CHAPTER XV.

Part I.

I

All her life Miss Elizabeth Dwarris had been a sore trial to her

relations. A woman of means, she ruled tyrannously over a large number

of impecunious cousins, using her bank balance like the scorpions of

Rehoboam to chastise them; and, like many another pious creature, for

their souls’ good making all and sundry excessively miserable. Nurtured

in the Evangelical ways current in her youth, she insisted that her

connections should seek salvation according to her own lights, and with

harsh tongue and with bitter gibe made it her constant business to

persuade them of their extreme unworthiness. She arranged lives as she

thought fit, and ventured not only to order the costume and habits, but

even the inner thought of those about her; the Last Judgment could have

no terrors for any that had faced her searching examination. She

invited to stay with her in succession various poor ladies who presumed

on a distant tie to call her Aunt Eliza, and they accepted her summons,

more imperious than a royal command, with gratitude by no means unmixed

with fear, bearing the servitude meekly as a cross which in the future

would meet due testamentary reward.

Miss Dwarris loved to feel her power. During these long visits—for in a

way the old lady was very hospitable—she made it her especial object to

break the spirit of her guests, and it entertained her hugely to see

the mildness with which were borne her extravagant demands, the

humility with which every inclination was crushed. She took a malicious

pleasure in publicly affronting persons, ostensibly to bend a sinful

pride, or in obliging them to do things which they peculiarly disliked.

With a singular quickness for discovering the points on which they were

most sensitive, she attacked every weakness with blunt invective till

the sufferer writhed before her raw and bleeding; no defect, physical

or mental, was protected from her raillery, and she could pardon as

little an excess of avoirdupois as a want of memory. Yet with all her

heart she despised her victims, she flung in their face insolently

their mercenary spirit, vowing that she would never leave a penny to

such a pack of weak fools; it delighted her to ask for advice in the

distribution of her property among charitable societies, and she heard

with unconcealed hilarity their unwilling and confused suggestions.

With one of her relations only Miss Dwarris found it needful to observe

a certain restraint—for Miss Ley, perhaps the most distant of her

cousins, was as plain-spoken as herself, and had besides, a far keener

wit, whereby she could turn rash statements to the utter ridicule of

the speaker. Nor did Miss Dwarris precisely dislike this independent

spirit; she looked upon her, in fact, with a certain degree of

affection and not a little fear. Miss Ley, seldom lacking a repartee,

appeared really to enjoy the verbal contests, from which, by her

greater urbanity, readiness, and knowledge, she usually emerged

victorious; it confounded, but at the same time almost amused, the

elder lady that a woman so much poorer than herself, with no smaller

claim than others to the coveted inheritance, should venture not only

to be facetious at her expense, but even to carry war into her very

camp. Miss Ley, really not grieved to find someone to whom without

prickings of conscience she could speak her whole mind, took a grim

pleasure in pointing out to her cousin the poor logic of her

observations or the foolish unreason of her acts. No cherished opinion

of Miss Dwarris was safe from satire; even her Evangelicism was laughed

at, and the rich old woman, unused to argument, was easily driven to

self-contradiction; and then—for the victor took no pains to conceal

her triumph—she grew pale and speechless with rage. The quarrels were

frequent, but Miss Dwarris, though it was a sharp thorn in her flesh

that the first advances must be made by her, in the end always forgave.

Yet at last it was inevitable that a final breach should occur. The

cause thereof, characteristically enough, was very trivial.

Miss Ley, accustomed, when she went abroad for the winter to let her

little flat in Chelsea, had been obliged by unforeseen circumstances to

return to England while her tenants were still in possession, and had

asked Miss Dwarris whether she might stay with her in Old Queen Street.

The old tyrant, much as she hated her relatives, hated still more to

live alone; she needed someone on whom to vent her temper, and through

the illness of a niece, due to spend March and April with her, had been

forced to pass a month of solitude. She wrote back, in the peremptory

fashion which even with Miss Ley she could not refrain from using, that

she expected her on such and such a day by such and such a train. It is

not clear whether there was in the letter anything to excite in Miss

Ley a contradictory spirit, or whether her engagements really prevented

it, but at all events she answered that her plans made it more

convenient to arrive on the day following and by a different train.

Miss Dwarris telegraphed that unless her guest came on the day and at

the hour mentioned in her letter she could not send the carriage to

meet her, to which the younger lady replied concisely: “Don’t!”

“She’s as obstinate as a pig,” muttered Miss Dwarris, reading the

telegram, and she saw in her mind’s eye the thin smile on her cousin’s

mouth when she wrote that one indifferent word. “I suppose she thinks

she’s very clever.”

Her hostess greeted Miss Ley, notwithstanding, with a certain grim

affability reserved only for her; she was at all events the least

detestable of her relations, and, though neither docile nor polite, at

least was never tedious. Her conversation braced Miss Dwarris, so that

with her she was usually at her best, and sometimes, forgetting her

overbearing habit, showed herself a sensible and entertaining woman of

not altogether unamiable disposition.

“You’re growing old, my dear,” said Miss Dwarris when they sat down to

dinner, looking at her guest with eyes keen to detect wrinkles and

crow’s-feet.

“You flatter me,” Miss Ley retorted; “antiquity is the only excuse for

a woman who has determined on a single life.”

“I suppose, like the rest of them, you would have married if anyone had

asked you.”

Miss Ley smiled.

“Two months ago an Italian Prince offered me his hand and heart,

Eliza.”

“A Papist would do anything,” replied Miss Dwarris. “I suppose you told

him your income and he found he’d misjudged the strength of his

affections.”

“I refused him because he was so virtuous.”

“I shouldn’t have thought at your age you could afford to pick and

choose, Polly.”

“Allow me to observe that you have an amiable faculty for thinking of

one subject at one time in two diametrically opposed ways.”

Miss Ley was a slender woman of middle size; her hair, very plainly

arranged, beginning to turn gray, and her face, already much wrinkled,

by its clear precision of feature indicating a comfortable strength of

character; her lips, thin but expressive, mobile, added to this

appearance of determination. She was by no means handsome, and had

certainly never been pretty, but her carriage was not without grace nor

her manner without fascination. Her eyes were very bright, and so

shrewd as sometimes to be almost disconcerting: without words they

could make pretentiousness absurd; and most affectations, under that

searching glance, part contemptuous, part amused, willingly hid

themselves. Yet, as Miss Dwarris took care to remind her, she was not

without her own especial pose, but it was carried out so admirably,

with such a restrained, comely decorum, that few observed it, and such

as did found not the heart to condemn: it was the perfect art that

concealed itself. To execute this æsthetic gesture, it pleased Miss Ley

to dress with the greatest possible simplicity, usually in black, and

her only ornament was a Renaissance jewel of such exquisite beauty that

no museum would have disdained to possess it: this she wore around her

neck attached to a long gold chain, and she fingered it with pleasure,

to show, according to her plain-spoken relative, the undoubted beauty

of her hands. Her well-fitting shoes and the elaborate open-work of her

silk stockings suggested also a not unreasonable pride in a shapely

foot, small and high of instep. Thus attired, when she had visitors,

Miss Ley sat in an Italian straight-backed chair of oak, and delicately

carved, which was placed between two windows against the wall; and she

cultivated already a certain primness of manner which made very

effective the audacious criticism of life wherewith she was used to

entertain her friends.

Two mornings after her arrival in Old Queen Street, Miss Ley announced

her intention to go out. She came downstairs with a very fashionable

parasol, a purchase on her way through Paris.

“You’re not going out with that thing?” cried Miss Dwarris, scornfully.

“I am indeed.”

“Nonsense; you must take an umbrella. It’s going to rain.”

“I have a new sunshade and an old umbrella, Eliza. I feel certain it

will be fine.”

“My dear, you know nothing about the English climate. I tell you it

will pour cats and dogs.”

“Fiddlesticks, Eliza!”

“Polly,” answered Miss Dwarris, her temper rising, “I wish you to take

an umbrella. The barometer is going down, and I have a tingling in my

feet, which is a sure sign of wet. It’s very irreligious of you to

presume to say what the weather is going to be.”

“I venture to think that meteorologically I am no less acquainted with

the ways of Providence than you.”

“That, I think, is not funny, but blasphemous, Polly. In my house I

expect people to do as I tell them, and I insist on your taking an

umbrella.”

“Don’t be absurd, Eliza!”

Miss Dwarris rang the bell, and when the butler appeared ordered him to

fetch her own umbrella for Miss Ley.

“I absolutely refuse to use it,” said the younger lady, smiling.

“Pray remember that you are my guest, Polly.”

“And therefore entitled to do exactly as I like.”

Miss Dwarris rose to her feet, a massive old woman of commanding

presence, and stretched out a threatening hand.

“If you leave this house without an umbrella, you shall not come into

it again. You shall never cross this threshold so long as I am alive.”

Miss Ley cannot have been in the best of humours that morning, for she

pursed her lips in the manner already characteristic of her, and looked

at her elderly cousin with a cold scorn most difficult to bear.

“My dear Eliza, you have a singularly exaggerated idea of your

importance. Are there no hotels in London? You appear to think I stay

with you for pleasure rather than to mortify my flesh. And really the

cross is growing too heavy for me, for I think you must have quite the

worst cook in the Metropolis.”

“She’s been with me for five-and-twenty years,” answered Miss Dwarris,

two red spots appearing on her cheeks, “and no one has ventured to

complain of the cooking before. If any of my guests had done so, I

should have answered that what was good enough for me was a great deal

too good for anyone else. I know that you’re obstinate, Polly, and

quick-tempered, and this impertinence I am willing to overlook. Do you

still refuse to do as I wish?”

“Yes.”

Miss Dwarris rang the bell violently.

“Tell Martha to pack Miss Ley’s boxes at once, and call a

four-wheeler,” she cried, in tones of thunder.

“Very well, Madam,” answered the butler, used to his mistress’

vagaries.

Then Miss Dwarris turned to her guest, who observed her with irritating

good-humour.

“I hope you realize, Polly, that I fully mean what I say.”

“All is over between us,” answered Miss Ley mockingly, “and shall I

return your letters and your photographs?”

Miss Dwarris sat for a while in silent anger, watching her cousin, who

took up the _Morning Post_ and with great calmness read the fashionable

intelligence. Presently the butler announced that the four-wheeler was

at the door.

“Well, Polly, so you’re really going?”

“I can hardly stay when you’ve had my boxes packed and sent for a cab,”

replied Miss Ley mildly.

“It’s your own doing; I don’t wish you to go. If you’ll confess that

you were headstrong and obstinate, and if you’ll take an umbrella, I am

willing to let bygones be bygones.”

“Look at the sun,” answered Miss Ley.

And, as if actually to annoy the tyrannous old woman, the shining rays

danced into the room and made importunate patterns on the carpet.

“I think I should tell you, Polly, that it was my intention to leave

you ten thousand pounds in my will. This intention I shall, of course,

not now carry out.”

“You’d far better leave your money to the Dwarris people. Upon my word,

considering that they’ve been related to you for over sixty years, I

think they thoroughly deserve it.”

“I shall leave my money to whom I choose,” cried Miss Dwarris, beside

herself; “and if I want to, I shall leave every penny of it in charity.

You’re very independent because you have a beggarly five hundred a

year, but apparently it isn’t enough for you to live without letting

your flat when you go away. Remember that no one has any claims upon

me, and I can make you a rich woman.”

Miss Ley replied with great deliberation.

“My dear, I have a firm conviction that you will live for another

thirty years to plague the human race in general, and your relations in

particular. It is not worth my while, on the chance of surviving you,

to submit to the caprices of a very ignorant old woman, presumptuous

and overbearing, dull and pretentious.”

Miss Dwarris gasped and shook with rage, but the other proceeded

without mercy.

“You have plenty of poor relations—bully them. Vent your spite and

ill-temper on those wretched sycophants, but, pray, in future spare

_me_ the infinite tediousness of your conversation.”

Miss Ley had ever a discreet passion for the rhetorical, and there was

a certain grandiloquence about the phrase which entertained her hugely.

She felt that it was unanswerable, and with great dignity walked out.

No communication passed between the two ladies, though Miss Dwarris,

peremptory, stern, and Evangelical to the end, lived in full possession

of her faculties for nearly twenty years. She died at last in a passion

occasioned by some trifling misdemeanour of her maid; and, as though a

heavy yoke were removed from their shoulders, her family heaved a deep

and unanimous sigh of relief.

They attended her funeral with dry eyes, looking still with silent

terror at the leaden coffin which contained the remains of that harsh,

strong, domineering old woman; then, nervously expectant, begged the

family solicitor to disclose her will. Written with her own hand, and

witnessed by two servants, it was in these terms:

“I, Elizabeth Ann Dwarris, of 79 Old Queen Street, Westminster,

spinster, hereby revoke all former wills and testamentary dispositions,

made by me, and declare this to be my last will and testament. I

appoint Mary Ley, of 72 Eliot Mansions, Chelsea, to be the executrix of

this my will, and I give all my real and personal property whatsoever

to the said Mary Ley. To my great-nephews and great-nieces, to my

cousins near and remote, I give my blessing, and I beseech them to bear

in mind the example and advice which for many years I have given them.

I recommend them to cultivate in future strength of character and an

independent spirit. I venture to remind them that the humble will never

inherit this earth, for their reward is to be awaited in the life to

come, and I desire them to continue the subscriptions which, at my

request, they have so long and generously made to the Society for the

Conversion of the Jews and to the Additional Curates Fund.

“In witness whereof, I have set my hand to this my will the 4th day

of April, 1883.

“Elizabeth Ann Dwarris.”

To her amazement, Miss Ley found herself at the age of fifty-seven in

possession of nearly three thousand pounds a year, the lease of a

pleasant old house in Westminster, and a great quantity of early

Victorian furniture. The will was written two days after her quarrel

with the eccentric old woman, and the terms of it certainly achieved

the three purposes for which it was designed: it occasioned the utmost

surprise to all concerned; it heaped coals of fire on Miss Ley’s

indifferent head; and caused the bitterest disappointment and vexation

to all that bore the name of Dwarris.

II

It did not take Miss Ley very long to settle in her house. To its new

owner, who hated modernity with all her heart, part of the charm lay in

its quaint old fashion: built in the reign of Queen Anne, it had the

leisurely, spacious comfort of dwelling-places in that period, with a

hood over the door that was a pattern of elegance, wrought-iron

railings, and, to Miss Ley’s especial delight, extinguishers for the

link-boys’ torches.

The rooms were large, somewhat low-pitched, with wide windows

overlooking the most consciously beautiful of all the London parks.

Miss Ley made no great alterations. An epicurean to her finger-tips,

for many years the passion for liberty had alone disturbed the

equanimity of her indolent temper. But to secure freedom, entire and

absolute freedom, she was ever ready to make any sacrifice: ties

affected her with a discomfort that seemed really akin to physical

pain, and she avoided them—ties of family or of affection, ties of

habit or of thought—with all the strenuousness of which she was

capable. She had taken care never in the course of her life to cumber

herself with chattels, and once, with a courage in which there was

surely something heroic, feeling that she became too much attached to

her belongings—cabinets and exquisite fans brought from Spain,

Florentine frames of gilded wood and English mezzotints, Neapolitan

bronzes, tables and settees discovered in out-of-the-way parts of

France—she had sold everything. She would not risk to grow so fond of

her home that it was a pain to leave it; she preferred to remain a

wayfarer, sauntering through life with a heart keen to detect beauty,

and a mind, open and unbiassed, ready to laugh at the absurd. So it

fitted her humour to move with the few goods which she possessed into

her cousin’s house as though it were but a furnished lodging, remaining

there still unfettered; and when Death came—a pagan youth, twin brother

to Sleep, rather than the grim and bony skeleton of Christian

faith—ready to depart like a sated reveller, smiling dauntlessly and

without regret. A new and personal ordering, the exclusion of many

pieces of clumsy taste, gave Miss Ley’s drawing-room quickly a more

graceful and characteristic air: the _objets d’art_ collected since the

memorable sale added a certain grave delicacy to the arrangement; and

her friends noticed without surprise that, as in her own flat, the

straight, carved chair was set between two windows, and the furniture

deliberately placed so that from it the mistress of the house, herself

part of the æsthetic scheme, could command and manipulate her guests.

No sooner was Miss Ley comfortably settled than she wrote to an old

friend and distant cousin, Algernon Langton, Dean of Tercanbury, asking

him to bring his daughter to visit her new house; and Miss Langton

replied that they would be pleased to come, fixing a certain Thursday

morning for their arrival. Miss Ley greeted her relatives without

effusion, for it was her whim to discourage manifestations of

affection; but notwithstanding the good-humoured, polite contempt with

which it was her practice to treat the clergy in general, she looked

upon her cousin Algernon with real esteem.

He was a tall old man, spare and bent, with very white and a pallid,

almost transparent, skin; his eyes cold and blue, but his expression

singularly gentle. There was a dignity in his bearing, and at the same

time an infinite graciousness which reminded you of those famous old

ecclesiastics whose names have cast for ever a certain magnificent

renown upon the English Church; he had a good deal of the polished

breeding which made them, whatever their origin, gentlemen and

courtiers, and, like theirs, his Biblical erudition was perhaps less

noteworthy than his classical attainments. And if he was a little

narrow, unwilling to consider seriously modern ways of thought, there

was an æsthetic quality about him and a truly Christian urbanity which

attracted admiration, and even love. Miss Ley, a student of men, who

could observe with interest the most diverse tendencies, (for to her

sceptical mind no way of life nor method of thought was intrinsically

more valuable than another,) was pleased with his stately, candid

simplicity, and used with him a forbearance which was not customary to

her.

“Well, Polly,” said the Dean, “I suppose now you are a woman of

property you will give up your wild-goose chase after the unattainable.

You will settle down and become a respectable member of society.”

“You need not insist that my hair is grayer than when last you saw me,

and my wrinkles more apparent.”

At this time Miss Ley, who had altered little in the last twenty years,

resembled extraordinarily the portrait-statue of Agrippina in the

museum at Naples. She had the same lined face, with its look of rather

scornful indifference for mundane affairs, and that well-bred

distinction of manner which the Empress had acquired through the

command of multitudes, but Miss Ley, more finely, through the command

of herself.

“But you’re right, Algernon,” she added, “I am growing old, and I doubt

whether I should have again the courage to sell all my belongings. I do

not think I could face the utter loneliness in which I rejoiced when I

felt I had nothing I could call my own but the clothes on my back.”

“You had quite a respectable income.”

“For which the saints be praised! No one can think of freedom who has

less than five hundred a year; without that, life is a mere sordid

struggle for daily bread.”

The Dean, hearing that luncheon would not be ready till two, went out,

and Miss Ley was left alone with his daughter. Bella Langton had

reached that age when she could by no stretch of courtesy be described

as a girl, and her father but lately, somewhat to her dismay, had

composed a set of Latin verses on her fortieth birthday. She was not

pretty, nor had she the graceful dignity which made the Dean so

becoming a figure in the cathedral chapter: somewhat squarely built,

her hair, of a pleasant brown, was severely arranged; her features were

too broad and her complexion rather oddly weather-beaten, but her gray

eyes were very kindly, and her expression singularly good-humoured.

Following provincial fashions in somewhat costly materials, she dressed

with the serviceable plainness affected by the pious virgins who

congregate in cathedral cities, and the result was an impression of

very expensive dowdiness. She was obviously a capable woman who could

be depended upon in any emergency. Charitable in an unimaginative,

practical way, she was a fit and competent leader for the philanthropy

of Tercanbury, and, fully conscious of her importance in the

ecclesiastical hierarchy, ruled her little clerical circle with a firm

but not unkindly hand. Notwithstanding her warm heart and truly

Christian humility, Miss Langton had an intimate conviction of her own

value; for not only did her father hold a stately office, but he came

from good county stock of no small distinction, whereas it was

notorious that the Bishop was a man of no family, and his wife had been

a governess. Miss Langton would have given her last penny to relieve

the sick wife of some poor curate, but would have thought twice before

asking her to call at the Deanery; her charitable kindness was bestowed

on all and sundry, but the ceremonies of polite society she practised

only with persons of quality.

“I’ve asked various people to meet you at dinner to-night,” said Miss

Ley.

“Are they nice?”

“They’re not positively disagreeable. Mrs. Barlow-Bassett is bringing

her son, who pleases me because he’s so beautiful. Basil Kent is

coming, a barrister; I like him because he has the face of a knight in

an early Italian picture.”

“You always had a weakness for good-looking men, Mary,” answered Miss

Langton, smiling.

“Beauty is quite the most important thing in the world, my dear. People

say that the masculine appearance is immaterial, but that is because

they are foolish. I know men who have gained all the honour and glory

of the earth merely through a fine pair of eyes or a well-shaped mouth.

. . . Then I have asked Mr. and Mrs. Castillyon; he is a member of

Parliament and very dull and pompous, but just the sort of creature who

would amuse you.”

While Miss Ley spoke a note was brought in.

“How tiresome!” she cried, having read. “Mr. Castillyon writes to say

he cannot leave the House to-night till late. I wish they wouldn’t have

autumn sessions. It’s just like him to think such a nonentity as

himself is indispensable. Now I must ask someone to take his place.”

She sat down and hurriedly wrote a few words.

“My dear Frank,

“I beseech you to come to dinner to-night at eight, and since when

you arrive your keen intelligence will probably suggest to you that

I have not asked nine people on the spur of the moment, I will

confess that I invite you merely because Mr. Castillyon has put me

off at the last minute. But if you don’t come I will never speak to

you again.

“Yours ever,

“Mary Ley.”

She rang the bell, and told a servant to take the letter immediately to

Harley Street.

“I’ve asked Frank Hurrell,” she explained to Miss Langton. “He’s a nice

boy—people remain boys till they’re forty now, and he’s ten years less

than that. He’s a doctor, and by way of being rather distinguished;

they’ve lately made him assistant-physician at St. Luke’s Hospital, and

he’s set up in Harley Street waiting for patients.”

“Is he handsome?” asked Miss Langton, smiling.

“Not at all, but he’s one of the few persons I know who really amuses

me. You’ll think him very disagreeable, and you’ll probably bore him to

extinction.”

With this remark, calculated to put the younger woman entirely at her

ease, Miss Ley sat down again at the window. The day was warm and

sunny, but the trees, yellow and red with the first autumnal glow, were

heavy still with the rain that had fallen in the night. There was a

grave, sensuous passion about St. James’s Park, with its cool, smooth

water just seen among the heavy foliage, and its well-tended lawns; and

Miss Ley observed it in silence, with a vague feeling of

self-satisfaction, for prosperity was a comfortable thing.

“What would be a suitable present for a poet?” asked Miss Langton

suddenly.

“Surely a rhyming dictionary,” answered her friend, smiling. “Or a

Bradshaw’s Guide to indicate the æsthetic value of common-sense.”

“Don’t be absurd, Mary, I really want your advice. I know a young man

in Tercanbury who writes poetry,”

“I never knew a young man who didn’t. You’re not in love with a pale,

passionate curate, Bella?”

“I’m in love with no one,” answered Miss Langton, with the shadow of a

blush. “At my age it would be ridiculous. But I should like to tell you

about this boy. He’s only twenty, and he’s a clerk in the bank there.”

“Bella!” cried Miss Ley, with mock horror. “Don’t tell me you’re

philandering with a person who isn’t _county_. What would the Dean say?

And for heaven’s sake take care of poetical boys; at your age a woman

should offer daily prayers to her Maker to prevent her from falling in

love with a man twenty years younger than herself. That is one of the

most prevalent diseases of the day.”

“His father was a linen-draper at Blackstable, who sent him to Regis

School, Tercanbury. And there he took every possible scholarship. He

was going to Cambridge, but his people died, and to earn his living he

was obliged to go into the bank. He’s had a very hard time.”

“But how on earth did you make his acquaintance? No society is so

rigidly exclusive as that of a cathedral town, and I know you refuse to

be introduced to anyone till you have looked him out in the _Landed

Gentry._

Miss Ley, singularly unprejudiced, ridiculed her cousin hugely for this

veneration of the county family; and though her own name figured in

Burke’s portentous she concealed the fact as something rather

discreditable. To her mind the only advantage of a respectable ancestry

was that with a whole heart she could ridicule the claims of blood.

“He was never introduced to me,” answered Bella unwillingly. “I made

friends with him by accident.”

“My dear, that sounds very improper. I hope at least he rescued you in

a carriage accident, which appears to be one of Cupid’s favourite

devices. He always was an unimaginative god, and his methods are

dreadfully commonplace. . . . Don’t say the young man accosted you in

the street!”

Bella Langton could not have told Miss Ley the whole story of her

acquaintance with Herbert Field, for the point of it lay to some extent

in her own state of mind, and that she but vaguely understood. She had

arrived at that embarrassment which comes to most unmarried women, when

youth is already passed and the monotonous length of middle age looms

drearily before them. For some time her round of duties had lost its

savour, and she seemed to have done everything too often: the days

exasperated her in their similarity. She was seized with that

restlessness which has sent so many, nameless or renowned, sailing like

stout Cortez across unknown seas, and others, no fewer, on hazardous

adventures of the spirit. She looked with envy now at the friends, her

contemporaries, who were mothers of fair children, and not without

difficulty overcame a nascent regret that for her father’s sake, alone

in the world and in all practical concerns very helpless, she had

foregone the natural joys of women. These feelings much distressed her,

for she had dwelt always in a world of limited horizon, occupied with

piety and with good works; the emotions that tore her heart-strings

seemed temptations of the devil, and she turned to her God for a solace

that came not. She sought to distract her mind by unceasing labour, and

with double zeal administered her benevolent institutions; books left

her listless, but setting her teeth with a sort of angry determination,

she began to learn Greek. Nothing served. Against her will new thoughts

forced themselves upon her; and she was terrified, for it seemed to her

no woman had ever been tormented by such wild, unlawful fancies. She

reminded herself in vain that the name of which she was so proud

constrained her to self-command, and her position in Tercanbury made it

a duty, even in her inmost heart, to serve as an example to lesser

folk.

And now Miss Langton took no pleasure in the quiet close where before

she had delighted to linger; the old cathedral, weather-beaten, gray

and lovely, no longer gave its accustomed message of resignation and of

hope. She took to walking far into the country, but the meadows,

bespangled with buttercups in spring, the woods, with their autumnal

russet, but increased her uneasiness; and most willingly she went to a

hill from which at no great distance could be seen the shining sea, and

for a moment its immensity comforted her restless heart. Sometimes at

sundown over the slate gray of the western clouds was spread a great

dust of red gold that swept down upon the silent water like the train

of a goddess of fire; and presently, thrusting through sombre cumuli,

like a Titan breaking his prison walls, the sun shone forth, a giant

sphere of copper. With almost a material effort it seemed to push aside

the thronging darkness, filling the whole sky with brilliancy; and then

over the placid sea was stretched a broad roadway of unearthly fire,

upon which might travel the mystical, passionate souls of men,

endlessly, to the source of the deathless light, Bella Langton turned

away with a sob and walked back slowly the way she came. Before her in

the valley the gray houses of Tercanbury clustered about the tall

cathedral, but its ancient beauty pressed her heart with bands of pain.

Then came the spring: the fields were gay with flowers, a vernal carpet

whereon with delicate feet might walk the angels of Messer Perugino,

and she could bear the agony no longer; in every hedgerow, on every

tree, the birds sang with infinite variety, singing the joy of life and

the beauty of the rain and the glorious sunshine. They told her one and

all that the world was young and beautiful, but the time of man so

short that every hour of it must be lived as though it were the last.

When a friend asked her to spend a month in Brittany, sick of her

inaction, she accepted eagerly. To travel might ease her aching heart,

and the fatigue of the journey allay that springing of the limbs which

made her feel apt for hazardous undertakings. Alone the two ladies

wandered along that rugged coast. They stayed at Carnac, but the

mysterious antique stones suggested only the nothingness of life; man

came and went, with hope and longing, and left the signs of his dim

faith to be a mystery to succeeding ages; they went to Le Faouet, where

the painted windows of the ruined church of Saint Fiacre gleam like

precious stones: but the restful charm of these scenes had no message

for a heart thirsting for life and the love that quickens. They passed

to the famous calvaries of Plougastel and Saint Thégonnec; and those

grim crosses, with their stone processions, (the effort at beauty of a

race bowed down by the sense of sin), oppressed her under that gray

western sky with dismay: they suggested only death and the grave’s

despair, but she was full of expectation, of longing for she knew not

what. It seemed to her as though, she knew not how, she were sailing on

that dark silent sea of which the mystics speak, where the common rules

of life availed not. Travel gave her nothing that she sought, but

increased rather her unquiet; her hands itched for work to do, and she

went back to Tercanbury.

III

At last, one afternoon of that very summer, after the vesper service in

the cathedral. Miss Langton, wandering listlessly towards the door, saw

a young man seated at the back of the nave; it was late, so that he and

she seemed to possess that vast building by themselves. With glowing

eyes he stared into vacancy, as though his own thoughts blinded him to

the Gothic loveliness about him, and his eyes were singularly dark. His

hair was fair, and his face, womanlike in its transparent delicacy of

skin, was thin and oval. Presently a verger went to him saying that the

attention cathedral would be closed, and as he rose, paying no other

attention to the man’s words, he passed within a yard of Bella, but in

his abstraction saw her not. She thought no more of him, but on the

following Saturday, going, as her habit, to the afternoon service, she

saw the youth again, seated as before in the furthermost part of the

nave, well away both from sightseers and from devout. A curiosity she

did not understand impelled her to remain there rather than go into the

choir, separated from the nave by an elaborate screen, where by right

of her dignity a seat was reserved for her not far from her father’s

decanal stall.

The boy, for he was little more, this time was reading a book, which

she noticed was written in verse; now and again, with a smile, he threw

back his head, and she imagined he repeated to himself a line that

pleased him.

The service began, softened by distance so that the well-known forms

gained a new mystery; the long notes of the organ pealed reverberating

along the vaulted roof, or wailed softly, like the voice of a young

child, among the lofty columns. At intervals the choir gave a richer

depth to the organ music, and it was so broken and deadened by

obstructing stone that it sounded vaguely like the surging of the sea.

Presently this ceased, and a tenor’s voice, the pride of the cathedral,

rang out alone; and as though the magic sound had power over all

material obstacles, the melody of the old-fashioned anthem—her father

loved the undecorated music of a past age—rose towards heaven in a

sobbing prayer. The book fell from the young man’s hand, and an eager

look came into his face as he drank in the silver harmonies; his face

was transfigured with ecstasy so that it resembled the face of some

pictured saint glorified by a mystic vision of the celestial light. And

then, falling on his knees, he buried his face in his hands, and Bella

saw that with all his soul he prayed to a God that gave men ears to

hear and eyes to see the beauty of the world. What was there in the

sight that made her own heart beat with a new emotion?

And when he sat once more on his chair there was a look in his face of

exquisite content, and a smile of happiness trembled on his lips, so

that Bella turned sick with envy. What power was there in his soul that

gave a magic colour to things that left her, for all her striving,

still untouched? She waited till he walked slowly out, and, seeing him

nod to the verger at the door, asked who he was.

“I don’t know, miss,” was the answer; “he comes here every Saturday and

Sunday regular. But he never goes into the choir. He just sits there in

the corner where no one can see him, and reads a book. I don’t

interfere with him, because he’s very quiet and respectful.”

Bella could not tell why she thought so often of the fair-haired youth

who had never so much as noticed her presence, nor why, on the Sunday

that followed, she went again to the nave awaiting his appearance.

Observing him more closely, she noticed the slimness of his figure and

the shapely length of his hands, which seemed to touch things with a

curious delicacy; once their eyes met, and his were blue like the

summer sea in Italy, and deep. A somewhat nervous woman, she would

never have ventured to address a stranger, but the candid simplicity of

his expression, in which strangely there was also a certain appealing

pathos, overcame her shyness, overcame also her sense of the

impropriety of making friends with a person about whom she knew

nothing. Some hidden intuition told her that she was arrived at a

turning-point in her life, and courage now was needed to seize with

both hands a new happiness; and as though the very stars were

favourable there had occurred to her a way to scrape acquaintance.

Excited, for it seemed very adventurous, she waited impatiently for

Saturday, and then, asking her favourite verger for his keys, after the

service went boldly to the youth whose name even she did not know.

“Would you like me to take you over the cathedral?” she asked without a

word of introduction. “We can go round alone, and it’s very pleasant

without the chatter of vergers and the hurry of a crowd.”

He blushed to the very roots of his hair when she spoke, but then

smiled charmingly.

“It’s very kind of you,” he answered; “I’ve wanted to do that always.”

His voice was pleasant and low, and he showed no surprise whatever; but

all the same Bella, now somewhat startled by her own audacity, thought

it needful to explain why she ventured the suggestion.

“I’ve seen you here very often, and it struck me that you would like to

see the cathedral at its best. But I’m afraid you must put up with me.”

He smiled again, and appeared now to take note of her for the first

time. Bella, looking straight in front of her, felt his eyes rest

thoughtfully on her face, and suddenly she seemed to herself old and

lined and dowdy.

“What book is that you have?” she asked, to break the silence.

Without speaking he gave it her, and she saw it was a little

collection, evidently much read, for the binding scarcely held the

leaves together, of Shelley’s lyrical poems.

Bella unlocked the gate that led into the apse, and locked it again

behind her.

“Isn’t it delightful to feel one’s self alone here?” he cried, and with

springing step and smiling eyes walked forwards.

At first he was a little shy, but presently the spirit of the place,

with its dark chapels and stone knights recumbent, the tracery of its

jewelled windows, loosened his tongue, and he poured forth his boyish

enthusiasm with a passion that astonished Bella. His delight

communicated itself to her so that she found a new enchantment in the

things she knew so well; his glowing poetic fervour seemed to gild the

old walls with magic sunshine; and, as if those prisoned stones were

strangely thrown open to heaven, they gained something of the outer

freshness of green lawns and flowers and leafy trees: the warm breath

of the west wind stole among the Gothic columns, lending a new

splendour to the ancient glass, and to the groinery a more living

charm. The boy’s cheeks were flushed with excitement, and Bella’s heart

beat as she listened, enchanted with his pleasure; he gesticulated a

good deal, and under the movements of his long exquisite hands, (her

own, for all her well-bred ancestry, were short, thick-set and

ungraceful,) the past of the mighty church rose before her, so that she

heard the clank of steel when knights in armour marched over the still

flags, and saw with vivid eyes that historic scene when the gentlemen

of Kent in gally hose and doublet, the ladies with ruff and

farthingale, assembled to praise the God of storm and battle because

Howard of Effingham had scattered the armada of King Philip.

“Now let’s go into the cloister,” he said eagerly.

They sat on a stone parapet looking out on the cool green sward where

in time past Augustine monks had wandered meditative; there was a

dainty gracefulness about the arcade, with the slender columns, their

capitals delicately carved, recalling somewhat the cloisters of Italy,

which, notwithstanding their cypress-trees and their crumbling decay,

suggest a peaceful happiness rather than the Northern sense of stricken

sin. The boy, though he knew the magic of the South only from books and

pictures, was quick to catch the impression, and his face expressed a

rather pitiful longing. When Bella told him she had travelled in Italy,

he questioned her eagerly, and his young enthusiasm gave a warmth to

her answers which with any other, fearing to be ridiculous, she would

carefully have suppressed. But the scene before them was very lovely;

in massive splendour the tall central tower looked down upon them, and

its stately beauty entered their souls, so that the youth, though he

had never seen the monasteries of Tuscany, was comforted. They sat for

a while in silence.

“You must be a very important person,” he said at last, turning to her,

“or we should never be allowed to remain so long.”

“I dare say to a verger I am,” she answered, smiling. “It must be

late.”

“Won’t you come and have tea with me?” he asked. “I have rooms just

opposite the cathedral gate.” Then, catching Bella’s look, he added

with a smile: “My name is Herbert Field, and I’m eminently

respectable.”

She hesitated, for it seemed odd to drink tea with a youth whom she had

never seen before, but she was mortally afraid of seeming prudish; and

a visit to his rooms, whereby she might learn more about him, would add

a finish to the adventure. Finally her sense decided her that living

life, not mere existence, for once lay under her hand.

“Do come,’ he said; “I want to show you my books.”

And with a little persuasive motion he touched her hand.

“I should like it very much.”

He took her to a tiny room over a chemist’s shop, simply furnished as a

study, with a low ceiling and panelled walls: these were decorated with

a few photographs of pictures by Pietro Perugino, and there were a good

many books.

“It’s rather poky, I’m afraid, but I live here, so that I can always

see the gateway. I think it’s one of the finest things in Tercanbury.”

He made her sit down while he boiled water and cut bread-and-butter.

Bella, at first somewhat intimidated by the novelty of the affair, was

a little formal; but the boy’s manifest delight in her presence

affected her so that she became gay and light-hearted. Then he

displayed a new side of his character: the rather strenuous passion for

the beautiful was momentarily put aside and he showed himself quite

absurdly boyish. His laughter rang out joyously, and, feeling less shy

now that Miss Langton was his guest, he talked unrestrainedly of a

hundred topics that sprang up one after another in his mind.

“Will you have a cigarette?” he asked when they had finished their tea,

and, on Bella’s laughing refusal: “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you? I

can talk better.”

He drew their chairs to the open window, so that they could look at the

massive masonry before them, and, as though he had known Bella all his

life, chattered on. But when at last she rose to go, his eyes grew

suddenly grave and sad.

“I shall see you again, shan’t I? I don’t want to lose you now I’ve

found you so strangely.”

Really he was asking Miss Langton to make an assignation, but by now

the Dean’s daughter had thrown all caution to the winds.

“I dare say we shall meet sometime in the cathedral.”

Womanlike, though she meant to grant all he desired, she would not give

in too quickly.”

“Oh, that won’t do,” he insisted. “I can’t wait a week before seeing

you again.”

Bella smiled at him while he looked eagerly into her eyes, holding her

hand very firmly, as though till she made promise he would never let it

go.

“Let’s take a walk in the country to-morrow,” he said.

“Very well,’ she replied, telling herself that there could be no harm

in going with a boy twenty years younger than herself, “I shall be at

the Westgate at half-past five.”

But the evening brought counsels of prudence, and Miss Langton wrote a

note to say that she had forgotten an engagement, and was afraid she

could not come. Yet it left her irresolute, and more than once she

reproached herself because from sheer timidity she would cause Herbert

Field the keenest disappointment. She told herself sophistically that

perhaps, owing to the Sunday delivery, the letter had not reached him,

and, fearing he would go to the Westgate and not understand her

absence, persuaded herself that it was needful to go there and explain

in person why she could not take the promised walk.

The Westgate was an ancient, handsome pile of masonry which in the old

days had marked the outer wall of Tercanbury, and even now, though on

one side houses had been built, a road to the left led directly into

the country. When Bella arrived, somewhat early, Herbert was already

waiting for her, and he looked peculiarly young in his straw hat.

“Didn’t you get a note from me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered, smiling. “Then why did you come?”

“Because I thought you might change your mind. I didn’t altogether

believe in the engagement. I wanted you so badly that I fancied you

couldn’t help yourself. I felt you must come.”

“And if I hadn’t?”

“Well, I should have waited. . . . Don’t be horrid. Look at the

sunshine calling us. Yesterday we had the gray stones of the cathedral;

to-day we’ve got the green fields and the trees. Don’t you feel the

west wind murmuring delicious things?”

Bella looked at him, and could not resist the passionate appeal of his

eyes.

“I suppose I must do as you choose,” she answered.

And together they set off. Miss Langton, convinced that her interest

was no less maternal than when she gave jellies to some motherless

child, knew not that Dan Cupid, laughing at her subterfuge, danced

gleefully about them and shot his silver arrows. They sauntered by a

gentle stream that ran northward to the sea, shaded by leafy willows;

and the country on that July afternoon was fresh and scented: the cut

hay, drying, gave out an exquisite perfume, and the birds were hushed.

“I’m glad you live in the Deanery,” he said; “I shall like to think of

you seated in that beautiful garden.”

“Have you ever seen it?”

“No; but I can imagine what it is like behind that old wall, the shady

lawns and the roses. There must be masses of roses now.”

The Dean was known as an enthusiast for that royal flower, and his

blossoms at the local show were the wonder of the town. They went on,

and soon, half unconsciously, as though he sought protection from the

hard world, Herbert put his arm in hers, Bella blushed a little, but

had not the heart to withdraw; she was strangely flattered at the

confidence he showed. Very discreetly she questioned him, and with

perfect simplicity he told of his parents’ long struggle to give him an

education above their state.

“But, after all,” he said “I’m not nearly so wretched as I thought I

would be. The bank leaves me plenty of time, and I have my books and I

have my hopes.”

“What are they?”

“Sometimes I write verse,” he answered, blushing shyly.

“I suppose it’s ridiculous, but it gives me great happiness; and who

knows?—someday I may do something that the world will not willingly let

die.”

Later on, when Bella rested on a stile and Herbert stood by her side,

he looked up at her, hesitating.

“I want to say something to you, Miss Langton, but I’m rather afraid. .

. . You won’t drop me now, will you? Now that I’ve found a friend, I

can’t afford to lose her. You don’t know what it means to me having

someone to talk to, someone who’s kind to me. Often I feel dreadfully

alone. And you make all the difference in my life; this last week

everything has seemed changed.”

She looked at him earnestly. Did he think he made no difference in

hers? She could not tell what stirred her when those blue appealing

eyes asked so irresistibly for what she was most willing to give.

“My father is going into Leanham on Wednesday,” she answered presently.

“When your work is over, will you come and have tea in the Deanery

garden?”

She felt herself ten times rewarded by the look of pleasure that

flashed across his face.

“I shall think of nothing else till then.”

And Miss Langton found that her restless anxiety had strangely

vanished; life now was no longer monotonous, but sparkled with magic

colour, for an absorbing interest had arisen which made the daily round

a pleasure rather than a duty. She repeated to herself all the charming

inconsequent things the boy had said, finding his conversation

agreeably different from the clerical debates to which she was used.

They cultivated a refined taste in the chapter, and the Archdeacon’s

second wife had written a novel, which only her exalted station and an

obvious moral purpose saved from excessive indecency. The Minor Canons

talked with gusto of the Royal Academy. But Herbert spoke of books and

pictures as though art were a living thing, needful as bread and water

to his existence; and Bella, feeling that her culture, somewhat

ostentatiously pursued as an element of polite breeding, was very

formal and insipid, listened with complete humility to his simple

ardour.

On Wednesday, almost handsome in summer muslin and a large hat, she

went into the garden, where the tea-things were laid under a leafy

tree. Miss Ley would have smiled cruelly to notice the care with which

the Dean’s daughter arranged her position to appear at her best. The

privacy, the garden’s restful beauty, brought out all Herbert’s

boyishness, and his pleasant laughter rang across the lawns, rang like

silver music into Bella’s heart. Watching the shadows lengthen, they

talked of Italy and Greece, of poets and of flowers; and presently,

weary of seriousness, they talked sheer light-hearted nonsense.

“You know, I can’t call you Mr. Field,” said Bella, smiling. “I must

call you Herbert.”

“If you do I shall call you Bella.”

“I’m not sure if you ought. You see, I’m almost an old fossil, and it’s

quite natural that I should use your Christian name.”

“But I won’ t let you assume any airs of superiority over me, I want

you to be absolutely a companion, and I don’t care twopence if you’re

older than I am. Besides, I shall always think of you as Bella.”

She smiled again, looking at him with tender eyes.

“Well, I suppose you must do as you like,” she answered.

“Of course.”

Then quickly he took both her hands, and, before she realized what he

was about, kissed them.

“Don’t be foolish,’ cried Bella, withdrawing them hurriedly, and she

reddened to her very hair.

When he saw her discomfort, boylike, he burst into a shout of laughter.

“Oh, I’ve made you blush.”

His blue eyes sparkled, and he was delighted with his little

wickedness. He did not know that afterwards, in her room, Bella, the

kisses still burning on her hands, wept bitterly as though her heart

would break.

IV

When Miss Ley entered her drawing-room she found the punctual Dean

already dressed for dinner, very distinguished in silk stockings and

buckled shoes, and presently Bella appeared, attired with sombre

magnificence in black satin.

“I went to Holywell Street this morning to look round the book-shops,”

said the Dean, “but Holywell Street is pulled down. London isn’t what

it was, Polly. Each time I come I find old buildings gone and old

friends scattered.”

With melancholy he thought of the pleasant hours he had spent fingering

second-hand books, and the scent of musty volumes rose to his nostrils.

The new shops to which the Jewish vendors had removed no longer had the

old dusty nonchalance, the shelves were too spick and span, the idle

lounger apparently less welcome.

Mrs. Barlow-Bassett and her son were announced. She was a tall woman of

handsome presence, with fine eyes and a confident step; her gray hair,

abundant and curling, recalled in its elaborate arrangement the fashion

of the eighteenth century, and her manner of dress, suggested by the

modes of that time, gave her somewhat the look of a sitter for Sir

Joshua Reynolds. Her movements were characterized by a kind of

obstinate decision, and she bore herself with the fine uprightness of a

woman bred when deportment was still a part of maidenly education. She

was immensely proud of her son, a tall strapping fellow of

two-and-twenty, with black hair no less fine than his mother’s, and

with singularly beautiful features. Big-boned but unmuscular, very

dark, his large brown eyes, straight nose and olive skin, his full

sensual mouth, made him a person of striking appearance; and of this he

was by no means unconscious. He was a good-humoured, lazy creature,

languid as an Oriental houri, unscrupulous, untruthful, whom his mother

by an exacting adoration had forced into insincerity. Left a widow of

means, Mrs. Barlow-Bassett had devoted her life to the upbringing of

this only son, and was pleased to think that hitherto she had kept him

successfully from all knowledge of evil. She meant him to and in her a

friend and confidant as well as a mother, and boasted that from her he

had never kept a single action nor a single thought.

“I want to talk to Mr. Kent this evening, Mary,” she said. “He’s a

barrister, isn’t he? And we’ve just made up our minds that Reggie had

better go to the Bar.”

Reggie, who, notwithstanding the attraction of a splendid uniform, had

no inclination for the restraints of a military career, and disdained

the commercial walk in which his father had earned a handsome fortune,

was quite content to put up with the more gentlemanly side of the law.

He knew vaguely that a vast number of dinners must be eaten, a prospect

to which he looked forward with equanimity; and afterwards saw himself,

becomingly attired in wig and gown, haranguing juries to the admiration

of the world in general.

“You’re going to sit next to Basil,” answered Miss Ley; “Frank Hurrell

is to take you down.”

“I’m sure Reggie will do well at the Bar, and I can keep him with me in

London. You know, he’s never given me a moment’s anxiety, and sometimes

I do feel proud that I’ve kept him so good and pure. But the world is

full of temptations, and he’s so extraordinarily good-looking.”

“He is very handsome,” returned Miss Ley, pursing her lips.

She thought her knowledge of character must be singularly at fault if

Reggie was the virtuous creature his mother imagined. The sensuality of

his face suggested no great distaste for the sins of the flesh, and the

slyness of his dark eyes no excessive innocence.

Basil Kent and Dr. Hurrell, meeting on the doorstep, came in together.

It was Frank Hurrell whom Miss Ley, somewhat exacting in these matters,

had described as the most amusing person she knew. His breadth of

shoulder and solid build were too great for his height, and he had

reason to envy Reggie Bassett’s length of leg; nor was his face

handsome, for his brows were too heavy and his jaw too square, but the

eyes were expressive, mocking sometimes or hard, at others very soft,

and there was a persuasiveness in his deep resonant voice of which he

well knew the power. A small black moustache concealed the play of a

well-shaped mouth and the regularity of his excellent teeth. He

impressed you as a strong man, of no very easy temper, who held himself

in admirable control. Silent with strangers, he disconcerted them by an

unwilling frigidity of manner, and though his friends, knowing that at

all times he could be depended upon, were eager in his praise,

acquaintance often accused him of superciliousness. To be popular with

all and sundry he took no sufficient pains to conceal his impatience of

stupidity, and though Miss Ley thought his conversation interesting,

others to whom for some reason he was not attracted found him absent

and taciturn.

An extremely reserved man, few knew that Frank Hurrell’s deliberate

placidity of expression masked a very emotional temperament. In this he

recognised a weakness and had schooled his face carefully to betray no

feeling; but the feeling all the same was there, turbulent and

overwhelming, and he profoundly mistrusted his judgment which could be

drawn so easily from the narrow path of reason. He kept over himself

unceasing watch, as though a dangerous prisoner were in his heart ever

on the alert to break his chains. He felt himself the slave of a vivid

imagination, and realized that it stood against the enjoyment of life

which his philosophy told him was the only end of existence. Yet his

passions were of the mind rather than of the body, and his spirit urged

his flesh constantly to courses wherein it found nothing but

disillusion. His chief endeavour was the search for truth, and somewhat

to Miss Ley’s scorn, (for she rested easily in a condition of satisfied

doubt, her attitude towards life indicated by a slight shrug of the

shoulders,) he strove after certainty with an eagerness which other men

reserve for love or fame or opulence. But all his studies were directed

at the last to another end; convinced that the present life was final,

he sought to make the completest use of its every moment; and yet it

seemed preposterous that so much effort, such vast time and strange

concurrence of events, the world and man, should tend towards nothing.

He could not but think that somewhere a meaning must be discernible,

and to find this examined science and philosophy with an anxious

passion that to his colleagues at St. Luke’s, worthy craftsmen who saw

no further than the slide on their microscope’s, would have seemed

extraordinary and almost insane.

But it would have required an imaginative person to discover in Dr.

Hurrell at that moment trace of a conflict as vehement as any

passionate disturbance of more practical people. He was in high

good-humour, and while they waited for the remaining guests talked to

Miss Ley.

“Isn’t it charming of me to come?” he asked.

“Not at all,” she replied; “it’s very much nicer for a greedy person

like you to eat my excellent dinner than to nibble an ill-cooked chop

in your own rooms.”

“How ungrateful! At all events, as a stopgap I have no duties to my

neighbour, and may devote myself entirely to the pleasures of the

table.”

“Like a friend of mine—people weren’t so polite forty years ago, and

much more amusing—who, when his neighbour made some very foolish

remark, shouted at her: ‘Go on with your soup, madam!’”

“Tell me who else is coming,” said Frank.

“Mrs. Castillyon, but she’ll be monstrously late. She thinks it

fashionable, and the _County_ in London has to take so many precautions

not to seem provincial. Mrs. Murray is coming.”

“D’you still want me to marry her?”

“No,” replied Miss Ley, laughing, “I’ve given you up. Though it wasn’t

nice of you to abuse me like a pickpocket because I offered you a

handsome widow with five thousand a year.”

“Think of the insufferable bore of marriage, and in any case Heaven

save me from an intellectual wife. If I marry at all, I’ll marry my

cook.”

“I wish you wouldn’t make my jokes, Frank. . . . But as a matter of

fact, unless I’m vastly mistaken, Mrs. Murray has made up her mind to

marry our friend Basil.”

“Oh!” said Frank.

Miss Ley noticed a shadow cross his eyes, and examined his expression

sharply.

“Don’t you think it would be a very suitable thing if she did?”

“I have no views on the subject,” returned Frank.

“I wonder what you mean by that. Basil is poor and handsome and clever,

and Mrs. Murray has always had an inclination for literary men. That’s

the worst of marrying a cavalryman—it leads you to attach so much

importance to brains.”

“Was Captain Murray an absolute fool?”

’My dear Frank, you don’t ask if a guardsman has intelligence, but

whether he can play polo. Captain Murray did two wise things in his

life: he made a will leaving his wife a large fortune, and then

promptly departed to a place where stupidity is apparently no

disadvantage.”

Miss Ley, for Bella’s peculiar edification, had invited also the most

fashionable cleric in London, the Rev, Collinson Farley, Vicar of All

Souls, Grosvenor Square, and it amused her to see the look of Frank

Hurrell, who detested him, when this gentleman was announced. Mr.

Farley was a man of middle size, with iron-gray hair carefully brushed,

and a rather fine head; his well-manicured hands were soft and

handsome, adorned with expensive rings. He was an amateur of good

society, and could afford, such were his fascinations, to be very

careful in his choice of friends; a coronet no longer dazzled a man who

realized how hollow was earthly rank beside earthly riches. Poverty he

could excuse only in a duchess, for there is in the strawberry leaves,

even when, faded and sere, they wreathe the wrinkled brow of a dowager,

something which inspires respect in the most flippant. His suave manner

and intelligent conversation had gained him powerful friends when he

was but a country rector, and through their influence the opportunity

came at last to move to a sphere where his social talents met their due

appreciation. Ecclesiastical dignity, like the sins of the fathers, may

descend to the third and fourth generation, and obviously a man whose

grandfather was a bishop could not lack decorum; something was surely

due to a courteous person who had been actually born in an episcopal

palace.

Mrs. Castillyon, as her hostess predicted last to arrive, at length

appeared.

“I hope I’m not late, Miss Ley,” she said, putting out both hands with

a pretty little gesture of appeal.

“Not very,” replied her hostess. “Knowing that you make a point of

being unpunctual, I took care to ask you for half an hour earlier than

anyone else.”

In solemn procession the company marched down to the dining-room, and

Mr. Farley surveyed the table with satisfaction.

“I always think a well-dressed table one of the most truly artistic

sights of our modern civilization,” he remarked to his neighbour.

And his eyes wandered round the dining-room, in the furniture of which

he observed a comforting but discreet opulence. Mr. Farley had known

the house in Miss Dwarris’ lifetime, and noticed now that a portrait of

her no longer hung in its accustomed place.

“I see you have removed that excellent picture of the former occupant

of this house, Miss Ley,” he said, with a graceful wave of his white

and jewelled hand.

“I couldn’t bear that she should watch me eat three meals a day,”

replied his hostess. “I have a vivid recollection of her dinners: she

fed me on husks and acorns, like the prodigal son, and regaled me with

accounts of the torment that awaited me in an after-life.”

The Dean smiled gravely. He looked upon Miss Ley with a kind of

affectionate disapproval; and though often he rebuked her for the books

she read or for the flippancy of her conversation, took always in good

part the irony with which she met his little sermons.

“You’re very uncharitable, Polly,” he said. “Of course Eliza was a

difficult person to live with, but she exacted no more from others than

she exacted from herself. I always admired her strong sense of duty; it

was very striking at the present time when everyone lives entirely for

pleasure.”

“We may not be so virtuous as our fathers, Algernon,” answered Miss

Ley, “but we’re very much easier to live with. After all, forty years

ago people were positively insufferable: they spoke their minds, which

is a detestable habit; their temper was abominable, and they drank more

than was good for them. I always think my father was typical of his

period. When he flew into a passion he called it righteous anger, and

when I did anything to which he objected he suffered from—virtuous

indignation. D’you know that till I was fifteen I was never allowed to

taste butter, which was thought bad both for my figure and my soul? I

was brought up exclusively on dripping and Jeremy Taylor. The world was

a hazardous path beset with gins and snares; and at every turn and

corner were immature volcanoes from which arose sulphurous fumes of

hell-fire.”

“It was an age of tyranny and vapours,” said Frank. “of old gentlemen

who were overbearing and young ladies who swooned.”

“I’m sure people aren’t so good as they used to be,” said Mrs. Bassett,

glancing at her son, who was much engrossed in a conversation with Mrs.

Castillyon.

“They never were,” answered Miss Ley.

“The perverseness of men would have made an infidel of me,” added the

Dean, in his sweet grave voice, “but for the counteracting impression

of Divine providence in the works of Nature.”

Meanwhile Reggie Bassett enjoyed his dinner far more than he expected.

He found himself next to Mrs. Castillyon, and on sitting down proceeded

to examine her with some effrontery. A rapid glance had told her that

the boy was handsome, and when she saw what he was about, to give him

opportunity at his leisure to observe her various graces, she began to

talk volubly with her other neighbour. But presently she turned to

Reggie.

“Well, is it satisfactory?” she asked.

“What?”

“Your inspection.”

She smiled brightly, flashing a quick, provoking look into his fine

dark eyes.

“Quite,” he answered, with a smile, not in the least disconcerted. “My

mother is already thinking that Miss Ley oughtn’t to have let me sit by

you.”

Mrs. Castillyon was a vivacious creature, small and dainty like a

shepherdess in Dresden china, excitable and restless, who spoke with a

loud, shrill voice; and with a quick, nervous gesture, constantly threw

herself back in her chair to laugh boisterously at what Reggie said.

And finding he could venture very far indeed without fear of offence,

the model youth told her little scabrous stories in a low, suave voice,

staring meanwhile into her eyes with the shameless audacity of a man

conscious of his power. It is the fascination-look of the lady-killer,

and its very impudence appears to be half its charm; the rake at heart

feels that here modest pretences are useless, and with unhidden joy

descends from the pedestal upon which the folly of man has insisted on

placing her. Mrs. Castillyon’s face was thin and small, overpowdered,

with rather high cheek-bones, her hair, intricately dressed, had an

unnatural fairness; but this set Reggie peculiarly at his ease, for he

had enough experience of the sex to opine that women who used such

artifices were always easier to get on with than the others. He thought

his neighbour quite pretty, notwithstanding her five-and-thirty years;

and the somewhat faded look of a thin blonde was counterbalanced by the

magnificence of her jewels and the splendour of her gown: this was cut

so low that Bella from the other side of the table naïvely wondered how

on earth it was kept on at all.

When the men were left to smoke, Reggie, helping himself to a third

glass of port, drew his chair to Hurrell’s.

“I say, Frank,” he exclaimed, “that was a nice little woman next to me,

wasn’t it?”

“Had you never met Mrs. Castillyon before?”

“Never! Regular ripper, ain’t she? By Jove! I thought this dinner would

be simply deadly—politics and religion, and all that rot. The mater

always makes me come, because she says there’s intellectual

conversation. My God!”

Frank laughed at the idea of Mrs. Barlow-Basset combining instruction

with amusement for her son at Miss Ley’s dinner-table.

“But Mrs. Castillyon’s a bit of all right, I can tell you. Little

baggage! And she don’t mind what you say to her. . . . Why, she isn’t

like a lady at all.”

“Is that a great recommendation?”

“Well, ladies ain’t amusing, are they?” You talk to ’em of the Academy

and all that sort of rot, and you’ve got to take care you don’t swear.

Ladies may be all very well to marry, but upon my soul, for giving you

a good time I prefer them a bit lower in the scale.”

A little later, on the stairs, when they were going up to the

drawing-room, Reggie slipped his arm through Frank’s.

“I say, old man, don’t give me away if my mater thanks you for asking

me to dinner on Saturday.”

“But I haven’t. Neither have I the least desire that you should dine

with me on that day.”

“Good Lord! d’you think I want to come—and talk about bugs and beetles

all the evening? Not much! I’m going to dine with a little girl I

know—typewriter, my boy, and a real love touch. Stunning little thing,

I can tell you.”

“But I don’t see why, because you wish to entertain a young person

connected with typewriting, I should imperil my immortal soul.”

Reggie laughed.

“Don’t be an ass, Frank; you might help me. You don’t know how utterly

rotten it is to have a mother like mine who wants to keep me tied to

her apron-strings. She makes me tell her everything I do, and of course

I have to fake up some yarn. The only thing in it is that she’ll

swallow any damned lie I tell her.”

“You can tell her lies till you’re blue in the face,” said Frank, “but

I don’t see why the devil I should.”

“Don’t be a beast, Frank. You might help me just this once. It won’t

hurt you to say I’m grubbing with you. The other night, by Jove! I

nearly gave the show away. You know she always waits up for me. I told

her I should be working late with my crammer, and went to the Empire.

Well, I met a lot of chaps there and got a bit squiffy. There would

have been a shindy if she’d noticed it, but I managed to pull myself

together a bit, and said I’d got the very deuce of a headache. And next

day I heard her tell someone that I was next door to a teetotaler.”

They reached the drawing-room and Frank found himself close to Mrs.

Bassett.

“Oh, Dr. Hurrell,” she said, “I want to thank you so much for asking

Reggie to dinner on Saturday. He’s been working so hard that I think a

little relaxation will do him good. And his tutor keeps him sometimes

till past eleven—it can’t be good for him, can it? The night before

last he was so tired when he came in that he could scarcely get up the

stairs.”

“I’m delighted that Reggie should care to come and dine with me

sometimes,” answered Frank, somewhat grimly.

“I’m always glad to think he’s with you. It’s so important that a young

man should have really trustworthy friends, and I feel sure your

influence is good for him.”

Reggie, listening to this, gave Frank a very slow and significant wink,

then went off with a light heart to resume his conversation with Mrs.

Castillyon.

V

Presently all Miss Ley’s guests, except Frank Hurrell, bade her

good-night, and he showed no intention of following their example.

“You don’t want to go to bed yet, do you?” she asked the Dean. “Let us

go into the library.”

Here Frank took from a drawer his pipe, and helping himself from a

tobacco-jar placed in readiness, sat down. Miss Ley, noticing Bella’s

slight look of surprise, explained.

“Frank keeps a pipe here and makes me buy his favourite tobacco. It’s

one of the advantages of old age that you can sit into the small hours

of the morning and talk with young men.”

But when he too was gone, Miss Ley, an old-fashioned hostess solicitous

for her guests’ comfort, accompanied Bella to her room.

“I hope you enjoyed my little party,” she said.

“Very much,” replied Bella. “But why do you ask Mrs. Castillyon? She’s

dreadfully common, isn’t she?”

“My dear,” answered Miss Ley ironically, “her husband is a most

important person—in Dorsetshire, and her own family has a whole page in

the _Gentleman’s Bible_ or the _Landed Gentry_.”

“I shouldn’t have thought she was county,” said Bella seriously; “she

seemed to me very vulgar.”

“She is very vulgar,” answered Miss Ley, “but it’s the sort of

vulgarity which is a mark of the highest breeding. To talk too loud and

to laugh like a bus-driver, to use the commonest slang and to dress

outrageously, are all signs of the _grande dame_. Often in Bond Street

I see women with painted cheeks and dyed hair dressed in a manner which

even a courtesan would think startling, and I recognise the leaders of

London fashion. . . . Good-night. Don’t expect to see me at breakfast;

that is a meal which only the angels of heaven should eat in company.”

Miss Langton sat down as though she had no wish to go to bed.

“Don’t go just yet. I want to know all about Mr. Kent.” Miss Ley,

following her friend’s example, made herself comfortable in an

armchair. Once Miss Dwarris asserted that a virtuous person as a matter

of discipline should do every day two things which he disliked,

whereupon Miss Ley answered flippantly that then she must be on the

direct road to everlasting happiness, for within the twenty-four hours

she invariably performed a brace of actions which she thoroughly

detested: she got up, and she went to bed. Now, therefore, in no hurry

to go to her own room, she proceeded to tell Miss Langton what she knew

of Basil Kent. In truth it was not strange that he had attracted

Bella’s attention, for his appearance was unusual; he managed to wear

the conventional evening dress of an Englishman with becoming grace,

but one felt, such was his romantic air, he should by rights have borne

the armour of a Florentine knight. His limbs were slender and well

made, his hands white and comely, and his brown curly hair, worn

somewhat long, set off the fine colour of his face; the dark eyes, thin

cheeks, and full sensual mouth were set into a passionate wistfulness

of expression which recalled again those faces in early Italian

pictures wherein the spirit and the flesh seem ever to fight a restless

battle—to them the earth is always beautiful, rich with love and

warfare, with poetry and deep blue skies, but yet everywhere is

disillusion also, and the dark silence of the cloister, even amid the

painted turbulence of court or camp, whispers its irresistible appeal.

None looking at Basil Kent could imagine that any great ease of life

awaited him; through his brown eyes appeared a soul at the same time

sensual and ascetic, impulsive and chivalrous, yet so sensitive that

the storms and buffets of the world, to which inevitably he exposed

himself, must assault him with double violence.

“Well, he’s the son of Lady Vizard,” said Miss Ley.

’What!” cried Bella, “you don’t mean the woman about whom there was

that dreadful case five years ago?”

“Yes. He was then at Oxford, where Frank and he were bosom friends. It

was through Frank that I first knew him. His father, a cousin of the

present Kent of Ouseley, died when he was a child, and Basil was

brought up by his grandmother, for his mother married Lord Vizard very

shortly after her husband’s death. Even now she’s a beautiful woman. In

those days she was perfectly gorgeous; her photograph was in all the

shop-windows—her prime coincided with the fashion for young men to buy

the portraits of celebrated beauties they did not know, and the

chastest women thought it no shame for their pictures to be exposed in

every stationer’s shop or to decorate the chimneypiece of a platonic

counter-jumper. At that time Lady Vizard’s doings were minutely

chronicled in the papers that concern themselves with such things, and

her parties were thronged with all the fashion of London. She was to be

seen at every race-meeting surrounded by admirers; of course she had a

box at the opera, and at Homburg attracted the most august attention.”

“Did Mr. Kent ever see her?” asked Bella.

“He used to spend part of his holidays with her, and she dazzled him as

she dazzled everyone else, Frank told me that Basil simply worshipped

his mother; he has always had a passion for beauty, and was immensely

proud of her magnificent appearance, I used at one time occasionally to

meet her at parties, and she struck me as one of the most splendid,

majestic women I ever saw; one felt that something like that most have

looked Madame de Montespan.”

“Was she fond of her son?”

“In her way. Naturally she didn’t want him bothering around her. She

kept her youth marvellously. Lord Vizard was younger than herself, and

she didn’t much care to produce a boy who was very nearly grown up. So

she was quite pleased that old Mrs. Kent, whom she detested, should

look after him. But when he came to stay she filled his pockets with

money, took him to the play every night and thoroughly amused him. I

dare say she too was pleased with his good looks, for at sixteen he

must have been more beautiful than a Greek ephebe. But if ever he

showed any signs of inconvenient attachment, I doubt whether Lady

Vizard encouraged him. From Harrow he went to Oxford, and Frank, who is

a very acute observer, told me that then Basil was a peculiarly

innocent boy, absurdly open and frank, who never kept a secret from

anybody, and said without thinking, ingenuously, everything that came

into his head. Of course scandal for a good many years had been busy

with Lady Vizard; her extravagance was notorious, and Vizard was known

to be neither rich nor generous; but his wife did everything that cost

a great deal of money, and her emeralds were obviously worth a fortune.

Even Basil cannot have helped seeing how many masculine friends she

had, though perhaps when he was spending with her the occasional week

to which he looked forward so intensely, she took pains that nothing

too flaunting should come to his eyes; and when strange gentlemen

slipped sovereigns into his hand he pocketed them under the impression

that his own merit had earned them. And now I must go to bed.”

Miss Ley, with a tantalizing smile, rose from her chair, but Bella

stopped her.

“Don’t be cattish, Mary. You know I want to hear the rest of the

story.”

“Are you aware that it’s past one o’clock?”

“I don’t care, you must finish it now.”

Miss Ley, having created this small diversion, sat down again,

proceeding, not at all against her will, with the recital.

“Basil’s only vanity was his mother, and he talked of her incessantly,

taking a manifest pride in her social success and the admiration which

everywhere she excited; he would have staked his life on her immaculate

character, and when the crash came he was simply overwhelmed. You

remember the case; it was one of those in which a prudish English

public takes keen delight. Every placard announced in huge letters that

for the especial delectation of the middle classes a divorce in high

life was being fought at the Law Courts in which there were no less

than four co-respondents. It appeared that Lord Vizard, chiefly because

he was frightened of his wife’s extravagance, had at last filed a

petition in which he named Lord Ernest Torrens, Colonel Roome, Mr.

Norman Wynne and somebody else. The pair evidently had not for some

time enjoyed great connubial felicity, for Lady Vizard brought a

counter-petition, accusing her husband of philandering with her own

maid and with a certain Mrs. Platter, a lady who inhabited a flat in

Shaftesbury Avenue. The case was fought on both sides with the greatest

acrimony, and a crowd of witnesses testified to behaviour which one at

least hopes is unusual in the houses of the great. But of course you

read the details in the _Church Times_, Bella.”

“I remember it was reported in the _Standard_,” answered Miss Langton,

“but I read nothing.”

“Virtuous creature!” said Miss Ley, with a thin smile. ’The average

Englishman would never keep his respect for titled persons if the

reports of proceedings in the Divorce Court did not periodically give

him some insight into their private life. . . . Anyhow, the things of

which Lord and Lady Vizard accused one another were enough to make the

hair of a suburban paterfamilias stand right on end.”

Miss Ley paused for a moment, and then with calm deliberation, as

though she had given this matter the attention of a lifetime and

carefully weighed all sorts, proceeded.

“A divorce, you know, can be managed in two ways—respectably, when both

parties are indifferent or afraid and no more is said than is essential

for the non-intervention at a subsequent stage of that absurd

gentleman, the King’s Proctor; and vindictively, when in their

eagerness to bespatter the person whom at some previous period they

solemnly vowed to love to the end of their days, they care not how much

mud is thrown at themselves. Lady Vizard made a practice of detesting

her husbands, and she loathed the second far more because he had not

the grace to die like the first, four years after the marriage. His

penuriousness, ill-temper, insobriety were dragged into the light of

day; and he brought servants to testify to his wife’s most private

habits, produced letters which he had intercepted, and subpœnaed

tradesmen to swear by whom accounts for jewellery and clothes had been

settled. Lord Vizard engaged the cleverest criminal lawyer of the time,

and for two days his wife with unparalleled wit, courage, and resource

bore a cross-examination which would have ruined a weaker woman. It was

partly on this account, because they admired the good fight she made,

partly because it seemed impossible that such an imposing creature

should have done the quite odious things of which the husband accused

her, but still more because they thought there was precious little to

choose between kettle and pot, that the jury found the charges not

proven; and Lady Vizard in a manner remained mistress of the position.

The rest you can guess for yourself.”

“No, I can’t, Mary. Go on.”

“No word had reached Basil that proceedings were to be taken, and his

first knowledge of the affair came with the morning paper and his eggs

and bacon. He could scarcely believe his eyes, and he read the report

with incredulity changing quickly to dismay and horror. The news dazed

and crushed him. A hundred trifles he had seen but never noticed came

to his mind, and he knew that his mother was no better than the painted

harlot who sells her body for a five-pound note.”

“But how d’you know all this, Mary?” asked Bella doubtfully. “You’re

not inventing it, are you?”

“I read the papers,” answered Miss Ley, with some asperity. “Frank told

me a good deal, and my common-sense the rest. I flatter myself I have a

certain knowledge of human nature, and if Basil didn’t feel what I tell

you, he should have. But I shall never finish my story if you keep on

interrupting me.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Bella humbly. “Pray go on.”

“Frank, you know, is somewhat older than Basil, and at that time was in

Oxford, taking his M.B. He found the poor boy overcome with shame,

anxious like a stricken beast to hide himself from all strange eyes.

But Frank is made of sterner stuff; he persuaded him to go about as

though nothing had happened, and even to dine in hall as usual. What

for the one would not have been so very difficult to the other was

unendurable. Basil imagined that everyone stared at him as though he

were a thing unclean; he had bragged a good deal of his wonderful

parent, and he thought now that all his words must be scornfully

repeated. The papers continued their edifying story; witnesses told

shameful things; and Basil, haggard and sleepless, could not conceal

his torment. Frank had set him an ordeal beyond his strength, and

without a word to anyone he fled to London. After the trial he went to

see Lady Vizard, but what happened then I do not know. He never

returned to Oxford. At that time they were recruiting for the Imperial

Yeomanry, and Basil, passing by chance through St. James’s Park, saw

the men drilling. He wished to get out of England, where everyone

seemed to point at him with scorn, and here was an opportunity; he

enlisted, and a month later sailed for South Africa.”

“As a trooper?” asked Miss Langton.

“Yes. I believe he distinguished himself, for they offered him a

commission, but this he refused and was given instead the Medal for

Distinguished Conduct in the Field. He remained there three years, and

did not return to England till the last batch of Yeomanry was brought

home. Then he settled down to read for the Bar, and was called last

year.”

Does he ever see his mother, d’you know?”

I believe never. He has a small income, about three hundred a year, and

on that in a modest way is able to live. I think he has only gone to

the Bar as a sort of form, for he means to write. You probably never

saw the little book of South African sketches which he brought out last

year—impressions of scenery and studies of character. It had no

particular success, but to my mind showed a good deal of promise; I

remember an account of some battle about which there was an uncommon

swing and dash. He’s working at a novel now, and I dare say some day

will write a very clever book.”

“D’you think he’ll ever be famous?”

Miss Ley shrugged her shoulders.

“You know, to achieve great success in literature you must have a

certain coarseness in your composition, and that I don’t think Basil

has. Really to move and influence men you must have complete

understanding, and you can only get that if you have in you something

of the common clay of humanity. . . . But now I really must go to bed.

You’re such a chatterbox, Bella, I believe you would keep me up all

night.”

This was somewhat hard on Miss Langton, who for an hour had barely

opened her mouth.

VI

But while the two ladies thus discussed him, Basil Kent stood on the

bridge over the ornamental water in St. James’s Park, and looked

thoughtfully at that scene than which perhaps there is none more

beautiful in the most beautiful of all cities, London: the still water,

silvered by the moon, the fine massing of the trees, and the Foreign

Office, pompous and sedate, formed a composition as perfect and no less

formally elaborate than any painted by Claude Lorrain. The night was

warm and balmy, the sky clear; and the quiet was so delightful,

notwithstanding the busy hum of Piccadilly, where, at that hour, all

was gaiety and frolic, that it reminded Basil of some restful,

old-fashioned town in France. His heart beat with a strange elation,

for he knew at last, without possibility of doubt, that Mrs. Murray

loved him. Before, though he could not be unaware that she saw him with

pleasure and listened to his conversation with interest, he had not the

audacity to suppose a warmer feeling; but when they met that evening he

surprised a blush while she gave her hand, and this had sent the blood

running to his own cheeks. He took her down to dinner, and the touch of

her fingers on his arm burnt him like fire. She spoke but little, yet

listened to his words with a peculiar intensity as though she sought in

them some hidden meaning, and when his eyes met hers seemed to shrink

back almost in fear. But at the same time her look had a strange,

expectant eagerness, as though she had heard the promise of some

excellent thing, and awaited it vehemently, yet half afraid.

Basil recalled Mrs. Murray’s entrance into the drawing-room, and his

admiration for the grace of her bearing and the fine sweep of her long

dress. She was a tall woman, as tall as himself, with a certain

boyishness of figure that lent itself to a sinuous distinction of line;

her hair was neither dark nor fair, the eyes gray and tender, but her

smile was very noticeable for a peculiar sweetness that marked an

attractive nature. And if there was no precise beauty in her face, its

winsome expression, the pallor of her skin, gave it a fascinating grave

sadness reminiscent of the women of Sandro Botticelli: there was that

same inscrutable look of melancholy eyes which suggested a passionate

torment repressed and hidden, and she had that very grace of gesture

which one is certain was theirs. But to Basil Mrs. Murray’s greatest

charm was the protecting fondness, as though she were ready to shield

him from all the world’s trouble, which he felt in her; it made him at

once grateful, proud, and humble. He longed to take in his own those

caressing hands and to kiss her lips; he felt already round his neck

the long white arms as she drew him to her heart with an affection half

maternal.

Mrs. Murray had never looked handsomer than that night when she stood

in the hall, holding herself very erect, and spoke with Basil while

waiting for her carriage. Her cloak was so beautiful that the young man

remarked on it, and she, flushing slightly with pleasure because he

noticed, looked down at the heavy brocade as splendid as some material

of the eighteenth century.

“I bought the stuff in Venice,” she said, “but I feel almost unworthy

to wear it. I couldn’t resist it because it’s exactly like a gown worn

by Catherine Cornaro in a picture in one of the galleries.”

“Only you could wear it,” answered Basil, with flashing eyes. “It would

overwhelm anyone else.”

She smiled and blushed, and bade him good-night.

Basil Kent was much changed from the light-hearted youth whom Frank had

known at Oxford, for at that time he gave himself carelessly, like a

leaf to the wind, to every emotion; and a quick depression at the

failure of something in which he was interested would be soon followed

by a boisterous joy. Life seemed very good then, and without

after-thought he could rejoice in its various colour, in its ceaseless

changing beauty; it was already his ambition to write books, and with

the fertile, rather thin invention of youth, he scribbled incessantly.

But when he learned with shame and with dismay that the world was

sordid and vile, for his very mother was unchaste, he felt he could

never hold up his head again. Yet, after the first nausea of disgust,

Basil rebelled against his feeling; he loved that wretched woman better

than anyone, and now his place was surely by her side. It was not for

him to judge nor to condemn, but rather in her shameful humiliation to

succour and protect. Could he not show his mother that there were finer

things in life than admiration and amusement, jewels and fine clothes?

He made up his mind to go to her and take her away to the Continent,

where they could hide themselves; and perhaps this might be a means to

draw closer together his mother and himself, for, notwithstanding his

blind admiration, Basil had suffered a good deal because he could never

reach her very heart.

Lady Vizard still inhabited her husband’s house in Charles Street, and

it was thither on the day after the case had been dismissed that Basil

hurried. He expected to find her cowering in her room, afraid of the

light of day, haggard and weeping; and his tender heart, filled only

with pity, bled at the thought of her distress. He would go to her and

kiss her, and say: “Here am I, mother. Let us go away together where we

can start a new life. The world is wide and there is room even for us.

I love you more than ever I did, and I will try to be a good and

faithful son to you.”

He rang the bell, and the door was opened by the butler he had known

for years.

“Can I see her ladyship at once, Miller?” he said.

“Yes, sir. Her ladyship is still at luncheon. Will you go into the

dining-room.”

Basil stepped forward, but caught sight of several hats on the

hall-table.

“Is anyone here?” he asked with surprise.

But before the butler could answer there was a shout of laughter from

the adjoining room. Basil started as though he had been struck.

“Is her ladyship giving a party?”

“Yes, sir.”

Basil stared at the butler with dismay, unable to understand; he wished

to question him, but was ashamed. It seemed too monstrous to be true.

The very presence of that servant seemed an outrage, for he too had

given evidence at the hateful trial. How could his mother bear the

sight of that unctuous, servile visage? Miller, seeing the horror in

the young man’s eyes and the pallor of his cheek, looked away with a

vague discomfort.

“Will you tell her ladyship that I am here, and should like to speak to

her? I’ll go into the morning-room. I suppose no one will come there?”

Basil waited for a quarter of an hour before he heard the dining-room

door open, and several people, talking loudly and laughing, walk

upstairs. Then his mother’s voice rang out, clear and confident as ever

it had been:

“You must all make yourselves comfy, I’ve got to see somebody, and I

forbid anyone to go till I come back.”

In a moment Lady Vizard appeared, a smile still on her lips, and the

suspicion which Basil during that interval had vainly combated now was

changed to naked certainty. Not at all downcast was she nor abashed,

but alert as ever, neither less stately nor less proud than when last

he saw her. He expected to find his mother in sackcloth and ashes, but

behold! she wore a gown by Paquin, the flaunting audacity of which only

she could have endured. Very dark, with great flashing eyes and

magnificent hair, she had the extravagant flamboyance, the opulence of

colour of some royal gipsy. Her height was unusual, her figure

splendid, and holding herself admirably, she walked with the majesty of

an Eastern queen.

“How nice of you to come, dear boy!” she cried, with a smile showing

her beautiful teeth. “I suppose you want to congratulate me on my

victory. But why on earth didn’t you come into the dining-room? It was

so amusing. And you really should begin to _décrasser_ yourself a

little.” She put forward her cheek for Basil to kiss, (this was surely

as much as could be expected from a fond though fashionable mother,)

but he stepped back. Even his lips grew pale.

“Why didn’t you tell me that this action was coming?” he asked

hoarsely.

Lady Vizard gave a little laugh, and from a box on the table took a

cigarette.

“_Voyons, mon cher_, I really didn’t think it was your business.”

Lighting a cigarette, she blew into the air two neat smoke-rings, and

watched her son with somewhat contemptuous amusement.

“I didn’t expect to find you giving a party to-day.”

“They insisted on coming, and I had to do something to celebrate my

triumph.” She laughed lightly. “_Mon Dieu!_ you don’t know what a

narrow shave it was. Did you read my cross-examination? It was that

which saved me.”

“Saved you from what?” cried Basil sternly, two lines of anger

appearing between his brows. “Has it saved you from shameful dishonour?

Yes, I read every word. At first I couldn’t believe it was true.”

“_Et après?_” asked Lady Vizard calmly.

“But it was true; there were a dozen people to prove it. Oh God, how

could you! I admired you more than anyone else in the world. . . . I

thought of your shame, and I came here because I wanted to help you.

Don’t you understand the horrible disgrace of it? Oh, mother, mother,

you can’t go on like this! Heaven knows I don’t want to blame you. Come

away with me, and let us go to Italy and start afresh. . . .”

In the midst of his violent speech he was stopped by the amusement of

Lady Vizard’s cold eyes.

“But you talk as if I’d been divorced. How absurd you are! In that case

it might have been better to go away for a bit, yet even then I should

have faced it. But d’you think I’m going to run away now? _Pas si bête,

mon petit!_”

“D’you mean to say you’re going to stay here when everyone knows what

you are—when they’ll point at you in the street, and whisper to one

another foul stories? And however foul they are, they’ll be true.”

Lady Vizard shrugged her shoulders.

“_Oh, que tu m’assomes!_” she said scornfully, justly proud of her

French accent. “You know me very little if you think I’m going to hide

myself in some pokey Continental town, or add another tarnished

reputation the _declassée_ society of Florence. I mean to stay here. I

the opera, at the races, everywhere. I’ve got some good friends who’ll

stick to me, and you’ll see in a couple of years I shall pull through.

After all, I’ve done little more than plenty of others, and if the

_bourgeois_ knows a good deal about me that he didn’t know before—_je

m’en bats l’oeil_. I’ve got rid of my pig of a husband, and, for that

the whole thing was almost worth it. After all, he knew what was going

on; he only rounded on me because he was afraid I spent too much.”

“Aren’t you ashamed?” asked Basil, in a low voice. Aren’t you even

sorry?”

“Only fools repent, my dear. I’ve never done anything in my life that I

wouldn’t do over again—except marry the two men I did.”

“And you’re just going to remain here as if nothing had happened?”

“Don’t be foolish, Basil,” answered Lady Vizard ill-temperedly. “Of

course, I’m not going to stay in this particular house. Ernest Torrens

has rather a nice little shanty vacant in Curson Street, and he’s

offered to lend it me.”

“But you wouldn’t take it from him, mother. That would be too infamous.

For God’s sake, don’t have anything more to do with these men.”

“Really, I can’t throw over an old friend just because my husband makes

him a co-respondent.”

Basil went up to her, and placed his hands on her shoulders.

“Mother, you can’t mean all you say. I dare say I’m stupid and

awkward—I can’t say what I have in my mind. Heaven knows, I don’t want

to preach to you, but isn’t there something in honour and duty and

cleanliness and chastity, and all the rest of it? Don’t be so hard on

yourself. What does it matter what people say? Leave all this and let

us go away.”

“_T’es ridicule, mon cher_, said Lady Vizard, her brow darkening. “If

you have nothing more amusing to suggest than that, we might go to the

drawing-room. . . . Are you coming?”

She walked towards the door, but Basil intercepted her.

“You shan’t go yet. After all, I’m your son, and you’ve got no right to

disgrace yourself.”

“And what will you do, pray?”

Lady Vizard smiled now in a manner that suggested no great placidity of

temper.

“I don’t know, but I shall find something. If you haven’t the honour to

protect yourself, I must protect you.”

“You impudent boy, how dare you speak to me like that!” cried Lady

Vizard, turning on him with flashing eyes. “And what d’you mean by

coming here and preaching at me? You miserable prig! I suppose it runs

in your family, for your father was a prig before you.”

Basil looked at her, anger taking the place of every other feeling;

pity now had vanished, and he sought not to hide his indignation.

“Oh, what a fool I was to believe in you all these years! I would have

staked my life that you were chaste and pure. And yet when I read those

papers, although the jury doubted, I knew that it was true.”

“Of course it was true!” she cried defiantly. “Every word of it, but

they couldn’t prove it.”

“And now I’m ashamed to think I’m your son.”

“You needn’t have anything to do with me, my good boy. You’ve got money

of your own. D’you think I want a lubberly, ill-bred oaf hanging about

my skirts?”

“I know what you are now, and you horrify me. I hope I shall never see

you again. I would sooner my mother were a wretched woman on the

streets than you!”

Lady Vizard rang the bell.

“Miller,” she said when the butler appeared, as though she had

forgotten Basil’s presence, “I shall want the carriage at four.”

“Very well, my lady.”

“You know I’m dining out to-night, don’t you?”

“Yes, my lady.”

Then she pretended to remember Basil, who watched her silently, pale

and scarcely able to contain himself.

“You can show Mr. Kent out. Miller. And if he happens call again you

can say that I’m not at home.”

With scornful insolence she saw him go, and once again remained

mistress of the situation.

Then came three years at the Cape, for Basil, unwilling to return to

England, stayed after the expiration of the year for which he had

enlisted. At first his shame seemed unendurable, and he brooded over it

night and day; but when the distance increased between him and Europe,

when at length he set foot on African soil, the load of dishonour grew

lighter to bear. His squadron was quickly sent up-country, and the hard

work relieved his aching mind; the drudgery of a trooper’s lot, the

long marches, the excitement and the novelty, exhausted him so that he

slept with a soundness he had never known before. Then came the sheer

toil of war and its dull monotony; he suffered from hunger and thirst,

from heat and cold. But these things drew him closer to the companions

from whom at first he had sought to hide himself; he was touched by

their rough good-humour, their mutual help, and the sympathy with which

they used him in sickness; his bitterness towards mankind in general

diminished when he saw human good-fellowship face to face with actual

hardship; and when at last he found himself in battle, though he had

looked forward to it with horrible anxiety, fearing that he might be

afraid, Basil felt a great exhilaration which made life most excellent

to live. For then vice and squalor and ugliness vanished away, and men

stood before one another in primeval strength, the blood burning in

their veins, and Death walked between contending hosts; and where Death

is there can be nothing petty, sordid, nor mean.

But finally the idea came to Basil that it was not brave to remain

there in concealment. For such talents as he had the Cape offered no

scope, and he made up his mind to return to London, holding up his head

proudly, and there show what stuff he was made of. He felt more

self-reliant because he knew he could withstand cheerfully fatigue and

want; and the medal on his breast proved that he lacked not courage.

Back at length in London, he entered his name at Lincoln’s Inn, and

while arranging for publication a little series of sketches he had

written during the war, worked hard at law. Though the storm through

which he passed had left him somewhat taciturn, with a leaning towards

introspection, at bottom Basil was no less open-hearted and sanguine

than before, and he entered upon this new phase with glowing hopes. But

sometimes his chambers in the Temple seemed very lonely. He was a man

who yearned for domestic ties; a woman’s hands busied about him, the

rustle of a dress or the sound of a loving voice were necessities of

his nature. And now it seemed the last bitterness of his life would be

removed, for Mrs. Murray offered just that affection which he needed,

and still somewhat distrustful of himself, he looked for support to her

strength.

Then, in the midst of his thought, Basil frowned, for on a sudden there

had arisen in his mind a form which in his new-born joy he had

momentarily forgotten. Leaving the bridge, he wandered to the greater

darkness of the Mall, his hands behind him; and for a long time walked

up and down beneath the trees, perplexed and downcast. It was very

late, and there was scarcely a soul about; on the seats homeless

wretches lay asleep, huddled in grotesque attitudes, and a policeman

stealthily crept along behind them.

Some months before, Basil, instead of lunching in hall, went by chance

into a tavern in Fleet Street, and there saw behind the bar a young

girl whose extreme beauty at once attracted his attention. Her

freshness was charming in that tawdry place, gray with London smoke

notwithstanding the gaudiness of its decoration; and though not a man

to gossip with barmaids over his refreshment, in this case he could not

resist a commonplace remark. To this the girl answered rather saucily,

(a public-house is apparently an excellent school for repartee,) and

her bright smile gave a new witchery to the comely face. Interested and

a little thrilled, for there was none on whom sheer beauty made a

greater impression, Basil told Frank Hurrell, then resident physician

at St. Luke’s, that he had found in Fleet Street of all places the

loveliest woman in London, The doctor laughed at his friend’s

enthusiasm, and one day when they were passing, Basil, to justify

himself, insisted on going again to the _Golden Crown_. Then once or

twice he went alone, and the barmaid, beginning to recognise him, gave

a little friendly nod of greeting. Basil had ever something of a

romantic fancy, and his quick imagination decked the pretty girl with

whimsical conceits: he dignified her trade by throwing back the date,

and seeing in her a neat-footed maid who gave sack to cavaliers and

men-at-arms; she was Hebe pouring nectar for the immortal gods; and

when he told her this with other fantastic inventions, the girl, though

she did not altogether comprehend, reddened as the grosser compliments

of the usual frequenters of the bar—accredited admirers—had no power to

make her. Basil thought he had never seen anything more captivating

than that blush.

And then he began to visit the _Golden Crown_ more frequently—at

tea-time, when there were fewest people. The pair grew friendly; and

they discussed the weather, the customers, and the news of the day.

Basil found that half an hour passed very pleasantly in her company,

and perhaps he was a little flattered because the barmaid set greater

store on his society than on that of the other claimants to her

attention. One afternoon, going somewhat later than usual, he was

delighted with the bright look that lit her face like sunshine on his

appearance.

“I was afraid you weren’t coming, Mr. Kent.”

By now she used his name, and hers he found was Jenny Bush.

“Would you have minded if I hadn’t?”

“A bit.”

At that moment the second barmaid of the _Golden Crown_ came to her.

“It’s your evening out to-night, isn’t it, Jenny?”

“Yes, it is.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” said Jenny; “I haven’t made any plans.”

A customer came in, and Jenny’s friend shook hands with him.

“Same as usual, I suppose?” she said.

“Would you like to come to the play with me?” asked Basil lightly.

“We’ll have a bit of dinner first, and then go wherever you like.”

The suggestion flashed across his mind, and he spoke the words without

thinking. Jenny’s eyes sparkled with pleasure.

“Oh, I should like it. Come and fetch me here at seven, will you?”

But then came in a somewhat undersized young man, with obviously false

teeth and a jaunty air. Basil vaguely knew that he was engaged to

Jenny, and on most days he might be seen making sheep’s eyes across the

bar, and drinking innumerable whiskies-and-soda.

“Coming out to dinner, Jenny?” he said. “I’ll stand you a seat at the

Tivoli if you like.”

“I’m afraid I can’t to-night, Tom,” she answered, blushing slightly.

“I’ve made other arrangements.”

“What arrangements?”

“A friend has promised to take me to the theatre.”

“Who’s that?” answered the man, with an ugly look.

“That’s my business, isn’t it?” answered Jenny.

“Well, if you won’t tell me, I’m off.”

“I’m not stopping you, am I?”

“Just give me a Scotch-and-soda, will you? And look sharp about it.”

The man spoke impudently, wishing to remind Jenny that she was there to

carry out his orders. Basil reddened, and with some sharpness was about

to say that he would be discreet to use greater politeness, when

Jenny’s eyes stopped him. Without a word she gave the clerk what he

asked for, and the three of them remained silent.

Presently the new-comer finished his liquor and lit a cigarette. He

glanced suspiciously at Basil, and opened his mouth to make an

observation, but catching the other’s steady look, thought better of

it.

“Good-night then,” he said to Jenny.

When he was gone Basil asked her why she had not thrown him over; it

would have been better than to vex her lover.

“I don’t care,” cried Jenny; “I’m about sick of the airs he gives

himself. I’m not married to him yet, and if he won’t let me do as I

like now he can just take himself off.”

They dined at a restaurant in Soho, and Basil, in high spirits over the

little adventure, was amused with the girl’s delight. It did his heart

good to cause such pleasure, and perhaps his satisfaction was not

lessened by the attention which Jenny’s comeliness attracted. She was

rather shy, but when Basil strove to entertain her laughed very

prettily and flushed: the idea came to him that he would much like to

be of use to her, for she seemed to have a very agreeable nature; he

might give her new ideas and a view of the beauty of life which she had

never known. She wore a hat, and he morning dress, so they took seats

in the back-row of the dress circle at the Gaiety; but even this was

unwonted luxury to Jenny, accustomed to the pit or the upper boxes. At

the end of the performance she turned to him with dancing eyes.

“Oh, I have enjoyed myself,” she cried. “I like going out with you much

more than with Tom; he’s always trying to save money.”

They took a cab to the _Golden Crown_, where Jenny shared a room with

the other barmaid.

“Will you come out with me again?” asked Basil.

“Oh, I should love to. You’re so different from the other men who come

to the bar. You’re a gentleman, and you treat me—as if I was a lady.

That’s why I first liked you, because you didn’t go on as if I was a

lump of dirt: you always called me Miss Bush. . . .”

“I’d much rather call you Jenny.”

“Well, you may,” she answered, smiling and blushing. All those fellows

who hang about the bar think they can do anything with me. You never

tried to kiss me like they do.”

“It’s not because I didn’t want to, Jenny,” answered Basil, laughing.

She made no reply, but looked at him with smiling mouth and tender

eyes; he would have been a fool not to recognise the invitation. He

slipped his arm round her waist and touched her lips, but he was

astonished at the frank surrender with which she received his embrace,

and the fugitive pressure turned into a kiss so passionate that Basil’s

limbs tingled. The cab stopped at the _Golden Crown_, and he helped her

out.

“Good-night.”

Next day, when he went to the public-house, Jenny blushed deeply, but

she greeted him with a quiet intimacy which in his utter loneliness was

very gratifying. It caused him singular content that someone at last

took an interest in him. Freedom is all very well, but there are

moments when a man yearns for someone to whom his comings and goings,

his health or illness, are not matters of complete indifference.

“Don’t go yet,” said Jenny; “I want to tell you something.”

He waited till the bar was clear.

“I’ve broken off my engagement with Tom,” she said then. “He waited on

the other side of the street last night and saw us go out together. And

this morning he came in and rounded on me. I told him if he didn’t like

it he could lump it. And then he got nasty, and I told him I wouldn’t

have anything more to do with him.”

Basil looked at her for a moment silently.

“But aren’t you fond of him, Jenny?”

“No; I can’t bear the sight of him. I used to like him well enough, but

it’s different now. I’m glad to be rid of him.”

Basil could not help knowing it was on his account that she had broken

off the engagement. He felt a curious thrill of power, and his heart

beat with elation and pride, but at the same time he feared he was

doing her some great injury.

“I’m very sorry,” he murmured. “I’m afraid I’ve done you harm.”

“You won’t stop coming here because of this?” she asked, anxiously

watching his doubtful face.

His first thought was that a sudden rupture might be best for both of

them, but he could not bear that on his account pain should darken

those beautiful eyes, and when he saw the gathering tears he put it

aside hastily.

“No, of course not. If you like to see me I’m only too glad to come.”

“Promise that you’ll come every day.”

“I’ll come as often as I can.”

“No, that won’t do. You must come every day.”

“Well, I will.”

He was touched by her eagerness, for he must have been a dolt not to

see that Jenny cared a good deal for him, but introspective though he

was, never asked himself what were his own feelings. He wished to have

a good influence on her, and vowed she should never through him come to

any harm. She was very unlike his notion of the ordinary barmaid, and

he thought it would be simple to lead her to some idea of personal

dignity; he would have liked to take her away from that rather

degrading occupation, placing her where she could learn more easily:

her character, notwithstanding three years at the _Golden Crown_, was

very ingenuous, but in those surroundings she could not for ever remain

unspoilt, and it would have seemed a justification of his friendship if

he could put her in the way to lead a more beautiful life. The most

obvious result of these deliberations was that Basil presently made it

a practice to take Jenny on her free evenings to dinner and to the

play.

As for her, she had never known anyone like the young barrister who

impressed her by the courtesy of his manner and the novelty of his

conversation: though often she did understand the things he said, she

was flattered nevertheless, and, womanlike, simulated a comprehension

which made Basil think her less uneducated than she really was. At

first she was intimidated by the grave stateliness of his treatment,

for she was accustomed to less respect, and he could not have used a

duchess with more polite decorum; but insensibly admiration and awe

passed into love, and at last into blind adoration of which Basil not

for a moment dreamed. She wondered why since that first night he had

never kissed her, but at parting merely gave his hand; in three months

she had advanced only so far as to use his Christian name.