E. TEMPLE THURSTON
 
 V 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT
 
 " This was the kitchen that had been Nanno's mew of life 
 
 for nineteen years.''' 1 
 
 Page 82. Traffic. 
 
 Taken from the spot by LUKE TAYLOR, A.R.E.
 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 The Story of a Faithful Woman 
 
 BY 
 
 E. TEMPLE THURSTON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 " THE APPLE OF EDEN " 
 
 G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY 
 E. TEMPLE THURSTON 
 
 A II Rights Reserved
 
 ?R 
 
 TO 
 
 p. f . Bollock. 
 
 938851
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 THE LOVE-CHILD. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER! 11 
 
 CHAPTER II 20 
 
 CHAPTER III 26 
 
 CHAPTER IV 33 
 
 CHAPTER V 43 
 
 CHAPTER VI 49 
 
 CHAPTER VII 56 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 69 
 
 CHAPTER IX 74 
 
 CHAPTER X 82 
 
 CHAPTERXI 90 
 
 CHAPTER XII 95 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 103 
 
 BOOK II. 
 HOLY MATRIMONY. 
 
 CHAPTER 1 113 
 
 CHAPTER II 119 
 
 CHAPTER III 129 
 
 CHAPTER IV 138 
 
 BOOK III. 
 THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE LAW. 
 
 CHAPTER 1 151 
 
 CHAPTER II 161 
 
 5
 
 6 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III 165 
 
 CHAPTER IV 170 
 
 CHAPTER V 184 
 
 CHAPTER VI 189 
 
 CHAPTER VII , 196 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 203 
 
 CHAPTER IX 211 
 
 CHAPTER X 220 
 
 CHAPTER XI 227 
 
 CHAPTER XII 233 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 240 
 
 CHAPTERXIV 252 
 
 CHAPTER XV 262 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 THE CROSS-ROADS. 
 
 CHAPTER 1 269 
 
 CHAPTER II 279 
 
 CHAPTER III 283 
 
 CHAPTER IV 288 
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 THE UPLIFTED HAND. 
 
 CHAPTER 1 303 
 
 CHAPTER II 311 
 
 CHAPTER III 319 
 
 CHAPTER IV 325 
 
 CHAPTER V 339 
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 THE END OF THE TRAFFIC. 
 
 CHAPTER I , 349 
 
 CHAPTER II 857 
 
 CHAPTER III.. 371
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 THE LOVE-CHILD.
 
 ' . . . For no kind of traffic 
 Would I admit ; no name of magistrate ; 
 Letters should not be known ; riches, poverty, 
 And use of service, none ; contract, successsion, 
 Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; 
 No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil 
 No occupation; all men idle, all; 
 And women too, but innocent and pure; 
 No sovereignty." Act II, scene 1. The Tempest.
 
 TRAFFIC. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE sun which had been white with heat all day, was 
 growing deeper and deeper in a tone of orange; and as 
 though some unseen hand were plunging it again into 
 the bowels of a furnace, it sank slowly behind the horizon. 
 Long strands of purplish clouds, rimmed with palest gold, 
 stretched across a sky of primrose, and in the east, great 
 banks of cumulus clouds were lit with cream and pink, like 
 snow-capped mountains lifting their rounded peaks into 
 the unknown. A haze of gold hung about the land in a 
 mist; every tree or bush that rose up before the sun was 
 black. Evening lurked in every shadow, and the last 
 breath of the day was almost drawn. 
 
 In the middle of autumn it was late to be driving home 
 the cattle; yet across the fields, their tails swishing lethar- 
 gically to keep off the stray flies that had followed them, 
 their udders swinging heavily from side to side, like cum- 
 brous bells swaying to an impotent hand, seven cows 
 walked peacefully before a tall girl, whose rounded figure 
 was silhouetted with impressionistic effect against the sky- 
 line. 
 
 The gait of the animals, their ambling, even motion, 
 brought one a sense of contentment. One felt that they 
 needed the relief of the hands that were to milk them. 
 One inevitably realized that the day was over. When 
 
 11
 
 12 TRAFFIC. 
 
 they were out of sight, it seemed that nothing was left 
 to be done. 
 
 In the girl herself this sense had imparted itself as well. 
 Occasionally she laid a light hand upon the hind-quarters 
 of the last cow as it lagged behind. But she gave them 
 no word of command. In her eyes as she came nearer you 
 could see the reflected light of the sunset. It tinted her 
 face with a deep russet red and added to the color of her 
 lips. Her hands that swung by her side were of the same 
 deep shade, and her hair that was brown looked almost 
 black in the half light. 
 
 By the side of a gap in a wall of grass-sod and stone, 
 a man was crouching with a gun on his knee. She was 
 bound to pass through that way. The field had no other 
 egress beyond the gate at the farther end by which she had 
 entered. And so he waited and watched her. 
 
 The solitary man who awaits the approach of a solitary 
 woman, whether she be peasant, lady or sprite, will accord 
 her a share of interest which only the state of circumstances 
 can reasonably guarantee. His thoughts will be drawn to- 
 wards her as though she might be the only woman in the 
 world, which, in fact, as far as his horizon is concerned, she 
 is. There is some instinct which is almost primeval cer- 
 tainly animal that stirs in his mind. The spirit of com- 
 petition drives many men ; but the law of nature leads one 
 and all of them, blindfolded, by the hand. 
 
 The man with the gun altered his position in order to be 
 able to see her better. He speculated on her appearance 
 from the frayed black outline that he saw. He wondered 
 vaguely if she would start when she came through the gap 
 and saw him sitting there. He thought of things he might 
 say to her ; then he lowered the hammers of his gun. Just 
 as he had done so, a rabbit started out of its burrow. He 
 had come out to shoot rabbits. This one was not more than
 
 TRAFFIC. 13 
 
 thirty yards away from him. For a moment a light came 
 into his eyes; his fingers stirred on the triggers, but he 
 did not raise the gun. Had he been introspective he 
 would have smiled at the control of action, but he did not 
 notice it ; his eyes returned again to the approaching figure 
 of the girl. Nearer and nearer she came, until the forms of 
 the foremost cattle, enlarged out of proportion by the 
 lessened perspective, almost hid her from view. 
 
 The first cow gazed at him as it passed through the gap. 
 The others followed its example. The last one stopped 
 abruptly. He rose to his feet as, diminishing the distance 
 between her and the hesitating beast, the girl came up 
 behind it and looked to see what had caused its delay. 
 
 The man stepped back another pace, and she gazed 
 at him with big, gray eyes. Had she been quite ordinary, 
 quite commonplace, he would probably have said something 
 at once. As it was, he remained silent and studied her. 
 She was not commonplace. She was far from ordinary. 
 In the gray eyes that surveyed him, there was a shadow 
 of fate a foreboding of tho .future that gave her a subtle 
 distinction. She was utterly unlike her type. The es- 
 sentially Irish girl of her class is round-cheeked, red- 
 lipped, and heavy-eyed ; there is a daring in her glance, 
 but in this girl's there was none; only the suggestion 
 of submission to some power greater than her own. The 
 essentially Irish girl has the attractions of the moment. 
 This girl possessed that fascination which does not insist or 
 compel, but which grows between the moments of forget- 
 fulness. 
 
 To the reader this may convey an appearance of fragil- 
 ity, a description that would be absolutely incorrect to 
 apply to her. She was not fragile. She was not Tin- 
 formed. There is a stage in the development of a girl, 
 when apparent development has scarcely begun. It is a 
 phase that makes no appeal to the man whose instincts
 
 14 TRAFFIC. 
 
 are young enough to be healthy. This girl, no doubt 
 prematurely, had passed that stage. She was a woman a 
 woman of nineteen. As she stood there, in the one moment 
 that they looked at each other, he would, had he been asked, 
 have described her as married. There was a subtle com- 
 pletion of her figure showing, certainly to little advantage, 
 under the close-fitting bodice of homespun. Almost un- 
 hesitatingly he would have said that she was married. The 
 life experiences of a woman mostly end with that con- 
 dition. She shows it in her face; her eyes understand. 
 And, without reasoning it, merely taking the superficial 
 impression, it seemed to him that that understanding was 
 to be found there in the eyes that met his. 
 
 "Are there many rabbits about this field?" he asked, 
 endeavoring to break the silence that threatened to become 
 awkward. 
 
 Her eyes wandered to his gun, then rose again with 
 an unsympathetic expression to his face. 
 
 " They do burrow in the hedges," she replied. " Have 
 ye shot any ? " 
 
 Nb." 
 
 The momentary contempt that showed in her face made 
 him wince. 
 
 " I've only seen a couple. They get away rather quick, 
 and I'm not much of a shot. Does this land belong to 
 you?" 
 
 "Tis me father's land." 
 
 " Where's his farm ? " 
 
 She nodded her head in the direction of a white-washed, 
 thatched building that the sun was lighting up behind a 
 clump of trees. 
 
 " Bi the trees there," she replied ; then, seeing that the 
 cows had wandered far ahead of her, across the field, she 
 began to move in their direction.
 
 TRAFFIC. 15 
 
 "Perhaps your father \vould object to my shooting 
 rabbits on his land ? " he suggested, walking slowly by 
 her side. 
 
 " Shure, 'tis no harm," she said " if ye don't hit any." 
 
 He was about to smile at the humor which he thought 
 she intended to convey, when he saw the serious expres- 
 sion of her mouth. What she had said, she had meant in 
 irony. The realization of that amazed him for a moment. 
 There is something servile in the Irish character when 
 brought in contact with strangers servile as opposed to 
 that curt aggressiveness of the English manner. This was 
 not servile. There was something almost intellectual in 
 the satire of it. He looked at her face, but it by no means 
 belied the impression that her words had given. The 
 eyes, gazing out before her over the shadowy fields, as a 
 sailor's which rest forever on the sea, were quiet, gentle, 
 restful. Her chin was gracefully molded, and the 
 mouth, too large to deserve the customary epithets that 
 befit a woman, compelled interest for its fulness of hu- 
 manity. There was no irony there. Then something had 
 offended her. 
 
 " Do you object, then ? " he asked. 
 
 She turned her face in his direction, and he saw that 
 he had surprised her by his question. 
 
 " 'Tis the way it seems so cruel," she said softly. 
 " Everyone treats the animals cruel round here." 
 
 " But you don't ? You're fond of animals ? " 
 
 " I am thin. Shure what harm are they doin' ? " She 
 spoke very gently. Sometimes it seemed as though she 
 were talking to herself. " When I come out here in the 
 mornin' to bring in the cows, I counts all the rabbits I sees 
 in these fields here, and the same in the evening. They're 
 gettin' less afraid of me than they used to be. Sometimes 
 I sees as many as twenty rabbits."
 
 16 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " I suppose you think I'm a vandal? " 
 
 " What's that ? " 
 
 "Well I suppose you think I'm a brute to com out 
 here with a gun and try and shoot 'em ? " 
 
 " I dunno' most men do it round here what have 
 guns. They can't keep off it; 'tis their nature, I sup- 
 pose." 
 
 " Do you study human nature ? " 
 
 " One sees things sometimes. 'Tisn't everyone's alike, 
 except men, when they want to kill somethin'." 
 
 He smiled. 
 
 " Do you think women are individually more different 
 as a sex than men ? " 
 
 She hesitated and gazed vaguely before her. He was 
 drawing her into deep water. The knowledge of human 
 nature which she possessed was instinctive, inherent; not 
 cultivated. She could not argue about it; she could not 
 discuss it. What she learnt was more from unconscious 
 observation. She made no wilful study of the people about 
 her. 
 
 He saw her hesitation; realized what it meant, and was 
 just about to simplify his question when she spoke. 
 
 "I dunno'," she replied; "shure I dunno'." 
 
 And he understood that she had not grasped his meaning. 
 Then he lost interest in the subject. He judged her from 
 the standpoint of his own intellectuality the college train- 
 ing of the average Englishman. By this type of rash judg- 
 ment, half the interesting personalities in life are lost 
 sight of. But the man with the gun was keener than the 
 majority. He abandoned the contemplation of the subject 
 of human nature, but his interest in the girl had not abated 
 at all. 
 
 Keeping pace with the laborious movements of the cows 
 before them, they had made but slow progress, and there
 
 TRAFFIC. 17 
 
 were still two more fields to cross before they reached the 
 farmhouse where* she had said that her father lived. 
 
 " Is Crowley your father s name ? " he asked at length, 
 after the pause that had followed her answer to his last 
 question. 
 
 "'Tis not. 'Tis Troy John Troy." 
 
 " Oh John Troy. And what's your name ? " 
 
 " Nanno." 
 
 There was no trace of self-consciousness in her answer. 
 It might have been anyone's name but her own. 
 
 " That's rather uncommon isn't it ? " he asked. 
 
 " Maybe it is. 'Tis a county Wexford name, it is I 
 b'lieve." 
 
 " Oh, I thought I hadn't heard it before. Nanno Troy 
 is that it ? " 
 
 He looked up once more at her face. She nodded 
 her head and shook loose a strand of deep earth-brown hair 
 so that it fell on her shoulder. 
 
 " Well," he said, coming to a standstill, " I suppose 
 you'll be going to milk the cows now ? " 
 
 " I will," she replied. She pushed the loosened strand 
 into a crevice of the mass of hair on her head. 
 
 "Then I'll say good-night." 
 
 He hesitated, then half raised his cap as he turned 
 away. 
 
 " Good-night, sir," she said. 
 
 He looked round at her over his shoulder. Her face 
 was once more set towards the farm and the clump of 
 trees. It was a disappointment. 
 
 " I'll have greater respect for rabbits in the future," he 
 called back. " You won't find me trying to shoot them 
 any more." 
 
 She looked round and smiled. He could see the last 
 rays of the sun in her eyes, and felt satisfied. In another
 
 18 TRAFFIC. 
 
 moment he had clambered over the hedge on to the road 
 that runs to Anesk and was out of sight. 
 
 Nanno drove the cows on silently, wondering who he 
 could have been. As she turned the animals into the last 
 field, the figure of a small boy came out of the shadows of 
 the trees round the house and ran to meet her. The grass 
 rattled against his bare legs like the muted crackling of 
 firewood and, as he ran, he stooped without hesitating to 
 pluck the blossoms off the scabii that grew everywhere. 
 
 " Is that you, Johnnie ? " Nanno called. The sun had 
 finally disappeared and the gold of the evening light was 
 slowly waning to uncertain tones of blue and shadows of 
 gray. It was an eerie atmosphere ; hard to recognize any- 
 one in. A frog jumping suddenly in the grass would have 
 set anyone's heart beating. 
 
 " It is," was the answer, called in a deep boy's treble. 
 Nanno lost sight of him then behind the cows, but in 
 another moment the youngest member of the Troy family 
 was beside her. 
 
 She took his hand gently. 
 
 " Did herself come back from Anesk ? " she asked. The 
 allusion was made to her mother. 
 
 " She be just afther comm'," he replied, looking over 
 his shoulder towards the sunset and pulling on her hand. 
 
 "What did she say?" 
 
 " Shure, nothin' at all." 
 
 " Did she meet any in Anesk ? " 
 
 Johnnie looked over his shoulder again. 
 
 " She did I suppose. I dunno. She did av course." 
 For the third time he pulled on her hand. 
 
 " What are ye starin' at over there ? " she asked curi- 
 ously. 
 
 " The crocidile." 
 
 " What crocidile ? "
 
 TRAFFIC. 19 
 
 He stopped and turned her round with him, pointing 
 towards the sunset. 
 
 " There's the crocidile." His finger indicated a long 
 purple cloud that was lying in the primrose sky. The 
 faint murmuring of distant breaths of wind had blown it 
 to the grotesque shape which he saw. "D'ye see his 
 mouth open ? " 
 
 She looked down at the serious little face and the tense 
 figure that still pointed with a rigid, dirty finger. 
 
 " Ye can almost see his teeth," she said. 
 
 " Few minutes back ye could," he informed her. " I 
 watched thim meltin' away. I wonder how long he'll 
 stay a crocidile. There's one over there afther changin' 
 into a littleen lamb." 
 
 The cows were waiting patiently at the gate that led 
 from the field into the farm. Nanno hurried forward, 
 pushed it open, and then, one by one, their hoofs sucking 
 in the mud as they passed through, they disappeared into 
 the deeper shadows of the yard ; and with one last look at 
 the purple crocodile in the west, Johnnie and Nanno fol- 
 lowed silently after them. You could hear the gate click 
 and then a curlew called out at sea.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 TROY'S LANE, which was the first boreen off the main 
 road as you come from Rathmore to Anesk, leads up to 
 the farm where Nanno lived. It is not uncommon for 
 boreens, creeks, streams, hollows, in these parts of Ireland, 
 to be called after those who live by them. John Troy's 
 farm was the only residence adjoining the boreen; to en- 
 able him to bring his carts up to the farm from the main 
 road the boreen had been made accordingly it was called 
 Troy's Lane. 
 
 From the top of ihe lane, finding its way out of the 
 side of the rising ground, to the bottom where it emptied 
 itself into the ditch on the main road, a little stream 
 ambled; chattering prettily over the pebbles all day long. 
 The brambles and the honeysuckle, of which the hedges 
 at either side were mainly composed, grew over it; dipped 
 their long arms in its shallows and made dense tunnels 
 from which it emerged into the sunlight, chattering as 
 ever laughing like a little child. 
 
 Pungently smelling thyme and straggling watercress 
 grew luxuriantly in the humid ground beside this little 
 stream. All day long the ducks from the farm paddled 
 up and down in its clear and sparkling water. The sound 
 of their beaks gobbling under the surface of the stream 
 and the incessant humming of the bees, as they hurried 
 from one honeysuckle flower to another, were the only 
 sounds that rose to break the absorbing stillness of that 
 quiet spot. 
 
 30
 
 TRAFFIC. 21 
 
 On the right-hand side, as you neared the top of the 
 boreen, an old, iron, five-barred gate, swinging laboriously 
 on its rusty hinges, broke the uneven line of hedge, and 
 gave entrance to the farm. There, in an open square 
 under the shadows of the clump of trees, bounded on one 
 side by the hedgerow, and on the other three by the farm- 
 house itself and various linneys or outhouses, was Nanno's 
 birthplace Nanno's environment where Nanno had seen 
 the first nineteen years of her life. 
 
 The farm-house itself was a long, low, one-storeyed 
 building. A rough, cobbled path ran in front of the house 
 past the kitchen door with its slab stone step, and ter- 
 minated abruptly in the soft, yielding, sandy mud of the 
 farm-yard. The kitchen-door was the main, in fact, the 
 only entrance; the kitchen itself the living-room. There 
 was no parlor. The two bedrooms at either side made up 
 the entire length of the principal building. And here 
 John Troy, with his thirty acres and ten milch cows, his 
 fields of pasture and his corn land, had made a comfort- 
 able home that comfort, poor enough, no doubt, in com- 
 parison with the English farmer, which few men in Ire- 
 land are able to offer to a wife. 
 
 Yet all this, just nineteen years before, he had offered 
 to Bridget Power, and the circumstances of that offering 
 were not commonly known in Eathmore. In point of fact 
 there was only one man besides John Troy himself who was 
 fully aware of the details of the case, and that was Tim- 
 othy Lovett, the sergeant of police. How he became ac- 
 quainted with the circumstances need not be inquired into. 
 To state the affair simply, as it occurred those nineteen 
 years before, will be amply sufficient. 
 
 When John was thirty-one years of age, old Michael 
 Troy, his father, had gone to his rest. There had been 
 a merry wake. The dead had been honored by a well-
 
 22 TRAFFIC. 
 
 attended burial. There was nothing really to be sad 
 about. Michael had lived to a good old age, and if the 
 grief of some of the mourners was alcoholic, it was what 
 one would have expected what experience teaches one 
 to expect. 
 
 Then John had become the owner of the farm, and from 
 that day forward was looked upon in the village as a 
 catch. He had only to make his choice; and fate orders 
 these things that choice fell on Bridget Power, whose 
 heart, if she might have been said to have possessed one, 
 was elsewhere. John was a simple creature. He took 
 his refusal in silence, and brooded over it with his pipe 
 by his fireside. The parish priest, as is usual in these 
 matters, was the first to hear of it. In the quiet of the 
 confessional, with soft and unoffending voice, he gently 
 expostulated with Bridget. It would obviously be of bene- 
 fit to them all, the priest included, if she gave her consent ; 
 but she was obdurate. 
 
 The pity was that she had good looks, and the greater 
 pity that she knew it. But perhaps the greatest pity of 
 all lay in the fact that a young Englishman, an artist, 
 staying in the village, became passionately aware of that 
 prettiness himself. 
 
 Now in a country village like Eathmore, where one may 
 walk the wild country round across the cliffs or over 
 dreary lowlands without meeting a soul, tragedies may 
 be played and lives be lost without anyone being a whit 
 the wiser. 
 
 And so it happened with Bridget Power and her young 
 English lover. They used to wander round the cliff path 
 at night, the worn footway just guiding their steps in the 
 blackness, the swishing of the sea on the rocks below warn- 
 ing them of their proximity to the chasms beneath. It 
 made no matter that the grass and the sea pinks were
 
 TRAFFIC. 23 
 
 sodden with dew; that the whole outlook was forbidding 
 and oppressive. The nights were black ; they needed little 
 else. And so no one knew of it; they were never seen. 
 
 There is no doubt that her hopes soared above the mere 
 ardor of his affections. She was a good-looking girl 
 handsome is a better word. Her eyes were daring in those 
 days and her ambitions daring too. She had once been in 
 service in Lismore with a family who also possessed a house 
 in the village and there, though she had tired of it in two 
 years, she had seen fine ladies or so they seemed to her 
 and she was well aware that pretty clothes would go far to 
 making a fine lady of her, though not perhaps so far as 
 she imagined. There was a coarseness in her brogue that 
 could never be eradicated. She made use of phrases of 
 speech and occasional curses that jarred the man's artistic 
 mind. But it is not easy to jar the mind for long when 
 the blood is up and the throat is dry. The remembrance 
 may come afterwards. It came afterwards with him, and 
 there lay the fault in her reckoning. 
 
 She had given way to him in almost everything and, 
 with her simple calculation, it seemed that to yield him 
 all would be to gain him for herself. So long as the 
 world swings round women will make this cruel mistake. 
 The power of a woman lies in what she retains. In what 
 she yields, there lies her certain misery and regret. 
 
 There came the day; there came the moment of com- 
 plete oblivion and then arose the awful realization. The 
 chase was over ; the quarry caught, as nature had intended, 
 and it had vainly desired to be caught. But that Avas 
 all. Scarcely a moment later, she realized her mistake; 
 heard it in the simulation of his voice and knew that 
 she had played too high ; had lost an irreplaceable posses- 
 sion to find a curse thrust inevitably into her life. 
 
 The one memory that lingered with her beyond all the
 
 24 TRAFFIC. 
 
 breathless moments that had led to the crisis, was her first 
 question to him and his reply. 
 
 " Will ye come out again to-morrow night ? " she had 
 asked; and with that forced, feeble simulation of enthu- 
 siasm in his voice he had answered : 
 
 " Yes yes of course. Well I don't know. We'll 
 settle that in the morning. I ought to do some work to- 
 morrow." 
 
 She had risen from the damp grass and looked stonily 
 away across the headlands to the open sea. Then her 
 tears that followed had been prophetic. He thought that 
 she was crying for her misdoing. A man would think 
 like that. He would not dream of supposing that her de- 
 sire was only to bind him still further. Repentance is not 
 consistent in connection with a woman's desire to win a 
 man. She regrets nothing until she has bound him to her. 
 Bridget's regret lay in her knowledge that she had failed. 
 The to-morrow never arrived for her. She had guessed 
 that ; her tears had prophesied it. When the next day came 
 he had gone. 
 
 Even then, when she realized the utter fruitlessness of 
 her folly, it cannot be said that Bridget regretted her 
 misdoing. She remained proud of her partial conquest, 
 but her disappointment that it had not served her to 
 further ends was none the less acute. For some weeks 
 after the artist had left Rathmore she had endeavored to 
 face circumstances with a bold front. The villagers had 
 been fully aware that he had made love to her; but of the 
 crisis and his reasons for leaving Rathmore they were com- 
 pletely ignorant. And so for those first few weeks she 
 had answered all their questions with arrogant audacity. 
 She tossed her head and her eyes were just as daring as 
 ever, so that if there had been any suspicion as to tha 
 circumstances of the case, it was allayed.
 
 TRAFFIC. 25 
 
 But all this only lasted for a few weeks. For a few 
 weeks even the most cowardly amongst us can snap our 
 fingers in the face of Fate and whistle a tune to brave the 
 inevitable. But the few weeks fly by. Then a night comes 
 without sleep and the end is at hand. In the morning 
 the back of our conceit is broken. 
 
 The reckoning had to be counted. She knew that she 
 was trapped ; trapped, as only women can be, by that pur- 
 suing hand of Judgment, which is seldom concerned with 
 the retribution of men, but fastens itself with its iron 
 fingers on to the shoulders of the woman and forces her 
 like a whipped dog to the ground. 
 
 And then Bridget's manner changed. First she became 
 subdued and then stricken and, upbraiding her again in 
 the confessional, the parish priest showed her the material 
 heights of her folly in not taking the honest hand of John 
 Troy. 
 
 " Shure, God help us," he had said parenthetically, 
 " there was a man with thurty acres of good, dacent land 
 and a fine pot o' money in the bank at Anesk. How do 
 I know? Shure, I dined with the manager only last 
 
 week. And ye'd lose veer head to that " he hesitated, 
 
 " that Englishman, who doesn't know who he says his 
 prayers to, if he says any at all. Wisha, God help us ! " 
 
 For a moment she had buried her face in her hands, 
 saying nothing, and then, with that presumptuous daring 
 which could not entirely be eradicated, she had asked : 
 
 " Like is it too late now, Father, ye mane ? " 
 
 And the priest had said nothing.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WHATEVER the parish priest had meant by his silence, 
 Bridget interpreted it to her own advantage and, from 
 that day forward, she began the entanglement of John 
 Troy. A simple man, such as he was, is a straw in the 
 hands of a woman like Bridget Power. She had lost 
 none of her good looks; if at all, she was even more 
 attractive and, like wheat in .the hands of the thrasher, 
 he was turned at her will. 
 
 She had admitted to him that the young artist had 
 made love to her. She had tormented and encouraged him 
 by the admission that she had been perfectly contented 
 that he should do so. But he was gone and so what did 
 it matter? John had always wanted her; he could have 
 her. She was his, then, from that moment if he wished. 
 
 John sat rigidly on the low stool beside his fire and 
 pulled heavily at his pipe. It had been a late evening in 
 September when she had come up to the farm for a can 
 of milk, with the express purpose of seeing him and play- 
 ing her last card. 
 
 For a few moments he had kept silence and then, his 
 eyes wandering to the direction where she stood, he had 
 watched her as she slowly withdrew a handkerchief from 
 the folds of her bodice. Had he known that she was 
 aware of his watching; had he known that the action itself 
 was premeditated and intentionally delayed, 'he might have 
 hesitated. But he was simple. He cared little then that 
 
 26
 
 TRAFFIC. 27 
 
 there had been others who had made love to her and, in 
 that moment, he made up his mind. 
 
 It is foolish to say that a man has pride when he de- 
 sires. Pride had little or nothing to do with it. John 
 was as human as a man is made and somewhat simpler. 
 He took her for what she was worth to him at the mo- 
 ment not for what she was. All that, he thought, he 
 had calculated before. 
 
 And then they were married. Bridget was able to walk 
 through the village with her head once more erect, and her 
 eyes as daring as ever. It mattered little to her who saw 
 her at Mass, or whispered about her in connection with 
 the English artist. She was Mrs. John Troy, and there 
 tvas no need to show her that they were envious of her one 
 and all. 
 
 And at last, when the festivities of the wedding were 
 over, she told John Troy the truth. There was no doubt 
 in her mind as to the issue. He might curse her if he 
 chose, and that she expected; but it would go no further 
 than that. He was too quiet, too simple-minded to do 
 more and, what was nearer to the point in her calculations, 
 his nature could not afford to lose her. 
 
 The calculation was correct. She had made her books 
 to balance. John Troy did not even curse. He sat on 
 the three-legged stool by the fire, his face buried in his 
 hands, and said nothing. If the truth must be known, 
 he had guessed it; guessed it with that almost feminine 
 intuition, which frequently comes to a man in these mat- 
 ters. Had she told him before their marriage, it would 
 really have made no difference. It was no unexpected con- 
 fession on her part. She may have thought she was 
 courageous, even noble-minded, in telling him so openly 
 but he had known it all the time. He could never have 
 brought himself to do without her, either before their wed-
 
 28 TRAFFIC. 
 
 ding or after. She had judged him well on that score. 
 But he knew ; and there lay the basis of the way in which 
 he had accepted her admission. She might pride herself 
 on her honesty, but here, there was no cause for pride. 
 Nothing could have altered the fact that he had needed 
 her; nothing could have prevented him from taking the 
 opportunity of satisfying that need. If there were to bo 
 disaster, it would follow afterwards, when that need was 
 supplied. 
 
 And so, when Nanno was born, he never contradicted 
 the general belief that she was his child. Bridget had 
 left no stone unturned to hasten the wedding after the 
 departure of the English artist, so that suspicion never 
 arose. For the first few years, until children of his own 
 were brought into the world, John Troy never spoke to 
 Nanno, or of her, unless the consideration of appearances 
 made it compulsory. 
 
 And then his attitude to Nanno changed. It was not 
 because his own blood had been established, or because he 
 saw the uselessness of raging against the inevitable fate. 
 In point of fact, it was Bridget herself who brought about 
 the change. So long as Nanno was her only child, she had 
 expended upon her all the natural affection of which her 
 nature was capable. It did not consist of much; but it 
 was sufficient to show that she was aware of her responsi- 
 bility without exactly having any sentiment about it. Then 
 came Patsy, the first boy. She preferred boy children to 
 girls, if the matter ever called for preference in her mind. 
 And after Patsy, Johnny arrived; then any affection that 
 she had ever shown to Nanno was transferred to the others. 
 Nanno was ignored Nanno was treated with contempt. 
 All the worries and the sins of the household were expiated 
 by Nanno. She was beaten; she was abused; and, long 
 before her little body was physically able, she was forced
 
 TRAFFIC. 29 
 
 to do work about the farm and in the kitchen which was 
 beyond her strength. 
 
 The first time the fact came under John's notice was 
 when he discovered her alone in the kitchen endeavoring 
 to lift a large pail of pigs' food, and empty its contents 
 into the cauldron, where it was to be boiled. Like an 
 impregnable wall the cauldron raised itself some inches 
 above her head. 
 
 For a moment he had stood and watched her little fig- 
 ure, disjointed by the strained efforts that she was mak- 
 ing; one shoulder dragged down by the excessive weight, 
 the other elevated in disproportionate contortion, as a 
 scale that has no counterbalance to its load. 
 
 " Wisha, ye little fool," he had said, taking the bucket 
 from her hand and with one motion of his arm lifting it 
 above the cauldron and emptying its contents into the 
 already steaming mass. 
 
 These were the first voluntary words that he had ever 
 spoken to her. For ten years, with that unswerving per- 
 sistence natural to his race, he had maintained the same 
 attitude towards her. He had been wronged, and though 
 many another man would have vented his indignation in 
 more violent measures, he had never forgotten it until 
 then. 
 
 He would probably have remembered it and returned 
 to his same attitude again, had not Bridget at that moment 
 entered from the dairy. 
 
 " In the name o' God ! " she exclaimed, seeing what he 
 was doing, " is it slopping about in the kitchen ye are now, 
 instead o' tendin' ye're own business ? " 
 
 " Shure the choild's not shtrong enough to be liftin' 
 thim things," he replied quietly. " If ye want a girrl to 
 help, why don't ye say so ? " 
 
 Bridget looked at him in amazement.
 
 30 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Glory be to God ! Not shtrong enough ? That 
 choild? Faith, ye're getting moighty considheration out 
 of yeerself. Go an' fill the bucket again, Nanno an' 
 doant be shtandin' shtarin' at him." 
 
 " I'll fill the bucket meself," said John, carrying it out 
 of the room. 
 
 As soon as he had gone Bridget had approached Nanno 
 menacingly; then had followed the thud of her blow on 
 the child's head, as she drove her out of the kitchen to 
 feed the chickens in the yard. 
 
 After this day, whenever he could, John helped her with 
 the laborious work that had been set for her to do. When- 
 ever he could escape from the house without being seen, 
 he would follow her in the dusk of the evening, or the 
 faint light of the early morning, and assist her in the 
 bringing in of the cows. At these times her gray eyes 
 would watch him wonderingly, and at first neither he nor 
 Nanno could understand this gradual change. They both 
 marveled at it in their different ways ; but when one even- 
 ing, as they were driving home the cows to be milked, 
 he had bent down and taken her little hand in his, there 
 had seemed no further need for explanation both were 
 satisfied. 
 
 Of the circumstances of her birth. Nanno had never 
 been told; but this was through no special desire of her 
 mother's. Many times, since their hostility to each other 
 had first commenced, Bridget had had it on the tip of 
 her tongue to hurl the fact in the face of the unoffending 
 child. Frequently, however, in speaking to her husband of 
 Nanno, she would make no endeavor to refer reticently io 
 the illegitimacy of her birth. 
 
 "'Tis aiqual to the deuce what that young bastard be 
 doin' ! " she had exclaimed one day in a fit of rage to her 
 husband.
 
 TRAFFIC. 31 
 
 John Troy stood up in righteous anger and ran his 
 horny fingers through his hair. 
 
 " D'ye mind this," he said warningly, " ye ungrateful 
 woman, ye ! When I married ye, an' faith, 'twas a damned 
 queer thing to do I was afther makin' that choild me 
 own; an' by God if I hear ye tellin' her or anvone else 
 that she's not my choild bi the law by God, I'll break 
 yeer head open I will so ! " 
 
 For the first time in her life Bridget had been afraid 
 of her husband, and she had said no more. She did not 
 abate her cruel treatment to Xanno; in fact, the child 
 suffered the more in private from the wrath that conse- 
 quently descended upon her shoulders; but she curbed her 
 inclination to shame her as had often been her intention 
 before. 
 
 And so, even at nineteen years of age, no word of her 
 birth had reached Xanno's ears; yet the mark of it was 
 stamped indelibly in her face. The hand of misfortune 
 had already molded the expression of her mouth; there 
 was fatality in the color of her lips. The desire of men was 
 bound to turn to them. Even her eyes seemed shadowed 
 with that trouble and disaster which had attended her life 
 from its very birth. She had, in fact, received but few, 
 indeed, of her mother's characteristics. Where she did 
 not resemble her father, her nature seemed to have absorbed 
 that spirit of sensuousness which had dominated her par- 
 ents in their intimacy. It had not as yet developed itself 
 in her manner; there was no shadow of it, even in her 
 thoughts. But the seductive charm of it was there, ap- 
 parent in her face. 
 
 There is no doubt about- the sins of the fathers falling 
 upon the generation in the case of an illegitimate child. 
 No book has ever been written, no law has ever been 
 made there is not one dissentient voice in the chorus of
 
 32 TRAFFIC. 
 
 rebuke, not one hand to help or one lamp to lead the 
 way, when a love-child is cast into the world. There must 
 be thousands of these nameless, ocean tramps cast away on 
 the broad sea of existence; overloaded, until their water- 
 line has vanished, with their cargoes of the world's con- 
 tempt and their own shame. No port is home to them ; 
 no roadstead, but which is too deep for them to use their 
 fragile anchors of hope. They must ride the seas until 
 they sink, and the waters close over them forgotten, dis- 
 regarded but at rest.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 So it was that Xanno was different from her class. Her 
 mother saw it. The consciousness of it at times irritated 
 her unreasonably. Whenever she observed a refinement of 
 sentiment in iSTanno, she would ridicule it with native sar- 
 casm; but she was well aware of its derivation. There 
 were times when something that Nanno did would call 
 vividly to her mind the remembrance of her lover, and then 
 her anger would rise at the recollection of her failure 
 and his desertion. 
 
 It was not so much the characteristics of her father that 
 ISTanno possessed there was no small-mindedness, no cow- 
 ardice, in her nature but rather his mannerisms and that 
 delicacy of feeling which only education and inheritance 
 can bring with them. 
 
 There were many times when Bridget could see, despite 
 herself, that Nanno would be susceptible to the slightest 
 refining influence; that she would soon find her foothold 
 in better surroundings; but all this only rankled in her 
 mind the more. 
 
 When she returned that evening with the cows; when 
 the gate had shut, and, following the indolent beasts, 
 ISTanno had come into the farm-yard, where a ray of light 
 from the east had fallen through the trees and lit up her 
 face; Bridget, who was waiting in the doorway, had seen 
 again that difference, that aloofness to her surroundings 
 in her which nothing could eradicate. And seeing it, her 
 temper overcame her. 
 
 3 33
 
 34 TRAFFIC. 
 
 "'Tis fine and late ye are. What's been happenin' ye 
 in the name o' God ? " 
 
 Her voice sounded rawkish in the still air of the even- 
 ing and, because of the silence that followed her question, 
 the rawkishness was intensified. 
 
 Nanno stood watching the cattle as by instinct they 
 found their way to their stalls in the shed on the other 
 side of the yard. 
 
 " Is it dumb ye're gettin' ? " insisted Bridget " what's 
 been happenin' ye to be so late ? An' I af ther comin' back 
 from Anesk this half-hour." 
 
 "'Twas one o' the Fennels talkin' to her down in the 
 field below." 
 
 This information was volunteered in a simple fashion 
 by Johnny. If he had any reason at all for giving it, 
 it was pride that one of the Fennels a greatly respected 
 family in Kathmore should speak with his sister. He 
 was quite unconscious of the effect produced by his state- 
 ment. 
 
 The blood stole into ISTanno's face. 
 
 " 'Twas not one of the Fennels, Johnny ! " she said 
 quickly. " I've never seen the gentleman before." 
 
 Bridget looked from one to the other. 
 
 " 'Tis like he's stayin' wid the Fennels thin," he as- 
 serted, in proof of his statement. " Shure I've seen him 
 out wid them in the boat." 
 
 " Maybe 'tis Mr. Jerningham whatever ye call him. 
 'Tis a friend of theirs stayin' from England." 
 
 It was Bridget who suggested this. For the moment 
 her native curiosity had got the better of her wrath. It 
 was the natural instinct, common to all her race, to locate 
 a personality. The moment that she had satisfied herself 
 in this, the remembrance of her anger returned. 
 
 "Shure, what the deuce do ye want to be wastin' yeer
 
 TRAFFIC. 35 
 
 time talkin' to him, an' he only makin' a fool o' ye? 
 Patsy ! " she turned round and called the name into the 
 kitchen " come an' take some o' the cows ; an' Nanno, 
 ye go down the street to Crowley's. Tell him to sind up 
 a sack o' coals and get six-pennorth o' candles." 
 
 " Don't ye want me to do the milkin' ? " 
 
 " I do not glory be to God, wouldn't I tell ye if I did? 
 Tell him to charge them in the bill." 
 
 Nanno walked quietly down the cobbled path and passed 
 through the five-barred gate into the lane. The silence 
 of her obedience almost exasperated Bridget. She often 
 wished the girl would rebel, that she might give full vent 
 to the embittered rage which seemed almost to dominate 
 her thoughts of this illegitimate child of hers. Nanno was 
 a thorn in her side. The mere sight of her frequently 
 called forth Bridget's spleen. As year by year Nanno de- 
 veloped, and Bridget became older, the mother grew the 
 more to hate the daughter. It was her folly staring her 
 in the face ; her failure gloating over her discomfiture. No 
 one knew of it certainly, but it robbed her of the upper 
 hand over her husband; it robbed her of the power that 
 her nature craved. 
 
 And Nanno, unconscious of all this, only aggravated it 
 by her unconsciousness. She aggravated it by her silence 
 as she passed out into the lane, but she was unaware of it. 
 Everything she did, was with that same degree of quiet- 
 ness. She was a fatalist in almost every action, though 
 the word destiny or its equivalents had never entered into 
 her vocabulary. 
 
 The evening was falling fast and the shadows of the 
 trees were heavy and gray as she made her way down the 
 lane to the main road. She could hear the stream be- 
 tween the noise of her footfalls, but its chattering seemed 
 imbued with the neutral tones of the evening and the still-
 
 36 TRAFFIC. 
 
 ness of the air. Its, rippling was subdued and hushed, as 
 though it moved in sleep; but though she heard it, Nanno 
 noticed nothing. She did not see that the fields which had 
 been steeped in gold were then washed with gray ; that the 
 hedges which had stood out in blackness against the light, 
 were now beginning to lose their outlines, to hide them- 
 selves in the sky. 
 
 Something that Bridget had said to her had blunted 
 her observation. The words were hanging in her mind as 
 a catching tune hangs in the reluctant ear. " Shure, what 
 the deuce do ye want to be wastin' yeer time talkin' to 
 him, an' he only makin' a fool o' ye ? " 
 
 How had he tried to make a fool of her? She could 
 not remember anything he had said, which was not quite 
 ordinary and commonplace, except the question he had 
 asked her which she had not perfectly understood. She 
 knew what sort of a fool her mother alluded to ; but their 
 conversation had contained very little more than the mere 
 passing of the time of day. It seemed to her, in summing 
 up the matter in her mind, that her mother's thoughts ran 
 too easily to that conclusion concerning men and women. 
 Nanno had often heard her say it before of others, And 
 so, at this point, she dismissed the question from her, in- 
 voluntarily turning to her conversation with Jerningham. 
 There was no doubt in her mind that that was his name. 
 She had never known her mother to fail by her adroit 
 questions in discovering .the identity of a new-comer to 
 the village. Nanno did not possess that curiosity herself. 
 It was another respect in which Bridget had noticed her re- 
 semblance to her father. 
 
 Mr. Jerningham, then, was an Englishman. She had 
 a natural distaste for the classification. Her father, John 
 Troy, disliked Englishmen. He said, " They're so deuced 
 ehure o' things they know nothin' whativer about."
 
 TRAFFIC. 37 
 
 She was convinced that that was quite true, and that 
 it applied to this man as well as to the rest. But his 
 voice was quiet and that had appealed to her. It was not 
 that she was jarred by the voices of those around her. 
 Contact with them from her birth had made that impos- 
 sible. But nevertheless, her ear was naturally trained to 
 the refinement of a voice a reed of nature tuned by God 
 to the whispering of every wind. When he had called out 
 after her, " I'll have greater respect for rabbits in future," 
 she had found herself drawing inferences on his character 
 from the way he spoke. With this remembrance she began 
 to wonder whether he would speak to her as he had done 
 if they happened to meet again. Why had he spoken to 
 her at all ? 
 
 That was a question which only her instinct could an- 
 swer and, in such a case, instinct never fails a woman. It 
 seldom fails a man. It may be only a glance, a hurried 
 look, a word, a thing of the moment ; it may be in crowded 
 traffic or in a lonely lane, but the instinct that detects it 
 is infallible. There is underlying in human nature an 
 ability to perceive its power of fascination over another, 
 that is as keen as the instinct to pursue the trail of its 
 prey in the nature of an animal. A woman may glance 
 at a man in the hurrying of a crowd, and the mind of the 
 man becomes exultant with the knowledge of his command 
 over her. A man may look at a woman in the silence of a 
 church, and the heart of that woman beats with pride at 
 the knowledge of the power that is hers. 
 
 Xanno knew why he had spoken to her. She did not 
 reason it out ; it is not in the nature of women to do these 
 things. They understand a matter without knowing why. 
 Nanno understood why Jerningham had spoken to her the 
 thought of it brought a sense of warmth to her face but
 
 38 TRAFFIC. 
 
 she could have given no definite reasons for her compre- 
 hension. 
 
 And so she made her way to the village, allowing her 
 thoughts to be absorbed by the trifling incident of her 
 meeting with Philip Jerningham ; absorbed, because it had 
 been magnified in her mind by her mother's retort that 
 he was endeavoring to make a fool of her. 
 
 By the time she had reached the main street the gloom 
 had finally set in. The row of cottages on either side 
 were lost in the gray, and the roofs were hardly distinguish- 
 able against the sky. A patch of warm, yellow lamplight 
 fell from the window of Hannah Foley's little china-shop 
 on to the whitewashed wall of the next house. The shadow 
 of the window-frame divided it sharply in two. A glimmer 
 of light pierced its way out of Willoughby's public-house. 
 Through the door of Julia Quinn's cottage the flushed light 
 of a fire found points of reflection in every polished sur- 
 face in the room. She could see Mary Quinn, the young- 
 est girl, turning the bellows wheel; the warm light of the 
 glowing cinders deepening the color of her cheeks. Her 
 head was on one side and she hummed a tune as she turned 
 the wheel Everything was intensely quiet. A man down 
 the street struck a match to light his pipe and the scratch- 
 ing sound reached her ears; then as he sheltered it in his 
 hands the profile of his face was lit up with orange. 
 
 As she reached Crowley's shop, the universal provision 
 store of Eathmore, a rough burst of laughter from inside 
 reached her ears. For a moment she hesitated. She recog- 
 nized the voice of the man who had laughed. Jamesy 
 Eyan was often to be seen in Eathmore, though he lived 
 on his farm in Glenlickey, some five miles away. And 
 'Jamesy Eyan brought a shuddering sense of disgust into 
 Nanno's mind whenever she saw him. For some time 
 past, whenever they met in the street of the village or
 
 TRAFFIC. 39 
 
 coming away from Mass he had gone out of his way to 
 show her such attentions as would be calculated to express 
 his admiration for her. To those who did not understand 
 them, those forms of attention might have been mistaken 
 for horse-play. They were rough, uncouth, ill-mannered 
 at times. But to girls of her own class, and to ISTanno her- 
 self, they were unmistakable. Jamesy Evan had her in 
 his eye, as they might have said in those parts. 
 
 He was typical of most Irish farming life. His face 
 was round and utterly devoid of any expression, save a 
 cunning little look here or a humorous wink there. Be- 
 yond that it was a face as expressionless as dough in the 
 hands of a baker. It was the unhealthy purple of his 
 skin like many of the men in that district, he was clean- 
 shaven that spoke more plainly for his character than 
 any lack of animation or want of intelligence. 
 
 He was vastly different to Crowley, the owner of the 
 small shop to whom he was talking as Nanno entered 
 after her momentary pause. Crowley was a man, who 
 seemed to have no blood in him at all; rather some thin, 
 oleaginous liquid that toiled slowly through his veins and 
 feebly lit an interest in his eyes. Yet his face too was 
 round; round in that flabby way which one would expect 
 to become elliptical if placed in any other position on his 
 shoulders. He was seldom if ever seen outside the pre- 
 cincts of his shop. There was the air he breathed from one 
 year to another; an atmosphere laden with the odors of 
 stale edibles and all unwholesomeness. Like a parasite he 
 moved in and out amongst his kegs of butter, barrels of 
 salted fish, and dried pigs' heads; unhealthy unclean 
 yet with the great cleansing Atlantic not more than two 
 hundred yards from his door. 
 
 Nanno approached the counter with her head averted 
 from the two men and opened her transactions with Mrs.
 
 40 TRAFFIC. 
 
 Crowley who, in a filthy pink dressing-gown, was labor- 
 iously making up accounts. 
 
 " Good evenin', Nanno," she said ; then looking down at 
 her attire, she laughed stupidly with assumed embarrass- 
 ment. " Ye're afther catchin' me in me dressing-gown." 
 
 This remark was made without exception to every cus- 
 tomer, and the same people had heard it again and again. 
 There followed no effort on her part to change the cos- 
 tume. She did not even offer to get it washed. 
 
 Nanno volunteered no reply. She was too engrossed in 
 the thought of finishing her purchases and escaping from 
 the presence of Jamesy Kyan. But escape was made im- 
 possible. Directly he saw her, he made his way down the 
 shop and leaned over the counter by her side, professing 
 to take a great interest in all that she required. He gazed 
 up into her face with those small, cunning eyes of his, but 
 for the first few moments said nothing. It was one of his 
 ways of showing admiration. 
 
 But to Nanno, that admiration brought only the sense 
 of loathsome foreboding. A woman always knows when 
 Fate is following her. Again and again through her life 
 she will see the shadow of that Fate falling slant-wise in 
 grotesque silhouettes upon the ground. It is seldom more 
 than once that the shadow of good fortune ever crosses her 
 path. 
 
 Whenever she met Jamesy Ryan the shadow of her Fate 
 lay like a fantastic symbol before Nanno's eyes and dogged 
 her footsteps as she walked. Invariably, prompted by her 
 instinct, she avoided it; but the instinct was not strong 
 enough to predict in actual words the future that she 
 feared. 
 
 As soon as her purchases were complete, she left the shop, 
 saying good-night to Mrs. Crowley and vaguely including 
 the others in her departure.
 
 TRAFFIC. 41 
 
 " She's a damned fine girrl ! " exclaimed Jamesy Ryan, 
 giving expression at length to his pent-up admiration. 
 
 " Shure, fine is it ? " simpered Mrs. Crowley. " Her 
 eyes wasn't made for the good of her soul, I'm thinkin'." 
 
 " She's a damned fine girrl ! " was all that Kyan could 
 say and, after one or two restless movements, he left the 
 shop, as though some unseen force were dragging him 
 against his will. 
 
 Nanno had gone no more than a few hundred paces up 
 the street, when she heard footsteps hurrying after her. 
 It would have been impossible to deceive her. She knew 
 who it was. One quick little breath she drew in and 
 then, without looking round, increased her pace. But it 
 was quite useless; before she had passed the pump out- 
 side Hannah Foley's little china-shop, Jamesy Ryan came 
 abreast with her. 
 
 " Ye take mighty little notice of a- fella," he said, un- 
 consciously fitting in his step with hers. 
 
 " 'Tis the way I was in a hurry," said Nanno uncom- 
 fortably. 
 
 .auiy. 
 
 Is it goin' home ye are ? " 
 I am." 
 
 " Faith, I'm goin' up the road too." 
 
 And so he accompanied her until they reached Troy's 
 Lane. 
 
 There in the darkness Nanno stopped. 
 
 " Good-night," she said coldly. 
 
 She was just turning away when Jamesy followed her. 
 
 "Begob, I'll come up to the house wid ye," he said. 
 " 'Tis mighty dark." 
 
 At the five-barred gate she tried again to shake him off. 
 She dreaded lest her mother should see her with him. 
 
 " 'Tis good-night now, thin," she said lightly with a 
 forced smile.
 
 42 TRAFFIC. 
 
 He took no notice of that. 
 
 "Why don't ye come up dancing at the cross these 
 nights ? " he asked. 
 
 " Shure, I don't have a mind for it, and that's the way 
 with me." 
 
 He quietly moved a step nearer to her. 
 
 " I wouldn't moind havin' me arrm round yeer waist/' 
 he said sensuously. 
 
 She shuddered. 
 
 " Maybe I wouldn't like it myself," she said warmly. 
 
 " Bi God, then how's this for it now? " 
 
 Before she could resist him he had flung his arm round 
 her, and held her there, laughing with excitement and de- 
 fiance into her face. 
 
 She wrenched herself free of him; but not before his 
 fingers had felt the softness of her flesh beneath the home- 
 spun bodice. Then the gate opened swiftly to her hand 
 and she left him there in the darkness, chuckling at his 
 success and her discomfiture. 
 
 Her manner was excited and distraught as she sat down 
 to her tea. The others had finished their meal and were 
 sitting round the fire. She said nothing to them; but 
 then, as she raised the cup to her lips, her sleeve caught 
 the edge of her saucer and knocked it on to the ground, 
 where it broke in two pieces. 
 
 Bridget broke into loud laughter. 
 
 " Glory be to God ! Nanno's going to be married," she 
 exclaimed, echoing the superstition of the country-side. 
 
 " Nanno's going to be married ! " caught up Johnny in 
 his deep treble. 
 
 And Kanno, bending down to pick up the pieces, shud- 
 dered as she had done before.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LIFE in Rathmore had but one relaxation in the year: 
 the day of the Pattern and the two or three days follow- 
 ing, when the anniversary of the Patron Saint was kept 
 as a feast day, and all work was suspended. Not that life 
 there was particularly strenuous. It really needed no re- 
 laxation at all. Tending the land or fishing the sea was 
 not permitted on Sunday. The parish priest was strict 
 about that. Only when the weather threatened the crops, 
 or a big school of fish came into the bay, then was dispen- 
 sation granted on the Sabbath ; then the nets were allowed 
 to be cast or the corn cut and stacked. 
 
 But on the Pattern day, no matter whether it rained for 
 twenty-four hours or the bay was alive with fish, you 
 could get no one to work. Rathmore on that day was at 
 play. The ever-youthful child in us must have its holi- 
 day ; the Irishman his saint's day. 
 
 And it was not without its benefits, that patron day of 
 St. Daeclan. Every cottage, small or large, was given 
 its coat or so of whitewash or pinkwash, as the case might 
 be, with the result that Rathmore was one of the cleanest 
 of villages in the county of Waterford. Saint Daeclan 
 was responsible for it all ; and considering that cleanliness 
 in Ireland is no small matter unless it be in the existence 
 of it the holy man was by no means so vivid a personality 
 to the country folk as one would have expected. True, 
 they called their children after him ; but then, in a temper- 
 ance hall which had been erected on the cliff, they put up 
 
 43
 
 44 TRAFFIC. 
 
 a plaster statue of St. Patrick, whose brown beard they 
 made gray with judicious applications of paint from the 
 pot. Him, they called St. Daeclan, and the country people 
 who looked in on their way to the holy well said, " Ah, 
 shure, 'tis just like the good man indeed it is." And, 
 seeing that he was their patron saint, they ought to have 
 known better. But they did not. There were few of them 
 indeed who knew the story of the saint's life, excepting 
 Shaughnessy, who took charge of the ruins of the round 
 tower; and his acquaintance with it, seeing that it became 
 a stock-in-trade which he repeated to various visitors, was 
 not so deeply to be respected. 
 
 Nevertheless, he certainly was one man in Rathmore to 
 whom St. Daeclan was a living personality. And Nanno 
 was another. She never questioned that the good man had 
 dried up the River Blackwater in the valley that runs 
 between Anesk and Eathmore, because he had thrice been 
 refused a salmon by a greedy fisherman. It never occurred 
 to her to disbelieve that ; for some act of disobedience, he 
 had turned a man to stone in the cornfields that fronted 
 the sea above the mile of strand. If she herself did not 
 understand the means and ways of such deeds, God, by 
 whose hand they had been accomplished, was almighty. 
 She was perfectly contented to accept them from that 
 standpoint. 
 
 Since all the habitations in Rathmore are whitewashed 
 in readiness for this great event, it is easily understood 
 that the preparations are almost as important as the 
 function itself. For a week beforehand every cottage be- 
 gins to wear a clean face. It is as though a lot of chil- 
 dren were being set in tidiness to go before the bishop for 
 their confirmation. Carts begin to come into the village, 
 and the climax of excitement is reached when the traveling 
 show arrives and begins to set up its swings.
 
 TRAFFIC. 45 
 
 About a week after her encounter with Jamesy Ryan, 
 and three days before the eventful Pattern, Xanno had been 
 sent down to the village on an errand of Bridget's. With 
 all the rest of Rathmore, she expected company on the Pat- 
 tern da} T . Relations came from far and near, some travel- 
 ing so much as thirty or forty miles with the intention 
 of seeing their kith and kin, making their rounds of the 
 Holy Well, and sharing in the delights of the village. 
 
 Provisions, therefore, had to be stocked, and Xanno was 
 sent down to Crowley's to procure them. As she turned 
 the corner which opened the street before her, she was sur- 
 prised to see a crowd of young girls collected round the door 
 of Hannah Foley's little shop. For a moment she stopped. 
 There was something determined in their attitudes that 
 impressed her. She wondered what they were waiting for. 
 Could some one inside be ill? At last curiosity prompted 
 her to go on. Xone of them noticed her approach. Their 
 eyes were all fixed on the interior of the shop. 
 
 " What is it ? " she asked, approaching one of them. 
 
 The girl looked round stolidly. She was not more than 
 seventeen years old; in fact, their ages, all the thirteen 
 girls, ranged between fifteen and twenty-two. 
 
 " 'Tis Nancy Foley," she said, and then she looked back 
 again into the shop. Xanno followed her glance and there, 
 she saw the girl alluded to standing by the portal of an 
 inner door, her face in the angle of her arm, sobbing bit- 
 terly. 
 
 " What's happened her ? " Xanno persisted. 
 
 " 'Tis the way she's a /' said the other in a whisper. 
 
 " She hev a choild an' she not married. Glory be to 
 God the shame of her ! " Horror entered her voice with 
 these last words. 
 
 " But what are ye waitin' here for ? " 
 
 " To turn her out."
 
 46 TRAFFIC. 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 " Out of Rathmore. Is it shamin' us ye'd have her ? " 
 
 Nanno looked at them; all unmarried girls who, like 
 herself, as yet had not known the power of their own na- 
 tures. Then her eyes wandered to the figure of the sob- 
 bing girl inside, and suddenly she realized the horror of 
 it. They were going to turn her out of her own home. 
 Her own mother was letting her go. What else indeed 
 could she do ? But they these girls whose virtue was yet 
 strong in them, yet whose virtue might be lost that very 
 night they were taking her judgment into their own 
 hands. Not knowing what she had suffered, oblivious of 
 the effort she may have made to guard her name, ignorant 
 of the cruel and pressing pleasure of sin, they were about 
 to pass upon her the sentence of their own disgust. 
 
 For one moment more Nanno gazed at them all in 
 amazement. The same relentless look was in the eyes of 
 each girl. It was as though an unswerving law, merciless 
 in its irrevocability, blind in its sense of justice, was meting 
 out judgment there before her. She felt that appeal to 
 their pity would be useless, yet there, for that moment, 
 drawn by an irresistible sympathy for the wretched girl, 
 she hesitated, wondering whether it would be possible for 
 such an appeal to be made. She did not then or afterwards 
 try to account for that softness of her heart. It only 
 seemed to her, as she looked from one face to another, that 
 each one of them, she herself included, might find them- 
 selves in such a plight and pray in vain for the mercy 
 which that girl needed then. Was theirs the mercy of 
 God or hers? 
 
 At last she turned away, unable to watch the course of 
 events any longer. She walked slowly down the street to- 
 wards Crowley's shop, her mind contorted with the thoughts
 
 TRAFFIC. 47 
 
 that raced through it a flood that twisted the placid 
 surface of the stream into grotesque eddies. 
 
 Was life really so hard? Was sin, which seemed so 
 close and possible a thing, never punished by the bitter- 
 ness of the remorse of those who fell? Was forgiveness 
 a quality that none possessed? The questions all tor- 
 mented her with their insistence. 
 
 At length a sound of groaning from many voices made 
 her turn and look back. Xancy Foley had come out of her 
 house and, like a sheep that the butcher drives to the 
 shambles, she was being turned by them out of the village. 
 Her face was hidden in her hands as she hurried along 
 before them and, with compassionless faces on which the 
 implacable expression of merciless justice was set, they fol- 
 lowed her, disappearing from sight as they turned off out 
 of the street. In just such a manner had she seen Shaugh- 
 nessy, the butcher, driving a trembling sheep away from the 
 openness of the green fields and the blue of God's sky to 
 that shed behind his cottage where, with nerveless hand, he 
 cut its throat. 
 
 Then Xanno continued her way to Crowley's shop. Her 
 mind was numbed. For the first time in her life she 
 had realized what was the meaning of an inviolable law. 
 She had seen it at work, and it terrified her. She had 
 plainly appreciated the right of it; yet there was some- 
 thing beneath its execution which had seemed wanting in 
 absolute justice. It did not occur to her that she was only 
 one of the many who had wondered and thought and suf- 
 fered in that very way; one of the many who would still 
 wonder and think and suffer so long as laws are governed 
 by human limitation. She did not ask that sin should 
 go unpunished. It was not that she wished to avoid retri- 
 bution; but only, in that moment, when she realized the 
 fate of Nancy Foley, it seemed to her that the leaven of
 
 48 TRAFFIC. 
 
 human pity, of human kindness, was needed to influence 
 the judgment between the nature of one woman and an- 
 other. 
 
 Why she, as yet unsoiled by the hand of any man, should 
 have been driven to this impulse of thought by what she 
 had seen, is not easy to define by any law of psychology. 
 It has been said that Nanno was a fatalist; and fatality, 
 in truth, was at the root of it all. The mark of destiny 
 that lay in her eyes, the hand of Fate that had laid itself 
 upon her lips, these were not to be made evident without 
 their shadows being cast across her thoughts. 
 
 There is something uncanny in the nature of a woman. 
 She reads her own future with unswerving instinct, and 
 follows her fate as a dog follows its master. Almost every 
 story in Ireland that deals with witchcraft and the posses- 
 sion of the evil eye, is concerned with a woman, and the 
 same holds good nearly the whole world over. 
 
 And so, no doubt, in Nanno, this incident had stirred 
 the instinct she possessed. In the flight of her imagina- 
 tion she saw herself driven by a law that knew no mercy 
 or restraint. She pictured herself, her face turned to- 
 wards the unknown, with the hounds of an unswerving jus- 
 tice at her heels. And looking on into life with that clearer 
 vision which only women possess, she dreaded its possibil- 
 ities; shrank from its unpitifulness, and wondered why 
 she had been called into its existence.
 
 JL 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THREE days later came the Pattern. Those of the vil- 
 lagers who had witnessed the expulsion of Xancy Foley 
 had forgotten the incident, insomuch as that it was passed. 
 They might, as in fact they did, recount it to those to whom 
 it would be news, gossip, scandal; but beyond that, it had 
 passed out of their lives. Only with Xanno did it re- 
 main an actual fact; si-ill living, still horrible, still a note 
 that had been sounded in the recesses of her mind, the echo 
 of which would continue to vibrate until that moment 
 when all vibration ceases and the labored swinging of the 
 pendulum has stopped. 
 
 For two nights it had forced its way into her dreams. 
 Women in this way are susceptible to such things. And 
 when the Pattern day arrived, she felt in no mood to 
 enjoy the frivolities of the occasion. 
 
 As soon as the eleven o'clock Mass was over, she made 
 her way up to the holy well, which, with its ruins of a 
 chapel of the fifth century, stands out of the cliff side as 
 though, withstanding the growth of weeds around it, it 
 held tenaciously to the right of its existence. True, only 
 the gable end of the chapel, the high altar with its Gaelic 
 cross and the well itself, surmounted by the three figures 
 of Christ and the two thieves these only had defied the 
 wind and rain. The washed, white bones, left by the cara- 
 van of Time in the desert of men's ambitions. They stood 
 there invincible, more than sufficient to stir the imagina- 
 tion of an imaginative people. And so, in commemoration 
 4 49
 
 50 TRAFFIC. 
 
 of the saint, they have become a place of prayers; prayeri 
 which are but echoes in another tongue of the supplications 
 that were offered there fourteen hundred years ago. 
 
 Around the entire ruin, a footpath has been worn by 
 the feet of those who have walked in childish meditation, 
 counting the hand-worn beads of their rosary. Year after 
 year that pathway is beaten down afresh ; the grass that has 
 grown there is worn and killed. The stone which forms 
 the base of the cross is marked in the name of the Father 
 and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost by each supplicant 
 as he ends his prayers. One by one, they approach it as 
 they pass and, taking up the sharp-edged stone which is 
 laid there for the purpose, they mark the sign with silently 
 moving lips. That sign of the cross is now deep with the 
 imprint of many a man's and many a woman's prayers. 
 By some it is done with the gentleness of reverence, by 
 others with the fierceness of their zeal, but one and all they 
 wear it deeper and yet deeper as time goes by. One looks 
 at it and wonders which will last longest, the faith or 
 the stone? 
 
 It had not outworn that faith which was so much a 
 part of Nanno's nature. Each year, as the Pattern came 
 by, she made her devotions with the same fervent rever- 
 ence. They meant a great deal to her. Religion is mostly 
 one of two things ; a habit or a consolation ; and to Nanno 
 it was a consolation in the truest sense of the word. Be- 
 yond the friendship of John Troy, which, however true it 
 may have been, was clumsy and incomplete, she received 
 sympathy from no one. And then, also, it is within the 
 natural order of things that the sexual development of a 
 girl, as well as the absence of sexual gratification, draws 
 her towards a contemplation of and a reliance on the 
 faith in which she has been brought up. Religion was 
 made for young girls, disappointed women, and the moral
 
 TRAFFIC. 51 
 
 benefit of the state; and to Nanno, at this period of her 
 life, it constituted everything. 
 
 In company with John Troy, she made her way up to 
 the well after the eleven o'clock Mass. The beggars who 
 plied a substantial trade at this season of the year were 
 seated at intervals no doubt arranged between themselves 
 for some distance along the approach to the place. At 
 the well itself, there were clusters of them. Some chose 
 the high altar where the sign of the cross was marked 
 on the stone. Others collected near the spot where the holy 
 water was meted out in thick glass tumblers holy water 
 fed by the rain of Heaven and polluted with the washings 
 of diseased humanity. There, were seated two poor wo- 
 men of the village, to whom the right of sale of the water 
 was accorded as a charity. It was not compulsory to pay 
 for it, certainly ; but that it was holy water there was no 
 denying, and those who partook of it, received a candid 
 opinion of themselves from the vendors if payment was not 
 forthcoming. As a matter of fact, every one paid. The 
 fear of public opinion is a worthy incentive. Much the 
 same spirit dominated the donations to the beggars. To 
 refuse alms was to receive a curse instead of a blessing 
 and, at the moment of having finished their devotions, these 
 simple people dislike the sound of a curse, even though 
 it may come from one whose prayers only soil the lips 
 that utter them. 
 
 And so they do well, these mendicants. They know 
 accurately the susceptibility of the natures they are deal- 
 ing with. John Troy would not have the thought of 
 refusing one of them. 
 
 " For the love an' d'onor of the Almighty God, give 
 a copper in respect of the poor blind man. May the 
 Mother o' God pray for the sowls of veer father and 
 mother, sister and brother for the love an' d'onor of the 
 Almighty God!''
 
 52 TRAFFIC. 
 
 John Troy put his hand in his pocket, and the blessings 
 of the blind man followed him a flutter of dead leaves 
 swept into life by a passing gust of wind as he and Nanno 
 walked on towards the place to make their rounds of the 
 chapel. 
 
 "May the blissid Mother o' God give ye the benefits 
 of yeer rounds, and may all the hairs of yeer head turn 
 into mowld candles to light yeer sowl to glory on the last 
 day ! " 
 
 Again the simple man paid for the price of his prayers, 
 and again, and yet again ; an automatic dropping of coins 
 into a machine that yielded its quota nothing else. 
 
 "Will ye pray for me, now?" he said, as he gave a 
 penny to one of them. 
 
 " Will I pray for ye ? Shure, glory be to God as long 
 as wather runs ! " 
 
 But the chances of those prayers ever being said were 
 remote ; more remote than he imagined. 
 
 To IsTanno these things passed unnoticed. She was too 
 engrossed in the thought of her own prayers. With eyes 
 lowered on the beads that she turned through her fingers, 
 or with her head raised and a rapt expression on her face, 
 she walked round and round with the stream of suppli- 
 cants, who, in the anticipation of the attractions of the 
 village, were making good their devotions in the early part 
 of the day. 
 
 They were all set prayers that she said; but though! 
 she had repeated the words a thousand times in the quiet 
 of the kitchen where every evening John Troy responded 
 to the rosary they seemed to supply every need that 
 her mind possessed. It seldom occurred to her to say 
 prayers of her own making. Her nature was completely 
 dominated by those which her religion had made for her. 
 she obeyed it implicitly. To disobey it, to question
 
 TRAFFIC. 53 
 
 it, to do anything that opposed its slightest precept, was as 
 foreign to her mind as the north wind is to the south. It 
 was the law that governed the world the pivot of every- 
 thing that existed. Her father's sowing might cease to 
 yield its crop ; his cattle might refuse to breed their young ; 
 but her religion could never fail to her it was indestruc- 
 tible. 
 
 The sea was alight with the sun as she made her rounds 
 of the chapel that morning. Across the bay, Helvic Head 
 slipped out into the sea the snout of a leviathan, just 
 cooling itself in the water. Gentle breezes of wind blew 
 through her hair as she walked ; but contemplation of the 
 sea and thought of the day were very far from her mind. 
 She noticed nothing. Occasionally a passer-by one whose 
 religious beliefs were contrary to the expression of such 
 simple faith as this would stop and look at her. Once 
 two men nudged each other as she went by. She did not 
 notice that. Such utter unconsciousness of the picture 
 that she made was sufficiently attractive in itself. But 
 the expression of her face was not intense. From her eyes 
 the look of fate was for the moment gone and, in its 
 place, reliance was predominant. Her lips, slightly parted, 
 gave an impression of absolute confidence. She was lost in 
 what she believed. 
 
 And so she walked and prayed until the rosary was fin- 
 ished, and she was standing on the rough stone that 
 raised her to the base of the cross on the high altar. In 
 a tender, reverent way, she took up the jagged stone that 
 lay ready for her hand where the last person had left it; 
 in a still more reverent way, she began to mark the cross 
 in the well-worn groove. 
 
 " In the name of the Father and of the Son and of 
 the Holy Ghost," her lips whispered; then as she looked
 
 54 TRAFFIC. 
 
 up, she met the eyes of Jerningham, watching her from 
 the footpath where he stood. 
 
 The blood rushed to her cheeks. It was not that she 
 was ashamed of being seen; but she felt that he had been 
 watching, coldly observant of everything that she had done. 
 It seemed as though he had found her at a disadvantage; 
 displaying something of herself which she would never 
 willingly have shown to any one. 
 
 She lowered her head while she was passing him, and 
 his eyes followed her as she joined the stream of people 
 who were leaving the place. He had come there with the 
 cold mind of the materialist, ready to make a study of na- 
 tive superstition and subsequent debauchery. The suppli- 
 cations and the curses of the beggars seemed to him to be 
 well within the picture. It was not necessarily a bigoted 
 opinion. To the casual outsider, whose education has been 
 one of dry facts and essentials, it was a conclusion almost 
 impossible to avoid. The Irish character that is growing 
 out of childhood is losing its faith in these simple things; 
 but those of them who are still children can make-believe 
 their whole life long. To them, religion is filled with its 
 signs and wonders, and the name of God and of the Mother 
 of God is forever on their lips in earnest supplication. 
 
 But to distinguish between this contrast, which under 
 a slow process of evolution has now been established in 
 the Irish character, is no easy matter; and for the first 
 few moments, while he stood and watched them, Jerning- 
 ham was carried to the conclusion which is arrived at by 
 the majority of Englishmen who come with a protesting 
 faith for the first time to Ireland. They call it priestcraft. 
 They say that the priesthood thrives on the superstitions 
 which it cultivates in the minds of the people. Jerningham 
 was drifting in the same direction. From the stolid faces 
 of the supplicants, he looked to the vile features of the beg-
 
 TRAFFIC. 55 
 
 gars, viciously, sensually exhibiting the sores and ills of 
 their bodies and crying for alms. 
 
 What truth could there be in a religion whose pursuits 
 were these? he asked himself. And he would have an- 
 swered the question in the same way as hundreds who 
 believe they understand Ireland have answered it for them- 
 selves before ; but at that moment he saw Nanno. 
 
 Primarily his interest in the girl made him look, and 
 then he found himself slowly being forced to the conclusion 
 that he was at fault. Could priestcraft ever play on feel- 
 ings as deep as those which he thought he saw expressed in 
 her face ? 
 
 He could not take his eyes off her. In watching the 
 movements of her lips he forgot how they had interested 
 him on their first meeting. They suggested some depth of 
 feeling for which, at the moment, he was unable to ac- 
 count. It disarmed him. The materialist still inclined to 
 be uppermost; but what he had seen, confused him. It 
 was easy enough to believe that all these people were priest- 
 ridden. With the already implanted inclination in his 
 mind, he fancied that such was plainly to be seen in every 
 action and every expression of their faces. But this girl 
 this Xanno Troy. The fact that he knew her even 
 so slightly as he did seemed to give him a better oppor- 
 tunity of judging. And her expression dismayed him; he 
 felt confused. 
 
 At last, when she had gone out of sight he turned away, 
 to be met by the supplication of a beggar. 
 
 ee May the Holy Mother o' God bless yer honor, and may 
 ill-luck never stop at yeer door ! " 
 
 He looked down at the depraved face of the woman and 
 shook his head; and, as he walked away, she added an 
 amendment to her wish : 
 
 " But fly in at the windy in handfuls ye durrty " 
 
 He heard no more.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE aftermath of the Pattern, the swings, the dancing, 
 the parading of the village street, these things had no at- 
 traction for Xanno. As soon as her rounds of the holy 
 well were finished she went home. John walked with her 
 as far as the school-house, but there, though he had no 
 definite intention of staying behind, the inclination Avas 
 too strong. He saw James Crowley, the publican, play- 
 ing forty-five with three of the fishermen. John could 
 not resist that. He edged his course towards the upturned 
 barrel upon which the four men were laying their greasy 
 cards. As he reached them, Crowley produced the ace of 
 hearts, recognizable more by the shape than the color of it 
 and, at the sight of that, John stopped. Xanno had looked 
 back for the moment and then had gone on by herself. 
 She knew his partiality for a game of forty-five. 
 
 Men jostled her as she passed through the crowds in 
 the narrow street, but she took little notice. Girls march- 
 ing abreast, arm in arm, called out laughingly to her to join 
 them; she smiled in reply, to some she shook her head in 
 refusal, but she continued her way home, talking to no 
 one. 
 
 " She's gettin' great pride out of herself," one girl said 
 as she passed. 
 
 " Shure she's always that way shure the divil couldn't 
 touch her wid a pitchfork," and with their gaudy-colored 
 dresses and ribbons they pushed their way through the 
 crowd. 
 
 56
 
 TRAFFIC. 57 
 
 Apparently she took no interest in anything. A col- 
 lection of people had gathered round a journeyman clown 
 who, with filthy jests addressed to an imaginary comrade 
 whom he alluded to as Billy, was making them shout with 
 laughter; Xanno hurried by with only a side-glance in 
 their direction. 
 
 From that moment the pace of her steps increased. In 
 the back of the crowd, she had seen Jamesy Eyan. His 
 face was contorted with sensual laughter, the little eyes 
 were pinched with the wrinkled flesh ; she heard the shout 
 of his hilarity above all the others, and for that reason, 
 lest he should see her, she hurried on. 
 
 When she reached home, the kitchen was crowded with 
 friends, acquaintances, and far-distant relatives. They all 
 greeted her with geniality that in some cases was genuine 
 and in others alcoholic. The smell of intoxicants, com- 
 bined with the heat of many people, almost disgusted her 
 as she came in from the outer air. 
 
 They all sat round in Ihe room, occupying every avail- 
 able seat that was to be had. Each man grasped a bottle 
 of porter in his hand. They leaned forward with their 
 elbows on their knees, the bottle held out in front of them. 
 Some of the older women were drinking too, but these 
 were supplied with glasses, the exteriors of which were all 
 greasy and sticky with the porter that had slopped over the 
 brim. 
 
 In every face there was a vacuous expression of enjoy- 
 ment. They spoke at intervals between the gurgling sound 
 of their drinking animals raising their heads from the 
 trough. Sometimes the conversation became loud and 
 noisy. The men laughed gutturally ; the women with occas- 
 ional high notes, as though they had been drinking too 
 much. On the table by the little window that looked out 
 on to the yard were numerous empty bottles. They were
 
 58 TRAFFIC. 
 
 ranged in careless disorder on the board behind the men 
 who had chosen it as a seat. 
 
 In a corner of the fireplace, under the chimney, Bridget 
 sat on a low form and gossiped with a stout woman, whose 
 black cape that fitted her shoulders was heavily ornamented 
 with jet. 
 
 She was just telling Bridget how much she paid for it 
 at Callaghan's in Anesk, when Xanno entered. 
 
 " Glory be to God, shure she's the dead spit of her 
 father ! " the stout woman exclaimed. 
 
 Bridget turned away with a coarse laugh, and urged 
 a man who was sitting near her on the red settle to have an- 
 other drop of porter. He finished hurriedly what remained 
 in the bottle that he had and took it. 
 
 It was at times like these, that N"anno gave those around 
 her the impression that she was morose. She felt it im- 
 possible to join in the conversation. She lacked that power 
 of being able to give herself up to the present with the 
 abandonment that possessed those with whom she contin- 
 ually came in contact. 
 
 On the little three-legged stool, which, at various turning- 
 points in his life, John Troy had frequently sat, Nanno 
 seated herself in the chimney-corner and silently turned 
 the bellows wheel. For a while, after the numerous greet- 
 ings were over, she escaped notice; but at last Bridget's 
 eyes rested on her; and, whether it were those vagaries that 
 possess a woman's mind when she has been drinking to 
 excess, or simply that bitterness of rage which she always 
 felt when she recognized Nanno's aloofness, she directed an 
 attack upon her to which every one in the kitchen stopped 
 in speaking to listen. 
 
 " What did ye want to come back here for in the name 
 o' God? Why didn't ye stay back in the shtreet if y 
 can't get a word out of yeself ? "
 
 TRAFFIC. 59 
 
 Nanno looked up in confusion. 
 
 "' Maybe I didn't want to," she retorted. " There are 
 plenty o' girls in the shtreet without me trapsin' about." 
 
 " Maybe 'tis the way ye thought yeself too good for the 
 fellas." Bridget turned and addressed the company in 
 general. " Glory be to God, me heart's broke thrying to 
 pick up an ould farmer for her who'll take her wid a 
 couple o' hundred pounds." 
 
 Every one laughed uproariously. 
 
 " Begob, there's Patsy Gee ! " said one man. The sug- 
 gestion was met with renewed merriment. Patsy Gee was 
 a farmer who, in the effort of burying three wives, had 
 reached the age of seventy-eight. " Maybe he'd thry his 
 luck wid a fourth if she cud bring him a couple o' hun- 
 dhred." 
 
 Nanno bent down, took the iron, and raked some cinders 
 on to the pile of glowing fuel. She did not want to draw 
 further attention to herself by getting up and leaving the 
 room then, and so she did not even make a reply to the 
 last sally. She was getting accustomed to this jest of her 
 mother's about the ould farmer and the couple o' hunderd 
 pounds. Bridget wanted to see her married; and this con- 
 tinual harping on the probable sum of her dowry when any 
 one was present, was solely in the form of an advertise- 
 ment. 
 
 It was for this reason that she avoided Jamesy Ryan. 
 From his manner to her, she was fully aware that the sum 
 of two hundred pounds would be more than sufficient temp- 
 tation to him. Whenever the matter was mentioned, she 
 knew that the moment was bound to come when the in- 
 formation would reach his ears and, bad character though 
 he was well known to be, she was sure that her mother 
 would accept him with open arms. At length, when the 
 conversation had turned and well set in on the topic of
 
 60 TRAFFIC. 
 
 Xancy Foley's expulsion from Rathmore, Nanno rose 
 quietly from her seat in the chimney-corner and slipped 
 unnoticed out of the room. 
 
 It was time for the cows to be brought home for milk- 
 ing, and, more because she wanted to avoid any further 
 reference to her marriage settlement, than because it was 
 her duty to do so, she went across the fields to fetch 
 them. 
 
 The evening was creeping through the trees when they 
 were finally turned out to graze again ; and then, still wish- 
 ing to avoid the people in the kitchen who, as the day wore 
 on, were becoming more noisy, more hilarious, she set out 
 for the village. 
 
 In the gray light it would not be so difficult to avoid 
 Jamesy Ryan. She would not have ventured there before. 
 As she entered the street, she passed John Troy, standing, 
 as he had seen James Crowley, with three other men 
 round the upturned barrel. His simple face was flushed 
 with excitement and with what he had been drinking. As 
 a rule he was a temperate man. No one would ever have 
 accused him of riotous living ; but it was a saint's day and 
 a holiday. His condition was almost inevitable. Xanno 
 saw him lay down a card with a thud of his fist on the 
 barrel. His eyes glittered with suppressed excitement 
 and, with his other hand, he held his cards guardedly 
 to his chest. 
 
 For one moment she waited, until the hand was played 
 and then, when she realized that he had lost, when she 
 saw his hand go unhesitatingly to his pocket, she turned 
 away. 
 
 At the bottom of the street, by the sea-wall, where an 
 open space gave them opportunity, the swings were placed. 
 She would not have been human had she not been interested
 
 TRAFFIC. 61 
 
 in seeing the people there. And so she made her way in 
 that direction. 
 
 The naphtha flares were hanging from different parts 
 of the scaffolding. They had already been lighted and 
 were casting a spluttering glare on the faces of those who 
 stood around. Like great sweeping hats, the swings were 
 swaying to and fro above her head in the dull blue light 
 against the sky. The men stood up high in the seats as 
 they rose and pulled strainingly on the woolen-covered ropes 
 that slid between their fingers. The girls shrank in their 
 seats, holding limply to the ropes and uttering stupid little 
 cries as the boats swayed to and fro. 
 
 Xanno watched them with a smile on her face. For the 
 first time that day she forgot that a fate was hanging over 
 her. And then, even at that moment, even when she had 
 forgotten, the expression in her eyes suddenly changed. A 
 hand slipped through her arm and a heavy voice said : 
 
 " There'll be one o' thim bloody boats empty in a 
 minute." And the hand still held her arm. 
 
 " I don't care for swingin', then," Nanno said hurriedly. 
 
 " Shure I don't care a damn about thai I do." 
 
 " Well, then, go an' swing by yeerself." 
 
 " I will not. Ye'll come in that boat they're after stop- 
 pin' now. Come on ! " Evan caught her again by the 
 arm. 
 
 She looked for a moment at his face. His eyes were 
 bloodshot, his cheeks heavy and red. It seemed to her 
 that he would have struck her had she refused, and so she 
 went. 
 
 For the first few minutes, he pulled violently at his rope, 
 standing perilously upright in the fragile little vehicle and 
 saying not a word, until they were swinging higher than 
 any of the others. Every time the boat rose at his side, 
 she saw his vicious-looking face, covered with perspiration
 
 62 TRAFFIC. 
 
 from his exertions, glaring down into hers; every time it 
 rose at her side, she shrank into her seat lest she should 
 fall on the top of him. 
 
 And then, when he was satisfied with the altitude which 
 they had reached, he rose to the rope no more, but leaned 
 forward until his face was close to hers and she felt the 
 tainted breath from his mouth in her nostrils. She shrank 
 from him a sensitive plant withering before the coarse- 
 ness of an unaccustomed touch. 
 
 " Ye think I'm drunk," he said at last, and his small 
 eyes fixed themselves on her. 
 
 She said nothing. 
 
 " Maybe I've drink taken," he went on, " but I'm not 
 drunk by Christ, I am not! An' I'll tell ye whisper, 
 I'll tell ye what I'll do. I'll give up drinkin' if ye'll 
 
 At that second the brake was applied underneath the 
 boat and they found themselves stopping beside another 
 swing next them, in which was seated the man who had 
 exerted his humor at the expense of Patsy Gee, when Brid- 
 get had spoken about her daughter's dowry. 
 
 When he saw Nanno, he laughed. 
 
 " Good man, Jamesy, bi gob ! " he said. " Gettin' yeer 
 fisht into that two hundhred pounds." 
 
 Ryan looked at him with a dull light of perception in 
 his eyes. Then he looked at Nanno. 
 
 The swing stopped. Xanno got out quickly. The mo- 
 ment her feet touched the ground, she extricated herself 
 from the tangle of ropes and scaffolding and hurried away 
 into the darkness, where the glare of the naphtha lights had 
 lost their penetraition. Once in the crowd of people again, 
 she felt safe. He would scarcely follow her there. 
 
 One thought only, was spurring her mind; the other 
 aspect had entered into Jamesy Ryan's calculations. Be- 
 tween wanting to marry her, which was construing his pur-
 
 TRAFFIC. 63 
 
 pose at its best, and actually proposing for her hand, she 
 knew that there was a lot to be overcome in his expecta- 
 tions. Marriage is a mercenary matter in Ireland, and 
 the solicitor is the most important factor concerned. Oc- 
 casionally a man's feelings get the better of him and he 
 marries with his heart ; but it is not often the case. To the 
 majority, the dowry of the girl is of foremost consideration. 
 And so, much though she knew Jamesy Evan was attracted 
 to her, there was always the question of the dowry to be 
 weighed. Now at last it had been put in the balance. 
 If her mother openly admitted to being prepared to part 
 with two hundred pounds on the marriage of her daughter, 
 there was every reason to suppose that when the matter 
 came to actual barter, she would raise it at least to three. 
 It was a large sum; larger than Xanno would ever have 
 anticipated as being the value that Bridget put upon her. 
 But the real point of fact in her mind, was that it was 
 more than sufficient to bring Jamesy to a definite intention. 
 She had felt it in the way he had regarded the man in 
 the swing; she had known it in the way he had looked 
 at her. 
 
 With the torture of these thoughts in her mind she fol- 
 lowed any direction that her impulse led her, until at 
 length, for the second time that day, she approached 
 the holy well. 
 
 It was a vastly different spectacle from what it had been 
 in the daytime. Contented or dissatisfied with their day's 
 work, the beggars tinkers as they call them in those parts 
 were resting from their labors. Clustered around fires 
 burning on the ground, which threw sharp lights on their 
 rough features, and cast weird shadows that danced and 
 shivered on the grass behind them, they sang and drank 
 at intervals. An old woman, seated by herself, holding ten- 
 aciously to a bottle in her lap, emitted flatulent noises
 
 64 TRAFFIC. 
 
 from her mouth, at which, when they heard them, the 
 others laughed revoltingly. 
 
 Xanno thought of the prayers she had said, the prayers 
 they had promised, and turned away in disgust. She 
 walked a few steps and then looked around again. It ap- 
 peared to her forcibly that all life was like this. She had 
 seen it so frequently. Sin had its reaction of remorse, as 
 well as virtue its aftermath of vice. There seemed to be 
 no steady, even course ; nothing upon which one could rely 
 with any degree of certainty. Even the crops failed some- 
 times, and the cattle did not give their yield. 
 
 This was the beginning of the realization of things to 
 Nanno. She stood there still wondering them, when out 
 of the gloom that hung round the ruins, the light of the 
 fires falling intermittently on his face as he passed them, 
 she saw Jerningham striding up the cliff path. 
 
 The beggars appealed to him loudly in the name of God 
 as he went by; even the old woman, cautiously concealing 
 the bottle under her skirt, bid for his money in exchange 
 for her prayers. For the first time, oSTanno understood why 
 people sometimes refused to notice them. 
 
 As he approached her, she leaned over the wall, looking 
 out across the bay, her head averted, with the intention 
 that he should pass her unnoticed; yet hoping against 
 intention that he might recognize who she was. 
 
 His footsteps came nearer ; they reached her, they passed 
 her; but even in passing she thought she hearcf hesitation 
 in them. And then, when she was beginning to doubt her 
 impression, she heard him stop. 
 
 For a moment he stood still. She felt his eyes studying 
 her, but she did not look round At last he made up his 
 mind. She heard him coming towards her. It was, no 
 doubt, the delay, the sense of uncertainty at length made 
 certain, but the blood tingled in her cheeks.
 
 TRAFFIC. 65 
 
 " Isn't that Nanno Troy ? " he asked quietly. 
 
 She turned round. 
 
 " It is, sir." 
 
 He leaned over the wall near her. 
 
 " What are you doing here ? How is it you're not down 
 in the village with the rest of Eathmore ? " 
 
 " I'm just after comin' away from it." 
 
 " Oh yes. Didn't I see you this morning at the holy 
 well?" 
 
 " You did, sir." 
 
 " I thought so. It's a wonderful place to say one's 
 prayers." 
 
 She looked at him questioningly and then her eyes wan- 
 dered down to the encampment of beggars. He followed 
 her look. 
 
 " Do they sleep here all night ? " he asked. 
 
 " They do, sir. People won't take them in down street. 
 They're too noisy. '"Tis a shame for them to be here any- 
 way!" 
 
 " Do you think that ? " 
 
 " I do. 'Tis a sacrilege they make of the place. The 
 parish priest ought never to leave them come there." 
 
 " I believe you're right," he said. " They're not very 
 edifying to a heathen like me." 
 
 She looked up at his face. 
 
 " Indeed, I'm shure ye're not a heathen," she said. 
 
 " I'm afraid I am. I don't believe in holy wells and 
 saints' days. I'm afraid I don't believe in saints at all. 
 It seems to me that all of us who are not irredeemable sin- 
 ners, are saints more or less mostly less, no doubt. 
 Wouldn't you call that being a heathen of the most im- 
 possible type ? " 
 
 " I would not. 'Tis because ye weren't taught that way. 
 5
 
 66 TRAFFIC. 
 
 No one would be after callin' ye a fool because ye didn't 
 know how to milk a cow." 
 
 "Wouldn't they? I couldn't milk one." 
 
 " That's because ye havn't been taught." 
 
 " I expect it is. But then, if I was taught, I believe I 
 could learn." 
 
 " Ye could of course." 
 
 " Well you see, that's where the difference lies." 
 
 "What difference? 
 
 " I couldn't believe in saints however much you taught 
 me. That's why I must be a heathen." 
 
 He was trying her rather severely ; but it was because, in 
 the estimation he had formed of her, he believed that she 
 could stand it. He found himself realizing that he would 
 be disappointed if she could not. 
 
 " But I couldn't teach ye," she replied, after a moment's 
 pause. 
 
 " Why not ? You know everything about it ? " 
 
 " Maybe I do ; but like it's not a lesson that ye can learn 
 like milkin', d'ye see. Shure I believe in saints; but I 
 don't know anything about them. It's believin' that ye 
 have to be taught, and shure I couldn't teach ye to believe." 
 
 He felt forcibly the gentle inference she had made that 
 it was God alone who could teach him belief, and there 
 was admiration in his eyes when he looked at her. 
 
 " You're a wonderful girl, Nanno," he said at last. 
 
 She looked at him with big eyes. 
 
 " What d'ye mane by wonderful ? " 
 
 He smiled. 
 
 " Well I really mean that I've never met any one like 
 you, and I can't understand you in the least." 
 
 " There's no call for ye to understand me." 
 
 " Yes you're right there. Not the faintest call in the 
 world. How long have you lived in Eathmore ? "
 
 TRAFFIC. 67 
 
 " Since I was born." 
 
 " How long is that ? " 
 
 " Xearly twenty years." 
 
 " Is that all you are ? ~Not twenty yet ? " 
 
 " Nineteen." 
 
 " Heavens ! And yet there are women of your age in 
 London who know every trick of the trade, and can play 
 the game with their eyes shut/' 
 
 She frowned : it was because she could not understand. 
 
 " What trade ? " she asked. " What game? " 
 
 " Well what is a woman's trade ? " 
 
 " Shure, I dunno." 
 
 " Well getting married I suppose isn't it ? " 
 
 "Is it?" 
 
 "I should think so. When are you going to be mar- 
 ried?" 
 
 She remained silent. 
 
 " Haven't you made up your mind yet ? " he persisted. 
 
 She looked away from him. The light of the fires 
 touched her face. 
 
 " I don't want to marry," she replied, and he thought he 
 saw her shiver. 
 
 " You're cold," he said. " You oughtn't to be standing 
 out here. It's half -past nine; you ought to be getting 
 home." 
 
 He moved away from the wall on which they had been 
 leaning. 
 
 " I'll walk home with you, if I may." 
 
 She started in the direction of the high road that over- 
 looks the village. It was the shortest way back. He fol- 
 lowed her. 
 
 They passed down by the Eound Tower, on the road 
 covered by trees where the Protestant Vicarage stands. 
 It was very dark there. It was very dark everywhere. She
 
 68 TRAFFIC. 
 
 compared him with Jamesy Ryan under similar circum- 
 stances. The comparison was unavoidable. This man was 
 utterly different. 
 
 When they reached the gate in Troy's Lane, he stopped. 
 He was just about to say something to her, when a burst of 
 uproarious laughter from the kitchen forced its way 
 through the gloom across the yard. It shook the darknesf 
 like a clatter of metal. It was quite unmistakable. A 
 woman's voice mingled with it; it was Bridget's, and the 
 laugh of a drunken woman is the essence of abandonment. 
 One does not require to have heard it before to recognize it. 
 Jerningham looked quickly at Kanno. 
 
 " It that why you stayed out so late ? " he asked gently. 
 
 She looked at him for a moment, and then her hand 
 stretched out for the gate. 
 
 " Good-night, sir," she said as the gate swung open. 
 
 He accepted her answer. 
 
 " Good-night, ISTanno," he replied. 
 
 She turned into the yard. The blackness swallowed her 
 up; but he still waited there, standing in the lane. 
 
 Then, as if the darkness of the place had been rent, the 
 light of the room, as Nanno opened the kitchen door, shone 
 out for a moment. Inside he could see men and women, 
 firelight and guttering candles. He heard a slovenly voice 
 calling her name ; he heard the clamp of the door as it shut ; 
 and then he turned a\va} r , wondering how long she would 
 put up with life like that; wondering what would be the 
 end of her ; wondering why, with her lips and her eyes and 
 her hair, she had ever been born into it at all.
 
 CHAPTER Till. 
 
 PHILIP JERXIXGIIAM was a plain man of the world, 
 one might add; but of the world would be wrong. He 
 lived in the world and with it; moved waist-deep in the 
 flood of its affairs, and mixed with men every day for whom 
 life had lost most of its sensations. To this type belong 
 those who pamper their emotions as an epicure does his 
 appetite; men who take a sherry and bitters before a meal 
 and need the spectacle of a dancing woman behind the foot- 
 lights before their animal passions are aroused. This type 
 is of the world, and Jerningham did not belong to it. 
 
 His father, the owner of a small brewery in one of the 
 Midland counties, a man to whom business for six days of 
 the week was business, and religion for the seventh day 
 was a rigid discipline, had brought him up with healthy 
 instincts, plenty of fresh air, and many a sound thrashing. 
 
 At the age of thirteen, his mother, a pretty, effeminate 
 little woman, left Mr. Jerningham, senior, to take life as 
 it came with the under-brewer, and Philip was hurried 
 away from home, from the local school where he was at- 
 tending, to begin a course of crammed education for a 
 University scholarship. Old Mr. Jerningham put as much 
 faith in the winning of a scholarship as he did in the head- 
 master's report at the end of a term. Years afterwards, 
 when he had scraped through his terms at Oxford, and 
 passed from a short career in a bank to the Stock Exchange, 
 he received a letter from his mother, from whom, since he 
 was thirteen years of age, he had heard nothing. It was a 
 
 69
 
 70 TRAFFIC. 
 
 short note, addressed from a square in Bloomsbury, begging 
 him to come and see her. 
 
 He was at that time just thirty years of age. His father 
 was dead; the brewery had passed into other hands and, 
 until that moment, he had considered himself without re- 
 lations of any kind worth counting. Half an hour after 
 he had received the letter, the bell of the house in Blooms- 
 bury was answering to his hand. 
 
 His mother was dying. She was worn to a shadow. He 
 noticed, pathetically, the thinness of her wrists and the 
 bones that forced themselves into prominence on her chest. 
 She was fifty-three then, and all the light had been driven 
 out of her eyes. She knew she was dying. She told him 
 so; it was with the first note of cheerfulness that he had 
 heard in her voice. Her life had been a failure, and she 
 offered no complaints. The under-brewer had left her some 
 years before. She told him that, with unconscious paren- 
 thesis, as though it were the most natural thing in the 
 world for him to do. 
 
 " Did you let the pater know that ? " he had asked. 
 
 She shook her head, then stretched a thin hand out across 
 the dingy coverlet to touch his. 
 
 " I didn't let you know until well until now. You 
 had your life to make. I wasn't going to hamper you with 
 a mother." 
 
 "As far as that goes, life makes itself, mater," he had 
 replied. " I don't believe in digging for it." 
 
 The expression of that sentiment contained the whole of 
 his attitude towards existence. He did not believe in dig- 
 ging up life from the heaps and the pits where it is mostly 
 to be found. But when it came his way, he was man and 
 human enough not to avoid it. 
 
 In Plowden Buildings, Middle Temple, where he had 
 chambers, there had been women to see him. Men had
 
 TRAFFIC. 71 
 
 drunk too much there ; one man in his sitting-room, he had 
 saved from committing suicide. All of those things were 
 life in a way, but he had not that morbid inclination to 
 drag it to his rooms and place it under the microscope, that 
 is possessed by so many. The women who came that way, 
 he treated as they would have expected to be treated; on 
 the whole, perhaps, with infinitely more consideration. The 
 men who drank too much, did so without forethought or 
 premeditation. His whisky may sometimes have been bet- 
 ter than at others, or the men more jovial. And as for the 
 man who tried to commit suicide, Jerningham paid his 
 passage for him out to the Cape, where the cause of his 
 trouble could be avoided, and then he succeeded in forget- 
 ting all about him. 
 
 And this constituted life as Jerningham saw it. He did 
 not find it morbid. At times, perhaps, it seemed serious; 
 as when his mother had finally died, with her emaciated 
 fingers lying in the grip of his hand. But on the whole it 
 was interesting. There was always the struggle in the 
 crowd, to avoid the fall of the Damoclean hammer. That 
 interested him. More than once, he had seen the shadow of 
 it at his feet and, looking up, had perceived it swinging 
 above his head. And then, what came from outside, was 
 all grist to the mill. He was a casual observer of many 
 things; a spectator who, finding himself on the ground, 
 makes the best of it and determines to be interested in the 
 game. 
 
 On the Stock Exchange itself he was known as straight. 
 Men were glad to make a deal with him. Honesty lies 
 mostly in the eyes ; and you could find it in Jerningham's. 
 
 It was during the Oxford days, that he had become 
 friendly with one of the young Fennels, and from that ac- 
 quaintance had arisen his visit to Eathmore,
 
 T2 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Never been to Ireland ? " Harry Fennel said to him one 
 day, when they had met casually in the City. 
 
 " Never," Jerningham replied. 
 
 " Well then, come over this summer with me to Rath- 
 more my people are going there for the holidays and I'll 
 show you south of Ireland life fresh out of the ground, 
 before the earth's washed off." 
 
 Jerningham had accepted the invitation. 
 
 Crossing over by Milford to Cork, he had stood on the 
 boat, when it had reached the quay, while the luggage was 
 being collected. An old man, who seemed to have command 
 over every laborer within sight, was conducting the removal 
 of cargo. His face was red with fierce excitement. His 
 little eyes danced dangerously in his head, and his voice, 
 always pitched on its highest key, sometimes broke into a 
 hoarse whisper in his effort to shout louder. 
 
 " Holy Mother o' God, shift thim blasted boxes into the 
 ghtore as I tell ye ! Haul away haul away haul away on 
 that rope, damn ye ! " 
 
 He could not keep his little body still. Knowing the 
 jiame of every man who worked under him, he Avas every- 
 where at once, shouting personal commands and curses into 
 their ears, which rose shrilly above the snorting of the 
 donkey-engine that worked the crane. 
 
 Jerningham leaned over the taffrail and watched him 
 with a smile until Fennel approached. 
 
 " They seem pretty free with the Mother of God over 
 here," he said quietly. 
 
 Fennel laughed the casual laugh of one whose judg- 
 ment knows no sympathy. 
 
 " Well it means little or nothing to them but what the 
 priests shove down their throats." 
 
 And Jerningham had felt inclined to believe that until 
 he met Nanno Troy.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THREE days had passed since the Pattern, and the daily 
 routine which, at Troy's Farm, had been diverted from the 
 ordinary channels, had at length settled back again into its 
 usual grooves. Bridget had slept off the effects of the holi- 
 day, and John had suffered from dull headaches that for the 
 time being made him silent and morose. Nearly every beg- 
 gar had left the village, and all that remained of the traces 
 of the Pattern were the spotlessly whitewashed cottages and 
 the carts that came from Anesk to fetch away the empty 
 bottles from the various public-houses. 
 
 To Xanno, perhaps, more than to any one, it had been 
 a day that would not easily be forgotten. Her conver- 
 sation with Jerningham, if it had not opened up new possi- 
 bilities in life, had at least shown her a completely differ- 
 ent state of existence from that which she had been ac- 
 customed to from her birth until then. 
 
 It had nothing to do with her; she knew that. She 
 could not imagine its ever being more than a sight of some- 
 thing which was quite beyond her reach ; a glimpse through 
 an unsheltered window into the house of one whose fortunes 
 and customs could never be her own. Yet there it was; 
 she had seen it. She was not aware that it was the result 
 of civilization, the effect of education; but she fully real- 
 ized that it was different from anything she had previously 
 experienced. 
 
 In speaking to her, as he had done on that night of the 
 
 73
 
 74 TRAFFIC. 
 
 Pattern, Jerningham had seemed to be considering her be- 
 fore anything else before himself. 
 
 He had seen her shiver and asked her if she was cold. 
 He had heard Bridget's drunken laughter, and asked her if 
 that had driven her away from the cottage. It was abso- 
 lutely unavoidable that she should compare him with Kyan. 
 They were the two men uppermost in her thoughts. And 
 the result of that comparison was also inevitable. 
 
 Jerningham, probably, had never been drunk in his life. 
 She could not, in her imagination, conceive him in that 
 condition. And then his whole manner suggested submis- 
 sion to her feelings; Ryan compelled the knowledge that 
 she would be his slave. Until that moment, she had more 
 or less considered it the ultimate circumstance of a woman's 
 life. 
 
 All these thoughts were not the result of a contemplation 
 of Jerningham in a light that would mean anything to 
 her. If the suggestion ever entered her head that such a 
 life as he would make for a woman could possibly be her 
 own, it was only in the form of the idlest day-dream, that 
 could never, by the remotest chance on earth, be realized. 
 
 Yet there it remained ; she had seen another side of life. 
 That as a common rule husbands drank and frequently 
 beat their wives, she had taken for granted, and the woman 
 who imbibed herself, generally made the best of things. 
 
 But here, was another condition of life altogether; one 
 that seemed free from everything that was sordid ; one that 
 seemed safe and guarded from even that pitiless law which 
 she had seen to crush the life of Nancy Foley. She could 
 see pity in it, consideration and that sympathy which her 
 nature felt the need of ; but beyond all things, she knew it 
 to be utterly out of her reach. 
 
 And so, when three days after the Pattern had passed, 
 and the ordinary duties had fallen back again into their
 
 TRAFFIC. 75 
 
 places, Xanno was left with a definite impression that, for 
 a greater part of her life, was an influence which could not 
 be eradicated. 
 
 On the Saturday following the holiday, John Troy had 
 made arrangements to cut his corn. There were five acres 
 of it altogether, and the arrangements consisted of hiring 
 a reaper from some neighboring farmer and collecting to- 
 gether, by the inducements of a barrel of porter, all the 
 hands that he could possibly get to help him. 
 
 It was a matter that entirely depended on the weather, 
 and when JSTanno woke on that Saturday morning to find 
 the sun streaming through her bedroom window, investing 
 with color even the dulness of the uneven mud floor, she 
 rose to her knees in her bed and thanked God for her 
 father's sake that the day was fine. 
 
 At half-past six, before breakfast, they began and, until 
 seven in the evening, the clattering whirr of the reaper, 
 interspersed with John's ejaculations to the horses, never 
 ceased. As the machine passed along the line of standing 
 corn, sweeping the stalks with its relentless arms on to the 
 unerring knives, the binders closed in and picked up their 
 portion, binding it into sheaves with wisps drawn from the 
 corn itself. Without speaking, and with apparent uncon- 
 sciousness, the men and girls following the reaper, seemed 
 at times to become part of the machinery itself. As regu- 
 larly as a certain line of severed stalks were thrown out on 
 to the ground by the reaper, so regularly did a girl or a man 
 come forward and, silently picking the heap up into their 
 arms, bind it with automatic movements into the sheaf. 
 
 Slowly and gradually as the day wore on, and the pale 
 yellow of the corn became deep in gold with the departing 
 light, the line of stubble grew broader and broader, the 
 sheaves more numerous, and the upright stalks more scant. 
 Still they worked on, cutting into the cloth of gold, leaving
 
 73 TRAFFIC. 
 
 only the ragged stitches behind them. At intervals, they 
 stood erect, resting their backs when the reaper had passed 
 and their sheaves were bound. Working at a distance of 
 thirty feet apart down the whole line, conversation was 
 rendered impossible. They none of them spoke. 
 
 Far away across the fields, a long strip of sea on the 
 horizon just showed itself. It looked like a ribbon of deep 
 blue silk, held taut across the sky. At times, when she 
 rested, Xanno looked at it and wondered. It seemed to 
 convey to her all the other side of life that she had found 
 in Jerningham. Beyond that strip of blue, might easily lie 
 another world, where all things were constant mercy, pity, 
 sympathy being the greatest among them. 
 
 She did not give way to these thoughts for long. There 
 was work to be done, and God had sent a fine day on which 
 to do it. 
 
 At one time, as she approached her portion of fallen 
 corn, the reaper stopped. One of the men was driving in 
 Troy's absence. 
 
 " What the hell's that ? " he asked, looking over his 
 shoulder. 
 
 A little brown object lay motionless on the ground in 
 the wake of the machine. Xanno hurried towards it. and 
 then a cry escaped from her lips. A hedgehog, overtaken 
 by the relentless knives, had been cut off lacerated. The 
 scarlet blood, red as the deepest red of a poppy, lay in a 
 warm mass on the mown corn a blot of red on the gold. 
 Nanno turned away with a sensation of nausea and horror 
 in her throat. 
 
 Seeing what it was, the man descended from his iron 
 perch and examined it roughly, unfeelingly. 
 
 " Faith, 'tis only a hedgehog," he said, turning it over 
 with his foot. " Bi gob, he'd be the fella to stick the divil
 
 TRAFFIC. 77 
 
 inta ye, if his prickles was out. Glory be to God, there's 
 blood for ye ! It's as red as hell whativer." 
 
 Xanno bound up her sheaf mechanically. It seemed to 
 her like the rest of life as merciless as cruel. It was 
 only death after all 'the most constant and certain thing 
 that life had to offer; yet even death, in that moment, 
 when the sun was beating down on to the golden corn- 
 field, when the sky was a wealth of blue and the larks sang 
 lustily above her head, looked still and awesome and un- 
 kind. 
 
 When the man had passed on and no one was looking, 
 she carried the dead creature to the hedge that bounded 
 the field and laid it gently in a corner where the brambles 
 grew thickest. It was the only way she could bear to think 
 of it. Then she went on with her work. 
 
 At seven o'clock the day was over. With the rest of the 
 binders, intent upon the thought of their reward, ISTanno 
 walked back to the farm. She waited for them to pass 
 through the gate into the yard and, as she stood there, she 
 perceived a man leaning against a pillar that supported the 
 roof of one of the out-houses, talking to Bridget. His back 
 was turned to her, but she knew him. It was Jamesy 
 Evan. 
 
 So it had come at last. She knew well what his visit 
 meant. It seemed for the moment, with the realization of 
 it, that she could not stir. All the others had passed on 
 into the kitchen; but ISTanno could not move. A vice that 
 overpowered her inclinations, held her there. And then, 
 when the full understanding reached her mind, she turned 
 away from the gate with lips that were cold and heart that 
 beat irregularly. Without hesitation, she crossed the field 
 at the back of the cottage. Without consideration, she 
 clambered over the hedge into the lane and began walking 
 quickly down towards the main road.
 
 78 TRAFFIC. 
 
 The only thought that prompted her was the desire to 
 get away from the farm. She did not ask in what direction 
 she should go; she only wanted to put a distance between 
 her and the scene which she had just witnessed. 
 
 From force of habit, she turned towards the village and, 
 not until she had reached the schoolmaster's cottage, which 
 is the first habitation as you enter the main street, did she 
 begin to collect her thoughts. 
 
 Jamesy Eyan had come to speak about her marriage to 
 Bridget. The result of that she knew to be inevitable; 
 Bridget would give her consent. A few months would go 
 by, until next Shrove-tide, and then she would be Jamesy 
 Ryan's wife. The thought terrified her; she felt her lips 
 cold again. A thousand scenes of her married life conjured 
 themselves up in her mind; each one was more terrible 
 than another. She remembered the taint of his breath, as 
 it reached her nostrils, when they were in the swings on the 
 Pattern night. Vividly she saw his face in close proxim- 
 ity to her own; unsparingly she imagined the strength of 
 his body and thought of the violence of his arms. It was 
 as though she had been brought face to face with some 
 street horror and, from morbid compulsion, felt driven to 
 gaze at its nauseating details. 
 
 But what could be done? She could refuse to marry 
 him. It came to her mind first, because it was the most 
 obvious ; but she knew well how feeble would be the power 
 of her refusal. 
 
 Then one thing occurred to her and another. For some 
 moments she contemplated running away; but the whole 
 breadth of the world, with all that was unknown in it, rose 
 up and faced her. That was frightening terrible. At 
 last, when every possibility seemed to be exhausted, Sister 
 Mary and Sister Ignatius passed her on their way from the 
 convent to some sick bed. Her eyes watched them wonder-
 
 TRAFFIC. 79 
 
 ingly. They were free from this horrible side of life. 
 Their existence was one continual preparation for that 
 after-state, which was a rest from every ill and every misery 
 that the world could hold. Heaven was a very tangible 
 realization to Nanno and, at that moment, it seemed very 
 close to the quiet seclusion of a convent. 
 
 Why should she not become a nun ? The sight of those 
 two quiet figures, with their long black veils and sombre 
 dresses, seemed then to suggest the greatest happiness that 
 life could offer. If she became a nun, all that coarseness of 
 existence which she had seen, for instance, so often at the 
 Pattern, all that would be put far away from her. There 
 was something secure, something secluded and safe in con- 
 vent life. The more the thought engrossed her mind, the 
 more beautiful it seemed. 
 
 At last, impelled by the necessity of immediate decision, 
 she went into the chapel where, it being Saturday evening, 
 the parish priest was hearing confession. She determined 
 to tell him at once that she had received a vocation ; and in 
 the terror of her heart she believed it to be true. 
 
 Quite a number of people, the majority of whom were 
 women, were waiting for a hearing, repentant of their fol- 
 lies on the Pattern day. Like a lot of conscience-stricken 
 children, with heads bowed in their hands they waited for 
 their turn ; well knowing what would be said to them ; well 
 remembering what had been said to them so many times 
 before. The parish priest sometimes lost his temper at the 
 blind persistence of their petty sins. He had corrected 
 them so often, and they had always seemed so willing to 
 obedience, so attentive to his advice. Yet every year, when 
 the Pattern had passed, they came back with the same tales 
 of intemperance and harmless inchastity. 
 
 Choosing an empty bench near the high altar, Nanno 
 waited until they had all gone ; then, when Father Mehan,
 
 86 TRAFFIC. 
 
 thinking there were no more to be heard, came out of the 
 confessional, she walked softly down the side aisle and en- 
 tered the little wooden box. 
 
 Those sins sins in her eyes which, she could think of 
 first, she told ; the priest listening with occasional grunts of 
 gentle reproof or lenient forbearance. Confession, at that 
 period of her life, was not conceived for such natures as 
 Nanno's. Father Mehan, hearing the ticking of his watch 
 in the pocket of his vest, felt strongly inclined to tell her 
 so. 
 
 " An' there's somethin' else now I be goin' to say, 
 Father," she said, when these little faults were enumerated. 
 
 From the sound of her voice the priest inclined his head 
 nearer to the grating. 
 
 " An' what's that ? " he asked. 
 
 " I'm after gettin' a vocation to be a nun." 
 
 For a moment, even Nanno could hear the ticking of 
 Father Mehan's watch. 
 
 " Since when ? " he asked at length. 
 
 She paused. Put in that way the truth seemed rather 
 sudden ; but she told it. 
 
 " Since to-day." 
 
 The priest coughed behind his hand. 
 
 " Is it to be a nun in the convent here ? " 
 
 " It is I suppose." 
 
 " An' what put the ic!a inta yeer head? " 
 
 " Shure, I dunno shure, I want to be a nun." 
 
 " An' will yeer father give ye the money." 
 
 " If he doesn't, I can be a lay sister. I'm not afraid o' 
 doin' work. I can be a lay sister." 
 
 " Ye can," he agreed amiably, " ye can of course. An' 
 so ye got the vocation to-day ? " 
 
 " I did, Father." 
 
 "When would ye like to go into the convent?/'
 
 TRAFFIC. 81 
 
 K As soon as I can." 
 
 " The sooner the better, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Yes I suppose that's the way with me." 
 
 " Then what is it ye're afraid of ? What is it ye want 
 to avoid? Come come come there's many a slip of a 
 girl has come here into this very confessional and told me 
 with tears in her eyes that she wanted to be a nun. But 
 faith, that's not the way to do it at all. Tears won't make 
 a nun o' ye. Fallin' out with yeer mother won't make a 
 nun o' ye. Isn't it that's what happened ye, Xanno? 
 Bridget's been savin' things eh?" 
 
 Xanno felt the old terror returning to her. She dared 
 not tell him the truth. It would prove his point immedi- 
 ately ; and, without proof, she knew it to be the true one. 
 Accordingly she said nothing. 
 
 " God bless us, child ! " he went on, when he received 
 no answer, "vocations for a convent don't come in a mo- 
 ment, after working in the field all day and falling out 
 with yeer mother in the evening. Just ye go back home, 
 Xanno, and make yeer mother the nicest sup o' tea she's 
 ever had on this side o' the grave, and faith, ye won't even 
 find the vocation under the matrass in the marnin' ! " 
 
 Xanno made no reply. She knew what he said was true 
 and, for the time, the realization of this, that she had not 
 really received a vocation, obliterated the thought of why 
 she had imagined it. With a feeling of despair, she rose to 
 her feet and left the confessional, and Father Mehan, 
 taking the stole from off his shoulders, hung it up on a 
 little black iron peg behind him; and there was a comical 
 smile of sympathy at the corners of his mouth. 
 6
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 IT was some time before Xanno could bring herself to go 
 home. She walked as far as the bottom of Troy's Lane 
 and there she stopped. The light in the back window of 
 the kitchen just glimmered through the clump of fuchsia 
 shrubs. By some magic of its own, it conjured up in her 
 imagination a picture of the interior. She saw the shim- 
 mering firelight that danced in points of orange on the 
 polished surfaces of the brass candle-sticks that stood on 
 the shelf over the hen-coop. She saw the rows of willow- 
 pattern plates that ranged the dresser. This was the 
 kitchen that had been Xanno's view of life for nineteen 
 years. Xow, as she painted it for herself, the picture filled 
 her with a shuddering sense of foreboding. Jamesy Eyan 
 was sitting there on the table. John occupied his three- 
 legged stool by the fire, and Bridget, with her arms folded 
 over the ample proportions of her breast, was standing with 
 legs apart in the center of the room. They were all talking 
 of her. A process of bartering, preliminary to the seeking 
 of a solicitor, was going on for her body and soul. Had 
 the man been any other than Jamesy Ryan, she would not 
 have considered it in that light. The custom was too com- 
 mon in those parts to ever call for attention from those 
 most intimately concerned. Yet with Jamesy Ryan, the 
 sum of her dowry rose up in exalted prominence in her 
 eyes. It seemed to her to be the greatest factor in the 
 whole matter, the price of her happiness, the cost of her 
 content. 
 
 83
 
 TRAFFIC. 83 
 
 It was not that she had any fixed ideas ahout marriage. 
 She knew it was her duty to her parents to relieve them of 
 her responsibility; and, so long as the man had not been 
 actually repulsive to her, she would not have thought of it. 
 
 But to be the wife of Jamesy Eyan ; to share his life, his 
 fortune, and his bed with him; both her body and mind 
 shrank, like a frightened child, from the idea. 
 
 For some moments, she watched the steady glimmer of 
 the light through the trees. It was all a supposition that 
 Eyan was still there, but she could not bring herself even 
 to go up the lane and ascertain whether it were true. At 
 last, she turned along the road to Anesk. There was no 
 definite intention in her mind as to when she would come 
 back. Her only desire was to be by herself as long as she 
 dared. 
 
 It was scarcely eight o'clock, but the night was as dark 
 as it well could be. Occasionally, from the side of the road, 
 disturbed by the sound of her footsteps, a donkey or a 
 goat, their legs inhumanely spanselled, would hobble out 
 of the darkness. The uneven clattering of their feet, like 
 the rattle of gigantic dice in a gigantic box, would sound 
 for some time after they were out of sight. She called 
 gently to each one of them reassuring!}- ; but they had been 
 called to reassuringly before, and suffered for their mis- 
 placed confidence. 
 
 Xot until she had reached the road that leads to the 
 Anesk ferry, did she stop ; and then, the noise of her own 
 footsteps having ceased for the moment, she heard in the 
 distance, coming from Eathmore, the sound of a horse and 
 the rumble of a car. Xearer and nearer it came until, 
 with the intense stillness of everything else, it seemed like 
 the roll of thunder. The noise of it strung up her nerves. 
 She wished it would pass and go away into the quiet of the 
 night again.
 
 8-t TRAFFIC. 
 
 At last the horse's head came into view ; the horse's head, 
 its body, and the car itself, all jumbled up into one con- 
 fused mass in the darkness. When it was a little nearer, 
 she was able to distinguish the driver Tom Fitzgerald, 
 one of the two car-owners in Rathmore and the figure of 
 another man seated opposite to him. The outline of the 
 second man seemed familiar and, as they passed, she recog- 
 nized Jerningham. A trunk was lashed to the footboard 
 under the driver's seat, and he held a small leather bag 
 with his hand on to the cushion that covered the well of 
 the car. He was going away then. He was going back to 
 England. 
 
 " Hi there ! " Fitzgerald called out, as they came level 
 with her. 
 
 She moved back a step to let the car pass, and Jerning- 
 ham bent down as they went by, to see who or what it was. 
 Then, just as Fitzgerald whipped up the horse again into a 
 trot, he called out to him to stop and, jumping down from 
 his seat, came back along the road to where she was stand- 
 ing. 
 
 " Isn't that Nanno Troy ? " he asked. She saw his eyes 
 screwed up in the endeavor to distinguish her. 
 - " It is, sir," she said. 
 
 "By jove! I was looking about for you to-day, to say 
 good-bye. I'm off back to England." 
 
 She said nothing. He was going back to England. She 
 had been quite right. 
 
 " What brings you out here ? " he went on. " I always 
 seem to find you wandering about alone." 
 
 " Maybe 'tis the way I like bein' alone I dunno. 'Tisn't 
 everybody can be alone when they want to." 
 
 " That's a very serious observation." 
 
 "D'ye think so?" 
 
 "It sounds like it; but I'm beginning to expect them
 
 TRAFFIC. 85 
 
 from you. Do you remember that evening when I was try- 
 ing to shoot rabbits ? " 
 
 " I do." 
 
 " You made a serious observation then." 
 
 "Did I?" 
 
 " You said every one wasn't alike except men, when they 
 wanted to kill something." 
 
 The words came back suddenly into her memory. She 
 looked at him, amazed that they had remained so long in 
 his thoughts. 
 
 " Ye have a good memory for things," she said, smiling. 
 
 "Begorra ye'll be late for the thrain, Mr. Jerning- 
 ham," Fitzgerald called out from the darkness. They 
 heard him expectorate impatiently. 
 
 Jerningham looked at Xanno. The thought came into 
 both their minds at the same moment. Why should she 
 not drive in with him to Anesk ? She saw it in his eyes : 
 but so faint, so indefinite was the idea to her, that he saw 
 no reflection of it as she answered his look. 
 
 " Aisy, ye divil ! " Fitzgerald could be heard saying under 
 his breath and then, in louder voice, his face turned evi- 
 dently in their direction : " Begorra, Mr. Jerningham, sorr 
 ye'll be afther losin' that thrain." 
 
 Jerningham stirred uneasily and looked back at the car. 
 " Why shouldn't you drive into Anesk with me ? " he said, 
 with sudden impulse. " Fitzgerald can bring you back 
 again." 
 
 He took a step in the direction of the car; then, seeing 
 her hesitation, he stopped. " Don't mind saying if you 
 think you ought not to," he added quietly. 
 
 She had hesitated certainly, but her mind was made up. 
 Every existing circumstance forced her to the decision. 
 She knew what was awaiting her when she returned home. 
 She realized that this was the last she would see of the man
 
 86 TRAFFIC. 
 
 who, unconsciously solely from the view of life which he 
 had shown her had formed an incident in her existence 
 which she knew she would be unable to forget. 
 
 Then, too, there is an instinct in human nature which 
 compels us to accept the generosity of circumstance. To 
 ISTanno it seemed that circumstance was generous then. 
 The Juggernaut of her destiny was not so far off that she 
 could afford to forego one last taste of the sun. Without 
 questioning the wisdom of what she did, she followed Jer- 
 ningham to the car. 
 
 " We're going to take Nanno into Anesk, Tom," he said 
 lightly. " You'd better climb on to the box seat. Can you 
 get your feet over that trunk ? " 
 
 "Begorra, I can, sorr." 
 
 He glanced quickly at Nanno. She understood the look, 
 but Jerningham did not even see it. 
 
 "Well, come along. Up you get, Nanno; there's very 
 little time to spare." 
 
 She climbed up mechanically into the seat left vacant 
 by Fitzgerald and then, when Jerningham was settled 
 again, they drove off. 
 
 How it rattled and jolted that car ! Every stone that 
 it passed over in the darkness, every hollow in the road 
 that it crossed, seemed as though it would be the last strain 
 that the springs could resist. Fitzgerald, with his left ear 
 inclined towards ISTanno's direction, tried vainly to catch 
 what they were saying. His curiosity was thoroughly 
 aroused even he would have admitted that himself but 
 only a stray word here and there reached his ears. It would 
 probably have been better had he heard everything. Give 
 curiosity a word and leave the sentence to its imagination 
 and the result is apt to be dangerous. Yet what they talked 
 of, the whole world might have heard. Nanno did not try 
 to make conversation. Her mind was too full of number-
 
 TRAFFIC. 8? 
 
 less considerations that seemed over-burdened with impor- 
 tance, overloaded with concern. 
 
 For moments together she said nothing. As the trees, 
 like witches with tattered garments, passed by them in the 
 blackness; as the road stretched out behind, a dim gray 
 channel in the almost impenetrable night, she felt more and 
 more afraid to return to that state of life which she knew 
 was being prepared for her. Every word that Jerningham 
 said, made a contrast in her mind : every expression of his 
 voice, a comparison. 
 
 " You're very quiet, Xanno," he said at last. 
 
 She looked away steadily beyond the horse's head that, 
 with every step, rose and fell like an automatic contrivance, 
 until it seemed to be dancing before her eyes. The iron- 
 shod hoofs played a monotonous tattoo upon the hard road 
 that fitted in its time with the uneven beating of her pulse. 
 
 "This time to-morrow I shall be in London," he con- 
 tinued, endeavoring to interest her. 
 
 "Ye'll be glad to be away out o' this place," she said, 
 half in question, half assertively. " 'Tis too quiet, it is." 
 
 "But that's the beauty of it that's the beauty of it. 
 Don't 3'ou know it's the things we don't get in this world, 
 that we want. If you'd had thirty years of London, as I 
 have thirty years of noise without cessation thirty years 
 of perpetual motion thirty years of trafficking with men 
 and women and carts and omnibuses, you'd think you'd got 
 to heaven when you reached Eathmore." 
 
 She glanced swiftly at him while he was not looking. 
 
 " Then you're sorry to be leavin' ? " she asked. 
 
 " I should think I was. I never came across a place 
 more cut out for a holiday an absolute rest in all my 
 life. It's been such a complete change, you see. I never 
 thought the world had anything so simple left to look at..
 
 88 TRAFFIC. 
 
 Do you remember when I saw you up at the holy well on 
 the Pattern day ? " 
 
 Nanno nodded her head. 
 
 " Well you gave me an impression that I'd never had 
 before." 
 
 " An' what was that ? " 
 
 " Oh I don't know. It's more or less inexplicable. I 
 didn't know that people believed in things as I could see 
 you did." 
 
 " 'Twas what I was brought up to." 
 
 " Of course I know that ; but there are so few people 
 who do believe what they're brought up to nowadays." 
 
 And this, more or less, was the strain of his conver- 
 sation. Xanno listened attentively, she answered atten- 
 tively; but it was attention that was almost mechanical. 
 She heard everything he said with the same degree of sensa- 
 tion that she watched the lights of Anesk, like fireflies 
 meshed in a black tangle of copse, growing nearer and 
 nearer across the river Blackwater as they approached the 
 bridge that spans the entrance of the water to the sea. It 
 interested her to be talked to like that ; but the needs of her 
 nature predominated. She wanted sympathy, she wanted 
 pity. She felt utterly alone. And soon, when they 
 reached Anesk, he would be gone and she would be still 
 more alone. With the thought of that, she concentrated 
 her interest more closely on what he was saying. They 
 were the last words she would hear him say. She tried 
 to make herself remember that. 
 
 At length, when they had crossed the bridge and passed 
 the few straggling rows of cottages outside the town, 
 Anesk was reached. It was still some distance to the sta- 
 tion, but Nanno said she would get down there. A feeling 
 of sensitiveness, forbade her from allowing him to be seen
 
 TRAFFIC. 89 
 
 with her in the streets, where there might be many who 
 knew her by sight. 
 
 " Shure, Tom can fetch me here when he comes back," 
 she said, as she dismounted. 
 
 " Good-bye then, Nanno," he said slowly. 
 
 " Good-bye, sir," she replied. 
 
 " I shall probably be in Eathmore again next year." 
 
 She nodded her head mechanically. It seemed to mean 
 nothing to her. The present outweighed the future just 
 then, and that, she felt, was slipping away from her. She 
 had not expected anything else, and yet, so commonplace, 
 so ordinary had everything seemed, that she knew she was 
 disappointed. 
 
 The car started again and she turned away to look in 
 the window of a shop. A lump had risen in her throat. 
 
 " Oh ! " she exclaimed under her breath ; and for a mo- 
 ment she swayed unsteadily.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 IT was after ten o'clock when Nanno left the car that 
 night at the bottom of Troy's Lane. All the questions 
 that Fitzgerald put to her about Jerningham and they 
 were asked with a crafty astuteness that was amazing she 
 answered with a reticence that guarded itself with mono- 
 syllables. 
 
 " He's a damned fine gintleman ! " 
 
 She had not replied. 
 
 "Begorra, he's got the divil's own journey in front of 
 him ! " 
 
 " He has." 
 
 " I suppose he's afther tellin' ye he was goin' to Lon- 
 don?" 
 
 " To London, is it ? " 
 
 Fitzgerald had resorted to his habit of expectoration a 
 habit that was customary with him whenever he was per- 
 plexed. 
 
 " Bi dad, 'twas a queer thing his askin' ye to sit up along- 
 side of him on the car." 
 
 Again she had remained silent. 
 
 " Maybe 'twas havin' a bit o' fun wid himself, he was." 
 
 There was the inflection of a question in every remark; 
 though not so obvious as to compel an answer. 
 
 " Some fellas are rare divils for gettin' a howlt o' girrls 
 out o' the country." She had felt his side glance in her 
 direction. " Begorra, though, he's a fine gintleman an 
 'tis not the way he'd be doin' any harm whativer." 
 
 90
 
 TRAFFIC. 91 
 
 This was said reassuringly, as though, presuming that 
 N"anno had allowed Jerningham to take liberties with her, 
 he wanted to set her mind at rest. The insinuation had 
 almost drawn a remark from her, but she controlled herself 
 in time. 
 
 " We'd a fine day for the reapin'," she had said, trying 
 to turn the current of conversation altogether. 
 
 " Begorra, I suppose ye had, an' faith, he'll have a foine 
 crossin' goin' over to-night. Young Mr. Fennel was tellin' 
 me that a power o' money goes through his hands every 
 day. Begorra, if it came through mine I'd soon have me 
 fisht on it I would so." 
 
 Nanno had found it useless to change the topic, and so, 
 until he set her down at the bottom of the lane, she had 
 shielded herself with evasive answers that helped in no 
 way to satisfy his curiosity. 
 
 The light was still burning in the kitchen. She watched 
 it fearsomely as she walked up the lane. Some one was 
 waiting up until her return, and she dreaded the thought 
 that it was Bridget. Passing softly through the iron gate, 
 she stopped with sudden hesitation as she approached the 
 kitchen door. A dull mumbling of voices reached her ears, 
 above which she could distinguish the guttural tones of 
 John Troy. They were saying the rosary. After a mo- 
 ment, when she had grown accustomed to the sound, she 
 was able to make out both Patsy's and Johnny's voices as 
 they repeated the Bail Marys in tired, monotonous tones. 
 Placing her ear against the latch of the door, a moment 
 of relief brought a sigh to her lips. Bridget's voice was 
 not amongst them. Then, bending silently to her knees, 
 she repeated with them inside the last decade of the 
 rosary. 
 
 " Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee : blessed 
 art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy 
 womb Jesus -"
 
 93 TRAFFIC. 
 
 The deep notes of John Troy's voice rolled the words out 
 in subdued reverence and, with the others, her lips moving 
 silently, she answered : 
 
 " Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now 
 and at the hour of our death. Amen.'' 
 
 As she said the last words, alone there in the yard, the 
 cohbles of the path grinding hard against her knees, the 
 night clouds hovering in the black vault of the sky, it came 
 into her mind to wonder when would be the hour of her 
 death : whether it would come swiftly, like a sudden gift, 
 or tortuously, slowly, with dragging steps, the sound of 
 which grew gradually louder and louder as they ap- 
 proached. That it might be swift, she asked; and then, 
 rising to her feet, she pushed the door gently open and en- 
 tered the kitchen. 
 
 In the act of regaining his seat on the three-legged stool, 
 John Troy looked up. 
 
 " God bless us, choild, where have ye been ? " he asked, 
 and Johnny and Patsy stood round with expectant faces 
 to hear her answer. 
 
 " Herself's afther going to bed this half-hour," he added. 
 
 " What did she say about me not comin' in ? " 
 
 " Shure, I dunno. What would she be sayin' ? " But 
 where have ye been ? " 
 
 " 'Twas the way the night was fine, an' I was tired afther 
 the reapin'. I was out, that was all." 
 
 " But what about your tea ? " 
 
 " Shure, I'm not wantin' any." 
 
 She sat down on the form under the chimney and. for 
 a moment or so, John watched her face; then, seeing the 
 two boys standing expectantly by, he turned on them. 
 
 " Go to bed out o' that, ye young divils go to bed ; " 
 and, disappointedly, they stole away, taking as long over 
 their departure as they dared.
 
 TRAFFIC. 93 
 
 John waited until they had closed the door behind them ; 
 then, ramming a horny finger into the bowl of the pipe 
 which he was smoking, he sat round on the stool and gazed 
 at Xanuo. 
 
 With eyes that stared vacantly before her at the glowing 
 cinders in the grate, she was turning the bellows wheel 
 automatically, the leather belt clattering loosely in time to 
 the motion of her arm. 
 
 " There's been some talk about ye here while ye were 
 abroad," he said at length. 
 
 " 'Bout me ? " She looked up. 
 
 " Ay 'bout ye marrin'." 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 " Jamesy Evan." 
 
 Xanno shut her eyes. 
 
 " That brute of a fella ? " she exclaimed, with sudden im- 
 pulse. 
 
 John looked at her in mild amazement. He did not like 
 the man himself; but he was one like many another, and 
 he had a farm of his own. 
 
 " He's hard-workin', however." 
 
 Xanno raked down some cold cinders on to the blaze, 
 and turned the wheel vehemently. 
 
 " When he's not had too much drink taken, maybe. But 
 I've never seen him sober yet I have not." 
 
 John looked at her perplexed. 
 
 " But, God bless us, choild, ye want to marry some day ! " 
 
 " I do not." 
 
 For a moment John was silenced by the directness of her 
 answer. He did not know how to reply. 
 
 " Then what'll ye be doin' when Patsy grows up, in the 
 name o' God ? " 
 
 She made no answer.
 
 94 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Faith, an' how about meself ? Is it the way ye think 
 I can afford to be keepin' ye ? " 
 
 He did not say it unkindly. From every point of view 
 it seemed to him the rightful, the only attitude to adopt. 
 
 She looked across the fire at him. 
 
 " But I hate the man," she said. 
 
 "Begorra, an' what's that to do with it? There's not 
 much difference between him an' other men what I ever 
 see." 
 
 Nanno thought of Jerningham. 
 
 " Not much difference i " she repeated. 
 
 John scratched his head. 
 
 " Well, herself's afther patchin' things up wid him. 
 Shure I dunno." 
 
 "What d'ye mean?" 
 
 "Well, they're afther settlin' it between 'hemselves. 
 Faith, I hadn't much to say to it. Herself's a greater 
 hand at managin' figures than what I am. Begorra, he 
 wanted three hundhred wid ye he did so; but she bate 
 him down till there was divil a leg for him to stand on, an' 
 he took two hundhred and thirty-wan like a pig takin' 
 male." 
 
 N"anno listened tremblingly to all this. She knew from 
 the beginning that it was her mother with whom she would 
 ultimately have to deal. If they could spare two hundred 
 and thirt} r -one pounds as a dowry on her wedding day, there 
 was no doubt that they could afford to keep her for at 
 least three or four more years. Then she could go into 
 service : at any rate, relieve them of her responsibility. Be- 
 yond that, she did not feel it her duty to go. 
 
 " 'Tis this is the way with me," she said at last. " I 
 don't want to be married at all, and faith, if I did, it 
 wouldn't be to Jamesy Eyan. An' ye can tell her that 
 if ye like. There's no call for her to be batin' Jamesy
 
 TRAFFIC. 95 
 
 Ryan down at a bargain, 'cos there's one side o' the bargain 
 that don't count an' that's the way wid me." 
 
 She said this assertively, defiantly, but the tears of her 
 despair were very near her eyes. 
 
 John rose in a state of bewilderment to his feet. He 
 had never contemplated these objections and, when he met 
 them, the simplicity of his nature made it impossible for 
 him to cope with them. 
 
 Knocking the burnt-out ashes from his pipe, he turned 
 away to the bedroom door which was opposite the fire- 
 place. What Bridget would say, he could only vaguely 
 imagine. Whatever it was, he knew it would be fiery and 
 incensed. 
 
 Nanno did not move from her scat in the chimney cor- 
 ner. She watched him go into the bedroom. She watched 
 him shut the door, then her eyes turned again to the fire. 
 Beside all her fears of the inevitable scene with Bridget, 
 there rose the remembrance of what had been happening 
 over the last few hours. 
 
 By that time Jerningham was probably on his way to 
 Dublin. She saw him plainly in her mind. And then she 
 began to wonder why he had asked her to drive into Anesk 
 with him. 
 
 The fire became more dim, more lifeless; the shadows 
 began to creep round her, as it slowly died out. Sleep 
 was just commencing to dull her senses, when she heard 
 a sudden exclamation from Bridget's room. 
 
 Immediately she sat up and listened. They were talk- 
 ing inside. Bridget's voice was rising with every word. 
 
 " The divil trust her ! " she heard her mother exclaim ; 
 then the door of the room flew open, crashing against the 
 kitchen dresser and shaking all the willow pattern plates 
 and the old brass candlesticks, like a storm that had sprung 
 up in the night.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " HOLY mother o' God ! So that's the way ye think ye 
 can trate honest, dacint people ! Begorra, those children 
 that are not right from big'ning, 'tis mighty hard to man- 
 age 'em ! " 
 
 Bridget closed the door behind her and strode, trembling 
 with anger, into, the middle of the room. She had risen 
 from the bed, just as she was, arrayed only in her pink 
 flannel nightgown. It was scarcely a becoming garment; 
 it had not even the attraction of being clean. But she 
 did not mind that. It never entered her head to consider 
 it. Her hair fell loosely in greasy, clotted masses over her 
 shoulders. She looked like a fury consumed with dia- 
 bolical rage. The button at the neck of her nightgown was 
 missing, and the white skin of her breast struck incon- 
 gruous contrast with the flushed and coarser color of her 
 face. Her feet were bare. She had not even put on a pair 
 of shoes to cover their uncleanliness. ISfanno shuddered 
 as she looked at her. 
 
 " What the hell d'ye mane by sayin' ye won't be afther 
 marryin' Jamesy Eyan ? " 
 
 " I mane that I won't, an' that's simple enough." 
 
 Bridget folded her arms. It was her characteristic atti- 
 tude when she adopted combat. In just such a pose, Nanno 
 had seen her talking to Jamesy Eyan that afternoon. 
 
 " Where have ye been this evenin' ? " 
 
 96
 
 TRAFFIC. 97 
 
 Xanno made no reply. 
 
 " Where have ye been ? answer ine ! " 
 
 " What's that matter to ye ? Maybe I've been where I 
 didn't hear women makin' shame o' themselves as ye're 
 doin'." 
 
 This was almost the last struggle of Xanno's courage 
 of despair ; but it stung her mother to the quick. Behind 
 the words, she felt that sense of superiority in her child, 
 which brought the worst out of her. 
 
 With glittering eyes, she approached Xanno with a cat- 
 like motion, bending down, like a witch in the moment of 
 incantation, so that the coarse outlines of her body, the 
 heavy hips and disproportionate limbs, showed revoltingly 
 through the opening of the flannel shift. 
 
 " Yirra, d'ye think I don't know damn well where ye've 
 been ? The deuce o' fear I do." 
 
 The words came from between her lips in a hoarse whis- 
 per of rage. Xanno gazed at her for a moment, then 
 turned away her head in disgust and fear. 
 
 " Ye've been wid that Mr. Jerningham from Fennel's 
 over ? " 
 
 She put the question with cunning assertiveness, but it 
 was only a guess based upon instinct. The remembrance 
 of her own folly and the fact that she had been told of 
 Xanno's standing at the gate with him on the night of the 
 Pattern, prompted her. 
 
 Xanno hung her head. It wa-s not from shame or con- 
 fusion; but directly Bridget saw the action, she construed 
 it to be one or the other and knew that her surmise was 
 correct. This only made her temper the more vile, the 
 more bitter. It lashed her into a froth of fury. She pos- 
 sessed a fair judgment of human nature in her way; but 
 there was always one grievous error that made most of her 
 calculations false. She based every supposition upon her 
 7
 
 98 TRAFFIC. 
 
 own standpoint, which, while it might be vitally true of Her- 
 self, was a dangerous and inaccurate way of judging others. 
 
 As soon as Nanno by her silence admitted that she had 
 been with Jerningham, Bridget rushed to her conclusion. 
 
 With hands that were hot and wet, she seized Nanno's 
 wrist and shook her violently. 
 
 " Ye blasted little ! " she hissed, with rage over 
 
 which her control was utterly lost. 
 
 Nanno dragged herself vehemently away, and a cry of 
 horror and shame that was subdued with its intensity came 
 from between her lips. She shrank into the chimney- 
 corner. 
 
 " Faith, I guessed as much," she went on, " when him- 
 self told me ye wouldn't marry Jamesy Eyan. God blast 
 ye ! I wouldn't doubt ye ! Didn't I tell ye it was only 
 thrying to make a fool o' ye he was ! Didn't I know well 
 what he'd be afther in ye the filthy, durrty baste, deuce 
 take him ! Glory be to God ! He was fine and full o' 
 promises I suppose; an' he was so pressin' he was, av 
 course. Shure, that's the way wid those." She minced 
 her words in biting sarcasm. 
 
 And Nanno was dumb. She could only gaze at her 
 mother in horrified amazement. There seemed to be no 
 words that she could find to reply. And the longer she 
 maintained her silence, the more Bridget believed herself 
 to be right. With unconscious irony she related the whole 
 of her fraility with the English artist, and applied it to 
 the case with which she dealt. There was no hesitation 
 in her abuse of Nanno, though it all redounded upon her- 
 self ; and, seeing that Nanno still kept silent, she went on, 
 taking a keen and cruel delight in painting the whole pic- 
 ture in vivid and awful colors before the girl's frightened 
 eyes. 
 
 " Faith, there's a drop o' bad blood in ye, an', begorra,
 
 TRAFFIC. 99 
 
 I know where it comes from. God bless us ! An' to think 
 that ye, wid all yeer quiet ways, 'ud go an' let that durrty 
 foreigner play his filthy game wid ye, a dacint honest girrl. 
 Yirra, that settles it now ! Ye'll be havin' to marry Jamesy 
 Ryan, whether ye like ut or not, to save yeerself. Ye will 
 so. Ye come of a kind that breeds easily did ye know 
 that ? Begorra, 'twas a pity ye didn't think of it in time." 
 
 "It's a lie!" 
 
 The words rushed out of ISTanno's lips with a violence 
 that had been growing gradually in force and vehemence 
 during her prolonged silence. In all that Bridget had said, 
 she had been slowly realizing the fineness of Jerningham's 
 character. If men were like that ; if in every man lay the 
 uncontrollable bestial desire for a woman, then Jamesy 
 Eyan was surely one of them; but Jerningham was not. 
 And when at last she did speak, the words were prompted 
 more in defence of him than of herself. 
 
 " It's all a horrible lie ! " she repeated. 
 
 At first Bridget would not believe her. She tossed back 
 her head and laughed, so that her body shook. 
 
 " D'ye think I'm goin' to believe that ? " she asked. 
 
 " Shure, I don't care whether ye believe it or don't," 
 said Xanno bitterly ; " 'tis the truth, however. 'Twas only 
 the way yeer own mind thought of it." 
 
 For a moment or two Bridget was perplexed. She could 
 not realize that, after all, she had been in the wrong. 
 
 " Wisha, God help us then ! " she exclaimed. " Why in 
 hell's name won't ye marry Jamesy Eyan ? " 
 
 " There's no call for me to be marryin' a man I don't 
 like. 'Tis a shame for ye to be makin' me." 
 
 " Makin' ye ? An' isn't it yeer duty to yeer father ? " 
 
 (< 'Tis not me duty to any one to be marryin' a man that 
 drinks as Jamesy Eyan does. I wouldn't trust him." 
 
 " Yirra, ye're gettin' mighty particular. Where's a man
 
 100 TRAFFIC, 
 
 in Rathmore that doesn't dhrink? Shure, if one o' thim 
 found a shillin' under a shtone, dey'd go an' drink it. 
 Goin' bi that, ye'd never be married at all." 
 
 " An' maybe that would suit me best afther all." 
 
 Bridget looked at her incredulously. The fierce rage 
 that was seething within her had so far been kept in check 
 by her astonishment. That Nanno should hold out against 
 marrying, when the opportunity came in her way, was more 
 than Bridget could understand. She seemed to overlook 
 the fact that Nanno did not know the circumstances of her 
 birth, and only judged her as ungrateful, because she re- 
 fused to relieve John Troy of a responsibility which in good 
 nature alone, he had taken upon his shoulders. But slowly 
 and by sure degrees her surprise was giving way to the 
 anger that lay beneath. Her eyes were full of a glistening 
 fire, and her lips twitched dangerously as the words began 
 to form themselves. She did not consider the light in 
 which she would place herself. The keen desire to shame 
 this girl, who, in every respect, was so superior to herself, 
 was overmastering everything. It was not a desire born of 
 the moment. She had long possessed it. John Troy had 
 stopped her in the satisfaction of it before; nothing on 
 earth would stop her now. The moment that she had 
 longed for, the moment when Nanno had rebelled, had 
 come at last. She was about to have her revenge upon 
 everything : on ISTanno herself for her aloofness, on her lover 
 for his perfidy, and on her husband for his befriending of 
 her illegitimate child. And she rose to it as an angry ani- 
 mal rises to a tormenting prey. 
 
 "Ye'll have to marry him," she said, with dangerous 
 calm. 
 
 !N~anno noticed the change in her manner. 
 
 " 'Tis for meself to say that," she replied quietly. 
 
 Bridget gnashed her teeth.
 
 TRAFFIC. 101 
 
 " Be careful ! " she exclaimed " be careful ! Ye're 
 drivin' me desperate, that's what ye are. D'ye know that 
 ye could be turned out o' this house as ye shtand widout a 
 stitch o' clothin' to yeer back and divvle a one could be 
 called up to own ye ? " 
 
 Xanno looked at her with a white face. 
 
 " Begorra, ye can look ; but that's the truth for ye, an' 
 
 the truth's always bittherr. D'ye know what ye are ? " 
 
 She bent down again closely to the girl. Xanno shrank 
 from her because of the evil look in her eye. 
 
 " D'ye know what ye are ? " she repeated, in her frighten- 
 ing whisper. " Ye're a bastard that's what ye are. D'ye 
 think ye're that man's choild ? " Her arm pointed tragic- 
 ally to the bedroom. " Yirra, there's not a tint o' his 
 blood in the whole o' ye." 
 
 Xanno covered her face \yith her hands. 
 
 " Glory be to God, shure when ye were born, if I'd put 
 ye in his arms he'd a dropped ye like a hat spood he would 
 so. An' ye'd have the brazen face to say ye wouldn't marry 
 any man he'd have a moind to say for ye. Begorra, 'tis 
 the way ye should be goin' down on yeer knees to him and 
 thankin' all the blissid saints that ye've had a home to live 
 in as long as this." The saliva, in her rage, gathered white 
 at the corners of her mouth. 
 
 " Xot his child !t " Xanno repeated dully. " Xot his 
 child ! " 
 
 Bridget laughed harshly. To Xanno, it sounded like 
 the laughter one would hear in hell. 
 
 " Yeer father was of the kind of Mr. Jerningham. 
 Faith, he wanted all he could get out o' me, an' he got ut. 
 Oh, glory be to God, an' he was full o' promises. He 
 was so. Divvle blast him ! I niver seen him since the 
 night he played hell wid me; an' some years back I heard
 
 102 TRAFFIC. 
 
 say he was dead. 'Tis a quare place ye'll find him now if 
 ye want to look for him." 
 
 For one moment Nanno took her hands from her face 
 and gazed at her mother in horror; then, rising and cross- 
 ing the room, she threw herself on the table by the window 
 in a flood of tears. 
 
 "Ah, ye can cry; but that won't make ye yeer father's 
 choild by God, it will not. We always bred easy, we 
 Powers, and, by dad, there was no stoppin' ye cornin' into 
 the world. Faith, ye'll marry Jamesy Ryan now. An' 
 if he does take a drop now and agin, shure, that's a little 
 beside the truth about ye if he knew it." 
 
 After this Bridget could say no more. Nanno was 
 beaten. There was no defiance, no courage left in her, and 
 as soon as her mother saw that, she felt her anger satisfied. 
 With a last look at the prostrate figure on the table, she 
 went back into the bedroom. 
 
 For almost an hour Nanno never moved. She lay like 
 a log that the flood has washed on to the bank. Occasion- 
 ally her shoulders shook convulsively ; but beyond that she 
 scarcely showed any sign of life. And then at last, when 
 the flow of her tears was exhausted, she rose with heavy 
 eyes and looked unseeingly about her. 
 
 " God/' she whispered, trying to begin a prayer. " 
 God," she said again but there seemed nothing to pray 
 for. 
 
 All that she had feared in life all that had lain subcon- 
 sciously in the back of her mind, seemed, in that one word 
 of her mother's, to have suddenly been realized. Shame 
 was her portion her birthright her inheritance.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 that night and onwards, the fate which had molded 
 JSTanno's lips and left its shadows in her eyes began to make 
 its way into her soul. For some weeks afterwards, she felt 
 ashamed to be seen by any one and would not consent to 
 go into the village under any pretext whatsoever. When- 
 ever she met John Troy, her eyes would fall from his gaze. 
 For a time she could look no one in the face. It was as 
 though she had been branded with some cruel mark that 
 stamped her as unclean, unfit for those around her. If 
 Johnny slipped his hand into hers, she would draw it gently 
 away. Whenever Bridget touched her, she shivered. And 
 at night, while the sound of her brothers' sleeping kept 
 rhythm with the monotony of her thoughts, she would lie 
 awake, consumed with an unreasonable disgust for herself 
 that was piteously degrading. She felt unclean, even to 
 herself. Xo amount of reasoning seemed powerful enough 
 to change the attitude of her mind. She knew it was 
 through no fault of her own ; she knew that by no sense of 
 right could any blame attach itself to her ; yet the stain of 
 it seemed so personally her own, to be so much more 
 vitally connected with herself than any one else, that she 
 could not wash it out of her mind. 
 
 Whenever John Troy gave her any command about the 
 farm, she obeyed it with hurried servility, as though she 
 were a slave. Whenever Bridget requested her to do any- 
 thing, she did it immediately, without comment. For 
 those few weeks, until the keenest edge of her disgrace had 
 
 103
 
 104 TRAFFIC. 
 
 been indifferently blunted by the stone of time, she felt 
 that her duty, her obedience, her existence, belonged to any 
 but herself. 
 
 And on the matter of Jamesy Eyan, she decided that 
 very night. Three days later, when she found an oppor- 
 tunity of speaking to John alone, she told him briefly of 
 her decision. He listened with astonishment to the altera- 
 tion of her mind and the meekness of her voice. 
 
 " What did herself say to ye, that night ? " he asked, 
 when she had finished. He was not so simple as to be 
 deceived by the unexpected upheaval of her determination. 
 A twenty years' acquaintance with Bridget had not dead- 
 ened his perception of the methods which she used, and he 
 knew that, with ISTanno in particular, she was pitiless and 
 without heart. 
 
 On the night in question, he had heard nothing of what 
 had passed between Nanno and her mother. Discarding 
 his clothes, that depended from him by the simplest con- 
 trivances in the world, he had slipped into bed in a few 
 moments and, no sooner had his head found its accustomed 
 groove on the pillow, than he fell into a depth of sleep 
 known only to those who live in God's air; and all the 
 highest tones of Bridget's raucous voice could not have 
 awakened him. 
 
 But, though he had heard nothing to arouse his suspi- 
 cions, the humility of Nanno's words quickened his in- 
 stincts at once. 
 
 " What did herself say to ye, that night ? " he repeated. 
 
 Nanno looked away. 
 
 " She told me like that it was yeerself I should be con- 
 sidering an' shure, I suppose she's right. She is, of 
 course." 
 
 John tried to catch her eye ; but she evaded him. 
 
 " An' is that all?"
 
 TMAFFIC. 105 
 
 " It is." 
 
 Whether this were true or not, and John very much 
 doubted her word, he knew by the sound of her voice 
 that he could elicit nothing further, so he did not persist. 
 But he questioned her closely, trying to disturb the fixity 
 of her determination. This also was useless and, begin- 
 ning at last to be deceived by the apparent earnestness of 
 her manner, that she really wished to show her willingness 
 to marry Jamesy Evan, he let the matter drop. 
 
 After this, the solicitor in Anesk was called into the 
 affair. They all drove into the town, Xanno included, 
 and in his dingy little office, with uncarpeted floor and 
 piles of discolored papers, with which the must and the 
 dust lived in one accord, the last throes of the mutual 
 agreement were entered into. 
 
 He was a small, fat little man, with kindly and knowing 
 eyes that looked at everything without seeing and saw 
 everything without looking. He sat behind an old ma- 
 hogany desk that was always one mangled confusion of un- 
 answered letters, and he never said an unkind word to any 
 one in his life. In speaking, he had a slight impediment, 
 a stammer that had a partiality for certain letters of the 
 alphabet. But this did not interfere with his business; 
 many times, in fact, the humor of it had won him a case 
 before the resident magistrate. By nature, he was a senti- 
 mentalist to the core; but in business, he relied upon the 
 length of his upper lip, the drollery of his impediment, and 
 the humorous twinkle in his eye. 
 
 There are always three ways of winning a case, and 
 they are made use of in every court, from the Eathmore 
 Petty Sessions to the oak-paneled chambers in Fleet 
 Street. Either you make the Bench laugh, or you make 
 it weep, or you appeal to its sense of logic; and all these, 
 if they are to be successful, may be done regardless^ if neces-
 
 106 TRAFFIC. 
 
 sary, of the truth. Little Mr. Donegan always adopted 
 the first. His type of countenance suited it. To utilize 
 the second, one must have a watery eye and a mournful 
 voice; while a lengthy face, clean-shaven, a voice that im- 
 presses every one, even its owner, and an unerring knowl- 
 edge of when to bring the clenched fist down upon the 
 table, are all that are required for the third. 
 
 Mr. Donegan was certainly a humorist; he seldom 
 smiled. And it was mostly the comedy of life that came 
 as grist to his mill. 
 
 As he sat and listened to the last efforts of Jamesy Ryan 
 to increase the amount of the dowry and Bridget's valiant 
 though illogical replies, his eyes twinkled merrily. 
 
 " Yirra, damn it all, me good 'ooman, make it two hun- 
 dred and thirty-foive for luck an' the look of ut." 
 
 " The look of ut ! " Bridget exclaimed. Her eyes pite- 
 ously sought the ceiling, appealing silently but impressively 
 to the God of all justice, then descended, full of scorn and 
 contempt, on the face of her prospective son-in-law. 
 " Glory be to God, shure, if ye don't like the looks o' two 
 hundred and thurrtj'-wan pounds in meltin' gold, ye can 
 leave it for others that'll take it quick enough. Yirra, 
 man, ye're as mane as bogwater, an' I havin* to get the por- 
 ther and whishkey for ye to be makin' yeerself drunk wid 
 at the weddin' ! " 
 
 This was the kind of thing that Mr. Donegan repeated 
 with admirable mimicry to his friends. He was enjoying 
 every word of it, when his eyes lighted on Nanno. She 
 was seated on a chair in a far corner of the room, the ex- 
 pression of her face seeming to separate her from all that 
 was going on, as the face of one in the beauty of prayer 
 is distinct from the crowd. 
 
 " Is that your daughter that's going to be married ? " he 
 asked Bridget quietly.
 
 TRAFFIC. 107 
 
 "Begorra, it is, if this young man'll have the dacint 
 honesty not to go back on the word he gave me the day we 
 reaped the field o' barley." 
 
 Mr. Donegan looked at Xanno again, and the senti- 
 mentalist came almost to the surface. From that moment, 
 until even-thing was arranged, he could not take his eyes 
 away from her. There was many a word he wrote in the 
 deed of settlement, which he was compelled to cross out 
 and write again. 
 
 She said not a word through the whole proceeding. It 
 would have seemed as though she were the very last person 
 concerned. At one moment, before the deed was signed, 
 when Jamesy Ryan, in sudden indecision, had declared 
 again that he must have his two hundred and thirty-five 
 pounds, Mr. Donegan thought he saw the expression of 
 absolute fatality replaced for one brief moment by a 
 look of almost hope; but it died away again, when Jamesy 
 was brought once more to Bridget's way of thinking. 
 
 And then, when the whole matter, to which John had 
 all the time been a silent spectator, was settled, they went 
 out into the street, repairing at once to the nearest public- 
 house and leaving Nanno to look about as she chose. 
 
 An unconscious impulse led her to the shop window 
 where she had descended from the car on which Jerningham 
 had brought her from Eathmore. For some length of time, 
 she stood there, looking at the articles that were for sale, yet 
 not realizing the existence of any one of them. 
 
 All that she had feared that night, and worse than that, 
 had come to pass since then. Up to that moment, it seemed 
 as though she had lived ; there had been pleasures and de- 
 lights in existence that she had looked forward to. Now, 
 she looked forward to nothing; in fact, everything that lay 
 before her filled her with a loathsome foreboding and 
 dread,
 
 168 TRAFFIC. 
 
 From that day on which the settlements were signed, 
 until the next Shrove-tide, there was nothing to be done but 
 wait. To Nanno, the time wore various aspects. Some- 
 times it seemed as though the years would pass quicker 
 than those few months. At others, more especially when, 
 in view of their approaching relationship, Jamesy would 
 come up to the farm and, in the moments of showing his 
 admiration, endeavor to taste the fruits that he was soon to 
 wrench from her with his rough hands, she would imagine 
 it to be but a breath before the awful day would arrive. 
 
 Meeting her one day in the street, Father Mehan stopped 
 and smiled. 
 
 " Faith, 'tis aisy to see what suits ye better than the 
 convent," he said, with native flattery. 
 
 Nanno did not reply and, mistaking her silence for 
 maiden modesty, he had added : 
 
 "Well, I suppose I'll see ye next Shrove-tide, ISfanno," 
 and, believing that she was perfectly contented with cir- 
 cumatances, he had gone on his way. 
 
 How she had the courage to bear and face it all is be- 
 yond the understanding of a man to say. Women are not 
 only stoics to the agonies of the body; it is not only the 
 labor of child-birth that they are able to bear with tightened 
 lips and silent tongues; they are stoics also to the agonies 
 of the mind. Yet all that ISTanno suffered for those few 
 months; all that she hoped for and, as time went on, de- 
 spaired of, until life became in actual fact the terrible 
 reality she had sometimes dreamed it to be, is but the out- 
 set of the tragedy that is hereafter to be played. 
 
 She was young intensely young and there lay the 
 greater pity of it. It is hard to realize that life is to 
 be suffered, quite as much as, if not more so, than it is 
 to be lived. It may not, it is true, be such a serious mat- 
 ter after all, and the temperaments that find it so are
 
 TRAFFIC. 109 
 
 greatly blessed. But when one's birth is the satire of fatal- 
 ity as was JSTanno's; when one feels the hideous necessity 
 of living it through because of two immense uncertainties 
 it is the lesser; then life can be all that Nanno feared of it, 
 and may contain all that she found it to hold. What rec- 
 ompenses there may be hereafter no philosophy of clerics 
 or wisdom of wise men can say. Heaven is a gentle word 
 with which to lull children to sleep, and hell a fearsome one 
 to terrify them to obedience. But two things only are con- 
 stant ; two things only resist the logic and the reasoning of 
 us all we live and we die beyond that there is a veil 
 which hides the wonders and the mysteries from the 
 farthest-seeing eye or the deepest philosophy. And into 
 this state, this condition of things, we are brought without 
 will, question, or consent ! Because one night a man and 
 a woman who had been nothing to each other in the eyes 
 of the Church had, in one moment, for the pressing pleas- 
 ure of it, gratified a sensual desire, N"anno had been called 
 into existence, a prey for the sport of Fate, a frail vessel 
 to battle with the buffetings of the storm as best she could. 
 Two courses alone were left open for her to adopt; either 
 she could choose the uncertainty of life, and cling to its 
 existence, or, leaving it, she might face the uncertainty of 
 death and the ban of the Church. Had she not accepted 
 the former, preferring the uncertainty of death to that of 
 life, this story had never been written, and the Gods would 
 have been cheated of their game.
 
 BOOK II, 
 
 HOLY MATRIMONY.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON Shrove Tuesday, in the following year, Nanno was 
 married to Jamesy Ryan. 
 
 The little church of Rathinore with its simple interior, 
 its square, brick-tiled floor, and its varnished rafters, was 
 filled with the villagers and those friends and relations 
 who had come from various parts to witness the ceremony 
 and partake of the hospitality that would follow after. 
 
 Compared with a burial, a wedding in Ireland is as a 
 rushlight to a bonfine. As an occasion for the distribution 
 of much alcohol, it is welcomed enthusiastically, but the 
 ceremony itself is in no way so impressive. Death and 
 emigration are the two great incidents of life in Ireland. 
 Marriage is a small matter compared with these. 
 
 There is, perhaps, no country in the world where a sym- 
 pathy with human nature is more wanting, more extinct. 
 Their loves and their hates, fierce though they sometimes 
 may be, are based upon motives that are as different from 
 those of other nations as the Frenchman differs from the 
 Sphinx. To an Irishman, his land is his mother, his wife 
 and his child, all three in one; his women-folk are little 
 more than beasts of burden cattle upon the land that he 
 loves. Insult his land, and he will wait forever for the 
 day to wreak his vengeance insult his women-folk, and a 
 few stiff glasses of whisky will make amends for a great 
 deal. 
 
 Ireland is notorious for its pretty women. That may 
 be so; but it will be found that they are nearly all of 
 8 113
 
 114 TRAFFIC. 
 
 them unmarried. Once a woman marries in Ireland, she 
 deteriorates; she becomes a hewer of wood and a drawer 
 of water, and withers into premature old age. The num- 
 ber of children born to an average Irishwoman is proof of 
 it all. No man who had sympathy with human nature 01 
 a love of his wife, would tax her strength and multiply 
 her labors as the Irish workman will do. She is only the 
 beast to bear his burden, the cattle on the land that he 
 loves. Every record of English injustice in that country 
 and there are thousands that are only too true are all 
 those inflicted on the land. This man stole a farmer's 
 homestead, that man killed another for his domain but 
 scarce a tale of the seduction of this man's wife or the rape 
 of that man's child; and, when the soldiers were spread 
 throughout the country, that must have been a common 
 story too. Yet never is it repeated now. It has slipped 
 the memory of them all, while the stories of the land 
 the land the land these will remain forever. 
 
 Of all those who were present at the marriage of Nanno 
 Troy to Jamesy Ryan in the little church of Rathmore, 
 there was probably not one to whom the matter appealed in 
 its serious aspect ; not one, excepting Nanno herself. There 
 was merriment; there were jests. Ripples of suppressed 
 laughter ran along the occupants of the long forms. 
 Jamesy Ryan, while they were waiting for Father Mehan's 
 arrival, turned frequently and winked lasciviously at those 
 of his friends who were present. Bridget, herself, was in 
 the best of spirits. In muffled whispers, interrupted at 
 times by coarse though subdued hilarity, she gossiped with 
 those who were sitting near, and John Troy, still believing 
 that it was Nanno's willing desire, discussed the coming 
 summer with his neighbors. 
 
 To Nanno alone, it was real, horrible, grotesque. For 
 the most part it seemed to be a dream, a dream, neverthe-
 
 TRAFFIC. 115 
 
 less, that she knew to be true. She moved as though she 
 were asleep. There was no trace of emotion in her face; 
 her eyes looked away into a distance that no one but her- 
 self could see. When those girls of the village with whom, 
 from time to time, she had been more or less friendly, 
 spoke to her about the good fortune that was hers, she 
 answered without feeling or expression. All that they 
 said, she quietly agreed with; when they laughed, she 
 laughed with them, but it was only the echo of theirs, the 
 laughter that the walls of a vault will throw back to him 
 who utters it. 
 
 And then, Father Mehan arrived. The laughter and 
 the jesting died down into a quiet hush ; the service began. 
 
 Nanno tried to feel that the words which were being 
 said, applied to herself But even standing there with 
 Jamesy Evan beside her, it seemed hard to realize. With 
 her whole nature and desire so foreign to it all, it was 
 difficult to believe that it was absolutely true. 
 
 Almost before she was aware of it, it was over; her con- 
 dition in life was changed. Xo longer free to speculate 
 upon her own future, no longer able to count herself her 
 own, she belonged to some one else. Her future was there 
 already ; it both faced her and was at her side. 
 
 In the vestry, she had to submit to the inevitable kiss 
 of bondage, while the others stood by and laughed. 
 
 " Begorra, that's the first of a lot of 'em," she heard a 
 girl whisper. 
 
 She even framed her lips into the form of a kiss, when 
 he put his mouth to hers. But no kiss was given. The 
 sound of his own obliterated that fact, even to himself. 
 And then, when the registry was signed ; her name in neat, 
 legible writing that she had learned at the National School, 
 his, with a cross against the name that Father Mehan had 
 Britten for him, they hurried out of the church and
 
 116 TRAFFIC. 
 
 mounted the cars and the traps that had been waiting for 
 them. 
 
 The crowd cheered and shouted as, with a lashing of 
 whips, a clattering of hoofs and a jolting of springs, they 
 drove helter-skelter away. In that part of the world one 
 drives slowly and the longest way round to a funeral. It 
 is the importance that falls on death. At a wedding, one 
 drives hell for leather; and, if it were possible, the short- 
 est route as the crow flies would be the one preferred. 
 
 In ten minutes they were all back at the farm. The 
 wedding had taken place at four o'clock in the afternoon, 
 so that the evening was already gray by the time that they 
 returned. And then began the feasting of the night. 
 
 One of the outhouses had been cleared of all its contents 
 and there, to the tunes of a blind fiddler, there AVOS dancing 
 in all its national forms. The kitchen was filled, as it had 
 been on the day of the Pattern, with men and women drink- 
 ing the whole night long. The incessant sounds of their 
 talking and the muddled laughter of their voices would 
 sometimes be broken by the metallic breaking of glass, as 
 a tumbler was dropped from an unsteady hand. But to 
 Nanno, the quiet, peaceful farmhouse seemed like hell; a 
 pandemonium that would never regain its peacefulness un- 
 til the end of time. She was dragged from one place to 
 another by her friends, to share in whatever amusement was 
 going on. She was made to dance with the rest of them, 
 and still it was all a dream ; a dream from which she would 
 not wake until everything was quiet, and all the voices had 
 ceased. And every now and again, the face of Jamesy 
 Ryan came to her as a reality. His voice would rise above 
 the others, and she would look quickly at him as though she 
 had been reminded ; he would put his arm round her waist 
 in the dance, and a light of conscious horror would creep 
 into her eyes.
 
 TRAFFIC. 117 
 
 So the night wore on, drawing nearer every moment to 
 the hour when she would be left alone with him. In a 
 desire of fear, endeavoring to put off the evil moment as 
 long as she dared, she began, in the first, small hours of 
 the morning, to enter into the spirit of the dancing. When 
 one set was finished, she urged another, to begin. If a 
 girl had to leave, she would fill in her place herself, and 
 dance, as though new energy had suddenly entered into her 
 and she wished to infuse it into the minds of others. 
 
 But it was all unnatural, forced, an effort of despair. 
 The light of enthusiasm went out of her eyes, as a candle 
 is snuffed by the extinguisher, when she saw Jamesy Evan 
 lurching across the floor of the outhouse, a purpose fixed 
 in his face. With an unsteady gaze, he was looking at 
 her, and she knew that the moment had come. 
 
 One more effort she made, calling to the fiddler to play 
 quicker, and whirling round with her partner in the square ; 
 the next moment Ryan's hand was laid on her shoulder. 
 
 " Glory be to God," he said thickl}', " ye're dancing the 
 deuce out o' yeerself," and, taking her by the arm, he 
 dragged her away. 
 
 The girls looked at her, and grinned; the men burst 
 forth into laughter as she followed him out of the outhouse. 
 That laughter rang in her ears until the light of the morn- 
 ing found its way into the sky. 
 
 " God blast ? em," he said, when they were alone outside 
 in the yard " Shure, 't'll be marnin' before they'll be 
 thinkin' o' goinV 
 
 He stumbled heavily, and she caught at his arm in- 
 voluntarily to save him. The jolting of it brought on a 
 feeling of sickness, and, for a moment, he stood there, 
 swaying uncertainly. Then it overcame him. He vom- 
 ited. Xanno shuddered, and shut her eyes. But she
 
 118 TRAFFIC. 
 
 stood by him until it had passed; praying that no one 
 would come out and see him. 
 
 Soon after she had left the dance, the party broke up, 
 and one by one they went home. As the last of them 
 drove away, JSTanno turned back into the kitchen. Her 
 energies were dead; she felt exhausted. And then she 
 seated herself on the three-legged stool until Jamesy came 
 back from the yard outside to claim her the claiming of 
 the animal that the butcher has bought for the shambles. 
 
 The moment as she passed through the door of the room 
 that had been prepared for them, seemed as though it were 
 the last that she could endure; yet, above it all, governing 
 and controlling every action, rose the remembrance that she 
 was a shame-child one who could have no right for sym- 
 pathy or reason for regret. This was her duty; this was 
 her penalty; the sins of the father were falling heavily, 
 but with divine accuracy, upon the child. And, as the 
 door closed behind her, leaving her alone with the man 
 whom she had discarded from the beginning, she fell down 
 across the bed; but her eyes were dry, and her heart 
 stone.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 GLENLICKY is a wild part of the country. A little river, 
 bearing the name of the district, flows through the low- 
 lying valley of gray, lichened rock and warm, purple 
 heather. The water of it, is of a soft, brown color, caused 
 by the peat land through which it has passed. During a 
 flood it rushes along over the shallow bed, resting now and 
 again in the deep pools where the trout lie lazily, then 
 seething on past the gray-green rocks through the lonely 
 valley. Here and there, across the big stretch of country, 
 a farmhouse rises behind a clump of trees; but they are 
 few and far between. The nearest place of habitation to 
 Jamesy Ryan's farm, was Kiley's Cross, which was com- 
 posed of a police barracks, a public house, and two or 
 three cottages. They all stand on the square where four 
 cross-roads meet. From this circumstance and the owner 
 of the public house, the place gets its name. To the igno- 
 rant traveler, Kiley's Cross is merely a half-way house, 
 dropped into the midst of a lonely part of country. And 
 two miles distant from it stands Jamesy Ryan's farm. 
 
 Surrounded by a few stunted poplars, with its warm, 
 thatched roof and standing high up on the side of the 
 valley, it appears at the first glance to be homely, com- 
 fortable, secure. But in winter, when the nights are long ; 
 when the wind rattles through the leafless branches of the 
 trees and the mud floor of the kitchen is damp with the 
 rain that has filtered through the thatch; there are few 
 places in those parts that are more desolate. To Nanno, 
 
 119
 
 120 TRAFFIC. 
 
 after the comparative comfort of John Troy's farm, it be- 
 came at times intolerable. At night she would pray for the 
 daylight, and when it came, gray, misty, blowing over the 
 land in great sheets of floating rain, she would long for 
 the night to come to shut it out and hide it from her. 
 
 Eathmore was a small village, no doubt ; but it brought 
 with it a sense of peaceful security. There was always 
 something consoling in the small, bright lights that burned 
 in the cottage windows. Even at eight and nine o'clock 
 at night people were moving about. Men talked in groups 
 at the corners of the street. But here, if she looked out of 
 the one small, dirty window in the kitchen, there was not 
 a light to be seen. Only the gaunt, gray forms of the 
 stunted poplars stood out, webbed, against the leaden color 
 of the sky and across the country the land was bleak and 
 cold. 
 
 The cottage itself was poor and miserable. The rafters 
 were rotting and the thatch was always damp. The fifteen 
 acres that Jamesy possessed were badly farmed ; for though 
 John Troy had said he was hard-working, yet Nanno's 
 estimation of him had been the more correct. A man who 
 is sober only on occasions cannot put hard work into any- 
 thing. 
 
 Almost every day, from the time they were married until 
 spring had begun to set in and there really was work to be 
 done, ISTanno would be left to herself. Jamesy would go 
 up to Kile/s Cross, spending the whole day there, and re- 
 turning home sometimes late at night, his clothes often 
 caked with mud where he had fallen. The ground through 
 that valley and up the sides of the hills was none too even 
 for a man to walk in the possession of all his wits. On 
 these occasions, expecting sometimes that she would turn 
 and abuse him for his neglect, he frequently lost his tem- 
 per sot the quietness of her submission.
 
 TRAFFIC. 181 
 
 " Yirra, damn and blast ye," he said once, as he took a 
 seat threateningly beside her. " Why the hell can't ye have 
 a little more spirrut in ye ? " 
 
 She made no answer and then, in uncontrollable irrita- 
 tion, he struck her with his open hand, throwing her from 
 the stool on which she was sitting to the ground. She fell 
 heavily, but was not hurt in any way, and as she rose to 
 her feet, her deep, gray eyes looked steadily at him. 
 
 " I'm yeer wife," she said, regaining her breath ; " I 
 belong to ye but if ye treat me in that way, 'tis a short 
 time ye'll find me submittin' to it." 
 
 He tried to laugh nonchalantly. The effort made him 
 look supreme!}" ridiculous. 
 
 " Bi gob, I'll do as I damn well loike," he retorted ; but 
 for the next few days, though he showed her no affection 
 and returned at nights just as drunk as ever, he kept his 
 hands under control and did not ill-use her again. 
 
 The sensual attraction that had driven him previous to 
 their marriage had not taken long to be satiated; and 
 when the freshness of her in his mind had worn itself to 
 a thread; when her cheeks had lost the warmth of their 
 color and her eyes were heavy with sleepless nights, he re- 
 sorted to Kiley's Cross, spending day by day there the 
 sum of money that had come to him with her dowry. 
 
 It was just the hell on earth that Xanno had expected 
 it to be, and only by keeping her mind aloof from it all 
 could she retain that self -respect which, no matter how she 
 had been shamed, was still inseparable from her nature. 
 She never went up to Kiley's Cross herself, though, for 
 the first week or so of their married life, he had tried to 
 persuade her to do so. But she was not of the type who 
 endeavor to drown their sorrow. There was something so 
 ignoble in it to her mind that, though night after night 
 she would see Jamesy throw himself on to his bed and
 
 122 TRAFFIC. 
 
 drift off immediately into a sodden condition of sleep that 
 became oblivious of everything which, as she watched 
 him, seemed a state of mind that she almost envied yet 
 the thought of the means by which he had arrived at it 
 disgusted her to nausea. 
 
 And thus, day by day, night by night, the period of 
 her married life lengthened. The circumstances of it be- 
 came worse and worse as time went on, but she also be- 
 came more inured to bear it. She realized how much more 
 hardened to her conditions she was when, one day, a neigh- 
 bor came in from a distant farm and, gossipping with her 
 over a cup of tea, had told her tales about Jamesy's doings 
 at Kiley's Cross that she had not thought about before. 
 
 The good woman felt sympathetic to Nanno's hardships, 
 which were a byword in the district, and she thought a 
 little consolation might help her. 
 
 " Maybe there's not a tint o' truth in it," she said care- 
 fully, mistaking Nanno's silent acceptance of the story for 
 a cloak behind which deeper feelings lay. "'Tis that 
 widdey woman, Mrs. Doran. Wisha, 'twas a bad day that 
 brought her to these parts. She niver wrote the scroll of a 
 pen to her husband for the last six months before he was 
 drowned at sea. Shure, 'tis the way there's a bad drop in 
 her." 
 
 It was from this incident, perhaps, more than any other, 
 that Nanno realized how utterly indifferent to life she had 
 become. But it was slowly killing her. Her life, young as 
 it was, seemed utterly, irretrievably wasted. She had not 
 realized before she was married all the joys that life could 
 contain; but since, when she had experienced some of its 
 greatest horrors, it was as though she had come to know 
 by contrast. She had failed to make of life what she knew 
 could be made of it, when circumstance or a great and 
 masterful nature control it for its good. But a masterful
 
 TRAFFIC. 123 
 
 nature was not hers. She could not stride barefooted over 
 the sharp flints of adversity; she was not strong enough to 
 hew her way through the tangled forest of depression 
 where the daylight only steals through odd chinks in the 
 leaves. Hers was not the personality which seizes the ax, 
 fells the tree and makes a rent of daylight in the gloom, 
 where the sun had failed to force its way. Nanno, rather, 
 was the child of the story-book. Circumstances might 
 harden her, conditions might embitter her; yet always at 
 the root of her nature would be that childish love of being 
 intensely happy in the sunlight of life and looking to one 
 stronger than herself when the clouds were heavy or the 
 night was dark. 
 
 But it was all dark in those first few months of her mar- 
 ried life, and the only strength she had on which to rely 
 was her religion. No love had entered her life up till then, 
 and so she leaned upon her faith, still hoping against hope, 
 still praying against belief. 
 
 Often, at night, Jamesy would return to find her by the 
 kitchen fire upon her knees, the deep orange of the fire- 
 light glowing on her face, her lips parted silently. At 
 those times, she would rise hastily to her feet and busy 
 herself about the room as though nothing had happened. 
 
 It was under a circumstance like this, that Jamesy had 
 one night returned, accompanied by friends with whom he 
 had attended the wake of an old farmer who had died in 
 the district. To have been at a wake implies, almost of 
 necessity, the state of intoxication. They were all of them 
 more or less drunk. 
 
 The soft mud of the farmyard outside had muffled the 
 sound of their footsteps and, when the door suddenly flew 
 open, they saw Nanno kneeling by the chimney corner. 
 She had evidently been in that attitude for some time, for 
 her hand rested on the three-legged stool by her side, sup-
 
 124 TRAFFIC. 
 
 porting her body. Immediately she rose to her feet; but 
 not before two of them had noticed her. 
 
 One burst out into laughter, and the other it was 
 Jamesy himself spat into the room. 
 
 " Glory be to God ! " he exclaimed, " shure, we've had 
 prayers enough for to-night, anyhow. Quid Brodie's soul 
 ought to be restin' like a babe now, wid all we've said for 
 him." 
 
 They crowded into the room, the one woman who was 
 with them scrutinizing Nanno directly she entered. For 
 a moment, Nanno was overcome with her surprise and 
 then, realizing, from the description she had received, that 
 this was the notorious Mrs. Doran whose intimacy with 
 Jamesy had already been related to her, she withdrew her 
 gaze in disgust. 
 
 " Good evening ma'am," Mrs. Doran said brazenly. 
 Nanno affected not to hear, and the widow winked at 
 Jamesy. 
 
 She was a hard-featured woman, who still possessed in 
 her face the attributes of good looks. But there was some- 
 thing particularly vicious in the regularity of her features 
 and the coarse color of her skin; there was, moreover, a 
 sense of shamelessness in her expression. Her skirt of 
 rough homespun was cut short above her ankles. There 
 was some of the brutality of the man about her, and she 
 walked with heavy steps that betokened the daring inde- 
 pendence of her nature. 
 
 "'Tis a fine evenin' ma'am," she went on, determining 
 to make Nanno notice her. 
 
 Nanno looked round. 
 
 " Maybe," she replied " I've not been out." 
 
 "'Twas a fine wake ye're after missin'," she persisted. 
 
 Nanno nodded her head, and passed from the kitchen 
 into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
 
 TRAFFIC. 125 
 
 They all turned their heads, watching her departure; 
 then, one by one, with a smile lurking in the corner of 
 their eyes, they looked back at Jainesy. 
 
 " Shure, she's moighty supayrior," said the widow, gaz- 
 ing up at the ceiling. 
 
 The three men laughed, but Jamesy stared viciously at 
 the door that Xanno had closed behind her. 
 
 " Begorra, she's drivin' me to hell wid her supayriority," 
 he said under his breath, though loud enough for them all 
 to hear it. 
 
 " Me darlin' bhoy," sighed Mrs. Doran. 
 
 That was a type of humor that made them shout with 
 laughter and, seeing that it amused them, she gave them 
 more of it. 
 
 " Yirra, come and sit on me knee, me poor fella," she 
 murmured. There was a maudlin caress in her voice. 
 
 The other men pushed him on to her and, when he 
 put his arms round her neck to save himself, they shouted 
 their hilarity again. 
 
 " Is it drivin' ye to hell she is ? " she began again, when 
 she had recovered herself from the shock of his impact. 
 She patted him on his unshaven face with her coarse hands 
 as she said it. 
 
 Jamesy looked at her and she winked. The other men 
 urged them on with their laughter. 
 
 " Begorra, she'd make a foine mother, she would so," 
 said one of them. 
 
 " Maybe I'd make better than ye'd think, if I got the 
 chanst," she replied readily and, unseen to them, she ac- 
 companied the words with a sudden grip of Jamesy's 
 waist as she held him to her. 
 
 Ryan moved uneasily, and the others rolled around the 
 room in their merriment. 
 
 And so this scene of loathsome debauchery continued*
 
 126 TRAFFIC. 
 
 A bottle of whisky was produced, and the drinking of 
 it but intensified the coarseness of their jests. 
 
 Lying awake in the other room, Nanno listened dully 
 to all that was going on. She heard their shouts of 
 laughter, every blast of it fraying her nerves, laying bare 
 the threads; until, at last, covering her head with the 
 bed-clothes, she strove to shut it out of her ears. 
 
 At last, by whispered persuasions, addressed to Jamesy 
 when the others were not looking, Mrs. Doran induced 
 him to get rid of the other men. They accepted eventually 
 the blatant hints that were offered them and, with sly 
 looks at each other, they moved unsteadily towards the 
 door. 
 
 Mrs. Doran yawned and rose slowly to her feet. 
 
 "Faith, I'd better be goin' meself," she said. Jamesy 
 looked at her apprehensively, but she made no movement 
 to carry out what she said. 
 
 " Shure, 'tis aiqual to the deuce what time we get home," 
 said the last man, as he lurched out of the door into the 
 darkness. 
 
 "If ye ever get home at all," Mrs. Doran called out 
 after him. 
 
 She seated herself again in the chimney corner as 
 Jamsey closed the door and, while in the pretense of 
 gazing at the fire, she watched him as he came back slowly 
 into the room. She saw him stand midway between 
 her and the door. She saw him listening. Every- 
 thing was silent; and then, as he crept to the door of the 
 bedroom, bending down in an attitude of concentrated at- 
 tention, a vicious smile turned the corners of her mouth. 
 She was on the eve of triumph over the woman whom she 
 had hated by instinct and now loathed on acquaintance. 
 
 "Begorra, she'd sleep through hell," she said in an
 
 TRAFFIC. 127 
 
 undertone. Jamesy nodded his head, and crossed the 
 room stealthily to her side. 
 
 But Nanno was not asleep. She had heard the de- 
 parture of the three men and, with the bed-clothes re- 
 moved from her face, her eyes and ears were strained 
 in the darkness. The walls of the cottage were thick, 
 but, nevertheless, she had heard their laughing and talk- 
 ing plainly enough. Now, not a sound could be heard 
 in the other room. 
 
 For some time she-, listened and waited, and at last, 
 hearing nothing, thinking that Jamesy must have gone out 
 with them as well, she stole out of bed. In another 
 moment she had opened the door that led into the kitchen. 
 
 A scuffle and a word of cursing reached her ears before 
 she saw anything. Apprehensively, she took one more 
 step forward; then, with a catching of her breath, she 
 turned her back, hurrying again into the bedroom and 
 closing the door hastily behind her. 
 
 For a few moments, everything was silent again. 
 With heart pounding against her as she lay in the 
 bed, she waited for something else to happen. It came at 
 last. Jamesy's footsteps sounded heavily as he crossed the 
 kitchen floor; the door flew open, letting the dim light 
 from outside pour in a murky stream into the room. Then 
 he stood beside the bed. Once she looked at him. She 
 could look no more. There was hate and murder in his 
 eyes. Instinctively she felt that she was facing the blade 
 of danger and, with a little cry, she covered the clothes 
 about her. 
 
 He uttered a violent curse, and tore them from her 
 shoulders. She lay there with her arms across her eyes, 
 her head buried in the pillow. But it availed her nothing. 
 He was not in the mood to stop and think ; the fury of a 
 guilty mind had gripped him. 'With iron fingers, he
 
 128 TRAFFIC. 
 
 caught her wrists and dragged her arms apart. Then 
 his clenched fist fell with a dull, unyielding thud upon her 
 upturned face. The mark it left was white; as death. 
 She moaned. 
 
 " By God, ye'll niver be afther spyin' on me agen ! " 
 he muttered, and then his blows fell on her as the ham- 
 mers that drive in a wedge. When she tried to get away 
 from him, he seized the loosened strands of her hair and 
 dragged her to his reach. A thin stream of blood flowed 
 from her mouth; blood that, in that dim, uncertain light, 
 looked black and ugly. This was the shambles to which, 
 passing before the altar of God and with the blessing of 
 the priest in their ears, he had led her. But she still 
 moaned, and so long as she did that, fear did not stop 
 him. He beat her about the body, caring little that her 
 child was yet unborn; and then, when her moaning ceased, 
 when he realized that he was beating a still and lifeless 
 thing that gave no answer to its punishment, his arm 
 swung limply to his side, and he looked at her disfigured 
 face in stupid horror. 
 
 She never moaned; she never moved. 
 
 " Chroist ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 Then he ran into the kitchen, the blood on his hands, 
 the terror in his eyes. 
 
 The kitchen was empty. Mrs. Doran had gone.
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 FOR almost two weeks Nanno never moved from the 
 bed where she had been beaten. Every time she saw the 
 blood-stain upon the clothes, she shuddered, and every 
 time that Jamesy entered the room, she closed her eyes. 
 
 The doctor from Eathmore had come over that next day 
 to see her and, during his visit, Jamesy found it necessary 
 to be at work in one of the fields farthest from the house. 
 
 Dr. Fitzgerald was a young man, square about the 
 shoulders, keen in the eyes. He had not long concluded 
 his walking of the hospitals and life to him, as yet., was 
 not a thing to be taken for granted. His manner at that 
 time would have been detrimental to his career, had he 
 been attending a better class of patients ; but with the poor 
 country people, the brusqueness of his voice and his abrupt 
 way of speaking, could not have been more suitable. He 
 gave them confidence; it was a reflection of the confidence 
 he felt in himself. 
 
 As he stood by Nanno's bedside there was a keen, 
 critical expression in his eyes: the keenness of the lancet 
 which cuts to the root of the evil. 
 
 " How did this happen ? " he asked. 
 
 Her lips twitched with pain. She was piteously weak. 
 
 " Come now how did it happen ? " he repeated. 
 
 " 'Twas the way I fell on me face," she said under her 
 breath, and her eyes watched his face closely for any ex- 
 pression of belief. How could she have told him the 
 truth? It might be a common occurrence for a husband 
 9 129
 
 130 TRAFFIC. 
 
 to beat his wife. The doctor, no doubet, had seen plenty 
 of instances of it. But it was not common to Nanno. 
 Undeserved, brutal, and cowardly though it had been, 
 she felt it to be a shame to herself. She could not tell 
 him the truth; yet, realizing that he might not accept 
 her statement, she watched his face critically to see if 
 he believed. 
 
 But she saw nothing. She could not have said whether 
 he credited her information or not. He merely bent over 
 the bed and made a closer examination of her wounds, say- 
 ing, nothing. 
 
 He ordered ointments to be used, lotions to be applied. 
 In a rough sort of way, he took her hand and told her to 
 cheer up. 
 
 " Good heavens it might have been worse," he said. 
 
 He had seen worse. 
 
 Then he went out of the house and into the fields. 
 
 " Have you seen Eyan ? " he asked of a man whom he 
 found resting from work under a hedge. 
 
 " 'Tis way in that field over." 
 
 He pointed with a knotted finger in the direction. 
 
 Fitzgerald climbed a hedge and disappeared out of 
 sight. When Jamesy saw him approaching, he stood up 
 from his work and a breath of cold wind blew over his 
 forehead. He touched his hat. 
 
 " Your wife's in a bad way," said Fitzgerald. 
 
 "Bigob, she is that, sorr," he said, shifting his hands 
 on the spade he held. 
 
 " Yes and do you know what's the cause of it ? " 
 
 Jamesy's face assumed an expression of consideration. 
 
 " 'Twas the way she fell." 
 
 "Oh! she told you that?" 
 
 " She did." 
 
 Fitzgerald .clenched his fists. The pleasure of doing
 
 TRAFFIC. 131 
 
 the same to Ryan as lie had clone to his wife, was a temp- 
 tation that he could barely resist. 
 
 "I'm a doctor/' he said shortly. 
 
 " Begorra, I know that, sorr." 
 
 " Well, then, you can understand why, when a woman 
 is battered about the face as your wife is, I know damned 
 well what has been the cause of it. Your fist was the 
 cause of it, you hulking coward, and by God, if you re- 
 peat it, I won't keep my hands off you. And when I've 
 done with you, we'll see if the law has anything to say. 
 D'you understand that ? " 
 
 " I do, sorr." 
 
 Fitzgerald looked into his eyes, the lancet again cut- 
 ting into the unhealthy flesh; then he turned on his heel, 
 striding away too quickly to hear the curse that Ryan mut- 
 tered after him. 
 
 On two other occasions before Xanno was able to rise 
 from her bed, the doctor came to see her ; but he never al- 
 luded to the knowledge that he possessed. During both 
 visits, Jamsey managed to keep out of the way, and when 
 Fitzgerald had gone, he would come and curse her be- 
 cause she had irritated him into the losing of his temper. 
 About his unfaithfulness to her he said nothing. He was 
 quite aware that she must know, and he hated her the 
 more for the knowledge; yet, for a time, he abated his 
 visits to Kiley's Cross, and Nanno saw no more of Mrs. 
 Doran. 
 
 But this effort of neutrality an avoidance of vice and 
 an absence of virtue did not last for long. At the 
 threshing, Mrs. Doran made her reappearance with the 
 other hands who had been requisitioned to help. As she 
 stood by the machine, untying one sheaf after another, 
 Jamesy would come and speak to her, their laughter and 
 remarks often reaching Xanno's ears as she prepared the
 
 132 TRAFFIC. 
 
 meal for the workers in the kitchen. At the sound of it, 
 she would stop in what she was doing; her eyes, wandering 
 to the window, would look out across the country, flushed 
 with the purple of its heather and brightened with patches 
 of green or j^ellow fields of uncut corn. All feeling about 
 Jamesy's unfaithfulness, all suffering was dead; even the 
 sense of shame that it brought, was numbed, and smarted 
 no longer. Yet, as she saw the brightness of the sun 
 outside and felt that life in a world that could show such 
 simple beauty must have its better and its more perfect 
 view, a sigh of regret came involuntarily to her lips. 
 There was such a thing as being happy; and she realized 
 that happiness in what form her imagination did not 
 describe might have been hers. 
 
 But so long as these conditions of her life remained 
 the same, she knew it to be impossible to gain even a 
 glimpse of any state of happiness, however slight, however 
 transitory. Yet she would still, driven by the sense of 
 duty and dominated by the fear of her religion, have con- 
 tinued to accept them as they wore, had not Jamesy, on 
 that first night of the threshing, fallen back into the ways 
 of life which, for a time, since her illness, he had eschewed. 
 
 It was then that Nanno took a course of action upon 
 herself. Without telling her husband of her decision, she 
 set off the next morning for Grange, the nearest parish to 
 Glenlickey, which, united to that of Rathmore, came under 
 the care of Father Mehan. It was his day there for hear- 
 ing confession; and to him, as pastor and mentor of all 
 her doings, she determined to pour out her soul. 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! Oh, indeed ! Shure, there now tch ! 
 tch ! tch ! " he repeated over and over again, as she 
 told him all the story; its revolting details left unde- 
 scribed, yet evident, impellingly obvious in the note of 
 shuddering remonstrance that trembled in her voice.
 
 TSAFFIC. 13S 
 
 " An' is that the way he's gone, then ? " he said, when 
 she had finished. " 'Twas always the way. He was a 
 bold fellow: but, glory be to God, I niver thought it was 
 as bad as that with him. An' it's the way ye say that 
 this woman's coming back to the house?" 
 
 "She is, father/" 
 
 " Shure, I know who it is. There's no need for ye 
 not to be tellin' me. I don't want to know, mind ye; 
 shure I know already. I do, of course. There's only 
 one woman in Glenlickey that would brazen it out like 
 that. Faith, I had a mind meself that something was 
 going wrong with ye I had so. When the docthor told 
 me the way ye'd been beaten a few weeks ago, I made up 
 me mind to come and see ye." 
 
 " The doctor ? " Xanno echoed. 
 
 " Shure ; who else ? Wasn't he attendin' ye ? " 
 
 " But I told him it was the way I fell on me face." 
 
 " Shure, I know that ; but the docthor's no fooL He 
 knew ye couldn't fall on both sides of yeer face at once. 
 Teh ! tch ! tch ! tch ! An' what did ye think of doin' 
 about it yeerself ? " 
 
 Xanno hesitated. To her, what she was going to say, 
 was a big step ; and, for a moment, while she paused be- 
 fore the words that she would choose, it assumed propor- 
 tions greater than she had ever seen while she had walked 
 by herself into Grange. 
 
 " I'm goin' away," she said at last, with firm decision. 
 " I'm goin' away. I couldn't live with him any longer." 
 
 There was a long pause of silence. Nanno listened 
 with ears strained for the slightest sound he might make 
 which would indicate the attitude of his mind towards 
 what she had just said. She heard nothing. Only the 
 sound of the chapel woman scraping the fallen grease from 
 the large candle-stand reached her ears.
 
 134 TRAFFIC. 
 
 At last he answered her. 
 
 "Is it by putting one sin on the top of another that 
 ye think ye're goin' to get at the right way o' doin' 
 things ? " he asked quietly. 
 
 " Sin ? " she said. " What sin is there in me goin' 
 away? Shure, I can't live with him. God never meant 
 a mortal being to live such a life as I am." 
 
 " God means us to do a power o' things that seem to 
 have no reason in them at all," he replied. 
 
 "But it's the way that it's bringin' more sin on him. 
 He hates the sight o' me. 'Twould only be drivin' him 
 to do worse, I'd be doin', if I stayed on wid him." 
 
 "Maybe ye're right there/' Father Mehan replied with 
 consideration. " But, then, think again of the sin ye'd 
 be bringing on yeerself away from him." 
 
 "What sin?" 
 
 " Shure, the same that the world's full of. Suppose 
 now, ye went to America. Isn't it beset with tempta- 
 tions ye'd be a good-looking girl like you ? " 
 
 Nanno felt the blood rising warmly to her cheeks, 
 then, as suddenly, it left her cold, with the nauseating 
 sense of the bitterness and horror of the world. 
 
 " Ye can't tempt them that have no want to do wrong," 
 she cried impulsively, and Father Mehan smiled at her 
 knowledge of life. 
 
 " There's a savin' about an open door and a saint," he 
 said; "though, maybe, the man what wrote it, had just 
 been through one and wanted to persuade himself that 
 he wasn't so bad after all. But God bless us, child, want 
 or no want, ye'll find life filled with temptation, and 
 mind ye, ye haven't got the easy time that a Protestant 
 has in these matters. Ye can't divorce yeer husband and 
 walk off wid some one else. Faith, it 'ud make this world 
 easy enough if ye could, an' if there wasn't somethin' else
 
 TRAFFIC. 135 
 
 beyond it. ' Whom God hath joined together ' d'ye mind 
 that ' let no man put asunder.' Shure, ye took him for 
 better or for worse, an' faith, I know it's bad enough ye're 
 gettin', but I've come across many that were worse." 
 
 Nanno shifted her position on the hard board on which 
 she was kneeling; her hands involuntarily clasped them- 
 selves in perplexit} r . 
 
 " It's not the way I'm thinking of any other man," 
 she said. " I know there be no divorce in the church 
 I know we can't marry again." 
 
 " Wisha, ye can marry again aisy enough ; there's plenty 
 that'll do it for ye over in America, but you know what 
 the Church has got to say to that." 
 
 He paused. There had been a note of question in his 
 voice with what he had said and, half expecting to be 
 answered, he waited. Nanno did not reply. 
 
 " The Church'll forgive many sins ; " he said ; " shure, 
 'twill absolve a man from murder, if he gives himself 
 up to the authorities, but there's no forgiveness for that. 
 I'm tellin' ye plainly, mind ye; ye'd be excommunicated, 
 that's what 'ud happen ye. No church would let ye in- 
 side its doors, an' the hand o' God would be taken off 
 of ye forever." 
 
 The words chilled Xanno. She shuddered. A picture 
 rose in her mind of the terrible loneliness of such a 
 state. Then, surely, nothing would be left but death ; and 
 even that would be but the gate into another life, more 
 lonely, more horrible still. She shook the thoughts away 
 from her. How could such a case ever be hers? How 
 could the contemplation of such a thing ever enter her 
 mind? 
 
 " I'm only warning ye, mind," Father Mehan went on. 
 "I'm not savin' that ye'd ever think o' doin' such a 
 thing. But I tell ye this, that if ye leave Jamesy and go
 
 136 TRAFFIC. 
 
 away to America, the temptation of it, likely as col, 
 might come in veer way. 'Tisn't the way with men to 
 see a young girl like yeerself goin' about alone in the 
 world, without having something to do with her life. Men 
 make women's lives, and women make men's, and both 
 spoil each other sometimes. Shure, that's the way the 
 life goes. Nanno ! " 
 
 "Yes, father?" 
 
 " Go back to yeer husband, Nanno, an' God'll show 
 ye some way to do the right thing the first moment ye enter 
 the door/' 
 
 It was those last words that brought her to her de- 
 cision. God would show her some way to do the right 
 thing. All her faith rose up and grasped the belief 
 of that and, with a new feeling in her heart, she left the 
 chapel. 
 
 The dusk fell, and the evening closed in as she walked 
 back the five miles to Glenlickey. She did not notice 
 the distance. She did not mind that the roads wore hard, 
 unyielding, tiresome to her scarce recoverd strength. She 
 would so soon be a mother she tried to think cheerfully of 
 that; and then God would show her. God would show her 
 how, she did not dream, but He would reveal that, and 
 on that she counted most of all. 
 
 There was no sound of the threshing machine as she 
 climbed up the hillside over the resisting field of stubble 
 to the farm; but she had not expected it. The evening 
 had finally set in, and she did not anticipate finding any 
 of the hands there at all. By that time, they had all 
 gone home. 
 
 There was no light in the kitchen as she entered. 
 Even the fire in the grate had died down to one small 
 point of red. The door was open. The place seemed
 
 TRAFFIC. 1ST 
 
 deserted. Yet still she hoped, still she believed; waiting 
 for the sign. 
 
 Silently she moved across to the fire, thinking that 
 she might make it up for Jamesy's return; and then, at 
 that moment, a sign was given hurled at her with the 
 force of God. 
 
 Her foot had kicked against a chair, making a noise 
 which, however slight, sounded disproportionate in the sur- 
 rounding stillness. She heard the murmur of Jamesy's 
 voice coming from the bedroom, the door of it opened 
 stealthily, and Mrs. Doran, her hair scattered over her 
 shoulders, stood peering into the uncertain light. 
 
 God had shown her the sign that was all she could 
 think God had shown her the sign. With a cry that she 
 smothered with her hand, she ran out of the room into 
 the yard out of the yard into the fields, and on and on, 
 till she reached the night.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 JOHN TROY had gone into Anesk to inspect a new com- 
 bined reaper and binding machine, and Bridget, her stout 
 arms bared to the elbow, was turning the wheel of a cutter 
 in accordance with the supply of turnip-tops that Patsy 
 thrust into the receiver. The clean, crisp sound of the 
 knife severing the stalks, like the grinding of hay between 
 a horse's teeth, was kept up with intermittent pauses, filled 
 in by Bridget's voice demanding a greater speed with the 
 supply. 
 
 No day in October could have seemed more like the 
 poetic conception of Autumn. The sun was burning 
 brightly and the shed under which they worked, cast 
 sharp-edged shadows on the ground. Through the warmtb 
 of the sunny air, there came at times the breath of a 
 breeze that just tingled the cheeks, and, as though in an- 
 swer to it, a leaf, brilliant in the last colors it had as- 
 sumed, would flutter from the trees into the yard. 
 
 Neither of the workers in the shed was conscious of 
 these puffs of wind that each time called a leaf to its last 
 resting place. Bridget was too concerned with hurrying 
 through her work; Patsy too engaged in shirking it. 
 
 They did not even notice Nanno's figure as she turned 
 slowly from the lane and entered through the open gate 
 into the yard. She was almost beneath the roof of the 
 shed, before Bridget looked up. When she did see her, 
 her hand fell from the handle of the wheel and her mouth 
 opened in astonishment. 
 
 138
 
 TRAFFIC. 139 
 
 " Glory be to God, is that yeerself ? " she exclaimed, 
 while surprise was still overmastering curiosity. 
 
 Xanno nodded her head, and in her attitude, there was 
 that which at once aroused Bridget's suspicions. 
 
 " What's on ye, in the name o' God ? " she asked. 
 " What's on ye ? " She pushed Patsy away with his arm- 
 ful of turnip-tops, and came out of the shed. " What's 
 happened ye ? " she went on and then, taking Xanno by 
 the arm, she led her into the kitchen. 
 
 When they were inside, Bridget closed the door and, 
 crossing to the settle, sat down with folded arms and 
 scrutinized her daughter. It was obvious to the most un- 
 critical eye that something was the matter. In Xanno's 
 eyes was the wandering, unsettled look of one whose mind 
 is wavering with uncertainty and apprehension. Her face 
 was white with the want of sleep, and her clothes looked 
 damp and clinging. 
 
 For two hours after she had left Glenlickey, she had 
 walked feverishly in any direction that her footsteps 
 brought her. Nothing was conscious to her mind beyond 
 the fact that God had shown her a sign. Had that evi- 
 dence come at any other moment, she might even have 
 passed it by, overlooked it; but at that peculiar instant, 
 when her mind, spurred by faith and alive with the en- 
 thusiasm of belief, was ready to accept the slightest token 
 as an ispiration of the divine, she found it impossible to 
 see anything other than as a sign from God: in what 
 had met her on her home-coming. 
 
 When those two hours had passed and her reason had 
 adjusted itself, she turned to the contemplation of what 
 she would do and where she would go. The thought of re- 
 turning to Glenlickey she put out of her mind. The sign 
 had been given her and she knew that she would never 
 go back again. Only one course was palpably left open to
 
 140 TRAFFIC. 
 
 her. She could go home to Rathmore. But even that, 
 could not be followed without thought or consideration. 
 How would Bridget receive her? Could the hardness of 
 her heart ever refuse to soften, when she knew the truth 
 when she understood? Xanno climbed over a hedge and, 
 taking shelter behind it, sat down in the field on the coarse 
 grass. 
 
 For some hours she remained there, the heavy dew 
 drenching her clothes, the cold night wind seeking out the 
 scantiest parts of her attire, until her body was inert, 
 her mind numbed, and she was forced to thrust her 
 hands into her breast to keep the life in them. The 
 night was not the time to surprise them; she knew that. 
 The unexpected return of any one at such an hour would 
 only exaggerate the sense of its importance; and when 
 she thought of John Troy opening the door of the kitchen 
 and peering out into the darkness, she decided to stay 
 where she was. 
 
 After a time sleep reached her, but it was only the 
 outcome of exhaustion. A shower of rain some half-hour 
 later, awakened her. Then she lay listening to the move- 
 ments of an animal in the hedge beside her. It might 
 have been a weasel, or a rat. She vaguely wondered 
 as she heard it, what it was doing; whether in that lonely 
 place it felt as much alone as she did. Once more, then, 
 she fell asleep. 
 
 When she woke again the daylight was beginning to 
 merge its way out of the east. A cold and ugly gray shim- 
 mered in the sky; it looked as though some milky liquid 
 were forcing its way into a mass of ink. Slowly and 
 slowly the gray became predominant, and the blackness 
 of the night faded away before it, until the whole sky, 
 with the exception of one gleam of light before her, was 
 one thick web of scarce illumined light. .The heathered
 
 TRAFFIC. 141 
 
 hills all around had no color in them. Their purple was a 
 dead and faded brown. Nothing stirred. It seemed as if 
 the dawn was breaking on a world that was dead. Xo 
 living thing answered to it; even Xanno felt impotent to 
 move. But at last the gleam of light in the east strength- 
 ened. By infinite degrees it became more intense, until at 
 length the half-disc of a white and pallid sun rose up over 
 a hill, looked at the world, and the colors of things crept 
 into them. Yague uncertain shadows fell behind the 
 trees; a bird fluttered out of the branches and flew again 
 into cover. Then a yellow light came into the sun. 
 Xanno felt the warmth of it feebly breathing on her face. 
 At last, with a whirring of wings and an oft-repeated note, 
 a lark rose out of the field, soared upwards, and the day 
 was born. 
 
 Soon afterwards, she rose to her feet, There were some 
 seven or eight miles in front of her before she reached 
 Rathmore, and it was then, judging by the day, well after 
 seven. Her blood was chilled, her body numb. She could 
 only walk with difficulty. Every step she took racked 
 her limbs with pain. She could feel that her lips were 
 white, and the weakness that possessed her, compelled her 
 again and again to rest by the side of the road. But at 
 last Troy's Lane was reached. It was an effort beyond 
 her comprehension by which she reached the five-barred 
 gate. Had the distance been any greater, she must inevi- 
 tably have failed; and when Bridget led her into the 
 kitchen, she sank on to the first chair that was near, her 
 breach coming in short, labored gasps, that told of her ex- 
 haustion. 
 
 " Wisha, God help us, what's wrong wid ye ? " Bridget 
 persisted, her curiosity at last predominating. 
 
 " Can I have something to eat first ? " Nanno asked, as 
 quietly as her labored breathing woujld permit. "I'll
 
 142 TRAFFIC. 
 
 tell ye everything then." She put out her hand on to 
 the table to steady herself, and Bridget, at last convinced 
 that, unless she complied with this request first, it would 
 really be physically impossible for her to hear anything 
 or satiate her curiosity, hurried to the cupboard in the wall 
 and produced from a loaf of soda-bread baked in the 
 ashes a teapot, and the other necessary ingredients for a 
 hasty meal. 
 
 With the warmth of the hot tea, ISTanno revived very 
 quickly. The dead, uncertain light left her eyes, color 
 crept into her cheeks, and her lips, that were white, as- 
 sumed again that full depth of red, in which the deepest 
 note of her bodily attraction lay. 
 
 Bridget watched her musingly as she ate the bread and 
 butter and drank the tea. 
 
 " Is it the way ye had no breakfast for yeerself ? " she 
 asked, as Nanno poured out a second cup. 
 
 " It is. I've had nothing/' 
 
 " An' what in the name o' goodness made ye come away 
 so early in the mornin' ? " 
 
 " 'Twas not in the morning I came away at all 'twas 
 last night." 
 
 " Last night ! Yirra, what the deuce are ye af ther doin 7 
 that for?" 
 
 Then Nanno told her everything. Indirectly, Bridget 
 had heard of the way that Jamesy was treating her. She 
 did not admit it to Kanno, but then, she did not know 
 that his conduct had been as bad as this. 
 
 " Wisha, God help us an' what have ye come back here 
 for? Tellin' me won't save the fat from the fire. Shure, 
 I can't do anything to stop him deuce o' fear I can." 
 
 For a moment or so, Nanno looked steadily out of 
 the window. Without any sense of observation, she 
 watched Patsy turning the wheel of the cutter for himself.
 
 TRAFFIC. 143 
 
 Had he been asked to do that intead of feeding the ma- 
 chine with armfuls of turnip-tops, his labor would have 
 been more willingly given. Even in Bridget's absence he 
 worked energetically. But to Xanno all this was lost. 
 Everything seemed blurred, as through a gauze. In 
 the tone of her mother's voice, in the impression which 
 her question gave, Nanno felt the impending finality to 
 all which she could depend upon in the world. But it had 
 to be told. She had made up her mind never to return 
 to Glenlickey. Troy's Farm in Eathmore was at that 
 moment the only place she looked to for security. At last 
 she turned round from the table and faced Bridget's in- 
 quiring look. 
 
 " Shure, I don't want ye to stop him," she said. " Ye 
 couldn't if ye tried. I'm never goin' back to him again. 
 I've done with him. 'Tisn't the way one was meant to 
 live, to be treated as he treated me. An' there's no 
 changin' him whatever. I want to come back here and 
 work as I used to. I'll help more'n I ever did before 
 I went abroad." 
 
 As one word followed another, Bridget's face grew more 
 and more contorted with incredulity and surprise. It was 
 almost an unheard-of thing in those parts for a woman 
 to leave her husband, however he ill-treated or was un- 
 faithful to her. Women suffered lives that were hell 
 upon earth ; their pride was beaten out of them with what- 
 ever instrument came first to the man's hand; their 
 honor was outraged, their homes desecrated and impover- 
 ished by the curse of drink; yet they seldom complained, 
 and only one in a hundred had the courage to face the 
 anger of the Church or the satirical mercy of the world 
 and break away from it altogether. As a rule, they took 
 to drinking themselves and drowned their sorrows, as 
 one drowns an unfledged bird, whenever they became un-
 
 144 TRAFFIC. 
 
 bearable. The simple, domestic happiness of a home was 
 seldom understood ; but to think that her daughter should 
 take upon herself the exception and decide to leave her hus- 
 band, however he ill-treated her, was more than Bridget 
 could understand. It broke down all the canons laid 
 down by Church and custom and, when once it had pene- 
 trated her mind to be believed, her anger rose to the 
 surface and shone relentlessly in her eyes. 
 
 " Is it come back here as if ye were never married at 
 all ? " she asked. " Is it come back here and be a burden 
 on the man what brought ye up, an' we payin' two hun- 
 dred and thurrty-wan pounds to get a match for ye? 
 Yirra, glory be to God; may the Lord Almighty give ye 
 sinse ! I'd sooner see him bate the deuce out o' ye, than 
 have the shame o' people seem' ye back here again I 
 would so." 
 
 The old dread of life came back into Xanno's eyes again 
 as she listened dully to what her mother said. Up till 
 then, there had been some vague and childish hope in her 
 mind that she would find a home again in Bathmore. 
 Quaintly, almost, she had imagined that all she had suf- 
 fered during the past eight months would make atonement 
 to John Troy for the conditions of her birth, and that 
 from every point of view it would be seen right to protect 
 and guard her from the horribleness of her existence with 
 Jamesy Evan. All this she had reasoned in a simple way 
 with herself, fully believing it to be the only aspect in 
 which the matter could be regarded. And now, in less 
 than five minutes, she had heard, from her mother's own 
 lips, an absolutely different point of view one without 
 mercy or restraint yet one as legitimate as, those few mo- 
 ments ago, her own had seemed to her. 
 
 They had given two hundred and thirty-one pounds 
 to secure for her a husband; therefore, what right
 
 TRAFFIC. 145 
 
 had she to return and place herself once more upon them 
 for support? Life, hard as she thought she had consid- 
 ered it, was yet not so easy as she had supposed. For 
 this, indeed, was life; the bolting of doors, the barring 
 of ways against those weakened by oppression against 
 those hampered by distress. In an untutored way she 
 saw things as the scientists see them; though the phrase, 
 "survival of the fittest," would have meant nothing to 
 her. Hampered from the first by the stain of her birth, 
 and fettered afterwards by the chains of her belief, she was 
 not equipped to battle against the strong, the strength of 
 life's laws which are inviolable. There are some who un- 
 fit themselves with vice for the battle of life; there are 
 others whom circumstances unfit; but Xanno was one of 
 those against whom the laws of the universe were waging 
 their force; and struggle how she might, nothing but the 
 hand of divine omnipotence, could raise her on to the 
 crest of the wave. 
 
 As Bridget finished speaking, Nanno rose slowly to her 
 feet. In her face there was an expression of resignation, 
 in her eyes lay the knowledge of her fate. When human 
 nature conies face to face with the inevitable it behaves 
 very like an animal that has struggled for a time in the 
 hands of its captor and then walks quietly, with glazed 
 eyes, to its doom. 
 
 To Xanno, at that moment, it seemed the end of every- 
 thing. Life had no road to offer her. 
 
 " I won't be staying then," she said quietly. " 'Tisn't 
 right I should be a burden to any. 'Twas the way I 
 thought but shure, what's that matter now? Don't be 
 tellin' himself I came back. There's no call for him to 
 know I'm treated that way.'' 
 
 As far as it was possible, Bridget's heart softened; the 
 principal reason being that she was satisfied by the readi- 
 10
 
 146 TRAFFIC. 
 
 ness with which Nanno had fallen in with her views. 
 Then, again, she was pleased because she believed that 
 Nanno was going back to her husband, and the scandal 
 that she feared would be averted. Accordingly, she did 
 what at any other time would not have entered into her 
 consideration. 
 
 " There's a power more o' sinse in ye than I'd ever have 
 imagined," she said and, with impulsive determination, 
 she went into the bedroom that she shared with her hus- 
 band. 
 
 "Why in the name o' goodness wouldn't ye be sittin' 
 down while ye'd be standin' there ? " she called out. 
 
 Nanno complied with the grotesquerie of her request 
 and waited until she returned. 
 
 When Bridget came back into the kitchen, a piece of 
 paper, dirty almost beyond recognition, was flapping in 
 her hand. She handed it to Nanno. It was a ten-pound 
 note, scored with the addresses of many people who had 
 passed it, begrimed with the dirt of the many through 
 whose hands it had come, and patched with stamp paper 
 across a line where it had once been torn in two. 
 
 Nanno looked at it questioningly, then she turned her 
 eyes to her mother's face. Bridget explained. 
 
 " That's what we owe Jamesy out o' the dowry," she 
 said. " He let tin pounds stand over. Yirra, why 
 wouldn't he? Ye take it to him, maybe 'tis the way he's 
 wantin' it; though I'd make damn sure he didn't spend 
 much of the other two hundred an twinty-wan on ye. Did 
 he?" 
 
 Nanno did not reply. She took the note without real- 
 izing the value of what she held, and then Bridget ac- 
 companied her to the gate. 
 
 " If ye take my advice," she said, as Nanno departed, 
 " ye'll go into Foley's on yeer way down shtreet, and take
 
 TRAFFIC. 147 
 
 a sup o* whisky. Ye'll want all the shtrength ye've got 
 for the next week or so. I'd give it ye meself if we had 
 it/' 
 
 Nanno nodded her head as though she were in a dream. 
 As though she were in a dream, she stumbled unsteadily 
 down the lane, the ten-pound note still grasped uncon- 
 sciously in her hand. What she was going to do, did not 
 occur to her. Life seemed suddenly to have exhausted 
 all its possibilities. It stopped abruptly, as did the street 
 of Eathmore with the sea-wall. 
 
 When she reached the main road, she stood there, un- 
 certainly, looking from right to left in a dazed bewilder- 
 ment. A car approached her from the village, bumping 
 laboriously on its ill-formed springs. She waited and 
 watched it. As it came nearer, she saw it to be the mail- 
 car on its way into Anesk. Fitzgerald, who had driven 
 them that night when she and Jerningham had gone into 
 Anesk, had risen to the position of mail-car driver since 
 she had left Eathmore. He saluted her with a broad 
 smile of pride upon his face. 
 
 " Good mornin', Xanno," he said jovially, pulling up 
 the horse with a native disregard for the time to which 
 he was a slave. " Begorra, it's a pity ye can't be drivin' 
 into Anesk agen wid me. D'ye mind the night I brought 
 ye in along wid Mr. Jerningham ? " 
 
 She nodded her head. 
 
 " Well, begorra, I must be gettin' on," he added, still 
 obedient to his habit of expectoration. " Bigob, I'm a 
 governmint servant now tisn't as if I had an hour to 
 spare it is not." 
 
 He was just about to whip up, when Nanno laid her 
 hand detainingly on the step of the car. 
 
 "Would ye take me into Anesk?" she asked im- 
 pulsively.
 
 148 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " I will, o'course. Climb up the other side." He 
 moved a mail-bag to make room for her. 
 
 She obeyed him at once. It was not a moment when 
 she wished to consider. This was going to be the begin- 
 ning of a new life to her. A new road had suddenly been 
 opened up before her eyes. She clutched the ten-pound 
 note tenaciously in her hand ; her face turned towards 
 Anesk. Glenlickey, Eathmore, Troy's Lane they were 
 all behind her. The fresh wind, stinging with the sea, 
 blew on her cheeks and through her earthen-colored hair. 
 Everything lay in front. With that ten pounds by every 
 right her own she thought that she could face the whole 
 of a new existence. 
 
 " Go fast," she said. " Drive fast I like goin' fast." 
 
 The old horse clattered on like a mechanical toy and, 
 growing into the distance, the round tower pointed like a 
 needle into the sky behind her.
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND 
 THE LAW.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IT is a fallacious idea to think that one must come to 
 London to see life. Life is evident in many places, be- 
 fore one reaches the vast metropolis. The pivot upon 
 which turns the great human machine is certainly there; 
 in fact, everything is mechanical vice, virtue, work, even 
 the mere act of breathing. One does not inhale the air 
 in London with any intention of benefiting one's lungs; 
 one does it mechanically, for the bare sake of existence. 
 When, as inevitably they must do in this atmosphere, the 
 ambitions lie dead, people work on mechanically ; this man 
 painting pictures, that man writing books. The giving 
 to the poor, the praying to a God if done at all is car- 
 ried out with a mechanical accuracy that will split hairs 
 or subdivide into parts the point of a needle. The very 
 vices, the very appetites, are pursued or obeyed with a me- 
 chanical regularity that is the last word upon scientific 
 precision. The working man gets drunk on Saturday 
 night; on that day on which his salary is paid, the young 
 clerk gratifies his appetites. Those who can afford it, 
 move out of town when the season is over, and there, 
 whether it be in the country or abroad, they are like ships 
 without ballast, engines without lubricating oil. If de- 
 prived of their environment for long, they would rust or 
 become obsolete; they cannot live without their constant 
 material supply of fuel. Action is never spontaneous with 
 them; sensation, feeling, or expression none of these are 
 spontaneous; truth is the least spontaneous of them all. 
 
 151
 
 158 TRAFFIC. 
 
 Their society is a mechanical contrivance like a Dutch 
 clock, the weight of which is public opinion swinging a 
 pendulum of avarice. Conversation is mechanical; every 
 one talks as though they were engines in motion, with 
 piston rods entering and receding from the cylinder at 
 given moments that never vary. The dining out, the 
 lunching in, the going to theaters, the playing at bridge 
 all these things are mechanical functions of the human 
 machine, performed with automatic precision and accuracy. 
 If a man once says what he feels, if, ignoring the mo- 
 notonous hum of the engine, he once speaks from his 
 heart speaks earnestly, not rolling the words up in the 
 tinseled paper of a jest he is ostracized condemned. 
 Even modesty is mechanical. The things which we all 
 know, yet do not like to speak about, are hidden in songs 
 or insinuated in prose, and the people who call a spade 
 an implement will pay impossible prices to listen to them 
 for hours. But once let those things be treated honestly 
 for what they are, in such a way that lessons can be learned 
 from them, then society the clergy the city itself will 
 hold up its hands in shame. In London it is truly called 
 a scientific age. How to live is the everlasting question; 
 never why to live. And there are scientists growing gray 
 in their laboratories, striving to invent a way to do it. 
 
 This is life in London, as it is in all the great cities 
 of the world. Wherever two or three are gathered together 
 in the name of God, there there is some hope of getting 
 at the truth; but gather them together in the name of ad- 
 vancement, and the mechanical dirge of vice and virtue, 
 right and wrong, will make itself the dominant keynote 
 of existence. Surround yourself with the handiwork of 
 men's fingers, and your outlook will reach its limit with 
 the fifth storey the fact that a sky exists will be beyond 
 your comprehension. It is only where the trees grow
 
 TRAFFIC. 153 
 
 straight and the grass is green, that a man can get near to 
 the heart of things away from the whirr of the machine. 
 
 In this atmosphere, strangely untouched by it, peculiarly 
 undisturbed, Philip Jerningham lived, moved, and had his 
 being. In the daytime he entered the workshop, where 
 the cracking of belts and the buzzing of wheels, was almost 
 deafening to the ears, and there, at the lathe which we all 
 must turn, he wove out the pattern of his life. The com- 
 petition was keen. He did not mind that, While it 
 lasted, he gave his fullest energies to it; but when the 
 house closed for the day, when the men carried away their 
 human machinery for toil in pleasure and its kind, Jer- 
 ningham became a different man. During those hours 
 when he was at rest, he lived, and it was life that was not 
 mechanical. 
 
 A dress-suit hung in his wardrobe at Plowden Build- 
 ings; it was almost worn out from want of use. He fre- 
 quently smiled when he looked at it. When he went to a 
 theater, it was because he wanted to see a play, not because 
 he felt compelled to witness this actor and that actress in 
 their latest role. On these occasions, he sat in the pit, 
 whilst the man who had lost money to him over a deal on 
 'change during the day, dressed mechanically in an even- 
 ing suit and lolled in the stalls. If he went into the 
 country for a week-end, he put on an old suit and departed 
 by himself. The absence of bridge-parties, or golf, at a 
 wayside inn did not concern him. He was himself his 
 own fuel, his own impetus. When he gratified a desire, it 
 was his own, spontaneously his own; not one that he had 
 read about or heard of another man possessing. If ever 
 he dined out, he made conversation out of things that he 
 had thought about himself, not from those topics which 
 he had heard discussed at a luncheon party the day before. 
 He said, moreover, what he felt, instead of echoing what
 
 154 TRAFFIC. 
 
 every one else was feeling. And for all of these reasons, 
 he was not a social success. Accordinagly, he eschewed 
 society, and avoided that class of woman with whom he 
 might have married. 
 
 There was no doubt about it, he was a dull companion 
 at a dinner-party. Nowadays, a man who says what he 
 thinks always is. It is the being able to say the oppo- 
 site of what one feels, the ability to pervert the truth 
 with a smart brilliancy, that makes one interesting to 
 one's fellow-creatures. The man or woman who can prove 
 that black is white, or defeat the wisdom of a proverb that 
 has guided people's lives from the days of Solomon, is an 
 acquisition anywhere invaluable. Jerningham could not 
 do this. He was not brilliant; he was never smart. The 
 London man and the London woman are shaped in a 
 mold of insincerity. Jerningham was as opposite to the 
 type as he could well be. It was, perhaps, on account of 
 this, that the men who came up to Plowden Buildings 
 were apt to place their confidences in his hands. He, at 
 least, told them the truth about themselves, so far as he 
 understood it; and when a man has been in London for 
 some years, he will go far to hear the truth, if there is 
 any grit left in him. 
 
 From all this it may be inferred that Jerninghanrs life 
 was comparatively a quiet one. Amongst those who were 
 intimately acquainted with him, he was known as the 
 bachelor ; and not one of them, with the greatest stretch of 
 imagination, could conceive the possibility of his ever 
 marrying. It was not because he shunned women, or in 
 any way adopted the attitude of a Benedict. Women, as 
 has been said before, had been to his rooms; but not one 
 of them had entered his life. A photograph of his mother 
 stood prominently on the mantelpiece in his chambers, 
 but it was the only picture of a woman that the room con-
 
 TRAFFIC. 155 
 
 tained. Beyond that, there were no photographs of any 
 sort; steel engravings, woodcuts, and old prints were the 
 only decorations on the walls. Essentially it was the habi- 
 tation of a bachelor; the rooms of a man who loved them 
 for the hardness of their chairs and the never-varying ap- 
 pearance they possessed. When a man lives by himself, 
 he never alters anything; he only replenishes. Chairs 
 stand forever in the same position as they were placed 
 when first they were brought into the room and a corner 
 decided for them. Let a woman cast her eye over the ar- 
 rangement of things, which three weeks before she has 
 decided to be perfect, and nothing is left alone. Impres- 
 sions to a woman are never sacred things. 
 
 To Jerningham, returning from Ireland, where he had 
 passed a holiday that was after his own heart, the old things 
 in their old positions were of the greatest consolation. He 
 found it intensely hard to get back again into harness, but 
 it was not so difficult to return in the evening to the Tem- 
 ple and seat himself in the old wood-bottomed chair that 
 once he had unearthed from a pile of dust and purchased 
 in an auction-room. 
 
 With these surroundings, one pictures to oneself a man 
 advanced in years, with hair that is gray on the temples; 
 but that is not accurate of Jerningham. Gray's Inn, 
 Lincoln's Inn, Clifford's Inn, the Temple, are filled with 
 men living, much as Jerningham lived, who are yet young, 
 yet on the strenuous side of life. If the family Bible, 
 which had long since found its way into the hands of a 
 bookseller in the midland counties, was correct, Jerningham 
 was only thirty-four. He still looked at life out of young 
 eyes ; still had dull visions of a future. From what direc- 
 tion it was to come he was not sufficiently introspec- 
 tive as to imagine; but whenever a play stirred him, or a 
 piece of music touched his inherently unmusical soul, he
 
 156 TRAFFIC. 
 
 fancied that one day a woman might come into his life, 
 upset all his principles, alter all his goings, and change 
 the invariable positions of his chairs. 
 
 So far, she had not made her appearance, and he was 
 sufficiently contented with conditions as they were, not 
 even to want to watch for her. The taking of things as 
 they came, was his motive. He had hated the return to 
 work and city hours ; but he had not flinched from accept- 
 ing it. Perhaps the hardest trial he had had for some 
 time, lay in being compelled to refuse a pressing invitation 
 from Fennel to go back to Ireland the next summer. 
 Nothing he could do would put any stability into the for- 
 eign markets, and so he was compelled to stand at the 
 wheel. It had been a grievious disappointment. The 
 wild freedom of the life he had lived there had found a 
 lasting echo in the unconventionality of his nature. His 
 interest in the people themselves, and most particularly in 
 Nanno, had been deeply roused. He misunderstood them, 
 as every one does, and that, in itself, made them interest- 
 ing. For the next year, the Irish question had been one 
 that he discussed as every Englishman does after his 
 first visit with fervid enthusiasm. 
 
 When, therefore, a client invited him to meet an Irish 
 member of Parliament at dinner, he accepted; notwith- 
 standing the fact that nearly two years had gone by, since 
 he had been staying with the Fennels, and all the impres- 
 sions that he had then received were dull and rusty. 
 
 " An Irish member of Parliament ! " he exclaimed to 
 himself. A representative of the very people whom he 
 wished to understand an Irishman of the Irish. 
 
 The dress-clothes were taken down from the wardrobe 
 and brushed. The trousers were unearthed from the mat- 
 tress of his bed, where they had taken upon themselves an 
 accumulation of fluff, that utterly altered the appearance
 
 TRAFFIC. r>; 
 
 of their material. He hunted for white ties, and could not 
 find them ; he cursed at the obduracy of his stud-holes. It 
 was a social event. He was about to meet a man who could 
 talk to him on a topic that he was absorbingly interested 
 in. It was not going to be an ordinary march into a nine- 
 course meal, where } r ou had neither time to eat nor con- 
 verse, by reason of the kaleidoscopic passing of the dishes. 
 On other occasions, he would not have minded when his 
 bootlace broke; on this he swore, and it was an oath of 
 some substance. 
 
 A hansom took him West, and, as he was being carried 
 along, his mind reverted to the various impressions that he 
 had gleaned out of Ireland two years before. With vivid 
 detail, he recalled that day of the Pattern, when he had 
 stood and watched the line of supplicants moving round 
 the holy well in Eathmore. Clearest above them all, rose 
 the face of Xanno Troy, lit with the fervor of a belief 
 which, ever since, he had tried and, ever since, had failed 
 to really understand. 
 
 These reminiscences lifted him completely out of himself 
 and, before he was actually aware of it, the cabman had 
 pulled up. with a skidding of hoofs and a tinkle of bells. 
 
 Jerningham walked into the drawing-room as a man for 
 a wager walks into a den of lions. His reward was to be 
 the Irish member of Parliament. 
 
 Mrs. Hilton, his hostess, was engaged in talking to a 
 carefully dressed man, who was listening to her in that 
 attitude of one who is waiting to hear the sound of his 
 own reply. For Jerningham, it was a painful moment. 
 Then, to the chagrin of the carefully dressed man, Mrs. 
 Hilton turned, before he could begin his answer, and held 
 out her hand. Jerningham grasped it with relief. 
 
 " You just complete the number," she said. " Let me 
 introduce you to Mr. Mahony, the member for Ardcashel."
 
 158 TRAFFIC. 
 
 She effected the introduction with consummate ease. 
 " You'll take in my daughter," she added, as she moved 
 away. 
 
 Jerningham felt a momentary sense of disappointment, 
 as he looked at the man with braided trousers. It was not 
 exactly that Mahony was elaborately dressed, but that he 
 seemed so potently aware of the existence of his attire. 
 There was no suggestion of a man of the people about him. 
 
 " I visited Ireland for the first time two years ago," 
 Jerningham began tentatively. 
 
 Mahony nodded. 
 
 " So long as you only visit it," he replied, " you're all 
 right. Don't go and live there. I've just come back from 
 America. Fine country that, if you like." 
 
 " America yes but Ireland " 
 
 Mahony interrupted. 
 
 " They know how to entertain in America," he went on. 
 "You talk about hospitality and unconventional cosmo- 
 politanism in London New York can give it a street and 
 to spare. I've been over here now for eighteen years, and 
 never have I been so hospitably treated as I was for those 
 three weeks in New York." 
 
 " But don't you live in Ireland ? " Jerningham asked. 
 
 Mahony looked at him quietly and smiled. 
 
 " Live in Ireland ? " he repeated. " No, no, I live in 
 London have done so for a good many years. You don't 
 think a man could live there, do you ? Ah, well, if you've 
 only visited it once, you wouldn't know. How long were 
 you there?" 
 
 " A fortnight ; and from what I saw of it 
 
 "Well, you can't see much in a fortnight. If you'd 
 eaten soda-bread for fourteen years or so, and only had 
 meat once a week, and that always mutton, you'd be
 
 TRAFFIC. 159 
 
 glad to come to London. There are places here, where 
 you can get steak." 
 
 " Then living out of Ireland is a question of food ? " 
 
 There was a cold gibe in the back of Jerningham's 
 voice. The member for Ardcashel took it imperturbably. 
 
 " Figuratively yes," he replied. " Of course, senti- 
 ment is all very well you English, though you do so 
 hate to hear it, are full of it but perhaps you're not ac- 
 quainted with Ardcashel ? There is a large work-house on 
 one side of the town and a colossal lunatic asylum on the 
 other. Both are always full to overflowing. In the town 
 itself there is a cattle-market, the cobbled stones of which 
 I believe I have seen washed there are also thirty-nine 
 public houses, which are known as the thirty-nine articles 
 
 and, for the rest, we have the police- " He turned to a 
 
 lady who was standing close at hand. 
 
 " Have you nerved yourself ? " he asked. 
 
 " For what ? " she said. 
 
 "Mrs. Hilton told me I was to take you in to 
 dinner." 
 
 Jerningham turned away to seek out his partner, and 
 from that moment the dinner became the function that 
 he dreaded. Miss Hilton, flaxen-haired and aged to suit 
 the convenience of her mother, was as a drum in conver- 
 sation. You tapped her with a question; she emitted a 
 hollow reply. Jerningham labored through the first 
 course with her, as people who are competing to see how 
 much food they can consume. A topic was exhausted with 
 every second spoonful of the soup that they raised to their 
 lips. With each one, he said what he thought; she re- 
 plied what she had heard her mother say at dinner-parties 
 extending over the previous fortnight. 
 
 At last that course was ended. He saw with relief the
 
 160 TRAFFIC. 
 
 half-tmptj plate disappear from before hi eyes, and then 
 a voice behind his chair said: 
 
 "Sherry, sir?" 
 
 He felt a remembrance that gripped him as a vice grips 
 a bolt. For a brief moment he did not answer. He 
 looked straight ahead. Then the voice repeated : 
 
 "Sherry, sir?" 
 
 He half turned in his chair and looked up. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " yes." 
 
 It was Nanno Nanno Troy Nanno Troy, dressed as 
 a maid, with white cap, streamers, black dress, and earthen- 
 colored hair.
 
 CHAPTBE II. 
 
 IN that moment, they recognized each other, and from 
 that moment Jerningham scarcely took his eyes away 
 from her. As she moved from one guest to another on 
 the opposite side of the table, he watched her face. As she 
 asked each man or woman the same question that she had 
 asked him, he listened to her voice. But she was changed 
 almost imperceptibly, yet irrevocably, she was changed. 
 He put it down to the difference of her dress, to the com- 
 plete inversion of her environments. Nanno Troy, in a 
 homespun skirt, with uncovered head and heavy boots, 
 could not possibly look the same as she would with a 
 starched cap and plain black cotton dress. He was con- 
 tent to account for it in that way. The pathetic drooping 
 of her mouth, the solemnity of the big gray eyes, the 
 wistfulness of her expression none of which really indi- 
 cated that she was perceptibly older all these he believed 
 to be the result of the alteration of her environment. 
 
 The thought that life might have come her way since 
 he had last seen her, the idea that she might have suffered, 
 might have encountered experience, never entered his 
 head. A man is peculiarly dense in seeing the possibilities 
 of a woman's existence. He imagines that she moves 
 from childhood into girlhood, girlhood into marriage, 
 without one moment's insight into the seething mass of 
 human nature that is churned at her feet. He believes 
 that she retains an untutored spirit of innocence, until 
 that moment when, in his arms, she learns the motives of 
 11 161
 
 162 TRAFFIC. 
 
 men and women. It is to teach her life that he marries 
 her; it is to him he expects her to look for all the knowl- 
 edge of the world that she is ever to learn. And this is 
 not a condition that can be bought; he must win it. In 
 return, he sacrifices his freedom, and it is a sorry state of 
 affairs, when he finds that he himself is the pupil the 
 pupil of the child who has learned already. 
 
 Jeringham, calling to mind the expression on Nanno's 
 face as she made her round of the well, could not conceive 
 that the difference which he saw in her was due to experi- 
 ence the result of suffering. 
 
 " What can a girl know of life," he had often asked 
 himself since his return, " who will drink the water from 
 a well that the rain has fed, and believe it to hold more 
 sanctity than any other gift of nature ? " 
 
 While each course of the dinner was in mid-progress, 
 she stood with the other maids at the back of the room, 
 and during those moments he sometimes tried to catch 
 her eye; but she would not look at him. Once a smile 
 crept into his face to think that she was there. There 
 were so many hundreds of serving-maids in London; but 
 this was Nanno Troy. Sometimes he thought that it 
 could not be she. That shy awkwardness which exists 
 only among people in the country, and is a grace in itself, 
 had almost vanished from her. She moved about the 
 room with a certain sedateness which, through knowing 
 her, though he could not reconcile it as being absolutely 
 natural, was yet convincing to the rest. Her voice, too, 
 notwithstanding that he had recognized it at once, was dif- 
 ferent, almost intrinsically altered. It seemed as if she 
 could never return to the homespun skirt or the uncovered 
 head again, and for a moment, he felt disappointed at hav- 
 ing seen her. He would have preferred to have gone back 
 to Ireland and found her once more in the fields, driving
 
 TRAFFIC. 163 
 
 home the cattle in the hush of the evening. But this, as 
 the member for Ardcashel had said, was the sentiment of 
 an Englishman. 
 
 At length, the ladies moved into the drawing-room, and 
 Jerningham sat by himself, listening to the decided opin- 
 ions of the Irish member of Parliament, who was still 
 concerned with the hospitality of America. 
 
 " There wasn't a night," he was saying, " during the 
 whole three weeks I was there, when I wasn't invited out to 
 dinner." 
 
 " Did you go into any one's house ? " asked his host. 
 
 "Well no," he replied, "but the restaurants are 
 good." 
 
 Jerningham turned round to find Xanno handing him 
 a cup of coffee. He always took it black, but on this 
 occasion he made her delay by pouring out milk. As he 
 did so, he looked up once into her face. 
 
 Her eyes turned away from him and then, though it 
 was but the briefest moment, he realized that there was 
 a beauty in her face that was compelling, and he looked 
 down, to find that he was pouring the milk into his saucer. 
 
 When the men followed the ladies into the drawing- 
 room, he took the first opportunity of seating himself be- 
 Bide Mrs. Hilton. 
 
 " There is something I want to ask you," he said, when 
 the machine of conversation was palpitating in every 
 cylinder. 
 
 " Wicked ? " she suggested. 
 
 " Xot at all. I only want to know where you got your 
 maid from, who was handing round the wine ? " 
 
 Mrs. Hilton smiled archly. 
 
 " Well it sounds wicked," she said. 
 
 " Probably to ask any question about a woman in Lon-
 
 164 TRAFFIC. 
 
 don is to imply a chapter that has the leaf turned down; 
 but there's nothing of that in what I want to know.'' 
 
 "Well" Mrs. Hilton pouted"! am going to tell 
 you a fearful domestic secret. She's hired just for the 
 evening. We can't keep more than two maids in a house 
 like this ; so when I give a dinner, I get them in from 
 Maynard's. Why?" 
 
 Jerningham invented why.
 
 CHAPTEK III. 
 
 How had Nanno become the neat waiting-maid, hired 
 for an occasion into Mrs. Hilton's establishment? How 
 had she discarded the country manners, the country ways, 
 and taken upon herself the bearing of such girls, of whom 
 one can see so many, quietly dressed, with an air of gentle- 
 ness those girls whom the necessity of fighting their 
 own battle in life has neither robbed of virtue nor respect ? 
 They are to be found in offices, doing the work of men; 
 they are to be seen behind counters, or attending tables in 
 a restaurant. One meets them in the early morning, com- 
 ing from the suburbs in the west, seated on the tops of 
 omnibuses that bear them into the whirr of the city. 
 Each one of them has her novel to read, and sometimes it 
 is astonishing to see the taste that they display in their 
 choice of books. The facetious, modern clerk, with his 
 paper cuff-protectors, who endeavors to strike up an ac- 
 quaintance with them, is treated with disdainful contempt. 
 They know the value of their virtue and, though each day 
 it is exposed to the wiles of life, they protect it jealously, 
 assiduously. How, then, did Nanno, from being the ill- 
 treated wife of a farmer in the wilds of Ireland, become 
 one of these? How does human nature invariably adapt 
 itself to the constant flux of change that whirls us along 
 in the flood of its tide, yet leaves us ever fighting, ever 
 struggling against the stream? 
 
 It is that unquenchable fire of hope, that eternal es- 
 sence of optimism, without which this " sorry scheme of 
 
 165
 
 166 TRAFFIC. 
 
 things/' could not continue, that is responsible for the 
 wonderful adaptability of the human race. 
 
 ISTanno had fronted a sea of troubles since that day 
 when., leaving the farm in Eathmore, she had turned her 
 face towards Anesk to begin life all over again. At the 
 maternity hospital in Cork, her child had been born dead. 
 
 " Guess you had some accident ? " the student had said. 
 
 "I did," she replied quietly, and the student had felt 
 himself to be a man of insight. 
 
 When she was first told of it, the bitterness of her 
 misery had seemed complete. The one life which had 
 been created to understand her, to give her love and look 
 to her for its dependence, she had been deprived of. For 
 the few days during which she lay in that dreary, un- 
 carpeted room and listened to the rumbling of the carts 
 that passed by in the street below, she thought that the 
 last blow had been given, the last stitch removed from the 
 fabric of hope, which she had so persistently drawn about 
 her. 
 
 But when once she was able to move about, she saw 
 things differently. If from thenceforth, she was to be 
 her own power of existence ; if, through all the future, she 
 was to look to herself for her own support, then the death 
 of her child had been but a deliverance of Providence from 
 a vital responsibility. She knew sufficiently of the world, 
 to realize that a woman with a child and no husband starts 
 life with a handicap that is well-nigh impossible to work 
 away. 
 
 So fully did she realize this that, the morning on which 
 she left the hospital, her prayers were concerned with 
 thanking God for her deliverance; yet the moment that 
 she had crossed herself, she cried as though her heart would 
 break. 
 
 L Two days later, when the sum of her capital was be-
 
 TRAFFIC. 167 
 
 ginning to lessen and, when various efforts to apply for 
 employment of any kind had met with unsuccess, she en- 
 countered Nancy Foley, whose expulsion from Eathmore 
 she had witnessed with such intensity of horror nearly 
 two years before. 
 
 In the first moment of their meeting, the distressed 
 girl would have avoided Nanno had it been possible. She 
 turned hastily away, but Nanno followed and laid her 
 hand detainingly on her arm. 
 
 " Shure, Nancy," she said, and the tone of her voice 
 was irresistible. The girl faced her. 
 
 " Why d'ye speak to me ? " she asked. " Weren't you 
 one o' the girls that turned me out?" 
 
 "I'd have begged 'em not to do it, if a' be I'd seen it 
 was any use." 
 
 For a moment Nancy looked at her incredulously. 
 
 " Ye wouldn't think what I'd done a sin ? " she said. 
 
 "It don't be a question o' whether things be sins or 
 not," said Nanno quietly " but o' how they're goin' to 
 be punished whether they're goin' to be done agen, and 
 who's goin' to forgive 'em. "Pis the doin' o' things when 
 they've once been forgiven, that makes 'em sins indeed." 
 
 Nancy looked at her in amazement. 
 
 " Who taught ye that? " she asked. 
 
 Nanno sighed. Experience had been her master, but 
 no woman cares to admit it. She said nothing. Then 
 Nancy slipped her arm through hers and together they 
 walked through the streets, Nanno listening to all the con- 
 fidences which her companion, with feverish haste and 
 relief, poured into her ears ; confidences which, up till then, 
 she had been the only one to share with herself ; confidences 
 which were dragging at her heart and embittering every 
 thought she had of life. 
 
 When she had finished Nanno raised her head.
 
 16S TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Will ye do something if I ask ye ? " she said. 
 
 Xancy nodded. With the rush of relief that was over- 
 whelming her, she would have done anything. 
 
 Nanno brought her to the church of Holy Trinity and, 
 when the doors had swung to behind them, she had 
 whispered : 
 
 " Go to confession shure this is just what God meant 
 it for." 
 
 When that was over, and the repentant girl had sobbed 
 away her tears of gratitude in a shadowed corner of the 
 church, they went home together, to the room where Nanno 
 was lodging, and talked over their plans for the future. 
 As yet, both of them were unable to look to anything defi- 
 nite, though Nancy had written to London, applying for 
 a situation, the advertisement of which she had seen in 
 the local papers. It was her determined intention to leave 
 Ireland as soon as she possibly could. If this application 
 which she had made, were to fall through, she had decided 
 to go to America, whence a brother of hers had departed 
 some five years before. They talked about the possibility 
 of it then, as they sat there; and at last, remembering 
 that two posts had been delivered since she had left her 
 lodgings that morning, Nancy said she would go and see 
 if, by any chance, an answer to her application might not 
 have arrived. Nanno accompanied her. A letter was ly- 
 ing in the passage, underneath the aperture of the door. 
 Nancy seized it eagerly. She tore it open, pulled out its 
 contents and, from the folds of the paper, a postal order 
 fluttered to the ground. 
 
 " Yeer fare to London," Nanno said quietly. 
 
 Nancy looked at it incredulously. She read through 
 the letter with only a dazed conception of what it con- 
 tained. 
 
 "Bead it," she said, handing it to Nanno; and then
 
 TRAFFIC. 169 
 
 she stooped down to pick up the slip of paper on the 
 floor. 
 
 " They want ye to go on Thursday," 1ST anno said, when 
 she had glanced through it. " That's the day after to- 
 morrow." 
 
 The tears rushed into Nancy's eyes. Xow that the part- 
 ing had actually come, and she had really found a friend to 
 leave behind, the bitterness of it seemed overwhelming. 
 
 " But what'll ye be doin' wid yeerself ? " she asked. 
 
 Nanno looked down the passage at the narrow, un- 
 carpeted stairs that led up to the bedroom. For a moment, 
 she put both hands over her face. Nancy could hear the 
 breath passing between her fingers. Then she looked up. 
 
 " I'll be eomin' with ye," she replied and, scarcely be- 
 fore the words had left her lips, she found Nancy's arms 
 about her shoulders, the hot tears from her eyes upon her 
 neck.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 So had Nanno come to London. It frightened her at 
 first. The ceaseless rushing of vehicles, the endless pass- 
 ing of people all heedless, unconscious of her existence, 
 except those who evinced a momentary interest in her face 
 depressed her with a sense of loneliness. These were, 
 for the most part, men whose eyes happened on the danger- 
 ous humanity of her mouth, or the wistful dependence of 
 her expression. Whenever one of them looked at her 
 as men, noting these things, do look at a woman she hur- 
 ried by with thoughts reverting to what Father Mehan 
 had said to her in confession. Once, out of spontaneous 
 curiosity, she had looked back over her shoulder. She 
 had wondered whether the man's apparent interest in her 
 would have continued when they had passed. She found 
 that he was looking round as well. When he saw her 
 action, he stopped. She turned away again and hurried 
 on, her heart beating jerkily with apprehension. 
 
 For the first fortnight, although she applied for many 
 of the situations which she saw advertised in the papers, 
 she could not succeed in getting occupation. 
 
 " Have you done this kind of work before ? " she was 
 asked in every instance. And when she had replied in the 
 negative, the persons interviewing her had pursed their 
 lips, shook their head, glanced at her face, and said, 
 " Good morning." She realized in those days how little 
 the world cares or sympathizes with any one who is out- 
 side the pale of its personal consideration. Want, deg- 
 
 170
 
 TRAFFIC. 171 
 
 radation, pain, misery, only appeal to the sympathies of 
 those who are directly or indirectly affected by them. The 
 Good Samaritan will forever be an allegory. 
 
 Yet Nanno did not despair. The ease with which 
 Nancy had obtained her position in a comfortable home, 
 gave her heart to persevere. The only thing that had 
 frightened her was the minimum to which her capital 
 had been reduced. She had still possessed the sum avail- 
 able for one more week at her lodgings, which included a 
 simple breakfast, whose simplicity consisted of lack of 
 quantity rather than plainness of quality, when she ap- 
 plied for a vacant situation in the restaurant of Maynard's 
 stores. 
 
 The man who had interviewed her, was one of those in- 
 dividuals, who pitiable, no doubt in the meager frock 
 coat, thin trousers, and scanty underclothes, was a god in 
 the presence of an inferior. He towered above Nanno, 
 who was far from being small in height, and his hands 
 clasped each other underneath his coat behind his back. 
 
 " Ever been in a restaurant before ? " he had asked, 
 criticizing her face with his eyes. 
 
 " I have not, sir." 
 
 " Irish aren't you ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 He had smiled sententiously. He felt a man of the 
 world, though he only left Shepherd's Bush behind him 
 on Sundays. 
 
 " Well, I suppose you'd know how to bring tea and 
 things to people if they asked for it ? " 
 
 " I would, sir." 
 
 " Ever been in service ? " 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " What side would you er approach a person whom 
 you were going to er serve ? "
 
 17-3 TRAFFIC. 
 
 He had put the question directly, and she had known 
 .that her chance of getting the situation lay in giving a 
 direct answer. 
 
 " The left-hand, side," she had said without hesitation. 
 Had she paused, she knew it would have lost her the 
 chance, as surely as saying the wrong thing. She guessed, 
 and he nodded his head satisfied. 
 
 " You couldn't wait at a dinner-table, I suppose ? " he 
 had asked. 
 
 " I could not, sir." 
 
 " Ah, well," he replied, " that wouldn't matter so much. 
 We undertake to teach you that." He gave her the im- 
 pression that he was a member of the firm. She went 
 away, in fact, with the belief that he was Mr. Maynard, 
 not knowing that there was no such person. 
 
 " Are you accustomed to hard work ? " he went on, 
 studying her face with the same persistence. She felt 
 his eyes watching her mouth. " Hard work, I mean," 
 he had added. 
 
 A curious smile came into her eyes. A thousand re- 
 membrances were passing through her mind. 
 
 "I am, indeed, sir," she had answered, and a ring of 
 conviction accompanied her words. 
 
 He stroked his mustache lovingly. 
 
 " How old are you ? " 
 
 The question was put out of personal curiosity. 
 
 " Twenty-one." 
 
 A light of more evident interest came into his eyes. 
 He stood watching her silently, all the while endeavoring 
 to extract something from his teeth with his tongue, and, 
 in the effort, making sounds that she felt disgusted with. 
 It was a habit that was inseparable from him, and was 
 the basis of her first impression of dislike.
 
 TRAFFIC. 173 
 
 " You'd look very well in the caps we provide." he told 
 her. 
 
 She said nothing to that. Then he smiled encour- 
 agingly. 
 
 " You've got a remerkably pretty mouth did you know 
 that?" 
 
 He said it in a way that had seldom failed before with 
 girls of Xanno's class. He thought he knew exactly the 
 effect that it produced. Usually, they giggled affectedly. 
 Nanno had merely turned away. 
 
 " Did you know that ? " he repeated, with a trace of au- 
 thority. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " I did not, sir," she said quietly. 
 
 He smiled again. Of course she did know it, he had 
 told himself. He had not gleaned an experience of wo- 
 men, to he deceived so easily. But the unconscious way 
 in which she had denied it, attracted him. 
 
 " Well, look here," he had concluded confidentially, giv- 
 ing her the impression that he was exerting his own gener- 
 osity "come along here to-morrow morning at eight- 
 thirty sharp, and I'll give you a week's trial." 
 
 She had thanked him genuinely and, watching her re- 
 treating figure, he had smiled, then turned to regard him- 
 self in one of the long mirrors with which these places 
 endeavored to give an impression of space. The reflection 
 suggested that he might curl his mustache a little more. 
 He obeyed the suggestion. Two girls behind a counter 
 in the distance watched him with ironic merriment. 
 
 The next morning at eight-thirty, Nanno was in her 
 place. It was all a little strange at first. The ladies who 
 .had come into Maynard's for shopping and needed tea or 
 lunch, were not the highest examples of patience. Wo- 
 men, intent upon purchases for their attire, seldom arc.
 
 174 TRAFFIC. 
 
 The true spirit of combat is exemplified in them when they 
 approach a milliner's counter. These ladies did not come 
 to take a comfortable meal, unless it might so happen that 
 their shopping was over, and even then, a slight delay in 
 supplying them with their wants was dangerous. jSTanno 
 felt that everything and everyone was clamoring for her 
 attention at once. By the end of that first day she was ex- 
 hausted. 
 
 Then the routine of it began to grow on her. Mr. 
 Mossop, the individual who had accorded her the week's 
 trial, came to the superintendent of the restaurant at the 
 end of that time and asked her what she thought of 
 Nanno's abilities. 
 
 The superintendent was approaching the age of thirty- 
 one, and Mr. Mossop had once three years before been 
 attentive to her. She knew, of course, that Xanno was 
 attractive, and it goes without saying that she knew her 
 Mr. Mossop. There was nothing that she could think of 
 to say against Nanno, and so her lip merely curled in 
 casual consideration as she had replied to his question 
 
 " As good as the rest no better what I mean " 
 
 Mr. Mossop had bowed. 
 
 " I know what you mean," he had replied and, crossing 
 to Nanno, he told her she might consider herself engaged. 
 
 The knowledge that she had succceeded inclined her, 
 from simple gratitude, to work the harder; and in three 
 weeks' time she was as useful in the restaurant as any 
 of them. Every night, before she retired to bed, she 
 thanked God in her prayers for His infinite wisdom in 
 helping her to choose the life she had adopted. She did 
 not mind the hard work ; she even found continual interest 
 in it. The constant change of people some of whom oc- 
 casionally addressed remarks to her was as sufficiently a 
 food for her mind as to alter her entire outlook on life.
 
 TRAFFIC. 173 
 
 There was also a string band during the hours that meals 
 were served, and she was not without that love of music in 
 her soul which tells of a strong natural force of emotion. 
 
 To this band, there were only three performers a vio- 
 lin, a 'cello, and a piano. The girl who played the violin, 
 interested her unceasingly: her playing was certainly by 
 no means above the average, but whenever Xanno was for 
 a moment at rest, she would watch her with increasing ad- 
 miration. She hugged her instrument to her as die 
 played, as thought she loved it. Her bow-arm swung 
 so gracefully to and fro, as if it moved uneonseioasly; and 
 snsnpHmps the strings throbbed, and sometimes they cried; 
 sometimes they seemed almost to laugh, and sometimes to 
 whisper. To Xanno, who had never in her life heard any- 
 thing better than the blind fiddler who had played the 
 square dances at her wedding, this girl was possessed of 
 strange and wonderful intelligence. 
 
 One day, she had seen Xanno watching her *"d hi 
 smiled, laying her cheek caressingly g?THf* the violin. 
 A little while afterwards, while she was resting, she 
 beckoned to Xanno as she passed. 
 
 " Do you play ?" she had whispered. 
 
 Xanno shook her head. 
 
 " I wish I did," die had answered. 
 
 From that moment had sprung op an acquaintance be- 
 tween them, which had lasted as long longer even than 
 her connection with Juavnarors, Limited. 
 
 And ihigp briefly, was Xanno's new i liiliiitr Being 
 an attendant in the restaurant, she was paid a higher wage 
 --.-- _-.:'. -':. :--.-'_ -/_:::: 
 
 cordingly, expected to live oat, as they eipiBamd it. The 
 term implies that she did not sleep in those dnmioVa 
 which Maynard's supplied for their employees, hot paid 
 for lodgings of her own a fact upon which, as she
 
 176 TRAFFIC. 
 
 to know the establishment better, she never ceased to con- 
 gratulate herself. 
 
 In a little house amongst a row of many other pre- 
 cisely similar little houses, in a little street off the Fulham 
 Road, she had found a bedroom, which combined the use 
 of a sitting-room, for the sum of ten shillings a week. 
 Her breakfast in fact, all her meals, excepting those on 
 Saturday afternoon and Sunday were provided by the 
 restaurant; and the eigth shillings that remained out 
 of her wages she carefully put aside. Sometimes ladies 
 or gentlemen who had said something to her asked her 
 for an illustrated paper or requested her to suggest an 
 item to the band would leave some coppers under the 
 plate on the table. Gratuities were not forbidden. And 
 these unexpected sums, she spent upon little adornments 
 for herself or her bedroom. As time went on she came to 
 take a quaint pride in her surroundings. She bought a 
 picture of the Sacred Heart and hung it over her bed : she 
 purchased simple vases, and, whenever flowers were not too 
 expensive, iilled them with gentle-smelling violets that 
 brought a perfume of the country into the room. Then a 
 new interest had come into her life she began to read. 
 Miss Shand, the girl who played the violin, had lent her a 
 novel, and she read it during the whole of one Sunday. 
 Novels had never reached her in Ireland. As a bundle 
 of fancies, she had heard Father Mehan disparage them 
 from the pulpit and, until then, had never cared to look at 
 them; but from that time they became a constant source 
 of companionship. She saw life from different points of 
 view. While she read, she became the characters that were 
 before her, until she lived with them. 
 
 And all this time, Mr. Mossop had been studiously 
 watching her. Whenever he entered the restaurant, he 
 curled his mustache carefully beforehand. The superin-
 
 TRAFFIC. 177 
 
 tendent surveyed them jealously when he was speaking 
 to her. Mr. Mossop never passed through the room with- 
 out making some remark to her, and it usually conveyed 
 a compliment, clumsily expressed and suggestively de- 
 livered. But, much as she disliked this form of atten- 
 tion, Xanno knew that she could not openly snub him. 
 Her position depended entirety upon his clemency, and 
 she dared not offend the sense of dignity, more essential 
 to him than the clothes he wore. 
 
 Once, he had asked her lightly where she lived, and 
 when she had vaguely told him the district, he had smiled 
 henignly, howing as though she were a customer. 
 
 " My dear girl," he had replied, with assumed polite- 
 ness, "your address is registered upstairs in the office. 
 There is no reason why you should not tell me." 
 
 For the next few days, she had expected that any even- 
 ing he might come and see her, but when he made no ap- 
 pearance, she thought her fears were groundless. 
 
 A week later, as the establishment was being closed, he 
 had brought her a bunch of lilies. 
 
 " They are my favorite flower," he had said sentiment- 
 ally. " Pure that's what they are pure." He looked 
 at her with languid eyes, an expression that he had always 
 found to be irresistible. "Like you," he added "like 
 you." Then he had fallen into the habit of worrying his 
 teeth; and, thanking him hurriedly, Xanno had turned 
 away, the lilies held listlessly in her hand. 
 
 With the quickness of a woman's perception, she saw 
 that he was a man who would quickly resent, not hesi- 
 tating to work that resentment at the sacrifice of others; 
 but with the gentleness of a woman's timidity, she did not 
 know how to treat him. A man of that nature, placed 
 in authority over any one, will always drive until he is 
 driven. Xanno felt the weight of his authority so strongly 
 12
 
 178 TRAFFIC. 
 
 that, through want of experience, she feared it in pro- 
 portion. 
 
 At last, one Sunday afternoon, when she was reading, 
 the event that she had for some time dreaded, came to 
 pass. 
 
 The landlady opened her door and said that a gentle- 
 man named Mr. Mossop wanted to see her. 
 
 " Did you say I was in ? " she asked quickly. 
 
 The landlady looked at her in amazement. 
 
 " Well, aren't yer ? " she said. 
 
 Nanno nodded. 
 
 " Could I see him in the sitting-room ? " she inquired. 
 
 The landlady sniffed. 
 
 " I suppose so," she said at length. " 'E's got a butt'n- 
 hole in 'is coat, and 'e looks respectable. Mind yer, I 
 don't allow visitors as a rule. There was a girl here 
 once " 
 
 " Well, couldn't you tell him that ? " ISTanno interrupted, 
 full of hope. " I don't want to see him." 
 . Mrs. Hudson shook her head. 
 
 " 'E looks respectable," she repeated, as though she had 
 not heard Nanno's last remark, " so I don't hobject just 
 for this once," and with that she closed the door. 
 
 Nanno put away her book and gazed out of the window. 
 What Father Mehan had said about men was quite true she 
 thought. She wondered, simply, how he had known. 
 
 After a few moments, Mrs. Hudson had returned and 
 announced that Mr. Mossop was waiting in the sitting- 
 room. 
 
 " 'E's got a silk 'at on," she added. " It surprises me 
 'ow you girls get 'old of gentlemen like 'im. I didn't, 
 when I was your age." 
 
 Nanno did not reply. She walked through to the sit-
 
 TRAFFIC. 179 
 
 ting-room, as though she were about to face another or- 
 deal of being engaged for a fresh situation. 
 
 Mr. Mossop rose, with his hat in his hand, as she en- 
 tered. 
 
 " I took the liberty," he said, carefully choosing his 
 words, " of dropping in. I happened to be passing." 
 
 " 'Twas very good of you," she said. " Won't you sit 
 down?" 
 
 He obeyed awkwardly, still holding 'his hat ; and for the 
 next few minutes their conversation had been strained 
 and uncomfortable. The pose of authority had, for the 
 time being, fallen from him. He felt ill at ease. Xanno 
 was not conscious of being so afraid of him as when he 
 talked to her in the restaurant. 
 
 " I was just going to have tea," she said after a while. 
 " Would you be liking any yourself? " 
 
 " How charmingly you put that ! " he said. " I should 
 like it very much indeed." 
 
 She rang the bell and asked Mrs. Hudson to bring 
 up tea for them both. The landlady went away, telling 
 her husband that Miss Troy as such Xanno had de- 
 scribed herself would likely be married in a few weeks. 
 
 As soon as she had left the room, Mr. Mossop rose and 
 walked restlessly round the room, glancing at the tawdry 
 oil-paintings of stormy seas that hung on the walls. When 
 he had finished, he came hesitatingly to her side. 
 
 " You're very comfortable here, Miss Troy," he said 
 and, with an assumption of paternal demonstration, he 
 laid his hand on her shoulder. 
 
 Xanno felt the blood weaken in her. Her limbs seemed 
 suddenly to lose their strength. For a moment she was 
 powerless with a sense of apprehension ; and, in that mo- 
 ment, thinking that she did not resent his attention, he 
 bent over her, bringing his face close to hers.
 
 ISO TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Wouldn't you give me a kiss ? " he said. There was 
 a tone of maudlin sentiment and passion in his voice. 
 She heard it in his throat. Then she rose hastily, up- 
 setting his balance in her endeavor to get away. He 
 looked, and rather felt, a fool. 
 
 " Are you vexed ? " he asked. 
 
 " Shure, I am, of course," she replied. 
 
 " What for ? There's no harm done." He straight- 
 ened himself to his extreme height. " Good heavens ! 
 there's many a girl in your position 'ud take it a compli- 
 ment what I mean, they wouldn't start up in a fuss, like 
 what you do." 
 
 Nanno said nothing. It was the wisest and best course 
 for her to adopt. Had she expressed what was in her 
 mind, he would only have felt the more incensed. 
 
 " What's the matter with me ? " he went on, when she 
 remained silent. " Haven't I shown you every considera- 
 tion since you've been attendin' in the restaurant ? " 
 When emotion controlled Mr. Mossop he frequently 
 dropped his g's, but never his h's. " Who have you to 
 thank for gettin' into Maynard's at all ? " he persisted. 
 " Am I nobody, as if I was to be treated like a bit of dirt 
 as contemptuosly as what you are ? Am I ? " 
 
 There was a note of aggression in his voice that fright- 
 ened her. She knew that he controlled her period of 
 service at Maynard's and could, by adroit misrepresenta- 
 tions, so prejudice her employers against her, that she 
 would be dismissed. 
 
 " Shure, I'm sorry," she replied at last, turning to- 
 wards him. "It wasn't the way that I meant anything 
 disrespectful. I'm sorry." 
 
 Mr. Mossop looked at her more benignly. He felt that 
 she was under his thumb. It seemed all so preposterously 
 simple. He had only to say " Bah ! " in a terrifying
 
 TRAFFIC. 181 
 
 voice and, with frightened eyes, she was at his heels. There 
 was no element even of sport in it; but then, Mr. Mossop 
 did not care for sport. He was essentially a man who 
 bullied women. There is a playing of the game, even in 
 these matters, but he was neither fitted, nor did he care for 
 it. 
 
 Her apologizing to him on that, the very first occasion, 
 had enabled him to take up the position that he always 
 assumed with women; and he only dealt with those who 
 came under his own personal authority. This position 
 was one of terrorizing them, to which he resorted when his 
 own physical blandishments failed. In the case of Xanno, 
 he believed that, with time and care, he could terrorize 
 her into all that he required and, content for the moment 
 to acknowledge a postponement, he had accepted her apol- 
 ogy with what he considered was remarkably good grace. 
 
 " Don't say any more about it," he said at once. " Per- 
 haps I was a little carried away I admit it. I've told 
 you before you're an attractive girl quite attractive." 
 
 He had stopped abruptly as Mrs. Hudson brought in 
 the tea and then, still dreading every moment lest he 
 should repeat his attentions, she sat down again and poured 
 out a cup for him. 
 
 " You're the first Irish girl I've ever known," he said 
 when he had half finished it. " What I mean, known any 
 way well, intimately." 
 
 She shuddered mentally at the last word. 
 
 " Am I ? " she said. 
 
 "Urn " His mouth was filled with bread and butter 
 at the time ; no other word was possible. 
 
 " What part of Ireland did you come from ? " 
 
 Xanno looked out of the window. 
 
 "The south." 
 
 "Beautiful, isn't it?"
 
 182 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Some parts of it are." 
 
 " I'm thinking of going to see the Lakes of Killarney 
 next summer holidays," he said, forming the resolution as 
 he said the words. 
 
 She closed her eyes, saying nothing. 
 
 " Have you been there ? " 
 
 " I have not." 
 
 " Eeally now ! fancy that. I said fancy that ! " 
 
 "I never thought about it." 
 
 " Urn and why did you think of coming over here ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I I wanted to get work to do." 
 
 He looked at her sensuously. 
 
 " But a girl like you ought to have got married." 
 
 She did not reply. 
 
 " Perhaps you are thinking of it ? " he suggested jeal- 
 ously. " Is that why you didn't want me to kiss you ? " 
 
 " I haven't thought about it," said Nanno. 
 
 " What ! there isn't a young feller after you ? " 
 
 " There is not." 
 
 He drew his chair nearer to her. 
 
 " Come, then, give us a kiss," he said whiningly. 
 
 Nanno rose quickly to her feet. 
 
 "I suppose it's the way you don't know who you're 
 speakin' to, Mr. Mossop ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 " And who am I speakin' to, Miss Troy ? " 
 
 " To some one that doesn't give kisses to anybody. 
 Oh ! is it fair to be speakin' like this to me because I'm 
 alone? I know 'twas ye got me to be attendant at May- 
 nard's, but that's no call for ye to be askin' me to kiss ye. 
 I don't kiss any one. Isn't that sufficient for ye ? " 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 "You don't kiss any one don't you forget it. D'you 
 think I can believe that when I look at your mouth ? Why, 
 I can see kisses on it. Great Scott! That's what it's
 
 TRAFFIC. 183 
 
 made for your mouth. You don't kiss any one! I'm 
 not going to forget that." He stood up. " Why, girls 
 have kissed me what have a good deal more reason to think 
 something of themselves than what you have. One of the 
 lady customers, what I went to see once on business 
 she kissed me nothing else, perhaps. And you you don't 
 kiss any one ! Good Lord ! " 
 
 Nanno crossed to the door and opened it. 
 
 " Good afternoon, Mr. Mossop," she said, and she went 
 into her bedroom, leaving him to his own discretion.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THIS was the only way to treat Mr. Mossop. He had no 
 respect for the girls who had once kissed him, while he 
 treated with a certain amount of consideration those who 
 had not; and the consideration that he had shown to 
 Nanno from that day had made things perceptibly easier. 
 The cessation of his more obvious attentions, however, 
 did not for a moment imply that he had been disturbed 
 from his purpose. Xanno had risen in his estimation. 
 His determination to win her was probably more genuine 
 and, if anything, more honorable. Moreover, he did not 
 attempt to employ the same methods that he had already 
 adopted. There were even moments when he thought that 
 it might not be so unwise if he made her his wife. But 
 this thought he would not allow himself to encourage. A 
 sense of his own freedom was strong within him. 
 
 And so, Nanno had not been troubled any further. She 
 knew that she was giving every satisfaction to her employ- 
 ers; the fact was proved by the celerity with which they 
 recognized her ability to wait at a private table. Within 
 four months of the time when she had first entered, they 
 selected her to accompany one of the most experienced 
 girls when a customer had ordered two attendants for a 
 dinner-party. After this she was sent by herself; and 
 when she had proved her efficiency, customers asking 
 for her attendance again, her wages were raised, and she 
 felt her position still more secure. 
 
 All this was bringing her to a happier outlook on life. 
 184
 
 TRAFFIC. 185 
 
 Compared with what she had suffered, her existence was 
 the Nirvana of the Prophet. Her evenings were mostly 
 her own. When they were not, she was engaged in attend- 
 ing at a dinner-party, which, to her, was always a con- 
 stant fund of interest. There were times, perhaps, when 
 she felt the loneliness of her position, yet she never ceased 
 from thanking God for the infinite mercy which He had 
 shown her. Her faith and the wonderful benefits of her 
 church, were the greatest things in her life. She had 
 not been robbed of these. Beyond that, she was comfort- 
 able ; she really wanted for nothing. If she had not much 
 companionship, the love of reading had entered into her 
 interests. The only thing that she did not possess, was 
 the love of any one or the love for any one; and so little 
 had she seen of it in the world, that she did not think of it 
 as a necessity. In time, she might possibly have become 
 one of those women who, through loneliness in the early 
 part of their life, lose the deeper sense of loving, and be- 
 come old maids from choice rather than from necessity. 
 That deeper, more profound side of her nature the spirit 
 of passionate love, the spirit of gentle maternity had 
 never been awakened in her by Jamesy Evan; that such 
 should have been the case, would have been a physical im- 
 possibility. Yet even Mr. Mossop that coarse, unen- 
 lightened materialist had seen its presence in her, had 
 traced it to her lips, had been attracted by it. It was 
 there, but she did not know it ; it was there, but, not know- 
 ing it, she did not feel its needs or demands. The desires 
 of love are mostly created in a woman; they do not fully 
 develop in the ordinary course of evolution. With Xanno, 
 there had been no one to create them, and so, she was 
 barely conscious of the fact that it was in her nature to 
 love passionately, fervently, devoutly to cling blindly,
 
 186 TRAFFIC. 
 
 reverently, to the man who should so inspire her, with that 
 same faithfulness that she devoted to her religion. 
 
 Nancy Foley occasionaly came to see her in her little 
 rooms off the Fulham Eoad. They talked a lot together 
 about their home; but Nanno, quiet, reticent, sensitive, 
 never mentioned what had driven her from Eathmore. It 
 was a secret that she kept bravely to herself. She never 
 heard from Bridget. She never heard from any one in 
 Eathmore, and she felt that she had separated herself 
 from them forever; had made a life of her own and, as 
 far as it was possible, she had determined to put the past 
 irrevocably behind her. 
 
 Miss Shand, the violinist of Maynard's band, came some- 
 times to visit her, generously bringing her violin and play- 
 ing for Nanno those pieces of music which the British 
 public cannot listen to when it is drinking tea at the same 
 time. To her, Nanno had told nothing, though the girl 
 spoke confidentially of the conquests that she had made. 
 There was very little reticence about Miss Shand, as a rule, 
 but with Nanno, she felt a compulsion of reserve. Nanno 
 was so obviously inexperienced, she thought, and many 
 times she had checked herself in her confidences, lest she 
 should shock this girl, for whom she had conceived a genu- 
 ine regard. 
 
 In consequence of this, Nanno thought her to be spot- 
 less. She could not then have understood that, however 
 great a sin may be, there may yet be a predominance of 
 virtue in the person who commits it. This was not nar- 
 row-mindedness, but rather a lack of experience of life. 
 Mr. Mossop, for instance, had been no temptation to her. 
 She could not therefore understand that he would ever 
 be a temptation to any girl. This was only her ignorance 
 of the world. There are Mr. Mossops everywhere, and 
 they find their prey.
 
 TRAFFIC. 187 
 
 These little variations composed the greater part of 
 Nanno's life that is worth recording, when Jerningham 
 had met her again, serving sherry and coffee at Mrs. Hil- 
 ton's dinner-part}*. 
 
 She had gone home that night to her lodgings, when 
 her work was finished, feeling dazed and mystified. Did 
 it mean anything to her? she found herself asking. It 
 seemed unanswerable, unless a sudden heating of her heart, 
 a flushing of blood in her cheeks, could be counted as 
 such. But she tried to take no notice of these. Jer- 
 ningham had for so long been a dead personality to her, 
 that the sudden meeting of him, and under those peculiar 
 circumstances, might easily account for her agitation. She 
 chose, in fact, to account for it in that way. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding all her efforts to minimize the ef- 
 fect that their meeting had produced in her, there rose in 
 the back of her mind, as a mist rises from the horizon on a 
 July day at sea, all those comparisons which she had once 
 been forced into making, when Jerningham was in Ireland 
 and she was fighting against the impending fate of Jamesy 
 Eyan. 
 
 For a long time into that night, she lay awake, en- 
 deavoring to thrust the circumstance out of her thoughts. 
 Seeing him, as she had done, had shown her, more plainly 
 than she had ever realized in Ireland, the immeasurable 
 gulf that stretched between them. What interest he had 
 evinced in her there, could not possibly exist in these new 
 environments. She knew that. And it was not that she 
 hoped against hope that it would she persisted in telling 
 herself that this was true but that an insistent voice 
 of Fate, like the monotonous note in a shell, forced upon 
 her the fear that here lay the temptation of which Father 
 Mehan had spoken. 
 
 At last she fell asleep, and in the morning, with the
 
 188 TRAFFIC. 
 
 daylight, the fears had dwindled into a far-distant per- 
 spective. Her imaginations had thrived like parasites upon 
 the night. 
 
 The routine of daily work, brought her back again to 
 a casual contemplation of the event, until, when two days 
 had gone by, she had come to look upon it as a strange co- 
 incidence and fit it into a common groove. 
 
 On the third day it had practically passed out of her 
 mind. She went aboiit her duties as usaul, feeling an 
 awakened interest in this person or that, who came in to 
 take tea, after some hours of strenuous shopping in the 
 various departments of Maynard's establishment. The 
 band was playing Pierne's serenade; the clatter of tea- 
 cups was incessant. Attendants kept passing to and fro 
 with their trays. It was half-past four, the busiest time 
 of the afternoon, and Xanno was fully occupied. 
 
 "When, at length, all her customers were served, and 
 she had a moment's respite from her labors, the swing 
 doors at the end of the room opened, and Jerningham 
 entered. She saw him at once. She noticed that, for a 
 moment, he stood there as though looking for some one. 
 She felt the blood tingling in her cheeks. All her powers 
 concentrated themselves in an endeavor to look uncon- 
 cerned. 
 
 At last his eyes fell upon her, and he crossed the 
 room. When he reached her side he raised his hat. The 
 other attendants stared at him and at Nanno. 
 
 " Have you got a vacant table ? " he asked, in a low 
 voice. 
 
 " There's one over there," she said, in the same tone. 
 " Over in that far corner." 
 
 He thanked her, strode across the room, hung his hat 
 upon a rack on the wall, and sat down at the table.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 XAXXO'S thoughts, as she crossed to the table a moment 
 later, to wait upon Jerningham, were clamoring for reali- 
 zation, as the hounds clamor round the huntsman on a 
 frosty day. He had come to see her but why? 
 
 " What do you give here ? " he asked, when she ap- 
 proached the table. 
 
 She could not help smiling. 
 
 " What do you want ? " she said. " We can give you 
 anything, sir." 
 
 " Tea ? " 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "And bread and butter. I suppose?" 
 
 She bowed her head in acquiescence and turned away. 
 
 " Wait a moment,'* he said. 
 
 She came back again. 
 
 " I want to have a talk with you." 
 
 It seemed as though she did not understand. 
 
 " Can't you spare a minute or tv 
 
 " I should get into trouble." she said, looking steadily 
 at him with her large eyes. " We're not supposed " 
 
 " Of course I can understand that. Well bring me 
 the tea. will you ? " 
 
 Jerningham's eyes followed her as she moved away. He 
 was trying to fill the gap of time which stretched between 
 that moment of his last meetir _ -r in Ireland. He 
 
 realized the attempt to be futile. Some indefinable ex- 
 pression in her face, led him to feel that much Lad hap- 
 
 189
 
 190 TRAFFIC. 
 
 pened there his imagination stopped, failing to take the 
 flight. 
 
 When she returned with the tea and the bread and 
 butter, he watched her closely as she laid them on the 
 table. Her cheeks were more delicate in color than when 
 he had seen her in Ireland. The absence of outdoor life 
 had, no doubt, been the cause of that. But in many other 
 respects, she seemed more fragile more ethereal. Her 
 figure, markedly improved by the carefully made cotton 
 dress, looked more formed, more symmetrical, than it had 
 done in the close-fitting bodice and uncouth skirt of home- 
 spun. Her hair was more glossy; her head looked to be 
 more daintily posed upon her shoulders. Refinement had 
 become a more essential part of her. There were moments 
 when Jerningham could scarcely believe her to be the same 
 girl. 
 
 " You've changed a good deal, Nanno," he said, as she 
 set the things in front of him. 
 
 " D'you think so ? I suppose I have " and then, in a 
 sudden burst of impulse, she exclaimed, " Oh, Mr. Jer- 
 ningham, it is strange to see you ! " She said it in a 
 low voice, but he felt the strain that lay behind it. He 
 almost imagined that he traced a note of pleasure in her 
 words. Home-sickness, he thought, it might probably be. 
 He was, no doubt, a link, slender enough in all conscience 
 yet, nevertheless, a link between her and the little farm up 
 the brambled lane that she had left behind. She was glad 
 to see him for that reason;, and when the brambled lane 
 and the old five-barred gate rose up in the focus of his 
 mind's eye, he felt a deep and earnest sympathy for her. 
 She was lonely of course she was. For that matter, so 
 was he sometimes; but a man does not count in these af- 
 airs. When she had said that " Oh, Mr. Jerningham, it 
 is strange to see you ! " he made up his mind that he
 
 TRAFFIC. 191 
 
 would contribute some effort to save the solitary condition 
 of her life. 
 
 " Strange ? " he said. " Yes, isn't it ? How long have 
 you been here ? " 
 
 "A little over six months." 
 
 " As long as that ? " 
 
 She nodded her head. 
 
 " And do you live here on the premises I mean? " 
 
 " I do not" 
 
 " Where do you live, then ? " 
 
 She told him at once, giving the number and the name 
 of the street without any hesitation. To him, who knew 
 nothing of Mr. Mossop, and to her, who was unconscious of 
 her readiness to answer his question, this fact implied 
 nothing; yet it was, nevertheless, indicative of the confi- 
 dence which she placed in him. As he had treated her in 
 Ireland so, she knew instinctively, he would treat her 
 here. It would be, all through, his way of treating wo- 
 men, as also would those that Mr. Mossop had adopted 
 remain his. 
 
 " And what do you do with yourself ? " Jerningham 
 asked, with growing interest. 
 
 " I can't wait now," she replied. She saw the cold eye 
 of the superintendent watching her from the other side 
 of the room, and knew that any slight indiscretion on her 
 part would reach the ears of Mr. Mossop. " I must not 
 talk any longer I'll come back again." Then she moved 
 away to make up a bill at another table. 
 
 Jerningham dallied over his tea. It was a meal of 
 which he seldom partook, yet, for the sake of being able 
 to say a few more words to Xanno, he ordered another sup- 
 ply of bread and butter, making desperate pretense to eat 
 it. 
 
 There was something in the existence of this girl in
 
 192 TEAFFH '. 
 
 London that seemed to echo with his own. He drew 
 thumb-nail sketches of her in his mind's eye, little im- 
 pressionist pictures of her in the evening, sitting in her 
 room by herself. That was a state of affairs that fre- 
 quently existed with him. He felt sorry for her, as some- 
 times, when he was in the mood, he felt sorry for himself. 
 Why, particularly, he should feel sorry for Nanno, he 
 could not explain. There were hundreds of other girls 
 in. similar positions in life, hundreds of other girls 
 who did their nine hours' w r ork in the day, and then folded 
 cold and untouched hands before them as the evening drew 
 in. He was not drawn out of his way to feel sympathy 
 for them. With Nanno, evidently, it was different. He 
 was at least candid with himself, and admitted that she 
 was attractive to him because she was Irish because he 
 had known her first in Ireland had seen her under the 
 conditions with which she was brought up. All these 
 other girls were nonentities. He knew nothing about 
 them. His lack of interest in them compelled him to 
 imagine nothing. When he thought of Nanno, he imag- 
 ined a host of things. He saw her in the cornfield ; he 
 pictured her driving home the cows. She stood out strik- 
 ingly in his mind at the holy well, making her rounds 
 and counting her beads. What girl was there in London, 
 drudging in a tea-shop, who had such faith in the back 
 of her heart as Nanno? Had any of them any faith at 
 all? 
 
 He was perfectly aware why Xanno was interesting to 
 him. It had been with her, as though he had watched her 
 course from infancy, yet no one, it must be admitted, 
 knew so little about her as Jerningham ; and that again, 
 when once he realized it, goaded him to know more. He 
 did not study the lives and developments of people as 
 a rule; with Nanno, he fancied he had begun to do so.
 
 TRAFFIC. 193 
 
 A.s lie waited for her to come and make up his account, 
 he determined in his mind to see more of her, to under- 
 stand better the type of life that she had led and, if pos- 
 sible, to make it easier for her. 
 
 At last she came to his beckoning, and he asked her 
 for his bill, watching her face as she calculated with 
 the figures. 
 
 " Xanno," he said, as she laid the slip of paper in 
 front of him, "I'm not going to be done out of my talk 
 with you." 
 
 She smiled brightly. It i? with this type of assertion 
 of a man's authority and determination that a woman 
 is won. The mailed fist or the tender ballade may find 
 their answer in the obedient eyes and the soulful sigh; 
 but it is the gentle sweeping up into the saddle-bow and 
 the strong arm gripping the yielding waist that carries off 
 more women in a whirlwind towards that horizon where 
 the sun can never set. 
 
 " I came here, you know," he went on, " with the in- 
 tention of having a talk. Mrs. Hilton told me where you 
 came from." 
 
 " You asked her ? " Xanno's eyes opened. 
 
 " Of course I did." 
 
 "And she told you?" 
 
 "Of course she did. Now, look here to-morrow's 
 Saturday. I suppose you've got a half day off?" 
 
 She nodded her head. 
 
 '' Well, then do you know your way down to the Tem- 
 ple?" 
 
 She said she did not. She had never, in fact, heard 
 of it before. He told her then what 'bus to take that 
 would bring her in the direction, advising her after that 
 to ask her way to Plowden Buildings. 
 
 " Come down at about half -past three/' he concluded, 
 13
 
 194 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " and we'll go back over old times. Who'd ever think it 
 was as much as two years ago ! " 
 
 For a moment she looked at him questioningly. 
 
 "I don't think it's right that I should/' she said hesi- 
 tatingly. 
 
 " Eight? " He looked at her in astonishment. " Why 
 shouldn't you? Do you remember driving in on the car 
 with me to Anesk that evening that I was going ? " 
 
 " Yes I remember," she replied. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 The consideration of its not being absolutely the correct 
 form of etiquette had not occurred to him ; but it was by 
 no means a point of etiquette that rose up before her. 
 She trusted him implicitly. There was, in fact, no other 
 man she had ever met in whom she could place so much 
 confidence. But that was not in question. What right 
 had she to go to any man's rooms ? Father Mehan's warn- 
 ing had left an impression in the recesses of her mind 
 which she could not obliterate. 
 
 " Men come into women's lives, and women into men's," 
 he had said, or to that effect ; " and some were made, and 
 some were spoiled." 
 
 Jerningham could not make her life. That, she knew 
 only too well, was made already. But why should he 
 spoil it? Was it always to be that she should have no 
 companionship ? Was she, for the rest of her life, to make 
 for loneliness and shun friendship, because she was joined 
 to a man whose morality was a wreck and whose affec- 
 tion for her did not exist? She did not realize all that 
 the answering of this question meant. The flood comes 
 in the tide of affairs moral and beneficial, and it is a 
 mighty small-looking stream as men and women hesitate 
 to look at it. They stand on the brink and ask themselves 
 just the same sort of questions as Nanno was then asking
 
 TRAFFIC. 195 
 
 herself. Is it the time to launch or to refrain from launch- 
 ing? And the stream hums merrily by. In a few mo- 
 ments the waters will be placid and smooth and un- 
 eventful again. The opportunity for action or for an- 
 swering will be gone. They wonder if that playful seeth- 
 ing on the surface of the stream can really be the signs 
 of a flood ; but it is not at one's feet that the current runs 
 strongest. Farther down the stream it is racing in a 
 mad frenzy. There are whirlpools, cataracts, torrents, 
 farther down; but, standing there, it is hard to see the 
 foam they make or hear their voices that roar. And so, 
 perhaps, the affairs are taken at the flood, or they are 
 discarded ; but it is only when the soul that takes them has 
 been carried far down upon the water, that it realizes 
 whether the tide be for good or evil. 
 
 This is the eternal question with mankind; this was 
 the question then with Xanno. Was the tide of seeming 
 happiness that was setting in upon the loneliness of her 
 affairs, one for good or for evil ? 
 
 " Well ? " Jerningham repeated, his voice breaking in 
 on the wondering of her thoughts. " How about that 
 evening? Look here, you're not going to be a foolish girl 
 and let yourself be worried by conventionalities? Do 
 you know many people ? Have you got many friends here 
 in London ? " 
 
 She framed a wistful negation with her lips. 
 
 " Well, then, you come down to Plowden Buildings to- 
 morrow afternoon, and I'll give you a far better tea than 
 you've just given me. What sort of cake do you like?" 
 
 She could not but laugh he made so light of the 
 whole thing. 
 
 " Ah ! " he said, seeing her amusement "I take that 
 laugh as an answer you'll come."
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 EXCEPT those parts which have latterly been rebuilt, 
 the courts of the Middle Temple are singularly similar 
 in appearance. All have their wooden flights of stairs 
 that creak and groan as you mount them to your desti- 
 nation. In each building there is that atmosphere of 
 musty recollections, that subtle sensation of bygone days. 
 The caged gas-jet that nickers dimly and casts a cheerless 
 light on each landing, is in keeping with everything 
 most of all with the unpromising milk cans that stand on 
 the window-sill outside each door. 
 
 The Benchers are not concerned with the approach to 
 your residential quarters. Your name is painted in black 
 letters on the jamb of the main entrance; painted again 
 on the lintel of your own door. In almost every case it 
 is a double door, the outside being of thick, stout oak, 
 covered with a layer of pale green paint, the inner of the 
 same timber, bearing a knocker of a metal and antiquity 
 which your pocket happens to afford. Or, perhaps, there 
 is no knocker at all. 
 
 Nearly all the oak in the Temple the paneling of the 
 rooms, the lintels of the doors and the doors themselves 
 is covered with that same green paint. When you think 
 of it as oak, you are apt to call it vandalism unless you 
 happen to be an admirer of Louis XV, when the fate of 
 antique oak does not worry you. But in time you get 
 accustomed to it; grow, in fact, to think of it as part of 
 
 196
 
 TRAFFIC. 107 
 
 the whole scheme. There is no doubt that the black let- 
 ters of your name show up well on that green paint. 
 
 But it is not only the interiors of the buildings them- 
 selves which make the atmosphere that surrounds the 
 Temple. It is to be felt outside in the courts as well. 
 That narrow passage Middle Temple Lane with its 
 numerous bypaths and alleys, its houses on either side 
 that almost reach over and touch each other; those courts 
 into which the alleys lead Pump Court, Fig Tree Court 
 paved with the slabs of grave-like stones that seem to 
 be memorial to the steps that have fallen upon them in 
 the years of long ago all these combine to breathe a 
 silent atmosphere of the lives of men who have written 
 their names in water, ink, or their own heart's blood, and 
 gone their way into the great unknown. 
 
 There are the very graves, too, of some of those who 
 peopled the Temple in that Past which can never fail 
 to be romantic. Most of them who are known to us still, 
 have written their names in ink or their own heart's blood, 
 perhaps if such writing could ever be traced and the 
 men who live in their rooms to-day yet strive to keep in 
 touch with them. They collect the earlier editions of their 
 books and strain their sight over the musty, printed char- 
 acters. The middle Temple breeds a love of books old 
 books first editions. It will not satisfy a man in Plow- 
 den Buildings or Essex Court to possess those new illus- 
 trated copies of " The Vicar of Wakefield." He must 
 have his dirty " dumpy twelves " with the old-fashioned 
 s's and faded brown pages that were once white, once 
 handled, once caressed, perhaps, by the author himself. 
 
 The middle Temple will never lose that odor of the dim 
 and half-forgotten past. It clings about its buildings as 
 the aromatic perfume clings about the pot of scented 
 rose-leaves that defy all dust and dare decay. The sim-
 
 198 TRAFFIC. 
 
 pie row of trees in Essex Court, they have looked on at 
 life in the Temple for some few years, but they are quite 
 silent about it, whispering only amongst themselves in win- 
 ter; sighing, perhaps, in summer. And Fig Tree Court 
 and Pump Court it matters little that the pump has been 
 appropriated for the use of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade 
 and that the fig tree no longer has existence it is quite 
 sufficient that they still bear their names to suggest the 
 history that surrounds them. 
 
 And it is about the interiors, no less than in the court- 
 yards themselves, that the sense of mystery and romance 
 still clings to this part of old London. The rooms are 
 paneled with that painted woodwork, sometimes to the 
 edge of their low ceilings. They almost compel the choice 
 of furniture that is mostly to be found in them old oak 
 dressers, Queen Anne bureaus, and brass ornaments. It 
 is a strange fact that nearly all residents of the Temple 
 journalists, barristers, all classes, conditions, and opposites 
 of mankind invariably unconsciously, it sometimes 
 seems submit to the same scheme of furnishing their 
 quarters. Old prints adorn the walls ; old books lie on the 
 bookshelves. It would appear to be an unwritten senti- 
 ment that you may not modernize or denationalize the 
 Temple with the furniture that you fill in your rooms. 
 To do so would be ignorant, bad taste sacrilege. 
 
 Some men, perhaps, you will find there unprepossess- 
 ing-looking men, with untutored voices and features that 
 betray no inner refinement of intellect who can set you 
 right when you misquote the English classics of the last 
 four centuries. They can tell you the genuine from the 
 false in prints, pewter, brass, and what-not. The spell of 
 the Temple is cast over them. In their own chambers you 
 are compelled to submit yourself beneath them. 
 
 You have only to turn aside from Fleet Street and pass
 
 TRAFFIC. 199 
 
 down Middle Temple Lane, to feel in one moment, in the 
 stillness that swiftly wraps you round, the subtle yet al- 
 most pregnant existence of your contact with the Past. 
 The porter who sits in his little room under the archway, 
 he is merely an ordinary cockney who, no doubt, takes his 
 racing tips from the evening papers; but you cannot con- 
 nect him with anything so cheaply modern or mundane. 
 The barristers and their clerks, the law students and their 
 women, they are all invested with that selfsame spell. 
 They have chambers in the Temple go and see them; go 
 and talk to them in their surroundings, and you will find 
 that in some unaccountable way they are different from the 
 rest. 
 
 There is a general superstition that only barristers and 
 law students occupy rooms in the Temple. But this is not 
 the case. The Temple contains all sorts and conditions of 
 men who have been admitted when that noble body of 
 Benchers found themselves short of rents; and, once hav- 
 ing entered, they have quietly remained. That only 
 Benchers may drive into the Temple with a lady after a 
 certain hour at night is a law that is inviolable ; but that 
 barristers should be the only inhabitants of chambers 
 that may be broken by necessity. 
 
 You will see the names on many lintels of men in all 
 phases and fortunes of life and, were you to look upon the 
 lintel of one of the doors in Plowden Buildings the 
 caged gas-jet illumines the letters, otherwise at night they 
 would be undecipherable you would find the name writ- 
 ten, P. H. Jerningham. 
 
 That is all. Xothing to describe who P. H. Jerning- 
 ham is ; yet, when once she had found it on that next Sat- 
 urday afternoon, Xanno was satisfied with the brevity of 
 its sign. 
 
 The outer door was open, the inner closed. She stood
 
 200 TRAFFIC. 
 
 hesitatingly for a moment, her hand grasping the brass 
 knocker, which represented a nude lady of sorts caressing 
 her modesty. Jerningham had found it in a dirty furni- 
 ture-shop in the Waterloo Bridge Road. 
 
 Even then, at that moment, doubts entered her mind. 
 She had not struck the knocker. He did not know she was 
 there. The indescribable prescience that she had alwaj^s 
 possessed in the matter of her own destiny, was haunting 
 her with the monotonous persistence of a tolling bell. It 
 was not too late to turn back. On the other hand, what 
 was it really that she feared? This man whom she was 
 going to see, what interest had he in her beyond that curi- 
 osity which one human being in one sphere of life feels 
 for another ? She herself was curious to see the conditions 
 with which he lived. Anticipation burned in her to know 
 what it was like on the other side of that door. But was it 
 curiosity alone that had brought her there? 
 
 She thought over what she would do if she turned back 
 then. She would get on to a 'bus in Fleet Street. The 
 'bus would be cold cheerless uncomfortable. She would 
 return home, and there would be no fire in the sitting- 
 room, unless she paid for it. There would be no one there 
 to talk to her; no one to welcome her when she returned. 
 On the other hand, beyond that door was everything that 
 would make the rest of the afternoon pass more enjoyably 
 than any day which she had yet spent in London. 
 
 Her hand raised the knocker. She paused. If she went 
 to see Mr. Jerningham now, might it not mean her coming 
 to see him again? Once more she let the knocker down 
 gently, making no noise. And all these thoughts chased 
 each other through her mind, as shadows of a passing 
 show are swept across a screen. Three minutes had 
 scarcely passed since, with an eager hand, she had first
 
 TRAFFIC. 201 
 
 grasped the little brass figure; yet in that time she had 
 been warring against the dictates of her own destiny. 
 
 The fight was nearly over. Her mind was coming slowly 
 to the decision that it would be unwise; but the entire 
 foundation of that decision was one that she would not ex- 
 press, even with her most innermost thoughts. After all, 
 what right had she to admit that Jerningham, as a man, 
 had appealed to her from the first time that she had met 
 him? She believed herself to be absolutely nothing a 
 cipher in the consideration of his affairs. His social stand- 
 ing was immeasurably above hers his intellect, his edu- 
 cation, his breeding, they were all incomparable with those 
 qualifications which she knew to be her own. If she did 
 admit in vague hypothesis that, as a man, he might be her 
 ideal, how would that affect matters ? How would it alter 
 the scale one way or another? She would never be any- 
 thing more than a farmer's daughter, an attendant in a 
 restaurant, to him. But she did not admit it. She would 
 not admit it. For another moment she stood there, her 
 eyes closed, refusing to admit it. 
 
 Then decision came to her. She turned slowly away. It 
 was a cruel renunciation. Her heart was crying in bitter- 
 ness at the hardness of the compulsion. She knew then 
 that life had to be fought by inches, not lived in oblivion 
 through unlimited space and time. 
 
 Her foot was on the first wooden step that led down to 
 the main entrance; her head was still half turned in the 
 direction of the open outer door, when she heard footsteps 
 on the other side and, swiftly turning, she tried to hurry 
 down the remaining steps, making as little noise as pos- 
 sible. 
 
 It was too late. Jerningham had come out on to the 
 landing. He had heard her departing footsteps, and was 
 looking over the handrail from above.
 
 202 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " What's the meaning of this ? " he called out. 
 
 She stopped. She had tried to get away honestly tried 
 but her heart was beating with delight that she had been 
 discovered. 
 
 "I'm just afther thinkin' that it would be better if I 
 didn't come/' she replied, looking up. 
 
 He smiled down at her. 
 
 " Do you imagine I'm going to allow that ? " he asked, 
 and he began to descend the stairs. " When I've bought 
 the most wonderful thing in cakes you've ever seen and 
 have been sitting watching a kettle that refuses to boil 
 until it has mighty good reason to ? " He reached her side 
 and took her arm with gentle authority. 
 
 "Be so good," he said, "as to mount these stairs in 
 front of me," and, setting her before him, he followed her 
 up into the room.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 IT was perfectly true that Jerningham had been sitting 
 over the fire watching the kettle, but he had also been won- 
 dering about jSTanno. He speculated with himself how she 
 would be dressed. Sometimes, when in his mind's eye he 
 saw the impression of a girl gaudily arrayed, having put 
 on her best to honor him and the occasion, he shuddered. 
 In her ignorance, he fancied that she might dress like that, 
 and the possibilities of her being seen by men on the other 
 landings made him wonder whether he had been wise in 
 asking her there. Of course it would not be her fault; he 
 could not for a moment blame her for it. But then, when 
 he had seen her, his surprise had been far greater than his 
 relief. 
 
 His sole impression was that she was quietly dressed, 
 neatly dressed. Of what material her frock was made, he 
 could not possibly have said; whether it was black or 
 whether it was dark blue, he would have been equally in 
 doubt. He only knew that he was more than satisfied ; in 
 fact, so far as such things did appeal to him, he was 
 pleased. 
 
 That refinement which had always found evidence in 
 her face had, since she had come to London, shown itself 
 in various other little ways. Once it had found oppor- 
 tunity, the strain of her father was obliterating the coarser 
 instincts that she inherited from her mother. Bridget had 
 always thought that in finer suroundings her daughter 
 
 203
 
 204 TRAFFIC. 
 
 would develop into a fine woman. Had she seen her then, 
 she would have realized the truth of her expectations. 
 
 For some little time after she had seated herself in the 
 one comfortable armchair that he placed for her, Jerning- 
 ham could only sit and watch Xanno's face in admiring 
 satisfaction. There was no lady at that moment he could 
 have named no matter what social position she might 
 have held whom he would have preferred in Xanno's 
 place. He felt perfectly at his ease with her. There was 
 just a touch of that spirit of the eventful which added zest 
 to the whole thing ; and, leaning back in his chair, with his 
 eyes still on her, he took a deep breath with involuntary 
 content. 
 
 " Xow we're going to have a tea," he said, " that'll 
 knock that one you gave me into a cocked hat." 
 
 She could not prevent herself from laughing. She knew 
 that, though she had been thwarted in her design, she was 
 intensely happy. 
 
 " Won't you take off your hat ? " he went on. " You'll 
 be more comfortable." 
 
 " I'd rather not, if ye don't mind," she said. 
 
 He closed his eyes to the sound of gentle obedience In. 
 her voice. If he didn't mind ! What other woman would 
 have dreamed of adding that? 
 
 "Very well, then come along we're going to make 
 some toast." He crossed to the gate-legged table in the 
 center of the room and commenced cutting slices from a 
 loaf of bread. She watched all his actions with a smile on 
 her face. 
 
 " Shure, you're cutting it very thick ! " she exclaimed at 
 last, when she saw the tremendous slices that fell before 
 the knife. 
 
 " And ought it to be thinner ? " He looked round. 
 
 She crossed to the table, holding out her hand for the
 
 TRAFFIC. 205 
 
 knife. He gave it to her and, with skilful manipulation, 
 she cut three more pieces where he would have cut one. 
 
 " That's neat enough," he said. 
 
 " I often make toast for myself at home," she explained. 
 
 " At home ? Where ? In Ireland ? " 
 
 Xo the Fulham Road." 
 
 " So you call that home now eh ? " 
 
 " I do." 
 
 The moment that Ireland had been mentioned, her voice 
 had lost the lightness of its tone. The word alone would 
 have brought back the thought of all her sufferings; and 
 then, also, she was wondering whether he knew. As soon 
 as an opportunity occurred, she asked him whether he had 
 been back again since to Eathmore. 
 
 " If I had," he replied, " do you think I wouldn't have 
 come to see you ? " 
 
 " And you haven't heard anything from Eathmore 
 since ? " 
 
 " Xot a word." 
 
 Without being able to control it, a sigh of relief escaped 
 from her. Then he knew nothing about her. It had 
 vaguely entered her mind that if he were told that she^had 
 left her husband, he would refuse to speak to her again 
 and, until that moment, she had never been so happy be- 
 fore in her life. Can it be wondered at, then, that her 
 sigh was of relief ? 
 
 " Is it the way you mean to toast it on the knife ? " she 
 asked, leaving the subject of Ireland as soon as she pos- 
 sibly could, " or have you got a proper fork ? " 
 
 He had a proper fork. He fetched it for her and stood 
 by while she secured a piece of bread upon the prongs. 
 Then she carried it to the fire, kneeling down before the 
 fender. Still he watched her. The back of her neck was 
 like a child's. For a moment his eyes seemed hypnotized to
 
 206 TRAFFIC. 
 
 it. At last he came back to earth and Plowden Buildings. 
 
 " Look here," he exclaimed, striding forward, " give me 
 the fork you'll burn your face." 
 
 She looked up. " I don't mind the fire," she said. 
 
 " P'r'aps not and neither do I. Come along, give me 
 the fork." 
 
 He took it from her as she held it up, and continued 
 with the toasting himself, his eyes lost in a contemplation 
 of the fire, while she filled the teapot. 
 
 " You're very quiet suddenly," she said, when, after 
 taking up the third piece of bread to toast, he still main- 
 tained silence. 
 
 He looked round and smiled. 
 
 " Sorry don't think I was forgetting about you. I 
 wasn't. When you've lived by yourself for a time, you'll 
 find you'll get into it, too. Just a trick, habit that's all." 
 
 " Do you feel lonely sometimes, then ? " she asked. 
 
 He frowned at the fire. 
 
 " Only when any one comes up here feel a bit lonely 
 then. You see, I know they've got to go some time or 
 other, and then I shall be alone. When I am by myself, 
 then there's no one to go, so that I can't be any worse off. 
 Quite silly, of course." 
 
 " Would you like me to go now? " 
 
 Jerningham stood up quickly from the fire. 
 
 " You mustn't misunderstand me like that," he said, 
 " I'm enjoying myself immensely. Is the tea ready? " 
 
 She nodded her head. 
 
 He drew the one arm-chair up close to the fire for her 
 and waited until she had seated herself. 
 
 " Now for the best cup of tea," he began. 
 
 She interrupted quaintly, with a smile. "Is your tea 
 the best?" 
 
 " Always," he said ; then they laughed.
 
 TRAFFIC. 207 
 
 There is a type of pleasure, of happiness, in this world 
 that is beyond comprehension. It will not admit of ex- 
 tremes, though it be pregnant with possibilities. No re- 
 laxation follows after it; it is simple to a degree. Such a 
 type is that when the natures of a man and a woman first 
 find mutual interest in each other's society. At that 
 period and so long as it lasts, before avowals are made or 
 passions declared, when there are no illusions to be spoiled 
 or hopes to be crushed, they too, are experiencing a state 
 of almost perfect happiness. In subtle hiding behind it 
 all, as the sense of danger that lurks in the truest forms 
 of sport, there lies the knowledge that one day the mo- 
 ment will come when the train will be burned out, the 
 magazine of powder reached, and the entire condition of 
 things be altered. It is this tremble of anticipation this 
 tentative playing with a quivering fire that adds a zest, 
 or rather is the gist of pleasure itself in this negative state 
 of happiness. Negative it must be, for when the woman 
 has looks and the man the blood of youth, a burning there 
 will follow, without doubt. In the whole range of chem- 
 ical science there are no two substances, such as these, so 
 highly inflammable, so bound when brought in contact to 
 coalesce. 
 
 In such a state of happy contentment Jerningham 
 found himself that afternoon. At the time, he did not 
 wish it to go further. It did not enter into his considera- 
 tion that Nanno was a woman to be desired. He did not 
 see that a hundred men in his place rushing to the con- 
 clusion that, in her consent of coming to their rooms, 
 she had tacitly consented to other things would find the 
 urgent temptation of pressing their advantage, even if 
 they did not give way to it. None of these things oc- 
 curred to him. He merely found her a companion dif- 
 ferent, perhaps, in her companionship from men but,
 
 208 TRAFFIC. 
 
 nevertheless, a companion with whom the hours passed 
 like minutes. 
 
 The men who came up to his rooms helped themselves 
 to what he had. JSTanno had to be helped, to be waited 
 on. The whole experience took him out of himself a 
 circumstances for which any one in this world may be 
 thankful. 
 
 The fact that she was a waitress in a restaurant did not 
 touch him. Even when she was telling him of her ex- 
 periences, he scarcely thought of her as that. 
 
 Her ignorance of life in London he found fascinating. 
 She had never heard of the Stock Exchange; and then, 
 what was monotonous routine to him, became suddnly 
 interesting as he explained to her the wheels that worked 
 within wheels, the struggle that was forever seething in 
 the heart of the City. 
 
 Whenever she did not understand, she asked curious, 
 childish questions that sometimes made him laugh, some- 
 times compelled him to lean back in his chair and watch 
 her face with wonder. 
 
 But, beside all this, she had uncommon, unexpected 
 views of life. Occasionally in Ireland, she had given them 
 expression. He remembered that he had once remarked 
 upon them to her. Now, because, no doubt, of all she had 
 suffered, they were more frequent. At unlooked-for mo- 
 ments she expressed thoughts that amazed him; the ex- 
 pression of them was simple in the extreme. "What little 
 reading she had done since she came to London, would not 
 be calculated to materially raise the standard of her ideas 
 or yield her a greater facility of speech : her education had 
 never been of that high order which elevates the plebeian 
 mind to a contemplation of higher things; it was simply 
 that grasp of her own outlook on life that instinct of her
 
 TRAFFIC. 209 
 
 own fate which brought involuntarily, unconsciously, to 
 her lips the words she said. 
 
 There were moments when commonplace though he 
 thought her circumstances to be he knew that he did not 
 understand her; realized that, as a complexity of char- 
 acter, she was utterly beyond him. But all this only 
 added to her interest. 
 
 " I believe you're a pessimist," he said, when tea was 
 finished and she had been talking generally about the effort 
 that so many were compelled to make to keep up that 
 vague, indescribable appearance of respectability. 
 
 "An' what's that?" she asked. 
 
 " A person who takes the rough road rather than the 
 smooth, and then offers the belief that life is entirely paved 
 with uncut stones." 
 
 " I know what you mean," she replied ; " but you say 
 it as if 'twas the way the person took the rough road on 
 purpose." 
 
 " So they do." 
 
 " They do not not always. Shure, it isn't always 
 there's a cross-road at all. There are some people that 
 have one road the whole time, and there be finger-posts 
 pointing the way, keeping on telling them the way, though 
 there's no chanst for them to go any other way. An' 
 they've got to keep walking up hill and down dale till 
 they're stopped in a wood that's always lonely and black, 
 and then a big, gray figure comes out of the trees " 
 
 "Death?" 
 
 " Death." 
 
 " Those whom the gods love die young, eh ? " 
 
 " I don't know what you mean by the gods but some- 
 body's lovin' ye if ye do die young." 
 
 " Nanno ! " 
 
 "What?" 
 14
 
 810 TRAFFIC, 
 
 " Why do you say these things ? " 
 
 " I'm sorry, Mr. Jerningham 'tis the way with me" 
 sometimes. Ye was talking so serious, and then it seems 
 that's what it all comes to in the end." 
 
 " Do you often think these things? " 
 
 " Not often no I'm very happy sometimes and then 
 sometimes it seems as though bein' happy was only a kind 
 o' piece o' colored glass, that makes everything look dif- 
 ferent. Then ye get tired of holding it up in front o' 
 yeer eyes, and when ye put it down it's like that." 
 
 "Like what?" 
 
 " Like what I said." 
 
 " And was the colored glass down all this afternoon ? " 
 
 " It was not." 
 
 " You've been happy, then ? " 
 
 "I have " she paused. "Oh! I haven't been so 
 happy for a long,, long time."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 XAXXO lived on the remembrance of that afternoon for 
 a considerable length of time. In the uneventful course 
 of her existence it stood out from other days as one set 
 apart, hallowed by memory of its pleasantness. On a 
 calendar that hung in her bedroom, she marked the date 
 with a ring of pencil and, whenever it caught her eye, she 
 fell into a reverie, reviewing it in all its details with a 
 lingering pleasure. To her it had meant a great deal. 
 From the time she had come to London her thankfulness 
 had all been for negative conditions an absence of tor- 
 ment, an abatement of suffering. Xow she felt grateful for 
 the positive pleasure of that one afternoon's companionship. 
 It did not seem that there could be anything left to ask 
 for; but just that she might sometimes see Jerningham 
 and talk with him, as she had done then. Her desires had 
 not one touch of sensuality. In the simplicity of her na- 
 ture, she did not consider what his might be, or what they 
 might become. He had not made love to her as her hus- 
 band had done; he had not treated her after the manner 
 of Mr. Mossop. She could not believe that in his nature 
 he was a man just such as they were. Everything he did 
 and said pointed to his being so utterly different, If she 
 were going to appeal to him in that, the coarser way of 
 life, it would have shown in the beginning; it would 
 have made itself evident in Ireland, and she would have 
 shunned him from the first. Xow she knew that it 
 was not so ; could never be so. He was her friend and, if 
 
 211
 
 212 TRAFFIC. 
 
 ever a woman needed a friend on whom to lean for the 
 support of advice and companionship, it was she. Never 
 through her life, had she possessed the magic lamp of 
 friendship until now; and it was not her intention to lose 
 it by presuming things that were out of the question. 
 
 Father Mehan's warning to her had, no doubt, been 
 instinct with truth. The world was full of men who 
 would not stand by and see a young girl alone without hav- 
 ing something to say to her existence. Belonging to such 
 a type, was Mr. Mossop. The women who stood alone 
 were his prey. He pounced upon them at once. But 
 Jerningham was different. He had often seen her five 
 times in all yet he had never once shown one sign of 
 desire for her other than as a friend. Could she have 
 been more at his mercy than she had been that Saturday 
 afternoon, alone with him in his rooms? Yet he had not 
 taken advantage of it. HP had made the whole position 
 seem one of ordinary circumstance, to such an extent that 
 she would never again feel any compunction in going to 
 see him. 
 
 On the Friday following that Saturday afternoon, Miss 
 Shand had come to see her when the work of the day was 
 over. Maynard's closed at seven o'clock in the evening 
 and, when the last customer had departed, the two girls 
 hurried out of the building from the door which was 
 reserved for the entrance and exit of the much-despised 
 commercial traveler. A 'bus took them to the Fulham 
 Eoad; a cold and draughty 'bus, with muddied floor and 
 every available space inside plastered with unctuous ad- 
 vertisements. On a wintry evening, when the conductor's 
 feet are cold, and the rain is dripping from the shelter on to 
 his shoulder, a 'bus is not the most cheerful vehicle in the 
 world. But these two took no heed of the conductor as he 
 stamped impatiently to keep his feet warm, or of the testy
 
 TRAFFIC. 213 
 
 old gentleman with a muffler across his mouth, who 
 coughed and complained of a lack of room at regular in- 
 tervals. There is a spirit of cheerfulness that overlooks 
 these little details of life and Nanno, possessed of it to the 
 full, infused it into the mind of her companion. 
 
 A meal that she had ordered to be set in readiness by 
 Mrs. Hudson was awaiting them when they went into 
 the sitting-room; a fire was crackling brightly in the 
 hearth. They both emitted exclamations of delight, and 
 hurried to the fireplace to warm themselves. 
 
 " Is all this on account of me, dear ? " asked Miss Shand. 
 
 Nanno said " Um " in a comprehensive way. The other 
 put her arm round her waist. 
 
 " You're going to tell me this evening, aren't you ? " she 
 said. 
 
 Xar-no looked quickly at her. 
 
 " Tell you what ? " she asked. 
 
 " Who the fellow wr.s that came in that day to see you 
 a week ago to-day aren't you ? " 
 
 " I didn't say I would." 
 
 " Xo but you remember, dear, I asked you." 
 
 This did not seem to Nanno a sufficient reason for her 
 to speak to Miss Shand about Jerningham. She did not 
 say so, but then, she said nothing. Instead, she took her 
 companion by the arm and led her into the bedroom. 
 
 " Aren't you dying to take your hat off? " she said, when 
 they got inside. To those who had known her in Ireland 
 it would have been a very noticeable fact that her speech 
 was fast losing its nationality. She still had an evident 
 inclination to a brogue that could never be entirely eradi- 
 cated but the method of forming her sentences she had 
 vastly altered, as it were keeping pace with the complete 
 change of her environments. 
 
 Miss Shand replied to her question with action. The
 
 214: TRAFFIC. 
 
 long hat-pins were extracted, the hat thrown on to the bed 
 and, finally, the pins employed before the glass to raise her 
 hair from her forehead, where the hat had crushed it down. 
 When this operation was finished, she turned and looked 
 round the room. 
 
 There were fresh pictures on the walls since she had 
 been there last ; amongst them was the gaudy-colored print 
 of the Sacred Heart that hung over Nanno's bed. 
 
 " Whatever's that, dear ? " she asked, pointing to it. 
 
 " A picture of the Sacred Heart." 
 
 The answer conveyed nothing to Miss Shand, beyond the 
 fact that it had some religious meaning. That the heart 
 itself of any one, however sacred, could mean anything to 
 anybody in this prosaic world was outside the pale of her 
 comprehension. 
 
 " Fancy your being a Eoman Catholic ! " she said, as she 
 turned away. " Isn't it funny ? " 
 
 " Why funny ? " asked Nanno. 
 
 " I don't know it seems strange any one believing in 
 those sort of things. I couldn't." 
 
 Nanno made no reply. She remembered her conversa- 
 tion with Jerningham in Ireland on the second occasion 
 when they had met. He had said he could not believe in 
 saints, but in her heart she had known that that was be- 
 cause he had not been taught the faith which she possessed. 
 She greatly believed that faith was a teachable commodity. 
 But this girl, she felt, would be incapable, unreceptive, of 
 instruction. She did not, could not blame her for it ; but 
 to discuss it with her as she had done with Jerningham 
 seemed utterly useless. She said nothing. 
 
 "Do you say prayers to that?" persisted Miss Shand 
 lightly. She extracted a hairpin from her hair as she 
 asked the question, and commenced to clean her nails. 
 
 " Shure, we only pray to God/' ISTanno replied simply,
 
 TRAFFIC. 215 
 
 "but through the power of many intercessions and ap- 
 peals. That's one of them/' 
 
 " How funny ! " Miss Shand repeated, as she replaced 
 the hairpin. " Are you ready ? I'm as hungry as a cat." 
 
 For the first few moments of the meal, Nanno felt in 
 no mood for conversation. Her companion's utter dis- 
 regard for sacred things had offended the sensitive side 
 of her nature which clung fast to her faith; she felt out 
 of sympathy with her. She put it aside, however, and 
 soon they were laughing and talking again as they had 
 been when coming back in the 'bus. The conversation 
 was mostly of inconsequent things people whom they had 
 both happened to observe in the restaurant, the vagaries 
 of the lady superintendent, the jealousies and petty spites 
 amongst the other girls. It would have interested no one 
 but themselves. 
 
 At last, when Nanno's good spirts had wholly returned, 
 Miss Shand cautiously reverted to the subject that she had 
 broached when they first came in. 
 
 " I believe I've seen that friend of yours before/' she 
 said suggestively. 
 
 Nanno looked up impulsively from her plate. 
 
 "Where?" she asked. 
 
 " Well, you know I told you that before I came to May- 
 nard's I was playing in an orchestra at a restaurant in 
 the Strand you do remember, don't you, dear ? " 
 
 Nanno nodded an affirmative. 
 
 " Well, I believe I saw him having tea there one after- 
 noon." 
 
 She convinced herself, as she said it, that this was the 
 truth; but then, Jerningham was not an uncommon type, 
 and out of the numberless men whom she had seen in this 
 particular restaurant, there could not have failed to be 
 many who would bear a slight resemblance to him, She
 
 216 TRAFFIC. 
 
 might have seen him on that she based her assertion, and 
 with that she endeavored to convice herself. 
 
 " How long ago was that ? " Nanno asked, with interest. 
 
 " Oh ! let me see I've been in Maynard's for six 
 months. It must have been just before then." 
 
 " About seven months ago? " 
 
 " Yes that's about it. He's very handsome, isn't he ? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " You don't know ! " Miss Shand laughed sententi- 
 ously. " Oh, get along ! You know he is and such a 
 gentleman, too what I mean you'd almost think he was 
 in society you know what I mean, dear." 
 
 " So he is he is a gentleman." 
 
 The words had slipped from Nanno's lips before she 
 could stop them. She cried in her heart in vain to get 
 them back ; a fruitless combat against windmills. The in- 
 sinuation that he was not a gentleman, the subtle insult 
 of supposing that, from his looks, he might even be in 
 society, when she knew that he was, had seen him in its 
 midst herself, was more than she could withstand. He 
 might be in Society ! And that word society meant a 
 great deal to her. She moved amongst a class of people 
 who used it to describe refinement, wealth, romance all, 
 in fact, that was the unattainable to them. 
 
 Miss Shand was delighted with the information. It 
 corroborated what she had already thought herself, and 
 served the more to increase her curiosity and interest. 
 
 " D'you know, I guessed as much," she said immediately, 
 assuming not to have noticed Nanno's evident regret for 
 her reply. " He seems different to other men men like 
 Mr. Mossop, for instance doesn't he, dear ? " 
 
 Nanno admitted that there was a difference between him 
 and that unctuous employer of Maynard's stores.
 
 TRAFFIC. 217 
 
 " I suppose you've known him quite a long time ? " 
 Miss Shand went on craftily. 
 
 " A little more than two years," Xanno replied proudly. 
 
 Her companion looked at her enviously, yet with undis- 
 guised admiration. 
 
 " Is he serious, d'you think ? " she asked. " Seems a 
 long time, doesn't it ? " 
 
 Xanno opened her eyes. 
 
 "What do you mean by serious?" she asked. 
 
 "Well, when's he going to marry you? Two years is a 
 long time isn't it ? " 
 
 Xanno leaned on the table and looked with some sort 
 of amazement into Miss Shand's face. 
 
 " Marry me ? " she repeated. " Me ? When's he going 
 to marry me ? Why, he's a gentleman in society." 
 
 " Well I don't mind that. Gentlemen in society marry 
 actresses sometimes. It isn't because a man's a gentle- 
 man that he can have his time with a girl a good girl 
 like yon are, too for two years, and not marry her de- 
 cently. One woman's the same as another, as far as that 
 goes. A woman's virtue's not for sale at least, that's 
 what I say it's only when her virtue's gone that you can 
 buy from a woman." 
 
 Xanno could scarcely contain her surprise. For the 
 first few words of what she said, she could not believe that 
 Miss Shand was speaking seriously. Such thoughts as 
 these were utterly foreign to her. It was as though she 
 had been shown an unexpected glimpse into the manners 
 and customs of a life that was not her own. How any- 
 one could think such things of Mr. Jerningham, amazed 
 her. Then, also, the suggestion of his marrying her 
 seemed so completely preposterous, even putting aside the 
 fact that she was married already. 
 
 "You don't know what you're talking about," she said
 
 218 TRAFFIC. 
 
 at last. " Shure, he's nothing more than a friend to me, 
 and never will be anything more. You don't know what 
 you're saying when you think he's a man like that." 
 
 It was Miss Shand's turn to be surprised. She knew 
 that Nanno was telling the truth ; but she could not under- 
 stand how, after an acquaintance of two years, they were 
 nothing more than friends. As far as Jerningham him- 
 self was concerned, she had her own opinion of his nature 
 as a man. Her experience of those who considered them- 
 selves gentlemen, and whom, sometimes, she considerd to 
 be gentlemen, too, had always proved that the one motive 
 controlled them all; and it is hard to make a woman of 
 some experience believe that there are many exceptions to 
 the rule which her experience dictates to her. 
 
 " I'm sure I didn't mean to say anything unkind, dear," 
 she said tactfully. " Of course, I'm sure I'm all wrong. 
 But it does surprise me fancy your only being friends! 
 I thought it was something far more romantic ! " 
 
 As though to place a climax on all that had been said, 
 Mrs. Hudson, at that moment, opened the door and came 
 into the room. 
 
 " There's a gentleman as wants to see you, miss," she 
 said. 
 
 " A gentleman ? " 
 
 " Mr. Jerningham, 'e calls 'isself ." 
 
 Nanno's face flamed, and Miss Shand jumped with the 
 agility of a woman's mind to her conclusion. 
 
 " Oh ! can't he come in, Mrs. Hudson ? " she took it 
 upon herself to say. " It's all right." 
 
 " Well, I'm sure I don't mind." 
 
 Nanno stood up from the table. 
 
 " No he can't come in," she said. " I'll go out and see 
 him." 
 
 Miss Shand laughed as Mrs. Hudson, went away.
 
 TRAFFIC. 219 
 
 " I guessed he was more than a friend," she said some- 
 what spitefully. 
 
 This was an insinuation that Nanno could not bear. 
 She hated to hear any one make it. He was only a friend ! 
 How could he be anything else, when she was a married 
 woman? She would show Miss Shand that she was 
 wrong. 
 
 " Mrs. Hudson ! " she called out, going to the door, 
 " ask Mr. Jerningham to come upstairs ! "
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 JERNINGHAM stood in the doorway, holding his hat in 
 his hand. 
 
 " I guessed I was intruding," he said, " by the doubtful 
 way in which the fat lady downstairs said I might come 
 up." He looked particularly at Nanno. " I really only 
 wanted to see you for a minute." 
 
 He came farther into the room, and then Nanno, nerv- 
 ous and timid as to what she should do, took his out- 
 stretched hand. 
 
 " This is Miss Shand," she said, turning towards her 
 companion. " Mr. Jerningham." 
 
 Miss Shand effusively grasped his hand, ill concealing 
 her eagerness to meet him. 
 
 " How do you do ? " she said, and she smiled engagingly. 
 
 Jerningham, a little overwhelmed, murmured something 
 inaudibly. He was not a man who could suffer being 
 lionized with imperturbable ease. Nanno placed a chair 
 for him and asked him to sit down. 
 
 " Were you in the middle of a meal ? " he asked. 
 " Don't let me stop you." 
 
 They both assured him that they had finished; Nanno 
 with shy timidity, Miss Shand with confident assertion 
 and admiring eyes. 
 
 " Is this a sort of gala night, then ? " he asked. " Some- 
 body's birthday, or something like that ? " 
 
 Nanno smiled. "Miss Shand comes in and plays the 
 violin for me sometimes," she explained " she plays beau- 
 
 220
 
 TRAFFIC 1 . 221 
 
 tifully, and she leads the orchestra at Maynard's." These 
 last two statements she made with generous impulse, but 
 Mi?s Shand vigorously denied them : vigorously, because it 
 called more attention to an accomplishment which she pos- 
 sessed in advantage of her companion. 
 
 If this man Jerningham were only a friend of Xanno's, 
 as platonic as ISTanno would have suggested him to be, 
 there seemed to her no reason why she should not endeavor 
 to pave her own path towards his favor. There had been 
 a sufficient number of examples in her life to prove to her 
 that she was attractive to men. Looking at her own re- 
 flection in a glass, she would have called herself pretty; 
 but her attraction to the other sex did not originate from 
 that point of view. There was something animal in her 
 features, something suggestive in her expression. When 
 a man noticed her, it was because, in the way she was 
 made, in the way she walked, in the way she dressed, and 
 in the way she looked at him, he was carried to a thought 
 of her body rather than of her mind. The world contains 
 many such women; the stage is peopled with them. 
 
 And so she vigorously denied Xanno's praise of her, 
 in the hope that she would be asked to play. Her hope 
 was fulfilled. More out of a sense of politeness than any 
 desire for music, Jerningham expressed a wish to hear her. 
 
 She rose from her seat at once, lest the request should 
 not be repeated, but protested all the time, as she lifted her 
 violin out from its case and despoiled it of its silk wrap- 
 ping, that Xanno had grossly exaggerated her ability. 
 
 When once the instrument was under her chin and 
 she began to tune the strings, she assumed a pose of 
 caressing sensuousness ; that same pose which Xanno had 
 been attracted to when she had first seen her. On many 
 men it had the same effect. She knew very well how she 
 appeared. That pose had not been studied in a long
 
 223 TRAFFIC. 
 
 mirror without purpose. She gave the impression that, 
 as she fondled her violin, so she would cling in passive 
 passion to the man whom she would love. 
 
 Then she began to play, choosing a somewhat common- 
 place tune; one, also, that asked less for the need of an 
 accompaniment. It moved slowly, seductively. She 
 thrilled each note with a passionate tremolo, and, as she 
 played, her eyes sought Jerningham's as though she were 
 trying to speak. For the first few moments he watched 
 her face, he saw her pose ; then, when he became conscious 
 of her eyes, he turned uncomfortably away. 
 
 But Kanno, whom she left unnoticed, never looked in 
 any other direction. She was fascinated, as a snake fas- 
 cinates its prey; fascinated by a loathing and a dread, a 
 fear and a contempt. Once she glanced at Jerningham, a 
 glance filled with trembling apprehension. He was not 
 looking at Miss Shand, but in his face she thought she saw 
 him caught within the web; struggling half-heartedly in 
 the spirit to free himself, yet in the flesh quiescent; suc- 
 cumbed. 
 
 It was probably from the point of that moment that 
 the thorn entered Nanno's side that she first felt the 
 prick of the goad in her flesh, galling her young blood, 
 making her leap like a restive filly into the flood of life 
 which forever swells on to the eddying whirlpools and the 
 seething cataracts. 
 
 The bitter knowledge that, however low she stooped. 
 however contemptible her methods were, Miss Shand was 
 utterly within her rights when she set out to fascinate 
 Jerningham that was the pricking goad, and it galled 
 incessantly. Nanno had not asked that he should be more 
 than a friend to her. Her most vital senses had not till 
 then been touched by any other desire of him. Now she 
 knew that if Miss Shand, with 'her superior right the
 
 TRAFFIC. 223 
 
 superior right of her freedom were to win him, the 
 friendship would break, as a bubble that escapes and is 
 caught in its passage by a gust of wind. 
 
 Months might have gone by, had conditions remained 
 as they were, and Xanno would still have believed herself 
 to be contented with friendship. But now, brought to a 
 crisis in a moment, she had come to know that she loved 
 this quiet, simple man with his unselfish ways and his 
 gentle consideration of her. She loved him for his 
 strength, as she loved him for his almost childlike interests 
 in little things. And still, even with that knowledge press- 
 ing through her blood, there was nothing of the sensual in 
 her affection. The matter was almost entirely intellectual 
 She loved him with her mind, though it is not improbable 
 that, had this realization come to her before her marriage 
 with Jamesy, she might then have loved him passionately, 
 too. But, compared with the instincts that were alive in 
 her companion, her thoughts of Jerningham were as un- 
 tainted as the air of the early morning that is swept up 
 from the sea. She had been brought by wholesome jealousy 
 to know that she wanted him for herself. It was a desire 
 that she would not disclose. Above everything in her mind 
 there rose the consideration of him, his happiness, his wel- 
 fare. These were infinitely more dear to her than any 
 pleasure of her own and, with a subtle instinct, as she 
 watched her companion's face, she knew that they were 
 safer in her hands than in the keeping of Miss Shand. 
 
 When the playing was finished, the performer laid her 
 violin back in its case. Her hands were shaking as she 
 wrapped the silk scarf around it little beads of perspira- 
 tion stood out upon her lip. 
 
 " Thank you very much, Miss Shand," Jerningham said, 
 as she came back to the table. "I don't know a thing 
 about music, but it sounded very nice."
 
 224 TRAFFIC. 
 
 He did not look at her while he spoke, though her eyes 
 were strained to his. 
 
 " It's not up to much to play without an accompani- 
 ment." She turned to Nanno. " Sounds better with the 
 orchestra doesn't it, dear ? " 
 
 " I think it does," Nanno replied. 
 
 There followed a slight pause between the three, then 
 Jerningham rose to his feet. 
 
 " I have to be getting off," he said decisively. He saw 
 no opportunity of Miss Shand's departure, and so hoped 
 that Nanno might come downstairs with him to the door. 
 
 Miss Shand at once picked up her violin case. 
 
 " I must go too, dear," she said. " I said I couldn't 
 stay for long didn't I ? " 
 
 Nanno looked for a moment from one to the other. 
 The thought had leaped into her mind that there might 
 be some understanding between them, but the half-con- 
 cealed annoyance that passed through Jerningham's eyes 
 dispelled the suspicion. Such a thought, by nature, was 
 beneath her. On the whole, perhaps, she gave too much 
 trust to the people whom she met; but now she was 
 racked with jealousy. Her heart beat with it, her breath 
 was quickened by it. 
 
 " Would you like to put on your hat, then? " she said. 
 
 Miss Shand readily assented, passing at once into the 
 inner room. 
 
 The moment that they were left alone, Jerningham came 
 to Nanno's side. 
 
 " I haven't said what I wanted to, yet," he asid quietly. 
 
 She looked up at him. 
 
 " What is it?" 
 
 " I have to go down to a place called Hitchin to-morrow 
 afternoon, to see a client. Hitchin's a jolly little country 
 place, stocked with quaint corners not like your country,
 
 TRAFFIC. 225 
 
 places in Ireland more civilized, you know. It's in 
 Hertford, about an hour's journey outside London " 
 
 " Well ? " she said at last. He would have gone labor- 
 ing on for some time longer, sensitive about coming to the 
 point of what he wanted to say. 
 
 " I want to know if you'd like to come," he said, with 
 sudden impulse. " The outing'll do you a heap of good, 
 and you haven't seen any of the country in England yet 
 have you ? " 
 
 " No [ haven't." 
 
 " Well d'you think you'd like it ? We'll try what sort 
 of tea they'll give us down at Hitchin. You'd better 
 come, you know. Of course, if you think " 
 
 " 'Tis the way I don't think anything at all except 
 that I'd like to come. I would indeed." 
 
 He patted her back in a friendly way. 
 
 " That's remarkably sensible," he said gaily. " Stick- 
 ing up here in town, when there's the whole acreage of 
 England open to you, will only lay you up. You want 
 fathering, you know." 
 
 She laughed brightly, and then they made their arrange- 
 ments for the morrow. At any other time, Nanno might 
 have refused this offer, much as it appealed to her. But 
 then, with jealousy knocking at her heart, she would have 
 been inhuman had she not consented. 
 
 The next moment, Miss Shand came in from the other 
 room. 
 
 " Which way are you going, Mr. Jerningham ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " The City," he replied. 
 
 " Oh then we shall be going together. I live up the 
 Gray's Inn Eoad." 
 
 Xanno had anticipated this. She knew that it had been 
 the intention of Miss Shand's departure and, when they 
 15
 
 226 TRAFFIC. 
 
 had gone, and the noise of the hall door closing below had 
 reached her ears, she stood at the closed window and 
 pictured them in her imagination in the street beneath. 
 Jerningham had asked her to go with him the next day; 
 but then, in the all-important present, Miss Shand had 
 him to herself. A breath of hot wind seemed to fan her 
 face. Yet still she stood at the window, irresolute. At 
 last the inclination overcame her. She undid the bolt, 
 and raised the window; then, leaning out, she looked up 
 the street. 
 
 They were just turning the corner. Before they were 
 out of sight, she saw Miss Shand look up into his face; 
 in a breath of silence, she heard her laugh. So do voices 
 sound in hell. The next moment, they had gone. She 
 stood back again into the room, following them with her 
 mind's eye. 
 
 " Oh ! " she exclaimed involuntarily, as the picture be- 
 came vivid; "it's wrong o' me I know it's wrong! "
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THERE was no liltle anticipation in Jerningham's mind 
 as he walked away with Miss Shand that night. He did 
 not understand women ; he did not understand Miss Shand 
 but he knew, by no very subtle instinct, when the devil 
 was at large. Without exactly understanding why, he 
 had seen it in her eyes as she had played the violin with- 
 out reasoning the cause, he had heard it in her voice when 
 she had announced that she too was coming home and that 
 their ways lay in the same direction. 
 
 Her laugh the laugh that Nanno had heard had been 
 one of flattery at some dry remark that he had made, not 
 intended to be exactly humorous. And in that laugh, he 
 heard and felt her abandonment. Then for some mo- 
 ments they had walked on in silence. 
 
 " Have you known Nanno Troy for long ? " he asked 
 presently. 
 
 " Only since she came to Maynard's. She's a dear 
 little thing: I'm very fond of her." 
 
 Jerningham nodded approvingly. He did not follow 
 her subtle discretion. He did not see the motive behind 
 her remark, and accordingly it produced the effect she 
 wished for. He thawed a little; he became more genial. 
 In a few minutes they were laughing and talking with a 
 greater ease. 
 
 " Where do you live ? " she asked after a time. 
 
 "The Temple Middle Temple Plowden Buildings." 
 227
 
 228 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Oh you poor thing. Do you live by yourself then? " 
 
 " An inveterate bachelor." 
 
 " Oh ? " There was a depth of insinuation in her voice. 
 "Inveterate?" she added "But you never know. I ex- 
 pect you find you can get along just as well that way 
 though eh ? " 
 
 Jerningham laughed sharply at her audacity. 
 
 " Afraid I don't consider the question much either way," 
 he answered. 
 
 By an unnoticeable degree, she brought her step closer 
 to his, so that they touched as they walked. He thought 
 it was by accident until it recurred again once or twice. 
 Then he looked at her face. 
 
 " Are you going back home again now ? " she asked. 
 
 "I am." 
 
 "All by yourself?" 
 
 " All by myself." 
 
 She looked up at him with a suggestive smile. " And 
 you an inveterate bachelor oh, don't tell me ! " 
 
 "I am, I assure you. It's too late to turn into a 
 theater ; besides, I don't know that I'd care to go to one if 
 I could." 
 
 "I didn't mean that you know I didn't." 
 
 " Then what did you mean ? " 
 
 " Do you mind if I take your arm ? it's so slippy and 
 muddy underfoot." 
 
 " Suppose we get a hansom it is much too wet for 
 walking. I can drive you back. It's more or less in my 
 way." 
 
 " Oh that 'ud be luscious wouldn't it ? " 
 
 Jerningham hailed a passing hansom, helped her in, 
 asked her the address of her rooms and, telling the cab- 
 man where to drive, shut the doors upon them. 
 
 She sat as close to him as she could, her elbow pro-
 
 TRAFFIC. 229 
 
 truding across his arm, and for a moment he shut his eyes, 
 listening to the conflict of his conscience with himself. 
 On one side was urged the policy to take life as it came; 
 as in a measure he had always taken it. On the other 
 side he saw the sad, wistful eyes of Nanno, whom they 
 had just left behind them. Involuntarily he made a com- 
 parison between this sensuous girl beside him and her. 
 The man in him, the man himself, as God had made him, 
 was revolted by the picture that it produced. Beside this 
 piece of flotsam of London life, this girl who made her 
 existence a trap for the weaker nature of men, Nanno 
 stood apart as a fresh wild flower that rises out of a dust- 
 heap : so a daffodil makes pollen out of that dust of pure 
 gold and extracts it from the refuse of the earth. She 
 was all that eliminated the best side of a man from the 
 dross of his nature. She was a pure, undefiled child, with 
 a majestic faith; whilst this girl here was nothing but the 
 scum that finds its way to the surface, floating about, 
 attracted to everything that comes near its course. 
 
 Why did he not desire to win Nanno, who was clean, 
 white, fresh as God had sent her forth ISTanno, whose 
 untouched mind would lift him above this occasional de- 
 mand to take the fruit that drops with its sordid over- 
 ripeness into the hand? 
 
 While these thoughts passed through his mind he an- 
 swered Miss Shand with disinterested monosyllables. She 
 could extract nothing from him because he was just at 
 that crisis of a man's life when the lesser things of the 
 world become insignificant before the great, illuminating 
 power of some higher, more inspiring motive. 
 
 The hero is not by any means the perfect man. He 
 has his sins he has his feelings. The hero rather is 
 the man who, passing through life, dealing honorably 
 with all men and all women even with the worst of them
 
 230 TRAFFIC. 
 
 is at last lifted above the surface where all light matter 
 lies; lifted above it by the great light of some nobler feel- 
 ing the unconquerable hope of being able to conquer with 
 the right; lifted above a common desire to an unselfish 
 fanaticism as Jerningham, in his comparison between 
 Nanno and Miss Shand, was borne above the wish to take 
 the life that came into the desire to win the life that 
 was beyond him. Such a state as this is hero-ship; the 
 moment when a human being, launching forth beyond that 
 tide of earthly endeavor to reach the ultimate good, as- 
 cends above the needs of the flesh towards the striving of 
 the spirit. All the world sets forth to climb that moun- 
 tain of good intention; but it is only the hero who raises 
 his head above the clouds and gains the light in the 
 brilliant atmosphere beyond. 
 
 Unconsciously, ISTanno had effected her first influence 
 upon Jerningham; but the attitude that his mind had 
 reached was because of her, rather than for her sake. 
 Such a man, living the solitary life that he had lived, is 
 not quick to see the state of mind into which he is drift- 
 ing. He can realize the present and its immediate sur- 
 roundings, but he is not sufficiently introspective to grasp 
 the trend of circumstances and construe their meaning to 
 himself. Jerningham was fully aware that Nanno had 
 been the influence which had led him to the conquering 
 of his senses; but he was not yet aware that he loved her. 
 The moment when a man recognizes that a certain woman 
 is essential to him, had not as yet illuminated his under- 
 standing. He put it all down to interest; he ascribed it 
 to the belief that women can be the best as also they 
 may be the worst influence in a man's life. In that mo- 
 ment, when he had determined to resist the opportunity 
 that Miss Shand was subtly offering to him, he thought 
 of Nanno as a personality infinitely beyond his reach, in-
 
 TRAFFIC. 231 
 
 finitely beyond the principles of his own conception of 
 morality. And this state of mind, it needed only one 
 spark of intimacy to set into the flame of an absorbing 
 passion. For that his whole nature was unconsciously 
 waiting. 
 
 The cab at last pulled up opposite the house where Miss 
 Shand lived. Jerningham got out first, protecting the 
 wheel, so that she should not soil her skirt. She waited 
 while he paid the driver and then, as the man drove off, 
 Jerningham turned and held out his hand. 
 
 " Good-night," he said. 
 
 She did not offer to take his hand. She looked up ex- 
 pectantly into his face. 
 
 " Won't you come in for a bit ? " she asked. 
 
 " I don't think I'd better," he replied quietly. 
 
 She came closer to him, still looking up into his face. 
 " Just for a little while come along ? " 
 
 " I don't think I'd better," he repeated stolidly. 
 
 " I suppose you think there'd be a lot of people in the 
 house ? There won't we can be quite alone. Do come 
 I want you to." Her voice quivered on the last words. 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " I'm going back to the Temple," he said. 
 
 She looked at him eagerly. 
 
 " Well take me," she suggested. 
 
 He stood back from her. 
 
 "Miss Shand," he said "don't think I blame you in 
 the least. Things of that sort scarcely enter my head. I 
 
 suppose I've knocked about too much But you're a 
 
 friend of Xanno Troy's. It's probably in your hands 
 to a certain extent what outlook she gets of life. At 
 present she's absolutely untouched and there's no need 
 to describe what you want with me now I've told you 
 blame doesn't enter my head but if you spoiled Xanno
 
 232 TRAFFIC. 
 
 Troy's life you'd be committing the greatest sin you ever 
 did in the whole of your existence." 
 
 All the time she watched his face; and when he had 
 finished, she laughed with passionate disappointment. 
 Her lip curled, defying the tears of her chagrin. 
 
 " Why, you love her yourself ! " she exclaimed ironically. 
 " You love her yourself, and she told me you were only a 
 friend. I guessed she was talking out of the back of her 
 neck ! " 
 
 "I love her?" Jerningham repeated; "I think a great 
 deal of her but heavens! I've never been in love in 
 my life. But don't you forget what I say. In a measure 
 Nanno Troy is in your hands. Good-night." 
 
 He turned away. She watched him as he walked up the 
 muddy, pavement into the Gray's Inn Road, but he did not 
 look back, as she had half hoped that he would. 
 
 " I love her ? " he kept repeating to himself. " I love 
 her? I wonder what made her think that. She's a 
 splendid character, of course but "
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE impulse upon which Xanno had accepted Jerning- 
 ham's proposal that she should go with him into the 
 country had its reaction. With subsequent consideration, 
 she believed that she had done wrong. Knowing, as she 
 did now, that she loved him, it seemed but a tempting of 
 temptation to yield to the delight of having his companion- 
 ship. Yet again and again the thought prompted itself 
 she was really nothing to him. Being with him might 
 be the draining of a cup filled up to the brim with a 
 bitter pleasure, yet so long as she took the draught in 
 secret, who would it hurt but herself ? There was no con- 
 tingency which she could foresee, under whose influence 
 she would expose her secret. Then, last of all, on this 
 occasion at least, she had promised, and the high regard 
 in which she held him forbade her from breaking it. 
 
 And so it was the next day that they met at the station, 
 and left London by some early afternoon train. 
 
 " I've looked up the trains back," Jerningham told her, 
 when they were seated in the empty first-class carriage, 
 " and the last one leaves Hitchin at seven o'clock in the 
 evening, so that we'll have to come by that whether we like 
 it or not." 
 
 " But shure, that's quite late enough," she said. 
 
 " D'you think so ? I don't. I wanted to give you 
 dinner there. There's a fine old-fashioned inn in the 
 High Street, about three hundred years old, with a reg- 
 ular coaching courtyard that's where we'll have tea. 
 
 233
 
 234 TRAFFIC. 
 
 And I wanted to have dinner. Well, we can get that up 
 in town." 
 
 She did not tell him then that she would go straight 
 back home when they returned ; but she made up her mind 
 to it. It was good to be with him certainly; but she 
 loved him every moment that he spoke she loved him 
 the more and then, when she realized the unutterable 
 hopelessness of it, it seemed to her self-torture that was 
 unnecessary. If she could only feel his arms about her 
 once, she thought just once realize that he too could love 
 her; then she believed that she could go from him forever 
 and exist upon the remembrance of that moment for the 
 rest of her life. 
 
 Jerningham watched her as, looking out of the windows 
 at the leafless trees that flitted by like passing skeletons, 
 she let these thoughts course through her mind. Miss 
 Shand's words persistently recurred to him. They 
 sounded in his memory like a distant prophecy, but be- 
 cause the moment of intimacy had not yet come, he could 
 not really understand them. To love meant in a sense 
 to desire and, as he looked at her, he could only think of 
 the curious loneliness of her life, her untouched virtue 
 and her majestic faith. The element of desire seemed al- 
 most sacrilege. 
 
 This state of mind, it will be admitted, could be no 
 fitter preparation for the great illumination of the greatest 
 passion in the world; the passion that must possess all 
 body and soul yet is ready without thought to give life, 
 if need be, in return. 
 
 " It's a pity it's not spring or summer time," Jerning- 
 ham said at length, after a lapse of silence. 
 
 " Ah what a pity ! " she echoed feelingly. " The 
 winter's an unkind time of the year. In Ireland, if any 
 one goes away for the winter, they always ask who died 
 when they come back,"
 
 TRAFFIC. 235 
 
 " Are you afraid of death, Xanno ? " 
 
 " I'm not then not always. There are some ways that 
 I could die quite happily. Shure, I could always die 
 happily if I got Plenary Indulgence." 
 
 " That's entire forgiveness, isn't it ? " 
 
 " It is." 
 
 "If a person obtains Plenary Indulgence, they go 
 straight to heaven don't they ? " 
 
 " They do." 
 
 " Well, now, supposing a person was excommunicated 
 from the Church couldn't they get Plenary Indulgence 
 when they were dying ? " 
 
 " They could not not if the Church had closed its 
 doors against them." As she said this, the words of 
 Father Mehan's warning echoed in her ears, and the fear 
 of such a state of desolation chilled the blood in her. She 
 closed her eyes involuntarily. Jerningham watched her, 
 half-seeing what she felt. 
 
 " The thought of such a possibility frightens you eh ? " 
 he said questioningly. 
 
 She looked out of the window. 
 
 " Couldn't we talk of something else ? " she suggested. 
 
 He turned the conversation lightly into another channel. 
 
 So far they had had the carriage to themselves, but at 
 the next station where they stopped, a smartly dressed 
 woman and an immaculate-Jooking man got in. Seeing 
 Xanno and Jerningham alone together, the man had hesi- 
 tated when he approached the door. 
 
 " Oh, this'll do," the woman said petulantly, and they 
 had entered the carriage, occupying two corners at the 
 farther end. 
 
 " Well, thank goodness, that's over," she said, leaning 
 back in her seat and lifting her veil on to her forehead. 
 
 "It was a tight job," said the man, " but I think we 
 managed."
 
 236 TRAFFIC. 
 
 "Tight? Xot a bit of it ! " 
 
 " But look at the way she cried." 
 
 The woman looked at her companion with some pity. 
 
 " Cried ! Do you think there was any salt in those 
 tears?" 
 
 " How on earth should I know ? I saw plenty rolling 
 down her cheeks." 
 
 The woman shrugged her elegant shoulders. 
 
 " Men are always sentimentalists ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 " I don't call that sentiment. There was not a doubt 
 in my mind that she was fearfully cut up. You admitted 
 yourself, before we got there, that she was pretty keen 
 on the chap. I don't suppose she cared for him any the 
 less because she saw it was better to give him up. Why, 
 they've been engaged for five years." 
 
 Through all this conversation Xanno and Jerningham 
 were silent. They could not help listening; the people 
 made no effort to lower their voices. It is almost a sign 
 of breeding nowadays to talk with a loud voice. 
 
 " Hadn't they been engaged five years ? " the man con- 
 tinued. 
 
 " What has that to do with it? " 
 
 " Good deal, I should think. You can't obliterate five 
 years in five minutes." 
 
 "No, you couldn't; but a woman can if it's to her 
 own advantage. Now, I'll just tell you something 
 merely for the sake of opening your eyes." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " You heard her say didn't you that she didn't care 
 whether he had five thousand a year or fifty thousand ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, when you went into the hall, she crossed to the 
 glass over the mantelpiece, dried her eyes, settled her 
 hair a bit, and then came and put her hands on my
 
 TRAFFIC. 237 
 
 shoulders. ' Has he really five thousand a year? ' she said. 
 I told her, of course, that we knew it for an absolute fact. 
 Then she dangled about with that pendant you gave me, 
 and asked me what he'd said and I told putting it the 
 best way I could." 
 
 " I know/' said her companion, nodding comprehen- 
 sively. 
 
 " And then what d'you think she said ? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " She said, ' Of course, I'm sure I shall like him aw- 
 fully, when I get to know him a little better he's fright- 
 fully good-natured.' t And he's got five thousand a year, 
 which is more than ten times better than an uncertain 
 five hundred,' I said. She nodded. ' Is he very much in 
 love ? ' she said then. Then I nodded. And then she 
 laughed it was the sort of giggle when a girl is paid a 
 compliment. ' I'm awfully lucky, aren't I ? ' she said." 
 
 "Did she really say that?" the man asked, amazed. 
 " Did she say that she was lucky? " 
 
 " Of course she did so she is." 
 
 " Good heavens ! And she was crying again like a fish 
 when you came out into the hall again." 
 
 " Well, you can't expect a woman to show everything 
 she's feeling before a man. I assure you sentiment is 
 mostly a pose when you find it in women. Men buy and 
 women sell there must be some bluff somewhere over a 
 transaction like that. She laughed, but the man and he 
 was evidently her husband looked at her with dazed 
 comprehension. 
 
 At the next station they got out, and then Jerningham 
 and ISTanno looked at each other. Throughout the whole 
 of the conversation they had not said a word. The whole 
 affair had been so consecutive, so obvious. It was a com-
 
 238 TRAFFIC. 
 
 plete story of life, ripped from the seam. As soon as the 
 carriage door had closed, Jerningham laughed ironically. 
 
 " Did you listen to all that ? " he asked. 
 
 " I did." 
 
 " What did you make of it ? " 
 
 " The way some friend of theirs was going to be married 
 to one man, and they'd been to persuade her to break it 
 off for another with more money." 
 
 " That's it. The friend I should imagine was the wo- 
 man's sister. But what did you think of it ? " 
 
 " I don't know that I thought anything." 
 
 Jerningham leaned forward on his seat and looked up at 
 her. 
 
 " I did," he said " I thought a good deal. It's more 
 or less true what that woman said men want to buy and 
 women have to sell it's the proper thing for a woman to 
 be married ; either for the look of it or the homing instinct. 
 But, my heavens surely every woman doesn't bluff, does 
 she ? " He half paused, in tentative expectation that she 
 would answer him. 
 
 " You wouldn't bluff would you, Nanno ? " he went 
 on, putting the question more seriously and directly to 
 her. 
 
 She looked frightened into his eyes. 
 
 " What d'ye mean by bluff ? ' she asked, relapsing into 
 her old use of the pronoun. 
 
 " Would you pretend you loved a man in order to get 
 him to marry you, if you thought he had a comfortable 
 position to offer ? " 
 
 "I would not," she said, half confused by the inpulsive 
 intensity of his question. 
 
 "Would you marry a man," he persisted, little think- 
 ing how he was torturing her mind, "simply because he
 
 TRAFFIC. 239 
 
 could better your position in life, or because you considered 
 that a woman's only justification is marriage ? " 
 
 For a moment before she answered, she wondered 
 whether it would be right for her to say what she really 
 thought. For fear he might think too well of her, ought 
 she not to make herself a disappointment to him and an- 
 swer that she would marry any man who could give her a 
 comfortable home, and that from a sense of duty to her- 
 self? An inner voice cried to her that this was untrue. 
 And why should she tell him an untruth? She had been 
 forced into marriage with the man who was her husband; 
 that alone proved to her that, if she answered as her con- 
 science prompted, it would be false. 
 
 " Would you marry a man for either of these reasons ? " 
 he asked again. 
 
 She paused. " I would not," she said. 
 
 " You'd marry him because you loved him ? " 
 
 " I would." 
 
 " Were you ever in love, Xanno ? " he added. 
 
 She looked across the carriage with strained eyes, and 
 though she did not see, she felt the intensity in his. 
 
 " Why do you ask me those questions ? " she said pite- 
 ously, with averted face. 
 
 Before he could reply to her, the train slowed down, and 
 they entered a station. 
 
 " We get out here," he said. " This is Hitchin."
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 WHILE Jerningham went to see his client, Nanno wan- 
 dered round the thriving little market-town. He had 
 told her to meet him at four o'clock outside a shop of her 
 own selection in the High Street, and until then much 
 to his disgust, and he admitted it she was compelled to 
 entertain herself. 
 
 Entertainment to ISTanno consisted in looking into one 
 shop-window after another; pointing out to herself in this 
 one, various little things that she would like to buy for 
 her room, and in that, speculating upon the price of hats 
 or blouses which she knew were beyond the power of her 
 pocket to purchase. Jerningham had tried to persuade 
 her to go and wait for him in the hotel where they wore 
 to have tea, but this she refused. She felt sensitive about 
 what people might think of her. 
 
 After much indiscriminate wandering, she at last 
 reached the market-place. The half-lights of the evening 
 were beginning to creep out of the shadows. Christmas 
 was only two weeks away, and the square of stalls within 
 the square of houses had already begun to light up their 
 lamps. 
 
 The entire picture of the numerous sweet-stalls with 
 their loads of brightly colored sweets, the vegetable-stalls 
 with their burdens of brilliant greens and glaring reds that 
 picked out daubs of color with no outline and no shape, 
 offered such an effect as a Whistler might have produced. 
 No great ability of technique would have been needed for 
 
 240
 
 TRAFFIC. 241 
 
 its representation upon canvas : only a heart that loved it 
 for its dull, soft beauty's sake, for its cunning indefm- 
 ability and its subtle gradients of light. Here and there 
 a face of a man or of a woman would be lit up in profile 
 by the light of a smoky lamp. The stalls all lost their 
 shapes in the shadows that surrounded them. Back- 
 grounded on every side by the deep tones of the houses 
 of the square, the outline of one thing was washed into 
 another; whilst, here, there, and everywhere, lightless 
 patches of color and splashes of orange from the lamps 
 stole away out of the mist and reached the eye with efforts 
 of relief. 
 
 To Xanno it appealed indefinably. For some moments 
 it made her think of the Pattern day at home and, until 
 it was time for her to go and meet Jerningham, she 
 waited there and watched the business that was being con- 
 ducted on every side of her. 
 
 At length, when the church clock struck the hour of 
 four, she turned away in the direction of the High Street. 
 The lamplighter was already going his rounds. One by 
 one, as he passed down the street, a little beacon was 
 kindled in its brazier and sought out its reflection in the 
 puddle that made murky mirrors in the road. In less 
 than five minutes she would be with him again; he would 
 perhaps be asking her the same questions which the arrival 
 of their train in Hitchin had put an end to. What did 
 it mean? And how should she answer them? During 
 the hour in which she had been away from him, she had 
 tried to think it all out. "What lay behind those questions 
 he had asked? She did not rightly know. She could 
 not believe that there had ever entered his consideration 
 a thought of marrying her. There was nothing in her to 
 sufficiently attract him to that ; it was for this reason, as 
 much as any other, that she felt so grateful to him for 
 16
 
 242 TRAFFIC. 
 
 his friendship. No man, she thought, would ever see in 
 the poverty of her breeding, the lack of her education, 
 so much as he had seen. Yet, creating the most unlikely 
 suppositions, if it were so, that he even for a moment had 
 thought of making her his wife, would it not be right for 
 her to tell him now; to break up their friendship at once 
 by giving him the truth about herself? 
 
 When she saw him in the distance; when she saw the 
 smile of eagerness that broke over his face, she said she 
 knew it would be right. 
 
 " It must be ! " she exclaimed under her breath as she 
 approached him, and there was a catch in her voice, the 
 voluntary breaking of her own happiness. It was the first 
 times since she had left Ireland that the iron yoke had 
 begun really to bite into the flesh; but she set her teeth, 
 her eyes smiled when she met him. He did not know that 
 she was walking into the valley of the shadow of death 
 the death of all her hopes, of all her hold on life. Beyond, 
 there seemed nothing to her but the gray, forbidding light, 
 as when the morning had broken after the night when she 
 had first left her husband. 
 
 " You must be fearfully cold," he said ; and he took 
 her arm in such a way that she could not deny him. 
 " We'll get the tea right away." 
 
 He brought her back to the hotel, and there in the 
 coffee-room, before a blazing fire, where big logs of wood 
 were burning with an aromatic scent, they had their tea 
 served. 
 
 " Well, what did you think of Hitchin ? " he asked, rub- 
 bing his hands at the blaze and all the time watching her 
 as she poured out the tea. 
 
 ""Pis a nice little place," she said. "I was looking 
 at the market for some time. Do you know what it re- 
 minded me of ? "
 
 TRAFFIC. 243 
 
 "No." 
 
 " The Pattern in Rathmore." 
 
 " Ah by Jove, yes the Pattern. Do you remember 
 that evening when you talked to me about saints ? " 
 
 She nooded her head seriously. 
 
 " I've often sat up alone in chambers and thought about 
 you that night. And d'you remember when I brought 
 you back to Troy's Lane ? " 
 
 " We stood at the gate." 
 
 " Yes and then, when we heard some one laughing 
 inside in the cottage, I asked you if that was why 'you 
 hadn't liked to go home." 
 
 "I remember." 
 
 " And you didn't answer : you simply said good-night." 
 
 " Did I ? " 
 
 "Yes that's what you said, and then you went across 
 the yard into the kitchen. But I still stayed at the gate." 
 
 " Oh Mr. Jerningham ! " 
 
 " I saw you open the door I heard the laughter and 
 singing again, and I saw a crowd of men who, from the 
 look of them, had been drinking; and that was why you 
 hadn't liked to go home wasn't it ? " 
 
 For a mere moment she tried to look into his face. The 
 thought that even then, when they had been acquainted 
 for so short a time, he had watched over her and under- 
 stood her, filled her with a gratitude which in that one 
 moment glittered like a luster in her eyes. The next 
 moment the luster was dissolved ; her eyes filed with tears. 
 If he understood her then, how much more did he not 
 understand her now; and now, she was to sacrifice him to 
 the inviolable law. The great God of Fate was calling 
 upon her to pay her price and, with the price in her hand, 
 she stood at the counter of life broken with her misery, 
 shaken with her sobs.
 
 244 TRAFFIC. 
 
 For that brief moment when she had looked at him 
 with gratitude in her eyes, she had known that her time 
 of payment was due, if not overdue, and she tried to face 
 it with a brave heart and unshaking lips. The effort had 
 been genuine, but it had failed. Her lips quivered, her 
 eyes filled, and then, with shoulders racked by her sobbing, 
 she hid her face in her hands and cried as though endur- 
 ance could endure no more. 
 
 At first he was amazed. He had not followed her train 
 of thought; he could not see the reason for this sudden 
 outburst of weeping. But that did not alter the effect 
 it made upon him. A man believes that he understands 
 a woman better when first he sees her tears; in fact, to 
 Jerningham, this was the one moment of intimacy needed 
 to blow the spark of his passion into a devouring flame. 
 As he saw her there with bowed head, and tears streaming 
 through the fingers that covered her face, he knew that 
 she was more to him than anything he had yet known 
 the essential need, the essential influence in his life. 
 
 " Nanno ! " he exclaimed, and his arms held her. 
 " Don't cry, Nanno ! What is there to cry about ? I've 
 guessed all along that your life hasn't been particularly 
 happy but it's going to be happy now." 
 
 It would not have entered his head that it was because 
 of the possibility of this that she was crying. 
 
 " It's going to be happy now," he repeated. 
 
 She looked up at him regardless of her appearance. 
 There were pools of salt tears in the corners of her eyes, 
 just ready to tumble down her cheeks in heavy drops. She 
 looked the essence of her own misery. 
 
 " What d'ye mean by that ? " she asked, with shaking 
 yoice. 
 
 " I mean that I'm going to make your life happy for 
 you; I'm going to take you out of those lonely rooms of
 
 TRAFFIC. 245 
 
 yours ; I'm going to marry you if you'll let mo. Nanno, 
 I Idve you; I want you to be my wife." 
 
 " Glory be to God ! " she exclaimed hoarsely, and then 
 her sobbing made it impossible for her to speak. She 
 covered her face once more. She did not want him to 
 look at her then. She knew that crying made her ugly, 
 but he was not aware of it. The quaint contortion of her 
 lips only made him love her the more. 
 
 " Wouldn't you be happ} 7 , then, Xanno ? " he said 
 softly, putting his head close to hers. " Wouldn't you ? " 
 
 " Oh I would I would I know I would ! " she 
 moaned. 
 
 He stood up with the look of conquest in his face. He 
 stretched his arms above his head with an overwhelming 
 sense of possession, as though he were trying to grasp all 
 that he believed he had gainad. 
 
 " You love me, then, Xanno ? " he asked, bending over 
 her. 
 
 She stood up suddenly and faced him, the knowledge of 
 the inevitable driving the tears away before it. 
 
 " Yes I love you," she said tensely, " I love you with 
 every breath that comes out o' me but I can't marry you 
 -I can't I can't." 
 
 He fell from the altitude of his sense of conquest. 
 It was the falling of a tower, like an old man dropping 
 with fatigue. His arms hung motionless at his sides. 
 His eyes looked at her without understanding. 
 
 "You can't?" he repeated. "You can't? why can't 
 you?" 
 
 His mind was inert. He struggled to grasp the mean- 
 ing to what she said. He hunted for her reasons in his 
 thoughts as a blind man fights with the darkness to find 
 his way. She had not said it petulantly, as a woman who 
 dallies with her prize and loves to play it with unyielding
 
 246 TRAFFIC. 
 
 line. She had meant what she said. He realized that 
 in the passion of her words. The thought that he had 
 lost her at the very moment when he believed that she was 
 found was like a blow across his eyes. He could see noth- 
 ing but sudden flashes of reason that had no meaning in 
 them. Then, with all its power, he understood his love 
 for her. 
 
 " Why can't you ? " he asked again. 
 
 " 'Tis the way I I I'm married already." 
 
 Once she had said it, her courage fell like a pack of 
 cards. She sank back into her chair. He knew it now. 
 Nothing could take back the words. He knew it. She 
 might cry to him now that her words were a lie it would 
 remain the same. He knew it. At the bottom of her 
 heart she was not sorry. It seemed as though she had 
 humiliated herself to the rack of confession, and with the 
 reaction she felt a deep conviction of content. She had 
 put herself beyond temptation. He would hate her now, 
 and with closed eyes she waited for the first torrent of his 
 words. 
 
 But no torrent came. For a time he could only stand 
 and gaze at her sitting there, as though some blow had 
 staggered him, and he were gathering his senses for a fresh 
 onslaught. 
 
 Once or twice he put his hand up to his eyes. Once or 
 twice he half turned, as though to leave her. At last he 
 spoke; his voice had lost its vitality. In one moment it 
 had aged. 
 
 " Why haven't I been told ! " he asked. It seemed as 
 though he lodged the complaint against every one. He 
 did not throw the blame on her alone. " Why haven't I ? " 
 he repeated. 
 
 She stared into the fire. The big logs of wood burned 
 just as brightly as before, She looked round the room;
 
 TRAFFIC. 
 
 nothing had altered. Yet within the last five minutes 
 everything as she saw it had changed. The cheerful 
 flames from the fire were laughing spitefully ; the comfort- 
 able coffee-room had become gaunt and gray with the 
 spirit of her own misery. 
 
 " Why haven't I been told ? " he repeated once more. 
 
 " Oh shure, I never knew," she said. " How could I 
 know that ye'd come to care for any one like me ? Shure, 
 I'm only waiting in a restaurant I've been a servant 
 waiting at a table on ye-nhow should I know ? " 
 
 " Haven't I shown you at all ? Didn't I ask you up to 
 chambers ? Haven't I been to see you in your own rooms ? 
 Didn't I take an interest in you in Ireland ? " 
 
 All these different things he cited bitterly, at last real- 
 izing they had been the steps towards the passion that 
 now was consuming him. It seemed, when he thought of 
 it, that she must all the time have seen them in that 
 light. 
 
 "Didn't I come and look you up directly I'd seen 
 you in London, and haven't I shown you in a hundred 
 different little ways ? " 
 
 If she had only realized this at the first, how willingly 
 would she not have told him everything that very day 
 when he had come to Maynard's to see her! How will- 
 ingly she would have sacrificed all the pleasure of his 
 companionship to save him the pain that now she knew 
 he felt. But it was too late. This was one of the posi- 
 tions in the game of life that always come unexpectedly. 
 She could do nothing to save it now. 
 
 " Why don't you answer me ? " he persisted. " Haven't 
 I deserved that much generosity from you ? " 
 
 "With that word " generosity " she was stung to de- 
 fend herself in his eyes. She could not let him continue 
 to think that of her,
 
 248 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Oh don't think that, Mr. Jerningham," she pleaded. 
 " 'Twas not because I didn't think generously of ye 
 'twas not, indeed 'twas not. If I'd ever dreamed it was 
 going to come to this, I'd have told ye when first ye came 
 to see me at Maynard's; but how could I know that ye'd 
 ever think like this of me? only a farmer's daughter in 
 Eathmore and ye, in society here in London." 
 
 When she mentioned that word " society " he laughed 
 shortly, sharply, bitterly. 
 
 " Well, then, we were friends only if you like. 
 Couldn't you have told me in the common cause of friend- 
 ship?" 
 
 She hung her head. Now he had reached the core of 
 her weakness, now she was to expose herself to him in all 
 the poorness of her mind. But she did not flinch from 
 it. 
 
 " I didn't want to lose yeer friendship," she said in- 
 nocently. " I thought if I told ye, ye'd go away from me, 
 and 'twas the way I felt so lonely in London. It was like 
 being at home to see ye." 
 
 That touched the bigness of his heart. He stretched 
 out and clutched her hand. 
 
 " My God ! " he exclaimed, with quiet intensity, " what 
 a fiasco the whole thing is ! Here am I, just thirty-five, 
 having taken all these years to realize what it means to 
 be in love, and then discover that I've learned my lesson 
 from a married woman who can give me nothing in re- 
 turn. God ! what a fiasco ! " 
 
 Xanno hid her face in her hands. She could say noth- 
 ing; she could plead for nothing. Through her fault the 
 man she loved was to suffer, when by every right he de- 
 served the happiness that circumstance forfeited from her. 
 
 "But tell me," he went on. " Where's your husband? 
 Where were you married? When? Why aren't you liv-
 
 TRAFFIC. 249 
 
 ing with him now ? " He poured out the questions from 
 the bitter desire to know everything, as one spills away the 
 surface liquid from a tankard overfull. 
 
 Then she told him the whole story, from the moment 
 when he had left her that night in Anesk. Every word 
 of it was guarded by a gentle reticence, by which, un- 
 consciously, she only added to the tragedy it contained. 
 She offered no judgment upon her husband. She did not 
 hasten to qualify her reasons for leaving him. Xothing 
 in the telling was exaggerated; it was just the plain and 
 simple story of a miserable life misery such as Jerning- 
 ham could not credit to have entered Nanno's knowledge. 
 Putting short questions here and there, where he did not 
 fully understand, he listened to it all in dazed bewilder- 
 ment and compassion. Sometimes he emitted exclama- 
 tions of pity, sometimes of incredulous revolt; and when 
 she reached the climax her leaving Jamesy on that night 
 of the threshing he looked at her, amazed to think what 
 agony of soul she had been through, astounded at the 
 powers of her endurance and recuperation. 
 
 " We'll be late for the last train, Mr. Jerningham," she 
 said quietly, when she had finished. A clock on the wall 
 at the other end of the room pointed to a quarter of the 
 hour before seven. 
 
 He rose slowly to his feet, obeying her suggestion in- 
 stinctively, yet with his mind churning the thoughts of 
 all he had just heard. One idea was gradually taking 
 shape in his view of the whole matter. She was not 
 utterly beyond his reach. There was still an arm which, 
 outstretched, could reach her the far-grasping arm of the 
 law. There was sufficient evidence, there was sufficient 
 cause, to enable her to obtain a divorce. Unfaithfulness 
 and cruelty -nothing more was needed. A decree ni^i 
 would be granted for that, and then she would be his.
 
 250 TRAFFIC. 
 
 She loved him; she had admitted it. The whole outlook 
 seemed to brighten as the plausibility of it became clearer 
 to his mind, but, until they were once more seated in a 
 carriage of the train, where there was no likelihood of in- 
 trusion, he said nothing. 
 
 Time seemed interminable before the guard blew his 
 whistle ; but at length they felt the vibration of the engine 
 and the train moved out of the brightness of the station 
 into the dark country beyond. Then Jerningham leaned 
 forward with his elbows on his knees. 
 
 " Nanno," he said, with quiet conviction, " you're going 
 to marry me." 
 
 She gazed at him pitifully, as though it were a sorry jest 
 to her. 
 
 "You're going to marry me," he repeated. 
 
 " If Jamesy were to die ? " she asked. " Ah, shure, 
 you couldn't wait on for the hope of that. There are 
 other women in the world beside me, Mr. Jerningham; 
 better women women that are better educated than what 
 I am. I beg you not to spoil your life by thinking any 
 more about me. I'm not good enough for it." Her lips 
 quivered as she made this voluntary renunciation. She 
 felt the saying of it as though it were the approaching act 
 itself. 
 
 " There's no need to wait until he dies," he said, tri- 
 umphant with the belief in his own mind. 
 
 "What d'ye mean?" 
 
 "You're going to divorce him. He's been unfaithful 
 to you you have witnesses and evidence of that. He 
 has beaten you shamefully you have witnesses and evi- 
 dence of that. These two things are quite sufficient to get 
 a divorce." 
 
 She listened to him with a fear that numbed her senses. 
 Here were the words of Father Mehan come to actual
 
 TRAFFIC. 251 
 
 truth. To her mind, it was as though he had prophesied 
 this very incident and, filled with susceptibilities that al- 
 most amounted to superstition, she felt that she was 
 trapped already. In her vivid imagination she saw the 
 doors of the Church slowly swinging to upon her helpless 
 body. 
 
 " There is no divorce in our Church," she said, with a 
 dull voice. 
 
 He sat up in his surprise. "But surely there must be 
 some way out of a ghastly situation like this. Do you mean 
 to tell me ?" 
 
 " There is no divorce in our Church," she repeated, and 
 behind that sentence with its hopeless brevity she crouched 
 a whipped animal cowering to the hand that beats it. 
 
 "But surely," he persisted, the instinct of a British 
 law-giver standing like a giant in the path of his under- 
 standing, "surely the tie of marriage is broken by such a 
 man as E} T an ! He's not your husband any longer he's 
 discarded you. The law of England, of which you're a 
 subject, gives you release from su^ch a man." 
 
 " Oh, don't say any more, Mr. Jerningham ! " she said 
 once more. " I tell ye there is no divorce in our Church."
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SEVEN long days with long, sleepless nights passed by 
 after Jerningham's parting with Nanno that evening, be- 
 fore she saw him again. She did her work in the restau- 
 rant as though driven by a power outside her comprehen- 
 sion; her actions became those of a machine painful, 
 unconscious in their accuracy. 
 
 As one day succeeded another, the belief sank deeper 
 into her consciousness that Jerningham had exhausted 
 every feeling for her, even that of the slightest interest. 
 In imagination, she saw herself in his mind a withered, 
 hollow resemblance of something that had scarcely been 
 worth while. She felt the cold pass through her like 
 the current of a stream when she thought of the loneli- 
 ness of life that lay before her. Yet, still, methodically, 
 persistently, she continued with her duties, arriving at 
 Maynard's as though the hands of the clock were leading 
 her; winding herself up for the day's work before her, 
 then slowly using out her energies until, by the time that 
 she returned to the Fulham Road, she was swaying be- 
 tween a balance of exhaustion and relief. 
 
 One evening, Miss Shand took it upon herself to ac- 
 company her for part of the way back to her lodging?. 
 Jevningham's words to her that night still had their 
 echoes; they had just succeeded in hurting a sensitive side 
 of her nature, and she could not forget them. On this 
 particular evening they stirred her to a generous impulse. 
 
 252
 
 TRAFFIC. 253 
 
 "I've been wanting to tell you something," she said, 
 as they picked their way between the puddles, " since that 
 night when he went back home with me." She left it to 
 be tacitl}' understood to whom she alluded. 
 
 " Did he go home with you ? " Xanno asked appre- 
 hensively. 
 
 " Well he didn't come in, of course why I'd only met 
 him that evening. But this was what I wanted to tell 
 you, dear, because, if you remember, you said he was only 
 a friend." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Well just say you remember, because it spoils it all 
 if you don't." 
 
 " I do I do remember." 
 
 " Well, dear you're making a great mistake," said Miss 
 Shand, with a sense of the dramatic. " He's in love with 
 you; in fact, though perhaps I oughtn't to be sayin' it, 
 he as good as told me so. What I mean, he gave the show 
 away." 
 
 She was watching Xanno, expecting to see wonderful 
 results from the effect of her information. She saw none. 
 Xanno's face was expressionless. A stone-mason, with 
 rough chisel and heavy hand, could have hewn more life 
 out of a piece of granite. Miss Shand's generosity was 
 fruitless, and she felt disappointed. 
 
 "I think you might thank me for finding out that 
 much for you," she said. " It'll help you knowing what 
 to do with him next time." 
 
 " I'm sure it's kind of you," said Xanno unemotionally- 
 
 Miss Shand, in her chagrin, almost stamped her foot. 
 She felt that she had been generous and, fully expecting 
 reward, had received none. 
 
 " Poor sort of thanks I call that/" she said petulantly ; 
 and she stopped.
 
 254 TRAFFIC. 
 
 Nanno turned round. " Are you going ? " she asked, 
 in the same tone of voice. 
 
 " Yes that's just what I am going to do ! " she ex- 
 claimed; and hailing a 'bus that passed she left Nanno 
 standing on the pavement. 
 
 This little incident had occurred five days after the 
 journey into Hertfordshire. Two more days still went by 
 under the same conditions of loneliness and, as with the 
 days, so with the week itself; her energies slowly became 
 exhausted with each succeeding day as a clock that is run 
 down, until by the time that Saturday came round she 
 found it impossible to walk back to her rooms in the Ful- 
 ham Eoad, and was compelled to resort to an extravagance 
 that she never permitted herself to take. She got into a 
 'bus that would pass her door and, when she alighted, it 
 seemed an effort to cross the road. 
 
 Mrs. Hudson, after a considerable period, had placed 
 sufficient confidence in her as to bestow upon her the 
 honor of a latch-key an unwieldy piece of metal that 
 weighed down heavily in her pocket, and constantly wore 
 holes in the lining. With this she let herself in, and 
 walked straight upstairs to the sitting-room into which 
 her bedroom opened. She did not notice a letter, ad- 
 dressed to her, that lay on the rickety table in the hall. 
 The hall, Mrs. Hudson called it the passage, said Miss 
 Shand whenever she came. 
 
 Unprepared, unexpectant, she walked abruptly into the 
 sitting-room, and when she saw Jerningham seated in the 
 horsehair arm-chair, an involuntary cry forced its way 
 through her lips she was too weak to repress it. 
 
 " Why have you come ? " she asked, still standing at the 
 door. 
 
 He rose to his feet, at the same time taking out of his
 
 TRAFFIC. 255 
 
 pocket a bundle of papers which he laid emphatically on 
 the table. 
 
 " That's why I've come/' he said, pointing to them 
 with a smile of satisfaction. " Oh by the way, I wrote 
 you a letter telling you I was coming. I saw it down in 
 the hall as I came up." 
 
 She remained holding on to the door, her face white, 
 her lips that were deep red, almost bloodless. 
 
 " Good heavens ! " he said, as he suddenly realized her 
 condition. " You look awfully bad what's the matter ? " 
 
 She came slowly into the room, laying her hand on the 
 back of the first chair that came within her reach. 
 
 " We've been working rather hard this week," she ex- 
 plained. " I only feel tired." 
 
 " Come and sit in this arm-chair, then." He led her 
 round to the seat he had just vacated, and placed her 
 there. " Why isn't this fire lighting ? " he went on. 
 "You're as cold as a shroud. Why isn't it lighting?" 
 
 Her eyes rose to his for one moment, smiling gently, 
 as though he had asked the question in fun. 
 
 " I can't afford to be extravagant," she said. There 
 was no complaint in her voice. 
 
 Jerningham strode across the room to a bell-handle, 
 which hung loosely in the plaster of the wall. He pulled 
 it with a jerk, and some of the plaster fell with a white 
 dust to the floor. 
 
 " What's this fat woman's name ? " he asked. 
 
 " Mrs. Hudson. Why what are you going to do? " 
 
 " Order a fire. This is not the way for you to live." 
 
 The landlady entered the room, having discreetly 
 knocked. 
 
 "We want a fire, Mrs. Hudson," he said. "Will it 
 take you long to light it ? "
 
 256 TRAFFIC. 
 
 The suggestion thai her actions were ponderous and slow 
 offended her somewhat. 
 
 " 'Twon't take no longer than gettin' the sticks and the 
 paper, I suppose. There's coals in the hox." 
 
 " Thanks," he replied genially. " Well will you get 
 it at once." 
 
 Her small eyes looked him up and down. She ob- 
 jected to the sound of proprietorship in his voice. Still, 
 a fire had been ordered, and that meant sixpence. She 
 came to the inevitable conclusion that obedience was bet- 
 ter than sacrifice, and departed. 
 
 Jerningham turned back to Xanno. 
 
 " Now/' he said, " as soon as the fire's lit and I've 
 settled you comfortably I want to go into this matter 
 here." He laid his hand again upon the papers. 
 
 Nanno looked at them with curiosity. It did not enter 
 her head what they contained. Then, curbing her im- 
 patience to know their meaning, which she realized must 
 in some way be the object of his visit, she went into her 
 room, making the excuse that she wished to remove her 
 coat and hat. As soon as she had closed the door she 
 crossed to the bed over which hung the gaudy picture of 
 the Sacred Heart, and before that she knelt, with clasped 
 hands whose sense of touch had been driven from them 
 with the cold. 
 
 " Sacred Heart of Jesus," she whispered " if 'twas 
 the way I was going to die now, be with me and help me 
 if he asks me to marry him again. I'm afraid he will, 
 and I'm afraid of myself, because I love him. Sacred 
 Heart of Jesus " she tried to say more, but what she had 
 already prayed contained all her fears; fears that she felt 
 weak and incompetent to battle with. Then she rose to 
 her feet, took off her coat and hat, and came back into the 
 sitting-room.
 
 TRAFFIC. 257 
 
 By that time the fire had been lighted. Obeying Jer- 
 ningham's suggestions, without knowing why, Mrs. Hud- 
 son had gone to the extremity of using a candle-end to 
 hasten matters, and now it was burning brightly, the 
 grease spitting and crackling like fat in a frying-pan. 
 
 Nanno seated herself in the horsehair arm-chair and, 
 behind her back, Jerningham placed a cushion bearing 
 some floral design in many-colored wools, which a daughter 
 of Mrs. Hudson's had made during an attack of measles. 
 
 " Is that comfortable ? " he asked. 
 
 She nooded her head, smiling: the sensation of being 
 taken care of was luxurious after the week of servitude. 
 
 "You'll be much warmer presently," he went on; then, 
 drawing up a chair where he could watch her face, he 
 reached for the papers that were still lying on the table 
 and began to undo the little piece of tape that held them 
 together. 
 
 "I expect you're wondering what on earth I've got 
 here ? " he said. 
 
 Yes I am." 
 
 " Well, I'll tell you. I've been spending all my spare 
 time during the last week with solicitors." 
 
 " Solicitors ? " The name brought back to ISFanno's 
 memory the one solicitor with whom she had ever had 
 any dealings Mr. Donegan, in Anesk. As though a 
 magician had passed his wand over a black mirror, she saw 
 in her mind the reflection of that untidy office where the 
 deeds of settlement of her marriage had been signed. She 
 heard the little man's stuttering voice; she heard her 
 mother wrangling with Jamesy over the amount of the 
 dowry. It was quite natural that she should at once con- 
 nect the word with the event of marriage; and, moreover, 
 her instinct was perfectly right when she presumed that it 
 was for this very reason that Jerningham had been to see 
 17
 
 258 TRAFFIC. 
 
 them. Involuntarily she shrank back in her chair, because 
 she knew that temptation was about to assail her again. 
 
 " Yes solicitors," he went on " hard-headed, hard- 
 hearted City solicitors, who wipe off sentiment from the 
 soles of their feet when they enter their own offices." 
 
 " Well ? " she said apprehensively. She dreaded to hear 
 what he had done. 
 
 " Well you say that there is no divorce in your Church, 
 but what you ought to say is that your Church doesn't 
 recognize divorce. You've got to remember that it's not 
 the Church that grants divorce in the first instance; it's 
 the law. Now you come under the laws of England, and 
 amongst them is the law of divorce. Your Church may 
 not recognize it, but there it is ; and when you are divorced 
 you can marry again, no penalty attaching itself to you, 
 no sin being committed. The number of people who do it 
 are as many as flies in June." He spoke as though he 
 were a solicitor himself, so deeply had he been immersed 
 in their opinions during the last seven days. 
 
 "But you don't understand, Mr. Jerningham," she 
 began, and her voice was tired even then, at the beginning. 
 
 " Wait a minute," he interrupted " I understand 
 everything. I've made it my duty to understand. With- 
 out mentioning any names I've put your case before two or 
 three solicitors and have got here their advice in writing, 
 with quotations from other cases that have occurred in the 
 courts. You can divorce this husband of yours. I can 
 quite understand that the people amongst whom you have 
 been living have never had the means to set you the ex- 
 ample, and so you have come to think it impossible. But 
 it's not impossible. It'll cost a good deal of money, per- 
 haps, because I think your husband has to be resident here 
 as well as you, just for a certain time. It'll cost money to 
 collect the witnesses; but all that expense I'm ready to
 
 TRAFFIC. 259 
 
 defray. You are bound to win the case, so that to a cer- 
 tain extent they will be lessened; but whatever they are 
 I don't care." He left his chair impulsively and knelt 
 down beside her. " I'm going to marry you, Xanno," he 
 said intensely. " Nothing's going to be put in my way. 
 You love me you've admitted it. I know that as far as 
 that goes you'd marry me to-day wouldn't you ? " 
 
 She did not answer, but he read her silence as consent. 
 
 " Well the other thing the other objection, you're 
 going to leave that to me to overcome. Nanno " he took 
 her face in his hands " I've been living the life of the 
 ordinary man no worse, no better; and there comes a 
 time when, if he's ever going to shake it off him, a man 
 must chuck it up and take into his own life the life and 
 heart of a woman who directs all his intentions and brings 
 the best out of him. I didn't know there was such a 
 woman till I met you." He let her free, but only to im- 
 prison her numbed hands in his. " And do you know," he 
 went on, " already you've saved me from one piece of 
 folly." He told her the incident with Miss Shand, and 
 while he told it he held her head against his shoulder. 
 
 "For the sake of that alone," he continued, when the 
 incident was told, " do you think I'm going to let you go ? 
 And then I love you, apart from all that. I can make you 
 happy I can make you comfortable. The whole of your 
 life I can reconstruct." 
 
 The tears were hurrying down her cheeks. For her sake, 
 and because of her, he had resisted temptation, when she 
 had no claim upon him whatsoever. She could not for one 
 moment have blamed him had he given way; but because 
 he had resisted, her love for him amounted almost to adora- 
 tion. To think that she was an influence for good in his 
 life, this was surely the hardest form of temptation to re- 
 sist. To be an influence upon the actions of a man, this
 
 260 TRAFFIC. 
 
 s- 
 
 is the zenith of a woman's desires. Watch them you will 
 see that it may be for good or it may be for bad ; if not the 
 former, then she may resort to the latter ; but an influence 
 she must be at all costs. And when she learned that she 
 possessed that power over Jerningham, ISTanno was at the 
 nearest point to giving way. It was when he returned to 
 the argument of paying every expense, which to him 
 seemed irresistible, that her slender courage returned, and 
 with clasped hands and cold lips she told him of its im- 
 possibility. 
 
 " If I were to be divorced and to marry again," she said 
 expressionlessly, " the Church would close its doors against 
 me I should be excommunicated." 
 
 Bitter words, revolting against such a law, rose up to his 
 tongue, but for her sake he kept them back. It would have 
 been impossible with the logic of his faith for him to rec- 
 oncile his mind to such drastic punishment. Such a law, 
 he told himself, as she declared it, was unchristian to the 
 very heart of it. Such a law did not uphold the forgive- 
 ness of sins, but the eternal damnation of them. To him, 
 it was as though the hands of man, stained with sin even 
 were it only that of origin had closed the gates of Heaven 
 in the face of God. He could not see it from her point of 
 view and, because it affected him no less than it did Xanno, 
 he railed against it in his mind. 
 
 " Well, then, be excommunicated ! " he exclaimed at 
 last. The words were driven from him. He was an Eng- 
 lishman, and common law was impregnated in his blood. 
 " Be excommunicated ! " he repeated ; " that doesn't de- 
 prive you of your belief in the goodness of God that 
 doesn't rob you of your faith in Christ that doesn't spoil 
 you of your love of the Virgin Mary be excommunicated, 
 and God will give you to me to take care of ! " 
 
 She rose quickly to her feet.
 
 TRAFFIC. 261 
 
 "You must go," she said feverishly "you mustn't 
 say anything more. I love you and I can't bear to listen. 
 You don't know what you're saying. You're not a Catho- 
 lic you haven't been brought up as I have, or you couldn't 
 say what you are saying. \Vho am I that I should dare to 
 leave the Roman Catholic Church that's going on and on 
 with the millions of people that follow it, years after I'm 
 dead and buried? I'm nothing simply a little speck. 
 Those who've made that law " 
 
 " The men who've made it/' Jerningham bitterly inter- 
 posed. She took no notice. 
 
 " Those who've made that law," she repeated, " have 
 known far better than I do what's best for me. What right 
 have I to question what they've done ? I can only obey or 
 disobey, and oh 3Ir. Jerningham if I disobeyed, and 
 the Church closed its doors on me " she invariably made 
 use of the simile that Father Mehan had given her "I 
 couldn't go on living I could not." 
 
 Jerningham laid his hands gently on her shoulders. 
 Either the unquenchable belief of the man in himself, or 
 the knowledge that she was overwrought, and could not 
 consider the matter calmly, made him think that she did 
 not thoroughly mean what she said. 
 
 " You're not in a fit state to talk about it now," he said 
 softly ; " I'm going to leave you by yourself. But in a few 
 days I shall come back again when you've thought it all 
 over; and then you'll tell me." 
 
 He kissed her forehead, curbing his passionate desire to 
 kiss her lips ; and then he departed.
 
 CHAPTEK XV. 
 
 NO sank back into the arm-chair as the door closed, 
 and for an hour or more she stayed there, almost without 
 movement. The struggle that had taken place within her, 
 none of the signs of which she had shown to him, had 
 left her powerless, impotent, inert. Sometimes her eyes 
 opened and she gazed dully at the fire that he had caused 
 to be lit and, cold though she was still, she had not the 
 energy or the wish to benefit by its brightness. 
 
 On the table by her side lay the little sheaf of papers 
 the written statements of the solicitors who had advised 
 him just as he had left them. Occasionally her eyes 
 watched them as though they were alive, which, indeed, 
 to her they were alive with the still pregnant power of 
 temptation. She lay there in the arm-chair encouraging 
 her feeling of exhaustion, because she knew that if she 
 moved or left her place, she would succumb to the wish to 
 read them, and beyond that she could see no certain road. 
 So long as she lay there inert, passively resisting the incli- 
 nation to be convinced that he was right, she could foresee 
 her own victory. The terrors of excommunication had 
 their full weight with her, and consciously, intentionally, 
 she summoned all her power of imagination to picture 
 them in her mind. She terrorized herself because she knew 
 that if she did not persist in keeping their horrors before 
 her, she would inevitably give way to the longing to yield 
 
 262
 
 TRAFFIC. 263 
 
 her soul and body to the man who had won her heart hon- 
 orably for himself. 
 
 And thus, for an hour or more, she lay in the arm-chair 
 tormenting, torturing herself with the terrors that she 
 forced herself to depict ; until the crisis of her temptation 
 came with the contempt that is bred of familiarity. She 
 had terrified herself for so long that the terror became 
 secondary to her desire for happiness. She began to think 
 that in his arms and in his life, with his body and his will 
 to shield her, these scenes that she had been so vividly 
 painting, like mediaeval frescoes of Hell, might have but 
 little effect upon her. She began to consider that she could 
 face them through life if he stood by her. " Be excom- 
 municated ! " he had said, " that doesn't deprive you of 
 your belief in the goodness of God that doesn't rob you of 
 your faith in Christ " and all of it was perfectly true. 
 Nothing on earth could rob her of those things ; these she 
 would always have with her. 
 
 It was when she came to the moment of this thought that 
 she stood up with a frightened, muffled cry. She had come 
 to the very verge of the edge and, looking suddenly below, 
 there saw the awful abyss into which she had all but fallen. 
 Below her there, far down beneath, she saw death without 
 the last rites of the Church and, believing in the simple- 
 ness of her heart, and with the faith she had been taught, 
 that without these no love of God or agony of repentance 
 could bring her to the heavy locked gates of Heaven, she 
 turned from the way she had been drifting, and rushed 
 into the sheltering arms of her belief. 
 
 Without daring to look again at the papers that lay on 
 the table, she went into her bedroom, put on her coat and 
 hat, then went downstairs out into the street. As once 
 before, in a crisis of her life, she turned her steps in the
 
 264 TRAFFIC, 
 
 direction of a church, and there, having prayed before the 
 High Altar, she entered a confessional. 
 
 Within a few moments her story in every detail was told 
 to the priest who heard her. 
 
 " What had I better do, father ? " she asked, when she 
 had finished. 
 
 He was an English priest. There was no sentiment 
 about him. He did not paint pretty pictures of the signs 
 of a forgiving God, or describe the horrors of a life made 
 naked and ashamed by the ruthless hand of a Church. He 
 was practical to the point. 
 
 " You ask my advice ? " he said plainly. " Then go 
 back to your husband. Without her husband, however bad 
 he may be, a woman cannot fight against the world and its 
 temptations. It can do no good ? Who gives you the right 
 to say that ? How can you tell ? Do you take upon your- 
 self the power of omniscience ? It may be doing the great- 
 est good in the world. No man is incapable of reformation. 
 You think of the life hereafter; then make your life here 
 such that it will merit reward. I don't suggest that it 
 will be easy. I don't suggest that, if you do it, it will be 
 bound to succeed. If I were to say so I should be giving 
 you false hope. But there is good in the worst of us. God 
 may help you to find it in him, and at least you will have 
 done your duty." 
 
 She sighed involuntarily. She knew that he did not 
 understand. No quality of remorse, no hope of better 
 things, had she ever seen in Jamesy's character. She felt 
 certain that if she went back to the farm in Glenlicky, 
 things would be precisely the same. He had no love for 
 her; had never really possessed it. There was no founda- 
 tion in him for the better things. This she told the priest, 
 haltingly, submissively. 
 
 " Then bring him over here/' he replied. " You ask me
 
 TRAFFIC. 265 
 
 my advice, you wish to know what the Church would say 
 that is, the answer of the Church. It can offer no other 
 answer. " Whom God hath joined together, let no man 
 put asunder." This is the only way to save yourself from 
 the temptation that besets you. For, be warned by me, 
 so long as you are alone, this man of whom you speak will 
 not leave you to yourself; the more so because he is not 
 a Catholic, and could not understand your motives for 
 withholding from him what he desires. And then, what 
 will happen ? You will not give way, perhaps, but he will 
 induce you into sin. Now, what will you do? What will 
 you do ? I feel it my duty to hear you say before you leave 
 the Church. What will you do? " 
 
 "I will send for my husband," she said, and her voice 
 was the voice of one who sees death.
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 THE CROSS-ROADS.
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 ONE midday, two weeks after the priest's advice to 
 Nanno in the confessional, the Milford train deposited on 
 the Paddington arrival platform a man whose bemused 
 amazement in the midst of his strange surroundings was 
 almost humorous. At every station where the train had 
 stopped on its way up from Milford, he had alighted from 
 his carriage and, with wide eyes, asked the first person he 
 encountered whether he was in London. When at length 
 he did arrive, he went through the same ceremony. On 
 being told that he was at his destination, he stood on the 
 platform outside his carriage with mouth half opened and 
 impotent attitude. People as they passed him gazed, some 
 with compassion, some with amusement, according to their 
 mood, at his obvious bewilderment. 
 
 At last a porter, having already seen to the wants of one 
 passenger on the train, approached him. 
 
 " 'Ave yer got 'ny luggage ? " he asked. 
 
 The man looked at him helplessly. 
 
 " 'Ave yer got 'ny luggage ? " he repeated. 
 
 " Shure, I dunno what the hell ye're sayin'," the man 
 replied, with exasperation. " Where's me throonk ? " 
 
 The porter assumed an attitude. 
 
 " Look 'ere," he said f orbearingly, " if you want a box 
 what nobody else '11 claim, why don't yer say so? It's 
 down 'ere on the platform ; I chucked it out myself." He 
 moved away in ihe direction that he had indicated. 
 
 269
 
 270 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Come on," he said, looking back ; and Jamesy Ryan this 
 was indeed the genesis of ISTanno's husband in London 
 moved awkwardly after him. -He wore a rough tweed suit, 
 ill-fitting, coarse in texture, the best of its type that Anesk 
 could produce. His hat, a black, broad-brimmed, soft felt 
 not unlike the sombrero as worn in Spain was one that 
 is donned by men in Eathmore on Sundays and feast-days. 
 His boots chinked merrily with nails as he walked, and his 
 whole appearance only served the more to alienate him 
 from his surroundings. He looked servile; in that vast 
 area, roofed in with glass, and vibrating with the noise of 
 the incoming and departing engines, he felt servile an 
 animal untrained to the stir of life cast headlong between 
 the spinning-wheels of traffic. The cunning twinkle in his 
 eyes was almost dead. A rough crossing from Cork and a 
 tiring railway journey had subdued it. "Whenever a train 
 shrieked with its metallic whistle he turned and gazed 
 about him with fogged amazement. 
 
 " Is this yours ? " asked the porter, kicking an ungainly 
 box that lay severely alone upon the platform. 
 
 " It is what the deuce are ye kicking it for ? " 
 
 "All right all right. That won't 'urt it. Don't lose 
 yer rag. Where are yer goin' ? " 
 
 Jamesy gave him an address, as though he were con- 
 fiding a secret. 
 
 "Well yer better get a cab." The porter whistled to 
 one that came leisurely forward and then, with a deft 
 swing, he hoisted the box on to his shoulder. Jamesy 
 looked at his slight, wiry figure, and marveled. Then he 
 followed him to the hansom, made ungainly efforts to get 
 into it, and finally subsided into his seat. The porter 
 waited expectantly on the platform. Jamesy took no 
 notice of him. At last the cab, detained for the porter's 
 benefit, moved away.
 
 TRAFFIC. 271 
 
 " Keep an eye skinned on 'im," the porter called out to 
 the driver 'E's made o' the bloody mint 'e is." 
 
 The driver opened the trap door and asked what address. 
 Jamesy jumped at the unexpected sound of the voice. He 
 looked wildly about him. When the cabman repeated his 
 question, Jamesy looked up and saw a red face through a 
 square hole in the roof. 
 
 " What is it ye want in the name o' God ? " he asked. 
 This second voice was as unintelligible to him as the por- 
 ter's had been at first. 
 
 The driver pulled up his horse and asked the question 
 for the third time, enunciating each word with comic em- 
 phasis. Ryan called out the number of a road in the by- 
 ways of Earl's Court and they finally drove out of the 
 station. He could not look everywhere at once; accord- 
 ingly, he was so dazed that only a very few things reached 
 his puzzled powers of observation. At the corner of one 
 street he saw a barrel-organ being played by a navvy out of 
 work. The man's wife, with a little child in her arms, 
 was leaning up against the handle by which the instrument 
 was drawn from one place to another. The handle caught 
 and pressed in her dress, displaying with coarse brutality 
 her approaching condition of maternity. A look leaped 
 into Jamesy's eyes and he strained his attitude in the cab to 
 watch her. A little farther on, a ponderous advertisement 
 of a brand of whisky that he knew caught his eye. He 
 gazed at that. Most of his impressions, however, were 
 vague. Things passed too quickly by him. 
 
 At last the driver pulled up before a door. With some 
 difficulty Jamesy descended. The driver lowered the box 
 down from the roof of the cab on to the pavement. Ryan 
 felt in his pockets, finally producing a shilling, and placing 
 it in the cabman's outstretched hand. For a moment the
 
 272 TRAFFIC. 
 
 latter looked at it; then his gaze rested expectantly on 
 Jamesy. 
 
 " 'Ere come on," he said. " I can't stop 'ere waitin' 
 while you dive for 'em. Two shillin's my fare." 
 
 "Your what?" 
 
 " My fare two shillin's." 
 
 " Is it to pay ye two shillings I am, and ye only drivin' 
 me for twenty minutes ? Shure, glory be to God ! " 
 
 He brought out another shilling, laying it with the first 
 in the patiently waiting hand. 
 
 " You ought to travel in a black Maria, that's what you 
 ought," the driver remarked, as he turned his horse. 
 " Cabs is too hexpensive for you. You try a black Maria 
 next time yer goin' away for a week hend." 
 
 The satire was lost upon Jamesy, who was thinking of 
 his two shillings. Just at that moment the door of the 
 house opened and a sour-faced woman looked out. 
 
 " Are you Mr. Kyan ? " she asked. 
 
 " I am," he replied, turning round with relief. 
 
 " Well unless you want a policeman to move yer hon 
 you'd better come inside and bring that box with yer." 
 
 He did what he was bid with childlike obedience. 
 
 " Yer wife'll be i>ack at 'arf-past six," she said, as she 
 closed the door behind him, and at every moment she 
 looked him up and down with unconcealed surprise. 
 
 " P'raps you'd like to go to yer room ? " she suggested 
 vaguely, thinking that he might improve with a change of 
 clothes. She could not have supposed that these were his 
 best. 
 
 He followed her upstairs like a dog retreating to its 
 kennel and, going some few minutes later into the kitchen 
 where a friend of hers had been sitting with her, the land- 
 lady deposited herself into a chair with an exclamation : 
 
 " Well, I never did in all my born life ! " she said.
 
 TRAFFIC. 273 
 
 The friend waited expectantly to hear what it was that 
 she had never done. 
 
 " If Vs 'er 'usband," she went on, gathering breath, 
 ''she throw'd 'erself away that's what she's done. Why 
 a girl like that you see'd her when she was 'ere the other 
 night didn't yer ? A girl like that cud marry right well. 
 She's only been 'ere three days, but I know the sort that's 
 ladylike. Why, I've 'card ladies in shops speak no better'n 
 what she does." She pressed her hair back from her fore- 
 head, sighed heavily, and folded her hands in her lap. 
 
 " Phew ! Ain't there a smell ! " said her visitor, alluding 
 to the normal odor of the kitchen. 
 
 Mrs. Eandal filled her lungs with the surrounding 
 atmosphere and closed her eyes imperturbably. " She's a 
 damned sight too good for 'im," she said, still thinking of 
 her new lodger. 
 
 " Don't you notice it ? " repeated her friend, still refer- 
 ring to the scent that offended her. She looked suspi- 
 ciously at a pot that simmered on the hob. 
 
 " Xotice it ? No ! I'd like to see them meet when she 
 comes in thi' s'evenin'." So Mrs. Eandal continued to 
 conjecture upon her latest lodgers, oblivious of the more 
 apparent facts of life. 
 
 And upstairs, Jamesy was sitting on the spotlessly white 
 bed, gazing at the floor, wondering why he had come to 
 London. He knew that he was utterly out of his element. 
 Through all those streets by which he had come, there was 
 not one face that he had known in the throngs of people 
 who had passed him by. He missed the faces that were 
 friendly ; he missed the places that were familiar. At last 
 a dismal depression overcame him, and after a few heavy 
 sighs he went downstairs, passing into the street. 
 
 " Will ye tell me the way I could find a public-house ? " 
 he asked of the first man that he met. 
 18
 
 274 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Second turning to the left," the man replied, and 
 looked after him with amused surprise. 
 
 He found the place and pushed his way into the bar. 
 No one was there but the barmaid, a substantial woman 
 with a coarse face, who sat on a stool reading a novelette. 
 Whenever it got exciting she picked her teeth excitedly 
 with the broken end of a wooden match. Jamesy watched 
 her for a moment. At last she looked up. 
 
 " Beg pard'n," she said, laying down the book. " I 
 thought someone 'ad come in and gone hout again. What's 
 yours ? " 
 
 " Whisky, please," he said. 
 
 She poured it out for him, passed him a jug of water, 
 then reseated herself on the stool, returning to her novel. 
 He leaned on the counter and watched her. The glass was 
 only raised to his mouth twice ; then he asked for another. 
 She rose mechanically and poured it out. 
 
 " Won't ye be havin' any yeerself ? " he asked. 
 
 She looked at him and smiled. 
 
 " Thanks I don't mind a glass of port's mine." She 
 poured it out from a dirty decanter. Sediment swilled in 
 with the liquid into the glass. 
 
 " 'Ere's your very good 'ealth," she said, winking at 
 him through the glass. 
 
 He winked at her, holding his up to his nose. 
 
 " Do you come from Scotland ? " she asked, after she 
 had licked her lips. 
 
 " Shure, I do not," he said, half laughing. 
 
 "Ireland, then?" 
 
 "Faith, I come from Rathmore that's where I come 
 from. Did ye ever meet any from Rathmore ? " 
 
 She shook her head vaguely. She suspected that this 
 was not only the second whisky he had taken that day. 
 
 For almost an hour he stood there talking to her. With
 
 TRAFFIC. 275 
 
 the third glass of whisky, his better spirits returned, and 
 some of his native humor oozed out. The barmaid found 
 him passable company, more especially while she was 
 drinking a second port at his expense. She even forgot her 
 nevelette, in which the hero was just coming through the 
 wood where the heroine lay asleep. 
 
 When he asked for a fifth glass of whisky and offered, 
 her a third of port, she arrived at the conclusion that he 
 was up from the country with more money than he knew 
 what to do with and, as they parted, a seal of good fellow- 
 ship was implied by her in the spasmodic way with which 
 she pressed the horny hand he offered her. 
 
 He returned to his lodgings with a more favorable im- 
 pression of London. In every respect he was in a more 
 agreeable state of mind. He unpacked the big box and 
 waited for Xanno's return in a state of expectant equa- 
 nimity. 
 
 Soon after half-past six, Mrs. Randal wiped her hands 
 on her apron and admitted Xanno by the front door. 
 
 " Has my husband come ? " was the first question that 
 she asked. 
 
 " 'E 'as," Mrs. Eanclal replied conclusively as she closed 
 the door. " 'E's come." 
 
 With a nauseating sensation of apprehension, Xanno 
 mounted the stairs. There were moments when, as her 
 foot touched a higher step, she felt that she must turn 
 back, fly out of the house, find Jerningham, and let the 
 Church wreak its will against her. Yet her body moved 
 on, bringing her nearer to the end at which her mind was 
 shuddering as though, carried by some powerful force 
 which she could not physically resist, her mind rebelled 
 with every inch of ground. At last she stood outside the 
 bedroom door, and hesitatingly her hand sought the 
 handle. With an effort then to swallow the sensation that
 
 276 TRAFFIC 
 
 rose to her throat,, she opened the door and walked into 
 the room. 
 
 Giving way to a feeling of fatigue that had heen exag- 
 gerated by the whisky which he had consumed, Jamesy 
 had lifted his heavy boots on to the white quilt which cov- 
 ered the bed, and had fallen asleep. His head was reclining 
 on the pillow; his mouth, wide open, was emitting sterto- 
 rous snores that one by one rose in pitch until they reached 
 a climax when it seemed that he must choke. Then they 
 stopped for a moment, beginning again in the lowest key 
 and leading up slowly once more to the dominant. She 
 stood there and watched him. She looked at the mark of 
 mud that his boots had made on the spotless quilt. She 
 thought of the tidy little room that she had had to herself 
 in the Fulham Road. She looked round at the bare room 
 that she must now share with him. 
 
 Then again she looked at him sleeping there. That 
 night her face would be close to his. A sob of rebellious 
 tears tightened in her throat. She bent down over the bed 
 in an endeavor to try and realize how horrible it would be 
 to sleep close to the face that was there before her. Then 
 the odor of whisky reached her nostrils, and she stood up- 
 right with a moan of despair that parted her lips. Less 
 than ever now could she tolerate a drunken man. For the 
 last year she had never come in contact with one. The 
 familiarity of it in Ireland had bred some sort of contempt ; 
 but now, even the girls she knew would run frightened 
 from a drunken man who came near them on the footpath. 
 
 At the sound of her moan he sat up looking at her. The 
 expectation of her return had been the last thing in his 
 mind before he went to sleep ; the realization of it he was 
 not slow to grasp. 
 
 " Glory be to God is that yeerself ? " he exclaimed, and 
 his eyes wandered over her from head to foot. As with
 
 TBAFFIC. 
 
 Jerningham, though with an infinitely slower degree of 
 intellect, he could not connect the girl who had been his 
 wife in Ireland, with this neatly dressed person who stood 
 beside his bed. Never did a Christopher Sly wake more 
 amazed to see madam his wife. With the gradual sub- 
 sidence of his surprise, he got down from the bed, still 
 watching her. 
 
 " Begorra," he said, " 'tis mighty changed ye are. Only 
 for ye shtandin' there, I wouldn't have known ye." His 
 eyes still rested on her and the old lust of her that had 
 dominated him before their marriage crept through his 
 blood. He forgot his own viciousness; he overlooked his 
 own brutality. It seemed to him in that moment that she 
 had for the last } r ear defrauded him of herself. 
 
 " What the hell did ye mean by running away from 
 me ? " he asked at length. He did not speak violently, but 
 his method of expression, which for so long her ears had 
 been unaccustomed to, disgusted her. She turned away 
 from him with a look of repulsion in her eyes. She turned 
 away because, in the very outset of her effort, she did not 
 wish him to see the smallest suggestion of failure. 
 
 " Why was it ? " he repeated. 
 
 " I'd rather not talk about that," she said quietly. It 
 was the first time that he had heard her voice. The sound 
 of it amazed him as much as her appearance had done. 
 He thought she was putting on airs, and for a moment it 
 irritated him. He was on the point of expressing his irri- 
 tation when he looked at her and considered that she must 
 be treated gently with what he considered gentleness 
 if he were to be allowed to gratify the desire that possessed 
 him. 
 
 " Shure, if that's the way wid ye, we won't talk about it 
 at all." He came closer to her and put his arm round her 
 waist. She stood there like a pillar of stone.
 
 278 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Aren't ye goin' to give me a kiss ? " he said. 
 
 She turned a cold, white face to his. It would have been 
 so much easier to look death in the eyes. He crushed her 
 mouth with heavy kisses, then whispered something in her 
 ear. 
 
 A shudder ran through her body. Her eyes looked as 
 though they sought help. 
 
 " I'll have a meal sent up to you," she said. " I'd go to 
 bed then, if I were you you must be tired." 
 
 He admitted that he was. 
 
 " How about yeerself ? " he asked. " Aren't ye goin' 
 to have somethin' to eat ? " 
 
 " No I've had my dinner." 
 
 " Well will ye come back here then ? " 
 
 She walked to the door and held it open. 
 
 "Not to-night," she replied. 
 
 " Yirra, damn it all ! " he exclaimed, taking a step to- 
 wards her. 
 
 She slipped out of the room before he could reach her 
 and closed the door, hearing his oath as she hurried down 
 the stairs.
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 KANNO had hoped that Mrs. Eandal would have another 
 room to spare her. Her determination was not daunted 
 when she heard that it was impossible. 
 
 " Why ain't yer goin' to sleep wiv 'im to-night ? " her 
 landlady asked suspiciously. 
 
 Xanno looked worried. 
 
 " He's tired," she said" he'll sleep better by himself." 
 
 Mrs. Randal sniffed. There was something in the af- 
 fair that made friction against her peace of mind. She 
 silently promised herself a strict surveillance of all their 
 actions. 
 
 "You couldn't make me up a bed on the sofa in the 
 sitting-room ? " she suggested. 
 
 " What next hindeed ? " asked Mrs. Eandal. 
 
 " Oh, I should pay you for it," Xanno exclaimed. 
 
 "My best 'orse-'air sofa? No thank you." 
 
 " Then I must ask a friend to put me up." 
 
 " Well that's as you like but if 'e's yer 'usband as you 
 says 'e is your place is wiv 'im, if you was to arst me. 
 A tired man don't sleep no worse for 'is wife bein' wiv 
 ? im." 
 
 Nanno left the subject, ordered a meal for Jamesy, and 
 went out. 
 
 For the moment, when she had alluded to a friend, 
 ISTanno had thought of going to Miss Shaud. After she 
 had walked a little way, she put the thought out of her 
 head. The last day on which they had parted they had 
 
 279
 
 2SO TRAFFIC. 
 
 not been on very friendly terms, and since then, in the 
 restaurant, Miss Shand's smile had been somewhat re- 
 served. Pride finally compelled her to put it out of her 
 mind. But in its place a longing had been growing in her 
 thoughts, to go and see Jerningham's rooms. She knew 
 the window that looked on to Middle Temple Lane and 
 perhaps, if she stood there for a short while at some little 
 distance, she might see him moving about inside. The mere 
 fact of seeing him, she imagined, would help her to forget 
 what awaited her at home. It was a mood of desperation 
 the last determination to watch the flame that had almost 
 consumed her, before she went out once more into the utter 
 darkness. 
 
 She did not know as yet whether Jerningham had come 
 back to the Fulham Road to ask for her final decision. He 
 had not been to see her at the restaurant, as she fully 
 anticipated that he would, when he found her gone, leav- 
 ing no address. Circumstances all pointed to the belief 
 that he had given her a full seven days to arrive at the 
 determination for which he was waiting. 
 
 Every step of the way to Middle Temple Lane, when 
 once she had made up her mind, she walked. The expense 
 of keeping two people in the new rooms that she had 
 chosen was going to try her severely. But in her heart 
 she hoped expected that Jamesy would try to find some 
 work for himself. Ultimately she was disappointed in 
 this. Jamesy was not the type of man who works to 
 justify himself. In his own eyes no justification was nec- 
 essary. He found himself in life with certain appetites, 
 certain instincts, and these he did not hesitate to gratify. 
 Work was not one of them. 
 
 Nevertheless, then at least at the outset, Nanno looked 
 on the more optimistic side of the most pitiful situation 
 that a woman has to face. She could not see any degree
 
 TRAFFIC. S81 
 
 of brightness before her. She had burned her boats. From 
 the harbor of what might have been her refuge, she could 
 mark the smoke rising in its columns of sacrifice, while be- 
 fore her lay the impenetrable endlessness of the open sea. 
 But despair had not come to her then. The valley, which 
 once she had described to Jerningham, where there lurkel 
 the dull, gra} r , silent figure of Death, was still on the hori- 
 zon; there were still roads to be taken which avoided it 
 on the right hand or on the left. 
 
 It was after eight o'clock when she passed through the 
 gates that open into Middle Temple Lane from Fleet 
 Street. The porter in the little office, warming his hands 
 and stamping his feet, looked through his window with 
 healthy suspicion. He might have questioned had he 
 wished, but he knew his business. 
 
 The Law Courts clock chimed the quarter as she reached 
 Jerningham's rooms. For a moment after, the night 
 seemed alive with the sonorous answers of a hundred other 
 bells that clanged the hour, even into the far distance, 
 like echoes in an empty house. Then everything was still. 
 Xanno leaned against the railings opposite Plowden Build- 
 ings, gazing up at Jerningham's windows. There was a 
 light there, as she had expected. At first it was only the 
 light of a fire that flickered and wavered with the antics of 
 a fawn ; but after a little while a black figure came to the 
 window, a match was struck; she saw him light the lamp 
 that stood on the table. 
 
 This was the last time she would see him, she told her- 
 self, and in an endeavor to invest it with the semblance 
 of truth, she repeated it as she watched him. This was the 
 last time, the very last, the very last. Her vitality seemed 
 to sink lower and lower with each word as she uttered it. 
 Life went out of her as the liquid oozes out of a leaky 
 vessel, when she forced its meaning upon herself. And
 
 2S2 TRAFFIC. 
 
 Jerningham, sublimely unconscious that the eyes he loved 
 were watching him, added to the torture of her mind by 
 remaining at the window engrossed in a book that he had 
 picked up from the table. 
 
 So long as he stood there, she could not wrench herself 
 away. It did not satisfy her that she had just seen him. 
 She laid herself down willingly eagerly upon the rack 
 of her own making and made the pain her pleasure. 
 
 At last he moved back into the room, out of sight ; but 
 it was only when the clocks again were striking the hour 
 of nine that she turned away. The hope that he might 
 return had been exhausted. The fear that she might 
 mount the stairs and knock at his door was driving her. 
 She passed down to the Embankment just as the gates 
 were closing, but she dared not go home. All that night 
 she moved from one place to another, resting here or there 
 when there was no one to be seen, walking, as though with 
 a definite purpose, when any one approached her. In the 
 sky above her head, where the stars twinkled in the bitter 
 night, she saw God the God she could still worship, the 
 God she could still call her own; but before her, around 
 her, beneath her, was a great city, where she was alone.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IN the mind of a woman, when life ceases to be a miracle 
 it becomes a degradation. From the moment that Nanno 
 resumed her duties as a wife to Jamesy Ryan, life lost its 
 sense of mystery; the gossamer fabric of illusion with 
 which she had clothed it was torn away, and in its naked 
 reality she saw nothing but the gross hideousness of every- 
 thing. Give a woman the truth, and she will idealize it in 
 order to live with it. Deprive her of those cunning little 
 instruments with which she makes ideals, and the truth is 
 likely to degrade her. It degraded Nanno. 
 
 A convention of priests might have told her that her 
 only course was to return to Jamesy Ryan, but they could 
 not secure her mind against the degradation and loss of 
 self-esteem that such a reunion would be bound to canker 
 in her thoughts. 
 
 For that first night she fought against it, but the end 
 was inevitable. Eating through the wax into the metal, 
 the biting acid of truth was bent upon etching its picture 
 of disgust. She was his wife ; as her husband she had re- 
 ceived him back. Within three days she loathed herself. 
 
 It was in this condition of mind that Jerningham found 
 her when, going to the Fulham Road and being told that 
 she had left with no address, he hastened the next day at 
 four o'clock to the restaurant of Maynard's Stores. 
 
 " What's the meaning of this, Nanno ? " were the first 
 words he asked, when she came to serve him. "Do you 
 think you've treated me fairly ? " 
 
 283 '
 
 284 TRAFFIC. 
 
 She made no reply. He had never seen her look as she 
 looked then. 
 
 " Why did you leave the Fulham Eoad without giving 
 any address without giving me the answer, negative or 
 affirmative, either of which, at least, I deserved ? " 
 
 " I told you that day," she said quietly, " what you 
 asked was impossible. I should have been excommunicated 
 if I'd done what you wanted." 
 
 " You count that as everything ? " 
 
 "And isn't it?" 
 
 " ' I thank whatever Gods there be for my unconquer- 
 able soul/ " Jerningham quoted. 
 
 " There's only one God/' said JSTanno simply. " Oh/' 
 she added bitterly, "you don't understand! How could 
 you ? You don't know what it would mean one day to die 
 and know that no service would be read over your grave, 
 that no prayers would be said for your soul in Purgatory. 
 You don't know what it would mean to go straight into 
 hell without absolution, and to suffer there forever and 
 ever never to know any relief, always to be in torment 
 always think of it ! " 
 
 " My God ! " Jerningham exclaimed in an undertone, 
 " do you believe that ? " 
 
 " I must believe it," she replied. 
 
 " And if I married you, you believe that I should bring 
 all that upon you ? " 
 
 " I must believe it." 
 
 " You believe that the God you call all-merciful would 
 damn your soul forever because you made the life of one 
 man on this world a perfect happiness and filled it with a 
 higher nobility of purpose ? " 
 
 " I must believe it." 
 
 She felt that if she did not continue to say that she 
 would break down.
 
 TRAFFIC. 285 
 
 Jtrnirigham changed the tone of his voice. " Where do 
 you live now ? " he asked. 
 
 " Don't ask me," she said" I can't tell you." 
 
 "You don't trust me?" 
 
 " Yes I trust you with everything I I " 
 
 "You can't trust yourself?" 
 
 " What are you going to have ? " 
 
 " You avoid the question ? " 
 
 " You must tell me what you want. I shall be blamed 
 for standing here so long." 
 
 Jerningham accepted the inevitable, little thinking that, 
 in those few moments, he went nearer to the winning of 
 his purpose than he had ever been before. 
 
 " I'll have tea andiread and butter/' he replied. 
 
 From the other side of the room, caressing her violin 
 and thrilling each note in an endeavor to reach his ears, 
 Miss Shand had watched them with comprehensive glances. 
 From Nanno herself, though she had often tried, she had 
 been able to ascertain nothing, but from Nanno's face, as 
 Jerningham talked to her, the a?tute Miss Shand had seen 
 the indubitable evidence of a quarrel. From her outlook on 
 life she made her calculations. With dexterous intuition 
 she brought the figures to balance, and then, as her violin, 
 automatically obeying the mechanism of her fingers, sighed 
 sobbingly through the sensuous movements of a popular 
 waltz, she told herself sagaciously to wait and to watch. 
 
 Throughout the whole of his tea-taking, Jerningham did 
 not notice her. He had forgotten her existence. His eyes 
 rested on Xanno wherever she went. He was giving her 
 up. He was breaking in his mind to the knowledge that 
 what he had dreamed was a dream ; that nothing, save the 
 death of her husband, could make it a reality. The 
 thought was not susceptible to taming, and he was not an 
 idealist of facts. He looked the truth square in the face.
 
 286 TRAFFIC. 
 
 He had no claim on her; he would never possess any claim. 
 As she wandered there from one table to another, a person- 
 ality filling him with passion as unselfish as nature can 
 permit it to be, he knew that she was nothing to him. He 
 could not touch that earth-brown hair of hers as in his 
 imagination he had so frequently done and call it his. 
 Her deep gray eyes, like stones that lay at the bottom of a 
 pool, they were nothing to him ; and her mouth, those full, 
 human lips, always half parted, ripe, like a peach, for the 
 kisses that in his dreams of her he had so often devoured, 
 all these were as the golden gates of Alexandria, buried, 
 he knew well where, but buried, be} r ond his reach, in the 
 fathoms of an ocean through which no man could dive. 
 
 When he called her for his bill, he was inert with the 
 struggle through which he had passed. 
 
 " This is the last time I shall see you then, Nanno ? " 
 he said, looking up into her face. 
 
 "I suppose it is," she replied. She felt the room re- 
 ceding from her, and life was going with it. 
 
 " May I shake hands with you when I get up to go ? " 
 
 " I think you'd better not." 
 
 "Not for the last time?" 
 
 " I think you'd better not." 
 
 "Then come down to the Temple this evening and say 
 good-bye to me properly." 
 
 "I daren't." 
 
 "You daren't?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then you must shake hands now." 
 
 He stood up and reached for his hat. 
 
 " Good-bye," he said, as he held out his hand. She 
 took it timidly with hers. He seemed a long way away 
 from her then. Everything was getting distant. 
 
 " God take care of you," he whispered.
 
 TRAFFIC. 237 
 
 She said nothing. She let him go. She heard the 
 swing doors close to as he went out. She tidied up the 
 table that he had left; then she turned and walked with 
 a peculiar motion to the door that led into the attendants' 
 dressing-room. That she opened. She passed through. 
 She had scarcely closed it when she fell. One of the 
 girls found her there later in the afternoon. They 
 brought her to as shop girls will, with hysterical excla- 
 mations and pattings of her hand. When she opened her 
 eyes she looked as though she had been away in search of 
 death, returning disappointed.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Two months dragged themselves out. Their full value 
 of time lost not one minute to Nanno. There is no such 
 thing as Tune. If the creatures of this world never 
 died, Time, so called, would never have been invented. 
 There is no Time before we are born; there is no Time 
 after we are dead. But whilst we live we have invented 
 little instruments of torture chronometers, sand-glasses 
 to measure out our span; and every grain of sand that 
 falls through the glass, and every tick of the pendulum in 
 the clock, we call Time. But our own conception of it 
 differs with every individual. To this man Time is long, 
 to that Time is short. So even we ignore the accuracy 
 of the inventions that we ourselves have made. To Kanno 
 the period seemed eternal; yet to Jamesy, in whose con- 
 ception London had become a place of pleasure, the mo- 
 ments passed impossible to count; but the clock in the 
 sitting-room, with its gaudy-painted face and its hollow 
 ticking moved none the faster or the slower for what 
 they thought. 
 
 For the first week or so Jamesy was always at home 
 when she returned. For all that she knew, he might 
 have been there all day ; but she did not ask any questions. 
 It did not matter to her. 
 
 One day Mrs. Randal asked her where her husband 
 worked. 
 
 "He doesn't work," she replied. 
 
 "What, not of a daytime?" 
 
 288
 
 TE * 
 
 ~ Where does he take his meA m the middle of the 
 
 . 
 
 zar }\m \rnnn i 
 
 k-- 7-: -:-::- -- -ill ^7 :: Ja 
 
 sh'jold try and nd -ome vork to do. 
 
 nd if his 
 . ~_T-i 1- M" .--. - - ~ ;. _ 
 
 1- --.T. Ar :'. ~i. --. --:.ll '-rd -^ 
 
 I :^ I::-' :~ :- z,-, ' .- 1 ~ :-. 
 
 *-!.*. 
 
 foce I erne wet J did t wai r bt^oby I ^rt fine fcn- 
 dred pA for iL Fait^ it'll he tihe (fiviTs wn 
 
 hefate I want any money." 
 
 Ti'T :z: ::".i:.-- :!:i: i"" :>J- :^i-i : : ii" 
 
 "-".i" - - 
 
 :-: v. : _ !- -;- -- ill - : : i l-.-^l; : 
 viii: !i-f i_ j : _: ~_L~~- : . i:. S_: rj..l z _ :-f 
 
 tkree wwfci hadl 
 
 " "-::. -a: -^-f I.: z: V L, : 
 
 :: I:-; i .-::.-. -If 
 
 ^- -.- :.:i -_: -i? j .^ :: : t d ,: 
 fae realized wfai Ms staying away 
 - aa the kter days at GLal 
 was beoaning haffdeacd. SJie did ae 
 
 1-
 
 290 TRAFFIC. 
 
 pened to him so long as he did not bring his viciousness 
 into contact with her life. 
 
 When she woke in the morning, it was to find the bed 
 beside her unoccupied. Jamesy had been away all night. 
 She said nothing to Mrs. Eandal when she brought up 
 the breakfast; but that virtuous individual was not pre- 
 pared to let Nanno go to work while her curiosity had 
 an empty stomach. 
 
 " Where was yer 'usband las' night ? " she asked. She 
 was waiting in the passage when Xanno came downstairs 
 on her way to business. " Why didn't 'e come 'ome ? " 
 
 " He had to stay away last night," she said. She would 
 give no further information, and after she had closed 
 the door, Mrs. Eandal discussed the matter aloud with 
 herself for at least half an hour. 
 
 Jamesy had returned when she came back in the even- 
 ing. He could not look her in the face. 
 
 " 'Twas the way I met a friend last night," he began 
 awkwardly. 
 
 For a moment Nanno felt satirically inclined to lead 
 him on to expatiate about the friend; but the growing 
 callousness of her mind put the idea aside. 
 
 So the days became weeks, the weeks accumulated un- 
 til the two months had passed. Every day her powers 
 of feeling became more blunted, less defined; the fine 
 edge of a blade that loses keenness with every coarse 
 stroke; yet there grew steadily within her the knowledge 
 that the end of her duty to the Church was drawing 
 nearer and nearer. The priest who had advised her to 
 recall her husband, would soon be compelled to admit that 
 his advice was useless. Then, in one day, the climax came 
 with its torrent, as the drops of rain that slowly merge 
 together on the window-pane, and finally tumble down 
 their own weight upon the sill.
 
 TRAFFIC. 291 
 
 Arriving one morning at the restaurant, Mr. Mossop 
 presented her with a letter. 
 
 "It's not customary in fact, I may say it's against 
 the rules," he said, " for any of our young ladies to give 
 the Stores as an address." 
 
 " I have not done so," she replied quickly. 
 
 " Oh ! then, rather than get you into trouble, I'll say 
 nothing about it d'you see I'll say nothing about it." 
 
 " Thank you very much." She took the letter that 
 he was reluctantly holding out for her. 
 
 " And how are you now, Nanno ? " he asked, wishing 
 to ^make the best of the advantage of his generosity. 
 " You haven't looked at all up to the mark since that 
 day you fainted in the dressing-room not at all up to 
 the mark. Feeling so-so I expect?" 
 
 " I don't feel very well." 
 
 " Been to a doctor ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Well, now, there's a very good man attends me 
 he's quite Al, what I mean, 'e'd make his mark in Harley 
 Street. I've often said so to him. Of course, he's not 
 an M.D. and that's against him. He's only L.K.C.P. 
 M.R.C.S., and some people make the mistake when they 
 see that on his plate that he's only a veterinary surgeon. 
 Supposin' I send him along to see you. He's extremely 
 reasonable what I mean to say, he won't charge more 
 than half-a-crown if he thinks you couldn't afford it." 
 
 Believing her letter to be from Jerningham, Kanno 
 could scarcely control her impatience to get away from this 
 garrulous man; yet she knew that it would be impolitic 
 to show her lack of interest. 
 
 " I don't think I really want to see a doctor," she said, 
 crumpling her letter in her hand. 
 
 "Very well," he said, with a shrug descriptive of his
 
 292 TRAFFIC. 
 
 belief that he was the wiser of the two. " It isn't because 
 Dr. Fincham attends me, that he isn't a lady's man." 
 
 He smiled. He thought that there he had found the 
 weak spot in her refusal. Thinking still more concretely, 
 he shook his head in a playful manner that made him 
 look like a mechanical toy, and departed. 
 
 Nanno went immediately to the dressing-room and tore 
 open the envelope. Had she not been so hasty, she might 
 have noticed that fingers had been engaged at the flap be- 
 fore hers. The sleek Mr. Mossop, in fact, believing 
 the letter to have come from an admirer, had tried to 
 force it with gentle persuasion. But Jerningham was not 
 a man who licked envelopes with the tip of his tongue, 
 and it had remained impervious to his effort. 
 
 "My Nanno," it began, and when she saw the words, 
 she put it down for a moment and let the lump that had 
 risen in her throat break into the tears in her eyes. 
 
 " MY 
 
 " This is not written as a temptation to you. Con- 
 sider that all temptation is past, and let me say good-bye 
 to you here without the ghastly dinning of Miss Shand's 
 violin in my ears or the clattering of teacups. I want 
 you to think I want you to believe that what you have 
 made in me is made for all time. I don't believe I am 
 a marrying man. I mean that, losing you, I shall not 
 just get over it in the ordinary way, and then look out for 
 some one else. Some one else would not do. I could have 
 made proposals to you other than those of marriage 
 which, perhaps I am utterly wrong in thinking, that 
 loving me as you do, you would not have hated me for. 
 I could possibly have made such proposals to any other 
 woman looking in your eyes, I could not have clone so to 
 you. I suppose, to an extent, I am old-fashioned. I be-
 
 TRAFFIC. 293 
 
 lieve in marriage; though to look at it in your instance, 
 almost shatters my belief. But I don't look at it in your 
 instance I only look at it as it would be with you and 
 me. Supposing you were to come to me while he was still 
 alive and tell me you could not live alone, I should take 
 you in with all my heart and never think one thought of 
 blame of you but I could not ask you to do so myself. 
 Should it ever happen that you want a home while he 
 is still alive, what I have is yours for the asking. I say 
 this : I put it in this way because I can never forget how 
 I have in these last few months been urging you to some- 
 thing which in your eyes is a sin. I will never do that 
 again, and this instance which I cite here now I sup- 
 pose I don't know the laws of your Church but I 
 suppose that that would be a greater sin. I could not 
 make you sin, Xanno. You are only meant for the 
 praise and pleasure of the God who made you. And so 
 I see I am wrong even in saying that I would take you 
 in if you should come and ask me. I would not take 
 you in. I would not. Whatever I have is yours, but I 
 must take nothing that I long for from you. And so 
 good-bye good-bye, my Xanno." 
 
 This was a piece out of Jerningham's heart. The 
 lancet of circumstance, keen-edged as a reed, had probed 
 to depths that he had been unaware of, bringing away 
 with it, when its incision had been complete, an ex- 
 pression of himself which his friends, still nicknaming 
 him "the bachelor," would not have recognized, would 
 not have believed. 
 
 Xanno put the letter to her lips. Her tears fell on 
 its characters. The ink of the writing mingled with 
 them. How was she to go back to the sordidness of her 
 home, when in life there was a man who loved her like
 
 294: TRAFFIC. 
 
 this? She asked herself that question with everything 
 she did. In all the carrying out of her duty during the 
 day she put the question to herself. When she went up to 
 the counter to demand tea for a customer, when she ap- 
 proached her customers to inquire what they wanted, 
 that question looked defiantly out of her eyes. But by 
 the evening the defiance vanished. As she walked home, 
 she read the letter through once more; stopping for a 
 few moments under the gas-lamps, lest standing under one 
 until it was finished, she might seem conspicuous. It 
 was the fruitless end of it all. When she had read it for 
 the fourth time she realized that; but it in no way 
 lessened the hideousness of that to which she was return- 
 ing. 
 
 She had scarcely finished pulling the bell of the house 
 when the door opened and Mrs. Randal stood before her. 
 She was wiping her hands with vicious movements, and 
 the attitude which she assumed, aggressively barring the 
 way, brought into Nanno's mind at once the apprehension 
 that something had occurred in her absence. She felt 
 afraid to ask her what it was, but the irate landlady had 
 no intention of keeping her ignorant. She took a deep 
 breath at once and, at the sight of Nanno's expectant face, 
 her lips became thin and white with the remembrance of 
 how as she would have described it herself she had 
 been put out. 
 
 " P'r'aps you'd like to know where your husband is," 
 she said, closing the door and facing Nanno in the pas- 
 sage. 
 
 A dread that was nauseating made her limbs seem 
 weak and powerless to support her. She leaned up 
 against the wall, looking piteously at the woman who con- 
 sidered herself so infinitely much more injured than 
 Nanno herself, who as yet knew nothing.
 
 TRAFFIC. 295 
 
 " What is it ? " she asked, bewildered " what's hap- 
 pened?" 
 
 Mrs. Eandal folded her arms and, for a moment, 
 seemed to permit herself to be inwardly consumed by a 
 living crater of wrath : the convulsions of its burning con- 
 torted her face. 
 
 " Mind yer, if I don't just pack yer out of the 'ouse 
 the moment what yer come in, it's because I'm a mar- 
 ried woman myself, and it don't need a drop o' gin to make 
 me feel sympathetic to others what's in trouble." 
 
 Nanno could bear it no longer. 
 
 "What is it, Mrs. Randal?" she pleaded. "Where is 
 he?" 
 
 "Well if you was to arst me I should say 'e was fast 
 asleep in Bow Street." 
 
 "Where's that?" 
 
 " Well, it's a lock-up, but I couldn't tell you exactly 
 the whereabouts of it. I ain't been there myself." 
 
 "He's in jail?" 
 
 " Where 'e ought to be." 
 
 " But what's he done ? " 
 
 " Well this is what 'e's done." She blew her nose with 
 her apron, preparatory to a long story. " I brought Mm 
 up 'is breakfast this morning after you'd gone, and when 
 I come to clear away the things about an hour later 'e'd 
 gone out. I'd never 'eard 'im, because I said to myself 
 noticin' a little bit,, o' bacon what Vd left on his plate 
 ' I wonder what she'd say ' meanin' you ' if she see'd 
 'ow wasteful 'e was,' I said, and I shouldn't 'ave said that 
 if 'e'd been there." So far her remarks were too obvious 
 to be explicit, but she labored on. " When I found 'e 
 didn't come in to 'is dinner at one o'clock, I went out 
 myself and I told Annie, my youngest girl, to look after 
 the door if any gne came." Here she turned her head
 
 296 TRAFFIC. 
 
 in the direction of the remote parts of the house and 
 cried " Annie ! " with a strident voice that seemed to tear 
 the membrane of her throat. Twice she repeated the 
 cry. At last a little girl opened the door at the end of 
 the passage. 
 
 " Come 'ere!" Mrs. Eandal exclaimed peremptorily. 
 
 Well knowing what was expected of her, the child sidled 
 towards them. 
 
 " What time did 'e come in this afternoon ? " she was 
 asked. 
 
 " 'Arf-past four," was the prompt reply, with a voice 
 that was her mother's in a higher octave. 
 
 " And who was with 'im ? " 
 
 " The barmaid from the * Three Crowns.' ' : 
 
 Mrs. Eandal looked expectantly at Nanno to see the 
 effect of this dramatic announcement. Dramatic it still 
 was to her, though she had heard it from the child's 
 lips at least twenty times before. But Nanno only leaned 
 up against the wall. Her breath did not come any the 
 faster; her heart beat none the quicker. Mrs. Eandal did 
 not know the previous experiences which had inured her 
 against the horribleness of such information. She had 
 not guessed how little events, little circumstances, during 
 the last two months, had been leading Nanno to the ex- 
 pectation of such a crisis. The knowledge that frequently, 
 on her return in the evening, he had been taking more 
 than he could stand in the way of alcohol; the remem- 
 brance of that night when he had not returned at all; 
 these and a lot of other smaller facts had all combined 
 to prepare her mind for the climax which she fully real- 
 ized was inevitable. Now it had come. He had proved 
 his utter worthlessness. He had shown the hopeless futil- 
 ity of their lives being continued together. But if Mrs. 
 Eandal had expected that the knowledge of it would shame
 
 TRAFFIC.. 89? 
 
 Xanno so that she could not raise her head, she was mis- 
 taken. It has been said before in this chapter that the 
 truth in life to a woman who has been robbed of her 
 powers of idealization is degrading. It had degraded 
 Xanno. She felt no shame. In the eyes of God, where 
 all marriages were made, this man was her husband ; but 
 so utterly had he made his existence separate from hers 
 that she felt no disgrace in the evil that he did. 
 
 "My Gawd! 'aven't yer anything to say to that?" 
 Mrs. Randal exclaimed, when she had watched Xanno's 
 face in vain for some sign of feeling. 
 
 Xanno shook her head. 
 
 '' What did he say to yer ! " Mrs. Randal then con- 
 tinued in her examination of the child. " 'Ow did 'e 
 explain what ? e was doin' in the 'ouse with, that ? " 
 
 " 'E said, ' Is my wife in ? ' 'e says." 
 
 "Well ?" 
 
 " ' No,' I says, ' she ain't.' ' Well, this 'ere,' he says, 
 *is a friend of 'ers, she's comin' in 'ere to wait till she 
 comes in,' he says." 
 
 " Go on ! " ejaculated Mrs. Randal, anxious to arrive 
 at that part of the story where she herself had taken 
 an active part. 
 
 " Well they went upstairs then and I didn't see no 
 more of 'em 'cept what I 'eard." 
 
 "What did yer 'ear?" 
 
 " Singin' and laughin' same way as father sings on 
 Saturday night." 
 
 Mrs. Randal dismissed her daughter with a well-directed 
 blow, lest other domestic details might fall from the 
 mouth of babes. 
 
 "Well what dyer think of that now?" she asked, 
 when Annie had closed the kitchen door. " In my 'ouse, 
 what 'as always 'ad the name of bein' 'ighly respectable.
 
 298 TRAFFIC. 
 
 Singin' and laughin' drunk they were. When I come 
 back, the place was like a music-'all. I don't want to 
 'urt your feelin's. God in 'evin knows, we women 'ave 
 to put up with a deal more than we oughter. But when 
 I come in and Annie told me what was a-goin' on up- 
 stairs well, I just crep' up to the door and, God forgive 
 me that I should be tellin' yer " Mrs. Eandal just gloried 
 in the telling " but I've always said as 'ow you were a 
 cut above 'im. Well I crep' up to the door and as shure 
 as I'm standin' 'ere I 'card 'im lovey-doveyin' 'er. I 
 didn't go in. I've got some sense of decency, I 'ave. No 
 I didn't go in I knocked at the door. ' Will yer come 
 outside 'ere, Mr. Kyan ? ' I says ; and then the singin' 
 stopped, like as if I'd clapped me 'and on their mouths. 
 After a minute the door opened an' 'e came out. Well 
 Gawd knows I don't want to be exageratin', my dear but 
 'e was drunk filthy 'e was.- I didn't say nuffin' I just 
 went downstairs, out of the 'ouse, an' I got a policeman 
 one as I knows myself on 'is beat. Well I won't re- 
 peat the langwidge 'e used " she lifted her hands and 
 her eyes towards heaven, represented by a dirty ceiling. 
 " Anyway," she concluded, " 'e's in Bow Street now, where 
 you can see 'im if you like." 
 
 To all this story Nanno had said nothing. With her 
 head against the varnished yellow paper of the wall, she lis- 
 tened to it all, as the picture of a dead man might listen to 
 the importunate cries of his living wife. Mrs. Eandal 
 waited for a few moments after she had finished, to see 
 whether Nanno had anything to reply, then she came to 
 the gist of what she wanted to say. 
 
 "I'm sorry to 'ave to do it," she said, wiping the per- 
 spiration from her face, "but I'm afraid I shall 'ave to 
 ask yer to find lodgin's elsewhere. When the street gets 
 to 'ear of this I shall lose my reputation, and it'll take
 
 TRAFFIC. 299 
 
 me some time to get it back again, 'less I can say as 'ow 
 I packed yer horff d'yer see." 
 
 Nanno looked at her. 
 
 "I'll go up and pack my things," she said unemotion- 
 ally. 
 
 " Well you needn't go to-night," said Mrs. Eandal. 
 
 "I'm going at once," Nanno replied.
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 THE UNLIFTED HAND.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE laws of Traffic are inexorable. The business of 
 life cannot come to a standstill for this horse that falls 
 dead between the shafts or for that driver that drops 
 in death from his seat. Move on move on is the con- 
 tinual cry, and the rumble of all the vehicles in the world 
 is incessant. Should a horse fall, or a driver drop the 
 reins, will the Traffic stop? Never. Around the obstacle 
 that bars its way, the ever-flowing stream will bifur- 
 cate with the inevitable precision of the mill-race that is 
 divided by the fallen branch. Sometimes a passenger in 
 passing will look down at the silent body and the rigid 
 legs; others will turn away, preferring not to be reminded 
 of the fate that awaits them farther down the road; but 
 no one ever stops; the Traffic surges on. In a few 
 hours that purchaser of the dead will come from nowhere 
 with his cart. The body will be lifted on to the ready 
 board. The driver will whip up his horse with a jest his 
 horse that, maybe, carrying the dead, will fall between 
 the shafts itself and the cart will rumble back to no- 
 where from whence it came, with its freight of death; 
 the protruding head wagging aimlessly, the stiffened legs 
 jolting like two sticks. Then the Traffic will pass on over 
 the same spot, and the mark of what happened there will 
 be gone forever. 
 
 What if the Traffic become congested? What if the 
 crowd surge into one spot, the wheels be interlocked and, 
 
 303
 
 304 TRAFFIC. 
 
 at a cross roads, prevent the progress of those coming in 
 another direction? What then? 
 
 There, at those corners in Life, you will find one, who, 
 in his uniform of the law, controls the Traffic in his 
 charge. There are many such corners to be met with, and 
 many wear the uniform of power. By the raising of his 
 hand or the nodding of his head he can let this vehicle 
 pass on, and delay that at his will. He obeys a great 
 design, but the discretion that he uses is his own. 
 
 Then to what type of man is given such colossal right ? 
 Is he part human, part divine? Does the great despot 
 for whom he works instil into him some of his own omnis- 
 cience? No. He is as much a man as that carter who, 
 being allowed to pass on by the motioning hand, turns 
 in his seat and jeers at those delayed behind. He is as 
 human as that. 
 
 Supposing, then, his discretion be wrong? Supposing 
 his judgment at fault? From one day to another he 
 may direct the Traffic right; yet, in a moment, he might 
 cast into utter destruction this vehicle or that which must 
 obey his will. What is the whole of Traffic to such a 
 vehicle, when its own destruction is wrought by his un- 
 yielding hand ? 
 
 There is no answer. 
 
 The stream still swells on its flood. The wheels still 
 grind; the whips still crack. You must be driven into 
 the wall of damnation in order that those of your neigh- 
 bors may pass by unscathed. But what is that to you? 
 There is a voice that answers out of the East " It is 
 the law." 
 
 For the second time, Nanno left her husband. Her
 
 TRAFFIC. 305 
 
 life was her own, she argiied; and, if she might not do 
 with it as she wished, the liberty to dissociate it with 
 that which was degrading at least remained with her. 
 
 Jamesy had never questioned where she worked. She 
 had never told him. So long as she had brought back 
 with her the substance of his living, he did not mind. It 
 had not interested him. When therefore she returned 
 to the old rooms in the Fulham Road, going as usual 
 each day to the restaurant, she knew that she was free from 
 discovery. In the labyrinths of London she was certain 
 that it would be impossible for one of his experience to 
 penetrate into her seclusion, and she felt sure that when 
 he was free he would return to Ireland, well knowing 
 that, in leaving no clue to her whereabouts, she had taken 
 her life into her own hands as she had done before. 
 
 The relief of being once again by herself and in the 
 place which held only the happiest of her recollections 
 was continually present with her. She decorated her room 
 just as it had been before. The same picture of the Sa- 
 cred Heart she hung on its nail which had never been re- 
 moved over the bed. With only herself to support, her 
 circumstances seemed suddenly to have assumed an afflu- 
 ence that was like the realization of a dream of wealth. 
 She put money away at meager interest in the Post Office 
 Savings Bank; and Mrs. Hudson, always having an affec- 
 tion for her because of the quietness of her living and her 
 gentle voice, welcomed her back as though she were a 
 child of her own. 
 
 Of Jerningham, she saw nothing. He had gone out of 
 her life, and all that she retained of him was the letter 
 which she had received at the restaurant. She dared 
 not go and see him again. This second catastrophe had 
 weakened her determination to obey, and she knew that 
 if she were once more to come into the atmosphere of his 
 20
 
 306 TRAFFIC. 
 
 influence, she could not maintain the strength that she 
 had shown before. 
 
 But life was incomparably happier than it had been. 
 There was no fear to be felt in the returning home. Mrs. 
 Hudson always had a comfortable meal prepared for her. 
 She gave her back the possession of the latchkey; that 
 same, heavy weight of metal which began again to wear 
 the holes in her pocket. 
 
 When the first tremble of anticipation that at any turn 
 of a street she might meet Jamesy had worn away, she 
 settled down to a more contented outlook on life. There 
 was time for reading again. Her Saturday afternoons 
 and her Sundays were once more holidays, not days of pen- 
 ance and terror. And with this growing feeling of nega- 
 tive happiness, she knew that she had done right in pur- 
 suing the course which she had adopted. 
 
 Even at this hour, there was left the hope of making 
 amends in her life for all the wretchedness and disappoint- 
 ment that had preceded it; but her destiny as yet had 
 not begun the weaving of its last pattern on the loom. 
 
 Five weeks after her departure from Jamesy, the hand 
 of nature fastened about her with its unerring grip. As 
 one day followed another, she felt its fingers sinking deeper 
 and deeper into the humanity of her flesh. Then, when 
 all hope had been choked, when realization had donned the 
 black cap of certainty, she knew that she was to be a 
 mother once more. The curse of Eve had pursued her, 
 overtaking her just as her steps were free, just as she saw 
 before her the silent, far-stretching road of content. 
 
 Then the horizon altered. The faint gray of a peace- 
 ful sky was swept with ugly clouds. She saw nothing 
 but the hopeless inevitability of the storm through which 
 she knew she must pass; and what lay on the other side
 
 TRAFFIC. ' 307 
 
 was totally obscured in the shadow of that which was 
 gathering around her. 
 
 When first she realized it, she lay on her bed, her face 
 buried in the pillows and the hot tears soaking into their 
 texture. For a while she raged against it, crying im- 
 portunately as will a child who has been denied its dear- 
 est wish. The last five weeks seemed unsurpassable in 
 their happiness, compared to what awaited her. If the 
 thought of appealing to Jamesy in her trouble ever entered 
 her head, it was with a shudder of repugnance and disgust. 
 The fact that it was his child as well as her own had no 
 place in her reasoning. She felt she was utterly alone. 
 
 Then she sat up, her hair disheveled about her face 
 and stared before her at nothing. Her eyes smarted with 
 their tears. Her lips felt swollen and her face burning to 
 her forehead. But she seemed unconscious of everything. 
 After a few moments she rose and paced the room, going to 
 the mirror on the dressing-table and looking for some 
 minutes at her face without realizing how piteous she 
 seemed. 
 
 At last a desperate hope that she might be wrong, she 
 might have made a mistake, cheered her. She dried her 
 eyes, making up her mind to wait. 
 
 The hope yielded nothing. When a few more weeks 
 had passed, during which she had striven to occupy her 
 thoughts with other things, the truth was forced upon 
 her. The same scene occurred once more and, passing 
 through the sitting-room by her door, Mrs. Hudson heard 
 the sounds of her passionate weeping. 
 
 Hesitating for a moment, she at last opened the door 
 and looked in. 
 
 " Why, my goodness ! " she exclaimed, coming forward. 
 
 Nanno sat up hurriedly and tried to dry her eyes. 
 
 "What hever's the matter?"
 
 308 TRAFFIC. 
 
 Nanno shook her head. " Nothing," she said weakly. 
 
 Mrs. Hudson was not prepared to be satisfied with that. 
 She crossed the room and stood in front of her with her 
 hands on her massive hips. 
 
 " What's been 'appenin' to yer ? " she persisted. 
 
 Xanno shook her head again, but said nothing. She 
 tried to rise to her feet and pass by Mrs. Hudson to the 
 dressing-table, but the landlady laid her hands on her 
 shoulder she was not afraid of trouble. She would ad- 
 mit, quite openly, to any one in the most casual conver- 
 sation that she had had her share of it. And with ISTanno, 
 she felt interested ; which is a kinder way of saying that a 
 woman is curious. There was not a great deal of life 
 that she had not seen from her point of view, and she 
 knew by unconscious experience that a girl does not cry 
 when there is no one to see or to affect unless she has very 
 serious reasons for it. She was, moreover, with her knowl- 
 edge of the world, quite prepared to guess what those rea- 
 sons were, and in her own way, which, when handled by a 
 woman, is wonderfully efficacious, she proceeded to do 
 so. 
 
 " I guess that Mr. Mossop 'as been worrying yer again," 
 she began " I never did like the looks of 'im when 'e came 
 'ere that Sunday. He ain't the best type of man because 
 Vs under a silk 'at. A brother o' mine was a hundertaker 
 and wore a top 'at most days of 'is life; but 'e was the 
 biggest blackguard I hever saw. It is Mr. Mossop isn't 
 it ? " she added cunningly, fully believing that it was 
 not. " When first you told me 'e was hover you in the 
 restaurant, I said to my 'usband 'Jest you wait and see,' 
 I says. Now, what's 'e been doin ' ? " 
 
 Nanno shook the tears from her eyes. 
 
 " Oh, nothing ! " she exclaimed vehemently. " It has 
 nothing to do with Mr. Mossop." .
 
 TRAFFIC. 309 
 
 Mrs. Hudson nodded her head satisfactorily. This was 
 one possibility eliminated from those which she had in her 
 mind. If it was not Mr. Mossop, then the suggestion 
 that it was the other visitor, whose name she had for- 
 gotten, might find an echo or induce her to tell the real 
 truth. She was firmly convinced that a man lay beneath 
 it all. She knew men thoroughly. She had married one. 
 
 With a few tentative preliminaries then, she made the 
 second suggestion, and this Nanno refuted as emphatically 
 as the first. 
 
 "But there is some man?" Mrs. Hudson declared, for 
 a moment at a loss. " Come now," she continued in a 
 motherly tone of voice " 'as 'e jilted yer 'as 'e 'as 'e ? " 
 
 Nanno remained silent and, with a subtle intuition, 
 knowing that the girl would admit such a position when 
 asked with such kindness as Mrs. Hudson had shown, she 
 arrived with a sudden bound of her imagination in the 
 region of the truth. 
 
 " 'As 'e got yer into trouble ? " she asked in a whisper 
 " 'as 'e got yer into trouble and then 'ooked off ? " 
 
 Nanno buried her head again in the pillow. The knowl- 
 edge that in another moment she would be compelled, 
 from the sheer desire to ease her mind, to tell Mrs. Hud- 
 son everything, completely overcame her. 
 
 The landlady stood erect for a moment, as though to 
 take breath after her exertion. She knew that she had 
 found the kernel of it all; the same poor withered fruit 
 that lies within nearly every shell of despair and remorse, 
 with which so many women's lives are clothed. She 
 shook her head as she looked at Nanno's body, convulsing 
 with the sobs that were shaking her from head to foot. 
 
 " And 'e won't marry yer eh isn't that it, 'e won't 
 marry yer ? " 
 
 " I am married ! " Nanno exclaimed suddenly, in her
 
 310 TRAFFIC. 
 
 own defense " I am married ! " she repeated, and her 
 words were muffled with the pillow at her mouth. 
 
 " You are married ? " Mrs. Hudson cried. " Well, my 
 Gawd ! 'ow you do surprise me. What are yer cry in' about 
 then?" 
 
 Nanno told her everything.
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 IF there is ever a time when Life can be said to be 
 like a man in whose footsteps death follows, running when 
 he runs, walking when he walks, stopping when he stops; 
 then, during the next few months, Life was as that to 
 Nanno. 
 
 The hour would come, she knew, when she would require 
 every penny that she could scrape together. The deter- 
 mination, then, to save everything that she could spare, 
 was a natural consequence. But there was as yet another 
 point for consideration. As soon as her condition be- 
 came apparent, she knew that she would be dismissed 
 from the restaurant. Then, for the time being at 
 least and until her child was born, she could not hope 
 to obtain another situation. How long dared she take 
 the risk in order to save the sum which she considered 
 necessary? Affluent though her circumstances had seemed 
 to be when first she came back to the Fulham Eoad, they 
 now appeared in a very different light. Ten shillings 
 or twelve at the utmost saved every week will not ac- 
 cumulate in a few months to anything of importance. 
 But the eternal hope that she was true to her faith and 
 that therein lay the help that she most needed, persuaded 
 her to trust the God of Providence too implicitly. 
 
 One day she found the superintendent's glance criti- 
 cizing her. The cold eyes were fixed on her. An ill-bred 
 relentlessness lay like a shadow on her face. Nanno felt 
 the blood running like cold water through her veins. With 
 
 311
 
 312 TRAFFIC. 
 
 the first opportunity that offered, she hurried to the at- 
 tendants' dressing-room, and with pathetic attitudes 
 studied herself in the glass. 
 
 She had trusted too much. She had been deceived 
 by hope and the desire to be earning money as long as 
 possible. The tears came quietly into her eyes when she 
 thought of the twenty pounds or so that she had put 
 away in the Savings Bank. For some weeks to come she 
 knew that she would be unable to earn any more. And 
 how long would twenty pounds last? Only a few weeks 
 no longer. 
 
 When the day was over, Mr. Mossop called her aside. 
 She followed him with her head erect. 
 
 "I'm sorry to tell you, Miss Troy," he said, in a tone 
 of righteousness, "that we shall not require your services 
 any longer. You will be given a week's wages and your 
 place will be filled to-morrow." 
 
 Nanno put her hand to her eyes. 
 
 " Can I have a recommendation that will help me in 
 getting another situation ? " she asked. 
 
 " Most decidedly not," he replied. In his voice lay the 
 just indignation of the entire firm. She had favored an- 
 other as she had refused to favor him, and mercy was not 
 within call of him. 
 
 Nanno looked up with pleading eyes. 
 
 " Oh, surely you can't deny me that ? " she begged. 
 
 " We have every right. I may say that such a case 
 as this has never occurred amongst our young ladies be- 
 fore. Your condition is a disgrace to the establishment 
 and to yourself." Mr. Mossop could be a moralist if he 
 chose. Half expressed in the back of his mind, there lay 
 quite a few stinging phrases of ethical judgment which 
 he was yearning to deliver to this girl who had so wantonly
 
 TRAFFIC. 313 
 
 given herself away; but they would not collect them- 
 selves into forms of speech. 
 
 " I repeat/' he added in lieu of them " it is a dis- 
 grace." 
 
 " But I am married," Xanno replied quietly. " I didn't 
 know that it was a disgrace for a married woman to 
 work for her living as long as she is able." 
 
 Mr. Mossop saw the truth in her eyes, but he refused to 
 believe it. This would rob him of prestige. It offended 
 his sense of mastery. Besides, where was her husband? 
 
 " If you wish to profess that," he answered, " I am 
 forced to reply that we do not employ married women 
 on our staff. You will receive your wages from the 
 cashier in the usual way." 
 
 " But the letter of recommendation ? " 
 
 He looked her squarely in the face, as though, with 
 the astuteness of the barrister, he were putting her to 
 a test that would expose the weakness of her story. 
 
 " If you like to bring your husband here and with the 
 certificate of your marriage I will endeavor, for the sake 
 of the interest I once took in you, to see how far I can 
 influence the firm to look at your case with reasonable 
 leniency. Will you do that? Will you bring your hus- 
 band here ? " 
 
 " I can't." 
 
 " Ah ! " He smiled with the wisdom of the world and 
 the weight of his own omniscience. "Isn't he alive?" 
 He asked it so gently, so considerately. 
 
 " Yes he's alive." 
 
 "Oh then why can't you bring him?" 
 
 " We don't live together." 
 
 " Ah." The smile returned with reassurance. " I see 
 you don't live together. Then good-afternoon." 
 
 He left her there alone.
 
 314 TRAFFIC. 
 
 When four months had passed her child was born. Mrs. 
 Hudson in those days rose to a pinnacle of admiration 
 and affection in Nanno's heart. She nursed her through 
 it all with a care and attention that no mother could have 
 excelled. " Why, my goodness/' she said, expressing her 
 view of the whole matter, " so long as they leave them 
 words ' for better or for worse ' in the prayer-books, 
 this state o' things'll be goin' hon, goin' hon, and what's 
 to stop 'em?" 
 
 When she -learned that Nanno had but very little money 
 left in the hoard which she had saved, she replied that 
 there was time enough to talk about them things when 
 she couldn't pay at all. 
 
 " Why Lord a' mercy," she added, going to the door, 
 " a fine young girl like you will get somefin' to do the 
 moment you put your foot outside the door again. And 
 that'll be in just ten days from now. I'll pack yer off 
 then; like as if yer was goin' to school." 
 
 Nanno smiled. She tried to laugh, but the sound broke 
 in her throat, and the moment the door had closed, her 
 head was buried in the pillows and the tears rushed from 
 her eyes as a stream that is in flood. She made no sound. 
 She was too weak. But beside her, in all the lustiness of 
 new life, Jamesy's child asserted its existence. 
 
 In ten days, as Mrs. Hudson had declared, Nanno was 
 about once more, and the first morning that she was strong 
 enough, she set out to answer the advertisements that 
 she had been watching in the papers. They were all for 
 situations such as that which she had filled at Maynard's, 
 but without exception needed proofs of her experience. 
 She could give none. 
 
 The days passed by, and one evening after another she 
 returned, her errands fruitless. Her circumstances when 
 she first came from Ireland were far superior to those
 
 TRAFFIC. 315 
 
 which she cited now. She had had experience; she was 
 more fitted for her work, but some shadow seemed to have 
 fallen across her face. It fell across the story that she 
 told. They looked at her suspiciously. When Mr. Mos- 
 sop had first seen her, she had been so obviously the fresh, 
 country girl, ready to learn, ready to work. That sugges- 
 tion had left her now. There was no doubt that she had 
 been in London for some time. Then what had she been 
 doing? She could not answer. If she had not been at 
 work, were there any persons who could recommend her 
 for honesty, sobriety any of the moral qualifications that 
 all these establishments are so eager to get and so lax to 
 superintend? But there were none. There was one per- 
 haps Jerningham but she would not go to him. And 
 so the days turned into weeks. She was already heavily 
 in Mrs. Hudson's debt, but no work was to be found. 
 
 One evening she was having a meal, when the door of 
 the sitting-room opened and Mr. Hudson, whom she had 
 often seen, but never spoken to before, entered the room. 
 
 " Excuse me," he began awkwardly. 
 
 " Why of course. Please come in." 
 
 He shut the door ominously behind him. 
 
 "It's like this," he said, striding like a cart-horse at 
 once to his point : " my missis is lettin' you lodge 'ere for 
 nothin'." 
 
 " Oh, as soon as I get work, Mr. Hudson " 
 
 " Yes as soon as you do. So far you 'aven't got it, 
 so what I'm sayin' ain't so far wrong. She's lettin' you 
 lodge 'ere for nothin', and we can't afford it blowed if 
 we can. If she knew I was talkin' to you about it, she'd 
 go 'arf ways to breakin' me 'ead so you needn't tell her, 
 d'yer see " 
 
 Nanno said she understood.
 
 316 TRAFFIC. 
 
 "Well, now, what are yer.goin' to do? I tells you we 
 can't afford it, and what do you reply ? " 
 
 " It shan't continue. I shall say nothing to Mrs. Hud- 
 son; you needn't be afraid of that but it shan't con- 
 tinue." 
 
 He went to the door again. 
 
 " Much obliged," he said lethargically. Then ho was 
 gone. A few sentences, a few moments, and the real 
 tragedy of her position had been shown to her, as when 
 a search-light, scouring like a greyhound through the 
 dark, falls with its dazzling illumination upon its prey. 
 He had come and gone, before she was almost aware 
 of his entrance ; yet it had been long enough to change the 
 entire outlook in her mind. 
 
 A pound or so was all that she possessed in the world 
 and, so far as she could see, only one course lay open to her 
 to appeal to Jerningham. She took his crumpled letter 
 out of her pocket and read it through again. She had 
 lost count by this of the number of times that she had 
 perused it. 
 
 " I don't know the laws of your Church but I suppose 
 that that would be a greater sin. I could not make you 
 sin, Nanno. You are only meant for the praise and pleas- 
 ure of the God who made you. And so I see I am wrong 
 even in saying that I would take you in should you come 
 and ask me. I would not take you in. I would not." 
 
 It was quite obvious that he did not know the laws 
 of her Church. It would be a sin, no doubt, if she 
 sought the cover and release of his protection ; but absolu- 
 tion would not be denied her. There were many women 
 who sinned in such a way to whom absolution was granted. 
 The punishment would not be so drastic as the inevitable 
 excommunication that would follow her marriage, were 
 she to accept the law of England. He did not know the
 
 TRAFFIC. 317 
 
 laws of her Church ; but could she enlighten him ? Could 
 she go down to the Temple that evening and say, " I'm 
 in great trouble ; I can't support myself or my child. If I 
 came to live with you, it would not be so great sin as if I 
 wilfully disobeyed the teachings of the Church and mar- 
 ried you will you take me ? " 
 
 How could she say that? It would be selling herself 
 worse than selling herself. She would be taking advan- 
 tage of the love he felt for her, and receiving more, in- 
 finitely more, than was her due. It would be a better 
 thing to go into the streets and barter with those who 
 needed no more than she could give, rather than play on 
 his feelings as on a man who was drunk and steal from 
 him more than her rightful wage. 
 
 She shuddered when she thought of the stress of cir- 
 cumstance into which she had been brought. Two years 
 ago, six months ago, this idea would never have entered 
 her head ; now she contemplated it as a possible alternative 
 to something that appeared to be her last hope. The hand 
 of the Law was raised warningly before her. When it 
 was lowered, it seemed that she could only go on towards 
 her own destruction. Why obey the Law ? Those brought 
 up beneath its hand find it well-nigh impossible to creep 
 out of the shadow. 
 
 But what was there to do? She leaned on the table, 
 her hands holding her head, that throbbed with the pulse 
 of despair. The Fate that had been hanging in her steps 
 across the checkered-board of Life had driven her into the 
 fatal square. She could move neither to the right nor to 
 the left. There remained only one black square and that, 
 behind her. The law of Traffic compelled her to move 
 on. Fate, Circumstance there are so many names, yet 
 none actually define the power that drives offered only 
 this wav to move. Was it to be checkmate or one more
 
 318 TRAFFIC. 
 
 effort in a lower, meaner groove, from which the hope of 
 ultimate escape was too remote to see? 
 
 Mrs. Hudson opened the door and looked in. 
 
 ' 'Ere's Miss Shand to see yer, dear. Miss Shand, what 
 used to come before." 
 
 Nanno lifted her head with sudden hope. Was this a 
 direction, an alternative that she had overlooked ?
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HAD she known the subtle menace that was hidden be- 
 hind the advent of Miss Shand the poisoned dagger be- 
 hind the velvet cloak Nanno would have closed her door 
 and cried against her entry. But the deeper design lay 
 concealed beneath the superficial fact that this was a 
 friend in a moment of distress. She welcomed her as a 
 man welcomes the first blades of harvest that lift above the 
 ground. In that instant it seemed that she had found 
 her salvation. 
 
 So it is and in such a guise that the scheme of Life 
 brings personalities together for its own ends, with its 
 own intentions. It will scour the earth to fill one de- 
 parting boat, weaving a network of circumstances, lasting 
 sometimes over years, in order to collect these units on a 
 certain night of storm when the ship shall be wrecked 
 and they whose hour has come be sent before their God 
 as the law of Fate has decided. It will bring together 
 a man and a woman from the uttermost ends of the world, 
 constructing an intricate scaffolding of events which, with 
 a certainty that counts to a grain the sand that is washed 
 of the sea, will make their contact inevitable. It will 
 make lovers of them, friends of them, husband and wife 
 of them, in order to create tribulation or blessing for 
 them both. Thus the gauntlet of existence is run in order 
 that they who are entered for the race may pass the test 
 of tribulation or the yet harder test of blessings that can- 
 
 319
 
 320 TRAFFIC. 
 
 not be numbered, before it may be adjudged that they have 
 earned their reward. 
 
 That evening, as Miss Shand was getting into the 'bus 
 that would bring her to the flat where she had moved, 
 she saw a girl crossing the road who reminded her of 
 N"anno. That girl had been sent on a message from the 
 City, and it Avas the first time for three years that she 
 had come so far West. A moment later, a moment sooner, 
 Miss Shand would not have seen her, and the thought 
 of going out to the Fulham Eoad and renewing her 
 friendship with Nanno would not have entered her head. 
 But the incident was timed with an accuracy which noth- 
 ing human can conceive. Miss Shand jumped down from 
 her 'bus before it started ; crossing to the other side of the 
 street, she took another that was going in the direction 
 that she required and, within twenty minutes, she was kiss- 
 ing Nanno's cheek with friendly assurances that their 
 quarrel was over. 
 
 So these two, both unconscious of the fact that they 
 were puppets in a powerful hand, met again to play their 
 parts, one against the other, as unwittingly as they had 
 done before. 
 
 Nanno seated Miss Shand in the old horsehair arm- 
 chair, and, placing herself near her, they talked for an 
 hour of the old times, of the changes that had come in 
 the restaurant since Nanno's departure, on every topic that 
 a woman no matter what her training may have been 
 can call into immediate requisition in order to shield the 
 one subject that is nearest her thoughts. 
 
 But eventually it had to be discussed. Both of them 
 were fully aware of that. Whenever an opportunity of- 
 fered, Miss Shand drew the conversation round to Nanno's 
 dismissal from Maynard's and, for a time, Nanno deftly 
 avoided the inevitable result. At length she gave way
 
 TRAFFIC. 321 
 
 and, with lips thai sometimes quivered, with voice that 
 sometimes shook, she told her story once more, her eyes 
 fixed on the cold and empty grate as though, in its 
 very cheerlessness, she found assistance in her confession. 
 
 With concentrated intentness, Miss Shand listened to 
 every word ; asking such questions now and again as would 
 satisfy a curiosity regarding intimate details which she 
 could not suppress. 
 
 " And now," concluded Nanno, " I can get nothing to 
 do. For the last week or so I've been answering advertise- 
 ments till the sight of a paper makes me feel tired worn 
 out/' 
 
 " How much have you saved, dear ? " asked Miss Shand, 
 coming without hesitation to the vital point. 
 
 " All that I've saved is gone. I've only got a pound and 
 a few shillings, and I owe Mrs. Hudson here quite a 
 lot of money." 
 
 " But how about Mr. Jerningham ? He'd help you 
 don't I just know he would." 
 
 Up to this moment Jerningham's name had not been 
 mentioned. Xanno had steered wide of it as of a whirl- 
 pool, though just before her friend's arrival it had risen 
 so prominently in her mind. 
 
 " How about Mr. Jerningham ? " Miss Shand repeated. 
 She knew that N"anno had intentionally avoided the intro- 
 duction of his name. Xow she intended to bring it in 
 herself. It is a practical impossibility to shake a woman 
 of a fixed belief which instinct has driven into her mind, 
 and with Miss Shand, when first she heard the reason 
 of Xanno's dismissal from the restaurant, her thoughts 
 flew to Jerningham as the cause. Now she had been told 
 a different story. Out of nowhere a husband had been 
 created and offered for her acceptance as the father of 
 Nanno's child. But where was the father now? He had 
 21
 
 322 TRAFFIC. 
 
 vanished again into the nowhere from whence he came. 
 When first she had known Nanno, she had found her living 
 alone in these very rooms. No hint, no suggestion, was 
 ever given then that she was married. Now, after some 
 months, she had returned to find Nanno the mother of a 
 child, but still living alone as she was before. With 
 preconceived ideas as to the child's parentage, founded on 
 no idle conjectures, she was asked then to believe in a 
 husband who, in that short time, had come from and gone 
 into the unknown. 
 
 Nanno was reticent; by nature, Miss Shand knew that 
 she was a great deal more virtuous than many another 
 girl of her acquaintance, who had not come to such a 
 pass as this. It was quite reasonable to suppose that she 
 did not like to tell the actual truth. But more forcible 
 a reason than this, was the first conviction that had entered 
 like a sun-ray into the unillumined mind of Miss Shand, 
 that Jerningham was the father of Nanno's child. She 
 would not dare openly to say so. A generous consideration 
 of Nanno's feelings was mostly the cause of this. But 
 in her heart, she nursed the belief judged by it worked 
 on it. Why wasn't Jerningham helping her? For the 
 third time she asked the question: 
 
 "How about Mr. Jerningham?" 
 
 "Why do you keep on asking that?" said Nanno, 
 brought at last to the actual discussion of his existence. 
 "Mr. Jerningham has nothing to do with me. We used 
 to be friends, perhaps, but because she's his friend, a wo- 
 man can't go and ask a man to help her with money." 
 
 Miss Shand opened her eyes. 
 
 " Why not ? He'd be only too glad." 
 
 " I don't think so. He wouldn't like it. I'm nothing 
 to him. I'd rather we didn't speak about him. What 
 you suggest is right out of the question." She leaned
 
 TRAFFIC. 323 
 
 forward and laid her hand on Miss Shand's. " Don't 
 speak about him any more," she pleaded. 
 
 It had been said that Miss Shand was by no means the 
 worst of her type. She had not been brought up to 
 understand the full meaning of the word morality, but 
 that did not lessen the power of the better impulses that 
 were often ready to dominate her actions. She could 
 not withstand this appeal, as Xanno made it. Still be- 
 lieving that Jerningham was the cause af all the mis- 
 fortune that had beset her companion, she felt the utmost 
 compassion for her in this plight, which, in her own mind, 
 she chose to call desertion. Gripping with convulsive pres- 
 sure the hand that was laid on hers, she put one arm round 
 Xanno's neck. 
 
 " I'll never so much as breathe his name again ! " she 
 exclaimed ; " but if he won't help you I will. You pack 
 up your things here. Tell Mrs. Hudson you'll pay her as 
 soon as you can, and then you'll just come and live with 
 me till you can get some work to do eh, dear ? " 
 
 Xanno's gratitude filled her eyes. 
 
 " How can I ? " she said. " You couldn't afford it in 
 your rooms." 
 
 " Ah ! but I've a flat of my own now." 
 
 "You have?" 
 
 " Yes so that it'll be only your food that'll cost any- 
 thing, and I know how to do things cheap. I should just 
 think I did." 
 
 " But there's the baby." 
 
 For the moment both of them had forgotten the first 
 cause of all the trouble. 
 
 " And I've never seen him is it a him ? " 
 
 Xanno nodded. 
 
 " Where is he ? " 
 
 " Sleeping in my bedroom."
 
 324 TRAFFIC. 
 
 In an instant the thought of its existence dominated 
 Miss Shand's mind. 
 
 " May I have a look? " she begged. 
 
 iSTanno opened the door into the bedroom and they both 
 entered noiselessly. 
 
 " Oh ! you still keep that funny picture of the Sacred 
 what-cher-may-call-it over your bed," said Miss Shand in 
 a whisper. Then she turned with a delighted exclamation 
 to the sleeping son of Jamesy Eyan. " Oh ! he is a gem. 
 Isn't he, dear?"
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ox the following day, in a little flat at the top of a 
 large building near Shepherd's Bush, Nanno had taken up 
 her abode with Miss Shancl. She filled the place of the 
 maid-of-all-work, who had been dismissed in order that 
 Xanno might in some way justify her existence there and 
 save her friend the greater expense of her board. When- 
 ever there were two or three hours of the day which she 
 could spare from her household duties, she locked up the 
 flat and departed in search of employment. But the re- 
 sult was always the same. Sometimes she was requested 
 to come again, and the diminishing hill of hope be- 
 came a mountain that was crumbled away to dust when 
 next she saw her prospective employers. No mountains 
 are there more easy to be moved with a word than those 
 of hope, which range from one end to the other of our 
 mental homon. 
 
 Xevertheless, the conditions of life were not so im- 
 possible as they had been with Mrs. Hudson, to whom 
 she still owed eight pounds for her lodging. She was 
 entirely dependent upon Miss Shand certainly, but then 
 she worked for her and in some degree lessened the ex- 
 pense that she otherwise caused. This, however, did not 
 detract from the sense of obligation of which, whenever 
 they were not on the best of terms, Miss Shand was not 
 above reminding her. Accordingly she did her utmost to 
 make herself free once more. She longed for the inde- 
 pendence she had known when she was in the restaurant. 
 
 325
 
 32G TRAFFIC. 
 
 But three weeks passed by and that independence was still 
 unfound. She did her utmost during this time to mini- 
 mize the cost of her living and, as a result, the baby suf- 
 fered in its strength. She suffered too Her cheeks that 
 once were full and tinted with the open air, as when Jer- 
 ningham had first seen her, found hollows and grew paler 
 every day. Her deep eyes burned just as brightly, but 
 there were heavy shadows under them. Her lips were just 
 as beautiful. They looked, in fact, a deeper red against 
 the ivory pallor of her face. 
 
 She seemed more fragile than ever. The expression of 
 Fatefulness had increased. No one, looking at her with 
 sight that was anything at all more than superficial, could 
 fail to think that in some man's life she would be the 
 heaven of a great passion or the hell of a giant despair. 
 It did not escape the notice of Miss Shand. Often, when 
 silently looking at her in the evening when she returned, 
 she would wonder why Nanno had so spoiled her life. 
 Whether it was, as she still believed, the fault of Jerning- 
 ham, or, as Nanno would wish her to understand, the ex- 
 istence of this unknown husband, still her life was spoiled, 
 and with the undeniable beauty of her face, Miss Shand 
 was fully aware that the conditions under which she lived 
 might have been very different. 
 
 She never expressed this thought. A woman must love 
 another more deeply than Miss Shand loved Nanno to tell 
 her that she is beautiful. And Nanno was not of that 
 type of woman which knows its beauty for itself. Re- 
 garding herself in the glass when she went to bed, she 
 would realize how tired she looked. Never, even with Jer- 
 ningham, had she counted upon her appearance. She had 
 often wondered why he should love her as he had declared. 
 He had never told her that she was beautiful. Had he 
 done so, she might then have believed it for his eyes alone.
 
 TRAFFIC. 327 
 
 It is the women who are pretty, who know of their own 
 grace and think themselves beautiful. The beauty of a 
 beautiful woman is not to be found by herself when she 
 sees her reflection in a mirror; half of it lies in the minds 
 of those who find her fair. 
 
 It was after three weeks of quiet living, chatting with 
 her friend after supper, while she made minute little gar- 
 ments for her child, and working like a housemaid during 
 the day, that Miss Shand returned early one evening with 
 the information that she wanted to get a swell meal ready. 
 
 " I've got some fellows nice chaps coming in to- 
 night, dear that's why/' 
 
 They busied themselves about the room to improve the 
 superficial appearance of things, which means so much to 
 a woman and so little to a man. The expectation of com- 
 pany brought a glow of excitement to Nanno's cheeks. 
 She had never met any of Miss Shand's friends and, in 
 the generous innocence of her heart, she anticipated a 
 pleasurable relief from the monotony of listening to her 
 companion's amiable conversation. 
 
 " Xow, you go and put on the best frock you've got, 
 dear," Miss Shand advised, when they had spread an en- 
 ticing meal from the parcels which she had brought back 
 with her. " I'm going to put on a low body what one of 
 the girls in Maynard's got for me cheap. It's a bargain, 
 really it is. I've seen some in Eegent Street in Peter 
 Eobinson's not a bit better. 
 
 Nanno departed to her room with a lighter step. 
 
 " I do hope the baby won't cry out in your room to- 
 night, dear," Miss Shand called after her. " It 'ud be so 
 awkward like if they was to hear it." 
 
 Nanno stopped. She felt plainly the note of objection 
 in her friend's voice. Those first ecstasies of Miss Shand 
 had soon died away when she had come to live with the
 
 328 TRAFFIC. 
 
 child. Nanno had seen that before. Now it was still more 
 obvious and once again, for a time that was past counting, 
 she whispered a hurried appeal to the Power above her that 
 she might soon find employment. 
 
 " I'll see that it goes fast asleep," she called back. . 
 
 Whatever belief there may be, prayer is the essence of 
 religion. It is a greater and deeper and truer acknowledg- 
 ment of the existence and mercy of God than any purchased 
 seat in the parish church. Nanno's unswerving belief in 
 the teachings of her creed was no less wonderful than her 
 deep-rooted feeling of reverence and dependence upon the 
 God she worshiped. Scarcely a day passed when, apart 
 from the usual prayers of night and morning, she did not 
 whisper an importunate appeal to the Throne of her 
 Creator. She did it as she worked. She did it as she 
 passed along the street. There was no one sufficiently ob- 
 servant to mark the surreptitiously moving finger as it 
 made the sign of the Cross in preliminary to the prayer. 
 
 That evening, no sooner had she closed the door of her 
 room than she went to the bed and knelt down, praying for 
 patience, praying for help however it might come. 
 
 When she came back into the sitting-room, Miss Shand 
 was already dressed. The bargain that she wore, suited her 
 certainly, if it did fulfil to the letter the fact that it was 
 low. She looked up with the expectation of approval in 
 her eyes; but when she saw Nanno, who for the last few 
 weeks had worn nothing but her oldest clothes in which to 
 do the work of the house, arrayed in a dainty though un- 
 pretentious muslin frock which she had once bought for 
 the summer, the look of expectation departed from her 
 eyes. 
 
 " My goodness ! " she exclaimed, " I didn't know you 
 had that thing ! " She half closed her eyes critically. 
 " Yes I think it does suit you, dear," she added. To an
 
 TRAFFIC. 329 
 
 outsider the lie would have been obvious. Miss Shand 
 knew that Nanno looked infinitely preferable to herself. 
 But this was not the moment for praise. 
 
 At half-past seven the fellows arrived. There were only 
 two of them. Miss Shand was not without discretion when 
 considering her own interests. 
 
 To introduce them as the} r were, Stanley Puckle and 
 "\Yilfrid Aimes were both in business. As a solicitor's clerk 
 in Bedford Kow, the former, dressed in the neighborhood 
 of Eastcheap on approved patterns from West End tailors, 
 was the discontented recipient of one hundred and seventy- 
 five pounds a year. He lived in lodgings quite close to the 
 suburban end of the Two-penny Tube, and when he went 
 up to business in the morning, a flower of the previous 
 night's entertainment usually graced his button-hole. 
 Wilfrid Aimes, on the other hand, was of a diametrically 
 opposite mold. When Stanley Puckle talked loudly of 
 musical-comedy artistes and repeated jokes which he had 
 heard across the footlights from those creatures of genius, 
 his friend was mutely silent. When, on the other hand, 
 Wilfrid Aimes discussed the beauties of Shelley and the 
 more intelligible portions of George Meredith, Stanley 
 Puckle held his tongue and waited for an opening. 
 
 Wilfrid Aimes was a designer for the artistic productions 
 of a firm of electricians in the West. The firm of electri- 
 cians, though full of hesitation in backing their opinion 
 of him in the form of the salary they gave were, neverthe- 
 less, emphatically aware of the value of his services. He 
 had a little office to himself called the Designing Boom, 
 with two capital letters and from there he despatched 
 neat little paintings on colored paper of electroliers and 
 wall-light fittings, which never looked the same when the 
 actual ornament was complete. He pleased the customers 
 however, frequently inducing them to buy fittings that
 
 330 TRAFFIC. 
 
 they did not require, and his designs in antique copper 
 were like nothing that the trade could produce. In the 
 district of Portland Street Station, he had secured a couple 
 of top rooms and there, with no possible hope of success, 
 he painted studies in his non-working hours studies in 
 black and white, studies in crayons, studies in cheap Ger- 
 man oils with the expectation that he would ultimately 
 rise to fame. By this means he supplemented something 
 to his income; but he was belonging to that class of 
 Bohemian artists who live with a woman and, when they 
 have painted her features on more canvasses than they can 
 afford, never having really caught her likeness or made a 
 picture, grow tired of her and search for another. The 
 stability that succeeds was not to be found in his compo- 
 sition. At heart he was infinitely preferable to his friend ; 
 but the stamp of Bohemianism debarred him from much 
 of the appreciation which fell to the lot of Stanley Puckle. 
 Stanley Puckle was a man of the world ; he knew what was 
 going on at the theaters ; Wilfrid Aimes had " artist " 
 written across the unstarched limpness of his collar, and 
 he only knew nothing about Meredith, Shelley, and the 
 rest and of what use was that ? 
 
 Here then are the two fellows, the nice chaps, the two 
 friends of Miss Shand introduced as they were. As she 
 introduced them to Nanno, they became " My friend, Mr. 
 Puckle." Mr. Puckle raised Nanno's hand to the level of 
 his shoulder and wagged it familiarly. " How d'you do," 
 he said. He had a special tone of voice for conversing with 
 women. 
 
 " Mr. Aimes," went on Miss Shand ; " he's an artist, 
 dear, paints divinely." 
 
 Mr. Aimes bowed. 
 
 " Nothing in this world is divine," he said epigram- 
 matically; then he looked up, met Nanno's eyes and felt
 
 TRAFFIC. 331 
 
 persuaded to add an amendment to his statement, He 
 thought he had never seen such eyes, such hair, or such lips 
 before. For the rest of the evening he was mixing burnt 
 umber upon the palette of his mind and painting her hair 
 on the canvas of his imagination. Many a woman's face 
 had been portrayed there before. He merely ruboed the 
 pictures out and painted over them. 
 
 Before the meal was commenced, it became evident to 
 Nanno that Mr. Puckle, with his well-oiled hair, his latest 
 thing in ties and the suggestion of lavender-water that 
 clung about him, was Miss Shand's more especial friend. 
 They drifted away into a corner of the room together and 
 she was left to converse with Mr. Aimes. Had she particu- 
 larly felt any preference, this would have been her choice. 
 At least he was no fop. His intelligence was of a higher 
 order than that of Stanley Puckle's. Of course he talked 
 about his art; but then, on first acquaintance, she found 
 the topic interesting. And all the time his eyes wandered 
 from her lips to her eyes, her eyes to her hair, then back 
 again to commence their journey of obvious admiration 
 once more. Nanno was not exactly sorry when Miss Shand 
 asked her to see if the meal was ready. 
 
 When everything was prepared, they sat down to the 
 table and the conversation became general. Nanno joined 
 in the laughter that ensued. For the first time for some 
 months she felt in excellent spirits. 
 
 " Delicious trifle this/' said Mr. Puckle, looking up from 
 a spoonful of the sweet that he was just raising to his 
 mouth. Six-pennyworth of sherry had gone to the making 
 of that dish. Miss Shand felt flattered at the remark. 
 
 " I always like it flavored with sherry," she said. " Will 
 you have another help ? " 
 
 Mr. Puckle with alacrity said he would. 
 
 "I remember when I was staying down at Hastings,"
 
 332 TRAFFIC. 
 
 lie remarked, bearing away a well-filled plate, " they had 
 excellent trifle at the hotel where I was staying. I asked 
 the head waiter what wine they used." 
 
 " Sherry, of course," interposed Miss Shand. 
 
 " Yes sherry. Oh ! they do you very well at that place. 
 Quite reasonable too. I only had to pay four guineas a 
 week while I was there. Some of the actors and actresses 
 in one of the musical comedies were staying there as well. 
 That proves, of course, that the place was up to the mark. 
 You won't catch them going to the inferior hotels. Very 
 decent lot they were too. "What musical comedy? Oh 
 the ' Orchid.' Jolly good did you see it ? " 
 
 Miss Shand shook her head. 
 
 "Did you, Miss Troy?" 
 
 Nanno replied in the negative. 
 
 " Oh clever thing ! " he assured them. " Very smart, 
 you know. There was one joke, this man wanted to get 
 a certain orchid you know " he leaned over the table and 
 continued the relation of it to Miss Shand. 
 
 " Did you ever sit for your portrait, Miss Troy ? " Aimes 
 asked, turning to Nanno. 
 
 She looked up at him and laughed brightly. 
 
 " For my portrait ? Xo never. Don't you have to pay 
 for that?" 
 
 " Well it all depends." He hesitated. He was think- 
 ing of what he would pay to get her to sit to him. 
 
 " I wouldn't charge to paint yours." 
 
 "Oh, but why should you?" 
 
 " Because I should like to. You've got the type of face 
 that is full of inspiration to a man of my temperament. 
 When I feel a thing I must paint it. I don't feel I'm ex- 
 isting until I get a brush in my hand. It's just tempera- 
 ment of course; I'm cursed with the artistic tempera- 
 ment."
 
 TRAFFIC. 333 
 
 "But why should you call it a cur?e? Isn't it nice to 
 feel you must do a thing and then be able to do it." 
 
 "There is that way of looking at it," Aimes admitted. 
 "But I'm afraid I'm no good, Miss Troy. I talk about 
 the artistic temperament, and when I say I'm cursed with 
 it, I mean that I don't think I'm any good." 
 
 "Why do you want to paint me then?" 
 
 " Because I believe I could make a picture. Might get 
 into the Royal Academy, you know. I have seen some rot- 
 ters in there from time to time. I believe I could make a 
 picture." 
 
 The poor man had believed this with every other woman 
 he had been attracted to. 
 
 " Would you ever come and sit for me ? " he begged . 
 " I'd pay you as they do a model, you know ; because why 
 should I take up your time for nothing ? " 
 
 He would pay her. She would earn some money; well 
 earned if it helped him to paint a picture that might get 
 into the Eoyal Academy. But it would be money with 
 which she could pay Mrs. Hudson; with which she could, 
 in some part, remove her obligations from Miss Shand. 
 She was hungering for the independence wrought of gold. 
 
 " Say you'll come," he repeated eagerly, seeing the half 
 consent already in her face. 
 
 " Yes I'll come," she said " if you really do think you 
 want me as a model I'll come; but I don't want you to 
 do it out of kindness." 
 
 Why did she use that word " kindness " ? Was it not 
 more her kindness to him ; even if he did pay her ? 
 
 " Are you sure you do really want to paint my picture ? " 
 she persisted. 
 
 " Well I have only to look at you," he said and he did 
 look at her. She might have known then that it was not 
 her picture that he wanted ; yet how could she know, when
 
 334 TRAFFIC. 
 
 his enthusiasm even deceived himself? He had wanted to 
 paint so many women, and it had usually ended in the 
 same way. He took them from the class where such an 
 ending would be possible. Yet he never succeeded in see- 
 ing through himself. The inclination to make a picture 
 always deceived him. Perhaps it was true; he was cursed 
 with the artistic temperament. But any temperament can 
 be a curse, just as is life itself. The whole matter depends 
 upon how one uses it; whether it sways the man or the 
 man becomes its master. It ruled Wilfrid Aimes as a wife 
 rules a husband; permitting him to think that he was its 
 tyrant, yet driving him precisely where it willed. 
 
 " When shall I come, then ? " Nanno asked. 
 
 " It'll have to be in the evenings," he told her. " When 
 I've finished business." 
 
 They made the arrangement then for the first sitting, 
 and when after a while they came to a pause of silence, Mr. 
 Puckle's voice attracted their attention. He was confiding 
 to Miss Shand the difficulties he was experiencing in re- 
 gaining some money that he had lent to a friend. 
 
 " Of course, I spurned to take an IOTJ from a friend," 
 he explained. " I wouldn't do such a thing. But I don't 
 want to be done." 
 
 " Didn't he give you a receipt or anything ? " she asked. 
 
 " No that's the worst of it. I ought to have paid him 
 with a check, but when you're not very well known 
 you know what I mean people ask questions about your 
 checks, and I detest that. I've treated him as decently as 
 I possibly can. I've written and written, but I can't afford 
 to keep him in luxury. When I look over my bank-book 
 and see the amounts I've lent him, it makes me absolutely 
 furious. You remember Turner, don't you, Aimes ? " 
 
 Mr. Aimes admitted that he did. 
 
 " Well, he's never paid me back that money I lent him.
 
 TRAFFIC. 335 
 
 I shall cut him now if I see him in the street. I would 
 too if I were you. Oh, of course, the man's not a gentle- 
 man." 
 
 " Can't be," Miss Shand agreed. 
 
 Later on in the evening whisky and a syphon of soda 
 were produced. jSTanno noticed at a still later period that 
 Mr. Puckle's arm, which had been lying on the back of 
 Miss Shand's chair, was now round her waist. The laugh- 
 ter that burst forth at various intervals sounded strange 
 and hysterical. At last Nanno rose and said that she 
 would retire. 
 
 " Oh, don't go to bed yet ! " exclaimed Miss Shand. 
 
 "No, please don't," echoed Mr. Puckle. 
 
 Mr. Aimes looked at her mutely. 
 
 " I'm very tired," she said, apologetically. " Of course, 
 I'll stay if you wish it." 
 
 " Well, we don't want to force you, dear don't think 
 that. Do we ? " Miss Shand appealed to the others. 
 
 Mr. Puckle emphatically said " No ! " Mr. Aimes shook 
 his head wistfully. 
 
 Then Nanno bid them good-night, and when she had 
 gone, leaving Mr. Aimes inconsolably alone, Miss Shand 
 settled down more comfortably into Mr. Puckle's embrace. 
 
 " She's a strange mixture," she remarked. 
 
 Mr. Aimes looked round with interest. 
 
 " Why do you say that ? " he asked. 
 
 " Well, look here. You must promise both of you to say 
 nothing. You're both friends of mine, otherwise of course 
 I wouldn't breathe a word. It's not the sort of thing I 
 like to go telling people about others' private affairs. Have 
 you ever heard me?" She appealed more particularly to 
 Stanley Puckle, and that gentleman more particularly en- 
 deavored to reply by an attempt to kiss her. 
 
 " You mustn't do that ! " she exclaimed petulantly.
 
 336 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Well, that girl used to be at Maynard's restaurant with 
 me, where I am now." 
 
 " Is she a musician then ? " asked Mr. Puckle. 
 
 " No she waited. Well, there was a man that used to 
 come up to see her. Oh, he was really a gentleman. One 
 evening I met him up in her rooms, and when I went home 
 he came back with me. That was when I was living in 
 Gray's Inn Boad." 
 
 " He came back with you, eh ? " inquired Mr. Puckle. 
 
 " Oh, only to the door. I think he'd have liked how- 
 ever, that's nothing to do with you is it ? " She looked 
 up coquettishly into her admirer's face. "Well, he told 
 me then that he was gone on her Xanno, I mean Miss 
 Troy and some time after then she was dismissed from 
 Maynard's." 
 
 " Why ? " Mr. Aimes asked abruptly. 
 
 Miss Shand assumed the most decorous of maiden mod- 
 esty. " Well, if you must know," she said, endeavoring to 
 find blushes and striving to hide them, "she was in the 
 family way." 
 
 Wilfrid Aimes put his hand over his eyes. 
 
 " Well ? " said Mr. Puckle, settling himself closer to 
 Miss Shand. 
 
 " Well, I guessed of course ; but about four weeks ago 
 this was some months after she had been dismissed I 
 went down to her old rooms and found her there with her 
 baby. She hadn't got anything fresh to do. She hadn't 
 had any work in fact for some months. She hadn't a 
 penny she owed eight pounds to her landlady. She was 
 practically starving herself the child'll never live long 
 after those first few months of its life and so I took her 
 in here, and she's been here ever since." 
 
 " By Jove, that was awfully decent of you, you know ! " 
 Mr. Puckle exclaimed.
 
 TRAFFIC. 337 
 
 " Very kind/' echoed Mr. Aimes. 
 
 " Had the man left her then ? " Mr. Puckle asked, with 
 a twinge of his own conscience. 
 
 " That's what it was, you may be sure," said Miss Shand 
 volubly. She told me a long rigmarole about a husband 
 that she married in Ireland whom she had brought over 
 to England et cetera but I never saw him. When I came 
 to see her, he'd gone back to Ireland again." 
 
 " Ah, well of course one has to say these things," said 
 the sententious Puckle. 
 
 " I gathered that she was Irish," remarked his friend. 
 " But she's a beautiful girl." 
 
 "Oh, do you think so, really?" said Miss Shand. "I 
 suppose she is pretty ; but beautiful ? " 
 
 " Beautiful I think," persisted the artistic Aimes, in 
 whose mind a herd of possibilities were upon the point of 
 stampede. " You say she's awfully hard up ? " he added. 
 
 "Penniless," said Miss Shand. 
 
 " Um ! That's why she said it was kind of me." 
 
 " Why what are you going to do ? " the others asked in 
 a breath. 
 
 " She's coming in the evening to sit for me and I'm 
 going to pay her." 
 
 "Oh, Wilfrid!" Puckle exclaimed, with an uplifted 
 finger of reproof. " We all know what that means." 
 
 ' Xot at all not at all," Aimes replied blandly. " You 
 don't know what the craving to do artistic work is." 
 
 Stanley Puckle, fortunately for him, did not. He ad- 
 mitted as much by taking the remark as a rebuff. He said 
 nothing. 
 
 Ten minutes later, when he began to feel that his pres- 
 ence was obviously unnecessary. Mr. Aimes rose to take his 
 leave. He thanked Miss Shand for a very pleasant evening, 
 22
 
 338 TRAFFIC. 
 
 begged her to put nothing in the way of Nanno's coming 
 to see him, and nodded to his friend. 
 
 When he had gone Miss Shand settled herself on to Mr. 
 Puckle's knee. 
 
 " What did you mean by saying to him ' we all know 
 what that means ' ? " 
 
 Puckle laughed. " Oh, we all know Wilfrid. He al- 
 ways ends up by living with the women he paints. They 
 sort of grow into the idea of it." 
 
 " Do you mean he would keep her ? " 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 " Well she'll never get any work to do, and she's got 
 to keep the child." 
 
 " But I thought she was living with you ? " 
 
 " Yes but I can't go on keeping her forever can I ? " 
 
 " No, of course not of course not. I suppose we shall 
 meet her next up in old Wilfrid's studio, sitting on the 
 model's throne with that old Chinese dressing-gown round 
 her, that every single one of 'em has worn. It 'ud fit any- 
 body."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THERE is no doubt about it that the starving man who 
 steals a loaf to fill an empty stomach is a thief. There was 
 also no doubt when, some weeks after the little party in 
 Miss Shand's flat, Nanno might have been found sitting 
 on the throne in Wilfrid Aimes' studio with the old 
 Chinese dressing-gown around her, that she had become a 
 woman of little count. Now, the law of Moses draws no 
 distinction between the seventh commandment and the 
 eighth; yet that man who, to assuage an hunger that is 
 almost death, steals a loaf is judged to all intent to be 
 justified. What then can be said of Nanno heroine for 
 so long through all these pages now, a creature, passing 
 whom, one should pull aside the hem or cross to the other 
 path? 
 
 Nothing can be said that would be just, for what mind 
 is there capable of administering justice in such a case? 
 The priest of God points to his tablets of stone with the 
 remark : " Here are my laws written." The good woman 
 thinks of her virtue, the virtue which quite possibly she 
 has rigidly maintained since last she sinned, and is 
 ashamed. Justice only is possible from the man who was 
 tempted in the wilderness. He, no doubt, who could see 
 the virtue in the box of spikenard, would find virtue also 
 in the prayers of Nanno that left her lips every night. 
 
 A quarrel with Miss Shand: an open door on the very 
 evening when she was going to Aimes' studio for the fifth 
 sitting that was the climax. Events over the last few 
 
 339
 
 340 TRAFFIC. 
 
 weeks had been steadily leading up to it. Mrs. Hudson 
 had written for some money. It was a generous letter, but 
 it conveyed an absolute necessity. Aimes, hearing of it 
 through Miss Shand, had scraped the money together from 
 the lumber of his studio and paid it without Xanno's 
 knowledge. Mrs. Hudson's letter of thanks which followed 
 had shown her to whom she owed the obligation. After 
 the third sitting she had discovered that Aimes was pay- 
 ing her extravagantly for her services. She told him of it, 
 but he begged her to keep the money. Dire necessity com- 
 pelled her to obey. Then he professed to take a great in- 
 terest in the baby. He bought things for it. He asked her 
 to bring it with her to the studio. 
 
 " How the deuce you can bear to hear that whining brat 
 up here," Mr. Puckle said one day to him, " is more than I 
 can understand." 
 
 " It's quiet enough," Aimes replied. " I don't mind it 
 she comes, you see." 
 
 The curse of his artistic temperament again deceived 
 him. He thought that he could put up with it forever. 
 He called it, for amusement, his adopted child. He 
 thought that he liked to see it crawling about the studio 
 floor. He pitied it for its white, pinched face. It did 
 not occur to him that he was putting up with it in order to 
 win Nanno. In the light of a seducer, he would not have 
 recognized himself. 
 
 By the time that Xanno felt thoroughly indebted to him 
 there came the break the inevitable break in her friend- 
 ship with Miss Shand. 
 
 " I can't afford to go on paying for you," was Miss 
 Shand's last remark. " That baby of yours is always keep- 
 ing me awake at night. I wish to God you'd take it out 
 of the house."
 
 TRAFFIC. 341 
 
 Nanno wrapped it up and took it with her to the sitting 
 in Aimes' studio. 
 
 He saw no difference in her while she sat for her por- 
 trait. The brushes that he held in his hand smeared away 
 just as hopefully as ever, and the passable portrait of 
 Nanno grew slowly upon the canvas. He was making her 
 look much older than she did. The expression of Fate, 
 although she saw it every time, escaped the intelligence of 
 his brush. There was nothing in the picture to recom- 
 mend it. But he struggled on, believing that with every 
 fresh daub of paint it would come. It never came. 
 
 When he had finished, he laid down his brushes and 
 crossed the room to the row of pegs that had been attached 
 to the wall. 
 
 " I'm going to see you home," he said, taking down his 
 soft felt hat. 
 
 She looked up at him from the throne where she was 
 still sitting, and then she broke down. He was going to 
 see her home; but there was no such place for her. She 
 could not go back and face Miss Shand. There still re- 
 mained a sum of money which she owed to Mrs. Hudson. 
 The sudden realization which, until that moment, she had 
 been too dazed to perceive, now broke forth upon her be- 
 wildered understanding. There was her child to think of 
 this time. She could not walk the streets as once she had 
 clone before. The moment had actually come now. She 
 knew that she was about to take the lower groove from 
 which it would be so difficult to rise again. She knew that 
 this man would accept her pay for her keep her. It 
 was because she realized that it had come to the moment 
 when she must receive such protection, that she cried as 
 though her heart were breaking. 
 
 In a moment he had thrown away his hat and was at her 
 knees.
 
 342 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " What on earth's the matter ? " he asked, amazed. 
 
 She shook the tears out of her eyes and stood up. There 
 was a show of daring in her face; her lips were set tight. 
 At last she was facing the fate that had crept at her heels 
 from the moment when the English artist had won Bridget 
 from herself. She was facing it, as she had faced Jamesy 
 on the first occasion when he had struck her; as she had 
 faced Mr. Mossop when he had tried to kiss her. Let it 
 come let it take her ! It had waited long enough. There 
 was only one person in the world who would care if he 
 knew. She would not let his name enter her thoughts. 
 Let it take her ! It had played a waiting game better than 
 she. This did not rob her of the grace of the Church. Re- 
 pentance would not be so hard a thing when she hated her- 
 self for what she was about to do even in the beginning 
 of it. There would be infinite absolution for the man who 
 stole the loaf ; there would be infinite absolution for her. 
 He was not a thief in mind ; only in body. And so was it 
 with her. She felt that if she went out into the streets, 
 she could not fail to take her life. Work had been so im- 
 possible to obtain; she would not find the hope of it to 
 bear her up then. For a moment she stood listening. A 
 heavy shower of rain was pattering down on to the glass 
 roof of the studio. She heard it rattle. like little pebbles 
 on the panes. If she were to go out into that, assuredly 
 before morning broke she would have taken her life and 
 her child's as well. The Church would not condone that. 
 Murder and suicide ! She put her hands up to her eyes and 
 shivered. 
 
 " What's the matter ? " repeated Aimes at her feet. 
 " Don't you want to go back home ? " 
 
 " I have no home," she said stoically. " I live nowhere. 
 Miss Shand won't have me with her any more." 
 
 He raised himself quickly, like a hound that is freecl
 
 TRAFFIC. 343 
 
 from the leash. The scent of the prey was in his nostrils 
 the end of the chase was in his eyes. 
 
 " My God ! " he exclaimed, " has she turned you out ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " What are you going to do ? " 
 
 "I don't know walk about the streets." If he would 
 not offer to take her, she knew it would be the end of 
 everything. She began to plead that the vice would not 
 fail him at the last moment. 
 
 " But you can't it's pouring with rain." 
 
 " I've been out in the rain at night before now," she re- 
 plied. The remembrance of that evening when she had 
 first left Jamesy flashed across her mind. The whole pic- 
 ture the night, black as ink; the dawn, sickly and gray 
 all came and went in a moment. 
 
 " But you can't go out with the baby to-night. You'd 
 be dead in the morning." 
 
 " Where can I go, then ? " 
 
 " Stay here stay with me always with me, Nanno. 
 
 She sat down on the model's chair again and laughed. 
 The man had risen to the flesh who could doubt it? 
 Aimes felt the cold sweat on his hands when he heard her 
 laugh. 
 
 " Why that ? " he asked. " Why laugh ? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " Don't you care for me enough ? Haven't I tried 
 enough to please you ? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " Why do you keep on saying, ' I don't know' ? " 
 
 She looked at him in silence. Her eyes blinked. For a 
 moment she thought her reason was going. 
 
 " Nanno ! " he exclaimed. He fancied that the protesta- 
 tions of his affection might bring her back into a more 
 reasonable frame of mind, " Nanno, you'll stay with me,
 
 3-1-1 TRAFFIC. 
 
 Can't you see I've wanted this all along? That first night 
 I saw you at Miss Shand's; do you remember I was just 
 saying that nothing in this world was divine? Then I 
 looked up and saw your face. Xanno, I thought you were 
 divine then. I've thought so ever since. And then there's 
 the baby " he scrambled quickly to his feet and brought 
 the creature from his bedroom., placing it on her lap. She 
 sat there motionless on the throne. Lot's wife turned to a 
 pillar of salt turned to a model of cold, white clay from 
 the moment when she had looked in the eyes of her destiny. 
 
 "Here's the baby," Aimes went on, lifting up its tiny 
 hand and waving it to her. " We'll take care of that 
 both of us. It's going to be our child." 
 
 The advent of this third person seemed to bring life into 
 her. She stood up gripping the child in her hands and 
 looking wildly into its eyes as though in the pale blue 
 shallows she expected to find reason for all things. He 
 watched her, fearing that she might do something rash in 
 her desperation. 
 
 "Just we three," he said feebly; driveling whatever 
 words came to his lips. He had a horror of tragedy, and 
 felt on the brink of one. Another step, and the sheer edge 
 was reached. He remembered his experiences with other 
 women in hysterics. His reason started, ready to bolt with 
 hers. 
 
 Still she stood there saying nothing. Had he been able 
 to watch her eyes, he would have seen them growing more 
 dazed, more and more lifeless. The suggestion that there, 
 as she stood, was the study for a great picture the mother 
 of an illegitimate child fled through his mind, not wait- 
 ing to grip his real understanding, chased by a thousand 
 hounds of fear that she was contemplating murder. He 
 waited in readiness to seize her if she tried, all the time un- 
 consciously swept with a passionate admiration for her as
 
 TRAFFIC. 345 
 
 she unwittingly posed on the model's throne. There was 
 no doubt that he had mistaken his prey. He had thought 
 her used to the game ; playing only to be won. He found 
 her sensitive, shy as a young colt in the field. 
 
 At last she looked round at him with a wonderful calm. 
 
 " You'd take the child as well ? " she asked in a distant 
 voice. 
 
 " Yes yes haven't I said so ? " He hurried forward. 
 " Let me hold it for you you're tired." He stretched out 
 his hands, but she folded both her arms round the infant 
 body and turned away.
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 THE END OF THE TRAFFIC.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A YEAR had woven itself out on the loom of Time since 
 that night of Xanno's despoiling. During all that period, 
 even since last he had seen her, Jerningham had not al- 
 tered his method of going. He was essentially a man to 
 whom change is impervious. The iron had entered his soul 
 when he left her. He wrenched it out, when he had seated 
 himself to write that letter which so long ago it seemed 
 to both of them she had received from Mr. Mossop's 
 hands in the restaurant. 
 
 From that day he had become once more the inveterate 
 bachelor. New friends he made and old ones left him to 
 enter matrimony, a college where many graduate, where 
 the cloisters are long and the time for meditation lavish. 
 Jerningham found that most of them disappeared. Only 
 he was left remaining in the old place; but the strain of 
 a deeper sentiment than he was aware of had grown into 
 and maintained its hold upon his nature. In the first 
 place, he had changed the position of one of his old arm- 
 chairs, the one upon which he had seated Xanno when she 
 came to have tea in his rooms. Where he had placed it on 
 that day it was left and, by the side of it, he put the other 
 seat that he had occupied. 
 
 Frequently when men came up to see him in the evening, 
 they would look at the vacant chair pulled up towards the 
 fire and ask him whether some one had been in and who it 
 was. This is to say that those of his friends, possessed of 
 
 849
 
 350 TRAFFIC. 
 
 keener observation than the rest, had been known to put 
 the question. He always answered in the same way. 
 
 " Yes, some one's been up here." 
 
 *' Any one I know ? " would follow. 
 
 No no, I shouldn't think so." 
 
 The matter usually dropped there. 
 
 Now clearly that was nothing but sentiment. Accused 
 of it, he would have denied the charge the more emphatic- 
 ally as time went on with a certain amount of contempt 
 for the accuser. Yet he never changed their positions, 
 until in time the arrangement grew almost to be a habit. 
 He could find them in the dark. 
 
 To a slight extent his affairs upon the Stock Exchange 
 prospered, but he was never liable to become rich. His 
 ambitions rose no higher than Plowden Buildings. Every 
 Friday, four men came into his rooms for poker; unless 
 the condition of the markets made them hesitate in front 
 of a meal before they decided whether they could afford to 
 sit down to it. On those evenings he lit his colossal wax 
 candles in their barbaric sconces. With a certain amount 
 of recklessness, he filled the brass lamps with oil. Directly 
 he came in from dining at a neighboring tavern in Fleet 
 Street, he stoked a fire that would have shamed the 
 most generous of householders. A large German sausage, 
 a loaf of bread, glasses, and an indigestible cake were laid 
 on a small side table which, like most of the rest of his 
 furniture, had fallen to his bidding in an auction-room, 
 where only dust and dealers were ever to be found. More 
 candles were lighted on the card-table lighted in old 
 brass candlesticks that come in their shiploads from Hol- 
 land. New packs of cards were uncased, a box of vari- 
 colored counters were produced; then, looking finally 
 around the room to see if more were needed, he would 
 go into his bedroom, returning arrayed in a dark blue
 
 TRAFFIC. 351 
 
 smock that would have lent disfigurement to the Apollo 
 Belvedere. But the men who came for poker were no 
 critics of appearances and, in any case, they took Jer- 
 ningham as they found him. 
 
 This Friday in every week was an invariable institu- 
 tion. But beyond that he made his arrangements as 
 they came. A client might dine with him one day; he 
 might dine with a client the next. Occasionally he went 
 to a theatre, usually by himself, but most of his nights 
 were spent in chambers alone, where he read till midnight, 
 and then retired. 
 
 One evening, as he was just preparing to go out to 
 his tavern dinner, the brass knocker rattled on the inner 
 door. He crossed the hall and opened it. 
 
 " Is that Sturgis ? " he queried, peering out into the 
 darkness of the landing. " By Jove, yes*! Come in ! " 
 
 Sturgis, a man who lived also in the Temple, yet of 
 whom he saw but little from one year's end to the other, 
 walked into the hall, laying his hat on a plaster bust that 
 graced an oak cabinet. Jerningham removed it and fol- 
 lowed him into the sitting-room. 
 
 " Have you dined ? " he asked. 
 
 Sturgis shook his head. 
 
 " Well, come to Williams', I'm just going there to 
 feed?" 
 
 " And what afterwards ? " Sturgis was the essence of 
 lethargy. He made a contract with every sentence which 
 he used, that it should contain as few words as possible. 
 
 "I don't mind do you particularly want to go any- 
 where?" 
 
 " Somewhat been up in chambers every night this 
 week." 
 
 " We'll go to the Eegent, then.", 
 
 " That'll do."
 
 352 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " In fact, what you would have suggested yourself ? " 
 
 " Probably." 
 
 " Eegent, then come on ! " 
 
 He waited for his friend to pass out on to the stairs; 
 then he closed both the doors. The sound of their shut- 
 ting echoed through the empty building and up the lane. 
 In such a manner as this, Jerningham found occasional 
 evenings accounted for. Sturgis was nothing but a com- 
 panion with whom to eat his meal. After that night, 
 he would probably not see him again for three, or even 
 six months. 
 
 At Williams', a tavern that still clung to the old- 
 time custom of high-backed benches, and a grill that was 
 within sight of the diners, they conversed intermittently 
 through their fare. Sturgis held some post on one of the 
 newspapers, and was possessed of a varied experience 
 which expressed itself in an abrupt form of speech that 
 reminded one of head-lines. Once in a way, like this, 
 his company was amusing to Jerningham. The same 
 might be said of Jerningham with regard to Sturgis. 
 Their grooves were too isolated for them ever to unite 
 in a contact of sympathy. They had known each other 
 for five years, and only on occasions such as these, did 
 they meet ships of the great trade, coming into a com- 
 mon port and for an hour or so laying up alongside each 
 other, only to be separated immediately by a long voyage 
 across foreign waters. 
 
 They sat over dinner for an hour, and when the saucer 
 of the cup of coffee opposite Sturgis was littered with ash 
 and the ends of cigarettes, and Jerningham's pipe had 
 been knocked out against his heel to be refilled, they both 
 rose. At a sign, an obsequious waiter hurried forward 
 and helped them on with their coats. 
 
 " Good-night, gentlemen," he said.
 
 TRAFFIC. 353 
 
 " Good-night/' they replied in chorus. 
 
 The Kegent was its mass of lights. Every niche that 
 held a space contained a light. Wherever a shadow might 
 have fallen, an electric flame defied it. Like most places 
 of modern entertainment, it depended heavily upon its 
 brilliancy. Things genuine left the world in a body when 
 the lantern was extinguished ; things tinseled took their 
 place when electricity began to dazzle the eyes. Only a 
 real diamond will answer to the rays of a candle; the 
 poorest performer that night at the Regent blazed with 
 gems behind the modern footlights. 
 
 Sturgis and Jerningham took their seats in the back 
 of the parterre, some distance from the rows of the white 
 triangles of bare backs and shoulders. They were not in 
 evening dress. Sturgis pulled affectionately at a heavy 
 cigar. 
 
 For a while they kept their seats, watching the per- 
 formance. A French chanteuse sang songs in broken 
 English, making a hit with intentional mispronuncia- 
 tions. Following her was the unavoidable tramp musi- 
 cian, who got more applause when he played his instru- 
 ments execrably than when he did his best. Jerningham 
 yawned once or twice and, in an endeavor to conceal it 
 from Sturgis, noticed that his friend's eyes were closed. 
 
 The last item before the Ballet were two Parisian dan- 
 cers, male and female according to the programme, hus- 
 band and wife. The moment that they commenced their 
 turn, men in the audience leaned forward in their seats 
 and women raised their glasses. All the subtlet} T of 
 French dancing was here condensed to one purpose. 
 Never for a moment did it hesitate to convey its impres- 
 sion. In a gauzy dress that clung with every motion to 
 her shapely figure, the woman struck her attitudes of de- 
 fiant sensualism, and the audience cheered. In one of the 
 23
 
 354 TRAFFIC. 
 
 stage boxes a crowd of young men shouted vociferously, re- 
 gardless of the fact that the rest of the audience was watch- 
 ing them. Some of them leaned out over the velvet rail 
 and with flushed faces directed their applause to her very 
 feet. 
 
 "We call ourselves moralists and point to the Folies 
 Bergeres," remarked Sturgis. " These people come over 
 here because they can't get an audience like this in Paris. 
 Where, on God's earth, except in England, would they turn 
 an opera house into a dancing-den and hire boxes from 
 which so-called respectable women may go and see their 
 husbands dancing with the scum? Come and have a 
 drink." 
 
 They ascended to the bar, where the files of women 
 passed endlessly to and fro and the groups of English 
 gentlemen linked arms and ogled them. 
 
 " Look at that ! " said Sturgis. 
 
 Jerningham looked in the direction that he indicated. 
 A gentleman and his wife were making their way to a 
 box on the tier above the parterre. A young girl, evidently 
 their daughter and not older than twenty, accompanied 
 them. 
 
 " Here you can get life raw," went on Sturgis, " caught 
 in the flesh and hanging from the ceiling, and a fond 
 English father, who wouldn't permit his daughter to read 
 the most abridged translation of a French classic, will 
 drag that slip of innocence through the very shambles 
 itself. The morals of the Englishman amaze me. He will 
 shut his eyes to the truth, but he loves inordinately to find 
 the occasion on which to shut them. You won't catch him 
 avoiding the occasion not likely. He likes to keep his 
 eyes open till just the last moment then shut them 
 snap! Like that." Sturgis screwed up his eyes with a 
 grimace. " Then he imagines the rest."
 
 TRAFFIC. 355 
 
 " What's yours ? " asked the un journalistic Jerning- 
 ham. 
 
 " Scotch soda. But haven't you noticed that ? " 
 
 Jerningham shook his head. 
 
 " I'm not of your observant type/' he said quietly. " It's 
 probably quite true " 
 
 " Of course it's true/' Sturgis affirmed. The absence 
 of contradiction encouraged him. " Look at that ever- 
 lasting phrase one of the things that are better not talked 
 about. Lord ! The times I've heard that. ' But don't 
 you think that that is one of the things that are far better 
 left untalked of ? ' Great heavens ! If that doesn't come 
 into the catechism of the Prayer Book, which is dedi- 
 cated to one of the kings of England, it ought to ! What 
 is your duty to your neighbor? My duty to my neigh- 
 bor is to leave unsaid those things that ought to be said. 
 I think I'll revise the catechism for the ' Leader '." 
 
 Jerningham smiled. " I would," he said, " if I were 
 you, and when you've thoroughly mastered what it con- 
 tains at present." His smile lingered on after his words, 
 then suddenly was frozen from his lips. On a seat by her- 
 self, outside in the promenade, a girl was sitting dis- 
 consolately. His mind felt sick as he watched her. Up 
 to that moment only her side face met his view, but when 
 she turned his suspicion was confirmed. He recognized 
 her. It was Xanno. 
 
 Sturgis swallowed his whisky, and turning saw Jerning- 
 ham's face. 
 
 "What's the matter?" he asked. 
 
 " You'll have to excuse me," said Jerningham abruptly. 
 "I see some one I know. I'm sorry for running off like 
 this." 
 
 " Thought I should have gone before you."
 
 356 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " So did I," Jerningham replied candidly. " Good- 
 night." 
 
 His perturbed manner amazed Sturgis, who watched 
 the reflection of his approach to Nanno in a mirror with 
 which such places abound. Then he turned away with a 
 sententious laugh. There was no accounting for the taste 
 of any man.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 BEFORE she had seen him, he had taken the vacant seat 
 next to her and, even then, until she had turned in the 
 first essay of making conversation, she did not recognize 
 who he was. 
 
 " What do you think ? " of the performance, she 
 
 was about to add. 
 
 " Nanno," said Jerningham. 
 
 For a moment she seemed to wither. He was watching 
 her, and the recoil of her body from his side reminded him 
 of the snail that is repulsed into its shell. In that brief 
 instant, twenty years had swept across her face. 
 
 " Mr. Jerningham ! " she whispered. From force of 
 habit the words found their way to her lips. Still he 
 looked at her and a troop of pictures, like a passing 
 show, made passage across his mind. He saw her at 
 every period of their acquaintance. He recalled her as 
 when they had first met; blossoming, healthy woman- 
 hood, her cheeks tinged with the warmth of the sun, her 
 hair the shadow of the brown earth, her eyes the gray 
 of a deep evening sky. That was what she had been; 
 this was what she had become. His eyes refocussed them- 
 selves upon the present, and he saw the pale, thin cheeks 
 tinged with an artificial red, the earth-brown hair a 
 shadow that no sun has lit, and her big, gray eyes, luster- 
 less, somber, sad. 
 
 " Nanno," he repeated. He tried his utmost to believe 
 that it was a mistake. He waited eagerly for her to tell 
 
 357
 
 358 TRAFFIC. 
 
 him that she did not answer to the name. He repeated 
 it as a woman reading the casualty list of war repeats, 
 for her assurance, the name of the dead. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Jerningham,," she said again. Then he 
 looked away. The other women strolled past him with 
 tightened skirts and swinging purses. This was the mar- 
 ket-place. Life here, as Sturgis had said, was raw, caught 
 in the flesh, hanging from the ceiling. The drip, drip, 
 drip of honor and restraint sickened him. The air reeked 
 of life putrescent. He turned back again to Nanno. 
 
 " We'll come out of this," he said steadily. 
 
 "Where? "she asked. 
 
 " Where do you live ? " 
 
 "I can't go home with you," she said brokenly. This 
 was the perfection of agony to her, that he should take 
 her at once for what she was. 
 
 " But where do you live ? " he persisted. 
 
 " You mustn't come back with me," she answered. 
 
 Jerningham frowned. He felt in no humor to play with 
 the situation. Their surroundings did not call for a 
 wasting of words; he felt impatient to be gone. 
 
 " This sort of dallying won't do, ISTanno," he said 
 firmly. "The sooner you tell me, the sooner we can 
 get away from this." He rose to his feet. " Come along 
 oh, I assure you I don't intend that you should be a 
 loser." A wave of bitterness had swept the words out 
 of him. They stung her like pebbles that the sea slings 
 in its rage. 
 
 Nanno looked up at his face and knew that she must 
 obey. There had only been one thing in her life to which 
 he had been unable- to command her, and that, because 
 she had fled from the sphere of his influence. In every- 
 thing else she knew that she was dominated by him. 
 Fiercely, heroically though she had clung through all trib-
 
 TRAFFIC. 359 
 
 ulation to the law of her Church far more tenaciously 
 than he would ever have done under similar circum- 
 stances it was yet a clinging of fear. Her apparent 
 strength had been her ultimate weakness. It had 
 brought her to what he saw her then. And still, not- 
 withstanding all, she clung to the iron handle of the open 
 door of her creed. 
 
 They walked down the stairs together to the main 
 entrance, saying nothing. A few turned and looked after 
 them, thinking that they knew their destination. One 
 woman with yellow hair swung her purse and raised her 
 painted eyebrows. 
 
 Outside, Jerningham nodded to a hansom. 
 
 " What's the address ? " he asked her again, for the 
 third time. 
 
 She gave it to him submissively. He repeated it plainly 
 to the cabman. Then they took their seats, and the cab 
 pulled away from the curb into the traffic. 
 
 A little flat, one amongst a hundred others compressed 
 into a row of buildings, was s anno's abode. They climbed 
 up the stone stairs with their iron railings, still saying 
 nothing. ISTanno walked two steps ahead. At the door 
 bearing her number she stopped. 
 
 " Oh, don't come in, Mr. Jerningham," she pleaded, 
 turning round to him piteously. 
 
 "Why?" He asked abruptly. 
 
 She tried to smooth out the tangle of her thoughts 
 with her hand across her forehead. 
 
 " Can't you see it's not for men like you that I'm here ? 
 Oh, I couldn't!" 
 
 For a moment the inconsistency of her appeal came be- 
 fore the realization that she had not understood his in- 
 tentions. The bitterness at finding her thus was becoming 
 harder eve IT minute to control.
 
 360 TRAFFIC. 
 
 "I can't follow you," he said, with intense quiet. 
 "Why make an exception of me? You've got your trade 
 to ply, irrespective of persons. Why hesitate at my 
 soul?" 
 
 She shuddered. 
 
 " You said you loved me once," she replied. 
 
 Then he understood her inconsistency. A rush of senti- 
 ment sped through him. She could not treat him as other 
 men, because he once had said he loved her; perhaps 
 because she still loved him. There was no doubt about 
 this being sentiment. He told himself so and shook 
 it from him. 
 
 " I think you may as well open the door," he said un- 
 emotionally, " My motives in bringing you back are not 
 what you take them to be. I'll stay only for a very short 
 time, if you wish it." 
 
 She drew out her latch-key and opened the door obe- 
 diently. In his mind's eye he saw the numberless times 
 she had opened it so before, with a man hanging on her 
 heels. Why had he come back with her at all? She 
 had now cut herself adrift from him forever. Was it 
 curiosity? Scarcely such an instinct had no life in 
 Jerningharn. The dread he possessed in becoming inti- 
 mate to any extent with the life that she was leading, of- 
 fered no room for curiosity. He knew that he would be 
 jarred by everything that he saw. Then once more, why 
 had he come? A sense of pity for the condition of her 
 life was one reason. A hope that there was yet salva-* 
 tion for her was another. He felt, or realized, no re- 
 sponsibility; but having once had all life in common with 
 her, he could not bear to see her being run to earth. There 
 was no absurdly sanctimonious idea in his thoughts when 
 he regarded the situation. A course of training is re- 
 quired for a man to look diregt to the welfare of a wo-
 
 TRAFFIC. 361 
 
 man's soul. The spiritual side of the matter did not occur 
 to him. He only thought of the wretchedness of her 
 life, the squalid misery of it. Once he had nearly claimed 
 that life for himself. Once it had been his greatest inter- 
 est. He could not afford to see it go under without an 
 effort for the sake of what had, or might have been. 
 These reasons, as he gave them to himself in answer 
 to his own question, seemed reasonable enough satisfac- 
 tory; but they were not the intrinsic truth. The man who 
 can tell himself the naked truth is no prey for the devil. 
 Facts prove that there are few. 
 
 The truth was that Jerningham, once loving, loved 
 always. His friends had not nicknamed him the bachelor 
 without reason. A hard grain of truth lies at the bottom 
 of every nickname, if only a schoolboy dubs it. Jerning- 
 ham would have paced out his way, inevitably bachelor, 
 if Xanno had not found him that day kneeling behind 
 the hedge in John Troy's fields with a gun uncocked be- 
 side him. But once having found him and, in his nature, 
 having roused that passion which he and his friends had 
 believed to be non-existent, there was nothing in life 
 that could absolutely quell it in its former state of 
 nonentity. He loved her still. Honor, a sense of shame, 
 a disgust of degradation, might offend him to the deepest 
 foundations of his intellect. He might leave her forever 
 and shut her out of the wanderings of his thoughts, yet 
 there within him, apart from any intellect, duping all 
 ^reason, would still continue to burn the secret fire that 
 made its own existence and would not be put out. He 
 succeeded in taking no notice of it. He clamped it down 
 with the coldest reasoning and the most impenetrable 
 aloofness. In time, no doubt, it would be choked with the 
 fumes of its own consumption; but while it burned and 
 so long as it burned, he presumed to ignore its presence.
 
 362 TRAFFIC. 
 
 Following her into the cramped passage from which 
 opened the doors of the sitting-room and kitchen, he waited 
 while she shut the outer door; then stood aside for her 
 to pass him. 
 
 With a motion of habit, she switched on the electric 
 light. In the dreaded expectation that he would find 
 sordid and showy vulgarity upon the walls and all about 
 him, he was mercifully disappointed. So far as that was 
 concerned, the Nanno'that he had once known had not 
 changed. The walls had their plain, unimposing paper, 
 the floor its unobtrusive carpet, the furnishing its ordi- 
 nary chairs and table. The first impression that forced 
 itself upon him was that she was poor and his heart asked 
 him how she, with her gentle mind, could every ply the 
 trade at all? He disdained an answer to the question. 
 Yet there the fact was obvious. She was not successful. 
 There was no sign of even the slightest attention that had 
 ever been paid her. He could see it all his heart helped 
 him. She treated men coldly. She hated them one and 
 all of course she hated them and could not conceal 
 her hatred. And the result? They left her and they 
 did not come again. There rose in his throat the choking 
 pressure of pity for the awfulness of her life. Again he 
 drove it back. She might have married him. He would 
 have given her life that was fresh, clean, worth living. 
 Instead, she had chosen this. Why should he pity her? 
 He shut his heart as the watchman shuts the gates of a 
 city at night, and left her shuddering outside an out- 
 cast. All day long the gates had been open, from sun- 
 rise until sunset. If she had come sooner it might have 
 been different. What excuse was there for those who 
 dragged their bodies out at night and then, thinking 
 to find better shelter from within, knocked imploringly 
 at the iron tracings? His heart reminded him that as
 
 TRAFFIC. 363 
 
 yet she had not knocked. She had begged him not to re- 
 turn with her. He accepted the reminder and tried to 
 put aside the pack of thoughts that strained at the leash 
 within him. 
 
 Walking across to the fireplace, he turned round to find 
 her seated at the table with her head in her hands. 
 
 " Xanno," he said quietly, " you don't understand my 
 motive in coming here, do you?" 
 
 She looked up with dry, tired eyes. 
 
 " No, I don't understand." 
 
 " You thought at first that I had come in the ordinary 
 way, to add one to the list of the many ? " 
 
 " I didn't know. I suppose " she hesitated " I sup- 
 pose I don't suggest anything else. But I wouldn't have 
 anything to do with you if you did. The men I see are 
 not fit to touch the boots you wear. I loathe them. The 
 only hope they can have is that they may come to loathe 
 themselves, and loathe me too as much as I loathe myself." 
 
 " Then, good God ! what made you come to this ? " 
 
 The words were rent from him. Ever since he had seen 
 her. the question had been seething in his mind. In one 
 moment of reality it forced its way into expression, and 
 from that moment, Nanno felt that sympathy in him 
 was dead ; a dried and withered leaf that the first footfall 
 would crush into obscurity. 
 
 In the very beginning, when he had turned round to 
 her from the fireplace, she thought she had seen the shadow 
 of his old interest, his old concern for her welfare. Had 
 that tone in his voice continued, she would have told him 
 everything; unfolded to him that piteous picture of her 
 downfall. Within the telling and an hour, she would 
 have drawn from him the pity of his love. He could not 
 have withheld it. Only from those whose moral virtue 
 seems to them triumphant, could forgiveness have been
 
 364 TRAFFIC. 
 
 held back. But now his question and the sound of his 
 voice drove her within herself; frightened her into the 
 reticence of her own mind. She knew that she could tell 
 him nothing. If he poured the vitriol of his contempt 
 upon the aching heart that throbbed so listlessly her 
 pulses, she knew that she must let him remain ignorant 
 until the end. 
 
 " I don't ask it out of curiosity," he went on, strangled, 
 tortured with the astringency of his own bitterness. " I 
 suppose God knows how many men haven't dug with a 
 spade in the mud to find that much from you. I ask be- 
 cause of what I knew you once to be. Why ? Lord ! isn't 
 there a sufficiency of trades for women to ply without 
 coming to this. Why did you, Nanno ? Why did you ? " 
 
 " One has to live," she replied quietly. 
 
 "Has to live! Come, I am not such a fool, that I 
 can't take that for granted. Weren't you living in a cer- 
 tain amount of comfort when I saw you last? Why 
 couldn't you stick to that ? Discontented ? Eh ? " 
 
 " I was dismissed." 
 
 He looked swiftly at her; let his eyes burn into hers. 
 So a hawk looks at a passing swallow. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 " Why were you dismissed ? " he repeated suspiciously. 
 
 She would not reply. She was watching once more 
 the expulsion of Annie Foley, from Eathmore, in a dark, 
 distant pool of her memory. The incident stood out with 
 that hazy distinctness which leaves so much to the imagi- 
 native remembrance. Now she understood the quality of 
 human mercy. 
 
 " I suppose I must draw my own conclusions," he said, 
 baffled. " It's not so very difficult a thing to do as you 
 might suppose. The hawk had you. What a simple
 
 TRAFFIC. 365 
 
 prey you were ! Good God ! The world's full of hawk?. 
 And you oh, I can see it plainly enough ! You flew 
 too gently ever to escape. I sometimes wonder that, 
 whether you could escape in a quick pursuit, more relent- 
 less than mine." 
 
 She could not follow what he was saying. She did 
 not know what he meant. Cornered thus, and stung to 
 bitterness, a man uses the best of his intellect to stand 
 high above the woman. 
 
 " Why didn't you come to me," he asked. 
 
 " I couldn't." She understood him now. 
 
 " In that last letter I wrote you, I told you that every- 
 thing I had was yours." 
 
 " I wouldn't take from you what I couldn't pay back," 
 was her answer. 
 
 "And so you chose this?" 
 
 She covered her face again with her hands. 
 
 " So you chose this ? " he continued relentlessly. " You 
 found this preferable to marrying me, to taking my name ? 
 You thought this better than facing a few cut-and-dried 
 opinions with my hand to hold you ? Ogh ! And I could 
 have made you happy made us both happy you knew 
 I could." 
 
 Yes I knew." 
 
 " Then why wouldn't you choose to marry me instead 
 of this?" 
 
 " I couldn't marry you." 
 
 " Because you would have been excommunicated ? " 
 
 " Because the Church would have shut its doors against 
 me." Even still she clung to Father Mehan's simile. 
 "Because I should have been denied the rites of the 
 Church." 
 
 " My heavens ! Aren't you denied them now ? " 
 
 "No."
 
 366 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " You go to church ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " How do you go to confession ? " 
 
 " I don't go." 
 
 " Then you're denied that ? " 
 
 " No for the sin I do, I deny that to myself. How 
 could you know what that means to me? I could go to 
 confession to-morrow, if I wished." 
 
 " Then why don't you ? " 
 
 "Because because I still live here; must live here 
 until I have saved enough to keep me and and to keep 
 me." 
 
 "And what?" 
 
 " To keep me," she repeated. 
 
 Even that did not move him to pity. The poison of 
 the thought that he had lost her for this, still found sub- 
 stance to consume. 
 
 " I positively fail to see the benefits of your position," 
 he said drily. " You can go to church, but there is no 
 forgiveness for your sins. You can't go to confession." 
 
 " But I shall do," she replied. 
 
 "When? When?" 
 
 "When I can call myself free. I pray to God every 
 night to keep me alive till then." 
 
 She uttered it triumphantly. In the childish arrogance 
 of her faith, she saw right and reason, logic and force, in 
 all she said. It went differently with him. The British 
 instinct stood amazed at such profession. 
 
 " You think God takes your life of sin, prolonged until 
 it should suit you to put an end to it ? " he exclaimed. 
 " You think God would take that in preference to the un- 
 sullied, unsoiled life that you would have lived with me? 
 You think He takes you still tarred from the cauldron of 
 vice, whensoever you choose to step out of it, rather than
 
 TRAFFIC. 36T 
 
 have you clean as I would have kept you with the love 
 that only you have ever made in me? It's childish it's 
 mad ! " 
 
 She shuddered as though a cold wind had struck her. 
 
 "It's what I believe," she said fearfully. "It's what 
 I'm told to believe." 
 
 He turned away, lest he should say worse. 
 
 " So you've saved your soul by steeping yourself in 
 this/' he said, after a pause. " You married a man who 
 was not fit to call any woman his wife. The Church 
 married you. The priest knew who he was marrying you 
 to. He turned out what might have been expected of him. 
 He drank away your living. He beat you almost to death. 
 He was unfaithful. You come then here to London. You 
 leave him, sooner than be murdered. So far there's logic, 
 because there's life. What happens then ? You meet me. 
 I ask you to marry me. I, whom God meant that you 
 should meet and marry. You say it is impossible. You 
 point to the law and excommunication of the Church. 
 To save you from that, I leave you, only to find that you 
 have chosen this this life this hell on earth. And 
 you tell me God prefers it to the life you would have led 
 with me." 
 
 " I believe that I can receive forgiveness. There is 
 not one moment when I could say I have not sinned. I 
 say it every night." 
 
 "Yet still you sin?" 
 
 He sank down into a chair and looked glassily at the 
 unburned coals that lay piled in the grate. Xanno sat at 
 the table and her teeth chattered involuntarily. 
 
 Jerningham looked round. 
 
 " You ought to have this fire alight," he said. 
 
 She closed her eyes. The words reminded her of an- 
 other time. Endurance had almost reached its limit.
 
 368 TRAFFIC. 
 
 " Will you light it? " she said inertly. 
 
 He took out his match-box aud, striking a light, knelt 
 down to apply it to the paper. There came a pause of 
 silence while the blue flames licked round the bars; then 
 the sticks caught and crackled like hail on a window-pane. 
 Jerningham looked about for a shovel, a tongs with which 
 to put on more coals. There were no fire-irons; only 
 the half-filled coal-box. He turned to Nanno, but her 
 face was imprisoned in her hands. A moment later she 
 looked up and saw him feeding the fire from the coal-box 
 with coals that he carried in his fingers. 
 
 " Wait," she said. " I'll get a tongs." 
 
 " Doesn't matter now/' he replied. " I've done." 
 
 He stood up once more and they talked again. A clock 
 in the distance of the city struck the half-hour after mid- 
 night. 
 
 " I'm keeping you up," he said. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "If you'll excuse me for a moment," she said, rising. 
 He rose formally as well and stood aside as she went out 
 into the passage, passing into the kitchen. When she re- 
 turned, her face was patched with white. The faint appli- 
 cations of rouge stood out glaringly. Jerningham watched 
 her, and thought of the ballet they had left behind at the 
 Regent. Death in the face of a ballet-girl would not 
 have looked more gruesome than Nanno did then. 
 
 "You've made your hands black with the coals," she 
 said vacantly. " Would you like to wash them ? " She 
 crossed the room to the other door. " You can wash 
 them in my bedroom if you like." 
 
 He was just about to accept her suggestion when he 
 stopped. She read the look of repugnance in his eyes. 
 She understood why he had thought of it and she had 
 not.
 
 TRAFFIC. 369 
 
 "I prefer them black," he said hardly. 
 
 She closed the door again. Her pulse then was beat- 
 ing like some exhausted animal that battles feebly with 
 the waters that are dragging it surely down. The light 
 in her had almost burned out. She felt it guttering like 
 a wax candle. 
 
 The same clock in the distance chimed the hour of 
 one. Then Jerningham buttoned up his coat. 
 
 " I mustn't keep you up any longer," he said. He 
 sorted out all the gold that he had in his pocket, and 
 laid it quietly on the mantelpiece. From long-accustomed 
 habit, her eyes had followed his actions and, seeing 
 him, the light in her flickered up with a glare; the last 
 spurt of the guttering candle. She swept the money from 
 its resting-place and brought it to him. 
 
 " This is yours," she said. 
 
 Jerningham turned towards the door. 
 
 "I've occupied your time, which might otherwise have 
 been valuable. I look upon it in that light. If you're 
 not foolish, you'll do the same." 
 
 She fronted him pleadingly. 
 
 " Take it back," she whispered. " Mr. Jerningham, 
 take it back. Xo one would have come home with me 
 to-night. I counted the burned and unburned matches in 
 the match-holder, and I knew they wouldn't." 
 
 He looked at her in amazement. 
 
 " Oh, don't make me take it ! " she persisted. " I I 
 it isn't mine." 
 
 " I prefer to pay for the piper whether he plays or 
 not," he remarked as he reached the door. 
 
 She let the sovereigns tumble out of her hand. They 
 fell with a glitter and metallic tinkling on the floor. Jer- 
 ningham took no notice. He opened the door. 
 
 " Good-night," he said hesitatingly.
 
 310 TRAFFIC. 
 
 She stood there motionless. Only a pale, dead glim- 
 mer of the light was left. Then a sound broke upon 
 their ears a sound that leaped into the silence : the chok- 
 ing cry of a child. It lifted lifted lifted to a pinnacle; 
 then fell gutturally. into nothing. 
 
 Jerningham looked at her. 
 
 " Ah/' he said his teeth bit the words. " You save 
 enough to keep yourself ' and ' that is your ' and.' 
 Whenever a woman's run to earth, you'll find a child with 
 her. That is your ' and.' Good God ! " 
 
 He slammed the door. 
 
 For an instant iSTanno swayed like a toppling rock. 
 Then she rushed into the kitchen, across its uncarpeted 
 floor, to where a little cot stood in the shelter of the 
 range. Everything was quite still. A pair of thin, white, 
 emaciated hands lay without shape upon the coverlet. 
 The eyes were closed, the mouth stretched open like 
 an ugly wound. There was a smut on the baby's cheek. 
 For a moment she could see only the black, broad smut 
 that had risen from the kitchen fire. Then her eyes took 
 in death, and she screamed.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A MAX was hoseing the empty street when Jerningham 
 descended the stone steps and came out again into the 
 night. The volumes of water gushed out from the pipe, 
 cooling the air, so it seemed, with its icy torrents, and 
 sweeping away all refuse and dirt with its flood into 
 the gutter. The sight refreshed him. It felt as though 
 the cleansing water also purged his mind. He lifted up 
 his face and let the cold air play on it. Then, as he 
 walked, he took off his hat, carrying it in his hand. It was 
 the hygiene of the mind he sought for. His whole soul 
 was infected with the moral disease of what he had just 
 beheld, and that man hoseing the street was an antiseptic 
 impression that he welcomed readily. There were some 
 left who strove for cleanliness ! Some left who would 
 purge the filth of the streets into the gutter ! 
 
 In such a manner as this is the judgment of human 
 nature warped by the limitations of its own personal bias. 
 Xo man, no woman, can see beyond the weapon which in- 
 flicts the wound upon their pride. Jerningham's point 
 of view was excusable in that all the world, but personally 
 concerned, would have felt the same. He had been slighted, 
 he had been spurned. The love that he had offered ISTanno, 
 a deep and glowing sentiment, far-reaching, unassailable, 
 had been rejected for the bartering of the market-place. 
 She had shut the gates of a man's love in order to keep 
 open the doors of the Church. And not that alone, but for 
 its justification he had been told that by so doing she re- 
 
 371
 
 372 TRAFFIC. 
 
 served herself the ultimate absolution of God. Such logic 
 had maddened him. Each answer that she had given 
 to his questions had been a goad tipped with some smart- 
 ing poison that filtered through his veins and stung his 
 mind to passion. 
 
 That for such a belief, for such a credence, the hope 
 that he had held and the love that he had learned should, 
 like a fagot, be snapped across the knees of an implacable 
 law, devoid of logic and bereft of mercy, was more than 
 his reason could accept. He raged against it; an impotent 
 prisoner beating with bruised knuckles the bars of his 
 cell. 
 
 Why should such a law, made by those with whose 
 sympathies he had no share, be given existence, to wreak 
 such havoc in his life? He derided the law. He cursed 
 it. He thanked God bitterly, as a man who brushes the 
 touch of another from his coat, that though it had robbed 
 him it had left him clean. That was consolation. 
 
 Then what of Nanno ? It had robbed her too ; despoiled 
 her of everything and left her shuddering in the stagnant 
 pool of loathsome weed that no animal would touch and 
 no man would cleanse. With a giant effort he turned 
 his mind to contemplate what might be her point of view 
 which, try as he might, he knew he could never fully 
 grasp. Yet the circumstances, the conditions, they were 
 obvious to the most casual eye. He could not fail to see 
 them and, with a nobleness of generosity, he put his own 
 grievances aside to study her piteous position. 
 
 She was poor; that told its story more plainly than any 
 declaration of hers. Her instincts for the pursuit of such 
 a trade were all at variance with the trade itself. How 
 could they have been otherwise? The gentleness of such 
 as Nanno could make no fight to secure the flesh that is 
 thrown from the tables of life. She had refused the
 
 TRAFFIC. 373 
 
 which he had offered her. That alone would stamp 
 her incompetence. Her hand should be open for the 
 drunkard as well as for the fool. What could she hope 
 to do with fingers that closed, sensitively clutching upon 
 emptiness, rather than take from one what was not her 
 due? Never mind what she did with it afterwards; how 
 lavishly she spent it or how generously she gave it away; 
 the minted gold she must know how to take, and that 
 for service ill or good, before she could hope to make her 
 way at such a trade. But she did not know. A piteous 
 picture of her unfittedness, a sorry impression of her deso- 
 lation, as he had seen her sitting in the Regent, rose up 
 on the receptive fiber of his mind. 
 
 Perhaps he had spoken harshly to her. Perhaps his 
 wortfs had cut more than he meant them to. In that 
 atmosphere and in those surroundings, tainted with the 
 heated breath of other men, he had forgotten that he was 
 speaking to Xanno Xanno, who had driven back the 
 ambling cattle in the hush of the evening; Xanno, who 
 had milked them in their stalls with her gentle head laid 
 against their warm flanks, while the milk hissed into the 
 pail. 
 
 He slackened his footsteps then he stopped. 
 
 They had been harsh words to use to her. Would she 
 forgive him? Conscience was smiting him a little, sting- 
 ing switch. He turned back, retracing his steps; and, as 
 he walked, the stinging switch smarted more and more, 
 driving him at length to long, swinging strides that rapidly 
 covered the ground over which he had passed. 
 
 He did not prepare in his mind the words he would 
 say to her. Xo exact attitude had suggested itself for him 
 to adopt, unless it were that of sympathy. He left it 
 entirely to circumstance and to the moment as to what he 
 should advise her to do. That she must give up the life
 
 374 TRAFFIC. 
 
 that she was leading was the first and most obvious fact 
 for accomplishment. If some other means of subsistence 
 were put in her way, he did not imagine that she would 
 be hard to persuade. No doubt had ever entered his mind 
 that the pressure must have been great indeed to drive 
 her to such an extremity of life. How deeply it spoke 
 then of her great respect for him, that she had never ap- 
 proached one whom she knew loved her, for support. The 
 thought sped warmly like wine through his blood. That 
 at least, in the midst of all her degradation, bespoke a 
 greatness of heart that was almost worthy of nobility; 
 and, virtue though she had none, a prey to the lusts of men 
 as she was, he looked up to her for that. Other women 
 would not have done the same. They would have written 
 their whining letters and licked the flap of the envelope 
 with a calculating tongue. Nanno had been above that; 
 and it touched his admiration for the greatness of life. 
 
 From all this it may be seen that Jerningham was no 
 mere conventionalist. For so long had he moved in an 
 atmosphere unbiassed by any narrow social law, for so 
 long had he been accustomed to look to his own reason 
 for judgment upon matters, rather than rely on the in- 
 fluence of unyielding moral codes that, when he came 
 to regard the case of Nanno Troy, apart from those bitter 
 personal feelings which had driven him in the beginning, 
 his standpoint was one that would no doubt irrevocably 
 offend the British matron and draw from the lips of the 
 paterfamilias such remarks as " Lax ! " " Eotten to the 
 core ! " " Not the right way to judge a loose woman." 
 
 The shockingness of sin is so potent an influence on 
 the world at large, that there are many who prefer to shut 
 their eyes to it and do nothing, disregarding the fact 
 that the very foundation of Christianity bases itself upon 
 the point that we are one and all, indiscriminately of 
 persons, born with that, rather than original virtue, in our
 
 TRAFFIC. 375 
 
 natures. Inasmuch as Jerningham was outside the pale of 
 these chicken-hearted people of whom the philosopher 
 Nietzsche said, "There was only one Christian, and He 
 died on the Cross " ; so the shockingness of Nanno's im- 
 morality had no power to deter him from regarding the 
 just view of her case. She must be saved, and he was re- 
 turning to save her. 
 
 In another moment or so he came in sight of the 
 block of buildings from which he had departed in so dif- 
 ferent a frame of mind but half an hour before. The 
 servant of the corporation had disappeared; the road was 
 swept and garnished. In the little puddles of water that 
 had found existence in the uneven hollows of the wood 
 pavement the reflections of the gas-lamps twinkled like 
 pieces of glass. The jingling bells of a hansom in the 
 distance irritated the heavy silence. There was not a 
 soul in sight. 
 
 He was scarcely more than a hundred yards from the 
 main entrance to the building, when the black figure of 
 a woman emerged from the yawning patch that he knew 
 to be the doorway. A dark shawl was wrapped around 
 her shoulders, bulging disfiguringly at her side, as though 
 beneath it she were carrying an ungainly parcel. 
 
 It was natural enough that his first thoughts should 
 fly to Xanno, before he had absolute proof of recognition. 
 So convinced was he of her identity that, instead of enter- 
 ing the block of buildings and going first to find whether 
 she was in, he crossed to the other side of the street and, 
 keeping close within the shadow of the shops, he hastened 
 his steps until she was near enough for identification. 
 The next lamp-post under which she passed convinced him. 
 It was Xanno. What was she doing? Where was she 
 going at that unearthly hour of the night? 
 
 She walked unswervingly; looked neither to the left 
 hand nor to the right. A set purpose seemed to be guid-
 
 376 TRAFFIC. 
 
 ing her. When she took a turning, it was unfalteringly. 
 Her destination was obviously fixed. The steps she took 
 were not hasty. Had he not known it to be impossible, 
 he would have declared that she was walking in her sleep. 
 Once she hesitated. He stopped immediately. He 
 thought she was about to turn back; then he saw that it 
 was merely in order to ease the weight of the bundle 
 which she carried under her shawl. When that was settled 
 to her satisfaction, she hurried on more quickly than be- 
 fore. 
 
 They entered Trafalgar Square from St. Martin's Lane, 
 Kanno keeping to the left pavement, passing by the long 
 steps of the church, Jerningham still following his course, 
 walking on the opposite side. 
 
 The statues under the shelter of the Column rose up into 
 the darkness like black shadows which the night has 
 brought to rest. Jerningham passed them unseeingly, 
 his eyes fixed on Nanno's hastening figure which, in that 
 vast open space, looked so pathetically alone. 
 
 When she came to the post-office she turned unhesi- 
 tatingly into the Strand. Jerningham followed. Only 
 at the station of Charing Cross, where the railings separate 
 the courtyard from the road, did he stop. Through them 
 the light was falling conspicuously. He waited in the 
 shadows until she would have passed far enough ahead not 
 to recognize him as he crossed the open space. He was 
 just about to move on, when she crossed the street and dis- 
 appeared down Villiers Street, that leads to the Embank- 
 ment. 
 
 For a moment his heart was jolted with a thought, 
 and the next instant he had covered the distance between 
 him and the top of the street in long, eager strides. When 
 he turned the corner, she was scarcely thirty paces ahead 
 of him; but here the light was faint and intermittent,
 
 TRAFFIC. 377 
 
 and the thought that had leaped into his brain was still 
 revolving like a windmill in a gale. He did not pause 
 to let her increase the distance; his long strides if any- 
 thing diminished it. She kept her way continuously, mak- 
 ing directly towards the underground railway station at 
 the bottom. Before she reached it, she turned sharp to 
 the right. 
 
 " God ! " said Jerningham under his breath, and a chill- 
 ing sweat rushed to the surface, damping, soaking even 
 into his clothes. She had mounted the steps to Hunger- 
 ford Bridge. 
 
 Now again she was out of sight and, like a bloodhound 
 drawing the burning scent into its nostrils, his legs 
 stretched out into a creeping run, bringing him to the 
 bottom of the stone stairs as he heard her turn the first 
 corner. 
 
 There he stopped. Was he a fool? What was it to 
 him? Was it the hour of night and the witches of dark- 
 ness just playing a game of havoc with his thoughts? 
 The kind of life she now led might reasonably bring 
 Nanno out upon some vicious errand at this time of night. 
 Supposing he stopped her and found that his fears had 
 fooled him? All this might reasonably be. But in the 
 recesses of his mind hung the memory of the harsh words 
 that he had used to her; hung there, as the black cap of 
 the judge hangs limply on its nail, reminding him of 
 death. Fool or no fool, he could not bear it and, taking 
 two steps at a time, he continued the pursuit. 
 
 When he reached the top she was some yards away on 
 the narrow bridge. Below her, in the muddy water, 
 gleamed like a gauntlet of dancing eyes the reflections 
 of the Embankment lights. Nothing was moving on the 
 river. As far up as the next bridge all was sleeping 
 water.
 
 378 TRAFFIC. 
 
 He dared not take his eyes off her. And now he was 
 walking upon the tips of his toes. Fate seemed marvel- 
 ously to be conspiring with her, if that indeed were her 
 purpose, for no one was to be seen. 
 
 Once or twice as she walked, now more slowly, more de- 
 liberately, she paused and looked over the handrail beneath. 
 At length she stood still and, even then giving to Jerning- 
 ham that impression of somnambulism, she put her hands 
 on the wooden rail as though to raise herself. 
 
 For the man of action that was more than enough. 
 With her name on his lips he bounded forward, a power 
 of saving life shot from the bowels of a machine. 
 
 With a spasmodic twist of her head, she looked round. 
 Then, hastily, she put her foot upon the ironwork. A 
 little moan crushed a way out of her lips. The foot 
 slipped. With a colossal effort she tried again, impeded 
 by the bundle that she held; but this time, raising her 
 body to the waist above the rail, she was on the verge of 
 overbalance when he came within her reach. 
 
 She was lost perhaps there was no doubt that she was 
 lost but this was death. He made a vice of his arms 
 and held her there. 
 
 As a rabbit that writhes between the iron teeth of a 
 trap, she struggled in his arms. 
 
 " Let me go ! " she cried. " Let me go ! I don't want 
 to live ! I can't live ! " 
 
 The awful blasphemy of the words made his muscles 
 strain and crack. 
 
 "You're not going, ISTanno," he said, with intense and 
 breathless quiet. " There's more life yet better than 
 what there has been." 
 
 She struggled again, more feebly than before. 
 
 " What have you got here ? " he asked, feeling the bundle 
 with her in his arms.
 
 TRAFFIC. 379 
 
 She did not reply. From having struggled, her body 
 quivered like a blade of grass that the wind plays with. 
 
 " What have you got here ? " he asked again. He pulled 
 aside the edge of the shawl. The sightless, glazed eyes of 
 a baby met his; its face was blue cold dead. 
 
 A nauseous sensation that he had arrested the natural 
 course of a woman distraught with crime, flooded his 
 mind an oozing liquid that swamped him with sickly 
 impotence. 
 
 " How how did this happen ? " he asked. This was 
 the child who an hour before had lived and thrilled them 
 both with its ugly cry. 
 
 " How did it happen ? " he repeated. 
 
 " When you left " the words chattered almost in- 
 
 audibly between her teeth. 
 
 " Yes : when I left it was alive I heard it cry." 
 
 " That cry was its last. I found it dead in the kit- 
 chen. I had nothing else what could you expect? I'd 
 been living for that." 
 
 " Where's its father do you know him ? " 
 
 "My husband." 
 
 Jerningham made an effort to understand. 
 
 " When ? " he asked. 
 
 " After after I left the Fulham Eoad." 
 
 Just those few words painted a picture with a coarse and 
 hurried brush to which only the distance of time lent 
 perspective. He saw the picture, thrust for the moment 
 under the light. Whether the details were correct or not 
 he did not hesitate to consider. He saw the picture. 
 
 Then slowly his arms bound round her tighter a force 
 that seemed life without sentiment. He put his face 
 against her face he shuddered then he kissed her. 
 
 THE END.
 
 PR 
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