SHW 
 
 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES
 
 Copyrighted in the United States 
 All rights reserved
 
 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 BY H. D. LOWRY 
 
 LONDON : JOHN LANE, VIGO ST 
 BOSTON: ROBERTS BROS., 1895
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLF, Printers to Her Majesty
 
 TO 
 
 JAMES NICOL DUNN
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE TORQUE, ...... I 
 
 THE GREAT KO-KO, ..... 24 
 
 THE MAN IN THE ROOM, . . . 33 
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY, ft . . 45 
 
 THE CHRISTENING, ..... 83 
 
 A CHILD'S TRAGEDY, . "... 92 
 
 MAMIE'S DREAM, . . . 101 
 
 THE GOOD-FOR-NAUGHT, . . . KX) 
 BEAUTY'S LOVER, . . . . .127 
 
 THE WISE WOMEN, ..... 140 
 
 THE SISTERS, ...... 148 
 
 'THE FORMER AGE' 
 
 I. A PAGAN DREAM, .... 172 
 
 II. THE LAST PAGAN, . . . 179 
 
 III. THE GREY WOLF, . . . .187 
 
 IV. THE COWARD, . . . . 194
 
 THE TORQUE 
 
 I 
 
 No man could tell how long the family of 
 Tregoning had lived at Cam Dhu. They had 
 been notable people in the district from the 
 very beginning of time, and the house they 
 inhabited seemed to have a history co-extensive 
 with theirs. But about the year 1660, the 
 family having achieved a greater prominence 
 than was ever theirs before, it was resolved to 
 build a new and larger house of granite at a 
 little distance from the old. The resolve was 
 natural enough, seeing to what a position the 
 yeoman, John Tregoning, had risen ; yet there 
 were many who found his intentions altogether 
 laughable. For, though he had all else a strong 
 man could desire, there had been no child born 
 to him during the ten years of his married life. 
 He bore his trouble in proud silence ; but 
 the neighbour folk, who had known him all his 
 days, and perceived how little the sad serious- 
 
 A
 
 2 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 ness of his manhood accorded with his jovial 
 youth, were fa,r from under-estimating his 
 sorrow. And they laughed among themselves, 
 that a man should build himself a fine house 
 for the mere pleasure of dwelling in it a little 
 while, and presently going down to the grave 
 and leaving it for the inhabitation of others 
 than the children of his loins. Doubtless 
 Jonathan and his wife Hannah had perceived 
 what was the inevitable comment upon their 
 action ; indeed, it may be their enterprise was 
 in its first intention a defiance of the fate that 
 kept from them their natural birthright of a life 
 on earth beyond the grave. But one day, when 
 the new house neared completion, Jonathan 
 came striding over the moorland with a song 
 upon his lips, and on his face a pride and glad- 
 ness no man had seen there since the days 
 when he and Hannah had but newly joined 
 hands before the altar, vowing to make the 
 pilgrimage of life in company. He had a score 
 of new orders to give to the men engaged upon 
 his house; his interest in the work had increased 
 a hundred-fold in this one night. And the 
 workmen wondered. 
 
 ' Why, 'tis a fine house we 're building for 'ee,
 
 THE TORQUE 3 
 
 Jonathan Tregoning ; an' there 's few things a 
 man could want that you do lack. An' yet 'tis 
 strange to hear 'ee singing foolish songs like 
 that, an' with that look upon your face. Now, 
 where and how didst chance upon the gift of 
 happiness ? Tis a new thing in thee, with all 
 thy wonderful good fortune.' 
 
 It was an aged workman who spoke. Jona- 
 than looked gravely into his eyes for a moment. 
 Then he laughed in the gladness of his heart. 
 
 ' Why, Anthony, where didst thee come upon 
 the gift o' wisdom ? Tis a new thing, indeed ! 
 As for me wouldst have me live the old life 
 here in the new house you are building me ? 
 God, if you only knew how true you speak ! A 
 new life, Anthony! ... "A little child shall 
 lead them." ' 
 
 Immediately he moved away to a small 
 eminence whence he could better survey the 
 house, leaving the old man to gaze after him 
 with wonder and disbelief mingling on his 
 wrinkled face. 
 
 The yeoman himself marvelled now (as all 
 the neighbour-folk had wondered) that he had 
 ever had the heart to order the building of the 
 house : he could scarcely imagine that the man
 
 4 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 he had been until the previous day could have 
 been capable of any ambition for the future, of 
 any activity save such as might be necessary 
 for the comfort of life from day to day. Now 
 his whole energy was given to the scheme, and 
 his brain was busy elaborating it. And so he 
 did not observe the approach of a woman who 
 now appeared at a distance of a hundred yards 
 from his position on the moorland ; nor did his 
 eyes wander from the building when she had 
 drawn near to him. 
 
 She was a woman of five-and-thirty, dark, 
 tall, and of a very rebellious mien ; her features 
 had doubtless been beautiful, but now they 
 were become the outward mirror of her soul, 
 and her soul had been many years in torment, 
 by reason of love given foolishly. Tregoning 
 did not move ; the woman paused and watched 
 him, and presently a wave of angry feeling 
 darkened her face. She spoke. 
 
 'A fine house, Jonathan ! A fine new house 
 for thee and thy poor Hannah ! ' 
 
 Tregoning started from his dreams. 'Ay,' 
 he said, ' 'tis better than the old. Yet we have 
 had much of happiness there also.' 
 
 Again the worn face darkened. ' You have
 
 THE TORQUE 5 
 
 had happiness ? ' she cried. ' Nay, you may lie 
 as you will to others, but not with me. Why, 
 I have learned in these past years, watching you, 
 that the Lord is even just ! You were promised 
 to me : for the promise is one not made with 
 words. And with me you should have had 
 happiness, and when you came to die there 
 would have been children to keep your name 
 alive and finish the work you left undone. 
 What has it profited you that you went from 
 me and drove home that barren thing out of the 
 West-country ? ' 
 
 There was anger in Tregoning's voice, but 
 hardly less of pity for a woman whom he ac- 
 counted mad. ' There was no promise,' he said, 
 ' nor ever thought of a promise. God makes 
 the maid for the man, and you had still been no 
 wife for me, though I had never set eyes on 
 Hannah. There were a score you might have 
 had, but never me.' 
 
 The woman's hate broke out again. 'You 
 may deny the promise ; but once you were 
 glad to make it, and for ten years you have 
 borne the liar's punishment. A fine house, 
 indeed ! But the fool builds houses for the 
 children of other men.'
 
 6 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 Jonathan forgot his pity. 'Talk as you 
 please,' he said ; ' but better talk as you do 
 know. I have loved Hannah in sorrow and in 
 pleasure. Now I thank God the child which 
 is to be born is hers, not thine. Let thy 
 tongue run ; for who shall heed it, childless 
 woman ? ' 
 
 He left her abruptly and returned to the old 
 workman. 
 
 ' Bid your men carry the work to its end as 
 quickly as may be. There shall be feasting, I 
 promise you, when the house is completed.' 
 
 And he strode off across the moorland to the 
 old house, where Hannah waited for his coming 
 with something of the shy gladness she had 
 known in early days when he came courting 
 her. 
 
 II 
 
 Very quickly the news passed throughout 
 the country-side that Hannah was about to 
 become a mother. The very people who had 
 cried out at the folly of her husband's enter- 
 prise, now saw in it only a marvellous faith 
 which Providence had made haste to recognise 
 and reward. Jonathan and his wife moved
 
 THE TORQUE 7 
 
 very quietly into the new house, and there the 
 child was born a month or two later. 
 
 Hannah had never doubted that Heaven's 
 generosity would be complete and absolute, and 
 the event justified her faith. They two, for ten 
 years childless and without a hope of children, 
 were parents of as fine a boy as ever lived in 
 the dreams of a woman. They forgot their 
 dreary past ; they were young again, and like 
 people newly married, as they listened to the 
 weak voice of the child. Jonathan sat many 
 a long hour at Hannah's bedside, and day by 
 day it was made clear to him that he had not 
 known his wife until now. The truth is, 
 Hannah the mother was another woman than 
 Hannah the childless wife. A new joy was 
 given her, an old grief taken away ; life had 
 renewed its possibilities. Very soon she began 
 to talk of the festivities that should celebrate at 
 once the completion of the new house, the birth 
 of the child, and the beginning of their new 
 happy life in his young life. 
 
 It was well they had room for guests without 
 number, for all the country-side was rejoicing 
 with them. Jonathan could hardly go un- 
 hindered about the common necessary business
 
 8 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 of the day, so eager were the neighbouring folk 
 to have him stop and take their congratula- 
 tions, drink the health of child and mother, 
 and render a minute account of the progress 
 they made. And long before he had ceased to 
 stand vigilantly on guard at Hannah's door, 
 the women came and were fain to speak with 
 her, if it were but for a moment, and to see the 
 brave boy lying, not on the broidered nursing- 
 cushion, but in his proper place at her breast. 
 
 ' A man would 'most think,' said Jonathan 
 one day, ' that our good fortune was good luck 
 to all the world. For all the world is glad of 
 it.' 
 
 This sympathy of their friends was no un- 
 important constituent of their great happiness ; 
 and even Jonathan forgot to wonder what were 
 the present emotions of Janet Chegwidden, the 
 woman with whom he had spoken upon the 
 moor, on the day when he first heard that a 
 child was coming. Yet she was still living in 
 the background of their lives. 
 
 Hannah soon rose from her bed and resumed 
 her household duties. Half a dozen women of 
 approved skill in the art of cookery were called 
 to her assistance, and while they filled cup-
 
 THE TORQUE 9 
 
 boards and pantries with a tremendous pleni- 
 tude of food, Jonathan went far and wide 
 inviting guests to the feast. 
 
 At last the day of the festivities arrived. 
 Everything was made ready in good time ; it 
 remained only to see that the boy was fitly 
 decorated and attired. He was a well-grown, 
 happy child, and the task of dressing him was 
 an undiluted pleasure to the mother. When 
 the work was completed she laid him carefully 
 in the cradle and called the father. 
 
 Jonathan gazed fondly upon his first-born. 
 'There'll be never a woman among them 
 maid or mother that won't be envying you,' 
 he said. Then, after a pause : ' Dost mind that 
 moon-shaped necklet that was dug up while the 
 house was building ? 'Twould look fine about 
 his neck.' 
 
 Hannah recoiled from the suggestion. ' 'Tis 
 hard and heavy,' she said. ' It isn't in the 
 power of gold to make the boy look prettier, 
 an' I wouldn't have him cry for the world. 
 Let well alone.' 
 
 But Jonathan was gone without hearing, and 
 a moment later he returned bearing the torque 
 an elongated crescent of pale gold which had
 
 io WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 lain many centuries in the grave of some savage 
 chief when it was dug up in the building of the 
 house. ' There,' he said, ' put that on him. 
 'Twill look beautiful upon the white of his 
 dress. But the hair of him is brighter.' 
 
 Hannah faced him, the torque held slackly 
 and unwillingly in her hand. ' He 's well 
 enough as he is,' she said ; ' don't make me do 
 it And . . . who can tell who wore it years 
 ago, and what the wearing of it now will mean ? 
 Was there ever a handsome baby but the pixies 
 were dying to have it ? I am afraid of the 
 pixies ; I am afraid to put this thing about his 
 neck. Who can say what spells they have laid 
 upon it ? ' 
 
 Jonathan laughed with a man's scorn of 
 woman's fears, a man's unwillingness to admit 
 his own superstitions ; then, as the child caught 
 sight of the gleaming gold and crowed, stretch- 
 ing out weak hands towards it. 'There,' he 
 said, ' the boy is asking for it. 'Tis foolishness, 
 that talk of the pixies. Put the thing about 
 his neck.' 
 
 And when she saw the child still stretching 
 forth his hands towards the golden toy, Hannah 
 bowed herself to her husband's will, thrusting
 
 THE TORQUE n 
 
 her private fears aside. The boy crowed de- 
 lightedly as his fingers closed about the circlet ; 
 and very soon Hannah was called away to 
 receive and welcome the first arrivals of her 
 guests. All through the earlier hours of the 
 evening the boy held an audience, for there was 
 none but must see and handle him, marvel at 
 his wonderful growth and his good temper, 
 and weigh most carefully the question whether 
 he most resembled father or mother. There 
 were some who remarked upon his wearing of 
 the torque, and to these Hannah nervously 
 explained her husband's fancy. But when one 
 of them talked foolishly of ' ill-luck,' and the 
 power of the pixies, Jonathan overheard, and 
 had he not been playing the part of host would 
 have been angry. ' An old woman's widdle ! ' 
 he cried impatiently. ' Fit to frighten old 
 women.' 
 
 Presently the guests were called to supper. 
 There was some little confusion while they 
 chose their seats, for a multitude of viands 
 called for skilful carvers ; then followed a noisy 
 interval until all were served. But at last all 
 crying needs had been supplied, and only the 
 most inveterate of jesters found time for aught
 
 12 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 but eating. The child had been left in charge 
 of a young girl, and, under pretence of needing 
 to supervise her domestics, Hannah visited him 
 once or twice. She knew that he must presently 
 be exhibited to the guests once more ; when 
 that was over she was resolved to take the 
 golden circlet from his neck, that he might 
 sleep in safety. 
 
 At last a man rose from his seat and called 
 for silence ; very briefly he reminded his fellows 
 of the many good gifts on whose possession 
 they had to congratulate their host. ' Fill your 
 cups,' he said finally, ' and drink good luck to 
 the new house, and good health to the new 
 baby.' There was a roar of applause, and 
 the company stood. Then a voice was heard 
 above the rest : ' The baby ! Bring in the 
 boy!' 
 
 Hannah turned to give a servant the order to 
 bring in the child, but her motherly pride pre- 
 vented her. She slipped from the table and 
 went herself to fetch her son. As she passed 
 down the slate-paved passage she heard the 
 voice of the nursemaid coming from another 
 part of the house, and resolved to deal hardly 
 with her for this neglect of duty. Then she
 
 THE TORQUE 13 
 
 entered the room where she had left the child, 
 and hastened to the side of the cradle. . . . 
 
 Guests and servants throughout the house 
 were startled by a sudden awful cry of desolation ; 
 and as Jonathan came from the feasting-room, 
 followed by frightened friends, he was con- 
 fronted by his wife. Her face was tortured 
 with a very madness of sorrow and fear. ' The 
 child is gone,' she cried. 'The golden collar. . . . 
 Did I not say we should lose him ? ' 
 
 All night, and for many days that followed, 
 Jonathan wandered throughout the country-side 
 asking high and low for news of ' a little boy- 
 child with a moon-shaped collar of gold about 
 his neck.' But there was no trace of him dis- 
 coverable. Hannah from the first refused to 
 entertain a hope, and very soon her husband 
 also desisted from his vain search. And so 
 their house was left unto them desolate. 
 
 Ill 
 
 There was no lack of kindly sympathy with 
 Tregoning and his wife in this their time of 
 tribulation ; but the hurt they had suffered was 
 of the sort that sympathy does but aggravate. 
 ' The Lord gave ? ' cried Hannah passionately,
 
 14 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 breaking upon the decent commonplaces of one 
 who sought to comfort. 'The Lord gave? 
 Did He only give that He might take away ? 
 . . . Did 'ee ever wonder what thoughts He must 
 have o' nights ? ' She alone knew, and that only 
 by a slow daily revelation, how great was the 
 disaster which had befallen her and Jonathan. 
 
 Once before they two had been cut off from 
 the world by a great sorrow long endured ; but 
 in those days the very fact of their affliction had 
 been in some poor sense a bond between them. 
 Hannah, at least, had perceived during the 
 brief weeks of exquisite happiness while the 
 child was with them, that they were the better 
 companions in good fortune because of the 
 dismal years that lay behind. 
 
 But now that darkness had fallen again the 
 old relations were not resumed. It seemed, 
 when the trouble was new, as if each suffered so 
 poignant an agony that the old sympathy was 
 a thing impossible. They lived together in the 
 great house upon the moorland ; yet each was 
 verily alone, even as a man is alone in the 
 midst of his dearest when death comes near and 
 he lies in the last stupor. It was thus at first ; 
 and there was little change in Hannah to the
 
 THE TORQUE 15 
 
 end : for she knew well that she would have no 
 other child. 
 
 But because the husband was a man, and 
 bound to take an active part in life because, 
 also, he was of a stronger character than she 
 his nature, warped and strained by tribulation, 
 seemed gradually to undergo a more disastrous 
 change. The earlier years of disappointment 
 had made him no great lover of the companion- 
 ship of his fellows, since the most of them 
 possessed as a most natural right the boon him- 
 self desired so passionately and so vainly ; now 
 he became morose and cynical, almost a hater 
 of his kind. Yet he was soon more hopelessly 
 a drunkard than many a man who reaps dam- 
 nation as the harvest of good seed too generously 
 implanted in him at birth. At one inn or 
 another in half a score of lonely villages he 
 became a familiar figure ; every night he drank 
 heavily, but the dull pain he suffered kept him 
 always in some sort the master of his senses. 
 It is possible the influence of his presence 
 tended to sobriety in others, for folly stands 
 naked and ashamed if she has not the allegiance 
 of all men. Tregoning would sit perfectly sober 
 in a corner of the room ; for the most part he
 
 16 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 watched the rest silently and refused to be 
 drawn into the conversation. If he did speak, 
 it was only to hurl brutal unnecessary scorn at 
 the head of some harmless good-for-naught who 
 had ventured to address him with the bluff good- 
 fellowship bred in country taverns. 
 
 Gradually, choosing thus to live alone in the 
 midst of his fellows, he began to impress the 
 witnesses of his life with a certain sense of 
 supernatural isolation. Only a vague hint of 
 the idea crept now and again into the talk of 
 the village folk ; but it was felt by all that for 
 some unknown reason Tregoning had incurred 
 the terrible anger of Heaven. The children 
 feared him ; good matrons had for him an 
 unreasoning instinctive antipathy which almost 
 amounted to hatred. And there were events in 
 his life which impressed both him and Hannah 
 with something of the same ill-defined sense of 
 living under the perpetual disfavour of God. 
 In the first years of their married life he had 
 prospered exceedingly in all he undertook ; but 
 for the denial of children he might have deemed 
 himself transcendently fortunate. 
 
 It would have been hard in these latter days 
 to lay the finger upon the faults in him which
 
 THE TORQUE 17 
 
 were the cause of his daily mischances. But 
 though the drink never mastered him in the 
 common sense, it often seemed to inspire him 
 with a maniacal perverseness. And thus 
 it was always his cattle that died, his crops 
 that were left unharvested until the fine 
 weather had broken up and the rain ruined 
 them. 
 
 There was an end to their barren prosperity at 
 Cam Dhu ; and Hannah, living year after year 
 in the darkened house, suffered dumbly, as it 
 is decreed that only women shall suffer ; it was 
 continually a cause of wonder to her that she 
 had been born out of the unsentient clay. 
 Tregoning did not maltreat her ; often there 
 were whole weeks when he seemed hardly to 
 be conscious of her existence ; but at times he 
 did not scruple to use against her the spiteful 
 weapon of the tongue, cursing her impotence as 
 the root of all they suffered. 
 
 As for the woman Janet Chegwidden, she 
 also had felt the heavy hand of time. Her 
 strength of body and of mind failed rapidly, and 
 because she had lived alone and appeared to 
 have no natural love for any living creature, 
 the foolish people of the neighbourhood gave 
 B
 
 i8 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 her an evil name, and took every occasion to 
 torment and harass her. 
 
 But one day a woman, kinder than the rest, 
 passed by her cottage and heard no sound of 
 movement through the open door. She paused 
 and called upon Janet by name ; then, getting 
 no answer, she entered the house. 
 
 Janet lay in a huddled heap upon the floor, 
 her face swollen and disfigured, her thin lips 
 blue and fringed with froth. The woman knelt 
 and made certain that life was not yet gone 
 from her ; and presently, having done so much 
 as she was able, she hurried into the village in 
 quest of assistance. 
 
 And Janet Chegwidden did not die ; but 
 from that day hand and foot and tongue of her 
 were paralysed and dead. Only in her fixed 
 and staring eyes did the life remain. 
 
 Now that she was thus pitifully reduced, the 
 women of the place entreated her not less 
 kindly than if she had been the universal 
 benefactress in her days of strength. One or 
 another would come of a morning to see that 
 she lay in decent comfort ; others would visit 
 her at other periods of the day. And Janet, 
 lying with unmoved contemptuous face, would
 
 THE TORQUE 19 
 
 look upon them hauntingly with unblenching 
 eyes. Now and again, lest the dead creature 
 should grow weary of confinement to the bed, 
 they moved her to a great oaken chair, so 
 fastening her with the aid of a broad belt that 
 she could safely be left alone. And there was 
 never a woman but was glad to have the 
 duty over and done with as she looked back 
 from the doorway and beheld this wooden 
 thing this corpse with the living eyes seated 
 rigid in an attitude of grim discomfort. 
 
 Hannah had not lived so long a time in the 
 home of her adoption without learning some- 
 thing of Janet's delusion. But it is certain that 
 what she had heard or discovered had not 
 impressed her deeply ; moreover, they were 
 both old women now, and as she looked back 
 upon the years of her married life, and con- 
 sidered her present fortunes, it seemed to her 
 that her enemy had slight enough excuse for 
 hatred or for envy. So she gave freely to 
 Janet's sustenance ; and one day when the work 
 of the household had been finished earlier than 
 usual, she set forth from her house on the moor 
 to visit the cottage. 
 
 Reaching the doorway, she paused a while ;
 
 20 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 for now that she had come so far she began 
 vaguely to repent of her own daring. But it 
 was only for a moment she hesitated ; then she 
 raised the latch and entered. There was no 
 movement of the clumsy rigid figure ; the living 
 eyes stared unmovingly from the grey fixed 
 face. Hannah spoke a few words of kindly 
 greeting, solely for her own relief: for the 
 dreadful stillness oppressed her with a grow- 
 ing fear. Then she placed her basket upon 
 the well-scoured table and began to remove 
 from it certain gifts of food which she had 
 brought. 
 
 A curious nervousness came over her ; for 
 the dead figure did not stir, and the eyes 
 watched her with a fierce intensity of brooding 
 malice. It was as though some awful Presence 
 stood at her side, invisible to her, but seen and 
 closely watched in all its movements by this 
 creature who had come so near to death as 
 to be no longer on the side of the living. A 
 lock of yellow-grey hair had become loosened 
 and fallen over the woman's forehead, giving 
 a fearful grotesqueness to her appearance. 
 Hannah was possessed with an absurdly 
 urgent desire to smooth it back into its proper
 
 THE TORQUE 21 
 
 place ; but a continually resurgent fear of the 
 living eyes restrained her. 
 
 ' Here is food,' she said, longing to be re- 
 lieved from the dead weight of silence. ' Could 
 'ee eat something ? ' 
 
 There was no answer, no movement, and the 
 sense of nervous confusion strengthened its 
 hold upon her. She broke some bread into a 
 bowl and poured milk upon it ; then she looked 
 about her for a spoon wherewith to feed the 
 afflicted woman. The furniture of the cottage 
 was sufficiently scanty ; yet she could nowhere 
 discover what she required. And presently it 
 appeared to her that the living eyes of that 
 dead figure had wandered to a shelf fixed high 
 up against the wall. 
 
 'Is there a spoon on the shelf?' she asked ; 
 and the eyes watched her maliciously as she 
 thrust a stool towards the shelf and stood upon 
 it to investigate. There was no spoon to be 
 found: nothing, indeed, but a dusty metallic 
 object whose nature Hannah did not im- 
 mediately recognise. She took it from the 
 shelf, mechanically wiping it as she stepped 
 from the stool. The eyes of the paralysed 
 woman still watched her, and a curious dull
 
 22 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 thrill (as of a taut wet string struck sharply) 
 passed over the rigid figure. And Hannah 
 cried aloud, and turning, faced her enemy, 
 demanding words from the very dead. 
 
 For it was a crescent of thin gold she held 
 within her hand the golden torque which the 
 boy had worn upon the day of his disappear- 
 ance. She had learned in a moment the secret 
 of his death. 
 
 A fearful change was visible in Janet Cheg- 
 widden. The fixed eyes blazed : it was as 
 though they would take through her uncon- 
 querable will that power of significant speech 
 which had long left her tongue. Then the 
 frozen features worked and were convulsed, as 
 a man's throat works when, striving to speak, 
 he finds the words choke him because of some 
 great fear. In a moment the struggle was 
 over : once again her face was that of the living 
 woman, Janet Chegwidden. Hannah had in- 
 deed called her back to life, but like the 
 woman of Endor was overmastered by a 
 shuddering fear that kept her dumb. Then 
 the lips parted, and a laugh sounded through 
 the room, expressing better than any words the 
 abominable triumph of Hannah's malignant
 
 THE TORQUE 23 
 
 enemy. It was as though she had come back 
 from the grave to laugh at the uncovering of 
 her wickedness. 
 
 A moment later the figure stiffened again, 
 and the eyes grew fixed and awful. Then 
 there was a sudden relaxation : Janet Cheg- 
 widden swung forward in her chair, and, but 
 for the belt supporting her, would have fallen 
 prone upon the floor.
 
 THE GREAT KO-KO 
 
 THE end was very near. Joanna had been 
 weakly all her life, and before her death there 
 were five years during which she was bedridden. 
 I had thought when I saw her at night that she 
 would assuredly be gone before the morning, 
 but now at midday she was still alive, still 
 conscious. The woman who was with her 
 watched me as I approached the bedside ; in a 
 moment she had comprehended my judgment 
 upon the case. She crossed the room and 
 opened the window very quietly, that the soul 
 of Joanna might escape without trouble when 
 presently it should be released from its prison 
 of the flesh. The sick woman had not been 
 sleeping, though her eyes were closed. The 
 little movement aroused her ; she turned in the 
 bed and looked into my face. 
 
 I pulled a chair from its corner and sat down. 
 ' Well, Joanna/ I said, ' how is it to-day ? '
 
 THE GREAT KO-KO 25 
 
 1 Why, doctor/ she answered quietly, ' how 
 can 'ee pretend you don't know how 'tis without 
 tellin' ? 'Tis a few more hours for me, or per- 
 haps a few more minutes, and then Home. . . . 
 The Lord hath dealt bountifully with His hand- 
 maiden ; but I could wish Thomas-James was 
 here. A good son ! 'Twould be a comfort to 
 have him here at the last, after twelve years 
 without once seeing him.' 
 
 Joanna had been many years a widow and 
 childless. At the age of forty she had married 
 a miner who had already a family of six ; and 
 in due season she had borne a son, Thomas- 
 James. When she became a widow for the 
 second time, the children of her husband had 
 been very generous, so that from the first she 
 was saved the awful fear of poverty, and knew 
 that she might look to die in the little cottage 
 in Tallywarn Street, where her husband had 
 left her. But though they dealt with her very 
 kindly, discharging more than the full duty of 
 children, her heart was bound up in the boy, 
 Thomas- James. 
 
 Joanna was too old for perfect wisdom. 
 
 The boy had in him the possibilities of many 
 admirable virtues, for whose sake he became
 
 26 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 the favourite of all men. But because the 
 widow was weakly fond of him, and at the same 
 time apt to be unduly alarmed at escapades 
 which were but boyishness in action, the ultim- 
 ate development of these good qualities was 
 into vices, or, at the least, to weaknesses. The 
 boy had a pretty humour and a beautiful 
 soprano voice. All Tallywarn talked at divers 
 times of the intrigues of rival choirmasters 
 anxious to secure his services ; and when the 
 Tallywarn Ethiopian Minstrels made their first 
 appearance, Thomas-James won all hearts by 
 his rendering of certain sentimental plantation 
 songs. 
 
 He did no particular harm, but he was very 
 much before the public, and thus all his deeds 
 were assured of notoriety. 
 
 Moreover, Joanna was already past the age 
 when a woman should be asked to discipline 
 the young, and found his smallest indiscretion 
 ineffably shocking. In the end the boy came to 
 think of himself as a very desperate character 
 indeed,and at the age of eighteen merely, I con- 
 ceive, through the influence of this delusion, and 
 because it seemed the proper thing for such a 
 youth as himself to do he ran away from home.
 
 THE GREAT KO-KO 27 
 
 Twelve years had passed from the time of his 
 disappearance when I entered Joanna's bedroom 
 that bleak February morning ; and though he 
 had sometimes written and very often sent her 
 money, he had never once visited her. And 
 now as she lay dying her thoughts were of him. 
 
 She lay with her eyes closed and murmured 
 inaudibly ; only, once or twice I caught the 
 name of her son. And, because I knew the end 
 must be soon, I waited. 
 
 There seemed to be more noise than usual in 
 Tallywarn Street, though it is always a busy 
 place until doors are closed and lights grow 
 fewer at half-past nine. I went to the open 
 window. The pavements on both sides were 
 filled with men, women, and children, all of 
 whom were looking very intently down the 
 long street in the direction of the town. At a 
 window opposite appeared the ruffled head of a 
 young miner, who had probably spent the past 
 night underground, and awakened from his sleep 
 only when it was told him that to delay would 
 mean losing the spectacle to which all the town 
 had been looking forward. 
 
 For at last a murmur ran along the street ; 
 people ceased to talk, and stared west towards
 
 28 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 the square. There was heard suddenly the bray 
 of a brass band, and a woman ran from her 
 place upon the causeway to her cottage door. 
 'Susan-Jane!' she cried excitedly, 'Susan-Jane! 
 The riders is comin'.' And immediately 
 another woman appeared from within, pro- 
 ceeding to wipe the soapsuds from arms bare 
 to the elbow, as she took up her stand with 
 the rest. 
 
 Joanna was too far gone to be much disturbed 
 by the noise. The band came slowly nearer, 
 and as it approached and passed beneath the 
 window there was a great hubbub of voices. 
 But the widow lay very quiet ' Twelve years,' 
 she murmured presently, ' twelve years since he 
 went away ; and he was nearly a grown man 
 then. I could die easier if he was here.' 
 
 She opened her eyes, and the woman who had 
 been attending her (one of the step-daughters) 
 moved nearer. Even now a hot flush came to 
 the old face, as Joanna realised that her words 
 might have given pain. 
 
 1 You was all of 'ee good to me ; sometimes, 
 before Thomas-James went away, I used to 
 fancy I could n' have been dearer to you, nor 
 you to me, if you had been born children to me.
 
 THE GREAT KO-KO 29 
 
 But you 're a mother now : you do know that a 
 mother must think of her own. Every day 
 since he went I Ve been longin' to see the boy 
 again ; I shall still be longin' for him when I 'm 
 with the Lord.' 
 
 The band had reached the Bryanite chapel 
 by this time, and, turning, had gone back by 
 another way towards the town. The noise was 
 somewhat less, but the riders themselves were 
 passing in straggling procession up the street, 
 and as they went by, the people on the pave- 
 ment made remarks on their bearing and 
 appearance, being vastly critical of such out- 
 door demonstrations, though too poor to be 
 well acquainted with the inside of the circus- 
 tent. Presently there was a great noise of 
 laughter and cheering from the remoter end of 
 the street. I remembered that ' the Great Ko- 
 Ko,' a clown, was to walk on his high stilts in 
 the procession, and immediately guessed that 
 he was coming ; for in Tallywarn a circus stands 
 or falls by the merits of its ' merrymen.' Pre- 
 sently, the window being open, one could catch 
 some of the rude jests the great man was 
 exchanging with those who watched him from 
 cottage windows.
 
 30 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 The younger woman was manifestly perturbed 
 and angered at this intrusion of worldliness 
 upon a death-scene ; but Joanna's peace was 
 undisturbed. 
 
 ' Longin' for en even in heaven ! ' she mur- 
 mured. ' And never satisfied until I do find his 
 voice amid the singin'. He had such a lovely 
 voice : do 'ee mind how he used to sing, " Shall 
 we gather at the river?" standin' all by himself 
 in the front of the choir-gallery up to Bryanites', 
 and the very preacher turnin' round in the 
 pulpit to listen, 'stead o' thinkin' 'pon what he 
 should say when it came to sermon-time ? 
 'Twould be sweet to go Home with the voice of 
 en still in my ears.' 
 
 I had thought the younger woman a little 
 unsympathetic, but her next act was very 
 tenderly inspired. She began to sing the old 
 hymn softly, and because her heart was very 
 full of love and pity there was something in 
 her voice which might, indeed, have made 
 death easier to Joanna. She sang one verse. 
 
 Then the noise became louder than it had 
 been at all. She looked confusedly towards 
 the open window, and forgot to go on with her 
 singing, for the clown, solemnly stalking on his
 
 THE GREAT KO-KO 31 
 
 stilts, was very near, and it was possible to hear 
 every word he said. 
 
 I rose from my chair, and was upon the point 
 of stepping to the window to close it, when a 
 sudden movement called my attention to 
 Joanna. 
 
 She had started up in the bed, and was lean- 
 ing forward, eagerly attentive, every feature 
 radiant with an exquisite and growing happi- 
 ness. ' Thomas-James ! ' she cried, ' my son, 
 my dear boy ! Come, are 'ee ? Aw, my dear, 
 my heart was sick wi' longin' for 'ee.' 
 
 The radiant happiness faded, as she paused, 
 to a peace that was yet more beautiful. Death 
 had come very gently, and the frail figure fell 
 back lightly upon the pillows. 
 
 The step-daughter had sprung forward, but 
 seeing the quietness of the old face she stood 
 silent and still. At last 'she looked across at 
 me. 
 
 ' You may pull down the blind,' I said softly. 
 
 The noise had now become intolerable. The 
 woman had but half drawn the white blind 
 when she started back with a cry of indignant 
 horror. For a hideous grinning face appeared 
 outside the window, and the people roared (few
 
 32 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 of them knowing anything of Joanna) when the 
 Great Ko-ko spoke. 
 
 ' Why so shy, pretty maid?' he said. 'There 's 
 no need ' 
 
 The knowledge must have come upon him 
 suddenly, with the sight of his half-sister's face. 
 The voice ceased ; there was a woman's scream 
 and the sound of a heavy fall. Then, after an 
 interval of silence, I heard a door opened 
 below, and a man stumbled up the stairs and 
 entered the room. His face was plastered with 
 flour and uncouthly daubed with vermilion. 
 The blood streamed from a great cut upon his 
 forehead. 
 
 For one moment he looked at the still figure 
 which lay upon the bed. Then he fell forward 
 upon his knees, crying and sobbing as he might 
 have done had he been still the young lad for 
 whom Joanna had longed while she lay dying.
 
 THE MAN IN THE ROOM 
 
 SHE seemed a child when we were married, and 
 I was resolved she shouldn't learn the bitter 
 meaning of poverty. There were but three 
 weeks of the new life, then parting, and three 
 years of loneliness out in Dakota. The child 
 was born ; a year more passed, and it was dead ; 
 and very soon Nellie began to write begging 
 me to come home to her. But I was a fool, 
 and didn't look beyond the words ; it was only 
 when her father wrote, saying how she grieved 
 for the child, that I gave up trying to save for 
 the future, and went back home to Trenoweth. 
 Nellie was the same as ever: young and 
 pretty, and still so slight and slender that a 
 man could hardly think her a woman, made to 
 bear a woman's burdens. She didn't speak 
 once of the child that was dead, and I let her 
 have her way, though I was longing to hear 
 more of it. Sometimes when I sat with her in 
 c
 
 34 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 the bit of garden-ground, or walked in the lanes 
 that lead down to the sea, I could have fancied 
 we two were children again, alone in a new- 
 made world, and knowing nothing of any evil 
 thing. 
 
 And so it went until a day in August, when 
 I was working night-chore, and left home a 
 trifle after nine for the mine. 'Twas some 
 small thing had gone wrong with the engines : 
 when I came there I found we couldn't go 
 underground that night ; so I turned and went 
 homeward again, glad as a bird to get back to 
 Nellie. I was always loth to be away from her 
 now that I saw her every day. 
 
 I walked back whistling through the narrow 
 lanes, saying a ' Good-night ' once or twice to 
 people meeting me, and glad to take note of a 
 score of common things that would have been 
 nothing to me if I had not been abroad so long. 
 There was no moon, and the sky was all done 
 over with a thin mist from the sea ; yet there 
 was a sort of glimmering in the air, and a wet- 
 ness that gathered in great drops on a man's 
 moustache and eyebrows. 
 
 And so at last I came in sight of the 
 cottage.
 
 THE MAN IN THE ROOM 35 
 
 It stood alone, upon the right-hand side of 
 the road, at the bottom of a little slope. Just 
 beyond it the road went into parts, in the shape 
 of a narrow Y. And as I got to the gate I 
 heard a man coming quickly to meet me down 
 the road on the left out of Trenoweth. I 
 waited, standing in the shadow of a great 
 fuchsia-bush that overhung the wall of the 
 garden, and the man came quite close to me, 
 seeming to walk straight towards the gate, 
 before he saw me. Then he stopped suddenly, 
 and I knew who he was; 'twas Neily Matthews, 
 a cousin of Nellie. There had been a time 
 when I thought he might marry her, but Nellie 
 laughed when I told her of it, ' to think I could 
 fancy she would take up with a boy like that ! ' 
 
 He stopped suddenly, like a man startled, 
 and I came forth from under the fuchsia. 
 
 1 Hullo, Neily ! ' I said. ' Where be goin' this 
 way, an' this time o' night, and in such a tearin' 
 hurry ? ' 
 
 He didn't speak for a moment, and when he 
 found words I thought his voice was strange. 
 
 ' To tell the truth,' he said, ' I can't say where 
 I was goin'. I don't know myself. I was just 
 out for a stroll.'
 
 36 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 I couldn't keep from laughin', to hear him 
 talk like that to a man three years married. 
 
 ' And alone ? ' I said. ' Young men must be 
 finely changed since my time ! ' 
 
 ' Well,' he said, and the lie came easier now, 
 ' how should one like me keep a secret from a 
 man so wise ? To tell the truth, I had a tiff 
 with a girl last night : Jim Roskerby's daughter, 
 that lives up by the mine. All the evening 
 I've been hoping she would come down to 
 Trenoweth, and as she hasn' come I am goin' 
 up to try to get a look at her.' 
 
 ' Art mazed ? ' I said. ' I 've been young 
 myself, and a fool, but 'tis ten o'clock. The 
 maid 's in bed and sleepin', this long time. 
 Leave her till to-morrow, and since you 're here 
 come in and have a bit of supper. There 's a 
 light, see : Nellie haven' gone to bed yet.' 
 
 I couldn't for the life of me understand him. 
 He didn't speak for a minute ; then he began 
 to stammer out excuses, shuffling his feet in 
 the dust ; and before I could hear what he had 
 to say the door of the house was thrown open, 
 and I could see Nellie standing there against 
 the light. And then Neily was silent in a 
 moment.
 
 THE MAN IN THE ROOM 37 
 
 Nellie peered into the dark across the little 
 garden. 
 
 ' Who 's there ? ' she called, and I could tell 
 by her voice she was frightened to hear voices 
 at this time o' night. 
 
 'All right, Nellie,' I cried. "Tis only me: 
 me an' Neily. I 've been askin' him to come 
 in and have a bit of supper, but I can't get him 
 to say yes. I suppose you can give us a bit o' 
 something? He've got love-troubles, so he 
 tells me ; you may depend he won't eat 
 much.' 
 
 There was a long silence, and I hardly knew 
 her voice when she spoke. 
 
 'There's not much,' she said. 'But he's 
 welcome to what there is. Bring him in.' 
 
 But Neily wouldn't hear of it ; he turned 
 away and went back towards Trenoweth, and 
 I walked up the garden path to where Nellie 
 was waiting at the door. I took her face 
 between my hands to kiss it, and as I touched 
 her a sudden fear took me. I forgot to kiss 
 her, and stepped past into the house without 
 speaking. 
 
 And in a moment I knew everything, and all 
 the good in life was dead for me. For the
 
 38 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 cloth was spread, the lamp well trimmed ; and 
 on the table plates were laid for two. 
 
 I stood there like a man turned to stone. 
 Nellie followed me into the room, and for a 
 second she stood dumb and white as death. I 
 could feel the struggle she was making, as plain 
 as if her heart had been laid bare. 
 
 But she was brave, and mastered herself. 
 
 ' Ah ! ' she said, with a soft laugh. ' Canst 
 guess the meanin' of the two plates, and the 
 two chairs drawn to the table ? I used to have 
 things to do by daytime when you were away, 
 and so I made shift to forget some part o' my 
 loneliness. But when night came I was forced 
 to sit idle, and I was all the time longin' to 
 have you back. And so supper was always 
 laid for two, and the easiest chair was set 
 before the plate that was not used. I used to 
 linger over supper, thinkin' "If the door should 
 open, and he come in ! " Twas foolishness, an' 
 yet I couldn' but do it.' 
 
 Then she stopped, to see how the lie took 
 me, and I knew that the thing she told was 
 just like what she might have done in truth 
 when I first went away. But I didn't speak, 
 and she began again.
 
 THE MAN IN THE ROOM 39 
 
 'And now you have come at last, just as I 
 used to fancy ! Come and sit down ! ' 
 
 She drew out the easy-chair that was put 
 ready: I sat down, and she made me eat the 
 supper she had prepared for her lover. When 
 a man is wounded unto death 'tis one flash o' 
 ghastly pain, and then the very agony do stun 
 him, and perhaps 'tis a long time before he 
 feels his hurt. 'Twas that way with me. 
 
 I sat there dull and stupid, while she talked 
 an' laughed : it was like the old days, when I 
 used to take tea in her father's house and 
 wonder whether I was as old as I seemed to be 
 when I looked at her. For she laughed and 
 played, talking pretty nonsense, like a child 
 sitting on the knee of a man that 's fond of her. 
 And I knew that it was all play-acting : that she 
 was watching me all the time, and wondering 
 how much I guessed. 
 
 At last I couldn' bear with it any longer. 
 
 ' I Ve got a deal to think about to-night, 
 Nellie,' I said. ' Would 'ee mind leaving me 
 an' goin' to bed ? I Ve a deal to think about.' 
 
 I could see the fear in her face ; but she 
 couldn't afford to be weak, and in a moment 
 she had thrown it off. ' Ah ! ' she said. ' Tis
 
 40 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 no good for a married woman to look for com- 
 pliments. Don't 'ee sit up much longer : 'tis 
 eleven o'clock already. Promise me you won't 
 be long.' 
 
 She put her two arms about my neck and 
 kissed me upon the lips : I might have been 
 her lover, and I came near to saying so. 
 ' Good night,' she said, and I turned and 
 watched her mount the stairs. 
 
 I heard her moving about in the room over- 
 head, and it seemed as if I could see every 
 movement that she made. Then there was 
 quietness she was praying and in a minute 
 or two she was in bed, and I was wondering 
 what a man ought to do when he was treated 
 as I had been. I couldn't think. I sat there 
 hour after hour, until the lamp burned low and 
 the stink of it filled the room ; and all that I 
 could do was to speak the name of her falseness 
 over and over again to myself. There was no 
 need of that: I had understood it from the 
 moment when I stepped across the threshold ; 
 but the news had stunned me like a blow, so 
 that I couldn't go beyond it and think out plans 
 for the future. And so at last I rose and went 
 upstairs, taking a lighted candle in my hand.
 
 THE MAN IN THE ROOM 41 
 
 Nellie was lying with her eyes closed ; the 
 counterpane flung back a little, and her black 
 hair all a-tumble on the pillow. I stood beside 
 her, shading the candle with my hand ; I 
 couldn't believe that it was true, for she had 
 still that look of an unstained child, and her 
 breast rose and fell lightly with the come-and- 
 go of her breath. But as I turned away there 
 was a little sound which told me she was not 
 sleeping, and that she had found it hard to 
 master herself and fool me while I stood 
 watching her so long. And then again my 
 heart was hardened against her ; I knew it was 
 all true, and that this falseness was her very 
 nature. 
 
 I threw off my clothes, and put out the light ; 
 in a moment I was lying beside her, and again 
 I knew that she was only shamming sleep. 
 
 And I lay there trying to think what I should 
 do, and every moment longing to cry out to her 
 that I knew she was watching me, and all her 
 falseness. I can't tell 'ee how long a time this 
 lasted, but by-and-by I knew that she was 
 really sleeping, and a change came over me ; it 
 was like the loosing of a string strained to 
 breaking. And yet I couldn't sleep ; I lay
 
 42 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 there staring at the ceiling, a voice within me 
 saying over and over again that Nellie was 
 false. 
 
 I could fancy a dead man lying like that in 
 his grave, and waiting for the judgment. But 
 Nellie slept soft as a little child beside me. 
 
 This must have lasted a long time, for I 
 noticed presently that the window-square was 
 paling. It was just before the dawn, and a 
 small wind whining about the house. And 
 suddenly the door opened without a sound, and 
 a man stepped into the room. 'Twas a strange 
 thing, but somehow I didn't move nor speak ; 
 but I mind I wondered how he had opened the 
 door so noiselessly, for a hinge of it was broken 
 and always screeched. 
 
 The man came inside and closed the door 
 behind him ; then he moved about the room, 
 not making a sound. I didn't see the face of 
 him ; to tell the truth, I didn't think of noticing 
 it I lay and watched him, as a sick child half 
 asleep '11 watch his mother moving about his 
 bed. 
 
 He moved to and fro in the room. Then he 
 came and stood beside the bed, looking down 
 upon Nellie. Her arm was flung up, with one
 
 THE MAN IN THE ROOM 43 
 
 hand under her head, her lips just parted, and 
 the long lashes black against her cheek. The 
 first greyness of the dawn came through the 
 white window-blind ; and somewhere in the 
 country outside a cock crowed faintly. There 
 was no other sound. 
 
 The man stood watching her, like a shadow 
 of the night ; and I lay with my eyes upon him, 
 not moving hand nor foot. 
 
 She lay so quiet and untroubled, I wondered 
 presently what he thought of her : whether in 
 his judgment also she seemed like an innocent 
 child that sins all the more grievously because 
 of its innocence. But all at once Nellie made a 
 quick movement in her sleep. 
 
 ' Neily ! ' she cried, and I guessed what had 
 been her dream, and why she had called her 
 lover's name in such tones of fear. She knew 
 that I knew. 
 
 And then the man that stood watching her 
 turned away from the bed and walked to and 
 fro in the room ; I could see that he was looking 
 for something, he hardly knew what 
 
 But I knew. Hanging up against the wall 
 there was a sharp-bladed knife, which I had 
 carried in Dakota, and which had been put
 
 44 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 there for want of a better place when I came 
 home. I watched the man, and I watched the 
 knife ; and presently he seemed not so much to 
 see it as to remember it He took it from the 
 nail and tried the point against his palm. He 
 stood thinking for a little while ; then he came 
 back to the bed and looked down on Nellie. 
 
 And I lay watching him, as I might have 
 watched a shadow on the wall. I didn't think 
 to notice his face. 
 
 A long time passed. 
 
 Then all at once Nellie stirred again in her 
 sleep and flung her head back on the pillow, 
 stretching her arms above her. The coverlet 
 fell back, and her white breast shone dimly in 
 the grey. 
 
 The man took one step forward and struck . . . 
 
 And I screamed aloud as I flung the dagger 
 from me across the room. God knows it was 
 not I who murdered her. Yet I was alone with 
 my dead.
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 
 
 I 
 
 THE Wesleyan chapel, a gaunt, unlovely 
 building, scrupulously whitewashed, stood be- 
 side the roadway at a little distance from its 
 point of descent into the valley wherein the 
 village of Trevabyn was situated. Over against 
 it, some fifty yards removed, was another 
 building, standing in the midst of what had 
 manifestly been a rick-yard at no distant period; 
 the building itself had been no more than a barn 
 until it was transformed into the Sunday school 
 of the Trevabyn Wesleyans. From the early 
 part of the afternoon this schoolroom had been 
 the goal of some score or two of women and 
 girls, all greatly excited and attired with 
 particular gaiety, all laden with tea-things and 
 edibles, which they carried in huge clothes- 
 baskets. 
 
 Autumn had passed into winter. There had
 
 46 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 been many days of bitter cold and miserable 
 rain ; for a short space, even, the ground had 
 been hard bound with frost. But on this day 
 the air was soft and pleasant against the face, 
 the shining feathery clouds served but to show 
 the infinite depth of the clear sky, and all along 
 the road the shadows of the hedges on the damp 
 ground were edged with an exquisite azure. 
 Gulls and lapwings gleamed in the sunlight over 
 barren fields. 
 
 Circumstances favoured the pleasant excite- 
 ment of the village folk. Circumstances, indeed, 
 could have done but little to repress this 
 universal feeling. It was the day of the annual 
 missionary meeting ; no less than three regular 
 ministers and many of the best-known laymen 
 in the district were to be present together at 
 Trevabyn chapel, where on more ordinary 
 occasions you heard only a local preacher a 
 good man, and perhaps an able one, but still 
 only a ' local.' There was to be a tea-meeting 
 in the schoolroom ; and since the weather was 
 fine, it was expected that a multitude of people 
 would come out from the neighbouring town, 
 the head of the circuit : the good matrons of 
 Trevabyn chapel were therefore more than
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 47 
 
 ordinarily anxious to make the tea their part 
 in the day's proceedings a success. 
 
 Towards four o'clock a group of youths began 
 to gather in the roadway, where a small, rutted 
 lane turned in to the schoolroom. All were in 
 the black clothes that betoken respectability ; 
 two or three wore in their buttonholes the pink 
 monthly roses that open all the year round in 
 the valley. 
 
 Towards these youths there came presently 
 from the direction of the valley a girl of eighteen 
 or thereabouts. She had a dark, passionate face ; 
 dead black hair, and eager, green-grey eyes. 
 In the one hand she carried a pitcher of dull 
 red, unglazed earthenware, filled with milk ; 
 with the other a great saffron cake was held 
 against her breast. The group of youngsters 
 made way for her. 
 
 ' 'Tis busy-all with 'ee, Marina ! ' said one of 
 them, laughing. ' But where 's Mark ? I should 
 think 'twas his place to carry your burdens ; for 
 'tis but courtin' days yet, and then's the woman's 
 time.' The girl blushed crimson, but made no 
 answer; when she had passed from them 
 towards the school a second youth broke into 
 speech.
 
 48 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 ' Aw ! ' he said contemptuously. ' Don't 'ee 
 know nothin", Johnny Kemp ? Marky's courtin' 
 days is over, for she 've given him the go-by. 
 He had a wonderful good pay-day Saturday, 
 and went into the " Three Choughs " with the 
 rest to divide it. You know what fashion chap 
 Mark is : one drop o' drink do make a fool of 
 en. He had a glass or two, an' then he went out 
 to meet Marina.'. 
 
 ' Was & drunk ? ' asked Kemp. 
 
 ' Drunk enough, I suppose ; but none can tell 
 what happened. Any way, after a bit he came 
 back to the " Three Choughs " again an' stopped 
 there all the evening, drinking hard, an' talkin' 
 about the women in such a style that no one 
 that ever owned so much as an old gran'mother 
 (so they tell me) could bear to hear him.' 
 
 "Tis all over with him if that's true,' said 
 one. 
 
 'Ay,' said Kemp, 'Marina can't abide the 
 drink, an' come to think upon it 'twas a 
 wonder to all that ever she took him.' 
 
 ' Iss,' echoed another. ' 'Tis all over with him, 
 an' though he 's a good enough sort, 'tis a thing 
 you can't be sorry for. Marina was always too 
 good for him. A man wouldn' like to think
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 49 
 
 Marina was goin' to spend her days with a 
 drunken husband.' 
 
 This was a tragedy they were discussing, and 
 speech left them a moment later. Mark 
 Harvey's mother had come in sight a woman 
 little past fifty, but bowed and aged by a 
 mysterious sorrow. She had come into the 
 village twelve years previously to occupy a 
 house which had been taken for her by the 
 curate. She brought with her the son Mark, 
 then a handsome child of ten ; and from that 
 time she had laboured hard to make a living. 
 She had picked mushrooms and blackberries in 
 autumn; she had reared a multitude of chickens; 
 and gradually, visiting the town to sell these 
 commodities, she had found people willing to 
 give her employment as seamstress. 
 
 In the course of time she had gained the 
 respect of her neighbours and become a recog- 
 nised part of the village life ; but she had 
 hardly attained to a place in their affections. 
 She had been very reticent upon the subject of 
 her previous history, though manifestly not a 
 woman of an ignoble past ; and the matrons of 
 the village had been puzzled, almost vexed, by 
 the manner in which she regarded the various 
 D
 
 50 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 incidents of her son's up-growing. He was a 
 handsome, well-grown fellow, and they saw very 
 clearly that his impatience of control was only 
 the direct consequence of his abounding good 
 health. He was something of a trial, no doubt, 
 but still a son to be the pride of any mother. 
 It was a sign of weakness, they thought, that, 
 for all her passionate love of him, Martha 
 seemed to look upon the boy with constant 
 anxiety, and never for a moment with simple 
 maternal pride. 
 
 Even the boys knew what an agony she had 
 endured silently when Mark began to turn in 
 at the 'Three Choughs' of an evening. They 
 had been vaguely glad of his engagement to 
 Marina, because of the relief it would give the 
 widow to see him fortified against this temp- 
 tation. And as she drew near, her face 
 revealing her great trouble, they stood back 
 from the lane and let her pass towards the 
 schoolroom. 
 
 ' 'Tis a poor world for the women,' said Kemp, 
 looking after the retreating figure. ' I suppose 
 Mark is on the drink still ?' 
 
 ' I saw him in front of the " Three Choughs " 
 just now, as I was coming up along,' replied
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 51 
 
 another. ' He was quiet enough then, but 
 foolish-like.' 
 
 The widow passed onward. In the yard 
 beside the old barn they were boiling a huge 
 kettle over a fire of brushwood and of sticks 
 downfallen from the great elms that grew out 
 of the turf ' hedges.' The pleasant odour of the 
 burning filled the place. She crossed the yard, 
 hardly seeming to observe a boy and girl who 
 laughed and talked at the door of the school- 
 room. 
 
 ' Make haste, Mis' Harvey,' said the girl. 
 'There's a lot left to do still, and helpers is 
 wanted.' 
 
 The widow opened the door and looked down 
 the bare room. Eight narrow tables ran across 
 it, spread with white cloths, and laden with food : 
 great jars of cream, cakes coloured a rich yellow 
 with the aid of saffron, and bread buns split and 
 liberally spread with butter or with cream and 
 jam. At each end of the long tables was a tea- 
 tray filled with cups and saucers, a gigantic tea- 
 pot in the centre. And at every table a number 
 of women of all ages were preparing busily for 
 the advent of the guests. Some were splitting 
 bread buns, some spreading them with butter ;
 
 52 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 others were cutting the cake into massive slices. 
 The rough walls of the room were whitewashed 
 and hung with large paper banners bearing 
 favourite texts ; the lamps, as yet unlighted, 
 were hung against the walls. 
 
 'Come on, Mrs. Harvey,' said a red-faced 
 woman of fifty, attired in gorgeous mauve. 
 ' Come an' help to split these buns. You may 
 depend there '11 be crowds here directly, an' not 
 one but '11 mean to eat his shilling's-worth.' 
 
 Martha took her place at the matron's elbow 
 and set herself to help. She worked with quiet 
 vigour, and for a space the mistress of the table 
 was occupied in giving directions to another of 
 her assistants. At last she turned, and again 
 went on splitting the buns ; then, looking 
 curiously at the widow's face, she spoke. 
 
 ' I don't like to speak of it, Mrs. Harvey,' she 
 said, ' but I couldn' keep from saying how 
 sorry I was to hear that you was in trouble 
 again about Mark. What can the men find in 
 the drink, I wonder?' 
 
 She paused. The widow made no answer, 
 but fumbled with a bun she had taken from the 
 basket beside her, and presently dropped it 
 altogether. She stooped to pick it from beneath
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 53 
 
 the table, and as she rose the other spoke 
 again. 
 
 1 Is it true, what they're telling, that Marina 
 Carthew has given him up?' 
 
 ' I can't tell 'ee,' said the widow, piteously. 
 ' I haven' heard nor seen her since. Don't 'ee 
 talk of it, for pity sake.' 
 
 There was a little cloak-room opening out of 
 the larger room at the end nearest the door. 
 Marina had not been visible upon the entry of 
 Mark Harvey's mother ; but now she appeared 
 in the doorway of this room. The widow saw 
 her, and moved towards her immediately, aban- 
 doning her occupation. 
 
 ' Come inside here a moment,' she said. ' I 
 do want to speak with 'ee a bit.' 
 
 Marina yielded to her pressure, and in a 
 moment the two women were face to face. It 
 was the widow who spoke first. 
 
 ' Dear child,' she said, 'you mus' know I don't 
 blame 'ee, whichever way you do choose : no 
 one can blame 'ee. But, tell me : have 'ee 
 clean broke wi' Mark? Is it gone beyond 
 mending?' 
 
 ' I think,' said the girl bitterly, ' I think that 
 if anything is broke between us two the
 
 54 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 breaking has been Mark's. Love is a thing 
 that don't die in a moment with the worst o' 
 wounds ; I would give my right hand now to 
 have things as they were till yesterday. But I 
 can't marry a man that drinks ; I told him so, 
 and he knew what he was doing when he came 
 drunk to meet me last night. It is all over.' 
 
 ' My dear,' said the mother with a piteous 
 eagerness, ' 'tis a maiden's right to choose, an' 
 the choice is one of heaven or hell. An' yet 
 do 'ee think there 's no hope for him ? Could 
 'ee try him once again ? ' 
 
 Marina's face was troubled. 
 
 ' I can't believe 'tis any good,' she said. 
 ' Tis the first time, since I said " Yes " to him ; 
 but there were many times before that. I 'd 
 give the world to have him made strong against 
 this weakness, but I can't marry a man that '11 
 ruin everything with the drink.' 
 
 ' Dear child,' said the mother, ' I couldn' rest 
 in my grave if I thought that through words of 
 mine a woman had come to live with a drunken 
 husband. But have 'ee thought of the words 
 in the Bible, " Thou shalt be to him as God " ? 
 'Tis a lot laid upon every maiden to be like 
 God to some man or other : to know she can
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 55 
 
 take his will an' turn it as she do wish, for good 
 or ill. Sometimes he lies upon the dung-hill 
 an' all the world couldn' raise him. But a 
 word from her '11 make a man of him, an' may 
 be one of the best : at least, 'tis the one thing 
 that will make him try to rise again. Tis a 
 maiden's right to choose, an' I wouldn' have it 
 upon my soul that I was the one to tie 'ee to a 
 drunken husband. But Mark is my own son ; 
 I 've toiled for him an' prayed for him, an' now 
 I must see him goin' to his ruin, an' neither 
 word nor deed o' mine '11 hold him. A word o' 
 yours might do it. Will 'ee think of it again, 
 dear chiel' ? Will 'ee give him one more 
 chance to save himself?' 
 
 Marina's strength had left her. 
 
 1 1 d' love him ! ' she cried. ' I 'd give the 
 world for him to be strong again. Tell him I 
 forgive him.' 
 
 She moved to the doorway, not caring to 
 hear the expression of Martha's joy. A 
 moment later Martha followed her into the 
 schoolroom. 
 
 Two of the ministers had already come ; 
 they were now talking with Mrs. Philips, the 
 lady of the mauve dress.
 
 56 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 1 Is it 'most time to begin ? ' she said to one 
 of them the superintendent of the circuit. ' I 
 fancy we shall be forced to have two sittings, 
 there's so many here. I should think 'twas 
 time the doors was open : the tea is soaked.' 
 
 'Very well,' said the minister; and as soon 
 as he had spoken the doors were opened, and 
 the people began to enter. 
 
 For full five minutes there was infinite con- 
 fusion. Here, perhaps, a young man was 
 separated from the girl of his choice, and stood 
 upon a form, striving, with vehement gestures, 
 to attract her attention and bring her to the 
 table he had selected. Many of the people had 
 come from distant villages, or from the town 
 three miles away ; they recognised an old 
 acquaintance in every guest, and must needs 
 make and answer the natural inquiries after 
 absent friends. Others, again, had come to 
 the tea mindful of past experiences : they re- 
 membered that one hostess gave better tea than 
 another, and were her table never so crowded 
 they must somehow find a place at it. 
 
 But at last the bustle died down. Every one 
 had now found a place ; all looked up at the 
 minister to see if he had apprehended that they
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 57 
 
 were ready. Then they looked down again, 
 and he began to ask a blessing. 
 
 1 We ask Thy blessing, O Lord 
 
 The minister paused, disconcerted. Even 
 before he began to ask the blessing there had 
 been audible in the hush a man's voice, singing 
 very tipsily a song men sing at harvest suppers 
 when the beer goes round 
 
 ' Tom Toddy is come home, come home ; 
 Tom Toddy is come home, 
 With his eyes burnt, and his nose burnt, 
 And his fingers burnt also.' 
 
 Now the same voice was raised in argument 
 with the keepers of the door. 
 
 4 Let me be ! ' said the man. ' You can't 
 keep me out. Marina's in here. Marina's 
 goin' to give me a cup o' tea.' 
 
 ' Get out with 'ee, Mark,' cried another voice. 
 1 You can't go in like this. There 's ' 
 
 The speech was suddenly broken off; there 
 was a noise of struggling, and a moment later 
 Mark Harvey entered, with a roar of drunken 
 laughter, and stood dazed and swaying in the 
 light of the lamps. 
 
 ' Where 's Marina ? ' he cried. ' Marina 's 
 goin' to give me a cup o' tea.'
 
 58 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 Then he caught sight of the girl. 
 
 ' Come on, Marina,' he shouted, while she 
 stood dumb and motionless. ' Did we fall out 
 last night? Why, come an' make it up, my 
 dear.' And once again he sang tipsily 
 
 ' Shall a rough word end it ? 
 Sure, a kiss '11 mend it ! ' 
 
 And then the superintendent, Mr. Morecombe, 
 stepped quietly to his side. He spoke no word, 
 but took the young man by the collar and 
 shoved him into the yard. Mark had been too 
 surprised to struggle ; but once he was without 
 and realised what had happened, he began to 
 bluster and swear. The people crowded round 
 the tables made way half unconsciously for the 
 widow, who had started from her place at the 
 first entry of her son. 
 
 As she quitted the room there arose a mur- 
 mur of astonishment mingled with indignation. 
 And Marina, standing like a statue of despair, 
 spoke bitterly as if she had still in her mind 
 the text quoted by the widow. 
 
 ' Is there any hope ? ' she cried. ' Is there 
 any hope ? '
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 59 
 
 II 
 
 For Mark Harvey, at any rate, there was 
 henceforth, in the judgment of his neighbours, 
 no hope at all remaining. They had mis- 
 understood Marina's passionate self-respect, 
 seeing in it an ungirlish prudence and common- 
 sense ; but, though they misnamed the quality, 
 they were nowise in doubt as to its probable 
 effect upon her behaviour at this juncture. She 
 was no light-headed girl, to be drawn from all 
 serious purposes at the mere name of love. 
 She could love, indeed, but was capable also of 
 enduring the pain of love set aside, if it were 
 necessary she should sacrifice herself. The 
 villagers realised that nothing lying within the 
 common circle of events could induce her to 
 forgive the affair of the tea-meeting. 
 
 They came of a race which for unnumbered 
 generations had gotten a hard living by direct 
 conflict with the elements ; they were good 
 Christians, the most of them, but they were 
 born fatalists. They looked on Marina's silent 
 pain, on Mark's wild folly, with a constant 
 sense of the inevitableness of all things 
 happening upon earth. And it seemed that
 
 60 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 Mark Harvey's ruin was a thing resolved upon 
 by Providence. He was occupied as a 'tributer' 
 in a mine near to the village : that is, he and 
 divers comrades worked together, receiving by 
 way of wages a certain varying proportion of the 
 value of the ore they sent to the surface. This 
 proportion varied with the apparent richness of 
 the ground they were working, and was subject 
 to periodical revision. 
 
 Now, sometimes it might happen that the 
 ground deceived them, appearing vastly richer 
 than it really was. They would accept a low 
 proportion, or 'tribute,' on the 'setting-day,' 
 and at the end of the month find themselves 
 with only a pittance to take up by way of 
 payment for their labour. Sometimes, again, 
 it would be the underground captain who was 
 deceived by the appearance of the ground. He 
 would grant them liberal terms, and they 
 finding, perhaps, that the ground was unusually 
 rich would work with special vigour during the 
 termof their bargain, send a greatquantityof stuff 
 to the surface, and receive a very heavy pay-day. 
 
 Such lucky bargains ' sturts ' in local par- 
 lance happened more than once in the next 
 few months to Mark Harvey and his partners.
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 61 
 
 They were very flush of cash, and though they 
 worked hard and regularly knowing that their 
 tribute would be cut on the next setting-day 
 they were only gone out of the village eight or 
 ten hours daily, and on Mondays, according to 
 a custom very prevalent in those parts, they 
 did no work at all. Mark had plenty of leisure, 
 and more money than usual ; and the thought 
 of Marina lost to him was never for a moment 
 out of his mind. Often at nights the widow 
 kept her lonely vigil, awaiting his return from 
 the ' Three Choughs ' ; and any who had 
 looked upon her face as she sat in her corner 
 at the end of a white scrubbed table, a Bible 
 lying unregarded before her, would have marked 
 upon it an emotion an awful fear, mingling 
 with natural disquiet that might have seemed 
 altogether beyond the requirements of the situa- 
 tion. She was habitually reticent : even in pri- 
 vate her features rarely expressed her strongest 
 emotions. But in these long vigils she talked 
 much in broken sentences to herself. And the 
 burden of her speech still kept to one subject 
 the possibility of Mark's salvation by the influ- 
 ence of Marina, if she could but be induced to 
 call him back to her.
 
 62 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 1 He 's the one good thing in my life my 
 son ; an' I must stand by and see him go down 
 into the Pit. For the drink is stronger than 
 me : something always was stronger than me 
 with Mark. And his father. . . . Was it I that 
 was weak? or was it the drink that was 
 stronger strong as death, cruel as the grave ? 
 May be Marina couldn' fight against it ; may 
 be 'twas written he should die like his father. 
 But Mark is strong a strong man in all but 
 this an' Marina's the one living soul that can 
 give him the wish to make use of his strength. 
 Tis a fearful thing to be the wife of a drunkard ; 
 but Marina might save him.' 
 
 She had manifestly a passionate desire to go 
 and plead with Marina, to induce her to step 
 forth and save this man that went so swiftly to 
 ruin, receiving for the sacrifice of her just pride 
 a soul that but for her was already lost. But 
 she made no direct appeal to the girl. She 
 loved her, had taken a strange pride in her 
 strength and comely self-respect during the 
 few months of Mark's engagement ; and now 
 she hesitated to say a word that should induce 
 her to link her fate with that of a drunken 
 husband.
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 63 
 
 There was a secret in her own past life ; she 
 also had once been proud of her youth and 
 strength, and had known the bitterness of 
 degradation for the sake of a man loved. 
 
 Meanwhile Mark Harvey fell lower and lower, 
 and was alternately the terror and the laughing- 
 stock of the baser sort among the villagers. 
 
 When the drink was out he was morose, ill- 
 tempered, vindictive ; but once he had begun 
 his drinking again he was a loosely talkative 
 fool, a singer of old songs for the amusement 
 of all that cared to laugh at him. He had been 
 somewhat famous as a talker in earlier days 
 than these ; now he was wont to set the great 
 world to rights and expose the wickedness of 
 women for the edification of all the idlers in 
 Trevabyn. Manna's name was often in his 
 mouth : he had told publicly and on many 
 occasions the story of how she had cast him off 
 in her hateful pride, leaving him the one con- 
 solation of drink. 
 
 On one such occasion towards seven o'clock 
 in the evening of a bleak day in March he 
 stood before the 'Three Choughs,' encircled 
 with a little crowd of good-for-naughts. 
 
 'Marina?' he cried, in swift response to a
 
 64 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 jesting speech. ' I loved her, friends ; I chose 
 Marina out of all the girls in Trevabyn. But 
 she was proud proud as Satan. I wadn' good 
 enough : she flung me off, an' I might lie on 
 the dung-hill for all she do care. Friends,' he 
 laughed drunkenly, ' friends, I tell 'ee, women 
 is without hearts or conscience.' 
 
 There was a chorus of laughter. 
 
 ' Get away, Mark,' said one of the onlookers. 
 1 You don't know what you 're talking of. You 
 was never half good enough for Marina. She 's 
 a good little maid, an' she done well to give 'ee 
 the go-by.' 
 
 Mark looked excitedly around the group. 
 ' Done well ? ' he cried. ' She 's got the heart 
 of a mill-stone ; 'twas cruel the way she treated 
 me. There 's better women than her in 
 
 His speech remained unfinished. The sur- 
 rounding crowd had turned away from him at 
 a word from one of their number, and even 
 Mark was sobered and silenced. 
 
 Marina was coming towards them down the 
 street, and could not have failed to hear the 
 speech of her old lover. For a moment it 
 seemed she would attempt to ignore the event, 
 would pass on her way through the village.
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 65 
 
 That this was her first purpose was obvious, 
 but she was overmastered by her love of Mark, 
 by a passion of sorrow to see him thus de- 
 graded. She swerved aside suddenly, and came 
 towards him, laying a hand upon his shoulder. 
 
 I Mark ! ' she said, pleading passionately for 
 the old love's sake. ' Come away from here. 
 Come with me ; come home ! ' 
 
 The young man strove to meet her eye, 
 laughed drunkenly, and staggered, so that her 
 hand slipped from his shoulder. Then the 
 madness took hold on him again. He laughed 
 with a horrid triumph. 
 
 ' Hark ! ' he cried. ' Now hark, friends, to 
 what the maid is saying of. I told 'ee she cast 
 me off: I wadn' good enough for such as she. 
 An' now I must go back to her upon the first 
 word, like a dog to heel.' 
 
 He paused and clumsily mimicked the call- 
 ing of a dog to the master's side. Then with 
 a new effort after seriousness he spoke again. 
 
 I 1 'm no fool,' he said. ' Would any man do 
 it ? She threw me off, but she threw me off for 
 good. I 'm a man, I hope, an' not a dog, to 
 come when she calls, an' go when she bids me 
 go. So long to 'ee, Marina ! '
 
 66 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 Marina had hitherto stood silent. Now she 
 faced the people with a gesture of despair. 
 
 ' Go ! ' she cried. ' Leave me to deal with 
 him. He will come, if you do but leave him to 
 me.' 
 
 There was no disobeying the commands of 
 one who spoke in the strength of such a passion 
 as had inspired Marina to this act. The people 
 withdrew clumsily, and the girl was left with 
 her lover. For a moment there was silence 
 between them. She could hear the crying of a 
 young child in one of the houses near by, could 
 distinguish the words of a song that was being 
 sung in the taproom within. Then she spoke 
 again, taking her lover by the arm. 
 
 ' Come away, Mark,' she entreated ; ' come 
 home now.' 
 
 Mark had grown quieter now that the crowd 
 of onlookers was withdrawn. He smiled fool- 
 ishly. 
 
 ' Come home with 'ee, Marina ? 'Tis like old 
 times come again to hear 'ee asking that. Of 
 course I '11 come.' 
 
 And he talked volubly and disconnectedly 
 of the great strength of his love, and of his 
 sufferings in the weeks that were now ended,
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 67 
 
 while she led him up the hill that slopes out of 
 the valley, and towards his home. Every word 
 was a wound to her, spoken in that voice of 
 utter foolishness. She could better have borne 
 a blow than the reek of drink upon his breath. 
 
 The widow had long since finished all house- 
 hold work for the day. She knew it was useless 
 to hope as yet for the return of her son, even 
 though he should chance to come home earlier 
 than usual. She was merely abandoned to 
 sorrow, wildly questioning the justice of Pro- 
 vidence, even while she strove to find some 
 means of submitting herself to the hard will of 
 God. But when she heard a noise of voices at 
 her gate, and of unsteady footsteps upon the 
 rudely paved pathway that led to her door, she 
 was overtaken with a panic of fear. She took 
 the lamp from the table, and held it above her 
 head as she flung open the door and looked out 
 into the dark. 
 
 'Who's there?' she cried. 'What do 'ee 
 want ? ' 
 
 Mark was lounging against the low white- 
 washed wall of the garden on her left. He 
 laughed feebly as the door was opened. ' All 
 right, mother,' he said ; ' 'tis only me an'
 
 68 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 Marina. We belong courtin' again. 'Tis all 
 right.' 
 
 The widow looked swiftly into Marina's white 
 face. 
 
 4 Is it true ? ' she asked. ' Did you bring en 
 home ? ' 
 
 Marina looked back at her with face set in a 
 resolve that might have been utter despair. 
 
 ' I brought him home. We two must save 
 him.' 
 
 Then, as if she could no longer bear to look 
 upon his degradation, she turned away into 
 the darkness, leaving to the widow the task 
 of inducing Mark to come within the house. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Marina had turned aside from her first pur- 
 pose suddenly, and in obedience to instincts 
 beyond her control. Once again she had linked 
 her fate with Mark's, but she was still resolved 
 that he should overcome his weakness. He 
 pledged his word to her upon the morrow, 
 when he had come to himself and realised the 
 nobility of her act. Had she been securely 
 married to him he would assuredly have re- 
 sented the interference ; now it appeared that
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 69 
 
 her act would indeed achieve his salvation. He 
 had a strong will, if only it could be aroused in 
 opposition to his inborn weakness, and it seemed 
 that he had now a clearer understanding of the 
 strength of Marina's love for him. He had been 
 wont hitherto, perhaps, to look upon their en- 
 gagement as a mere affair of 'keeping company,' 
 a matter on which a man must expect to endure 
 a good deal of laughter from his friends. Now 
 he saw what that love meant to Marina, and 
 he too became serious. 
 
 1 'Tis like a thing inside me, but not myself/ 
 he said. ' There 's nothing else I 'm afraid of ; 
 and I can't believe sometimes that this is the 
 master of me. 'Twas that way the night before 
 the tea-meeting, when it all began. The rest 
 had their drop o' drink, an' I thought I was a 
 man and could afford to take a glass 'long with 
 them for the sake of company. An' one glass, 
 or two, would have done me no harm, if 'twas 
 only me ; but one drop is enough to make me 
 servant of the beast inside that can't have 
 enough of it ; and so I stayed drinking until 
 I was what you saw and scorned. I must put 
 the thing clean away from me ; for I 'm weak 
 weak as water over this."
 
 70 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 There is but little need to fear for the man 
 who has discerned his own weakness. Mark 
 held himself to his pledge, and in a little while 
 the village talked of him as a man snatched 
 into safety out of the very depths of the pit. 
 In Marina this assurance was a plant of slower 
 growth. For the first weeks of the renewed 
 engagement she had more of fear than of hope ; 
 but gradually, as he returned more and more 
 to the full command of himself, even Marina 
 began to hope, and after hope came confidence. 
 The old fear died out in her with the growth 
 of the year from spring to summer ; and soon 
 she had promised to become Mark's wife when 
 the necessary arrangements had been made. 
 
 The widow's home was to be theirs also ; for 
 the feeling that they two women were in some 
 fashion responsible for Mark's well-being was 
 very real to Marina, and overcame any unwill- 
 ingness she might have felt to have beneath the 
 roof of her new home any one who might be 
 tempted to interfere with her control of it. 
 She had seen into the widow's heart in the 
 past months, and they were very near to one 
 another, having all their hopes in common. 
 
 It chanced towards the beginning of Septem-
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 71 
 
 her that Mark was working 'night-chore' 
 from ten at night till six o'clock in the morn- 
 ing. He slept until early afternoon, then had 
 some hours of freedom wherein to perform the 
 numerous small jobs that were for ever being 
 suggested to him by his desire to make the 
 home worthy of his wife that should be. And 
 now, in these days of autumn sunshine, Marina 
 first tasted the security of perfect trust. Every 
 moment of the present was a keen delight to 
 her ; every moment, it seemed, she was thank- 
 ing God, who had again made it hers to face 
 the future without fear. Many an afternoon 
 she spent standing in the door of the widow's 
 house, her needlework in hand, while Mark was 
 busy over jobs of carpentry, or in laying out 
 and ordering the little garden, with its narrow 
 paths of white spar and box-edged flower-beds. 
 
 One afternoon she stood there as usual .talk- 
 ing now and again to the widow, who kept 
 within the kitchen. It was towards five o'clock, 
 when she heard the pleasant clatter of tea- 
 things being taken from the dresser. 
 
 'Did Mark say what time he'd be back?' 
 she asked. 
 
 'Said he'd be back as soon as he could,'
 
 72 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 answered the widow cheerfully. "Twas pay- 
 day yesterday, an' I fancy whether he 's set his 
 heart on some bit of furniture, and do want to 
 bring it with him as a surprise to 'ee. He jus' 
 said he was goin' in to Tallywarn, an' wouldn' 
 be gone more'n an hour or two. I mustn't 
 wait tea for en, he said, but he didn' think 
 there 'd be any need.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Marina, ' if we don't wait for him, 
 there '11 be two of us to 'tend him when he does 
 come. And you may depend he knew it. 
 Now, look ! you 've got to sit comfortable 
 while I put the things ready an' make the 
 tea.' 
 
 She laid her needlework upon the dresser 
 and quickly finished the arrangement of the 
 table ; then she stepped to the door, and looked 
 up and down the road through the deepening 
 twilight 
 
 'My Lord the King edn' in sight yet,' she 
 said. ' We '11 take him at his word, and begin.' 
 
 They took their time over the meal. When 
 at last they had finished it was already dark, 
 and Marina's first task was to light the lamp. 
 Then she brushed all crumbs from the table- 
 cloth, removed the tea-things they had been
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 73 
 
 using, and made the table neat in readiness for 
 Mark's return. 
 
 ' He 's a bit late, 1 she exclaimed. ' No doubt 
 he knew I should be longin' to find out what 
 he 'd bought to-day.' 
 
 A heavy sigh from the widow aroused her 
 to a sense of the necessities of the situation. 
 
 'Well/ she said, 'he's fine an' late, so 'tis 
 pretty sure he won't be much longer. I '11 
 empty the teapot against he comes : 'tis poor 
 trade when 'tis left soakin' a long time, an' bad 
 for the stomach they do say.' 
 
 The widow appeared hardly conscious of 
 the speech, and sat with countenance unchanged 
 while Marina poured away the spoiled tea. 
 Evidently she was wholly given over to nervous 
 apprehensions ; it was necessary she should be 
 given some other occupation for her thoughts. 
 
 ' Shall we wash up the cups and saucers, and 
 so on ? ' said Marina. ' 'Tis a bit late, and what 
 Mark uses can wait until to-morrow.' 
 
 The widow rose unwillingly and took her 
 place at the girl's side in the small pantry. 
 Marina talked volubly, manifesting a keen 
 desire for information ; but the widow seemed 
 incapable of connected thought. She was for
 
 74 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 ever listening for something ; her eyes were for 
 ever wandering to the doorway that opened 
 from the pantry into the kitchen. Marina's 
 confidence in her lover was unabated, but she 
 could not resist a certain movement of anger 
 against him. He had not told her on the 
 previous evening that he intended visiting the 
 town, and she had come over expecting to find 
 him at home. She had forgiven his absence at 
 first, supposing, with his mother, that he was 
 gone upon some errand connected with the 
 marriage, and that he desired the thing which 
 he might purchase to come to her as a pleasant 
 surprise. This had sufficed to excuse him until 
 now ; but in staying so late he inflicted a 
 positive cruelty upon his mother, and upon 
 her, his sweetheart, a manifest discourtesy. 
 
 The two women worked in silence at last, 
 the widow still maintaining her attitude of 
 strained attention ; and suddenly she uttered 
 a loud cry, dropping the plate she had been 
 wiping. Some one had entered at the gate, 
 and was knocking at the door. She caught the 
 lamp from the table ; then, moving hurriedly 
 across the kitchen, she flung open the door, 
 holding the light (with an action already
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 75 
 
 stamped on Marina's memory) above her 
 head. 
 
 A man stood without, looking very anxiously 
 into the faces of the two women. Once his 
 mouth opened as if to speak ; but the words 
 would not come, and he stood gazing helplessly 
 into their faces. Beyond the low wall of the 
 garden a cart was drawn up, a man sitting in 
 it with a lantern by his side, and a burden, 
 apparently, supported in his arms. Marina, 
 beholding this, was overwhelmed with a great 
 fear. 
 
 ' What is it ? ' she cried with fierce impatience. 
 ' What is it you have come to tell us ? Speak, 
 man, for the sake of Heaven ! ' 
 
 The man drew a step nearer. ' 'Tis hard to 
 be the one to tell it,' he said. 'Mis' Harvey, 
 Mark is hurted very badly : was rode over on 
 the way from town about a half-hour ago.' 
 
 The widow bent and gazed into his face. 
 ' He 's dead ! ' she screamed. ' Tell me, is he 
 dead ? ' 
 
 ' Ay,' said the man slowly. ' Lord help 'ee. 
 Mark is dead this half-hour. He never spoke 
 a word after they picked him up.'
 
 76 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 IV 
 
 They bore the dead man into the house, 
 and laid him upon the bed where he had slept 
 every night since he came, a young child, into 
 the village. The women had neither desire 
 nor strength to question those that brought 
 him as to the circumstances of his death. 
 Indeed, with the knowledge they had of his 
 past life, to see him dead was to know in what 
 manner he had died ; and the story, when it 
 was told them upon the morrow, seemed to 
 them both already an old familiar tale. 
 
 Mark had gone into the town and made the 
 purchase he had been contemplating: the 
 parcel, neatly wrapped in brown paper and 
 tied with thin thread, was found afterwards 
 lying by the roadside where it had fallen in the 
 moment of his death. He had met with 
 certain friends and acquaintances, and told 
 them that he was about to be married ; they 
 had insisted he should come with them to 
 drink the health of the bride, and laughed him 
 to scorn when he told them of his promise to 
 Marina. And then, drawing a foolish con- 
 fidence from the knowledge of his strength in
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 77 
 
 the past months, he had yielded. One glass had 
 sufficed to make him no longer master of him- 
 self. He had stopped some hours in the public- 
 house, and was going home drunk to his sweet- 
 heart, when a heavy broad-wheeled waggon, 
 driven rapidly through the narrow lanes by a 
 home-going labourer, came suddenly upon him 
 from behind, knocked him down, and killed him. 
 The essence of this story was known to both 
 the women in the first moments of their 
 bereavement, and made their grief the more 
 intolerable. The doctor came presently, but 
 he could do no more than tell them that Mark 
 was dead. Marina, who had been so strong in 
 the past, was now utterly broken down ; she 
 knelt like a wounded creature by the bed 
 where they had laid him and wept unceasingly. 
 But the widow, after the first moments of her 
 bewilderment, gave proof of a fortitude of 
 which none could have supposed her capable. 
 The neighbours had flocked to the house, some, 
 it may be, from ignoble curiosity, but most of 
 them with the desire to assist two women 
 grievously afflicted. But to all such the widow 
 had but one reply : ' 'Tis kind of 'ee to come, 
 neighbours ; but 'tis little enough he do want
 
 78 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 doin' for en now, poor dear ! an' that little me 
 an' Marina would like to do with our own 
 hands. Would 'ee leave us, friends ? ' 
 
 As soon as the kitchen was empty she 
 mounted the stairs with slow step, and set 
 about the task of composing her son's body for 
 the grave. A stranger looking upon the scene 
 might have supposed her no more than a hired 
 assistant ; for she went about her work very 
 quietly, and with no more than a conventional 
 trouble visible in her face. Now and again she 
 paused and laid a hand upon the girl's bowed 
 head, uttering softly some word of affection, 
 such as one might give to a child in its young 
 trouble. And when her labour was completed, 
 she stood by the bedside for a while and gazed 
 fixedly upon the dead face. Marina was still 
 sobbing brokenly. 
 
 The widow looked from the face of her son 
 to the girl that loved him. For a short space 
 she was manifestly perplexed ; then she turned 
 from the bedside and went, with a lighted 
 candle in her hand, into the adjoining chamber, 
 her bedroom. 
 
 She put the candlestick upon the mantel. 
 Then, opening a small drawer, she turned over
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 79 
 
 its contents, until she had come upon a small 
 box of white wood, having a picture of the 
 Crystal Palace upon the varnished lid. She 
 turned the key and raised the lid, displaying 
 various relics of past years a broken ear-ring, 
 a silvered buckle, a ringlet of a child's soft hair, 
 tied with pale blue silk. Finally she came on 
 an envelope, yellow with age, and deeply edged 
 with black. She took from it a little scrap of 
 newspaper. Then, taking her candle, she 
 returned to the death-chamber. 
 
 She laid a hand upon Marina's head, softly 
 smoothing the wavy hair. 
 
 ' Weep for en,' she said. ' 'Twould be sin if 
 you was not broken-hearted, for 'tis a bitter 
 thing to lose the man you do love. But thank 
 the Lord, too, that you aren't ashamed to grieve, 
 that you can let the world know of your sorrow. 
 For look ! look, and hark to me. 'Tis a bitter 
 tale to tell, but I 've kept quiet all these years 
 since I came into the place, and I must ease 
 my heart with speakin'.' 
 
 The girl ceased sobbing, and, turning, looked 
 uncomprehendingly into the face of her 
 companion. 
 
 1 What is it ? ' she said.
 
 8o WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 The widow stood silent a moment, then she 
 began with feverish haste to unfasten the bodice 
 of her dress. She tore it open, and showed 
 upon the breast, at the base of the throat, the 
 great scar of some old wound. 
 
 ' That is the mark of the drink upon me,' she 
 said ; ' that is the secret I have been keeping.' 
 
 Something in her manner had compelled 
 Marina's attention, stupefied with sorrow 
 though she was. 
 
 ' What do 'ee mean ?' she cried ; 'what secret 
 have you ? ' 
 
 The widow laid an arm about her, and drew 
 her gently to her. 
 
 ' All my days,' she said, ' all my days I have 
 seen him lie, as he lies now, killed by the hate- 
 ful drink. For so his father died, and his 
 father's father.' 
 
 She paused as if to gather strength for the 
 recital of her history. Then she spoke again : 
 ' He came of a drinking stock ; the love of it 
 was a thing that each had from his father ; an' 
 when he came courtin' me Uncle did all he 
 could to stop it But I loved him : he was a 
 man that any girl was bound to love ; an' he 
 promised me that for my sake he would be
 
 THE WIDOW'S HISTORY 81 
 
 strong against his weakness. Once while we 
 was courtin' he forgot, an' for months 'twas all 
 over between us : for I was proud as your- 
 self, an' wouldn' hear tell of love from a 
 drunkard. An' yet ... I couldn' see en go 
 from bad to worse for lack of a word from me. 
 I called him back, and all went well until we 
 
 was married, and for years after. Then ' 
 
 She thrust the scrap of newspaper into 
 Marina's hand. ' All the world knew of it,' she 
 continued. "Twas cried an' published every- 
 where. The drink got hold of him again ; there 
 were three months of misery, and then he he, 
 that loved me like his own soul did his best 
 to kill me, an' died by his own hand. I came 
 away as soon as 'twas over I brought the 
 child with me ; but I 've known that the curse 
 of the drink was in his blood. For this is the 
 worst that comes out of the drink : that no man 
 can himself bear the full punishment of his sin. 
 He gives himself body and soul ; but the souls 
 of his children yet unborn are a part of the 
 same price. Even when Mark was a child the 
 knowledge I had was almost more than I could 
 bear : from the first time he tasted it I could 
 hardly hope at all, an' every moment was filled 
 F
 
 82 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 with the fear that the drink would take an* 
 force him to some crime.' 
 
 Marina interrupted passionately. 'There was 
 no wrong in him/ she cried. ' He was good to 
 man and woman. 'Twas only this one weak- 
 ness ; an' there 's greater sins that take a less 
 punishment than death.' 
 
 ' Ay,' said the widow softly. ' Weep for him, 
 for you loved him well, an' 'tis worse than death 
 to lose the one you do love. But thank the 
 Lord, too, an' think o' me that stood near 
 dead myself to look upon the burial of a 
 husband that was thought not fit to lie wi' 
 decent folk. Ah, the rank weeds he fed ! Can 
 'ee think what fear has lived with me, wearing 
 the body of my own child ? ' 
 
 Marina was uncomforted. 'There are no 
 thanks due,' she said. ' Mark is dead. What 
 is my life to his ? ' And once again she 
 abandoned herself to her sorrow, thrusting the 
 widow away from her as she knelt beside her 
 dead.
 
 THE CHRISTENING 
 
 TlS seventy years that I Ve lived in Tregembo, 
 and all that time I haven' been farther than 
 Tallywarn. But I can't say I regret it. Even 
 so I haven' found out all that is to be learnt 
 about every one in this little place ; but I Ve 
 learnt this much : that there edn' man nor 
 woman you can meet that wouldn' be fit to put 
 in a book if all the truth was known of them. 
 Janie Daddow's first was christened this 
 morning : why, I can mind when Janie's grand- 
 mother was the prettiest little maid in all 
 Tregembo, and I half in the mind to marry her 
 myself. But when I saw them go past this 
 morning, something made me think upon the 
 chris'nin' of Minnie Vercoe's baby, fifty year ago. 
 Minnie was a maid that always had poor 
 luck. There was a plenty of boys came courtin' 
 her, and if only she could have looked forward 
 a few years she might have died the wife of a
 
 84 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 man well-to-do in the world, and mother of 
 prosperous children. But you must pay for 
 your wisdom before you can have it, and 
 Minnie said ' No ' to twenty, and ' Iss' to 
 George Tregarthen : fate, I suppose ; and what 
 must be will be. 
 
 Moreover, 'twas a thing you couldn" wonder 
 at. He was a son to old Tregarthen of 
 Nansistis, and, as you might say, born with his 
 hands to the plough. But he was a bold-faced, 
 black-eyed youngster, and before he was ten all 
 the world knew that he was going to be a sailor, 
 and see the width of the earth. He wadn' 
 sixteen when he had a few words with his 
 father on the night of Tregembo Feast, and 
 went off before the morning, nobody knew 
 where. He was gone four years, and when he 
 came back he had the strength and the manners 
 of a grown man, with ten times his old devilry. 
 He stopped home a brave bit, makin' love to 
 all the maidens, and tellin' tales that made the 
 boys neither to keep nor to hold for months 
 after. Then he went off again. 
 
 Three year an* six months later, in the 
 month of June, he was back once more. I can 
 mind the stir there was when he came into
 
 THE CHRISTENING 85 
 
 church the next Sunday with his mother on his 
 arm, and his black eyes wandering everywhere ; 
 I wadn' the only one by a long way that noticed 
 Minnie Simmons was wearin' a silken shawl, 
 the like of which was never seen in Tregembo 
 before. A week later was St. Peter's Fair, and 
 before evening every one was talkin' of what was 
 plain to see. 'Tis a poor man that can't make 
 haste when time is short, and George Tregarthen 
 was never one to be slow. It wadn' a month 
 before the banns was put up, and three weeks 
 later Minnie Simmons was Mrs. George. 
 
 Old George was dead by this time, and the 
 widow was fine and anxious her son should stop 
 home and take his place. And you may depend 
 Minnie thought the same. However, George 
 wadn' willin' to settle down all at once. ' My 
 dear,' he said, ' thee's took me all by surprise. 
 I wadn' thinkin' to be a family man for years 
 yet ; but when I saw what a pretty little maid 
 you was grown into I couldn' run the risk of 
 findin' 'ee snatched up while I was away. Give 
 me one more voyage, and I '11 take to farmin' 
 like a Roman.' 
 
 Well, the women had to give in. George 
 went off to sea again, leaving Minnie to keep
 
 86 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 his mother company. There was one letter 
 came after twelve months, but beyond that 
 no news of him for over two years. People 
 almost began to pity Minnie, who had had so 
 many chances, and now had nothing but a ring 
 to show for all of them. And after two years 
 news came that George's ship had been lost on 
 the coast of Labrador, and all hands drowned. 
 
 It didn' seem as if this could make much 
 difference up at Nansistis, but it was not long 
 afterwards that old Mrs. Tregarthen died, and 
 Minnie was left alone at the farm. She wadn' 
 much over twenty then, and it seemed 
 almost a sinful thing that such a dear little 
 maid should be livin' all alone, a widow. She 
 had a tidy bit of property, too. There was a 
 good many young chaps that looked lovin' at 
 her ; and they said there was an old retired 
 reverend ' rounder ' in Tallywarn that would 
 have liked to make her something more than a 
 sister in the Faith. But no man ever had a 
 kind word from Minnie until Samson Vercoe 
 came into the place as gardener at the big 
 house ; and that was when she 'd been a widow 
 close upon three years. 
 
 He was a little bit of a chap, with fair hair
 
 THE CHRISTENING 87 
 
 and blue eyes like a girl's, and an outlandish, 
 up-the-country manner of speech. But he 
 seemed to take her fancy from the first, and in 
 the end he showed himself a better man than 
 any in Tregembo. For about a twelvemonth 
 after he came into the place 'twas told that he 
 and Minnie had been courtin' on the quiet for 
 a brave long time ; and that at last she had 
 given her word to try matrimony again along 
 with him. There were some that said 'twould 
 have been no more than decent, seein' she had 
 no proof that George was dead, if she had 
 made up her mind to put off Samson until she 
 knew for certain she was a widow. ' But 
 there,' said the most, 'that's a thing that'll 
 only be known in the Day of Judgment ; and 
 what good would certainty be to her then, poor 
 dear?' So they were married just after hay- 
 harvest, and Squire had Samson for tenant 
 instead of gardener. 
 
 Things went well with them. Samson took 
 to farming like a duck to water, and from what 
 I've heard he'd found out things that other 
 people have hardly learnt in fifty years. And 
 the garden before the house was lovely to look 
 upon, though (like Susan's best teapot) more
 
 88 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 for show than for use. Moreover, in the course 
 of time 'twas told that more good luck was 
 comin' to them ; and presently Minnie was 
 mother to as fine a baby as ever stepped. 
 There was something about Samson, notwith- 
 standing he was a foreigner, that took wonderful 
 well with all sorts : I can tell 'ee every one 
 about was glad there was such joy up at 
 Nansistis. And two Sundays later, when the 
 baby was to be christened, there was some 
 chapel-folk that minchied and went to church. 
 But it so happened that they that went to 
 church saw nothing. 
 
 About five minutes before service-time Minnie, 
 and Samson, and Minnie's sister, Hetty, who 
 was going to be godmother to the child, came 
 forth from Nansistis and down over the hill 
 towards the church. Minnie was fine and weak 
 still, but, do what he would, Samson couldn' 
 get her to let some one else carry the baby. 
 And, come to think upon it, I can fancy he 
 was pleased enough to let her have her way, 
 now that he was walkin' along beside of her. 
 Hetty was on the other side, carrying the bread 
 and salt: for in the old days 'twas thought 
 proper, for the sake of good-luck, to give a gift
 
 THE CHRISTENING 89 
 
 to the first person that was met as the party 
 went to church with a baby. 
 
 It was a fine sunny morning in the latter 
 part of July : the roads thick with dry dust, and 
 all the hedges white. Down at the bottom of 
 the hill they could see the church, and one or 
 two people waiting about the porch to wish 
 them good luck : though most of them were 
 gone in already, to make sure of good seats. 
 The larks were singin', I suppose, and the bells 
 ringin', but beyond that all was quiet as could 
 be, and even the bells didn' go so hearty as 
 sometimes, for the ringers knew 'twas no use 
 callin' when the church was crammed a'ready. 
 
 All of a sudden Hetty looked up and saw a 
 wayfarin' man sittin' on the hedge beside the 
 road. He was near black with sunburn ; his 
 clothes were all in rags and smothered in dust. 
 Now, I fancy she was hopin' that a young chap 
 she was keepin' company with would be the 
 first to meet them and take the baby's gift. 
 Anyway, being in her best, she didn' want to 
 have dealin's with such a bundle o' rags as this. 
 But there was no choice. 
 
 She took the bread and salt in her hand and 
 stepped forth, her eyes lookin' anywhere but
 
 90 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 upon the face of the stranger. ' Please to take 
 this ! ' she said ; and then she stood waitin' and 
 wonderin' that the man was so slow. Minnie 
 and Samson had stopped, too, and were waiting: 
 no doubt they were as vexed as she was to 
 think no friend had met them. The church 
 bells stopped ringin' : there was no sound 
 beyond the noise of the larks. 
 
 And the man slipped from the hedge and 
 stepped forward with a little blue bundle in 
 his hand. ' Good Lord ! ' he said, laughing. 
 ' It 's the sister ! It 's Hetty ! . . . Now what 's 
 the meanin' of all this play-actin' ? ' 
 
 Hetty looked up into his face for the first 
 time, and knew him, notwithstanding the great 
 beard he wore. ' Tis George ! ' she screeched, 
 an' ran back to Minnie. 
 
 But Minnie had seen already. She managed 
 just to slip the baby into her husband's arms ; 
 then she fell fainting in the dust. 
 
 The stranger came forth, Hetty standing up 
 against him and doing her best to keep him 
 off. Samson stood like a man dumfoundered, 
 the baby in his arms. 
 
 ' What 's the meanin' of this ? ' he said. ' Who 
 are you ? '
 
 THE CHRISTENING 91 
 
 The stranger laughed. 'The blessed saints 
 only know the meanin' of it,' he answered. 
 ' But I am George Tregarthen, and I had a 
 fancy that that woman was my wife.' 
 
 So the baby wadn' baptized that mornin' : 
 for what's the use of a Christian name when 
 the surname 's whatever do come easiest upon 
 the tongue? And a few days later Samson 
 took the child away with him, out of Tregembo ; 
 for Minnie was dead with the shame of it. As 
 for George, he sold the property and went off 
 to sea. I suppose he was drowned sure 'nough 
 that time, for we never heard tell of him in 
 Tregembo again.
 
 A CHILD'S TRAGEDY 
 
 WHEN Mark Render died at two-and-thirty, 
 leaving little more than was enough to pay his 
 debts and bury him, it seemed that matters must 
 go exceeding ill with Margaret and her children. 
 But the widow was a woman of no ordinary 
 force ; and precisely because her husband had 
 been the world to her, she came very early to a 
 resolve that his death should be as little of a 
 misfortune to his children as she could render 
 it. From girlhood she had been accounted a 
 very clever milliner ; she had served her 
 apprenticeship to the trade before her marriage; 
 and Mark had been little more than a month in 
 the grave when she opened her shop in the 
 front street of Tallywarn. She had undeniable 
 talent, and in the spectacle of her devotion to 
 the boy and girl there was discovered an 
 unfailing pathos. The business prospered from 
 the first, and to Margaret's friends it seemed
 
 A CHILD'S TRAGEDY 93 
 
 that the children would presently go forth into 
 the world unhandicaped by the untimely death 
 of their father. 
 
 But at the end of four years the little girl fell 
 ill. For days she had been languid, irritable ; 
 now she complained continually of a dull pain in 
 the region of the breast. Upon the next day, 
 seeing that the child had neither slept nor 
 found relief, Margaret summoned the doctor. 
 He came, and while he made his examination, 
 Minnie sat upon his knee, her cheerfulness 
 well-nigh recovered in the excitement of his 
 visit. The doctor's face slowly became unwont- 
 edly grave, though he still talked a little 
 perfunctorily for the amusement of his patient 
 Presently he looked up sharply at Margaret, 
 who stood regarding him anxiously. 
 
 'She has had a blow at some time?' he asked. 
 1 A blow upon the breast ? ' 
 
 Margaret pondered a moment. ' A blow ? ' 
 she echoed ; ' surely not. She may have fallen 
 in playing.' 
 
 1 It is a blow/ the doctor answered. ' Some one 
 has struck her : by accident, possibly ? ' 
 
 Margaret had not strength to answer further. 
 She rejoiced exceedingly that his eyes were
 
 94 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 once more turned upon the child. For the 
 colour had gone out of her face ; her features 
 were tortured with a sudden agony : she had 
 remembered who it was that had struck Minnie. 
 
 She was glad as a soul released from torment 
 when the doctor took his leave, giving her 
 instructions as to the mode of applying the 
 remedies he would send. The excitement of 
 his visit had banished Minnie's languor, for the 
 time at least ; she was more like the lively 
 creature she had always been when Willie came 
 home from school ; and Margaret, looking at 
 her children as they sat with her for tea, began 
 to hope eagerly that her fears had been without 
 cause. 
 
 But when she was alone again the maid 
 entered a woman who had been with her from 
 the time of her marriage, and so had come to 
 be something more than a servant. 
 
 ' What did the doctor say about Miss Minnie?' 
 she asked ; ' did he think there was much the 
 matter ? ' 
 
 Margaret hesitated. ' She has had a blow upon 
 the breast/ she said. ' She must have fallen. . . . 
 It will pass.' 
 
 'A blow upon the breast?' exclaimed the
 
 A CHILD'S TRAGEDY 95 
 
 woman. ' Do 'ee mind how Master Willie 
 struck her, one day back-along a bit, when she 
 wouldn' play like he wanted her to ? I thought 
 she was hurt.' 
 
 Margaret interrupted, almost angrily. ' No,' 
 she said, ' it must have been a fall that caused it 
 Why, 'tis a month since that quarrel with Willie. 
 It can't be that.' 
 
 The woman eyed her curiously, fingering a 
 knife upon the table. ' No, I suppose/ she 
 said. But she afterwards shared with the 
 mother the secret of little Minnie's death. And 
 she had not Margaret's love of the boy. 
 
 The young widow was something of a figure 
 in the town. There was a touch of the 
 romantic in her story, and the children had 
 always claimed attention by a certain pictur- 
 esqueness of aspect and attire. The funeral of 
 little Minnie might have been that of some 
 local magnate, so many were the mourners ; and 
 from a hundred quarters there came the evid- 
 ences of sympathy. 
 
 Willie was but eleven, and had been spared 
 knowledge of the thing which had taken his 
 sister from him ; but he grieved for her incess- 
 antly, and Margaret had but little time to indulge
 
 96 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 her sorrow, being thus involved in fresh anxieties 
 for the child that was left her. The boy's 
 school-life was not altogether pleasant to him. 
 He was delicate, nervous, very highly strung ; 
 perhaps, also, he had been kept too carefully 
 from the streets to mingle easily with other 
 boys of his standing. He was clever enough at 
 his books, and possessed of an intelligence that 
 might some day develop into a real love of 
 learning. But he never moved quite comfort- 
 ably among his fellows, and sometimes as 
 often by their friendliness, as by their malice 
 he was rendered acutely unhappy. 
 
 They were playing a game of marbles one 
 afternoon on the pavement of a quiet street hard 
 by the school. Willie was the worst of players, 
 yet found it impossible either to deny himself 
 the excitement of the game or to be reconciled 
 to its inevitable losses. In half an hour he was 
 already upon the verge of a passionate outbreak, 
 and it was then that he detected an opponent in 
 the act of cheating. He started to his feet, ran 
 forward, and snatched his stake out of the 'town.' 
 
 4 Cheats ! Cheats ! ' he cried passionately ; ' I 
 shan't play no longer. Johnny Penberthy's 
 cheatin'.'
 
 A CHILD'S TRAGEDY 97 
 
 Johnny Penberthy rose to his feet very de- 
 liberately. He was a heavy, phlegmatic boy, 
 and the charge against him was perfectly true. 
 4 You 're a Hard !' he retorted ; ' I was not cheatin'. 
 Tis only you can't play worth nothinV 
 
 Willie stepped up to him. ' Cheat ! Cheat ! ' 
 he cried again. ' You was cheatin'.' 
 
 ' Look ! ' said the accused portentously. ' Do 
 you know what you 're sayin' of? Put they 
 marbles back in the town ; an' if you do want 
 to stop playiu' when the game is done, you can 
 go, an' welcome. 'Tis you that 's cheatin'. Will 
 'ce put them back ? ' 
 
 The rest of the boys encouraged him. 'That 's 
 right, Johnny,' they said. ' Make en put them 
 back. Tis he that 's cheatin'.' 
 
 They were nowise moved by Willie's dis- 
 covery ; Johnny's play was so exceeding bad 
 that none of them was likely to be affected by 
 his efforts to secure success. Moreover, he was 
 vastly more popular than his accuser. 
 
 ' Do 'ee hear ? ' cried Johnny, finding himself 
 supported. ' Will 'ee put they marbles back ? ' 
 He drew nearer to the boy and laid a clumsy 
 hand upon his shoulder. 
 
 Upon the instant Willie struck out with 
 G
 
 98 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 clenched fist, hitting his persecutor full in the 
 face, so that the blood streamed promptly from 
 his nose. For a moment the boy stood amazed 
 at the sight of his handiwork ; then Johnny was 
 upon him, and he was blinded and maddened by 
 blow after blow upon the face. He himself struck 
 with all his force at his enemy, but most often 
 he wasted his strength upon thin air, and when 
 his blows were well directed they were pitifully 
 weak. He fell at last, and Johnny knelt over 
 him, holding him rudely by the arms to restrain 
 his desperate struggles. 'I'll kill you,' he 
 sobbed ; Til kill you, Johnny Penberthy ! ' 
 
 The victor suddenly set free his arms and 
 rose in significant silence ; Willie also arose, 
 and the two stood face to face in the little ring 
 of spectators. 
 
 ' Boys ! ' said Johnny, addressing them, ' did 
 'ee hear what he said ? " I '11 kill you, Johnny 
 Penberthy," he said. There was a boy hanged 
 the other day, an' I wouldn' say he was much 
 older than Willie Hender. Ay, an' there 's 
 others would be hanged if all the truth was 
 known ! ' His voice rose higher with every 
 word. The boys crowded nearer, and Willie 
 in utter ignorance stood with eyes fixed upon
 
 A CHILD'S TRAGEDY 99 
 
 his enemy's face, intent upon the coming 
 disclosure. 
 
 1 Do 'ec mind he had a sister died ? A pretty 
 little maid, she was. . . . An' he killed her like 
 he said he 'd kill me.' 
 
 There was a sudden noise of wonder and 
 excitement. Willie alone spoke. "Tis a lie,' 
 he said ; ' God took her. She was my sister. 
 How could I kill her?' 
 
 ' He killed her ! ' repeated Johnny. ' He 
 struck her struck a girl, his sister an' the 
 great bruise didn' die away, but grew bigger 
 day by day, an' ate an' ate inwards until it 
 touched her heart. He killed her ; I heard our 
 Martha tellin' Jane Cundy one day in the 
 kitchen.' 
 
 Willie protested his innocence again, but they 
 were all afire with indignation : so that even 
 Penberthy was presently inclined to wish he 
 had not spoken. They surrounded and followed 
 him along the road, his protestations seeming 
 to render them only the more implacable 
 against him. One or two of the townspeople 
 met the little band, but they counted the affair 
 for no more than a common outfalling of 
 schoolboys, and did not think of interference.
 
 ioo WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 It was only when they had come in sight of 
 Margaret's shop that Willie's persecutors allowed 
 him to escape, while they stood to discuss the 
 matter with a greater sobriety than had hitherto 
 been possible. 
 
 Margaret was serving a customer in the shop, 
 but saw at once that some evil had befallen her 
 son. She dropped the fabric she had been 
 displaying. ' What is it, Willie?' she demanded. 
 ' What is the matter ? ' 
 
 The child threw himself into her arms. ' I 
 didn't kill her,' he said ; ' I didn't kill Minnie.' 
 And he clung sobbing to her. 
 
 Margaret raised an anguished face. ' Who 
 has spoken ? ' she cried. Then she bent ten- 
 derly over the child. ' No,' she said, ' God took 
 her. She is in heaven. Go into the house, and 
 I will come to you.' 
 
 The child went from her, and as the door 
 closed loudly behind him, she returned to the 
 task of serving her customer. But her heart 
 quailed as she foresaw the future, when Willie 
 must return to school, to live down among his 
 fellows the crime of which they had been made 
 avengers.
 
 MAMIE'S DREAM 
 
 MAMIE still watched alone at the bedside of 
 her husband. Two hours after midnight he 
 had wakened out of the dull stupor which had 
 lain upon him for many days, keeping him from 
 all consciousness of her devoted tendance, from 
 all knowledge of the horror of parting which 
 was ordained for them. Waking, as if from a 
 brief sleep, he had turned weakly upon the 
 pillows, so that his eyes fell upon Mamie's face. 
 He had gazed into it for a moment ; then, as it 
 were in a single instant, the bitter knowledge 
 had come upon him. 
 
 ' I am to die ! ' he cried. ' I am to leave you 
 and to what ? ' 
 
 Then Mamie had flung herself upon her 
 knees beside the bed, and cried out in a vain 
 passion of revolt against this disaster which was 
 so relentlessly advancing upon them. 
 
 But presently her husband spoke again, 'Who
 
 102 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 knows how long we have ? I am to die, and in 
 a moment, maybe, the thing will be here to 
 cheat us of farewells. Or, if I live a little 
 longer, perhaps it will be in dark unconscious- 
 ness. That would be like death's malice. And 
 how shall I say farewell ? ' 
 
 She caught his hand ; again and again she 
 kissed it, like a creature distraught ; and he lay 
 back upon the pillows at a loss for the com- 
 monest words. They were to part in a little 
 time, and he was worn out with the fever. How 
 should he find eloquence for such a parting ? 
 
 ' I had thought,' he said, ' I had thought that 
 there was a long time before us, during which 
 I might labour to atone to you for the things 
 you had suffered since you were my wife.' 
 
 ' I am your wife,' she said. ' That is, mine 
 always ! ' 
 
 'I had thought,' he said, 'that there would 
 come a time when we should look back not un- 
 kindly to the days of our misfortune, since it 
 enabled us to take both pride and joy in each 
 separate advance towards the old comfort, as 
 in a victory over hostile fates. I thought my- 
 self the master of a long life ; and I was 
 resolved that out of every day I would draw
 
 MAMIE'S DREAM 103 
 
 some new pleasure for you. And now I can 
 scarce promise myself an hour of life ; I am 
 tired with long sickness. How, then, shall I 
 speak the love for you which would have been 
 still half untold though we had lived to go 
 down together, grey-headed, to the grave ? I 
 am to die ' 
 
 Again she broke in upon his speech with 
 incoherent and unrestrained sorrow, and he 
 too lapsed into broken words of his great love 
 for her, and of the hopes that now appeared 
 but vanity. And presently, his hand still held 
 in hers, he fell away from consciousness and 
 lay quiet as a corpse. But the life still beat 
 (though faintly) in his veins, and Mamie knelt 
 at the side of the bed, hardly breathing, fixed 
 upon the beating of his pulse. 
 
 She heard the ticking of a clock in the room 
 below, and now and again the sound of foot- 
 steps in the street. A company of riotous 
 young men approached, laughing and loudly 
 talking, but had the sense to perceive the tan 
 with which the roadway had been strewn, and 
 broke, as it were, abruptly into silence. Very 
 early the sparrows awoke on the housetops ; 
 she listened with a curiously strained attention
 
 104 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 to their monotonous cheeping. And through 
 the long hours of her vigil there was vouchsafed 
 to her a vision of the few years which had gone 
 by since they two met who were now at the 
 point of parting : the years of happiness for 
 which, it seemed, she must hereafter live in 
 bondage all the days of her life. 
 
 Very vaguely, as from a time long since 
 utterly banished, she recalled the simple life of 
 her childhood and upgrowing; the little solitary 
 village set down haphazard betwixt the wide 
 untilled moorlands and the splendid sea. It 
 seemed hardly credible to her that she who 
 had now endured so many of life's hardships 
 was indeed the same person as the girl whose 
 life came back to her in pictures. She had 
 in very truth entered upon a new existence 
 from the day of the appearance of him who 
 was now her husband ; and though she sum- 
 moned up the earlier days with difficulty, there 
 was nothing so small among the events of the 
 first weeks of their intercourse which did not 
 remain vivid and real in her memory. It 
 seemed to her that she had loved him from the 
 first moment of their acquaintance. 
 
 Then she recalled her visit to his wealthy
 
 M A M I E'S D R E A M 105 
 
 friends, when, for all their kindness, she had 
 found herself a little discomforted, and had 
 realised that he alone was altogether her friend 
 in this big world. She saw again as one be- 
 holds the moving picture of a stage-play the 
 crowd that filled the grey old church, her 
 father's, on the day when they were married. 
 She seemed to hear the very greetings of the 
 villagers as she passed from the church to the 
 lych-gate. The most of them had known her 
 from a child ; and she upon her side had heard 
 (and now recalled, each with its face) the history 
 of each life. 
 
 Once more she saw the beautiful face of her 
 father, the old clergyman, as he said farewell 
 and blessed her ; and she remembered that 
 immediately upon this parting there had fol- 
 lowed an interval of unalloyed happiness with 
 her new-made husband, who was now to die. 
 She looked again at his ashen face, and looking, 
 was overtaken with a passion of rebellion against 
 fate's decree. 
 
 At last their month of happiness had reached 
 its end ; she had entered with pride and delight 
 upon her task of managing a household. And 
 then, with never a word of warning that might
 
 io6 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 have prepared them for renunciation, the house 
 of her husband's father had fallen in utter ruin. 
 The old man, knowing himself hopelessly dis- 
 graced, had died a suicide : and Mamie's hus- 
 band had fallen to an estate of utter poverty. 
 She had borne herself bravely, taking a pride 
 in showing with what truth she had declared 
 herself prepared for any lot, so that it were 
 shared with him. 
 
 But the struggle had been very arduous, and 
 though five years had now gone by since the 
 catastrophe, they were still in direst poverty. 
 Yet there had seemed some likelihood of better- 
 ment in their circumstances a month before ; 
 her husband had spoken brightly of the future 
 the very night before he fell ill of the sickness 
 which must now take his life. Mamie could 
 not reconcile herself to fate. Looking back, 
 she beheld a space of well-nigh unbroken mis- 
 fortune, brightened only by such interludes as 
 served to show even to them how beautiful were 
 the possibilities of life. They had fought as 
 companions against their evil fortune ; they 
 had come near to victory ; and now that death 
 was coming to her husband, she beheld in it the 
 cowardly advantage which alone could avert
 
 MAMIE'S DREAM 107 
 
 the discomfiture of their enemy. Looking for- 
 ward, she beheld the interminable years that 
 she must live out in solitude, and her heart 
 quailed within her at the prospect. 
 
 She stretched her clenched hands before her 
 on the counterpane. ' It is so short a time,' 
 she cried. 'We have been but five years to- 
 gether. If it is written we must suffer, let us 
 suffer together, and not in aching loneliness. 
 Give him back to me. Even though all else 
 be taken, give him back to me ! ' 
 
 The sick man shifted his position a little, 
 and moaned. She heard from the street below 
 the sound of footsteps on the pavement. ' I 
 would give my life,' she sobbed. ' I would 
 surrender all natural hope of happiness. Only 
 give me his life ! ' 
 
 She lay a moment in silence. Then there 
 was a foot upon the stair, and Mamie rose as 
 the doctor entered. He glanced at the patient 
 without speaking, then advanced and scrutinised 
 his face with a greater curiosity. And sud- 
 denly a gush of new life came to the woman 
 who stood watching. For the doctor turned to 
 her, his face eloquent of good tidings. ' He is 
 given back to you,' he said. ' He '
 
 io8 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 And immediately Mamie awoke from her 
 dream of a night now more than ten years past. 
 She looked about the sordid room, and in a 
 moment all the youth went out of her face. 
 She rose wearily and opened the door. She 
 waited while the master of the house staggered 
 drunkenly up the narrow staircase towards her. 
 
 In truth she had given much in return for 
 the gift of his life. Behind her and before there 
 lay long years of sorrow borne in aching lone- 
 liness, such as she had not guessed at when her 
 husband seemed upon the point of death.
 
 THE GOOD-FOR-N AUGHT 
 
 I 
 
 THE fidelity of Anna Tregea to the insubstantial 
 memory of a man well known to be dead 
 seemed only foolish to the people of Trevorrow. 
 Even her father, landlord of the ' Lamb and 
 Flag,' was moved to expostulate with her 
 occasionally, pointing out that in the common 
 course of nature he must presently quit the 
 flesh, and that there were details in the manage- 
 ment of the quietest inn which could not fail to 
 be distasteful to a woman. But Anna had for 
 a long time been the unquestioned mistress of 
 the inn ; her father had come to look to her 
 instinctively for the word of decision upon all 
 debatable subjects, and the habit was of such 
 strength that he could venture only to suggest, 
 even in this matter, where he believed her to 
 err grievously. 
 
 It was a real joy to him as proving his 
 wisdom in reliance upon her judgment when
 
 no WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 Harry Bosanko returned suddenly and renewed 
 his wooing of Anna, after he had been supposed 
 for close upon ten years to be dead. 
 
 He had been in Spain. Tradition is ever 
 careful to hold back at the least as much as it 
 surrenders to mortal curiosity ; it is not told by 
 what means he explained away the utter heart - 
 lessness of those ten years of silence. But 
 immediately upon the news of his return there 
 followed the intelligence that he would marry 
 Anna, as had been expected in the days before 
 his disappearance. 
 
 It was told, further, that he had been all this 
 while in Spain. His vessel had been sailing close 
 by the coast of that country ; some little chance 
 befell which made him out of taste for the 
 moment with the life he was leading, and so 
 he slipped overboard one fine night and swam 
 ashore. 
 
 ' Ah,' said the hearers of his confession, ' they 
 thought you must have fallen overboard and 
 got drownded ! They wrote and told us so ; 
 but Anna wouldn' give 'ee up. 'Tis wonderful, 
 the wisdom of a feelin' heart, and passes under- 
 standing.' 
 
 It did not occur to them to wonder at his
 
 THE GOOD-FOR-N AUGHT in 
 
 frank confession of heartlessness. They re- 
 membered from the days of his youth his un- 
 failing tendency to retire unostentatiously from 
 any situation which he found irksome. Further, 
 their fancy was tickled to observe the reward- 
 ing of that fidelity which, until it was rewarded, 
 they had deemed mere foolishness. So far were 
 they from carping criticism that they found 
 Bosanko's conduct positively generous : poor 
 Anna had by no means kept her good looks, 
 and had forgotten how to charm. 
 
 So the young couple were married, all the 
 town assisting at the ceremony ; and when 
 Harry Bosanko had taken up his abode at the 
 ' Lamb and Flag,' old Mr. Tregea ceased, very 
 naturally, from all active part in the conduct of 
 business. He had no tales of foreign countries ; 
 he had not the younger man's dash and savoir 
 faire. Quite contentedly he became a person 
 of no account : an old man, to whom customers 
 would speak heartily of old times out of their 
 great kindness. Anna, indeed, attempted some- 
 times to have it appear that his authority was 
 still existent ; but there was not one who 
 would support her, and in a brief while she and 
 her husband were veritable masters of the inn.
 
 ii2 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 It was in November they were married ; in 
 March the old man died, and a month or two 
 later the swinging sign was repainted, and 
 the name of Tregea gave place to that of 
 Bosanko. 
 
 All through the following summer things 
 went as well as could be desired. The new 
 landlord speedily approved himself a person of 
 astonishing enterprise ; and if his foreign ways 
 were somewhat disconcerting to the old gentle- 
 men who until then had chiefly frequented the 
 bar-parlour of a night, they were vastly attrac- 
 tive to those of a younger generation. On 
 market-days the house was more busy than it 
 ever had been of old ; and some of the local 
 gentry, young men of no particular occupation, 
 began to spend an evening there very frequently. 
 When the time of Trevorrow Feast drew near 
 Bosanko made tremendous preparations, and 
 the event justified his action. Never at that 
 busiest season of the whole year had the ' Lamb 
 and Flag' done so fine a trade before: even 
 Anna, who had been of a notorious niceness in 
 her father's time, could scarce find it in her to 
 regret the very obvious falling off in the quality 
 of the company frequenting the house. Bosanko
 
 THE GOOD-FOR-N AUGHT 113 
 
 himself was sober enough: but the inn began 
 to lose its ancient character for respectability. 
 
 But winter brought a change more gravely 
 lamentable. 
 
 The season was by no means rigorous, but 
 Bosanko was manifestly tormented by the rain 
 which dripped eternally from ashen skies. The 
 night never came early enough : he would have 
 blinds drawn and candles lighted while the rest 
 of the townspeople looked for nearly an hour 
 of twilight. And as soon as the evening drew 
 in and the guests began to gather, he put on a 
 feverish gaiety. Throughout the evening he 
 would talk and sing with strange excitement, 
 seeming to strive vehemently to escape from 
 that dulness whose mastery he had been forced 
 to recognise throughout the dismal, rainy day. 
 He talked sometimes of the country where he 
 had dwelt so long : of splendid stainless skies, 
 of calm strong seas, of the delight of lounging 
 in the shadow of the ruined convent on a chief 
 point of the neighbouring coast. 
 
 In truth, he was altogether malcontent, and 
 through the slow-footed winter days was for 
 ever unhappy as a strong tree transplanted into 
 unfriendly soil. 
 
 II
 
 ii4 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 And so it went until early in the second 
 week of February. Then he awoke one morn- 
 ing to find the world all changed, and himself, 
 as in a resurrection, changed with it. The 
 wind was in the south, and overhead a sunny 
 sky, cloudless, yet softened here and there by 
 such a hint of white as one would leave upon a 
 coloured fabric by the least touch of a chalky 
 hand. The pine wood stood clearly against 
 the sky on the little hill across the creek ; it 
 seemed to Bosanko he could well-nigh hear 
 the voices of its birds, despite the intervening 
 clamour of gulls about the harbour and above 
 the waters of the creek. The awaited spring 
 had turned in sleep, dimly knowing the time of 
 waking near; Nature had seen the movement 
 and joyously prepared for the activity it fore- 
 told. The landlord went about that morning 
 with a certain sense of being hopelessly con- 
 fined ; the sunlight and the clear, cold air 
 inspired him with the desire of high adventure ; 
 the little town afforded no field wherein he 
 might exert himself. 
 
 Towards noonday he went indoors to have 
 his dinner, and when the meal was finished and 
 set aside he lingered for a long spell with pipe
 
 THE GOOD-FOR-NAUGHT 115 
 
 and glass. It may have been two hours that 
 he was thus unable to observe the course of 
 events in the little town. Then at last he 
 rolled a cigarette a foreign habit and stepped 
 to the doorway, where he took up his stand 
 with the easy air of a proprietor. 
 
 For a while he idly watched the circling of 
 the seagulls, and very gradually his expression 
 changed from self-satisfaction to discontent. 
 Then he chanced to look in the direction 
 of the harbour, and immediately his face 
 grew brighter. A vessel had come in whilst 
 he was at his dinner ; at the very least 
 there would be some talk of foreign parts 
 that night. 
 
 He stepped within the house again to find 
 another coat. Upon his return he beheld a 
 spectacle that killed all remembrance of his 
 intention to visit the harbour. 
 
 A noisy gathering of youths and girls was 
 coming towards him up the street ; they jeered 
 and laughed at a strange-looking woman who 
 walked in their midst, eagerly interrogating 
 them in a foreign tongue, and with the same 
 eagerness scrutinising the details of the street. 
 All along the way the people turned to watch
 
 ii6 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 the progress ; some, after a brief pause, followed 
 and joined the little crowd ; everywhere the 
 tradesmen were at their doors. 
 
 The woman looked no more than eight-and- 
 twenty ; she was of the slenderest build, dark- 
 skinned, with strange black eyes and a wealth 
 of dusky hair. Over her head she wore a kind 
 of shawl of black lace ; beneath there was a 
 glint of scarlet. She was, indeed, of a remark- 
 able beauty, but sorrow had preyed upon a 
 spirit very rebellious, and her worn face had a 
 lamentable pallor. 
 
 Bosanko had paused in the doorway upon 
 the apparition of the group. As they drew 
 near his face showed him the subject of a 
 curious excitement. He looked eagerly at the 
 black shawl, the glint of scarlet underneath, 
 and seemed to meditate hostilities against the 
 hooting mob. He moved forward, paused. . . . 
 Then he stood waiting. 
 
 The crowd advanced ; as they drew near 
 there were some among them who looked 
 towards Bosanko, knowing him a person of 
 great joviality and desiring his applause and 
 co-operation. But Bosanko was unaware of 
 their regard ; his face was set in a look of
 
 THE GOOD-FOR-N AUGHT 117 
 
 tremendous expectation, and in a moment 
 there was a new surprise for the crowd. 
 
 For the woman, glancing eagerly from side 
 to side, had seen the landlord standing in the 
 porch of the ' Lamb and Flag.' In a moment 
 her expression changed to one of utter glad- 
 ness. She uttered a cry as of incredulous 
 delight ; she broke away from the environing 
 crowd of her persecutors, and in a flash was 
 kneeling at Bosanko's feet, devouring his hands 
 with kisses, telling the tale of all her sorrows 
 in a foreign tongue. 
 
 Only for an instant did the landlord show 
 signs of any embarrassment 
 
 He glanced about him surveying and defy- 
 ing the people, the ugly street : all that of late 
 had made up his place of imprisonment and 
 in a moment the foreign woman was in his 
 arms, and he was replying in the same out- 
 landish tongue to all her questionings and 
 confessions. 
 
 The crowd stood still and wondered, and at 
 that moment another character in the drama 
 came upon the scene. 
 
 Anna who had stayed ten years single for 
 the sake of the man before her had heard the
 
 n8 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 clamour of the crowd, and come forth, with a 
 natural curiosity, to discover what had caused 
 their excitement. 
 
 Seeing her husband with a strange woman 
 held in his arms beneath the eyes of the whole 
 town, she stood incredulous for a moment. 
 Then she advanced and laid a hand upon his 
 shoulder. 
 
 Juanita drew herself away from his embrace 
 and stood regarding this other woman. There 
 was a long pause, during which Bosanko looked 
 from one to the other. Then he stepped to the 
 side of the foreign woman, spoke a few words 
 quickly in Spanish, and faced his wife. 
 
 ' Who is this woman ? ' said Anna. ' Who is 
 this woman that dishonours me ? ' 
 
 Bosanko hesitated. ' God help us ! ' he said. 
 ' She thinks herself . . . She is come after me 
 out of Spain.' 
 
 Anna's white face grew whiter, more set in 
 misery. 
 
 ' She thinks herself? She is your wife ? ' she 
 cried, half-questioning, and half-accusing him. 
 And Bosanko let his eyes fall to the ground. 
 
 ' She is a Catholic,' he cried. ' But she was 
 my wife eight years in Spain.'
 
 THE GOOD-FOR-NAUGHT 119 
 
 Anna looked upon him again, a great con- 
 tempt apparent in her face. Then her eyes 
 passed to the Spanish woman. 
 
 ' Your wife ! ' she cried. ' God help her, then. 
 . . . But you have chiefly wronged me, and now 
 shame me before the town. Let us step within 
 the house, and I will consider what you are to 
 do.' 
 
 She moved away and entered the inn ; a 
 moment later Bosanko turned to the Spanish 
 woman, and addressed her angrily. She 
 answered, beseechingly, with a flood of out- 
 landish talk, and as the man listened his face 
 grew softer again. He glanced over his 
 shoulder towards the inn. 
 
 ' Come, then, child,' he said, holding a hand 
 towards her ; and so they followed Anna into 
 the house. 
 
 II 
 
 The crowd gradually scattered, breaking up 
 into smaller groups, and soon all the town was 
 talking of Bosanko and the Spanish woman. 
 There came no fresh news from the inn. Anna 
 had her domestics well under authority ; and 
 though two or three of the most curious among
 
 120 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 the people dropped in at the ' Lamb and Flag ' 
 during the remaining hours of the afternoon, 
 they could 'by no means induce the maid who 
 waited in the bar to recognise that any event 
 of peculiar interest had happened. She con- 
 versed very distantly of the weather and such- 
 like topics ; and there was a something in her 
 manner that made the boldest fear to linger 
 unduly over his glass. Finally, as the twilight 
 began to fall in, it was noised about that the 
 door of the inn had just been closed, and that 
 some who chanced to be near had heard at the 
 same time the drawing of the bolt. 
 
 There was an endless variety of opinions 
 upon the case, and each opinion was many 
 times expressed during the hours that followed. 
 
 ' Anna's case is bad enough,' said one. ' To 
 think she waited ten year for a good-for-naught, 
 an' then in a year found she was never his wife. 
 'Tis a great shame to bear, and a mercy she 's 
 not a mother. But 'tis the other I do pity. 
 Ay! 'tis a cruel thing to lose a husband, and 
 seek en in a foreign country, an' find him living 
 with another woman.' 
 
 Others there were whose sympathy was all 
 with Anna; while some spent their time in
 
 THE GOOD-FOR-N AUGHT 121 
 
 wondering that Bosanko had ever left his 
 Spanish wife, and come back to Trevorrow. 
 1 Tisn' as if he was tired of her. His face went 
 like sunlight after rain when she came forth, 
 and spoke to him ; you could see she was the 
 one.' 
 
 This view of the matter, indeed, was largely 
 prevalent, and it was because they recognised 
 Bosanko's love for her that the majority of the 
 townspeople refused to see the pitifulness of 
 the Spanish woman's situation. Long before 
 dark there was some rumour of the thing which 
 was to happen, and when the night had fairly 
 settled in the shopkeepers were at their doors, 
 and even the most respectable householders were 
 on the alert for the first sound of disturbance. 
 
 It was towards eight o'clock when they heard 
 the first outbreak : a hideous noise of pans and 
 kettles beaten upon with sticks, of horns 
 vigorously blown, and (worst of all) of shouting 
 through a vast tin speaking-trumpet an 
 instrument used by the huers, who stood upon 
 the cliffs when there were pilchards in the bay 
 and directed the steering of the seine-boats by 
 shouts and the waving of a furze-bush in either 
 hand. The noise came from the direction of
 
 122 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 the harbour, and thither the more volatile among 
 the inhabitants immediately hastened. Very 
 soon they were seen returning. 
 
 The central group the 'kettle-band' 
 marched in the midst of a crowd that strove 
 loudly to discover the identity of the musicians ; 
 they themselves had now desisted from their 
 hubbub, and were content to hear the remarks 
 of the spectators upon their demonstration. 
 There had been scant time for preparation, 
 but the occasion was one to inspire unusual 
 activity, inasmuch as the credit of the town 
 must suffer damage if there were not a prompt 
 demonstration of indignation. So the youths 
 had constructed two effigies, which were elevated 
 on a couple of long poles, and carried with 
 much comical swaying in the centre of the 
 group. 
 
 There was little enough illumination in the 
 old days of Trevorrow, yet it was still easy to 
 recognise that the effigies were those of a man 
 and woman. The knee-breeches and soft felt 
 hat of the male figure showed that it was 
 intended to represent the landlord of the ' Lamb 
 and Flag ; ' the female figure had a black 
 shawl over the head, and was decked out in
 
 THE GOOD-FOR-N AUGHT 123 
 
 flaunting scarlet. The procession advanced, 
 the groans of the crowd coming in great gusts, 
 while the followers grew every moment more 
 numerous. At last they had reached the 
 1 Lamb and Flag.' 
 
 In front of the inn there was a considerable 
 open space, strewn with a fine grey gravel of 
 decomposed granite. A horse-trough stood 
 there. Into this open space the kettle-band 
 marched, with a renewal of its ghastly music, 
 and the crowd followed, surging against the 
 very door of the inn. There was a moment's 
 pause beneath the unlighted windows. Then 
 the crowd groaned repeatedly and now with 
 less of mockery than of fierce anger and there 
 were audible a score of angry voices crying out 
 against Bosanko and the foreign woman, his 
 wife. 
 
 Some one at the back of the crowd threw a 
 stone which smashed a pane in one of the 
 upper windows, and the people swayed back- 
 wards to avoid the falling glass. Finally there 
 was a hoarse, united cry : ' Burn them ! Burn 
 the effigies ! ' 
 
 The suggestion was a timely one in the 
 judgment of those who had the chief authority.
 
 124 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 The effigies were quickly lowered and fastened 
 to a couple of stakes driven into the earth. 
 Then they were surrounded with combustibles, 
 and in a moment a man came through the 
 crowd, screaming excitedly, and bearing a great 
 bundle of straw which he had lighted at the 
 hearth of a neighbour. The fire was kindled 
 and blazed up immediately, illuminating the 
 front of the inn and the faces of the crowd. 
 There arose a great noise of groaning, mingled 
 with cheers for the blaze of the fire. And a 
 moment later the door of the inn was flung 
 open, and Anna appeared before the people, 
 her face white and old in the light of the flaring 
 bonfire. 
 
 For a moment her intentions were uncertain. 
 The chief part of the noise died away, and 
 only one or two voices were heard. ' 'Tis all 
 right, Mis' Bosanko/ they cried. 'We aren't 
 come out against you. 'Tis your husband we 
 do want. Where is a gone to ? Say the word 
 and we '11 duck him in the harbour or in his 
 own horse-trough,' 
 
 ' Ay ! ' screamed a woman, a worthless 
 creature who had often slandered Anna in 
 bygone days, ' bring en out, and we '11 duck en.
 
 THE GOOD-FOR-N AUGHT 125 
 
 An' the foreign woman ; turn her to doors and 
 we '11 do all that you could desire by her. 'Tis 
 he an' she we do want.' 
 
 Anna stood silent and unmoving in the door- 
 way, the light of the fire upon her face. Once 
 she coughed, putting a hand to her mouth, as 
 the wind blew the smoke in a great cloud 
 against her. And at last she stepped a little 
 forward and raised a hand, entreating silence. 
 
 ' Hush ! all of 'ee ! ' shouted a leader of the 
 mob. 'Mis' Bosanko is goin' to speak. Now 
 hark, I tell 'ee ! ' 
 
 The crowd pressed closer, treading upon the 
 embers of the fire ; there was a great noise of 
 men and women angrily expostulating with 
 others that intruded too closely upon them. 
 Finally there was some sort of silence, and 
 Anna spoke. 
 
 'You can go back,' she cried scornfully. ' If 
 your business is with Harry Bosanko and the 
 Spanish woman, his wife, you can go back and 
 leave me to myself.' 
 
 There was a murmur of indignation at this 
 announcement. 
 
 1 1 have asked for no pity,' she said again. 
 ' He was never my husband, and I couldn't have
 
 126 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 kept him if I wished for it. An' I didn't wish 
 it I care nothing for the scorn of them that 
 think me shamed. So they 're gone gone two 
 hours ago with money that '11 take them back 
 to Spain back to his children and hers. And 
 I ask you to go : you can do no hurt to them 
 nor good to me.' 
 
 She paused a moment surveying them scorn- 
 fully. Then her self-command was broken. 
 ' Friends ! ' she said, with pitiful weakness, ' he 
 was dead, as you all told me. The fool I was 
 to think he lived ! ' 
 
 Here the matter ended. The crowd quickly 
 broke up, one or two only lingering to stamp 
 out the remnants of the fire. Upon the morrow 
 the ' Lamb and Flag ' opened its doors again, 
 Anna reigning its sole mistress, as she had done 
 in the time of her father. 
 
 She lived for many years, and to the hour of 
 her death retained the respect of all ; so that 
 presently the story of her misfortune seemed 
 but never was forgotten.
 
 BEAUTY'S LOVER 
 
 IT was a surprise to every one that Rosetta 
 Curnow should consent to become the wife of 
 Jim Penhallow. She had gained the name and 
 fame of the loveliest girl in all the neighbour- 
 hood during the four or five years which had 
 elapsed since she began to be noticeable among 
 the maidens of the place. It would have 
 seemed most natural if some new Cophetua of 
 the countryside had raised her to the rank 
 for which she was plainly made. Many who 
 might have played the part had been seduced 
 by her exquisite beauty to forgetfulness of the 
 dictates of common prudence ; and each had 
 been vastly surprised when he found himself 
 unmistakably rejected. Already there were 
 wiseacres who declared that Rosetta played 
 the fool in trifling with opportunities which 
 would not always be hers. When it was told 
 that she would marry Penhallow, the village 
 cried out with one voice, proclaiming her mad.
 
 128 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 Indeed, it was not easy to understand her 
 choice. 
 
 Penhallow was but a common labourer, and 
 so her social inferior. Moreover, he had the 
 misfortune to be not exactly like other men, 
 and was therefore looked upon by the majority 
 as undeserving of their entire approbation. He 
 was sufficiently industrious ; he did not drink ; 
 and, though he made no great pretensions to 
 religion, he was moderately regular in his 
 attendance at the chapel. Perhaps his strongest 
 characteristic was his love of flowers, to which 
 he devoted the whole of his small garden, 
 thereby scandalising a community essentially 
 practical in all its views. 
 
 It is reported that the manner of his intro- 
 duction to Rosetta was after this fashion. 
 
 She was going one day, dressed in her 
 prettiest, towards the Big House ; the roadway 
 took her past Penhallow's cottage, and there 
 she lingered, looking over the low white wall 
 of the garden to where the man himself was 
 working. The dahlias were almost over ; but 
 in the centre of the garden, where all could see, 
 he had a treble row of chrysanthemums all in 
 full flower. He was looking over them with
 
 BEAUTY'S LOVER 129 
 
 something of the artist's affection for work that 
 is plainly good ; and now and again he care- 
 fully removed imperfect blooms. Rosetta had 
 stopped in the first instance to look at the 
 flowers. Very soon she found herself watching 
 the man and faintly smiling. And when at 
 last he looked up and deigned to take notice of 
 her she laughed outright. 
 
 ' They 're lookin' wonderful ! ' she exclaimed. 
 ' But so would any flowers that had their treat- 
 ment. They might have human souls ! ' 
 
 All this time Penhallow had been gazing at 
 her with a curious look of surprise ; Rosetta 
 paused and blushed slightly, for it was borne 
 in upon her that until this moment the man had 
 never rendered the proper homage to her beauty. 
 She had a sudden desire to win his admiration. 
 
 'Can 'ee spare me one or two?' she asked 
 coquettishly. 
 
 A few seconds passed, during which Penhallow 
 continued to stare at her, plainly wondering 
 that he had never recognised her beauty until 
 now. Then he stepped to the gate. 
 
 'Come and help yourself,' he said eagerly. 
 ' Take as many as you mind to.' 
 
 Rosetta thanked him, and began rather 
 I
 
 130 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 nervously to gather the flowers, while Jim 
 Penhallow watched her. Presently he came 
 forward, and, without speaking, picked cluster 
 after cluster, until Rosetta told him she had 
 enough. He paused, looking contemptuously 
 at the nosegay he had gathered her. 
 
 ' Well ! ' he said. ' Come again when you do 
 want more. Good afnoon to 'ee.' And he 
 watched her as she proceeded on her way, 
 dexterously avoiding the pools that stood in 
 the road. 
 
 Once, and once only, she glanced back, and 
 saw that he still watched. 
 
 An hour or two later she returned, one of the 
 young men of the village walking at her side. 
 Jim was still working in his garden, but he 
 kept his eyes fixed upon his work, refusing to 
 perceive that Rosetta sought to greet him again 
 in passing. He looked up as they retreated 
 into the dusk, and immediately his resolve was 
 taken. 
 
 People had hardly realised that Rosetta was 
 being courted by Jim Penhallow, when they 
 heard that the marriage was decided on. It 
 was duly solemnised at the chapel, and Rosetta 
 went to live in the cottage by the roadside.
 
 BEAUTY'S LOVER 131 
 
 'There's one good thing about it,' said a 
 matron, discussing the matter with her peers. 
 ' Rosetta 's a sensible girl. She'll make him 
 till 'taties in that garden and root up all his ol' 
 flowers. 'Tis a rig'lar eyesore to see a good bit 
 o' garden like that bringin' forth nothin' but a 
 pa'cel o' flowers, that's good neither for man 
 nor beast.' 
 
 As a matter of fact Rosetta did nothing of 
 the sort. She became Penhallow's eager pupil, 
 and the staid and sober villagers perceived with 
 a sort of pious horror that the newly-married pair 
 were living a life which was simply a prolonga- 
 tion of courting-days. Rosetta was manifestly 
 well content with the husband she had chosen. 
 
 Once she confided to a friend the reason of 
 her affection for him. ' Is it any shame to say 
 I 'm proud of my pretty face ? A woman has 
 failed if she is not beautiful : to one, or to 
 many. And there have been many would have 
 done much for me because of the face God 
 gave me. But to Jim 'tis all the world. He 
 would give his life for it ay, and his very soul. 
 And I can't but love the man.' 
 
 And so things went, until Rosetta was taken 
 with a deathly sickness.
 
 i 3 2 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 Penhallow seemed endowed with superhuman 
 endurance, and for weeks he hardly slept at all. 
 Rosetta grew weaker day by day, and daily 
 there was a change in her bearing towards her 
 husband. For a space she continued mindful 
 of her beauty : she would ask frequently to be 
 given a mirror, that she might know what in- 
 jury had been wrought by sickness against her 
 good looks. 
 
 But gradually, as the strength left her, she 
 forgot her attitude of superiority : she seemed 
 to long passionately for a simple human love 
 that should be hers merely because she was 
 herself. Penhallow did not understand, and 
 still treated her rather as the incarnation of all 
 loveliness than as a simple human creature. 
 When he was told that she must surely die, 
 he was taken with an insanity of grief; but 
 he spoke as one believing that it lay with her 
 to consent or refuse to accept the change of 
 death. 
 
 And while he cried on her as to a creature 
 of Divine attributes, Rosetta, conscious of 
 mortal infirmity, yearned for some expression 
 of a love for that part in her which suffered 
 or was glad, which would be still the same
 
 BEAUTY'S LOVER 133 
 
 though her beauty had been long ruined by 
 accident or the relentless hand of time. But 
 very soon she was overtaken with a heavy 
 torpor, and lay unconscious with the mark of 
 death upon her. 
 
 The last night came. Penhallow's grief had 
 been hardly human. He had watched re- 
 belliously the dreadful change which made 
 her face a livid and inhuman mask ; now it 
 appeared he had forgotten his old passion, or, 
 rather, that he could not be persuaded that 
 this creature of so hideous an aspect was 
 indeed the wife whose beauty he had wor- 
 shipped. The night went on. The husband 
 had with him an old woman of the village 
 accustomed to the work of watching. From 
 time to time she endeavoured to comfort him ; 
 but presently she ceased from troubling: she 
 was, indeed, disconcerted, and in some degree 
 affrighted, by the man's demeanour. 
 
 He was watching the still figure of his wife 
 as if held fast by some horrible attraction. 
 Her face was all discoloured, distorted to the 
 semblance of an obscene mirth ; through the 
 shut eyelids a narrow line of the eyeball 
 glistened. And it seemed to the husband,
 
 134 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 standing by, that this unsightly body was no 
 longer inhabited by the spirit of his wife : she 
 was gone from it, leaving it to become the 
 ambuscade of a fiend, whose evil nature now 
 reinformed its features. 
 
 Presently he began to mutter incoherently, 
 seeming wholly unconscious of everything save 
 that dreadful face which mocked him. The 
 nurse had almost forgotten the patient in 
 growing fear of Penhallow. Presently she 
 could no longer be quiet. She rose and moved 
 to his side ; then, finding he gave her not the 
 slightest attention, she took him by the arm 
 and shook him roughly. Doubtless, some 
 sharp remonstrance was in her mind, but she 
 had no time for speech. 
 
 Penhallow started at the touch of her hand ; 
 then he laid a hand upon her shoulder and 
 spoke, regarding her with vacant eyes. ' It is 
 not Rosetta,' he said. * Night and day I 
 watched, and she lay there beautiful in sickness 
 as she was before. Look at this thing that lies 
 where she lay. It is not Rosetta ; I am afraid 
 of it.' 
 
 He paused, and the old woman strove in- 
 effectually to bring him back to reason.
 
 BEAUTY'S LOVER 135 
 
 'Your head is light, Jim, after so much 
 watching. No wonder ! Lie down a bit, an' 
 I'll see that Rosetta's all right.' Her tones 
 became more urgent as she recognised the 
 uselessness of her entreaties. ' Be quiet, man,' 
 she cried. 'Don't 'ee know Rosetta's near 
 to death ? ' 
 
 And the man laughed aloud. 
 
 'Rosetta's gone this long time,' he said. 
 'She was beautiful. This thing ... it is a 
 devil. I am afraid of it.' 
 
 He walked clumsily to the door. 
 
 ' I can't stay under the same roof with it,' he 
 said, as he left the room. A moment later the 
 nurse heard him quit the house, and when the 
 sound of footsteps had died away she turned 
 to the bedside again. 
 
 Rosettawas regarding her curiously with wide- 
 open eyes ; her face had once more changed, so 
 that Penhallow, could he have seen her, would 
 have known that she was in very truth the wife 
 he had loved. And while the nurse still won- 
 dered Rosetta spoke, weakly, but very eagerly. 
 1 Where is he gone to ? ' she asked. ' What was 
 it he said ? ' 
 
 The nurse strove to quiet her curiosity.
 
 136 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 ' He 's gone out to get a mouthful o' fresh air,' 
 she said. ' He Ve been watchin' with 'ee night 
 an' day, this long time past. He didn' say 
 nothin' particular.' 
 
 But Rosetta was not deceived. 
 
 ' Give me the looking-glass,' she said ; and 
 when the nurse had brought it she raised herself 
 laboriously and studied her face in the glass. 
 And presently she fell back upon the pillows 
 with a sob. ' He spoke true,' she said. ' But 
 it was cruel. Yet from that moment she pro- 
 gressed towards recovery. 
 
 Thirty years later, on a most dismal autumn 
 day, I drove up to The Crown, an hotel whose 
 front commands a full view of the single narrow 
 street which constitutes the town. I could not 
 attract the attention of the hostler, and dis- 
 covered that every one was greatly interested 
 in a funeral that came slowly down the street. 
 There were hardly half a dozen mourners ; and 
 these, so far as one could judge, were by no 
 means deeply afflicted. A moment later, as 
 the procession came nearer, I perceived that 
 the interest of the people centred rather in a 
 small shop at the roadside than in the funeral
 
 BEAUTY'S LOVER 137 
 
 itself. The shutters were up, the door closed, 
 the white blinds of the small upstairs windows 
 drawn. 
 
 And as the bearers reached this point the 
 door was opened and a tall woman, dressed in 
 deep mourning, stepped into the roadway. 
 She took her place in the procession. She 
 held a black-edged handkerchief to her dry 
 eyes. A small crowd had gathered, and now 
 followed the coffin. In a little while the 
 funeral had passed out of sight in the direc- 
 tion of the cemetery. Inquiring afterwards, I 
 learned the story I have told, with its con- 
 cluding passages. 
 
 From the night when he left her to die 
 alone Rosetta hardly spoke again to her hus- 
 band. He was found the next morning 
 wandering at a great distance from the village ; 
 coming home, he met the doctor quitting the 
 cottage, and from him he heard that his wife 
 would live. And from that hour, his madness 
 over, he tended Rosetta with more than the 
 old devotion. When she was sufficiently 
 recovered he got the loan of a spring-cart, and 
 offered to take her for a drive in the fresh air. 
 ' Take me home,' she said. ' Take me to see
 
 138 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 mother.' And she was strangely impatient to 
 start 
 
 She was still silent, but for Penhallow there 
 was sufficient joy in the contemplation of her 
 beauty, which rapidly came back to her. They 
 reached the cottage, and drove into the little 
 yard. Penhallow helped his wife to descend, 
 and almost carried her to the open door. Then 
 he went back to lift the cushions out of the 
 cart ; but, hearing a sound behind him, he once 
 more turned. 
 
 Rosetta had shut the door; even now he 
 heard her fastening the bolt. And immediately, 
 with a strange understanding of the thing which 
 had befallen him, he dashed forward and began 
 to hammer with his fists upon the panels, 
 crying, ' Open the door, Rosetta ! Let me in ! ' 
 
 A faint laugh reached him. 
 
 ' Go back alone,' she said. ' Did you not 
 take me for better or for worse ? And because 
 I had been sick a long time, and had lost my 
 good looks, you would have let me die alone. 
 You shall live alone. Go back, and do not fool 
 yourself with hoping.' 
 
 It would seem that Penhallow realised 
 perhaps one should rather say he was a fool to
 
 BEAUTY'S LOVER 139 
 
 believe that her resolve was inexorable. At 
 any rate, it is said he never once troubled his 
 wife again. When she had quite recovered her 
 strength she opened a small shop in the village; 
 being, further, a skilled needlewoman, she 
 found it very possible to make a living. And, 
 though there were many attempts to shake her 
 resolution, she lived until the day of Jim 
 Penhallovv's funeral as if he had ceased to exist 
 when she sent him from her at the door of her 
 mother's cottage.
 
 THE WISE WOMEN 
 
 ' All the refuse of the city 
 Ever drifting to the sea : 
 Foulness of the river merging 
 In the sea's cold purity. 
 
 ' Is the current fouled, encumbered 
 With God's failures ? There doth lie 
 A vast sea beyond the river, 
 And the saddest soul must die.' 
 
 IN a lonely cottage on the slope of the coombe 
 that opens from Pentreath beach into the moor- 
 land, lived a man for whom there was very 
 little left in life. More than thirty years earlier 
 he had been cast ashore one wild night when 
 God fought on the side of England against the 
 power of Spain. For weeks there were bodies 
 thrown up on the beach daily, to be buried by 
 the villagers in great pits dug at the mouth of 
 the coombe. 
 
 Only this man, Jose*, came alive to the land. 
 
 At first he lived very miserably, being a 
 stranger, and so hated by the village-folk. But 
 among these was a young girl, Genefer Tre-
 
 THE WISE WOMEN 141 
 
 garrick, who had perhaps something of his own 
 ancestry. She was black-haired, dark, pas- 
 sionate ; it seemed to him that she also was 
 a stranger in the land, and he turned to her 
 instinctively, as if to a woman of his own 
 country. Probably he loved her in the begin- 
 ning less for herself than because she brought 
 back to him all that was dearest among his 
 memories. But, in her, blood answered to 
 blood : she loved him with a love beyond his 
 understanding. And so, when he had dwelt 
 but a few months in the village, they were 
 married each knowing hardly ten words of the 
 other's language. 
 
 They had few friends among the folk sur- 
 rounding them, and God laid upon them the 
 bitter burden of childlessness, so that they clave 
 all the more closely to one another, and became 
 as one soul. The man was a stranger in a 
 strange land, yet it was Genefer who changed 
 most in the years that followed. In the course 
 of time he learned just so much English 
 as sufficed for conversation with the villagers, 
 and presently they came to love him, for the 
 sake of his hesitating, gentle speech and foreign 
 courtesy.
 
 142 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 But Genefer had learned his language so that 
 it seemed her native speech. To a generation 
 little later than her own she was yet more of a 
 foreigner less comprehended than Jose him- 
 self. When it was necessary to protect his 
 interests, however, she had forgotten nothing 
 of the wisdom gathered in childhood. And 
 when she died, after thirty years, it seemed 
 that a blow had been struck at the very roots 
 of his life. 
 
 The people forgot that he was a foreigner : 
 more accurately, they were mindful of his utter 
 loneliness, and, because of it, dealt with him 
 very kindly. The women, especially, vied with 
 one another in little benefactions, and the man 
 thanked them with an unfailing courtesy, which 
 pleased and flattered even those who would 
 have found it an excuse for laughter but a little 
 earlier. But he grew peaked and thin ; his 
 eyes were large and bright. ' The warmth is 
 gone out of the sun,' he said, pitifully, one day ; 
 and it was evident he was dying merely because 
 there was no purpose or delight left him in life. 
 
 This fact the women could not fail to 
 recognise. They had grown to look upon him 
 as a sort of child, and made a hundred efforts
 
 THE WISE WOMEN 143 
 
 to arouse him. And at last, when prayer itself 
 would have been vanity, a woman came to his 
 cottage and besought him to seek a cure. 
 She found him sitting in the sun, his hands 
 slack upon his knees, his eyes fixed mournfully 
 upon the little stream which ran seawards in 
 the bottom of the coombe. 
 
 She looked at him with anxious pity. ' I 
 tell 'ee,' she said, ' you'm very bad. I can't fancy 
 you '11 live long if there edn' some change.' 
 
 Jose" regarded her very kindly. 'The good 
 God knows,' he said. ' It is likely you speak 
 true.' 
 
 ' Ay,' said the woman, ' all too true ! I 
 could wish I were not so sure. But look ! 
 Will 'ee do what I ask ? ' 
 
 Again the man looked at her gently. 
 ' Surely,' he said, ' if it is possible.' 
 
 She came nearer. ' Do 'ee know the cottage 
 betwixt here and Pentreath by the cliff-path ? 
 There's a wise woman do live there, Martha 
 Gilbert, that have cured many. Will 'ee go 
 and ask her what you shall do? Will 'ee go 
 to-night ? 'Tis a chance for 'ee.' 
 
 And Jos promised he would go. 
 
 ' They tell me you are wise,' he said, as the
 
 144 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 woman met him at the door of her cottage. ' I 
 have a pain of the heart, I think : a pain smaller 
 than the hurt of a cut finger, and yet it takes 
 my life. I have no fear to die, but I was sent' 
 
 The woman looked upon him with impassive 
 face, yet once there was a movement, suddenly 
 arrested, which might have ended in such a 
 caress as a mother of happy children would 
 give to some strange child that wept uncom- 
 forted. 'She did well who sent you,' she 
 answered. ' I have been taught many things 
 since I came into the world. You would have 
 me cure this pain ? ' 
 
 He smiled gently. ' If it please you,' he said. 
 
 There was an outbreak of feeling in Martha's 
 voice, and the tears started to her eyes. ' It 
 is the good God will do it,' she said. ' Sit you 
 down awhile, for there is need of two.' 
 
 Jose" seated himself upon a rude bench which 
 stood against the mud wall of the hovel, and 
 waited very contentedly, looking out over the 
 fading purple of the heather to where the sea 
 showed in the west. The sun had fallen 
 below the level of the cliffs ; so great a quiet 
 brooded over the moorland that the man half 
 fancied the cure was wrought already.
 
 THE WISE WOMEN 145 
 
 And so he did not observe the return of the 
 Wise Woman until she stood at his elbow ; a 
 look of surprise came to his face, for he saw 
 that her companion was a sinful creature of 
 the village, a woman for whom even her own 
 people had no longer pity nor love. She was 
 hardly older than Genefer had been when she 
 became his wife, and still she kept the ruins 
 of the beauty God had given her to her 
 undoing. Jos had been kinder to her than 
 most, having a natural sympathy with all 
 outcasts and strangers. But he did not under- 
 stand her presence now. 
 
 She also seemed oppressed with a sense of 
 intruding. She looked once at this man from 
 whom she had suffered no unkindness. Then 
 her eyes fell and she waited. 
 
 But the Wise Woman spoke. 'There must 
 be two," she said. ' She is wise as I am wise : 
 she has suffered.' She paused ; then, with a 
 change of voice, ' Now let us go to the stream 
 in the coombe. The stream shall cure 'ee.' 
 
 No word was spoken as the three followed 
 
 the beaten track through the heather. But 
 
 when they had come to the edge of the coombe 
 
 Martha turned and looked back into the grow- 
 
 K
 
 r 4 6 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 ing twilight. ' Look back ! ' she said, and she 
 watched him secretly as he turned and looked 
 back, a great peace at his heart, into the 
 world with which he had finished. 
 
 A moment later they were descending to the 
 bottom of the coombe. She found a clump 
 of heather which grew where the little stream 
 was narrowest, and here she bade the man 
 lie down. He obeyed her quietly and with- 
 out a question. Then the younger woman 
 stepped across the stream and stretched a 
 hand towards her companion. Martha took 
 it, standing so that the man was under the 
 joined hands. 
 
 'Say the words that we do say, as we do 
 speak them,' she said. And then the two 
 women, standing with joined hands, repeated 
 this old verse very slowly, the man following 
 as he was able, very carefully, yet in a voice 
 which showed he had no care as to the import 
 of the words. For already his pain grew less, 
 and a great contentment filled his heart. 
 
 ' Stream, take my pain from me, 
 Bear it along with thee 
 Into the deepest sea : 
 Stream, take my pain from me.'
 
 THE WISE WOMEN 147 
 
 There was a pause when the words were 
 ended. Then the Wise Woman dropped her 
 companion's hand and bent over the man. 
 'There is no more,' she said. 'You must lie 
 there until the sun is up, and then your pain 
 will be gone.' 
 
 Jose" did not answer ; the younger woman 
 stepped across the stream and rejoined her 
 elder. Once she looked back into the shadow 
 as she mounted the coombe-side. But Martha 
 laid a hand upon her arm. ' His pain will be 
 gone by morning,' she said, as they gained the 
 summit. 
 
 She had spoken truly. For in the morning, 
 when the sun was hardly risen and the thin 
 hoar unmelted, she returned alone to the place 
 where she had left him. He had not moved, 
 and she knew as she looked on the cold face 
 that the sea had in very truth taken away his 
 pain.
 
 THE SISTERS 
 
 I 
 
 SIXTY years ago the farmhouse yonder among 
 the sycamores on the slope of the coombe was 
 occupied by John Trewhella. He was but a 
 poor man, and one daughter, Nancy, was away 
 in service ; but Jennett, the elder sister, stopped 
 at home, her mother being long dead. Now, 
 Jennett was a pretty enough maid when Nancy 
 did not happen to be by ; but Nancy would 
 have been better than the best in any company. 
 After some 'time, it came about that George 
 Penhalleck, a young blacksmith living in the 
 village, cast eyes on Jennett, and presently 
 began to keep company with her. I Ve heard 
 though it must have been many years later 
 that she was a hard mistress to him, always 
 tormenting him with orders and fancies out of 
 all reason. However, 'tis to be supposed he 
 was very much in love, for as time went on he 
 was almost the only one about the place who
 
 THE SISTERS 149 
 
 could stand her lofty airs. I was a child at the 
 time, and I mind I was always afraid of her. 
 
 Now, I should have said that Nancy was 
 very delicate upon the chest. Perhaps it was 
 that which gave her the chief part of her loveli- 
 ness : cheeks like June roses, and a skin like 
 elder bloom. It was because of this that she 
 had gone away from home. You will not need 
 telling how bleak a place this is ; and the farm- 
 house yonder stands full in the way of the east 
 wind. So Nancy was servant to an old maiden 
 lady, pretty well up in the world, and with so 
 much money you might have wondered she 
 had missed finding a husband. She lived at 
 Trenear. I fancy the girl must have been 
 almost like a daughter to the old lady, for 
 whenever she came back to spend a day or two 
 at the farm, her dresses were the talk of the 
 place (though never fine beyond modesty), and 
 her manners something wonderful. 
 
 The blacksmith was almost a new-comer to 
 the place, and it so happened that during the 
 whole time 'of his courting, Nancy was never 
 at home. She did not come back until close 
 upon six months after the match was made up. 
 Then the old lady wrote to say that Nancy
 
 ISO WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 was seeming a little poorly and in need of a 
 change, and that she would come by the coach 
 the next afternoon to stay for a few weeks. 
 
 Sure enough she came. It was just four 
 o'clock when the coach came up the hill, and 
 stopped to set down the passenger and her 
 luggage where the path crosses the fields. And 
 Nancy was looking prettier than ever. She 
 was always glad to be at home again ; her eyes 
 were bright as stars, and her cheeks prettily 
 flushed. And she was no sooner in the house 
 than she set about teasing her sister. 
 
 ' My dear Jennett,' she said, ' I couldn' 
 believe it when I heard the news : I never 
 could fancy a man having the courage to ask 
 you to keep company. What fashion man is 
 he, at all ; and art very hard upon him ? ' 
 
 Jennett was not one to take jesting of this 
 kind in the best of spirits ; but Nancy seemed 
 to take no heed of the danger. 
 
 ' I can see how 'twill be,' she said, a little 
 later : ' before many days are gone I shall have 
 the poor dear coming to me to ask for just a 
 little kindness. There never was a man afraid 
 of me, somehow. Is he very much in love, 
 Jennett ? '
 
 THE SISTERS 151 
 
 You can't live to my age without coming 
 almost to believe that there 's a Book of Fate, 
 in which our lives are all written out before- 
 hand. It so happened it was Nancy went to 
 the door when George Penhalleck, the black- 
 smith, came. He was a big, dark-faced chap, 
 with black curly hair, and a rather serious look. 
 And Nancy laughed all over her pretty face 
 and made him a wonderful curtsey. 
 
 ' Come in, brother-in-law,' she said. 
 
 The girl was good as gold by all accounts, 
 and none ever dreamed of saying that she had 
 set herself to steal away her sister's sweetheart. 
 But she was young and very thoughtless, and 
 did not know the full power of her beauty : 
 looking upon George Penhalleck as an engaged 
 man, and so, as you might say, in a place of 
 safety. Nevertheless, the poor young man 
 was tried as by fire that night, and from that 
 time forth. Perhaps it was even as Nancy had 
 said in jest that Jennett asked too much from 
 her lover, being by nature hard. Nancy was 
 her very opposite, and was always laughing at 
 the young man's serious face, and doing all she 
 could to infect him with her own high spirits. 
 And soon she began to succeed. George came
 
 152 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 more frequently than ever to the farmhouse, 
 and if Nancy happened to be out of the way 
 he would hardly try to conceal his disappoint- 
 ment, and would be a very different person 
 from what he was when she was there. 
 
 Once or twice there were words between the 
 sisters ; but Jennett always had been hard on 
 Nancy, who was younger by three years, and 
 that did not seem to be anything out of the 
 way. But one evening it happened that she 
 was in the dairy when her sweetheart arrived. 
 As she came back, and stood at the door of the 
 kitchen, she heard her sister and Penhalleck 
 talking and laughing inside. She waited a 
 moment; then she entered, and the laughter 
 died away at once. Nancy and Penhalleck 
 were silent and a bit shamefaced. And Jennett 
 stood and looked at the two without speaking, 
 something beyond mere anger in her face. 
 
 ' Go on,' she said at last ; ' I should be very 
 loth to be in any person's way.' 
 
 Before they had time to make any answer, 
 she had walked across the kitchen and mounted 
 the stairs to her bedroom. 
 
 That if it had not been already too late 
 should have warned them of what they were
 
 THE SISTERS 153 
 
 doing ; as it was, it can only have served to 
 show them how deeply in love with one an- 
 other they were. But, of course, there was no 
 word said between them at the time. Nancy 
 ran upstairs after her sister, and coaxed her 
 into coming down ; and to all appearances 
 things were quite smoothed over again. Nancy 
 even found courage to joke about the matter 
 before the night was out : being, perhaps, more 
 anxious to deceive Penhalleck than her sister. 
 But things were gone too far to be stopped 
 now. A day or two later I went birds'-nesting 
 in the coombe that runs inland from Trelynt 
 beach ; there 's a little oak wood on the 
 western slope, and one could fancy the place 
 had been a haunting-ground of lovers from the 
 beginning of Time, the spring comes there so 
 beautifully. Now, it so happened that I heard 
 voices ; and, being but a boy of ten, and very 
 full of mischief, I made my way through the 
 tangle of hazels in the direction of the sound. 
 And when I had seen who was there I turned 
 back, and went away quietly as I had come. 
 For the two I had heard talking were George 
 Penhalleck and Nancy ; and Nancy was crying 
 bitterly, her face hidden in her hands. ' Don't
 
 154 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 tell her,' she sobbed ; ' don't tell her ! I will go 
 away. It is all my fault.' 
 
 Somehow I felt as if I trespassed : as if the 
 whole place belonged to them. So I made 
 towards the edge of the wood, going softly at 
 first, and then more boldly. And just on the 
 edge of the open ground I almost stumbled into 
 the arms of a pale-faced woman who stood 
 alone by the tall trunk of an elm-tree. It was 
 Jennett Trewhella. 
 
 ' Little boy,' she said, ' is there any one in the 
 wood.' 
 
 I was afraid of her and wanted to get away, 
 and so I blurted out what I should have kept 
 to myself. 'Ay,' said I, 'the blacksmith's in 
 there talkin' to your sister, and she's cryin' 
 like rain.' 
 
 Upon this I would have gone upon my way. 
 But she stopped me with a gesture, and looked 
 me up and down. ' Listen,' she said. ' Take 
 off the garter from your right leg, and come 
 in an hour's time to the cowshed in the eight- 
 acre field. Will you do this ? ' 
 
 I would have given the world to refuse, but 
 there was that in her face which forbade the 
 exercise of my free-will. I promised and ran
 
 THE SISTERS 155 
 
 on, leaving her still solitary on the outskirts of 
 the wood. 
 
 Even when I had left her, the mastery of 
 her look was upon me ; so that at the time 
 appointed I came to the cowshed in the eight- 
 acres. 'Tis a field lying some two or three 
 hundred yards up the coombe beyond the farm- 
 house yonder. According to orders I had 
 taken off my right garter and carried it in my 
 hand ; and, to tell the truth, I recalled a host 
 of awful stories as I went to meet Jennett : 
 wondering, among other things, whether this 
 my own garter would be used to bind my limbs 
 in preparation for some dreadful death. 
 
 The cowshed stood in a corner of the field, 
 a few rough uprights supporting a roof of 
 smaller poles thatched with grey furze-fagots. 
 And here Jennett stood waiting for me, bare- 
 headed, her face more pale than ever. I 
 noticed as I advanced that she had a book in 
 her hand ; then she beckoned to me with an 
 impatient gesture, and I ran on. She did not 
 speak when I reached the shed, but laid the 
 book (which I now saw to be a Bible) upon the 
 ground, and took the garter from me. Then 
 she bent down and turned over the leaves of
 
 156 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 the Bible until she had found the passage she 
 required ; having found it, she produced a big 
 door-key, and closed the book upon it as if it 
 had been a book-marker. The ring of the key 
 projected beyond the top edge of the book. 
 Next she took the garter I had given her and 
 bound it about the Bible ; repeating the process 
 with a second garter, taken from her own 
 pocket. Then she raised the book by the ring 
 of the key to prove that it was tightly bound, 
 ' That will do!' she muttered, and turned to me. 
 ' This is a Bible,' she said fiercely. ' Put your 
 hand upon it and swear that you will never 
 breathe a word of what you are to see ! ' 
 
 I said the words which she dictated to me, 
 my hand upon the Bible. Then she bade me 
 hold forth my hand and do as I was told, 
 repeating after her the words she should utter. 
 I held out my hand, and she hers. Then with 
 the other hand she brought forward the Bible 
 and hung it upon her forefinger and mine in 
 such a position that the ring of the key pointed 
 from her to me. She paused for a moment 
 with set face. Then she spoke : 
 
 ' Will Nancy be able to steal away George 
 Penhalleck from me ? Will they be married ?
 
 THE SISTERS 157 
 
 If so, let this Bible turn and fall. . . . Set me 
 as a seal upon thine heart: as a seal upon thine arm. 
 For love is strong as death ; jealousy is cruel as 
 the grave ! ' 
 
 These words, which she chanted in monotone, 
 I had said after her, struggling with my fear. 
 Now she seemed overmastered by her passion, 
 and for a space swallowed and gulped at a lump 
 that rose in her throat. And I waited until she 
 should begin again. 
 
 ' Love is strong as death ; jealousy is cruel as 
 the grave!' Once more the passion mastered 
 her for a moment, and as the words died upon 
 her lips the key moved upon our fingers, and 
 the Bible twisted and fell to the ground. For 
 a space the woman was dumb. Then she 
 turned upon me furiously. 
 
 ' Go ! ' she cried. ' Why do you stop gaping ? 
 But still, it shall not be ! ' 
 
 II 
 
 It would appear that the interview between 
 George Penhalleck and Nancy had come about 
 by accident, though it is very certain that, in 
 any case, some such meeting must soon have
 
 158 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 come to pass, seeing how matters were between 
 them. Penhalleck had declared his love for 
 her, and in the first moments which followed 
 she had let him see all too clearly that her love 
 for him was just as strong. Then, when he 
 spoke of his intention to tell the whole story to 
 Jennett and throw himself upon her mercy, 
 Nancy had broken down and burst into tears ; 
 partly, it may be, through remorse, but partly, 
 also, through fear of the impending crisis. She 
 had begged him to forget what had happened 
 between them ; had declared that she would go 
 back to Trenear, and never again return home 
 until Jennett and he were safely married. But 
 Penhalleck had insisted that the course he had 
 proposed to take was the only one open to them, 
 and at length the girl realised that it would be 
 impossible to dissuade him from its adoption. 
 
 And so, as Jennett came from the practice 
 of her divination, she met her old lover, who 
 frankly told her it was impossible he should 
 marry her. 
 
 ' God knows I 'm sorry/ he said. ' I shouldn' 
 be a man if I was not filled with sorrow. But 
 'tis no good. The love I had for 'ee is dead ; 
 'tis Nancy I was made for. Can 'ee forgive us,
 
 THE SISTERS 159 
 
 Jennett ? A better man '11 make a better 
 husband for 'ee than ever I could have done.' 
 
 Jennett heard him to the end with an heroic 
 composure. When he had finished his clumsy 
 speech she broke out upon him passionately. 
 
 ' Forgive ! ' she cried. 'Is it a thing to 
 forgive? Did I ask that you would come 
 about me with your talk of love? Did I ask 
 that you would grovel at my feet as you did 
 that day in the spring ? Body and soul of you 
 is mine by your own free gift that I was slow 
 to take, and though you marry your pretty doll, 
 you will be a liar and she a thief, and you will 
 both remember it ! ' 
 
 She passed onward. Reaching the farm she 
 found out her sister. 
 
 ' Had Jacob a sister ? ' she cried, surveying 
 the girl scornfully. 'To think you should be 
 such a thief, with your soft voice and your pink 
 cheeks ! May you be happy with him ! ' 
 
 She passed on to her bedroom ; and through 
 the night Nancy, miserable enough herself, 
 heard her moving up and down without ceasing. 
 
 But in the morning there was no sign of 
 the trouble she had gone through. Nancy 
 was pale-faced, and most unhappy ; her big
 
 160 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 blue eyes had dark shadows underneath. But 
 Jennett went as usual about her household 
 tasks. Only she spoke hardly a dozen words 
 in the day, and her eyes were never permitted 
 to rest upon her sister. Towards evening 
 Nancy stole out to have an interview with 
 her sweetheart ; and when she came back it 
 was with an air which would have been natural 
 only had her absence been criminal. And so 
 things went for many miserable days. Jennett 
 was still self-possessed and impassive; only, the 
 mere presence of her sister seemed to affect her 
 with a sense of physical repulsion. George 
 Penhalleck no longer came to the farmhouse 
 as he had been wont to do ; and Nancy, who 
 suffered abjectly during the long days, went 
 out at night to meet him as it were by stealth. 
 Her father was inclined to favour the present 
 arrangement ; but the affair did not seem to 
 him of great importance. He thought that 
 matters would settle down in the course of 
 a day or two, and it was the abiding presence 
 of Jennett's jealous passion that made the fan 
 a very house of bondage to Nancy. 
 
 And gradually her wretchedness increased. 
 It was not only that she was mentally un-
 
 THE SISTERS 161 
 
 happy ; it was as though some hostile element 
 in the air she breathed acted as poison to her. 
 I ler nights were sleepless, or filled with hideous 
 dreams ; she was languid and irritable all the 
 day, and little things seemed great; so that, 
 when she got away from the house of her 
 subjection to meet her lover, she constantly 
 spoke or acted to him with childlike petulance, 
 wasting the only tolerable hours of the day. 
 Then she would come home, and lie awake 
 the long night through, crying like a child at 
 her own folly. She knew that Jennett would 
 not of her own free will touch, or see, or 
 approach her ; and yet it seemed to her that 
 she was being spied upon with a brooding 
 and triumphant malice. She remembered her 
 sister's ironical ' May you be happy ! ' and knew 
 she could not pretend that she was otherwise 
 than miserable. And yet she could have 
 uttered a very pathetic protest against the 
 unkindness of the Fates. She loved Penhalleck 
 very truly ; it seemed a great injustice that she 
 should suffer because he returned that love. 
 
 There was a strange fact told of the family 
 which dwelt in the farmhouse. It was said 
 that whenever death drew near to any one of 
 L
 
 162 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 them, the watchers by the bedside were always 
 warned. Something would abide over the 
 house, so that those who watched were bowed 
 forward as if under the oppression of a material 
 weight. An awful heavy silence would sur- 
 round them, and they sat in their places, 
 unable to move or speak, until the soul of the 
 sick person had got release. And in these 
 days the story came back to Nancy : it seemed 
 to her that death was already in the house. 
 She grew daily more and more miserable. 
 Her cheeks became thinner and thinner, and 
 the dark circles round her eyes deepened. 
 There were times when it seemed to her that 
 the air of the house was hot and sterile ; she 
 would go out into the wide fields where the 
 cool winds came fresh from the sea, and almost 
 immediately, overtaken with deadly weakness, 
 would creep back to the house. Her lover was 
 not long in perceiving the change which had 
 come over her ; indeed, no small number of 
 her unreasonable outbreaks of ill-temper had 
 followed upon his suggestions that she should 
 seek the advice of some one skilled in medicine. 
 But what he could not effect was presently 
 accomplished by a few words from the wife of
 
 THE SISTERS 163 
 
 a labourer on the farm. Nancy had gone forth 
 one day, and chanced to pass the miserable 
 mud cottage in which the woman lived. She 
 heard a voice calling her name, and turning 
 saw the woman standing in the doorway. 
 
 ' What is it ? ' she said brokenly. 
 
 ' Beggin' your pardon, Miss Nancy,' said the 
 woman, 'but you're gone to look fine and 
 poorly these last few weeks. They tell me 
 you Ve got a sweetheart, but I can't fancy 'tis 
 true to see that white face o' yours.' 
 
 Nancy sighed impatiently. 'Yes,' she said, 
 ' I 'm poorly enough. Is that all you have to 
 tell me ? ' 
 
 The woman paused and looked at her 
 curiously. ' Why, no,' she said. ' Come inside 
 and take a chair, and I '11 tell 'ee what I got 
 to say.' 
 
 Nancy entered the cottage, and the woman 
 continued. ' Do 'ee know Mary Cundy, that 
 do live on the moor near to the Trenear 
 road ? ' 
 
 The girl shivered. ' A horrible old woman ! ' 
 she said. ' She has the evil eye.' 
 
 The woman interrupted. 'All the more 
 reason to speak soft of her/ she said. 'Them
 
 164 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 that can make people ill without a disease can 
 cure them that 's sick in the same way.' 
 
 The girl started. ' You mean ' 
 
 ' I mean,' said the woman, bending nearer, 
 and speaking with particular emphasis, ' I mean 
 that to my thinkin' you're very sick indeed, 
 with a sickness no doctor can cure. And if 
 there's a cure to be had, Mary Cundy'll be 
 bound to know it.' 
 
 Nancy did not answer. After a moment's 
 silence she rose and went upon her way. But 
 the suggestion of this labourer's wife remained 
 with her and made its impression. 
 
 That evening she went out to meet her lover 
 again, and he was not a little surprised at the 
 changed manner in which she replied to his 
 reiterated expressions of anxiety. 
 
 ' Iss,' she said. ' I haven' been well this last 
 few weeks ; I haven' been able to sleep like I 
 do belong to. But I shall be all right in a day 
 or two, or I'll go to any doctor you like to 
 name, and take whatever stuff he gives me.' 
 
 Then she turned the conversation into other 
 channels, and to his amazement put on some- 
 thing of the light and careless gaiety which 
 had fascinated him in his earliest intercourse
 
 THE SISTERS 165 
 
 with her. When at last they parted her gaiety 
 altogether deserted her ; but the languor and 
 depression of the last few weeks were gone. 
 She had recognised, and strengthened herself 
 to resist, the hostile influence which had so 
 nearly overcome her. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The night brought sleep, and worked in her 
 a miracle of restoration. And through the day 
 she moved about the house with a quiet courage 
 altogether unlike her late listlessness ; so that 
 Jennett watched her with an uneasy surprise. 
 Towards night the elder sister disappeared for 
 a space, and Nancy ran upstairs hurriedly 
 and donned a big cloak. She wrapped herself 
 in it and set forth from the farmhouse, making 
 across the fields in the direction of the Trenear 
 road. It was a beautiful June evening ; the 
 sun had set, but the clear sky was still softly 
 luminous, and the young moon grew brighter 
 every moment. Daisies swayed and danced 
 in the long reddish grass ; the green corn 
 rustled faintly ; a murmur of the sea came out 
 of the distance if ever the wind was still for 
 a moment.
 
 166 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 Nancy was going to interview the woman of 
 the evil eye, who dwelt in a ruinous hovel 
 where the high-road skirts the great moorland. 
 She was assured that no natural causes had 
 sapped her strength in the weeks which were 
 past ; she was now resolved to fight her hidden 
 enemy with the only potent weapon, opposing 
 influence to influence. 
 
 She had not gone far before a clump of 
 broken and distorted pine-trees, standing clear- 
 etched against the sky, marked her destination ; 
 for the moor slopes upward for the space of 
 three or four hundred yards on the north of 
 the road, and at its highest point stands the 
 plantation. The cottage of the white witch lay 
 beyond this, on its cold northern side. 
 
 The darkness grew as she went on, and 
 when she had stepped out upon the moorland 
 the pine wood was a black mass before her. 
 Nevertheless she advanced through the wood 
 towards the cottage. And suddenly, as she 
 reached its outskirts, her heart stood still with 
 sudden fright For a man stepped out of the 
 darkness and laid a hand upon her arm. 
 ' Hush ! ' he said, ' hush ! ' 
 
 For a moment terror kept her silent. Then
 
 THE SISTERS 167 
 
 she recognised him. ' George ! ' she said, in a 
 hoarse whisper. 
 
 Evidently he also had not recognised to 
 whom he spoke. ' You ! ' he said. ' Jennett 's 
 in there talking with Mary Cundy. I happened 
 to be walking across the moor and saw her 
 come this way. And I followed, for I knew 
 then why you were so sick and ill. Go forth 
 as quiet as you can, and put your ear to a 
 chink of the wall.' 
 
 Trembling with fear and excitement Nancy 
 crept forward and listened. Jennett was 
 speaking angrily. 
 
 '. . . . fooling me! I thought at first that 
 all was going well. She was weak, and pale, 
 and wretched, and couldn' try to pretend no 
 other. But last night there was a change in 
 her ; she had thrown off the tiredness that was 
 dragging her down to the grave. And to-day 
 the change is greater : she is pale still, and her 
 cheeks are thin ; but, for all that, her strength 
 is come back to her. She began singing once, 
 and until to-day she has forgotten all her songs 
 since she wronged me. Tell me, Mary Cundy, 
 art foolin' me? Tis a game that'll hardly 
 pay, if you '11 believe me.' 

 
 168 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 Nancy listened, trembling, to the reply of 
 the old woman. 
 
 ' Fooling 'ee ? ' she said indignantly, ' and all 
 because the girl's in better spirits one day 
 than another? Aren't there ups and downs 
 in every illness? I suppose she took the 
 medicine?' 
 
 Jennett laughed hatefully. 'Never mother 
 was more careful with a child like to die. I 've 
 seen her take it with my own eyes. But to-day 
 I have almost tired of these slow measures. 
 She poisons the air for me, and spoils the 
 sunshine. Can you not make haste ? ' 
 
 ' Haste would spoil the sunshine, in very 
 truth, and maybe stop the need of air for both 
 of us,' replied the crone. ' Can you not have 
 patience, when you know that she will die? 
 What does it matter that she has some few 
 days yet to live ? You will see the grass green 
 on her grave.' 
 
 Penhalleck had crept forward and put his 
 arm about Nancy. 
 
 ' She shall hang first ! ' he muttered. ' She 
 shall hang!' He drew his sweetheart closer 
 to him, as Jennett spoke again. 
 
 ' Ay,' she said. ' We must wait. I suppose.
 
 THE SISTERS 169 
 
 But, oh ! the days are hateful to me while she 
 lives. Give me the powder.' 
 
 George Penhalleck moved softly along the 
 wall of the house until he stood outside the 
 window. There was a light within, and this 
 revealed to him the face of his old sweetheart 
 as she waited for the poison. He saw her hide 
 it in her breast and hand some money to the 
 witch. Then he crept back to Nancy's side. 
 
 'Go forth and knock at the door,' he said. 
 ' I shall be close to you.' 
 
 The girl shrunk from him, fearing to face the 
 woman who had striven to murder her. But 
 he persisted. She yielded and stepped forward, 
 raising her hand to knock. But at that instant 
 the door was opened, and the sisters were face 
 to face. Jennett started backwards, and her 
 hand rose swiftly towards her breast. But in a 
 moment she had recovered her self-command. 
 
 ' What ! ' she cried scornfully, ' fallen so low 
 already that you must go seeking charms to 
 keep what you stole in so short a time ? Lord, 
 I could find it in my heart to pity you ! 
 Mother, here 's another come to get advice ; and 
 remember the thief's helper should get hand- 
 some payment ! '
 
 i;o WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 Nancy stood silent ; the old woman watched 
 the scene from a corner of the room. But 
 at the end of Jennett's outbreak Penhalleck 
 stepped forward out of his concealment. And 
 before he had time to speak a word Jennett 
 had perceived the meaning of the scene. 
 
 'So,' she said, 'you have spied upon me! 
 Well, you have heard pretty tidings ! ' 
 
 Penhalleck trembled. ' You shall hang ! ' he 
 said. 'You shall hang, if my own hands put 
 the rope about your neck.' 
 
 And Jennett laughed. She stepped quickly 
 to the table, on which there stood a cup of water. 
 Before she could be stopped she had emptied 
 a white powder into it out of a packet she 
 took from her breast. She drained the cup. 
 Then she turned and faced her old lover again. 
 
 'Man/ she said, 'you would think justice 
 done if I were hanged in the sight of all the 
 world. And I did long to kill your pretty doll ; 
 I hated the world while she was in it. But 
 remember, George Penhalleck, that when you 
 had found all out I could still scorn you, and 
 your scorn of me. I go a long journey to- 
 night, but this I know that the place I go to 
 holds none but is your better.'
 
 THE SISTERS 171 
 
 She paused. ' Good-bye, old woman,' she 
 said. Then she stepped past the lovers into 
 the darkness which brooded over the moorland : 
 going forth to die, like some wild animal, under 
 the cloak of the vast night.
 
 A PAGAN DREAM 
 
 I CLIMBED the hillside under the hot sun by 
 the pathway through the heather. Reaching the 
 summit, I mounted upon the ancient granite 
 altar. Below me were the ugly villages and 
 towns ; wide regions of the country were 
 desolated by the work of miners ; beyond these 
 was the great sea. I stretched myself upon the 
 altar, where human victims had once lain, and 
 dreamed of the old time. 
 
 Gradually I lost consciousness of the blue 
 sky and the larks' singing, though perhaps not 
 altogether of that distant, satisfying gleam of 
 the sea. A vision of this hillside lying beneath 
 a melancholy evening sky invaded my senses, 
 and I knew that I beheld things which had 
 happened here in the old days, whose deeds are 
 no longer kept in memory. 
 
 There was a gathering of men and women 
 about the ancient granite pile ; they were dark-
 
 A PAGAN DREAM 173 
 
 haired, and of less than the common stature : 
 clad in garments of skins and undyed wool. 
 They spoke but little, and that in a language 
 incomprehensible to me ; but their eyes gleamed 
 with an evident excitement. Whatever might 
 be the event they awaited, it was plain that 
 some among them were very loth to witness it. 
 
 Presently an old man appeared among them, 
 at whose presence all grew silent, though such 
 of them as had seemed angry before eyed him 
 askance, with manifest ill-will. His aspect was 
 terrible indeed. He wore a tunic of white 
 wool, and over it a cloak made out of the skins 
 of wolves ; his feet were sandalled. His long 
 iron-grey hair fell upon his shoulders, but the 
 forehead was shaven, and the front ridge of the 
 hair jagged into teeth, as it were. I thought 
 immediately of the Druids and of the ' magical 
 rule ' which was seen upon their heads ; but I 
 knew he was none of these, for about his neck 
 was a cord, from which there hung a cross of 
 bone. 
 
 The man moved about among the people, 
 and some of them spoke to him willingly 
 enough ; but there were others who seemed loth 
 to answer, and still eyed him sombrely. It
 
 174 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 was evident they all were waiting until certain 
 others should come. 
 
 And soon they turned, when one cried aloud, 
 and pointed down the pathway which climbed 
 through the tall heather and the stunted oaks. 
 A young man was slowly mounting, bending to 
 talk with a girl who advanced at his side. It 
 seemed he was encouraging her to persist in 
 some undertaking from which she shrank with 
 overmastering fear. As they drew near (the 
 excitement of those who stood by the altar 
 now increasing) I saw that she was clad less 
 rudely than the others, and possessed a certain 
 nobility of mien and carriage. About her neck 
 there was a torque of yellow gold, and there 
 were heavy golden bracelets upon her bare 
 arms. 
 
 The young man was entreating her to have 
 courage, and she came forth with him linger- 
 ingly and most unwillingly until they had 
 reached the summit. It appeared that some 
 of the people held her in great reverence, and 
 these were they who had looked angrily at the 
 priest The others seemed to welcome and 
 encourage her, but from these she shrank with 
 something of loathing, and not a little disdain.
 
 A PAGAN DREAM 175 
 
 Of the priest alone did she appear to stand in 
 dread. 
 
 Silence fell on the people. The old man 
 stepped upon a smaller table of granite which 
 stood near the great altar-pile, and began to 
 speak in a strange tongue. Sometimes he 
 seemed as one possessed, accusing the people 
 of unpardonable sin, and warning them of the 
 judgment they should inherit ; sometimes again 
 he essayed to speak comfortably to them, 
 though his worn face and the jagged horror 
 of his hair made him appear more fitly the 
 messenger of wrath and of damnation than of 
 the great peace of God. 
 
 And the people who listened cared less for 
 what he told them of the mercy of God than 
 for what he spoke when, raving, he manifestly 
 talked to them of the horrors of the judgment. 
 A fierce excitement grew among them ; even 
 while he still spoke they began to cry out, their 
 faces working with passion. But still there were 
 some who seemed to participate unwillingly. 
 
 At last the old man was silent. He brought 
 forth a cake which had been baked among the 
 embers, and broke it into fragments. Then he 
 poured wine into a golden cup.
 
 176 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 The people fell back, forming a circle in 
 which the young man and the girl stood face 
 to face with the priest. A dreadful fear was 
 visible in her eyes ; it was as though she saw 
 death incarnate in horrid form before her. 
 
 The priest came forward and addressed her 
 in wheedling tones of entreaty and encourage- 
 ment ; but she turned from him shuddering, 
 and hid her face upon the shoulder of her lover. 
 Then he took up the task of persuasion. For 
 some time the girl made as if she did not hear 
 him, hiding her face. Finally, as his entreaty 
 grew more urgent, she once more faced the 
 priest, her face still eloquent of the agony and 
 conflict existing within her. A look of triumph 
 came into the eyes of the grey priest. 
 
 The people drew closer, pressing round the 
 two who stood within the circle. At a word 
 from the priest the youth knelt, and the girl, 
 hesitating for a moment, did likewise. Then 
 he took the broken bread and, muttering un- 
 intelligibly, gave a portion of it to each. 
 
 The youth ate the portion which had been 
 given to him, but the girl still held back. 
 Finally, she took the morsel, glanced desperately 
 into the face of her lover, and strove to swallow
 
 A PAGAN DREAM 177 
 
 it. But the holy bread seemed like to choke 
 her ; a great fear grew in her wild eyes. Then 
 the priest took the golden cup and gave it into 
 her hands that she might drink. She raised it 
 to her mouth and drank a little of the wine, 
 but it had no sooner passed her lips than she 
 choked again. For a moment she strove to 
 master herself; then, with a cry of utter fear, 
 she sprang to her feet, letting the golden cup 
 fall, so that the wine of the sacrament was 
 spilled upon the turf. 
 
 Yet again she struggled for a moment against 
 the agony which tore her. Then, yielding 
 suddenly as a dam broken by weight of water, 
 she fell prone upon the ground, her body 
 tortured with the pangs of dissolution, her eyes 
 eloquent of horrid fear. For a space she 
 writhed there ; then, while the others still 
 watched in helpless panic, she lay still. 
 
 And the lover cried aloud and knelt over 
 her, seeing that she was dead ; but the priest 
 stood and faced the crowd. 
 
 For a murmur arose among them. A stone 
 flew through the air, and the jagged ridge upon 
 the old man's forehead was bloody. For a 
 while there was much tumult, the people being 
 
 M
 
 i;8 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 divided among themselves. But in the end of 
 my dream I beheld them turn upon the grey 
 priest and stone him until he lay dead beside 
 the girl. 
 
 And so I awoke. 
 
 Below me were the ugly little towns, but 
 now my eyes passed beyond them to dwell on 
 the shining sea. Even so had the pagan girl 
 beheld it, a leaden line, in the moment of her 
 death. Long ago her history passed out of 
 memory, nor is it any longer told among the 
 people how the priest died on the hillside. 
 But the altar of the old gods stands to this day 
 upon the Carn Dhu, nor are they cheated of 
 their proper worship. 
 
 For they were the gods of our fathers, and 
 live again in us ; so that, if a man strive to cast 
 them out of his heart, which they inhabit, he 
 must surely die himself, even as the girl died 
 by this old altar, centuries ago.
 
 THE LAST PAGAN 
 
 IT was long since the grey priests, voyaging 
 from overseas, had landed in the country. 
 The story of their coming had already become 
 an old, dark tale, and men shuddered for the 
 wickedness of dimly-realised forefathers, who 
 had slain many of the strangers by the altars 
 of the gods they strove to dispossess. Now 
 those gods were dethroned, and their names 
 almost passed out of memory. The altars 
 were cold. The priests, already regarding 
 themselves as members of an order long estab- 
 lished in the land, had seized upon the holy 
 places and proclaimed themselves the inter- 
 preters of their mysteries : so that if water 
 healed, or a sick child recovered strength when 
 it had been passed at sunrise through the 
 holed stone, the people no longer gave thanks 
 to the old gods, who had been wont to confer 
 their mercies by these means throughout all
 
 i8o WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 the centuries which had been before the coming 
 of the priests from overseas. 
 
 Even the senseless dead might no longer 
 get the purification of flame. There was 
 need that their miserable bodies should be 
 kept whole, and so they were laid in 
 graves digged in the earth, where the unclean 
 worm might prey on them ; and the grey 
 priests muttered prayers above, and sprinkled 
 water themselves had sanctified by virtue of 
 their words. For they had waxed strong in 
 the land, taking toll of all who visited the 
 holy places which had been holy long before 
 their coming ; and the people dared not speak 
 of the faith which their fathers had held. 
 
 But there was one man whom the priests 
 had ever hated ; for he had made a mock of 
 their teaching, saying he would still worship 
 the gods who revealed themselves in moon 
 and sun, in the green of leaves and grass, 
 and in the abiding silences of hills and moor- 
 land. All his life long they had followed him 
 with heavy persecution, bidding all men shun 
 him, and making it a virtue to injure him. 
 
 For, whilst he was young, he had conformed 
 to the teaching of one who was before them
 
 THE LAST PAGAN 181 
 
 in the land ; and, because it was told him that 
 the old gods would assuredly betray their 
 worshippers to eternal flames, he had per- 
 suaded the girl whom he loved to do likewise. 
 But the holy bread had choked her, the wine 
 of the sacrament been as poison : so that she 
 died before the grey priest on the Carn Dhu. 
 And the people had stoned the priest until 
 he died upon the hillside ; and this man had 
 cast off the new faith, fearing the gods who 
 had shown the might of their anger in the 
 death of the girl whom he loved. 
 
 And so, when the priests got power, this 
 man was taken as the incarnation of the old 
 things against which they had fought and still 
 were fighting : for the old things were deep 
 in the hearts even of those who denied them 
 altogether. Yet he was also a common man, 
 and open to the full effect of their malice. 
 
 Had they held full sway he must have 
 perished very quickly; but, though he was 
 old beyond all others in that country, there 
 were still some in whose hearts the voices of 
 the banished gods spoke. Because the power 
 of the priests was great, and to disobey them 
 dangerous, they feigned to do in all things
 
 182 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 as they commanded. But, for some reason 
 less plain to themselves, they also feared the 
 gods they had put away ; and the outcast, 
 being able to tell them what was their will, 
 had a power among them which was all the 
 greater because they usually carried themselves 
 as if they also hated and scorned him. 
 
 The old man dwelt alone in a cave upon 
 the summit of a great stony hill above the sea ; 
 and upon a certain day (a festival of the for- 
 gotten gods) the people to whom he had been 
 a teacher gathered here as soon as darkness 
 had fallen over the land and they could come 
 unseen. 
 
 They found the old man waiting, seated 
 upon a block of stone at the mouth of the 
 cave, his face like the face of the dead. And 
 when he had seen them he spoke. 
 
 ' My children,' he said, ' the weight of many 
 years is upon me, and I sink swiftly towards 
 death. More things than ye know of will die 
 with me.' 
 
 The people wailed, and cried aloud in their 
 distress, saying, ' Who shall teach us the things 
 men need to know, if thou be taken from us ? 
 What can the grey priests tell us ? '
 
 THE LAST PAGAN 183 
 
 The old man sighed. ' The gods will return/ 
 he said. ' The priests will yet be driven into 
 the sea whence they came, though it may be 
 the youngest among you will not see the day. 
 But, since I am to die, let me die utterly, and 
 not feed the worms. I shall pass before the 
 sunrise. Stay with me until then, and, when 
 the spirit is gone out of me, lay a stone against 
 the mouth of the cave and go hence, saying 
 nothing to the priests. But at night do ye 
 come back ; and let my body be burned and 
 the ashes of it cast into the sea. It is not 
 proper I should be laid in earth. Do ye 
 promise ? ' 
 
 And the people promised. 
 
 Then the old man stretched himself upon 
 a couch of heather within the cave, and before 
 the sun was risen he died, even as he had 
 foretold. The people watched in silence, and 
 when the spirit was gone out of him they laid 
 a great stone against the mouth of the cave 
 and went into their own homes. 
 
 . Throughout the day they were as the folk 
 around them, but at night they stole forth 
 to the hill above the sea, bearing logs and 
 cloven wood. They cut the tall heather where
 
 184 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 it grew, and piled the logs upon it, working 
 in silence and awe, because of the old man 
 who lay dead in the cave hard by. And when 
 the pyre was raised they moved away the 
 stone which had closed the mouth of the cave 
 and bore him thither. Then one of them 
 brought dried leaves and laid them among 
 the heather under the logs, and with a flint 
 struck a spark which kindled them. At first 
 there was only smoke. Then a flame began 
 to spread among the heather, and the people 
 stood back. 
 
 The flames grew, and the burning heather 
 hissed and crackled. As the tawny golden 
 smoke parted before the wind they saw the 
 white face of the old man lying as in sleep on a 
 cushion of brown fern. And when the wood 
 caught fire the spirit of song came upon them, 
 and they danced about the pyre, chanting a 
 hymn which he had taught them. 
 
 They sang of the forgotten gods who made 
 the corn to grow and the earth to be clothed in 
 loveliness : the gods who made the hills for 
 their habitation, revealed themselves in the 
 shining of moon and sun and stars, and gave to 
 men the fire which purifies. And while they
 
 THE LAST PAGAN 185 
 
 sang the hissing flames leapt higher and higher, 
 and the old man sank into them as a sodden 
 log sinks in water. Now some fetched more 
 heather, and tore thick branches from the old 
 trailing gorse to fling on the pile, whilst the 
 others still continued to sing, dancing about 
 the flames as their dead fathers had been wont 
 to do. 
 
 But the stars had travelled long in their 
 courses, and the sky turned grey. Gradually 
 the people ceased from singing, and the fire 
 sank lower and lower. They stood silent at 
 last, and the chill light of the morning showed a 
 pile of grey ashes, with glowing embers under- 
 neath. They could trace the outline of some- 
 thing dimly resembling the figure of a man. 
 
 A cold wind came from the sea, so that 
 they shivered, and the light ash was blown 
 against them. 
 
 Then a man brought forth a great earthen 
 vessel, and into this they collected the ashes, 
 still interspersed with glowing embers. Small 
 flames broke out again as they stirred the pile, 
 but lasted only a little time. Presently the 
 task of the men was ended. The sky turned 
 rose-red as they descended, making for a high
 
 186 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 point of the coast. The larks had begun to 
 sing, but the sea lay livid and grey in the 
 shadow of the cliff. 
 
 They paused a moment, then flung the 
 earthen vessel from them. It turned in falling, 
 and a smoke of grey dust was scattered in the 
 air. The charred bones fell more swiftly ; and, 
 as the sea-gulls rose, circling and screaming in 
 the gloom which hung about the face of the 
 cliff, the men turned from the sea and went into 
 their own homes.
 
 THE GREY WOLF 
 
 AT dusk the wolves moved soundlessly among 
 the oaks on the Cam Dhu ; and when the 
 darkness followed, the night was filled with 
 the noise of their howling. Now, the Father of 
 all the wolves, a giant among the beasts, was 
 hated even as he was feared. For many a child, 
 wandering late, had died by his fangs, yet no 
 man had been able to kill him, though the task 
 had often been essayed by those who had the 
 spur of fierce grief. And so a host of super- 
 stitions hung about the huge grey beast, and 
 there were many who believed it was beyond 
 the power of man to rid the earth of him. 
 
 But one day a girl of that country went forth 
 from her home in the dusk, and when deep 
 night had fallen she was still away. Dawn 
 came, and she had not returned. And a hunter, 
 a man who loved her, came to her home with 
 haggard face and spoke in a voice hardly to be
 
 i88 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 understood for choking passion. As he went 
 through the woods in the dawn he had come 
 upon a mangled human body. Standing above 
 it he had perceived it to be the body of a 
 woman. Kneeling with sudden fear and look- 
 ing more closely, he had seen that this was 
 the girl he loved. And immediately he swore 
 a great oath : for he knew well that this 
 was the work of the grey wolf whom all men 
 feared. 
 
 The torn and desecrated body was brought 
 home and the funeral rites conducted. But of 
 all this the hunter knew nothing. A passion of 
 revenge had taken hold on him, and he went 
 forth into the woods and moorlands, a great 
 bronze axe in his hand, seeking for the grey 
 wolf that he might kill him. 
 
 Day after day he sought his enemy, growing 
 white and haggard for lack of food, and through 
 the torture of unappeased desire. Sometimes 
 he cried aloud in his madness, taunting the 
 huge beast which still avoided him. He had 
 gone forth thinking he must needs be led 
 straightway to the lair of his enemy, and slay 
 him in fair fight, rending his limbs asunder 
 even as the white limbs of the dead girl had
 
 THE GREY WOLF 189 
 
 been torn. But after many days he understood 
 the cunning of the old grey wolf, and knew that 
 he also must fight by subterfuge if he would 
 attain his end. 
 
 He found a place in the hillside where the 
 trees stood apart, and the grass grew long and 
 rank in the shadow of grey rocks. Then he 
 brought a kid, not yet weaned, and fettered it 
 in the midst of the open space. He hid himself 
 hard by, and watched ; his hand still clung to 
 the haft of the axe. 
 
 The kid soon bleated miserably, finding little 
 sustenance in the rank grass it cropped. The 
 man watched it, not all without pity ; and ever, 
 as the kid grew weaker and more thin, himself 
 became more and more haggard. For the 
 passion that filled him, being still unsatisfied, 
 fed upon the springs of life, burning like a fire 
 within him. Two days went by, and two 
 nights ; and often the hunter's heart leapt 
 within him, when he heard the howl of a wolf, 
 a sudden noise of underwood thrust apart, or 
 the crack of a dry branch trodden upon. But 
 it seemed as if the terror of his presence and 
 his purpose announced itself to all the beasts 
 of the forest. Often he knew that his enemy
 
 190 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 was near. Yet the old wolf never came to that 
 space in the midst of the woods. 
 
 Throughout the second night of his watching 
 a cold rain fell and a bitter wind came in gusts 
 from the sea. The bleating of the kid was 
 infrequent and weak almost to extinction ; the 
 man himself lived only in virtue of the wild 
 desire of vengeance which inhabited him. The 
 night aged, and the sky turned to a grey smoke 
 of rain-cloud. And suddenly a rotten branch 
 snapped. 
 
 The hunter gripped his axe and stood upon 
 the alert, his heart beating in great thumping 
 beats against the walls of its cavern. The wind 
 came and went. Then the kid bleated pitifully, 
 as the grey wolf stole round a corner of the 
 rocks. And the hunter cried aloud and flung 
 his axe at the head of his enemy. The huge 
 beast snarled and paused, bewildered and 
 blinded by the weight of the blow ; and the 
 man leapt forward in an instant, himself no 
 other than a beast of the fields. 
 
 For a long time that space among the rocks 
 was as the pit of hell ; for the man and the wolf 
 fought together with the weapons God gave 
 them ; and the grey wolf was filled with terror,
 
 THE GREY WOLF 191 
 
 but the man thought only of the dead girl, and 
 that his enemy was beneath his hands. And 
 so, in the end, he arose, the blood falling in 
 heavy drops from gaping wounds in limbs and 
 chest. But the gaunt wolf was stretched upon 
 the coarse grass, dead. 
 
 For awhile the hunter stood beside the body, 
 swaying to and fro with faintness. A blindness 
 had come upon him. But when the kid bleated 
 again he bent and released it, watching it 
 absently as it went into the woods. And it 
 seemed to him that he had long since come to 
 the end of his life. He had died when the girl 
 lay dead and that passion of revenge entered 
 into his body ; but until it was satisfied he did 
 not recognise what had befallen him. Now he 
 stood haggard in the ashen dawn and knew 
 himself to be no more a man than the ghosts 
 which dwell in hills by the sea, or in the mounds 
 raised where the bodies of heroes were laid long 
 since. He looked at the grim body of the wolf 
 and knew that his life was ended, though he 
 had not attained to the peace of death. And 
 he wondered what he should do with his life 
 that was not life. 
 
 But the wind came through the woods, and
 
 192 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 the voice of it spoke in his heart. He took the 
 axe of bronze, and cut a staff from an oak : for 
 he was weak with wounds and fasting, and 
 because his aim had been accomplished. His 
 path as he travelled was marked with blood. 
 For he turned from his dead enemy, and walked 
 through the lonely country, towards the cold 
 North. 
 
 At first he hardly comprehended to what end 
 he was moving. But gradually the voice which 
 had called him, speaking in the wind, conveyed 
 the knowledge he lacked. He had a vision of 
 the great sea which should presently purge him 
 of his life. He grew weaker and weaker as he 
 advanced through the woods and over the rough 
 and marshy ground ; yet he suffered no pain or 
 weariness. An exquisite calm fell on him, and 
 all his thoughts were dreams of the great peace 
 of death. And so he came at last to the high 
 cliffs. 
 
 The sun had risen, but the waters were cold 
 and grey in the shadow of the cliffs. For a 
 moment they repelled him, and he became 
 distantly aware of his deathly weakness. But 
 the sea spoke soothingly, and he climbed down- 
 wards, moving like a man entranced by some
 
 THE GREY WOLF 193 
 
 spell of magical words. He gained the lowest 
 rocks and the waves were at his feet. He 
 paused and closed his eyes, as if for sleep. 
 Then he fell forward, and in a moment the sea 
 had taken him. 
 
 N
 
 THE COWARD 
 
 THERE were two who loved the maiden : one 
 of them a chieftain, whose word was as the law 
 over many miles of moor and forest ; the other 
 a mere hunter, born only that he might sur- 
 render all desires even to the desire of living 
 at the will of men stronger or more sagacious. 
 And the maiden hated the great chief ; for the 
 hunter was more to her than life itself. 
 
 When the tidings came that the chief had 
 chosen her for his consort, she had but one 
 thought : to resist the irresistible, and continue 
 faithful to him she had chosen to love. The 
 night before, she had gathered from the de- 
 meanour of her parents that some great matter 
 had befallen. They treated her with a new 
 deference ; and jested obscurely. In the morn- 
 ing her mother told her ; and throughout the 
 day the girl sat spinning with rude implements 
 before the low door of the hut, a passion of
 
 THE COWARD 195 
 
 revolt at her heart. She did not speak. But 
 when the night was almost fallen she put aside 
 her work and went forth to the trysting-place 
 among the stunted oaks which covered the 
 slopes of the Cam Dhu. 
 
 She sat silently upon a block of the grey 
 moorstone, her face bowed upon her hands ; 
 and presently her lover came to meet her. She 
 was a creature magnificently tall and strong : 
 a daughter of the wide waste-lands and the 
 open air, as yet unbowed by labour in the 
 scanty clearings where the yellow wheat was 
 tilled. But the hunter was small beyond the 
 most of his fellows, and none too skilful in the 
 chase. It was only when tired hunters gathered 
 about the great fire at the day's end, and there 
 was need of some one to sing of what others 
 did, that he became a man of some importance. 
 Yet the girl loved him, and took his least word 
 for the law of her soul. 
 
 The man came forth to greet her, a light 
 song upon his lips ; but when he had looked 
 upon her face he too was silent. And in a few 
 words she told him of the evil thing which had 
 come upon them, and entreated him to devise 
 some plan whereby they might escape. A
 
 196 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 feeling which might have grown into distrust 
 came over her as she watched him and heard 
 his ineffectual words. Beyond a doubt he loved 
 her with all his strength ; but he feared the 
 great chief, and could find no counsel, but only 
 lamentations, and passionate declarations of his 
 love. 
 
 The girl sat silent, a shadow as of the dark 
 night of death upon her face ; the stars came 
 out above them. She seemed to be unconscious 
 of his caresses ; and presently she arose, almost 
 thrusting him from her. 'There is one thing 
 left/ she said. ' What life awaits us when we 
 have passed from the light of sun and moon we 
 know not. It may be that in the narrow house 
 of the grave we are dead, even as the stones 
 above us are dead. But in the grave we shall 
 abide together, and it were better to be dust 
 together than to live apart. We must die.' 
 
 Once again her lover broke forth with 
 declarations of his passion, and vain obloquies 
 against the chief who had robbed them of their 
 happiness. But the girl, standing with white 
 face under a bare oak, repeated that which she 
 had said : ' We must die together, since to live 
 were to be parted.'
 
 THE COWARD 197 
 
 And so, at last, the man consented. ' When 
 the sun rises over the hills yonder,' said the 
 girl, ' I will rid myself of life. Do thou die also 
 in the self-same moment, and come with me to 
 discover what lies beyond. Call my name in 
 the moment of death, and my soul shall seek 
 thine, that we may go together.' 
 
 Then they parted. In the morning the 
 hunter watched for the rising of the sun. The 
 sky turned from the hue of night to morning 
 grey, and the larks soared ; then the heavens 
 were blue, and a light fleece of cloud shone 
 rose-red in the West. And presently the 
 radiance of the East grew stronger ; a rim of 
 gold appeared above the dark hills, and the 
 man knew that the hour of his death was come. 
 He listened and suddenly it seemed to him 
 that a voice shrilled over the hushed land 
 calling his name. He staggered where he 
 stood, and raised the knife of bronze to his 
 breast But it had pleased the gods to make 
 him a coward. In the moment when he should 
 have slain himself he flung the knife away from 
 him, and fell forward in a swoon. 
 
 Later, he recovered ; but the sun was now 
 high in the heavens, and as he came to himself he
 
 ig8 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 heard a distant sound of wailing. The maiden 
 had kept the faith which he had broken, casting 
 herself from a high rock when the sun first rose 
 in the East. They were conveying her body 
 into the house of her father. 
 
 From that time forth the hunter loathed the 
 life for whose sake he had become forsworn. 
 He would have slain himself had he not feared 
 to meet her, now that she knew how great a 
 coward he was. He neither ate nor drank ; 
 the neighbourhood of his fellows was hateful to 
 him. But presently, in the course of his 
 wanderings, he met a little child, and asked 
 many questions. And it was told him that the 
 chief, who had loved the dead girl no less than 
 himself had loved her, was resolved that she 
 should have the burial of a chieftain's wife. 
 Even now they were building a great house of 
 granite in which she should lie ; and, when she 
 had been laid in it, and the earth piled above, 
 a man was to be slain to guard and serve her 
 in the dark world which lies on the farther side 
 of death. 
 
 Still the lover wandered alone in solitary 
 places, touching neither food nor drink. But 
 presently he heard that all the people were to
 
 THE COWARD 199 
 
 be assembled, in order that the companion and 
 slave of the dead girl the man to be offered 
 to the gods as the price of her felicity might 
 be chosen after the appointed fashion. He 
 had gotten strength in these days of darkness. 
 And at the time fixed he joined the crowd of 
 his fellows, looking forward to death with a 
 glad heart 
 
 The Druids had already kindled a huge fire 
 of gorse and heather, mingled with the dead 
 branches of trees, on the summit of the Carn 
 Dhu. Already the night had fallen. And at 
 a given word, when the flame rose highest, the 
 company joined hands and formed a circle 
 about the fire. The Druids stood aloof, clad in 
 coarse linen and grey wolf-skins ; the hair 
 shaven from their foreheads, and jagged into 
 horrid teeth in the front ridge. And when the 
 circle was complete, they began to chant a 
 hymn of the old gods, while the people moved 
 about the fire. 
 
 At first they went slowly, knowing that death 
 hovered above them, to fall swiftly upon him 
 who should first break hands. And the golden 
 flames showed white faces, and eyes filled with 
 fear. But the hymn which the Druids chanted
 
 200 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES 
 
 quickly made them drunken, as with the strong 
 wine of the heather ; and soon they ran about 
 the flames, rushing in upon them at intervals 
 with shouts and screamings, and themselves 
 chanting the praises of their gods. 
 
 The chief stood watching behind the group 
 of the Druids. In his hand was a huge axe of 
 green jade a sacred thing, which had travelled 
 in the course of centuries, and through many 
 hands, out of Asia. And if ever a man lost his 
 footing or staggered in the circling of the 
 company, he grasped it more firmly, and 
 seemed about to spring forward. 
 
 But, suddenly, a great resolve which had 
 been forming in the mind of the man who 
 loved the dead girl moved him to action. He 
 tore himself away from the ring, and, turning, 
 faced the Druids and the man who watched 
 and waited behind them. 
 
 The chief dashed forward, raising the axe of 
 green jade. But the hunter cried aloud, filling 
 the vast night with the sound of the dead girl's 
 name. ' I come ! ' he cried, ' I come ! ' And in 
 that moment the axe fell, and he sprawled 
 upon the ground, his skull cloven to the chin. 
 The others fled horror-stricken into the night,
 
 THE COWARD 201 
 
 leaving his body to the Druids, and to the 
 chieftain who had slain him. 
 
 But a voice came out of the darkness, from 
 where the sea lay, and the name it called across 
 the moor and the woodlands was the name of 
 him who lay dead and bloody in the red light 
 of the fire. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press
 
 NOTE 
 
 OF these stories the first and two others are new 
 to print. The others have appeared in The National 
 Observer, Pall Mall Gazette, Speaker, Black and 
 White, English Illustrated, and Sylvia 's Journal, 
 and are here presented by permission of their 
 Editors.
 
 John Lane 
 
 Efjr BobUo &eatj 
 VIGO STREET, LONDON, W. 
 
 THE KEYNOTES SERIES. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth. Each volume with a Title-page and Cover 
 Design by AUBREY BEARDSLEY. 35. 6d. net. 
 
 i. KEYNOTES. By GEORGE EGERTON. Sixth Edition, 
 ii. THE DANCING FAUN. By FLORENCE FARR. 
 
 in. POOR FOLK. By FEDOR DOSTOIEVSKY. Translated 
 from the Russian by LENA MILMAN. With an 
 Introduction by GEORGB MOORE. 
 
 iv. A CHILD OF THB AGE. By FRANCIS ADAMS. 
 
 v. THE GREAT GOD PAN AND THE INMOST LIGHT. 
 By ARTHUR MACHEN. 
 
 vi. DISCORDS. By GEORGE EGERTON. Third Edition, 
 vn. PRINCE ZALESKI. By M. P. SHIEI.. 
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 Copyright Editions of the volumes of the KEYNOTES 
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 POOR FOLK. Translated from the Russian of FEDOR 
 DOSTOIEVSKY. By LENA MILMAN. With an Intro- 
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 Design by AUBREY BEARDSLKY. Crown 8vo, 3$. 6d. net. 
 
 ' The book is cleverly translated. " Poor Folk " gains in reality and pathos 
 by the very means that in less skilful hands would be tedious and common- 
 place. ' Spectator. 
 
 ' A charming story of the love of a Charles Lamb kind of old bachelor 
 for a young work-girl. Full of quiet humour and still more full of the 
 lachryma rtrum.' Star. 
 
 ' Scenes of poignant realism, described with so admirable a blending of 
 humour and pathos that they haunt the memory.' Daily Newt. 
 
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 pathos. ' Scotsman. 
 
 ' The book is one of great pathos and absorbing interest. Miss Milman 
 has given us an admirable version of it which will commend itself to every 
 one who cares for good literature.' C/<UOtv Herald. 
 
 'These things seem small, but in the hands of Dostoievsky they make 
 a work of genius.' Black and White. 
 
 'One of the most pathetic things in all literature, heartrending just 
 because its tragedy is so repressed.' Bookman, 
 
 ' As to novels, the very finest I have read of late or for long is " Poor Folk, 
 oy Fedor Dostoievsky, translated by Miss Lena Milman.' Truth, 
 
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 the way has turned it into excellent English.' Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
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 vey to us a cry from the depths of a famished human soul. As far as we 
 can judge, the English rendering, though simple, retains that ring of 
 emotion which must distinguish the original.' \Vtstmituttr Review. 
 
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 ever written.' Daily Telegraph. 
 
 ' " Poor Folk" is certainly a vivid and pathetic story.' Globe. 
 
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 Pott. 
 
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 translator.' Queen. 
 
 1 This admirable translation of a great auth ' Liverpool Mercury. 
 
 ' " Poor Folk" Englished does not read like a translation indubitably a 
 masterpiece.' Literary World. 
 
 ' Told with a gradually deepening intensity and force, a pathetic truth- 
 fulness which lives in the memory.' Leeds Mercury. 
 
 ' What Charles Dickens in his attempts to reproduce the sentiment and 
 pathos of the bumble deceived himself and others into thinking that he did, 
 that Fedor Dostoievsky actually does.' Manchester Guardian. 
 
 ' It is a story that leaves the reader almost stunned. Miss Milman's 
 translation is admirable.' Gentlewoman. 
 
 ' The translation appears to be well done so far as we have compared it 
 with the original.' W. R. MORFILL in The Academy. 
 
 ' A most impressive and characteristic specimen of Russian fiction. 
 Those to whom Russian is a sealed book will be duly grateful to the trans- 
 lator (who has acquitted herself excellently), to Mr. Moore, and to the 
 publisher for this presentment of Dostoievsky's remarkable novel.' Times.
 
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 A CHILD OF THE AGE. By FRANCIS ADAMS. Title- 
 page and Giver Design by AUBREY BEARDSLEY. Crown 
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 1 English or foreign, there is no work among those now before me which 
 is so original as that of the late Francis Adams. " A Child of the Age " is 
 original, moving, often fascinating.' Academy. 
 
 'A great deal of cleverness and perhaps something more has gone to the 
 writing of " A Child of the Age." 'Vanity Fair. 
 
 ' It comes recognisably near to great excellence. There b a love episode 
 in this book which is certainly fine. Clearly conceived and expressed with 
 point. 1 Pall Mall Catettt. 
 
 ' Those whose actual experience or natural intuition will enable them to 
 see beneath the mere narrative, will appreciate the perfect art with which 
 a boy of nineteen this was the author's age when the book was written 
 has treated one of the most delicate subjects on which a man can write 
 the history of his own innermost feelings. Weekly Sun, 
 
 ' The book possesses a depth and clearness of insight, a delicacy of touch, 
 and a brilliancy and beauty of style very remarkable in so young a writer. ' 
 Weikly Scott matt, 
 
 '"A Child of the Age " is as fully saturated with the individuality of its 
 author as " Wuthering Heights" was saturated with the individuality of 
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 ' I am writing about the book because it is one yon should read, for it is 
 typical of a certain sort of character and contains some indubitable excel- 
 lences. 1 Pall Mall Budget. 
 
 ' Not faultless, indeed, but touched with the magic of real poetry ; with- 
 out the elaborate carving of the chisel. The love incident is exquisite and 
 exquisitely told. "Rosy" lives; her emotions stir us. Wonderfully sug- 
 gested in several ports of the work is the severe irony of nature before 
 profound human suffering.' Saturday Kevieiv. 
 
 'There is a bloom of romance npon their story which recalls I.ucy and 
 
 Richard Fever? I It is rarely that a novelist is able to suffuse his 
 
 story with the first rosy purity of passion as Mr. Adams has done in this 
 book.' Realm. 
 
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 Design by AUBREY BKARDSLEY. Crown 8vo, 35. 6d. 
 net 
 
 ' Since Mr. Stevenson played with the crucibles of science in " Dr. 
 Jekyll and Mr. Hyde " we have not encountered a more successful experi- 
 ment of the sort.' Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 ' Nothing so appalling as these tales has been given to publicity within 
 our remembrance ; in which, nevertheless, such ghastly fictions as Poe's 
 "Telltale Heart," Bulwer's "The House and the Brain," and Le Fanu's 
 " In a Glass Darkly" still are vividly present. The supernatural element 
 is utilised with extraordinary power and effectiveness in both these blood- 
 chilling masterpieces.' Daily Telegraph. 
 
 ' He imparts the shudder of awe without giving rise to a feeling of disgust. 
 \M me strongly advise anyone anxious for a real, durable thrill, to get it.' 
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 1 A nightmarish business it i* suggested, seemingly, by " Dr. Jekyll and 
 Mr. Hyde" and capital reading, we should say, for ghouls and vampires 
 in their leisure moments.' Daily Chronicle. 
 
 ' The rest we leave for those whose nerves are strong, merely saying that 
 since "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," we have read nothing so uncanny.' 
 Tkt Literary World. 
 
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 by two striking books, which carry on with much ability the traditions of 
 Sheridan Le Fanu : one is " The Great God Pan," by Arthur Macben.' 
 Star. 
 
 'Will arouse the sort of interest that was created by "Dr. Jekyll and 
 Mr. Hyde." The tales present a frankly impossible horror, which, never- 
 theless, kindles the imagination and excites a powerful curiosity. It is 
 almost a book of genius, and we are not sure that the safeguarding adverb 
 is not superfluous.' Birmingham Pott. 
 
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 shudder that one feels at the shadowed devil-mysteries of. "The Great God 
 Pan." ' Liver fool Mercury, 
 
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 familiarly known as making one's flesh creep, he can hardly do better than 
 read "The Great God Pan." 'Speaker. 
 
 ' For sheer gruesome horror Mr. Machen's story, "The Great God Pan," 
 surpasses anything that has been published for a long time.' Scotsman. 
 
 ' Nothing more striking or more skilful than this book has been produced 
 in the way of what one may call Borderland fiction since Mr. Stevenson's 
 indefatigable Brownies gave the world " Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." ' 
 Glasgow Herald. 
 
 The mysteries he deals with lie fat beyond the reach of ordinary human 
 experience, and as they are vague, though so horror-producing, he wisely 
 treats them with a reticence that, while it accords with the theme, im- 
 mensely heightens the effect.' Dundee Advertiser, 
 
 'The author is an artist, and tells his tale with reticence and grace, 
 hinting the demoniac secret at first obscurely, and only gradually permit- 
 ting the reader to divine how near to us are the infernal powers, and how 
 terribly they satiate their lusts and wreak their malice upon mankind. It 
 is a work of something like genius, fascinating and fearsome.' Btaajard 
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 DISCORDS. By GEORGE EGERTON. With Title-page and 
 Cover Design by AUBREY BEARDSLEY. Crown 8vo, 
 35. 6d. net. 
 
 We have the Heights as well as the depths of life. The transforming 
 touch of beauty is upon it, of that poetry of conception beneath whose spell 
 nothing is ugly or unclean.' Star. 
 
 'The writer is a warm-blooded enthusiast, not a cold-blooded 
 "scientist" In the long run perhaps it will do some goud.' fratiottal 
 Observer. 
 
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 equally present in this new volume. But there is also in at least equal 
 measure that artistic force and skill which went so far to overcome the 
 repugnance which many felt to the painful dissection of feminine nature.' 
 North British Daily Mail. 
 
 ' Korce of conception and power of vivid presentment mark these sketches, 
 and are sure to impress all who read them. Birmingham Post. 
 
 'Written with all "George Egertons" eloquence and tervour.' York- 
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 THE KEYNOTES SERIES 
 
 ' It almost takes one's breath away by its prodigious wronf-headedness, 
 its sheer impudence.' M*. A. B. WALKLKY in Tht Morning Ltadtr. 
 
 ' The wonderful power of observation, the close analysis and the really 
 brilliant writing revealed in parts of this volume .... George Egerton ' 
 would seem to be well equipped for the task.' Cork Exatnintr. 
 
 ' Readers who have a leaning to psychological fiction, and who revel in 
 such studies of character as George Meredith's " Diana of the Crossways" 
 will find much to interest them in these clever stories.' W*sttm Daily 
 Prtts. 
 
 ' There is no escape from the fact that it Is vividly interesting The 
 Christian World, 
 
 ' With all her realism there is a refinement and a pathos and a brilliance 
 of style that lift ihe book into a region altogether removed from the merely 
 sensational or the merely repulsive. It is a book that one might read with 
 a pencil in his hand, for it is studded with many fine, vivid passages.' 
 Wttkly Scotsman. 
 
 1 She has many fine qualities. Her work throbs with temperament, and 
 here and there we come upon touches that linger in the memory as of things 
 felt and seen, not read of.' Daily tfavt. 
 
 1 Mrs. Grandy, to whom they would be salutary, will not be induced to 
 read either " Keynotes" or " Discords." Wtttmintter Gattttt. 
 
 ' What an absorbing, wonderful book it is : How absolutely sincere, and 
 how finely wrong 1 George Egerton may be what the indefatigable Mr. 
 Zangwill calls a one-I'd person, but she is a literary artist of exceptional 
 endowment probably a genius.' Woman, 
 
 1 She has given, times without number, examples of her ripening powers 
 that astonish as. Her themes astound ; her audacity is tremendous. In 
 the many great passages an advance is proved that is little short of amaz- 
 ing.' Literary World. 
 
 ' Interesting and skilfully written.' Sunday Timtt. 
 
 'A series of undoubtedly clever stories, told with a poetic dreaminess 
 which softens the rugged truths of which they treat. Mothers might benefit 
 themselves and convey help to young girls who are about to be married by 
 the perusal of its pages.' Lfverfao/Afercnry. 
 
 ' They are the work of an author of considerable power, not to say genius. 
 Scottinan. 
 
 ' The book is true to human nature, for the author has genius, and, let us 
 add, has heart. It is representative ; it is, in the hackneyed phrase, a 
 human document.' Sptaktr. 
 
 1 It is another note in the great chorus of revolt ... on the whole 
 clearer, more eloquent, and braver than almost any I have yet heard.' 
 T. P. (' Book of the Week *), Wttkly Sun. December 30. 
 
 1 These masterly word-sketches.' Daily Telegraph.
 
 List of Books 
 
 in 
 
 gelles Jettres 
 
 1895 
 
 ALL BOOKS IN THIS CATALOGUE 
 ARK PUBLISHED AT NET PRICES 
 
 Telegraphic Addrta 
 ' BODLF.IAN. LONDON
 
 1895. 
 
 List of Books 
 
 IN 
 
 BELLES LETTRES 
 
 (Including some Transfers) 
 
 Published by John Lane 
 tlty BoDlep ^eaD 
 
 VIGO STREET, LONDON, W. 
 
 N.B. The Authors and Publisher reserve the right of reprinting 
 any book in this list if a new edition is called for, except in cases 
 where a stipulation has been made to the contrary, and of printing 
 a separate edition of any of the books for America irrespective of the 
 numbers to which the English editions are limited. The numbers 
 mentioned do not include copies sent to the public libraries, nor those 
 sent for review. 
 
 Most of the books are published simultaneously in England and 
 America, and in many instances the names of the American 
 Publishers are appended. 
 
 ADAMS (FRANCIS). 
 
 ESSAYS IN MODERNITY. Crown 8vo. 5s.net. [Shortly. 
 Chicago : Stone & Kimball. 
 
 A CHILD OK THE AGE. (See KEYNOTES SERIES.)
 
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 THE WOMAN WHO DID. (See KEYNOTES SERIES.) 
 
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 Madam Venus, Goddess and Meretrix, under the 
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 By AUBREY BEARDSLEY. With 20 full-page illus- 
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 PLAYS : An Unhistorical Pastoral ; A Romantic Farce ; 
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 POEMS, DRAMATIC AND LYRICAL. Second Series, uni- 
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 JOHN LANK 5 
 
 DIX (GERTRUDE). 
 
 THE GIRL FROM THE FARM. (See KEYNOTES SERIES.) 
 
 DOSTOIEVSKY (F.). 
 
 See KEYNOTES SERIES, Vol. HI. 
 
 ECHEGARAY (JOSE). 
 See LYNCH (HANNAH). 
 
 EGERTON (GEORGE). 
 
 KEYNOTES. (See KEYNOTES SERIES.) 
 
 DISCORDS. (See KEYNOTES SERIES.) 
 
 YOUNG OFEG'S DITTIES. A translation from the Swedish 
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 THE DANCING FAUN. (See KEYNOTES SERIES.) 
 
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 ITALIAN LYRISTS OF TO-DAY. Translations in the 
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 New York : Macmillan & Co. 
 
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 THE FIRST STEP A Dramatic Moment. Small 410. 
 35. 6d. net.
 
 JOHN LANK 7 
 
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 ROMANTIC PROFESSIONS : A Volume of Essays. With 
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 Vol. i. KEYNOTES. By GEORGE EGERTON. 
 
 [Sixth edition now ready. 
 
 Vol. ii. THE DANCING FAUN. By FLORENCE FARR. 
 
 Vol. III. POOR FOLK. Translated from the Russian of 
 F. Dostoievsky by LKNA MILMAN. With 
 a Preface by GEORGE MOORE. 
 
 Vol. iv. A CHILD OF THE AGE. By FRANCIS ADAMS.
 
 THE PUBLICATIONS OK 
 
 KEYNOTES SERIES continued. 
 
 Vol. v. THE GREAT GOD PAN AND THE INMOST 
 
 LIGHT. By ARTHUR MACHEN. 
 Vol. vi. DISCORDS. By GEORGE EGERTON. 
 
 [ Third Edition now ready. 
 Vol. vu. PRINCE ZALESKI. By M. P. SHIEL. 
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 The following Volumes are in rapid preparation. 
 Vol. ix. WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES. By H. D. LOWRY. 
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 By HENRY 1 1 AR LAND. 
 Vol. xi. AT THE FIRST CORNER AND OTHER STORIES. 
 
 By H. B. MARRIOTT WATSON. 
 
 Vol. xn. A VOLUME OF STORIES. By ELLA D'ARCY. 
 Vol. xin. AT THE RELTON ARMS. By EVELYN SHARP. 
 Vol. xiv. THE GIRL FROM THE FARM. By GERTRUDE 
 
 Dix. 
 Vol. xv. THE MIRROR OF Music. By STANLEY V. 
 
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 LEATHER (R. K.). 
 
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 [In preparation.
 
 JOHN LANE 9 
 
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 GEORGE M KR EDITH : Some Characteristics. With a Biblio- 
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 WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES. (See KEYNOTES SERIES.) 
 
 LUCAS (WINIFRED). 
 
 A VOLUME OF POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. 45. 6d. net. 
 
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 [In preparation, 
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 THE GALLERY OF PIGEONS AND OTHER POEMS. Post 
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 Trantferrtd by tht Author to the frtstnt Publitktr. 
 
 MEREDITH (GEORGE). 
 
 THE FIRST PUBLISHED PORTRAIT OF THIS AUTHOR, 
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 POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. 3s.6d.net. [Out of Print at present. 
 A few of the 50 large paper copies (First Edition) remain, 121. 6d. net.
 
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 MILLER (JOAQUIN). 
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE CITY BEAUTIFUL. Fcap 8vo. 
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 POOR FOLK. (See KEYNOTES SERIES.) 
 
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 Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott Co. 
 
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 See KEYNOTES SERIES, Vol. in. 
 
 NESBIT (E.). 
 
 A VOLUME OF POEMS. Cr. 8vo. 55. net. \ln preparation. 
 
 NETTLESHIP (J. T.). 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING : Essays and Thoughts. Third 
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 New York : Chas. Scribner's Sons. 
 
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 His LIFE AND His WORK. With Selections from his 
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 Chicago : Stone & Kimball.
 
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 A series of lithographed portraits by WILL ROTHENSTEIN, 
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 PRINCE ZALESKI. (See KEYNOTES SERIES.) 
 
 STEVENSON (ROBERT LOUIS). 
 
 PRINCE OTTO. A Rendering in French by EGERTON 
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 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A BOY. Passages selected by 
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 THIMM (C. F.). 
 
 A COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE ART OF FENCE, 
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 POEMS. With Frontispiece, Title-page, and Cover Design 
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 CUCKOO SONGS. With Title-page and Cover Design by 
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 MIRACLE PLAYS. [In preparation. 
 
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 WATSON (WILLIAM). 
 
 ODES AND OTHER POEMS. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, 
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 JOHN LANE 13 
 
 WATSON (WILLIAM). 
 
 THE ELOPING ANGELS: A Caprice. Second Edition. 
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 EXCDRSIONS IN CRITICISM : being some Prose Recrea- 
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 tkt Kelmscott Prttt. 
 
 WELLS (H. G.). 
 
 A VOLUME OF ESSAYS. Fcap. 8vo. [In preparation. 
 
 WHARTON (H. T.). 
 
 SAPPHO. Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings, and a 
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 S, 5s. net. 
 
 Boston : Copeland & Day. 
 
 THE INCOMPARABLE AND INGENIOUS HISTORY OF MR. 
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 now for the first time here fully set forth, with Initial 
 Letters and Cover Design by CHARLES RICKETTS. 
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 Also 50 copies Urge paper, us. net. (In preparation.
 
 14 THE PUBLICATIONS OF 
 
 WILDE (OSCAR). 
 
 DRAMATIC WORKS, now printed for the first time. With a 
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 SHANNON. 500 copies. Sm. 410. Js. 6d. net per vol. 
 Also 50 copies large paper. 155. net per vol. 
 
 Vol. L LADY WINDERMKRE'S FAN : A Comedy in 
 
 Four Acts. [Out of print. 
 
 VoL IL A WOMAN OF No IMPORTANCE -. A Comedy 
 
 in Four Acts. [Just published. 
 
 Vol. in. THE DUCHRSS OF PADDA : A Blank Verse 
 
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 THE YELLOW BOOK 
 
 An Illustrated Quarterly 
 
 Vol. I. Fourth Edition, 272 pages, 15 Illustrations, Title-pagt, 
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 The Literary Contributions by MAX BEERBOHM, A. C. BENSON, 
 HUBERT CRACKANTHORPE, ELLA D'ARCY, JOHN DAVID- 
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 PENNELL, WILL ROTHENSTEIN, WALTER SICKERT.
 
 JOHN LANE 15 
 
 Vol. II. Third Edition. Pott 4/0, 364 pages, 23 Illustrations, 
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 The Literary Contributions by FREDERICK GREENWOOD, 
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 and MAX BEERBOHM.
 
 s6 THE PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN LANE 
 
 Vol, IV. Now Ready. Pott 4/0, 285 pages, 16 Full-page 
 Illustrations. With a New Cover Design and a Double- 
 page Supplement by Aubrey Beards ley. Price $s. net. 
 
 The Literary Contributions by RICHARD LB GALLIENNE, 
 HENRY HARLAND, GRAHAM R. TOMSON, H. B. MARRIOTT 
 WATSON, DOLF WYLLARDE, MENIE MURIEL DOWIE, 
 OLIVE CUSTANCE, JAMBS ASHCROFT NOBLE, LEILA MAC- 
 DONALD, C. S., RICHARD GARNETT, VICTORIA CROSS, 
 
 * CHARLES SYDNEY, KENNETH GRAHAME, C. NEWTON 
 ROBINSON, NORMAN HAPGOOD, E. NESBIT, MARION HEP- 
 WORTH DIXON, C. W. DALMON, EVELYN SHARP, MAX 
 BEERBOHM, and JOHN DAVIDSON. 
 
 The Art Contributions by H. J. DRAPER, WILLIAM HYDE, 
 WALTER SICKERT, PATTEN WILSON, W. W. RUSSELL, 
 A. S. HARTRICK, CHARLES CONDER, WILL ROTHENSTEIN, 
 Miss SUMNER, P. WILSON STEER, and AUBREY BEARDS- 
 LEY. 
 
 Prospectuses Post Free on Application. 
 
 LONDON : JOHN LANE 
 BOSTON : COPELAND & DAY 
 
 Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press
 
 M aamcmfiEaowl uHum fKun 
 
 A 000 679 761 7