 
 between them. 
 
 Nearly seven years after the murder of Ascania 
 and the flight of her husband, Ercole received a note 
 from the Cardinal early one morning begging him to 
 come and see him. He went, and found the old man 
 in a strange, tense excitement, not at all of the 
 talkative kind. He was evidently preparing for a 
 journey. 
 
 " I am going to Rojate," he said, " and — if it is 
 possible, if it is not too inconvenient — I am going to 
 ask you to come with me." 
 
 There was really nothing to prevent Ercole. It 
 was October, and nobody was in Rome ; he had no 
 engagements, and if it had been to any other place 
 he would have been glad enough to get away for a day 
 or so into the mountains. But to Rojate he had an 
 aversion that had scarcely weakened at all since that 
 horrible February morning seven years ago. 
 
 Nevertheless, he presently consented, and the 
 Cardinal informed him they were going to drive. 
 
 This did not surprise Ercole much. His Eminence 
 was the most old-fashioned person in Rome, and the 
 last of the cardinals to keep up old customs. He 
 disliked the railway, and scarcely ever used it ; 
 indeed, his journeys from Rome were nearly all such 
 as might just as easily be performed in his own 
 carriage. And Cardinal dei Crivelli had splendid 
 horses, another old Roman habit. 
 
 Ercole did not mind driving either. He was not 
 afraid of brigands ; and the open solitudes of the 
 Campagna, and afterwards the ever-mounting but 
 
 91 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 excellent road into the heart of the Sabines (built by 
 Pius IX.), would make a refreshing change after the 
 city. 
 
 " I drive," said the Cardinal as they passed out of 
 Rome by the Porta San Sebastiano, " I drive because 
 I 'm an old, pig-headed man who likes to ignore time's 
 changes, and behave, as far as may be, as if things 
 remained still as they were when I was your age." 
 
 " For my part," said Ercole, " I think it is a much 
 pleasanter way of travelling, and in this instance 
 pretty nearly as quick. Allowing an hour or so for 
 luncheon at Albano, it will take us with your horses 
 five hours and a half. If we went by train, there 
 would be from your palace to Valmontone Station 
 two hours, and from Valmontone to Rojate at least 
 three more." 
 
 It was one of those exquisite autumn mornings 
 that are lovelier, I think, near Rome than anywhere 
 else. The air was fresh and cool, the sun bright, and 
 a smell that belongs to October filled one with a sense 
 that was like elation. The horses needed no urging, 
 and cheery was the ring of their feet on the ancient 
 paved way that for two-and-twenty centuries has seen 
 so endless a going and returning to and from the 
 world's great capital. 
 
 On either side lay illustrious tombs, around them 
 garden-like enclosures, behind these patches of vine- 
 yard, and then the empty, utterly silent Campagna. 
 
 They did not talk much : Ercole had an idea that 
 all old people were rather deaf, and thought it 
 necessary to raise his voice, which, of course, was a 
 little fatiguing. As a matter of fact, the Cardinal's 
 hearing was excellent, and though he was too cour- 
 teous to beg his companion not to shout, it was 
 slightly tiresome to him. 
 
 92 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 Beyond the tomb of Caecilia Mella the road becomes 
 more soHtary : the walls have ceased, and the 
 ineffable melancholy of the Campagna is all around. 
 
 But Ercole for many years had never seen his old 
 friend look so little sad. A slight flush lighted up his 
 usually pale cheeks, and a sparkle that was hopeful, 
 if not glad, animated his large black eyes. 
 
 " Ercole," he said, turning quite abruptly to his 
 young companion, " I am going to ask you some- 
 thing ..." 
 
 And instantly San Vito knew what about, though 
 the subject had long been avoided between them. 
 
 " Ercole," asked the old man, sinking his voice, but 
 speaking with eager and clear rapidity, " you know 
 what my sorrow is ! Not that I am the last — if I 
 really am the last — of our race, but that it should 
 have ended in the crime of its head." 
 
 He paused a moment, and looked far away across 
 the pale green ocean of the Campagna to where the 
 mountains, like a rocky coast, rose from it in a vast 
 curve. Then, turning again, he laid his thin, delicately 
 beautiful old hand on the young man's arm. 
 
 " Ercole ! Do you believe Luigi killed his wife ! " 
 
 It was, somehow, more like an exclamation than a 
 question, and the Cardinal scarcely seemed to expect 
 an answer. And if he had, what could San Vito have 
 replied ? That after reiterated provocation the 
 Prince of Rojate had slain his wife no one had ever 
 doubted. 
 
 Of that last scene — of Ascania's final insults, of the 
 blow with the whip — much had been overheard, as 
 during the protracted and reiterated examinations 
 had been ascertained. 
 
 " If," the Cardinal went on, " it were true, as 
 people think, that Luigi were alive now, he and 
 Gianpaolo, in America ; if it were the case that they 
 
 93 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 were living there on money sent by me, then it would 
 be true also that Luigi killed his wife, killed her and 
 fled from Italy with his child." 
 
 Again the old man paused, and looked away over 
 the melancholy emptiness of that weird landscape. 
 Ercole was more than interested : he had always 
 believed that Luigi and Gianpaolo did live some- 
 where, out of Europe probably, on money regularly 
 remitted by the Cardinal. 
 
 " I myself," the latter continued, " have always 
 hoped that he was dead. I never heard one word, 
 one hint of his existence from the moment of his 
 disappearance ; and if he and Gianpaolo were alive, 
 I know he would have let me know, and have let his 
 mother know. Neither of us have ever received one 
 word, one line . . . 
 
 " Every day all these seven years I have said Mass 
 for them both — Luigi and Ascania, I mean. And 
 this morning I said it. But afterwards something 
 unusual happened. It was during my thanksgiving, 
 when the Mass was over, and I am certain I was not 
 asleep. I had just finished the Anima Christi, when 
 something made me turn my head — I do not think it 
 was any sound — and I looked towards the door. My 
 frie-Dieu, you know, is placed angle- wise, facing 
 towards the middle of the altar. Well, just inside 
 the door of the chapel, a little behind me, stood Luigi,. 
 beside him stood Ascania, and between them, each of 
 them holding him by a hand, was Gianpaolo. The 
 child was looking up in their faces with a happy, 
 satisfied expression. They were looking at me. 
 When our eyes met they both smiled. Luigi looked 
 older, so did Ascania, so did the child — older, but 
 absolutely unchanged. Nay, what am I saying ! 
 Features were unaltered, figure, gesture ; but both 
 were elevated, purified — something earthly had fallen 
 
 94 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 from them, something heavenly had grown into 
 them." 
 
 The old man spoke with a singular force and 
 earnestness, but without excitement or delusion. 
 Ercole listened almost breathless, but from the 
 very first convinced. 
 
 " Presently they knelt — all three ; and the words 
 of the Te Deum rose to my own lips like a divine 
 infection from theirs, and I knew they were joining 
 in thanksgiving. And when they rose, with a 
 gesture that said farewell, I could read in it also this : 
 * No more Masses need you say for us : we are together 
 henceforth, our quarrel healed, our pain ended, our 
 faults blotted out.' Presently they smiled at me, made 
 their reverence, and passed out. I knelt on and 
 thanked God, then myself went out. Outside the 
 door old Onopio, my cameriere, was waiting with 
 my letters. ' Did you see anyone come out ? ' 
 I asked him. * No one came out,' he answered quite 
 quietly, ' but I saw them go in ! ' * Whom did you 
 see ? ' I asked him, and he answered promptly 
 and without hesitation : * Their Excellencies the 
 Prince Luigi, the Princess Ascania, and Don Gian- 
 paolo.' ' You saw them go in ? ' ' Yes, Eminenza,, 
 nearly ten minutes ago.' Then he gave me my 
 letters, bidding me note that one was marked 
 ' Urgent/ " 
 
 95 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 "" I AM certain now," the Cardinal observed, after a 
 thoughtful pause, " that Luigi and Gianpaolo are both 
 dead, that both are happy, and Ascania happy with 
 them. God is good ! " 
 
 For a little while Ercole was silent. Then he 
 asked — 
 
 " Is this why you are going to Rojate ? " 
 
 " No. That letter marked * Urgent ' was from 
 Don Pippo, the old parish priest at Rojate, who 
 nearly died on the day . . . You know when I 
 mean. He had been very ill already, and it was 
 partly to see him that Luigi went out that time to 
 Rojate. But he didn't die after all. He wrote last 
 night to beg me to come out. He urges that it is a 
 matter closely concerning the honour of the Casa 
 Crivelli, but declares that he will not write it. That 
 is why I have come." 
 
 At the entrance of the village, or '' paese " as they 
 themselves call it, Don Pippo was waiting for them : 
 perhaps he had been waiting some time, but he 
 did not betray the least impatience. He was a 
 very pious old person, and he considered impatience 
 *' imperfect." He knew they were coming, and that 
 they would drive, for a telegram had been sent. 
 
 At the Cardinal's invitation he got into the 
 carriage, which he asked might be shut now, for it was 
 cold up here in the mountains. 
 
 " There is a man dying here," he said, '' and it is 
 to see him I sent for your Eminence. You may re- 
 
 96 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 member him, for your Eminence had always a good 
 memory. He is called Sisto, a Sicilian, who used to 
 be in the service of the most excellent house ; and he 
 married, about seven years ago, a woman called 
 Marasca, who had been also in the most excellent 
 household — I need not remind you. The woman 
 died in childbirth of her first bambino ; and after- 
 wards he married a certain Giazza, also a Sicilian, 
 whom it is impossible that your Eminence should 
 forget. (If you will allow me, we will stop here, for 
 the carriage can hardly pass to the fellow's house.) " 
 They accordingly got out, and the old priest con- 
 tinued : " That woman is dead too, dying also in 
 childbirth. Both of the man's wives suffered horribly, 
 and the children of neither were born alive. Of 
 course, they were unbaptised. All this your 
 Eminence will remember presently. The ways of 
 the Omnipotent are inscrutable ; His judgments 
 are terrible. (This w^ay, Eminence ; this way, 
 Excellency.) " 
 
 The cottage stood alone in a small vineyard. A dog 
 like a wolf snarled at them out of his kennel, where he 
 was tied up with a length of dirty rope. A bowl of 
 tomato pulp stood on a trestle outside the door, 
 some large pumpkins were ranged on a flat outhouse 
 roof. There was an acrid smell from the shrivelled 
 and withered vines. 
 
 The dying man was propped up in bed. He was 
 incredibly emaciated, but though evidently in fever, 
 quite sensible, and able to speak without any great 
 appearance of effort. 
 
 " It was not, of course," said Don Pippo, " in 
 Confession that I learned those things which caused 
 me to write yesterday to you, Eminence. This man 
 told them to me in ordinary confidence, expressly 
 
 97 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 that I should send for you. Only to-day would he 
 go to Confession : even now he has not had II Santo 
 Viatico. He wants to tell his story himself." 
 
 And he told it. 
 
 From the first day he saw Marasca he was, he said, 
 " impassionated " with her : the love of her devoured 
 him like a fire, and the thought of anyone else even 
 speaking to her maddened him. He was all the more 
 jealous because she would neither admit she loved 
 him nor deny it. If he accused her of having another 
 lover she would say neither " yes " nor " no." 
 Sometimes she seemed really to care for him ; at 
 others to be absent-minded, as if thinking of someone 
 else. Meanwhile, Giazza was jealous of her; for 
 Giazza, though she was too proud to show it volun- 
 tarily, was herself in love with him, Sisto. 
 
 Giazza at last began to speak of their master's 
 eing in love with Marasca, and of Marasca being 
 deep in love with the Prince. Soon afterwards came 
 the " flight " of the Prince and Don Gianpaolo to 
 Rojate, with Marasca instead of Giazza to attend the 
 child. Giazza pretended to him that she had begged 
 to be allowed to go, but the Prince had refused, and 
 Marasca had triumphed over her. Next day the 
 Princess followed her husband to Rojate, taking 
 Giazza in place of her own maid, who was sick ; and 
 he, Sisto, had obtained through Giazza permission 
 to go with them. 
 
 In the hall, when they arrived at the castle, he had 
 heard the Princess openly accuse her husband of 
 loving Marasca ; and during dinner he had heard the 
 same accusation repeated and enlarged. He felt 
 certain Marasca had been brought to Rojate for the 
 purpose Donna Ascania asserted. After dinner 
 Gianino, the Prince's valet, felt too ill to remain up, 
 and told Sisto he should obtain permission to go to 
 
 98 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 bed, and that he would ask Don Luigi to let Sisto 
 himself act as valet for that night. 
 
 Meanwhile, another thing had happened. Car- 
 luccio, brother of Marasca, a very proud man with a 
 dauntless and high temper, had overheard the 
 Princess speak insultingly of himself to Giazza as the 
 carriage came slowly uphill from Valmontone and he 
 walked past it. He came into the servants' hall at 
 the castle blazing with anger against her, but saying 
 nothing of it. In silence he learned from the other 
 servants how the Princess had arrived and had in- 
 sulted the Prince before half a dozen of them, coupling 
 his sister's name dishonourably with the Prince's. 
 
 He generally saw the Prince about game, &c., just 
 after tea in the smoking-room, and had gone up 
 thither by a back staircase, when he overheard the 
 Princess's abuse of her husband there, and with his 
 own ears heard her intolerable insults of his sister. 
 
 All this, however, Sisto himself only came to know 
 later. He himself all that evening was boihng with 
 a hotter and hotter fury of jealousy and anger 
 against his master. As it grew late he hung about, 
 waiting for the Prince to come to his own room to 
 undress, in which, owing to Gianino's illness, it was 
 to be his duty to assist him. 
 
 Hearing at last a very loud voice in the smoking- 
 room, he had crept near the door of it, which opened 
 from the Prince's dressing-room. Beyond the 
 dressing-room was the Princess's bedroom, and 
 beyond that Don Gianpaolo's night nursery. Neither 
 nurses slept there, but in rooms of their own opening 
 out of the day nursery on the other side of the 
 corridor. All the rooms just mentioned on this side 
 the corridor opened into one another. From the 
 smoking-room a second door led on to the corridor, 
 from which, close to this door, the back staircase 
 
 99 
 
A RO^^IAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 already mentioned led down. Inside both doors of 
 the smoking-room were tall, heavy and dark screens. 
 
 During the whole scene between the Prince and 
 Princess the valet had stood eavesdropper, every 
 word of hers being audible, and nearly all that her 
 husband, in his much lower but very clear voice, had 
 rejoined. The Prince was nearer to him than the 
 Princess, but with his back to the doorway in which 
 Sisto stood. The loose folds of the tapestry fell 
 together over the doorway, which was shadowed and 
 partly hidden by the tall, dark screen. 
 
 He could never see the Prince's face or judge of its 
 expression, and the Prince's replies were not what he, 
 a Sicilian, would have expected from a falsely- 
 accused husband. All his animosities were roused 
 against his master : what sympathy he had to spare 
 from himself was for his mistress. She really was 
 his mistress : Don Luigi was only his Princess's 
 husband. She was Sicilian, like himself : he came 
 from her " paese," had been born on the old Duke of 
 San Stefano's land, had been in the Duke's household 
 since he was a young boy, and had only lately been 
 transferred to the service of the Casa Crivelli — 
 Romans and foreigners. He had always been the 
 partisan of the Princess. And now her injuries, 
 which he then madh^ believed, were his own. To 
 revert to the Prince's manner. A Sicilian prince so 
 accused, had he been in truth innocent, would, Sisto 
 felt sure, have answered with as great a fury as his 
 wife's, perhaps have silenced her with force, cer- 
 tainly passionate anger, quite unlike this low, cold 
 immovability. 
 
 Then came the blow on the Prince's face, and in a 
 moment he saw the Prince turn and, with his hand 
 to his face, almost stagger to the doorway in which 
 he himself was standing. He also turned and drew 
 
 lOO 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 back, hurrying across the dressing-room, which was 
 also thickly carpeted because of the season and the 
 cold scagiiola flooring. There was no light but that 
 of the moon shining through the uncurtained window. 
 Half-way across the room the Prince's foot caught 
 in a fold of the loose carpet, which he himself had 
 kicked up a moment before in his flight. Don Luigi 
 fell, and instantly Sisto had leapt upon him. He 
 was taller than the Prince, and much heavier. With 
 his hands, and with a towel he had been holding all 
 through the scene between Prince and Princess, he 
 strangled his master. At the moment he had heard 
 the first words of the quarrel between Prince and 
 Princess he had been arranging the towels on the 
 stand by the washing-place. 
 
 lOI 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 The Prince had made scarcely a sound, though, of 
 course, he struggled beneath his assailant's weight. 
 But a dreadful noise was taking place behind him in 
 the smoking-room whence Don Luigi had rushed. 
 
 All this time the door into the Princess's bedroom 
 had been closed : tapestries overhung it also. No 
 doubt the other door opening from Donna Ascania's 
 room into Don Gianpaolo's must also have been 
 closed. 
 
 But just as Sisto knew that his work was done he 
 heard both these doors open, and in the moonlight 
 stood the child, whom some evil chance had awakened, 
 and who, awakening perhaps in fear, had come to seek 
 his parents. 
 
 That he saw and understood what Sisto had done 
 was written on his face, ghastly white in the broad 
 silver light of the moon. But the child neither 
 screamed nor fled. He stood shivering and pointing 
 at his dead father's body on the floor. Maddened 
 with fear for himself, the murderer could not spare 
 the child, and he did not. 
 
 Then he dragged both bodies to the window, softly 
 opened the casement, and flung them out, leavmg the 
 window open, perhaps with some vague idea that 
 when found it might be supposed they had fallen out. 
 There was, of course, no blood. 
 
 Then a further notion struck him. All these rooms 
 looked to the side of the castle, away from the draw- 
 bridge entrance, on which front were the windows of 
 
 102 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 the piano-nohile and the suite of great rooms of 
 State. The moat that had been formed out of the 
 natural ravine was here very narrow and very dark ; 
 at the bottom were loose stones and a rank growth 
 of weeds. There was no entrance to this part of the 
 moat ; at each end it was blocked by a high wall, in 
 which was no door. But from his own bedroom 
 window in the floor below it might be possible to get 
 down. He would go and see. 
 
 All this time there was the horrible though not 
 loud, noise in the smoking-room ; but it seemed a 
 sort of outward echo of the horrible turmoil in his own 
 brain. He had no attention to spare for it : he must 
 think of himself, of his own danger. 
 
 Safe in his own room, he locked the door, and 
 gently opening the casement, looked out. It was not 
 more than twelve feet from the loose stony bottom 
 of the moat, and down there all was black shadow. 
 Even from here he could not see the bodies, half- 
 buried among the tall weeds : would it not be safest 
 to leave them there untouched ? At first he thought 
 it would : then it occurred to him that in broad 
 daylight they might be very visible. 
 
 There was no rope in his room, but he remembered 
 where he had seen some, and he stole forth again and 
 fetched it. This he knotted here and there to climb 
 up by again. 
 
 It was not difficult to get down, but he nearly 
 ended his own life there and then. For, concealed by 
 the weeds, and now by the darkness also, was the 
 mouth of an old well. It was disused and partly, 
 perhaps intentionally, filled up with stones. Still, 
 even now it was twelve or fifteen feet deep, and had 
 he fallen into it he might have broken his neck. 
 
 (" No great loss," thought Don Ercole. The 
 Cardinal was nearly of the same mind, but thought 
 
 103 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 of the man's soul, and recognised God's mercy 
 on it.) 
 
 Into this well Sisto had not much difficulty in 
 getting the two bodies, and then a few stones, as if 
 they had fallen of themselves from the loose masonry 
 of the well's mouth, dislodged by the impact of the 
 bodies themselves. 
 
 He had two reasons for not throwing down more 
 stones : lest doing so might make some noise which 
 might betray him, and in order that, if ever dis- 
 covered, the bodies might not appear to have been 
 intentionally hidden there. 
 
 Once back in his own room, he unlocked his door, 
 undressed and went to bed. To his own great 
 surprise, he discovered that he was unspeakably 
 tired, and, more than that, overpowered by sleep. 
 
 He slept until morning : then came the outcry and 
 disturbance of the discovery of Donna Ascania's 
 murder. He seemed wholly to have forgotten her 
 from the moment, in obedience to a half involuntary, 
 wholly unreasoned, entirely animal impulse of un- 
 calculating revenge, he had leapt upon the Prince. 
 
 " I do not think," the man said calmly, ** that I 
 should have attacked him had he not stumbled. It 
 was as when a man stumbles in a cage of lions : until 
 then they have no idea of attacking him." 
 
 Extravagant as this may sound, both the Cardinal 
 and Don Ercole felt an instantaneous conviction that 
 it was true. But the old parocco shook his head. 
 
 " Penitenza! " he admonished. " Penitenza ! It 
 is not now the moment for vanity." 
 
 The dying man had, however, no eyes for him : 
 they were fixed on the two nobles. Priests were 
 useful people when one was drawing near death, 
 especially with a good deal to answer for. But Sisto 
 only cared for the principatura. If the old peasant- 
 
 104 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY 
 
 priest failed to understand — well, well, fa nicntel' 
 The nobles would understand. Tst ! Yonder 
 Cardinal would understand anything! 
 
 Marasca and Giazza slept together on the other 
 side of the corridor, at the end farthest from the 
 smoking-room, in a large room with two beds, 
 opposite to that which was used as a night-nursery 
 for Don Gianpaolo. Next to their bedroom, but not 
 opening out of it, was the day-nursery. Immediately 
 opposite the smoking-room was another large room,, 
 used as a sort of drawing-room, already alluded to. 
 These three rooms all had windows looking into the 
 court3'ard, away from the moat. xAll the walls were 
 six feet thick, and impervious to sound. Neither 
 Giazza nor Marasca had been awakened or disturbed 
 by any noise. 
 
 It was not till they had dressed and gone to fetch 
 Don Gianpaolo from his night-nursery that, missing 
 him, they began to suppose anything uncommon had 
 occurred. 
 
 Whether they satisfied others or not in their 
 examination, Sisto was convinced that neither knew 
 anything whatever of the murder of the Princess. 
 
 From the first there was scarcely any possibility of 
 suspecting anyone but the Prince himself, and he, by 
 his disappearance with his son, had as it were courted 
 suspicion. That disappearance was, beyond all 
 Sisto's hopes, accepted, not only as accounting for 
 the Princess's murder, but as accounted for itself by 
 that murder. No sort of suspicion had ever attached 
 to Sisto himself, and neither Giazza nor i\Iarasca had 
 ever connected him in the least with Ascania's murdei 
 or the Prince's disappearance. Had Giazza possessed 
 any such hold over him, she would never have allowed 
 him to marry her rival. 
 
 IOt 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 On her death-bed Marasca confessed to him that it 
 was her brother Carluccio, the gamekeeper, who had 
 murdered the Princess. He had himself told her, and 
 made her understand the crime. 
 
 On that memorable night, exasperated against 
 Donna Ascania for her insulting remark about him- 
 self, overheard as he passed her carriage slowly coming 
 up the hill from Valmontone, further inflamed against 
 her by what he heard reported by the servants, and 
 finally infuriated by the scene he had overheard just 
 after tea between her and Don Luigi, in which his 
 sister had been more openly insulted, he had, late at 
 night, been drawn by a morbid attraction to the place 
 where he had heard all this, and where, if the Princess 
 and her husband were together, he felt certain he 
 should hear more. 
 
 Throughout the final scene between the fated pair 
 he had stood listening at the door, just as Sisto had 
 stood listening at the other, both alike hidden by 
 the tall, dark screens and the loose folds of the hang- 
 ing tapestries that had been specially arranged to 
 xaeet thus and exclude draughts from the doors. 
 
 At every degrading insult of Ascania's the furious 
 man's revengeful passion burned more and more 
 hotly, till at last, in the moment of her horrible blow 
 with the rhinoceros-hide cutting whip upon her 
 husband's face, it had boiled over, like a mess that 
 seethes and bubbles in a pot. That the Prince fled 
 from the place to fly from the sudden temptation to 
 
 1 06 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 kill his wife Carluccio was instantly convinced, and 
 instantly he resolved to do it for him. To do so was, 
 to his wild code of passion and impulse, a feudal 
 service to his lord, as much as an irresistible act of 
 vengeance on his own account. He had seen Prince 
 Crivelli take the native knife out of his wife's hand 
 and lay it back half-sheathed upon the table. He 
 was beside the wretched woman with the dagger in 
 his own hand almost before Don Luigi had dis- 
 appeared through the curtained tapestries of the 
 opposite door. 
 
 Marasca took her own early death as a retribution 
 for this crime. 
 
 " You see, Sisto,"she had explained to her husband, 
 ** Carluccio has become a saint now, and it would be 
 a scandal that a saint should pay the penalties of 
 killing a wicked woman. So I pay." 
 
 According to Sisto, she thought it all right. For 
 the credit of her family, she could not refuse to pay. 
 
 ** You will never catch Carluccio, if you want to," 
 observed Sisto. " He has disappeared, just as 
 safely as the Prince, into the folds of the great 
 Franciscan Order. They will hide him safe enough. 
 Of course, he is not in Italy. Marasca did not her- 
 self really know, but she thought in Barbary." Any- 
 way, it was somewhere where Carluccio had a great 
 grace in confounding the heathens (perhaps Sisto 
 meant Mohammedans), to large numbers of whom 
 he was in the habit of preaching. Their religion, it 
 seemed, he w^as able to turn into a laughing-stock, 
 and the arguments of its prophet into childish 
 gibberish, for all wliich Carluccio (whatever the 
 saintly /rate's name might be " in religion ") had con- 
 fident hopes of achieving martyrdom at the hands of 
 these " heathen." 
 
 From what they heard, tlie Cardinal and Don Ercole 
 
 107 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 thought it not impossible that he might, unless^, 
 indeed, the poHce regulations of that particular part of 
 Barbary should happen to be preternaturally perfect. 
 
 Anyway, they were quite of Sisto's opinion that 
 very little success would attend any effort to drag 
 forth the fiery missioner from the wide folds of the 
 great Franciscan Order, as Sisto had picturesquely 
 put it. Even in death the Sicilian's satisfaction at 
 any balking of mere legal justice was undiminished. 
 
 So, Sisto explained, Marasca had died, proud to 
 pay with her own life the debt to heaven which it 
 would have been a scandal should remain due to so 
 great and redoubtable a saint as her brother. 
 
 For his part, Sisto was content to pay with the life 
 of their child for that of the child he had killed. 
 
 " Of course," he was good enough to declare, " it 
 w^as always an awful necessity to silence the poor 
 hamhino ; but what other way was there, having 
 seen what he had ? At the time I could not argue 
 much, opportunity and time were lacking. But I 
 have argued much to myself since, and it seems to 
 me there was nothing else to do. So I, too, had a 
 price to pay. And my own child, Marasca's baby, 
 died stillborn." 
 
 " Unbaptised ! " suggested the farocco. 
 
 " Tst ! " said Sisto impatiently, not denying it. 
 '* But," he added, " / had to pay double, for 
 Giazza's child died too, died stillborn also ! " 
 
 " Unbaptised ! ! ! " suggested Don Pippo again. 
 
 " Tst ! " retorted Sisto, again admitting it. "I 
 had two children to give for one. I have paid," he 
 declared haughtily. 
 
 These " dispositions " were far from satisfying the 
 old priest, though admittedly he thought it un- 
 practical to expect any better. 
 
 1 08 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 " x\nd what did you pay for Don Luigi ? " he 
 demanded angrily. " What had you to give for the 
 Prince of Rojate ? " 
 
 Sisto seemed almost hurt. Legal justice he de- 
 tested, but for abstract justice he craved always. 
 
 " I ! For the Princess's husband," he replied, 
 " I gave my wife — two wives. One that I wor- 
 shipped and one that worshipped me. It was 
 enough. Besides, when I did it I supposed he 
 deserved it. It was only afterwards I knew. 
 Marasca explained. I understood then there had 
 been a mistake. Tst ! " 
 
 Regrettable as the incident had been, Sisto 
 evidently considered it closed. He was tired of 
 tragedy. 
 
 " As soon as Giazza heard that Marasca was 
 dead," he observed, " she wrote and forgave me for 
 marryan.e: her. It was even better, she declared, for 
 now I could not be hankering after Marasca, as I 
 might have gone on doing had I married Giazza 
 herself in the first place. But now it would be all 
 right. She had nearly two thousand lire in the 
 Banca di Sicilia, and I had this casetta that was 
 Marasca's : she left it me." 
 
 Sisto gave them to understand that his married 
 life with Giazza had been w^ll enough. Then her 
 baby came, was stillborn, and Giazza herself died, 
 
 " I paid twice," he repeated, " twice for the 
 hamhino and twice for the Prince. But I paid most 
 the first time. Between it all I have paid." 
 
 Next day they heard he was dead. It seemed 
 impossible. No lights of the next world and no 
 shadows of death seemed to have touched him. 
 Such light and shade as they had noted in him were 
 positive, Siciliem, secular, wholly material. 
 
 109 
 
A ROMAN TRAGEDY. 
 
 " He was," observed Don Pippo, who brought the 
 news, " he was not (with respect !) in all essentials 
 a bad man. However," and the parish priest took 
 snuff copiously and not silently, " he was a Sicilian. 
 Brutta hestia ! And last night I gave him the last 
 Sacraments." 
 
 The discoveries in the place indicated by Sisto 
 confirmed all he said. The skeletons were such as 
 might easily be identified with those of the Prince 
 and his child. The medical experts said it was certain 
 that they could not have fallen where they lay with- 
 out dislocation of any joint or fracture of any bone. 
 The Prince's watch, chain, seals and rings were there 
 to make identification more certain ; and round the 
 child's neck was a gold chain with certain sacred 
 medals he had always worn. 
 
 Any attempt to extract from the folds of the great 
 Franciscan Order the militant friar who had once been 
 Carluccio was from the first recognised to be hopeless. 
 But Sisto 's confession was attested and widely made 
 known. The honour of the Casa Crivelli was given 
 back. 
 
 no 
 
The Cremation of Colonel 
 Calverly. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE DON. 
 
 It would be an exaggeration to assert that all colonels 
 commanding staff corps regiments in India are 
 teetotallers. But Colonel Hubert Calverly, of the 
 73rd Bombay Infantry, was undoubtedly an ex- 
 tremely temperate man. 
 
 He was eccentric in other ways ; and partly on 
 that account, and partly by reason of the extra- 
 ordinary chivalry of the man, he was knowTi from 
 Ouetta to Ceylon by the nickname of the Don, which 
 was short for Don Quixote. 
 
 Now most of Colonel Calverly's eccentricities were, 
 as it would seem to the unlettered mind of the English 
 in England, exceedingly harmless. But to the 
 robuster and more tutored intellect of the Resident at 
 Katara, they could have an exasperating side to them. 
 Colonel Calverly knew thirteen native languages, 
 and the Resident had scruples about knowing even 
 Mahratti properly. Bazaaz-Mahratti was all very 
 well, and perhaps even indispensable, but what on 
 
 I II 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 •earth any English gentleman wanted with the 
 literature of the ancient Mahratta kingdom, the 
 Resident at Katara could not understand. xAnd 
 Colonel Calverly had the Mahratti language and 
 literature at his finger-ends ; and the Sanskrit, Urdu, 
 Pali, Tamul, and eight or nine others as well. It 
 was no study for a gentleman. 
 
 Colonel Calverly would not eat beef, because he 
 said it must be insufferable to the Hindu soldiers he 
 commanded to know that he did so ; and he would 
 not eat pork, because both Hindu and Mussulman 
 servants thought it disgusting, and for "his part he 
 agreed with them. So he lived on mutton and 
 morghe, and people said he had " become a Hindu " 
 — which was nonsense. One is a Hindu or one is not, 
 but one can no more become one than one can become 
 an American. Not so much, for persons are per- 
 mitted to be at large who have done that, but I never 
 heard of anyone taking out letters of naturalisation 
 as a Hindu. 
 
 Colonel Calverly knew the Shastas as well as the 
 priests at Towli, and, it was generally whispered, 
 believed them far more sincerely. For the memory 
 of Rama, Prince of Oude, he had a far greater respect 
 than for that of Henry, King of England, and 
 Gautama the Buddha he venerated as a truer Re- 
 former and diviner teacher than Doctor Martin 
 Luther. But what tried the patience of the Resident 
 at Katara most sorely of all was that Colonel Calverly 
 would address as " rajah sahib " the dethroned 
 descendant of many Mahratta kings who was drinking 
 himself to death in the mud palace in the native city. 
 
 Colonel Calverly's other eccentricities were ad- 
 mitted to be harmless. They were chiefly obsolete 
 virtues grotesquely belated in the end of the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
 112 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 In appearance the Colonel of the 73rd Bombay 
 Infantry was not striking ; soldier-like and wir}^ but 
 not tall, exceedingly dry and brown of skin, lean, and 
 white-haired. He had been young, and now was old ; 
 there was a young clerk in the Treasury (at Katara, 
 not Whitehall) supposed to resemble him very 
 strongly, but that must have been a mistake, for he 
 had never been married. 
 
 Colonel Calverly had been in India for more years 
 than Kinahan, the Assistant-Judge, had been in the 
 world, and for some time had ruled the destinies of 
 the regiment, unofficially known as the Bombay 
 Ducks : not on account of any peculiarity of gait, 
 but simply by reason of the material whereof their 
 overalls were made. The Colonel inhabited the big 
 bungalow next the mess, on the side remote from the 
 church ; and, as the officer commanding the detach- 
 ment of British troops did not want to take a bunga- 
 low, seeing he might be gone to-morrow, and seeing 
 that one of the Don's eccentricities was his limitless 
 good nature, he let that officer share his bungalow. 
 
 "3 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 JIM-JAMS. 
 
 His real name was the Honourable Ulick FitzUrze 
 de Tracey, and he was the ninth son of the Lord 
 Viscount Ardrahan (Baron Horseleap of Horseleap, 
 in the county of Tyrone, in the peerage of Ireland). 
 But he was universally known as Jim-jams. 
 
 If the Honourable U. FitzU. de Tracey had 
 characteristics as well as Colonel Calverly, they were 
 totally dissimilar. The de Traceys of Horseleap had 
 never gone in for the Blue Ribbon movement ; and 
 on occasions of great public rejoicing, Lord Ardrahan's 
 ninth son saw visions that would have made the 
 fortune of Mr. Morris and his school of designers. 
 
 Nothing could have been more Pre-Raphaelite 
 than the dragons and demons beheld by the Hon. 
 U. FitzU. de Tracey, nothing less hackneyed than 
 the shifting shades of blue and green that pre- 
 dominated in their tails. 
 
 So he was called Jim-jams. 
 
 He was a handsome man, and not undervalued by 
 the Anglo-Indian lady. But his popularity was not 
 striking with the Anglo-Indian lady's husband. It 
 was supposed that the Don liked him, or else why 
 did not he get rid of him ? But then the Don found 
 something to like in everybody, even the perspiring 
 deputy policeman at Karli, who impeded the digestion 
 of the other inhabitants of the Deccan. And, after 
 all, was it certain the Don did like him ? For having 
 
 114 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 taken him in, it would never occur to the Colonel to 
 cold-shoulder him out. As for the Hon. U. FitzU. 
 de Tracey, the only person he cared much for was 
 Lord Ardrahan's ninth son ; but, as other people went, 
 he had no objection to the Colonel, and certainly had 
 none to making himself comfortable in his bungalow. 
 It was not a bad bungalow either, though nothing 
 like so comfortable, of course, as the judge's. The 
 judge's bungalow, next the little Roman Catholic 
 church, although the judge was a bachelor, was by 
 far the best in the station. It was the deathless envy 
 of Mrs. Pillitt, the wife of the Indian Medical Staff 
 doctor. In vain she gave banquets of tinned meats 
 and dazzled the eye with her European goods ; a 
 momentary splendour might be hers, but perennial 
 comfort was the judge's. 
 
 "5 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 MEM-SAHIB. 
 
 Those who would sorrow as they that have no hope for 
 the death of Colonel Joscelyn of the Pioneers, should 
 remember that had he not died this story could not 
 have been written. Probably that was why his death 
 was arranged. At all events, I cannot think of any 
 other reason. For it was a serious and unlooked-for 
 embarrassment to his daughter. She had only come 
 out from being educated at Surbiton six months 
 before, and in the plans she had made there had been 
 no provision for the decease of her father previous to 
 her own marriage. And she was not yet married. 
 Originally she had intended to marry Captain 
 Forestier, but he had been first dilatory and then 
 faithless : and he was now engaged to that awful 
 girl with the voice. So Miss Joscelyn had turned her 
 attention to the Waler. 
 
 Now the Waler's other name was Lieutenant 
 Charles Chichely, and though he was enormous, he was 
 extremely young, and, of course, only a subaltern. The 
 sudden death of Colonel Joscelyn made it impossible 
 that he — the Waler — could be matured in time. 
 
 In general, Miss Joscelyn was a very sensible girl, 
 who never overtaxed her constitution by attempting 
 impossibilities. So she had one touching interview 
 with the Waler, and definitely decided that was im- 
 possible. And by that time she had heard from 
 Colonel Calverly. 
 
 ii6 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 He had not been nearly as much surprised by her 
 father's death as she was, though he was probably 
 far more grieved by it. He had known Jack Joscelyn 
 all his life, and she had hardly known him at all. 
 But the Don knew well that his friend had had heart 
 disease, and many times Joscelyn had said to him : 
 " If I go out suddenly, you '11 see to my little girl, 
 won't you ? " 
 
 " I hope you don't very much dislike children," 
 the Don had said to Jim-jams, " but I 've heard 
 to-day of the death of a very old chum of mine, and 
 his little girl will have to come here ; there 's no other 
 home for her." 
 
 Now the Hon. U. FitzLT. de Tracey did very 
 specially dislike children, but it was not his bungalow, 
 and he could not very well say so. 
 
 Then Colonel Calverly wrote to the second in 
 command of the Pioneers at Kohat, and enclosed a 
 note for the late Colonel Joscelyn's daughter, whom 
 he supposed to be twelve or thirteen, and who really 
 had been, seven or eight years previously. 
 
 Whether the prudent Kathleen understood from 
 that note the mistake Colonel Calverly had made 
 may not now be determined. Personally, I have 
 always thought she did. So has Mrs. Pillitt — but 
 then Pillitt went silly about the girl. If she did 
 perceive any mistake, she did nothing to rectify it. 
 Indeed, her letter to the Colonel was babyish. 
 
 So it came to pass that Kathleen Joscelyn bade 
 farewell to Kohat and went to reside at Katara in 
 the Deccan, and the Pioneers missed her extremely ; 
 but Mrs. Pentecost was delighted, and so was 
 Mrs. Malody ; and the two Playne-Hedd girls 
 kissed each other for sheer gladness and lightness 
 of heart. 
 
 The Waler saw her off, and, as for the flower she 
 
 117 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 gave him at the station, he wore it always, and when 
 he was killed in the punitive expedition against the 
 Pink Mountain people, they found it round his 
 ridiculous neck in a badly-made and much kiss- 
 stained case formed of a small white glove that could 
 never have been honestly come by. 
 
 ii8 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CASSANDRA. 
 
 When Miss Joscelyn, on her way south, had passed 
 Delhi she felt herself in the home counties. Most 
 Anglo-Indians returning from northern border 
 stations do. As for the state of Baroda, that was 
 positively suburban, and the troops of large grey 
 monkeys chasing the leisurely express affected her 
 as the sight of costermongers' donkeys might affect 
 the Londoner who finds himself again within the 
 four-mile radius after a six-weeks' exile in North 
 Britain. 
 
 At Ajmir a globe-trotter and his wife had joined 
 her, and would not be dislodged. They were of 
 boundless amiability and thirsted to explain them- 
 selves. Their name they determined she should 
 know was Troy — Mr. and Mrs. 'Erbert Troy of ^lill 
 Hill. Did the young lady know Mill Hill ? It was 
 a dehghtful part. Did not the young lady wonder 
 why ever they were in India ? Well, Mr. Troy he 
 enjoyed very Poor 'Elth — and he did not appear to 
 enjoy it intensely — and they were travelhng for his 
 'Elth. They had already been travelling twelve 
 months, and had seen ah the United States and San 
 Francisco, as well as the Falls of Niagara, which are 
 not in the United States, though they had always 
 thought they were. Now did not the young lady 
 think they were in the United States ? They had 
 also seen Japan, where they had met a very nice 
 
 iig 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 gentleman called Robinson — but perhaps the young 
 lady knew him — who had also been under the 
 impression that the Falls of Niagara were in the 
 United States. And now they were in India, and 
 didn't the young lady find it very fatiguing, especially 
 Delly and the Coo-Tub, and Aggrer and the Tadge ? 
 How did the young lady hke the Tadge ? She had 
 not seen it ! Was it not then necessary to see the 
 Tadge ? and the other place — oh yes, Futty-paw- 
 see-cree ; especially that other place, for it was 
 thirty miles in a Garry — the Garry man said. And 
 did the young lady consider Kellner's Hotel at Delly 
 or Laurie's at Aggrer comfortable — what she really 
 called comfortable ? 
 
 Throughout Rajputana did their ceaseless babble 
 flow. And after dinner at Palanpur they insisted 
 on getting back into the same carriage as Miss 
 Joscelyn. Not till Bombay were they to be shaken 
 off. There at Colaba she saw the last of them, beset 
 by gari-walas, and waiting for the guard. But the 
 guard was talking to an elderly gentleman in a Terai 
 hat, who was asking after a little girl — a young 
 lady — from Delhi. 
 
 Poor dear Colonel Calverly ! He had had confused 
 notions as to kissing the little girl — the young lady 
 — from Delhi ; and then of driving with her to 
 purchase a doll in one of the shops near the Frere 
 fountain. Did Treacher sell dolls ? — the Colonel 
 really could not remember. At all events one could 
 get large native dolls, or rather plaster dwarfs, with 
 the heads of giants and countenances of criminal 
 lunatics, at Ramswamy's in Meddows Street. 
 
 Well, that difficulty at all events was obviated. 
 There would be no necessity to provide a doll for the 
 young lady from Delhi, and there would be no neces- 
 sity to kiss her. The Colonel almost wished 
 
 120 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 " To Hutchinson Sahib's, Bassein Lodge, Malabar 
 Hill," he said to the gari-wala, into whose gari he 
 had handed Miss Joscelyn. Another gari with her 
 baggage had been sent on to the Boree Bunder — I 
 beg its pardon, the Victoria Terminus of the GT.P. 
 Railway to Poona. 
 
 Colonel Calverly had been in India two-thirds of 
 his Hfe, and could talk thirteen of its languages, so 
 he spoke English to the Bombay gari-wala. Had he 
 just landed at the Apollo Bunder from one of Her 
 Majesty's Indian troopships he would have treated 
 the native to such erudition as he had gleaned on the 
 voyage out from Roge/s Shilling Hindtistani Manual, 
 and would probably have said — 
 
 " Hi ! gari-wala ! Hutchinson-Sahib-A'^?-gfl/' ko 
 jcio : jaldi-jao ; Bassein Lodge, Malabar Hill, 
 ke pas ! " 
 
 Colonel Calverl}^ was rather silent as the}^ drove 
 round Back Bay, behind the Secretariate, the 
 University, the post-office and the telegraph 
 office to Malabar Hill. He was thinking over his 
 plans, and by the time they had passed the 
 Tower of Silence and turned into the compound 
 of Mr. Hutchinson's bungalow he had arranged 
 them. 
 
 Mr. Alexander Hutchinson, as all the world knows, 
 is editor of the Bombay and Salsette Overland Mail, 
 and enjoys Rs. 5000 per mensem, which enables him 
 to live with great comfort in his unexceptionable 
 bungalow on Malabar Hill, especially as he is a 
 widower. He is Scotch, and he is economical ; so 
 when his wife died within five months of their 
 marriage it is chought he was so shocked at the 
 combined expenses of the wedding and the funeral 
 that he would not risk any repetition of them. So 
 he had asked his sister, Miss Jean, to come out 
 
 121 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 and keep house for him, and saved himself half 
 the three hundred a year he had allowed her 
 previously. 
 
 Hutchinson Sahib was in, and so was Mistress 
 Jean — rather a gaunt and grizzled dame, who looked 
 as if she was feehng the cold severely, which was 
 hardly possible. 
 
 Presently Hutchinson Sahib led forth Miss Joscelyn 
 to admire the view. There was the lighthouse — 
 Colaba Lighthouse ; and that was the Afghan War 
 Memorial Church — not this last affair, you know, 
 but the other. Those ? Oh, those were the Colaba 
 Lines. What regiment ? South Riding ; no, they 
 left last w^eek in the Tigris, and had been relieved by 
 Prince Teck's Own Welsh Borderers. That big 
 yellow building was the new Apollo Bunder Hotel, 
 and that half-kiosk, half-Swiss cottage affair, the 
 Bombay Yacht Club. Could she see Elephanta — 
 the small, steep island out there, covered with wood ? 
 Horrid place, full of snakes and Buddhist remains. 
 Must be unhealthy ? Oh, he didn't mean human 
 remains. The mountains away back were in the 
 Konkan ; and round, right round, to the left was 
 Mazagon and Byculla — only you couldn't see it from 
 where they were standing. . . 
 
 " Now, Miss Jean," said the Colonel, " you must 
 belp me a bit. Of course, as soon as I heard of poor 
 Joscelyn's sudden death, I wrote and offered a home 
 to his child. It was an understood thing I was to 
 look after her. But I thought she was in short 
 frocks, and would want dolls ; whereas she 's a grown- 
 up young lady, and wants — what do you call it ? — 
 a chaperon." 
 
 Miss Jean grunted and stroked the end of her nose 
 with her thimble. 
 
 " You '11 help me a bit, won't you ? " 
 
 122 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 " You mean go off up the Poona Ghauts with you 
 to-night to Katara ? " 
 
 Colonel Calverly pleaded the soft impeachment. 
 
 " Then, indeed, I '11 do nothing of the kind for you 
 or all the orphans in Asia," said the lady with decision. 
 " But leave the lassie here and go you home to 
 Katara to-morrow. Next week I don't mind bring- 
 ing her up there. There 's a big Tamasha at Ganesh 
 Kind on the 13th, and Sandy has to be there of course. 
 So he can see me and the lassie safe as far as Poona, 
 and you '11 just drive to Katara Station on the 
 Southern Mahratta to meet us — on Friday that '11 
 be. And that 's all I '11 do for you. . . . But 
 you 'd better by far send the girl back to where she 
 came from — yes, or pay her passage home. For any 
 sake, Don, don't marry her," the old lady concluded 
 pathetically, nearly wearing a hole in her nose with 
 the thimble. 
 
 " Dear me ! " said the Don, blushing furiously. 
 " I hadn't dreamt of such a thing ! " 
 
 Miss Jean shook her head gloomily. 
 
 " You soon will do — in fact," she added, sharply 
 eyeing him, " I see it 's a he already. Lord love you 
 for a fool, Don ! " 
 
 So some of Miss Joscelyn's baggage had to be 
 fetched up again after all from the Boree Bunder. 
 
 " Eh, sirs ! what blind idiots they men are," 
 groaned Miss Jean Hutchinson to herself as she tired 
 her head for dinner. " Guid help the puir auld 
 softie wi' that fine lassie. Soon she '11 hae him round 
 her finger . . . but if ae auld fule must needs have 
 her, it shall na' be — Sandy ! " 
 
 123 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 KATARA. 
 
 As nearly as I can remember, it is thirteen miles from 
 the city and cantonment of Katara to the station of 
 that name on the Southern Mahratta Railway. 
 
 As everything else which it will be my business to 
 relate in the course of this narrative took place in or 
 near that city and cantonment, you may as well be 
 told something about it, while Miss Jean Hutchinson 
 and Miss Kathleen Joscelyn are being brought up 
 the Ghauts to Poona. 
 
 Once upon a time Katara was the capital of a 
 large and powerful kingdom, ruled over by rich and 
 powerful kings, who dispensed any amount of justice 
 there, not in the least caring to retain any for their 
 own use. Unless I mistake, they were of the Brah- 
 min caste, and inordinately devout to the mild and 
 kindly goddess Devi — usually painted vermilion to 
 typify blood, and with a handsome necklace of 
 skulls — or Parwati, or Kali, and her husband Shiva. 
 Beside their palace in the city these Brahminy kings 
 had a fortress castle overlooking it, that Nature had 
 made impressive enough for them. When there were 
 no devil-guns it must have been something like 
 impregnable. 
 
 Of what does the station consist ? 
 
 Well, there 's a Resident, in the large bungalow, 
 with a semaphore and Union Jack on it on the 
 Towli Road, beyond the parade ground ; and a judge, 
 
 124 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 whose bungalow near the Roman CathoUc church 
 has been said to be perfection ; and an assistant 
 judge, who hves somewhere, called Kinahan, but 
 known as LL. in the station. There was a doctor 
 — Pillitt to wit, of the Indian Medical : a regiment of 
 native infantry, whose officers mostly varied. The 
 colonel, however, was perennial, and so was the 
 second in command. And there was a detachment. 
 At present it was a very small detachment of Prince 
 Leiningen's Own Channel Islanders (Royal Tas- 
 manians), late the ii2th Regiment, commanded by 
 Captain the Hon. U. FitzU. de Tracey. There was, 
 of course, a parson, whose legal name was Epps ; 
 he was, however, called " Grateful — Comforting " in 
 civil life. The only use of a surname in India is that 
 it sometimes furnishes hints for an appropriate 
 nickname. Not always though ; sometimes the 
 name in common use has no connection whatever 
 with the surname. Mrs. Epps, for instance, was 
 universally known as the Empress, merely because 
 it was her dehght to wear on the summit of her 
 enormous head the smallest hard felt hat she could 
 raise in Asia, which at once reminded the spectator 
 of the minute crown as worn by the Empress on a 
 Jubilee rupee or two-anna bit. But neither clergy- 
 man nor clergywoman has any particular part in this 
 story. 
 
 125 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 INFANT MARRIAGE. 
 
 When Colonel Calverly made up his mind to propose 
 to Miss Joscelyn there is no doubt he decided to do a 
 very foolish thing. From the day that she arrived 
 in the station, the station said that there could be 
 but one end to it, and the station would have been 
 justly incensed if any other end had happened to 
 come about. Nevertheless, when it was publicly 
 made known that Katara had prophesied truly, 
 Katara was disgusted. 
 
 Miss Jamdyce, the sister of the second-in-com- 
 mand (who had been brought out almost on purpose) , 
 affected, indeed, delight. But very gladly would she 
 have bitten Miss Joscelyn instead of the rim of her 
 black-wood clothes-press. The other ladies of the 
 station openly said it was sickening, and even the men 
 honestly thought the Don was a fool for his pains. 
 
 When an old man marries a young girl he generally 
 is. But Colonel Calverly's mistake was du,e to 
 something better than an old man's infatuation for 
 a pretty face. He had pledged himself to give a 
 home to the orphan child of his friend : how else, 
 after all, could he do it ? He had certainly never 
 dreamt of marrying the little girl — " the young lady 
 from Delhi " — whom he had gone to meet at the 
 Colaba terminus of the B. B. & C. L Railway. And 
 it was not his fault that she turned out to be a young 
 woman whom he could hardly provide with a home 
 
 126 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 in his bungalow otherwise than by offering to make 
 her its mistress. 
 
 Miss Jean Hutchinson could not remain to 
 chaperon them for ever ; and, indeed, had grown 
 very restive long before the expiration of the six 
 weeks she did stop. And there was no one else whom 
 Colonel Calverly knew of that might have taken her 
 place. No doubt all would have been well if Miss 
 Joscelyn had married or become engaged to someone 
 else during the six weeks of Miss Jean's chaperonage. 
 But she did not. And to tell the truth, there was 
 really no one just then in Katara for her to marry. 
 Pillitt of the Indian Medical would have married her 
 gladly, but Mrs. Pillitt would, of course, not permit 
 it. And, if you had given him time, perhaps the 
 judge might. But the judge was nothing if he was 
 not deliberate. And then he was every bit as old as 
 the Colonel : and even if time had been given him 
 would not have grown younger. Kinahan was a 
 bachelor too, and was the brief epitome of every 
 virtue ; but when brevity only runs to five foot 
 seven, girls like Miss Joscelyn will not hear of it. 
 There really was no one for her to marry. Jim- 
 jams ? Well, Jim-jams was, as it happened, away 
 from the station. And even when in it he had 
 nothing but his pay to live on. 
 
 Therefore I maintain there was a good deal of 
 excuse for the Don. And having said that I wiU 
 repeat that he was inexcusable. It was certain to 
 end in mischief, and all Katara and the world knows 
 to what it did lead. 
 
 " Kathleen," he said, " I am not fool enough to 
 think there 's anything about me to catch a young 
 girl's fancy ; but if you will give to me, fmite de 
 micux, the right to be the guardian of your happiness, 
 your happiness will be very precious to me. And, 
 
 127 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 after all, dear child, there is this advantage in my 
 being so old — that it is pretty sure, when I am gone 
 from you, you will still have time enough for love 
 and romance." 
 
 It is probable that when Colonel Calverly so spoke 
 he had not any special thought or intention of quitting 
 this valley of tears incontinently — even to make 
 room for love and romance in the life of his widow. 
 What he said was stale enough, and the girl's reply 
 was also such as has many a time been made before. 
 
 " Dear Colonel Calverly ! God knows I know you 
 are too good for me, and I will give you my life to 
 keep for me with a certainty of finding it, in your 
 keeping, full of happiness ! " 
 
 Perhaps in a way they were each sincere enough. 
 
 So Miss Jean Hutchinson went back to administer 
 the household of her brother ; and Captain the 
 Hon. U. FitzU. de Tracey, who was still on leave, 
 read with eyes that stared like a shrimp's the an- 
 nouncement in the Pioneer of the marriage of Colonel 
 Hubert Calverly, of the 73rd Bombay Infantry, to 
 Kathleen Mildred, only child of the late Colonel 
 Jack Joscelyn, at Katara, Deccan, 
 
 " Great Scott ! " he whistled. " The man 's gone 
 in for infant marriage ! s'welp me ! " He was not 
 refined in his speech, and, you see, he thought the 
 little girl whom the Don had adopted was aged eleven 
 or twelve years. 
 
 128 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GOOD FRIENDS. 
 
 AVhen Captain the Hon. U. FitzU. de Tracey rejoined 
 for duty he left Poona by the train that starts for 
 Belgaum about five in the afternoon. He therefore 
 did not get in till nearly midnight, and saw no one at 
 Katara till he was shaking hands with Colonel 
 Calverly. 
 
 Jim-jams was, of course, not going to remain an 
 inmate of the Don's bungalow. But the Colonel had 
 written saying, " Though I am married, there is 
 plenty of room for you here while you are looking 
 about for quarters to suit you. So we shall expect 
 you on the twentieth." Jim-jams was not slow to 
 note the changes in the bungalow. It had been 
 rather wild, but now a general air of smartness per- 
 vaded it. The infant-wife was evidently quite alive 
 to her position as Mrs. C. O. The infant-wife was, 
 of course, in bed long ago. But who was this ? 
 What was the Colonel saying ? 
 
 " My wife, Jim : Kathleen, let me introduce 
 Captain de Tracey to you." 
 
 A large, blonde vision arose upon the astonished 
 young man. Piles of yellow hair, great pale blue 
 eyes, and acres of clear waxen complexion. This the 
 infant- wife ! Why, she must be three and twenty ! 
 Teeth large and white, large white hands plentifully 
 ringed : and a large smile. The Hon. U. FitzU. de 
 Tracey himself was lean and black : close, crisp, 
 
 129 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 curly hair, black as night ; eyes of the dead-black of 
 jet, and a skin of a fine healthy brownness. Mrs. 
 Calverly just suited him ; in ten years she would be 
 fat, and in less than ten she would be coarse, but that 
 he knew not. Meanwhile she filled the eye with 
 shape and colour, and it satisfied him. He was not 
 a young man of refined tastes, neither was he a good 
 man. But for all the misery and crime that was to 
 come it seems to me that he was not wholly respon- 
 sible. On the present occasion he was merely 
 astonished. His mind acted slowly, and just at 
 present he could not get beyond that. Colonel 
 Calverly saw his surprise and was amused, guessing 
 very well the cause of it. When Colonel Calverly 
 had said : " Jim, I hope you don't very much dislike 
 children, but an old chum of mine is dead, and his 
 little girl will have to come here," he had not failed 
 to see that Captain de Tracey was bored. And when 
 Jim-jams had gone on leave, the Colonel had guessed 
 it was to get out of the way of " the baby." 
 
 As for Mrs. Calverly, she too saw that the Hon. 
 U. FitzU. de Tracey was taken aback, and made up 
 her mind that he was dazzled. He appeared to be a 
 nice young man, and would make quite an agreeable 
 playfellow. She liked dark men, and one could 
 see at a glance that his clothes were imported ; 
 nothing durzi-made about those trousers ! In 
 short. Jim-jams and Mrs. Calverly were mutually 
 pleased with each other, and they soon became 
 very intimate. 
 
 The Hon. U. FitzU. de Tracey did not hurry away 
 from the Calverlys' bungalow. And even when he 
 had left it he continued to be very intimate. 
 
 " A little banjo is all very well," he would say at 
 first, in excuse for the frequency of his visits, " but 
 Menzies plays from breakfast till he goes to the 
 
 130 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 Gymkhana, and it palls a little. I 'm so glad neither 
 you nor the Colonel are musical." 
 
 Oh no, she was not at all musical. And as for the 
 Colonel, he knew *' God save the Queen" becau:e 
 people took off their hats at it, but he did not know 
 any other tune. 
 
 " We are always glad to see 3''ou ! " she said 
 graciously, with a smile so large and sweet as to give 
 a singular force to the plural pronoun. 
 
 In process of time it was an admitted fact that 
 Jim-jams and " the Calverlys " were very " thick " 
 indeed. Now there were two people in the station 
 who disapproved exceedingly of this intimacy. And 
 they were Achchi Singh and the young man who had 
 such an unreasonable resemblance to Colonel Calverly. 
 But it was hardly likely Mrs. Calverly would regulate 
 her conduct by the opinion of her husband's butler, 
 or that of a half-caste clerk in the Katara Treasury. 
 Was it ? And, as it happened, they kept their 
 opinion to themselves. 
 
 131 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 UMBRA MORTIS. 
 
 A BLACK shadow fell over the Valley of Katara, 
 beneath which it sat still in terror and amazement. 
 It was the shadow of a man riding on a pale horse. 
 Some said he was a king, some said he was nothing 
 but a reaper. Some called him friend, some foe, but 
 all agreed that he was strong and inexorable. He 
 appeared suddenly in the midst of the city, and the 
 dead silence of middle night was broken by the cries 
 wherewith they greeted him. In the morning he had 
 ridden away with an old man and two children on the 
 saddle-bow before him. But at night he came back 
 galloping. And the narrow, fetid streets of the 
 bazaar gave back the noise of his horse-hoofs, i e 
 rode carelessly on his pale horse, and trampled Ihe 
 little children as he passed, and the grey old men who 
 could not fly from him. But that made no difference. 
 Fly as they would, he galloped faster ; and the 
 strongest he laid low as easily as the weaker. 
 
 And the humour of him ! 
 
 " It 's the butcha he came for," said the wrinkled 
 hag, drawing the white cloth over the dead grand- 
 child. ** He likes tender flesh, and warm ; he hath 
 not relish for the dry and aged." 
 
 But he heard her ; smiling, stooping from his 
 saddle-tree with his ear by the tatti. And Ufting 
 the tatti he looked on her, and with his eyes he 
 mocked her, and with his chill breath he froze the 
 
 132 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 slow blood and dried up the marrow of her shaking 
 bones. 
 
 *' Idhdr do,'' he whispered. " Daro mat. Fear 
 not." And ruthlessly with his long arms he drew 
 her — drew her shrieking to sit before him as he 
 galloped on his pale horse through the city. 
 
 The poor besotted raj ah quaked in his palace and 
 swore to Devi that he would build her a new temple at 
 Towli, a brand-new temple raddled all over, out of 
 his next quarter's pension from the queen-empress, 
 if but she would spare him. And lest the Hindu gods 
 should have grown rusty, he vowed also to Beebee 
 Miriam that he would give her a statue in the Catholic 
 church here in Katara, a beautiful crown like the one 
 he had seen on her statue in the Bara church at Goa. 
 And one or other of them heard him, for the pale king 
 spared him (perhaps for pity at seeing a thing so much 
 paler), and he did not die. Only his wife Saraswati, 
 and (the gods are good) he had others. Wherefore 
 he sent secretly the dead ranee's necklace (of big 
 amethysts, three rows, strung on three strings of seed- 
 pearls) to the Goanese priest of the Catholic Mission, 
 and it was bound round the forehead of the big statue 
 of the Madonna, and the native Catholics were 
 enraptured. For that was cheaper than to build a 
 big new temple, raddled all over, on the river bank 
 at Towli — where in all conscience there were temples 
 enough already. 
 
 But still day after day the shadow lay over the 
 Valley of Katara, and it was the monstrous shadow 
 of a man who rode ruthlessly, riding on a pale horse. 
 At night the noise of his riding echoed through the 
 narrow mud-ways of the bazaar, and by day they sat 
 cowering in silence lest he should espy them. For 
 none wanted to go with him, even if he were a king, 
 riding out with him into the darkness that lies around 
 
 133 
 
,THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 the world : the warm world that they knew, where 
 their friends were. *' Truly the hght is sweet," they 
 said, " and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to see 
 the sun." And they had no thought of plagiarism, 
 or thought that they were but echoing the cry of a 
 poet who sang while the vedas were being written. 
 
 134 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " GOD FORGIVE HER ! " 
 
 At last the shadow passed away from the Valley of 
 Katara, and people congratulated each other that 
 they were still alive. As it happened, the shadow 
 had hardly fallen on the cantonment, only on the 
 native city. But the dread of it had been every- 
 where. And here and there to the godowns also the 
 rider on the pale horse had come, stealthily, and 
 taken one or two — a Goanese cook perhaps, or an 
 ayah, perhaps only a sweeper — but someone. He 
 had ridden away now, and the last echoes of his 
 galloping had died away. In a very little while he 
 would be forgotten. He had been gone some days, 
 and was already nearly forgotten, when the parson 
 called at the Calverlys' bungalow and was explaining 
 to the Colonel the form of prayer for thanksgiving 
 he proposed using at church next Sunday — after 
 the second lesson would be best, he thought. But 
 the Colonel, perhaps by reason of his Hindu 
 heterodoxies, did not seem to take any lively interest 
 in the matter. And " Grateful — Comforting " de- 
 parted rather huffed. 
 
 Mrs. Calverly departed to the Gymkhana almost 
 immediately, and as soon as she was gone the Colonel 
 went into his own room and flung himself rather 
 wearily on the bed. 
 
 " Master sahib iU ? " asked Achchi Singh. 
 
 135 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 " Jehannum-ko-jao ! " answered the Colonel with 
 great sweetness. " Bolo mat." 
 
 But Achchi Singh peered inquisitively at his 
 master and did not go there. He went out instead 
 at the back of the bungalow and through a hole in 
 the cactus hedge on to the parade ground, then 
 he ran. And he did not stop till he reached the 
 Pillitt bungalow on the Towli Road. 
 
 ''Doctor sahib gar-men hai ? " he gasped. 
 
 " Hai." 
 
 " What 's up ? " asked the doctor, hearing himself 
 demanded. " Whew ! Not the Colonel sahib ? " 
 
 ** Yes, sahib ; it 's the Colonel." 
 
 Half an hour later Mrs. Calverly drove home, for 
 Miss Janidyce and the judge and a few others were 
 coming to tea. You know that as one comes out 
 of the tennis-ground the hedge hides anyone from 
 those who may be coming in till they are almost 
 face to face. The Hon. U. FitzU. de Tracey was 
 seeing Mrs. Calverly to her carriage, but as it 
 happened they were not speaking ; and they heard 
 two men talking who were approaching hurriedly. 
 
 '' Yes, it 's back, and the Don has it. I Ve just 
 seen Pillitt." 
 
 Mrs. Calverly uttered a httle cry, and Jim-jams 
 looked at her. 
 
 " Good God ! she 's glad," he thought ; and 
 though it was by no means chilly, he shivered. 
 
 Then they met the men. 
 
 " I overheard what you said," stammered Mrs. 
 Calverly with every symptom of distress and terror. 
 *' Is it true — about my husband ? " 
 
 ** I had no notion you were here. I am afraid it 
 is true . . . but perhaps ..." 
 
 She uttered another little cry, not loud, but quite 
 a different one, and said miserably — 
 
 136 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 *' I must go at once to him." 
 
 "Hadn't someone better go with you — Captain 
 de Tracey, perhaps ? 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! I would rather go alone." 
 
 " Yes, you 'd better go alone," said Jim-jams 
 gravely. 
 
 He did not go back on to the ground, but walked 
 quickly towards the Jarndyces' bungalow to tell 
 them not to go to tea at the Calverlys'. He 
 shivered again, and this I will say for him, that if a 
 prayer of his could have saved the man who had 
 always been good to him, he would with all sincerity 
 have put it up. " God forgive her, that was a 
 horrible look on her face." One thing he resolved^ 
 and that was that until the Don was well again — or 
 it was all over — he would not go near their bungalow. 
 And it was no dread of infection that lay at the root 
 of that determination. Poor Jim-Jam.s ! Never- 
 theless he knew that if the Don died he should marry 
 Kathleen. 
 
 137 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 DEVOTION. 
 
 Mrs. Calverly was horribly afraid. She was a 
 coward by nature, and she had none of a wife's 
 generous affection to counterbalance a woman's 
 natural fear. But all the more because she knew 
 that in her soul she was disloyal to him was she in 
 terror of this feeling showing itself visibly. 
 
 " There is always danger," the doctor answered ; 
 " but there is as little danger yet as there could be 
 in any case of it. He has it most favourably. All 
 the conditions are most favourable." 
 
 And with the slightest possible fluctuations his 
 report was the same always. 
 
 " Pilhtt thinks the Don will stick in," said Menzies, 
 coming into their bungalow, settling himself into a 
 long chair, and cocking his legs gracefully over the 
 arm of it. He had his banjo and began tuning it. 
 Captain the Hon. U. FitzU. de Tracey was understood 
 to express — very unequivocally — his pleasure at the 
 intelligence. 
 
 " H'm," thought Captain Menzies. And perhaps 
 bis look was too close an index of his thought, for 
 Jim-jams reddened and said apologetically — 
 
 " He 's been very decent to me — the Don has ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes ; he 's been decent enough to you, I 
 know, Jim." 
 
 Captain de Tracey put his hands in his pockets 
 and began to whistle. Presently he strolled out into 
 
 138 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 the compound, and began to throw stones medita- 
 tively at a pariah dog that was lurking in the 
 bushes. 
 
 " Fables de la Fontaine," thought Captain 
 Menzies, " only he can't see it." And Captain 
 Menzies, who was rather a metaphysical officer, 
 wiped the smile from his mouth to make room for 
 '' Dinah Do," the strains whereof were soon uphfted 
 on the breeze. 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Calverly nursed her husband 
 with much assiduity, and Katara was not a little 
 edified. 
 
 " Especially as anyone can see she 's in a blue funk 
 all the while," said Menzies ; only he said it to 
 himself, for he had an idea that no one but he had 
 seen it. And though he was very " noticing," as 
 the nurses say, he was a prudent child too, and apt 
 to tell more secrets to Captain Menzies than to all 
 the rest of the cantonment. Of course, Mrs. Calverly 
 did not do all the nursing — her ayah and she did most 
 of it between them, but Achchi Singh insisted on 
 helping. 
 
 Now Mrs. Calverly detested Achchi Singh, and so 
 did Kasi the ayah. He watched her ceaselessly, 
 and she knew it. He guessed her secret indifference 
 to his master, and she knew it. Whereas Achchi 
 Singh adored the Colonel sahib with a limitless 
 adoration — and she knew that also. Perhaps most 
 of all for this last reason she hated him. Never- 
 theless, Achchi Singh helped to nurse his master. 
 
 " Good Lord, what 's that ? " 
 
 Captain Menzies and the second-in-command 
 were going into the parade ground ; and it was 
 Captain Menzies who spoke. 
 
 139 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 Now the Protestant church at Katara possesses 
 two bells, and on occasions of great public rejoicing 
 they are clattered deliriously. One of these was now 
 tolling dolorously. The two men stopped dead and 
 listened. 
 
 " It can't be poor Calverty." 
 
 The second-in-command was but human, and 
 he was second, you see. 
 
 " But he was out of all danger. Pillitt told me 
 so last night at Kinahan's." 
 
 Nevertheless it was the Colonel. Pillitt came 
 hurrying into the parade ground. 
 
 " Dismiss the men," he said with a chalky face ; 
 " it 's the Colonel. I went in there twenty minutes 
 ago, and Mrs. Calverly and I went into his room 
 together ; she only went to lie down an hour and a 
 half ago ; her ayah was with him — but she 'd fallen 
 asleep ; and we found him dead. He had been dead 
 about an hour, and the rigor mortis was quite 
 declared." 
 
 Pillitt was a very keen doctor, and a clever one ; 
 he felt this professionally very acutely. 
 
 " I never knew such a case in my days," he 
 groaned ; " last night I turned in there on my way 
 home from Kinahan's, and he was doing splendidly. 
 In a week at the outside I should have taken his 
 name off the sick-list. It fairly beats me, and 
 that's the truth of it. The blow to his wife is 
 terrible." 
 
 " Yes ? " 
 
 The doctor turned to Menzies, w^ho had spoken. 
 
 " Yes, quite terrible. She fainted dead at the 
 sight of him. You see it 's so horribly unlooked for. 
 But I must go back there." 
 
 " Poor Don ! " said the second-in-command. " I 
 wish it could have come some other way — by Jove, 
 
 140 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 I do." But this observation also was addressed 
 solely to himself, for he was not thinking of the 
 manner of the Don's death, but of the manner of his 
 own promotion. And he was going back alone to 
 his own bungalow. 
 
 " Captain Menzies, is it true ? " 
 
 The young man looked up ; it was the clerk in the 
 Katara Treasury with the inconsequent resemblance 
 to Colonel Calverly. 
 
 " About the Colonel ? I am afraid it is," 
 he answered kindty. "It is sad news for all of 
 us." 
 
 " It is sad news to me," said the clerk. " Thank 
 you, sir," and he walked off. 
 
 Captain Menzies turned to go home. 
 
 " That 's a rum chap," he thought. " i\nd he 
 looked rum. By Jove, he is like the old boy, and 
 his voice is like too. Well, perhaps I should look 
 rum if " 
 
 The Hon. U. FitzU. de Tracey overtook him. 
 
 " Good God, Menzies, this is awful ! " 
 
 " It 's pretty bad," said Menzies, with British 
 moderation of statement. De Tracey, you see, 
 was Irish. 
 
 " I wish to God he hadn't died," cried he. And 
 there was no mistake as to his sincerity. 
 
 " Yes," said Menzies curiously. 
 
 " Upon my soul I do." 
 
 Menzies thoroughly believed, but thoroughly 
 disliked these protestations. 
 
 " Well, Jim," he said, " we all do. There 's not a 
 man in the station who doesn't." 
 
 Captain de Tracey looked uneasy. He shot a 
 swift glance of suspicion at the other man. 
 
 " Nor a woman either ! " he said fooHshly. 
 . Menzies nodded. 
 
 141 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 " Of course — nor a woman either," he assented 
 innocently. 
 
 They turned into the bungalow. Captain Menzies 
 picked up his banjo, but put it down again. He 
 sat on the table instead, and began to whistle. 
 
 " He was awfully decent to me," said Jim-Jams» 
 
 142 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE HORROR OF KATARA. 
 
 If Katara was shocked at the news of Colonel 
 Calverly's death, consternation fell on it at the 
 intelhgence that he was to be cremated. Here in 
 England it is far from being a popular mode of 
 disposal of the dead, in spite of the very prosaic 
 burning-house at Woking. But in India there are 
 a whole different set of reasons against it. It is 
 hke publicly marrying a native. And the cremation 
 of Colonel Calverly was not to take place in a 
 smart new crematorium at the end of an orthodox 
 funeral with hearse and mourning coaches, and 
 the Protestant Burial Service. 
 
 It appeared that he had made his will, leaving^ 
 everything to his wife, at the time of his marriage, 
 and with that had been found a loose sheet of paper 
 containing a brief but absolute command, that in 
 the event of his death his body should be burned, 
 with as little delay as possible, on the river bank at 
 Towli — " in the manner of the country," he had 
 added emphatically. This document was signed 
 and dated the afternoon of the day on which he had 
 been taken ill. It must have been written about 
 half an hour after the Rev. Epps had left his 
 bungalow and his wife had gone out to the Gymkhana. 
 He had sealed it with the signet ring he always wore, 
 and though the writing showed signs of agitation, 
 
 H3 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 and of having been the work of a man in great 
 bodily pain, it was unmistakably his. 
 
 " He often told me that he would wish to be burned 
 on the river-bank at Towli," said Mrs. Calverly. 
 *' Once he showed me the very place he wished — 
 just below the ranee's temple at the foot of the 
 steps — Ghats, he called them." 
 
 Katara is not easily scandalised. A readiness to 
 be scandalised is not the most crying fault of Anglo- 
 Indian society. But Katara was unutterably 
 scandalised now. What would the natives think 
 when Sahib-Log took to be burned at the Ghats like 
 natives ? Katara read a sardonic triumph in its 
 servants' eyes already. And the second-in-command, 
 who was really not a bad fellow at bottom, and old- 
 fashioned to boot, kicked his butler incontinently 
 on the strength of it. Doubtless in these dangerous 
 days the native w^ould " summons " him, so he was 
 determined to get the worth of his fifty rupees 
 while he was about it, and kicked him thoroughly. 
 *' That '11 teach him to expect no Hindu foolery 
 from the new Colonel," panted the second-in- 
 command when he had finished. 
 
 But all that did not stop the late Colonel's body 
 from being disposed of as he had directed. And the 
 Resident could not stop it either. He did his best, 
 but he failed. He had an idea that when the 
 Supreme Government heard of it — which it certainly 
 would — it would visit on him the permission of such 
 levelling doings in his district. And the home 
 Government, too. If it had been a Radical 
 Government at home, a Radical Viceroy here — 
 but they were both as Tory as common sense could 
 make them. The Resident of Katara saw himself a 
 marked man — and marked, alas ! with a most 
 undesirable distinction — as the head of a district in 
 
 144 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 which the first European officer broke down the 
 wholesome difference between natives and Sahib- 
 Log, and let himself be burned up, like a bundle of 
 weeds, on the river-bank. 
 
 He interviewed the widow without losing an 
 instant, but she was inexorable. 
 
 " I know it to have been my poor husband's 
 desire," she reiterated, " and it is my sacred duty 
 to see that his desires are not set aside when he can 
 no longer enforce them." 
 
 The Resident was eloquent, but Mrs. Calverly 
 was unmoved by his eloquence. He became 
 pathetic, but the lady grew scornful. 
 
 " You are thinking of nothing but yourself," 
 she said, with considerable candour, " and I intend 
 to think of nothing but my poor husband's wishes. 
 . . . Really, at such a time, such an interview is 
 most painful," she added. 
 
 The Resident moved reluctantly to go. But he 
 did not go till he had gained a concession. As it 
 seemed to him, a very important concession. 
 
 The body of Colonel Calverly should be burned, 
 as he had directed, on the bank of the river at the 
 holy place of Towli ; at the foot of the stone steps 
 leading up to the ranee's temple, on the spot he 
 had himself chosen. But first there should be a 
 funeral — a decent European funeral service in the 
 Protestant church in the cantonment. The whole 
 station should attend that service ; the regiment 
 commanded by the late Colonel should accompany 
 the coffin from the bungalow to the church. 
 
 " And you will yourself attend the service ? " 
 he suggested, pleadingly. 
 
 " Of course. I shall be chief mourner.'* 
 
 " Of course ! " assented the Resident, a trifle 
 taken aback, but delighted. " The usual volleys 
 
 H5 
 10 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 will be fired over the grave," he said, " into which 
 the coffin will have been lowered. . . . After the 
 volleys the funeral party will disperse, and you will 
 do what you wish. ... I shall report the 
 proceedings in full up to that point, Ot anything 
 that may take place afterwards I shall have no 
 cognisance whatever." 
 
 Mrs. Calverly bowed, and the Resident departed 
 in triumph. He felt that a first-rate diplomatist 
 was thrown away on Katara. Possibly Mrs. Calverly 
 was a bit of a diplomatist also. 
 
 The Resident evidently presumed that she would 
 have her husband's body taken from the grave 
 after the volley-firing and dispersal of the funeral 
 party. But she had a notion that to steal bodies 
 from graves where they had been buried was a 
 felony, and, on the whole, she thought it might be 
 better to send the coffin without the body to the 
 church, especially as she felt confident her husband 
 had never contemplated any Protestant and 
 European funeral over his remains at all. 
 
 146 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 TOWLI. 
 
 If the Resident flattered himself that people would 
 believe the European funeral to be the final and only 
 one, he was considerably out of his reckoning. Most 
 probably he did not so flatter himself. All he desired 
 w^as that he himself should have no official know- 
 ledge of any subsequent proceedings. And he hoped 
 people would, to him at all events, hold their tongues 
 on the subject. Of course, all European Katara 
 attended the European obsequies. But the later 
 ceremony was to be ignored officially by the canton- 
 ment. Unofficially and out of uniform, however, 
 the cantonment had every intention of going to 
 Towli as a spectator. No sooner, therefore, was the 
 last volley fired over the " grave," and the funeral 
 party dismissed, than Katara made haste back to 
 its bungalow, and hurriedly changed from uniform 
 to mufti. 
 
 Towli is perhaps a mile and a half or two miles 
 from Katara. And straight and white and hot is 
 the road that leads to it, past the Residency gardens 
 and the bungalow where Mrs. Pillitt gives her dinner- 
 parties, luxurious with Europe goods and prodigal 
 of tinned meats. 
 
 Whether Towli is a village or a city I cannot tell. 
 Judging by its extreme minuteness I should say 
 a city. Anyway, it is a sacred city, and consists 
 almost entirely of temples. Two rivers meet there 
 
 H7 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 — the Yena and the Krishna, and of course they are 
 both sacred. The banks are very steep on either 
 hand, and they are hned with temples, whose ghats 
 wade knee-deep in water in the rains, but stand high 
 on the hot bank in the dry season. Looking up and 
 down stream one sees great weird-shaped " Deccany " 
 hills ; and in and out of the courts of the temples 
 are holy banyan trees and pepul trees, such as that 
 under which the Lord called Nathaniel. And there 
 are monkeys, fiippantty oblivious of the incarnations 
 of Vishnu. And Brahmins, who will be gods when 
 they are dead, but are not obtrusively divine at 
 present. 
 
 In spite of having had to change its clothes, 
 Katara was at Towli before the funeral procession. 
 With the latter came the regiment (all of it that was 
 not on duty), but without side-arms or accoutre- 
 ments. And with it also came the rajah, in semi- 
 state, and attended by the princes of his family, 
 who were all sober. A certain triumph was, or was 
 supposed to be, written on their faces. Not even 
 Sirdah Rajah Perthab Singh in all his glory had been 
 privileged to attend the burning of one of the sahib- 
 log. The body was in a bullock dumnie, curtained 
 with hangings of magnificent white silk, a blaze of 
 gold needlework. This had been lent by the rajah, 
 and was the ranee's state equipage. It was drawn 
 by six lovely oxen, of the sacred Brahmin breed, 
 small and graceful like deer, bright and pure of 
 colour, with conscious calm divinity in gait and mien. 
 At the head of each walked a Sais, in garments and 
 lunghi of spotless white. Immediately behind, in 
 a closed dumnie drawn by two bullocks and closely 
 curtained, came the dead man's widow. Near the 
 red monument of the dog who saved the rajah's life 
 the procession stopped and the body was lifted out. 
 
 148 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 It lay upon a hand-bier of very light woodwork, 
 covered with a silk fulkari plentifully wrought with 
 gold. The body itself was swathed entirely in cloth 
 of finest white linen, and was wholly covered with 
 flowers, also chiefly white ; but here and there 
 gleamed red the huge and splendid blossoms of the 
 babul tree. Swiftly and in silence the body was 
 carried down the steep path to the ghat of the 
 ranee's temple, and thence to the water's edge. 
 Swiftly the fuel cakes were set around and over it, 
 till it was wholly hidden, and then the god Fire was 
 brought. He breathed into the pyre, and with his 
 long fierce tongue began to hck it, chuckhng ; and 
 then out across the rapid-flowing sacred river 
 streamed a long thin veil of palest blue-white smoke, 
 wherefrom the god Air received the dead man into 
 his divine embrace. 
 
 149 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 TOO SOON. 
 
 Captain Alexander Menzies of the Bombay 
 Ducks and Captain the Hon. U. FitzU. de Tracey 
 of the Royal Tasmanians were sitting in their 
 bungalow after tifhn. Captain Menzies was now 
 sufficiently recovered from the shock of Colonel 
 Calverly's death to resume his performances upon 
 the banjo, and he was playing upon that instrument. 
 It did not appear that Captain de Tracey was doing 
 anything. That is to say, he was sucking a cheroot, 
 and moodily watching his companion, who appeared 
 — but was not — quite unconscious of his scrutiny. 
 
 " Have you ever tried Beecham's pills ? " Captain 
 Menzies inquired presently, with great sweetness. 
 *' They are said to be worth a guinea a box, but you 
 can get them for less at Sorabji's." 
 
 Captain de Tracey scraped with one foot upon the 
 ground. 
 
 " Funny chap ! " he grunted sulkily. 
 
 " Livery ? " 
 
 " Oh, do shut up ! I Ve no doubt you 're fright- 
 fully waggish, Menzies, but I 'm not a witty fellow 
 myself, and it palls." 
 
 Captain Menzies looked wounded, and began to sing 
 " Kathleen Aroon." 
 
 Jim-jams leapt up. 
 
 " Curse you, Menzies ! " he shouted. *' Will you 
 shut up ? " 
 
 150 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 Captain Mcnzies demanded an explanation. He 
 had tried conversation, only to be rebuffed ; he had 
 fallen back on song — what was now his offence ? 
 
 " Can't you let that woman alone ? Now, at all 
 events." 
 
 " My dear Jim-jams ! You used not to object so 
 very much to playful allusions to that ' woman ' 
 (since you put it so rudely) when she was somebody 
 else's wife ; now she 's only somebody's widow I 
 should have thought it a more legitimate subject of 
 friendly allusion " 
 
 A Seedee boy entered, barefooted and silent, with 
 a note which he gave to Jim-jams. He took it 
 carelessly, then reddened, and shot a furtive glance 
 at ]\Ienzies, who was, however, absorbed in the tuning 
 of his banjo. 
 
 " All right." 
 
 The young man got up and went into his bed- 
 room. 
 
 Captain Menzies smiled. 
 
 " No black edge to it, but it was from her all the 
 same. Poor Jim-jams ! He doesn't want her a bit 
 now he can have her. But he '11 have to, I 'm 
 thinking ! Lord, how she '11 stick ! " 
 
 Very cautiously he gave the peg one tiny screw 
 more, then tried the string again. 
 
 " By Jove, though, it 's soon," thought Captain 
 Menzies. 
 
 In his bedroom, Captain de Tracey read the note 
 again. " Can you meet me while they 're all at 
 dinner — at the well ? — K." 
 
 " By Jove, though, it 's horribly soon," said Jim- 
 jams. 
 
 When he had gone back to Captain Menzies he 
 pretended to read, and that officer was not thinking 
 at all about him when he suddenly looked up. 
 
 151 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 " Menzies," he said, " you 're always rotting me 
 about — about that woman. Of course, I was there 
 a good bit, and of course I saw a lot of her, but on my 
 soul it w^as absolutely platonic ; if I were to die this 
 minute," he concluded, somewhat confusedly. 
 
 " Which I trust you won't," replied the other 
 politely. 
 
 Nevertheless, Captain Menzies saw that he spoke 
 sincerely ; and Captain Menzies did not love Jim- 
 jams. 
 
 It has been said already that few men did like him 
 very much. Whatever the average civilian Pharisee 
 may think, a man who has the reputation of a drinker 
 is seldom very popular in the Army. 
 
 152 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE FIRST TRYST. 
 
 All the cantonment was at dinner, with the excep- 
 tion of two persons. Those two persons were Mrs. 
 Calverly and Captain de Tracey ; and to tell the 
 truth, Katara was thinking as little of them just then 
 as of any two people in the Deccan. Some da3'5 had 
 passed since the cremation of Mrs. Calverly's late 
 husband. For a time she had been a good deal the 
 topic of conversation, but now she was done with ; 
 and Captain de Tracey never was much thought of. 
 
 Mrs. Calverly had chosen the time for her first 
 tryst very prudently. Everyone was at dinner, 
 either at the mess or in their bungalows. It was 
 about as dark as it would be all night, and the moon 
 was nearing her second quarter. There are two ways, 
 by which Mrs. Calverly might have gone from her 
 bungalow to the well where Captain de Tracey was 
 to meet her, but she chose the one that leads past 
 the judge's. If when you come out of the judge's 
 gate you turn north-east the road takes you to the 
 city and the fort ; if you turn south-west it takes you 
 past the Roman Catholic church and down a short 
 steep hill to a bridge, beyond which the road rises 
 again and trends back to the cantonment and the 
 mess bungalow. 
 
 The httle Catholic church looked white and 
 ghostly in the moonlight as Mrs. Calverly passed it. 
 They were expecting the Bishop of Poona to-morrow, 
 
 153 
 
THE CREMATION OF COEONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 and it was decorated with hideous wreaths and paper 
 flowers in his honour. A triumphal arch in front 
 ah-eady had W — E — L — C — (also in paper flowers) 
 arranged upon it ; O — M — E would be added in the 
 morning. Then Mrs. Calverly disappeared into the 
 darkness beneath the trees where the road runs down- 
 hill. She was rather afraid of snakes here, and went 
 delicately, like King Agag, but luckily with better 
 results. Just where it was darkest, however, a deep 
 sigh startled her, close at her elbow. It was only a 
 buffalo lying in the grass at the roadside ; but Mrs. 
 Calverly hurried past him. She had an idea that, 
 for all their seeming gentleness, those buffaloes could 
 poke most discomfortably with their huge flat horns. 
 
 At the bottom of the little valley there were no 
 irees except overhanging the bridge, and it was lighter. 
 After the darkness out of which she had come it 
 seemed quite light. The well, at which she thought 
 •she would have probably some minutes to wait, is 
 about fifty yards to the left of the bridge, as she came, 
 and you do not see it until you are pretty close to the 
 b)ridge. The well is quite clear of trees, though there 
 is a small thicket twenty yards or so from it, and when 
 Mrs. Calverly came in sight of it the moonlight was 
 ialling full upon it. 
 
 So she saw at once she was not first at the place of 
 tryst. He was leaning over the wall of the well, and 
 looking down into the water, with his back to her. 
 At the sound of her footstep he raised himself to his 
 full height and turned round. Now Captain de 
 Tracey was a very large man. He was by far the 
 tallest man in Katara, and his shoulders were very 
 broad and powerful, but he was loosely built and 
 rather awkward in his carriage. His uniform was 
 that of ordinary infantry, except that being a royal 
 regiment, the facings were blue. The man who now 
 
 154 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 turned to face Mrs. Calverly was by no means tall, 
 but slim, wiry and smart. He was in mess kit, but 
 the facings on his sleeves and at his neck were white. 
 
 With a horrible sense of numbness Mrs. Calverly 
 stood still, and the ground began to shiver beneath 
 her feet. Immovably her eyes were riveted on that 
 spare and well-known figure, waiting for her so ruth- 
 lessly by the well. That yonder silent shape was no 
 reality, she knew full well ! Who so well as she knew 
 that he was dead ? — knew that he must be dead, even 
 had she not seen his body burned ? Great God ! 
 And this was to be her punishment ! Ever so busily 
 her brain worked, as if it were being lashed with whips 
 into feverish activity. She felt with a horrible 
 intelHgence the full loathsomeness of meeting the 
 man of whom she had so cruelly desired to free herself, 
 here in the place of her first tryst with the man for 
 whose sake she had longed to be rid of him. 
 
 High and cold and white the moon swam in the 
 night sky, and flung her sad fight over the highlands 
 of the Deccan, and bathed in her palHd radiance the 
 living and the dead. Could there be any error ? 
 There could be none, as, growing impatient, the 
 dead man slowly left the well and came, with well- 
 remembered step, to meet her ; and the moonlight, 
 catching his shoulders, showed a crown and two stars 
 gfittering thereon. 
 
 Ah ! what would she not have given to cry aloud ; 
 but speech was frozen in her throat ! And if she 
 could, if only she could, have turned and fled ! But 
 her heavy feet seemed weighted with the world on 
 which she stood. Fixed, and unmovable, in leaden 
 silence she stood waiting while he came towards her. 
 And now she could recognise the features of that face 
 which she had thought to see only turned on her 
 upbraiding at the bar of God's judgment. White 
 
 ^55 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 and pale in the moonlight, nearer and nearer it came, 
 with eyes fixed and wide staring in mute upbraiding 
 now. To and fro she swayed and staggered drun- 
 kenly, and the sky swam, and the hills, and the trees 
 beat at her like switches, and the moon and stars were 
 broken, as when one breaks the clear surface of a lake 
 their shattered image flies hither and thither and 
 dances horribly. And so, with one low, choking, 
 gurgling sob, she sa.nk, deathly white and senseless, 
 at the dead man's feet. 
 
 156 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 WATCHED. 
 
 When Mrs. Calverly recovered consciousness, she 
 found herself some yards from the place where she 
 had fallen, and out of sight of the road. 
 
 Thither Captain de Tracey had carried her, not 
 specially wishing that either or both of them should 
 be seen there at such an hour by any chance passer- 
 by. He had been puzzled and disquieted to find her 
 lying there unconscious and alone, and, of course, had 
 had no idea as to the length of time she had been thus. 
 Probably it had been less than five minutes, but that 
 he could not know. He had propped her up in a 
 sitting posture against a tree, and had stood over her 
 bewildered and disturbed, utterly without knowledge 
 as to what should next be done. The faint seemed to 
 him to continue a terrible time, and suddenly as his 
 eyes wandered round in an aimless search for some 
 means of revival, an unpleasant sensation of being 
 watched came over him. It was senseless and un- 
 reasoning, he knew, and he was utterly ashamed 
 of such folly, but there was a conviction, strong as 
 instinct, grounded on no evidence of any sense, that 
 out of the thicket eyes were fastened on him and the 
 unconscious woman at his feet. 
 
 It was a horrid impression. There was an intense 
 loneliness about the place and the night, and some- 
 thing infinitely lonelier in the presence of the swooned 
 girl than if he had been veritably alone. And yet he 
 
 157 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 saw no watcher and caught the gleam of no eyes 
 peering from the bushes with the hght of an in- 
 extinguishable hate and cruelty. 
 
 When Mrs. Calverly came to herself, she kept her 
 own counsel as to the cause of her faint ; and the 
 sound of her voice weakened somewhat the feeling of 
 superstitious dread that had been creeping over her 
 companion. 
 
 But she found him dull and by no means tender. 
 
 " Was it not good of me to meet you so soon ? " 
 
 " Yes, verv. But wasn't it rather — rather risky ? '* 
 
 "Risky?"" 
 
 " Well, if we were seen, wouldn't people think it 
 rather — rather soon, you know ? " 
 
 She looked at him curiously. 
 
 " Perhaps you find it too soon ? Apparently you 
 were in no hurry ! " She spoke in a very low voice, 
 but with intense bitterness. It was easy to see that 
 the young man was ill at ease, and had come to meet 
 her simply at her request, without any great pleasure 
 in the tryst. What had come over him ? They had 
 not met since that afternoon when coming out of the 
 Gymkhana together they had heard of her husband's 
 illness. He too remembered that. 
 
 It must not be supposed that they were still on the 
 spot where Mrs. Calverly had recovered consciousness. 
 She had taken his arm, and at once made him leave 
 it, and they were now some distance from the place 
 where she had, as she believed, seen that apparition. 
 
 *' Oh, Jim," she said reproachfully, " I thought you 
 would be so glad ! Glad to see me, I mean, after so 
 long — and now, now that I am free," she ended in a 
 whisper. 
 
 *' Of course I 'm glad," he answered guiltily, but 
 there was no gladness in his voice. He certainly had 
 admired this girl, and had willingly enough flirted 
 
 158 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 with her ; and to his taste she had seemed very good 
 to behold. But a certain cloud had fallen upon her, 
 and he could not rouse again yet the old feeling he 
 had had for her. A certain look that he had seen 
 upon her face when she first heard of her husband's 
 illness had never ceased to haunt him ever since 
 . . . and after all that dead man had been 
 " awfully decent to him." 
 
 Poor Jim-jams would have given a week's pay to 
 be alone in his own bungalow with half the canton- 
 ment between him and the woman at his side. And 
 yet he knew that he should marry her. 
 
 As for her, she loved him passionately, and he 
 could not deceive her. She saw plainly that he was 
 turning from her, and that knowledge fell like ice 
 into her heart. Was it for this she had covered 
 herself with the shadow of a great crime ? — for this 
 that she had risked so much ? — for this that she was 
 to be haunted by such a presence as that she had felt 
 to-night ? 
 
 I think in the bitterness of that moment she w^ould 
 have given ten years of her own life to bring back 
 again the dead man whom she had seen. But that 
 she could not do. We can destroy — miserable that 
 we are — but we can neither create nor recreate. 
 
 159 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 AGAIN. 
 
 Mrs. Calverly could not sleep. 
 
 Three days had passed since her meeting with 
 Captain de Tracey, and that other person by the well ; 
 and she had not seen either of them since. Her 
 mind had been, of course, full of what she had seen 
 before that faint in which Jim-jams had found her ; 
 and being alone in her widowhood and deep mourning, 
 the opportunities had been ample of wearily puzzling 
 — puzzling about what she would in truth have fain 
 forgotten. She could, after all, come to no other 
 decision than that it had been a simple delusion — 
 probably a first stage in the unconsciousness that had 
 later entirely fallen upon her. This explanation struck 
 her as peculiarly reasonable, and even ingenious. 
 
 But in her own secret mind she knew that it was 
 false. What she had seen was no delusion, but had 
 been seen as truly with her physical eyes as she saw 
 Achchi Singh watching her as he helped to wait upon 
 her at dinner. 
 
 Dinner was over now, though, and Achchi Singh 
 was asleep in his godown, and Mrs. Calverly would 
 have very gladly been asleep too. But sleep was 
 ^one from her eyes ; and very tiresomely, as she lay 
 wearily awake, would the old stale quotation din, 
 din in her ears and even form itself upon her lips — 
 
 " . . . . Sleep no more. 
 Macbeth does murder sleep, — the innocent sleep." 
 
 i6o 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 No doubt she thought with a kind of feverish 
 terror this was to be part of her punishment. Sleep 
 was to be dragged from her. All the heaviness of 
 sleep was to be hers without the oblivion. She was 
 unutterably weary even now, and her eyes ached, 
 but hold them fast closed as she would, they would 
 reopen. Her eyelids felt thick and hot as if they 
 were of horn. So she tossed from side to side, and 
 now and then a low wretched murmur would break 
 from her. She flung aside the mosquito curtains, 
 but she could hear the abhorred buzz of one of those 
 sweet insects somewhere in the room, and was fain 
 to pull them down again. 
 
 And she thought of the plain indifference of the man 
 for whom she had done so wickedly, and neither con- 
 cerning that could she deceive herself. A kind of 
 repulsion to her had been written on his face. Had 
 he guessed ? Of all people she would have felt safe 
 concerning him ! She had had an unacknowledged 
 trust in the dulness of the man. For, passionately 
 as she had loved him, she had known him to be a dull, 
 slow-witted man. If he guessed ! what would others 
 . . , a horrible dew of abject terror and cowardice 
 broke chill upon her. What was that upon the 
 wall ? 
 
 Her bed stood between two windows, and opposite 
 its foot was an expanse of white wall. Whose 
 shadow is that upon it ? The shadow of a lean, 
 spare man, bareheaded, with hands uplifted as of one 
 who makes appeal to God for judgment. 
 
 Kneeling up in bed, she bent forward and flung up 
 the mosquito curtain to see yet more plainly that 
 which, God knows, she feared to see at all. For some 
 few seconds the shadow stood there immovable, and 
 then with a gesture of intense sadness the hands 
 dropped, and the head drooped forward on the breast. 
 
 i6i 
 11 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 Slowly it passed, but only to reappear upon the other 
 patch of square white moonlit wall. Then it went. 
 
 Fearfully and with a slow reluctance, the haunted 
 woman rose from her bed and crept guiltily to the 
 window. It did not open to the ground, but she 
 stood beside it, her cold hands dropped upon the sill, 
 and gazed out into the moonlit night. 
 
 He was there. Slowly going from her, with head 
 bent, and weary step, across the open lawn. Nearly 
 opposite her was a gap in the cactus hedge, leading 
 out on to the parade ground. Towards that the dead 
 man walked. He was dressed in a rough suit of 
 khaki, such as he had often worn, but his head was 
 uncovered, and wintry white was his hair in the sad 
 light of the moon. When he had nearly reached the 
 cactus hedge he stopped. He seemed to listen, and 
 then he turned towards her. She could not see his 
 face well as he faced her, for the moon was behind 
 him then, and shining on herself ; but again he 
 listened and half turned from her. The outline of 
 the face, so familiar, and so impossible ever to forget, 
 was touched with the silver light. 
 
 She saw now that he held something in his right 
 hand that glistened as it caught the light. No one 
 else could have told at that distance what it was. 
 But she knew; and she knew that he would raise 
 it to his lips. As he took it from his lips, he shud- 
 dered — yes, she could see him shudder — and across 
 the empty garden in the dead silence of the night 
 came the long sobbing whisper of a sigh. 
 
 He seemed now to be looking straight at her. She 
 could not see his face, but as with burning eyes she 
 watched him, there was in his attitude the silent 
 expression of an unspeakable sadness, an unutterable 
 reproach. 
 
 A sound close to her, a sound so slight that it might 
 
 162 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 have been no more than the dropping of a beetle on a 
 leaf, made her turn. There were — yes, there were 
 two eager, curious eyes watching her from among the 
 bushes, and as her own met them, a terror greater yet 
 than she had felt in seeing again the man she had 
 murdered made her skin creep and her heart beat 
 sickeningly. 
 
 It was Achchi Singh, the man who ever watched 
 her. There had been high doings at the Temple of 
 Ganesli in the city, and he, being a very devout Hindu, 
 had been assisting at them. But for some time he 
 had been watching the Mem-Sahib standing at her 
 window in the moonlight, and staring out with so 
 strange a look into the empty compound. She was a 
 strange w^oman, this young Mem-Sahib ! 
 
 163 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 SUSPECTED. 
 
 A KIND of dull despair was rapidly taking possession 
 of Mrs. Calverly. 
 
 She was between two terrors. The dread of a 
 presence that would come to her oftener and more 
 persistently, she knew, until she should have learned 
 to look upon it as a sort of terrible condition of her 
 life, and the sharp terror of temporal retribution. 
 
 Unutterably as she was afraid of the presence that 
 would come to her by night, it was, I think, 
 characteristic of the woman that she was distinctly 
 more afraid of the discovery and punishment of 
 her crime. She loved her life — it was miserable 
 enough just now — but she clung to it with a 
 passionate instinct of self-preservation. It was not 
 the horrible publicity, the being brought to trial, 
 to shame, and to execration that made her hand 
 tremble and her tongue grow dry in her mouth. 
 It was the physical terror of being hanged by the 
 neck until she should be dead. She loved her large 
 white body ; she had always treated it well. She 
 had never failed to consult its ease and comfort. 
 She liked feeding it, and even now it was an appre- 
 ciable aggravation of her wretchedness that she could 
 not enjoy doing this as she used. She was a sensual, 
 vulgar-minded woman, and pleasure had been her 
 highest notion of happiness. 
 
 She loved Jim-jams, at all events. Yes, with the 
 
 164 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 love of a large white cow for a large black bull, she 
 loved him fiercely. But she loved herself — and 
 there was nothing of herself but that large yellow- 
 haired body — best. Her love for Jim-jams had 
 been nothing else than an irresistible desire to be 
 his wife. And it did not now sustain her, or prevent 
 her clasping her great white neck shudderingly 
 with her large soft hands, and shivering. And he 
 still kept aloof. 
 
 During those days I fancy Mrs. Calverly was much 
 more constantly present to the thoughts of Jim-jams 
 than he was to those of that lady. But she was 
 not welcome there, and his thoughts were not very 
 lover-like. 
 
 Perhaps he never had been in love with her. He 
 was certainly not in love with her now. Neverthe- 
 less, it did not occur to him that he need not marry 
 her. He had an instinct that she had determined 
 to marry him as soon as she had been told of her 
 husband's illness. And poor Jim-jams knew that 
 he had not the qualities which would enable him to 
 resist doing what Mrs. Calverly had set her mind on. 
 
 So while he kept aloof, he was moody and not 
 too sweet-tempered. 
 
 Menzies no longer chaffed him about Mrs. Calverly ; 
 but he very sincerely wished that lady would take 
 her admirer to reside with herself, since he was such 
 indifferent company. i\Ienzies had an idea that a 
 crisis was approaching, for the development whereof 
 he watched and waited. 
 
 On the day following the second visit of that 
 accusing presence Mrs. Calverly received a note 
 from Jim-jams. She went into her bedroom to 
 wash her hands before tiffin, and on Ufting one of 
 her hairbrushes she found the note underneath. It 
 was in a small square envelope sealed with a small 
 
 165 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 horseshoe seal that he had on his watch-chain. It 
 was written on half a sheet of his regimental paper, 
 and was very short : — 
 
 " Must see and warn you. Suspected. Towli 
 most unhkely place. There to-night same time. — 
 U. FiTzU. DE Tracey." 
 
 The note was not addressed, though he had 
 signed it in full. 
 
 i66 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE ranee's temple. 
 
 Mrs. Calverly's hand shook as she made a show 
 of helping herself to the dishes Achchi Singh and the 
 other menservants handed her at tiffin. In truth, 
 she felt sick, horribly and physically sick with a 
 growing, over-mastering terror. Thoroughly like 
 poor Jim-jams in its incoherence, the note was all 
 too easy of comprehension. 
 
 " Suspected." What had he to tell her ? 
 Whereof must he needs warn her ? In the physical 
 alarm for the safety of her neck, the wretched woman 
 thought singularly little of its being at Towli that 
 she must meet him. It was not the place she would 
 for choice have fixed upon : but of that she recked 
 little now. As for that presence, it had not spared 
 her in her own bungalow ; it could be no worse at 
 Towli, and certainly at Towli during the hours of 
 dinner there would be little fear of her meeting 
 with Jim-jams being observed by any white 
 inhabitant of the valley of Katara. 
 
 But many, many hours must pass before that at 
 which she could meet him and hear that whereof he 
 had to put her on her guard. Ceaselessly up and 
 down her dim drawing-room she walked that livelong 
 afternoon. People were beginning to call again, 
 and though they only inquired, they waited while 
 their cards were sent in, and seemed to expect to be 
 asked in. They were not. Who suspected her ? 
 
 167 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 How could she tell ? And perhaps in her ignorance 
 might she not say something most fatal ? She would 
 see no one. But she could not read or work. She 
 never had been a great reader. But for novels of 
 a certain sort she had had a great relish. " Realistic 
 works," she had called them — as though all reality 
 were of the sewers. She tried one now — The 
 Plumber s Wife — but realistic as it was, she felt a 
 more horrible realism outside of it. Then she tried 
 " work." She rather liked " work " — had she been 
 born a milliner, might have earned an honest living 
 by it. But to-day she could not work. 
 
 So she walked up and down, and wondered if 
 perhaps after all there were a hell, and people were 
 walking up and down in it now. I do not think any 
 of them would have gained much by changing with 
 her during those endless hours. 
 
 She did not think it prudent to drive, and after 
 all the distance was not great. So when Katara had 
 gone to dinner Mrs. Calverly slipped out at the back 
 of her bungalow, and cut straight across the parade 
 ground to the Towli Road. To do this she had to 
 pass through that gap in the cactus hedge by which 
 her dead husband had gone. When was that ? 
 Many years ago ? Last night ! 
 
 It was thoroughly like Mrs. Calverly that she did 
 not, for all her wretchedness and fear, omit to curl 
 her fringe again before starting. She had noticed 
 with intense annoyance while she was doing this 
 that anxiety was not becoming to her large, blonde 
 style. It had a dingy effect upon her ; and lack 
 of sleep and appetite had made her lose colour, 
 leaving her face a uniform tallowy white. 
 
 She shuddered as she slipped through that gap, 
 though she tried hard to shut her memory. She 
 
 1 68 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 could not. As she passed the PilHtt bungalow she 
 could hear the doctor laugh ; his laugh had nothing 
 at all grim or funereal in it, but it made her shiver. 
 She should never forget his face when he had gone 
 in with her to her husband's room and they had 
 found him dead. Was it he who had begun to 
 suspect ? 
 
 The thought made her quicken her step. 
 
 She had been waiting nearly half an hour. 
 
 What is there in the world so harassing as waiting 
 for someone who does not come, especially if one 
 by no means wishes to be seen waiting ? And 
 Towli was not a pleasant place for her to wait at. 
 
 She waited first by the red monument to the rajah's 
 dog, because it seemed less lonely there than down 
 nearer to the river. But soon, for that very reason, 
 she moved. It was above all things necessarv that 
 nothing suspicious should be told of her at present, 
 and she must not be seen thus aimlessly waiting. 
 She would go down near the burning-ghat, and if 
 anyone came she would go boldly right to it. They 
 would say she had come to weep unnoticed at the 
 place of her husband's cremation. She wished she 
 had thought of bringing flowers. 
 
 Had something prevented him from coming, 
 after all ? What should she do if he did not come, 
 and she had to remain still in ignorance of his 
 warning ? Two natives passed along the road, and 
 lest they should see her she stole with silent tread 
 into the dark shadow of the temple — the ranee's 
 temple — though she had a great reluctance to go 
 thus into the darkness. An irresistible fascination 
 made her peer down the river banks to that spot 
 whereon her husband's body had been burned. 
 The river flowed silver-white in the moonlight that 
 
 169 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 flooded all the temple cupolas and minars with its 
 cold sad radiance. A dark heap lay still by the river 
 where he had been burned, shapeless and indis- 
 tinguishable — a heap as of debris. A sudden chill 
 crept over her, and for the moment she forgot her 
 impatience for the man she was awaiting, forgot 
 even her terror of what he might have to tell, in a 
 sudden overpowering superstitious fear and dread. 
 
 And the heap moved, and from its shapeless mass 
 a shape well known arose, but swathed in white, 
 that gleamed ghostly in the moonlight. For a 
 moment he stood still, drawing the white cloths 
 from his face. And then with face uplifted to the 
 moon he came swiftly towards her. 
 
 In his attitude last night there had been only 
 unspeakable sadness ; on his face now she read an 
 inexorable anger. 
 
 With a low cry of terror she turned to fly. 
 Immediately behind her was the doorway into the 
 Tanee's temple, and a flight of stone steps leading 
 up from it. Up these she sped, her heart in her 
 mouth. A ghastly race — the living fleeing from the 
 dead. 
 
 At the top of the stairs opened one of the 
 courtyards of the temple, but it was cloistered, and 
 she could not cross it directly ; she would have to 
 run round two sides — either to left or right. She 
 took the right, and her pursuer took the left. Which 
 would first reach the wide doorway and second 
 staircase leading to the great court of the temple ? 
 
 Her breath came fast in short sobbing gasps ; 
 she could not hear her pursuer, but she knew that 
 he would make no sound, and even she made hardly 
 any on the deeply-sanded pavement. 
 
 She turned to glance over her shoulder, not 
 stopping in her flight, and here was a dark place in 
 
 170 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 the cloister. Then she tripped, tripped and fell 
 heavily over something laid across her path. But 
 for it she would have hurt herself, falling thus 
 violently upon the flagged pavement. What was 
 it ? Something large, and not hard. With ineffable 
 loathing she lifted herself from it, but found her 
 dress had caught, and as she struggled passionately 
 to free herself she dragged it a foot or so into a 
 square of moonlight. At her feet he lay, his face 
 now bathed in the pale sad light of the upbraiding 
 moon. The anger had faded from it. The eyes 
 were closed fast in that unwakening, dreamless 
 sleep, and the nose looked unnaturally sharp and 
 drawn. It was like the face of one who had died 
 of pneumonia : worn out, and eloquent of a 
 measureless weariness, an ineffable sadness. 
 
 If she feared the eyes would open and pierce her 
 with their cold upbraiding, or the lips move and 
 curse her, they did not. Unheeding of her, the dead 
 man slept on, and stirred not. No knowledge of 
 her nearness disturbed his rest, in no nightmare did 
 she come to horrify him. An impulse to touch him 
 mastered her — an impulse that was no part of her 
 will, but contrary to it. She had not touched him 
 since his death. 
 
 She laid her hand upon his forehead. It was dead 
 cold, and a chill moisture lay on it. At her touch 
 the head fell slightly to the left, and to her it had 
 the effect as of a petulant sleeping child, who, in 
 impatience, turns his face to the wall when one 
 touches him. 
 
 171 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 10.45 P.M. 
 
 It had been guest night, but Jim-jams did not 
 remain at the mess much after half-past ten. There 
 had only been three guests, and none of them had 
 been friends of his. A few weeks ago he would not 
 have needed the presence of guests as an inducement 
 to sit on, but latterty he had not troubled anybody 
 much with his company. It had been supposed that 
 he was secretly solacing the widowed hours of Mrs. 
 Calverly. 
 
 It has already been explained why Captain the 
 Hon. U. FitzU. de Tracey was called Jim-jams, and 
 to you that may all seem simply ludicrous. It was 
 not at all ludicrous to him. When aesthetically- 
 tinted beasts without any legs, but a head at each 
 end, peer at you out of the corners, and reptiles like 
 lizards, only about the size of a camel, and humped 
 like a Brahmin cow, with five horns and one long 
 bare leg, come and sit by you in bed, and laugh 
 hoarsely, or when featherless birds with heads like 
 ex-Prime Ministers choose to sit and choke upon the 
 towel-rail, then it does not seem to you so very funny 
 to be 
 
 What on earth was that ? 
 
 Poor Jim-jams was walking down the road, and 
 the road had until now been for some few yards in 
 shadow ; before it had been so no one was in front 
 of him. But as soon as he had passed out of the 
 
 172 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 moonlight under the trees he heard footsteps 
 half a dozen paces ahead. 
 
 " Is that you, Menzies ? " How could it be ? 
 He had left Menzies seated on the billiard-table, 
 and playing a break-down. The step was light and 
 firm ; he seemed to know it — to have known it some- 
 where. Who could it be ? 
 
 It kept an even distance from him, and now they 
 came to the gateway into Menzies' and Jim-jams' 
 own compound. The road kept straight on, and was 
 still dark for a dozen yards. The drive up to their 
 door struck off at right angles and was moonlit. 
 
 Very quietly the man in front pushed open the 
 gate, slipped through, and let it bang to behind him, 
 and passed into the moonlight. 
 
 Jim-jams was standing frozen to the earth in 
 the midst of a tropic night, his eyes glued to the 
 incredible shape in front. As truly as the ground was 
 rocking under his feet that was the Colonel. The 
 dead man was walking neither fast nor slow, but with 
 a measured promptness. He was in an old, well- 
 remembered khaki suit, and his head was a little 
 bent. Presently he stopped and seemed to Hsten as 
 though he had noted the cessation of the other foot- 
 steps behind him. Then he turned and beckoned, 
 and the clear white light of the moon fell broad upon 
 his face. Sad and cold and stern was the expression 
 of the face turned thus to the young man, to whom, 
 as he himself had said, the dead man had been 
 *' awfully decent." There was no doubt he was 
 waiting. But the luckless Jim-jams had less power 
 than he had will to go to him. 
 
 With a sudden very swift recollection, it came back 
 to the young man's mind that he owed that dead man 
 a hundred rupees. He had borrowed them the day 
 he went on leave, to get out of the way of the baby. 
 
 173 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 Until now they had been totally forgotten. But 
 living or dead, he knew that that man had far more 
 totally forgotten them. Living or dead, Colonel 
 Calverly would never have remembered a debt due 
 to him. Again the dead man beckoned, and then 
 with a strangely pathetic gesture of disappointment 
 he turned and passed out of sight in the shadow of 
 the house. 
 
 The Seedee boy who had delivered that first note 
 from Mrs. Calverly was lighting a lamp in the 
 bungalow, and Jim-jams made haste indoors. He 
 was glad to be where there was light and the presence 
 of the living. 
 
 " Menghis Sahib send me for book," said the boy. 
 He described the book, which proved to be one that 
 Jim-jams had been reading lying on his bed that 
 afternoon. 
 
 *' All right, I '11 get it," and Jim-jams went into 
 his bedroom to fetch it. There was no wooden door 
 between his room and their common sitting-room, 
 only a wide arched doorway and a thick curtain. 
 Coming out of the brightly-lit room, his own seemed 
 for a moment very dark, but he could see the hght, 
 yellowish book half-covered by some clothes gleam 
 pale on the rezai. He stretched out his hand to 
 pick it up, and found his fingers close together on the 
 cold forehead of a dead face. 
 
 174 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 11.30 P.M. 
 
 " HuLLOA, Jim, what 's up ? " 
 
 Captain Menzies was walking home, and Captain 
 de Tracey seemed to have come to meet him. Such 
 devotion was not ordinary. 
 
 " Up 1 Nothing 's up. I was stroUing about 
 and heard vou coming." 
 
 " Oh. ah"! " 
 
 Then they walked together in silence. If Captain 
 Menzies had known how passionately his coming 
 had been longed for, I think he must have been 
 flattered. 
 
 As it was he did not, and he wondered indolently 
 whether Jim-jams had been seeing things. He had 
 indeed ! But not such things as Captain Menzies 
 supposed. When they got indoors he sat down to 
 write a letter, and Captain de Tracey began to smoke. 
 Captain Menzies wrote his letters with a quill pen, 
 and one could almost hear what he was saying : 
 " Squiggle, squiggle, squiggle, squack, squack . . ." 
 with occasional pauses for thought. After he had 
 been writing some time, one of these pauses became 
 very long, and an odd exclamation came from him. 
 Jim-jams turned to look. Menzies was half standing 
 up, leaning forward on the writing-table and looking 
 out across the compound towards tlie church. 
 Presently he sat down, and resolutely the pen began 
 to squeak once more. He finished his letter, folded 
 
 175 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 and addressed it, and then got up. Jim-jams 
 looked narrowly at his face. 
 
 " So you 've seen him," he said calmly. 
 
 It ma.y be supposed that Captain de Tracey spoke 
 thus with a certain triumph. How about people 
 ^' seeing things " ? But he did not. There was no 
 triumph at all in his voice, only a kind of dogged 
 desperation. 
 
 As for Captain Menzies, he made no verbal response, 
 but he picked up his banjo and played a false chord 
 ■on it. Had Jim-jams known anything about har- 
 monies, he would have perceived that his friend 
 must be considerably upset. 
 
 Captain de Tracey pulled the cheroot out of his 
 mouth and stared at the ash end of it. 
 
 " What do you suppose he 's come for ? " 
 
 " Come for ? " 
 
 " Yes ; don't they generally come for some- 
 thing ? " 
 
 Captain Menzies tried another chord ; but it was 
 quite inadmissible. 
 
 " Oh ! " he said, " so you think it 's genuine ? " 
 
 " I think that 's genuine," observed Jim-jams 
 with some spirit. " Look ! " 
 
 They were both standing up, Menzies with his 
 back, he with his face to the window facing the 
 church. Captain Menzies turned round ; forty 
 paces from them, with his face turned to the moon, 
 ■stood the Colonel, and his expression was so vindictive 
 and so dark that it affected them with singular 
 unpleasantness. 
 
 176 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE WITCHING HOUR. 
 
 *' Come on ! " 
 
 The clock in the church turret was striking mid- 
 night, but neither Menzies nor de Tracey noticed it. 
 They were standing in the black shadow of the 
 bungalow, and the Colonel still stood immovable 
 in the light of a moon that was nearly full with that 
 Satanic expression on his face. Jim-jams shivered. 
 " If that 's the Colonel, he 's in hell," he thought. 
 
 " Come on ! " 
 
 At the gate they looked down the road — there was 
 no one on it ; up it towards the mess — there all was 
 for some way in deep shadow. Rut there were 
 footsteps. 
 
 Fifty yards or so up the road, that to the church, 
 turned off, and they found it in bright Hght. Far 
 down it close to the church gate was the figure they 
 were following. They walked quickly and in silence ; 
 at the church gate Captain Menzies took the lead, 
 and to the surprise of his companion pulled out a 
 revolver. Turning the corner of the church, they 
 strode across the grass to the corner in which lay 
 the Colonel's official but empty grave. Him they 
 had followed they found, as Menzies at least had 
 expected, sitting upon it, with his face upturned to 
 the cloudless queen of night. 
 
 A few paces from him they stood still, and for 
 a brief space both young men gazed full on the sad 
 
 177 
 ]2 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 face they had known so well. That expression of 
 cruel mahgnity had faded, and in its place there 
 was left an unspeakable weariness and ineffable 
 sorrow. What expression might be in the eyes 
 they could not tell, for they were closed. Presently 
 Captain Menzies spoke, and at his words Jim-jams 
 started. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Hewson, of the Katara Treasury," he 
 said in a low but very firm voice, '* I must ask you 
 to get up." 
 
 He paused a moment, but there came no response. 
 To Jim-jams it seemed that the faintest flicker of a 
 smile quivered on the face ; but that may have been 
 the shadow of a leaf that fell upon it. 
 
 " I have asked you to get up," continued Captain 
 Menzies, " and if you would kindly open your eyes 
 I think you would recognise that I hold a very 
 powerful argument." 
 
 He spoke in the same soft tone of quiet sarcasm, 
 but the gibe fell on deaf ears, and there came neither 
 obedience nor reply. 
 
 The revolver clicked. Did the eyelids quiver ? 
 Or was it the cheating light ? At least there came 
 no voice. A very small tree grew close beside the 
 grave ; with one hand Colonel Calverly's wraith or 
 impersonator held it. At that hand Captain Menzies 
 took deliberate aim. Poor Jim-jams shivered. 
 
 " Don't ! " he said ; " Menzies, it 's brutal." 
 
 " I have warned him," he said sternly. 
 
 " But perhaps " 
 
 " If it is a ghost I cannot hurt him," he insisted,, 
 and he fired. There was hardly any detonation and 
 no smoke. And hardly any effect followed, but that 
 effect was ghastlier than if it had been greater. 
 
 The shot passed clean through the fleshy part of 
 the hand, and the hand fell from the place it had 
 
 178 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 occupied ; and the dead man's head fell back and 
 he lay prone upon his own grave. No blood came 
 from the wound, but a clear 3^ellowish fluid began 
 slowly to ooze from it. 
 
 To Jim- Jams' fancy it seemed as though the blue 
 lips bore now a faint smile of placid scorn ; but 
 Menzies noticed nothing of the kind. 
 
 " Good Lord ! " he muttered, " this beats me, 
 
 unless " He stooped down and peered closer 
 
 into the dead face. " It is the Colonel," he said ; 
 '•' by George, this is awful ! " 
 
 " I wish you hadn't shot him," said Jim-jams 
 miserably. 
 
 To this Menzies made no answer. 
 
 *' We ought to take him somewhere," he said ; 
 " let 's go back to the bungalow and get something 
 to carry him on." 
 
 They walked back without a word ; in less than 
 ten minutes they had returned. But the dead 
 Colonel had not awaited their coming. The bark 
 of the little tree beside the grave, grazed by the shot 
 that had pierced the dead man's hand, was the only 
 proof of the reality of what had passed. 
 
 179 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 " WHO IS DEAD ? " 
 
 Mrs. Calverly was receiving visitors. Habited in 
 the garments of her widowhood, she sat in her 
 drawing-room and heard the condolences of her 
 friends. She was not " in looks," and it was generally- 
 felt that she must have suffered a good deal more 
 from her husband's death than would have been 
 thought probable. It was easy to see that there was 
 no studied neghgence of attire, no well-kept-up air 
 of interesting melancholy. On the contrary, her 
 toilet had been made with obvious and immense 
 solicitude : and her effort appeared to be all for 
 composure and ease of manner. But a haggard look 
 had come into her eyes, and dark shadows lay under 
 them ; her pallor was extreme and unbecoming, 
 and she was perceptibly thinner. More than once 
 she would involuntarily put up her hand to her side, 
 especially at any sudden sound. 
 
 Shortly before dusk the judge arrived, and almost 
 with him Colonel Jarndyce and his sister. Mrs. 
 PilHtt was already there, and her husband. Major 
 and Mrs. Cadby went out as these latter came in. 
 But the Resident clove to his chair, intending to 
 leave with the Pillitts, who lived next door to him. 
 
 Finally Captain de Tracey and Captain Menzies 
 were announced. Some of the visitors strolled out 
 on to the verandah now ; but they all came back 
 with a very peculiar manner. Next door to the 
 
 i8o 
 
THE cre:\iation of colonel calverly. 
 
 drawing-room was the late Colonel's room, and its 
 windows also opened into the verandah. Presently 
 Achchi Singh appeared. Not this time to announce 
 anybody. He went close up to his mistress, and in 
 a low voice told her she was wanted in the next 
 room, where someone wanted to speak to her at once. 
 He then turned away immediately and left the room. 
 
 With a dull and dread foreboding Mrs. Calverly 
 heard the message ; for one moment her eyes had 
 met those of the servant, and she read there an 
 undisguised triumph and vindictiveness. Again was 
 her hand involuntarily raised to her side, and she 
 trembled visibly as she rose to her feet. An amaze- 
 ment was fallen upon her, and she hardly stammered 
 an apology as she stumbled from the room. 
 
 " I think she 's ill," said IMrs. Pilhtt, whose 
 curiosity was easily excited ; " don't you think, 
 Tom, you had better go after her ? " 
 
 But ]\Ir. Pillitt was one of those who had been out 
 on the verandah. So was Colonel Jarndyce. They 
 seemed to have a dislike to catching each other's 
 eyes, and kept looking about with an uneasy, sheepish 
 manner. 
 
 " Indeed, I think you're right, Mrs. Pihitt," said 
 Miss Jarndyce ; " I 'm sure Mrs. Calverly looked 
 very faint." 
 
 Achchi Singh again appeared. He said they were 
 all wanted in the next room ; with many odd glances 
 at one another, and not without whispering, they 
 obeyed. 
 
 The Colonel's sitting-room was a large and rather 
 dreary room, scantily furnished and bare of aspect. 
 There was no light in it, and the brief twilight had 
 already begun. But the broad white light of the 
 moon streamed full in through the open window. 
 It was full moon ; exactly twenty-eight days since 
 
 i8i 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 the death of the Colonel. Near the window was the 
 dead man's writing-table, and a shabby black-wood 
 chair was set in front of it. A black-wood settee 
 covered with a leopard-skin rug stood in the middle 
 of the floor. Into this Mrs. Calverly sank as her 
 many visitors crowded by door and window into the 
 room. But in the chair by his writing-table sat the 
 dead Colonel. 
 
 " Look ! " said Achchi Singh, and with his thin 
 brown hand he pointed at the living and the dead. 
 
 " Good God ! " said the judge, drawing back 
 nervously, and the Resident and Colonel Jarndyce 
 shuddered as they looked. As for Jim-jams, his 
 eyes were set in a dull stare as of one unconcerned 
 and scarcely interested in that which was to take 
 place. 
 
 " Master Sahib ! " whispered Achchi Singh ; and 
 it was remarkable to note the tenderness of his voice, 
 so strangety contrasted with the malignity of his 
 glance as it fell on his master's wife. 
 
 " Master Sahib ! " 
 
 But there came no breath of answer, no lifting of 
 the sealed eyelids. 
 
 " Master Sahib ! " and Achchi vSingh crept close 
 to the dead man and passed his hand within the 
 breast of the old khaki tunic. For a few seconds 
 he left it there, and then drew it forth. Rising to his 
 feet, he stood back and pointed once again, but in 
 silence, at the living and the dead. A quiver, slight 
 but unmistakable, fluttered on the dead face ; a 
 strong shudder passed from head to feet of the dead 
 body, and a thin red ooze came from a little wound 
 in the dead hand that lay upon the table. 
 
 " Master ! Master Sahib ! " cried Achchi Singh, in 
 low breathless tones of passionate eagerness. Even 
 in that cold light they saw the pallor flush into the 
 
 182 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 red bronze of life ; the lips softly parted, and between 
 them crept a long sigh of extremest weariness. 
 Again the lips quivered, and the eyelids, and then 
 from their cavernous hollows the keen blue eyes 
 looked out. 
 
 A kind of shiver shook the Colonel's frame, as 
 when one who has dozed awakes and finds that he 
 is chilled. But the dazed stupidity of sleep was still 
 upon him. He stared, but his eyes seemed to notice 
 nothing, and though his lips moved no words of 
 articulate speech came from them. 
 
 " Look, sahibs ! " said Achchi Singh, and his voice 
 had a fierce eagerness that was all the stronger for 
 its obvious repression. He spoke in a low clear voice 
 that was very plainly audible to all. " For one moon 
 I, Achchi Singh, have let him sleep. And now I wake 
 him . . . O my dear Master Sahib ! When he 
 grew sick, I watched him, and I saw that he would 
 not die. But the Mem-Sahib, she nurse him, and 
 the more she nurse him, the more he not get well. 
 So I watch, and not say anything, only I watch all 
 the time. . . . And sometimes I give him the 
 medicine, but mostly the Mem-Sahib give it. And 
 I see her put it in chota, chota drop of water, out 
 of chota green bottles ; but when she think me watch 
 no put in drops out of chota bottles. ... So I, 
 Achchi Singh, in the night stole bottles and took it 
 swiftly to Bal Krishna, at the Lai Temple by the 
 palace ; he very wise man and very old ; more old 
 than the rajah's grandmother, and he know every- 
 thing. . . . Yes, sahibs, it was poison-drink, but 
 Bal Krishna very wise man. He burn the poison 
 drink and fill the chota bottles with the blood of 
 Ganesh, clear like water same as poison-drink. Then 
 Achchi Singh swiftly went back and put the bottles 
 in his place ; next morning Mem-Sahib give Master 
 
 183 
 
THE CREMATION OF COEONEL CALVERLY. 
 
 Sahib his medicine, and put in plenty drops out of 
 green bottle. Then Colonel Sahib die, more quickly 
 than Mem-Sahib thought, and the doctor sahib not 
 understand — not understand at all why Colonel die. 
 But Achchi Singh knew the Colonel Sahib had written 
 about not be buried in a hole like the other sahibs, 
 and Achchi Singh not afraid. Mem-Sahib, too, very 
 glad have husband body burned up all, so doctors not 
 able dig him up and find poison-drink in him inside. 
 But Achchi Singh steal Colonel while everybody in 
 church, and someone help him ; then dead native 
 he put in place of Colonel Sahib, all covered with 
 fulkaris and flowers, and dead native taken to Towli 
 and burned up." 
 
 Achchi Singh looked at Menzies and Jim-jams 
 now, and a certain grim satisfaction seemed to 
 flicker on his face. 
 
 *' Several people see the Colonel Sahib, and several 
 people see Mr. Hewson, who very like the Colonel ; 
 Mr. Hewson they see walking, and Colonel Sahib they 
 see lying still ; but they think both two the same ! 
 . . . And now it is a full moon since the Colonel 
 Sahib drink the * blood of Ganesh ' . . . Ganesh 
 was Devi's son, but Shiva angry with Devi for have 
 son at all ; and with his tulwar he cut off Ganesh head, 
 and the blood, drop, drop, trickley, trickley, on the 
 ground. Then Devi weep and squeal, so Shiva stick 
 his fingers in his ear, but Devi squeal more and more. 
 So Shiva tell her stop, and with tulwar he cut off the 
 head of his elephant and stick it on Ganesh, who 
 came alive again. So the god Ganesh have man-body 
 but head of elephant, and very wise god Ganesh. 
 Where his blood fell a red flower grew up with a 
 white fruit, and where Devi's tears fell a white flower 
 came with a red fruit. . . . And the juice of that 
 white fruit we call the * Blood of Ganesh,' but the 
 
 184 
 
THE CREMATION OF COLONEL CAL\'ERLY. 
 
 juice of the red fruit we call ' Kali's Tears.' . . . 
 Now, Bal Krishna very wise Brahmin, and he know 
 everything. He know that if Colonel Sahib drink 
 chota drops out of Mem - Sahib's green bottles. 
 Colonel Sahib soon die. But if he drink blood of 
 Ganesh he only die for one moon ; and if when the 
 moon done, Achchi Singh give him Kali's tears to 
 drink, Colonel Sahib soon wake. . . ." 
 
 All this time the fluttering spirit had been hovering 
 nearer and nearer to the man that had been dead. 
 The sweat and pallor of death had gone, and the 
 wholesome bronze of life had come again ; the dull 
 and drunken languor had slowly cleared from the 
 blue eyes, and now speech came trembling back to 
 her twin thrones. . . . 
 
 " Why ! Who is dead ? " he cried. 
 
 As one wakes half conscious, yet wholly astonished 
 from sleep, he staggered to his feet and pointed to 
 the deep mourning of his wife. 
 
 No one answered, but the Colonel w^ent to her. 
 He tried to raise her up. 
 
 " Good God ! " he stammered. " It 's herself ! " 
 
 It was true. She, too, had suffered from her 
 father's malady ; and the sables that she had donned 
 for her dead husband she wore in death for her 
 living husband's dead wife. 
 
 It was certainly hard on the second in command. 
 
 185 
 
A New Curiosity Skop. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The old year lay a-dying, and his shivering 
 successor was within an hour of his arrival. He 
 would have a chilly journey, for the Weald of Kent 
 lay deep in snow, and a little bitter wind sobbed and 
 gasped round the chimney-stacks and gables of 
 Frampton Court, so that the naked trees outside, 
 in the desolate park, flung and tossed their black 
 arms wildly up towards the high, cold heavens, 
 where the moon rode clear and white and sad. 
 It had been a bad year for many in all this great 
 round world of ours, a merry, prosperous year foe 
 others ; but such as it was, good or bad, it was donr 
 with. It only had about fifty minutes to do any 
 further mischief in ; and yet those were to prove 
 long enough for the ruin of Marston Street. Old 
 Jabez Street lay dying, like the year, and he tossed 
 and turned uneasily on his fine bed, for his ears and 
 mind were full of the Voices of the Night. Up- 
 braidings, calm but insistent reproaches, breathed 
 themselves into the dying ears, and would not be 
 ignored. 
 
 " Has the carriage gone to meet the train yet ? 
 he suddenly asks, leaning up, with terrible difficulty, 
 on his quaking elbow. 
 
 187 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. "^ 
 
 The attendant comes forward gently with 
 admirable quietness and respectful solicitude. 
 
 " The carriage started nearly half an hour ago, 
 sir. It went direct from the stables, so as not to 
 disturb you by coming to the front. Is the pain 
 easier, sir ? " 
 
 The old man growled what might have been art 
 assent or a denial, and turned away as though to 
 close the conversation. 
 
 The attendant went back to the arm-chair by the 
 fire. 
 
 Presently one of the doctors came in. Tw^o slept 
 in the house, but twenty could not prevent the 
 millionaire from starting on his journey, from going 
 out into the wild wintry night to keep his tryst 
 with the inexorable King that we shuddering 
 creatures christen Death. 
 
 " Any easier ? " inquires the physician, softly 
 taking the withered hand and pressing the feeble^ 
 vacillating pulse. 
 
 The old man shakes his head impatiently. 
 
 " It 's never very easy dying," he snaps, " as 
 you '11 find when your time comes. It 's as bad for 
 me as for others." 
 
 " Trenchant to the last ! " declares the doctor, 
 appealing, as it would seem, to the heavy canopy 
 of damask over the patient's head. 
 
 To this the old man vouchsafes no retort. 
 
 " What o'clock is it ? " he demands presently. 
 
 The physician consults a very resplendent presen- 
 tation watch, and announces that it wants twenty- 
 nine minutes of midnight. 
 
 " And the train 's due at Horley at eleven twenty- 
 five. They ought to be here in half an hour." 
 
 He spoke more to himself than to the doctor, and 
 again turned to the wall. 
 
 i88 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 The doctor nodded and smiled to the attendant, 
 nodded and smiled as though there were something 
 specially sweet and noble in the old man's doing 
 this, and left the room on tiptoe. 
 
 He found his chief. Sir Junket Paine, fallen into 
 a light doze. 
 
 " Our dear friend," he whispered, having jogged 
 the great man awake, " our dear friend is as easy 
 as can be expected." 
 
 Sir Junket Paine tried to combine in his expression 
 his professional interest in a patient who was reputed 
 to have amassed a fortune of a million and a half, 
 and his recollection that it was usually in the ante- 
 chambers of dukes and princes that he awaited 
 " the end." 
 
 *' He keeps asking for the son," continued 
 the junior. " He seems very impatient to see 
 him." 
 
 " He has got on without seeing him for more than 
 twenty years," remarks Sir Junket. " They have 
 never met since the son's marriage. The old fellow 
 expected him to marry a title, and he married for 
 love — a young person of much their own rank." 
 
 " Mr. Street began in a very small way, I 
 suppose ? " inquired the junior, who thought Sir 
 Junket looked as if he wanted to tell the story. 
 
 " He was a bargeman. But he was wonderfully 
 clever, and plucky and industrious, and, above all, 
 fortunate. He had the true trade instincts, always 
 knowing what to buy and where to sell. And his 
 larger investments were unprecedentedly lucky. 
 He doubled his capital in five months over the 
 American War. He is worth at least a million and 
 a half now." 
 
 *' And only one child ! " 
 
 Sir Junket shook his head. 
 
 189 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " To whom he has not spoken for nearly quarter 
 of a century." 
 
 " But he has sent for him now," urged the 
 junior, 
 
 " Certainly. Oh, quite so ; but he has not 
 commanded the presence of a lawyer : there is no 
 sign of his intending to revoke any unfavourable 
 will, and it is known that there is something of the 
 kind." 
 
 The two doctors sighed. They had a pleasant, 
 comfortable sympathy for the only son of the 
 millionaire. 
 
 The gentlemen had dined well, and found 
 Mr. Street's port undeniable. It was sleepy work, 
 waiting and doing nothing. Presently they were 
 both dozing. But the dying man could not sleep. 
 With muttered peevish ejaculations of impatience he 
 tossed and twisted in his bed, and listened for the 
 sound of carriage wheels. He wanted to set right 
 a great and cruel injustice. Would there be time ? 
 
 Again he suddenly raises himself, but with still 
 greater difficulty, on to his weak and quivering 
 elbow, and peers out of the shadow of the bed to 
 the ever-wakeful attendant. 
 
 A slight sound makes the latter turn. In a 
 moment she is by the bed. 
 
 " Can I do anything for you, sir ? " she asks, 
 rearranging a pillow. 
 
 But the old man frowns impatiently. Then a 
 thought strikes him. 
 
 " Open the door into the next room," he says. 
 
 The next room is his private study, where he was 
 used to do his writing, where his writing bureau stood. 
 He peers towards the open door inquisitively. He 
 sees that the room is not in darkness. The attendant 
 has in fact been sleeping there for a night or two. 
 
 190 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 How he would like to be there now alone for five, 
 nay, for three minutes. 
 
 Far, far away down some distant corridor a door 
 bangs. 
 
 " Go, go ! " shouts the old man. " Go at once 
 and stop that banging ; find out where it is, and 
 stop it instantly." 
 
 The nurse looks half doubtful about leaving 
 him, and makes a gesture as if to ring for someone 
 eise. 
 
 " Go ! " shrieks the old man. " If you wait it 
 may bang again, and it will kill me. Go, I tell 
 you ! 
 
 And so violent was he, so peremptory, that she 
 went. 
 
 It was not at all easy to find the door ; she was 
 gone five or six minutes. She had scarcely left the 
 room before the dying man dragged himself, with 
 incalculable difficulty and pain, from the soft and 
 warm bed, and staggered towards the inner room. 
 
 His legs quaked beneath him, his hands shook 
 and quivered, his head swam, and he thought he 
 would reel and tumble. But somehow he reached 
 the goal of his desires — the splendid Louis XV. 
 cabinet where his most private papers were locked 
 up. He dragged a chair to it, and fumbled for the 
 key that hung around his neck on a thin chain of 
 old-fashioned gold work. As he fitted the key in 
 the lock there came the crushing sound of the 
 gravel beneath the wheels and horses' feet. The 
 carriage from the station had come. y:^ 
 
 The two wills were easy to find, being in fact tied 
 up together. One was nearly twenty-live years old ; 
 it had been executed after the death of his wife. 
 In it everything that he possessed, without reserve, 
 was left to his dear and only child, Marston Street. 
 
 191 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 The other was two years more recent. In it all 
 his property, real and personal, was bequeathed to 
 the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National 
 Debt, in trust for twenty years after his own demise ; 
 the money to be allowed during that time to increase 
 by natural process of compound interest, at the end 
 of which period it should, as thus augmented, be 
 applied to the reduction of the National Debt. 
 
 Externally the two wills were precisely alike. 
 The old man's eyes were blurred with the gathering 
 gloom of death. He wished, standing on that silent 
 threshold, to undo the mischief planned in the 
 petty spite of health. Close at hand was the red 
 heart of the pleasant, flickering fire. Very, very 
 painfully he tottered towards it, almost falling more 
 than once. But without accident he reached the 
 hearthrug, and was able to clutch the mantel for 
 support with his quavering left hand. With the 
 right he dropped into the throbbing flame the will, 
 which, if undestroyed, would do so much and such 
 hard injustice. Then he turned to regain his room 
 and bed ; it was slower work now, the flickering, 
 feeble lamp of life had been so roughly shaken that 
 it must soon, soon bum out. 
 
 Other steps, hurried and nervous, were hastening 
 down the corridor. As the old man reached the door 
 of communication between the two rooms, his son 
 stood in that leading into the corridor. For the 
 first time for three-and-twenty years they looked 
 in one another's faces. The son trembled at the 
 near presence of the cold King Death, who peered 
 so chilly over his father's shoulder. 
 
 For a moment the dying man leaned against the 
 door -jamb, steadying himself with his tremulous 
 left hand ; in his right he held out a folded 
 document to his son. 
 
 192 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " I sent for you," he stammers, " to — to give you 
 this ! " and staggering, he fell forward. 
 
 They were his last words. Henceforth he must 
 keep the great silence that is laid upon the lips of 
 all who have been before us in the world, the wise 
 who taught it and the fools who filled it with their 
 babbling folly, the silence that soon or late comes to 
 the kindly tongues who comfort, and the bitter, 
 wounding tongues that make us smart. 
 
 They lifted the old man in their arms and laid him 
 in his bed, and gently drew from the dead fingers 
 the paper that they held. 
 
 It was his will. In which all he possessed of real 
 or personal property was devised to the Commis- 
 sioners of the National Debt. He had burned the 
 wrong one. How simple a thing is tragedy. 
 
 The horses that had brought his son were not yet 
 stabled before the Rider on the Pale Horse had 
 laken him to ride with him out into the wild night ; 
 out into the Unknown Waste that lies beyond our 
 life. 
 
 18 ''' 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 It was only too true that the whole of the late 
 Jabez Street's colossal fortune was lost to his 
 natural heir. By the death of his father Marston 
 Street was only the richer by a thousand 
 pounds, which had belonged to his late mother. 
 This she had herself left to her husband 
 for his life, afterwards it was to go to her 
 son. 
 
 *' Well," said Marston Street to his wife, " a 
 thousand pounds is better than a poke in the eye 
 with a sharp stick." 
 
 But the lady did not seem to think such an accident 
 the necessary and only alternative. 
 
 " Fifteen hundred thousand would have been 
 even better," she remarked, with some asperity. 
 
 *' Yes. But then, you know, we never expected 
 him to leave it to me ! " 
 
 " Not till he sent for you ; but why should he have 
 sent for you, if he did not mean to do the right thing 
 by you ? " 
 
 " Perhaps he did. Perhaps he meant to destroy 
 that will and make a new one. But he had not 
 time." 
 
 " He was ill three weeks," 
 
 " Yes. But he was a very obstinate, proud man. 
 It was only, as I think, at the last that he thought 
 better of it ; only tb.at last day when he sent for 
 me. 
 
 194 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 Mrs. Marston Street had her own opinion. She 
 believed the old man had kept his spite to the 
 last, and had deliberately sent for his only son 
 to bring his ill-treatment of him to a dimax by 
 thus handing him the will that was to disinherit 
 him. It was of a piece, she declared to herself, 
 with his whole behaviour towards them, and people, 
 she said, do not change their natures on their 
 death-beds. 
 
 She did not reason amiss, but she was wrong. 
 Her husband shrank from the plain and apparent 
 explanation of his father's action, and so doing he 
 was right. 
 
 It is to be regretted that Mr. Marston Street was 
 not also disinherited of the small legacy that his 
 mother had left him. One afternoon he was coming 
 home from his counting-house when he was overtaken 
 by a gentleman he knew well — a cousin, in fact, of 
 his wife's. 
 
 " Hulloa, Street ! Awful business this ! " 
 
 " What business ? " 
 
 " Why, the Galwegian and Caledonian Bank." 
 
 " What 's up with it ? " 
 
 " It has gone smash," remarked Mr. Brand 
 familiarly. " I have just left Harcourt Brown," 
 he continued ; " he 's all smiles, for he had shares 
 in it and sold out six months ago." 
 
 " I 've got ten shares in it," observed Marston 
 Street. " It 's a bore to lose a thousand pounds. 
 But I only got it — a legacy from my mother — after 
 my father's death four months ago. So after all 1 
 shall not miss it much." 
 
 " I remember Carry saying you liad a thousand 
 under your mother's will," said Mr. Brand, in a low- 
 tone ; " but you do not mean to say it was invested 
 in that bank ? " 
 
 195 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " It was, though. It seemed a goodish thing, 
 too." 
 
 " And you never sold the shares ? " 
 
 " Sold them ? No. Why should I sell them ? 
 There was no suspicion of this smash up. You 're 
 uncommon cautious after the event. And they were 
 regular dividend payers." 
 
 Mr. Brand looked straight in front of him, then 
 hailed a hansom. They got into it together. He 
 kept peeping guiltily at his companion out of the 
 comer of his eye. 
 
 Presently the latter caught him. 
 
 " What is the matter with you, Brand ? " he 
 exclaimed irritably. "As I said before, nobody 
 exactly cares to lose a thousand pounds, but though 
 my father did not leave me his fortune, I am not 
 going to break over a thousand." 
 
 " Unfortunately," thought the other, " that is 
 precisely what you are going to do. That 's the 
 tragedy ! " But aloud he said nothing. He had 
 not the moral courage. 
 
 At the railway station the boys were crying the 
 evening papers : 
 
 " Scotch bank stopped payment, sir ! Evening 
 'Erald, sir ! Galwegian and Caledonian Bank 
 stopped payment, sir ! Hunlimited Liability, 
 sir ! 
 
 " What 's that they 're calling out ? " asked 
 Marston, turning suddenly giddy. 
 
 " Unlimited liability, I think," responded Brand, 
 " but perhaps it 's a mistake." He found it very 
 hard to say anything. He did not flatter himself 
 that what he did say was very brilliant. His 
 throat felt dry ; he wished himself, as he said, at 
 Jericho. How populous a resort that little Oriental 
 city would become if everyone who wished himself 
 
 196 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 there, or was wished there by his friends, could be 
 there in reahty ! Unhmited Liabihty ! What a 
 simple thing to say ; what a terrible thing to realise 
 in the results it may imply. By those two little 
 words together Marston Street found himself reduced 
 from affluence to beggary. 
 
 197 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 When Sir Junket Paine discussed the fortunes of 
 Jabez Street with Dr. Urban Bland he fell, like other 
 great men before and since, into some errors con- 
 cerning which I would like to set the reader right, 
 as regards two of them at any rate. 
 
 In saying that Jabez Street had been a bargeman 
 Sir Junket was a generation out, for the bargee was 
 not Jabez but his father, old Hiram Street, who was 
 the first member of his family, as he was apt, at a 
 later period of his life to boast, who had ever worn 
 a collar. 
 
 Still Sir Junket was right as to the beginnings of 
 the millionaire having been very obscure. 
 
 He was, however, again wrong in giving his 
 colleague to understand that Mrs. Marston Street 
 had also belonged to the bargee class. She was the 
 pretty and almost penniless daughter of a Sussex 
 parson of good family, and about as lacking in the 
 qualities that make up a useful wife as she could 
 have been. Fortunately her husband had already 
 made some way in life at the time his father quarrelled 
 with him for marrying her, and he had risen to 
 partnership in a well-known house. He had since 
 gone on making money, and had lately bought out 
 the son of his late partner, who had no taste for 
 business. 
 
 Mrs. Marston Street took her husband's ruin very 
 hardly. It seemed as if she was impressed with the 
 notion that he had done it on purpose, and personally 
 rather enjoyed the process. It was, she realised, 
 
 198 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 a most teirible thing for her to be reduced, at her 
 time of hfe, from affluence to beggary. (Not that 
 Mrs. Street would ever have had the energy to beg 
 for anything.) But she entirely failed to understand 
 that it was quite as terrible for her husband, and not 
 much more agreeable for her children. She wailed 
 persistently, and if reproaches had had any market 
 value, poor Marston might have started a wholesale 
 business of the very largest description. 
 
 That he felt he had been foolish in leaving that 
 luckless thousand invested in a concern of unlimited 
 liability did not make these upbraidings any easier 
 to bear. If he had consulted his own convenience, 
 I think the unlucky gentleman would have quietly 
 broken his heart and died ; but he had always been 
 a very unselfish fellow, and he determined to live 
 and work as well as he could, and as long. 
 
 If only Mrs. Marston would have taken up the 
 notion of breaking her heart ! But she contented 
 herself with doing all in her power to break those of 
 her family. 
 
 About two things the world at once made up its 
 mind. That it had been inexcusable of Marston 
 Street to lose his fortune through neglecting to 
 transfer an investment, and that Francis Jabez 
 Marston Street, his eldest son, would certainly never 
 do anything to restore the ruin. 
 
 " He has never been taught anything except how 
 to be a fine gentleman," they declared. " What has 
 he learned at Eton, except to dress himself up to the 
 eyes ? What has he learned at Cambridge, except 
 to spend as much money on ridiculous fads and 
 extravagances as would keep many of us for the whole 
 year ? " 
 
 Some declared he was conceited, " though it seems 
 almost impossible," they charitably added. 
 
 199 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " Why, what on earth has he but his looks ? " 
 
 " Looks, indeed ? I 'd rather have a downright 
 ugly chap than those sort of namby-pamby good 
 looks." 
 
 It was generally agreed that the younger sons, 
 having all along known they would be expected, 
 as is the way with younger sons in England, to make 
 their own way, would shake down into their fallen 
 fortunes much better. 
 
 One gentleman came forward and offered to take 
 Hiram, who was nineteen, into his office at a small 
 salary, an offer that was gladly and gratefully 
 accepted. Another friend, who had a West India 
 branch, gave Phil, who was a year younger, a berth 
 out at St. Kitts. But no one had anything to offer 
 which the young " swell " would be any good at. 
 
 It need hardly be said that Marston himself had 
 no difficulty in finding a billet ; but it was pathetic 
 to see the elderly man, who had stood so high, 
 starting again up the ladder of life from the lowest 
 rung. 
 
 Before the smash Francis Street had lived a good 
 deal in rooms of his own, in one of the smartest 
 parts of the town, for he detested the suburban 
 residence of his family ; and when not actually in 
 London liked to be out of it altogether, and was 
 often abroad " mooning round the picture galleries," 
 as his critics scoffingly said. 
 
 Of course these rooms were at once given up. 
 But they had been furnished partly by the fittings 
 of Frank's Cambridge quarters, and partly by furni- 
 ture, pictures, china, &c., he had picked up since. 
 He was five-and-twenty, and he had had an excellent 
 allowance, had even saved a little each year out of 
 it, a fact which would have surprised his critics. 
 Some people have the art of buying a great deal with 
 
 200 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 their money. And those who only spend their money 
 and never buy anything cannot understand it. 
 
 When the crash came, Frank was at first very much 
 of the opinion of his critics. What could he do ^ It 
 was by no means lost on him that not one of all 
 their friends had a word of encouragement for him, 
 though his brothers were patted on the back all 
 round. His mother had always failed to understand 
 him, and was annoyed that he had none of the out- 
 door sporting tastes of her owti brothers. 
 
 " You may buy a place, Marston," she had often 
 said, " or the old man may relent and leave you 
 Frampton Court after all ; but nothing will ever make 
 a squire of Francis. He 's finnicky ! " 
 
 Poor Frank ! It was well that his gentle, meek 
 little father was kind and tender to him. 
 
 " The lad 's no fool," began Marston mxildly. 
 
 " Fool ! Why should he be a fool ? Goodness 
 knows he takes after you enough in other ways," 
 snapped the lady. " But he 's — I '11 tell you what 
 he is," she concluded, as if it was quite a new sug- 
 gestion — " he 's finnicky ! " 
 
 Perhaps her husband was not sufficiently in- 
 structed to know whether his eldest son was so or 
 not, so he held his peace. 
 
 " For my part I can't stand a finnick ! " declared 
 the lady, rather pleased with her substantive. 
 
 When they moved out of their handsome villa,, 
 it was, of course, Mrs. Street who decided where they 
 should go and live, and then what house should be 
 taken. 
 
 There was just room in it, as it turned out, for the 
 parents and their younger son (Phil had already 
 sailed for St. Kitts). Marston ventured some 
 remark as to Francis, which his wife snubbed in- 
 stantly. 
 
 20I 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " Francis never did care to reside at home when 
 home was home indeed," she observed loftily. 
 " There is no need to provide room for him now, 
 when ' home ' is a mere exiguous shelter from the 
 weather ! " 
 
 For my part I think Mrs. Marston wallowed in her 
 reverses like a pig in a puddle ; she certainly never 
 lost a chance of smacking, as it were, her lips over 
 them. If she had to be a martyr, she liked to wear 
 her crown over her bonnet, so to speak, while she 
 could enjoy it. 
 
 " But, my dear," murmured Marston, ** the boy 
 must live somewhere ! " 
 
 " By all means, my love. And you may be 
 sure he will reside in the best quarter. He always 
 has ! " 
 
 " Don't worry about me, dad," said Frank, when 
 his father, with a very red face, made him under- 
 stand that there was no provision for his reception 
 at Malabar Cottage. " To tell the truth, dad," he 
 continued, " it fits in better. I have a sort of notion 
 of doing something, but would much rather none of 
 them knew anything about it till I see how it turns 
 out. I don't think I shall even tell you ! " 
 
 " Frank, my boy, I feel very much the breakdown 
 of all your hopes." 
 
 " Dad, don't talk nonsense ! My hopes are only 
 just beginning. I fancy you have forced me to make 
 my fortune, which otherwise I might have not 
 troubled about. After all, it 's in the family — 
 making fortunes, I mean. You will see that I 
 inherit the family taste. Should you be surprised 
 to hear I intend to start shop-keeping ? " 
 
 " Shop-keeping ! " 
 
 " Yes. I dare say you think I shall hate it. My 
 tastes have not hitherto seemed commercial. But 
 
 202 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 I shall like it. What is more, I shall succeed at it. 
 I can't run to a barge," he added, with a laugh, " or 
 I would try and build the family fortunes afresh from 
 the start." 
 
 The allusion to the barge would have infuriated 
 his mother, though she, of course, was not 
 " finnicky." 
 
 " His present Grace of Lul worth," the young man 
 went on, with a grin, " used constantly to remind me 
 at Eton, during his first term, before he had the 
 nonsense knocked out of him, of my bargee ancestor. 
 I blacked his eye once, and I do not think he was 
 a bit grateful to me for it. He was only called Algy 
 Beaudesert then, for the late Duke was, as you know, 
 only his uncle." 
 
 Marston Street smiled. He liked a quiet chat with 
 his son, w^ho, as we have seen, he believed not to be 
 a fool. 
 
 '' But, my dear Frank, how are you going to stock 
 a shop ? It wants a lot of capital." 
 
 " Ah, I suppose it might. All the same, I am going 
 to stock one. Will you come and have tea with me 
 behind my counter the first Sunday ? " 
 
 " If you intend to keep your establishment open 
 on Sundays, I presume you are going to be a 
 tobacconist." 
 
 " No, I 'm not ; nor a stale fruiterer either. In 
 fact, my shop will not be open to the public on 
 Sunday, only to you. That will be my * at home ' 
 day. Mind you come." 
 
 " You have not told me the address yet." 
 
 " No. Do not be so dreadfully inquisitive, dad. 
 I shall tell you in good time. But, mind, the infor- 
 mation is for yourself only. I do not propose to 
 teU the family." 
 
 The father promised, and went his way, smiling 
 
 203 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 quietly. He was thinking that, to his mind, Frank 
 did not seem altogether " finnicky." 
 
 " I 'm sure," he told himself, " none of us have 
 been pluckier about our ruin than Francis. It means 
 to him the loss of every friend, of every hope and 
 expectation of his life. And he has never once 
 groaned or grumbled." 
 
 204 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 It is probable that Marston Street hardly took his son 
 literally when he stated his intention of keeping a 
 shop, but it was, nevertheless, true that the young 
 man did seriously propose a venture in that direction. 
 
 " Poor dad ! " the young man thought to himself, 
 as he watched his father, from the window, slowly 
 cross to the shady side of the street. " He feels it 
 much worse than our mother, though he says so much 
 less. It has broken him. He is very brave, but he 
 has finished his life." 
 
 The young man turned back into the room with a 
 lump rising in his throat, and a suspicious dimness 
 about the eyes. Like thousands of us, he was a much 
 better fellow than people ever thought. Underneath 
 the rather artificial, fine-gentleman manner there was 
 an honest, wholesome heart, and plucky, manly self- 
 rehance. Only hitherto there had, he thought, been 
 really no necessity to rely upon himself. Francis 
 Street was the great-grandson of a bargeman, and he 
 had blacked the ducal eye of his schoolfellow for 
 thinking it necessary to remind him of the fact, but 
 the young man was a gentleman, not in mere tastes 
 and training only, but in every thought of his 
 mind. 
 
 There was something about his father that always 
 touched him, a sort of appealing deprecation of 
 criticism. His father havmg so nearly succeeded, 
 had so utterly failed. And what, thought the son, 
 is so wholly pathetic as failure ? 
 
 205 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 Poor Marston Street had failed to secure his natural 
 inheritance ; he had lost it to secure, as he fancied, 
 a wife worth all else that the world could offer. And 
 how he had failed there ! He had made a fortune, 
 and had failed to keep it. 
 
 And he was such a harmless creature ! Gentle, 
 sweet-tempered, without a rancorous thought for 
 anyone. 
 
 Francis glanced round his room ; he had the rooms 
 till the last day of June, so he had stayed on in them, 
 for there would be no economy in moving out. But 
 this was his last day in them. And now he looked 
 round on the beautiful and interesting things he had 
 collected, with so great interest and pleasure, in such 
 various places. 
 
 " Please, sir," remarked the landlord of the rooms, 
 who had once been a butler in his father's service, 
 throwing wide the door, " Lord Hounslow wants to 
 see you. I told him ' Not at 'ome,' and he only 
 laughed. He said he saw you just now at the winder. 
 He begs as you '11 let hiin come up." 
 
 " Very well, Perkisett," and the man went down 
 much pleased. He had a feeling that it was almost 
 profane to turn away the eldest son of a Marquess, 
 and a Marquess who would certainly be made a Duke 
 at the next change of ministry. 
 
 Hitherto Frank had rigorously refused himself to 
 everybody. 
 
 ** It will have to come," he had told himself ; " all 
 that life will have to be dropped, and it will be easier 
 to do it now than later. It 's all part of one thing 
 now. Later on it would seem like a fresh mis- 
 fortune." 
 
 He was rather touched by Lord Hounslow's coming 
 and persistence. They were only fairly good friends. 
 But he had always thought the 3'oung man nice. 
 
 206 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 Perkisett announced " The Hurl of 'Ounslow " with 
 a roUing emphasis that suggested the dehberate 
 tasting of port wine. 
 
 Lord Hounslow made no mistakes. He came 
 forward exactly as if nothing had happened since 
 their last meeting. There was no irritating air of 
 compassionate patronage. Still he was perfectly 
 direct. 
 
 " Of course we 've heard of your worry," he said, 
 sitting down leisurely, as if he meant to remain, and 
 drawing out his cigarette-case. " It does seem out- 
 rageous — that Unlimited Liability business. I am 
 not going to bother you about your plans ; I expect 
 it 's not easy to make up your mind all in a hurry 
 about them. But my father asked me, if I should 
 succeed in catching you, whether you would come 
 and stay with us for a bit. Perkisett tells me he 's 
 losing you." 
 
 " Of course," replied Frank. " You see, I have 
 really no income at all now. I happened to have 
 saved a hundred or two out of my allowance." 
 
 " Saved ! " cried the visitor. " In all my days 
 you 're the first chap I ever heard say that. And 
 you always seemed pretty extravagant too," he 
 added, with a glance at the opulent surroundings. 
 
 Frank laughed. 
 
 " Well, my father did give me a ripping screw. 
 And, you see, I was always buying things. Half the 
 fellows one knows only spend and never buy. So 
 everyone thought me extravagant, when I really was 
 saving up." 
 
 " Saving up ! " ejaculated Lord Hounslow, with 
 another glance at the china and pictures and furniture. 
 
 " Certainly. I 've got it all. It wns bought witli 
 money that was my own, and there is no claim, cither 
 legal or moral, against all tliis. It is really mine." 
 
 207 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " Yes. Of course. But I fancy the dollars would 
 he more to the pomt now." 
 
 " I do not know. I knew what to buy, and what 
 ±0 give for what I did buy. I think these things are 
 worth a heap more now than when I bought them. 
 I think I will tell you something that was to have been 
 a dark and mysterious secret. I am going to keep a 
 shop." 
 
 "Oh, nonsense ! " exclaimed Lord Hounslow. 
 ^* By the way, we 've wandered from the point. My 
 father wants you to come and stay with us. We are 
 leaving town to-morrow, the rest of the season (it 
 will only be a couple of weeks, they say) we 'shall stop 
 at Hounslow, and my father will drive backwards 
 and forwards. The doctors don't want him to stick 
 in London any longer. Will you come with us ? 
 Father thinks, if you and he have a talk, he may 
 be of some use to you." 
 
 " It is very kind indeed of him to think of me ; and, 
 of course, I should enjoy it. But, my dear Hounslow, 
 enjoyment is scarcely to be my object in hfe yet 
 awhile. And I think I must just say ' No ' straight." 
 
 " Ah, but this is not merely a pleasure visit. If 
 you talk things over with the governor, it may do 
 some practical good. He thinks he might get you 
 a private secretaryship." 
 
 Frank was more upset by this eager friendliness 
 than he had been by all his misfortunes. He could 
 scarcely command his voice to reply. But all the 
 same, he was firm. 
 
 " Hounslow," he said, " I really do not know how 
 to thank you for this friendhness. But I think my 
 own idea is better. I have, as I told you, a hundred 
 or two ; but I have no income whatever. Secretary- 
 ships are so much sought after nowadays for the sake 
 of the introduction to poHtical hfe, or diplomatic hfe, 
 
 208 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 and so on, that they are generally unpaid for some 
 time. I have to make money." 
 
 "If my father decided to offer you his own secre- 
 taryship, he would know about your circumstances, 
 and w^ould, of course, pay." 
 
 Frank shook his head. 
 
 " No," he said, " that would not do. It would be 
 to suit me, not to suit himself, and I should hate it 
 Why pay for what you can easily get free ? " 
 
 " Sometimes one gets a better article by paying 
 for it." 
 
 " Yes. Often. But I do not know that I should 
 be a good article. I do not feel at all sure that I 
 should make a good private secretary. The list of 
 things he is supposed to know, and do (in The 
 Caxtons I think it is) always terrified me. No, I 
 had better stick to my shop." 
 
 " Your shop ? " 
 
 " Yes. I told you I intended starting a shop, and 
 I do. It was not a httle joke. After all, it is only a 
 Recrudescence of Family Tradition. As you are 
 doubtless aware, my great-grandfather was a bargee." 
 
 Lord Hounslow laughed. 
 
 " So I 've heard. I remember you leathered Algy 
 Beaudesert at Eton for saying so, though." 
 
 " Certainly. It was horrid cheek his saying so. 
 All the same it was true, only I think he said it was 
 my grandfather. Well, I am going in for trade 
 again. That 's my line, I fancy. But navigation 
 isn't, so I am obhged to forsake the traditional line 
 and strike out a new one." 
 
 "Of course you 're inventing," observed the hope 
 of the house of Mortlake. 
 
 " No, I 'm not. But my original idea was to keep 
 it as dark as possible. That I already see was a 
 mistake. A shop like mine wants advertising among 
 
 209 
 14 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 the higher classes. So I tell you, ' soliciting the 
 favour of your patronage and recommendation.' " 
 
 " What sort of shop are you going in for, anyway ?" 
 
 ** A curiosity shop.'' 
 
 ** Ah ! We now begin to smell dayhght. Your 
 stock-in-trade I see before me, is it not ? " 
 
 Frank laughed at his friend's English, and admitted 
 the correctness of his surmise. 
 
 " I wish," cried Lord Hounslow, '' you 'd take a 
 partner. I should wallow in it. You should inter- 
 view all the old lady customers and I would interview 
 — well — all the new ones ! " 
 
 Frank laughed, but did not at once close with his 
 friend's offer. 
 
 " ' Lord Hounslow, Jokes & Co.' would, of course, 
 sound very w^ell," he admitted, " but at present 
 * Jokes & Co.' has no partner. I must make my 
 business first, then develop it." 
 
 " Is ' Jokes & Co.' the title of your firm ? " 
 
 Frank nodded. 
 
 " Sounds cheery anyway," said Lord Hounslow. 
 
 " Would you like to come and see the premises ? " 
 
 " Ra.-ther ! " replied this painfully vernacular 
 young man. " Get your chap to call a hansom." 
 
 " Hansom ! Nonsense. If you come you '11 have 
 to come in a green bus." 
 
 ** Forgive miy saying," laughed Lord Hounslow, 
 " that Time is Money. A sentiment all my own, and 
 hot out of the oven. In business Time is Every- 
 thing." 
 
 The window stood open. Outside was a small 
 balcony. Lord Hounslow stepped out, and blew a 
 silver whistle shrilly. Twenty seconds later a hansom 
 was at' the door. 
 
 210 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 " How did you findit ? " 
 
 " By accident," replied Frank. " Doesn't it look 
 promising ? " 
 
 " De la premiere classe ! Is it dear ? " 
 
 " No. And, 3'Ou see, mine is much the bigger 
 half." 
 
 The shop was a double one. Half was used as a 
 post office ; but, as Mr. Street observed, his was the 
 better half. 
 
 " I 've got it for three months, with option then to 
 take on for a year. At the back is a small parlour, 
 but that the tenant keeps (I 'm s«6-tenant), viz. the 
 old lady who has the post office." 
 
 " She doesn't look so very old ! " remarked Lord 
 Hounslow. 
 
 Street laughed. 
 
 " Oh, the girl you saw downstairs ! That 's her 
 great-niece. Miss Priddy was not there. I expect 
 she is playing shiit-eye in the parlour we spoke of." 
 
 (" Charming game," observed Lord Hounslow. 
 *' I play it splendidly myself.") 
 
 The latter remarks were not made in the shop, but 
 upstairs, where Frank had two good rooms and a sort 
 of scullery, or housemaid's closet ; the rest of the 
 house belonged to Miss Priddy and a lodger. 
 
 " In tliese upstair rooms, of course, I shall live," 
 Frank explained. " They will also be my warehouse, 
 for, needless to say, the little shop won't hold a tithe 
 of my things." 
 
 21 I 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " And when they 're all sold ? What then ? " 
 
 " I intend to buy as well as sell. I have my own 
 ideas as to that. ... I am always, as it is, 
 getting offers of bric-a-brac, pictures, &c., that 
 people want to sell to me. I shall get many more 
 when I sell them." 
 
 " I io wish," murmured Lord Hounslow plain- 
 tively, " you 'd take me as a partner — sleeping 
 partner even. I 'm unsurpassed in that line." 
 
 But Frank was obdurate. There must be no 
 partner till there was a business to share. 
 
 " There 's one thing," declared Lord Hounslow, 
 " that I insist on, so it 's no use your being pig- 
 headed about this. All your things have to be moved 
 from Jermyn Street here. / 'm going to move 
 them ! " 
 
 " You ! " 
 
 " Yes, me ! " reiterated the ungrammatical young 
 man. " My father has a lot of big covered wagons 
 like carriers' carts, wherein we send our produce to 
 Covent Garden Market — for we too are shopkeepers, 
 only we haven't exactly got a shop, and we 're in the 
 greengrocery and dairy-produce line. To-morrow 
 morning, after emptying themselves of the cabbages 
 and things, these will call at Jermyn Street and bring 
 all your stock here. I '11 superintend." 
 
 And this good-natured young man did, thereby 
 saving Frank a very considerable expense. 
 
 The shop was well stocked, and the rest of the 
 things were taken upstairs to be brought down as 
 required, and meanwhile to furnish Frank's living- 
 rooms. 
 
 Miss Priddy watched the arrival of the wagons 
 with devouring interest, but she was not permitted 
 to see the shop itself till all was arranged. Between 
 the post ofhce and the shop Frank had had a screen 
 
 212 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 erected, the lower half of wood, the upper of glass. 
 But a long curtain could be drawn across the latter, 
 which was done now, and only when all the quaint 
 and pretty things were in place did Frank allow them 
 to be seen. 
 
 By luncheon time all was in order, for they had 
 been at work since six o'clock in the morning, so that 
 Lord Hounslow said he had never sat up quite so late 
 before ! Then the two young men had luncheon 
 upstairs, their meal consisting of a veal and ham pie 
 and some fruit. But in the midst of it came an 
 interruption. 
 
 213 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The interruption was a customer. 
 
 They had bolted the shop-door on the inside when 
 they went upstairs to lunch, but Miss Priddy, 
 breathless with excitement, came up the private 
 stairs to tell them " a grand lady in a carriage 
 and pair wanted to get into the shop to buy a 
 vause." 
 
 " She might see for herself," said Lord Hounslow, 
 " that there 's really no room in the shop for a 
 carriage and pair. I doubt if it would conveniently 
 hold a four-wheeler. She must be an unreasonable 
 female." 
 
 " Female, indeed ! " cried Miss Priddy, much 
 scandalised. " You should see her rings ! " 
 
 Miss Priddy had no notion that he was a lord. 
 
 " Meanwhile," said Frank, " my first customer is 
 waiting." So he left Lord Hounslow and Miss Priddy 
 to fight it out, and without delay went down to the 
 shop. 
 
 He bowed very respectfully as he admitted the 
 lady and apologised for having kept her waiting. 
 
 "... I only moved in this morning," he 
 explained, " and the stock has not been arranged 
 many minutes. I did not venture to hope for so 
 early a customer." 
 
 " Perhaps I shall not be a customer," said Miss 
 Priddy 's female. " But I want to inquire about 
 that bowl. I saw it through the glass screen from 
 the post ofhce. I had come to send a telegram." 
 
 214 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 Frank placed the bowl in her hands, and she 
 turned it about with undisguised admiration. 
 
 " Is it very dear ? " she inquired. 
 
 " No, madam. At the price for which I would 
 sell it to you it would not be dear. But the price is 
 a high one. I ask thirty guineas for it." 
 
 The lady said nothing, but continued to twist 
 the bowl about. 
 
 " I saw a similar bowl, but not nearly so fine as 
 this, in a Bond Street shop priced forty guineas 
 last week," observed Frank. 
 
 " I bought it," said the lady quietly. " It was, 
 as you say, not nearty so fine as this. It has a 
 crack all across the back too. Yet I am told it was 
 a bargain. I will certainly give you thirty guineas 
 for yours. I will take it with me, I have a carriage 
 here." 
 
 Frank began to wrap the bowl carefully in paper. 
 The lady moved about. 
 
 " What price do you ask for this figure ? " she 
 inquired, touching a beautiful Chelsea statuette of 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 " If I sold it without its companion, madam, the 
 price would be sixty guineas. For the pair I would 
 take one hundred pounds." 
 
 " They are very fine," said the lady. " Your 
 things are very cheap. I will buy the tw^o figures. 
 But I have not enough to pay for all three in my 
 pocket. I have enough to pay for the bowl ; but 
 you must put the figures aside for me. I will return 
 for them after luncheon." 
 
 " Please take them, madam. Send me your 
 cheque by post. I would rather you took them if 
 you would not mind." 
 
 But the lady requested instead that the things 
 might be sent to her later in the day. 
 
 215 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " I am Lady Salford," and she handed him a 
 card. " I hve quite near." 
 
 This did not surprise Frank at all, for, rather 
 slummy as his own street was, it lay, as often happens 
 in London, cheek by jowl with one of the smartest 
 squares in Belgravia. 
 
 When his customer was gone Lord Hounslow 
 came down, having been strictly forbidden to come 
 into the shop before. 
 
 " Did the female buy anything ? " he inquired 
 eagerly, 
 
 " She bought a bowl and two figures for one 
 hundred and thirty-one pounds ten shillings," 
 replied Frank. 
 
 " Oh, my aunt ! " cried Lord Hounslow. " Are 
 you sure you don't want a partner ? " 
 
 They both laughed. 
 
 " Nothing seems to be gone, either. Now, one 
 would have missed that sideboard." 
 
 " But it would not have fetched so much. All 
 the same, the things were cheap." 
 
 Frank told his friend about the bowl. " . . . 
 the figures would fetch perhaps as much again in a 
 season-sale at Christie's," he added. 
 
 " I '11 step round to Salford House," said 
 Hounslow, " and explain that the price was really 
 two hundred guineas." 
 
 Again they laughed. 
 
 " All the same," said Frank, " I did well enough, 
 for I did not give sixty for the three. They were 
 some of my bargains. Besides, when I picked them 
 up that sort of thing wasn't so much sought after." 
 
 Lady Salford was a well-known figure in the world 
 to both young men. She was not exactly a beauty, 
 but she had the much rarer gift of charm, which 
 some people say is nearly obsolete. Her story was 
 
 216 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 a little romantic, for at twenty-four she was a widow 
 as well as being one of the richest women in London. 
 But that story, if it has to be told, shall be told 
 separately. It would take up too much room 
 here. 
 
 She was not Frank's only customer on that first 
 day of his shop-keeping, but she was his best. In 
 the course of the afternoon nineteen persons came 
 into the shop, of whom eleven made purchases. 
 Three of the others came to look and handle, and 
 declare that all the articles were very dear. One 
 came in to ask if Frank would give a small subscrip- 
 tion to the Royal Society for Preventing Cruelty to 
 Flowers. One wanted to sell him some water-cress, 
 and another to sell him some muffins (also, he guessed,, 
 they wanted to have a peep at the pretty things), 
 one asked change of a sovereign, and one inquired 
 the shortest way to Pimlico, 
 
 The eleven purchasers chiefly made small 
 purchases, but it was a very good day's w^ork for 
 an opening, in such a business. 
 
 Lord Hounslow went away for a couple of hours, 
 but his curiosity was too great for him to keep away 
 altogether, and about six he came back, full of 
 eagerness to hear what business had been done. 
 
 " You 've sold nothing since \ " he complained, 
 with a disappointed glance round. 
 
 " Sorry to disagree with you. I have sold thirty- 
 two articles, including a big screen that you might 
 have missed. I know you long to know what they 
 fetched. Well, altogether, they fetched forty-one 
 pounds five shillings. Not quite so good as one 
 hundred and thirty-one pounds for three things. 
 But it would not have been a bad day's business 
 even if I had not sold those three." 
 
 Lord Hounslow could scarcely tear himself away^ 
 
 217 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 but he was dining out, and from Frank's shop to 
 the " Haunt of the White Man," as he called it, was 
 some distance. 
 
 " Old Gummy St. Roc," he said, thus profanely 
 alluding to a noble Marquess, " is marrying one of 
 his daughters, and I will make him buy her a wedding 
 present here. I know she goes in for these sort of 
 things. Good night, Jokes & Co. If you won't 
 have me for a partner, have me as a traveller to take 
 in custom." 
 
 Very soon after he had departed Frank's shop-door 
 opened, and an anxious-faced lady entered with a 
 nervous, shamefaced glance around. She had a good 
 expression, and her sad, tired eyes were kindly and 
 refined, but there was an unmistakable air about her 
 of being ill to do in the world and troubled. 
 Nevertheless she was undoubtedly a lady, and Frank 
 felt sure that if misfortunes had overtaken her, they 
 had not been deserved. 
 
 He bowed with a grave and quiet respectfulness 
 that seemed to put the poor lady rather more at 
 her ease. 
 
 From beneath her cloak she produced a little parcel, 
 and he had no difficulty in guessing that she had 
 come to sell and not to buy. 
 
 I suppose," she said, in a low, shy voice, " that 
 you buy as well as sell." 
 
 " Certainly," he answered, with a little laugh. 
 ^* I have been buying for a long time ; I only began 
 to sell to-day." 
 
 His cheerful, unaffected manner seemed to relieve 
 the lady of much of her embarrassment. 
 
 " I know it is a new shop," she remarked. " I 
 often come to the little post ojEhce, and an houi ago 
 I was there and saw that this shop had been opened. 
 Miss Priddy told me that you seemed to have had a 
 
 218 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 good deal of custom, considering, even already. 
 So I went home and brought them to show you." 
 
 She began, as she spoke, to untie her parcel. 
 
 " They are miniatures," she continued, unfolding 
 the paper, " and they are by Cosway." 
 
 Now Frank had very often been offered miniatures, 
 and very often had been told that they were by 
 Cosway, but he had very seldom had the refusal of any 
 that were genuine. 
 
 " Ah," he said courteously, " genuine Cosways are 
 scarce and valuable." 
 
 " There are six. And they are all, as you see, 
 in real old ivory frames, and the name of each is at 
 the back." 
 
 The paper was now all unfolded, and the miniatures 
 were lying on the Empire table that seemed the 
 most convenient place for them. In Frank's shop 
 there was no counter. He picked them up one by 
 one, and examined each carefully, but at the first 
 glance his doubts vanished, and he was quite sure 
 they were genuine. 
 
 " And you really want to sell them ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes. None of them are portraits of any family 
 interest to me. But a member of my family was a 
 collector. Of course, I admire them. They are 
 beautiful. But I would much rather have the 
 money. Indeed, I have no choice " 
 
 She paused, with a faint flush on her pale, tired 
 face. 
 
 " They are, I have no doubt at all, perfectly 
 genuine," observed Frank, not seeming to hear her 
 last words or noticing her slight confusion ; " and 
 they are very fine. Some quite genuine antique 
 miniatures are not fine at all. These are exquisite, 
 and they are in splendid state. The proper way to 
 sell them would be in a season-sale at Christie's." 
 
 219 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " I should have to wait months for that. No, I 
 cannot wait at all. I would rather sell them now 
 and get a quarter, than wait and sell them after 
 weeks' and months' delay." 
 
 " The truth is," he explained, ** I could not offer 
 you even a quarter of what you might get at Christie's. 
 They might fetch as much as ninety guineas each 
 there. I could certainly not offer you more than 
 twenty guineas each." 
 
 '* Would you give me that ? Would you give me 
 a hundred and twenty guineas for them ? " 
 
 The pale flush deepened, and the tired eyes 
 glistened eagerly. 
 
 " Certainly I would give you that. But you know 
 it is throwing them away. I could not advise you 
 to sell them for so little." 
 
 " So little ! I might have offered them half 
 over London and not been offered nearly so 
 much." 
 
 She pushed them towards him, as though joyfully 
 willing to part with them. 
 
 " Will you, could you — buy them to-day ? " she 
 inquired with ill-dissembled suspense. 
 
 " Yes — if you really wish it. I must, of course, 
 give you a cheque. I have not got the money in 
 cash in the shop. But if you like to bring them 
 again to-morrow I would pay you in notes and 
 gold." 
 
 " Oh, no. The cheque would be best. I would 
 rather finish it all up to-night." 
 
 Frank bowed and inquired as to whose order the 
 cheque should be payable to, and was given the 
 name of Margaret Dene, whether Miss or Mrs. he 
 was not told and did not inquire. He withdrew to 
 write the cheque, and soon returned with it in his 
 hand. 
 
 220 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " A hundred and twenty-six pounds. I think 
 that is right." 
 
 " Oh, I had forgotten they were guineas. It is 
 six pounds more than I expected." 
 
 " It is httle enough," lie answered, smihng. 
 
 The lady smiled too, and with a lighter step and 
 much more cheerful air than at her entry, she bade 
 Frank good night and left the shop. 
 
 221 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 After he had shut his shop and balanced his 
 accounts, Frank had some supper, a very frugal one ; 
 and after that he went out for a walk, with the 
 parcel for Lady Salford in his hand. 
 
 Half an hour later he bent his steps tow^ards 
 Salford House. He knew it very well, for a year ago 
 it had been let furnished for a few months to some 
 great friends of his. He rang the bell, and the big 
 doors were promptly opened by the hall porter. 
 
 " Oh, are you the young man from Jokes & Co. ? '' 
 he demanded, surveying Frank rather critically. 
 
 Frank admitted that he was. 
 
 " Well, then, her ladyship's instructions was as she 
 should see you personally." 
 
 The young man from Jokes & Co. did not inquire 
 whether it was Lady Salford's ordinary custom to 
 see people impersonally ; but he obeyed the rather 
 imperious gesture by which the hall porter had 
 signified that he was to walk in. 
 
 A footman received him, as it were, from the hands 
 of the hall porter, who promptly went back to his 
 hooded wicker-chair, like a dog into its kennel, and 
 the footman led him up the wide, red staircase that 
 he knew so well, to a small ante-room in which he 
 had sometimes waited before. 
 
 The whole thing amused Frank hugely. He was 
 not at all depressed by the memory of his former 
 gentility and the contrast of his present mean 
 estate. On the contrary, he was rather elated. It 
 
 ;222 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 was the first day of his hfe on which he had changed 
 spending money into earning it. 
 
 " Please take a seat. Her ladyship has not come 
 up from dinner yet." 
 
 Frank obeyed. It was the first time in his life 
 a footman had addressed him without saying " sir." 
 It sounded a little odd, that was all. There was 
 nothing insolent or uncourteous in the man's manner. 
 He was much too good a servant. 
 
 As he left the room, Frank fancied he caught him 
 " taking stock " of the young man from Jokes & Co, 
 But that might easily be fancy, or the footman might 
 merely be a little curious as to the contents of the 
 parcel. 
 
 Presently the door was thrown open by another 
 footman and Lady Salford entered. 
 
 " The young man from Jokes & Co., my lady," the 
 lackey announced. 
 
 She smiled a httle as she came forward, and the 
 door closed behind her. 
 
 ** I think you are Jokes & Co.," she said. 
 
 She looked far more beautiful in her evening dress 
 of black and lilac ; and Jokes & Co. admitted 
 instantly to himself that she was the most 
 lovely person he had ever seen. And yet she 
 was not supposed to be at all a beauty. She 
 was generally called the triumph of grace over 
 feature. 
 
 " I have no messengers at present," he repHed, 
 " my business is in its infancy — it was bom, in fact, 
 to-day. We shall have, of course, to get a messenger. 
 At present I must be my own. I have brought the 
 china." 
 
 " The reason I asked you to bring them," the lady 
 explained, " was that I would hke to ask your opinion 
 as to the genuineness of a Plymouth group that has 
 
 223 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 been sent me on approval. It is unmarked, as 
 Plymouth so often is, but I think it is genuine." 
 
 She opened an inner door, and led the way into 
 a much larger room. 
 
 Jokes & Co. glanced round. He had known the 
 room very well. The furniture was mostly familiar, 
 though a few bits of special interest had been added ; 
 but the china, photographs, &c., were not those he 
 had been used to see there. 
 
 " x\h, how stupid of me ! I forgot to bring it 
 down from my boudoir. I was rather late and 
 dressed in a hurry. I will ring and send for it." 
 
 Before the lady had finished speaking, the young 
 man had hastened to save her the trouble and had 
 rung the bell for her. 
 
 Now he had scarcely done so before he perceived 
 that he had made a mistake. For the bell, as he had 
 remembered, was in an unusual position behind the 
 portiere that draped the door. 
 
 As his eyes met Lady Salford's he could see that 
 the little episode was not lost upon her. 
 
 " How clever of you," she remarked with a little 
 laugh, " to know by instinct that the bell was behind 
 that curtain." 
 
 " I am not really very clever, I am afraid," he 
 replied. 
 
 She was, he knew, still watching him. He stood, 
 not far inside the door, in such a position as he 
 imagined a man of his supposed class would adopt. 
 
 ** I wonder," the lady said aloud, " if you were ever 
 in this room before." 
 
 " Yes, madam." The young man from Jokes & Co. 
 answered frankly. ** Yours is not the first piece of 
 china I have been asked to give my opinion of in this 
 room." 
 
 The lady seemed a httle puzzled, perhaps a httle 
 
 224 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 disappointed. It was quite true that Frank had 
 been asked in that very place to pronounce upon a bit 
 of china. And she saw that he spoke the plain 
 truth. But her next remark was to the footman 
 who answered the bell, and whom she sent to her 
 maid for the box containing the Plymouth group. 
 
 While he was absent about his errand, a rather 
 awkward pause occurred. 
 
 To see the young man standing there doing nothing, 
 " at attention " as it were, embarrassed her somehow, 
 though it scarcely seemed to embarrass him. And 
 yet how could they sit down and wait together, 
 talking as they would have done, had he been 
 what he seemed and not what he chose to wish to 
 seem. 
 
 The footman seemed very long. 
 
 " Do sit down," she was beginning, when a better 
 idea struck her. 
 
 " These Chelsea figures," she said, " are neither 
 so large nor so fine as those I got to-day ; but they 
 cost very much more." 
 
 Her allusion to them was evidently an invitation 
 to examine them ; he moved forward and did so. 
 But not as he would have examined a piece of china 
 in that room twelve months ago. He studiously 
 affected a professional air, and he kept as far from 
 her as possible. 
 
 " No, madam," he observed, with a dry manner 
 that was absurdly unlike his own, " they are not so 
 good — not nearly so good as the Milton or Shake- 
 speare you purchased from us." 
 
 The " us " struck her ear. 
 
 "Have you a partner?" she inquired half care- 
 lessly, but watching him all the same. " I thought 
 I caught a glimpse of another — er — gentleman in the 
 inner room." 
 
 225 
 15 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " At present, madam," replied the young man 
 in his dry, deferential voice, " I represent the 
 firm." 
 
 He did not tell her much. 
 
 " The gentleman that I thought might be your 
 partner seemed so very hke a gentleman I have 
 often met." 
 
 " Indeed, madam ? " 
 
 " Yes. Young Lord Hounslow." 
 
 *' Indeed, madam ? " 
 
 " Yes. If you had ever seen Lord Hounslow, you 
 would be as much struck by the likeness as I was." 
 She watched him curiously as she said this. 
 
 *' Likenesses, madam " — at this point the footman 
 returned — " are very interesting." 
 
 Lady Salford felt herself baffled. But she had 
 other arrows in her quiver. 
 
 The footman opened the box and drew forth the 
 costly piece of bric-a-brac in its multitudinous 
 wrappings of silver paper. Having unfolded these 
 with as much awe and as little enjoyment as if he 
 had been undressing an important baby, he left the 
 room. 
 
 '* And now," inquired the lady, " what do you 
 think of it ? " 
 
 " I could tell, I think, with my eyes shut that this 
 is true Plymouth. There is no other paste at all 
 Hke it." 
 
 Lady Salford watched his long, pointed fingers as 
 they seemed to caress the white china. 
 
 " You say the question of likeness is very 
 interesting," she observed. " What do you think of 
 cheirology ? Do you think one's hands really tell 
 much ? " 
 
 *' No," he replied, with a light laugh, and forgetting 
 his " madam," " for if cheirology were true, I ought 
 
 226 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 to be a duke at least : and my grandfather was the 
 son of a bargeman ! " 
 
 " Nowadays," remarked Lady Salford, " one meets 
 plenty of people in society who never had a great- 
 grandfather of any sort ! And besides one has eight 
 great-grandparents — perhaps yours weren't all barge- 
 men." 
 
 " Four may have been barge- women," Frank was 
 beginning ; but it struck him that the conversation 
 was no longer professional. He swallowed his re- 
 mark and coughed it down sepulchrally, in a way 
 that really was quite professional — as though he had 
 come to " request a small payment on account." 
 
 " It is certainly Plymouth," he declared, setting 
 the group down upon the flat top of the piano, at 
 which he had often sung. " May I, madam, hope 
 that you will continue your custom and patronage ? " 
 
 Lady Salford looked somewhat surprised, and 
 perhaps a little annoyed. She had not intimated that 
 the interview was at an end. 
 
 " I have to-day acquired some very splendid 
 miniatures," continued Jokes & Co., with his hand 
 upon the door-handle. " They are worth your 
 inspection, madam : if you wished, they should be 
 put aside until you had seen them." 
 
 The lady at once expressed her intention of 
 inspecting them on the following day, and begged 
 they might be put aside, and Jokes & Co. withdrew. 
 
 227 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 During the course of the next day Jokes & Co. did a 
 very fair business, though the purchases did not 
 amount to anything like what they had reached on 
 the opening day. A very large Chesterfield sofa, 
 covered with a beautiful silk tapestry, was sold, and 
 for a couple of pounds more than it had cost, the 
 purchaser being an old gentleman, who made a 
 speciality of Italian art fabrics. 
 
 " I bought that tapestry at Siena," Frank ex- 
 plained to Lord Hounslow, who had looked in to see 
 how things were going. " It was filthy then, but I 
 spotted it at once." 
 
 " It would have been more to the point to get the 
 previous spots removed," suggested this jocular 
 young man. 
 
 " I did that afterwards. I am delighted to have 
 sold that sofa ; it took up such a dreadful lot of room, 
 and it was such a temptation to customers to sit 
 down. It would soon have wanted cleaning again 
 if it had not gone off." 
 
 But most of the things sold that day were small 
 and cheap ; nevertheless when closing time arrived 
 the firm was well satisfied. 
 
 " Old Gummy St. Roc is coming down here to- 
 morrow," Lord Hounslow announced. " He is quite 
 keen about buying Lady Olivia a Virtu-ous present 
 here. I invented that joke while he was talking to 
 me, and I practised it on him first. I said : ' Cousin 
 Plantagenet, Olivia is such a piece of Virtue, that you 
 
 225 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 ought to go to Jokes & Co. and buy her one for a 
 wedding-present.' The pleasantry can be varied by 
 turning it that way. He asked who Jokes & Co. was, 
 and I said they were the people to whom everybody 
 was now going to get art bargains. Mind you ask 
 him twice what you intend to take ; he doesn't care 
 for anything unless he bargains for it. He would 
 rather give one and ninepence for something 
 marked two and six, than pa}- eighteenpence for 
 exactly the same thing if that was the price 
 asked for it. And he would fancy he had cleared 
 ninepence." 
 
 Having given this advice as to the treatment of his 
 eccentric old cousin, Lord Hounslow lit another 
 cigarette and sauntered off, not, however, before 
 promising that one of his father's wagons should call 
 early the next morning for the sofa, to remove it to 
 the house of its purchaser. 
 
 In the afternoon a short note came by post from 
 Lady Salford. It was addressed to the firm in the 
 third person, and apologised for being unable to call 
 at present and inspect the Cosway miniatures. Lady 
 Salford had been called out of London by the illness 
 of a relative, but she hoped to be able to return in a 
 few days, and would then look forward to seeing the 
 miniatures. As it turned out, she did not return for 
 a fortnight. 
 
 Meanwhile many other articles had been brought to 
 the shop by persons anxious to dispose of them. 
 Some were of no use, and some were valued absurdly 
 high by their possessors, especially when the latter 
 happened to be entirely ignorant of the subject. 
 But a fair proportion were good enough to purchase, 
 and their owners were sensible enough to bear in mind 
 that a dealer buys to sell again at a profit, and that, 
 though he may ultimately realise a very good one, he 
 
 229 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 may not be able to sell the article at all for years, so 
 that it is so much absolutely dead capital. 
 
 As a rule Jokes & Co. found that the vendors of 
 art objects were only too anxious to part with them, 
 very much more anxious than the firm was to pur- 
 chase them, and there was no need for any bargaining 
 at all. In fact. Jokes & Co. would not bargain over 
 their purchases. 
 
 " What price do you ask ? " the firm would say. 
 If the price named was such as to suggest a reasonable 
 likelihood of profit, it would be given at once. If not. 
 Jokes & Co. never offered a smaller price. They 
 simply declined the article altogether. 
 
 A great many of the customers bought nothing but 
 prints, and some of them would look through a whole 
 portfolio and only buy a sixpenny print, or perhaps 
 buy nothing at all. It must not be supposed that 
 Jokes & Co. were always selling articles whose price 
 was counted by guineas. 
 
 One day a very smart landau stopped outside, and 
 a resplendent footman helped a very resplendent lady 
 to descend. From the ducal coronet on the panel, 
 and the large single letter under it, the firm of Jokes 
 & Co. had no difficulty in arriving at the identity of 
 the lady. The Duke of Fulham is the only duke 
 whose title begins with F, and as there is no dowager 
 alive this must be the reigning Duchess. Her accent 
 soon clinched the matter, for it was unmistakable 
 New England. 
 
 " I want to look at that round print of John, Earl 
 of Lambeth, " she announced, with a brief stare of 
 surprise at the shopman, " the one in the gold olive- 
 leaf frame in the window." 
 
 She need not have informed Jokes & Co. of 
 the identity of the portrait, but the firm did not 
 say so. 
 
 230 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 The print was taken down and placed in the great 
 lady's hands. 
 
 " He was our great-grandfather," she remarked in 
 a shghtly loud voice, and speaking almost as though 
 she also belonged to a firm. " Lambeth is the second 
 title in our family." 
 
 Jokes & Co. bowed with solemn respect. In the 
 family of McSlay there had been as yet no first title, 
 as the firm was amusedly aware. 
 
 "It is a very fine print apart from any family 
 associations," the young man observed gravely. 
 " It is also very scarce, for the plate was accidentally 
 destroyed when only a few impressions had been 
 pulled off. It is after Sir Joshua Reynolds. The 
 original is at Fulham Court." 
 
 " I guess I know that," retorts the lady. *' I 'm 
 the Duchess." 
 
 She stared at the portrait with her pretty head on 
 one side. 
 
 " My husband has a birthday week after next," 
 she announced. " It would be just lovely for one of 
 my presents. What 's the ruin of it ? " 
 
 "It is ten guineas. But I have a Cosway minia- 
 ture of the Earl's wife — Lady Agneta Bohun, the 
 beautiful Countess of Lambeth. Would your Grace 
 care to see it ? " 
 
 She certainly would, and in spite of its 
 very high price she bought it. Both print and 
 miniature went away in her carriage, and next 
 morning a cheque arrived for a hundred and ten 
 guineas. 
 
 When Jokes & Co. had bought the miniatures they 
 had been paid for by cheque, and now the firm made 
 it its business to ascertain through what bank the 
 draft had been cleared. As he expected, Frank 
 found that the cheque had been cleared through a 
 
 231 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 bank in the neighbourhood, to which he addressed 
 the following letter for the lady : — 
 
 " Madam, — We recently purchased from you, for 
 the sum of twenty guineas each, six miniatures by 
 Cosway, one of which we have now sold for one 
 hundred guineas. We have pleasure in now enclosing 
 a cheque for sixty guineas. Our own profit has been 
 quite satisfactory, considering the quick turnover, 
 and we remain, madam, 
 
 " Your obedient servants, 
 
 " Jokes & Co., 
 
 '' f.p. F. S." 
 
 The firm did not mention this transaction to Lord 
 Hounslow or anyone else. But its commercial con- 
 science pricked it. 
 
 " It 's not business ; no, it 's not business ! " the 
 original partner admitted to himself as he wrote the 
 cheque. " Perhaps I may never sell the other five 
 at all. No, it isn't business, and there 's no use 
 pretending it is. And ' business first,' but * pleasure 
 after ' ; it 's pleasure after." 
 
 232 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Half an hour after Jokes & Co. had stepped in next 
 door to post that unbusiness-hke letter, the postman 
 dehvered one to the firm informing it of the return to 
 town of Viscountess Salford, and requesting that the- 
 Cosway miniatures might be submitted to her. 
 " Lady Salford," said the note, " will be at home 
 and disengaged to-night at 8.45 ; and if the miniatures 
 could be sent then it would give her great pleasure 
 to see them. Perhaps the representative of the firm 
 whom she already knows would bring them." 
 
 One soon gets used to a new state of life ; and 
 Frank did not now feel it particularly odd to be a 
 shopkeeper. As he was a tradesman, he was glad 
 that it seemed likely that he should be a successful 
 one, that was all. 
 
 Lady Salford received him in the same room as 
 before, and he was conscious that she still scrutinised 
 him in the same watchful manner ; but he found it 
 much easier already to act his simple part, and 
 appear impervious to her conjectures. 
 
 The lady was an instant victim to the miniatures. 
 They were the most beautiful she had ever seen, and 
 several of them were of family interest. 
 
 " I will keep them all," she said quietly. " L 
 wonder you can bear to part with them." 
 
 " I only bought them," he answered, " to sell again 
 — at a profit. That is our trade." He paused a 
 moment, and then reminded the lady that she had. 
 not inquired the price. 
 
 233 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " No, I forgot. Well, what is it ? " 
 
 " Five hundred guineas," he replied. " It is a 
 good deal of money." 
 
 " Yes, it is. But I should rather have the minia- 
 tures than the money. Are there not six of them ? 
 I thought you mentioned six ? " 
 
 He explained that one of them had already been 
 purchased by the Duchess of Fulham. 
 
 She sat down at an open bureau — of tortoise-shell 
 inlaid with jasper and ivory and cornelian — and 
 -wrote the cheque. 
 
 " To the order of the firm, I suppose ? " she said. 
 
 " Yes, madam, if you please." 
 
 Her back was turned to him, but by her side was a 
 small mirror, and, framed in its silver round, was the 
 charming portrait of herself. The firm of Jokes & 
 Co. sighed a little, catching sight of it, and wondered 
 which of the miniatures was equal to it. On the bent 
 face was a sort of smile — or so it seemed to the firm of 
 Jokes & Co. 
 
 The young man drew still further back, and seemed 
 to wrap himself closer than before in his quiet dis- 
 guise of chill respect. 
 
 When the lady had blotted the cheque she stood 
 up and turned to face him. 
 
 '' When are you going to take a partner ? " she 
 inquired. 
 
 " Our business, madam, is not yet large enough to 
 justify the firm in extending itself," he answered. 
 
 " I know someone who wants to join it," she 
 said. 
 
 Though she watched his face so carefully he 
 betrayed nothing. 
 
 " . . . He is quite sound financially," she 
 continued, still watching. 
 
 Jokes & Co. bowed again. 
 
 234 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " Anyone, madam, who obtains your recommen- 
 dation is fortunate." 
 
 " The young man to whom I allude. — who would 
 like to join you in business," continued Lady Salford, 
 " is called Lord Hounslow ; his father, Lord Mort- 
 lake, is a very rich man." 
 
 Jokes & Co. bowed. 
 
 " You know Lord Hounslow, perhaps ? " con- 
 tinued the lady, with the same watchful carelessness 
 of manner. 
 
 " The name is quite famihar to me, madam," 
 admitted the young man. 
 
 At that moment their eyes met, and the lady's were 
 full of laughter. 
 
 "He is dining here to-night," she went on : "I 
 thought he would be company for my younger sister, 
 whom I brought back to London with me " 
 
 The lady's blue-grey eyes were still laughing, but 
 her voice was quite steady and innocent. As for 
 Jokes & Co., that firm was beginning to look dis- 
 tinctly annoyed. The expression of its face de- 
 manded of the universe what possible concern it could 
 be of his what dinner-guest Lady Salford might 
 invite. 
 
 " Besides," added that lady calmly, " I know that 
 Lord Hounslow would be so glad to meet you." 
 
 A sudden flush swept across Frank's expressive 
 face ; his manner grew ten degrees icier than before. 
 He gave no other sign of having heard the lady's last 
 words, and with a stiffly-respectful salutation, he 
 turned to take his leave. 
 
 " If, madam, I can be of no further service to you, 
 I will encroach no further on your goodness," he 
 began, but Lady Salford laughed gently. 
 
 " Oh, but you can ! " she declared easily. " You 
 can help me to amuse Lord Hounslow." 
 
 235 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 Her eyes travelled behind the firm of Jokes & Co., 
 who turned involuntarily to follow them. Framed 
 in the wide doorway leading to the saloon stood 
 Lord Hounslow and a lady younger than Lady 
 Salford, but singularly like her. 
 
 The doorway was an arch which could be filled by 
 a rolling double door, sliding into the wall at either 
 side ; a heavy velvet curtain also draped the 
 opening, and this Lord Hounslow was now holding 
 aside. 
 
 The red flush deepened on Frank's face, and all 
 three saw that he was annoyed. 
 
 " Now, my dear young man,'' begged Lord Houns- 
 low persuasively, " do not look so savage. It is 
 fortunate that the Evil Eye is not a British Insti- 
 tution, or I should shiver in my shoes." 
 
 " I am afraid," said the gentle voice of Lady 
 Salford, " you accuse your friend of playing you false 
 and not keeping your secret." 
 
 " I did my best," protested Lord Hounslow meekly. 
 " It was not my fault if Jokes & Co. looked sus- 
 piciously like a gentleman." 
 
 Lady Salford's sister laughed. She had been 
 considering the firm with obvious and undisguised 
 interest. 
 
 " I should not have been deceived for an instant ! " 
 she declared in a subdued aside to the company in 
 general. 
 
 " It is very tiresome ! " ejaculated Jokes & Co., as 
 if it meant it. 
 
 " What is ? " inquired the company. 
 
 *' Being found out," explained the firm, with a 
 short laugh of considerable irritation. 
 
 *' Found out ! " cried Lord Hounslow. " Did-ums 
 think we should serenely pass for a Jew curio- 
 dealer ? " 
 
 236 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " I said nothing about passing for a Jew," pro- 
 tested Jokes & Co. 
 
 " Why, you were bound to be spotted by the very 
 iirst customer who entered the shop ! " declared 
 Lord Hounslow. 
 
 " I was the first customer," remarked Lady Salford 
 mildlv, but with complacence. " I certainly 
 spotted ! " 
 
 " For my part," declared Lady Sal ford's sister, 
 *' I object to all the laugh being turned against the 
 eminent firm of Jokes & Co. It is not justified by 
 the facts. Mr. Street " 
 
 *' Margaret ! " cried Lady Salford. 
 
 *' Miss Dene ! " shouted Lord Hounslow. 
 
 " You 're not going to turn the tables against us ? " 
 expostulated her sister. 
 
 " Aren't I though ! " laughed Miss Dene, with a fine 
 indifference to grammatical restrictions. " Mr. 
 Street," she continued, turning to our hero, " I am 
 rather hurt by your failure to recognise me again. I 
 did think I had made a deeper impression." 
 
 The firm bent all its attention on the lady, with 
 some glimmering of a suspicion that the voice was 
 somehow familiar. 
 
 " Don't you remember writing to me ? " she de- 
 manded. " Don't you even recall the little fact of 
 having bought six Cosway miniatures of me ? " 
 
 " Were you the distressed Miss Margaret Dene ? " 
 inquired Frank, with a dawning and rather grim 
 amusement. 
 
 " I was — I was ! But remember it was not my 
 scheme ; it was Annette and Lord Hounslow who 
 invented the shameless plot. And it was Annette's 
 miniatures I sold to you, and of which you have sold 
 one to the Duclicss of Fulham. Oh, dear ! oh, 
 dear ! " 
 
 237 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 All four burst out together into peals of laughter. 
 
 And thus it was that the great intimacy began 
 between Lady Salford and her sister, and Mr. Street 
 and his friend Lord Hounslow, which ended, as may 
 be told elsewhere, in a certain " Double Wedding in 
 High Life/' 
 
 238 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 If Lord Hounslow and Lady Salford imagined that 
 the firm of Jokes & Co. must cease to exist because 
 its identity with Francis Street, Esq., had been 
 detected, they were lamentably mistaken. 
 
 As he walked home from Salford House the young 
 man admitted to himself that the attempt to keep 
 his shop-keeping a secret had been foredoomed ta 
 failure. But his shop-keeping had not been a 
 failure at all : and there was no present reason 
 whatever for abandoning it. 
 
 Lord Hounslow was walking beside him ; but 
 since leaving Salford House he had smoked in silence. 
 He was half-expecting " a wigging," and was half- 
 ready to admit that he deserved it. 
 
 " Why did you come with me ? " his friend 
 presently inquired. 
 
 Lord Hounslow perceived that if there was to be 
 any wigging it was to open in a direction different 
 from that which he had expected. 
 
 " How do you mean ? " 
 
 " Well, you came downstairs with me and left 
 the house with me, and you wanted to give me a 
 cigarette in the hall : and behaved altogether in a 
 manner singularly unbecoming a young earl who 
 
 239 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 happened to be quitting a lady's house at the same 
 TQoment as one of her tradesmen." 
 
 " Oh, bunkum ! " observed Lord Hounslow. 
 ^* That little joke 's obsolete now. You left the house 
 as one of Lady Salford's acquaintances. It 's all up 
 with your being a tradesman." 
 
 Frank explained that this was far from being the 
 case. 
 
 " I 've got my living to earn whether my customers 
 know my real name or not," he said, " and I seem 
 likely to earn it very comfortably as Jokes & Co." 
 
 '* Do you mean that you are really going to stick 
 to it ? " 
 
 '* Of course. If the business succeeds as well as I 
 intend it shall, I shall ultimately sell it, and do 
 something with the money. Meanwhile, I have to 
 work it up." 
 
 Lord Hounslow did not quite know what to say. 
 He was a 3^oung man of a warm and generous 
 imagination, and he had his own ideas as to what his 
 friend's future was to be. But it was, he felt, rather 
 €asy to speak of them : and to speak without betray- 
 ing them was, he was conscious, beyond his powers. 
 So he sighed and held his peace. 
 
 " To-morrow is early closing day," remarked 
 Prank, after a meditative pause, " and I 'm going 
 down into the country on business — to attend a 
 sale, in fact. Oddly enough it 's in a farm-house 
 which used to belong to my grandfather : I suppose 
 now it belongs to the National Debt." 
 
 Lord Hounslow, of course, recognised the allusion 
 to old Jabez Street's eccentric will. 
 
 " How you can speak of it without gnashing 
 your teeth," he said, " is beyond my comprehen- 
 sion." 
 
 ** Even your comprehension has limits, you see," 
 
 240 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 observ^ed Frank, who had not quite forgiven his 
 friend's betrayal of his secret to Lady Salford. 
 
 " That," declared Lord Hounslow solemnly, " is 
 a very incorrect way of speaking — for one in your 
 lowly position — to a nobleman." 
 
 They both laughed comfortably, and Lord 
 Hounslow suggested that he should accompany his 
 friend on the morrow. Frank had no possible objec- 
 tion to urge, except that it would be a waste of time 
 and money : and as that trifling objection might 
 have been urged with almost equal force against 
 most of Lord Hounslow's occupations, it failed to be 
 conclusive. So Frank told him that the station 
 was Horley, and the train to catch was the 1.55 
 p.m. from Victoria ; whereupon they said good night 
 and parted. 
 
 At ten minutes to two on the following day 
 Frank arrived on the platform, and was rather 
 surprised to find his friend already there. He did 
 not deny himself the pleasure of expressing that 
 astonishment. 
 
 " Well," rephed Lord Hounslow, " I have had the 
 whole morning to catch the train in. You, I dare 
 say, have done other things. How 's trade ? " 
 
 " Very lively. I 've sold a lot of things ; and the 
 Duchess of Fulham came again. She wants 
 engravings of all the Fulhams back to Adam, and 
 wants them by Wednesday at a quarter to four." 
 
 " I 've got the tickets," observed Lord Hounslow, 
 restraining his friend from an obvious tendency to 
 the booking-ofiice, and holding two up rather 
 ostentatiously. 
 
 " First class ! " objected Frank reproachfully, 
 and they moved along towards the carriage. 
 
 " Take your seats, please ! " called a porter. 
 
 " Here we are/' said Lord Hounslow. His face 
 
 241 
 16 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 was rather guilty ; but he hoped, in the hurry, it 
 might not be noticed. He held the carriage-door 
 open and Frank jumped in. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Street ! " said Lady Salford. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Jokes ! " said her half- 
 sister. 
 
 " I 've got the tickets," observed Lord Hounslow, 
 holding up four this time, and stepping in with a 
 brazen air of simplicity. 
 
 They all four laughed, but Frank did not deem it 
 expedient to denounce the duplicity of Lord 
 Hounslow at that moment. An old lady of an 
 austere deportment occupied one of the corners, 
 with her back to the engine, but her face against all 
 mankind. She knitted noisily and very tightly, 
 and her expression was one of vehement protest and 
 -disapproval. When the four young people laughed 
 she elevated her eyebrows and pursed her lips, which 
 were wide, but very pale and thin ; and when Lord 
 Hounslow asked her whether she would dislike 
 having the window open, she said, " . . . . four, 
 five, six," and snapped up a stitch as if it had been 
 a caraway seed, and she had been some ugly, cross 
 old bird. 
 
 The malign influence of this old lady seemed to 
 damp even Lord Hounslow's spirits for a while, 
 and there was not, at first, much conversation. He 
 sat trying not to watch her, and getting caught 
 doing so about twice a minute, on each of which 
 occasions he blew his nose guiltily and with evident 
 supererogation. 
 
 " Got a cold ? " demanded the old lady at last, 
 with such startling directness that Lord Hounslow 
 had not presence of mind to pretend that he was 
 indeed so afflicted. 
 
 She had just reached the end of a row, and she 
 
 242 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 poised the vacant needle in the air as if about to 
 harpoon him. 
 
 " Thought you hadn't," she retorted. " Snuffly 
 habit." 
 
 Frank and Miss Dene got rather red in the face 
 from trying not to laugh ; Lord Hounslow got very 
 red indeed, but not from suppressed mirth. Lady 
 Salford remained serenely pale as was her habit. 
 She was not nearly so good-looking as her sister, 
 but her appearance was much more interesting. 
 The old lady watched them, with her head on one 
 side, and a clicking of the eyelids, immensely 
 suggestive of a cassowary getting ready to peck. 
 
 " Sisters ? " she demanded suddenly, addressing 
 the party at large. 
 
 " Only two of us," murmured Lord Hounslow, 
 anxious to regain his perkiness, but not speaking 
 loudly enough to suggest a bona fide desire for 
 retort. 
 
 Lady Salford looked amused, and admitted that 
 the other young lady was her sister. 
 
 The Cassowary had finished another row, and she 
 made another plunge at Lord Hounslow. 
 
 " Best-looking one the eldest, eh ? " she demanded, 
 leaning forward and affecting a whisper. 
 
 " They must be twins at that rate," replied the 
 young man, with reviving spirit. 
 
 " Poof ! " ejaculated the old lady, clicking her 
 eyelids scornfully, and stabbing her needle into a 
 stitch as if she was determined it should not evade 
 her. 
 
 -43 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 At Croydon the old lady got out, and they had the 
 carriage to themselves. 
 
 " Why did you let her in ? " demanded Lord 
 Hounslow of the two ladies. 
 
 " She never consulted us," replied Miss Dene. 
 " I wish she had been going all the wav ; she was 
 dehghtful." 
 
 "I do hope," said her sister, " you will never 
 become delightful ! " 
 
 " She never can," murmured Lord Hounslow, 
 in what Frank called his " best manner." They all 
 laughed, and the train moved on again. 
 
 It was a delightful afternoon, and they were all in 
 good spirits at a few hours' emancipation from the 
 glare and heat of London. In twenty minutes 
 Horley was reached, and they got out. Quarter of 
 an hour later they had reached Sheepcote, the farm 
 where the sale was going on. 
 
 It was a delightful place, more like an old manor 
 house than a farm, and it lay, among green lanes, 
 surrounded by fields so well timbered as to suggest 
 that they formed part of an ancient park or chase. 
 The house was of old, mellow brick, lichen-rusted, 
 and relieved by windows, chimney-stacks, and copings 
 of worn grey stone. Behind, one caught glimpses 
 of huge ricks ; in front was a trim garden hedged 
 with clipped box, and having in the centre a sundial 
 of crumbling stone. The doorway was rather low, 
 and broadly arched ; over it, carved in stone, was 
 
 244 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 a date that carried one restfully back to the wide times 
 of Elizabeth ; and a symbol, once not uncommon — 
 the full-faced sun shining down upon an opening 
 flower, out of which springs a butterfly, new- 
 delivered from its chrysalis, and Thus, my Soule ! 
 incised about it. 
 
 Old as the place seemed, there was no suggestion 
 of melancholy or decay about it ; only of a rich and 
 placid peace, and a bland, steadfast ripeness. 
 
 The old garden filled the air with warm, sweet 
 fragrance, and from the fields there crept other 
 vague, pure odours, as though of the caressing hands 
 of God laid upon the things that He had made and 
 man had not trampled or destroyed. 
 
 Ever so far up, by the wide blue door of heaven, 
 sang a lark. In a field not far off a few lads and girls 
 were haymaking, and their cheerful laughter came 
 pleasantly enough, mellowed by the intervening 
 space of meadow and copse. The half-sensuous 
 complaining of doves was just audible from a depth 
 of wood some furlongs away to the east. 
 
 All the quiet influence of the place seemed to drop 
 down upon our four Londoners, and drew them 
 into a sort of friendly silence and contentment. 
 
 The sale was not at all like the auctions Frank 
 had attended in London : it was, indeed, much 
 pleasanter. Most of the things had been turned 
 out on to a smooth lawn, or bowling-green, that ran 
 along the west side of the house, and there, grouped, 
 but not crowded, under the cool shadows of scented 
 cedars, was gathered the thin concourse of those 
 who had come to the sale. Except our friends they 
 were all rustics, and, to say truth, few were buyers. 
 The Sunday smartness of the ladies marked it as a 
 holiday jaunt rather than a business expedition. 
 
 The auctioneer was himself local, and was full of 
 
 245 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 the local suggestion of prosperous leisure. He had 
 none of the snappish hurry of your London salesman ; 
 his jests were at no particular person's expense and 
 were of established reputation. As soon as he began 
 one it was recognised, and his audience marshalled 
 their grins in readiness for the well-known point. 
 He did not seem to whip up the bidding with scorn 
 or sarcasm, but just to jog it forward with a good- 
 natured shove or so. 
 
 The auction seemed half picnic and half country 
 fair. 
 
 All the best things were still unsold when our 
 friends arrived. The sale had begun at " Twelve 
 o'clock precisely," which meant, literally, about ten 
 minutes to one ; and there had been farm stock, 
 grass, hay, and implements to dispose of out of doors, 
 and dairy and kitchen matters within. 
 
 Frank, who had heard by a lucky accident of the 
 sale, had come after some fine old Chippendale 
 furniture, and he found that there was some good 
 china also. Some of the china Lady Salford bought ; 
 and some her sister also got. 
 
 " I really must buy something ! " declared Lord 
 Hounslow. " I 've no idea of letting you have all 
 the fun. I wonder if that churn is sold ? " 
 
 The auctioneer overheard and regretfully informed 
 him that it was, suggesting that there was a larger 
 one that had been " overlooked," which would be 
 put up when they dealt with the cheese-room. 
 
 Lord Hounslow made a pencil note on the back 
 of a letter, with his tongue a trifle protruded to the 
 left, which he had perceived was the local custom. 
 
 " I 'm quite determined to get that Buhl cabinet," 
 observed Lady Salford. " You 're only going in 
 for the Chips, aren't you, Mr. Street ? " 
 
 Mr. Street assured her that he did not propose 
 
 246 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 to bid against her for the escritoire in question ; 
 in fact, he considered it rather ugly, of a period that 
 he was accustomed to despise as " exuberant." 
 
 " Jove ! " exclaimed Hounslow. " Who 'd have 
 ever thought of cabinets getting exuberant. My 
 mother used to call me * exuberant,' when my other 
 parent wanted to hide me for shutting five live rats 
 in his hat-box." 
 
 The sale jogged leisurely on. The auctioneer 
 sometimes stopped to take a drink of ale out of a 
 brown jug, and sometimes to try and overhear the 
 pleasantries of Lord Hounslow, which he appreciated 
 immensely. No one w^as in the least hurry. Mean- 
 while the pleasant afternoon lay smiling in the happy 
 fields, the fresh, hght breeze came breathing coolly 
 from the slumbrous woods, and still the flowers 
 sweetened all the air, and in the great elms myriads 
 of unseen insects droned their drowsy hum. The 
 pigeons came and went unheeding of the httle 
 crowd, and strutted foppishly about the old paved 
 yard and on the red-tiled roof. Albeit, the old farm 
 was changing hands, and the old farmer had fallen 
 quietly into willing sleep, and been laid, against the 
 Great Awakening, to his long rest beside the ferny 
 wall of the sunny churchyard. They were cheery 
 philosophers, unmoved by this or that, and taking 
 all things, life and the sleep after life, with equal 
 mind. 
 
 When the sun went down behind the trees, and 
 the four Londoners went back to the great weary 
 town, they carried with them an abiding memory 
 of the calm and constant peace of that long pleasant 
 afternoon. 
 
 Thus, O my soule,' " thought Frank, 
 remembering the old symbol carven in the stone of 
 the arched doorway. 
 
 247 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 But his reverie was broken by the voice of Lady 
 Salford. 
 
 ** Well, I have got my Buhl cabinet — and it was 
 disgracefully cheap. Are you pleased with your 
 Chips ? " 
 
 " But I haven't got my chum," complained 
 Lord Hounslow. 
 
 248 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 At Croydon Lord Hounslow could not be restrained 
 from thrusting his curly head out of the window 
 to see if the Cassowary was there. 
 
 " Of course she 's not there," declared Miss Dene. 
 *' How absurd you are ! " 
 
 " I wish I was," groaned the young man, pulling 
 his head back very hurriedly. " There she is 1 " 
 
 But he was not quick enough to avoid being seen. 
 The sharp, restless eyes had caught sight of him, 
 and he had instantly been recognised. 
 
 " Open the door, I 'm coming in," snapped the 
 Cassowary. 
 
 Lord Hounslow obeyed without betraying any 
 enthusiasm, and the old lady clambered in. He 
 certainly did not want her, but he helped her very 
 poHtely. 
 
 " Cold better ? " she demanded, as soon as she had 
 taken her seat and got out the knitting. 
 
 " No ; worse," he replied gloomily. 
 
 " More snuffly, eh ? Been sitting on damp grass, 
 perhaps ? Young. Silly." 
 
 She wagged her head sharply and counted " two,, 
 three, four ! " as if she was disposing of him and 
 the subject. But presently she looked up suddenly 
 and clicked out another question. 
 
 " Father's gout better ? 
 
 Lord Hounslow looked a good deal surprised by 
 this sudden show of interest in his parent's healtli, 
 
 " Bless us ! Might have said something 
 
 249 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 improper ! " snapped the old lady. " Gout 's quite 
 modest. How 's your father's ? " 
 
 Lord Hounslow admitted that it occasionally 
 troubled him. 
 
 " Always did. Tell him I asked. Know my 
 name ? 
 
 The young man confessed that he had not that 
 pleasure. 
 
 " Meaning, * don't know, and don't care ' ! Well, 
 it 's Green ! Signature, /. M. Green. But I 'm not ; 
 not a bit of it." 
 
 Lord Hounslow bowed with a resigned air of 
 misery. He was long since convinced that their 
 travelling companion was a lunatic. She eyed him 
 sharply. 
 
 " Think I 'm crazy ? Not a bit of it. Ask your 
 mother — ask Dulcibella ! " 
 
 Now it was quite true that the Marchioness of 
 Mortlake did indeed rejoice in the ridiculous Christian 
 name of Dulcibella. 
 
 At this point the old lady laughed, and they were 
 all not a little grateful for so legitimate an excuse 
 for a laugh on their own account. 
 
 " That 's better ! " snapped the old lady. 
 " Swallow^ed our pokers now. Get on better." 
 
 " You seem to know my name, anyway," 
 observed Lord Hounslow in a leading manner. 
 
 " So it seems," clicked the Cassowary, refusing his 
 Jead exasperatingly. 
 
 " Do you know all our names ? " inquired Miss 
 Dene unwarily. 
 
 " No ! Didn't even know you had one," retorted 
 the old lady. " What 's yours ? " she demanded, 
 harpooning the firm of Jokes & Co. 
 
 " I trade as Jokes & Co.," it rephed, handing her 
 a business card with immense urbanity. 
 
 250 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 " Rubbish ! You 're a gentleman," she snapped. 
 " Twin's husband ? No ? Not at present ? 
 Question premature ? " And the Cassowary cackled 
 again. Her laughter was extraordinarily brief and 
 of an incredibly hard and bony tone, like castanets. 
 
 " Well ! And how did you" like Horley ? Poof ! 
 Think one 's deaf ? Think one don't know all your 
 names and all about you. Horley, yes. Porter said 
 so first ; then the lilac twin " (it was true that Miss 
 Dene's hat w^as adorned with that flower) ; " then 
 the boy." 
 
 She nodded quickly at Lord Hounslow, and added 
 that she should know him an^'where for a son of 
 Dulcibella's. 
 
 "... Only better looking. Big mouth, and 
 Dulcibella could not hide it. Moustache yery 
 useful." 
 
 No one made much attempt to reply to this 
 extraordinary old lady's remarks. It called for an 
 acrobatic agility of speech. But she did not seem 
 to desire any replies. 
 
 " Pretty place Horley. Had a sister once. Went 
 and lived there. Heayen knows why ! Sister 
 pretty ; self plain. Self single ; sister silly. Sister 
 married. Bad luck ; scamp husband. Sister dead ; 
 self ahye. Alive and ugly better than dead and 
 pretty. Poof ! " 
 
 Ever as she clicked her restless eyes seemed to 
 peck at theirs, keen, observant, shrewd, and 
 watchful ; and the needles clicked, and the knitting 
 grew longer. Her one beauty was her white delicate 
 hands, and the knitting showed them off. 
 
 " Keep a shop ? Honour bright ? " she demanded, 
 once again harpooning Frank. " Duke, I suppose ? 
 Most dukes keep 'cm now. Milk or coals ? 
 
 Frank observed that it would be seen from the 
 
 251 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 card he had handed the lady that his hne of business 
 was neither fuel nor dairy produce, but curios. 
 
 " H'm ? Buy me ? Sell again ? Genuine 
 antique — barocco, eh ? Prob'ly unique — * hope so,' 
 eh ? Rude lad ; certainly duke. Dukes all rude 
 nowadays. Too good-looking, though." 
 
 It is impossible to suggest in print the rapidity 
 with which all this was said, and yet with such a 
 clear staccato that not a word was ever lost, even in 
 the train. 
 
 At Victoria the old lady bade them a touching 
 farewell, and assured Jokes & Co. she would come 
 and look at his curios ; to Dulcibella she sent her 
 love. 
 
 " Whose love ? " Hounslow managed to ask with 
 abrupt presence of mind. 
 
 " Selina's ! " clicked the Cassowary. *' She TL 
 know what Selina when you 've mocked me. Good- 
 bye, twins ; there 's my carriage ..." 
 
 A very smart brougham was awaiting her, and 
 quite close to it was Lady Salford's. 
 
 252 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The following afternoon Lord Hounslow dropped in 
 on Jokes & Co. with a note from Lady Salford to 
 request that he would dine with her that night, to 
 inspect the Buhl cabinet, which had arrived and was 
 even now being unpacked. 
 
 " And who," inquired Frank, " is the Cassowary ? 
 Did Lady Mortlake recognise your description ? " 
 
 " Rather. She 's an old maid rejoicing in the name 
 of Selina Twi gg — highly appropriate, eh ? Just what 
 she does, eh ? " 
 
 And the young man clicked imitatively. 
 
 ** She had a sister," he continued, " who died years 
 ago, and was very pretty ; but she was rummy too ; 
 she took it into her head to disappear, and only 
 emerged to announce her demise in guarded terms. 
 Selina won't believe she is dead. Prefers to think 
 she disgraced herself and retired to America or 
 somewhere. ... Of course, you '11 come to-night ? " 
 
 Frank, " after some slight affectation of un- 
 certainty," as his friend put it, said he would. And 
 eight o'clock found him in Lady Salford's drawing- 
 room. 
 
 " Who do you think called on me to-day ? " 
 mquired his hostess when they had taken their 
 places at table. 
 
 " The Cassowary," he replied, without an instant's 
 hesitation. 
 
 " Yes. I was in, and she was quite delightful. 
 She assured me that she preferred my appearance 
 
 253 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 to Margaret's, though of course Margaret was better- 
 looking. And she successfully pumped out of me 
 all about you and your shop. She is over head and 
 ears in love with you." 
 
 " I thought it was Hounslow," laughed Frank. 
 
 *' On the contrary, she considers him futile. I think 
 futile is excellent, don't you ? " 
 
 Everyone laughed, though Lord Hounslow's 
 merriment was said by Miss Dene to be obviously 
 forced. 
 
 " And," concluded Lady Salford, " I ended by 
 telling her you were coming here to-night to have a 
 look at my Buhl cabinet, and she barefacedly asked 
 to be allowed to come too — to meet you, I 'm sure, 
 not the cabinet." 
 
 " Fancy being invited to meet a cabinet ! " 
 
 " One is often asked to meet a bit of one," declared 
 the jocular Lord Hounslow. 
 
 After dinner they all four left the dining-room 
 together, and went at once to Lady Salford's library 
 where the Buhl cabinet had been placed. Five 
 minutes later Miss Twigg was announced. 
 
 Frank pointed out the excellences of the cabinet 
 with great magnanimity, as he declared, seeing the 
 article had not been purchased at his establishment, 
 and that he did not personally admire Buhl. 
 
 " For my part," said Miss Dene, " I shall consider 
 you have been cheated, Gladys, if it does not prove 
 to contain a secret drawer." 
 
 " Enclosing a treasure," interpolated Hounslow. 
 
 '' Of course," agreed Miss Dene. " Who ever 
 heard of a secret drawer without a treasure ? You 
 insist needlessly on details. Lord Hounslow." 
 
 " If," observed Frank, " this cabinet contains a 
 secret drawer at all, this is where it certainly will be," 
 and he gently pressed a little inlaid pillar on one side 
 
 254 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 of an arched pigeon-hole. The " secret " drawer was 
 there, and proved to be quite empty. 
 
 " Is there one on the other side too ? " 
 
 " Not usually," replied Frank ; " but you can 
 try." 
 
 Miss Dene did try, and it proved that there was 
 a second drawer. In it was a single piece of faded 
 paper of official and uninteresting appearance. 
 
 " How stupid ! " she complained ; " the roll of 
 banknotes has evidently been removed by some 
 unscrupulous person. . . ." 
 
 " Before you could get at it," suggested Hounslow. 
 
 " And only this dull piece of paper left," continued 
 Miss Dene, ignoring his interruption with dignity. 
 
 "It looks like a water-rate," remarked Lady 
 Salford. 
 
 '* Let us read it, at any rate," urged Frank. 
 
 The Cassowary nodded sharply, as if to point out 
 that there was one sensible person besides herself 
 in the company. 
 
 The paper that looked like a " water-rate " was 
 handed to Frank, and he flushed oddly as soon as he 
 had glanced at it. 
 
 For a moment he said nothing, but kept his eyes 
 fixed on the faded paper, then he looked up and said 
 quietly — 
 
 " I d.m sure, Lady Salford, no one sympathises 
 more sincerely than I do with you in your natural 
 disappointment at not finding hidden treasure. 
 But to tell the truth, what you have found is of much 
 greater importance to me." 
 
 " What is it ? " they all asked. " Not another 
 will of your grandfather's ? 
 
 " No ; but something quite as surprising, and 
 nearly as useful. This is the certified copy of the 
 marriage certificate of my grandfather to " — and here 
 
 255 
 
A NEW CURIOSITY SHOP. 
 
 Frank glanced at the Cassowary — " to Jessica Twigg 
 on the 3rd of November, i860." 
 
 He handed the paper to the old lady. 
 
 " H'm — yes. Jessica Twigg, daughter of Ephraim 
 and Maria ; pretty sister, right enough. Died next 
 spring. Married Jabez Street, son of Hiram ; 
 never thought he had a father. H'm." 
 
 " But why," inquired Hounslow, " is this as good 
 as a will ? Explain position." 
 
 Everyone laughed ; quite involuntarily he was 
 again clicking like the Cassowary. 
 
 " This marriage," explained Frank, " took place 
 in November, i860 ; the disinheriting will is dated 
 some time before that, and a subsequent marriage 
 invalidates a will. So that my grandfather died, in 
 reality, intestate, and his only child — my father — is 
 still his heir at law." 
 
 " Oh, my aunt ! " exclaimed the fervidly ver- 
 nacular Lord Hounslow. 
 
 256 
 
A Shadow of Death. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 I AM only a globe-trotter. 
 
 I am neither a Public Works, like young MacPegg, 
 who lately shot himself in the bungalow down by 
 the residency, nor a judge, hke old Pawney, who, 
 they say, has mislaid his wife. It need hardly be 
 said I am not the Resident, and indeed I have quite 
 as little business in Rajputana as he has. I am, 
 not to put too fine a point upon it, merely a visitor 
 staying with my ancient schoolfellow, Clive Warren, 
 who has a queer billet in these parts in connection 
 with ryots. Oddly enough, it is not his nominal 
 duty to quell them ; on the contrary, he has to 
 " develop their interests and report thereon to the 
 Supreme Government." 
 
 Our intimacy is of long standing, for it began in 
 our boyhood, when it was Warren's custom — not 
 exclusively of an afternoon — to punch my head, 
 which, being very large, was much in request among 
 my schoolfellows for that purpose. 
 
 We met again a month or so ago in Calcutta, 
 whither I had arrived from Japan, on the business 
 above alluded to, and where he was engaged in 
 presenting one of those reports to the Supreme 
 Government. We were as much delighted to see 
 
 257 
 17 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 each other as might have been expected from our 
 long and contented separation — vide the talented 
 author of Northanger Abbey — and he immediately 
 insisted on bringing me back here with him to see 
 what x\nglo-Indian life is like in an up-country 
 station, and a native " Protected " state. I am no 
 politician, and I must confess that until I came here 
 I never understood why such an outcry is made at 
 home against Protection. I quite see now it would 
 never do for England. 
 
 But life here is very agreeable for those who are 
 unprotected like myself, and it has a novelty surpass- 
 ing that of any pantomime, and almost any 
 curtain-hfter. 
 
 I mention my being merely a globe-trotter, because 
 I hope thus to disarm criticism. I am not up to the 
 minutiae of Anglo-Indian description : I can just call 
 luncheon " tiffin," and my early cup of tea " chota- 
 hazri." I have presence of mind enough to offer 
 fellows a cheroot when I want them to help them- 
 selves out of my cigar-case — and how warmly one 
 urges their acceptance when they are Rs. 2.8 a 
 hundred. Yes, and to pronounce cheroot as if it 
 began with a capital " T." I have broken myself of 
 calling " gharis " cabs, and " pegs " whiskies and 
 sodas. I shout for " ag " when I w^ant the matches, 
 and for " chokra " when I mean the waiter ; but, 
 bless you, I am nothing but ] a beginner, and 
 when I talk Hindustani to the servants — natives, I 
 meant to say — I break into a cold perspiration if 
 they begin to answer me in that language. So, if 
 I give things English names where I don't know the 
 Indian ones, I hope you will kindly excuse it — for 
 Rome was not built in a day, and one can't forget 
 one's native language in five weeks, however 
 intelligent one may be. 
 
 258 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 One of my " imported ways " — as Warren calls 
 them — is a habit of going out in the middle of the 
 day to look for things to photograph, which, every- 
 one assures me, will end in fever, and probably the 
 grave. I did this at first in a small hat — I do 
 think I 'm coming on — but it gave such offence, 
 that I had to take to a " terai," viz. two grey felt 
 wide-awakes, worn one over the other in the tradi- 
 tional Hebraic manner. Even then I was told by 
 all the station that I should have a touch of the sun 
 before I was much older ; but this I put down to 
 local pride, for it is extraordinary how the Anglo- 
 Indian plumes itself on the horrors of its climate. 
 
 A few days ago, in my midday wanderings, I 
 found myself several miles from cantonments in a 
 very characteristic spot, which at once took my 
 fancy, and where I made up my mind that there was 
 subject-matter for several volleys of my hand- 
 camera. 
 
 It is a valley, not very wide, nor indeed very long — 
 perhaps a quarter of a mile in width, and rather 
 more than twice as much in length. It is entirely 
 treeless, except that in one part of it there stands 
 a group of dead banyans. Perhaps those weird 
 trees require moisture about their roots, and 
 certainly there was not enough anywhere in that 
 valley to dissolve the gum at the back of a two-pie 
 stamp — there 's local colour for you ! I begin to 
 regret my foolish frankness as to being only a 
 globe-trotter. 
 
 The valley is very stony, and the stones are 
 evidently the chic place for the local residents to 
 crawl and dart about on about midday. In the 
 middle of the valley stands a ruined temple — I 
 should rather say a temple very much out of repair, 
 and apparently deserted. In India you can never 
 
 239 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 exactly tell whether a temple really is deserted ; 
 but there was certainly no clergy-house attached. 
 
 It was not an uncommon make of temple. There 
 was a sort of little courtyard in front, surrounded by 
 a low wall. Then a square room — the sanctuary 
 itself — shut in by walls on three sides, the fourth 
 consisting mainly of a wide doorwa}^ with pillars 
 and a couple of window-openings ; over all a minar, 
 or blunt spire, rose forty feet or so into the air, this 
 pagoda arrangement being very mmch enriched 
 w4th carvings of Hindu gods and goddesses of 
 singularly unfettered manners. 
 
 The front of the temple faced down the valley 
 towards Benares or Timbuctoo, or some such sacred 
 spot, the long, blank sides looking therefore to right 
 and left. Opposite one of these, a dozen yards or 
 less away, was another very tiny temple, suggestive 
 of the bigger temple having pupped and drowned 
 all the others. 
 
 I first photographed the valley as a whole, then, 
 drawing nearer, opened fire on the two temples ; 
 next I did the pup alone, after which I raked the front 
 of the mother at close range, so as to show the carved 
 pillars of the door, with a dusky ghmpse of the 
 bland Deity within — the gentle Parwati, wreathed 
 with skulls, and belted with life-like human heads. 
 
 I ended with the weird dead trees, after which 
 I began to feel that the valley was constructed 
 on the principles of a bain-marie, only that it was 
 upside down, and I was entirely exposed to the 
 fire above me. 
 
 I therefore retreated to the pup, intending there 
 to eat my biscuits and drink the tepid liquid out of 
 my flask, and perhaps fire another parting shot or so 
 at the parent bird while doing so. It was not 
 disagreeable to find oneself in the shade, and I sat 
 
 260 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 down in the tiny sanctuaiy with a sense of making 
 myself at home that Ganesh himself could not have 
 surpassed, though it w^as his shrine. I took the stop- 
 per from the flask, and began to suck out its contents 
 with no other preoccupation than that of preventing 
 my tongue from being dragged up inside. I then 
 munched a sandwich, with a brutal disregard of its 
 beefy unfitness in that place, that would have done 
 honour to an old-established sahib of the sahib-log. 
 
 But suddenly my munching stopped dead in mid 
 munch, and the meaty slice was suffered to drop 
 unheeded out of the unbitten fragment in my hand. 
 So that on the floor of Gunputty's shrine lay a portion 
 of the Sacrosanct Gaigosht, and yet he smiled 
 inanely out of his wide elephant mouth, and 
 rakishly as ever held his trunk to one side, and 
 gesticulated with his four hands. 
 
 What made me stare was this : 
 
 There was the valley — that alone would not have 
 so much surprised me — there was the heathenish, 
 irrelevant temple turning its bhnd side-wall to me, 
 and there was that ghostly group of what had been 
 trees, and over all the blazing fires of an Indian 
 midday sun. The whole valley panted and gasped 
 in the horrible glare — the air swayed and shivered 
 over the baked rock and slag ; and all this I noticed 
 with a strong apprehension, quite different from the 
 merely pictorial notice I had given the scene at first, 
 and yet I was consciously regarding now none of 
 these things. My eyes were fastened on the line of 
 blank, blazing wall in front of me, and my eyes were 
 probably starting out of my head. 
 
 I have read many ghost stories in my time, and 
 I have noted with true concern the degeneration of 
 the species, for what could be feebler than the mere 
 contemporary spook ? There have been times when 
 
 261 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 I was younger when I have read of ghosts until such 
 a sense of the supernatural came over me that I truly 
 deserved the Victoria Cross for venturing alone after 
 dark into the spare bedroom. But never, until 
 that day, in the pitiless light of an Indian noon, 
 had I fully learned what supernatural horror means. 
 It means a sort of chilly, burning sickness, and 
 pervading, penetrating sense of contamination, 
 and vague dread — as a foul criminal might feel 
 suddenly arrested, without any information as to 
 which of his crimes has been dragged to light, a 
 shuddering, nerveless wretchedness, a sinking at 
 the heart, as if one's soul should be sHpping down 
 out of its raiment of the flesh into fathomless, cold 
 depths beneath. 
 
 It was a sudden, sharp revelation of wickedness, 
 a personal consciousness of the presence of crime. 
 And yet what I actually saw as yet was only this : 
 on the wall over against me was a shadow, the shadow 
 of a man, silhouetted sharply on the dazzling, 
 shadeless stone, as upon a screen. 
 
 Now when we see shadows on a screen in common 
 life, the screen is of translucent fabric, the shadow 
 is thrown on it from a light behind. But here the 
 screen was of solid stone, and the hght was almost 
 directly overhead, if antyhing, a little on my side 
 of the wall. The shadow should have fallen the 
 other way, foreshortened, on to the flagged pavement 
 between me and the temple. 
 
 And what cast the shadow-shape ? Where was 
 this tall, slight man of the sahib-log — as was plain 
 from his dress — whose presentment was before me ? 
 With a thumping heart I crept out from my little 
 shrine and peered around. Except myself there was 
 nothing that had life in all the valley, save the 
 darting lizards on the stones. And the shadow was 
 
 262 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 not motionless : it moved, so that sometimes one 
 would have said that the man who cast it must be 
 facing towards me, then he would turn his side face, 
 and the profile was clean-cut against the glaring 
 stone. A very handsome man, one would say, 
 with fine, high-bred features ; of masterful bearing, 
 and impatient. And presently another shadow 
 grew upon the wall — a girl's, but not an English 
 girl's. The dress was native, and there was some- 
 thing Eastern in the very walk and mien of this 
 shadow lady — for she was a lady. One felt it without 
 arguing from the difference between her dress and 
 that of the ordinary Hindu women of the bazaar. 
 
 And now they met ; and I stood breathless, 
 watching, as if gazing on an acted tableau, but with 
 what a different interest ! My heart had risen up 
 into my throat and seemed to choke me with its 
 sickening beating. I had a horrible, unreasoning 
 knowledge that I was staring at the first scene of a 
 tragedy. 
 
 They met, and the girl was drawn into the young 
 man's arms, and there upon his breast she lay 
 contentedly ; her head was pillowed on his breast, 
 and his was bent upon it ; and now there came 
 upon the stone another shadow, another actor took 
 part in the strange drama. At the corner of the wall, 
 towards the bottom of the valley — the corner nearest 
 to the front of the temple — appeared the shadow of 
 a muffled hand ; it crept farther forward on the 
 screen of stone, showing a draped arm, and finally 
 part of a face was shadowed on the wall ; this was 
 a man's, but not a European's : there was enough 
 of the silhouette to show the Rajput lunghi, and 
 the very features were those of a Hindu. 
 
 But in his hand he held a strange thing : at first 
 its shadow was not separated from his own, but 
 
 263 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 presently it writhed out into distinct representation. 
 It was the twisting, curling shadow of a cobra, 
 held fast round the neck by the hood, its long body 
 slowly coiling in the air. Then he who held it 
 stooped, his whole head being shadowed on the 
 stone as he leaned forward, and the cobra was set 
 upon the ground. The arm was withdrawn, the 
 hand and face disappeared ; there were left only the 
 shadowed lovers, and making towards them, creeping 
 rapidly, the frightful snake. 
 
 An insane cry of warning broke from my parted 
 lips ; it woke the stony echoes of that hateful 
 valley, and sounded ghastly to myself as the rocks 
 and temple gave it back ; but the fated lovers did 
 not hear. Wreathed in that pictured embrace, they 
 heeded nothing but themselves, and towards them 
 writhed the hooded reptile ; low and indeterminate 
 was his horrid shadow as he slid along the ground, 
 but now close behind the man he slowly reared him- 
 self into sight, and once again I cried aloud, though 
 my throat was parched and the sound came stifled, 
 as when one tries to shout in nightmare. 
 
 Back the deadly reptile drew his head, broader 
 was the hideous hood displayed, and then he struck ! 
 — as he did so his shadow losing itself in that of the 
 young man who was his victim. 
 
 My eyes burned within my head ; I covered them 
 for one moment with my hand, and when I looked 
 again there was nothing ! There blazed the flat 
 wall in the shadeless light, and on it not one smallest 
 shadow of anything animate or inanimate. 
 
 264 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 My name is Clive Warren : I am collector of the 
 Ranipur district, and I hold a special mission from 
 the Supreme Government as well. I have been in 
 this station about ten months, having been trans- 
 ferred from the Garamabad district last x\pril. 
 
 Six or seven weeks ago I knocked up against old 
 Brock in Calcutta, where he was on the globe-trot, 
 and brought him up here to show him what life in 
 up-country stations is like. I wish to goodness I had 
 let it alone. He is likely to be a hideous nuisance 
 to me. 
 
 He is the most pig-headed ass in Asia, and he used 
 to be a harmless poor devil, who generally did what 
 one told him, and was contented. I should like to 
 have seen him kick up his heels at school as he has 
 been doing here. 
 
 To start with, he began with the idea — that all 
 your globe-trotters have — that India is rather a chilly 
 place, if anything, and behaved himself accordingly. 
 It was quite useless to warn him that if he would go 
 out in the middle of the day, prowling round for 
 things to photograph, he would be down witli fever 
 before he had been a week in the station. He stuck 
 to it, and as a rule went about in a small hat, as if he 
 was on a walking-tour in Greenland. 
 
 Of course, the natural result accrued : he has had 
 such a touch of the sun that he has gone quite silly. 
 Though goodness knows it was not worth his while to 
 go off his chump ; there was so little of it at best. 
 
 265 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 He came in one afternoon about an hour and a half 
 after tiffin-time, and frightened my wife out of her 
 wits : he was so strange in his manner, so restless and 
 excited. He did nothing but ask for me, and as soon 
 as I appeared let me see at once that he was not him- 
 self. He became fiercely mysterious, and talked a 
 parcel of rot about some terrible crime that he was on 
 the scent of — I declare it made a fellow quite jumpy 
 to listen to the man. Talk of nervous excitement ! 
 I never saw anything like it. Well, I sent round for 
 old Pillett, and he sloped in, quite by chance as it 
 were, and as soon as he looked at Brock, called out, 
 ^' I say, my dear fellow, you 've done it at last. 
 You 've got fever ! Let 's have your temperature." 
 
 Brock did not seem a bit keen about shoving the 
 thermometer into his mouth, and swore he had 
 nothing the matter with him : only, he muttered, he 
 had been witness of a terrible tragedy, and he could 
 neither rest nor be easy till he had done something 
 towards its discovery. But Pillett was quite firm, 
 and for a minute or so Brock had to hold his tongue, 
 and stand still with the thermometer sticking out 
 of the corner of his mouth, while we tried to chat 
 indifferently. 
 
 When he had got it back Pillett looked a bit 
 puzzled ; then he shook the thing, and seemed to 
 think of trying it again, but Brock would not have 
 it at any price. 
 
 "Certainly there is no great fever," admitted the 
 doctor-sahib gloomily, as if he had hoped to find 
 a hundred-and-six point-eight or thereabouts," but 
 I should strongly advise your going to bed. Brock." 
 
 But Brock intimated pretty plainly that he did 
 not want anybody's advice. 
 
 " I shall go and see the judge," he remarked, 
 earnestly, " or is it the Resident ? Does one go to the 
 
 266 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 Resident or the judge about criminal cases — in cases 
 of murder, for instance ? " 
 
 Pillett and I tried not to catch each other's eye : 
 all the same, I felt a sort of creepiness down my back. 
 Who so quiet as old Podgy Brock at ordinary times ! 
 The very last chap one would have suspected of 
 jim-jams. The doctor spoke soothingly. But Brock 
 grew extremely shirty, as if he twigged perfectly. 
 
 "It is useless speaking on a matter of such im- 
 portance to fellows like you," he declared with great 
 candour. " If a horrible crime could be traced with 
 quinine or a clinical thermometer, you 'd be in- 
 valuable ; but as it is, I shall go to the Resident. If 
 he 's not the right man, he at least will have sense 
 enough to tell me who is." 
 
 We thanked him kindty, and Pillett said " All 
 right." But all the same he advised me presently not 
 to lose sight of the poor chap. So off I started and 
 dogged him to the residency, where it was " darwasa 
 band," so we might both have saved ourselves 
 the trouble. But he was not going to be done. Off 
 he trotted to the judge's bungalow at the very other 
 end of the cantonments, and all on his two feet, mind 
 you, as if the early afternoon was just the time for 
 tramping along a particularly badly-shaded road in 
 Rajputana. 
 
 The judge had gone to Chotamahal last night, and 
 was not expected back till late to-night, so there was 
 another disappointment. Back we trudged together, 
 Brock seeming too much preoccupied to resent my 
 having followed him. 
 
 " You know a place about two miles from here, 
 where there 's a temple in a little valley ? " he 
 suddenly asked me. 
 
 I am a fellow who takes no interest in the neigli- 
 bourhood beyond my work, and I seldom poke round 
 
 267 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 in search of the picturesque. I did not seem to 
 recognise the place, though he went on to describe it 
 more fully. 
 
 " I don't know what it may be called," he said^ 
 " but it is a mile or so beyond Sikandra, and the 
 temple is one to Devi." 
 
 As about ninety per cent, of the temples are 
 dedicated to that divine female, that did not help me 
 much. Personally, Hindu temples bore me to 
 extinction. 
 
 " It is a horribly weird, lonely place," he went on. 
 *' I was there this morning." 
 
 I remarked that, were I he, I should go there no 
 more. It was evidently an undesirable spot ; it was 
 there, no doubt, he had got his fever. 
 
 But he paid no attention whatever to my 
 practical suggestion, and went on eagerly with 
 the most awfully lunatic farrago of nonsense you 
 ever heard. I had one intense feeling of 
 thankfulness, which was that he was a friendless 
 bachelor. If he were to die on my hands, what 
 embarrassment this would spare me. I know 
 nothing less easy than to write and tell a lady 
 you have had the pleasure of burying her husband 
 this afternoon. 
 
 At last he seemed to have some consciousness that 
 I was aware he was raving, after which he fell into 
 an irritable, moody silence. By bed-time he really 
 had a much higher temperature : but still Pillett 
 seemed disappointed with it. 
 
 " It 's high," he said, " certainly. But not nearly 
 high enough to account for the delirium." 
 
 In the middle of the night I heard him moving, 
 and went to his door. 
 
 " For goodness sake do not bring a light ! " he 
 shouted. 
 
 268 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 Then I heard him run to the door and turn the key- 
 in the lock. 
 
 " I am developing ! " he called out through the 
 door. " Don't you mind me — I am all right." 
 
 I was beastly sleepy, and went back to bed. 
 I certainly hoped he would not develop much further : 
 for old Podgy Brock he had already developed con- 
 siderably. In the morning Pillett came round to 
 see him. 
 
 " It 's an awfully rum case," he confided to me, 
 after again taking the temperature, and asking him 
 a number of questions. " There is fever, no doubt, 
 but nothing very much, and the whole thing does not 
 fit a bit with the ordinary India fever. It is much 
 more like a sort of brain-fever." 
 
 Old Pillett insisted on his lying low^ that day, at all 
 events, and after a lot of fuss he consented, but only 
 on conditions, the principal condition being that the 
 Resident and the judge should be brought to see him. 
 Accordingly they came, Pillett and I being present. 
 
 " Are cases of snake-bite common here ? " he began, 
 and the doctor and I looked straight to our front : 
 he was as sharp as mustard, and would have caught 
 us sniggering in a moment. 
 
 The Resident shifted a bit in his chair, and said 
 they were, unfortunately, terribly common. 
 
 " It is computed," he stated, " that eighty thousand 
 people die of snake-bite every year." 
 
 " Mostly natives," interjected the judge comfort- 
 ably. 
 
 " But in this neighbourhood ? " 
 
 " This district is not specially unlucky : no, the 
 Deccan, I believe, suffers more." 
 
 " But cases occur ? 
 
 " Oh, frequently : large numbers, in the course of 
 the year." 
 
 269 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 " So that isolated cases would not attract much 
 attention ? " queried Brock eagerly. 
 
 ''Well," replied the Resident, " it is as the judge 
 remarked : the vast majority of cases are those of 
 natives. You see, they go about with bare legs. If 
 any of our fellows are bitten it is mostly through 
 a thick boot. Fatal cases are very rare among us." 
 
 Brock paused ; then he stared intently at the 
 Resident, and demanded — 
 
 *' Do you remember any ? " 
 
 " I remember one : it was poor young Savile of the 
 32nd Lancers. He was attached to the Lieutenant- 
 Governor of Madras, A.D.C. or something. Very 
 good-looking fellow." 
 
 " Tall ? " 
 
 " Well, no. Rather a tight little chap ; but a 
 tremendous sportsman." 
 
 " You 're sure he was short ? " 
 
 '* Certain. All those Saviles are ; comes from 
 breeding in-and-in, I expect. Lord Kingstown's 
 people and the Dundrum Saviles are always marrying 
 one another." 
 
 Brock seemed disappointed. 
 
 '* When was he here ? " 
 
 " Here ! Bless you, he never was here. It 
 happened near Goty. He never was in the North- 
 West Provinces or Central Provinces." 
 
 Brock fell back haggard. 
 
 " But here ? " he persisted, " do you remember 
 no case here ? " 
 
 The Resident shook his head. 
 
 " I 've only been here two years," he said ; '' there 
 has been no case since I came." 
 
 " I 've been here five, and there 's been no case," 
 said the judge, as if it was due to him that there 
 had not. 
 
 270 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 " Has no one been here more than five years ? "^ 
 asked Brock, almost indignantly. 
 
 " Well, most of us find five years quite long 
 enough," said the Resident blandly ; and we all 
 grinned our agreement with him. " Ranipur is na 
 catch, I can tell you." 
 
 " Chudder 's been a long while, I fancy," observed 
 Pillett meditatively. 
 
 Chudder is bear-leader to the young rajah. At 
 the moment he was on leave ; at which intelhgence 
 Brock gnashed his teeth openly. 
 
 "And now," inquired the Resident mildly, "why 
 do you want to know all this ? It seems to have 
 some peculiar interest for j^ou, Mr. Brock." 
 
 If Brock were not the future Lord Gracechurch 
 I doubt if the Resident would have answered all his 
 potting questions as patiently; but the Resident is 
 one of those men who can no more help cottoning 
 to a title than some other men can help pulling the 
 last leg sharp into bed at night lest the devil should 
 grab hold of it. 
 
 " Interest ! " cried Brock : " it 's not only peculiar, 
 it 's terrible. If it is not unravelled some awful 
 crime will go unpunished." 
 
 Again we looked to our front, and the judge 
 fidgeted. He had a constitutional horror of anyone 
 with the jumps. He had had them himself, and liked 
 to forget it. 
 
 " Listen ! " said Brock, turning sharp on us, 
 though none of us were interrupting, " I will' not say 
 now why I have asked all these questions. I had 
 meant doing so when I asked you to come here ; 
 but I will ask you to go with me where I was yester- 
 day, and at the same hour ; and if you need then to 
 inquire the reason of my questions I will certainly 
 tell you." 
 
 271 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 He proceeded to tell us where he was yesterday, 
 "but Pillett put a stopper instantly on the idea of his 
 going there or anywhere else that day. 
 
 " And you choose the very time of day that would 
 be most dangerous ! My good sir, you are in a very 
 nervous state, and a very little would unhinge you 
 altogether." 
 
 For three or four days Brock consented to wait, 
 then he would wait no more, and the day before 
 yesterday we accompanied him to his bothering 
 valley, where he led us to a little temple facing the 
 side- wall of a bigger one. 
 
 "It is about a quarter of an hour too soon," he 
 said, sinking his voice to a sort of mystic whisper, 
 '* but that is better than being too late." 
 
 He was evidently highly excited, and Pillett shook 
 his head ominously as he listened to him. I pulled 
 out a cheroot, but Brock almost knocked it out of 
 lay hand. 
 
 " Good heavens ! " he said, in a passionate, stifled 
 voice, " would you stand smoking here with such a 
 tragedy enacted within a dozen feet of you ? " 
 
 The judge fidgeted, and Pillett hardly tried any 
 longer to hide his opinion of poor Brock's state. 
 
 He led me aside. 
 
 " We 'd better pretend to see whatever he says he 
 sees," he whispered ; " it 's the only way." 
 
 I nodded, and presently Pillett got hold of the 
 Resident, v/ho promised to act on the tip. 
 
 As the time drew nearer poor Brock's excitement 
 was really something terrible to witness. He broke 
 into a cold sweat, and his whole body shook. We all 
 pretended not to notice him : Pillett said it was the 
 only way. 
 
 " Now ! " whispered Brock. 
 
 He had his watch in his hand, and I could see it 
 
 272 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 was just twenty-five minutes past one. His lips 
 looked parched, and he could hardly articulate the 
 words. We watched his face ; it was turned upon 
 the flat line of wall of the temple opposite. His eyes 
 were fixed upon it as if he were in a mesmeric trance, 
 and Pillett told me afterwards that he then began 
 to think it was, in fact, some very rum case of 
 hypnotic influence. 
 
 " What do you see ? " whispered the doctor 
 earnestly, as if he saw the deuce of a lot himself. 
 
 But Brock shook his head. 
 
 " Nothing yet," he said ; " perhaps my watch is 
 fast.'^ 
 
 We waited breathlessly, though none of us but 
 poor Brock had the least expectation of seeing any- 
 thing at all. The mere strain of waiting thus in 
 silence makes one feel queer, just as when one is 
 watching artillery practice, and waiting for the gun 
 to go off. 
 
 At last Brock drew a long breath. 
 
 " What time do you all make it ? '' he asked, and 
 we told him. 
 
 The mean time between us was thirty-one minutes 
 past one. 
 
 " It was all over the other day by twenty-six 
 minutes past," he said ; " but it is possible my watch 
 was slow then. The real time may have been 
 later." 
 
 We nodded, and waited on in silence. At last 
 I could not stand it any longer. 
 
 " Your watch must have been slow indeed the 
 other day," I observed bitterly ; " or it may be thai 
 tragedies do not, after all, occur licre daily. Few 
 places are so fortunate as that." 
 
 " The tragedy may have happened years ago," he 
 replied, still glaring at that flat expanse of wall. 
 
 273 
 18 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, I thought it was on Monday," 
 I remarked with withering sarcasm. 
 
 " No, no : you do not understand," he answered. 
 
 I admitted that that was very probable, and after 
 a few more minutes Brock himself said there was no 
 use in waiting any longer. He looked puzzled and 
 worried, and Pillett told me afterwards it would have 
 been almost better for the chap if he had fancied 
 he had seen something. We started home. Brock 
 growing calmer as we got farther away from the 
 valley. 
 
 He was evidently busy with his own thoughts. 
 I thought he would apologise for our having seen 
 nothing ; but he did not. As we were turning into 
 our compound, he suddenly asked — 
 
 " And Chudder — when will he be back ? " 
 
 " Chudder ? " 
 
 " Yes. Didn't you say that was the name ? — 
 the young rajah's bear-leader, who has been here 
 a long time." 
 
 " Oh, ah — yes, that 's his name. Why, he took 
 a year's leave to Europe. He 's only been gone a 
 month. He '11 be back in about eleven months." 
 
 " That fits in well enough," remarked Brock, 
 getting out of the tum-tum, and he walked into the 
 bungalow looking easier in his mind than I had seen 
 him for the last four days. 
 
 This morning he went off en route for Mount 
 Abu, Ahmedabad, Baroda, and Bombay. I must 
 say I breathed more freely when I was rid of him. 
 I wonder whether I had better write a line to old 
 Gracechurch about him. He seemed so sensible 
 the last day or so I do not think it is necessary. 
 
 274 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Eleven months ago I wrote the above, and now I 
 have to add a sequel. I was sitting with Pillett a 
 week ago on my verandah, smoking, and was just 
 about to raise a peg to my Hps when a tonga drove 
 in at our compound, and who should be in it but old 
 Brock. 
 
 " Good lord ! " I ejaculated. 
 
 " I am quite well, thank you, Warren," says Brock, 
 as free and easy as you please, jumping out of the 
 tonga, and coming up the verandah steps with a 
 hand-bag. " How do, Pillett ? Have you a bed 
 for me, Warren ? If not, I '11 go to the dak- 
 bungalow. You did not expect me, did you ? " 
 
 Of course I didn't ; but it was bosh talking of 
 the dak-bungalow. Anglo-Indian hospitality is not 
 w^hat it was : in these days of trains and tourists w^e 
 really cannot afford it. But we have not arrived yet 
 at leaving an old schoolfellow to the bleak comfort 
 of a dak-bungalow. 
 
 My bearer was already seeing about Brock's 
 baggage being taken indoors. He now inquired 
 very politely, but without much enthusiasm, for 
 Mrs. Warren and the butcha. 
 
 " There are two now," I repHed, rather sadly ; 
 " they 're all right, thanks." 
 
 *' And Chudder ? " continued Brock eagerly. 
 
 " Chudder ! " cried Pillett and I in a breath. 
 
 " Yes ; is he back ? He was on leave, you know, 
 when I was here before." 
 
 275 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 We stared. Of course he was. Brock had never, 
 so far as we knew, cJapped eyes on him. 
 
 " Oh, yes, he 's back. He got back last week. 
 It 's very nice of you to ask after him," I said 
 sarcastically. 
 
 But Brock was not a bit sat on. 
 
 " Let 's see," he said, *' whereabouts is his 
 bungalow ? " 
 
 " It 's the big one nearest to the palace gates, at 
 the bazaar end of cantonments," I answered in 
 astonishment. 
 
 " Do you feel inclined to stroll that far and 
 introduce me ? " asked Brock, as cool as a cucumber, 
 and I actually got up, and away we went, all three 
 of us. x\s Pillett remarked afterwards, there 's a 
 sort of power about the chap. Brock had only 
 arrived in Bombay three days ago. 
 
 " You '11 probably get a letter to-morrow," he 
 said, " to tell you I 'm coming. By the way, I 'm 
 engaged to be married now." 
 
 I remarked sweetly that that accounted for his 
 sudden determination to revisit Asia. W^hereat he 
 stared. 
 
 " On the contrary," he declared gravely, " it 
 made it rather hard to arrange. Nor is my 
 determination at all sudden ; I always intended to 
 come back. I only waited for Chudder's return." 
 
 Pillett had my arm, and he dug me in the ribs in a 
 way that a doctor might have known was dangerous. 
 
 " He ought to be thundering grateful," I observed. 
 But*Brock took no notice ; his power of ignoring 
 thefmost biting sarcasm constitutes his peculiar 
 strength. He is as invulnerable as a tortoise. 
 
 Chudder Sahib was at the palace, but I left word 
 that he was to come and dine with us, and as it 
 turned out he did so. As soon as they were 
 
 276 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 introduced, Brock handed him a chit in an envelope, 
 coolly remarking that he would call on Major 
 Chudder next day about noon. 
 
 I had no opportunity of getting hold of Chudder 
 alone to assure him that my old friend was really 
 quite harmless. But luckily they got on like a 
 house afire. 
 
 " Warren," said Brock to me next day about 
 quarter to twelve, " I 'm going to keep my appoint- 
 ment with Major Chudder. I have asked him to 
 come with me to that valley. Would you like to 
 come with us ? " 
 
 " Hadn't we better get the Resident and the judge 
 and Pillett ? " I inquired. " They enjoyed it so 
 last time." 
 
 " Pray do not come if it bores you," said Brock 
 calmly. " Chudder is really more suitable. I 
 merely made the offer." 
 
 For some reason I decided to go with him. 
 There 's a deal of human nature in a man, as the late 
 Mr. Lowell observes, and his obvious indifference 
 as to whether I went or stayed at home made me 
 rather keen to go. 
 
 At Chudder 's door there was a dog-cart, and 
 Chudder himself was ready. We jumped in, and 
 in a quarter of an hour were near the valley. 
 
 " We '11 get out here," he snid, " and send the 
 sais home with the cart." 
 
 He proceeded to do so. telling the man to return 
 for us in tliree-quarters of an hour. 
 
 " What you wrote to me is very strange," said 
 Chudder, as we walked towards the valley, turning to 
 Brock. 
 
 '* Is it possible you came out again to India about 
 that affair ? " I asked Brock. 
 
 He nodded gravely. 
 
 277 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 " It was on my conscience. A ghastly crime has 
 been brought to my knowledge, and I feel bound 
 to do what I can to bring it to light." 
 
 " But, Brock, we came here with you and saw 
 nothing." 
 
 " I know ; but what I saw is perhaps to be seen 
 only once in the year, on the anniversary of the 
 crime's committal. This is the day : it is a year ago 
 to-day since I saw this thing." He turned to 
 Chudder : " And do you," he asked earnestly, 
 " remember any case of death from snake-bite 
 among the sahib-log here ? " 
 
 " Yes, one ; and that is the strange part of it. 
 It was a young fellow who was assistant judge here 
 then — seven years ago at least — and I well remember 
 him. He was very much what you describe : tall, 
 stalwart and slim, with thin aquiline features, and 
 very aristocratic bearing. He was about seven-and- 
 twenty, or perhaps thirty." 
 
 We were in the valley. Certainly there was 
 something ghastly about it : a sort of horrible 
 criminality in its suggestion. 
 
 " That was very odd about the photograph," 
 said Chudder. Whereupon I looked interrogatively 
 at Brock, who made an explanation. 
 
 " Do you remember how you and Pillett were 
 determined I had fever that day ? Well, I admit 
 I was feverishly excited, and I could not sleep. 
 So I got up and lighted my developing lamp, and 
 started developing a plate out of my hand-camera. 
 To my intense surprise I found it was a photograph 
 of the scene I had witnessed here ; then I remembered 
 that when I had cried out and started back, I had 
 brushed against the catch with my sleeve and I 
 suppose the plate was exposed ; of course, the plates 
 and exposure are instantaneous — anyway, there it 
 
 278 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 was. Just as I was trying to intensify it — hydro- 
 quinine is a wretched developer, though it is clean — 
 you came banging at my door, and flurried me so 
 much that on getting back to the washing-stand, 
 where I was working, I dropped the plate on to 
 the marble top, and it smashed into a hundred 
 atoms." 
 
 There was nothing the least cracked about Brock's 
 manner to-day, and as Chudder seemed to take him 
 quite seriously, I quietly did the same. 
 
 " Here we are," observed Brock, coolly pulling 
 out a small hand-camera and adjusting the exposing- 
 pin, so that one touch would fire it off. We none of 
 us now spoke much ; Brock was evidently again 
 growing excited, but so, I think, were we all three. 
 
 " Now! " said Brock, and he pointed to the wall 
 opposite us. He had his watch in his hand, and 
 this time his calculations were not out. 
 
 A creeping sensation came in my back, for there, 
 sure enough, plainly pictured on that blazing, 
 sunht wall, was the shadow of a young man such 
 as Chudder had described. 
 
 " My God ! " gasped Chudder, as the profile was 
 cut sharply on the wall, "it is poor Carnegie ! " 
 
 Click went the camera ; and quite calmly and 
 yet with an intense restrained excitement. Brock 
 pulled out the exposing-pin again. We watched, 
 staring at that blank wall as if our eyes were glued 
 to it, and I could plainly hear Chudder's heart 
 thumping against his side. H anything Brock was 
 the calmest of us ; my own breath seemed to clioke 
 me as it came. 
 
 Another portrait on the wall ! A girl's, a native 
 girl's, but no bazaari one. There was all the grace, 
 all the haughtiness of a Rajput princess in her 
 figure and in her movements. 
 
 279 
 
A SHADOW OF DEATH. 
 
 *' Do you know her also ? " whispered Brock, 
 as if the shadow might hear him. 
 
 I looked at Chudder : he was deathly pale. 
 
 "It is Saras wati, the princess," he stammered, 
 " elder sister of the rajah himself. Her father 
 was not the rajah's, they were half brother and 
 sister. She was called Moti Mahal, the Pearl of 
 the Palace." 
 
 " Yes," he stuttered hoarsely, " it is Lai Singh, 
 the girl's father. Such a deed would be held glorious 
 in a Rajput prince, whose daughter had forgotten 
 her pride." 
 
 " Do you think," inquired Brock presently, 
 " that with the evidence we have he could be 
 brought to justice ? " 
 
 Chudder shook his head doubtfully. 
 
 " Veels vithin veels," thought I, too limp as yet 
 for speech. 
 
 We started back to the place where the dog-cart 
 was to meet us. 
 
 *' Sahib," said the sais, when we got up to it, 
 " there has been a sudden thing in the palace." 
 
 " In the palace ! I was there less than two hours 
 ago," said Chudder. 
 
 The sais nodded. 
 
 *' Achcha, sahib ! An hour ago all right. Half 
 an hour ago Lai Singh Sahib, the rajah sahib's 
 uncle, drop dead in the palace." 
 
 280 
 
R 
 
 eversions. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " I PLAINLY perceive," observed Lady Haddon^. 
 " that you are about to make a fool of yourself." 
 
 Lady Haddon is universally spoken of as the most 
 charming woman in the world, and her manner now 
 lacked none of its usual sweetness. 
 
 Her brother thanked her ; but his charm of manner 
 was not so great, nor were his tones so sweet. 
 
 " It is obvious," explained the lady, " that before 
 you leave Haddon you will have proposed to Marjory 
 Eccleston ! " 
 
 Her manner retained its blandness, but it is possible 
 that there may have been the slightest conceivable 
 elevation of tone. 
 
 " Admitting the justice of your ' wild sunnise ' — 
 what then ? " 
 
 Captain Dorset drew a clean envelope towards him 
 and began to draw upon it a picture of a little man 
 with a hump putting a very improbable horse at a very 
 impossible fence. It was not the hunting season ; 
 but when idle or annoyed, this gentleman was apt to 
 
 281 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 draw little timber horses with little afflicted men on 
 them. 
 
 " If anyone were to bang a door now, or the house 
 were to be struck by lightning," remarked his sister, 
 watching him, " you would bite the tip of your 
 tongue off." 
 
 It was true that he was also much given to 
 protruding the extremity of that unruly member, 
 obliquely to the left, when engaged upon his 
 sketches. 
 
 " Doors are not banged in your well-ordered house," 
 he retorted, regretting that he found it impossible to 
 keep the tongue out while he talked. " And if the 
 house were struck by lightning you might be killed 
 yourself." 
 
 He wagged his head sidewise with some com- 
 plaisance ; but as the weather was singularly bright 
 and clear Lady Haddon did not seem much alarmed. 
 
 " If," she said, returning to the question of Miss 
 Eccleston, " you propose to her now, you will be a 
 goose. She has not got two red cents to knock 
 together." 
 
 " Fortunately," observed Captain Dorset, " I have 
 no desire that my wife should spend her time knock- 
 ing cents together, red or blue." 
 
 Lady Haddon laughed indulgently at this easy 
 pleasantry. 
 
 " All the same," she hinted, " they are convenient 
 things to have. One need not knock them unless one 
 feels inclined." 
 
 " The red cent is not a peculiarly valuable coin in 
 any country," objected the young man ; "in Great 
 Britain it is not even current." 
 
 His sister laughed again ; still indulgently, but 
 with a certain arriere-pensee that Captain Dorset 
 heard and instantly resented. 
 
 282 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " The metal," she said, " that Madge Eccleston is 
 so rich in is current coin in no quarter of the globe — 
 though doubtless useful everywhere/' 
 
 " And that ? " inquired her brother, savagely- 
 increasing the difficulties of his fence by the wanton 
 addition of a brook on the near side of it. 
 
 " Is brass," replied the lady suavely. 
 
 The young man scowled fiercely, and was about to 
 exclaim, but Lady Haddon had not finished. 
 
 " That girl has more assurance than any six 
 ordinary women of her age. She might be five-and- 
 thirty." 
 
 " Of course she might — if she had been bom in 
 1863 ! " 
 
 Captain Dorset fired this volley with a rather brutal 
 laugh. Lady Haddon reddened, for she recognised 
 the allusion to her own birthday on the 3rd 
 of April in the year mentioned, whereas for many 
 years she had been universally known as seven- 
 and-twenty. 
 
 Her brother was not spiteful, nor at all given to 
 striking below the belt. Not given, in fact, to engage 
 in Amazonian warfare at all. But he had been 
 surprised into ill-temper by his sister's tone in 
 speaking of Miss Eccleston. 
 
 " Madge Eccleston," he continued, seeing that his 
 sister had one foot alread}^ in the stirrup of her high 
 horse, " has, at all events, two quahties that should 
 commend her to your fellow-feehng. She is beautiful, 
 and has a delightful manner." 
 
 " Admitting my beauty and my manners," re- 
 marked his sister — not, as he perceived, admitting 
 those of Miss Eccleston — " it does not appear that 
 you can live upon them." 
 
 " Your beauty and your manners secured Haddon 
 and eleven thousand a year," remarked her brother, 
 
 283 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 slightly softening the asperities of the take-off in his 
 picture. 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 " You don't mention poor|Walter," she suggested. 
 
 " I meant him when I said Haddon," declared the 
 young man, grinning mendaciously. 
 
 *' But," objected the lady, " if Madge marries you 
 her beauty and her manners will not have secured a 
 baronet, a castle, and (as you optimistically put it) 
 eleven thousand a year." 
 
 '' She will have secured me ! " 
 
 " Exactly ! " 
 
 They both laughed ; their ill-tempers were not. 
 serious. 
 
 '* My dear Mark," said his ' sister confidentially, 
 '' the truth is you would both be throwing yourselves 
 away. She could do much better, and so could you." 
 
 " But if we love each other ? " inquired the 
 warrior, surveying his hunchback equestrian with 
 the indulgent fondness of a creator. 
 
 Lady Haddon made a peculiar noise in her throat, 
 not really an aristocratic sound : a sort of com- 
 promise between a cluck and a snort. 
 
 " Love your grandmother ! " she ejaculated. 
 
 " Why, certainly," asserted the gentleman. ** But 
 you know I am expressly forbidden to marry her ! " 
 
 His sister laughed again. 
 
 " About the only commandment you Ve ever 
 kept," she declared uncharitably. 
 
 " Not at all," asserted her brother stoutly, willing 
 to justify himself like the lawyer. " I have never 
 removed my neighbour's landmark. That crime 
 must have been prevalent at an epoch when hedges 
 were more portable than they are now." -■.■■' 
 
 " Now go, like a good boy," begged the lady, " and 
 let me answer all these tiresome letters." 
 
 284 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 The young man lighted a cigarette and stepped out 
 of his sister's window on to the broad stone terrace 
 that runs along the south front of Haddon Castle. 
 
 " I cannot trust him," thought the lady ; "he is 
 selfish in a way, but one can't build too much on that. 
 He likes his comforts and his luxuries ; he would be 
 miserable and insufferable if he had to give up one of 
 them. But they are so unreasoning ; they know all 
 that ; but when they think themselves in love they 
 choose to forget it ; only till the mischief is done, and 
 they are married and done for, then they remember 
 all about it. Oh, yes ; and the girl is soon enough 
 reminded. No, Mark, I do not trust you. As for 
 Madge, I thought she had sense enough, but I begin to 
 have misgivings. He is, of course, the dearest boy 
 in the world, and there can only be one opinion as to 
 his looks. And they are thrown so dreadfully 
 together here . . ." 
 
 285 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Captain Dorset strolled along the stone terrace and 
 wondered how long it was until dressing- time. He 
 was not anxious for his dinner, except as a point to 
 be looked forward to. He liked the country and he 
 liked country houses, but except in the autumn and 
 winter there was not much to do in them. 
 
 That was how he got into mischief. His sister had 
 not invited him, but he had been to a brother officer's 
 wedding in the same county, and he had come on here 
 after it. Madge Eccleston had been one of the 
 bridesmaids, and it had been the news that she was 
 going on to Haddon that had decided Mark to go 
 there. 
 
 He looked at his watch, and found it was a quarter- 
 past six. He did not see his way to taking more than 
 three-quarters of an hour over his toilet, so there was 
 just an hour on hand to get rid of. 
 
 Sir Walter Haddon was certainly writing letters at 
 this hour ; perhaps everyone was doing the same. 
 Captain Dorset hated writing letters and the only 
 letter he had received to-day was a reminder from his 
 tailors that they had been honoured of late neither by 
 the commands nor by the remittances of the gallant 
 officer. Next time they wrote he would order a suit of 
 clothes. To-day he could not be bothered. 
 
 " If," thought Mark, " Madge Eccleston were here 
 and I were somewhere else, I would not mind writing 
 to her ; " but that, of course, was an excursion into the 
 ideal. He had no notion of writing to her as it was. 
 
 286 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " Captain Dorset, what are you thinking of ? " 
 
 The drawing-room windows also opened upon the 
 south terrace, and Miss Eccleston had been reading 
 near one of them. 
 
 " Of you," the young man rephed without hesita- 
 tion. His manner was not very sentimental, but it 
 suggested satisfaction. In fact, he had begun to 
 dread being bored for a whole hour, and the terror 
 of being bored is the skeleton in the cupboard of 
 the modern young man. 
 
 Miss Eccleston laughed. 
 
 " Of course ! " she said, making room in her corner 
 for Captain Dorset's evident intention of sitting 
 there too. " But what were you thinking about me ? " 
 
 " I was regretting," replied the truthful youth, 
 " that you were not staying in some other neigh- 
 bourhood — or that I was not." 
 
 " A civil regret ! And why ? 
 
 " Merely that we might have the pleasure of corre- 
 sponding. I left my sister up to the girths in letters, 
 and, passing the library windows, got a glimpse of 
 Walter also hard at it. It made me think that I 
 should like writing letters if they were all to you." 
 
 Miss Eccleston declared that this was a specious 
 kind of flattery after all, for correspondence implied 
 absence. 
 
 " Yes. But you were absent ; it was only a 
 question of distance. I do not want to write to you 
 now." 
 
 The girl laughed. 
 
 " There would, at all events, be very little risk of 
 your letter going astray en route," she observed. 
 " Don't you think," she inquired, " that it would be 
 nicest out of doors ? It looks lovely down by the 
 lake." 
 
 She had r.c sort of objection to Captain Dorset's 
 
 287 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 ■company, nor to a tcte-a-tcte with him ; but it struck 
 her that if anyone else were to arrive in the drawing- 
 room, which was an immense apartment, it might 
 seem ridiculous that two people could not find room 
 to sit in it more than fourteen inches apart. 
 
 Captain Dorset hinted that he was excellently 
 content as things were ; and, without skipping over 
 his legs, Miss Eccleston could scarcely get out of her 
 corner ; but she did somehow make him understand 
 that she intended to do as she had said. 
 
 " If we sit here twenty minutes," she told herself, 
 " he will propose to me." 
 
 And that she did not at present desire. So the 
 gallant warrior's long legs had to be removed from 
 their position of a barricade, and they strolled 
 leisurely down the broad terrace steps and across the 
 sloping lawn to the little lake. 
 
 At the garden end, Haddon Pool, as it is called, is 
 not more than fifty yards wide, and lies between con- 
 ventional stone banks, but it widens and bends as it 
 gets farther from the castle, and the banks are several 
 hundred yards apart and clothed with copse. 
 
 " Come for a row," suggests the young man. 
 
 " If you will row," agrees the girl. 
 
 The boat is small, and, as Miss Eccleston observes, 
 rather " tit-tuppy." But the lake looks so lovely 
 that she cannot resist it. 
 
 ^He makes her very comfortable in the stern seat, 
 and they glide out into the middle. 
 
 " No ! " she says. " Keep nearer in, in case of 
 accidents." 
 
 " It 's a great deal deeper, as it happens, along the 
 edge, than out here," he objects. 
 
 " Never mind. If I am drowned I like being 
 drowned close to shore. Can't you swim, though ? " 
 
 " Yes. You need not be afraid. T could swim all 
 
 288 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 round the lake with you in m}' mouth hke a retriever," 
 he asserts. 
 
 She glances at his mouth as if surprised by a new 
 idea of its proportions, but does not seem much 
 fascinated by the picture. 
 
 " My head and my feet would both dangle in the 
 water," she reminds him ; " only the small of my 
 back would be left dry." 
 
 Again they both laugh. When one is young and 
 good-looking, and in perfect health, it does not take 
 much to make one cackle. Someone else said that. 
 I repeat it. 
 
 289 
 19 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 " I WISH," said Captain Dorset, " that I had. I very 
 nearly did. I wonder what she would have said." 
 
 Repentance is the word by which we express our 
 not usually very poignant regrets at the follies we 
 might have omitted but have not. I do not know 
 what is the correct term for the inverse sentiment. 
 
 Captain Dorset was suffering from it. 
 
 It was about five minutes to eight, and he was 
 not nearly ready for dinner. They had both been 
 disgracefully late, and had sneaked in with guilty 
 haste. 
 
 Nevertheless it had been delightful, and he had 
 screwed out of Miss Eccleston a half promise of 
 coming again — by moonlight — after dinner. 
 
 " I wonder," he thought, continuing his regrets 
 that he had nothing to repent of, ** whether she 
 would have been in a rage or whether she would have 
 liked it. Both, I dare say," he added, thrusting one 
 ample foot into a boat-like pump. 
 
 He was a big young man, and his feet were not, as 
 he euphemistically put it, " deformed." He con- 
 sidered it unmanlv to have little feet. 
 
 When he got downstairs there was, he found, a new 
 arrival. There were in fact two, but the one that 
 mattered was a lady. 
 
 He had to take her in : last night he had had 
 Miss Eccleston. To-night Lady Haddon was going 
 to separate them, 
 
 290 
 
REVERSIONS. =! 
 
 He looked round the hall when he got down, and 
 saw that Madge was still in arrears. 
 
 " They take such a deuce of a while to dress," he 
 thought, knowing that his sister would be cross. 
 For unpunctuality at Haddon was the sin for which 
 there is no forgiveness. 
 
 " Let me introduce my brother, Baroness,'* 
 observed Lady Haddon. And Captain Dorset made 
 his bow to the new arrival ; but he did not catch her 
 name. It sounded German : but the lady was 
 evidently English or American. 
 
 Mark was too much preoccupied at the moment by 
 the lateness of Miss Eccleston to give his new friend 
 much attention. He talked to her, but he was not 
 listening to what he said. 
 
 As to Miss Eccleston's unpunctuality, he felt all the 
 guilt of an accomplice. 
 
 " It is all Mark's fault," declared his sister ; " he 
 kept her out on the lake till nearly eight. We may 
 expect her about a quarter to nine." 
 
 Sir Walter smiled hungrily. He could not abuse 
 a lady guest ; but he was conscious of a vacuum. 
 He despised luncheon, and tea was anathema to him. 
 So he was the mere shell of that which nature is said 
 to " abhor." A quarter-past eight Miss Eccleston 
 appeared, apologetic but serene. Her toilette had 
 not been less careful than usual, and she looked her 
 best. There was no flurry, or bustle, or apprchen- 
 siveness about her. 
 
 Captain Dorset admired her more than ever. 
 
 The other new arrival had to take her in, an 
 elderly young man called " Bible " Cholmeley, 
 because he had a famous Lollard Bible that had 
 belonged to John of Gaunt — not because of any 
 tendency on his part to excessive searching of the 
 Scriptures. 
 
 29 X 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 He was apt to be en disponihiliU , and Lady Haddon 
 had wired for him from London as follows : — 
 
 *' To Cholmeley, Carlton Club, S.W. 
 Come over and help us. 
 Macedonian, Haddon Castle, War Chester.'* 
 
 On his arrival she had explained about Mark and 
 Miss Eccleston. 
 
 " Have I got to propose to her, do you mean ? '' he 
 inquired with the intrepidity of a true friend. 
 
 " Well, no. That, I should say, would not be 
 really necessary. But you must be always in the 
 way." 
 
 " I am never in the way ! " he protested. 
 
 " Indeed no, dear Mr. Cholmeley ; but you must 
 be fra le piedi of them both. If you could monopolise 
 her a good deal, and if the Baroness could flirt with 
 him a good deal, all might yet be well." 
 
 292 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 At dinner Mark had time to take soundings, and 
 arrive at some decisions concerning the female new 
 arrival. As for Bible Cholmeley, everyone knew 
 him. He was familiar as household words. Indeed, 
 so universally was this elderly young man admitted 
 as the intimate of every upper circle, that a recent 
 variant of his sobriquet was " Family Bible." 
 
 But the Baroness was new. Mark had never seen 
 or heard of her. 
 
 She was undeniably handsome, and certainly not 
 older than Captain Dorset himself. Lady Haddon 
 was a full half a dozen years senior to her brother. 
 
 She betrays, as he told himself, every symptom 
 of wealth and cleverness. 
 
 Her jewels were undeniable, and he had never seen 
 anyone so perfectly dressed. 
 
 "Is this your first visit to England ? " inquired 
 Mark. 
 
 " Yes. It has lasted nine-and-twenty years," 
 she answered. " I was born here." 
 
 They both laughed. 
 
 " My husband's family were Austrians," she 
 said, " but he was an American citizen, and lived all 
 his life out there till we married." 
 
 So she was a widow. Though only nine-and- 
 twenty, she was evidently not a recent widow. 
 There was nothing in the least funereal about her 
 delightful dress ; and yet, as he noticed, it was 
 all black and lilac. 
 
 293 
 
REVERSIONS, 
 
 As she moved there came the glimmer of diamonds 
 from among the black lace, and her rings were a 
 knight's ransom. He noticed that she carried an 
 enormous fan of tortoise-shell and black lace. As 
 it lay in her lap he noticed that along the outer 
 stick crept a name in large brilhants, surmounted 
 by a coronet, also of good diamonds. He tried to 
 read the name, but could not. 
 
 ** It is ' Rose,' " she said, laughing out of her 
 extraordinary blue eyes. 
 
 He had never seen such eyes. He told himself 
 that they were like an unhmited company, and 
 probably as dangerous. But of their beauty there 
 was no question. 
 
 He laughed too, and turned to look straight into 
 the twin depths of cloudy azure. 
 
 Miss Eccleston looked across just then, and 
 replied to Bible Cholmeley's inquiry as to which 
 language she hked best for singing, that in her 
 opinion all languages were tiresome to listen to. 
 
 **...! mean in singing, of course," she added, 
 not too immediately. 
 
 As for Mark, he made no bones about enjoying 
 himself. He would have preferred originally to sit 
 next Madge ; as he could not, he piously thanked 
 Heaven that he had something so entirely decorative 
 to sit next to. 
 
 " My other name," said the Baroness, " is Von 
 Hagel. It will make you less distrait if I tell you at 
 once. I saw you didn't catch the name, and if I 
 did not tell you, you would be wondering all the 
 time." 
 
 " What 's in a name ? A Rose by any other 
 name . . ." 
 
 Baroness Von Hagel laughed again ; and this 
 time more provokingly. 
 
 294 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " Ah," she said, " I knew that must come. It 
 always does. You are the seven hundred and 
 eighty-fourth young man who has told me that by 
 any other name I should smell as sweet." 
 
 " Only seven hundred and eighty-fourth ! How 
 few the men you must have met." 
 
 " That," said the beautiful lady, "is a little 
 better. You improve rapidly ! " 
 
 As she turned her head, he noticed how faultless her 
 nose was. A good nose is far rarer than fine eyes. 
 
 It was really odd that her name should be Rose ; 
 for there was something absolutely like a flower in 
 the texture and the colouring of her dazzling white- 
 pink skin. And an odour, fresh and flower-like, 
 seemed to hang round her like an atmosphere. 
 
 Lady Haddon listened sweetly to the County 
 Member's scheme for the sanitation of Puddlemire, 
 but she smiled inwardly as she saw without watching 
 her brother's obvious resignation. With Bible 
 Cholmeley she w^as less pleased. He was not, she 
 suspected, doing his best. Indeed, he more than 
 once glanced across, more than half anxiously, at 
 Mark. 
 
 " That," thought Lady Haddon, " would be 
 unpardonable. If he did such a thing as that, I 
 would never have him inside the house again." 
 But to the County Member she loudly expressed 
 her detestation of the conduct of the man who would 
 not buy the sewage. 
 
 When the ladies went away, the County Member 
 poured forth the sewage on Sir Walter and the 
 Rector, who tried to divert some of it towards 
 Mr. Eccleston, Madge's father, and the two young 
 men. But they would none of it, and kept down 
 at their own end of the table pumping one another 
 about the Baroness in stealthy undertones. 
 
 295 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " Have you met her before anywhere ? I never 
 heard of her." 
 
 " Oh, yes," rephed Bible Cholmeley. " I Ve seen 
 her in London ; though she doesn't come to town 
 much, and she was staying in the spring at Earring 
 Dene." 
 
 Now, everybody who knows anything of anything, 
 knows that Earring Dene is the head-quarters of 
 the great house of Orpeth ; and Captain Dorset was 
 well aware that any guest of the Duke of Shepply 
 was " all right." 
 
 " A widow, eh ? " 
 
 *' Yes, she married at eighteen or nineteen, and 
 her husband was drowned the year following. He 
 was a Dutchman." 
 
 ** No ! An Austrian naturalised in America. 
 Rich I should fancy." 
 
 " I don't think so. She had the tin, they say." 
 
 " Who was she, then ? " 
 
 " Oh, nobody. Her father was a smallish squire 
 somewhere in Wales, I fancy ; and he was always 
 grubbing about on his land for coal, and found it — 
 found enough to found a fortune." 
 
 ** And with all her money, and all the rest that 
 she has, she has never married again ? " 
 
 " No ; she has buried herself in the country. 
 The Duchess of Shepply met her by a perfect 
 accident, and they took a liking to each other. At 
 Earring Dene she got lots of other invitations, but 
 jumped at none of them." 
 
 " I wonder how Pauline got her to come here." 
 
 " Told her you were coming, I suppose," suggested 
 Mr. Cholmeley. 
 
 " Or you," amended the modest Captain. 
 
 296 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Old Jemima Bull, the Rector's spinster sister, was 
 engaged in narrative for the entertainment of the 
 other ladies in the drawing-room. She was a very 
 nice old woman, much devoted to poultry and good 
 works, with a pleasant earthly fondness for novels 
 and short whist. 
 
 " It was really a most extraordinary thing," she 
 declared, nailing the County Member's lady. " V\^hen 
 his wife was taken he disappeared, and we found him 
 four weeks afterwards in the shrubbery sitting on 
 five lost tennis-balls. The Rector thought it very 
 touching. I cried, Lady Haddon." 
 
 The widower in question was a turkey-cock whose 
 helpmate a fox had eaten. 
 
 " For my part," objected the Baroness, " I refuse 
 to admire the sagacity of your bird. However 
 blinded by sorrow, he might have convinced himself 
 they were not eggs ; and even if they were, the proba- 
 bility was all against his having laid them himself." 
 
 " And I," said Miss Eccleston, " am only struck 
 by the intelligence of the tennis-balls, who had no 
 idea of being hatched by a parent so evidently 
 determined to sit upon them." 
 
 " Nor," added the County Member's wife, seeing 
 that it behoved her to say something smart, " can 
 one allow one's feelings to be worked upon until 
 one knows the third volume of the story ; I have 
 very little doubt that the sentimental widower 
 shortly afterwards married again ? 
 
 297 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 Old Jemima, as everyone called her, reluctantly 
 admitted that such was indeed the case ; and in 
 the midst of her defence of his conduct the door 
 opened, and the gentlemen came in. 
 
 Captain Dorset found himself near his sister, and 
 began to chat with her ; unfortunately, however, 
 alluding to his lateness at dinner, and foolishly 
 apologising for it. 
 
 " It was very naughty of you, Mark. You know 
 how particular Walter is about being in time for 
 dinner. And you might have known that if you ran 
 yourself late you would make the girl much later. 
 I waved to you to come in, but you would not 
 take any notice." 
 
 " Did you see us P " inquired the young man 
 anxiously. " I never saw you/* 
 
 " Yes ; I was watching from the west oriel. I 
 saw everything." 
 
 " Through a field-glass ? " 
 
 His sister nodded ominously. 
 
 " Oh, Pauline ! " 
 
 He looked much disconcerted ; and was evidently 
 pained by her perfidious espionage. 
 
 " I saw you kiss her," she said. 
 
 " Did you ? " he faltered. 
 
 She nodded three times, and each time her head 
 wagged the lady looked more severe and the 
 gentleman more sheepish. 
 
 " Do you know ? " he inquired irrelevantly, 
 '' the anecdote of the Sunday-school Teacher and 
 the Ingenious Infant ? " 
 
 " I know several. If it is one of yours, I am pretty 
 sure to have heard it ! " 
 
 " Let that pass," said the young man loftily. 
 *' You are sure that you saw me ? " 
 
 298 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 *' Certain ! " reiterated the lady. 
 
 " Oh, Pauhne ! and through a field-glass ? " 
 
 " Through a field-glass." 
 
 " Then here beginneth the anecdote. There was 
 a certain Sunday-school, and in it there was a 
 teacher . . .'' 
 
 " There often is." 
 
 "... And a pupil . . ." 
 
 " That also has occurred before." 
 
 " . . . And the teacher told the infant that the 
 Powers above see everything that takes place. Are 
 you attending, Pauline ? " 
 
 " Yes, Mark ; but I don't want to." 
 
 " That," replied her brother sweetly, " is not the 
 point. The infant, hearing this, demanded of the 
 teacher whether the Powers above had beheld him 
 smite his poor little lame sister in their small 
 backyard upon the previous evening. The teacher 
 replied (like you, Pauline, to my queries) in the 
 affirmative, saying, * that such smiting had been 
 distinctly visible, only with the naked eye.' 
 Whereupon the infant remarked — attend, Pauline — 
 that that was odd, for he 'd never had no lame little 
 sister, nor never had no small backyard." 
 
 " You mean," laughed Lady Haddon, " that I 
 didn't see you kiss her." 
 
 " Oh, no, Pauline ! I only meant I never did." 
 
 Lady Haddon laughed again, and seeing the 
 Baroness close at hand went off to talk to Mr. 
 Eccleston. He was a very young-looking man of 
 fifty with scientific tastes, and divided his time 
 between the study of house-flics, diseases of the 
 throat and knee, and the observation of the criminal 
 procedure of ants. Lady Haddon was wont to say 
 of him that nobody with less than six legs had s(ny 
 interest for him. 
 
 299 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 Captain Dorset turned towards the Baroness and 
 told her in a tone of sympathy, just loud enough 
 for Lady Haddon to catch as she moved away, 
 that his sister was suffering from a blister on her 
 tongue, 
 
 " She is terribly subject to them," he said ; 
 *' in all other respects her health on week-days is 
 excellent." 
 
 Mr. Cholmeley approached also and took the 
 beautiful lady on the other flank. He began with a 
 question and the Baroness turned to answer it. 
 At Mark's left there was a window open to the ground, 
 and he stepped out of it. At the other end of the 
 drawing-room by another window, also open, stood 
 Miss Eccleston. 
 
 He walked quickly to it along the terrace and 
 greeted her from outside. 
 
 " Come out," he said, sinking his voice, " it 's 
 glorious outside. And Miss Masham 's going to 
 sing." 
 
 Miss Masham was the County Member's daughter. 
 
 Madge laughed. 
 
 "It 's a powerful argument for flight," she 
 replied, and came out into the broad moonlight 
 of the terrace. 
 
 *' You promised you would come out in the boat 
 again," he urged. " It will be far more lovely now 
 than by daylight." 
 
 " But much more dangerous." 
 
 " Yes, much," he agreed solemnly, " but not for 
 you," he added, laughing. 
 
 They strolled leisurely across the dry, dewless turf, 
 and the moon touched all they looked upon with her 
 gleaming silver. The old castle, bowered among its 
 " immemorial elms," lay dozing warmly in the hot 
 night. A smell of incense seemed to come from 
 
 300 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 the belt of pines that screened the north bank of 
 the lake. A coot, far away out of sight, called to 
 its mate. There seemed no breeze at all, and yet a 
 stealthy whispering crept among the leafy shadows 
 of the spinny. Neither of them spoke at first ; 
 she was listening to the great silence of the night ; 
 he was foolishly wondering how he should say what 
 he was determined by the influence of hour and 
 place to say. 
 
 The picture of the castle lay unbroken on the 
 cool black breast of the lake until, as they stepped 
 into the little boat, they sent out curling ripples to 
 break it. It shivered, and then mended again, as 
 they glided away to the lonelier end of the winding 
 pool. 
 
 The smell of the summer night came delicately 
 from unmeasured distances of wood and field ; it 
 breathed about them, soft and rich and sweet. It 
 seemed now as though all things lay in sleep but they 
 two ; as if the happy earth and sweet night were all 
 their own. 
 
 " ' In such a night,' " he quoted . . . And she 
 took it from him. 
 
 " ' The moon shines bright. In such a night as this, 
 When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, 
 And they did make no noise , . . ' " 
 
 (" Models of discretion ! " thought Mark.) 
 
 . in such a night 
 Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls, 
 And sighed his soul towards the Grecian tents 
 Where Cressid lay that night.' " 
 
 The girl trailed her white fingers in tlic cool, black 
 water. 
 
 " Oh, what would one give to have written that ! " 
 
 301 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 she said, more earnestly, no doubt, than it it had been 
 eleven o'clock in the morning and they had been 
 sitting in the house. 
 
 " I would much rather have been Lorenzo in such 
 a night," the young man answered, " than have 
 written it." 
 
 302 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Captain Dorset did not row much. He rested on 
 his oars, and watched the girl's fair face, as the moon- 
 hght lay softly on it like a veil of gentleness. He 
 wondered why people made the stern seats of these 
 sort of boats so unduly small, and whether, in the 
 event of there being ampler accommodation in the 
 present instance, the young lady would have allowed 
 him to come and avail himself of it. He feared not ; 
 any way, the discussion was purely academical, for 
 there was obviously no room. After all, it was 
 perhaps as well ; for had their united weiglit been in 
 the extreme stern of this mere cockleshell of a boat it 
 seemed likely that the craft would have assumed the 
 ridiculous posture of a swan searching the bottom of 
 a pond. 
 
 Certainly Miss Eccleston was not very far off. 
 
 *' We 've no business to be out here all on our own 
 hook," she observes presently. 
 
 " None whatever," he admits complacently. 
 
 " You think so too ? Then let us return at once. 
 Captain Dorset, would you kindly row immediately 
 to the shore ? " 
 
 " The coast," he declares gloomily, " is here 
 most dangerous even by daylight ; by night, what 
 with sunken rocks and breakers — (you hear the 
 breakers ?) — and under-tows of various patterns, 
 it is enough to appal the stoutest heart. Our only 
 safety lies in remaining out in the middle of the 
 pond." 
 
 303 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 They both laugh, and she does not press the 
 question of return. After all, it is not very late. 
 
 Round the banks lie broad shadows black and 
 sombre ; out here the lake is a mirror of dusky 
 silver. Somewhere in the belt of shadowed blackness 
 lies a fringe of reeds. Presently a breath comes 
 ■from the warm fields, and sets them whispering. 
 
 " They are telling one another what the queen 
 told them," says the girl, herself almost whispering. 
 " Midas has ass's ears ; can't you hear them ? " 
 
 He does not answer, but dips one oar lightly, and 
 almost without sound, into the water ; he wants to 
 move the boat so that the moonshine shall fall more 
 directly on her face. He does not care w^hat frank 
 truths his own face tells ; it is in shadow, he tells 
 himself. 
 
 A dog barks — who can tell where ? but somewhere, 
 ever so far off, whence the sound comes mellowed 
 and harmonious. 
 
 " It sounds," she says, " a milHon miles away. 
 And so everything seems ! It is almost frightening ; 
 one seems to be utterly alone." 
 
 " Personally," declared the gallant captain, " I 
 must admit that I 'm not in the least alarmed." 
 
 She laughs ; she makes scarcely any noise. It 
 is, he thinks, as if a flower laughed. 
 
 " I meant," she tells him, " that it seems as if the 
 world were empty but for us." 
 
 *' That would be ripping," he asserts. Only as 
 an afterthought : "It might be well to keep one 
 clergyman alive." 
 
 She is rather surprised ; it had not struck her in 
 their brief acquaintance that he was so ecclesiastically 
 minded. She ponders his remark, and decides not 
 to inquire into it. 
 
 " . . . As a merely temporary measure," he adds. 
 
 304 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 And she at once feels that she was right in ignoring 
 the permissive existence of the parson. 
 
 Again she stoops over the side and draws her long 
 white fingers through the water. The small noise the 
 plashing water makes sounds clear in the quiet night. 
 
 They are both silent. She is so near him, and yet 
 she seems so far ; so separate, so divided. 
 
 He knows he should not speak — not speak, that 
 is, what he wants to say ; and yet speech jostles at 
 her portals as if bent on breaking out. 
 
 " How odd it is ! " the girl says dreamily. " In 
 all the world there is not one foot of earth that is 
 mine : until I die I shall own no freehold. And yet 
 all the lovely world seems mine." 
 
 He leaves her to say out her happy thoughts, 
 un vexed by interruption. Perhaps her speech is 
 vague, and he scarcely follows her indolently told 
 meaning. 
 
 " A man like the Duke of Shepply," she says, 
 " scarcely knows what he owns. Twenty territories 
 belong to him ; but he belongs to none of them. 
 With a score of castles in a dozen counties, one 
 cannot have a real home." 
 
 The young man laughs : not sharp or loudly, 
 but with a sort of large gentleness. 
 
 '" I wouldn't mind," he says, " roughing along 
 without a home if I had Earring Dene or Welby ! " 
 
 She shakes her head. 
 
 " Please, understand ! I know what belongs to 
 him. But I would rather belong to myself." 
 
 He gazes at her as the witching light lies mystic, 
 wonderful, on her fair face, and the silly words 
 break bounds and sally forth. 
 
 " I wish to Heaven," he begins, " that you would 
 belong to me ! " 
 
 Her hands drop in her lap ; her eyes meet his and 
 
 305 
 20 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 almost chill him with their cold displeasure : but 
 not quite. It takes a hard frost to freeze a torrent. 
 And the words pour forth with all the vehemence 
 and passion bom of the place and hour. 
 
 Having in vain tried to stop the beginning, she 
 leans back in her seat rigidly, and lets him speak. 
 
 It seems to him she scarcely even listens. In 
 truth she does not listen ; for a pause, for a chance of 
 interruption alone she waits. 
 
 Then she speaks. 
 
 *' We have known each other five days," she says, 
 '' and perhaps I like you as well as most other 
 people I have known as long. Or I did. I cannot 
 say it has advanced matters that you should 
 suddenly go mad. Marry you ! Marry you ! You 
 whom I met first on Monday ! And this, what is it ? 
 Friday, is it not ? Why don't you go in and propose 
 to the Baroness Von Hagel, whom you first met 
 to-night ? That would be more striking still. 
 Now will you kindly row to the landing-steps ? 
 You have certainly given me a fine lesson in discre- 
 tion ; one sees now why one should not have come 
 out rowing on lakes with strange young men after 
 dinner. Would you mind doing what I ask and 
 rowing straight back ? " 
 
 " You will not listen ? You will not soften your 
 refusal by any hope or condition ? " 
 
 " Will you please row in ? " 
 
 " WiU you answer my question ? " 
 
 Their eyes met straight in the moonlight, and 
 hers are not more angrily aflame than his. 
 
 " Very well, since you insist," she replies hardly. 
 " No, I will not listen. My refusal is straight and 
 plain ; I will not soften it by any * hope,' as you call 
 it, nor any condition." 
 
 He would give the world to keep her there. Apart 
 
 306 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 from any forlorn hope of persuading her, for he has 
 none, he longs to pour out on her a torrent of half- 
 savage invective. 
 
 But she has appealed to her helplessness. And 
 no decent man can help obeying when the command 
 is thus put forth by one powerless to enforce 
 obedience. 
 
 307 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 When the Baroness and Lady Haddon sat down to 
 luncheon on the following morning the table looked 
 sadly shrunken from the night before. There had 
 then been twelve, now there were but four, seated 
 roimd it. 
 
 The parson and his sister had, of course, gone back 
 to the rectory ; the County Member and his wife and 
 daughter had only been what Mark called " Jorrocks* 
 guests." Where they had dined they had slept, 
 and where they had slept there had they also break- 
 fasted, but soon afterwards had driven off in a 
 brougham contemporary with the great statesman 
 after whom it was called. 
 
 Mr. Eccleston had also declared, after reading his 
 letters, that he must, after all, not stay over Sunday. 
 So they too had left by the 12.50 train from Haddon 
 Road Station, and the carriage had not yet returned 
 from taking them to it. 
 
 Sir Walter, as we know, takes no lunch : that is, 
 he only consumes half a cake and a pint or so of 
 sherry in his stud}^ So the two young men and the 
 two ladies make up the party. Bible Cholmeley is 
 not at his best in the morning ; he is apt to be dull 
 and somewhat sleepy. Neither does Captain Dorset 
 seem as lively a companion as he had been last 
 night at dinner. Perhaps he is a trifle sulky. Or 
 perhaps he has heard that some horse that ought 
 to have done something somewhere has not done it. 
 So says the Baroness to herself. 
 
 308 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 But Lady Haddon, always the most charming of 
 women, is more dehghtful even than her wont. 
 She is certainly not sulky. She must be the best of 
 sisters, and her sweetness to Mark is really deserving 
 of a better recognition. The young man is distinctly 
 more inclined to snap when his sister strokes him 
 most obviously. He understands her blandness, 
 and resents it. He has made an idiot of himself, and 
 she knows it. She knows also that he has been 
 refused, and her complacence is the daughter of 
 her delight. 
 
 As things are, Lady Haddon rather wishes she had 
 not taken the trouble to get Bible Cholmeley down. 
 He was, as it turned out, not necessary. And it is 
 a pity he should have been told. And he is not an 
 easy guest in a small party ; he demands attention, 
 and he is not generally amusing when there are 
 only three or four to hear him. His conversation is 
 like the champagne in some houses, " AI " for 
 large parties, gooseberry and acid for half a dozen. 
 
 Mark, she admits, is not really behaving amiss. 
 He is, of course, a trifle surly to herself : but that is 
 only because he knows that she knows ; and it is 
 obviously disagreeable for another person to be 
 aware when one has received a smart correction. 
 Especially when that person has " taken a line " 
 in the matter. Pauline almost wishes she had not 
 spoken to him yesterday at all. But then, perhaps, 
 he would not have spoken so soon, and had he waited 
 a littk' most likely Madge would have said " Yes." 
 
 Captain Dorset himself knows that he is cross. 
 He is not really quite so cross as he imagines. One's 
 little tempers are never very serious when one is so 
 ready to admit them. Had he been accepted he 
 might possibly have felt depressed. 
 
 The modem young man is not usually elated on 
 
 309 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 the day following his declaration, whether its recep- 
 tion has been favourable or the reverse. If 
 unfavourable, his amottr-propre is hurt. If affirmative 
 has been the reply, he is attacked by misgivings. 
 There will be so much to give up. Has he not, 
 perhaps, been too precipitate ? Does the dear girl, 
 he wonders, realise how much he is doing for her 
 sake ? Does she grasp, can a woman grasp, what 
 it means to a man ? 
 
 But Captain Dorset knows he has been refused ; 
 and refused with some special, and, as he thinks, 
 uncalled-for vehemence. Therefore he feels at 
 liberty to consider himself unlucky, and rather hardly 
 used. There will, in his case, be nothing to give up : 
 but he will have to go without. He has a right, 
 therefore, to be a trifle surly ; not to be so would 
 argue lack of feeling. Nevertheless he is, his sister 
 admits, very civil to the Baroness. It does not 
 matter about his being a wee bit snappish to herself, 
 and if he snubs Cholmeley a little, all the better. 
 Bible Cholmeley, she considers, is apt to get above 
 himself. 
 
 On the whole, she wishes that young man would 
 " get the hump " and remove himself. 
 
 He has darkly alluded, more than once to-day, 
 to the longing of an anonymous duchess for his 
 presence in Scotland. By all means let him go. 
 
 " Pauline," says her brother, " the Baroness told 
 me last night she was devoted to riding. Why 
 shouldn't we ride this afternoon ? 
 
 " * Why, indeed ? ' as the infant replied to the 
 parson," said my lady. " Only I don't think / 
 can : I don't feel up to it." 
 
 Lady Haddon made a little face, hidden, as she 
 supposed, from Mr. Cholmeley by a begonia growing 
 most naturally out of a silver dragon's mouth. 
 
 310 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 The little face meant, " You know he can't ride, 
 and some one will have to play with him." 
 
 *' But," she continued aloud, " I want very much 
 to go over to Wilmotes. Lady Hounslow came here 
 the very week we got down from London : and that 's 
 a month, quite a month ago. She will think me the 
 rudest woman in Rentshire. And Wilmotes is so 
 lovely, if the Baroness has not seen it. You and 
 she, Mark, could ride over, and I would drive my 
 own ponies, if i\Ir. Cholmeley would come to bring 
 home the body in case they kill us." 
 
 The Baroness would be charmed. As for 
 Mr. Cholmeley, he delighted in afternoon calls in 
 the country, especially when the visit was to a show 
 house, with a Marchioness as hostess. And he rather 
 liked driving ; it was no trouble, and yet it gave one 
 an appetite. 
 
 The idea was Mark's, so he is bound to be pleased. 
 But all the same, he thinks a good deal of Madge 
 while he is getting ready. 
 
 That young woman has just finished her lunch- 
 basket, and is looking out of her window in the 
 train, her father dozing comfortably in the comer 
 opposite. 
 
 " If only he had waited," she thinks. " Why on 
 earth could he not wait ? What idiots men are. 
 As if a girl could accept a man on Friday night 
 whom she first met on Monday ! " 
 
 The train rushed along, and the fields and trees 
 slipped past. The girl watched them heedlessly, 
 and with a rather dreary expression of her brown 
 eyes. She only half saw them. She seemed, in 
 reality, to be looking down a long perspective of 
 years at an older, more faded presentment of 
 herself. 
 
 " Perhaps I shall be an old maid at last," she 
 
 311 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 thought, " or perhaps I shall marry an elderly fat 
 widower with four chins and three children, and a 
 red neck that overlaps his collar behind . . . why 
 couldn't he have waited ? It was simply insolent 
 to ask so soon. How could one say * Yes ' ? What 
 an idiot ! " 
 
 312 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Baroness Von Hagel was wise to like riding. 
 She looked perfect in a habit : and Mark observed 
 how small and beautifully shaped were her feet. 
 ]\Iadge, he had noticed, had rather large hands, and 
 had left her feet very much to herself. A girl witli 
 big hands who likes to hide her feet is pretty sure ta 
 have big ones. 
 
 It was also apparent that the Baroness knew all 
 about horses : she rode excellently, and her mount 
 w^as worthy of her — a tall, show}/ chestnut, almost 
 thoroughbred, with not a vice within two generations 
 of him, but a whole pedigree of spirit. 
 
 They evidently understood each other, and 
 horse and rider felt at home with each other 
 instantly. 
 
 When a man rides with a woman it must always 
 increase his pleasure to find that he need have no 
 anxiety for her safety or her comfort. And Mark. 
 at once knew that they were going to enjoy a very 
 pleasant time together. 
 
 Haddon Castle lies in the heart of the rich Midlands, 
 and for miles around the country is like a park ; 
 virgin pastures that no plough has ever furrowed, 
 and huge trees, beneath whose broad shadows the 
 lazy cattle can find cool comfort even in hottest 
 August. 
 
 For two miles they rode through Sir Walter's 
 home park ; then, through a Gothic lodge, passed 
 out into Haddon Chase, a royal demesne, of whicli 
 
 313 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 Sir Walter was Hereditary Keeper and Ranger. j 
 
 Here the trees were sparser, but even older than those 
 in the park ; for the latter dated from the Tudors 
 only, whereas the Chase had been the king's warren 
 since the second William's time. In the park were 
 deer, but in the Chase only white cattle, wild and, 
 as tradition said, indigenous. The *' buff bulls of 
 Haddon " had been famous since Chaucer's day, and 
 many a hind and yeoman in former days had been 
 lianged for killing one. 
 
 Even now not a horn might fall without a special 
 license from the Crown ; and the creamy hide of 
 every calf or bull that was killed had to be dressed 
 and sent to Windsor. 
 
 Mark was always fond of riding in the Chase : 
 there was a glorious sense of space and privacy : 
 two ideas so hard to combine in a little country full 
 of people. The trees were, without exception, oaks : 
 and some were of immense size. Many were of an 
 age so vast that almost any tradition could be 
 believed about them. 
 
 " Do you see that little hill over there," he 
 said, pointing with his whip, " and the low 
 gnarled oak upon the top ? That is called 
 the Queen's Oak, and they say it was there 
 Ihat Boadicea was caught and flogged by the 
 Romans." 
 
 " And they tied her to that tree ? " 
 
 " Don't scoff ! That oak is the daughter (are 
 oaks gentlemen or ladies ?) of the tree that spread 
 itself out to overshadow the insulted queen. It is 
 said to be eleven hundred years old." 
 
 They were quite near now. The tree was certainly 
 a strange one : its trunk was not six feet high : its 
 branches lay writhing on the ground like huge 
 tortured snakes. 
 
 3H 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " That tree comes very late into leaf ; and it is 
 so old that its acorns are all barren. We have sent 
 acorns to all the royal nurseries, but they would none 
 of them sprout." 
 
 " Perhaps," suggests the lady, " the royal children 
 ate them." 
 
 Mark laughed. 
 
 " It 's a good thing Walter Haddon doesn't hear 
 your profane jesting. He could not conceive the 
 possibility of a mind so frivolous as to joke about the 
 Queen's Tree in Haddon Chase. He would rather 
 be hereditary keeper, falconer, forester, and ranger 
 than be made a peer." 
 
 " And Lady Haddon ? " 
 
 He laughed again. 
 
 " I 'm not so sure about her. Being wife of the 
 ranger doesn't prevent her having to follow Lady 
 Fotheringhay in to dinner, and Lady Fotheringhay's 
 father was my father's butler." 
 
 " How well those things are remembered ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Mark honestly. " I dare say we 
 should forget all about it if our father had been 
 her father's butler." 
 
 " But she wouldn't, so it 's really all right." 
 
 He was quite forgetting that he was out of temper, 
 and in low spirits. His nature was not, perhaps, 
 a very profound one ; but it was wholesome and 
 honest. He would soon have forgiven Madge, and 
 only call himself a hound for having worried her. 
 Meanwhile he could not resist the happy influence 
 of the scene and day. The sun was bright and warm, 
 but there was a fresh breeze, cool though not 
 boisterous or strong. The sky was not of the pale 
 and languid grey that goes with great heat, but 
 of the intense Prussian blue that is generally 
 
 315 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 seen flecked with moving clouds of fleecy white. 
 During the previous night rain had faflen, and 
 even the highways had been refreshed ; the 
 hedges were washed, and there were no longer 
 shallow waves of dust for the breeze to lift and 
 scatter. 
 
 The broad, cool shadows of the oaks lay black 
 upon the smooth green carpet of the Chase ; and 
 here and there, far away, the wild cattle grazed in 
 groups of creamy buff. 
 
 Somewhere, high up and out of sight, at 
 heaven's gate or near it, a lark poured down upon 
 the earth her profuse strains of unpremeditated 
 art. 
 
 '' It 's a good day to be alive on," observes Mark. 
 *' I always prefer being alive." 
 
 " Oh, yes. So do I. The alternative suggests 
 a nasty risk. But on these sort of days one 
 does feel that it 's jolly not to have got one 's 
 living over. I suppose our grandpapas and grand- 
 mammas felt much the same when they rode 
 out together in Haddon Chase on a summer's 
 afternoon — before grandpapa had asked her to be 
 grandmamma." 
 
 She laughs. He evidently does not quite notice 
 the bearing of this remark upon their own position. 
 
 *' Do you think," she inquires, " that he put it 
 that way ? " 
 
 " Oh, no. If he had, she would not have seen it. 
 They weren't thinking of their children's children 
 at all." 
 
 Captain Dorset was not, like Bible Cholmeley, a 
 professed conversationalist. His thoughts were 
 seldom of national importance, and his expression 
 of them was apt to be down at heel and untidy. 
 But he was not much distressed at this. He did not 
 
 316 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 go in for being clever : in fact, he rather " barred *' 
 the sort of men who do. 
 
 " It 's rather a drawback to growing up/' he 
 continues presently, " that soon afterwards one 
 begins to grow old." 
 
 She turns her head and considers him dispassion- 
 ately. 
 
 " The ravages of age," she says, " are lamentable 
 indeed." 
 
 He laughs. 
 
 " It is a pity that you are so frivolous. It threatens 
 to be the one blot upon an otherwise faultless 
 character. I am not at present very old ; but I am 
 older than I was." 
 
 " So am I." 
 
 " Really ! I can only say you must have been 
 deuced young formerly : I beg your pardon, 
 extremely young formerly, I mean." 
 
 They were an obliging young couple, and they 
 encouraged each other's conceits by laughing 
 pleasantly. 
 
 " For my part," she declares, " I should like to 
 remain seven-and- twenty for ever." 
 
 " Like Lady Fotheringhay ! She was twenty- 
 seven when I went to Eton, and she will be eight-and- 
 twenty on her next birthday. Bar larks, though, I 
 am getting old. I found a grey hair on the top of 
 my head this morning." 
 
 " From your description I should say it fell 
 there." 
 
 " Oh, no. It grew. It was all in one piece with 
 me. 
 
 " Lots of young men of nine-and-twenty," she 
 assures him, " would be very glad to find a hair on 
 the top of their head at all, without troubling about 
 the colour. Evidently this one grey hair marks a 
 
 317 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 sad day in your life. You must have had a 
 misfortune yesterday." 
 
 He grows suddenly red. 
 
 " I had," he says quietly. " I was out when you 
 arrived, and never saw you till dinner-time." 
 
 All the same, she wonders what he was thinking 
 about. 
 
 318 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 When Baroness Von Hagel and Captain Dorset 
 arrived at Wilmotes, they were informed that the 
 Marchioness of Hounslow was not a Tome ; and to 
 ensure their behef in the statement, it was added 
 that her ladyship had gone to Puddlemire to Hopen 
 a bazaar. 
 
 Her ladyship would be back by five, or " anyway " 
 by quarter past. Would not Captain Dorset and the 
 Baroness wait ? The gardings was looking a sight ; 
 in fact they was a sight to look at. And her ladyship 
 so particular said as she oped the Capting always 
 would wait. 
 
 " Has Lady Haddon been here ? " 
 
 No, Lady Addon had not. But perhaps Captain 
 Dorset had rode (this was a bold surmise under the 
 circumstances), and Lady Addon had drove, and it 
 would take longer, hoeing to the I-road being so much 
 longer than the way through the Chase. 
 
 They decided to stay, at all events, till the others 
 turned up. Then they would wait for Lady Houns- 
 low, or not, as Lady Haddon might decide. 
 
 Tea was offered, but firmly refused by Captain 
 Dorset, and less firmly by the Baroness : an English- 
 woman always breaks down at an allusion to tea in the 
 middle of the afternoon. 
 
 In a quarter of an hour the pony-carriage arrived. 
 But as it was then only half-past four. Lady Haddon 
 decided not to wait. 
 
 Mr. Cholmelcy was much disappointed. He said 
 
 319 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 lie had so much wanted to see the famous Reynolds — 
 of Araminta, first Marchioness. 
 
 Lady Haddon quite understood that it was the 
 existing Marchioness in the original that the young 
 man really wanted to see : but she at once said — 
 
 " And you shall see it. Would you be so kind as 
 to let this gentleman go with you to the picture 
 gallery?" she said, with her invariable sweetness, 
 to the footman. 
 
 Bible Cholmeley was disgusted — he would now 
 have to " tip " the man — but he had to go. It would 
 liave been too barefaced to have refused. He 
 disappeared. 
 
 " Will you also go and look at Pepperminta ? " 
 inquired the humorous Captain Dorset of the 
 Baroness. But she said " No.'' She hated clanking 
 about in boots and spurs, especially on polished 
 floors. 
 
 " Mark," said his sister, " don't let us go straight 
 home : as we are out, let us do something. Why not 
 go round by Walden, and show the Baroness and 
 Bible Cholmeley dear old Dorney." 
 
 " Why, certainly. If the Baroness would like 
 it. 
 
 " Dorney," said Lady Haddon, " is our own old 
 hiome. It is not like Wilmotes, of course, or even like 
 Haddon. But it is older than either of them, and 
 there is nowhere a more beautiful specimen of a 
 thirteenth-century fortified manor-house." 
 
 The Baroness said she would of all things like to 
 see it. 
 
 " I shall be far more interested in seeing it than in 
 being shown Wilmotes," she said. " Longleat and 
 Hatfield and Wilmotes are all one to me ; but your 
 friends' own places are very different. Does it 
 l)elong to you now, Captain Dorset ? " 
 
 320 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " Yes. For five years it has been very well let ; 
 but my tenant has succeeded to his own estate, and 
 does not want it any more." 
 
 " It is in excellent order, and fully furnished," said 
 Lady Haddon ; " and there is a caretaker and his wife, 
 so we shall get tea. It will be a picnic." 
 
 " And it 's all in the way home, too ; at least, not 
 two miles out of the way." 
 
 So it was settled, and Mr. Cholmeley, who had soon 
 seen enough of the great Sir Joshua, did not keep 
 them long waiting. The quicker he was the less, he 
 thought, could he be expected to give. He hurried 
 so much that he considered sixpence .was enough ! 
 For which the footman thanked him aloud, taking 
 care to drop the coin in sight of the party at the door, 
 and to experience, as it seemed, great difficulty in 
 finding it again with the naked eye. Nothing could 
 have been more disconcerting than the assiduous, 
 grateful air of the footman as he packed his bene- 
 factor again into the pony-carriage, and Bible 
 Cholmeley drove away quite hoping that he should 
 never be brought to call at Wilmotes again. 
 
 Alas ! he was to return in less than half an hour. 
 The riders soon left Lady Haddon and himself behind, 
 and passed from sight. And just as the pony-carriage 
 was waiting at Dorney Lodge for the gates to be 
 opened, the Marchioness of Hounslow came along the 
 road from Puddlemire in her huge landau. She in- 
 sisted on dearest Lady Haddon and Mr. Cholmeley 
 (whom she was so charmed to meet) getting into her 
 carriage and going back to Wilmotes — the pony- 
 carriage might follow slowly. 
 
 It was disgusting to be again confronted with that 
 lackey, who now betrayed no sign of recognition. 
 But Bible Cholmeley was not given to losing his head, 
 and he coolly argued that though ultimately the 
 
 321 
 21 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 lackey might let my lady's maid know about the 
 sixpence, and the maid might divulge it to the 
 Marchioness, nothing of the kind could have happened 
 yet. For all practical purposes of the present visit, 
 he might have given the man a bank-note and her 
 ladyship be none the wiser. 
 
 322 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 DoRNEY, as Lady Haddon had said, was not as fine a 
 place as Haddon or Wilmotes, but it challenged com- 
 parison with neither. It lay, not in a park, but in a 
 river valley, and, as far as picturesque beauty went, 
 it was unapproachable by either. The road wound 
 along the wooded slope of the glen, sometimes 
 descending to the flat bottom by the crawling 
 stream, where it passed by great boulders, and 
 was often carried across the stream by a beautiful 
 old Gothic arch. 
 
 The house itself lay, in a widening of the valley, 
 among old gardens walled and moated, except on the 
 riverside, where the stream was its fence. 
 
 The grey castellated mansion, many-gabled and 
 turreted, seemed to lie smiling, but asleep, in the 
 afternoon light. The sadder tone of the limestone 
 was warmed by the yellow tint of lichens, and the 
 parterre in front was a blaze of red and gold. 
 
 " And this is yours ! nimiiim heatos agricolas 
 si norint ! " 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 " Yes, it is mine. But my case is at present just 
 as you say, there 's no rint." 
 
 She would not laugh at his abominable and stale 
 pleasantry. 
 
 " It is fifty times more beautiful than Haddon," 
 she said. " And yet you never live here ? 
 
 " Not since our father died — half a dozen years ago. 
 You see, my stepmother has a big jointure, and 
 
 323 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 Pauline has to get her share. So I have to let it, and 
 dwell in the thought that I am Mark Dorset of 
 Domey." 
 
 " And a very comfortable thought too." 
 
 " Thoughts don't keep you dry when it rains, or 
 shade you when it 's hot," the young man suggests 
 rather dismally. 
 
 "If this place w^as mine I would live in it," observes 
 the lady. 
 
 " I dare say you would," he replies, grinning 
 irresistibly ; "so would I if I were you." 
 
 The lady reddens a little, and does not pursue the 
 theme. They have sent away the horses, and he 
 leads her into the old walled garden with its smooth 
 bowling-green and trim box hedges. Round three 
 sides of it stands a procession of chess kings and 
 queens, and knights and pawns, all cut in box : on the 
 third glides the river, silent here between conventional 
 stone banks. The old house seems to lie dozing by 
 its side, blinking comfortably down upon the hand- 
 some young man and woman that go strolling lazily 
 over the soft cool turf. 
 
 He can see she is delighted, fascinated with the 
 place, and is himself pleased and flattered. He had 
 nothing to do with the making of Domey ; it was all 
 made, just as it now is, centuries before he was bom : 
 but he takes her admiration of the place as a com- 
 pliment to himself. 
 
 " Come and see the orange-trees," he says, " they 
 are round here. We have had orange-trees here ever 
 since Charles II. 's time. Sir Guy Dorset's wife, 
 Alicia Androz, came with Catherine of Braganza as a 
 maid of honour, and brought the orange pips in her 
 pocket. We 're famous for them : see, they have 
 regular big trunks like little beech-trees." 
 
 The trees were really curious, by their rare size and 
 
 324 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 evident age. They formed a sort of avenue shading 
 a flagged walk. 
 
 " And now," he continued, " come in and see the 
 carved oak and the tapestry." 
 
 They retraced their steps to the river-front, and 
 entered by a low tower-gate defended on either side 
 by looped slits through the thickness of the walls for 
 musketry. 
 
 " Some say," explained the young Castellan, " that 
 those are later than the building of the tower : others 
 that they were meant first for cross-bow firing." 
 
 Crossing a small courtyard paved with cobbles, they 
 went down by two steps into the great hall, a huge 
 vaulted room occupying the whole of one side of an 
 inner and larger quadrangle. Here some splendid 
 suits of armour hung, and the standards of successive 
 lords of the manor, showing the whole pedigree of 
 Dorset alliances. 
 
 The walls of this great room were of rough and 
 undressed stone. 
 
 A short stone stair led to the oak hall, now the 
 dining-room, and the two drawing-rooms, hung with 
 sombre but perfect gilding. 
 
 " There is 7nore carving," said Mark, " in other 
 great houses. There is none finer, as far as it goes, 
 anywhere." 
 
 Of the tapestry, he told her that it had been brought 
 from the sack of a Flemish city by Gilbert Dorset, 
 Count of the Holy Roman Empire, who had gone as a 
 soldier of fortune and volunteer to the Thirty Years' 
 War. 
 
 " And this," cried the Baroness, shaking her head 
 mournfully, " is what you want to let ! I wish you 
 would take me for a tenant." 
 
 He stood still opposite her, and the yellow sunlight 
 fell on his big, comely body as he answered — 
 
 325 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " On one condition, gladly." 
 
 Something in his voice made her hesitate to ask 
 about the condition : but he added — 
 
 " . . . that you come as a life-tenant." 
 
 The little lad}^ looked up, and with a delightful 
 freedom from embarrassment said quietly, " I per- 
 ceive. Captain Dorset, that you are proposing to 
 marry me." 
 
 " You have," he admitted very handsomely, 
 ** quite accurately divined my meaning." 
 
 She turned half aside, and sat her dainty small 
 body down in a huge chair of oddly carved oak, 
 black and of immemorial age. No contrast could 
 have shown her off to more wonderful advantage. 
 He came close before her, and looked down admiringly 
 on what he felt was a picture of almost perfect beauty. 
 
 " Twenty-four hours ago," began the lady, " I had 
 never seen you : nor you me ! " 
 
 But though the exordium was not promising, her 
 voice was free from any suggestion of annoyance or 
 offence. She seemed about to state the case with 
 excellent blandness and good temper. 
 
 " Of course," said the young man, " I ought to have 
 waited." 
 
 Their eyes met, for hers were by no means downcast 
 or afraid of encountering his : and she perceived, 
 \vith a slight heightening of colour, the obvious 
 sincerity of his admiration. 
 
 '' Certainly," she agreed, " you might have waited. 
 But if I were a vain woman I might take it as a great 
 flattery that you could not wait." 
 
 " I wish you would so take it," he urged simply, 
 " it would be just the truth." 
 
 " They say," she pursued, without further dis- 
 claimer, " that the sincerest compliment a man can 
 pay a woman is to want to marry her. After all, 
 
 326 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 it seems a very reasonable idea, . . . and if that 
 is so, when the man's desire is arrived at after long 
 doubt and cautious hesitation, it would seem that 
 the compliment must be greater when the desire is 
 prompt, and waits the dulness of no reasoned self- 
 questioning." 
 
 Again she lifted her face towards his, and the 
 young man noticed, half compunctiously, how honest 
 it was, as well as how beautiful. 
 
 " And," she pursued questioningly, " do you really 
 want to marry me ? " 
 
 " If you will have me," he answered stoutly. 
 
 Her eyes dropped, and she sighed gently. 
 
 " Captain Dorset," she said, in a voice that was low 
 but very audible, " do you w^ant me to say that I am 
 in love with you, or simply that I will marry you if 
 you ask and wish it ? " 
 
 " Dear lady," he replied, " how could I expect 
 you to say that you are in love with me ? But if you 
 would really marry me (I can scarcely believe it), 
 I would hope that you might at last even love me." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " It would need no effort to like you : almost 
 already that is so. But a woman's idea of love is 
 of a love which is given once and never taken back ; 
 and that love — it is not mine to give. I did give it — 
 long ago : and have never taken it back." 
 
 " To your husband ? " 
 
 She made no verbal answer of assent : but he 
 needed none. 
 
 " But," she continued soon, " I cannot for ever be 
 quite alone. For eight desolate years I have borne 
 it, spending them quite alone with my memories of 
 our brief happiness. Perhaps if I were like those 
 great women that we read of I could go on to the end. 
 But I cannot. I am only twenty-nine years old, and 
 
 327 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 people live till they are seventy, eighty — ninety 
 sometimes." 
 
 He looked at her with growing admiration and 
 respect ; he had a soft heart, perhaps a soft head. 
 He was easily touched, and the thought of her faithful 
 lonely years moved him strongly. 
 
 *' If he loved you as truly as you love him he would 
 not wish it," he said gently. 
 
 She did not deny this. It was, in truth, her 
 thought. 
 
 " And," she went on, *' I am so rich ! We were 
 always rich, but now I am much richer than we used 
 to be. All these years my wealth has been a reproach 
 to me. It cries out against my inaction, my help- 
 lessness to use it." 
 
 To this he said nothing ; indeed, there was nothing 
 that could decently be said by him. 
 
 *' If I married you," she said simply, " we should 
 be good friends, I think. And then all our wealth 
 would not be idle and good for nothing. I should 
 no longer be alone and helpless. Together we might 
 be useful, and therefore happy. If that will satisfy 
 you, I am ready to agree ; but I am in love with a 
 dead man, and that you must, in bare justice, be 
 warned of, before you make your decision." 
 
 Again she lifted her face to his, and their eyes 
 met frankly. He was so filled with the sense of her 
 beauty, and truth, and faithfulness, that there was 
 room for no other thought. 
 
 He took her hand and lifted it, slowly and with a 
 diffident respect, until it barely touched his hps. 
 
 ** There is no decision," he said, " for me to make. 
 It is only for you." 
 
 She sighed a little. 
 
 " I trust you," she said, " and, since you ask it, 
 am willing to marry you." 
 
 328 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 There was no announcement of their engagement^ 
 and it was suspected by nobody. On the following 
 day, Sunday, Captain Dorset received orders by 
 telegram from his regiment to proceed to Hythe for 
 a course of musketry on Monday, with a number 
 of non-commissioned officers and men. He there- 
 fore returned to Warchester that day. And on the 
 day after Baroness Von Hagel also left Haddon. 
 
 She had told him that it was her wish that their 
 wedding should be quite private, and be nowhere 
 announced till it had taken place, which might be 
 as soon as he desired. He was quite content to obey^ 
 and not even his sister was given any hint. She 
 was well satisfied with the progress they had seemed 
 to make in each other's good graces, and scented 
 nothing further. 
 
 It was annoying that Mark should be sent off to 
 Hythe ; but Baroness Von Hagel, as Lady Haddon 
 knew, had a country house in Kent, not out of reach. 
 And in answer to a question or hint of his sister's 
 the young man had frankly owned, that if the 
 Baroness was anywhere in his neighbourhood he 
 should be pretty sure to meet her. 
 
 They were married early in September, by a special 
 licence, in a small church a mile out of Dover, at an 
 hour that left them just time to drive straight to the 
 Calais boat that leaves at eleven o'clock in the 
 morning. There was neither bride-cake nor wedding- 
 dress, and the sole witnesses were the pew-opener 
 
 329 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 and the sexton, monuments of stupidity and dim- 
 ■sightedness, old and rather depressing. 
 
 There was, however, a much more unpleasant 
 circumstance of dismal omen. The parson, almost 
 before arriving at " amazement," " went off," as 
 the pew-opener put it, in a fit. The Baroness was 
 naturally startled, but the sexton begged her to 
 *' take no notice." 
 
 " 'E 'ave 'em constant," explained the pew-opener, 
 ^* last time 'e were baptising of a hinfant, and he 'd 
 liked to have drowned un. Splosh it went in the 
 font, and my ! but there was a to-do an' all." 
 
 To the kind ministrations of the sexton and the 
 pew-opener the new-made bride and bridegroom 
 had to leave the unfortunate divine. But their fees 
 had been so handsome that the old man and woman 
 were in the sweetest of tempers. The one thing 
 they could both still see plainly was the difference 
 between a sovereign and a shilling. 
 
 As it was, the slight delay of this contretemps 
 had nearly caused them to miss the boat : the 
 train from London had arrived to the moment, 
 and there were very few passengers ; and as a 
 consequence the baggage was speedily got on board. 
 
 The weather was cool ashore, and on the sea 
 proved chilly. Mark made his wife comfortable, 
 and then began to pace the deck. He was a good 
 enough sailor, but his wife was a better. Presently 
 he went forward and lit a cigarette — a Norman 
 sailor, with an eye to being offered one, coming up 
 and opening a little conversation with him. 
 
 Monsieur, the man assured him kindly, need not 
 be apprehensive ; the sea would be quite amiable 
 all the way over. Had Monsieur crossed before ? 
 Yes ? Ah ! the English must always be voyaging, 
 The French, on the contrary, expatriate themselves 
 
 330 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 never : is it not so ? One finds everything in 
 France : one needs not, as the Enghsh, to cross the 
 sea in order to enjoy oneself. 
 
 The sky was cloudy in the Channel, and a few drops 
 of rain fell. The morning seemed to have lost heart 
 and grown dismal. And Mark felt its chilling in- 
 fluence. He grew bored by the Norman sailor and 
 shook him off rather abruptly. As a rule, he was 
 not apt to be " short " with his inferiors, and now 
 he was annoyed with himself for having snubbed 
 the Frenchman. 
 
 He went off to see how his wife was getting on, 
 and found her with her eyes shut, and as he wrongly 
 thought, asleep. 
 
 So he resumed his pacing of the deck, though, 
 as he had finished his cigarette, he remained aft in 
 full view of the shelter where she was sitting. His 
 thoughts went back to the unpleasant episode of 
 the parson's sudden illness ; and the recollection 
 was certainly depressing. He was not much troubled 
 by superstition, but it was not a cheering omen for 
 a wedding. 
 
 And suddenly the thought smote him like a whip 
 stroke, that in marrying the girl who was now his 
 wife he had behaved feebly and amiss. He had 
 made a mistake, and a mistake that nothing could 
 set straight or alter. 
 
 For ten minutes the young man was almost 
 helpless under the assault of these misgivings. 
 Then he pulled himself together, and determined 
 to be deaf to them. 
 
 " Whether I 've married the wrong girl or not, I 
 am married," he tliought, " and the thing to do is 
 to make the best of it. It 's not a very bad 
 best. She is almost perfect. A thousand times too 
 good for me. More beautiful, yes, certainly more 
 
 331 
 
REVERSIONS 
 
 beautiful by far than — than the other one . . . who 
 would not envy me ? And my business is to forget 
 there ever was any other one : to do all I can to 
 deserve her, and make her life a happy one. And, 
 hang it all, I '11 do it. ..." 
 
 He walked back to where she was sitting, and 
 found her eyes were open this time. He did not 
 know it, but she had been watching him for the last 
 quarter of an hour, and she was a woman of fatally 
 keen intuitions ; on her too the chill of the clouded 
 sky began to settle. 
 
 ** You look cold, dear," he said, stooping to draw 
 her wraps about her. And his voice was so kind, 
 and so honest, that her eyes cleared, and she answered 
 cheerily. 
 
 332 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 At Calais they had time for a hurried luncheon, but 
 failed to secure a carriage to themselves for the 
 journey to Paris. It was a large and new first class, 
 and the other occupants were a French officer and 
 his wife, who took two comers, leaving them the 
 other two, so thev were not crowded. 
 
 The French officer wrapped himself in a cloak 
 with a hood to it, and assumed the appearance of a 
 rakish and rather immature Father Christmas. 
 He very soon composed himself to sleep, but would 
 open one eye from time to time and peep across at 
 the Baroness out of it very appreciatively. 
 
 His wife also went to sleep as much as she could, 
 but had to wake up very often to blow up her air- 
 pillow, and pick herself up out of her owti lap into 
 which she had tumbled during her unconsciousness. 
 On these occasions her gallant colonel was apt to 
 open both eyes, and fasten them upon her, with a 
 very different expression from that he had bestowed 
 on the Baroness. Their gleam was quite of a small- 
 weed bitterness and intensity. 
 
 At Boulogne the poor lady muttered " Bordeaux " 
 in her sleep, as the train jolted itself to a standstill. 
 And her husband muttered " Hein ! " through his 
 teeth, as if he would have enjoyed biting her. 
 
 The train shook and made a noise. Mark and 
 his wife made very little attempt at conversation. 
 Each looked out of the window, and sometimes 
 glanced across at one another. If their eyes met, 
 
 333 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 they smiled politely, and he would perhaps inquire 
 if she were tired. 
 
 He looked out at the wide, rolling landscape, 
 first sand-dune then treeless corn-land, and through 
 his mind there thudded still, in unison with the thump 
 and joggle of the engine, the thought that he had 
 done wrong. He was by no means without 
 conscience, and he recognised quite directly now 
 the uncomfortable, awkward fact that he was in love 
 with one woman still and had married another. 
 
 He was not without conscience, and it behoved 
 him to get over that actual love that did exist, and 
 learn to have that which ought to exist. No doubt, 
 he thought, this would really be effected in time. 
 But in the meanwhile he must be discontented. 
 
 As she caught herself watching him his wife 
 always turned her eyes away, angry with herself 
 for spying on his looks. But none the less her 
 troubled eyes would come back to his face again, 
 and she almost knew what was waking in his mind. 
 
 She was sorry for him, but angry also. He had 
 not, she thought, been frank with her as she had been 
 with him. 
 
 At Abbeville the French lady awoke in a fright, 
 and would with difficulty be persuaded that it was 
 not Paris. At Amiens Mark got his wife some 
 cafe au lait : she was too wise a traveller to want 
 tea at a continental railway station. At Creil an 
 old gentleman came looking for his daughter, to the 
 great resentment of the colonel, who declared that 
 Mademoiselle was not there, as if he had been 
 accused of stealing her. He stood up in his place 
 and patted his breast-pockets as if defying the 
 world to search him. 
 
 There were no other incidents of the journey, 
 and at three minutes to five they reached the Nord 
 
 334 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 terminus. By twenty minutes to six they were in 
 their rooms at the Hotel Continental, a fine suite 
 an premier overlooking the Tuileries gardens. 
 
 " The luggage will be brought up almost 
 immediately," Mark declared, " but don't worry 
 about unpacking yet. Have some tea and then 
 rest." 
 
 " When do we dine ? " 
 
 " Not till eight. But I can tell them to have it 
 earlier if you like." 
 
 " Oh, no. I would rather not have it before 
 eight. Yes, I 11 close with your offer of the tea. 
 But I do not feel inclined to sit still : we 've been 
 sitting all day. Let us go for a drive afterwards." 
 
 He agreed very readily, and rang to order the 
 tea and the carriage. 
 
 " Are you sure you can manage without Jekyll ? " 
 he asked. " I wish I had made you bring another 
 maid." 
 
 She laughed : his tone was already so marital. 
 
 " Certainly I can manage ! I could always pack 
 and unpack better than Jekyll. By the way, I 
 heard from her this morning : her father is better. 
 His death never alarms me : he dies annually about 
 this time, but he always gets well when three doctors 
 have given him up. Never before — that would be 
 undignified. Jekyll would not care sixpence for an 
 ordinary month's holiday, but she loves the 
 importance of being telegraphed for, and having to 
 go off in a hurry." 
 
 " And she know^s nothing of our marriage ? " 
 
 " Not a word. How astonished she '11 be ! " 
 
 The tea came, but j\Iark only poured out his 
 wife's, and would have none himself. 
 
 " I '11 go out on the balcony and smoke a cigarette," 
 he said. 
 
 335 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " Listen. I 've an amendment to propose. You 
 go for a stroll, and I will, after all, rest for quarter 
 of an hour. Then I '11 pick you up somewhere, 
 and we '11 dine ! " 
 
 " Very well. I '11 go across the Place de 
 la Concorde and into the Champs Elysees. You'll 
 find me mooching slowly along, or sitting on a bench, 
 on the right side as you go up to the Arc." 
 
 He disappeared, and gave instructions to the 
 concierge that the carriage was to be announced to 
 Madame in twenty minutes. 
 
 336 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Mark stood in the Place de la Concorde, and looked 
 for twenty seconds at the dismally pathetic statue 
 of Strasburg, with its ugly but touching wreaths 
 and tributes. Then he went on, over the tragic 
 site of so many executions, and so into the 
 shade of the Elysees. 
 
 On a bench, a hundred yards up, sat a figure 
 concerning whose identity he could not be mistaken. 
 To be accurate, there were two figures, but only one 
 of them was known to him. Both were ladies, and 
 both were English : but one was young and one 
 wasn't. The one who wasn't Mark had never seen 
 before : the younger lady was Miss Eccleston. 
 
 He had no decision to make as to whether or no 
 it behoved him to speak to her. 
 
 She turned her head first, as he caught sight of 
 her, and exclaimed — 
 
 " Captain Dorset ! Oh, Aunt Carrie, there 's 
 Captain Dorset." 
 
 Aunt Carrie had never heard of Captain Dorset, 
 but his arrival seemed so opportune that she smiled 
 most affably, and made ready to become acquainted 
 with excellent goodwill. 
 
 The two ladies had just been criticising the 
 trousers and the hat of a passing Frenchman. 
 
 " Oh, dear. Aunt Carrie," the girl had said, " how 
 one longs for a good wholesome Englishman to 
 talk to." 
 
 337 
 22 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " And now," she declares to Mark, '' you come 
 dropping down from heaven just as we were getting 
 ready to feel homesick." 
 
 He was presented to the elder lady, and made to 
 understand, somehow, by the younger that his 
 former indiscretions were forgiven. 
 
 *' And what on earth," she inquired, " brings 
 you to Paris ? It seems to me that people only 
 come here for one of two reasons, either on their 
 honeymoon, or else to buy gowns and bonnets. 
 Do you come to Paris for your bonnets, Captain 
 Dorset ? " 
 
 " And have you come on your honeymoon ? *' 
 he retorts, not without dexterity. 
 
 " Not yet," the girl rephes hardily ; " when I go 
 on my wedding-trip I shall take my bridegroom with 
 me. 
 
 " My dear Madge," says the old lady, *' what 
 nonsense you are talking." 
 
 *' That 's not nonsense, is it. Captain Dorset ? " 
 declares the girl ; "it shows a very proper spirit." 
 
 They both laugh. And no one notices how 
 constrained his mirth is. Miss Eccleston begins to 
 explain her presence. 
 
 It seems that three weeks ago she was summoned 
 to Paris on account of the illness of a godmother. 
 " She was only quite a distant relation, but she was 
 all alone in the world, and I was about as near to 
 her as anybody ; and she always liked me, and was 
 very nice to me. Not that we met very often ; 
 for, you see, she liked to live over here, and very 
 seldom came to England. Now she 's dead, Captain 
 Dorset, and she made me her heir. That 's why I 'm 
 in mourning." 
 
 " Madge ! " cried her aunt, much scandalised. 
 
 *^ Aunt Carrie, it 's no use being shocked. You 
 
 338 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 know very well I shouldn't have gone into mourning 
 if she had not left me all her money — even though 
 she had died a dozen times." 
 
 " You don't seem to have gone very far in," 
 observes the young man critically ; " one would 
 not say vou mourned as they who are without 
 hope." 
 
 " That 's what papa says. He came over for the 
 funeral last week. He has a gout attack ; that 's 
 what we 're waiting on for." 
 
 The old lady declared that it was rather chilly 
 in the shade, and began to get up steam for 
 departure. 
 
 " Would Captain Somerset come to dinner," she 
 inquired, " at eight, at the Hotel Meyerbeer — 
 close to here in the Elysees ? 
 
 Her niece laughed ; it seemed to her that the young 
 man looked unduly upset by the havoc in his name. 
 He expressed, however, his regret that he was 
 engaged already. 
 
 " Well, come and see us when you can," the girl 
 added ; " we shall be another week, I dare say. 
 It 's very good of me to want him. Aunt Carrie ; 
 the last time we met we quarrelled, and he was ever 
 so tiresome." 
 
 Perhaps the old lady was sharper than her juniors 
 imagined, and formed some sort of surmise as to the 
 nature of the quarrel. 
 
 " That 's your account of it, my dear ! " she 
 observed drily. " Perhaps Captain Somerset found 
 you unpleasant also." 
 
 " What a ridiculous hypothesis ! " exclaimed 
 Miss Eccleston. But, as she held out her hand in 
 farewell, there was some admission in her manner 
 that she might indeed have been also " tiresome." 
 
 " If only you had had the sense to wait," her 
 
 339 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 eyes declared, " and not been in such indecent haste, 
 the answer might have been different." 
 
 Captain Dorset sat down upon the bench that they 
 had just vacated, and his eyes followed them 
 drearily. To him, like the judge in " Maud Miiller," 
 it seemed that of all the words of tongue or pen the 
 saddest is, " It might have been." 
 
 340 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Captain Dorset sat upon the bench, where so 
 recently the two ladies had been seated, on the left 
 side of the Elysees, as one goes towards the Arc de 
 Triomphe : and the expression of his face was dismal, 
 and indeed stem. 
 
 He had no intention of meeting Madge again if he 
 could help it ; but it was unpleasant to know how 
 necessary such a resolution w^as. 
 
 A man who smokes will probably do so if he is 
 worried or out of gear. Mark pulled out his case 
 and put a cigarette between his lips, but he felt in 
 vain in his pockets for matches. The impossibility 
 of getting a light was certainly an additional 
 grievance at that moment. 
 
 " Can I help you ? " 
 
 The offer was from a gentleman, passing leisurely, 
 who had noticed Mark's dilemma. The gentleman 
 sat down and handed him a match-box. While 
 the cigarette was being lighted the stranger watched 
 the younger man with some amusement. 
 
 " You look," he said whimsically, " rather down 
 on your luck ; as if you were just going to be 
 hanged — or perhaps married." 
 
 " I have just been married." 
 
 They both laughed slightly. The elder man was 
 tall and very handsome, but lean and careworn- 
 looking. He might have been thirty-five or thirty- 
 six years old. But his hair was entirely untinged 
 with grey, and his face clean shaven. Both in his 
 
 341 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 manners and appearance there was something 
 Eastern — difficult to define or even appreciate, but 
 unmistakable. 
 
 He spoke English quite perfectly, but nevertheless 
 with some faint foreign suggestion that puzzled and 
 almost teased one. 
 
 For a few minutes the two men chatted desultorily, 
 then a sudden low exclamation from the stranger 
 caused Mark to turn sharply and look at him. 
 
 " What is it ? " he asked. " You seemed startled.'' 
 
 " I thought," replied the elder man, " that I 
 recognised somebody." 
 
 He was looking up the grand avenue in the 
 direction of the Arc de Triomphe, towards the right 
 side of the broad roadway. There were many 
 carriages going each way, and it was not easy to 
 follow the direction of his eyes as he stared among 
 them. 
 
 He sighed, and seemed to relinquish the attempt 
 to see again what had caught his attention. 
 
 " It was a wonderful likeness," he explained, 
 turning to Mark very courteously, " but it was only 
 for a moment, and after all the distance was 
 considerable." 
 
 '* You thought you caught sight of an 
 acquaintance ? " observed Mark, more out of a polite 
 show of interest than curiosity. 
 
 " An acquaintance ! " 
 
 " A great friend, I see." 
 
 The gentleman laughed softly and turned again to 
 Mark. 
 
 " It was my wife," he said, " whom I thought I 
 caught sight of." 
 
 " Your wife ! But surely in that case you could 
 scarcely be mistaken." 
 
 The stranger shook his head. 
 
 342 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " We have not met," he answered, " for many 
 years. Nevertheless, I beheve it was she. There 
 is no other woman in all the world so beautiful." 
 
 " Would you mind," asked Mark, " telling me your 
 wife's name. I know it is an odd request." 
 
 The dark stranger turned his beautiful eyes full 
 on ]\Iark, and answered without hesitation. 
 
 " My wife," he said, " is called the Baroness 
 Ferdinand Von Hagel." 
 
 It had never struck Mark previously that his 
 presence of mind was remarkable, but on this occasion 
 his retention of it was really rather singular. With 
 scarcely any pause he took the cigarette from his 
 lips, and said very quietly — 
 
 " You may easily have seen the Baroness Von 
 Hagel — I know she is in Paris." 
 
 The stranger leapt to his feet, and Mark rose also. 
 
 " How can I find her ? " cried the elder man. 
 *' It would be useless to try and track her now. 
 How can I find where she is staying ? " 
 
 " One moment," said Mark, " I know the 
 Baroness. In England she is spoken of as a 
 widow." 
 
 " I am not surprised. She must for years have 
 believed me dead. I was wrecked, and I alone 
 escaped. By a party of Riff pirates, however, I was 
 picked up and sold into slavery on the Tripoli coast. 
 Thence I was carried to the interior and sold again. 
 My purchaser was fond of me, but cruel beyond all 
 expression : during seven years he treated me well, 
 with two exceptions. Twice I attempted escape 
 and was recaptured ; I was then tortured, and given 
 to understand that with each such attempt the 
 tortures would be increased. I was surrounded by 
 spies, and, though the horror of torture could not 
 kill in me the determination to escape, it made me 
 
 343 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 cautious. Until five months ago my attempts 
 failed. At last I succeeded, but it took me months — 
 alone, hounded, unprovisioned — to reach the coast ; 
 and to-day have I reached Paris, by the night mail, 
 to leave it for England.'' 
 
 " You have not written to your wife ? " 
 
 " No, until the last few days I had no chance. 
 Now I want to see her, not to write." 
 
 " Forgive my saying it," said Mark quietly, '' but 
 have you thought what such a shock would be ? " 
 
 The Baron admitted that he had not sufficiently 
 considered that. 
 
 " If," continued Mark, " you go to Galignani's 
 they might know her hotel ; meanwhile I will also do 
 my best. Suppose you meet me in an hour at the 
 Hotel Meurice, perhaps I shall have news for you. 
 If I see her first, may I use my discretion in breaking 
 some hint of this to her ? " 
 
 The man who claimed to be the husband of the 
 Baroness agreed, and there and then they parted. 
 The elder man called a carriage and ordered it to 
 drive to Galignani's : Mark walked up the avenue a 
 little way and then jumped into another. 
 
 " Drive on slowly towards the Arc de Triomphe," 
 he said, " I expect to meet someone coming 
 back." 
 
 It was as he thought ; in a few minutes he met his 
 wife, driving slowly back and peering among the 
 trees on the left side. He dismissed his seedy fiacre 
 and joined her in her smart Victoria, ordering the 
 man, rather to her surprise, to return at once to the 
 Hotel Continental. 
 
 It was not easy to begin upon the subject on which 
 he had to speak : very difficult to approach it at all 
 without abruptness. For a few moments he was 
 silent, and his preoccupation was very apparent. 
 
 344 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " I saw someone," she herself began, " as I was 
 driving just now, whom I did not expect at aU to 
 see here — someone I know." 
 
 He turned sharply towards her, but in an instant 
 he recognised that she could not thus have spoken 
 of seeing the husband whom she had so long believed 
 to be dead. 
 
 On her side his start struck her as peculiar. Her 
 remark scarcely, she thought, justified it. 
 
 " I saw that Miss Eccleston," she continued, 
 trying not to watch him, " who was staying at 
 Haddon the night I arrived." 
 
 " Oh ! I saw her too. She was with an aunt — 
 an old maid, I fancy. We had a little talk. It 
 seems a godmother and distant relation of 
 Miss Eccleston's died here lately and has left her a 
 fortune." 
 
 " Ah ! I noticed the mourning and the high 
 spirits." 
 
 To this he made no reply. The tone was, of course, 
 critical, and he disliked it. But he recognised 
 that it was not called for that at this moment he 
 should champion the young lady to his wife. 
 
 Presently she turned to him, and said " Mark ! " 
 calling him, almost for the first time, by his Christian 
 name. 
 
 He turned at once, and their eyes met frankh'. 
 His were full of trouble, but it was only the trouble 
 of his sense of the great difficulty of the task he had 
 to perform. He was not at all a coward, even 
 morally ; and he delayed only out of the dread of 
 abruptness. He was thinking wholly of her. 
 Nevertheless, he knew that the delay was increasing" 
 the difficulty of beginning. 
 
 " Mark ! " said his wife, " I have been thinking. 
 And so have you, haven't you ? " 
 
 345 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " I never make much hand of it," he said, " it 's 
 not my hne." 
 
 He laughed, but it did not seem that his laughter | 
 was very light-hearted. 
 
 " Do you remember," she asked, *' the afternoon 
 that you proposed to me ? " 
 
 She spoke very gently, as if the remembrance 
 was one she liked : and he replied as gently — 
 
 " Yes, dear. I shall always remember that." 
 
 They both thought of it. The old tapestried room, 
 the slanting yellow light of the late August afternoon, 
 the happy air of ancient peace about the quaint, 
 old-world scene in which they had said their say, 
 he and she. 
 
 " I told you then," she said, " how it was with me. 
 That I was still, and would for ever be, in love with 
 a dead man." 
 
 " Yes," he said ; he remembered very well. 
 
 " But you," she continued, " you said nothing to 
 me of your being also in love." 
 
 " No," he answered, not defending himself, " I 
 know I did not." 
 
 " But, Mark, I think you were. I think so now ; 
 it never struck me then." 
 
 He made no denial, and no excuse. 
 
 " Why, my dear," she cried, in her low, clear voice, 
 ** oh, why did you not tell me ? " 
 
 " I had asked," he answered, and, as I think, 
 T^ravely, " and I had been refused." 
 
 " The day before ? " 
 
 "Yes. The very day before." 
 
 " Oh, Mark ! " 
 
 It was their first difference. The strangeness of 
 the position seemed to him so great, that almost all 
 other feeling was swallowed up in the sense of it. 
 
 346 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 She was his wife, and she was not his wife. Her 
 sole right to their questions lay in his being, as she 
 thought, her husband. And they had only been 
 married a few hours. He did not challenge her 
 right, or deprecate her judgment. If she was angry, 
 he did not protest against her anger, or silence her 
 by the crushing statement of the truth. 
 
 He had deserved the correction, and he took it 
 mildly — without even kissing the rod ! 
 
 They came to the hotel. 
 
 She preceded him upstairs to their rooms. He 
 lingered behind and bade the carriage wait. He 
 asked also that his account might be prepared, 
 explaining that, most unexpectedly, both he and 
 Madame had to leave. He made them understand 
 that there would be no discussion as to the amount ; 
 and seeing that, and that Monsieur was evidently 
 troubled, they met him fairly. Even hotel-keepers 
 are not all bandits. Having made these arrange- 
 ments, he followed his wife upstairs, still thinking 
 wholly of her, and yet feeling that he would give 
 much to be spared this interview. 
 
 Oddly enough, he never for a moment doubted 
 that the other man was, in truth, her husband. 
 
 347 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 He found his wife in their sitting-room, out of which, 
 on one side, opened their private dining-room ; on 
 the other their bedroom, beyond which was his own 
 dressing-room. 
 
 She was standing by one of the open windows 
 looking out into the gardens of the Tuileries opposite. 
 
 Half an hour had already gone by since he had 
 parted from Von Hagel ; in another half-hour he 
 must meet him at the Hotel Meurice. As he entered 
 she turned to meet him, and he saw at once that there 
 was to be no further allusion to his offence. It had 
 been, the girl thought, their first matrimonial 
 discussion — and it was over : perhaps it might be 
 their last. 
 
 *' Oh, Mark ! " she said, " you look so grave. 
 Was I nasty ? I did not mean to be." 
 
 " No, dear," he answered gently, " you could not 
 be nasty." 
 
 She held out her hands to him, and he took hers 
 with a grave cordiality. 
 
 She seemed so small and weak ! And he was so 
 huge and strong. He could not guess how great the 
 shock might be of what he had to tell. But, after 
 all — time pressed so — he was almost forced to be 
 abrupt. 
 
 " My dear," he said, " do not think, just now, 
 about me at all. There is something concerning 
 yourself that I have to tell you." 
 
 She scanned his face with doubting wonder. 
 
 348 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " But does it not concern you too ? " she asks. 
 
 " Yes, but for me it is different. I am a man, 
 and we do not feel things hke you." 
 
 " What is it ? " she almost whispers, half-scared 
 by the anxious gravity of his face. 
 
 " It is nothing bad," he answers, " for you a great 
 joy. But for me scarcely that." 
 
 He smiled rather sadly, she thought. 
 
 " Oh, Mark! " she whispers, " are not our joys to 
 be the same ? " 
 
 He shakes his head. 
 
 " In this," he says, " they cannot be. And even 
 for you the joy must come as a great shock." 
 
 He does not take his eyes from her startled face, 
 nor can she do anything but search his for the 
 meaning of his riddles. He feels her tremble a 
 little, and knows that she is leaning on him for 
 support. 
 
 " Oh ! " she cries, " what is it ? Tell me, Mark. 
 It frightens me to see you look so grave, and under- 
 stand nothing." 
 
 He is in desperation : the time is hurrying on, and 
 she seems to have no inkling. 
 
 " My dear," he says, himself shaking, " you must 
 be told " 
 
 Still he can scarcely tell her. Then he does. 
 
 " Your husband," he says in a strained, low voice, 
 " your husband is alive." 
 
 She is quite dazed. 
 
 " My husband ! Yon are my husband," she 
 stammers. 
 
 He still holds her hands, and feels how they 
 tremble. He shakes liis head gently. 
 
 " You . . . you mean," and the words will 
 scarcely come through the quivering gate of speech, 
 *' you mean that Rudolph is alive ? " 
 
 349 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " Yes," he says, ''he is, I beheve, ahve. And 
 I have seen him : he is here — in Paris." 
 
 " But," she cries, as if she dreaded that he was 
 deceiving her, " he died. He was drowned. They 
 identified his body." 
 
 Mark shakes his head, and still she clings to his 
 strong support, her whole body — the whole of it he 
 feels, so small, so frail — shivering as if in fever. 
 
 Then, very slowly and softly, as if to a child who 
 has been ill and must be told everything very simply 
 and gradually, he told her what he had himself been 
 told. And as she listened she became calm, and 
 a strange, almost unearthly light of rapture grew 
 in her great eyes. It gave him a sort of pang. He 
 knew that the pang was unreasonable, but he knew 
 that it was there. After all, he had thought of her all 
 day as his wife. And ever since he had known her 
 he had appreciated her. Not all his being in love 
 with Madge had ever blinded him to the greater 
 sweetness, more wonderful beauty, of this girl who 
 had been for a few hours his wife. 
 
 Then he told her his plan. 
 
 " I meet him," he said, " at half-past seven at the 
 Hotel Meurice, where I shall take my things. Yours 
 you will take to the Hotel Bristol. I will send him 
 there to you, or bring him rather. For though, 
 somehow, I have no doubt, there is the possibility 
 of doubt. If you doubt after seeing him then you 
 need me, and I am yours for every need. If you have 
 no doubt, and recognise him as — as himself — then it 
 must be for you to decide whether he should be told 
 anything of our marriage or not. My own feeling 
 would be to tell him nothing yet, later if you like. 
 But remember that no one in all the world really 
 knows of our marriage. It has not been registered, 
 owing to the parson's illness ; the only witnesses 
 
 350 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 were that old man and woman, half blind and wholly 
 
 stupid, who only saw us that once in the dark church. 
 
 As for the parson, he saw me twice, and you once. 
 
 Nor is he ever likely to meet either of us again." 
 " You have sent no notice to the papers ? " 
 " Not yet. I have it in my pocket now." 
 
 351 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 *' And now," said Mark, " we must say good-bye. 
 For it is time that you should go. I heard them take 
 your things down. You will find them on the 
 carriage we were driving in just now. Drive at once 
 to the Hotel Bristol, and take rooms there. I am 
 so sorry I cannot save you the trouble of doing it for 
 yourself. Have your luggage taken up at once, and 
 then have your dinner. Before you have finished 
 we shall be there too." 
 
 " What was he like ? " she asks irrelevantly and 
 for the twentieth time. 
 
 At each word of Mark's she knows more surely 
 that the wonderful news is true. 
 
 " Good-bye," she says presently, " we shall always 
 be dear friends." 
 
 '* Always dear friends," he answers, " but friends 
 who are apart." 
 
 She made some gesture of question, and he said 
 that it even must be so. 
 
 " After all," he tells her, *' you have been my wife 
 to-day, and I have been your husband. Any other 
 intercourse of friendship would for us two be grotesque 
 henceforward, and unseemly. Nor," he adds sin- 
 cerely, " should I like to meet you and see you as 
 the wife of another man." 
 
 She feels that he speaks wisely and with a singular 
 apprehension of the truth. It is odd, but she knows 
 that she should not care either to see him married to 
 another woman. 
 
 352 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 " And yet," she says, " you will marry — and be 
 happy." 
 
 He offers no heroic denial. 
 
 " Oh, yes," he admits, " I shall marry, and be 
 happy. I am one of those men who are bound to 
 be happy and bound to be married." 
 
 " And I think," she tells him, " that you would 
 make any woman happy." 
 
 She tries not to think of any particular woman — 
 she certainly will not think of Miss Eccleston. A 
 ridiculous jealousy of that young woman assails her, 
 and she knows it. 
 
 For a moment they are both silent, then he takes 
 her hand again, for it is time that she should go. 
 
 " God's providence," he says gravely, " is a strange 
 thing : a strange but true thing. I am not much of 
 a religious man, but I know that. All these years 
 it has guarded him ; " she knew that he meant her 
 husband ; " and it has been with us too." 
 
 He is first to turn towards the door : he opens it 
 for her, and stands holding it as she passes out. 
 The room has no signs of their brief occupation ; it 
 has rather a forlorn look, he thinks. The door into 
 the dining-room is open, and they can see the smart 
 table, with its plate and glass and flowers, set out for 
 their first conjugal repast. 
 
 They pass down the broad, shallow stairs — it is 
 not worth while to descend by the lift : and he 
 places her in the waiting carriage. Here they make 
 no farewells, she leans forward and herself directs 
 the driver. And she is gone, their honeymoon 
 is over ; and Mark stands a widowed bachelor 
 upon the steps of the hotel watching her as she 
 goes. 
 
 He sighs a little as he turns away. The ending of 
 
 353 
 28 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 a dream has always a certain wistfulness, albeit the 
 awakening is to a reality as happy. 
 
 Another carriage loaded with his luggage stands 
 waiting. He pays the account they have prepared, 
 and distributes generous gratuities. Then he too 
 departs. 
 
 But for the baggage it would be absurd to drive 
 to the Hotel Meurice, it is so near. He is there almost 
 immediately. 
 
 He jumps down and goes straight in, having paid 
 the cocher. He engages rooms and bids them have 
 his baggage taken up. Then he goes at once into the 
 salle a manger and sits down at a small table. They 
 bring him soup, and he then says that he expects a 
 gentleman. In a few minutes the gentleman is 
 shown in : it appears that the gentleman was waiting 
 in the fumoir. 
 
 This he has done intentionally to gain a little more 
 time. 
 
 " Well," he says, " could Galignani help you ? " 
 
 *' No. They were horribly busy and not very 
 attentive at first : they evidently did not think it at 
 all an important matter, and I did not care to be too 
 explicit. At last they found time to attend to me, 
 and did what they could." 
 
 *' But to no purpose ? " 
 
 *' To no purpose. They seemed to be telephoning 
 to half the hotels and pensions in Paris." 
 
 " Baroness Von Hagel would not be at a pension," 
 observed Mark. 
 
 " No, I expect not. But, you see, after eight years 
 in the heart of Tripoli one's ideas of polite customs 
 might get antiquated. What 's all wrong one year 
 gets all right the next. So I let them go their own 
 way to work. But it led to nothing." 
 
 He had taken a seat, in a temporary sort of way, 
 
 354 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 sitting sideways on it with his hat and stick in his 
 hand. Meanwhile Mark had finished his soup and 
 a Httle fish. 
 
 He poured out some wine and pushed it towards 
 Von Hagel, who took it carelessly without any 
 acknowledgment, and drank it as if he was not 
 thinking of it at all. 
 
 Mark himself drank some and said — 
 
 " Well ! I have been more fortunate : I have 
 seen her." 
 
 " It was her that I saw ? I felt sure I was not 
 mistaken." 
 
 *' No, I do not think you were mistaken. I met 
 her almost immediately after you had gone away : 
 and made her stop and let me get into her carriage. 
 I drove with her to her hotel, and have prepared her 
 mind for your coming. You will find her at the 
 Hotel Bristol." 
 
 Baron Von Hagel jumped up. 
 
 " And why are we gossiping here ? " he exclaimed. 
 " Come, let us go at once." 
 
 Mark also rose, but more deliberately. 
 
 " To tell the truth," he replied, " I have kept you 
 here these few moments intentionally. It is scarcely 
 half an hour since I left the Baroness. I told her 
 I was going to meet you and bring you to her. 
 Meanwhile, I begged her to take some refreshment. 
 She only crossed over from England to-day, and must 
 be fatigued by her journey, apart from this great 
 shock — for you know it must be a shock, however 
 full of joy so enormous a surprise may be. It was 
 her very recent arrival that prevented Galignani's 
 knowing her whereabouts ; by to-morrow he could 
 certainly have told you." 
 
 355 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 If Mark had before felt any doubts as to the 
 genuineness of the soi-disant Baron Von Hagel's 
 claims, they would have vanished the moment he 
 saw that man of strange adventures and his supposed 
 widow meet. As a matter of fact, he had had none. 
 
 Truth is often oddly convincing, and from the 
 first the young man had felt himself to be in the 
 presence of facts which no mere discussion of 
 probabilities or unlikelihoods would shake or alter. 
 
 His own position, of course, was the most peculiar 
 conceivable. He had quite legally married a lady 
 who was legally quite free to marry. But, more 
 than that, she had felt herself, believed herself, to 
 be equally free as regards the sanction of divine 
 law also. 
 
 And now it was discovered, within half a dozen 
 hours of their marriage, that the lady was not a 
 widow ; and therefore that their marriage, legal or 
 not, could be none in the eye of Heaven. And the 
 husband, thus given back by death, was not the 
 more unwelcome one returned, as Ulysses said, 
 *' like ghosts to trouble joy." 
 
 He had been her one and only lover. 
 
 Meanwhile their marriage, by the merest chance 
 unregistered, had had so few witnesses, and of such 
 a character, that it was in the greatest possible degree 
 unlikely that it would ever be known to have taken 
 place, except by their own avowal. 
 
 All this was very present to the mind of the young 
 
 356 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 man as he walked beside Von Hagel on their way to 
 the Hotel Bristol. 
 
 " Yes," the concierge admitted, " the Baroness 
 Von Hagel had descended chez nous. Did these 
 gentlemen wish to see Madame ? " 
 
 They were escorted to her apartments — again a 
 fine suite on the first floor. 
 
 In the outer salon their conductor left them, 
 passing through a very small anteroom to the little 
 salle a manger of the suite where, he thought, 
 Madame ctait a table. 
 
 In a few moments he returned. Yes, Madame la 
 Baronne would receive these gentlemen. Would 
 they be seated ? He placed chairs, altered the 
 blinds a little, and withdrew. 
 
 He had scarcely disappeared when the Baroness 
 came in. 
 
 She was very pale, which altered her singularly. 
 And Mark noticed that her slight frame trembled 
 so much that she could scarcely stand. 
 
 But she had scarcely let her earnest gaze rest upon 
 the man whom she had long mourned as dead, 
 when all this was changed. A lovely flush swept 
 away the pallor of her face and throat, a glistening 
 moisture, that was all of happiness, filled her 
 wondrous eyes, and the lips parted in a smile that, 
 told of long grief, and of such a joy as we mortals 
 only know as the revulsion from long grief and 
 pain ! 
 
 Mark stood on the balcony, his hands leant upon 
 the marble, his eyes bent upon the street ; but they 
 had no heed of the passing to and fro of the city's 
 busy traffic. They were full of that meeting he had 
 just seen : and his mind was entangled with it. 
 
 Was it not possible without such previous sorrow 
 
 357 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 to know such unmeasured gladness ? Must earthly 
 happiness be always the removal or the mere 
 absence of suffering ? 
 
 Presently she herself came out on to the balcony, 
 and stood beside him in the gathering dusk. 
 
 He turned and looked down upon her happy face, 
 half-grudgingly ; never, he knew, though they had 
 been wedded half a life-time, would his coming 
 have lighted in her eyes the lamp that burned 
 there now. 
 
 She stood beside him silent, and yet half wondering 
 at his silence. 
 
 ** Good-bye," he said at last. 
 
 And she knew that there could only now remain 
 farewells. 
 
 He took her hand and lifted it until his lips 
 touched it. 
 
 " This," he said, " is all you ever meant to give 
 me. And now I give it back. But always it will 
 have been an honour that for any time at all it should 
 have been mine." 
 
 He released it very gently, almost as if he feared 
 it might fall and break, it seemed so small and 
 fragile. 
 
 And so he left her, passing into the room where 
 her husband waited for him to say farewell. 
 
 '* Good-bye," the elder man said heartily, " you 
 have helped miC very much. It was a great good 
 fortune that I met you." 
 
 " Yes," replied the other, " it was very fortunate." 
 
 Perhaps something in the young man's face 
 arrested the Austrian's attention. 
 
 " Perhaps," he said drily, " you have less reason 
 to rejoice at our meeting than I have." 
 
 " I am very glad indeed we met. It was a 
 singular good fortune," Mark answered quietly. 
 
 358 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 They were out on the staircase now, Von Hagel 
 seeing his guest off. He laughed a httle. 
 
 " I thought, perhaps," he said, " my resurrection 
 might have spoiled wishes of your own." 
 
 " You forget," said Mark a little grimly, " that I 
 told you I had just got married." 
 
 " Ah ! So you did ! and I am keeping you from 
 your bride. Good-bye, good-bye ; hurry off to her, 
 and make her all my apologies for keeping you so 
 long from her." 
 
 " Good-bye," said Mark, still smiling grimly ; 
 and so he went, without, however, promising to 
 deliver the Baron's messages to his wife. 
 
 359 
 
REVERSIONS. 
 
 and looked at her from under the brim of a straw hat 
 that was also tilted, and rested at this moment on 
 his nose. 
 
 " Shall we go up and speak to him ? " inquired 
 the Baron. " It 's your friend Dorset, isn't it ? " 
 
 The Baroness said that there was no necessity to 
 interrupt them. 
 
 " He looked awfully down the time I saw him first," 
 said Von Hagel ; "he said it was his wedding-day, 
 and I am sure he was repenting at leisure . . . but 
 he looks pretty well reconciled now, doesn't he ? " 
 
 ** He certainly appears reconciled to his destiny 
 now," repeated the Baroness, in a less complacent 
 tone than might have been expected. 
 
 362 
 
A Self-contained Residence. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 What took Mr. Mailing's fancy was the above 
 description. Houses in their own park-hke grounds 
 — of nearly an acre and a quarter — presented 
 nothing novel, and certainly nothing arresting, to the 
 imagination, though Mr. Marling's imagination had 
 ever been one of his most active characteristics. 
 The three laburnums, or as many pink may-trees, 
 the two wellingtonias, one arancaria and half a 
 copper-beech instantly rose before his horrified 
 fancy, together with the painted entrance-gate 
 bearing the name of the residence — Sandringham, 
 perhaps, or Ladysmith. 
 
 He had learned what to expect of a grange, and 
 even a manor-house could no longer deceive him. 
 Castles, indeed, are infrequent in the lists of house 
 and estate agents, but halls he had found very 
 unreliable, especially in the Eastern Counties. 
 Courts, too, on actual acquaintance, had often 
 proved remarkably uncourtjy in appearance and 
 demeanour. 
 
 But a self-contained residence ! Why, here at 
 last was something original. (Mr. Marling had 
 never been house-hunting in Scotland, where a 
 
 363 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 self-contained residence is not more unusual than a 
 lady or gentleman of the same character.) 
 
 Mr. Marling at once resolved to inspect it ; and 
 though it was as near the Arctic Circle as one can get 
 in England, thirty miles or more on the polar side of 
 Newcastle (" a place quite northward," as even 
 Mr. Bennet was aware), he had no objections ; for 
 proximity to London was no attraction to him, and in 
 no particular county had Mr. Marling fewer acquain- 
 tances than in any other. It was a harmless 
 idiosyncrasy of his to believe that he possessed no 
 acquaintance anywhere, and only a few friends 
 whom he had always been accustomed to think of 
 as a long way off. Unsuited to promiscuous 
 sociability, Mr. Marling was inclined to plume 
 himself on being a misanthrope, whereas he was 
 merely rather a shy man, with too much 
 originality, or at all events independence of 
 behaviour, to get on well with everybody. He 
 went dow^n to Newcastle, and changed there into a 
 local train which carried him nearer and nearer to 
 the Scottish border. At a small market-town 
 called Horspeth he passed the night in an old- 
 fashioned and very comfortable inn, whence on the 
 morrow he drove over to have his first look at the 
 self-contained residence. 
 
 The description proved in every way applicable. 
 To state that the house was detached would feebly 
 convey the idea of its determined isolation ; and its 
 grounds, extensive as they were, were secluded 
 (from a public which had no existence) within 
 enormously high walls of ancient brickwork, coped 
 and buttressed with stone. The mansion was rather 
 large, and though several of the tall windows had 
 been built up in the days of the window-tax, quite 
 enough remained. But they conveyed the singular 
 
 3^4 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 impression of eyes that have exclusively an outward 
 look. No doubt they admitted light enough, but 
 nothing could be seen through them by the 
 spectator out of doors. Their object was to let in 
 something, but to let out nothing. 
 
 Nothing could be more reticent than the air of 
 this thoroughly eligible mansion. Mr. Marling, 
 who was fanciful, felt himself instantly reminded 
 of Steerforth's respectable servant, Mr. Littimer. 
 The house was just as respectable, and conveyed 
 exactly the same impression of resolute non- 
 committal. If its master had a secret, like Mr. 
 Littimer it would keep it. Its very neatness, and 
 for an unoccupied house that had been unlet for 
 •several years its neatness was surprising ; its very 
 neatness, I say, seemed a part of its grim determina- 
 tion to express nothing, hint nothing, admit nothing. 
 
 " Such an excellent house as it seems," observed 
 Mr. Marling to the caretaker, " it is a wonder no one 
 has taken it ! " 
 
 " Indeed," said the caretaker ; but whether she 
 meant " A marvel indeed ! " or " Indeed, do you 
 think so ? " not even Mr. Marling, who was a judge 
 of voices, and quick at detecting shades of 
 intonation, could in the least determine. The 
 woman certainly possessed a voice, but had 
 apparently disencumbered herself of anything like 
 intonation. Her name, he subsequently learned, 
 was Mrs. Filmer, but for his par: he chose to believe 
 her the relict of Mr. Littimer aforesaid. 
 
 She seemed to have been built out of the same 
 materials as the house, and, like it, was large 
 enough and perfectly eligible (for anyone bold 
 enough to take her), and not at all out of repair or 
 neglected. But she was not a bit more confidential. 
 
 She no doubt showed the rooms — on their own 
 
 365 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 responsibility, so to speak, and did not appear to 
 decline answering questions. But her replies never 
 conveyed anything (so Mr. Marling fancifully 
 assured himself), and her afhrmatives gave just as 
 nugatory an impression as her negatives. She had 
 no apparent objection to his coming to see the house, 
 and would apparently have none to his taking it, 
 or to his going out into the shrubbery and hanging 
 himself. 
 
 The mansion was fully furnished, and the furniture 
 was good and well-kept. It looked as new as it 
 could ever have looked, and seemed determined 
 never to look any older — like Mrs. Filmer, who could 
 never have been young, and in fifty years' time 
 would undoubtedly refuse to seem old. 
 
 It was probably quite comfortable furniture, but 
 had firmly resolved not to betray anything of the 
 sort, or to frankly declare itself uncomfortable 
 either. The beds certainly had a lethargic 
 expression, and one could readily suppose people 
 had gone to sleep in them ; but that anyone had ever 
 woke up in them even Mr. Marling, with his active 
 fancy, found it impossible to imagine. The beds 
 were, Mr. Marling assured himself, the only un- 
 observant-looking objects about the place. Just 
 as the outward aspect of the house itself suggested 
 coolly vigilant observation, just as Mrs. Filmer 
 seemed the solid embodiment of the same idea, so 
 every polished mahogany door-panel, or shining 
 walnut card-table, or reflective rose-wood sideboard 
 fascinated Mr. Marling by its air of stolid, incurious 
 watchfulness. There was nothing inquisitive about 
 Mrs. Filmer : the notion of inquisitiveness was too 
 personal and human for association with so 
 impersonal a female. She was merely observant : 
 with the stolid, immovable observation of a 
 
 366 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 chameleon, that turns his head the other way and 
 watches you all the while. 
 
 So did the furniture. It never blinked as ordinary 
 furniture does in the fire or sunlight ; it merely 
 stared. There was no alert glance in its polished 
 surfaces, only the stationary, vigilant noting of an 
 immovable sentinel. 
 
 Of course, Mr. Marling took the house : its material 
 excellence and its ethical peculiarity alike marked 
 him down its victim. The opportunity of studying 
 so remarkable a character as Mrs. Filmer's and the 
 mansion's (one, really, and inseparable) was a thing 
 beyond his power to resist. Mrs. Filmer, indeed, 
 showed from the first that she knew he would take it. 
 No doubt she answered his questions as to the 
 drains and the water, the number of bedrooms, 
 and the aspect of the sitting-rooms, but it was 
 obvious that she was entirely aware that they were 
 all irrelevant. 
 
 Had there been forty bedrooms instead of eleven, 
 had the reception-rooms all looked north-east 
 instead of south-west, she knew very well that 
 Mr. Marling could not help taking the house. It 
 was not that she wanted him to take it ; it was 
 obviously indifferent to her whether anyone took it, 
 or nobody took it, or an earthquake swallowed it up 
 bodily, once she had herself locked and quitted 
 the premises. 
 
 Mrs. Filmer was taken on with the mansion as 
 housekeeper. Mr. Marling could not deny the 
 apparent probability of his having proposed the 
 arrangement to her, or of her having proposed it to 
 him. He could only aver that he had not the 
 faintest recollection of cither. Mrs. Filmer, he 
 declared, had merely taken it for granted that slie 
 would remain as housekeeper, just as he could not 
 
 367 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 help knowing, the moment he entered the house, 
 that she had taken it for granted he would become 
 its tenant. She took everything for granted — the 
 hours of his meals (which were not those to which 
 he had been accustomed), their bill of fare, his hour 
 of rising in the morning. It was with relief he found 
 himself allowed to fix his own time for going to bed^ 
 or rather to leave it unfixed, and sit up or retire 
 betimes as varying fancy led him. 
 
 Mrs. Filmer herself he believed to go to bed rather 
 early, though as a matter of fact he knew nothing 
 about it. She sent him his dinner at seven, during 
 which repast he was waited upon by a sort of cheaper, 
 more recent family edition of Mrs Filmer called 
 Ida or Eider (he had never seen it WTitten, but from 
 her downy manner he thought the latter spelling 
 more suitable), popularly supposed by himself to be 
 a niece of the housekeeper's. At a quarter to nine 
 that lady herself appeared with whisky decanter, 
 tumbler, hot water and syphon, all of which she had 
 taken for granted, without any order on his part, 
 and w^as subsequently seen no more till the morrow. 
 
 At seven she brought him to his bedside a cup of 
 excellent tea, but so inexorably, that had it been 
 poison instead, Mr. Marling knew very well that he 
 would have had to drink it. He hoped she would 
 not take it for granted presently that he and she 
 had better get married, for in such a case he frankly 
 admitted to himself that nothing could save him. 
 His sheet-anchor was the ungrounded conviction 
 that Mr. Filmer — or Mr. Littimer, as he preferred 
 to call him — was still extant, though not apparent. 
 
 368 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 For the first week it rained without cessation all 
 day, clearing up ridiculously at nightfall, just 
 when it would have been reasonable to begin to 
 rain. Mr. Marling disliked getting wet as much as 
 a cat, and remained contentedly indoors : his habits 
 were not active, and this was no penance to him. 
 He had plenty of books (but they were, he found, 
 all about Mrs. Filmer), and his housekeeper kept up 
 excellent fires. 
 
 After the rain came fogs, and for another week 
 he remained indoors. At the end of the fortnight 
 a frost set in, black and hard, and Mr. Marling 
 decided that to go abroad while it lasted would be 
 unsafe. " I don't know the country," he thought, 
 " and might trip up over the North Pole, or tumble 
 into it, or prick myself with it. I haven't an idea 
 what it is like, whether it 's a cavity or an ex- 
 crescence, liquid or solid, blunt or sharp." 
 
 So he remained indoors, writing a few letters, 
 reading a few books, but thinking all the while 
 of Mrs. Filmer. 
 
 And all this while he saw no one. Except a 
 farmer or two, there were no laymen to come to call ; 
 and tenants of the self-contained residence were 
 considered to move on a plane above their reach. 
 True, each village had its parson, and perhaps half 
 a dozen villages were within as many miles ; but 
 Mr. Marling had not been to churcli, and even the 
 nearest of them had no official cognisance of his 
 
 24 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 arrival. He did not complain, for he rather disliked 
 clergymen, and on the whole was disposed to believe 
 himself an agnostic. 
 
 About a month after his arrival, however, it 
 happened that the sun, in an unguarded moment, 
 began to shine, and Mrs. Filmer shortly took it for 
 granted that he would be going out for a walk. 
 Perhaps she thought it time to " turn out " his 
 library, though she certainly did not say so, and 
 like every other room in the house, it seemed both 
 cleanness and neatness itself ; but she did bring 
 him a glass of port and three biscuits, and 
 undoubtedly she caused him to understand that 
 this would carry him on till lunchtime at two ; 
 and the fact is indisputable that by eleven o'clock 
 he was outside the high walls of his own domain, 
 and walking down the road that had originally 
 brought him from Horspeth. 
 
 The sensation was peculiar. Mr. Marling had 
 become, as it were, so absorbed in his self-contained 
 residence that it was already almost an adventure 
 to be away from it. He felt it so strange to be 
 outside that he did not think he should stay long. 
 It was really with a sense of nervousness that he 
 wondered if he should meet anyone. And it was 
 certain he could meet no one known to himself, 
 or to whom he was known. 
 
 It was a pleasant morning, mild, silent, soundless, 
 with a soft air, motionless as death, a sunlight that 
 held no heat, sexless, utterly unreminiscent of the 
 lusty sun of summer, with his ardent kisses, his 
 fierce love-touches. The trees were quite leafless. 
 In the narrow belt of wood beside the road a golden- 
 russet carpet was still spread, and the smell of it 
 beat upon his memory with stings of association. 
 
 He had been young once, with high hopes and 
 
 370 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 high ambitions. He had no ambitions left, and 
 hope was impossible, for he had got already all he 
 intended to want. Quite unexpectedly he had 
 become, ten years ago, rather rich. And that 
 advent of unearned wealth had gradually, but 
 quickly, spoiled his life, emasculating it. He had 
 little by little abdicated all his claims on life, 
 exchanging each once eager desire for present 
 indolent comfort and indulgence, and with all the 
 less struggle that no indulgence of his was illicit 
 or degrading, or injurious. He had relinquished 
 effort as supererogatory : attainment of all sorts 
 he had ceased to look up at, having acquired the 
 wretched habit of pricing the thing to be attained, 
 and counting cost with the trouble of acquisition. 
 
 Out of doors on this lovely morning Mr. Marling 
 found himself uncomfortable : not physically, but 
 morally. There was an accusation in the beauty of 
 the wintry world that threatened to annoy him. 
 The swiftly - dying year smiled, not wistfully, 
 because, unable to effect more, she had done all 
 that had been appointed or possible. Her abandon- 
 ment of further effort because energy could no 
 longer be effectual, and nothing remained for action 
 to accomplish, was the contrary and reproach of his 
 own abdication of endeavour at an age when he ought 
 to have been still a young man. At eight-and-thirty 
 Mr. Marling was, as he knew, in reality elderly. 
 
 So disagreeable did he find the unwonted callings 
 of memory and reproachful glances of retreating 
 purpose, that he turned homeward as soon as he 
 deemed it late enough for Mrs. Filmer to take his 
 return for granted. But, as he turned, something 
 peculiar took place : the road in front ran straight 
 for half a mile — it was that straight stretch, without 
 a turning, that had decided him against further 
 
 371 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 advance — and some way on, too distant for recogni- 
 tion of feature, he observed a gentleman. The 
 figure was strongly familiar : he had known it, 
 through its varying development, all his life, and 
 yet at the moment it evaded recollection and 
 identification ; and just as he resolved to go no 
 farther, the gentleman turned too. He made a 
 gesture — if he spoke, no sound reached Mr. Marling — 
 and it was one of very simple import. He beckoned 
 to come on. 
 
 But Mr. Marling was out of humour with the fine 
 wintry morning ; its sunshine, he decided, was 
 Pharisaical and provoking ; and such signals to 
 increase the distance from his self-contained residence 
 as were given by the beckoning gentleman were 
 unwelcome and inopportune. 
 
 He stood still indeed, without immediately acting 
 on his resolve to turn homewards, but without 
 moving forward either. The point he had reached 
 was at the beginning of a long incline, straight, 
 resolutely upward. Mr. Marling had long ceased to 
 enjoy walking uphill. 
 
 He watched the gentleman ahead (who walked 
 faster than he cared about), but with very little 
 hesitation as to not following him. And presently 
 the stranger, if he were a stranger, turned once 
 more. Pointing forwards, up the steep, straight road, 
 he beckoned again, and beckoned insistently. 
 Mr. Marling giving no sign of obedience he added a 
 gesture of displeasure and of disappointment, and 
 vanished absolutely. 
 
 It seemed so impossible, the road was so straight, 
 that Mr. Marling was startled. For some time he 
 looked earnestly, but the stranger (whose appearance 
 was not at all strange to him) did not reappear, nor did 
 anything else occur to account for his having vanished. 
 
 372 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 Mr. Marling did at length really turn homewards, 
 but the exquisite beauty of the wintry day had 
 become even more uneasy to him, its reproach was 
 more explicit. Arrived within his own high- walled 
 grounds, problematic from without as those of a 
 convent, he felt more himself — the recent self to 
 whom the idea of a self-contained residence had 
 appealed with such attraction. And as he drew 
 nearer the house the contrary appeal of the day 
 outside, the winter sunshine and the open country, 
 weakened, and was easier to repell. 
 
 But here another strange thing was to happen. 
 Just as he had almost succeeded in forgetting the 
 reproach of the woodland smell, with its burden of 
 association, its linking to the days " when he 
 remembered to have been joyful and free from 
 blame ; " just as he was assuring himself that, 
 once indoors, he would remain there, the very door 
 to which he was hastening opened — or he supposed 
 so, for on the threshold, facing him, was the same 
 figure that had disappeared just now. But was it 
 quite the same ? Was not this figure more youthful, 
 more alert ? Was not its mien and significance all 
 more pregnant with adolescent vigour, courage, 
 movement ? 
 
 Anyway, it was nearer, and the features as well as 
 the form were clearly recognisable. In spite of 
 himself, he stood still ; in spite of himself, a weird 
 emotion chilled him. No figure could be more 
 familiar, no features could once have been better 
 known to him, though both were now out of date — 
 obsolete. 
 
 Had he had a younger brother this should have 
 been he ; but he had been an only child, and no 
 relation had ever much resembled him. 
 
 The figure on the doorstep lifted a warning hand, 
 
 373 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 not to beckon now, but to forbid his entrance. He 
 moved forward till the expression on the other's 
 face was as obvious as his gesture. 
 
 " Go hence," both said. " Inhabit here no more." 
 
 But Mr. Marling, though fanciful, was practical — 
 as the fanciful oftenest are — and he moved forward 
 with scarcely a pause, keeping, however, an earnest 
 watch on the figure that had once been so familiar. 
 With a pang he noted how straight it was, how 
 upright, that it seemed taller than he was now ; 
 it certainly was slimmer, more active, and the face 
 was undoubtedly more attractive. He noted, 
 wistfully, excellences that had ceased from his 
 looking-glass, though until now he had never missed 
 them. The eyes were steadier, the skin clearer, the 
 lines all cleaner, more definite. The lips had a 
 kindlier firmness, that was neither hard nor feeble ; 
 irregular as all the features might be, sanguine faith 
 and purpose gave them unity. 
 
 Nevertheless, to himself there was reproach in the 
 face that had once been his own : was there, con- 
 ditionally, encouragement too ? The gesture was 
 not warning only, but reproving. On the threshold 
 of the self-contained house the figure of his earlier, 
 better self stood forbidding his entrance, forbidding 
 with a menace. 
 
 But Mr. Marling moved forward. 
 
 When he had come within twenty paces, or less, 
 of the door it did veritably open, and Mrs. Filmer 
 came out. For a moment the two figures were side 
 by side upon the doorstep, one as actual as the 
 other. Then, as had before happened, the man's 
 figure simply vanished, ceased to be where it had 
 been. 
 
 374 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 During his luncheon Mr. Marhng had abundant 
 leisure to review all this. What struck him most 
 was what was remarked last — that the two figures 
 side by side on the threshold had been equally real, 
 one as material as the other. If anything, Mrs. 
 Filmer had appeared the less probable. At all 
 events, with her impenetrability and her negation 
 of data, she was much less human, and much more 
 forbidding. 
 
 Yet he knew that she was a living woman, fed on 
 a good deal of butcher's meat and a sufficiency of 
 malt liquors. He had his weekly books to show for 
 it. What was the other ? Of course, she had not 
 seen it, nor could anyone else, except himself, see 
 it ; but was it therefore unreal ? 
 
 Mr. Marling was exactly the sort of man to have 
 *' believed " in ghosts, and always had played at 
 believing in them. But he had certainly never 
 believed that he himself would ever see one, least 
 of all his own. Did he now believe that he had ? 
 He found it impossible to arrive at any decision 
 as to what his conviction was. 
 
 In so brief a story as this must be, I have, un- 
 fortunately, no time to describe accurately what his 
 sensations concerning the whole occurrence were. 
 It must merely be said that to him it was an occur- 
 rence, undoubted, veritable, as actual as any other 
 episode of the morning or of his life. And it had 
 aroused in him, not exactly dread, but misgiving 
 
 375 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 and emotion. Latterly he had been growing 
 cowardly, and shrunk from emotion as liable to be 
 distressing. This awakening of it was, therefore, 
 vaguely but strongly disconcerting. 
 
 In the afternoon he found he could not read, much 
 less write ; he had what old ladies very excellently 
 describe as the fidgets. He did not at all want to go 
 out again, but he felt that it would become im- 
 possible to remain indoors. When he did go out he 
 resolved to remain within his own high-walled 
 gardens, and to this part of his resolution he adhered. 
 But his object in confining himself to their limits 
 was tiresomely defeated. He had grown so habituated 
 to silence, or perpetual unspoken monologue, that 
 it was repugnant to him to face the chance — slight 
 enough surely — of being addressed, forced into some 
 casual conversation, by anyone he might meet 
 outside. 
 
 At some distance from the house, turning a corner, 
 he came unexpectedly face to face with a young 
 gardener. A year or two ago such a meeting would 
 have pleased him, and the stalwart lad, with his 
 excellent face and promising manner, have at once 
 engaged his interest. For in those days Mr. Marling 
 had found no study more fruitful than that of his 
 fellow-creatures. Almost everybody he had dis- 
 covered to be worth examination and comparison. 
 The circle of his own individuality had perpetually 
 been intersected by that of other people, and proving 
 some varying measure of coincidence. And there 
 would, in those days, have at once struck him 
 certain fascinating appearances in such a young man 
 as this. 
 
 No one certainly could have been " plainer " ; 
 but the young fellow's smile was so engaging — 
 spacious as it was — so broadly expressive of a 
 
 376 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 delightful disposition, that no one with any apprecia- 
 tion of character could have wished him better 
 looking. 
 
 His presence and his greeting now, however, 
 annoyed Mr. Marling, who, had he considered the 
 matter, would have taken it for granted that the 
 gardeners must all have been nephews of Mrs Film.er, 
 and as free as herself from obtruding any claims on 
 a living human interest. 
 
 The young gardener seemed resolved to talk, and 
 painfully unaware of Mr. Marling's inclination for 
 silence. He had, indeed, an irritating air of sup- 
 posing that his master, in such a lonely place, 
 might be rather glad to interchange a little talk even 
 with an inferior. No one could conceivablv have 
 been more unlike a nephew of Mrs. Filmer's : there 
 could not possibly be the most distant relationship. 
 His ver^^ teeth (and they were extremely nice teeth, 
 which added an almost dazzling brilliance to his 
 irresistible smile) were confidential. His eyes insisted 
 on avowal. One could scarcely fancy him indoors : 
 he seemed to have been bom in the open air, and to 
 have lived there ever since. 
 
 All this was infinitely disconcerting to Mr. IMarling, 
 especially as he felt powerless to resist its attack. 
 The irresistible smile was, entirely against his will, 
 irresistible to him also. 
 
 Roger — such was the unnecessary young gardener's 
 name — had no secrets ; his private affairs were all 
 for publication and discussion. It appeared he was 
 engaged, and not only engaged but in love. All 
 this was very tedious to Mr. Marling, who had given 
 up tlie idea of ever again being in love himself, and 
 was resolved not even to become engaged. Nor chd 
 Roger conceal his compassion for Mr. Marling living 
 alone in yonder house, which it vexed his master ta 
 
 377 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 perceive that the young man (who probably lodged 
 in a four-roomed cottage) by no means envied. It 
 was no wonder, Roger evidently considered, that 
 Mr. Marhng should look unwell, as he frankly, though 
 most regretfully, declared that the gentleman did 
 look. Perhaps what vexed the latter most was the 
 •exuberant pleasure in life which this infuriating 
 young man let off, like a feu-de-joie, in all he said, 
 and in every one of his maddeningly delightful smiles. 
 He rejoiced in his work, but did not consider it at all 
 underpaid. Full of pity for the dull monotony of 
 his employer's existence, his own he plainly believed 
 to have all reasonable variety that could be desired. 
 With such comfortable purpose as a companion he 
 could never be lonely, even though his work lay 
 within those high, incommunicative brick walls. 
 
 Mr. Marling was quite relieved when Mrs. Filmer 
 came to inform him that tea was ready, and not 
 displeased at the sour look she directed at the smiling 
 gardener. But he would rather she had come 
 alone. 
 
 Close behind her, just as actual, as indisputable, 
 walked the young man he had seen in the morning ; 
 and while the housekeeper betrayed no approval of 
 her master's condescension towards the gardener, 
 the young man, with Mr. Marling's own features, 
 smiled in undisguised satisfaction and encourage- 
 ment. 
 
 Mrs. Filmer's announcement that his tea was 
 served sounded like a reproof and a command ; but 
 behind her back the young man shook his head, as 
 though declaring that there was no hurry about the 
 tea, and that Mr. Marling was better employed as he 
 was. 
 
 This warning Mr. Marling obstinately decided to 
 disregard ; but he could not resist the same chill 
 
 378 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 emotion that had seized him before, and he was more 
 struck than ever by the difference between his 
 present self and that discarded self that had come 
 to expostulate with him. Vanity had never been 
 a fault of his, and until now he had never given much 
 consideration to his own appearance. But there 
 was no avoiding the fact that yonder young man was 
 handsome, and had a pleasing appearance, with a 
 generous promise. No one — he felt disagreeable — 
 could regard his own present appearance as admir- 
 able, with all its wretched betrayal of broken promise 
 and pusillanimous abdication of purpose or desire. 
 
 His gaze was so unmistakable, that Mrs. Filmer 
 turned round rather sharph^ and the young gardener 
 could not help following the direction of his glance. 
 
 " I am coming," said Mr. Marling doggedly, and 
 the figure behind the housekeeper vanished. 
 
 379 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Mr. Marling enjoyed his tea — he was determined to 
 enjoy it. He made some parade to himself of his 
 appreciation of the creature comforts in which he had 
 embedded himself in his self-contained residence. 
 He was resolved to forget the gardener, and that 
 other figure that had urged his remaining out of doors. 
 Perhaps, however, his sensation of all these indoor 
 conveniences was somewhat too deliberate, if not for 
 sincerity, at all events for spontaneity. He made 
 himself observe also the comfort of his bedroom when 
 he went up thither to change before dinner ; for 
 though he lived alone, he always did change. This 
 also increased his sense of hien aise. 
 
 The night had fallen wild and stormy. The wind 
 had shifted into the north-east, and had brought a 
 bitter sleet between its teeth to fling against his 
 well-shuttered windows. But his fire burned red 
 and clear, the house was well-built, the windows 
 deep recessed and shuttered, heavily curtained, and 
 impervious to draughts. 
 
 No doubt, even on such a night, some other people 
 must be out of doors ; but he was beginning to have 
 some Pecksniffian appreciation of his own advantage 
 in the contrast. 
 
 During his dinner (Mrs. Filmer was an excellent 
 cook) this well-padded acquiescence in the dis- 
 positions of Providence was not decreased. The 
 wind and sleet beat, indeed, noisily against the 
 
 380 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 windows, but none the less brightly glowed his fire, 
 not one flicker disturbed his shaded lamps. 
 
 Nevertheless, after his ample, yet by no means 
 heavy, meal was over, something did happen to 
 disturb him. 
 
 The neat if rubber-tyred " Eider " had left the 
 room, he had a pleasant book, his coffee was puffing 
 in its patent apparatus at his side, his walnuts 
 and Madeira were all that could be desired. And 
 he really did desire nothing (except to forget that 
 gardener, and the other young man whom he had 
 thrice seen that day) . When a bit of coal fell out of 
 the fire behind him, Mr. Marling rose to replace it, 
 and as he did so his glance fell on the large old- 
 fashioned looking-glass over the chimney-piece. 
 The whole room was reflected in it — himself, too, of 
 course. But something else, that instantly arrested 
 his attention with a sense of disquiet that was almost 
 dread. 
 
 In the chair from which he had that moment risen 
 someone else was already seated, full in the light of 
 lamp and fire ; a presentment of himself, indeed, but 
 how hateful a presentment ! 
 
 That it was himself he could not pretend to deny ; 
 but older, and how horribly worsened ! Ten years 
 older, perhaps, but how immeasurably degenerated ! 
 Pendulous was the lip, and purplish ; moist and 
 faded the nervous, wandering eyes ; blotched and 
 coarsened the unhealthy, pallid, yet red-flecked skin ; 
 and the whole confession of the face sensual, selfish, 
 dull, hopeless and ashamed. He turned abruptly, 
 but his chair was vacant as he had left it by his 
 rising, and with a quick sigh of relief he noted it. 
 A mere hallucination this time ! There had been no 
 hallucination about those earlier appearances : con- 
 trasted with actual living persons, they had been as 
 
 381 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 real, as actual. But this was a mere apparition, 
 momentary, evanescent, already past. With a 
 surprising sense of thankfulness he turned again to 
 the chimney-glass : in it the same figure was re- 
 flected, the position slightly altered, but with no 
 other difference. He hated to look at it ; to look at 
 it, however, was inevitable, and with a reluctant 
 curiosity he felt himself fascinated by it. The hair 
 of the reflected figure was thin, and the hands 
 tremulous, with a wavering, uncertain restlessness ; 
 the posture shrunken, mean, deprecatory. The man 
 in the glass was obviously not old, but aged with an 
 unnatural loss of youth that was feebly senile. 
 
 Twice he looked back at the chair, plainly empty ; 
 twice he stared again into the mirror, where the 
 hateful image persisted. He fully understood. Here 
 was but a picture, a forestalling. What he had seen 
 earlier in the day had been : therefore the latter had 
 been actual, and visible to the actual and direct sense 
 of sight. Whereas this might never he. For the 
 future is unborn, and may never come to birth. And 
 so this hateful presentment of himself as he might 
 become (as he was hastening to become) was not 
 subject to direct vision, not patent to genuine visual 
 apprehension, but reflected only, and to be seen only, 
 '* in a glass darkly.'' A sermon with an ugly text, 
 but at least easy to understand. 
 
 Mr. Marling had never been stupid. He stood long 
 by the hearth that he had wilfully chosen should be 
 so lonely, looking by turns into the red heart of the 
 fire and into the mirror with its menacing reflection, 
 and comparing the figures he had seen that day, 
 first with his present self, and then, by inevitable 
 consequence, with that later future self that the glass 
 held steadily. 
 
 At last, without drinking or even remembering his 
 
 382 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 coffee, he went slowly, full of thought, to his study. 
 Here too he stood by the fire, thinking, echoes of 
 many voices in his ears ; but though many, they 
 were all one — his own from childhood until now. 
 And these too reproached. 
 
 " I am thyself what hast thou done to me ! " And 
 Bacon's old apothegm crept into his memor}^ that 
 the solitary must needs be at last a devil or a god. 
 Was he growing god-like ? 
 
 A knocking came at his window, not mistakable 
 for the tap of a blown branch, and he went without 
 hesitation to open it ; though, as he drew back the 
 heavy curtains and unfastened the barred shutters, 
 he wondered what final presentment of himself this 
 should be. The phenomenal had already grown 
 familiar. 
 
 He threw open the window, which was, in fact, a 
 glass door, and perceived outside in the driving' 
 sleet the face and figure of Roger, the unnecessary 
 gardener. 
 
 He explained that he had asked Mrs. Filmer to tell 
 the master that he was anxious to see him ; but she 
 had refused flatly, saying it was too late, and that 
 Mr. Marling was not to be disturbed. So he had 
 made bold to come here to the window himself : he 
 knew where the study was, and that there Mr. 
 Marling sat. 
 
 By this time the young man had been brouglit in 
 and the glass door shut behind him. Almost at the 
 same moment Mrs. Filmer entered with her spirit 
 decanters and her hot water, and sourly enough 
 she stared at him. But he bravely told his errand, 
 and even more bravely did her master disregard her 
 stony disapproval. 
 
 There had lx*cn an accident : a motor, with a 
 chauffeur only in it, had come to terrible grief a niik' 
 
 383 
 
A SELF-CONTAINED RESIDENCE. 
 
 outside the village, near the cottage where Roger 
 lodged. The man seemed horribly injured ; perhaps 
 he would die. He was evidently a foreigner, and the 
 little he could say was quite unintelligible. He 
 seemed in great distress, and eagerly desirous to 
 impart something. Would Mr. Marling come ? 
 Perhaps he would be able to understand the stranger's 
 language. 
 
 Roger held out a letter in an envelope, saying it had 
 fallen from the young man's pocket, and perhaps the 
 name alone might be sufficient to inform Mr. Marling 
 as to his nationality. 
 
 " Yes," said that gentleman, " the name is Italian. 
 So are the postage stamps." 
 
 Mrs. Filmer lingered, and looked as full of interest 
 as an iceberg. The wind raved round the house, and 
 in wild gusts the sleet drove against the glass : the 
 hearth glowed red, Mr. Marling's chair had an air of 
 slothful invitation. 
 
 Inside was warmth and comfort, and common 
 sense. Outside storm and chill, and an errand of 
 doubtful utility. 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Marling, " I will come with you 
 at once. Just wait while I go and put my boots on." 
 
 Mrs. Filmer raised her eyebrows. The young gar- 
 dener's smile became even unwontedly irresistible. 
 
 While Mr. Marling got on his boots he resolved to 
 have the desolate foreigner brought here : he would 
 nurse him himself. As he passed through the dining- 
 room he walked eagerly up to the fireplace and looked 
 into the mirror ; but it reflected only one image of 
 himself, and that much more like the figures he had 
 seen earlier in the day than any which a looking-glass 
 had yielded him these three years. 
 
 384 
 
Love s Monument. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It was a great house and a great party, but of all 
 the hundreds of guests, many illustrious, two only 
 concern us. Perhaps the two of whom the rest 
 thought least. 
 
 It was for many beautiful and happy girls their 
 first full look direct into the great " world " : their 
 debut, their first entrance on the public stage of life. 
 Perhaps they called it, to themselves, their first 
 glimpse of life itself, as if life belonged less to the 
 cradle than to the dance, were less actual in the 
 nursery than in the crowded glitter of the ball- 
 room. 
 
 But with them, their hopes and their uncertainties, 
 their disappointments and compensations, we have no 
 affair to-night. 
 
 Our business is with a man whom no one had ever 
 called beautiful, and with a woman who considered 
 herself to have written already " finis " beneath the 
 brief tragedy of her life. If she bore some apparent 
 share in sucli a scene at all it was only, she meant, as 
 a spectator. To be henceforth a spectator of life 
 was, she supposed unquestioningly, all that was lot< 
 of it to her. 
 
 385 
 
 25 
 
LOVE'S MONUMENT. 
 
 When one has been cut in two and one half buried, 
 what sort of hfe remains for the other ? She had 
 loved entirely, and been loved again with such a love 
 as her own deserved. She had loved wisely, not a 
 bit too well, though her love had been her whole self, 
 her existence. 
 
 Then Nemesis had caught sight of her; and the 
 golden cup had been dashed in mid-draught from 
 her lips, the wine of life spilled out on to the thirsty 
 sand of death, and black night fallen, unheralded by 
 evening, unprefaced by afternoon, on the very 
 morning of her day. 
 
 Less than a year after her marriage the horrid clang 
 of war had jangled through the world, and her 
 husband — no soldier, but a civilian of high place and 
 consequence — had arisen at the sound, as if Honour 
 called him as imperiously as any one of those whose 
 trade was arms, had arisen and left her with the old, 
 stale, cruel-brave excuse — 
 
 " I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
 Loved I not Honour more." 
 
 And Honour had kept him for her own, nor 
 presently given back. In her lists his name stood 
 high, and highest at the end. But to his love he was 
 lost. 
 
 In a deep valley by a great and sombre river, 
 silent flowing, dark and deep, the sentinel mountains 
 keep watch about his grave for ever. 
 
 The din of war sank back at last into the piping 
 song of peace, but his voice was stilled into the 
 Great Silence. England dried her tears to give 
 smiling welcome home to her tired heroes, but 
 Elspeth's own hero had gone Home by another road, 
 and rested far from the windy, white shores of the 
 country he had died for. And Elspeth's tears sank 
 
 386 
 
LOVE'S MONUMENT. 
 
 from her eyes into her heart, where they lay chill, 
 like a sad, salt pool. 
 
 Four years ago ! Sometimes it seemed to Elspeth 
 that it all must have been not four but forty years 
 ago ; at others that the first shock of her loss was 
 fresh yesterday. 
 
 387 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 Between Elspeth and the world there lay the 
 curtain of her sorrow, and it had seemed to draw 
 away from her into a sort of meaningless remoteness. 
 She had lost its intimacy, and began to find she cared 
 little for its acquaintance. Her own rank had been 
 always high, and in wealth and place her husband 
 had been at least her equal : a definite and marked 
 position in the world was unalterably hers, but she 
 found herself indifferent to it. She had no craven 
 desire to abdicate life's duties, but they seemed to 
 her to have grown obsolete. 
 
 And her own sense of aloofness from it seemed to 
 re-act on its attitude towards herself. She was less 
 and less Elspeth, more and more Lady Gracechurch. 
 Girls in reality older than herself no longer treated 
 her as one of themselves, nor did she care that they 
 should. At three-and-twenty she was no longer a 
 girl, but a very sad and silent woman, with nothing 
 of life left, as she believed, but its flat and tedious 
 epilogue. 
 
 To-night was her first re-entrance into the brilliant 
 society of which she four years ago had been not 
 the least brilliant figure ; and she re-entered it at all, 
 not to please herself, but to please her mother, who 
 was, she half-truly told herself, a younger woman 
 in all but the meaningless measure of time than 
 herself. 
 
 As her maid dressed her she was as silent as her 
 mistress, and scarcely less thoughtful. Not every 
 
 388 
 
LOVE'S MONUMENT. 
 
 waiting-woman is like the shallow, chattering, 
 flattering, back-biting Abigail of comedy and fiction. 
 And Lady Gracechurch was a woman who created 
 refinement all around her. Still young, the woman 
 was nearly half a dozen years older than her mistress, 
 and had been with her nearly ten. She had dressed 
 her for her marriage, and of that arraying they were 
 both silently thinking now. 
 
 Between some people sympathy is very silent. 
 And the silence between these two women was not 
 that of distance, imposed by their difference of rank ; 
 there was established confidence between them, not 
 confidences. 
 
 Not being at all beautiful herself, the elder woman 
 was proud of the beauty of her mistress, which 
 seemed as inevitable to her as her rank. And it 
 had never shone, she thought, so brilliantly as 
 to-night. It was like the dark brilliance of a night 
 of stars. 
 
 As Lady Gracechurch swept down the broad 
 white marble staircase her maid watched her from 
 above, and her verdict was that of other judges — 
 better qualified, as they at all events would have 
 thought — who watched her from the great hall 
 below. 
 
 Her dress and train were of black, but the black 
 was relieved by lilac flowers, and by the star-like 
 shining of almost regal gems. Dress and gems 
 alike were, however, could only be, a mere impression, 
 vague as it was satisfying : her own beauty dominated 
 all sense of costume or splendour. 
 
 At the foot of the stairs she was greeted by her 
 brother, standing by their widowed motlier, her 
 brother to honour whose coming-of-age she had 
 resolved to appear to-night. And his boyish, 
 obvious, though unexpressed admiration was but 
 
 389 
 
LOVE'S MONUMENT. 
 
 the translation of that expressed in every eye that 
 fell on her. 
 
 " She is like a black flower/' murmured a young 
 nobleman who was darkly understood to be a poet, 
 and had never been known to deny it. 
 
 " There are no black flowers," objected another 
 young man with much shorter hair, whom no one 
 had ever accused of poetry, " and if there were 
 they would be ugly." 
 
 ** I think," declared a rather old gentleman with 
 a survival of taste for the mid- Victorian compliment, 
 " that Lady Gracechurch reminds one of a white 
 flower in a dark night. ..." 
 
 " Just before the dawn," added a much younger 
 gentleman. 
 
 Then Lady Gracechurch had descended among 
 them, and their admiration was fain to be driven 
 from their tongues into their eyes. 
 
 390 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 As there were threescore guests staying in the house, 
 it had been decided to break them up into small 
 groups for dinner, which was served on a number 
 of little tables in the huge marble hall. 
 
 Lady Gracechurch chose to sit at one where was 
 only room for a single companion. No one took her 
 in to dinner. She knew where the table was, and 
 went to it alone. Standing by it was a man well 
 known to her for several years by sight and by 
 name, and was for several months known personally 
 also. 
 
 " I hope I am not late," she said, as they bowed 
 with a sort of grave air of laughing at themselves. 
 
 " It is no use my apologising that I could not bring 
 you in. You know I could not ! " 
 
 She did not answer, or seem to feel there was 
 need of any. They sat down opposite each other, 
 and as he took his place there was something even in 
 the way he performed that slight action that would 
 have betrayed his secret had Lady Gracechurch been 
 a stranger and unaware of it. 
 
 Standing up and standing still Lord Oscathorpe 
 had a graceful if not very stalwart figure. He was 
 tall, taller than Lady Gracechurch, and shghter; 
 his limbs were straiglit and well made ; but even as 
 he sat down one saw that he was lame, that the long, 
 well-turned legs were useless and powerless. He had 
 been carried thither, he would be carried hence ; 
 and in his face was already the expression that one 
 
 391 
 
LOVE'S MONUMENT. 
 
 reads in the countenance of the deformed, though 
 deformed he was not. 
 
 An accident had made him whatThe was. Till 
 eighteen or nineteen years of age he had been a 
 model of stalwart strength. 
 
 Their table was under an alcove, and above the 
 alcove was the small music gallery, in which was the 
 string band. By their side a low and broad window 
 opened out on to the terrace. 
 
 " We are to all intents and purposes alone," 
 Lord Oscathorpe said to himself. "If it were any 
 other two people our tete-a-Ute would be labelled as 
 ostentatious flirting." 
 
 He knew that she would not have arranged so to 
 sit and dine alone with any other man but him, when 
 she could have been at one of the other tables where 
 were groups of four and six. It had been her own 
 choice. She had herself told the duchess to have 
 this table, too small certainly for more than two, 
 arranged in this particular place ; and as on this 
 night each lady had herself chosen what gentleman 
 should take her to dinner, she had chosen Lord 
 Oscathorpe. 
 
 Had he been as other men, and she as other women, 
 he knew she would have done none of this. So that, 
 well content as he was to find himself thus chosen 
 and thus placed, it was none the less with a certain 
 irrepressible bitterness. 
 
 Presently he too looked at her, and considered her 
 beauty, wondering, as the party at the foot of the 
 great staircase had wondered, what it suggested. It 
 did not occur to him that she was at all like any 
 flower he had ever seen. Even a flower seemed too 
 material an idea to associate with her. 
 
 " What are you thinking of ! " she demanded, 
 looking up suddenly. The words were much more 
 
 392 
 
LO\TE'S MONUMENT. 
 
 an exclamation than a question, but he answered 
 them. 
 
 " Of you, of course." 
 
 She glanced swiftly at him a look of half-resolved 
 hostility. Had she been mistaken in him ? Was he 
 going to fiirt with her — intending, that is, to try ? 
 That he intercepted her suspicion and resented it she 
 perceived instantly. 
 
 "Of 3'ou, of course. When tw^o people are 
 sitting together like this, one of four things must 
 happen ! " 
 
 " Four seems a great many — it offers a wide 
 resource of alternative." 
 
 She had dropped her suspicion and thrust all the 
 hostility back into its sheath. 
 
 " Either," he pursued, observing the discarded 
 hostility and ignoring her interruption, " either one's 
 mind is a blank (w^hich mine isn't) and one thinks of 
 nobody, or one thinks of the absent (which is a 
 breach of politeness and the fitness of things), or one 
 thinks of oneself (which is nearly as rude), or one 
 thinks of one's partner. I was doing the proper 
 thing, and thinking of my partner." 
 
 (" She is like a Moonlight Sonata," he said to him- 
 self ; " not Beethoven's, but the one / should com- 
 pose if I knew how to compose sonatas.") 
 
 " It sounds," remarked Lady Gracecliurch, still 
 observing him, " a good principle, but it may be 
 carried too far." 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 " I will endeavour," he said, " to think of you as 
 little as possible." 
 
 " I wish," she said presently, " they would play 
 something else. It has a flippant twang about it, 
 and has a bad effect on us." 
 
 It was indeed an air that, as a rather perky young 
 
 393 
 
LOVE'S MONUMENT. 
 
 lady at another table was at that moment declaring, 
 would have set John Knox and Mary Stuart flirting 
 with one another had they been forced to sit and 
 listen to it. 
 
 But the objectionable tune did not oblige Lady 
 Gracechurch by finishing just yet. 
 
 " I hope/' said Lord Oscathorpe, speaking perhaps 
 under its influence, " that you are adopting the 
 fourth and most polite of my alternatives, and 
 thinking of me f '* 
 
 " Yes, I am ! " she answered, but not at all 
 amiably. " You make me ! " (" He is trying to 
 flirt," she decided, " and it 's beneath him. How- 
 ever, I really do think it 's that horrid tune. It gets 
 into one's head like cheap champagne.") 
 
 " When I admitted I was thinking of you, you 
 didn't ask me what I was thinking. Which appeared 
 to suggest that you didn't care to know. But I do 
 care to know what you may be thinking about me," 
 he rejoined. 
 
 He also thought it was the music, and absolved 
 himself from the necessity of contrition. How could 
 he help the music ! 
 
 " To tell the truth," she answered with a fatal 
 readiness, " I was thinking that I was disappointed 
 in you." 
 
 " So that, after all, you were thinking of your own 
 feelings, and only secondarily of me — in relation to 
 them." 
 
 Even before he had begun to speak she had 
 realised her own mistake, and then, almost simul- 
 taneously, that he was not going to take occasion by 
 it. It is a much more intimate thing to scold a man 
 than to praise him. To tell a man you are feeling 
 disappointed in him is at least as much like flirting 
 as anything he himself had said to her. She had 
 
 394 
 
LOVE'S MONUMENT. 
 
 given him almost the right to ask why she was dis- 
 appointed, but he had forborne to use it. 
 
 Before he had finished speaking the obnoxious 
 French air ceased. When another began. Lady 
 Gracechurch and Lord Oscathorpe mutually realised 
 that their tete-a-tete was at least becoming what she 
 had intended. 
 
 395 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 After dinner the ball-guests began to arrive speedily. 
 And Lord Oscathorpe said to Elspeth — 
 
 " You know I cannot ask you to dance : it is no 
 use telling you how I wish. . . ." 
 
 She interrupted him, but with a swift gentleness. 
 
 " I 'm glad you are not going to ask me, for I 
 shall not dance. But as neither of us belong to 
 the ball, we can please ourselves, and do as if there 
 was no such a thing taking place . . . Let us sit 
 out, really out. The marble terrace, with the Italian 
 garden beneath it, will be lovely in this moonlight. 
 Will you go and choose a place while I go and help 
 my mother for quarter of an hour with her guests ? " 
 
 He knew that this was to let him get to the place 
 she mentioned without being forced to feel that she 
 saw him carried thither. And when, quarter of an 
 hour later, she found him stretched in a long 
 lounging-chair, anyone would have supposed, to see 
 him, that he had simply walked there like any other 
 young man. 
 
 " You are good ! " he said. " I didn't expect you 
 for a long time ! " 
 
 " I said quarter of an hour. ..." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; but I thought that was merely to 
 keep me quiet." 
 
 They both laughed, and she took her seat near him. 
 The moonlight lay around her on the cold white 
 marble like a lake. 
 
 " Now she is the Lady of the Lake," he thought. 
 
 396 
 
LOVE'S MONUMENT. 
 
 Beneath them lay the ItaUan garden, its 
 bahistrades of marble, and its flower-beds bordered 
 with marble, its marble walks and statues all very 
 clearly defined in the broad moonlight : beyond, a 
 little lake, long and sinuous, like a great silver snake 
 lying twisted through the park and gardens. 
 
 In the lake lay the moon, as though it had fallen 
 thither from the sky, but that there, in the sky, it 
 hung still, a disc of chased silver. 
 
 The sound of the music came out and stood still 
 to meet the divine silence of the night. Through 
 the wide marble arches of the ballroom one saw the 
 dance as in a framed picture. The smell of the flowers 
 below seemed woven into a symphony with the 
 pulse of the stringed music, the rhythm of the 
 dancers' feet. . . . 
 
 Both of them were thinking the same thought — 
 that such a scene w^as theirs, young as they both were, 
 by right of memory only. He knew he could never 
 dance again : she knew she would not. 
 
 " After all," he said quietly, finishing his thought 
 aloud, as though he knew she had been sharing it, 
 " life is more than that. Nearly everything 
 remains." 
 
 She turned sharply. 
 
 " Nearly everything ! " 
 
 " Forgive me," he answered : " perhaps I was 
 thinking too much of myself." 
 
 His patience and courage reproved her for her 
 reproof. To her it seemed he had lost everything. 
 Like herself, he must look at life henceforth as a 
 spectator through a window. Some such thought 
 she clad in careful words now and expressed to him. 
 But he shook his head. 
 
 " God," he declared, " has not taken everything. 
 One power lost, all is not gone." 
 
 397 
 
LOVE'S MONUMENT. 
 
 She sighed. 
 
 '* You are very brave," she said. " If I were you 
 I should not be able to cast up the balance thus — to 
 weigh the taken and the left." 
 
 " That," he answered, " is not bravery, but fiat 
 common sense." 
 
 A breathing of the summer night moved the trees 
 beyond the lake : they seemed to whisper 
 approvingly. 
 
 Her own loss was greater than his, but it scarcely 
 seemed to her more final. It seemed to her 
 marvellous that he could have room left for any sense 
 of aught save that of self-pity. 
 
 Out came a wail of music, a waltz by no means 
 new, but a favourite of her brother's, and played 
 by his desire. 
 
 " When Strauss wrote that," said Lord Oscathorpe, 
 " I wonder if he meant to preach, or if the sermon 
 came in spite of the imperial and royal court 
 bandmaster — like Balaam's prophecy in spite of the 
 fallen prophet." 
 
 He knew he need explain no further to her. The 
 waltz was a passion of sensuous beauty, an utter 
 abandonment to life and time, suggestive of entire 
 yielding to the siren- voice of pleasure ; but under 
 all and through all, till at last it rose over and 
 dominated all, pierced a sob and a cry. 
 
 " Eat and drink," whispered the melody, " and 
 dance. I am life," it murmured, " and my office 
 it is to weave your carpet of flowers, and strew it 
 with all fragrance." 
 
 " For to-morrow you die ! " screamed the under- 
 tone. 
 
 The music fell again as a wave falls, and the 
 breath of the night rose above it. For a long time 
 they seemed fenced in a reluctant silence. 
 
 398 
 
LOVE'S MONUMENT. 
 
 Then it was she who began to speak ; and she told 
 him how long she had been interested in him, and 
 how often, in London for instance, she had watched 
 him pass her in his carriage, and had thought she 
 would like to know him. In reply he told her how 
 he too had known her story, and had often, when 
 they met, wondered if they could become friends 
 and help each other. 
 
 " And what do you think now ? 
 
 " I do not think, I wait." 
 
 This utterance scarcely pleased her, and he had 
 hardly thought it would. 
 
 " I have watched you now for four years," he 
 continued, " watched you at your work." 
 
 She said nothing, but turned towards him, and in 
 her attitude there was question. 
 
 " Your work, as it seemed to me, was to build a 
 monument ; and the work was to be life-long. 
 And the monument was to be " 
 
 " Love's ! " she whispered. 
 
 He nodded gravely, and they both were silent. 
 
 " At first, because I was very young then," he 
 went on at last, " I thought you were right. 
 That love's best monument was the immovable, 
 life-long, unwavering recollection of the living ; 
 that in abdicating life you were paying the great 
 tribute to death . . . and that the tribute was his 
 due, and was just." 
 
 He paused again : but she had no interruption 
 of comment or question. 
 
 " But I was wrong," he continued, " to thus believe 
 you right. Life cannot be abdicated. All death 
 has any claim to is that which he actually takes. 
 And what you proposed is not love's true 
 monument." 
 
 " What, then, do you think it is ? " 
 
 399 
 
LOVE'S MONUMENT. 
 
 " Kindness to the living," he answered. '' Love 
 of those who would be left loveless." 
 
 She made no rejoinder : and the music that came 
 in breakers of sound was all that bridged the silence 
 when he had ceased. 
 
 It seemed long before he spoke again. 
 
 " You called me brave just now," he said. " I am 
 braver than you thought — foolhardy even. For 
 I am letting you see plainly the audacity of my 
 hopes. Nay, more, when I do ask, which will not 
 be soon, I will take no denial. For it w^ill be best 
 for both of us." 
 
 She gave no answer. But all the voices of the 
 night whispered of life, and that life is not to be 
 iiung as a wreath into the inexorable pit of death. 
 
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