CHAPTER I

Produced by David Widger

THE ENTIRE SHORT WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH

CONTENTS:

Farina

Case of General Ople

The Tale of Chloe

The House on the Beach

The Gentleman of Fifty

The Sentimentalists

Miscellaneous Prose

FARINA

By George Meredith

THE WHITE ROSE CLUB

In those lusty ages when the Kaisers lifted high the golden goblet of

Aachen, and drank, elbow upward, the green-eyed wine of old romance,

there lived, a bow-shot from the bones of the Eleven Thousand Virgins

and the Three Holy Kings, a prosperous Rhinelander, by name Gottlieb

Groschen, or, as it was sometimes ennobled, Gottlieb von Groschen;

than whom no wealthier merchant bartered for the glory of his ancient

mother-city, nor more honoured burgess swallowed impartially red juice

and white under the shadow of his own fig-tree.

Vine-hills, among the hottest sun-bibbers of the Rheingau, glistened

in the roll of Gottlieb’s possessions; corn-acres below Cologne;

basalt-quarries about Linz; mineral-springs in Nassau, a legacy of the

Romans to the genius and enterprise of the first of German traders. He

could have bought up every hawking crag, owner and all, from Hatto’s

Tower to Rheineck. Lore-ley, combing her yellow locks against the

night-cloud, beheld old Gottlieb’s rafts endlessly stealing on the

moonlight through the iron pass she peoples above St. Goar. A wailful

host were the wives of his raftsmen widowed there by her watery music!

This worthy citizen of Cologne held vasty manuscript letters of the

Kaiser addressed to him:

‘Dear Well-born son and Subject of mine, Gottlieb!’ and he was easy

with the proudest princes of the Holy German Realm. For Gottlieb was

a money-lender and an honest man in one body. He laid out for the

plenteous harvests of usury, not pressing the seasons with too much

rigour. ‘I sow my seed in winter,’ said he, ‘and hope to reap good

profit in autumn; but if the crop be scanty, better let it lie and

fatten the soil.’

‘Old earth’s the wisest creditor,’ he would add; ‘she never squeezes the

sun, but just takes what he can give her year by year, and so makes sure

of good annual interest.’

Therefore when people asked Gottlieb how he had risen to such a pinnacle

of fortune, the old merchant screwed his eye into its wisest corner,

and answered slyly, ‘Because I ‘ve always been a student of the heavenly

bodies’; a communication which failed not to make the orbs and systems

objects of ardent popular worship in Cologne, where the science was long

since considered alchymic, and still may be.

Seldom could the Kaiser go to war on Welschland without first taking

earnest counsel of his Well-born son and Subject Gottlieb, and

lightening his chests. Indeed the imperial pastime must have ceased, and

the Kaiser had languished but for him. Cologne counted its illustrious

citizen something more than man. The burghers doffed when he passed; and

scampish leather-draggled urchins gazed after him with praeternatural

respect on their hanging chins, as if a gold-mine of great girth had

walked through the awe-struck game.

But, for the young men of Cologne he had a higher claim to reverence as

father of the fair Margarita, the White Rose of Germany; a noble maiden,

peerless, and a jewel for princes.

The devotion of these youths should give them a name in chivalry. In her

honour, daily and nightly, they earned among themselves black bruises

and paraded discoloured countenances, with the humble hope to find it

pleasing in her sight. The tender fanatics went in bands up and down

Rhineland, challenging wayfarers and the peasantry with staff and beaker

to acknowledge the supremacy of their mistress. Whoso of them journeyed

into foreign parts, wrote home boasting how many times his head had been

broken on behalf of the fair Margarita; and if this happened very often,

a spirit of envy was created, which compelled him, when he returned, to

verify his prowess on no less than a score of his rivals. Not to possess

a beauty-scar, as the wounds received in these endless combats were

called, became the sign of inferiority, so that much voluntary maiming

was conjectured to be going on; and to obviate this piece of treachery,

minutes of fights were taken and attested, setting forth that a

certain glorious cut or crack was honourably won in fair field; on what

occasion; and from whom; every member of the White Rose Club keeping

his particular scroll, and, on days of festival and holiday, wearing it

haughtily in his helm. Strangers entering Cologne were astonished at

the hideous appearance of the striplings, and thought they never

had observed so ugly a race; but they were forced to admit the fine

influence of beauty on commerce, seeing that the consumption of beer

increased almost hourly. All Bavaria could not equal Cologne for

quantity made away with.

The chief members of the White Rose Club were Berthold Schmidt, the rich

goldsmith’s son; Dietrich Schill, son of the imperial saddler; Heinrich

Abt, Franz Endermann, and Ernst Geller, sons of chief burghers, each of

whom carried a yard-long scroll in his cap, and was too disfigured

in person for men to require an inspection of the document. They were

dangerous youths to meet, for the oaths, ceremonies, and recantations

they demanded from every wayfarer, under the rank of baron, were what

few might satisfactorily perform, if lovers of woman other than the

fair Margarita, or loyal husbands; and what none save trained heads and

stomachs could withstand, however naturally manful. The captain of the

Club was he who could drink most beer without intermediate sighing,

and whose face reckoned the proudest number of slices and mixture of

colours. The captaincy was most in dispute between Dietrich Schill and

Berthold Schmidt, who, in the heat and constancy of contention, were

gradually losing likeness to man. ‘Good coin,’ they gloried to reflect,

‘needs no stamp.’

One youth in Cologne held out against the standing tyranny, and chose to

do beauty homage in his own fashion, and at his leisure. It was Farina,

and oaths were registered against him over empty beer-barrels. An axiom

of the White Rose Club laid it down that everybody must be enamoured of

Margarita, and the conscience of the Club made them trebly suspicious

of those who were not members. They had the consolation of knowing that

Farina was poor, but then he was affirmed a student of Black Arts, and

from such a one the worst might reasonably be feared. He might bewitch

Margarita!

Dietrich Schill was deputed by the Club to sound the White Rose herself

on the subject of Farina, and one afternoon in the vintage season,

when she sat under the hot vine-poles among maiden friends, eating ripe

grapes, up sauntered Dietrich, smirking, cap in hand, with his scroll

trailed behind him.

‘Wilt thou?’ said Margarita, offering him a bunch.

‘Unhappy villain that I am!’ replied Dietrich, gesticulating fox-like

refusal; ‘if I but accept a favour, I break faith with the Club.’

‘Break it to pleasure me,’ said Margarita, smiling wickedly.

Dietrich gasped. He stood on tiptoe to see if any of the Club were by,

and half-stretched out his hand. A mocking laugh caused him to draw

it back as if stung. The grapes fell. Farina was at Margarita’s feet

offering them in return.

‘Wilt thou?’ said Margarita, with softer stress, and slight excess of

bloom in her cheeks.

Farina put the purple cluster to his breast, and clutched them hard on

his heart, still kneeling.

Margarita’s brow and bosom seemed to be reflections of the streaming

crimson there. She shook her face to the sky, and affected laughter at

the symbol. Her companions clapped hands. Farina’s eyes yearned to her

once, and then he rose and joined in the pleasantry.

Fury helped Dietrich to forget his awkwardness. He touched Farina on the

shoulder with two fingers, and muttered huskily: ‘The Club never allow

that.’

Farina bowed, as to thank him deeply for the rules of the Club. ‘I

am not a member, you know,’ said he, and strolled to a seat close by

Margarita.

Dietrich glared after him. As head of a Club he understood the use of

symbols. He had lost a splendid opportunity, and Farina had seized it.

Farina had robbed him.

‘May I speak with Mistress Margarita?’ inquired the White Rose chief, in

a ragged voice.

‘Surely, Dietrich! do speak,’ said Margarita.

‘Alone?’ he continued.

‘Is that allowed by the Club?’ said one of the young girls, with a saucy

glance.

Dietrich deigned no reply, but awaited Margarita’s decision. She

hesitated a second; then stood up her full height before him; faced him

steadily, and beckoned him some steps up the vine-path. Dietrich bowed,

and passing Farina, informed him that the Club would wring satisfaction

out of him for the insult.

Farina laughed, but answered, ‘Look, you of the Club! beer-swilling has

improved your manners as much as fighting has beautified your faces. Go

on; drink and fight! but remember that the Kaiser’s coming, and fellows

with him who will not be bullied.’

‘What mean you?’ cried Dietrich, lurching round on his enemy.

‘Not so loud, friend,’ returned Farina. ‘Or do you wish to frighten the

maidens? I mean this, that the Club had better give as little offence as

possible, and keep their eyes as wide as they can, if they want to be of

service to Mistress Margarita.’

Dietrich turned off with a grunt.

‘Now!’ said Margarita.

She was tapping her foot. Dietrich grew unfaithful to the Club, and

looked at her longer than his mission warranted. She was bright as the

sunset gardens of the Golden Apples. The braids of her yellow hair were

bound in wreaths, and on one side of her head a saffron crocus was

stuck with the bell downward. Sweetness, song, and wit hung like dews of

morning on her grape-stained lips. She wore a scarlet corset with bands

of black velvet across her shoulders. The girlish gown was thin blue

stuff, and fell short over her firm-set feet, neatly cased in white

leather with buckles. There was witness in her limbs and the way

she carried her neck of an amiable, but capable, dragon, ready, when

aroused, to bristle up and guard the Golden Apples against all save the

rightful claimant. Yet her nether lip and little white chin-ball had a

dreamy droop; her frank blue eyes went straight into the speaker: the

dragon slept. It was a dangerous charm. ‘For,’ says the minnesinger,

‘what ornament more enchants us on a young beauty than the soft slumber

of a strength never yet called forth, and that herself knows not of!

It sings double things to the heart of knighthood; lures, and warns us;

woos, and threatens. ‘Tis as nature, shining peace, yet the mother of

storm.’

‘There is no man,’ rapturously exclaims Heinrich von der Jungferweide,

‘can resist the desire to win a sweet treasure before which lies a

dragon sleeping. The very danger prattles promise.’

But the dragon must really sleep, as with Margarita.

‘A sham dragon, shamming sleep, has destroyed more virgins than all the

heathen emperors,’ says old Hans Aepfelmann of Duesseldorf.

Margarita’s foot was tapping quicker.

‘Speak, Dietrich!’ she said.

Dietrich declared to the Club that at this point he muttered, ‘We love

you.’ Margarita was glad to believe he had not spoken of himself. He

then informed her of the fears entertained by the Club, sworn to watch

over and protect her, regarding Farina’s arts.

‘And what fear you?’ said Margarita.

‘We fear, sweet mistress, he may be in league with Sathanas,’ replied

Dietrich.

‘Truly, then,’ said Margarita, ‘of all the youths in Cologne he is the

least like his confederate.’

Dietrich gulped and winked, like a patient recovering wry-faced from an

abhorred potion.

‘We have warned you, Fraulein Groschen!’ he exclaimed. ‘It now becomes

our duty to see that you are not snared.’

Margarita reddened, and returned: ‘You are kind. But I am a Christian

maiden and not a Pagan soldan, and I do not require a body of tawny

guards at my heels.’

Thereat she flung back to her companions, and began staining her pretty

mouth with grapes anew.

THE TAPESTRY WORD

Fair maids will have their hero in history. Siegfried was Margarita’s

chosen. She sang of Siegfried all over the house. ‘O the old days of

Germany, when such a hero walked!’ she sang.

‘And who wins Margarita,’ mused Farina, ‘happier than Siegfried, has in

his arms Brunhild and Chrimhild together!’

Crowning the young girl’s breast was a cameo, and the skill of some

cunning artist out of Welschland had wrought on it the story of the

Drachenfels. Her bosom heaved the battle up and down.

This cameo was a north star to German manhood, but caused many chaste

expressions of abhorrence from Aunt Lisbeth, Gottlieb’s unmarried

sister, who seemed instinctively to take part with the Dragon. She was a

frail-fashioned little lady, with a face betokening the perpetual smack

of lemon, and who reigned in her brother’s household when the good wife

was gone. Margarita’s robustness was beginning to alarm and shock Aunt

Lisbeth’s sealed stock of virtue.

‘She must be watched, such a madl as that,’ said Aunt Lisbeth. ‘Ursula!

what limbs she has!’

Margarita was watched; but the spy being neither foe nor friend, nothing

was discovered against her. This did not satisfy Aunt Lisbeth, whose own

suspicion was her best witness. She allowed that Margarita dissembled

well.

‘But,’ said she to her niece, ‘though it is good in a girl not to

flaunt these naughtinesses in effrontery, I care for you too much not to

say--Be what you seem, my little one!’

‘And that am I!’ exclaimed Margarita, starting up and towering.

‘Right good, my niece,’ Lisbeth squealed; ‘but now Frau Groschen lies in

God’s acre, you owe your duty to me, mind! Did you confess last week?’

‘From beginning to end,’ replied Margarita.

Aunt Lisbeth fixed pious reproach on Margarita’s cameo.

‘And still you wear that thing?’

‘Why not?’ said Margarita.

‘Girl! who would bid you set it in such a place save Satan? Oh, thou

poor lost child! that the eyes of the idle youths may be drawn there!

and thou become his snare to others, Margarita! What was that Welsh

wandering juggler but the foul fiend himself, mayhap, thou maiden of

sin! They say he has been seen in Cologne lately. He was swarthy as

Satan and limped of one leg. Good Master in heaven, protect us! it was

Satan himself I could swear!’

Aunt Lisbeth crossed brow and breast.

Margarita had commenced fingering the cameo, as if to tear it away; but

Aunt Lisbeth’s finish made her laugh outright.

‘Where I see no harm, aunty, I shall think the good God is,’ she

answered; ‘and where I see there’s harm, I shall think Satan lurks.’

A simper of sour despair passed over Aunt Lisbeth. She sighed, and was

silent, being one of those very weak reeds who are easily vanquished and

never overcome.

‘Let us go on with the Tapestry, child,’ said she.

Now, Margarita was ambitious of completing a certain Tapestry for

presentation to Kaiser Heinrich on his entry into Cologne after his

last campaign on the turbaned Danube. The subject was again her beloved

Siegfried slaying the Dragon on Drachenfels. Whenever Aunt Lisbeth

indulged in any bitter virginity, and was overmatched by Margarita’s

frank maidenhood, she hung out this tapestry as a flag of truce. They

were working it in bits, not having contrivances to do it in a piece.

Margarita took Siegfried and Aunt Lisbeth the Dragon. They shared the

crag between them. A roguish gleam of the Rhine toward Nonnenwerth could

be already made out, Roland’s Corner hanging like a sentinel across the

chanting island, as one top-heavy with long watch.

Aunt Lisbeth was a great proficient in the art, and had taught

Margarita. The little lady learnt it, with many other gruesome matters,

in the Palatine of Bohemia’s family. She usually talked of the spectres

of Hollenbogenblitz Castle in the passing of the threads. Those were

dismal spectres in Bohemia, smelling of murder and the charnel-breath

of midnight. They uttered noises that wintered the blood, and revealed

sights that stiffened hair three feet long; ay, and kept it stiff!

Margarita placed herself on a settle by the low-arched window, and Aunt

Lisbeth sat facing her. An evening sun blazoned the buttresses of the

Cathedral, and shadowed the workframes of the peaceful couple to a

temperate light. Margarita unrolled a sampler sheathed with twists of

divers coloured threads, and was soon busy silver-threading Siegfried’s

helm and horns.

‘I told you of the steward, poor Kraut, did I not, child?’ inquired Aunt

Lisbeth, quietly clearing her throat.

‘Many times!’ said Margarita, and went on humming over her knee

‘Her love was a Baron,

A Baron so bold;

She loved him for love,

He loved her for gold.’

‘He must see for himself, and be satisfied,’ continued Aunt Lisbeth;

‘and Holy Thomas to warn him for an example! Poor Kraut!’

‘Poor Kraut!’ echoed Margarita.

‘The King loved wine, and the Knight loved wine,

And they loved the summer weather:

They might have loved each other well,

But for one they loved together.’

‘You may say, poor Kraut, child!’ said Aunt Lisbeth. ‘Well! his face was

before that as red as this dragon’s jaw, and ever after he went about as

white as a pullet’s egg. That was something wonderful!’ ‘That was it!’

chimed Margarita.

‘O the King he loved his lawful wife,

The Knight a lawless lady:

And ten on one-made ringing strife,

Beneath the forest shady.’

‘Fifty to one, child!’ said Aunt Lisbeth: ‘You forget the story. They

made Kraut sit with them at the jabbering feast, the only mortal there.

The walls were full of eye-sockets without eyes, but phosphorus instead,

burning blue and damp.’

‘Not to-night, aunty dear! It frightens me so,’ pleaded Margarita, for

she saw the dolor coming.

‘Night! when it’s broad mid-day, thou timid one! Good heaven take pity

on such as thou! The dish was seven feet in length by four broad.

Kraut measured it with his eye, and never forgot it. Not he! When the

dish-cover was lifted, there he saw himself lying, boiled!

“‘I did not feel uncomfortable then,” Kraut told us. “It seemed

natural.”

‘His face, as it lay there, he says, was quite calm, only a little

wrinkled, and piggish-looking-like. There was the mole on his chin, and

the pucker under his left eyelid. Well! the Baron carved. All the guests

were greedy for a piece of him. Some cried out for breast; some for

toes. It was shuddering cold to sit and hear that! The Baroness said,

“Cheek!”’

‘Ah!’ shrieked Margarita, ‘that can I not bear! I will not hear it,

aunt; I will not!’

‘Cheek!’ Aunt Lisbeth reiterated, nodding to the floor.

Margarita put her fingers to her ears.

‘Still, Kraut says, even then he felt nothing odd. Of course he was

horrified to be sitting with spectres as you and I should be; but the

first tremble of it was over. He had plunged into the bath of horrors,

and there he was. I ‘ve heard that you must pronounce the names of the

Virgin and Trinity, sprinkling water round you all the while for three

minutes; and if you do this without interruption, everything shall

disappear. So they say. “Oh! dear heaven of mercy!” says Kraut, “what I

felt when the Baron laid his long hunting-knife across my left cheek!”’

Here Aunt Lisbeth lifted her eyes to dote upon Margarita’s fright. She

was very displeased to find her niece, with elbows on the window-sill

and hands round her head, quietly gazing into the street.

She said severely, ‘Where did you learn that song you were last singing,

Margarita? Speak, thou girl!’

Margarita laughed.

‘The thrush, and the lark, and the blackbird,

They taught me how to sing:

And O that the hawk would lend his eye,

And the eagle lend his wing.’

‘I will not hear these shameless songs,’ exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.

‘For I would view the lands they view,

And be where they have been:

It is not enough to be singing

For ever in dells unseen!’

A voice was heard applauding her. ‘Good! right good! Carol again,

Gretelchen! my birdie!’

Margarita turned, and beheld her father in the doorway. She tripped

toward him, and heartily gave him their kiss of meeting. Gottlieb

glanced at the helm of Siegfried.

‘Guessed the work was going well; you sing so lightsomely to-day, Grete!

Very pretty! And that’s Drachenfels? Bones of the Virgins! what a

bold fellow was Siegfried, and a lucky, to have the neatest lass in

Deutschland in love with him. Well, we must marry her to Siegfried after

all, I believe! Aha? or somebody as good as Siegfried. So chirrup on, my

darling!’

‘Aunt Lisbeth does not approve of my songs,’ replied Margarita,

untwisting some silver threads.

‘Do thy father’s command, girl!’ said Aunt Lisbeth.

‘And doing his command,

Should I do a thing of ill,

I’d rather die to his lovely face,

Than wanton at his will.’

‘There--there,’ said Aunt Lisbeth, straining out her fingers; ‘you

see, Gottlieb, what over-indulgence brings her to. Not another girl in

blessed Rhineland, and Bohemia to boot, dared say such words!--than--I

can’t repeat them!--don’t ask me!--She’s becoming a Frankish girl!’

‘What ballad’s that?’ said Gottlieb, smiling.

‘The Ballad of Holy Ottilia; and her lover was sold to darkness. And she

loved him--loved him----’

‘As you love Siegfried, you little one?’

‘More, my father; for she saw Winkried, and I never saw Siegfried. Ah!

if I had seen Siegfried! Never mind. She loved him; but she loved Virtue

more. And Virtue is the child of God, and the good God forgave her for

loving Winkried, the Devil’s son, because she loved Virtue more, and

He rescued her as she was being dragged down--down--down, and was half

fainting with the smell of brimstone--rescued her and had her carried

into His Glory, head and feet, on the wings of angels, before all men,

as a hope to little maidens.

‘And when I thought that I was lost

I found that I was saved,

And I was borne through blessed clouds,

Where the banners of bliss were waved.’

‘And so you think you, too, may fall in, love with Devils’ sons, girl?’

was Aunt Lisbeth’s comment.

‘Do look at Lisbeth’s Dragon, little Heart! it’s so like!’ said

Margarita to her father.

Old Gottlieb twitted his hose, and chuckled.

‘She’s my girl! that may be seen,’ said he, patting her, and wheezed up

from his chair to waddle across to the Dragon. But Aunt Lisbeth tartly

turned the Dragon to the wall.

‘It is not yet finished, Gottlieb, and must not be looked at,’ she

interposed. ‘I will call for wood, and see to a fire: these evenings of

Spring wax cold’: and away whimpered Aunt Lisbeth.

Margarita sang:

‘I with my playmates,

In riot and disorder,

Were gathering herb and blossom

Along the forest border.’

‘Thy mother’s song, child of my heart!’ said Gottlieb; ‘but vex not good

Lisbeth: she loves thee!’

‘And do you think she loves me?

And will you say ‘tis true?

O, and will she have me,

When I come up to woo?’

‘Thou leaping doe! thou chattering pie!’ said Gottlieb.

‘She shall have ribbons and trinkets,

And shine like a morn of May,

When we are off to the little hill-church,

Our flowery bridal way.’

‘That she shall; and something more!’ cried Gottlieb. ‘But, hark thee,

Gretelchen; the Kaiser will be here in three days. Thou dear one! had

I not stored and hoarded all for thee, I should now have my feet on a

hearthstone where even he might warm his boot. So get thy best dresses

and jewels in order, and look thyself; proud as any in the land. A

simple burgher’s daughter now, Grete; but so shalt thou not end, my

butterfly, or there’s neither worth nor wit in Gottlieb Groschen!’

‘Three days!’ Margarita exclaimed; ‘and the helm not finished, and the

tapestry-pieces not sewed and joined, and the water not shaded off.--Oh!

I must work night and day.’

‘Child! I’ll have no working at night! Your rosy cheeks will soon be

sucked out by oil-light, and you look no better than poor tallow Court

beauties--to say nothing of the danger. This old house saw Charles the

Great embracing the chief magistrate of his liege city yonder. Some

swear he slept in it. He did not sneeze at smaller chambers than our

Kaisers abide. No gold ceilings with cornice carvings, but plain wooden

beams.’

‘Know that the men of great renown,

Were men of simple needs:

Bare to the Lord they laid them down,

And slept on mighty deeds.’

‘God wot, there’s no emptying thy store of ballads, Grete: so much shall

be said of thee. Yes; times are changeing: We’re growing degenerate.

Look at the men of Linz now to what they were! Would they have let the

lads of Andernach float down cabbage-stalks to them without a shy back?

And why? All because they funk that brigand-beast Werner, who gets

redemption from Laach, hard by his hold, whenever he commits a crime

worth paying for. As for me, my timber and stuffs must come down

stream, and are too good for the nixen under Rhine, or think you I would

acknowledge him with a toll, the hell-dog? Thunder and lightning! if old

scores could be rubbed out on his hide!’

Gottlieb whirled a thong-lashing arm in air, and groaned of law and

justice. What were they coming to!

Margarita softened the theme with a verse:

‘And tho’ to sting his enemy,

Is sweetness to the angry bee,

The angry bee must busy be,

Ere sweet of sweetness hiveth he.

The arch thrill of his daughter’s voice tickled Gottlieb. ‘That’s it,

birdie! You and the proverb are right. I don’t know which is best,

‘Better hive

And keep alive

Than vengeance wake

With that you take.’

A clatter in the cathedral square brought Gottlieb on his legs to the

window. It was a company of horsemen sparkling in harness. One trumpeter

rode at the side of the troop, and in front a standard-bearer, matted

down the chest with ochre beard, displayed aloft to the good citizens

of Cologne, three brown hawks, with birds in their beaks, on an azure

stardotted field.

‘Holy Cross!’ exclaimed Gottlieb, low in his throat; ‘the arms of

Werner! Where got he money to mount his men? Why, this is daring all

Cologne in our very teeth! ‘Fend that he visit me now! Ruin smokes in

that ruffian’s track. I ‘ve felt hot and cold by turns all day.’

The horsemen came jingling carelessly along the street in scattered

twos and threes, laughing together, and singling out the maidens at the

gable-shadowed windows with hawking eyes. The good citizens of Cologne

did not look on them favourably. Some showed their backs and gruffly

banged their doors: others scowled and pocketed their fists: not a few

slunk into the side alleys like well-licked curs, and scurried off

with forebent knees. They were in truth ferocious-looking fellows these

trusty servants of the robber Baron Werner, of Werner’s Eck, behind

Andernach. Leather, steel, and dust, clad them from head to foot; big

and black as bears; wolf-eyed, fox-nosed. They glistened bravely in the

falling beams of the sun, and Margarita thrust her fair braided yellow

head a little forward over her father’s shoulder to catch the whole

length of the grim cavalcade. One of the troop was not long in

discerning the young beauty. He pointed her boldly out to a comrade, who

approved his appetite, and referred her to a third. The rest followed

lead, and Margarita was as one spell-struck when she became aware that

all those hungry eyes were preying on hers. Old Gottlieb was too full

of his own fears to think for her, and when he drew in his head rather

suddenly, it was with a dismal foreboding that Werner’s destination in

Cologne was direct to the house of Gottlieb Groschen, for purposes only

too well to be divined.

‘Devil’s breeches!’ muttered Gottlieb; ‘look again, Grete, and see if

that hell-troop stop the way outside.’

Margarita’s cheeks were overflowing with the offended rose.

‘I will not look at them again, father.’

Gottlieb stared, and then patted her.

‘I would I were a man, father!’

Gottlieb smiled, and stroked his beard.

‘Oh! how I burn!’

And the girl shivered visibly.

‘Grete! mind to be as much of a woman as you can, and soon such raff as

this you may sweep away, like cobwebs, and no harm done.’

He was startled by a violent thumping at the streetdoor, and as brazen

a blast as if the dead were being summoned. Aunt Lisbeth entered, and

flitted duskily round the room, crying:

‘We are lost: they are upon us! better death with a bodkin! Never shall

it be said of me; never! the monsters!’

Then admonishing them to lock, bar, bolt, and block up every room in the

house, Aunt Lisbeth perched herself on the edge of a chair, and reversed

the habits of the screech-owl, by being silent when stationary.

‘There’s nothing to fear for you, Lisbeth,’ said Gottlieb, with

discourteous emphasis.

‘Gottlieb! do you remember what happened at the siege of Mainz? and

poor Marthe Herbstblum, who had hoped to die as she was; and Dame

Altknopfchen, and Frau Kaltblut, and the old baker, Hans Topf’s sister,

all of them as holy as abbesses, and that did not save them! and nothing

will from such godless devourers.’

Gottlieb was gone, having often before heard mention of the calamity

experienced by these fated women.

‘Comfort thee, good heart, on my breast,’ said Margarita, taking Lisbeth

to that sweet nest of peace and fortitude.

‘Margarita! ‘tis your doing! have I not said--lure them not, for they

swarm too early upon us! And here they are! and, perhaps, in five

minutes all will be over!

Herr Je!--What, you are laughing! Heavens of goodness, the girl is

delighted!’

Here a mocking ha-ha! accompanied by a thundering snack at the door,

shook the whole house, and again the trumpet burst the ears with fury.

This summons, which seemed to Aunt Lisbeth final, wrought a strange

composure in her countenance. She was very pale, but spread her dress

decently, as if fear had departed, and clasped her hands on her knees.

‘The will of the Lord above must be done,’ said she; ‘it is impious to

complain when we are given into the hand of the Philistines. Others have

been martyred, and were yet acceptable.’

To this heroic speech she added, with cold energy: ‘Let them come!’

‘Aunt,’ cried Margarita, ‘I hear my father’s voice with those men.

Aunty! I will not let him be alone. I must go down to him. You will be

safe here. I shall come to you if there’s cause for alarm.’

And in spite of Aunt Lisbeth’s astonished shriek of remonstrance, she

hurried off to rejoin Gottlieb.

THE WAGER

Ere Margarita had reached the landing of the stairs, she repented her

haste and shrank back. Wrapt in a thunder of oaths, she distinguished:

‘‘Tis the little maiden we want; let’s salute her and begone! or cap

your skull with something thicker than you’ve on it now, if you want a

whole one, happy father!’

‘Gottlieb von Groschen I am,’ answered her father, ‘and the Kaiser----’

‘‘S as fond of a pretty girl as we are! Down with her, and no more

drivelling! It’s only for a moment, old Measure and Scales!’

‘I tell you, rascals, I know your master, and if you’re not punished for

this, may I die a beggar!’ exclaimed Gottlieb, jumping with rage.

‘May you die as rich as an abbot! And so you will, if you don’t bring

her down, for I’ve sworn to see her; there ‘s the end of it, man!’

‘I’ll see, too, if the laws allow this villany!’ cried Gottlieb.

‘Insulting a peaceful citizen! in his own house! a friend of your

emperor! Gottlieb von Groschen!’

‘Groschen? We’re cousins, then! You wouldn’t shut out your nearest kin?

Devil’s lightning! Don’t you know me? Pfennig? Von Pfennig! This

here’s Heller: that’s Zwanziger: all of us Vons, every soul! You’re not

decided? This’ll sharpen you, my jolly King Paunch!’

And Margarita heard the ruffian step as if to get swing for a blow. She

hurried into the passage, and slipping in front of her father, said to

his assailant:

‘You have asked for me! I am here!’

Her face was colourless, and her voice seemed to issue from between a

tightened cord. She stood with her left foot a little in advance, and

her whole body heaving and quivering: her arms folded and pressed hard

below her bosom: her eyes dilated to a strong blue: her mouth ashy

white. A strange lustre, as of suppressed internal fire, flickered over

her.

‘My name ‘s Schwartz Thier, and so ‘s my nature!’ said the fellow with

a grin; ‘but may I never smack lips with a pretty girl again, if I harm

such a young beauty as this! Friendly dealing’s my plan o’ life.’

‘Clear out of my house, then, fellow, and here’s money for you,’ said

Gottlieb, displaying a wrathfully-trembling handful of coin.

‘Pish! money! forty times that wouldn’t cover my bet! And if it did?

Shouldn’t I be disgraced? jeered at for a sheep-heart? No, I’m no ninny,

and not to be diddled. I’ll talk to the young lady! Silence, out there!

all’s going proper’: this to his comrades through the door. ‘So, my

beautiful maiden! thus it stands: We saw you at the window, looking

like a fresh rose with a gold crown on. Here are we poor fellows come

to welcome the Kaiser. I began to glorify you. “Schwartz Thier!” says

Henker Rothhals to me, “I’ll wager you odds you don’t have a kiss of

that fine girl within twenty minutes, counting from the hand-smack!”

Done! was my word, and we clapped our fists together. Now, you see,

that’s straightforward! All I want is, not to lose my money and be made

a fool of--leaving alone that sugary mouth which makes mine water’; and

he drew the back of his hand along his stubbled jaws: ‘So, come! don’t

hesitate! no harm to you, my beauty, but a compliment, and Schwartz

Thier’s your friend and anything else you like for ever after. Come,

time’s up, pretty well.’

Margarita leaned to her father a moment as if mortal sickness had seized

her. Then cramping her hands and feet, she said in his ear, ‘Leave me

to my own care; go, get the men to protect thee’; and ordered Schwartz

Thier to open the door wide.

Seeing Gottlieb would not leave her, she joined her hands, and begged

him. ‘The good God will protect me! I will overmatch these men. Look,

my father! they dare not strike me in the street: you they would fell

without pity. Go! what they dare in a house, they dare not in the

street.’

Schwartz Thier had opened the door. At sight of Margarita, the troop

gave a shout.

‘Now! on the doorstep, full in view, my beauteous one! that they may see

what a lucky devil I am--and have no doubts about the handing over.’

Margarita looked behind. Gottlieb was still there, every member of him

quaking like a bog under a heavy heel. She ran to him. ‘My father! I

have a device wilt thou spoil it, and give me to this beast? You can do

nothing, nothing! protect yourself and save me!’

‘Cologne! broad day!’ muttered Gottlieb, as if the enormity had

prostrated his belief in facts; and moved slowly back.

Margarita strode to the door-step. Schwartz Thier was awaiting her,

his arm circled out, and his leering face ducked to a level with his

victim’s. This rough show of gallantry proved costly to him. As he was

gently closing his iron hold about her, enjoying before hand with grim

mouthridges the flatteries of triumph, Margarita shot past him through

the door, and was already twenty paces beyond the troop before either

of them thought of pursuing her. At the first sound of a hoof, Henker

Rothhals seized the rider’s bridle-rein, and roared: ‘Fair play for a

fair bet! leave all to the Thier!’ The Thier, when he had recovered

from his amazement, sought for old Gottlieb to give him a back-hit, as

Margarita foresaw that he would. Not finding him at hand, out lumbered

the fellow as swiftly as his harness would allow, and caught a glimpse

of Margarita rapidly fleeting up the cathedral square.

‘Only five minutes, Schwartz Thier!’ some of the troop sung out.

‘The devil can do his business in one,’ was the retort, and Schwartz

Thier swung himself on his broad-backed charger, and gored the fine

beast till she rattled out a blast of sparkles from the flint.

In a minute he drew up in front of Margarita.

‘So! you prefer settling this business in the square.

Good! my choice sweetheart!’ and he sprang to her side.

The act of flight had touched the young girl’s heart with the spirit of

flight. She crouched like a winded hare under the nose of the hound, and

covered her face with her two hands. Margarita was no wisp in weight,

but Schwartz Thier had her aloft in his arm as easily as if he had

tossed up a kerchief.

‘Look all, and witness!’ he shouted, lifting the other arm.

Henker Rothhals and the rest of the troop looked, as they came trotting

to the scene, with the coolness of umpires: but they witnessed something

other than what Schwartz Thier proposed. This was the sight of a

formidable staff, whirling an unfriendly halo over the head of the

Thier, and descending on it with such honest intent to confound and

overthrow him, that the Thier succumbed to its force without argument,

and the square echoed blow and fall simultaneously. At the same time

the wielder of this sound piece of logic seized Margarita, and raised

a shout in the square for all true men to stand by him in rescuing

a maiden from the clutch of brigands and ravishers. A crowd was

collecting, but seemed to consider the circle now formed by the horsemen

as in a manner charmed, for only one, a fair slender youth, came forward

and ranged himself beside the stranger.

‘Take thou the maiden: I’ll keep to the staff,’ said this latter,

stumbling over his speech as if he was in a foreign land among old roots

and wolfpits which had already shaken out a few of his teeth, and made

him cautious about the remainder.

‘Can it be Margarita!’ exclaimed the youth, bending to her, and calling

to her: ‘Margarita! Fraulein Groschen!’

She opened her eyes, shuddered, and said: ‘I was not afraid! Am I safe?’

‘Safe while I have life, and this good friend.’

‘Where is my father?’

‘I have not seen him.’

‘And you--who are you? Do I owe this to you?’

‘Oh! no! no! Me you owe nothing.’

Margarita gazed hurriedly round, and at her feet there lay the Thier

with his steel-cap shining in dints, and three rivulets of blood

coursing down his mottled forehead. She looked again at the youth, and a

blush of recognition gave life to her cheeks.

‘I did not know you. Pardon me. Farina! what thanks can reward such

courage! Tell me! shall we go?’

‘The youth eyed her an instant, but recovering himself, took a rapid

survey, and called to the stranger to follow and help give the young

maiden safe conduct home.

‘Just then Henker Rothhals bellowed, ‘Time’s up!’ He was answered by a

chorus of agreement from the troop. They had hitherto patiently acted

their parts as spectators, immovable on their horses. The assault on

the Thier was all in the play, and a visible interference of fortune in

favour of Henker Rothhals. Now general commotion shuttled them, and the

stranger’s keen hazel eyes read their intentions rightly when he lifted

his redoubtable staff in preparation for another mighty swoop, this time

defensive. Rothhals, and half a dozen others, with a war-cry of curses,

spurred their steeds at once to ride him down. They had not reckoned the

length and good-will of their antagonist’s weapon. Scarce were they in

motion, when round it whizzed, grazing the nostrils of their horses

with a precision that argued practice in the feat, and unhorsing two,

Rothhals among the number. He dropped heavily on his head, and showed

signs of being as incapable of combat as the Thier. A cheer burst from

the crowd, but fell short.

The foremost of their number was struck flat to the earth by a fellow of

the troop.

Calling on St. George, his patron saint, the stranger began

systematically to make a clear ring in his path forward. Several of the

horsemen essayed a cut at his arm with their long double-handed swords,

but the horses could not be brought a second time to the edge of the

magic circle; and the blood of these warriors being thoroughly up, they

now came at him on foot. In their rage they would have made short work

with the three, in spite of the magistracy of Cologne, had they not been

arrested by cries of ‘Werner! Werner!’

At the South-west end of the square, looking Rhinewards, rode the

marauder Baron, in full armour, helm and hauberk, with a single retainer

in his rear. He had apparently caught sight of the brawl, and, either

because he distinguished his own men, or was seeking his natural

element, hastened up for his share in it, which was usually that of the

king of beasts. His first call was for Schwartz Thier. The men made way,

and he beheld his man in no condition to make military responses.

He shouted for Henker Rothhals, and again the men opened their ranks

mutely, exhibiting the two stretched out in diverse directions, with

their feet slanting to a common point. The Baron glared; then caught off

his mailed glove, and thrust it between his teeth. A rasping gurgle of

oaths was all they heard, and presently surged up,

‘Who was it?’

Margarita’s eyes were shut. She opened them fascinated with horror.

There was an unearthly awful and comic mixture of sounds in Werner’s

querulous fury, that was like the noise of a complaining bear, rolling

up from hollow-chested menace to yawning lament. Never in her life had

Margarita such a shock of fear. The half gasp of a laugh broke on her

trembling lips. She stared at Werner, and was falling; but Farina’s arm

clung instantly round her waist. The stranger caught up her laugh, loud

and hearty.

‘As for who did it, Sir Baron,’ he cried, is a cheery tone, ‘I am the

man! As you may like to know why--and that’s due to you and me both of

us--all I can say is, the Black Muzzle yonder lying got his settler for

merry-making with this peaceful maiden here, without her consent--an

offence in my green island they reckon a crack o’ the sconce light

basting for, I warrant all company present,’ and he nodded sharply

about. ‘As for the other there, who looks as if a rope had been round

his neck once and shirked its duty, he counts his wages for helping the

devil in his business, as will any other lad here who likes to come on

and try.’

Werner himself, probably, would have given him the work he wanted; but

his eye had sidled a moment over Margarita, and the hardly-suppressed

applause of the crowd at the stranger’s speech failed to bring his ire

into action this solitary time.

‘Who is the maiden?’ he asked aloud.

‘Fraulein von Groschen,’ replied Farina.

‘Von Groschen! Von Groschen! the daughter of Gottlieb

Groschen?--Rascals!’ roared the Baron, turning on his men, and out

poured a mud-spring of filthy oaths and threats, which caused Henker

Rothhals, who had opened his eyes, to close them again, as if he had

already gone to the place of heat.

‘Only lend me thy staff, friend,’ cried Werner.

‘Not I! thwack ‘em with your own wood,’ replied the stranger, and fell

back a leg.

Werner knotted his stringy brows, and seemed torn to pieces with the

different pulling tides of his wrath. He grasped the mane of his horse

and flung abroad handfuls, till the splendid animal reared in agony.

‘You shall none of you live over this night, villains! I ‘ll hang

you, every hag’s son! My last orders were,--Keep quiet in the city, ye

devil’s brood. Take that! and that!’ laying at them with his bare sword.

‘Off with you, and carry these two pigs out of sight quickly, or I’ll

have their heads, and make sure o’ them.’

The latter injunction sprang from policy, for at the head of the chief

street there was a glitter of the city guard, marching with shouldered

spears.

‘Maiden,’ said Werner, with a bull’s bow, ‘let me conduct thee to thy

father.’

Margarita did not reply; but gave her hand to Farina, and took a step

closer to the stranger.

Werner’s brows grew black.

‘Enough to have saved you, fair maid,’ he muttered hoarsely. ‘Gratitude

never was a woman’s gift. Say to your father that I shall make excuses

to him for the conduct of my men.’

Whereupon, casting a look of leisurely scorn toward the guard coming up

in the last beams of day, the Baron shrugged his huge shoulders to an

altitude expressing the various contemptuous shades of feudal coxcombry,

stuck one leather-ruffled arm in his side, and jolted off at an easy

pace.

‘Amen!’ ejaculated the stranger, leaning on his staff. ‘There are Barons

in my old land; but never a brute beast in harness.’

Margarita stood before him, and took his two hands.

‘You will come with me to my father! He will thank you. I cannot. You

will come?’

Tears and a sob of relief started from her.

The city guard, on seeing Werner’s redoubtable back turned, had adopted

double time, and now came panting up, while the stranger bent smiling

under a fresh overflow of innocent caresses. Margarita was caught to her

father’s breast.

‘You shall have vengeance for this, sweet chuck,’ cried old Gottlieb in

the intervals of his hugs.

‘Fear not, my father; they are punished’: and Margarita related the

story of the stranger’s prowess, elevating him into a second Siegfried.

The guard huzzaed him, but did not pursue the Baron.

Old Gottlieb, without hesitation, saluted the astonished champion with a

kiss on either cheek.

‘My best friend! You have saved my daughter from indignity! Come with

us home, if you can believe that a home where the wolves come daring us,

dragging our dear ones from our very doorsteps. Come, that we may thank

you under a roof at least. My little daughter! Is she not a brave lass?’

‘She’s nothing less than the white rose of Germany,’ said the stranger,

with a good bend of the shoulders to Margarita.

‘So she’s called,’ exclaimed Gottlieb; ‘she ‘s worthy to be a man!’

‘Men would be the losers, then, more than they could afford,’ replied

the stranger, with a ringing laugh.

‘Come, good friend,’ said Gottlieb; ‘you must need refreshment. Prove

you are a true hero by your appetite. As Charles the Great said to

Archbishop Turpin, “I conquered the world because Nature gave me a

gizzard; for everywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomach.”

Come, all! A day well ended, notwithstanding!’

THE SILVER ARROW

At the threshold of Gottlieb’s house a number of the chief burgesses

of Cologne had corporated spontaneously to condole with him. As he came

near, they raised a hubbub of gratulation. Strong were the expressions

of abhorrence and disgust of Werner’s troop in which these excellent

citizens clothed their outraged feelings; for the insult to Gottlieb

was the insult of all. The Rhinestream taxes were provoking enough to

endure; but that the licence of these free-booting bands should extend

to the homes of free and peaceful men, loyal subjects of the Emperor,

was a sign that the evil had reached from pricks to pokes, as the saying

went, and must now be met as became burgesses of ancient Cologne, and by

joint action destroyed.

‘In! in, all of you!’ said Gottlieb, broadening his smile to suit the

many. ‘We ‘ll talk about that in-doors. Meantime, I’ve got a hero to

introduce to you: flesh and blood! no old woman’s coin and young girl’s

dream-o’day: the honest thing, and a rarity, my masters. All that over

some good Rhine-juice from above Bacharach. In, and welcome, friends!’

Gottlieb drew the stranger along with him under the carved old oak-wood

portals, and the rest paired, and reverentially entered in his wake.

Margarita, to make up for this want of courtesy, formed herself the

last of the procession. She may have had another motive, for she took

occasion there to whisper something to Farina, bringing sun and cloud

over his countenance in rapid flushes. He seemed to remonstrate in dumb

show; but she, with an attitude of silence, signified her wish to seal

the conversation, and he drooped again. On the door step she paused a

moment, and hung her head pensively, as if moved by a reminiscence. The

youth had hurried away some strides. Margarita looked after him. His

arms were straightened to his flanks, his hands clenched, and straining

out from the wrist. He had the aspect of one tugging against the

restraint of a chain that suddenly let out link by link to his whole

force.

‘Farina!’ she called; and wound him back with a run. ‘Farina! You do not

think me ungrateful? I could not tell my father in the crowd what you

did for me. He shall know. He will thank you. He does not understand

you now, Farina. He will. Look not so sorrowful. So much I would say to

you.’

So much was rushing on her mind, that her maidenly heart became unruly,

and warned her to beware.

The youth stood as if listening to a nightingale of the old woods, after

the first sweet stress of her voice was in his ear. When she ceased,

he gazed into her eyes. They were no longer deep and calm like forest

lakes; the tender-glowing blue quivered, as with a spark of the young

girl’s soul, in the beams of the moon then rising.

‘Oh, Margarita!’ said the youth, in tones that sank to sighs: ‘what am I

to win your thanks, though it were my life for such a boon!’

He took her hand, and she did not withdraw it. Twice his lips dwelt upon

those pure fingers.

‘Margarita: you forgive me: I have been so long without hope. I have

kissed your hand, dearest of God’s angels!’

She gently restrained the full white hand in his pressure.

‘Margarita! I have thought never before death to have had this sacred

bliss. I am guerdoned in advance for every grief coming before death.’

She dropped on him one look of a confiding softness that was to the

youth like the opened gate of the innocent garden of her heart.

‘You pardon me, Margarita? I may call you my beloved? strive, wait,

pray, hope, for you, my star of life?’

Her face was so sweet a charity!

‘Dear love! one word!--or say nothing, but remain, and move not. So

beautiful you are! Oh, might I kneel to you here; dote on you; worship

this white hand for ever.’

The colour had passed out of her cheeks like a blissful western red

leaving rich paleness in the sky; and with her clear brows levelled at

him, her bosom lifting more and more rapidly, she struggled against the

charm that was on her, and at last released her hand.

‘I must go. I cannot stay. Pardon you? Who might not be proud of your

love!--Farewell!’

She turned to move away, but lingered a step from him, hastily touching

her bosom and either hand, as if to feel for a brooch or a ring. Then

she blushed, drew the silver arrow from the gathered gold-shot braids

above her neck, held it out to him, and was gone.

Farina clutched the treasure, and reeled into the street. Half a dozen

neighbours were grouped by the door.

‘What ‘s the matter in Master Groschen’s house now?’ one asked, as he

plunged into the midst of them.

‘Matter?’ quoth the joy-drunken youth, catching at the word, and mused

off into raptures; ‘There never was such happiness! ‘Tis paradise

within, exile without. But what exile! A star ever in the heavens

to lighten the road and cheer the path of the banished one’; and he

loosened his vest and hugged the cold shaft on his breast.

‘What are you talking and capering at, fellow?’ exclaimed another:

‘Can’t you answer about those shrieks, like a Christian, you that have

just come out of the house? Why, there’s shrieking now! It ‘s a woman.

Thousand thunders! it sounds like the Frau Lisbeth’s voice. What can be

happening to her?’

‘Perhaps she’s on fire,’ was coolly suggested between two or three.

‘Pity to see the old house burnt,’ remarked one.

‘House! The woman, man! the woman!’

‘Ah!’ replied the other, an ancient inhabitant of Cologne, shaking his

head, ‘the house is oldest!’

Farina, now recovering his senses, heard shrieks that he recognized

as possible in the case of Aunt Lisbeth dreading the wickedness of

an opposing sex, and alarmed by the inrush of old Gottlieb’s numerous

guests. To confirm him, she soon appeared, and hung herself halfway out

of one of the upper windows, calling desperately to St. Ursula for aid.

He thanked the old lady in his heart for giving him a pretext to enter

Paradise again; but before even love could speed him, Frau Lisbeth was

seized and dragged remorselessly out of sight, and he and the rosy room

darkened together.

Farina twice strode off to the Rhine-stream; as many times he returned.

It was hard to be away from her. It was harder to be near and not close.

His heart flamed into jealousy of the stranger. Everything threatened to

overturn his slight but lofty structure of bliss so suddenly shot into

the heavens. He had but to remember that his hand was on the silver

arrow, and a radiance broke upon his countenance, and a calm fell upon

his breast. ‘It was a plight of her troth to me,’ mused the youth. ‘She

loves me! She would not trust her frank heart to speak. Oh, generous

young girl! what am I to dare hope for such a prize? for I never can

be worthy. And she is one who, giving her heart, gives it all. Do I not

know her? How lovely she looked thanking the stranger! The blue of her

eyes, the warm-lighted blue, seemed to grow full on the closing lids,

like heaven’s gratitude. Her beauty is wonderful. What wonder, then,

if he loves her? I should think him a squire in his degree. There are

squires of high birth and low.’

So mused Farina with his arms folded and his legs crossed in the shadow

of Margarita’s chamber. Gradually he fell into a kind of hazy doze. The

houses became branded with silver arrows. All up the Cathedral stone was

a glitter, and dance, and quiver of them. In the sky mazed confusion of

arrowy flights and falls. Farina beheld himself in the service of the

Emperor watching these signs, and expecting on the morrow to win glory

and a name for Margarita. Glory and the name now won, old Gottlieb was

just on the point of paternally blessing them, when a rude pat aroused

him from the delicious moon-dream.

‘Hero by day! house-guard by night! That tells a tale,’ said a cheerful

voice.

The moon was shining down the Cathedral square and street, and Farina

saw the stranger standing solid and ruddy before him. He was at first

prompted to resent such familiar handling, but the stranger’s face was

of that bland honest nature which, like the sun, wins everywhere back a

reflection of its own kindliness.

‘You are right,’ replied Farina; ‘so it is!’

‘Pretty wines inside there, and a rare young maiden. She has a throat

like a nightingale, and more ballads at command than a piper’s wallet.

Now, if I hadn’t a wife at home.’

‘You’re married?’ cried Farina, seizing the stranger’s hand.

‘Surely; and my lass can say something for herself on the score of brave

looks, as well as the best of your German maids here, trust me.’

Farina repressed an inclination to perform a few of those antics which

violent joy excites, and after rushing away and back, determined to give

his secret to the stranger.

‘Look,’ said he in a whisper, that opens the private doors of a

confidence.

But the stranger repeated the same word still more earnestly, and

brought Farina’s eyes on a couple of dark figures moving under the

Cathedral.

‘Some lamb’s at stake when the wolves are prowling,’ he added: ‘‘Tis

now two hours to the midnight. I doubt if our day’s work be over till we

hear the chime, friend.’

‘What interest do you take in the people of this house that you watch

over them thus?’ asked Farina.

The stranger muffled a laugh in his beard.

‘An odd question, good sooth. Why, in the first place, we like well

whatso we have done good work for. That goes for something. In the

second, I’ve broken bread in this house. Put down that in the reckoning.

In the third; well! in the third, add up all together, and the sum

total’s at your service, young sir.’

Farina marked him closely. There was not a spot on his face for guile to

lurk in, or suspicion to fasten on. He caught the stranger’s hand.

‘You called me friend just now. Make me your friend. Look, I was going

to say: I love this maiden! I would die for her. I have loved her long.

This night she has given me a witness that my love is not vain. I am

poor. She is rich. I am poor, I said, and feel richer than the Kaiser

with this she has given me! Look, it is what our German girls slide in

their back-hair, this silver arrow!’

‘A very pretty piece of heathenish wear!’ exclaimed the stranger.

‘Then, I was going to say--tell me, friend, of a way to win honour and

wealth quickly; I care not at how rare a risk. Only to wealth, or high

baronry, will her father give her!’

The stranger buzzed on his moustache in a pause of cool pity, such as

elders assume when young men talk of conquering the world for their

mistresses: and in truth it is a calm of mind well won!

‘Things look so brisk at home here in the matter of the maiden, that

I should say, wait a while and watch your chance. But you’re a boy of

pluck: I serve in the Kaiser’s army, under my lord: the Kaiser will be

here in three days. If you ‘re of that mind then, I doubt little you may

get posted well: but, look again! there’s a ripe brew yonder. Marry, you

may win your spurs this night even; who knows?--‘S life! there’s a tall

fellow joining those two lurkers.’

‘Can you see into the murk shadow, Sir Squire?’

‘Ay! thanks to your Styrian dungeons, where I passed a year’s

apprenticeship:

“I learnt to watch the rats and mice

At play, with never a candle-end.

They play’d so well; they sang so nice;

They dubb’d me comrade; called me friend!”

So says the ballad of our red-beard king’s captivity. All evil has a

good:

“When our toes and chins are up,

Poison plants make sweetest cup”

as the old wives mumble to us when we’re sick. Heigho! would I were in

the little island well home again, though that were just their song of

welcome to me, as I am a Christian.’

‘Tell me your name, friend,’ said Farina.

‘Guy’s my name, young man: Goshawk’s my title. Guy the Goshawk! so they

called me in my merry land. The cap sticks when it no longer fits.

Then I drove the arrow, and was down on my enemy ere he could ruffle a

feather. Now, what would be my nickname?

“A change so sad, and a change so bad,

Might set both Christian and heathen a sighing:

Change is a curse, for it’s all for the worse:

Age creeps up, and youth is flying!”

and so on, with the old song. But here am I, and yonder’s a game that

wants harrying; so we’ll just begin to nose about them a bit.’

He crossed to the other side of the street, and Farina followed out

of the moonlight. The two figures and the taller one were evidently

observing them; for they also changed their position and passed behind

an angle of the Cathedral.

‘Tell me how the streets cross all round the Cathedral you know the

city,’ said the stranger, holding out his hand.

Farina traced with his finger a rough map of the streets on the

stranger’s hand.

‘Good! that’s how my lord always marks the battlefield, and makes me

show him the enemy’s posts. Forward, this way!’

He turned from the Cathedral, and both slid along close under the eaves

and front hangings of the houses. Neither spoke. Farina felt that he

was in the hands of a skilful captain, and only regretted the want of a

weapon to make harvest of the intended surprise; for he judged clearly

that those were fellows of Werner’s band on the look-out. They wound

down numberless intersections of narrow streets with irregular-built

houses standing or leaning wry-faced in row, here a quaint-beamed

cottage, there almost a mansion with gilt arms, brackets, and devices.

Oil-lamps unlit hung at intervals by the corners, near a pale Christ on

crucifix. Across the passages they hung alight. The passages and

alleys were too dusky and close for the moon in her brightest ardour to

penetrate; down the streets a slender lane of white beams could steal:

‘In all conscience,’ as the good citizens of Cologne declared, ‘enough

for those heathen hounds and sons of the sinful who are abroad when

God’s own blessed lamp is out.’ So, when there was a moon, the expense

of oil was saved to the Cologne treasury, thereby satisfying the

virtuous.

After incessant doubling here and there, listening to footfalls, and

themselves eluding a chase which their suspicious movements aroused,

they came upon the Rhine. A full flood of moonlight burnished the

knightly river in glittering scales, and plates, and rings, as headlong

it rolled seaward on from under crag and banner of old chivalry and

rapine. Both greeted the scene with a burst of pleasure. The grey mist

of flats on the south side glimmered delightful to their sight, coming

from that drowsy crowd and press of habitations; but the solemn glory

of the river, delaying not, heedless, impassioned-pouring on in some

sublime conference between it and heaven to the great marriage of

waters, deeply shook Farina’s enamoured heart. The youth could not

restrain his tears, as if a magic wand had touched him. He trembled with

love; and that delicate bliss which maiden hope first showers upon us

like a silver rain when she has taken the shape of some young beauty and

plighted us her fair fleeting hand, tenderly embraced him.

As they were emerging into the spaces of the moon, a cheer from the

stranger arrested Farina.

‘Seest thou? on the wharf there! that is the very one, the tallest of

the three. Lakin! but we shall have him.’

Wrapt in a long cloak, with low pointed cap and feather, stood the

person indicated. He appeared to be meditating on the flow of the water,

unaware of hostile presences, or quite regardless of them. There was a

majesty in his height and air, which made the advance of the two upon

him more wary and respectful than their first impulse had counselled.

They could not read his features, which were mantled behind voluminous

folds: all save a pair of very strange eyes, that, even as they gazed

directly downward, seemed charged with restless fiery liquid.

The two were close behind him: Guy the Goshawk prepared for one of those

fatal pounces on the foe that had won him his title. He consulted Farina

mutely, who Nodded readiness; but the instant after, a cry of anguish

escaped from the youth:

‘Lost! gone! lost! Where is it? where! the arrow! The Silver Arrow! My

Margarita!’

Ere the echoes of his voice had ceased lamenting into the distance, they

found themselves alone on the wharf.

THE LILIES OF THE VALLEY

‘He opened like a bat!’ said the stranger.

‘His shadow was red!’ said Farina.

‘He was off like an arrow!’ said the stranger.

‘Oh! pledge of my young love, how could I lose thee!’ exclaimed the

youth, and his eyes were misted with tears.

Guy the Goshawk shook his brown locks gravely.

‘Bring me a man, and I ‘ll stand up against him, whoever he be, like a

man; but this fellow has an ill scent and foreign ways about him,

that he has! His eye boils all down my backbone and tingles at my

finger-tips. Jesu, save us!’

‘Save us!’ repeated Farina, with the echo of a deadened soul.

They made the sign of the Cross, and purified the place with holy

ejaculations.

‘I ‘ve seen him at last; grant it be for the last time! That’s my

prayer, in the name of the Virgin and Trinity,’ said Guy. ‘And now let’s

retrace our steps: perchance we shall hunt up that bauble of yours, but

I’m not fit for mortal work this night longer.’

Burdened by their black encounter, the two passed again behind the

Cathedral. Farina’s hungry glances devoured each footmark of their

track. Where the moon held no lantern for him, he went on his knees,

and groped for his lost treasure with a miser’s eager patience of agony,

drawing his hand slowly over the stony kerb and between the interstices

of the thick-sown flints, like an acute-feeling worm. Despair grew heavy

in his breast. At every turning he invoked some good new saint to aid

him, and ran over all the propitiations his fancy could suggest and his

religious lore inspire. By-and-by they reached the head of the street

where Margarita dwelt. The moon was dipping down, and paler, as if

touched with a warning of dawn. Chill sighs from the open land

passed through the spaces of the city. On certain coloured gables and

wood-crossed fronts, the white light lingered; but mostly the houses

were veiled in dusk, and Gottlieb’s house was confused in the twilight

with those of his neighbours, notwithstanding its greater stateliness

and the old grandeur of its timbered bulk. They determined to take up

their position there again, and paced on, Farina with his head below his

shoulders, and Guy nostril in air, as if uneasy in his sense of smell.

On the window-ledge of a fair-fitted domicile stood a flower-pot, a rude

earthen construction in the form of a river-barge, wherein grew some

valley lilies that drooped their white bells over the sides.

The Goshawk eyed them wistfully.

‘I must smell those blessed flowers if I wish to be saved!’ and he

stamped resolve with his staff.

Moved by this exclamation, Farina gazed up at them.

‘How like a company of maidens they look floating in the vessel of

life!’ he said.

Guy curiously inspected Farina and the flower-pot, shrugged, and with

his comrade’s aid, mounted to a level with it, seized the prize and

redescended.

‘There,’ he cried, between long luxurious sniffs, ‘that chases him out

of the nostril sooner than aught else, the breath of a fresh lass-like

flower! I was tormented till now by the reek of the damned rising from

under me. This is heaven’s own incense, I think!’

And Guy inhaled the flowers and spake prettily to them.

‘They have a melancholy sweetness, friend,’ said Farina. ‘I think of

whispering Fays, and Elf, and Erl, when their odour steals through me.

Do not you?’

‘Nay, nor hope to till my wits are clean gone,’ was the Goshawk’s reply.

‘To my mind, ‘tis an honest flower, and could I do good service by the

young maiden who there set it, I should be rendering back good service

done; for if that flower has not battled the devil in my nose this

night, and beaten him, my head’s a medlar!’

‘I scarce know whether as a devout Christian I should listen to that,

friend,’ Farina mildly remonstrated. ‘Lilies are indeed emblems of the

saints; but then they are not poor flowers of earth, being transfigured,

lustrous unfadingly. Oh, Cross and Passion! with what silver serenity

thy glory enwraps me, gazing on these fair bells! I look on the white

sea of the saints. I am enamoured of fleshly anguish and martyrdom. All

beauty is that worn by wan-smiling faces wherein Hope sits as a crown

on Sorrow, and the pale ebb of mortal life is the twilight of joy

everlasting. Colourless peace! Oh, my beloved! So walkest thou for my

soul on the white sea ever at night, clad in the straight fall of thy

spotless virgin linen; bearing in thy hand the lily, and leaning thy

cheek to it, where the human rose is softened to a milky bloom of red,

the espousals of heaven with earth; over thee, moving with thee, a

wreath of sapphire stars, and the solitude of purity around!’

‘Ah!’ sighed the Goshawk, dandling his flower-pot; ‘the moon gives

strokes as well’s the sun. I’ faith, moon-struck and maid-struck in

one! He’ll be asking for his head soon. This dash of the monk and the

minstrel is a sure sign. That ‘s their way of loving in this land: they

all go mad, straight off. I never heard such talk.’

Guy accompanied these remarks with a pitiful glance at his companion.

‘Come, Sir Lover! lend me a help to give back what we’ve borrowed to its

rightful owner. ‘S blood! but I feel an appetite. This night-air takes

me in the wind like a battering ram. I thought I had laid in a stout

four-and-twenty hours’ stock of Westphalian Wurst at Master Groschen’s

supper-table. Good stuff, washed down with superior Rhine wine; say your

Liebfrauenmilch for my taste; though, when I first tried it, I grimaced

like a Merry-Andrew, and remembered roast beef and Glo’ster ale in my

prayers.’

The Goshawk was in the act of replacing the pot of lilies, when a blow

from a short truncheon, skilfully flung, struck him on the neck and

brought him to the ground. With him fell the lilies. He glared to the

right and left, and grasped the broken flower-pot for a return missile;

but no enemy was in view to test his accuracy of aim.

The deep-arched doorways showed their empty recesses the windows slept.

‘Has that youth played me false?’ thought the discomfited squire, as he

leaned quietly on his arm. Farina was nowhere near.

Guy was quickly reassured.

‘By my fay, now! that’s a fine thing! and a fine fellow! and a fleet

foot! That lad ‘ll rise! He’ll be a squire some day. Look at him. Bowels

of a’Becket! ‘tis a sight! I’d rather see that, now, than old Groschen

‘s supper-table groaning with Wurst again, and running a river of

Rudesheimer! Tussle on! I’ll lend a hand if there’s occasion; but you

shall have the honour, boy, an you can win it.’

This crying on of the hound was called forth by a chase up the street,

in which the Goshawk beheld Farina pursue and capture a stalwart

runaway, who refused with all his might to be brought back, striving

every two and three of his tiptoe steps to turn against the impulse

Farina had got on his neck and nether garments.

‘Who ‘d have thought the lad was so wiry and mettlesome, with his soft

face, blue eyes, and lank locks? but a green mead has more in it than

many a black mountain. Hail, and well done! if I could dub you knight, I

would: trust me!’ and he shook Farina by the hand.

Farina modestly stood aside, and allowed the Goshawk to confront his

prisoner.

‘So, Sir Shy-i’the-dark! gallant Stick-i’the-back! Squire Truncheon, and

Knight of the noble order of Quicksilver Legs! just take your stand at

the distance you were off me when you discharged this instrument at my

head. By ‘r lady! I smart a scratch to pay you in coin, and it’s lucky

for you the coin is small, or you might reckon on it the same, trust me.

Now, back!’

The Goshawk lunged out with the truncheon, but the prisoner displayed no

hesitation in complying, and fell back about a space of fifteen yards.

‘I suppose he guesses I’ve never done the stupid trick before,’ mused

Guy, ‘or he would not be so sharp.’ Observing that Farina had also

fallen back in a line as guard, Guy motioned him to edge off to the

right more, bawling, ‘Never mind why!’

‘Now,’ thought Guy, ‘if I were sure of notching him, I’d do the speech

part first; but as I’m not--throwing truncheons being no honourable

profession anywhere--I’ll reserve that. The rascal don’t quail. We’ll

see how long he stands firm.’

The Goshawk cleared his wrist, fixed his eye, and swung the truncheon

meditatively to and fro by one end. He then launched off the shoulder

a mighty down-fling, calmly, watching it strike the prisoner to earth,

like an ox under the hammer.

‘A hit!’ said he, and smoothed his wrist.

Farina knelt by the body, and lifted the head on his breast. ‘Berthold!

Berthold!’ he cried; ‘no further harm shall hap to you, man! Speak!’

‘You ken the scapegrace?’ said Guy, sauntering up.

‘‘Tis Berthold Schmidt, son of old Schmidt, the great goldsmith of

Cologne.’

‘St. Dunstan was not at his elbow this time!’

‘A rival of mine,’ whispered Farina.

‘Oho!’ and the Goshawk wound a low hiss at his tongue’s tip. ‘Well! as

I should have spoken if his ears had been open: Justice struck the blow;

and a gentle one. This comes of taking a flying shot, and not standing

up fair. And that seems all that can be said. Where lives he?’

Farina pointed to the house of the Lilies.

‘Beshrew me! the dog has some right on his side. Whew! yonder he lives?

He took us for some night-prowlers. Why not come up fairly, and ask my

business?

Smelling a flower is not worth a broken neck, nor defending your

premises quite deserving a hole in the pate. Now, my lad, you see what

comes of dealing with cut and run blows; and let this be a warning to

you.’

They took the body by head and feet, and laid him at the door of his

father’s house. Here the colour came to his cheek, and they wiped off

the streaks of blood that stained him. Guy proved he could be tender

with a fallen foe, and Farina with an ill-fated rival. It was who could

suggest the soundest remedies, or easiest postures. One lent a kerchief

and nursed him; another ran to the city fountain and fetched him water.

Meantime the moon had dropped, and morning, grey and beamless, looked on

the house-peaks and along the streets with steadier eye. They now both

discerned a body of men, far down, fronting Gottlieb’s house, and drawn

up in some degree of order. All their charity forsook them at once.

‘Possess thyself of the truncheon,’ said Guy: ‘You see it can damage.

More work before breakfast, and a fine account I must give of myself to

my hostess of the Three Holy Kings!’

Farina recovered the destructive little instrument.

‘I am ready,’ said he. ‘But hark! there’s little work for us there, I

fancy. Those be lads of Cologne, no grunters of the wild. ‘Tis the White

Rose Club. Always too late for service.’

Voices singing a hunting glee, popular in that age, swelled up the clear

morning air; and gradually the words became distinct.

The Kaiser went a-hunting,

A-hunting, tra-ra:

With his bugle-horn at springing morn,

The Kaiser trampled bud and thorn:

Tra-ra!

And the dew shakes green as the horsemen rear,

And a thousand feathers they flutter with fear;

And a pang drives quick to the heart of the deer;

For the Kaiser’s out a-hunting,

Tra-ra!

Ta, ta, ta, ta,

Tra-ra, tra-ra,

Ta-ta, tra-ra, tra-ra!

the owner of the truncheon awoke to these reviving tones, and uttered a

faint responsive ‘Tra-ra!’

‘Hark again!’ said Farina, in reply to the commendation of the Goshawk,

whose face was dimpled over with the harmony.

The wild boar lay a-grunting,

A-grunting, tra-ra!

And, boom! comes the Kaiser to hunt up me?

Or, queak! the small birdie that hops on the tree?

Tra-ra!

O birdie, and boar, and deer, lie tame!

For a maiden in bloom, or a full-blown dame,

Are the daintiest prey, and the windingest game,

When Kaisers go a-hunting,

Tra-ra!

Ha, ha, ha, ha,

Tra-ra, tra-ra,

Ha-ha, tra-ra, tra-ra!

The voices held long on the last note, and let it die in a forest

cadence.

‘‘Fore Gad! well done. Hurrah! Tra-ra, ha-ha, tra-ra! That’s a trick

we’re not half alive to at home,’ said Guy. ‘I feel friendly with these

German lads.’

The Goshawk’s disposition toward German lads was that moment harshly

tested by a smart rap on the shoulder from an end of German oak, and a

proclamation that he was prisoner of the hand that gave the greeting, in

the name of the White Rose Club. Following that, his staff was wrested

from him by a dozen stout young fellows, who gave him no time to get

his famous distance for defence against numbers; and he and Farina were

marched forthwith to the chorusing body in front of Gottlieb Groschen’s

house.

THE MISSIVES

Of all the inmates, Gottlieb had slept most with the day on his eyelids,

for Werner hung like a nightmare over him. Margarita lay and dreamed

in rose-colour, and if she thrilled on her pillowed silken couch like a

tense-strung harp, and fretted drowsily in little leaps and starts, it

was that a bird lay in her bosom, panting and singing through the

night, and that he was not to be stilled, but would musically utter the

sweetest secret thoughts of a love-bewitched maiden. Farina’s devotion

she knew his tenderness she divined: his courage she had that day

witnessed. The young girl no sooner felt that she could love worthily,

than she loved with her whole strength. Muffed and remote came the

hunting-song under her pillow, and awoke dreamy delicate curves in her

fair face, as it thinned but did not banish her dream. Aunt Lisbeth also

heard the song, and burst out of her bed to see that the door and window

were secured against the wanton Kaiser. Despite her trials, she had

taken her spell of sleep; but being possessed of some mystic maiden

belief that in cases of apprehended peril from man, bed was a rock of

refuge and fortified defence, she crept back there, and allowed the

sun to rise without her. Gottlieb’s voice could not awaken her to the

household duties she loved to perform with such a doleful visage. She

heard him open his window, and parley in angry tones with the musicians

below.

‘Decoys!’ muttered Aunt Lisbeth; ‘be thou alive to them, Gottlieb!’

He went downstairs and opened the street door, whereupon the scolding

and railing commenced anew.

‘Thou hast given them vantage, Gottlieb, brother mine,’ she complained;

‘and the good heavens only can say what may result from such

indiscreetness.’

A silence, combustible with shuffling of feet in the passage and on the

stairs, dinned horrors into Aunt Lisbeth’s head.

‘It was just that sound in the left wing of Hollenbogenblitz,’ she said:

‘only then it was night and not morning. Ursula preserve me!’

‘Why, Lisbeth! Lisbeth!’ cried Gottlieb from below. ‘Come down! ‘tis

full five o’ the morning. Here’s company; and what are we to do without

the woman?’

‘Ah, Gottlieb! that is like men! They do not consider how different it

is for us!’ which mysterious sentence being uttered to herself alone,

enjoyed a meaning it would elsewhere have been denied.

Aunt Lisbeth dressed, and met Margarita descending. They exchanged the

good-morning of young maiden and old.

‘Go thou first,’ said Aunt Lisbeth.

Margarita gaily tripped ahead.

‘Girl!’ cried Aunt Lisbeth, ‘what’s that thing in thy back hair?’

‘I have borrowed Lieschen’s arrow, aunt. Mine has had an accident.’

‘Lieschen’s arrow! An accident! Now I will see to that after breakfast,

Margarita.’

‘Tra-ra, ta-ta, tra-ra, tra-ra,’ sang Margarita.

‘The wild boar lay a-grunting,

A-grunting, tra-ra.’

‘A maiden’s true and proper ornament! Look at mine, child! I have worn

it fifty years. May I deserve to wear it till I am called! O Margarita!

trifle not with that symbol.’

‘“O birdie, and boar, and deer, lie tame!”

I am so happy, aunty.’

‘Nice times to be happy in, Margarita.’

“Be happy in Spring, sweet maidens all,

For Autumn’s chill will early fall.”

So sings the Minnesinger, aunty; and

‘“A maiden in the wintry leaf

Will spread her own disease of grief.”

I love the Minnesingers! Dear, sweet-mannered men they are! Such lovers!

And men of deeds as well as song: sword on one side and harp on the

other. They fight till set of sun, and then slacken their armour to waft

a ballad to their beloved by moonlight, covered with stains of battle as

they are, and weary!’

‘What a girl! Minnesingers! Yes; I know stories of those Minnesingers.

They came to the castle--Margarita, a bead of thy cross is broken. I

will attend to it. Wear the pearl one till I mend this. May’st thou

never fall in the way of Minnesingers. They are not like Werner’s troop.

They do not batter at doors: they slide into the house like snakes.’

‘Lisbeth! Lisbeth!’ they heard Gottlieb calling impatiently.

‘We come, Gottlieb!’ and in a low murmur Margarita heard her say: ‘May

this day pass without trouble and shame to the pious and the chaste.’

Margarita knew the voice of the stranger before she had opened the door,

and on presenting herself, the hero gave her a guardian-like salute.

‘One may see,’ he said, ‘that it requires better men than those of

Werner to drive away the rose from that cheek.’

Gottlieb pressed the rosy cheek to his shoulder and patted her.

‘What do you think, Grete? You have now forty of the best lads in

Cologne enrolled to protect you, and keep guard over the house night

and day. There! What more could a Pfalzgrafin ask, now? And voluntary

service; all to be paid with a smile, which I daresay my lady won’t

refuse them. Lisbeth, you know our friend. Fear him not, good Lisbeth,

and give us breakfast. Well, sweet chuck, you’re to have royal honours

paid you. I warrant they’ve begun good work already in locking up that

idle moony vagabond, Farina--’

‘Him? What for, my father? How dared they! What has he done?’

‘O, start not, my fairy maid! A small matter of breakage, pet! He

tried to enter Cunigonde Schmidt’s chamber, and knocked down her pot

of lilies: for which Berthold Schmidt knocked him down, and our friend

here, out of good fellowship, knocked down Berthold. However, the chief

offender is marched off to prison by your trusty guard, and there let

him cool himself. Berthold shall tell you the tale himself: he’ll

be here to breakfast, and receive your orders, mistress

commander-in-chief.’

The Goshawk had his eye on Margarita. Her teeth were tight down on her

nether lip, and her whole figure had a strange look of awkwardness, she

was so divided with anger.

‘As witness of the affair, I think I shall make a clearer statement,

fair maiden,’ he interposed. ‘In the first place, I am the offender. We

passed under the window of the Fraulein Schmidt, and ‘twas I mounted

to greet the lilies. One shoot of them is in my helm, and here let me

present them to a worthier holder.’

He offered the flowers with a smile, and Margarita took them, radiant

with gratitude.

‘Our friend Berthold,’ he continued, ‘thought proper to aim a blow at me

behind my back, and then ran for his comrades. He was caught, and by

my gallant young hero, Farina; concerning whose character I regret that

your respected father and I differ: for, on the faith of a soldier

and true man, he’s the finest among the fine fellows I’ve yet met in

Germany, trust me. So, to cut the story short, execution was done upon

Berthold by my hand, for an act of treachery. He appears to be a sort of

captain of one of the troops, and not affectionately disposed to Farina;

for the version of the affair you have heard from your father is a

little invention of Master Berthold’s own. To do him justice, he seemed

equally willing to get me under the cold stone; but a word from your

good father changed the current; and as I thought I could serve our

friend better free than behind bars, I accepted liberty. Pshaw! I should

have accepted it any way, to tell the truth, for your German dungeons

are mortal shivering ratty places. So rank me no hero, fair Mistress

Margarita, though the temptation to seem one in such sweet eyes was

beginning to lead me astray. And now, as to our business in the streets

at this hour, believe the best of us.’

‘I will! I do!’ said Margarita.

‘Lisbeth! Lisbeth!’ called Gottlieb. ‘Breakfast, little sister! our

champion is starving. He asks for wurst, milk-loaves, wine, and all thy

rarest conserves. Haste, then, for the honour of Cologne is at stake.’

Aunt Lisbeth jingled her keys in and out, and soon that harmony drew a

number of domestics with platters of swine flesh, rolls of white wheaten

bread, the perpetual worst, milk, wine, barley-bread, and household

stores of dainties in profusion, all sparkling on silver, relieved by

spotless white cloth. Gottlieb beheld such a sunny twinkle across the

Goshawk’s face at this hospitable array, that he gave the word of onset

without waiting for Berthold, and his guest immediately fell to, and did

not relax in his exertions for a full half-hour by the Cathedral clock,

eschewing the beer with a wry look made up of scorn and ruefulness, and

drinking a well-brimmed health in Rhine wine all round. Margarita was

pensive: Aunt Lisbeth on her guard. Gottlieb remembered Charles the

Great’s counsel to Archbishop Turpin, and did his best to remain on

earth one of its lords dominant.

‘Poor Berthold!’ said he. ‘‘Tis a good lad, and deserves his seat at my

table oftener. I suppose the flower-pot business has detained him. We’ll

drink to him: eh, Grete?’

‘Drink to him, dear father!--but here he is to thank you in person.’

Margarita felt a twinge of pity as Berthold entered. The livid stains

of his bruise deepened about his eyes, and gave them a wicked light

whenever they were fixed intently; but they looked earnest; and spoke

of a combat in which he could say that he proved no coward and was used

with some cruelty. She turned on the Goshawk a mute reproach; yet smiled

and loved him well when she beheld him stretch a hand of welcome and

proffer a brotherly glass to Berthold. The rich goldsmith’s son was

occupied in studying the horoscope of his fortunes in Margarita’s eyes;

but when Margarita directed his attention to Guy, he turned to him with

a glance of astonishment that yielded to cordial greeting.

‘Well done, Berthold, my brave boy! All are friends who sit at table,’

said Gottlieb. ‘In any case, at my table:

“‘Tis a worthy foe

Forgives the blow

Was dealt him full and fairly,”

says the song; and the proverb takes it up with, “A generous enemy is a

friend on the wrong side”; and no one’s to blame for that, save old Dame

Fortune. So now a bumper to this jovial make-up between you. Lisbeth!

you must drink it.’

The little woman bowed melancholy obedience.

‘Why did you fling and run?’ whispered Guy to Berthold.

‘Because you were two against one.’

‘Two against one, man! Why, have you no such thing as fair play in this

land of yours? Did you think I should have taken advantage of that?’

‘How could I tell who you were, or what you would do?’ muttered

Berthold, somewhat sullenly.

‘Truly no, friend! So you ran to make yourself twenty to two? But don’t

be down on the subject. I was going to say, that though I treated you in

a manner upright, ‘twas perhaps a trifle severe, considering your youth:

but an example’s everything; and I must let you know in confidence, that

no rascal truncheon had I flung in my life before; so, you see, I gave

you all the chances.’

Berthold moved his lips in reply; but thinking of the figure of defeat

he was exhibiting before Margarita, caused him to estimate unfavourably

what chances had stood in his favour.

The health was drunk. Aunt Lisbeth touched the smoky yellow glass with a

mincing lip, and beckoned Margarita to withdraw.

‘The tapestry, child!’ she said. ‘Dangerous things are uttered after the

third glass, I know, Margarita.’

‘Do you call my champion handsome, aunt?’

‘I was going to speak to you about him, Margarita. If I remember, he has

rough, good looks, as far as they go. Yes: but thou, maiden, art thou

thinking of him? I have thrice watched him wink; and that, as we

know, is a habit of them that have sold themselves. And what is frail

womankind to expect from such a brawny animal?’

‘And oh! to lace his armour up,

And speed him to the field;

To pledge him in a kissing-cup,

The knight that will not yield!

I am sure he is tender, aunt. Notice how gentle he looks now and then.’

‘Thou girl! Yes, I believe she is madly in love with him. Tender,

and gentle! So is the bear when you’re outside his den; but enter it,

maiden, and try! Thou good Ursula, preserve me from such a fate.’

‘Fear not, dear aunt! Have not a fear of it! Besides, it is not always

the men that are bad. You must not forget Dalilah, and Lot’s wife, and

Pfalzgrafin Jutta, and the Baroness who asked for a piece of poor Kraut.

But, let us work, let us work!’

Margarita sat down before Siegfried, and contemplated the hero. For the

first time, she marked a resemblance in his features to Farina: the same

long yellow hair scattered over his shoulders as that flowing from under

Siegfried’s helm; the blue eyes, square brows, and regular outlines.

‘This is a marvel,’ thought Margarita. ‘And Farina! it was to watch

over me that he roamed the street last night, my best one! Is he not

beautiful?’ and she looked closer at Siegfried.

Aunt Lisbeth had begun upon the dragon with her usual method, and was

soon wandering through skeleton halls of the old palatial castle in

Bohemia. The woolly tongue of the monster suggested fresh horrors to

her, and if Margarita had listened, she might have had fair excuses

to forget her lover’s condition; but her voice only did service like a

piece of clock-work, and her mind was in the prison with Farina. She

was long debating how to win his release; and meditated so deeply, and

exclaimed in so many bursts of impatience, that Aunt Lisbeth found her

heart melting to the maiden. ‘Now,’ said she, ‘that is a well-known

story about the Electress Dowager of Bavaria, when she came on a visit

to the castle; and, my dear child, be it a warning. Terrible, too!’ and

the little woman shivered pleasantly. ‘She had--I may tell you

this, Margarita--yes, she had been false to her wedded husband.--You

understand, maiden; or, no! you do not understand: I understand it only

partly, mind. False, I say----’

‘False--not true: go on, dear aunty,’ said Margarita, catching the word.

‘I believe she knows as much as I do!’ ejaculated Aunt Lisbeth; ‘such

are girls nowadays. When I was young-oh! for a maiden to know anything

then--oh! it was general reprobation. No one thought of confessing it.

We blushed and held down our eyes at the very idea. Well, the Electress!

she was--you must guess. So she called for her caudle at eleven o’clock

at night. What do you think that was? Well, there was spirit in it: not

to say nutmeg, and lemon, and peach kernels. She wanted me to sit with

her, but I begged my mistress to keep me from the naughty woman: and no

friend of Hilda of Bayern was Bertha of Bohmen, you may be sure. Oh! the

things she talked while she was drinking her caudle.

Isentrude sat with her, and said it was fearful!--beyond blasphemy! and

that she looked like a Bible witch, sitting up drinking and swearing

and glaring in her nightclothes and nightcap. She was on a journey into

Hungary, and claimed the hospitality of the castle on her way there.

Both were widows. Well, it was a quarter to twelve. The Electress

dropped back on her pillow, as she always did when she had finished the

candle. Isentrude covered her over, heaped up logs on the fire, wrapped

her dressing-gown about her, and prepared to sleep. It was Winter, and

the wind howled at the doors, and rattled the windows, and shook the

arras--Lord help us! Outside was all snow, and nothing but forest; as

you saw when you came to me there, Gretelchen. Twelve struck. Isentrude

was dozing; but she says that after the last stroke she woke with cold.

A foggy chill hung in the room. She looked at the Electress, who had not

moved. The fire burned feebly, and seemed weighed upon: Herr Je!--she

thought she heard a noise. No. Quite quiet! As heaven preserve her, says

slip, the smell in that room grew like an open grave, clammily putrid.

Holy Virgin! This time she was certain she heard a noise; but it seemed

on both sides of her. There was the great door leading to the first

landing and state-room; and opposite exactly there was the panel of the

secret passage. The noises seemed to advance as if step by step, and

grew louder in each ear as she stood horrified on the marble of the

hearth. She looked at the Electress again, and her eyes were wide open;

but for all Isentrude’s calling, she would not wake. Only think! Now the

noise increased, and was a regular tramp-grate, tramp-screw sound-coming

nearer and nearer: Saints of mercy! The apartment was choking with

vapours. Isentrude made a dart, and robed herself behind a curtain of

the bed just as the two doors opened. She could see through a slit in

the woven work, and winked her eyes which she had shut close on hearing

the scream of the door-hinges--winked her eyes to catch a sight for

moment--we are such sinful, curious creatures!--What she saw then, she

says she shall never forget; nor I! As she was a living woman, there she

saw the two dead princes, the Prince Palatine of Bohemia and the Elector

of Bavaria, standing front to front at the foot of the bed, all in white

armour, with drawn swords, and attendants holding pine-torches. Neither

of them spoke. Their vizors were down; but she knew them by their arms

and bearing: both tall, stately presences, good knights in their day,

and had fought against the Infidel! So one of them pointed to the bed,

and then a torch was lowered, and the fight commenced. Isentrude saw the

sparks fly, and the steel struck till it was shattered; but they fought

on, not caring for wounds, and snorting with fury as they grew hotter.

They fought a whole hour. The poor girl was so eaten up with looking on,

that she let go the curtain and stood quite exposed among them. So, to

steady herself, she rested her hand on the bed-side; and--think what she

felt--a hand as cold as ice locked hers, and get from it she could not!

That instant one of the princes fell. It was Bohmen. Bayern sheathed his

sword, and waved his hand, and the attendants took up the slaughtered

ghost, feet and shoulders, and bore him to the door of the secret

passage, while Bayern strode after--’

‘Shameful!’ exclaimed Margarita. ‘I will speak to Berthold as he

descends. I hear him coming. He shall do what I wish.’

‘Call it dreadful, Grete! Dreadful it was. If Berthold would like to

sit and hear--Ah! she is gone. A good girl! and of a levity only on the

surface.’

Aunt Lisbeth heard Margarita’s voice rapidly addressing Berthold. His

reply was low and brief. ‘Refuses to listen to anything of the sort,’

Aunt Lisbeth interpreted it. Then he seemed to be pleading, and

Margarita uttering short answers. ‘I trust ‘tis nothing a maiden should

not hear,’ the little lady exclaimed with a sigh.

The door opened, and Lieschen stood at the entrance.

‘For Fraulein Margarita,’ she said, holding a letter halfway out.

‘Give it,’ Aunt Lisbeth commanded.

The woman hesitated--‘‘Tis for the Fraulein.’

‘Give it, I tell thee!’ and Aunt Lisbeth eagerly seized the missive,

and subjected it to the ordeal of touch. It was heavy, and contained

something hard. Long pensive pressures revealed its shape on the paper.

It was an arrow. ‘Go!’ said she to the woman, and, once alone, began,

bee-like, to buzz all over it, and finally entered. It contained

Margarita’s Silver Arrow. ‘The art of that girl!’ And the writing said:

‘SWEETEST MAIDEN!

‘By this arrow of our betrothal, I conjure thee to meet me in all

haste without the western gate, where, burning to reveal to thee

most urgent tidings that may not be confided to paper, now waits,

petitioning the saints, thy

‘FARINA.’

Aunt Lisbeth placed letter and arrow in a drawer; locked it; and ‘always

thought so.’ She ascended the stairs to consult with Gottlieb. Roars

of laughter greeted her just as she lifted the latch, and she retreated

abashed.

There was no time to lose. Farina must be caught in the act of waiting

for Margarita, and by Gottlieb, or herself. Gottlieb was revelling. ‘May

this be a warning to thee, Gottlieb,’ murmured Lisbeth, as she hooded

her little body in Margarita’s fur-cloak, and determined that she would

be the one to confound Farina.

Five minutes later Margarita returned. Aunt Lisbeth was gone. The dragon

still lacked a tip to his forked tongue, and a stream of fiery threads

dangled from the jaws of the monster. Another letter was brought into

the room by Lieschen.

‘For Aunt Lisbeth,’ said Margarita, reading the address. ‘Who can it be

from?’

‘She does not stand pressing about your letters,’ said the woman; and

informed Margarita of the foregoing missive.

‘You say she drew an arrow from it?’ said Margarita, with burning face.

‘Who brought this? tell me!’ and just waiting to hear it was Farina’s

mother, she tore the letter open, and read:

‘DEAREST LISBETH!

‘Thy old friend writes to thee; she that has scarce left eyes to see

the words she writes. Thou knowest we are a fallen house, through

the displeasure of the Emperor on my dead husband. My son, Farina,

is my only stay, and well returns to me the blessings I bestow upon

him. Some call him idle: some think him too wise. I swear to thee,

Lisbeth, he is only good. His hours are devoted to the extraction

of essences--to no black magic. Now he is in trouble-in prison.

The shadow that destroyed his dead father threatens him. Now, by

our old friendship, beloved Lisbeth! intercede with Gottlieb, that

he may plead for my son before the Emperor when he comes--’

Margarita read no more. She went to the window, and saw her guard

marshalled outside. She threw a kerchief over her head, and left the

house by the garden gate.

THE MONK

By this time the sun stood high over Cologne. The market-places were

crowded with buyers and sellers, mixed with a loitering swarm of

soldiery, for whose thirsty natures winestalls had been tumbled up.

Barons and knights of the empire, bravely mounted and thickly followed,

poured hourly into Cologne from South Germany and North. Here, staring

Suabians, and round-featured warriors of the East Kingdom, swaggered up

and down, patting what horses came across them, for lack of occupation

for their hands. Yonder, huge Pomeranians, with bosks of beard stiffened

out square from the chin, hurtled mountainous among the peaceable

inhabitants. Troopers dismounted went straddling, in tight hose and

loose, prepared to drink good-will to whomsoever would furnish the

best quality liquor for that solemn pledge, and equally ready to pick

a quarrel with them that would not. It was a scene of flaring feathers,

wide-flapped bonnets, flaunting hose, blue and battered steel plates,

slashed woollen haunch-bags, leather-leggings, ensigns, and imperious

boots and shoulders. Margarita was too hurried in her mind to

be conscious of an imprudence; but her limbs trembled, and she

instinctively quickened her steps. When she stood under the sign of

the Three Holy Kings, where dwelt Farina’s mother, she put up a fervent

prayer of thanks, and breathed freely.

‘I had expected a message from Lisbeth,’ said Frau Farina; ‘but thou,

good heart! thou wilt help us?’

‘All that may be done by me I will do,’ replied Margarita; ‘but his

mother yearns to see him, and I have come to bear her company.’

The old lady clasped her hands and wept.

‘Has he found so good a friend, my poor boy! And trust me, dear maiden,

he is not unworthy, for better son never lived, and good son, good all!

Surely we will go to him, but not as thou art. I will dress thee.

Such throngs are in the streets: I heard them clattering in early this

morning. Rest, dear heart, till I return.’

Margarita had time to inspect the single sitting-room in which her lover

lived. It was planted with bottles, and vases, and pipes, and cylinders,

piling on floor, chair, and table. She could not suppress a slight

surprise of fear, for this display showed a dealing with hidden things,

and a summoning of scattered spirits. It was this that made his brow so

pale, and the round of his eye darker than youth should let it be! She

dismissed the feeling, and assumed her own bright face as Dame Farina

reappeared, bearing on her arm a convent garb, and other apparel.

Margarita suffered herself to be invested in the white and black robes

of the denial of life.

‘There!’ said the Frau Farina, ‘and to seal assurance, I have engaged

a guard to accompany us. He was sorely bruised in a street combat

yesterday, and was billeted below, where I nursed and tended him, and he

is grateful, as man should be-though I did little, doing my utmost--and

with him near us we have nought to fear.’

‘Good,’ said Margarita, and they kissed and departed. The guard was

awaiting them outside.

‘Come, my little lady, and with thee the holy sister! ‘Tis no step

from here, and I gage to bring ye safe, as sure as my name’s Schwartz

Thier!--Hey? The good sister’s dropping. Look, now! I’ll carry her.’

Margarita recovered her self-command before he could make good this

offer.

‘Only let us hasten there,’ she gasped.

The Thier strode on, and gave them safe-conduct to the prison where

Farina was confined, being near one of the outer forts of the city.

‘Thank and dismiss him,’ whispered Margarita.

‘Nay! he will wait-wilt thou not, friend! We shall not be long, though

it is my son I visit here,’ said Frau Farina.

‘Till to-morrow morning, my little lady! The lion thanked him that

plucked the thorn from his foot, and the Thier may be black, but he’s

not ungrateful, nor a worse beast than the lion.’

They entered the walls and left him.

For the first five minutes Schwartz Thier found employment for

his faculties by staring at the shaky, small-paned windows of the

neighbourhood. He persevered in this, after all novelty had been

exhausted, from an intuitive dread of weariness. There was nothing to

see. An old woman once bobbed out of an attic, and doused the flints

with water. Harassed by increasing dread of the foul nightmare of

nothing-to-do, the Thier endeavoured to establish amorous intelligence

with her. She responded with an indignant projection of the underjaw,

evanishing rapidly. There was no resource left him but to curse her with

extreme heartiness. The Thier stamped his right leg, and then his left,

and remembered the old woman as a grievance five minutes longer. When

she was clean forgotten, he yawned. Another spouse of the moment was

wanted, to be wooed, objurgated, and regretted. The prison-gate was in

a secluded street. Few passengers went by, and those who did edged away

from the ponderous, wanton-eyed figure of lazy mischief lounging there,

as neatly as they well could. The Thier hailed two or three. One took

to his legs, another bowed, smirked, gave him a kindly good-day, and

affected to hear no more, having urgent business in prospect. The Thier

was a faithful dog, but the temptation to betray his trust and pursue

them was mighty. He began to experience an equal disposition to cry and

roar. He hummed a ballad--

‘I swore of her I’d have my will,

And with him I’d have my way:

I learn’d my cross-bow over the hill:

Now what does my lady say?

Give me the good old cross-bow, after all, and none of these lumbering

puff-and-bangs that knock you down oftener than your man!

‘A cross stands in the forest still,

And a cross in the churchyard grey:

My curse on him who had his will,

And on him who had his way!

Good beginning, bad ending! ‘Tisn’t so always. “Many a cross has the

cross-bow built,” they say. I wish I had mine, now, to peg off that old

woman, or somebody. I’d swear she’s peeping at me over the gable, or

behind some cranny. They’re curious, the old women, curse ‘em! And the

young, for that matter. Devil a young one here.

‘When I’m in for the sack of a town,

What, think ye, I poke after, up and down?

Silver and gold I pocket in plenty,

But the sweet tit-bit is my lass under twenty.

I should like to be in for the sack of this Cologne. I’d nose out that

pretty girl I was cheated of yesterday. Take the gold and silver, and

give me the maiden! Her neck’s silver, and her hair gold. Ah! and her

cheeks roses, and her mouth-say no more! I’m half thinking Werner, the

hungry animal, has cast wolf’s eyes on her. They say he spoke of her

last night. Don’t let him thwart me. Thunderblast him! I owe him a

grudge. He’s beginning to forget my plan o’ life.’

A flight of pigeons across the blue top of the street abstracted the

Thier from these reflections. He gaped after them in despair, and fell

to stretching and shaking himself, rattling his lungs with loud reports.

As he threw his eyes round again, they encountered those of a monk

opposite fastened on him in penetrating silence. The Thier hated monks

as a wild beast shuns fire; but now even a monk was welcome.

‘Halloo!’ he sung out.

The monk crossed over to him.

‘Friend!’ said he, ‘weariness is teaching thee wantonness. Wilt thou

take service for a night’s work, where the danger is little, the reward

lasting?’

‘As for that,’ replied the Thier, ‘danger comes to me like greenwood to

the deer, and good pay never yet was given in promises. But I’m bound

for the next hour to womankind within there. They’re my masters; as

they’ve been of tough fellows before me.’

‘I will seek them, and win their consent,’ said the monk, and so left

him.

‘Quick dealing!’ thought the Thier, and grew brisker. ‘The Baron won’t

want me to-night: and what if he does? Let him hang himself--though, if

he should, ‘twill be a pity I’m not by to help him.’

He paced under the wall to its farthest course. Turning back, he

perceived the monk at the gateway.

‘A sharp hand!’ thought the Thier.

‘Intrude no question on me,’ the monk began; ‘but hold thy peace and

follow: the women release thee, and gladly.’

‘That’s not my plan o’ life, now! Money down, and then command me’: and

Schwartz Thier stood with one foot forward, and hand stretched out.

A curl of scorn darkened the cold features of the monk.

He slid one hand into a side of his frock above the girdle, and tossed a

bag of coin.

‘Take it, if ‘tis in thee to forfeit the greater blessing,’ he cried

contemptuously.

The Thier peeped into the bag, and appeared satisfied.

‘I follow,’ said he; ‘lead on, good father, and I’ll be in the track of

holiness for the first time since my mother was quit of me.’

The monk hurried up the street and into the marketplace, oblivious of

the postures and reverences of the people, who stopped to stare at him

and his gaunt attendant. As they crossed the square, Schwartz Thier

spied Henker Rothhals starting from a wine-stall on horseback, and could

not forbear hailing him. Before the monk had time to utter a reproach,

they were deep together in a double-shot of query and reply.

‘Whirr!’ cried the Thier, breaking on some communication. ‘Got her, have

they? and swung her across stream? I’m one with ye for my share, or call

me sheep!’

He waved his hand to the monk, and taking hold of the horse’s rein, ran

off beside his mounted confederate, heavily shod as he was.

The monk frowned after him, and swelled with a hard sigh.

‘Gone!’ he exclaimed, ‘and the accursed gold with him! Well did a voice

warn me that such service was never to be bought!’

He did not pause to bewail or repent, but returned toward the prison

with rapid footsteps, muttering: ‘I with the prison-pass for two; why

was I beguiled by that bandit? Saw I not the very youth given into my

hands there, he that was with the damsel and the aged woman?’

THE RIDE AND THE RACE

Late in the noon a horseman, in the livery of the Kaiser’s body-guard,

rode dry and dusty into Cologne, with tidings that the Kaiser was at

Hammerstein Castle, and commanding all convocated knights, barons,

counts, and princes, to assemble and prepare for his coming, on a

certain bare space of ground within two leagues of Cologne, thence to

swell the train of his triumphal entry into the ancient city of his

empire.

Guy the Goshawk, broad-set on a Flemish mare, and a pack-horse beside

him, shortly afterward left the hotel of the Three Holy Kings, and

trotted up to Gottlieb’s door.

‘Tent-pitching is now my trade,’ said he, as Gottlieb came down to him.

‘My lord is with the Kaiser. I must say farewell for the nonce. Is the

young lady visible?’

‘Nor young, nor old, good friend,’ replied Gottlieb, with a countenance

somewhat ruffled. ‘I dined alone for lack of your company. Secret

missives came, I hear, to each of them, and both are gadding. Now what

think you of this, after the scene of yesterday?--Lisbeth too!’

‘Preaches from the old text, Master Groschen; “Never reckon on womankind

for a wise act.” But farewell! and tell Mistress Margarita that I take

it ill of her not giving me her maiden hand to salute before parting. My

gravest respects to Frau Lisbeth. I shall soon be sitting with you over

that prime vintage of yours, or fortune’s dead against me.’

So, with a wring of the hand, Guy put the spur to his round-flanked

beast, and was quickly out of Cologne on the rough roadway.

He was neither the first nor the last of the men-at-arms hastening to

obey the Kaiser’s mandate. A string of horse and foot in serpentine

knots stretched along the flat land, flashing colours livelier than the

spring-meadows bordering their line of passage. Guy, with a nod for all,

and a greeting for the best-disposed, pushed on toward the van, till the

gathering block compelled him to adopt the snail’s pace of the advance

party, and gave him work enough to keep his two horses from being jammed

with the mass. Now and then he cast a weather-eye on the heavens, and

was soon confirmed in an opinion he had repeatedly ejaculated, that ‘the

first night’s camping would be a drencher.’ In the West a black bank

of cloud was blotting out the sun before his time. Northeast shone bare

fields of blue lightly touched with loosefloating strips and flakes of

crimson vapour. The furrows were growing purple-dark, and gradually a

low moaning obscurity enwrapped the whole line, and mufed the noise of

hoof, oath, and waggon-wheel in one sullen murmur.

Guy felt very much like a chopped worm, as he wriggled his way onward

in the dusk, impelled from the rear, and reduced to grope after the main

body. Frequent and deep counsel he took with a trusty flask suspended

at his belt. It was no pleasant reflection that the rain would be down

before he could build up anything like shelter for horse and man. Still

sadder the necessity of selecting his post on strange ground, and in

darkness. He kept an anxious look-out for the moon, and was presently

rejoiced to behold a broad fire that twinkled branchy beams through an

east-hill orchard.

‘My lord calls her Goddess,’ said Guy, wistfully. ‘The title’s

outlandish, and more the style of these foreigners but she may have it

to-night, an she ‘ll just keep the storm from shrouding her bright eye a

matter of two hours.’

She rose with a boding lustre. Drifts of thin pale upper-cloud leaned

down ladders, pure as virgin silver, for her to climb to her highest

seat on the unrebellious half-circle of heaven.

‘My mind’s made up!’ quoth Guy to the listening part of himself. ‘Out of

this I’ll get.’

By the clearer ray he had discerned a narrow track running a white

parallel with the general route. At the expense of dislocating a mile

of the cavalcade, he struck into it. A dyke had to be taken, some heavy

fallows crossed, and the way was straight before him. He began to sneer

at the slow jog-trot and absence of enterprise which made the fellows he

had left shine so poorly in comparison with the Goshawk, but a sight of

two cavaliers in advance checked his vanity, and now to overtake them he

tasked his fat Flemish mare with unwonted pricks of the heel, that made

her fling out and show more mettle than speed.

The objects of this fiery chase did not at first awake to a sense of

being pursued. Both rode with mantled visages, and appeared profoundly

inattentive to the world outside their meditations. But the Goshawk

was not to be denied, and by dint of alternately roaring at them and

upbraiding his two stumping beasts, he at last roused the younger of the

cavaliers, who called to his companion loudly: without effect it seemed,

for he had to repeat the warning. Guy was close up with them, when the

youth exclaimed:

‘Father! holy father! ‘Tis Sathanas in person!’

The other rose and pointed trembling to a dark point in the distance as

he vociferated:

‘Not here! not here; but yonder!’

Guy recognized the voice of the first speaker, and cried:

‘Stay! halt a second! Have you forgotten the Goshawk?’

‘Never!’ came the reply, ‘and forget not Farina!’

Spur and fleeter steeds carried them out of hearing ere Guy could throw

in another syllable. Farina gazed back on him remorsefully, but the Monk

now rated his assistant with indignation.

‘Thou weak one! nothing less than fool! to betray thy name on such an

adventure as this to soul save the saints!’

Farina tossed back his locks, and held his forehead to the moon. All the

Monk’s ghostly wrath was foiled by the one little last sweet word of his

beloved, which made music in his ears whenever annoyance sounded.

‘And herein,’ say the old writers, ‘are lovers, who love truly, truly

recompensed for their toils and pains; in that love, for which they

suffer, is ever present to ward away suffering not sprung of love: but

the disloyal, who serve not love faithfully, are a race given over

to whatso this base world can wreak upon them, without consolation or

comfort of their mistress, Love; whom sacrificing not all to, they know

not to delight in.’

The soul of a lover lives through every member of him in the joy of a

moonlight ride. Sorrow and grief are slow distempers that crouch from

the breeze, and nourish their natures far from swift-moving things. A

true lover is not one of those melancholy flies that shoot and maze over

muddy stagnant pools. He must be up in the great air. He must strike

all the strings of life. Swiftness is his rapture. In his wide arms

he embraces the whole form of beauty. Eagle-like are his instincts;

dove-like his desires. Then the fair moon is the very presence of his

betrothed in heaven. So for hours rode Farina in a silver-fleeting

glory; while the Monk as a shadow, galloped stern and silent beside

him. So, crowning them in the sky, one half was all love and light; one,

blackness and fell purpose.

THE COMBAT ON DRACHENFELS

Not to earth was vouchsafed the honour of commencing the great battle of

that night. By an expiring blue-shot beam of moonlight, Farina beheld

a vast realm of gloom filling the hollow of the West, and the moon was

soon extinguished behind sluggish scraps of iron scud detached from the

swinging bulk of ruin, as heavily it ground on the atmosphere in the

first thunder-launch of motion.

The heart of the youth was strong, but he could not view without quicker

fawning throbs this manifestation of immeasurable power, which seemed as

if with a stroke it was capable of destroying creation and the works of

man. The bare aspect of the tempest lent terrors to the adventure he

was engaged in, and of which he knew not the aim, nor might forecast

the issue. Now there was nothing to illumine their path but such forked

flashes as lightning threw them at intervals, touching here a hill with

clustered cottages, striking into day there a May-blossom, a patch of

weed, a single tree by the wayside. Suddenly a more vivid and continuous

quiver of violet fire met its reflection on the landscape, and Farina

saw the Rhine-stream beneath him.

‘On such a night,’ thought he, ‘Siegfried fought and slew the dragon!’

A blast of light, as from the jaws of the defeated dragon in his throes,

made known to him the country he traversed. Crimsoned above the water

glimmered the monster-haunted rock itself, and mid-channel beyond, flat

and black to the stream, stretched the Nuns’ Isle in cloistral peace.

‘Halt!’ cried the Monk, and signalled with a peculiar whistle, to

which he seemed breathlessly awaiting an answer. They were immediately

surrounded by longrobed veiled figures.

‘Not too late?’ the Monk hoarsely asked of them.

‘Yet an hour!’ was the reply, in soft clear tones of a woman’s voice.

‘Great strength and valour more than human be mine,’ exclaimed the Monk,

dismounting.

He passed apart from them; and they drew in a circle, while he prayed,

kneeling.

Presently he returned, and led Farina to a bank, drawing from some

hiding-place a book and a bell, which he gave into the hands of the

youth.

‘For thy soul, no word!’ said the Monk, speaking down his throat as he

took in breath. ‘Nay! not in answer to me! Be faithful, and more than

earthly fortune is thine; for I say unto thee, I shall not fail, having

grace to sustain this combat.’

Thereupon he commenced the ascent of Drachenfels.

Farina followed. He had no hint of the Monk’s mission, nor of the

part himself was to play in it. Such a load of silence gathered on

his questioning spirit, that the outcry of the rageing elements alone

prevented him from arresting the Monk and demanding the end of his

service there. That outcry was enough to freeze speech on the very lips

of a mortal. For scarce had they got footing on the winding path of

the crags, when the whole vengeance of the storm was hurled against the

mountain. Huge boulders were loosened and came bowling from above: trees

torn by their roots from the fissures whizzed on the eddies of the wind:

torrents of rain foamed down the iron flanks of rock, and flew off in

hoar feathers against the short pauses of darkness: the mountain heaved,

and quaked, and yawned a succession of hideous chasms.

‘There’s a devil in this,’ thought Farina. He looked back and marked the

river imaging lurid abysses of cloud above the mountain-summit--yea! and

on the summit a flaming shape was mirrored.

Two nervous hands stayed the cry on his mouth.

‘Have I not warned thee?’ said the husky voice of the Monk. ‘I may well

watch, and think for thee as for a dog. Be thou as faithful!’

He handed a flask to the youth, and bade him drink. Farina drank and

felt richly invigorated. The Monk then took bell and book.

‘But half an hour,’ he muttered, ‘for this combat that is to ring

through centuries.’

Crossing himself, he strode wildly upward. Farina saw him beckon back

once, and the next instant he was lost round an incline of the highest

peak.

The wind that had just screamed a thousand death-screams, was now

awfully dumb, albeit Farina could feel it lifting hood and hair. In the

unnatural stillness his ear received tones of a hymn chanted below; now

sinking, now swelling; as though the voices faltered between prayer and

inspiration. Farina caught on a projection of crag, and fixed his eyes

on what was passing on the height.

There was the Monk in his brown hood and wrapper, confronting--if he

might trust his balls of sight--the red-hot figure of the Prince of

Darkness.

As yet no mortal tussle had taken place between them. They were arguing:

angrily, it was true: yet with the first mutual deference of practised

logicians. Latin and German was alternately employed by both. It

thrilled Farina’s fervid love of fatherland to hear the German Satan

spoke: but his Latin was good, and his command over that tongue

remarkable; for, getting the worst of the argument, as usual, he

revenged himself by parodying one of the Church canticles with a point

that discomposed his adversary, and caused him to retreat a step,

claiming support against such shrewd assault.

‘The use of an unexpected weapon in warfare is in itself half a victory.

Induce your antagonist to employ it as a match for you, and reckon on

completely routing him...’ says the old military chronicle.

‘Come!’ said the Demon with easy raillery. ‘You know your game--I

mine! I really want the good people to be happy; dancing, kissing,

propagating, what you will. We quite agree. You can have no objection to

me, but a foolish old prejudice--not personal, but class; an antipathy

of the cowl, for which I pardon you! What I should find in you to

complain of--I have only to mention it, I am sure--is, that perhaps you

do speak a little too much through your nose.’

The Monk did not fall into the jocular trap by retorting in the same

strain.

‘Laugh with the Devil, and you won’t laugh longest,’ says the proverb.

Keeping to his own arms, the holy man frowned.

‘Avaunt, Fiend!’ he cried. ‘To thy kingdom below! Thou halt raged over

earth a month, causing blights, hurricanes, and epidemics of the deadly

sins. Parley no more! Begone!’

The Demon smiled: the corners of his mouth ran up to his ears, and his

eyes slid down almost into one.

‘Still through the nose!’ said he reproachfully.

‘I give thee Five Minutes!’ cried the Monk.

‘I had hoped for a longer colloquy,’ sighed the Demon, jogging his left

leg and trifling with his tail.

‘One Minute!’ exclaimed the Monk.

‘Truly so!’ said the Demon. ‘I know old Time and his habits better than

you really can. We meet every Saturday night, and communicate our best

jokes. I keep a book of them Down There!’

And as if he had reason to remember the pavement of his Halls, he stood

tiptoe and whipped up his legs.

‘Two Minutes!’

The Demon waved perfect acquiescence, and continued:

‘We understand each other, he and I. All Old Ones do. As long as he

lasts, I shall. The thing that surprises me is, that you and I cannot

agree, similar as we are in temperament, and playing for the long odds,

both of us. My failure is, perhaps, too great a passion for sport, aha!

Well, ‘tis a pity you won’t try and live on the benevolent principle.

I am indeed kind to them who commiserate my condition. I give them all

they want, aha! Hem! Try and not believe in me now, aha! Ho!... Can’t

you? What are eyes? Persuade yourself you’re dreaming. You can do

anything with a mind like yours, Father Gregory! And consider the luxury

of getting me out of the way so easily, as many do. It is my finest

suggestion, aha! Generally I myself nudge their ribs with the capital

idea--You’re above bribes? I was going to observe--’

‘Three!’

‘Observe, that if you care for worldly honours, I can smother you with

that kind of thing. Several of your first-rate people made a bargain

with me when they were in the fog, and owe me a trifle. Patronage they

call it. I hook the high and the low. Too-little and too-much serve

me better than Beelzebub. A weak stomach is certainly more carnally

virtuous than a full one. Consequently my kingdom is becoming too

respectable. They’ve all got titles, and object to being asked to poke

the fire without--Honourable-and-with-Exceeding-Brightness-Beaming

Baroness This! Admirably-Benignant-Down-looking Highness That!

Interrupts business, especially when you have to ask them to fry

themselves, according to the rules... Would you like Mainz and the

Rheingau?... You don’t care for Beauty--Puella, Puellae? I have plenty

of them, too, below. The Historical Beauties warmed up at a moment’s

notice. Modern ones made famous between morning and night--Fame is the

sauce of Beauty. Or, no--eh?’

‘Four!’

‘Not quite so fast, if you please. You want me gone. Now, where’s

your charity? Do you ask me to be always raking up those poor devils

underneath? While I’m here, they’ve a respite. They cannot think

you kind, Father Gregory! As for the harm, you see, I’m not the more

agreeable by being face to face with you--though some fair dames do take

to my person monstrously. The secret is, the quantity of small talk

I can command: that makes them forget my smell, which is, I confess,

abominable, displeasing to myself, and my worst curse. Your sort, Father

Gregory, are somewhat unpleasant in that particular--if I may judge by

their Legate here. Well, try small talk. They would fall desperately in

love with polecats and skunks if endowed with small talk. Why, they

have become enamoured of monks before now! If skunks, why not monks? And

again--’

‘Five!’

Having solemnly bellowed this tremendous number, the holy man lifted his

arms to begin the combat.

Farina felt his nerves prick with admiration of the ghostly warrior

daring the Second Power of Creation on that lonely mountain-top. He

expected, and shuddered at thought of the most awful fight ever yet

chronicled of those that have taken place between heroes and the hounds

of evil: but his astonishment was great to hear the Demon, while Bell

was in air and Book aloft, retreat, shouting, ‘Hold!’

‘I surrender,’ said he sullenly. ‘What terms?’

‘Instantaneous riddance of thee from face of earth.’

‘Good!--Now,’ said the Demon, ‘did you suppose I was to be trapped into

a fight? No doubt you wish to become a saint, and have everybody talking

of my last defeat.... Pictures, poems, processions, with the Devil

downmost! No. You’re more than a match for me.’

‘Silence, Darkness!’ thundered the Monk, ‘and think not to vanquish thy

victor by flatteries. Begone!’

And again he towered in his wrath.

The Demon drew his tail between his legs, and threw the forked, fleshy,

quivering end over his shoulder. He then nodded cheerfully, pointed

his feet, and finicked a few steps away, saying: ‘I hope we shall meet

again.’

Upon that he shot out his wings, that were like the fins of the

wyver-fish, sharpened in venomous points.

‘Commands for your people below?’ he inquired, leering with chin

awry. ‘Desperate ruffians some of those cowls. You are right not to

acknowledge them.’

Farina beheld the holy man in no mood to let the Enemy tamper with him

longer.

The Demon was influenced by a like reflection; for, saying, ‘Cologne is

the city your Holiness inhabits, I think?’ he shot up rocket-like

over Rhineland, striking the entire length of the stream, and its

rough-bearded castle-crests, slate-ledges, bramble-clefts, vine-slopes,

and haunted valleys, with one brimstone flash. Frankfort and the far

Main saw him and reddened. Ancient Trier and Mosel; Heidelberg and

Neckar; Limberg and Lahn, ran guilty of him. And the swift artery of

these shining veins, Rhine, from his snow cradle to his salt decease,

glimmered Stygian horrors as the Infernal Comet, sprung over Bonn,

sparkled a fiery minute along the face of the stream, and vanished,

leaving a seam of ragged flame trailed on the midnight heavens.

Farina breathed hard through his teeth.

‘The last of him was awful,’ said he, coming forward to where the Monk

knelt and grasped his breviary, ‘but he was vanquished easily.’

‘Easily?’ exclaimed the holy man, gasping satisfaction: ‘thou weakling!

is it for thee to measure difficulties, or estimate powers? Easily? thou

worldling! and so are great deeds judged when the danger’s past! And

what am I but the humble instrument that brought about this wondrous

conquest! the poor tool of this astounding triumph! Shall the sword say,

This is the battle I won! Yonder the enemy I overthrow! Bow to me, ye

lords of earth, and worshippers of mighty acts? Not so! Nay, but the

sword is honoured in the hero’s grasp, and if it break not, it is

accounted trusty. This, then, this little I may claim, that I was

trusty! Trusty in a heroic encounter! Trusty in a battle with earth’s

terror! Oh! but this must not be said. This is to think too much! This

is to be more than aught yet achieved by man!’

The holy warrior crossed his arms, and gently bowed his head.

‘Take me to the Sisters,’ he said. ‘The spirit has gone out of me! I am

faint, and as a child!’

Farina asked, and had, his blessing.

‘And with it my thanks!’ said the Monk. ‘Thou hast witnessed how he can

be overcome! Thou hast looked upon a scene that will be the glory of

Christendom! Thou hast beheld the discomfiture of Darkness before the

voice of Light! Yet think not much of me: account me little in this

matter! I am but an instrument! but an instrument!--and again, but an

instrument!’

Farina drew the arms of the holy combatant across his shoulders and

descended Drachenfels.

The tempest was as a forgotten anguish. Bright with maiden splendour

shone the moon; and the old rocks, cherished in her beams, put up their

horns to blue heaven once more. All the leafage of the land shook as to

shake off a wicked dream, and shuddered from time to time, whispering

of old fears quieted, and present peace. The heart of the river fondled

with the image of the moon in its depths.

‘This is much to have won for earth,’ murmured the Monk. ‘And what is

life, or who would not risk all, to snatch such loveliness from the

talons of the Fiend, the Arch-foe? Yet, not I! not I! say not, ‘twas I

did this!’

Soft praises of melody ascended to them on the moist fragrance of air.

It was the hymn of the Sisters.

‘How sweet!’ murmured the Monk. ‘Put it from me! away with it!’

Rising on Farina’s back, and stirruping his feet on the thighs of the

youth, he cried aloud: ‘I charge ye, whoso ye be, sing not this deed

before the emperor! By the breath of your nostrils; pause! ere ye

whisper aught of the combat of Saint Gregory with Satan, and his

victory, and the marvel of it, while he liveth; for he would die the

humble monk he is.’

He resumed his seat, and Farina brought him into the circle of the

Sisters. Those pure women took him, and smoothed him, lamenting, and

filling the night with triumphing tones.

Farina stood apart.

‘The breeze tells of dawn,’ said the Monk; ‘we must be in Cologne before

broad day.’

They mounted horse, and the Sisters grouped and reverenced under the

blessings of the Monk.

‘No word of it!’ said the Monk warningly. ‘We are silent, Father!’ they

answered. ‘Cologne-ward!’ was then his cry, and away he and Farina,

flew.

THE GOSHAWK LEADS

Morning was among the grey eastern clouds as they rode upon the

camp hastily formed to meet the Kaiser. All there was in a wallow

of confusion. Fierce struggles for precedence still went on in the

neighbourhood of the imperial tent ground, where, under the standard of

Germany, lounged some veterans of the Kaiser’s guard, calmly watching

the scramble. Up to the edge of the cultivated land nothing was to be

seen but brawling clumps of warriors asserting the superior claims of

their respective lords. Variously and hotly disputed were these claims,

as many red coxcombs testified. Across that point where the green field

flourished, not a foot was set, for the Kaiser’s care of the farmer, and

affection for good harvests, made itself respected even in the heat of

those jealous rivalries. It was said of him, that he would have camped

in a bog, or taken quarters in a cathedral, rather than trample down a

green blade of wheat, or turn over one vine-pole in the empire. Hence

the presence of Kaiser Heinrich was never hailed as Egypt’s plague by

the peasantry, but welcome as the May month wherever he went.

Father Gregory and Farina found themselves in the centre of a group ere

they drew rein, and a cry rose, ‘The good father shall decide, and all’s

fair,’ followed by, ‘Agreed! Hail and tempest! he’s dropped down o’

purpose.’

‘Father,’ said one, ‘here it is! I say I saw the Devil himself fly off

Drachenfels, and flop into Cologne. Fritz here, and Frankenbauch, saw

him too. They’ll swear to him: so ‘ll I. Hell’s thunder! will we. Yonder

fellows will have it ‘twas a flash o’ lightning, as if I didn’t see him,

horns, tail, and claws, and a mighty sight ‘twas, as I’m a sinner.’

A clash of voices, for the Devil and against him, burst on this accurate

description of the Evil spirit. The Monk sank his neck into his chest.

‘Gladly would I hold silence on this, my sons,’ said he, in a

supplicating voice.

‘Speak, Father,’ cried the first spokesman, gathering courage from the

looks of the Monk.

Father Gregory appeared to commune with himself deeply. At last, lifting

his head, and murmuring, ‘It must be,’ he said aloud:

‘‘Twas verily Satan, O my sons! Him this night in mortal combat I

encountered and overcame on the summit of Drachenfels, before the eyes

of this youth; and from Satan I this night deliver ye! an instrument

herein as in all other.’

Shouts, and a far-spreading buzz resounded in the camp. Hundreds had now

seen Satan flying off the Drachenstein. Father Gregory could no

longer hope to escape from the importunate crowds that beset him for

particulars. The much-contested point now was, as to the exact position

of Satan’s tail during his airy circuit, before descending into Cologne.

It lashed like a lion’s. ‘Twas cocked, for certain! He sneaked it

between his legs like a lurcher! He made it stumpy as a brown bear’s! He

carried it upright as a pike!

‘O my sons! have I sown dissension? Have I not given ye peace?’

exclaimed the Monk.

But they continued to discuss it with increasing frenzy.

Farina cast a glance over the tumult, and beheld his friend Guy

beckoning earnestly. He had no difficulty in getting away to him, as the

fetters of all eyes were on the Monk alone.

The Goshawk was stamping with excitement.

‘Not a moment to be lost, my lad,’ said Guy, catching his arm. ‘Here,

I’ve had half-a-dozen fights already for this bit of ground. Do you know

that fellow squatting there?’

Farina beheld the Thier at the entrance of a tumbledown tent. He was

ruefully rubbing a broken head.

‘Now,’ continued Guy, ‘to mount him is the thing; and then after the

wolves of Werner as fast as horse-flesh can carry us. No questions!

Bound, are you? And what am I? But this is life and death, lad! Hark!’

The Goshawk whispered something that sucked the blood out of Farina’s

cheek.

‘Look you--what’s your lockjaw name? Keep good faith with me, and you

shall have your revenge, and the shiners I promise, besides my lord’s

interest for a better master: but, sharp! we won’t mount till we’re out

of sight o’ the hell-scum you horde with.’

The Thier stood up and staggered after them through the camp. There was

no difficulty in mounting him horses were loose, and scampering about

the country, not yet delivered from their terrors of the last night’s

tempest.

‘Here be we, three good men!’ exclaimed Guy, when they were started, and

Farina had hurriedly given him the heads of his adventure with the Monk.

‘Three good men! One has helped to kick the devil: one has served an

apprenticeship to his limb: and one is ready to meet him foot to foot

any day, which last should be myself. Not a man more do we want, though

it were to fish up that treasure you talk of being under the Rhine

there, and guarded by I don’t know how many tricksy little villains.

Horses can be ferried across at Linz, you say?’

‘Ay, thereabout,’ grunted the Thier.

‘We ‘re on the right road, then!’ said Guy. ‘Thanks to you both, I’ve

had no sleep for two nights--not a wink, and must snatch it going--not

the first time.’

The Goshawk bent his body, and spoke no more. Farina could not get a

word further from him. By the mastery he still had over his rein, the

Goshawk alone proved that he was of the world of the living. Schwartz

Thier, rendered either sullen or stunned by the latest cracked crown he

had received, held his jaws close as if they had been nailed.

At Linz the horses were well breathed. The Goshawk, who had been snoring

an instant before, examined them keenly, and shook his calculating head.

‘Punch that beast of yours in the ribs,’ said he to Farina. ‘Ah! not

a yard of wind in him. And there’s the coming back, when we shall have

more to carry. Well: this is my lord’s money; but i’ faith, it’s going

in a good cause, and Master Groschen will make it all right, no doubt;

not a doubt of it.’

The Goshawk had seen some excellent beasts in the stables of the

Kaiser’s Krone; but the landlord would make no exchange without an

advance of silver. This done, the arrangement was prompt.

‘Schwartz Thier!--I’ve got your name now,’ said Guy, as they were

ferrying across, ‘you’re stiff certain they left Cologne with the maiden

yesternoon, now?’

‘Ah, did they! and she’s at the Eck safe enow by this time.’

‘And away from the Eck this night she shall come, trust me!’

‘Or there will I die with her!’ cried Farina.

‘Fifteen men at most, he has, you said,’ continued Guy.

‘Two not sound, five true as steel, and the rest shillyshally. ‘Slife,

one lock loose serves us; but two saves us: five we’re a match for,

throwing in bluff Baron; the remainder go with victory.’

‘Can we trust this fellow?’ whispered Farina.

‘Trust him!’ roared Guy. ‘Why, I’ve thumped him, lad; pegged and

pardoned him. Trust him? trust me! If Werner catches a sight of that

snout of his within half-a-mile of his hold, he’ll roast him alive.’

He lowered his voice: ‘Trust him? We can do nothing without him. I

knocked the devil out of him early this morning. No chance for his

Highness anywhere now. This Eck of Werner’s would stand a siege from the

Kaiser in person, I hear. We must into it like weasels; and out as we

can.’

Dismissing the ferry-barge with stern injunctions to be in waiting from

noon to noon, the three leapt on their fresh nags.

‘Stop at the first village,’ said Guy; ‘we must lay in provision.

As Master Groschen says, “Nothing’s to be done, Turpin, without

provender.”’

‘Goshawk!’ cried Farina; ‘you have time; tell me how this business was

done.’

The only reply was a soft but decided snore, that spoke, like a

voluptuous trumpet, of dreamland and its visions.

At Sinzig, the Thier laid his hand on Guy’s bridle, with the words,

‘Feed here,’ a brief, but effective, form of signal, which aroused the

Goshawk completely. The sign of the Trauben received them. Here, wurst

reeking with garlic, eggs, black bread, and sour wine, was all they

could procure. Farina refused to eat, and maintained his resolution, in

spite of Guy’s sarcastic chiding.

‘Rub down the beasts, then, and water them,’ said the latter. ‘Made a

vow, I suppose,’ muttered Guy.

‘That’s the way of those fellows. No upright manly

take-the-thing-as-it-comes; but fly-sky-high whenever there’s a dash on

their heaven. What has his belly done to offend him? It will be crying

out just when we want all quiet. I wouldn’t pay Werner such a compliment

as go without a breakfast for him. Not I! Would you, Schwartz Thier?’

‘Henker! not I!’ growled the Thier. ‘He’ll lose one sooner.’

‘First snatch his prey, or he’ll be making, God save us! a meal for a

Kaiser, the brute.’

Guy called in the landlady, clapped down the score, and abused the wine.

‘Sir,’ said the landlady, ‘ours is but a poor inn, and we do our best.’

‘So you do,’ replied the Goshawk, softened; ‘and I say that a civil

tongue and rosy smiles sweeten even sour wine.’

The landlady, a summer widow, blushed, and as he was stepping from the

room, called him aside.

‘I thought you were one of that dreadful Werner’s band, and I hate him.’

Guy undeceived her.

‘He took my sister,’ she went on, ‘and his cruelty killed her. He

persecuted me even in the lifetime of my good man. Last night he came

here in the middle of the storm with a young creature bright as an

angel, and sorrowful--’

‘He’s gone, you’re sure?’ broke in Guy.

‘Gone! Oh, yes! Soon as the storm abated he dragged her on. Oh! the way

that young thing looked at me, and I able to do nothing for her.’

‘Now, the Lord bless you for a rosy Christian!’ cried Guy, and, in his

admiration, he flung his arm round her and sealed a ringing kiss on each

cheek.

‘No good man defrauded by that! and let me see the fellow that thinks

evil of it. If I ever told a woman a secret, I ‘d tell you one now,

trust me. But I never do, so farewell! Not another?’

Hasty times keep the feelings in a ferment, and the landlady was

extremely angry with Guy and heartily forgave him, all within a minute.

‘No more,’ said she, laughing: ‘but wait; I have something for you.’

The Goshawk lingered on a fretting heel. She was quickly under his elbow

again with two flasks leaning from her bosom to her arms.

‘There! I seldom meet a man like you; and, when I do, I like to be

remembered. This is a true good wine, real Liebfrauenmilch, which I only

give to choice customers.’

‘Welcome it is!’ sang Guy to her arch looks; ‘but I must pay for it.’

‘Not a pfennig!’ said the landlady.

‘Not one?’

‘Not one!’ she repeated, with a stamp of the foot.

‘In other coin, then,’ quoth Guy; and folding her waist, which did not

this time back away, the favoured Goshawk registered rosy payment on a

very fresh red mouth, receiving in return such lively discount, that he

felt himself bound in conscience to make up the full sum a second time.

‘What a man!’ sighed the landlady, as she watched the Goshawk lead off

along the banks; ‘courtly as a knight, open as a squire, and gentle as a

page!’

WERNER’S ECK

A league behind Andernach, and more in the wintry circle of the sun than

Laach, its convenient monastic neighbour, stood the castle of Werner,

the Robber Baron. Far into the South, hazy with afternoon light, a

yellow succession of sandhills stretched away, spouting fire against the

blue sky of an elder world, but now dead and barren of herbage. Around

is a dusty plain, where the green blades of spring no sooner peep than

they become grimed with sand and take an aged look, in accordance with

the ungenerous harvests they promise. The aridity of the prospect is

relieved on one side by the lofty woods of Laach, through which the sun

setting burns golden-red, and on the other by the silver sparkle of a

narrow winding stream, bordered with poplars, and seen but a glistening

mile of its length by all the thirsty hills. The Eck, or Corner, itself,

is thick-set with wood, but of a stunted growth, and lying like a dark

patch on the landscape. It served, however, entirely to conceal the

castle, and mask every movement of the wary and terrible master. A

trained eye advancing on the copse would hardly mark the glimmer of the

turrets over the topmost leaves, but to every loophole of the walls

lies bare the circuit of the land. Werner could rule with a glance the

Rhine’s course down from the broad rock over Coblentz to the white tower

of Andernach. He claimed that march as his right; but the Mosel was no

hard ride’s distance, and he gratified his thirst for rapine chiefly on

that river, delighting in it, consequently, as much as his robber nature

boiled over the bound of his feudal privileges.

Often had the Baron held his own against sieges and restrictions, bans

and impositions of all kinds. He boasted that there was never a knight

within twenty miles of him that he had not beaten, nor monk of the same

limit not in his pay. This braggadocio received some warrant from his

yearly increase of licence; and his craft and his castle combined,

made him a notable pest of the region, a scandal to the abbey whose

countenance he had, and a frightful infliction on the poorer farmers and

peasantry.

The sun was beginning to slope over Laach, and threw the shadows of the

abbey towers half-way across the blue lake-waters, as two men in the

garb of husbandmen emerged from the wood. Their feet plunged heavily and

their heads hung down, as they strode beside a wain mounted with straw,

whistling an air of stupid unconcern; but a close listener might have

heard that the lumbering vehicle carried a human voice giving them

directions as to the road they were to take, and what sort of behaviour

to observe under certain events. The land was solitary. A boor passing

asked whether toll or tribute they were conveying to Werner. Tribute,

they were advised to reply, which caused him to shrug and curse as he

jogged on. Hearing him, the voice in the wain chuckled grimly. Their

next speech was with a trooper, who overtook them, and wanted to know

what they had in the wain for Werner. Tribute, they replied, and won the

title of ‘brave pigs’ for their trouble.

‘But what’s the dish made of?’ said the trooper, stirring the straw with

his sword-point.

‘Tribute,’ came the answer.

‘Ha! You’ve not been to Werner’s school,’ and the trooper swung a

sword-stroke at the taller of the two, sending a tremendous shudder

throughout his frame; but he held his head to the ground, and only

seemed to betray animal consciousness in leaning his ear closer to the

wain.

‘Blood and storm! Will ye speak?’ cried the trooper.

‘Never talk much; but an ye say nothing to the Baron,’--thrusting his

hand into the straw--‘here’s what’s better than speaking.’

‘Well said!--Eh? Liebfrauenmilch? Ho, ho! a rare bleed!’

Striking the neck of the flask on a wheel, the trooper applied it to his

mouth, and ceased not deeply ingurgitating till his face was broad to

the sky and the bottle reversed. He then dashed it down, sighed, and

shook himself.

‘Rare news! the Kaiser’s come: he’ll be in Cologne by night; but first

he must see the Baron, and I’m post with the order. That’s to show you

how high he stands in the Kaiser’s grace. Don’t be thinking of upsetting

Werner yet, any of you; mind, now!’

‘That’s Blass-Gesell,’ said the voice in the wain, as the trooper

trotted on: adding, ‘‘gainst us.’

‘Makes six,’ responded the driver.

Within sight of the Eck, they descried another trooper coming toward

them. This time the driver was first to speak.

‘Tribute! Provender! Bread and wine for the high Baron Werner from his

vassals over Tonnistein.’

‘And I’m out of it! fasting like a winter wolf,’ howled the fellow.

He was in the act of addressing himself to an inspection of the

wain’s contents, when a second flask lifted in air, gave a sop to his

curiosity. This flask suffered the fate of the former.

‘A Swabian blockhead, aren’t you?’

‘Ay, that country,’ said the driver. ‘May be, Henker Rothhals happens to

be with the Baron?’

‘To hell with him! I wish he had my job, and I his, of watching the

yellow-bird in her new cage, till she’s taken out to-night, and then a

jolly bumper to the Baron all round.’

The driver wished him a fortunate journey, strongly recommending him

to skirt the abbey westward, and go by the Ahr valley, as there was

something stirring that way, and mumbling, ‘Makes five again,’ as he put

the wheels in motion.

‘Goshawk!’ said his visible companion; ‘what do you say now?’

‘I say, bless that widow!’

‘Oh! bring me face to face with this accursed Werner quickly, my God!’

gasped the youth.

‘Tusk! ‘tis not Werner we want--there’s the Thier speaking. No, no,

Schwartz Thier! I trust you, no doubt; but the badger smells at a hole,

before he goes inside it. We’re strangers, and are allowed to miss our

way.’

Leaving the wain in Farina’s charge, he pushed through a dense growth

of shrub and underwood, and came crouching on a precipitous edge of

shrouded crag, which commanded a view of the stronghold, extending round

it, as if scooped clean by some natural action, about a stone’sthrow

distant, and nearly level with the look-out tower. Sheer from a deep

circular basin clothed with wood, and bottomed with grass and bubbling

water, rose a naked moss-stained rock, on whose peak the castle firmly

perched, like a spying hawk. The only means of access was by a narrow

natural bridge of rock flung from this insulated pinnacle across to the

mainland. One man, well disposed, might have held it against forty.

‘Our way’s the best,’ thought Guy, as he meditated every mode of gaining

admission. ‘A hundred men an hour might be lost cutting steps up that

steep slate; and once at the top we should only have to be shoved down

again.’

While thus engaged, he heard a summons sounded from the castle, and

scrambled back to Farina.

‘The Thier leads now,’ said he, ‘and who leads is captain. It seems

easier to get out of that than in. There’s a square tower, and a round.

I guess the maiden to be in the round. Now, lad, no crying out--You

don’t come in with us; but back you go for the horses, and have them

ready and fresh in yon watered meadow under the castle. The path down

winds easy.’

‘Man!’ cried Farina, ‘what do you take me for?--go you for the horses.’

‘Not for a fool,’ Guy rejoined, tightening his lip; ‘but now is your

time to prove yourself one.’

‘With you, or without you, I enter that castle!’

‘Oh! if you want to be served up hot for the Baron’s supper-mess, by all

means.’

‘Thunder!’ growled Schwartz Thier, ‘aren’t ye moving?’

The Goshawk beckoned Farina aside.

‘Act as I tell you, or I’m for Cologne.’

‘Traitor!’ muttered the youth.

‘Swearing this, that if we fail, the Baron shall need a leech sooner

than a bride.’

‘That stroke must be mine!’

The Goshawk griped the muscle of Farina’s arm till the youth was

compelled to slacken it with pain.

‘Could you drive a knife through a six-inch wood-wall? I doubt this wild

boar wants a harder hit than many a best man could give. ‘Sblood! obey,

sirrah. How shall we keep yon fellow true, if he sees we’re at points?’

‘I yield,’ exclaimed Farina with a fall of the chest; ‘but hear I

nothing of you by midnight--Oh! then think not I shall leave another

minute to chance. Farewell! haste! Heaven prosper you! You will see her,

and die under her eyes. That may be denied to me. What have I done to be

refused that last boon?’

‘Gone without breakfast and dinner,’ said Guy in abhorrent tones.

A whistle from the wain, following a noise of the castlegates being

flung open, called the Goshawk away, and he slouched his shoulders and

strode to do his part, without another word. Farina gazed after him, and

dropped into the covert.

THE WATER-LADY

‘Bird of lovers! Voice of the passion of love! Sweet, deep,

disaster-toning nightingale!’ sings the old minnesinger; ‘who that has

not loved, hearing thee is touched with the wand of love’s mysteries,

and yearneth to he knoweth not whom, humbled by overfulness of heart;

but who, listening, already loveth, heareth the language he would speak,

yet faileth in; feeleth the great tongueless sea of his infinite desires

stirred beyond his narrow bosom; is as one stript of wings whom the

angels beckon to their silver homes: and he leaneth forward to ascend to

them, and is mocked by his effort: then is he of the fallen, and of

the fallen would he remain, but that tears lighten him, and through the

tears stream jewelled shafts dropt down to him from the sky, precious

ladders inlaid with amethyst, sapphire, blended jasper, beryl,

rose-ruby, ether of heaven flushed with softened bloom of the

insufferable Presences: and lo, the ladders dance, and quiver, and

waylay his eyelids, and a second time he is mocked, aspiring: and after

the third swoon standeth Hope before him with folded arms, and eyes dry

of the delusions of tears, saying, Thou hast seen! thou hast felt! thy

strength hath reached in thee so far! now shall I never die in thee!’

‘For surely,’ says the minstrel, ‘Hope is not born of earth, or it were

perishable. Rather know her the offspring of that embrace strong

love straineth the heavens with. This owe we to thy music, bridal

nightingale! And the difference of this celestial spirit from the

smirking phantasy of whom all stand soon or late forsaken, is the

difference between painted day with its poor ambitious snares, and night

lifting its myriad tapers round the throne of the eternal, the prophet

stars of everlasting time! And the one dieth, and the other liveth; and

the one is unregretted, and the other walketh in thought-spun raiment of

divine melancholy; her ears crowded with the pale surges that wrap this

shifting shore; in her eyes a shape of beauty floating dimly, that she

will not attain this side the water, but broodeth on evermore.

‘Therefore, hold on thy cherished four long notes, which are as the very

edge where exultation and anguish melt, meet, and are sharpened to one

ecstasy, death-dividing bird! Fill the woods with passionate chuckle and

sob, sweet chaplain of the marriage service of a soul with heaven! Pour

out thy holy wine of song upon the soft-footed darkness, till, like a

priest of the inmost temple, ‘tis drunken with fair intelligences!’

Thus the old minstrels and minnesingers.

Strong and full sang the nightingales that night Farina held watch by

the guilty castle that entombed his living beloved. The castle looked

itself a denser shade among the moonthrown shadows of rock and tree.

The meadow spread like a green courtyard at the castle’s foot. It was of

lush deep emerald grass, softly mixed with grey in the moon’s light, and

showing like jasper. Where the shadows fell thickest, there was yet a

mist of colour. All about ran a brook, and babbled to itself. The spring

crocus lifted its head in moist midgrasses of the meadow, rejoiced with

freshness. The rugged heights seemed to clasp this one innocent spot as

their only garden-treasure; and a bank of hazels hid it from the castle

with a lover’s arm.

‘The moon will tell me,’ mused Farina; ‘the moon will signal me the

hour! When the moon hangs over the round tower, I shall know ‘tis time

to strike.’

The song of the nightingales was a full unceasing throb.

It went like the outcry of one heart from branch to branch. The four

long notes, and the short fifth which leads off to that hurried gush of

music, gurgling rich with passion, came thick and constant from under

the tremulous leaves.

At first Farina had been deaf to them. His heart was in the dungeon

with Margarita, or with the Goshawk in his dangers, forming a thousand

desperate plans, among the red-hot ploughshares of desperate action.

Finally, without a sense of being wooed, it was won. The tenderness of

his love then mastered him.

‘God will not suffer that fair head to come to harm!’ he thought, and

with the thought a load fell off his breast.

He paced the meadows, and patted the three pasturing steeds.

Involuntarily his sight grew on the moon. She went so slowly. She

seemed not to move at all. A little wing of vapour flew toward her;

it whitened, passed, and the moon was slower than before. Oh! were the

heavens delaying their march to look on this iniquity? Again and again

he cried, ‘Patience, it is not time!’ He flung himself on the grass. The

next moment he climbed the heights, and was peering at the mass of gloom

that fronted the sky. It reared such a mailed head of menace, that his

heart was seized with a quivering, as though it had been struck. Behind

lay scattered some small faint-winkling stars on sapphire fields, and a

stain of yellow light was in a breach of one wall.

He descended. What was the Goshawk doing? Was he betrayed? It was surely

now time? No; the moon had not yet smitten the face of the castle.

He made his way through the hazel-bank among flitting nightmoths, and

glanced up to measure the moon’s distance. As he did so, a first touch

of silver fell on the hoary flint.

‘Oh, young bird of heaven in that Devil’s clutch!’

Sounds like the baying of boar-hounds alarmed him. They whined into

silence.

He fell back. The meadow breathed peace, and more and more the

nightingales volumed their notes. As in a charmed circle of palpitating

song, he succumbed to languor. The brook rolled beside him fresh as

an infant, toying with the moonlight. He leaned over it, and thrice

waywardly dipped his hand in the clear translucence.

Was it his own face imaged there?

Farina bent close above an eddy of the water. It whirled with a strange

tumult, breaking into lines and lights a face not his own, nor the

moon’s; nor was it a reflection. The agitation increased. Now a wreath

of bubbles crowned the pool, and a pure water-lily, but larger, ascended

wavering.

He started aside; and under him a bright head, garlanded with gemmed

roses, appeared. No fairer figure of woman had Farina seen. Her visage

had the lustrous white of moonlight, and all her shape undulated in a

dress of flashing silver-white, wonderful to see. The Lady of the Water

smiled on him, and ran over with ripples and dimples of limpid beauty.

Then, as he retreated on the meadow grass, she swam toward him, and

taking his hand, pressed it to her. After her touch the youth no longer

feared. She curved her finger, and beckoned him on. All that she did was

done flowingly. The youth was a shadow in her silver track as she passed

like a harmless wave over the closed crocuses; but the crocuses shivered

and swelled their throats of streaked purple and argent as at delicious

rare sips of a wine. Breath of violet, and ladysmock, and valley-lily,

mingled and fluttered about her. Farina was as a man working the day’s

intent in a dream. He could see the heart in her translucent, hanging

like a cold dingy ruby. By the purity of his nature he felt that such

a presence must have come but to help. It might be Margarita’s guardian

fairy!

They passed the hazel-bank, and rounded the castlecrag, washed by the

brook and, beneath the advancing moon, standing in a ring of brawling

silver. The youth with his fervid eyes marked the old weather-stains and

scars of long defiance coming into colour. That mystery of wickedness

which the towers had worn in the dusk, was dissolved, and he endured no

more the almost abashed sensation of competing littleness that made him

think there was nought to do, save die, combating single-handed such

massive power. The moon shone calmly superior, like the prowess of

maiden knights; and now the harsh frown of the walls struck resolution

to his spirit, and nerved him with hate and the contempt true courage

feels when matched against fraud and villany.

On a fallen block of slate, cushioned with rich brown moss and rusted

weather-stains, the Water-Lady sat, and pointed to Farina the path of

the moon toward the round tower. She did not speak, and if his lips

parted, put her cold finger across them. Then she began to hum a soft

sweet monotony of song, vague and careless, very witching to hear.

Farina caught no words, nor whether the song was of days in dust or in

flower, but his mind bloomed with legends and sad splendours of story,

while she sang on the slate-block under sprinkled shadows by the water.

He had listened long in trance, when the Water-Lady hushed, and

stretched forth a slender forefinger to the moon. It stood like a dot

over the round tower. Farina rose in haste. She did not leave him to ask

her aid, but took his hand and led him up the steep ascent. Halfway to

the castle, she rested. There, concealed by bramble-tufts, she disclosed

the low portal of a secret passage, and pushed it open without effort.

She paused at the entrance, and he could see her trembling, seeming to

wax taller, till she was like a fountain glittering in the cold light.

Then she dropped, as drops a dying bet, and cowered into the passage.

Darkness, thick with earth-dews, oppressed his senses. He felt the

clammy walls scraping close on him. Not the dimmest lamp, or guiding

sound, was near; but the lady went on as one who knew her way. Passing

a low-vaulted dungeon-room, they wound up stairs hewn in the rock, and

came to a door, obedient to her touch, which displayed a chamber faintly

misted by a solitary bar of moonlight. Farina perceived they were above

the foundation of the castle. The walls gleamed pale with knightly

harness, habergeons gaping for heads, breastplates of blue steel,

halbert, and hand-axe, greaves, glaives, boar-spears, and polished

spur-fixed heel-pieces. He seized a falchion hanging apart, but the lady

stayed his arm, and led to another flight of stone ending in a kind of

corridor. Noises of laughter and high feasting beset him at this point.

The Lady of the Water sidled her head, as to note a familiar voice; and

then drew him to a looped aperture.

Farina beheld a scene that first dazzled, but, as it grew into shape,

sank him with dismay. Below, and level with the chamber he had left, a

rude banqueting-hall glowed, under the light of a dozen flambeaux, with

smoking boar’s flesh, deer’s flesh, stone-flagons, and horn-beakers. At

the head of this board sat Werner, scarlet with furious feasting, and on

his right hand, Margarita, bloodless as a beautiful martyr bound to the

fire. Retainers of Werner occupied the length of the hall, chorusing the

Baron’s speeches, and drinking their own healths when there was no call

for another. Farina saw his beloved alone. She was dressed as when he

parted with her last. The dear cameo lay on her bosom, but not heaving

proudly as of old. Her shoulders were drooped forward, and contracted

her bosom in its heaving. She would have had a humbled look, but for the

marble sternness of her eyes. They were fixed as eyes that see the way

of death through all earthly objects.

‘Now, dogs!’ cried the Baron, ‘the health of the night! and swell your

lungs, for I’ll have no cat’s cry when Werner’s bride is the toast.

Monk or no monk’s leave, she’s mine. Ay, my pretty one! it shall be made

right in the morning, if I lead all the Laach rats here by the nose.

Thunder! no disrespect to Werner’s bride from Pope or abbot. Now, sing

out!--or wait! these fellows shall drink it first.’

He stretched and threw a beaker of wine right and left behind him, and

Farina’s despair stiffened his limbs as he recognized the Goshawk and

Schwartz Thier strapped to the floor. Their beards were already moist

with previous libations similarly bestowed, and they received this

in sullen stillness; but Farina thought he observed a rapid glance of

encouragement dart from beneath the Goshawk’s bent brows, as Margarita

momentarily turned her head half-way on him.

‘Lick your chaps, ye beasts, and don’t say Werner stints vermin good

cheer his nuptial-night. Now,’ continued the Baron, growing huskier as

he talked louder: ‘Short and ringing, my devil’s pups:--Werner and his

Bride! and may she soon give you a young baron to keep you in better

order than I can, as, if she does her duty, she will.’

The Baron stood up, and lifted his huge arm to lead the toast.

‘Werner and his Bride!’

Not a voice followed him. There was a sudden intimation of the call

being echoed; but it snapped, and ended in shuffling tones, as if the

hall-door had closed on the response.

‘What ‘s this?’ roared the Baron, in that caged wild beast voice

Margarita remembered she had heard in the Cathedral Square.

No one replied.

‘Speak! or I’ll rot you a fathom in the rock, curs!’

‘Herr Baron!’ said Henker Rothhals impressively; ‘the matter is, that

there’s something unholy among us.’

The Baron’s goblet flew at his head before the words were uttered.

‘I’ll make an unholy thing of him that says it,’ and Werner lowered at

them one by one.

‘Then I say it, Herr Baron!’ pursued Henker Rothhals, wiping his

frontispiece: ‘The Devil has turned against you at last. Look up

there--Ah, it’s gone now; but where’s the man sitting this side saw it

not?’

The Baron made one spring, and stood on the board.

‘Now! will any rascal here please to say so?’

Something in the cruel hang of his threatening hatchet jaw silenced many

in the act of confirming the assertion.

‘Stand out, Henker Rotthals!’

Rotthals slid a hunting-knife up his wrist, and stepped back from the

board.

‘Beast!’ roared the Baron, ‘I said I wouldn’t shed blood to-night. I

spared a traitor, and an enemy----’

‘Look again!’ said Rothhals; ‘will any fellow say he saw nothing there.’

While all heads, including Werner’s, were directed to the aperture which

surveyed them, Rothhals tossed his knife to the Goshawk unperceived.

This time answers came to his challenge, but not in confirmation. The

Baron spoke with a gasping gentleness.

‘So you trifle with me? I’m dangerous for that game. Mind you of

Blass-Gesell? I made a better beast of him by sending him three-quarters

of the road to hell for trial.’ Bellowing, ‘Take that!’ he discharged a

broad blade, hitherto concealed in his right hand, straight at Rothhals.

It fixed in his cheek and jaw, wringing an awful breath of pain from him

as he fell against the wall.

‘There’s a lesson for you not to cross me, children!’ said Werner,

striding his stumpy legs up and down the crashing board, and puffing

his monstrous girth of chest and midriff. ‘Let him stop there awhile, to

show what comes of thwarting Werner!--Fire-devils! before the baroness,

too!--Something unholy is there? Something unholy in his jaw, I

think!--Leave it sticking! He’s against meat last, is he? I’ll teach you

who he’s for!--Who speaks?’

All hung silent. These men were animals dominated by a mightier brute.

He clasped his throat, and shook the board with a jump, as he squeaked,

rather than called, a second time ‘Who spoke?’

He had not again to ask. In this pause, as the Baron glared for his

victim, a song, so softly sung that it sounded remote, but of which

every syllable was clearly rounded, swelled into his ears, and froze him

in his angry posture.

‘The blood of the barons shall turn to ice,

And their castle fall to wreck,

When a true lover dips in the water thrice,

That runs round Werner’s Eck.

‘Round Werner’s Eck the water runs;

The hazels shiver and shake:

The walls that have blotted such happy suns,

Are seized with the ruin-quake.

‘And quake with the ruin, and quake with rue,

Thou last of Werner’s race!

The hearts of the barons were cold that knew

The Water-Dame’s embrace.

‘For a sin was done, and a shame was wrought,

That water went to hide:

And those who thought to make it nought,

They did but spread it wide.

‘Hold ready, hold ready to pay the price,

And keep thy bridal cheer:

A hand has dipped in the water thrice,

And the Water-Dame is here.’

THE RESCUE

The Goshawk was on his feet. ‘Now, lass,’ said he to Margarita, ‘now

is the time!’ He took her hand, and led her to the door. Schwartz Thier

closed up behind her. Not a man in the hall interposed. Werner’s head

moved round after them, like a dog on the watch; but he was dumb. The

door opened, and Farina entered. He bore a sheaf of weapons under his

arm. The familiar sight relieved Werner’s senses from the charm. He

shouted to bar the prisoners’ passage. His men were ranged like statues

in the hall. There was a start among them, as if that terrible noise

communicated an instinct of obedience, but no more. They glanced at each

other, and remained quiet.

The Goshawk had his eye on Werner. ‘Stand back, lass!’ he said to

Margarita. She took a sword from Farina, and answered, with white lips

and flashing eyes, ‘I can fight, Goshawk!’

‘And shall, if need be; but leave it to me now, returned Guy.

His eye never left the Baron. Suddenly a shriek of steel rang. All fell

aside, and the combatants stood opposed on clear ground. Farina, took

Margarita’s left hand, and placed her against the wall between the Thier

and himself. Werner’s men were well content to let their master fight

it out. The words spoken by Henker Rothhals, that the Devil had forsaken

him, seemed in their minds confirmed by the weird song which every one

present could swear he heard with his ears. ‘Let him take his chance,

and try his own luck,’ they said, and shrugged. The battle was between

Guy, as Margarita’s champion, and Werner.

In Schwartz Thier’s judgement, the two were well matched, and he

estimated their diverse qualities from sharp experience. ‘For short work

the Baron, and my new mate for tough standing to ‘t!’ Farina’s summary

in favour of the Goshawk was, ‘A stouter heart, harder sinews, and a

good cause. The combat was generally regarded with a professional eye,

and few prayers. Margarita solely there asked aid from above, and knelt

to the Virgin; but her, too, the clash of arms and dire earnest of

mortal fight aroused to eager eyes. She had not dallied with heroes in

her dreams. She was as ready to second Siegfried on the crimson field as

tend him in the silken chamber.

It was well that a woman’s heart was there to mark the grace and glory

of manhood in upright foot-to-foot encounter. For the others, it was a

mere calculation of lucky hits. Even Farina, in his anxiety for her,

saw but the brightening and darkening of the prospect of escape in every

attitude and hard-ringing blow. Margarita was possessed with a painful

exaltation. In her eyes the bestial Baron now took a nobler form and

countenance; but the Goshawk assumed the sovereign aspect of old heroes,

who, whether persecuted or favoured of heaven, still maintained their

stand, remembering of what stuff they were, and who made them.

‘Never,’ say the old writers, with a fervour honourable to their

knowledge of the elements that compose our being, ‘never may this bright

privilege of fair fight depart from us, nor advantage of it fail to be

taken! Man against man, or beast, singly keeping his ground, is as fine

rapture to the breast as Beauty in her softest hour affordeth. For if

woman taketh loveliness to her when she languisheth, so surely doth man

in these fierce moods, when steel and iron sparkle opposed, and their

breath is fire, and their lips white with the lock of resolution; all

their faculties knotted to a point, and their energies alive as the

daylight to prove themselves superior, according to the laws and under

the blessing of chivalry.’

‘For all,’ they go on to improve the comparison, ‘may admire and delight

in fair blossoming dales under the blue dome of peace; but ‘tis the

rare lofty heart alone comprehendeth, and is heightened by, terrific

splendours of tempest, when cloud meets cloud in skies black as the

sepulchre, and Glory sits like a flame on the helm of Ruin’

For a while the combatants aired their dexterity, contenting themselves

with cunning cuts and flicks of the sword-edge, in which Werner first

drew blood by a keen sweep along the forehead of the Goshawk. Guy had

allowed him to keep his position on the board, and still fought at his

face and neck. He now jerked back his body from the hip, and swung a

round stroke at Werner’s knee, sending him in retreat with a snort of

pain. Before the Baron could make good his ground, Guy was level with

him on the board.

Werner turned an upbraiding howl at his men. They were not disposed to

second him yet. They one and all approved his personal battle with

Fate, and never more admired him and felt his power; but the affair was

exciting, and they were not the pillars to prop a falling house.

Werner clenched his two hands to his ponderous glaive, and fell upon

Guy with heavier fury. He was becoming not unworth the little womanly

appreciation Margarita was brought to bestow on him. The voice of the

Water-Lady whispered at her heart that the Baron warred on his destiny,

and that ennobles all living souls.

Bare-headed the combatants engaged, and the headpiece was the chief

point of attack. No swerving from blows was possible for either: ward,

or take; a false step would have ensured defeat. This also induced

caution. Many a double stamp of the foot was heard, as each had to

retire in turn.

‘Not at his head so much, he’ll bear battering there all night long,’

said Henker Rothhals in a breathing interval. Knocks had been pretty

equally exchanged, but the Baron’s head certainly looked the least

vulnerable, whereas Guy exhibited several dints that streamed freely.

Yet he looked, eye and bearing, as fresh as when they began, and the

calm, regular heave of his chest contrasted with Werner’s quick gasps.

His smile, too, renewed each time the Baron paused for breath, gave

Margarita heart. It was not a taunting smile, but one of entire

confidence, and told all the more on his adversary. As Werner led off

again, and the choice was always left him, every expression of the

Goshawk’s face passed to full light in his broad eyes.

The Baron’s play was a reckless fury. There was nothing to study in it.

Guy became the chief object of speculation. He was evidently trying to

wind his man.

He struck wildly, some thought. Others judged that he was a random

hitter, and had no mortal point in aim. Schwartz Thier’s opinion was

frequently vented. ‘Too round a stroke--down on him! Chop-not slice!’

Guy persevered in his own fashion. According to Schwartz Thier, he

brought down by his wilfulness the blow that took him on the left

shoulder, and nigh broke him. It was a weighty blow, followed by a thump

of sound. The sword-edge swerved on his shoulder-blade, or he must have

been disabled. But Werner’s crow was short, and he had no time to push

success. One of the Goshawk’s swooping under-hits half severed his right

wrist, and the blood spirted across the board. He gasped and seemed

to succumb, but held to it still, though with slackened force. Guy now

attacked. Holding to his round strokes, he accustomed Werner to guard

the body, and stood to it so briskly right and left, that Werner grew

bewildered, lost his caution, and gave ground. Suddenly the Goshawk’s

glaive flashed in air, and chopped sheer down on Werner’s head. So

shrewd a blow it was against a half-formed defence, that the Baron

dropped without a word right on the edge of the board, and there hung,

feebly grasping with his fingers.

‘Who bars the way now?’ sang out Guy.

No one accepted the challenge. Success clothed him with terrors, and

gave him giant size.

‘Then fare you well, my merry men all,’ said Guy. ‘Bear me no ill-will

for this. A little doctoring will right the bold Baron.’

He strode jauntily to the verge of the board, and held his finger for

Margarita to follow. She stepped forward. The men put their beards

together, muttering. She could not advance. Farina doubled his elbow,

and presented sword-point. Three of the ruffians now disputed the way

with bare steel. Margarita looked at the Goshawk. He was smiling calmly

curious as he leaned over his sword, and gave her an encouraging nod.

She made another step in defiance. One fellow stretched his hand to

arrest her. All her maidenly pride stood up at once. ‘What a glorious

girl!’ murmured the Goshawk, as he saw her face suddenly flash, and

she retreated a pace and swung a sharp cut across the knuckles of

her assailant, daring him, or one of them, with hard, bright eyes,

beautifully vindictive, to lay hand on a pure maiden.

‘You have it, Barenleib!’ cried the others, and then to Margarita:

‘Look, young mistress! we are poor fellows, and ask a trifle of ransom,

and then part friends.’

‘Not an ace!’ the Goshawk pronounced from his post.

‘Two to one, remember.’

‘The odds are ours,’ replied the Goshawk confidently.

They ranged themselves in front of the hall-door. Instead of accepting

this challenge, Guy stepped to Werner, and laid his moaning foe

length-wise in an easier posture. He then lifted Margarita on the board,

and summoned them with cry of ‘Free passage!’ They answered by a sullen

shrug and taunt.

‘Schwartz Thier! Rothhals! Farina! buckle up, and make ready then,’ sang

Guy.

He measured the length, of his sword, and raised it. The Goshawk had not

underrated his enemies. He was tempted to despise them when he marked

their gradually lengthening chaps and eyeballs.

Not one of them moved. All gazed at him as if their marrows were

freezing with horror.

‘What’s this?’ cried Guy.

They knew as little as he, but a force was behind them irresistible

against their efforts. The groaning oak slipped open, pushing them

forward, and an apparition glided past, soft as the pallid silver of

the moon. She slid to the Baron, and put her arms about him, and sang

to him. Had the Water-Lady laid an iron hand on all those ruffians, she

could not have held them faster bound than did the fear of her presence.

The Goshawk drew his fair charge through them, followed by Farina, the

Thier, and Rothhals. A last glimpse of the hall showed them still as

old cathedral sculpture staring at white light on a fluted pillar of the

wall.

THE PASSAGE OF THE RHINE

Low among the swarthy sandhills behind the Abbey of Laach dropped the

round red moon. Soft lengths of misty yellow stole through the glens of

Rhineland. The nightingales still sang. Closer and closer the moon came

into the hushed valleys.

There is a dell behind Hammerstein Castle, a ring of basking sward,

girdled by a silver slate-brook, and guarded by four high-peaked hills

that slope down four long wooded corners to the grassy base. Here, it is

said, the elves and earthmen play, dancing in circles with laughing feet

that fatten the mushroom. They would have been fulfilling the tradition

now, but that the place was occupied by a sturdy group of mortals, armed

with staves. The intruders were sleepy, and lay about on the inclines.

Now and then two got up, and there rang hard echoes of oak. Again all

were calm as cud-chewing cattle, and the white water ran pleased with

quiet.

It may be that the elves brewed mischief among them; for the oaken blows

were becoming more frequent. One complained of a kick: another demanded

satisfaction for a pinch. ‘Go to,’ drawled the accused drowsily in both

cases, ‘too much beer last night!’ Within three minutes, the company

counted a pair of broken heads. The East was winning on the West in

heaven, and the dusk was thinning. They began to mark, each, whom he

had cudgelled. A noise of something swiftly in motion made them alert.

A roebuck rushed down one of the hills, and scampered across the sward.

The fine beast went stretching so rapidly away as to be hardly distinct.

‘Sathanas once more!’ they murmured, and drew together.

The name passed through them like a watchword.

‘Not he this time,’ cried the two new-comers, emerging from the foliage.

‘He’s safe under Cologne--the worse for all good men who live there! But

come! follow to the Rhine! there ‘s work for us on the yonder side, and

sharp work.’

‘Why,’ answered several, ‘we ‘ve our challenge with the lads of

Leutesdorf and Wied to-day.’

‘D’ ye see this?’ said the foremost of the others, pointing to a carved

ivory white rose in his cap.

‘Brothers!’ he swelled his voice, ‘follow with a will, for the White

Rose is in danger!’

Immediately they ranked, and followed zealously through the buds

of young bushes, and over heaps of damp dead leaves, a half-hour’s

scramble, when they defiled under Hammerstein, and stood before the

Rhine. Their leader led up the river, and after a hasty walk, stopped,

loosened his hood, and stripped.

‘Now,’ said he, strapping the bundle to his back, ‘let me know the hound

that refuses to follow his leader when the White Rose is in danger.’

‘Long live Dietrich!’ they shouted. He dropped from the bank, and waded

in. He was soon supported by the remainder of the striplings, and all

struck out boldly into mid-stream.

Never heard history of a nobler Passage of the Rhine than this made

between Andernach and Hammerstein by members of the White Rose Club,

bundle on back, to relieve the White Rose of Germany from thrall and

shame!

They were taken far down by the rapid current, and arrived panting to

land. The dressing done, they marched up the pass of Tonnistein, and

took a deep draught at the spring of pleasant waters there open to

wayfarers. Arrived at the skirts of Laach, they beheld two farmer

peasants lashed back to back against a hazel. They released them, but

could gain no word of information, as the fellows, after a yawn and a

wink, started off, all heels, to make sure of liberty. On the shores of

the lake the brotherhood descried a body of youths, whom they hailed,

and were welcomed to companionship.

‘Where’s Berthold?’ asked Dietrich.

He was not present.

‘The more glory for us, then,’ Dietrich said.

It was here seriously put to the captain, whether they should not halt

at the abbey, and reflect, seeing that great work was in prospect.

‘Truly,’ quoth Dietrich, ‘dying on an empty stomach is heathenish, and

cold blood makes a green wound gape. Kaiser Conrad should be hospitable,

and the monks honour numbers. Here be we, thirty and nine; let us go!’

The West was dark blue with fallen light. The lakewaters were growing

grey with twilight. The abbey stood muffled in shadows. Already the

youths had commenced battering at the convent doors, when they were

summoned by the voice of the Goshawk on horseback. To their confusion

they beheld the White Rose herself on his right hand. Chapfallen

Dietrich bowed to his sweet mistress.

‘We were coming to the rescue,’ he stammered.

A laugh broke from the Goshawk. ‘You thought the lady was locked up in

the ghostly larder; eh!’

Dietrich seized his sword, and tightened his belt.

‘The Club allows no jesting with the White Rose, Sir Stranger.’

Margarita made peace. ‘I thank you all, good friends. But quarrel not, I

pray you, with them that save me at the risk of their lives.’

‘Our service is equal,’ said the Goshawk, flourishing, ‘Only we happen

to be beforehand with the Club, for which Farina and myself heartily beg

pardon of the entire brotherhood.’

‘Farina!’ exclaimed Dietrich. ‘Then we make a prisoner instead of

uncaging a captive.’

‘What ‘s this?’ said Guy.

‘So much,’ responded Dietrich. ‘Yonder’s a runaway from two masters: the

law of Cologne, and the conqueror of Satan; and all good citizens are

empowered to bring him back, dead or alive.’

‘Dietrich! Dietrich! dare you talk thus of the man who saved me?’ cried

Margarita.

Dietrich sullenly persisted.

‘Then, look!’ said the White Rose, reddening under the pale dawn; ‘he

shall not, he shall not go with you.’

One of the Club was here on the point of speaking to the White Rose,--a

breach of the captain’s privilege. Dietrich felled him unresisting to

earth, and resumed:

‘It must be done, Beauty of Cologne! the monk, Father Gregory, is now

enduring shame and scorn for lack of this truant witness.’

‘Enough! I go!’ said Farina.

‘You leave me?’ Margarita looked tender reproach. Weariness and fierce

excitement had given a liquid flame to her eyes and an endearing

darkness round their circles that matched strangely with her plump

youth. Her features had a soft white flush. She was less radiant, but

never looked so bewitching. An aspect of sweet human languor caught at

the heart of love, and raised tumults.

‘It is a duty,’ said Farina.

‘Then go,’ she beckoned, and held her hand for him to kiss. He raised it

to his lips. This was seen of all the Club.

As they were departing with Farina, and Guy prepared to demand

admittance into the convent, Dietrich chanced to ask how fared Dame

Lisbeth. Schwartz Thier was by, and answered, with a laugh, that he had

quite forgotten the little lady.

‘We took her in mistake for you, mistress! She was a one to scream! The

moment she was kissed--mum as a cloister. We kissed her, all of us,

for the fun of it. No harm--no harm! We should have dropped her when we

found we had the old bird ‘stead of the young one, but reckoned ransom,

ye see. She’s at the Eck, rattling, I’s wager, like last year’s nut in

the shell!’

‘Lisbeth! Lisbeth! poor Lisbeth; we will return to her. Instantly,’

cried Margarita.

‘Not you,’ said Guy.

‘Yes! I!’

‘No!’ said Guy.

‘Gallant Goshawk! best of birds, let me go!’

‘Without me or Farina, never! I see I shall have no chance with my lord

now. Come, then, come, fair Irresistible! come, lads. Farina can journey

back alone. You shall have the renown of rescuing Dame Lisbeth.’

‘Farina! forget not to comfort my father,’ said Margarita.

Between Margarita’s society and Farina’s, there was little dispute in

the captain’s mind which choice to make. Farina was allowed to travel

single to Cologne; and Dietrich, petted by Margarita, and gently jeered

by Guy, headed the Club from Laach waters to the castle of the Robber

Baron.

THE BACK-BLOWS OF SATHANAS

Monk Gregory was pacing the high road between the Imperial camp and

suffering Cologne. The sun had risen through interminable distances

of cloud that held him remote in a succession of receding mounds and

thinner veils, realm beyond realm, till he showed fireless, like a

phantom king in a phantom land. The lark was in the breast of morning.

The field-mouse ran along the furrows. Dews hung red and grey on the

weedy banks and wayside trees. At times the nostril of the good

father was lifted, and he beat his breast, relapsing into sorrowful

contemplation. Passed-any citizen of Cologne, the ghostly head sunk into

its cowl. ‘There’s a black raven!’ said many. Monk Gregory heard them,

and murmured, ‘Thou hast me, Evil one! thou hast me!’

It was noon when Farina came clattering down from the camp.

‘Father,’ said he, ‘I have sought thee.’

‘My son!’ exclaimed Monk Gregory with silencing hand, ‘thou didst not

well to leave me contending against the tongues of doubt. Answer me

not. The maiden! and what weighed she in such a scale?--No more! I am

punished. Well speaks the ancient proverb:

“Beware the back-blows of Sathanas!”

I, that thought to have vanquished him! Vanity has wrecked me, in this

world and the next. I am the victim of self-incense. I hear the demons

shouting their chorus--“Here comes Monk Gregory, who called himself

Conqueror of Darkness!” In the camp I am discredited and a scoff; in

the city I am spat upon, abhorred. Satan, my son, fights not with his

fore-claws. ‘Tis with his tail he fights, O Farina!--Listen, my son! he

entered to his kingdom below through Cologne, even under the stones

of the Cathedral Square, and the stench of him abominably remaineth,

challenging the nostrils of holy and unholy alike. The Kaiser cannot

approach for him; the citizens are outraged. Oh! had I held my peace in

humbleness, I had truly conquered him. But he gave me easy victory, to

inflate me. I shall not last. Now this only is left, my son; that thou

bear living testimony to the truth of my statement, as I bear it to the

folly!’

Farina promised, in the face of all, he would proclaim and witness to

his victory on Drachenfels.

‘That I may not be ranked an impostor!’ continued the Monk. ‘And how

great must be the virtue of them that encounter that dark spirit! Valour

availeth nought. But if virtue be not in’ ye, soon will ye be puffed to

bursting with that devil’s poison, self-incense. Surely, my son, thou

art faithful; and for this service I can reward thee. Follow me yet

again.’

On the road they met Gottlieb Groschen, hastening to the camp. Dismay

rumpled the old merchant’s honest jowl. Farina drew rein before him.

‘Your daughter is safe, worthy Master Groschen,’ said he.

‘Safe?’ cried Gottlieb; ‘where is she, my Grete?’

Farina briefly explained. Gottlieb spread out his arms, and was going

to thank the youth. He saw Father Gregory, and his whole frame narrowed

with disgust.

‘Are you in company with that pestilent animal, that curse of Cologne!’

‘The good Monk--,’ said Farina.

‘You are leagued with him, then, sirrah! Expect no thanks from me.

Cologne, I say, is cursed! Meddling wretches! could ye not leave Satan

alone? He hurt us not. We were free of him. Cologne, I say, is cursed!

The enemy of mankind is brought by you to be the deadly foe of Cologne.’

So saying, Gottlieb departed.

‘Seest thou, my son,’ quoth the Monk, ‘they reason not!’

Farina was dejected. Willingly would he, for his part, have left the

soul of Evil a loose rover for the sake of some brighter horizon to his

hope.

No twinge of remorse accompanied Gottlieb. The Kaiser had allotted him

an encampment and a guard of honour for his household while the foulness

raged, and there Gottlieb welcomed back Margarita and Aunt Lisbeth on

the noon after his meeting with Farina. The White Rose had rested at

Laach, and was blooming again. She and the Goshawk came trotting in

advance of the Club through the woods of Laach, startling the deer

with laughter, and sending the hare with her ears laid back all across

country. In vain Dietrich menaced Guy with the terrors of the Club: Aunt

Lisbeth begged of Margarita not to leave her with the footmen in vain.

The joyous couple galloped over the country, and sprang the ditches, and

leapt the dykes, up and down the banks, glad as morning hawks, entering

Andernach at a round pace; where they rested at a hostel as capable of

producing good Rhine and Mosel wine then as now. Here they had mid-day’s

meal laid out in the garden for the angry Club, and somewhat appeased

them on their arrival with bumpers of the best Scharzhofberger. After a

refreshing halt, three boats were hired. On their passage to the river,

they encountered a procession of monks headed by the Archbishop of

Andernach, bearing a small figure of Christ carved in blackthorn and

varnished: said to work miracles, and a present to the good town from

two Hungarian pilgrims.

‘Are ye for Cologne?’ the monks inquired of them.

‘Direct down stream!’ they answered.

‘Send, then, hither to us Gregory, the conqueror of Darkness, that he

may know there is gratitude on earth and gratulation for great deeds,’

said the monks.

So with genuflexions the travellers proceeded, and entered the boats

by the Archbishop’s White Tower. Hammerstein Castle and Rheineck

they floated under; Salzig and the Ahr confluence; Rolandseck and

Nonnenwerth; Drachenfels and Bonn; hills green with young vines; dells

waving fresh foliage. Margarita sang as they floated. Ancient ballads

she sang that made the Goshawk sigh for home, and affected the Club with

delirious love for the grand old water that was speeding them onward.

Aunt Lisbeth was not to be moved. She alone held down her head.

She looked not Gottlieb in the face as he embraced her. Nor to any

questioning would she vouchsafe reply. From that time forth, she was

charity to woman; and the exuberant cheerfulness and familiarity of

the men toward her soon grew kindly and respectful. The dragon in Aunt

Lisbeth was destroyed. She objected no more to Margarita’s cameo.

The Goshawk quickly made peace with his lord, and enjoyed the

commendation of the Kaiser. Dietrich Schill thought of challenging

him; but the Club had graver business: and this was to pass sentence

on Berthold Schmidt for the crime of betraying the White Rose into the

hands of Werner. They had found Berthold at the Eck, and there consented

to let him remain until ransom was paid for his traitorous body.

Berthold in his mad passion was tricked by Werner, and on his release,

by payment of the ransom, submitted to the judgement of the Club, which

condemned him to fight them all in turn, and then endure banishment

from Rhineland; the Goshawk, for his sister’s sake, interceding before a

harsher tribunal.

THE ENTRY INTO COLOGNE

Seven days Kaiser Heinrich remained camped outside Cologne. Six times

in six successive days the Kaiser attempted to enter the city, and was

foiled.

‘Beard of Barbarossa!’ said the Kaiser, ‘this is the first stronghold

that ever resisted me.’

The warrior bishops, electors, pfalzgrafs, and knights of the Empire,

all swore it was no shame not to be a match for the Demon.

‘If,’ said the reflective Kaiser, ‘we are to suffer below what poor

Cologne is doomed to undergo now, let us, by all that is savoury, reform

and do penance.’

The wind just then setting on them dead from Cologne made the courtiers

serious. Many thought of their souls for the first time.

This is recorded to the honour of Monk Gregory.

On the seventh morning, the Kaiser announced his determination to make a

last trial.

It was dawn, and a youth stood before the Kaiser’s tent, praying an

audience.

Conducted into the presence of the Kaiser, the youth, they say,

succeeded in arousing him from his depression, for, brave as he was,

Kaiser Heinrich dreaded the issue. Forthwith order was given for

the cavalcade to set out according to the rescript, Kaiser Heinrich

retaining the youth at his right hand. But the youth had found occasion

to visit Gottlieb and Margarita, each of whom he furnished with a flash,

[flask?] curiously shaped, and charged with a distillation.

As the head of the procession reached the gates of Cologne, symptoms of

wavering were manifest.

Kaiser Heinrich commanded an advance, at all cost.

Pfalzgraf Nase, as the old chronicles call him in their humour, but

assuredly a great noble, led the van, and pushed across the draw-bridge.

Hesitation and signs of horror were manifest in the assemblage round the

Kaiser’s person. The Kaiser and the youth at his right hand were cheery.

Not a whit drooped they! Several of the heroic knights begged the

Kaiser’s permission to fall back.

‘Follow Pfalzgraf Nase!’ the Kaiser is reported to have said.

Great was the wonderment of the people of Cologne to behold Kaiser

Heinrich riding in perfect stateliness up the main street toward

the Cathedral, while right and left of him bishops and electors were

dropping incapable.

The Kaiser advanced till by his side the youth rode sole.

‘Thy name?’ said the Kaiser.

He answered: ‘A poor youth, unconquerable Kaiser! Farina I am called.’

‘Thy recompense?’ said the Kaiser.

He answered: ‘The hand of a maiden of Cologne, most gracious Kaiser and

master!’

‘She is thine!’ said the Kaiser.

Kaiser Heinrich looked behind him, and among a host grasping the pommels

of their saddles, and reeling vanquished, were but two erect, a maiden

and an old man.

‘That is she, unconquerable Kaiser!’ Farina continued, bowing low.

‘It shall be arranged on the spot,’ said the Kaiser.

A word from Kaiser Heinrich sealed Gottlieb’s compliance.

Said he: ‘Gracious Kaiser and master! though such a youth could of

himself never have aspired to the possession of a Groschen, yet when the

Kaiser pleads for him, objection is as the rock of Moses, and streams

consent. Truly he has done Cologne good service, and if Margarita, my

daughter, can be persuaded--’

The Kaiser addressed her with his blazing brows.

Margarita blushed a ready autumn of rosy-ripe acquiescence.

‘A marriage registered yonder!’ said the Kaiser, pointing upward.

‘I am thine, murmured Margarita, as Farina drew near her.

‘Seal it! seal it!’ quoth the Kaiser, in hearty good humour; ‘take no

consent from man or maid without a seal.’

Farina tossed the contents of a flask in air, and saluted his beloved on

the lips.

This scene took place near the charred round of earth where the Foulest

descended to his kingdom below.

Men now pervaded Cologne with flasks, purifying the atmosphere. It

became possible to breathe freely.

‘We Germans,’ said Kaiser Heinrich, when he was again surrounded by his

courtiers, ‘may go wrong if we always follow Pfalzgraf Nase; but this

time we have been well led.’ Whereat there was obsequious laughter.

The Pfalzgraf pleaded a susceptible nostril.

‘Thou art, I fear, but a timid mortal,’ said the Kaiser.

‘Never have I been found so on the German Field, Imperial Majesty!’

returned the Pfalzgraf. ‘I take glory to myself that this Nether reek

overcomes me.’

‘Even that we must combat, you see!’ exclaimed Kaiser Heinrich; ‘but

come all to a marriage this night, and take brides as soon as you will,

all of you. Increase, and give us loyal subjects in plenty. I count

prosperity by the number of marriages in my empire!’

The White Rose Club were invited by Gottlieb to the wedding, and took it

in vast wrath until they saw the Kaiser, and such excellent stout German

fare present, when immediately a battle raged as to who should do the

event most honour, and was in dispute till dawn: Dietrich Schill being

the man, he having consumed wurst the length of his arm, and wine

sufficient to have floated a St. Goar salmon; which was long proudly

chronicled in his family, and is now unearthed from among the ancient

honourable records of Cologne.

The Goshawk was Farina’s bridesman, and a very spiriting bridesman was

he! Aunt Lisbeth sat in a corner, faintly smiling.

‘Child!’ said the little lady to Margarita when they kissed at parting,

‘your courage amazes me. Do you think? Do you know? Poor, sweet bird,

delivered over hand and foot!’

‘I love him! I love him, aunty! that’s all I know,’ said Margarita:

‘love, love, love him!’

‘Heaven help you!’ ejaculated Aunt Lisbeth.

‘Pray with me,’ said Margarita.

The two knelt at the foot of the bride-bed, and prayed very different

prayers, but to the same end. That done, Aunt Lisbeth helped undress the

White Rose, and trembled, and told a sad nuptial anecdote of the Castle,

and put her little shrivelled hand on Margarita’s heart, and shrieked.

‘Child! it gallops!’ she cried.

‘‘Tis happiness,’ said Margarita, standing in her hair.

‘May it last only!’ exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.

‘It will, aunty! I am humble: I am true’; and the fair girl gathered the

frill of her nightgown.

‘Look not in the glass,’ said Lisbeth; ‘not to-night! Look, if you can,

to-morrow.’

She smoothed the White Rose in her bed, tucked her up, and kissed her,

leaving her as a bud that waits for sunshine.

CONCLUSION

The shadow of Monk Gregory was seen no more in Cologne. He entered the

Calendar, and ranks next St. Anthony. For three successive centuries the

towns of Rhineland boasted his visits in the flesh, and the conqueror of

Darkness caused dire Rhenish feuds.

The Tailed Infernal repeated his famous Back-blow on Farina. The youth

awoke one morning and beheld warehouses the exact pattern of his own,

displaying flasks shaped even as his own, and a Farina to right and

left of him. In a week, they were doubled. A month quadrupled them. They

increased.

‘Fame and Fortune,’ mused Farina, ‘come from man and the world: Love

is from heaven. We may be worthy, and lose the first. We lose not love

unless unworthy. Would ye know the true Farina? Look for him who walks

under the seal of bliss; whose darling is for ever his young sweet

bride, leading him from snares, priming his soul with celestial

freshness. There is no hypocrisy can ape that aspect. Least of all, the

creatures of the Damned! By this I may be known.’

Seven years after, when the Goshawk came into Cologne to see old

friends, and drink some of Gottlieb’s oldest Rudesheimer, he was waylaid

by false Farinas; and only discovered the true one at last, by chance,

in the music-gardens near the Rhine, where Farina sat, having on one

hand Margarita, and at his feet three boys and one girl, over whom both

bent lovingly, like the parent vine fondling its grape bunches in summer

light.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

A generous enemy is a friend on the wrong side

All are friends who sit at table

Be what you seem, my little one

Bed was a rock of refuge and fortified defence

Civil tongue and rosy smiles sweeten even sour wine

Dangerous things are uttered after the third glass

Everywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomach

Face betokening the perpetual smack of lemon

Gratitude never was a woman’s gift

It was harder to be near and not close

Loving in this land: they all go mad, straight off

Never reckon on womankind for a wise act

Self-incense

Sign that the evil had reached from pricks to pokes

So are great deeds judged when the danger’s past (as easy)

Soft slumber of a strength never yet called forth

Suspicion was her best witness

Sweet treasure before which lies a dragon sleeping

We like well whatso we have done good work for

Weak reeds who are easily vanquished and never overcome

Weak stomach is certainly more carnally virtuous than a full one

Wins everywhere back a reflection of its own kindliness

THE CASE OF GENERAL OPLE AND LADY CAMPER

By George Meredith

CHAPTER I

An excursion beyond the immediate suburbs of London, projected long

before his pony-carriage was hired to conduct him, in fact ever since

his retirement from active service, led General Ople across a famous

common, with which he fell in love at once, to a lofty highway along

the borders of a park, for which he promptly exchanged his heart, and

so gradually within a stone’s-throw or so of the river-side, where he

determined not solely to bestow his affections but to settle for life.

It may be seen that he was of an adventurous temperament, though he had

thought fit to loosen his sword-belt. The pony-carriage, however, had

been hired for the very special purpose of helping him to pass in review

the lines of what he called country houses, cottages, or even sites for

building, not too remote from sweet London: and as when Coelebs goes

forth intending to pursue and obtain, there is no doubt of his bringing

home a wife, the circumstance that there stood a house to let, in an

airy situation, at a certain distance in hail of the metropolis he

worshipped, was enough to kindle the General’s enthusiasm. He would

have taken the first he saw, had it not been for his daughter, who

accompanied him, and at the age of eighteen was about to undertake

the management of his house. Fortune, under Elizabeth Ople’s guiding

restraint, directed him to an epitome of the comforts. The place he fell

upon is only to be described in the tongue of auctioneers, and for

the first week after taking it he modestly followed them by terming

it bijou. In time, when his own imagination, instigated by a state of

something more than mere contentment, had been at work on it, he chose

the happy phrase, ‘a gentlemanly residence.’ For it was, he declared,

a small estate. There was a lodge to it, resembling two sentry-boxes

forced into union, where in one half an old couple sat bent, in the

other half lay compressed; there was a backdrive to discoverable

stables; there was a bit of grass that would have appeared a meadow if

magnified; and there was a wall round the kitchen-garden and a strip

of wood round the flower-garden. The prying of the outside world was

impossible. Comfort, fortification; and gentlemanliness made the place,

as the General said, an ideal English home.

The compass of the estate was half an acre, and perhaps a perch or two,

just the size for the hugging love General Ople was happiest in giving.

He wisely decided to retain the old couple at the lodge, whose members

were used to restriction, and also not to purchase a cow, that would

have wanted pasture. With the old man, while the old woman attended to

the bell at the handsome front entrance with its gilt-spiked gates, he

undertook to do the gardening; a business he delighted in, so long as he

could perform it in a gentlemanly manner, that is to say, so long as he

was not overlooked. He was perfectly concealed from the road. Only one

house, and curiously indeed, only one window of the house, and further

to show the protection extended to Douro Lodge, that window an attic,

overlooked him. And the house was empty.

The house (for who can hope, and who should desire a commodious house,

with conservatories, aviaries, pond and boat-shed, and other joys of

wealth, to remain unoccupied) was taken two seasons later by a lady,

of whom Fame, rolling like a dust-cloud from the place she had left,

reported that she was eccentric. The word is uninstructive: it does not

frighten. In a lady of a certain age, it is rather a characteristic of

aristocracy in retirement. And at least it implies wealth.

General Ople was very anxious to see her. He had the sentiment of humble

respectfulness toward aristocracy, and there was that in riches which

aroused his admiration. London, for instance, he was not afraid to say

he thought the wonder of the world. He remarked, in addition, that the

sacking of London would suffice to make every common soldier of the

foreign army of occupation an independent gentleman for the term of his

natural days. But this is a nightmare! said he, startling himself with

an abhorrent dream of envy of those enriched invading officers: for

Booty is the one lovely thing which the military mind can contemplate

in the abstract. His habit was to go off in an explosion of heavy sighs

when he had delivered himself so far, like a man at war with himself.

The lady arrived in time: she received the cards of the neighbourhood,

and signalized her eccentricity by paying no attention to them,

excepting the card of a Mrs. Baerens, who had audience of her at once.

By express arrangement, the card of General Wilson Ople, as her nearest

neighbour, followed the card of the rector, the social head of the

district; and the rector was granted an interview, but Lady Camper was

not at home to General Ople. She is of superior station to me, and may

not wish to associate with me, the General modestly said. Nevertheless

he was wounded: for in spite of himself, and without the slightest wish

to obtrude his own person, as he explained the meaning that he had in

him, his rank in the British army forced him to be the representative

of it, in the absence of any one of a superior rank. So that he was

professionally hurt, and his heart being in his profession, it may be

honestly stated that he was wounded in his feelings, though he said no,

and insisted on the distinction. Once a day his walk for constitutional

exercise compelled him to pass before Lady Camper’s windows, which were

not bashfully withdrawn, as he said humorously of Douro Lodge, in the

seclusion of half-pay, but bowed out imperiously, militarily, like a

generalissimo on horseback, and had full command of the road and levels

up to the swelling park-foliage. He went by at a smart stride, with a

delicate depression of his upright bearing, as though hastening to greet

a friend in view, whose hand was getting ready for the shake. This much

would have been observed by a housemaid; and considering his fine figure

and the peculiar shining silveriness of his hair, the acceleration of

his gait was noticeable. When he drove by, the pony’s right ear was

flicked, to the extreme indignation of a mettlesome little animal. It

ensued in consequence that the General was borne flying under the eyes

of Lady Camper, and such pace displeasing him, he reduced it invariably

at a step or two beyond the corner of her grounds.

But neither he nor his daughter Elizabeth attached importance to so

trivial a circumstance. The General punctiliously avoided glancing at

the windows during the passage past them, whether in his wild career

or on foot. Elizabeth took a side-shot, as one looks at a wayside tree.

Their speech concerning Lady Camper was an exchange of commonplaces over

her loneliness: and this condition of hers was the more perplexing to

General Ople on his hearing from his daughter that the lady was very

fine-looking, and not so very old, as he had fancied eccentric ladies

must be. The rector’s account of her, too, excited the mind. She had

informed him bluntly, that she now and then went to church to save

appearances, but was not a church-goer, finding it impossible to support

the length of the service; might, however, be reckoned in subscriptions

for all the charities, and left her pew open to poor people, and none

but the poor. She had travelled over Europe, and knew the East. Sketches

in watercolours of the scenes she had visited adorned her walls, and

a pair of pistols, that she had found useful, she affirmed, lay on the

writing-desk in her drawing-room. General Ople gathered from the rector

that she had a great contempt for men: yet it was curiously varied with

lamentations over the weakness of women. ‘Really she cannot possibly be

an example of that,’ said the General, thinking of the pistols.

Now, we learn from those who have studied women on the chess-board, and

know what ebony or ivory will do along particular lines, or hopping,

that men much talked about will take possession of their thoughts; and

certainly the fact may be accepted for one of their moves. But the whole

fabric of our knowledge of them, which we are taught to build on this

originally acute perception, is shattered when we hear, that it is

exactly the same, in the same degree, in proportion to the amount of

work they have to do, exactly the same with men and their thoughts in

the case of women much talked about. So it was with General Ople, and

nothing is left for me to say except, that there is broader ground

than the chessboard. I am earnest in protesting the similarity of the

singular couples on common earth, because otherwise the General is in

peril of the accusation that he is a feminine character; and not simply

was he a gallant officer, and a veteran in gunpowder strife, he was

also (and it is an extraordinary thing that a genuine humility did not

prevent it, and did survive it) a lord and conqueror of the sex. He had

done his pretty bit of mischief, all in the way of honour, of course,

but hearts had knocked. And now, with his bright white hair, his

close-brushed white whiskers on a face burnt brown, his clear-cut

features, and a winning droop of his eyelids, there was powder in him

still, if not shot.

There was a lamentable susceptibility to ladies’ charms. On the other

hand, for the protection of the sex, a remainder of shyness kept

him from active enterprise and in the state of suffering, so long as

indications of encouragement were wanting. He had killed the soft ones,

who came to him, attracted by the softness in him, to be killed: but

clever women alarmed and paralyzed him. Their aptness to question and

require immediate sparkling answers; their demand for fresh wit, of a

kind that is not furnished by publications which strike it into heads

with a hammer, and supply it wholesale; their various reading; their

power of ridicule too; made them awful in his contemplation.

Supposing (for the inflammable officer was now thinking, and deeply

thinking, of a clever woman), supposing that Lady Camper’s pistols were

needed in her defence one night: at the first report proclaiming her

extremity, valour might gain an introduction to her upon easy terms,

and would not be expected to be witty. She would, perhaps, after the

excitement, admit his masculine superiority, in the beautiful old

fashion, by fainting in his arms. Such was the reverie he passingly

indulged, and only so could he venture to hope for an acquaintance with

the formidable lady who was his next neighbour. But the proud society of

the burglarious denied him opportunity.

Meanwhile, he learnt that Lady Camper had a nephew, and the young

gentleman was in a cavalry regiment. General Ople met him outside his

gates, received and returned a polite salute, liked his appearance and

manners and talked of him to Elizabeth, asking her if by chance she

had seen him. She replied that she believed she had, and praised his

horsemanship. The General discovered that he was an excellent sculler.

His daughter was rowing him up the river when the young gentleman

shot by, with a splendid stroke, in an outrigger, backed, and floating

alongside presumed to enter into conversation, during which he managed

to express regrets at his aunt’s turn for solitariness. As they belonged

to sister branches of the same Service, the General and Mr. Reginald

Roller had a theme in common, and a passion. Elizabeth told her father

that nothing afforded her so much pleasure as to hear him talk with Mr.

Roller on military matters. General Ople assured her that it pleased

him likewise. He began to spy about for Mr. Roller, and it sometimes

occurred that they conversed across the wall; it could hardly be

avoided. A hint or two, an undefinable flying allusion, gave the General

to understand that Lady Camper had not been happy in her marriage. He

was pained to think of her misfortune; but as she was not over forty,

the disaster was, perhaps, not irremediable; that is to say, if she

could be taught to extend her forgiveness to men, and abandon her

solitude. ‘If,’ he said to his daughter, ‘Lady Camper should by any

chance be induced to contract a second alliance, she would, one might

expect, be humanized, and we should have highly agreeable neighbours.’

Elizabeth artlessly hoped for such an event to take place.

She rarely differed with her father, up to whom, taking example from the

world around him, she looked as the pattern of a man of wise conduct.

And he was one; and though modest, he was in good humour with himself,

approved himself, and could say, that without boasting of success, he

was a satisfied man, until he met his touchstone in Lady Camper.

CHAPTER II

This is the pathetic matter of my story, and it requires pointing out,

because he never could explain what it was that seemed to him so

cruel in it, for he was no brilliant son of fortune, he was no great

pretender, none of those who are logically displaced from the heights

they have been raised to, manifestly created to show the moral in

Providence. He was modest, retiring, humbly contented; a gentlemanly

residence appeased his ambition. Popular, he could own that he was, but

not meteorically; rather by reason of his willingness to receive light

than his desire to shed it. Why, then, was the terrible test brought

to bear upon him, of all men? He was one of us; no worse, and not

strikingly or perilously better; and he could not but feel, in the

bitterness of his reflections upon an inexplicable destiny, that the

punishment befalling him, unmerited as it was, looked like absence of

Design in the scheme of things, Above. It looked as if the blow had been

dealt him by reckless chance. And to believe that, was for the mind of

General Ople the having to return to his alphabet and recommence the

ascent of the laborious mountain of understanding.

To proceed, the General’s introduction to Lady Camper was owing to a

message she sent him by her gardener, with a request that he would cut

down a branch of a wychelm, obscuring her view across his grounds toward

the river. The General consulted with his daughter, and came to the

conclusion, that as he could hardly despatch a written reply to a verbal

message, yet greatly wished to subscribe to the wishes of Lady Camper,

the best thing for him to do was to apply for an interview. He sent

word that he would wait on Lady Camper immediately, and betook himself

forthwith to his toilette. She was the niece of an earl.

Elizabeth commended his appearance, ‘passed him,’ as he would have

said; and well she might, for his hat, surtout, trousers and boots, were

worthy of an introduction to Royalty. A touch of scarlet silk round the

neck gave him bloom, and better than that, the blooming consciousness of

it.

‘You are not to be nervous, papa,’ Elizabeth said.

‘Not at all,’ replied the General. ‘I say, not at all, my dear,’ he

repeated, and so betrayed that he had fallen into the nervous mood. ‘I

was saying, I have known worse mornings than this.’ He turned to her and

smiled brightly, nodded, and set his face to meet the future.

He was absent an hour and a half.

He came back with his radiance a little subdued, by no means eclipsed;

as, when experience has afforded us matter for thought, we cease to

shine dazzlingly, yet are not clouded; the rays have merely grown

serener. The sum of his impressions was conveyed in the reflective

utterance--‘It only shows, my dear, how different the reality is from

our anticipation of it!’

Lady Camper had been charming; full of condescension, neighbourly,

friendly, willing to be satisfied with the sacrifice of the smallest

branch of the wych-elm, and only requiring that much for complimentary

reasons.

Elizabeth wished to hear what they were, and she thought the request

rather singular; but the General begged her to bear in mind, that they

were dealing with a very extraordinary woman; ‘highly accomplished,

really exceedingly handsome,’ he said to himself, aloud.

The reasons were, her liking for air and view, and desire to see into

her neighbour’s grounds without having to mount to the attic.

Elizabeth gave a slight exclamation, and blushed.

‘So, my dear, we are objects of interest to her ladyship,’ said the

General.

He assured her that Lady Camper’s manners were delightful. Strange to

tell, she knew a great deal of his antecedent history, things he had

not supposed were known; ‘little matters,’ he remarked, by which his

daughter faintly conceived a reference to the conquests of his dashing

days. Lady Camper had deigned to impart some of her own, incidentally;

that she was of Welsh blood, and born among the mountains. ‘She has a

romantic look,’ was the General’s comment; and that her husband had been

an insatiable traveller before he became an invalid, and had never cared

for Art. ‘Quite an extraordinary circumstance, with such a wife!’ the

General said.

He fell upon the wych-elm with his own hands, under cover of the

leafage, and the next day he paid his respects to Lady Camper, to

inquire if her ladyship saw any further obstruction to the view.

‘None,’ she replied. ‘And now we shall see what the two birds will do.’

Apparently, then, she entertained an animosity to a pair of birds in the

tree.

‘Yes, yes; I say they chirp early in the morning,’ said General Ople.

‘At all hours.’

‘The song of birds...?’ he pleaded softly for nature.

‘If the nest is provided for them; but I don’t like vagabond chirping.’

The General perfectly acquiesced. This, in an engagement with a clever

woman, is what you should do, or else you are likely to find yourself

planted unawares in a high wind, your hat blown off, and your

coat-tails anywhere; in other words, you will stand ridiculous in your

bewilderment; and General Ople ever footed with the utmost caution

to avoid that quagmire of the ridiculous. The extremer quags he had

hitherto escaped; the smaller, into which he fell in his agile evasions

of the big, he had hitherto been blest in finding none to notice.

He requested her ladyship’s permission to present his daughter. Lady

Camper sent in her card.

Elizabeth Ople beheld a tall, handsomely-mannered lady, with good

features and penetrating dark eyes, an easy carriage of her person and

an agreeable voice, but (the vision of her age flashed out under the

compelling eyes of youth) fifty if a day. The rich colouring confessed

to it. But she was very pleasing, and Elizabeth’s perception dwelt on it

only because her father’s manly chivalry had defended the lady against

one year more than forty.

The richness of the colouring, Elizabeth feared, was artificial, and

it caused her ingenuous young blood a shudder. For we are so devoted to

nature when the dame is flattering us with her gifts, that we loathe the

substitute omitting to think how much less it is an imposition than a

form of practical adoration of the genuine.

Our young detective, however, concealed her emotion of childish horror.

Lady Camper remarked of her, ‘She seems honest, and that is the most we

can hope of girls.’

‘She is a jewel for an honest man,’ the General sighed, ‘some day!’

‘Let us hope it will be a distant day.’

‘Yet,’ said the General, ‘girls expect to marry.’

Lady Camper fixed her black eyes on him, but did not speak.

He told Elizabeth that her ladyship’s eyes were exceedingly searching:

‘Only,’ said he, ‘as I have nothing to hide, I am able to submit to

inspection’; and he laughed slightly up to an arresting cough, and made

the mantelpiece ornaments pass muster.

General Ople was the hero to champion a lady whose airs of haughtiness

caused her to be somewhat backbitten. He assured everybody, that Lady

Camper was much misunderstood; she was a most remarkable woman; she was

a most affable and highly intelligent lady. Building up her attributes

on a splendid climax, he declared she was pious, charitable, witty,

and really an extraordinary artist. He laid particular stress on

her artistic qualities, describing her power with the brush, her

water-colour sketches, and also some immensely clever caricatures. As he

talked of no one else, his friends heard enough of Lady Camper, who was

anything but a favourite. The Pollingtons, the Wilders, the Wardens, the

Baerens, the Goslings, and others of his acquaintance, talked of Lady

Camper and General Ople rather maliciously. They were all City people,

and they admired the General, but mourned that he should so abjectly

have fallen at the feet of a lady as red with rouge as a railway

bill. His not seeing it showed the state he was in. The sister of Mrs.

Pollington, an amiable widow, relict of a large City warehouse, named

Barcop, was chilled by a falling off in his attentions. His apology for

not appearing at garden parties was, that he was engaged to wait on Lady

Camper.

And at one time, her not condescending to exchange visits with the

obsequious General was a topic fertile in irony. But she did condescend.

Lady Camper came to his gate unexpectedly, rang the bell, and was let

in like an ordinary visitor. It happened that the General was

gardening--not the pretty occupation of pruning--he was digging--and of

necessity his coat was off, and he was hot, dusty, unpresentable.

From adoring earth as the mother of roses, you may pass into a lady’s

presence without purification; you cannot (or so the General thought)

when you are caught in the act of adoring the mother of cabbages. And

though he himself loved the cabbage equally with the rose, in his heart

respected the vegetable yet more than he esteemed the flower, for he

gloried in his kitchen garden, this was not a secret for the world to

know, and he almost heeled over on his beam ends when word was brought

of the extreme honour Lady Camper had done him. He worked his arms

hurriedly into his fatigue jacket, trusting to get away to the house and

spend a couple of minutes on his adornment; and with any other visitor

it might have been accomplished, but Lady Camper disliked sitting alone

in a room. She was on the square of lawn as the General stole along the

walk. Had she kept her back to him, he might have rounded her like the

shadow of a dial, undetected. She was frightfully acute of hearing. She

turned while he was in the agony of hesitation, in a queer attitude, one

leg on the march, projected by a frenzied tip-toe of the hinder leg,

the very fatallest moment she could possibly have selected for unveiling

him.

Of course there was no choice but to surrender on the spot.

He began to squander his dizzy wits in profuse apologies. Lady Camper

simply spoke of the nice little nest of a garden, smelt the flowers,

accepted a Niel rose and a Rohan, a Cline, a Falcot, and La France.

‘A beautiful rose indeed,’ she said of the latter, ‘only it smells of

macassar oil.’

‘Really, it never struck me, I say it never struck me before,’ rejoined

the General, smelling it as at a pinch of snuff. ‘I was saying, I always

....’ And he tacitly, with the absurdest of smiles, begged permission to

leave unterminated a sentence not in itself particularly difficult

‘I have a nose,’ observed Lady Camper.

Like the nobly-bred person she was, according to General Ople’s

version of the interview on his estate, when he stood before her in his

gardening costume, she put him at his ease, or she exerted herself to

do so; and if he underwent considerable anguish, it was the fault of his

excessive scrupulousness regarding dress, propriety, appearance.

He conducted her at her request to the kitchen garden and the handful of

paddock, the stables and coach-house, then back to the lawn.

‘It is the home for a young couple,’ she said.

‘I am no longer young,’ the General bowed, with the sigh peculiar to

this confession. ‘I say, I am no longer young, but I call the place a

gentlemanly residence. I was saying, I...’

‘Yes, yes!’ Lady Camper tossed her head, half closing her eyes, with a

contraction of the brows, as if in pain.

He perceived a similar expression whenever he spoke of his residence.

Perhaps it recalled happier days to enter such a nest. Perhaps it had

been such a home for a young couple that she had entered on her marriage

with Sir Scrope Camper, before he inherited his title and estates.

The General was at a loss to conceive what it was.

It recurred at another mention of his idea of the nature of the

residence. It was almost a paroxysm. He determined not to vex her

reminiscences again; and as this resolution directed his mind to his

residence, thinking it pre-eminently gentlemanly, his tongue committed

the error of repeating it, with ‘gentleman-like’ for a variation.

Elizabeth was out--he knew not where. The housemaid informed him, that

Miss Elizabeth was out rowing on the water.

‘Is she alone?’ Lady Camper inquired of him.

‘I fancy so,’ the General replied.

‘The poor child has no mother.’

‘It has been a sad loss to us both, Lady Camper.’

‘No doubt. She is too pretty to go out alone.’

‘I can trust her.’

‘Girls!’

‘She has the spirit of a man.’

‘That is well. She has a spirit; it will be tried.’

The General modestly furnished an instance or two of her spiritedness.

Lady Camper seemed to like this theme; she looked graciously interested.

‘Still, you should not suffer her to go out alone,’ she said.

‘I place implicit confidence in her,’ said the General; and Lady Camper

gave it up.

She proposed to walk down the lanes to the river-side, to meet Elizabeth

returning.

The General manifested alacrity checked by reluctance. Lady Camper had

told him she objected to sit in a strange room by herself; after that,

he could hardly leave her to dash upstairs to change his clothes; yet

how, attired as he was, in a fatigue jacket, that warned him not to

imagine his back view, and held him constantly a little to the rear of

Lady Camper, lest she should be troubled by it;--and he knew the habit

of the second rank to criticise the front--how consent to face the outer

world in such style side by side with the lady he admired?

‘Come,’ said she; and he shot forward a step, looking as if he had

missed fire.

‘Are you not coming, General?’

He advanced mechanically.

Not a soul met them down the lanes, except a little one, to whom Lady

Camper gave a small silver-piece, because she was a picture.

The act of charity sank into the General’s heart, as any pretty

performance will do upon a warm waxen bed.

Lady Camper surprised him by answering his thoughts. ‘No; it’s for my

own pleasure.’

Presently she said, ‘Here they are.’

General Ople beheld his daughter by the river-side at the end of the

lane, under escort of Mr. Reginald Rolles.

It was another picture, and a pleasing one. The young lady and the

young gentleman wore boating hats, and were both dressed in white, and

standing by or just turning from the outrigger and light skiff they were

about to leave in charge of a waterman. Elizabeth stretched a finger at

arm’s-length, issuing directions, which Mr. Rolles took up and worded

further to the man, for the sake of emphasis; and he, rather than

Elizabeth, was guilty of the half-start at sight of the persons who were

approaching.

‘My nephew, you should know, is intended for a working soldier,’ said

Lady Camper; ‘I like that sort of soldier best.’

General Ople drooped his shoulders at the personal compliment.

She resumed. ‘His pay is a matter of importance to him. You are aware of

the smallness of a subaltern’s pay.

‘I,’ said the General, ‘I say I feel my poor half-pay, having always

been a working soldier myself, very important, I was saying, very

important to me!’

‘Why did you retire?’

Her interest in him seemed promising. He replied conscientiously,

‘Beyond the duties of General of Brigade, I could not, I say I could

not, dare to aspire; I can accept and execute orders; I shrink from

responsibility!’

‘It is a pity,’ said she, ‘that you were not, like my nephew Reginald,

entirely dependent on your profession.’

She laid such stress on her remark, that the General, who had just

expressed a very modest estimate of his abilities, was unable to

reject the flattery of her assuming him to be a man of some fortune. He

coughed, and said, ‘Very little.’ The thought came to him that he might

have to make a statement to her in time, and he emphasized, ‘Very little

indeed. Sufficient,’ he assured her, ‘for a gentlemanly appearance.’

‘I have given you your warning,’ was her inscrutable rejoinder, uttered

within earshot of the young people, to whom, especially to Elizabeth,

she was gracious. The damsel’s boating uniform was praised, and her

sunny flush of exercise and exposure.

Lady Camper regretted that she could not abandon her parasol: ‘I freckle

so easily.’

The General, puzzling over her strange words about a warning, gazed at

the red rose of art on her cheek with an air of profound abstraction.

‘I freckle so easily,’ she repeated, dropping her parasol to defend her

face from the calculating scrutiny.

‘I burn brown,’ said Elizabeth.

Lady Camper laid the bud of a Falcot rose against the young girl’s

cheek, but fetched streams of colour, that overwhelmed the momentary

comparison of the sunswarthed skin with the rich dusky yellow of the

rose in its deepening inward to soft brown.

Reginald stretched his hand for the privileged flower, and she let him

take it; then she looked at the General; but the General was looking,

with his usual air of satisfaction, nowhere.

CHAPTER III

‘Lady Camper is no common enigma,’ General Ople observed to his

daughter.

Elizabeth inclined to be pleased with her, for at her suggestion the

General had bought a couple of horses, that she might ride in the park,

accompanied by her father or the little groom. Still, the great lady

was hard to read. She tested the resources of his income by all sorts of

instigation to expenditure, which his gallantry could not withstand; she

encouraged him to talk of his deeds in arms; she was friendly, almost

affectionate, and most bountiful in the presents of fruit, peaches,

nectarines, grapes, and hot-house wonders, that she showered on his

table; but she was an enigma in her evident dissatisfaction with him for

something he seemed to have left unsaid. And what could that be?

At their last interview she had asked him, ‘Are you sure, General, you

have nothing more to tell me?’

And as he remarked, when relating it to Elizabeth, ‘One might really be

tempted to misapprehend her ladyship’s... I say one might commit oneself

beyond recovery. Now, my dear, what do you think she intended?’

Elizabeth was ‘burning brown,’ or darkly blushing, as her manner was.

She answered, ‘I am certain you know of nothing that would interest her;

nothing, unless...’

‘Well?’ the General urged her.

‘How can I speak it, papa?’

‘You really can’t mean...’

‘Papa, what could I mean?’

‘If I were fool enough!’ he murmured. ‘No, no, I am an old man. I was

saying, I am past the age of folly.’

One day Elizabeth came home from her ride in a thoughtful mood. She had

not, further than has been mentioned, incited her father to think of the

age of folly; but voluntarily or not, Lady Camper had, by an excess

of graciousness amounting to downright invitation; as thus, ‘Will you

persist in withholding your confidence from me, General?’ She added, ‘I

am not so difficult a person.’ These prompting speeches occurred on the

morning of the day when Elizabeth sat at his table, after a long ride

into the country, profoundly meditative.

A note was handed to General Ople, with the request that he would step

in to speak with Lady Camper in the course of the evening, or next

morning. Elizabeth waited till his hat was on, then said, ‘Papa, on my

ride to-day, I met Mr. Rolles.’

‘I am glad you had an agreeable escort, my dear.’

‘I could not refuse his company.’

‘Certainly not. And where did you ride?’

‘To a beautiful valley; and there we met.... ‘

‘Her ladyship?’

‘Yes.’

‘She always admires you on horseback.’

‘So you know it, papa, if she should speak of it.’

‘And I am bound to tell you, my child,’ said the General, ‘that this

morning Lady Camper’s manner to me was... if I were a fool... I say,

this morning I beat a retreat, but apparently she... I see no way out of

it, supposing she...’

‘I am sure she esteems you, dear papa,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You take to

her, my dear?’ the General inquired anxiously; ‘a little?--a little

afraid of her?’

‘A little,’ Elizabeth replied, ‘only a little.’

‘Don’t be agitated about me.’

‘No, papa; you are sure to do right.’

‘But you are trembling.’

‘Oh! no. I wish you success.’

General Ople was overjoyed to be reinforced by his daughter’s good

wishes. He kissed her to thank her. He turned back to her to kiss her

again. She had greatly lightened the difficulty at least of a delicate

position.

It was just like the imperious nature of Lady Camper to summon him

in the evening to terminate the conversation of the morning, from the

visible pitfall of which he had beaten a rather precipitate retreat. But

if his daughter cordially wished him success, and Lady Camper offered

him the crown of it, why then he had only to pluck up spirit, like a

good commander who has to pass a fordable river in the enemy’s

presence; a dash, a splash, a rattling volley or two, and you are over,

established on the opposite bank. But you must be positive of victory,

otherwise, with the river behind you, your new position is likely to

be ticklish. So the General entered Lady Camper’s drawing-room warily,

watching the fair enemy. He knew he was captivating, his old conquests

whispered in his ears, and her reception of him all but pointed to a

footstool at her feet. He might have fallen there at once, had he not

remembered a hint that Mr. Reginald Rolles had dropped concerning Lady

Camper’s amazing variability.

Lady Camper began.

‘General, you ran away from me this morning. Let me speak. And, by the

way, I must reproach you; you should not have left it to me. Things have

now gone so far that I cannot pretend to be blind. I know your feelings

as a father. Your daughter’s happiness...’

‘My lady,’ the General interposed, ‘I have her distinct assurance that

it is, I say it is wrapt up in mine.’

‘Let me speak. Young people will say anything. Well, they have a certain

excuse for selfishness; we have not. I am in some degree bound to my

nephew; he is my sister’s son.’

‘Assuredly, my lady. I would not stand in his light, be quite assured.

If I am, I was saying if I am not mistaken, I... and he is, or has

the making of an excellent soldier in him, and is likely to be a

distinguished cavalry officer.’

‘He has to carve his own way in the world, General.’

‘All good soldiers have, my lady. And if my position is not, after a

considerable term of service, I say if...’

‘To continue,’ said Lady Camper: ‘I never have liked early marriages.

I was married in my teens before I knew men. Now I do know them, and

now....’

The General plunged forward: ‘The honour you do us now:--a mature

experience is worth:--my dear Lady Camper, I have admired you:--and your

objection to early marriages cannot apply to... indeed, madam, vigour,

they say... though youth, of course... yet young people, as you

observe... and I have, though perhaps my reputation is against it, I was

saying I have a natural timidity with your sex, and I am grey-headed,

white-headed, but happily without a single malady.’

Lady Camper’s brows showed a trifling bewilderment. ‘I am speaking of

these young people, General Ople.’

‘I consent to everything beforehand, my dear lady. He should be, I say

Mr. Rolles should be provided for.’

‘So should she, General, so should Elizabeth.’

‘She shall be, she will, dear madam. What I have, with your permission,

if--good heaven! Lady Camper, I scarcely know where I am. She would

.... I shall not like to lose her: you would not wish it. In time she

will.... she has every quality of a good wife.’

‘There, stay there, and be intelligible,’ said Lady Camper. ‘She has

every quality. Money should be one of them. Has she money?’

‘Oh! my lady,’ the General exclaimed, ‘we shall not come upon your purse

when her time comes.’

‘Has she ten thousand pounds?’

‘Elizabeth? She will have, at her father’s death... but as for my

income, it is moderate, and only sufficient to maintain a gentlemanly

appearance in proper self-respect. I make no show. I say I make no show.

A wealthy marriage is the last thing on earth I should have aimed at.

I prefer quiet and retirement. Personally, I mean. That is my personal

taste. But if the lady... I say if it should happen that the lady ...

and indeed I am not one to press a suit: but if she who distinguishes

and honours me should chance to be wealthy, all I can do is to leave her

wealth at her disposal, and that I do: I do that unreservedly. I feel

I am very confused, alarmingly confused. Your ladyship merits a

superior... I trust I have not... I am entirely at your ladyship’s

mercy.’

‘Are you prepared, if your daughter is asked in marriage, to settle ten

thousand pounds on her, General Ople?’

The General collected himself. In his heart he thoroughly appreciated

the moral beauty of Lady Camper’s extreme solicitude on behalf of his

daughter’s provision; but he would have desired a postponement of that

and other material questions belonging to a distant future until his own

fate was decided.

So he said: ‘Your ladyship’s generosity is very marked. I say it is very

marked.’

‘How, my good General Ople! how is it marked in any degree?’ cried Lady

Camper. ‘I am not generous. I don’t pretend to be; and certainly I don’t

want the young people to think me so. I want to be just. I have assumed

that you intend to be the same. Then will you do me the favour to reply

to me?’

The General smiled winningly and intently, to show her that he prized

her, and would not let her escape his eulogies.

‘Marked, in this way, dear madam, that you think of my daughter’s future

more than I. I say, more than her father himself does. I know I ought

to speak more warmly, I feel warmly. I was never an eloquent man, and if

you take me as a soldier, I am, as, I have ever been in the service, I

was saying I am Wilson Ople, of the grade of General, to be relied on

for executing orders; and, madam, you are Lady Camper, and you command

me. I cannot be more precise. In fact, it is the feeling of the

necessity for keeping close to the business that destroys what I would

say. I am in fact lamentably incompetent to conduct my own case.’

Lady Camper left her chair.

‘Dear me, this is very strange, unless I am singularly in error,’ she

said.

The General now faintly guessed that he might be in error, for his part.

But he had burned his ships, blown up his bridges; retreat could not be

thought of.

He stood, his head bent and appealing to her sideface, like one

pleadingly in pursuit, and very deferentially, with a courteous

vehemence, he entreated first her ladyship’s pardon for his presumption,

and then the gift of her ladyship’s hand.

As for his language, it was the tongue of General Ople. But his bearing

was fine. If his clipped white silken hair spoke of age, his figure

breathed manliness. He was a picture, and she loved pictures.

For his own sake, she begged him to cease. She dreaded to hear of

something ‘gentlemanly.’

‘This is a new idea to me, my dear General,’ she said. ‘You must give me

time. People at our age have to think of fitness. Of course, in a sense,

we are both free to do as we like. Perhaps I may be of some aid to you.

My preference is for absolute independence. And I wished to talk of a

different affair. Come to me tomorrow. Do not be hurt if I decide that

we had better remain as we are.’

The General bowed. His efforts, and the wavering of the fair enemy’s

flag, had inspired him with a positive re-awakening of masculine passion

to gain this fortress. He said well: ‘I have, then, the happiness,

madam, of being allowed to hope until to-morrrow?’

She replied, ‘I would not deprive you of a moment of happiness. Bring

good sense with you when you do come.’

The General asked eagerly, ‘I have your ladyship’s permission to come

early?’

‘Consult your happiness,’ she answered; and if to his mind she seemed

returning to the state of enigma, it was on the whole deliciously. She

restored him his youth. He told Elizabeth that night; he really must

begin to think of marrying her to some worthy young fellow. ‘Though,’

said he, with an air of frank intoxication, ‘my opinion is, the young

ones are not so lively as the old in these days, or I should have been

besieged before now.’

The exact substance of the interview he forbore to relate to his

inquisitive daughter, with a very honourable discretion.

CHAPTER IV

Elizabeth came riding home to breakfast from a gallop round the park,

and passing Lady Camper’s gates, received the salutation of her parasol.

Lady Camper talked with her through the bars. There was not a sign to

tell of a change or twist in her neighbourly affability. She remarked

simply enough, that it was her nephew’s habit to take early gallops, and

possibly Elizabeth might have seen him, for his quarters were proximate;

but she did not demand an answer. She had passed a rather restless

night, she said. ‘How is the General?’

‘Papa must have slept soundly, for he usually calls to me through his

door when he hears I am up,’ said Elizabeth.

Lady Camper nodded kindly and walked on.

Early in the morning General Ople was ready for battle. His forces

were, the anticipation of victory, a carefully arranged toilet, and an

unaccustomed spirit of enterprise in the realms of speech; for he was no

longer in such awe of Lady Camper.

‘You have slept well?’ she inquired.

‘Excellently, my lady:

‘Yes, your daughter tells me she heard you, as she went by your door

in the morning for a ride to meet my nephew. You are, I shall assume,

prepared for business.’

‘Elizabeth?... to meet...?’ General Ople’s impression of anything

extraneous to his emotion was feeble and passed instantly. ‘Prepared!

Oh, certainly’; and he struck in a compliment on her ladyship’s fresh

morning bloom.

‘It can hardly be visible,’ she responded; ‘I have not painted yet.’

‘Does your ladyship proceed to your painting in the very early morning?’

‘Rouge. I rouge.’

‘Dear me! I should not have supposed it.’

‘You have speculated on it very openly, General. I remember your

trying to see a freckle through the rouge; but the truth is, I am of

a supernatural paleness if I do not rouge, so I do. You understand,

therefore, I have a false complexion. Now to business.’

‘If your ladyship insists on calling it business. I have little to

offer--myself!’

‘You have a gentlemanly residence.’

‘It is, my lady, it is. It is a bijou.’

‘Ah!’ Lady Camper sighed dejectedly.

‘It is a perfect bijou!’

‘Oblige me, General, by not pronouncing the French word as if you were

swearing by something in English, like a trooper.’

General Ople started, admitted that the word was French, and apologized

for his pronunciation. Her variability was now visible over a corner of

the battlefield like a thunder-cloud.

‘The business we have to discuss concerns the young people, General.’

‘Yes,’ brightened by this, he assented: ‘Yes, dear Lady Camper; it is a

part of the business; it is a secondary part; it has to be discussed; I

say I subscribe beforehand. I may say, that honouring, esteeming you as

I do, and hoping ardently for your consent....

‘They must have a home and an income, General.’

‘I presume, dearest lady, that Elizabeth will be welcome in your home. I

certainly shall never chase Reginald out of mine.’

Lady Camper threw back her head. ‘Then you are not yet awake, or you

practice the art of sleeping with open eyes! Now listen to me. I rouge,

I have told you. I like colour, and I do not like to see wrinkles or

have them seen. Therefore I rouge. I do not expect to deceive the world

so flagrantly as to my age, and you I would not deceive for a moment. I

am seventy.’

The effect of this noble frankness on the General, was to raise him from

his chair in a sitting posture as if he had been blown up.

Her countenance was inexorably imperturbable under his alternate

blinking and gazing that drew her close and shot her distant, like a

mysterious toy.

‘But,’ said she, ‘I am an artist; I dislike the look of extreme age,

so I conceal it as well as I can. You are very kind to fall in with the

deception: an innocent and, I think, a proper one, before the world,

though not to the gentleman who does me the honour to propose to me

for my hand. You desire to settle our business first. You esteem me; I

suppose you mean as much as young people mean when they say they love.

Do you? Let us come to an understanding.’

‘I can,’ the melancholy General gasped, ‘I say I can--I cannot--I cannot

credit your ladyship’s...’

‘You are at liberty to call me Angela.’

‘Ange...’ he tried it, and in shame relapsed. ‘Madam, yes. Thanks.’

‘Ah,’ cried Lady Camper, ‘do not use these vulgar contractions of

decent speech in my presence. I abhor the word “thanks.” It is fit for

fribbles.’

‘Dear me, I have used it all my life,’ groaned the General.

‘Then, for the remainder, be it understood that you renounce it. To

continue, my age is...’

‘Oh, impossible, impossible,’ the General almost wailed; there was

really a crack in his voice.

‘Advancing to seventy. But, like you, I am happy to say I have not

a malady. I bring no invalid frame to a union that necessitates the

leaving of the front door open day and night to the doctor. My belief

is, I could follow my husband still on a campaign, if he were a warrior

instead of a pensioner.’

General Ople winced.

He was about to say humbly, ‘As General of Brigade...’

‘Yes, yes, you want a commanding officer, and that I have seen, and that

has caused me to meditate on your proposal,’ she interrupted him; while

he, studying her countenance hard, with the painful aspect of a youth

who lashes a donkey memory in an examination by word of mouth, attempted

to marshal her signs of younger years against her awful confession of

the extremely ancient, the witheringly ancient. But for the manifest

rouge, manifest in spite of her declaration that she had not yet that

morning proceeded to her paintbrush, he would have thrown down his glove

to challenge her on the subject of her age. She had actually charms. Her

mouth had a charm; her eyes were lively; her figure, mature if you like,

was at least full and good; she stood upright, she had a queenly seat.

His mental ejaculation was, ‘What a wonderful constitution!’

By a lapse of politeness, he repeated it to himself half aloud; he was

shockingly nervous.

‘Yes, I have finer health than many a younger woman,’ she said. ‘An

ordinary calculation would give me twenty good years to come. I am a

widow, as you know. And, by the way, you have a leaning for widows. Have

you not? I thought I had heard of a widow Barcop in this parish. Do not

protest. I assure you I am a stranger to jealousy. My income...’

The General raised his hands.

‘Well, then,’ said the cool and self-contained lady, ‘before I go

farther, I may ask you, knowing what you have forced me to confess, are

you still of the same mind as to marriage? And one moment, General. I

promise you most sincerely that your withdrawing a step shall not, as

far as it touches me, affect my neighbourly and friendly sentiments; not

in any degree. Shall we be as we were?’

Lady Camper extended her delicate hand to him.

He took it respectfully, inspected the aristocratic and unshrunken

fingers, and kissing them, said, ‘I never withdraw from a position,

unless I am beaten back. Lady Camper, I...’

‘My name is Angela.’

The General tried again: he could not utter the name.

To call a lady of seventy Angela is difficult in itself. It is, it

seems, thrice difficult in the way of courtship.

‘Angela!’ said she.

‘Yes. I say, there is not a more beautiful female name, dear Lady

Camper.’

‘Spare me that word “female” as long as you live. Address me by that

name, if you please.’

The General smiled. The smile was meant for propitiation and sweetness.

It became a brazen smile.

‘Unless you wish to step back,’ said she.

‘Indeed, no. I am happy, Lady Camper. My life is yours. I say, my life

is devoted to you, dear madam.’

‘Angela!’

General Ople was blushingly delivered of the name.

‘That will do,’ said she. ‘And as I think it possible one may be admired

too much as an artist, I must request you to keep my number of years a

secret.’

‘To the death, madam,’ said the General.

‘And now we will take a turn in the garden, Wilson Ople. And beware of

one thing, for a commencement, for you are full of weeds, and I mean

to pluck out a few: never call any place a gentlemanly residence in my

hearing, nor let it come to my ears that you have been using the phrase

elsewhere. Don’t express astonishment. At present it is enough that I

dislike it. But this only,’ Lady Camper added, ‘this only if it is not

your intention to withdraw from your position.’

‘Madam, my lady, I was saying--hem!--Angela, I could not wish to

withdraw.’

Lady Camper leaned with some pressure on his arm, observing, ‘You have a

curious attachment to antiquities.’

‘My dear lady, it is your mind; I say, it is your mind: I was saying, I

am in love with your mind,’ the General endeavoured to assure her, and

himself too.

‘Or is it my powers as an artist?’

‘Your mind, your extraordinary powers of mind.’

‘Well,’ said Lady Camper, ‘a veteran General of Brigade is as good a

crutch as a childless old grannam can have.’

And as a crutch, General Ople, parading her grounds with the aged woman,

found himself used and treated.

The accuracy of his perceptions might be questioned. He was like a man

stunned by some great tropical fruit, which responds to the longing

of his eyes by falling on his head; but it appeared to him, that she

increased in bitterness at every step they took, as if determined to

make him realize her wrinkles.

He was even so inconsequent, or so little recognized his position, as to

object in his heart to hear himself called Wilson.

It is true that she uttered Wilsonople as if the names formed one word.

And on a second occasion (when he inclined to feel hurt) she remarked,

‘I fear me, Wilsonople, if we are to speak plainly, thou art but a

fool.’ He, perhaps, naturally objected to that. He was, however, giddy,

and barely knew.

Yet once more the magical woman changed. All semblance of harshness, and

harridan-like spike-tonguedness vanished when she said adieu.

The astronomer, looking at the crusty jag and scoria of the magnified

moon through his telescope, and again with naked eyes at

the soft-beaming moon, when the crater-ridges are faint as

eyebrow-pencillings, has a similar sharp alternation of prospect to that

which mystified General Ople.

But between watching an orb that is only variable at our caprice, and

contemplating a woman who shifts and quivers ever with her own, how vast

the difference!

And consider that this woman is about to be one’s wife! He could have

believed (if he had not known full surely that such things are not) he

was in the hands of a witch.

Lady Camper’s ‘adieu’ was perfectly beautiful--a kind, cordial,

intimate, above all, to satisfy his present craving, it was a lady-like

adieu--the adieu of a delicate and elegant woman, who had hardly left

her anchorage by forty to sail into the fifties.

Alas! he had her word for it, that she was not less than seventy. And,

worse, she had betrayed most melancholy signs of sourness and agedness

as soon as he had sworn himself to her fast and fixed.

‘The road is open to you to retreat,’ were her last words.

‘My road,’ he answered gallantly, ‘is forward.’

He was drawing backward as he said it, and something provoked her to

smile.

CHAPTER V

It is a noble thing to say that your road is forward, and it befits a

man of battles. General Ople was too loyal a gentleman to think of any

other road. Still, albeit not gifted with imagination, he could not

avoid the feeling that he had set his face to Winter. He found himself

suddenly walking straight into the heart of Winter, and a nipping

Winter. For her ladyship had proved acutely nipping. His little

customary phrases, to which Lady Camper objected, he could see no harm

in whatever. Conversing with her in the privacy of domestic life would

never be the flowing business that it is for other men. It would demand

perpetual vigilance, hop, skip, jump, flounderings, and apologies.

This was not a pleasing prospect.

On the other hand, she was the niece of an earl. She was wealthy. She

might be an excellent friend to Elizabeth; and she could be, when she

liked, both commandingly and bewitchingly ladylike.

Good! But he was a General Officer of not more than fifty-five, in his

full vigour, and she a woman of seventy!

The prospect was bleak. It resembled an outlook on the steppes. In

point of the discipline he was to expect, he might be compared to a raw

recruit, and in his own home!

However, she was a woman of mind. One would be proud of her.

But did he know the worst of her? A dreadful presentiment, that he did

not know the worst of her, rolled an ocean of gloom upon General Ople,

striking out one solitary thought in the obscurity, namely, that he was

about to receive punishment for retiring from active service to a life

of ease at a comparatively early age, when still in marching trim. And

the shadow of the thought was, that he deserved the punishment!

He was in his garden with the dawn. Hard exercise is the best of opiates

for dismal reflections. The General discomposed his daughter by offering

to accompany her on her morning ride before breakfast. She considered

that it would fatigue him. ‘I am not a man of eighty!’ he cried. He

could have wished he had been.

He led the way to the park, where they soon had sight of young Rolles,

who checked his horse and spied them like a vedette, but, perceiving

that he had been seen, came cantering, and hailing the General with

hearty wonderment.

‘And what’s this the world says, General?’ said he. ‘But we all applaud

your taste. My aunt Angela was the handsomest woman of her time.’

The General murmured in confusion, ‘Dear me!’ and looked at the young

man, thinking that he could not have known the time.

‘Is all arranged, my dear General?’

‘Nothing is arranged, and I beg--I say I beg... I came out for fresh air

and pace.’..

The General rode frantically.

In spite of the fresh air, he was unable to eat at breakfast. He was

bound, of course, to present himself to Lady Camper, in common civility,

immediately after it.

And first, what were the phrases he had to avoid uttering in her

presence? He could remember only the ‘gentlemanly residence.’ And it was

a gentlemanly residence, he thought as he took leave of it. It was one,

neatly named to fit the place. Lady Camper is indeed a most eccentric

person! he decided from his experience of her.

He was rather astonished that young Rolles should have spoken so coolly

of his aunt’s leaning to matrimony; but perhaps her exact age was

unknown to the younger members of her family.

This idea refreshed him by suggesting the extremely honourable nature of

Lady Camper’s uncomfortable confession.

He himself had an uncomfortable confession to make. He would have to

speak of his income. He was living up to the edges of it.

She is an upright woman, and I must be the same! he said, fortunately

not in her hearing.

The subject was disagreeable to a man sensitive on the topic of money,

and feeling that his prudence had recently been misled to keep up

appearances.

Lady Camper was in her garden, reclining under her parasol. A chair was

beside her, to which, acknowledging the salutation of her suitor, she

waved him.

‘You have met my nephew Reginald this morning, General?’

‘Curiously, in the park, this morning, before breakfast, I did, yes.

Hem! I, I say I did meet him. Has your ladyship seen him?’

‘No. The park is very pretty in the early morning.’

‘Sweetly pretty.’

Lady Camper raised her head, and with the mildness of assured

dictatorship, pronounced: ‘Never say that before me.’

‘I submit, my lady,’ said the poor scourged man.

‘Why, naturally you do. Vulgar phrases have to be endured, except when

our intimates are guilty, and then we are not merely offended, we are

compromised by them. You are still of the mind in which you left me

yesterday? You are one day older. But I warn you, so am I.’

‘Yes, my lady, we cannot, I say we cannot check time. Decidedly of the

same mind. Quite so.’

‘Oblige me by never saying “Quite so.” My lawyer says it. It reeks of

the City of London. And do not look so miserable.’

‘I, madam? my dear lady!’ the General flashed out in a radiance that

dulled instantly.

‘Well,’ said she cheerfully, ‘and you’re for the old woman?’

‘For Lady Camper.’

‘You are seductive in your flatteries, General. Well, then, we have to

speak of business.’

‘My affairs----’ General Ople was beginning, with perturbed forehead;

but Lady Camper held up her finger.

‘We will touch on your affairs incidentally. Now listen to me, and do

not exclaim until I have finished. You know that these two young ones

have been whispering over the wall for some months. They have been

meeting on the river and in the park habitually, apparently with your

consent.’

‘My lady!’

‘I did not say with your connivance.’

‘You mean my daughter Elizabeth?’

‘And my nephew Reginald. We have named them, if that advances us. Now,

the end of such meetings is marriage, and the sooner the better, if they

are to continue. I would rather they should not; I do not hold it good

for young soldiers to marry. But if they do, it is very certain that

their pay will not support a family; and in a marriage of two healthy

young people, we have to assume the existence of the family. You have

allowed matters to go so far that the boy is hot in love; I suppose the

girl is, too. She is a nice girl. I do not object to her personally. But

I insist that a settlement be made on her before I give my nephew one

penny. Hear me out, for I am not fond of business, and shall be glad to

have done with these explanations. Reginald has nothing of his own. He

is my sister’s son, and I loved her, and rather like the boy. He has at

present four hundred a year from me. I will double it, on the condition

that you at once make over ten thousand--not less; and let it be yes or

no!--to be settled on your daughter and go to her children, independent

of the husband--cela va sans dire. Now you may speak, General.’

The General spoke, with breath fetched from the deeps:

‘Ten thousand pounds! Hem! Ten! Hem, frankly--ten, my lady! One’s

income--I am quite taken by surprise. I say Elizabeth’s conduct--though,

poor child! it is natural to her to seek a mate, I mean, to accept a

mate and an establishment, and Reginald is a very hopeful fellow--I

was saying, they jump on me out of an ambush, and I wish them every

happiness. And she is an ardent soldier, and a soldier she must marry.

But ten thousand!’

‘It is to secure the happiness of your daughter, General.’

‘Pounds! my lady. It would rather cripple me.’

‘You would have my house, General; you would have the moiety, as the

lawyers say, of my purse; you would have horses, carriages, servants; I

do not divine what more you would wish to have.’

‘But, madam--a pensioner on the Government! I can look back on past

services, I say old services, and I accept my position. But, madam, a

pensioner on my wife, bringing next to nothing to the common estate! I

fear my self-respect would, I say would...’

‘Well, and what would it do, General Ople?’

‘I was saying, my self-respect as my wife’s pensioner, my lady. I could

not come to her empty-handed.’

‘Do you expect that I should be the person to settle money on your

daughter, to save her from mischances? A rakish husband, for example;

for Reginald is young, and no one can guess what will be made of him.’

‘Undoubtedly your ladyship is correct. We might try absence for the poor

girl. I have no female relation, but I could send her to the sea-side to

a lady-friend.’

‘General Ople, I forbid you, as you value my esteem, ever--and I repeat,

I forbid you ever--to afflict my ears with that phrase, “lady-friend!”’

The General blinked in a state of insurgent humility.

These incessant whippings could not but sting the humblest of men; and

‘lady-friend,’ he was sure, was a very common term, used, he was sure,

in the very best society. He had never heard Her Majesty speak at levees

of a lady-friend, but he was quite sure that she had one; and if so,

what could be the objection to her subjects mentioning it as a term to

suit their own circumstances?

He was harassed and perplexed by old Lady Camper’s treatment of him, and

he resolved not to call her Angela even upon supplication--not that day,

at least.

She said, ‘You will not need to bring property of any kind to the common

estate; I neither look for it nor desire it. The generous thing for you

to do would be to give your daughter all you have, and come to me.’

‘But, Lady Camper, if I denude myself or curtail my income--a man at his

wife’s discretion, I was saying a man at his wife’s mercy...!’

General Ople was really forced, by his manly dignity, to make this

protest on its behalf. He did not see how he could have escaped doing

so; he was more an agent than a principal. ‘My wife’s mercy,’ he said

again, but simply as a herald proclaiming superior orders.

Lady Camper’s brows were wrathful. A deep blood-crimson overcame the

rouge, and gave her a terrible stormy look.

‘The congress now ceases to sit, and the treaty is not concluded,’ was

all she said.

She rose, bowed to him, ‘Good morning, General,’ and turned her back.

He sighed. He was a free man. But this could not be denied--whatever

the lady’s age, she was a grand woman in her carriage, and when looking

angry, she had a queenlike aspect that raised her out of the reckoning

of time.

So now he knew there was a worse behind what he had previously known. He

was precipitate in calling it the worst. ‘Now,’ said he to himself, ‘I

know the worst!’

No man should ever say it. Least of all, one who has entered into

relations with an eccentric lady.

CHAPTER VI

Politeness required that General Ople should not appear to rejoice in

his dismissal as a suitor, and should at least make some show of holding

himself at the beck of a reconsidering mind. He was guilty of running up

to London early next day, and remaining absent until nightfall; and he

did the same on the two following days. When he presented himself

at Lady Camper’s lodge-gates, the astonishing intelligence, that her

ladyship had departed for the Continent and Egypt gave him qualms of

remorse, which assumed a more definite shape in something like awe of

her triumphant constitution. He forbore to mention her age, for he

was the most honourable of men, but a habit of tea-table talkativeness

impelled him to say and repeat an idea that had visited him, to the

effect, that Lady Camper was one of those wonderful women who are

comparable to brilliant generals, and defend themselves from the

siege of Time by various aggressive movements. Fearful of not being

understood, owing to the rarity of the occasions when the squat plain

squad of honest Saxon regulars at his command were called upon to

explain an idea, he re-cast the sentence. But, as it happened that the

regulars of his vocabulary were not numerous, and not accustomed to work

upon thoughts and images, his repetitions rather succeeded in exposing

the piece of knowledge he had recently acquired than in making his

meaning plainer. So we need not marvel that his acquaintances should

suppose him to be secretly aware of an extreme degree in which Lady

Camper was a veteran.

General Ople entered into the gaieties of the neighbourhood once more,

and passed through the Winter cheerfully. In justice to him, however, it

should be said that to the intent dwelling of his mind upon Lady Camper,

and not to the festive life he led, was due his entire ignorance of

his daughter’s unhappiness. She lived with him, and yet it was in other

houses he learnt that she was unhappy. After his last interview with

Lady Camper, he had informed Elizabeth of the ruinous and preposterous

amount of money demanded of him for a settlement upon her and Elizabeth,

like the girl of good sense that she was, had replied immediately, ‘It

could not be thought of, papa.’

He had spoken to Reginald likewise. The young man fell into a dramatic

tearing-of-hair and long-stride fury, not ill becoming an enamoured

dragoon. But he maintained that his aunt, though an eccentric, was a

cordially kind woman. He seemed to feel, if he did not partly hint, that

the General might have accepted Lady Camper’s terms. The young officer

could no longer be welcome at Douro Lodge, so the General paid him

a morning call at his quarters, and was distressed to find him

breakfasting very late, tapping eggs that he forgot to open--one of the

surest signs of a young man downright and deep in love, as the General

knew from experience--and surrounded by uncut sporting journals of

past weeks, which dated from the day when his blow had struck him, as

accurately as the watch of the drowned man marks his minute. Lady Camper

had gone to Italy, and was in communication with her nephew: Reginald

was not further explicit. His legs were very prominent in his

despair, and his fingers frequently performed the part of blunt combs;

consequently the General was impressed by his passion for Elizabeth. The

girl who, if she was often meditative, always met his eyes with a smile,

and quietly said ‘Yes, papa,’ and ‘No, papa,’ gave him little concern

as to the state of her feelings. Yet everybody said now that she was

unhappy. Mrs. Barcop, the widow, raised her voice above the rest. So

attentive was she to Elizabeth that the General had it kindly suggested

to him, that some one was courting him through his daughter. He gazed

at the widow. Now she was not much past thirty; and it was really

singular--he could have laughed--thinking of Mrs. Barcop set him

persistently thinking of Lady Camper. That is to say, his mad fancy

reverted from the lady of perhaps thirty-five to the lady of seventy.

Such, thought he, is genius in a woman! Of his neighbours generally,

Mrs. Baerens, the wife of a German merchant, an exquisite player on the

pianoforte, was the most inclined to lead him to speak of Lady Camper.

She was a kind prattling woman, and was known to have been a governess

before her charms withdrew the gastronomic Gottfried Baerens from his

devotion to the well-served City club, where, as he exclaimed (ever

turning fondly to his wife as he vocalized the compliment), he had found

every necessity, every luxury, in life, ‘as you cannot have dem out

of London--all save de female!’ Mrs. Baerens, a lady of Teutonic

extraction, was distinguishable as of that sex; at least, she was not

masculine. She spoke with great respect of Lady Camper and her

family, and seemed to agree in the General’s eulogies of Lady Camper’s

constitution. Still he thought she eyed him strangely.

One April morning the General received a letter with the Italian

postmark. Opening it with his usual calm and happy curiosity, he

perceived that it was composed of pen-and-ink drawings. And suddenly

his heart sank like a scuttled ship. He saw himself the victim of a

caricature.

The first sketch had merely seemed picturesque, and he supposed it a

clever play of fancy by some travelling friend, or perhaps an actual

scene slightly exaggerated. Even on reading, ‘A distant view of the city

of Wilsonople,’ he was only slightly enlightened. His heart beat

still with befitting regularity. But the second and the third sketches

betrayed the terrible hand. The distant view of the city of Wilsonople

was fair with glittering domes, which, in the succeeding near view,

proved to have been soap-bubbles, for a place of extreme flatness,

begirt with crazy old-fashioned fortifications, was shown; and in

the third view, representing the interior, stood for sole place of

habitation, a sentry-box.

Most minutely drawn, and, alas! with fearful accuracy, a military

gentleman in undress occupied the box. Not a doubt could exist as to the

person it was meant to be.

The General tried hard to remain incredulous. He remembered too well who

had called him Wilsonople.

But here was the extraordinary thing that sent him over the

neighbourhood canvassing for exclamations: on the fourth page was the

outline of a lovely feminine hand, holding a pen, as in the act of

shading, and under it these words: ‘What I say is, I say I think it

exceedingly unladylike.’

Now consider the General’s feelings when, turning to this fourth page,

having these very words in his mouth, as the accurate expression of his

thoughts, he discovered them written!

An enemy who anticipates the actions of our mind, has a quality of the

malignant divine that may well inspire terror. The senses of General

Ople were struck by the aspect of a lurid Goddess, who penetrated him,

read him through, and had both power and will to expose and make him

ridiculous for ever.

The loveliness of the hand, too, in a perplexing manner contested his

denunciation of her conduct. It was ladylike eminently, and it involved

him in a confused mixture of the moral and material, as great as young

people are known to feel when they make the attempt to separate them, in

one of their frenzies.

With a petty bitter laugh he folded the letter, put it in his

breast-pocket, and sallied forth for a walk, chiefly to talk to himself

about it. But as it absorbed him entirely, he showed it to the rector,

whom he met, and what the rector said is of no consequence, for General

Ople listened to no remarks, calling in succession on the Pollingtons,

the Goslings, the Baerens, and others, early though it was, and

the lords of those houses absent amassing hoards; and to the ladies

everywhere he displayed the sketches he had received, observing, that

Wilsonople meant himself; and there he was, he said, pointing at the

capped fellow in the sentry-box, done unmistakably. The likeness indeed

was remarkable. ‘She is a woman of genius,’ he ejaculated, with utter

melancholy. Mrs. Baerens, by the aid of a magnifying glass, assisted

him to read a line under the sentry-box, that he had taken for a mere

trembling dash; it ran, A gentlemanly residence.

‘What eyes she has!’ the General exclaimed; ‘I say it is miraculous what

eyes she has at her time of... I was saying, I should never have known

it was writing.’

He sighed heavily. His shuddering sensitiveness to caricature was

increased by a certain evident dread of the hand which struck; the

knowing that he was absolutely bare to this woman, defenceless, open to

exposure in his little whims, foibles, tricks, incompetencies, in what

lay in his heart, and the words that would come to his tongue. He felt

like a man haunted.

So deeply did he feel the blow, that people asked how it was that he

could be so foolish as to dance about assisting Lady Camper in her

efforts to make him ridiculous; he acted the parts of publisher and

agent for the fearful caricaturist. In truth, there was a strangely

double reason for his conduct; he danced about for sympathy, he had the

intensest craving for sympathy, but more than this, or quite as much, he

desired to have the powers of his enemy widely appreciated; in the first

place, that he might be excused to himself for wincing under them, and

secondly, because an awful admiration of her, that should be deepened

by a corresponding sentiment around him, helped him to enjoy luxurious

recollections of an hour when he was near making her his own--his own,

in the holy abstract contemplation of marriage, without realizing their

probable relative conditions after the ceremony.

‘I say, that is the very image of her ladyship’s hand,’ he was

especially fond of remarking, ‘I say it is a beautiful hand.’

He carried the letter in his pocket-book; and beginning to fancy that

she had done her worst, for he could not imagine an inventive malignity

capable of pursuing the theme, he spoke of her treatment of him with

compassionate regret, not badly assumed from being partly sincere.

Two letters dated in France, the one Dijon, the other Fontainebleau,

arrived together; and as the General knew Lady Camper to be returning to

England, he expected that she was anxious to excuse herself to him. His

fingers were not so confident, for he tore one of the letters to open

it.

The City of Wilsonople was recognizable immediately. So likewise was the

sole inhabitant.

General Ople’s petty bitter laugh recurred, like a weak-chested

patient’s cough in the shifting of our winds eastward.

A faceless woman’s shadow kneels on the ground near the sentry-box,

weeping. A faceless shadow of a young man on horseback is beheld

galloping toward a gulf. The sole inhabitant contemplates his largely

substantial full fleshed face and figure in a glass.

Next, we see the standard of Great Britain furled; next, unfurled and

borne by a troop of shadows to the sentry-box. The officer within

says, ‘I say I should be very happy to carry it, but I cannot quit this

gentlemanly residence.’

Next, the standard is shown assailed by popguns. Several of the shadows

are prostrate. ‘I was saying, I assure you that nothing but this

gentlemanly residence prevents me from heading you,’ says the gallant

officer.

General Ople trembled with protestant indignation when he saw himself

reclining in a magnified sentry-box, while detachments of shadows hurry

to him to show him the standard of his country trailing in the dust; and

he is maliciously made to say, ‘I dislike responsibility. I say I am

a fervent patriot, and very fond of my comforts, but I shun

responsibility.’

The second letter contained scenes between Wilsonople and the Moon.

He addresses her as his neighbour, and tells her of his triumphs over

the sex.

He requests her to inform him whether she is a ‘female,’ that she may be

triumphed over.

He hastens past her window on foot, with his head bent, just as the

General had been in the habit of walking.

He drives a mouse-pony furiously by.

He cuts down a tree, that she may peep through.

Then, from the Moon’s point of view, Wilsonople, a Silenus, is discerned

in an arm-chair winking at a couple too plainly pouting their lips for a

doubt of their intentions to be entertained.

A fourth letter arrived, bearing date of Paris. This one illustrated

Wilsonople’s courtship of the Moon, and ended with his ‘saying,’ in his

peculiar manner, ‘In spite of her paint I could not have conceived her

age to be so enormous.’

How break off his engagement with the Lady Moon? Consent to none of her

terms!

Little used as he was to read behind a veil, acuteness of suffering

sharpened the General’s intelligence to a degree that sustained him

in animated dialogue with each succeeding sketch, or poisoned arrow

whirring at him from the moment his eyes rested on it; and here are a

few samples:

‘Wilsonople informs the Moon that she is “sweetly pretty.”

‘He thanks her with “thanks” for a handsome piece of lunar green cheese.

‘He points to her, apparently telling some one, “my lady-friend.”

‘He sneezes “Bijou! bijou! bijou!”’

They were trifles, but they attacked his habits of speech; and he began

to grow more and more alarmingly absurd in each fresh caricature of his

person.

He looked at himself as the malicious woman’s hand had shaped him. It

was unjust; it was no resemblance--and yet it was! There was a corner

of likeness left that leavened the lump; henceforth he must walk abroad

with this distressing image of himself before his eyes, instead of the

satisfactory reflex of the man who had, and was happy in thinking that

he had, done mischief in his time. Such an end for a conquering man was

too pathetic.

The General surprised himself talking to himself in something louder

than a hum at neighbours’ dinner-tables. He looked about and noticed

that people were silently watching him.

CHAPTER VII

Lady Camper’s return was the subject of speculation in the

neighbourhood, for most people thought she would cease to persecute the

General with her preposterous and unwarrantable pen-and-ink sketches

when living so closely proximate; and how he would behave was the

question. Those who made a hero of him were sure he would treat her

with disdain. Others were uncertain. He had been so severely hit that it

seemed possible he would not show much spirit.

He, for his part, had come to entertain such dread of the post, that

Lady Camper’s return relieved him of his morning apprehensions; and he

would have forgiven her, though he feared to see her, if only she had

promised to leave him in peace for the future. He feared to see

her, because of the too probable furnishing of fresh matter for her

ladyship’s hand. Of course he could not avoid being seen by her, and

that was a particular misery. A gentlemanly humility, or demureness

of aspect, when seen, would, he hoped, disarm his enemy. It should,

he thought. He had borne unheard-of things. No one of his friends and

acquaintances knew, they could not know, what he had endured. It has

caused him fits of stammering. It had destroyed the composure of his

gait. Elizabeth had informed him that he talked to himself incessantly,

and aloud. She, poor child, looked pale too. She was evidently anxious

about him.

Young Rolles, whom he had met now and then, persisted in praising his

aunt’s good heart. So, perhaps, having satiated her revenge, she might

now be inclined for peace, on the terms of distant civility.

‘Yes! poor Elizabeth!’ sighed the General, in pity of the poor girl’s

disappointment; ‘poor Elizabeth! she little guesses what her father has

gone through. Poor child! I say, she hasn’t an idea of my sufferings.’

General Ople delivered his card at Lady Camper’s lodgegates and escaped

to his residence in a state of prickly heat that required the brushing

of his hair with hard brushes for several minutes to comfort and

re-establish him.

He had fallen to working in his garden, when Lady Camper’s card was

brought to him an hour after the delivery of his own; a pleasing

promptitude, showing signs of repentance, and suggesting to the General

instantly some sharp sarcasms upon women, which he had come upon

in quotations in the papers and the pulpit, his two main sources of

information.

Instead of handing back the card to the maid, he stuck it in his hat and

went on digging.

The first of a series of letters containing shameless realistic

caricatures was handed to him the afternoon following. They came fast

and thick. Not a day’s interval of grace was allowed. Niobe under the

shafts of Diana was hardly less violently and mortally assailed. The

deadliness of the attack lay in the ridicule of the daily habits of one

of the most sensitive of men, as to his personal appearance, and the

opinion of the world. He might have concealed the sketches, but he could

not have concealed the bruises, and people were perpetually asking the

unhappy General what he was saying, for he spoke to himself as if he

were repeating something to them for the tenth time.

‘I say,’ said he, ‘I say that for a lady, really an educated lady, to

sit, as she must--I was saying, she must have sat in an attic to have

the right view of me. And there you see--this is what she has done.

This is the last, this is the afternoon’s delivery. Her ladyship has

me correctly as to costume, but I could not exhibit such a sketch to

ladies.’

A back view of the General was displayed in his act of digging.

‘I say I could not allow ladies to see it,’ he informed the gentlemen,

who were suffered to inspect it freely.

‘But you see, I have no means of escape; I am at her mercy from morning

to night,’ the General said, with a quivering tongue, ‘unless I stay at

home inside the house; and that is death to me, or unless I abandon the

place, and my lease; and I shall--I say, I shall find nowhere in England

for anything like the money or conveniences such a gent--a residence

you would call fit for a gentleman. I call it a bi... it is, in short, a

gem. But I shall have to go.’

Young Rolles offered to expostulate with his aunt Angela.

The General said, ‘Tha... I thank you very much. I would not have her

ladyship suppose I am so susceptible. I hardly know,’ he confessed

pitiably, ‘what it is right to say, and what not--what not. I-I-I never

know when I am not looking a fool. I hurry from tree to tree to shun the

light. I am seriously affected in my appetite. I say, I shall have to

go.’

Reginald gave him to understand that if he flew, the shafts would follow

him, for Lady Camper would never forgive his running away, and was quite

equal to publishing a book of the adventures of Wilsonople.

Sunday afternoon, walking in the park with his daughter on his arm,

General Ople met Mr. Rolles. He saw that the young man and Elizabeth

were mortally pale, and as the very idea of wretchedness directed his

attention to himself, he addressed them conjointly on the subject of his

persecution, giving neither of them a chance of speaking until they were

constrained to part.

A sketch was the consequence, in which a withered Cupid and a fading

Psyche were seen divided by Wilsonople, who keeps them forcibly asunder

with policeman’s fists, while courteously and elegantly entreating

them to hear him. ‘Meet,’ he tells them, ‘as often as you like, in my

company, so long as you listen to me’; and the pathos of his aspect

makes hungry demand for a sympathetic audience.

Now, this, and not the series representing the martyrdom of the old

couple at Douro Lodge Gates, whose rigid frames bore witness to the

close packing of a gentlemanly residence, this was the sketch General

Ople, in his madness from the pursuing bite of the gadfly, handed about

at Mrs. Pollington’s lawn-party. Some have said, that he should not have

betrayed his daughter; but it is reasonable to suppose he had no idea of

his daughter’s being the Psyche. Or if he had, it was indistinct, owing

to the violence of his personal emotion. Assuming this to have been the

very sketch; he handed it to two or three ladies in turn, and was heard

to deliver himself at intervals in the following snatches: ‘As you like,

my lady, as you like; strike, I say strike; I bear it; I say I bear it.

... If her ladyship is unforgiving, I say I am enduring.... I may go,

I was saying I may go mad, but while I have my reason I walk upright, I

walk upright.’

Mr. Pollington and certain City gentlemen hearing the poor General’s

renewed soliloquies, were seized with disgust of Lady Camper’s conduct,

and stoutly advised an application to the Law Courts.

He gave ear to them abstractedly, but after pulling out the whole

chapter of the caricatures (which it seemed that he kept in a case of

morocco leather in his breast-pocket), showing them, with comments on

them, and observing, ‘There will be more, there must be more, I say I am

sure there are things I do that her ladyship will discover and expose,’

he declined to seek redress or simple protection; and the miserable

spectacle was exhibited soon after of this courtly man listening to Mrs.

Barcop on the weather, and replying in acquiescence: ‘It is hot.--If

your ladyship will only abstain from colours. Very hot as you say,

madam,--I do not complain of pen and ink, but I would rather escape

colours. And I dare say you find it hot too?’

Mrs. Barcop shut her eyes and sighed over the wreck of a handsome

military officer.

She asked him: ‘What is your objection to colours?’

His hand was at his breast-pocket immediately, as he said: ‘Have you not

seen?’--though but a few minutes back he had shown her the contents of

the packet, including a hurried glance of the famous digging scene.

By this time the entire district was in fervid sympathy with General

Ople. The ladies did not, as their lords did, proclaim astonishment that

a man should suffer a woman to goad him to a state of semi-lunacy;

but one or two confessed to their husbands, that it required a

great admiration of General Ople not to despise him, both for his

susceptibility and his patience. As for the men, they knew him to

have faced the balls in bellowing battle-strife; they knew him to

have endured privation, not only cold but downright want of food and

drink--an almost unimaginable horror to these brave daily feasters; so

they could not quite look on him in contempt; but his want of sense was

offensive, and still more so his submission to a scourging by a woman.

Not one of them would have deigned to feel it. Would they have allowed

her to see that she could sting them? They would have laughed at her. Or

they would have dragged her before a magistrate.

It was a Sunday in early Summer when General Ople walked to morning

service, unaccompanied by Elizabeth, who was unwell. The church was of

the considerate old-fashioned order, with deaf square pews, permitting

the mind to abstract itself from the sermon, or wrestle at leisure with

the difficulties presented by the preacher, as General Ople often

did, feeling not a little in love with his sincere attentiveness for

grappling with the knotty point and partially allowing the struggle to

be seen.

The Church was, besides, a sanctuary for him. Hither his enemy did not

come. He had this one place of refuge, and he almost looked a happy man

again.

He had passed into his hat and out of it, which he habitually did

standing, when who should walk up to within a couple of yards of him

but Lady Camper. Her pew was full of poor people, who made signs of

retiring. She signified to them that they were to sit, then quietly took

her seat among them, fronting the General across the aisle.

During the sermon a low voice, sharp in contradistinction to the

monotone of the preacher’s, was heard to repeat these words: ‘I say I am

not sure I shall survive it.’ Considerable muttering in the same quarter

was heard besides.

After the customary ceremonious game, when all were free to move, of

nobody liking to move first, Lady Camper and a charity boy were the

persons who took the lead. But Lady Camper could not quit her pew, owing

to the sticking of the door. She smiled as with her pretty hand she

twice or thrice essayed to shake it open. General Ople strode to her

aid. He pulled the door, gave the shadow of a respectful bow, and no

doubt he would have withdrawn, had not Lady Camper, while acknowledging

the civility, placed her prayer-book in his hands to carry at her heels.

There was no choice for him. He made a sort of slipping dance back for

his hat, and followed her ladyship. All present being eager to witness

the spectacle, the passage of Lady Camper dragging the victim General

behind her was observed without a stir of the well-dressed members of

the congregation, until a desire overcame them to see how Lady Camper

would behave to her fish when she had him outside the sacred edifice.

None could have imagined such a scene. Lady Camper was in her carriage;

General Ople was holding her prayer-book, hat in hand, at the carriage

step, and he looked as if he were toasting before the bars of a furnace;

for while he stood there, Lady Camper was rapidly pencilling outlines in

a small pocket sketchbook. There are dogs whose shyness is put to it to

endure human observation and a direct address to them, even on the part

of their masters; and these dear simple dogs wag tail and turn their

heads aside waveringly, as though to entreat you not to eye them and

talk to them so. General Ople, in the presence of the sketchbook, was

much like the nervous animal. He would fain have run away. He glanced at

it, and round about, and again at it, and at the heavens. Her ladyship’s

cruelty, and his inexplicable submission to it, were witnessed of the

multitude.

The General’s friends walked very slowly. Lady Camper’s carriage whirled

by, and the General came up with them, accosting them and himself

alternately. They asked him where Elizabeth was, and he replied,

‘Poor child, yes! I am told she is pale, but I cannot, believe I am so

perfectly, I say so perfectly ridiculous, when I join the responses.’

He drew forth half a dozen sheets, and showed them sketches that Lady

Camper had taken in church, caricaturing him in the sitting down and the

standing up. She had torn them out of the book, and presented them to

him when driving off. ‘I was saying, worship in the ordinary sense will

be interdicted to me if her ladyship...,’ said the General, woefully

shuffling the sketch-paper sheets in which he figured.

He made the following odd confession to Mr. and Mrs. Gosling on the

road:--that he had gone to his chest, and taken out his sword-belt

to measure his girth, and found himself thinner than when he left the

service, which had not been the case before his attendance at the last

levee of the foregoing season. So the deduction was obvious, that

Lady Camper had reduced him. She had reduced him as effectually as a

harassing siege.

‘But why do you pay attention to her? Why...!’ exclaimed Mr. Gosling, a

gentleman of the City, whose roundness would have turned a rifle-shot.

‘To allow her to wound you so seriously!’ exclaimed Mrs. Gosling.

‘Madam, if she were my wife,’ the General explained, ‘I should feel

it. I say it is the fact of it; I feel it, if I appear so extremely

ridiculous to a human eye, to any one eye.’

‘To Lady Camper’s eye.’

He admitted it might be that. He had not thought of ascribing the

acuteness of his pain to the miserable image he presented in this

particular lady’s eye. No; it really was true, curiously true: another

lady’s eye might have transformed him to a pumpkin shape, exaggerated

all his foibles fifty-fold, and he, though not liking it, of course not,

would yet have preserved a certain manly equanimity. How was it Lady

Camper had such power over him?--a lady concealing seventy years with a

rouge-box or paint-pot! It was witchcraft in its worst character. He had

for six months at her bidding been actually living the life of a beast,

degraded in his own esteem; scorched by every laugh he heard; running,

pursued, overtaken, and as it were scored or branded, and then let go

for the process to be repeated.

CHAPTER VIII

Our young barbarians have it all their own way with us when they fall

into love-liking; they lead us whither they please, and interest us

in their wishings, their weepings, and that fine performance, their

kissings. But when we see our veterans tottering to their fall, we

scarcely consent to their having a wish; as for a kiss, we halloo at

them if we discover them on a byway to the sacred grove where such

things are supposed to be done by the venerable. And this piece of rank

injustice, not to say impoliteness, is entirely because of an unsound

opinion that Nature is not in it, as though it were our esteem for

Nature which caused us to disrespect them. They, in truth, show her to

us discreet, civilized, in a decent moral aspect: vistas of real life,

views of the mind’s eye, are opened by their touching little emotions;

whereas those bully youngsters who come bellowing at us and catch us by

the senses plainly prove either that we are no better than they, or that

we give our attention to Nature only when she makes us afraid of her.

If we cared for her, we should be up and after her reverentially in her

sedater steps, deeply studying her in her slower paces. She teaches

them nothing when they are whirling. Our closest instructors, the true

philosophers--the story-tellers, in short-will learn in time that Nature

is not of necessity always roaring, and as soon as they do, the world

may be said to be enlightened. Meantime, in the contemplation of a pair

of white whiskers fluttering round a pair of manifestly painted cheeks,

be assured that Nature is in it: not that hectoring wanton--but let the

young have their fun. Let the superior interest of the passions of the

aged be conceded, and not a word shall be said against the young.

If, then, Nature is in it, how has she been made active? The reason

of her launch upon this last adventure is, that she has perceived

the person who can supply the virtue known to her by experience to be

wanting. Thus, in the broader instance, many who have journeyed far down

the road, turn back to the worship of youth, which they have lost. Some

are for the graceful worldliness of wit, of which they have just share

enough to admire it. Some are captivated by hands that can wield the

rod, which in earlier days they escaped to their cost. In the case

of General Ople, it was partly her whippings of him, partly her

penetration; her ability, that sat so finely on a wealthy woman, her

indifference to conventional manners, that so well beseemed a nobly-born

one, and more than all, her correction of his little weaknesses and

incompetencies, in spite of his dislike of it, won him. He began to feel

a sort of nibbling pleasure in her grotesque sketches of his person; a

tendency to recur to the old ones while dreading the arrival of new. You

hear old gentlemen speak fondly of the swish; and they are not attached

to pain, but the instrument revives their feeling of youth; and General

Ople half enjoyed, while shrinking, Lady Camper’s foregone outlines of

him. For in the distance, the whip’s-end may look like a clinging caress

instead of a stinging flick. But this craven melting in his heart was

rebuked by a very worthy pride, that flew for support to the injury she

had done to his devotions, and the offence to the sacred edifice. After

thinking over it, he decided that he must quit his residence; and as

it appeared to him in the light of duty, he, with an unspoken anguish,

commissioned the house-agent of his town to sell his lease or let the

house furnished, without further parley.

From the house-agent’s shop he turned into the chemist’s, for a tonic--a

foolish proceeding, for he had received bracing enough in the blow he

had just dealt himself, but he had been cogitating on tonics recently,

imagining certain valiant effects of them, with visions of a former

careless happiness that they were likely to restore. So he requested to

have the tonic strong, and he took one glass of it over the counter.

Fifteen minutes after the draught, he came in sight of his house, and

beholding it, he could have called it a gentlemanly residence aloud

under Lady Camper’s windows, his insurgency was of such violence. He

talked of it incessantly, but forbore to tell Elizabeth, as she was

looking pale, the reason why its modest merits touched him so. He longed

for the hour of his next dose, and for a caricature to follow, that he

might drink and defy it. A caricature was really due to him, he thought;

otherwise why had he abandoned his bijou dwelling? Lady Camper, however,

sent none. He had to wait a fortnight before one came, and that was

rather a likeness, and a handsome likeness, except as regarded a certain

disorderliness in his dress, which he knew to be very unlike him. Still

it despatched him to the looking-glass, to bring that verifier of

facts in evidence against the sketch. While sitting there he heard the

housemaid’s knock at the door, and the strange intelligence that his

daughter was with Lady Camper, and had left word that she hoped he would

not forget his engagement to go to Mrs. Baerens’ lawn-party.

The General jumped away from the glass, shouting at the absent Elizabeth

in a fit of wrath so foreign to him, that he returned hurriedly to have

another look at himself, and exclaimed at the pitch of his voice, ‘I

say I attribute it to an indigestion of that tonic. Do you hear?’ The

housemaid faintly answered outside the door that she did, alarming him,

for there seemed to be confusion somewhere. His hope was that no one

would mention Lady Camper’s name, for the mere thought of her caused a

rush to his head. ‘I believe I am in for a touch of apoplexy,’ he

said to the rector, who greeted him, in advance of the ladies, on Mr.

Baerens’ lawn. He said it smilingly, but wanting some show of sympathy,

instead of the whisper and meaningless hand at his clerical band, with

which the rector responded, he cried, ‘Apoplexy,’ and his friend seemed

then to understand, and disappeared among the ladies.

Several of them surrounded the General, and one inquired whether the

series was being continued. He drew forth his pocket-book, handed

her the latest, and remarked on the gross injustice of it; for, as he

requested them to take note, her ladyship now sketched him as a person

inattentive to his dress, and he begged them to observe that she had

drawn him with his necktie hanging loose. ‘And that, I say that has

never been known of me since I first entered society.’

The ladies exchanged looks of profound concern; for the fact was, the

General had come without any necktie and any collar, and he appeared to

be unaware of the circumstance. The rector had told them, that in

answer to a hint he had dropped on the subject of neckties, General Ople

expressed a slight apprehension of apoplexy; but his careless or merely

partial observance of the laws of buttonment could have nothing to do

with such fears. They signified rather a disorder of the intelligence.

Elizabeth was condemned for leaving him to go about alone. The situation

was really most painful, for a word to so sensitive a man would drive

him away in shame and for good; and still, to let him parade the ground

in the state, compared with his natural self, of scarecrow, and with

the dreadful habit of talking to himself quite rageing, was a horrible

alternative. Mrs. Baerens at last directed her husband upon the General,

trembling as though she watched for the operations of a fish torpedo;

and other ladies shared her excessive anxiousness, for Mr. Baerens had

the manner and the look of artillery, and on this occasion carried a

surcharge of powder.

The General bent his ear to Mr. Baerens, whose German-English and

repeated remark, ‘I am to do it wid delicassy,’ did not assist his

comprehension; and when he might have been enlightened, he was petrified

by seeing Lady Camper walk on the lawn with Elizabeth. The great lady

stood a moment beside Mrs. Baerens; she came straight over to him,

contemplating him in silence.

Then she said, ‘Your arm, General Ople,’ and she made one circuit of the

lawn with him, barely speaking.

At her request, he conducted her to her carriage. He took a seat beside

her, obediently. He felt that he was being sketched, and comported

himself like a child’s flat man, that jumps at the pulling of a string.

‘Where have you left your girl, General?’

Before he could rally his wits to answer the question, he was asked:

‘And what have you done with your necktie and collar?’

He touched his throat.

‘I am rather nervous to-day, I forgot Elizabeth,’ he said, sending his

fingers in a dotting run of wonderment round his neck.

Lady Camper smiled with a triumphing humour on her close-drawn lips.

The verified absence of necktie and collar seemed to be choking him.

‘Never mind, you have been abroad without them,’ said Lady Camper, ‘and

that is a victory for me. And you thought of Elizabeth first when I drew

your attention to it, and that is a victory for you. It is a very

great victory. Pray, do not be dismayed, General. You have a handsome

campaigning air. And no apologies, if you please; I like you well enough

as you are. There is my hand.’

General Ople understood her last remark. He pressed the lady’s hand in

silence, very nervously.

‘But do not shrug your head into your shoulders as if there were any

possibility of concealing the thunderingly evident,’ said Lady Camper,

electrifying him, what with her cordial squeeze, her kind eyes, and her

singular language. ‘You have omitted the collar. Well? The collar is

the fatal finishing touch in men’s dress; it would make Apollo look

bourgeois.’

Her hand was in his: and watching the play of her features, a spark

entered General Ople’s brain, causing him, in forgetfulness of collar

and caricatures, to ejaculate, ‘Seventy? Did your ladyship say seventy?

Utterly impossible! You trifle with me.’

‘We will talk when we are free of this accompaniment of carriage-wheels,

General,’ said Lady Camper.

‘I will beg permission to go and fetch Elizabeth, madam.’

‘Rightly thought of. Fetch her in my carriage. And, by the way, Mrs.

Baerens was my old music-mistress, and is, I think, one year older than

I. She can tell you on which side of seventy I am.’

‘I shall not require to ask, my lady,’ he said, sighing.

‘Then we will send the carriage for Elizabeth, and have it out

together at once. I am impatient; yes, General, impatient: for

what?--forgiveness.’

‘Of me, my lady?’ The General breathed profoundly.

‘Of whom else? Do you know what it is?-I don’t think you do. You English

have the smallest experience of humanity. I mean this: to strike so hard

that, in the end, you soften your heart to the victim. Well, that is my

weakness. And we of our blood put no restraint on the blows we strike

when we think them wanted, so we are always overdoing it.’

General Ople assisted Lady Camper to alight from the carriage, which was

forthwith despatched for Elizabeth.

He prepared to listen to her with a disconnected smile of acute

attentiveness.

She had changed. She spoke of money. Ten thousand pounds must be settled

on his daughter. ‘And now,’ said she, ‘you will remember that you are

wanting a collar.’

He acquiesced. He craved permission to retire for ten minutes.

‘Simplest of men! what will cover you?’ she exclaimed, and peremptorily

bidding him sit down in the drawing-room, she took one of the famous

pair of pistols in her hand, and said, ‘If I put myself in a similar

position, and make myself decodletee too, will that satisfy you? You see

these murderous weapons. Well, I am a coward. I dread fire-arms. They

are laid there to impose on the world, and I believe they do. They have

imposed on you. Now, you would never think of pretending to a moral

quality you do not possess. But, silly, simple man that you are! You can

give yourself the airs of wealth, buy horses to conceal your nakedness,

and when you are taken upon the standard of your apparent income, you

would rather seem to be beating a miserly retreat than behave frankly

and honestly. I have a little overstated it, but I am near the mark.’

‘Your ladyship wanting courage!’ cried the General.

‘Refresh yourself by meditating on it,’ said she. ‘And to prove it to

you, I was glad to take this house when I knew I was to have a gallant

gentleman for a neighbour. No visitors will be admitted, General Ople,

so you are bare-throated only to me: sit quietly. One day you speculated

on the paint in my cheeks for the space of a minute and a half:--I had

said that I freckled easily. Your look signified that you really could

not detect a single freckle for the paint. I forgave you, or I did not.

But when I found you, on closer acquaintance, as indifferent to your

daughter’s happiness as you had been to her reputation...’

‘My daughter! her reputation! her happiness!’

General Ople raised his eyes under a wave, half uttering the outcries.

‘So indifferent to her reputation, that you allowed a young man to talk

with her over the wall, and meet her by appointment: so reckless of the

girl’s happiness, that when I tried to bring you to a treaty, on her

behalf, you could not be dragged from thinking of yourself and your own

affair. When I found that, perhaps I was predisposed to give you some of

what my sisters used to call my spice. You would not honestly state the

proportions of your income, and you affected to be faithful to the woman

of seventy. Most preposterous! Could any caricature of mine exceed in

grotesqueness your sketch of yourself? You are a brave and a generous

man all the same: and I suspect it is more hoodwinking than egotism--or

extreme egotism--that blinds you. A certain amount you must have to be

a man. You did not like my paint, still less did you like my sincerity;

you were annoyed by my corrections of your habits of speech; you were

horrified by the age of seventy, and you were credulous--General

Ople, listen to me, and remember that you have no collar on--you were

credulous of my statement of my great age, or you chose to be so, or

chose to seem so, because I had brushed your cat’s coat against the fur.

And then, full of yourself, not thinking of Elizabeth, but to withdraw

in the chivalrous attitude of the man true to his word to the old woman,

only stickling to bring a certain independence to the common stock,

because--I quote you! and you have no collar on, mind--“you could not

be at your wife’s mercy,” you broke from your proposal on the money

question. Where was your consideration for Elizabeth then?

‘Well, General, you were fond of thinking of yourself, and I thought I

would assist you. I gave you plenty of subject matter. I will not say

I meant to work a homoeopathic cure. But if I drive you to forget your

collar, is it or is it not a triumph?

‘No,’ added Lady Camper, ‘it is no triumph for me, but it is one for

you, if you like to make the most of it. Your fault has been to quit

active service, General, and love your ease too well. It is the fault

of your countrymen. You must get a militia regiment, or inspectorship of

militia. You are ten times the man in exercise. Why, do you mean to tell

me that you would have cared for those drawings of mine when marching?’

‘I think so, I say I think so,’ remarked the General seriously.

‘I doubt it,’ said she. ‘But to the point; here comes Elizabeth. If

you have not much money to spare for her, according to your prudent

calculation, reflect how this money has enfeebled you and reduced you to

the level of the people round about us here--who are, what? Inhabitants

of gentlemanly residences, yes! But what kind of creature? They have

no mental standard, no moral aim, no native chivalry. You were rapidly

becoming one of them, only, fortunately for you, you were sensitive to

ridicule.’

‘Elizabeth shall have half my money settled on her,’ said the General;

‘though I fear it is not much. And if I can find occupation, my lady...’

‘Something worthier than that,’ said Lady Camper, pencilling outlines

rapidly on the margin of a book, and he saw himself lashing a pony; ‘or

that,’ and he was plucking at a cabbage; ‘or that,’ and he was bowing to

three petticoated posts.

‘The likeness is exact,’ General Ople groaned.

‘So you may suppose I have studied you,’ said she. ‘But there is no

real likeness. Slight exaggerations do more harm to truth than reckless

violations of it.

You would not have cared one bit for a caricature, if you had not nursed

the absurd idea of being one of our conquerors. It is the very tragedy

of modesty for a man like you to have such notions, my poor dear good

friend. The modest are the most easily intoxicated when they sip at

vanity. And reflect whether you have not been intoxicated, for these

young people have been wretched, and you have not observed it, though

one of them was living with you, and is the child you love. There, I

have done. Pray show a good face to Elizabeth.’

The General obeyed as well as he could. He felt very like a sheep that

has come from a shearing, and when released he wished to run away. But

hardly had he escaped before he had a desire for the renewal of the

operation. ‘She sees me through, she sees me through,’ he was heard

saying to himself, and in the end he taught himself, to say it with a

secret exultation, for as it was on her part an extraordinary piece

of insight to see him through, it struck him that in acknowledging the

truth of it, he made a discovery of new powers in human nature.

General Ople studied Lady Camper diligently for fresh proofs of her

penetration of the mysteries in his bosom; by which means, as it

happened that she was diligently observing the two betrothed young ones,

he began to watch them likewise, and took a pleasure in the sight. Their

meetings, their partings, their rides out and home furnished him themes

of converse. He soon had enough to talk of, and previously, as he

remembered, he had never sustained a conversation of any length with

composure and the beneficent sense of fulness. Five thousand pounds, to

which sum Lady Camper reduced her stipulation for Elizabeth’s dowry, he

signed over to his dear girl gladly, and came out with the confession to

her ladyship that a well-invested twelve thousand comprised his fortune.

She shrugged she had left off pulling him this way and that, so his

chains were enjoyable, and he said to himself: ‘If ever she should

in the dead of night want a man to defend her!’ He mentioned it to

Reginald, who had been the repository of Elizabeth’s lamentations about

her father being left alone, forsaken, and the young man conceived a

scheme for causing his aunt’s great bell to be rung at midnight,

which would certainly have led to a dramatic issue and the happy

re-establishment of our masculine ascendancy at the close of this

history. But he forgot it in his bridegroom’s delight, until he was

making his miserable official speech at the wedding-breakfast, and set

Elizabeth winking over a tear. As she stood in the hall ready to depart,

a great van was observed in the road at the gates of Douro Lodge; and

this, the men in custody declared to contain the goods and knick-knacks

of the people who had taken the house furnished for a year, and were

coming in that very afternoon.

‘I remember, I say now I remember, I had a notice,’ the General said

cheerily to his troubled daughter.

‘But where are you to go, papa?’ the poor girl cried, close on sobbing.

‘I shall get employment of some sort,’ said he. ‘I was saying I want it,

I need it, I require it.’

‘You are saying three times what once would have sufficed for,’ said

Lady Camper, and she asked him a few questions, frowned with a smile,

and offered him a lodgement in his neighbour’s house.

‘Really, dearest Aunt Angela?’ said Elizabeth.

‘What else can I do, child? I have, it seems, driven him out of a

gentlemanly residence, and I must give him a ladylike one. True, I would

rather have had him at call, but as I have always wished for a policeman

in the house, I may as well be satisfied with a soldier.’

‘But if you lose your character, my lady?’ said Reginald.

‘Then I must look to the General to restore it.’

General Ople immediately bowed his head over Lady Camper’s fingers.

‘An odd thing to happen to a woman of forty-one!’ she said to her great

people, and they submitted with the best grace in the world, while the

General’s ears tingled till he felt younger than Reginald. This, his

reflections ran, or it would be more correct to say waltzed, this is the

result of painting!--that you can believe a woman to be any age when her

cheeks are tinted!

As for Lady Camper, she had been floated accidentally over the ridicule

of the bruit of a marriage at a time of life as terrible to her as her

fiction of seventy had been to General Ople; she resigned herself to

let things go with the tide. She had not been blissful in her first

marriage, she had abandoned the chase of an ideal man, and she had found

one who was tunable so as not to offend her ears, likely ever to be a

fund of amusement for her humour, good, impressible, and above all, very

picturesque. There is the secret of her, and of how it came to pass

that a simple man and a complex woman fell to union after the strangest

division.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

Can believe a woman to be any age when her cheeks are tinted

Modest are the most easily intoxicated when they sip at vanity

Nature is not of necessity always roaring

Only to be described in the tongue of auctioneers

Respected the vegetable yet more than he esteemed the flower

She seems honest, and that is the most we can hope of girls

Spare me that word “female” as long as you live

The mildness of assured dictatorship

When we see our veterans tottering to their fall

THE TALE OF CHLOE AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF BEAU BEAMISH

By George Meredith

‘Fair Chloe, we toasted of old,

As the Queen of our festival meeting;

Now Chloe is lifeless and cold;

You must go to the grave for her greeting.

Her beauty and talents were framed

To enkindle the proudest to win her;

Then let not the mem’ry be blamed

Of the purest that e’er was a sinner!’

Captain Chanter’s Collection.

CHAPTER I

A proper tenderness for the Peerage will continue to pass current the

illustrious gentleman who was inflamed by Cupid’s darts to espouse the

milkmaid, or dairymaid, under his ballad title of Duke of Dewlap: nor

was it the smallest of the services rendered him by Beau Beamish, that

he clapped the name upon her rustic Grace, the young duchess, the very

first day of her arrival at the Wells. This happy inspiration of a wit

never failing at a pinch has rescued one of our princeliest houses from

the assaults of the vulgar, who are ever too rejoiced to bespatter and

disfigure a brilliant coat-of-arms; insomuch that the ballad, to which

we are indebted for the narrative of the meeting and marriage of the

ducal pair, speaks of Dewlap in good faith--

O the ninth Duke of Dewlap I am, Susie dear!

without a hint of a domino title. So likewise the pictorial historian is

merry over ‘Dewlap alliances’ in his description of the society of that

period. He has read the ballad, but disregarded the memoirs of the beau.

Writers of pretension would seem to have an animus against individuals

of the character of Mr. Beamish. They will treat of the habits and

manners of highwaymen, and quote obscure broadsheets and songs of the

people to colour their story, yet decline to bestow more than a passing

remark upon our domestic kings: because they are not hereditary, we

may suppose. The ballad of ‘The Duke and the Dairymaid,’ ascribed with

questionable authority to the pen of Mr. Beamish himself in a freak

of his gaiety, was once popular enough to provoke the moralist to

animadversions upon an order of composition that ‘tempted every bouncing

country lass to sidle an eye in a blowsy cheek’ in expectation of a

coronet for her pains--and a wet ditch as the result! We may doubt it to

have been such an occasion of mischief. But that mischief may have been

done by it to a nobility-loving people, even to the love of our nobility

among the people, must be granted; and for the particular reason,

that the hero of the ballad behaved so handsomely. We perceive a

susceptibility to adulteration in their worship at the sight of one of

their number, a young maid, suddenly snatched up to the gaping heights

of Luxury and Fashion through sheer good looks. Remembering that they

are accustomed to a totally reverse effect from that possession, it is

very perceptible how a breach in their reverence may come of the change.

Otherwise the ballad is innocent; certainly it is innocent in design.

A fresher national song of a beautiful incident of our country life has

never been written. The sentiments are natural, the imagery is apt and

redolent of the soil, the music of the verse appeals to the dullest ear.

It has no smell of the lamp, nothing foreign and far-fetched about it,

but is just what it pretends to be, the carol of the native bird. A

sample will show, for the ballad is much too long to be given entire:

Sweet Susie she tripped on a shiny May morn,

As blithe as the lark from the green-springing corn,

When, hard by a stile, ‘twas her luck to behold

A wonderful gentleman covered with gold!

There was gold on his breeches and gold on his coat,

His shirt-frill was grand as a fifty-pound note;

The diamonds glittered all up him so bright,

She thought him the Milky Way clothing a Sprite!

‘Fear not, pretty maiden,’ he said with a smile;

‘And, pray, let me help you in crossing the stile.

She bobbed him a curtsey so lovely and smart,

It shot like an arrow and fixed in his heart.

As light as a robin she hopped to the stone,

But fast was her hand in the gentleman’s own;

And guess how she stared, nor her senses could trust,

When this creamy gentleman knelt in the dust!

With a rhapsody upon her beauty, he informs her of his rank, for a

flourish to the proposal of honourable and immediate marriage. He

cannot wait. This is the fatal condition of his love: apparently a

characteristic of amorous dukes. We read them in the signs extended

to us. The minds of these august and solitary men have not yet been

sounded; they are too distant. Standing upon their lofty pinnacles, they

are as legible to the rabble below as a line of cuneiform writing in

a page of old copybook roundhand. By their deeds we know them, as

heathendom knows of its gods; and it is repeatedly on record that the

moment they have taken fire they must wed, though the lady’s finger

be circled with nothing closer fitting than a ring of the bed-curtain.

Vainly, as becomes a candid country lass, blue-eyed Susan tells him that

she is but a poor dairymaid. He has been a student of women at Courts,

in which furnace the sex becomes a transparency, so he recounts to her

the catalogue of material advantages he has to offer. Finally, after

his assurances that she is to be married by the parson, really by the

parson, and a real parson--

Sweet Susie is off for her parents’ consent,

And long must the old folk debate what it meant.

She left them the eve of that happy May morn,

To shine like the blossom that hangs from the thorn!

Apart from its historical value, the ballad is an example to poets

of our day, who fly to mythological Greece, or a fanciful and morbid

mediaevalism, or--save the mark!--abstract ideas, for themes of song,

of what may be done to make our English life poetically interesting, if

they would but pluck the treasures presented them by the wayside;

and Nature being now as then the passport to popularity, they have

themselves to thank for their little hold on the heart of the people. A

living native duke is worth fifty Phoebus Apollos to Englishmen, and

a buxom young lass of the fields mounting from a pair of pails to the

estate of duchess, a more romantic object than troops of your visionary

Yseults and Guineveres.

CHAPTER II

A certain time after the marriage, his Grace alighted at the Wells,

and did himself the honour to call on Mr. Beamish. Addressing that

gentleman, to whom he was no stranger, he communicated the purport of

his visit.

‘Sir, and my very good friend,’ he said, ‘first let me beg you to abate

the severity of your countenance, for if I am here in breach of your

prohibition, I shall presently depart in compliance with it. I could

indeed deplore the loss of the passion for play of which you effectually

cured me. I was then armed against a crueller, that allows of no

interval for a man to make his vow to recover!’

‘The disease which is all crisis, I apprehend,’ Mr. Beamish remarked.

‘Which, sir, when it takes hold of dry wood, burns to the last splinter.

It is now’--the duke fetched a tender groan--‘three years ago that I had

a caprice to marry a grandchild!’

‘Of Adam’s,’ Mr. Beamish said cheerfully. ‘There was no legitimate bar

to the union.’

‘Unhappily none. Yet you are not to suppose I regret it. A most

admirable creature, Mr. Beamish, a real divinity! And the better known,

the more adored. There is the misfortune. At my season of life, when the

greater and the minor organs are in a conspiracy to tell me I am mortal,

the passion of love must be welcomed as a calamity, though one would not

be free of it for the renewal of youth. You are to understand, that with

a little awakening taste for dissipation, she is the most innocent of

angels. Hitherto we have lived... To her it has been a new world. But

she is beginning to find it a narrow one. No, no, she is not tired of my

society. Very far from that. But in her present station an inclination

for such gatherings as you have here, for example, is like a desire to

take the air: and the healthy habits of my duchess have not accustomed

her to be immured. And in fine, devote ourselves as we will, a term

approaches when the enthusiasm for serving as your wife’s playfellow all

day, running round tables and flying along corridors before a knotted

handkerchief, is mightily relaxed. Yet the dread of a separation from

her has kept me at these pastimes for a considerable period beyond my

relish of them. Not that I acknowledge fatigue. I have, it seems, a

taste for reflection; I am now much disposed to read and meditate, which

cannot be done without repose. I settle myself, and I receive a worsted

ball in my face, and I am expected to return it. I comply; and then you

would say a nursery in arms. It would else be the deplorable spectacle

of a beautiful young woman yawning.’

‘Earthquake and saltpetre threaten us less terribly,’ said Mr. Beamish.

‘In fine, she has extracted a promise that ‘this summer she shall visit

the Wells for a month, and I fear I cannot break my pledge of my word; I

fear I cannot.’

‘Very certainly I would not,’ said Mr. Beamish.

The duke heaved a sigh. ‘There are reasons, family reasons, why my

company and protection must be denied to her here. I have no wish...

indeed my name, for the present, until such time as she shall have

found her feet... and there is ever a penalty to pay for that. Ah, Mr.

Beamish, pictures are ours, when we have bought them and hung them up;

but who insures us possession of a beautiful work of Nature? I have

latterly betaken me to reflect much and seriously. I am tempted to side

with the Divines in the sermons I have read; the flesh is the habitation

of a rebellious devil.’

‘To whom we object in proportion as we ourselves become quit of him,’

Mr. Beamish acquiesced.

‘But this mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasure, is one

of the wonders. It does not pall on them; they are insatiate.’

‘There is the cataract, and there is the cliff. Potentate to potentate,

duke--so long as you are on my territory, be it understood. Upon my way

to a place of worship once, I passed a Puritan, who was complaining of

a butterfly that fluttered prettily abroad in desecration of the Day of

Rest. “Friend,” said I to him, “conclusively you prove to me that you

are not a butterfly.” Surly did no more than favour me with the anathema

of his countenance.’

‘Cousin Beamish, my complaint of these young people is, that they miss

their pleasure in pursuing it. I have lectured my duchess--’

‘Ha!’

‘Foolish, I own,’ said the duke. ‘But suppose, now, you had caught your

butterfly, and you could neither let it go nor consent to follow its

vagaries. That poses you.’

‘Young people,’ said Mr. Beamish, ‘come under my observation in this

poor realm of mine--young and old. I find them prodigiously alike in

their love of pleasure, differing mainly in their capacity to satisfy

it. That is no uncommon observation. The young, have an edge which they

are desirous of blunting; the old contrariwise. The cry of the young for

pleasure is actually--I have studied their language--a cry for burdens.

Curious! And the old ones cry for having too many on their shoulders:

which is not astonishing. Between them they make an agreeable concert

both to charm the ears and guide the steps of the philosopher, whose

wisdom it is to avoid their tracks.’

‘Good. But I have asked you for practical advice, and you give me an

essay.’

‘For the reason, duke, that you propose a case that suggests hanging.

You mention two things impossible to be done. The alternative is, a

garter and the bedpost. When we have come upon crossways, and we can

decide neither to take the right hand nor the left, neither forward nor

back, the index of the board which would direct us points to itself, and

emphatically says, Gallows.’

‘Beamish, I am distracted. If I refuse her the visit, I foresee

dissensions, tears, games at ball, romps, not one day of rest remaining

to me. I could be of a mind with your Puritan, positively. If I allow

it, so innocent a creature in the atmosphere of a place like this must

suffer some corruption. You should know that the station I took her from

was ... it was modest. She was absolutely a buttercup of the fields. She

has had various masters. She dances... she dances prettily, I could say

bewitchingly. And so she is now for airing her accomplishments: such are

women!’

‘Have you heard of Chloe?’ said Mr. Beamish. ‘There you have an example

of a young lady uncorrupted by this place--of which I would only remark

that it is best unvisited, but better tasted than longed for.’

‘Chloe? A lady who squandered her fortune to redeem some ill-requiting

rascal: I remember to have heard of her. She is here still? And ruined,

of course?’

‘In purse.’

‘That cannot be without the loss of reputation.’

‘Chloe’s champion will grant that she is exposed to the evils of

improvidence. The more brightly shine her native purity, her goodness

of heart, her trustfulness. She is a lady whose exaltation glows in her

abasement.’

‘She has, I see, preserved her comeliness,’ observed the duke, with a

smile.

‘Despite the flying of the roses, which had not her heart’s patience.

‘Tis now the lily that reigns. So, then, Chloe shall be attached to the

duchess during her stay, and unless the devil himself should interfere,

I guarantee her Grace against any worse harm than experience; and that,’

Mr. Beamish added, as the duke raised his arms at the fearful word,

‘that shall be mild. Play she will; she is sure to play. Put it down

at a thousand. We map her out a course of permissible follies, and she

plays to lose the thousand by degrees, with as telling an effect upon a

connubial conscience as we can produce.’

‘A thousand,’ said the duke, ‘will be cheap indeed. I think now I have

had a description of this fair Chloe, and from an enthusiast; a brune?

elegantly mannered and of a good landed family; though she has thought

proper to conceal her name. And that will be our difficulty, cousin

Beamish.’

‘She was, under my dominion, Miss Martinsward,’ Mr. Beamish pursued.

‘She came here very young, and at once her suitors were legion. In the

way of women, she chose the worst among them; and for the fellow Caseldy

she sacrificed the fortune she had inherited of a maternal uncle. To

release him from prison, she paid all his debts; a mountain of bills,

with the lawyers piled above--Pelion upon Ossa, to quote our poets.

In fact, obeying the dictates of a soul steeped in generosity, she

committed the indiscretion to strip herself, scandalizing propriety.

This was immediately on her coming of age; and it was the death-blow to

her relations with her family. Since then, honoured even by rakes, she

has lived impoverished at the Wells. I dubbed her Chloe, and man

or woman disrespectful to Chloe packs. From being the victim of her

generous disposition, I could not save her; I can protect her from the

shafts of malice.’

‘She has no passion for play?’ inquired the duke.

‘She nourishes a passion for the man for whom she bled, to the exclusion

of the other passions. She lives, and I believe I may say that it is the

motive of her rising and dressing daily, in expectation of his advent.’

‘He may be dead.’

‘The dog is alive. And he has not ceased to be Handsome Caseldy, they

say. Between ourselves, duke, there is matter to break her heart. He has

been the Count Caseldy of Continental gaming tables, and he is recently

Sir Martin Caseldy, settled on the estate she made him free to take up

intact on his father’s decease.’

‘Pah! a villain!’

‘With a blacker brand upon him every morning that he looks forth across

his property, and leaves her to languish! She still--I say it to the

redemption of our sex--has offers. Her incomparable attractions of mind

and person exercise the natural empire of beauty. But she will none of

them. I call her the Fair Suicide. She has died for love; and she is a

ghost, a good ghost, and a pleasing ghost, but an apparition, a taper.

The duke fidgeted, and expressed a hope to hear that she was not of

melancholy conversation; and again, that the subject of her discourse

was not confined to love and lovers, happy or unhappy. He wished his

duchess, he said, to be entertained upon gayer topics: love being

a theme he desired to reserve to himself. ‘This month!’ he said,

prognostically shaking and moaning. ‘I would this month were over, and

that we were well purged of it.’

Mr. Beamish reassured him. The wit and sprightliness of Chloe were so

famous as to be considered medical, he affirmed; she was besieged for

her company; she composed and sang impromptu verses, she played harp and

harpsichord divinely, and touched the guitar, and danced, danced like

the silvery moon on the waters of the mill pool. He concluded by saying

that she was both humane and wise, humble-minded and amusing, virtuous

yet not a Tartar; the best of companions for her Grace the young

duchess. Moreover, he boldly engaged to carry the duchess through the

term of her visit under a name that should be as good as a masquerade

for concealing his Grace’s, while giving her all the honours due to her

rank.

‘You strictly interpret my wishes,’ said the duke; ‘all honours, the

foremost place, and my wrath upon man or woman gainsaying them!’

‘Mine! if you please, duke,’ said Mr. Beamish.

‘A thousand pardons! I leave it to you, cousin. I could not be in safer

hands. I am heartily bounders to you. Chloe, then. By the way, she has a

decent respect for age?’

‘She is reverentially inclined.’

‘Not that. She is, I would ask, no wanton prattler of the charms and

advantages of youth?’

‘She has a young adorer that I have dubbed Alonzo, whom she scarce

notices.’

‘Nothing could be better. Alonzo: h’m! A faithful swain?’

‘Life is his tree, upon which unceasingly he carves his mistress’s

initials.’

‘She should not be too cruel. I recollect myself formerly: I was...

Young men will, when long slighted, transfer their affections, and be

warmer to the second flame than to the first. I put you on your guard.

He follows her much? These lovers’ paintings and puffings in the

neighbourhood of the most innocent of women are contagious.’

‘Her Grace will be running home all the sooner.’

‘Or off!--may she forgive me! I am like a King John’s Jew, forced to

lend his treasure without security. What a world is ours! Nothing,

Beamish, nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted! Catch a

prize, and you will find you are at war with your species. You have

to be on the defensive from that moment. There is no such thing as

peaceable procession on earth. Let it be a beautiful young woman!--Ah!’

Mr. Beamish replied bracingly, ‘The champion wrestler challenges all

comers while he wears the belt.’

The duke dejectedly assented. ‘True; or he is challenged, say. Is there

any tale we could tell her of this Alonzo? You could deport him for the

month, my dear Beamish.’

‘I commit no injustice unless with sufficient reason. It is an estimable

youth, as shown by his devotion to a peerless woman. To endow her with

his name and fortune is his only thought.’

‘I perceive; an excellent young fellow! I have an incipient liking

for this young Alonzo. You must not permit my duchess to laugh at him.

Encourage her rather to advance his suit. The silliness of a young man

will be no bad spectacle. Chloe, then. You have set my mind at rest,

Beamish, and it is but another obligation added to the heap; so, if I

do not speak of payment, the reason is that I know you would not have me

bankrupt.’

The remainder of the colloquy of the duke and Mr. Beamish referred to

the date of her Grace’s coming to the Wells, the lodgement she was

to receive, and other minor arrangements bearing upon her state and

comfort; the duke perpetually observing, ‘But I leave it all to you,

Beamish,’ when he had laid down precise instructions in these respects,

even to the specification of the shopkeepers, the confectioner and the

apothecary, who were to balance or cancel one another in the opposite

nature of their supplies, and the haberdasher and the jeweller, with

whom she was to make her purchases. For the duke had a recollection of

giddy shops, and of giddy shopmen too; and it was by serving as one for

a day that a certain great nobleman came to victory with a jealously

guarded dame beautiful as Venus. ‘I would have challenged the goddess!’

he cried, and subsided from his enthusiasm plaintively, like a weak wind

instrument. ‘So there you see the prudence of a choice of shops. But

I leave it to you, Beamish.’ Similarly the great military commander,

having done whatsoever a careful prevision may suggest to insure him

victory, casts himself upon Providence, with the hope of propitiating

the unanticipated and darkly possible.

CHAPTER III

The splendid equipage of a coach and six, with footmen in scarlet and

green, carried Beau Beamish five miles along the road on a sunny day to

meet the young duchess at the boundary of his territory, and conduct

her in state to the Wells. Chloe sat beside him, receiving counsel with

regard to her prospective duties. He was this day the consummate beau,

suave, but monarchical, and his manner of speech partook of his

external grandeur. ‘Spy me the horizon, and apprise me if somewhere you

distinguish a chariot,’ he said, as they drew up on the rise of a hill

of long descent, where the dusty roadway sank between its brown hedges,

and crawled mounting from dry rush-spotted hollows to corn fields on

a companion height directly facing them, at a remove of about

three-quarters of a mile. Chloe looked forth, while the beau passingly

raised his hat for coolness, and murmured, with a glance down the sultry

track: ‘It sweats the eye to see!’

Presently Chloe said, ‘Now a dust blows. Something approaches. Now I

discern horses, now a vehicle; and it is a chariot!’

Orders were issued to the outriders for horns to be sounded.

Both Chloe and Beau Beamish wrinkled their foreheads at the disorderly

notes of triple horns, whose pealing made an acid in the air instead of

sweetness.

‘You would say, kennel dogs that bay the moon!’ said the wincing beau.

‘Yet, as you know, these fellows have been exercised. I have had them

out in a meadow for hours, baked and drenched, to get them rid of their

native cacophony. But they love it, as they love bacon and beans. The

musical taste of our people is in the stage of the primitive appetite

for noise, and for that they are gluttons.’

‘It will be pleasant to hear in the distance,’ Chloe replied.

‘Ay, the extremer the distance, the pleasanter to hear. Are they

advancing?’

‘They stop. There is a cavalier at the window. Now he doffs his hat.’

‘Sweepingly?’

Chloe described a semicircle in the grand manner.

The beau’s eyebrows rose. ‘Powers divine!’ he muttered. ‘She is let

loose from hand to hand, and midway comes a cavalier. We did not count

on the hawks. So I have to deal with a cavalier! It signifies, my dear

Chloe, that I must incontinently affect the passion if I am to be his

match: nothing less.’

‘He has flown,’ said Chloe.

‘Whom she encounters after meeting me, I care not,’ quoth the beau,

snapping a finger. ‘But there has been an interval for damage with a

lady innocent as Eve. Is she advancing?’

‘The chariot is trotting down the hill. He has ridden back. She has no

attendant horseman.’

‘They were dismissed at my injunction ten miles off particularly to

the benefit of the cavaliering horde, it would appear. In the case of a

woman, Chloe, one blink of the eyelids is an omission of watchfulness.’

‘That is an axiom fit for the harem of the Grand Signior.’

‘The Grand Signior might give us profitable lessons for dealing with the

sex.’

‘Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war!’

‘Trust you, and the stopper is out of the smelling-bottle.’

‘Mr. Beamish, we are women, but we have souls.’

‘The pip in the apple whose ruddy cheek allures little Tommy to rob the

orchard is as good a preservative.’

‘You admit that men are our enemies?’

‘I maintain that they carry the banner of virtue.’

‘Oh, Mr. Beamish, I shall expire.’

‘I forbid it in my lifetime, Chloe, for I wish to die believing in one

woman.’

‘No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters!’

‘Then fly to a hermitage; for all flattery is at somebody’s expense,

child. ‘Tis an essence-extract of humanity! To live on it, in the

fashion of some people, is bad--it is downright cannibal. But we may

sprinkle our handkerchiefs with it, and we should, if we would caress

our noses with an air. Society, my Chloe, is a recommencement upon an

upper level of the savage system; we must have our sacrifices. As, for

instance, what say you of myself beside our booted bumpkin squires?’

‘Hundreds of them, Mr. Beamish!’

‘That is a holocaust of squires reduced to make an incense for me,

though you have not performed Druid rites and packed them in gigantic

osier ribs. Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues. Grant us

ours too. I have a serious intention to preserve this young duchess, and

I expect my task to be severe. I carry the banner aforesaid; verily and

penitentially I do. It is an error of the vulgar to suppose that all is

dragon in the dragon’s jaws.’

‘Men are his fangs and claws.’

‘Ay, but the passion for his fiery breath is in woman. She will take her

leap and have her jump, will and will! And at the point where she will

and she won’t, the dragon gulps and down she goes! However, the business

is to keep our buttercup duchess from that same point. Is she near?’

‘I can see her,’ said Chloe.

Beau Beamish requested a sketch of her, and Chloe began: ‘She is

ravishing.’

Upon which he commented, ‘Every woman is ravishing at forty paces, and

still more so in imagination.’

‘Beautiful auburn hair, and a dazzling red and white complexion, set in

a blue coif.’

‘Her eyes?’

‘Melting blue.’

‘‘Tis an English witch!’ exclaimed the beau, and he compassionately

invoked her absent lord.

Chloe’s optics were no longer tasked to discern the fair lady’s

lineaments, for the chariot windows came flush with those of the beau

on the broad plateau of the hill. His coach door was opened. He sat

upright, levelling his privileged stare at Duchess Susan until she

blushed.

‘Ay, madam,’ quoth he, ‘I am not the first.’

‘La, sir!’ said she; ‘who are you?’

The beau deliberately raised his hat and bowed. ‘He, madam, of whose

approach the gentleman who took his leave of you on yonder elevation

informed you.’

She looked artlessly over her shoulder, and at the beau alighting from

his carriage. ‘A gentleman?’

‘On horseback.’

The duchess popped her head through the window on an impulse to measure

the distance between the two hills.

‘Never!’ she cried.

‘Why, madam, did he deliver no message to announce me?’ said the beau,

ruffling.

‘Goodness gracious! You must be Mr. Beamish,’ she replied.

He laid his hat on his bosom, and invited her to quit her carriage for

a seat beside him. She stipulated, ‘If you are really Mr. Beamish?’

He frowned, and raised his head to convince her; but she would not be

impressed, and he applied to Chloe to establish his identity. Hearing

Chloe’s name, the duchess called out, ‘Oh! there, now, that’s enough,

for Chloe’s my maid here, and I know she’s a lady born, and we’re going

to be friends. Hand me to Chloe. And you are Chloe?’ she said, after a

frank stride from step to step of the carriages. ‘And don’t mind being

my maid? You do look a nice, kind creature. And I see you’re a lady

born; I know in a minute. You’re dark, I’m fair; we shall suit. And tell

me--hush!--what dreadful long eyes he has! I shall ask you presently

what you think of me. I was never at the Wells before. Dear me! the

coach has turned. How far off shall we hear the bells to say I’m coming?

I know I’m to have bells. Mr. Beamish, Mr. Beamish! I must have a

chatter with a woman, and I’m in awe of you, sir, that I am, but men and

men I see to talk to for a lift of my finger, by the dozen, in my duke’s

palace--though they’re old ones, that’s true--but a woman who’s a lady,

and kind enough to be my maid, I haven’t met yet since I had the right

to wear a coronet. There, I’ll hold Chloe’s hand, and that’ll do. You

would tell me at once, Chloe, if I was not dressed to your taste; now,

wouldn’t you? As for talkative, that’s a sign with me of my liking

people. I really don’t know what to say to my duke sometimes. I sit and

think it so funny to be having a duke instead of a husband. You’re off!’

The duchess laughed at Chloe’s laughter. Chloe excused herself, but was

informed by her mistress that it was what she liked.

‘For the first two years,’ she resumed, ‘I could hardly speak a

syllable. I stammered, I reddened, I longed to be up in my room brushing

and curling my hair, and was ready to curtsey to everybody. Now I’m

quite at home, for I’ve plenty of courage--except about death, and I’m

worse about death than I was when I was a simple body with a gawk’s

“lawks!” in her round eyes and mouth for an egg. I wonder why that is?

But isn’t death horrible? And skeletons!’ The duchess shuddered.

‘It depends upon the skeleton,’ said Beau Beamish, who had joined the

conversation. ‘Yours, madam, I would rather not meet, because she would

precipitate me into transports of regret for the loss of the flesh. I

have, however, met mine own and had reason for satisfaction with the

interview.’

‘Your own skeleton, sir!’ said the duchess wonderingly and appalled.

‘Unmistakably mine. I will call you to witness by an account of him.’

Duchess Susan gaped, and, ‘Oh, don’t!’ she cried out; but added, ‘It

‘s broad day, and I’ve got some one to sleep anigh me after dark’; with

which she smiled on Chloe, who promised her there was no matter for

alarm.

‘I encountered my gentleman as I was proceeding to my room at night,’

said the beau, ‘along a narrow corridor, where it was imperative that

one of us should yield the ‘pas;’ and, I must confess it, we are all so

amazingly alike in our bones, that I stood prepared to demand place of

him. For indubitably the fellow was an obstruction, and at the first

glance repulsive. I took him for anybody’s skeleton, Death’s

ensign, with his cachinnatory skull, and the numbered ribs, and

the extraordinary splay feet--in fact, the whole ungainly and shaky

hobbledehoy which man is built on, and by whose image in his weaker

moments he is haunted. I had, to be frank, been dancing on a supper with

certain of our choicest Wits and Beauties. It is a recipe for conjuring

apparitions. Now, then, thinks I, my fine fellow, I will bounce you; and

without a salutation I pressed forward. Madam, I give you my word, he

behaved to the full pitch as I myself should have done under similar

circumstances. Retiring upon an inclination of his structure, he draws

up and fetches me a bow of the exact middle nick between dignity

and service. I advance, he withdraws, and again the bow, devoid of

obsequiousness, majestically condescending. These, thinks I, be royal

manners. I could have taken him for the Sable King in person, stripped

of his mantle. On my soul, he put me to the blush.’

‘And is that all?’ asked the duchess, relieving herself with a sigh.

‘Why, madam,’ quoth the beau, ‘do you not see that he could have been

none other than mine own, who could comport himself with that grand air

and gracefulness when wounded by his closest relative? Upon his opening

my door for me, and accepting the ‘pas,’ which I now right heartily

accorded him, I recognized at once both him and the reproof he had

designedly dealt me--or the wine supper I had danced on, perhaps

I should say’ and I protest that by such a display of supreme good

breeding he managed to convey the highest compliment ever received by

man, namely the assurance, that after the withering away of this mortal

garb, I shall still be noted for urbanity and elegancy. Nay, and more,

immortally, without the slip I was guilty of when I carried the bag of

wine.’

Duchess Susan fanned herself to assist her digestion of the anecdote.

‘Well, it’s not so frightful a story, and I know you are the great Mr.

Beamish;’ she said.

He questioned her whether the gentleman had signalled him to her on the

hill.

‘What can he mean about a gentleman?’ she turned to Chloe. ‘My duke told

me you would meet me, sir. And you are to protect me. And if anything

happens, it is to be your fault.’

‘Entirely,’ said the beau. ‘I shall therefore maintain a vigilant

guard.’

‘Except leaving me free. Oof! I’ve been boxed up so long. I declare,

Chloe, I feel like a best dress out for a holiday, and a bit afraid of

spoiling. I’m a real child, more than I was when my duke married me. I

seemed to go in and grow up again, after I was raised to fortune. And

nobody to tell of it! Fancy that! For you can’t talk to old gentlemen

about what’s going on in your heart.’

‘How of young gentlemen?’ she was asked by the beau.

And she replied, ‘They find it out.’

‘Not if you do not assist them,’ said he.

Duchess Susan let her eyelids and her underlie half drop, as she looked

at him with the simple shyness of one of nature’s thoughts in her head

at peep on the pastures of the world. The melting blue eyes and the

cherry lip made an exceedingly quickening picture. ‘Now, I wonder if

that is true?’ she transferred her slyness to speech.

‘Beware the middle-aged!’ he exclaimed.

She appealed to Chloe. ‘And I’m sure they’re the nicest.’

Chloe agreed that they were.

The duchess measured Chloe and the beau together, with a mind swift in

apprehending all that it hungered for.

She would have pursued the pleasing theme had she not been directed to

gaze below upon the towers and roofs of the Wells, shining sleepily in a

siesta of afternoon Summer sunlight.

With a spread of her silken robe, she touched the edifice of her hair,

murmuring to Chloe, ‘I can’t abide that powder. You shall see me walk

in a hoop. I can. I’ve done it to slow music till my duke clapped hands.

I’m nothing sitting to what I am on my feet. That’s because I haven’t

got fine language yet. I shall. It seems to come last. So, there ‘s the

place. And whereabouts do all the great people meet and prommy--?’

‘They promenade where you see the trees, madam,’ said Chloe.

‘And where is it where the ladies sit and eat jam tarts with whipped

cream on ‘em, while the gentlemen stand and pay compliments?’

Chloe said it was at a shop near the pump room.

Duchess Susan looked out over the house-tops, beyond the dusty hedges.

‘Oh, and that powder!’ she cried. ‘I hate to be out of the fashion and a

spectacle. But I do love my own hair, and I have such a lot, and I like

the colour, and so does my duke. Only, don’t let me be fingered at.

If once I begin to blush before people, my courage is gone; my singing

inside me is choked; and I’ve a real lark going on in me all day long,

rain or sunshine--hush, all about love and amusement.’

Chloe smiled, and Duchess Susan said, ‘Just like a bird, for I don’t

know what it is.’

She looked for Chloe to say that she did.

At the moment a pair of mounted squires rode up, and the coach stopped,

while Beau Beamish gave orders for the church bells to be set ringing,

and the band to meet and precede his equipage at the head of the bath

avenue: ‘in honour of the arrival of her Grace the Duchess of Dewlap.’

He delivered these words loudly to his men, and turned an effulgent gaze

upon the duchess, so that for a minute she was fascinated and did not

consult her hearing; but presently she fell into an uneasiness; the

signs increased, she bit her lip, and after breathing short once or

twice, ‘Was it meaning me, Mr. Beamish?’ she said.

‘You, madam, are the person whom we ‘delight to honour,’ he replied.

‘Duchess of what?’ she screwed uneasy features to hear.

‘Duchess of Dewlap,’ said he.

‘It’s not my title, sir.’

‘It is your title on my territory, madam.’

She made her pretty nose and upper lip ugly with a sneer of ‘Dew--!

And enter that town before all those people as Duchess of... Oh, no,

I won’t; I just won’t! Call back those men now, please; now, if you

please. Pray, Mr. Beamish! You’ll offend me, sir. I’m not going to be a

mock. You’ll offend my duke, sir. He’d die rather than have my feelings

hurt. Here’s all my pleasure spoilt. I won’t and I sha’n’t enter the

town as duchess of that stupid name, so call ‘em back, call ‘em back

this instant. I know who I am and what I am, and I know what’s due to

me, I do.’

Beau Beamish rejoined, ‘I too. Chloe will tell you I am lord here.’

‘Then I’ll go home, I will. I won’t be laughed at for a great lady

ninny. I’m a real lady of high rank, and such I’ll appear. What ‘s a

Duchess of Dewlap? One might as well be Duchess of Cowstail, Duchess of

Mopsend. And those people! But I won’t be that. I won’t be played with.

I see them staring! No, I can make up my mind, and I beg you to call

back your men, or I’ll go back home.’ She muttered, ‘Be made fun

of--made a fool of!’

‘Your Grace’s chariot is behind,’ said the beau.

His despotic coolness provoked her to an outcry and weeping: she

repeated, ‘Dewlap! Dewlap!’ in sobs; she shook her shoulders and hid her

face.

‘You are proud of your title, are you, madam?’ said he.

‘I am.’ She came out of her hands to answer him proudly. ‘That I am!’

she meant for a stronger affirmation.

‘Then mark me,’ he said impressively; ‘I am your duke’s friend, and you

are under my charge here. I am your guardian and you are my ward, and

you can enter the town only on the condition of obedience to me. Now,

mark me, madam; no one can rob you of your real name and title saving

yourself. But you are entering a place where you will encounter a

thousand temptations to tarnish, and haply forfeit it. Be warned do

nothing that will.’

‘Then I’m to have my own title?’ said she, clearing up.

‘For the month of your visit you are Duchess of Dewlap.’

‘I say I sha’n’t!’

‘You shall.’

‘Never, sir!’

‘I command it.’

She flung herself forward, with a wail, upon Chloe’s bosom. ‘Can’t you

do something for me?’ she whimpered.

‘It is impossible to move Mr. Beamish,’ Chloe said.

Out of a pause, composed of sobs and sighs, the duchess let loose in a

broken voice: ‘Then I ‘m sure I think--I think I’d rather have met--have

met his skeleton!’

Her sincerity was equal to wit.

Beau Beamish shouted. He cordially applauded her, and in the genuine

kindness of an admiration that surprised him, he permitted himself

the liberty of taking and saluting her fingers. She fancied there was

another chance for her, but he frowned at the mention of it.

Upon these proceedings the exhilarating sound of the band was heard;

simultaneously a festival peal of bells burst forth; and an admonishment

of the necessity for concealing her chagrin and exhibiting both station

and a countenance to the people, combined with the excitement of the

new scenes and the marching music to banish the acuter sense of

disappointment from Duchess Susan’s mind; so she very soon held herself

erect, and wore a face open to every wonder, impressionable as the blue

lake-surface, crisped here and there by fitful breezes against a level

sun.

CHAPTER IV

It was an axiom with Mr. Beamish, our first, if not our only

philosophical beau and a gentleman of some thoughtfulness, that the

social English require tyrannical government as much as the political

are able to dispense with it: and this he explained by an exposition of

the character of a race possessed of the eminent virtue of individual

self-assertion, which causes them to insist on good elbowroom wherever

they gather together. Society, however, not being tolerable where the

smoothness of intercourse is disturbed by a perpetual punching of sides,

the merits of the free citizen in them become their demerits when a

fraternal circle is established, and they who have shown an example of

civilization too notable in one sphere to call for eulogy, are often to

be seen elbowing on the ragged edge of barbarism in the other. They must

therefore be reduced to accept laws not of their own making, and of an

extreme rigidity.

Here too is a further peril; for the gallant spirits distinguishing them

in the state of independence may (he foresaw the melancholy experience

of a later age) abandon them utterly in subjection, and the glorious

boisterousness befitting the village green forsake them even in their

haunts of liberal association, should they once be thoroughly tamed

by authority. Our ‘merrie England’ will then be long-faced England, an

England of fallen chaps, like a boar’s head, bearing for speech a lemon

in the mouth: good to feast on, mayhap; not with!

Mr. Beamish would actually seem to have foreseen the danger of a

transition that he could watch over only in his time; and, as he said,

‘I go, as I came, on a flash’; he had neither ancestry nor descendants:

he was a genius, he knew himself a solitary, therefore, in spite of his

efforts to create his like. Within his district he did effect something,

enough to give him fame as one of the princely fathers of our domestic

civilization, though we now appear to have lost by it more than formerly

we gained. The chasing of the natural is ever fraught with dubious

hazards. If it gallops back, according to the proverb, it will do so at

the charge: commonly it gallops off, quite off; and then for any kind of

animation our precarious dependence is upon brains: we have to live on

our wits, which are ordinarily less productive than land, and cannot be

remitted in entail.

Rightly or wrongly (there are differences of opinion about it) Mr.

Beamish repressed the chthonic natural with a rod of iron beneath his

rule. The hoyden and the bumpkin had no peace until they had given

public imitations of the lady and the gentleman; nor were the lady and

the gentleman privileged to be what he called ‘free flags.’ He could be

charitable to the passion, but he bellowed the very word itself (hauled

up smoking from the brimstone lake) against them that pretended to be

shamelessly guilty of the peccadilloes of gallantry. His famous accost

of a lady threatening to sink, and already performing like a vessel in

that situation: ‘So, madam, I hear you are preparing to enrol yourself

in the very ancient order?’... (he named it) was a piece of insolence

that involved him in some discord with the lady’s husband and ‘the

rascal steward,’ as he chose to term the third party in these affairs:

yet it is reputed to have saved the lady.

Furthermore, he attacked the vulgarity of persons of quality, and he has

told a fashionable dame who was indulging herself in a marked sneer of

disdain, not improving to her features, ‘that he would be pleased

to have her assurance it was her face she presented to mankind’: a

thing--thanks perhaps to him chiefly--no longer possible of utterance.

One of the sex asking him why he addressed his persecutions particularly

to women: ‘Because I fight your battles,’ says he, ‘and I find you in

the ranks of the enemy.’ He treated them as traitors.

He was nevertheless well supported by a sex that compensates for dislike

of its friend before a certain age by a cordial recognition of him when

it has touched the period. A phalanx of great dames gave him the terrors

of Olympus for all except the natively audacious, the truculent and the

insufferably obtuse; and from the midst of them he launched decree and

bolt to good effect: not, of course, without receiving return missiles,

and not without subsequent question whether the work of that man was

beneficial to the country, who indeed tamed the bumpkin squire and his

brood, but at the cost of their animal spirits and their gift of speech;

viz. by making petrifactions of them. In the surgical operation of

tracheotomy, a successful treatment of the patient hangs, we believe, on

the promptness and skill of the introduction of the artificial windpipe;

and it may be that our unhappy countrymen when cut off from the source

of their breath were not neatly handled; or else that there is a

physical opposition in them to anything artificial, and it must be

nature or nothing. The dispute shall be left where it stands.

Now, to venture upon parading a beautiful young Duchess of Dewlap, with

an odour of the shepherdess about her notwithstanding her acquired art

of stepping conformably in a hoop, and to demand full homage of respect

for a lady bearing such a title, who had the intoxicating attractions

of the ruddy orchard apple on the tree next the roadside wall, when the

owner is absent, was bold in Mr. Beamish, passing temerity; nor would

even he have attempted it had he not been assured of the support of his

phalanx of great ladies. They indeed, after being taken into the

secret, had stipulated that first they must have an inspection of the

transformed dairymaid; and the review was not unfavourable. Duchess

Susan came out of it more scatheless than her duke. She was tongue-tied,

and her tutored walking and really admirable stature helped her to

appease, the critics of her sex; by whom her too readily blushful

innocence was praised, with a reserve, expressed in the remark, that she

was a monstrous fine toy for a duke’s second childhood, and should never

have been let fly from his nursery. Her milliner was approved. The duke

was a notorious connoisseur of female charms, and would see, of course,

to the decorous adornment of her person by the best of modistes. Her

smiling was pretty, her eyes were soft; she might turn out good, if well

guarded for a time; but these merits of the woman are not those of the

great lady, and her title was too strong a beam on her character to give

it a fair chance with her critics. They one and all recommended

powder for her hair and cheeks. That odour of the shepherdess could be

exorcised by no other means, they declared. Her blushing was indecent.

Truly the critics of the foeman sex behaved in a way to cause the

blushes to swarm rosy as the troops of young Loves round Cytherea in her

sea-birth, when, some soaring, and sinking some, they flutter like her

loosened zone, and breast the air thick as flower petals on the summer’s

breath, weaving her net for the world. Duchess Susan might protest

her inability to keep her blushes down; that the wrong was done by the

insolent eyes, and not by her artless cheeks. Ay, but nature, if we

are to tame these men, must be swathed and concealed, partly stifled,

absolutely stifled upon occasion. The natural woman does not move a

foot without striking earth to conjure up the horrid apparition of the

natural man, who is not as she, but a cannibal savage. To be the light

which leads, it is her business to don the misty vesture of an idea,

that she may dwell as an idea in men’s minds, very dim, very powerful,

but abstruse, unseizable. Much wisdom was imparted to her on the

subject, and she understood a little, and echoed hollow to the

remainder, willing to show entire docility as far as her intelligence

consented to be awake. She was in that stage of the dainty, faintly

tinged innocence of the amorousness of themselves when beautiful young

women who have not been caught for schooling in infancy deem it a

defilement to be made to appear other than the blessed nature has made

them, which has made them beautiful, and surely therefore deserves to be

worshipped. The lectures of the great ladies and Chloe’s counsels failed

to persuade her to use the powder puff-ball. Perhaps too, as timidity

quitted her, she enjoyed her distinctiveness in their midst.

But the distinctiveness of a Duchess of Dewlap with the hair and cheeks

of our native fields, was fraught with troubles outrunning Mr. Beamish’s

calculations. He had perceived that she would be attractive; he had

not reckoned on the homogeneousness of her particular English charms.

A beauty in red, white, and blue is our goddess Venus with the apple

of Paris in her hand; and after two visits to the Pump Room, and one

promenade in the walks about the Assembly House, she had as completely

divided the ordinary guests of the Wells into male and female in opinion

as her mother Nature had done in it sex. And the men would not be

silenced; they had gazed on their divinest, and it was for the women

to succumb to that unwholesome state, so full of thunder. Knights and

squires, military and rural, threw up their allegiance right and left

to devote themselves to this robust new vision, and in their peculiar

manner, with a general View-halloo, and Yoicks, Tally-ho, and away we

go, pelt ahead! Unexampled as it is in England for Beauty to kindle the

ardours of the scent of the fox, Duchess Susan did more--she turned all

her followers into hounds; they were madmen: within a very few days of

her entrance bets raged about her, and there were brawls, jolly flings

at her character in the form of lusty encomium, givings of the lie, and

upon one occasion a knock-down blow in public, as though the place had

never known the polishing touch of Mr. Beamish.

He was thrown into great perplexity by that blow. Discountenancing the

duel as much as he could, an affair of the sword was nevertheless more

tolerable than the brutal fist: and of all men to be guilty of it, who

would have anticipated the young Alonzo, Chloe’s quiet, modest lover!

He it was. The case came before Mr. Beamish for his decision; he had

to pronounce an impartial judgement, and for some time, during the

examination of evidence, he suffered, as he assures us in his Memoirs, a

royal agony. To have to strike with the glaive of Justice them whom they

most esteem, is the greatest affliction known to kings. He would

have done it: he deserved to reign. Happily the evidence against the

gentleman who was tumbled, Mr. Ralph Shepster, excused Mr. Augustus

Camwell, otherwise Alonzo, for dealing with him promptly to shut his

mouth.

This Shepster, a raw young squire, ‘reeking,’ Beau Beamish writes of

him, ‘one half of the soil, and t’ other half of the town,’ had involved

Chloe in his familiar remarks upon the Duchess of Dewlap; and the

personal respect entertained by Mr. Beamish for Chloe so strongly

approved Alonzo’s championship of her, that in giving judgement he

laid stress on young Alonzo’s passion for Chloe, to prove at once the

disinterestedness of the assailant, and the judicial nature of the

sentence: which was, that Mr. Ralph Shepster should undergo banishment,

and had the right to demand reparation. The latter part of this decree

assisted in effecting the execution of the former. Shepster declined

cold steel, calling it murder, and was effusive of nature’s logic on the

subject.

‘Because a man comes and knocks me down, I’m to go up to him and ask him

to run me through!’

His shake of the head signified that he was not such a noodle. Voluble

and prolific of illustration, as is no one so much as a son of nature

inspired to speak her words of wisdom, he defied the mandate, and

refused himself satisfaction, until in the strangest manner possible

flights of white feathers beset him, and he became a mark for

persecution too trying for the friendship of his friends. He fled,

repeating his tale, that he had seen ‘Beamish’s Duchess,’ and Chloe

attending her, at an assignation in the South Grove, where a gentleman,

unknown to the Wells, presented himself to the adventurous ladies, and

they walked together--a tale ending with nods.

Shepster’s banishment was one of those victories of justice upon which

mankind might be congratulated if they left no commotion behind. But,

as when a boy has been horsed before his comrades, dread may visit them,

yet is there likewise devilry in the school; and everywhere over earth

a summary punishment that does not sweep the place clear is likely to

infect whom it leaves remaining. The great law-givers, Lycurgus, Draco,

Solon, Beamish, sorrowfully acknowledge that they have had recourse

to infernal agents, after they have thus purified their circle of an

offender. Doctors confess to the same of their physic. The expelling

agency has next to be expelled, and it is a subtle poison, affecting our

spirits. Duchess Susan had now the incense of a victim to heighten her

charms; like the treasure-laden Spanish galleon for whom, on her voyage

home from South American waters, our enterprising light-craft privateers

lay in wait, she had the double attraction of being desirable and an

enemy. To watch above her conscientiously was a harassing business.

Mr. Beamish sent for Chloe, and she came to him at once. Her look

was curious; he studied it while they conversed. So looks one who is

watching the sure flight of an arrow, or the happy combinations of an

intrigue. Saying, ‘I am no inquisitor, child,’ he ventured upon two or

three modest inquisitions with regard to her mistress. The title he

had disguised Duchess Susan in, he confessed to rueing as the principal

cause of the agitation of his principality. ‘She is courted,’ he said,

‘less like a citadel waving a flag than a hostelry where the demand is

for sitting room and a tankard! These be our manners. Yet, I must own,

a Duchess of Dewlap is a provocation, and my exclusive desire to protect

the name of my lord stands corrected by the perils environing his lady.

She is other than I supposed her; she is, we will hope, an excellent

good creature, but too attractive for most and drawbridge and the

customary defences to be neglected.

Chloe met his interrogatory with a ready report of the young duchess’s

innocence and good nature that pacified Mr. Beamish.

‘And you?’ said he.

She smiled for answer.

That smile was not the common smile; it was one of an eager

exultingness, producing as he gazed the twitch of an inquisitive

reflection of it on his lips. Such a smile bids us guess and quickens us

to guess, warns us we burn and speeds our burning, and so, like an angel

wafting us to some heaven-feasting promontory, lifts us out of ourselves

to see in the universe of colour what the mouth has but pallid speech

to tell. That is the very heart’s language; the years are in a look, as

mount and vale of the dark land spring up in lightning.

He checked himself: he scarce dared to say it.

She nodded.

‘You have seen the man, Chloe?’

Her smiling broke up in the hard lines of an ecstasy neighbouring pain.

‘He has come; he is here; he is faithful; he has not forgotten me. I was

right. I knew! I knew!’

‘Caseldy has come?’

‘He has come. Do not ask. To have him! to see him! Mr. Beamish, he is

here.’

‘At last!’

‘Cruel!’

‘Well, Caseldy has come, then! But now, friend Chloe, you should be made

aware that the man--’

She stopped her ears. As she did so, Mr. Beamish observed a thick silken

skein dangling from one hand. Part of it was plaited, and at the upper

end there was a knot. It resembled the commencement of her manufactory

of a whip: she swayed it to and fro, allowing him to catch and lift the

threads on his fingers for the purpose of examining her work. There was

no special compliment to pay, so he dropped it without remark.

Their faces had expressed her wish to hear nothing from him of Caseldy

and his submission to say nothing. Her happiness was too big; she

appeared to beg to lie down with it on her bosom, in the manner of an

outworn, young mother who has now first received her infant in her arms

from the nurse.

CHAPTER V

Humouring Chloe with his usual considerateness, Mr. Beamish forbore to

cast a shadow on her new-born joy, and even within himself to doubt the

security of its foundation. Caseldy’s return to the Wells was at least

some assurance of his constancy, seeing that here they appointed to

meet when he and Chloe last parted. All might be well, though it was

unexplained why he had not presented himself earlier. To the lightest

inquiry Chloe’s reply was a shiver of happiness.

Moreover, Mr. Beamish calculated that Caseldy would be a serviceable

ally in commanding a proper respect for her Grace the Duchess of Dewlap.

So he betook himself cheerfully to Caseldy’s lodgings to deliver a

message of welcome, meeting, on his way thither, Mr. Augustus Camwell,

with whom he had a short conversation, greatly to his admiration of the

enamoured young gentleman’s goodness and self-compression in speaking of

Caseldy and Chloe’s better fortune. Mr. Camwell seemed hurried.

Caseldy was not at home, and Mr. Beamish proceeded to the lodgings of

the duchess. Chloe had found her absent. The two consulted. Mr. Beamish

put on a serious air, until Chloe mentioned the pastrycook’s shop, for

Duchess Susan had a sweet tooth; she loved a visit to the pastrycook’s,

whose jam tarts were dearer to her than his more famous hot mutton pies.

The pastry cook informed Mr. Beamish that her Grace had been in

his shop, earlier than usual, as it happened, and accompanied by a

foreign-looking gentleman wearing moustachois. Her Grace, the pastrycook

said, had partaken of several tarts, in common with the gentleman, who

complimented him upon his excelling the Continental confectioner. Mr.

Beamish glanced at Chloe. He pursued his researches down at the Pump

Room, while she looked round the ladies’ coffee house. Encountering

again, they walked back to the duchess’s lodgings, where a band stood

playing in the road, by order of her Grace; but the duchess was away,

and had not been seen since her morning’s departure.

‘What sort of character would you give mistress Susan of Dewlap, from

your personal acquaintance with it?’ said Mr. Beamish to Chloe, as they

stepped from the door.

Chloe mused and said, ‘I would add “good” to the unkindest comparison

you could find for her.’

‘But accepting the comparison!’ Mr. Beamish nodded, and revolved upon

the circumstance of their being very much in nature’s hands with Duchess

Susan, of whom it might be said that her character was good, yet all

the more alive to the temptations besetting the Spring season. He allied

Chloe’s adjective to a number of epithets equally applicable to nature

and to women, according to current ideas, concluding: ‘Count, they call

your Caseldy at his lodgings. “The Count he is out for an airing.” He is

counted out. Ah! you will make him drop that “Count” when he takes you

from here.’

‘Do not speak of the time beyond the month,’ said Chloe, so urgently on

a rapid breath as to cause Mr. Beamish to cast an inquiring look at her.

She answered it, ‘Is not one month of brightness as much as we can ask

for?’

The beau clapped his elbows complacently to his sides in philosophical

concord with her sentiment.

In the afternoon, on the parade, they were joined by Mr. Camwell, among

groups of fashionable ladies and their escorts, pacing serenely, by

medical prescription, for an appetite. As he did not comment on the

absence of the duchess, Mr. Beamish alluded to it; whereupon he was

informed that she was about the meadows, and had been there for some

hours.

‘Not unguarded,’ he replied to Mr. Beamish.

‘Aha!’ quoth the latter; ‘we have an Argus!’ and as the duchess was not

on the heights, and the sun’s rays were mild in cloud, he agreed to

his young friend’s proposal that they should advance to meet her. Chloe

walked with them, but her face was disdainful; at the stiles she gave

her hand to Mr. Beamish; she did not address a word to Mr. Camwell,

and he knew the reason. Nevertheless he maintained his air of soldierly

resignation to the performance of duty, and held his head like a

gentleman unable to conceive the ignominy of having played spy. Chloe

shrank from him.

Duchess Susan was distinguished coming across a broad uncut meadow,

tirra-lirraing beneath a lark, Caseldy in attendance on her. She stopped

short and spoke to him; then came forward, crying ingenuously. ‘Oh, Mr.

Beamish, isn’t this just what you wanted me to do?’

‘No, madam,’ said he, ‘you had my injunctions to the contrary.’

‘La!’ she exclaimed, ‘I thought I was to run about in the fields now and

then to preserve my simplicity. I know I was told so, and who told me!’

Mr. Beamish bowed effusively to the introduction of Caseldy, whose

fingers he touched in sign of the renewal of acquaintance, and with a

laugh addressed the duchess:

‘Madam, you remind me of a tale of my infancy. I had a juvenile comrade

of the tenderest age, by name Tommy Plumston, and he enjoyed the

privilege of intimacy with a component urchin yclept Jimmy Clungeon,

with which adventurous roamer, in defiance of his mother’s interdict

against his leaving the house for a minute during her absence from

home, he departed on a tour of the district, resulting, perhaps as a

consequence of its completeness, in this, that at a distance computed at

four miles from the maternal mansion, he perceived his beloved mama with

sufficient clearness to feel sure that she likewise had seen him.

Tommy consulted with Jimmy, and then he sprang forward on a run to his

frowning mama, and delivered himself in these artless words, which I

repeat as they were uttered, to give you the flavour of the innocent

babe: he said, “I frink I frought I hear you call me, ma! and Jimmy

Clungeon, he frought he frink so too!” So, you see, the pair of them

were under the impression that they were doing right. There is a

delicate distinction in the tenses of each frinking where the other

frought, enough in itself to stamp sincerity upon the statement.’

Caseldy said, ‘The veracity of a boy possessing a friend named Clungeon

is beyond contest.’

Duchess Susan opened her eyes. ‘Four miles from home! And what did his

mother do to him?’

‘Tommy’s mama,’ said Mr. Beamish, and with the resplendent licence of

the period which continued still upon tolerable terms with nature under

the compromise of decorous ‘Oh-fie!’ flatly declared the thing she did.

‘I fancy, sir, that I caught sight of your figure on the hill yonder

about an hour or so earlier,’ said Caseldy to Mr. Camwell.

‘If it was at the time when you were issuing from that wood, sir, your

surmise is correct,’ said the young gentleman.

‘You are long-sighted, sir!’

‘I am, sir.’

‘And so am I.’

‘And I,’ said Chloe.

‘Our Chloe will distinguish you accurately at a mile, and has done it,’

observed Mr. Beamish.

‘One guesses tiptoe on a suspicion, and if one is wrong it passes, and

if one is right it is a miracle,’ she said, and raised her voice on a

song to quit the subject.

‘Ay, ay, Chloe; so then you had a suspicion, you rogue, the day we had

the pleasure of meeting the duchess, had you?’ Mr. Beamish persisted.

Duchess Susan interposed. ‘Such a pretty song! and you to stop her,

sir!’

Caseldy took up the air.

‘Oh, you two together!’ she cried. ‘I do love hearing music in the

fields; it is heavenly. Bands in the town and voices in the green

fields, I say! Couldn’t you join Chloe, Mr.... Count, sir, before we

come among the people, here where it ‘s all so nice and still. Music!

and my heart does begin so to pit-a-pat. Do you sing, Mr. Alonzo?’

‘Poorly,’ the young gentleman replied.

‘But the Count can sing, and Chloe’s a real angel when she sings;

and won’t you, dear?’ she implored Chloe, to whom Caseldy addressed a

prelude with a bow and a flourish of the hand.

Chloe’s voice flew forth. Caseldy’s rich masculine matched it. The song

was gay; he snapped his finger at intervals in foreign style, singing

big-chested, with full notes and a fine abandonment, and the quickest

susceptibility to his fair companion’s cunning modulations, and an eye

for Duchess Susan’s rapture.

Mr. Beamish and Mr. Camwell applauded them.

‘I never can tell what to say when I’m brimming’; the duchess let fall

a sigh. ‘And he can play the flute, Mr. Beamish. He promised me he

would go into the orchestra and play a bit at one of your nice evening

delicious concerts, and that will be nice--Oh!’

‘He promised you, madam, did he so?’ said the beau. ‘Was it on your way

to the Wells that he promised you?’

‘On my way to the Wells!’ she exclaimed softly. ‘Why, how could anybody

promise me a thing before ever he saw me? I call that a strange thing to

ask a person. No, to-day, while we were promenading; and I should hear

him sing, he said. He does admire his Chloe so. Why, no wonder, is it,

now? She can do everything; knit, sew, sing, dance--and talk! She’s

never uneasy for a word. She makes whole scenes of things go round you,

like a picture peep-show, I tell her. And always cheerful. She hasn’t

a minute of grumps; and I’m sometimes a dish of stale milk fit only for

pigs.

With your late hours here, I’m sure I want tickling in the morning, and

Chloe carols me one of her songs, and I say, “There’s my bird!”’

Mr. Beamish added, ‘And you will remember she has a heart.’

‘I should think so!’ said the duchess.

‘A heart, madam!’

‘Why, what else?’

Nothing other, the beau, by his aspect, was constrained to admit.

He appeared puzzled by this daughter of nature in a coronet; and more on

her remarking, ‘You know about her heart, Mr. Beamish.’

He acquiesced, for of course he knew of her life-long devotion to

Caseldy; but there was archness in her tone. However, he did not expect

a woman of her education to have the tone perfectly concordant with

the circumstances. Speaking tentatively of Caseldy’s handsome face and

figure, he was pleased to hear the duchess say, ‘So I tell Chloe.’

‘Well,’ said he, ‘we must consider them united; they are one.’

Duchess Susan replied, ‘That’s what I tell him; she will do anything you

wish.’

He repeated these words with an interjection, and decided in his mind

that they were merely silly. She was a real shepherdess by birth and

nature, requiring a strong guard over her attractions on account of her

simplicity; such was his reading of the problem; he had conceived it at

the first sight of her, and always recurred to it under the influence

of her artless eyes, though his theories upon men and women were astute,

and that cavalier perceived by long-sighted Chloe at Duchess Susan’s

coach window perturbed him at whiles. Habitually to be anticipating the

simpleton in a particular person is the sure way of being sometimes

the dupe, as he would not have been the last to warn a neophyte; but

abstract wisdom is in need of an unappeased suspicion of much keenness

of edge, if we would have it alive to cope with artless eyes and our

prepossessed fancy of their artlessness.

‘You talk of Chloe to him?’ he said.

She answered. ‘Yes, that I do. And he does love her! I like to hear him.

He is one of the gentlemen who don’t make me feel timid with them.’

She received a short lecture on the virtues of timidity in preserving

the sex from danger; after which, considering that the lady who does not

feel timid with a particular cavalier has had no sentiment awakened, he

relinquished his place to Mr. Camwell, and proceeded to administer the

probe to Caseldy.

That gentleman was communicatively candid. Chloe had left him, and he

related how, summoned home to England and compelled to settle a dispute

threatening a lawsuit, he had regretfully to abstain from visiting

the Wells for a season, not because of any fear of the attractions of

play--he had subdued the frailty of the desire to play--but because

he deemed it due to his Chloe to bring her an untroubled face, and he

wished first to be the better of the serious annoyances besetting him.

For some similar reason he had not written; he wished to feast on her

surprise. ‘And I had my reward,’ he said, as if he had been the person

principally to suffer through that abstinence. ‘I found--I may say it to

you, Mr. Beamish love in her eyes. Divine by nature, she is one of the

immortals, both in appearance and in steadfastness.’

They referred to Duchess Susan. Caseldy reluctantly owned that it would

be an unkindness to remove Chloe from attendance on her during the short

remaining term of her stay at the Wells; and so he had not proposed it,

he said, for the duchess was a child, an innocent, not stupid by any

means; but, of course, her transplanting from an inferior to an exalted

position put her under disadvantages.

Mr. Beamish spoke of the difficulties of his post as guardian, and also

of the strange cavalier seen at her carriage window by Chloe.

Caseldy smiled and said, ‘If there was one--and Chloe is rather

long--sighted--we can hardly expect her to confess it.’

‘Why not, sir, if she be this piece of innocence?’ Mr. Beamish was led

to inquire.

‘She fears you, sir,’ Caseldy answered. ‘You have inspired her with an

extraordinary fear of you.’

‘I have?’ said the beau: it had been his endeavour to inspire it, and he

swelled somewhat, rather with relief at the thought of his possessing a

power to control his delicate charge, than with our vanity; yet would

it be audacious to say that there was not a dose of the latter. He was a

very human man; and he had, as we have seen, his ideas of the effect of

the impression of fear upon the hearts of women. Something, in any case,

caused him to forget the cavalier.

They were drawn to the three preceding them, by a lively dissension

between Chloe and Mr. Camwell.

Duchess Susan explained it in her blunt style: ‘She wants him to go away

home, and he says he will, if she’ll give him that double skein of silk

she swings about, and she says she won’t, let him ask as long as he

pleases; so he says he sha’n’t go, and I’m sure I don’t see why he

should; and she says he may stay, but he sha’n’t have her necklace, she

calls it. So Mr. Camwell snatches, and Chloe fires up. Gracious, can’t

she frown!--at him. She never frowns at anybody but him.’

Caseldy attempted persuasion on Mr. Camwell’s behalf. With his mouth at

Chloe’s ear, he said, ‘Give it; let the poor fellow have his memento;

despatch him with it.’

‘I can hear! and that is really kind,’ exclaimed Duchess Susan.

‘Rather a missy-missy schoolgirl sort of necklace,’ Mr. Beamish

observed; ‘but he might have it, without the dismissal, for I cannot

consent to lose Alonzo. No, madam,’ he nodded at the duchess.

Caseldy continued his whisper: ‘You can’t think of wearing a thing like

that about your neck?’

‘Indeed,’ said Chloe, ‘I think of it.’

‘Why, what fashion have you over here?’

‘It is not yet a fashion,’ she said.

‘A silken circlet will not well become any precious pendant that I know

of.’

‘A bag of dust is not a very precious pendant,’ she said.

‘Oh, a memento mori!’ cried he.

And she answered, ‘Yes.’

He rallied her for her superstition, pursuing, ‘Surely, my love, ‘tis a

cheap riddance of a pestilent, intrusive jaloux. Whip it into his hands

for a mittimus.’

‘Does his presence distress you?’ she asked.

‘I will own that to be always having the fellow dogging us, with his

dejected leer, is not agreeable. He watches us now, because my lips are

close by your cheek. He should be absent; he is one too many. Speed him

on his voyage with the souvenir he asks for.’

‘I keep it for a journey of my own, which I may have to take,’ said

Chloe.

‘With me?’

‘You will follow; you cannot help following me, Caseldy.’

He speculated on her front. She was tenderly smiling. ‘You are happy,

Chloe?’

‘I have never known such happiness,’ she said. The brilliancy of her

eyes confirmed it.

He glanced over at Duchess Susan, who was like a sunflower in the sun.

His glance lingered a moment. Her abundant and glowing young charms were

the richest fascination an eye like his could dwell on. ‘That is right,’

said he. ‘We will be perfectly happy till the month ends. And after it?

But get us rid of Monsieur le Jeune; toss him that trifle; I spare him

that. ‘Twill be bliss to him, at the cost of a bit of silk thread to us.

Besides, if we keep him to cure him of his passion here, might it not

be--these boys veer suddenly, like the winds of Albion, from one fair

object to t’ other--at the cost of the precious and simple lady you

are guarding? I merely hint. These two affect one another, as though

it could be. She speaks of him. It shall be as you please, but a trifle

like that, my Chloe, to be rid of a green eye!’

‘You much wish him gone?’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘The fellow is in our way.’

‘You think him a little perilous for my innocent lady?’

‘Candidly, I do.’

She stretched the half-plaited silken rope in her two hands to try the

strength of it, made a second knot, and consigned it to her pocket.

At once she wore her liveliest playfellow air, in which character no one

was so enchanting as Chloe could be, for she became the comrade of men

without forfeit of her station among sage sweet ladies, and was like a

well-mannered sparkling boy, to whom his admiring seniors have given the

lead in sallies, whims, and fights; but pleasanter than a boy, the soft

hues of her sex toned her frolic spirit; she seemed her sex’s deputy, to

tell the coarser where they could meet, as on a bridge above the torrent

separating them, gaily for interchange of the best of either, unfired

and untempted by fire, yet with all the elements which make fire burn to

animate their hearts.

‘Lucky the man who wins for himself that life-long cordial!’ Mr. Beamish

said to Duchess Susan.

She had small comprehension of metaphorical phrases, but she was quick

at reading faces; and comparing the enthusiasm on the face of the beau

with Caseldy’s look of troubled wonderment and regret, she pitied

the lover conscious of not having the larger share of his mistress’s

affections. When presently he looked at her, the tender-hearted woman

could have cried for very compassion, so sensible did he show himself of

Chloe’s preference of the other.

CHAPTER VI

That evening Duchess Susan played at the Pharaoh table and lost eight

hundred pounds, through desperation at the loss of twenty. After

encouraging her to proceed to this extremity, Caseldy checked her. He

was conducting her out of the Play room when a couple of young squires

of the Shepster order, and primed with wine, intercepted her to present

their condolences, which they performed with exaggerated gestures,

intended for broad mimicry of the courtliness imported from the

Continent, and a very dulcet harping on the popular variations of her

Christian name, not forgetting her singular title, ‘my lovely, lovely

Dewlap!’

She was excited and stunned by her immediate experience in the transfer

of money, and she said, ‘I ‘m sure I don’t know what you want.’

‘Yes!’ cried they, striking their bosoms as guitars, and attempting the

posture of the thrummer on the instrument; ‘she knows. She does know.

Handsome Susie knows what we want.’ And one ejaculated, mellifluously,

‘Oh!’ and the other ‘Ah!’ in flagrant derision of the foreign ways they

produced in boorish burlesque--a self-consolatory and a common trick of

the boor.

Caseldy was behind. He pushed forward and bowed to them. ‘Sirs, will you

mention to me what you want?’

He said it with a look that meant steel. It cooled them sufficiently to

let him place the duchess under the protectorship of Mr. Beamish, then

entering from another room with Chloe; whereupon the pair of rustic

bucks retired to reinvigorate their valiant blood.

Mr. Beamish had seen that there was cause for gratitude to Caseldy, to

whom he said, ‘She has lost?’ and he seemed satisfied on hearing the

amount of the loss, and commissioned Caseldy to escort the ladies to

their lodgings at once, observing, ‘Adieu, Count!’

‘You will find my foreign title of use to you here, after a bout or

two,’ was the reply.

‘No bouts, if possibly to be avoided; though I perceive how the flavour

of your countship may spread a wholesome alarm among our rurals, who

will readily have at you with fists, but relish not the tricky cold

weapon.’

Mr. Beamish haughtily bowed the duchess away.

Caseldy seized the opportunity while handing her into her sedan to say,

‘We will try the fortune-teller for a lucky day to have our revenge.’

She answered: ‘Oh, don’t talk to me about playing again ever; I’m nigh

on a clean pocket, and never knew such a sinful place as this. I feel

I’ve tumbled into a ditch. And there’s Mr. Beamish, all top when he bows

to me. You’re keeping Chloe waiting, sir.’

‘Where was she while we were at the table?’

‘Sure she was with Mr. Beamish.’

‘Ah!’ he groaned.

‘The poor soul is in despair over her losses to-night,’ he turned from

the boxed-up duchess to remark to Chloe. ‘Give her a comfortable cry and

a few moral maxims.’

‘I will,’ she said. ‘You love me, Caseldy?’

‘Love you? I? Your own? What assurance would you have?’

‘None, dear friend.’

Here was a woman easily deceived.

In the hearts of certain men, owing to an intellectual contempt of easy

dupes, compunction in deceiving is diminished by the lightness of their

task; and that soft confidence which will often, if but passingly, bid

betrayers reconsider the charms of the fair soul they are abandoning,

commends these armoured knights to pursue with redoubled earnest the

fruitful ways of treachery. Their feelings are warm for their prey,

moreover; and choosing to judge their victim by the present warmth of

their feelings, they can at will be hurt, even to being scandalized,

by a coldness that does not waken one suspicion of them. Jealousy would

have a chance of arresting, for it is not impossible to tease them back

to avowed allegiance; but sheer indifference also has a stronger hold on

them than a, dull, blind trustfulness. They hate the burden it imposes;

the blind aspect is only touching enough to remind them of the burden,

and they hate if for that, and for the enormous presumption of the

belief that they are everlastingly bound to such an imbecile. She walks

about with her eyes shut, expecting not to stumble, and when she does,

am I to blame? The injured man asks it in the course of his reasoning.

He recurs to his victim’s merits, but only compassionately, and the

compassion is chilled by the thought that she may in the end start

across his path to thwart him. Thereat he is drawn to think of the prize

she may rob him of; and when one woman is an obstacle, the other shines

desirable as life beyond death; he must have her; he sees her in the

hue of his desire for her, and the obstacle in that of his repulsion.

Cruelty is no more than the man’s effort to win the wished object.

She should not leave it to his imagination to conceive that in the end

the blind may awaken to thwart him. Better for her to cast him hence,

or let him know that she will do battle to keep him. But the pride of a

love that has hardened in the faithfulness of love cannot always be wise

on trial.

Caseldy walked considerably in the rear of the couple of chairs. He saw

on his way what was coming. His two young squires were posted at Duchess

Susan’s door when she arrived, and he received a blow from one of them

in clearing a way for her. She plucked at his hand. ‘Have they hurt

you?’ she asked.

‘Think of me to-night thanking them and heaven for this, my darling,’ he

replied, with a pressure that lit the flying moment to kindle the after

hours.

Chloe had taken help of one of her bearers to jump out. She stretched

a finger at the unruly intruders, crying sternly, ‘There is blood on

you--come not nigh me!’ The loftiest harangue would not have been so

cunning to touch their wits. They stared at one another in the clear

moonlight. Which of them had blood on him? As they had not been for

blood, but for rough fun, and something to boast of next day, they

gesticulated according to the first instructions of the dancing master,

by way of gallantry, and were out of Caseldy’s path when he placed

himself at his liege lady’s service. ‘Take no notice of them, dear,’ she

said.

‘No, no,’ said he; and ‘What is it?’ and his hoarse accent and shaking

clasp of her arm sickened her to the sensation of approaching death.

Upstairs Duchess Susan made a show of embracing her. Both were

trembling. The duchess ascribed her condition to those dreadful men.

‘What makes them be at me so?’ she said.

And Chloe said, ‘Because you are beautiful.’

‘Am I?’

‘You are.’

‘I am?’

‘Very beautiful; young and beautiful; beautiful in the bud. You will

learn to excuse them, madam.’

‘But, Chloe--’ The duchess shut her mouth. Out of a languid reverie, she

sighed: ‘I suppose I must be! My duke--oh, don’t talk of him. Dear man!

he’s in bed and fast asleep long before this. I wonder how he came to

let me come here.

I did bother him, I know. Am I very, very beautiful, Chloe, so that men

can’t help themselves?’

‘Very, madam.’

‘There, good-night. I want to be in bed, and I can’t kiss you because

you keep calling me madam, and freeze me to icicles; but I do love you,

Chloe.’

‘I am sure you do.’

‘I’m quite certain I do. I know I never mean harm. But how are we women

expected to behave, then? Oh, I’m unhappy, I am.’

‘You must abstain from playing.’

‘It’s that! I’ve lost my money--I forgot. And I shall have to confess it

to my duke, though he warned me. Old men hold their fingers up--so!

One finger: and you never forget the sight of it, never. It’s a round

finger, like the handle of a jug, and won’t point at you when they’re

lecturing, and the skin’s like an old coat on gaffer’s shoulders--or,

Chloe! just like, when you look at the nail, a rumpled counterpane up to

the face of a corpse. I declare, it’s just like! I feel as if I didn’t

a bit mind talking of corpses tonight. And my money’s gone, and I don’t

much mind. I’m a wild girl again, handsomer than when that----he is

a dear, kind, good old nobleman, with his funny old finger: “Susan!

Susan!” I’m no worse than others. Everybody plays here; everybody

superior. Why, you have played, Chloe.’

‘Never!’

‘I’ve heard you say you played once, and a bigger stake it was, you

said, than anybody ever did play.’

‘Not money.’

‘What then?’

‘My life.’

‘Goodness--yes! I understand. I understand everything to-night-men too.

So you did!--They’re not so shamefully wicked, Chloe. Because I can’t

see the wrong of human nature--if we’re discreet, I mean. Now and then a

country dance and a game, and home to bed and dreams. There’s no harm

in that, I vow. And that’s why you stayed at this place. You like it,

Chloe?’

‘I am used to it.’

‘But when you’re married to Count Caseldy you’ll go?’

‘Yes, then.’

She uttered it so joylessly that Duchess Susan added, with intense

affectionateness, ‘You’re not obliged to marry him, dear Chloe.’

‘Nor he me, madam.’

The duchess caught at her impulsively to kiss her, and said she would

undress herself, as she wished to be alone.

From that night she was a creature inflamed.

CHAPTER VII

The total disappearance of the pair of heroes who had been the latest

in the conspiracy to vex his delicate charge, gave Mr. Beamish a high

opinion of Caseldy as an assistant in such an office as he held. They

had gone, and nothing more was heard of them. Caseldy confined his

observations on the subject to the remark that he had employed the best

means to be rid of that kind of worthies; and whether their souls had

fled, or only their bodies, was unknown. But the duchess had quiet

promenades with Caseldy to guard her, while Mr. Beamish counted the

remaining days of her visit with the impatience of a man having cause to

cast eye on a clock. For Duchess Susan was not very manageable now; she

had fits of insurgency, and plainly said that her time was short, and

she meant to do as she liked, go where she liked, play when she liked,

and be an independent woman--if she was so soon to be taken away and

boxed in a castle that was only a bigger sedan.

Caseldy protested he was as helpless as the beau. He described the

annoyance of his incessant running about at her heels in all directions

amusingly, and suggested that she must be beating the district to

recover her ‘strange cavalier,’ of whom, or of one that had ridden

beside her carriage half a day on her journey to the Wells, he said she

had dropped a sort of hint. He complained of the impossibility of his

getting an hour in privacy with his Chloe.

‘And I, accustomed to consult with her, see too little of her,’ said Mr.

Beamish. ‘I shall presently be seeing nothing, and already I am sensible

of my loss.’

He represented his case to Duchess Susan:--that she was for ever driving

out long distances and taking Chloe from him, when his occupation

precluded his accompanying them; and as Chloe soon was to be lost to him

for good, he deeply felt her absence.

The duchess flung him enigmatical rejoinders: ‘You can change all that,

Mr. Beamish, if you like, and you know you can. Oh, yes, you can. But

you like being a butterfly, and when you’ve made ladies pale you’re

happy: and there they’re to stick and wither for you. Never!--I’ve that

pride. I may be worried, but I’ll never sink to green and melancholy for

a man.’

She bridled at herself in a mirror, wherein not a sign of paleness was

reflected.

Mr. Beamish meditated, and he thought it prudent to speak to Caseldy

manfully of her childish suspicions, lest she should perchance in like

manner perturb the lover’s mind.

‘Oh, make your mind easy, my dear sir, as far as I am concerned,’ said

Caseldy. ‘But, to tell you the truth, I think I can interpret her creamy

ladyship’s innuendos a little differently and quite as clearly. For

my part, I prefer the pale to the blowsy, and I stake my right hand

on Chloe’s fidelity. Whatever harm I may have the senseless

cruelty--misfortune, I may rather call it--to do that heavenly-minded

woman in our days to come, none shall say of me that I was ever for an

instant guilty of the baseness of doubting her purity and constancy.

And, sir, I will add that I could perfectly rely also on your honour.’

Mr. Beamish bowed. ‘You do but do me justice. But, say, what

interpretation?’

‘She began by fearing you,’ said Caseldy, creating a stare that was

followed by a frown. ‘She fancies you neglect her. Perhaps she has a

woman’s suspicion that you do it to try her.’

Mr. Beamish frenetically cited his many occupations. ‘How can I be ever

dancing attendance on her?’ Then he said, ‘Pooh,’ and tenderly fingered

the ruffles of his wrist. ‘Tush, tush,’ said he, ‘no, no: though if

it came to a struggle between us, I might in the interests of my old

friend, her lord, whom I have reasons for esteeming, interpose an

influence that would make the exercise of my authority agreeable.

Hitherto I have seen no actual need of it, and I watch keenly. Her eye

has been on Colonel Poltermore once or twice his on her. The woman is

a rose in June, sir, and I forgive the whole world for looking--and for

longing too. But I have observed nothing serious.’

‘He is of our party to the beacon-head to-morrow,’ said Caseldy. ‘She

insisted that she would have him; and at least it will grant me furlough

for an hour.’

‘Do me the service to report to me,’ said Mr. Beamish.

In this fashion he engaged Caseldy to supply him with inventions, and

prepared himself to swallow them. It was Poltermore and Poltermore, the

Colonel here, the Colonel there until the chase grew so hot that Mr.

Beamish could no longer listen to young Mr. Camwell’s fatiguing drone

upon his one theme of the double-dealing of Chloe’s betrothed. He became

of her way of thinking, and treated the young gentleman almost as coldly

as she. In time he was ready to guess of his own acuteness that the

‘strange cavalier’ could have been no other than Colonel Poltermore.

When Caseldy hinted it, Mr. Beamish said, ‘I have marked him.’ He added,

in highly self-satisfied style, ‘With all your foreign training, my

friend, you will learn that we English are not so far behind you in the

art of unravelling an intrigue in the dark.’ To which Caseldy replied,

that the Continental world had little to teach Mr. Beamish.

Poor Colonel Poltermore, as he came to be called, was clearly a victim

of the sudden affability of Duchess Susan. The transformation of a stiff

military officer into a nimble Puck, a runner of errands and a sprightly

attendant, could not pass without notice. The first effect of her

discriminating condescension on this unfortunate gentleman was to make

him the champion of her claims to breeding. She had it by nature, she

was Nature’s great lady, he would protest to the noble dames of the

circle he moved in; and they admitted that she was different in every

way from a bourgeoise elevated by marriage to lofty rank: she was not

vulgar. But they remained doubtful of the perfect simplicity of a young

woman who worked such changes in men as to render one of the famous

conquerors of the day her agitated humble servant. By rapid degrees the

Colonel had fallen to that. When not by her side, he was ever marching

with sharp strides, hurrying through rooms and down alleys and groves

until he had discovered and attached himself to her skirts. And,

curiously, the object of his jealousy was the devoted Alonzo! Mr.

Beamish laughed when he heard of it. The lady’s excitement and giddy

mien, however, accused Poltermore of a stage of success requiring to be

combated immediately. There was mention of Duchess Susan’s mighty wish

to pay a visit to the popular fortune-teller of the hut on the heath,

and Mr. Beamish put his veto on the expedition. She had obeyed him by

abstaining from play of late, so he fully expected, that his interdict

would be obeyed; and besides the fortune-teller was a rogue of a sham

astrologer known to have foretold to certain tender ladies things

they were only too desirous to imagine predestined by an extraordinary

indication of the course of planets through the zodiac, thus causing

them to sin by the example of celestial conjunctions--a piece of wanton

impiety. The beau took high ground in his objections to the adventure.

Nevertheless, Duchess Susan did go. She drove to the heath at an early

hour of the morning, attended by Chloe, Colonel Poltermore, and Caseldy.

They subsequently breakfasted at an inn where gipsy repasts were

occasionally served to the fashion, and they were back at the wells as

soon as the world was abroad. Their surprise then was prodigious when

Mr. Beamish, accosting them full in assembly, inquired whether they

were satisfied with the report of their fortunes, and yet more when he

positively proved himself acquainted with the fortunes which had been

recounted to each of them in privacy.

‘You, Colonel Poltermore, are to be in luck’s way up to the tenth

milestone,--where your chariot will overset and you will be lamed for

life.’

‘Not quite so bad,’ said the Colonel cheerfully, he having been informed

of much better.

‘And you, Count Caseldy, are to have it all your own way with good

luck, after committing a deed of slaughter, with the solitary penalty of

undergoing a visit every night from the corpse.’

‘Ghost,’ Caseldy smilingly corrected him.

‘And Chloe would not have her fortune told, because she knew it!’ Mr.

Beamish cast a paternal glance at her. ‘And you, madam,’ he bent his

brows on the duchess, ‘received the communication that “All for Love”

will sink you as it raised you, put you down as it took you up, furnish

the feast to the raven gentleman which belongs of right to the golden

eagle?’

‘Nothing of the sort! And I don’t believe in any of their stories,’

cried the duchess, with a burning face.

‘You deny it, madam?’

‘I do. There was never a word of a raven or an eagle, that I’ll swear,

now.’

‘You deny that there was ever a word of “All for Love”? Speak, madam.’

‘Their conjuror’s rigmarole!’ she murmured, huffing. ‘As if I listened

to their nonsense!’

‘Does the Duchess of Dewlap dare to give me the lie?’ said Mr. Beamish.

‘That’s not my title, and you know it,’ she retorted.

‘What’s this?’ the angry beau sang out. ‘What stuff is this you wear?’

He towered and laid hand on a border of lace of her morning dress, tore

it furiously and swung a length of it round him: and while the duchess

panted and trembled at an outrage that won for her the sympathy of every

lady present as well as the championship of the gentlemen, he tossed the

lace to the floor and trampled on it, making his big voice intelligible

over the uproar: ‘Hear what she does! ‘Tis a felony! She wears the stuff

with Betty Worcester’s yellow starch on it for mock antique! And let

who else wears it strip it off before the town shall say we are

disgraced--when I tell you that Betty Worcester was hanged at Tyburn

yesterday morning for murder!’

There were shrieks.

Hardly had he finished speaking before the assembly began to melt; he

stood in the centre like a pole unwinding streamers, amid a confusion of

hurrying dresses, the sound and whirl and drift whereof was as that of

the autumnal strewn leaves on a wind rising in November. The troops of

ladies were off to bereave themselves of their fashionable imitation

old lace adornment, which denounced them in some sort abettors and

associates of the sanguinary loathed wretch, Mrs. Elizabeth Worcester,

their benefactress of the previous day, now hanged and dangling on the

gallows-tree.

Those ladies who wore not imitation lace or any lace in the morning,

were scarcely displeased with the beau for his exposure of them that

did. The gentlemen were confounded by his exhibition of audacious power.

The two gentlemen nighest upon violently resenting his brutality to

Duchess Susan, led her from the room in company with Chloe.

‘The woman shall fear me to good purpose,’ Mr. Beamish said to himself.

CHAPTER VIII

Mr. Camwell was in the ante-room as Chloe passed out behind the two

incensed supporters of Duchess Susan.

‘I shall be by the fir-trees on the Mount at eight this evening,’ she

said.

‘I will be there,’ he replied.

‘Drive Mr. Beamish into the country, that these gentlemen may have time

to cool.’

He promised her it should be done.

Close on the hour of her appointment, he stood under the fir-trees,

admiring the sunset along the western line of hills, and when Chloe

joined him he spoke of the beauty of the scene.

‘Though nothing seems more eloquently to say farewell,’ he added, with a

sinking voice.

‘We could say it now, and be friends,’ she answered.

‘Later than now, you think it unlikely that you could forgive me,

Chloe.’

‘In truth, sir, you are making it hard for me.’

‘I have stayed here to keep watch; for no pleasure of my own,’ said he.

‘Mr. Beamish is an excellent protector of the duchess.’

‘Excellent; and he is cleverly taught to suppose she fears him greatly;

and when she offends him, he makes a display of his Jupiter’s awfulness,

with the effect on woman of natural spirit which you have seen, and

others had foreseen, that she is exasperated and grows reckless. Tie

another knot in your string, Chloe.’

She looked away, saying, ‘Were you not the cause? You were in collusion

with that charlatan of the heath, who told them their fortunes this

morning. I see far, both in the dark and in the light.’

‘But not through a curtain. I was present.’

‘Hateful, hateful business of the spy! You have worked a great mischief

Mr. Camwell. And how can you reconcile it to, your conscience that you

should play so base a part?’

‘I have but performed my duty, dear madam.’

‘You pretend that it is your devotion to me! I might be flattered if I

saw not so abject a figure in my service. Now have I but four days of

my month of happiness remaining, and my request to you is, leave me to

enjoy them. I beseech you to go. Very humbly, most earnestly, I beg your

departure. Grant it to me, and do not stay to poison my last days here.

Leave us to-morrow. I will admit your good intentions. I give you my

hand in gratitude. Adieu, Mr. Camwell.’

He took her hand. ‘Adieu. I foresee an early separation, and this dear

hand is mine while I have it in mine. Adieu. It is a word to be repeated

at a parting like ours. We do not blow out our light with one breath: we

let it fade gradually, like yonder sunset.’

‘Speak so,’ said she.

‘Ah, Chloe, to give one’s life! And it is your happiness I have sought

more than your favor.’

‘I believe it; but I have not liked the means. You leave us to-morrow?’

‘It seems to me that to-morrow is the term.’

Her face clouded. ‘That tells me a very uncertain promise.’

‘You looked forth to a month of happiness--meaning a month of delusion.

The delusion expires to-night. You will awaken to see your end of it in

the morning. You have never looked beyond the month since the day of his

arrival.’

‘Let him not be named, I supplicate you.’

‘Then you consent that another shall be sacrificed for you to enjoy your

state of deception an hour longer?’

‘I am not deceived, sir. I wish for peace, and crave it, and that is all

I would have.’

‘And you make her your peace-offering, whom you have engaged to serve!

Too surely your eyes have been open as well as mine. Knot by knot--I

have watched you--where is it?--you have marked the points in that

silken string where the confirmation of a just suspicion was too strong

for you.’

‘I did it, and still I continued merry?’ She subsided from her

scornfulness on an involuntary ‘Ah!’ that was a shudder.

‘You acted Light Heart, madam, and too well to hoodwink me. Meanwhile

you allowed that mischief to proceed, rather than have your crazy

lullaby disturbed.’

‘Indeed, Mr. Camwell, you presume.’

‘The time, and my knowledge of what it is fraught with, demand it and

excuse it. You and I, my dear and one only love on earth, stand outside

of ordinary rules. We are between life and death.’

‘We are so always.’

‘Listen further to the preacher: We have them close on us, with the

question, Which it shall be to-morrow. You are for sleeping on, but I

say no; nor shall that iniquity of double treachery be committed because

of your desire to be rocked in a cradle. Hear me out. The drug you

have swallowed to cheat yourself will not bear the shock awaiting you

tomorrow with the first light. Hear these birds! When next they sing,

you will be broad awake, and of me, and the worship and service I would

have dedicated to you, I do not... it is a spectral sunset of a day

that was never to be!--awake, and looking on what? Back from a monstrous

villainy to the forlorn wretch who winked at it with knots in a string.

Count them then, and where will be your answer to heaven? I begged it of

you, to save you from those blows of remorse; yes, terrible!’

‘Oh, no!’

‘Terrible, I say!’

‘You are mistaken, Mr. Camwell. It is my soother. I tell my beads on

it.’

‘See how a persistent residence in this place has made a Pagan of the

purest soul among us! Had you... but that day was not to lighten me!

More adorable in your errors that you are than others by their virtues,

you have sinned through excess of the qualities men prize. Oh, you have

a boundless generosity, unhappily enwound with a pride as great. There

is your fault, that is the cause of your misery. Too generous! too

proud! You have trusted, and you will not cease to trust; you have vowed

yourself to love, never to remonstrate, never to seem to doubt; it

is too much your religion, rare verily. But bethink you of that

inexperienced and most silly good creature who is on the rapids to her

destruction. Is she not--you will cry it aloud to-morrow--your victim?

You hear it within you now.’

‘Friend, my dear, true friend,’ Chloe said in her deeper voice of

melody, ‘set your mind at ease about to-morrow and her. Her safety is

assured. I stake my life on it. She shall not be a victim. At the worst

she will but have learnt a lesson. So, then, adieu! The West hangs like

a garland of unwatered flowers, neglected by the mistress they adorned.

Remember the scene, and that here we parted, and that Chloe wished you

the happiness it was out of her power to bestow, because she was of

another world, with her history written out to the last red streak

before ever you knew her. Adieu; this time adieu for good!

Mr. Camwell stood in her path. ‘Blind eyes, if you like,’ he said, ‘but

you shall not hear blind language. I forfeit the poor consideration

for me that I have treasured; hate me; better hated by you than shun my

duty! Your duchess is away at the first dawn this next morning; it has

come to that. I speak with full knowledge. Question her.’

Chloe threw a faltering scorn of him into her voice, as much as her

heart’s sharp throbs would allow. ‘I question you, sir, how you came to

this full knowledge you boast of?’

‘I have it; let that suffice. Nay, I will be particular; his coach is

ordered for the time I name to you; her maid is already at a station on

the road of the flight.’

‘You have their servants in your pay?’

‘For the mine--the countermine. We must grub dirt to match deceivers.

You, madam, have chosen to be delicate to excess, and have thrown it

upon me to be gross, and if you please, abominable, in my means of

defending you. It is not too late for you to save the lady, nor too late

to bring him to the sense of honour.’

‘I cannot think Colonel Poltermore so dishonourable.’

‘Poor Colonel Poltermore! The office he is made to fill is an old one.

Are you not ashamed, Chloe?’

‘I have listened too long,’ she replied.

‘Then, if it is your pleasure, depart.’

He made way for her. She passed him. Taking two hurried steps in the

gloom of the twilight, she stopped, held at her heart, and painfully

turning to him, threw her arms out, and let herself be seized and

kissed.

On his asking pardon of her, which his long habit of respect forced him

to do in the thick of rapture and repetitions, she said, ‘You rob no

one.’

‘Oh,’ he cried, ‘there is a reward, then, for faithful love. But am I

the man I was a minute back? I have you; I embrace you; and I doubt that

I am I. Or is it Chloe’s ghost?’

‘She has died and visits you.’

‘And will again?’

Chloe could not speak for languor.

The intensity of the happiness she gave by resting mutely where she was,

charmed her senses. But so long had the frost been on them that their

awakening to warmth was haunted by speculations on the sweet taste of

this reward of faithfulness to him, and the strange taste of her own

unfaithfulness to her. And reflecting on the cold act of speculation

while strong arm and glowing mouth were pressing her, she thought her

senses might really be dead, and she a ghost visiting the good youth for

his comfort. So feel ghosts, she thought, and what we call happiness

in love is a match between ecstasy and compliance. Another thought flew

through her like a mortal shot: ‘Not so with those two! with them it

will be ecstasy meeting ecstasy; they will take and give happiness in

equal portions.’ A pang of jealousy traversed her frame. She made the

shrewdness of it help to nerve her fervour in a last strain of him to

her bosom, and gently releasing herself, she said, ‘No one is robbed.

And now, dear friend, promise me that you will not disturb Mr. Beamish.’

‘Chloe,’ said he, ‘have you bribed me?’

‘I do not wish him to be troubled.’

‘The duchess, I have told you--’

‘I know. But you have Chloe’s word that she will watch over the duchess

and die to save her. It is an oath. You have heard of some arrangements.

I say they shall lead to nothing: it shall not take place. Indeed, my

friend, I am awake; I see as much as you see. And those... after being

where I have been, can you suppose I have a regret? But she is my dear

and peculiar charge, and if she runs a risk, trust to me that there

shall be no catastrophe; I swear it; so, now, adieu. We sup in company

to-night. They will be expecting some of Chloe’s verses, and she must

sing to herself for a few minutes to stir the bed her songs take wing

from; therefore, we will part, and for her sake avoid her; do not be

present at our table, or in the room, or anywhere there. Yes, you rob

no one,’ she said, in a voice that curled through him deliciously by

wavering; but I think I may blush at recollections, and I would rather

have you absent. Adieu! I will not ask for obedience from you beyond

to-night. Your word?’

He gave it in a stupor of felicity, and she fled.

CHAPTER IX

Chloe drew the silken string from her bosom, as she descended the dim

pathway through the furies, and set her fingers travelling along it for

the number of the knots. ‘I have no right to be living,’ she said. Seven

was the number; seven years she had awaited her lover’s return; she

counted her age and completed it in sevens. Fatalism had sustained her

during her lover’s absence; it had fast hold of her now. Thereby had

she been enabled to say, ‘He will come’; and saying, ‘He has come,’

her touch rested on the first knot in the string. She had no power

to displace her fingers, and the cause of the tying of the knot stood

across her brain marked in dull red characters, legible neither to her

eye nor to her understanding, but a reviving of the hour that brought it

on her spirit with human distinctness, except of the light of day: she

had a sense of having forfeited light, and seeing perhaps more clearly.

Everything assured her that she saw more clearly than others; she saw

too when it was good to cease to live.

Hers was the unhappy lot of one gifted with poet-imagination to throb

with the woman supplanting her and share the fascination of the man who

deceived. At their first meeting, in her presence, she had seen that

they were not strangers; she pitied them for speaking falsely, and when

she vowed to thwart this course of evil it to save a younger creature of

her sex, not in rivalry. She treated them both with a proud generosity

surpassing gentleness. All that there was of selfishness in her bosom

resolved to the enjoyment of her one month of strongly willed delusion.

The kiss she had sunk to robbed no one, not even her body’s purity, for

when this knot was tied she consigned herself to her end, and had become

a bag of dust. The other knots in the string pointed to verifications;

this first one was a suspicion, and it was the more precious, she felt

it to be more a certainty; it had come from the dark world beyond us,

where all is known. Her belief that it had come thence was nourished

by testimony, the space of blackness wherein she had lived since,

exhausting her last vitality in a simulation of infantile happiness,

which was nothing other than the carrying on of her emotion of the

moment of sharp sour sweet--such as it may be, the doomed below attain

for their knowledge of joy--when, at the first meeting with her lover,

the perception of his treachery to the soul confiding in him, told her

she had lived, and opened out the cherishable kingdom of insensibility

to her for her heritage.

She made her tragic humility speak thankfully to the wound that slew

her. ‘Had it not been so, I should not have seen him,’ she said:--Her

lover would not have come to her but for his pursuit of another woman.

She pardoned him for being attracted by that beautiful transplant of the

fields: pardoned her likewise. ‘He when I saw him first was as beautiful

to me. For him I might have done as much.’

Far away in a lighted hall of the West, her family raised hands of

reproach. They were minute objects, keenly discerned as diminished

figures cut in steel. Feeling could not be very warm for them, they were

so small, and a sea that had drowned her ran between; and looking

that way she had scarce any warmth of feeling save for a white rhaiadr

leaping out of broken cloud through branched rocks, where she had

climbed and dreamed when a child. The dream was then of the coloured

days to come; now she was more infant in her mind, and she watched the

scattered water broaden, and tasted the spray, sat there drinking the

scene, untroubled by hopes as a lamb, different only from an infant in

knowing that she had thrown off life to travel back to her home and be

refreshed. She heard her people talk; they were unending babblers in the

waterfall. Truth was with them, and wisdom. How, then, could she pretend

to any right to live? Already she had no name; she was less living than

a tombstone. For who was Chloe? Her family might pass the grave of Chloe

without weeping, without moralizing. They had foreseen her ruin, they

had foretold it, they noised it in the waters, and on they sped to the

plains, telling the world of their prophecy, and making what was untold

as yet a lighter thing to do.

The lamps in an irregularly dotted line underneath the hill beckoned her

to her task of appearing as the gayest of them that draw their breath

for the day and have pulses for the morrow.

CHAPTER X

At midnight the great supper party to celebrate the reconciliation of

Mr. Beamish and Duchess Susan broke up, and beneath a soft fair sky the

ladies, with their silvery chatter of gratitude for amusement, caught

Chloe in their arms to kiss her, rendering it natural for their

cavaliers to exclaim that Chloe was blest above mortals. The duchess

preferred to walk. Her spirits were excited, and her language smelt of

her origin, but the superb fleshly beauty of the woman was aglow, and

crying, ‘I declare I should burst in one of those boxes--just as if

you’d stalled me!’ she fanned a wind on her face, and sumptuously spread

her spherical skirts, attended by the vanquished and captive Colonel

Poltermore, a gentleman manifestly bent on insinuating sly slips of

speech to serve for here a pinch of powder, there a match. ‘Am I?’ she

was heard to say. She blew prodigious deep-chested sighs of a coquette

that has taken to roaring.

Presently her voice tossed out: ‘As if I would!’ These vivid

illuminations of the Colonel’s proceedings were a pasture to the

rearward groups, composed of two very grand ladies, Caseldy, Mr.

Beamish, a lord, and Chloe.

‘You man! Oh!’ sprang from the duchess. ‘What do I hear? I won’t listen;

I can’t, I mustn’t, I oughtn’t.’

So she said, but her head careened, she gave him her coy reluctant ear,

with total abandonment to the seductions of his whispers, and the lord

let fly a peal of laughter. It had been a supper of copious wine, and

the songs which rise from wine. Nature was excused by our midnight

naturalists.

The two great dames, admonished by the violence of the nobleman’s

laughter, laid claim on Mr. Beamish to accompany them at their parting

with Chloe and Duchess Susan.

In the momentary shuffling of couples incident to adieux among a

company, the duchess murmured to Caseldy:

‘Have I done it well.’

He praised her for perfection in her acting. ‘I am at your door at

three, remember.’

‘My heart’s in my mouth,’ said she.

Colonel Poltermore still had the privilege of conducting her the few

farther steps to her lodgings.

Caseldy walked beside Chloe, and silently, until he said, ‘If I have not

yet mentioned the subject--’

‘If it is an allusion to money let me not hear it to-night,’ she

replied.

‘I can only say that my lawyers have instructions. But my lawyers cannot

pay you in gratitude. Do not think me in your hardest review of my

misconduct ungrateful. I have ever esteemed you above all women; I do,

and I shall; you are too much above me. I am afraid I am a composition

of bad stuff; I did not win a very particularly good name on the

Continent; I begin to know myself, and in comparison with you, dear

Catherine----’

‘You speak to Chloe,’ she said. ‘Catherine is a buried person. She died

without pain. She is by this time dust.’

The man heaved his breast. ‘Women have not an idea of our temptations.’

‘You are excused by me for all your errors, Caseldy. Always remember

that.’

He sighed profoundly. ‘Ay, you have a Christian’s heart.’

She answered, ‘I have come to the conclusion that it is a Pagan’s.’

‘As for me,’ he rejoined, ‘I am a fatalist. Through life I have seen my

destiny. What is to be, will be; we can do nothing.’

‘I have heard of one who expired of a surfeit that he anticipated, nay

proclaimed, when indulging in the last desired morsel,’ said Chloe.

‘He was driven to it.’

‘From within.’

Caseldy acquiesced; his wits were clouded, and an illustration even

coarser and more grotesque would have won a serious nod and a sigh from

him. ‘Yes, we are moved by other hands!’

‘It is pleasant to think so: and think it of me tomorrow. Will you!’

said Chloe.

He promised it heartily, to induce her to think the same of him.

Their separation was in no way remarkable. The pretty formalities were

executed at the door, and the pair of gentlemen departed.

‘It’s quite dark still,’ Duchess Susan said, looking up at the sky, and

she ran upstairs, and sank, complaining of the weakness of her legs, in

a chair of the ante-chamber of her bedroom, where Chloe slept. Then she

asked the time of the night. She could not suppress her hushed ‘Oh!’

of heavy throbbing from minute to minute. Suddenly she started off at

a quick stride to her own room, saying that it must be sleepiness which

affected her so.

Her bedroom had a door to the sitting-room, and thence, as also from

Chloe’s room, the landing on the stairs was reached, for the room ran

parallel with both bed-chambers. She walked in it and threw the window

open, but closed it immediately; opened and shut the door, and returned

and called for Chloe. She wanted to be read to. Chloe named certain

composing books. The duchess chose a book of sermons. ‘But we’re all

such dreadful sinners, it’s better not to bother ourselves late at

night.’ She dismissed that suggestion. Chloe proposed books of poetry.

‘Only I don’t understand them except about larks, and buttercups, and

hayfields, and that’s no comfort to a woman burning,’ was the answer.

‘Are you feverish, madam?’ said Chloe. And the duchess was sharp on her:

‘Yes, madam, I am.’

She reproved herself in a change of tone: ‘No, Chloe, not feverish, only

this air of yours here is such an exciting air, as the doctor says; and

they made me drink wine, and I played before supper--Oh! my money; I

used to say I could get more, but now!’ she sighed--‘but there’s better

in the world than money. You know that, don’t you, you dear? Tell me.

And I want you to be happy; that you’ll find. I do wish we could all

be!’ She wept, and spoke of requiring a little music to compose her.

Chloe stretched a hand for her guitar. Duchess Susan listened to some

notes, and cried that it went to her heart and hurt her. ‘Everything we

like a lot has a fence and a board against trespassers, because of such

a lot of people in the world,’ she moaned. ‘Don’t play, put down that

thing, please, dear. You’re the cleverest creature anybody has ever met;

they all say so. I wish I----Lovely women catch men, and clever women

keep them: I’ve heard that said in this wretched place, and it ‘s a nice

prospect for me, next door to a fool! I know I am.’

‘The duke adores you, madam.’

‘Poor duke! Do let him be--sleeping so woebegone with his mouth so,

and that chin of a baby, like as if he dreamed of a penny whistle. He

shouldn’t have let me come here. Talk of Mr. Beamish. How he will miss

you, Chloe!’

‘He will,’ Chloe said sadly.

‘If you go, dear.’

‘I am going.’

‘Why should you leave him, Chloe?’

‘I must.’

‘And there, the thought of it makes you miserable!’

‘It does.’

‘You needn’t, I’m sure.’

Chloe looked at her.

The duchess turned her head. ‘Why can’t you be gay, as you were at the

supper-table, Chloe? You’re out to him like a flower when the sun jumps

over the hill; you’re up like a lark in the dews; as I used to be when I

thought of nothing. Oh, the early morning; and I’m sleepy. What a beast

I feel, with my grandeur, and the time in an hour or two for the birds

to sing, and me ready to drop. I must go and undress.’

She rushed on Chloe, kissed her hastily, declaring that she was quite

dead of fatigue, and dismissed her. ‘I don’t want help, I can undress

myself. As if Susan Barley couldn’t do that for herself! and you may

shut your door, I sha’n’t have any frights to-night, I’m so tired out.’

‘Another kiss,’ Chloe said tenderly.

‘Yes, take it’--the duchess leaned her cheek--‘but I’m so tired I don’t

know what I’m doing.’

‘It will not be on your conscience,’ Chloe answered, kissing her warmly.

Will those words she withdrew, and the duchess closed the door. She ran

a bolt in it immediately.

‘I’m too tired to know anything I’m doing,’ she said to herself,

and stood with shut eyes to hug certain thoughts which set her bosom

heaving.

There was the bed, there was the clock. She had the option of lying down

and floating quietly into the day, all peril past. It seemed sweet for a

minute. But it soon seemed an old, a worn, an end-of-autumn life, chill,

without aim, like a something that was hungry and toothless. The bed

proposing innocent sleep repelled her and drove her to the clock. The

clock was awful: the hand at the hour, the finger following the minute,

commanded her to stir actively, and drove her to gentle meditations on

the bed. She lay down dressed, after setting her light beside the clock,

that she might see it at will, and considering it necessary for the bed

to appear to have been lain on. Considering also that she ought to be

heard moving about in the process of undressing, she rose from the bed

to make sure of her reading of the guilty clock. An hour and twenty

minutes! she had no more time than that: and it was not enough for her

various preparations, though it was true that her maid had packed and

taken a box of the things chiefly needful; but the duchess had to change

her shoes and her dress, and run at bo-peep with the changes of

her mind, a sedative preface to any fatal step among women of her

complexion, for so they invite indecision to exhaust their scruples, and

they let the blood have its way. Having so short a space of time, she

thought the matter decided, and with some relief she flung despairing on

the bed, and lay down for good with her duke. In a little while her head

was at work reviewing him sternly, estimating him not less accurately

than the male moralist charitable to her sex would do. She quitted the

bed, with a spring to escape her imagined lord; and as if she had

felt him to be there, she lay down no more. A quiet life like that was

flatter to her idea than a handsomely bound big book without any print

on the pages, and without a picture. Her contemplation of it, contrasted

with the life waved to her view by the timepiece, set her whole system

rageing; she burned to fly. Providently, nevertheless, she thumped a

pillow, and threw the bedclothes into proper disorder, to inform the

world that her limbs had warmed them, and that all had been impulse with

her. She then proceeded to disrobe, murmuring to herself that she could

stop now, and could stop now, at each stage of the advance to a fresh

dressing of her person, and moralizing on her singular fate, in the

mouth of an observer. ‘She was shot up suddenly over everybody’s head,

and suddenly down she went.’ Susan whispered to herself: ‘But it was

for love!’ Possessed by the rosiness of love, she finished her business,

with an attention to everything needed that was equal to perfect

serenity of mind. After which there was nothing to do, save to sit

humped in a chair, cover her face and count the clock-tickings, that

said, Yes--no; do--don’t; fly--stay; fly--fly! It seemed to her she

heard a moving. Well she might with that dreadful heart of hers!

Chloe was asleep, at peace by this time, she thought; and how she envied

Chloe! She might be as happy, if she pleased. Why not? But what kind of

happiness was it? She likened it to that of the corpse underground, and

shrank distastefully.

Susan stood at her glass to have a look at the creature about whom there

was all this disturbance, and she threw up her arms high for a languid,

not unlovely yawn, that closed in blissful shuddering with the sensation

of her lover’s arms having wormed round her waist and taken her while

she was defenceless. For surely they would. She took a jewelled ring,

his gift, from her purse, and kissed it, and drew it on and off her

finger, leaving it on. Now she might wear it without fear of inquiries

and virtuous eyebrows. O heavenly now--if only it were an hour hence;

and going behind galloping horses!

The clock was at the terrible moment. She hesitated internally and

hastened; once her feet stuck fast, and firmly she said, ‘No’; but the

clock was her lord. The clock was her lover and her lord; and obeying

it, she managed to get into the sitting-room, on the pretext that she

merely wished to see through the front window whether daylight was

coming.

How well she knew that half-light of the ebb of the wave of darkness.

Strange enough it was to see it showing houses regaining their solidity

of the foregone day, instead of still fields, black hedges, familiar

shapes of trees. The houses had no wakefulness, they were but seen to

stand, and the light was a revelation of emptiness. Susan’s heart was

cunning to reproach her duke for the difference of the scene she beheld

from that of the innocent open-breasted land. Yes, it was dawn in a

wicked place that she never should have been allowed to visit. But where

was he whom she looked for? There! The cloaked figure of a man was at

the corner of the street. It was he. Her heart froze; but her limbs

were strung to throw off the house, and reach air, breathe, and (as her

thoughts ran) swoon, well-protected. To her senses the house was a house

on fire, and crying to her to escape.

Yet she stepped deliberately, to be sure-footed in a dusky room; she

touched along the wall and came to the door, where a foot-stool nearly

tripped her. Here her touch was at fault, for though she knew she must

be close by the door, she was met by an obstruction unlike wood, and

the door seemed neither shut nor open. She could not find the handle;

something hung over it. Thinking coolly, she fancied the thing must be a

gown or dressing-gown; it hung heavily. Her fingers were sensible of the

touch of silk; she distinguished a depending bulk, and she felt at it

very carefully and mechanically, saying within herself, in her anxiety

to pass it without noise, ‘If I should awake poor Chloe, of all people!’

Her alarm was that the door might creak. Before any other alarm had

struck her brain, the hand she felt with was in a palsy, her mouth

gaped, her throat thickened, the dust-ball rose in her throat, and the

effort to swallow it down and get breath kept her from acute speculation

while she felt again, pinched, plucked at the thing, ready to laugh,

ready to shriek. Above her head, all on one side, the thing had a round

white top. Could it be a hand that her touch had slid across? An arm

too! this was an arm! She clutched it, imagining that it clung to her.

She pulled it to release herself from it, desperately she pulled, and a

lump descended, and a flash of all the torn nerves of her body told her

that a dead human body was upon her.

At a quarter to four o’clock of a midsummer morning, as Mr. Beamish

relates of his last share in the Tale of Chloe, a woman’s voice, in

piercing notes of anguish, rang out three shrieks consecutively, which

were heard by him at the instant of his quitting his front doorstep,

in obedience to the summons of young Mr. Camwell, delivered ten minutes

previously, with great urgency, by that gentleman’s lacquey. On

his reaching the street of the house inhabited by Duchess Susan, he

perceived many night-capped heads at windows, and one window of the

house in question lifted but vacant. His first impression accused the

pair of gentlemen, whom he saw bearing drawn swords in no friendly

attitude of an ugly brawl that had probably affrighted her Grace, or

her personal attendant, a woman capable of screaming, for he was well

assured that it could not have been Chloe, the least likely of her sex

to abandon herself to the use of their weapons either in terror or in

jeopardy. The antagonists were Mr. Camwell and Count Caseldy. On his

approaching them, Mr. Camwell sheathed his sword, saying that his work

was done. Caseldy was convulsed with wrath, to such a degree as to make

the part of an intermediary perilous. There had been passes between

them, and Caseldy cried aloud that he would have his enemy’s blood.

The night-watch was nowhere. Soon, however, certain shopmen and their

apprentices assisted Mr. Beamish to preserve the peace, despite the

fury of Caseldy and the provocations--‘not easy to withstand,’ says

the chronicler--offered by him to young Camwell. The latter said to Mr.

Beamish: ‘I knew I should be no match, so I sent for you,’ causing his

friend astonishment, inasmuch as he was assured of the youth’s natural

valour.

Mr. Beamish was about to deliver an allocution of reproof to them in

equal shares, being entirely unsuspicious of any other reason for the

alarum than this palpable outbreak of a rivalry that he would have

inclined to attribute to the charms of Chloe, when the house-door swung

wide for them to enter, and the landlady of the house, holding clasped

hands at full stretch, implored them to run up to the poor lady: ‘Oh,

she’s dead; she’s dead, dead!’

Caseldy rushed past her.

‘How, dead! good woman?’ Mr. Beamish questioned her most incredulously,

half-smiling.

She answered among her moans: ‘Dead by the neck; off the door--Oh!’

Young Camwell pressed his forehead, with a call on his Maker’s name. As

they reached the landing upstairs, Caseldy came out of the sitting-room.

‘Which?’ said Camwell to the speaking of his face.

‘She!’ said the other.

‘The duchess?’ Mr. Beamish exclaimed.

But Camwell walked into the room. He had nothing to ask after that

reply.

The figure stretched along the floor was covered with a sheet. The young

man fell at his length beside it, and his face was downward.

Mr. Beamish relates: ‘To this day, when I write at an interval of

fifteen years, I have the tragic ague of that hour in my blood, and I

behold the shrouded form of the most admirable of women, whose heart was

broken by a faithless man ere she devoted her wreck of life to arrest

one weaker than herself on the descent to perdition. Therein it was

beneficently granted her to be of the service she prayed to be

through her death. She died to save. In a last letter, found upon her

pincushion, addressed to me under seal of secrecy toward the parties

principally concerned, she anticipates the whole confession of the

unhappy duchess. Nay, she prophesies: “The duchess will tell you truly

she has had enough of love!” Those actual words were reiterated to me

by the poor lady daily until her lord arrived to head the funeral

procession, and assist in nursing back the shattered health of his wife

to a state that should fit her for travelling. To me, at least, she was

constant in repeating, “No more of love!” By her behaviour to her duke,

I can judge her to have been sincere. She spoke of feeling Chloe’s eyes

go through her with every word of hers that she recollected. Nor was the

end of Chloe less effective upon the traitor. He was in the procession

to her grave. He spoke to none. There is a line of the verse bearing

the superscription, “My Reasons for Dying,” that shows her to have been

apprehensive to secure the safety of Mr. Camwell:

I die because my heart is dead

To warn a soul from sin I die:

I die that blood may not be shed, etc.

She feared he would be somewhere on the road to mar the fugitives, and

she knew him, as indeed he knew himself, no match for one trained in the

foreign tricks of steel, ready though he was to dispute the traitor’s

way. She remembers Mr. Camwell’s petition for the knotted silken string

in her request that it shall be cut from her throat and given to him.’

Mr. Beamish indulges in verses above the grave of Chloe. They are of a

character to cool emotion. But when we find a man, who is commonly of

the quickest susceptibility to ridicule as well as to what is befitting,

careless of exposure, we may reflect on the truthfulness of feeling by

which he is drawn to pass his own guard and come forth in his nakedness;

something of the poet’s tongue may breathe to us through his mortal

stammering, even if we have to acknowledge that a quotation would

scatter pathos.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

All flattery is at somebody’s expense

Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues

But I leave it to you

Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war

Happiness in love is a match between ecstasy and compliance

If I do not speak of payment

Intellectual contempt of easy dupes

Invite indecision to exhaust their scruples

Is not one month of brightness as much as we can ask for?

No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters

Nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted

Primitive appetite for noise

She might turn out good, if well guarded for a time

The alternative is, a garter and the bedpost

They miss their pleasure in pursuing it

This mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasure

Wits, which are ordinarily less productive than land

THE HOUSE ON THE BEACH

By George Meredith A REALISTIC TALE

CHAPTER I

The experience of great officials who have laid down their dignities

before death, or have had the philosophic mind to review themselves

while still wielding the deputy sceptre, teaches them that in the

exercise of authority over men an eccentric behaviour in trifles has

most exposed them to hostile criticism and gone farthest to jeopardize

their popularity. It is their Achilles’ heel; the place where

their mother Nature holds them as she dips them in our waters. The

eccentricity of common persons is the entertainment of the multitude,

and the maternal hand is perceived for a cherishing and endearing sign

upon them; but rarely can this be found suitable for the august in

station; only, indeed, when their sceptre is no more fearful than a

grandmother’s birch; and these must learn from it sooner or later that

they are uncomfortably mortal.

When herrings are at auction on a beach, for example, the man of chief

distinction in the town should not step in among a poor fraternity to

take advantage of an occasion of cheapness, though it be done, as he

may protest, to relieve the fishermen of a burden; nor should such

a dignitary as the bailiff of a Cinque Port carry home the spoil of

victorious bargaining on his arm in a basket. It is not that his

conduct is in itself objectionable, so much as that it causes him to be

popularly weighed; and during life, until the best of all advocates can

plead before our fellow Englishmen that we are out of their way, it is

prudent to avoid the process.

Mr. Tinman, however, this high-stepping person in question, happened to

have come of a marketing mother. She had started him from a small shop

to a big one. He, by the practice of her virtues, had been enabled to

start himself as a gentleman. He was a man of this ambition, and prouder

behind it. But having started himself precipitately, he took rank among

independent incomes, as they are called, only to take fright at the

perils of starvation besetting one who has been tempted to abandon the

source of fifty per cent. So, if noble imagery were allowable in our

time in prose, might alarms and partial regrets be assumed to animate

the splendid pumpkin cut loose from the suckers. Deprived of that

prodigious nourishment of the shop in the fashionable seaport of

Helmstone, he retired upon his native town, the Cinque Port of

Crikswich, where he rented the cheapest residence he could discover for

his habitation, the House on the Beach, and lived imposingly, though not

in total disaccord with his old mother’s principles. His income, as he

observed to his widowed sister and solitary companion almost daily in

their privacy, was respectable. The descent from an altitude of fifty

to five per cent. cannot but be felt. Nevertheless it was a comforting

midnight bolster reflection for a man, turning over to the other side

between a dream and a wink, that he was making no bad debts, and one

must pay to be addressed as esquire. Once an esquire, you are off the

ground in England and on the ladder. An esquire can offer his hand

in marriage to a lady in her own right; plain esquires have married

duchesses; they marry baronets’ daughters every day of the week.

Thoughts of this kind were as the rise and fall of waves in the bosom of

the new esquire. How often in his Helmstone shop had he not heard titled

ladies disdaining to talk a whit more prettily than ordinary women; and

he had been a match for the subtlety of their pride--he understood it.

He knew well that at the hint of a proposal from him they would have

spoken out in a manner very different to that of ordinary women. The

lightning, only to be warded by an esquire, was in them. He quitted

business at the age of forty, that he might pretend to espousals with a

born lady; or at least it was one of the ideas in his mind.

And here, I think, is the moment for the epitaph of anticipation over

him, and the exclamation, alas! I would not be premature, but it is

necessary to create some interest in him, and no one but a foreigner

could feel it at present for the Englishman who is bursting merely to do

like the rest of his countrymen, and rise above them to shake them class

by class as the dust from his heels. Alas! then an--undertaker’s pathos

is better than none at all--he was not a single-minded aspirant to our

social honours. The old marketing mother; to whom he owed his fortunes,

was in his blood to confound his ambition; and so contradictory was the

man’s nature, that in revenge for disappointments, there were times when

he turned against the saving spirit of parsimony. Readers deep in Greek

dramatic writings will see the fatal Sisters behind the chair of a man

who gives frequent and bigger dinners, that he may become important in

his neighbourhood, while decreasing the price he pays for his wine, that

he may miserably indemnify himself for the outlay. A sip of his wine

fetched the breath, as when men are in the presence of the tremendous

elements of nature. It sounded the constitution more darkly-awful, and

with a profounder testimony to stubborn health, than the physician’s

instruments. Most of the guests at Mr. Tinman’s table were so

constructed that they admired him for its powerful quality the more at

his announcement of the price of it; the combined strength and cheapness

probably flattering them, as by another mystic instance of the national

energy. It must have been so, since his townsmen rejoiced to hail him as

head of their town. Here and there a solitary esquire, fished out of the

bathing season to dine at the house on the beach, was guilty of raising

one of those clamours concerning subsequent headaches, which spread

an evil reputation as a pall. A resident esquire or two, in whom a

reminiscence of Tinman’s table may be likened to the hook which some old

trout has borne away from the angler as the most vivid of warnings to

him to beware for the future, caught up the black report and propagated

it.

The Lieutenant of the Coastguard, hearing the latest conscious victim,

or hearing of him, would nod his head and say he had never dined at

Tinman’s table without a headache ensuing and a visit to the chemist’s

shop; which, he was assured, was good for trade, and he acquiesced, as

it was right to do in a man devoted to his country. He dined with Tinman

again. We try our best to be social. For eight months in our year he

had little choice but to dine with Tinman or be a hermit attached to a

telescope.

“Where are you going, Lieutenant?” His frank reply to the question

was, “I am going to be killed;” and it grew notorious that this meant

Tinman’s table. We get on together as well as we can. Perhaps if we

were an acutely calculating people we should find it preferable both for

trade and our physical prosperity to turn and kill Tinman, in contempt

of consequences. But we are not, and so he does the business gradually

for us. A generous people we must be, for Tinman was not detested. The

recollection of “next morning” caused him to be dimly feared.

Tinman, meanwhile, was awake only to the Circumstance that he made no

progress as an esquire, except on the envelopes of letters, and in his

own esteem. That broad region he began to occupy to the exclusion of

other inhabitants; and the result of such a state of princely isolation

was a plunge of his whole being into deep thoughts. From the hour of his

investiture as the town’s chief man, thoughts which were long shots took

possession of him. He had his wits about him; he was alive to ridicule;

he knew he was not popular below, or on easy terms with people above

him, and he meditated a surpassing stroke as one of the Band of Esq.,

that had nothing original about it to perplex and annoy the native mind,

yet was dazzling. Few members of the privileged Band dare even imagine

the thing.

It will hardly be believed, but it is historical fact, that in the act

of carrying fresh herrings home on his arm, he entertained the idea of

a visit to the First Person and Head of the realm, and was indulging in

pleasing visions of the charms of a personal acquaintance. Nay, he had

already consulted with brother jurats. For you must know that one of

the princesses had recently suffered betrothal in the newspapers, and

supposing her to deign to ratify the engagement, what so reasonable

on the part of a Cinque Port chieftain as to congratulate his liege

mistress, her illustrious mother? These are thoughts and these are deeds

>which give emotional warmth and colour to the ejecter members of a

population wretchedly befogged. They are our sunlight, and our brighter

theme of conversation. They are necessary to the climate and the Saxon

mind; and it would be foolish to put them away, as it is foolish not to

do our utmost to be intimate with terrestrial splendours while we have

them--as it may be said of wardens, mayors, and bailiffs-at command.

Tinman was quite of this opinion. They are there to relieve our dulness.

We have them in the place of heavenly; and he would have argued that we

have a right to bother them too. He had a notion, up in the clouds, of

a Sailors’ Convalescent Hospital at Crikswich to seduce a prince with,

hand him the trowel, make him “lay the stone,” and then poor prince!

refresh him at table. But that was a matter for by and by.

His purchase of herrings completed, Mr. Tinman walked across the mound

of shingle to the house on the beach. He was rather a fresh-faced man,

of the Saxon colouring, and at a distance looking good-humoured. That

he should have been able to make such an appearance while doing daily

battle with his wine, was a proof of great physical vigour. His pace

was leisurely, as it must needs be over pebbles, where half a step is

subtracted from each whole one in passing; and, besides, he was aware of

a general breath at his departure that betokened a censorious assembly.

Why should he not market for himself? He threw dignity into his

retreating figure in response to the internal interrogation. The moment

>was one when conscious rectitude =pliers man should have a tail for

its just display. Philosophers have drawn attention to the power of the

human face to express pure virtue, but no sooner has it passed on

than the spirit erect within would seem helpless. The breadth of our

shoulders is apparently presented for our critics to write on. Poor duty

is done by the simple sense of moral worth, to supplant that absence of

feature in the plain flat back. We are below the animals in this. How

charged with language behind him is a dog! Everybody has noticed it. Let

a dog turn away from a hostile circle, and his crisp and wary tail not

merely defends him, it menaces; it is a weapon. Man has no choice but to

surge and boil, or stiffen preposterously. Knowing the popular sentiment

about his marketing--for men can see behind their backs, though they may

have nothing to speak with--Tinman resembled those persons of

principle who decline to pay for a “Bless your honour!” from a voluble

beggar-woman, and obtain the reverse of it after they have gone by. He

was sufficiently sensitive to feel that his back was chalked as on a

slate. The only remark following him was, “There he goes!”

He went to the seaward gate of the house on the beach, made practicable

in a low flint wall, where he was met by his sister Martha, to whom

he handed the basket. Apparently he named the cost of his purchase per

dozen. She touched the fish and pressed the bellies of the topmost,

it might be to question them tenderly concerning their roes. Then the

couple passed out of sight. Herrings were soon after this despatching

their odours through the chimneys of all Crikswich, and there was that

much of concord and festive union among the inhabitants.

The house on the beach had been posted where it stood, one supposes, for

the sake of the sea-view, from which it turned right about to face the

town across a patch of grass and salt scurf, looking like a square and

scornful corporal engaged in the perpetual review of an awkward squad of

recruits. Sea delighted it not, nor land either. Marine Parade fronting

it to the left, shaded sickly eyes, under a worn green verandah, from

a sun that rarely appeared, as the traducers of spinsters pretend those

virgins are ever keenly on their guard against him that cometh not.

Belle Vue Terrace stared out of lank glass panes without reserve,

unashamed of its yellow complexion. A gaping public-house, calling

itself newly Hotel, fell backward a step. Villas with the titles of

royalty and bloody battles claimed five feet of garden, and swelled in

bowwindows beside other villas which drew up firmly, commending to the

attention a decent straightness and unintrusive decorum in preference.

On an elevated meadow to the right was the Crouch. The Hall of Elba

nestled among weather-beaten dwarf woods further toward the cliff.

Shavenness, featurelessness, emptiness, clamminess scurfiness, formed

the outward expression of a town to which people were reasonably glad to

come from London in summer-time, for there was nothing in Crikswich

to distract the naked pursuit of health. The sea tossed its renovating

brine to the determinedly sniffing animal, who went to his meals with an

appetite that rendered him cordially eulogistic of the place, in spite

of certain frank whiffs of sewerage coming off an open deposit on the

common to mingle with the brine. Tradition told of a French lady and

gentleman entering the town to take lodgings for a month, and that

on the morrow they took a boat from the shore, saying in their faint

English to a sailor veteran of the coastguard, whom they had consulted

about the weather, “It is better zis zan zat,” as they shrugged between

rough sea and corpselike land. And they were not seen again. Their

meaning none knew. Having paid their bill at the lodging-house, their

conduct was ascribed to systematic madness. English people came to

Crikswich for the pure salt sea air, and they did not expect it to be

cooked and dressed and decorated for them. If these things are done to

nature, it is nature no longer that you have, but something Frenchified.

Those French are for trimming Neptune’s beard! Only wait, and you are

sure to find variety in nature, more than you may like. You will find it

in Neptune. What say you to a breach of the sea-wall, and an inundation

of the aromatic grass-flat extending from the house on the beach to the

tottering terraces, villas, cottages: and public-house transformed by

its ensign to Hotel, along the frontage of the town? Such an event

had occurred of old, and had given the house on the beach the serious

shaking great Neptune in his wrath alone can give. But many years had

intervened. Groynes had been run down to intercept him and divert him.

He generally did his winter mischief on a mill and salt marshes lower

westward. Mr. Tinman had always been extremely zealous in promoting the

expenditure of what moneys the town had to spare upon the protection of

the shore, as it were for the propitiation or defiance of the sea-god.

There was a kindly joke against him an that subject among brother

jurats. He retorted with the joke, that the first thing for Englishmen

to look to were England’s defences.

But it will not do to be dwelling too fondly on our eras of peace, for

which we make such splendid sacrifices. Peace, saving for the advent of

a German band, which troubled the repose of the town at intervals,

had imparted to the inhabitants of Crikswich, within and without, the

likeness to its most perfect image, together, it must be confessed, with

a degree of nervousness that invested common events with some of the

terrors of the Last Trump, when one night, just upon the passing of the

vernal equinox, something happened.