Scene VII.--IDYLL

Now fast beside the pathway stood

A ruin’d village, shagg’d with wood,

A melancholy place.--_William Stewart Rose_.

Maude Juxon had failed to materialize at the time of Flora’s visit,

because she was on the other side of the great chalky billows,

enjoying life after her usual manner, that is to say by wasting it in

vain pursuits. Had Flora dropped into the Thorlund valley earlier, she

would certainly have seen the notorious little tandem of asses in

front of the rectory. So glorious was the evening that Maude

determined to give herself the gratification of calling upon Dr.

Berry, to offer him a drive through the serene and poetic atmosphere.

The spoilt beauty had soon forgiven the scholar for that indiscreet

praise of herself before her husband. Indeed she liked him the better

for his panegyric, which at least convinced her of the thorough

genuineness of his nature. She knew that he liked her; it flattered

her that he should think her clever. She had been indeed so impressed

by this fact that she spent two terrible days struggling to compose an

equal number of original lines of poetry; and when the effort brought

forth, after much ruffling of silken hair and puckering of pretty

brows, nothing but a silly series of ragged syllables, she shamelessly

copied Sir Nicholas Breton’s “Farewell to the World” from an old book

of English poetry which she discovered in the house, and this inky

forgery was crumpled in her pocket when she jumped into the cart.

The rector was in the church, said the housekeeper, and thither Maude

repaired, to discover him unpoetically engaged in discussing the

condition of the roof with a pair of ruddy sheep-farmers. Some mossy

tiles had been worked awry by wind and weather, and in time of rain a

puddle would occur symbolically in the vicinity of the font. As

Maude’s bright colours illuminated the porch, the first bucolic was

expressing his conviction that a certain handy labourer in his employ

would experience no difficulty in resettling the recalcitrant tiles:

the second bucolic indifferently suggested that the repairer should be

summoned forthwith; the rector dreamily concurred, and the meeting was

adjourned.

“Now you are coming for a drive,” said Maude, when the farmers had

clamped away, side by side like twin brethren. “I am sure you deserve

it, after being shut up with those things. What funny voices they

have, and the red on their cheeks is just like blobs of paint! Why is

it that big men squeak, and little men bellow? How can you talk to

them? I shouldn’t know what to say after I had exhausted the weather.”

“With these men, fortunately, that subject cannot be exhausted,” said

the poet. “It is very kind of you to invite me to drive with you on

this magnificent evening, but I always find you kind and good,” he

went on, gazing into the marvellous flora of her hat with his calm

thought-filled eyes. “I have not seen you for three days, and in that

time have made, I am ashamed to say, no appreciable progress with my

work. I dream too much. Even when I sit beside my table I am unable to

control my thoughts. I am carried away beyond the border, and there

wander at will tween truths and half-truths. And there I am lost, and

when I awake it is late, and nothing has been recorded.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Maude. “I hope you don’t talk like that to the

sheep-men and the cow-men?”

“I speak upon such matters to you only,” he replied tenderly. “Because

I know you understand.”

He dropped the church key among the weeds on the gravel walk, and did

not appear to notice his loss until Maude stooped and picked it up for

him.

“Look at my cart!” she exclaimed, with childish pleasure. “Doesn’t it

shine? I have just had it varnished, and those pink lines painted

round it. May I have some of your poppies?”

“Let me gather them for you,” said the scholar, as she hovered about

the border. “You will soil your gloves.”

Immediately he began to decollate all manner of poppies, scarlet,

white, and variegated, great sleep-scented globes of blossom, ragged,

and fluffy, and seed-capped, until Maude arrested his hand with a

scream of laughter.

“No, no! What could I do with those things--as big as cabbages? It is

the pink Shirley ones I want.”

Laughing and chattering, she selected half-a-dozen of the prettiest,

and fastened them into her dress; while the abashed scholar strewed

the flowers of his own selection about the turf.

“Don’t waste them,” cried Maude. “Go and stick them about the heads of

my donkeys.”

The poet did so, but as he bent his silvered head over the long ears

of the little steeds, a voice out of the breeze from the garden of the

Strath sardonically whispered, “Oh, scholar, scholar! How has your

wisdom served you? Has it fitted you for nothing better than to deck a

donkey’s head with poppies? Reason and infatuation, to say truth, keep

little company together.”

“You too must wear a flower,” said Maude, approaching him. “Here is a

pink rose for you.” She lifted her dainty self on tip-toe, and

fastened the bloom into his coat with perfumed white-gloved fingers,

rattling on, “We must preserve the scheme of colour. I like every

thing on me and near me pink. When I die I should like to be carried

away on one of those delicious pink clouds we see at sunset.”

“A beautiful thought,” he said reverently, touching her hand lightly

as it brushed a petal from his coat. “And beautifully expressed by a

true poetic mind.”

“I am clever?” cried Maude eagerly. “I really am a little clever?”

He smiled upon her, as he replied devoutly, “Cleverness is a small

thing. It is an attribute we allow even to the lower animals. You are

inspired.”

Then he submitted to be packed into the little cart and driven from

the valley.

At the sign-post Maude whipped her leader round to the right, and they

descended the slope which ended among the ruins of Queensmore. The

little lady had been silent for some minutes. That copied poem made

itself uncomfortable in her pocket. She knew that her companion was

widely read. He might recognise it, and she would be shamefully

unmasked. She did not so much mind his discovering her shallowness,

because it was somewhat of a strain to maintain the part; but what she

did fear was lest a forced acknowledgement of her sheer ignorance

might also deprive her of beauty in his eyes. She did not want to lose

her present hold upon him. She liked him, she told herself, immensely,

because he was handsome and dignified, so immeasurably, if

unconsciously, superior to all the men she had known. She had seen her

husband standing by his side. She could never have believed it

possible for two men to be so widely different; the one had seemingly

all the gifts Nature had to bestow; the other had--mere money.

She refused to consider Herbert Juxon’s healthy mind and honest heart,

and resolutely turned her eyes from his excessive forbearance. She had

received a letter from him that morning. Somehow his kindly utterances

always irritated her. He was coming to her on Saturday; he wished he

could take her upon the Continent for a time, but business was holding

him closely to the city; he intended to look out for a house in the

country, which he hoped might suit her health; it was his ambition to

make her happy. But his kindly words and thoughts were merely

hailstones upon this butterfly.

The wheels jolted round a bend in the grass-grown road, and the

entrance to what had been the village appeared before them. On a dark

winter’s day the scene would have inspired with melancholy; then,

mellowed with sunshine and enriched by flowering grasses, lush reeds

and lichens, it made a gratifying picture for the artist. Ruin and

decay were all around; here, brambles choked the bleak foundation of

a former ale-house, the bricks and woodwork of which had been carted

away; there, a roofless cottage gaped with doorless mouth and stared

with empty window sockets.

The church had been a low thatched building with a shingled spire. The

remains were tottering upon a slight eminence beside a gigantic yew.

The thatch sagged heavily, loaded with moist mosses of an emerald

green, and the rotten rafters snagged inward like broken ribs. The

interior was stripped bare. Its bell miles away was used for calling

children to school; its encaustic tiles and fittings had been

distributed abroad; its font and brasses had passed into the hands of

collectors of antiques; even the burying place had been rifled, and

the old grave stones taken to fill gaps in walls or to floor

pig-sties.

A portion of the parsonage stood gaunt and spectral, its windows

gloomy gaps fringed with ivy, its garden a pasture ground for straying

cattle and adventurous sheep. The roof was golden with lichen, and the

gutter-line broken picturesquely into a dog-tooth pattern by tiles,

jutting off, awaiting removal by October winds. Swallows were darting

in and out of the space once occupied by the door, where old parson

Hooper had often entered in ragged red-lined coat and stiff gloves

eager to count his gold. The village green beyond, where a rust-red

pump leaned far out of the perpendicular, was a mere field, lined

geometrically by four cart-tracks. White butterflies were swarming,

and fruit-trees grew unpruned, and all the old gardens writhed with

caterpillars; the grass and reeds fluttered lazily; a gentle sound

issued through the vacant windows that were left.

Maude tried to be solemn as they drove through this desolation. She

quickly found herself incapable of sustaining the effort, and dropping

the reins demanded from her companion accurate information as to

whether _asinus vulgaris_ really delighted in consuming herbaceous

plants of a spiny character.

“By refusing to do so the animal would destroy a long cherished

belief,” the scholar replied.

“Then their little hearts shall rejoice,” said Maude. “There are

enough thistles here to feed a hundred donkeys for a year. I will tie

one of the reins round this pump, and the beasts may eat prickles

while we explore.”

When the tethering process had been accomplished they roamed through

the village of the past, and presently entered the churchyard. A low

tomb beneath a cypress offered a shady resting-place which met with

Maude’s approval, and thither she led the scholar, who was prepared to

indulge her smallest whim. Seating themselves upon the sunken masonry,

they watched the drops of sunlight filtering through the leaves, and

making satin-like patches upon the mouldering and mossy stones which

sealed down the bodies of those who long ago had taken the mystic

road, which, in the words of a wise Greek, is not of difficult

passage, nor uneven, nor full of windings, but all very straight and

downhill, and can be gone along with shut eyes.

“It is heavenly,” said Maude with a sigh, firmly believing she was

perfectly happy, and fortunately ignorant of the saying of another

Greek, that a woman knows only two happy days, that of her marriage,

and that of her funeral.

Dr. Berry was leaning forward, his beautifully shaped hands clasped

between his knees, his eyes fixed upon an inscription still faintly

legible beside a laurel, “Here innocence and beauty lie.” A beautiful

woman was close beside him and in her soul, he believed, innocence was

personified. The gently rounded summit of Deadman’s Hill rose in the

distance. Clearly outlined against the rosy sky stood the tall rugged

post which marked the spot of the gallows where former villains had

been compelled to submit to fate. The gallows had long ago been swept

away. The post, which stood as its representative, cast a long narrow

shadow across the ruins.

“Say something,” urged the pink idol.

“I shall remember this,” he answered dreamily.

Maude flushed a little. She did not like to be reminded of the future,

when her dainty bloom must ripen off and the wrinkle assert its

tyranny. “Ruins always make people sad,” she said a little crossly.

“The only ruins which could deject me would be those of my

prettiness,” she went on in a lower voice.

“Dear lady,” murmured the poet, taking her hand impulsively. “Beauty

will never leave you. It is the soul gazing from your eyes that gives

you loveliness, and the soul does not age. Fifty years hence there may

be snow upon your head and lines along your brow, but the beauty that

is within can defy the years.”

Maude conceived that moment profitable for the production of her

borrowed master-piece. Releasing her hand, she burrowed into her

pocket and brought forth an inky ball of manuscript, which she

unrolled with blushes and smoothed modestly upon her knee, saying in a

small faltering voice:

“You’ve never asked if I have written anything, but I--I’ve listened

to you so often I want you to--to hear what I have done. Will you let

me read you a little poem of my own?”

Her heart began to thump.

“My sister! My dear sister!” the scholar cried. “This is indeed a

privilege. How selfish I have been! Completely engrossed in my own

work, I had forgotten yours. Let me put myself in the disciple’s place

and learn.”

He stretched himself upon the grass by her feet, and in that posture

of humility put back his uncovered head, that he might behold her

pretty features, and the brilliant curls fluttering beneath the brim

of her hat.

“I am ready,” he murmured.

“It is sad,” said Maude warningly.

“We poets love the sorrowful theme. The sweetest music is also the

saddest. But read! I am impatient to hear.”

“It is called Farewell to the World,” she murmured, with shy

deprecation, and then hurriedly, “I believe you don’t want to hear it.

I’m sure you’ll think it stupid.”

“I shall feel only admiration, with perhaps some little envy,” he

answered. “But why are you so diffident? Am not I a poor weaver of

fancies, like yourself?”

His encouragement was so kindly and sincere that Maude gained courage.

With increasing colour she began to read:

“Go! Bid the world, with all its trash, farewell.”

“Slower,” he entreated with upraised hand. “The music is lost when the

time gallops.”

Maude’s fear began to be dissipated when the title and opening line

passed unchallenged. She continued with more confidence, until her

dainty voice sounded disdainfully the last of the stanza, “Leave it, I

say, and bid the world farewell.”

A few moments of silence intervened before the poet spoke:

“For freshness of conception, strength of imagery, and purity of line,

that verse is only to be surpassed by the best work of the Elizabethan

poets. It recalls indeed to my mind Sir Nicholas Breton’s--”

“Oh!” Maude interrupted, dreadfully pale. “You don’t think I--” And

there she stopped in dire confusion.

“Indeed the similarity is but upon the surface,” he continued. “We all

have our models. The Elizabethan, to whom I have just referred, had

neither your originality nor your strength of metaphor. To draw from

the model is one thing; to improve upon it is another. Talent may

copy, but genius will improve.”

Maude breathed again and, after resolutely repelling the idea that she

was acting with shameless wickedness, read the second stanza with

boldness, the third and last with impudence, and sat, joyous in her

sins, awaiting the verdict.

“That verse again,” he prayed.

When she had complied with this request, he repeated the first line in

a resonant voice, with his eyes fixed upon the ruined church:

“Then let us lie as dead, till there we live.”

Silence fell again, intensified by the ticking of the insects in the

grass and the wings of the swallows cutting through the air. Dr. Berry

turned abruptly and seizing Maude’s right hand pressed it passionately

to his lips. He was paying his tribute then, not to face and figure,

nor to dainty garments, but to a beautiful soul which was not there at

all.

“I am a mere clerk,” he said in a thrilling voice. “A poor transcriber

of the ideas of others, while you soar through the clouds, and drink

out of the golden cup of the gods. How hollow must my poor lines have

sounded upon your ears! Yet you listened patiently, and approved,

condescending to stoop and lift me upon your pinions and point out to

me the path to the stars. My feeble song is but a piping of pan-pipes.

Yours is a trumpet blast, stirring the depths.”

“I’m so glad you like it,” said Maude, blushing deeply, and delighted

by his praise.

“What is your inspiration?” he continued, gazing up into her flushed

face. “Tell me what stirs your soul. It is not true, as men have said,

and will still affirm, that wisdom lies latent in the mind. We are the

inspired media of an influence, that influence emanating from the

minds which have preceded us. One great poet of the past heard a

gentle fluttering of wings above his head. Another thought he could

see a butterfly quivering about his pen. I, if I may mention my

unworthy self, have a strange nervousness, the sense of a presence, a

quickened heart, and a pricking sensation round my forehead. When the

inspiration passes I am depressed and weak.”

“I don’t know,” quavered Maude. “Oh yes! I like to smell roses.”

“It is fitting,” he said reverently. “Daintiness and sweetness make

appropriate food for the divine soul. I see now that I have been

misled. I have always refused to admit that the poetess, if born into

this present age, would be able to break the bonds of social and

domestic life, and fly upward with her song. Tell me,” he added in a

low and pleading tone. “Confide in me, dear sister. Only the heart

which has been wrung, and the mind which has cried, ‘The hand of God

has touched me,’ could have controlled the brain to fashion such

sorrowful truths as those you have recited. You have already passed

through tribulation?”

A robin darted into the cypress, and his beautiful little body

throbbed with song.

“Indeed I have,” said Maude pathetically. “I have had dreadful

troubles, but I have never told anyone.”

Honestly she believed what she said. She did not know that her silly

life had been a mere ramble through a pleasance. Never having seen

suffering, she did not know what it was. But she had a husband whom

she did not care for, ambitions which had not been realised, clothes

which had not come up to her expectations, and friends whom she knew

had scoffed at her idle ways. So she had passed indeed through the

valley of tribulation.

“We do not talk of these things,” the scholar gently answered. “Like

the young Laconian, we hold the fox to our bosom, and though it may

gnaw, and we may wince and faint, we still declare the creature is not

there. We clutch the rose tightly, and aver there are no thorns. But

those who love us know, and we are glad that they should know, because

we need sympathy even as the flowers need dew. I have not known

suffering, and while thankful for the privilege, I confess my work

lacks that refining touch which suffering alone can give. Dear sister,

put your hands for one moment upon mine.”

The little lady quivering slightly, permitted him to take her hands.

Her eyes were hidden by her hat, and waves of pink chased one another

across her face and throat.

“Our souls are here united,” he cried triumphantly. “Beautiful and

inspired poetess! Did you not feel that restful sense of approaching

union when first we met? We have grown together, during these blissful

days, like two blooms upon one stem. Our ideals are the same. Together

we may succeed in realising them. I have perhaps--pardon the

presumption--more learning, but you have far clearer sight, a more

perfect mind, and a soul quickened into fire by the suffering you have

undergone. We will bring these forces together. How perfectly destiny

works! She brought you to me at the time when I needed you most. And I

have served you a little. You were neglecting your gifts. The fires

were smouldering ineffectually. I flatter myself that, if we had

failed to meet, that magnificent lyric I have just heard would never

have been penned by this white hand.”

“It wouldn’t,” Maude quavered.

“Then I have served you, but the debt upon my side remains still

large. What a mysterious thing is this union! You have often seen a

climbing plant reaching out for support, and when it finds a stem to

which it may cling it grows into full perfection; but if it cannot

establish the union it must wither. The same with our souls. But

destiny is so kind she would not see us wither. You and I have been

languishing, but now we shall grow--together and undivided.”

He pressed her hands together, and bent his head over them.

INCIDENTAL

All things are changing; and thou thyself art perpetually altering

and, so to speak, wasting away always.--_Marcus Antoninus_.

The time of ripened fruit had come, and the grass was yellow and sere.

Change was upon the face of the country, the prospect was mantled in

mists, and the shortened evenings were dark with rain-clouds. The note

of Nature’s song had altered. Autumn had taken the lyre out of

summer’s reluctant hand, and as she struck her fiercer notes the

foliage turned from green to gold, and the migratory birds went away.

The spirit of change had settled upon the Bethel of Thorlund. The

interior was in better order than formerly. The spider had been

routed, and the mouse discomfited; the strong coarse flowers of autumn

glimmered dimly at the east, where the old hangings had been replaced

by new; the brass-work shone, and the damp altar itself awoke one day

from a long lethargy to find itself resplendent in a new green mantle.

The sleep which hung so long upon the rector’s eyes had been in some

part dissipated. Foolish Maude was the murderess of that slumber.

Through her trivial and wholly terrestrial mind Dr. Berry perceived

that one side of his environment lacked the beauty which was requisite

for his bodily peace. Hitherto his mind had been so fully occupied in

its strange flights that his charge the church had been but lightly

included. But, subsequent to that memorable evening in the churchyard

of ruined Queensmore, his lower self noted, with a distinct

uneasiness, a certain lack of harmony between dreamland and the

earthly vision. His manner of life had made stains which he would

willingly have seen eliminated. The neglected church was one of these

blots. He opened his eyes, and removed this reproach, in order that

his poetic soul might no longer receive offence. This partial

awakening was not spiritual, because at the same time he attended more

carefully to his own appearance. His hair was more thoughtfully

arranged, and his shoes were more elegant. Selfishness was the root,

pride the stem, and vanity the bloom of this sudden growth, which had

been raised into being and propagated as a pastime by Maude.

Change had come also over the spirit of the influence. It was

stronger, more assertive, and more binding. It was at the same time

more sinister. Conway and Drayton had become drifting particles

controlled by the house, the instruments of its will, like electrons

imprisoned within the atom. They roamed the garden in a perpetual

state of dreams, responding to every breath from the hidden chamber,

where the heart of the Strath was beating. Had Drayton been able to

remind his companion of those past days of profligacy, Conway might

have shaken his head with a perplexed smile. Had the older man been

told of his former struggles to keep oil in the lamp of life, he would

probably have replied, “I am thankful such misfortunes have never

occurred to me.”

As for Lone Nance she was noisy no longer. The Strath supplied what

had been wanting in her. Had she wandered again into the country, she

would doubtless have been seized by the former wildness, and claimed

by the old evils; the borrowed reason would have left her; she would

have sunk again to the level of the animals. Conway would often sit

and gaze upon her face. Though she was brown and tanned, she brought

back for him fair-haired Winifred, walking sadly through the orchard

in glimmering white, her small pale face set towards the road,

watching the night for the lover who did not come.

Flora too had changed since that evening when her soul had been

stripped bare. She had the feeling that youth was departing from her,

and that her woman’s pride of beauty was beginning to wane. Mr. Price

regarded her with apprehension, believing her to be ill. But she was

not ill. She was only undergoing her punishment for having defied the

first principles of the drama. She had come to regard her former

opinions with a sort of loathing akin to fear. She confessed that she

was an unnatural woman, after all her boastings of having made a step

in advance of the remainder of her sex. What had actually occurred

during her visit to the house of the drama she did not know; but she

carried away a dream that evening which became a cloud darkening her

life.

Upon a cheerless afternoon when a mass of grey vapour spread across

the sky dropping warm rain at intervals, Conway brought his

fellow-dreamer to Kingsmore vicarage.

Flora flushed when the leading character of the Strath entered. She

had never been backward in speaking to any man, but then she was

afraid. She knew that she desired to attract Conway, that she would

still draw back if she could make him approach, but the knowledge came

to her that power was wanting. She had lost the old art. At a glance

she understood that he had no real affection for her. Could she have

come to the Strath with a pure mind, as a humble heroine seeking

development, as one anxious to discharge the high, if seemingly

commonplace, functions of a woman, even as Nancy Reed had unwittingly

approached the house, it might have been otherwise.

Mr. Price sought possession of Drayton, and Flora stood in the garden

with the man whom she desired to shrink from, but could not. The rain

had ceased, but the grass was mantled with film, and all the trees

dripped moisture. The girl was cold; she was wearing white, which did

not suit her. She might have recalled to him Winifred, as she had done

once before, because she too was fair-haired, but she did not. Conway

appeared to have forgotten that she was near. Once Flora would have

been enraged at being thus slighted, but now she was pitying herself.

A cluster rose, still showing a few blooms, wreathed an old-fashioned

archway, and Flora in passing brushed against one of the flowers, and

shivered when it became immediately resolved into a number of wet

petals about their feet.

“I have changed a little lately,” she said with a new timidity. “I can

touch a rose now.”

Conway stopped when she spoke, and looked fixedly into the mist.

“Could you never hold a rose?” he said. “That is unnatural.”

It was the cruellest word he could have uttered. She shrank from him

again, but gathered courage to say, as they moved on, “It is not easy

to conquer any antipathy. Last summer I would faint, if I came into a

room where roses were. Next year, perhaps, I shall be able to wear

them.”

Nancy wore roses in her hair. Indeed she was always fragrant with

flowers. Conway had been sorry to see the grass flaked all over with

shell-like petals; but Nance assured him that at the Strath roses

bloomed all the year round. When Flora confessed that the fragrance of

the queen of blossoms had caused her to faint the gulf between them

became wider.

“There is a rose-bush at Queensmore, close beside the ruins of the

church,” he went on, in the abstracted manner which had been his of

late. “I walked there early in the summer, when the flowers were at

their best. It was close upon evening, and as I looked through the

trees I thought I saw a woman, clothed in white, leaning over a tomb.

When I came nearer I saw it was this bush covered with blooms. I went

back and tried to make out the white woman again, but could not.”

“I drove through Queensmore once by moonlight,” said Flora.

“The ruins show us what a small thing life is,” Conway answered

sagely. “They teach us that no trouble is worth taking very much to

heart, because suffering, like our time here, does not last for long.

You know my house?” he added sharply.

“I have been inside it once,” the girl faltered.

“Why is not that a ruin? Queensmore flourished for years after my

house was abandoned, but the village has fallen, and the Strath

stands. It has defied wind and weather. Its foundations are secure,

and its walls sound, although creepers were rotting the bricks before

any man now living was born. Do you know the secret of its strength?”

“They built for eternity in those days,” said Flora more lightly.

“It is because the house has a soul,” went on Conway, as though she

had not answered. “Because it lives and breathes, and has its moods

like us. If it were to die it would crumble in a day. You would

understand if you lived there. The Strath resembles you and me, in

that it contains a spirit, which, while it remains, preserves the

fabric from corruption.”

Flora was about to reply, as pleasantly as she dared, when to her

great relief little bells sounded through the damp air, and Maude

Juxon came to join the party, as pink and fresh as ever, although her

curls were limp, and her hat saddened by raindrops. She tripped to her

friend and embraced her daintily with sympathetic comments upon her

appearance.

“You are white, and thin, and ghostly,” she declared. “My dear, you

should do as I tell you and take a glass of warm milk, with an egg

beaten up in it, every morning directly you wake up. I have been

quarrelling with myself all day,” she ran on, “because I was dull; and

now I’m damp and cold. Mr. Conway, say something to make me laugh.”

“I am no comedian,” said the owner of the house, which was just then

very far removed from the fantastic mood. “I live, you must remember,

in a valley, and it is the inhabitants of the mountains who laugh and

sing.”

“But now you are out of your valley you might laugh and sing,”

suggested the beauty. “Well, I shall go into the house and search

diligently for a fire. It is shivery out here. Come along, Flora. How

is your mother’s cold? It is so stupid to catch colds. I never do, but

then I take care of myself. A cold is so unbecoming, but of course

when one is old that doesn’t matter.”

Frivolous Maude rendered her society one service. It was not easy to

be depressed in her presence, and her pretty face, always laughing at

nothing, quickly changed the atmosphere of any room which had been

dark and dull before her arrival. When all that could be said against

her had been urged, the fact remained that she was always full of life

and sound, like a shallow stream bubbling with bright waters

unceasingly.

Her husband came frequently on the Saturday evening, leaving early on

the Monday. He too had changed; he had stopped “worrying,” to use

Maude’s expression, and talked no longer of a house in the country.

The careless wife would possibly have laughed as usual, had anyone

suggested to her that she was spending more money than her husband

could afford. When he gave up persuading her to return, she believed

he had accepted his defeat. As a matter of truth Juxon was hard hit;

he was in a tight corner; he had ceased begging his wife to come back

because there was no longer a home to offer her. His lease had run

out, and he could not afford to renew it; and while Maude fared

luxuriously in her farm-house, the husband lived and slept in his

office, where there would be a light showing until the small hours of

morning.

He had been hard pressed before to meet his obligations on settling

day, but had escaped, and made the running as strongly as ever, and he

trusted that energy and ingenuity would pull him through again. He was

made of tough material, this stout little stockbroker. His only fear

was lest Maude might stumble across the truth. When he found it

impossible to allow her all the money she asked for, he stinted

himself and did his best; while she sulked and called him stingy, and

told him to his face that he did not deserve her. He only smiled in

his quiet way, instead of shaking her as she deserved; and refreshed

by the hill breezes, went back to work, pouring all his energies into

a final struggle which should decide whether he was fitted to survive,

or fated to go to the wall. His work would have been less arduous, had

he married a wife who would have shared his burden, and assisted him

with sympathy.

That very day Maude had received a message which, stated concisely,

ran thus: “Could you obtain a more inexpensive cottage? I have

suffered an unexpected reverse. Nothing to worry about, but clients

have been more dilatory than usual in paying purchase price of their

investments and differences owing on speculations. And when they are

behindhand I must find the money.” The little lady had driven into

Kingsmore to send a telegram in reply. A telegram was so much less

troublesome than a letter. On this occasion she was not extravagant,

as all she had to say in response to her husband’s note was the single

word, “Nonsense.” It was very inconsiderate of Herbert, she thought.

She had told him so often that she did not want to be troubled with

business matters. As for that reverse, if it was of no importance, as

he implied, why on earth did he want to mention it to her? She was

most distinctly an injured person and a long-suffering wife.

The influence of the Strath extended even to Kingsmore vicarage.

Conway and Drayton had brought it with them, and the heartless little

lady was no doubt its object. So far Maude had escaped. She had come,

as she thought, to visit her friend that day by mere chance, not

knowing that she had been led to that place by the destiny which was

then weaving her idle phrases into a net through the meshes of which

she would not escape until she had learnt to know herself.

It was natural, she thought, that she should speak to Conway

concerning the house of which she had heard so much. She longed to

behold for herself its china and pictures. The garden, she owned, did

not interest her in the least, because she liked order as represented

by carpet-bedding and level lawns. Then she knew that Drayton was a

writer. Dr. Berry had spoken kindly of him.

“I can criticise,” Maude declared, with wicked confidence. “I must see

your work and give you my opinion, Mr. Drayton.”

The scribe muttered something which sounded complimentary, but he did

not display any of Dr. Berry’s enthusiasm. He was not in the least a

clever man, but his eyes were open, and he was well aware that Maude

was sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.

“Is it true you have a stone floor in the hall?” went on the lady

frivolous, turning to Conway.

“And the floor of what you call the saloon is of real solid oak?” she

went on, when he had replied.

“It is not solid now,” he said.

“Marvellously preserved,” interpolated Mr. Price, swamping his saucer

by adding to the contents of his tea-cup his customary three lumps of

sugar.

“And there are mirrors round the walls, and candlesticks--what do you

call those things with a lot of branches?--and old pictures, and

windows with those quaint diamond panes of yellow glass,” Maude cried.

“Oh, Mr. Conway, you shall give a dance. Just a little dance for us.”

“Don’t, Maude,” said Flora.

“Be quiet, Flora. Mr. Conway, it would be perfect, and we will wear

fancy costumes and masks, and believe we are those wicked people of

the eighteenth century one reads about--yes, a masked ball, and I will

help you with the supper.”

“My dear lady, the place would frighten you to death,” said Mr. Price.

“Of course I know the house is haunted,” said Maude flippantly. “But

these gentlemen have not been frightened to death, and I don’t mind

groans and rattling of chains and all that sort of thing, so long as I

don’t see real ghosts in white sheets. Besides we shall be making such

a noise the ghosts won’t be given a chance. I shan’t be frightened.

Why, with people all round me I believe I might endure one glimpse at

the wicked baronet himself.”

“The Strath is not haunted,” said Drayton stolidly.

“Then we must have that dance,” cried Maude. “Yes, Mr. Conway, you

have promised. No outsiders. Just us, and Dr. Berry, of course.”

“Certainly we might have a dance,” agreed Conway with some spirit.

“At the end of the month,” cried Maude. “You need not worry, Mr.

Conway. Flora and I will attend to all the preliminaries, and I know

we shall have a lovely time.”

“I do not see the use of wearing masks,” objected the squarson. “As

there are to be so few of us it will be impossible to conceal our

identity.”

“Masks will be appropriate,” said Drayton almost sharply; and his

voice settled the matter.

When the two men who were bound for Thorlund left the vicarage rain

was again falling. On this return journey they talked incessantly; but

it was not until they reached the summit of the hill, and saw the

ivied roof of the Strath among the wet trees, that the thought of the

proposed masquerade recurred to their minds. It was Conway who touched

upon the subject by remarking:

“Do you imagine that a dance would give offence?”

Drayton understood and answered, as he inclined his head towards the

dreamy hollow, “Not if the suggestion came from there.”

ACT IV.

Scene I.--PUPPENSPIELE

To have a wife, and to be father of children, bring many troubles into

life.--_Menander_.

While rain was falling upon just and unjust, Herbert Juxon sat in his

gas-lit office up a gloomy court, struggling to conquer the London

which roared around him. A clock indicated half-past-three. The

stockbroker was working excitedly, because he believed that the

combination which might restore him much that he had lost was nearly

made.

Without lifting his eyes from the file of letters and the pencilled

notes before him, he held out his hand to take a message from his

clerk; and at that moment the door opened noisily, and a man hurried

in, hatless and unannounced. He was a lawyer, well-known in the city,

and one of Juxon’s friends. The son of parchment bent over the desk,

and making himself on this occasion a man of few words, whispered into

the stockbroker’s ear. Juxon’s face went white for a moment, then he

recovered, and jerked out a nervous laugh.

“It is impossible,” he muttered. “The business is a small one, but it

has been established for so long. I have heard rumours. They did not

come from a reliable source, and I could not trust them. I had no time

to think of them. But my little nest-egg is there.”

“Get it out. You have just time--if it is not already too late,”

whispered the counsellor; and then he left, as hurriedly as he had

entered.

Juxon pounced upon his cheque-book, filled a form, then, glancing up

at the clock, caught at his hat and raced from his office and the

court. He dodged breathlessly along the crowded streets, until he came

to a dark lane, which he entered at the double, and turned in at the

door of a private bank where his money was deposited. He had always

banked there, having no suspicion regarding its stability, and the

manager was a personal friend of long standing, who, he firmly

believed, would have given him a word of warning had any crisis been

impending. He noticed, as he passed the threshold, a group of men

discussing in low tones.

The cashier himself received Juxon’s cheque, but he did not say a

word; nor did he once raise his eyes, after a nervous word of greeting

and one hasty glance upon the stockbroker’s heated face. His own face

twitched, in spite of himself, when he glanced at the figures on the

slip of paper. He flung open a drawer and produced a handful of gold,

which he swept towards the client, so fiercely that some of the coins

rolled away along the floor; and then he rushed round to the door,

locked and bolted it. There was a crash of broken glass, followed by

an outcry and an uproar at the head of the lane. It was twelve minutes

to four; and the little bank had failed.

Juxon received the blow with the patience which was part of his

nature. He said nothing, but slipped clear of the crowd assembling

rapidly before the bankrupt premises, and escaped into the comparative

silence of his office. He believed in being quiet under affliction. He

was not religious in the accepted sense of the word; but he was strong

and upright, for his mind was unobscured by any perplexing creed; just

as the faith of the savage, who kneels beneath the sun, amid the

wonders of nature, may be at least as pure as that of the priest,

standing before an altar, bound and tied by superstitions of man’s

creation. Had Juxon been a scholar, he would probably have uttered the

consoling words of Philemon the dramatist, “If thou couldst only know

the evils which others suffer, thou wouldst gladly submit to thine

own.”

Four hours later Juxon was hurrying from a suburban station, between

parallel rows of lamp-posts, along numerous streets, past endless red

villas exasperatingly alike. In a street, which differed from others

only in name, he drew up before a house which was made dissimilar to

its neighbours by the possession of a distinctive number. He knocked,

waited impatiently, and knocked again; and then an elderly woman,

attired in the uniform of a nurse, admitted him to the little house,

and ushered him into a tiny room, where pretty four-year-old child was

sitting up in her cot playing with a doll’s house.

“Daddy!” cried the child in an ecstasy, holding out two pink arms.

“Here he is again,” laughed the stockbroker. “Like a bad old battered

shilling.”

The tiny lady, who was already wonderfully like Maude in appearance,

received his caresses, returned them with interest, and straightway

demanded with odd severity:

“Where’s Mummy?”

“Far away in the country, little Peggy,” said the father. “Only Daddy

left. Are you glad to see him, sweetheart?”

“Vewy,” lisped the dainty miss. “Here’s a wose-bud for you.” She

collected a white rose, somewhat the worse for ill-treatment, from the

quilt, and lifted it laughing to his lips. “Put it in you coat. Here’s

one for Mummy, a pwettier one, but Mummy won’t have it. You shall have

it instead, Daddy. My Mummy is pwettier than my Daddy,” she announced

generally to a family of small dolls. “But I love my Daddy most,

’cause he comes to see me, and my Mummy don’t. Oh, Daddy!”

Thereupon a pair of cherubic lips parted, and a chocolate disappeared

between two rows of pretty teeth. “But you must have one too--the

greatest one,” came from the little mouth in action.

“I was afraid you would be asleep, my Daisy,” said the father. “How

you are growing, miss! You are getting quite a giantess. Do you know

what a giantess is, darling?”

The fair curls were shaken violently.

“Well, a giantess is a great tall lady, who has to stoop whenever she

comes into a house, lest she should knock the roof off. If you go on

growing so fast, you will be like that some day, Miss Peggy, and you

will look down, and pat me on the head, and say, ‘Poor old Daddy, what

a long way down you are.’ Now, Daisy, shut your eyes, and open your

mouth just as wide as ever you can.”

“Don’t tell Nursie,” adjured the smallest of the transgressors.

“Of course not. It would never do to be caught by Nurse, or she might

slap us both. What were you doing before I came, sweetheart?”

“Talking to my dollies,” said Peggy, munching busily and pointing to

the doll’s house.

“You was answering me lots, but Mummy wouldn’t speak. Naughty Mummy!”

She picked up a little pink doll, with flaxen hair and scarlet cheeks,

and scolded it scrupulously. “And Mummy don’t stand up nice a bit.”

“Why can’t she stand up, Peggy?” asked the father.

“I stooded her up, and down she went--so! It is silly of her, isn’t

it? P’raps she ain’t vewy stwong, poor Mummy! I’ll put her on the

sofa. She looks pwetty on the sofa, doing nothing, cept laugh. This is

you, Daddy. You’re so drefful busy you ain’t got time to talk much,

and when you laugh it’s quick--so! And then you go on working.”

“That is quite true, Peggy. You see I have you and Mummy to work for,

so I mustn’t be idle. And now I must run off again, and work, and

work.”

There were protestations and tearful blue eyes, but the former were

checked by the promise of a visit the very next evening, and the

latter were kissed bright again. But before the stockbroker left his

little daughter, he bent over her, and said in a whisper, “When I am

gone, Daisy, say over and over again, until you go to sleep, ‘God help

Mummy.’”

“God help dear Daddy and Mummy,” a small voice amended.

The honest man caught his treasure in his arms and kissed her many

times.

“Good-night, sweet Daisy.”

“Come again vewy quick, Daddy.”

When in the street again there was an elasticity in Juxon’s step which

had not been apparent earlier in the evening. There were heavy odds

facing him. Many men would have shrunk from the difficult task of

restoring the ruined fabric. A few cowards might even have sought the

easiest way out; but quiet Mr. Juxon was prepared to go on playing the

game. Although outwardly commonplace, and lacking in originality, he

was not an ordinary man. His character could not be better revealed

than by the statement that he did not entertain a single bitter

thought towards his absent wife.

He did not intend that she should hear the truth, and he was resolved

that she should not want even the least of those luxuries which she

had hitherto enjoyed. He argued that she had a right to look to him

for these things, and because he was true of heart he determined she

should have them, if only he could avert that imminent and final

disaster by hard work.

He reached his lonely office in the deserted city, leaving far behind

the voices of paper-vendors screaming in malicious enjoyment the news

of the bank failure. He turned up the gas, removed his coat, and

wrapped a moistened handkerchief round his forehead. He smiled at the

excessive plainness of his careworn face when it met his eyes in the

glass. Was it possible that any woman could care for him, if he were

poor? That smile was still upon his lips when he sat down to his desk.

“There is still a chance,” he muttered. “The veriest loophole, but I

may struggle through yet. I can fight, and I will fight, and I will go

down, if that be my destiny, fighting all the time.”

It was close upon midnight when Juxon pushed aside his business books

and papers, and began the composition of a letter to a client who was

encumbered with wealth in very much the same proportion as Egypt was

once troubled with flies. Upon this letter much depended, as without

financial assistance he would have to declare himself a defaulter. All

the securities which he had to offer were hidden in his safe. They

were not so valuable as he could have wished, but he believed they

might prove sufficient for his purpose. He wrote quickly, the pen held

loosely in his tired fingers, winking his eyes often to dispel the

black spots which rose persistently between his face and the sheet of

paper.

The clocks chimed over the city of Mammon, which was empty, but not

silent. Wind was howling along the deserted streets, and a heavy rain

lashed the window. The noise of business was not there, but while men

slept Nature awoke to traffic in storm and tempest. Instead of the

rolling of carts came the rush of rain water, and the cries of the

wind arose in the stead of the voices of men. Round the corners, where

by day traffic crushed, nature in wet garments shouted and bustled;

and in that one room, which made an eye of light in the solitude of

buildings, Juxon went on writing.

How exhausted he was he did not know, until the knowledge came that he

had lost control over his pen, which for some moments had scratched

upon the paper without any apparent assistance from his hand. There

was a coldness in his arm. He dropped the pen and rose, opening and

closing his stiffened fingers. Then he brought the paper up to his

tired eyes and read what he had written.

It was an ordinary business letter. There was nothing remarkable about

it until he came to the last sentence; and there the writer must have

lost control over his pen for a few moments. He was very tired. He had

hardly known whether he was writing sense or nonsense. Certainly he

had not the slightest idea that he had concluded his letter with the

extraordinary sentence, “Go to the Strath.” These four words however

were staring at him from the paper. There was no sense in them. He did

not know what they meant. He had no memory of having written them. He

only knew that they were there in his own crabbed handwriting.

“I must be careful,” Juxon whispered. “This sort of thing won’t do.

This is what some people might call insanity. I have been working too

much.”

He went into the corner of the office, dipped the hot handkerchief

which had been around his forehead into cold water, wrung it out, and

replaced it. Then he said:--

“My wife is living in the country, and in the neighbourhood stands a

house about which strange things are said. That house is called the

Strath.”

Scene II.--LYRICAL DITHYRAMB

It often happens that those who try to avoid their fate run directly

upon it.--_Titus Livius_.

The day of Maude’s introduction to the Strath arrived. The careless

little lady, to whom the future state was a terrible black cloud, had

taken it upon herself to fix a date for their festivities within that

house; and as the day was near she deemed it necessary to attend in

person and make arrangements upon the spot. Accordingly she decked

herself out in a vesture of pink wrought about with divers laces,

drove into Thorlund in usual state, and requisitioned the services of

Dr. Berry as companion and guide.

The scholar was in a silent mood that calm sunless afternoon. His

sleep had been much broken of late, and fear had crept about his bed.

He was exceedingly sensitive to every outside influence, and thus had

foreseen evil impending, but its nature was not revealed. The thought

occurred to the rector that he had wasted his life in selfish

pursuits, that punishment was in store; and therefore he was afraid.

Maude prattled joyously as she walked towards the wall, having, as she

firmly believed, no sins to be sorry for. It was true she trembled

when she set foot inside the garden, and caught at her companion’s

arm; but Flora had told her strange stories concerning that haunted

ground, and for at least the first minute she had a right to be

nervous. It was natural weakness, she assured herself, but she was

relieved when the sensation passed, as it did suddenly; and to show

her relief she laughed, boldly and defiantly, the first foolish laugh

that had sounded in that garden for many more years than any living

man could look back upon.

There was a dead tree lying within the shadow of the house, its trunk

mantled with moss, its few remaining branches smothered in the mud of

the moat.

There Conway was seated. He looked up with vacant eyes when the

visitors approached, and invited them to sit beside him and listen

while he read; and when Maude demurred, after a glance at the heavy

moss, he removed his cloak, a quaint blue garment lined with scarlet

cloth, and spread it across the trunk. Then the little lady

condescended to take her ease, and looked about with disapproval and

disappointment.

“What a dirty tumbling-down old place!” she observed. “I think you

ought to have the garden put into some sort of order; and as for the

house it must be full of rats and spiders. I suppose it looks all

right when it is lighted up, but by daylight--”

“If you please you must not say these things,” Conway interrupted.

“What!” Maude laughed. “Why, what nonsense!”

“You must remember, my friend,” said the scholar gently, “this lady

has a mind superior to ours. The perfect beauty in art alone appeals

to her. She finds her present environment unusual, not having been

here before, but time will bring appreciation. What book is that you

are holding?”

Conway held out the journal, its pages tinted lightly with ink as

yellow as dead grass, and replied, “I will read to you if you will.”

“I want to see the house,” said Maude.

“Listen a few minutes to a voice from the past,” Conway entreated.

Maude, who was accustomed to having her own way, was about to reply

indignantly, when she heard a rustling against the side of the house,

and turning beheld Drayton gazing at her from between the creepers.

The expression on his face silenced her, and the colour began to leave

her cheeks. Before she was able to assert herself, the master of the

Strath bent his head over the pages which contained the sad record of

Winifred Hooper’s short life, and his voice came into her ears,

ringing sad echoes of the past:

“I have been ill, and have not written in my book for days. I have

been lying on my bed, listening to the wind in the trees, and seeing

by the light of the harvest-moon forms and faces in the mirror

opposite. I am well again now, and wondering why I was so foolish as

to spend so long a time out of the air and sunshine, for indeed

nothing ailed me except sorrow. Already it seems a long time since I

went out, in a white dress, with a thick shawl about me, and my hair

hanging down because I was too sick at heart to bind it, and yet it

was scarce a week ago. Now we are in autumn, cold and blustering, but

is it not always cold when one is sorrowing?

“How true was Mr. Spencer when he wrote, ‘for every dram of honey

found in love a pound of gall doth over it redound.’ I could almost be

sorry that I love you, Geoffrey. Love has visited me of late with

dreams, when I would find myself struggling with my heart up a steep

mountain, knowing that if I might reach the summit I should gain

happiness. But at a certain point my strength would always fail. I

have read that love requited gives perfect rest, but is it so? Wise

Sophocles has better described it as a storm in the heart, which all

must endure, even the gods. This written page can only speak. It

conveys no feeling. I may write down ‘sorrow,’ but what can the word

convey? A lacerated finger, a pain in the head--no more; and I may so

easily, if I will, run my pen through the word, and write instead

‘love,’ and still nothing is conveyed. Love requited becomes a

restless pain, when the loved one is far away. How shall lovers when

separated express their feelings? It is the presence that speaks, not

the tongue. One look is more eloquent than a life of letters.

“My dog has placed his paws upon my knee and looks up with soft brown

eyes. He loves me, and yet speaks only with his eyes. I have seen so

little of the world, and my reading of its doings come but rarely, but

’tis enough to humiliate me into a half-belief that the purest love is

not in us, but in the animals. Have you watched a mother thrush

feeding her fluffy chicks? Or an owl fighting a cotter for the sake of

her offspring? Or a dog dying broken-hearted upon his dead master’s

coat? Are we exceptions, Geoffrey, you and I? Do we love too much, and

is it for that cause we are separated, least we should be too happy

and thus anticipate the joys of Heaven?

“These are wandering and foolish thoughts. I should turn my mind

towards the white hills and the woods, and note the beauty of the

changing leaves; but, when I strive to do so, I see the wind whirling

the dry foliage down the slopes and around the tombs of the old

churchyard. Even when I look across the scenery it is upon the cypress

and yew that my eyes are fixed. And yet so strange a creature am I

that I would rather suffer than forego the privilege of having won

your love.

“I keep this journal in a secret place where my father would not think

to look. I must hide it now more securely than ever before, because I

have done a dangerous and fearful thing. I have given information

against my own father. It is horrible. It is unnatural. It may even

happen that he shall be hanged through me. I shall thank Heaven for

giving me liberty. I shall go forth to seek you, Geoffrey, and to find

you, even if you be in the land of fables known as India. Yesterday I

chanced upon Mr. Price along the highway where the road branches to

Queensmore village; and when he stopped and spoke to me I was unable

to contain my tongue, and before I knew had told him concerning those

dark midnight rides. He heard me with amazement, and when I had done

placed his hand upon the hilt of his sword, and said, ‘Very well

indeed. We will see to this. A most notorious highwayman has long been

the terror of these roads. To-morrow I will myself ride to town and

place this information before the Sheriff, and promise that the Strath

shall be soon more closely watched than you are now. Do not forget,

child, that Kingsmore house stands open to give you shelter whensoever

you may require it.’

“I supposed that I had passed secure from observation during that

interview with worthy Mr. Price, but I was mistaken. Late last night

a step came upon my passage, the door gave, and the man Reed advanced

one step into my room. He was half-drunken, but I dared not order him

out, menial though he be, for he is master here. He told me that my

father had given orders I was to be confined in the garden, and if I

ventured to disobey I would be brought back and locked within my

chamber. I would not shame myself by showing weakness before him, but

when I was again alone my silly heart seemed to break, and I fell upon

my bed and wept a long hour. No more wanderings upon the solitary

hills. My home is now my prison and my grave.

“I have not spoken to my father for more than a week. Last night,

after Reed left me, I heard loud oaths and the sounds of fighting; and

Deborah to-day told me she saw the squire standing in the hall, very

drunk, with blood dripping from his head. There will be violent death

in this house if these brawlings endure. Pray God I shall not see it.

Even the sight of a mouse’s body sets me a-shivering. And so,

Geoffrey, I have taken my last walk into the woods. There is a kind of

wild pleasure in even that thought. When I go forth again, if I do go

forth, you will be at my side, and there will be no winter any more,

but I will be your summer, and you shall be my spring, and we will

stand together once again where the daffodils grow.

“If it be folly to write so, it is a joy to think it. There is a book

already written for each one, with the future set forth. Mine is

indeed a small record, a few pages of love, and then a tomb; but

yours, I like to think, is a long and noble tale, containing very much

that is glorious: victories, rewards, and honours on each page, and

then a sweet home and a loving wife--be very good to her for my

sake--and smiling old age such as Mr. Addison has portrayed. That is

how I read your future, beloved, without the aid of stars or omens. I

desire for you a full and perfect life, flowing steadily on gathering

strength and nobleness, like the river increasing as it nears the sea.

Mine is a little impress upon the sands, which the rising tide smooths

silently away.”

Dr. Berry moved suddenly forward, sweeping the book out of Conway’s

hand. Maude had fainted.

Unaided the scholar carried her into the house. He placed his burden

upon a sofa and fanned the white face, until a sigh escaped its lips,

and the eyelids quivered. Another moment and Maude rose stiffly like a

sleep-walker, stared about her with wild eyes, and said in a cold hard

voice, as though in continuation of a tragic conversation which had

been interrupted by her loss of consciousness, “Then there is nothing

left, and I must drown myself.”

He tried to hold her, but she shook him off with a tragic gesture and

moaned, “I see my fate before me. I must go to it. Do not touch me.

Keep away from me. You do not know what I have done.”

She covered her face with her hands, and screamed, “I feel the eyes of

the dead.”

“Dear lady,” the scholar interjected. “We are indeed surrounded by the

dead, but they are invisible. Let me lead you into the garden.”

He took her hand, which was cold and lifeless, and she went with him

into the open air; and there sank down in the long grass, shuddering

and afraid, shrinking from his consoling touch.

“I have a right to share your suffering,” he said.

“You!” she exclaimed, beating her hands together. “What have you done?

I can only sink into the stream, and die, and be forgotten. Leave me

to myself. Why do you follow me? Why do you touch me? Look at your

hands and see how I have soiled them.”

“Beloved sister,” spoke the tragedian. “I will never forsake you.

Remember how our souls were united at the birth of song. You and I,

poetess and poet, are joined together for all time by the double bond

of art and of love. Your sin is mine also. If punishment must fall,

let it fall on us together. It is happiness to suffer with those we

love.”

“Let me show you,” she gasped, with a laugh, as unlike her own empty

sound of mirth as the storm wind differs from the whirring of a wing.

“Listen! I had a child, and a husband. One night I went into my

daughter’s room. The child slept, one little hand reaching out towards

me, her bright hair tumbling over the pillow, her little bosom rising

and falling gently. I seized the pillow, and pressed it over the

innocent face, and--and I stood looking down upon a little waxen face

which never moved again.”

The choregus bent over her, and returned the philosophic answer which

the laws of the drama required:

“It was the madness of jealousy. Under somewhat similar circumstances

Medea murdered her children. It is as destiny appoints. Nature is

exceedingly cruel. You were merely the instrument called upon to

remove the child.”

“Hear me out,” she screamed. “I passed from that room to my husband’s

side. He was a good man, noble, unselfish, and kind, having one fault

only and that his love for me. I discovered him at work. He was always

working, that he might provide me with those luxuries which my soul

coveted. When I came near, he looked up and said, ‘Is our little girl

asleep?’ And I smiled at him and said, ‘I have just come from her, and

she is asleep.’”

“For a parallel--” the spell-bound listener interposed; but before he

could say more she drowned his voice.

“Then my husband said, ‘I have been working all night, and my head

pains me.’ So I took a handkerchief, and tied it round his head, and

went and brought him a cup of wine. He drank it, pressing my hand, and

I watched his head fall forward, and his hands shaking, and his

strength going from him. And then I helped him to his room and left

him, and in the night I heard him call me, but I put my fingers in my

ears and turned away, and left him to die of the poison which I had

given him.”

“Surely,” said the actor, “these things happened long ago. The

poisoned cup and the suffocation of a sleeper are suggested to us

again and again as orthodox punishments of an enemy.”

“I myself am guilty,” she raved. “With these hands I killed my husband

and my child. Look at them, and see how the shadow lies upon them. The

sun has not warmed them since.”

He took her hands which she had frantically extended. He lifted them

and pressed first one and then the other to his lips with the

adoration of a monk for holy relics. She was staring above the trees

to where the vapoury hills were outlined. This was no longer the

silent country dividing two lonely hamlets, but the resounding hills

of despair rising above the hell of classical belief, and the autumnal

fog was steam escaping from the crater beneath.

“Knowledge of the past comes without study,” the scholar proclaimed.

“Who teaches the new-born child its prehensile grip? We arrive in this

world well equipped. Mind is brought back from beyond, stored with

knowledge. The young see visions, but as time passes, and the cares of

the world enter, memory weakens, and finally there is nothing left but

a craving to learn the future. Yet the past speaks in us all our

lives. We return by the same way that we came. Could we look back we

should understand all things; but, lest we should grow too wise, we

are made to look forward, and so belief declines through half-belief

and superstition to unbelief, and we return less learned than when we

came. The deeds of others live on in us, and their sins are visited

upon our heads.”

“You do not speak of hope,” she muttered. “You dare not.”

“Even while you speak in despair I see the light of hope dawning in

your eyes,” he answered. “The husband and the child, for whom, in the

tenderness of your heart, you mourn, met their death a very great time

ago by other hands than these, perhaps in lofty Corinth, or amid the

sands of Heliopolis, or beside the stubborn walls of Troy. Can you

believe that to you alone appear these visions? There are sins upon

the souls of all, there are sins upon my soul, the sins of long ago. I

will speak of one. I was then, as now, a priest. It was my duty to

interpret signs, and the inspired words which proceeded from the

mouths of seers; but not as now to instruct the people respecting the

nature of religion. Religion then consisted in the performance of

certain mysteries, the secret of which was handed on from father to

son, and guarded jealously from the people. The ground allotted to me

was small, but beyond was a beautiful garden, wherein I would often

wander to weave poetic fancies. For many years this ground was mine,

but one day I came upon one who told me it was his, and that it was

his intention to cultivate the ground, tear up the flowers, and remove

the arbors. He was a rough unlearned man. When he closed the garden

against me I hated him, and planned how I might destroy him. Night and

day I pondered beside the oracle, watching the incense smoke. At

length I went forth. Moonlight was upon the garden. I saw my enemy and

crept upon him. I seized his neck, and strangled him. The garden was

mine again. Shall I suffer for this memory? Not so. These hands are

not guilty. My soul, less sentient than yours, is also less capable of

suffering.”

“My friend,” she moaned. “Are you indeed my friend?”

“Your more than friend,” he rapturously replied.

“Then you will obey me. Leave me here.”

“It is my duty to watch over you. Alone you may do yourself some

harm.”

“You may watch me. I will go beneath the trees.”

As the poet followed out her bidding he recited the second antistrophe

of the second stasimon of the Agamemnon, that magnificent song

concerning dreams and destiny in the house. Maude heard and trembled

when the new understanding interpreted for her the meaning of those

words. Genuine suffering was hers at last. She believed that her

husband and child were dead, murdered as she had described. She saw in

that enchanted atmosphere the lines of her fate written across the sky

in letters of fire, even as Alcephron had read his warning in the

flaming gardens of Osiris. No ray of hope lighted the way, and all

that came was the dark assurance of the implacable nature of that

destiny she had fought against. And the advice suggested by the

sinister influence was that she should destroy herself.

Yet, in the very act of punishment, the didactic force brought out all

the moral strength and latent good which might be enshrined within its

victim. Thus Maude, when compelled to fight, manifested powers the

existence of which she had never suspected. She resolutely refused to

take the path of cowardice. She longed to live for better things.

Instead of a hindrance she would become a help. But whom should she

help? At that self-set question she shuddered again, knowing the

resolution to have come too late, because those who had loved her were

gone. Yet there were others who needed assistance, who might be led on

by one so worthless as herself. She would seek them out. She would

cover her pink dress with the sister’s robes of white and black, and

dispense charity for her soul’s sake. So comedy and tragedy went on

fighting over Maude; and the scholar looked on, chanting his lyric

Greek.

Could she awake and find that horror only a dream, her husband and

child yet living, what a world of happiness might still be hers. How

joyously would she tread, though it were on the path of poverty,

towards the life which seeks no recompense beyond a smile. Could it be

that the choregus yonder had spoken the truth? Had the double crime

which wrenched her heart been committed in a past age, by hands long

vanished into earth?

As such questions as these quivered like meteoric flashes across her

brain the heavily-charged atmosphere lifted, the mists dissolved, and

through a golden fissure in a fast-floating cloud a ray of sunlight

darted down the hills. A breath of wind followed, and as the influence

withdrew Maude beheld Drayton standing in the grass, throwing up an

apple, and catching it as it fell. It was the turn of the dramatic

tide. Burlesque was laughing down the tragic frown.

SCENE-SHIFTING

Time, that sees everything, and hears everything, brings all things to

light.--_Sophocles_.

The following letter, written by the proprietor of a curiosity shop in

central London, was handed in at the toy-shop of one Emmanuel Falk in

a by-way of the city of Nuremberg, and perused by the light of a

yellow candle:--

“Dear Mr. Falk. I have pleasure in informing you that copies of the

masks which belonged to the Biron family have come as pledges into my

hands. They are genuine I have no doubt, because I find the name

Joseph Falk engraved upon their backs. Permit me to state the

incidents connected with this discovery.

“Yesterday a middle-aged Englishman, well-dressed, but apparently

pressed for money, entered my shop and requested me to make him an

advance, offering as security the pair of masks. Let me tell you he

was well aware of their value. He asked for £5 and when I had handed

him that amount he left hurriedly. I called my boy Jacob, pointed the

man out, and bade him follow. Jacob went after the Englishman to his

home. Very soon the man came out with a bag, which Jacob was permitted

to carry for some coppers to the underground station. Jacob

accompanied the man to Paddington, and standing close behind heard him

ask for a ticket to a small town some distance from the metropolis.

Not having sufficient money upon him to follow the man to his

destination, Jacob returned. In the afternoon I called at the house,

which the Englishman had entered after leaving my shop, told the woman

who answered my ring that I was a tax-collector, and so managed to

discover the name of the man who pawned the masks.

“You know where Mr. Biron can be found. Will you then write to him,

letting him know of my discovery, and telling him that I will grant

further information if he will communicate with me? The masks cannot

leave my shop, as I may be ordered to give them up any day, but if he

can visit me I will produce them for his inspection. I presume that

the reward which he has offered for so long still holds good, if the

information I am able to give may lead to the discovery of the

originals? If you will forward this letter I will pay you five per

cent upon the transaction, should the affair be brought to a

satisfactory conclusion, and to this effect I enclose my commission

note duly signed and stamped. If you are not content with my offer,

remember, I can certainly discover Mr. Biron through advertisements in

the Italian papers; but this would require time, and the masks may be

redeemed to-morrow. I must not fail to produce them, because the

English law is severe.

“I am, my dear sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

“Francesco Cerutti.”

The old toy-maker spluttered through his beard until the candle

guttered.

“The thief! the rogue!” he shouted, “The son of a dog to offer me his

five per cent. I will not help him. Not for twenty. Let him give me my

fifty per cent, and I will do business. The vampire! How he would suck

my blood. The toad! the fox! Would that I might put him in the Iron

Virgin. Would that I might poison the Pegnitz and make him drink of

the water.”

The candlelight fell with weird effect among stacks of toys, striking

a thousand glassy eyes into a semblance of life. There were legions of

dolls stuffed with mechanism; there were animals, birds, and realistic

reptiles, quivering and mouthing at their long-bearded Frankenstein.

Their eyes were so many points of light glinting all colours,

tawny-red, yellow, black, green, winking and leering and grinning.

These eyes appeared to the toy-maker to expand during the night and to

contract by day. When the sun entered the shop the eyes were small and

yellow, having each one a narrow line of black for pupil. Towards

evening these pupils were enlarged, and by night became round and

far-seeing. Here was a doll whose eyes by the candlelight were unduly

large; they might have been disfigured by the use of drugs. Here was

another with optic nerves shuddering; and there another with eyes

distorted, as it were by some external influence, the refracting

surfaces being marred by a shadow cast across the retina. Emmanuel

Falk loved those glinting glassy eyes. He felt a creator when he

looked at them. He settled himself between the candle and the eyes,

and indited a letter to Signore Eugene Biron, at the Strada Nuova di

Poggio Reale, Napoli.

A fortnight passed without bringing any reply. A month followed,

during which time the Italian Jew and the citizen of Nuremberg

exchanged letters, which were impatient on the one side, and indignant

on the other. But one day a very thin man entered the crooked street,

stopped at the gabled toy-shop, and confronted the proprietor with the

intelligence that his name was Eugene Biron.

The toy-maker thought at first that the Lord of all the Dolls had

taken life and come to haunt him. Mr. Biron did not appear to darken

the doorway as he entered, so hopelessly devoid was he of flesh. He

was so thin that the perfect outline of his skull could be traced

distinctly. For all that his face was pleasant, because it happened to

possess two singularly kind eyes. His head was as bald as an apple. He

had neither eyebrows nor beard. He might have been thirty, or he might

have been seventy.

“By Gott!” whispered the toy-maker. “What a model! I will make a doll

like him by San. Nicholas’ Day. He will make the children scream.”

Then he welcomed the visitor, and brought him into the sanctity of the

work-shop where the toy marvels were planned and composed. Bringing

forward a chair, which with a sweep of the hand he cleared of dolls in

embryo, he begged his guest to be seated, and floundering to a

cupboard produced a bottle of thin wine and two beautiful Venetian

glasses chased in blue.

“I have been travelling lately, and while in this neighbourhood

happened to write to Italy for my letters,” the visitor explained in

fluent German. “Having just received your communication, I take the

earliest opportunity of visiting you, on the chance of your having

some information to add to that which your letter gave.”

“But I have nothing,” wailed Emmanuel. “That Jew in London did write

last week and say that the masks were still in bond. I have used

already many postage-stamps upon the man. I did only meet him once,

and then he talked me into an arrangement by which I did lose and he

did gain--may Gott confound him! He calls himself my humble and

obedient servant every time, and next time I write I will sign myself

his lofty and unyielding master, by Gott I will. I will be even with

that Jew. I would give one hundred of my best dolls to choke him in

the Schöne Brunnen. I drink now to your long life, Mr. Biron, and to

the increased prosperity of the toy business.”

“If you have nothing more to tell me I shall start for England

to-night,” said the man of no nationality. “I have been searching all

my life for these masks, and I may be now on the point of succeeding.

Your great-grandfather made, I believe, several copies from the

originals--”

“And he did die of it,” interrupted the toy-maker excitedly. “Gott in

Heaven! They did kill him. Come up these stairs, and I will show you

at the top of the house a great iron hook where he did hang himself

and die.”

“I am afraid the masks may have killed others besides old Joseph

Falk,” said the visitor solemnly. “That is why I want to discover

them.”

The bearded toy-maker stared at his hairless guest with open mouth and

eyes like two full moons behind his glasses. “And then what you do

with them?” he demanded.

“Cremate them,” came the reply. “Or give them Christian burial.”

“Give to them Christian burial. Mine holy Gott!”

“Surely you know their history?”

“But I do not know,” shouted the toy-maker, snatching up a doll and

screwing off its head, unmindful of the sawdust which snowed upon his

slippers. “I know how Joseph Falk lost his brains and thought himself

an actor, and would stand on these stairs reciting poetry. I know this

old house was once the terror of all the strasse, and those who came

here would sometimes stand and laugh as though the very devil of

comedy was in them, and sometimes they would stamp and frown like

Faustus at the opera. When Joseph Falk hanged himself Mr. Biron came

and took the masks away. I know nothing more, except that these things

happened more than a hundred years ago. Bah! they could not make my

dolls in those days.”

“Falk begged for the masks to be returned to him after he had sold

them,” said Biron slowly, “I believe he was compelled by his

extraordinary nature to love them. He must have been a remarkable man.

He called himself a toy-maker, but his toys were the products of a

diseased and morbid imagination. He made a clock which, instead of

ticking, groaned the seconds, and a candle with machinery attached

which caused the flame to burn blue at midnight. Finally he made the

masks.”

“And they did kill him,” muttered the great-grandson. “But he did sell

them first to Mr. Biron.”

“To my great-grandfather, a man whose mind had suffered through

intercourse with Joseph Falk. But is it possible that you, the present

head of the family, do not know how the masks were made?”

“By Gott, I do know,” cried Emmanuel. “They were made of the skin of

animals, treated with human blood. Bah! I will not talk about it. The

thought gives me cold feelings here.” The toy-maker clapped his hand

upon his spine.

“You are wrong,” said Biron. “They were made of skin certainly, but

not the skin of animals. We will not go closely into details, because,

as I have said, Joseph Falk’s mind was not a healthy one; but it was

the skin of human beings that was used in the making of the masks.”

“That is one big lie,” roared the toy-maker; and as he uttered these

words all the clocks in the establishment, above, around, and below,

struck the hour together solemnly.

“I am sorry to say it is true,” said Biron quietly. “My

great-grandfather’s notes leave no doubt on the matter. I will give

you a few details concerning the composition of the masks. The idea

was suggested to Joseph Falk one night at the opera. He was

exceedingly fond of the stage, and his visits were as frequent as

business would permit. One night he was attracted by a representation

of the masks of Tragedy and Comedy modelled upon the proscenium; and

straightway the idea entered his mind of creating two such masks,

which should be influential types of the respective branches of the

drama which they are supposed to represent. You know that he succeeded

in carrying out this project; and you shall now hear how he did so.”

“Then he, my great-grandfather, was a devil,” cried the toy-maker. “I

will forget him. He is not worthy to lie within a stone’s cast of the

great Dürer. Bah! I will never again pray for him upon All Souls’

Day, and I will go no more to the cemetery of St. John to put

immortelles upon his grave.”

“This is a story of the eighteenth century,” went on the visitor. “One

of the institutions of this city was the College of Surgeons, which

was placed hard by the prison, and distinguished from the buildings

surrounding it by a gilded globe which satirists were fond of calling

a globule--the only form of medicine which physicians of that day

could, or would, dispense. Superstition ruled the art of healing to

such an extraordinary extent that astrology was one of the important

subjects for examination, and even barbers were required to pass in

surgery before being licensed to shave chins. Anyone could be a

surgeon in those days. It was in fact as easy as enlisting in the

army, or, as a wit has said, as difficult to avoid as the press-gang;

and knowing this you will not be surprised to hear that Joseph Falk

became enrolled a member of the College, not because he wished to

acquire the art of the physicians, but because his membership entitled

him to a place in the dissecting-theatre, which was kept well supplied

with material by the adjacent prison where executions were frequent.”

“Is it not true what I say, that this Joseph Falk prostituted the

noble art of toy-making?” cried the great-grandson appealingly to his

creations.

“Had he turned his talents in the right direction it is certain he

would have produced many useful models of mechanism,” Biron went on.

“Unfortunately his mind was bent towards the horrible. It happened

that fortune favoured him. I do not suppose you have heard of the

criminal Cagliari, who perpetrated his villainies in this and many

another country during the last half of the eighteenth century; but

according to my great-grandfather’s notes he seems to have been the

most inhuman murderer that has ever troubled the world. This man made

a living by decoying youths and young women into secret places, and

killing them for the sake of what money and jewellery they possessed.

It is said that he despatched some twenty victims in this manner,

burying the bodies in a lonely wood which he named the Cagliari

Cemetery. Strangely enough he was a well-educated man, of good

appearance and address, although entirely lacking in all moral sense.

It was however argued at the autopsy that the development of his head

showed that he was not a natural creature. Being at last convicted and

executed, his body was brought in due course to the dissecting-hall of

the College of Surgeons. Joseph Falk managed to secure the

malefactor’s abnormal head.”

“Mine Gott, I do not yet understand these things,” muttered the

toy-maker.

“From that head he extracted the materials for compounding his mask of

Tragedy.”

The listener’s jaw dropped, and his tongue protruded, but no sound

proceeded therefrom. He stared along the vista of glass-eyed dolls,

and the orbs stared back and winked knowingly.

“That same year the body of Quillebeuf came into the hands of old

Falk,” went on the visitor hurriedly. “This man was a little

mountebank of unusual talent, who roamed from country to country,

miming and jesting, and giving entertainments full of drollery by the

way-side. He had never an opportunity of appearing before the better

classes, indeed it is said that he rarely entered the large towns. He

loved the country, and wandered there with tabor and drum, an

itinerant maker of mirth, delighting the simple people by his artistic

foolery. Had he been given a chance of appearing upon the stage, he

must have made his mark as a comedian, but opportunity was not his,

and he died a failure. One day he was arrested on suspicion of theft

and sent to prison; there he was taken ill and died, wearing to the

end a laugh on his comic face. It was subsequently discovered that he

had been innocent of the theft, and to do what poor justice was then

possible a memorial was subscribed for, and set up in the place where

he was born, a memorial which could not have been of any permanent

nature, for when I went to see it a few years ago it had disappeared.

Quillebeuf’s body was sent from the prison to the dissecting-room; and

thus Joseph Falk obtained material for his mask of Comedy. There,”

Biron concluded, “you have the story, as I know it, of the two masks

which your great-grandfather made and mine bought.”

“Find them, I do beseech you, Mr. Biron,” muttered the frightened

little toy-maker. “Bury them deep, and get a holy priest to exorcise

the evil spirits. Holy Gott! There are horrible things in this world.

I shall tremble when I make my dolls. I shall feel that they may go

from my hands with the power to work evil upon the minds of little

children. I will leave my business, Mr. Biron, and come with you. I do

not want my five per cent. I will give it to charity, and more

besides, when you have destroyed those awful things.”

“I thank you for your offer of help,” said the visitor, as he rose

carefully from the rickety chair. “But I shall not require it. I am

upon the right track I believe. Unfortunately my great-grandfather’s

notes finish abruptly. There is indeed a tragedy suggested about that

termination, and it is curious that no authenticated record exists in

my family concerning how, when, or where the old man came to his end.

There is however a rumour, entirely unsupported by proof, to the

effect that Mr. Biron went to live for a time in a manor-house

situated in a lonely English valley, and there left the masks built up

inside a cellar, and the harmless copies made by Joseph Falk disposed

about the rooms. The latter point is of the greatest importance, for,

if there be any truth in the rumour, this pledging of the copies may

well lead to the discovery of the originals. England is not a large

country, but there are many lonely valleys about the island, and

thousands of manor-houses. My grandfather and father both searched in

vain for the masks, and bequeathed the duty to me. I have done what

little I could, but up to the present without success. Is it not

strange that they should now break through the long silence of more

than a hundred years?”

“You will find them, Mr. Biron,” said the toy-maker with religious

confidence. “Cerutti the Jew knows more than he has told to me, and

his mouth will open when you show him money. He would not rest until

he had found out everything. By this time he has discovered that

house, and can point out to you the cellar where the masks are hidden,

and directly you go into his shop he will bring before you a receipt

for five hundred pounds English money, the reward which your father

offered, and you renewed, and will say to you, ‘I have the information

you require. Give me my money.’ Yes, by Gott, he will, and he will not

give me my five per cent unless I frighten him with the law.”

The toy-maker of Nuremberg unfairly judged the London dealer in

curios, but he was prejudiced against the man who had once got the

better of him in trade. His estimation of the Jew’s shrewdness was,

how ever, not at fault. When, less than a week later, the shadowy

figure of Biron flitted across the threshold of the curiosity shop and

revealed its identity the shrewd Italian made no mention of the

reward, but merely bowed obsequiously, and in a business-like manner

produced from his pocket a slip of paper, which he handed to the

visitor with a second obeisance deeper than the first. Across this

piece of paper was written the three pregnant words, “Thorlund. The

Strath.”

ACT V.

Scene I.--MORALITY

Leave things so prostitute,

And take th’ Alcaic lute,

Or thine own Homer, or Anacreon’s lyre.--_Ben Jonson_.

It was the day of the dance at the Strath. Early in the morning mist

rose before the sun, and a hollow silence prevailed upon the hills.

Windy sighs followed, and the trees began to shake, and dead leaves

scurried along the roads, and the cart-ridges were brimming with black

water. At noon dark clouds raced over the valley to the sound of an

anapaestic march. Then a deep haze settled, and the atmosphere was

heavy with odours of decaying vegetation.

Never had the valley of Thorlund looked more lonely. Early in the

afternoon Maude came to the hamlet and found the rector conducting a

funeral. He saw her and with the solemn words of the office upon his

lips smiled dreamily. She passed on alone into the Strath, without

fear, for the place had lost its terror. She could not remember the

incidents connected with her first visit; she only understood that she

had suffered of late, but the cause of that suffering and its definite

nature she had yet to learn. She called herself the same, both

outwardly and inwardly, being unwilling to confess that she had

changed; although her glass revealed a face where the white

predominated over the pink, and her inner vision might have shown a

picture, had she cared to contemplate it, of a mind which had been

awakened. She went again, and willingly, to the Strath, not dreaming

that she too had fallen beneath the influence of the goat-song, to

suffer there as one may suffer when a frost-bitten limb is being

restored gradually to vitality; but whenever she left the house she

believed that this suffering was caused by the troublesome world, and

so longed for the Strath where she might be at peace.

A few ordinary preparations had been made for the forthcoming party.

The young women had made ready certain delicacies which had been

brought from Kingsmore that morning; they had also been occupied over

their costumes, and had made themselves masks of silk and lace.

But within the Strath all designs were brought to nothing. Not an

article of furniture had been removed from the saloon, the ragged

carpet still cumbered the floor, and the impossible harpsichord had

not been replaced by any modern instrument of music. Conway was

upstairs dreaming, Drayton sat and worked in the ante-room, Nancy Reed

sang her old ballads.

Maude entered full of schemes, but when the house had received her she

forgot the world and the approaching festivities which she had

arranged, and seating herself before the pictures of Hogarth’s

Marriage _à la Mode_ wondered why destiny handled her victims so

roughly, so like a thoughtless child breaking her toys and flinging

them aside.

She heard the moaning of wind, and dead leaves creeping upon the stone

floor of the hall. She passed into the room opposite, and stood

between the brown masks, which had watched the recluse Biron ruining

mind and body with morbid fancies, and the struggles of the unknown

family of Branscombe, before the solitude of a century had come to

fill their blank eyes with dust.

The wind was strong on that side of the house. Gloom had already

settled. She began to long for a companion, not for Flora who lately

had drifted from her, but rather for a strong man who might protect

her against that terrible depression, or for a child whom she might

call her own, that she might show the spirit of the house how willing

she was to conform to the dramatic laws. She thought of Peggy vaguely.

As for the man whose name she bore, why he, the voice assured her, had

grown tired of her insincerity and had found consolation elsewhere.

She stood quite alone and a great fear fell upon her. When Dr. Berry

entered in his noiseless fashion he discovered her kneeling, white and

shivering.

He came and lifted her by the hands. The dim light fell upon his

silvered head and invested each feature of his handsome face with a

rare softness:

“The summer is over,” he said quietly.

“The wind begins to bite. No more long days to walk and think. The

time of imagination has gone. The winter comes when we must work.”

“That poem I read to you,” gasped Maude.