Meanwhile the Millbornes had returned to London, and Frances was growing

anxious. In talking to her mother of Cope she had innocently alluded to

his curious inquiry if her mother and her step-father were connected by

any tie of cousinship. Mrs. Millborne made her repeat the words. Frances

did so, and watched with inquisitive eyes their effect upon her elder.

'What is there so startling in his inquiry then?' she asked. 'Can it

have anything to do with his not writing to me?'

Her mother flinched, but did not inform her, and Frances also was now

drawn within the atmosphere of suspicion. That night when standing by

chance outside the chamber of her parents she heard for the first time

their voices engaged in a sharp altercation.

The apple of discord had, indeed, been dropped into the house of the

Millbornes. The scene within the chamber-door was Mrs. Millborne

standing before her dressing-table, looking across to her husband in the

dressing-room adjoining, where he was sitting down, his eyes fixed on

the floor.

'Why did you come and disturb my life a second time?' she harshly asked.

'Why did you pester me with your conscience, till I was driven to accept

you to get rid of your importunity? Frances and I were doing well: the

one desire of my life was that she should marry that good young man. And

now the match is broken off by your cruel interference! Why did you show

yourself in my world again, and raise this scandal upon my hard-won

respectability-won by such weary years of labour as none will ever

know!' She bent her face upon the table and wept passionately.

There was no reply from Mr. Millborne. Frances lay awake nearly all that

night, and when at breakfast-time the next morning still no letter

appeared from Mr. Cope, she entreated her mother to go to Ivell and see

if the young man were ill.

Mrs. Millborne went, returning the same day. Frances, anxious and

haggard, met her at the station.

Was all well? Her mother could not say it was; though he was not ill.

One thing she had found out, that it was a mistake to hunt up a man when

his inclinations were to hold aloof. Returning with her mother in the

cab Frances insisted upon knowing what the mystery was which plainly had

alienated her lover. The precise words which had been spoken at the

interview with him that day at Ivell Mrs. Millborne could not be induced

to repeat; but thus far she admitted, that the estrangement was

fundamentally owing to Mr. Millborne having sought her out and married

her.

'And why did he seek you out-and why were you obliged to marry him?'

asked the distressed girl. Then the evidences pieced themselves together

in her acute mind, and, her colour gradually rising, she asked her

mother if what they pointed to was indeed the fact. Her mother admitted

that it was.

A flush of mortification succeeded to the flush of shame upon the young

woman's face. How could a scrupulously correct clergyman and lover like

Mr. Cope ask her to be his wife after this discovery of her irregular

birth? She covered her eyes with her hands in a silent despair.

In the presence of Mr. Millborne they at first suppressed their anguish.

But by and by their feelings got the better of them, and when he was

asleep in his chair after dinner Mrs. Millborne's irritation broke out.

The embittered Frances joined her in reproaching the man who had come as

the spectre to their intended feast of Hymen, and turned its promise to

ghastly failure.

'Why were you so weak, mother, as to admit such an enemy to your house-

one so obviously your evil genius-much less accept him as a husband,

after so long? If you had only told me all, I could have advised you

better! But I suppose I have no right to reproach him, bitter as I feel,

and even though he has blighted my life for ever!'

'Frances, I did hold out; I saw it was a mistake to have any more to say

to a man who had been such an unmitigated curse to me! But he would not

listen; he kept on about his conscience and mine, till I was bewildered,

and said Yes! . . . Bringing us away from a quiet town where we were

known and respected-what an ill-considered thing it was! O the content

of those days! We had society there, people in our own position, who did

not expect more of us than we expected of them. Here, where there is so

much, there is nothing! He said London society was so bright and

brilliant that it would be like a new world. It may be to those who are

in it; but what is that to us two lonely women; we only see it flashing

past! . . . O the fool, the fool that I was!'

Now Millborne was not so soundly asleep as to prevent his hearing these

animadversions that were almost execrations, and many more of the same

sort. As there was no peace for him at home, he went again to his club,

where, since his reunion with Leonora, he had seldom if ever been seen.

But the shadow of the troubles in his household interfered with his

comfort here also; he could not, as formerly, settle down into his

favourite chair with the evening paper, reposeful in the celibate's

sense that where he was his world's centre had its fixture. His world

was now an ellipse, with a dual centrality, of which his own was not the

major.

The young curate of Ivell still held aloof, tantalizing Frances by his

elusiveness. Plainly he was waiting upon events. Millborne bore the

reproaches of his wife and daughter almost in silence; but by degrees he

grew meditative, as if revolving a new idea. The bitter cry about

blighting their existence at length became so impassioned that one day

Millborne calmly proposed to return again to the country; not

necessarily to Exonbury, but, if they were willing, to a little old

manor-house which he had found was to be let, standing a mile from Mr.

Cope's town of Ivell.

They were surprised, and, despite their view of him as the bringer of

ill, were disposed to accede. 'Though I suppose,' said Mrs. Millborne to

him, 'it will end in Mr. Cope's asking you flatly about the past, and

your being compelled to tell him; which may dash all my hopes for

Frances. She gets more and more like you every day, particularly when

she is in a bad temper. People will see you together, and notice it; and

I don't know what may come of it!'

'I don't think they will see us together,' he said; but he entered into

no argument when she insisted otherwise. The removal was eventually

resolved on; the town-house was disposed of; and again came the invasion

by furniture-men and vans, till all the movables and servants were

whisked away. He sent his wife and daughter to an hotel while this was

going on, taking two or three journeys himself to Ivell to superintend

the refixing, and the improvement of the grounds. When all was done he

returned to them in town.

The house was ready for their reception, he told them, and there only

remained the journey. He accompanied them and their personal luggage to

the station only, having, he said, to remain in town a short time on

business with his lawyer. They went, dubious and discontented-for the

much-loved Cope had made no sign.

'If we were going down to live here alone,' said Mrs Millborne to her

daughter in the train; 'and there was no intrusive tell-tale presence! .

. . But let it be!'

The house was a lovely little place in a grove of elms, and they liked

it much. The first person to call upon them as new residents was Mr.

Cope. He was delighted to find that they had come so near, and (though

he did not say this) meant to live in such excellent style. He had not,

however, resumed the manner of a lover.

'Your father spoils all!' murmured Mrs. Millborne.

But three days later she received a letter from her husband, which

caused her no small degree of astonishment. It was written from

Boulogne.

It began with a long explanation of settlements of his property, in

which he had been engaged since their departure. The chief feature in

the business was that Mrs. Millborne found herself the absolute owner of

a comfortable sum in personal estate, and Frances of a life-interest in

a larger sum, the principal to be afterwards divided amongst her

children if she had any. The remainder of his letter ran as hereunder:-

'I have learnt that there are some derelictions of duty which cannot be

blotted out by tardy accomplishment. Our evil actions do not remain

isolated in the past, waiting only to be reversed: like locomotive

plants they spread and re-root, till to destroy the original stem has no

material effect in killing them. I made a mistake in searching you out;

I admit it; whatever the remedy may be in such cases it is not marriage,

and the best thing for you and me is that you do not see me more. You

had better not seek me, for you will not be likely to find me: you are

well provided for, and we may do ourselves more harm than good by

meeting again.

'F. M.'

Millborne, in short, disappeared from that day forward. But a searching

inquiry would have revealed that, soon after the Millbornes went to

Ivell, an Englishman, who did not give the name of Millborne, took up

his residence in Brussels; a man who might have been recognized by Mrs.

Millborne if she had met him. One afternoon in the ensuing summer, when

this gentleman was looking over the English papers, he saw the

announcement of Miss Frances Frankland's marriage. She had become the

Reverend Mrs. Cope.

'Thank God!' said the gentleman.

But his momentary satisfaction was far from being happiness. As he

formerly had been weighted with a bad conscience, so now was he burdened

with the heavy thought which oppressed Antigone, that by honourable

observance of a rite he had obtained for himself the reward of

dishonourable laxity. Occasionally he had to be helped to his lodgings

by his servant from the Cercle he frequented, through having imbibed a

little too much liquor to be able to take care of himself. But he was

harmless, and even when he had been drinking said little.

March 1891.

A TRAGEDY OF TWO AMBITIONS

CHAPTER I

The shouts of the village-boys came in at the window, accompanied by

broken laughter from loungers at the inn-door; but the brothers

Halborough worked on.

They were sitting in a bedroom of the master-millwright's house, engaged

in the untutored reading of Greek and Latin. It was no tale of Homeric

blows and knocks, Argonautic voyaging, or Theban family woe that

inflamed their imaginations and spurred them onward. They were plodding

away at the Greek Testament, immersed in a chapter of the idiomatic and

difficult Epistle to the Hebrews.

The Dog-day sun in its decline reached the low ceiling with slanting

sides, and the shadows of the great goat's-willow swayed and

interchanged upon the walls like a spectral army manoeuvring. The open

casement which admitted the remoter sounds now brought the voice of some

one close at hand. It was their sister, a pretty girl of fourteen, who

stood in the court below.

'I can see the tops of your heads! What's the use of staying up there? I

like you not to go out with the street-boys; but do come and play with

me!'

They treated her as an inadequate interlocutor, and put her off with

some slight word. She went away disappointed. Presently there was a dull

noise of heavy footsteps at the side of the house, and one of the

brothers sat up. 'I fancy I hear him coming,' he murmured, his eyes on

the window.

A man in the light drab clothes of an old-fashioned country tradesman

approached from round the corner, reeling as he came. The elder son

flushed with anger, rose from his books, and descended the stairs. The

younger sat on, till, after the lapse of a few minutes, his brother re-

entered the room.

'Did Rosa see him?'

'No.'

'Nor anybody?'

'No.'

'What have you done with him?'

'He's in the straw-shed. I got him in with some trouble, and he has

fallen asleep. I thought this would be the explanation of his absence!

No stones dressed for Miller Kench, the great wheel of the saw-mills

waiting for new float-boards, even the poor folk not able to get their

waggons wheeled.'

'What is the use of poring over this!' said the younger, shutting up

Donnegan's Lexicon with a slap. 'O if we had only been able to keep

mother's nine hundred pounds, what we could have done!'

'How well she had estimated the sum necessary! Four hundred and fifty

each, she thought. And I have no doubt that we could have done it on

that, with care.'

This loss of the nine hundred pounds was the sharp thorn of their crown.

It was a sum which their mother had amassed with great exertion and

self-denial, by adding to a chance legacy such other small amounts as

she could lay hands on from time to time; and she had intended with the

hoard to indulge the dear wish of her heart-that of sending her sons,

Joshua and Cornelius, to one of the Universities, having been informed

that from four hundred to four hundred and fifty each might carry them

through their terms with such great economy as she knew she could trust

them to practise. But she had died a year or two before this time, worn

out by too keen a strain towards these ends; and the money, coming

unreservedly into the hands of their father, had been nearly dissipated.

With its exhaustion went all opportunity and hope of a university degree

for the sons.

'It drives me mad when I think of it,' said Joshua, the elder. 'And here

we work and work in our own bungling way, and the utmost we can hope for

is a term of years as national schoolmasters, and possible admission to

a Theological college, and ordination as despised licentiates.'

The anger of the elder was reflected as simple sadness in the face of

the other. 'We can preach the Gospel as well without a hood on our

surplices as with one,' he said with feeble consolation.

'Preach the Gospel-true,' said Joshua with a slight pursing of mouth.

'But we can't rise!'

'Let us make the best of it, and grind on.'

The other was silent, and they drearily bent over their books again.

The cause of all this gloom, the millwright Halborough, now snoring in

the shed, had been a thriving master-machinist, notwithstanding his free

and careless disposition, till a taste for a more than adequate quantity

of strong liquor took hold of him; since when his habits had interfered

with his business sadly. Already millers went elsewhere for their gear,

and only one set of hands was now kept going, though there were formerly

two. Already he found a difficulty in meeting his men at the week's end,

and though they had been reduced in number there was barely enough work

to do for those who remained.

The sun dropped lower and vanished, the shouts of the village children

ceased to resound, darkness cloaked the students' bedroom, and all the

scene outwardly breathed peace. None knew of the fevered youthful

ambitions that throbbed in two breasts within the quiet creeper-covered

walls of the millwright's house.

In a few months the brothers left the village of their birth to enter

themselves as students in a training college for schoolmasters; first

having placed their young sister Rosa under as efficient a tuition at a

fashionable watering-place as the means at their disposal could command.

CHAPTER II

A man in semi-clerical dress was walking along the road which led from

the railway-station into a provincial town. As he walked he read

persistently, only looking up once now and then to see that he was

keeping on the foot track and to avoid other passengers. At those

moments, whoever had known the former students at the millwright's would

have perceived that one of them, Joshua Halborough, was the peripatetic

reader here.

What had been simple force in the youth's face was energized judgment in

the man's. His character was gradually writing itself out in his

countenance. That he was watching his own career with deeper and deeper

interest, that he continually 'heard his days before him,' and cared to

hear little else, might have been hazarded from what was seen there. His

ambitions were, in truth, passionate, yet controlled; so that the germs

of many more plans than ever blossomed to maturity had place in him; and

forward visions were kept purposely in twilight, to avoid distraction.

Events so far had been encouraging. Shortly after assuming the

mastership of his first school he had obtained an introduction to the

Bishop of a diocese far from his native county, who had looked upon him

as a promising young man and taken him in hand. He was now in the second

year of his residence at the theological college of the cathedral-town,

and would soon be presented for ordination.

He entered the town, turned into a back street, and then into a yard,

keeping his book before him till he set foot under the arch of the

latter place. Round the arch was written 'National School,' and the

stonework of the jambs was worn away as nothing but boys and the waves

of ocean will wear it. He was soon amid the sing-song accents of the

scholars.

His brother Cornelius, who was the schoolmaster here, laid down the

pointer with which he was directing attention to the Capes of Europe,

and came forward.

'That's his brother Jos!' whispered one of the sixth standard boys.

'He's going to be a pa'son, he's now at college.'

'Corney is going to be one too, when he's saved enough money,' said

another.

After greeting his brother, whom he had not seen for several months, the

junior began to explain his system of teaching geography.

But Halborough the elder took no interest in the subject. 'How about

your own studies?' he asked. 'Did you get the books I sent?'

Cornelius had received them, and he related what he was doing.

'Mind you work in the morning. What time do you get up?'

The younger replied: 'Half-past five.'

'Half-past four is not a minute too soon this time of the year. There is

no time like the morning for construing. I don't know why, but when I

feel even too dreary to read a novel I can translate-there is something

mechanical about it I suppose. Now, Cornelius, you are rather

behindhand, and have some heavy reading before you if you mean to get

out of this next Christmas.'

'I am afraid I have.'

'We must soon sound the Bishop. I am sure you will get a title without

difficulty when he has heard all. The sub-dean, the principal of my

college, says that the best plan will be for you to come there when his

lordship is present at an examination, and he'll get you a personal

interview with him. Mind you make a good impression upon him. I found in

my case that that was everything and doctrine almost nothing. You'll do

for a deacon, Corney, if not for a priest.'

The younger remained thoughtful. 'Have you heard from Rosa lately?' he

asked; 'I had a letter this morning.'

'Yes. The little minx writes rather too often. She is homesick-though

Brussels must be an attractive place enough. But she must make the most

of her time over there. I thought a year would be enough for her, after

that high-class school at Sandbourne, but I have decided to give her

two, and make a good job of it, expensive as the establishment is.'

Their two rather harsh faces had softened directly they began to speak

of their sister, whom they loved more ambitiously than they loved

themselves.

'But where is the money to come from, Joshua?'

'I have already got it.' He looked round, and finding that some boys

were near withdrew a few steps. 'I have borrowed it at five per cent.

from the farmer who used to occupy the farm next our field. You remember

him.'

'But about paying him?'

'I shall pay him by degrees out of my stipend. No, Cornelius, it was no

use to do the thing by halves. She promises to be a most attractive, not

to say beautiful, girl. I have seen that for years; and if her face is

not her fortune, her face and her brains together will be, if I observe

and contrive aright. That she should be, every inch of her, an

accomplished and refined woman, was indispensable for the fulfilment of

her destiny, and for moving onwards and upwards with us; and she'll do

it, you will see. I'd half starve myself rather than take her away from

that school now.'

They looked round the school they were in. To Cornelius it was natural

and familiar enough, but to Joshua, with his limited human sympathies,

who had just dropped in from a superior sort of place, the sight jarred

unpleasantly, as being that of something he had left behind. 'I shall be

glad when you are out of this,' he said, 'and in your pulpit, and well

through your first sermon.'

'You may as well say inducted into my fat living, while you are about

it.'

'Ah, well-don't think lightly of the Church. There's a fine work for any

man of energy in the Church, as you'll find,' he said fervidly.

'Torrents of infidelity to be stemmed, new views of old subjects to be

expounded, truths in spirit to be substituted for truths in the letter .

. . ' He lapsed into reverie with the vision of his career, persuading

himself that it was ardour for Christianity which spurred him on, and

not pride of place. He had shouldered a body of doctrine, and was

prepared to defend it tooth and nail, solely for the honour and glory

that warriors win.

'If the Church is elastic, and stretches to the shape of the time,

she'll last, I suppose,' said Cornelius. 'If not-. Only think, I bought

a copy of Paley's Evidences, best edition, broad margins, excellent

preservation, at a bookstall the other day for-ninepence; and I thought

that at this rate Christianity must be in rather a bad way.'

'No, no!' said the other almost, angrily. 'It only shows that such

defences are no longer necessary. Men's eyes can see the truth without

extraneous assistance. Besides, we are in for Christianity, and must

stick to her whether or no. I am just now going right through Pusey's

Library of the Fathers.'

'You'll be a bishop, Joshua, before you have done!'

'Ah!' said the other bitterly, shaking his head. 'Perhaps I might have

been-I might have been! But where is my D.D. or LL.D.; and how be a

bishop without that kind of appendage? Archbishop Tillotson was the son

of a Sowerby clothier, but he was sent to Clare College. To hail Oxford

or Cambridge as alma mater is not for me-for us! My God! when I think of

what we should have been-what fair promise has been blighted by that

cursed, worthless-'

'Hush, hush! . . . But I feel it, too, as much as you. I have seen it

more forcibly lately. You would have obtained your degree long before

this time-possibly fellowship-and I should have been on my way to mine.'

'Don't talk of it,' said the other. 'We must do the best we can.'

They looked out of the window sadly, through the dusty panes, so high up

that only the sky was visible. By degrees the haunting trouble loomed

again, and Cornelius broke the silence with a whisper: 'He has called on

me!'

The living pulses died on Joshua's face, which grew arid as a

cIRONlinker. 'When was that?' he asked quickly.

'Last week.'

'How did he get here-so many miles?'

'Came by railway. He came to ask for money.'

'Ah!'

'He says he will call on you.'

Joshua replied resignedly. The theme of their conversation spoilt his

buoyancy for that afternoon. He returned in the evening, Cornelius

accompanying him to the station; but he did not read in the train which

took him back to the Fountall Theological College, as he had done on the

way out. That ineradicable trouble still remained as a squalid spot in

the expanse of his life. He sat with the other students in the cathedral

choir next day; and the recollection of the trouble obscured the purple

splendour thrown by the panes upon the floor.

It was afternoon. All was as still in the Close as a cathedral-green can

be between the Sunday services, and the incessant cawing of the rooks

was the only sound. Joshua Halborough had finished his ascetic lunch,

and had gone into the library, where he stood for a few moments looking

out of the large window facing the green. He saw walking slowly across

it a man in a fustian coat and a battered white hat with a much- ruffled

nap, having upon his arm a tall gipsy-woman wearing long brass earrings.

The man was staring quizzically at the west front of the cathedral, and

Halborough recognized in him the form and features of his father. Who

the woman was he knew not. Almost as soon as Joshua became conscious of

these things, the sub-dean, who was also the principal of the college,

and of whom the young man stood in more awe than of the Bishop himself,

emerged from the gate and entered a path across the Close. The pair met

the dignitary, and to Joshua's horror his father turned and addressed

the sub-dean.

What passed between them he could not tell. But as he stood in a cold

sweat he saw his father place his hand familiarly on the sub-dean's

shoulder; the shrinking response of the latter, and his quick

withdrawal, told his feeling. The woman seemed to say nothing, but when

the sub-dean had passed by they came on towards the college gate.

Halborough flew along the corridor and out at a side door, so as to

intercept them before they could reach the front entrance, for which

they were making. He caught them behind a clump of laurel.

'By Jerry, here's the very chap! Well, you're a fine fellow, Jos, never

to send your father as much as a twist o' baccy on such an occasion, and

to leave him to travel all these miles to find ye out!'

'First, who is this?' said Joshua Halborough with pale dignity, waving

his hand towards the buxom woman with the great earrings.

'Dammy, the mis'ess! Your step-mother! Didn't you know I'd married? She

helped me home from market one night, and we came to terms, and struck

the bargain. Didn't we, Selinar?'

'Oi, by the great Lord an' we did!' simpered the lady.

'Well, what sort of a place is this you are living in?' asked the

millwright. 'A kind of house-of-correction, apparently?'

Joshua listened abstractedly, his features set to resignation. Sick at

heart he was going to ask them if they were in want of any necessary,

any meal, when his father cut him short by saying, 'Why, we've called to

ask ye to come round and take pot-luck with us at the Cock-and-Bottle,

where we've put up for the day, on our way to see mis'ess's friends at

Binegar Fair, where they'll be lying under canvas for a night or two. As

for the victuals at the Cock I can't testify to 'em at all; but for the

drink, they've the rarest drop of Old Tom that I've tasted for many a

year.'

'Thanks; but I am a teetotaller; and I have lunched,' said Joshua, who

could fully believe his father's testimony to the gin, from the odour of

his breath. 'You see we have to observe regular habits here; and I

couldn't be seen at the Cock-and-Bottle just now.'

'O dammy, then don't come, your reverence. Perhaps you won't mind

standing treat for those who can be seen there?'

'Not a penny,' said the younger firmly. 'You've had enough already.'

'Thank you for nothing. By the bye, who was that spindle-legged, shoe-

buckled parson feller we met by now? He seemed to think we should poison

him!'

Joshua remarked coldly that it was the principal of his college,

guardedly inquiring, 'Did you tell him whom you were come to see?'

His father did not reply. He and his strapping gipsy wife-if she were

his wife-stayed no longer, and disappeared in the direction of the High

Street. Joshua Halborough went back to the library. Determined as was

his nature, he wept hot tears upon the books, and was immeasurably more

wretched that afternoon than the unwelcome millwright. In the evening he

sat down and wrote a letter to his brother, in which, after stating what

had happened, and expatiating upon this new disgrace in the gipsy wife,

he propounded a plan for raising money sufficient to induce the couple

to emigrate to Canada. 'It is our only chance,' he said. 'The case as it

stands is maddening. For a successful painter, sculptor, musician,

author, who takes society by storm, it is no drawback, it is sometimes

even a romantic recommendation, to hail from outcasts and profligates.

But for a clergyman of the Church of England! Cornelius, it is fatal! To

succeed in the Church, people must believe in you, first of all, as a

gentleman, secondly as a man of means, thirdly as a scholar, fourthly as

a preacher, fifthly, perhaps, as a Christian,-but always first as a

gentleman, with all their heart and soul and strength. I would have

faced the fact of being a small machinist's son, and have taken my

chance, if he'd been in any sense respectable and decent. The essence of

Christianity is humility, and by the help of God I would have brazened

it out. But this terrible vagabondage and disreputable connection! If he

does not accept my terms and leave the country, it will extinguish us

and kill me. For how can we live, and relinquish our high aim, and bring

down our dear sister Rosa to the level of a gipsy's step-daughter?'

CHAPTER III

There was excitement in the parish of Narrobourne one day. The

congregation had just come out from morning service, and the whole

conversation was of the new curate, Mr. Halborough, who had officiated

for the first time, in the absence of the rector.

Never before had the feeling of the villagers approached a level which

could be called excitement on such a matter as this. The droning which

had been the rule in that quiet old place for a century seemed ended at

last. They repeated the text to each other as a refrain: 'O Lord, be

thou my helper!' Not within living memory till to-day had the subject of

the sermon formed the topic of conversation from the church door to

church-yard gate, to the exclusion of personal remarks on those who had

been present, and on the week's news in general.

The thrilling periods of the preacher hung about their minds all that

day. The parish being steeped in indifferentism, it happened that when

the youths and maidens, middle-aged and old people, who had attended

church that morning, recurred as by a fascination to what Halborough had

said, they did so more or less indirectly, and even with the subterfuge

of a light laugh that was not real, so great was their shyness under the

novelty of their sensations.

What was more curious than that these unconventional villagers should

have been excited by a preacher of a new school after forty years of

familiarity with the old hand who had had charge of their souls, was the

effect of Halborough's address upon the occupants of the manor-house

pew, including the owner of the estate. These thought they knew how to

discount the mere sensational sermon, how to minimize flash oratory to

its bare proportions; but they had yielded like the rest of the assembly

to the charm of the newcomer.

Mr. Fellmer, the landowner, was a young widower, whose mother, still in

the prime of life, had returned to her old position in the family

mansion since the death of her son's wife in the year after her

marriage, at the birth of a fragile little girl. From the date of his

loss to the present time, Fellmer had led an inactive existence in the

seclusion of the parish; a lack of motive seemed to leave him listless.

He had gladly reinstated his mother in the gloomy house, and his main

occupation now lay in stewarding his estate, which was not large. Mrs.

Fellmer, who had sat beside him under Halborough this morning, was a

cheerful, straightforward woman, who did her marketing and her alms-

giving in person, was fond of old-fashioned flowers, and walked about

the village on very wet days visiting the parishioners. These, the only

two great ones of Narrobourne, were impressed by Joshua's eloquence as

much as the cottagers.

Halborough had been briefly introduced to them on his arrival some days

before, and, their interest being kindled, they waited a few moments

till he came out of the vestry, to walk down the churchyard-path with

him. Mrs. Fellmer spoke warmly of the sermon, of the good fortune of the

parish in his advent, and hoped he had found comfortable quarters.

Halborough, faintly flushing, said that he had obtained very fair

lodgings in the roomy house of a farmer, whom he named.

She feared he would find it very lonely, especially in the evenings, and

hoped they would see a good deal of him. When would he dine with them?

Could he not come that day-it must be so dull for him the first Sunday

evening in country lodgings?

Halborough replied that it would give him much pleasure, but that he

feared he must decline. 'I am not altogether alone,' he said. 'My

sister, who has just returned from Brussels, and who felt, as you do,

that I should be rather dismal by myself, has accompanied me hither to

stay a few days till she has put my rooms in order and set me going. She

was too fatigued to come to church, and is waiting for me now at the

farm.'

'Oh, but bring your sister-that will be still better! I shall be

delighted to know her. How I wish I had been aware! Do tell her, please,

that we had no idea of her presence.'

Halborough assured Mrs. Fellmer that he would certainly bear the

message; but as to her coming he was not so sure. The real truth was,

however, that the matter would be decided by him, Rosa having an almost

filial respect for his wishes. But he was uncertain as to the state of

her wardrobe, and had determined that she should not enter the manor-

house at a disadvantage that evening, when there would probably be

plenty of opportunities in the future of her doing so becomingly.

He walked to the farm in long strides. This, then, was the outcome of

his first morning's work as curate here. Things had gone fairly well

with him. He had been ordained; he was in a comfortable parish, where he

would exercise almost sole supervision, the rector being infirm. He had

made a deep impression at starting, and the absence of a hood seemed to

have done him no harm. Moreover, by considerable persuasion and payment,

his father and the dark woman had been shipped off to Canada, where they

were not likely to interfere greatly with his interests.

Rosa came out to meet him. 'Ah! you should have gone to church like a

good girl,' he said.

'Yes-I wished I had afterwards. But I do so hate church as a rule that

even your preaching was underestimated in my mind. It was too bad of

me!'

The girl who spoke thus playfully was fair, tall, and sylph-like, in a

muslin dress, and with just the coquettish d�sinvolture which an English

girl brings home from abroad, and loses again after a few months of

native life. Joshua was the reverse of playful; the world was too

important a concern for him to indulge in light moods. He told her in

decided, practical phraseology of the invitation.

'Now, Rosa, we must go-that's settled-if you've a dress that can be made

fit to wear all on the hop like this. You didn't, of course, think of

bringing an evening dress to such an out-of-the-way place?'

But Rosa had come from the wrong city to be caught napping in those

matters. 'Yes, I did,' said she. 'One never knows what may turn up.'

'Well done! Then off we go at seven.'

The evening drew on, and at dusk they started on foot, Rosa pulling up

the edge of her skirt under her cloak out of the way of the dews, so

that it formed a great wind-bag all round her, and carrying her satin

shoes under her arm. Joshua would not let her wait till she got indoors

before changing them, as she proposed, but insisted on her performing

that operation under a tree, so that they might enter as if they had not

walked. He was nervously formal about such trifles, while Rosa took the

whole proceeding-walk, dressing, dinner, and all-as a pastime. To Joshua

it was a serious step in life.

A more unexpected kind of person for a curate's sister was never

presented at a dinner. The surprise of Mrs. Fellmer was unconcealed. She

had looked forward to a Dorcas, or Martha, or Rhoda at the outside, and

a shade of misgiving crossed her face. It was possible that, had the

young lady accompanied her brother to church, there would have been no

dining at Narrobourne House that day.

Not so with the young widower, her son. He resembled a sleeper who had

awaked in a summer noon expecting to find it only dawn. He could

scarcely help stretching his arms and yawning in their faces, so strong

was his sense of being suddenly aroused to an unforeseen thing. When

they had sat down to table he at first talked to Rosa somewhat with the

air of a ruler in the land; but the woman lurking in the acquaintance

soon brought him to his level, and the girl from Brussels saw him

looking at her mouth, her hands, her contour, as if he could not quite

comprehend how they got created: then he dropped into the more

satisfactory stage which discerns no particulars.

He talked but little; she said much. The homeliness of the Fellmers, to

her view, though they were regarded with such awe down here, quite

disembarrassed her. The squire had become so unpractised, had dropped so

far into the shade during the last year or so of his life, that he had

almost forgotten what the world contained till this evening reminded

him. His mother, after her first moments of doubt, appeared to think

that he must be left to his own guidance, and gave her attention to

Joshua.

With all his foresight and doggedness of aim, the result of that dinner

exceeded Halborough's expectations. In weaving his ambitions he had

viewed his sister Rosa as a slight, bright thing to be helped into

notice by his abilities; but it now began to dawn upon him that the

physical gifts of nature to her might do more for them both than

nature's intellectual gifts to himself. While he was patiently boring

the tunnel Rosa seemed about to fly over the mountain.

He wrote the next day to his brother, now occupying his own old rooms in

the theological college, telling him exultingly of the unanticipated

d�but of Rosa at the manor-house. The next post brought him a reply of

congratulation, dashed with the counteracting intelligence that his

father did not like Canada-that his wife had deserted him, which made

him feel so dreary that he thought of returning home.

In his recent satisfaction at his own successes Joshua Halborough had

well-nigh forgotten his chronic trouble-latterly screened by distance.

But it now returned upon him; he saw more in this brief announcement

than his brother seemed to see. It was the cloud no bigger than a man's

hand.

CHAPTER IV

The following December, a day or two before Christmas, Mrs. Fellmer and

her son were walking up and down the broad gravel path which bordered

the east front of the house. Till within the last half-hour the morning

had been a drizzling one, and they had just emerged for a short turn

before luncheon.

'You see, dear mother,' the son was saying, 'it is the peculiarity of my

position which makes her appear to me in such a desirable light. When

you consider how I have been crippled at starting, how my life has been

maimed; that I feel anything like publicity distasteful, that I have ye

no political ambition, and that my chief aim and hope lie in the

education of the little thing Annie has left me, you must see how

desirable a wife like Miss Halborough would be, to prevent my becoming a

mere vegetable.'

'If you adore her, I suppose you must have her!' replied his mother with

dry indirectness. 'But you'll find that she will not be content to live

on here as you do, giving her whole mind to a young child.'

'That's just where we differ. Her very disqualification, that of being a

nobody, as you call it, is her recommendation in my eyes. Her lack of

influential connections limits her ambition. From what I know of her, a

life in this place is all that she would wish for. She would never care

to go outside the park-gates if it were necessary to stay within.'

'Being in love with her, Albert, and meaning to marry her, you invent

your practical reasons to make the case respectable. Well, do as you

will; I have no authority over you, so why should you consult me? You

mean to propose on this very occasion, no doubt. Don't you, now?'

'By no means. I am merely revolving the idea in my mind. If on further

acquaintance she turns out to be as good as she has hitherto seemed-

well, I shall see. Admit, now, that you like her.'

'I readily admit it. She is very captivating at first sight. But as a

stepmother to your child! You seem mighty anxious, Albert, to get rid of

me!'

'Not at all. And I am not so reckless as you think. I don't make up my

mind in a hurry. But the thought having occurred to me, I mention it to

you at once, mother. If you dislike it, say so.'

'I don't say anything. I will try to make the best of it if you are

determined. When does she come?'

'To-morrow.'

All this time there were great preparations in train at the curate's,

who was now a householder. Rosa, whose two or three weeks' stay on two

occasions earlier in the year had so affected the squire, was coming

again, and at the same time her younger brother Cornelius, to make up a

family party. Rosa, who journeyed from the Midlands, could not arrive

till late in the evening, but Cornelius was to get there in the

afternoon, Joshua going out to meet him in his walk across the fields

from the railway.

Everything being ready in Joshua's modest abode he started on his way,

his heart buoyant and thankful, if ever it was in his life. He was of

such good report himself that his brother's path into holy orders

promised to be unexpectedly easy; and he longed to compare experiences

with him, even though there was on hand a more exciting matter still.

From his youth he had held that, in old-fashioned country places, the

Church conferred social prestige up to a certain point at a cheaper

price than any other profession or pursuit; and events seemed to be

proving him right.

He had walked about half an hour when he saw Cornelius coming along the

path; and in a few minutes the two brothers met. The experiences of

Cornelius had been less immediately interesting than those of Joshua,

but his personal position was satisfactory, and there was nothing to

account for the singularly subdued manner that he exhibited, which at

first Joshua set down to the fatigue of over-study; and he proceeded to

the subject of Rosa's arrival in the evening, and the probable

consequences of this her third visit. 'Before next Easter she'll be his

wife, my boy,' said Joshua with grave exultation.

Cornelius shook his head. 'She comes too late!' he returned.

'What do you mean?'

'Look here.' He produced the Fountall paper, and placed his finger on a

paragraph, which Joshua read. It appeared under the report of Petty

Sessions, and was a commonplace case of disorderly conduct, in which a

man was sent to prison for seven days for breaking windows in that town.

'Well?' said Joshua.

'It happened during an evening that I was in the street; and the

offender is our father.'

'Not-how-I sent him more money on his promising to stay in Canada?'

'He is home, safe enough.' Cornelius in the same gloomy tone gave the

remainder of his information. He had witnessed the scene, unobserved of

his father, and had heard him say that he was on his way to see his

daughter, who was going to marry a rich gentleman. The only good fortune

attending the untoward incident was that the millwright's name had been

printed as Joshua Alborough.

'Beaten! We are to be beaten on the eve of our expected victory!' said

the elder brother. 'How did he guess that Rosa was likely to marry? Good

Heaven Cornelius, you seem doomed to bring bad news always, do you not!'

'I do,' said Cornelius. 'Poor Rosa!'

It was almost in tears, so great was their heart-sickness and shame,

that the brothers walked the remainder of the way to Joshua's dwelling.

In the evening they set out to meet Rosa, bringing her to the village in

a fly; and when she had come into the house, and was sitting down with

them, they almost forgot their secret anxiety in contemplating her, who

knew nothing about it.

Next day the Fellmers came, and the two or three days after that were a

lively time. That the squire was yielding to his impulses-making up his

mind-there could be no doubt. On Sunday Cornelius read the lessons, and

Joshua preached. Mrs. Fellmer was quite maternal towards Rosa, and it

appeared that she had decided to welcome the inevitable with a good

grace. The pretty girl was to spend yet another afternoon with the elder

lady, superintending some parish treat at the house in observance of

Christmas, and afterwards to stay on to dinner, her brothers to fetch

her in the evening. They were also invited to dine, but they could not

accept owing to an engagement.

The engagement was of a sombre sort. They were going to meet their

father, who would that day be released from Fountall Gaol, and try to

persuade him to keep away from Narrobourne. Every exertion was to be

made to get him back to Canada, to his old home in the Midlands-

anywhere, so that he would not impinge disastrously upon their courses,

and blast their sister's prospects of the auspicious marriage which was

just then hanging in the balance.

As soon as Rosa had been fetched away by her friends at the manor-house

her brothers started on their expedition, without waiting for dinner or

tea. Cornelius, to whom the millwright always addressed his letters when

he wrote any, drew from his pocket and re-read as he walked the curt

note which had led to this journey being undertaken; it was despatched

by their father the night before, immediately upon his liberation, and

stated that he was setting out for Narrobourne at the moment of writing;

that having no money he would be obliged to walk all the way; that he

calculated on passing through the intervening town of Ivell about six on

the following day, where he should sup at the Castle Inn, and where he

hoped they would meet him with a carriage-and-pair, or some other such

conveyance, that he might not disgrace them by arriving like a tramp.

'That sounds as if he gave a thought to our position,' said Cornelius.

Joshua knew the satire that lurked in the paternal words, and said

nothing. Silence prevailed during the greater part of their journey. The

lamps were lighted in Ivell when they entered the streets, and

Cornelius, who was quite unknown in this neighbourhood, and who,

moreover, was not in clerical attire, decided that he should be the one

to call at the Castle Inn. Here, in answer to his inquiry under the

darkness of the archway, they told him that such a man as he had

described left the house about a quarter of an hour earlier, after

making a meal in the kitchen-settle. He was rather the worse for liquor.

'Then,' said Joshua, when Cornelius joined him outside with this

intelligence, 'we must have met and passed him! And now that I think of

it, we did meet some one who was unsteady in his gait, under the trees

on the other side of Hendford Hill, where it was too dark to see him.'

They rapidly retraced their steps; but for a long stretch of the way

home could discern nobody. When, however, they had gone about three-

quarters of the distance, they became conscious of an irregular footfall

in front of them, and could see a whitish figure in the gloom. They

followed dubiously. The figure met another wayfarer-the single one that

had been encountered upon this lonely road-and they distinctly heard him

ask the way to Narrobourne. The stranger replied-what was quite true-

that the nearest way was by turning in at the stile by the next bridge,

and following the footpath which branched thence across the meadows.

When the brothers reached the stile they also entered the path, but did

not overtake the subject of their worry till they had crossed two or

three meads, and the lights from Narrobourne manor-house were visible

before them through the trees. Their father was no longer walking; he

was seated against the wet bank of an adjoining hedge. Observing their

forms he shouted, 'I'm going to Narrobourne; who may you be?'

They went up to him, and revealed themselves, reminding him of the plan

which he had himself proposed in his note, that they should meet him at

Ivell.

'By Jerry, I'd forgot it!' he said. 'Well, what do you want me to do?'

His tone was distinctly quarrelsome.

A long conversation followed, which became embittered at the first hint

from them that he should not come to the village. The millwright drew a

quart bottle from his pocket, and challenged them to drink if they meant

friendly and called themselves men. Neither of the two had touched

alcohol for years, but for once they thought it best to accept, so as

not to needlessly provoke him.

'What's in it?' said Joshua.

'A drop of weak gin-and-water. It won't hurt ye. Drin' from the bottle.'

Joshua did so, and his father pushed up the bottom of the vessel so as

to make him swallow a good deal in spite of himself. It went down into

his stomach like molten lead.

'Ha, ha, that's right!' said old Halborough. 'But 'twas raw spirit-ha,

ha!'

'Why should you take me in so!' said Joshua, losing his self-command,

try as he would to keep calm.

'Because you took me in, my lad, in banishing me to that cursed country

under pretence that it was for my good. You were a pair of hypocrites to

say so. It was done to get rid of me-no more nor less. But, by Jerry,

I'm a match for ye now! I'll spoil your souls for preaching. My daughter

is going to be married to the squire here. I've heard the news-I saw it

in a paper!'

'It is premature-'

'I know it is true; and I'm her father, and I shall give her away, or

there'll be a hell of a row, I can assure ye! Is that where the

gennleman lives?'

Joshua Halborough writhed in impotent despair. Fellmer had not yet

positively declared himself, his mother was hardly won round; a scene

with their father in the parish would demolish as fair a palace of hopes

as was ever builded. The millwright rose. 'If that's where the squire

lives I'm going to call. Just arrived from Canady with her fortune-ha,

ha! I wish no harm to the gennleman, and the gennleman will wish no harm

to me. But I like to take my place in the family, and stand upon my

rights, and lower people's pride!'

'You've succeeded already! Where's that woman you took with you-'

'Woman! She was my wife as lawful as the Constitution-a sight more

lawful than your mother was till some time after you were born!'

Joshua had for many years before heard whispers that his father had

cajoled his mother in their early acquaintance, and had made somewhat

tardy amends; but never from his father's lips till now. It was the last

stroke, and he could not bear it. He sank back against the hedge. 'It is

over!' he said. 'He ruins us all!'

The millwright moved on, waving his stick triumphantly, and the two

brothers stood still. They could see his drab figure stalking along the

path, and over his head the lights from the conservatory of Narrobourne

House, inside which Albert Fellmer might possibly be sitting with Rosa

at that moment, holding her hand, and asking her to share his home with

him.

The staggering whitey-brown form, advancing to put a blot on all this,

had been diminishing in the shade; and now suddenly disappeared beside a

weir. There was the noise of a flounce in the water.

'He has fallen in!' said Cornelius, starting forward to run for the

place at which his father had vanished.

Joshua, awaking from the stupefied reverie into which he had sunk,

rushed to the other's side before he had taken ten steps. 'Stop, stop,

what are you thinking of?' he whispered hoarsely, grasping Cornelius's

arm.

'Pulling him out!'

'Yes, yes-so am I. But-wait a moment-'

'But, Joshua!'

'Her life and happiness, you know-Cornelius-and your reputation and

mine-and our chance of rising together, all three-'

He clutched his brother's arm to the bone; and as they stood breathless

the splashing and floundering in the weir continued; over it they saw

the hopeful lights from the manor-house conservatory winking through the

trees as their bare branches waved to and fro.

The floundering and splashing grew weaker, and they could hear gurgling

words: 'Help-I'm drownded! Rosie-Rosie!'

'We'll go-we must save him. O Joshua!'

'Yes, yes! we must!'

Still they did not move, but waited, holding each other, each thinking

the same thought. Weights of lead seemed to be affixed to their feet,

which would no longer obey their wills. The mead became silent. Over it

they fancied they could see figures moving in the conservatory. The air

up there seemed to emit gentle kisses.

Cornelius started forward at last, and Joshua almost simultaneously. Two

or three minutes brought them to the brink of the stream. At first they

could see nothing in the water, though it was not so deep nor the night

so dark but that their father's light kerseymere coat would have been

visible if he had lain at the bottom. Joshua looked this way and that.

'He has drifted into the culvert,' he said.

Below the foot-bridge of the weir the stream suddenly narrowed to half

its width, to pass under a barrel arch or culvert constructed for

waggons to cross into the middle of the mead in haymaking time. It being

at present the season of high water the arch was full to the crown,

against which the ripples clucked every now and then. At this point he

had just caught sight of a pale object slipping under. In a moment it

was gone.

They went to the lower end, but nothing emerged. For a long time they

tried at both ends to effect some communication with the interior, but

to no purpose.

'We ought to have come sooner!' said the conscience-stricken Cornelius,

when they were quite exhausted, and dripping wet.

'I suppose we ought,' replied Joshua heavily. He perceived his father's

walking-stick on the bank; hastily picking it up he stuck it into the

mud among the sedge. Then they went on.

'Shall we-say anything about this accident?' whispered Cornelius as they

approached the door of Joshua's house.

'What's the use? It can do no good. We must wait until he is found.'

They went indoors and changed their clothes; after which they started

for the manor-house, reaching it about ten o'clock. Besides their sister

there were only three guests; an adjoining landowner and his wife, and

the infirm old rector.

Rosa, although she had parted from them so recently, grasped their hands

in an ecstatic, brimming, joyful manner, as if she had not seen them for

years. 'You look pale,' she said.

The brothers answered that they had had a long walk, and were somewhat

tired. Everybody in the room seemed charged full with some sort of

interesting knowledge: the squire's neighbour and his wife looked wisely

around; and Fellmer himself played the part of host with a preoccupied

bearing which approached fervour. They left at eleven, not accepting the

carriage offered, the distance being so short and the roads dry. The

squire came rather farther into the dark with them than he need have

done, and wished Rosa good-night in a mysterious manner, slightly apart

from the rest.

When they were walking along Joshua said, with desperate attempt at

joviality, 'Rosa, what's going on?'

'O, I-' she began between a gasp and a bound. 'He-'

'Never mind-if it disturbs you.'

She was so excited that she could not speak connectedly at first, the

practised air which she had brought home with her having disappeared.

Calming herself she added, 'I am not disturbed, and nothing has

happened. Only he said he wanted to ask me something, some day; and I

said never mind that now. He hasn't asked yet, and is coining to speak

to you about it. He would have done so to-night, only I asked him not to

be in a hurry. But he will come to-morrow, I am sure!'

CHAPTER V

It was summer-time, six months later, and mowers and haymakers were at

work in the meads. The manor-house, being opposite them, frequently

formed a peg for conversation during these operations; and the doings of

the squire, and the squire's young wife, the curate's sister-who was at

present the admired of most of them, and the interest of all-met with

their due amount of criticism.

Rosa was happy, if ever woman could be said to be so. She had not learnt

the fate of her father, and sometimes wondered-perhaps with a sense of

relief-why he did not write to her from his supposed home in Canada. Her

brother Joshua had been presented to a living in a small town, shortly

after her marriage, and Cornelius had thereupon succeeded to the vacant

curacy of Narrobourne.

These two had awaited in deep suspense the discovery of their father's

body; and yet the discovery had not been made. Every day they expected a

man or a boy to run up from the meads with the intelligence; but he had

never come. Days had accumulated to weeks and months; the wedding had

come and gone: Joshua had tolled and read himself in at his new parish;

and never a shout of amazement over the millwright's remains.

But now, in June, when they were mowing the meads, the hatches had to be

drawn and the water let out of its channels for the convenience of the

mowers. It was thus that the discovery was made. A man, stooping low

with his scythe, caught a view of the culvert lengthwise, and saw

something entangled in the recently bared weeds of its bed. A day or two

after there was an inquest; but the body was unrecognizable. Fish and

flood had been busy with the millwright; he had no watch or marked

article which could be identified; and a verdict of the accidental

drowning of a person unknown settled the matter.

As the body was found in Narrobourne parish, there it had to be buried.

Cornelius wrote to Joshua, begging him to come and read the service, or

to send some one; he himself could not do it. Rather than let in a

stranger Joshua came, and silently scanned the coroner's order handed

him by the undertaker:-

'I, Henry Giles, Coroner for the Mid-Division of Outer Wessex, do hereby

order the Burial of the Body now shown to the Inquest Jury as the Body

of an Adult Male Person Unknown . . . ,' etc.

Joshua Halborough got through the service in some way, and rejoined his

brother Cornelius at his house. Neither accepted an invitation to lunch

at their sister's; they wished to discuss parish matters together. In

the afternoon she came down, though they had already called on her, and

had not expected to see her again. Her bright eyes, brown hair, flowery

bonnet, lemon-coloured gloves, and flush beauty, were like an

irradiation into the apartment, which they in their gloom could hardly

bear.

'I forgot to tell you,' she said, 'of a curious thing which happened to

me a month or two before my marriage-something which I have thought may

have had a connection with the accident to the poor man you have buried

to-day. It was on that evening I was at the manor-house waiting for you

to fetch me; I was in the winter-garden with Albert, and we were sitting

silent together, when we fancied we heard a cry. We opened the door, and

while Albert ran to fetch his hat, leaving me standing there, the cry

was repeated, and my excited senses made me think I heard my own name.

When Albert came back all was silent, and we decided that it was only a

drunken shout, and not a cry for help. We both forgot the incident, and

it never has occurred to me till since the funeral to-day that it might

have been this stranger's cry. The name of course was only fancy, or he

might have had a wife or child with a name something like mine, poor

man!'

When she was gone the brothers were silent till Cornelius said, 'Now

mark this, Joshua. Sooner or later she'll know.'

'How?'

'From one of us. Do you think human hearts are iron-cased safes, that

you suppose we can keep this secret for ever?'

'Yes, I think they are, sometimes,' said Joshua.

'No. It will out. We shall tell.'

'What, and ruin her-kill her? Disgrace her children, and pull down the

whole auspicious house of Fellmer about our ears? No! May I-drown where

he was drowned before I do it! Never, never. Surely you can say the

same, Cornelius!'

Cornelius seemed fortified, and no more was said. For a long time after

that day he did not see Joshua, and before the next year was out a son

and heir was born to the Fellmers. The villagers rang the three bells

every evening for a week and more, and were made merry by Mr. Fellmer's

ale; and when the christening came on Joshua paid Narrobourne another

visit.

Among all the people who assembled on that day the brother clergymen

were the least interested. Their minds were haunted by a spirit in

kerseymere in the evening they walked together in the fields.

'She's all right,' said Joshua. 'But here are you doing journey-work,

Cornelius, and likely to continue at it till the end of the day, as far

as I can see. I, too, with my petty living-what am I after all? . . . To

tell the truth, the Church is a poor forlorn hope for people without

influence, particularly when their enthusiasm begins to flag. A social

regenerator has a better chance outside, where he is unhampered by dogma

and tradition. As for me, I would rather have gone on mending mills,

with my crust of bread and liberty.'

Almost automatically they had bent their steps along the margin of the

river; they now paused. They were standing on the brink of the well-

known weir. There were the hatches, there was the culvert; they could

see the pebbly bed of the stream through the pellucid water. The notes

of the church-bells were audible, still jangled by the enthusiastic

villagers.

'Why see-it was there I hid his walking-stick!' said Joshua, looking

towards the sedge. The next moment, during a passing breeze, something

flashed white on the spot to which the attention of Cornelius was drawn.

From the sedge rose a straight little silver-poplar, and it was the

leaves of this sapling which caused the flicker of whiteness.

'His walking-stick has grown!' Joshua added. 'It was a rough one-cut

from the hedge, I remember.'

At every puff of wind the tree turned white, till they could not bear to

look at it; and they walked away.

'I see him every night,' Cornelius murmured . . . 'Ah, we read our

Hebrews to little account, Jos! ?p?�e??e sta????, a?s????? ?ataf????sa?.

To have endured the cross, despising the shame-there lay greatness! But

now I often feel that I should like to put an end to trouble here in

this self-same spot.'

'I have thought of it myself,' said Joshua.

'Perhaps we shall, some day,' murmured his brother. 'Perhaps,' said

Joshua moodily.

With that contingency to consider in the silence of their nights and

days they bent their steps homewards.

December 1888.

ON THE WESTERN CIRCUIT

CHAPTER I

The man who played the disturbing part in the two quiet lives hereafter

depicted-no great man, in any sense, by the way-first had knowledge of

them on an October evening, in the city of Melchester. He had been

standing in the Close, vainly endeavouring to gain amid the darkness a

glimpse of the most homogeneous pile of medi�val architecture in

England, which towered and tapered from the damp and level sward in

front of him. While he stood the presence of the Cathedral walls was

revealed rather by the ear than by the eyes; he could not see them, but

they reflected sharply a roar of sound which entered the Close by a

street leading from the city square, and, falling upon the building, was

flung back upon him.

He postponed till the morrow his attempt to examine the deserted

edifice, and turned his attention to the noise. It was compounded of

steam barrel-organs, the clanging of gongs, the ringing of hand-bells,

the clack of rattles, and the undistinguishable shouts of men. A lurid

light hung in the air in the direction of the tumult. Thitherward he

went, passing under the arched gateway, along a straight street, and

into the square.

He might have searched Europe over for a greater contrast between

juxtaposed scenes. The spectacle was that of the eighth chasm of the

Inferno as to colour and flame, and, as to mirth, a development of the

Homeric heaven. A smoky glare, of the complexion of brass-filings,

ascended from the fiery tongues of innumerable naphtha lamps affixed to

booths, stalls, and other temporary erections which crowded the spacious

market-square. In front of this irradiation scores of human figures,

more or less in profile, were darting athwart and across, up, down, and

around, like gnats against a sunset.

Their motions were so rhythmical that they seemed to be moved by

machinery. And it presently appeared that they were moved by machinery

indeed; the figures being those of the patrons of swings, see-saws,

flying-leaps, above all of the three steam roundabouts which occupied

the centre of the position. It was from the latter that the din of

steam-organs came.

Throbbing humanity in full light was, on second thoughts, better than

architecture in the dark. The young man, lighting a short pipe, and

putting his hat on one side and one hand in his pocket, to throw himself

into harmony with his new environment, drew near to the largest and most

patronized of the steam circuses, as the roundabouts were called by

their owners. This was one of brilliant finish, and it was now in full

revolution. The musical instrument around which and to whose tones the

riders revolved, directed its trumpet-mouths of brass upon the young

man, and the long plate-glass mirrors set at angles, which revolved with

the machine, flashed the gyrating personages and hobby horses

kaleidoscopically into his eyes.

It could now be seen that he was unlike the majority of the crowd. A

gentlemanly young fellow, one of the species found in large towns only,

and London particularly, built on delicate lines, well, though not

fashionably dressed, he appeared to belong to the professional class; he

had nothing square or practical about his look, much that was

curvilinear and sensuous. Indeed, some would have called him a man not

altogether typical of the middle-class male of a century wherein sordid

ambition is the master-passion that seems to be taking the time-honoured

place of love.

The revolving figures passed before his eyes with an unexpected and

quiet grace in a throng whose natural movements did not suggest

gracefulness or quietude as a rule. By some contrivance there was

imparted to each of the hobby-horses a motion which was really the

triumph and perfection of roundabout inventiveness-a galloping rise and

fall, so timed that, of each pair of steeds, one was on the spring while

the other was on the pitch. The riders were quite fascinated by these

equine undulations in this most delightful holiday-game of our times.

There were riders as young as six, and as old as sixty years, with every

age between. At first it was difficult to catch a personality, but by

and by the observer's eyes centred on the prettiest girl out of the

several pretty ones revolving.

It was not that one with the light frock and light hat whom he had been

at first attracted by; no, it was the one with the black cape, grey

skirt, light gloves and-no, not even she, but the one behind her; she

with the crimson skirt, dark jacket, brown hat and brown gloves.

Unmistakably that was the prettiest girl.

Having finally selected her, this idle spectator studied her as well as

he was able during each of her brief transits across his visual field.

She was absolutely unconscious of everything save the act of riding: her

features were rapt in an ecstatic dreaminess; for the moment she did not

know her age or her history or her lineaments, much less her troubles.

He himself was full of vague latter-day glooms and popular melancholies,

and it was a refreshing sensation to behold this young thing then and

there, absolutely as happy as if she were in a Paradise.

Dreading the moment when the inexorable stoker, grimily lurking behind

the glittering rococo-work, should decide that this set of riders had

had their pennyworth, and bring the whole concern of steam-engine,

horses, mirrors, trumpets, drums, cymbals, and such-like to pause and

silence, he waited for her every reappearance, glancing indifferently

over the intervening forms, including the two plainer girls, the old

woman and child, the two youngsters, the newly-married couple, the old

man with a clay pipe, the sparkish youth with a ring, the young ladies

in the chariot, the pair of journeyman-carpenters, and others, till his

select country beauty followed on again in her place. He had never seen

a fairer product of nature, and at each round she made a deeper mark in

his sentiments. The stoppage then came, and the sighs of the riders were

audible.

He moved round to the place at which he reckoned she would alight; but

she retained her seat. The empty saddles began to refill, and she

plainly was deciding to have another turn. The young man drew up to the

side of her steed, and pleasantly asked her if she had enjoyed her ride.

'O yes!' she said, with dancing eyes. 'It has been quite unlike anything

I have ever felt in my life before!'

It was not difficult to fall into conversation with her. Unreserved-too

unreserved-by nature, she was not experienced enough to be reserved by

art, and after a little coaxing she answered his remarks readily. She

had come to live in Melchester from a village on the Great Plain, and

this was the first time that she had ever seen a steam-circus; she could

not understand how such wonderful machines were made. She had come to

the city on the invitation of Mrs. Harnham, who had taken her into her

household to train her as a servant, if she showed any aptitude. Mrs.

Harnham was a young lady who before she married had been Miss Edith

White, living in the country near the speaker's cottage; she was now

very kind to her through knowing her in childhood so well. She was even

taking the trouble to educate her. Mrs. Harnham was the only friend she

had in the world, and being without children had wished to have her near

her in preference to anybody else, though she had only lately come;

allowed her to do almost as she liked, and to have a holiday whenever

she asked for it. The husband of this kind young lady was a rich wine-

merchant of the town, but Mrs. Harnham did not care much about him. In

the daytime you could see the house from where they were talking. She,

the speaker, liked Melchester better than the lonely country, and she

was going to have a new hat for next Sunday that was to cost fifteen and

ninepence.

Then she inquired of her acquaintance where he lived, and he told her in

London, that ancient and smoky city, where everybody lived who lived at

all, and died because they could not live there. He came into Wessex two

or three times a year for professional reasons; he had arrived from

Wintoncester yesterday, and was going on into the next county in a day

or two. For one thing he did like the country better than the town, and

it was because it contained such girls as herself.

Then the pleasure-machine started again, and, to the light-hearted girl,

the figure of the handsome young man, the market-square with its lights

and crowd, the houses beyond, and the world at large, began moving round

as before, countermoving in the revolving mirrors on her right hand, she

being as it were the fixed point in an undulating, dazzling, lurid

universe, in which loomed forward most prominently of all the form of

her late interlocutor. Each time that she approached the half of her

orbit that lay nearest him they gazed at each other with smiles, and

with that unmistakable expression which means so little at the moment,

yet so often leads up to passion, heart-ache, union, disunion, devotion,

overpopulation, drudgery, content, resignation, despair.

When the horses slowed anew he stepped to her side and proposed another

heat. 'Hang the expense for once,' he said. 'I'll pay!'

She laughed till the tears came.

'Why do you laugh, dear?' said he.

'Because-you are so genteel that you must have plenty of money, and only

say that for fun!' she returned.

'Ha-ha!' laughed the young man in unison, and gallantly producing his

money she was enabled to whirl on again.

As he stood smiling there in the motley crowd, with his pipe in his

hand, and clad in the rough pea-jacket and wideawake that he had put on

for his stroll, who would have supposed him to be Charles Bradford Raye,

Esquire, stuff-gownsman, educated at Wintoncester, called to the Bar at

Lincoln's-Inn, now going the Western Circuit, merely detained in

Melchester by a small arbitration after his brethren had moved on to the

next county-town?

CHAPTER II

The square was overlooked from its remoter corner by the house of which

the young girl had spoken, a dignified residence of considerable size,

having several windows on each floor. Inside one of these, on the first

floor, the apartment being a large drawing-room, sat a lady, in

appearance from twenty-eight to thirty years of age. The blinds were

still undrawn, and the lady was absently surveying the weird scene

without, her cheek resting on her hand. The room was unlit from within,

but enough of the glare from the market-place entered it to reveal the

lady's face. She was what is called an interesting creature rather than

a handsome woman; dark-eyed, thoughtful, and with sensitive lips.

A man sauntered into the room from behind and came forward.

'O, Edith, I didn't see you,' he said. 'Why are you sitting here in the

dark?'

'I am looking at the fair,' replied the lady in a languid voice.

'Oh? Horrid nuisance every year! I wish it could be put a stop to'

'I like it.'

'H'm. There's no accounting for taste.'

For a moment he gazed from the window with her, for politeness sake, and

then went out again.

In a few minutes she rang.

'Hasn't Anna come in?' asked Mrs. Harnham.

'No m'm.'

'She ought to be in by this time. I meant her to go for ten minutes

only.'

'Shall I go and look for her, m'm?' said the house-maid alertly.

'No. It is not necessary: she is a good girl and will come soon.'

However, when the servant had gone Mrs. Harnham arose, went up to her

room, cloaked and bonneted herself, and proceeded downstairs, where she

found her husband.

'I want to see the fair,' she said; 'and I am going to look for Anna. I

have made myself responsible for her, and must see she comes to no harm.

She ought to be indoors. Will you come with me?'

'Oh, she's all right. I saw her on one of those whirligig things,

talking to her young man as I came in. But I'll go if you wish, though

I'd rather go a hundred miles the other way.'

'Then please do so. I shall come to no harm alone.'

She left the house and entered the crowd which thronged the market-

place, where she soon discovered Anna, seated on the revolving horse. As

soon as it stopped Mrs. Harnham advanced and said severely, 'Anna, how

can you be such a wild girl? You were only to be out for ten minutes.'

Anna looked blank, and the young man, who had dropped into the

background, came to her assistance.

'Please don't blame her,' he said politely. 'It is my fault that she has

stayed. She looked so graceful on the horse that I induced her to go

round again. I assure you that she has been quite safe.'

'In that case I'll leave her in your hands,' said Mrs. Harnham, turning

to retrace her steps.

But this for the moment it was not so easy to do. Something had

attracted the crowd to a spot in their rear, and the wine-merchant's

wife, caught by its sway, found herself pressed against Anna's

acquaintance without power to move away. Their faces were within a few

inches of each other, his breath fanned her cheek as well as Anna's.

They could do no other than smile at the accident; but neither spoke,

and each waited passively. Mrs. Harnham then felt a man's hand clasping

her fingers, and from the look of consciousness on the young fellow's

face she knew the hand to be his: she also knew that from the position

of the girl he had no other thought than that the imprisoned hand was

Anna's. What prompted her to refrain from undeceiving him she could

hardly tell. Not content with holding the hand, he playfully slipped two

of his fingers inside her glove, against her palm. Thus matters

continued till the pressure lessened; but several minutes passed before

the crowd thinned sufficiently to allow Mrs. Harnham to withdraw.

'How did they get to know each other, I wonder?' she mused as she

retreated. 'Anna is really very forward-and he very wicked and nice.'

She was so gently stirred with the stranger's manner and voice, with the

tenderness of his idle touch, that instead of re-entering the house she

turned back again and observed the pair from a screened nook. Really she

argued (being little less impulsive than Anna herself) it was very

excusable in Anna to encourage him, however she might have contrived to

make his acquaintance; he was so gentlemanly, so fascinating, had such

beautiful eyes. The thought that he was several years her junior

produced a reasonless sigh.

At length the couple turned from the roundabout towards the door of Mrs.

Harnham's house, and the young man could be heard saying that he would

accompany her home. Anna, then, had found a lover, apparently a very

devoted one. Mrs. Harnham was quite interested in him. When they drew

near the door of the wine-merchant's house, a comparatively deserted

spot by this time, they stood invisible for a little while in the shadow

of a wall, where they separated, Anna going on to the entrance, and her

acquaintance returning across the square.

'Anna,' said Mrs. Harnham, coming up. 'I've been looking at you! That

young man kissed you at parting I am almost sure.'

'Well,' stammered Anna; 'he said, if I didn't mind-it would do me no

harm, and, and, him a great deal of good!'

'Ah, I thought so! And he was a stranger till to-night?'

'Yes ma'am.'

'Yet I warrant you told him your name and every thing about yourself?'

'He asked me.'

'But he didn't tell you his?'

'Yes ma'am, he did!' cried Anna victoriously. 'It is Charles Bradford,

of London.'

'Well, if he's respectable, of course I've nothing to say against your

knowing him,' remarked her mistress, prepossessed, in spite of general

principles, in the young man's favour. 'But I must reconsider all that,

if he attempts to renew your acquaintance. A country-bred girl like you,

who has never lived in Melchester till this month, who had hardly ever

seen a black-coated man till you came here, to be so sharp as to capture

a young Londoner like him!'

'I didn't capture him. I didn't do anything,' said Anna, in confusion.

When she was indoors and alone Mrs. Harnham thought what a well-bred and

chivalrous young man Anna's companion had seemed. There had been a magic

in his wooing touch of her hand; and she wondered how he had come to be

attracted by the girl.

The next morning the emotional Edith Harnham went to the usual week-day

service in Melchester cathedral. In crossing the Close through the fog

she again perceived him who had interested her the previous evening,

gazing up thoughtfully at the high-piled architecture of the nave: and

as soon as she had taken her seat he entered and sat down in a stall

opposite hers.

He did not particularly heed her; but Mrs. Harnham was continually

occupying her eyes with him, and wondered more than ever what had

attracted him in her unfledged maid-servant. The mistress was almost as

unaccustomed as the maiden herself to the end-of-the-age young man, or

she might have wondered less. Raye, having looked about him awhile, left

abruptly, without regard to the service that was proceeding; and Mrs.

Harnham-lonely, impressionable creature that she was-took no further

interest in praising the Lord. She wished she had married a London man

who knew the subtleties of love-making as they were evidently known to

him who had mistakenly caressed her hand.

CHAPTER III

The calendar at Melchester had been light, occupying the court only a

few hours; and the assizes at Casterbridge, the next county-town on the

Western Circuit, having no business for Raye, he had not gone thither.

At the next town after that they did not open till the following Monday,

trials to begin on Tuesday morning. In the natural order of things Raye

would have arrived at the latter place on Monday afternoon; but it was

not till the middle of Wednesday that his gown and grey wig, curled in

tiers, in the best fashion of Assyrian bas-reliefs, were seen blowing

and bobbing behind him as he hastily walked up the High Street from his

lodgings. But though he entered the assize building there was nothing

for him to do, and sitting at the blue baize table in the well of the

court, he mended pens with a mind far away from the case in progress.

Thoughts of unpremeditated conduct, of which a week earlier he would not

have believed himself capable, threw him into a mood of dissatisfied

depression.

He had contrived to see again the pretty rural maiden Anna, the day

after the fair, had walked out of the city with her to the earthworks of

Old Melchester, and feeling a violent fancy for her, had remained in

Melchester all Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday; by persuasion obtaining

walks and meetings with the girl six or seven times during the interval;

had in brief won her, body and soul.

He supposed it must have been owing to the seclusion in which he had

lived of late in town that he had given way so unrestrainedly to a

passion for an artless creature whose inexperience had, from the first,

led her to place herself unreservedly in his hands. Much he deplored

trifling with her feelings for the sake of a passing desire; and he

could only hope that she might not live to suffer on his account.

She had begged him to come to her again; entreated him; wept. He had

promised that he would do so, and he meant to carry out that promise. He

could not desert her now. Awkward as such unintentional connections

were, the interspace of a hundred miles-which to a girl of her limited

capabilities was like a thousand-would effectually hinder this summer

fancy from greatly encumbering his life; while thought of her simple

love might do him the negative good of keeping him from idle pleasures

in town when he wished to work hard. His circuit journeys would take him

to Melchester three or four times a year; and then he could always see

her.

The pseudonym, or rather partial name, that he had given her as his

before knowing how far the acquaintance was going to carry him, had been

spoken on the spur of the moment, without any ulterior intention

whatever. He had not afterwards disturbed Anna's error, but on leaving

her he had felt bound to give her an address at a stationer's not far

from his chambers, at which she might write to him under the initials

'C. B.'

In due time Raye returned to his London abode, having called at

Melchester on his way and spent a few additional hours with his

fascinating child of nature. In town he lived monotonously every day.

Often he and his rooms were enclosed by a tawny fog from all the world

besides, and when he lighted the gas to read or write by, his situation

seemed so unnatural that he would look into the fire and think of that

trusting girl at Melchester again and again. Often, oppressed by absurd

fondness for her, he would enter the dim religious nave of the Law

Courts by the north door, elbow other juniors habited like himself, and

like him unretained; edge himself into this or that crowded court where

a sensational case was going on, just as if he were in it, though the

police officers at the door knew as well as he knew himself that he had

no more concern with the business in hand than the patient idlers at the

gallery-door outside, who had waited to enter since eight in the morning

because, like him, they belonged to the classes that live on

expectation. But he would do these things to no purpose, and think how

greatly the characters in such scenes contrasted with the pink and

breezy Anna.

An unexpected feature in that peasant maiden's conduct was that she had

not as yet written to him, though he had told her she might do so if she

wished. Surely a young creature had never before been so reticent in

such circumstances. At length he sent her a brief line, positively

requesting her to write. There was no answer by the return post, but the

day after a letter in a neat feminine hand, and bearing the Melchester

post-mark, was handed to him by the stationer.

The fact alone of its arrival was sufficient to satisfy his imaginative

sentiment. He was not anxious to open the epistle, and in truth did not

begin to read it for nearly half-an-hour, anticipating readily its terms

of passionate retrospect and tender adjuration. When at last he turned

his feet to the fireplace and unfolded the sheet, he was surprised and

pleased to find that neither extravagance nor vulgarity was there. It

was the most charming little missive he had ever received from woman. To

be sure the language was simple and the ideas were slight; but it was so

self-possessed; so purely that of a young girl who felt her womanhood to

be enough for her dignity that he read it through twice. Four sides were

filled, and a few lines written across, after the fashion of former

days; the paper, too, was common, and not of the latest shade and

surface. But what of those things? He had received letters from women

who were fairly called ladies, but never so sensible, so human a letter

as this. He could not single out any one sentence and say it was at all

remarkable or clever; the ensemble of the letter it was which won him;

and beyond the one request that he would write or come to her again soon

there was nothing to show her sense of a claim upon him.

To write again and develop a correspondence was the last thing Raye

would have preconceived as his conduct in such a situation; yet he did

send a short, encouraging line or two, signed with his pseudonym, in

which he asked for another letter, and cheeringly promised that he would

try to see her again on some near day, and would never forget how much

they had been to each other during their short acquaintance.

CHAPTER IV

To return now to the moment at which Anna, at Melchester, had received

Raye's letter.

It had been put into her own hand by the postman on his morning rounds.

She flushed down to her neck on receipt of it, and turned it over and

over. 'It is mine?' she said.

'Why, yes, can't you see it is?' said the postman, smiling as he guessed

the nature of the document and the cause of the confusion.

'O yes, of course!' replied Anna, looking at the letter, forcedly

tittering, and blushing still more.

Her look of embarrassment did not leave her with the postman's

departure. She opened the envelope, kissed its contents, put away the

letter in her pocket, and remained musing till her eyes filled with

tears.

A few minutes later she carried up a cup of tea to Mrs. Harnham in her

bed-chamber. Anna's mistress looked at her, and said: 'How dismal you

seem this morning, Anna. What's the matter?'

'I'm not dismal, I'm glad; only I-' She stopped to stifle a sob.

'Well?'

'I've got a letter-and what good is it to me, if I can't read a word in

it!'

'Why, I'll read it, child, if necessary.'

'But this is from somebody-I don't want anybody to read it but myself!'

Anna murmured.

'I shall not tell anybody. Is it from that young man?'

'I think so.' Anna slowly produced the letter, saying: 'Then will you

read it to me, ma'am?'

This was the secret of Anna's embarrassment and flutterings. She could

neither read nor write. She had grown up under the care of an aunt by

marriage, at one of the lonely hamlets on the Great Mid-Wessex Plain

where, even in days of national education, there had been no school

within a distance of two miles. Her aunt was an ignorant woman; there

had been nobody to investigate Anna's circumstances, nobody to care

about her learning the rudiments; though, as often in such cases, she

had been well fed and clothed and not unkindly treated. Since she had

come to live at Melchester with Mrs. Harnham, the latter, who took a

kindly interest in the girl, had taught her to speak correctly, in which

accomplishment Anna showed considerable readiness, as is not unusual

with the illiterate; and soon became quite fluent in the use of her

mistress's phraseology. Mrs. Harnham also insisted upon her getting a

spelling and copy book, and beginning to practise in these. Anna was

slower in this branch of her education, and meanwhile here was the

letter.

Edith Harnham's large dark eyes expressed some interest in the contents,

though, in her character of mere interpreter, she threw into her tone as

much as she could of mechanical passiveness. She read the short epistle

on to its concluding sentence, which idly requested Anna to send him a

tender answer.

'Now-you'll do it for me, won't you, dear mistress?' said Anna eagerly.

'And you'll do it as well as ever you can, please? Because I couldn't

bear him to think I am not able to do it myself. I should sink into the

earth with shame if he knew that!'

From some words in the letter Mrs. Harnham was led to ask questions, and

the answers she received confirmed her suspicions. Deep concern filled

Edith's heart at perceiving how the girl had committed her happiness to

the issue of this new-sprung attachment. She blamed herself for not

interfering in a flirtation which had resulted so seriously for the poor

little creature in her charge; though at the time of seeing the pair

together she had a feeling that it was hardly within her province to nip

young affection in the bud. However, what was done could not be undone,

and it behoved her now, as Anna's only protector, to help her as much as

she could. To Anna's eager request that she, Mrs. Harnham, should

compose and write the answer to this young London man's letter, she felt

bound to accede, to keep alive his attachment to the girl if possible;

though in other circumstances she might have suggested the cook as an

amanuensis.

A tender reply was thereupon concocted, and set down in Edith Harnham's

hand. This letter it had been which Raye had received and delighted in.

Written in the presence of Anna it certainly was, and on Anna's humble

note-paper, and in a measure indited by the young girl; but the life,

the spirit, the individuality, were Edith Harnham's.

'Won't you at least put your name yourself?' she said. 'You can manage

to write that by this time?'

'No, no,' said Anna, shrinking back. 'I should do it so bad. He'd be

ashamed of me, and never see me again!'

The note, so prettily requesting another from him, had, as we have seen,

power enough in its pages to bring one. He declared it to be such a

pleasure to hear from her that she must write every week. The same

process of manufacture was accordingly repeated by Anna and her

mistress, and continued for several weeks in succession; each letter

being penned and suggested by Edith, the girl standing by; the answer

read and commented on by Edith, Anna standing by and listening again.

Late on a winter evening, after the dispatch of the sixth letter, Mrs.

Harnham was sitting alone by the remains of her fire. Her husband had

retired to bed, and she had fallen into that fixity of musing which

takes no count of hour or temperature. The state of mind had been

brought about in Edith by a strange thing which she had done that day.

For the first time since Raye's visit Anna had gone to stay over a night

or two with her cottage friends on the Plain, and in her absence had

arrived, out of its time, a letter from Raye. To this Edith had replied

on her own responsibility, from the depths of her own heart, without

waiting for her maid's collaboration. The luxury of writing to him what

would be known to no consciousness but his was great, and she had

indulged herself therein.

Why was it a luxury?

Edith Harnham led a lonely life. Influenced by the belief of the British

parent that a bad marriage with its aversions is better than free

womanhood with its interests, dignity, and leisure, she had consented to

marry the elderly wine-merchant as a pis aller, at the age of seven-and-

twenty-some three years before this date-to find afterwards that she had

made a mistake. That contract had left her still a woman whose deeper

nature had never been stirred.

She was now clearly realizing that she had become possessed to the

bottom of her soul with the image of a man to whom she was hardly so

much as a name. From the first he had attracted her by his looks and

voice; by his tender touch; and, with these as generators, the writing

of letter after letter and the reading of their soft answers had

insensibly developed on her side an emotion which fanned his; till there

had resulted a magnetic reciprocity between the correspondents,

notwithstanding that one of them wrote in a character not her own. That

he had been able to seduce another woman in two days was his crowning

though unrecognized fascination for her as the she-animal.

They were her own impassioned and pent-up ideas-lowered to monosyllabic

phraseology in order to keep up the disguise-that Edith put into letters

signed with another name, much to the shallow Anna's delight, who,

unassisted, could not for the world have conceived such pretty fancies

for winning him, even had she been able to write them. Edith found that

it was these, her own foisted-in sentiments, to which the young

barrister mainly responded. The few sentences occasionally added from

Anna's own lips made apparently no impression upon him.

The letter-writing in her absence Anna never discovered; but on her

return the next morning she declared she wished to see her lover about

something at once, and begged Mrs. Harnham to ask him to come.

There was a strange anxiety in her manner which did not escape Mrs.

Harnham, and ultimately resolved itself into a flood of tears. Sinking

down at Edith's knees, she made confession that the result of her

relations with her lover it would soon become necessary to disclose.

Edith Harnham was generous enough to be very far from inclined to cast

Anna adrift at this conjuncture. No true woman ever is so inclined from

her own personal point of view, however prompt she may be in taking such

steps to safeguard those dear to her. Although she had written to Raye

so short a time previously, she instantly penned another Anna-note

hinting clearly though delicately the state of affairs.

Raye replied by a hasty line to say how much he was affected by her

news: he felt that he must run down to see her almost immediately.

But a week later the girl came to her mistress's room with another note,

which on being read informed her that after all he could not find time

for the journey. Anna was broken with grief; but by Mrs. Harnham's

counsel strictly refrained from hurling at him the reproaches and

bitterness customary from young women so situated. One thing was

imperative: to keep the young man's romantic interest in her alive.

Rather therefore did Edith, in the name of her prot�g�e, request him on

no account to be distressed about the looming event, and not to

inconvenience himself to hasten down. She desired above everything to be

no weight upon him in his career, no clog upon his high activities. She

had wished him to know what had befallen: he was to dismiss it again

from his mind. Only he must write tenderly as ever, and when he should

come again on the spring circuit it would be soon enough to discuss what

had better be done.

It may well be supposed that Anna's own feelings had not been quite in

accord with these generous expressions; but the mistress's judgment had

ruled, and Anna had acquiesced. 'All I want is that niceness you can so

well put into your letters, my dear, dear mistress, and that I can't for

the life o' me make up out of my own head; though I mean the same thing

and feel it exactly when you've written it down!'

When the letter had been sent off, and Edith Harnham was left alone, she

bowed herself on the back of her chair and wept.

'I wish it was mine-I wish it was!' she murmured. 'Yet how can I say

such a wicked thing!'

CHAPTER V

The letter moved Raye considerably when it reached him. The intelligence

itself had affected him less than her unexpected manner of treating him

in relation to it. The absence of any word of reproach, the devotion to

his interests, the self-sacrifice apparent in every line, all made up a

nobility of character that he had never dreamt of finding in womankind.

'God forgive me!' he said tremulously. 'I have been a wicked wretch. I

did not know she was such a treasure as this!'

He reassured her instantly; declaring that he would not of course desert

her, that he would provide a home for her somewhere. Meanwhile she was

to stay where she was as long as her mistress would allow her.

But a misfortune supervened in this direction. Whether an inkling of

Anna's circumstances reached the knowledge of Mrs. Harnham's husband or

not cannot be said, but the girl was compelled, in spite of Edith's

entreaties, to leave the house. By her own choice she decided to go back

for a while to the cottage on the Plain. This arrangement led to a

consultation as to how the correspondence should be carried on; and in

the girl's inability to continue personally what had been begun in her

name, and in the difficulty of their acting in concert as heretofore,

she requested Mrs. Harnham-the only well-to-do friend she had in the

world-to receive the letters and reply to them off-hand, sending them on

afterwards to herself on the Plain, where she might at least get some

neighbour to read them to her, if a trustworthy one could be met with.

Anna and her box then departed for the Plain.

Thus it befel that Edith Harnham found herself in the strange position

of having to correspond, under no supervision by the real woman, with a

man not her husband, in terms which were virtually those of a wife,

concerning a condition that was not Edith's at all; the man being one

for whom, mainly through the sympathies involved in playing this part,

she secretly cherished a predilection, subtle and imaginative truly, but

strong and absorbing. She opened each letter, read it as if intended for

herself, and replied from the promptings of her own heart and no other.

Throughout this correspondence, carried on in the girl's absence, the

high-strung Edith Harnham lived in the ecstasy of fancy; the vicarious

intimacy engendered such a flow of passionateness as was never exceeded.

For conscience' sake Edith at first sent on each of his letters to Anna,

and even rough copies of her replies; but later on these so-called

copies were much abridged, and many letters on both sides were not sent

on at all.

Though selfish, and, superficially at least, infested with the self-

indulgent vices of artificial society, there was a substratum of honesty

and fairness in Raye's character. He had really a tender regard for the

country girl, and it grew more tender than ever when he found her

apparently capable of expressing the deepest sensibilities in the

simplest words. He meditated, he wavered; and finally resolved to

consult his sister, a maiden lady much older than himself, of lively

sympathies and good intent. In making this confidence he showed her some

of the letters.

'She seems fairly educated,' Miss Raye observed. 'And bright in ideas.

She expresses herself with a taste that must be innate.'

'Yes. She writes very prettily, doesn't she, thanks to these elementary

schools?'

'One is drawn out towards her, in spite of one's self, poor thing.'

The upshot of the discussion was that though he had not been directly

advised to do it, Raye wrote, in his real name, what he would never have

decided to write on his own responsibility; namely that he could not

live without her, and would come down in the spring and shelve her

looming difficulty by marrying her.

This bold acceptance of the situation was made known to Anna by Mrs.

Harnham driving out immediately to the cottage on the Plain. Anna jumped

for joy like a little child. And poor, crude directions for answering

appropriately were given to Edith Harnham, who on her return to the city

carried them out with warm intensification.

'O!' she groaned, as she threw down the pen. 'Anna-poor good little

fool-hasn't intelligence enough to appreciate him! How should she? While

I-don't bear his child!'

It was now February. The correspondence had continued altogether for

four months; and the next letter from Raye contained incidentally a

statement of his position and prospects. He said that in offering to wed

her he had, at first, contemplated the step of retiring from a

profession which hitherto had brought him very slight emolument, and

which, to speak plainly, he had thought might be difficult of practice

after his union with her. But the unexpected mines of brightness and

warmth that her letters had disclosed to be lurking in her sweet nature

had led him to abandon that somewhat sad prospect. He felt sure that,

with her powers of development, after a little private training in the

social forms of London under his supervision, and a little help from a

governess if necessary, she would make as good a professional man's wife

as could be desired, even if he should rise to the woolsack. Many a Lord

Chancellor's wife had been less intuitively a lady than she had shown

herself to be in her lines to him.

'O-poor fellow, poor fellow!' mourned Edith Harnham.

Her distress now raged as high as her infatuation. It was she who had

wrought him to this pitch-to a marriage which meant his ruin; yet she

could not, in mercy to her maid, do anything to hinder his plan. Anna

was coming to Melchester that week, but she could hardly show the girl

this last reply from the young man; it told too much of the second

individuality that had usurped the place of the first.

Anna came, and her mistress took her into her own room for privacy. Anna

began by saying with some anxiety that she was glad the wedding was so

near.

'O Anna!' replied Mrs. Harnham. 'I think we must tell him all-that I

have been doing your writing for you?-lest he should not know it till

after you become his wife, and it might lead to dissension and

recriminations-'

'O mis'ess, dear mis'ess-please don't tell him now!' cried Anna in

distress. 'If you were to do it, perhaps he would not marry me; and what

should I do then? It would be terrible what would come to me! And I am

getting on with my writing, too. I have brought with me the copybook you

were so good as to give me, and I practise every day, and though it is

so, so hard, I shall do it well at last, I believe, if I keep on

trying.'

Edith looked at the copybook. The copies had been set by herself, and

such progress as the girl had made was in the way of grotesque facsimile

of her mistress's hand. But even if Edith's flowing caligraphy were

reproduced the inspiration would be another thing.

'You do it so beautifully,' continued Anna, 'and say all that I want to

say so much better than I could say it, that I do hope you won't leave

me in the lurch just now!'

'Very well,' replied the other. 'But I-but I thought I ought not to go

on!'

'Why?'

Her strong desire to confide her sentiments led Edith to answer truly:

'Because of its effect upon me.'

'But it can't have any!'

'Why, child?'

'Because you are married already!' said Anna with lucid simplicity.

'Of course it can't,' said her mistress hastily; yet glad, despite her

conscience, that two or three outpourings still remained to her. 'But

you must concentrate your attention on writing your name as I write it

here.'

CHAPTER VI

Soon Raye wrote about the wedding. Having decided to make the best of

what he feared was a piece of romantic folly, he had acquired more zest

for the grand experiment. He wished the ceremony to be in London, for

greater privacy. Edith Harnham would have preferred it at Melchester;

Anna was passive. His reasoning prevailed, and Mrs. Harnham threw

herself with mournful zeal into the preparations for Anna's departure.

In a last desperate feeling that she must at every hazard be in at the

death of her dream, and see once again the man who by a species of

telepathy had exercised such an influence on her, she offered to go up

with Anna and be with her through the ceremony-'to see the end of her,'

as her mistress put it with forced gaiety; an offer which the girl

gratefully accepted; for she had no other friend capable of playing the

part of companion and witness, in the presence of a gentlemanly

bridegroom, in such a way as not to hasten an opinion that he had made

an irremediable social blunder.

It was a muddy morning in March when Raye alighted from a four-wheel cab

at the door of a registry-office in the S.W. district of London, and

carefully handed down Anna and her companion Mrs. Harnham. Anna looked

attractive in the somewhat fashionable clothes which Mrs. Harnham had

helped her to buy, though not quite so attractive as, an innocent child,

she had appeared in her country gown on the back of the wooden horse at

Melchester Fair.

Mrs. Harnham had come up this morning by an early train, and a young

man-a friend of Raye's-having met them at the door, all four entered the

registry-office together. Till an hour before this time Raye had never

known the wine-merchant's wife, except at that first casual encounter,

and in the flutter of the performance before them he had little

opportunity for more than a brief acquaintance. The contract of marriage

at a registry is soon got through; but somehow, during its progress,

Raye discovered a strange and secret gravitation between himself and

Anna's friend.

The formalities of the wedding-or rather ratification of a previous

union-being concluded, the four went in one cab to Raye's lodgings,

newly taken in a new suburb in preference to a house, the rent of which

he could ill afford just then. Here Anna cut the little cake which Raye

had bought at a pastrycook's on his way home from Lincoln's Inn the

night before. But she did not do much besides. Raye's friend was obliged

to depart almost immediately, and when he had left the only ones

virtually present were Edith and Raye who exchanged ideas with much

animation. The conversation was indeed theirs only, Anna being as a

domestic animal who humbly heard but understood not. Raye seemed

startled in awakening to this fact, and began to feel dissatisfied with

her inadequacy.

At last, more disappointed than he cared to own, he said, 'Mrs. Harnham,

my darling is so flurried that she doesn't know what she is doing or

saying. I see that after this event a little quietude will be necessary

before she gives tongue to that tender philosophy which she used to

treat me to in her letters.'

They had planned to start early that afternoon for Knollsea, to spend

the few opening days of their married life there, and as the hour for

departure was drawing near Raye asked his wife if she would go to the

writing-desk in the next room and scribble a little note to his sister,

who had been unable to attend through indisposition, informing her that

the ceremony was over, thanking her for her little present, and hoping

to know her well now that she was the writer's sister as well as

Charles's.

'Say it in the pretty poetical way you know so well how to adopt,' he

added, 'for I want you particularly to win her, and both of you to be

dear friends.'

Anna looked uneasy, but departed to her task, Raye remaining to talk to

their guest. Anna was a long while absent, and her husband suddenly rose

and went to her.

He found her still bending over the writing-table, with tears brimming

up in her eyes; and he looked down upon the sheet of note-paper with

some interest, to discover with what tact she had expressed her good-

will in the delicate circumstances. To his surprise she had progressed

but a few lines, in the characters and spelling of a child of eight, and

with the ideas of a goose.

'Anna,' he said, staring; 'what's this?'

'It only means-that I can't do it any better!' she answered, through her

tears.

'Eh? Nonsense!'

'I can't!' she insisted, with miserable, sobbing hardihood. 'I-I-didn't

write those letters, Charles! I only told her what to write! And not

always that! But I am learning, O so fast, my dear, dear husband! And

you'll forgive me, won't you, for not telling you before?' She slid to

her knees, abjectly clasped his waist and laid her face against him.

He stood a few moments, raised her, abruptly turned, and shut the door

upon her, rejoining Edith in the drawing-room. She saw that something

untoward had been discovered, and their eyes remained fixed on each

other.

'Do I guess rightly?' he asked, with wan quietude. 'You were her scribe

through all this?'

'It was necessary,' said Edith.

'Did she dictate every word you ever wrote to me?'

'Not every word.'

'In fact, very little?'

'Very little.'

'You wrote a great part of those pages every week from your own

conceptions, though in her name!'

'Yes.'

'Perhaps you wrote many of the letters when you were alone, without

communication with her?'

'I did.'

He turned to the bookcase, and leant with his hand over his face; and

Edith, seeing his distress, became white as a sheet.

'You have deceived me-ruined me!' he murmured.

'O, don't say it!' she cried in her anguish, jumping up and putting her

hand on his shoulder. 'I can't bear that!'

'Delighting me deceptively! Why did you do it-why did you!'

'I began doing it in kindness to her! How could I do otherwise than try

to save such a simple girl from misery? But I admit that I continued it

for pleasure to myself.'

Raye looked up. 'Why did it give you pleasure?' he asked.

'I must not tell,' said she.

He continued to regard her, and saw that her lips suddenly began to

quiver under his scrutiny, and her eyes to fill and droop. She started

aside, and said that she must go to the station to catch the return

train: could a cab be called immediately?

But Raye went up to her, and took her unresisting hand. 'Well, to think

of such a thing as this!' he said. 'Why, you and I are friends-lovers-

devoted lovers-by correspondence!'

'Yes; I suppose.'

'More.'

'More?'

'Plainly more. It is no use bIRONlinking that. Legally I have married

her-God help us both!-in soul and spirit I have married you, and no

other woman in the world!'

'Hush!'

'But I will not hush! Why should you try to disguise the full truth,

when you have already owned half of it? Yes, it is between you and me

that the bond is-not between me and her! Now I'll say no more. But, O my

cruel one, I think I have one claim upon you!'

She did not say what, and he drew her towards him, and bent over her.

'If it was all pure invention in those letters,' he said emphatically,

'give me your cheek only. If you meant what you said, let it be lips. It

is for the first and last time, remember!'

She put up her mouth, and he kissed her long. 'You forgive me?' she said

crying.

'Yes.'

'But you are ruined!'

'What matter!' he said shrugging his shoulders. 'It serves me right!'

She withdrew, wiped her eyes, entered and bade good-bye to Anna, who had

not expected her to go so soon, and was still wrestling with the letter.

Raye followed Edith downstairs, and in three minutes she was in a hansom

driving to the Waterloo station.

He went back to his wife. 'Never mind the letter, Anna, to-day,' he said

gently. 'Put on your things. We, too, must be off shortly.'

The simple girl, upheld by the sense that she was indeed married, showed

her delight at finding that he was as kind as ever after the disclosure.

She did not know that before his eyes he beheld as it were a galley, in

which he, the fastidious urban, was chained to work for the remainder of

his life, with her, the unlettered peasant, chained to his side.

Edith travelled back to Melchester that day with a face that showed the

very stupor of grief; her lips still tingling from the desperate

pressure of his kiss. The end of her impassioned dream had come. When at

dusk she reached the Melchester station her husband was there to meet

her, but in his perfunctoriness and her preoccupation they did not see

each other, and she went out of the station alone.

She walked mechanically homewards without calling a fly. Entering, she

could not bear the silence of the house, and went up in the dark to

where Anna had slept, where she remained thinking awhile. She then

returned to the drawing-room, and not knowing what she did, crouched

down upon the floor.

'I have ruined him!' she kept repeating. 'I have ruined him; because I

would not deal treacherously towards her!'

In the course of half an hour a figure opened the door of the apartment.

'Ah-who's that?' she said, starting up, for it was dark.

'Your husband-who should it be?' said the worthy merchant.

'Ah-my husband!-I forgot I had a husband!' she whispered to herself.

'I missed you at the station,' he continued. 'Did you see Anna safely

tied up? I hope so, for 'twas time.'

'Yes-Anna is married.'

Simultaneously with Edith's journey home Anna and her husband were

sitting at the opposite windows of a second-class carriage which sped

along to Knollsea. In his hand was a pocket-book full of creased sheets

closely written over. Unfolding them one after another he read them in

silence, and sighed.

'What are you doing, dear Charles?' she said timidly from the other

window, and drew nearer to him as if he were a god.

'Reading over all those sweet letters to me signed "Anna,"' he replied

with dreary resignation.

Autumn 1891.

TO PLEASE HIS WIFE

CHAPTER I

The interior of St. James's Church, in Havenpool Town, was slowly

darkening under the close clouds of a winter afternoon. It was Sunday:

service had just ended, the face of the parson in the pulpit was buried

in his hands, and the congregation, with a cheerful sigh of release,

were rising from their knees to depart.

For the moment the stillness was so complete that the surging of the sea

could be heard outside the harbour-bar. Then it was broken by the

footsteps of the clerk going towards the west door to open it in the

usual manner for the exit of the assembly. Before, however, he had

reached the doorway, the latch was lifted from without, and the dark

figure of a man in a sailor's garb appeared against the light.

The clerk stepped aside, the sailor closed the door gently behind him,

and advanced up the nave till he stood at the chancel-step. The parson

looked up from the private little prayer which, after so many for the

parish, he quite fairly took for himself; rose to his feet, and stared

at the intruder.

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said the sailor, addressing the minister in a

voice distinctly audible to all the congregation. 'I have come here to

offer thanks for my narrow escape from shipwreck. I am given to

understand that it is a proper thing to do, if you have no objection?'

The parson, after a moment's pause, said hesitatingly, 'I have no

objection; certainly. It is usual to mention any such wish before

service, so that the proper words may be used in the General

Thanksgiving. But, if you wish, we can read from the form for use after

a storm at sea.'

'Ay, sure; I ain't particular,' said the sailor.

The clerk thereupon directed the sailor to the page in the prayer-book

where the collect of thanksgiving would be found, and the rector began

reading it, the sailor kneeling where he stood, and repeating it after

him word by word in a distinct voice. The people, who had remained agape

and motionless at the proceeding, mechanically knelt down likewise; but

they continued to regard the isolated form of the sailor who, in the

precise middle of the chancel-step, remained fixed on his knees, facing

the east, his hat beside him, his hands joined, and he quite unconscious

of his appearance in their regard.

When his thanksgiving had come to an end he rose; the people rose also,

and all went out of church together. As soon as the sailor emerged, so

that the remaining daylight fell upon his face, old inhabitants began to

recognize him as no other than Shadrach Jolliffe, a young man who had

not been seen at Havenpool for several years. A son of the town, his

parents had died when he was quite young, on which account he had early

gone to sea, in the Newfoundland trade.

He talked with this and that townsman as he walked, informing them that,

since leaving his native place years before, he had become captain and

owner of a small coasting-ketch, which had providentially been saved

from the gale as well as himself. Presently he drew near to two girls

who were going out of the churchyard in front of him; they had been

sitting in the nave at his entry, and had watched his doings with deep

interest, afterwards discussing him as they moved out of church

together. One was a slight and gentle creature, the other a tall, large-

framed, deliberative girl. Captain Jolliffe regarded the loose curls of

their hair, their backs and shoulders, down to their heels, for some

time.

'Who may them two maids be?' he whispered to his neighbour.

'The little one is Emily Hanning; the tall one Joanna Phippard.'

'Ah! I recollect 'em now, to be sure.'

He advanced to their elbow, and genially stole a gaze at them.

'Emily, you don't know me?' said the sailor, turning his beaming brown

eyes on her.

'I think I do, Mr. Jolliffe,' said Emily shyly.

The other girl looked straight at him with her dark eyes.

'The face of Miss Joanna I don't call to mind so well,' he continued.

'But I know her beginnings and kindred.'

They walked and talked together, Jolliffe narrating particulars of his

late narrow escape, till they reached the corner of Sloop Lane, in which

Emily Hanning dwelt, when, with a nod and smile, she left them. Soon the

sailor parted also from Joanna, and, having no especial errand or

appointment, turned back towards Emily's house. She lived with her

father, who called himself an accountant, the daughter, however, keeping

a little stationery-shop as a supplemental provision for the gaps of his

somewhat uncertain business. On entering Jolliffe found father and

daughter about to begin tea.

'O, I didn't know it was tea-time,' he said. 'Ay, I'll have a cup with

much pleasure.'

He remained to tea and long afterwards, telling more tales of his

seafaring life. Several neighbours called to listen, and were asked to

come in. Somehow Emily Hanning lost her heart to the sailor that Sunday

night, and in the course of a week or two there was a tender

understanding between them.

One moonlight evening in the next month Shadrach was ascending out of

the town by the long straight road eastward, to an elevated suburb where

the more fashionable houses stood-if anything near this ancient port

could be called fashionable-when he saw a figure before him whom, from

her manner of glancing back, he took to be Emily. But, on coming up, he

found she was Joanna Phippard. He gave a gallant greeting, and walked

beside her.

'Go along,' she said, 'or Emily will be jealous!'

He seemed not to like the suggestion, and remained. What was said and

what was done on that walk never could be clearly recollected by

Shadrach; but in some way or other Joanna contrived to wean him away

from her gentler and younger rival. From that week onwards, Jolliffe was

seen more and more in the wake of Joanna Phippard and less in the

company of Emily; and it was soon rumoured about the quay that old

Jolliffe's son, who had come home from sea, was going to be married to

the former young woman, to the great disappointment of the latter.

Just after this report had gone about, Joanna dressed herself for a walk

one morning, and started for Emily's house in the little cross-street.

Intelligence of the deep sorrow of her friend on account of the loss of

Shadrach had reached her ears also, and her conscience reproached her

for winning him away.

Joanna was not altogether satisfied with the sailor. She liked his

attentions, and she coveted the dignity of matrimony; but she had never

been deeply in love with Jolliffe. For one thing, she was ambitious, and

socially his position was hardly so good as her own, and there was

always the chance of an attractive woman mating considerably above her.

It had long been in her mind that she would not strongly object to give

him back again to Emily if her friend felt so very badly about him. To

this end she had written a letter of renunciation to Shadrach, which

letter she carried in her hand, intending to send it if personal

observation of Emily convinced her that her friend was suffering.

Joanna entered Sloop Lane and stepped down into the stationery-shop,

which was below the pavement level. Emily's father was never at home at

this hour of the day, and it seemed as though Emily were not at home

either, for the visitor could make nobody hear. Customers came so seldom

hither that a five minutes' absence of the proprietor counted for

little. Joanna waited in the little shop, where Emily had tastefully set

out-as women can-articles in themselves of slight value, so as to

obscure the meagreness of the stock-in-trade; till she saw a figure

pausing without the window apparently absorbed in the contemplation of

the sixpenny books, packets of paper, and prints hung on a string. It

was Captain Shadrach Jolliffe, peering in to ascertain if Emily were

there alone. Moved by an impulse of reluctance to meet him in a spot

which breathed of Emily, Joanna slipped through the door that

communicated with the parlour at the back. She had frequently done so

before, for in her friendship with Emily she had the freedom of the

house without ceremony.

Jolliffe entered the shop. Through the thin blind which screened the

glass partition she could see that he was disappointed at not finding

Emily there. He was about to go out again, when Emily's form darkened

the doorway, hastening home from some errand. At sight of Jolliffe she

started back as if she would have gone out again.

'Don't run away, Emily; don't!' said he. 'What can make ye afraid?'

'I'm not afraid, Captain Jolliffe. Only-only I saw you all of a sudden,

and-it made me jump!' Her voice showed that her heart had jumped even

more than the rest of her.

'I just called as I was passing,' he said.

'For some paper?' She hastened behind the counter.

'No, no, Emily; why do ye get behind there? Why not stay by me? You seem

to hate me.'

'I don't hate you. How can I?'

'Then come out, so that we can talk like Christians.'

Emily obeyed with a fitful laugh, till she stood again beside him in the

open part of the shop.

'There's a dear,' he said.

'You mustn't say that, Captain Jolliffe; because the words belong to

somebody else.'

'Ah! I know what you mean. But, Emily, upon my life I didn't know till

this morning that you cared one bit about me, or I should not have done

as I have done. I have the best of feelings for Joanna, but I know that

from the beginning she hasn't cared for me more than in a friendly way;

and I see now the one I ought to have asked to be my wife. You know,

Emily, when a man comes home from sea after a long voyage he's as blind

as a bat-he can't see who's who in women. They are all alike to him,

beautiful creatures, and he takes the first that comes easy, without

thinking if she loves him, or if he might not soon love another better

than her. From the first I inclined to you most, but you were so

backward and shy that I thought you didn't want me to bother 'ee, and so

I went to Joanna.'

'Don't say any more, Mr. Jolliffe, don't!' said she, choking. 'You are

going to marry Joanna next month, and it is wrong to-to-'

'O, Emily, my darling!' he cried, and clasped her little figure in his

arms before she was aware.

Joanna, behind the curtain, turned pale, tried to withdraw her eyes, but

could not.

'It is only you I love as a man ought to love the woman he is going to

marry; and I know this from what Joanna has said, that she will

willingly let me off! She wants to marry higher I know, and only said

"Yes" to me out of kindness. A fine, tall girl like her isn't the sort

for a plain sailor's wife: you be the best suited for that.'

He kissed her and kissed her again, her flexible form quivering in the

agitation of his embrace.

'I wonder-are you sure-Joanna is going to break off with you? O, are you

sure? Because-'

'I know she would not wish to make us miserable. She will release me.'

'O, I hope-I hope she will! Don't stay any longer, Captain Jolliffe!'

He lingered, however, till a customer came for a penny stick of sealing-

wax, and then he withdrew.

Green envy had overspread Joanna at the scene. She looked about for a

way of escape. To get out without Emily's knowledge of her visit was

indispensable. She crept from the parlour into the passage, and thence

to the front door of the house, where she let herself noiselessly into

the street.

The sight of that caress had reversed all her resolutions. She could not

let Shadrach go. Reaching home she burnt the letter, and told her mother

that if Captain Jolliffe called she was too unwell to see him.

Shadrach, however, did not call. He sent her a note expressing in simple

language the state of his feelings; and asked to be allowed to take

advantage of the hints she had given him that her affection, too, was

little more than friendly, by cancelling the engagement.

Looking out upon the harbour and the island beyond he waited and waited

in his lodgings for an answer that did not come. The suspense grew to be

so intolerable that after dark he went up the High Street. He could not

resist calling at Joanna's to learn his fate.

Her mother said her daughter was too unwell to see him, and to his

questioning admitted that it was in consequence of a letter received

from himself; which had distressed her deeply.

'You know what it was about, perhaps, Mrs. Phippard?' he said.

Mrs. Phippard owned that she did, adding that it put them in a very

painful position. Thereupon Shadrach, fearing that he had been guilty of

an enormity, explained that if his letter had pained Joanna it must be

owing to a misunderstanding, since he had thought it would be a relief

to her. If otherwise, he would hold himself bound by his word, and she

was to think of the letter as never having been written.

Next morning he received an oral message from the young woman, asking

him to fetch her home from a meeting that evening. This he did, and

while walking from the Town Hall to her door, with her hand in his arm,

she said:

'It is all the same as before between us, isn't it, Shadrach? Your

letter was sent in mistake?'

'It is all the same as before,' he answered, 'if you say it must be.'

'I wish it to be,' she murmured, with hard lineaments, as she thought of

Emily.

Shadrach was a religious and scrupulous man, who respected his word as

his life. Shortly afterwards the wedding took place, Jolliffe having

conveyed to Emily as gently as possible the error he had fallen into

when estimating Joanna's mood as one of indifference.

CHAPTER II