MAN AND MAID

BY

E. NESBIT

LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
ADELPHI TERRACE
MCMVI

[All rights reserved.]

TO
ADA BREAKELL
MY DEAREST AND OLDEST FRIEND

MAN AND MAID

By the same Author.

Illustrated. Crown 8vo. Cloth, 6s.

The Treasure Seekers.
Five Children and It.
Nine Unlikely Tales for Children.
The Would-be-Goods.
New Treasure Seekers.

LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN

CONTENTS

MAN AND MAID

I
THE HAUNTED INHERITANCE

The most extraordinary thing that ever happened to me was my going back to town on that day. I am a reasonable being; I do not do such things. I was on a bicycling tour with another man. We were far from the mean cares of an unremunerative profession; we were men not fettered by any given address, any pledged date, any preconcerted route. I went to bed weary and cheerful, fell asleep a mere animal—a tired dog after a day’s hunting—and awoke at four in the morning that creature of nerves and fancies which is my other self, and which has driven me to all the follies I have ever kept company with. But even that second self of mine, whining beast and traitor as it is, has never played me such a trick as it played then. Indeed, something in the result of that day’s rash act sets me wondering whether after all it could have been I, or even my other self, who moved in the adventure; whether it was not rather some power outside both of us ... but this is a speculation as idle in me as uninteresting to you, and so enough of it.

From four to seven I lay awake, the prey of a growing detestation of bicycling tours, friends, scenery, physical exertion, holidays. By seven o’clock I felt that I would rather perish than spend another day in the society of the other man—an excellent fellow, by the way, and the best of company.

At half-past seven the post came. I saw the postman through my window as I shaved. I went down to get my letters—there were none, naturally.

At breakfast I said: “Edmundson, my dear fellow, I am extremely sorry; but my letters this morning compel me to return to town at once.”

“But I thought,” said Edmundson—then he stopped, and I saw that he had perceived in time that this was no moment for reminding me that, having left no address, I could have had no letters.

He looked sympathetic, and gave me what there was left of the bacon. I suppose he thought that it was a love affair or some such folly. I let him think so; after all, no love affair but would have seemed wise compared with the blank idiocy of this sudden determination to cut short a delightful holiday and go back to those dusty, stuffy rooms in Gray’s Inn.

After that first and almost pardonable lapse, Edmundson behaved beautifully. I caught the 9.17 train, and by half-past eleven I was climbing my dirty staircase.

I let myself in and waded through a heap of envelopes and wrappered circulars that had drifted in through the letter-box, as dead leaves drift into the areas of houses in squares. All the windows were shut. Dust lay thick on everything. My laundress had evidently chosen this as a good time for her holiday. I wondered idly where she spent it. And now the close, musty smell of the rooms caught at my senses, and I remembered with a positive pang the sweet scent of the earth and the dead leaves in that wood through which, at this very moment, the sensible and fortunate Edmundson would be riding.

The thought of dead leaves reminded me of the heap of correspondence. I glanced through it. Only one of all those letters interested me in the least. It was from my mother:—

“Elliot’s Bay, Norfolk,
17th August.

“Dear Lawrence,—I have wonderful news for you. Your great-uncle Sefton has died, and left you half his immense property. The other half is left to your second cousin Selwyn. You must come home at once. There are heaps of letters here for you, but I dare not send them on, as goodness only knows where you may be. I do wish you would remember to leave an address. I send this to your rooms, in case you have had the forethought to instruct your charwoman to send your letters on to you. It is a most handsome fortune, and I am too happy about your accession to it to scold you as you deserve, but I hope this will be a lesson to you to leave an address when next you go away. Come home at once.—Your loving Mother,

“Margaret Sefton.

“P.S.—It is the maddest will; everything divided evenly between you two except the house and estate. The will says you and your cousin Selwyn are to meet there on the 1st September following his death, in presence of the family, and decide which of you is to have the house. If you can’t agree, it’s to be presented to the county for a lunatic asylum. I should think so! He was always so eccentric. The one who doesn’t have the house, etc., gets £20,000 extra. Of course you will choose that.

“P.P.S.—Be sure to bring your under-shirts with you—the air here is very keen of an evening.”

I opened both the windows and lit a pipe. Sefton Manor, that gorgeous old place,—I knew its picture in Hasted, cradle of our race, and so on—and a big fortune. I hoped my cousin Selwyn would want the £20,000 more than he wanted the house. If he didn’t—well, perhaps my fortune might be large enough to increase that £20,000 to a sum that he would want.

And then, suddenly, I became aware that this was the 31st of August, and that to-morrow was the day on which I was to meet my cousin Selwyn and “the family,” and come to a decision about the house. I had never, to my knowledge, heard of my cousin Selwyn. We were a family rich in collateral branches. I hoped he would be a reasonable young man. Also, I had never seen Sefton Manor House, except in a print. It occurred to me that I would rather see the house before I saw the cousin.

I caught the next train to Sefton.

“It’s but a mile by the field way,” said the railway porter. “You take the stile—the first on the left—and follow the path till you come to the wood. Then skirt along the left of it, cater across the meadow at the end, and you’ll see the place right below you in the vale.”

“It’s a fine old place, I hear,” said I.

“All to pieces, though,” said he. “I shouldn’t wonder if it cost a couple o’ hundred to put it to rights. Water coming through the roof and all.”

“But surely the owner——”

“Oh, he never lived there; not since his son was taken. He lived in the lodge; it’s on the brow of the hill looking down on the Manor House.”

“Is the house empty?”

“As empty as a rotten nutshell, except for the old sticks o’ furniture. Any one who likes,” added the porter, “can lie there o’ nights. But it wouldn’t be me!”

“Do you mean there’s a ghost?” I hope I kept any note of undue elation out of my voice.

“I don’t hold with ghosts,” said the porter firmly, “but my aunt was in service at the lodge, and there’s no doubt but something walks there.”

“Come,” I said, “this is very interesting. Can’t you leave the station, and come across to where beer is?”

“I don’t mind if I do,” said he. “That is so far as your standing a drop goes. But I can’t leave the station, so if you pour my beer you must pour it dry, sir, as the saying is.”

So I gave the man a shilling, and he told me about the ghost at Sefton Manor House. Indeed, about the ghosts, for there were, it seemed, two; a lady in white, and a gentleman in a slouch hat and black riding cloak.

“They do say,” said my porter, “as how one of the young ladies once on a time was wishful to elope, and started so to do—not getting further than the hall door; her father, thinking it to be burglars, fired out of the window, and the happy pair fell on the doorstep, corpses.”

“Is it true, do you think?”

The porter did not know. At any rate there was a tablet in the church to Maria Sefton and George Ballard—“and something about in their death them not being divided.”

I took the stile, I skirted the wood, I “catered” across the meadow—and so I came out on a chalky ridge held in a net of pine roots, where dog violets grew. Below stretched the green park, dotted with trees. The lodge, stuccoed but solid, lay below me. Smoke came from its chimneys. Lower still lay the Manor House—red brick with grey lichened mullions, a house in a thousand, Elizabethan—and from its twisted beautiful chimneys no smoke arose. I hurried across the short turf towards the Manor House.

I had no difficulty in getting into the great garden. The bricks of the wall were everywhere displaced or crumbling. The ivy had forced the coping stones away; each red buttress offered a dozen spots for foothold. I climbed the wall and found myself in a garden—oh! but such a garden. There are not half a dozen such in England—ancient box hedges, rosaries, fountains, yew tree avenues, bowers of clematis (now feathery in its seeding time), great trees, grey-grown marble balustrades and steps, terraces, green lawns, one green lawn, in especial, girt round with a sweet briar hedge, and in the middle of this lawn a sundial. All this was mine, or, to be more exact, might be mine, should my cousin Selwyn prove to be a person of sense. How I prayed that he might not be a person of taste! That he might be a person who liked yachts or racehorses or diamonds, or motor-cars, or anything that money can buy, not a person who liked beautiful Elizabethan houses, and gardens old beyond belief.

The sundial stood on a mass of masonry, too low and wide to be called a pillar. I mounted the two brick steps and leaned over to read the date and the motto:

“Tempus fugit manet amor.”

The date was 1617, the initials S. S. surmounted it. The face of the dial was unusually ornate—a wreath of stiffly drawn roses was traced outside the circle of the numbers. As I leaned there a sudden movement on the other side of the pedestal compelled my attention. I leaned over a little further to see what had rustled—a rat—a rabbit? A flash of pink struck at my eyes. A lady in a pink dress was sitting on the step at the other side of the sundial.

I suppose some exclamation escaped me—the lady looked up. Her hair was dark, and her eyes; her face was pink and white, with a few little gold-coloured freckles on nose and on cheek bones. Her dress was of pink cotton stuff, thin and soft. She looked like a beautiful pink rose.

Our eyes met.

“I beg your pardon,” said I, “I had no idea——” there I stopped and tried to crawl back to firm ground. Graceful explanations are not best given by one sprawling on his stomach across a sundial.

By the time I was once more on my feet she too was standing.

“It is a beautiful old place,” she said gently, and, as it seemed, with a kindly wish to relieve my embarrassment. She made a movement as if to turn away.

“Quite a show place,” said I stupidly enough, but I was still a little embarrassed, and I wanted to say something—anything—to arrest her departure. You have no idea how pretty she was. She had a straw hat in her hand, dangling by soft black ribbons. Her hair was all fluffy-soft—like a child’s. “I suppose you have seen the house?” I asked.

She paused, one foot still on the lower step of the sundial, and her face seemed to brighten at the touch of some idea as sudden as welcome.

“Well—no,” she said. “The fact is—I wanted frightfully to see the house; in fact, I’ve come miles and miles on purpose, but there’s no one to let me in.”

“The people at the lodge?” I suggested.

“Oh no,” she said. “I—the fact is I—I don’t want to be shown round. I want to explore!”

She looked at me critically. Her eyes dwelt on my right hand, which lay on the sundial. I have always taken reasonable care of my hands, and I wore a good ring, a sapphire, cut with the Sefton arms: an heirloom, by the way. Her glance at my hand preluded a longer glance at my face. Then she shrugged her pretty shoulders.

“Oh well,” she said, and it was as if she had said plainly, “I see that you are a gentleman and a decent fellow. Why should I not look over the house in your company? Introductions? Bah!”

All this her shrug said without ambiguity as without words.

“Perhaps,” I hazarded, “I could get the keys.”

“Do you really care very much for old houses?”

“I do,” said I; “and you?”

“I care so much that I nearly broke into this one. I should have done it quite if the windows had been an inch or two lower.”

“I am an inch or two higher,” said I, standing squarely so as to make the most of my six-feet beside her five-feet-five or thereabouts.

“Oh—if you only would!” said she.

“Why not?” said I.

She led the way past the marble basin of the fountain, and along the historic yew avenue, planted, like all old yew avenues, by that industrious gardener our Eighth Henry. Then across a lawn, through a winding, grassy, shrubbery path, that ended at a green door in the garden wall.

“You can lift this latch with a hairpin,” said she, and therewith lifted it.

We walked into a courtyard. Young grass grew green between the grey flags on which our steps echoed.

“This is the window,” said she. “You see there’s a pane broken. If you could get on to the window-sill, you could get your hand in and undo the hasp, and——”

“And you?”

“Oh, you’ll let me in by the kitchen door.”

I did it. My conscience called me a burglar—in vain. Was it not my own, or as good as my own house?

I let her in at the back door. We walked through the big dark kitchen where the old three-legged pot towered large on the hearth, and the old spits and firedogs still kept their ancient place. Then through another kitchen where red rust was making its full meal of a comparatively modern range.

Then into the great hall, where the old armour and the buff-coats and round-caps hang on the walls, and where the carved stone staircases run at each side up to the gallery above.

The long tables in the middle of the hall were scored by the knives of the many who had eaten meat there—initials and dates were cut into them. The roof was groined, the windows low-arched.

“Oh, but what a place!” said she; “this must be much older than the rest of it——”

“Evidently. About 1300, I should say.”

“Oh, let us explore the rest,” she cried; “it is really a comfort not to have a guide, but only a person like you who just guesses comfortably at dates. I should hate to be told exactly when this hall was built.”

We explored ball-room and picture gallery, white parlour and library. Most of the rooms were furnished—all heavily, some magnificently—but everything was dusty and faded.

It was in the white parlour, a spacious panelled room on the first floor, that she told me the ghost story, substantially the same as my porter’s tale, only in one respect different.

“And so, just as she was leaving this very room—yes, I’m sure it’s this room, because the woman at the inn pointed out this double window and told me so—just as the poor lovers were creeping out of the door, the cruel father came quickly out of some dark place and killed them both. So now they haunt it.”

“It is a terrible thought,” said I gravely. “How would you like to live in a haunted house?”

“I couldn’t,” she said quickly.

“Nor I; it would be too——” my speech would have ended flippantly, but for the grave set of her features.

“I wonder who will live here?” she said. “The owner is just dead. They say it is an awful house, full of ghosts. Of course one is not afraid now”—the sunlight lay golden and soft on the dusty parquet of the floor—“but at night, when the wind wails, and the doors creak, and the things rustle, oh, it must be awful!”

“I hear the house has been left to two people, or rather one is to have the house, and the other a sum of money,” said I. “It’s a beautiful house, full of beautiful things, but I should think at least one of the heirs would rather have the money.”

“Oh yes, I should think so. I wonder whether the heirs know about the ghost? The lights can be seen from the inn, you know, at twelve o’clock, and they see the ghost in white at the window.”

“Never the black one?”

“Oh yes, I suppose so.”

“The ghosts don’t appear together?”

“No.”

“I suppose,” said I, “whoever it is that manages such things knows that the poor ghosts would like to be together, so it won’t let them.”

She shivered.

“Come,” she said, “we have seen all over the house; let us get back into the sunshine. Now I will go out, and you shall bolt the door after me, and then you can come out by the window. Thank you so much for all the trouble you have taken. It has really been quite an adventure....”

I rather liked that expression, and she hastened to spoil it.

“... Quite an adventure going all over this glorious old place, and looking at everything one wanted to see, and not just at what the housekeeper didn’t mind one’s looking at.”

She passed through the door, but when I had closed it and prepared to lock it, I found that the key was no longer in the lock. I looked on the floor—I felt in my pockets, and at last, wandering back into the kitchen, discovered it on the table, where I swear I never put it.

When I had fitted that key into the lock and turned it, and got out of the window and made that fast, I dropped into the yard. No one shared its solitude with me. I searched garden and pleasure grounds, but never a glimpse of pink rewarded my anxious eyes. I found the sundial again, and stretched myself along the warm brick of the wide step where she had sat: and called myself a fool.

I had let her go. I did not know her name; I did not know where she lived; she had been at the inn, but probably only for lunch. I should never see her again, and certainly in that event I should never see again such dark, soft eyes, such hair, such a contour of cheek and chin, such a frank smile—in a word, a girl with whom it would be so delightfully natural for me to fall in love. For all the time she had been talking to me of architecture and archæology, of dates and periods, of carvings and mouldings, I had been recklessly falling in love with the idea of falling in love with her. I had cherished and adored this delightful possibility, and now my chance was over. Even I could not definitely fall in love after one interview with a girl I was never to see again! And falling in love is so pleasant! I cursed my lost chance, and went back to the inn. I talked to the waiter.

“Yes, a lady in pink had lunched there with a party. Had gone on to the Castle. A party from Tonbridge it was.”

Barnhurst Castle is close to Sefton Manor. The inn lays itself out to entertain persons who come in brakes and carve their names on the walls of the Castle keep. The inn has a visitors’ book. I examined it. Some twenty feminine names. Any one might be hers. The waiter looked over my shoulder. I turned the pages.

“Only parties staying in the house in this part of the book,” said the waiter.

My eye caught one name. “Selwyn Sefton,” in a clear, round, black hand-writing.

“Staying here?” I pointed to the name.

“Yes, sir; came to-day, sir.”

“Can I have a private sitting-room?”

I had one. I ordered my dinner to be served in it, and I sat down and considered my course of action. Should I invite my cousin Selwyn to dinner, ply him with wine, and exact promises? Honour forbade. Should I seek him out and try to establish friendly relations? To what end?

Then I saw from my window a young man in a light-checked suit, with a face at once pallid and coarse. He strolled along the gravel path, and a woman’s voice in the garden called “Selwyn.”

He disappeared in the direction of the voice. I don’t think I ever disliked a man so much at first sight.

“Brute,” said I, “why should he have the house? He’d stucco it all over as likely as not; perhaps let it! He’d never stand the ghosts, either——”

Then the inexcusable, daring idea of my life came to me, striking me rigid—a blow from my other self. It must have been a minute or two before my muscles relaxed and my arms fell at my sides.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

I dined. I told the people of the house not to sit up for me. I was going to see friends in the neighbourhood, and might stay the night with them. I took my Inverness cape with me on my arm and my soft felt hat in my pocket. I wore a light suit and a straw hat.

Before I started I leaned cautiously from my window. The lamp at the bow window next to mine showed me the pallid young man, smoking a fat, reeking cigar. I hoped he would continue to sit there smoking. His window looked the right way; and if he didn’t see what I wanted him to see some one else in the inn would. The landlady had assured me that I should disturb no one if I came in at half-past twelve.

“We hardly keep country hours here, sir,” she said, “on account of so much excursionist business.”

I bought candles in the village, and, as I went down across the park in the soft darkness, I turned again and again to be sure that the light and the pallid young man were still at that window. It was now past eleven.

I got into the house and lighted a candle, and crept through the dark kitchens, whose windows, I knew, did not look towards the inn. When I came to the hall I blew out my candle. I dared not show light prematurely, and in the unhaunted part of the house.

I gave myself a nasty knock against one of the long tables, but it helped me to get my bearings, and presently I laid my hand on the stone balustrade of the great staircase. You would hardly believe me if I were to tell you truly of my sensations as I began to go up these stairs. I am not a coward—at least, I had never thought so till then—but the absolute darkness unnerved me. I had to go slowly, or I should have lost my head and blundered up the stairs three at a time, so strong was the feeling of something—something uncanny—just behind me.

I set my teeth. I reached the top of the stairs, felt along the walls, and after a false start, which landed me in the great picture gallery, I found the white parlour, entered it, closed the door, and felt my way to a little room without a window, which we had decided must have been a powdering-room.

Here I ventured to re-light my candle.

The white parlour, I remembered, was fully furnished. Returning to it I struck one match, and by its flash determined the way to the mantelpiece.

Then I closed the powdering-room door behind me. I felt my way to the mantelpiece and took down the two brass twenty-lighted candelabra. I placed these on a table a yard or two from the window, and in them set up my candles. It is astonishingly difficult in the dark to do anything, even a thing so simple as the setting up of a candle.

Then I went back into my little room, put on the Inverness cape and the slouch hat, and looked at my watch. Eleven-thirty. I must wait. I sat down and waited. I thought how rich I was—the thought fell flat; I wanted this house. I thought of my beautiful pink lady; but I put that thought aside; I had an inward consciousness that my conduct, more heroic than enough in one sense, would seem mean and crafty in her eyes. Only ten minutes had passed. I could not wait till twelve. The chill of the night and of the damp, unused house, and, perhaps, some less material influence, made me shiver.

I opened the door, crept on hands and knees to the table, and, carefully keeping myself below the level of the window, I reached up a trembling arm, and lighted, one by one, my forty candles. The room was a blaze of light. My courage came back to me with the retreat of the darkness. I was far too excited to know what a fool I was making of myself. I rose boldly, and struck an attitude over against the window, where the candle-light shone upon as well as behind me. My Inverness was flung jauntily over my shoulder, my soft, black felt twisted and slouched over my eyes.

There I stood for the world, and particularly for my cousin Selwyn, to see, the very image of the ghost that haunted that chamber. And from my window I could see the light in that other window, and indistinctly the lounging figure there. Oh, my cousin Selwyn, I wished many things to your address in that moment! For it was only a moment that I had to feel brave and daring in. Then I heard, deep down in the house, a sound, very slight, very faint. Then came silence. I drew a deep breath. The silence endured. And I stood by my lighted window.

After a very long time, as it seemed, I heard a board crack, and then a soft rustling sound that drew near and seemed to pause outside the very door of my parlour.

Again I held my breath, and now I thought of the most horrible story Poe ever wrote—“The Fall of the House of Usher”—and I fancied I saw the handle of that door move. I fixed my eyes on it. The fancy passed: and returned.

Then again there was silence. And then the door opened with a soft, silent suddenness, and I saw in the doorway a figure in trailing white. Its eyes blazed in a death-white face. It made two ghostly, gliding steps forward, and my heart stood still. I had not thought it possible for a man to experience so sharp a pang of sheer terror. I had masqueraded as one of the ghosts in this accursed house. Well, the other ghost—the real one—had come to meet me. I do not like to dwell on that moment. The only thing which it pleases me to remember is that I did not scream or go mad. I think I stood on the verge of both.

The ghost, I say, took two steps forward; then it threw up its arms, the lighted taper it carried fell on the floor, and it reeled back against the door with its arms across its face.

The fall of the candle woke me as from a nightmare. It fell solidly, and rolled away under the table.

I perceived that my ghost was human. I cried incoherently: “Don’t, for Heaven’s sake—it’s all right.”

The ghost dropped its hands and turned agonised eyes on me. I tore off my cloak and hat.

“I—didn’t—scream,” she said, and with that I sprang forward and caught her in my arms—my poor, pink lady—white now as a white rose.

I carried her into the powdering-room, and left one candle with her, extinguishing the others hastily, for now I saw what in my extravagant folly had escaped me before, that my ghost exhibition might bring the whole village down on the house. I tore down the long corridor and double locked the doors leading from it to the staircase, then back to the powdering-room and the prone white rose. How, in the madness of that night’s folly, I had thought to bring a brandy-flask passes my understanding. But I had done it. Now I rubbed her hands with the spirit. I rubbed her temples, I tried to force it between her lips, and at last she sighed and opened her eyes.

“Oh—thank God—thank God!” I cried, for indeed I had almost feared that my mad trick had killed her. “Are you better? oh, poor little lady, are you better?”

She moved her head a little on my arm.

Again she sighed, and her eyes closed. I gave her more brandy. She took it, choked, raised herself against my shoulder.

“I’m all right now,” she said faintly. “It served me right. How silly it all is!” Then she began to laugh, and then she began to cry.

It was at this moment that we heard voices on the terrace below. She clutched at my arm in a frenzy of terror, the bright tears glistening on her cheeks.

“Oh! not any more, not any more,” she cried. “I can’t bear it.”

“Hush,” I said, taking her hands strongly in mine. “I’ve played the fool; so have you. We must play the man now. The people in the village have seen the lights—that’s all. They think we’re burglars. They can’t get in. Keep quiet, and they’ll go away.”

But when they did go away they left the local constable on guard. He kept guard like a man till daylight began to creep over the hill, and then he crawled into the hayloft and fell asleep, small blame to him.

But through those long hours I sat beside her and held her hand. At first she clung to me as a frightened child clings, and her tears were the prettiest, saddest things to see. As we grew calmer we talked.

“I did it to frighten my cousin,” I owned. “I meant to have told you to-day, I mean yesterday, only you went away. I am Lawrence Sefton, and the place is to go either to me or to my cousin Selwyn. And I wanted to frighten him off it. But you, why did you——?”

Even then I couldn’t see. She looked at me.

“I don’t know how I ever could have thought I was brave enough to do it, but I did want the house so, and I wanted to frighten you——”

“To frighten me. Why?”

“Because I am your cousin Selwyn,” she said, hiding her face in her hands.

“And you knew me?” I asked.

“By your ring,” she said. “I saw your father wear it when I was a little girl. Can’t we get back to the inn now?”

“Not unless you want every one to know how silly we have been.”

“I wish you’d forgive me,” she said when we had talked awhile, and she had even laughed at the description of the pallid young man on whom I had bestowed, in my mind, her name.

“The wrong is mutual,” I said; “we will exchange forgivenesses.”

“Oh, but it isn’t,” she said eagerly. “Because I knew it was you, and you didn’t know it was me: you wouldn’t have tried to frighten me.”

“You know I wouldn’t.” My voice was tenderer than I meant it to be.

She was silent.

“And who is to have the house?” she said.

“Why you, of course.”

“I never will.”

“Why?”

“Oh, because!”

“Can’t we put off the decision?” I asked.

“Impossible. We must decide to-morrow—to-day I mean.”

“Well, when we meet to-morrow—I mean to-day—with lawyers and chaperones and mothers and relations, give me one word alone with you.”

“Yes,” she answered, with docility.

“Do you know,” she said presently, “I can never respect myself again? To undertake a thing like that, and then be so horribly frightened. Oh! I thought you really were the other ghost.”

“I will tell you a secret,” said I. “I thought you were, and I was much more frightened than you.”

“Oh well,” she said, leaning against my shoulder as a tired child might have done, “if you were frightened too, Cousin Lawrence, I don’t mind so very, very much.”

It was soon afterwards that, cautiously looking out of the parlour window for the twentieth time, I had the happiness of seeing the local policeman disappear into the stable rubbing his eyes.

We got out of the window on the other side of the house, and went back to the inn across the dewy park. The French window of the sitting-room which had let her out let us both in. No one was stirring, so no one save she and I were any the wiser as to that night’s work.

It was like a garden party next day, when lawyers and executors and aunts and relations met on the terrace in front of Sefton Manor House.

Her eyes were downcast. She followed her Aunt demurely over the house and the grounds.

“Your decision,” said my great-uncle’s solicitor, “has to be given within the hour.”

“My cousin and I will announce it within that time,” I said and I at once gave her my arm.

Arrived at the sundial we stopped.

“This is my proposal,” I said: “we will say that we decide that the house is yours—we will spend the £20,000 in restoring it and the grounds. By the time that’s done we can decide who is to have it.”

“But how?”

“Oh, we’ll draw lots, or toss a halfpenny, or anything you like.”

“I’d rather decide now,” she said; “you take it.”

“No, you shall.”

“I’d rather you had it. I—I don’t feel so greedy as I did yesterday,” she said.

“Neither do I. Or at any rate not in the same way.”

“Do—do take the house,” she said very earnestly.

Then I said: “My cousin Selwyn, unless you take the house, I shall make you an offer of marriage.”

“Oh!” she breathed.

“And when you have declined it, on the very proper ground of our too slight acquaintance, I will take my turn at declining. I will decline the house. Then, if you are obdurate, it will become an asylum. Don’t be obdurate. Pretend to take the house and——”

She looked at me rather piteously.

“Very well,” she said, “I will pretend to take the house, and when it is restored——”

“We’ll spin the penny.”

So before the waiting relations the house was adjudged to my cousin Selwyn. When the restoration was complete I met Selwyn at the sundial. We had met there often in the course of the restoration, in which business we both took an extravagant interest.

“Now,” I said, “we’ll spin the penny. Heads you take the house, tails it comes to me.”

I spun the coin—it fell on the brick steps of the sundial, and stuck upright there, wedged between two bricks. She laughed; I laughed.

“It’s not my house,” I said.

“It’s not my house,” said she.

“Dear,” said I, and we were neither of us laughing then, “can’t it be our house?”

And, thank God, our house it is.

II
THE POWER OF DARKNESS

It was an enthusiastic send-off. Half the students from her Atelier were there, and twice as many more from other studios. She had been the belle of the Artists’ Quarter in Montparnasse for three golden months. Now she was off to the Riviera to meet her people, and every one she knew was at the Gare de Lyons to catch the pretty last glimpse of her. And, as had been more than once said late of an evening, “to see her was to love her.” She was one of those agitating blondes, with the naturally rippled hair, the rounded rose-leaf cheeks, the large violet-blue eyes that look all things and mean Heaven alone knows how little. She held her court like a queen, leaning out of the carriage window and receiving bouquets, books, journals, long last words, and last longing looks. All eyes were on her, and her eyes were for all—and her smile. For all but one, that is. Not a single glance went Edward’s way, and Edward, tall, lean, gaunt, with big eyes, straight nose, and mouth somewhat too small, too beautiful, seemed to grow thinner and paler before one’s eyes. One pair of eyes at least saw the miracle worked, the paling of what had seemed absolute pallor, the revelation of the bones of a face that seemed already covered but by the thinnest possible veil of flesh.

And the man whose eyes saw this rejoiced, for he loved her, like the rest, or not like the rest; and he had had Edward’s face before him for the last month, in that secret shrine where we set the loved and the hated, the shrine that is lighted by a million lamps kindled at the soul’s flame, the shrine that leaps into dazzling glow when the candles are out and one lies alone on hot pillows to outface the night and the light as best one may.

“Oh, good-bye, good-bye, all of you,” said Rose. “I shall miss you—oh, you don’t know how I shall miss you all!”

She gathered the glances of her friends and her worshippers on her own glance, as one gathers jewels on a silken string. The eyes of Edward alone seemed to escape her.

“Em voiture, messieurs et dames.”

Folk drew back from the train. There was a whistle. And then at the very last little moment of all, as the train pulled itself together for the start, her eyes met Edward’s eyes. And the other man saw the meeting, and he knew—which was more than Edward did.

So, when the light of life having been borne away in the retreating train, the broken-hearted group dispersed, the other man, whose name by the way was Vincent, linked his arm in Edward’s and asked cheerily: “Whither away, sweet nymph?”

“I’m off home,” said Edward. “The 7.20 to Calais.”

“Sick of Paris?”

“One has to see one’s people sometimes, don’t you know, hang it all!” was Edward’s way of expressing the longing that tore him for the old house among the brown woods of Kent.

“No attraction here now, eh?”

“The chief attraction has gone, certainly,” Edward made himself say.

“But there are as good fish in the sea——?”

“Fishing isn’t my trade,” said Edward.

“The beautiful Rose!——” said Vincent.

Edward raised hurriedly the only shield he could find. It happened to be the truth as he saw it.

“Oh,” he said, “of course, we’re all in love with her—and all hopelessly.”

Vincent perceived that this was truth, as Edward saw it.

“What are you going to do till your train goes?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Café, I suppose, and a vilely early dinner.”

“Let’s look in at the Musée Grévin,” said Vincent.

The two were friends. They had been school-fellows, and this is a link that survives many a strain too strong to be resisted by more intimate and vital bonds. And they were fellow-students, though that counts for little or much—as you take it. Besides, Vincent knew something about Edward that no one else of their age and standing even guessed. He knew that Edward was afraid of the dark, and why. He had found it out that Christmas that the two had spent at an English country house. The house was full: there was a dance. There were to be theatricals. Early in the new year the hostess meant to “move house” to an old convent, built in Tudor times, a beautiful place with terraces and clipped yew trees, castellated battlements, a moat, swans, and a ghost story.

“You boys,” she said, “must put up with a shake-down in the new house. I hope the ghost won’t worry you. She’s a nun with a bunch of keys and no eyes. Comes and breathes softly on the back of your neck when you’re shaving. Then you see her in the glass, and, as often as not, you cut your throat.” She laughed. So did Edward and Vincent, and the other young men; there were seven or eight of them.

But that night, when sparse candles had lighted “the boys” to their rooms, when the last pipe had been smoked, the last good-night said, there came a fumbling with the handle of Vincent’s door. Edward entered an unwieldy figure clasping pillows, trailing blankets.

“What the deuce?” queried Vincent in natural amazement.

“I’ll turn in here on the floor, if you don’t mind,” said Edward. “I know it’s beastly rot, but I can’t stand it. The room they’ve put me into, it’s an attic as big as a barn—and there’s a great door at the end, eight feet high—raw oak it is—and it leads into a sort of horror-hole—bare beams and rafters, and black as Hell. I know I’m an abject duffer, but there it is—I can’t face it.”

Vincent was sympathetic, though he had never known a night-terror that could not be exorcised by pipe, book, and candle.

“I know, old chap. There’s no reasoning about these things,” said he, and so on.

“You can’t despise me more than I despise myself,” Edward said. “I feel a crawling hound. But it is so. I had a scare when I was a kid, and it seems to have left a sort of brand on me. I’m branded ‘coward,’ old man, and the feel of it’s not nice.”

Again Vincent was sympathetic, and the poor little tale came out. How Edward, eight years old, and greedy as became his little years, had sneaked down, night-clad, to pick among the outcomings of a dinner-party, and how, in the hall, dark with the light of an “artistic” coloured glass lantern, a white figure had suddenly faced him—leaned towards him it seemed, pointed lead-white hands at his heart. That next day, finding him weak from his fainting fit, had shown the horror to be but a statue, a new purchase of his father’s, had mattered not one whit.

Edward had shared Vincent’s room, and Vincent, alone of all men, shared Edward’s secret.

And now, in Paris, Rose speeding away towards Cannes, Vincent said: “Let’s look in at the Musée Grévin.”

The Musée Grévin is a wax-work show. Your mind, at the word, flies instantly to the excellent exhibition founded by the worthy Madame Tussaud, and you think you know what wax-works mean. But you are wrong. The exhibition of Madame Tussaud—in these days, at any rate—is the work of bourgeois for a bourgeois class. The Musée Grévin contains the work of artists for a nation of artists. Wax, modelled and retouched till it seems as near life as death is: this is what one sees at the Musée Grévin.

“Let’s look in at the Musée Grévin,” said Vincent. He remembered the pleasant thrill the Musée had given him, and wondered what sort of a thrill it would give his friend.

“I hate museums,” said Edward.

“This isn’t a museum,” Vincent said, and truly; “it’s just wax-works.”

“All right,” said Edward indifferently. And they went. They reached the doors of the Musée in the grey-brown dusk of a February evening.

One walks along a bare, narrow corridor, much like the entrance to the stalls of the Standard Theatre, and such daylight as there may be fades away behind one, and one finds oneself in a square hall, heavily decorated, and displaying with its electric lights Loie Fuller in her accordion-pleated skirts, and one or two other figures not designed to quicken the pulse.

“It’s very like Madame Tussaud’s,” said Edward.

“Yes,” Vincent said; “isn’t it?”

Then they passed through an arch, and behold, a long room with waxen groups life-like behind glass—the coulisses of the Opéra, Kitchener at Fashoda—this last with a desert background lit by something convincingly like desert sunlight.

“By Jove!” said Edward, “that’s jolly good.”

“Yes,” said Vincent again; “isn’t it?”

Edward’s interest grew. The things were so convincing, so very nearly alive. Given the right angle, their glass eyes met one’s own, and seemed to exchange with one meaning glances.

Vincent led the way to an arched door labelled: “Gallerie de la Revolution.”

There one saw, almost in the living, suffering body, poor Marie Antoinette in prison in the Temple, her little son on his couch of rags, the rats eating from his platter, the brutal Simon calling to him from the grated window; one almost heard the words, “Ho la, little Capet—are you asleep?”

One saw Marat bleeding in his bath—the brave Charlotte eyeing him—the very tiles of the bath-room, the glass of the windows with, outside, the very sunlight, as it seemed, of 1793 on that “yellow July evening, the thirteenth of the month.”

The spectators did not move in a public place among wax-work figures. They peeped through open doors into rooms where history seemed to be re-lived. The rooms were lighted each by its own sun, or lamp, or candle. The spectators walked among shadows that might have oppressed a nervous person.

“Fine, eh?” said Vincent.

“Yes,” said Edward; “it’s wonderful.”

A turn of a corner brought them to a room. Marie Antoinette fainting, supported by her ladies; poor fat Louis by the window looking literally sick.

“What’s the matter with them all?” said Edward.

“Look at the window,” said Vincent.

There was a window to the room. Outside was sunshine—the sunshine of 1792—and, gleaming in it, blonde hair flowing, red mouth half open, what seemed the just-severed head of a beautiful woman. It was raised on a pike, so that it seemed to be looking in at the window.

“I say!” said Edward, and the head on the pike seemed to sway before his eyes.

“Madame de Lamballe. Good thing, isn’t it?” said Vincent.

“It’s altogether too much of a good thing,” said Edward. “Look here—I’ve had enough of this.”

“Oh, you must just see the Catacombs,” said Vincent; “nothing bloody, you know. Only Early Christians being married and baptized, and all that.”

He led the way, down some clumsy steps to the cellars which the genius of a great artist has transformed into the exact semblance of the old Catacombs at Rome. The same rough hewing of rock, the same sacred tokens engraved strongly and simply; and among the arches of these subterranean burrowings the life of the Early Christians, their sacraments, their joys, their sorrows—all expressed in groups of wax-work as like life as Death is.

“But this is very fine, you know,” said Edward, getting his breath again after Madame de Lamballe, and his imagination loved the thought of the noble sufferings and refrainings of these first lovers of the Crucified Christ.

“Yes,” said Vincent for the third time; “isn’t it?”

They passed the baptism and the burying and the marriage. The tableaux were sufficiently lighted, but little light strayed to the narrow passage where the two men walked, and the darkness seemed to press, tangible as a bodily presence, against Edward’s shoulder. He glanced backward.

“Come,” he said, “I’ve had enough.”

“Come on, then,” said Vincent.

They turned the corner—and a blaze of Italian sunlight struck at their eyes with positive dazzlement. There lay the Coliseum—tier on tier of eager faces under the blue sky of Italy. They were level with the arena. In the arena were crosses; from them drooped bleeding figures. On the sand beasts prowled, bodies lay. They saw it all through bars. They seemed to be in the place where the chosen victims waited their turn, waited for the lions and the crosses, the palm and the crown. Close by Edward was a group—an old man, a woman—children. He could have touched them with his hand. The woman and the man stared in an agony of terror straight in the eyes of a snarling tiger, ten feet long, that stood up on its hind feet and clawed through the bars at them. The youngest child, only, unconscious of the horror, laughed in the very face of it. Roman soldiers, unmoved in military vigilance, guarded the group of martyrs. In a low cage to the left more wild beasts cringed and seemed to growl, unfed. Within the grating on the wide circle of yellow sand lions and tigers drank the blood of Christians. Close against the bars a great lion sucked the chest of a corpse on whose blood-stained face the horror of the death-agony was printed plain.

“Good God!” said Edward. Vincent took his arm suddenly, and he started with what was almost a shriek.

“What a nervous chap you are!” said Vincent complacently, as they regained the street where the lights were, and the sound of voices and the movement of live human beings—all that warms and awakens nerves almost paralysed by the life in death of waxen immobility.

“I don’t know,” said Edward. “Let’s have a vermouth, shall we? There’s something uncanny about those wax things. They’re like life—but they’re much more like death. Suppose they moved? I don’t feel at all sure that they don’t move, when the lights are all out, and there’s no one there.” He laughed. “I suppose you were never frightened, Vincent?”

“Yes, I was once,” said Vincent, sipping his absinthe. “Three other men and I were taking turns by twos to watch a dead man. It was a fancy of his mother’s. Our time was up, and the other watch hadn’t come. So my chap—the one who was watching with me, I mean—went to fetch them. I didn’t think I should mind. But it was just like you say.”

“How?”

“Why, I kept thinking: suppose it should move—it was so like life. And if it did move, of course it would have been because it was alive, and I ought to have been glad, because the man was my friend. But all the same, if it had moved I should have gone mad.”

“Yes,” said Edward; “that’s just exactly it.”

Vincent called for a second absinthe.

“But a dead body’s different to wax-works,” he said. “I can’t understand any one being frightened of them.”

“Oh, can’t you?” The contempt in the other’s tone stung him. “I bet you wouldn’t spend a night alone in that place.”

“I bet you five pounds I do!”

“Done!” said Edward briskly. “At least, I would if you’d got five pounds.”

“But I have. I’m simply rolling. I’ve sold my Dejanira, didn’t you know? I shall win your money, though, anyway. But you couldn’t do it, old man. I suppose you’ll never outgrow that childish scare.”

“You might shut up about that,” said Edward shortly.

“Oh, it’s nothing to be ashamed of; some women are afraid of mice or spiders. I say, does Rose know you’re a coward?”

“Vincent!”

“No offence, old boy. One may as well call a spade a spade. Of course, you’ve got tons of moral courage, and all that. But you are afraid of the dark—and wax-works!”

“Are you trying to quarrel with me?”

“Heaven in its mercy forbid; but I bet you wouldn’t spend a night in the Musée Grévin and keep your senses.”

“What’s the stake?”

“Anything you like.”

“Make it, that if I do, you’ll never speak to Rose again—and what’s more, that you’ll never speak to me,” said Edward, white-hot, knocking down a chair as he rose.

“Done!” said Vincent; “but you’ll never do it. Keep your hair on. Besides, you’re off home.”

“I shall be back in ten days. I’ll do it then,” said Edward, and was off before the other could answer.

Then Vincent, left alone, sat still, and over his third absinthe remembered how, before she had known Edward, Rose had smiled on him; more than on the others, he had thought. He thought of her wide, lovely eyes, her wild-rose cheeks, the scented curves of her hair, and then and there the devil entered into him.

In ten days Edward would undoubtedly try to win his wager. He would try to spend the night in the Musée Grévin. Perhaps something could be arranged before that. If one knew the place thoroughly! A little scare would serve Edward right for being the man to whom that last glance of Rose’s had been given.

Vincent dined lightly, but with conscientious care—and as he dined, he thought. Something might be done by tying a string to one of the figures, and making it move, when Edward was going through that impossible night among the effigies that are so like life—so like death. Something that was not the devil said: “You may frighten him out of his wits.” And the devil answered: “Nonsense! do him good. He oughtn’t to be such a schoolgirl.”

Anyway, the five pounds might as well be won to-night as any other night. He would take a great coat, sleep sound in the place of horrors, and the people who opened it in the morning to sweep and dust would bear witness that he had passed the night there. He thought he might trust to the French love of a sporting wager to keep him from any bother with the authorities.

So he went in among the crowd, and looked about among the wax-works for a place to hide in. He was not in the least afraid of these lifeless images. He had always been able to control his nervous tremors. He was not even afraid of being frightened, which, by the way, is the worst fear of all. As one looks at the room of the poor little Dauphin, one sees a door to the left. It opens out of the room on to blackness. There were few people in the gallery. Vincent watched, and in a moment when he was alone he stepped over the barrier and through this door. A narrow passage ran round behind the wall of the room. Here he hid, and when the gallery was deserted he looked out across the body of little Capet to the gaolers at the window. There was a soldier at the window, too. Vincent amused himself with the fancy that this soldier might walk round the passage at the back of the room and tap him on the shoulder in the darkness. Only the head and shoulders of the soldier and the gaoler showed, so, of course, they could not walk, even if they were something that was not wax-work.

Presently he himself went along the passage and round to the window where they were. He found that they had legs. They were full-sized figures dressed completely in the costume of the period.

“Thorough the beggars are, even the parts that don’t show—artists, upon my word,” said Vincent, and went back to his doorway, thinking of the hidden carving behind the capitols of Gothic cathedrals.

But the idea of the soldier who might come behind him in the dark stuck in his mind. Though still a few visitors strolled through the gallery, the closing hour was near. He supposed it would be quite dark then. And now he had allowed himself to be amused by the thought of something that should creep up behind him in the dark, he might possibly be nervous in that passage round which, if wax-works could move, the soldier might have come.

“By Jove!” he said, “one might easily frighten oneself by just fancying things. Suppose there were a back way from Marat’s bath-room, and instead of the soldier Marat came out of his bath, with his wet towels stained with blood, and dabbed them against your neck.”

When next the gallery was empty he crept out. Not because he was nervous, he told himself, but because one might be, and because the passage was draughty, and he meant to sleep.

He went down the steps into the Catacombs, and here he spoke the truth to himself.

“Hang it all!” he said, “I was nervous. That fool Edward must have infected me. Mesmeric influences, or something.”

“Chuck it and go home,” said Commonsense.

“I’m damned if I do!” said Vincent.

There were a good many people in the Catacombs at the moment—live people. He sucked confidence from their nearness, and went up and down looking for a hiding-place.

Through rock-hewn arches he saw a burial scene—a corpse on a bier surrounded by mourners; a great pillar cut off half the still, lying figure. It was all still and unemotional as a Sunday School oleograph. He waited till no one was near, then slipped quickly through the mourning group and hid behind the pillar. Surprising—heartening too—to find a plain rushed chair there, doubtless set for the resting of tired officials. He sat down in it, comforted his hand with the commonplace lines of its rungs and back. A shrouded waxen figure just behind him to the left of his pillar worried him a little, but the corpse left him unmoved as itself. A far better place this than that draughty passage where the soldier with legs kept intruding on the darkness that is always behind one.

Custodians went along the passages issuing orders. A stillness fell. Then suddenly all the lights went out.

“That’s all right,” said Vincent, and composed himself to sleep.

But he seemed to have forgotten what sleep was like. He firmly fixed his thoughts on pleasant things—the sale of his picture, dances with Rose, merry evenings with Edward and the others. But the thoughts rushed by him like motes in sunbeams—he could not hold a single one of them, and presently it seemed that he had thought of every pleasant thing that had ever happened to him, and that now, if he thought at all, he must think of the things one wants most to forget. And there would be time in this long night to think much of many things. But now he found that he could no longer think.

The draped effigy just behind him worried him again. He had been trying, at the back of his mind, behind the other thoughts, to strangle the thought of it. But it was there—very close to him. Suppose it put out its hand, its wax hand, and touched him. But it was of wax: it could not move. No, of course not. But suppose it did?

He laughed aloud, a short, dry laugh that echoed through the vaults. The cheering effect of laughter has been over-estimated, perhaps. Anyhow, he did not laugh again.

The silence was intense, but it was a silence thick with rustlings and breathings, and movements that his ear, strained to the uttermost, could just not hear. Suppose, as Edward had said, when all the lights were out, these things did move. A corpse was a thing that had moved—given a certain condition—Life. What if there were a condition, given which these things could move? What if such conditions were present now? What if all of them—Napoleon, yellow-white from his death sleep—the beasts from the Amphitheatre, gore dribbling from their jaws—that soldier with the legs—all were drawing near to him in this full silence? Those death masks of Robespierre and Mirabeau, they might float down through the darkness till they touched his face. That head of Madame de Lamballe on the pike might be thrust at him from behind the pillar. The silence throbbed with sounds that could not quite be heard.

“You fool,” he said to himself, “your dinner has disagreed with you, with a vengeance. Don’t be an ass. The whole lot are only a set of big dolls.”

He felt for his matches, and lighted a cigarette. The gleam of the match fell on the face of the corpse in front of him. The light was brief, and it seemed, somehow, impossible to look, by that light, in every corner where one would have wished to look. The match burnt his fingers as it went out; and there were only three more matches in the box.

It was dark again, and the image left on the darkness was that of the corpse in front of him. He thought of his dead friend. When the cigarette was smoked out, he thought of him more and more, till it seemed that what lay on the bier was not wax. His hand reached forward, and drew back more than once. But at last he made it touch the bier, and through the blackness travel up along a lean, rigid arm to the wax face that lay there so still. The touch was not reassuring. Just so, and not otherwise, had his dead friend’s face felt, to the last touch of his lips: cold, firm, waxen. People always said the dead were “waxen.” How true that was! He had never thought of it before. He thought of it now.

He sat still, so still that every muscle ached, because if you wish to hear the sounds that infest silence, you must be very still indeed. He thought of Edward, and of the string he had meant to tie to one of the figures.

“That wouldn’t be needed,” he told himself. And his ears ached with listening—listening for the sound that, it seemed, must break at last from that crowded silence.

He never knew how long he sat there. To move, to go up, to batter at the door and clamour to be let out—that one could have done if one had had a lantern, or even a full matchbox. But in the dark, not knowing the turnings, to feel one’s way among these things that were so like life and yet were not alive—to touch, perhaps, these faces that were not dead, and yet felt like death. His heart beat heavily in his throat at the thought.

No, he must sit still till morning. He had been hypnotised into this state, he told himself, by Edward, no doubt; it was not natural to him.

Then suddenly the silence was shattered. In the dark something moved. And, after those sounds that the silence teemed with, the noise seemed to him thunder-loud. Yet it was only a very, very little sound, just the rustling of drapery, as though something had turned in its sleep. And there was a sigh—not far off.

Vincent’s muscles and tendons tightened like fine-drawn wire. He listened. There was nothing more: only the silence, the thick silence.

The sound had seemed to come from a part of the vault where, long ago, when there was light, he had seen a grave being dug for the body of a young girl martyr.

“I will get up and go out,” said Vincent. “I have three matches. I am off my head. I shall really be nervous presently if I don’t look out.”

He got up and struck a match, refused his eyes the sight of the corpse whose waxen face he had felt in the blackness, and made his way through the crowd of figures. By the match’s flicker they seemed to make way for him, to turn their heads to look after him. The match lasted till he got to a turn of the rock-hewn passage. His next match showed him the burial scene: the little, thin body of the martyr, palm in hand, lying on the rock floor in patient waiting, the grave-digger, the mourners. Some standing, some kneeling, one crouched on the ground.

This was where that sound had come from, that rustle, that sigh. He had thought he was going away from it: instead, he had come straight to the spot where, if anywhere, his nerves might be expected to play him false.

“Bah!” he said, and he said it aloud, “the silly things are only wax. Who’s afraid?” His voice sounded loud in the silence that lives with the wax people. “They’re only wax,” he said again, and touched with his foot, contemptuously, the crouching figure in the mantle.

And, as he touched it, it raised its head and looked vacantly at him, and its eyes were mobile and alive. He staggered back against another figure, and dropped the match. In the new darkness he heard the crouching figure move towards him. Then the darkness fitted in round him very closely.

“What was it exactly that sent poor Vincent mad: you’ve never told me?” Rose asked the question. She and Edward were looking out over the pines and tamarisks, across the blue Mediterranean. They were very happy, because it was their honeymoon.

He told her about the Musée Grévin and the wager, but he did not state the terms of it.

“But why did he think you would be afraid?”

He told her why.

“And then what happened?”

“Why, I suppose he thought there was no time like the present—for his five pounds, you know—and he hid among the wax-works. And I missed my train, and I thought there was no time like the present. In fact, dear, I thought if I waited I should have time to make certain of funking it, so I hid there, too. And I put on my big black capuchon, and sat down right in one of the wax-work groups—they couldn’t see me from the passage where you walk. And after they put the lights out I simply went to sleep; and I woke up—and there was a light, and I heard some one say: ‘They’re only wax,’ and it was Vincent. He thought I was one of the wax people, till I looked at him; and I expect he thought I was one of them even then, poor chap. And his match went out, and while I was trying to find my railway reading-lamp that I’d got near me, he began to scream, and the night watchman came running. And now he thinks every one in the asylum is made of wax, and he screams if they come near him. They have to put his food beside him while he’s asleep. It’s horrible. I can’t help feeling as if it were my fault, somehow.”

“Of course it’s not,” said Rose. “Poor Vincent! Do you know I never really liked him.” There was a pause. Then she said: “But how was it you weren’t frightened?”

“I was,” he said, “horribly frightened. I—I—it sounds idiotic, but I thought I should go mad at first—I did really: and yet I had to go through with it. And then I got among the figures of the people in the Catacombs, the people who died for—for things, don’t you know, died in such horrible ways. And there they were, so calm—and believing it was all all right. And I thought about what they’d gone through. It sounds awful rot I know, dear—but I expect I was sleepy. Those wax people, they sort of seemed as if they were alive, and were telling me there wasn’t anything to be frightened about. I felt as if I were one of them, and they were all my friends, and they’d wake me if anything went wrong, so I just went to sleep.”

“I think I understand,” she said. But she didn’t.

“And the odd thing is,” he went on, “I’ve never been afraid of the dark since. Perhaps his calling me a coward had something to do with it.”

“I don’t think so,” said she. And she was right. But she would never have understood how, nor why.

III
THE STRANGER WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN OBSERVED

“There he goes—isn’t he simply detestable!” She spoke suddenly, after a silence longer than was usual to her; she was tired, and her voice was a note or two above its habitual key. She blushed, a deep pink blush of intense annoyance, as the young man passed down the long platform among the crowd of city men and typewriting girls, patiently waiting for the belated train to allow them to go home from work.

“Oh, do you think he heard? Oh, Molly—I believe he did!”

“Nonsense!” said Molly briskly, “of course he didn’t. And I must say I don’t think he’s so bad. If he didn’t look so sulky he wouldn’t be half bad, really. If his eyebrows weren’t tied up into knots, I believe he’d look quite too frightfully sweet for anything.”

“He’s exactly like that Polish model we had last week. Oh, Molly, he’s coming back again.”

Again he passed the two girls. His expression was certainly not amiable.

“How long have you known him?” Molly asked.

“I don’t know him. I tell you I only see him on the platform at Mill Vale. He and I seem to be the only people—the only decent people—who’ve found out the new station. He goes up by the 9.1 every day, and so do I. And the train’s always late, so we have the platform and the booking office to ourselves. And there we sit, or stand, or walk, morning after morning like two stuck pigs in a trough of silence.”

“Don’t jumble your metaphors, though you very nearly carried it off with the trough, I own. Stuck pigs don’t walk—in troughs, or anywhere else.”

“Well, you know what I mean——”

“But what do you want the wretched man to do? He can’t speak to you: it wouldn’t be proper——”

“Proper—why not? We’re human beings, not wild beasts. At least, I’m a human being.”

“And he’s a beast—I see.”

“I wish I were a man,” said Nina. “There he is again. His nose goes up another half inch every time he passes me. What’s he got to be so superior about? If I were a man I’d certainly pass the time of day with a fellow-creature if I were condemned to spend from ten to forty minutes with it six days out of the seven.”

“I expect he’s afraid you’d want to marry him. My brother Cecil says men are always horribly frightened about that.”

“Your brother Cecil!” said Nina scornfully. “Yes; that’s just the sort of thing anybody’s brother Cecil would say. He simply looks down on me because I go third. He only goes second himself, too. Here’s the train——”

The two Art students climbed into their third-class carriage, and their talk, leaving Nina’s fellow-traveller, washed like a babbling brook about the feet of great rocks, busied itself with the old Italian Masters, painting as a mission, and the aims of Art—presently running through flatter country and lapping round perspective, foreshortening, tones, values high lights and the preposterous lisp of the anatomy lecturer.

Arrived at Mill Vale the Slade students jumped from their carriage to meet a wind that swept grey curtains of rain across the bleak length of the platform.

“And we haven’t so much as a rib of an umbrella between us,” sighed Molly, putting her white handkerchief over the “best” hat which signalised her Saturday to Monday with her friend. “You’re right: that man is a pig. There he goes with an umbrella big enough for all three of us. Oh, it’s too bad! He’s putting it down—he’s running. He runs rather well. He’s exactly like the cast of the Discobolus in the Antique Room.”

“Only his manners have not that repose that stamps the cast. Come on—don’t stand staring after him like that. We’d better run, too.”

“He’ll think we’re running after him. Oh, bother——”

A moment of indecision, and Nina had turned her skirt over her head, and the two ran home to the little rooms where Nina lived—in the house of an old servant. Nina had no world of relations—she was alone. In the world of Art she had many friends, and in the world of Art she meant to make her mark. For the present she was content to make the tea, and then to set feet on the fender for a cosy evening.

“Did you see him coming out of church?” Nina asked next day. “He looked sulkier than ever.”

“I can’t think why you bother about him,” said the other girl. “He’s not really interesting. What do you call him?”

“Nothing.”

“Why, everything has a name, even a pudding. I made a name for him at once. It is ‘the stranger who might have been observed——’”

They laughed. After the early dinner they went for a walk. None of your strolls, but a good steady eight miles. Coming home, they met the stranger: and then they talked about him again. For, fair reader, I cannot conceal from you that there are many girls who do think and talk about young men, even when they have not been introduced to them. Not really nice girls like yourself, fair reader—but ordinary, commonplace girls who have not your delicate natures, and who really do sometimes experience a fleeting sensation of interest even in the people whose names they don’t know.

Next morning they saw him at the station. The 9.1 took the bit in its teeth, and instead of being, as usual, the 9.30 something, became merely the 9.23. So for some twenty odd minutes the stranger not only might have been, but was, observed by four bright and critical eyes. I don’t mean that my girls stared, of course. Perhaps you do not know that there are ways of observing strangers other than by the stare direct. He looked sulkier than ever: but he also had eyes. Yet he, too, was far from staring, so far that the indignant Nina broke out in a distracted whisper: “There! you see! I’m not important enough for him even to perceive my existence. I’m always expecting him to walk on me. I wonder whether he’d apologise when he found I wasn’t the station door-mat?”

The stranger shrugged his shoulders all to himself in his second-class carriage when the train had started.

“‘Simply detestable!’ But how one talks prose without knowing it, all along the line! How can I ever have come enough into her line of vision to be distinguished by an epithet! And why this one? Detestable!”

The epithet, however distinguishing, seemed somehow to lack charm.

At Cannon Street Station the stranger looked sulkier than Nina had ever seen him. She said so, adding: “Than I’ve ever seen him? Oh—I’m wandering. He looks sulkier than I’vsquo;ve ever seen any one—sulkier than I’ve ever dreamed possible. Pig——”

Through the week, painting at the school and black and white work in the evenings filled Nina’s mind to the exclusion even of strangers who might, in more leisured moments, seem worthy of observation. She was aware of the sulky one on platforms, of course, but talking about him to Molly was more amusing somehow than merely thinking of him. When it came to thinking, the real, the earnest things of life—the Sketch Club, the chance of the Melville Nettleship Prize, the intricate hideousness of bones and muscles—took the field and kept it, against strangers and acquaintances alike.

Saturday, turning this week’s scribbled page to the fair, clear page of next week, brought the stranger back to her thoughts, and to eyes now not obscured by close realities.

He passed her on the platform, with a dozen bunches of violets in his hands.

Outside, on the railway bridge, the red and green lamps glowed dully through deep floods of yellow fog. The platform was crowded, the train late. When at last it steamed slowly in, the crowd surged towards it. The third-class carriages were filled in the moment. Nina hurried along the platform peering into the second-class carriages. Full also.

Then the guard opened the way for her into the blue-cloth Paradise of a first-class carriage; and, just as the train gave the shudder of disgust which heralds its shame-faced reluctant departure, the door opened again, and the guard pushed in another traveller—the “stranger who might——” of course. The door banged, the train moved off with an air of brisk determination. A hundred yards from the platform it stopped dead.

There were no other travellers in that carriage. When the train had stood still for ten minutes or so, the stranger got up and put his head out of the window. At that instant the train decided to move again. It did it suddenly, and, exhausted by the effort, stopped after half a dozen yards’ progress with so powerful a turn of the brake that the stranger was flung sideways against Nina, and his elbow nearly knocked her hat off.

He raised his own apologetically—but he did not speak even then.

“The wretch!” said Nina hotly; “he might at least have begged my pardon.”

The stranger sat down again, and began to read the Spectator. Nina had no papers. The train moved on an inch or two, and the reddening yellow of the fog seemed like a Charity blanket pressed against each window. Three of the bunches of violets shook and vibrated and slipped, the train moved again and they fell on the floor of the carriage. Nina watched their trembling in an agony of irritation induced by the fog, the delay, and the persistent silence of her companion. When the flowers fell, she spoke.

“You’ve dropped your flowers,” she said. Again a bow, a silent bow, and the flowers were picked up.

“Oh, I’m desperate!” Nina said inwardly. “He must be mad—or dumb—or have a vow of silence—I wonder which?”

The train had not yet reached the next station, though it had left the last nearly an hour before.

“Which is it? Mad, dumb, or a monk? I will find out. Well, it’s his own fault; he shouldn’t be so aggravating. I’m going to speak to him. I’ve made up my mind.”

In the interval between decision and action the train in a sudden brief access of nervous energy got itself through a station, and paused a furlong down the line exhausted by the effort.

The stranger had put down his Spectator and was gazing gloomily out at the fog.

Nina drew a deep breath, and said—at least she nearly said: “What a dreadful fog!”

But she stopped. That seemed a dull beginning. If she said that he would think she was commonplace, and she had that sustaining inward consciousness, mercifully vouchsafed even to the dullest of us, of being really rather nice, and not commonplace at all. But what should she say? If she said anything about the colour of the fog and Turner or Whistler, it might be telling, but it would be of the shop shoppy. If she began about books—the Spectator suggested this—she would stand as a prig confessed. If she spoke of politics she would be an ignorant impostor soon exposed. If——But Nina took out her watch and resolved: “When the little hand gets to the quarter I will speak. Whatever I say, I’ll say something.”

And when the big hand did get to the quarter Nina did speak.

“Why shouldn’t we talk?” she said.

He looked at her; and he seemed to be struggling silently with some emotion too deep for words.

“It’s so silly to sit here like mutes,” Nina went on hurriedly—a little frightened, now she had begun, but more than a little determined not to be frightened. “If we were at a dance we shouldn’t know any more of each other than we do now—and you’d have to talk then. Why shouldn’t we now?”

Then the stranger spoke, and at the first sentence Nina understood exactly what reason had decided the stranger that they should not talk. Yet now they did. If this were a work of fiction I shouldn’t dare to pretend that the train took more than two hours to get to Mill Vale. But in a plain record of fact one must speak the truth. The train took exactly two hours and fifty minutes to cover the eleven miles between London and Mill Vale. After that first question and reply Nina and the stranger talked the whole way.

He walked with her to the door of her lodging, and she offered him her hand without that moment of hesitation which would have been natural to any heroine, because she had debated the question of that handshake all the way from the station, and made up her mind just as they reached the church, a stone’s throw from her home. When the door closed on her he went slowly back to the churchyard to lay his violets on a grave. Nina saw them there next day when she came out of church. She saw him too, and gave him a bow and a very small smile, and turned away quickly. The bow meant: “You see I’m not going to speak to you. You mustn’t think I want to be always talking to you.” The smile meant: “But you mustn’t think I’m cross. I’m not—only——”

In the hot, stuffy “life-room” at the Slade next day Molly teased with ill-judged bread-crumbs an arm hopelessly ill drawn, and chattered softly to Nina, who in the Saturday solitude had drawn her easel behind her friend’s “donkey.” “It’s all very well here when you first come in, but when once you are warm, oh dear, how warm you are! Why do models want such boiling rooms? Why can’t they be soaked in alum or myrrh or something to harden their silly skins so that they won’t mind a breath of decent air? And I believe the model’s deformed—she certainly is from where I am. Oh, look at my arm! I ask you a little—look at the beastly thing. Foreshortened like this it looks like a fillet of veal with a pound of sausages tied on to it for a hand. Oh, my own and only Nina—save the sinking ship!”

“It ought to go more like that,” Nina said with indicative brush, “and don’t keep on rubbing out so fiercely. You’ll get paralysed with bread—it’s a disease, you know. I heard Tonks telling you so only the other day——”

“It’s rather a good phrase: I wonder where he got it? He was rather nice that day,” said Molly. “Oh, this arm! It’s no good—I believe the model’s moved—I tell you I must.” More bread. Nina re-absorbed in her canvas. “Yours is coming well. What’s the matter with you to-day? You’re very mousy. Has the ‘stranger who might’ been scowling more than usual? Or have you got a headache? I’m sure this atmosphere’s enough to make you. Did you see him this morning? Have you fainted at his feet yet? Has he relented in the matter of umbrellas? I’m sure he can’t have passed the whole week without some act of grumpiness.”

Nina leaned back and looked through half-shut eyes at the model’s beautiful form and stupid face.

“I went down in the same carriage with him on Thursday,” she said slowly.

“You did? Did he rush into the third class, where angels like himself ought to fear to tread?”

“There was a fog. Thirds all full, and seconds too. The guard bundled us both in, and the train started—and it took three or four hours to get down.”

“Any one else in the carriage?”

“Not so much as a mouse.”

“What did you do?”

“Do? What could I do? We sat in opposite corners as far as we could get from each other, exchanging occasional glances of mutual detestation for about an hour and a half. He knocked me down and walked on me once, and took his hat off very politely and beg-pardoningly, but he never said a word. He didn’t even say he thought I was the door-mat. And then some cabbages of his fell off the seat.”

“Sure they weren’t thistles?”

“Vegetables of some sort. And I said: ‘You’ve dropped your——whatever they were.’ And he just bowed again in a thank-you-very-much-but-I’m-sure-I-don’t-know-what-business-it-is-of-yours sort of way. Do leave that bread alone.”

Molly, lost in the interest of the recital, was crumbling the bread as though the floor of the life-room were the natural haunt of doves and sparrows.

“Well?” she said.

“Well?” said Nina.

“Why ever didn’t you ask him to put the window up, or down, or something? I would have—just to hear if he has a voice.”

“It wouldn’t have been any good. He’d just have bowed again, and I’d had enough bows to last a long time. No: I just said straight out that we were a couple of idiots to sit there gaping at each other with our tongues out, and why on earth shouldn’t we talk?”

“You never did!”

“Or words to that effect, anyhow. And then he said——”

A long pause.

“What?”

“He told me why he never spoke to strangers.”

“What a slap in the face! You poor——”

“Oh, he didn’t say it like that, you silly idiot. And it was quite a good reason.”

“What was it?”

No answer.

“Tell me exactly what he said.”

“He said, ‘I—I—I——’ At any rate, I’m satisfied, and I rather wish we hadn’t called him pigs and beasts, and things like that.”

“Well?”

“That’s all.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me the reason? Oh, very well—you leave it to my guessing? Of course it’s quite evident he’s hopelessly in love with you, and never ventured to speak for fear of betraying his passion. But, encouraged by your advances——”

“Molly, go on with that arm, and don’t be a vulgar little donkey.”

Molly obeyed. Presently: “Cross-patch,” she said.

“I’m not,” said Nina, “but I want to work, and I like you best when you’re not vulgar.”

“You’re very rude.”

“No: only candid.”

Molly’s wounded pride, besieged by her curiosity, held out for five minutes. Then: “Did you talk to him much?”

“Heaps.”

“All the way down?”

No answer.

“Is he nice?”

Silence.

“Is he clever?”

“I want to work.”

“Well, what I want to know is, and then I’ll let you alone—what did you talk about? Tell me that, and I won’t ask another question.”

“We talked,” said Nina deliberately, taking a clean brush, “we talked about your brother Cecil. No, I shan’t tell you what we said, or why we talked about him, or anything. You’ve had your one question, now shut up.”

“Nina,” said Molly calmly, “if I didn’t like you so much I should hate you.”

“That certainty about the other has always been the foundation of our mutual regard,” said Nina calmly.

Then they laughed, and began to work in earnest.

The next time Molly mentioned the “stranger who might have been observed” Nina laughed, and said: “The subject is forbidden; it makes you vulgar.”

“And you disagreeable.”

“Then it’s best to avoid it. Best for you and best for me.”

“But do you ever see him now?”

“On occasion. He still travels by the 9.1, and I still have the use of my eyes.”

“Does he ever talk to you like he did that Thursday?”

“No—never. And I’m not going to talk about him to you, so it’s no good. Your turn to choose a subject. You won’t? Then it becomes my turn. What a long winter this is! We seem to have taken years to get from November to February!”

The time went more quickly between February and May. It was when the country was wearing its full dress of green and the hawthorn pearls were opening into baby-roses in the hedgerows that it was Nina’s fortune to be put, by the zealous indiscretion of a mistaken porter, into an express train for Beechwood—the wrong station—the wrong line.

The “stranger who might have been observed,” on this occasion was not observed, but observer. He saw and recognised the porter’s error, hesitated a moment, and then leaped into a carriage just behind hers. So that when, after a swift journey made eventful by agonised recognition of the fleeting faces of various stations where she might have changed and caught her own train, Nina reached Beechwood, the stranger’s hand was ready to open the door for her.

“There’s no train for ages,” he said in tones deliberate, almost hesitating. “Shall we walk home? It’s only six miles.”

“But you—aren’t you going somewhere here?”

“No—I—I—I saw the porter put you in—and I thought—at least—anyway you will walk, won’t you?”

They walked. When they reached Beechwood Common, he said: “Won’t you take my arm?” And she took it. Her hands were ungloved; the other hand was full of silver may and bluebells. The sun shot level shafts of gold between the birch trees across the furze and heather.

“How beautiful it is!” she said.

“We’ve known each other three months,” said he.

“But I’ve seen you every day, and we’ve talked for hours and hours in those everlasting trains,” she said, as if in excuse.

“I’ve seen you every day for longer than that; the first time was on the 3rd of October.”

“Fancy remembering that!”

“I have a good memory.”

A silence.

Nina broke it, to say again: “How pretty!” She knew she had said it before, or something like it, but she could think of nothing else—and she wanted to say something.

He put his hand over hers as it lay on his arm. She looked up at him quickly.

“Well?” he said, stopping to look down into her eyes and tightening his clasp on her hand. “Are you sorry you came to Beechwood?”

“No——”

“Then be glad. My dear, I wish you could ever be as glad as I am.”

Then they walked on, still with his hand on hers.

Nina and Molly sat on a locker swinging their feet and eating their lunch in the Slade corridor next day. Nina was humming softly under her breath.

“What are you so happy for all of a sudden?” Molly asked. “Your sketch-club things are the worst I’ve ever seen, and the Professor was down on you like a hundred of bricks this morning.”

“I’m not happy,” said Nina, turning away what seemed to Molly a new face.

“What is it, then?”

“Nothing. Oh yes—by the way, I’m going to be married.”

“Not really?”

“Check this unflattering display of incredulity—I am.”

“Really and truly? And you never told me a thing. I hate slyness and secretiveness. Nina, who is it? Do I know him?”

Nina named a name.

“Never even heard of him. But where did you meet him? It really is rather deceitful of you.”

“I always meant to tell you, only there was nothing to tell till yesterday except——”

“Except everything,” said Molly. “Well, tell me now.”

Nina jumped up and shook the bath-bun crumbs off her green muslin pinafore.

“Promise not to be horrid, and I will.”

“I won’t—I promise I won’t.”

“Then it’s—it’s him—the ‘stranger who might’—you know. And I really should have told you, though there wasn’t anything to tell, only—don’t laugh.”

“I’m not. Can’t you see I’m not? Only what?”

“Well, when I spoke to him that day in the train, I said, ‘Why shouldn’t we talk?’ And he said, ‘I—I—I—be—be—be—because I stammer so.’ And he did. You never heard anything like it. It was awful. He took hours to get out those few words, and I didn’t know where to look. And I felt such a brute because of the things we’d said about him, that I had no sense left; and I told him straight out how I’d wondered he never even said he wondered how late the train was when we were waiting for the 9.1, and I was glad it was stammering and not disagreeableness. And then I said I wasn’t glad he stammered, but so sorry; and he was awfully nice about it, and I told him about that man who cured your brother Cecil of stammering, and he went to him at once: and he’s almost all right now.”

“Good gracious!” said Molly. “Are you sure—but why didn’t he get cured long ago?”

“He had a mother: she stammered frightfully—after the shock of his father’s death, or something, and he got into the way of it from her. And—anyway he didn’t. I think it was so as not to hurt his mother’s feelings, or something. I don’t quite understand. And he said it didn’t seem to matter when she was dead. And he’s an artist. He sells his pictures too, and he teaches. He has a studio in Chelsea.”

“It all sounds a little thin; but if you’re pleased, I’m sure I am.”

“I am,” said Nina.

“But what did he say when he asked you?”

“He didn’t ask me,” said Nina.

“But surely he said he’d loved you since the first moment he saw you?”

Nina had to admit it.

“Then you see I wasn’t such a vulgar little donkey after all.”

“Yes, you were. You hadn’t any business even to think such things, much less say them. Why, even I didn’t dare to think it for—oh—for ever so long. But I’ll forgive it—and if it’s good it shall be a pretty little bridesmaid, it shall.”

“When is it to be?” asked Molly, still adrift in a sea of wonder.

“Oh, quite soon, he says. He says we’re only wasting time by waiting. You see we’re both alone.”

But Molly, looking wistfully at her friend’s transfigured face, perceived sadly that it was she who was alone, not they.

And the thought of the red-haired Pierrot with whom she had danced nine times at the Students’ Fancy Dress dance, an indiscretion hitherto her dearest memory, now offered no solid consolation.

Nina went away, singing softly under her breath. Molly sighed and followed slowly.

IV
RACK AND THUMBSCREW

Her eyelids were red and swollen, her brown hair, flattened out of its pretty curves, clung closely to her head. Ink stained her hands, and there was even a bluish smear of it on her wrist. A tray with tea-things stood among the litter of manuscript on her table. The tea-pot had only cold tea-leaves in it; the bread and butter was untouched.

She put down the pen, and went to the window. The rose-tint of the sunset was reflected on the bank of mist and smoke beyond the river. Above, where the sky was pale and clear, a star or two twinkled contentedly.

She stamped her foot.

Already the beautiful garments of the evening mist, with veiled lights in the folds of it, was embroidered sparsely with the early litten lamps of impatient workers, and as she gazed, the embroidery was enriched by more and more yellow and white and orange—the string of jewels along the embankment, the face of the church clock.

She turned from the window to the room, and lighted her own lamp, for the room was now deeply dusk. It was a large, low, pleasant room. It had always seemed pleasant to her through the five years in which she had worked, and played, and laughed, and cried there. Now she wondered why she had not always hated it.

The stairs creaked. The knocker spoke. She caught her head in both hands.

“My God!” she said, “this is too much!”

Yet she went to the door.

“Oh—it’s only you,” she said, and, with no other greeting, walked back into the room, and sat down at the table.

The newcomer was left to close the outer door, and to follow at her own pleasure. The newcomer was another girl, younger, prettier, smarter. She turned her head sidewise, like a little bird, and looked at her friend with very bright eyes. Then she looked round the room.

“My dear Jane,” she said, “whatever have you been doing to yourself?”

“Nothing,” said her dear Jane very sulkily.

“Oh, if genius burns—your stairs are devilish—but if you’d rather I went away——”

“No, don’t go, Milly. I’m perfectly mad.” She jumped up and waved her outstretched arms over the mass of papers on the table. “Look at all this—three days’ work—rot—abject rot! I wish I was dead. I was wondering just now whether it would hurt much if one leaned too far out of the window—and—— No, I didn’t do it—as you see.”

“What’s the matter?” asked the other prosaically.

“Nothing. That’s just it. I’m perfectly well—at least I was—only now I’m all trembly with drink.” She pointed to the tea-cups. “It’s the chance of my life, and I can’t take it. I can’t work: my brain’s like batter. And everything depends on my idiot brain—it has done for these five years. That’s what’s so awful. It all depends on me—and I’m going all to pieces.”

“I told you so!” rejoined the other. “You would stay in town all the summer and autumn, slaving away. I knew you’d break down, and now you’ve done it.”

“I’ve slaved for five years, and I’ve never broken down before.”

“Well, you have now. Go away at once. Take a holiday. You’ll work like Shakespeare and Michelangelo after it.”

“But I can’t—that’s just it. It’s those stories for the Monthly Multitude; I’m doing a series. I’m behind now: and if I don’t get it done this week, they’ll stop the series. It’s what I’ve been working for all these years. It’s the best chance I’ve ever had, and it’s come now, when I can’t do it. Your father’s a doctor: isn’t there any medicine you can take to make your head more like a head and less like a suet pudding?”

“Look here,” said Milly, “I really came in to ask you to come away with us at Whitsuntide; but you ought to go away now. Just go to our cottage at Lymchurch. There’s a dear old girl in the village—Mrs Beale—she’ll look after you. It’s a glorious place for work. Father did reams down there. You’ll do your stuff there right enough. This is only Monday. Go to-morrow.”

“Did he? I will. Oh yes, I will. I’ll go to-night, if there’s a train.”

“No, you don’t, my dear lunatic. You are now going to wash your face and do your hair, and take me out to dinner—a real eighteenpenny dinner at Roches. I’ll stand treat.”

It was after dinner, as the two girls waited for Milly’s omnibus, that the word of the evening was spoken.

“I do hope you’ll have a good quiet time,” Milly said; “and it really is a good place for work. Poor Edgar did a lot of work there last year. There’s a cabinet with a secret drawer that he said inspired him with mysterious tales, and—— There’s my ’bus.”

“Why do you say poor Edgar?” Jane asked, smiling lightly.

“Oh, hadn’t you heard? Awfully sad thing. He sailed from New York a fortnight ago. No news of the ship. His mother’s in mourning. I saw her yesterday. Quite broken down. Good-bye. Do take care of yourself, and get well and jolly.”

Jane stood long staring after the swaying bulk of the omnibus, then she drew a deep breath and went home.

Edgar was dead. What a brute Milly was! But, of course, Edgar was nothing to Milly—nothing but a pleasant friend. How slowly people walked in the streets! Jane walked quickly—so quickly that more than one jostled foot-passenger stopped to stare after her.

She had known that he was coming home—and when. She had not owned to herself that the constant intrusion of that thought, “He is here—in London,” the wonder as to when and how she should see him again, had counted for very much in these last days of fierce effort and resented defeat.

She got back to her rooms. She remembers letting herself in with her key. She remembers that some time during the night she destroyed all those futile beginnings of stories. Also, that she found herself saying over and over again, and very loud: “There are the boys—you know there are the boys.” Because, when you have two little brothers to keep, you must not allow yourself to forget it.

But for the rest she remembers little distinctly. Only she is sure that she did not cry, and that she did not sleep.

In the morning she found her rooms very tidy and her box packed. She had put in the boys’ portraits, because one must always remember the boys.

She got a cab and she caught a train, and she reached the seaside cottage. Its little windows blinked firelit welcome to her, as she blundered almost blindly out of the station fly and up the narrow path edged with sea-shells.

Milly had telegraphed. Mrs Beale was there, tremulous, kindly, effective; with armchairs wheeled to the April fire—cups of tea, timid, gentle solicitude.

“My word, Miss, but you do look done up,” said she. “The kettle’s just on the boil, and I’ll wet you a cup o’ tea this instant minute, and I’ve a perfect picture of a chick a-roastin’ ready for your bit o’ dinner.”

Jane leaned back in the cushioned chair and looked round the quiet, pleasant little room. For the moment it seemed good to have a new place to be unhappy in.

But afterwards, when Mrs Beale had gone and she was alone in the house, there was time to think—all the time there had ever been since the world began—all the time that there would ever be till the world ended. Of that night, too, Jane cannot remember everything; but she knows that she did not sleep, and that her eyes were dry: very dry and burning, as though they had been licked into place between their lids by a tongue of flame. It was a long night: a spacious night, with room in it for more memories of Edgar than she had known herself mistress of.

Edgar, truculent schoolboy; Edgar at Oxford, superior to the point of the intolerable; Edgar journalist, novelist, war correspondent—always friend; Edgar going to America to lecture, and make the fortune that—he said—would make all things possible. He had said that on the last evening, when a lot of them—boys and girls, journalists, musicians, art students—had gone to see him off at Euston. He had said it at the instant of farewell, and had looked a question. Had she said “Yes”—or only thought it? She had often wondered that, even when her brain was clear.

Then—she pushed away the next thought with both hands, and drove herself back to the day when the schoolboy next door whom she had admired and hated, saved her pet kitten from the butcher’s dog—an heroic episode with blood in it and tears. Edgar’s voice, the touch of his hand, the swing of his waltz-step—the way his eyes smiled before his mouth did. How bright his eyes were—and his hands were very strong. He was strong every way: he would fight for his life—even with the sea. Great, smooth, dark waves seemed rushing upon her in the quiet room; she could hear the sound of them on the beach. Why had she come near the sea? It was the same sea that—— She pushed the waves away with both hands. The church clock struck two.

“You mustn’t go mad, you know,” she told herself very gently and reasonably, “because of the boys.”

Her hands had got clenched somehow, her whole body was rigid. She relaxed the tense muscles deliberately, made up the fire, swept up the hearth.

The new flame her touch inspired flickered a red reflection on the face of the cabinet—the cabinet with the secret drawer that had “inspired Edgar with mysterious tales.”

Jane went to it, and patted it, and stroked it, and coaxed it to tell her its secret. But it would not.

“If it would only inspire me,” she said, “if I could only get an idea for the story, I could do it now—this minute. Lots of people work best at night. My brain’s really quite clear again now, or else I shouldn’t be able to remember all these silly little things. No, no,” she cried to a memory of a young man kissing a glove, a little creeping memory that came to sting. She trampled on it.

Next day Jane walked four miles to see a doctor and get a sleeping draught.

“You see,” she explained very earnestly, “I have some work to finish, and if I don’t sleep I can’t. And I must do it. I can’t tell you how important it is.”

The doctor gave her something in a bottle when he had asked a few questions, and she went back to the cottage to go on bearing what was left of the interminable, intolerable day.

That was the day when she set out the fair white writing paper, and the rosy blotting-paper, and the black ink and the black fountain pen, and sat and looked at them for hours and hours. She prayed for help—but no help came.

“I’m probably praying to the wrong people,” she said, when through the dusk the square of paper showed vague as a tombstone in twilit grass—“the wrong people—No, there are no tombstones in the sea—the wrong people. If St Anthony helps you to find things, and the other saints help you to be good, perhaps the dead people who used to write themselves are the ones to help one to write!”

Jane is ashamed to be quite sure that she remembers praying to Dante and Shakespeare, and at last to Christina Rossetti, because she was a woman and loved her brothers.

But no help came. The old woman fussed in and out with wood for the fire—candles—food. Very kindly, it appears, but Jane wished she wouldn’t. Jane thinks she must have eaten some of the food, or the old woman would not have left her as she did.

Jane took the draught, and went to bed.

When Mrs Beale came into the sitting-room next morning, a neat pile of manuscript lay on the table, and when she took a cup of tea to Jane’s bedside, Jane was sleeping so placidly that the old woman had not the heart to disturb her, and set the tea down on a chair by the pillow to turn white and cold.

When Jane came into the sitting-room, she stood long looking at the manuscript. At last she picked it up, and, still standing, read it through. When she had finished, she stood a long time with it in her hand. At last she shrugged her shoulders and sat down. She wrote to Milly.

“Here is the story. I don’t know how I’ve done it, but here it is. Do read it—because I really am a little mad, and if it’s any good, send it in at once to the Monthly Multitude. I slept all last night. I shall soon be well now. Everything is so delightful, and the air is splendid. A thousand thanks for sending me here. I am enjoying the rest and change immensely.—Your grateful

“Jane.”

She read it through. Her smile at the last phrase was not pretty to see.

When the long envelope was posted, Jane went down to the quiet shore and gazed out over the sunlit sands to the opal line of the far receding tide.

The story was written. There was an end to the conflict of agonies, so now the fiercer agony had the field to itself.

“I suppose I shall learn to bear it presently,” she told herself. “I wish I had not forgotten how to cry. I am sure I ought to cry. But the story is done, anyway. I daresay I shall remember how to cry before the next story has to be done.”

There were two more nights and one whole day. The nights had islands of sleep in them—hot, misty islands in a river of slow, crawling, sluggish hours. The day was light and breezy and sunny, with a blue sky cloud-flecked. The day was worse than the nights, because in the day she remembered all the time who she was, and where.

It was on the last day of the week. She was sitting rigid in the little porch, her eyes tracing again and again with conscious intentness the twisted pattern of the budding honeysuckle stalks. A rattle of wheels suddenly checked came to her, and she untwisted her stiff fingers and went down the path to meet Milly—a pale Milly, with red spots in her cheeks and fierce, frowning brows—a Milly who drew back from the offered kiss and spoke in tones that neither had heard before.

“Come inside. I want to speak to you.”

The new disaster thus plainly heralded moved Jane not at all. There was no room in her soul for any more pain. In the little dining-room, conscientiously “quaint” with its spotted crockery dogs and corner cupboard shining with willow pattern tea-cups, Milly shut the door and turned on her friend.

“Now,” she said, “I came down to see you, because there are some things I couldn’t write—even to you. You can go back to the station in the cab, I’ve told the man to wait. And I hope I shall never see your face again.”

“What do you mean?” Jane asked the question mechanically, and not at all because she did not know the answer.

“You know what I mean,” the other answered, still with white fury. “I’ve found you out. You thought you were safe, and Edgar was dead, and no one would know. But as it happens I knew; and so shall everybody else.”

Jane moistened dry lips, and said: “Knew what?” and held on by the table.

“You didn’t think he’d told me about it, did you?” Milly flashed—“but he did.”

“I think you must tell me what you mean,” Jane said, and shifted her hold from table to armchair.

“Oh, certainly.” Milly tossed her head, and Jane’s fingers tightened on the chair-back. “Yes, I don’t wonder you look ill—I suppose you were sorry when you’d done it. But it’s no use being sorry; you should have thought of all that before.”

“Tell me,” said Jane, low.

“I’ll tell you fast enough. You shall see I do know. Well, then, that story you sent me—you just copied it from a story of Edgar’s that was in the old cabinet. He wrote it when he was here; and he said it wasn’t good, and I said it was, and then he said he’d leave it in the secret drawer, and see how it looked when he came back. And you found it. And you thought you were very clever, I daresay, and that Edgar was dead, and no one would know. But I knew, and——”

“Yes,” Jane interrupted, “you said that before. So you think I found Edgar’s manuscript? If I did it I must have done it in my sleep. I used to walk in my sleep when I was a child. You believe me, Milly, don’t you?”

“No,” said Milly, “I don’t.”

“Then I’ll say nothing more,” said Jane with bitter dignity. “I will go at once, and I will try to forgive your cruelty. I would never have doubted your word—never. I am very ill—look at me. I had a sleeping draught, and I suppose it upset me: such things have happened. You’ve known me eight or nine years: have you ever known me do a dishonourable thing, or tell a lie? The dishonour is in yourself, to believe such things of me.”

Jane had drawn herself up, and stood, tall and haggard, her dark eyes glowing in their deep sockets. The other woman was daunted. She hesitated, stammered half a word, and was silent.

“Good-bye,” said Jane; “and I hope to God no one will ever be such a brute to you as you have been to me.” She turned, but before she reached the door Milly had caught her by the arm.

“No, don’t, don’t!” she cried. “I do believe you, I do! You poor darling! You must have done it in your sleep. Oh, forgive me, Jane dear. I’ll never tell a soul, and Edgar——”

“Ah,” said Jane, turning mournful eyes on her, “Edgar would have believed in me.”

And at that Milly understood—in part, at least—and held out her arms.

“Oh, you poor dear! and I never even guessed! Oh, forgive me!” and she cried over Jane and kissed her many times. “Oh, my dear!” she said, as Jane yielded herself to the arms and her face to the kisses, “I’ve got something to tell you. You must be brave.”

“No—no more,” Jane said shrilly; “I can’t bear any more. I don’t want to know how it happened, or anything. He’s dead—that’s enough.”

“But——” Milly clung sobbing to her, sobbing with sympathy and agitation.

Jane pushed her back, held her at arm’s length and looked at her with eyes that were still dry.

“You’re a good little thing, after all,” she said. “Yes—now I’ll tell you. You were quite right. It was a lie—but half of it was true—the half I told you—but I wanted you to believe the other half too. I did walk in my sleep, and I must have opened that cabinet and taken Edgar’s story out, because I found myself standing there with it in my hands. And he was dead, and—— Oh, Milly. I knew he was dead, of course, and yet he was there—I give you my word he was there, and I heard him say ‘Take it, take it, take it!’ quite plainly, like I’m speaking to you now. And I took it; and I copied it out—it took me nearly all night—and then I sent it to you. And I’d never have told you the truth as long as you didn’t believe me—never—never. But now you do believe me I won’t lie to you. There! Let me go. I think I was mad then, and I know I am now. Tell every one. I don’t care.”

But Milly threw her arms round her again. The love interest had overpowered the moral sense. What did the silly story, or the theft, or the lie matter—what were they, compared with the love-secret she had surprised?

“My darling Jane,” she said, holding her friend closely and still weeping lavishly, “don’t worry about the story: I quite understand. Let’s forget it. You’ve got quite enough trouble to bear without that. But there’s one thing, it’s just as well I found out before the story was published. Because Edgar isn’t dead. His ship has been towed in: he’s at home.”

Jane laughed.

“Don’t cry, dear,” said Milly; “I’ll help you to bear it. Only—oh dear, how awful it is for you!—he’s going to be married.”

Jane laughed again; and then she thinks the great, green waves really did rise up all round the quaint dining-room—rise mountains high, and, falling, cover her.

Jane was ill so long that Milly had to tell Edgar about the story after all, and they sent it in, and it was published in Jane’s name. So the little brothers were all right. And he wrote the next story for her too, and they corrected the proofs together.

Jane has always thought it a pity that Milly had not troubled to ask the name of the girl whom Edgar intended to marry, because the name proved, on enquiry, to be Jane.

V
THE MILLIONAIRESS

I

It is a dismal thing to be in London in August. The streets are up for one thing, and your cab can never steer a straight course for the place you want to go to. And the trees are brown in the parks, and every one you know is away, so that there would be nowhere to go in your cab, even if you had the money to pay for it, and you could go there without extravagance.

Stephen Guillemot sat over his uncomfortable breakfast-table in the rooms he shared with his friend, and cursed his luck. His friend was away by the sea, and he was here in the dirty and sordid blackness of his Temple chambers. But he had no money for a holiday; and when Dornington had begged him to accept a loan, he had sworn at Dornington, and Dornington had gone off not at all pleased. And now Dornington was by the sea, and he was here. The flies buzzed in the panes and round the sticky marmalade jar; the sun poured in at the open window. There was no work to do. Stephen was a solicitor by trade; but, in fact and perforce, an idler. No business came to him. All day long the steps of clients sounded on the dirty, old wooden staircase—clients for Robinson on the second, for Jones on the fourth, but none for Guillemot on the third. Even now steps were coming, though it was only ten o’clock. The young man glanced at the marmalade jar, at the crooked cloth stained with tea, which his laundress had spread for his breakfast.

“Suppose it is a client——” He broke off with a laugh. He had never been able to cure himself of that old hope that some day the feet of a client—a wealthy client—would pause at his door, but the feet had always gone by—as these would do. The steps did indeed pass his door, paused, came back, and—oh wonder! it was his knocker that awoke the Temple echoes.

He glanced at the table. It was hopeless. He shrugged his shoulders.

“I daresay it’s only a bill,” he said, and went to see.

The newcomer was impatient, for even as Guillemot opened the door, the knocker was in act to fall again.

“Is Mr Guillemot—— Oh, Stephen, I should have known you anywhere!”

A radiant vision in a white linen gown—a very smart tailor-made-looking linen gown—and a big white hat was standing in his doorway, shaking him warmly by the hand.

“Won’t you ask me in?” asked the vision, smiling in his bewildered face.

He drew back mechanically, and closed the door after him as she went in. Then he followed her into the room that served him for office and living-room, and stood looking at her helplessly.

“You don’t know me a bit,” she said; “it’s a shame to tease you. I’ll take off my hat and veil; you will know me then. It’s these fine feathers!”

And take them off she did—in front of the fly-spotted glass on the mantel-piece; then she turned a bright face on him, a pretty mobile face, crowned with bright brown hair. And still he stood abashed.

“I never thought you would have forgotten the friend of childhood’s hour,” she began again. “I see I must tell you in cold blood.”

“Why, it’s Rosamund!” he cried suddenly. “Do forgive me! I never, never dreamed—— My dear Rosamund, you aren’t really changed a bit it’s only—your hair being done up and——”

“And the fine feathers,” said she, holding out a fold of her dress. “They are very pretty feathers, aren’t they?”

“Very,” said he. And then suddenly a silence of embarrassment fell between them.

The girl broke it with a laugh that was not quite spontaneous.

“How funny it all is!” she said. “I went to New York with my uncle when dear papa died—and then I went to Girton, and now poor uncle’s dead, and——” Her eye fell on the tablecloth. “I’m going to clear away this horrid breakfast of yours,” she said.

“Oh, please!” he pleaded, taking the marmalade jar up in his helpless hands. She took the jar from him.

“Yes, I am,” she said firmly; “and you can just sit down and try to remember who I am.”

He obediently withdrew to the window-seat and watched her as she took away the ugly crockery and the uglier food to hide them in his little kitchen; and as he watched her he remembered many things. The lonely childhood in a country rectory—the long, dull days with no playfellows; then the arrival of the new doctor and his little daughter Rosamund Rainham—and almost at the same time, it seemed, the invalid lady with the little boy who lodged at the Post Office. Then there were playfellows, dear playfellows, to cheer and teach him—poor Stephen, he hardly knew what play or laughter meant. Then the invalid lady died, and Stephen’s father awoke from his dreams amid his old books, as he had a way of doing now and then, enquired into the circumstances of the boy, Andrew Dornington, and, finding him friendless and homeless, took him into his home to be Stephen’s little brother and friend. Then the long happy time when the three children were always together: walking, boating, birdsnesting, reading, playing and quarrelling; the storm of tears from Rosamund when the boys went to College; the shock of surprise and the fleeting sadness with which Stephen heard that the doctor was dead and that Rosamund had gone to America to her mother’s brother. Then the fulness of living, the old days almost forgotten, or only remembered as a pleasant dream. Stephen had never thought to see Rosamund again—had certainly never longed very ardently to see her; at any rate, since the year of her going. And now—here she was, grown to womanhood and charm, clearing away his breakfast things! He could hear the tap running, and knew that she must be washing her hands at the sink, using the horrid bit of yellow soap with tea-leaves embedded in it. Now she was drying her hands on the dingy towel behind the kitchen door. No; she came in drying her pink fingers on her handkerchief.

“What a horrid old charwoman you must have!” she said; “everything is six inches deep in dust—and all your crockery is smeary.”

“I am sorry it’s not nicer,” he said. “Oh, but it’s good to see you again! What times we used to have! Do you remember when we burned your dolls on the 5th of November?”

“I should think I did. And do you remember when I painted your new tool-chest and the handles of your saws and gimlets and things with pale green enamel? I thought you would be so pleased.”

She had taken her place, as she spoke, in the depths of the one comfortable chair, and he answered from his window-seat; and in a moment the two were launched on a flood of reminiscences, and the flight of time was not one of the things they remembered. The hour and the quarters sounded, and they talked on. But the insistence of noon, boomed by the Law Courts’ clock, brought Miss Rainham to her feet.

“Twelve!” she cried. “How time goes! And I’ve never told you what I came for. Look here. I’m frightfully rich; I only heard it last week. My uncle never seemed very well off. We lived very simply, and I used to do the washing-up and the dusting and things; and now he’s died and left me all his money. I don’t know where he kept it all. The people on the floor above here wrote me about it. I was going to see them, and I saw your name; and I simply couldn’t pass it. Look here, Stephen—are you very busy?”

“Not too busy to do anything you want. I’m glad you’ve had luck. What can I do for you?”

“Will you really do anything I want? Promise.”

“Of course I promise.” He looked at her and wondered if she knew how hard it would be to him to refuse her anything: for Mr Guillemot had been fancy free, and this gracious vision, re-risen from old times, had turned his head a little.

“Good! You must be my solicitor.”

“But I can’t. Jones——”

“Bother Jones!” she said. “I shan’t go near him. I won’t be worried by Jones. What is the use of having a fortune—and it’s a big fortune, I can tell you—if I mayn’t even choose my own solicitor? Look here, Stephen—really—I have no relations and no friends in England—no man friends, I mean—and you won’t charge me more than you ought, but you will charge me enough. Oh, I feel like Mr Boffin—and you are Mortimer Lightwood, and Andrew is Eugene. Do you call him Dora still?”

It was the first question she had asked about the boy who had shared all their youth with them.

“Oh, Dornington is all right. He’d be awfully sick if you called him Dora nowadays. He’s got on a little—not much. He goes in for journalism. He’s at Lymchurch just now; he lives here with me generally.”

“Yes—I know; I saw his name on the door.” And Stephen did not wonder till later why she had not mentioned that name earlier in the interview.

“Here, give me paper and pens, the best there is time to procure. Now tell me what to say to Jones. I want to tell him that I loathe his very name; that I know I could never bear the sight of him; and that you are going to look after everything for me.”

He resisted—she pleaded; and at last the letter was written, not quite in those terms, and Stephen at her request reluctantly instructed her as to the method of giving a Power of Attorney.

“You must arrange everything,” she said; “I won’t be bothered. Now I must go. Jones is human, after all. He knew I should want money, and he sent me quite a lot. And I am going away for a holiday—just to see what it feels like to be rich.”

“You’re not going about alone, I hope,” said Stephen. And then, for the first time, he remembered that beautiful young ladies are not allowed to clear away tea-things in the Temple, without a chaperon—even for their solicitors.

“No; Constance Grant is with me. You don’t know her. I got to know her at Girton. She’s a dear.”

“Look here,” he said, awkwardly standing behind her as she pinned her hat and veil in front of his glass, “when you come back I’ll come to see you. But you mustn’t come here again; it’s—it’s not customary.” She smiled at his reflection in the glass.

“Oh, I forgot your stiff English notions! So absurd! Not going to see one’s old friend and one’s solicitor! However, I won’t come where I’m not wanted——”

“You know——” he began reproachfully; but she interrupted.

“Oh yes, it’s all right. Now remember that all my affairs are in your hands, and when I come back you will have to tell me exactly what I am worth—between eight and fourteen hundred thousand pounds, they say; but that’s nonsense, isn’t it? Good-bye.”

And with a last switch of white skirts against the dirty wainscot, and a last wave of a white-gloved hand, she disappeared down the staircase.

Stephen drew a long breath. “It can’t be fourteen hundred thousand,” he said slowly; “but I wish to goodness it wasn’t four-pence.”

II

The tide was low, the long lines of the sandbanks shone yellow in the sun—yellower for the pools of blue water left between them. Far off, where the low white streak marked the edge of the still retreating sea, little figures moved slowly along, pushing the shrimping-nets through the shallow water.

On one of the smooth wave-worn groins a girl sat sketching the village; her pink gown and red Japanese umbrella made a bright spot on the gold of the sand.

Further along the beach, under the end of the grass-grown sea-wall, a young man and woman basked in the August sun. Her sunshade was white, and so were her gown and the hat that lay beside her. Since her accession to fortune Rosamund Rainham had worn nothing but white.

“It is the prettiest wear in the world,” she had told Constance Grant; “and when you’re poor, it’s the most impossible. But now I can have a clean gown every day, and a clean conscience as well.”

“I’m not sure about the conscience,” Constance had answered with her demure smile. “Think of the millions of poor people.”

“Oh, bother!” Miss Rainham had laughed, not heartlessly, but happily. “Thank Heaven, I’ve enough to be happy myself and make heaps of other people happy too. And the first step is that no one’s to know I’m rich, so remember that we are two high-school teachers on a holiday.”

“I loathe play-acting,” Constance had said, but she had submitted, and now she sat sketching, and Rosamund in her white gown watched the seagulls and shrimpers from under the sea-wall of Lymchurch.

“And so your holiday’s over in three days,” she was saying to the young man beside her; “it’s been a good time, hasn’t it?”

He did not answer; he was piling up the pebbles in a heap, and always at a certain point the heap collapsed.

“What are you thinking of? Poems again?”

“I had a verse running in my head,” he said apologetically; “it has nothing to do with anything.”

“Write it down at once,” she said imperiously, and he obediently scribbled in his notebook, while she took up the work of building the stone heap—it grew higher under her light fingers.

“Read it!” she said, when the scribbling of the pencil stopped, and he read:

“Now the vexed clouds, wind-driven, spread wings of white,
Long leaning wings across the sea and land;
The waves creep back, bequeathing to our sight
The treasure-house of their deserted sand;
And where the nearer waves curl white and low,
Knee-deep in swirling brine the slow-foot shrimpers go.

Pale breadth of sand where clamorous gulls confer
Marked with broad arrows by their planted feet,
White rippled pools where late deep waters were,
And ever the white waves marshalled in retreat,
And the grey wind in sole supremacy
O’er opal and amber cold of darkening sky and sea.”

“Opal and amber cold,” she repeated; “it’s not like that now. It’s sapphire and gold and diamonds.”

“Yes,” he said; “but that was how it was last week——”

“Before I came——”

“Yes, before you came;” his tone put a new meaning into her words.

“I’m glad I brought good weather,” she said cheerfully, and the little stone heap rattled itself down under her hand.

“You brought the light of the world,” he said, and caught her hand and held it. There was a silence. A fisherman passing along the sea-wall gave them good-day. “What made you come to Lymchurch?” he said presently, and his hand lay lightly on hers. She hesitated, and looked down at her hand and his.

“I knew you were here,” she said. His eyes met hers. “I always meant to see you again some day. And you knew me at once. That was so nice of you.”

“You have not changed,” he said; “your face has not changed, only you are older, and——”

“I’m twenty-two; you needn’t reproach me with it. Yours is the same to a month.”

He moved on his elbow a little nearer to her.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” he asked, looking out to sea, “that you and I were made for each other?”

“No; never.”

He looked out to sea still, and his face clouded heavily.

“Ah—no—don’t look like that, dear; it never occurred to me—I think I must have always known it somehow, only——”

“Only what?—do you really?—only what?” A silence. Then, “Only what?” he asked again.

“Only I was so afraid it would never occur to you!”

There was no one on the wide, bare sands save the discreet artist—their faces were very near.

“We shall be very, very poor, I’m afraid,” he said presently.

“I can go on teaching.”

“No”—his voice was decided—“my wife shan’t work—at least not anywhere but in our home. You won’t mind playing at love in a cottage for a bit, will you? I shall get on now I’ve something to work for. Oh, my dear, thank God I’ve enough for the cottage! When will you marry me? We’ve nothing to wait for, no relations to consult, no settlements to draw up. All that’s mine is thine, lassie.”

“And all that’s mine—Oh! Stephen!”

For, with a scattering of shingle, a man dropped from the sea-wall two yards from them.

The situation admitted of no disguise, for Miss Rainham’s head was on Mr Dornington’s shoulder. They sprang up.

“Why, Stephen!” echoed Andrew, “this—this is good of you! You remember Rosamund? We have just found out that——” But Rosamund had turned, and was walking quickly away over the sand.

Stephen filled a pipe and lighted it before he said: “You’ve made good use of your time, old man. I congratulate you.” His tone was cold.

“There is no reason why I should not make good use of my time,” Dornington answered, and his tone had caught the chill of the other’s.

“None whatever. You have secured the prize, and I congratulate you. Whether it’s fair to the girl is another question.”

In moments of agitation a man instinctively feels for his pipe. It was now Dornington’s turn to fill and light.

“Of course it’s your own affair,” said Guillemot, chafing at the silence, “but I think you might have given the heiress a chance. However, it’s each for himself, I suppose, and——”

“Heiress?”

“Yes, the heiress—the Millionairess, if you prefer it. I’ve been looking into her affairs: it is just about a million.”

“Rather cheap chaff, isn’t it?”

“It’s a very lucky thing for you,” said Stephen savagely. “Perhaps I ought not to grudge it to you. But I must say, Dornington—I see we look at the thing differently—but I must say, I shouldn’t have cared to grab at such luck myself.”

Dornington had thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood looking at his friend.

“I see,” he said slowly. “And her fortune is really so much? I didn’t think it had been so much as that. Yes. Well, Guillemot, it’s no good making a row about it; I don’t want to quarrel with my best friend. Go along to my place, will you? Or stay: come and let me introduce you to Miss Grant, and you can walk up with her; she’ll show you where I live. I’m going for a bit of a walk.”

Five minutes later Stephen, in response to Rosamund’s beckoning hand at the window, was following Miss Grant up the narrow flagged path leading to the cottage which Rosamund had taken. And ten minutes later Andrew Dornington was striding along the road to the station with a Gladstone bag in his hands.

Stephen lunched at the cottage. The girls served the lunch themselves; they had no hired service in the little cottage. Rosamund exerted herself to talk gaily.

As the meal ended, a fair-haired child stood in the door that opened straight from the street into the sitting-room, after the primitive fashion of Lymchurch.

“’E gave me a letter for you,” said the child, and Rosamund took it, giving in exchange some fruit from the pretty disordered table.

“Excuse me,” she said, with the rose in her cheeks because she saw the hand-writing was the hand-writing she had seen in many pencilled verses. She read the letter, frowned, read it again. “Constance, you might get the coffee.”

Constance went out. Then the girl turned on her guest.

“This is your doing,” she said with a concentrated fury that brought him to his feet facing her. “Why did you come and meddle! You’ve told him I was rich—the very thing I didn’t mean him to know till—till he couldn’t help himself. You’ve spoilt everything! And now he’s gone—and he’ll never come back. Oh, I hope you will suffer for this some day. You will, if there’s any justice in the world!”

He looked as though he suffered for it even now, but when he spoke his voice was equable.

“I am extremely sorry,” he said, “but after all, there’s very little harm done. You should have warned me that you meant to play a comedy, and I would have taken any part you assigned me. However, you’ve succeeded. He evidently ‘loves you for yourself alone.’ Write and tell him to come back: he’ll come.”

“How little you know him,” she said, “after all these years! Even I know him better than that. That was why I pretended not to be rich. Directly I knew about the money I made up my mind to find him and try if I could make him care. I know it sounds horrid; I don’t mind, it’s true. And I had done it; and then you came. Oh, I hope I shall never see you again! I will never speak to you again! No, I don’t mean that——” She hid her face in her hands.

“Rosamund, try to forgive me. I didn’t know, I couldn’t know. I will bring him back to you—I swear it! Only trust me.”

“You can’t,” she said; “it’s all over.”

“Let me tell you something. If you hadn’t had this money—but if you hadn’t had this money I should never have seen you. But I have thought of nothing but you ever since that day you came to the Temple. I don’t tell you this to annoy you, only to show you that I would do anything in the world to prevent you from being unhappy. Forgive me, dear! Oh, forgive me!”

“It’s no good,” she said; but she gave him her hand. When Constance Grant came back with the coffee, she found Mr Guillemot alone looking out of the window at the sunflowers and the hollyhocks.

“What is the matter?” she asked.

“I’ve made a fool of myself,” he said, forgetting, as he looked at her kind eyes, that three hours ago she was only a name to him.

“Could I do anything?”

“You’re her friend,” he said. “Miss Grant, I’m going down to the sea, if you could come down with me and let me talk—but I’ve no right to bother you.”

“I’ll come,” said Constance. “I’ll come by-and-by when I’ve cleared lunch away. It’s no bother. As you say, I’m her friend.”

III

Rosamund stayed on at the little house behind the sea-wall, and she wrote letters, long and many, which accumulated on the mantel-piece of the rooms in the Temple. Andrew found them there when he returned to town in the middle of October. The room was cheerless, tenantless, fireless. He lit the gas and looked through his letters. He did not dare to open those which came from her. There were bills, invitation cards, a returned manuscript or two, a cheque for a magazine article, and a letter in Stephen’s hand-writing. It was dated a fortnight earlier.

“Dear old Chap,” it ran, “I’m off to my father’s. I can’t bear it. I can’t face you or any one. I wish to God I’d never told you anything about Rosamund Rainham’s money. There isn’t any money: it was all in the Crystal Oil Co. No one had the least idea that it wasn’t good, but I feel as if I ought to have known. There’s a beggarly hundred or so in consols: that’s the end of her million. It wasn’t really my fault, of course. She doesn’t blame me.—Yours,

“Stephen Guillemot.”

Then he opened her letters—read them all—in the order of the dates on the postmarks, for even in love Andrew was an orderly man—read them with eyes that pricked and smarted. There were four or five of them. First, the frank pleading of affection, then the coldness of hurt pride and love; then, doubts, wonderings. Was he ill? Was he away? Would he not at least answer? Passionate longing, tender anxiety breathed in every word. Then came the last letter of all, written a fortnight ago:

“Dear Andrew,—I want you to understand that all is over between us. I know you wished it, and now I see you are right. I could never have been anything to you but your loving friend,

“Rosamund.”

He read it through twice; it was a greater shock to him than Stephen’s letter had been. Then he understood. The Millionairess might stoop to woo a poor lover whose pride had fought with and conquered his love: the girl with only a “beggarly hundred in consols” had her pride too.

The early October dusk filled the room. Andrew caught up the bag he had brought with him, slammed the door, and blundered down the stairs. He caught a passing hansom in Fleet Street and the last train to Lymchurch.

A furious south-wester was waiting for him there. He could hardly stand against it—it blew and tore and buffeted him, almost prevailing against him as he staggered down the road from the station. The night was inky black, but he knew his Lymchurch every inch, and he fought it manfully, though every now and then he was fain to cling to a gateway or a post, and hold on till the gust had passed. Thus, breathless and dishevelled, his tie under his left ear, his hat battered in, his hair in crisp disorder, he reached at last the haven of the little porch of the house under the sea-wall.

Rosamund herself opened the door; her eyes showed him two things—her love and her pride. Which would be the stronger? He remembered how the question had been answered in his own case, and he shivered as she took his hand and led him into the warm, lamp-lighted room. The curtains were drawn; the hearth swept; a tabby cat purred on the rug; a book lay open on the table: all breathed of the sober comfort of home. She sat down on the other side of the hearth and looked at him. Neither spoke. It was an awkward moment.

Rosamund broke the silence.

“It is very friendly of you to come and see me,” she said. “It is very lonely for me now. Constance has gone back to London.”

“She has gone back to her teaching?”

“Yes; I wanted her to stay, but——”

“I’ve heard from Stephen. He is very wretched; he seems to think it is his fault.”

“Poor, dear boy!” She spoke musingly. “Of course it wasn’t his fault. It all seems like a dream, to have been so rich for a little while, and to have done nothing with it except,” she added with a laugh and a glance at her fur-trimmed dress, “to buy a most extravagant number of white dresses. How awfully tired you look, Andrew! Go and have a wash—the spare room’s the first door at the top of the stairs—and I’ll get you some supper.”

When he came down again, she had laid a cloth on the table and was setting out silver and glass.

“Another relic of my brief prosperity,” she said, touching the forks and spoons. “I’m glad I don’t have to eat with nickel-plated things.”

She talked gaily as they ate. The home atmosphere of the room touched Dornington. Rosamund herself, in her white gown, had never appeared so fair and desirable. And but for his own mad pride he might have been here now, sharing her pretty little home life with her—not as her guest, but as her husband. He flushed crimson. Blushing was an old trick of his—one of those that had earned him his feminine nickname of Dora, and in the confusion his blushing brought him, he spoke.

“Rosamund, can you ever forgive me?”

“I forgive you from my heart,” she said, “if I have anything to forgive.”

But in her tone was the resentment of a woman who does not forgive. Yet he had been right. He had sacrificed himself; and if he had chosen to suffer? But what about the blue lines under her dear eyes, the hollows in her dear face?

“You have been unhappy,” he said.

“Well,” she laughed, “I wasn’t exactly pleased to lose my fortune.”

“Dear,” he said desperately, “won’t you try to forgive me? It seemed right. How could I sacrifice you to a penniless——”

“I’d enough for both—or thought I had,” she said obstinately.

“Ah, but don’t you see——”

“I see that you cared more for not being thought mercenary by Stephen than——”

“Forgive me!” he pleaded; “take me back.”

“Oh no”—she tossed her bright head—“Stephen might think me mercenary; I couldn’t bear that. You see you are richer than I am now. How much did you tell me you made a year by your writing? How can I sacrifice you to a penniless——”

“Rosamund, do you mean it?”

“I do mean it. And, besides——”

“What?”

“I don’t love you any more.” The bright head drooped and turned away.

“I have killed your love. I don’t wonder. Forgive me for bothering you. Good-bye!”

“What are you going to do?” she asked suddenly.

“Oh, don’t be afraid, nothing desperate. Only work hard and try to forgive you.”

“Forgive me? You have nothing to forgive.”

“No, nothing—if you had left off loving me? Have you? Is it true?”

“Good-bye!” she said. “You are staying at the ‘Ship’?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t let’s part in anger. I shall be on the sea-wall in the morning. Let’s part friends, then.”

In the morning Andrew went into the fresh air. The trees, still gold in calmer homes, stood almost leafless in wild, windy Lymchurch. He stood in the sunlight, and in spite of himself some sort of gladness came to him through the crisp October air. Then the ping of a bicycle bell sounded close behind him, and there was Stephen.

They shook hands, and Stephen’s eyebrows went up.

“Is it all right?” he asked. “I knew you’d come here when I came home last night and found you’d had my letter.”

“No; it’s not all right. She won’t have me.”

“Why?”

“Pride or revenge, or something. Don’t let’s talk about it.”

“All right. I want some breakfast; we left town by the 7.20. I’m starving.”

“Who are ‘we’?”

“Miss Grant and I. I thought Rosamund would be wanting a chaperon or a bridesmaid, or something, so I brought her and her bicycle.”

“Always thoughtful,” said Andrew, with something like a laugh.

Presently, strolling along the sea-wall they met the two girls. Rosamund looked radiant. Where was the pale, hollow-eyed darling of last night? The wind that ruffled her brown hair had blown roses into her cheeks.

“Do you forgive me?” whispered Stephen when they met.

“That depends,” she answered.

They all walked on together, and presently Stephen and Constance fell behind.

Then Rosamund spoke.

“You really think I ought to crush my pride, and—and——”

Hope laughed in Andrew’s face—laughed and fled—for he looked in the face of Miss Rainham, and there was no sign of yielding in it.

“Yes,” he said almost sullenly.

“That is as much as to say that you were wrong.”

“I—perhaps I was wrong. What does it matter?”

“It matters greatly. Suppose I had my money now would you run away from me?”

“I—I suppose I should act as I did before.”

“Then you don’t care for me any more than you did?”

“I love you a thousand times more,” he cried, turning angry, haggard eyes to her. “Yes, I believe I was wrong. Nothing would send me from you now but yourself——”

She clapped her hands.

“Then stay,” she said, “for it’s a farce, and my money is as safe as houses.”

He scowled at her.

“It’s all a trick? You’ve played with me? Good-bye, and God forgive you!”

He turned to go, but Constance, coming up from behind them, caught his arm.

“Don’t be such an idiot,” she said. “She had nothing to do with it. She thought her money was gone. You don’t suppose she would have played such a trick even to win your valuable affections. You don’t deserve your luck, Mr Dornington.”

Rosamund was looking at him with wet eyes, and her lips trembled.

“Constance only told me this morning,” she said. “She and Stephen planned it, to get you—to make me—to—to——”

“And then she nearly spoilt it all by being as silly as you were. Whatever does it matter which of you has the money?”

“Nothing,” said Rosamund valiantly; “I see that plainly. Don’t you, Andrew?”

“I see nothing but you, Rosamund,” he said, and they turned and walked along the sea-wall, hand in hand, like two children.

“That’s all right,” said Stephen; “but, by Jove, I’ve had enough of playing Providence and managing other people’s affairs.”

“She was very sweet about it,” said Constance, walking on.

“Well she may be; she has her heart’s desire. But it was not easy. What a blessing she is so unbusiness-like! I couldn’t have done it but for you.”

“I am very glad to have been of some service,” said Constance demurely.

“I couldn’t have got on without you. I can’t get on without you ever again.”

“But that’s nonsense,” said Miss Grant.

“You won’t make me, Constance? There’s no confounded money to come between us.”

He caught at the hand that swung by her side.

“But you said you loved her, and that was why——”

“Ah, but that was a thousand years ago. And it was nonsense, even then, Constance.”

And so two others went along the sea-wall in the October sunshine, happily, like children, hand in hand.

VI
THE HERMIT OF “THE YEWS”

Maurice Brent knew a great deal about the Greek anthology, and very little about women. No one but himself had any idea how much he knew of the one, and no one had less idea than himself how little he knew of the other. So that when, a stranger and a pilgrim hopelessly astray amid a smart house-party, he began to fall in love with Camilla, it seemed to be no one’s business to tell him, what everybody else knew, that Camilla had contracted the habit of becoming engaged at least once a year. Of course this always happened in the country, because it was there that Camilla was most bored. No other eligible young man happened to be free at the moment: Camilla never engaged herself to ineligibles. The habit of years is not easily broken: Camilla became engaged to Maurice, and, for the six months of the engagement, he lived in Paradise. A fool’s Paradise, if you like, but Paradise all the same.

About Easter time Camilla told him, very nicely and kindly, that she had mistaken her own heart—she hoped he would not let it make him very unhappy. She would always wish him the best of good fortune, and doubtless he would find it in the affection of some other girl much nicer and more worthy of him than his sincere friend Camilla. Camilla was right—no one could have been less worthy of him than she: but after all it was Camilla he thought that he loved, Camilla he felt that he wanted, not any other girl at all, no matter how nice or how worthy.

He took it very quietly: sent her a note so cold and unconcerned that Camilla was quite upset, and cried most of the evening, and got up next day with swollen eyelids and a very bad temper. She was not so sure of her power as she had been—and the loss of such a certainty is never pleasant.

He, meanwhile, advertised for a furnished house, and found one—by letter, which seemed to be the very thing he wanted. “Handsomely and conveniently furnished five miles from a railway station—a well-built house standing in its own grounds of five acres—garden, orchard pasture, magnificent view.” Being as unversed in the ways of house agents as in those of women, he took it on trust, paid a quarter’s rent, and went down to take possession. He had instructed the local house agent to find a woman who would come in for a few hours daily to “do for him.”

“I’ll have no silly women living in the house,” said he.

It was on an inclement June evening that the station fly set him down in front of his new house. The drive had been long and dreary, and seemed to Maurice more like seventy miles than seven. Now he let down the carriage window and thrust his head into the rain to see his new house. It was a stucco villa, with iron railings in the worst possible taste. It had an air at once new and worn out; no one seemed ever to have lived in it, and yet everything about it was broken and shabby. The door stuck a little at first with the damp, and when at last it opened and Maurice went over his house, he found it furnished mainly with oil-cloth and three-legged tables, and photographs in Oxford frames—like a seaside lodging-house. The house was clean, however, and the woman in attendance was clean, but the atmosphere of the place was that of a vault. He looked out through the streaming panes at the magnificent view so dwelt upon in the house agents’ letters. The house stood almost at the edge of a disused chalk quarry; far below stretched a flat plain, dotted here and there with limekilns and smoky, tall chimneys. The five acres looked very bare and thistly, and the rain was dripping heavily from a shivering, half-dead cypress on to a draggled, long-haired grass plot. Mr Brent shivered too, and ordered a fire.

When the woman had gone, he sat long by the fire in one of those cane and wood chairs that fold up—who wants a chair to fold up?—so common in lodging-houses. Unless you sit quite straight in these chairs you tumble out of them. He gazed at the fire, and thought, and dreamed. His dreams were, naturally, of Camilla; his thoughts were of his work.

“I’ve taken the house for three years,” said he. “Well, one place is as good as another to be wretched in. But one room I must furnish—for you can’t work on oil-cloth.”

So next day he walked to Rochester and bought some old bureaux, and chairs, and book-cases, a few Persian rugs and some brass things, unpacked his books and settled down to the hermit’s life to which he had vowed himself. The woman came every morning from her cottage a mile away, and left at noon. He got his meals himself—always chops, or steaks, or eggs—and presently began to grow accustomed to the place. When the sun shone it was not so bad. He could make no way against the thorns and thistles on his five acres, and they quickly grew into a very wilderness. But a wilderness is pleasant to wander in; and a few flowers had survived long neglect, and here and there put out red, or white, or yellow buds. And he worked away at his book about Greek poetry.

He almost believed that he was contented; he had never cared for people so much as for books, and now he saw no people, and his books began to crowd his shelves. No one passed by “The Yews”—so called, he imagined, in extravagant compliment to the decaying cypress—for it stood by a grass-grown by-way that had once connected two main roads, each a couple of miles distant. These were now joined by a better road down in the valley, and no one came past Maurice’s window save the milk, the bread, the butcher, and the postman.

Summer turned brown and dry and became autumn, autumn turned wet and chilly and grew into winter, and all the winds of heaven blew cold and damp through the cracks of the ill-built house.

Maurice was glad when the spring came; he had taken the house for three years, and he was a careful man, and also, in his way, a determined. Yet it was good to look out once more on something green, and to see sunshine and a warm sky; it was near Easter now. In all these ten months nothing whatever had happened to him. He had never been beyond his five acres—and no one had been to see him. He had no relations, and friends soon forget; besides, after all, friends, unlike relations, cannot go where they are not invited.

It was on the Saturday before Easter that the quarryside fell in. Maurice was working in his study when he heard a sudden crack and a slow, splitting sound, and then a long, loud, rumbling noise, like thunder, that echoed and re-echoed from the hills on each side. And, looking from his window, he saw the cloud of white dust rise high above the edge of the old quarry, and seem to drift off to join the cotton-wool clouds in the blue sky.

“I suppose it’s all safe enough here,” he said, and went back to his manuscripts. But he could not work. At last something had happened; he found himself shaken and excited. He laid down the pen. “I wonder if any one was hurt?” he said; “the road runs just below, of course. I wonder whether there’ll be any more of it—I wonder?” A wire jerked, the cracked bell sounded harshly through the silence of the house. He sprang to his feet. “Who on earth——” he said. “The house isn’t safe after all, perhaps, and they’ve come to tell me.”

As he went along the worn oil-cloth of the hall he saw through the comfortless white-spotted glass of his front door the outline of a woman’s hat.

He opened the door—it stuck as usual—but he got it open. There stood a girl holding a bicycle.

“Oh!” she said, without looking at him, “I’m so sorry to trouble you—my bicycle’s run down—and I’m afraid it’s a puncture, and could you let me have some water, to find the hole—and if I might sit down a minute.”

Her voice grew lower and lower.

He opened the door wide and put out his hand for the bicycle. She took two steps past him, rather unsteadily, and sat down on the stairs—there were no chairs: the furniture of the hall was all oil-cloth and hat pegs.

He saw now that she was very pale; her face looked greenish behind her veil’s white meshes.

He propped the machine against the door, as she leaned her head back against the ugly marbled paper of the staircase wall.

“I’m afraid you’re ill,” he said gently. But the girl made no answer. Her head slipped along the varnished wall and rested on the stair two steps above where she sat. Her hat was crooked and twisted; even a student of Greek could see that she had fainted.

“Oh Lord!” said he.

He got her hat and veil off—he never knew how, and he wondered afterwards at his own cleverness, for there were many pins, long and short; he fetched the cushion from his armchair and put it under her head; he took off her gloves and rubbed her hands and her forehead with vinegar, but her complexion remained green, and she lay, all in a heap, at the foot of his staircase.

Then he remembered that fainting people should be laid flat and not allowed to lie about in heaps at the foot of stairs, so he very gently and gingerly picked the girl up in his arms and carried her into his sitting-room. Here he laid her on the ground—he had no sofa—and sat beside her on the floor, patiently fanning her with a copy of the Athenæum, and watching the pinched, pallid face for some sign of returning life. It came at last, in a flutter of the eyelids, a long-drawn, gasping breath. The Greek scholar rushed for whisky—brandy he esteemed as a mere adjunct of channel boats—lifted her head and held the glass to her lips. The blood had come back to her face in a rush of carnation; she drank—choked—drank—he laid her head down and her eyes opened. They were large, clear grey eyes—very bewildered-looking just now—but they and the clear red tint in cheeks and lips transformed the face.

“Good gracious,” said he, “she’s pretty! Pretty? she’s beautiful!”

She was. That such beauty should so easily have hidden itself behind a green-tinted mask, with sunken eyelid, seemed a miracle to the ingenuous bookworm.

“You’re better now,” said he with feverish banality. “Give me your hands—so—now can—yes, that’s right—here, this chair is the only comfortable one——”

She sank into the chair, and waved away the more whisky which he eagerly proffered. He stood looking at her with respectful solicitude.

After a few moments she stretched her arms like a sleepy child, yawned, and then suddenly broke into laughter. It had a strange sound. No one had laughed in that house since the wet night when Mr Brent took possession of it, and he had never been able to bring himself to believe that any one had ever laughed there before.

Then he remembered having heard that women have hysterical fits as well as fainting fits, and he said eagerly: “Oh don’t! It’s all right—you were faint—the heat or something——”

“Did I faint?” she asked with interest. “I never fainted before. But—oh—yes—I remember. It was rather horrible. The quarry tumbled down almost on me, and I just stopped short—in time—and I came round by this road because the other’s stopped up, and I was so glad when I saw the house. Thank you so much; it must have been an awful bother. I think I had better start soon——”

“No, you don’t; you’re not fit to ride alone yet,” said he to himself. Aloud he said: “You said something about a puncture—when you are better I’ll mend it. And, look here—have you had any lunch?”

“No,” said she.

“Then—if you’ll allow me.” He left the room, and presently returned with the tray set for his own lunch; then he fetched from the larder everything he could lay hands on: half a cold chicken, some cold meat pudding, a pot of jam, bottled beer. He set these confusedly on the table. “Now,” he said, “come and try to eat.”

“It’s very good of you to bother,” she said, a little surprise in her tone, for she had expected “lunch” to be a set formal meal at which some discreet female relative would preside. “But aren’t you—don’t you—do you live alone, then?”

“Yes, a woman comes in in the mornings. I’m sorry she’s gone: she could have arranged a better lunch for you.”

“Better? why, it’s lovely!” said she, accepting the situation with frank amusement, and she gave a touch or two to the table to set everything in its place.

Then they lunched together. He would have served her standing, as one serves a queen—but she laughed again, and he took the place opposite her. During lunch they talked.

After lunch they mended the punctured tyre, and talked all the while; then it was past three o’clock.

“You won’t go yet,” he said then, daring greatly for what seemed to him a great stake. “Let me make you some tea—I can, I assure you—and let us see if the tyre holds up——”

“Oh, the tyre is all right, thanks to your cleverness——”

“Well, then,” said he desperately, “take pity on a poor hermit! I give you my word, I have been here ten months and three days, and I have not in that time spoken a single word to any human being except my bedmaker.”

“But if you want to talk to people why did you begin being a hermit?”

“I thought I didn’t, then.”

“Well—now you know better, why don’t you come back and talk to people in the ordinary way?”

This was the first and last sign she gave that the circumstances in which she found herself with him were anything but ordinary.

“I have a book to finish,” said he. “Would you like to have tea in the wilderness or in here?” He wisely took her consent for granted this time, and his wisdom was justified.

They had tea in the garden. The wilderness blossomed like a rose, to Maurice’s thinking. In his mind he was saying over and over again: “How bored I must have been all this time! How bored I must have been!”

It seemed to him that his mind was opening, like a flower, and for the first time. He had never talked so well, and he knew it—all the seeds of thought, sown in those long, lonely hours, bore fruit now. She listened, she replied, she argued and debated.

“Beautiful—and sensible,” said Maurice to himself. “What a wonderful woman!” There was, besides, an alertness of mind, a quick brightness of manner that charmed him. Camilla had been languid and dreamy.

Suddenly she rose to her feet.

“I must go,” she said, “but I have enjoyed myself so much. You are an ideal host: thank you a thousand times. Perhaps we shall meet again some day, if you return to the world. Do you know, we’ve been talking and wrangling for hours and hours and never even thought of wondering what each other’s names are—I think we’ve paid each other a very magnificent compliment, don’t you?”

He smiled and said: “My name is Maurice Brent.”

“Mine is Diana Redmayne. If it sounds like somebody in the Family Herald, I can’t help it.” He had wheeled the bicycle into the road, and she had put on hat and gloves and stood ready to mount before she said: “If you come back to the world I shall almost certainly meet you. We seem to know the same people; I’ve heard your name many times.”

“From whom?” said he.

“Among others,” said she, with her foot on the pedal, “from my cousin Camilla. Good-bye.”

And he was left to stare down the road after the swift flying figure.

Then he went back into the lonely little house, and about half-past twelve that night he realised that he had done no work that day, and that those hours which had not been spent talking to Diana Redmayne, had been spent in thinking about her.

“It’s not because she’s pretty and clever,” he said; “and it’s not even because she’s a woman. It’s because she’s the only intelligent human being I’ve spoken to for nearly a year.”

So day after day he went on thinking about her.

It was three weeks later that the bell again creaked and jangled, and again through the spotted glass he saw a woman’s hat. To his infinite disgust and surprise, his heart began to beat violently.

“I grow nervous, living all alone,” he said. “Confound this door! how it does stick—I must have it planed.”

He got the door opened, and found himself face to face with—Camilla.

He stepped back, and bowed gravely.

She looked more beautiful than ever—and he looked at her, and wondered how he could ever have thought her even passably pretty.

“Won’t you ask me in?” she said timidly.

“No,” said he, “I am all alone.”

“I know,” she said. “I have only just heard you’re living here all alone, and I came to say—Maurice—I’m sorry. I didn’t know you cared so much, or——”

“Don’t,” he said, stopping the confession as a good batsman stops a cricket ball. “Believe me, I’ve not made myself a hermit because of—all that. I had a book to write—that was all. And—and it’s very kind of you to come and look me up, and I wish I could ask you to come in, but—— And it’s nice of you to take an interest in an old friend—you said you would, didn’t you, in the letter—and—I’ve taken the advice you gave me.”

“You mean you’ve fallen in love with some one else.”

“You remember what you said in your letter.”

“Some one nicer and worthier, I said,” returned Camilla blankly, “but I never thought—— And is she?”

“Of course she seems so to me,” said he, smiling at her to express friendly feeling.

“Then—good-bye—I wish you the best of good fortune.”

“You said that in your letter, too,” said he. “Good-bye.”

“Who is she?”

“I mustn’t tell even you that, until I have told her,” he smiled again.

“Then good-bye,” said Camilla shortly; “forgive me for troubling you so unnecessarily.”

He found himself standing by his door—and Camilla on her bicycle sped down the road, choking with tears of anger and mortification and deep disappointment. Because she knew now that she loved him as much as it was in her to love any one, and because she, who had humbled so many, had now at last humbled herself—and to no purpose.

Maurice Brent left his door open and wandered down across his five acres, filled with amazement. Camilla herself had not been more deeply astonished at the words he had spoken than he had been. A moment before he had not even thought that he was in love, much less contemplated any confession of it: and now seemingly without his will he stood committed to this statement. Was it true, or had he only said it to defend himself against those advances of hers in which he merely saw a new trap? He had said it in defence—yes—but it was true, for all that; this was the wonderful part of it. And so he walked in the wilderness, lost in wonder; and as he walked he noted the bicycles that passed his door—along his unfrequented road, by ones and twos and threes—for this was a Saturday, and the lower road was still lying cold and hidden under its load of chalk, and none might pass that way. This road was hot and dusty, and folk went along it continually. He strolled to his ugly iron gate and looked over, idly. Perhaps, some day, she would come that way again—she would surely stop—especially if he were at the gate—and perhaps stay and talk a little. As if in mocking answer to the new-born thought came a flash of blue along the road; Diana Redmayne rode by at full speed—bowed coldly—and then at ten yards’ distance turned and waved a white-gloved hand, with a charming smile. Maurice swore softly, and went indoors to think.

His work went but slowly on that day—and in the days that followed. On the next Friday he went over to Rochester, and in the dusk of the evening he walked along the road, about a mile from “The Yews,” and then, going slowly, he cast handfuls of something dark from his hand, and kicked the white dust over it as it lay.

“I feel like the enemy sowing tares,” said he.

Then he went home, full of anxious anticipation. The next day was hot and bright. He took his armchair into the nightmare of a verandah, and sat there reading; only above the top of the book his eyes could follow the curve of the white road. This made it more difficult to follow the text. Presently the bicyclists began to go past, by ones and twos and threes; but a certain percentage was wheeling its machines—others stopped within sight to blow up their tyres. One man sat down under the hedge thirty yards away, and took his machine to pieces; presently he strolled up and asked for water. Brent gave it, in a tin basin, grudgingly, and without opening the gate.

“I overdid it,” he said, “a quarter of a pound would have been enough; yet I don’t know—perhaps it’s well to be on the safe side. Yet three pounds was perhaps excessive.”

Late in the afternoon a pink figure wheeling a bicycle came slowly down the road. He sat still, and tried to read. In a moment he should hear the click of the gate: then he would spring up and be very much astonished. But the gate did not click, and when next he raised his eyes the pink blouse had gone by, and was almost past the end of the five acres. Then he did spring up—and ran.

“Miss Redmayne, can’t I help you? What is it? Have you had a spill?” he said as he overtook her.

“Puncture,” said she laconically.

“You’re very unfortunate. Mayn’t I help you to mend it?”

“I’ll mend it as soon as I get to a shady place.”

“Come into the wilderness. See—here’s the side gate. I’ll fetch some water in a moment.”

She looked at him doubtfully, and then consented. She refused tea, but she stayed and talked till long after the bicycle was mended.

On the following Saturday he walked along the road, and back, and along, and again the place was alive with angry cyclists dealing, each after his fashion, with a punctured tyre. He came upon Miss Redmayne sitting by the ditch mending hers. That was the time when he sat on the roadside and told her all about himself—reserving only those points where his life had touched Camilla’s.

The week after he walked the road again, and this time he overtook Miss Redmayne, who was resolutely wheeling her bicycle back in the way by which she had come.

“Let me wheel it for you,” he said. “Whither bound?”

“I’m going back to Rochester,” she said. “I generally ride over to see my aunts at Felsenden on Saturdays, but I fear I must give it up, or go by train; this road isn’t safe.”

“Not safe?” he said with an agitation which could not escape her notice.

“Not safe,” she repeated. “Mr Brent, there is a very malicious person in this part of the country—a perfectly dreadful person.”

“What do you mean?” he managed to ask.

“These three Saturdays I have come along this road; each time I have had a puncture. And each time I have found embedded in my tyre the evidence of some one’s malice. This is one piece of evidence.” She held out her ungloved hand. On its pink palm lay a good sized tin-tack. “Once might be accident; twice a coincidence; three times is too much. The road’s impossible.”

“Do you think some one did it on purpose?”

“I know it,” she said calmly.

Then he grew desperate.

“Try to forgive me,” he said. “I was so lonely, and I wanted so much——”

She turned wide eyes on him.

“You!” she cried, and began to laugh.

Her laughter was very pretty, he thought.

“Then you didn’t know it was me?” said the Greek student.

“You!” she said again. “And has it amused you—to see all these poor people in difficulties, and to know that you’ve spoilt their poor little holiday for them—and three times, too.”

“I never thought about them,” he said; “it was you I wanted to see. Try to forgive me; you don’t know how much I wanted you.” Something in his voice kept her silent. “And don’t laugh,” he went on. “I feel as if I wanted nothing in the world but you. Let me come to see you—let me try to make you care too.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” she said, for he stopped on a note that demanded an answer. “Why, you told Camilla——”

“Yes—but you—but I meant you. I thought I cared about her once—but I never cared really with all my heart and soul for any one but you.”

She looked at him calmly and earnestly.

“I’m going to forget all this,” she said; “but I like you very much, and if you want to come and see me, you may. I will introduce you to my aunts at Felsenden as—as a friend of Camilla’s. And I will be friends with you; but nothing else ever. Do you care to know my aunts?”

Maurice had inspirations of sense sometimes. One came to him now, and he said: “I care very much.”

“Then help me to mend my bicycle, and you can call there to-morrow. It’s ‘The Grange’—you can’t miss it. No, not another word of nonsense, please, or we can’t possibly be friends.”

He helped her to mend the bicycle, and they talked of the beauty of spring and of modern poetry.

It was at “The Grange,” Felsenden, that Maurice next saw Miss Redmayne—and it was from “The Grange,” Felsenden, that, in September, he married her.

“And why did you say you would never, never be anything but a friend?” he asked her on the day when that marriage was arranged. “Oh! you nearly made me believe you! Why did you say it?”

“One must say something!” she answered. “Besides, you’d never have respected me if I’d said ‘yes’ at once.”

“Could you have said it? Did you like me then?”

She looked at him, and her look was an answer. He stooped and gravely kissed her.

“And you really cared, even then? I wish you had been braver,” he said a little sadly.

“Ah, but,” she said, “I didn’t know you then—you must try to forgive me, dear. Think how much there was at stake! Suppose I had lost you!”

VII
THE AUNT AND THE EDITOR

Aunt Kate was the great comfort of Kitty’s existence. Always kindly, helpful, sympathetic, no girlish trouble was too slight, no girlish question too difficult for her tender heart—her delicate insight. How different from grim Aunt Eliza, with whom it was Kitty’s fate to live. Aunt Eliza was severe, methodical, energetic. In household matters she spared neither herself nor her niece. Kitty could darn and mend and bake and dust and sweep in a way which might have turned the parents of the bluest Girtonian green with envy. She had read a great deal, too—the really solid works that are such a nuisance to get through, and that leave a mark on one’s mind like the track of a steamroller. That was Aunt Eliza’s doing. Kitty ought to have been grateful—but she wasn’t. She didn’t want to be improved with solid books. She wanted to write books herself. She did write little tales when her aunt was out on business, which was often, and she dreamed of the day when she should write beautiful books, poems, romances. These Aunt Eliza classed roughly as “stuff and nonsense”; and one day, when she found Kitty reading the Girls’ Very Own Friend, she tore that harmless little weekly across and across and flung it into the fire. Then she faced Kitty with flushed face and angry eyes.

“If I ever catch you bringing such rubbish into the house again, I’ll—I’ll stop your music lessons.”

This was a horrible threat. Kitty went twice a week to the Guildhall School of Music. She had no musical talent whatever, but the journey to London and back was her one glimpse of the world’s tide that flowed outside the neat, gloomy, ordered house at Streatham. Therefore Kitty was careful that Aunt Eliza should not again “catch her bringing such rubbish into the house.” But she went on reading the paper all the same, just as she went on writing her little stories. And presently she got one of her little stories typewritten, and sent it to the Girls’ Very Own Friend. It was a silly little story—the heroine was svelte, I am sorry to say, and had red-gold hair and a soft, trainante voice—and the hero was a “frank-looking young Englishman, with a bronzed face and honest blue eyes.” The plot was that with which I firmly believe every career of fiction begins—the girl who throws over her lover because he has jilted her friend. Then she finds out that it was not her lover, but his brother or cousin. We have all written this story in our time, and Kitty wrote it much worse than many, but not nearly so badly as most of us.

And the Girls’ Very Own Friend accepted the story and printed it, and in its columns notified to “George Thompson” that the price, a whole guinea, was lying idle at the office till he should send his address. For, of course, Kitty had taken a man’s name for her pen-name, and almost equally, of course, had called herself “George.” George Sand began it, and it is a fashion which young authors seem quite unable to keep themselves from following.

Kitty longed to tell some one of her success—to ask admiration and advice; but Aunt Eliza was more severe and less approachable than usual that week. She was busy writing letters. She had always a sheaf of dull-looking letters to answer, so Kitty could only tell Mary in the kitchen under vows of secrecy, and Mary in the kitchen only said: “Well, to be sure, Miss, it’s beautiful! I suppose you wrote the story down out of some book?”

Therefore Kitty felt that it was vain to apply to her for intellectual sympathy.

“I will write to Aunt Kate,” said she, “she will understand. Oh, how I wish I could see her! She must be a dear, soft, pussy, cuddly sort of person. Why shouldn’t I go and see her? I will.”

And on this desperate resolve she acted.

Now I find it quite impossible any longer to conceal from the intelligent reader that the reason why Kitty had never seen Aunt Kate was that “Aunt Kate” was merely the screen which sheltered from a vulgar publicity the gifted person who wrote the “Answers to Correspondents” for the Girls’ Very Own Friend.

In fear and trembling, and a disguised hand-writing; with a feigned name and a quickly-beating heart, Kitty, months before, had written to this mysterious and gracious being. In the following week’s number had appeared these memorable lines:

“Sweet Nancy.—So pleased, dear, with your little letter. Write to me quite freely. I love to help my girls.”

So Kitty wrote quite freely, and as honestly as any girl of eighteen ever writes: her hopes and fears, her household troubles, her literary ambitions. And in the columns of the Girls’ Very Own Friend Aunt Kate replied with all the tender grace and delightful warmth that characterised her utterances.

The idea of calling on Aunt Kate occurred to Kitty as she was “putting on her things” to go to the Guildhall. She instantly threw the plain “everyday” hat from her, and pulled her best hat from its tissue-paper nest in the black bandbox. She put on her best blouse—the cream-coloured one with the browny lace on it, and her best brown silk skirt. She recklessly added her best brown shoes and gloves, and the lace pussy-boa. (I don’t know what the milliner’s name for the thing is. It goes round the neck, and hangs its soft and fluffy ends down nearly to one’s knees.) Then she looked at herself in the glass, gave a few last touches to her hair and veil, and nodded to herself.

“You’ll do, my dear,” said Kitty.

Aunt Eliza was providentially absent at Bath nursing a sick friend, and the black-bugled duenna, hastily imported from Tunbridge Wells, could not be expected to know which was Kitty’s best frock, and which the gloves that ought only to have been worn at church.

When Kitty’s music lesson was over, she stood for a moment on the steps of the Guildhall School, looking down towards the river. Then she shrugged her pretty shoulders.

“I don’t care. I’m going to,” she said, and turned resolutely towards Tudor Street. Kitty had been to a high school: therefore she was not obviously shy. She asked her way frankly and easily of carman, or clerk, or errand-boy; and though, at the door of the dingy office in a little court off Fleet Street, her heart beat thickly as she read the blue-enamelled words, Girls’ Very Own Friend, her manner as she walked into the office betrayed no nervousness, and, indeed, struck the grinning idle office boy as that of “a bloomin’ duchess.”

“I want to see——” she began; and then suddenly the awkwardness of her position struck her. She did not know Aunt Kate’s surname. Abruptly to ask this grinning lout for “Aunt Kate” seemed absolutely indecorous. “I want to see the editor,” she ended.

She waited in the grimy office while the boy disappeared through an inner door, marked in dingy white letters with the magic words, “Editor—Private.” A low buzz of voices came to her through the door. She looked at the pigeon-holes where heaps of back numbers of the Girls’ Very Own lay in a dusty retirement. She looked at the insurance company’s tasteless almanack that hung all awry on the wall, and still the buzz went on. Then suddenly some one laughed inside, and the laugh did not please Kitty. The next moment the boy returned, grinning more repulsively than ever, and said: “Walk this way.”

She walked that way, past the boy; the door fell to behind her, and she found herself in a cloud of tobacco smoke, compressed into a small room—a very dusty, untidy room—in which stood three young men. Their faces were grave and serious, but Kate could not forget that one of them had laughed, and laughed like that. Her chin went up about a quarter of an inch further.

“I am sorry to have disturbed you,” she said severely. “I wanted to see—to see the lady who signs herself Aunt Kate.”

There was a moment of silence which seemed almost breathless. Two of the young men exchanged a glance, but though Kitty perceived it to be significant, she could not interpret its meaning. Then one of the three turned to gaze out of the window at the blackened glass roof of the printing office below. Kitty felt certain he was concealing a smile; and the second hurriedly arranged a bundle of papers beside him.

The third young man spoke, and Kitty liked the gentle drawl, the peculiar enunciation. The poor girl, in her Streatham seclusion, had never before heard the “Oxford voice.”

“I am very sorry,” he said, “but ‘Aunt Kate’ is not here to-day. Perhaps—is there anything I could do?”

“No, thank you,” said Kitty, wishing herself miles away; the tobacco smoke choked her, the backs of the two other men seemed an outrage. She turned away with a haughty bow, and went down the grimy stairs full of fury. She could have slapped herself. How could she have been such a fool as to come there? There were feet coming down the stair behind her—she quickened her pace. The feet came more quickly. She stopped on the landing and turned with an odd feeling of being at bay. It was the fair-haired young man with the Oxford voice.

“I am so very sorry,” he said gently, “but I did not know. I did not expect to see—I mean, I did not know who you were. And we had all been smoking—I am so sorry,” he said again, rather lamely.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Kitty, more shyly than she had ever spoken in her life. She liked his eyes and his voice as much as she loathed the expressive backs of his two companions.

“If you could come again: perhaps Aunt Kate will be here on Thursday. I know she will be sorry to miss you,” the young man went on.

“I think I won’t call again, thank you,” said Kitty. “I—I’ll write, thank you; it is all right. I oughtn’t to have come. Good-bye.”

There was nothing for it but to stand back and let her pass. The editor went back slowly to his room. His friends had relighted their pipes.

“Appeased the outraged goddess?” asked one of them.

“Good old Aunt Kate!” said the other.

“Shut up, Sellars!” said the editor, frowning.

“Now, which of your correspondents is it?” pondered Sellars, ruffling the bundle of papers in his hand. “Is it ‘Wild Woodbine,’ who wants to know what will make her hands white? Chilcott, did you see her hands? Oh no, of course—bien chaussée, bien gantée. All brown, too. Is it ‘Sylph’?—no; she wants a pattern for a Zouave. What is a Zouave, if you please, Mr Editor?”

“Dry up!” said the editor, but Sellars was busy with the papers.

“Eureka! I know her. She’s ‘Nut-brown Maid’—here’s the letter—wants to know if she may talk to ‘a young gentleman she has not been properly introduced to’—spells it ‘interoduced,’ too——”