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THE CONFLICT 
 
WORKS OF M. E. BRADDON. 
 
 LADY AUDLHVS SECRET. 
 HENRY DUXBAR. 
 ELEANORS VICTORY. 
 AURORA FLOYD. 
 JOHN MARCHMONT'S 
 
 LEGACY 
 THE DOCTOR'S WIFE. 
 ONLY A CLOD. 
 SIR JASPERS TENANT. 
 TRAIL OF THE SERPENT. 
 THE LADY'S MILE. 
 LADY LISLE. 
 
 CAPTAIN OF THE VULTURE. 
 BIRDS OF PREY. 
 CHARLOTTE'S INHERIT- 
 
 ANCE. 
 RUPERT GODWIN. 
 RUN TO EARTH. 
 DEAD SEA FRUIT. 
 RALPH THE BAILIFF. 
 FENTON'S QUEST. 
 LOVELS OF ARDEN. 
 ROBERT AINSLEIGH. 
 TO THE BITTER END. 
 MILLY DARRELL. 
 STRANGERS AND PIL 
 
 GRIMS. 
 LUCIUS DAV'OREN. 
 TAKEN AT THE FLOOD. 
 LOST FOR LOVE. 
 A STRANGE WORLD. 
 HOSTAGES TO FORTUNE. 
 DEAD MEN'S SHOES. 
 
 THE 
 
 JOSHUA HAGGARD. 
 WEAVERS AND WEFT. 
 AN OPEN VERDICT. 
 VIXEN. 
 
 THE CLOVEN FOOT. 
 THE STORY OF BARBARA 
 JUST AS I AM. 
 ASPHODEL. 
 MOUNT ROYAL. 
 THE GOLDEN CALF. 
 PHANTOM FORTUNE. 
 FLOWER AND WEED. 
 ISHMAEL. 
 
 WYLLARDS WEIRD. 
 UNDER THE RED FLAG. 
 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 MOHAWKS. 
 LIKE AND UNLIKE. 
 THE FATAL THREE. 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 ONE LIFE, ONE LOVE. 
 GERARD. 
 
 THE VENETIANS. 
 ALL ALONG THE RIVER. 
 THOU ART THE MAN. 
 THE CHRISTMAS HIRE- 
 LINGS. 
 SONS OF FIRE. 
 LONDON PRIDE, 
 UNDER LOA'E'S RULE. 
 ROUGH JUSTICE. 
 IN HIGH PLACES. 
 HIS DARLING SIN. 
 INFIDEL. 
 
T 
 
 HE CONFLICT 
 
 l^nay^sArt^'^ J^iary 
 
 c 
 
 BY 
 
 M. E. BRADDON 
 
 Author of' LADY AUDLEV'S SECRET," '■' F/XEN," 
 ■•'LONDON PRIDE," ETC. 
 
 ALL RIGHTS. 
 RESERVED 
 
 London 
 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, 
 
 KENT & CO. Ltd. 
 
 Stationers' Hall Court 
 
 1903 
 
con- 
 If03 
 
 NOTE 
 
 The Author has pleasure in recording her 
 obligation to a very interesting personal narra- 
 tive by Mr. Ironmonger Sola, and to an official 
 report by IMr. William Ogilvie, for the local 
 colour in her description of the overland route 
 to the Klondyke River. 
 
 708 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 She was a lovely creature, and adapted herself with con- 
 summate grace to her new surroundings, and she died in her 
 second year of wedlock. 
 
 Nothing in life became her so well as this early death. 
 Her step-children and their relatives forgave her; and she 
 was ever after spoken of in the family as " Poor Emily." 
 
 Her portrait, by INIillais, stood on an easel in Lord 
 Wildernsea's book-room, the one room in his country house 
 which he kept for himself. Her image was locked in his 
 heart. He had hved like a modern hermit ever since her 
 death, rarely consorting with his fellow-men except in the 
 hunting-field, where he was notorious for silence and hauteur ; 
 a gaunt figure, splendidly mounted, aloof and uncivil. The 
 old members of the hunt called him " the hard-riding 
 spectre." 
 
 He hated his youngest son, and had never troubled him- 
 self to conceal his dishke. Ignored by half-brothers and 
 half-sisters, who looked down upon him for the lack of 
 blue-blood on the mother's side, the boy in his desolation 
 had discovered a refuge from the world of stern realities in 
 the world of sweet fancies — the world of books. Shake- 
 speare, Spenser, Scott, were to him as fairy godmothers. 
 Hans Anderson and the Brothers Grimm were his play- 
 fellows. He made for himself a paradise in the dull old 
 library at Wildernsea, a room with many windows looking 
 out upon the dreary level of a park ; a room of such spacious- 
 ness that, sitting in his favourite corner by the north fire- 
 place, it was a long walk from the south door for the nurse 
 who came in quest of him. 
 
 The youngest of his half-brothers was at Eton before 
 Walter had emerged from babyhood. The elders were 
 grown men. Lord Melbrook, the heir, was a captain in a 
 lancer regiment ; Godfrey, the next brother, was a lieutenant 
 in the Navy, when Walter was seven years old. There was 
 a third son at Oxford, and a fourth at Sandhurst ; and there 
 were two married daughters; one v/ho had chosen wisely, 
 with the general approval, who had a house in Grosvenor 
 Square, two country seats, and a villa at Cannes ; one who 
 had chosen ill, and was supremely happy in a Lincolnshire 
 Vicarage. 
 
 Lord Wildernsea was found dead in his armchair in the 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 book-room, facing his wife's picture, one bleak Februaiy 
 morning, while the unloved son was an undergraduate at 
 Balliol, reading hard for a degree. He had nursed his 
 estate in the long years of retirement, and he died a rich 
 man. 
 
 To the unloved son he left more than to any of his other 
 children, except the heir; and Walter Arden began life with 
 an income which v>-as more than sufficient for his wants. 
 He was no spendthrift. He had been a student in his child- 
 hood, sitting on the hearth-rug in the long Hbrary at 
 W'ildernsea, with the quarto Spenser on his knees. He was 
 a student still, and books v.-ere his sole extravagance ; and 
 as he only bought the books he wanted to read, this extrava- 
 gance was not fatal. But though bookish, he was not a 
 milksop. He had been stroke of his college boat in his 
 last year at Oxford— he had done well at cricket at the 
 Varsity, but had not pursued that noble sport afterwards ; 
 he was a good shot, and a fine fencer. Another young man 
 in his independent position might have talked of a career, 
 might have aired his opinions in politics, in the law, in 
 literature, might have aspired to be something; but in 
 Walter Arden the spring of ambition seemed wanting. He 
 was content to live among his books, to travel alone in out- 
 of-the-way tracks, to have very few friends, and no dreams 
 of greatness. His eldest brother, who was always con- 
 temptuous, said of him that he had neither vices nor 
 virtues ; he was an odd volume of the Aldine poets in a 
 frock-coat. 
 
 The past had been visibly present to him as he strolled 
 through the autumn mists, across the damp dulness of the 
 old-world square, to the narrow street that links it to a busier 
 life. Pictures of that joyless past had leapt out of the 
 brown evening, vivid as if seen yesterday. ^ • 
 
 Something, he knew not what, some feeling in the air 
 perhaps, some cloud in the London sky, had stirred those 
 memories, which ached like old wounds. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders, as if to shake off a burden, as 
 he stopped before the street door. He let himself in with 
 his latch-key, meaning to go straight to his rooms on the 
 first floor ; but to his infinite surprise his landlady, the most 
 
 3 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 unobtrusive of women, whose face he had seldom seen 
 twice in a quarter, darted out of her den at the back of the 
 house, and met him at the foot of the stairs. 
 
 " Oh, sir, will you be so good as to step into my sitting- 
 room ? There is something I want to say to you." 
 
 He saw her face looking up at him in the lamplight, and 
 he saw that she had been crying. There were red marks 
 round her pale, grey eyes, though the eyes were dry. She 
 was very plain, with insignificant features, sandy hair, sandy 
 eyebrows, and white eyelashes, and a pale fairness of com- 
 plexion which might have been a charm in a beautiful 
 woman. Care, anxious care, was the ruling characteristic 
 of her face, and had given a strained look to every feature. 
 She was a pattern of industry, an admirable manager, and 
 a gifted cook, and her lodgers rose up and called her 
 blessed. 
 
 " Certainly, Mrs. Berry," Arden answered kindly. " But 
 what's the matter ? I hope you're not in trouble of any 
 
 kind." 
 
 *' Indeed I am, sir, in very great trouble; or I shouldnt 
 have ventured to ask your help." 
 
 He followed her into a den of a room behind the stair- 
 case, and over the scullery, a room where the slow trickle of 
 water from a cistern made a melancholy music. A room 
 where the only prospect by day was the side-wall of an 
 adjoining house, and where the stuffiness by night suggested 
 the black hole at Calcutta, just such a miserable morsel of 
 space pinched off the better part of the house as lodging- 
 house keepers in London must needs be content to live in 
 
 an ill-shapen, gloomy abomination of a room, in which, 
 
 however, there had been some attempt to achieve prettiness. 
 There were paper fans upon the wall, Japanese teacups on 
 the mantelpiece, and a plaster bust of Byron on that odious 
 piece of furniture called a chiffonier. Even the armchair, 
 covered with American cloth, had something of its hideous- 
 ness hidden by frills and festoons of muslin. 
 
 *' Please take a seat, sir; it's a long story I've got to tell 
 
 you." ^^ . . 
 
 *' I shall be very glad to help you if I can. If it is a 
 money trouble " 
 
 " No, no, sir ; it isn't that. It's my daughter, sir ; it's my 
 
 4 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 dear, dear daughter. It's the thought of danger and sorrow' 
 to her that's weighing me down." 
 
 "Why, what danger can come near her in this house, 
 living under your care ? I saw her yesterday morning. 
 She was pale, but I thought I had never seen her looking so 
 pretty." 
 
 "Ah, sir, I wish she wasn't so pretty. I wish it had 
 pleased Providence for her to take after her father or m.e." 
 
 " Beauty is a choice gift, ^Irs. Berry." 
 
 " It may be for those that can live up to it, Mr. Arden ; 
 but do you think a pretty girl can be in her right place in 
 this parlour ? " 
 
 " It is a dull life for a girl, no doubt; but she must be 
 happy with her kind mother." 
 
 " Oh, sir, what can my kindness do for her ? I'm always 
 busy about the house from morning to night ; for though I 
 keep two servants, I'm never able to sit down. Ser\-ant girls 
 want looking after at every turn. And then there's the cook- 
 ing, which I daren't trust to any one. What company am 
 I for a girl of eighteen ? She sits alone in this room all day 
 long, tr}'ing to pass the time — sometimes it's fancy-work, or 
 trimming a hat ; or sometimes I find her deep in study — 
 French exercises — or an instructive book. Sometimes I 
 find her crying over Lord Byron's poetry, or a novel ; and 
 I don't like to see Lisbeth cry even over fictitious troubles, 
 for she takes such things to heart more than other girls." 
 
 " She has the look of a sensitive person." 
 
 " Sensitive isn't the word, sir. She's made up of nerves 
 and fancies. The dreamis that girl has 1 Often and often 
 she wakes with a scream, and tells me what she's been 
 dreaming, things that make my blood run cold." 
 
 " I fear you keep her too close in this house. She wants 
 fresh air, exercise, change of scene." 
 
 " That's just what the doctor said, sir, when she was so 
 low last summer — as white as a ghost — and no appetite — 
 and scarcely any sleep. ' Give her fresh air and change, and 
 cheerful young society,' says Dr. Durrant; and since then 
 I've been obliged to give her more freedom, you see, sir; 
 and she goes for a long walk with a friend every day — 
 m the parks — sometimes right across London, as far as 
 Primrose Hill." 
 
 5 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Nothing could be better for her, if the friend is a person 
 you Hke, and whom you can rely upon for good conduct and 
 good principles." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Arden, who can rely upon anybody ? After all 
 the young servants I've had in the last twenty years, I know 
 there's no such thing as reliance where girls are concerned. 
 Miss Milsome is the daughter of the Italian warehouseman 
 round the corner, most respectable people, and much better 
 off than me and my girl. She's a very pleasant-spoken 
 young ladv, and has had the best of educations at the High 
 School." 
 
 " A schoolfellow of your daughter's, I suppose ? " 
 
 "Ah, no, sir ; our girl never went to school. Her father 
 would not hear of school for her. He would hardly let her 
 out of his sight. She was brought up in this room, like a 
 hothouse flower." 
 
 It seemed an unlikely place for a flower to bloom in, 
 hardly an atmosphere for the rankest weed. 
 
 " We engaged a young person to come in every day, from 
 breakfast to dinner, to carry on her education. Perhaps 
 we've been wrong, sir, in keeping her so close; but we 
 wanted to bring her up without any contact with London 
 wickedness. She's as innocent as a little child, and, except 
 for v/hat she may have read without our knowledge in the 
 poets — being not much of bookworms ourselves — she doesn't 
 know the meaning of sin." 
 
 Mrs. Berry's manner in speaking of the poets implied that 
 she looked upon them as dangerous characters. 
 
 " We had an elderly German lady twice a week, to 
 teach her the piano. My poor James grudged no expense 
 for her. He worshipped the very ground she walked 
 upon." 
 
 " Well, but, my dear Mrs. Berry, what is your trouble 
 about your daughter ? " 
 
 " It's the worst kind of trouble, sir, for a mother. I know 
 my girl isn't happy, and I'm afraid — oh, sir, I'm afraid she's 
 deceiving me — and I'm afraid there's a man in the back- 
 ground." 
 
 " What man ? Is it any one you know ? " 
 
 " No, sir. I only wish it was, for then I should be able to 
 deal with him. There's a man in the background ; a man 
 
 6 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 v;ho came to this door with Lisbeth yesterday evening, in 
 the dusk, after six o'clock. Matilda Jane saw him from the 
 attic window ; a very tall fine-looking man, she said.; and 
 she saw him bending down to talk to Lisbeth, and Lisbeth 
 let him hold her hand; and the two stood there, hand in 
 hand, for a bit, before she rang the bell. He had gone 
 clean out of sight when Matilda Jane opened the door, for 
 she looked up and down the street, on a pretence of wanting 
 to see if it was raining." 
 
 " And your daughter told you nothing about this 
 stranger ? " 
 
 " Not she, sir. I asked her where she had been, and why 
 she came home so late ; and she said she and Emma Milsome 
 had been for a long walk Brompton way, and had their tea 
 at an A. B.C. shop in the Brompton Road. God knows how 
 much of that is true, or how much false. I can't lower my 
 daughter by questioning her friend." 
 
 "You should question your daughter, severely, if 
 necessary." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Arden, I couldn't be severe with her, if I tried 
 ever so. She has a look that melts me. Her sweet blue 
 eyes fill with tears at a cross word. She is too sensitive for 
 this world. I can't bear to talk unkindly to her; and I 
 can't bear to deprive her of anything she has set her heart 
 upon ; and that's where I feel I've been wrong in letting her 
 go to the theatre to-night." 
 
 " You are letting her go to the theatre without you ? " 
 
 " You see it's this way, Mr. Arden. Emma Milsome came 
 round at four o'clock and said she had had an order sent 
 her for the Criterion, from a friend — an order for two for the 
 upper circle, and might Lisbeth go with her? Their old 
 book-keeper, who lives in the house, would see the two 
 girls safe inside the theatre, and would meet them at the door 
 when the play was over, and bring them safe home. It's 
 hardly a step from here, as you know, sir ; and Emma was 
 very earnest about it ; and Lisbeth she just looked at me 
 with her eyes shining like stars ; and I couldn't bring myself 
 to say no." 
 
 " And now you are sorry you said yes ? " 
 
 " I can't help feeUng uneasy, sir, remembering how strange 
 and upset Lisbeth has been lately; and remembering what 
 
 7 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Matilda Jane told me about the stranger talking to her at 
 my own door. Do you think I did wrong, sir ?" 
 
 " I don't think you were wise. How did Miss Milsome 
 come by the order ? " 
 
 " A friend gave it her." 
 
 "What kind of a friend?" 
 
 *' I believe it was some one in the orchestra. The Mil- 
 somes keep a good deal of company." 
 
 *' I think your first duty should have been to question 
 your daughter about the stranger. That is a serious matter, 
 you see." 
 
 *' Yes, sir ; I feel that it is very serious. It's preying upon 
 my mind every hour of the day." 
 
 "And in the face of that difficulty I don't think you 
 should have let her out of your sight for a whole evening." 
 
 " That's what I feel, sir — and, oh, if you would only help 
 me in my trouble, I should be more grateful than words can 
 say." 
 
 " There's only one way that I could help you ; and that is 
 to go to the theatre and see if your daughter and her friend 
 are there, and not in dangerous company." 
 
 " It seem.s asking you too much, sir ; but if you would do 
 that " 
 
 " I will do as much, with pleasure, if it will be any relief 
 to your mind." 
 
 " It will, sir ; the greatest possible relief." 
 
 8 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 II. 
 
 From Walter Ardeii, in London, to Douglas Campbell^ 
 in Tasmania. 
 
 j\Iy dear Douglas, 
 
 I have not forgotten how in the old days at 
 Balliol we made a compact in which I pledged myself that 
 if ever in the course of my life, soon or late, I came upon 
 any experience which tended to shake me from my sceptical 
 attitude as to those supernatural influences which you have 
 always believed in, I would send you a careful record of 
 that experience. It might be something vague and elusive, 
 no visible presence of the unforgotten dead, no sound of 
 voice, or touch of hand. It might be no more than a 
 strange dream. It might be a state of mind, rather than 
 an occurrence ; but any mental phase, any mood or feeling, 
 for which I was unable to account upon commonsense 
 grounds, which seemed to pass beyond the limits of human 
 reason, would be not unworthy your consideration ; and it 
 was in our compact that I should send you my deliberate 
 and honest description of my feelings, across the width of 
 the world which divides us. 
 
 I have often thought of our compact, entered upon so 
 gravely on your part, so lightly and half scornfully on mine, 
 and of those long arguments we have held in many a winter 
 walk on the Woodstock Road. 
 
 Your Highland blood made for belief in that other 
 world which to your fancy was all about us — bound by 
 no law of place or time — in the midst of this mechanical 
 universe governed by laws so rigid and unalterable. I, the 
 man who worshipped science, and bowed to its adamantine 
 rule, could but smile at your belief in things that science 
 makes mock of — in the invisible presence of the dead, as 
 
 9 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 thinking, loving, suffering beings, hovering round the living; 
 in forewarnings ; in thought-transference ; in the subtle 
 influence of one mind over another ; in the abrogation of 
 all the laws of nature, under the dominant force of the gifted 
 soul — human, but immortal, with infinite power, untried and 
 unsuspected for the most part, but existing. 
 
 I doubt if the Psychical Society, of which you "are so 
 enthusiastic a member, would consider what I am going to 
 tell you worthy of their consideration ; but I know it will 
 interest you to receive a detailed account of a mental 
 mystery, in place of my customary budget of club gossip, 
 and opinions upon new books and new plays. 
 
 I spent last Wednesday evening at the Criterion theatre, 
 not for my own pleasure, but as a friendly service to Mrs. 
 Berry, my excellent landlady, who had allowed her daughter 
 to go to the theatre with a young friend, and who was un- 
 easy about the girl's safety, a stranger having been seen 
 talking with her at the street door on her home-coming the 
 previous afternoon. 
 
 Before I relate the evening's experience, I must give 
 you some idea of the girl, Lisbeth, who is by no means 
 represented by the words my landlady's daughter, which 
 may conjure up a commonplace type of cockney prettiness. 
 
 Lisbeth is not the common type of girl. I doubt if she 
 can be called pretty. Certainly no one would call her hand- 
 some. Her only noticeable charms are a complexion of a 
 milky whiteness, like the petal of a Mary lily, on which 
 rose-flushes come and go with every wave of emotion, pale 
 red-gold hair, and large blue eyes, full of thought, strangely 
 thoughtful for a girl of eighteen, whose experience of life is 
 so small ; for this lodging-house keeper's only child has 
 been kept from all contact with the outer world. 
 
 Does this account conjure up an interesting image ? It 
 is diflicult to describe a face wliose greatest attraction is its 
 unlikeness to all other faces. Singularity to some minds is 
 more attractive than actual beauty ; and I own that Lisbeth 
 Berry has interested me and attracted me, not as an admirer, 
 but as a student of strange personalities. Though I have 
 always set my face against the supernatural, I have always 
 been a lover of the strange. j\Ieeting Lisbeth now and 
 then as she moved about the house, I have said to myself, 
 
 10 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 were I as credulous an enthusiast as Campbell, I should 
 say, " Here is a girl who is more in touch with the spirit- 
 world than with Jermyn Street, Piccadilly." 
 
 It shocked me to find that this gentle, retiring creature 
 had been seen conversing familiarly with a man unknown 
 lo the poor mother, and, considering that her ignorance of 
 life increased instead of lessened the danger of her un- 
 protected position, I felt scarcely less anxious than her 
 mother about her visit to the theatre with only a girl- 
 companion. 
 
 It was an intermediate season, with a strange company. 
 The stars were all away on tour in the great provincial 
 towns. The Palais Royal comedy, tortured into an English 
 farce, had failed to attract the public ; so I was able to get 
 a stall near the orchestra, from which I had a good view of 
 the upper circle ; and there in the front row, I discovered 
 Lisbeth and her friend, a respectable tradesman's daughter. 
 Both girls had removed their hats, and Lisbeth's light red 
 hair looked like an aureola in an early Italian picture — 
 indeed the girl's hair and complexion had always reminded 
 me of one of Fra Angelico's Madonnas in the Academia 
 at Florence, save that Lisbeth's colouring was more sub- 
 dued, and her countenance more spiritual, than the painter's 
 favourite type. 
 
 The upper circle was thinly occupied, and at the side 
 where the girls were sitting the back rows were vacant, 
 when I entered the theatre ; and when I took miy survey 
 of the house after the first act there was no one near them. 
 They vrere not talking to each other. Lisbeth's friend was 
 looking about the house with an opera glass, now at the 
 stalls, now at the boxes ; but Lisbeth's eyes were gazing 
 intently at a fixed point, and, following that steadfast gaze, 
 I was surprised to see my sister, Mary Selby, sitting in the 
 stage box. 
 
 You know how little Mary and I see of each other. She 
 asks me to some of her parties, and she is always civil and 
 pleasant when we meet. I abhor parties. I go to her 
 house two or three times a year, to show that I "bear her 
 a good heart," as the gipsy fortune-tellers say ; and I am at 
 this moment under engagement to dine with her next 
 Friday week — a three-weeks' engagement. What gusto can 
 
 1 1 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 there be in dinners solemnly planned for the dim future? 
 In the season her dinner invitations are live or six weeks 
 ahead. I sigh for the old familiar easy-going days of 
 Theodore Hook, Lady Blessington, and the brothers Smith, 
 when men — and even women — dined with each other at a 
 day's notice. 
 
 IMary was looking bored, and she was looking pre- 
 occupied, a deeper thoughtfulness than often visits that 
 splendid face. You know how handsome she is, and with 
 a clear-cut, richly coloured beauty that defies time. How 
 handsome, and how commonplace ! I had never seen so 
 much mind in her countenance as I saw last Wednesday 
 night. I had never seen the impress of sorrow there as I 
 saw it then. 
 
 She paid very litde attention to the play. A farcical 
 comedy which kept the pit and gallery in a roar left her 
 face grave. She turned from time to time to speak to a 
 man who stood in the shadow behind her chair. I could 
 see no more of him than that he was a very tall man, and 
 of bulk in proportion to his height. When the lights went 
 up after the second act, he came to the front of the box, 
 and looked about the house, notably at that spot in the 
 upper circle where Lisbeth and her friend were sitting. 
 Turning my glass quickly from the box to that opposite 
 point, I saw that Lisbeth was conscious of his gaze. Her 
 eyes met his, and there was a joyous light in them that told 
 me this was the man to be feared. Here was the danger 
 that threatened. 
 
 This man, this danger to innocent girlhood, is a man 
 of striking and even distinguished appearance, and with 
 something of that strangeness which to some minds, as I 
 have said, is more attractive than symmetry of form. He 
 is of mature age, perhaps between forty and forty-five, his 
 hair iron-grey, moustache and eyebrows black, complexion 
 very dark, but with a deep glow of colour flushing the cheek 
 and giving light to the steely grey eyes— such eyes as I 
 have seldom seen except in the hawk tribe — so brilliant, 
 rapid, restless, all-seeing. Vitality is the chief characteristic 
 of the man's face. I never saw a human countenance so 
 intensely alive. The fire of life burns there, as it only burns 
 in the face of a conqueror. For the rest there is no claim 
 
 12 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 to beauty. The features are regular, but roughly moulded. 
 The mouth is sensual, the chin resolute, and the teeth have 
 something canine in their whiteness. 
 
 "Who and what is he?" I asked myself. *' Surely with 
 such a glow of life in him the man must have made his 
 mark in the world." 
 
 He is at least six feet four, and stands like a tower, 
 broad-chested, his head nobly set upon powerful shoulders. 
 
 "\\'hile I was looking at him he slipped quietly from the 
 box. I saw my sister turn as the door closed upon him, 
 and I read annoyance in her manner as she sank back in 
 her chair and put up her eye-glass to make a listless survey 
 of the audience, so listless that she failed to discover her 
 brother in the stalls. 
 
 I knew where to look, and, within two or three minutes 
 of his leaving the box, I discovered the unknown, sitting 
 behind the two girls in the upper circle, leaning forward to 
 talk to Lisbeth. I could see the happy look on the girl's 
 face, even though her eyes were hidden under the downcast 
 lids ; that look of ineffable joy which only first love can 
 bring to the utterly innocent, to the girl whose feet have 
 but just touched the brink of that mystic river vrhich 
 divides childhood's happy ignorance from womanhood's 
 fatal knowledge : the river of tears. 
 
 He spoke to the other girl now and then ; but the greater 
 part of his conversation was with Lisbeth, and the lowered 
 head told of the lowered voice, breathed close to the listen- 
 ing ear, and of her low replies — faltered by lips that trembled 
 as they spoke. He only left her when the curtain had been 
 up some time ; and in the obscurity of the sunk lights I saw 
 his hand seek hers and hold it for a long minute, while he 
 whispered an adieu. 
 
 Or was it an adieu ? An appointment to meet her after 
 the play, perhaps ; but I was there to baulk his intentions 
 in that line. 
 
 He reappeared in the box, and this time he seemed by 
 a particular attentiveness to excuse himself to my sister for 
 having left her during the ejii7'e-acte. She rose to go, before 
 the end of the piece, and he assisted her while she muffled 
 herself in a satin and sable coat that would have been warm 
 enough for mid-winter in Petersburg. 
 
 13 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 I left the stalls five minutes after they left the box, and 
 was in time to see the unknown take leave of Mary as he 
 shut her brougham door, the tall footman dwarfed by his 
 magnificence. 
 
 I watched him from the hall as he lighted a cigar, and 
 strolled slowly eastward. 
 
 " No, my friend, you are not going home," I told myself; 
 " you have shaken off your companion, and you are waiting 
 for your prey. You don't live east of Piccadilly, and you 
 have business in hand which will bring you back to this 
 spot." 
 
 I waited till the audience poured into the hall. Among 
 the first to appear were Lisbeth and her friend, and the 
 entranced look in the girl's eyes told me she came to meet 
 a lover. What was it to her that the man was old enough 
 to be her father, that his hair was iron-grey, and his brow 
 marked with the sign-manual of a tempestuous life, his mouth 
 at once hard and sensual ? She was under the spell which 
 such men have power to cast over sensitive women. 
 
 She came into the hall with her eyes shining, and a smile 
 upon her lips. As she ascended the last stair, I saw the 
 unknown reappear at the door, and she walked quickly 
 towards him, threading her way through the crowd, her 
 friend following. I can never forget the change in her 
 countenance when I intercepted her, halfway to the door. 
 The vivid flush on her cheek changed to a sickly white- 
 ness. Her eyes darkened with a look that was almost 
 despair. 
 
 *' Your mother asked me to see you and Miss Milsome 
 safely through the croAvd," I said gravely. 
 
 She looked at me with those despairing eyes, but was 
 too humbled to speak. I gave her my right arm, and kept 
 Miss Milsome on my left as we went out of the theatre. 
 The unknown retreated to the pavement outside, watching 
 us with a malignant frown which might have dispelled any 
 reasonable being's infatuation. But this poor Lisbeth is 
 not a reasonable being. She belongs to the class of creatures 
 in which you are interested, the creatures in whom imagina- 
 tion takes the place of reason, the sensitives. Her hand 
 trembled as it touched my arm, lightly, and reluctantly ; and 
 I knew that she hated me for my interference, 
 
 14 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 I knew also, when we had crossed the road and were 
 walking down Jermyn Street, that the stranger was following 
 slowly on the opposite pavement. 
 
 " "We will see Miss Milsome safely home first," I said. 
 
 " Mother needn't have troubled you about us, sir," Lisbeth 
 said, in a voice which trembled almost as her hand trembled. 
 " Emily and I would have been quite safe in coming these 
 few steps." 
 
 " London is hardly a safe place for young ladies without 
 an escort," I answered. " It was no trouble for me to meet 
 you, and I am very glad to be useful." 
 
 " Indeed, you are very kind, sir," the other girl said ; and 
 I thought by her tone that my interference was a relief 
 rather than an annoyance to her. 
 
 We went with her to her door, and waited till it was 
 opened by a sleepy parlourmaid. There was no word said 
 about the old book-keeper v/ho was to have been at the 
 theatre to see them home. That vras evidently a soothing 
 fiction meant to tranquillize Mrs. Berry. 
 
 Miss ]Milsome kissed her friend, who was as irresponsive 
 as a stone, wished me a polite good night, and the door 
 closed upon her, leaving Lisbeth and me standing in the 
 narrow side-street, both of us conscious of a tall figure 
 lurking in the shadow of the houses opposite. 
 
 The air v;as very mild for late October, and the sky was 
 alive with stars. 
 
 " Will you walk a little way with me, Lisbeth ? " I asked. 
 " There is something I want to say to you before I take you 
 home." 
 
 " I don't care where I go," she answered listlessly. " But 
 I can't imagine anything you can have to say to me, sir, 
 unless it's about some trouble of mother's." 
 
 *' It is about a trouble of your mother's, Lisbeth." 
 
 She asked no farther question, but walked by my side 
 in a dead silence. 
 
 There were not many people about at this hour; but I 
 felt I could not talk to her till we were in some quieter place 
 than the streets ; and it was not till we had passed through 
 the Marlborough Gate and were in the gloom of the deserted 
 I^Iall, that I broke the silence in which we had walked side 
 by side. I had seen the dumb devil of obstinacy in her 
 
 15 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 face as she passed under the lamps, and I knew that I had 
 a difficult task before me. There was no good in beating 
 about the bush. I had to convince her of her danger, even 
 by the roughest means. 
 
 " Who is the man who was sitting with you and your 
 friend at the theatre, and how did you become acquainted 
 with him ? " I asked. 
 
 " I don't see that you have any right to question me, sir." 
 
 " I have the right given me by your mother in her sorrow, 
 Lisbeth. You are breaking her heart ; and you are going 
 the way to break your own. Who is that man ? " 
 
 " He is a gentleman." 
 
 " Perhaps. Girls of your age are not the best judges of 
 that question. Who is he ? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " You know his name, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Not even his name ?" 
 
 *• I know him." 
 
 " How did you become acquainted.^ " 
 
 '' He saved my life." 
 
 " That sounds romantic." 
 
 " Oh, it was not romantic ; it was only horrible. It was 
 in Piccadilly— the crossing at the top of St. James's Street. 
 Emily and I were crossing, and I lost my nerve. There 
 was a great waggon coming down upon us. The horses 
 were close upon me. I felt their hot breath. I shut my 
 eyes, and my heart stopped beating. I heard people shout- 
 in^y ; then nothing ; only the sense of a hand that snatched 
 me 'away from those dreadful horses. Strong arms lifted 
 me up like a feather, and carried me to the pavement. I 
 was almost fainting, when a strange voice spoke to me and 
 told me to be strong ; and in a moment the cloud passed, 
 and my heart beat freely. It was his voice, deep and strong, 
 like the sound of the sea." 
 
 "Well, having done you this service, did he not give 
 you his card, so that you could tell your mother who had 
 helped you ? " 
 
 " He \valked with us to the park, where we were gomg. 
 It was a lovely afternoon, more than a month ago, and he sat 
 with us in a quiet part in the park, and we talked— we talked 
 
 i6 
 
The Conflict, 
 
 of all the things I love best — poetr)', pictures, music — and 
 we became friends." 
 
 " Friends ! And you don't know his name ! " 
 
 " What can a name matter, if I know him, if I believe in 
 him, and feel his power over me and over all things, and 
 trust him almost as I trust in God ? " 
 
 " And have you seen him often since that day?" 
 
 " Not often ; but I have seen him." 
 
 " A dozen times ? " 
 
 *' I have seen him five times. To-night was the nfih 
 time." 
 
 "And to-night he asked you and your friend to take a 
 little walk with him after the play?" 
 
 " Yes. We should have been walking with him now, 
 here in this park, in the starlight, if you had not come 
 between us." 
 
 I cannot describe the disappointment, the bitterness in 
 her tone. 
 
 "And when you don't see him you are unhappy, the 
 hours seem long and dreary ? " 
 
 " They seem endless." 
 
 " Lisbeth, you are on the pathway of lost souls, the path 
 that leads to misery and death." 
 
 And then I argued with this poor romantic child, so 
 helpless in her ignorance of life and its meanings, a creature 
 of nerves and fancies, and poetic dreams, who, coming 
 suddenly in contact with a man of powerful personality, a 
 strong mind in a strong body, a man of exceptional vitality, 
 was almost as helpless under that strange spell as those 
 miserable victims of nerves and superstition in the dark 
 ages, when Satan assumed a palpable shape, and the lives 
 of cloistered nuns were devil-haunted. 
 
 Never in my life had I pleaded with such earnestness — 
 never pleaded more vainly. The girl was under the spell of 
 newly awakened passion. 
 
 " Will you promise never to see this man again, if you 
 can help it, never to listen to him, or encourage his pursuit, 
 if he waylays you ?" 
 
 " No, I won't promise. I love him, and I trust him." 
 
 " You trust him ? You trust a man who follows you 
 as light women are followed by bad men? His conduct 
 
 17 c 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 to-night was an insult — the worst insult a man can offer a 
 woman. He takes advantage of your humble station, the 
 fact that you have neither father nor brother to punish him 
 if he wrongs you." 
 
 " I love him. I can't help it. I can't help it. I would 
 be content to be his servant, to live in his house and toil 
 for him ; only to see his face, only to hear his voice, once a 
 day. When he talks to me I feel like the dirt under his 
 feet. I wish we lived in a country where there were slaves, 
 that I might be his slave. I wish I could come between 
 him and some great danger, and die for him." 
 
 I write these words as she spoke them, in order that 
 you may understand this unhappy girl's infatuation, and the 
 peril in which she stands. 
 
 I said all I could to soothe her nerves, to awaken the 
 light of reason ; and she seemed in a better frame of mind 
 when we walked back to her mother's house ; but when I 
 liad opened the door, and Mrs. Berry's anxious face appeared 
 in the lamplit hall, I could see that the girl was sullen 
 rather than resigned. She hardly answered my friendly 
 good night ; and she followed her mother into the little 
 parlour in silence. 
 
 I have written at great length, because I am keenly 
 interested in this wretched girl's story, and mean to make 
 every possible eftbrt to save her ; but all that I have written 
 so far is only a prelude to the strangest, the most vivid, and 
 the most horrible dream that ever I remember to have 
 dreamt. 
 
 From the trackless confusion of my ordinary dreams I 
 came suddenly into a world where all things were distinct, 
 and all events followed in regular sequence. 
 
 I was in a hyperborean desert, whose biting cold I felt 
 in every bone of my body, an iron plain under an iron sky, 
 a vast monotonous steppe stretching far away to a sunless 
 horizon, broken here and there by basaltic rocks scattered 
 over the dismal waste in some volcanic upheaval, and with 
 here and there an ice-bound pool which flashed like polished 
 steel in the dim grey light. 
 
 In my dream I thought that neither sun, nor stars, nor 
 moon, had ever looked upon that frozen land. 
 
 But in the distance, lurid against the greyness of earth 
 
 i8 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 and sky, there rose a column of fire, vermilion and orange 
 flame, towering up to the iron roof of this dreadful \vorld, 
 and spreading a horrible glare over the arid plain. This 
 fiery shaft rose from a great gap in the earth ; and in m^y 
 dream I knew it was the mouth of hell. I saw strange 
 figures ascend and stream over the plain — figures of half- 
 naked men, of gigantic size, but nobly fashioned — men 
 whose faces shone with a diabolical beauty ; the faces of 
 falcons and eagles, full of evil power. No cloven hoofs, 
 no horned brows revealed their horrid species ; but in my 
 dream I knew that they were devils. 
 
 Suddenly, from behind a low ridge of rocks, there came 
 a train of wild women. Many of them young, some beauti- 
 ful, others old and haggard. They rushed across the plain, 
 and met and mingled with the company of devils ; and then 
 began a diabolical dance of fiends and wild women, com- 
 pared with which the revels of the witches on the Brocken 
 were mild and civiHzed. I saw beauty and strength, 
 streaming tresses, fiery eyes, the rugged force of giants, the 
 serpentine grace of beautiful women, mingling in that savage 
 rapture ; and in my dream I knew that I was gazing upon a 
 scene in the early dawn of history, and that these women 
 were Scythian witches, banished from the cities and villages 
 of the land, repudiated even by the barbarous hordes of the 
 wild north ; homeless, lawless, mates and companions for a 
 company of devils. 
 
 The dance seemed to last for hours. I saw white- 
 haired hags trampled underfoot, grovelling in the dust, 
 spurned by the flying feet of youth and power; and gradually, 
 amidst the tumultuous throng, ever moving in v/ild g}Tations, 
 my attention became concentrated upon two figures which I 
 had seen in the distance, towering above the rest, grander 
 and more diabolical than any other shapes in that infernal 
 throng. 
 
 They came nearer to me ; and in the face of the fiend 
 I saw the features and expression of the man whose 
 countenance I had watched and studied in the theatre. 
 It was the same face, but grander in its unearthly power, 
 a face lighted by the fires of hell, more beautiful, more 
 terrible, than humanity. Beside him, hanging upon his 
 shoulder in the diabolical dance, was the loveliest of all 
 
 19 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 those witch-women ; and these two having once appeared 
 in the foreground of that Pandemonium, stood out in bold 
 rehef, distinctly outlined against the mass of fiendish faces 
 and whirling forms, and dominated the scene. I seemed to 
 watch them for an intolerable length of time, with sickened 
 heart and weary eyes, weighed down by the sense of a- world 
 abandoned to the powers of darkness. 
 
 The hideous revelation of this infernal populace froze 
 my soul. I think you know that I went to Oxford a doubter, 
 and that I left the Varsity an unbeliever. Most of all had 
 I scoffed at the notion of a hell, of a personal devil, and his 
 army of fiends. And here, face to face with this demon- 
 world, there came upon me the appalling conviction that 
 the dominion of Satan was a power that had existed before 
 the beginning of time, and would rule and reign throughout 
 eternity. 
 
 Suddenly a cloud of snow drifted across the lurid 
 picture, and blotted it out. 
 
 My dream changed, and I was standing in a watch- 
 tower on the walls of Rome, looking down upon the sack 
 of the city. I heard the tremendous sound of the Gothic 
 trumpets under the midnight sky, as the Salarian Gate was 
 silently opened by a traitor's hands, and Alaric's barbarous 
 hordes poured into the streets, with licence to sack and 
 plunder, to ravage and kill, furious victors after a triple 
 siege. 
 
 Like the pictured scenes in a moving panorama the 
 horrors of that nocturnal massacre passed before my eyes ; 
 rapine, murder, the pitiless slaughter of the old and feeble ; 
 the white hairs of age, the sunny locks of childhood, dragged 
 over the blood-bespattered stones, cruelties unspeakable ; 
 a spectacle that I cannot remember without pain, unreal 
 though it was. And through all that labyrinth of horror 
 one figure was predominant, the captain of a barbaric 
 legion, in whose colossal form and satanic countenance I 
 saw the likeness of the man I had watched in the theatre. 
 
 Other scenes followed, familiar in the history of the 
 world, along the sequence of the centuries, scenes of terror 
 and crime, and in all his face flashed out upon me through 
 fire and blood, in the heart of the carnage, the embodied 
 power of evil. 
 
 20 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 The last vision showed me a room in a Russian palace, 
 the death-chamber of the murdered Emperor Paul ; and in 
 the band of conspirators his tall figure, superb in a general's 
 uniform, rose pre-eminent, the murderer-in-chief. 
 
 I woke exhausted, escaping with a struggle from dreams 
 that seemed to have held me in their ghastly spell for a long 
 night of agony — and I heard the clock of St. James's Church 
 strike two. I had been in bed something less than an hour, 
 and for the greater part of that time I had been lying awake, 
 with every prospect of a sleepless night. 
 
 I send you my dream, because you are a connoisseur 
 and a collector of the uncanny, not because I myself attach 
 any importance to it. I trace the vision of the desert steppe 
 and the satanic populace to a certain passage in Gibbon, 
 which impressed my imagination some time ago, when I 
 took down one of his volumes and opened it at random for 
 an hour's fireside reading. Perhaps there are few who read 
 their Gibbon nowadays ; but the book has always been a 
 favourite of mine. I love the history of those dim centuries 
 when Christianity and Paganism existed side by side. I love 
 the splendour of the Eastern Empire ; the grandeur of 
 Rome, noble even in decay. 
 
 So, remembering that legend of the Scythian witches, 
 who, banished from human companionship for their hellish 
 practices, met and mated with the infernal powers, and 
 became the mothers of a diabolical race, my dream is 
 easily accounted for. 
 
 21 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 III. 
 
 Arden had a long conversation with Mrs. Berry on the 
 morning after his bad dream. He withheld nothing that 
 had come to his knowledge from the mother's ear. She 
 had a right to know everything that concerned her daughter's 
 peril, every circumstance, however insignificant, that would 
 help to put her on her guard against the enemy. 
 
 "Oh, sir, what am I to do?" she asked despairingly, 
 being one of those weak women who, having lived under a 
 husband's control for the best part of their life, are incapable 
 of coming to a decision in a crisis. " Oh, Mr. Arden, do 
 help me ! Save her, sir ! Save my poor girl— my only 
 child — all I have in this world to work for and to love ! " 
 
 It was a difficult case. The girl could not be put under 
 lock and key ; nor could the mother watch over her with 
 unceasing vigilance. For the mistress of a West End 
 lodging-house there were but scanty hours of leisure ; nor 
 was the uneducated mother a companion for the half* 
 educated daughter. In that dingy ground-floor parlour, 
 with no outlook but a London yard, no sounds but the drip 
 of the cistern and the dull roar of distant wheels, the 
 monotony of street-organs, and the maddening iteration of 
 church-bells, youth, with its romantic longings, its vague 
 visions of a world of beauty, somewhere, far out of reach, 
 was eating its heart out. Arden felt an unspeakable pity 
 for mother and daughter. It seemed to him that these 
 middle-class parents, the strugglers and breadwinners, had 
 made a fatal mistake in bringing up their beloved girl-child 
 in the prison-house of a back parlour. They had reared her 
 in ignorance of the world and its ways, in ignorance of evil ; 
 but in so doing they had stunted the growth of her mind, 
 dwarfed the power of observation and comparison, and made 
 her an easy victim for the seducer. 
 
 22 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Better for her, he thought, to have suffered the rough train- 
 ing of a middle-class day-school, to have rubbed shoulders 
 with the good and bad, to have been early acquainted with 
 the manifold perils of life, the snares set for beauty, the 
 battle of the sexes, the treachery, the cruelty, the false- 
 hood of the strong in their dealings v.ith the weak. On the 
 threshold of her nineteenth birthday this girl was an infant 
 in her ignorance of life, and the first voice that thrilled her 
 ear, the first hand that held hers with a lover's grasp, the 
 first lips that sought the kiss her modesty refused, while the 
 impulse of her heart would have yielded it, were the voice 
 and the hand and the hps of the predestined conqueror. 
 Nothing but total separation from the pursuer could save 
 her from perdition. Her imagination v.-as enslaved, her 
 will was subjugated, and she had already travelled halfway 
 on the road to ruin. 
 
 ''There is only one thing I can advise," he told Mrs. 
 Berry. " Send your daughter away from London, in such 
 careful custody 'that this man will not be able to get an 
 interview with her, even if he finds out where she is living. 
 Have you any relations or friends in the country whom you 
 could trust to take care of her ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," she answered, with a troubled look ; " there is 
 Lisbeth's Aunt Tabitha, my dear husband's only sister, a 
 single woman, and very comfortably off, who has a nice 
 cottage near Woking." 
 
 "The very person, I should think." 
 
 *' Ob, I don't know, sir. I'm afraid my poor girl wouldn't 
 be happy with her." 
 
 ''She wouldn't be happy anywhere while she is in her 
 present frame of mind." 
 
 " No, sir ; I'm afraid not. But the countr}- is so dull, when 
 one has been used to the gaiety of town." 
 
 Arden thouglit of the smoky, stuffy back parlour with a 
 shudder. 
 
 " And Aunt Tabitha is a hard woman. She was still-room 
 maid, and then housekeeper, in a nobleman's family for nearly 
 thirty years, and saved a little fortune, quite enough for her 
 to live independent for the rest of her days. She keeps a 
 servant, and has everything nice about her. Indeed, her 
 cottage is a perfect picture; but then there is hardly a 
 
 23 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 chimney within half a mile. She hasn't the smuts to contend 
 with, as we have in St. James's." 
 
 " You don't think she would be unkind to your daughter ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; I do not. She is very fond of Lisbeth. Lisbeth 
 is her goddaughter ; but we could not bring ourselves to 
 call her Tabitha. She'd be very kind to my girl in her way 
 — but it's not like my way." 
 
 *' And you know of no one else to whom you could trust 
 your daughter ? " 
 
 *' No, sir; there is no one else. And you really think I 
 ought to send my girl away ? " 
 
 " Most certainly — if you can place her with some one who 
 will keep a close watch upon her. Remember, there is no 
 doubt as to her danger ; danger from this man ; danger from 
 her own state of mind. She will be safer anywhere than in 
 this house ; but wherever she is, she must be watched and 
 guarded; guarded from her own romantic impulses, and from 
 this man's unscrupulous pursuit." 
 
 " You don't know who he is, sir, or anything about him?" 
 
 " I know nothing about him now, except that he is a dan- 
 gerous man. But I hope soon to find out a good deal more." 
 
 *' I hope you will, sir. It will be some help." 
 
 " The help must come from you, Mrs. Berry, and from 
 your determination to save your child." 
 
 " I'll write to Tabitha this morning, sir, directly I've done 
 my marketing. Lisbeth didn't sleep five minutes all last 
 night. I was only sleeping a dog-sleep myself, and could 
 hear that poor child tossing about — she has her little bed 
 in my room, you know, sir — and this morning she looks as 
 white as a ghost. It's heart-breaking. We used to be so 
 happy together." 
 
 " Till womanhood came, and she had a heart to break," 
 thought Arden. 
 
 Walter Arden knew his sister's habits, and that his best 
 chance of finding her at home was after five o'clock, at which 
 hour her friends — " pals," as she called them — dropped in 
 for tea and gossip, to discuss the last scandal, or the newest 
 dressmaker, or the book which everybody was talking about 
 and very few people were reading, second-hand and third- 
 hand, and fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-hand opinions being 
 
 2A 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 bandied about in discussions that gave an impression of cul- 
 ture, without any preliminary trouble in the way of reading. 
 Impressionism was the note in Lady Mary Selby's circle. 
 ^^'omcn who were not pretty gave the impression of beauty, 
 were lovely by hypnotic suggestion, and imposed upon their 
 little world, Men with a smattering of modern literature, 
 and a faint flavour of Greek and Latin poetry, gave an 
 impression of profound scholarship. 
 
 A man of one book assumed the dimensions of a Voltaire. 
 People who were all but insolvent gave the impression of 
 millions. Everybody was willing to be impressed. Nobody 
 asked for particulars. In Lady Mar}''s superior set there 
 was no such vulgar element as plain facts, plain figures, or 
 common sense. 
 
 ;Mr. Selby was a stockbroker, and one of the reputed 
 millionaires ; though most people who knew him had an idea 
 of his wealth as a huge eccentric figure, like an inverted 
 pyramid, or the Loggan Rock, tremulous upon its narrov; 
 base, and were prepared at any time to read in the evening 
 papers that he had thrown himself under an express engine, 
 or blown out his brains in his own dressing-room. In the 
 mean time they rallied round his dinner-table, shot over his 
 moor, and courted his wife, who had shown herself so far 
 v.-hat her friends called level-headed. 
 
 The Selby house was one of the most spacious in Gros- 
 venor Square, where most of the houses are spacious. Arden 
 found Lady Mary at the end of a suite of four drawing-rooms 
 that made a glittering vista in the light of four wood-fires, 
 burning on open hearths, dazzling with the reflected glow on 
 amber tiles. The tall windows were curtained with amber 
 satin, sofas and chairs were of the same brilliant hue, and 
 the general effect gave the idea of a house of gold. 
 
 " Selby likes to show us the colour of his money," said 
 one of the over-educated butterflies who fluttered round 
 Lady ^Mary's tea-table. 
 
 The tea-table was in an octagon room at the end of the 
 suite, a room in which the water-colour pictures and the 
 rose du Barry Sevres were said to be of incalculable value. 
 The candles on the mantelpiece and a shaded lamp on the 
 table were the only light in the room, though the London 
 dusk was gathering outside. 
 
 2^ 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 It was a quarter to six, and Lady Mary's friends were 
 taking leave ; a fluttering knot of fashionably dressed women, 
 tall, large, imposing ; and three small emaciated men, of the 
 elderly young order, bald, etiolated, dehoiinaire^ faultless in 
 dress and demeanour; with the perfection of the present 
 hour, which would be imperfection next year. 
 
 "Be sure you ask for the book. It's a revelation," said 
 one of the small men, pressing Lady Mary's hand with the 
 solicitude of a physician offering a parting counsel. 
 
 " You have really read it ? " 
 
 " I reviewed it for the St. George's'' 
 
 " I knew it must be you ! Your review was a poem. I 
 shan't read the book. I know it would fall short of the 
 review." 
 
 " Don't forget to try Lady Cynthia," urged one of the 
 large women. '•' She has adorable tea-gowns. She is im- 
 mensely clever, and she puts brain-power into her frocks, 
 don't you know." 
 
 " Oh, I shall give her an order. She had everybody at 
 her tea-party. But do you think she will ever make the 
 business pay ? " 
 
 " Who knows ? Her rent for that flat in I^Iount Street is 
 four hundred and fifty ; but she charges atrociously." 
 
 They went at last, one airy trifler after another, lingering 
 for little subdued murmurings in Lady Mary's ear, questions, 
 promises, counsels, confidences, the men slipping out in 
 advance and leaving the ground clear. 
 
 They were all gone, and Mary had time to shake hands 
 with her brother. 
 
 " It's ages since I have seen you," she said, filling a cup 
 from a small Queen Anne teapot, which a footman had 
 brought after Arden's arrival. 
 
 " That's because you don't take the trouble to look at your 
 friends. It is not four and twenty hours since I saw you." 
 
 She looked puzzled for a few moments, and then a troubled 
 expression came over her face. 
 
 " Oh, I suppose you were at the theatre last night," she 
 said. " If so, I hope you were not as bored as I was." 
 
 " No ; I was keenly interested." 
 
 " In a hashed-up Palais Royal farce ? " 
 
 " No ; in a man who was with you." 
 
 26 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Colonel Manville ? I had asked three people, and he 
 was the only one who turned up." 
 
 " I want you to tell me all about him." 
 
 *' Why, what interest can you have in the man ? " 
 
 He could detect the artificial carelessness in her tone ; 
 and it pained him acutely to think that the dangerous 
 influence of a bad man had touched his sister's life, less 
 intensely no doubt, but as certainly as it had touched Lisbeth 
 Berry. 
 
 " I have a strong reason for being interested, a reason 
 that does not concern you in any way." 
 
 " How should it concern me ? The man is nothing to 
 me. He is a friend of my husband's — hardly a friend — a 
 chance acquaintance." 
 
 " Tell me all you know about him, Mary." 
 
 ** Not unless you tell me your reason for wanting to know." 
 
 " My reason is very simple. I believe the man to be 
 hunting down a girl — a young and innocent girl — in whose 
 welfare I am interested." 
 
 He saw his sister's face grow pale in the lamplight, and 
 saw a sudden distress in her lips and eyes. It was worse 
 than he had thought. This man must have acquired an 
 influence full of peril. And Mary Selby had held her head 
 high hitherto. No speck of the world's filth had ever 
 bespattered her name. Mated with a man who had nothing 
 to recommend him but his wealth, she had been admir- 
 able as a wife, amiable, accommodating, grateful for his 
 boundless indulgence, and to all appearance satisfied with 
 her lot. 
 
 " Hunting down an innocent girl ! " she echoed. " Isn't 
 that rather a sensational v,'ay of talking — like a shilling 
 shocker, or an Adelphi melodrama? Hunting down ! " she 
 repeated, v.-ith a satirical laugh ; " whom does he hunt, and 
 how ? " 
 
 " The girl is my landlady's daughter — a widow's ewe-lamb." 
 
 " Oh, that kind of ewe-lamb, brought up in a West End 
 lodging-house, must know how to take care of herself. She 
 must have seen life." 
 
 " This girl has been reared in seclusion, and knows 
 nothing of life." 
 
 " And how do you come to know that Colonel Manville 
 
 27 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 — a man of the world, past forty— is interesting himself in 
 your landlady's daughter ? " 
 
 " I have the evidence of my eyes, as well as the girl's own 
 story. You may remember that Colonel Manville left your 
 box during the last cntrc-ade, and was absent for some 
 time." 
 
 "Was he?" she asked, with well-acted indifference, were 
 it not for the contraction of the lips, which too surely indi- 
 cated mental pain. " Yes, I remember." 
 
 "Well, during that interval he was sitting in the upper 
 circle talking to my landlady's daughter — a girl of eighteen, 
 romantic, ignorant of the world's ways — an easy victim." 
 
 " Absurd ! What does he want with victims ? A man 
 who has lived half a long life among the most attractive 
 women in Europe." 
 
 " He has set himself to win that girl — to destroy her, I 
 mean — for he has won her. She worships him." 
 
 " Was the creature alone in the theatre ? " 
 
 " No ; she had a girl-friend with her." 
 
 " And Colonel Manville amused himself with talking to 
 these two girls " 
 
 "Talking to this one girl. He scarcely addressed the 
 other." 
 
 " He was chaffing her, as you men call it, I dare say, 
 amusing himself with such a piece of simplicity, reared in 
 a London lodging-house. Why do you trouble yourself 
 about such nonsense, Walter ? Colonel Manville had for- 
 gotten her existence, perhaps, before the play was over." 
 
 " He waited at the door after he had seen you to your 
 carriage. He had planned a midnight walk with the two 
 girls — or with one, if he could get rid of the other. He 
 followed and watched on the opposite side of the street 
 while I walked home with them." 
 
 " I congratulate you upon an unsuspected talent." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " You have missed a grand career. You ought to have 
 been a private detective." 
 
 " Your sarcasm does not offend me. I was at the theatre 
 last night to make a discovery, and I made it. I am not 
 ashamed of the means, since the end was good." 
 
 " You are in love with the girl yourself, I suppose." 
 
 28 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " I am surprised that you should be petty enough to niake 
 such a suggestion. I am sorry for the girl's mother, who 
 has implored me to save an idolized child from ruin. Won't 
 you help me, Mary, in a good work ? " 
 
 " What am I to do ? Remonstrate with Colonel Manville, 
 the next time I meet him in society, for his indiscreet atten- 
 tions to your landlady's daughter ? " 
 " Tell me what you know of the man." 
 *' He is the son of a Russian merchant. His father lives 
 in retirement at a place in Berkshire, very old, and very 
 rich. Colonel Manville was in the Russian Imperial Guard ; 
 but he is a cosmopolitan, talks four or five languages with- 
 out any foreign accent, and is as much at home in Rome 
 and Vienna as in Paris or London. He is a man of the 
 world, in fact, and to my idea the very last man to hunt 
 down cockney insipidities such as your landlady's ewe-lamb." 
 " Thank you for your information, my dear ^Mary. I 
 dare say I shall hear something of the man's character at 
 my Club," answered Arden, as he rose to go. 
 
 " Where, after bridge, I suppose your principal amuse- 
 ment is to vivisect the manners and morals of absent 
 members." 
 
 " That is an old idea of your sex. Good night." 
 *' Good night. I don't press you to stay, as I want an 
 hour's sleep before I dress for a little friendly dinner— one 
 of those out-of-the-season dinners, which are so much nicer 
 than the big feasts." 
 
 " At which you will meet Colonel Manville, perhaps ? " 
 " Not unlikely. He goes almost everywhere. Don't 
 forget your engagement to me." 
 
 *' Certainly not. But I hope your dinner is not to be a 
 big feast. The long invitation looks ominous." 
 
 " We have no big dinners in November. The long 
 invitation was to meet Villeneuve, the new French novelist, 
 more Parisian and more audacious than the strongest of the 
 old set. He is coming to London for ten days, and will 
 dine here to meet the chosen few. I hope }-ou have read 
 his latest, ' Femme Funeste ' ? " 
 
 " I have not opened one of his books, though I have 
 seen them lying about in the Club library. I relish no 
 French novelist since Balzac." 
 
 29 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " My poor Walter, you are a bundle of old-fashioned 
 prejudices." 
 
 Arden dined and spent the evening at his Club, where he 
 was fortunate in meeting the man he considered most likely 
 to give him the information he wanted. 
 
 Mr. de Courcy Smythe had begun life in the diplomatic 
 service, with assured means and brilliant prospects, but had 
 never risen higher than Secretary of Legation, and on reach- 
 ing the very mature age of fifty-five had exchanged the 
 cares of diplomacy for the pleasures of idleness, a wanderer 
 in sunny lands, or a lounger in London, as whim dictated. 
 He was a man who had been everywhere, had seen every- 
 thing, and was reputed to know all about everybody. 
 
 " Konstantin Manville ? Yes, of course. I saw some- 
 thing of him in Paris three winters ago. He had an apart- 
 ment near the Madeleine, and gave card suppers. His 
 food and wine were unsurpassable, but the play was too 
 high for me. One met all the cleverest and wickedest people 
 in Paris." 
 
 " Ladies among them, perhaps ? " 
 
 " The feminine element was not v.anting." 
 
 " What kind of man is he ? " 
 
 *'A giant in brain and body. A giant with a magnetic 
 power, which makes all other men seem pigmies. A modern 
 Mirabeau, with the advantage of being handsome instead of 
 
 ugly." 
 
 "A dangerous man where women are concerned," sug- 
 gested Arden. 
 
 Smythe looked at him curiously. " My dear fellow," he 
 said hastily, " if you have heard any ill-natured gossip 
 about " 
 
 He was going to say about Lady Mary Selby, when Arden 
 interrupted him. 
 
 " There is a girl — a simple inexperienced girl of the 
 humble classes, whom this man is pursuing " 
 
 " Oh ! " said Smythe, very glad he had not gone farther. 
 *'■ That kind of girl would have a very poor chance with 
 Manville." 
 
 " I mean to save her." 
 
 "Then you'd better get her on board an Australian 
 steamer to-morrow, and despatch her to the Antipodes. 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 She may be safe from him there, smce it wouldn't be worth 
 his while to follow her." 
 
 " Is he married ? " 
 
 '' No ; never married — a colossal butterfly, flitting from 
 flower to flower." 
 
 " Was he brought up in Russia ? " 
 
 '•No; he was born and raised here — was at Eton as a 
 small boy ; went to Petersburg in his teens, and v»'a3 given 
 a commission in the Imperial Guard, served in the Army 
 for nine or ten years, rose to the rank of major, and then 
 came to grief — an intrigue with the colonel's wife; the colonel 
 disappeared one snowy night, and was found a month later 
 in the Neva. It was an ugly business ; and though nobody 
 vrent so far as to suspect murder, Major Manville had to 
 leave the Russian Army, and very soon found it convenient 
 to leave Russia. I don't think he has ever re-crossed the 
 frontier." 
 
 " How does he come by the rank of Colonel ? " 
 
 " He commanded a yeomanry regiment in Berkshire, 
 where his father has a good deal of property." 
 
 " What manner of man is the father ? " 
 
 "A man v.ithout conscience or creed— engrained with 
 sin. But he has thriven upon iniquity. He is past ninety, 
 and looks good for another decade. He shows himself in 
 London once or twice a year at some famous book sale, 
 buying rare books of the kind they call ' curious ; ' a wonder- 
 ful example of longevity, full of energy, with the eyes of an 
 eagle, and a frame of iron. These Manvilles are a long- 
 lived race. Konstantin boasts of his descent from, a line 
 of centenarians.'' 
 
 " Is the old man like him ? " 
 
 *'Yes; it is the same face— the same colossal frame. 
 Konstantin senior has lived as adventurous a life as 
 Konstantin junior. He inherited a business worth a million, 
 and his mercantile career was finished before middle age. 
 He exchanged the counting-house for a life of profligate 
 indulgence that spread itself over civilized Europe, from 
 the Seine to the Golden Horn. He was past fifty before 
 he met the woman he married." 
 
 " Was she a Russian ? " 
 
 " She was the star of a cafe concert on the Paris boulevard." 
 
 31 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " A fallen star ? " 
 
 " One naturally supposes so. She lived with her husbani 
 a year and a half, presented him with a son, and elope^ 
 with a Wallachian prince while the infant was cutting hi 
 teeth. She was a Provcngale, a magnificent creature, wit 
 an alabaster skin and eyes of fire. All Paris had gone ma' 
 about her before Manville succumbed to her charm." 
 
 " And for character ? " 
 
 "A wicked witch. They were a well-matched couple- 
 witch and devil." 
 
 Arden was startled by words that so strangely recalled 
 his dream of the previous night — " Witch and devil ! " 
 
 Again he saw the Scythian desert, the women with wiL 
 hair and burning eyes, the yawning pit of hell. 
 
 32 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Mrs. Berry did not lose an hour before acting upon 
 Arden's advice. The peril of an idolized daughter gave the 
 mother unwonted energy and decision. The marauding 
 wolf was on the path of the lamb, and the rescue must 
 needs be prompt and speedy. Mrs. Berry left her house 
 and her lodgers to the care of her two servants for a whole 
 day, an almost unexampled proceeding on her part, and 
 took Lisbeth to her aunt's cottage on the outskirts of a 
 village near Woking, a rustic spot, where the air was health- 
 giving and the solitude unbroken. She carried her daughter 
 off in this sudden manner on the pretence of anxiety abput 
 her health, and gave Lisbeth no hint of Arden's communica- 
 tion ; but the girl had no doubt that her mother had been 
 told of all that occurred at the theatre and after, and she 
 submitted to the inevitable with a sullen acquiescence which 
 was new to her character. Between the indulgent mother.- 
 and the loving daughter there had opened an abyss which- 
 made them seem as strangers. The mother's heart ached 
 with pity ; the daughter seemed indifferent, coldly repulsing 
 every expression of tenderness, averting her eyes from the 
 eyes that sought hers with anxious love, shrinking into her 
 corner of the railway carriage, and turning all her thoughts 
 inward, to brood upon the image of the man whose name 
 she knew not, but whose influence had changed her life 
 from humdrum reality to a romantic dream. 
 
 " How long am I to stop with Aunt Tabitha? " she asked," 
 as the train drew near Woking. 
 
 " Only till you have got back your health, dear. It is 
 only for your health I am parting with you." 
 
 " That's nonsense, mother. There is nothing the matter 
 with me." 
 
 33 ^ 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 *'0h, Lisbeth, how can you say that, when you have 
 such restless nights, and look so white and wretched, and 
 seem so low-spirited ? " 
 
 " I can't help being miserable sometimes ; and I shall be 
 much more miserable in the country than in London." 
 
 " No, no, you won't, darling. There'll be nothing to 
 upset you, or to make you unhappy in Tabitha's pretty 
 home. You'll soon get back your good health in the fine 
 country air. I know your aunt will be very kind to you." 
 
 *' I don't care whether she's kind or unkind. I shall be 
 miserable till you let me go home again." 
 
 Tabitha Berry was at the station with a fly, and she gave 
 mother and daughter an affectionate welcome. Mrs. Berry's 
 letter of the previous night had acquainted her with her 
 niece's peril, and the girl came to her as a kind of state 
 prisoner. She was by no means a sour or pedantic spinster, 
 but a genial, comfortable person, carrying about her the 
 large and liberal ideas of the noble household in which 
 she had served for the greater part of her life, and where 
 all the machinery of existence was worked upon generous 
 lines. She was proud of her cottage, which she had made 
 a cosy nest for her declining years, prouder of her garden, 
 and proudest of her poultry-yard, where she reared specimens 
 of the superior breeds which obtained on her late mistress's 
 estate, forty miles away, in North Hampshire, whence, under 
 Providence, all Tabitha's blessings were derived, even her 
 little maid-of-all-work, who was the daughter of an under- 
 gardener at the great house. 
 
 In a confidential talk with the anxious mother, Tabitha 
 promised to keep watch and ward over her niece. They 
 would take their walks together on the common, and she 
 would hardly let Lisbeth out of her sight. 
 
 " You'll find she'll soon get over her foolish fancy when 
 she doesn't see the fellow," Tabitha opined, not having a 
 high estimate of the influence or attractiveness of the 
 superior sex. " She'll get her health back with country 
 air and country living, and she'll come round, and begin 
 to wonder how she ever cared for him." 
 
 Solaced in some small measure by these cheering prog- 
 nostications, Mrs. Berry went back to the lodging-house, 
 and the daily cares and toils that made the hours seem 
 
 34 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 short, and brought restful nights to the toiler. The little 
 back parlour seemed sadly dull \Yithout Lisbeth ; but the 
 busy housekeeper had scant leisure for sitting by her lonely 
 hearth, and in her few intervals of rest generally dropped 
 asleep over a newspaper, so that she suffered less from the 
 absence of this beloved companion than a mother in the 
 idle classes v/ould have done. The days were dull days, 
 but they passed quickly, and never seemed quite long 
 enough for the work that had to be got through. 
 i And now it was spring again, the bleak early spring of 
 crocuses and snowdrops, before the promise of leaves on the 
 black branches in the park ; but spring v/ith days of bright 
 sunshine that called .for clean m.uslin curtains in all the 
 windows, and much carpet-beating, and diligent pohshing 
 of the old substantial furniture. 
 
 • Tabitha's letters had been brief, but satisfactory. Her 
 niece was improving in health, and was not difficult to 
 manage. They went for long walks together every after- 
 noon ; and the vicar's lady had invited Lisbeth to an enter- 
 tainment at the schoolhouse. The vicar had called twice, 
 and had seemed very much taken v/ith Lisbeth, when he 
 found she read and appreciated his favourite poets. 
 
 Lisbeth's own letters had been cold and unloving. She 
 had only written when urgently entreated by her mother, 
 v.'ho sat down in the midst of her day's work to pour out 
 the feelings of her anxious heart to the child she loved. 
 
 " You can't suppose I like to be without you, Liz," she 
 wrote. "There's not a ghmmer of joy in my life while 
 you're away. I just drudge on, day after day, and try to 
 please my lodgers, and make my house nicer than anybody 
 else's, and that's all. And I do that for your sake— to make 
 a comfortable home for you, and to leave you with the 
 means of making a good living, if you never marry. I care 
 for nothing else, till I get you home again. All the clean 
 curtains are up, and the chintz chair-covers have been 
 calendered. Mr. Arden's rooms look lovely. He gave 
 me half the price of a Persian carpet for his library, and, 
 what with his books and a new lamp he bought the other 
 day, the room is something to be proud of. jNIy second 
 floor has told me he means to stay on, as my cooking 
 pleases him; and his lordship will keep the ground-floor 
 
 35 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 all the year, though he doesn't come back from Cannes 
 till April, and will be away in Scotland all August and 
 September. So you see everything is going on well, darling ; 
 and I only want my sweet daughter home and quite happy 
 in her mind to think myself the luckiest woman in London." 
 
 " What's the use of saying you want me home if you don't 
 send for me ? " Lisbeth wrote. " As for my being happy, 
 that's more than I ever expect to be. There's very little 
 happiness in life for people in our position. We are just 
 the dust of the earth, for other people to tread under foot. 
 \Ve see all the pleasures of life pass by us, like the carriages 
 in the streets, and we have no share in them. We are born 
 to be lookers-on. I have seen women look at me out of 
 their carriage windows — beautifully dressed women — look at 
 me and not see me, as they look at the bricks in t|ie walls 
 or the mud on the pavements ; and I am sic^k of a life which 
 means being despised and counted as nothing." 
 
 Such letters as these chilled Mrs. Berry's heart. What 
 could she do for her girl ? What could her housekeeping 
 cares, the labour of her hands, accomplish for the ido} of her 
 heart ? She thought she had done much in making a lady 
 of her daughter, dressing her neatly and prettily, keeping 
 her from contact with low people, keeping all sordid labour 
 from those delicate hands. And the result was bitter 
 discontent. She could do no more. She had to confess 
 herself beaten. 
 
 There came a v.-eek without any letter from Tabitha, who 
 had hitherto written every Sunday evening; and on Mrs. 
 Berry writing to ask the reason, a hasty scrawl from Lisbeth 
 told her that her aunt was confined to her room with an 
 attack of asthma, and that she, Lisbeth, was helping to nurse 
 her. 
 
 This was bad news for the mother. What of the promised 
 watch and ward, now that the warder was laid up ? If the 
 enemy had by any chance discovered Lisbeth's retreat, 
 Tabitha's illness would give him his opportunity. Mrs. 
 Berry carried the letter to Arden, who recommended her 
 to go to Woking without delay, and see for herself the state 
 of things there. It might be safer to bring her daughter 
 back to London, than to leave her in the country without due 
 supervision. 
 
 36 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Mrs. Berry assented to this view all the more readily 
 because of her yearning for her daughter's presence. The 
 letter arrived by the five-o'clock post ; and she was making 
 her hurried preparations for the little journey when there 
 came a telegram that made her helpless from agitation. 
 
 '' Lisbeth gone away — seen on road to station — TabithaP 
 
 Tvlrs. Berry rushed upstairs with the telegram in her hand, 
 and only controlled her excitement on arriving at Arden's 
 door, so far as to knock respectfully and wait for permission 
 to enter. 
 
 " Oh, sir, I am too late ! She has run away ! " 
 
 Arden looked at the telegram, and tried to take a cheer- 
 ful view of the case. 
 
 "She may be coming straight home," he said. "You say 
 she has been asking to come home. She may have taken 
 the law into her own hands." 
 
 " But she would have told Tabitha if she was coming 
 home. Oh, sir, what had I better do ? I feel too 
 bewildered to think. ISIy poor brain is in a whirl." 
 
 " You had better go to Woking as you intended, and find 
 out all you can. I will go to Vauxhall and wait there till 
 midnight if necessary, to watch the arrival of the Woking 
 trains. If Lisbeth is in one of them, I will bring her home, 
 and take care of her till you return." 
 
 " Oh, sir, you are all goodness ; but it seems like imposing 
 upon you " 
 
 " No, no. I am very glad to be of use. Evil shall not 
 come to your daughter if I can help it." 
 
 Arden took Mrs. Berry to Waterloo in a cab, saw her 
 seated in a second-class carriage for Woking, and went in 
 the same train to Vauxhall, where he was prepared to spend 
 some wearisome hours as best he might, with the help of 
 the daily papers and such luxury as was offered by the 
 general waiting-room. On the other hand, it was likely 
 that Lisbeth might soon appear upon the scene. 
 
 Tabitha's telegram had been sent at 5.50. It was now 
 half-past seven ; and there was a Woking train due in ten 
 minutes. If Lisbeth was on her way to the station when 
 the message was despatched, this was the time when she 
 would be likely to arrive. 
 
 37 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 The train came slowly in — a long train, with many' 
 passengers — and the lengthy business of ticket-collecting 
 began. There were very few people on the platform, and 
 among them there was no figure bearing the faintest 
 resemblance to Konstantin Manville. Assured of this fact, 
 Arden walked slowly past the carriages, peering into each, 
 and less than halfway from the end of the train he dis- 
 covered the agitated face of Lisbeth looking out of a second- 
 class carriage. She was calling for a porter to unlock the 
 door, and on its being opened she sprang out hastily, and 
 stood gazing up and down the platform in a distracted way, 
 evidently expecting to see some one who was not there. 
 Disappointment, chagrin, bewilderment, were depicted on 
 her countenance as her eyes roamed up and down tlie 
 distance, and then a sudden look of terror came into her 
 face at sight of Arden. 
 
 " Come, Lisbeth," he said quietly, " I'll get you a cab, 
 and see you safely home." 
 
 " Thank you, sir ; but I am not going home." 
 
 " Yes, you are, Lisbeth. I have promised your mother to 
 take care of you. She was sadly distressed, poor soul, al 
 hearing you had left your aunt ; but I knew you must mean 
 to come home." 
 
 He held her arm, gently but firmly, as he led her towards 
 the flight of stairs by which they had to leave the station, but 
 at the bottom of the stairs she stopped suddenly, and cried 
 out — 
 
 *' My bag, sir ! I left my bag in the carriage. I must go 
 back for it." 
 
 "No; I'll get it. Stay here. Don't stir till I come 
 back." 
 
 He placed her in a sheltered angle by the ticket-collector, 
 out of the way of the traffic. He looked along the hall, 
 from the door at one end to the door at the other. There 
 vras no Colonel Manville in sight. He hurried upstairs, and 
 had just time to spring into the empty compartment and 
 snatch a bag from the rack. The train- was moving as he 
 left it, and as the engine steamed out he heard a loud cry 
 from the porters at the London end of the station, and saw 
 a tall figure push its impetuous way through the crowd wait* 
 ing on the platform. 
 
 38 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " What's the matter? " he asked an mspector, as he hurried 
 towards the staircase. . 
 
 " Man crossed the line from the down platform, sir, close 
 in front of the engine. I thought he was done for. He 
 only just cleared it, jumped on to the platform, and ran this 
 way like a flash of lightning, just this mstant." 
 
 Arden was at the bottom of the stairs before the man had 
 left off talking. The ticket-collector was in his place ; but 
 the angle behind him was empty. Lisbeth was gone. 
 
 "What has becom.e of the lady I left here just now?' 
 
 Arden asked. t .i • i, 
 
 " Gone away this minute, sir, with a tall man. 1 dunk 
 
 they went to look for a cab." . . 
 
 Arden hurried to the door. A hansom was driving 
 rapidly towards Vauxhall Bridge, and there was no other 
 cab in sight. Arden followed across the bridge at a run, 
 and met an empty hansom just as he was losing sight of the 
 cab he was pursuing. He had scarcely breath enough to 
 tell the driver to give chase, as he sprang into the vehicle. 
 
 "A sovereign if you overtake that cab," he gasped, 
 pointing to the%anishing hansom. 
 
 The man swung his horse round, and started at a gallop, 
 the cab swaying from side to side. He contrived to keep 
 the hansom in sight for the next five or six minutes but 
 bv that time his horse flagged. The pace was beyond him. 
 
 " They've ^ot too much of a start, sir," the man said, hftmg 
 the shutter. ''" It can't be done. Shall I drive to Victoria? 
 They're going that way." 
 
 "Yes, yes, to Victoria, South Eastern platform, as fast as 
 
 you can go." . ^ ^ ,• 
 
 The continental express was on the point of starting as 
 \rden went on to the platform, doors banging, station- 
 master and inspectors on the qui vive. He had just time to 
 run half the length of the train before the first slow solemn 
 beats of the locomotive carried the mass of eager humanity 
 out into the darkness of the night ; and in that short span, 
 breathless, desperate at his defeat, he saw Lisbeth s pale 
 face looking out of an open window, with INIanville standing 
 in the shadow behind her, the tall form leaning forward over 
 her shoulder, the falcon eyes searching the crowd on the 
 platform. 
 
 39 
 
The Conflict, 
 
 She was gone ; the power of evil had been stronger than 
 the power of good. And Arden had to face the unhappy 
 ■mother, when she came back after her useless journey, and 
 to tell her that her child was lost. 
 
 He went straight to Scotland Yard, obtained the address 
 of a certain Mr. George Jackman, a retired member of the 
 Criminal Investigation Force, now practising the subtle arts 
 of private inquiry, and put the case in his hands, giving a 
 minute description of the girl, together with the name, 
 position, and personal characteristics of the man she was 
 travelling with. 
 
 " I have heard something of Colonel Manville in Paris, 
 where he's better known than in London," said the detective. 
 " I'm afraid there's not much chance of getting the better of 
 him. Do you want him to marry the young lady, or do you 
 want to get her away from him ? " 
 
 " I want to get her away from him. The idea of marriage 
 is hopeless, and would mean misery for her if it were 
 possible. I want you to follow them to Paris, or farther, if 
 they go beyond Paris. I would hunt them down myself, if 
 I knew how. It isn't a question of sparing myself trouble. 
 But you have the art of trapping a fugitive " 
 
 " I've run down a good many, sir. I'll do what I can in 
 this case. I've friends in Paris — and at Marseilles — friends 
 in the Police. Do you want me to start by the morning 
 train ? " 
 
 " By the very first train that will carry you." 
 
 '' Good." 
 
 Arden gave him two five-pound notes, which were all the 
 ready money he had about him, and offered to send further 
 funds to any address the detective might give him. 
 
 The man wrote an address on the back of his card : 
 *' Chez M. Davout, Rue Matamore, 37 bis." 
 
 " Telegraph to me immediately if you find the girl j and 
 don't let her out of your sight till I am on the spot to look 
 after her," Arden said. 
 
 It was nearly ten o'clock when he left Mr. Jackman's office, 
 and went back to Jermyn Street, heavy at heart, to tell the 
 wretched mother that the worst had happened. The 
 cherished only child, the joy and pride of lowly hearts, so 
 carefully reared amidst humble surroundings, so fondly 
 
 40 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 loved, had gone the ^vay that leads to perdition. And he 
 knew that Mrs. Berry was a religious woman, a follower of 
 severe evangelical pastors, with something of the old Puritan 
 temper, and that for her sin was sin, and perdition here 
 meant perdition hereafter. She had no wide modern ideas, 
 no philosophical acceptance of humanity's weaknesses and 
 errors, no belief in the indulgent theory that circumstances 
 alter cases and excuse sins. To keep her daughter spotless 
 from the world had been the fervent prayer of her life. 
 
 Arden knew this, and he had to tell her that her daughter 
 had cast in her lot with the reprobates, a deliberate_ sinner. 
 
 He urged every argument that made for consolation j but 
 the case admitted of little comfort. 
 
 " I will do all that can be done for her," he said. " If it 
 is possible to save her, and bring her back to you, I will 
 do it." 
 
 " Oh, sir, you have been very good. I know you will do 
 what you can. But my girl is lost. If she comes back to 
 me, she will seem like a stranger. I can never be proud of 
 her again. I can never look in her face without feeling 
 ashamed. I shall feel the shame, if she doesn't." 
 
 " She will feel it, you may be sure. If she comes back 
 to you, she v.ill come in sorrow and penitence. She will 
 have nothing left her in this Ufe except your pity and your 
 love." 
 
 " Oh, sir, I don't know. She was like a stranger to me 
 that last day when I took her to her aunt's cottage. And 
 she has been false and deceitful — she that never told me a 
 falsehood in her life till this misery came upon us. That 
 man has been seen near the house late at night, and she 
 has crept downstairs and gone out in the road to meet him 
 when her aunt was in bed. The servant heard her, and 
 looked out of the attic windov.- and saw her walking with him. 
 She only told her mistress this evening, after Lisbeth had 
 gone. It happened three or four times in the dark nights 
 last month. And then the girl saw and heard nothing 
 more. And she wouldn't tell, because she was fond of 
 Lisbeth." 
 
 " She ought to have spoken." 
 
 " Yes, of course she ought. She might have saved my 
 darling if she had told her mistress what was going on. 
 
 41 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 But she is a silly feather-headed girl, and she could do 
 nothing but cry and say that Lisbeth was always kind to 
 her." 
 
 " Were any letters found ? " 
 
 "Not a line. My sister-in-law had searched the house 
 before I got there, though she ought not to have left her 
 bed, poor thing, with her asthma. Oh, sir, if you could 
 have travelled to Dover in the train with them — if you 
 could have snatched her out of his arms ! " 
 
 " Two minutes earher and I would have made the attempt ; 
 but luck was against me. I was too late. If I had not 
 been fool enough to go back for that wretched bag," added 
 Arden, with a vindictive glance at the morocco travelling- 
 bag, which he had brought home — a birthday present to 
 Lisbeth from the indulgent mother, "she couldn't have 
 given me the slip." 
 
 " It was very unfortunate, sir," said Mrs. Berry, in a 
 voice broken by sobs. 
 
 She had never ceased crying throughout their conversa- 
 tion, and Arden knew that in the long watches of the night 
 the mother's broken-hearted crying would go on ; but that 
 soon after daybreak to-morrow she would be on foot, look- 
 ing after her servants, and slaving for her lodgers, and carry- 
 ing her silent grief about with her wherever she moved; 
 and he was intensely sorry for this patient sorrow for which 
 comfort or hope seemed impossible. 
 
 Lady Maiy Selby was at her villa on the Riviera. Arden 
 had not seen her since her dinner-party for the famous 
 novelist, as she left London for the South the next day. She 
 was brilliant and full of clever talk at the head of the dinner- 
 table, airing the Parisian French of which she was so proud, 
 with the novelist on her right hand ; but her brother could 
 see the shadow behind the brightness — a shade of discon- 
 tent, weariness, satiety, the signs of an empty heart and a 
 disappointed life. 
 
 Her husband, who was inordinately proud of her, saw 
 only the shining surface. 
 
 " My wife is always at her best when she has literary- 
 swells about her. She adores men of genius, and she 
 ^can talk to them on their own level," he told his friends, 
 
 42 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 pleased with his wife, his house, his wines, and everything 
 that was his. , 
 
 Mary was at Cannes, and there was nothing to be learnt 
 from her. De Courcy Smythe had left London. Arden 
 had failed in obtaining further details of Colonel IManville's 
 life or character from any of his friends. Several people 
 knew something about him ; but the som^ething was always 
 the same outside knowledge that he had obtained from 
 Smythe. Manville had not been seen about town during 
 the winter. He was a cosmopoHtan, and loved the sun. 
 He might be in Rome, Naples, Constantinople, or Egypt. ' 
 
 For ten days the daily report from Jackman told only of 
 failure. He had employed the Parisian police, and had 
 followed up every possible clue, but without result, though 
 he had reason to believe that Colonel Manville was in 
 Paris. But on the eleventh day there came a letter of more 
 significance. 
 
 " I have at last succeeded in meeting Colonel Manville, 
 after keeping a close watch upon the club of which I dis- 
 covered him to be a member. It is the fastest club in 
 Paris, notorious for high play, and rows and scandals of all 
 kinds. Some of the worst duels of the last ten years have 
 been the result of quarrels in the card-room ; and the club 
 has the worst possible reputation with the police, though 
 most of the swells belong to it, and everything about the 
 establishment is the tip-top of fashion and luxury. 
 
 *' Colonel Manville drove to the club at three o'clock 
 yesterday afternoon, and did not leave till two this morn- 
 ing. ^ I was in a cafe within sight of the door till midnight, 
 and in the street afterwards. I followed him to a house in 
 the Rue Royale, where he has rooms on the second floor, 
 and where I have contrived to get on friendly terms with 
 the concierge. IManville has been living in this house off and 
 on during the winter — sometimes going away for as much 
 as a fortnight or three weeks, but making Paris his head- 
 quarters. I believe the porter's statements may be relied 
 upon. He told me that Colonel Manville had only re- 
 turned to his rooms the day before yesterday, after an 
 absence of more than a fortnight. "Whether he was in 
 some other quarter of Paris between the night when you 
 saw him in the continental express and his return to his 
 
 43 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 lodgings, or whether he has been farther south with the 
 young lady, and where she is living now, I have still to 
 discover. Having found him, I feel hopeful of the result." 
 Three days later there came a telegram — 
 
 ^^ Lady found. Will meet the train arriving tomorrow 
 mornings Gare du NordV 
 
 44 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 V. 
 
 Within three hours after the receipt of the detective's 
 telegram, Walter Arden vras on his way to Paris. He told 
 Mrs. Berry that her daughter was found, and begged her 
 ta hope for the best. The unhappy mother wanted to go 
 with him, or at least to follow him next morning; but he 
 succeeded in convincing her that it was best for him to be 
 alone, and free to act as the circumstances of the hour 
 might require. There might be difficulties in the way 
 which would be increased by a woman's presence. 
 
 " If it is in me to do this thing, I will bring her back to 
 you," he said, with intense earnestness. "AH you have to 
 do is to open your arms to her, and to forgive. And in 
 God's own time you may both be able to forget." 
 
 " Oh, sir, I can never do that ! I can never forget what 
 she was to her father and me, and how proud we were of 
 her. She has humbled me to the dust for the rest of my 
 life — unless — unless he would marry her and make a lady 
 of her." 
 
 " My poor friend, he won't do that. And if he would, 
 she might be a miserable woman for the rest of her hfe." 
 
 " But she would be an honest woman. We shouldn't be 
 ashamed to look in each other's faces, as we shall be if she 
 comes home a ruined girl." 
 
 The poor creature broke into a flood of tears. She had 
 borne up bravely in her daily drudgery since the night of 
 the elopement, but the thought of the return crushed her. 
 
 Mr. Jackman was waiting in the stony greyness of the 
 terminus, the grey light of a bleak March morning. The 
 traveller had only a Gladstone bag and a hat-box, which 
 had been passed through the customs at Calais. He and 
 
 45 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Jackman were sitting side by side in a coupe driving towards 
 the Rue de Rivoli, five minutes after the arrival of the train. 
 
 " I'm very glad you've come, sir. It's the only chance." 
 
 '•Where is she?" 
 
 " In a respectable hotel on the other side of the river." 
 
 "Alone?" 
 
 " No. She has a nurse with her — a Sister of Charity." 
 
 " And where is Manville ? How did you get her away 
 from him ? " 
 
 " There was no difficulty about that. He has cast her off, 
 I suppose." 
 
 *' Cast her off — in Paris — a helpless girl ? What an 
 incarnate fiend ! " 
 
 " I believe that's about the size of it, sir." 
 
 " You suppose ! — you believe ! But you must know what 
 he has done." 
 
 " No, I don't, sir. No more v/ill you for some time to 
 come. The poor young lady is off her head. She won't be 
 able to give much of an account of herself. It's a sad story." 
 
 " Where did you find her ? " 
 
 " On the quay, by the flower-market, in the midst of a 
 crowd, about this time yesterday morning, when I was 
 starting for my day's business in the Rue Royale. My 
 diggings are on that side of the river, in the Rue Matamore, 
 near the boul. Mich, as they call it — the students' boulevard, 
 you know, sir." 
 
 " Yes, yes ; I know." 
 
 " There was a crowd of flower-girls and bargemen, and 
 a rag-picker or two, and I found that one of the bargemen 
 had just picked a girl out of the river. She had thrown 
 herself from the bridge right in the middle of the stream ; 
 and the man had been precious quick jumping off his barge, 
 or he would not have saved her. She was lying on die 
 ground, with her head in a woman's lap ; and directly I 
 saw the long red hair and the small pale face, I knew she 
 was the girl that was wanted. She was very bad, but she 
 had been got out of the water in time. We carried her into 
 a chemist's shop on the quay, and a doctor came and looked 
 after her, and presently she was able to speak, and said a 
 few words in a rambling light-headed way; and when I 
 heard her talk English, I was all the more sure of her. 
 
 46 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 *' ' It's all right, Miss Lisbeth,' I said, not wanting to give 
 away her surname ; and she started at the sound of her 
 name, and looked at me with a ray of sense in her eyes. 
 The doctor saw that I knew her name, and supposed that 
 I was a friend ; so he made no difficulty about my taking 
 charge of her, especially as I asked him to recommend a 
 quiet hotel where I could take her, and to find me a 
 hospital-nurse to look after her. He said that she was very 
 bad, and would need a great deal of care. He thought she 
 must have been in a bad way before she threw herself into 
 the river, for, considering how short'a time she had been in 
 the water, the shock and the immersion were not enough to 
 account for her state. He asked me if she was right in 
 her mind, and I told him that, to the best of my belief, she 
 was in possession of her reason v,-hen she left London, a 
 fortnight ago." 
 
 " She was mad enough to rush headlong to destruction," 
 said Arden, gloomily. 
 
 "The doctor said she m.ust have gone through some 
 terrible experience in the mean time to account for her 
 present condition. We put her in a cab and took her to 
 the hotel he recommended, where I was able to get a 
 couple of rooms on the third floor, looking into a courtyard, 
 and very quiet ; and then the doctor went off to get a nurse. 
 He is a young man, but he seems to know what he is about. 
 He looks poor, and practises in a poor quarter ; but I think 
 he is the right sort of man for the case, in the interests of 
 the young lady and her friends." 
 
 " Have you seen her since yesterday morning ? " Arden 
 asked. 
 
 '• I saw her late last night. There was no change. She 
 had taken no food, and had had no sleep, and had been 
 talking in a wild way, the nursing-sister said." 
 
 '•' You are sure she is Lisbeth Berry ? " 
 
 '' I don't think there's room for doubt. She agrees in 
 every particular with the description I wrote down from 
 your dictation, and I found a handkerchief marked L.B." 
 
 " Had she any money about her ? " 
 
 *' Half a sovereign and a little English silver, in a netted 
 silk purse." 
 
 " Ought I to send for her mother ? "' 
 
 47 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 ** You may think yourself bound to do so if she doesn't 
 get better soon ; but in her present condition there wouldn't 
 be much use in the mother coming, and it would be very 
 painful for her. I'm afraid the doctor thinks the girl may 
 end her days in a lunatic asylum." 
 
 *' God grant he may be mistaken. And how is Manville 
 to be brought to answer for his crime ? What can the law 
 do to him ? " 
 
 " I'm afraid the law can't touch him. I think you said 
 that Miss Berry is nineteen years of age." 
 
 " She was nineteen on the tenth of January." 
 
 " Then she is of an age to answer for her own actions, in 
 the eye of the law. It is not a case of abduction." 
 
 " And he might tempt her away from her home, slay her 
 soul and body, reduce her to madness, and throw her out 
 in the streets of a foreign city — a girl who had never left 
 her mother's care, till this wretch lured her away — and there 
 is nothing in all that sum of infamy for which he can be 
 made answerable to the law ? " 
 
 " No ; when a woman makes up her mind to run away 
 with a man, it is the fortune of war. He may treat her as. 
 vilely as he pleases. She has no resource except to leave 
 him ; for the streets or the river, if she has nowhere else to 
 go. It is to this young woman's credit that she chose the 
 river." 
 
 " She was a pure-minded girl, innocent as a child, before 
 that devil hunted her down." 
 
 They had crossed the Seine, had driven by the quay and 
 the Rue des Saints Pbres, and were now in a quiet street 
 within the shadow of St. Sulpice, where the cab stopped in 
 front of the Hotel Loyola, an old-fashioned house, without 
 any of the flashy splendours of the modern hotel. Jackman 
 led the way through a square hall, with windows opening on 
 a courtyard, up a circular staircase to the third floor, where 
 he knocked at a door in a narrow corridor. All was curiously 
 sombre and quiet ; and they had come so far vyithout seeing 
 any sign of life. 
 
 " Entrez," said a voice ; and they went into a small low- 
 ceiled room, furnished as a salon^ but with a bed in an alcove. 
 A nursing-sister, in black robe and hood, was standing on 
 the threshold of an inner room as they entered; and Arden 
 
 48 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 heard a low, piteous murmuring in a voice that he knew for 
 Lisbeth's, a murmur that was Hke a moan of pain. 
 
 " No better, sister? " asked Jackman. 
 
 " Helas, no, monsieur. She has not closed an eye all 
 the night, and I have had to feed her by force, poor thing ! 
 She would take nothing of her free will. And she is so 
 wasted for want of nourishment. It is pitiful to see her." * 
 
 The change was pitiful indeed to the eyes of Walter Arden, 
 when he stood at the bedside and looked at the spectral 
 face on the pillow, the wild wide-open eyes, with a look of 
 unspeakable horror in them. Could this wasted wreck of 
 womanhood be Lisbeth, the girl who had looked at him 
 in the autumn starlight with eyes aflame, defying him, strong 
 in her love for the wretch who was to be her destroyer ? 
 
 Words of unreason came from the white lips, inconsecutive 
 fragments of speech, and whatever scrap of meaning it was 
 possible to extract from that delirious babble was significant 
 of horror and loathing. 
 
 " Well, sir," said the detective, when Arden went back to 
 him in the outer room, " I suppose there has been no mistake. 
 This is the person you want." 
 
 " Yes — this is my landlady's daughter. A sad sight for 
 the mother, if I send for her ; and yet I think she ought to 
 come — and without delay." 
 
 *' You are the best judge of that, sir. I should give the 
 young lady a few days first. She may come round a bit 
 with good nursing. And now, I suppose you have no further 
 need for my services ? " 
 
 "Yes, I have — gi-eat need. You say you know Paris 
 well?" 
 
 " Yes, I know Paris — the best and the worst of it." 
 
 " Good. Then I want you to find out where this girl has 
 been — how she has been treated — what cruelty has brought 
 her to the state in which you found her." 
 
 " Very well, sir. I'll do my best. Give me forty-eight 
 hours, 'ni meet you here, the day after to-morrow — at 
 twelve o'clock." 
 
 " That will do." 
 
 Arden sat by Lisbeth's bed for an hour, while the sister 
 went about her work, making beef-tea and lemonade, dusting 
 the furniture, in the silence and gloom of rooms looking 
 
 49 E 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 into a stony well, three stories deep, where shuttered or 
 curtained windows stared across at each other. 
 
 "This hotel seems quite empty," he said, wondering at 
 the stillness. 
 
 "No, monsieur, the hotel is full of people; but they are 
 mostly priests from the provinces, who have business out 
 of doors all day, and who come in and out very quietly. It 
 is a most respectable hotel, and all the best of the provincial 
 clergy come here." 
 
 The doctor came while Arden was sitting there. He was 
 intelligent and sympathetic, and Arden told him of his un- 
 certainty as to whether the mother ought to be summoned 
 to the girl's bedside. He explained her position, and what 
 an upheaval it would be for her to leave London, a woman 
 whose living depended upon strict attention to her household, 
 and who had never been out of England. 
 
 " My hope is that I may be able to take her daughter 
 back to London in a few days, with the help of an English 
 nurse, whom I can bring here at twenty-four hours' notice," 
 Arden said. 
 
 The doctor approved of the idea, if his patient rallied, and 
 if the brain-trouble could be cured. 
 
 It might not be so serious as he had feared yesterday, and 
 might pass with the slight amount of fever which he still 
 found ; but the fever was not enough to account for the 
 brain-trouble, which he believed to be the result of a mental 
 shock. 
 
 Arden urged him to call in a specialist; and it was 
 arranged that one of the cleverest mental doctors in Paris 
 should see Lisbeth in the course of that evening. Mean- 
 while, Arden would telegraph to London for a nurse, and 
 would write to Mrs. Berry. 
 
 He told her that her daughter was very ill, but in no 
 danger ; that she was in comfortable lodgings, in the hotel 
 where he himself was staying, and in charge of an excellent 
 nurse ; that he was sending to London for an English nurse 
 to travel with her ; and that he would bring her to Jermyn 
 Street directly she was well enough to be moved. He kept 
 nothing from the anxious mother, except the terrible fact 
 of the wandering brain, which was the worst feature of the 
 case. 
 
 50 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Would that distraught brain ever recover the light of 
 reason ? That was the question he asked himself later in 
 the day, when, having written his letter and telegrams, and 
 engaged a room on the first floor of the hotel, he sat in the 
 shadow and stillness of the sick-room, while the good sister, 
 who had been on guard for a day and a night, slept peace- 
 fully on the bed in the salon. He had promised her that 
 he would not leave her patient till she came to relieve guard, 
 and had told her that before to-morrow evening there would 
 be another nurse to share her duties, a trained nurse from 
 a London institution. 
 
 " Not a rdigievse 1 " she asked wonderingly. 
 
 *' No. Our nurses are wom.en of business ; but they arc 
 good women all the same." 
 
 The patient had been quieter during the afternoon, and 
 had slept a little. It had been an intense relief to the 
 watcher when the white lips ceased to murmur strange 
 senseless words, and when the eyelids had drooped over 
 the wild stare of eyes that had not once looked at him with 
 recognition, though he had called her by her name in lov/ 
 and earnest tones, and had spoken to her of her mother, 
 trying by the intensity of sympathetic feeling to penetrate 
 the mist that clouded her brain. He had elicited no ray 
 of reason. The wild babble, or the dull moaning as of a 
 soul in pain, had gone on till that blessed reHef of slumber 
 stole over her, sheer exhaustion of brain and body, no doubt. 
 She awoke with a convulsive start and a shriek, and looked 
 wildly round her, beating the air in a frenzy of terror. 
 
 " Devils, devils, devils ! " she cried ; " they are all devils — 
 laughing devils, singing devils, dancing devils, dancing 
 and drinking ! Oh, the wine, the wine, the loathsome wine ! 
 look at it, running over them, drowning them ; and they 
 go on laughing. Their horrible eyes, their horrible flashing 
 teeth — how they shine and sparkle ! grinning devils, grinning 
 at me — grinning at the lost wretch they have murdered." 
 
 Then, after an interval, in which she fell back exhausted, 
 beating the air with her wild hands, as if she were beating 
 off some horrible assailant, her voice rang out again, loud 
 and shrill, no longer the muffled, inconsecutive babble of 
 the pale tremulous lips. 
 
 " Take me away from them ! Have mercy upon me ! 
 
 51 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 You are the Prince of Devils ; take me out of this hell ! 
 Take me out of the pit of death ! Cruel, cruel, cruel ! You 
 have killed my soul. I thought love vi^as heaven. Oh, I 
 loved you, I loved you ! I gave my soul for your lov^ ; and 
 now I know that love is hell. Why didn't they tell me ? 
 Why didn't they warn me, years ago when I was a child ? 
 I would never have listened to those sweet, sweet words — 
 never have believed— if I had known that devils could speak 
 with the voice of angels, and lure me into the pit of hell ! 
 Not one glimpse of heaven — not one hour of happiness ; 
 only the fiery pit of hell — flames that burn the soul, and the 
 worm that never dies — the worm that is eating my heart." 
 
 Over and over again he heard the same wild thoughts, 
 sometimes in the same words, sometimes with a frantic 
 eloquence that starded him. The girl's evangelical training 
 revealed itself in her hour of madness — a brain steeped in 
 the language of the Psalmist and the Hebrew Prophets, the 
 exalted phrases, the grand words, the poetical images of the 
 Old Testament, the fierce reprobation of sin, the self-abase- 
 ment of the sinner, conscious of his fall. " Out of the depths 
 have I cried to Thee ! " said the wretched girl. " My sins are 
 as scarlet. I have gone down into hell. I have kept com- 
 pany with devils. I am steeped to the lips in their impieties. 
 I am not fit to see the sunshine or the light of God's day. In 
 the great Day of Judgment, when the last trumpet sounds, 
 I shall be lying in a loathsome heap with the daughters of 
 sin, and my soul will go down to the everlasting hell." 
 
 Her frenzied raving had not ceased when the two doctors 
 appeared upon the scene. Arden left them with the patient, 
 and retired to the little salon^ where the wearied nurse was 
 sleeping soundly in the darkness of the curtained alcove. 
 They were nearly half an hour in the sick-room, and both 
 looked very grave as they came out. 
 
 The specialist told Arden that there was every indication 
 of a permanent loss of reason. It was a case of that 
 delirium without fever which means madness. Of course 
 there was the possibility of cure. There are no cases more 
 difficult than mental cases to pronounce upon with any 
 degree of certainty. Having heard the circumstances of the 
 patient, Dr. Veron was of opinion that she ought to be taken 
 back to England and to her mother's care as soon as she had 
 
 52 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 recovered her bodily health sufficiently to bear the journey. 
 It was not a case which he thought would call for confine- 
 ment in a lunatic asylum ; as after this present violent stage 
 the patient would in all probability lapse into an imbecile or 
 semi-imbecile condition. 
 
 " What we have to hope," he concluded, " is that her state 
 may not become melancholia, for that is one of the saddest 
 and the most dangerous forms of mental derangement ; and 
 in that case she might have to be placed under restraint." 
 
 " And vou do not think it necessary to bring her mother 
 here?" 
 
 " No. She is in no danger. Her strength will return in 
 a few days, with good feeding, and sleep, which we shall 
 bring about, I hope, without delay. The mother is not 
 wanted here, or for the journey. You have sent for a trained 
 nurse, I am told." 
 
 " A nurse is to cross from Dover to-night." 
 
 " And you have Sister Euphemia, a tower of strength. 
 You will do very well. It is a sad case. The girl has 
 been cruelly treated." 
 
 " Ah, monsieur, you cannot imagine the depth of her fall. 
 She was brought up with such loving care — utterly innocent 
 and inexperienced " 
 
 " And she has been dragged through the depths of hell. 
 There are worse murders on this earth than those that are 
 done with dagger or poison. There was a name spoken by 
 this girl in her ravings which was like a fiery red light across 
 the darkness — the name of a woman of such unspeakable 
 infamy that the slightest contact with her means destruction. 
 If this unhappy girl has been plunged into the devil's 
 kingdom where that woman is queen, I wonder at no frantic 
 speech, no agony of horror and remorse." 
 
 " WTJiat is the woman's name ? " Arden asked. " It might 
 serve as a clue. Believe me, monsieur, I am not going to 
 leave this girl's wrongs unavenged, if I can get at her 
 destroyer by any possible means." 
 
 " The woman is known as La Poulpe, a fitting sobriquet 
 for a wretch whose devouring arms have strangled the lives 
 and fortunes of men. She was once a miracle of beauty, 
 and she still retains some physical charm, and I believe is 
 still admired by the fools and reprobates for whom the 
 
 53 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 supremacy of vice is a kind of royalty. Ask any friend 
 of yours who knows his Paris what chance an innocent 
 EngUsh girl would have if once she fell into the power 
 ofLaPoulpe." 
 
 The physician took his fee, promised to see the patient 
 after four days, by which time he believed she would be in 
 a fit state to travel, and the two doctors departed. 
 
 Sister Euphemia slept till eleven o'clock, when she 
 awoke, refreshed and ready for the night's watch. Lisbeth 
 had been sleeping for the last hour, the result of a mild 
 narcotic which the physician had sent from the nearest 
 pharmacy. Arden went downstairs, and ate his supper at a 
 table in the corner of the comfortable restaurant, where two 
 jovial priests were chirruping over a bottle of Pomard at 
 another table. It was the first substantial food he had 
 taken since he left London. 
 
 The nurse arrived next morning, and having told her 
 v,hat was necessary about the case, and put her on friendly 
 terms with the sister, Arden felt that his responsibilities 
 towards Lisbeth were now considerably lessened. He 
 meant to see her three or four times a day, to assure him- 
 self that she was receiving proper treatment, and for the 
 rest he was free to go about Paris and do what he liked 
 with his life. Unhappily all delights of the gay city, now 
 full of its fashionable inhabitants, were a dead letter to him. 
 He had no liking, no desire, except to bring Konslantin 
 Manville to account for his crime against Lisbeth. Amuse- 
 ment on his own part, or interest in the amusements of 
 others, was out of the question. 
 
 He roamed about Paris in a purposeless way, but spent 
 most of his time in or near the Rue Royale, and lunched at 
 a restaurant opposite the Madeleine ; but he did not meet 
 Colonel Manville. 
 
 Mr. Jackman appeared at the Hotel Loyola with com 
 mendable punctuality. 
 
 " Well, what are your discoveries?" Arden asked eagerly, 
 when he had taken the man to his own room — a large room 
 on the first floor, where they were safe from the risk of 
 interruption. 
 
 " I think I've made out the history of the case, sir — from 
 the time when you saw Miss Berry leave Victoria to the 
 
 54 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 time when I saw her lying in her wet clothes on the quay ; 
 and it's a dire bad history. I don't know how much you 
 know about Paris." 
 
 "As much as a steady-going Englishman who spends an 
 occasional vreek at the Hotel Meurice is likely to know." 
 
 " Ah, that means you know the respectable side of Paris. 
 A good thing for you, sir, you don't know the other side. 
 It may spare you a heart-ache. There are not m.any 
 EngUshmen who do know what we call subterranean Paris ; 
 but in my calling we have to know these things. Half our 
 lives is spent burrowing underground, groping along the 
 dark passages where vice hides and riots, out of ken and 
 out of reach of the police — places where no police-officer's 
 life is worth five minutes' purchase. That poor young 
 woman has been underground, sir. If you knew the kind 
 of gutter she has been dragged through, you wouldn't 
 wonder that she tried to drown herself, and that her reason 
 has given way." 
 
 Jackman spoke with a suppressed vehemence that showed 
 strong feeling. 
 
 " I've a daughter about her age, sir," he said, as if in 
 apology for his unprofessional emotion — " a daughter I've 
 tried to bring up without the knowledge of sin, just as you 
 say Miss Berry has been reared." 
 
 "What motive could he have had?" exclaimed Arden. 
 " Pie was sure of his victim. Wasn't that enough ? " 
 
 " No, sir, that wasn't enough. He wanted to make her 
 like himself. He wanted to plunge her into the pande- 
 monium which is his only idea of pleasure. He has run 
 the gamut of ordinary wickedness. Nothing less than 
 underground Paris would satisfy him — the eccentric, the 
 diabolical, men and women who have educated themselves 
 in all the arts and devices of hell." 
 
 " She has spoken a name in her delirium — La Poulpe. I 
 am told it is the name of a monster of impurity." 
 
 " La Poulpe 1 Yes, it v,-as in that woman's hellish crew 
 he flung the unhappy girl. He wanted to make her like 
 them. Her simphcity soon palled upon him, no doubt. I 
 traced his movements from his arrival in Paris with Miss 
 Berry. I had the police to help me, you see, sir. Colonel 
 Manville is known to the police, and they keep an eye upon 
 
 55 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 him, though up to now he has never dropped into their net. 
 They Hve in hopes. From them I found that he took Miss 
 Berry straight to a small house on the outskirts of the forest 
 near Marly le Roi — a cut-throat place, with no neighbours 
 within a quarter of a mile. The house has been kept shut 
 up for the last three years, mostly empty. There was no 
 woman-servant, no one but his valet, a Russian, who goes 
 everywhere with him. Three days later he was seen with 
 the girl driving in a cab on the Boulevard Sebastopol, 
 and she was seen afterwards in the house where Madame 
 Loriston, alias La Poulpe, carries on her orgies ; but what 
 happened there, or how long she stayed, I have not been 
 able to find out. I know nothing more of her till the 
 morning she threw herself into the river." 
 
 *' And you say the laws of France and England have no 
 penalty for such a crime as his ? " 
 
 " No ; she is a woman, and a free agent. If she had got 
 away from Madame Loriston's den and appealed to the 
 police, she might have extricated herself sooner from that 
 abominable crew, perhaps " 
 
 " How should she know what to do, a girl of nineteen, 
 who had never been called on to act for herself? " 
 
 " Ah, there's the pity of it ! What could my girl do in 
 the same circumstances ? She would be lost as this girl has 
 been. But there are not many such men as Manville, thank 
 God. The world is not peopled with them. I've a fancy 
 that sometimes the devil gets tired of hell, and puts himself 
 into a human shape, and goes about the earth seeking whom 
 he may devour, as he did in the time of Job. If we believe 
 in Job, we're bound to believe in that sort of malicious 
 devil." 
 
 " And you think this Manville is one of the devil's 
 incarnations ? " said Arden. 
 
 " That's about the size of it, sir," said Jackman, employing 
 a favourite locution ; " at least, to my fancy." 
 
 Arden remembered his dream of the hyperborean world 
 peopled with devils and witches, a vision that was as vivid 
 and seeming real in his mind now as it had been when he 
 awoke and heard the church clock that measured the length 
 of his slumber — so short a span, in which he had seemed 
 to live through ages. 
 
 56 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 He paid the detective handsomely for his labours. There 
 was nothing more that Jackman could do to help him. If 
 retribution were possible, it must be the vrork of a private 
 hand, secret and unaided. 
 
 Arden had written to Mrs. Berry telling her that he would 
 take her daughter home as soon as she could bear the 
 journey ; and, the opinion of the specialist on his second 
 visit being favourable to removal, it was arranged that 
 Lisbeth and the nurse should leave Paris on the following 
 morning, in charge of Arden. The patient's bodily strength 
 had been considerably restored by sleep and scientific 
 feeding, and the wild vehemence of the first two days had 
 been followed by a kind of apathy which promised ill for 
 the future, but which was easier to deal with in the present. 
 
 It was sad to see the delicate young face, upon which 
 time had cast no shadow of the passing years, robbed of 
 all beauty by the loss of expression, an ivory mask out of 
 which gazed pale unseeing eyes, a drooping lip that looked 
 as if it would never speak again. Arden v,-atched her with 
 a heavy heart as he sat opposite her in the railway carriage 
 between Paris and Calais. She did not speak once during 
 the journey, and submitted to the nurse's cares and atten- 
 tions with a stony indifterence, as if hardly conscious of her 
 own existence, and quite unconscious of the world around 
 her. 
 
 " It's like taking home a corpse," the nurse said to Arden, 
 as they were nearing London. 
 
 He had prepared Mrs. Berry for the worst, but had 
 added words of comfort and hope. Indeed, he could not 
 resign himself to consider the case hopeless, in spite of the 
 French physician's despondent views. 
 
 " She lives," he wrote, " and has a long life before her. 
 You will need much patience, hopefulness, and love ; and I 
 know that all the rest of your life will be given to her as 
 freely as you have given her your care and your love in the 
 years that are gone. A mother's love can work a miracle 
 sometimes ; and I do not despair of seeing you both happy 
 together in the days to come. All I would implore of you 
 now is to be brave and hopeful." 
 
 This letter had had a good dfect : and Mrs. Berry received 
 
 f >-» 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 her daughter with a sublime gentleness and patience. She 
 uttered no word of surprise or grief. She took Lisbeth to 
 the little parlour where their two lives had moved along the 
 years in placid monotony. She placed her in the armchair 
 by the fireside, and wdth trembling hands arranged the 
 cushion that supported her head and the light eider-down 
 coverlet over her knees. 
 
 Lisbeth looked at the room with a kind of vacant wonder. 
 
 "Have I ever been here before?" she asked, speaking 
 for the first time since they left Paris. 
 
 " Oh, dearest, dearest, it is your own parlour — with your 
 piano, and your books, and all the things you love." 
 
 The girl's eyes turned slowly towards her mother. " I 
 don't know who you are," she said. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Arden, I didn't think it would be as bad as 
 this. I thought she would know ;;/<f, even if her mind was 
 gone,'- said Mrs. Berry, in a low voice. 
 
 " My dear soul, you must have patience. Hope and 
 pray." 
 
 " Pray ! Ah, sir, you don't know how I have prayed for 
 her since she was lost — the lost sheep — the lost sheep that 
 is dearer than all the ninety and nine that have never gone 
 astray." 
 
 58 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Arden gave himself a night's rest in his connfortable rooms, 
 among the books he loved, and in the peaceful atmosphere 
 of familiar things, and went back to Paris next day. He 
 had more than one reason for returning without loss of 
 time. In a New York Herald which he had bought at 
 the station when he was leaving Paris, he had seen an 
 announcement that concerned him in the fashionable in- 
 telligence — 
 
 " Mr. and Lady Mary Selby are staying at the Hotel 
 Bristol after their winter at Cannes." 
 
 Before leaving Paris, Mr. Jackman had introduced Arden 
 to a member of the police, a man of the highest grade, 
 whose tact and experience would be equal to any difficulty. 
 The detective had made this introduction at his client's 
 earnest desire, but reluctantly. 
 
 " I hope you don't contemplate bringing Colonel Man- 
 ville to book for his wickedness," Jackman said earnestly. 
 '•Take my word for it, sir, there's nothing to be done in 
 that line / and in any encounter with him you'd get the 
 worst of it. There's no net you can spread that's strong 
 enough to hold a cloven hoof." 
 
 Arden had his views, but they were vague at present. 
 In any encounter of that kind a man's acts are shaped by 
 Fate, or Providence, or the chapter of accidents, whichever 
 the man himself pleases to call the hand on the tiller. The 
 man who calls it Fate is the most reckless ; the man who 
 calls it Providence is the strongest : the brainless man calls 
 it accident. 
 
 He drove to the Bristol, and asked for Lady Mary Selby. 
 Her ladyship had gone to Saint Germain for the day Had 
 
 59 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 she gone by rail? No; she had ordered a carriage and 
 pair, and had left before luncheon. 
 
 He asked if Mr. Selby was in the hotel. 
 
 No. Mr. Selby had only stayed one night, and had left 
 for London by the morning train. 
 
 Did Lady Mary intend to stay some time in Paris ? 
 
 Her ladyship had engaged the rooms for a week. 
 
 It was mid-Lent ; the boulevards were alive with a noisy 
 exuberant crowd, pelting each other with showers of many- 
 coloured paper disks, which covered all the women's gowns 
 and the men's coats with rainbow spots. Paris had put on 
 her holiday air, and there was to be a masked ball at the 
 opera-house in the evening. 
 
 If Colonel Manville was still in Paris, it seemed to Arden 
 that he would be likely to be found in a heterogeneous mob 
 of that kind— cosmopolitan, disreputable ; a vortex in which 
 modern vice and modern virtue were whirled round, until 
 distinctions vanished, and all seemed of one clay and one 
 spirit. Avid of vicious pleasures, of the violent and eccen- 
 tric, Manville would hardly miss a scene in which subter- 
 ranean Paris came to the surface, respectable Paris only 
 looking on, or at least declaring itself only a spectator. 
 
 Arden arrived on the scene early, while the trumpeters in 
 the balcony were playing a noisy march from the comic 
 opera which was at that time the delight of the Parisian 
 playgoer. Though ordinary evening dress was worn by the 
 majority at these balls, he had disguised himself in a monk's 
 gown and hood of dark brown woollen stuff, with a rope 
 girdle, a dingy attire in which face and figure were hidden, 
 but which was too common a disguise to attract attention, 
 as he moved quietly through the crowd slowly ascending 
 that magnificent staircase which is the chief glory of the 
 opera-house. 
 
 A brilliant spectacle flashed upon him as he arrived at 
 the first circle. Stalls and stage had been converted into 
 a level dancing-floor, and the whole interior had become 
 one vast ballroom, where two bands, at opposite extremities 
 of the circle, played alternately, strident, swinging waltz, or 
 noisy polka, beating out their insistent rhythm, strings and 
 brasses fortissimo^ yet almost overpowered by the clamour 
 
 60 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 and roar of human voices, the loud bursts of laughter when 
 in the flower-battle between the women in the boxes and 
 the men in the salle a bunch of daffodils hit the mark with 
 almost deadly effect, or a bouquet of violets flew over the 
 heads of the crowd and nestled in the white plastron of a 
 gaping dandy, or when a glittering toy, dangled from the 
 upper circle by a string, tempted some agile youth to a 
 prodigious leap, and was rapidly withdrawn as his hand 
 clutched at it. 
 
 Ribbons of rainbow-hued paper were being hurled from 
 every point of vantage ; downward across the crowd, winding 
 themselves about the swift-moving figures and clinging to 
 bright hair and glittering garments ; upward to the central 
 chandeher, whence they streamed in gaudy showers, making 
 bizarre effects in the whirl of colour and light. Among the 
 cosmopolitan throng fancy dress was the exception ; but the 
 gay dresses and jewels of the women gave brightness and 
 colour ; and in a prominent part of the vast area a quadrille 
 was being performed by a company from one of the boule- 
 vard theatres, whose elaborate costumes made a glowing 
 point of intenser light where all was garish and brilliant. 
 
 Arden had been a gloomy observer of this vivid scene 
 for almost an hour, when he discovered his sister in a 
 box on the grand tier, with two other women, handsome 
 and fashionably dressed. There were three or four men 
 crowding the back of the box — all in evening dress — but 
 I^Ianville was not among them. 
 
 The night wore on. The hurly-burly might have amused 
 and interested a man whose thoughts were free ; and such 
 an observer might have discovered much that was innocent 
 and gay and good-humoured in the mixed assembly ; but to 
 Arden's troubled mind it seemed a page out of the book 
 of hell. Those painted faces and half-naked forms, those 
 haggard eyes ringed with black, and hollow bismuth-coated 
 cheeks that had once been rosy with the bloom of girlhood ; 
 those men with the last word of profligacy stamped across 
 the premature wrinkles on their mindless foreheads ; those 
 old women, who should have been rocking a grandchild's 
 cradle, or kneeling in the gloom and silence of a chapel, 
 before the altar of our Lady of Sorrows, but who flaunted 
 their corpulent shoulders, glittering with sham diamonds, 
 
 6i 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 gems as false as the frizzled auburn hair that crowned the 
 withered brow. 
 
 He felt that he wanted to cry out to them to put on their 
 masks, to hide the hideousness of vicious youth and im- 
 penitent age, out of charity to the spectators. Face after 
 face — face after face — and in all the eyes the same unholy 
 light; and on all the lips the same disgust of Hfe, that tried to 
 hide itself under the comedian's artificial smile. Even in 
 the countenances of the superior people — the people who were 
 there to look on, and who owned no affinity with the dancing, 
 shouting, laughing, singing, grimacing mob — even in those 
 complacent countenances of the rich and favoured of Fate, 
 he saw that lurking disgust of life, disappointment, satiety. 
 
 Suddenly, through the throbbing crowd, there came a 
 figure of monstrous bulk, that made a lane for itself as it 
 advanced, cleaving the human mass, like a strong swimmer 
 piercing a mountainous wave. A roar of applause and a 
 chorus of laughter welcomed the creature's appearance. It 
 was a huge brown bear, an admirable disguise, so perfect as 
 to send a thrill of fear through some who stood within the 
 monster's reach. He was a pacific brute, however, for a 
 w^oman walked at his side, wdth her arm tucked under his 
 huge paw\ He walked erect, turning his huge head from 
 side to side, surveying the crowd. Across the long fur upon 
 his mighty breast he wore the ribbon and star of a Russian 
 order. 
 
 The woman was a figure well known to the Paris of the 
 Opera Ball. She was no longer young, and her face, which 
 had once been perfect in its delicate aquiline, had hardened 
 to the lines of a bird of prey ; but the eyes were still fine, and 
 the figure, the carriage of head and shoulders, the sweeping 
 line of shoulder and arm, the supple curve of the waist and 
 long slope of the hip, were perfect. Sculptors had modelled 
 that superb form; and the creature lived in bronze and 
 marble in more than one world-famous statue. 
 
 The splendour of her dress was in the spirit of the place, 
 and Arden had seen no costume as striking in all the 
 kaleidoscope of vivid colour and eccentric form. 
 
 The gown was of some soft silken fabric, covered with 
 crimson spangles, so closely that as the woman came slowly 
 through the glancing lights it seemed as if she were clad in 
 
 62 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 flame. She wore a high tiara of diamonds on her blue- 
 black hair. Of all the faces Arden had remarked hers 
 owed the least to art. The complexion was like Parian 
 marble, without a touch of carnation. Even the lips were 
 pale. 
 
 " La Poulpe is in full force to-night," said a man standing 
 near Arden. "Are those the diamonds the Portuguese Jew 
 gave her ? " 
 
 " Who knows ? She has eaten princes as well as Jews — 
 and American millionaires — and Greek financiers. She is 
 the bottomless pit to which men's fortunes and lives go 
 down." 
 
 "She can't go on for ever. She must be on the edge of 
 forty." 
 
 "She will go on for the next twenty years. She will 
 frighten men out of their money when she can no longer 
 charm them. She has never painted her face yet — or dyed 
 her hair. AVhen she takes to those arts, it will be a renewal 
 of vouth — her second reign." 
 
 it hardly needed this dialogue to assure Arden that the 
 man disguised as a bear was the man he had come to look 
 for. The exceptional height and the Russian order had 
 identified the masquerader. Arden contrived to follow 
 within a few paces of the bear and his companion as they 
 walked round the salle, stared at by everybody, eagerly 
 observed by the people in the boxes, and often greeted with 
 a burst of applause—" OM, Fours ! bravo Fours ! " 
 
 Near the entrance the bear bent his mighty head, and 
 whispered in his companion's ear. She frowned as she 
 answered him, and withdrew her arm with an offended look. 
 Arden drew near enough to hear her reply. 
 
 " You won't get as good a supper anywhere else," she 
 said. " Don Jose has lent me his chef, and the wine is 
 from his own cellar — wine to swim in — wine to throw out 
 of all the windows. You had better com.e to our supper." 
 
 " Not possible, chcrie, I have a particular engagement 
 elsewhere — business — an affair of la Bourse^ 
 
 " Quel farceur! Dost thou believe I am the v.-oman to 
 swallow that old story ? La Bourse at two o'clock in the 
 morning, when no man's brain is clear enough to correct an 
 addition cJiez Bignon ? " 
 
 63 
 
The Conflict, 
 
 They went out iiito the hall together, and Arden, following, 
 saw the masquerader put thie lady into a carriage, and then 
 step into a cab and drive away. 
 
 Had he left for the night ? Arden was of opinion that he 
 would come back; and that Lady Mary would count for 
 something in his movements. He had failed to save 
 Lisbeth Berry ; but he meant to save his sister, if she were 
 not past saving. Where had she been all that day ? ^Vhy 
 drive alone to Saint Germain ? His mind was full of dark 
 suspicions. That she should be within reach of Manville 
 was horror to him ; and he foresaw the difficulty of dealing 
 with a woman of her kind, his senior by seven years, and 
 a woman of determined character, who had chosen her path 
 in life — the flowerless path with an unloved husband, the 
 path paved with gold, where there were no roses, no turtle- 
 doves, no fond, foolish dreams, only diamonds and blood- 
 horses, and carte-bhviche with fashionable dressmakers. Mr. 
 Selby's chief merit was boundless generosity, associated 
 with an unlimited power of writing cheques. There are no 
 disappointments in such a union, till the balance at the bank 
 runs dry. There is no cloud of fear in such a life, except 
 the fear of a financial crash. 
 
 Arden left his monkish robe and rope-girdle with one of 
 the women in charge of coats and hats, and presented 
 himself at the door of Lady Mary's box, an unconspicuous 
 figure in evening dress. The door was opened by an old 
 acquaintance, Major Vivian, a man who had seen hard 
 service in Ashantee and India, and in another of his sister's 
 party he discovered De Courcy Smythe, the man who had 
 given him the utmost information he had ever been able to 
 obtain about Konstantin Manville. 
 
 Lady Mary received her brother with more surprise than 
 pleasure. 
 
 " You most un-Parisian person ! " she exclaimed. " Who 
 would ever have expected to see you at the Mi-Care me 
 ball ? " 
 
 " It is always the unexpected that happens," answered 
 Arden, slipping into a chair behind hers. " I am in Paris 
 upon very painful business. I want to tell you all about it 
 when I can have an hour's quiet talk with you." 
 
 " I think we must postpone the quiet hour to some 
 
 64 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 afternoon next week in Grosvenor Square. I have only five 
 days more in Paris, and every moment is engaged in 
 advance. Allow me to present my brother, madame. Mr. 
 Arden, la Baronne de Montvalliers," added Lady Mar}-, 
 turning to the lady sitting next her, a handsome and im- 
 perious brunette, who was at this moment occupied in 
 dangling a golden carp, with ruby eyes, over the heads of 
 the crowd, lowering the toy, and pulling it up again as 
 eager hands snatched at it, and laughing immoderately at 
 every failure. 
 
 " ]My business is too serious to wait for Grosvenor Square," 
 Arden told his sister, sotto voce. 
 
 " I am sorr}- for that ; but since it is your business and 
 cannot possibly concern me, it will have to wait till I am in 
 London and at leisure. I am staying here to buy clothes 
 for the season, and Parisian dressmakers are ver}^ trouble- 
 some and very exacting." 
 
 " The business concerns you more nearly than it does 
 me." 
 
 Lady Ivlary looked at him curiously, and an angry light 
 came into her eyes. 
 
 " Is it about some girl you were talking of in Grosvenor 
 Square — boring yourself and me ? " 
 
 " It is about that girl." 
 
 " Then I will hear nothing either in Paris or London. 
 You have no right to bring me such stories." 
 
 "You must hear, and with the least possible delay. I 
 shall call at the Bristol early to-morrovr, and you must not 
 deny yourself to me." 
 
 " Baronne, you are impayable^'' exclaimed Lady ]Mary, as 
 Madame Montvalliers leant out of the box, laughing at the 
 frantic efforts of an elderly reveller, leaping up to the golden 
 carp, and always missing it. 
 
 " Est-il assez horripilanf^ cet animal^ Jiein 1 " exclaimed 
 la Baronne. 
 
 " Remember," said Arden, in the same low voice, as he 
 rose to go, " I must see you. Adieu, Madame la Baronne. 
 I hope you will not have that ambitious gentleman's death 
 on your conscience." 
 
 ''Sale bete! He kills himself in the effort to appear 
 young," said the Baronne. 
 
 65 F 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 She drew up the ghttering toy, and began to pelt distant 
 acquaintances with Uttle bunches of Parma violets from a 
 basket at her feet. 
 
 Arden resumed his monk's robe and girdle on his way 
 back to the ballroom. His interest in the scene was un- 
 diminished so long as his sister was in the opera-house. 
 He had a suspicion that Manville would reappear. 
 
 He moved quietly about among the crowd, masked and 
 hooded, a sombre brown figure, keeping watch upon Lady 
 Mary's box, where he presently saw the Baronne and the 
 other visitors taking leave. For about a quarter of an hour 
 his sister remained alone, no longer an amused spectator, 
 but sitting in the shadow. He noticed that she had put on 
 her little velvet mask. 
 
 Then the door opened, and a tall figure appeared in the 
 background — the unmistakable figure that he had watched at 
 the Criterion Theatre — Colonel Manville, now in evening 
 dress, correct, rigid, the man of the world, the citizen of 
 all cities, always master of the situation. Lady Mary rose 
 and took his arm, and they left the box together. 
 
 Arden was in the crowd at the foot of the staircase as 
 they came down, Lady Mary still masked, and with a sable 
 cloak over her velvet gown, the high collar covering the 
 lower part of her face and head. Arden followed as they 
 crossed the vestibule and went out into the open square, 
 where the air had the chill feeling of early morning, though 
 it was not yet three o'clock, and where the scavengers were 
 sweeping up the many- coloured confetti that had fallen 
 thick as snow. 
 
 Manville made no attempt to find Lady Mary's carriage, 
 as Arden had expected. They crossed the road on foot, 
 arm in arm, in the mock moonlight of arc lamps ; and he 
 followed them to the Avenue de I'Opera, where they went 
 into the Caf^ de Paris. He saw them pass through the 
 miscellaneous crowd at the tables, opera-bouffe actresses, 
 Americans, English, Spaniards, Italians, Hebrews, the 
 sweepings of the great world of ill-gotten gold. They 
 passed and vanished. 
 
 He beckoned to a waiter, holding a twenty-franc piece 
 between the fingers that beckoned, being assured that in 
 that scene of expensive riot, where the attendants were 
 
 66 
 
The Conflicto 
 
 rushing about as if distraught, nothing less than the glint of 
 gold would attract attention. 
 
 " A tall man came in just now with a lady in a sable cloak," 
 he said, holding the coin ready to drop into the man's 
 hand. " Can you show me the room where they are to sup ? " 
 
 " Not if monsieur vrishes to make a scene. The pro- 
 prietor objects to scenes," replied the man, with his eyes 
 upon the gold. 
 
 " I shall not make a scene in the presence of a lady." 
 
 " Bicn ! Then I will show monsieur the cahimt pariinilier. 
 The first service is just going up." 
 
 He held out his hand to receive the coin, and was not 
 disappointed. 
 
 Arden followed him to the landing on the first floor, and 
 stood outside the door of the room, while the dishes were 
 being carried in. He waited there till he heard Colonel 
 Manville dismiss the attendants. 
 
 " That is enough. You can go till I ring for the next 
 course." 
 
 The two waiters came out, glanced at the brown monk, 
 and vrent downstairs. 
 
 Two minutes afterwards Arden opened the door quickly, 
 and stood upon the threshold of the gaudy little room, 
 glowing with crimson and gold, the electric light tempered 
 by rose-coloured shades. 
 
 Manville started to his feet indignantly, looking thunder 
 on the intruder. 
 
 *'Who is this saUimbanque V he exclaimed furiously. 
 " How dare you burst into a private room ? Clear out this 
 instant, fellow 1 " 
 
 " Not without Lady Mary Selby." 
 
 ♦' Walter, this is too absurd," exclaimed IMary, who knew 
 the voice under the monk's hood. " I don't know which is 
 most ridiculous, your costume or your conduct." 
 
 Arden removed his mask, and threw off his hood and 
 gown. 
 
 "My costume need not offend you. I have no desire 
 to hide my identity from Colonel Manville. He is welcome 
 to know me as well as I know him ; but while I live to 
 prevent it, my sister shall never again take his arm or sit in 
 his company." 
 
 67 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " I did not know you had a lunatic brother, Mary," said 
 Manville, in a loud aside ; and then turning to Arden, " My 
 respect for Lady Mary Selby prevents my kicking you out 
 of the room, Mr. Arden ; but I hope you will remember 
 that the restraint of a lady's presence has its limits, and 
 relieve us from your company." 
 
 The strong dark face was livid with rage, but the man 
 held himself in check. 
 
 Arden ignored him, and kept his eyes upon his sister, 
 who sat fanning herself, with a hand that trembled violently, 
 and trying to look unconcerned. 
 
 " Are you coming, Mary ? " he asked. 
 *' Certainly not. Do you suppose I am going to be 
 carried off to please you, when I am absolutely famishing, 
 and jumped at Colonel Manville's offer of supper? Do 
 you suppose I shall submit to be dictated to by a younger 
 brother, scolded as if I were a naughty child ? If you are 
 such a Philistine as to see any harm in my supping tete-d-tete 
 with a friend, I can only say you are a quarter of a century 
 behind your age." 
 
 Manville stood like a stone figure, watching and listenmg. 
 *' I am not here to discuss social ethics, Mary," said Arden, 
 quietly. " If your host were any one else, I should be the 
 last to interfere ; but you shall not break bread with a 
 seducer and a murderer, if I can help it. Yes, a murderer " 
 — answering Manville's look with eyes that flamed \ " for to 
 steal an innocent girl from her home, and to destroy her 
 mind and soul — to drive her to attempt suicide — to reduce 
 reason to imbecility, and doom her to a miserable future, 
 is the worst kind of murder ; and that is Colonel Manville's 
 last crime ; and that is why I will not suffer my sister to 
 breathe the air he breathes, while I live." 
 
 " Manville, is it true ? " cried Lady Mary, who had risen, 
 in a tumult of agitation, and stood looking distractedly from 
 the accuser to the accused. 
 
 "True! Don't you see that the man is raving?" ex- 
 claimed Manville, contemptuously. 
 
 ' *' No, no ! He never told me a lie. It is true. I believe 
 every word. Give me my cloak, Walter. There "—pointing 
 to the chair where her priceless sables had been thrown. 
 ♦* Yes, I will go with you "—as Arden wrapped the heavy 
 
 68 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 cloak about her — " this instant. I will never see him again 
 — never. This is not the first warning. Other people have 
 told me what he is. Thank God, it is not too late — not too 
 late — to laugh at my folly." 
 
 " I think all the world is mad to-night," said Manville, 
 contemptuously. " I cannot dispute with a lady's right to 
 go or come as caprice dictates ; but remember. Lady Mary, 
 if you leave the room with the man who has grossly insulted 
 me, you and I must be strangers till the end of our lives. 
 No after-regret, no change of feeling on your part, will ever 
 bring me back to you." 
 
 She had taken her brother's arm, and was moving towards 
 the door. She turned and looked at IManville with a strange 
 expression, in which fear predominated. 
 
 He followed them to the threshold. 
 
 " A word with you, Mr. Arden," he said, in a low voice, 
 grasping Arden's arm in a grip of iron, as he drew him away 
 from Lady ^lary. 
 
 It was the first and the only time Manville touched him ; 
 and he never forgot that iron hand. Was it ice or fire that 
 ran through his veins under that pressure ? Was it a sense 
 of burning or of weight ? He was never able to define the 
 sensation ; but the memory of it remained. 
 
 " I suppose you know what this kind of insult involves in 
 any country but your own ? " whispered Manville. 
 
 " I am at your disposition, sir. Your friends will find 
 me at the Hotel Loyola, on the rive gaucher 
 
 " My friend shall call at your hotel in the afternoon, 
 by which time you may have provided yourself with a 
 second. No need for two. We can fight in the English 
 fashion." 
 
 *' As you please." 
 
 Arden passed him, and took his sister down the staircase 
 and out into the avenue, where he found a disengaged fly 
 among the crowd of carriages waiting for late revellers. 
 
 " What is this ghastly story, Walter ? " Lady Mary asked, 
 in a piteous voice. " Is Manville the unspeakable villain 
 you make him ? " 
 
 " Yes, he is an unspeakable villain." 
 
 *' Ihave been a fool in encouraging his attentions. He is 
 clever and amusing— an eccentric— altogether different from 
 
 69 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 the crowd of men my husband brings round me, who are 
 all bormg, and all alike ; and I have allowed myself to be 
 interested in him, perhaps a little more than I ought to be. 
 But life is so empty." 
 
 " So empty ! Poor Mary ! " thought Arden, remembering 
 Lady Maud Elderton, that other sister of his, in her rural 
 rectory, for whom life was so full — full of simple things, 
 of children, and children's clothes, and children's pleasures, 
 and childish illnesses ; of ponies and poultry, and husband, 
 and sermons, and parish work. 
 
 " I should not have believed you, if I had not seen the 
 truth in his face," said Lady Mary ; " that cruel face, the 
 eyes so brilliant and so hard, the sardonic lines of the iron 
 lips. I used to admire him because he was so strong, like 
 a tower, so strange, so terrible even ; but to-night I saw 
 the horror of it all. He is strong only in wickedness." 
 
 " Thank God you are disillusioned." 
 
 " Yes. The glamour has gone. I saw him in that 
 instant without his mask. But that wretched girl ! She 
 was under the spell. Tell me about her." 
 
 Arden told her Lisbeth's story, briefly, but suppressing 
 nothing, the pursuit, the elopement, the pit of hell into 
 which the wretched girl had been flung, her attempt to drown 
 herself, and her loss of reason. 
 
 " If you could have seen the human wreck that I carried 
 home to a broken-hearted mother, you would hate the man 
 as I do," he said. " Remember, it was no common cruelty. 
 If he had loved the girl — even with an evil love — if he had 
 chosen her for the companion of his life — one might say 
 it was a common story of sin. But for a caprice, for the 
 w^him of an hour, he has destroyed a human soul, killed a 
 life that was fair and full of promise." 
 
 " Oh, it is loathsome ! I knew men were cruel to women — 
 cruel to women they pretend to love — but not so cruel as 
 that ; not destroying a helpless creature for the fancy of a 
 moment. But he will try to take his revenge for to-night, 
 AValter. Such a man will have no mercy. What were you 
 and he whispering about as we went downstairs ? " 
 " Nothing of any consequence." 
 
 " Oh, but it must have been of consequence — in such a 
 moment. You are not going to fight a duel with him ? " 
 
 70 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " No, no. Here we are at the Bristol. Shall I see you 
 to your rooms ? " 
 
 " Don't trouble. My maid \Yill be waiting for me, and I 
 have a footman here. He will be sitting asleep in the hall, 
 I dare say, poor wretch. Good night." 
 
 71 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Arden called on Mr. de Courcy Smythe at the Continental, 
 at eleven o'clock on the day after the Opera ball, and was 
 fortunate enough to find that citizen of the world in the act 
 of completing his toilet, in his comfortable apartment on the 
 fourth floor, with a wide range of view over the Place de la 
 Concorde, the Champs Elysdes, the river, and the white 
 fa9ades and classic domes and pediments of official Paris 
 on the farther shore — a dazzling picture in the clear light 
 of a spring morning. 
 
 Smythe listened with a surprised interest when he heard 
 that he was wanted as second in a duel ; but when Arden 
 told him the name of his antagonist, he dropped the coat 
 he was in the act of putting on, and sat down in front of 
 his friend. 
 
 "My dear Arden, I don't mind a duel, though it is 
 deucedly un-English ; but a duel with that satanic Russian ! 
 For God's sake let it go no further. The man would kill 
 you." 
 
 " Fortune of war. I hope I shall kill him." 
 
 *' You hope — you, Walter Arden, the student, the mildest 
 of men, a Brahmin, by Jove — would step out of your way 
 rather than tread upon a worm ! You ! You want a man's 
 blood upon your head ? " 
 
 " I want to kill that man. The world will be the better 
 for his death." 
 
 " By Jupiter ! " 
 
 Mr. Smythe could find no stronger expression of his 
 astonishment. He put himself into his coat slowly, looking 
 at his friend all the time. 
 
 " I say, Arden, this seems a beastly business ! Is it any- 
 thing you have got into your head about your — about " 
 
 hesitatingly. 
 
 72 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 "About my sister, Mary Selby? No; my quarrel with 
 him has nothing to do vrkh my sister, although I suppose 
 people have talked about her notice of the man." 
 
 " People will talk, don't you know, Arden. Most of us 
 are such duffers that if we didn't talk about our friends and 
 relations and acquaintances, half the dinner-parties in London 
 would be dumb-show. We must talk about something. 
 Manville has hung about Lady Mary ; and you see the 
 cleverest woman seldom knows bad style from good in the 
 other sex. Ask her to vet another woman, and she'll know 
 in a minute if there's a screw loose ; but if a man is hand- 
 some, well-dressed, and a good talker, she may know him 
 for twenty years without finding out that he isn't a gentle- 
 man. However, I'm glad your quarrel isn't about Lady 
 Mary." 
 
 " No, she is entirely unconcerned, though I want the man 
 out of the way for her sake. I had better tell you my story ; 
 and then you'll know why I want to kill that man. I should 
 never regret the deed. It would not be a murder, but an 
 execution." 
 
 He told the history of Lisbeth Berry, exactly as he had 
 told it to his sister. 
 
 " You are sure of your facts ? " 
 
 " Quite sure. Most of them have corne under my own 
 observation ; and the man who is my authority for the rest 
 is to be relied upon. The victim is there, sitting by her 
 mother's hearth, ruined, broken, without reason or memory." 
 
 " But this man will kill you. Think what the man is ! 
 A soldier, a Hercules, a crack shot, and an accomplished 
 swordsman." 
 
 " I am not afraid of his sword. I would rather fight him 
 with sw^ords than pistols." 
 
 " You ! Are you a swordsman ? " 
 
 " Yes. I suppose you think because I am bookish I 
 don't care for anything outside a library. I have always 
 been fond of fencing, ever since Angelo taught us at Eton. 
 I have kept up the practice in England and in Italy, and I 
 am pretty good at it. I am not afraid to meet Colonel 
 Manville, though his height and weight may tell against 
 me, and though he may be a better swordsman." 
 
 " \Vhen am I to see his man ? " 
 
 73 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " This afternoon, at four o'clock, at my hotel, the 
 Loyola " 
 
 " Comiais pas^^^ said Smythe. 
 
 "Lunch with me at Durant's, and I'll drive you there 
 afterwards." 
 
 " Never mind lunch," said Smythe ; " come to Milvoie's 
 Salle d' Amies with me, and just let me see your form. It'll 
 seem a little less like a human sacrifice if I see you are 
 a good man with the foils." 
 
 " There is nothing I should like better. Have you had 
 your little breakfast ? " 
 
 " Two hours ago — rolls, coffee, and a new-laid egg." 
 
 ** Then you won't mind lunching late. We'll go to the 
 salle at once. I'll take half an hour's practice with the 
 professor with<?/^^j' de combat ; and we'll adjourn to Durant's 
 for luncheon." 
 
 " Good," said Smythe. 
 
 They walked to the salle, which was in one of the new 
 streets on the way to St. Lazare ; and Smythe looked on 
 at an encounter between his friend and the professional 
 instructor, which convinced him of Arden's mastery of the 
 sword. 
 
 " I call that an eye-opener," he said, when Arden came 
 to him for a few minutes' rest. " I should never have 
 suspected you of being such a ripper." 
 
 " Did you think I was a muff in everything ? " 
 
 "No, no; of course not! Only, you see, when one 
 knows that a man is a bookworm " 
 
 "One supposes him an all-round incapable. Well, will 
 you back me against Manville ? " 
 
 " No, for there is always the question of weight and size. I 
 would as soon back you against the Russian bear you say 
 he represented last night. But if a duel is inevitable " 
 
 " It is inevitable. If you won't act for me, I must find 
 some one else." 
 
 " Then I'll see you through it." 
 
 Colonel Manville's friend, Monsieur Leclair, appeared at 
 the hotel as the clock of St. Sulpice struck the hour. He 
 wa^s a Frenchman, small, sinister-looking, and elaborately 
 polite. He spoke no English, but the cosmopolitan Smythe 
 was as much at his ease in French, German, and Spanish, as 
 
 74 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 in his native tongue. They were closeted together in the 
 reading-room, unoccupied at this hour, for about twenty 
 minutes, during which time everything had been arranged. 
 
 "The meeting is for half-past six to-morrow morning," 
 said Smythe, when he and Arden were alone. " The sun 
 does not rise till a quarter to seven ; but there will be plenty 
 of light for us if the day is fine, and nobody will be about 
 at that early hour. Manville's friend looked surprised when 
 I agreed readily to a duel with swords. He supposed, as 
 an Englishman, you would have preferred pistols. I detected 
 a look of satisfaction in his Jesuitical countenance, as if he 
 thought you were giving away your chances." 
 " Where are we to meet ? " 
 
 " Ah, there's the rub ! At Leclair's suggestion, I have 
 agreed to an out-of-the-way spot, in a very queer neighbour- 
 hood, between Menilmontant and the Fortifications, where 
 there is a stretch of waste ground, soon to be built over, but 
 at present a desert. As the provocation came from you, 
 they claim the right to choose the place of meeting, as well 
 as of weapons. Leclair urged that anywhere in the Bois de 
 Boulogne, or even at Vincennes, we were almost sure to be 
 surprised. The men who go there to fight mostly want to 
 be surprised. ' A solitary spot in an out-of-the-way quarter 
 is the best, if your friend means business,' he said. I told 
 him you did very much mean business. He further urged 
 that, in the event of a fatal result, the survivor would get 
 away easily from that side of Paris." 
 
 "Well, the place will do, I dare say; but how are we to 
 find it ? The district is a terra incognita to me." 
 
 " And I am not very familiar with it, old Parisian as I 
 am; so I arranged that our carriage should follow Man- 
 ville's. He will leave the Rue Royale at ten minutes to 
 six, and we must be there, in our carriage, and on the 
 look out for him. They will take no doctor — clearly under 
 the impression that yours is the only life in danger ; but I 
 know a man whom I can trust, and I shall get him to go 
 with us. He has walked the hospitals in London, and is 
 here as a student ; but he is clever, and will be equal to the 
 occasion, whatever it may be." 
 
 " Good. So long as you are sure you can trust him with 
 our plans." 
 
 75 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Quite sure. I shall ask him to dine with me, and I 
 shall tell him nothing till we part company at eleven o'clock. 
 He will be with us before six in the morning; so there 
 would hardly be time for him to peach, even if he were that 
 way inclined." 
 
 " You are a model of discretion." 
 
 " Take care to select the stiffest shirt-front you can find. 
 A well-starched shirt has sometimes saved a man's life. 
 What you have to think of next, is where you will go if 
 Manville gets the worst of it. Remember, if you were 
 arrested red-handed, it might mean two years' imprisonment, 
 at the least ; while if you get away quietly, I don't suppose 
 the police would take the trouble to hunt you down. You 
 had better drive to the nearest station on the Eastern hne, 
 and get yourself into the first train that will take you to 
 Brussels. You must look up all particulars in the time- 
 table, and be prepared with your plan of action. I'll see 
 you through it ; but you had better be ready to act on your 
 own, if needs must." 
 
 "You are a good fellow, Smythe. I shall be prepared 
 for a rapid journey." 
 
 " And, above all things, keep your brain cool. I'll get 
 a landau and a pair of good horses from a livery-yard where 
 I am known. It must be here to fetch you at half-past 
 five, and you can pick up Dickson, the doctor, and me, at 
 the Continental at a quarter to six." 
 
 Through the cold grey of a March morning, before the 
 toilers of the city were moving in the long white streets — in 
 an hour when Paris was like a vision-city rather than a vast 
 hive of brick and stone, overcrowded with human beings — 
 two carriages drove quickly along the Rue de Rivoli and 
 the Rue Saint Antoine, that apparently interminable avenue 
 of tall houses that passes through every shade of fashion, 
 commerce, and poverty ; to end at last in the open space 
 where the gloomy towers of the State prison once rose in 
 their dark strength above moat and drawbridge, where the 
 old walled city of the Valois and the Bourbon ended, and 
 the long country roads began. 
 
 The carriages, one following the other at about a hundred 
 yards' distance, drove along the Boulevard Richard Lenoir 
 
 76 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 for some distance, and then through a labyrinth of narrow 
 streets to the Boulevard de Belleville, and after crossing the 
 Boulevard, to another labyrinth of narrower streets on the 
 side of a hill. This shabby wilderness, where crime and 
 penury had their habitations, was a Paris Arden had never 
 seen — though the Faubourg St. Honore and the Faubourg 
 St. Germain, the Champs Elysces and the Bois, were as 
 familiar to him as St. James's and Hyde Park. 
 
 They passed by the abodes of wretchedness — squalid 
 hovels, shabby wine-shops, ill-paved streets — where a sprink- 
 ling of haggard women and brutal-looking men were on 
 foot already in the pale grey morning ; but where most of 
 the windows were still shuttered and the doors closed. 
 
 The spot chosen by Manville was a waste space of about 
 three acres at the back of a lane in which there were sheds, 
 and stables, and gaunt buildings that looked like ware- 
 houses, but no human habitations. The place could scarcely 
 have been better chosen. It was a district where the police 
 were rarely seen ; and where the wretched population looked 
 upon deeds of violence as the commonplace of life. 
 
 There were the usual preliminaries : formal salutations 
 exchanged between the combatants, swords measured, and 
 lots drawn for choice of position. 
 
 The seconds chose a level spot near the middle of the 
 ground, and placed their principals fronting each other in the 
 clear cold light. Long streamers of pink and yellow showed 
 faintly above the horizon, but there was no dazzle or glitter 
 of sunshine. 
 
 Konstantin IManville stood up against the grey back- 
 ground, a magnificent figure ; the breadth of chest and 
 squareness of shoulder, the muscular development of the 
 long straight limbs, indicating a surpassing strength, the 
 tense form motionless as the statue of a Roman gladiator. 
 Never had man faced a more formidable antagonist ; and 
 to meet such an antagonist in a first duel might have 
 appalled a man even without stamping him as a weakling. 
 De Courcy Smythe shivered as he noted the contrast 
 between that prodigious form and Arden's slim frame, just 
 under six feet ; but Arden was unmoved by the peril of the 
 encounter. A steady light shone in his dark grey eyes ; his 
 manner was composed ; his movements were firm and 
 
 77 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 decisive. From the first dawn of this fatal day he had 
 been assured of victory. A something in his mind which 
 was not himself, but a power beyond and above himself, 
 made him strong as iron. 
 
 For the first few thrusts and guards the men appeared 
 equal in skill and rapidity. It seemed as if such an en- 
 counter might go on for an hour ; a mere display of science, 
 admirable, full of interest to the spectator. _ Then a dark 
 change came over Manville's face, and his thrusts and 
 lunges assumed a savage violence, as if, having found skill 
 where he had expected to find incompetence, he had lost 
 his self-command, and wanted to beat down his antagonist's 
 guard by sheer force. The swords met, and clashed, and 
 parried, and thrust, with lightning quickness. Arden seemed 
 as if inspired, as if some supernatural power had given force 
 and agility to that slender form, and were sustaining it 
 against the weight and vigour of a Hercules. 
 
 Suddenly, with a furious impetus, Manville hurled himself 
 upon his antagonist, trying to force his sword out of his 
 grasp. The attack was so savage, so unscientific, such an 
 exercise of sheer strength against skilled swordsmanship, that 
 De Courcy cried shame, and even the Frenchman muttered 
 a word of disapproval. 
 
 The frantic onslaught failed; Manville lost his footing, 
 and stumbled forwards. Parry and thrust followed fast, in 
 a corps d corps encounter — deadly, implacable as Fate, a 
 struggle of moments ; and then the massive form crumbled 
 like a figure built of sand, and sank to the ground in a 
 heap, the blood oozing slowly from a mortal wound. 
 
 The young doctor rushed to the fallen man with all his 
 appliances ready, Leclair helping him to raise the huddled 
 figure into an easier position. 
 
 Manville motioned them aside. " Don't pester me," he 
 gasped, " you can do nothing for a dead man." 
 
 Then, with an effort, lifting a hand that shook like a leaf, 
 he beckoned Arden to his side, waving back the other two 
 men. 
 
 " Kneel down. Closer— closer." And as Arden obeyed, 
 he hissed in his ear, " I want to give you my legacy of hate 
 — a dying man's promise. Don't think you have done with 
 me. You have killed this carcass, this thing of flesh and 
 
 78 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 bone; buf: you have not killed vie. The fire that burns 
 here is not at your mercy. It lives; it has lived in cen- 
 turies past y and shall live through the coming years, to be 
 your torment and your curse. When you are luckiest, 
 when you are happiest, when woman's love is sweet and life 
 is fair, I shall be near you. There is no path you tread 
 where I may not cross your steps ; there is no hour you live 
 that shall be safe from me. Fool ! Do you think this 
 blood that stains the dust will end a mind and a force like 
 mine ? Such spirits pass ; they change ; they do not die." 
 
 His last breath expired with the last word, panted out in 
 a hoarse whisper. His head fell back on Leclair's knee, the 
 wide eyes staring wildly, fixed in unutterable hate. 
 
 79 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Walter Arden, Via di Bahnno, Rome, to Douglas Campbell^ 
 TJie Hut, Leith, Tasfiiania. 
 
 I HAVE let nearly a year and a half drift by, my dear old 
 friend, without writing to you, although you have been in 
 my mind very often during that time, and I have suffered 
 and experienced much that I wanted to confide to the one 
 man upon this earth from whom I am sure of sympathy 
 in circumstances that might provoke ridicule from most 
 people. 
 
 A year ago I was involved in a tragedy, which ended 
 with the death of a most consummate villain, whose existence 
 upon this earth had been a bane and a curse to helpless 
 innocence. I gave you a detailed description of this man in 
 my last letter, and of the unhappy girl who was then 
 hovering on the brink of ruin, powerless as a bird that 
 flutters spellbound by the baleful gaze of a snake. Her fate 
 was swift and cruel. I took her back to her broken-hearted 
 mother, with ruined health and a shattered mind, and her 
 life since then has been a living death. 
 
 I will not give you the history of the seducer's end. It 
 was sudden and violent, and in somewise mysterious, since 
 the hand that killed him has never been discovered. It was 
 in Paris that he met his death ; but whether he fell in a duel, 
 or was murdered in cold blood, is still an open question for 
 the Parisian police ; though the fact that he was found lying 
 in an out-of-the-way spot, clad only in trousers and shirt, 
 stabbed through the body, points to the former view. He 
 had lived only to do evil, and there was no one to be sorry 
 for his death ; for I am told that his father, who survives 
 him, has long ceased to interest himself in anything except 
 
 80 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 the prolongation of his own life, now verging on the 
 centur}'. 
 
 I remained in my old lodgings in Jermyn Street for 
 some months after Lisbeth Berry's return to her mother's 
 hearth ; and I was able to help the poor mother by taking her 
 daughter to three celebrated mental specialists ; but from 
 none of them could we obtain a hopeful opinion. The girl's 
 condition was pronounced harmless, not far removed from 
 imbecility, and the chances of recovery were poor. Yet 
 recovery was said to be not impossible ; and in the mean time 
 she might safely live with her mother, with such care and 
 supervision as the mother could give. There was nothing in 
 the case to call for restraint or isolation. This was the only 
 ray of comfort ; and the boundless love of the mother finds 
 a kind of happiness in the companionship of this blighted 
 girl, and in toiling for her, and ministering to her. 
 
 And now I come to my own state of mind, which I have 
 communicated to no living creature ; since were I to confide 
 in an ordinary acquaintance, he would only laugh at me, and 
 were I to describe my condition to a doctor, he might write 
 me down a lunatic. 
 
 For the last year, almost perpetually, I have been tor- 
 mented by the sense of an unseen presence, a creature of 
 evil, hovering near me, impalpable, invisible, unthinkable 
 almost, for I can imagine neither form nor nature ; and it is 
 only by my own intense depression and vague horror that I 
 conclude the presence to be evil. From the beginning of 
 things I have struggled against the feeling. I have gone 
 more into society, spent more hours in the easy-going and 
 varied company at my club ; but even there, in those most 
 unromantic surroundings, in the billiard-room, in the card- 
 room, among men of the world, that haunting presence has 
 still been with me ; and in the midst of a rubber of bridge, 
 in the excitement of a hundred-break at bilHards, or the 
 rowdy racket of snooker, that ghastly sense of the something 
 evil close at my side, the something of another world 
 overshadowing me, has made ease of mind impossible. 
 Before I left London, my club-friends were telling me 
 that I was looking very ill, that I had altered greatly in 
 a very short time ; and every one of the friendly souls 
 was urgent with me to get myself overhauled by his 
 
 8i G 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 favourite physician. I had doctors' names and addresses 
 pressed upon me. I was made to feel that I was a 
 desperate case. 
 
 You know my old aversion to evening parties, from the 
 days of our Oxford perpendiculars. Well, to elude this 
 spectral company, I accepted every invitation that was sent 
 me, and came to be known as a young man who was worth 
 the trouble of a card, since he was almost sure to put in an 
 appearance. The mystic words " at home " commanded my 
 presence. I danced, I flirted, I listened to all the musical 
 stars of the season. I saw all the plays, I heard all the 
 operas. I was at Ascot, Sandown, even Newmarket. But go 
 v.'here I would, on the racecourse or on the river, in ball- 
 room or concert-room, I carried that evil presence with me, 
 until the haunted look in my face began to be noticeable 
 even by frivolous beauty, and my partners, while approving 
 my waltzing, began to tell me that I was looking dread- 
 fully ill. 
 
 After that, I felt I was no longer fit for scenes of gaiety ; 
 so I left England before the end of the London season, and 
 have been a wanderer in Switzerland and Italy ever since, 
 rarely spending more than twenty-four hours in any spot, 
 however it took hold of my heart and mind. In bitter truth 
 I have been driven from place to place, a haunted man, 
 trying, in daily change of scene, and in almost perpetual 
 movement, to shake off that miserable sense of a presence 
 other than my own, a presence that makes for evil. 
 
 One curious evidence of the something unknown and 
 unexplainable has been a source of keen pain to me. I 
 think you will remember my love of dogs, and how at Oxford 
 I was seldom unaccompanied by my adored and adoring 
 Splinter, a fox-terrier of undoubted race, offspring of a 
 mother whose career was a brilliant succession of triumphs 
 at Islington, Birmingham, and the Crystal Palace. When I 
 established my quarters in Jermyn Street, I sent Splinter, 
 then four years old, to Wildernsea, my brother's place in 
 Hertfordshire, in charge of an old gamekeeper whom I had 
 known from childhood, and to whom I was not afraid to 
 confide that precious existence. 
 
 In the beginning of that haunted feeling which has made 
 my life a burden, sitting after midnight surrounded by the 
 
 82 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 books I love, in that quiet hour which v.as once the choicest 
 portion of my day, I found myself longing for the vivacious 
 companionship and frivolous distractions which my terrier 
 had aftbrded me in the old college-rooms, when I was 
 reading hard for my degree. I thought that Splinter's 
 society would exorcise my demon, which I then believed to 
 be only a mood, an unexplainable condition of nerves. 
 
 I ran down to Hertfordshire one fine Tvlay morning, 
 spent a few hours with my brother and his belongings, looked 
 round the old house and gardens, and brought Splinter back 
 to London with me. 
 
 I had never lost touch with my favourite ; for though 
 Vrildernsea and I have little in common except our race, 
 v/e have always been on friendly terms, and I have spent 
 two or three days at the old home every autumn, annually 
 invited for one of his big shoots. 
 
 My dog welcomed me rapturously ; and old Bowker, his 
 custodian, assured me that at ten years old he was just as 
 playful, mischievous and active as in his puppyhood, a fine 
 ratter, and a "mark on cats." I was delighted to have him 
 again, and having squared the guard, established myself with 
 my lively friend in the assured privacy of a first-class com- 
 partment labelled " Engaged." 
 
 We had not been together half an hour before I detected 
 a change in my dog. He fidgeted about the carriage, not 
 with the joyous restlessness of old, but with the air of being 
 pursued by something that he feared. Splinter, who knew 
 not fear ! He scratched the doors vehemently, rushing 
 from one to the other, and looked at me with a piteous 
 appeal in his expressive eyes ; he put his paws upon my 
 knee, looking up at me with dumb pleading; and finally, 
 as if distressed at my not understanding him, set up a mournful 
 minor howl, which made my blood run cold. Never before 
 that evening had I heard such a sound from Splinter. 
 
 I kept him in Jermyn Street for a week; a week of 
 distress for him, and of mental agony for me. He escaped 
 from my room at every opportunity ; for I was cruel enough 
 to insist on having him with me whenever I could. He 
 crept down to the basement, where he seemed perfectly 
 happy, my servant told me, where he ate, drank, and took 
 his ease. I tried to keep him in my room at night, recalling 
 
 ^3 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 our habits in college, when Splinter slept on my bed, and 
 aroused me from slumber in the early morning, licking my 
 face in a transport of affection, as if to welcome me back 
 to the waking world. With such an early-rising companion, 
 one could hardly miss chapel. 
 
 But that one night in Jermyn Street was enough. The 
 dog lay with his nose against the door, making a low whimper- 
 ing noise, like the subdued crying of a frightened child. 
 After that night I let him sleep in my man's room, who 
 assured me that never dog was a quieter or more endearing 
 companion. 
 
 At the end of this troubled week I took my terrier back 
 to Wildernsea ; but I allowed him to make the return journey 
 in the guard's van, where he made himself at home, and 
 gave satisfaction. I told my old friend Bowker that Splinter 
 did not like London ; and this was my only explanation of 
 his prompt return. 
 
 Undeterred by this painful experience, which I tried 
 to account for as a purely material phenomenon, my own 
 shattered nerves acting on the nervous system of a thorough- 
 bred dog, I looked for a canine companion elsewhere. I 
 bought a bulldog, of renowned breed and undoubted courage ; 
 but only to see my experience with Splinter repeated in 
 almost every detail. The bull was happy in the kitchen, 
 or with my servant. He was miserable with me. 
 
 I tried a Schipperke, a pert, irresistible little black beast, 
 with alert ears and no tail, all vivacity and intelligence ; but 
 in my company he became paralyzed by fear. I tried a 
 powerful Irish terrier, hardly past puppyhood, full of fight 
 and high spirits ; but he had not been with me an hour 
 before he exhibited the same signs of terror that I had seen 
 in the others. This was my final experiment. I sold my 
 dogs, at a considerable loss, to the man who supplied them, 
 and who evidently looked upon me as an eccentric, unworthy 
 of four-legged friendship. 
 
 I cannot tell you how keenly I suffered from this failure, 
 so humiliating to a dog-lover. It was the last straw ; and 
 from that time I have been a miserable man. If the horror 
 is in myself, in my own shattered nerves and disordered 
 mind, which by some subtle power communicates itself to 
 the brute creation, the idea is scarcely less appalling than 
 
 84 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 that other idea of an extraneous presence, an evil spirit from 
 which my life is inseparable. 
 
 In my Italian rambles I often tried to make friends 
 with dogs— a peasant's dog barking in front of a cottage, 
 a casual cur loitering on the road, sheep-dogs, waggoners' 
 dogs — but not one among them ever reciprocated my 
 caresses. Every dumb creature that I courted slunk away 
 from me with a suspicious and distressed air. I have seen 
 the same kind of recoil in wayside children I have talked 
 to, but never to the same extent. Is there a keener instinct 
 in dogs that makes them suffer in any contact with evil ; and 
 if so, what is this mysterious intangible evil that I carry about 
 with me ? 
 
 I am now in this delectable city, the meeting-ground of 
 all the ages, where hitherto I have always found my life full 
 of keen interests and varied pleasures ; and I hope to remain 
 here till May, when I shall go back to London, and try to 
 resume my old habits among my books in Jermyn Street, 
 where my rooms are undisturbed, waiting for their master. 
 I am weary of my nomad existence, and of fatigue which 
 has never brought untroubled sleep or hopeful dreams. 
 
 I know not if even you, with your wide belief in the 
 Unseen, will have found patience to finish this letter ; but if 
 you are able to give any serious thought to the mental trouble 
 which has been heavy upon me for nearly a year, I shall be 
 deeply grateful for any ray of light which you, as an expert 
 in the unconditioned, can throw upon my perplexities. 
 
 Yours always, 
 
 Walter Ardex. 
 
 The Hut, near Leith, N.W, Coast, Tasmania. 
 My dear Walter, 
 
 You must have lost all memory of the hours we 
 spent together if you could think that it was in me to make 
 mock of any strange mental experience in the life of a friend. 
 So soon as I was able to think, it was borne in upon me that 
 I was living in a cloud of mystery, that all about and around 
 me were influences of which I knew nothing, and could never 
 know much, so longr as I wore this vesture of clav. So soon 
 as I was able to reason, I told myself that the finite could 
 never comprehend the infinite, and that the spiritual world 
 
 . S5 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 must ever remain beyond the fathom-line of human thought. 
 Something we think we know, something we guess. Imagina- 
 tion soars where reason cannot reach ; and some of us retain 
 in older years much of the child's unquestioning belief in 
 the things he cannot see or understand — the unmapped 
 Heaven, the life beyond the grave, the continued existence 
 of those we have known and loved here. 
 
 For my own part, every year that I have spent on earth 
 seems to have brought me nearer to the things that are not 
 of earth. The unseen, the unconditioned, has taken a 
 stronger hold upon my mind ; and every blow that fate 
 has struck at my heart here, every friend whom death has 
 beckoned to the farther shore, has made me more convinced 
 of the spiritual life that wraps us round amidst the dull 
 commonplace of our everyday existence. 
 
 And in this spirit-world, in the ten thousand times ten 
 thousand of those who have lived and sinned and suffered 
 and died, who live and move around us as we journey 
 through life, I cannot doubt that the imperishable evil 
 moves side by side with the imperishable good. I do not 
 question that the indestructible mind, the something which 
 is not bone and flesh, the intangible essence that no Darwin 
 has been able to fix, for which no science has found a cause 
 or a limit, survives the earthly frame of the sinner as surely 
 as it survives the earthly frame of the saint, and that the 
 imseen world is peopled with devils as well as with angels, 
 while the struggle between good and evil, the contest 
 between Michael and Lucifer, is for ever going on. I am 
 ready, therefore, to believe that your life has of late been 
 darkened by a baneful presence, unseen, but always near 
 you ; a disembodied spirit of hate and revenge, a hideous 
 companion, whose deadly influence the finer instinct of the 
 brute creation can perceive, though human intelligence 
 outside your own mind is seldom conscious of it. 
 
 I read between the lines of your letter, and divine those 
 particulars of Manville's fate, which you might not care to 
 trust to the hazards of the ocean post. But I am assured 
 that whatever were the circumstances of his death, your 
 part in the tragedy was honourable, and that you have 
 no occasion for remorse. But, materialist though ycu are, 
 can you think that the strono^, wicked soul, the insatiable 
 
 86 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 spirit of sin, the mind so active, so powerful for evil, could 
 be sent to an eternal sleep, annihilated by a thrust from a 
 small sword ? No, Walter, the soul of life is a light and a 
 fire that no earthly accident can extinguish. Do you think 
 the great Plantagenet, Edward I., is dead, or Luther, or 
 Bonaparte, or Shakespeare ; or the wicked ones of the earth, 
 the Borgias, the guilty queens, Joanna of Naples, Catherine 
 of Russia ; the restless, daring, unscrupulous, pitiless souls ? 
 Do you think that any of these have ended with the clay 
 that held them ? In som.e form of flesh or spirit, visible or 
 invisible, they are with us still, immortal minds, vrorking 
 amidst us for good or evil. 
 
 But if the wicked influences are strong, I believe the 
 good influences are stronger, and that the archangel is con- 
 tinually prevailing against the archfiend. I believe that 
 your release from the cloud that overshadows you will come 
 sooner or later from some pure and holy spirit among the 
 dead or the living, whose bright, white light of innocence 
 and piety will overpower the evil thing that haunts you. 
 Pray for the advent of that fair soul, that pure light of truth, 
 a divine emanation from the Divine Infinite. The lives of 
 many men have been made blessed by the presence of an 
 angel clad in human form. Lift up your soul in prayer. 
 Forget that you ever questioned the existence of an Omni- 
 potent, Omnipresent, Omniscient God ; and submit yourself 
 in all humility to the only povrer that can prevail against 
 the dominion of sin. 
 
 I shall pray for you, my dear friend, with all the fervour 
 of which I am capable ; and be sure that whatever you may 
 now suffer from an inextinguishable malevolence, you will 
 be rewarded here or hereafter for your generous and humane 
 endeavour to save that unhappy girl. \'\nhen I think of the 
 men who go through the world, enjoying all that this earth 
 can yield of pleasure and self-indulgence, and never lifting 
 a finger in behalf of a fellow-creature, I must needs admire 
 the chivalry that has cost you so dear. 
 
 Write to me whenever you are so minded, and re- 
 member that my interest in your spiritual experience is 
 inexhaustible. 
 
 Your sincere friend, 
 
 Douglas Campbell. 
 
 87 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Arden had counted upon remaining in Rome till the hot 
 weather drove him away from a city which he loved better 
 than any other spot on earth ; but before the end of April 
 he was on his way to London, travelling straight through by 
 the Rome express, restless, anxious, eager to be back in his 
 old rooms, in the noisy multitudinous city, in the press and 
 ferment of a world where the struggle for life, the race for 
 wealth, the greed of power, keep the great machine always 
 going, the piston-rods always plunging to and fro, the wheels 
 always revolving at their maximum speed. 
 
 Rome, and all the poetry of past ages, all the beauty 
 of temple and fountains, of mountain and sky, all the 
 picturesque charm of City and Campagna, had failed to 
 rid him of his incubus, of that unexplainable, indefinable 
 sense of a malignant presence that had become almost 
 a part of his consciousness, since not for one peaceful hour 
 was he able wholly to forget that the thing was there. He 
 might half forget, perhaps, in the distraction of brilliant 
 society, where the touch-and-go conversation flew lightly 
 from theme to theme, and every happy turn in the sparkling 
 talk provoked a happier retort, till the air seemed alive with 
 electric flashes of wit and fancy ; but no sooner was he 
 again alone than the silent horror returned. 
 
 He found himself a welcome guest in art circles, literary 
 circles, and diplomatic circles. All the sets and cliques 
 were open to a young unmarried Englishman of good 
 family, with fine manners, and credited with ample means. 
 He considerably increased the number of his acquaintance 
 during the month that he spent in the city of the Seven 
 Hills ; and he made one friend, an Anglo-American, a 
 young Englishman of good birth, who had led a roughish 
 life on the " other side," plucky, shrewd, adventurous, and 
 supremely unconventional, the son of a High Church dean, 
 brought up in the odour of sanctity, educated at Winchester 
 and Oxford, and flung loose upon the world at two-and-twenty, 
 cast off by an indignant father, upon his refusal to take orders, 
 and his open confession of a careless, easy-going agnosticism. 
 
 So, repudiated by the outraged dean, and wept over by his 
 mother and sisters. Archer Stormont had contrived to escape 
 starvation, and even to keep a decent coat upon his back, 
 a roughish coat, perhaps, coarse tweed or homely frieze, not 
 
 88 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 fashioned by a ^Vest End tailor. He had contrived to live 
 honestly, to hold his head high, breaking horses on a Texas 
 farm, or driving a tram in New York, teaching Boston girls 
 to ride, or acting in a dime theatre ; and he had seen more 
 of the varieties of life, of strange men and strange manners, 
 than the pampered traveller in the tram de luxe and the 
 state-cabin has ever seen, in his expensive progress from city 
 to city and continent to continent. 
 
 It is not in the saloons of Brobdingnagian steamers, not 
 in the most modern and luxurious hotels, that those varieties 
 of life are to be met with. Archer Stormont would have 
 sickened amidst the white-and-gold panelUng and ease and 
 high living of a first-class passage on an American liner. 
 He loved the rough better than the smooth. 
 
 The society of such a man was new to Arden, and as 
 pleasant to him as a gust of fresh mountain air blowing the 
 city vapours out of a tired brain. He and Stormont had 
 been at Balliol together, but were not of the same year, and 
 had seen very litde of each other, Stormont living only for 
 the cricket-field and the river, while Arden was then reading 
 hard for his degree. 
 
 They became chums in Rome, went for long tramps on 
 the Sacred Way, explored the Catacombs together, the only 
 rehcs of the past in which Stormont took the faintest interest, 
 dined at the Cafe de Rome together, and went together to 
 theatre or music-hall. 
 
 Such a life was a tame and languid business for a man 
 who loved the hazards and perils of a new country, outside 
 the limits of civilization. Stormont had come to Rome 
 with an American family, Mr. and Mrs. Washington Jam- 
 ford, and their two daughters, people of vast wealth and 
 some intelligence, to whom he had attached himself as a 
 kind of house-steward, financial manager, and master of 
 horse. In Rome, where the Chicago millionaire was a 
 stranger, Stormont's services were invaluable. He had 
 chosen their lodgings in a Prince's palace on the Corso; 
 he engaged and bullied their servants, bought their horses 
 and carriages, and obtained their introduction to society. 
 He hunted with the sons, and cycled with the daughters ; 
 instructed the chef, and looked after the cellar. He was 
 ubiquitous and unfailing. 
 
 89 
 
The Conflict, 
 
 "It gives me something to do," he told Arden, "and 
 just saves me from blowing out my brains in this dull hole. 
 They are an exacting family, but they mean well. The 
 old chap is a gentleman, and the girls have only one fault — 
 they are both in love with me." 
 
 " Why not take advantage of the situation, and make one 
 of them happy ? They are both pretty ; but for choice I 
 should say the younger sister, Vanessa." 
 
 " Marry ! Shut up my life in the circle of a wedding- 
 ring ! Not much," said Stormont. " They've abolished 
 slavery in the States, and I'm not going to be a feather- 
 headed girl's white nigger." 
 
 The adventurer opened his mind to his friend in one of 
 those long walks on the Campagna, far beyond the fortress 
 tomb of Cecilia Metella, that noble monument of a wife's 
 merits and a husband's love ; or is that splendid sepulchre 
 only the evidence of a wife's wealth, the memorial a con- 
 tented widower paid for with the gold of the dead ? Arden 
 had often gazed at the sculptured wall, dreaming, as Byron 
 dreamt, of her life-history, whose ashes were entombed 
 there. 
 
 Loved or unloved, the world knows nothing of her. But 
 Douglas Campbell would tell him she was living still, an 
 imperishable essence, living in the flesh or in the spirit; 
 near him, invisible, as he stood by her tomb ; or in the City 
 yonder, a creature of princely birth, born and reared in a 
 palace ; or a peasant sitting behind her flower-basket on the 
 steep slope of the Pincian hill. 
 
 " I'm getting pretty sick of this kind of life," said Stor- 
 mont, " but I'm going to take my friends back to Chicago 
 early in May, and after that I shall be my own master. 
 What do you think I'm going to do next ? " 
 
 " Texas and wild horses again ? " 
 
 " No. I'm going to Klondyke, to dig for gold. Will you 
 come with me, Arden ? You're looking ill and troubled. 
 I believe you are quite as sick of this one-horse old toAvn as 
 I am. You are perishing for want of something to do — 
 something to think about. Come to Klondyke " 
 
 " Turn gold-finder — when I have more than enough for 
 all my wants ? Turn my back upon civilization — books — • 
 music — art — to perish in a polar desert ? " 
 
 90 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 "Never mind the gold. It's not the filthy lucre that 
 dravrs me. It's for the sake of something new, a strange 
 world, a struggle for life. You don't know the keen delight 
 of that kind of existence, where everything conventional, 
 worn-out, stale, narrow, monotonous, the dull treadmill 
 round that your civilized citizen calls Hfe, is left behind, 
 forgotten. You don't know what it is to find yourself in 
 a place where everything is unexpected, and every hour 
 brings new danger or new luck. I don't care a curse for 
 the shekels, for what men call a comfortable income ; but 
 I wouldn't mind being a millionaire." 
 
 " Whv, what would a nomad like you do with your 
 million ? " 
 
 " Carry it in my breast-pocket — liquid — loose — spend it, 
 man, spend it ! Not on houses, and lands, and horses, and 
 carriages, and diamonds, and French cooks; but on the 
 whim of the moment, on the friend of a day, on the chorus- 
 girl I sit next at supper, on the beggar who follows me 
 along the street ; scatter the paltry dross right and left with 
 both hands, waste it, wallow in it, knowing that if I fling 
 away my last sovereign I shall be able to earn bread and 
 cheese when it is gone. But I don't go to Klondyke with 
 any idea of a million. I go for the fun of the thing. Will 
 you come ? " 
 
 " I'll think about it, my dear fellow." 
 
 *'Ah, that's your form. You have the look of a man who 
 is always thinking about things, and never doing them. But 
 I give you my honour, you want change and adventure 
 much worse than I do. There's something on your mind — 
 something wrong with you. I ask no man for his secrets, 
 not even my friend." 
 
 " I have no secrets," Arden answered hastily. 
 
 " Haven't you ? Then you've a deuced preoccupied air 
 for a man v.ho has no trouble on his mind." 
 
 " I did not say I had no trouble." 
 
 " Come to Klondyke ; when you've been shovelling 
 gravel or wheeling a heavy barrow all day, you'll sleep 
 sound all night. Our nights will be short there, and sleep 
 precious." 
 
 Arden liked Archer Stormont better than any friend he 
 had except Douglas Campbell. The two men were vride 
 
 91 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 as the poles asunder in their mode of life and way of 
 thinking ; but in both there was the same element— absolute 
 sincerity. Each was a tower of strength in friendship, for 
 neither was capable of falsehood. 
 
 Arden was in the old rooms again, with the books which 
 had been such dear companions in the untroubled past. 
 He tried to take up old threads of favourite studies, tried to 
 throw his thoughts backward into those historic ages which 
 had once been a source of inexhaustible delight. But 
 though the books were no less dear, the man was changed ; 
 though the past was no less vivid and real, the mind had 
 lost its power of concentration. He found himself reading 
 the same page over and over again, unable to fix his 
 thoughts upon the text. That haunting presence, that 
 something unknown and evil was with him in the quiet 
 of his book-room, with him in that shadowy hour between 
 day and night which he had loved of old, when the page 
 grew dim and he closed his book, threw himself back in 
 his armchair, and mused upon all he had read, while the 
 fire-glow flickered on the wall, or the sunset crimsoned the 
 room, and the street noises floated in at the open window. 
 He had loved solitude once, but now he found it intolerable. 
 
 Invitations poured in upon him when it was known he 
 was in London ; and he accepted them eagerly. No society 
 was too frivolous for him at this period of his life. He 
 liked the artistic and literary society best — painters, actors, 
 novelists, poets; for among these the talk was more start- 
 ling and highly coloured, and made for self-forgetfulness. 
 He compUed with all the exactions of society women, 
 fetched and carried for them, appeared at their afternoon 
 teas, listened to their music, escorted them to the theatre, 
 danced with them or sat out with them, talked chifl'ons or 
 talked scandal, just as they pleased. Anything was better 
 than solitude. 
 
 On his return to London, he met his sister Mary for the 
 first time since she bade him good night in the vestibule at 
 the Bristol. It was more than a year since he had seen 
 her ; and he found that she too had changed. She was as 
 handsome as ever, but there were new lines in her face. 
 Her eyes looked larger, and her mouth had a pensive look 
 
 92 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 in repose that was new. Her manners had the automatic 
 vivacity of women who are outwardly gay because they are 
 inwardly miserable. 
 
 " Where have you been hiding yourself all this time ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 "Hiding myself? Why, I have been flashing about the 
 society sky like a comet. I was seedy last season, and the 
 doctors sent me to Nauheim early in June. You must have 
 heard of my Homburg picnics. They were prodigious 
 successes. My husband had a grouse-moor, and I tore from 
 the Taunus to' the Pentlands. We had a glorious August 
 and September ; but I was seedy again in October, and I 
 told the doctors to send me to Ceylon ; and Ceylon was a 
 failure. We stayed in Egypt from January to Tvlarch, spent 
 the Easter week at Monte Carlo, and came back to Grosvenor 
 Square on the first of May. All which information you 
 might have seen a hundred times repeated in the society 
 papers." 
 
 " I never read society papers." 
 
 " And where have you been ? " 
 
 " In London last season, in Italy ever since." 
 
 "Then Italy doesn't agree with you, for you are looking 
 
 ten years older since — since " 
 
 She left the sentence unfinished. A strange expression — 
 distress, horror, he knew not which — came into her face, 
 and she turned from him suddenly, and began talking to a 
 man standing near. This conversation had been carried 
 on in a mob, at a great reception, to which people came in 
 their finest raiment, looked about, and not seeing the people 
 they wanted to see, went away after ten minutes, " going 
 on " to something smaller and pleasanter, something where 
 there were corners adapted for talk or flirting, and a buffet 
 that was not a feast of Tantalus, all the delicacies of the 
 season blockaded by a greedy crowd. 
 
 Arden was greatly surprised when Lady ^Mary called upon 
 him in Jermyn Street on the morning after this chance 
 meeting. 
 
 It was only twelve o'clock, and she, who had all the 
 fashionable carriages at her disposal, from barouche to 
 ralli-cart, came to Mrs. Berry's house in a four-wheel cab. 
 
 93 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 She was more plainly dressed than he had ever seen her in 
 town, in a dark tailor gown and a little cloth toque. 
 
 " I felt I must see you alone," she said abruptly, when 
 the servant had shut the door. " And I am never alone in 
 my own house between sunrise and midnight." 
 
 " I am very glad to see you, my dear Mary." 
 
 " Are you ? Are we friends, or enemies ? I never know 
 which." 
 
 " Friends, I hope." 
 
 There was a brief silence ; and then she looked at him 
 suddenly with flaming eyes. 
 
 " You killed Konstantin Manville." 
 
 " Have you come here to tell me that? " 
 
 " I have come because I can't rest till I know the truth. 
 I suspected you, that night, when you and he whispered 
 together. I lay awake in an agony for hours, knowing that 
 there was to be a duel. I thought he would kill you. I 
 was wTetched, accusing myself of being your murderer. I 
 could not rest all the next day. I drove about Paris, calling 
 upon people v/ho knew him, thinking I should hear some- 
 thing ; for I fancied the duel would be over next morning. 
 I never thought of seconds and J>oi^r-par/ers, or any cause 
 for delay. I had every evening paper in Paris brought to 
 my room that night, and, finding nothing, I began to hope 
 that the thing had blown over. If I had known where you 
 were staying, I should have gone to you " 
 
 " To plead for the man you loved ? " 
 
 *' No. To implore you not to risk your own life. I 
 thought he was invincible." 
 
 " He was not, you see. Even the wicked cannot have 
 everything their own way — always." 
 
 "After three days of suspense — agonized suspense — I 
 saw in the paper that he had been found dead, in a solitary 
 quarter of Paris, and had been taken to the Morgue, and 
 recognized almost immediately. Then came the inquiry — 
 an everlasting business. Was it a murder, or a duel ? There 
 were two or three people arrested. I suppose you know 
 that." 
 
 *' Arrests that meant nothing, and lasted for twenty-four 
 hours at longest." 
 
 " There was no evidence against anybody ; and the police 
 
 94 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 decided that he had been killed in a duel. No one knew 
 of any quarrel. The people at the cafe could have said 
 something if they had chosen ; but, luckily, they did not 
 come forward. No one knew anything of his movements 
 since he was seen in the opera-house v;ith that vile woman — 
 La Poulpe, the papers called her." 
 
 " Lucky for you that the last association observed was 
 with that vile woman, and not with you." 
 
 " Yes. Richard would have been frantic if my name had 
 been mixed up in such a business. You know^ what he is. 
 I may spend his money with both hands, tear about the 
 v.-orld as much as I like ; but, in his opinion, Selby's wife is 
 quite as important a person as Caesar's wife. That \Yas an 
 escape. But I\Ianville is gone, and the world seems empty 
 without him." 
 
 " Mary, what madness ! " 
 
 " Madness ! Yes, I suppose it is madness. ^Yha.t was 
 there in him ? What was the charm that made all other 
 men seem dull and commonplace, all other society boring, 
 after an hour with him ? Remember, I have nothing to be 
 ashamed of in our relations ; unless it is shameful to care 
 more for one man's company — for the sound of his voice, 
 for the touch of his hand — than for all the rest of the world. 
 I am not ashamed of having loved him. I was under a 
 spell, I think. I know that I have been miserable ever 
 since. I have rushed about the world. I have lived in a 
 crowd. But I cannot forget him ; I cannot find peace. I 
 feel sometimes as if he were still near me, still holding me 
 enthralled with that strange power of his. Even in this 
 room," she said, starting up from her chair suddenly, " I 
 feel as if he were standing at my shoulder. I dare not 
 look round for fear I should see him, ghastly, in his bloody 
 shirt, as they found him in that horrid field behind Belleville. 
 I drove there in a fly to look at the place. I was drawn 
 there ; and the picture of that dreary waste has haunted me 
 ever since." 
 
 There was a silence. Arden had risen when she rose, 
 and they stood staring at each other, pale to the lips. 
 
 " How white you look ! " she said, after those moments 
 of mute horror. " You killed him ! I know you killed 
 him!" 
 
 95 
 
The Conflict, 
 
 " You can know nothing more than the police know about 
 his death. It is enough for you to know that he fell in fair 
 fight. He did not deserve to live." 
 
 " Oh, I know that he was wicked — an evil spirit, with 
 power not given to common humanity. Walter, you know 
 what my married life has been, how straight, how clean, how 
 free from the shadow of reproach, till I met that man. I 
 lived among women whose lovers were as well known to the 
 world as their liveries, women who had their open secrets, 
 which all the world knew and pretended not to know. I 
 visited and received women whose lives had been one long 
 scandal ; and I kept my own life honest." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I know, Mary. I thought badly of you when 
 you made a mercenary marriage ; but I respected you after- 
 wards, because you were a good wife." 
 
 " I was a good wife till I met that man. I was not 
 always happy. There were intervals of depression when I 
 felt that I had missed something — the romance, the glamour, 
 the poetry of life. I had fits of melancholy during which it 
 was a struggle to seem satisfied with the things that money 
 can buy. It was in one of my melancholy fits that I met 
 Colonel Manville. I was in the Pyrenees, for a cure, alone. 
 We saw each other every day. We walked in the pine- 
 woods in the sultry silence, in a world that seemed new to 
 me from the hour I met him. And then for the first time 
 I understood what glamour meant, the glamour women had 
 talked about, those women who cannot keep themselves 
 from talking about their infatuations. Was I in love with 
 him? I don't know. He took hold of my existence, my 
 mind, my soul, if I have a soul. I think I knew from the 
 first that he was wicked, that it was an evil influence that 
 held me ; but I was like a creature possessed." 
 
 Her words had come in a torrent, and she stopped 
 suddenly, breathless and panting. 
 
 " He had dominion over my mind ; but I am a woman of 
 the world, and I had strength enough and sense enough to 
 resist him when he wanted me to go away with him, to 
 disgrace myself, and bring shame and sorrow upon my 
 husband. He had the power to make me miserable, but 
 not to make me a social outcast, or a living lie, a wicked 
 wife, who steers a difficult course between lover and husband, 
 
 96 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 and smiles in the face of the man she has dishonoured. 
 He was angry with me when he found I was not an easy 
 victim ; and then he seemed to forgive me, and we became 
 a kind of friends, whose friendship is sweet and bitter — 
 honey and galL I could hardly live without his society, 
 and I encouraged him to hang about me. I tried to make 
 my house pleasant to him, while I kept him at arm's 
 length." 
 
 " Was he at arm's length that night in Paris ? You must 
 have known that it was disgraceful to sup with him iete-d- 
 tete at a restaurant at three o'clock in the morning." 
 
 " Oh, I was in Paris alone, and I wanted to do something 
 adventurous — but I knew I was mistress of the situation. 
 I was at St. Germain with him all that day. We lunched 
 at the Henri Quatre, and strolled in the forest, and drove 
 back to Paris in the spring twilight. He was delightful. 
 We talked of everything in heaven and earth. He bared 
 his soul to me — his wicked, infidel soul — scoffing at all 
 things good, even honour. I was under a charm. His wit, 
 his eloquence, enchanted me. I look back now and think 
 that it was the happiest day of my life — yes, the happiest. 
 There is no other like it. His face, his eyes, his voice, all 
 that was splendid and grand in him, will live in my memory 
 for everj and yet I know that he was the incarnation of 
 evil." 
 
 " I thank God for his death, for your sake, Mary." 
 
 "You think that if he had lived, I should not have 
 escaped ; that I should have fallen, like the girl of whom 
 you told me ? " 
 
 " I think you were playing a game in which you must 
 have been the loser." 
 
 " What became of that girl ? Did she die ? " 
 
 " No \ she is in this house — with her mother." 
 
 " She is cured, I suppose, and will marry a grocer's 
 assistant, or something of that kind, and be happy ever 
 after." 
 
 " Would you like to see her ? " 
 
 " To see one of Manville's victims ? There were many 
 such, I suppose. His path through life was strewed with 
 broken hearts." 
 
 " It would be an object-lesson for you." 
 
 97 H 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Yes ; I should like to see her." 
 
 Arden went downstairs in advance, and having obtained 
 Mrs. Berry's permission, took his sister to the little back 
 parlour, where Lisbeth was sitting, in the care of a' trained 
 nurse, a pleasant-looking young woman in a lavender uni- 
 form. The room had been brightened since Lisbeth's 
 return. There were flowers on table and mantelpiece, 
 daintily bound books, rosebud chintz curtains, white paint 
 and rosebud wall-paper; improvements that had been pro- 
 vided by Arden, at whose advice the nurse had been engaged. 
 
 Lisbeth was sitting by the open window, where all the 
 sunshine that found its way into the stony well outside fell 
 on her face and figure. She was very pale, and there was 
 a restless, unhappy look in her eyes, as of one who was 
 always listening and waiting for someone who did not come. 
 She had an open book on the little table in front of her, and 
 her emaciated hand moved nervously about the pages. 
 
 " I have brought my sister to see you, Lisbeth," Arden 
 said. 
 
 She had not looked at them as they came into the room, 
 and she seemed to direct her eyes towards Arden with an 
 effort. 
 
 "I did not know you had a sister," she said, without 
 looking at the strange lady, whose appearance even in her 
 tailor gown was a revelation to Nurse Evelyn. 
 
 " It was the hang of the skirt," she told her friends after- 
 wards, when expatiating upon Lady Mary's clothes. " Only 
 a plain tweed gown, but such style ! You can't get that in 
 the Edgware Road." 
 
 Mary went to the girl and took her hand gently, and 
 stood looking down at her, with compassionate eyes. 
 
 " My poor child," she said ; " my poor child ! " and could 
 find no other words. 
 
 " Oh, I am not a child," answered Lisbeth, fretfully. " I 
 am a woman now. I was a child when I was happy. But 
 then came unhappiness, and I knew I was a woman." 
 
 Her head was drooping as she said this; and then she 
 lifted it suddenly, and stared at Lady Mary with wild eyes. 
 
 " Were you ever in hell ? " she asked. 
 
 *' Oh, Lisbeth dear, that's very naughty of you," remon- 
 strated the nurse. 
 
 98 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Were you ever in hell ? " she repeated insistently. 
 
 " No, no, my dear. You must not say such things." 
 
 " 1 have been in hell. My soul has been steeped in sin. 
 I have been in the burning pit, among wicked women." 
 
 " My poor girl, your mind is full of delusions ; you will 
 forget, and be better, by-and-by." 
 
 " No, I shall never be any better. I have been in hell. 
 That's what is the matter with me. The fires of hell have 
 burnt up my life. Mother mustn't spend any more money 
 on doctors. It's no use. I shall never change." 
 
 " She is not often as bad as this, ma'am," said tlie nurse. 
 " Come, come, Lisbeth, you haven't shown the lady the 
 lovely flowers i\Ir. Arden sent you yesterday — or your 
 pretty books." 
 
 " My books 1 Yes, I love my books," said Lisbeth, the 
 agonized expression of her countenance changing to a 
 childish smile, and her hand fluttering the pages of the 
 volume in front of her. " You love Byron, don't you ? " 
 she asked Lady Mary. 
 
 " Yes, with all my heart." 
 
 " And you know these lines ? " 
 
 And then she read a familiar passage, very slowly, and in 
 a tremulous voice, with her finger pointing out the words, 
 Uke a child who is learning to read — 
 
 " Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, 
 'Tis woman's whole existence " 
 
 " Isn't it sad ? Isn't it true ? " she asked eagerly. 
 
 " I'm afraid it is true," said Mary, very gently. " Good- 
 bye, my dear. But tell me, before I go, if there is anything 
 I can send you, anything you would like ? " 
 
 " Yes, there is something." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " A portrait of Byron. I have only his bust — so white — 
 like death. I should like a picture of him. It would seem 
 alive. I should look up from my book and see his face, and 
 think he was in the room with me. He was unhappy, wasn't 
 he — very unhappy ? " 
 
 " Yes, there was much sorrow in his life." 
 
 *' I am glad of that. I like to think he was unhappy. It 
 brings me nearer to him." 
 
 99 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " You shall have his picture, my dear." 
 
 Mary Selby bent down and kissed the pale forehead, and 
 pressed the wasted hand. 
 
 " Yes, she is an object-lesson," she said, as Arden took 
 her to her cab. " I am very sorry for her. Strange that she 
 never spoke of Manville." 
 
 " I believe she has forgotten him — that nothing is left of 
 that time in her consciousness except a shapeless horror, 
 which she expresses when she talks of having been in hell. 
 In her calmer moods she talks about Byron — the object of 
 her girlish adoration." 
 
 *' Will she never be any better ? " 
 
 " The doctors give little hope ; but the poor mother is 
 almost happy in having her to love and cherish. There 
 never was a more devoted mother, or a more indefatigable 
 worker." 
 
 " If I can do anything to help them, let me know." 
 
 " Happily, they need nothing. This house yields a good 
 income; and to work for her daughter is Mrs. Berry's 
 consolation." 
 
 Arden dined in Grosvenor Square at his sister's invitation 
 about a week after that agitating interview in Jermyn Street. 
 
 There was nothing in the manner of the handsome 
 matron, who gave him a smiling greeting in the midst of 
 her splendour, to recall the intense emotions of that hour. 
 She held herself with a royal dignity, magnificent in white 
 satin, with a diamond and ruby tiara glittering above her 
 dark-brown hair, her husband watching her with admiring 
 eyes. The ruby tiara was his latest gift, and it pleased him 
 to see how well it became her. The man was thorough, and 
 only worshipped two things — money and his wife. They 
 were going to a duchess's ball after their dinner-party, which 
 was small, and at short notice. 
 
 Monsieur Villeneuve, the French novelist, the author of 
 ** Femme Funeste," was there, having developed a passion 
 for London and London society; and Mr. Jordan, the 
 American novelist, who had long ago become entirely 
 English. The two men were talking literature, animated 
 and deeply absorbed, when Arden arrived, while Mrs. 
 Kelvin, a handsome widow, with her glances wandering 
 
 ICO 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 towards the Frenchman, tried to seem interested in Mr. 
 Selby's conversation. 
 
 " I have not read his last," she said, " but I am told it is 
 stronger than ' Femme Funeste,' and that was appalling." 
 
 '' Whose last ? Mr. Jordan's ? " 
 
 " His ? Oh no ! His are always perfect. He chooses 
 difficult problems; he sails very near the wind. But he 
 touches things so delicately. And then there is the charm, 
 don't you know ; the charm of style " 
 
 " I've never read any novelist since Dickens," said Selby. 
 " When I want to read a novel, I read him again. I have 
 all his books in my smoking-room. I just lift up my hand 
 and take a volume from the shelf without looking, and open 
 it anywhere, and read. I am always amused; though I 
 know ever}^ one of them, almost by heart." 
 
 " Ah, I suppose that is the way to taste an author. But 
 I never arrived at that point with any book except ' Madame 
 Bovary.' " 
 
 Mr. Selby blushed. He had heard strange things of 
 " Madame Bovary ; " but the widow sat smiling placidly at 
 him over her Louis-seize fan. In an age when style is the 
 sole measure of literary excellence, morality has become an 
 unconsidered detail. 
 
 The novelists were telling each other their manner of 
 working. 
 
 " For my own poor work," said Mr. Jordan, gravely 
 depreciative, as if he, the elect of the critics, were a worm 
 and no man, " I require absolute seclusion, long tranquil 
 hours, in which I do not hear a human voice or see a 
 human face. I have a cottage in our Lake country — un- 
 discovered by the tourist, remote even from the sound of a 
 cow-bell." 
 
 " Pour moi il me faiit la vie orageuse" said the French- 
 man. " The more of tempest at night — wine — cards — et k 
 reste — the more of calm in the morning. I rise at eight, 
 after four hours' profound slumber. I take my coffee and 
 roll, and I write with force, with fire, with my whole im- 
 passioned being, till seven in the evening — within closed 
 doors, eleven hours, sans boire on manga: Then I dress foi 
 dinner, and take up the thread of la vie b?-uyafite." 
 
 Lady Mary was talking confidentially to her brother, 
 
 JOI 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " There are only three more people coming," she said ; 
 *' but they are people I want you to know. I dare say you 
 have heard of Mr. Lorimer, the man who makes viaducts, 
 and waterworks, and things." 
 
 " It would be difficult to live in the world and not hear of 
 him. His work is everywhere — from London to Peru." 
 
 " Do you know him ? " 
 
 " By sight only. I have seen him dining at my club — but 
 he is not a member." 
 
 " He is coming with his wife and daughter — one of the 
 loveliest girls I know, and a great heiress." 
 
 " With such merits I wonder I have not heard of her till 
 to-night." 
 
 " If she were the average girl, her name and her frocks 
 would be in all the society papers j she would always be 
 shopping in Sloane Street." 
 
 "Why Sloane Street?" 
 
 " Don't you know ? That is how the society gossips write 
 of us. We are seen of a morning dashing about in hansoms, 
 or shopping in Sloane Street. Sloane Street is what the 
 Pantiles at Tunbridge Wells used to be in the eighteenth 
 century. But Rachel Lorimer is not that kind of girl. She 
 is the violet that hides among its leaves. And then, lovely 
 as she is, the fact is, she is pi." 
 
 " Pi ? What does that mean ? " 
 
 " Churchy — fasts in Lent, and visits the poor. It is the 
 only drawback, and, thank Heaven, she is not evangelical." 
 
 " What can bring you and Miss Lorimer together ? " 
 
 ♦' Oh, I cannot help admiring her, though I am not up to 
 her in spiritual things. She forgives my worldliness, and 
 hopes the best for me. Her father and my husband are old 
 friends ; and it seemed to me that, as a sister, I ought to 
 give you the opportunity " 
 
 " Of falling in love with an heiress, who would despise me 
 if I wanted to marry her." 
 
 " She sets no value upon money. She is all sweetness and 
 simplicity ; and if she cared for you, the difference of fortune 
 would weigh nothing with her." 
 
 " But it would have to weigh a great deal with me." ^ 
 
 " At any rate, it can do you no harm to take her in to 
 dinner." 
 
 102 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 The butler announced T\Ir. and Mrs. Lorimer, Miss 
 Lorimer. 
 
 Arden moved aside as his sister welcomed her friends. 
 He stood a little way off, watching the group ; Lorimer, tall 
 and broad shouldered, with iron-grey hair and beard, and 
 strong resolute face, large grey eyes, severe and keen, eyes 
 that had been looking intently at things, measuring distances, 
 calculating the cubical contents of valleys, testing the level 
 of viaducts, for half a century ; Mrs. Lorimer, fifteen years 
 younger, a large fair woman, in grey satin and old Venetian 
 lace, and wearing a diamond tiara that outshone Lady 
 Mary's rubies, an essentially comimonplace person, but not 
 vulgar ; Miss Lorimer, the loveliest girl he had ever seen in 
 his life, in his estimation undoubtedly the loveliest. She 
 was like one of Raffaelle's saints that had walked out of a 
 picture, and stood among them, radiant under her halo, 
 a creature of a different world and a different race, finding 
 herself by some strange accident in a Grosvenor Square 
 drawing-room. 
 
 Her deep blue eyes looked round her with a divine 
 simplicity that he had never seen except in the eyes of a 
 child ; but it was simplicity tempered by womanly thought. 
 There was a lovely earnestness, a clear light of faith, as of 
 one who had found all things good, and to whom sin and 
 the udiness of life were unknown. 
 
 o 
 
 Her hair was of the Raffaelle colour, a shadowy brown, 
 with faint golden lights touching it here and there. Her 
 features had Raffaelle's pure lines, correct without being 
 severe, and her colouring was so delicate as to seem almost 
 transparent, recalling to Arden's memory the fine warm 
 alabaster cf a bust in the Carthusian monastery near 
 Florence. 
 
 She was dressed in white, and her gown was something 
 gauzy and soft, vrith glimpses of satin here and there among 
 the cloudlike folds. Her only ornament was a single row 
 of pearls with a sapphire clasp, and Arden knew by instinct 
 that pearls and sapphire were of unique beauty. 
 
 Her manner was quiet, but he saw no indication of shy- 
 ness. The lovely eyes looked up at him thoughtfully as 
 she took his arm. She did not fuss and chatter, as shyness 
 jgenerally does. 
 
 10^ 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 When they were seated at the dinner-table, in an atmo- 
 sphere heavy with stephanotis and tuberose, he began with 
 the usual kind of conversational opening, but with some 
 apprehension, forewarned that she was pious, and not 
 knowing how far the piety might go as an opposing- force 
 in conversation. He talked about the opera — Wagner, 
 Mascagni. She worshipped AVagner. Her face grew vivid 
 with enthusiasm as she talked of him. So far, all was well. 
 So far, she was human. 
 
 He talked of the pictures of the year, and found that she 
 took an intelligent interest in art, and knew a good deal 
 about pictures, those of other years as well as the present 
 season. 
 
 " My father is devoted to modern art," she said. " I 
 believe he is a very good judge, and has rather a fine 
 collection." 
 
 She did not speak of her father scoffingly, or with a 
 patronizing indulgence, as a ridiculous person whom time 
 had left on the rubbish-heap of worn-out beliefs and pre- 
 judices, after the manner of most of the daughters he had 
 met. 
 
 He talked of the parties of the year — a wonderful ball at 
 which he had been the night before, and of the duchess's 
 ball to-night, to which he was bidden. 
 
 " No doubt you are to be there," he said. 
 
 " No ; I don't go to dances now," she answered 
 simply. 
 
 " Not now ! Since when have you abjured such follies ? " 
 
 " Since last year. It was my first season ; and I went 
 out a good deal just at the beginning. Mother liked to 
 take me about among her friends ; but I soon grew tired 
 of parties. They are all alike. It is the same thing over 
 and over again." 
 
 " But you must like dancing, I think." 
 
 "Must I? Well, to tell the truth, I do. I love an 
 impromptu dance in our gallery at home, where the floor 
 is perfection, with a few friends after dinner; but I hate 
 to be in a mob of strangers, and to waltz with a young 
 man who looks down at me with his eyes half shut, and 
 behaves as if he were doing me an immense favour. I 
 assure you it is not inspiring." 
 
 104 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " I am very much of your opinion ^Yhen my partner treats 
 me as if she were ^Yaltzing with a chair; yet I go to big 
 parties." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 "To distract myself; to forget my own existence; to 
 fuse my Ufe in the Ufe of the mob." 
 
 She looked at him wonderingly, then sadly, thinking 
 he must have had troubles. She had noticed the look 
 of trouble in his face when he was introduced to her; 
 but he was smiling now, and his eyes were no longer 
 shadowed. 
 
 " Do you never eat ? " he asked presently, seeing her 
 refuse entree after e7itree. "You took neither soup nor 
 fish. I shall see you picking up single grains of rice 
 presently, like the Oriental lady, who was so charming in 
 every particular except that she was a Ghoul." 
 
 " Indeed, you are more likely to see me devour a plateful 
 of rice-pudding. I am a vegetarian." 
 
 " My sister ought to have remembered the fact, and 
 ordered special dishes." 
 
 "Oh, there will be plenty for me to eat presently"-- 
 glancing at her menu — "asparagus. Gateau St. Honore', 
 Parmesan fondu — a magnificent dinner." 
 
 " What made you a vegetarian ? " 
 
 " I have never eaten meat since I was six years old, when 
 I saw a lamb dragged struggling into the slaughter-house, 
 and my nurse told me they were going to kill him, the poor, 
 pretty innocent creature. It was in the country, where I 
 used to watch the lambs in the meadows playing with their 
 mothers ; and it hurt me to think that they should be carried 
 away and killed. It seemed too cruel." 
 
 " You did not weigh the balance of good and evil— life 
 or no life. You did not consider that if everybody fed on 
 vegetables the lambs would never be born— or only enough 
 of them to provide fleeces and tallow for the world; and 
 heaven knows how the wool-growing sheep would be treated. 
 If there were no butchers, do you suppose there would be 
 half as many of those happy creatures gambolling in the 
 spring sunshine— a life that is all April and May, in deep 
 grass that is golden with buttercups — and then no wasting 
 malady, no slow dissolution, ' the bright death quivered at 
 
 105 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 the victim's throat, touched, and he knew no more ' ? I 
 think that animal-life, the consciousness of sunshine and 
 sweet air, without other consciousness, must be the most 
 blissful life ; and we see as much in the outward expression 
 of joy. Have you ever seen a man look as happy as a 
 terrier scampering about a common ? " 
 
 " Is not the hunting-man as happy, in what he calls a 
 good run ? " 
 
 " No ; there is always the drawback of thought. He 
 carries care at the back of his saddle. Will his horse go 
 lame? Will the fourteen-mile ride home be detestable? 
 Will that importunate creditor whose letter he received 
 that morning drive him into the bankruptcy court ? The 
 terrier lives in every limb, in every muscle ; life without 
 thought." 
 
 "And it does not pain you to think that harmless 
 creatures are killed in order that you may have mutton- 
 chops ? " 
 
 " Not at all, if their death is as painless as science can 
 make death, and if they are cared for at all stages of their 
 existence, and protected from the possibility of ill-usage. 
 I look to the legislature to protect all helpless creatures, 
 to put a stop to the transport of living animals under painful 
 conditions; but I believe with Lewes, and many other 
 physiologists, that man is a meat-eating animal, and that 
 he cannot thrive upon pulse and herbs. Here is the 
 asparagus ; and I shall no longer see you starving." 
 
 " You have eaten very little yourself." 
 
 " Have I not ? It has been so pleasant to talk. And 
 you foreswore mutton-chops at six years old? That was 
 wonderful. And it was more wonderful that in such an 
 infantine stage of your career you were allowed to do 
 so. 
 
 " I have always been allowed to do as I like." 
 
 " Always ! Did no troublesome doctors intervene and 
 order animal-food ? " 
 
 " I have not suffered from the burden of doctors. I have 
 hardly ever been ill." 
 
 He looked at her with admiring curiosity. Yes, though 
 so finely moulded, with such pure translucent colouring, 
 she had an air of perfect health. Her eyes had the exquisite 
 
 io6 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 clearness rarely seen after childhood, her lips the delicate 
 carmine in which there is no touch of fever, her cheeks the 
 soft bloom that betokens a nature where no element of 
 mind or body is at war with the rest; a nature divinely 
 calm, divinely pure, as poets have imagined the angelic 
 temperament. 
 
 *' A being far too bright and good 
 For human nature's daily food," 
 
 thought Arden, distorting his beloved Wordsworth. 
 
 " And you have actually been allowed to do as you like," 
 he said, in a playful tone. " Is that because you are one 
 of those young ladies with an appalling temper, whom 
 parents and guardians are afraid to tackle — the novelist's 
 termagant heroine, who always develops angelic qualities 
 before the end of the story ? " 
 
 " It is because my father and mother are the kindest 
 people in the world." 
 
 " They look kind," said Arden, glancing round the table, 
 from Mr. Lorimer's shrewd face, with the pleasant twinkle 
 in the grey eyes, to iSIrs. Lorimer's large and placid 
 countenance, smiling blandly on Mr. Selby as she listened 
 to him. 
 
 " I could never tell you how good they are to me," she 
 said. " From my babyhood they have given me my 
 own way." 
 
 " Then I have no doubt your own way is a good way. 
 Mr. Lorimer looks quite capable of dealing with a rebellious 
 daughter." 
 
 " How could I ever rebel when they are so indulgent ? " 
 
 " And you are daughter and son — all they have in the 
 world?" 
 
 " Yes, I am all. Isn't it sad for them ? My father would 
 have so loved a son. I have so longed for a brother. I 
 used to pray for one every day of my life." 
 
 " And you have left off praying now ? " 
 
 '' I have left off asking God for brothers and sisters. I 
 have learnt to submit." 
 
 " And you are very fond of your parents ? " 
 
 " Fond 1 Why, I adore them. How could I do other- 
 wise?" 
 
 107 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Arden smiled, recalling various Regans and Gonerils of 
 his acquaintance ; most of whom had talked of their mothers 
 as imbecile, and their fathers as impossible ; some of whom 
 indeed had depicted the author of their being as quite the 
 most odious character they had ever encountered; and 
 none of whom believed in any parental virtue except the 
 willingness to write a cheque. 
 
 " I wouldn't mind my father being horridly extravagant, 
 if he were not detestably mean," said one. 
 
 " I shouldn't complain of his eighteen-penny cigars, if he 
 didn't grumble at every hat I wear," said another. 
 
 " I should say nothing about his always being out, if he 
 didn't lead us such a life when he is at home," said a third, 
 who came from Dublin. 
 
 And, behold, here was a girl who owned to adoring her 
 parents, and had nothing but praise for them ! 
 
 Mr. Lorimer was the chief talker during the quarter of 
 an hour after the ladies had gone. He was relating some 
 of his experiences in South America ; the revolutions of a 
 week, not without bloodshed ; the labour difficulties, the 
 adventures and perils attending the carrying out of a great 
 engineering work in Peru. Arden contrived to move near 
 him, and listened with keen interest. The man was one of 
 nature's gentlemen, strong, straightforward, not the first 
 prosperous man of his race, and not having begun the world 
 with the proverbial half-crown. The primary half-crown 
 had been there two generations back. David Lorimer and 
 David I.orimer's father had been at Winchester and Oxford; 
 but David Lorimer's grandfather came of a race of peasants 
 and Bible Christians, whence the Scriptural name; had 
 trudged to the village day-school with his satchel on his 
 back, and his dinner of bread and bacon in his satchel, 
 and had ended all his schooling at thirteen years of 
 age. 
 
 Selby introduced Lorimer to his brother-in-law, as Arden 
 slipped into the empty chair near him. 
 
 " I saw you talking to my daughter," the contractor 
 said presently, when he had finished one of his South 
 American stories. " Was she tackling you on one of her 
 pet subjects?" 
 
 '' We were discussing vegetarianism." 
 
 jqS 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Oh, that is a trifle. She let you off lightly. It might 
 have been working-girls' clubs, day-nurseries, children's 
 hospitals, old-age pensions. She is as full of philanthropic 
 fads as a provincial newspaper of quack medicines." 
 
 " I can imagine that she would care for other people 
 more than for herself." 
 
 " Too much, too much. Altruism with her is a passion. 
 But we let her have her own way. It has been a rule with 
 her mother and me to let her do as she likes, ever since 
 she was a baby. But I have watched her like a lynx most 
 of the time ; and I have never discovered one unworthy 
 impulse, or one foolish thought; unless it is foolish to 
 worship God and to care for all His creatures. But I am 
 boring you with this talk about my daughter. You see, she 
 is an only child ; and her mother and I are a little weak 
 about her." 
 
 " You have reason to be proud of her. She is the 
 loveliest girl I have seen for a long time — in all my life, I 
 think." 
 
 "Oh, that is only the husk. It is the immortal spark 
 inside that I am proud of. But that's not the way to 
 talk at a dinner-table. Do you see the two novelists over 
 there, nose to nose, talking shop? I'd bet a thousand 
 pounds they are telUng each other that, except their own 
 stories, there hasn't been a good novel written since 
 ' Tom Jones.' " 
 
 " Shop is the most delightful talk." 
 
 "So it is. I have been telling them my engineering 
 adventures — boring them to death, I dare say ; but if there 
 were another civil engineer here, we should want to talk till 
 midnight. Are you going to the duchess's ball ? " 
 
 " I shall look in for an hour. I'm sorry Miss Lorimer 
 is not to be there." 
 
 " Her mother is sorrier. We are going to put in an 
 appearance, just to show that we are grateful for the card. 
 The duke is one of my best friends, and looks after my 
 interests in the Upper House. But Rachel has set her face 
 against all evening parties this year. She would not have 
 dined here to-night if she were not very much attached to 
 your sister. Lady Mary has gone heart and soul into some 
 of my girl's schemes. You might think she was too fine a 
 
 109 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 lady to interest herself in an East End creche; but she is 
 such a many-sided woman." 
 
 Arden and his new acquaintance went upstairs together, 
 and strolled through the dazzling suite to the roonv where 
 Mrs. Lorimer and Mary Selby were sitting. 
 
 Lorimer introduced Arden to his wife, with a certain 
 empressement^ and presently the conversation turned upon 
 pictures, and upon the great man's gallery in Carlton House 
 Terrace. 
 
 " I have heard great praise of your pictures," said 
 Arden. 
 
 " You must come and look at them," answered Lorimer. 
 " Very likely you'll be disappointed, and write me down a 
 Philistine. They are all modern. No early Italian masters. 
 Not even a Veronese, or a Titian, or a Rubens. There are 
 four fine Whistlers, six Millais, a Holman Hunt, three of 
 Clara Montalba's Venetian pictures, and some of her London 
 sketches, which I hold no less precious ; a lion picture and 
 a dog picture by Briton Riviere, a bit of modern life by 
 Frith, and a ' Return from Egypt ' by Frederick Goodall." 
 
 " My dear David," remonstrated his wife, " Mr. Arden 
 will find the catalogue in the gallery. You may spare him 
 to-night." 
 
 " Come and see my pictures. I should like your opinion 
 of them." 
 
 " Indeed, I am no connoisseur." 
 
 " Then you are not like most of Lady Mary's friends, who 
 pretend to know more about pictures than the men who 
 paint them." 
 
 " Oh, the only infallible judges are the men who don't 
 paint," said Arden. 
 
 " I am always at home on Saturday afternoons," said 
 Mrs. Lorimer. 
 
 " You are very kind. I shall take an early oppor- 
 tunity." 
 
 " Do. Saturday is my half-hohday," said Lorimer. " I'll 
 show you Rachel's den, if she's out of the way, and you'll 
 see what a woman of business she is — only nineteen on 
 her last birthday." 
 
 *' Only nineteen." 
 
 Arden thought of the girl in the little back parlour, the 
 
 no 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 girl of nineteen, -whose life was broken off short like the 
 snapped stem of a flower. The flower remained above 
 ground, but withered and faded, colour and perfume gone 
 for ever. 
 
 While they were talking, Arden's eyes had wandered to 
 the octagon room, where the two novelists, jNIrs. Kelvin 
 and Rachel Lcrimer, were carrying on an animated con- 
 versation. 
 
 ' The talk was of books, and the widow had in a manner 
 gone to the top of the class, on its being discovered that 
 she had read all the notorious French novels of the last 
 few years, without any prudish restrictions. Mr. Jordan's 
 delicate stories she declared she knew by heart, and 
 owned without a blush to having " devoured " " Femme 
 Funeste." 
 
 " When are you going to horrify us again ? " she asked, 
 and, without waiting for the Frenchman's answer, turned 
 to the American. " And you, Mr. Jordan ? I hope your 
 next is ready for Mudie ? " 
 
 " It seems ungrateful to complain," murmured ]Mr. Jordan, 
 smilingly, " but one's readers have an idea that a noveUst 
 never has occasion to rest upon his oars and look about 
 him for a subject" 
 
 " He has no occasion," retorted the widow. " There are 
 no subjects in our modern novels; only beautiful words, 
 exquisite phrases, 'jewels five words long,' as Browning 
 says." 
 
 " Tennyson," murmured Rachel, involuntarily. 
 " Ah, then you do read something. Miss Lorimer," said 
 Jordan, who had been gazing at her in quiet ecstasy. 
 
 She had confessed to not knowing his novels, or anybody's 
 novels, except Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray ; and he had 
 not been offended How could any man be offended with 
 such divine beauty ? She was a type he had dreamt of, 
 pen in hand, in the stillness of a summer morning, far away 
 among his lakes and mountains. " You do read some- 
 times ? " he repeated. 
 
 " I read Tennyson and Browning, my twin stars." 
 " And Shakespeare ? " 
 " Yes, and Wordsworth, and Coleridge." 
 "And Shelley?" 
 
 Ill 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " I used to worship Shelley; but his dreams are too vague. 
 I cannot grasp them." 
 
 The Frenchman had been careful not to inquire if she 
 had read his books. 
 
 " In my country young ladies do not read novels," he 
 said deprecatingly. " That deprives us of an exquisite 
 reward, but affords us a wider liberty. There are, indeed, 
 a few who write for ia jeunesse ; but, alas, when we are 
 chaste we are intolerably dull. I would recommend 
 mademoiselle to stick to Racine, and Lafontaine's Fables, 
 rather than to bore herself with our virtuous romances." 
 
 Mrs. Lorimer summoned her daughter, and the little 
 group scattered itself. Rachel shook hands with the widow, 
 and bowed her good night to the three men ; but Arden 
 attended her and her mother to their carriage, which was 
 to convey Rachel to Carlton House Terrace before taking 
 Mr. and Mrs. Lorimer to the ball. 
 
 *' Don't you repent, even at this last moment, of having 
 refused the best party of the season ? " he asked Rachel. 
 
 " Not in the least I have ever so many letters to write 
 before midnight." 
 
 " Busy person ! You fill me with awe. Good night." 
 
 " Good night." 
 
 His hand sought hers across the carriage door, after 
 shaking hands with her mother, and the slender little 
 gloved hand fluttered into his own for a moment, light as 
 a falling leaf. 
 
 He walked to Jermyn Street. His step was buoyant. 
 The June air smelt of Paradise. 
 
 " Oh, I have been happy ! I have been happy ! " he 
 said to himself. " My burden has been lifted off. There 
 was no unseen wickedness hovering near me while I was 
 with her." 
 
 Life seemed new ; his very being had changed. Hope 
 had come back to him, the divine forward-looking spirit 
 which lightens the life that is with the vague sweetness of 
 joys that are to come. Hope had been dead in him since 
 those days in Paris. But now his heart beat high, and he 
 began again to look forward. 
 
 He forgot all about the duchess's ball, and spent an hour 
 in the stillness of the Mall, looking up now and then at the 
 
 112 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 lighted windows of the terrace above him, and wondering 
 in which house and in which room Rachel Lorimer was 
 writing her letters. There were three lighted windows on 
 the third floor, French windows opening on a balcony, and 
 he thought that must be the " den " Lorimer had talked 
 about, the business-like room in w^hich the young philan- 
 thropist toiled in the cause of humanity. 
 
 113 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Lady Mary's little dinner had taken place on Thursday, 
 and Arden called in Carlton House Terrace on the following 
 Saturday. It seemed rather like seizing upon an opportunity 
 offered perhaps in casual politeness. The most hardened 
 heiress-hunter could not have shown himself more eager ; 
 but Arden had forgotten that Rachel was an heiress. He 
 only remembered that she had given him his first hour of 
 happiness since the beginning of his trouble. That myste- 
 rious trouble was not utterly gone from him. Only in her 
 presence had he been unconscious of the haunted feeling, 
 the impalpable something that suggested the existence of 
 an unknown world where all was evil. But that nameless 
 horror had been lessened even when he thought of her in 
 absence ; as if her image in his mind had power to exorcise 
 the demon. 
 
 Mr. Lorimer's house was the largest in the terrace. To 
 make room for his pictures he had joined two houses, and 
 had thus obtained a spacious gallery running all the length 
 of the southern fagade, with six long windows, but no top 
 light, a want he was always lamenting. The gallery, how- 
 ever, was charming for a summer drawing-room, and the 
 floor had been made perfect for dancing ; but in the spacious- 
 ness of the engineer's surroundings there was nothing that 
 suggested the nouveau riche^ no lavish display of brand-new 
 splendours, le dernier cri in modern upholstery. Mr. Lorimer 
 had bought the two houses with their contents, from their 
 two noble owners, had retained all that was good in the 
 furniture and had arranged all his decorations in the same 
 minor key. There was, therefore, a sober old-established 
 air in all the rooms, where there were cabinets and book- 
 cases that had been standing in the same place since the 
 
 114 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 terrace was built while William the Fourth was king, and 
 where old-fashioned sofas and original grandfather chairs 
 were relieved by Persian carpets of subdued richness. 
 
 The sober furniture, the plain dark Hveries, impressed 
 Arden as he looked about him after a few words w-ith Mrs. 
 Lonnier. who received him in the picture-gallery, where there 
 were a good many people, chiefly women, and where the 
 master of the house was making the round of his pictures 
 with a girl of sixteen, who said, " Oh, how too lovely I " 
 before every picture, and held her breath in an agony of 
 shyness, which her cicerone took for ecstasy. 
 
 " It is so good of Mr. Lorimer to take such trouble for 
 my poor Backfisch," said the girl's mother. 
 
 Lorimer would have taken a cabman or a coal-heaver 
 round his gallery with equal satisfaction. To look at his 
 pictures or to talk about them was his delight, and he could 
 put up with a good deal of ineptitude in his audience. He 
 didn't even object to the people who exclaimed " Land- 
 seer ! ■' when they came to the Briton Rivieres, or who 
 obviously could m^ake nothing of a nocturne by "VMiistler, 
 staring in blank wonder at the blue night-sky, and the 
 ghostly figures and glimmering lamps in a dim garden; 
 Mabille, Vauxhall — what you will. He dropped the school- 
 room miss, and possessed him.self of Arden, as soon as he 
 was aware of his presence. 
 
 " I don't think there's anything else you'll care for," he 
 told her, in his kind, cheerful voice. " Go and make them 
 give you plenty of chocolate cakes with your tea."' 
 
 And then he escorted Arden solemnly from picture to 
 picture ; Arden, who had learnt most of them by heart on 
 the Academy walls, and who was looking with perturbed 
 glances towards the door through which he hoped to see 
 Rachel enter. One comprehensive look on arri\-ing had 
 assured him that she was not in the room. 
 
 " Is Miss Lorimier too busy to appear among your 
 friends ? '' he asked at last, standing with absent gaze 
 before the finest of the Millais. 
 
 " She is always busy," answered Lorimer. '•' But she 
 will be here presently, I dare say, for Mrs. BelUnghara 
 is here, and Mrs. Beliingham is Rachel's mother abbess in 
 philanthropy." 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 ** Mrs. Bellingham is an admirable woman. She is a 
 connection of our family by marriage ; but we are very 
 slight acquaintances, much as I admire her for her chari- 
 table work. She is the least ostentatious of women; but 
 these things make themselves known. Father Romney, the 
 East End parson, was telling me about her." 
 
 " ' Father,' " exclaimed Lorimer, laughing. " Yes, that is 
 Rachel's particular parson. Father Romney ! There were 
 no fathers in the Protestant Church when I was a young man." 
 
 " And there is no Protestant Church now. That is all 
 the difference," said Arden. 
 
 A fine lady came sailing towards them, wanting to see 
 the Millais, and Arden moved away, and dropped into a 
 chair just vacated next Mrs. Bellingham. He had been 
 watching for his opportunity to cultivate Rachel's mother 
 abbess. She was a tall, stout woman on the wrong side of 
 sixty, with silvery hair and a beautiful countenance ; not 
 the beauty of outline or colouring, but the light of the 
 lamp inside which Lorimer had talked about. 
 
 " I hope you haven't forgotten me," he said, as they shook 
 hands ; " you know we are a kind of relations." 
 
 " I have not forgotten either you or the family link ; but 
 we meet very seldom." 
 
 "Will you allow the seldom to become often in the 
 future? I hope you don't think I am incapable of being 
 interested in your good work." 
 
 " One hardly expects a young man in society to be keenly 
 interested in day-nurseries and children's hospitals." 
 
 " That is because you have made up your mind to think 
 poorly of young men, unless they renounce all the pomps and 
 vanities. Cannot one keep some of the vanities, and yet be 
 useful in one's generation ? " 
 
 " Cannot one serve two masters, you mean ? " said Mrs. 
 Bellingham. " That is what we are all trying to do." 
 
 " Even you, when you come to tea in Carlton House 
 Terrace ? " 
 
 " Alas ! yes. I ought to be in Ratcliffe Highway at this 
 very moment, sorting clothes for a jumble sale." And then, 
 with a serio-comic look, measuring him as it were from head 
 to foot, *' Any clothes you don't want would be of the greatest 
 use to us in the East End." 
 
 ii6 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " For dock-labourers ? " 
 
 " No ; for poor clerks, reduced gentlemen, who are fight- 
 ing against Fate." 
 
 " I must send you a cheque instead. My servant has a 
 lien on my clothes. They silently vanish away when they 
 begin to show wear. But I might offer to buy them from 
 him on an old clothesman's valuation." 
 
 " I'm afraid you'll think I am a terrible woman to begin 
 pestering you so soon," said Mrs. Bellingham, laughing. 
 " But we are all like that ; we beg almost automatically, 
 like Mrs. Lorimer's poodle" — glancing at a beribboned, 
 silver-braceletted creature, with a large ' L ' standing fluffily 
 up on a back clipped to the smoothness of black satin, who 
 was squatting on his haunches beside the tea-table. 
 
 " You have a supreme right to call upon me," said Arden. 
 "Are we not relations? Oh, here is Miss Lorimer. Does 
 she also attack her friends' pockets ? " 
 
 " No ; she never begs. She only gives." 
 
 Rachel came straight to them, greeted her dearest Mrs. 
 Bellingham with delight, and shook hands smilingly with 
 Arden. 
 
 " Has Auntie Belle got hold of you ? " she asked, " How 
 have you come into her clutches ? " 
 
 " We are old friends — indeed a kind of relations." 
 
 " How expensive that must be for you ! " 
 
 " It has cost me nothing yet. Aunt Belle has neglected 
 me shamefully." 
 
 " Aunt Belle ! How dare vou call her bv the name that 
 I invented for her ? " 
 
 " But if I am her nephew ? " 
 
 "What, is she really your aunt — my own Mrs. Bellingham, 
 actually your aunt ? " 
 
 " I don't like to be too positive. !My father's sister 
 married Mrs. Bellingham's cousin. Jack Bellingham, of the 
 Scots Greys. He was handsome, and she was jealous, poor 
 woman. In his regiment I believe they called them Btl 
 and the Dragon." 
 
 " But that would not make you her nephew." 
 
 " Wouldn't it ? Anyhow, I know we are near relations." 
 
 " If you don't mind, I am sure she won't ; as long as she 
 can screw cheques out of you." 
 
 117 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 *' Is she such an unconscionable harpy ? " 
 
 " Utterly unconscionable, when there is good to be done." 
 
 Mrs. Bellingham watched the two animated faces with 
 admiring interest. Good looks were hereditary in the Wil- 
 dernsea family ; and Arden had the farther advantage of a 
 beautiful mother. He did not belie either race, the patrician 
 or the plebeian. He had the Arden strength and regularity 
 of outline, and the sensitive mother's variety of expression ; 
 and in Rachel's company he looked his best, animated and 
 happy. 
 
 The three were grouped near an open window, a little 
 aloof from the herd, Rachel sharing an S-shaped sofa with 
 her friend, Arden standing in front of them. He had 
 brought them tea, and had found a little table for their 
 cups and saucers, and was ineffably content to wait upon 
 them. 
 
 "What a pretty Httle frock," said Mrs. Bellingham, looking 
 at Rachel's simple muslin, with its froth of creamy lace. " I 
 hope it is from your slum dressmaker." 
 
 *' It is from my slum dressmaker. I'm glad you like it." 
 
 " Is that a new idea ? " asked Arden. " Are the slums 
 superseding Bond Street ? " 
 
 '' Not with girls who respect themselves," answered Mrs. 
 Bellingham. " They can't wear a gown without a name, 
 or love a dog that is not a prize-winner. Rachel has no 
 self-respect, and her frocks are made by a young widow, 
 who was working for a fashionable dressmaker, and starving 
 herself in order to feed her children. We have set her up 
 in business, Rachel and I ; and we bid defiance to our 
 friends, in clothes that cost a tithe of what they pay, and 
 yet leave a handsome profit for our poor widow." 
 
 " She lives in a little back street," said Rachel. " Half 
 the cost of smart people's clothes is for the Mayfair rooms, 
 and the show-women's silk gowns." 
 
 " Your white frock is lovely," said Arden ; " but I suppose 
 there is a mysterious something wanting — ' the cut, ' I think 
 my sister calls it, when she explains why her tweed skirt and 
 coat cost thirty pounds." 
 
 " Rachel and I do without the cut," said Mrs. Bellingham. 
 *'She is young enough, and I am old enough, to dispense 
 with ideal excellence." 
 
 ii8 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 *' My tailor lives on the wrong side of Oxford Street, and 
 my dressmaker in a tiny street at the back of a mews," said 
 Rachel, " and yet I am not unhappy." 
 
 Even while they were talking a languid voice was drawling 
 near them. 
 
 "She had the gown back five times, and it doesn't fit 
 any better than at the beginning," said the voice ; " but 
 she declares it does, and I daren't offend her." And 
 then there was a confidential murmur in the ear of the 
 listener. 
 
 " Oh, but your gown was lovely. I thought it was the 
 prettiest in the room last night. You had told me about 
 it, you know, so I took particular notice." 
 
 " I'm glad it looked decent." 
 
 " I said it was the prettiest, dear." 
 
 " I was in agonies half the evening. I could scarcely 
 breathe." 
 
 " Oh, but she has such good style, don't you know ; how- 
 ever dkolktes her frocks are, they are never vulgar." 
 
 " I hope you didn't think mine too deccIUter 
 
 " Oh no, not quite, quite too ! " 
 
 Arden sent IMrs. BeUingham a cheque for five and twenty 
 pounds that night, with " Old clo' " written on the sheet of 
 notepaper that covered it. And on jMonday he received an 
 invitation from the Lorimers at less than a week's notice, 
 !Mr. Lorimer delighting in small, friendly dinners of an old- 
 fashioned pattern, and rarely giving formal banquets. He 
 had quite enough of big dinners in the various public feasts 
 to which he was bidden, being eminently popular among 
 the working men of the world — Academy dinners, political 
 dinners, mess dinners, farewell dinners, Mansion House 
 dinners. Fishmongers, Goldsmiths, Ironmongers, Tallow- 
 chandlers. So in his own house he liked to entertain 
 frequently, and to obey the impulse of the moment as to 
 the choice of company. It was one of the pleasantest 
 houses in London, cosmopolitan, universal, as to the guests, 
 who included all sorts and conditions of men, from the 
 East End parson admired by Rachel, to American actors, 
 Japanese law-students, and coloured statesmen from the 
 Central American Republics. A man who is knov.n and 
 
 119 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 popular over half the inhabited earth has a wide range of 
 acquaintance. 
 
 " Our London house is like a caravanserai," Rachel told 
 Arden, who was the only young man at this particular dinner, 
 " My father receives three or four letters of introduction 
 every day, and you must never be surprised at meeting any 
 one here." 
 
 " Not even the Cham of Tartary ? " 
 
 " If there is such a person, and he should come to 
 London, he would inevitably bring a letter for my father." 
 
 " And I suppose African missionaries and South Sea 
 bishops are the only people in the motley crowd whom you 
 care about ? " 
 
 '' Why do you think me so narrow ? I am interested in 
 all interesting people." 
 
 " And you don't consider it wicked to act, or to write 
 novels ? " 
 
 " No, no, indeed. Life ought to be made pleasant for 
 everybody." 
 
 " Pleasant with innocent pleasures ? " 
 
 " Of course. You should see a dance at the East End ! " 
 
 " Are there such things ? I thought the only dancing for 
 those poor people was of the kind that French workmen 
 call dansant dez'ant le buffet.^* 
 
 " What does that mean ? " 
 
 " To go without one's dinner." 
 
 " A good many of them have to do that very often ; but 
 it does not prevent them being happy when the chance 
 comes. They are so patient, so ready to be pleased." 
 
 "They do not look before and after. They are un- 
 conscious philosophers, and make the best of life." 
 
 " Patience is their philosophy. Father Romney has a 
 club for the young people, where they dance twice a week. 
 He has had them taught simple easy dances." 
 
 •* Kitchen lancers, for instance ? " 
 
 " All sorts of square dances, and old, old country dances. 
 They are not a scrap rough, after a little practice." 
 
 •* Have you ever ventured to take the floor with one of 
 them?" 
 
 " I always dance at least once when I am there.". 
 
 *' And you attend these festivities often ? " 
 
 120 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 "As often as lean. Mrs. Bellingham takes me. We 
 wear our finest gowns, because they love to see pretty 
 clothes. Would you like to go ^vith us some evening? 
 Father Romney would be charmed to see you." 
 
 " ' Die Kirclie hat einen giiien Ma^cn^ " quoted Arden. 
 *' Will he want me to sell all that I have and give it to 
 Ratcliffe Highway ? " 
 
 " That is very unkind of you." 
 
 " I didn't really mean it. I shall be glad to help him. 
 I am sure this East End parson of yours must be a very 
 fine creature. He puts my purposeless sauntering life to 
 shame." 
 
 " Why should your life be purposeless ? " 
 
 " Why, ah, why ? Because I was born so, I suppose. 
 Created to believe nothing, and to do nothing ; to go down 
 under the River of Death without leaving a ripple on the 
 surface." 
 
 She looked at him with an inquiring expression, anxious 
 even ; and a shadow came over her face which had before 
 been radiant with the light of a happy nature. Half the 
 charm of her character was that gaiety of heart, the joyous- 
 ness of a being who has never doubted or feared, to 
 whom life has seemed always good and the world always 
 beautiful. 
 
 " To believe nothing," she repeated, in a subdued voice. 
 " That would be dreadful. But I know you do not mean 
 that." 
 
 They were sitting in the spacious stone balcony, where 
 other guests had come to take their coffee in the cool night 
 air, with the lam.p-dotted quiet of the Park below them, and 
 in front of them the gloom of the Abbey towers, and the 
 electric light above the Parliament house shining like a star, 
 to tell them that Party Government was doing the best it 
 could for them in a tortuous but well-meaning way. 
 
 They had sat side by side at dinner, and they had been 
 talking for some time, since Arden's escape from the dining- 
 room. 
 
 " I must go and talk to Aunt Belle," said Rachel, rising 
 and moving towards the drawing-room window. 
 
 " And will you ask Mrs. Bellingham to send me a card 
 for one of your East End drums ? " he said, following her. 
 
 121 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " It had better be for one of our Happy Evenings, and 
 then you could recite something." 
 
 " Recite ! Prodigious ! I am no more capable of such 
 a thing than Dominie Sampson." 
 
 " Or you could tell us something about your travels in 
 Italy — about Rome, for instance." 
 
 " In a familiar easy-going way, with plenty of comic relief, 
 a cross between Lord Rosebery and a Patagonian bishop. 
 Alas ! I am incapable of so much as that. You must let 
 me sit among the audience and applaud." 
 
 " Even that is useful, isn't it, Aunt Belle ? But will you 
 mind whom you sit next ? That is the test — the standard — 
 by which we judge our recruits." 
 
 " I will not mind, even if my neighbour should be a 
 chimney-sweep." 
 
 " He might be worse than a sweep. Chimney-sweeps are 
 among our upper ten." 
 
 " Whatever he is, I will put up with him." 
 
 Mrs. Bellingham smiled her sweet, serious smile. She 
 had seen so many young men interested in Rachel Lorimer's 
 work for Rachel Lorimer's sake, and eager to join the 
 philanthropic crusade under her leadership. But most of 
 them had fallen away when they found themselves no nearer 
 the beauty and heiress in Whitechapel or Poplar than in 
 Mayfair. To interest themselves in the working man and 
 the working woman had seemed a short cut to Rachel's 
 favour ; and it was a disappointment to discover that Rachel 
 was much more interested in the children of toil in the East 
 than in these well-groomed crusaders from the West'; and 
 that the reward for the long martyrdom of Happy Evenings, 
 with fourth-rate conjurers or sixth-rate musicians, or un- 
 speakably boring reciters, was no more than a smile that 
 shone alike upon the washed and the unwashed. 
 
 " Will this one fall away like the rest ? " Mrs. Bellingham 
 wondered. 
 
 W^as it the beauty or the heiress that allured him ? There 
 was a light on his face, a tone in his voice that seemed to 
 mean more than the cheap enthusiasm of previous adorers. 
 AVas he in earnest? His countenance had the stamp of 
 thought, and was more worn and haggard than it ought to 
 have been on the sunvrard side of thirty. There were traces 
 
 122 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 of suffering also, which set Mrs. BeUingham wondering what 
 kind of trouble had overshadowed his youth. She was 
 interested in him already, and her life among all sorts and 
 conditions of men having made her a keen observer of 
 character and temperament, it was natural to her to theorise 
 about any one who attracted her. She would not class him 
 among the heiress hunters. She thought he was honestly 
 in love with Rachel, who, to her mind, was the most lovable 
 girl in creation. 
 
 I\Irs. BeUingham was hardly surprised at receiving a visit 
 from the man she had been thinking about on the following 
 afternoon. 
 
 " You did not ask me to call upon you," Arden said, when 
 they had shaken hands. " But I thought as we are a kind 
 of relations, I might venture " 
 
 " I am very glad to see you. I don't ask young men to 
 call in Bedford Square, unless it is some one particularly 
 interested in my work, as I think perhaps you are." 
 
 The room in which she received him was her library, 
 spacious and lofty, lined with books from floor to ceiling, 
 and provided with two large business-like writing-tables with 
 drawers and pigeon-holes, one in front of a side window, the 
 other near the fireplace. A large bay with three long windows 
 looked over a garden — positively a garden — with a little 
 avenue of stunted limes, and low walls covered with passion- 
 flowers and ivy. There were pyramids of flower-pots on 
 stands on each side of the stone steps, and a small grass- 
 plot on a lower level, with a background of hardy shrubs ; 
 and the prospect made an oasis of verdure and bright colour 
 in the midst of central London. 
 
 " I love this old house," she told Arden, when he praised 
 her surroundings; "and I tremble for the day when leases 
 will expire and changes may come." 
 
 " You have such a dignified neighbour in the IMuseum." 
 
 " And think how delightful it is to be able to run round to 
 the reading-room whenever I have a morning hour to spare." 
 
 " It surprises me that you should ever have a spare hour, 
 knowing the multiplicity of your engagements." 
 
 " I work late at night. At my age one does not want 
 long hours for sleep." 
 
 123 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 She knew that he came to her because she was Rachel's 
 friend, and that he wanted her to talk about Rachel. She 
 was kind and encouraging, believing in his absolute sincerity. 
 
 " Have you met with many other girls as enthusiastic in 
 the service of humanity ? " he asked presently. 
 
 " With many as enthusiastic, but with none as steadfast. 
 Rachel is altogether exceptional. From her childhood she 
 has cared for all things that suffer — first for animals, and 
 then for children, and now for men and women. Pity is 
 the first instinct of her mind. She goes among creatures 
 whom you would shrink from with disgust and horror, if not 
 with detestation ; and she has but one thought about them, 
 their suffering, their cruel fate." 
 
 " And her people have given her a free hand ? " 
 
 '* Mrs. Lorimer would take off her shoes to give to a 
 barefooted beggar, if the beggar came her way ; but hers is 
 only a passive benevolence. She does not leave her easy- 
 chair to look for hard cases. Mr. Lorimer is a wonder of 
 broad-minded charity. Perhaps no other father in London, 
 placed as he is, would allow an only daughter like Rachel 
 to devote the greater part of her life to working among the 
 poorest of the poor." 
 
 " He admires her too much to thwart her, I think." 
 
 " Yes, but how many men in his position would admire 
 virtues of that kind ? They would treat her charitable 
 instincts as foul weeds, to be eradicated at any cost. She 
 is fortunate in her parents. They know that she is safe 
 with me, and with Father Romney, and they let her take 
 her own way." 
 
 " In return for which indulgence she adores them," said 
 Arden. 
 
 *' Yes, they have their reward." 
 
 " Have you known her long ? " 
 
 " We have been friends and allies for the last four years. 
 She read a letter of mine in the Times, a letter pleading for 
 a creche in a terrible part of East London, and she sent me 
 a quarter's pocket-money, with a delicious letter. She was 
 not fifteen, and she wrote like Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, 
 with divine pity and love in every line. We were friends 
 from that hour. We started our day-nursery together ; and 
 it was delightful to see her interest in every detail, her quick 
 
 124 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 understanding of the circumstances and trials of the mothers, 
 of the needs of the children. She worked her fingers to the 
 bone in making clothes for the poorest of them, and toiled 
 like a charwoman, scrubbing, and dusting, and cleaning 
 windows, when she was among them." 
 
 "And the Lorimers don't object to her doing such things ? " 
 
 " Object ! David Lorimer comes of a family who have 
 worshipped God in their own simple evangelical way from 
 generation to generation." 
 
 " But ]Miss Lorimer is of the Ritualistic school. Has not 
 that been a trial for the father ? " 
 
 "There are no real differences among Christians. Mr. 
 Lorimer is liberal in all things, and allows his daughter to 
 think for herself." 
 
 " And Mrs. Lorimer ? " 
 
 " Allows her daughter to think for her. They go to the 
 same churches, and admire the same preachers." 
 
 Arden would have stayed with Mrs. Bellingham for hours, 
 if she would have discoursed on the same theme ; but two 
 neat parlourmaids entered presently, bringing a long deal 
 board, which they placed upon trestles in the centre of the 
 room, and then proceeded to cover it with a snow-white 
 tablecloth and a double row of cups and saucers, glass bowls 
 of jam, piles of bread and butter, mountains of plum cake, 
 and stacks of sandwiches. 
 
 " You have a tea-party this afternoon, I see," he said, 
 taking up his liat. 
 
 " I have the same kind of party every week ; thirty young 
 women from one of the numerous clubs in different parts 
 of London. 'My visitors this afternoon are coming from 
 Islington. Would you like to stop and hand bread and 
 butter ? " 
 
 " If I could be really useful," he said, hesitating. 
 
 " No, Rachel is not coming to my party," she said, 
 answering his unspoken question. " She has gone to spend 
 an hour with a sick woman in Poplar." 
 
 Arden put down his hat. 
 
 " Let me stay and help you. Let me feel that I am 
 doing something for the sake of the work, and not because 
 I admire Miss Lorimer." 
 
 " I should like you to stay. You own to admiring her?" 
 
 125 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Who can do otherwise ? And for the rest — ' it were all 
 one that I should love a bright particular star and think to 
 wed it.'" 
 
 " * Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,' " said Mrs. 
 Bellingham, smiling. "You may be sure of one thing, 
 Rachel will not marry for position, or to add wealth to 
 wealth. She will love no man whom she cannot honour 
 and esteem. You best know if you are worthy to hope." 
 
 126 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 X. 
 
 Arden cast in his lot ^Yith the people who spend some part 
 of their lives in trying to brighten the lives of others, of that 
 vast multitude, the toilers and the castaways, the honest and 
 the dishonest, who exist and are even contented under con- 
 ditions that must needs seem intolerable to those who come 
 to them from that brighter world where there are food and 
 raiment and space and comfort for everybody ; where it is 
 easy to imitate the lilies of the field, and not to take trouble 
 for a to-morrow that is amply provided for with gilt-edged 
 securities. 
 
 He was only the humblest of subalterns in the army of 
 workers. He went where Mrs. Bellingham and Rachel 
 bade him go, and did what they told him to do. He 
 attached himself to Father Romney, and learnt much from 
 that indomitable cleric. He saw the rough and the smooth 
 among the submerged masses ; and while he v/ondered at the 
 brutality of some, he wondered still more at the patience of 
 others. 
 
 Rachel's favourite old women were a revelation. Their 
 long record of incessant toil, their meek acceptance of the 
 lowest place at the table of life, their capacity to exist upon 
 a pittance that would seem to him scarcely a maintenance 
 for a mongrel dog, their heroic straggle for cleanliness and 
 fresh air in a loathsome environment, impressed him strongly. 
 He admired the cheerful smile with which a widow of 
 seventy-five winters glanced round her "bit of a place;" 
 proud of the curly Stafifordshire dogs with baskets in their 
 mouths that adorned her mantelpiece, and her Windsor 
 chairs, beeswaxed and poUshed to the mellow darkness of 
 old Spanish mahogany ; while apologizing for the broken 
 ceiling through which the rain had come last winter, and 
 which the landlord had neglected to repair. 
 
 J27 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " I ask about it when I pay my rent every week," she said, 
 " but I sometimes think the collector won't take the trouble 
 to speak for me. He writes something on his wristband, 
 but nothing comes of it; and I suppose some day the 
 ceiling will tumble down and bury me alive in my bed." 
 
 She said this jocosely, and with a complacent glance at 
 the poor truckle bed, neatly covered with a patchwork quilt. 
 Arden admired the quilt, and elicited the fact that it Avas 
 the work of the dame's grandchildren, boys and girls, and 
 was an altogether superior article, as it was made of trouser 
 patterns, the boys being journeymen tailors. 
 
 All things were alike to Arden in Rachel's service. He 
 endured even the Happy Evenings, which were perhaps the 
 greatest trial ; for the Happy Evenings had to be long, and 
 the atmosphere in a Victoria Hall of corrugated iron, 
 flavoured with oranges, saveloy sandwiches, and strong beer, 
 was not conducive to physical enjoyment. It was a wonder 
 to him to see Rachel sitting serene and cool at an old grand 
 piano, accompanying the singers and fiddlers, radiant and 
 indefatigable. The necessity of taking part in the good 
 work had made him a reader, and he mounted the platform 
 once or twice in an evening to read a scene from Ivanhoe 
 or from Pickwick. He found that the boys and girls preferred 
 Ivanhoe, the men and women Pickwick. 
 
 How could he stint his service or deem any task a burden, 
 when he was happier than he had ever been in his life ? It 
 was not the first time he had been in love. He had suffered 
 a boy's fancies, a young man's follies ; but this love, in its 
 freshness and purity, so far excelled all those adventures 
 and escapades of his youth as to seem a first love. He 
 forgot every dream and aspiration of the past, in the exquisite 
 happiness of the present. And the indescribable horror 
 that had weighed him to the earth, the incubus, the nameless 
 dread, had been lifted from his soul. As his friendship for 
 Rachel ripened the horror lessened. Her image filled his 
 mind and heart, was always with him, waking or dreaming. 
 Sometimes he thought that Douglas Campbell's prophecy 
 had been fulfilled, and that a diabolical influence had been 
 exorcised by that pure presence. At other times he took 
 a common-sense view of his case, and told himself that 
 the whole thing had been no more than a mental state, a 
 
 128 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 consequence of shattered nerves, the natural result of his 
 fatal encounter with ^Manville. 
 
 " The temperament of the duellist, who could kill his 
 man without remorse, has been lost to Englishmen in the 
 last few generations," he thought, remembering Camelford 
 and Best, and various fatal duels of the past. 
 
 The season was over, and the Lorimers left Carlton 
 Terrace, Mr. Lorimer for Honduras, where he had a water- 
 supply in progress, Mrs. Lorimer and Rachel for a villa at 
 Goring, from which riverside paradise the railway would 
 bring Rachel to her friends in the East. 
 
 Here Arden was hospitably invited, and often made one 
 of the house-party. Mrs. Bellingham also was frequently 
 there ; and batches of work-girls from London appeared on 
 the smiling scene every now and then, and had to be taken 
 on the river, and entertained with picnic dinners and teas, 
 on willowy islands. Arden had his hands full on these 
 occasions, and, if he was not staying at the villa, came down 
 from London with the convoy, and laboured in the good 
 cause from morning till night. 
 
 And in all this time, during the growth of a friendship 
 that all the world might see, there had been no word of love 
 spoken ; and Arden sometimes wondered if he was any 
 more to Rachel than the Saturday to Monday visitors from 
 town, or the guardsmen from Windsor who rowed in her 
 boat and played croquet in her garden, the light and the 
 frivolous, who were always ready to lend a hand in any of 
 her philanthropic schemes, and always obviously doing it for 
 her sake. Was he more to her, nearer to her ? More than 
 once she had told him that he was the best of her lieutenants, 
 the cleverest and the most steadfast. 
 
 " And I believe you like the work," she said, " and that 
 you don't do it by way of being polite to me and pleasing 
 mother." 
 
 " Yes, I like the work. I am interested in your people ; 
 but — if you were not there to guide me — I doubt if I should 
 persevere." 
 
 " Oh, I cannot think so meanly of you. Now that you 
 have seen them, and know what they suffer, and how 
 patient and brave they are, you would never turn your back 
 on them." 
 
 129 K 
 
The Conflict, 
 
 *' No, no j I could never be as I have been — having seen 
 and known their Hves. But I need you. My inspiration is 
 from you." 
 
 She looked at him with that earnest inquiring look he 
 knew so well. Deeply religious as he knew her to be, she 
 had never spoken to him of her creed. She had encouraged 
 him in good works; but she had left that larger question 
 untouched. It might be that she felt that in spiritual things 
 there was a great gulf fixed between them, and that it was 
 well to be silent. 
 
 Did she know, did she even suspect, how fondly he loved 
 her ? He scarcely dared to ask himself the question ; still 
 less could he dare to question her. He was so happy in her 
 society, in a release from an intolerable bondage, that he 
 w-as slow to break the spell. Her calm friendship was more 
 precious than any other woman's love. To live in almost 
 daily communion with that fair soul, to carry her image 
 in his mind, a saintly presence, within whose influence no 
 evil thing could come ! This was enough. He shrank from 
 any act which might break the spell. To tell his love, if it 
 were not mutual, might mean a lifelong severance, or at the 
 best an estrangement, a lessening of confidence on her part, 
 a sense of wounded pride on his. 
 
 And so the seasons changed, and he was still no more 
 than her lieutenant and fellow-worker, spending most of the 
 days that he could not spend with her in going about her 
 work with Mrs. Bellingham, or with Father Romney. 
 
 Lady Mary laughed at his enthusiasm, but was liberal 
 with money help, and sometimes horrified her coachman by 
 driving to Whitechapel, and appearing, a resplendent figure 
 in velvet and ermine, in the ward of a child's hospital, or 
 amongst the squalling chorus of a creche. 
 
 " You are really impayable^^ she said. " When I in- 
 troduced you to Rachel, I expected you to fall over head 
 and ears in love with her, and that we should have had you 
 married at Westminster Abbey at the end of the season." 
 
 " At the Abbey, quotha ! " 
 
 " Why not ? Mr. Lorimer could do what he liked with 
 the Dean, for he may be wanted any day to shore up the 
 towers, or needle the Chapter House walls."! 
 
 " If I were going to marry Rachel Lorimer, I should be 
 
 130 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 satisfied with a less splendid fane," he said. " The parish 
 church at Goring would be good enough." 
 
 "But why have you not arrived at the ring and the 
 church ? " 
 
 " You forget one obstacle which I mentioned before I saw 
 the lady. She is a great heiress — to say nothing of being 
 the loveliest girl in London — and I am a nobody, with an 
 income which people in the suburbs call a modest com- 
 petence — meaning enough to pay rent, taxes, and butchers 
 and bakers, at Brixton."' 
 
 " Rachel does not care about money, nor do her people. 
 If Mrs. Lorimer has a weakness, it is for blue blood." 
 
 " Blue blood, indicated by a coronet. A younger son's 
 hereditary caste is not worth much." 
 
 " You forget how they worship that girl. To my certain 
 knowledge she refused more than one fine match last season, 
 and that she might now be a marchioness, if she had smiled 
 upon her most ardent admirer. Her mother told me in 
 confidence, so I must name no names. If Rachel cared for 
 you, there would be no difficulty ; and you ought to h^ave 
 made her care for you by this time." 
 
 " There are other obstacles " 
 
 "Vvliat obstacles?" 
 
 " More insurmountable, perhaps, than the difierence of 
 means. Ivliss Lorimer is deeply religious — while I " 
 
 " Nov/, for goodness' sake, don't tell me you pin your 
 faith on Darwin and Huxley " 
 
 " Unhappily, my unbelief is of a cheaper kind. I learnt 
 to doubt before I read Darwin." 
 
 " Does Rachel know ? " 
 
 " We have seldom spoken of spiritual things. Our business 
 has been the corporal works of mercy." 
 
 " She must never know ; and you must begin going to 
 church to-morrow. There are preachers in London who 
 will soon make you believe, if you go early enough to get a 
 seat at the Sunday morning service." 
 
 And then she ran over the names of half a dozen 
 awakening preachers, who were at that time playing upon 
 the emotions of fashionable congregations, divines whose 
 sermons were talked of during church parade, and who were 
 never more appreciated than when they were expatiating 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 upon modish vices, pride and frivolity, costly dress, and 
 high play, and reminding the best people in London that 
 they were a generation of vipers. 
 
 ** I am afraid your favourite clerics would leave me cold," 
 Arden said. 
 
 " But you won't air your hateful opinions before 
 Rachel?" 
 
 " I have never disguised my opinions ; and if ever Rachel 
 questions me, she shall find I have at least one Christian 
 virtue — Truth." 
 
 Mary Selby returned to the charge more than once, and 
 succeeded in taking her brother to her pet church, where 
 the sheep were divided from the goats, and where he sat 
 among a block of men in the jewelled light of painted 
 windows, and heard a very fine oration — as thick in classical 
 allusions and high-sounding epithets as a court sermon by 
 Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 The autumn woods had burned themselves out in every 
 phase of gold, and bronze, and flame-colour ; and winter 
 had wrapped the river and hidden the pollard willows and 
 the reedy eyots under a pall of pale mist ; and to people who 
 had no romantic love of atmospheric impressions and the 
 aesthetic charms of a landscape in silver and grey, Carlton 
 House Terrace and St. James's Park seemed better than the 
 Upper Thames. At any rate, the big house in the Terrace 
 was alive with fire and lamplight after its autumnal obscurity 
 under brown holland; a nothingness which for a house might 
 seem a foretaste of the inevitable death ; the day when it 
 would be said cheerfully, since in a progressive age there 
 are few who care for old things, " Carlton House Terrace is 
 coming down ; " coming down to make room for barracks, 
 club, residential flats — who knows ? Mutability has become 
 the sign of that city which was once so solid and fixed, the 
 sober London of Charles Lamb and the old India House ; 
 where changes were so slow and gradual that people were 
 hardly conscious of change. 
 
 Mr. Lorimer was at home again, and at the end of 
 November his dinner-table was spread three or four times a 
 week for the varieties of mankind. Arden was invited often 
 to these friendly dinners, being now an estabUshed favourite, 
 
 132 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 and treated as the familiar house-friend, who is ahvays wanted 
 for some special service, if it be only to secure stalls for a new 
 play, or for a musical recital by a new performer. He some- 
 times escorted Mrs. Lorimer and her daughter to the theatre. 
 Rachel delighted in good plays, well acted ; and her spiritual 
 guides had not taught her to find sinfulness in that form of 
 pleasure. 
 
 It was half a year since Arden had seen or heard of 
 Archer Stormont ; and he supposed that fiery youth to have 
 spent his later summer camping by the Yukon river, as he 
 had intended. He had been somewhat surprised that his 
 friend had not hunted him out in London, to reiterate his 
 invitation to join in the search for gold ; but perhaps that 
 kind of forgetfulness was a natural thing in a man of 
 Stormont's eager temper, and he had no doubt found some 
 more promising comrade for the trip. 
 
 " As I never pledged myself to go with him, there is no 
 reason that he should consider himself engaged to me," 
 Arden thought. 
 
 There had been a time when he seriously contemplated 
 that pilgrimage to the North-Vv'est, vrhen a life of depriva- 
 tion, danger, and daily toil, had seemed the best chance of 
 dispelling an evil influence; but from the hour he met 
 Rachel Lorimer, his life had changed, the world was trans- 
 formed, the things of every day were different, and the 
 shadow in which he had dwelt had been hfted, he hoped for 
 ever. No such exile in remote Canadian wilds would be 
 tolerable now, though the thought of the snow-mountains 
 and lonely pine-woods, the cafions and the rushing 
 rapids, perilous encounters with redskins, or friendly pow- 
 wows with tractable chiefs, and all the adventures of a 
 five-hundred-mile journey over mountain, lake, and river, 
 had once been alluring. 
 
 It was a surprise on entering Mrs. Lorimer's drawing-room 
 on All-hallows Eve to hear the familiar Anglo-American 
 accents, and to see Stormont standing in front of the fire in 
 an animated discussion with his host. 
 
 " We have a little batch of Americans," Mrs. Lorimer 
 told him. " One of David's casual invitations. Mr. 
 Washington Jamford sent him a letter of introduction this 
 morning from a business acquaintance in Chicago, so David 
 
 ^3Z 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 asked them all to dinner. The young man is a friend 
 only." 
 
 " The young man is a Roman acquaintance of mine," said 
 Arden, "and those two nice-looking girls were among the 
 stars in Roman salons last winter," he added, glancing at 
 two fair-haired girls, whose frocks were miracles of art in 
 gauze and chiffon, the most expensive and perishable thing 
 that Dover Street could produce. They moved about the 
 room like nymphs or goddesses, in an opalescent cloud, 
 revealing an Andalusian instep in a slipper flashing with 
 Parisian diamonds, and the lady whom they called their 
 Momma watched them admiringly, while conversing with 
 Father Romney, who only on rare occasions was to be 
 found so far West. 
 
 " I do consider those frocks are just sweet," she said. 
 "They were only sent home half an hour ago. We are 
 staying at the Cecil, which suits us because it is small and 
 homely." 
 
 " We are inclined to think it colossal." 
 
 " Ah ! you don't know the newest hotels on the other 
 side. They'd be eye-openers for you. I've seen nothing as 
 big here except a Rowton House. I don't know if you 
 admire slim figures. Your English girls are very nice, but 
 they are built too substantial. Sibylla's waist is under 
 eighteen inches in her frock, and Vanessa's is half an inch 
 smaller." 
 
 " No doubt there is a charm in such ethereal forms ; 
 but I cannot divest myself of the idea of suffering " 
 
 " Suffering ! You don't suppose my girls pull in ? " 
 
 He glanced at Vanessa, standing near the mantelpiece, 
 " chipping in," as she called it, in the talk between Stormont 
 and Mr. Lorimer ; and it occurred to him that there was 
 nothing to be pulled in. Vanessa's sylph-like figure seemed 
 an essence of loveliness, rather than corporeal beauty. 
 
 " You should see some of our flower-girls," he blurted out, 
 " waists of eight and twenty inches, magnificent creatures, 
 like the Venus of Milo." 
 
 " I should be very sorry to see either of my girls with her 
 figure," said Mrs. Jamford. " I call her right down clumsy. 
 Now, Miss Lorimer has a neat waist, and is rather a pretty 
 girl." 
 
 134 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 '• She is considered exquisitely lovely," said the priest. 
 
 *' Ah ! that style don't take, in the States. We don't care 
 for the classic form. It's too cold — not espVegle enough. In 
 Chicago we are all for the espiegle in looks and manner. 
 Say, did you ever see any one so serious as Miss Lorimer, 
 sitting like a statue, with her fan in her lap, talking to that 
 young man ? In Chicago we have a French ma'amselle 
 who teaches girls how to handle a fan ; and how to float 
 about a room, looking at the pictures and bric-a-brac, until 
 they attract somebody to go and talk to them." 
 
 " You have advanced ideas in education." 
 
 " We're advanced in everything. Push forward 1 That's 
 what we ought to put on our banners." 
 
 " ' Plus ultra,' Charles the Fifth's motto." 
 
 " I don't know anything about /^/;;/," said Mrs. Jamford, 
 '' there's too many Charleses ranging up and down history 
 for me to keep count of them. But you couldn't flummox 
 either of my girls. They know pretty well everything. You 
 should have heard them talk to your English bishop in the 
 Forum, reeling ofif the names of Roman senators as if they 
 were personal friends." 
 
 Father Romney listened with an interested air. He 
 meant to interest Mrs. Jamford by-and-by in his Home 
 of Rest for Women at Walton-on-the-Naze, interest for 
 interest. 
 
 " Mother wants you to take Miss Vanessa Jamford in to 
 dinner," Rachel told Arden. 
 
 " I shall do as I am bidden. I used to meet the Jamfords 
 in Rome — where they were bien vus on the strength of a 
 reputation for millions ; but I dare say they have forgotten 
 me. Even my friend Stormont has not discovered me 
 yet." 
 
 Stormont dashed across the room to him almost as he 
 spoke. 
 
 " My dear fellow, this is jolly ! We only came to 
 London a week ago, and I meant to hunt you up the next 
 day; but I had to go about with the girls, to show them 
 where the most expensive milliners and dressmakers are to 
 be found, and where they can pay the most money for cheap 
 jewellery, and to all the picture-galleries, and to the theatre 
 every night." 
 
 I'^ 
 
 OD 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Rachel had gone to talk to Mrs. Jamford, and Stormont 
 slipped into her empty chair beside Arden. 
 
 *' What a lovely creature that is ! Have you known her 
 long ? " he asked. 
 
 "About six months. But how is it I find you here? 
 I thought you would be in Klondyke goldfields." 
 
 *' You think I would go there without doing my level best 
 to take you with me ? No, these people stick to me like 
 leeches ; and as the old chap promises to finance my 
 expedition, and as the girls are a good sort " 
 
 " Especially Vanessa ? " 
 
 " Vanessa ! Well, isn't she cunning ? " 
 
 " And where have you been all this time ? " 
 
 " Oh, fooling round — the Danube, the Tyrol, the Rhine, 
 the Engadine, Como, Maggiore, Verona, Venice; then to 
 Paris, where those girls wanted to see everything — from the 
 Moulin Rouge to the Catacombs. They had heard a lot 
 about modern magic ; and they were awfully disappointed 
 at not seeing a Black Mass. It was out of the season, and 
 I couldn't manage it for them." 
 
 " My dear Stormont, anything so unspeakably revolt- 
 ing " 
 
 " Yes, that's what they wanted ; something unspeakable 
 that they could talk about when they go home. They are 
 as innocent as seraphim and cherubim ; but they've had an 
 advanced education, and they want to see everything out of 
 the common." 
 
 Dinner was announced, and Arden crossed the room to 
 renew his acquaintance with Vanessa, who was discussing 
 the operations of the Chicago stock-exchange with Mr. Selby, 
 revealing a knowledge of finance generally and " corners " 
 in grain in particular, that filled her host with wonder. 
 
 She remembered meeting Arden at the Doria Palace, and 
 expressed herself delighted to see him again. 
 
 " You used to take Mr. Stormont for long rambles in the 
 Campagna," she said ; " but you mustn't do that kind of 
 thing here. Sister and I are very exacting ; and we require 
 every minute of his time." 
 
 The two young men resumed their conversation after 
 dinner in the smoking-room. 
 
 " I shall leave for Frisco in March," Stormont said, *' and 
 
 136 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 my route will be from there to Juneau in Alaska, where I 
 shall buy stores and outfit, and then travel overland to the 
 Klondyke river. You have no idea what a romantic journey 
 it will be — adventures with Indians, adventures with rapids, 
 adventures with avalanches, adventures with wind-storms, 
 adventures with bears. Tm not quite clear about bears, but 
 there ought to be some," he added thoughtfully. 
 
 " Isn't that district rather too near the Arctic ice-fields for 
 the idea of pleasure ? " 
 
 " Pshaw, my dear fellow, a delightful climiate — better than 
 that confounded Engadine, and with something for a fellow 
 to do besides play golf and lawn tennis. Pine-woods, snow- 
 mountains, canons, lakes ; and the chance of a fortune into 
 the bargain. I shall stay two years, if I can stick it — though 
 Vanessa is wild at the idea." 
 
 " Vanessa ! Has that Delilah shorn your locks ? " 
 
 "Yes, we're engaged— in an offhand kind of way. She 
 seemed to wish it. I am to have at least three years' 
 liberty, to go where I like, and tame the locomotive devil 
 in my blood. And then we are to be married, and I am 
 to settle in Chicago, which she and her family think a much 
 finer city than even the place they call Pars." 
 
 " I congratulate you. She is a lovely creature." 
 
 " Pretty enough to put on a mantelpiece ; a bit of animated 
 Dresden china ; but she's as clever as she can stick ; and I 
 believe we shall be ridiculously happy. If I bring anything 
 bark from Klondyke, I am to put it into the grain-business ; 
 and the old man will make me a partner. And if I come 
 back with empty pockets, I fancy he'll have to do it all the 
 same. He's a snaffle-bit horse when Vanessa drives." 
 
 " She is the favourite, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Oh, he worships them both ; but V's the cutest, and he 
 thinks it's a case of heredity. Say, you mean to go with me, 
 don't you ? " 
 
 " I think not. I have found work in London that suits 
 me, and I don't want to leave it." 
 
 " Well, I guess you are looking much fitter than you 
 were in Rome. I never saw a man so run down." 
 
 " Shattered nerves. I had been through a time of 
 trouble." 
 
 "Shattered nerves, was it? Well, don't let them get 
 
 137 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 shattered that way again, or you mayn't be able to pick up 
 the bits. You looked as if you had been seeing ghosts." 
 
 " There is a ghost in every man's life." 
 
 " Confidence for confidence," said Stormont. " I've told 
 you about my engagement. How about you and Lorimer's 
 daughter ? Is it a foregone conclusion ? " 
 
 " No. I am not so distinguished by Fate." 
 
 *' She's an uncommonly pretty girl. An only child ? " 
 
 « Yes." 
 
 '•And I believe Lorimer is one of your single-barrelled 
 millionaires — not the South African twelve-chambered kind 
 — but a very respectable father-in-law." 
 
 " If Lorimer were as poor as Job, his daughter would be 
 a prize for a prince ; but I do not look so high." 
 
 " But you don't want to leave the field open to others ? " 
 
 *' I am contented with my life as it is." 
 
 " Well, I hope you'll change your mind before March. 
 There is plenty of time for things to happen. I want you 
 for a pal across the Chilkoot Pass ; and you're much fitter 
 for the trip now than you were six months ago." 
 
 " Shall you be in London all the winter ?" 
 
 " Not much ! The girls are only here to buy frocks, and 
 see Westminster Abbey, and make a round of the theatres. 
 When they have seen all the plays and done all the music- 
 halls, we shall up stick for Cairo and the Nile, till the end 
 of February. Then I am to bring them back to London, 
 and take them across with me in 'March, and we shall part 
 company in New York when I go West." 
 
 138 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XT. 
 
 Among the varied types of humanity that Arden dis- 
 covered in a world hitherto unknown, that world in which 
 the whole population are strugglers for life, there was one 
 man who stood out from the ruck of men by a certain 
 superiority of will-power and physical force. He was a fine 
 specimen of rough-hewn manhood, six feet two, broad- 
 shouldered, strongly limbed, a man whose back had never 
 bent beneath hard fare and hard work, and who in five and 
 thirty years of life had never known anything, year in, year 
 out, but the daily round of industry, ten hours, eight hours, 
 or fourteen hours, counting overtime, as the case might be. 
 Little wonder, perhaps, that such a man was at heart an 
 anarchist, much wonder that he had never put his revolu- 
 tionary opinions into action. 
 
 He was em.ployed in some iron-works near the East 
 India Docks. His name was Michael Dartnell, generally 
 shortened to Big Mike. He was a splendid worker, and 
 earned good wages. He occupied an airy garret with a 
 view of the river, not far from Stepney Church, in the house 
 where Rachel's favourite widow had her " bit of a place " 
 on the ground floor. He paid the old woman a trifle weekly 
 to clean his room, and these two contrived to maintain a 
 spotless cleanliness amidst surrounding dirt. His dormer 
 window in summer was a bower of climbing nasturtiums, 
 and the fragrance of stocks and mignonette blew into his 
 room from his garden of old packing-boxes on the roof of 
 an outhouse. 
 
 Arden met him first in the widow's room, and was im- 
 pressed by the strong character of the man. Here, as in 
 Konstantin Manville, he saw the maximum of vital energy, 
 a form all muscle and sinev/, governed by an indomitable 
 will. 
 
 139 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 He took note of Big Mike on many occasions, at the 
 Happy Evening entertainments, at awakening services in 
 the incense-clouded church, where Mike was in the choir, 
 rolHng out a tremendous basso-baritono voice, ahvays in 
 perfect tune. 
 
 Mike was severely sober. He had taken no pledge, 
 declaring that he should be ashamed of himself if he was 
 not able to exercise his own will without any formal act of 
 renunciation. 
 
 " When I mean to do a thing, I do it," he said, when a 
 friendly Salvation Army sister tried to pin a blue ribbon on 
 his fustian jacket. " I don't want a bit of ribbon to remind 
 me. I've got a will of my own. I hate the taste of drink ; 
 I hate the smell of drink ; I hate the name of drink. It's 
 all alike loathsome to me." 
 
 His vehemence startled the girl, and she looked at him 
 with a scared expression. 
 
 " Ah, you don't know, sister," he muttered between his 
 teeth — " you don't know what reason I have to hate it." 
 
 This abstinence of his had kept him in a respectable 
 way, well-fed, well-clad, able to help a friend in difficulties, 
 a subscriber in his humble way to several of Father Romney's 
 institutions, for the last five years. Before that time his 
 history was a blank to the people among whom he lived. 
 He had only come to London five years ago. 
 
 Christmas came, and there were high jinks in Father 
 Romney's parish ; feasts and pleasures of all kinds for old 
 age and infancy. Those two weak ends of life's thread had 
 the preference ; but something was done even for the sturdy 
 and the strong, for men and women in the prime of life, for 
 the valiant mothers, the brave workers. There were tea- 
 parties, snapdragon-parties, more happy evenings; a dramatic 
 performance by amateurs from the West End, whose art 
 was freely criticized by their brothers and sisters in_ the 
 East; a mighty Christmas-tree, hung with gold and silver 
 toys that glittered and flashed in the light of innumerable 
 candles ; and bran-pies on a gigantic scale, stuffed with the 
 things that everybody wanted— boots, aprons, petticoats, 
 flat-irons, teapots, scrubbing-brushes, bars of soap, and 
 baby-clothes. No feature of the festive season had been 
 forgotten ; and the plum-puddings distributed at the various 
 
 140 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 dinners and suppers vrere voted of a finer quality than had 
 ever smoked upon the board in years gone by. Certainly, 
 in the opinion of the East, whatever other arts might dwindle 
 and decay, plum-pudding-making was on the upward grade. 
 
 " It's the biling does it," said one matron. " You can't 
 give a Christmas-pudding too many hours, if you're sure of 
 your pudding-cloth." 
 
 '•No, Mrs. Rogers, it's the flavouring," said another. 
 " Any fool can bile a pudding." 
 
 ''And any fool can spile a pudding," interjected Mrs. 
 Rogers. 
 
 " But you want a lot of gumption to calculate the spice 
 and the sweet almonds. You didn't ought to be too free 
 with your nutmeg or your cinnamon." 
 
 " Nor your almonds neither, if you don't want to poison 
 people with proossic acid," suggested a third. " I don't 
 hold with almonds in a Christmas-pudding ; I'm in favour 
 of half a dozen good sound biling-apples, chopped small." 
 
 The subject was inexhaustible, and the discussion lasted 
 through the men's after-dinner pipes, till the signal for 
 clearing the tables, preparatory to a dance for the young 
 people. 
 
 Rachel appeared in all the festivities, and opened most 
 of the balls. Her influence was paramount everywhere. 
 
 " Is it because she is so lovely that all your people seem 
 to worship her ? " Arden asked Father Romney. 
 
 " No doubt her beauty is a point in her favour. In our 
 ugly enraonment such a face as hers makes a strong im- 
 pression, set off by a graceful figure, and the charm of 
 dainty garments, the refinement of manner and carriage — 
 differences and graces which these people feel without 
 knowing why. I have seen our girls sit gazing at her 
 open-mouthed in admiring wonder, and, after contemplating 
 her neat little hat and exquisite hair, turn a look of disgust 
 upon the Gainsborough monstrosities and bushy fringes of 
 their pals. I have even seen an improvement in the style 
 of some among them." 
 
 Big Mike made himself useful in the Christmas prepara- 
 tions, carried the tree from the nurseryman's van to the 
 schoolroom, and helped to tie on the many-coloured candles-. 
 
 141 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 His broad thick hands had a wonderful dexterity in doing 
 work that v.^ould seem to demand the touch of deHcate 
 fingers. His good-nature was inexhaustible; but he was 
 of a serious temper, and his smile was of the rarest. He 
 had a curious gentleness of speech and manner in addres- 
 sing young women, and was always ready to do them any 
 service ; but, for the rest, held himself aloof from them, and 
 Arden had never seen him engaged in the slightest flirtation 
 v»'ith the sex. His face assumed a peculiar gravity when 
 he talked to a woman, most of all if she were a notorious 
 sinner. 
 
 Arden questioned Father Romney about the man. 
 
 "He interests me more than any of your people," he 
 said. " He has the air of a man with a history." 
 
 " He has a history, and a tragic one," said the priest, 
 gravely. And as he said no more, Arden did not question 
 him. 
 
 Father Romney resumed, after a thoughtful pause, " For 
 me Michael Dartnell is a pearl of price. He has done 
 more to help me with my rescue work and my temperance 
 work than any one in the parish. You remember how 
 Samuel Johnson carried the lost girl to the shelter of his 
 lodgings. Mike has carried many an outcast in those strong 
 arms of his, in the small hours, when the snow was driving 
 through the empty streets, or the rain flooding the gutters. 
 They would listen to him when they wouldn't listen to my 
 women-helpers." 
 
 "And he has fought against the drink-devil?" 
 
 " His own sober life has been better than a sermon, and 
 he has fought might and main. He has stopped men and 
 women on their way to the great flaring tavern, to the 
 warmth and the light and the company that lure them to 
 ruin and death. He has argued with them, wrestled with 
 them, carried them off to the coffee palace, sat out the 
 evening with them, and in many cases he has prevailed 
 against Satan. If I had fifty such workers, I might have a 
 sober parish." 
 
 Michael was not inclined to make friendships. He bore 
 himself with a somewhat surly manner to his social superiors, 
 except in the case of Miss Lorimer, whom he worshipped. 
 It took Arden some time to get on really friendly terms 
 
 142 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 \vith him, for the man had a horror of being patronized, and 
 scented patronage in any civiHty from the upper classes ; 
 the " idle classes," as he called them, with a large disdain 
 for any work that was not manual labour, the exercise of 
 thev.-s and sinews. He had weighed and measured the 
 journalists, and authors, and dilettanti^ who had come to the 
 East End to look at him, very much as they would go to 
 the Zoo on the arrival of a rare animal ; and he considered 
 them poor creatures, undeserving of the bread they ate. 
 He had the socialist's Utopia in his mind, a world in 
 which everybody would work, and nobody would be rich — 
 a neutral-coloured world in which there would be no idle- 
 ness and over-feeding, and no penury and hunger. 
 
 He had turned his rough side towards Arden in all their 
 earlier encounters, had met every attempt at friendly con- 
 versation with grimness and sneers; but by degrees he 
 began to see that this particular member of the aristocracy 
 was sincere in his desire to get at the heart and mind of a 
 working roan, sincere in his reverence for honest labour, a 
 true follower of that splendid gospel which Thomas Carlyle 
 gave the world — the gospel of plain living and high thinking, 
 the gospel of unflinching work. 
 
 Michael was fond of reading, and the books he liked 
 were of a solid order — Mill, Carlyle, Darwin, and Spencer. 
 Reading with him was not a recreation, but a serious 
 pursuit. He read slowly and studiously, plodding his way 
 through a book, page by page and line by line, and never 
 leaving it till he had mastered the author's meaning. Milton 
 and Shakespeare he loved; but light literature had no 
 charm for him. He did not want to dip and skip, or open 
 a volume haphazard and read wherever his eye lighted. 
 He was not an epicurean nibbler, and for him a book did 
 not mean casual refreshment ; it meant a substantial meal. 
 He had spent a year over " The Origin of Species " and 
 "The Descent of Man." He read Hamlet or Lear as 
 intently as a cultured person would read a treatise on 
 Quaternions. "Sartor Resartus" he knew by heart. He 
 had ploughed through Mill's " Logic," and " The Principles 
 of Political Economy ; " and Spencer's " Sociology " was 
 almost the lightest book on the deal shelf of his own 
 fashioning which contained his modest library. 
 
 143 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Arden had heard and read of such men ; but he had never 
 been in touch with one till now, and he thoroughly enjoyed 
 a friendly argument with Michael Dartnell. He invited 
 the man to spend an evening with him in Jermyn Street, 
 and Michael turned out the pink of neatness in his Sunday 
 suit of dark-grey tweed, having had the good taste to eschew 
 funereal broadcloth for his best wear. He was quite at his 
 ease in Arden's handsome library, and the Persian carpet 
 and the artistic reading-lamp made no apparent effect upon 
 him ; but he walked round the room admiring the books, 
 and wondering at their number. 
 
 " You don't mean that you've read them all, Mr. Arden ? " 
 he said. 
 
 Mike never called any man " sir," not even his employer. 
 " I've looked into most of them, and I've read some of 
 them a good many times ; but if 1 were to pretend I had 
 read them all as conscientiously as you read Darwin, I 
 should be a base impostor." 
 
 " Ah, that kind of reading comes of having only a few 
 books. I put sixpence a week into a little tin box, till it 
 comes to the price of the book I want most, and then I 
 buy the book ; and as I'm a slow reader, the sixpences have 
 mounted up by the time I've finished it, and I've got the 
 price of my next fancy in hand." 
 
 " I believe yours is the right way, Mike, iion mtilta^ sed 
 multum. And then what a world you have to choose from ! 
 With your way of reading, every book read is a lasting pos- 
 session ; while for the skimmer and the dipper, alas ! what 
 a fleeting joy reading is ! what hazy memories the most 
 precious books leave behind ! " 
 
 From literature the discussion moved to actual things, 
 and Mike enlarged upon his socialistic Utopia, in which 
 there was to be no Upper House, and no Lords to occupy it, 
 all rank and title having been swept clean off the face of 
 Great Britain, all royalty having become a tradition. Arden 
 heard him talk, but listened as to a child's idea of life and the 
 world, when he tells the gardener he will give him a golden 
 palace, and a coach and eight, so soon as he, the child, is 
 grown up. 
 
 " It wall all come, Mr. Arden ; it is only a question of 
 time." 
 
 144 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Time can work wonders : but I think we are likely to 
 reach that igneous gulf in the constellation of Hercules, 
 towards which astronomers tell us our solar system is moving, 
 before we arrive at your ideal republic." 
 
 Michael shook his head gravely as he sipped his coffee 
 and trifled with some delicate sandwiches, a light refresh- 
 ment which Arden had ordered for his guest. To his mind, 
 Arden was in the condition of that unawakened aristocracy 
 at Versailles, who danced so lightly over the crust of the 
 earth, while the lava-flood of a hungry populace was seething 
 under their feet. Some day, soon or late, the revolution 
 would come ; the wild women, the bloodthirsty men, would 
 smash the windows and break in the doors in Grosvenor 
 Square and Park Lane ; the dukes, the millionaires, the 
 beauties, the wits, all those who had turned a deaf ear and 
 an unseeing eye upon the miseries of mankind, would be 
 flung upon the great waste-heap of old abuses, unfair 
 privileges, and unjust preferences ; the earth would roll 
 round to a new tune in a golden age of universal labour, 
 every man fulfilling the primeval curse and eating his 
 bread in the sweat of his brow ; but labour would be 
 regulated by the laws of health and happiness, each man 
 contributing his fair share to the sum of common industry, 
 and each man enjoying equal opportunities for rest and 
 pleasure ; while all surplus wealth, over and above the daily- 
 needs of the multitude, would be devoted to institutions for 
 the common benefit. 
 
 " The good things that are done by individual benevolence, 
 and which are but drops in the ocean of mankind's necessities, 
 would then be done by the State, and on a plan wide enough 
 to provide for everybody's need and everybody's pleasure," 
 said Michael, delighted to expound his theories. " All the 
 simple natural joys of life would be paid for by the surplus 
 now locked in the money-chests of millionaires. The beauty 
 of this earth would no longer be a luxury for the rich, 
 something for them to come to the East End and tell us 
 about condescendingly. Ever)'body would be able to enjoy 
 the delight of the earth ; for one of our institutions would 
 provide expenses on a humble scale for the young people 
 of both sexes to travel over the face of the globe, to a 
 greater or less extent, according to their capacity, to tramp 
 
 145 L 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 from city to city, over mountain passes, through forests, 
 across deserts, with just enough money in their wallet to 
 buy their daily bread. Then, instead of the privileged few 
 moving in sleeping-waggons and restaurant-cars from one 
 luxurious hotel to another still more luxurious, there will 
 be multitudes of happy young people trudging about the 
 Continent like Oliver Goldsmith, making friends with towns- 
 folk and villagers, learning foreign languages, and shaking 
 off British prejudices." 
 
 " All this will happen in your Utopia ? " 
 
 " More than this will happen in my Utopia. The children 
 will be fed and cared for by the State ; for the children are 
 the future. The old will be pensioned and made com- 
 fortable, their maintenance being, next to childhood, the 
 strongest claim on the State." 
 
 " And art, the drama, literature, how will they flourish, do 
 you think, in a State where no one is rich enough to buy a 
 picture ? " 
 
 " The State will buy pictures ; the State will maintain 
 theatres. The worship of money will be ended, for there 
 will be no quadruple millionaires for sycophants to crawl 
 and grovel before, battening upon their ostentatious feasts, 
 and envying and reviling tliem. Nobody v,'ill be rich ; but 
 everybody will be able to enjoy life. The drink-scourge 
 will be banished ; for the destitution which finds relief in 
 drunkenness will have ceased to be." 
 
 " Utopian, Utopian to the fortieth power," said Arden, 
 smilingly. " A pleasant dream. Some amelioration there 
 will be, I believe, with the progress of education, the refining 
 power of educated thought. But your Utopia, where no one 
 is hungry and every one has the chance of happiness, where 
 the smart hotels and the gambling-rooms at Monte Carlo 
 will be a habitation for the owl and badger, where all the 
 Pullman cars will be broken up and there will be only one 
 class, at a farthing a mile, upon the government railways, 
 where the cheap bicycle will have superseded the horse, and 
 
 the tramcar will be the only carriage No, Michael. 
 
 I do not believe in quite such an England as your imagina- 
 tion has conceived ; no — not even in the distant future." 
 
 " I am sorry you are satisfied with a state in which old-age 
 pensions are voted impracticable, and a single meal a day for 
 
 146 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 board-school children demoralizing, if not impossible ; where 
 millions are expended to enforce education upon empty 
 stomachs, and the additional million for food is withheld." 
 
 The clock on the mantelpiece struck eleven, and Dartnell 
 rose and bade his host good night. He would have liked 
 to stop much later ; but the instinct of the fitness of things 
 was strong in his rough-hewn nature, and he knew when 
 to go. 
 
 Christmas and New Year festivities were over and done 
 w^ith. The old people wondered if they would live to see 
 another Christmas ; the young people began to think of 
 Easter and the first bank-holiday of the year, the year that 
 was still in its infancy, an infancy as tetchy and wayward as 
 that of crook-backed Duke Richard. 
 
 It was a winter that made most people low-spirited and 
 captious ; and during a cold and cheerless February the 
 only brightness in x\rden's life was to be found in Carlton 
 House Terrace, where he v.-as asked to dinner two or three 
 times a week, one invitation following on the heels of another 
 in Lorimer's hearty casual way. 
 
 " If he knew that I love his daughter, he would hardly 
 be so hospitable," thought Arden. " I have no doubt he 
 has set his heart upon her making a great match. Some 
 day there will appear a duke or a marquis to her liking ; 
 and her heart will awaken like the heart of the sleeping 
 princess, and she will ride away with him to his ancestral 
 castle, ' in that new world which is the old.' Lorimer's 
 friendliness is a proof of my insignificance. To his mind, 
 I am not in the running. I am only a harmless detri- 
 mental." 
 
 It seemed to him inevitable that 2, parvenu like Lorimer, 
 hov>'ever large-minded, would wish his daughter to make 
 what the world calls a brilliant match ; and he was surprised 
 and touched when the prosperous man opened his heart 
 to him, they two sitting together in the smoking-room, after 
 the guest of the evening had departed, a South American 
 premier, whose conversation rarely travelled north of the 
 Nicaraguan cana], an interesting man from the Royal 
 Geographical Society point of view, but somewhat boring 
 to Lady Mary Selby, whom he had taken in to dinner. 
 
 147 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 *' I hope you know how grateful I am to you for helping 
 my daughter in her philanthropic work," Lorimer said 
 gravely. " She tells me you are a tower of strength in the 
 East End, a kind of suffragan to Father Romney." 
 
 "She places my poor services far too high. I have 
 enjoyed the work." 
 
 "It was new to you, I fancy. You hadn't done any 
 slumming before ? " 
 
 " No ; it was the opening up of a new world." 
 
 "Well, you know our system — the wife's and mine — 
 with our only child. We made up our minds about it when 
 she was a baby. We would never thwart her; so that if 
 God were to take away the blessing He gave us, we might, 
 at least, in our desolation, be able to look back and say, 
 * She grew up in perfect liberty, as free and as beautiful as 
 a hedgerow flower.' We knew somehow that she would 
 never desire any evil thing, that all her impulses and 
 instincts would be noble and true, that she would grow 
 always straight up towards the skies; and we were not 
 disappointed. So when she came under Mrs. Bellingham's 
 influence, and took up the cause of toilers and strugglers, 
 and sinners and outcasts, as the chief business of her life, 
 we did not complain. It was a blow all the same, for you 
 see their gain was our loss. We would have liked her to 
 go everywhere with us, to shine in society, and to marry 
 young; so that we might see our grandchildren growing 
 up, before our time came to blow out the candle and say 
 good night." 
 
 " She is very young still. There is time enough for her 
 to realize all your hopes." 
 
 "Perhaps; if she meets a man she can love. But I 
 doubt if she will ever care for any man who is not willing 
 to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, and devote 
 his life to the kind of work she lives for. And there are 
 not many such men— though there are plenty of oily hypo- 
 crites who would pretend anything, I dare say, to catch 
 such a wife. But she would not be taken in by that sort." 
 
 " And would you be satisfied if she were to make such 
 a marriage : choose a husband who had no worldly advan- 
 tages to offer her, who was greatly her inferior in worldly 
 wealth?" 
 
 148 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Worldly wealth need not count for much where Rachel 
 is concerned. A girl who thinks it a sin to spend money 
 on hot-house strawberries while there are needlewomen 
 living on eight shillings a vreek, wouldn't be likely to let her 
 husband squander her fortune on a racing-stable at New- 
 market, or ircntc-€t-quara?ite at ]Monte Carlo. The man 
 who marries my girl must make up his mind to do without 
 most of the amusements and indulgences that are a neces- 
 sity of existence to the modern young man. Cards, sport, 
 society, all must be a dead letter for him — at least while 
 Rachel thinks as she does now. The world changes, and 
 my daughter may change as time goes on. Her sons and 
 daughters may teach her to take pleasure in common 
 things, and in her own home. Who knows ? " 
 
 " I cannot imagine her other than she is — an angel of 
 pity." 
 
 " True j but she may find other means of doing good ; 
 she may sacrifice something less of her own life. When 
 she began the work, I gave her carte blanche as to money ; 
 but I did not think that hussies and brats in the East End 
 would have the first call upon my daughter. No more did 
 her mother. But we stick to our old rule of not thwarting 
 her; and we know that if we don't have half, or even a 
 quarter of her Ufe, we have her love." 
 
 149 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XII. 
 
 That confidential talk with David Lorimer set Arden's 
 heart on fire. For some time past he had lived upon the 
 hope that Rachel was not indifferent to him, that their daily 
 companionship was almost as dear to her as it was to him. 
 In her frank friendliness, in the kindly greeting of every 
 day, there had been something, perhaps, to discourage ; but 
 there had been thrilling moments for him in which some 
 sign of feeling, too subtle to be translated into words, had 
 told him that he was more than a friend, and that her 
 heart-beats answered to the intenser feeling that made him 
 suddenly incapable of replying to some commonplace ques- 
 tion with a commonplace reply. Few engaged lovers had 
 ever been more in each other's company than these two 
 who were nominally friends. They had tramped the long 
 monotonous streets together, threaded darksome alleys, 
 mounted squalid staircases, fed the little children, and com- 
 forted the sick, watched by the bed of death, entered heart 
 and soul into the lives that were so remote from their own 
 in every circumstance, from the cradle to the grave. They 
 had taken counsel together as to the help that was to be 
 given, and the best manner of giving it ; and gradually, as 
 Arden became familiar with the people, penetrated all their 
 mysteries, and weighed them in the scale of a sound logical 
 mind, she came to regard him as an oracle, and to submit 
 every question to his decision. Hooligans were reclaimed 
 and taught an industry ; emigrants were sent out into new 
 worlds ; wretched women were provided for, at his advice ; 
 and Father Romney, previously paramount, was content to 
 take the second place. The priest had no doubt as to 
 Rachel's feelings, and watched Arden with keen attention, 
 questioning whether he were worthy of so rich a prize ; for 
 
 150 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 though he had been indefatigable in works of charity, he had 
 rarely been seen in the church, and Father Romney feared 
 that there was something wanting. He discussed the situa- 
 tion confidentially with Mrs. Bellingham one winter night, 
 walking westward with her in search of a cab, after one of 
 his Happy Evenings. 
 
 " I don't think Miss Lorimer would marry an unbeliever," 
 he said, after a silence, and with no reference to their 
 previous talk. 
 
 " I don't think she would. But what led you to say 
 that?" 
 
 " Isn't it easy for you to guess ? Her friendship with Mr. 
 Arden seems likely to lead to an engagement ; and it would 
 grieve me more than I can say to see her marry a man who 
 was not a Christian." 
 
 " Do you suspect Walter Arden of not being a Christian, 
 after all his goodness to your people ? " 
 
 *' Oh, that is no criterion. Some of the men who have 
 helped me most have been outside the pale in religious 
 matters, men who have thought it a stringent duty to 
 brighten the lot of the wretched ones of this earth because, 
 in their barren creed, there is nothing to come after; no 
 counterbalance for sufferings patiently endured ; no reward 
 for humble virtues, self-sacrifice, the inefifable charities of 
 the poor to the poor ; nothing but darkness and the grave. 
 Arden reminds me of those men. He is lavish of time, 
 pains, and money ; but he has never knelt at our altar or 
 shown any interest in our services, or our guilds, or our 
 religious offices of any kind." 
 
 " It may be as you think," Mrs. Bellingham answered 
 quietly, " but he is young enough to change his opinions. 
 We all know the restless spirit of youth, and how many 
 phases of faith and unfaith a mind may suffer before it 
 settles down into passive acceptance of orthodox doctrines. 
 I should not be afraid to see Rachel Lorimer marry a man 
 of noble heart and intellect, even though his views of 
 religion were unsound." 
 
 Father Romney had hailed a crawling cab, so there was 
 no time to continue the argument on this occasion. 
 
 Arden had a staunch friend in ^Mrs. Bellingham, who was 
 on very confidential terms with Rachel's father and mother, 
 
 151 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 and who knew that their most earnest wish was to see their 
 daughter happily married to a good man. She knew that 
 they had renounced all ambitious views, after their disap- 
 pointment of the previous year, and that in the fear of 
 seeing Rachel enrol herself in some Anglican sisterhood, 
 a spinster by profession, if not a nun, they would be 
 contented with a very modest alliance. 
 
 A marriage with Lord Wildernsea's youngest brother 
 would satisfy Mrs. Lorimer's aspiration for blue blood, while 
 his lack of wealth would matter nothing to Rachel, whose 
 vision of the Christian life was to live plainly, and devote 
 her surplus means to works of charity. To Mrs. Belling- 
 ham it seemed that such a marriage would be an ideal 
 union — the veritable marriage of true minds. 
 
 There was a breath of spring in the land in the early days 
 of March, and the flower-sellers' baskets were bright with 
 daffodils and mimosa, golden yellow in the sunshine, as 
 Arden walked from Jermyn Street to Bedford Square. 
 Mrs. Bellingham's sitting-room was dazzling, great brown 
 bowls of daffodils on tables, yellow tulips, mimosa, violets, 
 hyacinths. Flowers were her only extravagance, in a house 
 where the solid and somewhat sombre furniture had not 
 been changed since her marriage, five and thirty years before, 
 to a physician and specialist of some renown. She had been 
 nearly twenty years a widow ; but she loved the spacious old 
 house in which her happy married life had been spent, and 
 would hardly have changed it for what the auctioneers call 
 "a bijou residence" in May fair or Belgravia. She even 
 liked that busy unbeautiful central London, which many 
 people consider detestable; the London of the workers, 
 the great middle-class, for whom London means both 
 a Uvelihood and a settled home ; not a pleasure-place for 
 a three-months' season, not merely a few choice streets 
 of expensive shops, in which to buy finery three or four 
 times a year, passing through between Scotland and the 
 Riviera. 
 
 Arden called this afternoon in response to a letter m 
 which Mrs. Bellingham had expressed her wish to see him, 
 in order to talk over the case of two young men who were 
 going to Canada, men who had done badly in London, but 
 
 152 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 whose physique and moral character promised well for their 
 success in a more primitive mode of life. 
 
 Mrs. Bellingham was out, but the maidservant told him 
 that she was sure to be home before five o'clock ; and on 
 this assurance he waited in the quiet sitting-room, where the 
 London noises were limited to the far-off rumble of wheels, 
 and the droning of an organ in a side street. 
 
 The afternoon sun was shining upon the wintry London 
 garden, the little avenue of pollarded limes, the aucubas with 
 their bright red berries, and a row of Irish yews, like 
 miniature obelisks. The dark verdure, the leafless limes, 
 looked almost gay in that clear light, and the London sky 
 was a wonderful blue, swept clean by the west wind. The 
 feeling of spring was in the land, that feeling of pleasure 
 mixed with a vague sadness — half hope, half fear; as if 
 heart and mind were awakening from a dreamless winter 
 sleep, to the uncertainties and apprehensions of life. 
 
 Arden stood at an open window, too deep in thought to 
 hear the chirping of metropohtan birds, or the distant drone 
 of an organ, dismally grinding " The Village Blacksmith." 
 
 He had met Stormont in the street that afternoon, fresh 
 from Cairo, full of high spirits and uncontrollable energy ; 
 and again the pilgrimage to the Yukon river had been 
 urged upon him. Stormont was to start in less than a 
 week. He had found a pal, a schoolfellow, a young doctor 
 with an Edinburgh degree, clever, enterprising, and not 
 obhged to earn his daily bread by putting up a brass plate 
 in a new neighbourhood, to wait for a run of luck in street 
 accidents and local epidemics. 
 
 "If you would join us, we should be a jolly little party," 
 said Stormont. " Alick Mackenzie is a splendid fellow, 
 capital company, and as hard as iron. You haven't his 
 stamina, but you've plenty of grit, and the tramp from 
 Juneau to the Stewart river will harden you. Why, you 
 won't know yourself after two or three years roughing it out 
 yonder." 
 
 " When do you start ? " 
 
 " In the Baltimore^ from Southampton, next Saturday. I 
 am personally conducting my people as far as New York, 
 where I bid them good-bye ; but Vanessa and I hope it will 
 not be good-bye for ever." 
 
 ^53 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Poor little Vanessa, so shrewd and so pretty ! I wonder 
 you don't make up your mind to stay in Chicago, and settle 
 down as a quiet citizen." 
 
 " I almost wish I could ; but there's some quicksilver in 
 my veins that must be used up before I can enjoy domestic 
 happiness, my own fireside, slippers, and an easy-chair. 
 I believe the homing instinct will be developed in time, if 
 I keep going for two or three years more." 
 
 *'A long engagement, and the lovers at different ex- 
 tremities of a continent ! Isn't that rather hard lines for 
 Vanessa ? " 
 
 "Not a bit of it. She's going to do her full share of 
 flirting while we're parted, and give herself a real good time. 
 Do you suppose there's no quicksilver in her veins ? I 
 sometimes think there's nothing but quicksilver. It'll take 
 her some time to arrive at the slipper and easy-chair stage. 
 But I calculate you'll see us a regular Darby and Joan in 
 the new century. Well now, Arden, will you be number 
 three ? " 
 
 " I don't think so, in my present frame of mind — but 
 something might happen — even in a few days — and I might 
 be glad to cast in my lot with you." 
 
 " You say you might be glad, and your countenance 
 assumes a look of despair. Glad or sorry, we'll take you — 
 even at the last moment. I am at the Savoy with the 
 Jamfords. They asked me to find them a cosy Uttle hotel, 
 where they would feel as if they were in their own parlour. 
 They have a suite of rooms on the third floor looking 
 on the river, and they like it better than Danieli's and the 
 view over the water to San Giorgio. They have a poor 
 opinion of Venice." 
 
 And now Walter Arden was looking up at the blue sky, 
 and wondering which way his road of life was going to turn 
 within the next five days. It was no question of a choice of 
 roads ; for the one road by which he wanted to travel was 
 that which Rachel and he would tread hand-in-hand from 
 the altar to the grave. 
 
 But if his case were hopeless, if the civilized world, the 
 faces of the men and women he knew, the occupations 
 of his daily life, even the books he had loved, were to 
 become dust and ashes, why then that unknown land 
 
 154 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 near the Arctic region, whose hardships and perils Stormont 
 talked of so glibly, might be the best refuge for a broken 
 life. 
 
 " Daily toil, daily struggles, daily dangers — no time for 
 thought, no time for memory." 
 
 He meant to put his fate to the touch, to know if he were 
 to be happy or miserable. He could hardly imagine life 
 without that pure presence which had rescued him from un- 
 speakable horror. He had come to take a common-sense view 
 of his case, and he now considered all that he had suffered 
 after ISIanville's death, the nameless indescribable torture of 
 his days and nights, the bewildering sense of a being that 
 was not himself always near him, as a mental condition, a 
 malady of the nerves such as he had often heard of in other 
 men. Rachel's influence had worked a cure that might 
 have seemed supernatural to any one but a determined 
 sceptic ; but the bent of his mind was opposed to all belief 
 in the au dela^ the something beyond earth, and outside the 
 iron laws of human reason. 
 
 He had never forgotten the strange foreshadowing of 
 Rachel in Douglas Campbeirs letter — the spiritualist's 
 prophecy that his release was to come from the influence 
 of some pure and holy spirit, the bright, white light of 
 innocence and piety. 
 
 By an accident of life, Campbell's forecast had been 
 curiously fulfilled. Rachel Lorimer's influence had dis- 
 pelled the darkness of a troubled mind. He had entered 
 upon a new phase of existence, had learnt to spend his life 
 and his thoughts for others, and to taste the ineffable joy of 
 making the wretched happy. In his companionless child- 
 hood and his independent youth, he had been seldom called 
 upon for any act of self-sacrifice; and, without becoming 
 selfish, he had been at least indifferent to the fate of others. 
 Mrs. Berry's appeal to him to save her daughter had been 
 the first stringent call upon his duty to mankind. Till that 
 hour he had gone his own way, and let the rest of the human 
 race go theirs. Rachel was the bright, white light that 
 Campbell had prophesied. Rachel was all the world to 
 him ; and without her this earth would seem a world of 
 iron and gloom. 
 
 Since that conversation with David Lorimer, which 
 
 155 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 seemed to sanction and almost to invite a declaration, he 
 had delayed the fateful moment from day to day. 
 
 " If I ask her to be my wife and she refuses, we can never 
 again be what we have been ? In failing to win her love, 
 I shall lose her for ever." 
 
 Rachel's image so filled his thoughts this sunlit after- 
 noon, as he stood by the open window in Mrs. Bellingham's 
 library, looking across the garden to the Museum walls, that, 
 although he had no reason to hope for her coming, it was 
 scarcely a surprise when the door opened behind him and 
 the light step he knew sounded on the oak floor. 
 
 A wave of happiness rose within him as he turned and 
 met her with outstretched hands. 
 
 *' Rachel!" 
 
 The name came unawares, and only her vivid blush 
 reminded him that he had gone beyond his right. 
 
 "I did not think I should see you here this after- 
 noon." 
 
 " Oh, I am here very often. I cannot get on long with- 
 out Aunt Belle. She is such a wonderful person. She has 
 all the threads of all our schemes at her fingers' ends. She 
 never forgets anything — names, places, needs, troubles, 
 hopes, plans, they are all inscribed on the tablet of her 
 mind. It is the largest mind I know." 
 
 *' Not larger than your father's ? " 
 
 " Perhaps not ; but his mind is full of things, hers is full 
 of people, human interests." 
 
 " Doesn't humanity come into the scheme of the great 
 contractor, who employs men by the thousand ? " 
 
 " So many that they are unknown multitudes. They have 
 no individual existence for him. They think and move in 
 a block. They don't care about his interests. When they 
 strike they don't mind if he is to be ruined. He pays them 
 well, and does not work them too hard ; if one of the 
 thousands is killed, he pensions the widow and children ; but 
 he can do very little for individuals. There is no room for 
 kind thoughts and sympathy. A multitude is only a human 
 machine." 
 
 " Ah, I see, sympathy and love can only move in a narrow 
 radius, like the village of Bethany." 
 
 *' True ; but when everybody is sympathetic, the edges of 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 those narrow circles will touch — and no living creature will 
 be friendless." 
 
 She spoke with a subdued enthusiasm that shone in her 
 countenance like a light. She loved to talk of these things ; 
 and she talked more freely with Arden than she had ever 
 talked with any one except Mrs. Bellingham. She had no 
 disturbing sensitiveness, no apprehension of ridicule when 
 she was with him ; and in her perfect confidence, in the 
 evident pleasure she took in telling him her ideas and her 
 hopes, he saw the promise of her love. 
 
 He brought a chair to the window for her. The air was 
 mild enough to admit of an open window, though the 
 westering sun that touched the roof of the Museum with 
 gold did not warm Ivlrs. Bellingham's library. 
 
 " What have you been doing all day ? " he asked, when 
 she was seated. 
 
 "I spent an hour or two in the children's hospital, St. 
 Helena's ; and then I went for a little round among my old 
 women. There are two of them who remind me of the 
 saints I have read about in the old, old histories, such 
 patience, and such a complete renunciation of all the 
 pleasures and comforts of life." 
 
 " They are like the fox in the fable, poor souls 1 They 
 renounce the unattainable." 
 
 " Ah, but to be cheerful in self-abnegation, not to be 
 angry or distrustful. To have tasted none of the gladness 
 of life — not even humdrum comfort — and yet after seventy 
 years to be able to say God is good." 
 
 " Religion, as Father Romney and his like administer it, 
 is a grand hypnotizer." 
 
 He caught her shocked look, and his cheek flushed at the 
 thought of having offended her; and yet he could not curb his 
 tongue, or pretend; not even though her approval meant life. 
 
 He drew a chair near hers and seated himself. There was 
 nothing embarrassing for her in finding herself alone with 
 him. They had been so often alone together in divers 
 places and at divers seasons ; and if she knew that he loved 
 her, she had no fear of his love. 
 
 *' I met Archer Stormont on my way here," he said, after 
 a pause, " and he told me that he is to start for New York 
 next Saturday." 
 
 157 
 
The Conflict, 
 
 "The first stage of his journey to Alaska. What an 
 adventurous person he is ! " 
 
 "He wants me to go with him, as a fellow-adven- 
 turer." 
 
 Her startled look and loss of colour thrilled him with a 
 wild joy. 
 
 " She cares, she cares, she cares ! " he thought. " She is 
 mine ! " 
 
 His heart swelled with rapture. All that was needed was 
 her love. All other circumstances were in his favour. 
 
 " And do you think of going ? " she asked. 
 
 " I have been thinking about it seriously — very seriously." 
 
 " I am sorry you are tired of doing good. You have 
 made so many poor creatures fond of you — and you will 
 turn your back upon them — forsake them — forget them 
 perhaps — for a whim." 
 
 Her cheeks were flushed now, and there were tears in her 
 eyes, half sorrow, half indignation. 
 
 " Not for a whim, Rachel, not for any light reason. If I 
 go to Klondyke, I shall carry with me a broken life, a 
 despairing heart." 
 
 " I don't understand," she faltered, brushing away her 
 sudden tears with a hand that shook a little as it groped for 
 the handkerchief in her jacket-pocket. 
 
 " Whether I go or stay rests with you. It is for you to 
 decide. You know, you must know, that I love you. How 
 could it be otherwise ? You have let me be your friend, 
 your almost daily companion ; you have been so sweetly 
 frank, so divinely trustful ; you have let me read your lovely 
 mind like an open book. You have given me the most 
 exquisite happiness my life has ever known, the only perfect 
 happiness. You could jiot guess that I loved you from the 
 hour of our first meeting, from our first hour of light casual 
 talk at the Selbys' table. You could not know that ; but 
 you must know now, you must have discovered ever so long 
 ago, how dearly, how deeply, I love you." 
 
 . He tried to take her hand, but she withdrew it, and 
 looked at him gravely, sorrowfully even. 
 
 " I have thought sometimes — lately — that you cared for 
 me — that our happy friendship was coming to an end," she 
 said slowly. 
 
 158 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Only to blossom into love. Friendship was the gradual 
 growth of the plant — love is the glorious flower." 
 
 " Pray, pray don't talk so wildly. I wanted our friendship 
 to last " 
 
 " Because love was impossible — on your part ? Is that 
 what you mean ? " 
 
 " Not quite — not quite that." 
 
 *' But you look upon my love as a calamity — something 
 that ought never to have been." 
 
 " Something that cannot bring us happiness, if there is an 
 impassable gulf between us." 
 
 "What gulf? Why impassable ? When first I met you 
 I thought that riches — the god of this age — would hold us 
 apart. But now, knowing what your life is, I know for how 
 little worldly possessions count with you ; and that all you 
 would ask from a husband would be liberty to devote your 
 fortune to good works. I want no share in your wealth, 
 Rachel. I want you, and you alone ; and I have reason to 
 think that if you loved me there would be no difficulties to 
 overcome, and that I should be acceptable to your father 
 and mother." 
 
 "Yes, I know, I know how highly my father thinks of 
 you," she answered quickly ; " but even that can make no 
 difference to me if your thoughts of God and the world to 
 come are as far from my thoughts as I fear they are. If I 
 loved you ever so dearly," she went on, in a lower voice, 
 that faltered a little, while her hands were clasped, with 
 nervous fingers interlaced, " if I loved you as dearly as ever 
 a wife loved her husband, how could I marry you, how 
 could I promise to honour and obey a man whose opinions 
 fill me with horror ? No, no ; it could never be. I have 
 valued your friendship more and more as the days have 
 gone by ; but I knew from the first that we could never be 
 more than friends." 
 
 " And when you gave me the inestimable bliss of your 
 companionship, when you let me follow you and adore 
 you " 
 
 " Oh no, no ; there was no word of love." 
 
 " Was my adoration less obvious because it was silent ? 
 You must have known, Rachel, no woman could have 
 helped knowing, how deeply you were beloved." 
 
 159 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 *' I may have thought sometimes " she faltered, the 
 
 delicate hands working convulsively, and her eyes brimming 
 with tears. 
 
 " You knew, you knew," he repeated passionately, " and 
 you let me love you ! You never reckoned with my fond 
 hopes, my dreams of a happy life, my disappointment, my 
 broken heart. And now you tell me that we can be nothing 
 to each other " 
 
 " No, no ; friends always, the tniest, the dearest." 
 
 " Men have not those half-measures. With us it is all or 
 nothing. Friendship is the stone which a woman offers to the 
 man who asks her for bread. If you do not love me, if you 
 will not accept my love, all is over between us. When I go 
 out of that door, I shall go out a stranger to the rest of your 
 life — loving your memory to my last breath, but never daring 
 to see you again. We have been closer friends than most 
 lovers, have had better opportunities of sounding the depths 
 of each other's minds, have been associated as even husbands 
 and wives are seldom associated, thinking the same thoughts, 
 sorrowing and rejoicing for the same things; and can you 
 dismiss me, me whom you know as an honest man, your 
 faithful ally in good works, penetrated as you yourself are 
 with an illimitable ardour in the cause of suffering humanity ; 
 can you say I am to have no part in your life, no recom- 
 pense from your love, because we differ in our opinions? 
 Will you dismiss me upon a question of metaphysics ? — my 
 estimate of things unknowable and unthinkable— a question 
 which every man has the right to answer according to the 
 light that is in him, and to keep the answer locked in his 
 own mind." 
 
 " Yes, I know that is your way of thinking ; but it never, 
 never, never could be mine. If I did not believe in God 
 and Christ, in the life after death, in the recompense of the 
 just and the punishment of the wicked, this world and its 
 sufferings, its cruelties, its injustice, would be such a horrible 
 wilderness, such an intolerable puzzle, that I should want to 
 turn my face to the wall and despair and die." 
 
 " What, while you can fight in the battle against Apollyon, 
 help in the sacred cause of progress ? Why, every woman 
 who lives as you do is a link in the chain of betterment. 
 Rachel, Rachel, be reasonable ! As I live I will never try 
 
 1 60 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 to shake your faith, for to me your faith is sacred and 
 beautiful." 
 
 " You would not try ! No ! But you might influence me 
 against my own will. You are so much cleverer than I am, 
 have read more, and thought more. How could I help 
 being influenced by you ? And when I looked forward to 
 the hfe after death — the life in which I believe those who 
 love each other here will be reunited in a deathless happi- 
 ness — when I looked forward and remembered that for you 
 that hereafter was a foolish dream, that when you refrained 
 from ridicule of my hopes, my creed, the church in which I 
 prayed, the altar before which I knelt, you were only humour- 
 ing me as you would humour a child that believed in fairy- 
 land. How could I bear it ? How could I be steadfast and 
 unwavering, against such an influence ? No, no, no, ^Valter, 
 I cannot hazard my immortal soul ! " 
 
 She had risen in her agitation, and was standing by the 
 open window, where the air blew colder as the light faded. 
 She was deadly pale, and her tears were streaming unheeded. 
 
 " Rachel ! " he cried vehemently, snatching her in his arms, 
 holding her and looking down at her with passionate love. 
 '• Rachel, Rachel, make me happy, and leave the future in 
 the lap of Fate ! What docs it all matter, all the world of 
 thought and speculation, all the creeds and all the dreams 
 of men, compared with the bliss of two hearts that are as 
 one, two Uves merged in each other in the ecstasy of love ? 
 All I know, all you can know, of life is that its highest and 
 best and purest and truest is love, the love that beats in 
 your breast now, like a scared bird, the love that answers 
 throb for throb to mine. No, no ; let me keep you, dear," 
 as she tried to break away from him ; " let me hold you to 
 my heart this once, if never, never, never again. I will not 
 even kiss those pale lips — but I must speak ; I must make 
 my protest against a woman's folly. I cannot see those tears, 
 and not believe that you love me. You love me, and we 
 have our lives in our own hands. There is nothing, nothing 
 but your will that can hinder our happiness. And, oh, my 
 dearest girl, is not this little life enough for us to consider 
 while we are here ? Is not love enough, earthly love made 
 holy by high and pure hopes, love unselfish, love unsensual, 
 love divine ? " 
 
 i6i M 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 He released her from his arms ; and she began to pace 
 the room slowly, drying her tears, deep in thought. 
 
 " If there were any hope that you would change," she 
 said, " if you were likely ever to think " 
 
 She broke off falteringly, looking at him with a despairing 
 earnestness. 
 
 " If I were likely to think as you and Father Romney 
 think — to believe in the efficacy of long prayers and 
 elaborate ritual, to accept the assurance of supernatural 
 things that war against my common sense? No, Rachel, 
 I do not believe that I shall ever come to that pass — not 
 in the health and vigour of my mind. I foresee no possi- 
 bility of such a change in me. I cannot lie to you. I 
 cannot play the hypocrite, and say that my love for you 
 might make a convert of me, might lead me to see with 
 your eyes, and think with your mind. But if in all that 
 concerns this world, this life that has to be lived here, 
 the only certain life, we think alike, and mean to act alike ; 
 if there is no sacrifice you can ask of pleasure or comfort 
 that I would not willingly yield ; no toil and trouble that 
 I would not take, for you and those you care for; surely 
 there is promise of happiness for us both, and our different 
 views of the dim and unknown future need not come 
 between us and that perfect life of wedded love which is 
 Nature's best gift to her children." 
 
 " I dare not hazard my immortal soul ! " she said, wring- 
 ing her hands, as she paced the room, while Arden stood 
 like a rock, watching her, loving her, admiring her in her 
 pale beauty, tall and slender as a lily, sheathed in the 
 straight folds of her green cloth gown, the fair throat and 
 face and pale brown hair the flower that crowned the folded 
 leaves. 
 
 Could so gentle, so delicate a creature, be adamant when 
 her own heart urged surrender? He could not doubt that 
 she loved him. Her agitation was too intense for anything 
 except a despairing love. 
 
 " Rachel, there need be no hazard. Why should you 
 fear ? You, whose faith is firm and steadfast." 
 
 " Is my faith firm ? Who knows ? I have never thought 
 of spiritual things too deeply. I have never questioned the 
 creed that I was taught in my childhood. I have grown up 
 
 162 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 believing, and happy in my belief. But if I were your wife, 
 if I were thinking day by day about you, deploring your 
 want of faith, arguing with you, trying to change you, only 
 to be defeated by your stronger intellect — who knov/s 
 whether I could remain steadfast, whether I too might not 
 begin to question those divine truths which no man can 
 demonstrate or prove, which we are taught to receive as 
 children, unquestioning, obedient ? No, no, no ; I will not 
 hazard my belief in God and Christ. That is my most 
 sacred possession. I will not risk my hope of heaven for 
 any dream of happiness on earth. I can be happy in 
 another way, happy as v/omen are in holy sisterhoods, 
 bending their minds to the yoke, patient in self-surrender." 
 
 " Rachel," he exclaimed, and the exclamation sounded 
 like a cry of pain, " for pity's sake do not think of that 
 melancholy fate — for you, for you in your youth and 
 beauty ! If you will not be my wife, at least be true to 
 your mission upon earth, and make a better man's life 
 happy. Dearly as I love you, I would rather think of you 
 in years to come as a happy wife, than as a mock nun, 
 subordinate perhaps to women of inferior intellect, obey- 
 ing where Nature meant you to command. I could not 
 endure the thought of such a sacrifice." 
 
 " It is not likely to happen, perhaps, for it would distress 
 my father and mother, and their happiness must come before 
 my own." 
 
 "That is well. I know what your father wishes. He 
 was good enough to confide in me. He wants to see his 
 daughter happily married — to see her children at his knees, 
 when his days decline. Rachel, if you will trust your life, 
 your creed, your plan of existence to me, I will pledge 
 myself never to trouble your ideas of the spirit-world, 
 always to respect your views, to keep my doubts locked 
 in my own mind, so that you shall forget that I am less 
 than a believing Christian. Is that so great a risk to run ? 
 At least you know the worst of me. J>Iight there not be a 
 greater hazard in marrj'ing a man of exalted piety, whose 
 exaggerated faith might make shipwreck afterwards? " 
 
 " I am not likely to run that hazard either," she answered. 
 " Oh, you do not know what my faith is to me — hov/ much 
 of my life it means. Think when I go amongst those poor 
 
 163 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 women — those ill-used wives, those wretched mothers whose 
 children have gone down into an abyss of infamy, those lost 
 girls whose youth has been ruined by sin — what could I say 
 to them, how could I comfort them, how speak to them of 
 hope, if I could not assure them of God's justice, and of 
 Christ's divine pity ? If my faith faltered, if I were half- 
 hearted, spoke only with the lips, what good could I do 
 them ? The Gospel has been my strong rock ; and I dare 
 not marry an unbeliever." 
 
 " And for my desolate life, for my broken heart, you have 
 no mercy ? " 
 
 '' Men's hearts are not easily broken. You will go back 
 into the busy world. You will have your career. I shall 
 hear of you as distinguished in some worthy work. I know 
 how good you are, how good and true a friend of humanity. 
 And some day, perhaps, in years to come, the light will 
 
 shine upon you as it has shone upon others • " 
 
 " Let me be your husband, and wait for the light " 
 
 " No, no ! It is too far off — too uncertain. You will 
 have my prayers always, wherever you are. I shall never 
 forget you. I shall never cease to be sorry for you." 
 
 *' And those prayers, these tears, are all that you will give 
 me in return for my love? You will not give me one ray 
 of hope?" 
 
 " I cannot, Walter." 
 
 " A woman's cannot means will not," he answered bitterly. 
 *' Well, the Arctic circle cannot be much colder than your 
 heart is for me." 
 
 " You know that is not true." 
 
 " Yes, I know ; I felt your heart beat against my own. 
 That heart is human. Oh, if it were but mine ! It is your 
 will that is like the adamant stone : it is your will that can 
 sacrifice human hearts to theological forms." 
 
 *' No, no ; I am no bigot. It is not a question of forms. 
 It is the burning question, the essential question — a world 
 to come. I cannot live without the belief in heaven, or 
 help others to live. Christ, my rock of ages, has promised 
 that heavenly home to all who suffer, to all who repent of 
 sin. I cannot loosen my hold on my Saviour. I cannot 
 trust my life to an unbeliever." 
 
 " It is to be farewell, then — farev/ell for ever ? " 
 
 164 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " No, no ; you will come back to me by-and-by ; and we 
 shall be friends and fellow-workers again." 
 
 " Never ! I love you too well. You must be all or 
 nothing to me." 
 
 The door opened suddenly, and I»*Irs. Bellingham came 
 in, alert and sm.iling, though not without traces of fatigue. 
 
 She looked first at Arden, holding out her hand to him, 
 having been with Rachel in the morning. 
 
 " It was very good of you to wait for me. Phoebe tells 
 me that you have been here since half-past four. You 
 should have made tea for this poor creature, Rachel. He 
 looks woefully white and tired. A\'hy " — suddenly observing 
 Rachel's tearful face — " what has happened ? What is the 
 trouble between you two fast friends ? " 
 
 Rachel turned away, under the pretence of looking for 
 her gloves on the table, where she had thrown them when 
 she came in. 
 
 " What does it all mean, AValter?" 
 
 " Only that Miss Lorimer and I have been saying good- 
 bye to each other, for a long time." 
 
 " Good-bye." 
 
 " I am going to North America with Archer Stormont. 
 That restless spirit has set me on fire for adventure. I am 
 going to Klondyke with him. Pray don't be alarmed — > 
 there is nothing terrible about the expedition " 
 
 " I am not alarmed. I am only disappointed— intensely 
 disappointed. Rachel, this is your doing ! Why are you 
 sending him away ? " 
 
 "That question has been asked and answered, my dear 
 kind friend," Arden said, after a pause, Rachel remaining 
 silent. 
 
 "Rachel, it is foolish, wrong, cruel — cruel to yourself 
 and to him," exclaimed Mrs. Bellingham, impetuously. 
 
 Arden went to Rachel, took her hand in his, and covered 
 it with kisses. The hand was cold, but did not withdraw 
 itself from his touch. No word was spoken ; but he heard 
 her stifled sob as he left her. 
 
 He grasped Mrs. Bellingham's hand with a muttered 
 good-bye. 
 
 " Noj no : you must let me see you again before you 
 start." 
 
 105 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 *' I fear it will he impossible. I am to sail next Saturday." 
 
 ^' From Southampton ? Yes ; Miss Jamford told me 
 about their voyage. I shall be at Waterloo, perhaps, to 
 say good-bye." 
 
 He tried to thank her, but the words would not come. 
 He was too near the ignominy of tears. 
 
 He hardly knew how he had made his way back to his 
 own rooms, when he found himself there in the gathering 
 dusk, with his books surrounding him, the familiar faces 
 looking at him in mute pity. He had moved amidst the 
 London traffic, crossing Tottenham Court Road, Oxford 
 Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly, like a sleep-walker, un- 
 conscious of the things about him, steering his way through 
 the crowd automatically. The only thing he remembered 
 of that dream-like journey was the clock of St. James's 
 Church striking six as he went through the little court 
 leading to Jermyn Street. 
 
 He had not known until this hour of his despair how 
 strong his hope had been. He had foreseen difficulties, 
 but in his inmost heart he had been conscious that he was 
 loved, and he believed that love would rise supreme over 
 every obstacle. And now all was lost; the affection that 
 had given a new colour to his life was to be henceforward 
 only a memory. 
 
 The world lay around him, dark and empty— a wilderness, 
 a chaos, like earth without the sun. 
 
 He sat in the evening dusk beside the hearth where the 
 fire burnt low, sat in a melancholy reverie, thinking what 
 his future would be without Rachel. She had come into his 
 life at its darkest hour, and her coming had been like light. 
 Parting from her he parted with every joy and every hope. 
 He shrank with horror from the treadmill round of an 
 existence unblest by her presence and her love. 
 
 " And yet she loved me," he thought, clasping his hands 
 above his head in a passion of revolt. " She loved me, and 
 would have been happy with me ; and she thrusts me out 
 into the darkness, because I cannot pretend to be the thing 
 I am not, even to buy her love." 
 
 And then he thought of what his life might have been if 
 he had bartered truth and honour for that dear prize ; if he 
 could have pretended to believe in the things that were the 
 
 i66 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 most precious part of her life. If he could have sat by her 
 side listening to awakening sermons, and affecting to be 
 impressed and edified ; if he had been a regular worshipper 
 at early services and had knelt with her at the altar. Would 
 the acted lie have been a crime so terrible as to work like 
 a blight upon his mind ? Who would have been the worse 
 for his hypocrisy ? What mattered the mock offering if there 
 were no God behind the veil ? But then came the question 
 of truth and honesty, and there the answer was plain. Not 
 for the woman he adored, could he stain his soul with so 
 base a lie. And there was more than self-respect, there 
 was his reverence for her. Not for an eternity of bliss could 
 he deceive her. 
 
 And so there was nothing for it but to shut the book that 
 held the one romance of his life. The story ended suddenly, 
 and in tears, her tears as well as his own. He was not 
 unselfish enough to regret those tears. It soothed him to 
 think that they had parted in mutual sorrow. 
 
 The church clock struck seven, and his servant brought 
 in the reading-lamp, and lighted the candles on the mantel- 
 piece. 
 
 " I did not hear you come in, sir, or I should have 
 brought the lamp sooner. I^Irs. Berry only just told me 
 you came in an hour ago." 
 
 " I did not want the lamp. I am going for a turn in the 
 park till eight o'clock. I shan't dress." 
 
 " You told me to remind you, sir, about the person from 
 the East End who was to come this evening." 
 
 " Mr. Dartnell ! Yes ! Thank you, iSlartin." 
 
 " I have ordered sandwiches and coffee for nine o'clock, 
 sir." 
 
 " Quite right ; but I have one of my headaches, and I 
 may send him a wire to put oft his visit" 
 
 " Shall I send the message, sir ? " 
 
 *' No ; I'll do it myself— or— I may change my mind." 
 
 " Very good, sir." 
 
 " And, excellent and faithful as you are, you are one of 
 the people I shall be glad to get away from," thought Arden, 
 as the valet helped him with his overcoat. " You, and fixed 
 hours for meals, the necessity to dine, even on dust and 
 ashes; all the monotonous machinery of life vrhen the 
 
 167 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 spring is broken ; the treadmill round, the recurrence of 
 petty details, when the scent and the savour have gone out 
 of everything." 
 
 The disgust of life had seized upon him like a mental 
 malaria. All that had seemed fair and pleasant yesterday, 
 the lighted streets, the dim grey sky sprinkled with pale 
 stars, the bright windows of the club-houses, their open doors 
 and lighted halls, suggesting go-as-you-please comfort, and 
 cheerful gatherings of men who liked to be together without 
 caring much about each other ; the passing faces, carrying 
 half-told histories in eyes and lips, steadfast, serious, trivial, 
 gloomy, gay ; the beggar-children with their pathetic appeal 
 to the well-to-do ; the puzzles, the questions, the griefs, the 
 blisses in that passing show, all the things that had interested 
 him in the London panorama, to-night seemed remote and 
 unreal, as if he saw them behind a black veil, only just trans- 
 parent enough to let him know that they were there, moving 
 figures in a cloudy dumb-show. 
 
 The park was deserted, and he paced the quiet walks for 
 more than an hour, not in thought, but in a dull despondency, 
 unable even to think. He went into a post-office on his way 
 back to Jermyn Street, and telegraphed to x\rcher Stormont — 
 
 " / can Join your expedition. Let me see you early to- 
 morrow T 
 
 " The half-hour has stmck, sir," his servant told him, 
 when he went up to his rooms. " Mrs. Berry has done 
 her best for the fish, but whiting don't bear to be kept 
 back." 
 
 " Never mind the fish. I don't Avant any dinner." 
 *' There's lamb cutlets, sir, and some grass." 
 "Very well. You can serve the cutlets," said Ardcn, 
 wearily, thirsting to get away from a civilization which com- 
 pelled a man to dine without an appetite, or to explain to his 
 servants why he was not hungry. 
 
 He had not put off Michael's visit. The man's company 
 might serve to distract his mind from that aching grief whicii 
 gnawed his heart like a physical pain. He would have to 
 talk, to argue, to enter into Michael's views of the world and 
 mankind, and to meet him on the common ground of 
 theories imbibed from Mill and Spencer. He would be 
 
 1 68 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 bored no doubt, tortured even, in the present state of his 
 nerves ; but anything would be better than that concentrated 
 agony of a mind fixed upon one point, which he had suffered 
 in the last three hours. 
 
 He made a feeble pretence of dining, under the too 
 sympathetic eye of his old servant — son of his widowed 
 nurse — born and reared on the Wildernsea estate, altogether 
 conscientious and devoted. He had finished the mock meal 
 before nine, and went back to his library, where the cheerful 
 light of fire and lamp glowed on the richly bound books. 
 His books had been his only foppery. For them nothing 
 had been too good. But to-night he looked at them in 
 a despairing wonder, as if they had suddenly become 
 strange. 
 
 Addison, Lamb, Carlyle, Ruskin, Goethe, Heine, Scott, 
 Balzac, de Musset — all the old favourites, the familiar 
 friends ! Could he ever find delight in them again ? Alas, 
 the dreams that he had dreamt, the dream of sitting with a 
 beloved wife among his beloved books, of making all his 
 chosen writers as dear to her as they were to him, the dream 
 of mutual likings and fancies that would mould two minds 
 into one, the dream of reposeful evenings after days spent 
 in working for others, ^'ain dreams that a week ago had 
 seemed so near being realized ; and which now could delude 
 him no more. 
 
 IMichael was announced as the clock struck nine, having 
 waited in the street, after his tramp from Stepney, till the 
 exact moment. 
 
 " Why, you are as punctual as if you were calling on a 
 cabinet minister," said Arden, shaking hands with him. 
 
 " I owe you that much respect, Mr. Arden. I've heard 
 say that punctuality is the politeness of princes ; and I think 
 the man who can't keep time stamps himself as a weakling 
 and a fool. But you're not looking yourself to-night. I hope 
 you're not ill ? " 
 
 " I am not quite myself. I have come to a sudden resolu- 
 tion which is rather upsetting. I am going to leave England 
 for a longish time." 
 
 " I'm sorry to hear that, Mr. Arden. You'll be greatly 
 missed in my part of the world. And I shall miss you more 
 than I can say. I never thought that I should come to say 
 
 169 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 as much to any member of the spending and wasting and 
 coat-of-arms-and-cockade classes — the gig-respectabilities.'' 
 
 " Go on, Michael ! The phantasm-captains " 
 
 " You ain't a phantasm captain, Mr. Arden ; and I'm 
 proud of your friendship. You say you are going to be away 
 a longish time. Does that mean as much as a year ? " 
 
 " It means between two and three years." 
 
 " And you are going to travel about the Continent, I 
 suppose, going to stop at expensive hotels, and look at 
 pictures and statues, and volcanoes and waterfalls ? " 
 
 " No, Michael. I am going to North America — to Alaska, 
 and to the Klondyke river." 
 
 " Klondyke ? That's the place where they have found 
 gold." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And it's an awful rough life out there, ain't it ? I read 
 an account of it in a Sunday paper, not long ago. An arctic 
 climate, no railway, no post-office ; nothing. It won't suit 
 you, Mr. Arden. You've pluck enough for anything, I dare 
 say, but you haven't been brought up the right way. You've 
 lived soft all your life. You'd better think twice about it, 
 before you tackle such a job as that." 
 
 " I have thought about it till I'm tired of thinking, Mike, 
 and I mean to face it." 
 
 "And you think you'll come home alive?" 
 
 " That's a question I haven't thought about, for it matters 
 very little to me." 
 
 " I see, Mr. Arden. You've had some stroke of trouble 
 that has changed you. Well, I know what that means. But 
 I think you might hit upon something better than Klondyke 
 gold-fields. You don't want money." 
 
 " For myself? Not a stiver." 
 
 " A voyage round the world in a steam-yacht, now ; that 
 would be more your form." 
 
 " Not the slightest use, Mike. I don't want champagne 
 dinners, and poker parties in the evening. I vrant to cast 
 myself adrift, to get a thousand miles from civilization." 
 
 " And your library," said Mike, looking round the close- 
 packed Chippendale bookcases with intense admiration. 
 ** Can you bear to leave that?" 
 
 "You don't know how few books will serve a man if they 
 
 170 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 are the quintessence of literature — Horace, Dante, Cervantes, 
 and Shakespeare, will pack in a small parcel ; but I never 
 knew a man who had come to the end of them." 
 
 "And there's 'Omer," said Mike. "I have got Pope's 
 translation. There's a goodish lot of reading in that. It's 
 what I call a cut-and-come-again book. It isn't like one of 
 your foolish novels that's waste paper when the author has 
 let the cat out of the bag — who stole the diamond, or who 
 murdered the groom ? Give me a book like 'Omer's ' Iliad.' 
 It took me a year to read, before I knew all the fellows, 
 which were Greeks and which were Trojans, and which was 
 first favourite with Minerva or Juno. I didn't leave the 
 book till I had 'em all pat." 
 
 "You are the best reader I ever met with, Mike. You 
 put Dr. Johnson to shame." 
 
 " Ah, he talked of tearing the heart out of a book. I 
 read that in Tit-Bits. That was very well for Samuel John- 
 son. He knew where the heart was, and how to find it. 
 But it wouldn't do for a self-educated chap. It's dogged as 
 does it, for such as me." 
 
 Martin appeared, carrying a tray, with a brown coffee-pot 
 that wafted suggestions of Arabian nights in its aroma, and 
 a pile of triangular sandwiches nestling in a fringed doyley, 
 a daintiness of detail which was by no means thrown away 
 upon the dock-labourer. 
 
 " I suppose you're going to take that fine gentleman with 
 you ? " said Mike, when he had poured out his coffee. 
 
 " Martin ? No. He is a capital servant, but he would 
 hardly do for Alaska. I am going with a friend who is used 
 to a rough life, and I shall rough it as he does. He would 
 laugh at the notion of a body-servant in the Chilkoot pass. 
 
 " You and your friend are going — any one else ?" 
 
 " We take a doctor." 
 
 " That's wise," said Mike, and then, after a meditative 
 silence, resumed, " I've read a bit about the life yonder, 
 I>>Ir. Arden, and it seems to me that the men that are most 
 wanted are men of thews and sinews, labouring men, navvies 
 — chaps like me ; and you don't appear to have got one of 
 that kind in your litde lot." 
 
 " No, ]\Iike ; we are to be the labourers. We mean to 
 put our shoulders to the wheel." 
 
 171 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 *' So you may, but it isn't much of a shoulder to shove 
 with. I know you've the pluck. Brain and heart are all 
 there ; but you haven't the fibre. You don't know what 
 work means till you try. Pushing a sledge, carrying a boat, 
 shipping and unshipping your cargo. It sounds as if it only 
 vranted the will ; but it wants something more than that, 
 Mr. Arden. It wants the training ; it wants the arms and 
 the back that have carried their load since they were big 
 enough to work. You three gentlemen will do your best, 
 I don't doubt, and will come through it somehow ; but 
 you'd find the job all the easier if you had one big brute 
 to help with the rough work — a brute like me. ^Vill you 
 take me ? " 
 
 " You, Mike ! What, are you tired of your life in 
 London ? " 
 
 " I've been dead sick of it for a long time ; but I hadn't 
 the spirit to turn it up. Klondyke would be a chance for 
 me. I don't want to be paid for my work. If you're lucky, 
 and find plenty of gold, I suppose I should come in for my 
 share " 
 
 *' Of course you would." 
 
 " I've got a little bit of money laid by — enough for a 
 berth in the steerage, and for my outfit." 
 
 " Don't trouble about that. If you want to go with us, 
 and will share the rough and smooth, I'll stand the expense 
 — always provided my friend is willing to take you. He's 
 the organizer and captain of the expedition. I shall see 
 him to-morrow ; and I'll let you know to-morrow night." 
 
 " I hope your friend will see the use of me. But before 
 you take any trouble on my account, there's something more 
 to be said. Did Father Romney tell you anything about 
 me, Mr. Arden ? " 
 
 " He told me that there was a tragedy in your life." 
 
 *' Did he tell you that I was a jail-bird ? " 
 
 " No, no, Mike. I should be sorry to believe " 
 
 " Not a thief — not a sneak and a liar — not an old oftendcr 
 — well known to the police — in and out of prison ; not that 
 kind of cur, ISlr. Arden. But there's a dark stain across my 
 life — the mark of blood." 
 
 Arden gave a startled look, and a flush passed over his 
 face; as he repeated, " The mark of blood ! " 
 
 1/2 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 '• I have been buried alive, j\Ir. Arden ; buried alive in a 
 convict prison. There is a gap of seven years in my life — 
 seven years in which I ceased to be a man, and became a 
 machine, moving in a narrow space at the will of others, 
 backwards and forwards, like a piston in a steam-engine ; 
 and all that time I had one thing to think about and dream 
 about, one minute out of all the days and months and 
 years of my life — one minute that blazed in red flame 
 against black darkness, and haunted me, and followed me 
 sleeping or waking — the one minute in which the deed was 
 done." 
 
 " I cannot believe you were a murderer — though some 
 horrible provocation " 
 
 " Yes, there was provocation enough to make a sane man 
 mad — the coroner's jury called it manslaughter — the coroner 
 said he was sorry for me. But there were two lives lost — 
 two souls sent to hell, if what the prison chaplain preached 
 is true — two unrepentent sinners sent to everlasting woe — 
 by my hand." 
 
 " Tell me your story, Michael — as much or as little of it 
 as you like," Arden said, with undiminished kindness. " I 
 shall believe every word you say, for I think you are made 
 of good stuff, and that your life has been, and will be, a life 
 of atonement." 
 
 " I'll tell you everything, 'Mr. Arden. There's nothing 
 I want to keep back from you. It does me good, once in 
 a way, to open my heart to a man who feels the brother- 
 hood of men, rich and poor, saints and sinners, strong 
 and feeble, as you feel it. I can confess to you as I 
 confessed to Father Romney, before I had been a week 
 in his parish." 
 
 " Be sure I can sympathize with you, ?^Iike." 
 
 " I am sure, or I wouldn't open my lips. Well, it's a 
 common story enough. I was in one of the great iron-works 
 in Sheffield. I was foreman, and was getting good pay, 
 and I had one of the prettiest girls in the place for my 
 sweetheart — a girl that came of respectable parents, and 
 had been well brought up. Her father was a clerk in a 
 bank, and she was a bit above me ; but I had done so well 
 that there wasn't much difficulty made about our marriage ; 
 and we were married, and I don't think that ever lighter 
 
 T - t 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 feet trod the streets of Sheffield than hers and mine in the, 
 first half-year of our married life." 
 
 He stopped suddenly, and his eyes had the look of a 
 man who turns his gaze inward upon the brain-picture of 
 days gone by. 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Arden, we were happy. I had chosen my 
 home in the country, three miles from the workshop, and 
 almost out of the smoke. I had taken a cottage from a 
 Building Society, which I was to pay for by instalments, 
 and in six years it would be my own freehold. We had 
 half an acre of ground ; and all through that summer I used 
 to work in my garden every evening as long as the light 
 held out. I had to get up at five o'clock to be at the works 
 in good time, and — well — I worked about as hard as a man 
 can work and be happy. But when we had been living 
 there about a year and a half, and when I had made our 
 garden, and was full of satisfaction in the thought of what 
 it was going to be as the years went on — so many years 
 for the privet hedges — so many for the climbing roses to 
 reach the gable-end and cluster round the chimney-stack — 
 so many for the wisteria to cover the south wall — why, I 
 had it all wrote down in my pocket-book, calculated almost 
 as close as a bit of measurement at the works ! — well, all 
 of a sudden my wife told me the place was killing her. 
 There was no one to talk to ; there was nothing to see ; 
 and the air was relaxing. I'd heard that word before when 
 people wanted to leave a place. Relaxing ! They can 
 always say it's relaxing. Who's to contradict them ? " 
 
 " And you gave up your garden, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Arden, I loved her too well to deny her any- 
 thing. She wanted to live in Sheffield, and to Sheffield we 
 must go. There was a great pile of workmen's dwellings 
 just built there ; the first of its kind ; gas in all the rooms, 
 baths, laundry, public kitchen, and every convenience ; not 
 like our cottage, where there was only the four walls, and 
 our garden, with a row of century-old limes, where the 
 blackbirds and thrushes sang all day long. A friend of 
 Jenny's lived in the big house, and Jenny wanted to be 
 near her friend, and she wanted to go to a theatre or a 
 music-hall once in a way, and she wanted to be near her 
 mother ; in short, she wanted Sheffield." 
 
 174 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Well, she had her way. She knew she only had to ask 
 and have. I took some rooms on the fourth floor. It 
 seemed up in the skies, but there were two more floors 
 overhead, and the rent was more than the rent of the 
 cottage that would have been our own in less than five 
 years. I had to forfeit what I had paid over and above 
 what the rent would have been ; but there was no help for 
 it. Jenny must be happy, if I could make her so." 
 
 He got up and moved about the room. 
 
 " I'd better make short work of the rest, sir. Jenny's 
 friend was a secret drunkard, one of those women who are 
 always feeling faint, or feeling low, or feeling cold, and 
 wanting a drop of spirits and water to set them right. Jenny 
 learnt the trick of her. She began to be always ailing. 
 And there was always the smell of brandy in our parlour 
 when I came home at night. ' Mrs. Evans has been here,' 
 I used to say, for I never suspected Jenny of wanting the 
 stuff"; but one night when I took her to the theatre I thought 
 she seemed strange, and the glassy look in her eyes frightened 
 me. She was drunk, Mr. Arden ; my pretty, delicate, well- 
 brought-up wife was drunk ! She couldn't walk steadily, 
 and I had to put her into a cab and take her home. I 
 needn't tell you how I used to talk to her — how I used 
 to kneel at her feet and beseech her to cure herself. I took 
 her to Whitby, and left her there in charge of a vroman I 
 thought I could trust — I did this and that— but nothing 
 stopped her. I would have borne with her to the end of 
 the chapter, would have nursed her and cherished her, and 
 loved her to the last hour of my life, if she had been true 
 to me in the midst of her degradation. But one day I 
 found out that she was carr}-ing on with an old admirer, a 
 clerk in a warehouse, a kind of gentlem.an, shiny boots, and 
 flower in coat o' Sundays. She swore there was no harm 
 in it. He'd dropped in to take a cup of tea, or she'd met 
 him in the street by chance and gone to a tea-shop with him." 
 
 Again there was a pause, and^then the words came faster, 
 as the tragedy neared its climax. 
 
 _ " I wanted to believe her, and I believed her. But one 
 night when I had meant to stay late at the works — where 
 there was a big job going on against time— I vras seized 
 
 175 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 with a sudden giddiness, and was obliged to give up. It 
 was ten o'clock, and I had told Jenny I should be at the 
 works till after midnight. 
 
 "Well, she had made the best of her chance. She had 
 given a party. The remains of a fine supper were on the 
 table, and empty champagne bottles. The visitors were 
 gone, except him. Those two were together, sitting side 
 iSy side in each other's arms, her head lying on his shoulder, 
 and all her pretty hair falling loose over his breast, and her 
 eyes looking up at him, drowned in tears — and I, well, I 
 had a drop of drink on board myself, and at the sight of 
 them I just went mad, and snatched a knife from the table 
 - — a carving knife that I'd sharpened myself the day before 
 for the Sunday dinner — and I dragged him out of her arms, 
 she shrieking and clutching him, as if she saw murder in 
 my face, and I sent the knife through his foul heart. She 
 gave one long, shrill scream as he dropped dead, and rushed 
 to the window. It was a sultry night, and the window was 
 wide open, a window opening on an iron balcony. In a 
 moment, like a flash, she had flung herself over the iron 
 rail, and was gone. I say it was all done in less than one 
 minute — from the time I snatched up the knife — two souls 
 gone to burning flame ! " 
 
 " A terrible tragedy, Michael ; but I for one do not 
 believe in the burning flame. I think we pay for our mis- 
 deeds here, and have no after-reckoning to face. Your 
 young wife blighted a life that might have been long and 
 peaceful and gracious, a blessing to herself and you. She 
 ran up a long score against herself, and paid it." 
 
 " But if I can't think of her in hell, how can I think of 
 her in heaven — her sins burnt white in atoning fires — fair 
 and innocent again— among the ransomed souls — saved by 
 the blood of the Lamb ? " 
 
 " Ah, Mike, if there is consolation in such dreams, cherish 
 them. There are some who say we have no evidence that 
 this life we are living is anything but a dream — since the 
 dreams we dream with shut eyes are so like it. So a dream, 
 more or less, is not worth disputing about. We are as 
 Nature made us ; we believe what we can, and we hope 
 what we can. For some of us it is all dark beyond these 
 voices." 
 
 176 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " It was dark for me in those seven years under lock and 
 key. My sentence was ten years, but they gave me three 
 off for good conduct. Every one was kind to me. The 
 chaplain lent me books. They were rather childish books- 
 pious books ; but I had never been a reader till then. My 
 life had been all work and movement, with no time for 
 more reading than a daily paper. Even those poor books 
 were a relief, and after a year or so, he lent me better 
 books — Darwin's "Voyage on the Beagle^' Livingstone's 
 " Travels," Dean Stanley's " History of the Jewish Church." 
 He was ver}- good to me. And then I had the Bible always. 
 A man has to be shut in a cell or cast on a desert island 
 to find out how much there is in that Book, so much that 
 days and nights and months and years cannot come at the 
 end of it— what a histor}- of the world and all the races of 
 man. Well, I came through my seven years alive; and 
 since I left the prison I have been a strict abstainer, and 
 a hard worker ; and here I am, thews and sinews, at your 
 service. If you want a navvy for the rough work of your 
 expedition, you could hardly have a tougher specimen." 
 
 "You represent something more than thews and sinews 
 for me, Mike. As for your tragedy, you have paid the law's 
 penalty, and have paid dearer in mental suffering. A man 
 would have a hard heart who could not pity you, as I do." 
 
 He held out his hand, which Michael grasped with fervour. 
 
 "And you'll let me go \\\\X\ you, Mr. Arden, your pal 
 being wiUing ? " 
 
 " My pal will be willing, Mike ; at least, I think I may 
 answer for him." 
 
 "Then you shall have a good servant, one that won't 
 stint his labour," said Michael. 
 
 Stomiont burst into the little dining-room in Jermyn 
 Street early next morning, while Arden was at breakfast, 
 and everything was settled in half an hour. He approved 
 of the dock-labourer as a chum. 
 
 " There's no question of caste after we leave Juneau," he 
 said; "copper-faces and white-faces, men and sleigh-dogs, 
 are all equal. And if your enlightened radical can saw 
 timber and build a boat better than you and I can, he'll 
 be boss." 
 
 177 N 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Arden called in Carlton House Terrace the day before 
 he sailed. He had no apprehension of meeting Rachel 
 there, as Friday was the afternoon for her attendance at a 
 creche which she herself had established, and of which she 
 was the chief supporter; an afternoon when she received 
 the mothers' weekly pence, and entertained them with a 
 substantial tea, and a friendly talk over their troubles, and 
 worries, and hopes. 
 
 Mrs. Lorimer greeted him with reproachful kindness. 
 " What is this mad thing you are going to do, Mr. Arden ? '' 
 she said, when they had shaken hands, and he had seated 
 himself beside her embroidery-frame. " Mr. Stormont has 
 told me all about it. I can't tell you how sorry I am." 
 
 " It is more than kind of you to be sorry. You and Mr. 
 Lorimer have been such good friends. I could not go away 
 without telling you how much I value your friendship. I 
 shall carry the thought of your warm-hearted hospitality to 
 the ice-region." 
 
 " But is it not madness in you to go there ? " 
 
 ** Alas ! my dear friend, it is the only sensible thing I 
 can do. I am not like Stormont, engaged to a girl who 
 loves him, and who would rather marry him offhand than 
 let him leave her. He turns his back upon happiness. I 
 go to find a cure for sorrow." 
 
 " Something has happened to spoil your pleasure in life?" 
 
 " Yes. Something that ends every hope and every 
 dream." 
 
 *' I won't ask you any questions, for I think I know what 
 your trouble is, though no one has told me anything about 
 it. I am almost as sorry as you can be. I should have 
 liked you for a son-in-law, Mr. Arden. (There now, I have 
 said it !) You come of an old family, of a race that was 
 honoured in the land centuries ago, when David's ancestors 
 were labouring men. And we both like you — David and I. 
 We want to see our dear girl married. This East End 
 craze of hers is all very well, but it has robbed us of her 
 company ; and if she is going to set her face against 
 marriage " 
 
 " She will not, perhaps, when the right man comes " 
 
 " I thought you were the right man. She has always 
 taken pleasure in your society." 
 
 178 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Yes, we have bepn happy together ; but that is over. 
 She has fixed a barrier between us. To n:!e it seems only 
 the shadow of a line, but to her mind it is insuperable." 
 
 "I understand; you are not religious enoiirh to please 
 her. That comes of the old Puritan race,"Mr. Arden. 
 David is careless about such things. His head is packed 
 so full of facts and realities that there's not much room 
 left for religion ; but his father and grandfather were leading 
 lights in their little world of Primitive Methodists, and for 
 them faith meant everything. With them, to believe rightly 
 was to be saved. David's idea of religion is doing right 
 things in the right way." 
 
 "He is an incomparable man, and his life is a grand 
 example." 
 
 "And you really mean to go? You won't wait a few 
 months, and give Fate another chance ? " 
 
 " It would be no use ; and the opportunity of going with 
 Stormont is too good to lose. I am not fit for solitude. 
 Your daughter's influence over me has been the strongest 
 influence in my life ; and I feel a lost wretch now that she 
 has cast me adrift. Oh, believe me, I am not complaining 
 of her ; her motives are the highest and purest. I respect 
 her view of life, even while I suffer." 
 
 "You are too generous. I think you ought to make 
 another trial. She has been looking wretched these last 
 few days, though she goes about her work as usual. I 
 know she is unhappy. Come, Mr. Arden, try again." 
 " It would be useless. Good-bye, dear friend." 
 She went with him to the staircase, and gave him both 
 her hands, with a motherly tenderness. 
 
 " I could have done more than like you ; I could have 
 loved you," she said. "Be sure you write to David or 
 me from time to time, and tell us how Fate is usin;: 
 you. 
 
 "Nemesis has done her worst," he said, with a bitter 
 smile, "but I shall be glad to let such good friends know if 
 I am aUve or dead ; and if you will tell me— something- 
 were it ever so little— about your daughter— just that she is 
 well and happy— I shall be deeply grateful." 
 
 " I shall tell you all about her. Don't leave off hoping. 
 I shan't." ^ ^ 
 
 179 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 The inevitable Saturday came, that Saturday which has 
 become a day of farewells, and the little party of four 
 started on the first stage of their pilgrimage to the Land of 
 Gold. 
 
 At Waterloo station, in the tumult of many partings, a 
 thrill of pain vibrating through the agitated crowd, Ardcn 
 found Mrs. Bellingham, calm in the midst of distracted 
 passengers and hurrying porters. 
 
 Her farewell was full of affection, and not without hope. 
 " My poor friend, be of good courage," she said, " and 
 be constant even to an unhappy love. Who knows what 
 may be waiting for you in the days to come? I shall 
 always believe in you." 
 
 And then, as the clamorous bell rang, and the last of the 
 travellers were taking their seats, she gave him a packet 
 addressed in the hand he knew so well. 
 " Rachel's good-bye," she said. 
 *' A letter ? " he asked eagerly. 
 
 " No ; I don't think there is a letter, only a word of 
 farewell, with the book she loves." 
 
 They clasped hands as the train moved slowly westward, 
 past a cloud of waving hands and agitated faces. 
 
 He did not open the little parcel till late in the afternoon, 
 when he was alone in his cabin, and the wooded shores of 
 the Solent were fading into grey fog. 
 
 The book was the New Testament, bound in pale green 
 silk, almost covered by a large white lily, a piece of delicate 
 embroidery which Arden had seen in Rachel's hands as she 
 sat beside him at some of their East End entertainments. 
 It touched him that she had given him her own work — 
 something of herself. She had written her farewell on the 
 flyleaf. 
 
 " Good-bye, dear Friend. If this book cannot be to you 
 what it is to me, I hope you will cherish it as the story of a 
 Beautiful Life. I shall think of you and pray for you ; and 
 my prayer will be that you may find God in the wilderness." 
 The great ship moved over the waters like a floating 
 town, so full of human life, of voices and movement, and 
 the different classes of society. The Jamfords and Stor- 
 mont occupied a luxurious seclusion in the finest state-rooms ; 
 Dartnell was in the steerage ; and Arden and the Edinburgh 
 
 i8o 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 doctor were among the second-class passengers, Arden 
 having taken advantage of AUck Mackenzie's economical 
 considerations as an excuse for keeping clear of the Chicago 
 family, whose exuberant enjoyment of the passing hour 
 would have been more than he could bear. No matter that 
 the cabin he shared with Mackenzie was exiguous, and had 
 only a borrowed light; he was at least out of reach of gay 
 company, safe from invitations to music or parlour games in 
 the ladies' saloon. He could He in his berth with his face 
 to the wall, and fancy himself lying in his grave. He could 
 not seem to have more utterly done with life, he thought, if 
 the narrow space had been underground. 
 
 He was a good sailor, and his mental pain was neither 
 intensified nor deadened by physical suffering. After two 
 days spent in dumb despair, which Mackenzie took for sup- 
 pressed sea-sickness, and was anxious to alleviate, he opened 
 his cabin-trunk and selected two or three volumes from his 
 little library of choice books ; and the old, old friends 
 talked to him with their kindly voices : Wordsworth and 
 Coleridge, in whose life man's love for woman played so 
 small a part; Lamb, for whom no star shone, and whose 
 every personal utterance breathes of meek renunciation ; 
 Goldsmith, one of Nature's unfortunates, an exquisite light 
 in an unbeautiful lamp. These all had been happy, with 
 that temperate pleasure in simple things, and that tender 
 appreciation of natural beauty, which elect souls enjoy ; an 
 equable state of mind that knows not the burning sun or the 
 black storm-clouds of passion. Their voices soothed him 
 in his dejection, and subtle shades of thought and feeling 
 appealed to him as they had never done before. 
 
 His first three nights at sea had been sleepless, but on 
 the fourth night he slept long and profoundly, and his 
 dreams were many and vivid. Rachel was his companion 
 through the labyrinth — in many and strange places — amongst 
 unknown multitudes, or amongst people whom they seemed 
 to have known always. They were together, engaged in the 
 work they had so lately been doing, but with the dream- 
 element of strangeness and impossibility in everything. Yet 
 the dreams had been full of happiness — bliss too exquisite 
 for expression — and her face, her voice, the touch of her 
 hand, had been so real that he had told himself " this is not 
 
 i8i 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 a dream ; " and waking in the wintry dawn it had been some 
 moments before he realized that he had been Hving among 
 shadows, that he was more than a thousand miles from the 
 place that held Rachel. 
 
 On the fifth night his dreams were troubled, though 
 Rachel was in them still. They were parting; the scene 
 in Mrs. Bellingham's library was acted over again, under 
 strange conditions. He held her in his arms, as he had 
 held her in those passionate moments, and the face that 
 looked up at him was the face he had seen then, the same 
 pale lips, the same tearful eyes; but her words were not 
 the same. 
 
 She spoke like a prophetess ; the deep note of warning 
 thrilled him. 
 
 " You are living without God in the world," she said ; 
 "but who is to defend you from the power of the devil? 
 You have chosen between man's two masters, Christ and 
 Satan. You have chosen the Lord of Hell instead of the 
 Lord of Heaven ; and your existence on earth and after 
 earth will be miserable. These tears are not of love, but of 
 pity — pity for your dreadful fate ! " 
 
 Her speech was ringing in his ears v.'hen he awoke, and 
 her speech was like the cry of pain. The dream, and the 
 strange tones of the dream-voice, haunted him all day, as he 
 sat alone, in a sheltered corner of the deck, watching the 
 racing waves and the gradual changes of a wintry sky. He 
 could interest himself in nothing, neither the moving figures 
 on the deck nor the progress of the ship, neither his books 
 nor the conversation of Alick Mackenzie, who wanted to 
 talk to him, but was repelled by his abstracted manner, 
 which he could no longer attribute to sea-sickness. 
 
 The sixth night brought fainter dreams, pale shadows 
 moving through Cimmerian darkness, and Rachel's form 
 was not among those shadows. His sleep was broken and 
 agitated, and in his waking intervals the old trouble clouded 
 his mind. 
 
 " I say, old chap, I'm afraid you've had a touch of night- 
 mare," said Mackenzie, in his strong young voice, when the 
 steward brought them their morning tea. "You'd better 
 let me give you a bromide draught before you turn in 
 to-night." 
 
 l32 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " I'd better let you give me a dose of prussic acid, if I 
 want to dream no more hellish dreams ! " 
 
 " No, no, my dear fellow, don't talk rot ! Your nerves 
 are out of order — or perhaps it's your digestion. You 
 don't eat enough for a sparrow, and the only way to do a 
 sea- voyage well is to feed like an alderman. But I'll give 
 you a harmless mixture that will settle your nightmare 
 dreams, if you'll come to your meals regularly, and take 
 a Httle exercise on deck, instead of m.oping in a dark 
 corner." 
 
 " Do you remember that story in Scott's " Demonology " — 
 the stor>' of the man who was haunted, first by a black cat, 
 next by a skeleton, then by a gentleman usher? He was a 
 man of sense, and he knew the things were not there — not 
 the actual things ; but the spectral appearances were enough 
 to take all the pleasure out of life." 
 
 " Ha.veyou been seeing things? " 
 
 " No, I have seen nothing ; but the story of those three 
 spectral forms came into my mind as I lay av>'ake this 
 morning." 
 
 " You had been dreaming ugly dreams ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " You won't be troubled with those when we are tramping 
 in Alaska." 
 
 183 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 There could hardly be a more startling change of scene 
 than from the west and the east of London to Juneau in 
 Alaska, the rising city, at the gateway of the gold country, 
 the headquarters of several steamboat lines, and the busy 
 mart where the miners buy their outfit, a picturesque settle- 
 ment at the foot of the snow-mountains, whence the avalanches 
 come tearing down day after day. Here Archer Stormont 
 and his companions bought revolvers, guns, and ammunition, 
 boat-building tools, provisions, and miners' clothes, and 
 shipped themselves and their luggage on the little steam- 
 boat, Adventure^ bound for the Indian village of Dyea, the 
 extreme northern limit of navigation. Here, after two nights 
 and one day, the steamer dropped anchor a mile from the 
 shore, and a gigantic canoe, manned by painted Indians, 
 shipped the four men and their cargo, and carried them 
 ashore, in the teeth of a gale. 
 
 A curious change from Jermyn Street lodgings and a 
 club in Pall Mall, to lie under canvas near an Indian village, 
 in a district where there was only one white inhabitant 
 among a goodly tribe of redskins, a race whose picturesque- 
 ness and personal dignity had the drawback of a quarrelsome 
 temper, an insatiable greed of gain, and an unappeasable 
 craving for strong drink, the fire-water which exalted them 
 to madness, and provoked them to murder, or reduced 
 them to drivelling imbecility, according to quantity or 
 temperament. 
 
 This was but the first stage in the pilgrimage. The 
 journey by mountain and lake began at this point. 
 Travellers less adventurous might have chosen a slower 
 and easier route by taking the steamer from San Francisco 
 to St. Michael, and thence by a stern-wheel river-boat up 
 
 184 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 the Yukon to Cudahy in the gold regions, a distance of 
 sixteen hundred miles ; but for Stormont and his com* 
 panions the shorter overland route, with its vicissitudes and 
 dangers, v/as much more alluring. 
 
 From Dyea they started for the Chilkoot pass, having 
 engaged a gang of Indians to help in carrying their baggage, 
 in their canoes, as long as the route lay beside the river, 
 and then unloading and distributing the packs for the tramp 
 across the mountain, each man carrying his share of the 
 baggage, the English adventurers as well as the redskins, 
 though, by Michael's contrivance, Arden's load was one of 
 the lightest. 
 
 " You know, he's been brought up too soft," he whispered 
 to Stormont, at the foot of the pass. 
 
 It took them something over a day and a night to cross 
 the mountain, tramping in the early morning, and late 
 evening, far into the depths of night, and resting in the heat 
 of the day, when the sun had softened the surface of the 
 snow and made walking impossible. 
 
 All the travellers enjoyed the long rest in that stupendous 
 scene, a panorama of snow-mountain and glacier, high above 
 the limit of vegetation ; a world of everlasting winter, moun- 
 tain rising above mountain ; a scene in which all that is 
 common and humdrum in man's daily life seems too petty 
 and futile to be remembered or valued, face to face with 
 Nature in her most majestic form. 
 
 A time would come perhaps in the near future, if the 
 race for gold continued, when even that remote and romantic 
 region would be vulgarized ; when strings of packhorses 
 would scale the mountain pass, and the painted Indian would 
 cloth himself in fustian and corduroy ; when steam-trams 
 would grind and screech beside those silent reaches of blue 
 water where the wild fowl skimmed and the salmon leapt, 
 unscared by man ; when steamers would pant and bustle 
 from landing-stage to landing-stage, and the restless feet of 
 ever-increasing multitudes would beat down reed and flower 
 on every path by lake and river. But for to-day this white 
 world of mountain and flood had all the majesty and all 
 the romance of primeval nature, and the Indian's hut and 
 the miner's camp only served to accentuate the solitude and 
 measure the vastness of the scene. 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Of the four adventurers, Michael Dartnell seemed most 
 to feel the glory of the earth. 
 
 " I can't believe that there's any such place as Sheffield," 
 he said, stretched at full length on his blanket, loolcing- up 
 at the amphitheatre of hills, when they had pitched their 
 camp for the afternoon high up in that Arctic wilderness, 
 with the best part of the ascent accomplished. *' I can't 
 believe that there's hundreds and thousands of grimy wretches 
 sweating in workshops, and breathing smoke, while there's 
 a world like this under a sky like that. Look at the blue 
 of it ! Was there ever such blue ? And to think of their 
 sky in the black country ! And to think of the courts in 
 Whitechapel, where a man turns sick at the stench of the 
 rooms that men and women live in, and children are born 
 and die in ! " 
 
 " You ought to have been a Chilkoot, Mike," said Stormont, 
 glancing at the Indians, who were sprawling near, sleeping 
 off their ill-temper at having been refused more than a 
 moderate allowance of whisky. 
 
 It was illegal in Alaska to sell whisky to an Indian ; but 
 it v/as another thing to give him a tin cup of fire-water after 
 a long climb up the snow-bound mountain paths, carrying a 
 pack that weighed over a hundred pounds. 
 
 Mike had carried as heavy a pack, but had resolutely 
 refused the fire-water. The Englishmen's meal consisted of 
 bacon and frying-pan bread, the most luxurious fare they 
 were likely to get till the end of their journey ; nor had they 
 any expectations of rich living or delicate cookery in the 
 gold-fields. 
 
 But the crisp atmosphere and the day's toil gave gusto to 
 common fare, while at each meal they brewed for them- 
 selves a liberal jorum of tea, the globe-trotter's elixir. 
 
 " The Jamfords satiated me with their restaurant dinners 
 and suppers," said Stormont, " but I never tasted anything 
 at one of their smart feeding-shops to equal our frying-pan 
 bread, when it has browned well, and has the taste of the 
 bacon in it." 
 
 " I own I should relish a crust of bread that didn't taste 
 of bacon-fat, just for a change," said Arden. 
 
 " Ah, that's where Mike's word comes in. You were 
 brought up too soft. You've never been in Mexico, or the 
 
 186 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Red River country, or on the South African veldt. Eut 
 you've taken to our rough-and-tumble life in the right spirit, 
 Arden, and I think it suits you better than civilization." 
 
 " It does, Archer, and I should never vrant to go back 
 to civilization, if " 
 
 " If you could get rid of that trick of looking across your 
 shoulder every now and then, as though you thought some 
 one was there ? I know it's only a nervous habit, old fellow ; 
 but it's an uncanny kind of trick that is apt to get upon 
 other people's nerves, ain't it, AUck?" 
 
 " If Arden hadn't assured me that he has never had so 
 much as a ghmpse of the other world, I should give him 
 credit for being the seventh son of a seventh son, with the 
 gift of second sight,"" answered Mackenzie. 
 
 " I am not a Scotchman, and cannot put in a claim to 
 one of your national privileges," said Arden. 
 
 " Ah, but there's something wrong," said Stormont, '* some- 
 thing that jars the mental strings. I believe you had a 
 touch of the evil eye while you were in Rome. You had a 
 haunted look when I met you there, and it stuck to you 
 all the time you were in the city ; and I saw the look at 
 Frisco when Mackenzie and I were inclined to loiter, and 
 when you were in such a feverish hurry to get ahead. If 
 your nerves are out of gear, you ought to let Alick prescribe 
 for you." 
 
 " Can he minister to a mind diseased ? " 
 
 " I don't suppose he can ; but you're not Macbeth, and 
 you haven't the murder of a pious old king on your con- 
 science. Alick's a clever chap — passed a high-class exam : 
 top of the list " 
 
 " Don't expatiate," said Mackenzie, laughing. " It's no 
 use. I've given Arden the finest nerve-bracer that medical 
 science has invented, and he swears it has done him no 
 good." 
 
 " I suppose because there was nothing the matter with 
 me," said Arden. " It was as useless as a letter addressed 
 to an empty house. Don't worry about me, like good 
 fellows. I shall lose v.hat Stormont calls the haunted look 
 before we get to Klondyke." 
 
 The descent of the pass was easy work, and they did 
 that part of the journey at night, when the mountain peaks 
 
 187 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 above them and the lake below were silvered by the newly 
 risen moon, and the track was crisp under their feet, except 
 here and there, where a step plunged them up to their knees 
 in melted snow. Their party of Indians tramped ahead of 
 them in single file ; and so in the early morning they came 
 to Lake Lindeman, where they found several camps and an 
 animated scene, the miners aU busy building boats, or pre- 
 paring to build, packing their stores, loading them on raft 
 or canoe, sawing timber in an extempore saw-pit, or cooking 
 the morning meal of beans and bacon, with the inevitable 
 frying-pan bread. 
 
 Here Stormont's little company established themselves, 
 and redskins and whiteskins luxuriated in a long day's rest 
 after the passage of the mountain ; and here Arden's select 
 little company of great writers came into requisition, Stor- 
 mont's stock of literature being comprised by the New 
 Testament, pressed upon him by an anxious mother on 
 the eve of his first voyage, and conscientiously carried from 
 continent to continent, and a cheap copy of Pickwick, a 
 comedy of early Victorian manners which he knew by 
 heart. 
 
 Mackenzie had armed himself with some tough medical 
 works and " The Ring and the Book," being an enthusiastic 
 Browning worshipper, and having kept the poet's spacious 
 work for an occasion like tliis. 
 
 " It's a poem that can't be digested in the madding 
 crowd," he remarked. 
 
 " I'm not an irreligious man," he exclaimed, " but I knew 
 some of you would bring a Bible, and I could borrow it for 
 a Sunday chapter." 
 
 On inquiry, it appeared that there was only one Bible 
 among the community, and that was owned by Dartnell, 
 who was well supplied with solid literature, having brought 
 half a dozen volumes of Carlyle, Darwin's " Origin of 
 Species," Mill's " Political Economy," the Globe Shakespeare, 
 Milton, and the Bible. 
 
 Here where there was no range of choice, no room for 
 caprice, each book acquired a new value. 
 
 " What will become of us when we have read them all ? " 
 exclaimed Mackenzie, who was a rapid reader, even of 
 science. 
 
 1 88 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " They will last till we get to Dawson City." 
 
 "And will there be book-stores at Dawson, do you 
 suppose? " 
 
 "There'll be everything at Dawson, Alick," answered 
 Stormont. " It's too near the States to be slack in the 
 race of progress. There'll be chapels, and music-halls, and 
 theatres, and restaurants, and gaming-hells, everything the 
 heart of man can hunger for." 
 
 Michael was in his element next morning, when the saw- 
 pit had to be dug, and still happier when with axe on 
 shoulder he tramped through a little wood of spruce firs to 
 choose the timber for the boat. 
 
 Work was jNIike's religion, and to put his hand to a new 
 craft and show that he could conquer difficulties was pure 
 delight. " Me and a bag of tools against the world," was 
 Mike's motto, faulty as to grammar, but of a grand courage. 
 Big as he was at all times, the man seem.ed to grow 
 bigger amidst Nature's immensities, and face to face with 
 peril. The Chilkoot Indians admired and fawned upon 
 him, and demonstrated by their every look and move- 
 ment that in their opinion he was leader and master of 
 the gang. 
 
 And Mike's soul expanded in the novel environment. 
 From the day the travellers left Juneau all difference of 
 caste had been ignored ; and for the first time in his life he 
 had found himself in his ideal world of perfect equality 
 between man and man. And for the self-taught day- 
 labourer, the student of half a dozen books, to find himself 
 on such terms with men of education and good-breeding 
 was a delightful experience. 
 
 In every preacher of equal rights there is, no doubt, an 
 unconscious bent towards the levelling upwards, which 
 Samuel Johnson satirized ; but though Mike held that God 
 made dukes and Sheffield iron-workers equals, he also 
 believed in the iron-worker's brotherhood with the drunken 
 pauper, and the convicted felon, the sinners, and sufferers, 
 and offscouring of mankind. So now in this northern wilder- 
 ness he accepted the painted Indian as his brother, and 
 by some indefinable human magnetism contrived to make 
 the Indian understand as much. 
 
 " I don't know how we should have got on without Mike," 
 
 189 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 said Stormont, when the first day's work was done, and they 
 were all squatting in a circle with the Indians, eating their 
 evening meal, and introducing the Chilkoots to the luxury 
 of tea-drinking, which they took to kindly enough, after it 
 was borne in upon them that there would be no more fire- 
 water till they had passed the rapids. 
 
 " You two fellows have worked with a good heart," con- 
 tinued Stormont, "but there ain't much of the primeval 
 man about either of you, and I don't think sawing rav>' 
 timber is the walk of life in which Nature meant you to 
 cut a handsome figure." 
 
 Arden and Mackenzie bore this reproof in silence, with a 
 rueful look at their hands, which were blistered and swollen 
 almost beyond the semblance of humanity. 
 
 "We shall get ourselves in training very soon," Alick 
 said presently. " But there's a considerable difference 
 between the weight of a lancet and a saw — and it's three 
 years since I've done anything to harden my hands, 
 except an afternoon at golf on the Mussleburgh links, once 
 in a blue moon." 
 
 The timber was sawn in due time, INIike doing the lion's 
 share of the work. The boat was built, and launched ; and 
 then began the adventurous voyage by the long chain of 
 lake and river and rapid, between Lake Lindeman and the 
 gold-fields. 
 
 The wide reaches of water, sapphire blue where it gave 
 back the glory of the sky, opaque and mud-stained in the 
 shallows along the shore, the reedy banks and wooded islands, 
 red rocks rising sheer out of the bosom of the lake, the 
 canons where the heaped-up water rushed furiously between 
 steep walls of basaltic rock, v>'hich time had worn into shapes 
 as fantastic as the forms that haunt fever-dreams, all had 
 their charm and their influence for the four travellers. Each 
 man after his lights tasted and absorbed the beauty of the 
 northern landscape in the short northern summer ; but Mike, 
 until he climbed the Chilkoot pass, had seen nothing grander 
 than the Yorkshire hills, and for him this Arctic world was 
 a stupendous revelation. An imagination that had been 
 nourished upon the Bible and upon Milton's verse, had not 
 been without its pictures of natural beauty, but the loftiest 
 
 190 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 visions of the untravelled dreamer were dwarfed bj' the 
 reality of mountains that rose peak above peak to the far- 
 od pinnacle of Mount Elias, the Mont Blanc of Alaska, 
 and vast lakes branching out into rivers that wound their 
 way to the ocean, through distances, if not measureless 
 to man, certainly measureless to the unscientific redskin, 
 who only reckoned the length of the river by the number 
 of days it took him to float his raft from the lake to 
 the sea. 
 
 The building of the boat was accomplished in something 
 over a week, busy days that left no record for the travellers, 
 save the slow progress of their work, from the preparation 
 of their saw-pit to the packing of their stores on the finished 
 boat. Every day brought the companions closer in sympathy 
 and friendship ; and all that was best in the character of each 
 was developed by their isolation from the common ruck of 
 humanity. 
 
 Nature's soothing influence had done much for Walter 
 Arden since they left Juneau. The laborious days, the 
 quiet nights, in an atmosphere whose purity was like an 
 elixir, had helped him to contemplate his sorrow, as some- 
 thing inevitable that was a part of himself, and must be 
 carried with him to his grave, without prejudice to his 
 mission upon earth. Whatever was in his means to do for 
 the common good of mankind must be done, even though 
 he himself were never to know happiness. He had to work 
 for the more unhappy, in the complex elements of whose 
 misery no drop of bitter had been wanting, and no drop of 
 sweet had been given. He who hoped for no celestial com- 
 pensations had to help those for whom this transient hfe 
 gave so few chances of joy. To lighten some of the in- 
 tolerable burdens, to bring light into some of the dark 
 places — that mission to which Rachel had given herself in 
 her youth and beauty — must be his work in years to come, 
 and its accomplishment his sufficient reward. He shaped 
 his vision of the future, lying awake late into the night, 
 amidst the immensities, with Rachel's book in his hand, 
 his fingers resting lightly on the delicate cover, every thread 
 of which had passed through her sensitive hands. It was 
 something of her very self, a link between them ; and if 
 there were any scrap of sense or reason in the idea of 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 thought-transference, surely his thoughts, which followed 
 her image in retrospective musings through all his hours of 
 solitude, would find their way to her brain and heart, by the 
 wireless telegraphy of love. 
 
 The story of a Beautiful Life read over and over again, and 
 meditated upon tenderly in those silent nights, had been to 
 him, not all that Rachel hoped it might be, but at least a 
 stimulus and incentive to goodness. If he could not look 
 above or beyond the limits of an earthly pilgrimage, the 
 lakes and hills of Palestine, the life which ended on Calvary 
 was at least to his mind the loveliest life that ever was 
 lived, and the supreme example of perfect manhood given 
 to the emulation of mankind. It was a narrow view, no 
 doubt, which shut out every element of the unknowable and 
 unthinkable ; but it was the view of men who have done 
 splendid service to humanity, and who have not been all 
 unhappy in a life from which they saw but one dark issue, 
 nothingness and the worm. 
 
 If those toilsome days in the wilderness could not bring 
 him gladness, he had at least found relief from that haunting 
 horror which had been with him in the earlier stages of his 
 pilgrimage. That subtle, undefinable sense of an unseen 
 presence no longer troubled him ; and again he told himself 
 that it was a question of nerves. In his darkest hours the 
 dying profligate's hideous threat had repeated itself in his 
 brain with a maddening recurrence, like the refrain of a song 
 in the wakeful hours of fever. He had hated himself for 
 the weakness of mind that could be influenced by the wild 
 speech of baffled rage, the impotent fury of the savage beast 
 at bay ; but the spectral appearance of that ghastly counte- 
 nance, the inexorable hate in the glassy eyes, the writhing 
 lips that seemed to scatter poison in a cloud of blood-stained 
 foam — all, face, speech, attitude, with every movement of 
 the colossal frame, had haunted his sleeping and waking 
 hours, at intervals, ever since that Lenten dawn on the waste 
 ground beyond Belleville. And still worse than the image 
 and the words had been the shapeless unseen horror, the 
 sense of something near him that was not human and was 
 all evil. Only in Rachel's company had he found peace ; 
 and now, it seemed to him that it was the thought of Rachel, 
 her image following him and absorbing his being, that had 
 
 192 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 exorcised the demon, and given him respite from mental 
 torture. 
 
 By the long chain of lakes and the rivers that linked them, 
 sometimes shooting the rapids at some hazard of life, some- 
 times, when the peril was too imminent, carrying their stores 
 and their boat along shore, sometimes with the help of 
 Indians, sometimes by their own unaided labour ; through 
 changes of weather, days of unsupportable heat, and days of 
 springlike coolness, calm days, and stormy ; sometimes sail- 
 ing on a lake of glass, their blanket-sail faintly fanned, and 
 the swift current bearing them over the untroubled water ; 
 sometimes having to row for dear life in the teeth of a gale 
 that changed the placid lake to a raging sea, and came near 
 swamping their boat, and which played havoc with their 
 cargo of stores. Through days of ceaseless activity and 
 rapid progress, and days of enforced idleness, when the 
 stores upon which their subsistence depended had to be 
 slowly dried by a wood-fire — long days which Stormont 
 and Arden beguiled by stalking a cariboo deer, or 
 shooting grouse among the hills, while Mackenzie fished 
 for salmon in the Hotalinqua river, with Mike in attend- 
 ance upon him, or lay under canvas reading for his next 
 examination. 
 
 " I can't imagine a better line of country for a reading- 
 party than the shore of Lake Lebarge," he said, after a long 
 day's studious seclusion. " I never read with half the comfort 
 in my rooms in Castle Street, not even with the glorious 
 memory of Walter Scott to help me. While you've been 
 stalking that imaginary cariboo, I've been dissecting mos- 
 quitos, and hunting down the malaria bacillus, and I believe 
 I've got a good deal nearer catching him than you've got to 
 the deer." 
 
 " The cariboo is a slippery customer — but he's a real 
 entity, Mac. I saw him drinking in that silvery streak up 
 yonder. I might have hit him with a stone "' 
 
 "Why didn't you? You might have stopped his wild 
 career and cut his throat mercifully in time for our 
 supper." 
 
 " I said I might, Mac. I didn't say I could." 
 
 " Go to, lad ! Your cariboo is of the family of Mrs. 
 Harris and the White Doe of Rylston. Well, thanks to my 
 
 193 O 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 superior capacity as an angler, and Mike's native genius as 
 a cook, ye'll have a feast of broiled salmon, and a batch of 
 slap-jack that hasn't turned to lead in the cooking. Mike's 
 frying-pan bread always rises." 
 
 " And never tastes of rancid fat," said Arden. 
 
 " That's a pernicketty objection, mon ! You're a wee 
 bittie o'er nice about your provand," retorted Mackenzie, 
 whose investigations had put him in high spirits. 
 
 In fair weather or foul, as wood-cutter, sawyer, boat- 
 builder, packer, or cook, T'.Iichael Dartnell had proved 
 himself master of the situation. Quick, dexterous, but 
 steady withal, and v.ith a dogged perseverance that would 
 not allow the possibility of defeat, he vanquished every 
 obstacle and made light of every difficulty. 
 
 And when the pilgrims had come to the end of their 
 journey, when they had shot the perilous Five Finger rapids, 
 and passed Fort Selkirk, and the Indian village at Felly 
 River post, and had navigated their boat safely down the 
 Yukon river to the mining-camp known as Forty Mile—' 
 an assemblage of log-cabins, billiard-parlours, restaurants, 
 gambling-dens, which gold-seekers had created in the heart 
 of the wilderness, and where missionary enterprise had built 
 a church — Michael showed a shrewd intelligence in the 
 choice of a locality for their initial attempts. He had talked 
 with every whiteskin and redskin he had met during their 
 seven-weeks' journey, had questioned them closely as to 
 every characteristic of the gold-bearing spots, had absorbed 
 every detail in the story of their successes and their dis- 
 appointments ; and in exploring those barren shores for gold 
 he had rather the air of a man who had come back to a 
 familiar country, with a full knowledge of the soil, than of a 
 stranger in the land. 
 
 It was he who, after several unprofitable attempts, directed 
 the expedition along a creek of the Yukon river, an obscure 
 inlet which had been thought not worth exploration until 
 Stormont's party began their experimentary diggings, when 
 it was considered that the new-comers were greenhorns to 
 waste their time in such an unlikely direction. Michael had 
 been told of the spot by a consumptive miner faring slowly 
 towards Juneau, one of the innumerable failures in the 
 multitude of gold-hunters, a man who had broken down in 
 
 194 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 health, and abandoned the struggle, at a time when he 
 believed himself on the threshold of a discovery that would 
 make his fortune. The result proved that he was right. 
 The metalliferous streak showed itself during their second 
 day's diggings, and the four men staked out their claim.s 
 along the edge of the stream, and then went back to Forty 
 Mile Camp to record them. 
 
 ^95 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XIV. 
 Waiter Arden to Douglas Campbell. 
 
 Box 89, Post Office, Forty Mile Camp, on the Yukon River, 
 Dominion of Canada, 
 
 My dear Douglas, 
 
 Your friendly reply to my letter of the summer 
 before last, despatched soon after our arrival at the Miner's 
 Metropolis, came into my hands long after it was written, 
 and at a period of preoccupation and trouble when I felt 
 incapable of replying. I write now after a gap in time of 
 nearly two years, and after an illness in which my life hung 
 upon a thread for many dismal days and nights, when I had 
 no knowledge of the passing hours, but lay like a log, 
 watched and cared for by anxious friends, and with only 
 one sense left me, the sense of pain, and an agonizing idea 
 of the eternity of hours, sleepless hours, in which I lay on 
 my back, with wide-open eyes staring at the rough timbers 
 of a cabin roof, and peopling that rugged shelter with 
 hideous creatures, the horrible inventions which go with 
 a temperature of a hundred and five. 
 
 I have been on the edge of the abyss, Douglas, so near 
 death that life and all it had ever given me of joy or woe 
 melted into the distance of things half remembered, and I 
 only knew, in a vague dim way, that once I had lived and 
 rubbed shoulders with living men. Life was the dream, 
 death the reality. An open grave was in the foreground of 
 all those fever pictures. It was always there; and every 
 now and then I could feel myself slipping down into it. 
 The smell of the clay was always in my nostrils ; the sound 
 of the pick and the shovel was always in my ears. I could 
 feel the four walls of the pit encompassing me, and the pit 
 
 196 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 grew deeper every day, and the faces of the friends looking 
 over the edge had a far-away look. It may be that the 
 labour with pick-axe and shovel in the rough shale and 
 gravel by the river brink, which had been my daily task for 
 so long, had made the odour and the sound of the earth a 
 part of my sense of being, an experience so continuous and 
 so vivid that the impression it had left upon my senses came 
 between me and every other thought. I can only thus 
 account for that ever-present idea of a grave ; since in my 
 conscious hours I had no dread of death, and had small 
 cause to value my life, having missed the one blessing that 
 would have made life dear. 
 
 Well, after passing through that fiery furnace of pain 
 and delirium — the first caused by the stab of a knife that 
 \vent perilously near my heart, the second the eftect of what 
 my devoted friend and doctor calls symptomatic fever — I 
 am my own man again ; my own man, with grey streaks in 
 my hair and deeper lines on my forehead than I ought to 
 have at eight and twenty ; my own man, with three hundred 
 thousand pounds sterling, as the result of less than two 
 years' toil on a creek between the Yukon and the Klondyke, 
 this sum representing a fourth share of the gold realized by 
 the four partners in the Httle company of which Arthur 
 Stormont is leader. One of the four partners has perished, 
 and we hold his treasure in trust for his legal heirs ; and, as 
 we know absolutely nothing of his kindred, the business of 
 arriving at a just disposal of his property may be arduous. 
 
 You must not think that this northern El Dorado ofters 
 a certainty of wealth for all comers. I could tell you of 
 men who have toiled in the gold-region for years, summer 
 and winter, worked out claim after claim, journeyed from 
 creek to creek and river to river, followed every trail where- 
 ever there has been the promise of luck, and have gone on 
 board the steamer for St. Michael with empty pockets and 
 broken hearts. Others there are who, after a long series of 
 failures, have stumbled upon a spot proUfic in golden ore. 
 Our case is exceptional, for we were lucky almost at the 
 outset, and we owed our success to the intelligence of the 
 man whose bones we are leaving in the Arctic wilderness, 
 and whose fate was the climax in a horrible tragedy. 
 
 This letter which I have begun to-day will be long, for 
 
 197 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 it is to be a statement rather than a letter, a categorical 
 narration of circumstances which are to me full of wonder 
 and mystery. You are the only man to whom I would care 
 to unfold that story, with all the dark fancies that have gone 
 along with it in my own mind, for you are the only man 
 from whom I should not expect ridicule or contempt. Of 
 your indulgence and your sympathy I know myself secure. 
 
 My communication may occupy some days, for I am 
 still too weak for any prolonged exertion, even so small an 
 effort as letter-writing; and my chum and doctor is as 
 watchful of my convalescence as he was of my illness, and 
 won't allow me any liberties. 
 
 You have been told in my letter from San Francisco of 
 the circumstances that led to my leaving England, and how 
 the disappointment of a cherished dream sent me out into the 
 v/ilderness. You know how small a factor the thirst for gold 
 was in my scheme of life ; and you will understand that the 
 fortune that has fallen into my lap is like the pile of hundred- 
 franc pieces in front of a wealthy idler at Monte Carlo, who 
 puts down his stake on the irenic d qnarantc table without 
 caring a jot for the result. 
 
 I wrote very briefly, I know, of the fourth member of 
 our little band — Michael Dartnell, familiarly Mike, a v.-ork- 
 ing man from the east end of London, a socialist in politics, 
 and a man of shrewd intellect and tremendous physical 
 power, a valuable associate in such an adventure as ours. 
 
 It is chiefly of him I have to write in this record. 
 
 I resume my task after a night's rest, and the infinite 
 blessing of a dreamless sleep. 
 
 The man Michael interested me deeply, and I had 
 every reason to believe that he was honestly and warmly 
 attached to me. He had a very strong feeling of the equal 
 rights of men ; and it was through me that he found himself 
 for the first time living on equal terms with men born and 
 reared in a social sphere above his own. I know that he 
 greatly appreciated that privilege, and that even in our 
 rough way of living he was able to perceive the differences 
 of habits and manners, and to modify and refine his conduct 
 in trifles. His fervour in the best kind of self-education 
 needed no stimulus. The few books which he knew and 
 
 198 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 loved were the books that open the gates of the intellectual 
 world. He enriched his mental treasury with those other 
 books which we knew; and every day that we spent 
 together brought him nearer to our level, and made him a 
 better companion. He became less ponderous and dog- 
 matic, learnt the touch and go of a lighter style of argument ; 
 and, as his reading widened, learnt to look at a question 
 from more than one side. He interested me more than I 
 can say, and I made him my friend. He had told me his 
 life-tragedy; and after v/e had gone a long way on our 
 pilgrimage, and when all my past hfe seemed to have receded 
 into an infinite distance, I opened my heart to him and 
 told him of my hopeless love for Rachel Lorimer. He 
 knew her and worshipped her, as the bringer of light into 
 dark places, and was able to understand and sympathize 
 with my feelings as perhaps no one else could have done. 
 
 It would be difficult to convey to you what a tovrer of 
 strength that man was to us, from the hour we left Juneau 
 on the river steamer for Dyea, till the hour of our triumphant 
 success, our allotments on a creek off the Klondyke river 
 having yielded a harvest of gold rare in the history of placer- 
 mining, when his health suddenly gave way, and the Hercules 
 we had all admired as the embodiment of virile power 
 became in a few short winter days weaker than a six-year- 
 old child. The hands in which the woodman's axe or the 
 miner's shovel had seemed light as a feather, lay on the 
 coverlet, too feeble to hold a cup to the burning lips. It 
 was only a common cold, he had declared a few days before, 
 when we saw that he was not quite himself; but the common 
 cold became congestion of the lungs, and all Mackenzie's 
 efforts failed in arresting the evil. 
 
 I don't think any of our little band quite understood 
 how much this man had been to us, till we saw him lying 
 helpless in our rough cabin, with Alick Mackenzie sitting 
 by his bed in a melancholy silence, and bending down every 
 now and then, with the doctor's intent countenance, to 
 listen to the labouring breath, or to wait with watch in hand 
 for the last record of the clinical thermometer. Only then, 
 perhaps, in those slow hours of gloomy foreboding, did we 
 realize how much we owed to our low-born comrade, and 
 how utterly all idea of caste or social difference had dropped 
 
 199 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 out of our minds. We had been companions for nearly 
 two years ; and in that time the man's mental outlook had 
 grown to our own level, while in vigour of brain and acute- 
 ness of perception he seemed our superior. As we owed 
 fortune to his vigilance to observe and to gather information, 
 to say nothing of the miner's Jiair, that curious instinct, 
 which seems to excel the power of the scientific geologist, 
 so we owed much of our happiness in the Arctic wilderness 
 to his courage and patience in difficulty, his unwavering 
 cheerfulness in deprivation and disaster. 
 
 " He was the best of us all," Stormont said, on the 
 bitter night when Mackenzie told us the end was near, and 
 when we two left the hut together, shrinking from the agony 
 of those final hours. 
 
 Alas, old friend, you know how tragic the passage from 
 life to clay is to the man who can see no light beyond that 
 dread moment when the last sigh leaves the ashen lips. 
 
 It was at the beginning of March, our second winter in 
 that polar region. The frozen lakes gave no promise of 
 a coming spring ; the ironbound soil in which we worked 
 needed continuous fires to combat the frost, and strenuous 
 effort and dogged persistence ; but we had laboured patiently 
 through the worst part of our second winter, with a result 
 that far surpassed even Stormont's expectations ; and we 
 meant to continue working to the end of May, and to 
 start upon our return journey by lake and river early in 
 June. 
 
 In many a long talk round the log-fire we had debated 
 the use we should make of our treasure when we got back 
 to civilization. 
 
 Stormont's fortune was pre-engaged, and was to be 
 invested in the Jamford Grain Company. Mackenzie 
 meant to establish himself in Harley Street, the youngest 
 consulting physician in the neighbourhood, since with an 
 income which few doctors achieve at the end of a dis- 
 tinguished career, he could afford to wait for patients, and 
 to devote himself to scientific research. For myself wealth 
 could suggest no scheme of personal happiness, and even 
 philanthropy could not interest me, unaided by Rachel. 
 
 Michael was the most jubilant among us, for in his 
 three hundred thousand pounds — reckoned roughly, and 
 
 200 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 considerably under-estimated — he saw the means of carr}'ing 
 out some of his Utopian ideas. 
 
 He told us how he meant to travel all over Europe, 
 taking with him a little knot of working men, selected for 
 their intelligence, and power of appreciating natural beauty 
 and the wonders of art. With these companions, shifting 
 them every three or four months, he meant to see all that 
 the world contains of interest or delight ; extending his 
 travels as the years went on to the four quarters of the earth, 
 and to every island of picturesque charm, but never a 
 solitary traveller ; always carrying with him companions of 
 his own class, labouring men, his inferiors in education, but 
 capable of improvement, and eager to improve. 
 
 "And some tropical night, when you are sitting under 
 a palm tree, reading Omar Kayyam to them, one of the 
 chosen band will stab you in the back, for the sake of your 
 wallet of travelling-money, and the others will go shares 
 with him in the plunder, and help him to scrape a grave in 
 the sand," said Stormont. 
 
 We all made mock of his optimistic schemes ; but 
 nothing could shake him in his conviction that his fortune 
 was a thing to be held in trust for his fellow-men. 
 
 Well, those dreams seemed to have come to a sudden 
 close. Our friend and fellow-labourer was dying. Mac- 
 kenzie had told us in the saddest words that all hope was 
 over. The last sands were running slowly through the 
 glass, the grey shadow with the scythe stood by the pillow, 
 where the doctor watched in a dumb patience, waiting for 
 that which seemed the inevitable end. 
 
 Stormont and I wandered far, in our silent tramp along 
 the frost-bound shore, with eyes that stared absently at the 
 narrow stream forcing its way between wide banks of ice, 
 and with hearts as heavy as lead. We seldom spoke to 
 each other ; and when we broke the melancholy silence it 
 was only to speak of the man we had left dying, and whom 
 we talked of already in a past tense, as if he were dead. 
 
 " What a fellow he was," said Stormont ; " strong as a 
 lion, and true as steel." 
 
 We had been tramping for nearly two hours under the 
 cold brilliancy of these northern stars, when I was seized 
 with a sudden eagerness to go back to the hut, and began 
 
 20I 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 to hate myself for the cowardly dread that had made me 
 shun those last hours of unconsciousness, those hours in 
 which, though he still lived, we knew he was no longer 
 with us. 
 
 " I must grasp his hand once more, for the last time," 
 I told Stormont, " though he will not know." 
 
 " Don't hurry. It's waste of power," Stormont answered. 
 " He must have gone ever so long ago. Mack only gave 
 him an hour. Life was ebbing fast." 
 
 I did not slacken my pace, but went along the backward 
 track almost at a run. I hated myself for having fled from 
 my friend's death-bed. 
 
 What if a flash of light had come at the last, and he had 
 looked about him with recovered consciousness, seeking the 
 faces of his friends, and had found only one of the three 
 — only the doctor, with his professional interest in death? 
 What would he have thought of us ? How might that 
 great strong heart have been wounded by a desertion that 
 would seem like indifterence ? 
 
 The return took a long time, for we had walked far in 
 our agitation, and I was dead beat when I got back to 
 the hut. 
 
 I stood on the threshold of the room which we had made 
 into a hospital, dreading to see the rigid outline of a marble 
 form under a sheet ; but, to my infinite relief, I saw 
 Mackenzie kneeling beside the bed, and holding the. sick 
 man's wrist, with head bent and close attention. 
 
 I sank on to the rough bench by the wall, exhausted by 
 the hurried pace at which I had walked the last mile, leaving 
 Stormont to follow me at his own steady tramp. 
 
 Mackenzie was watching his patient too intently to look 
 up as I entered the hut. 
 
 " The end has not come?" I said. 
 
 " No, this is not the end. It is more like the beginning," 
 he answered, in a low voice, still looking up. 
 
 I was thunderstruck, and my heart beat with a sudden 
 hope. I asked him if he saw a chance of his patient's 
 recovery. 
 
 " An hour ago he was sinking," Mackenzie ansvrered. " I 
 measured his life by moments ; the pulse was the thinnest 
 thread, which I could scarcely feel under my fingers. I had 
 
 202 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 heard the death-rattle in his throat. I had seen every sign 
 of dissolution, and I was prepared for the end. I was worn 
 out with watching, and as I sat beside him, with my fingers 
 on his wrist, in those moments which I thought his last, 
 waiting to close his eyes, I may have dozed a httle, the sort 
 of half-sleep that comes from a tired brain. I had taken 
 care to keep the fire going strong ; but in that hour an icy 
 blast had crept into the hut, and I started out of that short 
 lapse of attention, frozen to the marrow. I have never, even 
 in our Arctic weather, felt so fierce a grip of the cold. My 
 hand had dropped from Mike's wrist, as I dozed, and I 
 started awake, fully prepared to find lifeless clay lying on 
 this bed. I thought his pulse had stopped for ever, and I 
 found it beating strong and fast. His eyes looked at me 
 with hghtning in them. The life that had been so near 
 extinction flamed up in him like a raging fire. I gave him 
 a strong stimulant, but it seemed hardly needed. His pulse 
 beat as no man's pulse that had been so near death ever 
 beat within my experience : and it has been strong and 
 steady ever since." 
 
 " It is a wonderful recovery," I said, thrilled vdth gladness 
 at the strange news. 
 
 " It is a resurrection. It has made me think of Lazarus, 
 coming out of the darkness in his grave-clothes. I tell you, 
 Arden, this thing is little short of a miracle." 
 
 He spoke in a low voice, but he was greatly excited. 
 I told him that I was hardly surprised, knowing the physical 
 power, the exceptional vitality of the man. 
 
 " Yes, it is vitality," he said ; " some electrical force that 
 is beyond my diagnosis. Physical power was worn out, the 
 lungs are badly damaged ; but there must be some force of 
 will, some hidden spring in the life of the man, that I cannot 
 understand." 
 
 He seemed agitated, perplexed by so mysterious a recovery. 
 He is a young man of keen intelligence, loving his profession 
 ardently, an enthusiast in the search for truth, and for the 
 further development of medical science. Often and often 
 since that night of v/onder he has recurred to the subject, 
 and ahvays with the same air of perplexity, and even distress, 
 as if the wonder of the thing preyed upon his mind. 
 
 For my ovrn part, till r^lichael was about again, after an 
 
 203 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 interval of three weeks, during which Mackenzie insisted 
 upon keeping him in a state of absolute quiescence, building 
 up the shattered frame with unwavering care, till our lives 
 resumed our former course, and Michael and I became again 
 comrades, working shoulder to shoulder in the day's labour, 
 I had no feeling but gladness. The man I had liked and 
 esteemed, the trusted companion who had helped me to 
 forget my sorrows and to amass a fortune, that must needs 
 make for usefulness and comfort, this man had been snatched 
 from the jaws of death and given back to me, when I had 
 thought him vanished out of my life for ever. How could 
 I be otherwise than glad ? 
 
 Yet, after we had been together for little more than a 
 week, that gladness had given place to a strange feeling of 
 distrust, of something that was almost horror. I felt uneasy 
 in the man's company ; his voice jarred my nerves, that full 
 strong voice, with its north-country accent, that I had once 
 liked ; his face, in which no feature was altered, had under- 
 gone a subtle change of expression which made it not the 
 same face. I looked at him and studied his countenance 
 line by line, with a deliberate scrutiny. All the familiar 
 lines were there, but the countenance repelled me. I 
 began to make excuses for keeping aloof from my old com- 
 rade. I questioned Stormont, who owned that he too thought 
 ]Michael had grown dull and heavy since his illness. I 
 questioned Mackenzie, but could get no explanation from 
 him. He repeated that the man's recovery was almost a 
 miracle, and that he could not pretend to explain the fact. 
 
 Well, we worked together, we four comrades, and added 
 day by day to our pile of treasure, knowing that the vein we 
 had struck was almost inexhaustible, and that when our time 
 came to leave the Yukon basin, we should sell our claims 
 for a sum that would be in itself a fortune. Our luck was 
 known at Dawson City and at Forty Mile Camp, and we 
 had plenty of offers for the claims. 
 
 As time went on, I became conscious of other changes in 
 Michael Dartnell's character — changes always for the worse. 
 Hitherto, while working with indomitable energy, he had 
 never shown the greed of gain. He had piled up his fortune 
 almost unawares, moved by the spirit of adventure, and the 
 desire to excel, rather than by the thirst for gold ; and the 
 
 204 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 fortune having accumulated itself as it were automatically, all 
 his thoughts about its disposal were unselfish thoughts. But 
 since his escape from the jaws of the grave, we saw a new 
 spirit in him, the fierce desire to amass wealth, to build a 
 mountain of gold. In every attribute the man was changed. 
 The spirit of indomitable energy which we had all admired 
 in him, the mastery of character which had annihilated all 
 differences of caste and had made him our leader, now took 
 the form of absolute ferocity, a savage determination to do 
 better than any of us, and to see his own pile bigger than 
 ours at the end of the day's labour. 
 
 More than once have I heard Stormont remonstrate with 
 him in his easy-going way. 
 
 "I say, old chap, when you elbow and shove like a 
 maniac, and look as if you would like to trample us all 
 down, you forget that we're a joint-stock company, and that 
 it's against the spirit of trade-unions for one man to work 
 harder than the rest." 
 
 His only answer was a scowl, and a lightning flash from 
 the steel-grey eyes ; and the elbowing and pushing, the 
 determination to be first with his load for the rocker, went 
 on with unabated force. 
 
 But if he had the miser's mania for amassing wealth, he 
 showed also the prodigal's passion for squandering it. _ 
 
 At the end of every three days he insisted on a division 
 of the spoil, and on the fourth day he was off with his bag 
 of gold-dust to Forty Mile Creek, where we heard of him 
 afterwards, drinking whisky at four dollars a bottle, dancing 
 with squaws, and playing poker in a miner's cabin, from 
 sundown till daybreak. He would come back after his 
 debauch, sullen and silent, would tell us nothing of his 
 adventures, and would resume his work, in the same dogged 
 determination to show himself our superior. 
 
 " Your protege has all the vices," Stormont said to me ; 
 " and I begin to think he must have been playing a part up 
 to the time of his illness ; and, since then, finding us all so 
 weak about him, and so ready to let him take the lead, he 
 has dropped his mask, and shown us what an arrogant bully 
 your proletarian can be when he gets the upper hand." 
 
 For my own part, I was greatly distressed by the change 
 in the man, disappointed, perplexed ; for I had beUeved 
 
 205 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 in Michael Dartnell ; had believed that here was a transparent 
 soul, free from falsehood and cant, no psalm-singing hypo- 
 crite, no fawning scoundrel trading upon sham piety ; but a 
 man who had sinned and suffered, a man who had "loved 
 nobly, and had been cruelly wronged, and whose remorse 
 had been profound and bitter, a life's lesson of the hardest 
 kind. 
 
 I had seen the man's mind expand in his hourly inter- 
 course with his superiors in education and refinement, and 
 had seen that while we had enjoyed better opportunities, 
 he was the better man. It was a hard blow to find myself 
 so deceived, and to have to admit that the humble friend 
 I had cherished was unworthy of my regard, an impostor, 
 whose presence in our little band made for evil. 
 
 For myself, I cannot tell you how intense was the change 
 in my sensations, mental and physical, in relation to this 
 man. I found myself shrinking from him with absolute 
 loathing. His touch sent a shudder through my veins. The 
 labour that I had relished, the cheerful evenings round the 
 log-fire, the exploring tramps over mountain or wood, our 
 expeditions in quest of game, our fishing-parties, all became 
 hateful to me because of Michael's presence. He poisoned 
 the air I breathed. His sardonic laughter, always loudest 
 in any hour of trouble, at any news of accident, sick- 
 ness, or death, from the other mining-camps, rang through 
 my brain like the laughter of fiends in hell. His presence 
 conjured up all the hideous images that I had ever read of 
 in prose or verse — all that my memory held of the unearthly 
 and the Satanic. 
 
 The time came when I felt that I could endure this 
 torment no longer ; and I told my friends, Stormont and 
 Mackenzie, that I had made as big a pile as I wanted, and 
 was beginning to suffer from home sickness, so had made 
 up my mind to take the first steamer for St. Michael. I 
 was not afraid of the long, slow journey down the Yukon, 
 as it would give me just the interval of perfect rest and dull 
 monotony that I needed. 
 
 Michael heard me make this announcement in silence, 
 but I saw an angry fire in the brilliant eyes under scowling 
 brows, the eyes which had so altered in expression since 
 his recovery that it was difficult to believe that the calm 
 
 206 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 steadfast eyes I remembered so vrell in the beginning of my 
 acquaintance with the East End iron-worker could be the 
 same as these orbs that flashed fire at anything that vexed 
 the brain behind them. The others remonstrated, and 
 neither of them guessed the reason of my falling away. 
 For them the change in Michael's character was perplexing 
 and unpleasant, but it caused them no distress of mind. 
 He was a good worker, and they accepted his alteration in 
 mood and manner as only one more disillusion among the 
 many deceptions and disappointments of this mortal life. 
 
 Michael was missing next day, the division of spoil 
 having been made overnight, this bi-weekly reckoning of 
 our gains being a new order of things which had been 
 forced upon us by him. We knew he had gone to Forty 
 Mile Camp, as his custom was ; and we took a holiday 
 during his absence, and gave ourselves up to such sport as 
 the region afforded — hunting cariboo, shooting water-fowl, 
 enjoying the luxury of long hours of rest by the log-fire, 
 talking, reading, playing chess, writing home letters, 
 Mackenzie deep in medical books, always intent on his 
 next examination. 
 
 On the third day of Michael's disappearance a party of 
 miners came along, on their way to explore for new claims 
 farther north on the Porcupine river, and from them we 
 heard an appalling account of our partner's conduct at Forty 
 Mile, conduct so outrageous as to scandalize the rough 
 company assembled there, for the most part men whose 
 tongues were the worst things about them, and who had a 
 rough honesty in their dealings with one another which 
 made hfe possible in that wild region. He had found his 
 chosen circle among the vilest characters, the little knot of 
 cheats and profligates who were the exception in the mining 
 fraternity, the outcasts of all nations, the ofiscouring of the 
 human race. With these he had abandoned himself to 
 debauchery, steeped in alcohol, brawling, blaspheming, with 
 knife or revolver always ready, a terror even to the wretches 
 with whom he associated, and only tolerated on account of 
 the gold which he flung about him with mad recklessness. 
 
 I brooded over this hideous account, and the man being 
 absent, and I therefore being free from that physical loath- 
 ing which I had of late suffered in all contact v;ith him, my 
 
 207 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 mind travelled back to those happy days when I was working 
 in the East End in the dear company of an angel of charity, 
 and I thought of Michael as I had known him then, so fine 
 a character, so noble an example of the man for- whom 
 nature had done much and fortune nothing. I remembered 
 his respect for Rachel, and how he had submitted himself 
 to her gentle influence ; and I thought how it would grieve 
 that pure spirit to know of his degradation and ruin, which 
 for her, who saw in the earthly form the tabernacle of an 
 imperishable soul, meant so much more than any human 
 creature's fate could mean for me, the materialist. 
 
 For her sake, repulsive as the enterprise was, I resolved 
 to make one supreme effort to drag the profligate out of the 
 pit of infamy, to bring him back to a remembrance of the 
 man he had been. The link between him and me in his 
 better mood had been much stronger and closer than his 
 association with Stormont or Mackenzie. He had been, or 
 had seemed to be, my devoted friend, and had given me the 
 impression of an exaggerated gratitude for the little I had 
 done for him. He used to declare that I had Hfted him out 
 of the slough of despond, brought him into a new world, 
 given him new hopes and ambitions, and for the first time 
 since the tragedy of his life had made him acquainted with 
 happiness. Yet, since he had risen from the bed of death, 
 restored by one of nature's miracles, I had seen something 
 in the man's bearing towards myself that betrayed hatred, 
 a vindictive and malignant hatred, which threatened to 
 break out into outrage and personal violence at the first 
 flash of angry fire, the first conflict of will against will. 
 Marked as was the change in his character in all respects, 
 it was most obvious in his relations with me. 
 
 For Rachel's sake I conquered the feeling of intense 
 disgust with which the new man had inspired me, and I 
 made the journey to Forty Mile, in an open boat navigated 
 by a couple of Indians, intent upon saving him from his own 
 folly and his own vices, if his redemption were possible. 
 
 Though it is my misfortune to disbelieve in any higher 
 life than that we live here, I do at least believe in the 
 dignity of manhood, the preciousness of mind and heart, 
 and all that constitutes human character ; and I have always 
 
 208 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 held it mans sacred duty to save his fellow-man from 
 degradation and misery. 
 
 I need not enter into the details of the scenes I beheld 
 at the Miner's Camp. In a commmiity where the virtues 
 of a rough and ready life, the honour and kindly feeling 
 between man and man were the rule, Michael Dartnell had 
 chosen his companions among the dregs of humanity, just 
 those few choice scoundrels, the pariahs, the moral lepers, 
 who were shunned like a pestilence by every honest adven- 
 turer, thieves, liars, reprobates, who had come to Alaska 
 not to labour, but to rob, to lie in wait for other men's 
 gains, to lure the successful miner into their lair and strip 
 him of his fortune, cozen him out of his gold, and educate 
 him in drunkenness and devilry. 
 
 I found ^Michael enthroned like Beelzebub in a company 
 of fiends, worshipped for the sake of the gold he had scat- 
 tered among them. I dragged him, helpless with drink, out 
 of this hell in little, and took him to the cabin of a man I 
 knew, who gave me the hospitality of a room for twenty-four 
 hours ; and here I left my besotted protege under lock and 
 key, to sleep off the effects of a week's intoxication, while I 
 went to Dawson City to buy stores for our camp. He bore 
 my rough treatment with a sullen indifference, his brain 
 clouded by drink, his physical force paralyzed for the time 
 being ; and his infamous comrades, knowing that his pockets 
 were empty, offered no opposition. They saw me drag him 
 away with mocking laughter and coarse gibes. If I had 
 come for his swag, I was a day after the fair, they said. 
 Goliath was generous to the pals he liked ; and there was 
 nothing left for his mates down the river, whom he hated. 
 This was what one of them told me. They called him 
 Goliath, the name which he had given himself at Forty 
 Mile. 
 
 The brief Alaskan summer had begun, and the rivers and 
 lakes were open. Michael made no objection to the return 
 journey in the boat with the Indians. He had slept off the 
 worst effects of his debauch, after a day and night of sleep 
 that was like stupor. I spent the morning before our home- 
 ward journey in serious and kindly talk with him. I reminded 
 him of our old friendship, how I had taken him to my heart 
 almost as a brother. I told him that it was for Rachel's 
 
 209 P 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 sake I was making this last endeavour to drag him out of 
 the mire, to win him back to the reputable and worthy life 
 he had been leading before his illness. He heard me in a 
 stubborn silence ; and there was a malignity in his clouded 
 eyes and iron mouth that chilled me. I appealed to his 
 friendship, to pleasant memories of days gone by ; and I saw 
 hate, ungovernable hate, in his countenance. 
 
 Still, as he expressed his willingness to go back with me, 
 I considered that there was something gained ; so we left 
 the friendly community at the miners' city and started on 
 our river voyage, with wind and current in our favour, and 
 the first day's voyage was an easy one, Michael lying half 
 asleep at the bottom of the boat, and I having nothing to do 
 but watch the hills and the sky, the dark pine woods, and 
 the distant snow-peaks, while the Indians sailed our boat. 
 
 We landed at nightfall in a sheltered spot, and slept on 
 the bank, rolled in our blankets, by a large log-fire, which 
 the Indians were to keep burning all night. I had been a 
 very bad sleeper of late, and though I was dog tired after 
 the long journey up-stream, and the excitement of my 
 encounter with Michael, sleep was impossible for the first 
 three hours of the short summer night, and I lay on my bed 
 of river-reeds and long rank grass, watching the stars moving 
 in slow majesty across the steel-blue vault, and thinking sad 
 thoughts of the things that might have been, and were not, 
 and perhaps could never be. It was only on the edge of 
 morning, when a cold grey glimmer behind the crest of the 
 eastern hills broke through the purple night, that I felt myself 
 drifting to the haven of sleep, faintly conscious of the cool 
 wind and the fierce glow of the wood-fire. I slept soundly for 
 a couple of hours, and the snow-peaks were glittering in the 
 risen sun when I awoke and stared at the river and the pine 
 wood on the farther shore, for the moment surprised at not 
 finding myself under the rough ceiling of our cabin. 
 
 Memory returned in a flash, and I looked for Michael. 
 He was lying like a log along the hollow in the bank, on his 
 bed of rushes; but the Indians, who had stretched themselves 
 a few paces off, in front of the fire, were gone. 
 
 I sprang up and looked about for them, called and 
 whistled my loudest, but there was no reply. Michael 
 shook off his blanket, rose and stretched his long limbs, 
 
 210 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 looking at me with that darkling glance which was so unlike 
 the old Michael. 
 
 " The Indians are gone," he said. " I sent them packing, 
 an hour ago. They have started for Dawson City across 
 the, hills." 
 
 *' What made you send them away ? " 
 
 *' First, because we don't want them for the down-river 
 journey." 
 
 " We want them to portage our stores past the Needle 
 Rapids." 
 
 " We can mana^^e that without them. I had another 
 
 O 
 
 reason for getting rid of them. I wanted to be alone with 
 you. Do you know that you and I have never been alone 
 since — I got well ? " 
 
 He paused before the last three words — paused and 
 smiled, as if at some hidden thought. 
 
 "We have been together in friendly company." 
 
 *' Yes, but not alone, man to man, face to face, like two 
 men who meet and measure their strength, alone betwixt 
 earth and sky, alone as fast friends like to be. And what 
 can be a fitter opportunity than this — when we have fifty 
 miles of the river before us, and not a human habitation 
 within those fifty miles, and when you have taken a world 
 of trouble on my account, the trouble to reclaim me — to 
 make a Christian of me, like the good Christian you are." 
 
 " I don't pretend to be a Christian ; but I wanted to do 
 all I could for you, because of our past friendship — in the 
 days when I think you liked me, Michael, and for the sake 
 of that pure and beneficent woman, who believes that man 
 has a higher destiny than the struggle for life here. It was 
 for Rachel Lorimer's sake more than for yours that I made 
 a last effort to save you. I could not see you drifting to 
 destruction without trying my best for you." 
 
 He laughed aloud, a laugh that grated on my nerves, 
 and made me loathe him. 
 
 " Drifdng to destruction ! " he echoed scornfully. " Obey- 
 ing my own instincts, you mean ; the instinct that craves 
 excitement, movement, mastery of men ; the instinct that 
 thirsts for pleasure; the instincts that make the thing you 
 call a man's soul. Ivly soul wanted strong drink, cards, 
 dice, the company of wild women. You call that drifting 
 
 * 211 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 to destruction. I call it living ; and while there is breath 
 in my nostrils I intend to live." 
 
 "You mean that you will go back to that pande- 
 monium ? " 
 
 " Yes, when I have more gold to spend there." 
 
 ** You know that your companions care only for your 
 gold?" 
 
 " I know that every man lives for himself, fights for his 
 own hand. No matter to me how base the creatures are, 
 if they amuse me. I buy them, as I buy food and drink. 
 I buy them at the market price, and use them for my 
 pleasure." 
 
 No words can describe the revolting cynicism, the arro- 
 gance of his tone, nor the strangeness of such a tone in 
 the man whom I had first known as the preacher of man's 
 equal rights, the sacred duty of man towards his fellow-man, 
 to help, to cure, to educate, to upraise. 
 
 " The Michael I knew is dead," I thought ; and as the 
 words shaped themselves in my mind, a strange agitation 
 overcame me. 
 
 We were in the boat, drifting \\ ith the current, Michael 
 sprawling in the bows, a big cigar between his lips, his head 
 lying against a sack of household stores that I had bought 
 at Dawson City. I was sitting in the stern, steering, a task 
 that needed experience and keen attention, for there were 
 many dangerous rocks in the river, hidden at this season, 
 when the snow that came down from the hills in frequent 
 avalanches had raised the level of the water. 
 
 " The Michael I knew is dead." 
 
 The words repeated themselves in my mind in the 
 summer stillness, and seemed to me like a revelation from 
 some power outside myself. To me, an unbeliever in the 
 supernatural, it seemed as if from some higher and more 
 spiritual source I had been suddenly made acquainted with 
 the truth. 
 
 " The jMichael I knew is dead." This reprobate and 
 scoffer, this drunkard and profligate, who had risen up from 
 Michael's sick-bed, who wore Michael's form and features, 
 this was not the man I had known and esteemed, my trusted 
 companion and friend, the man by whose side I have lain 
 down to rest by night and risen in the morning, sure of a 
 
 212 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 dog-like fidelity, knowing that if I missed him for an hour 
 he was employed in some good service for me or for my 
 friends. 
 
 The iMichael I knew was dead ; the ehbing pulse, the 
 last long sighs which Mackenzie had recorded, had indeed 
 been the end. The life that flamed up in the prostrate form 
 like a raging fire was not his life. A new creature had risen 
 from that bed of death \ a creature whose instincts were 
 wholly evil, and who was my deadly foe. I felt as he lay 
 there in the bottom of the boat, taciturn, supine, and 
 seemingly harmless, that I was in the presence of an 
 implacable enemy. 
 
 I cannot describe the horror and agony of mind that 
 had come upon me with that revelation. All the suffering 
 of the time that followed Manville's death, the subtle sense 
 of evil haunting and overshadowing my life, came back, and 
 I sat with my hand upon the tiller, guiding our course 
 automatically, my brain frozen, my limbs seeming numbed 
 and lifeless, like humanity turned to stone. I can but 
 wonder that I was able to keep the boat oft' the rocks as 
 long as I did. 
 
 IMy automatic steering failed at last, and had nearly 
 grounded us upon a long strip of an eyot, when the man 
 started up, nearly capsizing the boat, and pushed himself 
 into my place, lifting me from my seat and thrusting me 
 towards the bows. 
 
 " You can't steer in your sleep, mate," he said, snatching 
 the tiller ; " lie down and keep quiet. I know the river 
 better than you do." 
 
 I knew that there was danger in the man's company, 
 foresaw some stroke of fate, in a vague, dim way ; but I 
 had a feeling of not caring, an indifference to the evil that 
 threatened ; and I lay down in the bottom of the boat, just 
 where my enemy had been lying, and abandoned myself to 
 the overpowering force of sleep — the sleep I had been 
 longing for as the worn-out wayfarer longs for a place of 
 rest, as the parched lips long for a cool drink. 
 
 Ten miles or so from the mouth of the creek to which 
 we were bound, the river narrows suddenly, and takes an 
 acute bend between a cleft of the hills, a dangerous bit of 
 navigation known as the Needle Rapids, on account of the 
 
 2\\ 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 rock splinters that rise sharp and straight out of the white 
 water. 
 
 In passing this spot we had always unloaded our boat 
 and carried everything over the trail to the foot of the 
 waterfall. Before I gave myself up to sleep, I urged 
 !*^Iichael to keep a sharp look-out for the bend of the river 
 above the rapids, which was masked by a jutting spur of 
 the hills. I calculated that we were within an hour of the 
 perilous spot, and I begged him to wake me in good time 
 to help in the task of landing our stores, and guiding the 
 empty boat over the rough water without damage from the 
 rocks. 
 
 I am a light sleeper by habit, but I think my brain was 
 worn out by the worry and perplexity of mind which I had 
 suffered for a long time. I know that I never tasted the 
 luxury of sleep as I tasted it in that hour, sleep so pro- 
 found, so restful, yet through which there was a subcon- 
 sciousness of the sweet soft air and monotonous ripple of 
 the stream ; sleep without a dream, yet with a vague sense 
 of some great joy, a love that I had longed for and been 
 denied, now given me in full measure, the sense of bliss 
 not to be defined. 
 
 My waking was swift and terrible. The boat swerved 
 suddenly, and I awoke with a thrill of fear, and saw a 
 murderer's eyes staring into mine, a murderer's arm lifted 
 to strike. I sprang to my feet before the flashing knife 
 came down, and fought for my life. Unarmed, helpless 
 in the grasp of a Hercules, I made a fierce resistance to a 
 fate that seemed inevitable. I seized the arm that held 
 the knife, and hung on to it with all my weight, and with 
 the strength of desperation, while the boat rocked from 
 side to side ; but the battle was only of moments, the 
 knife, was plunged into my breast while my grasp was still 
 upon the murderer's arm, and I dropped like a log at his 
 feet. And now the boat was drifting fast upon a hurrying 
 stream, and had drifted faster with every moment of that 
 wild struggle, as if the water took its velocity from our 
 fierce passion, and hurried as our pulses hurried in the 
 murderous strife. 
 
 A dreamlike feeling came over me as I lay in the 
 bottom of the boat, savage eyes glaring down at me, the 
 
 214 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 murderer's hand ready to strike the coup de grace, I felt 
 the blood rushing from my side, and thought I was dying. 
 Before all things faded from my sight, I saw a sudden 
 change in the face of my foe. 
 
 " The white water ! " he cried, with a blasphemous oath ; 
 and then I felt as if I was being hurled through space, 
 sv\-ung round and round in a vortex of wild water, and the 
 rest was darkness, till I woke in our cabin thirty miles from 
 the Needle Rapids. 
 
 Some Indians had pitched their tents at the entrance 
 to the canon, and had been watching our boat, and had 
 dragged me out of the water at the foot of the rapids, when 
 I v»-as flung, biiiised and bleeding and senseless, alm^ost at 
 their feet. 
 
 One of them was a man who had worked with us, and 
 he made his way by the river and creek to our camp, to 
 carry the news to my friends. The others brought me back 
 to life, but not to consciousness ; and many days and nights 
 of fever and pain had to pass before I knew ^^here I Avas 
 lying, or remembered what manner of man I was. 
 
 jNly enemy was never seen after that brief vision of 
 an uplifted arm and a flashing knife, which the Indians 
 described to Stormont and jNIackenzie with a few words of 
 broken English, and a good deal of energetic pantomime. 
 The white water had swept him from their ken as the empty 
 boat crashed bottom upwards am.ong the jagged rocks, and 
 that strong frame, vvith all its capacity for evil, was carried 
 to unknov^n depths. 
 
 I have now only one desire, and that grows keener 
 with every slow hour of convalescence. I am longing for 
 England, and the faces of the friends I left there. I shall 
 go back broken in health, shaken in mind, a bundle of 
 nerves, and haunting thoughts ; but to see the fields and 
 hedgerows, the village greens and thatched gables of that 
 little friendly vrorld of England, after the monotonous 
 grandeur of Alaskan snow-mountains, ought to be enough 
 for peace. 
 
 And I may see Rachel again, may taste the sweetness 
 of her Divine pity. I rejected her friendship with passionate 
 scorn when she denied me her love. I swore that she could 
 be nothing to me if she were not all. But I have grown 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 humbler in these years of severance. I can sue to her, in 
 forma pauperis^ for the charity of a kind word, a friendly 
 look from the eyes I love. I think I could school myself 
 to be her lieutenant, to work for her and obey her, and 
 keep every impassioned thought in check, so that she should 
 forget I ever asked her for more than friendship. With 
 her as the ruler of my life, my gold will be a precious 
 possession, every ounce of yellow ore a means of help and 
 comfort for humanity. Without her aid I fear the springs 
 of action would be weak, and all I attempted would lack 
 purpose, and that Divine patience under discouragement 
 which is the supreme attribute of the Believer. 
 
 I will write to you from England, my dear friend, if 
 I live to return to the old scenes. INIy quiet bachelor 
 lodgings and the books I love are waiting for me in the 
 narrow street behind the church. 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 Walter Ardex. 
 
 216 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XV. 
 
 The joy which Waher Arden hoped to feel in the sight of 
 famiUar things, the quiet fields and hills and woodlands, 
 the sober old homesteads and cosy villages between South- 
 ampton and London, and even in his own library, was 
 lessened by the state of physical prostration in which he 
 landed from the American liner that brought him from New- 
 York. Throughout the homeward pilgrimage by river and 
 sea, by rail and steamer, he had been carefully tended by 
 Alick Mackenzie and Archer Stormont ; but the rallying 
 power which he had shown immediately after the healing of 
 his wound had failed mysteriously before the band left 
 Dawson City in the steamer for St. Michael, carrying their 
 fortunes with them in strong iron-bound chests. Mackenzie 
 hoped that restful days on river and sea would have restored 
 his strength ; but the listlessness and apathy continued, and 
 he was in weaker health when he landed at Southampton than 
 when he left the gold-fields. The motive power of existence 
 seemed broken : and when his friends had seen him estab- 
 lished in his old rooms, with his old servant in attendance 
 upon him, he sank down into a languid endurance of life, 
 caring for nothing, hoping for nothing. Even his books 
 had lost their charm, nor could the old or the new things 
 in literature — neither the book beloved of mankind for two 
 thousand years, nor the book that had taken the town by 
 storm yesterday— bring him relief from the haunting memory 
 of those last months on the Yukon, and the mysterious 
 change in Michael Dartnell's character. 
 
 His landlady ministered to him with an almost maternal 
 tenderness, employing all the resources of her culinary art 
 to tempt an invalid appetite, but with scant success. Her 
 mourning-gown told him of her sorrow, even before her 
 trembling lips broke into speech. 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Oh, sir, there is no one in the little parlour now — the 
 room that we made so pretty, with your kind help. I keep 
 the door locked, and no one goes there but me, to dust the 
 furniture and air the room. The pretty things are all there ; 
 her bust of Byron, and his portrait that Lady Mary gave 
 her, and her books, and the flower-vases. I put a few 
 flowers there every Sunday ; for, though it may be foolish 
 of me, I can't help thinking that her spirit may haunt the 
 room where she spent so many quiet hours." 
 
 "Was she long ill?" 
 
 *' No, sir ; I think I may say she was never ill. I thank 
 God for that in the midst of my sorrow. She suffered 
 neither sickness nor pain ; she just drooped and drooped, 
 all through last autumn, and seemed a shade weaker every 
 day. I had the best of doctors for her, thanks to your 
 kind sister, who came to see her ever so many times, and 
 took her in her own carriage to her own physician ; but he 
 didn't pretend he could do anything to lengthen her life. 
 He gave her a prescription, and she took the medicine, and 
 seemed to rally just a little ; but she was fading away all 
 the time. Her life was ebbing from her slowly and gently, 
 like the tide going out." 
 
 " Did her mind seem stronger towards the last ? " 
 
 "No, sir; she was always the same, except that those 
 dreadful thoughts of hell-fire and fiends and the bottomless 
 pit seem to have left her. She was happy in her pretty 
 romantic way, as she used to be before that trouble came 
 upon her. She would talk of Byron, and shed tears over 
 his early death, when he was fighting the Greeks — or fighting 
 for the Greeks, was it? Poor child, how she adored his 
 lordship ! She had his picture propped up beside her bed 
 in the last days, when she was too weak to hold up her 
 head, and she died in her sleep, without so much as one 
 troubled sigh, with her face turned towards his face ; and I 
 wondered if his spirit knew of the love of one simple low- 
 born girl, given to him more than seventy years after they 
 laid him in his grave." 
 
 " I'm afraid your life must seem sad and empty since 
 your loss, my dear Mrs. Berry," Arden said gently. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Arden, I feel as if my heart, and all the hopes 
 I ever had in this life, were locked up with the pictures and 
 
 218 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 books in that little room. If I had only this life to think 
 about — well, I believe I should just walk down to West- 
 minster bridge, in the dead of some dark night, and drop 
 quietly over the parapet. One drowned woman more or 
 less would make no difference in this big city. But I look 
 forward to the life to come, when I shall find my poor 
 ruined girl again among the souls of the redeemed, whose 
 sins are washed white in the blood of the Lamb. 1 cannot 
 fly in the face of my Creator, Ish. Arden, and forfeit my 
 hope of hfe eternal, and reunion with my girl." 
 
 The fervour of her v.-ords, and the exalted look in the 
 poor plain face, touched him deeply. Yes, this was the 
 only possible consolation for the bereaved, the sure and 
 certain hope of reunion in the life to come. 
 
 He remembered Rachel's words, " What could I say to 
 them, how could I comfort them, if I did not believe in the 
 life after death ? " 
 
 Arden called in Carlton House Terrace on the day after 
 his return. He had just strength to get into a hansom and 
 let himself be driven vrhere he wanted to go, looking with 
 uncaring eyes at the houses and the people he passed, and 
 with the dreamlike half-alive feeling of extreme weakness. 
 
 Disappointment awaited him. Mr. Lorim.er was in 
 Central America ; Mrs. and Miss Lorimer were at Harro- 
 gate. He went back to Jermyn Street feeling that the town 
 was empty of all human interest. 
 
 Lady Mary Selby called upon him on the following day. 
 
 " iSIrs. Berry told me you were coming home on the 
 Bosfo7i," she said; "but I think you might have written to 
 me before you left Klondyke. Only one shabby letter in 
 more than two years I " 
 
 " I had so little to write about." 
 
 " So little ? In a life of adventure I " 
 
 " Would you have relished descriptions of snow-mountains 
 and lakes ? I know you care only about people ; and there 
 were no people, from your point of view, between San 
 Francisco and the Yukon." 
 
 " You might have written about yourself." 
 
 " I had nothing satisfactory to tell you." 
 
 " Then your expedition has been a failure?" 
 
 219 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Something of a failure." 
 
 ''No gold?" 
 
 " Gold ? Oh yes, plenty of gold. I believe I am richer 
 by a quarter of a million or so." 
 
 " A quarter of a million ! Do you call that failure ? 
 Why, my husband is quite jubilant when he has made a 
 quarter of a million, as he did the week before last, by the 
 boom in mineral oils." 
 
 " I know. He calls it another milestone on the road to 
 a modest competence. I have heard him. But I did not 
 go to the North-West for the sake of the gold ; I went to 
 forget things." 
 
 "And have you forgotten ? " 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 " I'm glad you have not forgotten Rachel Lorimer." 
 
 " If you love me, you ought to be sorry. But it was 
 something to find that she is still Rachel Lorimer." 
 
 " And will be to the end of the chapter, I believe, unless 
 you can make her change her mind." 
 
 " I cannot hope to do that, unless I could change my 
 mind." 
 
 " And is your mind still the same ? " 
 
 " Yes ; the light that shines into her life has not come 
 into mine." 
 
 " How can you hope for it if you won't even go to 
 church?" 
 
 " You think church would convert me — to sit in a row of 
 close-packed human beings, and listen to the pious banalities 
 of a popular preacher, to hear fifty-two sermons a year, of 
 which perhaps two would appeal to my reason or touch 
 my heart." 
 
 *' If you went to hear the right preachers, you would end 
 by being convinced." 
 
 " My dear Mary, if Rachel's perfect life cannot con- 
 vince me, there is no hope for my salvation ; not even in 
 a miracle. But tell me about yourself. You look younger 
 and handsomer and happier than when we parted." 
 
 " Yes, I am happier. I have been enjoying my trivial 
 life. The only way to be happy is to be trivial — to enjoy 
 the present moment, and to value the things one has. My 
 parties were among the most successful of the season. I 
 
 220 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 bad the best home and foreign royalties, and all the pretty 
 people, and all the clever people— I mean all the people 
 who have done things within the year — books, or pictures, 
 or flying-machines, or scientific discoveries." 
 
 " And how do you come to be in town in October ? " 
 
 " Oh, the usual business — to buy things. We have been 
 on Selby's Moor, and we came from Scotland in his motor- 
 car. There were three break-downs, and I had to stand 
 shivering on a lonely high-road while the wretched thing 
 was mended. I shall travel by rail in future. If one has 
 to wear ugly clothes and goggles, the motor isn't good 
 enough. Picture a honeymoon couple !— ' the bride's going- 
 away toilet was a mackintosh coat and smoked spectacles.' " 
 
 " How long shall you be in town ? " 
 
 " As long as I find London the pleasantest place in the 
 world. But I want to hear more about you, Walter. You 
 are looking dreadfully ill. You must have worn yourself 
 out in that horrid Arctic region." 
 
 " No, no ; the Arctic region is not to blame." 
 
 " What was the matter, then ? You are looking ten 
 years older than when you left England. There must be 
 some reason." 
 
 " Yes, there is a reason. I have been through tragic 
 experiences, things I cannot talk about — yet awhile." 
 
 " I won't v.'orry you. But I hope you will see my pet 
 doctor, who will set you right very soon." 
 
 And Lady Mary urged the merits of the last fashionable 
 physician, the man whom everybody insisted upon as the 
 one infallible healer. 
 
 '* You must see him at once — to-morrow morning. You 
 must write immediately for an appointment." 
 
 " My case is not so desperate. I am suffering from a 
 kind of reaction, and I only want rest. Just to lie back in 
 my chair half asleep, with a book dropping out of my 
 hand." 
 
 " That is not enough. He will send you somewhere " 
 
 *' I shall ask him to send me to Harrogate." 
 
 " Ah, then you know that Rachel is there ? " 
 
 "Yes; I was told she was there. But I hope she has 
 not been ill." 
 
 " No. They are there for her mother's rheumatism." 
 
 221 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 *' Then I would consent to Harrogate, if your physician 
 should send me there. But I have no hope, Mary — no 
 hope of anything better than to be Rachel's friend and 
 helper." 
 
 Arden promised to consult the great man without delay, 
 but on the next morning he was too ill to leave his bed, 
 and his servant sent for the general practitioner who had 
 the honour of attending Mrs. Berry's lodgers, whether lords 
 or commoners, and who had been a kind friend to Lisbeth 
 till her last hour. 
 
 He found the patient suffering from no specific disease, 
 but in a state of extreme prostration, and with a good deal 
 of fever. He ordered perfect rest and careful nursing — a 
 trained nurse to assist Martin the valet. 
 
 Lady Mary came on the following afternoon, and insisted 
 on a consultation with the oracle from Cavendish Square, 
 to which the Jermyn Street practitioner politely assented, 
 and had the satisfaction of finding his opinion confirmed 
 and his treatment approved. 
 
 " Mr. Arden must have passed through great suffering, 
 mental as well as physical," the physician said to Lady 
 Mary, after the consultation. " I suppose you know that 
 he has been badly wounded — a stab from a knife or dagger, 
 which narrowly missed his heart ? " 
 
 " No ; I know nothing." 
 
 " Mr. Wellborough found the scar when sounding him. 
 It must have been a severe wound, only just missing a vital 
 point, and recent ; certainly within the last six months." 
 
 " Can he have been fighting a duel ? " 
 
 " No, no ; the wound could not have been made by a 
 small sword. The scar indicates the blade of a knife or 
 dagger. Mr. Arden has had a narrow escape." 
 
 Walter Arden, Jermyn Street, London, to Doughfs CampheU^ 
 Leit/i, Tasmania. 
 
 November 30th, 1S9-. 
 
 ■ My dear Douglas, 
 
 I promised to write to you as soon as I arrived 
 in London ; but you know the proverb, Mann dertkt, Gott 
 le?ikt. I have been in this house nearly two months, and 
 
 222 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 for much of that time hfe has been a blank, or I have been 
 dwelling in a world of my own, where all things were 
 strange and incredible, and only within the last v/eek have 
 I again become a reasonable being, conscious of the world 
 in which I live ; conscious, and happy with an ineffable 
 happiness, having by means of my very weakness and 
 piteous condition won the prize which was denied to my 
 passionate pleading in the days of my strength. 
 
 I will not trouble you with the details of my illness, 
 for it was almost a repetition of the long period of fever 
 and v/eakness which I suffered in the log cabin after my 
 wound. Fever and delirium ; long days in which life 
 trembled in that fine balance with which the doctor weighs 
 his patient's chances ; and then a slow rallying, a gradual 
 return to the consciousness of the hfe around me, in which 
 the simple furniture of my bedroom ceased to present itself 
 under all manner of horrible or grotesque shapes, and 
 became again familiar objects — a wardrobe on the right, 
 a dressing-table on the left, the sofa, the mantelpiece -—all 
 so commonplace and soothingly peaceful after the labyrinths 
 in which I had lost myself, the catacombs where I had walked 
 for weary hours clutching an expiring candle, the submarine 
 ships in which I had panted for breath, the Siberian 
 dungeons, the Thibetan monasteries. Only the common 
 everyday world ; but what bliss to find it again, after being 
 lost among the spectral terrors of delirium. 
 
 That was my faithful servant quietly sweeping the 
 hearth and replenishing the fire ; and the comfortable- 
 looking middle-aged woman standing by my bed was my 
 nurse. 
 
 But the angel — who had looked down upon me some- 
 times, radiant with a divine light, in the midst of scenes of 
 terror — where was she ? 
 
 I asked what had become of the angel, but the nurse 
 thought I was delirious still, and only murmured some 
 soothing recommendation to take the prescribed nourish- 
 ment, and try to sleep. I had no power to persist. I was 
 weaker than an infant, and fell into a kind of half sleep, 
 while the nurse arranged my pillows. It was the first sleep 
 that brought me comfort since the beginning of my illness. 
 I slept till the short winter day was done, and awoke to find 
 
 223 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 my room lighted dimly by a pair of candles on a table at 
 some distance from my bed. 
 
 There were two women in the room. One was sitting 
 in the large armchair by the fire, in bonnet and mantle. I 
 could not see her face. The other was sitting by my bed, 
 bareheaded, the candlelight shining on soft brown hair and 
 the loveliest eyes in the world. 
 
 " Rachel ! " 
 
 Yes ; it was Rachel. I stretched out my hand, and it 
 was clasped in hers, and I heard a stifled sob before she 
 spoke. 
 
 " Mother and I are so glad you are better," she said 
 quietly. " We have been to see you every day ; but you 
 did not know us." 
 
 " I knew that an angel looked down at me sometimes — 
 that the gates of heaven opened for an instant, and that I 
 looked and saw an angel, while I was lying in the depths 
 of hell." 
 
 " Ah, now you are talking as if you were delirious again. 
 There were two of your angels— mother was always with me." 
 
 " Dear, dear Mrs. Lorimer," I said. 
 
 She came over and sat by me, and held my other hand, 
 and I lay thus between these dear women, mother and 
 daughter, and I knew that all I had ever suffered of sorrow 
 on earth was outweighed a hundred-fold by the bliss that 
 was granted to me. 
 
 Rachel loved me. The dear hand that clasped mine, 
 with a warmer clasp than ever friend gave to friend, was my 
 assurance of her love. It scarcely needed our quiet talk 
 next day, when Mrs. Lorimer left us for a brief span, which 
 she spent with my sister in the library, to convince me of 
 my happiness. 
 
 I asked her if she would trust her life to me, if she 
 would believe in my reverence for the religion she loved, 
 because it was hers, and that no act or word of mine should 
 ever attack her faith. 
 
 " I must believe, I must hope, and go on hoping, that 
 in His own good time God will give you the faith that 
 makes life on earth worth living " 
 
 And then she told me how unhappy she had been when 
 she knew that I had left England for the wild life on the 
 
 224 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Yukon, and that she had made me an exile, and had sent 
 me to face hardships and dangers that might end in death. 
 She had acted from a sense of duty. She had sacrificed her 
 love for her faith ; but when the deed was done, she repented, 
 and began to doubt if she had chosen the best course, if a 
 truly religious woman would not have accepted the risk from 
 which she had recoiled, and devoted herself to the man she 
 loved, trusting to the Divine guidance to bring him to the 
 true faith. 
 
 " The faith that can move mountains will surely help me 
 to lead one good man into the light," she said, with the 
 simplicity which makes her belief in the spiritual world so 
 lovely and so pathetic to an unbeliever like me. 
 
 She is mine, Douglas, this adorable creature whose 
 presence has for me been like the coming of sunshine into 
 a place of darkness. She will trust her life to me, and 
 every hope, every desire, every thought of mine, will be 
 centred in her. Henceforth her lightest wish will be my 
 law. I shall live only to adore and to obey her. Her 
 coming has routed all the brood of evil. 
 In ineffable, in unmerited bliss, 
 
 I sign myself your faithful friend, 
 
 Walter Aeden. 
 
 22i 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Walter Arden had been married three 
 years, and the only cloud upon their wedded happiness was 
 the shadow left by the loss of their only child, a son whose 
 life upon this planet had lasted something less than half 
 a year. 
 
 " He is waiting for us in heaven," his mother said some- 
 times, when her husband surprised her in tears, and knew 
 that they were shed for the one sorrow of her life. 
 
 A child under six months is hardly a sentient being to 
 the indifferent observer. It is a creature to be cherished by 
 an overpaid nurse, and wheeled about in a white chariot 
 under an embroidered satin coverlet, and to be admired 
 and gushed over by its mother's female friends, who would 
 not recognize the thing they praise if they happened to 
 meet it half an hour afterwards with somebody else's 
 nurse. 
 
 But to one person upon earth — to the mother — there is a 
 world of thought and meaning in those starry eyes ; and 
 every gesture of the delicate limbs, and every vague sweet 
 smile on the roseate face, has its significance. Rachel had 
 worshipped her infant son, not to the neglect of the un- 
 fortunate and the unhappy, for all the business of philan- 
 thropy had gone on uninterruptedly during his little life ; but 
 looking back on that brief span of exquisite happiness, which 
 seemed a life apart, a life in which he was, she felt that all 
 her thoughts had centred in her child, that she had made 
 him her idol, to the forgetfulness of other women's children — 
 the ill-nurtured, sickly little ones at the creche^ who, from her 
 own point of view, had as strong a claim on her as her own 
 very son — the claim of " the least of these," imposed upon 
 her by her Saviour. 
 
 226 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 He had been taken from her. Was it a lesson for the 
 unregenerate heart? She stood beside his grave with her 
 husband, the grave in a rural churchyard, far from the smoke 
 and din of cities, which was to be her own and her husband's 
 resting-place in the days to come, the last home, amidst 
 scenes of peacefulness and woodland beauty, which they 
 had chosen for their beloved. She stood by the open grave, 
 with Arden's hand clasped in hers, and her thoughts scared 
 from the coffin and the clay to that new life which her child 
 was living, and which to her seemed so much the more 
 certain and assured because of this little life that had flickered 
 into darkness here, to shine amiOng God's populace of radiant 
 faces, in the hght of the Lamb. 
 
 In all their after-talk of the son they had laid asleep 
 in the Berkshire churchyard, she never questioned her 
 husband as to his faith in that celestial future where her 
 missing treasure v>-as to be given back to her. She spoke 
 of her own hope as if it were a certainty ; and only in the 
 searching look of the lovely eyes did Arden see the doubt 
 struggling with the hope that he too looked forward to 
 the mystic reunion of spirit liberated from the bonds of 
 flesh. 
 
 The sorrow was an old wound now, and the life flowed on 
 in graciousness and peace, a life that meant incalculable 
 good for others. Arden had associated himself and his 
 fortune with all his wife's plans. She was his leader, his 
 conscience, the better part of himself. If he could not be a 
 Christian for her sake, he could at least be a philanthropist. 
 They worked together. He understood all the business of 
 charity, the accountancy, the supervision, all that needed a 
 strong will and mind. He had a secretary who helped in 
 the drudgery of correspondence and accounts, and the 
 greater part of whose time was occupied in answering 
 begging letters, or investigating the claims of the suppli- 
 cants ; but there was no part of the machine which his hand 
 did not direct, no detail in which he was not personally 
 interested. 
 
 When the question of her married home was mooted, 
 
 Rachel proposed a house in one of the old squares, Bedford 
 
 or Russell for choice, the largest house they could find, 
 
 where there would be room for philanthropic tea-parties 
 
 <> o n 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 after Mrs. Bellingham's pattern, where she would be out of 
 the way of the fashionable world and its laborious culture 
 of futile pleasures. 
 
 But Mr. and Mrs. Lorimer overruled this selection. 
 
 *' If those old squares were the kind of places I remember 
 when I was a boy, guarded by iron gates, remote, melancholy, 
 slow, I would make no objection to your living there," 
 Lorimer told his daughter, " but the noises and the traffic 
 of our obstreperous modern London have burst the gates 
 and spoilt the quiet. The flavour of the Georgian century 
 is gone. Students and old-fashioned people have fled from 
 the neighbourhood in despair. If you want quiet, you must 
 live in the West End." 
 
 Mrs. Lorimer put in her plea. She wanted her daughter 
 near her. That was essential. So a small house was found 
 in a quiet little street near St. James's Palace, and within 
 five minutes' walk of Carlton House Terrace. The house 
 was small, but the rent was immense. All the resources of 
 modern architecture had been brought to bear upon a prim 
 square house of the early Victorian order, and it had been 
 made eighteenth-century, with shallow bow windows, small 
 panes, beaten iron-work and copper decorations, and quaint- 
 nesses of every kind. It was like that house in Arlington 
 Street, of which it was said the owner ought to live over 
 the way in order to look at it. Happily, the house was 
 neat and pretty within as well as a thing of beauty out- 
 side ; and Rachel was a woman as well as a philanthropist, 
 and could not help loving her dainty home, with its white 
 walls and gay floral chintzes, Louis-seize cabinets and 
 tables, and choice water-colours, the gift of her adoring 
 father. 
 
 The house had been furnished by Mr. and Mrs. Lorimer 
 with a lavish outlay that had seemed sinful to Rachel, who 
 could never withdraw her mind from those martyrs of 
 poverty in the dark corners of the great city. But she 
 submitted to the will of those she loved, from whom she 
 had received boundless indulgence, and by whom she had 
 been allowed freedom that is rarely granted to a rich man's 
 daughter. She accepted the pretty house with a warm 
 gratitude, but she resolutely refused the diamonds which her 
 father wanted to give her. She had her pearls which had 
 
 228 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 been selected for shape and colour, two or three at a time, 
 year after year, till the perfect necklace was complete. 
 This necklace she loved for the love that had created it ; 
 but costliness in clothes or jewels in a general way was 
 distasteful to her. A country vicar's daughter would have 
 desired a more elaborate Irons seati than Mr. Lorimer's 
 heiress carried to her new hom.e. 
 
 The cynical among her girl-friends declared that she 
 affected this Spartan simplicity because she thought it 
 accentuated her beauty, and was the only possible way of 
 being original in a world where everybody of importance 
 was dressed by the same people and with the same reck- 
 less expenditure. 
 
 " Her quakerish satin frock is more conspicuous in a 
 crowd than all our furs and feathers," said one, " though it 
 can't cost her more than fifteen pound." 
 
 " She has found out the exact hat that sets off her profile, 
 and she makes a virtue of wearing it all through the season," 
 said another. 
 
 ]Mrs. Walter Arden did not abjure society. She had 
 youth and health. She was happily married, and the long 
 days spent in going about doing good left her with a reserve 
 of bright thoughts and gaiety for the evenings. She had 
 her opera-box, a gift from her mother, and she went to all 
 the evening parties, where the clever people — political, 
 literary, or artistic — were to be met. She was oftener seen 
 as Mrs. Arden than she had been as Miss Lorimer, for she 
 enjoyed the independence of a married woman's position, 
 and the knowledge that she was no longer a mark for the 
 fortune-hunter. The attentions paid her now must be 
 offered without any hidden motive. She was safe in the 
 haven of a happy marriage, and knew that somewhere in 
 the crowd her husband was waiting for the hour that would 
 bring them back to the quiet house and the dual solitude 
 they loved. 
 
 When the question of his daughter's marriage settlement 
 was mooted, Mr. Lorimer heard of Arden's Klondyke fortune 
 with unqualified astonishment. 
 
 " I didn't think you were the kind of man to make your 
 pile," he said frankly. " I fancied you too much of a 
 dreamer to pick up gold even if you found your way to 
 
 229 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Tom Tiddler's ground. I could understand your being 
 keen for the journey — your imagination fired by that rest- 
 less chap, Stormont ; but I expected to see you come home 
 minus your travelling expenses, with a box of snap-shot 
 films, and the materials for a book. Thafs all I expected 
 for you out of the North-West." 
 
 " You see, I had better luck than I deserved." 
 
 " You mean that for once in a way personal merit was 
 rewarded as richly as business capacity. Well, as you and 
 our girl are a brace of philanthropists, I propose, with your 
 leave, to tie up your two fortunes in such a manner that 
 neither of you v;ill have the power to chuck away the 
 capital, while free to make East End ducks and drakes of 
 the income." 
 
 " For my fortune, I lay it at Rachel's feet, to deal with as 
 she pleases." 
 
 " At my feet, you mean, to deal with in a common-sense 
 way for your mutual advantage. Rachel v/ould throw the 
 whole of it after the widow's mite." 
 
 " My dear friend, you must do what you think best. The 
 money is there, valueless for me except as a means of carry- 
 ing out Rachel's wishes." 
 
 *' Yes, yes, I understand. Well, you can spend the best 
 part of your income upon seaside camps and children's 
 dinners ; but I will take care the principal is under lock 
 and key. You will bring two hundred and fifty thousand 
 into settlement ; I shall give Rachel the same amount. 
 Your income from gilt-edged securities will be fifteen thou- 
 sand a year. I hope that will be enough for a comfortable 
 home, and for your ' poors,' as I heard an Orleans princess 
 call them." 
 
 " Our ' poors ' will rejoice in your liberality." 
 
 ** And you and Rachel will not lapse into eccentricity, 
 affect squalor, and walk about in patched boots, and ride in 
 halfpenny omnibuses ? " 
 
 " On fifteen thousand a year we can afford hansoms, and 
 sound boots." 
 
 " Yes, as long as you remember that you are a man of 
 the world as well as a Christian socialist." 
 
 Arden winced at the word Christian, averse to sailing 
 under false colours ; but he made no protest, remembering 
 
 230 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Lorimer's idea of Christianity, which was to do right things 
 in the right way. 
 
 "Talking of sociaHsts, what became of your East End 
 genius, Rachel's favourite, the man of whom you wrote in 
 your letters to my wife?" asked Lorimer. 
 
 " I am sorry to say he came to a bad end." 
 
 " A very bad end, I guess, by your face." 
 
 '• Yes, it was bad, and very bad. The man changed — and 
 disappointed me." 
 
 '• I see the subject is painful. I vron't ask for details. 
 Does Rachel know ? " 
 
 " She knows nothing except that the man is dead. I 
 ■would not trouble her mind vrith horrible fancies." 
 
 " Horrible fancies ! " 
 
 Lorimer echoed the words wonderingly, startled by Ardcn's 
 pallor, and the pained look in his contracted brow and 
 troubled eyes. The words and the look puzzled him, dis- 
 tressed him even. 
 
 " You must tell me more about this business another day, 
 Arden," he said. " I hate mysteries." 
 
 The other day never came, for in Lorimer's busy life 
 impressions pass quickly, and all things going smioothly and 
 happily in his daughter's courtship and marriage, the lover 
 and husband's devotion being above suspicion, he forgot 
 that momentary doubt, the flash of fear that had been 
 evoked by the strangeness of Arden's manner and speech 
 on one particular occasion. 
 
 Common sense ruled the house in Guelph Place ; there 
 was no touch of that eccentricity which Lorimer and his wife 
 had apprehended. Mr. and Mrs. Arden spent about a fifth 
 of their income upon themselves. Three thousand a year 
 will go a long way in a family of two, where neither husband 
 nor wife requires the stimulus of high play or extravagant 
 clothes to give a zest to existence. Rachel's personal 
 expenditure was trifling, but she liked to keep her sitting- 
 rooms supplied with flowers, and those flowers of the 
 freshest, and for this purpose two of her East End girls 
 came to the house on alternate days bringing their baskets 
 from Covent Garden, with the sweetest that the market 
 could supply, bought advantageously in the early morning, 
 
 2^1 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 not the rare products of tropical hot-houses, but flowers that 
 had bloomed in dewy gardens under sunny skies, flowers 
 fresh from the mother-earth that bore them. 
 
 There could scarcely have been a happier life than 
 Rachel's since the passing cloud of sorrow, the one sad 
 memory, the joy that w^as and is not, the sorrow common to 
 all lives. For her there was so little leisure to brood upon 
 that one sorrow. All her days were occupied, all her 
 thoughts w^ere busy in the labour to which she had devoted 
 her life, the steady unintermittent work for others that had 
 been going on since her fifteenth birthday, when she cast in 
 her lot with Mrs. Bellingham, and became a sister of charity 
 without the nun's habit. There could scarcely have been 
 a happier home than the small house whose hours were 
 measured by the big clock on the front of St. James's 
 Palace ; and those who knew Mr. and Mrs. ^Valter Arden 
 intimately always cited them as a splendid example of 
 harmony of mind and heart in married life. 
 
 " They certainly contrive to make the best of both 
 worlds," said a young matron, whose married life was a 
 notorious failure. " With Mrs. Arden's perfect health it is 
 easy to go in for philanthropy. If I had her constitution, 
 I could defy germs, and wouldn't mind doin' a little slummin' 
 now and then. It's rather interestin' ; and philanthropy 
 always pays, don't you know." 
 
 " Oh, pays, does it ? That's a new idea ! " 
 
 " You see it gets a Avoman talked about ; and that's not 
 easy nowadays, when all the women in society are clever and 
 most of them pretty. No doubt Mrs. Arden would have 
 always ranked among the pretty people ; but she's too much 
 of a prude to go far in that direction. But as the lovely 
 young philanthropist she has made herself a place in society. 
 Joey Bagstock is deep, sir, deep ! " concluded the lady, with 
 a false laugh. 
 
 If there were women whose egotism and vanity took 
 offence at Rachel's popularity, there were others, and some 
 among the most exalted, who admired and loved her. 
 Philanthropy has its social circle among the many circles 
 in the whirlpool of society; and the Ardens had their 
 particular set of friends and fellow-workers, who were all 
 busied in the same ceaseless endeavour for the betterment 
 
 232 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 of mankind. To the frivolous and sceptical, all their work 
 was so much filling of bottomless pails, so much upward- 
 rolling of stones that always rolled back again ; but to the 
 workers, in spite of failures and disappointments, there was 
 the conviction of progress, the assurance that out of the many- 
 helped and comforted some at least had been better for 
 that help and comfort, some death-beds had been smoothed, 
 some young lives had been brightened, the conditions of 
 life improved for many, and the battle vaUantly fought 
 against the three-headed monster, dirt, disease, and death. 
 
 In the world of philanthropy there was one man who rose 
 above the ruck, pre-eminent, less for the largeness of his 
 money gifts, though these were on a splendid scale as 
 measured by his m.eans, than by the fire of enthusiasm that 
 informed every act of his life, and by a depth of religious 
 fervour rare in this modern age of materialism and self- 
 indulgence, an age in which the scoffer gives the tone to 
 conversation, and homely, well-meaning men are ashamed 
 to declare themselves followers of Christ, when schoolgirls 
 with flowing hair and short petticoats pronounce themselves 
 Darwinians, and ask if any one can really believe the old- 
 fashioned creeds that sustained their grandmothers, when 
 the churches are full of women, and only the eloquence of 
 some famous preacher here and there has power to attract 
 a congregation of men. 
 
 Lord St. Just was a churchman of the school of Laud, 
 with so strong a leaning to all that was grand and beautiful 
 in the faith of ancient days that it v>as a vronder to some of 
 his friends that he had not taken the final step and sur- 
 rendered his will and his intellect to the Passive Obedience 
 of the Roman Church. 
 
 He had stopped in that via media where Newman in- 
 tended to stop, and deeply as he admired Newman and 
 iSIanning, he had never felt the necessity that compelled 
 them to leave the church of their fathers. 
 
 He came of one of the oldest families in Cornwall, where 
 there had been St. Justs since the Conquest, and though 
 there were houses that boasted a Saxon descent and a more 
 remote association with the soil, few could show a lineage 
 as unbroken, or a family record so free from stain or blemish 
 of any kind. Always conspicuous in the field of battle, 
 
 233 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 and devoted servants of the Sovereign, the St. Justs had 
 been Tories and High Churchmen through every change in 
 popular feeling, liberal landlords, bigoted politicians, hating 
 a Whig and a Methodist, opposing Reform, and Catholic 
 Emancipation, and the Repeal of the Corn Laws, but sub- 
 mitting to the inevitable with a good grace. More than one 
 St. Just had made his mark in politics, and when Ambrose, 
 the thirteenth Baron, took a double-first at Oxford, it was 
 supposed that he, too, would make a figure in the public 
 arena and maintain, or even enhance, the prestige of the 
 family. His mother, who adored him, was moved when 
 her friends told her of the career open to her son. 
 
 He was an only son, an only child, and his mother, still 
 remarkable among matrons for her beauty, had scarcely a 
 thought or a hope that did not centre in this one existence. 
 She had lived only for her son, since her husband's untimely 
 death in the Ashantee ^Var, where he had gone as a volunteer, 
 exchanging from the household brigade to a line regiment 
 in order to serve under Wolseley. Even before her widow- 
 hood, when the delicate boy was still in the nursery, her son 
 had been paramount. 
 
 " i\Iy dear Ethel, you knov/ you can spare me," her 
 husband said, when he pleaded for leave to join the expedi- 
 tion. " You will be so taken up with Ambrose's health that 
 you will hardly know I am gone till you see me home again, 
 with a scratch or two by way of distinction." 
 
 Lord St. Just distinguished himself in the brief war, and 
 though seriously wounded, did not die of his wounds. Fever 
 and climate gave him the coup de grace while he was waiting 
 for the transport that was to take him home. His widow 
 mourned him long, and never even entertained the idea of a 
 second marriage, though she was only six and twenty at the 
 time of his death. She kept all admirers at a distance, lived 
 in the old Cornish manor house between sea and moorland, 
 and devoted herself to her son. While he was in the nursery, 
 and schoolroom, learning his rudiments with the village 
 curate, she hardly left Cornwall ; but w4ien he went to Eton 
 she took a furnished house at Maidenhead, in order to be 
 near him, which she exchanged for a house at Woodstock 
 when he went to Oxford. She was careful not to place any 
 restraint upon his boyish independence in those happy Eton 
 
 234 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 davs. It was enough for her to be near him, to know that 
 the river at the end of her lawn was the river on which he 
 took his pleasure, that she might see his boat flash by and 
 his hat waved to her at any moment, that he could run in to 
 breakfast or luncheon when the whim seized him — that he 
 was near. To hear the college clock strike, to drive by the 
 cricket-field and see the lads' white flannels flash in the sun- 
 shine was bliss. To know that he was near her, and happy ! 
 What more could the maternal heart desire ? 
 
 At Woodstock life was even happier than at Maidenhead, 
 for the undergraduate had more freedom than the Eton boy. 
 St. Just was able to take his friends to his mother's house, 
 and she made little dinners for him, and got together the 
 nicest girls she could find in the neighbourhood, and her 
 house was a centre of attraction for the best set at Christ- 
 church. And so her son grew to manhood, and his mother 
 to middle age, and the lives of both had been cloudless, till 
 there came the discussion of army or no army for Lord St. Just. 
 
 All his relations, except the widov>-ed mother, were of 
 opinion that he ought to be in the Guards. It was a family 
 tradition. Every St. Just had to be a soldier. Blues, Life 
 Guards, Grenadiers, Coldstreams, Scots Guards ; no matter 
 which regiment was chosen, there would have been a St. 
 Just in it at some time or other ; but the Life Guards for 
 this young St. Just by all means. But this particular St. Just 
 happened, in spite of family tradition, to have the bent of the 
 student rather than the soldier. He had pluck enough to 
 head a forlorn hope or ride a Balaclava charge, had shown 
 of what good stuft" he was m.ade in more than one life-saving 
 adventure on the river, but he had no passionate desire for 
 soldiering. He had been among the reading men in his first 
 and second year at Christchurch, but in his third year his 
 mind had taken a new development. 
 
 Wider horizons had opened before him, and he had become 
 the leading spirit in a little band of philanthropists, as earnest 
 in their devotion to humanity as John Wesley and his com- 
 panions at the same college in the early days of Methodism. 
 Like that admirable man, young Lord St. Just was not exempt 
 from the ridicule which usually attaches to any fervid en- 
 deavour to make crooked things straight ; the normal idea 
 being to leave them crooked, and not to bother one's self oi 
 
 235 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 anybody else ; in short, never to " enthuse " about anything. 
 But St. Just cared no more for ridicule than Wesley did ; 
 and he gave himself up, heart and brain and flesh and 
 strength, to the work which it seemed to him good to do ; 
 and from the day he left Oxford his business in life was to 
 help the suffering, and to raise the fallen. On all great 
 questions affecting the good of the human race his voice was 
 to be heard in the House of Lords. He had never willingly 
 missed a debate in which the interests of humanity were at 
 stake ; and he made his mark early in his career as one of 
 the most eloquent speakers in the Upper House. It may 
 have been because he never spoke except when his heart 
 moved him, and his mind was full. 
 
 St. Just was now in his thirtieth year, and there had been 
 as yet no question of his marriage. He lived with his 
 mother in the old family mansion in Portland Place, which 
 had belonged to the St. Justs ever since it was built, a house 
 large enough for entertaining on a grand scale, or for all 
 the purposes of philanthropy. 
 
 There had been no brilliant gatherings, no dances or big 
 dinners in the young lord's reign. The spacious dining- 
 room had been devoted wholly to business purposes, 
 committee meetings, and the rest, while a smaller room at 
 the back of the house sufficed for hospitality, cosy dinners 
 of eight or ten, luncheons at which artists and literary men 
 were the salt that gave savour to the society of clerics and 
 philanthropists. Lady St. Just entered with enthusiasm 
 into all her son's schemes, believed as he believed, helped 
 his work wherever a woman's help was wanted ; and her lot 
 would have been cloudless happiness but for one brooding 
 fear in the background of her mind, a fear for the health 
 and life of her son, the dread of hereditary consumption. 
 It was on her own side of the house that the shadow had 
 fallen. Her father and two of his sisters had succumbed 
 to lung disease ; two in the prime of life, one in the fair 
 dawn of womanhood, lovely and beloved. At the time of 
 her marriage, Ethel Challoner had been too young, and 
 perhaps too thoughtless, to consider this family history a 
 bar to wedlock, nor did any of her friends apprehend 
 danger. She was a splendid specimen of girlhood, hand- 
 some, agile, full of life and energy, a star at lawn tennis, 
 
 236 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 a fine horsewoman, seemingly everything that a man should 
 desire in the mother of a stalwart race. People thought 
 St. Just had made an admirable choice. Certainly there 
 had been consumption in the family, but that could have 
 been only an accident. There was nothing consumptive- 
 looking about Lady St. Just's father, General Challoner, before 
 his fatal illness. Some men are imprudent, come home from 
 shooting in wet clothes, and sit about in the tea-room or 
 the smoking-room instead of going straight to a hot bath ; 
 and the finer the man the more reckless of health, and the 
 likelier victim to lung trouble. 
 
 It was only as the years went on and a certain chest 
 weakness showed itself in her son that Ethel St. Just began 
 to brood upon the family history, and to think that, wdth 
 that taint in her blood, she had sinned in becoming a wife 
 and mother. 
 
 Lady St. Just had never heard of the modem theory 
 which denies the inevitableness of lung disease, and will 
 only admit heredity in the transmitted type of abnormal 
 sensitiveness, with organs adapted to receive the fatal 
 infection. She kept her fears in the dark caverns of her 
 mind, shrinking from them as from hidden monsters ; and 
 she had never ventured to discuss the subject with any 
 of her scientific acquaintance, the men of experience and 
 research who might have given her comfort. 
 
 It was natural that friendship should grow and ripen 
 between people engaged in the same work and thinking the 
 same thoughts. T^Iodest and silent as Rachel's mission had 
 been, Lord St. Just heard of the good she had done, and 
 of her devotion to the cause which, to his mind, was the 
 first principle of the Christian life, without which creeds 
 were meaningless formulae and many prayers profitless as 
 the winds blowing through desert places. He had heard 
 of T^Iiss Lorimer's beautiful Hfe ; but as her work was local, 
 and as she never harangued on platforms, or mixed herself 
 with public movements, it was not till the third year after 
 her marriage that he made her acquaintance, meeting 
 her at an evening party in the house of a w-orld-renowned 
 painter. 
 
 " Father Romney has told me of your life work, Mrs. 
 
 237 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Arden," St. Just said, after their conversation had passed the 
 preHminary stage of the year's pictures, and the last book. 
 
 " You know Father Romney ? " 
 
 " He is my friend of many years, though we don't often 
 meet. You see his work keeps him in the East." 
 
 " And your work is everywhere. Mrs. BelUngham has 
 told me about you." 
 
 *' That admirable woman ! I do not see her half as 
 often as I should like." 
 
 " She is my dearest woman friend, after my mother; and 
 she is a kind of family connexion of my husband's." 
 
 *' Will you ask me to one of your evenings, Mrs. Arden ; 
 so that I may meet my old friend ? I have heard of your 
 evenings." 
 
 *' Oh, they are such insignificant little parties. Our 
 drawing-rooms won't hold more than twenty people, and 
 even then the rooms seem crowded — but all manner of 
 good and clever people are kind enough to come, and I 
 know Walter will be pleased to see you among them. We 
 are at home every Thursday from ten to twelve." 
 
 He noticed that she said, " We are at home," where 
 almost any other woman would have said, " I am at home." 
 The plural pronoun had a pleasant bourgeois sound, 
 indicating a Darby and Joan marriage, man and wife 
 moving in the same groove, finding their delight in the 
 same things. 
 
 Mrs. Walter Arden's Thursday evenings were popular 
 among some of the choicest people in London, the workers 
 with pen and pencil, men and women who had made their 
 name in the world, politicians, well-known clerics, and 
 here and there a fashionable butterfly, with brains enough 
 to care for the things that do not belong to fashion. 
 
 Mr. Chudbrook Martyn, an Englishman with an Italian 
 mother, polished, versatile, a poet and a painter, hovering 
 between the worlds of art and of fashion, but an earnest 
 worker all the same, was often to be found in the Arden 
 drawing-rooms; Lady Hortensia Lambert, a woman of 
 mind and wit, who loved art and letters better than the 
 mode of the moment, the last society craze or the last 
 society scandal, was also a frequent guest. Mr. Burton, 
 the popular preacher of South Belgravia, the man who made 
 
 238 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 people think about their sins, if he could not make them 
 leave off sinning, was another habitue. The small rooms 
 vrere on fire with intellect, a focus of ardent thought, at 
 other parties to be found only in a state of diffusion, an 
 ounce of brains in a gallon of rose-water. 
 
 Lord St. Just found an atmosphere in which he seemed 
 to breathe the breath of life as he had never done before. 
 He had the feeUng of a man who has climbed a hill, and 
 pauses near the summit to taste the freshness of the keen 
 upper air. He felt strengthened, rejuvenated by his inter- 
 course with Rachel and her friends. Never before had he 
 met a woman whose beauty had so touched his imagination, 
 whose character had so impressed him by its saintliness. 
 
 He knew many saintly women, toilers in the vineyard of 
 the Lord, women who gave all their time and work and 
 most of their means to the cause of humanity. 
 
 But, alas, few among these saintly ones possessed the 
 charm of an attractive personality. Some of them were 
 elderly, and the world had left them before they left the 
 world. To meet a woman of remarkable beauty, in the 
 bloom of youth, who had devoted herself with a joyous 
 heart to a task that repels all self-loving women, was a 
 wonder that impressed him deeply. He studied Rachel's 
 character, reflected upon her life and the circumstances 
 of her up-bringing, until her image occupied the first place 
 in his thoughts. 
 
 Then he awoke to a consciousness of his peril, one winter 
 evening, sitting in a favourite church, on one side of the 
 nave, while Rachel sat among the women on the other side. 
 He awoke in a flash kindled by some words of the preacher — 
 and knew that he had been giving too much of his mind 
 and heart to a woman who could never enter into his life 
 more nearly than she had entered already, as a friend and 
 fellow-worker, the faithful and devoted wife of the husband 
 she had chosen for herself. 
 
 ]Mrs. Bellingham had told him the history of that mar- 
 riage, early in his acquaintance with Rachel. She had told 
 him of that bitter day when the lovers parted, avowedly for 
 ever, and when Walter Arden turned his face towards the 
 Arctic Ocean in search of forgetfulness. She told him v/hy 
 he had been rejected, and how, after years of parting, and 
 
 239 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 when he seemed on the point of death, Rachel had taken 
 compassion upon him, and had given him her heart. 
 
 " She is so intensely in earnest that I wonder she could 
 trust her life to an unbeliever," St. Just said gravely. 
 
 " One always hopes for the best when the unbeliever is 
 a good man," replied Mrs. Bellingham. " I have a great 
 regard for Walter Arden, and I was very sorry she refused 
 him in the first instance ; yet her refusal was the cause of 
 his winning a fortune which he uses nobly." 
 
 St. Just set a watch upon himself after that sudden reve- 
 lation in the church. His joy in life must no longer be 
 counted by the hours he spent in Mrs. Arden's company. 
 There need be no break, no lessening of friendship. It was 
 in himself that the battle must be fought, and the hosts of 
 Midian discomfited. They come, they come, in such strange 
 forms, in a guise so unlikely to alarm. In dear society, 
 in sweet friendship, in the radiance of an almost celestial 
 beauty, which seems to exalt and ennoble the heart it moves, 
 in the purest joys, the loftiest hopes, the enemies of man 
 may be at work ; and the victim of their subtle spells may 
 awaken from his fond dream to discover hell where he 
 thought he had found heaven. 
 
 St. Just appeared in Mrs. Arden's drawing-room less 
 frequently, and tried to arrive at a more intimate acquaint- 
 ance with her husband. They were both members of the 
 Carlton and the Travellers, and met frequently. They were 
 men of the same views and aspirations in the cause of 
 humanity, both engaged in the same kind of work, and 
 interested in the same things. 
 
 But on the spiritual side of life a great gulf yawned 
 between the man whose hopes were fixed on the higher life, 
 and the man who saw nothing but darkness and the grave. 
 
 St. Just was an enthusiast in religion. He belonged to 
 that Oxford set which in the waning century had rekindled 
 the torch of Newman and the Tractarians with a fiercer 
 flame ; men for whom the via media was no impossibility, 
 but whose middle path closely skirted the great Roman 
 road which leads straight to the Vatican ; men for whom 
 the beauty of holiness meant all that is exalted and far- 
 reaching in a creed, all that is splendid, pompous, decorative 
 in a church. 
 
 240 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 To the mind of St. Just the unbeliever, the man without 
 God in the world, was a mystery. He could understand 
 and pity the wretches given over to invincible ignorance — 
 the heathens of London, on whom the light had never 
 shone ; but it was to him incomprehensible that a man of 
 cultivated mind, mated with such a woman as Rachel, could 
 shut his heart against the consolations of the Christian faith, 
 and wilfully reject the one Divine hope which makes man's 
 brief life on earth worth living. 
 
 As he became more intimate with Walter Arden, meeting 
 him very often in hours of leisure, at their club, or in their 
 philanthropic work, east or west, he discovered that Rachel's 
 husband was the prey of some hidden care ; and it was a 
 wonder to him that such a man, so placed in life, so blessed 
 by the love of an adorable woman, could be otherwise than 
 utterly happy. He could think of but one solution to that 
 problem. The man without God in the world could not know 
 happiness. There was the something wanting, the promise of 
 light behind the veil, without which all was dust and ashes. 
 
 One night, after they had been friends for more than a 
 year, and had worked much together and become really 
 intimate, St. Just ventured to touch upon Arden's gloomy 
 mood. There had been a public meeting of some import- 
 ance at Bethnal Green, and Arden had been present with 
 his wife and St. Just. Rachel and Mrs. Bellingham had 
 driven home together, and the two men had preferred the 
 long walk westward, through streets which were for the most 
 part silent. It was an exquisite summer night, and the great 
 human hive seemed to lie hushed and tranquil under the stars. 
 
 "I don't like to see you subject to these fits of depres- 
 sion," St. Just said, after they had walked som.e distance 
 without a word spoken by Arden, who had evidently not 
 heard his companion's occasional remarks en the places 
 through which they passed. '' I have suftered from the 
 same kind of thing myself. My doctor tells me it is only 
 a question of health, what he calls being run down. I'm 
 afraid you have been run down for some time past." 
 
 " No, no, it is not a question of health. I let other 
 people think so; I tell my wife that it is so, rather than 
 that she should suspect the miserable truth. I am not a 
 happy man, St. Just. All things that make for peace on 
 
 241 R 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 earth have been given to me ; all things that make life dear ; 
 a wife I adore, the means of making the common lot better, 
 of gratifying every good impulse, the knowledge that I am 
 of some use in the world ; all good things have been given 
 me, and I have not found content." 
 
 To the deeply religious man the answer was clear. 
 
 *' I think that is because you do not look for happiness 
 in the right way, or in the right place," St. Just answej-ed 
 gently; and then he quoted an old-fashioned poet whom 
 tormer generations revered — 
 
 " ' He builds too low ^vho builds below the stars.' " 
 
 " Ah, but I cannot build above the stars. My imagination 
 will not carry beyond the things I see. The earth I know 
 is Huxley's earth ; the heaven I know is the astronomer's 
 heaven. If there be anything in the infinite distance beyond 
 Neptune — anything other than suns and systems, uninhabit- 
 able stars, immeasurable distances — anything in which we 
 poor worms are interested, I cannot imagine it, or believe 
 in it," he added gloomily. 
 
 " And therefore you are unhappy." 
 
 " No, not therefore. I was happy enough, reading my 
 Darwin and my Spencer, six years ago. I was a creature 
 without a care. St. Just, you are a good man ; I know I can 
 trust you with secrets I have told to none." 
 
 " Yes, you can trust me, as other men have trusted me, 
 men whose secrets were hanging matters. But don't tell 
 me anything unless you believe I can help you." 
 
 " You will sympathize with me, perhaps, if you can under- 
 stand the unimaginable. I have but one friend to whom 
 I ever open my mind, and he is on the other side of the 
 world. I have written to him freely about myself, and he 
 has sympathized and understood. But even to him I have 
 not told what I am going to tell you." 
 
 " Make me your father confessor, if you like. You may 
 trust me as if I were a priest." 
 
 " Six years ago it was my misfortune to come between a 
 profligate and his prey. I could not save the girl; but I 
 killed her destroyer." 
 
 " Murder ! " said St. Just, in a horrified whisper. 
 
 " No ; a duel— a fair fight, with seconds, everything en 
 
 242 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 regie. He was physically my superior, and a fine swords- 
 man. Happily for me — or, perhaps, unhappily — I was 
 nearly as good, and fortune favoured me. In an onslaught 
 which was more like the attack of a man-eating tiger than 
 of a human being, he got the worst of it. He died cursing 
 me ; and he swore that I should never know peace, that in 
 some form or other, or formless, he would pursue me ; that 
 when I was happiest, amidst the smiles of fortune, in the com- 
 panionship of the woman I loved, his spirit should blast me/' 
 *' A wicked man's idle threat."' 
 
 " Idle, yes ! so I thought. But those words were spoken 
 six years ago ; and from that hour to this, except in certain 
 blessed intervals, I have been a haunted man.'' 
 
 "And you killed him fairly? As a man of the world, 
 you have nothing to reproach yourself with as to the manner 
 of his death ? " 
 
 " Nothing. Nor do I regret the fatal issue ; since I freed 
 the vrorld of a wretch who lived only to do evil." 
 
 *' And your im.agination has been haunted by the dying 
 man's curse. I can understand your feelings. To me the 
 idea of a duel is horrible. The idea of a man, a sinner, 
 taking upon himself to destroy his fellow-man, of set pur- 
 pose, face to face, and eye to eye, is to my mind more 
 terrible than unpremeditated murder, when the savage that 
 lives in civilized man gets the upper hand." 
 
 " Yes, I know it is horrible, where the men who stand 
 face to face are of the same nature ; but this man was a 
 monster of iniquity, and I felt myself a destined avenger. 
 I told myself that if I killed him it would be an execution, 
 and not a murder. No, St. Just ; dreadful as it may seem 
 to you, I have never repented of that act." 
 
 And then, in agitated phrases, pouring out his darkest 
 thoughts, he told his friend of that haunting presence which 
 made life a burden — the unseen, the ubiquitous, the thing 
 which had neither shape nor name, neither sound nor sub- 
 stance, but which was always with him, in all his thoughts 
 by day, in all his dreams by night. 
 
 He told of the scenes on the Klondyke, and the inex- 
 plicable change in the man he had trusted and almost 
 loved, the rough, strong nature that his friendship had 
 softened and refined, the radical artisan in whom he had 
 
 243 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 acknowledged his superior in force of mind and will. He 
 described those awful moments on the river, when, startled 
 from his sleep, he saw a murderer's eyes glaring down at 
 him, and knew that the soul looking out of those terrific 
 eyes was not the soul of Michael Dartnell. 
 
 St. Just heard this strange story with pity and horror. 
 
 "Alas! my poor friend," he said, " superstition has always 
 been one of the penalties of unbelief in God. Your imagina- 
 tion cannot conceive the mysteries revealed in the Gospel. 
 The Incarnation, the Divinity of Christ, the Resurrection 
 of the Dead, are to you unthinkable; and yet you are 
 haunted by the idea that the wicked soul of the man you 
 killed could Uve again in the form of your friend." 
 
 " Is the idea so strange ? Is this doctrine of metem- 
 psychosis, which has been common to the savage and to 
 the philosopher in innumerable ages, so incredible to you, 
 the Christian — you who believe that the soul still lives, 
 invisible, untraceable, impalpable to human sense, while 
 the form it once governed lies in the dust, and goes on 
 living, where and how you know not? Granted the after- 
 life, is it incredible that the souls of the just and the unjust 
 should exist as wandering spirits, and assume new tabernacles 
 of clay ? Where are the deathless souls of the wicked, do 
 you think ? Do you imagine them as Dante saw them in 
 his dream — each in his allotted sphere, suffering torments 
 commensurate to his guilt ? Is it not more credible that 
 the evil spirit should cling to the scenes of its lawless 
 pleasures, thirsting for revenge upon unforgiven foes, long- 
 ing to resume the carnal life it loves, the life of sensual 
 indulgence and unbridled sin ? This conviction has shaped 
 itself in my mind with irresistible force : and as truly as 
 I believe in my own existence at this moment, I believe 
 that I^Iichael Dartnell, the Michael I knew, left this earth, 
 and that the hellish spirit of my enemy entered into his life- 
 less clay. To you it may seem the idea of a madman ; but 
 I know I am not mad." 
 
 "You are sane now. But who can answer for your sanity 
 if you brood upon this wild imagination ? The conception 
 is like the beginning of madness — an idee fixe of the worst 
 kind. My dear Arden, there is no help for you, except in 
 Christ. If you cannot carry your troubles, your perplexities, 
 
 244 
 
The Conflict 
 
 your despair, to the Friend and Comforter of man, you 
 reject the only means of cure that I can imagine, in such 
 a case as yours. Your wife's affection, your consciousness 
 of a Ufe well spent in the cause of humanity, these have 
 failed to bring you peace. There is but one resource, one 
 refuge." 
 
 " That refuge is only open to the believer. For me the 
 gates are closed, and they are gates of adamant. Flesh 
 cannot prevail against them." 
 
 " But spirit can. The light will break through the dark- 
 ness by-and-by, perhaps. Go on with your good work, 
 and try to forget this horrible hallucination." 
 
 " I have sought forgetfulness in strenuous work ; I have 
 striven to give every thought of my brain to others, to 
 lose my own identity in the sufferings of others ; but the 
 paramount thought is there still. I may lose consciousness 
 of myself, but I cannot lose consciousness of my inexorable 
 enemy. Wherever I go, he goes with me. He comes 
 between me and the wife I love. He comes between me 
 and suffering mankind." 
 
 " My dear friend, I am deeply sorry for you ; but my 
 sorrow is worth nothing. God alone can help you," St. 
 Just answered earnestly. 
 
 " Your sympathy is worth much. It has been a relief 
 to talk to you. A lunatic notion, isn't it ? " added Arden, 
 laughing excitedly, with a sudden change of tone. "And, 
 after all, perhaps only a horrible hallucination, as you call 
 it — a question of nerves." 
 
 " I believe it is a question of mind rather than nerves 
 — a mind in peril of shipwreck for want of the Divine 
 Helper of men. To be without God in the world ! Oh, 
 my dear Arden, you, and men like you, who so lightly 
 renounce the privileges of the Christian life, who think it 
 enough to say, ' I cannot believe in miracles, and I can 
 steer my own course without any guiding star,' those men 
 must be prepared for the worst that can happen to man. 
 The empty house is there, swept and garnished, ready for 
 visitants from hell, wild delusions, phantasmal horrors, the 
 diabolical inventions of a mind that has lost its grasp on 
 reality." 
 
 "In plain words, you take me for a madman ? " 
 
 245 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " No, no ; not that, — but I take you for a man whose 
 reason is in danger, whose conscience is more sensitive 
 than he thinks, and who is in supreme need of the Divine 
 Healer. Arden, beUeve me, on my honour, you have my 
 heartfelt sympathy. I want to be your friend. I am your 
 friend. I would do anything — anything that a man could 
 do for his best-loved brother, to bring you peace of mind 
 and happiness." 
 
 *' You cannot do that ; but I am grateful for your 
 sympathy, and I ought not to feel angry if you think I 
 am mad. Indeed, I sometimes think I am myself." 
 
 " Will you hear my view of your position without being 
 offended, and let me help you ? I believe I could help 
 you, if you would let me." 
 
 " I will hear your words as the speech of a friend, and 
 nothing you can say shall offend me." 
 
 " I think you are at heart a Christian, and that the idea 
 of having killed a fellow-creature in cold blood is as re- 
 pugnant to you as it would be to me. I believe that since 
 that act, however you may excuse it to yourself by the 
 consideration that he fell in a fair fight, your mind has 
 been weighed down by the sense of sin. I believe that 
 the haunting presence that has made your life a burden 
 has been the agony of remorse in a mind too fine to bear 
 the stain of blood, the ever-present consciousness of a sin 
 unatoned. I believe that for this suffering of yours there 
 is only one possible cure, the reconciliation of the soul 
 with God ; and that until by some Divine interposition, by 
 some spiritual process whose mode and manner I cannot 
 foresee, faith has drawn your wandering steps to the foot 
 of the Cross, and rent the veil that hides the Redeemer's 
 face, and has shown you where to seek and where to find 
 forgiveness of sin, and peace on earth, and hope in heaven 
 — until then, my poor friend, remorse for an act which was 
 at variance with your own life and character will pursue you 
 with those mental horrors which you take for a diabolical 
 influence." 
 
 They had passed from the east to the west, and had 
 arrived at Oxford Circus. 
 
 " I thank you with all my heart for being in earnest with 
 me ! " Arden said, as they clasped hands, and parted. 
 
 246 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Walter Arden's confession made a turning-point in St. 
 Just's life. His course of action changed from that hour. 
 He had resolved to restrict his friendship with Rachel ; he 
 had foreseen peril to his soul in his gro^ving regard for her ; 
 but after Arden's revelation, he told himself that his first 
 duty in life was to safeguard the woman who had given 
 him her friendship, and v.-ho might be in bitter need of a 
 friend He had no doubt in his own mind that Arden was 
 a monomaniac, unsuspected by the wife who loved him, 
 or by the society in which he lived. Such a delusion as that 
 under which he suffered could only have been engendered 
 in a mind on the verge of madness ; and there could be no 
 doubt that this man, who had Rachel's happiness and life 
 in his power, was an incipient lunatic, capable at the present 
 time of conducting the business of his life like a reasonable 
 being, but liable at any hour to develop a dangerous form 
 of lunacy. 
 
 The man who loved Rachel, who had withdrawn himself 
 from a friendship that was becoming too close and too 
 dear, now resolved to continue that friendship at any risk 
 of his own unhappiness. He had no fear of peril for her. 
 He had seen her single-minded devotion to her husband. 
 He knev,' the purity of a nature in which affection reigned 
 supreme, free from the passions that lead to the tragedy of 
 life. He had no fear that she would ever hold him too 
 dear ; though she might come to lean upon him for help and 
 counsel, and to turn to him in any time of difficulty. It was 
 for him to watch for the coming of evil. It might be that 
 Arden's hallucination was only a passing phase of a brain 
 weakened by periods of fever in the past, and that the cloud 
 might lift. 
 
 247 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 In his fervent prayers for Rachel's peace, he prayed in 
 singleness of heart for her husband's cure. The blessings 
 he asked for her were those which her own heart desired. 
 He gave himself to her service, as her guardian and protector, 
 v/ithout one selfish thought. His religious fervour had 
 lifted him above the things that make the bliss or woe of 
 worldlings. He could go on loving without one guilty 
 hope. He could devote his life to the beloved, and ask 
 no higher recompense than the knowledge that he had 
 shielded her from dangers of which she knev/ not. To 
 work for her without reward and without praise was all 
 he asked from Fate. 
 
 He associated himself now more nearly with the little 
 company of workers within the sound of Bow-bells, whose 
 Bishop and leader was Father Romney. He interested 
 himself in all Mrs. Bellingham's schemes, and in all Rachel's 
 favourite pensioners — her old men, and women, and children, 
 her factory girls, and working lads, her day-nurseries for 
 infants, and night-schools for adults. There were few days 
 on which the friends did not meet; and there were quiet 
 evenings in every week which St. Just spent in Rachel's 
 drawing-room, with husband and wife. 
 
 He had watched Arden during more than a year of close 
 friendship, and had seen no sign of the thing which he 
 feared. Whatever delusions the man suffered in the realms 
 of thought, he was able to conduct the business of life with 
 good sense and discretion. But from the home of the 
 wedded lovers, from the home that had once been so happy, 
 the spirit of gladness had fled. The gaiety of heart, the 
 pleasure in trifles, the interest in all the details of domestic 
 life, which make the felicity of home, were wanting in the 
 dainty litde house in Guelph Place. Rachel struggled long 
 against the thought that her husband was no longer happy ; 
 the change had been so gradual, so vague, that she had 
 hardly realized it. There was only the sense of something 
 wanting, a light gone out, shadow where there had been 
 sunshine. She took to watching her husband's face, wait- 
 ing for the smile that was now so rare. She questioned 
 him often and anxiously about his health, fearing some 
 subtle disease, that might cloud over his life; but he 
 laughed off her fears, and even consented to go with 
 
 248 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 her to a famous physician, in order that she might be 
 reassured. 
 
 In a few minutes of confidential talk, after he had seen 
 his patient, the doctor told her that she had no cause for 
 anxiety. Her husband had a splendid constitution, un- 
 impaired by his sufferings at Klondyke, and the subsequent 
 breakdown. As for the depression, which had made her 
 anxious, that was a matter of temperament. 
 
 " Some men have not the joie de vivre, and are rather 
 difficult subjects in consequence," concluded the doctor. 
 *' Mr. Arden wants rousing — mental occupation. You should 
 make him go into Parliament." 
 
 " I would do anything," said Rachel, with tears in her 
 eyes ; and that ended the interview, which took place while 
 her husband was putting on his overcoat and waiting for 
 his carriage. 
 
 " I hope you are satisfied now, Rachel," he said, as they 
 drove away from Harley Street. 
 
 " Relieved, but not satisfied, Walter, while I see you 
 unhappy." 
 
 " My dearest, I am not unhappy. I should be an un- 
 grateful wretch if I could be unhappy, with the sweetest 
 wife in the world." 
 
 She tried to persuade herself that all was well. Her 
 husband was no less devoted than in the cloudless beginning 
 of their union. He sought no pleasures out of his own 
 house. His clubs knew him no more ; but too many hours 
 of his home life were spent in the solitude of his library, 
 a large room built out at the back of the small house, 
 covering the oblong space sacred to sparrows, that had once 
 called itself a garden. He sat here alone day after day, 
 seemingly absorbed in study, and no longer working with 
 his secretary at the business of philanthropy. The secretary 
 now came to Rachel for instructions ; and it was she who 
 wrote or dictated the answers to the daily letters. Most 
 of the business of charity now devolved upon her ; and she 
 gradually came to lean upon St. Just for advice and help 
 in all cases where her husband had been her ally and helper. 
 And thus the bond of friendship grew closer and stronger, 
 until she wondered what her life had been like before this 
 earnest and deeply religious thinker had been her daily 
 
 249 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 companion, sharing all her thoughts of the better life, 
 looking as she looked beyond the grave for the answer to 
 all that is darkest and most inexplicable upon earth. A 
 perfect sympathy reigned between them. 
 
 It was during this period that St. Just suffered the first 
 great sorrow of his life, in the almost sudden death of his 
 mother, which happened after an illness of less than a week. 
 She was gone, the companion and friend, and the house in 
 Portland Place, which had been so pleasant a home, became 
 hateful to him. He used it henceforward only as an office, 
 a place in which to receive his fellow-workers, or to give 
 dinners or evening entertainments to the young men of his 
 University Mission. The spacious old rooms served for 
 philanthropic purposes ; but he could live under that roof 
 no more. He took rooms in Berkeley Street, and was so 
 much nearer to Guelph Place and the friends to whom he 
 looked for consolation in his bereavement. His mother had 
 seen much of Rachel in the last two years, and had loved 
 her, too unworldly to apprehend evil from the close friend- 
 ship between St. Just and Walter Arden's wife. Her son 
 v.-as to her as a saint on earth, secure from the snares of 
 human passion, living only to do good works, and think 
 high thoughts. 
 
 It needed the voice of a worldling to suggest danger in 
 a friendship which St. Just knew to be pure and free from 
 guile. Lady Mary Selby's was the voice, uplifted in all 
 candour and kindliness, but still the voice of the world, 
 which sees only the surface of things, and measures every 
 life and every character by the same convendonal standard ; 
 the rule of the things that are done and the things that are 
 not done. 
 
 Lady Mary and St. Just had met often in Guelph Place, 
 and occasionally in the great world, and they were on 
 very friendly terms; so he was not surprised when she 
 drew him aside at an evening party in one of the great 
 houses of London, the house of a leader in the political 
 world. 
 
 " I have been dying for a quarter of an hour's quiet talk. 
 Shall we go into the winter garden ? " she asked. " There 
 are very few people there now ; every one is drifting to the 
 supper-room." 
 
 250 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 "By all means, if you will let mc take you to supper 
 afterwards." 
 
 " Of course I will. Do you suppose I mean to go home 
 unfed? The Lincolnshire House suppers are feasts of 
 many inventions. It is a liberal education in gastronomy 
 to feed here." 
 
 They went into the spacious conservatory, where the 
 rose-scented atmosphere was cooler than the rooms, and 
 where only a few couples sat secluded in shadowy corners, 
 breathing odours of orange-blossom, which might be either 
 a forecast or a mockery, as those low murmurings of neigh- 
 bouring lips meant the making or the breaking of marriage 
 vows. 
 
 St. Just and Lady Mary found a soHtary sofa out of 
 earshot. 
 
 " I want to talk to you about my sister-in-law," Lady 
 jMary said, with her unflinching air. 
 
 "I shall be charmed to hear you on so admirable a 
 subject. Mrs. Arden is my ideal of all that is best in a 
 woman." 
 
 " I know that. But perhaps you don't know that you are 
 draejging your ideal into the mud." 
 
 "^Lady Mary ! " 
 
 " Oh, of course you are astonished. You had no idea 
 what was happening, any more than Rachel, who is a baby 
 in the ways of the world. You thought you could be at her 
 house day after day ; that you could go about the East End 
 with her; drive from west to east and east to west tek- 
 a-iete in her brougham ; haunt all the houses she visits, and 
 rarely appear when she is not expected. You thought — 
 you, who have your clubs and your men-friends, and who 
 ought to know something of the world you live in — you 
 absolutely thought that you could carry on in this way and 
 not set people talking." 
 
 " The people who can imagine evil of my friendship for 
 Mrs. Arden would scent corruption in a garden of roses, 
 see stains on the new-fallen snow upon the mountains, 
 remote and pure under the eye of God. "We need not 
 give such people a thought." 
 
 " Oh, but you need ; you must think of them. I am not 
 a mischief-maker, or a scandal-bearer, Lord St. Just. I 
 
 251 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 have lived too long in society to be keen about scandals ; 
 I have heard too many of them. They are all pretty much 
 alike, and they soon pall on a woman with a ha'porth of 
 brains. But I must stand up for my brother. He has had 
 troubles — mental troubles — which have marred his life ; 
 and of late he has chosen to keep aloof from Rachel, whom 
 he idolizes. I don't want him to know what I am telling 
 you — I don't want to make bad blood between you and 
 him. I know you are a man of honour, of high principle 
 even, of religious convictions such as few men hold. You 
 are not a man to persist in conduct which reflection must 
 show you to be wrong." 
 
 " I have never harboured one thought which you and all 
 the world might not know — in relation to your sister-in-law." 
 
 " I can believe that. I believe that you are a good 
 man, capable even of that rare sentiment, friendship for a 
 young and beautiful woman. But you have been forgetting 
 that the world won't allow a woman to have a friend, not 
 even if she is middle-aged and ugly ; much less if she is as 
 attractive as my brother's wife. I have been hearing insinua- 
 tions, little hints, seeing smiles and significant looks, for a 
 long time. Oh, you don't know how malignant the women 
 who have ' thrown their caps over the mill ' can be about 
 a woman whose virtues are a standing reproach to them. 
 Rachel has never posed as a saint, but they all know that 
 she is a saint, and they loathe the saintly character. She 
 has taken a strong line as a philanthropist too. They sneer 
 at her plain frocks, and call her the sham Quakeress. They 
 hate and envy her for not being up to her eyes in debt to 
 milliners and hairdressers, as they are. And so they jump 
 at the first chance of throwing mud at her." 
 
 " It cannot affect her. She is as remote from the sphere 
 of such women as if she were among the stars." 
 
 " You are mistaken. Lord St. Just. There is only one 
 sphere, bounded on the east by Carlton House Terrace, and 
 on the west by Rutland Gate. The saints and the sinners 
 are all moving in the same circle; and the sinners are 
 trying their hardest to drag the saints down to their own 
 level." 
 
 "You have noticed one malicious woman's sneer. Lady 
 Mary. You have been hurt and made angry, and you 
 
 252 
 
The Conflict, 
 
 unconsciously exaggerate. I cannot believe that my friend- 
 ship for your sister-in-law could provoke slander. I honour 
 and revere her. I would make any sacrifice of my own 
 happiness rather than that the breath of slander should 
 sully her name." 
 
 " Her name is sullied already. You are talked of as the 
 Kindred Spirits, the Saints, the Heavenly Lovers. I have 
 heard enough to be sure of the mischief you are doing, 
 though they daren't talk openly before me. My brother is 
 asleep — hears nothing, sees nothing. It is my duty to 
 speak plainly. I can't help it if you are angry." 
 
 " I am angry with the hatefulness of human nature, not 
 with you. As if her life — her pure and perfect life — and 
 my life, which has been spent for others ever since I 
 learnt to think — as if that were not enough to save her 
 from the evil-speaking of women whose only instinct is 
 self-indulgence, who exist only for sensuous and sensual 
 pleasures, and shut their eyes and ears against the sufferings 
 of humanity." 
 
 " They are all that, and I detest them. But they are the 
 world ; and Rachel will have to live among them, and be 
 judged by them, till she joins some Sisterhood and shuts 
 herself behind a convent gate." 
 
 " And this world of yours will not let her have a friend ? " 
 
 " It will not ! It never did, and never will believe in 
 friendship between man and woman. Why, if Rachel were 
 elderly and blind, living in another country, and writing 
 gossiping letters to you, as Madame du Deffand wrote to 
 Horace Walpole, people would shrug their shoulders and 
 say there was more in the correspondence than met the eye, 
 and that only a careful selection of her letters were fit for 
 publicaUon. A man can't be a woman's friend without 
 being her enemy." 
 
 " Well, I will not be Rachel's enemy," he said, drawing 
 a deep breath, as if he were offering up the sacrifice of a life. 
 
 He had never called her Rachel before. Lady Mary 
 noted the slip. 
 
 " I am sure you will do all that is honourable and kind," 
 she said, rising and giving him her hand. 
 
 He had risen impetuously at the beginning of their 
 conversation, and had remained standing. 
 
 253 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " I will try to do what is best for her." 
 
 " I have unbounded faith in you, Lord St. Just. And 
 now will you take me to the supper-room ? These agitating 
 discussions make one awfully hungry." 
 
 He smiled, with white lips, wondering if he would ever 
 want to eat again, and loathing the crowd he would have 
 to face in the struggle for champagne and quails ; the trivial 
 crowd that he hated ; the crowd that scrambled for plovers' 
 eggs and iced asparagus and '84 champagne, while thou- 
 sands of fellow-creatures within a few miles of them were 
 wasting away for lack of wholesome food. 
 
 Lady Mary noted his pallor, and was merciful. Slie 
 seized upon the first " nice boy " who ran against them in 
 the crush — a young guardsman, beardless and beautiful. 
 
 " Have you just come away from the supper-room, Dick ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 " This instant ; but I'll go back with pleasure, if I may 
 take you. The duke's Veuve Pommery is tipple for 
 kings." 
 
 " Then I'll release you," she said to St. Just. " I know 
 you are tired, and want to go home." 
 
 " I think you will be in better hands with Mr. Quindon," 
 he said. " Good night." 
 
 " By Jupiter ! St. Just looks bad," exclaimed the youth, 
 when he was gone. " A man oughtn't to go to dances with 
 such a death-bed face. He's as ghastly as the statue in 
 Don Giovanni. He ought to stick to the philanthropic 
 caper — Bethnal Green and Bermondsey, don't you know." 
 
 St. Just did not go straight home on leaving Lincolnshire 
 House. His own rooms were within five minutes' walk, 
 and he felt that he wanted the freedom of the empty streets 
 and the deserted park under the starlit June sky. There 
 would be no room inside four walls for the tempest of his 
 thoughts. He had to think of her ; of what was best for 
 //(fr— best, not happiest; for he could scarcely doubt that 
 his friendship had been of value to her in the last year, 
 a source of consolation in her sorrow at her husband's 
 estrangement. He had filled the empty place in her life ; 
 he had been to her as a brother, and not one word had 
 ever been breathed by her lips or by his that could offend 
 
 254 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 the husband to whom she had given herself in purity of 
 heart. But there had been the intimacy of minds that 
 think aUke, of hearts moved by the same emotions of pity 
 and love, the same religious fervour, the same self-surrender 
 for the service of Christ. 
 
 She had talked to him even of her dead child, that sacred 
 theme which she could not speak of without tears. She 
 had told him of her hopes and visions of the future while 
 that child was with her ; how she had pictured his life — 
 the Christian life, the life that was to be a light in the 
 darkness of the helpless and unfortunate. She talked of 
 her child in the after-life, and loved to dwell upon the 
 blessedness of the saints with God, with an implicit faith 
 in the unseen. 
 
 " I do wrong to grieve for my son, knowing that I shall 
 go to him in the new life," she said. 
 
 They had been in such perfect sympathy, a friendship so 
 exalted, so free from guile. And this pure afiection, held 
 in check on his part with such undeviating self-control, had 
 not escaped malignant remark. And then, avrakened by 
 that revelation of the world's malevolence, there came the 
 thought of possible peril, peril to two souls now white and 
 stainless, but which one impassioned moment, one lapse of 
 self-master}', might taint with at least the suggestion of sin. 
 So far, he had never transgressed, never passed the limits of 
 a friendship such as obtained among the brothers and sisters 
 of the Early Church, when Christians heard the near echo of 
 the Master's voice, and thought and talked of their Lord as 
 of One who was with them yesterday. But could he be sure 
 of himself to the end ? Could he see her day after day in a 
 growing intimacy, upon which her own purity of heart placed 
 no restrictions, and trust himself never to betray the secret 
 of a sinful love, a love that was an offence against her purity, 
 however he might control all outward signs of the fire that 
 burnt within ? 
 
 "The worldling's voice is the voice of wisdom," he 
 thought, slowly pacing to and fro in the summer darkness. 
 *' I have been playing with fire. How could I ever forgive 
 myself if I let her guess my secret — if I startled that 
 exquisite innocence which fears no evil with the revelation 
 of a passionate love ? It has been a lovely dream ; but it is 
 
 255 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 over. Neither her good name nor her peace of mind shall 
 suffer by my wrong-doing." 
 
 For the three following days St. Just was absorbed in 
 business details. He spent most of his time in -Portland 
 Place, where he had appointments with the men with whom 
 he worked, his equals, or his subordinates, enthusiasts like 
 himself, his friends and his disciples, and his paid helpers. 
 He contrived to see them all, and to go into the particulars 
 of every good work to which he had put his hand. Pie 
 pledged his income to the uttermost in his contributions to 
 the financial support of these home missions, which in the 
 far-off golden age were to make the wilderness of pauper 
 life in London blossom as the rose ; and which had already 
 reclaimed many pestilential swamps, and exterminated many 
 poisonous weeds. 
 
 His friends were distressed at the idea of having to carry 
 on their work without their leader. 
 
 " You are the moving spirit of everything, St. Just," said 
 one of his Oxford chums ; " the only one of us who won't 
 see failure, and whose pluck has never failed when the 
 whole business seemed a hopeless muddle. I suppose it's 
 some blessed alarmist in Harley Street who is sending you 
 away. The modern doctor's favourite fad is the idea that 
 an Englishman can't live in England ? " 
 
 " No ; I haven't asked the doctors. I know that I am not 
 in good health, without their opinion. I have bought a two- 
 hundred-ton yacht. She is at Marseilles, where I shall join 
 her next week, and start on a vagabond voyage." 
 
 "Shall you go far?" 
 
 " Who knows ? I said a vagabond voyage. If I don't 
 find the Mediterranean good enough, I shall slip through 
 the Suez and steer my course to the South Seas." 
 
 " Poor fellow ! " his friends said, as they left his house. 
 
 " Lungs, of course," said one. " I shall be at Charing 
 Cross on Saturday night, for a farewell hand-shake. Who 
 knows if we shall ever see him again ? " 
 
 " I shouldn't like to bet even money on his return," said 
 another. " He looks awfully ill." 
 
 " The old story of the sword and the scabbard. This one 
 is a fiery sword in an ivory scabbard. Knowing the work 
 he has done since he left Oxford, I wonder he is alive ! " 
 
 256 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Rachel was surprised at not having seen St. Just during 
 those three days, for within the last half-year a day had 
 rarely passed without their meeting, either in some scene of 
 her daily work, at Mrs. Bellingham's house, or in her own 
 drawing-room. She missed him sadly before the third day 
 of his absence came to an end. Since her husband's 
 isolation, she had come to depend upon St. Just's judgment 
 on all doubtful questions, most of all as to the manner in 
 which the innumerable appeals to her benevolence should 
 be answered. St. Just was a shrewd judge of human nature, 
 and rarely failed in his diagnosis. The professional begging- 
 letter writer had a poor chance with him ; and he was a 
 shrewd judge of the worthiness or unworthiness of the 
 amateur who has but lately begun to depend upon a facile 
 pen and a penny stamp for increased income. 
 
 Rachel was sitting in the lamplight after dinner, with a 
 pile of unanswered letters before her, on the third evening 
 of St. Just's absence, when the servant announced him. 
 
 " I am so glad you have come," she said, going to meet 
 him with outstretched hand. " I have been wanting your 
 advice about so many of these letters — such piteous letters — 
 from impostors perhaps — but they make one's heart ache all 
 the same." 
 
 " The more heart-rending the letter, the more need of 
 verification. Indeed, Mrs. Arden, in your place I should 
 be adamant to all letter-writers, and give all your help to 
 those you know, face to face, in their own homes — whose 
 characters, surroundings, necessities, you know at first hand. 
 Even your resources have their limits. If you give all to 
 those you know, you may forgive yourself for refusing those 
 you don't kno^^■. AMiatever their sphere, they too must 
 
 257 s 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 have their helpers. There are good Samaritans upon every 
 road nowadays." 
 
 " I know you are right ; but these letters torture one, all 
 the same." 
 
 "Oh, there must always be that kind of torture for 
 sensitive minds, while the differences of fortune are as they 
 are. There is the torture of seeing an overworked horse in 
 a cart, the thought of the inequality in the fortunes of 
 horses — the underfed cab-horse in the pelting rain, crawling 
 along the streets at midnight, and the sleek carriage-horses 
 dozing in their warm stable. You will have to harden your 
 heart, my dear Mrs. Arden, to make up your mind that even 
 all you do is but as a drop of sweetness in a sea of bitter 
 waters." 
 
 Rachel looked at him wonderingly. There was some- 
 thing in his tone that was new to her — an indefinable 
 difference. 
 
 " What have you been doing in the last three days ? " she 
 asked. " You are looking pale and over-tired." 
 
 " I have been working very hard. I have been setting 
 my house in order." 
 
 " But I thought your house was always in order. Every 
 one says you are such a wonderful man of business." 
 
 " I have been setting my house in order before leaving 
 England. The fact is, I find myself out of health ; I want 
 change of scene and atmosphere. It is a want all workers 
 feel at some time in their lives ; and I am going to give 
 myself rest before I break down." 
 
 " That is very wise of you," she answered gravely ; and 
 the look of sorrow in her face sent a thrill through his over- 
 strained nerves. " I shall miss you dreadfully in all our 
 work — and — and in so many ways; but I am glad you are 
 taking the first warning. Do you mean to be away long ? " 
 
 " Till I am cured," he answered, with a faint, sad smile. 
 
 She would never know the malady which had need of 
 cure, or how slow the healing process was likely to be. 
 
 " And are you going far ? " 
 
 He told her how he had bought a friend's steam-yacht, a 
 nearly new boat, by one of the best builders on the Clyde. 
 
 "Won't it be too hot in the Mediterranean in summer? " 
 
 '' Oh, I can bask ; I shall have rest, which I suppose will 
 
 2^8 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 be all I vrant. And in October or November I shall make 
 for the South Seas." 
 
 " Like Stevenson ? '' 
 
 "Stevenson's book has inspired me with a longing for the 
 islands he loved." 
 
 " Perhaps you v;ill be like him, and settle there for 
 life." 
 
 " No, no ; I don't contemplate such a possibility. I should 
 always be thinking of vrhat could be done in fifty years of 
 Europe. A man would need the genius and the imagination 
 of a Stevenson to find happiness in that primitive life." 
 
 " But in any case you will be away for years— for many 
 years, perhaps." 
 
 " No, no ; I hope my cure will not be so slow. A year or 
 two should be enough. Two years would be a long exile 
 from friends — like you ! " 
 
 Her voice had been faintly tremulous, but his v.-as steady. 
 He had nerved himself for this farewell interview as a man 
 nerves himself for a surgical operation ; and in this case there 
 could be no anaesthetic, he must needs feel all the pain, and 
 all the peril of self-betrayal. 
 
 " You say that you are out of health," Rachel said, after a 
 pause. '' I hope there is nothing serious the matter — nothing 
 that need make your friends anxious about you." 
 
 '*0h no, there is nothing serious. I am not ordered 
 avray by the doctors. :My going is a precautionary step." 
 
 " I am glad of that. I shall miss you sadly. You have 
 been so kind, and I have come to rely on your help so 
 much — since — since my husband has taken less interest in 
 my work." 
 
 " His interest may be revived, if you tell him you have 
 need of his help. You must tiy to win him back into the 
 old paths." 
 
 " Oh, if I only could ! He began by being so warmly 
 interested, so helpful for all those poor people ; but now he 
 has ceased to care for them. I know he is unhappy, but I 
 can find no reason for bis trouble. He has a worried, 
 haunted look, that grieves me more than I can say, and I 
 can do nothing to brighten his life. I know nothing of the 
 shadow that darkens it. Something — something I cannot 
 understand— has come between us and made us almost 
 
 2.59 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 strangers ; and, now you are going away, I shall feel utterly 
 alone." 
 
 Her voice faltered in her struggle not to give way to tears. 
 Her sorrow, her appeal to his friendship, shook St. Just's 
 resolution. 
 
 *' Rachel, Rachel, cannot you understand, cannot you 
 read my heart — the heart that aches for love of you? It is 
 my love that is parting us — my hopeless love, the love of 
 years. It was easy to call love friendship. Love has been 
 sweet under that name ; and you know that I have never 
 offended, never said one word that you ought not to hear, 
 never for one moment forgotten that you are \Valter Arden's 
 wife." 
 
 " No, no, no. You have always been my friend, my 
 trusted friend. Why do you spoil our friendship now ? I 
 have honoured and looked up to you." 
 
 " I did not mean to tell you. I meant to carry my secret 
 to my grave, and that you should never know all you have 
 been to me ; the one love of my life, loved from the hour 
 of our first meeting, worshipped with every throb of my 
 heart from that hour to this. But the words have been 
 said, and at least you know that I am not leaving you for 
 a light reason, that I am not false to the dear friendship 
 you have given me. It is for your dignity, for my honour, 
 that I go. I have been told that our friendship has 
 provoked comment, that if it continued your name would 
 sufter ; and your good name is dearer to me than my own 
 happiness. And now I have put a barrier between us." 
 
 " Yes, you have put a lifelong barrier between us," she 
 said, with a profound sigh. " I am very sorry. I was so 
 happy in your friendship ; and now you have made friendship 
 impossible. All things that I care for seem to fall away 
 from me. I won't say that I have lost my husband's love — 
 but I know that he is changed to me. A cloud has come 
 between us ; there is a mystery in his life that I cannot 
 fathom. I should be utterly lonely if it were not for those 
 poor castaways who depend upon me, and who love me a 
 little, I think." 
 
 " They love you much," St. Just cried passionately. " How 
 can they help loving you ? To them you represent all 
 that is purest and best in human love, the Christ-like love 
 
 260 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 which forgives sin and believes in the regeneration of 
 sinners. You enter their dark haunts Hke Uving sunhght ; 
 you Uft them out of the slough of despond. Oh, be sure 
 you have your guerdon of human love. Never believe the 
 people who tell you the poor are ungrateful or unloving. 
 Good-bye, Rachel. Forget this confession of mine, if you 
 can. Think of me only as your friend, and as a man in 
 whom honour is stronger than passion. Write to me when 
 I am far away. I shall write to you sometimes, to tell you 
 where my wanderings have brought me. Write and tell 
 me of your own life, and all things that have to do with 
 your happiness." 
 
 "Yes, I will write to you," she answered simply. "I 
 shall forget every foolish word that you have spoken this 
 night. I shall think of you when you are far away as I 
 have known you in the last two years — my kind friend and 
 counsellor. Good-bye." 
 
 She gave him her hand, looking at him with the clear 
 and earnest gaze he knew so well. He had seen that look 
 in her eyes when she had pleaded with some sinner whose 
 fall she deplored — a look so mournful, yet so full of a 
 divine compassion. 
 
 He bent his lips over the gentle hand, as he might have 
 kissed the hand of a saint, and left her without a word. 
 
 "And now this world holds nothing for me but duty," 
 he thought, as he left her. " The two women I loved are 
 gone from me ; one in death ; one in lifelong severance. 
 I have done with love for the individual, and must live for 
 the species." 
 
 A strange grey life began for Rachel on the morning 
 after St. Just's farewell. She felt as if all interest, all colour, 
 had gone out of her life. She fought against her dejection, 
 and went about her old work with untiring patience ; but 
 the mind within was dull and inert. She let her old women 
 talk to her of their woes and grievances, and was kind and 
 gentle with them ; but it would have gone ill with her had 
 she been called on to repeat their pitiful stories. It was 
 a relief when one of them exclaimed — 
 
 " You ain't brought his lordship this arternoon. I do 
 like to hear him talk the Gospel — he do make it all come out 
 
 261 
 
The Conflict, 
 
 clear and strong, like as if it was in the morning paper ; 
 while in most sermons as I hear the preacher seems to 
 beat about the bush, so as I can't follow him. I can 
 alius follow his lordship ; and, to be sure, I ought to, when 
 he was that kind and paid my rent for a year in advance, 
 so as I shan't have to worrit myself all winter." 
 
 *' He is very fond of you, Biddy. But you won't see him 
 for a long time; he has gone on a sea-voyage for his 
 health." 
 
 " Poor dear gentleman ! He always looked a bit peaky 
 — ^but so kind, and so generous. Then I suppose he'll be 
 gone six months or so ? " 
 
 " Longer than that, I think. But I shall take care of 
 you, Biddy." 
 
 "And so you always have, mum. My life hasn't been 
 the same since the day your pretty face came in at that 
 door. Lor, I remember it as if it was yesterday. You 
 was wearing a sweet hat, with forget-me-nots in it, and as 
 it midit be a bow of fine white lace. And I thinks here's 
 
 o 
 
 another of them fine ladies come to mag about religion, and 
 why don't I go to the week-day services, and the Wednesday 
 and Friday evenings in Lent. But I soon found the differ- 
 ence. You didn't come to preach to me, but to try and 
 make me a bit more comfortable." 
 
 " And when you were more comfortable you liked coming 
 to the Lent sermons," said Rachel. 
 
 " Yes, mum. After a good cup of tea and a bloater, 
 and with a bit of fire to come home to, I don't mind an 
 evening service. They may sing a hanthem, and make the 
 sermon as long as they like, when I'm feeling comfortable 
 inside, and with a warm cape to my back such as you gave 
 me. But I hope, now his lordship has gone away, Mr. 
 Arden will come among us with you again, as he used to 
 do when you and him was keeping company. He's as kind 
 a gentleman as ever lived, and never one to worry folks 
 about religion. I don't know as ever he mentioned the 
 Gospel in my hearing." 
 
 "He will come back to his old friends by-and-by, I 
 hope, Biddy. He has been depressed and out of spirits 
 of late." 
 
 " Well, tell him, with my respects, that he ought to try 
 
 262 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Roupell's 'Mensanerincorperersaner.' It's a loiig word to 
 pr^^^^^^^^^ but it's rare stuff for the spirits Thirty drops 
 to be took on a lump of sugar, and warranted not poisonous 
 if vou was to drink the bottleful." 
 
 This was not the first time Rachel had heard lamenta ions 
 at her husband's absenting himself from the dark places 
 where his presence had brought comfort. 
 
 Father Romnev had urged her to use her influence with 
 him, and to persuade him to take up the work he had begun 
 
 '°M have seen so many instances of men who begin with 
 
 tremendous fervour, and cool -^ ^ ^^^^I'^f ^^''I^.^^^^^^^ 
 working at white heat for a year or two, that I ought ne^er 
 o be surprised by a deserter," he said; "but I thought 
 your husband was of a stronger fibre than most of my young 
 disciples, and that his fire would not have burnt out m a 
 few ve^ . I thought he would not take his hand from the 
 plouir 'i 1 he had come to the end of life's furrow, and 
 Sle hand dropped in death. Mr. Arden's defection has 
 disappointed me more than I can say. 
 
 Ra'chel could only reply .;ith the same excuse she had 
 made to old Biddy— depressed spirits, languid health She 
 ™d him that her husband's heart ^vas unchanged his 
 "mpassion for the unfortunate as .intense - .t had been 
 in the bec'inning of his philanthropic work. He knew that 
 he '4s dSing all that co'uld be done, and filling his place 
 Nvhile he ^vas unable to take his share of the burden. 
 
 Father Romney saw that she was unhappy, and did not 
 press the point. 
 
 Frm Walter Ardeu, Gndph Place St James's, London, to 
 Douglas Campbell, The Hvt, Leith, Tasmania. 
 
 ATy dear Douglas, ,. , . 
 
 Your kind, unanswered letter lies before me, 
 and I can only say that it is very good of you to concern 
 yourself about the fate of a wretched being who has not 
 vka force enough to write a letter to the only man m whom 
 he can confide the obscure trouble of mind that makes life 
 a burden. 
 
 o 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 The dates of your letters tell me that it is nearly three 
 years since I wrote to you. When that last letter was 
 written all was well with me. I was happy in the love 
 of the most lovable of women, an angel of charity and 
 compassion, in whose company I had learnt that the happiest 
 life a man can lead is the life that conduces to the happiness 
 of others. The philanthropic work which I began for love 
 of Rachel had grown as soul-satisfying to me as it is to 
 her. The loss of our child in the dawn of infancy had 
 been a heavy blow to us both ; but I think that both of 
 us had found consolation in brightening the lot of other 
 children ; and I know that Rachel took comfort from her 
 unquestioning faith in the vague promises of reunion offered 
 by the Gospel and the Church. 
 
 During those serene and exquisite years, if I had not 
 forgotten the horrors of the past, I had at least been able 
 to keep dark memories far away from me. I had indeed 
 taught myself to believe that all I had suffered from the 
 haunting presence of an evil spirit, the wicked mind of a 
 dead man, disembodied and endowed with malignant power 
 to harass and torment the living, was a delusion of my own 
 troubled brain — a delusion engendered by long brooding 
 over Manville's tragic death, a state of mind verging on 
 melancholia. 
 
 As in our first meeting Rachel's presence had exorcised 
 the fiend, so in the earlier years of our married life I felt 
 myself so far removed from that baleful influence that I 
 came to think the evil had been subjective from first to 
 last — a morbid action of the mind, a phase of mental weak- 
 ness, which happiness had cured. Rarely in those peaceful 
 years did I recall the words that had once recurred in every 
 hour of lonely brooding, and had flashed across my brain 
 often and often in the busiest and the gayest scenes. 
 
 "When you are luckiest, when you are happiest, when 
 woman's love is sweet and life is fair, I shall be near you. 
 There is no path you tread where I may not cross your 
 steps ; there is no hour you live that shall be safe from me." 
 
 Hideous words, if they could take substance and shape ; 
 but common sense would have brushed them aside as an 
 impotent menace of one who could play the braggart even 
 in the moment of death. I was weak enough to brood 
 
 264 
 
The Conflict.' 
 
 Upon the ghastly idea till I came to think that his wild 
 threat foreshadowed God's revenge for murder. 
 
 Hallucination or reality, I can recall the actual moment 
 in which that evil presence re-entered my life. It was in 
 one of the most brilliant assemblies of the London season, 
 a gathering of wit and power, wealth and prestige, a galaxy 
 of lovely women. I had watched my wife shining like a 
 star of purer light in that firmament of beauty, conspicuous 
 for her simple dress, and for an exquisite modesty which 
 has ever been her highest charm. I was proud of her, 
 happy in her love, a man without a care. 
 
 I left the dancing- room, and strolled into a long gallery, 
 in which there were only a few couples, seated in the 
 embrasures of the windows, or loitering in front of a picture 
 or a statue. I stood before a picture of Watts's, at once a 
 triumph of realism and of imagination — Milton's Satan, 
 the incarnate image of evil, the angel in the instant of his 
 fall. And as I gazed, the old horror fell over me like a 
 pall. Again I had that overpowering sense of an im- 
 palpable presence, a spirit of evil close at my side, wordless 
 whispers hissing in my ear, a creature not of earth, yet 
 w^ith power to torment mankind. 
 
 I turned sharply round, almost expecting to find myself 
 confronted by a visible form, a fiend as terrible as the 
 painted devil I had been looking at ; and then I laughed 
 at myself, remembering how my days and nights had been 
 haunted by that impalpable presence which had been as 
 real to my senses as flesh and blood. 
 
 From that hour the loathsome companion has been with 
 me. For a long time I fought resolutely against the in- 
 visible demon. I gave myself up to the service of my 
 fellow-creatures. I tried by strenuous, unremitting work to 
 escape from the inexorable companion. I struggled to 
 maintain an outward show of happiness, contrived even 
 to deceive a devoted wife; but the continued effort was 
 beyond human power, and I broke down miserably at last, 
 and have had the agony of seeing Rachel's mute distress at 
 a change in me that has made us almost strangers. I have 
 isolated myself in my own house, the home that was once 
 so full of charm, so dear, and so tranquil. Nothing can 
 help me. I have had to abandon the philanthropic work 
 
 265 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 which had become the business of my life. I can no longer 
 go about among the poor, or consult with my fellow- workers, 
 pursued by the demoniac influence which makes life hateful. 
 I dare not trust myself in society of any kind ; lest by some 
 uncontrollable impulse I should reveal the horror that 
 haunts me, and so brand myself as a madman, and end my 
 wretched existence in a lunatic asylum. Solitude is my 
 only refuge ; and I must live out my life in silent misery. 
 
 To one man only, except yourself, have I lifted the curtain 
 from my mind ; and in him I perceived at once a doubt of 
 my sanity. The border-line between reason and unreason 
 is so narrow ; and the very people who accept the Gospel 
 miracles in unquestioning faith will question the sanity of 
 a man who believes in ghosts. Liberty is too precious, 
 even in my despairing state of mind, to be hazarded ; so I 
 must keep myself aloof, and confide in none but you — my 
 faithful friend of the old undergraduate life. My wife is 
 perfect in her gentleness and forbearance. She has never 
 reproached me for my churlish preference of solitude to her 
 dear company ; but I know she grieves over our estrange- 
 ment, and her sorrow weighs me to the dust. Alas, to have 
 won such a prize, the very pearl of womanhood, and to 
 seem cold and indifferent. But if I were to open my heart 
 to her, and describe my mental tortures, I should but make 
 her life miserable, and risk being suspected of madness, 
 even by her. 
 
 You see, therefore, my dear friend, that for such suffering 
 as mine there is faint hope of cure. 
 
 Yours in profound dejection, 
 
 Walter Arden. 
 
 266 
 
 4^ 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 It was the beginning of November, and Lord St. Just had 
 been absent from England five months. His disappearance 
 from society had quieted Lady Mary Selby's fears, but it 
 had not silenced the voice of slander. The people who 
 want to think the worst of their fellow-creatures — especially 
 of their particularly fortunate fellow-creatures — opined that 
 the disease must have been virulent, or so drastic a remedy 
 would hardly have been required. 
 
 " I suppose he was afraid the husband would make a 
 row," said Lady Lammerton, whose well-trained spouse 
 fetched and carried for her as meekly as Rawdon Crawley 
 during his wife's affair with General Tufto. 
 
 "They do sometimes cut up rough, even in this en- 
 lightened age," said her friend ; " but with the advance of 
 civilization the vihiage a trois will, no doubt, be recognized 
 by the marriage law. It is absurd for the divorce court to 
 condemn a combination that society in general approves." 
 
 "And which helps to hold society together," remarked 
 a third. " Half the houses in May fair would be to let if 
 friendship were but a name." 
 
 "A name at the foot of a cheque," said another; " that's 
 where friendship comes in." 
 
 Rachel rarely appeared in society now that her husband 
 could no longer be persuaded to accompany her. The 
 evening parties in Guelph Place had dwindled to a little 
 knot of old friends and fellow-workers, of whom Mrs. 
 Bellingham and Father Romney were the chief. They 
 were to be found in Rachel's drawing-room almost every 
 Thursday, both moved by sympathy with the wife whose 
 existence seemed so solitary in her husband's house. 
 
 Mrs. Bellingham had tried to fathom the cause of Arden's 
 
 267 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 altered way of life. She had broken boldly in upon his 
 seclusion. She had questioned him, and remonstrated with 
 him. 
 
 " I should never have wished Rachel to marry you if 
 I could have thought you would make yourself almost a 
 stranger to her, burying yourself alive among these wretched 
 books." 
 
 Mrs. Bellingham indicated the choicest spirits of past 
 and present with an abhorrent sweep of her hand. No 
 woman better loved literature ; but what are books when 
 weighed against the living, loving, suffering heart of a 
 neglected wife? 
 
 " I declare, Walter, that if I could have foreseen your 
 conduct, I would not have said one word in your favour, 
 when that dear girl was fretting herself to death about 
 you — wanting you to be happy — and afraid to link her life 
 with a heathen." 
 
 " My dear friend, you are giving yourself needless anxiety. 
 There is nothing very remarkable in my secluded way of 
 life ; and Rachel has never complained. From my boyhood 
 I have been something of a student ; and for many years of 
 my life I only lived to read." 
 
 " Then you ought never to have married. Rachel chose 
 you because you were — or seemed to be — a kindred spirit, 
 as unwavering as she herself is in the endeavour to make 
 this wretched world better. And all at once, without 
 reason, you take your hand from the plough." 
 
 " The hand may have lost its power to guide the plough."" 
 
 " You mean that your health has broken down ? " 
 
 " I mean that my capacity for work has failed. I come 
 back to my quiet life in this room as the only life that 
 suits me." 
 
 Mrs. Bellingham was not easily answered. She returned 
 to the charge several times ; but her most searching questions 
 failed to bring her any nearer the mystery of Arden's conduct. 
 He set a watch upon himself, with that ever-present fear of 
 being taken for a madman, which was a part of his trouble. 
 His guarded replies perplexed and baffled the questioner. 
 
 Rachel could not refuse to dine in Carlton House 
 Terrace occasionally, though it was painful to her to appear 
 
 268 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 there time after time without her husband, since his absence 
 was a cause of offence to her father and mother. Mrs. 
 Lorimer feared that her daughter's love-match had ended in 
 failure : and Mr. Lorimer frankly confessed his disappoint- 
 ment in his son-in-law. 
 
 " Idlers and dildtanti are a kind of people I detest," 
 he told his daughter, in one of his impetuous moods. 
 " Life is too short, and there are too many things to be 
 set straight in this world for any man to sit in a library and 
 pore over the dreams and fancies of the dead past. Life 
 is too short for anything but living work ; and for a man of 
 your husband's age to turn his back upon active life is as 
 bad as for a soldier to hang up his sword in the midst of 
 a war." 
 
 Lady Mary Selby's v.-as the only other house in which 
 Rachel w^as to be met this winter. Here her husband's 
 absence created no surprise. Semi-detached couples were 
 rather the rule than the exception in Lady ^Mary's set ; 
 and if husband and wife were dining in Grosvenor Square 
 on the same evening, it was odds they were at different 
 numbers ; or if Grosvenor Square were probable for the 
 lady, one of the smaller streets between that place and 
 Piccadilly would be a more likely draw for her better half. 
 Those smaller streets, with their furnished houses, and 
 temporary stars, had attractions known only to the few. 
 
 It was at Lady Clary's dinner-table that Rachel heard an 
 alarming account of Lord St. Just. Mrs. Kelvin was there, 
 the handsome Mrs. Kelvin, who had played for high stakes 
 in the matrimonial game, and had seen her name bracketted 
 with most ofi the great matches of the last seven seasons, 
 and was still a widow ; still frightfully in debt, still not a day 
 older in face or manner, still avid for amusement of all kinds, 
 and still hoping to see strawberry-leaves on her notepaper. 
 
 " Have you heard from your friend St. Just lately, ^Mrs. 
 Arden ? " she asked across the dinner-table, in a party of 
 eight, which included a comedian, and his wife, retired from 
 business ; a French journalist of the most refined type ; a 
 successful novelist of the gentler sex, young enough to be 
 called a girl by her relations and friends, and old enough 
 to be told by women of seven and twenty that they had 
 gloated over her first book when they were " small." 
 
 269 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 It was one of those cosy little parties which Lady Mary 
 loved, where, if any one said an ill-natured thing, all the 
 table could hear it ; a party at which there were no 
 millionaires, nobody who knew anything about company- 
 promotion, or the last boom, or the approaching slump, in 
 the city. It was the kind of party which Mr. Selby 
 endured with a stoic indifference, holding all dinners worth- 
 less which did not further his financial interests. He was 
 perfectly amiable, however, always gratified to sit opposite 
 his wife and her diamonds, and to hear her say the fine 
 things whose drift he took no pains to follow. For him 
 she was the cleverest, as well as the handsomest, woman in 
 the world — or in London, which was his world. 
 
 Rachel's dark blue eyes met Mrs. Kelvin's insistent gaze 
 with an untroubled look. 
 
 "It is some time since I heard from him," she said 
 quietly. " He was at Corfu with his yacht." 
 
 " And wrote in good spirits about his health ? " 
 
 " He wrote of his travels only. He seemed interested 
 and amused. I hope you have not heard any bad news 
 of him ? " 
 
 Mrs. Kelvin shrugged her shoulders, and looked right 
 and left with a deHcate air of distress. She was a mistress 
 of the art of gesture and expression, and made as much 
 play with a swan-like throat and dazzling shoulders as the 
 immortal Becky. Mr. Bayning, the comedian, watched her 
 with an amused smile, thinking how nmch good acting that 
 was meant for mankind was being wasted on the few. 
 Mrs. Bayning observed her with a merry twinkle in her 
 bright grey eyes, as a good subject for drawing-room 
 mimicry. 
 
 "I shall give them Mrs. Kelvin at the Rochforts 
 to-morrow night," she thought. 
 
 " I am dreadfully sorry ; I thought of course you would 
 know," faltered Mrs. Kelvin, after her graceful byplay. " I 
 wouldn't have spoken of him for the world, if I had known 
 that you " 
 
 "You mean that he is ill— that something bad has 
 happened," Rachel said anxiously. " Pray tell me all you 
 have heard." 
 
 " Oh, it may not be all true. It was from a boy I know 
 
 270 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 in the Italian Legation. Did you know tliat St. Just was at 
 Naples all through the outbreak of cholera in September ? " 
 
 " He told me in his last letter that he was going to 
 Naples ; but he wrote before the cholera outbreak, and I 
 hoped he would not go." 
 
 " Having the whole of the Mediterranean to choose from," 
 said Miss Porter, the novelist. " But with an enthusiast 
 like Lord St. Just, the cholera would act as a magnet." 
 
 " Well, he followed the king's example ; went about 
 among the people, into their loathsome dens, the most 
 insanitary quarters of the city, into their hospitals. The 
 young secretary almost wept when he told me about 
 him," pursued Mrs. Kelvin. • 
 
 Rachel was very pale, but perfectly calm. 
 
 " He has been among such people before," she said 
 quietly. " It would be no new experience. What 
 happened ? Was he stricken with cholera ? " 
 
 ' ' No ; he seems to have escaped the epidemic ; but his 
 health broke down utterly. Hemorrhage of the lungs, I 
 believe. He left Naples on his yacht, a doomed man, 
 Donato told me; if not a dying man, as some people 
 thought." 
 
 " How long is that ago ? " 
 
 " Not very long — about a month, perhaps. Donato was 
 at Naples when the yacht sailed for Palermo, just before 
 he came to England." 
 
 " Will you ask Signor Donato to call upon me ? I shall 
 be at home to-morrow evening from nine o'clock, if that 
 vrould suit him." 
 
 " I know he will be charmed. I'll write to him before I 
 sleep," said Mrs. Kelvin, with eager sympathy. 
 
 She was greatly disappointed by the tranquillity with 
 which Rachel had received her tidings, hazarded as a sudden 
 blow that would bring about something in the v.'ay of a 
 scene. Lord St. Just had been one of the numerous 
 bachelors whom she had contemplated as a possible hus- 
 band. A philanthropist, and by no means a millionaire; 
 but still rich enough to pay her debts out of income, without 
 being absolutely crippled. Not a great catch, but it would 
 have been " a position, an establishment, don't you know ? " 
 And Mrs. Kelvin was pining for an establishment. She 
 
 271 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 would have married a man who made lucifer matches, or 
 sold tea, for vast wealth. She would have married St. Just 
 for sheer respectability, and would have renounced her 
 dream of strawberry-leaves. 
 
 I But what could be hoped of a man who spent the best 
 part of his days going about the East End with a beautiful 
 young married woman for his companion ; dining with her, 
 walking with her, spending most of his evenings in her 
 house ? 
 
 Mrs. Kelvin's voice had led the chorus of slander. She 
 had made mock of what she called the "saintly friend- 
 ship." She had made mock of Rachel and her ways. 
 
 " Does she go about the East End in a short frock and 
 a little cloak, with a basket of butter and honey, like Red 
 Riding Hood ? " she asked ; *' and does St. Just carry a 
 cotton umbrella to shelter her from the rain ? " 
 
 " And to protect her from all the other wolves." 
 
 *' He being Lupus the First." 
 
 To Rachel's influence Mrs. Kelvin attributed the painful 
 truth that she, like a play that has to be withdrawn after 
 the third week, had failed to attract. She had done all that 
 a clever woman, who had always prided herself upon the 
 " straightness " of her conduct, could do to win a husband. 
 She had thrown herself in St. Just's way on every opportunity, 
 had offered him her shoulders and eyes, her arms, which 
 were a strong point, and even her instep, in the Bond Street 
 shoe which she hoped he would pay for post-matrimonially. 
 She had affected an interest in his philanthropic work, had 
 gushed and sparkled, and expended an amount of fascina- 
 tion-power which might have brought down an emperor; 
 and she had left St. Just cold. Only to the counter 
 influence of a married woman — the very worst kind of 
 rival — could she attribute this frosty temperament. 
 
 " Sin must be irresistible for a saint," she thought, " from 
 th? force of contrast." 
 
 She gave up the chase some time before St. Just dropped 
 out of London life ; but she was a good hater, and she kept 
 Mrs. Arden's name written large in her black books. 
 
 " I am sorry for St. Just," said Lady Mary, who had 
 been talking to the Frenchman in his native tongue ; " but 
 don't let us be lugubrious, or Monsieur Reynaud will think 
 
 272 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 we are victims of le spleen. You will put down this dismal 
 talk to the month, monsieur," she added, turning to the 
 journalist ; "but I assure you 7ious avons change tout cela, 
 and what with the big shoots in Norfolk, and the skating 
 at Prince's, November has become almost the pleasantest 
 month of the year."' 
 
 '' Mol jc le trouvc, assnremcnt pour ce soir^' said her 
 neighbour, with an air of being enchanted. 
 
 Mrs. Kelvin, having launched her thunderbolt with poor 
 effect, tried to accaparcr the journalist, who sat on her left, 
 and made him almost blush by asking his opinion of the 
 last audacity in French fiction— if that can be called fiction 
 which invents nothing, imagines nothing, and begins and 
 ends in the vivisection of vice. 
 
 Monsieur Reynaud confessed himself ashamed of his 
 countrymen. 
 
 " I can pardon the aberrations of a man like Zola, who 
 always writes with a purpose, and has the human race for 
 his province: but these boudoir triflers, these miniature 
 painters of vice in a crepe de c/iine peignoir, and bestiality 
 in varnished boots, they are only less revolting than they 
 are ennuyenxT 
 
 "But their style,'' pleaded Mrs. Kelvin. "One can 
 forgive so much for the sake of that exquisite French." 
 
 " English ladies are very forgiving, madame. The books 
 that have most success here are rarely seen in a French 
 interieur. Monsieur may read them, perhaps, in \A%fumoir. 
 If madame reads them, elk ne le dit pasT 
 
 "And you think the modern EngHshwoman, with her 
 classical and scientific education, and her broader views, 
 is rather — shocking ? Hein 1 " 
 
 " Oh, madame, I would not venture to criticize so exquisite 
 a product of nature as the modem Englishwoman — such as 
 I have the happiness to behold at this table," answered the 
 Parisian, concentrating the adoration of a lifetime in a look, 
 which Mrs. Kelvin's shoulders deprecated with a modest shrug. 
 
 The Italian secretary called on Rachel the following 
 evening, before the arrival of her usual visitors, and from 
 him she heard the story of St. Just's life during the month 
 of September. 
 
 273 T 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Signor Donate spoke of him with a warmth of feeling 
 that touched Rachel. 
 
 *' If there were many Englishmen like him, we should call 
 your island the Isle of Saints," he said. " Like our noble 
 king, he showed himself without fear of the pestilence 
 which had made Naples a desert. Everybody who was 
 free to leave the place had fled, as if the city were on fire. 
 The priests, the doctors, the sisters of charity — all those 
 who live for others and hold their own lives of small 
 account — they alone remained. St. Just was perhaps the 
 only Englishman in Naples during that dreadful month. 
 He gave himself and his fortune to the blessed work. He 
 comforted the dying, and fed the widows and children. 
 Even the priests confessed that he was a saint, and forgave 
 him for not being a Papist." 
 
 " I am not surprised," said Rachel. " He would not miss 
 such an opportunity of doing his Master's work. But I 
 hope it will not cost him his life." 
 
 " I hope not ; but I am afraid he was in a very bad way 
 when he left Naples. I was at Sorrento at the time, and I 
 went on board his yacht to bid him good-bye. He had 
 an English doctor with him, who told me in confidence that 
 he had not much hope of his patient's living through the 
 winter. His pluck might keep him alive, perhaps ; but his 
 lungs were seriously damaged." 
 
 " I am very sorry. He was my most valued friend, after 
 my husband ; the man to whom I looked for help and 
 guidance," said Rachel, speaking of that cherished friend- 
 ship in the past tense. " He was going to Palermo, Mrs. 
 Kelvin said, when you saw him." 
 
 " Yes; he was to winter at Palermo, if the climate seemed 
 to suit him. His doctor was to remain with him." 
 
 Mrs. Bellingham v.as announced, and other visitors 
 followed. Arden always put in an appearance at some time 
 on his wife's evenings, talked for a few minutes to two or 
 three of her visitors, and quietly slipped away before people 
 had been able to observe him closely. He looked worried, 
 and even ill. So much was visible to the most casual 
 observer. Mr. and Mrs. Lorimer, who often dropped in 
 for an hour on a Thursday evening, were both disturbed 
 by the change in him, but did not say too much to their 
 
 274 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 daughter, for fear of making her unhappy; while Rachel 
 on her part was careful to hide all her apprehensions and 
 sorrows from her father and mother. 
 
 She wrote to St. Just on the morning after her interview 
 with Donato. She reproached him for not having told her 
 about his work in Naples, and for letting her hear of his 
 illness from a woman she disliked, and among frivolous 
 surroundings. She wrote hopefully of his future, urging him 
 to do all that medical science could suggest for the restora- 
 tion of his health. It was at a time when the Transvaal 
 had become popular as a sanatorium for lung complaints, 
 and she begged him, if Sicily failed, to try the great Karoo, 
 of course always with the approval of medical authority. 
 She wrote earnestly and urgently ; but with the calm affection 
 of a sister. 
 
 St. Just replied by return of post. 
 
 " Forgive me for having kept you in the dark as to my 
 work in Naples," he wrote, after thanking her for her letter. 
 " I did not want to trouble a friend with needless fears on 
 my account, and I took care that no one in England should 
 know my whereabouts. The cholera left me unscathed ; 
 though I spent the best part of my life among the sick and 
 dying. As for the breakdown in my health, that I believe 
 would have come in any case. I have suffered more after 
 a chill caught on board my yacht, on a voyage of pleasure, 
 than I suffered from the fatigues and risks of my life in 
 the slums and hospitals of Naples. With regard to your 
 suggestion about South Africa, I confess that I should be 
 very loath to go so far in quest of health ; or if I went as 
 far, I should infinitely prefer some station in the Himalayas. 
 The idea of India has always fascinated me. It is to me 
 as a dream-country ; and I think if I found myself there, I 
 should fancy myself escaped from the dull realities of earth 
 into the land of dreams. My doctor has talked of the great 
 Karoo, which it is a kind of fashion to believe in just now ; 
 but when I read of the dust-storms on those arid heights, I 
 think myself happy to be lying here, surrounded by the blue 
 waters of this exquisite bay. 
 
 " I am glad also to know that I am within easy reach 
 of England and the friends I left there ; for though I am 
 content to live on the Mediterranean, I want to die at 
 
 2 
 
 /D 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 home. It is this desire that has fought against my plan 
 of visiting the South Seas, and laying a flower on Louis 
 Stevenson's grave. You know how I admire his books, 
 and love the writer's beautiful nature. I think the South 
 Sea Islands, to many of those who care for literature, and 
 have not the geographical mind, mainly mean Stevenson's 
 last home." 
 
 276 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XX. 
 
 The winter was over. April had filled the London streets 
 with flowers, the yellow gold of spring — daffodils, jonquils, 
 mimosa ; the yellow flowers flamed in the yellow sun- 
 shine; and here and there, even in the East End streets, 
 where Rachel Arden was an almost daily visitor, the 
 glory of a window-garden bore witness of a good house- 
 wife and a decent home. Sometimes it was the master of 
 the brick packing-case, with its four rooms and washhouse, 
 who tended the window-garden ; and these gardens were 
 generally of a superior and more ambitious order ; for the 
 man's stronger and longer arms could do more in the use 
 of nails, and wire, and string, and in training plants; and 
 where there were great eftects made with wistaria trained 
 over a wall, or a hardy rose surrounding a window, or a 
 curtain of scarlet-runners climbing upon string, one might 
 be sure that the bread-winner had a taste for gardening, and 
 did not spend all his evenings in a public-house. 
 
 Rachel's winter had passed in a quiet monotony of work. 
 The trivial task, the daily round, had been enough for con- 
 tent. Arden had appeared in the old scenes now and then 
 to please his wife ; but he had tried in vain to interest him- 
 self in her work, or in the people for whom she toiled. The 
 one haunting impression — the invisible presence — made a 
 wall between him and the living world. He moved among 
 this eager, striving multitude like a man in a dream. Father 
 Romney could make nothing of him. 
 
 St. Just had written to Rachel several times between 
 November and April, but his letters had told her very 
 little about himself. He had put off her anxious questions 
 about his health with vngue replies. His doctor thought 
 
 277 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Palermo suited him. His yacht was a source of unfailing 
 amusement. 
 
 " We potter about along the coast sometimes when the 
 weather is favourable — a voyage of two or three days ; or 
 we lie at anchor and bask in the sun. I think of the East 
 End and the people there, and think what a wonder and 
 delight an hour of such sunshine would be to them in mid- 
 winter. And then I think that some day there may rise the 
 white walls and red roof of a vast sanatorium on this lovely 
 island ; or at Capri, perhaps — the Capri of Tiberius. A 
 world which has groAvn so much better, in its care for want 
 and suffering, within my own short life, will go on improving, 
 until, without any such universal confiscation as the socialist 
 dreams of, the distribution of wealth will come about 
 naturally, from the open hand of benevolence." 
 
 This letter had reached Rachel early in March ; and it 
 was late in April when she was surprised by seeing a long 
 letter from St. Just among the letters which her husband 
 had opened at the breakfast-table. 
 
 *' I see you have heard from Lord St. Just," she said 
 anxiously. " Is he still at Palermo ? " 
 
 " No ; he writes from Marseilles. He is on his way 
 home," Arden answered gravely. 
 
 " I am glad of that." 
 
 "You will be sorry when you hear that he is seriously 
 ill." 
 
 " Is that so ? Then, indeed, I am sorry. I knew he 
 was in bad health; but he said very little about himself 
 in his letters, and I hoped for the best. Does he write 
 very despondently ? " 
 
 "You had better read his letter. It is a strange letter, 
 Rachel, and it makes a strange appeal to you and me. Of 
 course, I knew how close your friendship was — that you were 
 to him the world's one woman, in the way of friendship — 
 but I was never jealous." 
 
 "You never had cause," she answered, looking at him 
 with a grave tenderness that had something of reproach. 
 " I was grateful to St. Just for his sympathy and advice, 
 when you lost interest in the things I love, and ceased to 
 give me your help." 
 
 " I understand, Rachel. I was not complaining. My faith 
 
 278 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 in your goodness and purity has never wavered. The life 
 I have led during the last two years has been a life of un- 
 utterable misery ; but distrust of you has had no part in my 
 suffering. If I have isolated myself from you, and seemed 
 cold to your mission of mercy, the cause of my desertion 
 lies far away from my domestic life. You made this life 
 heaven; but another influence has made it hell. And I 
 cannot tell you the dark secret — I dare not — lest you should 
 think " 
 
 He stopped suddenly, with a look of apprehension, as if 
 he had said too much, and then, after a pause, went on in a 
 quieter voice — 
 
 " I told St. Just something about myself — more, perhaps, 
 than I should have confided to any man. I believe he 
 thought me mad ; and he had good reason." 
 
 " No, no, no ! " exclaimed Rachel. " You must not imagine 
 such a thing." 
 
 " Other people would think as he thought, if I were to lift 
 the veil from my life. That is why I mope alone, and keep 
 myself aloof even from you — from you whom I love as 
 dearly as in our first hour of wedded life." 
 
 " Y'ou should not keep aloof, Walter. It is cruel of you 
 not to trust me, not to let me share your trouble of mind, 
 whatever it is." 
 
 " Mental trouble knows no division, Rachel. I can tell 
 you nothing — nothing. I say again, I dare not ! But I 
 want you to believe in my sanity to the last. Whatever 
 may happen, remember that I am not mad." 
 
 " My dear husband, I have never doubted — and, please 
 God, I shall never doubt — your sanity. But I should be so 
 much happier if you would let me share your life, as I did 
 in the dear days when we were all the world to each other. 
 Let us leave London, and go to some lovely spot in Switzer- 
 land, or the Tyrol, where we can live quietly, far away from 
 the world. If you must mope alone, let me share your 
 solitude. I am only a part of yourself. I will not question 
 you, or intrude upon your dark hours. But I want to be 
 your companion again ; I want you to know that I sympathize 
 and suffer with you." 
 
 " i^Iy dearest and best ! Alas, alas ! to think that you 
 were worthy of a better fate, and that a better man loved 
 
 279 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 you, and might have made you happy, if I had cut my throat 
 two years ago." 
 
 " Walter, how can you be so cruel ? " 
 
 "Read St. Just's letter. A dying man has privileges. 
 Read his letter, and decide upon the answer." 
 
 He gave her the letter, bent down to kiss her as she sat 
 at the breakfast-table, with her head leaning on her hand, 
 and then went quietly from the room, before her tears came, 
 and she broke down altogether. 
 
 She had promised not to think him mad — not mad ! But 
 if he were perfectly sane, as she strove to believe, what was 
 this mental trouble which he dared not tell her, and which 
 had made an end of his happiness and hers ? ^Vhat was 
 this influence which had made life hell? The change in 
 him was palpable enough ; but what of the impalpable, the 
 unknown cause? What could that be but some morbid 
 affection of the mind, some disease of the imagination, which 
 physicians call madness ? 
 
 It was long before she was able to control her troubled 
 thoughts, and to fix her attention upon St. Just's letter. 
 
 Terminus Hotel, Marseilles. 
 
 My dear Arden, 
 
 You will, perhaps, be surprised that this letter 
 should be addressed to you, instead of to your wife, to whom 
 I have written from time to time during my wanderings 
 in search of sunshine and calm seas ; but I have a request 
 to make which must be made in the first instance to you. 
 I want you to bring her to me in my Cornish home, that 
 I may bid farewell to the friend who has been more to mc 
 than any one in this world since my mother died. I want 
 to see her for the last time in the home of my childhood, the 
 place I have loved better than any other spot on earth; 
 as I have cherished her friendship more than that of any 
 other friend. 
 
 It is a selfish desire, perhaps; and I ought rather to 
 halt in London, on my last earthly journey, and say good- 
 bye to you and your wife in your own house. But doomed 
 men have a certain privilege of self-indulgence, and all the 
 world is kind to them. I know you will be kind ; and even 
 more surelv can I count on her kindness. 
 
 2S0 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 My days are numbered. When I leave Marseilles to- 
 night with my doctor, I shall be carried to my bed in the 
 train, carried from the train to the boat to-morrow evening, 
 carried from station to station, like a dead thing, till I lie 
 down to rest in the room where my father died, amidst the 
 voices of the sea and the winds, blowing across the moorland 
 where I was reared. I have made my doctor tell me the 
 worst about myself, in spite of the professional anxiety to 
 maintain hope even where the end is certain. He does not 
 promise me many days after my arrival in Cornwall, if I live 
 through the journey. He wanted to take me to some 
 sheltered spot in Auvergne, or to Aix in Savoy, rather than 
 to let me risk so long a pilgrimage. But my heart is set 
 upon dying at home among the old familiar faces of servants 
 and tenants, and to lie asleep in the shadow of the church 
 tower that was my landmark in my rides and rambles, when 
 I was a boy. 
 
 Will you bring your wife to Trevelyan, my dear Arden, 
 and let me see the face that has been my dream of womanly 
 kindness and pity, when my eyes are growing dim ? I know 
 that sh€ will not refuse to visit my death-bed ; for her Divine 
 compassion would gratify the dying wish of the vilest sinner 
 among Romney's flock. If you consent, I would beg you 
 to start soon after you receive this letter, as I ought to be 
 at Trevelyan within ten or twelve hours of its delivery \ and 
 who knows how long I may be found there ? 
 
 Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 St. Just. 
 
 281 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 xxr. 
 
 Darkness had closed over moor and sea, when the carriage 
 that had brought Mr. and Mrs. Arden from the station 
 drove along the avenue of beech and oak that wound 
 uphill to Trevelyan Manor House; and through the open 
 window the travellers could feel the salt breath of the sea, 
 and hear the distant roar of the waves rolling into the 
 caverns and hollows of that wild north coast. The house 
 stood on a ridge of hill within a mile of the sea — a stone 
 house, built when the last of the Tudors was nearing her 
 end, and added to in the time of Charles the First ; a house 
 with a priest's hole, and a family ghost, which, being a 
 purely domestic invention, hatched in the servants' hall, and 
 developed between the butlers pantry and the housekeeper's 
 room, had suftered many changes of circumstance and 
 character — nay, even changes of sex ; sometimes described 
 as an infirm old man in a brown Georgian suit, anon 
 vouched for by eye-witnesses as a lovely young woman in 
 ruff and farthingale. 
 
 Rachel's eyes searched the rolling stretch of turf, and the 
 wind-driven oaks. A young moon looked out fitfully from 
 a sky darkened by ragged clouds, and all seemed chill and 
 dreary in the uncertain light. 
 
 A curtain of gloom falls over a house w^hose master lies 
 dying ; an influence subtle as a supernatural presence ; and 
 this house of Trevelyan had the gloom of past ages — the 
 dark centuries when religious persecution and civil war made 
 a hiding-place as necessary for hunted human creatures as 
 a hole in the earth for the hunted fox. All that well-trained 
 servants could do to prepare comfort and cheerfulness for 
 the visitors had been done ; and the architectural beauty of 
 the hall and corridors, the carved ceilings and tapestried 
 
 282 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 walls, appealed to \\'alter Arden's sense of the beautiful, and 
 his love of the past. But the gloom was there all the same, 
 in spite of blazing wood-fires, and many candles in old silver 
 candelabra, and a dinner-table brightened by the deep 
 purple and gold of old Worcester china, and the pale roses 
 of spring, grown under glass. 
 
 The grey-haired housekeeper, in rustling black silk, was 
 waiting in the hall when the travellers alighted ; and it was 
 to her Rachel turned, pale and expectant, with tremulous 
 lips — 
 
 " Is Lord St. Just here ? " 
 
 "Yes, ma'am; his lordship arrived three hours ago, by 
 the eleven o'clock train from Waterloo. He is sitting up in 
 his room; and he would like to see you and Mr. Arden 
 before he goes to bed." 
 
 " Is he worse for the long journey ? " 
 
 " Oh, ma'am, he is very, very bad. I'm afraid he will 
 soon start on a longer journey ; but the Lord's word will 
 be a lantern unto his feet and a light unto his path. He 
 has been a saint on earth, and he will soon be among the 
 saints in heaven," the old woman said, with streaming eyes. 
 
 "Take me to his room, please, Mrs. Roper." 
 
 " You have heard my name, ma'am ? His lordship has 
 spoken of me ? " 
 
 *' Often and often. You were a part of his childhood." 
 
 " I loved him dearly, ma'am ; but that's no merit. We 
 all love him. Only I was his nurse, you see ; and it was 
 because he was so fond of me that I got promoted to be 
 housekeeper. He didn't want me to leave the family, or to 
 drop into a pensioner ; and, as her ladyship's housekeeper 
 was leaving on account of ill-health, I was given her place, 
 though I had no experience in the management of a large 
 establishment. There never was a sweeter child — or a 
 nobler boy — or a better man. Though I'm a Bible Chris- 
 tian myself, and don't hold with his lordship's Church, I 
 can reverence one who has shown himself a true disciple 
 of Christ." 
 
 The length of the corridor gave an opportunity for the 
 old servant's garrulous tongue ; and Rachel was touched by 
 the genuine affection indicated by the broken voice and 
 uncontrollable tears. 
 
 ^^3 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 The door of St. Just's room opened as they drew near. 
 Lightly as their steps sounded on the thick carpet, he had 
 heard the footfall for which he had been listening and 
 longing. He had found Arden's telegram in the hall when 
 he arrived — " We are starting by the afternoon train " — and 
 he had counted the minutes till the first possible moment 
 at which they could arrive. And from that moment his 
 impatience had been at fever height. 
 
 The hectic flush upon the sunken cheeks, and the eager 
 look in the too brilliant eyes, startled Rachel. Could 
 those be dying eyes that gazed at her with an intense 
 vitality which she had never seen in them before ? Could 
 the flame of life burn so fiercely on the verge of ex- 
 tinction ? 
 
 Speech failed him in his agitation. He pointed to the 
 vacant chair at his side with a radiant smile ; and then she 
 heard a faintly whispered, " This is kind." 
 
 He was half lying in a large armchair, a hospital nurse 
 standing beside him, and his valet in the background. The 
 room was larger than modern bedrooms. The low ceiling, 
 supported by black oak beams, and the dark tapestry, gave 
 an impression of unspeakable gloom to a mind over- 
 shadowed by impending sorrow. 
 
 The candles on the high mantelpiece gave less light than 
 the logs burning on the hearth ; and in the alternations of 
 leaping flame and dull red glow Rachel had not seen the 
 doctor till he came out of the shadows at the end of the 
 room. 
 
 " Nurse and I will leave you with Lord St. Just for five 
 or ten minutes, Mrs. Arden," he said quietly; "but you 
 must not let him talk much, please." 
 
 The nurse showed her the restorative which might be 
 given if there were signs of fainting. Eau de Cologne, 
 smelling-salts, everything was ready on the table by his 
 chair, with the little pile of books that had been his com- 
 forters in the long hours of weakness and decay. 
 
 " It was very good of Arden to bring you," St. Just said, 
 when they were alone. " Can you forgive me for summon- 
 ing you to this last dismal scene ? Yes, I know you will 
 forgive ; you have often looked upon sickness and death ; 
 you have comforted other death-beds." 
 
 284 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 *' Dear friend, how can you think I should hesitate to 
 come to you — or my husband," she said, interrupting him, 
 shocked at the change in his voice, which had a dull hoarse 
 sound. " If we had known you were so ill, and alone, we 
 would have gone to Sicily to help in bringing you home. 
 We are both of us glad to be with you. Walter has always 
 admired and esteemed you. He is your friend as much as 
 I am." 
 
 "Alas) that cannot be, Rachel; he and I are too far 
 apart in our understanding of life. I may call you Rachel 
 now, mayn't I ? If I sinned in loving you too dearly, the 
 sin belongs to the past ; it is gone with my life. I am 
 standing on the threshold, face to face with my Creator. 
 All earthly dreams are past, and my sins are washed clean 
 in the blood of my Saviour. Those long days and nights 
 on the yacht, lying supine, too weak even to read, gave 
 time for repentance." 
 
 *' You had so little to repent of, you who gave your life 
 for others." 
 
 " I gave them my labour and my thoughts. But the 
 soldier in the rank-and-file does more when he dies to save 
 a comrade. Will you be with me to-morrow morning, 
 Rachel, when the priest who christened me comes to give 
 me my last communion ? Will you kneel among my faithful 
 old servants ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes ; but you must not talk any more, St. Just." 
 
 " Not to-night ; I have to live till to-morrow. But when 
 the celebration is over I must open my heart to you and to 
 your husband. I have much to say to you. You must not 
 stop me then, Rachel. The thoughts in a dying man's 
 mind are worth more than a few hours of his life. And 
 now go, and dine, and rest after your journey." 
 
 " Good night," she said gently, bending down to kiss the 
 wasted hand lying upon the arm of his chair ; such a pure 
 and passionless kiss as women give to the dying. 
 
 She did not plague him with any of the death-bed com- 
 monplaces — that he would weather the storm, that he might 
 surprise his doctors, that there was hope still of long years 
 to come. She accepted the inevitable, and bowed her head 
 before the stroke of doom, with the meek submission of one 
 for whom death did not mean the end. 
 
 285 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Arden would have visited the invaUd that night, but the 
 doctor forbade any more talk or excitement for his patient. 
 
 " I beHeve he will be the better for your coming," the 
 doctor said; "and he may get some sleep, perhaps, to- 
 night, now his wish has been gratified. He wanted so much 
 to see you and Mrs. Arden. He has talked to me again 
 and again of her work among the poor, and of their love 
 for her." 
 
 " It is easy to win their love," Rachel said. " They have 
 so few to claim it, outside their own poor homes." 
 
 " And they don't get much of it inside, I reckon, if one 
 allows for all those gentlemen whom Miss Trotwood called 
 Poker husbands — the men who come home drunk and 
 murder their wives in a casual way ; or the men with irrit- 
 able tempers, who come home sober and find a drunken 
 wife and no dinner. I always feel rather sorry for those 
 fellows," concluded Dr. Walsh, with a meditative air. " I 
 had a cook once that I should have liked to murder — 
 deliberately." 
 
 Rachel left her husband and the doctor to dine tete-a-tete^ 
 and refreshed herself with tea and toast in Lady St. Just's 
 morning-room, which adjoined the bedroom that had been 
 prepared for her. The housekeeper brought the tea-tray 
 with her own hands, and waited on Rachel, trying to make 
 her take something more substantial than the little bit of 
 dry toast, which she ate only in order to satisfy the old 
 woman. 
 
 " Indeed, ma'am, you ought to take something better 
 than that scrap of toast — a new laid egg, nov;. These 
 were laid this morning, and my brahmas are famous for 
 their eggs." 
 
 " No, thank you, Mrs. Roper ; I have no appetite. My 
 Imsband made me eat something at Salisbury." 
 
 " But you'd miss your luncheon, leaving home, ma'am." 
 
 " Please don't trouble about me. I want you to tell me 
 about his lordship — his doctors — his nurses — all that is being 
 done for him." 
 
 Mrs. Roper asked nothing better than a talking licence. 
 She accepted Rachel's invitation to be seated with cere- 
 monious reluctance, but there was no ceremony in her use 
 of her tongue. She sat with the visitor for an hour, talking 
 
 286 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 of St. Just all the time— his ghastly appearance that after- 
 noon when they carried him into the house ; the impression 
 made upon the doctor from Bude, who had been summoned 
 to consult with his lordship's private doctor, who had 
 travelled with him nearly a year, and had watched him day 
 and night from the beginning of his illness, and understood 
 his case better than any one else could, Mrs. Roper opined, 
 though, of course, it was only right to have her ladyship's 
 doctor from Bude — at least, not living in Bude, but in his 
 own house and grounds in the neighbourhood, a gentleman 
 who had known his lordship from a baby, and knew the St. 
 Just constitution. 
 
 " It's in her ladyship's family," concluded the house- 
 keeper. " All the Challoners have weak chests. They look 
 strong and fine and handsome, and they're careless with 
 themselves, feeling strong and active, and then in the prime 
 of life they go otT unexpected, after a short illness. But oh, 
 ma'am, if there was ever anybody ready for heaven, it's my 
 young master, and it seems almost a cruelty in those that 
 love him to begrudge his going there." 
 
 The roaring of the wind and the waves had been in 
 Rachel's ears all through a sleepless night, a melancholy, 
 monotonous voice, that sounded like the voice of death — 
 the calling of the sea. 
 
 The priest and his two attendant choir-boys had a stormy 
 walk over the moor from Trevelyan village, confronting 
 wind and rain, with their faces towards the Atlantic, and a 
 tempest coming up from the waste of waters beyond the 
 Land's End. The morning was dark, the sky covered with 
 hurrying clouds, and the distant roar of the breakers mingled 
 with the solemn words of the Communion Service, words 
 broken now and then by the sound of stifled sobs among 
 the mei^ and maid-servants, who knelt with bowed heads to 
 participate for the last time, as they believed, in the cere- 
 mony which they had so often attended side by side with 
 their master in the village church. Never had grey-haired 
 butler and middle-aged footmen thought to kneel beside 
 their master's death-bed. They were all sons of the soil, as 
 much a part of the country where they had been born and 
 bred as the largest landowner in Cornwall. They came of 
 
 287 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 a race that had Hved from generation to generation in the 
 same parish, or in the same cottage, till the cob walls 
 crumbled under the heavy slate roof, or a beneficent land- 
 lord substituted stone for cob, and sash windows and flat 
 roof and modern ugliness for picturesque discomfort. 
 
 For these the early death of a beloved master meant the 
 break-up of their own lives. Good places were to be found, 
 no doubt, for good service; but where could they be as well 
 off and happy as they had been at Trevelyan ? It was not 
 leaving a " place." It was leaving home. 
 
 All was over; the Rector and his attendants had gone, 
 comfortably sheltered from rain and wind in the late Lady 
 St. Just's roomy landau. Rachel and the day-nurse were 
 alone with the patient, while the doctor breakfasted below 
 stairs. 
 
 He had slept fairly well, the nurse told Rachel ; and his 
 temperature and pulse were both a shade better. 
 
 " He was restless till you came, ma'am, and that sent up 
 the temperature." 
 
 " Will you send for your husband ? " St. Just asked, when 
 Rachel had taken the nurse's place at his bedside, while 
 she took her breakfast in the adjoining room, within call. 
 " I want to pour out my heart to him, and to you." 
 
 " He will be here directly, I think. He meant to come 
 when " 
 
 " When all signs of a Christian death-bed had vanished ? 
 I understand." 
 
 There was a discreet knock at the door, and Arden 
 entered the room with hushed footsteps, and came to the 
 bedside, where he bent down to lay his hand upon the 
 spectral hand on the bed, in silent greeting. He was almost 
 as pale as St. Just ; and he was slow to put his sympathy into 
 words. 
 
 " Will you leave us for a little while, Rachel. I want to 
 speak to Arden alone." 
 
 She rose without a word, and moved towards the door, 
 then stopped and said imploringly — 
 
 *' Remember what the doctor said. You are not to talk 
 much." 
 
 " Yesterday ! I was obedient yesterday. I am free 
 to-day." 
 
 288 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 The hoarse voice, the effort in speaking, agonized her ; 
 but she dared not oppose him. Excitement, distress of 
 mind, might be worse than that effort of speech. She left 
 the room in silence. 
 
 "Arden, it was kind of you to grant my request — pure 
 charity— Christian charity. For I think you must have read 
 between the lines — you must have known that I loved your 
 wife — loved her, and fought the good fight, against love, 
 against sin. I was her friend, her true and honest friend, 
 for years ; and when I felt the fight might be a losing 
 battle, I fled from the face I loved, from the voice that was 
 my. music — the voice that was my music ! Ah, how that 
 line has haunted me." 
 
 " Yes, I understood your letter. And I know that you 
 are a good man. I have not believed implicitly in all the 
 professing Christians I have met; but I believe in you, and 
 I believe in my wife. Nothing could ever make me doubt 
 her. She did not know you loved her. You kept that 
 secret to yourself?" 
 
 "Till the last hour — the hour in which I wished her 
 good-bye, vrhen I was leaving England, meaning never to 
 return. In that unhappy hour I spoke words which I would 
 have died to recall — words that made our lifelong parting 
 inevitable. I hope you know that I should not have asked 
 to look on her dear face again if I had not known that my 
 hours were numbered." 
 
 " I believe that with all my heart, St. Just." 
 
 " Enough of myself. I want to talk to you of your own 
 life — the life that may be long, and that ought to be so 
 deeply blessed. I want to talk to you of her and her 
 happiness. Do you know why I courted her society, spent 
 half my life with her, knowing that I loved her too well for 
 my peace ? It vras because I saw how you neglected her ; 
 and because, after your confession that night, I feared for 
 vour reason. I wanted to be near her, a friend and 
 protector, against the peril of a husband's insanity.' 
 
 " I knew you thought me mad." 
 
 " No, not mad when you opened your mind to me ; yet 
 what might not be feared from a mind in which hallucination 
 had taken the place of reality ? But, as time went on, I saw 
 no fresh cause for alarm. You were a most unhappy man, 
 
 2 89 u 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 but your brain was strong enough to keep its balance, under 
 conditions that in most men would have ended in lunacy. 
 But think what it was for me, worshipping her beauty and 
 her sweetness, to see such a flower neglected; to see a 
 marriage, that all who knew you had admired as an" idyllic 
 love-match, drifting into hopeless estrangement, a husband 
 in sullen isolation, a wife broken-hearted. After those years 
 of severance she is unchanged. She loves you still. You 
 have but to take her to your heart again." 
 
 " And to make her miserable ; to let her share the horror 
 of my haunted life ; to let her see me in the hour when that 
 spirit of evil holds my soul in thrall ; to let her see me as I 
 am for the greater part of my life, a man accursed. What 
 could she think me but a madman ? And then would come 
 the horror I have been dreading for the last two years. A 
 loving wife's anxiety for an afflicted husband — physicians 
 called in — interviews with the patient — searching questions 
 — the thin end of the wedge — the secret of my suffering 
 extorted from me — and then the bland advice for self- 
 control — and the certificate — and the asylum. I confided 
 in you, St. Just, which was a mistake. I won't make that 
 mistake again." 
 
 " Walter Arden," said St. Just, raising himself in his bed 
 with a sudden energy, *' if you believed in God, you would 
 not believe in this devil. Men who love Christ, who live 
 by the light of His word, are incapable of fantastic dreams 
 like yours." 
 
 " Yet what if I am incapable of believing in God, or 
 loving Christ, except as a Jewish philosopher of incom- 
 parable wisdom and gentleness ? " 
 
 " Yet you believe in the invisible, the impalpable presence 
 of a supernatural being. You do not shut your mind against 
 the unseen world. You believe that the evil spirit of the 
 man you killed — justly, as you think — has power to haunt 
 your life, and even to enter the form of a dead man whom 
 you loved — to live again, a devil's nature in a human 
 form. You believe in the reality of that which reason 
 should tell you to be a wild delusion of your own troubled 
 brain, and you withhold your belief from the Creator of the 
 universe, and the Saviour of mankind." 
 
 " I am as Nature made me. In the propensities and 
 
 290 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 instincts that make up this being of mine, the instinct of 
 faith in God is ^vanting." 
 
 " But not the instinct of superstition. Oh, my dear friend, 
 what can I say to you, how can I convince you that in one 
 refuge only can your troubled spirit find peace ? I tell you, 
 Arden, that in this brief life of ours, on this infinitesimal 
 spot in illimitable space, we are surrounded with the unseen, 
 and we cannot escape from its influence. The world in- 
 visible is round us and about us, in our childish dreams, our 
 childish gropings after the mysterious and unknowable, the 
 something near us that is not ourselves; and if we reject 
 the messengers from heaven, we become the prey of the 
 spirits from hell. God has given us minds that aspire, 
 thoughts that break through the prison-house of clay. 
 Somehow, by some half-conscious process, the spirit of man 
 escapes the hmitations of flesh, to find the peace of God, or 
 the terrors of Satan. God or the devil I Man must choose 
 under which master he will live and die." 
 
 " Why must there be a master ? Why should not man 
 be free — free as Huxley was; as Darwin was; believing 
 only in the things that he can see and measure and test and 
 compare ; the things whose absolute reality he knows and 
 understands ? Those men lived out their lives without the 
 necessity of a God, or the fear of a devil."' 
 
 " Yes, there must always be exceptions, men of the 
 scientific mind, men of vast intellectual force, who have the 
 power to concentrate their thoughts upon the actual world, 
 who know that they are labouring for a great cause — the cause 
 of truth about material things. Such men can be satisfied 
 without thought of the hereafter. Their work is the work of 
 to-day ; their discoveries, their achievements, their triumphs, 
 are circumscribed by earthly limits. The world of sense, 
 of fossils and dry bones, of insect and animal life, is their 
 dominion. The scientific mind asks nothing better." 
 
 His voice was hoarse, and he breathed heavily ; but the 
 flushed cheek and brilliant eye, the energy of tone and 
 manner, were full of vitality. It was difiicult to think of 
 him as a man whose life might not outlast the day. 
 Diflficult, agonizing, to think that this ardent, beneficent 
 spirit must soon be cold in death. 
 
 Arden was deeply moved. 
 
 291 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " I wish to God I were like you, St. Just. But some 
 men see the heavens opening, and the company of saints, 
 where others see only the trackless wilderness of infinite 
 space, the barren wastes of mindless matter — an illimitable 
 universe, with no room for a personal God. I would give 
 half the life that lies before me to have faith, simple and 
 strong as yours, to help me through the other half." 
 
 " It will come to you. I believe with all my soul that 
 the light will come ; if you will give your mind and heart in 
 perfect trustfulness to the wife who loves you. She will be 
 your guide, Arden, strong in her childlike simplicity. A 
 child shall lead you. Let me lie down to rest, with the 
 assurance that you will be again to her as you were in the 
 first years of your married life. Let no morbid fancy of an 
 overwrought brain come between you and your guardian 
 angel." 
 
 " My guardian angel ! " echoed Arden. " That is what I 
 thought her when we first met, and when the cloud of 
 horror was lifted from me — the indescribable horror which 
 no words can convey to the mind of another, but which is 
 more real than the sternest realities of life are to me." 
 
 " Lean upon Rachel," said St. Just, laying his hand on 
 Arden's with an affectionate pressure. " She will lead you 
 to peace. And now I have said my last word — and last 
 words are remembered when the speaker is no more. 
 Good-bye." 
 
 They clasped hands, and Arden bent over the wasted 
 hand with clouded eyes, and went quietly from the room 
 as Dr. Walsh came in, bringing the Bude doctor, his senior 
 by a quarter of a century. 
 
 There had been a question between the two men over- 
 night as to the advisability of sending for a London specialist ; 
 and both had agreed that it would be useless. The end 
 had long been inevitable. St. Just, always of a delicate 
 frame and constitution, had shown wonderful vitality, but 
 it was only the power of mind over matter. The mischief 
 had progressed beyond hope of cure. Walsh was young, 
 and a disciple of the newest school, full of intelligence, and 
 warmly attached to St. Just, who had offered to take him 
 on his yachting tour, with a liberal salary, at a time when 
 the young man's constitution was in danger of breaking 
 
 292 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 down altogether from over-work as a general practitioner 
 in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in London. He had 
 left the medical schools eager for experience, and not caring 
 for income, beyond the absolute needs of existence ; and he 
 had been on foot early and late, working with heart and 
 brain, in a practice that hardly brought him the rent of his 
 surgery. 
 
 " The late Lady St. Just's people were a family of weak 
 chests," the Bude doctor said. " I am not surprised at 
 St. Just's break-up. But it's a great loss for this neighbour- 
 hood, for he was a model landlord. And it's a greater loss 
 for the philanthropic world." 
 
 " He was the friend of the poor," ansv/ered "Walsh. '' He 
 would wish for no higher title." 
 
 They both said he "was." They spoke and thought of 
 him in the past. 
 
 "And title and estates go to a distant cousin?" in- 
 terrogated Walsh. 
 
 " Yes, a small squire near Launceston, a fine sportsman. 
 We shall have a pack of hounds here perhaps in a year or 
 two. The kennels are on the other side of the park, where 
 St. Just's grandfather built them eighty years ago. I've 
 heard my grandfather talk of him." 
 
 " But you have a pack of hounds near Bude, haven't 
 you?" 
 
 " Yes ; but if we had a private pack at Trevelyan, we could 
 hunt five days a week." 
 
 This conversation had taken place on the previous even- 
 ing, after it had been agreed that the science of medicine 
 could do no more for the present master of Trevelyan. In 
 a few hours, more or less, the new master would be coming 
 hotfoot to claim his own, the cheery hunting-squire, whose 
 modest means hardly allowed of a second horse, and who 
 had cast many a longing look [at the spacious stables — 
 room enough for twenty — and the kennels that had not 
 echoed the voices of hounds for half a century. Only 
 within the last six months, vrhen the report of St. Just's bad 
 health had appeared from time to time in the gossip column 
 of the London papers, had the Launceston squire contem- 
 plated the future ownership of those admirable stables, and 
 ihe rapture of improving the empty kennels on modern 
 
 293 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 principles. The good man knew not yet how near his 
 ownership might be. It was no man's business to inform 
 him of his kinsman's return; and there was so httle in 
 common between the two men that no one had thought of 
 suggesting the squire's presence in the sick-room. He had 
 been asked to Trevelyan for a day's shooting now and then, 
 when St. Just was at home, and had been allowed to shoot 
 the covers as often as he chose when St. Just was away ; 
 but no familiarity could have made the men companions. 
 
 Arden found Rachel pacing the terrace on the south 
 side of the house, careless of wind and rain. He went to 
 her and drew her hand gently through his arm, and walked 
 by her side in silence. Simple as the act was, it seemed to 
 her like the breaking down of a barrier of ice that had 
 gradually risen between husband and wife. She looked up 
 at him wonderingly, and met his gaze of melancholy tender- 
 ness, ineffable love shadowed by ineffable pain. 
 
 " You have been a long time with St. Just," she said. 
 
 " Not long in minutes ; but we have talked of things that 
 fill a lifetime. He has been talking of you, Rachel, telling 
 me to love you ; as if I had ever ceased to do that, as if I 
 had ever loved woman as I love you. He urged me to 
 confide even my darkest thoughts to you — as I once con- 
 fided them to him " 
 
 "And you will trust me, Walter? If you only knew 
 how miserable I have been in these wretched years of our 
 estrangement — never estrangement on my side ; but on yours 
 the cruellest desertion. I was a deserted wife in our own 
 house, husband and wife sitting face to face day after day, 
 yet miles apart." 
 
 '' Well, there shall be no more estrangement. If you can 
 live with me and share my burden, I will not creep into 
 my hole and hide my misery in darkness. I will hide 
 myself from all the world except you. But you don't know 
 the shadow you are bringing upon your life, if you are to 
 be my companion. You don't know ! " 
 
 *' However darkly the shadow may fall, I would rather 
 live in it than live as we have been living — you and I, 
 Walter ! You and I who were once in such perfect sympathy, 
 who once seemed to have but one heart and mind, except 
 in our thoughts of the world to come. Oh, Walter, if you 
 
 294 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 could look there in your hour of trouble, you would surely 
 find comfort. ^Morbid imaginings, fancied evils, cannot live 
 in the Hght of heaven." 
 
 " ;Morbid imaginings ! They are the realities." 
 
 •' And if you cannot yet find the light — if the blessedness 
 of belief in a Divine Friend and Saviour is denied you, dear 
 husband, you have but to return to the little world of suffer- 
 ing humanity, where there are such real miseries, so many 
 ill-used wives, and fatherless children, and sickly families, 
 toiling from morning till night for such pitiful wages, so 
 many heart-broken mothers grieving over the degradation 
 of their daughters, or the wickedness of their sons. When 
 I think of all that patient suffering, I cannot fathom the mind 
 of a man who can turn his back upon it, having once seen 
 and known it, as you have." 
 
 " You think I gave up without a struggle, that I wearied 
 of the work you loved. You wrong me there, Rachel. I 
 thought once, as you think now, that a man might arm 
 himself against all the powers of hell by unflagging labour 
 in the cause of humanity— that the human must vanquish 
 the devilish. I thought that ; and I wrestled with my enemy. 
 But evil was stronger than good. Oh, for mercy's sake, 
 don't drive me into explanations ; don't force me to talk of 
 myself ! Shelter me with your love if you can. Save me 
 from despair, from the peril of madness. I will be as a 
 child in your hands ; I will do whatever you bid me, go 
 where you tell me to go ; but don't question me." 
 
 " I will do nothing that can give you pain, Walter." 
 
 Dr. Walsh met them at the end of the terrace. 
 
 " Lord St. Just would like to see Mrs. Arden, if she would 
 be kind enough to stay with him for a little while," he said ; 
 and then, in a lower voice, to Arden, " I think he wishes to 
 bid her good-bye." 
 
 ''I will go this instant," Rachel said, walkmg quickly 
 
 towards the house. 
 
 " Is it really good-bye ? " Arden asked, when he and the 
 doctor were alone. " Have you given up hope ? " 
 
 " Yes. We are near the end ; but he is calm and happy. 
 It is the death-bed of a saint." 
 
 " He was so full of life and energy half an hour ago, when 
 he talked to me." 
 
 295 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 *' The light that comes before the final darkness. He is 
 without pain. His mental power is undiminished; but I 
 doubt if he will live through the night." 
 
 " Does he know ? '* 
 
 "Yes. He made me tell him the truth. All that can 
 prolong his life will be done till the last moment. He has 
 two admirable nurses ; and I shall be at hand all day and 
 all night, if he live till night." 
 
 *' Rachel," said St. Just, when she had seated herself by 
 his bedside. Nurse Marian having withdrawn to a seat by 
 an open window at the other end of the room, " I have 
 done with most earthly things, but not with your friendship. 
 I like to see you by my bed, though I see your face dimly 
 through a pale grey mist. I like to hear your voice." 
 
 " Shall I read to you ? It would tire you less than 
 talking." 
 
 " No ; sing to me, Rachel ; sing one of the hymns we 
 both love — the hymns I have heard you sing at St. Saviour's. 
 Ah, if you could have known then how your voice thrilled 
 me ; how for me it was the only voice in that mass of 
 people, singing in tune and out of tune, with their poor 
 cockney accent, their heart-whole piety, so pathetic in its 
 yearning for the Unseen. Your voice rose up from the 
 multitude like a seraph's — so clear, so pure, so tender ! 
 Sing to me, Rachel." 
 
 " If my poor voice can soothe you." 
 
 " It will lift me up to heaven." 
 
 She rose and moved to a prie-dieu chair at the foot of 
 the bed, and knelt with clasped hands and upward gaze, 
 as of one who sees something far away. She sang several 
 hymns, making a long pause after each, while she prayed 
 silently with bowed head. She knew the hymns he loved 
 best ; for she had heard him read them and talk of them 
 to school-children, to old men and women, to the sick and 
 the dying. She sang — 
 
 " The King of love my Shepherd is, 
 Whose goodness faileth never ; 
 I nothing lack if I am His 
 And He is mine for ever." 
 
 And then, in a low voice, attuned to that sad environment, 
 
 296 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 she sang, " Lead, kindly Light," " Rock of Ages," " Art 
 thou weary ? " And last of all— 
 
 " Abide with me ; fast falls the eventide ; 
 The darkness deepens ; Lord, with me abide ; 
 When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, 
 Help of the helpless, O abide with me." 
 
 Nurse ^Marian was kneeling by the distant window. The 
 doctor had come into the room silently, and after looking 
 at his patient, he too had knelt with bowed head. Sung 
 under such conditions, those hymns were prayers. 
 
 A thrush was singing in the rainy shrubbery under the 
 window; but his song was not more pure and true than 
 Rachel's voice— steady and unfaltering, save when, at some 
 too pathetic suggestion in the verse, there came the sound 
 of tears. 
 
 " Rachel ! " — the voice that called her had grown famter 
 than before. 
 
 She rose from her knees, and went to the bedside. 
 
 " Dear friend, I bless you for this happy hour. It was 
 for such an hour as this I came from Sicily— for this, and 
 to talk to your husband as I have talked to-day. He is the 
 lost sheep of the Lord, Rachel. You must bring him home. 
 Oh, my dear, you can do it, for he loves you, and love must 
 conquer." 
 
 " I will try," she murmured brokenly. 
 
 " And now bid me the last good-bye. I have done with 
 all things dear, till I recover my lost treasures in heaven. 
 Shall we ever meet again ? Shall we meet and remember, 
 in the world of emancipated souls — spirits freed from the 
 dominion of flesh ? He whom M-e trust held out that 
 blessed hope to the penitent sinner. To-morrow — the 
 to-morrow of long years — we may be together in Paradise." 
 
 His hand was in hers as she stood beside the bed, his 
 eyes looking up at her with unspeakable love. 
 
 She bent over him, and kissed the cold brow. 
 " Good-bye, St. Just," she said softly. " Your friendship 
 has been very dear and precious to me. I shall never 
 forget you — never cease to love your memory." 
 
 He lifted her hand to his lips, and kissed it passionately. 
 " Good-bve, earth," he said, and turned his face to the 
 wall. 
 
 297 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 She kept back her tears till she was in the corridor outside, 
 where Walsh followed her. 
 
 " I don't want to leave him," she said. " I would stay 
 with him to the last if it were best." 
 
 " It is best for him to be alone now. He will fall into 
 a dreamy state most likely, and pass away in his sleep. 
 The nurse and I will keep watch." 
 
 All through the long spring day there was a silence in 
 the spacious old house, a dumbness that seemed like the 
 herald of death. The servants moved about the house no 
 more than was absolutely necessar}', and walked with hushed 
 footsteps. They spent the intervals of their service in their 
 own rooms, reading their Bibles, and breathing many a 
 prayer for a beloved master. Every flutter of a bird's wings 
 as it flew past an open window, every rustle of the boughs 
 in the rising wind, seemed to have a melancholy significance, 
 and to those simple minds whispered of the saintly soul 
 passing from the dull grey things of earth to the rainbow 
 light of the celestial city. The old butler and the old house- 
 keeper sat with their open Bibles on their knees, and talked 
 of the days that were gone — of St. Just's father, and grand- 
 father, of his childhood, and boyhood. The head laundry- 
 maid came to the housekeeper's room with reddened eyelids 
 and pale cheeks. She had been under-nurse, and loved to 
 talk of the childish illnesses through which she had helped 
 2slrs. Roper to bring the young master. The Bible-reading 
 and the rambling talk alternated in Mrs. Roper's room atl 
 the afternoon. There was no one but the servants in the 
 lower part of the house ; and the footmen had nothing to 
 do but attend to the fires in the empty sitting-rooms, and 
 shut the shutters and draw the curtains at nightfall. 
 
 At any moment they might hear that all was over. 
 " All " in this case meaning that serviceable, unselfish life, 
 whose years of reason had been spent in good works. At 
 any moment the stable-messenger might be bidden to saddle 
 his pony and carry the tidings to Trevelyan village; and 
 then the church bell would toll thirty times with slow and 
 solemn sound across the darkness ; and homestead and 
 cottage would know that the landlord and master was dead. 
 Inquirers had been cominc^ to the lodge gates all day long 
 
 ^ 298 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 — squire and parson, yeoman and cottager, from all the 
 country round ; but none had come up to the house to 
 disturb the solemn silence around a vanishing life. The 
 woman at the lodge had the doctor's bulletin, from hour 
 to hour, and the inquirers left sorrowfully, being told that 
 the case was hopeless. 
 
 Arden left the house after his interview with Rachel, and 
 wandered over the moorland to the coast, choosing his 
 path at random, and walking with his face seaward till he 
 found himself standing on that rugged headland " where the 
 great vision of the guarded mount looks toward Namancos 
 and Bayona's hold." 
 
 He felt his burden lightened after that earnest talk with 
 his wife, his guardian angel, as he loved to call her ; but he 
 knew not how long the tranquil mood would last, or when 
 his haunting miser}' might come back upon him. 
 
 The wild beauty of hill and valley, and the granite coast 
 that girdled them, the majesty of rocks that rose like the 
 ramparts of a giant city, solitary and strange as a dream- 
 picture in Christian's journey, helped to distract his mind 
 from his intangible enemy. There was relief in having 
 escaped from the densely peopled scenes of everyday life, 
 to feel alone with Nature. He breathed the purer air; he 
 gazed upon the wide expanse of sea and sky, with a new 
 sense of liberty. 
 
 " I have hugged my ghost. I have shut myself in a 
 prison-house with my spectral foe," he thought. " From 
 henceforward I will fly from him. I will fling myself upon 
 Nature's breast. I will worship mountains and rivers, sun 
 and stars. I will cast away the consciousness of this petty 
 stunted individuality, and lose the sense of horror in the 
 sense of infinite beauty." 
 
 It was nearly ten o'clock when he went back to Trevelyan. 
 Rachel was walking in the avenue, wrapped in a cloak, her 
 hair blown about by the wind, her face pale with fear. 
 
 " Oh, Walter, what a scare you have given me 1 " she 
 exclaimed, hurr)'ing to meet him. " I was afraid some 
 accident had happened. I thought of the most dreadful 
 things. The stablemen have gone to look for you, and 
 to make inquiries in the village." 
 
 "Because I was an hour or so late for dinner? My 
 
 299 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 dear wife, that I should seem to neglect you, after our talk 
 this morning ! I wandered farther than I meant to go, 
 lured on by the grandeur of the scenery — those stupendous 
 cliffs, and the stormy sea, Tintagel, with its grim walls and 
 romantic legends. I have been steeping myself in" the wild 
 beauty of this coast, finer than I had ever imagined it. It 
 was dusk when I found myself in a fishing-village under 
 the clifi", and found that I had a long way to walk home. 
 How pale you look ! Has the end come ? " 
 
 *' No, he is living still ; but he lies half asleep. He opens 
 his eyes sometimes and looks at the watchers, but gives no 
 sign of recognition. Dr. Walsh thinks that consciousness 
 has gone, never to return. Never to return here. I can 
 but think of him as if he were now among the blessed souls 
 in heaven." 
 
 " Ah, that is the myster}'. Even your creed is vague and 
 wavering upon that question. In a paradise of dreamless 
 sleep, or before the throne of God ? You have no promise 
 or assurance." 
 
 " ' In my Father's house are many mansions,' " murmured 
 Rachel. 
 
 " Vague, all vague ! The children of Israel— God's chosen 
 people — had no promise of the after-life. They were groping 
 in the dark, and never thought that when they did well or 
 ill they were choosing between eternal felicity and eternal 
 pain." 
 
 " Christ brought us the promise. We can trust Him." 
 
 "Well, St. Just's life on earth was the ideal life— St. 
 Paul's ideal — to spend and to be spent for others. He can 
 face the great mystery without fear of the issue. ^ Come 
 what may, he has his reward — rest from toil, or joy un- 
 speakable in the world we know not. Have you been with 
 him lately ? " 
 
 " I was with him for an hour this morning ; and then he 
 said good-bye, and I went away to hide my tears. Dr. 
 Walsh thought it best that he should be alone after that. I 
 have been sitting in my room all day. Nurse Marian has 
 come to me from time to time and told me about him. She 
 is a good nurse ; but not so sympathetic as Nurse Ethel." 
 
 They went into the house together, and the old butler, 
 who had been on the watch for them, ushered them into 
 
 3Q0 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 the dining-room, \\-here all things were in readiness for the 
 long-deferred dinner. 
 
 Rachel urged her husband to eat, having discovered that 
 he had taken nothing all day; but she did not tell him that 
 her only refreshment had been the tea that Nurse Marian 
 had persuaded her to take at five o'clock. 
 
 The dinner was a mere pretence of a meal, in spite of 
 the butler's tender ministrations. Who could eat in a house 
 towards whose door the fatal footstep was approaching? 
 Husband and wife sat in silence, listening for that other 
 step on the old oak staircase, the step of the doctor coming 
 to tell them of the end. 
 
 301 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The thin-spun thread held out longer than Dr. Walsh 
 expected. Midnight struck from the big clock in the 
 stable-yard, and St. Just still lived. He lived ; but the end 
 seemed very near — the inevitable end. 
 
 " He is sinking fast," Walsh whispered to the night-nurse, 
 who had just taken her place at the bedside. '' He will 
 sleep till the last, most likely. I shall go and lie down in 
 my clothes, for an hour or two. Be sure you call me if 
 there is any change." 
 
 The nurse sat in the large armchair, watching the slum- 
 bering form, the wasted hand lying waxen white on the 
 crimson silk coverlet. She watched the dying man with 
 reverent gaze, knowing what manner of life he had led — a 
 soldier of Christ, disbanded in the thick of the battle, but 
 leaving his record of work well done, having borne such 
 witness as few men bear to the faith that was in him — the 
 implicit childlike faith which had been a lantern to light his 
 steps, and a lamp shining in the distance, far away, at the 
 end of the earthly vista, to beckon and guide him home. 
 
 Nurse Ethel was a religious woman, a member of that 
 sect which has taken so strong a hold in the West of 
 England — the Bible Christians. For her the solution of 
 all life's enigmas was to be found in Holy Writ. She went 
 to her Bible for comfort and guidance, in every sorrow and 
 in every difficulty. And now, sitting in the silent room, 
 in the dim light of the night-lamp, she thought of the 
 Shunammite woman's son, and the Prophet of Israel, who 
 gave the boy living to his mother's arms, the boy who had 
 been dead. 
 
 Dr. Walsh had told her that there was no hope — none ; 
 but he looked at all things from his own narrow standpoint 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 of the hospital and the dissecting-room. He spoke as a 
 man in whom faith was utterly wanting. Alas ! for the 
 simple faith of old, the faith that made the Shunammite 
 mother invoke the Prophet's power, albeit her child was 
 dead. Here death had not yet come; but a good man 
 lay sick, and in case so desperate that mortal hand could 
 not prolong his life by a single hour. But God's hand 
 could. There was no need of the Prophet of Israel, gifted 
 with supernatural power. There was no need of any 
 human intervener. The hand of Omnipotence, the invisible 
 hand that kills and makes alive, need but to be stretched 
 out over that dying head, and death would flee away, and 
 life would come back to the friend of the sorrowing and 
 the poor. 
 
 Nurse Ethel sank upon her knees beside the bed, bowed 
 her face upon the coverlet, and prayed v/ith the fervour of 
 those who know not written prayer, the wild outpouring 
 of an enthusiastic piety, belief that knew no bounds, an 
 imagination that soared to the throne of God, and aspired 
 even in this life to a familiar communing with Christ and 
 His saints. 
 
 " ;My Redeemer and my Saviour, Saviour of ^Mankind, 
 canst Thou suffer the death of this good man ? Oh, loving 
 Jesus, Thou who carest for the poor, look down and save 
 Thy disciple and servant.'' 
 
 She lost herself in an ecstasy of prayer; lost count of 
 time, lost consciousness of outer things — even of that 
 motionless figure on the bed — in the fervour of supplica- 
 tions which she thought must needs be answered. She 
 had been taught the efficacy of prayer, taught to believe in 
 a Divine Friend whose ear was always open to the cry of 
 the poor ; and it was for them, for the poor and the for- 
 saken, that she was pleading. 
 
 A window at the end of the room had been kept open 
 to give air to the patient, and the wind had been rising 
 since midnight. It was a freezing blast that startled Nurse 
 Ethel from her ecstasy, and made her suddenly conscious 
 of the wild shriek of the storm, shrill and loud, with a 
 something human in its note; like the cry of a giant in 
 agony. 
 
 She started to her feet, and bent over the bed to look 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 and listen. The blanched face, the utter stillness, thrilled 
 her with a sudden awe. She held her cheek above the lips 
 of the patient. No breath touched it. She laid her ear 
 above his heart ; and there was no sound. " Oh, God, hast 
 Thou no mercy ? " While she had prayed, lifting' her soul 
 to heaven, full of faith and hope, the life she pleaded for 
 had fled. God had refused to hear. Jesus had made no 
 intercession. What power could she hope to exercise, 
 she who had lived the life of common mortals, she who 
 was not as the Man of God, the anchorite, the earthly 
 saint, whose life had been sacrifice and obedience ? Why 
 should Jier prayers be answered; unselfish as they were, 
 supplicating for the life of one whose face she had seen for 
 the first time only yesterday ? 
 
 The enthusiast remembered that she was a nurse on duty, 
 and crept across the corridor to awaken the doctor. The 
 light tap on the door roused that light sleeper, and Walsh 
 answered her summons instantly, in shirt-sleeves and slip- 
 pered feet. 
 
 " Well ? " he asked, as he followed the nurse to St. Just's 
 room. 
 
 *' He is gone, sir." 
 
 " He went off quietly, as I expected ? " 
 
 " He passed away in his sleep, without a struggle, without 
 a groan." 
 
 Walsh bent over the bed for a minute in silence. 
 
 "You are mistaken, nurse," he said. "Lord St. Just is 
 not dead." 
 
 " Oh, sir, there was not a breath from his lips, his hand 
 was like marble." 
 
 "Walsh plucked off the handkerchief which she had folded 
 round the shrunken face. 
 
 " There is warmth and life in the hand now, and the 
 pulse is stronger than it was this morning." 
 
 "Oh, God, I thank thee!" cried Nurse Ethel, bursting 
 into tears. 
 
 " I had been praying for him, Dr. Walsh ; praying that 
 a good man's life might be spared," she said presently. 
 
 " Well, we shall see if your prayers are to be answered 
 by your patient's recovery. I'm afratd that's out of the 
 question. I have seen miraculous cures, Nurse Ethel, 
 
 304 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 but I don't expect to sec my poor friend rise from this 
 bed." 
 
 He took his seat by the bed, surprised and interested, 
 
 but not hopeful. 
 
 The stormy wind roared in the old Tudor chimneys all 
 night ; but when morning came the April sunshine and the 
 soft April air filled Rachel's room with the glory of spring ; 
 that something of unspeakable loveliness that brings the 
 glad sense of life even to desolate hearts ; a momentary 
 feeling, perhaps, followed by the bitter cry, " Oh, how can 
 /be glad?" 
 
 Rachel leant out of her open window, breathing the fresh- 
 ness of the dawn, the scent of pale monthly roses growing 
 round the casement — the first roses of the year — and of a 
 bed of violets in the border below. She had spent the 
 night in sleeplessness and prayer, while Arden slept heavily, 
 worn out by the day's toil. She had crept along the corridor 
 several times in those long, slow hours, to listen outside St. 
 Just's door. All had been still ; and she thought that silence 
 meant death. She wept for him as for the dead ; not the 
 dead as the materialist counts his lost ones, dead for ever 
 and for ever ; but as the friend who has gone before, from 
 the finite to the infinite, from the transient to the eternal. 
 She was sorry with the sorrow that can find instant comfort 
 in hope. 
 
 Nurse Ethel came to her at six o'clock, as she had 
 promised overnight, tearful and agitated, but smiling through 
 her tears. 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Arden, I am so happy ! He has lived through 
 the night. He rallied at two o'clock, after I thought he 
 was dead. Oh, I shall never forget that marble hand, those 
 breathless lips ! I had been praying God to save him, ask- 
 ing Jesus to plead for that precious life. And I thought he 
 was gone ; and then came the sudden rally. Dr. W^alsh is 
 as much surprised as I was. His pulse is ever so much 
 better this morning, and the temperature not quite so high. 
 He has taken milk and brandy greedily — as if he wanted 
 to live. Oh, dear Mrs. Arden, doesn't it seem as if our 
 prayers had been heard ? " added the enthusiast, with dilated 
 eyes, and clasped hands. 
 
 " Yes, nurse, we know that our prayers are heard, even 
 
 305 X 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 when the blessing we pray for is withheld. The Divine 
 wisdom hears and judges. But can this change really mean 
 
 recovery ? Does Dr. Walsh think " 
 
 "Oh, he won't speak out, Mrs. Arden; they never do. 
 They treat us poor nurses like the dirt under their feet — 
 very polite, some of them. ' Good morning, nurse,' and all 
 that ; but no confidence, and always thinking what we do is 
 wrong, if it isn't to the very letter of their orders. No, we 
 mustn't think for ourselves ; though we are there to judge, 
 and they are miles away. Dr. Walsh says he's astonished, 
 and that's all he'll vouchsafe to inc. He'll speak plainer to 
 you and Mr. Arden, no doubt." 
 
 " Has St. Just awakened and spoken to you ? " 
 " No ; he lies asleep. He was half asleep even when I 
 gave him the milk and the meat jelly. Oh, I feel sure he 
 will recover. He may not live to be old, poor dear, with his 
 weak chest, but he will get over this illness." 
 
 " It is very good of you to have felt so deeply for him." 
 " Oh, Mrs. Arden, that's my disposition. When I take 
 to a patient, I do take to him ; and I'd go through fire and 
 water, or sit up six nights running, and not have three hours 
 off in the day. And after what you told me about his lord- 
 ship's goodness to the poor, giving up all his life to help 
 others, I felt as if I was attending upon a saint. And I 
 never prayed, never in my life, no not even for my own 
 grandfather— for, after all, his death was a happy release — as 
 I prayed last night. My spirit seemed lifted up to heaven. 
 It was as if I was kneeling on the threshold of the golden 
 gates." 
 
 "Well, nurse, we will not cease to pray, with thankful 
 hearts ; and now go and give yourself a few hours' good 
 
 sleep." 
 
 "I'm going to bed, for Dr. Walsh says I must ; but I'm- 
 
 much too excited and happy to sleep. Nurse Marian is as 
 
 cool as a cucumber. She don't take to her cases as I do, 
 
 and she hasn't sat under ]\Ir. Cobbledick." 
 
 " Is that the vicar of your church at Launceston ? " 
 
 " Oh dear, no, Mrs. Arden ; none of your vicars for me ! 
 
 I was born and bred a Bible Christian. Mr. Cobbledick is 
 
 minister at our chapel, an apostle, if ever there was one, 
 
 and a first-class tailor by trade." 
 
 306 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Arden had slept late, after his long tramp in the wind 
 and rain ; he had slept the sleep of exhaustion, and woke 
 refreshed, and feeling himself a new man. He thought of 
 his wife with^ unspeakable affection. She loved him still, 
 in spite of his neglect. It was sweet to know that. He 
 had let her see something of his trouble, of that darkened 
 mind which made the sun a burden. His mind was more 
 tranquil than it had been for a long time. That profound 
 and dreamless sleep had soothed his nerves. He went out 
 on to the terrace, and rejoiced in the morning freshness, 
 the glory of flowers and foliage, blooming with the luxuri- 
 ance of summer, in that mild climate, sheltered by the pine- 
 clad hills that rose between the gardens and the sea. 
 
 He wondered if the closing scene had been acted during 
 the night-silence ; and suddenly, while he was thinking of 
 St. Just, the man who had been to him once as a friend and 
 counsellor, there came upon him the memory of that other 
 friend, the humble friend of his Alaskan journey, his com- 
 panion in labour and in rest after toil, the bold, strong spirit 
 he had admired and loved. There came back to him the 
 memory of that long tramp by the ice-bound river, when 
 he and Stormont had been told that the end was near ; and 
 then there came into his mind, with lurid reality, the horror 
 that had followed the miraculous recovery of a fast-ebbino^ 
 life. 
 
 He turned at the end of the walk, and saw Rachel 
 coming towards him, her white gown radiant in the morning 
 sunshine, and a smile upon her lips. 
 
 " I have some good news for you," she said. " I have 
 just seen Dr. Walsh. He is wonder-struck at the change 
 in his patient. He says St. Just may weather the storm. 
 Those were his very words ; and he declares it will be a 
 most remarkable case." 
 
 Arden looked at her with wild eyes, the look of a man 
 who thinks he sees a ghost. 
 
 " Dear Walter, surely you are glad ? " she exclaimed, 
 scared by that strange look. 
 
 " Glad ! No ; I can't believe it. The man was dying — 
 Walsh told me there was not a ray of hope. The doctor 
 from Bude said the same. They had given him over. 
 When did the change begin ? " 
 
 307 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " At two o'clock this morning. There was no one with 
 him but Nurse Ethel. She had been watching him as he 
 slept, and she thought that he was dead, and then the turn 
 came " 
 
 " She thought that he was dead ? She had fallen asleep 
 herself, perhaps ? " 
 
 " No ; she had been praying for him." 
 
 *' Praying when she should have been watching. I must 
 see Walsh immediately." 
 
 *' He is waiting for us to go in to breakfast. But, Walter, 
 are you not glad of this improvement ? You speak so 
 strangely. Surely you must wish that good man's life to 
 be spared." 
 
 " That good man's life — yes. If he could be spared ! " 
 
 He went hurriedly to the house, Rachel following him, 
 surprised and pained by his manner. What could it mean, 
 that look of horror, when she told him of the happy change ? 
 Could it be that he wanted St. Just to die ? He had said 
 that he was not jealous, had assured her of his perfect 
 confidence ; but this strange reception of her news alarmed 
 her. Was it possible that he had secretly resented her 
 friendship for St. Just, and that he had looked forward to 
 his death as the removal of a rival in his wife's affection ? 
 Could it be that her husband, the man in whose nobility 
 of mind she had believed, was capable of doing her this 
 great wrong, capable of desiring a good man's death ? 
 
 They sat down to breakfast with the young doctor, who 
 took his coffee and grilled chicken and ham with a 
 professional calm, while neither Arden nor his wife was 
 able to eat. The meal passed almost in silence, and as 
 they rose from the table, Arden asked Walsh to give him 
 a few minutes' talk in the library. 
 
 *' I am anxious to know your opinion about your patient's 
 chance of recovery," he said. 
 
 " Then you had better wait till Dr. Dever has seen him, 
 and we have talked over the symptoms, and then you can 
 have our joint opinion," replied Walsh, who was standing 
 by an open window looking down the drive. " There's 
 his cart ! " 
 
 The wheels sounded from far off in the crisp morning 
 air. 
 
 308 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 '^ Very well, I'll wait," answered Arden. 
 
 " In the mean time, to relieve your anxiety, I may tell 
 you that in my opinion there's an even chance of St. Just's 
 recovery." 
 
 " And you are surprised ? " 
 
 " As much surprised as a doctor ever ought to be, know- 
 ing as much as he ought to know of the mystery of human 
 life, and the immeasurable power of certain constitutions 
 to fight with disease and death." 
 
 Arden paced the terrace from end to end, while the two 
 doctors were with their patient, blind to the beauty of 
 the sunlit park and the far-off sea, showing through a gap 
 in the hills. He spent nearly half an hour tramping to 
 and fro, pausing in front of the open hall-door now and 
 then, to watch and listen for any movement in the house ; 
 and at last, when the time seemed endless, he heard the 
 two doctors coming dov/nstairs, conversing cheerfully about 
 the weather and the young wheat, with that air of indifference 
 which tortures a sick man's friends. They went into the 
 library together ; and Arden flung himself into one of the 
 Glastonbury chairs in the porch, to wait a summons from 
 Walsh. He waited a little more than ten minutes— minutes 
 of intolerable length — before the young man came out to 
 him. 
 
 Dr. Dever was walking up and down the library, a tall 
 man, well set-up, with a fine open-air look, and a keen 
 professional expression, very much the sportsman, but not 
 the less the doctor. 
 
 " Well, doctor, your colleague waited for your opinion 
 before he would give me a plain answer. What do you 
 think of this case ? " 
 
 " Only that it is the most wonderful case I have seen in 
 the last ten years." 
 
 " A kind of miracle ? " 
 
 *' As near a miracle as one can expect to meet with in 
 our day. I gave your friend over when I first put my 
 stethoscope to his chest on "\\'ednesday evening. I would 
 have laid fifty to one against his recovery — and there he 
 is, fighting for life, with a will-power I have rarely seen." 
 
 " And you, Walsh, do you call this almost a miracle ? " 
 
 309 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 *' It makes me more inclined to believe in the Resurrec- 
 tion." i 
 
 " Oh, Dr. Walsh, we do not bring science to bear on 
 the Gospels," remonstrated Dever. 
 
 "The man was sinking fast at midnight; and at ten 
 minutes past three his pulse was stronger than it had been 
 eighteen hours before. It was the arrest of death rather 
 than the return of life. The case is remarkable ; but as 
 I — as Dr. Dever and I think, it is the case of an intense 
 vitality acting upon a fragile frame, the conquest of will over 
 matter." 
 
 " Undoubtedly," said Dever. 
 
 " It sets one's mind wondering what this will-power is that 
 can overrule the conditions of flesh. It certainly is a force 
 outside the scope of medical diagnosis. From my personal 
 knowledge of St. Just, after living with him nearly a year, I 
 thought he would have slipped out of life without a struggle. 
 Never could I have anticipated this fierce fight for existence 
 in such a man." 
 
 " And can he go on living ? " 
 
 " Yes ; if he can get over this attack, he may live for years, 
 with care. Post-mortem research has shown that the active 
 mischief may be arrested, and the wounded lung may scar 
 over ; and although the injured organ can never regain 
 the functions of the healthy organ, the man may live ; if he 
 will be satisfied with a restricted existence, a life regulated 
 by medical control. For the sake of the poor of London, 
 I hope that St. Just may survive this crisis for many years, 
 or even live to be an old man." 
 
 " Then, after all our talk of miracles, this case comes 
 within ordinary conditions, within the limits of the possible ? " 
 
 Walsh smiled at the question, and wondered at the 
 questioner's agitated manner of asking it. 
 
 " Within the limits of the possible — yes. I suppose we 
 all use the word miraculous in a modern sense. But it is 
 by no means an ordinary case." 
 
 Dr. Dever was looking out of the window, a little bored 
 by this interrogation from a layman. Surely it was enough 
 for Mr. Arden to be told that his friend had a chance of 
 recovery. 
 
 '* I must be getting on the road again," he said ; ** I have 
 
 310 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 to drive ten miles to my next patient. Good day, Walsh. 
 I shall look in at the same time to-morrow. Good dav, 
 Mr. Arden." 
 
 Walsh went with him to his dog-cart, in which he had 
 put a young horse that he was breaking in for next winter's 
 hunting, and which Yi-as employing his superfluous energy 
 on the gravel drive. 
 
 " Nice-looking young 'un, ain't he ? " Dr. Dever asked 
 cheerily. " Rather too good for leather 1 But it makes 
 'em handy, and gives 'em a taste of the hills. He'll feel 
 it a game to carry me over our country, after having the 
 cart behind him;" and with a jovial v/ave of his doe-skin 
 glove, Dr. Dever took leave of his brother practitioner. 
 
 " Country versus town," thought Robert Walsh, sniffing 
 the fresh morning air, and watching the smart dog-cart 
 trundling dov.'n the avenue behind the eager young horse. 
 And then he thought of the foetid alleys, the insanitary 
 tenement houses in which his medical experience had lain ; 
 the sickness, and hunger, and dirt ; the misery he had been 
 powerless to help, and for which the only panacea was the 
 hospital or the workhouse. 
 
 Town versiis country ; and the strength and intelligence 
 of the land is all drifting to the town : He remembered a 
 London workhouse under the smoke-darkened sky, hemmed 
 round with bricks and mortar, and he thought of the Union 
 at Stratton, which they had passed on their way from the 
 station ; a grey stone house in a garden, with windows that 
 all looked to the sea or the wooded hills ; a building that 
 he had taken for the home of some prosperous squire, till 
 St. Just enlightened him. 
 
 311 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 xxiir. 
 
 From Walter Ardcn to Douglas Campbell. 
 
 Klosterberg, Switzerland, 
 
 June 15th, 1S9-. 
 
 My dear Douglas, 
 
 Strange things have happened since I received 
 your comforting answer to my last letter, and again I find 
 myself dominated by the same hideous idea that made my 
 life by the Klondyke river a time to look back upon with 
 horror : again I find myself in the power of a spirit from 
 hell, recreated in the human semblance of an earthly saint. 
 I think I must have told you in previous letters of our 
 intimate acquaintance with St. Just, the well-known philan- 
 thropist, a man of strong religious bias and saintly character, 
 who, during the time of my miserable isolation, became 
 my wife's helper and counsellor in her mission of charity. 
 Unfortunately for the poor of London, he broke down 
 under the strain of incessant work, and after nearly a year's 
 absence in Southern Italy, came back to his Cornish birth- 
 place in a dying state, given over by every doctor who had 
 seen him. 
 
 He came home to die ; and he summoned Rachel and 
 me to his death-bed. No pang of jealousy had ever 
 disturbed my mind. I knew my wife's purity of soul, and 
 I knew St. Just's fine nature, lifted above the things of earth 
 by a profound belief in the Unseen, an absolute submission 
 to the law of an unknown God. I admired and revered 
 that perfect faith which Fate or character had denied to me. 
 I had never been jealous of his influence, or doubted his 
 honour ; but in that letter from a dying man I read the 
 secret of a despairing love ; and I felt that I had wronged 
 both St. Just and my wife by the desertion which had given 
 
 312 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 him the privilege of too close a friendship. I submitted 
 that dying appeal to Rachel ; and, at her desire, we started 
 for Cornwall without an hour's delay. We found our friend 
 apparently at the last extremity, but with his mind as 
 luminous as in his best day, and his spirits exalted by the 
 piety of the Christian enthusiast, for whom, in old Sir Thomas 
 Browne's happy phrase, " Death is the Lucina of Life." 
 
 He had his resident doctor — a young man who had been 
 with him on his yacht for nearly a year — and two hospital 
 nurses, in close attendance upon him ; and these three 
 people assured me, each unprompted by the other, that 
 the case was hopeless, and the end only a question of hours. 
 An experienced general practitioner from the neighbourhood, 
 who had attended St. Just from his childhood, was of the same 
 opinion. Not one of these persons entertained the faintest 
 hope, or expressed the slightest uncertainty. The case had 
 passed beyond the chance of any change for the better. 
 
 I saw St. Just on the morning after our arrival, when he 
 had received the last sacrament, and had, as it were, closed 
 the book of religious observances. He talked to me of my 
 mental trouble, which I had confided to him in an hour of 
 supreme depression, and of the influence of that trouble on 
 my wife. He spoke of Rachel with a pathetic earnestness, 
 urging me to confide in her, and to look to her for the 
 lifting of the shadow from miy life ; to look to her as my 
 guide to that peace of mind which passeth all understand- 
 ing. When I had clasped his feeble hand, and bent in 
 silence over the emaciated form, I left him with the con- 
 viction that we had parted for ever. His words had affected 
 me deeply, and they had inspired me with a faint hope that 
 by Rachel's aid I might escape from the self-torments of the 
 past. I went straight to her, and in that solemn hour, with 
 death hovering near, as I believed, I bared my mind to her 
 as I had never done before, yet keeping the secret of my 
 miser}'. It was enough to tell her of a mind tortured _ to 
 the verge of madness, and to throw myself upon her pity- 
 ing love for help and consolation. I am thankful to say 
 that from that hour she has been my friend and comforter, 
 and that our union has become again as perfect as in those 
 cloudless years when I thought my spectral foe was banished 
 for ever. 
 
 313 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 You will remember the history of Michael Dartnell's ill- 
 ness in our hut by the Klondyke river, and of a return to 
 life so sudden, so swift, so altogether strange as to touch 
 the border-line of the miraculous ; a restoration to life that 
 was followed by a total change in the character of the man, 
 so that the creature who rose up from Michael's sick-bed, 
 wearing his form and substance, had no quality or charac- 
 teristic of the creature who lay there at the point of death. 
 It may be that such a transformation in the nature of a man 
 who has gone so near the final dissolution is not unknown 
 to experience, that, in a malady which brings the subject 
 so close to actual extinction, there may arise some subtle 
 change in the brain of the man, the original intelligence 
 fading into blankness, and a new mind being born in its 
 place — new instincts, animal instincts, the vilest side of 
 human nature, where previously the brain had held only 
 generous impulses and noble desires. I have never heard 
 of such a case ; but it seems to me not impossible — the case 
 of a mind new-born, and born for evil instead of for good. 
 
 But in that last tragic experience of the Klondyke Rapids 
 there had flashed upon me the horrible idea that in this 
 loathsome being I beheld, not my old friend, but a new 
 incarnation of the man I killed, and whose blood-bespattered 
 lips had menaced me with an undying hate — a hate that 
 should survive the clay I saw before me— inexorable, unex- 
 tinguishable. I had known the fulfilment of that hideous 
 threat in the haunting invisible presence that had made this 
 gracious, beautiful earth a hell ; and it was but natural that 
 I should recognize a new form of that horror in the murderer 
 who stood over me on the waters of the Klondyke. Halluci- 
 nation, perhaps ; but to me reality. Only to you, Douglas, 
 dare I write freely of these things, by reason of your dab- 
 blings in occult science, and your willingness to consider, if 
 not to accept, every form of the supernatural, whether it 
 bring us " airs from heaven or blasts from hell." 
 
 You will bear with me then when I tell you of my instant 
 feeling of horror when on the morning after my farewell con- 
 versation with St. Just I was told that he had taken a most 
 unexpected turn for the better, rallying in a manner which 
 his doctor called little short of the miraculous. The night- 
 nurse, a somewhat hysterical young woman, had actually 
 
 314 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 thought him dead. She told me afterwards, with dilated 
 eyes, how she had held her cheek above his livid lips, and 
 had not felt the faintest breath; how she had touched his 
 lifeless hand; before she went to avraken the doctor, who 
 was resting in a room close by, and to tell him that the 
 momently expected end had come. 
 
 History repeats itself, no doubt, in medical experience 
 as in public events; but this close resemblance to the 
 case in the log-hut filled me with a horror which I 
 could not overcome, and which it was difficult to hide from 
 Rachel. 
 
 In vain I struggled against the hideous suggestion : in vain 
 I told myself that I was harbouring a delusion that might 
 end in madness. I could not believe that the man lying 
 in the room upstairs, unconscious, but with a vitality that 
 was a marvel to those who watched him, eating, drinking, 
 sleeping, with an animal enjoyment of sensual comfort, was 
 the man with whom I had parted, after those earnest and 
 pathetic words which had gone home to my heart. 
 
 The nurse Ethel, whose excitable temperament was kept 
 in a fever by the surprises and perplexities of the case, came 
 to Rachel from time to time with her account of the sick 
 man. She is one of those irrepressible people whose com- 
 municativeness is not easily checked; and in those hours 
 when life trembled in the balance and death hovered near, 
 Rachel had, no doubt, encouraged her to talk. As the 
 days went on, all that she told us of St. Just in the awaken- 
 ing of consciousness filled me with horror. She wept as she 
 described his altered bearing — an impatience that amounted 
 to brutality, rough gestures, violent language. She wept as 
 she told us how sweet and Christian a gentleman he had 
 seemed to her during the earlier part of her attendance. 
 She admitted that illness often made a startling change in 
 the disposition of a patient. The best of husbands w^ould 
 be fretful and unkind to a devoted wife; mothers, sisters, 
 nurses even, would be snubbed and treated with rudeness. 
 But the alteration in St. Just was more startling, more per- 
 plexing, than any deterioration of character that had come 
 within her experience. The fierce light in his eyes when 
 he was angered by having his medicine pressed upon him, 
 the roughness with which he pushed away the hand that 
 
 315 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 held the glass, were so unlike his former gentleness. Every 
 detail of his conduct surprised and scared her. 
 
 " He is not the same man, Mrs. Arden," she exclaimed, 
 in conclusion. 
 
 He had been conscious for twenty-four hours, and he had 
 not asked to see my wife or me ; and on hearing from the 
 resident doctor that he might now be considered out of 
 danger, and in a fair way to such partial recovery as a man in 
 his condition could hope for — a patching up of the damaged 
 lungs which might carry on the life for some time — I per- 
 suaded Rachel to go back to London with me. We had 
 done what we had been asked to do. We had gratified the 
 wish of a man who thought himself dying ; and now the 
 man had been restored to life, and there could be no reason 
 for our presence in his house. If, as I had reason to believe, 
 his attachment to Rachel had been something deeper than 
 friendship, a despairing love kept nobly in check, there was 
 every reason why their paths in life should henceforward lie 
 wide apart. For myself, tortured by the hideous suspicion 
 of a supernatural substitution of a spirit of evil for a spirit 
 of good, every hour that I spent at Trevelyan was a time of 
 horror. I breathed more freely as St. Just's horses carried 
 us to the station ; and the thought of our cosy London 
 house was no longer painful to me. The invisible presence 
 no longer hung over me like a cloud. The spirit from hell 
 had now its habitation in mortal flesh, and was no longer 
 a disembodied malignity haunting and overshadowing my 
 life. I had to do now with a man, and not with a ghost. 
 
 To write these words is to admit that the horrible idea, 
 which even you may look upon as the delusion of a dis- 
 organized intellect, had by the time I left Trevelyan become 
 an absolute belief. It was so. I left the Cornish manor- 
 house with the conviction that the man who was master 
 there was no longer the beneficent and holy-minded St. 
 Just, but the re-incarnation of the heartless profligate, whose 
 vicious career my sword had cut short. 
 
 To be once more with Rachel, free from the loathsome 
 presence, was bliss unspeakable. I sunned myself in the 
 atmosphere of her love. We went about among the old 
 scenes and the old faces together, as in the days when we 
 were lovers, whose love had not yet found a voice. It was 
 
 316 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 my delight to go back into the old paths, to talk with the 
 old acquaintances, who welcomed my return with enthu- 
 siasm. I was reproached for my desertion : I was praised 
 for coming back to them. My heart went out to these 
 humble friends with warm affection. They were so human ; 
 and there was unspeakable comfort in this humanity, for me 
 who had been existing in that frozen region of mysterious 
 influences that lies beyond the limit of human feeling and 
 human knowledge. 
 
 Nothing in that darker London where Father Romney's 
 mission lay seemed to me common or unclean. My fellow- 
 man, however low he had sunk in the vices of the abject 
 poor, seemed to me as an angel of light compared with that 
 unseen enemy from an unknown world. At his worst he 
 was a creature of feelings like my own ; and I could appeal 
 to him as man to man. Never had I worked more earnestly, 
 or with better resuhs, than I worked last ^slay, from the 
 beginning till the end of the month. 
 
 It was late in :May that I met Dr. Walsh, the young 
 medical man who had been with Lord St. Just on his 
 yacht, and had helped to bring him from Palermo to his 
 house in Cornwall, when he was supposed to be at the 
 point of death. We ran against each other in the Com- 
 mercial Road ; and I found that AValsh was now living in 
 that neighbourhood, where he had been practising when 
 Lord St. Just found him in broken health, and carried him 
 off for a sea-voyage. 
 
 I asked him when he left Cornwall. I could not bring 
 myself to make any inquiry about his patient. 
 
 He told me that he had been in London a fortnight ; and 
 then he continued in words that I shall try to render 
 faithfully — words to which I listened with acute interest. 
 
 " You see, Mr. Arden, there are some things worse than 
 dirt and squalor, worse even than suffering, before which a 
 man stands helpless, a witness of miseries he has no power 
 to lessen. I thought my experience in this neighbourhood 
 was about the worst that life had to offer me ; but I have 
 had a worse experience in Cornwall since you left Trevelyan. 
 I have seen a man whom I loved and honoured, a man 
 whose beautiful nature had been my wonder and delight, 
 as much my wonder and delight after nearly a year's closest 
 
 317 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 intimacy, the life of every day spent in each other's com- 
 pany, as it was in the first days of our acquaintance. I 
 have seen that man's character changed in every attribute, 
 that spiritual nature degraded to a debased animalism, that 
 lovely temper changed to fierce impatience of the' faintest 
 contradiction, and become savage and overbearing beyond 
 endurance ; yet the man capable on occasion of simulating 
 every charm of manner and bearing with which a profligate 
 can beguile a woman's simplicity or impose upon his fellow- 
 man." 
 
 I asked him if in his medical experience he had ever known 
 such a change following upon such an illness as St. Just's. 
 
 " Not such a change," he replied. " But I have known 
 a man become a lunatic after a severe attack of influenza ; 
 and I suspect that this change in St. Just is an indication 
 of obscure brain-disease, which might ultimately take the 
 form of acute mania. It would be a very interesting 
 case to watch, for a man who had not loved the original 
 St. Just ; but it was too painful for me. I couldn't stick it 
 any longer. I left Trevelyan as if I had had the devil 
 behind me." 
 
 I asked him if St. Just meant to remain long in Cornwall. 
 Walsh thought not. He had expressed contempt and 
 hatred for the place. He who had been the most abstemious 
 of men had taken to drinking heavily, to the amazement 
 and distress of the old butler, who had even ventured on 
 a mild remonstrance, which brought upon him a burst of 
 fury from his master. 
 
 " I never saw a man so cowed or so bewildered," Walsh 
 told me. " He complained to me afterwards, with tears in 
 his poor old eyes, that it was the first time his lordship 
 had ever spoken to him in anger. ' And I don't think I 
 deserved it,' said the old man, ^ for I spoke for his lordship's 
 good, seeing he was only just beginning to get his strength 
 back again.' It was not the last time he was to experience 
 the rough side of his master's tongue," Walsh added, " for 
 the slightest shortcoming in the service brought a storm 
 of abuse on the old servants ; and yet I never saw better 
 servants or more careful service. Dr. Dever told me that 
 the household had been trained by Lady St. Just, who was 
 a woman of remarkable capacity in small as well as in great 
 
 318 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 things. To hear these old servants abused got upon my 
 nerves, and I let St. Just see what I thought of him ; and 
 so, gradually, our friendship cooled, and I took myself 
 off." 
 
 I asked him if he thought St. Just would live long. His 
 answer was in the negative. Wonderful as the recovery 
 had been, he did not think his patient could last long. 
 The frame was fragile, and the constitution enfeebled by 
 a life of anxious endeavour in the Sisyphus labours of a 
 reformer, rolling stones uphill and having them roll back 
 upon him, accomplishing the preliminary steps in some 
 good cause, only to find himself baffled by the lukewarm 
 spirit of those for whom he worked. Walsh did not 
 believe the wasted frame and injured lungs could hold out 
 many years. 
 
 " It is a case in which an intense vitality has conquered 
 death," he said. "St. Just has been kept ahve by the 
 force of an indomitable will ; and his hold upon life, I take 
 it, henceforth will be the hold of the mind rather than the 
 flesh. His vehemence, his impatience, his eagerness for 
 sensual pleasures, such as wine and food, warmth and sleep, 
 indicate an intense vitality, and a predominant self-love." 
 
 AValsh had heard nothing of his patient since he left 
 Trevelyan ; but he opined that St. Just would not remain in 
 Cornwall an hour after he felt himself strong enough to 
 travel. He had talked of his London house, questioning 
 Walsh about it in a curious way, as if he had forgotten 
 what it was like. He had spoken of other things relating 
 to his past life in the same vague way ; and Walsh thought 
 that his memory had suffered in the illness which had 
 wrought such an extraordinary deterioration of character. 
 
 " The contradictions and perplexities of the case are more 
 startling than anything that has come within my experience," 
 Walsh said, in conclusion, "and whenever I can get a 
 leisure evening, I shall write a detailed description of the 
 illness and recovery for the Lancet^ of course withholding 
 the patient's name, in the hope that it may produce accounts 
 of other cases of a similar nature." 
 
 Some days after my chance meeting with the doctor, I 
 saw a paragraph in a morning paper to the effect that Lord 
 St. Just, who had made a complete recovery from his serious 
 
 3^9 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 illness of the winter and spring, had arrived at his house 
 in Portland Place for the season. 
 
 Rachel read the announcement as we sat at breakfast, 
 
 " For the season ! " she exclaimed, laughing. " How unlike 
 St. Just that sounds ! I don't think he knew when the 
 season began or ended." 
 
 I told her that if they were to meet, she would find the 
 St. Just of to-day very unlike the friend she had known in 
 the past, but that I hoped she would never see his face 
 again. And then I repeated Walsh's account of his patient, 
 to which she listened with sorrowful surprise. 
 
 She was silent and grave for some time afterwards, and 
 then she reminded me of the morning when I heard of 
 St. Just's wonderful recovery, and of the strangeness of my 
 manner on that occasion. 
 
 " You had a look of absolute horror," she said, " as if 
 something dreadful had happened. Could you have had 
 any foreboding of this change in his nature ? Had you 
 ever known such a case in your past life ? " 
 
 I admitted that I had known a restoration to life as 
 seemingly miraculous, followed by a hideous transformation 
 in the nature of the man who recovered ; and that I had been 
 filled with an uncontrollable horror when I heard of circum- 
 stances which seemed absolutely to repeat that past history. 
 And now that AV'alsh's experience had realized my fear, I 
 implored my wife never again to think of St. Just as a 
 friend, or even to allow him to cross her threshold as a 
 guest. 
 
 She answered with the sweet submission with which she 
 had always yielded to any wish of mine. 
 
 " Of course I shall do as you tell me, AValter; and now 
 I have your help and advice in all our work, I don't want 
 any other helper. But all the same, I believe this dreadful 
 change in St. Just to be only a passing phase, a deteriora- 
 tion that has to do with weak health, and not with character. 
 He will go back to his philanthropic work, and the old tender- 
 ness of heart will return. I cannot believe that so good a 
 man could become debased and unworthy." 
 
 I had spoken only just in time. The weather that day 
 was too bad for our East End peregrinations, and I spent 
 the afternoon at my club, where I had been so long a 
 
 320 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 stranger, and where I now found myself, as it were, among 
 a generation " who knew not Joseph," so completely had I 
 dropped out of the old easy-going intimacies of billiard and 
 card rooms, ^^^len I went home at tea-time, I found St. Just's 
 cards in the hall. He had called twice, the butler told me, 
 and had been very pressing in his inquiries as to when 
 Mrs. Arden was to be found at home. 
 
 This decided me upon a step which I had been con- 
 sidering all day; and over the tea-table, set in front of 
 a window in my wife's pretty drawing-room, I reminded 
 her of our conversation some months ago, when she had 
 offered to go with me to some romantic spot, remote from 
 the world, where we might live happily together in a tranquil 
 solitude. She had not forgotten. She was ready to go 
 with me anywhere, near or far ; although she would be sorry 
 to leave the neighbourhood of her father and mother, who 
 liked so much to have her near them, and often in their 
 house. 
 
 I should add that since our reunion, and my happier 
 frame of mind, we had been frequent visitors in Carlton 
 House Terrace ; and I had been received with the utmost 
 kindness by Mr. and Mrs. Lorimer, wha. refrained from all 
 allusions to my past isolation, my churlish refusal of their 
 hospitality. 
 
 And now I felt that London would be intolerable. I 
 could not live in peace in the city that held St. Just. It 
 would be hopeless to try to keep him at a distance. The 
 indomitable will which I had known on the shores of the 
 Yukon river, the brute force that had flourished in the Miner's 
 City, would again be set in opposition to me and my 
 happiness, this time under a smoother outward garb, with 
 perhaps even some semblance of refinement. And this 
 time the point of attack would not be myself, but the 
 wife I adored, the lovely and innocent woman whose pure 
 mind could not conceive the wickedness of a spirit from 
 hell. 
 
 From hell ! Laugh at me, the unbeliever, to whom all 
 the hierarchy of heaven has seemed as mythic as the Homeric 
 gods ! I have learnt to believe in a hell ; a bottomless pit 
 peopled with evil spirits ; a hell from which the children of 
 darkness are sent out to war against the children of light. 
 
 321 y 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 I have advanced so far from the barren waste of materialism. 
 I have learnt to believe in devils. 
 
 My sweet wife assented without a murmur to an indefinite 
 period of separation from her kith and kin, and from the 
 work which she loves only a little less than she loves father 
 and mother. It was decided that we would go first to 
 Klosterberg, a village above the Lake of Thun, which I 
 had discovered in my Swiss rambles, a quiet little place, 
 four thousand feet above the sea, a place of wooded hills, 
 and winding paths, and a luxury of wild flowers ; and it is 
 from this delicious retreat, which is happily known to very 
 few people at this present time, that I am writing to you. 
 i We have found a chalet on the slope of a wooded hill 
 above the village ; a humble wooden house, with wide 
 covered balconies on each side, and a facade decorated 
 with pious adages, a garden running over with common 
 English flowers, which here have larger and more luxuriant 
 blossoms, and a more brilHant colouring, than in England. 
 •We have our man and maid, old and tried servants both, 
 and three stalwart Swiss maidens in short skirts and velvet 
 bodices, adorned with massive silver chains. We wander 
 in the woods, or sit in picturesque spots with the books we 
 love best, and in the tranquil afternoons sit in our garden, 
 and dream our day-dreams to the music of the cow-bells 
 in the pastures that slope from our hedge, at an acute 
 angle, down to the shore of the lake. We have adopted a 
 St. Bernard puppy, which Rachel adores ; and she has found 
 something to do in visiting the peasants, and in ministering 
 to their children, most especially to the poor half-witted 
 creatures v/ho are too common in this part of the world ; 
 and I think I may say that we are perfectly happy. But 
 how long this elysian bliss may last I know not. For me 
 there must ever be a shadow and a fear, while that spirit of 
 evil walks the earth, in palpable or impalpable form. 
 
 322 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 "St. Just has chucked the East End," was the careless 
 comment of the clubs, after the \Yell-known philanthropist 
 had been seen about London in those resorts of pleasure 
 where he had been a stranger hitherto. 
 
 The men of his own age, men about town, the idle and 
 the dissipated, who had looked upon the philanthropist as a 
 creature of another world, a prig, perhaps a hypocrite, and 
 most certainly a person whose acquaintance they did not 
 desire, were surprised and amused by the change which had 
 reduced him to their own level, a haunter of the music-hall 
 and the night-club, a worshipper of venal beauty, a patron 
 of prize-fights, a determined backer of his fancy on the race- 
 course, winning or losing with an equal imperturbability. 
 
 " At this rate he will soon run through his money," said 
 a man who had watched his aspect under heavy losses. 
 
 " Oh, he wins much oftener than he loses," said another. 
 *' St. Just has a long head, and knows how to make a safe 
 book." 
 
 " There's no more desperate rake than a reformed saint,' 
 said a third speaker. " When I meet St. Just on the prowl 
 in the wickedest streets of London, after two o'clock in 
 the morning, and remember him on the platform at a 
 temperance lecture, or as a leading light in rescue work, 
 I find myself echoing Macbeth's question — 
 
 " 'Can such things be, and overcome us like a summer cloud, 
 Without our special wonder ? ' " 
 
 " ]\ry dear fellow, there are very few things that can't be, 
 in this enlightened century ; and the stranger the thing is 
 the more likely to be true." 
 
 To the London world in general St. Just's new mode of 
 life was a matter of slightest importance ; but to the Uttle 
 
 323 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 world of philanthropic London his defection was a heavy 
 blow. His old friends left the big house in Portland Place, 
 surprised and wounded, after being told that he meant to 
 cut his connection with the numerous charitable organiza- 
 tions of which he had been the generous and honoured 
 leader. Seldom in the history of philanthropic endeavour 
 had there been so sad a falling away. His manner and his 
 words had an insolence that forbade argument ; and men 
 who had admired and loved him left his house in sorrow 
 and in anger, shaking the dust off their feet, and meaning 
 never again to cross his threshold, while a Jewish missionary, 
 white-haired and patriarchal, spat upon the renegade's door- 
 step, in solemn abjuration. He had talked of his past work 
 with a brutal levity, telling them that he was sick of the poor 
 and all their ways ; a rabble of ungrateful curs, who would 
 drain a man's last drop of blood like vampires, and leave 
 his carcase to rot on a dunghill. 
 
 " You have been very near the gates of death, St. Just," 
 said an elderly Rector, from the east of London, an in- 
 defatigable labourer in a troublesome vineyard, where the 
 vines for the most part brought forth wild grapes, very sour 
 and bitter to the taste. " You have been through the 
 valley of the shadow ; and upon most Christians such an 
 experience has a softening influence. A year ago, when 
 you bade us good-bye in this house, we left you in sorrow, 
 few of us hoping ever to see your face again. And now 
 I tell you frankly that I would rather that had been our last 
 parting in this world, than that I should hear you talk as you 
 have talked to-day." 
 
 If Lord St. Just's altered character made but a slight im- 
 pression upon the men among whom his new existence was 
 spent, it created a considerable sensation among the women 
 whose society he cultivated. He was unpopular in mascu- 
 line circles ; for his splendours and arrogant bearing were 
 accounted " bad form ; " and he took no trouble to make 
 friends among his own sex. He was a fine card-player, but 
 he played with a ferocious intensity which made him dis- 
 liked either as a partner or an opponent; and men who 
 owned race-horses soon began to think of him as a bringer 
 of bad luck, since on several occasions the favourite had 
 
 324 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 gone down before some rank outsider upon which St. Just 
 was afterwards discovered to have piled his money. Men 
 rather avoided him ; but upon the women of that class which 
 lives only for amusement, St. Just exercised a potent in- 
 fluence. The mothers of fair daughters looked doubtfully 
 upon him ; since at his rate of living the St. Just property 
 could not hold out many years, and he could not therefore 
 be considered a good ^arfi ; but the daughters listened with 
 a too indulgent ear to his insidious flatterings ; and the semi- 
 detached wives, who could regulate their existence according 
 to their own fancy, cultivated his society with a reckless 
 indifference to character or morals, trifling with his atten- 
 tions ; as the moth glances across the flame, confident in the 
 strength of his wings, to escape the destroying fire. 
 
 Lady Mary Selby was conspicuous among that particular 
 set in which St. Just shone as a star. She was one of the 
 women who had taken him up; and she made him the 
 ornament of those small dinners for which she was cele- 
 brated, dinners at which the women all belonged to her own 
 esoteric circle, and at which the men came from all the 
 four winds — literary, musical, painters, sculptors, architects, 
 actors, journalists, inventors, speculators ; the notorieties 
 of the passing hour, forgotten next year. These were 
 charmed to meet St. Just, whom they regarded as an 
 interesting study, a modern D'Orsay, whose foppery was 
 spiced with the insolence of an age of free thought in art 
 and morals ; and as none of these transient acquaintance 
 presumed to be in love with Lady ^lary, St. Just had the 
 field to himself. 
 
 Mrs. Kelvin contrived to be at most of these merry little 
 parties, going so far even as to ask her friend to ask her, if 
 there were too long an interval between the invitations. 
 
 " Your dinners are adorable ; and you have such a power 
 of attracting the right people," she said. " Don't forget 
 me, Mary, when you have any one extra nice." 
 
 Two years ago Mrs. Kelvin had given up St. Just in 
 despair. She was now more hopeful. The shoulders and 
 arms and swan-like throat evidently made an impression ; 
 the flashing glances of fine eyes were no longer ineffectual 
 fires. She felt that there might have been a chance of a 
 baron's coronet on her writing-paper, if Mary Selby had not 
 
 325 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 been In the way; handsome, daring, and not wanting the 
 man for a husband, which might make all the difference in 
 her value to the man himself. 
 
 Lady Mary had avoided even the faintest approach to 
 flirtation, since the scene in the Parisian restaurant. People 
 who had talked about her in the past had left off talking, 
 or agreed to praise her for her goodness in putting up 
 with such a husband as Selby ; not giving her credit for 
 really liking the man as a friend and comrade, if not with 
 a romantic attachment. Selby worshipped his handsome 
 wife, and made her the confidante of all his financial 
 schemes, associating her with every success; and she had 
 gradually become keenly interested in the operations by 
 which money was doubled or quadrupled on the stock 
 exchanges of Europe. Her subtle brain delighted even in 
 the risks, the touch-and-go of a financier's career, being 
 assured that Selby would never hazard the house that 
 sheltered her, or the income that maintained her comfort. 
 He had resources with which he could afford to gamble, 
 a capital so far beyond the needs even of a fine lady, that 
 it seemed justifiable to run big hazards in order to achieve 
 big results. He laid all his plans before his wife. He had 
 the highest opinion of her judgment, and a superstitious 
 belief in her luck. Theirs was an ideal union, as compared 
 with the marriages of most of their neighbours. 
 
 Mary had always prided herself upon keeping " straight,'' 
 and never till she met Konstantin Ivlanville had her honour 
 been in peril. That peril had left her mind and conscience 
 seared and branded ; as of one who had passed through the 
 fiery furnace of sin, and about vv'hom the smell of fire still 
 hung. She remembered the man with horror, yet remem- 
 bered a fascination that had made him irresistible ; and she 
 remembered with a deeper horror that period after his death, 
 in which she had been perpetually haunted by his image, a 
 shadow that made solitude unbearable. 
 
 She pretended at first to ridicule the change in St. Just ; 
 but by degrees the man began to exercise a subtle influence 
 which made his society almost a necessity to her. He gave 
 new colour to her life, and made old things seem hateful. 
 She could not even pretend to be interested in her hus- 
 band's financial operations. She turned a cold eye upon 
 
 326 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 his pass-book, which she had been wont to accept as the 
 most attractive form of Hterature. Gain or loss, thousands 
 or hundreds of thousands, on the right hand or the left, no 
 longer concerned her. She told Selby that figures made her 
 head ache ; and he shut the book submissively, with spirits 
 dashed by her coldness, having thought to astonish her by. 
 the evidence of a coup on the mineral market. 
 
 Alas, for Mary Selby ! She had entered upon a new 
 phase of her existence, in which she cared no more for loss 
 or gain, or for any of the common things of this work-a-day 
 world. What was the influence that subjugated her ? Was 
 it love or fear ? It seemed to her sometimes that there was 
 more of repulsion than of attraction in the sensations which 
 St. Just's presence evoked. She feared his coming; yet 
 life was dull and motiveless in his absence. There were 
 moments v/hen the sound of his voice, a flashing glance 
 from the grey eyes, a word, a gesture, recalled days that 
 were gone, an infatuation that she remembered with shame, 
 for which she had wept remorseful tears, and whispered 
 penitential prayers, on her knees in one of those dim 
 churches she loved, where the muffled bass of the organ 
 and the faint odours of incense seemed to belong to a better 
 world. She had repented of that unholy dream. She knew 
 that she had sinned in thought, and that she had been on 
 the brink of hell. She recalled Manville's poisonous words 
 in the box at the Paris opera-house, when they two sat 
 alone in the shadow of the velvet curtain, when he held her 
 hand for the last time, and breathed his passionate prayer 
 in her ear, while the harsh brasses in the orchestra, the clang 
 of cymbals, and beat of drums, rang loud in the pandemonium 
 below. That low whisper ^\'as heard above all the uproar 
 of voices, and dancing feet, and comet and trombone. She 
 knew that she had been on the edge of the pit that night, 
 the Tophet to which fallen women go down, lost to their 
 place and name. Only her brother's interposition had saved 
 her. From the supper-room to the Vienna express, en rente 
 for Petersburg, would have been the next stage in her life- 
 journey. She knew that her resolution had begun to waver, 
 that a will-power stronger than her own was gaining the 
 master)'. 
 
 She remembered her vision of him as they found him 
 
 327 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 two days afterwards, lying alone under the open sky, in 
 a shabby outskirt of the great city, in his blood-stained shirt. 
 His image had haunted her with a maddening persistence 
 for a year after that dreadful doom. She had not dared to 
 be alone, had scarcely dared to look round, even in the 
 midst of a brilliant assembly ; lest she should see the man 
 himself, the dead man alive, with the mysterious life of 
 ghosts, pointing to the mortal wound, killed because of her 
 folly. 
 
 And now, after years of peace, something of that old 
 feeling had come back. Mind and senses again were sub- 
 jugated. She was no longer Mary Selby, the woman of the 
 world, the kindly, generous, honest wife of an honest man. 
 She knew that she was at heart a wanton. She was glad of 
 her husband's absence. She listened for a footstep. She 
 counted the hours of St. Just's absence. She was under a 
 spell. Was it love or fear ? She knew that a thrill of fear 
 stirred her heart at his approach; that the sound of his 
 voice subjugated her, as lions are subdued by the lion-tamer. 
 She had made up her mind to keep to that straight line 
 which she had drawn for her future life, when she resigned 
 herself to the humdrum of a loveless marriage. She had 
 asked herself which was best, wealth or love ? a life of 
 ease with all the things she wanted, or a brief dream of 
 bliss — a honeymoon and an awakening? She had seen such 
 marriages among her bosom friends — a year of infatuation, 
 and then grumblings and lamentings about the general 
 behaviour of " that man." And she had taken Selby for her 
 mate deliberately, meaning to use him well, to play the 
 game of married hfe fairly, with no hidden card, no stealthy 
 revoke. 
 
 She was happy — happy in that existence of fashionable 
 humdrum, content to move in the same circle, monoto- 
 nous as a steam merry-go-round in a country fair — when 
 Manville came across her path. He impressed her at once. 
 Here was some one at last who did not belong to the world 
 of humdrum. He was unconventional to the verge of 
 brutality. His eyes had flashes of lurid light, his deep-toned 
 voice had accents that were strange to her. His strangeness 
 captivated her fancy. She admired him at first as she might 
 have admired a wild beast in the Zoological Gardens, a 
 
 328 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 something handsome and terrible that was not of her world. 
 Then when he became too attentive, following in her foot- 
 steps wherever she went, laying traps in order to have her 
 alone with him, in the brief snatches of iete-a-tete that are 
 possible in the modish merry-go-round, she found herself 
 growing afraid of him. He had the air of a man who knew 
 not failure — the successful man, the born master of men, still 
 stronger in his mastery of women. She recoiled from him. 
 Her womanly instincts told her that he was dangerous. She 
 was cold, even uncivil, to him, and kept him at bay ; but she 
 could not make up her mind to break with him altogether. 
 His influence over her was like witchcraft. She shuddered 
 at the thought of his power; and in her inmost soul she 
 knew that he belonged to the sons of darkness ; yet only 
 death was strong enough to break the spell. 
 
 And now, as her acquaintance with St. Just grew closer, 
 the memory of that one romantic episode in her life, 
 the passion, the danger, the guilt of it all, came back upon 
 her with vivid power. Again she saw the vision of the 
 blood-bespattered form, lying abandoned in the desolate 
 waste. She knew not how or why those old feelings — 
 the sense of subjugation, the thrill of love and fear — 
 should have again blotted out the common things of life, 
 and made the beaten round odious. Money - getting, 
 money-spending, jewels, fine clothes, a better house, a 
 better chef, better horses, better dogs, than her legion of 
 dearest friends had ! These things had satisfied her in the 
 last five years ; and now, as it were in a moment, as with 
 the stroke of Harlequin's bat, how trivial, how futile, how 
 detestable, the vulgar commonplace existence had become ! 
 She felt a wild longing to escape from it all. Alone, if it 
 were possible ; to escape from the lover, and the Golgotha he 
 had made of her life. She was not a vicious woman. She 
 could not even imagine herself yielding to the tempter. But 
 she was wretched ; and her days and nights were shadowed 
 by a nameless terror. It was as if she felt herself on the 
 slope that leads to hell, and felt a hand dragging her down, 
 a hand that was strong as iron, yet tender as passionate love, 
 the irresistible hand of the tempter. 
 
 Archer Stormont and his pretty American wife had crossed 
 from New York in the newest and largest liner, and were 
 
 329 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 treating themselves to a London season. They had taken 
 a first-floor flat in Mount Street, the best and most expensive 
 that the Mayfair house-agents could find for them. Mrs. 
 Stormont was not boastful about her wealth ; but she saw 
 no harm in mentioning that money was no object. " We 
 want just the very best diggings you can find for us," she 
 told the agent. 
 
 She met Lady Mary at the Lorimers two days after land- 
 ing, and wanted to swear eternal friendship on the spot. 
 
 "My husband positively doats upon your brother," she 
 said; "so I think you and I ought to be pals. I admire 
 you more than any one I've seen this side. Your frock is 
 just perfect, and your figure is equal to it. But, of course, you 
 know that. Don't suppose I'm pushing. I'm only open- 
 hearted; and I must say what I think straight out. I've 
 come to this side to enjoy myself, and make nice friends. 
 Archer did uncommonly well in the North-West — your 
 brother the same, by-the-by, and poppa's operations in 
 grain have just trebled Archer's capital ; so you see expense 
 don't stop us in anything. I mean to give London an 
 eye-opener before I go back." 
 
 Mary asked what kind of eye-opener. 
 
 *' Well, I guess it will take the shape of a dance ; but I'm 
 bothered how to lift it out of the commonplace. Your 
 London balls are done so well nowadays, that it is difficult 
 to imagine how one could beat the record. I want to strike 
 out a hne — something quite new and a bit eccentric. But 
 how is it to be done ? The cafe chantaiit is played out ; or 
 I'd have got some singers over from Paris — some of the 
 risky ones. I believe I shall be driven to make it a water- 
 party." 
 
 " A water-party and a dance ! That seems a difficult 
 combination." 
 
 " Not for any one that has the inventive faculty and 
 the dollars. I've got both, thank Providence." 
 
 Lady Mary was amused. Vanessa's delicate prettiness 
 and frank vulgarity made a piquant mixture. She invited 
 Mrs. Stormont to her next little dinner— a dinner of six — 
 Mrs. Kelvin, Mr. and Mrs. Stormont, Lord St. Just, and 
 Sir Frederick Marwood, a guardsman, who wrote verses of 
 the most advanced character, and published them in a 
 
 330 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 luxurious binding at his own expense. Mr. Selby was at 
 Lie'ge, acting like an octopus upon an embryo railway, which 
 he meant first to strangle as a Belgian enterprise, and then 
 to launch with an English company. 
 
 It was one of Lady i^Iar>-'s most successful dinners. 
 Never had Mrs. Kelvin's shoulders been more dazzling, 
 her Parisian diamonds more brilliant, or her speech more 
 daring. Even the outspoken Vanessa was astonished at 
 the startling propositions flashed across the table by the 
 time the ices were being handed. 
 
 " I didn't mind the company," she told Archer, afterwards, 
 '' but I believe I was as red as a peony when I had to look 
 at the servants." 
 
 They adjourned en viasse from the dinner- table to the 
 smoking-room, built at the back of the house, over unorna- 
 mental space that had once been called a garden ;_ a room 
 with a movable roof, which was raised on a night like this, 
 letting in the cool air, with glimpses of stars in a purple 
 sky. The room was furnished with an Oriental luxury of 
 divans and pillows, covered with gold inwrought brocade, 
 rich and ancient fabrics, plundered from the vestiaries of 
 old Italian churches, the copes of Renaissance bishops. 
 
 The three women smoked their cigarettes lightly and 
 delicately, with an airy indifference to the charm of tobacco 
 that made smoking coquetry, and not vice. 
 
 Vanessa, who was primitively egotistical as a child of 
 seven, could talk hardly of anything but her coming party. 
 
 " I don't want it to be passed over in the paper with 
 three lines—* Mrs. Stormont's party was a great success,' or 
 something mawkish of that kind. I do want my party 
 to stand alone. I've been thinking of a water-party." 
 
 " Admirable ! " exclaimed Sir Frederick. " A water- 
 party would be new. Eighteenth-century to the fortieth 
 power — suggestive of Sir Plume and BeUnda." 
 
 " Never heard of the lady. Is she one of your profes- 
 sional beauties ? " asked Vanessa. 
 
 " Alas ! " sighed Sir Frederick, " Belinda belongs to the 
 past. She has gone up aloft among the constellations, 
 after her stolen ringlet. I congratulate you on your idea, 
 Mrs. Stormont. A water-party in this tropical weather 
 would be of all things the most delicious. But you must 
 
 331 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 not waste your July, and eighty in the shade, on long invita- 
 tions. A week at most can be hazarded. Send out your 
 cards the instant they are ready. St. Just and I will put it 
 about that your party will eclipse ever^-thing ever seen ; and 
 people will throw over their engagements to go to it. And 
 then you need not start till midnight ; and people can come 
 on to you after other things." 
 
 " Yes, that's about the size of it," replied Vanessa, elated, 
 having found a man who understood her. " Will you help 
 me through with it. Sir Frederick ? I'll do just whatever you 
 tell me. Money no object." 
 
 " If money were an object, dear Mrs. Stormont, it would 
 be futile to attempt anything of the kind. But if Mr. Stor- 
 mont approve, I shall be charmed to run the thing for you." 
 
 " Archer ! He never disapproves. He knows when it 
 comes to entertaining the swells he's got to take a back 
 seat." 
 
 Stormont had been telling Mrs. Kelvin Chicago anecdotes, 
 racy of the soil, and received with silvery laughter ; although 
 the lady's attention had often wandered to the conservatory 
 beyond the curtained archway at the end of the room. It 
 was not a large conservatory, space in Grosvenor Square 
 being a difficult problem for the architect ; but it was hrge 
 enough to contain a few fine palms, a screen of Marechal 
 Niel and Xiphetos roses, with a bank of choice carnations 
 in front of them ; it was also large enough to hold two 
 luxurious armchairs, in which Lady Mary and St. Just 
 were seated, the lady's white brocade train and the point 
 of a jewelled shoe just visible between the Oriental curtains, 
 and the sound of lowered voices faintly audible to one keen 
 listener. 
 
 " It's the old, old story," thought Mrs. Kelvin. " WTiat 
 kind of chance can any marriageable woman have while 
 the married ones are such abominable flirts ? " 
 
 The raciest American stories left her cold. 
 
 " Let us hear what Sir Frederick is saying about Mrs. 
 Stormont's party," she said, whereupon the conversation 
 became a quartette ; but there was not a word more about 
 the party. 
 
 " It is to be a surprise," Sir Frederick said, " and nobody 
 except Mrs. Stormont and me is to know anything about it." 
 
 332 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Isn't it lovely ? " exclaimed Vanessa ; " a kind of gun- 
 powder plot." 
 
 Engravers were expeditious, and Mrs. Stormont's cards 
 were sent out on the following evening. 
 
 " Mrs. Stormont requests the pleasure of Lady Blank's 
 company at a river-party on Tuesday, July 13th. Boats 
 will leave Hammersmith pier at midnight, Carriages to be 
 ordered at 4.30 a.m. at Vauxhall Station, L.S.W.R." 
 
 333 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 The elements were kind to Vanessa. The night of her 
 party was blest with a purple sky, in which the stars looked 
 nearer and brighter than their wont, and a sultry stillness 
 which seemed almost tropical. Airy gowns and feathered 
 cloaks were scarcely stirred by the soft warm air, as Vanessa's 
 guests alighted from the line of carriages on the bridge, a 
 line that extended all the length of the road as far back 
 as the old parish church, where the deep-toned clock was 
 striking the first hour of morning before the last carriage 
 had deposited its occupants on the bridge, and the last of 
 the ten electric launches had moved from the pier. 
 
 One o'clock, and even Hammersmith — with silvered roofs 
 and glorified chimneys, under the moon that rode triumphant 
 in a dark blue sky, the moon in her fullest, maturest beauty 
 — had a picturesque semi-Dutch appearance, as wharf and 
 warehouse lay fast asleep. 
 
 The Thames, under that enchanting light, rippled and 
 danced like a river of molten gold ; and the shore, the poor 
 suburban shore that was once only a line of willows against 
 a background of cornfields — even the shore of villadom had a 
 vague charm when seen betwixt purple sky and golden river. 
 
 The midnight assembly was a success. It had allowed 
 people to go to other parties, to prime themselves for 
 pleasure. Everybody had dined somewhere. Most of the 
 young people had come away from dances they had just 
 looked at — a valse, an ice, and good-bye. 
 
 " Going on to Mrs. Stormont's." '* A long drive ! " 
 " Ridiculous, ain't it ? " " Haven't the least idea what's 
 going to happen." "An American surprise party, don't you 
 know." " Rich ? " " Oh, stupendously." '' Sure to do us well.'' 
 
 And now on the ten launches, each holdmg thirty people, 
 
 334 
 
The Conflict, 
 
 the ripple of animated talk was louder than the ripple of 
 the moonlit water. A smaller launch carrying an orchestra 
 headed the procession, and the music floated back loud or 
 low, as distance varied— gay operatic music, bridal marches, 
 famous waltzes, familiar serenades, melodies that all the 
 world loves, from Lohengrin, Faust, Rigoktto, Don Giova?mi, 
 the music that thrills with old memories and vanished loves. 
 And there were intervals when reeds and brasses were 
 mute, and a trio of strings played some old song that once 
 filled all the air— " Good-bye, Sweetheart," "Come into 
 the Garden, Maud." 
 
 One old lady in a cloak, brilliant with peacock plumage, 
 wept quietly in her corner when that last song was played, 
 wept to think that Sims Reeves was dead, and that she was 
 no longer young. 
 
 Everybody agreed that it was an enchanting party. 
 People were curious ; but no one cared much whither the 
 boats were going. It was enough to exist in that delicious 
 atmosphere, sitting by the girl one loved, perhaps, or the 
 man one wanted to marry, with ices and tea and coffee 
 in abundance, and all manner of possibilities, between 
 dark and daylight. Alas ! dawn would come too soon, and 
 carriages at half-past four. Brentford clock chimed the 
 third quarter after one, as the boats passed the fair lawns 
 of Syon House, a sheet of white light, and then plunged 
 into the dark shadow of the trees on the island below 
 Isleworth ferry, which looked like a home for ghosts. 
 
 " I'm sure ghosts live there," said Vanessa ; " the ghost 
 of Pope, perhaps." 
 
 " Pope has an island more convenient to his grave." 
 
 "The Eel Pie, where there's an inn, and people drink 
 beer," cried Vanessa, disgusted. "No, he would much 
 rather haunt a desert island like that." 
 
 "Too many rats," said her companion. 
 
 Vanessa was on the last of the launches. She knew her 
 duties too well to leave the pier till the last of her guests 
 had embarked. She would like to have been on all the 
 boats, flitting from group to 'group, the moving spirit of the 
 scene ; but she knew that her time was coming. 
 
 Lady Mary Selby and Lord St. Just were in the leading 
 
 335 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 launch, sitting in a shadowy corner side by side, and talking 
 in undertones. They had been among the earhest arrivals 
 at Hammersmith, driving down together in the lady's neat 
 little brougham, -balanced lightly on C-springs. They had 
 dined together, and alone. St. Just had supplicated for a 
 tik-d-fete dinner. 
 
 ' " Are we never to be together, always to be performing 
 before an audience ? Can I never look into your eyes, or 
 hold your hand a moment longer than your troop of casual 
 friends ? Mary, we 7nust be together to-night." 
 
 The must — impassioned, imperious, which would have 
 seemed unpardonable from any other lips — conquered. 
 
 *' We shall set people talking," she said. 
 
 "What do we care for people? I count all the world 
 rabble when I have the one adorable woman sitting opposite 
 me. Let us dine tete-dtete for once in our lives. Shall it 
 be in your house, or at the Savoy ? " 
 
 " At the Savoy, if it must be. Just a table in a window 
 in the room where all the people dine." 
 
 But when the evening came, St. Just conducted his guest 
 to a small room facing the river, a room that had been 
 made into a bower of roses. The windows were open, and 
 the newly risen moon was looking in upon them, a shining 
 disk, orange-red, out of the vague purple of the night. 
 
 " This isn't fair, St. Just," Mary said angrily. " I told 
 you we were to dine in the public room. Nobody could 
 have said anything malicious about that ; but this is just the 
 kind of thing to set them talking." 
 
 *' The roses, or the moon, or what ? Do you think that 
 would have been a iete-d-tete^ Mary, with people jabbering 
 at the next table ? Do you suppose I wanted to dine with 
 you, hemmed round with curious eyes and deafening chatter ? 
 One of yoMX parties carr'ees in Grosvenor Square would have 
 been better than that. I wanted to have you to myself — 
 my companion, my friend, soul of my soul, heart of my 
 heart — ^just for one delicious hour before we go on to Mrs. 
 Stormont's party." 
 
 He called her Mary unreproved. The hour of quibbling 
 about trifles had gone by. She looked him full in the face, 
 her eyes flashing. She stood as it were on guard, with her 
 sword drawn, a woman of high courage. He could not 
 
 336 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 doubt that, though he watched her with a fond smile, as if 
 she had been a pretty child playing some childish part. 
 
 " Va pour le diner a deiix, if it must be," she said, throw- 
 ing off her long white satin cloak, fringed from collar to 
 hem with ostrich plumage. 
 
 Her gown was softest chiffon, gauze, lace; an artistic 
 mingling of delicatest fabrics, white as snow, with no gaudy 
 glitter of gold or spangles, no suggestion of tawdriness. 
 The only touch of colour was the ruby necklace which 
 showed blood-red against the marble whiteness of her neck, 
 and the ruby brooches on her corsage. Never had she 
 looked lovelier, in spite of the thirty-five years recorded 
 against her by Debrett. 
 
 She was conscious of her beauty and her splendour; eyes 
 and complexion as incomparable as her jewels, a queen in 
 stature, a figure built for grace and dignity. For this hour 
 she felt mistress of the situation ; and she treated St. Just 
 with a certain hauteur even in the midst of their confiden- 
 tial talk. She was full of gaiety ; ridiculed her friends, 
 talked of private and public people, and would suffer no 
 lapse into sentiment. Nothing could be more correct than 
 her attitude through that hour in the rose-scented room, and 
 on the balcony, where they took their coffee, looking out 
 over the moonlit river, or to the brazen-faced clock, and the 
 beacon light shining above the great grey palace where the 
 everlasting problem of " how not to do it" was in process 
 of solution. 
 
 No word that could offend matronly modesty was spoken 
 during that tetc-a-tete dinner, nor in the carriage as it rolled 
 swiftly through the lighted streets, and along the suburban 
 road, spinning on noiseless wheels past omnibus and van, 
 waggon and cab. But later, when they two were sitting 
 in the shadow, lulled by the ripple of the stream, words 
 were spoken, such fatal and pernicious words as have been 
 breathed into the ear of woman from the dim beginning of 
 time, when this world's first woman heard and trembled at 
 the voice of the serpent ; always the same words, the same 
 impassioned prayer, the same perfidious promise of a life 
 of bliss, the same reckless vow of unalterable love. 
 
 Mary Selby listened — silent, unreproving, yet unyielding. 
 No, not for worlds would she be false to her husband. 
 
 337 2 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Not for worlds would she suffer the lot of divorced wives, 
 and women who have lost caste. She would dismiss St. 
 Just out of her life to-morrow. She would never of her 
 own free will see his face after to-nisrht. 
 
 But this night, v/hile the moon shone, and the river flowed, 
 — that delicious river whose suburban shores needed only 
 the veil of shadow and the fitful purple light to make them 
 lovely — what did it matter if wild words were spoken, and 
 if she listened, without too harsh a protest against the guilt 
 of it all ? 
 
 " What midsummer madness this is, St. Just. You know 
 that I am not the kind of woman to endure disgrace," she 
 said, in a low voice, trying to speak lightly, with her head 
 turned from him, while she watched the shore that seemed 
 gliding away as she looked at it, gliding from her sight 
 into the unknown darkness, and carrying her past existence 
 with it. 
 
 All her married life, the gaudy pleasures — the luxury of 
 money-spending, of caprices gratified on the instant, the 
 villa at Cannes, the boat on the Nile, the cottage at New- 
 market, the ceaseless round of banal pleasures — faded from 
 her memory, like the vague shapes in a half-forgotten dream. 
 Family, husband, caste, the world — all had become as 
 nothing. Life was narrowed to a point ; and time meant 
 only these moments while she sat in shadow, with a hand 
 holding hers, and a lowered voice breathing the seducer's 
 impassioned prayer. 
 
 He wanted her to go back to London with him. He 
 could get a carriage at Richmond. His yacht was at Green- 
 hithe, fitted and manned for a long cruise. He had made 
 all things ready for the voyage which was to carry them to 
 an Eden of their own. Or they would be ocean wanderers, 
 if she so willed it, remote from the common earth, flitting 
 from one delicious spot to another, as her caprice dictated. 
 Disgrace, the shame of looking into familiar faces and see- 
 ing estrangement there, need never come near her. They 
 would live in a world of their own — emancipated spirits, 
 roving far and ever farther from all that was petty and 
 dry-as-dust in everyday life. She let him rave. The low 
 deep tones of the perfect voice lulled her like the distant 
 music of Schubert's serenade, the languid sweetness of the 
 
 338 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 violins, singing the melody, the organ notes of the 'cello 
 accompanying, like the ground-swell of a summer sea. 
 
 She let him rave. What did it matter? To-night she 
 was in fairyland, like the lady in Comus ; there was no 
 reality in this sense of peril. To-morrow, if there were 
 no notice of Selby's immediate return, she would start by 
 the night mail for Liege. She would swoop down upon the 
 good honest husband, and give him a delightful surprise ; as 
 she had done more than once in the past, when she had 
 wearied of London and hberty. She really liked the good 
 man better than any of her friends. He was her best " pal," 
 after all ; and if art and literature were outside his comxpre- 
 hension, and his pass-book was the only volume he ever 
 opened, he read the newspapers diligently, and could always 
 talk about things. And then he admired her with a quiet 
 dog-like worship which was more flattering than all the airy 
 nothings of "haw-haw" guardsmen and society poets, the 
 men who gave themselves airs upon the strength of "a 
 ri\'ulet of print meandering through a meadow of margin." 
 Selby was at least better than any of these. 
 
 A blaze of light in the distance awoke a chorus of excla- 
 mations. The boats had passed under Richmond Bridge, 
 where Mrs. Stormont's boat shot past the others and went 
 to the front. They had passed Buccleuch House, with its 
 river-kissed lawn, and the big hotel crowning the wooded 
 hill. They were in a lonely reach of the river, no one 
 knew exactly where, no one cared to know; and there in 
 front of them they beheld a fair}- palace, chains of coloured 
 lights hanging all along the shore, a landing-stage with the 
 same rainbow brightness of hanging lamps, and a lawn 
 surrounded by a lamplit arcade, while in the background 
 a vast marquee aped the form and substance of an Oriental 
 palace, every line, domes and minarets, doors and win- 
 dows, edged with rainbow light from electric globes that 
 shone like the jewels in Aladdin's cave. And from this 
 fairy palace there came more music, this time the unmis- 
 takable music of a military band, playing the gavotte from 
 the Gondoliers^ so gay, so light, so sparkling, carrying a 
 sense of unreasoning joy even to jaded hearts. Praises 
 were loud and enthusiastic as Vanessa stood on the landing- 
 stage to receive her party. 
 
 339 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " So glad you like it all," she said gaily. " The idea was 
 mine ; but the carrying out is all Sir Frederick Marwood's. 
 I'm not going to be mean and deny it." 
 
 Sir Frederick hovered near her, and accepted everybody's 
 compliments ; and then, the cool night air having prepared 
 the modern unashamed appetite for something more sub- 
 stantial than the ices and cool drinks served on the boats, 
 the magic word of supper floated in the atmosphere ; and 
 there was a rapid and simultaneous movement towards the 
 fairy palace. 
 
 " Supper's ready," Vanessa told her friends, adding the 
 hospitable assurance that they need have no fear of the 
 quails or the champagne giving out. " And there's a fine 
 floor for those that hanker after the light fantastic," she said, 
 ** and I mean to have a twirl round myself before daylight, if 
 anybody will ask me." 
 
 Meanwhile Sir Frederick and Stormont had gone about, 
 telling the men that there would be a special train at 
 Twickenham station, to start punctually at four o'clock, and 
 carriages ready to take people to the station at a quarter to 
 four. 
 
 " You can't have carriages enough for everybody," said 
 one of the men. 
 
 "We shan't leave a mortal behind, unless he wants to 
 stop. There'll be room for every one in our sixty breaks 
 and landaus." 
 
 " Sixty ! That's a large order." 
 
 " Oh, we didn't want to be in the position of the ancient 
 Nabob, who had to order * more curricles ' for his guests. It 
 might not be easy to raise extra conveyances at four o'clock 
 in the morning." 
 
 The grounds were spacious, and thickly wooded ; and all 
 beyond that brilliant nucleus of coloured light lay in shadow 
 under the sinking moon, a place in which it was easy for 
 those unfamiliar with the scene by daylight to lose them- 
 selves. Only here and there a lamp had been hung on the 
 dark tnmk of a tree, to mark a footpath, or the parting of 
 the ways ; and this glow-worm glimmer served to intensify 
 the darkness, and gave a mystic air as of an enchanted 
 forest. There were not many wanderers ; for the attractions 
 of the supper-tent and the ballroom prevailed over the 
 
 340 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 romance of the shadowy grounds, or the footpath on the 
 edge of the river. Dancing was going on furiously in 
 the spacious marquee, for a cotillon was in full swing, led 
 by Sir Frederick and Vanessa, both alike possessed with 
 an untiring ardour, and the waltzing power of phantom 
 dancers in a German legend. Rumour had described the 
 presents as unparalleled even among millionaire hostesses ; 
 and the moment when a beribboned cart drawn by a snow- 
 white donkey brought these treasures into the ballroom was 
 a thrilling episode in this midsummer night's dream. 
 
 Lady Mary was not in the cotillon ; but this fact was not 
 surprising, as she rarely danced. A waltz once in a way, with 
 a favourite partner, just to show her dearest friends that she 
 waltzed more exquisitely than the best of them, sufficed her. 
 To be eager for dances, to give her hand freely to the first 
 comer, she considered unbefitting the dignity of her five 
 and thirty years, the royal repose of her manner. To waltz 
 with Lady Mary Selby was an honour which golden youth 
 knew how to appreciate. 
 
 She had been seen with St. Just in the supper-tent, but 
 only for a few minutes. She would take nothing but a 
 sandwich, and a glass of champagne in a tumbler of seltzer. 
 Her friends watched her, criticized her gown and her rubies, 
 and noted that she was very pale, save for a hectic flush 
 that came and went upon her cheek. They noted also that 
 St. Just never left her; and, in the shorthand vocabulary 
 of our time, told each other that " M. was giving herself 
 away." 
 
 The atmosphere of the tent stifled her ; the crovrd, the 
 odours of hot soups and coftee and chocolate from the 
 buffet, where lamps were burning under copper heaters — all 
 was oppressive. She was glad to escape into the coolness 
 outside. 
 
 " Let us go and watch the cotillon," she said. " It is 
 going to be something tremendous — with all sorts of 
 absurdities." 
 
 " No, no ; you have seen hundreds of cotillons. Let us 
 watch the dying moon upon the river." He drew her hand 
 through his arm, and led her away from the gaudy light, 
 into an avenue of old trees, tall beeches that were ancient 
 when Horace Walpole vras busy with his toy castle in his 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 beloved " County of T wicks ;" when Lady Suffolk was build- 
 ing herself a dower house hard by ; when Twickenham and 
 Richmond were secluded villages, the favoured homes of the 
 learned and the e/i^e. All was changed since those days ; but 
 to-night all seemed unchanged in the glimmer of- a sinking 
 moon and the first faint lilac of dawn. 
 
 A narrow backwater wound among the trees; it was 
 scarcely more than a ditch, but there was water enough to 
 reflect the fading stars and that faint daffodil glimmer of the 
 coming dawn, through an opening in the leafy roof. It was 
 a place of silence and seclusion, a narrow path following the 
 edge of the water, a low, irregular bank, broken here and 
 there where cattle had trampled the ground, going down to 
 drink. It was a spot for lovers, perhaps, since it was remote 
 and unfrequented, a winding track under leafy shade, where 
 with the first faint promise of dawn there came the low 
 sweet chorus of awakening birds, that sound which of all 
 others suggests the birth of a new day. But it was hardly 
 a spot to charm a solitary straggler; yet here was Mrs. 
 Kelvin, wrapped in a black satin cloak, the hood drawn 
 over her head and covering her face, with just space for 
 gleaming eyes to look out, peering round, piercing the 
 shadows under the trees, glancing this way and that, eager, 
 alert, expectant. So shrouded there was little fear of her 
 being observed by any one else who might be sauntering 
 along the narrow track ; but she was particularly careful to 
 avoid the possibility. Stealthy of foot, creeping from tree 
 to tree, not upon the path itself, but on the rank dry grass 
 beside it, moving slowly, so as to avoid the rustling of 
 silken skirts or of the long rank grass, she stole through the 
 shadows, following the stream to the river in the ghostly 
 dawn, a phantom, a ghoul, an evil spirit. 
 
 Was it a rendezvous or an espial ? 
 
 342 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Walter Arden was destined to suffer a rude awakening 
 from the halcyon days of tranquillity and content which had 
 followed his reunion with his wife. He had been supremely 
 happy, and had almost forgotten the sufferings of the past. 
 He had knelt in the little Lutheran church with Rachel, 
 and had heard the message of peace, not as the believer 
 hears, but touched by the wisdom of the Divine words, the 
 beauty of the Divine life, sympathizing with his wife in her 
 imphcit faith, her unquestioning acceptance of the miraculous 
 element in a life which to him had never been more than 
 a tradition and an example. 
 
 He was happy, and his mind was at rest ; and in his 
 musings on this happy change he recalled one of the 
 strange features of Chaldean magic ; the belief that the soul 
 which had been held in bondage by an evil spirit could, 
 after the expulsion of the demon, only be made secure from 
 future harm by becoming the tabernacle of a good spirit. 
 Possession could only be cured by possession. The counter 
 influence was needed for safety. 
 
 " Rachel is my good spirit," he thought. " The mind that 
 gentle spirit rules ought to be invincible against demoniac 
 power. To live with her, to live for her, shall be my 
 religion ; and who knows, some day I may come to think as 
 she thinks, and may learn to trust in the unknown good, 
 as I have learnt to fear the unknown evil." 
 
 They had left the mountain village above the Lake of 
 Thun, and had travelled by easy stages, in extra post 
 carriages, stopping at any halting-place that took their 
 fancy, from Thun to the Engadine, where they had spent 
 the first fortnight of July, not at Pontresina, or St. Moritz, 
 or Maloja, but at the smaller hotels in less frequented 
 
 343 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 places, where there were none of the attractions which the 
 average tourist demands : no tennis tournaments or hotel 
 dances, no band, no amateur theatricals or tableaux vivanfs. 
 They spent some days at Samaden, taking long walks in the 
 neighbourhood, perfectly happy in each other's company ; 
 and from Samaden they made a leisurely journey to 
 Damezzo, a village near the Italian frontier, a valley em- 
 bowered in chestnut woods, and with a narrow river rushing 
 between steep banks crowned with sedges, through meadows 
 sprinkled with purple crocuses, and merry with the fairy 
 music of innumerable grasshoppers. 
 
 Here Arden meant to make a halt till September, when 
 he wanted to take Rachel to that Italian lake-land which 
 she had never seen, and where he had been a lonely and 
 miserable wanderer in the unhappy time before he met 
 her. To be in those lovely scenes with her, to be able 
 to take pleasure in their romantic beauty, and to be 
 soothed by their tranquil atmosphere, would be ineffable 
 bliss. 
 
 The hotel at Damezzo was of modest proportions, and 
 there were few visitors at this time, while the season was 
 still too warm for going on to Italy. They had a suite of 
 rooms looking towards the river, with a wide view of distant 
 hills, and in the foreground a picturesque one-arched bridge 
 that spanned a waterfall. They had a garden, and a 
 spacious summer-house trellised with roses, where they 
 read and wrote and rested through the heat of the day, and 
 where they took their breakfast and tea ; and for their 
 morning and evening rambles they had mountain roads, 
 through immeasurable chestnut woods, roads leading up to 
 white-walled villages that seemed hanging in the sky. 
 
 It was from this haven of rest that Arden was called 
 away by news that came upon him like a thunderclap. 
 
 He opened a London daily paper, sitting among the 
 roses in the golden evening light, in an atmosphere of 
 supreme peace, silent, save for the rush of the waterfall and 
 the thin shrill chorus of the grasshoppers in the meadows 
 below. He was alone, his wife having gone upon a mission 
 of charity to a bedridden old woman in a lonely home- 
 stead, where the peasant farmer and his kine lived in friendly 
 propinquity. He was alone when the thunderbolt fell. 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Murder of Lady Mary Selby. 
 
 " Society has experienced a terrible shock in the tragic fate 
 of a lady who was eminently popular in a wide circle, and 
 whose beauty and talent made her a conspicuous figure 
 among the many lovely and clever women of the day. As 
 a hostess, Lady IMary Selby was incomparable. She had 
 made her house a focus for beauty, wit, and art, which 
 recalled the choicer gatherings in the houses of Lady Walde- 
 grave and Lady Moles worth. Gifted with singular tact, and 
 with a charm of manner that was more potent even than her 
 commanding beauty. Lady Mary was a centre of attraction 
 in every circle; and, being endowed with a fine physique 
 and inexhaustible vivacity, she took a leading position in 
 all fashionable gaieties, whether in the London season, in 
 Eg)'pt, or on the Riviera. Happily married to a man of 
 vast wealth, her fine and original taste never suffered 
 restraint for lack of means ; and society was to be congratu- 
 lated upon the union of so much charm and talent with such 
 ample fortune. With Lady Mary the power to achieve 
 went along with the genius that could invent ; and the world 
 of fashion was on tip-toe at the beginning of a London 
 season, to discover what new and striking form of entertain- 
 ment would be given at her palatial house in Grosvenor 
 Square. 
 
 " The hand of an undiscovered assassin has cut short that 
 brilliant career, and Mr. Selby, Lady Mary's brother, Lord 
 Wildernsea, and a large circle of relations and friends, are 
 mourning for the unhappy fate of an amiable and gifted 
 woman, while the police are endeavouring to solve the 
 mystery of her cruel death. A detailed description of the 
 brilliant fete given by a Chicago belle and millionaire, at 
 which Lady Mary Selby was a prominent figure, appeared 
 in our issue of Wednesday; and a report of the coroner's 
 inquest upon the unhappy lady will be found in another 
 part of this paper." 
 
 Arden's eye had rushed over the prolix article, transfixed 
 by the hideous fact embodied in the journalist's florid 
 paragraphs. Death ! Murder ! The two most horrible 
 words in the language — the second infinitely more terrible 
 
 34S 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 than the first. He turned the paper with trembling hands, 
 looking for the report of the inquest. It occupied two 
 columns of closely printed matter; and the name of one 
 of the witnesses deepened the horror in Arden's mind as 
 he read the ghastly details. 
 
 The first witness to be examined was a boatman, who 
 discovered the body of the murdered woman in the back- 
 water in the grounds of Montpelier House, Twickenham. 
 His attention had been attracted by the appearance of some 
 white object lying in the narrow inlet at a httle distance 
 from the river-bank, too far off for him to see what it was 
 as he rowed past, but near enough to excite his curiosity, 
 and induce him to pull his boat ashore and go to the spot, 
 where he found the body of a lady dressed in white, lying 
 in about a foot of water. She wore a white cloak trimmed 
 with feathers. She had no necklace, but there were jewels 
 on the bosom of her gown. Seeing that there was no doubt 
 as to her being dead, he had gone at once in search of a 
 policeman. The time when he made this discovery was 
 between six and seven o'clock on the morning of Wednesday. 
 
 The evidence of the police constable followed. He 
 described the appearance of the corpse, and the marks 
 upon the throat, which clearly pointed to strangulation. 
 Death by drowning under the conditions would have been 
 impossible, unless any one had fallen face downward into 
 the water, or had fallen there in a fainting state and so 
 been suffocated. The lady's face was hardly covered by 
 the water. 
 
 Dr. Stedman,a local medical man, confirmed the constable's 
 view. He declared that the signs of strangulation were 
 unmistakable. The throat, which was cruelly bruised, 
 showed the grip of a powerful hand, the finger-marks being 
 clearly defined. When asked if he could form any opinion 
 as to the character of the hand that had made this imprint, 
 he replied that he did not think it was the hand of a man 
 employed in rough labour. The distinct lines of the bruises 
 gave the shape of the fingers, and indicated a long slender 
 hand, rather than a broad and coarse one. Asked if he 
 believed there had been a struggle, the doctor replied yes : 
 that the hair of the deceased was dishevelled, her left 
 arm showed the imprint of a hand that had grasped it 
 
 346 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 violently, and her dress, which was of a very delicate fabric, 
 was a good deal torn. He had gone over the ground with 
 the constable. There was a spot some ten or twelve yards 
 from the water, where the grass was trampled, and where 
 they discovered the marks of a lady's high-heeled shoes. 
 He believed that the murder had occurred at this spot; 
 and that the body had been carried from there to the ditch 
 where it was found. In reply to the coroner's question, he 
 said that there were no indications of the body having been 
 dragged over the grass. The murderer must have been a 
 powerful man, the deceased lady being considerably above 
 the common height 
 
 The coroner reminded the witness that he had described 
 the marks upon the throat as indicating a delicate rather 
 than a powerful hand. 
 
 " I said they were the marks of slender fingers," answered 
 the doctor ; " but there is a sinewy nervous strength which 
 is no less powerful than weight and bulk. The grip upon 
 the throat of the deceased must have been the grip of a 
 hand with muscles of steel." 
 
 Mrs. Stormont, who was painfully agitated, gave evidence 
 as to the last time she had seen Lady Mary Selby on the 
 evening of her fete. It was in the supper-tent, where the 
 deceased was standing near the buffet, talking to Lord 
 St. Just. They were only taking some light refreshment, 
 and she did not see them sit down at one of the little tables, 
 which were mostly crowded at this time. She did not 
 obsen'e them leaving the tent. She was there herself only 
 a few minutes; as she had her duties as hostess in the 
 marquee where the dancing was going on. She looked for 
 Lady Mary at the station before the starting of the train, 
 but was not surprised at failing to discover her, among 
 nearly three hundred people. Lord St. Just helped her 
 in her search on the platform, and in the waiting-rooms. 
 He had lost sight of Lady Mary some time before the 
 carriages left for the station. 
 
 St. Just, who had volunteered his evidence, stated that 
 he and Lady Mar)' had walked round the grounds together ; 
 and that at her request he had taken her back to the 
 marquee, where she left him to look at the end of the 
 cotillon. He did not go into the marquee, and afterwardSj 
 
 347 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 when the prizes had been distributed, there was considerable 
 confusion ; as there was very little time left for the drive to 
 the station, and people were rushing to the carriages, and 
 looking for each other in a distracted way. 
 
 The coroner asked if St. Just could remember the precise 
 time at which he had seen Lady Mary enter the marquee. 
 
 Yes, he had looked at his watch immediately after leaving 
 her. It was five and twenty minutes past three, and the 
 carriages were to leave for the station at a quarter to four. 
 The cotillon must have lasted nearly twenty minutes after 
 this. He was walking up and down the lawn in front of 
 the marquee, waiting to escort Lady Mary to the station ; 
 but in the rush of people, who poured out of the tent en 
 viasse^ after the cotillon, he failed to discover her, and he 
 accompanied Mrs. Stormont to her carriage, and took his 
 seat beside her, when they drove away. 
 
 " You felt no uneasiness about the missing lady ? '* 
 
 " No ; I had no suspicion that she was missing, although 
 I failed in finding her. I had only time to walk along 
 the line of carriages, into which people were hurrying, 
 afraid of being left behind. Although I could not see 
 Lady Mary, I thought that she must be in one of the 
 crowded vehicles. There was only time for a hasty search. 
 The same thing occurred at the station." 
 
 " When you were walking in the grounds with the 
 deceased, did you see any suspicious character lurking 
 about?" 
 
 " No ; we met no one who did not belong to Mrs. 
 Stormont's party." 
 
 " Did you notice what jewels the deceased was wearing ? " 
 
 " Nobody could fail to notice Lady Mary's ruby necklace, 
 and the jewels on her corsage." 
 
 " Were these jewels exposed to view while she was 
 walking with you ? " 
 
 "She was wearing a cloak all the time; but the night 
 was sultry, and she had thrown her cloak open at the 
 throat, so that her necklace might have been seen by any 
 one who, passed us." 
 
 " Did you meet many of Mrs. Stormont's guests ?" 
 
 " An occasional couple only, sauntering under the trees, 
 as we were." 
 
 348 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Did your walk extend to the spot where the body was 
 found?" 
 
 " No ; we walked in that direction, but not so far. I 
 never saw the place till this morning, when I went to look 
 at it with the police." 
 
 "Can you account for Lady Mary Selby having gone 
 back to that lonely part of the grounds, after she left the 
 dancing-tent ? " 
 
 " I imagine that she may have loitered at the last, and 
 then may have become confused and agitated on finding 
 herself left behind, and so may have taken a wrong turn." 
 
 " That would seem unlikely, while a crowd of people were 
 all hurrying in one direction," said the coroner. 
 
 " The crowd was not all going in one direction. Ladies 
 were running about confusedly, asking the way to the gate 
 where the carriages were waiting." 
 
 *' But it was broad daylight at four o'clock." 
 
 " It was daylight j but there was a good deal of confusion 
 notwithstanding." 
 
 " There must be some one who saw the deceased in the 
 dancing-tent, if she stayed there twenty minutes," said the 
 coroner. 
 
 "No doubt she must have been seen by a good many 
 people." 
 
 No further questions were asked of Lord St. Just. Lady 
 Mary's French maid was the next witness, who had been 
 brought there only to state what jewels her mistress was 
 wearing on the evening of Mrs. Stormont's fete. She 
 described the ruby and diamond necklace, which she had 
 been told had cost thirteen thousand pounds, and a number 
 of ruby and diamond brooches, also of considerable value. 
 
 The inquest was adjourned, to give time for further 
 evidence to be obtained. 
 
 349 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Arden arrived in London two days after the inquest at 
 Twickenham, and went straight to his brother's house in 
 Hertford Street, where he found Lord Wildernsea and his 
 wife and daughters in a state of unspeakable consternation. 
 The elder of the two girls had made her debut this season, 
 and had still a goodly number of balls and parties on her 
 list. The society papers had enthroned her among the 
 beauties ; and her mother expected her to make a great 
 marriage. Perhaps the aspect in which Lady Mary's 
 dreadful fate most strikingly presented itself to the Wildern- 
 sea household was as a thing that ought not to have occurred 
 in a respectable family ; a sensational kind of calamity that 
 people would never leave off talking about ; and which would 
 prove a hotbed for scandalous details, for imputations and 
 insinuations running underground in endless ramifications, 
 like a pernicious weed under a grass lawn, spreading over 
 the whole of the unhappy lady's married life. 
 
 " I knew how reckless Mary was, and how very near the 
 wind she sailed sometimes," Wildernsea said to his brother, 
 after the first few words of unalloyed grief had been spoken, 
 "but I never thought such a horror as this would come 
 upon her." 
 
 " I hope you don't think my poor sister was to blame for 
 being murdered — that this hideous tragedy was her fault," 
 Arden said indignantly. 
 
 " Her fault, poor soul ! No, no, of course not ! Still, 
 don't you know, if she hadn't gone to that odious party — 
 a flashy, vulgar American thing — my wife had a card, and 
 the girl wanted to go, but I wouldn't hear of it — if Mary 
 had kept herself aloof, as she ought to have done, she 
 would have been alive and happy. I never saw her looking 
 handsomer than two or three nights before, at the opera. 
 
 350 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 And to go to a nobody's party, in a mob of silly people, 
 roaming about a strange place in the dead of the night ! 
 AMiat could come of it but harm ? Tliat poor devil Selby 
 is broken-hearted. I never saw a fellow so crushed. And 
 as for myself, I shan't enter one of my clubs this season. I 
 can't stand being pitied, and stared at, and whispered about. 
 Notoriety of any kind is poison to me — and such notoriety 
 as this is more than I can stand. I don't believe there has 
 been anything as horrible since Lord Ferrers was hanged 
 for shooting his steward." 
 
 The younger brother looked at him with unmitigated 
 scorn. Her ways were not his ways, but Walter Arden had 
 loved his sister ; and it enraged him to hear her miserable 
 fate considered from the society point of view. Wildernsea 
 was walking about the room in a distracted way, unconscious 
 of that contemptuous glance. He was not altogether heart- 
 less ; he had given his murdered sister two days and nights 
 of profound grief; but then had come the reaction, and the 
 idea of the catastrophe as it affected his own family. To 
 his mind there was unspeakable disgrace in the tragedy. 
 He had always supposed that murders of this kind were 
 peculiar to the East End slums, the dark places of the great 
 city; or, at any rate, to the lower middle classes. The 
 murder of Lord William Russell by his valet, and an agrarian 
 murder or two in Ireland, were all the crimes of this nature 
 that he could recall among people of importance ; and those 
 had been respectable murders, leaving no trail of slander 
 behind them. 
 
 " Poor Honoria 1 " he muttered, as he paced the room. 
 " It is hard lines for her." 
 
 " Honoria ? " questioned Arden. 
 
 " Yes, her first season ; and she has been tremendously 
 admired. The young Duke of Lincolnshire has been very 
 marked in his attentions, her mother tells me ; waltzed with 
 her no end, and always sitting out together. And now this 
 business will upset everj'thing. I shall take them all to 
 Wildernsea to-morrow. It will spoil Honoria's season; 
 but there's no use staying in town, now we're in deep mourn- 
 ing. I can run up for the day, if I'm wanted." 
 
 " Do you know who murdered your sister ? " Arden 
 asked suddenly. 
 
 351 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Know ? Why, of course not ! Nobody knows. But 
 I hope the police will find the wretch. Some miserable 
 tramp, I suppose, who was prowling about the place on the 
 look out for business, and met her alone, blazing with 
 jewels, and strangled her for the sake of the plunder. The 
 police are hunting for him, and hope to trace him through 
 the jewellery. Selby wanted to offer a thousand pounds 
 reward ; but the Chief recommended him to keep quiet, and 
 leave everything to the Criminal Investigation Department. 
 Twickenham is within the London radius, so the affair rests 
 with Scotland Yard." 
 
 " Is that the theory ? A casual member of the criminal 
 classes — who met her alone, and in a solitary part of the 
 grounds ? Is that your idea ? " 
 
 " What else can I think, after St. Just's evidence ? She 
 must have taken a wrong turn, when the crowd were hurrying 
 to the gates, and lost her way." 
 
 " Is that like Mary ? She was not the kind of woman 
 to lose her head, and take a wrong path in broad daylight. 
 Was not ! Oh, God, that we must speak of her in the past ! 
 I don't believe in your theory. I don't believe that Scotland 
 Yard will find the murderer, starting with the idea that he 
 is a member of the criminal classes, who will try to dispose 
 of the jewels." 
 
 *' Have you a theory of your own?" 
 
 *' I have ; but I shall keep it locked in my own mind, for 
 the present." 
 
 " I don't think anybody's theories can be of much use. 
 We must look to Scotland Yard for the solution of the 
 mystery — if you can call it a mystery, when the motive of 
 the crime was so obvious. Poor Mary ! We had drifted 
 apart since her marriage. My wife couldn't stand the 
 kind of people Mary cultivated — actors, and newspaper 
 men, and painters, and such like. But I was very fond 
 of her. The funeral is arranged for to-morrow, at two 
 o'clock, at Kensal Green. But there will be a service at 
 St. Aldate's, her favourite church, at twelve. You will be 
 there, of course ? " 
 
 " Yes, I shall be there. Good-bye." 
 
 Arden went from his brother's house to Grosvenor Square, 
 to the house of death, where the spacious splendour of hall 
 
 352 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 and staircase was wrapped in gloom ; and where the atmo- 
 sphere was laden with the sickly subtle perfume of gardenias 
 and tube-roses. He found Mr. Selby in the library, a room 
 which had always been devoted to his particular use, where 
 he received business visitors, and where he had elaborated 
 those financial schemes which had built up his fortune. 
 The room was at the back of the house, lighted by one 
 wide window, which commanded only the dead wall of the 
 smoking-room, across a space of ten feet, a gloomy outlook 
 to a room furnished with dark oak, and lined with those 
 time-honoured works which every gentleman's library should 
 contain, and which very few gentlemen who buy a hbrary 
 en bloc are in the habit of reading. 
 
 No need to draw the blinds down here. The window 
 was wide open, and in the sunless light Selby sat staring at 
 the opposite wall, haggard, livid, with eyes that had shed 
 passionate tears, in the night silence, and were dim, and 
 pale, and tired, and hopeless, beyond all eyes that Arden 
 had ever looked upon. The daily papers were on the table, 
 folded as the servant had placed them. The lid of the 
 massive silver inkstand had not been Hfted. All the usual 
 signs of occupation were absent. The man was sitting 
 there, motionless, hstless, inert, a mechanism whose springs 
 were broken. 
 
 On the table in front of him, Arden noticed an open 
 sandal-wood box, the contents covered with jewellers' wool. 
 He did not rise to receive his brother-in-law, or give any 
 indication of surprise at his appearance. He held out his 
 hand without a word, and it was deadly cold in Arden's grasp. 
 
 " I am profoundly sorry for you, Selby. There are 
 troubles too dreadful to be expressed in words — and this 
 is one." 
 
 " I loved her, Arden. God knows how dearly. I had 
 nothing else in the world. You've heard how I began life — 
 an office-boy, motherless, with a drunken father, kicked 
 out-of-doors before I was thirteen, to sink or swim. I had 
 never loved anybody till I met Mary. I had nothing but 
 her — her and money ; and I only cared for money because 
 she liked to spend it. There is nothing left, now she is 
 gone." 
 
 Arden seated himself in silence. Yes, this was a pure 
 
 353 2 A 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 and perfect love. He had always respected Selby for his 
 straightforward, purposeful life, for his unwavering affection 
 for the woman he had chosen for his helpmeet, his willing- 
 ness to take the lower place, to submit his own inclinations 
 to his wife's pleasure. 
 
 Selby sat silent, with his hand shading his eyes, for a few 
 minutes, while the ticking of the tall eight-day clock seemed 
 to grow more insistent with every moment it checked off; 
 and Arden found himself looking automatically at the long 
 rows of books in their rich and sober bindings of dull red 
 and dark brown, olive and black — Gibbon, Hume, Grote, 
 Froude, Macaulay, Dickens. Their names meant nothing to 
 him in this hour of agonizing thoughts ; but he looked at 
 them all the same. 
 
 " She was brought home last night," Selby said, in a low 
 voice, " and the cofifin was nailed down this morning. They 
 were in a hurry to hide her face — her beautiful face — the 
 only face I loved. You don't know what desolation means, 
 Arden. No man can know, who hasn't lost all — as I have. 
 My life is broken off short. If I live to be eighty, there will 
 be no meaning in my existence. It will be just dragging 
 on a load of misery, like a galley-slave toiling in irons. I 
 hope I shall die before the year is out." 
 
 " Time brings consolations," Arden said gently. " Your 
 wealth is a great power. You will find a beneficent use 
 for it." ^ 
 
 " Build a hospital in memory of my wife ? God knows 
 I wouldn't stint the cost; but that's soon done. And 
 after " 
 
 "Time will bring you something else; some new tie, 
 perhaps, in the far-off years." 
 
 ** Another wife, do you mean ? A strange woman to take 
 Mary's place. No, no, no; no strange woman shall ever 
 take her place or name. If I were fool enough, in some 
 weak moment, to think I cared for another woman ; and 
 were to marry her and bring her home to this house, I 
 should hate her. I should hate her all the days of my life, 
 and hate myself for having thought I could care for her. 
 No, Arden, my life, as a man, is finished. I may go on, 
 perhaps, as a money-making machine; but for the rest, 
 Amen." 
 
 354 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 There was a silence, and Arden saw slow tears stealing 
 down the haggard face, under the shading hand, and then 
 the low dull voice went on — 
 
 " She is lying in her own room, the large front room on 
 the second floor. The view from the windows used to look 
 green and countryfied in summer-time. She made her 
 rooms so beautiful. She had such perfect taste. Every 
 piece of furniture, the colouring of the walls, the draperies, 
 everything, was her own choice. The upholsterers and 
 people said that her taste was faultless. She never made 
 a mistake." 
 
 He had said no word as to the manner of her death, 
 Arden vrondered at this. There was a touch of egotism, 
 perhaps, here. It seemed as if the one thought in his mind 
 was of his own loss — the beautiful thing that had been his, 
 and that Fate had snatched from him. 
 
 " Have there been no discoveries ? " Arden asked at last, 
 "no clue to the murderer?" 
 
 " Discoveries ? Yes ; there is this," Selby answered, with 
 his hand on the sandal- wood box. " It came this morning, 
 addressed to me. Her necklace — the only necklace she 
 wore that night." 
 
 " The necklace which was supposed to have tempted the 
 murderer ! I knew, I knew, that it was no common criminal 
 who killed her. Who sent it to you ? Where did it come 
 from?" 
 
 " I don't know. The parcel was insured and posted at 
 Charing Cross. There was no name — no word in the box ; 
 nothing but her necklace — her favourite necklace. God ! 
 what a happy man I v.-as the day I clasped it round her 
 neck. It was the anniversary of our wedding. I had 
 pulled off something rather big in Russia ; and I wanted to 
 give her the best that money could buy. And all last night 
 I was walking about this room like a madman, thinking that 
 my gift had been the cause of her death." 
 
 Arden took the box from his hand, and examined it 
 carefully. The address was v/ritten in a stiff upright hand, 
 like a schoolboy's — a feigned hand, no doubt; but every 
 stroke was broad and strong. There were no signs of 
 weakness. 
 
 Was it the murderer who had sent the necklace ? No ; 
 
 355 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 he could not believe that. If the crime had been done for 
 plunder, the necklace would have been broken up within 
 an hour, and the loose stones disposed of before the murder 
 was known. There were dealers in London who would not 
 ask too many questions, and who had a ready market for 
 gems of exceptional value. The rubies would have been 
 sent out of the country before the transaction could be 
 investigated. No ; the return of the jewels was not the act 
 of a panic-stricken thief, afraid to hold the booty for which 
 he had stained his soul with blood. If the murderer was 
 the man Arden thought, nothing seemed less likely than 
 that he should restore the necklace, nothing less likely than 
 that he should have taken it from his victim's neck. 
 
 He went up to the chamber of death with Selby, and 
 looked at the coffin, heaped with white flowers, wreaths and 
 crosses, hearts and lyres ; the tribute of many of those trivial 
 friends who in their trivial way had loved the dead woman 
 for her graciousness, for her hospitality, for her liberal view 
 of other women's false steps and escapades, for her readiness 
 to interest herself in other people's loves and sorrows. She 
 was simpatlca. Every one had repeated the phrase. Poor 
 Mary was simpatica ; and her house was delightful. So the 
 wreaths of white liUes and Niphetos roses were not such 
 empty tributes to state and position as they sometimes are. 
 
 The room was lovely — white walls, white curtains, white 
 bed, all the furniture of white enamelled wood, only relieved 
 by the pale pink roses on the chintz and the pale green of 
 the carpet sprinkled with rosebuds. A few choice Barto- 
 lozzi rustic subjects in oval frames, a stand of delicately 
 bound books, were the only ornaments. A spacious sim- 
 plicity was the dominant note. Arden marked every detail, 
 as he stood beside the coffin, with the same automatic 
 observation that he had given to the books in the room 
 below. 
 
 Selby looked at the room with admiring tenderness. 
 His own bedchamber was on the same floor, furnished 
 with a Spartan severity. This room had always been to 
 him as a temple, sacred and beloved. 
 
 " My Mary — my beautiful Mary !" he sobbed, with clasped 
 hands pressed upon the coffin, heedless of the havoc those 
 heavy hands made among the fragile blossoms. 
 
 356 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 A shower of white petals rained upon the carpet. He fell 
 on his knees, and laid his haggard face against the side 
 of the coffin. 
 
 " Good-bye, Arden," he said ; " don't wait for me. You 
 can find your way downstairs, like a good fellow. I shall 
 stay here a little longer. God help me ] It is our last day 
 together." 
 
 " I shall come to you to-morrow, in the afternoon," said 
 Arden, gently. 
 
 " Yes, to-morrow — after the funeral. Come back to this 
 desolate house with me, and see how empty it is without 
 her." 
 
 Arden left him on his knees, among the shattered flowers, 
 with his head bowed, and his tears hidden behind the strong 
 hands. There had been nothing said of the manner of his 
 wife's death — no speculations about the murderer. The 
 one paramount fact that she was gone from him absorbed 
 all the thinking power in Selby's mind. 
 
 Arden's next visit was to Portland Place. Though he 
 shrank with horror from an encounter with St. Just, the 
 time had come when he must see this m.an face to face, 
 must try to penetrate the mystery of his existence, find the 
 devil under the mask of humanity. 
 
 He was baffled at the outset. Lord St. Just had left 
 London that morning, the servant told him. Questioned 
 closely, the man gave scanty information. He believed 
 that his lordship had gone to Paris, but could not say 
 whether he was going beyond Paris, or how long he was 
 to be away from London. He had taken no one but his 
 Hungarian valet with him. The butler did not know at 
 what hotel his lordship stayed in Paris. He was a new 
 servant, and had no knowledge of his master's habits. 
 
 Arden left Portland Place, doubtful as to his next step. 
 His most urgent desire was to return to Rachel immediately 
 after the funeral. He had hated leaving her far away, and 
 among strangers; and though no place could seem safer 
 than that quiet valley amidst the chestnut woods, and though 
 she had two trustworthy servants to protect her, he was not 
 the less uneasy at being separated from her. Otherwise, 
 his course would have been to go straight to Paris, with 
 the detective he had employed in the past, to follow the 
 
 357 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 movements of St. Just. But whatever his duty to the dead, 
 his duty to the living was paramount. He meant to start 
 for Damezzo by the night train for Basle, on the following 
 evening. 
 
 On returning to Guelph Place, he was told that a lady 
 had called during his absence. She had not given the 
 servant her name, but she had inquired when his master 
 was likely to be at home, and had left a note, and would 
 call again at three o'clock. 
 
 The note was from Mrs. Kelvin. 
 
 I write this in case you should be out when I call, in 
 which case I shall return later. Pray do not refuse to see 
 me, dear Mr. Arden. I have something of dire importance 
 to tell yoUj something which comes nearer you and yours 
 than it does to me. 
 
 Yours in great distress of mind, 
 
 Isabel Kelvin. 
 
 Mrs. Kelvin? Yes, he remembered meeting her at his 
 sister's house. She was one of Mary's friends, a woman of 
 whom he had never approved as his sister's intimate com- 
 panion ; an embodiment of all that is shallow, and frivolous, 
 and unprincipled, in the world of pleasure ; a woman who 
 lived only to dress expensively and be admired, and gad 
 from party to party, and talk slightingly of everybody she 
 knew ; a beautiful viper, he thought, a creature without soul 
 or conscience, always ready to bite the hand that fed it. 
 She had something to tell him — something terrible — some- 
 thing about his murdered sister. He shuddered at the 
 thought of a revelation from those malicious lips, remem- 
 bering the cynical airy phrases which had blown away a 
 friend's character, to spice an after-luncheon cigarette. But 
 he could not refuse to hear what she had to tell him. 
 " Something of dire importance." 
 
 He walked up and down his library, the only room that 
 he had allowed to be opened, waiting for his visitor, with 
 a heavy heart, and a mind distraught by shapeless morbid 
 fancies, the old trouble coming back upon him, too disturbed 
 to open one of the books piled on the tables, the surplus 
 volumes for which there was no shelf-room, and which were 
 
 358 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 stacked on every available piece of furniture, the accumula- 
 tions of the last year. 
 
 A telegram from Rachel, delivered an hour before, told 
 him that all was well with her. She had promised to 
 telegraph to him every morning, and to write to him every 
 day. He would thus be kept in touch with her during his 
 enforced absence, which he measured anxiously by moments. 
 Since he had heard of St. Just's departure for the Continent, 
 it seemed to him as if the devil were at large, a foul fiend, 
 whose existence menaced Rachel. 
 
 She would think of him as the man by whose sick-bed 
 she had knelt in prayer and pious meditation. She could 
 never picture him as Arden knew him, the deathless spirit 
 of evil, passing from phase to phase of human life. 
 
 Mrs. Kelvin was announced, and he was surprised to see, 
 not the futile being he remembered of old, not the airy, 
 fluttering creature, tricked out in the last caprice of fashionable 
 extravagance, but a woman, an actual woman, pale, emotional, 
 with frightened eyes and a trembhng breathlessness, as of 
 a woman near the fainting-point. 
 
 " It is very good of you to see me," she faltered, sinking 
 into the chair he drew forward for her. " I have something 
 terrible to tell you — about your sister." 
 
 " If it is anything that reflects upon my sister's character, 
 I must beg you to refrain," he said. " I could not consent 
 to believe it ; and I should be sorry to express my anger 
 too strongly to a woman." 
 
 " No, no ; it is nothing against Mary. I should be the 
 last to breathe one word against her. She was my friend. 
 I was very fond of her. We have had many hght-hearted 
 hours together — our butterfly pleasures. Oh, it is agonizing 
 to think how that happy life ended. No, no ; I have not 
 a thought that wrongs your sister. She was always straight. 
 I want to tell you something horrible — something un- 
 believable — about her murderer." 
 
 " Her murderer ! St. Just ? " 
 
 *' WTiat, you know ? You kncnu that he killed her ? " 
 
 " I have never doubted it since I read the story of her 
 death." 
 
 " How strange ! And you could believe it ? You could 
 believe anything so horrible of a man who a year ago was 
 
 359 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 counted the very pattern of the Christian life, a saint on 
 earth ? You could believe that such a man could suddenly 
 become a murderer ? " 
 
 " I had reason to believe as much. But how do you come 
 to know his guilt ? Is it an instinct, a guess, on your part ? " 
 
 " No, no ; it is not a guess. I was there — close by. I saw 
 the cruel, cruel murder. I saw my poor friend in the clutch 
 of a human fiend, a maniac — for he must be mad. Nothing 
 but madness could account for such a deed." 
 
 " You saw the murder ; and you did not give evidence 
 against him ! You let the murderer escape ! He has left 
 the country ; and may never be brought to justice. Where 
 was your love for my sister when you let her murderer 
 escape the gallows ? " 
 
 " Oh, I know how vile it was in me. But he had been 
 my friend. It would be dreadful to doom him to a 
 murderer's death. And then, for my own sake, I could not 
 bear to come forward and confess that I was there, creeping 
 about among the trees, a listener, a spy. It seemed so 
 contemptible. And I know what lawyers are. I should 
 have been questioned and badgered, and made to commit 
 myself. Why was I there ? What was I doing ? What 
 was my motive? I should be held up to ridicule and 
 contempt, as a jealous woman, a spy, a listener." 
 
 "And, after the inquest, your conscience upbraided 
 you?" 
 
 " Yes, I hated myself for having been so cowardly ; and 
 I made up my mind that I would come forward at the 
 adjourned inquest, whatever it cost me." 
 
 " I'm afraid your repentance has come too late. If St. 
 Just is the man I believe him to be, he will escape all 
 human retribution. And now tell me — tell me every detail 
 of that dreadful night — everything that came within your 
 knowledge." 
 
 " That is what I want to do, Mr. Arden. I want to get 
 this load off my mind — this load of misery. I will tell 
 you — everything. I won't spare myself, however you may 
 despise me." 
 
 " I shall not despise you. I respect the feeling that has 
 brought you here to-day ; and I believe what you tell me — 
 that you really loved my sister." 
 
 360 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " Indeed, that is true. She was my favourite friend. She 
 was always kind, always generous. She has helped me 
 often with money when I have been stranded. I was never 
 afraid to go to her in a difficulty. I felt as much at home 
 in her house as in my own. Well, I must begin at the 
 beginning, and must confess that St. Just had an extraordinary 
 influence over my mind. I had always admired him, even 
 when he was a saint, and when people were inclined to 
 laugh at what they called his philanthropic fads ; but this 
 summer, after he had broken away from his old life, and 
 had made himself notorious by his dissipated habits, his 
 influence over me became an infatuation. I cannot describe 
 his power over women. Whatever the charm may be, it 
 escapes analysis : but I have seen it as strong upon other 
 women as it was upon me. And I saw^ your sister yielding 
 to that power in a way that made me tremble for her — even 
 for her, who had been so thoroughly able to hold her own 
 against every danger." 
 
 She stopped short, in her hurried and half-breathless 
 speech, sniffed at a bottle of smelling-salts; then, with a 
 burning blush, went on. 
 
 " I wanted to marry him, you see. I am always hard 
 up, and I am awfully tired of knocking about the world 
 alone ; and though he is not rich, it would have been a 
 decent match for me. I wanted him to care for me, and 
 to offer to marry me. I think he admired me a little, when 
 we met this season. He hung about me at parties, and 
 seemed to like to talk to me. Women have a kind of 
 instinct, don't you know, that tells them they are admired. 
 I thought the rest would follow, and that I should have 
 some one to care for me and pay my debts, and give me 
 an assured position. And then, all at once, I saw that it 
 was hopeless. Your sister had captivated him. He cared 
 for no one else. He devoted himself to her, and followed 
 her about in a way that meant mischief. I think he tried 
 to compromise her, to blight her character, before he asked 
 her to throw everything to the winds for his sake. People 
 began to talk about her infatuation. But, after all, I knew 
 how strong she was ; that she could go to the brink of the 
 precipice and not fall over ; and so I didn't give up hope. 
 She would lead him on, and then laugh in his face ; and 
 
 361 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 when he was piqued and angry, I thought perhaps my 
 chance might come. I could soothe his wounded vanity. 
 I could let him see that I worshipped him ; and so I might 
 snatch the prize. Horrid, isn't it, Mr. Arden? But that's 
 what women come to, when they struggle to keep afloat 
 in an expensive set without the means. I often wish 
 I had the strength of mind to chuck it all, and hide 
 myself in a Buckinghamshire village, and teach in the 
 Sunday school." 
 
 " For God's sake, come to the vital point," Arden 
 entreated. " The murder ! What did you see or hear 
 that night ? What do you know of my sister's death ? " 
 
 " I saw them leave the supper-tent, and saunter away 
 into the darkness under the trees. I followed them, watching 
 and listening. I wanted to hear how far things had gone — 
 whether Mary would be staunch. I knew she loved him. 
 But which would be stronger — love or pride ? I followed 
 them to the edge of the narrow backwater. It was moon- 
 light in places, and then dark under the trees. I followed 
 close enough to hear their talk. They were too much 
 absorbed in each other to hear me creeping near them. 
 He was imploring her to go away with him, to lead a 
 wandering life with him, and laugh the world to scorn ; and 
 when she was resolute in her refusal — when she declared 
 again and again that nothing would induce her to disgrace 
 her name and break her husband's heart — he began to be 
 angry. He told her that she had led him on, fooled him 
 to the top of his bent, had treated him as no woman would 
 dare to treat a man if she did not mean to belong to him. 
 He told her that she belonged to him already, by an 
 unspoken concession, by a tacit surrender. There was no 
 one of that night's mob who did not believe her to be his 
 mistress ; and to prate to him of her good name, and her 
 husband's honour, after she had listened to him as she had 
 listened to-night, after she had let him read the secret of 
 her heart, was childish folly. And then, as she answered 
 him indignantly, he grew even more insulting ; he grasped 
 her arm violently — they were standing in an opening of 
 the trees with the moonlight on them — and he told her that 
 she was his by their mutual love, and that he would not 
 give her up. She should not leave that place alive, if she 
 
 3^2 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 did not promise to belong to him, from that hour, in spite 
 of the world." 
 
 Again she paused, breathless, her eyes dilated as memory 
 set the scene before her, so recent, so vivid in its reality. 
 
 Arden was pacing the room, speechless, his clenched 
 hands before his eyes, dry and burning, and in an agony 
 of rage too fierce for tears. 
 
 " She was frightened when he seized her arm j she broke 
 away from him with a scream, and rushed through the 
 trees, past where I was hiding. I was going to her, for- 
 getful of myself, only wanting to help her ; but he was too 
 quick for me. He rushed after her, and caught her in his 
 arms. I saw his face in the moonlight— the face of a fiend, 
 murderous, diabolical. His left arm was round her waist, 
 and I saw him throw the beautiful frightened face, the 
 beautiful head and neck, back across his arm, while his 
 right hand grasped her throat. I heard her choking cry, 
 the horrible death-agony ; and then I saw him lift her on 
 his shoulder, and carry her towards the backwater. I was 
 paralyzed with horror, and I fell on the ground under the 
 trees, not fainting, but utterly helpless. I could not move. 
 I don't know how long it was, but it was daylight when I 
 crept away. I don't know how he left the place. I never 
 saw him after that moment till an hour after, when he was 
 among the crowd at the station— talking, laughing, with 
 Mrs. Stormont." 
 
 "Did you go back to the water to look at his 
 victim ? " 
 
 " No ; I was afraid. I dared not see her face again — 
 the face I had seen in her death-agony — the wild eyes, the 
 writhing lips. I did not know where he had taken her. 
 I dared not go to look for her. I felt powerless to do 
 anything, except creep back to the other people and get 
 home, anyhow. I had to pass over the spot where he killed 
 her — the hateful spot— an open space between two great 
 beeches, and as I went stumbling along, my foot struck 
 against something ; and I looked down and saw Mary's ruby 
 necklace lying in the trampled grass." 
 
 " Then it was you who sent it to Selby ? " 
 
 " Yes ; it was I. I wanted him to know that the murderer 
 was no common thief. I picked up the necklace, and put 
 
 363 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 it round my neck, under my cloak ; and then I ran to the 
 gates, losing my way ever so many times in my confusion. 
 I was half demented, and hardly knew where I was going, 
 or even w^ho I was. I caught myself wondering about the 
 place, and the time, and the meaning of everything. I must 
 have looked like a madwoman \ but nobody noticed me in 
 the saiive qui pent at the gates; and I got into a brake with 
 a crowd of chattering girls, who sat on each other's laps, 
 and talked of the cotillon, and I scrambled into a saloon 
 carriage with them, and sat in a corner, and pretended to 
 be asleep, and so got to Vauxhall, where my brougham was 
 waiting for me." 
 
 "Well, you must appear at the adjourned inquest, and 
 describe the murder as you saw it. No one will ask you 
 how you came to be at that spot. You have only to relate 
 what you saw and heard, and can swear to. But you must 
 not wait for the inquest. You must come with me at once 
 to Scotland Yard, and make your deposition to the Chief 
 of the Criminal Investigation Department, so that their 
 machinery for the pursuit of an absconding felon may be 
 put in motion." 
 
 He rang the bell, and gave his order. 
 
 " A hansom at the door immediately." 
 
 The shrill whistle rang through Guelph Place, and was 
 heard in St. James's Street. Mrs. Kelvin offered no 
 objection. 
 
 " It is a horrible thing to have to do," she said, " but it 
 is for Mary's sake." 
 
 They were not more than half an hour in the Chiefs 
 spacious room, where the narration of St. Just's crime was 
 received with a business-like air by an imperturbable official. 
 A murder, more or less, could not agitate the mind that had 
 to carry the burden of metropolitan crime within a radius 
 of fifteen miles from his office. . The Chief was, as it were, 
 a Mezzofanti, or a Bunsen, in the criminal tongues. He 
 had the grammar of every species of criminality at his 
 finger's end. He was grave, and profoundly attentive, taking 
 rapid notes of every particular ; but he was not astonished. 
 That Lord St. Just should have done this murder seemed 
 to strike him as no more curious than if a shoeless tramp 
 Qff the high-road had been accused of the crime. 
 
 364 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " It looks like a case of homicidal mania," he said ; and 
 that was his only comment. 
 
 He had watched Mrs. Kelvin closely as she told her 
 story, which she made brief and direct on this occasion, 
 nerving herself to the effort. He wanted to make sure 
 that it was not a case of hysteria, the fabrication of a 
 neurotic brain. 
 
 From Scotland Yard Arden went to Grosvenor Square, 
 after having taken Mrs. Kelvin to her house in Half Moon 
 Street. She was worn out by the emotions of the last two 
 hours, and sat silent and speechless in the hansom as they 
 drove through the crowded streets between Whitehall and 
 Mayfair. 
 
 The house was small, a fagade, two windows broad, with 
 pink geraniums from basement to garrets, and a white door. 
 It was a house like a bofibo?inih-e, that gave an impression 
 of charm and prettiness, which the visitor carried in with 
 him, and transferred to his hostess. There was no discor- 
 dant note in the gamut of beauty, between the pavement 
 outside and the perfectly dressed woman sitting by an 
 artistic hearth. 
 
 To-day Mrs. Kelvin was out of tune with this futile 
 prettiness, and did not look as if she belonged to the 
 house. Indeed, she stared about her vaguely when the 
 hansom stopped, and Arden alighted to hand her out, as 
 if she hardly knew that she lived there. 
 
 " I thank you for having carried this thing through," he 
 said, as he parted with her. " Be assured that there was 
 nothing else to be done." 
 
 " And my evidence will hang St. Just," she said, looking 
 at him with agonized eyes. " If you knew how I admired 
 him — what dreams I have had about him ! " 
 
 '' But they were deluding dreams. You know now that 
 the man is a monster. You will forget him, I hope, when 
 all is over. And as for his fate, I think you need have 
 little fear. I don't believe his crime will ever be brought 
 to justice." 
 
 The door had been opened, and they were speaking in 
 lowered accents, while the highly respectable butler waited 
 in the hall. 
 
 The hardest part of Arden's work remained to be done. 
 
 365 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 He had to tell Selby the story of his wife's death, a story 
 in which, however he might soften details and throw a 
 gloss over cruel facts, the adoring husband must needs 
 discover that his wife had dallied with the tempter, had 
 suffered herself to be courted and pursued ; only making a 
 stand against the destroyer when her folly had brought 
 about a crisis that meant life or death — at least, the death of 
 character and honour, the ruin of a woman's soul. That 
 in this case it should have meant murder was an abnormal 
 development of a normal situation. 
 
 Walter Arden spoke as a man who loved the dead woman, 
 and pitied her devoted husband. If these ghastly details of 
 the tragedy could have been kept from Selby's knowledge, 
 he would have been silent ; but for Selby to hear the story 
 at the inquest, from Mrs. Kelvin's lips, unprepared for such 
 a revelation, would be a harder blow. 
 
 Arden tried to excuse his sister. Her folly had been 
 the common indiscretion of women of her class. She had 
 allowed a man to pursue her, meaning only to trifle with 
 him, flattered by attentions that had neither value nor 
 significance for her. She had not reckoned with the fierce 
 passions of a profligate — a homicidal maniac, perhaps ; for 
 the crime, as witnessed by Mrs. Kelvin, seemed the crime 
 of a madman. She had not understood. 
 
 Selby caught at every excuse that spared his idol. 
 
 " No, no ; she did not understand," he sobbed. " How 
 should she understand her danger ? She was accustomed 
 to be admired, to have the best men in London society 
 hanging round her, worshipping her. We used to talk of 
 her conquests. I used to chaff her about her victims. It 
 was a favourite joke with us. She knew what perfect con- 
 fidence I had in her. I knew her character — such pride ; 
 such fearlessness. Women of that stamp never go wrong. 
 How should she reckon with a profligate and a madman, 
 like this devil ? Oh, God, that I may see him swing ! They 
 must let me see him. I have the right, whatever their law 
 may be. I shall never believe he has paid the penalty, 
 unless I see him fall through the drop." 
 
 366 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 From Douglas Campbell^ Tasmania, to Walter Ardcn, Lcndcn, 
 
 My dear Arden, 
 
 Your last letter interested me profoundly, as 
 indeed all your letters have done, and however beyond the 
 limits of human thought your idea of the entrance of an evil 
 spirit into the tabernacle of a pure departed soul may be, it 
 does not pass beyond my conception of the things that may 
 be. I have never acknowledged that the manifestation of the 
 powers of good and evil ended with the Apostolic age ; and 
 that after Peter and Paul had passed from earth there were 
 to be no more miraculous healing of the blind and the lame, 
 no more raising of the dead, no more angehc visitants, 
 before whose coming prison walls fell, and iron fetters were 
 loosened, no more visions, no more opening of the heavens, 
 as they opened before Saul of Tarsus, transforming the 
 pitiless persecutor into the ardent disciple. There are those 
 who see life in its material, and those who see it in its 
 spiritual, aspect. To me nothing is incredible ; for I believe 
 in the spirit-world. I walk as one who moves among the 
 unseen. The transmigration of souls is no more wonderful 
 than the communication of thought from the mind of the 
 dead to the mind of the living ; and you know that this is 
 with me a fixed article of faith. I therefore recognize no 
 impossibihty in the lifeless clay of a good m.an becoming the 
 tenement of an evil spirit. I confess to a deep-seated belief 
 in a universe ruled by conflicting powers, a ceaseless battle 
 between good and evil, a beneficent God, a malignant devil. 
 I know this is not the modern view. We have eliminated 
 incarnate iniquity from our namby-pamby latter-day creed ; 
 and by banishing the devil we have made it easier to do 
 without God. Yet in the experience of every man's life there 
 is the sense of an abiding Beneficence, towards which his 
 hands stretch out in the hour of despair, when the deep 
 waters of sorrow are closing over his head ; and of an omni- 
 present power of evil luring him, dragging him into the 
 depths of sin, working against his peace, turning the innocent 
 joys of life to dust and ashes, making the good things that 
 he has loved hateful. I am ready to believe that in your 
 sufferings of the past years you have been the sport of the 
 enemy of man ; but on the other hand I am constrained to 
 
 367 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 consider your state of mind from a common-sense stand- 
 point; and so considered, I see in you tiie victim of a horrible 
 hallucination, the morbid growth of a highly nervous tem- 
 perament, and the not unnatural development of thought, in 
 a mind unsustained by the belief in something higher and 
 nobler than itself. 
 
 In plain words, my dear Arden, I believe that the materia- 
 list, in shutting his mind against the idea of God, is in danger 
 of opening his mind to the idea of Satan. It is the old 
 parable of the empty house and the seven devils. So large 
 a part of man's existence is imagination and thought, that he 
 cannot be satisfied without a belief in thq supernatural, the 
 something stronger, or the something better than himself; 
 and if imagination has no dream of heaven, and thought is 
 fettered to the sordid realities of earth, what can the end be 
 but despair ? If God is not a necessary fact in the universe, 
 the idea of God is a necessary element in the mind of man. 
 I do not despair of you. Dark as your horizon has been, 
 and obstinate as your rejection of the faith in the world 
 beyond, the faith that upheld me in the hour when Death 
 struck my promised bride, and when the light went out of 
 my life for ever, I believe that peace may yet be yours, if 
 you, who have been so ready to believe in the children of 
 darkness, wijl open your heart and mind to the children of 
 light ; that invisible legion of angels who encompass and 
 protect the righteous upon earth. From those ministering 
 spirits to the Omnipotent Ruler of the universe is a natural 
 and easy transition. Years ago, in our heated discussions, 
 you declared yourself an absolute materialist. You scoffed 
 at all things unthinkable or unknowable. A terrible experi- 
 ence has shown you the diabolical side of the unknowable. 
 God grant that your future experience may show you the 
 divine and the infinitely good. 
 
 You will say this is a sermon instead of a letter, but I 
 know you will forgive the preacher. 
 
 Yours always, 
 
 Douglas Campbell. 
 
 Campbell's letter was delivered in Guelph Place on the 
 morning of the funeral, and was hastily read and laid aside 
 for consideration later. The previous evening had brought 
 
 368 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Arden a letter from James Walsh, the East End doctor, 
 which he read with eager interest, even at a time when 
 all his thoughts were centred on the tragedy of his sister's 
 death. 
 
 Maple Row, Commercial Road. 
 
 July i6ih, 1S9-. 
 
 Dear Mr. Arden, 
 
 When we met after my return from Trevelyan, 
 I told you that I meant to send an account of Lord St. Just's 
 case to the Lancet. I carried out this intention, and wrote 
 a detailed description of the strange experience, taking care 
 to give no clue to my patient's identity, and therefore with- 
 holding my own name from the foot of the letter. 
 
 Well, my communication attracted more attention than I 
 had anticipated, and gave rise to a discussion which lasted 
 some time, other examples being cited that bore more or less 
 resemblance to my case ; but there was only one of these in 
 which I saw a startling correspondence in the manifestations 
 of the patient's altered nature; and seeing that this account was 
 contributed by a very old doctor, whom I had known as an 
 occasional visitor during my hospital practice, I was induced 
 to call upon him, in the hope of obtaining further details. 
 
 Dr. Maldon, who for about forty years was head physician 
 at one of the great city hospitals, has lived the greater part 
 of his life in the heart of commercial London, ^^^:lile 
 almost all his brother practitioners have pitched their tents 
 in Harley Street and Cavendish Square, or places of corre- 
 sponding gentility, old Dr. INIaldon has been content to 
 live in an early Georgian court, buried among banking- 
 houses and mercantile offices, a silent solitude amidst the 
 throbbing pulses of the great city. He is known to be a 
 rich man — rich enough to gratify his taste in a West End 
 house, and a country seat, if he so willed ; but he has the 
 adhesive temperament, the love of old things long used 
 and familiar ; and I could see by the way he walked round 
 his sombre panelled sitting-room, with its ponderous early 
 Victorian furniture, its cockatoo cage, and wicker dog- 
 kennel, where a plethoric fawn-coloured pug lay perdu, that 
 in this city abode of his were garnered all the things he 
 cares for. 
 
 I told him who I was, and reminded him of our meetings 
 
 369 2 B 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 in the hospital, when I had been proud to follow him in his 
 round of the wards, and to listen to his words of wisdom, 
 as he stood beside the beds. He remembered me, and 
 was quite ready to talk of the strange case which he had 
 written about, when he found that I was the writer of the 
 first letter. 
 
 He said that of course all he was going to tell me would 
 be told in confidence, and he would therefore withhold no 
 particulars. The experience had come upon him as a very 
 young man, when he was assistant to a general practitioner 
 in the Midlands, in a hunting-country. During his principal's 
 absence he was called in to attend a young man, who was 
 lying at the chief hotel in the town, after a bad accident in 
 the hunting-field. His horse had turned a somersault over 
 a stiff timber fence ; and the rider had been pitched upon his 
 head. It was a bad case of concussion of the brain, with 
 other injuries. Valet and grooms were in despair. Their 
 master was the best and kindest of men. If he had been 
 their own flesh and blood they could not have been fonder 
 of him. There were friends of the young man staying at 
 the hotel, who gave him as good a character, and showed the 
 keenest interest in his welfare. 
 
 It was a very bad case, and the patient went very near 
 the gates of death. The hunting-season was over before 
 he began to recover, and the convalescence was very 
 slow ; but from the hour of restored consciousness the 
 character of the man, as demonstrated in every word 
 and every act, appeared the very opposite of the character 
 described by his friends and servants. The kind and 
 generous master, the sweet-tempered, unselfish friend, had 
 become a selfish and savage tyrant, subject to paroxysms 
 of blind unreasoning fury that touched the border-line of 
 madness. The valet was an elderly man, and had been 
 servant to his master's father ; so the young doctor ventured 
 to question him as to the family history. Had there ever 
 been madness in the family ? Yes, the man admitted, there 
 had been a terrible case among his master's remote ancestry, 
 more than a hundred years ago, a case of madness and 
 homicide, the murder of a mad-house doctor, in the days 
 when lunatics were treated v/ith infernal cruelty. This 
 unhappy man, the patient's great-grandfather, had been one 
 
 370 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 of the early followers of the ^Vesleys, a fanatic in religion, 
 and notorious in his own county for leading the life of an 
 anchorite, and spending his fortune upon works of charity, 
 his manner of going about among the labouring classes of 
 the district, mostly miners, becoming more and more ec- 
 centric, until his eccentricities culminated in unmistakable 
 indications of insanity. 
 
 Dr. Maldon never met his patient again after he saw him 
 drive away from the hotel in a post-chaise, with his valet and 
 head groom in attendance, on the first stage of his long cross- 
 country journey to the West of England. 
 
 The mention of the AVest of England startled me. I 
 asked if the man's home was in Cornwall. The reply was 
 more startling, for it told me that the man was our man's 
 grandfather, the ninth Lord St. Just; and his after history 
 was no less tragical than the transformation of the man you 
 and I loved. Dr. Maiden's patient survived his accident 
 only three years, married, became the father of a son and 
 heir, and six months after his boy's birth drowned himself 
 in a lake in the grounds of his Highland shooting-box. Dr. 
 Maldon heard later from a member of the family that there 
 could be no doubt of this Lord St. Just's madness ; though 
 the devoted care of his wife, a remarkably clever woman, 
 had kept the secret of his infirmit)', at the cost of great 
 suffering to herself. 
 
 Now,"in Dr. Maiden's view of the case, the strain of mad- 
 ness latent in the St. Just family had reappeared in his 
 patient, as a consequence of a serious injury to the brain. 
 My own view of what I call our case corresponds with his 
 view. I believe that during St. Just's illness some subtle 
 change took place in his brain; and that the man whose 
 conduct and instincts so perplexed us was, to all intents and 
 purposes, a madman. I await with profound anxiety the 
 future development of his character, so changed from all I 
 remember of benevolence and noble feeling. 
 
 Beheve me, with apologies for the length of this letter, 
 
 Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 Richard Walsh. 
 
 Madness ! Atavism ! The strain of insanity in the 
 blood of his race ! Could the change in the man he had 
 
 371 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 known be so plausibly, so reasonably, accounted for ? Arden 
 brooded over the doctor's letter during the night journey 
 to Basle, sleepless among slumbering fellow-passengers. 
 I'he few hours of the summer night seemed intolerably 
 slow, and a long day's journey was to follow before he 
 could reach his young wife in the quiet valley, an hour's 
 drive from Chiavenna. 
 
 Lucerne, the St. Gothard, Como, the lake, the railway 
 again ; and then extra post to his destination. As he 
 thought of the different stages of his journey it seemed end- 
 less. Such a pleasant holiday trip for the mind at ease — 
 a luxurious progress through scenes of surpassing beauty 
 — eating, drinking, reading, talking, \vhile that lovely 
 panorama of mountain and torrent, village and vineyard, 
 river and garden and meadow, slowly unfolds itself, and 
 Switzerland melts into Italy ; but for the mind racked 
 with fear, what slow torture • 
 
 St. Just was at large, a homicidal madman, relentless, a 
 devil of insane fury. After Mrs. Kelvin's account of the 
 murder, could Arden doubt that the man was mad? A 
 murder so cruel, so motiveless, could have its beginning 
 only in the brain of insanity. St. Just was at large ; St. 
 Just who, in his better nature, had been Rachel's secret 
 adorer. The fear that he had gone, not to Paris, as his 
 servant affirmed, but in pursuit of Rachel, filled Arden's 
 mind with unspeakable horror. It was an idle fear, per- 
 haps — one of his morbid imaginings — but it was a fear that 
 made the night and day one long agony. 
 
 372 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 The solitary days had passed slowly, but peacefully, for 
 Rachel in the quiet valley, where the glory of the surround- 
 ing hills, the deep peace of the chestnut woods, the long 
 level pastures sprinkled with pale purple crocuses, alive with 
 the fair}' music of unseen grasshoppers, the river creeping 
 lazily between verdant banks, and reflecting the cloudless 
 blue, the sense of summer in the air, all made for content- 
 ment and joy. Rachel was peculiarly sensitive to the 
 influence of natural beauty ; and though her mind dwelt 
 much upon the tragedy of Mary Selby's death, she could 
 but feel the Divine gift of life, in a world where there was 
 so much of varied and romantic loveliness. Her reunion 
 with her husband had brought an abiding peace into her 
 life. Sympathy, confidence, the perfect bond between man 
 and wife, had been made good as in the early days of their 
 marriage. She thought of him in his trouble with profound 
 tenderness, and longed for his return, but without anxiety ; 
 for post and telegraph had kept them in touch with each 
 other in the few days of their severance ; and to-night she 
 was to welcome him back to a place which seemed like 
 home, so deep was the charm of its tranquil beauty, and 
 the sense that she had been happy there. 
 
 She had made friends of the children and the women ; 
 and was almost as much in sympathy with them as if they 
 had been her old pensioners of East-End London. She 
 had sat in their little gardens, and heard the story of their 
 simple lives, their hard work, and many deprivations — a life 
 as laborious as the life of the London poor, but with less of 
 struggle and uncertainty. The children admired and adored 
 the beautiful stranger, who talked to them in her slow care- 
 ful Italian, and who took such pains to understand their 
 patois ; they hung about her footsteps as she walked by the 
 
 373 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 river, and brought her flowers, which were really the gifts of 
 love, not the offering of the cadging child greedy for the 
 stranger's pence. Her money gifts were to the house- 
 mothers, or the old women, never to the children, for whom 
 she had cakes and fruit sometimes in the trellised arbour 
 where she spent the hottest hours of the day. She liked 
 to see the bright olive faces, and the dark eyes, peering in 
 at the leafy door, smiling and beaming at her, eager for her 
 notice. She would take the smallest children on her lap, 
 and let them touch her laces, and her hair, with inquisitive 
 little fingers ; and as she looked at the dark heads crowding 
 round her chair, she would select the boy whose age came 
 nearest to the years of her son, had he lived. He was never 
 forgotten, never long absent from her mind, and often — 
 very often — present in her dreams. She had dreamt lately 
 that he was given back to her. She had held him in her 
 arms, with a sense of overwhelming joy. The dream haunted 
 her, and was with her in all her solitary hours. Every 
 night on her knees she read the story of the Christ-Child's 
 coming, of the gladness on earth and in heaven ; and that 
 Divine Image went with all her thoughts of the child she 
 had lost, and the child she had seen in her dreams. 
 
 The hour of her husband's return was approaching. She 
 had postponed dinner till his arrival, though she did not 
 expect him till nearly ten o'clock. It was past nine, and 
 she was walking in the garden, with her young St. Bernard 
 frolicking round her, in the cool evening air. The clock 
 of the neighbouring church had not long struck the first 
 quarter, when she heard traveller wheels on the road from 
 the frontier, and rejoiced wonderingly at this early arrival. 
 She did not pause to question whether the carriage could 
 be bringing her husband. Impulsive in her glad surprise, 
 she ran to the gate to meet the traveller. She stood beside 
 the drive, a few paces from the open gates, an ethereal 
 figure, in her white gown, with bare head. Her dog growled 
 angrily when the carriage stopped, and a man sprang out 
 and stood in front of her with outstretched hands. It was 
 not her husband. 
 
 The moonlight flashed upon a pale, resolute face. 
 
 " Lord St. Just ! " she cried, startled and scared at the 
 unexpected appearance. 
 
 374 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 The St. Bernard made a whining noise that was almost a 
 howl, and slunk into the shrubber}'. 
 
 Rachel shrank away from those outstretched hands with 
 a sudden sense of loathing, as if some unclean animal had 
 approached her. And then there flashed upon her all that 
 her husband had said of the change in St. Just's nature, and 
 it seemed, as she looked at him, paralyzed by an inexpli- 
 cable fear, that this was not the man she had known, the 
 friend she had trusted, the saint by whose bed she had 
 knelt in an hour that had been a sacred memory, even after 
 the peril of death was past; an hour on the threshold of 
 the grave, hallowed by the most solemn rites of the Church 
 she loved. 
 
 "You look frightened, Mrs. Arden," he said. "Is it 
 such a very startling thing to see me in Switzerland ? " 
 
 " I am expecting my husband — I thought he was coming, 
 when I heard your carriage. But he is not really due for 
 another quarter of an hour." 
 
 " You are expecting him from England ? From Chia- 
 venna ? " 
 
 " Yes. He was to be at Chiavenna at eight o'clock." 
 
 " I travelled by the same train. I am sorry I have some 
 bad nev^'s for you," St. Just said slowly, after a few moments' 
 silence. 
 
 The measured words and compassionate tone scared her, 
 and instantly suggested calamity. 
 
 " There has been an accident. He is hurt— dangerously 
 hurt 1 " she exclaimed, panic-stricken. 
 
 " No, no. Pray be calm. There has been an accident. 
 Not on the railway. He has been hurt, but not dangerously. 
 I have come to take you to him." 
 
 " You are very good. I will go this instant. Where is he ? " 
 
 "At a village a few miles oft. He was driving in an 
 open carriage; his horses bolted at the bridge near the 
 frontier, and he was thrown out. He fell against one of 
 those granite posts that guard the road. There are con- 
 tusions, a broken collar-bone, severe injuries — but nothing 
 dangerous to life. It was a wonderful escape. If he had 
 fallen over the edge of the road, he must have been killed. 
 Will you go to the inn where he is lying? My carriage 
 will take you. I changed horses at the frontier." 
 
 375 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 *' Yes ; I will go this instant. It was kind of yoU to 
 come for me. I had better bring my maid, and Walter's 
 servant. They can be useful." 
 
 " No, no ; time is too precious. He had not recovered 
 consciousness when I left him ; and the doctor thought it 
 important that he should see a familiar face when he comes 
 to himself. Your people can follow." 
 
 " Yes, they can follow in another carriage. I will give 
 orders. What is the name of the place ? " 
 
 " It is the village nearest the Custom House. There is 
 only one inn. There can be no mistake." 
 
 " You say he has a doctor with him ? " 
 
 "Yes, an Italian — an intelligent little man, who seemed 
 quite equal to the occasion." 
 
 " And he told you there was no danger ? " 
 
 " None, that he could foresee, with proper care." 
 
 Rachel ran to the house, and to her room, where she 
 summoned her faithful handmaid, and gave the necessary 
 instructions. Valet and maid were to follow, directly a 
 carriage could be got for them. She put on a hat and 
 cloak, and hurried back to the gate where St. Just was 
 waiting for her. He had not entered the house during 
 her brief absence. The driver was in his seat, ready to 
 start. 
 
 ! The carriage was a closed landau, from which it was not 
 easy to see the road in the varying lights and shadows. The 
 moon was waning, that moon which had looked upon the 
 murder of Mary Selby. For some way the road was familiar 
 to Rachel. They crossed the bridge over the torrent, passed 
 two or three white houses, where lights were glowing 
 in the windows, then drove rapidly downhill, to the road 
 along which Rachel passed and repassed in her daily walks. 
 She knew every yard of the way they were going, up to this 
 point, but she saw very little of the passing scene. The 
 glass on her side of the carriage was drawn up, and St. Just's 
 figure hid the open window on his side. 
 
 Her whole mind was absorbed in questioning him about 
 her husband — the kind of inn to which he had been taken, 
 the attendance and accommodation, the distance from the 
 scene of the accident, the manner in which he had been 
 carried. Every detail was vital. She had no faith in the 
 
 376 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Italian doctor's knowledge or skill. A village doctor ! She 
 would telephone from the frontier to St. Moritz, for the 
 English doctor she knew there. They had been driving for 
 half an hour before she began to think of the road on which 
 they were travelling, so keen had been her anxiety about her 
 husband's condition And then suddenly it occurred to her 
 that, although the horses were going at a good pace, they 
 seemed always going uphill. 
 
 " Are we on the right road ? " she asked, in an agitated 
 voice. *' I thought it was all downhill to Chiavenna." 
 
 " No ; the road varies. There is a stiffish hill on this 
 side of the frontier." 
 
 The horses were going slowly now, and they were 
 obviously going uphill. Rachel was bewildered, doubtful, 
 and perplexed ; for it seemed to her, on reflection, that they 
 had been travelling upward the whole way, though her 
 troubled mind had failed to note the fact before. 
 
 She put down the window hurriedly and looked out. 
 They were in a street of white houses, on the ridge of 
 a hill : an old gateway, a big church, looked ghostly in the 
 wan light of the moon. It might have been a phantom city, 
 a place of dreams. She looked up at the church, with its 
 high tower and cupola, the classic archway. 
 
 " Why, this is Locco ! " she cried ; " the village on the top 
 of the hill. What does it mean. Lord St. Just ? Why ha\ e 
 you deceived me ? Is my husband here ? " 
 
 " Ves, he is here." 
 
 " But why — why so far off the main road. No, no ; it 
 can't be true. It is a trick of some kind. ^Vhere is he ? " 
 
 The carriage turned a sharp corner in the narrow street, 
 passed under the archway, and pulled up in an open sj'ace 
 in front of a large house, a palace once, now an inn. 
 
 A man opened the door as the carriage stopped. Lights 
 were burning in the hall — spacious, gloomy ; a place of faded 
 splendours and dense shadows, a low ceiling, with carved 
 cornice and heavy cross-beams. A wide stone staircase, 
 with ponderous balusters of dark Sienna marble, faced the 
 doorway. An elderly chambermaid was in attendance. 
 Travellers were evidently expected, albeit the hour was 
 late. 
 
 Rachel questioned the man in Italian. 
 
 377 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " The gentleman who had been thrown out of a carriage, 
 was he in that house ? " 
 
 " The fellow understands nothing but his own patois," 
 said St. Just, hurriedly. " Come, come, Mrs. Arden, don't 
 waste time, now you are here." 
 
 She followed him up the shallow marble steps, almost 
 mechanically, the chambermaid going in front, carrying 
 a pair of tall candles in copper candlesticks. The unac- 
 countable repulsion she had felt on St. Just's appearance in 
 the garden was stronger now. In doubt, and in a vague 
 horror, she followed him, not in fear. She who had never 
 shrunk from danger in the East End slums, who had sat in 
 the house of crime, knelt by the bed of the dying convict, 
 knew not fear. But a sense of aversion, an instinctive recoil 
 from the man who had once been her trusted friend, chilled 
 her with a sickening dread. She looked about her with 
 wide eyes, as she followed St. Just up four flights of the 
 broad staircase, to the second floor — the noble floor, as it 
 had once been called — and into a large sitting-room, where 
 the two candles, which the chambermaid placed on a centre 
 table, served only to indicate the gloomy spaciousness, the 
 tapestried walls, tarnished gilding, and sombre colouring. 
 
 " Where is my husband ? " she cried, hurrying across 
 the room, to a door opposite the one by which they had 
 entered. 
 
 She tried the door in front of her, and found it locked ; 
 then turned and saw St. Just standing before the entrance 
 door, and heard the key turn as he locked it. 
 
 " A thousand miles away ; in London, so far as I know," 
 he answered, smiling at her. 
 
 " What do you mean ? Is it a trick, then ? He was 
 right. You are changed — utterly changed. You who were 
 so good, so honourable." 
 
 "A man may grow tired of being good, as you call it. 
 Goodness earns such poor wages. All the best things in 
 this world are for the not good; the wicked, perhaps, you 
 would call them ; the men who desire gladness, and beauty, 
 and the joy of life." 
 
 " Why did you bring me here ? Is my husband safe — 
 unhurt ? Have you told me nothing but lies ? " 
 
 " I have spread a net for a glorious bird, that could be 
 
 378 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 caught no other way. It was a stale device, my love, but 
 the only one that would serve. And you are here, you are 
 my companion, in this lonely mountain inn, empty of people, 
 except the inn servants, who take us for man and wife. My 
 queen, my goddess, you belong to me now, and for ever — 
 this world's paltry for ever. You are mine to the end of 
 this mortal life, my hfe or yours." 
 
 She saw the light in his eyes, the light of madness as she 
 thought. Two spots of hectic red flamed on his hollow 
 cheeks, but his Hps were ashen. Nothing but a maddened 
 brain could account for the devilry of his conduct. She 
 braced her nerves to meet the danger. 
 
 " Open that door," she said, looking at him with resolute 
 eyes, an indomitable spirit shining out of her pale face, every 
 line rigid, her head held high, a noble fearlessness in her 
 attitude as she confronted him. "Unlock that door, this 
 instant. Do you think I am afraid of you ? " 
 
 "Afraid? No, no, Rachel. You know your power, the 
 power of your Divine beauty. I am master of the situation ; 
 but I am your slave, ready to crawl at your feet, to let you 
 set your foot upon my neck. Hard words from those sweet 
 lips will fall hke roses. You cannot treat me so ill that I 
 shall love you less. Do with me what you will; only 
 stay with me, only give me love for love." 
 
 In that moment, seeing the fierce passion in his face, her 
 courage failed all at once, and she realized her helplessness, 
 caught in the toils, a bird in the snare of the fowler, a pure 
 woman for the first time face to face with impurity, the 
 passion of the Satyr for the nymph. 
 
 She shrank from him with such aversion as she had never 
 felt for human kind. The light in his eyes was devilish ; the 
 lurid patches on his cheeks suggested the fires of hell. She 
 had faced madness before to-night, and had not feared ; but 
 now she knew that she was facing something worse than 
 madness. She felt as if she were standing amidst the roar 
 of waters, with the rising tide encircling her, great waves 
 leaping up to overwhelm her, and storm-winds shrieking 
 round her, drowning her call for help. She gave one wild 
 cry, looked about her in her desperation, saw that one of the 
 long casement windows was ajar, and moved towards it as 
 St. Just approached her, facing him with widely opened eyes. 
 
 379 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 He came towards her quietly, with a smile upon his pale 
 lips. 
 
 " Your master, my beloved, and yet your slave," he said, 
 holding out his arms, and then stopped suddenly and reeled 
 against a chair, as she rushed to the window, flung it open, 
 and vanished from his sight. 
 
 Still leaning over the chair, struggling for breath, he heard 
 the muffled sound of something falling in the garden below, 
 and knew that she had thrown herself from the balcony. 
 He felt a torrent of blood weUing up in his throat and 
 choking him, as he staggered to the open window, and on 
 to the light iron balcony, and, looking down through the 
 darkness, he saw the white figure lying in the long grass by 
 the side of a stone fountain, fifteen feet below. 
 
 The house was built on the steep slope of the hill, and 
 the garden at the back was not more than fifteen feet below 
 the rooms on the second floor. 
 
 He had scarcely strength to drag himself back into the 
 room, and to the bell, and then he sank into one of the 
 mammoth sixteenth-century chairs, and let his head fall 
 back against the tapestried cushion. 
 
 Rage, disappointment, humiliation, had been in his mind 
 as he saw his prey escape him ; but now there was but one 
 passion left in him, the fierce love of life. He knew that he 
 was dying. This bright red stream which was pouring from 
 his lips was life — life ebbing momently — the life he loved, 
 the life in which he had triumphed over weaker lives, had 
 always felt himself the stronger in every contest of human 
 force. It was going from him : and when again should he 
 taste the joy of living — how win his way back to the earth 
 he loved? The machine was broken. 
 
 Some one knocked at the door. He could not open 
 it. Or, if he could, what could mortal aid do for him ? 
 The machine was broken. He knew that this was the 
 end. 
 
 He heard people trying to open the door, then voices, 
 then some one came to the other door, and tried it, the door 
 he had locked that afternoon when he had engaged the 
 rooms, and made his survey of the bower he had chosen for 
 his caged bird. He had heard of this mountain village from 
 the Italian courier whom he had employed to discover 
 
 380 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 Arden's whereabouts in Switzerland, and report his move- 
 ments ; a man of many languages, and no prejudices. And 
 from this retreat he meant to convey his captive to Genoa — a 
 willing captive, he hoped — and thence to far-off seas, beyond 
 the reach of social laws, or a husband's revenge ; far off to 
 loveliest lands under torrid skies, and that semi-savage life 
 for which he had longed with a fervid desire, while hemmed 
 round with the restraints of modern civiHzation ; the life of 
 the savage and the brute, for whom to exist means to enjoy, 
 whose vision of hfe knows neither past nor future. 
 
 381 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 The white walls of Locco were shining in the morning sun, 
 and the church bells were ringing for mass, when Arden 
 alighted in front of the old-world palace that was now an 
 inn. He looked a spectral figure in the vivid light, his 
 haggard face grey with anguish. He had been driving to 
 and fro since ten o'clock on the previous night, when he 
 arrived at Damezzo, where he was received as if he had been 
 a ghost, and was told of the supposed accident, and of his 
 wife's hurried departure for an inn near the frontier, with 
 Lord St. just. Man and maid had followed half an hour 
 later, by their mistress's order. 
 
 Frantic with anxiety, Arden started in pursuit, as soon as 
 fresh horses could be got for him ; but it was a wild pursuit, 
 since he had no clue to the way St. Just's carriage had gone. 
 The innkeeper declared it had taken the Chiavenna road ; 
 but Arden had met only one carriage, which might have 
 been the one containing his servants. He had not noticed 
 (he occupants, as it drove past him in the doubtful light. 
 
 He went to the station at Chiavenna, after having made 
 inquiries for newly arrived travellers, at two hotels. There 
 was a train that left after midnight, and he waited till that 
 was gone ; since it was possible that St. Just might have 
 tricked a distracted wife into going farther than he had urged 
 her at first. With that story of her husband's danger, he might 
 take her where he chose. In her agitation and distress she 
 might scarcely know where she was being taken. The 
 midnight train left ; but there was no sign of the travellers 
 he was watching for. He started on the way back, after 
 changing horses, but it was a slower and longer journey, 
 and he was tortured by the knowledge of his helplessness. 
 What next could he do, and what next, and what next ? 
 
 382 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 His wife was in the power of a murderer ; fiend, or madnian, 
 he knew not which. A homicidal lunatic, the victim of 
 hereditary' mania; or the reincarnation of the wickedest 
 human being he had ever known. WTiichever view he chose 
 to take of the man St. Just, the knowledge that his wife 
 was in that man's power was equally appalling. 
 
 There were no tidings of his wife at Damezzo. The two 
 servants had come back, after their ineftectual search for the 
 inn near the frontier, where they had been told their master 
 would be found. The false inform.ation, and their mistress's 
 hurried departure with St. Just, had awakened suspicion ; and 
 the valet had spent the early morning hours going about the 
 neighbourhood, in the hope of getting on the track of the 
 carriage that had spirited away his master's wife. There 
 was the possibility of error rather than villainy; but while 
 the woman inclined to think there had been a mistake in 
 the direction that her mistress had given her, the man 
 beUeved the worst, and devoted himself with unflagging 
 energy to the search for information. 
 
 The people of Damezzo were early risers, whose day began 
 soon after the sun appeared above the edge of the eastern 
 hills, a golden light behind the dark line of fir trees, the 
 white homesteads, and cattle-sheds. From one of this 
 industrious race the valet heard of an empty landau that 
 had been seen returning from Locco at daybreak ; and the 
 description of the carriage, with a grey and a brown horse, 
 taUied with that in which the man had seen his mistress 
 leave the hotel. The valet now thought it possible that 
 there had been a mistake on his mistress's part as to the 
 place of the accident; and that his m,aster was lying at 
 Locco. 
 
 He went back to the hotel, and miet Arden in the hall ; 
 so that last possibility of honest dealing on St. Just's part 
 v/as at an end. He told his master what he had heard ; and 
 a quarter of an hour later Arden was on his way to Locco 
 behind another pair of horses. 
 
 At the inn at Locco all was confusion and terror. The 
 unknown traveller of yesterday, a great gentleman who had 
 engaged the v.hole of the noble floor for himself and his 
 lady, v/as quite dead; and the lady, the beautiful young 
 wife, was lying unconscious, and in peril of death, having 
 
 383 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 fallen, the good God alone knew wherefore, from the 
 balcony of the saloon. 
 
 " By the merciful interposition of our blessed Lady, the 
 fall had not been fatal," the innkeeper said piously. " The 
 sweet young English lady was still living." 
 
 " Was the signor a relation — perhaps the honourable lady's 
 brother ? " suggested the chambermaid. 
 
 " I am her husband." 
 
 " Heavens ! And the gentleman who brought her here, 
 and who spoke of her as his wife " 
 
 "Was an unspeakable villain. Is it true that he is 
 dead?" 
 
 " True as the sky above us. He had not been in this 
 house ten minutes ; the saloon bell rang violently — we 
 have no electric bells here; it is a loud bell that can be 
 heard all over the house — we rushed to answer it, for it 
 had the sound of danger. We found both doors locked — 
 the door on the landing, and the door in the bedroom 
 where he now lies. All the rooms on the noble floor have 
 doors of communication. We heard strange sounds within 
 — sounds of choking — deep groans ; and we broke open the 
 door. He was lying in the armchair. His head had fallen 
 across the arm, his hands were grasping the wood-work 
 convulsively, as in the last struggle ; the blood was bubbling 
 from his lips, but slower and slower. His eyes were wide 
 open — glassy, horrible. Ah, signor, it will be long before 
 we forget that sight. All has been done that was needful. 
 I have taken care of that. I sent for the mayor last night. 
 The signor had a letter-case in his pocket, stuffed with bank- 
 notes, which has been put in a sealed envelope. Every- 
 thing has been done in proper order. They will bury him 
 this night, in our little cemetery, unless you have the body 
 removed before the evening." 
 
 " Let him lie where his last crime brought him. He is 
 lucky to have escaped a worse fate. And now take me to 
 my wife." 
 
 " La signora is in the room at the other end of the noble 
 floor," said the landlord, and led the way to a spacious 
 chamber, which looked like a state bedroom in the castle 
 of Otranto, a panelled room, of a sombre magnificence, 
 and with a castellated ebony and alabaster bedstead of the 
 
 384 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 sixteenth centur}', huge as the bed of Ware, gloomy as a 
 mausoleum. 
 
 And the figure that lay on it, lightly covered with a 
 silken counterpane, looked so fragile, the white face so still 
 and lifeless, that Arden's heart sank with a sudden despair. 
 If this was not death, it was too hke death; and he gazed 
 at those marble features in an agony of fear. Would those 
 eyelids ever again unveil the lovely eyes, those pallid lips 
 ever smile again? Speechless, motionless, she lay there, 
 like a broken lily. 
 
 They had found her lying on the grass by the fountain. 
 She had fallen upon her right arm, w^hich was broken, the 
 woman who was nursing her told Arden. They feared there 
 might be fracture of the skull, but the doctor from Damezzo 
 had not yet come, though a messenger had been sent at day- 
 break. He was absent, at a distant village, where he had 
 gone to a bad case overnight. 
 
 Arden asked for another messenger, and sent him with a 
 letter to the landlord of the Damezzo hotel, begging him to 
 telephone to St. Moritz, for the English doctor, and an 
 English nurse, if one could be found there. He went down 
 to the hall, put his letter into the messenger's hand, with full 
 instructions. He was to insist upon seeing the hotel keeper 
 without an instant's delay, on a matter of life and death ; he 
 was to wait at Damezzo for the answer on the telephone ; 
 and he was to take a telegram to the post-office, a telegram 
 which Arden had written, informing the Cornish squire of 
 St. Just's sudden death, and the interment arranged for that 
 evening in the cemetery at Locco. Another telegram was 
 to be sent to the Chief at Scotland Yard, to convey the same 
 information. Arden watched the young man pass under 
 the archway, with rapid steps, a slim, long-legged youth, who 
 would be likely to get over the ground quickly, having been 
 promised a generous reward. The innkeeper said he would 
 make the downhill journey, by cross cuts across the woods, 
 as fast as a horse could do it ; and there being no horse 
 available, Arden had to be content with this assurance. 
 
 He went back to the room w^here Rachel was lying, and 
 sat by the bed, motionless, silent, scarcely seeming to 
 breathe, a statue of despair. 
 
 A fractured skull ; reason perhaps fled for ever. \\'ould 
 
 385 2 c 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 she live — if her Hfe were spared — a mindless image ; not the 
 Rachel he had loved, but a beautiful ghost, the semblance 
 of that sweet companion, that bright intelligence ? 
 
 The messenger brought back the reply from St. Moritz. 
 The doctor would start immediately, and bring a nurse with 
 him. Arden calculated that he might arrive in three hours ; 
 three hours of waiting, perhaps of peril. The Damezzo 
 doctor had not been heard of, and, had he appeared, Arden 
 would have hesitated about allowing him to touch the 
 patient. The nurse had applied cold lotions to the broken 
 arm. She seemed a capable person ; but she had not ven- 
 tured to examine the patient's head, and it was only the 
 stains of blood on the pillow that had suggested fracture. 
 
 The day wore on; the slow weary hours of suspense 
 crawled by ; till the time when the doctor might be expected. 
 Every sound of wheels in the stony street now became an 
 agitating fact. Happily, such sounds were not frequent in 
 this torrid month, when the tourist season had not yet begun 
 at Locco. At last there came the sound of quick, light 
 wheels ; and a carriage drew up below. He had come, the 
 bringer of hope, or the bringer of woe. He had come, to 
 pronounce sentence of doom, or give promise of healing. 
 Arden rose, pale as death, and offered the doctor a shaking 
 hand, and murmured a word of welcome to the nurse whom 
 he brought with him, a young Englishwoman, in a neat 
 grey uniform. 
 
 " You are good to come so quickly. My wife fell off the 
 balcony last night. She has been lying senseless ever since. 
 Her arm is broken ; and this good woman thinks there may 
 be injury to the skull. No one has dared to look. We 
 waited for you." 
 
 He spoke with effort, in short sentences, breathlessly. 
 
 " When did the accident happen ? " 
 
 " Between ten and eleven o'clock last night." 
 
 *' Over eighteen hours ! That's long ! " 
 
 The doctor went to the bedside, and helped the nurse 
 to raise the prostrate form, and then, with skilled touches, 
 examined the head under the soft brown hair. 
 
 These are the moments that age a man — the moments 
 that after-years of happiness cannot blot from the memory. 
 
 The doctor looked up, after a slow and careful examination. 
 
 386 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 " There is no injury to the bone. It is a bad case of 
 concussion. And now we will look at the arm." 
 
 That was a more difficult business. Arm and collar-bone 
 were broken, and there were broken ribs. Arden stood 
 with his face to the open window, with his hands clenched, 
 and his heart beating furiously, waiting for the verdict. 
 
 " Is it — is it likely to be fatal ? " he asked, when the 
 doctor came to him. 
 
 " It need not be fatal — if all go well ; but she has been 
 badly hurt. I can't conceal from you that it is a serious 
 case. I don't think the arm will give much trouble. The 
 broken ribs are the worst. There is always fear of lung 
 trouble ; and I don't like the long spell of unconsciousness. 
 You have got a good nurse by a fluke. Nurse iMabel had 
 just finished with a case at Pontresina. She vs'ould have 
 been on her way back to England to-morrow." 
 
 " It was lucky. The person here seems capable. She 
 can help Nurse Mabel, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, we'll make her useful." 
 
 " Shall you set the broken arm at once ? " 
 
 " I thiiik not. I shall wait for some recovery of con- 
 sciousness. She is almost pulseless. I should be afraid to 
 do anything in her present condition." 
 
 " Can you stop with her ? " 
 
 "I'll stop to-night j but I must go back to St. r^Ioritz 
 early to-morrow morning." 
 
 " And after that ? " 
 
 '* I'll come back to-morrow night. And now you had 
 better go and walk about a little. You can be no good 
 here ; and I don't want another patient. I shall have my 
 hands full by-and-by with your wife." 
 
 He spoke with a friendly roughness, which was more 
 cheering than the usual professional manner. Arden had 
 made his acquaintance on the golf-links at Samaden, and 
 had consulted him about some trivial matter, so they were 
 on friendly terms; and now it was evident the doctor's 
 sympathies were awakened by the piteous condition of his 
 patient, whom he had admired in perfect health and beauty 
 less than a month ago. 
 
 Arden did not mean to go farther than the garden. He 
 had been shown the spot where Rachel had been found by 
 
 387 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 the hotel servants, who had been so distracted by the 
 catastrophe of St. Just's sudden death that they remained 
 for some time in ignorance of her fate. The grass still bore 
 the impress of the form that had lain there, and he found 
 stains of blood and a broken comb that had fallen from her 
 hair. 'He fled from the horror of the spot, and went through 
 the little street, with slow, dejected steps, and along the hill- 
 side road, till he came to a tiny cemetery, a place of black 
 wood crosses and neglected graves, where flower and weed 
 grew at random, a lonely graveyard, girdled by a low stone 
 wall. 
 
 A man was digging a grave near the gate. Arden stood 
 and watched him with melancholy eyes. Another grave 
 might have to be dug there, a grave which for him would 
 mean the end of all things. Was she to be taken from him, 
 this sweet woman whom he had loved with all his power 
 of loving; albeit to-day he felt as if he had never loved 
 her well enough, never given her the absolute unqualified 
 adoration which her exquisite nature deserved ? Never 
 before had he known fear for her well-being. Sickness had 
 never tried her ; not even when her child was born, or when 
 her child died. Neither joy nor sorrow had broken that 
 perfect health with which Nature had gifted her. 
 
 He asked the grave-digger for whom he was working. 
 
 " For the foreigner who died at the inn last night : a 
 rich nobleman. He is to be buried at eight o'clock. His 
 friends will take the cofiin up again in a week or two per- 
 haps, and carry his excellence back to his own country. 
 This is a poor place for a rich nobleman." 
 
 " Where the tree falls, there let it lie," said Arden. " If 
 I were to die in this quiet place, I would rather rest here 
 than be carted over half Europe." 
 
 " Ah, but the signor is not going to die, though he looks 
 ill. But I may have another grave to dig to-morrow ; for 
 the foreign excellency's wife threw herself out of window in 
 a passion of grief, when she saw her husband dying, and 
 they tell me she can't live long." 
 
 Arden went back to the inn. He had asked for a room 
 next that where his wife was lying. He found his servant 
 there, unpacking and arranging things, while Rachel's maid 
 had established herself in the sick-room. There was a door 
 
 388 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 between the two rooms ; but the doctor forbade his seeing 
 his wife again tiiat evening. There had been some faint 
 return of consciousness ; but there were also indications of 
 fever, and the patient must be kept perfectly quiet. Fever 
 was now what they had to fear. He could have the satis- 
 faction of knowing that he was near her, and could have 
 frequent tidings of her condition ; and his friendly doctor 
 told him that the best thing he could do was to eat a light 
 supper, and try to get a good night's rest. 
 
 "You think I can rest while her life hangs in the 
 balance ? " 
 
 " It'll be hard, perhaps, but you ought to do it, for her 
 sake. We are going to pull her through; and when she 
 begins to mend, it won't do for her to see the spectre of 
 despair at her bedside. You will have to be cheerful, when 
 she gets better." 
 
 " When she gets better I Tell me that the danger is past, 
 and I will be as merry as a grig." 
 
 " Not if you've let yourself run down, and are looking 
 like an anaemic ghost. Come, I want some food myself; 
 and I shall insist on your eating a cutlet. They profess 
 to be able to give us soup and cutlets at nine o'clock — 
 after the gentleman at the end of the passage has been 
 taken to his last home. Do vou know anything about him, 
 by-the-by?" 
 
 " I know a good deal about him ; but I'd rather not talk 
 of him to-night, if you'll excuse me. I may tell you more 
 some day, perhaps." 
 
 " Are you going to the funeral ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " I have established ]Mrs. Arden's maid as night nurse. 
 The Locco woman will wait upon the sick-room, and help 
 the nurses on occasion. I feel sure we shall do very well." 
 
 " And you will come every day ? " 
 
 " Every night, while the case is urgent. It'll mean my 
 living on the road. But God grant the worst trouble may 
 soon be over, and we shall get into smooth water. I rely 
 upon you for helping me by keeping very quiet." 
 
 " And I am not even to see her ? " 
 
 " Not till I give you leave." 
 
 And now came the dark passage through the valley of 
 
 389 
 
The Conflict, 
 
 the Shadow of Death ; that long agony of suspense, when 
 the Ufe of the creature we love trembles in the balance, 
 and each new sun may rise upon a day of despair. In 
 Arden's case the time was long; the alternations of hope 
 and fear were frequent. The slow hours crawled by — 
 unrest by day, and fear by night. There were many days 
 and nights in which he was not allowed to see his wife, 
 when her frail hold upon existence would be jeopardized by 
 the slightest agitation, and when the doctor's best hope was 
 to keep her in a state of semi-consciousness, all ^motions, 
 all knowledge of the life around her, held in suspense. 
 
 " It is hard lines for you," he said kindly ; *' but you 
 will have your reward by-and-by, if we pull her through." 
 
 If ! That was the terrible word which hung upon Arden's 
 soul like a leaden weight. If ! It was in his mind day 
 after day, as he paced the little garden behind the hotel, 
 miserably restless, yet not daring to go farther from the 
 house, roaming up and down, and in and out, by the old 
 yew hedges, the scarlet and orange salvias, tall and bright, 
 like flowers of fire and flame ; the roses and carnations, 
 jessamine, and myrtle, all the beauty of that summery land, 
 which his weary eyes looked at unseeing. 
 
 There came one terrible sundown, when the fever was 
 at its height, and when the life hung by a thread so fine 
 that the doctor was constrained to speak words of warning. 
 
 " I don't like the look of things, Arden. I am 
 afraid " 
 
 " You are afraid that she will die ? " 
 
 " It is very serious." 
 
 " Let me see her, then — don't keep me from her. Don't 
 let her die without my seeing her. Man alive, if you 
 knew how I love her ! " 
 
 " You can come in and look at her. It will make no 
 difference to her, poor soul. She will not know you. You 
 can come into the room — softly, in your slippers — and keep 
 in the shadow. Don't let her see you." 
 
 Arden crept, shoeless, into the shadowy room, where 
 only one feeble light was burning on the dressing-table. 
 Rachel was lying with wide-open eyes, looking straight 
 before her, and talking rapidly, in a low troubled voice. 
 Who could tell what strange visions were moving before 
 
 390 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 those fever-bright eyes ? They were bUnd to earthly things, 
 and she did not see her husband, as he stood a Uttle way 
 from the bed, gazing at her. 
 
 He stood so for some time, motionless, till the doctor 
 touched him on the shoulder, and gently drew him from 
 the room. 
 
 "You see, my dear fellow, you can do no good here. 
 You must be patient. We are in God's hand." 
 
 Arden remembered a line of Browning's — "We are in 
 God's hand to-night.'' 
 
 Browning believed in God. The strong, staunch, manly 
 confidence in something higher and nobler than humanity 
 rings out clear and loud in that noble verse. It rings as 
 true at the beginning as at the end of the poet's earthly 
 pilgrimage. It was his message to mankind, and it knew 
 no wavering when he passed through the valley of the 
 shadow, and the wife he idolized was taken from him. 
 
 Arden went out of the house into the moonlit garden. 
 It was the first week in October, and the hotel was empty 
 again, as it had been in July. The horror of seeing strange 
 faces, and hearing careless, happy voices, was no longer 
 to be suffered. There had been only a few people, forhe 
 had retained the whole of the principal floor, including 
 that locked bedchamber where the dead man had lain, 
 and which he had never entered. All visitors were gone 
 now, and the mountain air blew keen over the long grass 
 in the quaint old garden. He went from the garden to 
 the street. The great church rose up before him, tower 
 and cupola silver white against the dark ^lue sky. The 
 door was open. He had but to lift the curtain and go in. 
 All was dark and cold, save for the sacred lamp hanging 
 before the altar, and a feeble taper burning here and there 
 in a side chapel. 
 
 He had sat in churches to please his wife, had knelt and 
 listened to the prayers, not in a mocking spirit, not as a 
 hypocrite, but pitying himself for his unbelief, for his having 
 missed that which gave gladness and consolation to other 
 people. But to-night he crept into the vast empty church, 
 into the gloom and silence, crushed and broken, feeling his 
 utter helplessness in the hand of Omnipotence. To-night he 
 wanted God 3 and if beUef could grow in an hour, and if 
 
 391 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 a man who had rejected Christ from his youth upward could 
 change in an instant, and supphcate and adore, and stretch 
 out his hands across the darkness, to touch the hem of the 
 miracle-working garment, and win healing for the creature 
 he loved — if that were possible, there was no depth of self- 
 humiliation, no surrender of intellectual pride, from which 
 he would recoil. He would have made himself a monk of 
 the most fanatical order in Christendom, would have devoted 
 all his future life to automatic prayers and superstitious 
 penances, only to keep his beloved back from the grave ; 
 only to know, even while parted from her by the tyranny 
 of his order, that she lived ; and that in some distant day 
 their hands might meet across the convent bars, and he 
 might see and hear her, were it but for a few moments. 
 
 So far as he could see in the dim light, the church was 
 empty. He knelt in front of the high altar, under the 
 dark-red lamp. He bowed his head on the broad marble 
 railing, grovelling before the Power that he could only half 
 acknowledge. 
 
 He pressed his burning forehead on the cold marble, 
 worn by many a weary brow, by the forehead of sinner 
 and saint, in the centuries that were gone, since the piety 
 of the rich built a cathedral for this small flock, dwelling 
 among the hills, remote from the traffic of life. The silence 
 and the dim light seemed to him like the quiet gloom of 
 the grave. How glad he would be to be dead ; if she were 
 doomed to die. Kneeling there in his despair, he debated 
 within himself the manner of his death ; for he did not mean 
 to go on living after she was gone. 
 
 There was the river, the swift, deep river in the valley 
 below, by which they had walked in the clear morning light, 
 and in the golden hour before sunset. A river of rest, he 
 thought, picturing the bright blue stream, the grey-green 
 sward purpled with crocuses. Where could he find an 
 easier close to a hateful life ? But he wanted her to live, 
 and bless him with her love. He wanted life with her, life 
 that is so sweet where love is ; so bitter and barren where 
 love is not. 
 
 Involuntarily there came from the agonized heart man's 
 despairing cry to God. 
 
 " ^^^lat am I, O Thou unknown Omnipotence, that I 
 
 392 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 should question Thy power to punish, to annihilate, or to 
 save? I am a worm, and no man. I tremble while I doubt. 
 1 have known the powers of hell ; oh, give me to learn the 
 dominion of heaven. Give me back my wife, my peace of 
 mind j lift this shroud of horror from my soul. 
 
 " I am humbled to the dust. I cannot pray, but I can suffer 
 and submit. Oh, let my sufferings count as prayers ; accept 
 the sacrifice of my troubled mind. O unknown Power, 
 inscrutable, unthinkable. Thou who hast neither habitation 
 nor name, but who livest in the instinct of mankind. Thou 
 whom the believer adores, and whom the sceptic longs 
 for, without whose promise of immortality our life is but a 
 mockery of man's capacity to Hve : enter into my barren 
 mind, O unknown Power, and bend my spirit to Thy will. 
 Let me be as the lowest of Thy worshippers, as the savage 
 who has heard of Thee with fear and trembling, who offers 
 himself to Thee in unquestioning faith. I have been made 
 to tremble before unseen malignity; oh, let me feel the 
 might of unseen Beneficence." 
 
 393 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 From Walter Arden to Douglas Campbell. 
 
 Grove Park, near Bargrove, Herts, 
 
 Midsummer Day, 190-. 
 
 My dear Douglas, 
 
 This delicious summer day is my wife's birthday, 
 and I think I could not choose a better date on which to 
 write to my dear old friend, after an interval of more than 
 half a year. You will receive this letter, with its odour of 
 fresh-gathered roses, by your winter hearth, piled with the 
 spoil of your neighbouring forest ; and, had I the pen of an 
 impressionist, I might make you envious with a vivid picture 
 of the garden I look out upon through the wide Tudor 
 window, an old-world garden of level paths, box borders, 
 clipped yews, and long arcades, curtained with climbing 
 roses. No doubt, were I to take so much pains, you would 
 reply that everything floral thrives in Tasmania as it can 
 never thrive in England; and that my roses would make 
 a sorry show beside your pelargoniums, your myrtles, and 
 orange trees, flourishing in the open air. I hope you will 
 tire of your perfect climate, and your superior floriculture, 
 some day, and give Rachel and me the happiness of 
 welcoming you to this dear old English manor house, which 
 we love quite as well as if the sons of the soil who dwelt 
 here from generation to generation — till the end of last 
 century — had been our ancestors. 
 
 In your last letter you reproached me for not having given 
 you fuller details of my life during the last three happy 
 years ; since the passing of that inexplicable trouble upon 
 which I was able to expatiate to you, with the assurance of 
 your compassion and your patience. I wrote to you then 
 as to the one friend in whom I dared to confide ; for I knew 
 
 394 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 that no experience of the Unseen was without interest for 
 you. 
 
 But since I have come out of that dark cloud — out of 
 that mystery which I am content to leave for ever unex- 
 plained — the course of my life has been smooth and 
 uneventful, and ofters little to record ; except the fulfilment 
 of almost every wish, and a happiness far beyond my deserts, 
 and even beyond my fondest hopes. I have restrained 
 myself in writing of these things, lest I should lapse into 
 twaddle ; but since you ask for details, you shall have the 
 history of the Arden settlement, in the leafy glades and 
 upland commons of the prettiest part of Hertfordshire. 
 
 I have just one hour of leisure in which to write, before I 
 start with Rachel, for a picnic in the adjacent wood, which 
 is to honour the anniversary ; a quiet luncheon for ^h. and 
 ]Mrs. Lorimer, my wife, and me ; to be followed by a picnic 
 tea, at which all our workpeople and their families are to 
 assemble, for which reason our two factories are to stop 
 work ^*vo hours earlier than usual. How I wish you could 
 be among us, Douglas, to see all those cheerful faces, all 
 that happiness so cheaply purchased. Happiness that lasts 
 for a day, you might answer ; but believe me, when you give 
 your guinea for a day's pleasure for old or young, of the 
 class whose pleasures are so rare, you buy something more 
 than the day's outing, the plenteous meal, and the boisterous 
 games. You buy happy memories that linger through the 
 monotonous months, and lighten toil, memories that are 
 fresh perhaps when the circling year brings its new festival, 
 and the van- wheels are rolling once again on the white 
 summer road, and the children singing — most discordantly, 
 alas ! — in their joy. 
 
 Our two modest factories — the toy-making and the jam- 
 making — have thriven wonderfully; and the profit-sharing 
 system, which some economists condemn, has been 
 thoroughly successful in our small communities. Our men 
 and women, and even the children, take a pride in the 
 organization with whose prosperity they prosper ; and they 
 all talk of " our factor}^ " with a proud sense of ownership. 
 
 Sitting in this grave old oak-panelled room, with the 
 sunlit flower-garden in front of my window, and my heart 
 full of the tranquil happiness of a life that realizes all my 
 
 395 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 ideals, I look back, across the last happy years, to the year 
 of Mary Selby's tragic death, and the long agony of my 
 wife's terrible illness, the illness which lasted, from that 
 hideous night in July, till the birth of our boy in the follow- 
 ing February ; and I wonder that after such darkness should 
 come such light. It was not till her son was born that the 
 mother's peril was past. He came to us as the child of 
 promise, bringing healing and peace. Her mind came out 
 of the cloud which had darkened it through those dismal 
 months ; her physical health was gradually restored ; and 
 before the end of the year she was yearning for the renewal 
 of her work in the slums of East-end London. 
 
 It was then that I framed the scheme that has succeeded 
 beyond my hopes. I told my wife that, with my consent, 
 she should never revisit those dark places, never hazard her 
 life, and the life of her child, among those fever-haunted 
 dens, those loathsome tenement houses which cry aloud to 
 heaven against the wretches who own them, and batten on 
 the needs of abject poverty. She should still work for the 
 poor, still move among her fellow-creatures as a ministering 
 angel ; but her poor should live in pure air, and their paths 
 should be paths of pleasantness. The mountain should be 
 brought to Mahomet. 
 
 And then I unfolded my plans, and told her how I was 
 negotiating for an estate of nearly a thousand acres in the 
 prettiest part of Hertfordshire, less than three miles from 
 a market town and railway station, with an old Tudor 
 manor house, and gardens and park, embosomed in lovely 
 woods. On an outlying field I proposed to build two 
 small factories — one for jam-making, from fruit grown on 
 our own land ; the other for toy-making, which was an idea 
 of my own, as I wanted to see whether small English fingers 
 were not as capable as small German fingers. For this 
 purpose I meant to bring over half a dozen toy-makers, 
 men and women, from Nuremburg, to teach our children 
 their art. 
 
 My plans were approved by my dear wife ; and I lost no 
 time in realizing them. Both our factories have been in 
 full swing for two years, and are doing good business. Our 
 men and women work in the fruit-gardens and in the jam- 
 making ; while almost all the work in the toy-factory is done 
 
 396 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 by children from twelve years old, half-timers, whose morn- 
 ings are spent in our schools. We have built a model 
 village for our workpeople, and we have given them a 
 communal dair)' and poultry farm of two hundred acres, 
 where all work in turn, for the benefit of all. We have a 
 cricket and football ground, and a shooting-range equal to 
 the best in the county. We have a club and library, and 
 my generous father-in-law has built us a church, severely 
 Gothic, of small size, but capable of extension should the 
 need arise in days to come. Our curate-in-charge, who 
 came to us from the East End, is a man of broad views, 
 and warm sympathy. 
 
 You may imagine my wife's delight in superintending the 
 building of our cottages, healthful homes for the families 
 we have brought from that foul ant-heap in East London, 
 to these wide commons and woods. We were careful in 
 our choice of people for our new settlement, knowing that 
 there were many among our old friends in whom the love 
 of cities was stronger than the desire for health and clean- 
 liness; and these we had to leave in their miserable en- 
 vironment. There were more by hundreds than we could 
 accommodate who yearned for fresh air and decent homes, 
 and who came eagerly, with their rejoicing children, as to 
 a land of milk and honey ; and I think I may say without 
 boasting that our village has been to these a veritable 
 Canaan. If you could see how the pinched gutter-snipe 
 face of our nine and ten year old boys has filled out and 
 reddened in the sun, how the wan cheeks of the mothers 
 have grown plump and rosy, and how self-respect and the 
 love of fresh air and clean water have increased with every 
 month of rural life, you would think as I do, that the solution 
 of that great problem — the housing of the London poor — 
 could best be found in the transplantation of the factories 
 round which the poor have to live. The countr}' is wide 
 enough for all, and the ugliness of a chimney here and 
 there need not spoil the face of it ; while to bring the people 
 back to the wide village street, the woods and fields, the 
 green lanes, white with flowering hawthorns, and commons, 
 golden with gorse and broom, is to bring them from misery 
 to comfort. 
 
 I could write at much greater length of all that Rachel 
 
 397 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 has done for the welfare of our people, and of the love they 
 bear her ; but I hope the day is not far distant when you 
 will see with your eyes and hear with your ears what can 
 be done by those who love their fellow-creatures,' and who 
 have means which enable them to realize their dreams of 
 benevolence. 
 
 I must add that Mr. and Mrs. Lorimer are large helpers 
 in all our schemes ; and they are both completely satisfied 
 with their daughter's life and surroundings. We have the 
 house in Guelph Place still. So much of that first home 
 was a gift from Rachel's father that it would have been 
 churlish for us to abandon it ; and as our country home is 
 little more than an hour's journey from the West End, we 
 are able to see a good deal of the dear people in Carlton 
 House Terrace ; without deserting those other people who 
 look to us for so much, for evening lectures, and concerts, 
 for out-of-door sketching-classes, for mothers' meetings, for 
 Saturday payments to their clubs and societies ; for all that 
 makes for thrift, improvement, and recreation ; and for all 
 that strengthens the bond between rich and poor. 
 
 I must add that our toy-making has been particularly 
 successful, and that some of our guttersnipes have developed 
 a remarkable inventiveness and adroitness in their work ; 
 and furthermore that a wholesale house near Liverpool 
 Street has within the last half-year bought our goods as 
 largely as the German toys in which they dealt exclusively, 
 before we came into the field. 
 
 So much for temporal things, and the interests which 
 involve the happiness of so many outside the narrow circle 
 of our home. What shall I say of spiritual things, to you 
 from whom I have withheld none of the dark secrets of my 
 mind in the mysterious sufferings of past years? What 
 shall I say of myself, now that my cup of content is full ; 
 now that I have nothing left to desire, except that to-morrow 
 may be as to-day, and that the dear wife in whom I find 
 the supreme good, and for whom I live, may bear me 
 company to the end of my journey; lovely in age as in 
 youth, with the spiritual light that shines through corporal 
 beauty, and makes it divine ? What shall I say ? I dare 
 not call myself a believer, for the consummate mind that 
 governs the universe, and the after-life of man, are still 
 
 398 
 
The Conflict. 
 
 inexplicable, unimaginable problems, for which I can find 
 no answer in the Book that Rachel accepts as the clue to all 
 mysteries. But I am no longer a materialist. I have been 
 brought to acknowledge the something more than the 
 machine of bone and flesh, evolved through countless ages 
 from lowliest beginnings, perfected protoplasm. I have 
 felt and suffered the influence of an unseen Enemy ; and in 
 that crisis of my life when I stood in danger of losing all 
 that made life dear, my heart seemed lightened by the 
 influence of an unseen Friend. And from that hour of 
 peril until now I have seemed to live in the warm radiance 
 of that Influence, an unknown Beneficence, mysterious, in- 
 definable. In that vague Presence, in the perfect beauty 
 of my wife's nature, and in the many fine impulses and 
 generous feelings which I discover among the humble and 
 meek ones of this earth, I find the surest pledge of the life 
 immortal : for these things are not of flesh, but of spirit, and 
 I tell myself that spirit cannot die. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. 
 
MISS BRADDON'S NOVELS. 
 
 THE AUTHOR'S AUTOGRAPH EDITION. 
 
 2s. 6(i. each, cloth gilt. 2s. each, picture boards. 
 
 I. 
 
 Lady Audley's Secret. 
 
 3^- 
 
 Dead Men's Shoes. 
 
 2. 
 
 Henry Dunbar. 
 
 31- 
 
 Joshua Haggard. 
 
 3- 
 
 Eleanor's Victory. 
 
 32. 
 
 Weavers and Weft. 
 
 4- 
 
 Aurora Floyd. [Legacy. 
 
 33. 
 
 An Open Verdict. 
 
 5- 
 
 John Marchmont's 
 
 34- 
 
 Vixen. 
 
 6. 
 
 The Doctor's Wife. 
 
 35. 
 
 The Cloven Foot. 
 
 7. 
 
 Only a Clod. 
 
 36. 
 
 The Story of Barbara 
 
 8. 
 
 Sir Jasper's Tenant. 
 
 37. 
 
 Just as I am. 
 
 9. 
 
 Trail of the Serpent. 
 
 38. 
 
 Asphodel. 
 
 lO. 
 
 Lady's Mile. 
 
 39. 
 
 Mount Royal. 
 
 II. 
 
 Lady Lisle. 
 
 40. 
 
 The Golden Calf. 
 
 12. 
 
 Captain of the Vulture. 
 
 41. 
 
 Phantom Fortune. 
 
 13. 
 
 Birds of Prey. 
 
 42. 
 
 Flower and Weed. 
 
 14. 
 
 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 43. 
 
 Ishmael. 
 
 »s. 
 
 Rupert Godwin. 
 
 44. 
 
 Wyllard's Weird. 
 
 16. 
 
 Run to Earth. 
 
 45- 
 
 Under the Red Flag. 
 
 17. 
 
 Dead Sea Fruit. 
 
 46. 
 
 One Thing Needful. 
 
 18. 
 
 Ralph the Bailiff. 
 
 47. 
 
 Mohawks. 
 
 19. 
 
 Fenton's Quest. 
 
 48. 
 
 Like and Unlike. 
 
 20. 
 
 Lovels of Arden. 
 
 49. 
 
 The Fatal Three. 
 
 21. 
 
 Robert Ainsleigh. 
 
 50. 
 
 The Day will come. 
 
 22. 
 
 To THE Bitter End. 
 
 51- 
 
 One Life, One Love. 
 
 23- 
 
 MiLLY Darrell. 
 
 52. 
 
 Gerard. 
 
 24. 
 
 Strangers and Pilgrims. 
 
 53- 
 
 The Venetians. 
 
 25- 
 
 Lucius Davoren. 
 
 54- 
 
 All along the Rivi r. 
 
 26. 
 
 Taken at the Flood. 
 
 55- 
 
 Thou art the Man. 
 
 27. 
 
 Lost for Love. 
 
 56. 
 
 Sons of Fire. 
 
 23. 
 
 A Strange World. 
 
 57. 
 
 Rough Justice. 
 
 29. 
 
 Hostages to Fortune. 
 
 58. 
 
 Under Love's Rule. 
 
 Now ready. 
 
 UNDER LOVE'S RULE. 
 
 Cloth gilt, 2S. dd. each. Picture boards, 2s. 
 
 London: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., Ltd.