LADY ARKROYD'S VISIT TO JIM. GOODY TALK. JIM AND HIS MAKER. HOW MR.
TAYLOR VISITED ANOTHER CASE. A DEATH-BED CONFESSION
The reference to Jim's irreligious attitude, in the Rector's letter,
makes it almost incumbent on the story to give some particulars of Lady
Arkroyd's visit to the Hospital.
Athelstan Taylor, of course, came to his appointment to the minute.
He always preferred to do the waiting himself if he could spare the
time, and he usually found something to avert tedium. On this occasion,
seeing no sign, when he arrived at St. Brides, of the Arkroyd pair of
bays, or the dark chestnuts with starred foreheads--both well known to
him--he made short excursions into the neighbourhood, hoping each time
to just catch Lady Arkroyd on her arrival when he returned.
He made three such excursions, amounting in all to half an hour. The
first and longest was made so by his lighting on a fight between two
small boys, which he felt bound to interrupt. But not at the very
earliest; it was such a good fight, and the two pugilists and their
friends were enjoying it so. So he spun out his approach as much as
possible, and then pounced with, "Why aren't you two at school, hey?"
They looked at each other, and at him, as their friends did also, but
could not agree on a reason. Then they said, "Let's go down the lyne,"
and fled, carrying jackets, to begin again as soon as possible. Pursuit
down the lane did not seem to come into practical politics.
The second excursion was shorter, and he was sorry he could not spare
time for more conversation with a purveyor of tortoises, who was
offering them to the public from a truck. Why should the trade in
tortoises flourish in South London? Why tortoises at all? He could not
stop to learn; and when he found that her ladyship was still in arrear,
he started back to find the tortoise-monger, but failed to do so. On
his return this time, he thought it best to step into the Hospital
and get a few words with his friend the House Surgeon, to whom he had
sent a card overnight. It was all right, said that gentleman, about
the dressers. They had nearly done by now, and Jim's case had been
made a point of--was quite ready for visitors; nothing doing now till
the visiting surgeon came--in an hour and a half about. Mr. Taylor,
reassured, went out again to meet her ladyship, and presently saw the
carriage coming down the street. In a very short time he was telling
Jim he had brought a lady to see him.
"It's mighty kind of you, master. And it's mighty kind o' the lady. I'm
not so fit to see company as I might be." He did not mean he could not
see; for he always forgot his blindness. He referred entirely to his
uncourtly _entourage_.
"We mustn't trouble about that," said her ladyship, and really didn't
mean to be condescending. "I shall sit here, Mr. Taylor. Where will you
come?" _Here_ being the chair beside the bed. Mr. Taylor wouldn't sit
down; indeed, it was easier to stand, as long as Jim kept his hand,
which he did not seem inclined to let go.
"Tell this lady about your accident, Jim."
"Oh, do, please! I should so like to hear." This was true, and opened
up an avenue of respite to a feeling of her ladyship's that she ought
to say something good, if it was only about how we should bow to the
will of an All-wise Providence. She had got that ready in the carriage
coming through Old Bond Street, and had felt quite sure she should
think of something better presently, and hadn't succeeded. So she was
glad of a pause, to think in. Besides, it was interesting.
"There's none so much to tell about it, lady; you might put it all
inside of a minute, in the manner o' speaking. Ye see, I never see
this van coming along--never took note, I should say!--more by token I
was listening like to hear the voice of my little lass call 'Pilot'--a
kind of divarsion we make out between us, me and the lassie ... you'll
understand?..."
"I quite understand. Your little lass is the child I have seen at Miss
Fossett's Schoolroom. Little Eliza Ann."
"Belike you have, lady. She's Lizarann, sure! Well, this here van come
along in the dark, and there was I mazed like, by reason of not finding
the granite curb. It come with a nasty rush, and I had no way on me to
steer clear, set apart the want of sea-room. But I'm a bit uncertain
how it come about, there's the truth of it!" Jim paused, and felt for
an expression, probably one akin to loss of presence of mind; then
ended with, "In a quick turn about o' things, you don't easy come by
the time to get your considerin' cap on. But it was no fault of any
man, as I see it."
Lady Arkroyd saw an opportunity. "It was the will of Providence," she
said. There could be no harm in that, although her clerical friend
had cautioned her that Jim's mind was not an easy one to deal with on
religious lines. But Jews, Turks, Heretics, and Infidels innumerable
could have subscribed to this, surely. Jim only said, with the most
perfect simplicity: "I wouldn't wish to fix the blame, with any
confidence. It was just a chance, as I see it." Her ladyship did not
catch the exact tenor of the remark, and did not see the amused,
benevolent smile on the face of the big man who still stood looking
down on Jim, holding his hand as he would have held a child's.
The fact was that, on one of the two or three occasions when the Rev.
Athelstan had referred--but quite colloquially, and without any idea
of taking a mean advantage of Jim's helplessness--to the Almighty as
the responsible agent in the matter, Jim had taken up the theological
position that if God hadn't "cut in," he--Jim--might have been still
the strong seaman on the great free sea, might have actually _seen_
his little lass! Dolly must have died, of course--"my wife, seven
year agone, master," said Jim. "Because a many on us may die, any
time"--but that was another matter. At least, why need both his eyes
go? "Ah, master!" said he, when it was settled that if God had done
one job, he'd done the other, "why couldn't he leave me just no more
than a quarter-allowance of one of them--just for to see my wife and
the little lass together, what time there was for it?" Perhaps it was
part of the Rector of Royd's unsoundness that he almost lost sight of
Jim's anthropomorphism--the naïveté of his presentment of his Maker
as a meddlesome old plague--in the heartbroken voice that could still
speak about the eyes that could no longer see, about the child his
touch and hearing alone could tell him of. Part of that unsoundness,
too, maybe, that he resolved thenceforward to make no attempt to change
Jim's views, except by hypnotic suggestions, or their equivalent! No
crop could grow on land so foully manured! Better to leave it to the
wild-flowers for a season.
He certainly thought he saw an improvement of Jim's feelings towards
this strange deity of his conception, in this readiness to exonerate
him, or it, and to lay the blame on the metaphysico-religious
scapegoat, Chance. It was manifested in the tone of his voice,
one of willingness to spare even an author of mischief--maybe a
well-intentioned blunderer--and to find an insensitive back to
flagellate in his place.
"The merest chance, I am sure!" Lady Arkroyd welcomed the scapegoat,
and the Rev. Athelstan looked more amused than ever, under the skin.
The lady never suspected herself of any absurdity. "But Sir Murgatroyd
says the matter ought to be gone into, and proper inquiries made."
The Baronet had done so, certainly; but may be said to have been left
speaking, like M.P.'s when a reporter packs off an instalment of
shorthand _in mediis rebus_. "Of course, if there was any doubt about
the driver of the van being sober at the time...."
Jim showed anxiety on the carman's behalf. "He mightn't be any the
worse driver for that, lady," he said. "It was the sart o' night a pint
or so don't go far on, to keep the life in a man."
"Jim won't grudge him that much, on such a night, Lady Arkroyd. But Sir
Murgatroyd's quite right, of course! However, as a matter of fact, the
whole thing has been thoroughly sifted, and it seems certain drink had
nothing to do with it, this time."
"Not likely, master! Didn't the pore feller make a shift to get over
here a'ter work hours--took a night-turn all the way from Camden Road
goods station--so they told me--just for to hear the end of the story?
And the follerin' night? So they _said_, and I'm tellin' ye all I know.
In coorse, I never seen him, myself!"
"No--of course you could not." Lady Arkroyd's pity for Jim's blindness,
which _his_ speech ignored, is mistaken by him for regret at the
stringency of visiting regulations. The feeling of compassion in
her voice seems to him only man's natural resentment against rules,
interpreted by womanly sensibility.
"I'll see him one o' these days, lady," Jim says consolatorily.
Of course, he means in the days of the wooden leg to come, if not
sooner. Her ladyship, still conscious of the desirability of a
religious atmosphere, has some vague impression that Mr. Taylor has
been guaranteeing Jim eyesight on a cloud, through the whole of an
exasperating Sunday lasting for ever; and she makes up her mind Jim
could be read to out of the Bible with advantage, and of course
there were any number of people ready to do this sort of thing. She
will inquire about that. But Jim had really wanted to change the
conversation to a subject nearer his heart.
"My little lass, lady!" he said. "You seen the lass once, round to the
Schoolhouse. Happen you might see her again?"
"If I see Miss Fossett, Coupland, I shall certainly ask her to point
out your little girl. She may not be there, you know."
"That's so, lady. But supposin'! Any guess thing you might speak about,
ye know. So I was just thinkin', if you was to be so very kind as to
bear in mind...."
"Yes. Indeed I will, Coupland. Is there something you wish I should
say?"
"Well, lady, yes! And be very thankful to ye! Would ye be so very kind
as just say to her ... from her Daddy, ye know ... nothing at all
about any sort of an ill-convenience come of this here accident. Just
make it easy, like ... for she's but young, ye'll understand...."
"Jim means ... I know, Jim"--for Jim seemed about to interrupt the Rev.
Athelstan--"he means he wants Lizarann to think the accident a slight
one."
"Right you are, master!" Jim is much relieved, and his interpreter
continues: "So he wants her to know as little as possible till he can
walk about and make the least of it."
"Oh yes! I quite understand that. I'll be very careful and discreet."
"Not for to let on, anyways, about her Daddy being a fut the less!"
Jim's relief is enormous at the completeness of the understanding.
The conversation ran on, on such general lines as the diet of hospital
life--highly approved of--the sanguineness of the head-surgeon that
Jim would make a record in recovery, and the peculiarly small amount
of inconvenience endured (if the truth were known) by the wearers of
wooden legs. Jim was very cheerful about this. "Bob Steptoe, he'll lose
a good half o' my custom," said he, immensely amused.
At this moment an interruption occurred. A nurse who had passed through
the room a few minutes before rather hurriedly was returning, with
a slightly perplexed manner on her, as of one who had not found a
thing sought for. At the same moment another, who seemed a superior
functionary, came in from the opposite door, and they met and spoke
together in an undertone. Both looked round towards Jim's bed.
"I can ask him, anyhow!" said the senior nurse, and approached
Athelstan Taylor. She spoke to him rapidly under her breath, but of
what she said neither Jim nor the lady heard anything. When she had
finished, he said, "Of course, certainly!" and then, turning to Lady
Arkroyd, explained that a man who was dying in another part of the
Hospital had asked to see a clergyman, and that an unusual conjunction
of circumstances had made it difficult to comply with his request,
which was urgent. He might die any moment, the nurse had said, and
Mr. * * * was ill--he being, presumably, the usual resource in such
cases. Mr. Taylor was sure Lady Arkroyd would excuse him. But it would
be better for him to say good-bye provisionally, as no one could tell
how long he might be detained. Her ladyship would no doubt stay and
talk with Jim a little longer.
Lady Arkroyd was not sorry to do so. She had not quite come up to
her own standard of self-justification; having, indeed, a well-marked
conviction of her capability of doing anything she turned her hands
to, and certainly not least of affording consolation and help to
the distressed. Without cataloguing the instances, she had an inner
conviction of the existence of a class of persons who were sick, and
she visited them. She was a good-natured woman enough, and really
took sufficient pleasure in doing good on purpose, to make playing at
Providence a luxury, or at least to prevent its ever becoming a bore.
No wonder that on this occasion she felt a little damped, with nothing
further to her score so far than an undertaking on her part to hold her
tongue and be discreet, under specified circumstances.
"The master's coming back--the gentleman?" says Jim, as the door closes
on Mr. Taylor and the nurse.
"Oh yes!--he'll come back to see you before he goes." Jim has to be
satisfied with this. "You must try to keep quiet and be patient,
Coupland, and then the healing will go on quicker...."
"It ain't hardly impatience, lady." Jim pauses to think what it is.
"Not so much as the want of a good stretch. I'd be all right if they'd
take this here plaister off o' my right leg. It's a mighty thick
plaister, anyhow." Jim's slight movement is terribly expressive of
the irksomeness of his lot. The nurse in charge notes the fact, and
contrives such alleviation as may be--an alteration in the angle of the
couch, an adjustment of a pillow, a dose of some refreshing stimulant
that seems not unwelcome. "He's not the trouble many are," says she.
Jim seems a favourite.
Lady Arkroyd, left to herself, casts about for something to say which
shall neither be aggressively religious nor too cowardly a concession
to Jim's heathenism, of which Mr. Taylor has spoken freely to her.
After a few more words about collateral matter, especially about the
Hospital's veto on smoking--a bitter privation--she thinks she sees her
way.
"It is very hard, Coupland, and one can't help saying so. Only, of
course, it doesn't do to call the Wisdom of Providence in question...."
"What might that be, missis--lady, I should say?" Now the fact is,
Jim was not inquiring about the Wisdom of Providence--of which he had
heard before from Mr. Wilkins--but about the meaning of "calling in
question." The lady thought otherwise, mistakenly.
"I only meant," she said, feeling very unsafe, "that we know--at least,
_we_ believe--that events are Divinely ordered for the best."
"Ye know better than I do about that, lady," said Jim. And then Lady
Arkroyd thought he was an Agnostic. He had really only paid tribute
to her superior education. But it seemed to set him a-thinking, too!
For he added, after a pause: "If they'd a' been ordered for the worst,
maybe I might have had my barker-pipe." The word "Divinely" had not
carried his mind outside the Hospital regulations. Poor Jim had not the
remotest conception that he had shocked his lady visitor.
Nevertheless, she was shocked, and felt the case called for an effort.
But her own religious convictions--only she had been quite properly
educated, mind you!--were few and vapid. Her proprietorship of a
Prayer-Book, with a mark in the right place, nearly covered the whole
ground. However, there was always the Rev. Athelstan; she could make
him responsible, by indirect engineering, for any amount of belief,
whatever her own unprofessional laxity might be. So she assumed a
definitely religious air, and ignored Jim's unfortunate remark about
the pipe.
"I feel so sure, Coupland, that Mr. Taylor has told you, and will tell
you more, about Where to look, in tribulation for...."
"Sakes alive, Lady! _Me_ look!..." Jim, who had interrupted, stopped
suddenly, confused and perturbed at something. Her ladyship,
interpreting this as some protest of Agnosticism, now felt her
insufficiency to deal with the case, and only wished to transfer the
conversation elsewhere. She felt she had done her duty, in what she
would not have hesitated to mention in Society as "goody talk," when
she executed that superb _entrechat_, so to speak, of the big initial
W of "Where." She had done her duty, and had not succeeded. She would
be quite justified now in relaxing from the exalted serenity, tempered
with due humility, of a spiritual instructress, and referring to the
minor consolations of this earth. She ignored Jim's exclamation, and
continued speaking as though her last sentence had been completed.
"Besides, in a very little while you will be able to have Eliza Ann
back again, and really you'll be able to move about quite easily."
Jim laughed out--a big hearty laugh of contempt for any mere personal
mishap of his own. "I'll have the less weight to carry, sure!" he said.
And then her ladyship looked at her watch, and asked the nurse whether
that clock was right; who promptly replied that that clock was, if
anything, slow. Seeing the good effect of which, she went on to say
that it was slower still. However, this was not needed, for the visitor
was only feeling about for departure, which, in view of the possible
indefinite postponement of Mr. Taylor's return, was given up with
insincere professions of regret on the part of both, and Lady Arkroyd
took her leave, consolable, but with a noble sense of duty done.
"The master _be_ coming back, though, missis...?" Jim asks anxiously of
the nurse.
"Oh, yes, he's bound to come back, and you may make your mind easy."
* * * * *
When Athelstan Taylor and the nurse left the ward, they passed through
the avenue of beds in the adjoining ward without speaking, and into a
lobby beyond. Then the nurse stopped and spoke. "This is a bad ward
that we are going to. Perhaps I ought to have told you?"
"You are going there yourself?"
"It is my duty to go."
"And mine." They said no more, but no more was necessary. It was a
little way further that they had to go, through wards and passages; but
the circumstances did not seem to favour chat. Arriving at the door of
the ward, Mr. Taylor turned and said: "This is a man, is it not--this
patient--I think you said?"
"A man. The case developed in the hospital. He was brought in as sudden
paralysis. He has been here a month or more."
"Do they keep cases of this sort so long?"
"Not always. They kept this one. He had an epileptic seizure which was
followed by torpor. Dr. ---- thinks now that the disease has affected
the valves of the heart. He might die suddenly, at any moment. When I
told him so to-day, he asked to see the Chaplain, Mr. ----. He and all
his family have mumps."
A young doctor was in the ward, who said, "Is this the gentleman?" and
after "Yes" from the nurse, continued: "You mustn't be alarmed at our
precautions. We only take them in order to be on the safe side." The
precautions which, it seemed, St. Bride insisted on for all who should
enter a contagion-ward were a close overall of some germ-proof canvas
or linen, and thin, invulnerable rubber gloves. Mr. Taylor, as he drew
them on, shuddered to think how many a time, conceivably, they might
have been some wearer's only safeguard against a blasted life, and the
inheritance of a dire poison by generations yet unborn.
When he was safely attired in them, the young surgeon, as he conducted
him through the ward, said in reply to a question: "Oh no!--not the
slightest _danger_ from the breath. You may be quite happy about that.
Let Sister Martha put a little eau-de-Cologne on your handkerchief.
This is your man."
This! This semi-mummy that is little else than bandages! This thing,
at least, only manifested to us, otherwise, as an exposed mouth; or
what was a mouth and is an orifice, to be identified by two carious,
projecting teeth; or as the nailless fingers of an enclosed hand,
escaping from its wraps. This, it seems, is the Rev. Athelstan Taylor's
man, by whom he takes a chair the nurse brings him, as he thinks to
himself: "My man, thank God, not Gus's!" For his invalid friend might
easily have been here in his place, and could _he_--poor delicate
fellow!--have borne the awful flavour of this place, breaking through
all antiseptic spray and palliation of ozone, and making him, himself,
as physically sick as he is sick at heart? "Not Gus's man, thank God!
At least, a great overgrown giant like myself!" So he thought as he
tried to catch the words of the wretched remnant on the bed beside
him. They were audible only by him, as he stooped resolutely, brushing
all caution aside, and placed his ear close to the dreadful mouth.
It needed an effort, even with Sister Martha's benediction on his
handkerchief.
"What is my name, and who am I?" He repeats the whispered words as he
hears them. "I am Athelstan Taylor, a priest in holy orders.... Yes--a
clergyman of the Church of England ... yes!--I understand what you say.
You have something on your conscience which you wish to tell. Try and
tell me."
The nurse evidently thinks the man is dying, and may die without
receiving the Sacrament, which she has supposed his principal object.
She makes a suggestion to that effect. But Mr. Taylor thinks otherwise.
"Presently!" he says. "Let him tell his story first." The nurse
retires, and the tale goes on.
It was a hard tale to catch the threads of. But its hearer was able
to master the main points. The narrator had married, sixteen years
before, a very young and inexperienced girl, unknown to her parents,
who seemed to have remained in ignorance throughout. Even when he
deserted her, a very short time after marriage, she kept her secret
from everyone but a young clerk, a friend of his own, with whom, as
a natural consequence, the poor girl, apparently afraid to divulge
the facts to her family, became very _liée_. His story was obscure at
this point, the only clear thing being that, in order to shake her off
and remain free to contract another marriage, he had written a mock
confession to this young man; alleging, on grounds which the dying
man's condition prevented his explaining in full, that the wedding had
been really a fraud, and his statement that it was so seemed to have
been held sufficient by the girl. The friend, either convinced of its
truth or in love with the girl himself, had accepted it, or seemed to
accept it, as indisputable. Was it to be wondered at that, when she
returned to her home after an absence of some months, with nothing to
show that this concealed marriage had taken place, she had accepted
this young man as her lover, and married him with the full consent of
her parents? The narrator had clearly foreseen this, and looked to it
as a practical release from an encumbrance. His own subsequent career
had been one of profligacy and crime, some of his sins being, to all
appearance, far worse than this one, as such things are estimated;
one achievement having, in fact, procured him a long term of penal
servitude. How strange it seemed that now, with the hand of Death upon
him, he should feel the lighter offence an exceptional weight upon
his conscience! Yet so it was! And his hearer thought he could detect
the relief the confession had given him in the changed whisper that
followed the completion of his story. Mr. Taylor was glad that the
atrocity that sent him to Portland Island was not specially referred to
in the culprit's final inquiry--could he hope for forgiveness?
"I told the unhappy creature," wrote Athelstan to Gus, in the letter
he wrote that evening, "that his chances of forgiveness must depend on
the truth or falsehood of his own contrition, and I am afraid I had the
cruelty to say it with some severity. You know my severe manner. But,
then, it was true. I'm afraid, Gus dear, that I have hardly your faith
in the efficacy of my holy office, taken by itself. But these things
are awful to face. I had hardly time to fulfil my function as a priest
when the poor wretch breathed his last."
It was at that last moment that the need of the rubber gloves became
manifest. Just at the end, the dreadful nailless hand, moving painfully
about, and fraught with some sudden strength, had caught the healthy
one that lay near it on the coverlid, and drew it up to touch it with
the things that had once been lips. The young doctor seemed relieved
when he had himself seen the priest in holy orders well drenched in
water with strange suspicions of sanitation in it, after a heart-felt
lather of carbolic soap.
* * * * *
When the Rev. Athelstan came back to Jim's bedside, his face no longer
wore its cheerful aspect of an hour ago. In that short time his sad
experience--surely something more than a mere death-bed, such as his
daily routine of life brought him to the sight of so often!--had
changed it, and made him almost like another man.
"I'm martal glad ye've come, master," said Jim. And, at the sound of
a voice with a memory in it of the chant the windlass echoes when the
anchor leaves its bed in the sand, and the last shore-boat waves
God-speed to the ship set free, his hearer seemed to shake off some
of the gloom that oppressed him. "I'm martal glad to see ye back," he
repeats, "by token of the good lady."
Athelstan takes the hand that seeks his. "Why the good lady, Jim?" he
says.
"Why, master, the good lady she says to me, she says, did I know where
to look for soomat or other? Lard knows what! And I says to her, '_Me_
look!' I says, because I was thinking belike this drawback on my
eyesight might have slipped out of memory...."
"Not very likely, Jim! But if it did, Lady Arkroyd's recollected it by
now."
"Ye think so, master? But put it she hasn't! I'd be sorry she should
come to the knowledge late in the day. These here ladies, master,
they ain't a rough sart, like we"--this did not mean his hearer, only
himself and his congeners--"and she might easy get tender-hearted what
with thinkin' over. And _I'd_ never be the worse, bless you!"
"_I_ see what you mean, Jim." The light dawns; the speaker had been
till then in the dark. He has a laugh ready for it, as he adds: "You
thought the lady would be unhappy when she found she'd been talking to
a blind man about his eyesight? Wasn't that it?" That was it, clearly.
But Jim discerns a justification for his idea, when he learns that his
blindness had been fully talked over.
"There's just what I said, in that, ye see!" says he. "The lady
wouldn't be talking, not to hurt my feelings! Jim Coupland's feelings
now!... where are we at that?" They seem to be a rare good joke to Jim.
But there is material for regret in the background. "'Tain't a matter
to cry one's eyes out over," says he, "but a bit of a pity, too!..."
"What is, Jim?"
"If I'd kept a lookout ahead, I could have steered the good lady clear
of any fret about me and my eyesight. And if we'd only 'a known,
I might 'a told her the starry o' the Flying Dutchman--just for
entertainment like! A yarn's a yarn, master!"
* * * * *
Athelstan Taylor was puzzled on his way home by the curious selection
of a restless conscience as aliment for disquiet. But thinking back
on his own past, he found that _his_ disquiets had not been about his
mistakes that had most harmed others. Could he not remember his own
prolonged remorse, at five years old, when an overtwist brought off
the wooden leg of a minute doll, and he had the meanness to put the
limb in place, and leave it, sound to all seeming, for its owner to
discover its calamity? And how he _never told_! Even now, he wished he
had confessed. It was no use now! The sister that doll had belonged to
had been dead thirty years, and this tale he had just heard was, so he
gathered, well within the last twenty.
He was wondering that evening, after writing to Gus, whether his
friend, whose place he was so glad to occupy, would not have raised
some technical difficulty about the Administration of the Sacrament in
rubber gloves, when a note came from his friend the House Surgeon. Had
the man he had talked with given his name? It appeared that the name
entered in the list of patients was an alias. Probably he had several
aliases. But he had a right to be buried and registered under his last
one. A line by return would do. The letter made very light of the
matter--said the deceased couldn't have had any property!
Athelstan Taylor's reply was that the name given, as far as he could
hear it, was Edward Kay Thorne. He walked out and posted it himself,
as the servants had gone to bed. He posted at the same time his letter
to his friend Gus, to which he had added a long postscript about the
events of the day. "You need not think," it ended, "that I have broken
the 'seal of the confessional' in telling this man's story. He said I
was at liberty to do as I liked." He felt rather glad to have a sharer
in such a confidence. Then he went back to his comfortable library, put
coals on the fire, and sat up till one in the morning reading.