THE GARDEN
OF RESURRECTION

BEING THE LOVE STORY
OF AN UGLY MAN

BY

E. TEMPLE THURSTON

MITCHELL KENNERLEY
NEW YORK
1911

COPYRIGHT 1911 BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

TO
W.R. DAKIN, M.D.

My Dear Dakin:

Partly because you have a love of gardens, partly because together we have seen Ballysheen when the gorse was in its full blast of yellow, but most of all because I feel I owe you a debt of gratitude for a great friendship, I am asking you to accept this book of mine. It was after a talk with you one night that I went straight home and wrote Chapter I on a clean sheet of paper, therefore the book is doubly yours and I ask you to accept it in proof of the fact that, not only am I grateful, but also that I am

Your sincere friend,
E. Temple Thurston.

Adelphi, 1911.

The Garden of Resurrection

CHAPTER I

It was the first, the very first, day of spring. A man walked by me with a narcissus in his coat and he was humming a tune.

By the looks of him—the tail-coat, the bowler hat, the little leather hand-bag—he was an artisan. You know that game of placing people. I put him down as an electrician. He had been attending to a job up West. He was returning to the premises of his firm in Bond Street. All this, of course, was surmise. But of one thing I was certain. He had no business to be walking through the Park. He ought to have been on a 'bus, or in the Underground Railway, speeding back to save his firm's most precious time, ready to start forth once more upon his firm's most urgent errands. Instead of this—it was the first day of spring—he was walking through the Park and I was envying him. I envied the narcissus in his coat. Even the very tune he was humming touched a sense of covetousness in my heart.

"Nor his ox," thought I, "nor his ass, nor anything that is his." A very stern Commandment that; for even as I took off my silk hat and brushed the rim of it once with my sleeve, I envied him for his tail-coat and his billy-cock.

It was little enough to want of any man, his tail-coat or his billy-cock, his narcissus or the tune set humming from his heart. I did not want his leather bag at all. He could keep that. Yet it seemed that I was to break the tenth decree of Moses to its last letter, or, since I was going backwards, to its first; for after he had gone by some thirty yards or so, I was envying him for something else altogether.

A few moments before he came, a little nursemaid had wheeled her pram down the path where I was sitting. She was one of those rosy-cheeked creatures who come up from the country to grow pale in London, just as the flowers come up of a morning to Covent Garden and wither perhaps before the night is out. She must have been very new to it all, for she had all the country freshness about her still. Her cheeks glowed in the quick, bright air. Her hair blew loosely over her forehead—through the stray, fine threads of it her eyes danced, glittering with youth. I remember now of what it must have reminded me. You have seen those spiders' webs, caught on the points of furze which, early on a crisp May morning, glisten with drops of dew? Those eyes of hers through her hair reminded me of that. And as she passed me by, leaning forward again and again to whisper to that fat, round baby in the pram, she chanced to look at me.

You must take my word for it that it was not from any thwarted desire to draw her into conversation that the expression in those eyes of hers chilled me. I have never had the courage or, which again I envy so much in others, the presence of mind which brings knowledge to a man, that a woman would answer if he addressed her in the street. I believe there are many women, the most virtuous in the world, who have had little adventures of this kind. God knows, life would be dull without such interludes. But as yet no such woman has come my way. It were better put if I said that I have never come hers. Therefore, there was no desire on my part to say a word to this little nursery maid; yet the swift look in her eyes made a thrill of coldness quiver through me. That a woman looks her disapproval of you can be borne. But it is hard to bear, that look in a woman's eyes which sees you not at all; when in one woman's face you read the disapproval of her whole sex.

I don't know why it should have struck me so strangely that morning, for I am used to it by now. I have known it so long. In any case, it is not a thing to talk about. You have it there in that nursery maid's eyes. I am an ugly devil, not even with that ugliness which pleads a charm to many a woman's heart. I am an ugly devil, and that is all there is about it. The only creatures who have ever gazed at me as though I were the image of God were my mother and my dog. The one is dead. I have only to stretch down my hand from my chair and the other will gaze at me in such fashion now. He sat upon a chair next to me that morning and, as I paid his penny to the collector, he gave me a glance from his brown eyes which I chose to take for gratitude. He thanked me—why not? He had not got any pennies with him. There are times when I am that way myself.

Now, when the nursery maid's eyes had passed me over, they looked at Dandy and her whole expression changed. I caught the sign of friendliness, the gentle come-hitherly glance which I know is the first step in those little adventures leading to chance acquaintanceship. For that look he would have spoken to her had he been a man—by reason of that look, had he been a man, she would have answered him. As it was, only his tail wagged; but she did not see that. And so she passed on while Dandy and I sat gazing after her.

I will not depart into reasons as to why I called him Dandy. This incident alone will serve to tell you why. He was a dandy and so much better-looking than I, wherefore I gave him that name—an unnecessary yet unconscious criticism of myself.

It was a moment or two after this that my electrician strolled by and I began to envy him. Dandy and I both turned our heads to watch him out of sight, and then it was that I coveted most of all those things which were his. For this was what happened. When she had reached the end of the path, had stood a moment to watch the horses as they turned and started their canter once more down the Row, the little nursery maid wheeled round her pram and began retracing her steps.

"Dandy," said I, and his eyes shot round to mine, "they're going to meet."

We watched them closely as they passed.

"I wonder how she looked at him," I muttered. "If he turns, we shall see. Will he turn? Will he turn?"

Dandy's tail wagged, and he turned.

But that was not all; for, as he looked over his shoulder, the little nursery maid whipped round as well, and in the electrician's eyes I saw a smile. When then she turned her head about, I saw a smile there too. Twice they looked back over their shoulders, after which the electrician's steps grew slow. I settled myself back in my chair, so that they should not guess I had seen; for I was really interested by this. The premises of that firm in Bond Street were getting further away with every step he took in their direction. Another hesitating stride or two and they had vanished out of sight altogether. He had turned and was coming back.

For the third time the little nursery maid looked over her shoulder. Oh, you should not say she was leading him on. Such a thought as that never enters a woman's head. She is only curious to see what will happen. When, for instance, as in such a case as this, a woman looks back at you when you have passed, it is not to encourage you to look back at her, it is only to see if you are. But no woman will ever persuade a man to learn that; what is more, no woman would ever be so foolish as to try. It is a man's mistaken ideas about women—or it is love, if you like that better—which makes the world go round.

I could see that my little maid had not the faintest conception of what would have been the result of her glances. Any one might have seen it, for directly she understood that he was following, a great leaping of her heart quickened her steps and she came past me once more, wheeling the pram so fast that the fat, round baby jumped and jumped again.

And all this sudden increase of pace was in order to escape him. Not for one moment was there a desire in the heart of her to be caught. Indeed, in her face there was a set determination that she should not be overtaken—and certainly not opposite me.

Now whether she kept up this pace or not, I am in no position to say. The movement of a receding figure—I speak almost in terms of physical laws—is well-nigh impossible to estimate. I feel sure, however, that she did. The only means therefore by which I can satisfactorily justify the result in my mind is by the assumption that he must have been walking quicker than she. Whichever it was, he caught her.

He had forgotten his tune as he came by me. I think it was quite right of him. When life is holding out to you its greatest possibility, that is no time for humming a tune. Nevertheless, he did his best to look unconcerned. He pretended he had forgotten something at that house in the West End. In fact, as he passed me, he took out his watch and distinctly I heard him say—"Sch! Sch!"

"Splendid fellow," I said to Dandy. And so he was. I would have given much to be in need of such little deception myself. Some one else's romance, however, is very engrossing when it happens that you have none of your own. Dandy and I followed him secretly with our eyes as he sailed down the path like a bold man-o'-war in pursuit of his capture. I say, secretly. There was no secrecy about Dandy. He jumped off his chair and, standing in the middle of the path, he looked directly after them. At least, I think it was after them. There was another dog in sight, but he was very far away.

However that may be, we were not permitted to see the most interesting part of it. She was quick and she was cunning in her manœuvres, was that little nursery maid. Before I could have contemplated the action, she had put about and was off up the path which turns sharply to the right and leads into the solitary heart of the Park. That pram went round that corner bumping on two wheels. I saw the fat, round baby clinging to the sides. Then, sure enough, round went my electrician after her and, but for Dandy, the Park seemed empty once more.

"Well," said I, "that's all there is to that," and I leant back again with disappointment in my chair. There was no such thing as following them. It was not to be done. Love is a timid thing at such a stage as this, and I would not have frightened it for the world. I will confess that I enjoyed the thought that it was generous of me. I fancy, moreover, that Providence, who superintends all these matters, thought so too. In any case, she gave me my reward.

It was a good hour later. Hundreds of men and women had passed by in that time for me to look at—nearly as many dogs for Dandy. I had well-nigh forgotten my electrician when, happening to look down towards that sudden corner, I saw him hurry round it and make to come past me once more. I smiled in gratitude to Providence, but my reward was not full even then. He had an unlighted cigarette in his mouth, and, seeing me once more, knowing I was a friend no doubt, he stopped and asked me for a match. I took out my box.

"Did you find what you wanted?" said I, as he lit his cigarette.

He threw away the match and looked at me.

"I beg your pardon," said he.

"'Twas only," said I, "that you passed me here about an hour ago. You passed me twice. First time you were going out of the Park, the second time you came back. I saw you look at your watch. I imagined that you'd left some instrument at the house up West where you'd been working. You were evidently annoyed at the waste of time."

His eyes opened in some sort of amazement.

"Very quick of you to have noticed it, sir."

"Well—not very," I replied. "I sit here in the Park most mornings and amuse myself that way."

He gave me back my match-box.

"Well—that was just about it," he said. "I'd been fixing some blinds ready for the summer."

"Blinds for the summer," I echoed, "there's a sound about that."

He smiled broadly as he thought of it.

"By the way," said I, "you've lost your narcissus." He looked down quickly at his coat.

"Sch! Sch!" he said again, and with that turned and went away. I think he was beginning to mistrust me. He explained as he left me that he was in a great hurry. I have no doubt he was.

Now that really was the end of it, and for that I broke the very first letter of the tenth decree of Moses. For that lost narcissus, I envied him most of all. But when I say that I confess to envying him his little nursery maid, I simply mean that I envy every man his womenfolk, and the mood was heavy on me that morning. This little incident served only to make it the heavier. But for this incident, in fact, I might never have taken up my pen; certain it is I should never have gone forth on that wild, mad errand which is to become the subject of these pages.

Indeed, nothing less than this had happened—my electrician and his nursery maid had superinduced a mood, a growing, convincing belief that it was not worth while going on. I said aloud that there is nothing more lonely in this world than a lonely man. I made the remark to Dandy. I dared not tell it solely to myself, it would have been too real.

"There's nothing more lonely, Dandy," said I, "in this world than a lonely man."

Dandy stretched out a paw for my hand. He kept beating the air until he got it. When I felt his cold little pads in my palm, I added an amendment—"Unless it be a dog that is lost."

Confident then that in that short statement we had compassed the woes of the whole world, there came a momentary relief. It did not last for long. That vulture of a mood flapped its wings again and settled down once more to feed upon our minds. Neither Dandy nor I could shake him off. For this is the way with dogs, as you know well enough who have one. They are partners for better or for worse in the little limited company of hopes and fears that you see fit to float upon the world. The more shares are taken up, the better it is for you, the more going a concern it will be. But every human being has his own company and every one his own allotment. By which you may so easily understand that every man himself is his largest shareholder. Often, indeed, he marries and takes a partner; but even she has floated some little company of her own.

Now it is not this way with a dog. Take a dog into partnership and he halves your losses and your profits to the last. Little deals of his own, little speculations he may make in the street when the real business of the day is done. But during those working hours on 'Change when the vital affairs of life are afoot, there is he by the side of you, ready to laugh with you at the profits of your hopes, ready to despair with you at the losses you had feared.

Dandy was sharing my losses with me that morning. So fast as depression set in upon me, so, surely did his little ears droop down, his head hang lower and his tail fall limp. Why, even when some beautiful lady smiled at him as she passed, he turned away. I would have sworn he closed his eyes.

"My God," said I, in a supreme effort, "this'll never do," and at that moment came my doctor through the Park. I held up my hand in salute. It was more than a salute. I beckoned him to stop and speak to me. He got down from his car; came across and sat beside me.

"Lazy, lucky devil," said he.

I nodded my head. All men call me that.

"Do you ever give consultations in a place like this?" I asked.

He would have made me a professional answer had I not stopped him.

"Talk away," said he, and I talked.

It is marvellous how subtle and how eloquent one can be over the description of one's ills when there is really nothing the matter at all. I talked for ten minutes.

"It comes to this," said I, in conclusion, "every man jack of us is over-civilized. We're like a breed of race-horses that has outbred the strain which made it famous. We're over-bred."

He nodded.

"The worst of consultation in a place like this," said he, "is that I can't look at your tongue."

I don't suppose that Dandy heard this. In any case the sun was burning down on his head. Whichever it was, a broad smile wrinkled his face and his tongue lolled out. I pointed to him.

"You can look at that," said I; "we live the same sort of lives. Nothing the matter with that, is there?"

"Well—of course—it's an obvious thing to say," he began.

"I want a change?"

"That's it. A complete change of place."

"You're wrong," said I. "I want a complete change of time. I want to go back to a hundred years ago."

"Yes," he agreed, "better still, but I can't advise you how to get there. No—look here—it's not too late. Run off to Italy for a week or two—drop down into Sicily—take your time over it—get out of the train and walk if you like—and don't go alone."

"I shouldn't," said I.

"You know of some one?"

I looked down at Dandy. Dandy looked up at me.

"But I sha'n't go," I said. "You haven't diagnosed the disease. You don't seem to realize the worst symptom of it all."

"What's that?" he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders.

"I'm an ugly devil," said I.

CHAPTER II

Italy was no good to me. I had done it all before. There are not many corners in Europe of which Dandy and I are ignorant. I have seen his little footmarks in the snow and the dust in places where few of your so-called travelled folk have ever been. For my sake he has cheerfully suffered quarantine in half the ports of the south. I know Odessa as if I had been born there, waiting for Dandy's release. And when at last he did come out, a mere shadow of what he was, his ribs, a scale of them, protruding from his sides, he executed so violent a war dance of joy as exhausted all the strength left in him. In two minutes he was lying breathless in my arms.

I swore to him it should never happen again. "A man wouldn't put up with it, Dandy," said I. "Why should you?"

I think he saw the force of it all at the time; but when a few months of good feeding had gone by and I was for setting off East once more, he had forgotten all about Odessa.

"No, you're not coming this time," I said to him. He shook his tail and laughed. He didn't believe me. "Oh—that's all very well," I went on, "but remember that God-forsaken spot, Odessa." If you please, he laughed again. "I don't care," said I. "You're not coming. Get off that box, it's going to the station."

In time he began to realize it. There came a gradual dropping about his ears. He found his coat-brush in the corner where it always was. His leash was still hanging in the hall. I could see him thinking it out, with a puzzled frown between his eyes as if he were saying—"There's some mistake. He forgets I went with him last time—of course, there's some mistake"—whereat, half-convincing himself that there was, his ears pricked up and he began his get-ready-to-go-out dance, a wild exhibition of terpsichorean art, on his hind legs.

"You're not coming, Dandy," said I, and I looked him steadily in the eyes. At last he knew, and I had to turn away. It was too piteous, the expression then that twisted his face.

With his tail a limp and a foolish-looking thing, he stood upon the doorstep and saw me drive off. I waved a hand out of the window at him, but I could not look back.

It was that wave of the hand that did it. He knew I had been playing him a joke. There I was, beckoning to him just before it was too late and, roaring with laughter—so I am told—to think how nearly I had taken him in, he leapt after me.

When I got out of the taxi at Victoria, to my amazement, there he was, splashed with mud behind our wheels from nose to tail.

"A jolly good joke!" he roared. "A jolly good joke! I knew there must have been some mistake." And so there was, but the poor little devil had to pay for it at Algiers.

What good then was Italy to us after such journeys as these? We walked back home to lunch that morning, Dandy forlorn, I with the taste of envy still lingering in my mind.

How can I explain? Life has never reached me. No woman has ever come to me in trouble—and that is part of life; no man has ever told the story of a love affair to me in the whole course of my existence. Whenever a man sees me he slaps me on the back; whenever I meet a woman whom I know, she pats Dandy on the back instead. And to suggest Italy for such a disease as that!

A night or two later, I strolled into a restaurant where occasionally I sup alone. The young man and the young woman go there. Corks fly out of bottles and laughter flies after them. Sometimes there I can imagine I have never seen forty, and when I assure myself that I am forty-three, it seems nothing—nothing at all. The waters of Lethe are in the very finger-bowls on their tables, though often indeed, as I have rubbed it on my lips, it seems I have tasted the waters of Marah. That night after supper, I sat in the lounge outside, taking my coffee. At the other end of the settee I had chosen sat a woman of twenty-eight, listening patiently to the egotism of a boy of twenty-six. Here and there she placed a word with cunning knowledge of his kind. Now and again she laughed, when immediately rose his empty bark above it. At times he laughed all by himself.

"I suppose I shall have to marry her one of these days and settle down," I heard him say, and from that moment my ears caught no sound other than their two voices; his in limping, stilted narrative, hers in encouraging assent.

It was a story no man has the right to tell. Told to a woman, it set the blood racing in my veins till it tingled hot and furious in my very fingers. It seemed he had been to the West Indies, trading in what I don't know and care less. And there, no doubt, with what we call the superiority of our European civilization, he had captured the affections of a planter's daughter.

I caught her name, just her Christian name, as he disclosed it. Clarissa—only Clarissa—I heard no more. He was one of those youths who must give you names to make his story true. And how Clarissa loved him! Behind all his boasting and that barking laugh of his, I could see how well she loved him too. Could it have been anything but love that had brought her from her sunny islands to that grey land of Ireland where he had taken her?

I thought of Mary Queen of Scots, exiled from her golden France to those dim mists of Scotland, the greatest tragedy the world has ever seen. Only the need of history to make this as great a tragedy as well.

In the care of his two aunts he had placed her.

"And there she'll have to stay for some time. She wants educating," said he, and forthwith he proceeded to recount her little ignorances, her little follies, her little mistakes, at each of which he threw back his head and laughed.

"She knows nothing," he continued; "not that I think a woman ought to know much. But she knows absolutely nothing. I had thoughts of her coming over here to school. But she's too old for that; besides, she's nicely tucked away there in Ballysheen."

The name struck quickly on my ears. Ballysheen? Why was it familiar? One of those tricks of sense, perhaps. You know an Irish name anywhere. But I had no inclination then to follow it out. I beckoned my waiter for another Kümmel. My empty glass betokened idleness. I could see the woman's eyes wandering in my direction. The man would never have suspected me of listening, for when a man tells a story, the sound of it absorbs him. Women, I find, are different to that. They are ever aware of the thousand things about them.

"How is she going to be taught?" she asked when her suspicions were allayed by the filling of my glass.

He inhaled deeply of his cigarette and slowly blew out the smoke between pursed lips. "Oh—they'll teach her," said he.

And they—were his two maiden aunts. From his ill-phrased description of them, I could see it all. He had caught a bird of brilliant plumage in the wild heart of a tropic forest, and to a cage one foot by three he had brought her; a cage hung in some dull drab room, where never the light of the sun could enter. Behind the bars of their little bigotries and their little prejudices, this poor untamed creature was beating her tired wings, or she was sitting there waiting with watching eyes for him to return and marry her.

It was not the manner of his telling that made the story real. It was the place. That glare of lights, those sinuous sounds of music that crept upon one's ears, all the blatant artificiality of it, and this casual narrative told with a laugh and a glass to the lips! You hear strange conversations in public places; but I had never heard anything more strange than this.

Her father was wealthy, so it seemed. It was this that had attracted him to the match.

"She'll have ten thousand, when we marry," he continued; "worth thinking about, you know. And more when her father dies. But there's one ghastly drawback. I got used to it over there; but since I've been back in England—talking, for instance, to women like yourself—I sometimes wonder how the devil I'm going to do it."

I held my breath and strained my ears to listen. It is when you know what is coming that you are keenest of all to hear.

"You don't mean to say she's black?" said his companion, in horror.

Back went his head and he laughed right down my spine.

"Good Lord! No! You don't think any amount of money would tempt me to marry a black, do you? I hate that sort of thing as much as anybody. No, she's beautiful enough, but she's colored. There's the strain in her. Three generations back there was a black in the family. In most of them it's worn itself all out completely, but she's a set back. You can see it. Her hair's as black as pitch. Not a mat, thank God; it's fine enough. Her skin's quite olive, too. The whites of her eyes are that blue-white of old china. She's got the taste, too, for gaudy colored things. Wanted to dress herself in canary-colored satin when she first came to Ballysheen. My aunts soon put a stop to that. Oh, I've no doubt they'll teach her in time."

I think just that touch made me see it most of all. The little creature putting on her bright plumage, the very colors which Nature gives to those whose home is in the sun, and then to have them stripped from her, and in their place the dull religious black of these grey countries given her to wear. Oh, no doubt, they would teach her quickly enough, those two old maiden aunts of his. Her school-room roof would be the lightless skies of grey—one quickly learns a lesson of obedience, the obedience of despair, in such a room as that. Ready to their hands would be all the forms of chastisement that can so soon break down a spirit from the sun. Just that canary-colored satin made me see it most of all.

And what did his aunts think of it all, I wondered. It was as if I had wondered aloud, for his companion echoed the question to my thought.

He shrugged his shoulders and beckoned lazily for his bill. "Can't help what they think," said he. "Matter of fact, I don't believe they like it at all. We're an old family, you see. The Fennells have been in Ireland since Cromwell. He gave us our estates, every inch of which has gone. The only property left is the old house my aunts live in. They'll be glad enough if I get a rich wife. For that reason I suppose they put up with her; but it goes against the grain. In Ireland, you know, a drop of black blood is the greatest curse you can have. They won't let any one get a glimpse of her. I can tell you, it's a mystery over there. Everybody knows there's some one staying in the house—but they won't let her be seen. Rather rough on her, you know. They take her out for walks when it's dark—make her put a veil over her face. You wouldn't believe it in a cosmopolitan place like London; but it makes all the difference over there."

I heard no more than that. I could wait to hear no more.

"My things," said I to the attendant. He wanted to pull down the collar beneath my coat. I could not have borne that. It was a matter of walking home to Mount Street. There are times when the more civilized methods of progression have no meaning at all. There are times when one must return to Nature and use one's legs. I walked home, and all the time there sang in my head that phrase—no woman has ever come to me in trouble.

"My God," thought I. "If ever there was a woman in trouble!"

And then the name Clarissa—Clarissa—called itself back into my mind. Clarissa, with her little gown of canary-colored satin.

CHAPTER III

They can be cold, those nights in April, for spring comes timidly to this little island of ours. I have seen children, like her, peep round a door. There is laughter in their faces; it flows in a silver ripple, quivering shyly on their lips. For one instant they look in on you and then are gone. It is no good your calling. Nothing under Heaven will induce them to come back. Perhaps the next morning at the very same hour the door will open gently, you will see the sudden flash of eager eyes, but never again that day. It were as well you gave up hope of it. And so comes spring in such fashion to us here.

That very morning I had been sitting again in the Park. The sun was of pure white silver in a sky of blue. There was that cool, faint sense of chill about it, too, as when you see the flame of candles freshly lit. The daffodils under the trees lifted high their yellow petals from the grass to try and touch the warmth of it. Yet it only lasted for an hour or two. I looked down at Dandy as a grey cloud sailed up above the trees and hid the sun, and I saw a little wrinkle quiver swiftly up his back.

"Ah, my friend," said I, "I've no doubt you'd like Nature to spoil you. We all do; but, unfortunately, she won't."

I am always making these little reflections aloud to Dandy. It is not that he understands, but they do such a heap of good to me.

By night time that grey cloud had drawn a score of others after it. When I came out of the restaurant after supper the wind was scouring the streets with a shower of rain. As I walked home I thought with gratitude of the fire that I knew was burning in my room. My steps quickened as I pictured to myself the sight of Dandy lying curled in a complete circle upon the hearthrug. What manner of person, I wondered, would rise to his feet from such a comfortable position as that and greet you rapturously upon your entrance, put his hands on your wet coat and say between cavernous yawns and jovial laughter how jolly glad he was to have you back again? Perhaps there was one in the world who would have greeted a man like that.

Clarissa.

Ah, but there would be more than laughter, there would be those uncontrollable tears of gratitude if Clarissa's lover came back to her that night. Perhaps she had not even a fire by which to curl herself into the complete circle of contentment. No doubt at such an hour as that she was fast asleep in her tiny bed—or was she lying awake with eyes set deep into the darkness, listening to the ceaseless driving of the rain upon her window? Wherever she was, whatever doing, I could see the joy, lit radiant in her face, at the sound of his voice.

Then, when I thought of his return, I thought as well of him. The sudden picture of his face came straight into my eyes. I heard his voice. I heard his laughter. My God! thought I, what hopelessness to wait for such a man as that! Surely she knew the worthless kind he was? No, it was more likely she did not. So few, few women do.

"But what law of God or Nature is it," said I to myself, "that makes men treat women so?" Had there been an answer which left one shred of dignity to my back, I might have made it. So far as I could see there was none. "Unless," I thought, "unless it is she asks no better of us and gets but little more."

The words had scarcely entered my mind when I was contradicted flatly to my face. From a doorway as I passed I heard a woman's voice.

"Here, I say."

I stopped, peering into the shadow. A girl was there, sheltering beneath the overhanging portal of the door.

"What is it?" I asked.

Perhaps the tone of genuine inquiry in my voice, no doubt a thousand other things as well, checked her in what she was going to say, for she caught the words and shut her lips upon them.

"What is it?" I asked again.

She screwed up her face into a smile; no doubt to hide the injured dignity in her heart.

"Would you like to give me my cab fare home?" said she.

Now had I received a blow of her hand across my face I should not have felt more surprise. It was so direct an answer to my assumption, to the very question I had put myself but a few steps back. I had assumed that women received the worst from us because they asked no better. Yet what better can a woman ask of any man than charity?

In some awkward effort to explain I have said that life has never reached me—no woman has ever come to me in trouble. But it is more than that—and it is less. I have often wanted a woman to say to me, "Come and buy me a hat." No woman ever has. I have known women whom I would like to have adorned from the top of their dainty heads to the soles of their elegant feet; but either it is that they have husbands who do it for them or there is some ridiculous etiquette which forbids it. It seems I am one of those men of whom a woman asks nothing, another symptom of the disease which I forgot to tell my doctor.

You may imagine, then, what I felt when this girl came out of nowhere and asked me to pay her cab fare home. My hand went straight to my pocket. She might have asked so many things other than that. She might have asked for a new hat. Her own was sodden with rain.

"Well, what is the cab fare?" said I. "Where do you live?"

I said it all in the voice of one who is in two ways about what he is doing. You see, I had to make something to my credit out of the business. She had asked for so very little. Even when she told me it was Bloomsbury way, I felt a sense of disappointment. It might as well have been Highgate or Clapham Junction. But in this world, whether or not it be true that you want little, little it is most surely that you get. How long you get it for is another matter. It did not interest me then.

I looked up and down the street.

"You won't find the fare so difficult to get as the cab," said I. The whole street was empty. She peered out of the shadow, and I could see she must be wet to the skin.

"Look here," I continued, "come under this umbrella. I live just here. You'd better sit indoors while I get them to whistle for a 'taxi.'"

She stood quite still for a moment and stared at me. A foolish thing to do. Women behave ridiculously at times. It was the only obvious thing to suggest, and yet she gazed at me as though I could not possibly be aware of what I was saying. I was aware.

"Be good enough to come under this umbrella," I repeated, severely. Then she obeyed.

As we walked along in silence to my door, I began to see myself that there were two aspects to the case. I had forgotten for the moment my man. He would be waiting up for me. He always does. There are little things, and Moxon knows how to do them. I have come to believe he likes it. But would he like this?

"Oh, Moxon be damned," said I, and, of course, I must have said it out loud, for she asked me sympathetically who Moxon was.

"He looks after me," I replied.

I think that must have almost confirmed the opinion in her that I was not quite sane; that Moxon, indeed, was my keeper, for she drew away a little till I laughed and explained.

"You're a swell, then?" she said. She said it with conviction. She said it as a question too.

"If you'll tell me what you mean by that," said I, "I'll tell you if you're right."

Whereupon for a few moments she was silent, but when I prompted her for an answer, she said,

"A swell's a swell."

"Then certainly the description doesn't apply to me," I replied, and, taking out the latchkey, I opened my door.

At first she hesitated to come in, but I took her arm. The sleeve of her dress was drenched.

"You mustn't stay outside," said I. "Just come and wait in my sitting-room while Moxon gets a 'taxi.' He won't be long."

The moment I opened the door, there, sure enough, was Dandy to his feet, but at the sight of my visitor he arrested all motion and glared. At this time of night I was his personal belonging. He had me to himself. There was no doubt he resented this intrusion of another person, and when he realized it was a woman, his contempt was wonderful. With just a glance at me, he turned round and stared into the fire. I never saw reproach so clearly drawn in the outline of a dog's back before.

"This is just a foretaste," thought I, "of what we shall get from Moxon," and I rang the bell.

When I turned round, she was looking all about the room with a silent wonder in her eyes. It is comfortable, I know. I have been told that. But no one has ever surveyed it with such an expression in their eyes as she had then. I felt almost ashamed of myself for calling it my own; for in that look I seemed to see all the dull, cheap finery of her own squalid little rooms in Bloomsbury.

"The world is hard on women," I said to myself, and again the name of Clarissa came like an echo into my thoughts. Clarissa in her little gown of canary-colored satin.

I was just going to ask her more about herself when she forestalled me.

"Do you live here alone?" she asked.

I nodded my head.

"All this to yourself?"

I nodded again.

"Aren't you lonely?"

I felt quite grateful for Moxon's entrance. He opened the door, and the look of astonishment that leapt into his face was ludicrous to behold.

"I beg pardon, sir," he said quickly.

"I rang," said I. "I want you to whistle for a 'taxi' for this lady. She's been caught in the rain outside."

He went out obediently, closing the door. Another moment and we heard his whistle blowing violently in the street.

"Is that Moxon?" she asked, when he had gone.

"It is."

"What's he think of you bringing me in here?"

"I shouldn't attempt to say," said I. "Moxon's mind is one of the riddles I shall never solve. Sometimes I feel inclined to believe that he never thinks at all."

She sat silent for a moment or two staring at the fire, and then suddenly looked up quickly at me.

"Why did you bring me in here?" she asked.

It came to my lips to give some irrelevant answer. Why should I tell her? Would she understand it if I did? But then there flashed across my mind the belief I always hold that above all creatures women are gifted with understanding, and I told her of the story I had just heard.

"And what's that to do with me?" she asked.

"Nothing," I replied, "and everything. One woman in trouble is the whole world of women in distress. What I have to complain of is that they never come to me. You did. That's why I brought you in here. If this child in Ireland were to appeal to me—"

"How can she?"

"That's true," said I, "she doesn't know me."

She looked at me queerly—deedily is the word—and, almost in a whisper, she asked, "Why don't you go to her?"

I leant back in my chair and laughed.

"What, become a Don Quixote!" said I. "Go out and tilt at windmills, try to pose knight-errant to a child who's lost her heart to some one else! What's the good of saving any woman from her own infatuation? She'll only hate you for it."

She looked me strangely in the face.

"She'll thank you for it one day," she said, and there were whole years of terror in her voice.

Suddenly, then, I saw things different, and at that moment came Moxon into the room.

"The 'taxi' for the lady," said he.

CHAPTER IV

Not only has Moxon his ideas about me; he has also his ideas about women.

"They're a strange lot of people," he said once to me, meaning women, but as if they were all huddled together in waiting down in the hall.

"By which you mean?" said I.

"By which I mean, sir, that my sister Amy has thrown off the man she was engaged to and has taken to religion."

That was not telling me much what he meant. I doubt if he really knew himself. In all probability it was that he had come violently to the conclusion that he knew nothing whatever about them, in which case a man will speak knowingly of women in non-committal terms.

In the same diplomatic way, I knew he must be thinking a great deal with every blast of that whistle out in the street, and doubtless in the same diplomatic way, he would express it later.

I returned therefore with a certain amount of expectancy to my room as soon as the "taxi" had driven off and that poor little creature had vanished away into the grey heart of her world in Bloomsbury. There was that which I had slipped into her purse which might pay for the fare and perhaps a hat as well. God knows what hats cost, for I do not. Wherefore, when I put my hand into my pocket, I left it to God to suggest the amount.

And then, as I say, I returned, with a deal of expectancy in my mind. Moxon was putting out my slippers with Dandy looking on—Dandy assuring him, with expressions of contempt for his intelligence, that it was not a bit of good.

"There's some one with him," sniffed Dandy. "We shall have to sit up till they go," and he looked back again into the fire.

I remained there for a moment watching him, really waiting to hear what Moxon had to say. He stood up then, and as he said it, upon my soul, I came to the conclusion that I had never had such respect for diplomacy before.

"Is there anything more, sir?" he asked, and had there been a conscience to prick me, I swear to Heaven I should have begged his pardon for having asked so much. As it was, I smiled serenely when I looked back into his face.

"No—I think that's enough," said I.

And when he replied, "Yes, sir," it was intended to convey that he entirely agreed with me.

I let him get to the door and there he stopped, looking round the room once more, to see if I had forgotten anything on my own account; then as he was departing, I called him back. It might have been enough for him; it was a gross misrepresentation to say that it was enough for me.

"Do you mean to say, Moxon," I began, "that you wouldn't help a woman if she was in trouble?"

"I was not aware, sir," he replied, "that I had said anything about any woman."

I had to swallow that as best I could and begin again on a fresh score.

"Well," I continued, "if a woman had asked you to give her her cab fare home—a woman drenched to the skin, sheltering in a doorway, shivering in the cold at one o'clock at night—what would you do?"

"Naturally—if you put it that way, sir—but it's against my principles, and, what's more, I'm never out at one o'clock at night, I make a point of being in by half-past eleven."

This was too evasive for me. So far as his principles are concerned, I know all about them. A man who supports his mother and two sisters out of his earnings has every right to talk about it being against his principles to help a woman in distress; but there is no special call upon one to believe him. I fancy myself that when, in a moment of confidence, Moxon told me that women as a rule do not take to him, it is that he wishes to hide his affection for the whole sex. I quite agree with him. If I had any affection for the sex, I should try to hide it myself.

But all this was really beside the point. One thing, and one thing only, was in full occupation of my mind—the last words that little half-drowned mouse had said to me before she went. "She'll thank you for it one day."

A vision of Clarissa thanking me grew formlessly into my mind. I gazed over Dandy's head into the fire. She was there. There was her little gown of canary-colored satin, the very shade of it, leaping and dancing with all the joy that I had brought. A very silly dream! I tried to put it out of my head. I turned to Moxon, asking him if ever in the course of our travels we had been to Ballysheen. He shook his head.

"Where is it, sir?"

"In Ireland."

He shook his head again.

"Why does it sound familiar to me then?" I asked.

He assumed the attitude of a Prime Minister in deep thought. I cannot say that I know what that attitude is; but it was the attitude I fancy I should assume if I were asked to play the part of a Prime Minister in an advertising world. It impressed me immensely. I felt that his mind was working at a Herculean task. It lasted a good two minutes. Dandy and I watched him with keen interest all the time. So much were we wrought up to the pitch in fact, that when it was all over and Moxon suddenly made a swift movement towards my desk, Dandy rushed at him, barking loudly. It says much for the histrionic powers of Moxon. I could have made some similar exhibition of emotion myself, but I am more reserved.

After a few moments' hunting about among my correspondence—letters I have kept over two or three years which I need to refer to again—he produced an envelope and, in a triumph of silence, gave it into my hands.

I opened it. Then, when I saw the address stamped on the top of the note-paper, it all came back to me. The Rosary—Ballysheen.

"Why, Townshend!" said I.

Moxon inclined his head with dignity, like a conjuror who has produced the card from the hair of a lady in the audience.

"My dear A.H.," ran the letter, "The floods are all over and all our pools are stocked. We shall have the best season we've ever had. There's a rod tired of hanging here for you. Come and flog the water for a week—only come at once. Yours—F.H. Townshend."

"That was the 18th of April—two years ago," said I.

"You didn't go, sir."

Of course I had not gone. Should I have forgotten Ballysheen if I had? That was the time we went to Algiers, and I glanced at Dandy.

"You can go to bed, Moxon," said I, and therewith I sat down at my desk and pulled out a clean sheet of note-paper.

"Good-night, sir."

"Good-night," I answered, and I dipped my pen in the ink.

"My dear F.H.," I wrote, "If the fishing is anything like it was two years ago, may I come over and hold a rod in your honor? My doctor tells me I want a change and I am beginning to believe him, accordingly when I happened on your letter of two years ago, I made up my mind to force your hospitality. If inconvenient don't hesitate to say so.—Yours, A.H. Bellairs. P.S.—Are there two old maiden ladies in Ballysheen of the name of Fennell?"

When I had finished, I read it through. Could any man guess from that innocent little postscript, the mad errand I had in contemplation? I think I know now why women are such past-masters in the use of that particular form of letter writing. As a method of diplomacy, there is nothing to touch it. What you say in a postscript can have no possible significance to the man who reads it. Were it a matter of dignity alone, no one would admit to themselves that you had treated them with such scant courtesy. No—that postscript was the one bright spot in my letter, and therewith I sealed it up.

When I came back to the fire, there was Dandy still staring at the leaping antics of the canary-colored flame. I sat down on the hearthrug and put one arm round his neck.

"You can see that satin gown, too, can you?" said I. Dandy blinked his eyes. "And do you think she'll be grateful?" I went on. "Do you really imagine that any woman is grateful to a rank outsider for breaking her heart? It will break her heart, you know. She's breaking it now, longing for her blue skies and her palm trees—but if we send her back there without him, it'll break her heart altogether. Yet that's what we shall have to do. We shall have to send her back again. What do you think about it all?"

Dandy yawned towards the fire, and the yellow flame danced higher than ever. At moments it looked as though it were going to leap up the chimney out of sight, yet always it came back into the heart of the fire once more like a spirit chained to the furnace.

Three days later there came a reply from Ballysheen.

"There's not a fish in the water," wrote Townshend. "But come all the same, you never know. Your company is as good as any twenty-pounder in the slackest of seasons." "What, is he lonely too?" I thought. "There are Miss Fennells here," the letter continued, "but for God's sake don't talk of them as old maiden ladies—Miss Emily wears an orange-colored wig, so they say in Ballysheen—and she would have you know that at thirty-seven a woman is in her prime. I don't promise you entertainment from them—but come anyway."

And I am going. I have just rung the bell for Moxon, and Dandy already is beginning to lift his nose to the scent of adventure in the wind.

CHAPTER V

When I woke up this morning—my first in Ballysheen—the sun was ablaze upon everything. Last evening I had driven over the nine miles from Youghal upon Quin's car. Quin is the local baker, doing odd jobs as a jobbing-master besides. Then the sky had been a sullen grey, no light or hope was there to be found in it as far as your eyes could see. Those long, lone, rutted roads were empty. Not a soul did we pass from the bridge over the Blackwater all the way to where the dense trees tunnel an entrance into the wee village of Ballysheen.

"Is it always as lonely as this over here?" I asked of Quin, whose eyes were set dreamily before him, as though in the little gap between the horse's ears he saw visions of a country we should never reach. "Are there never any people about on the roads?"

With a jerk he brought himself back into the present.

"Shure there are plenty of people in these parts," said he, "only they're in their cottages, the way 'tis misting."

I gathered that he meant raining. But it was not raining, wherefore I said as much.

"Ah—well it will," said he, in a tone of fatality. "Ye see them clouds over there to the west, 'tis always wet when they be coming up from there. D'ye see the way the cattle have got their backs turned to ut? Yirra, don't I know a wet day when I see wan!"

"But, my God!" said I. "It's six o'clock and it isn't wet yet!"

"Wait a while," he replied, equably, "it will," and he put up the collar of his coat to prove it.

That was my first, my very first, impression of Ireland. Here this morning there was not a cloud in the sky, the sun was a flaming torch in the heavens, there had not been a drop of rain all night, yet in the heart, in the very spirit of James Quin there had poured down a veritable deluge. And they would understand Ireland who talk of a nation of light-hearted men and women. I think we must have driven three more miles of our journey before I said another word after that. Speaking truth, the greyness of it, the endlessness of those walls of mud and stone, the passing sight of a roofless cottage, the very soul of its past habitation starved and dead within it, they had all combined to close about me in a dull, impenetrable despair. Despair, I will admit, that was not of my own. I was thinking of Clarissa. I could see her gazing forth from the window of her prison, with those dark, Southern eyes of hers, gazing into that limitless mist of grey out of which, had a Banshee cried, upon my word, I should have felt no surprise.

Then from thought of her came the sudden wonder to my mind—how was I to help her? How, in the name of Heaven, set about the liberation of a woman who hugs to her heart the very chains that bind her? And not that obstacle only, but there were those two maiden aunts to face. It was then I turned once more to Quin.

"Who are the Miss Fennells who live in Ballysheen?" I asked.

"Is it Miss Mary and her sister, living at Janemount?"

"Are there others?" I inquired.

"There are not," said he, "'tis enough for one village to be havin' thim two. I wouldn't drive thim on this carr, not if they was to go down on their four knees bended."

"Why not?"

"Faith, they'd owe me for the job of ut for the rest of their lives."

"Are they very poor?"

"Is ut poor?" he exclaimed. "Shure, they haven't got what 'ud cover the palm of me wan hand with silver, an' they dhrive to Lady O'Shea's at the house on the cliff over, the way ye'd think the money was dhropping out av a sack with a hole in ut."

"Is it a crime to be poor, then?" I asked.

"It is not," said he; "but 'tis a crime to hide ut, the way ye can be ashamed of others who are."

To meet fatalism and philosophy all in one day! I had not done as much in London in a year. But in Ireland, if Nature has not given you the one, a divine Providence invests you with the other. My friend Townshend, whom I have not met since our days together at Oxford, I find is a philosopher to his finger-tips. But his is a philosophy of the beauty of Nature, whereby he closes Her hand that she may not present him with the gift of fatalism too.

It was this morning when, finding the sun laughing in at my windows, shaming my laziness, I jumped out of bed, dressed and went down into the garden. There was Townshend already before me, visiting his rose trees with an open pruning knife in his hand.

"I thought March—" I began.

He laughed.

"You're quite right," said he. "March for pruning—but all the rest of the year for love."

I stole a glance at him as he moved to another tree. This was the first swift insight I had received into his philosophy. Had he really got the secret of it—had he found Dandy's unassailable circle of contentment? One asks one's self these questions in a breath. If in the next breath they are not answered, they are gone. Now, in the next breath, the name of Dandy having but recently come into my mind, I lost sight of the spirit of his philosophy and began wondering where he was in the flesh. From wondering, I asked.

"On a morning like this," said Townshend, "where else would you expect?"

I shook my head.

"Out on the cliffs with Bellwattle?"

I stared at him.

"In the name of God," said I, "who's that?"

"My wife. My name for her is Bellwattle. In a moment of exuberant spirits one day, she addressed me as Cruikshank. Why? For no reason. For less reason I returned her the compliment of Bellwattle. That at least was suggested by her name for me. What made her think of Cruikshank is more than I can tell you. She hasn't the faintest conception herself."

So I call them Cruikshank and Bellwattle. It seems in some odd way to fit in with the quaintness of their philosophy—this living to give to Nature in return for what Nature has to bestow on them.

Just before breakfast, then, came Dandy dancing attendance on Bellwattle. They had walked four miles.

She swung up the path from the gate with Dandy at her heels, and her step was as light as the morning. I had not even known until the night before that my host was married; yet as Dandy, seeing me for the first time that day, leapt thrice and was at my knees, she gave me a smile and a cry of good-morrow, and I felt we had been the best of friends for the better part of our lives.

"How about breakfast?" said Cruikshank.

Bellwattle nodded her head violently, waving a bunch of wild violets in her hand. I followed them slowly into the house. There was something on Dandy's mind which he had somehow or other to express.

"Well—what is it?" I said, and I caught one paw as he jumped up, so that he must walk upon his hind legs beside me. "What is it?"

He dragged at his paw until I set it free, and then he told me. He raced three times round one flower-bed and twice round another, with the sides of his body almost touching the ground, so incredible was the speed he made. When that was completed he came back and looked up at me with his tongue lolling out.

"I understand," said I. "I can feel it just the same. It's the country." Whereupon he started racing it all over again.

Of course, it is the moment that lives; never the hour or the day or the year. The moment is the nearest approach to the truth in our conception of Eternity. I have gone back in my mind since, over my stay at Ballysheen, and, though many a meal-time comes back to my memory with pleasure, that first breakfast stands out beyond them all.

The chintz curtains were drawn full back, the window was wide open. Marvellously muted by the distance came the tireless music of the sea, which plays upon its gentlest instruments when the day is still. From the farmyard over the way the strains of yet another orchestra touched at moments on our ears. Neither the one nor the other clashed, for Nature chooses her instrumentalists, not for what they can do, but for what they must. This is not only the secret of harmony, it is the secret of all music and all art.

In the hedge of barberry across the lawn, the birds were building a very city of houses. In the high grass of the lawn itself, the daffodils lifted their trumpets, blowing a blast—young heralds announcing the entry of a knight into the lists, while all the little snowdrops bowed their heads, as maidens used, and trembled.

I sat down at the table facing the window in silence. Upon the clean white cloth was placed their set of Worcester-pink, with the color of roses, such as we scarce know how to handle upon china now. In the middle of it all stood one great bowl of primroses.

The maid came in and placed a basin of porridge before me—porridge! Such as I had not eaten for years and years.

"I'll ask them to let me off this to-morrow," I said to myself. "But this being my first day, 'twere better manners to take it now and say nothing." Therefore, I took it; and what is more, I am glad I said nothing. When I looked up out of the window again, that basin was empty.

Half way through breakfast, Cruikshank suddenly looked up. He directed his gaze at me.

"What was that about the Miss Fennells?" said he.

For a moment I felt confusion in my cheeks. The barest instant it lasted, and then was gone; yet in that very instant Bellwattle's eyes had sought my face. When a woman has instinct—and when has she not?—her heart has seen long before her eyes are warned of it. The abruptness of her husband's question had presupposed confusion in both of us, wherefore, while I was confused, her eyes were ready to my face to find it. I would swear Cruikshank were as ignorant of it as a helpless babe, for when he had waited but a second for my answer, he began again.

"That letter you wrote me," said he. "When you asked—"

"Of course—I know—and in the postscript I wanted to know if they lived here."

"That's it."

I made an effort to let him leave it at that.

"All your eggs come from the farm, I suppose?" I hazarded.

"Yes; he won't let me keep chickens; they tear up the garden," said Bellwattle. "Bless their hearts—I think those little chickens—the tiny little yellow things—" The thought of them overwhelmed her.

Words failed, as they often did with her. She begged to be allowed to keep them next year; but Cruikshank shook his head.

"What was it you wanted to find out about the Miss Fennells?" he asked. His mind had clung tenaciously to its subject.

"Merely that I wanted to know if they lived here. I had heard them mentioned."

"They live at a house called Janemount," said Bellwattle. "I'll show it to you after breakfast."

CHAPTER VI