CHAPTER I

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A DOZEN WAYS OF LOVE

by

L. DOUGALL

Author of 'Beggars All,' 'The Zeitgeist,' 'The Madonna of a Day,' Etc.

London

Adam And Charles Black

1897

TO

M. S. E.

WITHOUT WHOSE AID, I THINK, MY BOOKS WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN WRITTEN

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. YOUNG LOVE 1

II. A MARRIAGE MADE IN HEAVEN 29

III. THRIFT 57

IV. A TAINT IN THE BLOOD 77

V. 'HATH NOT A JEW EYES?' 127

VI. A COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 141

VII. THE SYNDICATE BABY 169

VIII. WITCHCRAFT 195

IX. THE GIRL WHO BELIEVED IN THE SAINTS 219

X. THE PAUPER'S GOLDEN DAY 237

XI. THE SOUL OF A MAN 251

XII. A FREAK OF CUPID 293

I

YOUNG LOVE

It was after dark on a November evening. A young woman came down the

main street of a small town in the south of Scotland. She was a

maid-servant, about thirty years old; she had a pretty, though rather

strong-featured, face, and yellow silken hair. When she came toward the

end of the street she turned into a small draper's shop. A middle-aged

woman stood behind the counter folding her wares.

'Can ye tell me the way to Mistress Macdonald's?' asked the maid.

'Ye'll be a stranger.' It was evident that every one in those parts knew

the house inquired for.

The maid had a somewhat forward, familiar manner; she sat down to rest.

'What like is she?'

The shopkeeper bridled. 'Is it Mistress Macdonald?' There was reproof in

the voice. 'She is much respectet--none more so. It would be before you

were born that every one about here knew Mistress Macdonald.'

'Well, what family is there?' The maid had a sweet smile; her voice fell

into a cheerful coaxing tone, which had its effect.

'Ye'll be the new servant they'll be looking for. Is it walking ye are

from the station? Well, she had six children, had Mistress Macdonald.'

'What ages will they be?'

The woman knit her brows; the problem set her was too difficult. 'I

couldna tell ye just exactly. There's Miss Macdonald--she that's at home

yet; she'll be over fifty.'

'Oh!' The maid gave a cheerful note of interested understanding. 'It'll

be her perhaps that wrote to me; the mistress'll be an old lady.'

'She'll be nearer ninety than eighty, I'm thinking.' There was a

moment's pause, which the shop-woman filled with sighs. 'Ye'll be aware

that it's a sad house ye're going to. She's verra ill is Mistress

Macdonald. It's sorrow for us all, for she's been hale and had her

faculties. She'll no' be lasting long now, I'm thinking.'

'No,' said the maid, with good-hearted pensiveness; 'it's not in the

course of nature that she should.' She rose as she spoke, as if it

behoved her to begin her new duties with alacrity, as there might not

long be occasion for them. She put another question before she went.

'And who will there be living in the house now?'

'There's just Miss Macdonald that lives with her mother; and there's

Mistress Brown--she'll be coming up most of the days now, but she dinna

live there; and there's Ann Johnston, that's helping Miss Macdonald with

the nursing--she's been staying at the house for a year back. That's all

that there'll be of them besides the servants, except that there's Dr.

Robert. His name is Macdonald, too, ye know; he's a nephew, and he's the

minister o' the kirk here. He goes up every day to see how his aunt's

getting on. I'm thinking he'll be up there now; it's about his time for

going.'

The maid took the way pointed out to her. Soon she was walking up a

gravel path, between trim, old-fashioned laurel hedges. She stood at the

door of a detached house. It was an ordinary middle-class

dwelling--comfortable, commodious, ugly enough, except that stolidity

and age did much to soften its ugliness. It had, above all, the air of

being a home--a hospitable open-armed look, as if children had run in

and out of it for years, as if young men had gone out from it to see the

world and come back again to rest, as if young girls had fluttered about

it, confiding their sports and their loves to its ivy-clad walls. Now

there hung about it a silence and sobriety that were like the shadows of

coming oblivion. The gas was turned low in the hall. The old-fashioned

omnibus that came lumbering from the railway with a box for the new maid

seemed to startle the place with its noise.

In the large dining-room four people were sitting in dreary discussion.

The gas-light flared upon heavy mahogany furniture, upon red moreen

curtains and big silver trays and dishes. By the fire sat the two

daughters of the aged woman. They both had grey hair and wrinkled faces.

The married daughter was stout and energetic; the spinster was thin,

careworn and nervous. Two middle-aged men were listening to a complaint

she made; the one was Robert Macdonald the minister, the other was the

family doctor.

'It's no use Robina's telling me that I must coax my mother to eat, as

if I hadn't tried that'--the voice became shrill--'I've begged her, and

prayed her, and reasoned with her.'

'No, no, Miss Macdonald--no, no,' said the doctor soothingly. 'You've

done your best, we all understand that; it's Mistress Brown that's

thinking of the situation in a wrong light; it's needful to be plain and

to say that Mistress Macdonald's mind is affected.'

Robina Brown interposed with indignation and authority.

'My mother has always had her right mind; she's been losing her memory.

All aged people lose their memories.'

The minister spoke with a meditative interest in a psychological

phenomenon. 'Ay, she's been losing it backwards; she forgot who we were

first, and remembered us all as little children; then she forgot us and

your father altogether. Latterly she's been living back in the days when

her father and mother were living at Kelsey Farm. It's strange to hear

her talk. There's not, as far as I know, another being on this wide

earth of all those that came and went to Kelsey Farm that is alive now.'

Miss Macdonald wiped her eyes; her voice shook as she spoke; the

nervousness of fatigue and anxiety accentuated her grief. 'She was

asking me how much butter we made in the dairy to-day, and asking if the

curly cow had her calf, and what Jeanie Trim was doing.'

'Who was Jeanie Trim?' asked the minister.

'How should I know? I suppose she was one of the Kelsey servants.'

'Curious,' ejaculated the minister. 'This Jeanie will have grown old and

died, perhaps, forty years ago, and my aunt's speaking of her as if she

was a young thing at work in the next room!'

'And what did you say to Mistress Macdonald?' the doctor asked, with a

cheerful purpose in his tone.

'I explained to her that her poor head was wandering.'

'Nay, now, but, Miss Macdonald, I'm thinking if I were you I would tell

her that the curly cow had her calf.'

'I never'--tearfully--'told my mother a falsehood in my life, except

when I was a very little girl, and then'--Miss Macdonald paused to wipe

her eyes--'she spoke to me so beautifully out of the Bible about it.'

The married sister chimed in mournfully, 'How often have I heard my

mother say that not one of her children had ever told her a lie!'

'Yes, yes, but----' There was a tone in the doctor's voice as if he

would like to have used a strong word, but he schooled himself.

'It's curious the notion she has got of not eating,' broke in the

minister. 'I held the broth myself, but she would have none of it.'

In the next room the flames of a large fire were sending reflections

over the polished surfaces of massive bedroom furniture. The wind blew

against this side of the house and rattled the windows, as if angry to

see the picture of luxury and warmth within. It was a handsome stately

room, and all that was in it dated back many a year. In a chintz

arm-chair by the fireside its mistress sat--a very old lady, but there

was still dignity in her pose. Her hair, perfectly white, was still

plentiful; her eye had still something of brightness, and there was upon

the aged features the cast of thought and the habitual look of

intelligence. Beside her upon a small table were such accompaniments of

age as daughter and nurse deemed suitable--the large print Bible, the

big spectacles and caudle cup. The lady sat looking about her with a

quick restless expression, like a prisoner alert to escape; she was tied

to her chair--not by cords--by the failure of muscular strength; but

perhaps she did not know that. She eyed her attendant with bright

furtive glances, as if the meek sombre woman who sat sewing beside her

were her jailer.

The party in the dining-room broke up their vain discussion, and came

for another visit of personal inspection.

'Mother, this is the doctor come to see you. Do you not remember the

doctor?'

The old lady looked at all four of them brightly enough. 'I haena the

pleasure of remembering who ye are, but perhaps it will return to me.'

There was restrained politeness in her manner.

The doctor spoke. 'It's a very bad tale I'm hearing about you to-day,

that you've begun to refuse your meat. A person of your experience,

Mistress Macdonald, ought to know that we must eat to live.' He had a

basin of food in his hand. 'Now just to please me, Mistress Macdonald.'

The old dame answered with the air that a naughty child or a pouting

maiden might have had. 'I'll no eat it--tak' it away! I'll no eat it.

Not for you, no--nor for my mither there'--she looked defiantly at her

grey-haired daughter--'no, nor for my father himself!'

'Not a mouthful has passed her lips to-day,' moaned Miss Macdonald. She

wrung excited hands and stepped back a pace into the shadow; she felt

too modest to pose as her mother's mother before the curious eyes of the

two men.

The old lady appeared relieved when the spinster was out of her sight.

'I don't know ye, gentlemen, but perhaps now my mither's not here, ye'll

tell me who it was that rang the door-bell a while since.'

The men hesitated. They were neither of them ready with inventions.

She leaned towards the doctor, strangely excited. 'Was it Mr. Kinnaird?'

she whispered.

The doctor supposed her to be frightened. 'No, no,' he said in cheerful

tones; 'you're mistaken--it wasn't Kinnaird.'

She leaned back pettishly. 'Tak' away the broth; I'll no' tak' it!'

The discomfited four passed out of the room again. The women were

weeping; the men were shaking their heads.

It was just then that the new servant passed into the sick-room, bearing

candles in her hands.

'Jeanie, Jeanie Trim,' whispered the old lady. The whisper had a

sprightly yet mysterious tone in it; the withered fingers were put out

as if to twitch the passing skirt as the housemaid went by.

The girl turned and bent a look--strong, helpful, and kindly--upon this

fine ruin of womanhood. The girl had wit 'Yes, ma'am?' she answered

blithely.

'I'll speak with ye, Jeanie, when this woman goes away; it's her that my

mither's put to spy on me.'

The nurse retired into the shadow of the wardrobe.

'She's away now,' said the maid.

'Jeanie, is it Mr. Kinnaird?'

'Well, now, would you like it to be Mr. Kinnaird?' The maid spoke as we

speak to a familiar friend when we have joyful news.

'Oh, Jeanie Trim, ye know well that I've longed sair for him to come

again!'

The maid set down her candles, and knelt down by the old dame's knee,

looking up with playful face.

'Well, now, I'll tell ye something. He came to see ye this afternoon.'

'Did he, Jeanie?' The withered face became all wreathed with smiles; the

old eyes danced with joy. 'What did ye say to him?'

'Oh, well, I just said'--hesitation--'I said he was to come back again

to-morrow.'

'My father doesn't know that he's been here?' There was apprehension in

the whisper.

'Not a soul knows but meself.'

'Ye didna tell him I'd been looking for him, Jeanie Trim?'

'Na, na, I made out that ye didna care whether he came or not.'

'But he wouldna be hurt in his mind, would he? I'd no like him to be

affronted.'

'It's no likely he was affronted when he said he'd come back to-morrow.'

The smile of satisfaction came again.

'Did he carry his silver-knobbed cane and wear his green coat, Jeanie?'

'Ay, he wore his green coat, and he looked as handsome a man as ever I

saw in my life.'

The coals in the grate shot up a sudden brilliant flame that eclipsed

the soft light of the candles and set strange shadows quivering about

the huge bed and wardrobe and the dark rosewood tables. The winsome

young woman at her play, and the old dame living back in a tale that was

long since told, exchanged nods and smiles at the thought of the

handsome visitor in his green coat. The whisper of the aged voice came

blithely--

'Ay, he is that, Jeanie Trim; as handsome a man as ever trod!'

The maid rose, and passing out observed the discarded basin of broth.

'What's this?' she said. 'Ye'll no be able to see Mr. Kinnaird to-morrow

if ye don't take yer soup the night.'

'Gie it to me, Jeanie Trim; I thought he wasna coming again when I said

I wouldna.'

The nurse slipped out of the shadow of the wardrobe and went out to tell

that the soup was being eaten.

'Kinnaird,' repeated the minister meditatively. 'I never heard my aunt

speak the name.'

'Kinnaird,' repeated the daughters; and they too searched in their

memories.

'I can remember my grandfather and my grandmother--the married daughter

spoke incredulously--'there was never a gentleman called Kinnaird that

any of the family had to do with. I'm sure of that, or I'd have as much

as heard the name.'

The minister shook his head, discounting the certainty.

'Maybe John will remember the name; your father, and your grandfather

too, had great talks with him when he was a lad. I'll write a line and

ask him. Poor William or Thomas might have known, if they had lived.'

William and Thomas, grey-haired men, respected fathers of families, had

already been laid by the side of their father in the burying-ground.

John lived in a distant country, counting himself too feeble now to

cross the seas. The daughters, the younger members of this flock, were

passing into advanced years. The mother sat by her fireside, and smiled

softly to herself as she watched the dancing flame, and thought that her

young lover would return on the morrow.

The days went on.

'I cannot think it right to tamper with my mother in this false way.'

The spinster daughter spoke tearfully.

'Would you rather see Mistress Macdonald die of starvation?' The doctor

spoke sharply; he was tired of the protest. The doctor approved of the

new maid. 'She's a wise-like body,' he said; 'let her have her way.'

'Don't you know us, mother?' the daughters would ask patiently, sadly,

day by day. But she never knew them; she only mistook one or the other

of them at times for her own mother, of whom she stood in some awe.

'Surely ye've not forgotten Ann Johnston, ma'am?' the nurse would ask,

carefully tending her old mistress.

The force of long habit had made the old lady patient and courteous, but

no answering gleam came in her face.

'Ye know who I am?' the new maid would cry in kindly triumph.

'Oh, ay, I know you, Jeanie Trim.'

'And now, look, I brought you a fine cup of milk, warm from the byre.'

'Oh, I canna tak' it; I'm no thinking that I care about eating the day.'

'Well, but I want to tell ye'--with an air of mystery. 'Who d'ye think's

downstairs? It's Mr. Kinnaird himself.'

'Did he come round by the yard to the dairy door?'

'That he did; and all to ask how ye were the day.'

The sparkle of the eye returned, and the smile that almost seemed to

dimple the wrinkled cheek.

'And I hope ye offered him something to eat, Jeanie; it's a long ride he

takes.'

'Bread and cheese, and a cup of milk just like this.'

'What did he say? Did he like what ye gave him?'

'He said a sup of milk sudna cross his lips till you'd had a cupful the

like of his; so I brought it in to ye. You'd better make haste and take

it up.'

'Did he send ye wi' the cup, Jeanie Trim?'

'Ay, he did that; and not a bit nor sup will he tak till ye've drunk it

all, every drop.'

With evident delight the cup was drained.

'Ye told him I was ailing and couldna see him the day, Jeanie?'

'Maybe ye'll see him to-morrow.' The maid stooped and folded the white

shawl more carefully over the dame's breast, and smiled in protective

kindly fashion. She had a good heart and a womanly, motherly touch,

although many a mistress had called her wilful and pert.

There were times when the minister came and sat himself behind his

aunt's chair to watch and to listen. He was a meditative man, and wrote

many an essay upon modern theology, but here he found food for

meditation of another sort.

There was no being in the world that he reverenced as he had reverenced

this aged lady. In his childhood she had taught him to lisp the measures

of psalm and paraphrase; in his youth she had advised him with shrewdest

wisdom; in his ministerial life she had been to him a friend, always

holding before him a greater spiritual height to be attained, and

now---- He thought upon his uncle as he had known him, a very reverent

elder of the kirk, a man who had led a long and useful life, and to whom

this woman had rendered wifely devotion. He thought upon his cousins, in

whose lives their mother's life had seemed unalterably bound up. He

would at times emerge from his corner, and, sitting down beside the

lady, would take her well-worn Bible and read to her such passages as he

knew were graven deep upon her heart by scenes of joy or sorrow, parting

or meeting, or the very hours of birth or death, in the lives that had

been dearer to her than her own. He was not an emotional man, but yet

there was a ringing pathos in his voice as he read the rhythmic words.

At such times she would sit as if voice and rhythm soothed her, or she

would bow her head solemnly at certain pauses, as if accustomed to agree

to the sentiment expressed. Heart and thought were not awake to him, nor

to the book he read, nor to the memories he tried to arouse. The fire of

the lady's heart sprang up only for one word, that word a name, the name

of a man of whose very existence, it seemed, no trace was left in all

that country-side.

The minister would retreat out of the lady's range of vision; and so

great did his curiosity grow that he instigated the maid to ask certain

questions as she played at the game of the old love-story in her

sprightly, pitying way.

'Now I'll tell ye a thing that I want to know,' said the maid, pouring

tea in a cup. 'What's his given name? Will ye tell me that?'

'Is it Mr. Kinnaird ye mean?'

'It's Mr. Kinnaird's christened name that I'm speering for.'

'An' I canna tell ye that, for he never told it to me. It'd be no place

of mine to ask him before he chose to speak o' it himsel'.'

'Did ye never see a piece of paper that had his name on it, or a card,

maybe?'

'I dinna mind that I have, Jeanie. He's a verra fine gentleman; it's

just Mr. Kinnaird that he's called.'

'What for will ye no let me tell the master that he comes every day?'

'Ye must no tell my father, Jeanie Trim'--querulously. 'No, no; nor my

mither. They'll maybe be telling him to bide away.'

'Why would they be telling him to bide away?'

'Tuts! How can I tell ye why, when I dinna ken mysel'? Why will ye fret

me? I'll tak' no more tea. Tak' it away!'

'I tell ye he'll ask me if ye took it up. He's waiting now to hear that

ye took a great big piece of bread tae it. He'll no eat the bread and

cheese I've set before him till ye've eaten this every crumb.'

'Is that sae? Well, I maun eat it, for I wouldna have him wanting his

meat.'

The meal finished, the maid put on her most winsome smile.

'Now and I'll tell ye what I'll do; I'll go back to Mr. Kinnaird, and

I'll tell him ye sent yer _love_ tae him.'

'Ye'll no do sic a thing as that, Jeanie Trim!' All the dignity and

authority of her long womanhood returned in the impressive air with

which she spoke. 'Ye'll no do sic a thing as that, Jeanie Trim! It's no

for young ladies to be sending sic messages to a gentleman, when he

hasna so much as said the word "love."'

Had he ever said the word 'love,' this Kinnaird, whose memory was a

living presence in the chamber of slow death? The minister believed that

he had not. There was no annal in the family letters of his name,

although other rejected suitors were mentioned freely. Had he told his

love by look or gesture, and left it unspoken, or had look and gesture

been misunderstood, and the whole slight love-story been born where it

had died, in the heart of the maiden? 'Where it had died!'--it had not

died. Seventy years had passed, and the love-story was presently

enacting itself, as all past and all future must for ever be enacting to

beings for whom time is not. Then, too, where was he who, by some means,

whether of his own volition or not, had become so much a part of the

pulsing life of a young girl that, when all else of life passed from her

with the weight of years, her heart still remained obedient to him?

Where was he? Had his life gone out like the flame of a candle when it

is blown? Or, if he was anywhere in the universe of living spirits, was

he conscious of the power which he was wielding? Was it a triumph to

him to know that he had come, gay and debonair, in the bloom of his

youth, into this long-existing sanctuary of home, and set aside, with a

wave of his hand, husband, children, and friends, dead and living?

Whatever might be the psychical aspects of the case, one thing was

certain, that the influence of Kinnaird--Kinnaird alone of all those who

had entered into relations with the lady--was useful at this time to

come between her and the distressing symptoms that would have resulted

from the mania of self-starvation. For some months longer she lived in

comfort and good cheer. This clear memory of her youth was oddly

interwoven with the forgetful dulness of old age, like a golden thread

in a black web, like a tiny flame on the hearth that shoots with

intermittent brilliancy into darkness. She was always to see her lover

upon the morrow; she never woke to the fact that 'to-day' lasted too

long, that a winter of morrows had slipped fruitless by.

The interviews between Jeanie Trim and Kinnaird were not monotonous. All

else was monotonous. December, January, February passed away. The

mornings and the evenings brought no change outwardly in the sick-room,

no change to the appearance of the fine old face and still stately

figure, suggested no variety of thought or emotion to the lady's

decaying faculties; but at the hours when she sat and contentedly ate

the food that the maid brought her, her mental vision cleared as it

focused upon the thought of her heart's darling. It was she whose

questions suggested nearly all the variations in the game of imagination

which the young woman so aptly played.

'Was he riding his black mare, Jeanie Trim?'

'I didna see the beast. He stood on his feet when he was tapping at the

door.'

'Whisht! Ye could tell if he wore his boots and spurs, an' his drab

waistcoat, buttoned high?'

'Now that ye speak of it, those were the very things he wore.'

'It'd be the black mare he was riding, nae doubt; he'll have tied her to

the gate in the lane.' Or again: 'Was it in the best parlour that ye saw

him the day? He'd be drinking tea wi' my mither.'

'That he was; and she smiling tae him over the dish of tea.'

'Ay, he looks fine and handsome, bowing to my mither in the best

parlour, Jeanie Trim. Did ye notice if he wore silk stockings?'

'Fine silk stockings he wore.'

'And his green coat?'

'As green and smart as a bottle when ye polish, it with a cloth.'

'Did ye notice the fine frills that he has to his shirt? I've tried to

make my father's shirts look as fine, but they never have the same

look.' The hands of the old dame would work nervously, as if eager to

get at the goffering-irons and try once more. 'An' he'd lay his hat on

the floor beside him; it's a way he has. Did my mither tell him that I

was ailing? His eyes would be shining the while. Do ye notice how his

eyes shine, Jeanie?'

'Ay, do I; his eyes shine and his hair curls.'

'Ye're mistaken there, his hair doesna curl, Jeanie Trim--ye've no'

obsairved rightly; his hair is brown and straight; it's his beard and

whiskers that curl. Eh! but they're bonny! There's a colour and shine in

the curl that minds me of the lights I can see in the old copper kettle

when my mither has it scoured and hung up on the nail; but his hair is

plain brown.'

'He's a graun' figure of a man!' cried the blithe maid, ever

sympathetic.

'Tuts! What are ye saying, Jeanie! He's no' a great size at all; the

shortest of my brithers is bigger than him! Ye might even ca' him a wee

man; it's the spirit that he has wi' it that I like.'

Thus, by degrees, touch upon touch, the portrait of Kinnaird was

painted, and whatever misconceptions they might form of him were

corrected one by one. There was little incident depicted, yet the

figure of Kinnaird was never drawn passive, but always in action.

'Did my father no' offer to send him home in the spring-cart? It's sair

wet for him to be walking in the wind and the rain the day.' Or: 'He had

a fine bloom on his cheeks, I'll warrant, when he came in through this

morning's bluster of wind.' Or again: 'He'll be riding to the hunt with

my father to-day; have they put their pink coats on, Jeanie Trim?'

The relations between Kinnaird and the father and mother appeared to be

indefinite rather than unfriendly. There were times, it is true, when he

came round by the dairy and gave private messages to Jeanie Trim, but at

other times he figured as one of the ordinary guests of a large and

hospitable household. No special honour seemed to be paid him; there was

always the apprehension in the love-sick girl's heart that such timely

attentions as the offer of proper refreshment or of the use of the

spring-cart might be lacking. The parents were never in the daughter's

confidence. She always feared their interference. There was no beginning

to the story, no crisis, no culmination.

'Now tell me when ye first saw Mr. Kinnaird?' asked the maid.

But to this there was no answer. It had not been love at first sight,

its small beginnings had left no impression; nor was there ever any

mention of a change in the relation, or of a parting, only that

suggestion of a long and weary waiting, given in the beginning of this

phase of memory, when she refused to touch her food, and said she was

'sair longing' to see him again.

The household at Kelsey Farm had flourished in the palmy days of

agriculture. Hunters had been kept and pink coats worn, and the mother,

of kin with the neighbouring gentry, had kept her carriage to ride in.

There had been many pleasures, no doubt, for the daughter of such a

house, but only one pleasure remained fixed on her memory, the pleasure

of seeing Kinnaird's eyes shining upon her. These days of the lady's

youth had happened at a time when religion, if strong, was a sombre

thing; and to those who held the pleasures of life in both hands, it was

little more than a name and a rite. So it came to pass that no religious

sentiment was stirred with the thought of this old joy and succeeding

sorrow.

The minister never failed to read some sacred texts when he sat beside

her; and when he found himself alone with the old dame, he would kneel

and pray aloud in such simple words as he thought she might understand.

He did it more to ease his own heart because of the love he bore her

than because he supposed that it made any difference in the sight of

God whether she heard him or not. He was past the prime of life, and had

fallen into pompous and ministerial habits of manner, but in his heart

he was always pondering to find what the realities of life might be; he

seldom drew false conclusions, although to many a question he was

content to find no answer. He wore a serious look--people seldom knew

what was passing in his mind; the doctor began to think that he was

anxious for the safety of the old dame's soul.

'I am not without hope of a lucid interval at the end,' he said; 'there

is wonderful vitality yet, and it's little more than the power of memory

that is impaired.'

At this hope the daughters caught eagerly. They were plain women, narrow

and dull, but their mother had been no ordinary woman; her power of love

had created in them an affection for her which transcended ordinary

filial affection. They had inherited from her such strong domestic

feelings that they felt her defection from all family ties for the sake

of the absent father and brothers, felt it with a poignancy which the

use and wont of those winter months did not seem to blunt.

No sudden shock or fit came to bring about the end. Gradually the old

dame's strength failed. There came an hour in the spring time--it was

the midnight hour of an April night--when she lay upon her bed, sitting

up high against white pillows, gasping for the last breaths that she

would ever draw. They had drawn aside the old-fashioned bed-curtains, so

that they hung like high dark pillars at the four posts. They had opened

wide the windows, and the light spring wind blew through the room fresh

with the dews of night. Outside, the moon was riding among her clouds;

the night was white. The budding trees shook their twigs together in the

garden. Inside the room, firelight and lamplight, each flickering much

because of the wind, mingled with the moonlight, but did not wholly

obscure its misty presence. They all stood there--the minister, the

doctor, the grey-haired daughters sobbing, looking and longing for one

glance of recognition, the nurse, and the new maid.

They all knelt, while the minister said a prayer.

'She's looking differently now,' whispered the home-keeping daughter.

She had drawn her handkerchief from her eyes, and was looking with awed

solicitude at her mother's face.

'Yes, there's a change coming,' said the married daughter; her large

bosom heaved out the words with excited emotion.

'Speak to her of my father--it will bring her mind back again,' they

appealed to the minister, pushing him forward to do what they asked.

The minister took the lady's hands in his, and spoke out clearly and

strongly in her ear; but he spoke not, at first, of husband or children,

but of the Son of God.

Memories that had lain asleep so long seemed slowly to awaken for one

last moment.

'You know what I am saying, auntie?' The minister spoke strongly, as to

one who was deaf.

There was a smile on the handsome old face.

'Ay, I know weel: "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shallna want ... though I

walk through the valley o' the shadow of death."'

'My uncle, and Thomas, and William have gone before you, auntie.'

'Ay'--with a satisfied smile--'they've gone before.'

'You know who I am?' he said again.

She knew him, and took leave of him. She took leave of each of her

daughters, but in a calm, weak way, as one who had waded too far into

the river of death to be much concerned with the things of earth.

The doctor pressed her hand, and the faithful nurse. The minister,

feeling that justice should be done to one whose wit had brought great

relief, bid the maid go forward.

She was weeping, but she spoke in the free, caressing way that she had

used so long.

'Ye know who I am, ma'am?'

The dying eyes looked her full in the face, but gave no recognition.

'It's Jeanie Trim.'

'Na, na, I remember a Jeanie Trim long syne, but you're not Jeanie

Trim!'

The maid drew back discomfited.

The minister began to repeat a psalm that she loved. The daughters sat

on the bedside, holding her hands. So they waited, and she seemed to

follow the meaning of the psalm as it went on, until suddenly----

She turned her head feebly towards a space by the bed where no one

stood. She drew her aged hands from her daughters', and made as if to

stretch them out to a new-comer. She smiled.

'Mr. Kinnaird!' she murmured; then she died.

'You might have thought that he was there himself,' said the daughters,

awestruck.

And the minister said within himself, 'Who knows but that he was

there?'

II

A MARRIAGE MADE IN HEAVEN

In the backwoods of Canada, about eighty miles north of Lake Ontario,

there is a chain of three lakes, linked by the stream of a rapid river,

which leads southward from the heart of a great forest. The last of the

three lakes is broad, and has but a slow current because of a huge dam

which the early Scottish settlers built across its mouth in order to

form a basin to receive the lumber floated down from the lakes above.

Hence this last lake is called Haven, which is also the name of the

settlement at the side of the dam. The worthy Scotsmen, having set up a

sawmill, built a church beside it, and by degrees a town and a

schoolhouse. The wealth of the town came from the forest. The half-breed

Indian lumber-men, toiling anxiously to bring their huge tree-trunks

through the twisting rapids, connected all thoughts of rest and plenty

with the peaceful Haven Lake and the town where they received their

wages; and, perhaps because they received their first ideas of religion

at the same place, their tripping tongues to this day call it, not

'Haven,' but 'Heaven.'

The town throve apace in its early days, and no one in it throve better

than Mr. Reid, who kept the general shop. He was a cheerful soul; and it

was owing more to his wife's efforts than his own that his fortune was

made, for she kept more closely to the shop and had a sharper eye for

the pence.

Mrs. Reid was not cheerful; she was rather of an acrid disposition.

People said that there was only one subject on which the shopkeeper and

his wife agreed, that was as to the superiority of their daughter in

beauty, talent, and amiability, over all other young women far or near.

In their broad Scotch fashion they called this daughter Eelan, and the

town knew her as 'Bonnie Eelan Reid'; everyone acknowledged her charms,

although there might be some who would not acknowledge her preeminence.

Mr. and Mrs. Reid carried their pride in their daughter to a great

extent, for they sent her to a boarding-school in the town of Coburgh,

which was quite two days' journey to the south. When she came back from

this educating process well grown, healthy, handsome, and, in their

eyes, highly accomplished, the parents felt that there was no rank in

the Canadian world beyond their daughter's reach, if it should be her

pleasure to attain it.

'It wouldn't be anything out of the way even,' chuckled the happy Mr.

Reid, 'if our Eelan should marry the Governor-General.'

'Tuts, father, Governors!' said his wife scornfully, not because she had

any inherent objection to Governors as sons-in-law, but because she

usually cried down what her husband said.

'The chief difficulty would be that they are usually married before they

come to this country--aren't they, father?' Eelan spoke with a twinkling

smile. She did not choose to explain to any one what she really thought;

she had fancies of her own, this pretty backwoods maiden.

'Well, well, there are lads enough in town, and I'll warrant she'll pick

and choose,' said the jolly father in a resigned tone. He was not

particular as to a Governor, after all.

That conversation happened when Eelan first came home; but a year or two

after, the family conferences took a more serious tone. She had learnt

to keep her father's books in the shop, and had become deft at

housework; but there was no prospect of her settling in a house of her

own; many of the best young men in the place had offered themselves as

lovers and been refused.

'Oh! what's the use o' talking, father,' cried Mrs. Reid; 'if the girl

won't, she won't, and that's all.--But I can tell _you_, Eelan Reid,

that all your looks and your manners won't save you from being an old

maid, if you turn your back on the men.'

'I wasn't talking,' said Mr. Reid humbly; 'I was only saying to the

lassie that I didn't want her to hurry; but I'd be right sorry when I'm

getting old not to have some notion where I was going to leave my

money--it'll more than last out Eelan's day, if it's rightly taken care

of.'

'But I can't marry unless I should fall in love,' said Eelan wistfully.

Her parents had a vague notion that this manner of expressing herself

was in some way a proof of her high accomplishments.

Life was by no means dull in the little town. There were picnics in

summer, sleigh-drives in winter, dances, and what not; and Eelan was no

recluse. Still, she loved the place better than the people, and there

was not a spot of ground in the neighbourhood that she did not know by

heart.

In summer, the sparkling water of the lake rippled under a burning sun,

and the thousand tree-trunks left floating in it, held near to the edge

by the floating boom of logs, became hot and dry on the upper side,

while the green water-moss caught them from beneath. It was great fun

for the school children to scamper out daringly on these floating fields

of lumber; and Eelan liked to go with them, and sometimes walk far out

alone along the edge of the boom. She would listen to the birds singing,

the children shouting, to the whir of the saws in the mill, and the

plash of the river falling over the dam; and she would feel that it was

enough delight simply to live without distressing herself about marriage

yet awhile.

When winter came, Eelan was happier still. All the roughness and

darkness of the earth was lost in a downy ocean of snow. Where the

waterfall had been there was a fairy palace of icicles glancing in the

sun, and smooth white roads were made across the frozen lake. Eelan

never drew back dazzled from the glittering landscape; she was a child

of the winter, and she loved its light. She would often harness her

father's horse to the old family sleigh and drive alone across the lake.

She took her snow-shoes with her, and, leaving the horse at some

friendly farmhouse, she would tramp into the woods over the trackless

snow. The girl would stand still and look up at the solemn pines and

listen, awed by their majestic movement and the desolate loveliness all

around. At such time, if the thought of marriage came, she did not put

it aside with the light fancy that she wished still to remain free; she

longed, in the drear solitude, for some one to sympathise with her, some

one who could explain the meaning of the wordless thoughts that welled

up within her, the vague response of her heart to the mystery of

external beauty. Alas! among all her suitors there was not such a

friend.

There was no one else in the town who cared for country walks as Eelan

did--at least, no one but the schoolmaster. She met him occasionally,

walking far from home; he was a quaint, old-looking man, and she thought

he had a face like an angel's. She might have wished sometimes to stop

and speak to him, but when they met he always appeared to have his eyes

resting on the distant horizon, and his mind seemed wrapped in some

learned reverie, to the oblivion of outward things. The schoolmaster

lived in the schoolhouse on the bank of the curving river, a bit below

the waterfall. He took up his abode there a few months before Eelan Reid

came home from school. He had come from somewhere nearer the centres of

education--had been imported, so to speak, for the special use of Haven

Settlement, for the leading men of the place were a canny set and knew

the worth of books. His testimonials had told of a higher standard of

scholarship than was usual in such schools, and the keen Scots had

snapped at the chance and engaged him without an interview; but when he

arrived they had been grievously disappointed. He was a gentle,

unsophisticated man, shy as a girl, and absent-minded withal.

'Aweel, I'll not say but he'll do to put sums and writing into the

youngsters' heads and teach them to spout their poems; but he's not just

what I call a _man_.' This was the opinion which Macpherson, the portly

owner of the mill, had delivered to his friends.

'There's something lacking, I'm thinking,' said one; 'he's thirty-six

years old, and to see him driving his cow afield, you'd say he was

sixty, and him not sickly either.'

'I doubt he's getting far too high a salary,' said Macpherson solemnly.

'To pass examinations is all very well; but he's not got the grit in him

that I'd like to see.'

So they had called a school committee meeting, and suggested to the new

schoolmaster, as delicately as they could, that they were much

disappointed with his general manner and appearance, but that, as he had

come so far, they were graciously willing to keep him if he would

consent to take a lower salary than that first agreed on. At this the

schoolmaster grew very red, and, with much stammering, he managed to

make a speech. He said that he liked the wildness and extreme beauty of

the country, and the children appeared to him attractive; he did not

wish to go away; and as to salary, he would take what they thought him

worth.

In this way they closed the bargain with him on terms quite satisfactory

to themselves.

'But hoots,' said the stout Macpherson as he ambled home from the

meeting, 'I've only half a respect for a man that can't stand up for

himself;' and this sentiment was more or less echoed by them all.

Happily, the schoolmaster did not desire society. The minister's wife

asked him to tea occasionally; and he confided to her that, up to that

time, he had always lived with his mother, and that it was because of

her death that he had left his old home, where sad memories were too

great a strain upon him, and come farther west. No one else took much

notice of him, partly because he took no notice of them. At the ladies'

sewing meeting the doctor's wife looked round the room with an injured

air and asked: 'How is it possible to ask a gentleman to tea when you

know that he'll meet you in the street next morning and won't remember

who you are?'

'A lady who respected herself couldn't do it,' replied Mrs. Reid

positively; and then in an undertone she remarked to herself, 'The

gaby!'

Miss Ann Blakely pursed her lips and craned her thin neck over her work.

'As to that I don't know, Mrs. Reid; no one could visit the school, as I

have done, and fail to observe that the youth of the town are more

obedient than formerly. In my opinion, a gentleman who can command the

respect of the growing masculine mind----' She finished the sentence

only by an expressive wave of her head.

'There is much truth in Miss Blakely's remark,' said a timid little

mother of six sons.

People married early, as a general thing, in Haven Settlement, and Miss

Blakely, having been accidentally overlooked, had, before he came,

indulged in some soft imaginations of her own with regard to the new

schoolmaster; like others, she was disappointed in him; but she had not

yet decided 'whether,' to use her own phrase, 'he would not, after all,

be better than none.' She poised this question in her mind with a nice

balancing of reasons for and against for about three years, and the man

who was thus the object of her interest continued to live peacefully,

ignorant alike of hostile criticism and tender speculation.

It was a terrible day for the schoolmaster when the honest widow who

lived with him as housekeeper was called by the death of a

daughter-in-law to go and keep the house of her son in another town. She

could only tell of her intention two weeks before it was necessary to

leave; and very earnestly did the schoolmaster consult with her in the

interval as to what he could possibly do to supply her place, for

servants in Haven Settlement were rare luxuries.

'I don't know, I'm sure, sir, what you can do,' said Mrs. Sims

hopelessly. 'The girls in these parts are far too proud to be hired to

work in a house. Why, the best folks in town mostly does their own

work; there's Mrs. Reid, so rich, just has a woman to do the charing;

and Eelan--that's the beauty, you know--makes the pies and keeps the

house spick-and-span. But you couldn't keep your own house clean, could

you, sir?--let alone the meals; and you wouldn't live long if you hadn't

_them_.'

As the days wore on, the schoolmaster became more urgent in his appeals

for advice, but he did not get encouragement to expect to find a servant

of any sort, for the widow was too sincere to suggest hope when she felt

none, and the difficulty was not an easy one to solve. She made various

inquiries among her friends. It was suggested that the master should go

to 'the boarding-house,' which was a large barn-like structure, in which

business men who did not happen to have families slept in uncomfortable

rooms and dined at a noisy table. Mrs. Sims reported this suggestion

faithfully, and added: 'But it's my belief it would kill you outright.'

The schoolmaster looked at his books and the trim arrangements of his

neat house, and negatived the proposition with more decision than he had

ever shown before.

After a while, Mrs. Sims received another idea of quite a different

nature; but she did not report this so hastily--it required more

finesse. It was entrusted to her care with many injunctions to be

'tactful,' and it was suggested that if there was a mess made of it, it

would be her fault. The idea was nothing less than that it would be

necessary for the master to marry; and it was the gaunt Miss Ann Blakely

herself who confided to his present housekeeper that she should have no

objections to become his bride, provided he wrote her a pretty enough,

humble sort of letter that she could show to her friends.

'For, mind you, I'd not go cheap to the like of him,' she said, raising

an admonishing finger, as she took leave of her friend: 'I'd rather

remain single, far.'

'I think he could write the letter,' replied Mrs. Sims; 'leastways, if

he can't do that, I don't know what he can do, poor man.'

Having been solemnly enjoined to be careful, Mrs. Sims thought so long

over what she was to say before she said it, that she made herself quite

nervous, and when she began, she forgot the half. Over her sewing in the

sitting-room one evening she commenced the subject with a flustered

little run of words. 'I'm sure such an amiable man as you are, sir,

almost three years I've been in this house and never had a word from

you, not one word'--it is to be remarked that the widow did not intend

to assert that the schoolmaster had been mute--'and you are nice in all

your ways, too; if I do say it, quite the gentleman.'

'Oh!' said the schoolmaster, in a tone of surprise, not because he had

heard what she said, but because he was surprised that she should begin

to talk to him when he was correcting his books.

'And not a servant to be had far or near,' she went on with agitated

volubility; 'and as for another like myself, of course that's too much

to be hoped for.' She did not say this out of conceit, but merely as

representing the actual state of affairs.

The schoolmaster began to look frightened. He was not a matter-of-fact

person, but, as long as a man is a man, the prospect of being left

altogether without his meals must be appalling.

'So, why you shouldn't get married, I don't know.' She added this in

tremulous excitement, speaking in an argumentative way, as if she had

led him by an ordered process of thought to an inevitable conclusion.

'Oh!' exclaimed the schoolmaster in surprise again, this time because he

_had_ heard what was said.

The worst was over now; and Mrs. Sims, having once suggested the

desperate idea of the necessity of marriage, could proceed more calmly.

She found, however, that she had to explain the notion at length before

he could at all grasp it, and then she was obliged to urge its necessity

for some time before he was willing to consider it. He became agitated

in his turn, and, rising, walked up and down the room, his arms folded

and an absent look in his eyes, as though he were thinking of things

farther off.

'I do not mind telling you, for I believe you are a motherly woman, Mrs.

Sims, that it is not the first time that the thought of marriage has

crossed my mind' (with solemn hesitation). 'I _have_ thought of it

before; but I have always been hindered from giving it serious

consideration from the belief that no woman would be willing to--ah--to

marry me.'

'Well, of course there's some truth in that, sir,' said his faithful

friend, reluctantly obliged by her conscience to say what she thought.

'Just so, Mrs. Sims,' said the schoolmaster with a patient sigh; 'and

therefore, perhaps it will be unnecessary to discuss the subject

further.'

'Still, there's no accounting for tastes; there might be some found that

would.'

'It would not be necessary to find more than one,' said he, with a quiet

smile.

'No, that's true, sir, which makes the matter rather easier. It's always

been my belief that while there is life there is hope.'

'True, true,' he replied; and then he indulged in a long fit of musing,

which she more than suspected had little to do with the immediate

bearing of the subject on his present case. It was necessary to rouse

him, for there was no time to be lost.

'Of course I don't say that there's many that would have you; there's

girls enough--but laws! they'd all make game of you if you were to go

a-courting to them, and, I take it, courting's not the sort of thing

you're cleverest at.'

'True,' said the schoolmaster again, and again he sighed.

'But now, a good sensible woman, like Miss Blakely, as would keep you

and your house clean and tidy, not to speak of cooking--I make bold to

say you couldn't do better than to get such a one, if she might be so

minded.'

'Who is Miss Blakely?' he asked wonderingly.

'It's her that visits the school so often; you've seen her time and

again.'

'I recollect,' he said; 'but I have not spoken much with her.'

'That's just what I said,' she observed triumphantly. 'You'd be no more

up to courting than cows are up to running races. Now, as to Miss

Blakely, not being as young as some, nor to say good-looking, she might

not stand on the ceremony of much courting; if you just wrote her one

letter, asking her quite modest, and putting in a few remarks about

flowers and that sort of thing, as you could do so well, being clever at

writing, I give it as my opinion it's not unlikely she'd take you out of

hand; not every one would, of course, but she has a kind heart, has Miss

Blakely.'

'Kind is she?' said he, with a tone of interest; 'and sweet-tempered?'

Mrs. Sims said more in favour of the scheme; it required that she should

say much, for the schoolmaster was not to be easily persuaded. She had,

however, three strong arguments in its favour, which she reiterated

again and again, with more and more assurance of certitude as she warmed

to the subject. The first point was, that if he did not marry, he must

either starve at home or go to the boarding-house, and at the latter

place she assured him again, as she had done at first, he would probably

soon die. Her second point was, that no one else would be willing to

marry him except Miss Blakely; and her third--although in this matter

she expressed herself with some mysterious caution--that Miss Blakely

would marry him if asked. Mrs. Sims bridled her head, spoke in lower

tones than was her wont, and said that she had the secret of Miss

Blakely's partiality from good authority. She sighed; and he heard her

murmur over her sewing that the heart was always young. In fact, without

saying it in so many words, she gave her listener to understand clearly

that Miss Blakely had conceived a very lively affection for him. And

this last, if she had but known it, was the only argument that carried

weight, for the schoolmaster could have faced either the prospect of

starvation or a lingering death in the rude noise of a boarding-house;

but he was tender-hearted, and, moreover, he had a beautiful soul, and

supposed all women to be like his mother, whom he had loved with all his

strength.

'You'd better make haste, sir,' said Mrs. Sims, 'for I must leave on

Thursday, and now it's Saturday night. There's not overmuch time for

everything--although, indeed, Mrs. Graham, that goes out charing, might

come in and make you your meals for a week, though it will cost you half

a quarter's salary, charing is that expensive in these parts.'

The schoolmaster proceeded to think over the matter--that is to say, he

proceeded to muse over it; by which process he did not face the facts as

they were--did not become better acquainted with the real Miss Blakely,

but made some sort of progress in another way, for he conjured up an

ideal Miss Blakely, gentle and good, cheerful, with intellectual tastes

like his own, a person who, like himself, had not fared very happily in

the world until now, and for whom his love and protection would make a

paradise. It did occur to him, occasionally, that the picture he was

drawing might not be quite correct, and at those times he would seek

Mrs. Sims, and ask a few questions of this oracle by way of adjusting

his own ideas to the truth. Poor Mrs. Sims, between her extreme honesty

and her desire to see the schoolmaster, whom she really loved, assured

of future comfort, had much ado to be 'tactful' and say the right

thing. She naturally regarded comfort as pertaining solely to the outer

man, and fully believed that this marriage was the best step he could

take; so her answers, when they could not be satisfactory, were vague.

'How can you doubt, sir, that you'll be much happier with a wife to cook

your meals regular, and no more bother about changements all your life?

I'm sure if I were you, sir, I wouldn't hesitate between the joys of

matrimony and single life.'

'Perhaps not, Mrs. Sims; but I, being I, do hesitate. It is a very

important step to take, just because, as you say, there will be no more

change.'

'And it's just you that have been telling me that the very thing you

dislike most in this world is change. And there are other advantages,

too, in having kith and kin, for it's lonesome without when you're old;

and just think how beautiful for a wife to weep over you when you're

a-dying--and she'll do all that, Miss Blakely will, sir; I'm sure, as

her friend, I can answer for it.'

'The wills above be done,' murmured the schoolmaster, 'but I would fain

die a dry death.'

Time pressed; the schoolmaster procrastinated; the very evening before

the widow's departure had arrived, and yet nothing was done. Then it

happened, as is frequently the case when the mind is balancing between

two opinions, that a very small circumstance determined him to write the

all-important note. The circumstance was none other than his having a

convenient opportunity of sending it; for to him, as to many other

unpractical minds, the small difficulties in the way of any action had

as great a deterring power as more important considerations. Miss

Blakely happened to live on the other side of the town, and though the

master walked much farther than that himself every day, he felt that in

this case it would hardly be dignified to be his own messenger.

It was early in the evening, and the master's window was open to the

soft spring air that came in full of the freshness of young leaves and

the joyous splash of the flooded river. Two of his schoolboys were

loitering under the window, wishing to speak to him, yet too bashful; he

got up and sat on the window-sill, smiled at them, and they smiled back.

They had a tale to tell; but, as it was of a somewhat delicate nature

and hard to explain, he had to listen very patiently. They had a

dollar--a brown and green paper dollar--which they gave him with an air

of solemn importance. They said that they and some of their comrades had

been a long way from home gathering saxifrage, and that they had met one

of the young ladies of the town. She had her arms full of flowers, and

her pocket quite full of moss, so full that she had had to take her

purse and handkerchief out and hold them in her hand with the flowers

because the moss was wet. When she came upon them, they were trying to

get some saxifrage that was on a ledge of rock; they could only climb

half-way up the rock, and were none of them tall enough to reach it; so

she put down all her flowers and things and climbed up and got it for

them; but in the meantime one of them opened the purse and took out the

dollar. She never found it out, and went away.

'Not either of you?' said the schoolmaster.

'No, sir; one of the other fellows did it. But he's sorry, and wants to

give it back; so we said that we would tell you, and perhaps you would

give it to her.'

'Why couldn't you go and give it to her, just as you have given it to

me?'

'Because we knew you'd b'lieve us that it was just the way we said; and

her folks, you know, might think we'd done it when we said we hadn't.

Or, mother said, if you didn't want to be troubled, perhaps you'd just

write a line to say how it was, and we'll go and leave it at the house

after dark and come away quick.'

The master had no objection to this; so he brought the boys in and got

out his best note-paper--he was fastidious about some things--and wrote

a note beginning 'Dear Madam,' telling in a few lines that the money had

been stolen and restored.

'What is the lady's name?' he asked, taking up the envelope.

'It was Eelan Reid, sir; Mr. Reid's daughter that keeps the shop.'

So the schoolmaster wrote 'Miss Eelan Reid' in a fair round hand, and

then he paused for a moment. He was making up his mind to the

all-decisive action.

'Perhaps you can wait for another note and take that for me at the same

time,' he said. He gave them some picture papers to look at. Then he

wrote the note of such moment to himself, beginning, as before, 'Dear

Madam,' and doing his best to follow the many instructions which the

faithful Mrs. Sims had given him. It was a curious specimen of

literature, in which a truly elegant mind and warm heart were veiled,

but not hidden, by an embarrassed attempt at conventional phrases--a

letter that most women would laugh at, and that the best women would

reverence. He addressed that envelope too, and sealed the notes and sent

away the boys.

There was no sleep for the schoolmaster that night. With folded arms he

paced his room in restless misery. Now that the die was cast, the ideal

Miss Blakely faded from his mind; he felt instinctively that she was

mythical. He saw clearly that he had forfeited the best possibilities of

life for the sake of temporary convenience, that he had sold his

birthright for a mess of pottage.

The long night passed at length, as all nights pass. The sun rose over

purple hills to glow upon the spring-stirred forest and to send golden

shafts deep down into the clear heart of lake and stream. The fallen

beauty of past woodland summers had tinged the water till it glowed like

nut-brown wine; so brown it was that the pools of the river, where it

swirled and rushed past the schoolhouse bend, seemed to greet the sun

with the soft dark glances of fawn-eyed water-sprites. The glorious sky,

the tender colours of the budding wood, the very dandelions on the

untrimmed bank, contrived their hues to accord and rejoice with the

laughing water, and the birds swelled out its song. In the rapture of

spring and of morning there was no echo of grief; for the unswerving law

of nature, moving through the years, had set each thing in its right

home. It is only the perplexed soul that is forced to choose its own way

and suffer from the choice, and the song of our life is but set to the

accompaniment of a sad creed if we may not trust that, above our human

wills, there is a Power able to overrule the mistakes of true hearts, to

lead the blind by unseen paths, and save the simple from their own

simplicity.

Very early in the morning the schoolmaster, haggard and worn, slipped

out of his own door to refresh himself in the sunlight that gleamed down

upon his bit of green through the budding willow trees that grew by the

river-side. He stood awhile under the bending boughs, watching the full

stream as it tossed its spray into the lap of the flower-fringed shore.

He looked, as he stood there, like a ghost of the preceding night,

caught against his will and embraced by the joyous morning. Just then he

had a vision.

A girl came towards him across the grass and stood a few paces distant.

The slender willow twigs, with their hanging catkins and tiny golden

leaves, made a sort of veil between them. She was very beautiful, at

least so the schoolmaster thought; perhaps she was the personification

of the morning, perhaps she was a wood-nymph--it did not matter much; he

felt, in his excitement and exhaustion, that her beauty and grace were

not real, but only an hallucination of moving sun and shade. She took

the swaying willow-twigs in her pretty hands and looked through them at

him and stroked the downy flowers.

'Why did you send me that letter?' she said at last, with a touch of

severity in her voice.

'The letter,' he stammered, wondering what she could mean.

He remembered, with a sort of dull return of consciousness, that he

_was_ guilty of having sent a letter--terribly guilty in his own

estimation--but it was sent to Miss Blakely, and this was not Miss

Blakely. That one letter had so completely absorbed all his mind that he

had quite forgotten any others that he might have written in the course

of his whole life.

'Do not be angry with me,' he said imploringly. He had but one idea,

that was, to keep this radiant dream of beauty with him as long as

possible.

'I'm not angry; I am not angry at all--indeed'--and here she looked down

at the twigs in her hand and began pulling the young leaves rather

roughly--'I am not sure but that I am rather pleased. I have so often

met you in the woods, you know; only I didn't know that you had ever

noticed me.'

'I never did,' said the schoolmaster; but happily his nervous lips gave

but indistinct utterance to the words, and his tone was pathetic. She

thought he had only made some further pleading.

'I--I--I like you very much,' she said. 'I suppose, of course, everybody

will be very much surprised, and mother may not be pleased, you know,

just at first; but she's good and dear, mother is, in spite of what she

says; and father will be glad about anything that pleases me.'

He did not understand what she said; but he felt distressed at the

moment to notice that she was twisting the tender willow leaves, albeit

he saw that she only did so because, in her embarrassment, her fingers

worked unconsciously. He came forward and took her hands gently, to

disentangle them from the twigs. She let them lie in his, and looked up

in his face and smiled.

'I will try to be a good wife, and manage all the common things, and not

tease you to be like other men, if you will sometimes read your books to

me and explain to me what life means, and why it is so beautiful, and

why things are as they are.'

'I'm afraid I don't understand these matters myself very well,' he said;

'but we can talk about them together.'

While he held her hands, she drooped her head till it touched his

shoulder.

He had kissed no one since his mother died, and the great joy that took

possession of his heart brought, by its stimulus, a sudden knowledge of

what had really happened to his mind. In a marvellously tender way, for

a man who could not go a-courting, he put his hand under the pretty chin

and looked down wonderingly, reverently, at the serious upturned face.

'And this is bonnie Eelan Reid?'

Then Eelan, thinking that he was teasing her gently for being so easily

won when she had gained the reputation of being so proud, cast down her

eyes and blushed.

So they were married, and lived happily, very happily, although they had

their sorrows, as others have. The schoolmaster was man enough to keep

the knowledge of his blunder a secret between himself and God.

As for Miss Blakely, she never quite understood who had stolen the

dollar, or when, or where; but she was glad to get it back. She never

forgave Mrs. Sims for having managed her trust so ill, although the

widow declared, with tears in her eyes, that she had done her best.

'He would have taken in the knowingest person, he would indeed, Ann

Blakely; and, to my notion, a straightforward woman like you is well

quit of a man who, while he looked so innocent, could act so deep.'

III

THRIFT

The end of March had come. The firm Canadian snow roads had suddenly

changed their surface and become a chain of miniature rivers, lakes

interspersed by islands of ice, and half-frozen bogs.

A young priest had started out of the city of Montreal to walk to the

suburb of Point St. Charles. He was in great haste, so he kilted up his

long black petticoats and hopped and skipped at a good pace. The hard

problems of life had not as yet assailed him; he had that set of the

shoulders that belongs to a good conscience and an easy mind; his face

was rosy-cheeked and serene.

Behind him lay the hill-side city, with its grey towers and spires and

snow-clad mountain. All along his way budding maple trees swayed their

branches overhead; on the twigs of some there was the scarlet moss of

opening flowers, some were tipped with red buds and some were grey. The

March wind was surging through them; the March clouds were flying above

them,--light grey clouds with no rain in them,--veil above veil of mist,

and each filmy web travelling at a different pace. The road began as a

street, crossed railway tracks and a canal, ran between fields, and

again entered between houses. The houses were of brick or stone, poor

and ugly; the snow in the fields was sodden with water; the road----

'I wish that the holy prophet Elijah would come to this Jordan with his

mantle,' thought the priest to himself.

This was a pious thought, and he splashed and waded along

conscientiously. He had been sent on an errand, and had to return to

discharge a more important duty in the same afternoon.

The suburb consisted chiefly of workmen's houses and factories, but

there were some ambitious-looking terraces. The priest stopped at a

brick dwelling of fair size. It had an aspect of flaunting

respectability; lintel and casements were shining with varnish; cheap

starched curtains decked every window. When the priest had rung a bell

which jingled inside, the door was opened by a young woman. She was not

a servant, her dress was fur-belowed and her hair was most elaborately

arranged. She was, moreover, evidently Protestant; she held the door and

surveyed the visitor with an air that was meant to show easy

independence of manner, but was, in fact, insolent.

The priest had a slip of paper in his hand and referred to it. 'Mrs.

O'Brien?' he asked.

'I'm not Mrs. O'Brien,' said the young woman, looking at something which

interested her in the street.

A shrill voice belonging, as it seemed, to a middle-aged woman, made

itself heard. 'Louisy, if it's a Cath'lic priest, take him right in to

your gran'ma; it's him she's expecting.'

A moment's stare of surprise and contempt, and the young woman led the

way through a gay and cheaply furnished parlour, past the door of a best

bedroom which stood open to shew the frills on the pillows, into a room

in the back wing. She opened the door with a jerk and stared again as

the priest passed her. She was a handsome girl; the young priest did not

like to be despised; within his heart he sighed and said a short prayer

for patience.

He entered a room that did not share the attempt at elegance of the

front part of the house; plain as a cottage kitchen, it was warm and

comfortable withal. The large bed with patchwork quilt stood in a

corner; in the middle was an iron stove in which logs crackled and

sparkled. The air was hot and dry, but the priest, being accustomed to

the atmosphere of stoves, took no notice, in fact, he noticed nothing

but the room's one inmate, who from the first moment compelled his whole

attention.

In a wooden arm-chair, dressed in a black petticoat and a scarlet

bedgown, sat a strong old woman. Weakness was there as well as strength,

certainly, for she could not leave her chair, and the palsy of

excitement was shaking her head, but the one idea conveyed by every

wrinkle of the aged face and hands, by every line of the bowed figure,

was strength. One brown toil-worn hand held the head of a thick

walking-stick which she rested on the floor well in front of her, as if

she were about to rise and walk forward. Her brown face--nose and chin

strongly defined--was stretched forward as the visitor entered; her

eyes, black and commanding, carried with them something of that

authoritative spell that is commonly attributed to a commanding mind.

Great physical size or power this woman apparently had never had, but

she looked the very embodiment of a superior strength.

'Shut the door! shut the door behind ye!' These were the first words

that the youthful confessor heard, and then, as he advanced, 'You're

young,' she said, peering into his face. Without a moment's intermission

further orders were given him: 'Be seated; be seated! Take a chair by

the fire and put up your wet feet. It is from Father M'Leod of St.

Patrick's Church that ye've come?'

The young man, whose boots were well soaked with ice-water, was not loth

to put them up on the edge of the stove. It was not at all his idea of a

priestly visit to a woman who had represented herself as dying, but it

is a large part of wisdom to take things as they come until it is

necessary to interfere.

'You wrote, I think, to Father M'Leod, saying that as the priests of

this parish are French and you speak English----'

Some current of excitement hustled her soul into the midst of what she

had to say.

''Twas Father Maloney, him that had St. Patrick's before Father M'Leod,

who married me; so I just thought before I died I'd let one of ye know a

thing concerning that marriage that I've never told to mortal soul. Sit

ye still and keep your feet to the fire; there's no need for a young man

like you to be taking your death with the wet because I've a thing to

say to ye.'

'You are not a Catholic now,' said he, raising his eyebrows with

intelligence as he glanced at a Bible and hymn-book that lay on the

floor beside her.

He was not unaccustomed to meeting perverts; it was impossible to have

any strong emotion about so frequent an occurrence. He had had a long

walk and the hot air of the room made him somewhat sleepy; if it had not

been for the fever and excitement of her mind he might not have picked

up more than the main facts of all she said. As it was, his attention

wandered for some minutes from the words that came from her palsied

lips. It did not wander from her; he was thinking who she might be, and

whether she was really about to die or not, and whether he had not

better ask Father M'Leod to come and see her himself. This last thought

indicated that she impressed him as a person of more importance and

interest than had been supposed when he had been sent to hear her

confession.

All this time, fired by a resolution to tell a tale for the first and

last time, the old woman, steadying as much as she might her shaking

head, and leaning forward to look at the priest with bleared yet

flashing eyes, was pouring out words whose articulation was often

indistinct. Her hand upon her staff was constantly moving, as if she

were about to rise and walk; her body seemed about to spring forward

with the impulse of her thoughts, the very folds of the scarlet bedgown

were instinct with excitement.

The priest's attention returned to her words.

'Yes, marry and marry and marry--that's what you priests in my young

days were for ever preaching to us poor folk. It was our duty to

multiply and fill the new land with good Cath'lics. Father Maloney, that

was his doctrine, and me a young girl just come out from the old country

with my parents, and six children younger than me. Hadn't I had enough

of young children to nurse, and me wanting to begin life in a new place

respectable, and get up a bit in the world? Oh, yes! but Father Maloney

he was on the look-out for a wife for Terry O'Brien. He was a widow man

with five little helpless things, and drunk most of the time was Terry,

and with no spirit in him to do better. Oh! but what did that matter to

Father Maloney when it was the good of the Church he was looking for,

wanting O'Brien's family looked after? O'Brien was a good, kind fellow,

so Father Maloney said, and you'll never hear me say a word against

that. So Father Maloney got round my mother and my father and me, and

married me to O'Brien, and the first year I had a baby, and the second

year I had another, so on and so on, and there's not a soul in this

world can say but that I did well by the five that were in the house

when I came to it.

'Oh! "house"!---- d'ye think it was one house he kept over our heads?

No, but we moved from one room to another, not paying the rent. Well,

and what sort of a training could the children get? Father Maloney he

talked fine about bringing them up for the Church. Did he come in and

wash them when I was a-bed? Did he put clothes on their backs? No, and

fine and angry he was when I told him that that was what he ought to

have done! Oh! but Father Maloney and I went at it up and down many a

day, for when I was wore out with the anger inside me, I'd go and tell

him what I thought of the marriage he'd made, and in a passion he'd get

at a poor thing like me teaching him duty.

'Not that I ever was more than half sorry for the marriage myself,

because of O'Brien's children, poor things, that he had before I came to

them. Likely young ones they were too, and handsome, what would they

have done if I hadn't been there to put them out of the way when O'Brien

was drunk, and knocking them round, or to put a bit of stuff together to

keep them from nakedness?

'"Well," said Father Maloney to me, "why isn't it to O'Brien that you

speak with your scolding tongue?" Faix! and what good was it to spake to

O'Brien, I'd like to know? Did you ever try to cut water with a knife,

or to hurt a feather-bed by striking at it with your fist? A nice

good-natured man was Terry O'Brien--I'll never say that he wasn't

that,--except when he was drunk, which was most of the time--but he'd no

more backbone to him than a worm. That was the sort of husband Father

Maloney married me to.

'The children kept a-coming till we'd nine of them, that's with the five

I found ready to hand; and the elder ones getting up and needing to be

set out in the world, and what prospect was there for them? What could

I do for them? Me always with an infant in my arms! Yet 'twas me and no

other that gave them the bit and sup they had, for I went out to work;

but how could I save anything to fit decent clothes on them, and it

wasn't much work I could do, what with the babies always coming, and

sick and ailing they were half the time. The Sisters would come from the

convent to give me charity. 'Twas precious little they gave, and

lectured me too for not being more submiss'! And I didn't want their

charity; I wanted to get up in the world. I'd wanted that before I was

married, and now I wanted it for the children. Likely girls the two

eldest were, and the boy just beginning to go the way of his father.'

She came to a sudden stop and breathed hard; the strong old face was

still stretched out to the priest in her eagerness; the staff was

swaying to and fro beneath the tremulous hand. She had poured out her

words so quickly that there was in his chest a feeling of answering

breathlessness, yet he still sat regarding her placidly with the

serenity of healthy youth.

She did not give him long rest. 'What did I see around me?' she

demanded. 'I saw people that had begun life no better than myself

getting up and getting up, having a shop maybe, or sending their

children to the "Model" School to learn to be teachers, or getting them

into this business or that, and mine with never so much as knowing how

to read, for they hadn't the shoes to put on----

'And I had it in me to better them and myself. I knew I'd be strong if

it wasn't for the babies, and I knew, too, that I'd do a kinder thing

for each child I had, to strangle it at it's birth than to bring it on

to know nothing and be nothing but a poor wretched thing like Terry

O'Brien himself----'

At the word 'strangle' the young priest took his feet from the ledge in

front of the fire and changed his easy attitude, sitting up straight and

looking more serious.

'It's not that I blamed O'Brien over much, he'd just had the same sort

of bringing up himself and his father before him, and when he was sober

a very nice man he was; it was spiritiness he lacked; but if he'd had

more spiritiness he'd have been a wickeder man, for what is there to

give a man sense in a rearing like that? If he'd been a wickeder man I'd

have had more fear to do with him the thing I did. But he was just a

good sort of creature without sense enough to keep steady, or to know

what the children were wanting; not a notion he hadn't but that they'd

got all they needed, and I had it in me to better them. Will ye dare to

say that I hadn't?

'After Terry O'Brien went I had them all set out in the world, married

or put to work with the best, and they've got ahead. All but O'Brien's

eldest son, every one of them have got ahead of things. I couldn't put

the spirit into _him_ as I could into the littler ones and into the

girls. Well, but he's the only black sheep of the seven, for two of them

died. All that's living but him are doing well, doing well' (she nodded

her head in triumph), 'and their children doing better than them, as

ought to be. Some of them ladies and gentlemen, real quality. Oh! ye

needn't think I don't know the difference' (some thought expressed in

his face had evidently made its way with speed to her brain)--'my

daughter that lives here is all well enough, and her girl handsome and

able to make her way, but I tell you there's some of my grandchildren

that's as much above her in the world as she is above poor Terry

O'Brien--young people that speak soft when they come to see their poor

old grannie and read books, oh! I know the difference; oh! I know very

well--not but what my daughter here is well-to-do, and there's not one

of them all but has a respect for me.' She nodded again triumphantly,

and her eyes flashed. 'They know, they know very well how I set them out

in the world. And they come back for advice to me, old as I am, and see

that I want for nothing. I've been a _good_ mother to them, and a good

mother makes good children and grandchildren too.'

There was another pause in which she breathed hard; the priest grasped

the point of the story; he asked--

'What became of O'Brien?'

'I drowned him.'

The priest stood up in a rigid and clerical attitude.

'I tell ye I drowned him.' She had changed her attitude to suit his; and

with the supreme excitement of telling what she had never told, there

seemed to come to her the power to sit erect. Her eagerness was not that

of self-vindication; it was the feverish exaltation with which old age

glories over bygone achievement.

'I'd never have thought of it if it hadn't been O'Brien himself that put

it into my head. But the children had a dog, 'twas little enough they

had to play with, and the beast was useful in his way too, for he could

mind the baby at times; but he took to ailing--like enough it was from

want of food, and I was for nursing him up a bit and bringing him round,

but O'Brien said that he'd put him into the canal. 'Twas one Sunday that

he was at home sober--for when he was drunk I could handle him so that

he couldn't do much harm. So says I, "And why is he to be put in the

canal?"

'Says he, "Because he's doing no good here."

'So says I, "Let the poor beast live, for he does no harm."

'Then says he, "But it's harm he does taking the children's meat and

their place by the fire."

'And says I, "Are ye not afraid to hurry an innocent creature into the

next world?" for the dog had that sense he was like one of the children

to me.

'Then said Terry O'Brien, for he had a wit of his own, "And if he's an

innocent creature he'll fare well where he goes."

'Then said I, "He's done his sins, like the rest of us, no doubt."

'Then says he, "The sooner he's put where he can do no more the better."

'So with that he put a string round the poor thing's neck and took him

away to where there was holes in the ice of the canal, just as there is

to-day, for it was the same season of the year, and the children all

cried; and thinks I to myself, "If it was the dog that was going to put

their father into the water they would cry less." For he had a peevish

temper in drink, which was most of the time.

'So then, I knew what I would do. 'Twas for the sake of the children

that were crying about me that I did it, and I looked up to the sky and

I said to God and the holy saints that for Terry O'Brien and his

children 'twas the best deed I could do; and the words that we said

about the poor beast rang in my head, for they fitted to O'Brien

himself, every one of them.

'So you see it was just the time when the ice was still thick on the

water, six inches thick maybe, but where anything had happened to break

it the edges were melting into large holes. And the next night when it

was late and dark I went and waited outside the tavern, the way O'Brien

would be coming home.

'He was just in that state that he could walk, but he hadn't the sense

of a child, and we came by the canal, for there's a road along it all

winter long, but there were places where if you went off the road you

fell in, and there were placards up saying to take care. But Terry

O'Brien hadn't the sense to remember them. I led him to the edge of a

hole, and then I came on without him. He was too drunk to feel the pain

of the gasping. So I went home.

'There wasn't a creature lived near for a mile then, and in the morning

I gave out that I was afraid he'd got drowned, so they broke the ice and

took him up. And there was just one person that grieved for Terry

O'Brien. Many's the day I grieved for him, for I was accustomed to have

him about me, and I missed him like, and I said in my heart, "Terry,

wherever ye may be, I have done the best deed for you and your children,

for if you were innocent you have gone to a better place, and if it were

sin to live as you did, the less of it you have on your soul the better

for you; and as for the children, poor lambs, I can give them a start

in the world now I am rid of you!" That's what I said in my heart to

O'Brien at first--when I grieved for him; and then the years passed, and

I worked too hard to be thinking of him.

'And now, when I sit here facing the death for myself, I can look out of

my windows there back and see the canal, and I say to Terry again, as if

I was coming face to face with him, that I did the best deed I could do

for him and his. I broke with the Cath'lic Church long ago, for I

couldn't go to confess; and many's the year that I never thought of

religion. But now that I am going to die I try to read the books my

daughter's minister gives me, and I look to God and say that I've sins

on my soul, but the drowning of O'Brien, as far as I know right from

wrong, isn't one of them.'

The young priest had an idea that the occasion demanded some strong form

of speech. 'Woman,' he said, 'what have you told me this for?'

The strength of her excitement was subsiding. In its wane the

afflictions of her age seemed to be let loose upon her again. Her words

came more thickly, her gaunt frame trembled the more, but not for one

moment did her eye flinch before his youthful severity.

'I hear that you priests are at it yet. "Marry and marry and marry,"

that's what ye teach the poor folks that will do your bidding, "in

order that the new country may be filled with Cath'lics," and I thought

before I died I'd just let ye know how one such marriage turned; and as

he didn't come himself you may go home and tell Father M'Leod that, God

helping me, I have told you the truth.'

The next day an elderly priest approached the door of the same house.

His hair was grey, his shoulders bent, his face was furrowed with those

benign lines which tell that the pain which has graven them is that

sympathy which accepts as its own the sorrows of others. Father M'Leod

had come far because he had a word to say, a word of pity and of

sympathy, which he hoped might yet touch an impenitent heart, a word

that he felt was due from the Church he represented to this wandering

soul, whether repentance should be the result or not.

When he rang the bell it was not the young girl but her mother who

answered the door; her face, which spoke of ordinary comfort and good

cheer, bore marks of recent tears.

'Do you know,' asked the Father curiously, 'what statement it was that

your mother communicated to my friend who was here yesterday?'

'No, sir, I do not.'

'Your mother was yesterday in her usual health and sound mind?' he

interrogated gently.

'She was indeed, sir,' and she wiped a tear.

'I would like to see your mother,' persisted he.

'She had a stroke in the night, sir; she's lying easy now, but she knows

no one, and the doctor says she'll never hear or see or speak again.'

The old man sighed deeply.

'If I may make so bold, sir, will you tell me what business it was my

mother had with the young man yesterday or with yourself?'

'It is not well that I should tell you,' he replied, and he went

away.

IV

A TAINT IN THE BLOOD

CHAPTER I

The curate was walking on the cliffs with his lady-love. All the sky was

grey, and all the sea was grey. The soft March wind blew over the rocky

shore; it could not rustle the bright green weed that hung wet from the

boulders, but it set all the tufts of grass upon the cliffs nodding to

the song of the ebbing tide. The lady was the vicar's daughter; her name

was Violetta.

'Let us stand still here,' said the curate, 'for there is something I

must say to you to-day.' So they stood still and looked at the sea.

'Violetta,' said the curate, 'you cannot be ignorant that I have long

loved you. Last night I took courage and told your father of my hope and

desire that you should become my wife. He told me what I did not know,

that you have already tasted the joy of love and the sorrow of its

disappointment. I can only ask you now if this former love has made it

impossible that you should love again.'

'No,' she answered; 'for although I loved and sorrowed then with all the

strength of a child's heart, still it was only as a child, and that is

past.'

'Will you be my wife?' said the curate.

'I cannot choose but say "yes," I love you so much.'

Then they turned and went back along the cliffs, and the curate was very

happy. 'But tell me,' he said, 'about this other man that loved you.'

'His name was Herbert. He was the squire's son. He loved me and I loved

him, but afterwards we found that his mother had been mad----' Violetta

paused and turned her sweet blue eyes upon the sea.

'So you could not marry?' said the curate.

'No,' said Violetta, casting her eyes downward, 'because the taint of

madness is a terrible thing.' She shuddered and blushed.

'And you loved him?'

'Dearly, dearly,' said Violetta, clasping her hands. 'But madness in the

blood is too terrible; it is like the inheritance of a curse.'

'He went away?' said the curate.

'Yes, Herbert went away; and he died. He loved me so much that he

died.'

'I do not wonder at that,' said the curate, 'for you are very lovely,

Violetta.'

They walked home hand in hand, and when they had said good-bye under the

beech trees that grew by the vicarage gate, the curate went down the

street of the little town. The shop-keepers were at their doors

breathing the mild spring air. The fishermen had hung their nets to dry

in the market-place near the quay. The western cloud was turning

crimson, and the steep roofs and grey church-tower absorbed in sombre

colours the tender light. The curate was going home to his lodgings, but

he bethought him of his tea, and turned into the pastry-cook's by the

way.

'Have you any muffins, Mrs. Yeander?' he asked.

'No, sir,' said the portly wife of the baker, in a sad tone, 'they're

all over.'

'Crumpets?' said he.

'Past and gone, sir,' said the woman with a sigh. She had a coarsely

poetical cast of mind, and commonly spoke of the sale of her goods as

one might speak of the passing of summer flowers. The curate was turning

away.

'I would make bold, sir,' said the woman, 'to ask if you've heard that

we've let our second-floor front for a while. It's a great thing for us,

sir, as you know, to 'ave it let, not that you'll approve the person as

'as took it.'

'Oh!' said the curate, 'how is that?'

'He's the new Jewish rabbi, sir, being as they've opened the place of

their heathenish worship again. It's been shut this two year, for want

of a Hebrew to read the language.'

'Oh, no, Mrs. Yeander; you're quite mistaken in calling the Jews

heathens.'

'The meeting-place is down by the end of the street, sir--a squarish

sort of house. It's not been open in your time; likely you'll not know

it. The new rabbi's been reading a couple of weeks to them. They do say

it's awful queer.'

'Oh, indeed!' said the curate; 'what are their hours of service?'

'Well, to say the truth, sir, they'll soon be at it now, for it's Friday

at sunset they've some antics or other in the place. The rabbi's just

gone with his book.'

'I think I'll look them up, and see what they're at,' said he, going

out.

He was a thin, hard-working man. His whole soul was possessed by his

great love for Violetta, but even the gladness of its success could not

turn him from his work. When the day was over he would indulge in

brooding on his joy; until then the need of the world pressed. He

stepped out again into the evening glow. The wind had grown stronger,

and he bent his head forward and walked against it towards the west. He

felt a sudden sympathy for this stranger who had come to minister in his

own way to the few scattered children of the Jews who were in the town.

He knew the unjust sentiment with which he would be surrounded as by an

atmosphere. The curate was broad in his views. 'All nations and all

people,' thought he, 'lust for an excuse to deem their neighbour less

worthy than themselves, that they may oppress him. This is the

selfishness which is the cause of all sin and is the devil.' When he got

to this point in his thoughts he came to a sudden stand and looked up.

'But, thank God,' he said to himself, 'the True Life is still in the

world, and as we resist the evil we not only triumph ourselves, but make

the triumph of our children sure.' So reasoned the curate; he was a

rather fanatical fellow.

The people near gave him 'good-day' when they saw him stop. All up and

down the street the children played with shrill noises and pattering

feet. The sunset cloud was brighter, and the dark peaked roofs of tile

and thatch and slate, as if compelled to take some notice of the fire,

threw back the red where, here and there, some glint of moisture gave

reflection to the coloured light. He had come near the end of the town,

and, where the houses opened, the red sky was fretted with dark twigs

and branches of elm trees which grew on the grassy slope of the cliff.

The elm trees were in the squire's park, and the curate looked at them

sadly and thought of Herbert who had died.

Up a little lane at the end of the street he found the entrance to a low

square hall. There was a small ante-room to the place of service, and in

this a dull-looking man was seated polishing a candlestick. He was a

crossing-sweeper by trade and a friend of the curate.

'Well, Issachar; so you've got your synagogue open again!'

The man Issachar made some sound meant for a response, but not

intelligible.

'How many Jews will there be in the town?'

'Twenty that are heads of families, and two grown youths,' said

Issachar.

'That's enough to keep up a service, for some of them will be rich?'

'Some are very rich,' said Issachar, wrinkling his face with

satisfaction when he said the words.

'Then how is it you don't always keep up the service?'

But Issachar had no explanation to give. He polished his candlestick the

more vigorously, and related at some length what he knew of the present

reader, which was, in fact, nothing, except that he was a foreigner and

had only offered to read while he was visiting the town.

'I have come for the service,' said the curate.

'Better not,' said Issachar; 'it's short to-night, and there'll not be

many.'

The curate answered by opening the inner door and entering. There were

some high pews up and down the sides of the room. There was a curtain at

the farther end and a reading desk in the centre, both of which were

enclosed in a railing ornamented by brass knobs, and in which were set

high posts supporting gas-lamps, nine in all, which were lit, either for

heat or ceremony, and turned down to a subdued light. The evening light

entered through the domed roof. Hebrew texts which the curate could not

decipher were painted on the dark walls. He took off his hat reverently

and sat down. There was no one there. He felt very much surprised at

finding himself alone. To his impressible nervous nature it seemed that

he had suddenly entered a place far removed in time and space from the

every-day life with which he was so familiar. He sat a long time; it was

cold, and the evening light grew dim, and yet no one came. Issachar

entered now and then, and made brief remarks about sundry things as he

gave additional polish to the knobs on the railing, but he always went

out again.

At length a side door opened and the reader came in from his vestry. He

had apparently waited in hope of a congregation, but now came in to

perform his duty without their aid. Perhaps he was not so much

disappointed as the curate was. It would have been very difficult to

tell from looking at him what his emotions were. He was a stout large

man with a coarse brown beard. There was little to be seen of his face

but the hair upon it, and one gathered the suggestion, although it was

hard to know from what, that the man and his beard were not as clean as

might be. He wore a black gown and an ordinary high silk hat, although

pushed much farther back on his head than an Englishman would have worn

it. He walked heavily and clumsily inside the railing, and stood before

the desk, slowly turning over backward the leaves of the great book.

Then suddenly he began to chant in the Hebrew tongue. His voice fell

mellow and sweet upon the silence, filling it with drowsy sound, as the

soft music of a humble-bee will suddenly fill the silence of a woodland

glade. There was no thought, only feeling, conveyed by the sound.

Issachar had gone out, and the Anglican priest sat erect, gazing at the

Jew through the fading light, his attention painfully strained by the

sense of loneliness and surprise. From mere habit he supposed the chant

to be an introduction to a varied service, but no change came. On and on

and on went the strange music, like a potent incantation, the big Jew

swaying his body slightly with the rhythm, and at long intervals came

the whisper of paper with the turning of the leaf.

The curate gazed and wondered until he forgot himself. Then he tried

with an effort to recall who he was, and where he was, and all the

details of the busy field of labour he had left just outside the door.

He wished that the walls of the square room were not so thick, that some

sound from the town might come in and mingle with the chant. He strained

his ear in vain to catch a word of the Hebrew which might be

intelligible to him. He wondered much what sort of a man this Jew might

be, actuated by what motives, impelled by what impulses to his lonely

task. All the sorrow of a hope deferred through ages, and a long torture

patiently borne, seemed gathered in the cadence; but the man--surely the

man was no refined embodiment of the high sentiment of his psalm! And

still the soft rich voice chanted the unknown language, and the daylight

grew more dim.

The curate was conscious that again he tried to remember who he was, and

where; and then the surroundings of the humble synagogue fell away, and

he himself was standing looking at a jewel. It was a purple stone,

oval-shaped and polished, perhaps about as large as the drop of dew

which could hang in a harebell's heart. The stone was the colour of a

harebell, and there was a ray of light in it, as if in the process of

its formation the jewel had caught sight of a star, and imprisoned the

tiny reflection for ever within itself. The curate moved his head from

side to side to see if the ray within the stone would remain still, but

it did not, turning itself to meet his eye as if the tiny star had a

life and a light of its own. Then he looked at the setting, for the

stone was set in steel. A zigzag-barred steel frame held it fast, and

outside the zigzag bars there was a smooth ring, with some words cut

upon it in Hebrew. The characters were very small; he knew, rather than

saw, that they were Hebrew; but he did not know what they meant. All

this time he had been stooping down, looking at this thing as if it lay

very near the ground. Then suddenly he noticed upon what it was lying.

There was a steel chain fastened to it, and the chain was around the

neck of a woman who lay upon the earth; the jewel was upon her breast.

But how white and cold the breast was! Surely there was no life in it.

And he observed with horror that the garments which had fallen back were

oozing with water, and that the hair was wet. He hardly saw the face;

for a moment he thought he saw it, and that it was the face of a Jewess,

young and beautiful, but the vision passed from him. The chant had

ceased, and the rabbi was kissing his book.

Very solemnly the Jew bowed himself three times and kissed the book,

and then in the twilight of the nine dim lamps he stumbled out and shut

the door, without giving a glance to his one listener.

As for the young Christian priest, he was panic-stricken. When our

senses themselves deceive us we are cut off from our cheerful belief in

the reality of material things, or forced to face the unpleasant fact

that we hold no stable relationship to them. He rushed out into the

street. Issachar was at the entrance as he passed, and he fancied he saw

the face of the reader peeping at him from the vestry window, but he

crushed his hat hard down on his head and strode away, courting the

bluster of the wind, striving by the energy of action to cast off the

trance that seemed to enslave him.

When he reached his own door he found the baker's wife sitting on the

doorstep. It was quite dusk; perhaps that was the reason he did not

recognise her at first.

'La, sir, I found them two muffins lying unbeknown in the corner of the

shelf, so I brought them round, thinking you mightn't 'ave 'ad your

tea.'

'Muffins?' said the curate, as if he were not quite sure what muffins

might be. Then he began to wonder if he was really losing his wits, and

he plunged into talk with the woman, saying anything and everything to

convince himself that he was not asleep or mad. 'Do you know, Mrs.

Yeander, that I am going to be married?'

'Well, I am sure, sir,' said she, curtseying and smiling. 'It's a great

compliment to me to hear it from your own lips; not that it's

unexpected. Miss Violetta's a sweet saint, just like her ma, she is, an'

her ma's a saint if there ever was one. Mr. Higgs, the verger, says that

to see her pray that length of time on her knees after the service is

over in church is a touching sight.'

'But I don't think Miss Violetta is like her mother,' said the curate.

'Well no, sir; now that you mention it, perhaps she's not--at least, not

in looks. But lor' sir, she's wonderful like her ma when it comes to

paying a bill, not but what they're to be respected for keeping a heye

on the purse. I often tell Yeander that if we were a bit more saving,

like the vicar's lady, we'd lay by a bit for our old age.'

'Yes, Mrs. Yeander, yes; that would be an excellent plan,' said the

curate, fumbling with his latch-key in the door. 'Suppose you come in

and make my tea for me, Mrs. Yeander. I'm all alone to-night.'

'I bethought I might do that, sir, when I came along. Yeander was in the

shop, and I said, Mrs. Jones having gone to see her son, that you'd 'ave

no one, so I just says to Yeander, "I'll step round, an' if I'm asked

I'll make tea."'

The curate lit his lamp and poked his fire, and the portly woman began

to toast his muffins. The flame lit up the placid wrinkles of her face

as she knelt before it:

'But I don't think Miss Violetta is in the least like her mother,' said

he again.

'Lor' sir, don't you? Well, you ought to know best. They do say what's

bred in the bone comes out in the flesh; but it'll be none the worse for

you if she looks sharp after the spending. You're not much given to

saving.'

The curate walked nervously up and down his small room.

'Make the tea strong to-night,' he said.

'Mr. Higgs, the verger, do hate the vicar's lady, sir--he do, and no

mistake--but he says anybody could see with 'alf a heye that she was a

real saint. The subscriptions she puts down to missions and church

restorings--it's quite wonderful.'

The curate ran his hand wearily through his hair. He felt called upon to

say something. 'I have the highest respect for Mrs. Moore,' he began. 'I

know her to be a most devoted helpmeet to the vicar, and a truly good

woman. At the same time'--he coughed--'at the same time, I should wish

to say distinctly that after being niggardly in her domestic affairs,

which is unfortunately the case, I do not think it adds to her stock of

Christian virtues to give the money thus saved to church work.'

The curate cleared his throat. It was because he was flying from himself

that he had let the woman talk until this speech of his had been made

necessary; but at all times his humble friends in this town were well

nigh irrepressible in their talk. This woman was in full tide now.

'They do say, sir, there's a difference between honest saving and greed.

Mr. Higgs said to Yeander one day, says he, "Mrs. Moore's folks far back

made their money by sharp trading, and greed's in the family, and it's

the worst sort of greed, for it grasps both at 'eaven and earth, both at

this life and the 'eavenly. And," says he, "no one could doubt that the

lady's that way constituted that she couldn't cut a loaf of bread in

'alf without giving herself the largest share, even if it were the bread

of life."'

'My good Mrs. Yeander----' began the curate in stern rebuke.

'Oh, no, sir, Mr. Higgs don't mean no harm. He only gets that riled at

Mrs. Moore sometimes that he kind of lets off to Yeander and me.'

'And I don't think, Mrs. Yeander,' said the curate, for the third time,

'that Miss Violetta is at all like her mother.'

'She's young yet, sir,' said the woman. Then she went away, leaving the

curate to interpret her last remark as he chose.

CHAPTER II

About a week after that there was a fine dinner given at the vicarage to

welcome the curate into the family. The old squire was invited, but he

refused to come. Violetta's mamma wrote and asked some of her relatives

to come down from town. 'Our chosen son-in-law is not rich,' she wrote,

'but he comes of an old family, and that is a great thing. Dear Violetta

will, of course, inherit my own fortune, which will be ample for them,

and his good connections, with God's blessing, will complete their

happiness.' So they came down. There was the vicar's brother, who was a

barrister, and his wife. Then there were two sisters of Mrs. Moore, who

were both very rich. One was an old maid, and one was married to a

dean--she brought her husband. 'You see,' said Violetta's mamma to the

curate, 'our relatives are all either law or clergy.'

There were very grand preparations made for the dinner, and Mrs. Higgs,

the wife of the verger, came to the curate's rooms the day before and

took away his best clothes, that she might see they were well brushed

for the occasion. She did up his collar and wristbands herself, and

gave them a fine gloss. Higgs brought them back just in time for the

dinner.

'It's just about five years since they had such a turn-out at the

vicarage,' said Higgs in a crisp little voice. 'Miss Violetta was

nineteen then; she'll be twenty-four now.'

'Yes,' said the curate absently; 'what was up then?'

''Twas a dinner much of a muchness to this. Mrs. Higgs, she was just

reminding me of it. But that was in honour of Mr. Herbert, of the 'All.

You'll 'ave heard of him?'

'Oh, yes,' said the curate, 'all that was very sad.'

'The more so,' said Higgs briskly, 'that when it was broke hoff, Mr.

Herbert died of love. He went to some foreign countries and took up with

low company, and there he died. Squire hasn't held his head up straight

since that day.'

'All that was before I came,' said the curate very gravely, for he did

not know exactly what to say.

'Lor' bless you, sir,' said Higgs, 'I was in no way blaming you. There's

no blame attaching to any, that I know; squire's wife was as mad as a

hare. Miss Violetta, she cried her pretty eyes nigh out for Mr. Herbert;

it's time she'd another.'

The curate went to the dinner, and it was a very fine affair indeed.

Violetta wore a silk gown and looked charming. She does not look a day

older than she did when I saw her five years ago,' said the dean to the

curate, meaning to be very polite, but the curate did not smile at the

compliment.

'How fine your flowers are!' said the maiden aunt to Violetta. 'Where

did you get them, my dear?'

'The squire sent them to me,' said Violetta, with a droop of her eyelids

which made her look more charming than ever. Then they had dinner, and

after dinner Violetta gave them some music. It was sacred music, for

Mrs. Moore did not care for anything else.

When the song was over Mrs. Moore said to the curate, 'It has been my

wish to give dear Violetta a little gift as a slight remembrance of this

happy occasion, and I thought that something of my own would be more

valuable than----' Here the mother's voice broke with very natural

emotion, and she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. 'You must excuse

me,' she murmured, 'she is such a dear--such a very dear girl, and she

is our only child.'

'Indeed, I can well understand,' said he, with earnest sympathy.

'Such a dear--such a very dear girl,' murmured Mrs. Moore again. Then

she rose and embraced Violetta and wept, and the aunts all shed tears,

and the vicar coughed. Violetta's own blue eyes over-flowed with very

pretty tears.

The curate felt very uncomfortable indeed, and said again that he quite

understood, and that it was quite natural. The dean and the barrister

both said what they ought. The dean remarked that these dear parents

ought not to sorrow at losing a daughter, but rejoice at finding a son.

The barrister pointed out that as the bride was only expected to move

into the next house but one after her marriage, all talk of parting was

really quite absurd. The vicar did not say anything; he rarely did when

his wife was present. Then Mrs. Moore became more composed, and put a

ring on her daughter's finger. The curate did not see the ring at the

moment. He was leaning against the mantel-shelf, feeling very much

overcome by the responsibility of his new happiness.

'Oh, mamma, how lovely!' cried Violetta. 'How perfectly beautiful!'

'A star-amethyst!' said the barrister in a tone of surprise.

'Is it a star-amethyst indeed?' said the dean, looking over the

shoulders of the group with his double eye-glass. 'I am not aware that I

ever saw one before; they are a very rare and beautiful sort of gem.'

'Where did you get it, sister Matilda?' asked the maiden aunt.

Now, although Mrs. Moore was in a most gracious humour, she never liked

being asked questions at any time. 'I am surprised that you should ask

me that, Eliza. I have had it for many years.'

'But you must have got it somewhere at the beginning of the years,'

persisted Eliza, who was of a more lively disposition.

Mrs. Moore gave her a severe glance for the frivolous tone of her

answer. 'I was just about to explain that this stone has been lying for

years among the jewellery which poor uncle Ford bequeathed to me. I

thought it a pity that such a beautiful stone should lie unnoticed any

longer.'

'Oh, a great pity!' they all cried.

'I should not have supposed that poor dear uncle Ford possessed such a

rare thing,' said the wife of the dean.

'It is very curious you never mentioned it before,' said Eliza.

But Eliza was not in favour.

'Not at all,' said Mrs. Moore; 'I take very little interest in such

things. Life is too short to allow our attention to be diverted from

serious things by mere ornaments.'

'That is very true,' said the dean.

Violetta broke through the little circle to show her lover the ring.

'Look,' she said, holding up her pretty hand. 'Isn't it lovely? Isn't

mamma very kind?'

The curate turned his eyes from the fire with an effort. He had been

listening to all they said in a state of dreamy surprise. He did not

wish to look at the stone, and the moment he saw it he perceived it was

what he had seen before. It was not exactly the same shade of purple,

but it appeared to him that he had seen it before by daylight, and now

the lamps were lit. It was the same shape and size, and the tiny

interior star was the same. He moved his head from side to side to see

if the ray moved to meet his eye, and he found that it did so. He looked

at Violetta. How beautiful she was in her white gown, with her little

hand uplifted to display the shining stone, and her face upturned to

his! The soft warm curve of the delicate breast and throat, the red lips

that seemed to breathe pure kisses and holy words, the tender eyes

shining like the jewel, dewy with the sacred tears she had been

shedding, and the yellow hair, smooth, glossy, brushed saintly-wise on

either side of the nunlike brow--all this he looked at, and his senses

grew confused. The sad rise and fall of the Hebrew chant was in his ears

again; the bright room and the people were not there, but the chant

seemed in some strange way to rise up in folds of darkness and surround

Violetta like a frame; and everything else was dark and filled with the

music, except Violetta, who stood there white and shining, holding up

the ring for him to look at; and at her feet lay that other woman, wet

and dead, with the same stone in the steel chain at her throat. 'Isn't

it lovely? Isn't mamma very kind?' Violetta was saying.

'My dear, I think he is ill,' said the vicar.

They took him by the arm, putting him on a chair, and fetched water and

a glass of wine. He heard them talking together.

'I daresay it has been too much for him,' said the dean. 'Joy is often

as hard to bear as grief.'

'He is such a fellow for work,' said the vicar, 'I never knew any one

like him.'

The curate sat up quite straight. 'Did any of you ever see an amethyst

like this set in steel?'

'In steel? What an odd idea!' said the maiden aunt.

'He is not quite himself yet,' said the dean in a low voice, tapping her

on the shoulder.

'I think it would be very inappropriate, indeed very wrong, to set a

valuable stone in any of the baser metals,' said Mrs. Moore. She spoke

as if the idea were a personal affront to herself, but then she had an

immense notion of her own importance, and always looked upon all

wrong-doing as a personal grievance.

'Whatever made you think of it?' asked Violetta.

'I daresay it was rather absurd,' said the curate meekly.

'By no means,' said the barrister; 'the idea of making jewellery

exclusively of gold is modern and crude. In earlier times many beautiful

articles of personal ornamentation were made of brass and even of iron.'

'Mamma,' said Violetta, 'I remember one day seeing a curious old thing

in the bottom of your dressing-case. It looked as if it might be made of

steel. It was a very curious old thing--chain, and a pendant with some

inscription round it.'

'Did you?' said Mrs. Moore. 'I have several old trinkets. I do not know

to which you refer.'

She bade Violetta ring for tea. 'I am sure you will be the better for a

cup of tea,' she said, turning to the curate.

'I am quite well,' he replied. 'I think, if you will excuse me, I will

walk home at once; the air will do me good.'

But they would not hear of his walking home. They made him drink tea and

sit out the evening with them. Violetta gave them some more music; and

they all made themselves exceedingly agreeable. When the evening was

over they sent the curate home in the carriage.

CHAPTER III

The night was frosty, calm, and clear, and quite light, for the March

moon was just about to rise from the eastern sea.

When the carriage set him down at his own door the curate had no mind to

go in. He waited till the sound of the horse's feet had died away, and

then he walked back down the empty street. The town was asleep; his

footsteps echoed sharply from roofs and walls.

He was not given to morbid fancies or hallucinations, and he was

extremely annoyed at what had taken place. Twice in the last eight days

he had been the subject of a waking dream, and now he was confronted

with what seemed an odd counterpart of his vision in actual fact. It was

no doubt a mere coincidence, but it was a very disagreeable one. Of

course if he saw the old trinket described by Violetta, the chances were

that it would be quite different from the setting of the stone which the

dead woman wore; but even if the two were exactly the same, what

difference could it make? A dream is nothing, and that which appears in

a dream is nothing. The coincidence had no meaning.

He turned by the side of the church down the lane which led to the

little quay. The tide was halfway up the dark weed, and the

fishing-boats were drawn near to the quay, ready for the cruise at dawn;

their dark furled sails were bowing and curtseying to one another with

all ceremony, like ghosts at a stately ball. To the east and south lay

the sea, vacant, except that on the eastern verge stood a palace of

cloud, the portals of which were luminous with the light from within,

and now they were thrown open with a golden flash, and yellow rays shot

forth into the upper heavens, spreading a clear green light through the

deep midnight of the sky where the other worlds wandered. Then the

yellow moon came from her palace, wrapping herself at first with a

mantle of golden mist, as if--Godiva-like--she shrank from loosening her

garments; but the need of the darkling earth pressed upon her, and she

dropped her covering and rode forth in nakedness.

Everything was more lovely now, for there was light to see the

loveliness. The bluff wind that came from the bosom of the sea seemed

only to tell of a vast silence and a world asleep. The rocky shore, with

its thin line of white breakers, stretched round to the west. About a

mile away there was a rugged headland, with some crags at its feet,

which had been broken off and rolled down into the sea by the Frost

Demon of bygone years. The smallest was farthest out, and wedged behind

it and sheltered by it was the black hulk of a wrecked vessel. This

outermost rock lay so that it broke the waves as they came against the

wreck, and each was thrown high in a white jet and curl of spray, and

fell with a low sob back into the darkness of the sea.

The curate turned and walked toward the headland on the cliff path where

he had walked a week before with Violetta. The cliffs were completely

desolate, except for some donkeys browsing here and there, their brown

hair silvered by the frost. There was a superstition in the town that

the place was haunted on moonlight nights by the spirit of a woman who

had perished in the wreck. It had been a French vessel, wrecked five

years before, and all on board were drowned--six men and one woman, the

wife of the skipper. They had all been buried in one grave in the little

cemetery that was on the top of the headland; and it was easy to see how

the superstition of the haunting came about, for as the curate watched

the spray on the rock near the wreck rise up in the moonlight and fall

back into the sea, he could almost make himself believe that he saw in

it the supple form of a woman with uplifted hands, praying heaven for

rescue.

The wind was pretty rough when he got to the head of land, and he walked

up among the graves to find a place where he might be sheltered and yet

have advantage of the view. He knew that close by the edge of the

cliff, over the grave of the shipwrecked people, stood a marble cross,

large enough to shelter a man somewhat if he leaned against it. Upon

this cross was a long inscription giving a touching account of the

wreck, and stating that it was erected by Matilda Moore, wife of the

vicar, out of grief for the sad occurrence, and with an earnest prayer

for the unknown bereaved ones.

The curate was rather fond of reading this inscription, as we all are

apt to be fond of going over words which, although perfectly familiar to

us, still leave some space for curiosity concerning their author and

origin, and he was wondering idly as he walked whether there would be

light enough from the moon to read them now. The wind came, like the

moonlight, from the south-east, and he walked round by the western side

of the graveyard in order to come up the knoll on which the cross stood

by the sheltered side. Everything around him was intensely bleak and

white, for the moon, having left the horizon, had lost her golden light,

and the colouring of the night had toned down to white and purple.

Patches of wild white cloud were scudding across the pallid purple sky

beneath the stars, and there was a silver causeway across the purple

sea. The purple was not unlike that of an amethyst. The cliffs sloped

back to the town; the boats and peaked roofs and church tower were seen

by the sharp outline of their masses of light and shade. The street

lamps were not lit in the town because of the moon, and only in two or

three places there was the warm glow of a casement fringed with the rays

of a midnight candle. To the left of the cliffs, close to the town, were

the trees of the squire's park and the roof of the Hall. Perhaps it was

because the curate was looking at these things, as he walked among the

graves, that he did not look at the monument towards which he was making

way, until he came within half a dozen yards of it; then he suddenly saw

that there was another man leaning against it, half hid in the shadow.

He stopped at once and stood looking.

The man had thrown his arms backward over the arms of the cross, and was

leaning, half hanging, upon it; the young priest was inexpressibly

shocked and startled by the attitude. He knew that none of the humbler

inhabitants of the town would venture near such a place at such a time,

nor could he think of any one else who was likely to be there. Besides,

although he could not see the stranger distinctly, he himself was

standing in full moonlight, and yet the man in the shadow of the cross

made no sign of seeing him. At that moment he would gladly have gone

home without asking further question, but that would have looked as if

he were afraid.

He tried a chance remark. 'It is a fine night,' he said, as lightly as

might be.

'Yes,' said the other, and moved his arms from the arms of the cross. It

was only one word, but the curate recognised the soft voice at once. It

was the Jewish rabbi.

'I was at one of your services the other day,' he said, advancing

nearer.

'Yes.'

'I felt sorry your people did not turn out better.'

There was no answer.

'It is a very cold wind,' said the curate. 'I hardly know why I came out

so far.'

'Shall I tell you?' asked the Jew softly. He spoke good English, but

very slowly, and with some foreign accent.

'Certainly, if you can.'

'I desired very much to see you.'

'But you did not tell me, so that could not be the reason. Your will

could not influence my mind. I assure you I came of my own free will; it

would be terrible if one man should be at the mercy of another's

caprice.'

'Be it so; let us call it chance then. I desired that you should come,

and you came.'

'But you do not think that you have a power over other men like that?'

'I do not know; I find that with some men such correspondence between

my will and their thoughts and actions is not rare; but I could not

prove that it is not chance. It makes no difference to me whether it be

chance or not. I have been thinking of you very much, desiring your aid,

and twice you have come to me--as you say--of your own free will.'

'If you have such a power, you may be responsible for a very

disagreeable dream I had in your synagogue the other day.'

'What was the dream?'

'Nay, if you created it you should be able to tell me what it was.'

'I have no idea what it was; if I influenced your imagination I did so

unconsciously.'

There was about this Jew such a complete gentleness and repose, such

earnestness without eagerness, such self-confidence without

self-assertion, that the curate's heart warmed to him instinctively.

'I believe you are an honest Christian,' said the Jew very simply.

'I hope honest Christians are not rare.'

'I think a wholly honest man is very rare, because to see what is honest

it is necessary to look at things without self-interest or desire.'

'I am certainly not such a man. The most I can say is that I try to be

more honest every day.'

'That is very well said,' said the Jew. 'If you had believed in your

own honesty, I should have doubted it.' Then, in a very simple and quiet

way, he told the curate a strange story.

He said that he lived in Antwerp. They were five in one family--the

parents, a sister and brother, and himself. His father and brother did

business with the English ships, but he was a teacher and reader in the

synagogue. There had been in their family a very sacred heirloom in the

form of an amulet or charm. Their forefathers had believed that it came

from Jerusalem before their nation lost the holy city; but he himself

did not think that this could be true; he only knew that it was ancient,

and possessed very valuable properties as a talisman to those who knew

how to use it. About five years before, his sister, who was beautiful

and wayward, had loved and married a French sea-captain. The father

cursed his daughter, but the mother could not let her go from them under

the fear of this curse, and she hung the amulet about her neck as a

safeguard. Alas for such safeguard! in a few weeks the captain's ship

was wrecked, and all on her were drowned. He said that it was that same

ship which lay near them, a wreck among the waves, and his sister lay

buried beneath their feet.

The family did not hear of the wreck till some time after the burial,

and then they knew for the first time what their mother had done with

the amulet. His brother came over at once to this town to seek it, but

in vain. The people said they had not seen the necklace; that it had

certainly not been buried with the girl. The people seemed simple and

honest; the brother was a shrewd man, and he believed that they spoke

the truth. He returned home, in distress; they could not tell what to

think, for they knew their sister would not have dared to take off the

necklace, and the chain was too strong to be broken by the violence of

the waves.

Some months after they heard that there was a young Englishman dying in

Antwerp who came from this town. The name of the town was graven on

their hearts, and they went to see him. He was a mere boy, a pretty boy,

and when they asked him about the wreck he became excited in his

weakness and fever, and told them all the story of it as he had seen it

with his own eyes.

It was an October afternoon. A storm had been lowering and partially

breaking over the town for three days, and that day there was a glare of

murky light from the cloud that made the common people think that the

end of the world was come. When the ship struck, the fisher-people ran

out of the town to the shore nearest her, and this boy would have run

out with them and been among the foremost but that a very pious and

charitable lady of the place had besought him to take her with him.

There was a great rain and wind, and it was with difficulty that he led

the lady out and helped her down to the shore. By that time the wreck

had been dashed to pieces, and the fishermen were bringing in the dead

bodies of the crew. There was a woman among them, and when they brought

her body in, they did not lay it with the bodies of the sailors, but

carried it respectfully and laid it close to the lady who stood in the

shelter of some rocks. The wet clothes had fallen back from her

breast--the boy remembered it well, for it had been his first sight of

death, and his heart was touched by the girl's youth and beauty. He had

not seen her again, for he had gone to help with the boats, and the

fishermen's wives had run at the lady's bidding and brought coverings to

wrap her in.

The Jewish father then told the dying man about the amulet. He said

that, to the best of his memory, some such thing had been about the neck

of the dead girl, but that he was certain that none of the fisher-people

would have been bad enough to steal from the dead. They entreated him to

think well what he said, and to consider again if there was no doubtful

character there who might have had the opportunity and the baseness to

commit the crime. At that the dying man fell into profound thought, and

when he looked at them again the fever-flush had mounted to his face,

and there was a light in his eyes. He told them that if there was any

one upon the shore that day who would have done such a thing it was the

very rich and pious lady that he himself had taken to the wreck. She had

been alone with the body when she sent the other women for wrappings.

They thought that perhaps his mind was wandering, and left him,

promising to return next day; but when they came again he was dead.

'I have learned since I came here,' said the Jew, 'that he was the son

of the old man who lives in the great house down there among the trees.'

They both looked down at the park. The leafless elms stood up like giant

feathers in the white mist of the moonbeams, and the chimney-stacks of

the house threw a deep shadow on the shining roof.

'But we felt,' said the Jew, 'that even if the judgment of the dying boy

were a true one, and this lady had committed the crime, we still had no

evidence against her, and that whoever was wicked enough to steal would

certainly deny the act, and conceal that which was stolen. Hopeless as

it seemed to wait, doing nothing, our only chance of redress would be

lost by making any inquiry which might frighten her. We sent a message

to the goldsmith in London who mends her jewels, asking him to watch for

this necklace, and so we waited. At last we heard news. An amethyst

which we do not doubt is ours came to the goldsmith to be put in a

ring; but there was no necklace with it. I came here to see if I could

do something, but I have been here for some time and can devise no plan.

If she still possess the other part, to speak would be to cause its

destruction, and how can I find out without asking if she still has by

her the thing that would prove her crime? Do not be angry with me when I

tell you this. Remember it was not I who presumed to suspect the wife of

your priest, but the English boy, who knew her well.'

'Yes,' said the curate, 'I shall remember that.' He had grown tired of

standing in the wind, and had sat down on the frosty grass below the

cross. The blast was very cold, and he crouched down to avoid it,

hugging his knees with his hands.

'You are about to be united to the family,' said the Jew; 'perhaps you

have seen the stone. Will you, for the sake of that justice which we all

hope for, try to find out for me if the other part of the amulet still

exists? I will give you a drawing of it, and if you find it as I

describe, you will know that my tale is true. Remember this--that we

have no wish to make the wrong public or punish the wrong-doer. We only

want to obtain our property.'

'Have you got a drawing of it now?'

'Yes, I have it here.'

The curate rose up and took the paper. He lit a match, and held its

tiny red flame in the shelter of the stone. The paper was soiled and

untidily folded, but the drawing was clear. It took but a glance to

satisfy him that what he had seen in his dream was but the reflection in

his own thought of the idea in the Jew's mind. He did not stop to ask

any explanation of the fact; the fact itself pressed too hard upon him.

While the match was still burning he mechanically noticed the Jew's

face, as it leaned over the paper near his own--not a handsome face, but

gentle and noble in its expression. Then the match went out; it dropped

from his hand, a tiny spark, into the grass, and for a moment

illuminated the blades among which it fell.

CHAPTER IV

The two men walked back over the bleak cliffs together, and for the

greater part of the way in silence; at last the curate spoke. He told

the Jew quite truly that he believed the vicar's wife had his jewel, and

that he supposed she must have come by it according to his worst

suspicions. 'But,' he added, 'I believe she is a good woman.'

The other looked at him in simple surprise. 'That is very curious,' he

said.

'Let us not try to find out her secret by prying; let us go to her

to-morrow, and tell her openly what we think. You fear that she will

deny her action; I have no such fear; and if she does not stand our

test, I give you my word for it, you shall not be the loser.'

'I have put my case in your hands,' said the Jew. 'I will do as you

say.'

They turned into the sleeping town; but when they reached the place of

parting the curate put his hand on the Jew's arm and said, 'I should not

have your forbearance. If some one unconnected with myself had wronged

me so, at the same time making profession of religion, I should think

she deserved both disgrace and punishment.'

'And that she shall have, but not from us,' he replied. 'The sin will

surely be visited on her and on her children.'

'Surely not on the children,' said the curate. 'You cannot believe that.

It would be unjust.'

'You have seen but little of the world if you do not know that such is

the law. The vagabond who sins from circumstances may have in him the

making of a saint, and his children may be saints; but with those who

sin in spite of the good around them it is not so. For them and for

their children is the curse.'

'God cannot punish the innocent for the guilty,' said the priest

passionately.

'Surely not; for that is the punishment--that they are not innocent. The

children of the proud are proud; the children of the cruel, cruel; and

the children of the dishonest are dishonest, unto the third and fourth

generation. Fight against it as they may, they cannot see the difference

between right and wrong; they can only, by struggling, come _nearer_ to

the light. Do you call this unjust of God? Is it unjust that the

children of the mad are mad, and the children of the virtuous virtuous.'

'You take from us responsibility if we inherit sin.'

'Nay, I increase responsibility. If we inherit obliquity of conscience,

we are the more responsible for acting not as seems right in our own

eyes, the more bound to restrain and instruct ourselves, for by this

doctrine is laid upon us the responsibility of our children and

children's children, that they may be better, not worse, than we.'

All night long the curate paced up and down his room. The dawn came and

he saw the fishermen hurry away to the boats at the quay. The sunrise

came with its dull transient light upon the rain cloud. When the morning

advanced he went for the Jew, and they walked down the street in the

driving rain. The wet paving-stones and roofs reflected the grey light

of the clouds which hurried overhead. The ruddy-twigged beech trees at

the vicarage gate were shaken and buffeted by the storm. The two men

shook their dripping hats as they entered the house. They were received

in a private parlour, which was filled with objects of art and devotion.

Very blandly did the good wife of the vicar greet them, yet with

business-like condescension.

The Jew, in a few very simple words, told the story of his sister's

death and the loss of the amulet. He told the peculiar value of the

amulet, and added, 'I have reason, madam, to believe that it has come

into your possession. If so, and if you have it still by you, I entreat

that you will give it to me at once, for to you it can only be a pretty

trinket, and to us it is like a household god.'

She looked at the Jew with evident emotion. 'I cannot tell you how it

grieves me to hear you speak as if you attributed to any inanimate

object the saving power which belongs to God alone,' she said. 'Think

for a moment, only think, how dishonouring such a superstition is to the

Creator.'

'Madam!' said the Jew in utmost surprise.

'Consider how wrong such a superstition is,' she said. 'What virtue can

there be in a stone, or a piece of metal, or an inscription? None. They

are as dead and powerless as the idols of the heathen; and to put the

faith in any such thing that we ought to put in God's providence, is to

dishonour Him. It grieves me to think that you, or any other intelligent

man, could believe in such a superstition.'

'Madam,' said the Jew again, 'these things are as we think of them. You

think one way and I another.'

'But you think wrongly. I would have you see your error, and turn from

it. Can you believe in the Christian faith and yet----'

'I am a Jew,' he said.

'A Jew!' she exclaimed. She began to preach against that error also;

entering into a long argument in a dull dogmatic way, but with an

earnestness which held the two men irresolute with wonder and surprise.

'It would seem, madam,' said the Jew, after she had talked much, 'that

you desire greatly to set an erring world to rights again.'

'And should we not all desire that?' she asked, unconscious of the

irony. 'For what else are we placed in the world but to pass on to

others the light that God has entrusted to us?'

'I verily believe, madam,' said he seriously, 'that you think exactly

what you say, and that you desire greatly to do me good. But, putting

these questions aside, will you tell me if you have this ornament which

I venerate?'

'Yes, I have it.'

'You took it from the breast of my sister when she lay dead upon your

shore?'

'I unfastened it from her neck, and have kept it with the greatest

care. It was an ornament which was quite unsuitable to your sister's

station in life. I could not have allowed any of our poor women to see

such a valuable stone on the neck of a girl like themselves in station;

it would have given them false ideas, and I am careful to teach them

simplicity in dress. In England we do not approve of people of your

class wearing jewellery.'

The curate put his arms on the table and bowed his head on his hands.

'Be that as it may,' said the Jew, rising, 'I will thank you if you will

give me my property now and let me go.'

'I cannot give it to you.' She was a little flustered in her manner, but

not much. 'It would be against my conscience to give you what you would

use profanely. Providence has placed it in my care, and I am responsible

for its use. If I gave it to you it would be tempting you to sin.'

He sat down again and looked at her with wonder in his soft brown eyes.

'You have had the stone taken out,' he said, 'and set in a ring.'

'Yes, and I have given it to my daughter, so that it is no longer mine

to return to you. You must be aware that the marble cross stone I set up

over your sister's grave cost me much more than the value of this stone.

I am very much surprised that you should ask me to give it back. Surely

any real feeling of gratitude for what I did for her would prompt you to

be glad that you have something to give me in return.' She paused, then

harped again upon the other string. 'But under any circumstances I could

not feel justified in giving you anything that you would put to a bad

use.'

'That you have stolen my property does not make it yours to withhold,

whatever may be your sentiments concerning it.'

'"Stolen!" I do not understand you when you use such a word. Do you

think it possible that I should steal? I took the chain from your

sister's neck with the highest motives. Do not use such a word as

"stolen" in speaking to me.'

'Truly, madam,' he said, 'you could almost persuade me that you are in

the right, and that I insult you.'

She looked at him stolidly, although evidently not without some inward

apprehension. It was a piteous sight--the poor distorted reasoning

faculty grovelling as a slave to the selfish will.

'I cannot give you back the amethyst,' she said, 'for I have given it

away; but if you will promise me never again to regard it as having any

value as an amulet or talisman, I will give you the necklace, and I will

pay you something to have another stone put in.'

The curate looked up. 'Get him the necklace and Violetta's ring,' he

said, 'and we will go.'

A man had arisen within the curate who was stronger than his

self-control. They might have argued with her for ever: he frightened

her into compliance. He took her by the arm and turned her to the door.

'There is not a man, woman or child in this town,' he said, 'who shall

not hear of this affair if you delay another moment to get him the chain

and the ring. It is due to his charity if the matter is concealed then.'

When she was gone the Jew was disposed to make remarks. 'I truly

believe,' he said, 'that it is as you say, that this woman is very

virtuous in the sight of her own conscience.'

A servant brought them a packet. The Jew opened it, taking out the chain

and the ring reverently and putting them in his breast. Then they went

out into the wind and the rain.

The Jew went to his native city, and the curate accompanied him as far

as London. There he said good-bye to him as to a friend. He did not

return at once to his parish, but found a substitute to do his work

there, and went inland for a month, seeking by change and relaxation to

attain to the true judgment of calm pulses and quiet nerves. It was in

April and in Lent that he returned.

Higgs, the irrepressible, received him with joy. 'It's you that are the

good sight for sore eyes,' he said. 'Not but what we've been 'aving an

uncommon peaceful time for Lent. The vicar's lady she's took bad and

took to bed.'

The curate reproved the wicked Higgs, but he inquired after the health

of the invalid.

'I hope Mrs. Moore is not very ill?'

'Bless you, no, sir; she's 'ale and 'earty. Cook says she's sure she've

fell out with some one. That's her way; she takes to bed when she've

fell out with any one. It makes them repent of their sins.'

A soft grey mist lay over land and sea. The church and vicarage were

grey and wet. The beeches at the vicarage gate had broken forth in a

myriad buds of silver green, and all the buds were tipped with water,

and the grey stems were stained and streaked. The yew trees in the

churchyard were bedewed with tiny drops. At the little gate that led

from the vicarage into the churchyard, between the yew trees and the

beeches, the curate waited for Violetta, after evensong. She came out of

the old grey porch and down the path between the graves and the yew

trees with her prayer-book in her hand. She looked like an Easter lily

that holds itself in bud till the sadness of Lent is past, so pure, so

modest, such a perfect thing from the hand of God.

She stopped and started when she saw her lover, and then greeted him

with a little smile, but blent with some reproachful dignity.

'I am glad you have come at last, for I have been wanting to speak to

you. Poor mamma has been very poorly and ill. It has grieved her very

much indeed that you should have so misunderstood her motives, and

treated her so rudely. Mamma takes things like that most deeply to

heart.'

'She told you why I treated her rudely?'

'Yes, she told me, but she did not tell papa anything about it; it would

only vex papa and do no good. Mamma told me to tell you that she had

made up her mind to forgive you, and to say no more about it, although

she was deeply grieved that you should have so misunderstood her.'

'Yes,' said the curate vaguely, for he did not know what else to say.

'Of course, as to the necklace, it may be a matter of opinion as to

whether mamma judged rightly or not; but no one who knows her could

doubt that her one desire was to do what was right. It is quite true

what she says: that the stone was most unsuitable to the station of

those people; every one says that the man was a very common and

vulgar-looking person; and of course to regard such a thing with

superstitious veneration is a very great sin, from which she saved them

as long as she kept it. Mamma says of course she knew she ran the risk

of being misunderstood in acting as she did, but she thought it her duty

to run that risk if by that means she could save anything that God had

entrusted to her keeping from being misused. You know what mamma is;

there is nothing she would not do if she thought it right.'

'Yes,' he said again, as though simply admitting that he had heard what

she said.

'So I think we had better not say anything more about it. I know you

will see that it is wisest to say nothing to papa or any one else.

People think so differently about such things that it would only cause

needless argument, and give poor mamma more pain when she has already

suffered so much.'

'You may trust me. I will never mention the matter to your father, or to

any one else. No one shall ever hear of it through me.'

'I was sure that you would see that it is wisest not to; I told mamma

so. When she is better, and you have shown her that you regret having

misunderstood her, we shall all be very happy again.' She held up her

pretty face for a kiss.

No one could see them except the chattering starlings in the church

tower, for they stood in the soft mist between the dewy yew trees and

the red-budding hedge by the vicarage lawn. The beech trees stretched

out their graceful twigs above them, the starlings talked to one another

rather sadly, and far off through the stillness of the mist came the

sound of the tide on the shore. The curate was very pale and grave. His

tall frame trembled like a sick woman's as he stooped to give Violetta

that kiss. He took her hands in his for a moment, and then he clasped

her in his arms, lifting her from the grass and embracing her in a

passion of tenderness and love. Then he put her from him.

'Violetta, it is amiable of you, and loyal, to excuse and defend your

mother, but tell me--tell me, as you speak before God, that you do not

think as you have spoken. You are a woman now, with a soul of your own;

tell me you know that to take this necklace and to keep it secretly was

a terrible sin.'

'Indeed'--with candour--'I do not think anything of the sort. I think it

is wicked of you to slander mamma in that way. And if you want to know

what I think'--with temper now--'I think it was most unkind of you to

give away my ring. After it had been given to me on such an occasion,

too, it was priceless to us, but we could easily have paid that vulgar

man all it was worth to him.'

'I will not argue with you. I perceive now that that would do no good.'

There was a heart-broken tone in his voice that frightened Violetta. 'I

will--I will only say----'

'What?' she asked. The thin sharp sound in her voice was a note of

alarm.

'I will not marry you,' moaned the curate.

'Not marry me!' she exclaimed in astonishment.

'I love you. I shall always love you. No other woman shall ever be my

wife; but I will never marry you; and I shall go away and leave you free

to forget me.'

'But why? What have I done?' she asked, her breath catching her tones.

'You have done nothing, my poor, poor girl; but--oh, my darling, I would

gladly die if by dying I could open your eyes to see the simple

integrity of unselfishness!'

'It is very absurd for you to speak of unselfishness at the very moment

when you are selfishly giving me so much pain,' she cried, defiant.

He bent his head and covered his face with his hands.

She stood and looked at him, her cheeks flushed and her breast heaving

with a great anger.

'Good-bye, Violetta,' he said, and turned slowly away.

'I never heard of anything so dishonourable,' she cried.

And that was what the world said; the curate was in disgrace with

society for the rest of his life.

V

'HATH NOT A JEW EYES?'

Mr. Saintou the hairdresser was a Frenchman, therefore his English

neighbours regarded him with suspicion. He was also exceedingly stout,

and his stoutness had come upon him at an unbecomingly early age, so

that he had long been the object of his neighbours' merriment. When to

these facts it is added that, although a keen and prosperous business

man, he had attained the age of fifty without making any effort to

marry, enough will have been said to show why he was disliked.

Why was he not married? Were English women not good enough for him? The

pretty milliner across the street had been heard to remark in his

presence that she should never refuse a man simply because he was a

foreigner. Or if he did not want an English wife, why did he not import

one from Paris with his perfumes? No, there was no reason for his

behaviour, and Mr. Saintou was the object of his neighbours' aversion.

Neighbours are often wrong in their estimates. In the heart of this

shrewd and stout French hairdresser there lay the rare capacity for one

supreme and lasting affection. Mr. Saintou's love story was in the past,

and it had come about in this way.

One day when the hairdresser was still a young man, not long after he

had first settled in Albert Street, the door of his shop opened, and a

young woman came in. Her figure was short and broad, and she was lame,

walking with a crutch. Her face and features were large and peculiarly

frank in expression; upon her head was a very large hat. When she spoke,

it was with a loud staccato voice; her words fell after one another like

hailstones in a storm, there was no breathing space between them.

'I want Mr. Saintou.'

'What may I have the pleasure of showing madame?'

'Good gracious, I told you I wanted to be shown Mr. Saintou. Are you Mr.

Saintou? None of your assistants for me; I want my hair cut.'

The hairdresser laid his hand upon his heart, as though to point out his

own identity. He bowed, and as even at that age he was very stout, the

effort of the bow caused his small eyes to shut and open themselves

again. There was nothing staccato about the manner of the hairdresser,

he had carefully cultivated that address which he supposed would be most

soothing to those who submitted themselves to his operations.

'Very well,' said the little lady, apparently satisfied with the

identification, 'I want my hair cut. It is like a sheaf of corn. It is

like a court train. It is like seven horses' manes tied together, if

they were red. It is like a comet's tail.'

It is probable that the hairdresser only took in that part of this

speech upon which he was in the habit of concentrating his attention,

and that the force of the similes which followed one another like

electric shocks escaped him altogether. He was about to show the new

customer into the ladies' room, where his staid and elderly sister was

accustomed to officiate, but she drew back with decision.

'No, not at all; I have come to have my hair cut by Mr. Saintou, and I

want to have it done in the room with the long row of chairs where the

long row of men get shaved every morning. I told my sister I should sit

there. You have no men in at this time of day, have you, Mr. Saintou?

Now I shall sit here in the middle chair, and you shall wash my hair. My

father is the baker round the corner. He makes good bread; do you wash

people's hair as well? Will you squirt water on it with that funny tube?

Will you put it in my eyes? Now, I am up on the chair. Don't put the

soap in my eyes, Mr. Saintou.'

Saintou was not a man easily surprised. 'Permit me, mademoiselle, would

it not be better to remove the hat? Mon Dieu! Holy Mary, what hair!' For

as the Eastern women carry their burdens on the crown of the head to

ease the weight, so, when the large hat was off, it appeared that the

baker's daughter carried her hair.

'Like the hair of a woman on a hair-restorer bottle, if it were red,'

remarked the girl in answer to the exclamation.

'No, mademoiselle, no, it is not red. Mon Dieu! it is not red. Holy

Mary! it is the colour of the sun. Mon Dieu, what hair!' As he untwined

the masses, it fell over the long bib, over the high chair, down till it

swept the floor, in one unbroken flood of light.

'Wash it, and cut it, and let me go home to make my father's dinner,'

said the quick voice with decision. 'My father is the baker round the

corner, and he takes his dinner at two.'

'Is it that mademoiselle desires the ends cut?' asked the hairdresser,

resuming his professional manner.

'Which ends?'

'Which ends?' he exclaimed, baffled. 'Mon Dieu! these ends,' and he

lifted a handful of the hair on the floor and held it before the eyes of

the girl.

'Good Heavens, no! Do you think I am going to pay you for cutting those

ends? It's the ends at the top I want cut. Lighten it; that's what I

want. Do you think I am a woman in a hairdresser's advertisement to sit

all day looking at my hair? I have to get my father's dinner. Lighten

it, Mr. Saintou; cut it off; that's what I want.'

'Mon Dieu, no!' Saintou again relapsed from the hairdresser into the

man. He too could have decision. He leant against the next chair and set

his lips very firmly together. 'By all that is holy, no,' he said; 'you

may get some villain Englishman to cut that hair, but me, never.'

'You speak English very well, Mr. Saintou. Have you been long in the

country? Well, wash the hair then, and be done. Don't put the soap in my

eyes.'

Saintou was in ecstasies. He touched the hair reverently as one would

touch the garments of a saint. He laid aside his ordinary brushes and

sponges, and going into the shop he brought thence what was best and

newest. Do not laugh at him. Have we not all at some time in our lives

met with what seemed the embodiment of our ideal; have we not set aside

for the time our petty economies and reserves, and brought forth

whatever we had that was best, of thought, or smiles, or vesture?

'Ah, mademoiselle,' he said, 'to take care of such hair for ever--that

would be heaven. I am a Frenchman; I have a soul; I can feel.'

'Should you be afraid to die a sudden death, Mr. Saintou?' said the

quick voice from the depths of a shower of water.

'Ciel! We do not speak of such things, mademoiselle. There will come a

time, I know, when my hair will turn grey; then for the sake of my

profession I shall be obliged to dye it. There will come a time after

that when I shall die; but we do not even think of these things, it is

better not.'

'But should you be afraid to die now?' persisted the girl.

'Very much afraid,' said the hairdresser candidly.

'Then don't feel, Mr. Saintou. I never feel. I make it the business of

my life not to feel. They tell me there is something wrong at my heart,

and that if I ever feel either glad or sorry I shall go off, pop, like a

crow from a tree when it is shot, like a spark that falls into water.'

The hairdresser meditated upon this for some time. He did not believe

her. He had drawn the bright hair back now from the water, and was

fondling it with his whitest and softest towels.

'Who was it that said to mademoiselle that her heart was bad?'

'Good gracious, Mr. Saintou, my heart is not bad. I know my catechism

and go to church, and cook my father's dinner every day, and a very good

dinner it is too. What put it into your head that I had a bad heart?'

'Pardon! mademoiselle; I mistake. Who told mademoiselle that she was

sick at heart?'

'Good gracious heavens! I am not sick at heart. To be sure my mother is

dead, and my sister is ill, and my father is as cross as two sticks, but

for all that I am not heart-sick. I like this world very well, and when

I feel sad I put more onions into the soup.'

Saintou went on with his work for some time in silence, then he tried

again. 'You say I speak good English, and I flatter myself I have the

accent very well, but what avails if I cannot make you understand? Was

it a good doctor who said mademoiselle's heart was affected; touched, I

might say?'

There was a shout of laughter from under the shower of gold.

'My heart touched! One would think I was in love. No, my heart is not

touched yet; least of all by you, Mr. Saintou.

'Least of all by you,

Mr. Saintou.'

She repeated this last rhyming couplet with a quaint musical intonation,

as though it was the refrain of a song, and after her voice and

laughter had died away she went on nodding her head in time to the

brushing as if she were singing it over softly to herself. This

distressed the hairdresser not a little, and he remained silent.

'What shall I pay you, Mr. Saintou?' said the little lady, when the

large hat was once more on the head.

'If mademoiselle would but come again,' said the hairdresser, putting

both hands resolutely behind his back.

'When I come again I shall pay you both for that time and this,' she

said, with perhaps more tact than could have been expected of her. 'And

if you want to live long, Mr. Saintou, don't feel. If I should feel I

should die off, quick, sharp, like a moth that flies into the candle.'

She made a little gesture with her hand, as if to indicate the ease and

suddenness with which the supposed catastrophe was to take place, and

hobbled down the street. Saintou stood in the doorway looking after her,

and his heart went from him.

He sent her flowers--flowers that a duchess might have been proud to

receive. He sent them more than once, and they were accepted; he argued

much from that. He made friends with the baker in order that he might

bow to him morning and evening. Then he waited. He said to himself,

'She is English. If I go to see her, if I put my hand on my heart and

weep, she will jeer at me; but if I wait and work for her in silence,

then she will believe.' He made a parlour for her in the room above his

shop; and every week, as he had time and money, he went out to choose

some ornament for it. His maiden sister watched these actions with

suspicion, threw scornful looks at when he observed her watchfulness,

and lent a kindly helping hand when he was out of sight. The parlour

grew into a shrine ready for its divinity, and the hairdresser worked

and waited in silence. In this he made a mistake, but he feared her

laughter.

Meanwhile the girl also waited. She could not go back to the

hairdresser's shop lest she should seem to invite a renewal of those

attentions which had given her the sweet surprise of love. The law of

her woman's nature stood like a lion in the path. She waited through the

months of the dreary winter till the one gleam of sunshine which had

come into her hard young life had faded, till the warmth it had kindled

in her heart died--as a lamp's flame dies for lack of oil; died--as a

flower dies in the drought; died into anger for the man who had

disturbed her peace, and when she thought she cared for him no more she

went again to get her hair cut.

'You have come,' said Saintou; but the very strength of his feeling made

him grave.

'Good gracious, yes, I have come to have my hair cut. You would not cut

it when I was here, and I have been very poorly these three months. I

could not come out, so the other day I had my sister cut it off. My

father wanted to send for you, but I said "no," and, oh, my! it looks

just as if a donkey had come behind and mistaken it for hay.'

How quickly a train of thought can flash through the brain! Saintou

asked himself if he loved the girl or the hair, and his heart answered

very sincerely that the hair, divine as it was, had been but the outward

sign which led him to love the inward grace of the girl.

'Mademoiselle ought not to have said "no"; I should have come very

willingly and would have cut her hair, if I had known it must be so.'

'I made my sister cut it, but it's frightful. It looks as if one had

tried to mow a lawn with a pair of scissors, or shear a sheep with a

penknife.'

'I will make all that right,' said Saintou soothingly; 'I will make it

all right. Just in a moment I will make it very nice.'

Yes, it was too true, the hair was gone; and very barbarously it had

been handled. 'I shall make it all right,' he said cheerfully; 'I shall

trim it beautifully for mademoiselle. Ah, the beautiful colour is there

all the same.'

'As red as a sunset or a geranium,' she said.

'You do not believe that,' sighed Saintou. He trimmed the hair very

tenderly, and curled it softly round the white face, till it looked like

a great fair marigold just beginning to curl in its petals for the

night. He worked slowly, for he had something he wanted to say, and when

his work was done he summoned up courage and said it. He told her his

hopes and fears. He told her the story blunderingly enough, but it had

its effect.

'Mon Dieu!' said Saintou, but he said it in a tone that made his sister,

who was listening to every word through the door, leave that occupation

and dart in to his assistance.

'Qu'elle est morte,' was her brief stern comment. And so it was. The

baker's daughter had felt, and she had died.

'This is not wholly unexpected,' said the baker sadly, when he came to

carry away the corpse of his daughter. 'We all expected it,' said the

neighbours; 'she had heart disease.' And they talked their fill, and

never discovered the truth it would have pleased them best to talk

about.

The short hair curled softly about the face of the dead girl as she lay

in her coffin, and Saintou paid heavily for masses for her sweet soul.

When they had laid her in the churchyard he came home, and took the key,

and went into the little parlour all alone. She had never seen it. She

had never even heard of it. It is sad to bury a baby that is dead; it

is sadder, if we but knew it, to bury in darkness and silence a child

that has never lived. A joy that has gone from us for ever is a jewel

that trembles like a tear on Sorrow's breast, but the brightest stars in

her diadem are the memories of hopes that have passed away unrealised

and untold. Ah well, perhaps the gay trappings of the little room, by

their daily influence on his life, drew him nearer to heaven. He gave

the key to his sister afterwards, and they used the room as their own;

but that day he locked himself in alone, and, hiding his face in the

cushions of her chair, he wept as only a strong man can weep.

VI

A COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER

Mam'selle Zilda Chaplot keeps the station hotel at St. Armand, in the

French country.

The hotel is like a wooden barn with doors and windows, not a very large

barn either. The station is merely a platform of planks between the

hotel and the rails. The railroad is roughly made; it lies long and

straight in a flat land, snow-clad in winter, very dusty in the summer

sun, and its line is only softened by a long row of telegraph poles,

which seem to waver and tremble as the eye follows their endless

repetition into the distance. In some curious way their repetition lends

to the stark road a certain grace.

When Zilda Chaplot was young there were fewer wires on these telegraph

poles, fewer railway-lines opposite the station, fewer houses in St.

Armand, which lies half a mile away. The hotel itself is the same, but

in those days it was not painted yellow, as it is now, and was not half

so well kept. The world has progressed by twenty years since mam'selle

was a girl, and, also, she owns the place herself now, and is a much

better inn-keeper than was her father.

Mam'selle Chaplot is a very active person, tall, and somewhat stout. Her

complexion is brown; her eyes are very black; over them there is a

fringe of iron-grey hair, which she does up in curl-papers every night,

and which, in consequence, stands in very tight little curls all day.

Mam'selle Chaplot minds her affairs well; she has a keen eye to the main

chance. She is sometimes sharp, a trifle fiery, but on the whole she is

good-natured. There are lines about the contour of her chin, and also

where the neck sweeps upward, which suggest a more than common power of

satisfaction in certain things, such as dinners and good sound sleep,

and good inn-keeping--yes, and in spring flowers, and in autumn leaves

and winter sunsets. Zilda Chaplot was formed for pleasure, yet there is

no tendency latent in her which could have made her a voluptuary. There

are some natures which have so nice a proportion of faculties that they

are a law of moderation to themselves. They take such keen delight in

small pleasures that to them a little is enough.

The world would account Mam'selle Chaplot to have had a life of toil and

stern limitations; a prosperous life, truly, for no one could see her

without observing her prosperity, but still a hard dry life. Even her

neighbours, whose ideas of enjoyment do not soar above the St. Armand

level, think that her lot would be softer if she married. Many of the

men have offered marriage, not with any disinterested motive, it is

true, but with kindly intent. They have been set aside like children who

make requests unreasonable, but so natural for them to make that the

request is hardly worth noticing. The women relatives of these rejected

suitors have boasted to mam'selle of their own domestic joys, and have

drawn the contrast of her state in strong colour. Zilda only says

'Chut!' or she lifts her chin a little, so that the pretty upward sweep

of the neck is apparent, and lets them talk. Mam'selle is not the woman

to be turned out of her way by talk.

The way of single blessedness is not chosen by Zilda Chaplot because of

any fiction of loyalty to a quondam lover. Her mind is such that she

could not have invented obligations for herself, because she has not the

inventive faculty. No, it is simply this: Mam'selle Chaplot loved once,

and was happy; her mind still hugs the memory of that happiness with

exultant reserve; it is enough; she does not desire other happiness of

that sort.

When she looks out on the little station platform and sees the loungers

upon it, once and again she lets her busy mind stop in its business to

think of some one else she was once accustomed to see there. When she

looks with well-practised critical eye down the hotel dining-room, which

is now quite clean and orderly, when she is scolding a servant, or

serving a customer, her mind will revert to the room in its former rough

state, and she will remember another customer who used to eat there.

When the spring comes, and far and near there is the smell of wet moss,

and shrubs on the wide flat land shoot forth their leaves, and the

fields are carpeted with violets, then mam'selle looks round and hugs

her memories, and thinks to herself, 'Ah! well, I have had my day.' And

because of the pleasant light of that day she is content with the

present twilight, satisfied with her good dinners and her good

management.

This is the story of what happened twenty years ago.

St. Armand is in the French country which lies between the town of

Quebec and the townships where the English settlements are. At that time

the railway had not been very long in existence; two trains ran

southward from the large towns in the morning, and two trains ran

northward to the large towns in the evening; besides these, there was

just one local train which came into St. Armand at noon, and passengers

arriving at noon were obliged to wait for the evening train to get on

farther.

There were not many passengers by this short local line. Even on the

main line there was little traffic that affected St. Armand. Yet most

of the men of the place found excuse of business or pleasure to come and

watch the advent of the trains. The chief use of the station platform

seemed to be for these loungers; the chief use of the bar at the hotel

was to slake their thirst, although they were not on the whole an

intemperate lot. They stood about in homespun clothes and smoked. A

lazy, but honest set of humble-minded French papists were the men at St.

Armand.

It was on the station platform that Zilda Chaplot came out in society,

as the phrase might be. She was not a child, for when her father took

the place she was twenty-four. There was red in her cheeks then, and the

lashes of her eyes were long; her hair was not curled, for it was not

the fashion, but brushed smoothly back from broad low brows. She was

tall, and not at all thin. She was very strong, but less active in those

days, as girls are often less active than women. When Zilda had leisure

she used to stand outside the hotel and watch the men on the platform.

She was always calm and dignified, a little stupid perhaps. She did not

attract a great deal of attention from them.

They were all French at St. Armand, but most of the strangers which

chance brought that way spoke English, so that the St. Armand folks

could speak English also.

Anything which is repeated at appreciable intervals has to occur very

often before the unscientific mind will perceive the law of its

repetition. There was a little red-haired Englishman, John Gilby by

name, who travelled frequently that way. It was a good while before the

loungers at the station remarked that upon a certain day in the week he

always arrived by the local train and waited for the evening train to

take him on to Montreal. It was, in fact, Gilby himself who pointed out

to them the regularity of his visits, for he was of a social

disposition, and could not spend more than a few afternoons at that dull

isolated station without making friends with some one. He travelled for

a firm in Montreal; it was his business to make a circuit of certain

towns and villages in a certain time. He had no business at St. Armand,

but fate and the ill-adjusted time-table decreed that he should wait

there.

This little red-haired gentleman--for gentleman, in comparison with the

St. Armand folk he certainly was--was a thorough worldling in the sense

of knowing the world somewhat widely, and corresponding to its ways,

although not to its evil deeds. Indeed, he was a very good sort of man,

but such a worldling, with his thick gold chain, and jaunty clothes, and

quick way of adjusting himself to passing circumstances, that it was

some time before his good-natured sociableness won in the least upon

the station loungers. They held aloof, as from an explosive, not knowing

when it would begin to emit sparks. He was short in stature, much

shorter than the hulking fellows who stood and surveyed him through the

smoke of their pipes, but he had such a cocky little way with him that

he overawed them much more than a big man would have done. Out of sheer

dulness he took to talking to Zilda.

Zilda stood with her back against the wall.

'Fine day,' said Gilby, stopping beside her.

'Oui, monsieur.'

Gilby had taken his cigar from his mouth, and held it between two

fingers of his right hand. Her countrymen commonly held their pipes

between their thumb and finger. To Zilda, Gilby's method appeared

astonishingly elegant, but she hardly seemed to observe it.

'You have a flat country here,' said he, looking round at the dry summer

fields; 'rather dull, isn't it?'

'Oui, monsieur.'

'Don't you speak English?'

'Yes, sir,' said Zilda.

This was not very interesting for Gilby. He had about him a good deal of

the modern restlessness that cannot endure one hour without work or

amusement. He made further efforts to make up to the men; he asked them

questions with patronising kindness, he gave them scraps of information

upon all subjects of temporary interest, with a funny little air of

pompous importance. When by mere force of habit they grew more familiar

with him, he would strut up and engage them in long conversations,

listen to all they said with consummate good nature, giving his opinion

in return. He was wholly unconscious that he looked like a bantam

crowing to a group of larger and more sleepy fowls, but the Frenchmen

perceived the likeness.

As the months wore on he did them good. They needed waking up, those men

who lounged at the station, and he had some influence in that direction;

not much, of course, but every traveller has some influence, and his was

of a lively, and, on the whole, of a beneficial sort. The men brought

forth a mood to greet him which was more in correspondence with his own.

When winter came the weather was very bleak; deep snow was all around.

Gilby disliked the closeness of the hotel, which was sealed to the outer

air.

'Whew!' he would say, 'you fellows, let us do something to keep

ourselves warm.' And after much exercise of his will, which was strong,

he actually had the younger men all jumping with him from a wood pile

near the platform to see who could jump farthest. He was not very young

himself; he was about thirty, and rather bald; the men who were with him

were much younger, but he thought nothing of that. He led them on, and

incited them to feats much greater than his own, with boisterous

challenges and loud bravos. Before he jumped himself he always made mock

hesitation for their amusement, swinging his arms, and apparently

bracing himself for the leap. Perhaps the deep frost of the country made

him frisky because he was not accustomed to it; perhaps it was always

his nature to be noisy and absurd when he tried to be amusing. Certain

it was that it never once occurred to him that under the French

politeness with which he was treated, under the sincere liking which

they really grew to have for him, there was much quiet amusement at his

expense. It was just as well that he did not know, for he would have

been terribly affronted; as it was, he remained on the best of terms

with them to the end.

The feeling of amusement found vent in his absence in laughter and

mimicry. Zilda joined in this mimicry; she watched the Frenchmen strut

along the platform in imitation of Gilby, and smiled when their

imitation was good. When it was poor she cried, 'Non, ce n'est pas comme

ça,' and she came out from the doorway and showed them how to do it. Her

imitation was very good indeed, and excited much laughter. This showed

that Zilda had been waked into greater vivacity. Six months before she

could not have done so good a piece of acting.

Zilda's exhibition would go further than this. Excited by success, she

would climb the wood pile, large and heavy as she was, and, standing

upon its edge, would flap her arms and flutter back in a frightened

manner and brace herself to the leap, as Gilby had done. She was aided

in this representation by her familiarity with the habits of chickens

when they try to get down from a high roost. The resemblance struck her;

she would cry aloud to the men--

'Voici Monsieur Geelby, le poulet qui a peur de descendre!'

The fact that at the thought of mimicking Gilby Zilda was roused to an

unwarranted glow of excitement showed, had any one been wise enough to

see it, that she felt some inward cause of pleasurable excitement at the

mention of his name. A narrow nature cannot see absurdity in what it

loves, but Zilda's nature was not narrow. She had learnt to love little

Gilby in a fond, deep, silent way that was her fashion of loving.

He had explained to her the principles of ventilation and why he

disliked close waiting-rooms. Zilda could not make her father learn the

lesson, but it bore fruit afterwards when she came into power. Gilby had

explained other things to her, small practical things, such as some

points in English grammar, some principles of taste in woman's dress,

how to choose the wools for her knitting, how to make muffins for his

tea. It was his kindly, conceited, didactic nature that made him

instruct whenever he talked to her. Zilda learned it all, and learned

also to admire and love the author of such wisdom.

It was not his fault; it was not hers. It was the result of his gorgeous

watch-chain and his fine clothes and his worldly knowledge, and also of

the fact that because of his strict notions and conceited pride it never

occurred to him to be gallant or to make love to her. Zilda, the

hotel-keeper's daughter, was accustomed to men who offered her light

gallantry. It was because she did not like such men that she learned to

love--rather the better word might be, to adore--little John Gilby. From

higher levels of taste he would have been seen to be, in external

notions, a common little man, but from Zilda's standpoint, even in

matters of outward taste he was an ideal; and Zilda, placed as she was,

quickly perceived, what those who looked down upon him might not have

discovered, that the heart of him was very good. 'Mon Dieu, but he is

good!' she would say to herself, which was simply the fact.

All winter long Gilby came regularly. Zilda was happy in thinking of him

when he was gone, happy in expecting him when he was coming, happy in

making fun of him so that no one ever suspected her affection. All that

long winter, when the snow was deep in the fields, and the engines

carried snow-ploughs, and the loungers about the station wore buffalo

coats, Zilda was very happy. Gilby wore a dogskin cap and collar and

cuffs; Zilda thought them very becoming. Then spring came, and Gilby

wore an Inverness cape, which was the fashion in those days. Zilda

thought that little Gilby looked very fascinating therein, although she

remarked to her father that one could only know he was there because the

cape strutted. Then summer came and Gilby wore light tweed clothes. The

Frenchmen always wore their best black suits when they travelled. Zilda

liked the light clothes best.

Then there came a time when Gilby did not come. No one noticed his

absence at first but Zilda. Two weeks passed and then they all spoke of

it. Then some one in St. Armand ascertained that Gilby had had a rise in

the firm in which he was employed, that he sat in an office all day and

did not travel any more. Zilda heard the story told, and commented upon,

and again talked over, in the way in which such matters of interest are

slowly digested by the country intellect.

Alas! then Zilda knew how far she had travelled along a flowery path

which, as it now seemed to her, led to nowhere. It was not that she had

wanted to marry Gilby; she had not thought of that as possible; it was

only that her whole nature summed itself up in an ardent desire that

things should be as they had been, that he should come there once a

week, and talk politics with her father and other men, and set the boys

jumping, and eat the muffins he had taught her to make for his tea. And

if this might not be, she desired above all else to see him again, to

have one more look at him, one more smile from him of which she could

take in the whole value, knowing it to be the last. How carelessly she

had allowed him to go, supposing that he would return! It was not her

wish to express her affection or sorrow in any way; it was not her

nature to put her emotions into words; but ah, holy saints! just to see

him again, and at least take leave of him with her eyes!

It was very sad that he should simply cease to come, yet that she knew

was just what was natural; a man does not bid adieux to a railway

station, and Zilda knew that she was, as it were, only part of the

station furniture. She resented nothing; she had nothing to resent.

So the winter came again, and Christmas, and again the days grew longer

over the snowfields. Zilda always looked for the sunsets now, for she

had been taught that they were beautiful. She cultivated geraniums and

petunias in pots at her windows, just as she had done for many winters,

but she would stop oftener to admire the flowers now.

The men had taken again to congregating in the hot close bar-room, or

huddling together in their buffalo coats, smoking in the outer air.

Zilda looked at the wood pile, from which no one jumped now, with weary

eyes. It had grown intolerable to her that now no one ever mentioned

Gilby; she longed intensely to hear his name or to speak it. She dared

not mention him gravely, soberly, because she was conscious of her

secret which no one suspected. But it was open to her to revive the

mimicry. 'Voici Monsieur Geelby,' she would cry, and pass along the

station platform with consequential gait. A great laugh would break from

the station loungers. 'Encore,' they cried, and Zilda gave the encore.

There was only one other relief she found from the horrible silence

which had settled down upon her life concerning the object of her

affection. At times when she lay awake in the quiet night, or at such

times as she found herself within the big stone church of St. Armand,

she prayed that the good St. Anne would intercede for her, that she

might see 'Monsieur Geelby' once more.

This big church of St. Armand has a great pointed roof of shining tin.

It is a bright and conspicuous object always in that landscape; under

summer and winter sun it glistens like some huge lighthouse reflector.

Ever since, whenever Zilda goes out on the station platform, for a

breath of air, for a moment's rest and refreshing, or, on business

intent, to chide the loungers there, the roof of this church, at a

half-mile's distance, twinkles brightly before her eyes, set in green

fields or in a snow-buried world; and every time it catches her eye it

brings to her mind more or less distinctly that she has in her own way

tested religion and found it true, because the particular boon which she

had demanded at this time was granted.

It was a happy morn of May; the snow had just receded from the land,

leaving it very wet, and Spring was pushing on all the business she had

to do with almost visible speed. The early train came in from Montreal

as usual, and who should step out of it but Gilby himself! He was a

little stouter, a little more bald, but he skipped down upon the

platform, radiant as to smile and the breadth of his gold watch-chain,

and attired in a check coat which Zilda thought was the most perfect

thing in costume which she had ever beheld.

In a flash of thought it came to Zilda that there would be more than a

momentary happiness for her. 'Ah, Monsieur Geelby, do you know that the

river has cut into the line three miles away, and that this train can go

no farther till it is mended.'

Gilby was distinctly annoyed; he had indeed left town by the earlier of

the two morning trains in order to stop an hour and take breakfast at

St. Armand; he had been glad of the chance of doing that, of seeing

Chaplot and his daughter and the others; but to be stopped at St. Armand

a whole day--he made exhibition of his anger, which Zilda took very

meekly. Why had the affair not been telegraphed? Why were busy men like

himself brought out of the city when they could not get on to do their

work?

There were other voices besides Gilby's to rail; there were other voices

besides Zilda's to explain the disaster. In the midst of the babel Zilda

slipped away to make muffins hastily for Gilby's breakfast. Her heart

was singing within her, but it was a tremulous song, half dazed with

delight, half frightened, fearing that with his great cleverness he

would see some way to proceed on his journey although she saw none.

When she came out of the kitchen with the muffins in her hand her

sunshine suddenly clouded. Gilby, unconscious that a special breakfast

was preparing for him, had hastily swallowed coffee and walked on to the

site of the breakdown to see for himself how long the mending would

take.

It was as if one, looking through long hours for the ending of night,

had seen the sunrise, only to see the light go out suddenly again in

darkness. Zilda felt that her heart was broken. Her disappointment grew

upon her for an hour, then she could no longer keep back the tears;

because she had no place in which to weep, she began to walk away from

the hotel down the line. There was no one to notice her going; she was

as free to go and come as the wild canaries that hopped upon the budding

bramble vines growing upon the railway embankment, or the blue-breasted

swallows that sat on the telegraph wire.

At first she only walked to hide her tears; then gradually the purpose

formed within her to go on to the break in the road. There was no reason

why she should not go to see the mishap. Truly there had been many a

breakdown on this road before and Zilda had never stirred foot to

examine them, but now she walked on steadily. Her fear told her that

Gilby might find some means of getting on to the next station, some

engine laden with supplies for the workmen from the other station might

take him back with it. If so, what good would this her journey do? Ah,

but perhaps the good God would allow her to see him first, or--well, she

walked on, reason or no reason.

The sun was high, the blue of the sky seemed a hundred miles in depth,

and not wisp or feather of cloud in it anywhere! Where the flat fields

were untilled they were very green, a green that was almost yellow, it

was so bright. Within the strip of railway land a tangle of young bushes

grew, and on every twig buds were bursting. About a mile back from the

road, on either side, fir woods stood, the trees in close level phalanx.

Everywhere over the land birds big and little were fluttering and

flying.

Zilda did not notice any of these things; she had only learned to

observe two things in nature, both of which Gilby had pointed out to

her--the red or yellow rose of the winter sunset, the depth of colour in

the petals of her flowers. Nature was to her like a language of which

she had only been told the meaning of two words. In the course of the

next month she learned the meaning of a few more; she never made further

progress, but what she learned she learned.

The river which, farther on, had done damage to the line, here ran close

to it for some distance, consequently Zilda came to the river before she

reached the scene of the disaster. The river banks at this season were

marshy, green like plush or velvet when it is lifted dripping from green

vats of the brightest dye. There were some trees by the river bank,

maples and elms, and every twig was tipped with a crimson gem. Zilda did

not see the beauty of the river bank either; she regarded nothing until

she came to a place where a foot-track was beaten down the side of the

embankment, as if apparently to entice walkers to stray across a bit of

the meadow and so cut off a large curve of the line. At this point

Zilda heard a loud chirpy voice calling,'Hi! hi! who's there? Is any one

there?'

Zilda did not know from whence the voice came, but she knew from whom it

came. It was Gilby's voice, and she stopped, her soul ravished by the

music. All the way along, bobolinks, canaries, and song-sparrows had

been singing to her, the swallows and red-throats had been talking;

everywhere among the soft spongy mosses, the singing frog of the

Canadian spring had been filling the air with its one soft whistling

note. Zilda had not heard them, but now she stopped suddenly with head

bent, listening eager, enraptured.

'Hi! hi!' called the voice again. 'Is any one there?'

Zilda went down the bank halfway among the bushes and looked over. She

saw Gilby sitting at the edge of the meadow almost in the river water.

She saw at once that something was wrong. His attitude was as natural as

he could make it, such an attitude as a proud man might assume when pain

is chaining him in an awkward position, but Zilda saw that he was

injured. Her heart gave a great bound of pleasure. Ah! her bird was

wounded in the wing; she had him now, for a time at least.

'You! Mam'selle Zilda,' he said in surprise; 'how came you here?'

'I wished to see the broken road, monsieur.' There was nothing in her

voice or manner then or at any other time to indicate that she took a

special interest in him.

'Do you often take such long walks?' he asked with curiosity.

Zilda shrugged her shoulders. 'Sometimes; why not?'

She could not have told why she dissembled; it was instinct, just as it

was the instinct of his proud little spirit to hate to own that he was

helpless. 'Look here,' he said, 'I slipped on the bank--and I--I think I

have sprained my ankle.'

'Oui, monsieur,' said Zilda.

Her manner evinced no surprise; her stolidity was grateful to him.

Stooping down, she took his foot in her hand, gently, but as firmly as

if it had been a horse's hoof. She straightened it, unlaced his muddy

boot, and with strong hands tore the slit further open until she could

take it off.

'Look here,' he said, with a little nervous shout of laughter, 'do you

not know you are hurting me?' It was the only wince he gave, although he

was faint with pain.

'Oui, monsieur'--with a smile as firm and gentle as her touch.

She took off her hat, and, heedless of the ribbon upon it, filled it

with water again and again and drenched the swollen leg. It was so

great a relief to him that he hardly noticed that she stood ankle-deep

in the river to do it. She wore a little red tartan shawl upon her

shoulders, and she dipped this also in the river, binding it round and

round the ankle, and tying it tight with her own boot-lace.

'Thank you,' said he; 'you are really very good, Mam'selle Zilda.'

She stood beside him; she was radiantly happy, but she did not show it

much. She had him there very safe; it mattered less to her how to get

him away; yet in a minute she said--

'Monsieur had better move a little higher up; he is very uncomfortable.'

He knew that much better than she, but he had borne all the pain he

could just then. He nodded as if in dismissal of the idea. 'Presently.

But, in the meantime, Zilda, sit down and see what a beautiful place

this is; you have not looked at it.'

So she found a stone to sit on, and immediately her eyes were opened and

she saw the loveliness around her.

The river was not a very broad one, but ah! how blue it was, with a

glint of gold on every wave. The trees that stood upon either bank cast

a lacework of shadow upon the carpet of moss and violets beneath them.

The buds of the maples were red. On a tree near them a couple of male

canaries, bright gold in the spring season, were hopping and piping;

then startled, they flew off in a straight line over the river to the

other shore.

'See them,' said Gilby; 'they look like streaks of yellow light!'

'I see,' said Zilda, and she did see for the first time.

Now Gilby had a certain capacity for rejoicing in the beauties of

nature; it was overlaid with huge conceit in his own taste and

discernment and a love of forcing his observations on other people, but

the flaws in his character Zilda was not in a position to see. The good

in him awakened in her a higher virtue than she would otherwise have

known; she was unconscious of the rest, just as eyes which can see form

and not colour are unconscious of the bad blending of artificial hues.

Presently Zilda rose up. 'I will make monsieur more comfortable,' she

said, and she lifted him to a drier place upon the bank.

This was mortifying to little Gilby; his manner was quite huffy for some

minutes after.

Zilda had her own ideas of what she would do. She presently left him

alone and walked on swiftly to the place of the breakdown. There she

borrowed a hand-car; it was a light one that could be worked easily by

two men, and Zilda determined to work it alone. While she was coming

back along the iron road on the top of the narrow embankment, Gilby

could see her from where he sat--a stalwart young woman in homespun

gown, stooping and rising with regular toilsome movement as she worked

the rattling machine that came swiftly nearer.

When the carriage thus provided for him was close at hand, the almost

breathless Zilda actually proposed to exert her strength to carry Gilby

up to it. He insisted upon hopping on one foot supported by her arm; he

did not feel the slightest inclination to lean upon her more than was

needful, he was too self-conscious and proud. Even after she had placed

him on the car, he kept up an air of offence for a long time just

because she had proved her strength to be so much greater than his own.

His little rudenesses of this sort did not disturb Zilda's tranquillity

in the least.

Gilby sat on the low platform of the hand-car. He looked like a bantam

cock whose feathers were much ruffled. Zilda worked at the handles of

the machine; she was very large and strong, all her attitudes were

statuesque. The May day beamed on the flat spring landscape through

which they were travelling; the beam found a perfect counterpart in the

joy of Zilda's heart.

So she brought Gilby safely to the hotel and installed him in the best

room there. The sprain was a very bad one. Gilby was obliged to lie

there for a month. Sometimes his friends came out from the town to see

him, but not very often, and they did not stay long. Zilda cooked for

him, Zilda waited upon him, Zilda conversed with him in the afternoons

when he needed amusement. This month was the period of her happiness.

When he was going home, Gilby felt really very grateful to the girl. He

had not the slightest thought of making love to her; he felt too

strongly on the subject of his dignity and his principles for that; but

although he haggled with Chaplot over the bill, he talked in a bombastic

manner about making Zilda a present.

It did not distress Zilda that he should quarrel with her father's bill;

she had no higher idea in character than that each should seek his own

in all things; but when Gilby talked of giving her a present she shrank

instinctively with an air of offence. This air of offence was the one

betrayal of her affection which he could observe, and he did not gather

very much of the truth from it.

'I will give you a watch, Zilda,' he said, 'a gold watch; you will like

that.'

'No, monsieur.' Zilda's face was flushed and her head was high in the

air.

'I will give you a ring; you would like that--a golden ring.'

'No, monsieur; I would not like it at all.'

Gilby retired from the discussion that day feeling some offence and a

good deal of consternation. He thought the best thing would be to have

nothing more to do with Zilda; but the next day, in the bustle of his

departure, remembering all she had done for him, he relented entirely,

and he gave her a kiss.

Afterwards, when the train was at the station, and Chaplot and Zilda had

put his bags and his wraps beside him on a cushioned seat, Gilby turned

and with great politeness accosted two fine ladies who were travelling

in the same carriage and with whom he had a slight acquaintance. His

disposition was at once genial and vain; he had been so long absent from

the familiar faces of the town that his heart warmed to the first

townsfolk he saw; but he was also ambitious: he wished to appear on good

terms with these women, who were his superiors in social position.

They would not have anything to do with him, which offended him very

much; they received his greeting coldly and turned away; they said

within themselves that he was an intolerably vulgar little person.

But all her life Zilda Chaplot lived a better and happier woman because

she had known him.

VII

THE SYNDICATE BABY

Some miles above the city of La Motte, the blue Merrian river widens

into the Lake of St. Jean. In the Canadian summer the shores of this

lake are as pleasant a place for an outing as heart could desire. The

inhabitants of the city build wooden villas there, and spend the long

warm days in boats upon the water. The families that live in these

wooden villas do not take boarders; that was the origin of 'The

Syndicate.' It consisted of some two dozen bachelors who were obliged to

sit upon office stools all day in the hot city. 'If,' said they, 'we

could live upon the lake, we could have our morning swim and our evening

sail; and the trains would take us in and out of the city.'

The one or two uncomfortable hotels of this region were already

overcrowded, so these bachelors said to each other--'Go to; we will put

our pence together, and build us a boat-house with an upper story, and

live therein.'

They bought a bit of the beach for a trifle of money. They built a

boat-house, of which the upper half was one long dormitory, with a great

balcony at the end over the water which served as kitchen and

dining-hall. The ground floor was the lake itself, and each man who

could buy a boat tethered it there. The property, boats excepted, was in

common. By and by they bought a field in which they grew vegetables;

later they bought two cows and a pasture. The produce of the herd and

the farm helped to furnish forth the table. This accretion of wealth

took several years; some of the older men grew richer, and took to

themselves wives and villas; the ranks were always filled up by more

impecunious bachelors. The bachelors called themselves 'The Syndicate.'

The plan worked well, chiefly because of the fine air and the sunshine,

the warm starry nights, and, above all, the witchery of the lake, which

is to every man who has spent days and nights upon it like a mystical

lady-love, ever changeful and ever charming. Then, too, there was the

contrast with the hot city; the sense of need fulfilled makes men

good-natured. The one servant of the establishment, an old man who made

the beds and the dinners, was not a professional cook; the meals were

often indifferent; yet the Syndicate did not quarrel among themselves.

Some outlet for temper perhaps was needful. At any rate they had one

outside quarrel with an old Welshman named Johns, a farmer of great

importance in the place, who had sold them the land and tried, in their

opinion, to cheat them afterwards about the boundaries. Their united

rage waxed hot against Johns, and he, on his side, did nothing to

propitiate. The quarrel came to no end; it was a feud. 'Esprit de

corps,' like the fumes of wine, gives men a wholly unreasonable sense of

complacence in themselves and their belongings, whatever the belongings

may happen to be. The Syndicate learned to cherish this feud as a

valuable possession.

The Syndicate, as has been seen, had one house, one servant, and one

enemy. It also had one Baby. The Baby was the youngest member of the

community, a pretty boy who by some chance favour had obtained a bed in

the dormitory at the hoyden age of nineteen. He had a tendency to

chubbiness, and his moustache, when it did come, was merely a silken

whisp, hardly visible. He did some fagging in return for the

extraordinary favour of adoption. The Baby from the first was entirely

accustomed to being 'sat upon.' He had no unnecessary independence of

mind. At twenty-one he still continued to be 'Baby.'

All the affairs of the Syndicate flourished, including the feud with

the neighbouring landowner. All went well with the men and their boats

and the Baby, until, at length, upon one fateful day for the latter,

there came a young person to the locality who made an addition to the

household of Farmer Johns.

'Old Johns has got a niece,' said the bachelors sitting at dinner, as if

the niece had come fresh to the world as babies do, and had not held the

same relation to old Johns for twenty-five years. Still, it was true she

had never been in the old man's possession before, and now she had

arrived at his house, a sudden vision of delight as seen from the road

or on the verandah.

Now Helen Johns was a beauty; no one unbiassed by the party spirit of a

time-honoured feud would have denied that. She was not, it is true, of

the ordinary type of beauty, whose chief ornament is an effort at

captivation. She did not curl her hair; she did not lift her eyes and

smile when she was talking to men; she did not trouble herself to put on

her prettiest gown when the evening train came in, bringing the

bachelors from the city. She was tall--five foot eight in her stockings;

all her muscles were well developed; there was nothing sylph-like about

her waist, but all her motions had a strong, gentle grace of their own

that bespoke health and dignity. She had a profession, too, which was

much beneath most of the be-crimped and smile-wreathed maidens who

basked in the favour of the bachelors. She had been to New York and had

learned to teach gymnastics, the very newest sort; 'Delsart' or

'Emerson,' or some such name, attached to the rhythmic motions she

performed. The Syndicate had no opportunity to criticise the gymnastic

performance, for they had not the honour of her acquaintance; they

criticised everything else, the smooth hair, the high brow, the

well-proportioned waist, the profession; they decided that she was not

beautiful.

There were, roughly speaking, two classes of girls in this summer

settlement, each held in favour by the Syndicate men according as

personal taste might dispose. There were the girls who in a cheerful

manner were ever to be found walking or boating in such hours and places

as would assuredly bring them into contact with the happy bachelors, and

there were those who would not 'for the world' have done such a thing,

who sedulously shunned such paths, and had to be much sought after

before they were found. Now it chanced that Helen Johns was seen to row

alone in her uncle's boat right across the very front of the Syndicate

boat-house, at the very hour when the assembled members were eating

roast beef upon the verandah above and arriving at their decisions

concerning her, and she did not look as if she cared in the least

whether twenty-four pair of eyes were bent upon her or not. To be sure,

it was her nearest way home from the post-office across the bay, and the

post came in at this evening hour. No one could find any fault, not even

any of the bachelors, but none the less did the affront sink deep into

their hearts. It added a new zest to the old feud. 'We do not see that

she is beautiful,' they cried over their dinner. 'We should not care for

Helen of Troy if she looked like that.'

The Baby dissented; the Baby actually had the 'cheek' to say, right

there aloud at the banquet, that he might not be a man of taste, but,

for his part, he thought she looked 'the jolliest girl' he had ever

seen. In his heart he meant that he thought she looked like a goddess or

an angel (for the Baby was a reverent youth), but he veiled his real

feeling under this reticent phrase.

One and all they spoke to him, spoke loudly, spoke severely. 'Baby,'

they said, 'if you have any dealings with the niece of Farmer Johns

we'll kick you out of this.'

It was a romantic situation; love has proverbially thriven in the

atmosphere of a family feud. The Baby felt this, but he felt also that

he could not run the risk of being kicked out of the Syndicate. The Baby

did sums in a big hot bank all day; he had no dollars to spare, there

was no other place upon the lake where he could afford to live, and he

had a canoe of his own which his uncle had given him. Hiawatha did not

love the darling of his creation more than the Baby loved his cedar-wood

canoe. All this made him conceal carefully that mysterious sensation of

unrestful delight which he experienced every time he saw Miss Helen

Johns. This, at least, in the first stage of his love-sickness.

Fate was hard; she led the Baby, all cheerful and unsuspecting, to spend

an evening at a picnic tea in a wood a mile or more from the shore.

Mischievous Fate! She led him to flirt frivolously until long after dark

with a girl that he cared nothing at all about, and then whispered in

his ear that he would get home the quicker if in the obscurity he ran

across the Johns' farm. Fate, laughing in her sleeve, led him to pass

with noiseless footsteps quite near the house itself; then she was

content to leave him to his own devices, for through the open window he

caught sight of Helen Johns doing her gymnastics. Her figure was all

aglow with the yellow lamplight; she was happy in the poetry of her

motions and in the delight that the family circle took in watching them.

The Baby was in the dark and the falling dew; he was uncomfortable, for

he had to stand on tiptoe, but nothing would have induced him to ease

his strained attitude. The pangs of a fierce discontent took possession

of his breast.

Art was consulted in the gymnasium in which Miss Johns had studied; the

theory was that only that which is beautiful is healthful. Sometimes she

poised herself on tiptoe with one arm waved toward heaven, an angel all

ready, save the wings, for aerial flight. Sometimes she seemed to hover

above the ground like a running Mercury. Sometimes she stood, a hand

behind her ear, listening as a maid might who was flying from danger in

some enchanted land. Often she waved her hands slowly as if weaving a

spell.

A spell was cast over the soul of the Baby; he held himself against the

extreme edge of a verandah; his mouth remained open as if he were

drinking in the beams from the bright interior and all the beautiful

pictures that they brought with them. It was only when the show was over

that he noiselessly relaxed his strained muscles, and crept away over

the dew-drenched grass, hiding under the shadow of maple boughs, guilty

trespasser that he was.

After that, one evening, Farmer Johns and his niece had an errand to

run; at a house about two miles away on the other side of the bay there

was a parcel which it was their duty to fetch. They had started out in

the calm white light of summer twilight; a slight wind blew, just enough

to take their sail creeping over the rippled water, no more. The lake

within a mile of the shore was thickly strewn with small yachts, boats,

and canoes. Upon the green shore the colours of the gaily painted villas

could still be seen among the trees, and most conspicuous of all the

great barn-like boat-house of the Syndicate, which was painted red. By

and by the light grew dimmer and stars came out in the sky; then one

could no longer distinguish the outline of the shore, but in every

window a light twinkled, like a fallen star.

Helen sat in the side of the tiny ship as near the prow as might be; her

uncle sat at the tiller and managed the sails. They were a silent pair,

the one in a suit of tweeds with a slouch hat, the other in a muslin

gown with a veil of black lace wrapped about her head.

The sailing of the boat was an art which Helen had not exerted herself

to understand; she only knew that every now and then there was a minute

of bluster and excitement when her uncle shouted to her, and she was

obliged to cower while the beam and the sail swung over her head with a

sound of fluttering wind. When she was allowed to take her seat after

this little hurly-burly the two lighthouses upon the lake and all the

lights upon the shore had performed a mysterious dance; they all lay in

different places and in different relation to one another. She had not

learned to know the different lights. When dusk came she was lost to her

own knowledge. She only knew that the sweet air blew upon her face and

that she trusted her uncle.

The moonless night closed in. Now and then, as they passed a friendly

craft, evening greetings were spoken across the dark space. By the time

they got to the place for which they were bound they were floating

almost alone upon the black water.

Johns descended into a small boat and secured the sailing-boat to the

buoy which belonged to the house whither he was going, or rather, he

thought that he secured it.

Helen heard the plash of his oars until he landed. The shore was but

twenty yards away, but she could hardly see it. The sail hung limp,

wrinkled, and motionless. She began to sing, and there alone in the

darkness she fell in love with her own voice, and sang on and on,

thinking only of the music.

Her uncle was long in coming; she became conscious of movement in the

water, like the swell of waves outside rolling into the cove. She heard

the sound of swaying among all the trees on the shore. She looked up and

saw that the stars of one half the sky were obscured, that the darkness

was rolling onward toward those that were still shining.

She stopped her own singing, and the song of the waters beneath her prow

was curiously like the familiar sound when the boat was in motion. She

strained her eyes, but could not see how far she was from the near

shore. She looked on the other side and it seemed to her that the lights

on the home-ward side of the bay were moving. That meant that she was

moving, at what speed and in what direction she had no means of knowing.

She stood up, lifted her arms in the air and shouted for help; again and

again her shouts rang out, and she did not wait to hear an answer. She

thought that the masters of other boats had seen the storm coming and

gone into shore.

She was out now full in the whistling wind and the boat was leaping. Her

throat was hoarse with calling, her eyes dazzled by straining.

When she turned in despair from scanning the shore she saw a sight that

was very strange. At the tiller where her uncle ought to have been, and

just in the attitude in which he always stood, was a slight white

figure. A new sort of fear took possession of Helen; at first she could

not speak or move, but kept her eyes wide open lest the ghostly thing

should come near her unawares.

This illusion might be a forerunner of the death to which she was

hastening, the Angel of Death himself steering her to destruction!

Then in a strange voice came the familiar shout, the warning to hold

down her head. The sail swung over in the customary way; every movement

of the figure at the helm was so familiar and natural that comfort

began to steal into her heart. Plainly, whoever had taken command of the

drifting craft knew his business; might it not be an angel of life, and

not of death?

Now in plain sober reality, as her pulses ceased to dance so wildly,

Helen could not believe that her companion was angel or spirit. One does

not believe in such companionship readily.

She scrambled to her knees and steadied herself by the seat. 'Who are

you?' she asked.

The figure made a gesture that seemed like a signal of peace, but no

answer was given.

The lights upon her own part of the shore were now not far distant. She

looked above and saw breaks in the darkness that had hidden the stars;

the clouds were passing over.

The squall that was taking them upon their journey was still whistling

and blowing, but she feared its force less as she realised that she was

nearing home.

She desired greatly to work herself along the boat and touch the sailor

curiously with her hand, but she was afraid to do it, and that for two

reasons: if he was a spirit she had reason for shrinking from such

contact, and if he was a man--well, in that case she also saw

objections.

The man at the helm dropped the sail; for a minute or two he stood not

far from Helen as he busied himself with it.

'Who are you?' she asked again, but she still had not courage to put out

her hand and touch him.

There was a little wooden wharf upon the shore, and to this the sailor

held the boat while Helen sprung out. Her feet were no sooner safe upon

it than the boat was allowed to move away. She saw the black mast and

the white figure recede together and disappear in the darkness.

Johns had to walk home by the shore, and in no small anxiety. When he

saw that his niece was safe he chuckled over her in burly fashion.

'Then I suppose,' he said, 'that some fellow got aboard her between the

puffs of wind. I hope it was none of those Syndicate men; they're a fast

lot. What was his name? What had he to say for himself?'

'She was flying far too fast for any one to get aboard,' asserted Helen.

'I don't know what his name was; he didn't say anything; I don't know

where he went to.'

Then the uncle suggested toddy in an undertone to his wife. The aunt

looked over her spectacles with solicitude, and then arose and put her

niece to bed.

When Helen was left alone she lay looking out at the stars that again

were shining; she wondered and wondered; perhaps the reason that she

came to no definite conclusion was that she liked the state of wonder

better. Helen was a modern girl; she had friends who were spiritualists,

friends who were theosophists, friends who were 'high church' and

believed in visions of angels.

In the morning Johns' boat was found tethered as usual to the buoy in

front of his house.

Long before this the Syndicate had suspected the Baby's attachment. The

strength of that attachment they did not suspect in the least; never

having seen depths in the Baby, they supposed there were none. They had

fallen into the habit of taking the Baby by the throat and asking him in

trenchant tones, 'Have you spoken to her?' The Baby found it convenient

to be able to give a truthful negative, not that he would have minded

fibbing in the least, but in this case the fib would certainly have been

detected; he could not expect his goddess to enter into any clandestine

parley and keep his secret.

Had the Baby taken the matter less to heart he would have been more rash

in asserting his independence, but he meditated some great step and 'lay

low.' What or when the irrevocable move was to be he had no definite

idea, the thought of it was only as yet an exalted swelling of mind and

heart.

There was a period, after the affair of the boat, when he spent a good

deal of time haunting the sacred precincts of the house where Helen

lived. The precincts consisted of a dusty lane, a flat, ugly fenced

field where a cow and a horse grazed, and a place immediately about the

house covered with thick grass and shaded by maple trees. There were

some shrubs too, behind which one could hide if necessary, but they were

prickly, uncomfortable to nestle against, and the unmown grass absorbed

an immense quantity of dew. In imagination, however, the Baby wandered

on pastoral slopes and in classic shades. At first he paid his visits at

night when the family were asleep, and he slipped about so quietly that

no one but the horse and the cow need know where he went or what he did.

At length, however, he grew more bold, and took his way across the maple

grove going and coming from other evening errands. Trespassing is not

much of a fault at the lake of St. Jean. The Baby became expert in

dodging hastily by, with his eyes upon the windows; the dream of his

life was to see the gymnastics performed again; at length it was

realised.

The thing we desire most is often the thing that brings us woe.

The Baby caught sight of Helen practising her beautiful attitudes. He

hung on to a rail of the verandah, and gazed and gazed. Then he took his

life in his hand, as it were, and swung himself up on the verandah; he

moved like a cat, for he supposed that the stalwart Johns was within.

From this better point of view, peeping about, he now surveyed the whole

interior of the small drawing-room. What was his joy to find that there

was no family circle of spectators; Helen was exercising herself alone!

He hugged to himself the idea that the gracious little spectacle was all

his own.

Now, as it happened, the Baby in his secret hauntings of this house had

not been so entirely unseen as he supposed. Certainly Johns had never

caught sight of him or he would have been made aware of it, but Helen,

since the night of the boating mystery, had more than once caught sight

of a white figure passing among the maple shadows. These glimpses had

added point and colour to all the mystical fancies that clustered round

the helmsman of the yacht. She hardly believed that some guardian spirit

was protecting her in visible semblance, or that some human Prince

Charming, more kingly and wise than any man that she had yet seen, had

chosen this peculiar mode of courting her; but her wish was the father

of thoughts that fluttered between these two explanations, and hope was

fed by the conviction that no man who could see her every day if he

chose would behave in this romantic manner.

So upon this evening it happened that when Helen, poised upon her toes

and beating the time of imaginary music with her waving hand, caught

sight of the Baby's white flannels through the dark window pane, she

recognised the figure of her dreams and, having long ago made up her

mind what to do when she had the chance, she ran to the French window

without an instant's delay, and let herself out of it with graceful

speed.

The Baby, panic-stricken, felt but one desire, that she might never know

who had played the spy. He threw himself over the verandah rail with an

acrobat's skill, and with head in front and nimble feet he darted off

under the maple trees: but he had to reckon with an agile maiden. Helen

had grown tired of a fruitless dream. A crescent moon gave her enough

light to pursue; lights of friendly houses on all sides assured her of

safety.

Over the log fence into the pasture vaulted the Baby, convinced now that

he had escaped. Vain thought! He had not considered the new education.

Over the fence vaulted Helen as lightly: in a minute the Baby heard her

on his track.

The cow and the horse had never before seen so pretty a chase. There was

excitement in the air and they sniffed it; they were both young and they

began to run too. The sound of heavy galloping filled the place.

Of the two sides of the field which lay farthest from the house, one

looked straight over to the glaring Syndicate windows, and one to the

rugged bank that rose from the shore. The Baby's one mad desire was to

conceal his identity. He made for the dark shore. Another fence, he

thought, or the rocks of the bank, would surely deter her flying feet.

They both vaulted the second fence. The Baby still kept his distance

ahead, but when he heard that she too sprang over, a fear for her safety

darted across his excited brain. Would those cantering animals jump

after and crush her beneath their feet, or would she fall on the rocks

of the shore which he was going to leap over? The Baby intended to leap

the shore and lose his identity by a swim in the black water.

It was this darting thought of anxiety for Helen that made him hesitate

in his leap. Too late to stop, the hesitation was fatal to fair

performance. The Baby came down on the shore with a groan, his leg under

him and his head on the earth.

He saw Helen pause beside him, deliberately staring through the dim

light.

'I'm not hurt,' said the Baby, because he knew that he was.

'You are only the Syndicate Baby!' she exclaimed with interrogatory

indignation.

'I'm going to cut the Syndicate; I'll never have anything more to do

with them, Miss Johns.'

Helen did not understand the significance of this eager assurance.

The Baby's brain became clear; he tried to rise, but could not.

'Are you not hurt?' she asked.

'Oh! no, not at all, Miss Johns' (he spoke with eager, youthful

politeness); 'it's only--it's only that I've doubled my leg and can't

quite get up.'

The Baby was pretty tough; a few bumps and breaks were matters of small

importance to him; his employers had already bargained with him not to

play football as he gained so many holidays in bandages thereby. Just

now he was quick enough to take in the situation: Helen despised him, it

was neck or nothing, he must do all his pleading once for all, and the

compensation for a broken leg was this, that she could not have the

inhumanity to leave him till he declared himself fit to be left. He

pulled himself round, and straightened the leg before him as he sat.

Helen was not accustomed to falls and injuries; she was shocked and

pitiful, but she was stern too; she felt that she had the right.

'I'm very sorry; I will go and get some one to help you, but you know

it's entirely your own fault. What have you been behaving in this way

for?'

'If you'd only believe me,' pleaded the Baby, 'I--I--you really can have

no idea, Miss Johns----'

If she could have seen how white and earnest his young face was she

might have listened to him, but the light was too dim.

'I want to know this' (severely), 'Was it you who got on to our sailing

boat that other night?'

'I thought you were alarmed, Miss Johns, and in a rather--rather

dangerous situation.' The Baby was using his prettiest tones, such as he

used when he went out to a dance.

If she could have known how heroic it was to utter these mincing accents

over a broken leg she might have been touched; but she did not even know

that the leg was broken. She went on rigidly, 'How could you get aboard

when she was sailing so fast? Where did you come from?'

'Oh! it wasn't difficult at all, I assure you, Miss Johns; I only got on

between the gusts of the wind. I swam from the Syndicate boat. You know,

of course, one of us must have gone when we heard you singing out for

help, and I was only too happy, frightfully happy, I am sure--and it was

nothing at all to do. If you were much here, and saw us swimming and

boating, you'd see fellows do that sort of thing every day.'

It was a delicate instinct that made him underrate the feat he had

performed, for he would have been so glad to have her feel under the

slightest obligation to him; but as far as her perceptions were

concerned, the beauty of his sentiment was lost, for when he said that

the thing that he had done was easy, she believed him.

She still interrogated. 'Why did you not speak and tell me who you

were?'

There had been an ostensible and a real reason for this conduct on the

Baby's part. The first was the order which his friends in the Syndicate

boat had called after him as he jumped into the water, the second he

spoke out now for the first time to Helen.

'I didn't speak, Miss Johns, because I--I _couldn't_. Oh! you have no

idea--really, you know, if you'd only believe me--I love you so much,

Miss Johns, I couldn't say anything or I'd have said more than I ought,

the sort of thing I'm saying now, you know.'

'Tut!' said Helen sharply, 'what rubbish!'

'Oh! but Miss Johns--yes, I knew you would think it was all rot and that

sort of thing; that was the reason I didn't say it in the boat, and that

is the reason I've never dared to ask to be introduced to you, Miss

Johns. It wasn't that I cared for the Syndicate. You see, the worst of

it is, I'm so confoundedly poor; they give me no sort of a screw at all

at the bank, I do assure you. But, Miss Johns, my uncle is one of the

directors; he's sure to give me a leg up before very long, and if you

only knew--oh! really if you only knew----,' words failed him quite when

he tried to describe the strength of his devotion. He only sat before

her, supporting himself with both hands on the ground and looking up

with a face that had no rounded outline now, but was white, passionate

and pathetic; he could only murmur, 'really, really--if you only

knew----'

The darkness barred her vision and the extravagant words in the boyish

voice sounded ridiculous to her.

'I will believe you,' she said, 'if you want me to, but it doesn't make

any difference; I am sorry you are hurt, and sorry you have taken this

fancy for me. I think you will find some other girl very soon whom you

will like better; I hope you will. There isn't' (she was becoming

vehement), 'there isn't the slightest atom of use in your caring for

me.'

'Isn't there?' asked the Baby despairingly. 'I wish you would say that

you will think over it, Miss Johns; I wish you would say that I might

know you and come and see you sometimes. I'd cut the Syndicate and make

it up with your uncle.'

'It wouldn't be the slightest use,' she repeated excitedly.

'Of course if you go on saying that, I sha'n't bore you any more, but

do, Miss Johns, do, do just think a minute before you say it again.'

A note in his voice touched her at last; she paused for the required

minute and then answered gently; her gentleness carried conviction. 'I

could never care for you. You are not at all the sort of man I could

ever care for, and I am going back to New York in a few days, so you

won't be troubled by seeing me any more.'

When Helen rushed breathless to the door of the Syndicate boat-house and

told of the accident, the bachelors went out in a body and bore the Baby

home.

They petted him until he was on his feet again. They gained some vague

knowledge of his interview with Helen, and he kept a very distinct

remembrance of it. Both he and they believed that his first attempt at

love had come to nothing, but that was a mistake.

The Baby had loved with some genuine fervour, and his grief made a man

of him.

VIII

WITCHCRAFT

A young minister was walking through the streets of a small town in the

island of Cape Breton. The minister was only a theological student who

had been sent to preach in this remote place during his summer holiday.

The town was at once very primitive and very modern. Many log-houses

still remained in it; almost all the other houses were built of wood.

The little churches, which represented as many sects, looked like the

churches in a child's Dutch village. The town hall had only a brick

facing. On the hillsides that surrounded the town far and wide were many

fields, in which the first stumps were still standing, charred by the

fires that had been kindled to kill them. There were also patches of

forest still to be seen among these fields, where the land had not yet

been cleared. In spite of all this, the town was very advanced, every

improvement being of the newest kind because so recently achieved. Upon

huge ungainly tree-trunks roughly erected along the streets, electric

lamps hung, and telephone wires crossed and recrossed one another from

roof to roof. There was even an electric tram that ran straight through

the town and some distance into the country on either side. The general

store had a gaily dressed lay figure in its window,--a female

figure,--and its gown was labelled 'The Latest Parisian Novelty.'

The theological student was going out to take tea. He was a tall, active

fellow, and his long strides soon brought him to a house a little way

out of the town, which was evidently the abode of some degree of taste

and luxury. The house was of wood, painted in dull colours of red and

brown; it had large comfortable verandahs under shingled roofs. Its

garden was not old-fashioned in the least; but though it aspired to

trimness the grass had not grown there long enough to make a good lawn,

so the ribbon flower-beds and plaster vases of flowers lacked the

green-velvet setting that would have made them appear better. The

student was the less likely to criticise the lawn because a very pretty,

fresh-looking girl met him at the gate.

She was really a fine girl. Her dress showed rather more effort at

fashion than was quite in keeping with her very rural surroundings, and

her speech and accent betrayed a childhood spent among uneducated folk

and only overlaid by more recent schooling. Her face had the best parts

of beauty: health and good sense were written there, also flashes of

humour and an habitual sweet seriousness. She had chanced to be at the

gate gathering flowers. Her reception of the student was frank, and yet

there was just a touch of blushing dignity about it which suggested that

she took a special interest in him. The student also, it would appear,

took an interest in her, for, on their way to the house, he made a

variety of remarks upon the weather which proved that he was a little

excited and unable to observe that he was talking nonsense.

In a little while the family were gathered round the tea-table. The

girl, Miss Torrance by name, sat at the head of the table. Her father

was a banker and insurance agent. He sat opposite his eldest daughter

and did the honours of the meal with the utmost hospitality, yet with

reserve of manner caused by his evident consciousness that his grammar

and manners were not equal to those of his children and their guest.

There were several daughters and two sons younger than Miss Torrance.

They talked with vivacity.

The conversation soon turned upon the fact that the abundant supply of

cream to which the family were accustomed was not forthcoming.

Strawberries were being served with the tea; some sort of cold pudding

was also on the table; and all this to be eaten without cream,--these

young people might have been asked to go without their supper, so

indignant they were.

Now, Mr. Torrance had been decorously trying to talk of the young

minister's last sermon and of the affairs of the small Scotch church of

which he was an elder, and Miss Torrance was ably seconding his effort

by comparing the sentiments of the sermon to a recent magazine article,

but against her will she was forced to attend to the young people's

clamour about the cream.

It seemed that Trilium, the cow, had recently refused to give her milk.

Mary Torrance was about eighteen; she suddenly gave it as her opinion

that Trilium was bewitched; there was no other explanation, she said, no

other possible explanation of Trilium's extraordinary conduct.

A flush mounted Miss Torrance's face; she frowned at her sister when the

student was not looking.

'It's wonderful, the amount of witchcraft we have about here, Mr.

Howitt,' said the master of the house tentatively to the minister.

Howitt had taken Mary's words in jest. He gave his smooth-shaven face

the twist that with him always expressed ideas wonderful or grotesque.

It was a strong, thin face, full of intelligence.

'I never could have conceived anything like it,' said he. 'I come across

witch tales here, there, everywhere; and the marvellous thing is, some

of the people really seem to believe them.'

The younger members of the Torrance family fixed their eyes upon him

with apprehensive stare.

'You can't imagine anything more degrading,' continued the student, who

came from afar.

'Degrading, of course.' Mr. Torrance sipped his tea hastily. 'The Cape

Breton people are superstitious, I believe.'

An expression that might have betokened a new resolution appeared upon

the fine face of the eldest daughter.

'_We_ are Cape Breton people, father,' she said, with dignified

reproach. 'I hope'--here a timid glance, as if imploring support--'I

hope we know better than to place any real faith in these degrading

superstitions.'

Howitt observed nothing but the fine face and the words that appeared to

him natural.

Torrance looked at them both with the air of an honest man who was still

made somewhat cowardly by new-fashioned propriety.

'I never put much o' my faith in these things myself,' he said at last

in broad accents, 'still,'--an honest shake of the head--'there's queer

things happens.'

'It is like going back to the Middle Ages'--Howitt was still

impervious--'to hear some of these poor creatures talk. I never thought

it would be my lot to come across anything so delightfully absurd.'

'Perhaps for the sake of the ministry ye'd better be careful how ye say

your mind about it,' suggested Mr. Torrance; 'in the hearing of the poor

and uneducated, of course, I mean. But if ye like to make a study o'

that sort of thing, I'd advise ye to go and have a talk with Mistress

Betty M'Leod. She's got a great repertory of tales, has Mistress Betty.'

Mary spoke again. Mary was a young woman who had the courage of her

opinions. 'And if you go to Mistress M'Leod, Mr. Howitt, will you just

be kind enough to ask her how to cure poor Trilium? and don't forget

anything of what she says.'

Miss Torrance gave her sister a word of reproof. There was still upon

her face the fine glow born of a new resolution never again to listen to

a word of witchcraft.

As for Howitt, there came across his clever face the whimsical look

which denoted that he understood Mary's fun perfectly. 'I will go

to-morrow,' he cried. 'When the wise woman has told me who has bewitched

Trilium, we will make a waxen figure and stick pins in it.'

The next day Howitt walked over the hills in search of Mistress Betty

M'Leod. The lake of the Bras d'Or held the sheen of the western sun in

its breast. The student walked upon green slopes far above the water,

and watched the outline of the hills on the other side of the inlet, and

thought upon many things. He thought upon religion and philosophy, for

he was religious and studious; he thought upon practical details of his

present work, for he was anxious for the welfare of the souls under his

charge; but on whatever subject his thoughts dwelt, they came back at

easy intervals to the fair, dignified face of his new friend, Miss

Torrance.

'There's a fine girl for you,' he said to himself repeatedly, with

boyish enthusiasm. He thought, too, how nobly her life would be spent if

she chose to be the helpmeet of a Christian minister. He wondered

whether Mary could take her sister's place in the home circle. Yet with

all this he made no decision as to his own course. He was discreet, and

in minds like his decisions upon important matters are fruits of slow

growth.

He came at last to a farm, a very goodly farm for so hilly a district.

It lay, a fertile flat, in a notch of the green hillside. When he

reached the house yard he asked for Mistress Betty M'Leod, and was led

to her presence. The old dame sat at her spinning-wheel in a farm

kitchen. Her white hair was drawn closely, like a thin veil, down the

sides of her head and pinned at the back. Her features were small, her

eyes bright; she was not unlike a squirrel in her sharp little movements

and quick glances. She wore a small shawl pinned around her spare

shoulders. Her skirts fell upon the treadle of the spinning-wheel. The

kitchen in which she sat was unused; there was no fire in the stove. The

brick floor, the utensils hanging on the walls, had the appearance of

undisturbed rest. Doors and windows were open to the view of the green

slopes and the golden sea beneath them.

'You come from Canada,' said the old dame. She left her spinning with a

certain interested formality of manner.

'From Montreal,' said he.

'That's the same. Canada is a terrible way off.'

'And now,' he said, 'I hear there are witches in this part of the land.'

Whereupon he smiled in an incredulous cultured way.

She nodded her head as if she had gauged his thought. 'Ay, there's many

a minister believes in them if they don't let on they do. I mind----'

'Yes,' said he.

'I mind how my sister went out early one morning, and saw a witch

milking one of our cows.'

'How did you know she was a witch?'

'Och, she was a neighbour we knew to be a witch real well. My sister

didn't anger her. It's terrible unlucky to vex them. But would you

believe it? as long as we had that cow her cream gave no butter. We had

to sell her and get another. And one time--it was years ago, when

Donald and me was young--the first sacrament came round----'

'Yes,' said he, looking sober.

'And all the milk of our cows would give hardly any butter for a whole

year! And at house-cleaning time, there, above the milk shelves, what

did they find but a bit of hair rope! Cows' and horses' hair it was. Oh,

it was terrible knotted, and knotted just like anything! So then of

course we knew.'

'Knew what?'

'Why, that the milk was bewitched. We took the rope away. Well, that

very day more butter came at the churning, and from that time on, more,

but still not so much as ought by rights to have come. Then, one day, I

thought to unknot the rope, and I undid, and undid, and undid. Well,

when I had got it undone, that day the butter came as it should!'

'But what about the sacrament?' asked he.

'That was the time of the year it was. Oh, but I could tell you a sad,

sad story of the wickedness of witches. When Donald and me was young,

and had a farm up over on the other hill, well, there was a poor widow

with seven daughters. It was hard times then for us all, but for her,

she only had a bit of flat land with some bushes, and four cows and some

sheep, and, you see, she sold butter to put meat in the children's

mouths. Butter was all she could sell.

'Well, there came to live near her on the hill an awful wicked old man

and woman. I'll tell you who their daughter is: she's married to Mr.

M'Curdy, who keeps the store. The old man and his wife were awful wicked

to the widow and the fatherless. I'll tell you what they did. Well, the

widow's butter failed. Not one bit more could she get. The milk was just

the same, but not one bit of butter. "Oh," said she, "it's a hard world,

and me a widow!" But she was a brave woman, bound to get along some way.

So, now that she had nothing to sell to buy meal, she made curds of the

milk, and fed the children on that.

'Well, one day the old man came in to see her in a neighbouring way, and

she, being a good woman,--oh, but she was a good woman!--set a dish of

curds before him. "Oh," said he, "these are very fine curds!" So he went

away, and next day she put the rennet in the milk as usual, but not a

bit would the curd come. "Oh," said she, "but I must put something in

the children's mouths!" She was a fine woman, she was. So she kept the

lambs from the sheep all night, and next morning she milked the sheep.

Sheep's milk is rich, and she put rennet in that, and fed the children

on the curd.

'So one day the old man came in again. He was a wicked one; he was

dreadful selfish; and as he was there, she, being a hospitable woman,

gave him some of the curd. "That's good curd," said he. Next day, when

she put the rennet in the sheep's milk, not a bit would the curd come.

She felt it bitterly, poor woman; but she had a fine spirit, and she fed

the children on a few bits of potato she had growing.

'Well, one day, the eldest daughter got up very early to spin--in the

twilight of the dawn it was--and she looked out, and there was the old

woman coming from her house on the hill, with a shawl over her head and

a tub in her arms. Oh, but she was a really wicked one! for I'll tell

you what she did. Well, the girl watched and wondered, and in the

twilight of the dawn she saw the old woman crouch down by one of the

alder bushes, and put her tub under it, and go milking with her hands;

and after a bit she lifted her tub, that seemed to have something in it,

and set it over against another alder bush, and went milking with her

hands again. So the girl said, "Mother, mother, wake up, and see what

the neighbour woman is doing!" So the mother looked out, and there, in

the twilight of the dawn, she saw her four cows in the bit of land,

among the alder bushes, and the old neighbour woman milking away at a

bush. And then the old woman moved her tub likewise to another bush, and

likewise, and likewise, until she had milked four bushes, and she took

up her tub, and it seemed awful heavy, and she had her shawl over it,

and was going up the hill.

'So the mother said to the girl, "Run, run, and see what she has got in

it." For they weren't up to the ways of witches, and they were

astonished like. But the girl, she said, "Oh, mother, I don't like."

Well, she was timid, anyway, the eldest girl. But the second girl was a

romping thing, not afraid of anything, so they sent her. By this time

the wicked old woman was high on the hill; so she ran and ran, but she

could not catch her before she was in at her own door; but that second

girl, she was not afraid of anything, so she runs in at the door, too.

Now, in those days they used to have sailing-chests that lock up; they

had iron bars over them, so you could keep anything in that was a

secret. They got them from the ships, and this old woman kept her milk

in hers. So when the girl bounced in at the door, there she saw that

wicked old woman pouring milk out of the tub into her chest, and the

chest half full of milk, and the old man looking on! So then, of course

they knew where the good of their milk had gone.'

The story was finished. The old dame looked at the student and nodded

her head with eyes that awaited some expression of formal disapproval.

'What did they know?' asked he.

'Know! Oh, why, that the old woman was an awful wicked witch, and she'd

taken the good of their milk.'

'Oh, indeed!' said the student; and then, 'But what became of the widow

and the seven daughters?'

'Well, of course she had to sell her cows and get others, and then it

was all right. But that old man and his wife were that selfish they'd

not have cared if she'd starved. And I tell you, it's one of the things

witches can do, to take the good out of food, if they've an eye to it;

they can take every bit of nouriture out of it that's in it. There were

two young men that went from here to the States--that's Boston, ye know.

Well, pretty soon one, that was named M'Pherson, came back, looking so

white-like and ill that nothing would do him any good. He drooped and he

died. Well, years after, the other, whose name was McVey, came back. He

was of the same wicked stock as the old folks I've been telling ye of.

Well, one day, he was in low spirits like, and he chanced to be talking

to my father, and says he, "It's one of the sins I'll have to 'count for

at the Judgment that I took the good out of M'Pherson's food till he

died. I sat opposite to him at the table when we were at Boston

together, and I took the good out of his food, and it's the blackest sin

I done," said he.

'Oh, they're awful wicked people, these witches! One of them offered to

teach my sister how to take the good out of food, but my sister was too

honest; she said, "I'll learn to keep the good of my own, if ye like."

However, the witch wouldn't teach her that because she wouldn't learn

the other. Oh, but I cheated a witch once. Donald, he brought me a pound

of tea. 'Twasn't always we got tea in those days, so I put it in the tin

box; and there was just a little over, so I was forced to leave that in

the paper bag. Well, that day a neighbour came in from over the hill. I

knew fine she was a witch; so we sat and gossiped a bit; she was a real

pleasant woman, and she sat and sat, and the time of day went by. So I

made her a cup of tea, her and me; but I used the drawing that was in

the paper bag. Said she, "I just dropped in to borrow a bit of tea going

home, but if that's all ye have"--Oh, but I could see her eyeing round;

so I was too sharp for her, and I says, "Well, I've no more in the paper

just now, but if ye'll wait till Donald comes, maybe he'll bring some."

So she saw I was too sharp for her, and away she went. If I'd as much as

opened the tin, she'd have had every grain of good out of it with her

eyes.'

At first the student had had the grave and righteous intention of

denouncing the superstition, but gradually he had perceived that to do

so would be futile. The artistic soul of him was caught by the curious

recital. He remembered now the bidding of Mary Torrance, and thought

with pleasure that he would go back and repeat these strange stories to

Miss Torrance, and smile at them in her company.

'Now, for instance,' he said aloud, 'if a good cow, that is a great pet

in the family, should suddenly cease to give her milk, how would you set

about curing her?'

The dame's small bright eyes grew keener. She moved to her

spinning-wheel and gave it a turn. 'Ay,' she said, 'and whose is the

cow?'

He was not without a genuine curiosity. 'What would you do for _any_ cow

in that case?'

'And is it Torrance's cow?' asked Mistress Betty. 'Och, but I know it's

Torrance's cow that ye're speiring for.'

The young minister was recalled to a sense of his duty. He rose up with

brisk dignity. 'I only asked you to see what you would say. I do not

believe the stories you have been telling me.'

She nodded her head, taking his assertion as a matter of course. 'But

I'll tell you exactly what they must do,' she said. 'Ye can tell Miss

Torrance she must get a pound of pins.'

'A pound of pins!' said he.

'Ay, it's a large quantity, but they'll have them at the store, for it's

more than sometimes they're wanted--a time here, a time there--against

the witches. And she's to boil them in whatever milk the cow gives, and

she's to pour them boiling hot into a hole in the ground; and when she's

put the earth over them, and the sod over that, she's to tether the

animal there, and milk it there, and the milk will come right enough.'

While the student was making his way home along the hillside, through

field and forest, the long arm of the sea turned to red and gold in the

light of the clouds which the sun had left behind when it sank down over

the distant region that the Cape Breton folk call Canada.

The minister meditated upon what he had heard, but not for long. He

could not bring his mind into such attitude towards the witch-tales as

to conceive of belief in them as an actual part of normal human

experience. Insanity, or the love of making a good story out of notions

which have never been seriously entertained, must compose the warp and

woof of the fabric of such strange imaginings. It is thus we account for

most experiences we do not understand.

The next evening the Torrance family were walking to meeting. The

student joined himself to Miss Torrance. He greeted her with the

whimsical look of grave humour. 'You are to take a pound of pins,' he

said.

'I do not believe it would do any good,' she interrupted eagerly.

It struck him as very curious that she should assert her unbelief. He

was too nonplussed to go on immediately. Then he supposed it was part of

the joke, and proceeded to give the other details.

'Mr. Howitt,'--a tremulous pause,--'it is very strange about poor

Trilium, she has always been such a good, dear cow; the children are

very fond of her, and my mother was very fond of her when she was a

heifer. The last summer before she died, Trilium fed out of mother's

hand, and now--she's in perfect health as far as we can see, but father

says that if she keeps on refusing to give her milk he will be obliged

to sell her.'

Miss Torrance, who was usually strong and dignified, spoke now in a very

appealing voice.

'Couldn't you get an old farmer to look at her, or a vet?'

'But why do you think she has suddenly stopped giving milk?' persisted

the girl.

'I am very sorry, but I really don't know anything about animals,' said

he.

'Oh, then if you don't know anything about them----' She paused. There

had been such an evident tone of relief in her voice that he wondered

much what would be coming next. In a moment she said, 'I quite agreed

with you the other night when you said the superstition about witchcraft

was degrading.'

'No one could think otherwise.' He was much puzzled at the turn of her

thought.

'Still, of course, _about animals_, old people like Mistress Betty

M'Leod may know something.'

As they talked they were walking down the street in the calm of the

summer evening to the prayer meeting. The student's mind was intent upon

his duties, for, as they neared the little white-washed church, many

groups were seen coming from all sides across the grassy space in which

it stood. He was an earnest man, and his mind became occupied with the

thought of the spiritual needs of these others who were flocking to hear

him preach and pray.

Inside the meeting-room, unshaded oil lamps flared upon a congregation

most serious and devout. The student felt that their earnestness and

devotion laid upon him the greater responsibility; he also felt much

hindered in his speech because of their ignorance and remote ways of

thought. It was a comfort to him to feel that there was at least one

family among his hearers whose education would enable them to understand

him clearly. He looked with satisfaction at the bench where Mr. Torrance

sat with his children. He looked with more satisfaction to where Miss

Torrance sat at the little organ. She presided over it with dignity and

sweet seriousness. She drew music even out of its squeaking keys.

A few days after that prayer meeting the student happened to be in the

post-office. It was a small, rough place; a wooden partition shut off

the public from the postmistress and her helpers. He was waiting for

some information for which he had asked; he was forced to stand outside

the little window in this partition. He listened to women's voices

speaking on the other side, as one listens to that which in no way

concerns oneself.

'It's just like her, stuck up as she is since she came from school,

setting herself and her family up to be better than other folks.'

'Perhaps they were out of them at the store,' said a gentler voice.

'Oh, don't tell me. It's on the sly she's doing it, and then pretending

to be grander than other folks.'

Then the postmistress came to the window with the required information.

When she saw who was there, she said something else also.

'There's a parcel come for Miss Torrance,--if you happen to be going up

that way,' the postmistress simpered.

The student became aware for the first time that his friendship with

Miss Torrance was a matter of public interest. He was not entirely

displeased. 'I will take the parcel,' he said.

As he went along the sunny road, he felt so light-hearted that, hardly

thinking what he did, he began throwing up the parcel and catching it

again in his hands. It was not large; it was very tightly done up in

thick paper, and had an ironmonger's label attached; so that, though he

paid small attention, it did not impress him as a thing that could be

easily injured. Something, however, did soon make a sharp impression

upon him; once as he caught the parcel he felt his hand deeply pricked.

Looking closely, he saw that a pin was working its way through the thick

paper. After that he walked more soberly, and did not play ball. He

remembered what he had heard at the post-office. The parcel was

certainly addressed to Miss Torrance. It was very strange. He remembered

with displeasure now the assumption of the postmistress that he would be

glad to carry this parcel.

He delivered the pound of pins at the door without making a call. His

mind had never come to any decision with regard to his feeling for Miss

Torrance, and now he was more undecided than ever. He was full of

curiosity about the pins. He found it hard to believe that they were to

be used for a base purpose, but suspicion had entered his mind. The

knowledge that the eyes of the little public were upon him made him

realise that he could not continue to frequent the house merely to

satisfy his curiosity.

He was destined to know more.

That night, long after dark, he was called to visit a dying man, and the

messenger led him somewhat out of the town.

He performed his duty to the dying with wistful eagerness. The spirit

passed from earth while he yet knelt beside the bed. When he was

returning home alone in the darkness, he felt his soul open to the power

of unseen spirit, and to him the power of the spiritual unseen was the

power of God.

Walking on the soft, quiet road, he came near the house where he had

lately loved to visit, and his eye was arrested by seeing a lantern

twinkling in the paddock where Trilium grazed. He saw the forms of two

women moving in its little circle of light; they were digging in the

ground.

He felt that he had a right to make sure of the thing he suspected. The

women were not far from a fence by which he could pass, and he did pass

that way, looking and looking till a beam of the lantern fell full on

the bending faces. When he saw that Miss Torrance was actually there, he

went on without speaking.

After that two facts became known in the village, each much discussed in

its own way; yet they were not connected with each other in the common

mind. One was that the young minister had ceased to call frequently upon

Miss Torrance; the other, that Trilium, the cow, was giving her

milk.

IX

THE GIRL WHO BELIEVED IN THE SAINTS

Marie Verine was a good girl, but she was not beautiful or clever. She

lived with her mother in one flat of an ordinary-looking house in a

small Swiss town. Had they been poorer or richer there might have been

something picturesque about their way of life, but, as it was, there was

nothing. Their pleasures were few and simple; yet they were happier than

most people are--but this they did not know.

'It is a pity we are not richer and have not more friends,' Madame

Verine would remark, 'for then we could perhaps get Marie a husband; as

it is, there is no chance.'

Madame Verine usually made this remark to the Russian lady who lived

upstairs. The Russian lady had a name that could not be pronounced; she

spoke many languages, and took an interest in everything. She would

reply--

'No husband! It is small loss. I have seen much of the world.'

Marie had seen little of the world, and she did not believe the Russian

lady. She never said anything about it, except at her prayers, and then

she used to ask the saints to pray for her that she might have a

husband.

Now, in a village about half a day's journey from the town where Marie

dwelt, there lived a young girl whose name was Céleste. Her mother had

named her thus because her eyes were blue as the sky above, and her face

was round as the round moon, and her hair and eyelashes were like

sunbeams, or like moonlight when it shines in yellow halo through the

curly edges of summer clouds. The good people of this village were a

hard-working, hard-headed set of men and women. While Céleste's father

lived they had waxed proud about her beauty, for undoubtedly she was a

credit to the place; but when her parents died, and left her needy, they

said she must go to the town and earn her living.

Céleste laughed in her sleeve when they told her this, because young

Fernand, the son of the inn-keeper, had been wooing and winning her

heart, in a quiet way, for many a day; and now she believed in him, and

felt sure that he would speak his love aloud and take her home to his

parents. To be sure, it was unknown in that country for a man who had

money to marry a girl who had none; but Fernand was strong to work and

to plan; Céleste knew that he could do what he liked.

It was the time when the April sun smiles upon the meadow grass till it

is very green and long enough to wave in the wind, and all amongst it

the blue scilla flowers are like dewdrops reflecting the blue that hangs

above the gnarled arms of the still leafless walnut trees. The cottage

where Céleste lived was out from the village, among the meadows, and to

the most hidden side of it young Fernand came on the eve of the day on

which she must leave it for ever. Very far off the snow mountains had

taken on their second flush of evening red before he came, and Céleste

had grown weary waiting.

'Good-bye,' said Fernand. He was always a somewhat stiff and formal

young man, and to-night he was ill at ease.

'But,' cried Céleste--and here she wept--'you have made me love you. I

love no one in the world but you.'

'You are foolish,' said he. 'It is, of course, a pity that we must part,

but it cannot be helped. You have no dowry, not even a small one. It

would be unthrifty for the son of an innkeeper to marry a girl without a

sou. My parents would not allow me to act so madly!' and his manner

added--'nor would I be so foolish myself.'

Next day Céleste went up to the town, and went into the market-place to

be hired as a servant.

This was the day of the spring hiring. Many servants were wanting work,

and they stood in the market-place. All around were the old houses of

the square; there was the church and the pastor's house, and the house

and office of the notary, and many other houses standing very close

together, with high-peaked roofs and gable windows. The sun shone down,

lighting the roofs, throwing eaves and niches into strong shadow,

gleaming upon yellow bowls and dishes, upon gay calicoes, upon cheese

and sausages, on all bright things displayed on the open market-stalls,

and upon the faces of the maid-servants who stood to be hired. Many

ladies of the town went about seeking servants: among them was Madame

Verine, and the Russian lady and Marie were with her. When they came in

front of Céleste they all stopped.

'Ah, what eyes!' said the Russian lady--'what simple, innocent, trustful

eyes! In these days how rare!'

'She is like a flower,' said Marie.

Now, they quickly found out that Céleste knew very little about the work

she would have to do; it was because of this she had not yet found a

mistress.

'I myself would delight to teach her,' cried the Russian lady.

'And I,' cried Marie. So Madame Verine took her home.

They taught Céleste many things. Marie taught her to cook and to sew;

the Russian lady taught her to write and to cipher, and was surprised at

the progress she made, especially in writing. Céleste was the more

interesting to them because there was just a shade of sadness in her

eye. One day she told Marie why she was sad; it was the story of

Fernand, how he had used her ill.

'What a shame!' cried Marie, when the brief facts were repeated.

'It is the way of the country,' said the Russian lady. 'These Swiss

peasants, who have so fair a reputation for sobriety, are mercenary

above all: they have no heart.'

Céleste lived with Madame Verine for one year. At the end of that time

Madame Verine arose one morning to find the breakfast was not cooked,

nor the fire lit. In the midst of disorder stood Céleste, with flushed

cheeks and startled eyes, and a letter in her hand.

'Ah, madam,' she faltered, 'what a surprise! The letter, it is from

monsieur the notary, who lives in the market-place, and to me,

madam--_to me_!'

When Madame Verine took the letter she found told therein that an aunt

of Céleste, who had lived far off in the Jura, was dead, and had left to

Céleste a little fortune of five thousand francs, which was to be paid

to her when she was twenty-one, or on her marriage day.

'Ah,' cried Céleste, weeping, 'can it be true? Can it be true?'

'Of course, since monsieur the notary says so.'

'Ah, madam; let me run and see monsieur the notary. Let me just ask him,

and hear from his lips that it is true!'

So she ran out into the town, with her apron over her head, and Marie

made the breakfast.

The Russian lady came down to talk it over. 'The pretty child is

distraught, and at _so small_ a piece of good fortune!' said she.

But when Céleste came in she was more composed. 'It is true,' she said,

with gentle joy, and she stood before them breathless and blushing.

'It will be three years before you are twenty-one,' said Madame Verine;

'you will remain with me.'

'If you please, madam, no,' said Céleste, modestly casting down her

eyes; 'I must go to my native village.'

'How!' they cried. 'To whom will you go?'

Céleste blushed the more deeply, and twisted her apron. 'I have good

clothes; I have saved my year's wages. I will put up at the inn. The

wife of the innkeeper will be a mother to me now I can pay for my

lodging.'

At which Madame Verine looked at the Russian lady, and that lady looked

at her, and said behind her hand, 'Such a baby, and so clever! It is the

mere instinct of wisdom; it cannot be called forethought.'

It is to be observed that, all the world over, however carefully a

mistress may guard her maid-servant, no great responsibility is felt

when the engagement is broken. Madame Verine shrugged her shoulders and

got another servant. Céleste went down to her village.

After that, when Marie walked in the market-place, she used to like to

look at the notary's house, and at him, if she could espy him in the

street. The house was a fine one, and the notary, in spite of iron-grey

hair and a keen eye, good-looking; but that was not why Marie was

interested; it was because he and his office seemed connected with the

romance of life--with Céleste's good fortune.

When summer days grew long, Madame Verine, her friend and daughter, took

a day's holiday, and out of good nature they went to see Céleste.

'Céleste lives like a grand lady now,' cried the innkeeper's wife, on

being questioned. 'She will have me take her coffee to her in bed each

morning.'

'The wages she has saved will not hold out long,' said the visitors.

'When that is finished she gives us her note of hand for the money she

will get when she is married. She has shown us the notary's letter. It

is certainly a tidy sum she will have, and our son has some thoughts of

marrying.'

They saw Céleste, who was radiant; they saw young Fernand, who was

paying his court to her. They returned home satisfied.

It was not long after that when one morning Céleste came into Madame

Verine's house; she was weeping on account of the loss of some of her

money. She had come up to town, she said, to buy her wedding clothes,

for which the notary had been so good as to advance her a hundred

francs, but her pocket had been picked in the train. The money was

gone--quite gone--alas!

So tearful was she that they lent her some money--not much, but a

little. Then she dried her eyes, and said she would also get some things

on credit, promising to pay in a month, for it was then she was to be

married. At the end of the day she came back gaily to show her

treasures.

'When the rejoicings of your wedding are over,' said Madame Verine, 'and

your husband brings you to town to claim the money, you may stay here in

the upper room of this house--it is an invitation.'

In a month came the wedding pair, joyful and blooming. The Russian lady

made them a supper. They lodged in an attic room that Madame Verine

rented. In the morning they went out, dressed in their best, to see the

notary.

An hour later Madame Verine sat in her little salon. The floor was of

polished wood; it shone in the morning light; so did all the polished

curves of the chairs and cabinets. Marie was practising exercises on the

piano.

They heard a heavy step on the stair. The bridegroom came into the room,

agitated, unable to ask permission to enter. He strode across the floor

and sat down weakly before the ladies.

They thought he had been drinking wine, but this was not so, although

his eye was bloodshot and his voice unsteady.

'Can you believe it!' he cried, 'the notary never wrote letters to her;

there was no aunt; there is no money!'

'It is incredible,' said Madame Verine, and then there was a pause of

great astonishment.

'It is impossible!' cried the Russian lady, who had come in.

'It is true,' said the bridegroom hoarsely; and he wept.

And now Céleste herself came into the house. She came within the room,

and looked at the ladies, who stood with hands upraised, and at her

weeping husband. If you have ever enticed a rosy-faced child to bathe

in the sea, and seen it stand half breathless, half terrified, yet

trying hard to be brave, you know just the expression that was on the

face of the child-like deceiver. With baby-like courage she smiled upon

them all.

Now the next person who entered the room was the notary himself. He was

a gentleman of manners; he bowed with great gallantry to the ladies, not

excepting Céleste.

'She is a child, and has had no chance to learn the arts of cunning,'

cried the Russian lady, who had thought that she knew the world.

The notary bowed to her in particular. 'Madam, the true artist is born,

not made.'

Then he looked at Céleste again. There were two kinds of admiration in

his glance--one for her face, the other for her cleverness. He looked at

the weeping husband with no admiration at all, but the purpose in his

mind was steady as his clear grey eye, unmoved by emotion.

'I have taken the trouble to walk so far,' said he, 'to tell this young

man what, perhaps, I ought to have mentioned when he was at my office.

Happily, the evil can be remedied. It is the law of our land that if the

fortune has been misrepresented, a divorce can be obtained.'

Céleste's courage vanished with her triumph. She covered her face. The

husband had turned round; he was looking eagerly at the notary and at

his cowering bride.

'Ah, Heaven!' cried the two matrons, 'must it be?'

'I have walked so far to advise,' said the notary.

All this time Marie was sitting upon the piano-stool; she had turned it

half-way round so that she could look at the people. She was not pretty,

but, as the morning light struck full upon her face, she had the

comeliness that youth and health always must have; and more than that,

there was the light of a beautiful soul shining through her eyes, for

Marie was gentle and submissive, but her mind and spirit were also

strong; the individual character that had grown in silence now began to

assert itself with all the beauty of a new thing in the world. Marie had

never acted for herself before.

She began to speak to the notary simply, eagerly, as one who could no

longer keep silence.

'It would be wrong to separate them, monsieur.'

Madame Verine chid Marie; the notary, no doubt just because he was a man

and polite, answered her.

'This brave young fellow does not deserve to be thus fooled. I shall be

glad to lend him my aid to extricate himself.'

'He does deserve it,' cried Marie. 'Long ago he pretended to have love

for her, just for the pleasure of it, when he had not--that is worse

than pretending to have money! And in any case, it is a _wicked_ law,

monsieur, that would grant a divorce when they are married, and--look

now--left to himself he will forgive her, but he is catching at what you

say. You have come here to tempt him! You dare not go on, monsieur!'

'Dare not, mademoiselle?' said the notary, with a superior air.

'No, monsieur. Think of what the good God and the holy saints would say!

This poor girl has brought much punishment on herself, but--ah,

monsieur, think of the verdict of Heaven!'

'Mademoiselle,' said the notary haughtily, 'I was proposing nothing but

justice; but it is no affair of mine.' And with that he went out

brusquely--very brusquely for a gentleman of such polite manners.

'I am astonished at you, Marie,' said Madame Verine. This was true, but

it was meant as a reproach.

'She is beside herself with compassion,' said the Russian lady; 'but

that is just what men of the world despise most.'

Then Marie went to her room weeping, and the two ladies talked to

Céleste till her soft face had hard lines about the mouth and her eyes

were defiant. Young Fernand slipped out and went again to the

market-place.

'I come to ask your aid, monsieur the notary.'

'I do not advise you.'

'But, monsieur, to whom else can I apply?'

'I am too busy,' said the notary.

Fernand and Céleste walked back to their village, hand in hand, both

downcast, both peevish, but still together.

Now the notary was not what might be called a bad man himself, but he

believed that the world was very bad. He had seen much to confirm this

belief, and had not looked in the right place to find any facts that

would contradict it. This belief had made him hard and sometimes even

dishonest in his dealings with men; for what is the use of being good in

a world that can neither comprehend goodness nor admire it? On the

whole, the notary was much better satisfied with himself than with human

nature around him, although, if he had only known it, he himself had

grown to be the reflex--the image as in a mirror--of what he thought

other men were; it is always so. There was just this much truth in him

at the bottom of his scorn and grumbling--he flattered himself that if

he could see undoubted virtue he could admire it; and there was in him

that possibility of grace.

After he left Madame Verine's door he thought with irritation of the

girl who had rebuked him. Then he began to remember that she was only a

woman and very young, and she had appealed to his heart--ah, yes, he had

a heart. After all, he was not sure but that her appeal was charming.

Then he thought of her with admiration. This was not the result of

Marie's words--words in themselves are nothing; it is the personality of

the speaker that makes them live or die, and personality is strongest

when nourished long in virtue and silence and prayer. When it came to

pass that the notary actually did the thing Marie told him to do, he

began to think of her even with tenderness in his heart.

Now a very strange thing happened. In about a week the notary called on

Madame Verine a second time; he greeted her with all ceremony, and then

he sat down on a little stiff chair and explained his business in his

own brief, dry way.

Marie was not there. The little _salon_, all polished and shining, gave

faint lights and shadows in answer to every movement of its inmates.

Madame Verine, in a voluminous silk gown, sat all attention, looking at

the notary; she thought he was a very fine man, quite a great personage,

and undoubtedly handsome.

'Madam,' began he, 'I am, as you know, at middle age, yet a bachelor,

and the reason, to be plain with you, is that I have not believed in

women. Pardon me, I would not be rude, but I am a business man. I have

no delusions left, yet it has occurred to me that a young woman who

would make the lives of the saints her rule of life--I do not believe

in such things myself, but--in short, madam, I ask for your daughter in

marriage.'

He said it as if he was doing quite a kind thing, as, indeed, he thought

he was. Madame Verine thought so too, and with great astonishment, and

even some apologies, gave away her daughter with grateful smiles.

Marie was married to the notary, and he made her very happy. At first

she was happy because he had good manners and she had such a loving

heart that she loved him. After a few years he found out that she was

too good for him, and then he became a better man.

X

THE PAUPERS' GOLDEN DAY

Betty Lamb was a comely girl; she was big to look at, being tall and

strong. She was never plump; she was never well clothed, not even in the

best days of her youth. She had been brought up in the work-house; after

that she belonged to no one. Her mind was a little astray: she had

strong, rude, strange ideas of her own; she would not be humble and work

day in, day out, like other folk, and for that reason she never throve

in the world. She lived here and there, and did this and that. All the

town knew her; she was just 'Betty Lamb'; no one expected aught of her.

It was a small town in the west of Scotland. On different sides of it

long lanes of humble cottages straggled out into the fields; the

cottages had grey stone walls and red tiled roofs. There were new grey

churches in the town, and big buildings, and streets of shops. The

people in those days thought these very fine; they thought less about

the real glory of the town--a ruined abbey which stood upon an open

heath just beyond the houses.

Three walls, two high gothic windows with the slender mullions unbroken,

a few stately columns broken off at different heights from the ground,

and one fragment of the high arch of the nave standing up against the

sky in exquisite outline--these formed the ruin. It was built of the red

sandstone that in its age takes upon it a delicate bloom of pink and

white; it looked like a jewel in the breast of the grey hill country.

Furze grew within the ruin and for acres on all sides. Sheep and goats

came nibbling against the old altar steps. A fringe of wallflower and

grass grew upon the top of the highest arch and down the broken

fragments of the wall.

All around the stately hills looked down upon the town and the ruin, and

the sky that bent over was more often than not full of cloud, soft and

grey.

Betty Lamb was getting on to middle age, about thirty, when she had a

baby. They had put her again in the poorshouse, but she rose when her

baby was but a day old and went away from the place.

It was summer time then; the sky relented somewhat; there was sunshine

between the showers, and sometimes a long fair week of silvery weather,

when a white haze of lifting moisture rose ever, like incense, from the

hills, and the light shone white upon the yellow bloom of the furze.

Betty Lamb found the ambry niche in the wall of the ruin at the side of

the place where the altar had been. She laid her baby there. That was

his cradle, and by sunlight and moonlight she was heard singing loud

songs to him. The people were afraid of going too near her at that time.

'It is dangerous,' said they, 'to touch an animal when she has her young

with her.'

As years went on Betty Lamb and her little boy spent summer after summer

upon the moor. The child was not christened, unless, indeed, the dew

falling from the sacred stones and the pity of God for fatherless

innocents had christened him. In this world, at least, his name was

written in no book of life, for he had no name.

He grew to be a little lithe lad. Then it was that in every pickle of

mischief where a little lad could be this elf-child, with his black eyes

and curly auburn hair, was to be found. So maddening indeed were his

naughty tricks that the townspeople spoke not so often of beating him,

as they would have beaten a human child, but of wringing his neck like a

young thing that had no right to live. Yet it was more often in word

than in deed that punishment of any sort was inflicted, for the

preliminary stage was perforce, 'first catch your boy,' and that was far

from easy.

Even when the catching was accomplished the beating did not always come.

One day the minister of the Kirk looked out upon his glebe. His

favourite cow, with a bridle in her mouth, was being galloped at

greatest speed around the field, Betty's lad standing tip-toe upon her

back. The minister, with the agility which unbounded wrath gave him,

caught the boy' and swung his cane.

'I am going to thrash you,' said he.

'Ay, ye maun do that.' The small face was drawn to the aspect of a grave

judge--'ye maun do that; it's yer juty.'

The minister, who had looked upon his intention rather in the light of

natural impulse, felt the less inclination for the task. 'Are you not

afraid of being beaten?' he asked.

'Aweel'--an air of profound reflection--'I'm thinking I can even it ony

day wi' ridin' on a coo's back when she'll rin like yon.'

The sunlight of habitual benevolence began to break through the cloud of

wrath upon the good minister's face. 'If I let you off, laddie, what

will you do for me in return?'

An answering gleam of generosity broke upon the sage face of the child.

'I'll fair teach ye how to dae't ye'sel'.'

The lad grew apace. The neighbours said that he showed 'a caring' for

his mother, but no one held toward him a helping hand. They were so sure

that no good could come of him or of her. The mother had taken to

drink, and one day it was found that the lad was gone. Just as he had

often slipped from the grasp of one or other of the angry townsmen,

dodged, darted, and disappeared for the moment, so now it seemed that he

had slipped from the grasp of the town, run quickly and disappeared. No

one knew why he had gone, or whither, or to what end.

Betty Lamb remained in the town, a fine figure of a woman, but bowed in

the shoulders, dirty, and clad in rags. At last, when her strong

defiance of poverty and need would no longer serve her, she was seen to

go about from door to door in the early dawn, raking among the ashes for

such articles as she chose to put in an old sack and carry upon her

back. The townsfolk honestly thought that all had been done that could

be done to make a decent woman of her, and now in her old age she must

needs go down to the gutter.

One day a man came to the town with circus pictures and a bucket of

paste. He pasted his pictures upon all the blank spaces of walls which

he could find. Great was the joy of the children who stood and stared,

their little hearts made glad by novelty and colour. Great was the

surprise of the older folk, who said, 'It is a new thing in the world

when so great a show as this comes out of the accustomed track of shows

to erect its tent in our small town!' Yet so it was; from some whim of

the manager, or of some one who had the ear of the manager, the thing

was decreed.

Upon these circus pictures there figured, in a series of many wonderful

harlequin attitudes, a certain Signor Lambetti. Very foreign was the

curl of his hair and the waxen ends of his moustache; very magnificent

was his physique; he wore the finest of silken tights and crimson small

clothes, and medals were depicted hanging upon his breast.

When at length the circus came for that one night's entertainment and

the huge tent was set up upon the common not far from the old red ruin,

all the town flocked to see the brilliant spectacle. The minister was

there, and what was more, his wife and daughters too; they were far

grander than he was, and wore silken furbelows and fringed shawls. The

minister paid for the best seats for them to sit in. All the shopkeepers

were there; every man, woman and child in all the town who could find as

much as sixpence to pay for standing room was there. But the strangest

circumstance was that before the show began a man went out from the

brightly-lit doorway and called in a loud voice to the beggars and

little ragged boys and girls who had come to survey the tent on the

outside, and he brought them all in and gave them a good part of the

tent to sit in, although they had not sixpence to pay, nor even a penny.

Ah! in those days it was a very grand sight. There were elephants who

performed tricks, and camels who walked about with men and bundles on

their backs just as they do in eastern deserts, and there were wonderful

ladies who dressed and behaved like fairies, and who rode standing

tip-toe on the backs of horses and jumped through swinging rings. But

the crowd had not read the circus bills and the newspapers from all the

neighbouring cities for nothing. They were a canny Scotch crowd; they

were not to be taken in by mere glitter, no, not the smallest barefoot

boy nor the most wretched beggar, for they knew very well that the real

crisis of the evening was to be the appearance of Signor Lambetti, and

the word 'wonderful' was not to be spoken until his feats began to be

performed.

At length he came outside the curtain upon which all eyes had long been

fixed. The curl of his hair and the waxed ends of his moustache proved

him to be beyond doubt from foreign parts. He was indeed a most grand

and handsome gentleman. His dress was, if anything, more superb than it

had been in the pictures; all his well-formed muscles showed through the

silken gauze that he wore. His velvet trappings were trimmed with gold

lace and his medals shone like gold.

He walked upon a tight rope away up in the peaked roof of the tent; he

held a wand in his hand by which to balance himself and in the other

hand a cup of tea which he drank in the very middle of his walk;

tossing it off, bowing to the crowd below, and bringing the cup and

saucer to the other end in safety.

The crowd gave deep sighs, partly of satisfaction for being permitted to

see so wonderful a sight, partly out of relief for the safety of the

performer. 'Ay me,' they said to one another, 'did ye ever see the licht

o' that?' It meant more from them than the loudest clamour of applause,

yet they applauded also.

Then Signor Lambetti, looking quite as fresh and jaunty as at first,

ascended a small platform, standing out upon it in the full light of all

the lamps. He made a little speech to the effect that he was now going

to perform a feat which was so difficult and dangerous that hitherto he

had kept it solely for the benefit of crowned heads, before whom on many

occasions he had had the privilege of appearing. He said, in an airy

way, that the reason he did the town the honour of beholding this most

wonderful of all his feats was merely that he had taken a liking to the

place.

'Ay, but he's grond,' said the little barefoot boys to one another as

they huddled against the front of the stand allotted to them. 'Ay me,

but he's grond'; and all the rest of the townsfolk said the same to

themselves or each other, but they expressed it in all the different

ways of that dignified caution common to the Scotch.

There was a series of swings, one trapeze fixed higher than another,

like a line of gigantic steps, to the very pinnacle of the tent. 'The

Signor' announced that he was going to swing himself up upon these

hanging bars until he reached the topmost, and from that he would leap

through the air down, down into the lighted abyss below, and catch a

rope that was stretched at the foot of the Grand Stand.

Merely to hear him tell what he was going to do made the crowd draw

breath with thrills of joyful horror.

Up and up he went, swinging himself with lissome grace, raising each

trapeze with the force of his swing until he could reach the one above

it.

He looked smaller as he travelled higher in his wonderful flying

progress. The little boys had not breath left now even to say, 'Ay me,

but he's grond.' There was silence among all the crowd.

To every one in all that crowd--to all except one--the spectacle was

that of a strange man performing a strange feat; one poor woman present

saw a different sight, one alone in all that crowd knew that the acrobat

was not a stranger.

In a corner of the beggars' gallery sat Betty Lamb. Dirty and clothed in

rags as she was, she held up her head at this hour with the old queenly

defiance of her youthful days. Her eyes, bleared and sunken, had

descried her son; her mother's heart, mad though all pronounced her to

be, had vibrated to the first sound of her son's voice. She knew him as

certainly as if she had seen him standing before her again, the little

lad of past years, or the infant cradled in the ambry of the ruined

chancel.

The monarchs of whom Lambetti had been glibly speaking were not more

noble in rank or more surrounded with glory in the thought of Betty Lamb

than was this hero of the circus, and he her son! What constitutes

glory? Is it not made up of the glare of lamps and the wearing of

shining clothes, the shout of a thousand voices in applause, the glance

of a thousand eyes in admiration, and the renown that spreads into the

newspapers? In the mind of Betty Lamb there was no room for gradations;

she knew glory, she knew shame; she herself had sunk to shame; but now

that was past, her son had attained to glory, and her soul went out, as

it were, from the circumstances of her own degradation and accepted his

glory as her own.

They said (the townsfolk said) that Betty Lamb had not lacked

opportunity. Ah well, God knows better than we what to each soul may be

its opportunity.

Betty Lamb watched her son in his perilous upward flight, and, for the

first time in her life, prayed that Heaven would forgive her misdeeds.

By some inborn instinct she assumed that it was this prayer she must

pray in order to obtain that desire of her eyes, his safety. When he

reached the highest swing, when he made his leap from that awful height

and caught the lower rope, there had come a change in Betty Lamb's soul.

It had seemed hours, nay, years to her, the space of time in which he

was swinging himself up and leaping down. Perhaps, half-witted as she

had been, this was in reality her life, not the other that for sixty

years she had been visibly living. She saw that his eye was fixed upon

her; she knew that the kisses were thrown to her. She rose and walked

erect, in her heart a new sense of responsibility and of the value of

life.

Next day in Betty Lamb's cellar-room a shadow darkened the doorway, and

her son stood before her. He did not kiss her--that had not been their

way, even when he was an infant and she had sung her songs to him in the

lonely ruin--but he bowed to her with all the foreign graces that he had

learned, just as if she were one of the queens before whom he had

performed. She feasted her eyes upon him.

He looked round upon the cellar. 'You must not live here any longer,'

said he.

For the first time in her life humility reigned in her heart and she

resigned her gypsy freedom. 'I'm thinking,' she replied modestly, 'that

it's nae fit for the mither of sich as ye are noo.'

With the minister Lambetti left money that would defray the expenses of

a decent habitation for his mother, and, to the wonder of all, from that

day forth the mother lived in it decently. She was even charitable with

her little store; she was even known to raise the fallen.

When she was dead Lambetti was dead too. He had lived his life fast,

and, if gold be of worth, it seemed as if he had lived it to some

purpose. Lambetti left money to the town, money for two purposes which

in due time the long-headed townsmen carried into effect. An asylum was

built upon the moor; it is called 'Betty Lamb's Home for the Young and

the Aged.' The old Abbey also was walled in; lawns and flower beds were

spread about the broken stones, and where the walls might totter they

were supported. The honour of this change too is ascribed to the famous

son of Betty Lamb, who had no name but his mother's.

XI

THE SOUL OF A MAN

CHAPTER I

A man was standing on one of the highroads in the south of

Gloucestershire. He was a man of science; his tools and specimens were

in his hand, and he was leaning against the wayside paling, enjoying a

well-earned rest. A long flock of birds fluttered over the autumn

fields; beneath them a slow ploughman trudged with his horses, breaking

the yellow stubble. The sky hung low, full of sunshine yet full of

haze--an atmosphere of blue flame, and the earth was bright with the

warm autumn colours of woods and hedgerow.

Just as the birds were flying past, a young woman came by upon the road,

treading with quick powerful step upon the fallen leaves. She was a poor

woman; her beauty, which would have been almost perfect in a simpler

gown, was marred by garments cut in cheap conformity to fashionable

dress. It could not be hidden, however, and her large symmetrical

figure, swinging as she walked, attracted the attention of the man; as

he stood there, leaning against the paling, he felt by no means

disinclined to while away his hour of rest by a few soft words with the

comely stranger. If he had put his thoughts into words, he would have

held it as good luck that she had come to amuse his leisure, thinking

very little about luck as it concerned her. His dog lying at his feet

stirred to look at the woman, and the man, following the same instinct

of nature, accosted her.

'Can you tell me, my girl, what time it is?'

She stopped short and looked at him. 'That I can't, sir,' she said in

clear hearty tones, and turned to continue her walk.

'But tell me what time you think it is, my good girl; I am not good at

reading the sun.'

She turned again, and looked at him with a longer pause, but, if there

was suspicion or disapproval in her thoughts, she expressed nothing in

her face.

'Yer a gent; I'd 'a thought ye'd 'a had a watch.'

'But mine is at the watchmaker's getting mended,' he said with a smile.

He was neither young nor handsome, but he was clever, and that goes

further than either in dealing with a woman.

She still stood staring at him in rude independence.

'The shadows is longer 'an they was a while by; mebbe it's three.'

He sighed and shifted his position wearily against the paling, as though

faint with fatigue.

'You can't tell me of any place near where I can get something to eat? I

have been working hard since daybreak, and now I am out of my reckoning,

and tired and hungry.' He glanced down at his tools and earth-stained

clothes.

He won his wish; the woman, who would not have tarried a moment for

selfish pleasure, remained out of generous pity.

'I've the piece mother put up, mebbe it's big enou' for we two.'

'But I could not think of taking your luncheon,' he exclaimed, with a

gallantry that was meant to be impressive, but was quite lost on his

practical companion. She proceeded to open her parcel and examine the

contents to see whether or not there was enough for two. He also

examined it critically with his eyes, in some alarm at her prompt

response to his appeal, but the thick slices of bread and meat, if not

dainty, were clean, and of excellent quality.

She took the largest and thickest bit and thrust it into his hand, very

much as a mother would feed her child with the portion she considered

its fair share.

''Ere, ye may 'ev that, fur I shan't want it.'

'You are very kind,' he said, with a touch of sarcasm too fine for her.

It appeared that, having taken out the food, she thought well to make

her own meal, for she went a few steps farther on, and, sitting down on

the grass with her back to the paling, began to eat. A large tuft of

weeds grew midway between him and her. Truly we can foresee consequences

but a very little way in our dealings with a fellow-creature, and this

man, as he stood munching his bread, uncertain how to proceed in winning

favour from the bold beauty, was hardly pleased with the result of his

encounter. His dog went and laid its head upon her knee, and she fed it

with crumbs; its master, after watching them a minute, stepped out on

the road with the intention of sitting down between them and the weeds.

As he did so he caught sight, as he thought, of a man seated in the very

place he intended to occupy. So strong was the impression that he

started and stared; but again, as before, there was no one to be seen.

The sunshine was bright upon all things; the palings were so far apart

that he could see everything in the fields behind; there was no one far

or near but the ploughman at half a field's distance, and they two, and

the dog.

The woman turned coolly round and looked through the paling, as if she

supposed he had seen something behind her. 'Was't a haër?' she asked,

eyeing him with interest; 'ye ain't feared o' the like o' that?'

'No, it was not a hare; I did not see a hare.'

'What was't ye seed then?' she asked, looking at him with bold

determination.

'What did I see?' he repeated vaguely, 'I saw nothing.'

'Thought ye looked as if ye'd seed something',' she remarked

incredulously, and then went on eating and feeding the dog, as

indifferent to his presence as she was to the presence of the weeds.

'Are you going far to-night?' he asked at length, thinking he would make

more progress toward friendship before he sat down.

'To th' town.'

'Indeed, as far as that! Which town, may I ask?' he said, with

mechanical politeness, for his mind was running on what he had seen.

'Yer a fool and noä mistake,' she replied with emphasis. 'There's but

one town wi'in a walk.'

'On the contrary, I am considered a man of great learning,' he replied,

with more eager self-assertion than he could hitherto have believed

possible under the circumstances.

'Is't larning ye've got?' she asked, with much greater interest than she

had before evinced.

'Yes; I am a man who spends his life seeking for knowledge.'

'Are ye wiser ner parson?'

'Very much wiser,' replied the man of science, with honest conviction.

She looked much more impressed than he had hoped; and thinking that he

had made himself sufficiently interesting, he began to speak about her

own affairs, supposing they would please her better.

'You are not a married woman?' he said, looking at her ringless hand.

'Married or no,' she replied, 'it's nowt to you.'

'I beg your pardon; everything which concerns such a beautiful woman

must be of interest to me.'

At that she laughed outright in hard derision, and went on eating her

bread and meat.

'But won't you tell me if you are married or not?' he pleaded, pursuing

a subject which he thought must interest her. He was surprised to see

the sudden expression of womanly sorrow that came over her face, giving

her eyes new depth and light. She answered him sadly, looking past him

into the sunny distance--

'No, nor like to be.'

'I must disagree with you there. If you are not married yet, I am sure

you will be very soon. I never saw a more likely lassie than yourself.'

Manlike, he was quite unconscious of the consummate impertinence of the

form this compliment had taken; but afterwards he realised it when his

idle words recurred to his mind.

She turned her eyes full upon him, and said with energy: 'Ye know nowt

at all about it;' and then added more meditatively, 'neither do

parson.'

She had been so absorbed in her thoughts for a few minutes that she had

ceased to stroke the dog, and, resenting this, it raised its silky head

from her lap and laid it upon her breast. Thus reminded, she smiled down

into the eyes of the dog and caressed it, pressing its head closer

against her bosom. The man stood a few paces away, watching these two

beautiful creatures as they sat in the hazy autumn sunlight, with their

background of weeds and moss-grown paling. He felt baffled and

perplexed, for he knew that he stood apart, excluded from their

companionship by something he could not define. So intolerable did this

feeling become that he resolved to break through it, and made a hasty

movement to sit down beside them; but, as he stepped forward, he was

suddenly aware that there was another man in the place he would have

taken, embracing and protecting the girl. He swore a loud oath, and

flung himself backwards to stand by the hedge on the opposite side of

the road, that he might the better review the situation. It was all as

it had been before--that quiet autumn landscape--only the woman appeared

much interested in his sudden movements.

'What was't ye seed; was't a snaïke?' she inquired loudly, at the same

time moving her skirts to look for that dangerous reptile.

'No,' he shouted, putting his whole energy into the word.

'What was't ye seed, cutting them capers as if ye was shot, an' saying

o' words neyther fit fur heaven above nor earth beneath?'

So loudly did she ask, and so resolutely did she wait for an answer,

that he was forced into speech. 'I don't know,' he said, with another

oath, milder than the first.

'Well, sure enow,' she said, still speaking loudly, ''ere's somethin'

awful queer, ye says yer a man that's got larning more ner parson, an'

ye sees somethin', an' can't tell what ye's seed. That's twice this

short while; are ye often took bad the like o' that?'

The bold derision of this speech fell without effect upon its object,

because he perceived a gleam of mischievous intelligence in her eyes

which she had intended to conceal, but she was no adept in the art of

concealment. The conviction that the woman knew perfectly what he had

seen and did not in reality despise him for his conduct, took the sting

from her jeers but did not make his position pleasanter. The repeated

shock to his nerves had produced a chilly feeling of depression and

almost fear, which he could not immediately shake off, and he stood back

against the opposite hedge, with his half-eaten bread in his hand,

conscious that he looked and felt more like a whipped schoolboy than, as

he had fondly imagined when he first stopped the woman, the hero of a

rural love scene. That was nothing; he was, as he had described

himself, a man who devoted his life to the search for knowledge, and

personal consciousness was almost lost in the intense curiosity which

the circumstances had aroused in him. With the trained mind of one

accustomed to investigation, he instantly perceived that his only clue

to the explanation of the phenomenon lay in the personality of the

woman. His one eager desire was to probe her thought through and

through, but how was he to approach the interior portals of a mind

guarded by a will as free and strong as his own? He would fain have

bound down her will with strong cords and analysed the secrets of her

mind with ruthless vivisection. But how? His tact, trained by all the

subtleties of a life cast in cultured social relations, was unequal to

the occasion, and, fearing to lose ground by a false step, he remained

silent.

The woman finished eating and shook herself free of the crumbs. He

supposed, almost with a sense of desperation, that she was about to

leave him before he could begin his inquiry, but instead of moving she

motioned him to come near, and he went, and stood on the road in front

of her.

'Ye says yer a man o' larning, an' I b'lieves ye, she began.

He was about to reply that he was only a seeker after truth, but he was

checked by the knowledge that she would accept no answer she could not

understand. He fell back on the truth as it was to her, and said

simply, 'Yes.'

'I wants to ask ye two questions; will ye answer like an honest man?'

She had laid aside all her loud rudeness, and was speaking with intense

earnestness--an earnestness that won his entire respect.

'I will indeed answer you honestly, if I can answer.'

'Then tell me this--What's the soäl o' a man?'

He stood with lips sealed, partly by surprise at the question, and

partly by self-acknowledged ignorance of the answer.

'The soäl o' a man,' she repeated more distinctly, 'ye knows what I mean

surely?'

Yes, he knew what she meant, but he knew also that his own most honest

convictions hovered between a materialist philosophy and faith in the

spiritual unseen. If at that moment he could have decided between the

two he would gladly have done so, for the sake of the eager woman

sitting at his feet, but he knew that he did not know which was the

truth.

She, still labouring under the impression that she had not made her

meaning plain, endeavoured to explain. 'Ye knows when a man dies,

there's two parts to him; one they buries, and one goes--' she pointed

upward with her thumb, not irreverently, but as merely wishing to

indicate a fact without the expense of words.

'Yes, I understand what you mean,' he said slowly, 'and under that

theory, the soul----'

'Under what?' she said sharply.

'I mean that if you say the soul is divided from the body at death----'

'But it is--ain't it?' she interrupted.

'Yes, it is,' he said, feeling that it was better to perjure himself

than to shake her faith.

'Go on,' she said, 'for parson says the soäl is the thing inside that

thinks; but when a man's luny, ye knows--off his head like--has he no

soäl then? I've looked i' the Catechis', an' i' Bible, an' i'

Prayer-book, an' fur the life o' me, I doän't know.'

'I don't wonder at that,' he said, with mechanical compassion, casting

about in his mind for some possible motive for her extraordinary

vehemence.

He felt as certain, standing there, that this was a true woman, true to

all the highest attributes of her nature, as if he had been able to

weigh all the acts of her life and find none of them wanting. In the

midst of his perplexity he found time to ask himself whence he had this

knowledge. Did he read it in the lines of her face, or was it some

unseen influence of her mind upon his own? He had only time to question,

not to answer, for she looked up in his face with the trust and

expectation of a child, awaiting his words.

He spoke. 'You say when a man dies he is divided into two parts--the

body that rots and the part "that lives elsewhere."' He was speaking

very slowly and distinctly. 'If that part of a man which lives goes to

Heaven, where everything is quite different from this, he could have no

use for most of his thoughts--what we call opinions, for they are formed

on what he sees, and hears, and feels here. Look here!'--he held out his

arm and moved it up and down from the elbow--'there are nerves and

muscles; behind them is something we call life--we don't know what it

is. And behind your thoughts and feeling there is the same life--we

don't know what it is. The part of you that you say goes to Heaven must

be that life. If you ask me what I think, I think the greater part of

what you call mind is part of your body. If your body can live a spirit

life, so can it; but it would need as much changing first.'

It was most extraordinary to him to see the avidity with which she drank

in his words, and also the intelligence with which she seemed to master

them, for she cried--

'What's i' the soäl then? When ye _will_ to do a thing agen all costs,

is that i' the soäl?'

'Certainly the spirit must be the self, and the will, as far as we know,

is that self--more that self than anything else is.' He spoke in the

pleased tone of a schoolmaster who finds that the mind beneath his

touch is being moulded into the right shape; and besides he supposed he

could question her next.

'I _knowed_ that,' she said, with an intensity of conviction that

confounded her listener, 'I _knowed_ the soäl was will.'

'It must be intelligence, and will, and probably memory,' he said,

beguiled into the idea that she was interested in the nicety of his

theory, 'but not in any sense that activity of mind which shows itself

in the opinions most men conceive so important.'

But of this she took no heed. 'When a man's off his head or par'lysed,

wi' no more life in him than babe unborn--yet when he's living and not

dead--where's his soäl then? Parson he says the soäl's sleeping inside

him afore going to glory, like a grub afore it turns into a fly; but I

asked him how he knowed, and he just said he knowed, an' I mun b'lieve,

and that's no way to answer an honest woman.'

'He did not really know.'

'Well, tell what you knows,' she said.

'Indeed, I do not know anything about it.'

'Ye doän't know!'

'I do not know.'

The animation of hope slowly faded from her face, giving place to a look

of bitter disappointment. It was as if a little child, suddenly denied

some darling wish, should have strength to restrain its tears and mutely

acquiesce in the inevitable.

'Then there's nowt to say,' she said, rising, sullen in the first moment

of pain.

'But you'll tell me why you have asked?' he begged; 'I am very sorry

indeed that I cannot answer.'

'Noä, I'll not tell ye, fur it's no concern o' yours; but thank ye

kindly, sir, all the same. Yer an honest man. Good-day.'

With that she walked resolutely away, nor would she accept his offer of

payment for the food she had given. He stood and watched her, feeling

checkmated, until he saw her exchange greetings with the ploughman, who

reached the end of his furrow as she passed the side of the field.

Seeing this, he took up his specimens and walked slowly in the same

direction, waiting for the ploughman's next return. As he stood at the

hedge he noticed that the labourer, who appeared to be a middle-aged man

of average intelligence, surveyed him with more than ordinary interest.

'Good-day,' he said.

'Good-day, sir.' There was a clank of the chains, a shout and groan to

the horses, and they stopped beside the hedge.

'Can you tell me the name of the young woman who passed down the road

just now?'

'Jen Wilkes, sir; "Jen o' the glen" they calls 'er, for she lives in the

holler down there, a bit by on the town road, out of West Chilton.'

'She has not lived here long, surely; she seems a north country woman by

her speech.'

'Very like, sir; it's a while by sin' she came with 'er mother to live

i' Chilton.'

It was evident that the ploughman had much more to say, and that he

wished to say it, but his words did not come easily.

'Can you tell me anything more about her?' The man rubbed his coarse

beard down upon his collar, and clanked his chains, and made guttural

sounds to his horses, which possibly explained to them the meaning he

did not verbally express. Then he looked up and made a facial

contortion, which clearly meant that there was more to be said

concerning Jen if any one could be found brave enough to say it.

'I feel assured she is everything that is good and respectable.'

At this the ploughman could contain himself no longer, but heaving up

one shoulder and looking round to see that there was no one to hear, he

blurted out--''Ave you seen 'er shadder, sir?'

'Her what?'

''Er shadder. I seen you so long with 'er on the road I thought maybe

you'd tried to 'ave a kiss. Gentlemen mostly thinks a sight of Jen's

looks; an' it ain't no harm as I knows on to kiss a tidy girl, if

y'ain't married, or th' missus don't object.'

'And if I did, what has that to do with it? What do you mean by her

shadow?'

'Oh, I dunno; I h'ain't seen nothing myself; but they says, whenever any

has tried to be friendly with 'er, they's seed something not just o' the

right sort. They calls it 'er shadder--but I dunno, I h'ain't seen

nothing myself.'

When we are suddenly annoyed, by whatever cause, we are apt to vent our

annoyance upon the person nearest to us; and at this unlooked-for

corroboration of his unpleasant vision, the gentleman said rudely,

'You're not such a fool as to believe such confounded trash as that, are

you?'

'No sir, I'm no fool,' said the ploughman sulkily, starting his horses

to go up the furrow. In vain the other called out an attempted apology,

and tried to delay him; the accustomed shout and clank of the chains was

all he got in answer. The birds that had settled upon the field rose

again at the return of the horses, and curveted in a long fluttering

line above their heads. The man on the road turned reluctantly away,

and, too perplexed almost for thought, walked off to catch his

home-bound train.

CHAPTER II

The man of science, Skelton by name, passed some seven days in business

and pleasure at home among men of his own class, and then, impelled by

an intolerable curiosity, he went to seek the home of the woman with

whom he had so strange a meeting. Concerning the mad delusion from which

he had suffered in her presence, his mind would give him no rest. Some

further effort he must make to understand the cause of an experience

which he could not reason from his memory. The effort might be futile;

he could form no plan of action; yet he found himself again upon the

highroad which led from the nearest station to the village of West

Chilton.

The autumn leaf that had bedecked the trees was lying upon the ground,

its brightness soiled and tarnished. The cloud rack hung above, a vault

of gloom in which the upper winds coursed sadly.

'This is the field,' said Skelton within himself. 'The ploughman has

finished his work, but the crows are still flapping about it. I wonder

if they are the same crows! That is the clump of weeds by which she sat;

it was as red as flame then, but now it is colourless as the cinders of

a fire that is gone out.'

His words were like straws, showing the current of his thoughts.

Just then in the west the cloud masses in the horizon, being moved by

the winds, rent asunder, exposing the land to the yellow blaze of the

setting sun. The distant hills stood out against the glow in richer

blue, and far and near the fields took brighter hues--warm brown of

earth ready to yield the next harvest, yellow of stubble lands at rest,

bright green of slopes that fed the moving cows. There were luminous

shadows, too, that gathered instantly in the copses, as if they were the

forms of dryads who could sport unseen in the murk daylight, but must

fly under each shrub for refuge in the sudden sunshine. Close at his

feet lay the patch of cabbages--purple cabbages they were, throwing back

from each glossy leaf and stalk infinite gradations of crimson light.

Parts of the leaves were not glossy but were covered with opaque bloom

of tender blue, and here and there a leaf had been broken, disclosing

scarlet veins. They were very beautiful--Skelton stood looking down into

their depth of colour.

It had been difficult for him to conjecture a possible cause for the

phantom he had thought he saw a week before, but one theory which had

floated in his mind had been that from these cabbages, which had lain a

trifle too long in sun and moisture; gases might have arisen which had

disturbed his senses. It was true that his theory did not account for

other instances of the same optical delusion to which the talk of the

ploughman had seemed to point, but Skelton could not bring himself to

attach much importance to his words. He meditated on them now as he

stood.

'I dare not go to the young woman and ask her to show me her "shadder."

If she knew I was here she would only try to defeat my purpose. I _can_

only interview her neighbours; and this first rustic whom I questioned

shut himself up like an oyster; if all the rest act in this way, what

can I do? And if I can hear all the vulgar superstition there is to be

heard, will there be in the whole of it the indication of a single

fact?'

So he mused by the road-side while the sun hung in the dream temple of

fire made by the chasm of cloud. Then the earth moved onward into the

night, and he walked on upon his curious errand.

The darkness of evening had already fallen, and he was still about a

mile from the village when he discerned a woman coming towards him on

the road. It was the very woman about whom his mind was occupied. There

was a house at one side; the gate leading to it was close to him, and,

not wishing to be recognised at the moment, he turned in through it to

wait in the darkness of some garden shrubs till she had passed.

But she did not pass. She came up, walking more and more slowly, till

she stood on the road outside the gate. She looked up and down the road

with a hesitating air, and then, clasping her hands behind her, leaned

back against a heavy gate-post and composed herself to wait. There was

light enough to see her, for there was a moon behind the clouds, and

also what was left of the daylight in the west was glimmering full upon

her. The house was close to the road--apparently an old

farmstead--turning blank dark walls and roofs to them, so that it was

evidently uninhabited or else inhabited only at the other side. The

young woman looked up at it, apparently not without distrust, but even

to her keen scrutiny there was no sign of life. For the rest, the road

lay through a glen, the village was out of sight, and the hills around

them were like the hills in Hades--silent, shadowy and cold.

It seemed an unearthly thing that she should have come there to stand

and lean against the gate, as if to shut him into his self-sought trap;

and there was no impatience about this woman--she stood quite still in

that dark, desolate place, as though she was perfectly contented to wait

and wait--for what? how long?--these were the questions he asked

himself. Was this dark house the abode of evil spirits with which she

was in league? and if so, what result would accrue to him? There are

circumstances which suggest fantastic speculations to the most learned

man.

At length he heard a footfall. He could not tell where at first, but, as

it approached, he saw a countryman in a carter's blouse coming across

the opposite field. He got through the hedge and came toward the gate.

Then the girl spoke in her strong voice and north-country accent, but

Skelton would hardly have known the voice again, it was so soft and sad.

'I've been waiting on ye, Johnnie; some women thinks shame to be first

at the trysting, but that's not me when I loves ye true.'

At this Skelton by an impulse of honour thought to pass out of ear-shot,

and then another motive held him listening. He thought of the ghostly

thing he had seen by this girl, of the wild tale the ploughman had told.

The passion of investigation, which had grown lusty by long exercise,

rose within him triumphing over his personal inclinations. Too much was

at stake to miss a chance like this. Honour in this situation seemed

like a flimsy sentiment. He waited for the answer of the girl's lover

with breathless interest.

The man was evidently a fine young fellow, tall and strong, and when he

spoke it was not without a touch of manly indignation in his tone.

'If you love me true, Jen, I can't think what the meaning of your doings

is. It's two years since you came to live in the glen, and you can't say

as you've not understood my meaning plain since the first I saw you;

it's to take you to church and take care of you as a woman ought to be

took care of by a man. And you know I could do it, Jen, for my wages is

good; but you've shied an' shied whenever you've seen me, and baulked

an' baulked when you couldn't shy, so as no skittish mare is half so

bad.'

'Because, Johnnie, I wouldn't ha' yer heart broke the way mine is. I

loved ye too true for that.'

'But what's to hinder that we may be like other folks is? There's

troubles comes to all, but we can bear them like the rest. What's to

hinder? I thought there was some one else, an' that you didn't like. God

knows, Jen, if that 'ad been the way, I'd never 'ev troubled you again;

but last night when we heard your mother was took bad, an' mother an' me

stepped round to see what we could do, an' you let on as you did 'ave a

caring for me, I says,--"Let's be cried in the church," so as your

mother could die happy, if die she must. But when you says, "no," and as

you'd meet me here an' tell me why, I was content to wait an' come here;

an' now what I want to know is--why? what's to hinder, Jen?'

'Ye knows as well as me the tales about me, Johnnie.'

'Tales!' said the young man passionately; 'what tales? All along I've

knocked down any man as 'ud say a word against you.'

'Ay, but the women, Johnnie; ye couldn't knock them down; that's why a

woman's tale's allus the worst.'

'An' what can they say? the worst is that if any man comes nigh you for

a kiss or the like o' that--and no offence, Jen, but you're an uncommon

tidy girl to kiss--he sees another man betwixt himself an' you. Fools

they be to believe such trash! If you'd give me the leave--which I'm not

the fellow to take without you say the word--I'd soon show as no shadder

'ud come betwixt.'

He came a step nearer, reproachful in his frank respect, as if he would

claim the liberty he asked; but she drew back, holding up her hand to

ward him off.

'I believe you half believe the nonsense yourself, Jen.'

'Heaven knows, Johnnie, I've reason to b'lieve it weel, none knows

better ner me. It's that I've comed to tell ye to-night; an' there's

nowt fur it but we mun part. An' if I trouble yer peace staying here i'

the glen, I'll go away out o' yer sight. It wasn't a wish o' mine to

bring ye trouble. None knows better ner me how hard trouble's to bear.'

Her voice trembled as if with some physical pain; he only answered by a

sound of incredulous surprise.

'I'll tell ye the whole on't, Johnnie. Ye sees, we lived i'

Yarm--mother and me. Mother, she sewed books fur a book-binding man; an'

we'd a little coming in as father'd saved. Well, mother, she was feared

lest I'd fall into rough ways like, an' she kep' me in a good bit, an'

there was a man as helped i' the book-binding----' she stopped, and then

said half under her breath--

'His name was Dan'el, Dan'el McGair, it was.'

'Go on, Jen.'

'He was a leän man and white to look at. He was very pious, and knowed

lots o' things. Least, I don't know if he was pious, fur he didn't go to

church, but he'd his own thoughts o' things, an' he was steady, an' kep'

himself to himself. He niver telled me his thoughts o' things--he said

it 'ud unsettle me like--but he taught me reading; an' mother, she liked

his coming constant to see us. As fur as I knows, he was a good man; but

I tell ye, Johnnie, that man had a will--whatsoever thing Dan'el McGair

wanted, that thing he mun have, if he died i' the getting. He was about

forty, an' I was nigh on twenty; it was after he'd taught me reading,

an' whenever I'd go out here or there, or do this or that he didn't

like, he'd turn as white as snow, an' tremble like a tree-stem i' the

wind, an' dare me to do anything as he didn't like. Ye sees he allus had

that power over mother to make her think like him, but I wouldn't give

in to him. If I'd gived in--well, I doänt know what 'ud 'a comed. God

knows what did come were bad enow.' She stopped speaking and toed the

damp ground--crushing her boot into the frosty mud and drawing it

backwards and forwards as she stood against the gate.

'Go on, Jen.'

'Ye sees, what he willed to get, that he mun have, an' at the end he

willed to have me--mind, body, an' soäl. He'd 'a had me, only I made a

stand fur my life. Mother, she was all on his side, only she didn't want

fur me to do what I wouldn't; but she cried like, an' talked o' his

goodness--an' Dan'el, he wouldn't ask out an' out, or I could 'a told

him my mind an' 'a done wi' it; but he went on giving us, an' paying

things, an' mother she took it all, till I was fairly mad wi' the shame

an' anger on't. I doänt say as I acted as I ought; I knowed I'd a power

over him to drive him wild like wi' a smile or a soft word, an' power's

awful dangerous fur a young thing--it's like as if God gave the wind a

will o' its own, an' didn't howd it in His own hand. Then I was feared

o' Dan'el's power over mother, an' give in times when I ought to 'a held

my own. An' I liked to have him fur a sarvint to me, an' I led him on

like. So it went on--he niver doubted I'd marry wi' him, an' I held out

fur my life. Then at th' end, some words we had made things worse. 'Twas

i' spring--i' March I think--he walked out miles an' miles on the bad

roads to bring me the first flowers. I was book-binding then, out late

at night, an' I comed home to find he'd left them fur me--snowdrops they

was, an' moss wi' a glint o' green light on't, like sun shining through

th' trees; an' there was a grey pigeon's feather he'd picked up

somewheres, all clean and unroughed, like a bit o' the sky at th' dawn;

an' there was a twig wi' a wee pink toädstood on't, all pink an' red.

The sight o' them fairly made me mad. 'Twas bad enow to buy me wi' munny

an' the things munny can buy, but it seemed he'd take the very thoughts

o' God A'mighty and use them to get his will. I were mad; but if he'd

comed to our house I couldn't 'a spoke fur mother's being there; so I

just took them bits o' Spring i' my hand, an' went out i' the dark to

his house, an' went into his room, an' threw 'em on the floor, an'

stamped 'em wi' my foot, an' I told him how he'd sneaked round to bind

me to him, an' as how I'd die first. I was mad, an' talked till I

couldn't speak fur my voice give out, an' that wasn't soon. He just sat

still hearing me, but he was white, an' shook like a man wi' the palsy.

They said he'd had fits once an' that made him nervous, but I didn't

think o' him like that. He was strong, fur he could make most all men do

as he wanted. He was spoiling my life wi' his strength, an' I didn't

think o' him as weakly. When I'd raged at him an' couldn't say more, I

went out an' was going home i' the dark, howding by the wall, as weak as

a baby; an' just afore I got home, I seed him stand just in front' o'

me. I thought he'd runned after me--mebbe he did--but I've thought

since, mebbe not, that his body mayn't 'a been there at all; but anyway

I seed him stand just afore me, wi' his eyes large and like fire, an'

him all white and trembling. He said, "I tell ye, Jen, I will have ye

mine, an' as long as I live no other man shall," an' wi' that I went

past him into the house.'

'Go on, Jen,' said the carter.

'All I knows is that the word he spoke was a true word. Next day they

comed and telled us he was found all par'lysed in his chair, an' he

couldn't move nor speak. From that time the doctors 'ud sometimes come

from a long way off; they said as there was somethin' strange about his

sickness. I doänt know what they said, I niver seed him again. There's

part o' him lies i' the bed, an' the parish feeds him, an' the doctors

they talk about him. I niver seed him again sin' that night, but I knows

what he said was true, an' there's many a man as 'as seed him anear me

sin' that day. I tell ye, Johnnie, there's trouble to face i' this world

worse ner death,--not worse ner our own death, fur that's most times a

good thing, but worse ner the death o' them we love most true--an' worse

ner parting i' this world, Johnnie, an' worse _a'most_ than sin itself;

but, thank God, not _quite_ worse ner sin. But I never knowed, lad, how

bad my own trouble was--though it's a'most drove me hard at times, not

recking much what I said or did--I niver knowed, my lad, how bad it was

till I knowed it was yer trouble too.'

The young carter stood quite silent. His blue blouse glimmered white in

the darkness and flapped a little in the wind, but he stood still as a

rock, with his strong arms crossed upon his breast, and the silence

seemed filled with the expression of thoughts for which words would have

been useless. It was evident that her strong emotion had brought to his

mind a conviction of the truth of her words which could not have been

conveyed by the words alone. So they stood there, he and she, in all the

rugged power of physical strength, confronted with their life's problem.

At last, after they had been silent a long time, and it seemed that he

had said many things, and that she had answered him, he appeared

suddenly to sum up his thoughts to their conclusion, and stretched out

both his strong arms to take her and all her griefs into his heart. It

seemed in the darkness as though he did clasp her and did not, for she

gave a low terrible cry and fled from him--a cry such as a spirit might

give who, having ascended to Heaven's gate with toil and prayer, falls

backward into Hell; and she ran from him--it seemed that with only her

human strength she could not have fled so fast. He followed her, dashing

with all his strength into the darkness. They went towards the village,

and in the mud their footfalls were almost silent.

The listener came out of his hiding and went back on the road by which

he had come.

CHAPTER III

Next morning Skelton travelled northward to Yarm. After some difficulty

he succeeded in discovering the paralytic whom he sought. The medical

interest which had at first been aroused by the case appeared to have

died away; and it was only after some time spent in interviewing

officials that he at last found the man, Daniel McGair. A parish

apothecary had him in charge. The apothecary was a coarse good-natured

fellow, one of that class of ignorant men upon whose brains the dregs of

a refined agnosticism have settled down in the form of arrogant

assumption. He had enough knowledge of the external matters of science

to know, upon receiving Skelton's card, that he was receiving a visitor

of distinction. 'Yes, sir,' he said, leading the way out of the

dispensary, 'I'll exhibit the case. I don't know that there's much

that's remarkable about it. Of course, to us who take an interest in

science, all these things are interesting in their way.'

It was quite clear he did not know in what way the most special interest

accrued to this case.

'No sir, he ain't in the Union; he saved, and bought his cottage before

his stroke, so that's where he is. He ain't got no kith or kin, as far

as we know.'

It was bright noonday when they walked through the narrow streets of

mean houses, passing among the numerous children which swarm in such

localities. The sun was shining, the children were shouting, the women

were gossiping at their doors, when the apothecary stopped at a low

one-roomed cottage, the home of Daniel McGair. He opened the door with a

key and went in, as though the house were empty.

It was a plain bare room; there was no curtain on the window and the sun

shone in. There was a smouldering fire in the grate, a bookshelf on one

side, still holding its dusty and unused volumes; there was an

arm-chair--was that the chair in which he had sat to see his love-gifts

trampled down, in which he had received that mysterious stroke from the

unseen enemy? There was also a table in the room, and a chest, and, in

the corner, a pallet-bed, upon which lay the withered body of a man.

That was all, except some prints that hung upon the wall, dusty and

lifeless-looking. Such changes do years of disuse make in dwellings

which, when inhabited, have been replete with human interest. Even yet

there was abundant indication that the room had once been the abode of

one who put much of his own personality into his surroundings. The chair

and the chest were carved with a rude device--the Devil grappling with

the Son of God. The prints were crude allegorical representations of

Life and Death. The books were full of the violent polemic of the

Reformation. A flowerpot stood on the window-sill; perhaps ten years ago

it had had a flower in it, but now it held the apothecary's empty

phials. Everything proclaimed the room tenantless.

Skelton walked to the bed and looked down upon it with profound

curiosity. Only the head lay above the coverlet; withered and shrunken

it was, yet the brow was high, and it was plain that the features had

been fine and strong, betokening the once keen and sensitive

nerve--there was nothing sensitive now; all thought and feeling had for

ever fled. The half-shut lids disclosed the vacant eyes; the hair lay

clammy and matted on the wrinkled brow; there was nothing of life left

but the breath.

'It's my opinion, sir, that he'll live out his natural time. It's a

theory of mine that we are all born with a certain length of life in us,

and, barring accident, that time we'll live. Well, of course this man

had the accident of his stroke, which by rights ought to have done for

him, but by some fluke he weathered it, and now he'll live out his time.

If one could find out his ancestors and see how long they each lived,

with a little calculation I could tell you how long he'd lie there.'

With that the apothecary poked his patient in the cheek, and jerked him

by the arm, to show Skelton how completely consciousness was gone. He

would have treated a corpse with more respect: the lowest of us has some

reverence for death.

Just then the door, which had been left ajar, was pushed open, and a

slight, sweet-faced woman came in from the street. She was evidently a

district Bible-reader, but, although perceiving that she had entered a

house where she was not needed, she advanced as far as the bed and

looked down upon it with a passion of tenderness and pity depicted on

her face.

'Bless you, mum, he ain't suff'ring,' said the apothecary.

'I was thinking of his soul, not of his body,' she said. 'I was

wondering if he had been prepared to meet his Creator.'

'Where do you suppose his soul is?' asked Skelton curiously. He asked

the question in all reverence; she was not a lady apparently, only a

working woman, but there was about her the strong majesty of a noble

life.

'He is not dead yet,' she replied with evident astonishment.

'Lor, mum,' said the apothecary, 'his brain ain't in working order just

at present, and as for his spirit apart from his body, that's an unknown

quantity we scientific men don't deal in.'

She looked at them both with a look of indescribable compassion, and

went away. Skelton would fain have followed the woman out into the sunny

street, but he remained to pay that courtesy which was due to the

brusque good nature of his companion.

After examining the room and finding nothing more of interest, he went

and talked over the physical circumstances of the case with the parish

doctor. He did not gain much information about the patient's diseased

body, and naturally none whatever concerning the whereabouts of his

soul. The peculiar interest of the case he did not mention to any one.

Afterwards he went back to the neighbourhood by himself, and

endeavoured, as quietly as possible, to find out what traces the man's

past life had left upon the minds of his neighbours. Ten years bring

more change to any community than we are apt to suppose; and among the

poor, where rude necessity rules rather than choice, there is more

change than among the rich. There were a few who had seen McGair moving

up and down the streets, and knew him to have been a book-binder by

trade. One or two remembered the widow Wilkes and her daughter, and

could affirm that they had been friends of McGair and had moved away

after his illness. Whither they had gone no one knew.

When there was nothing more to be seen or heard at Yarm, Skelton went

home. Again he threw himself into all the daily interests of his life in

order that he might think the more dispassionately of the circumstances

of this strange case. In truth it was not now entirely out of curiosity

that he was tempted to think of it; his sympathy had been stirred by the

courage and sorrow of the woman whom he had so idly accosted on that

bright autumn day only a few weeks before. She had appealed to him

because he had knowledge. Was all his knowledge, then, powerless to help

her? He believed that the shadowy appearance which dogged her footsteps

could only be some projection of mind, whether or not its cause was the

strong will of the paralytic transcending the ordinary limits of time

and space, he could not tell. Certainly no discussion as to its nature

and origin could in any way aid its victim, and he could only fall back

upon the comfort material kindness and sympathy could give. At last he

went down once more to West Chilton, this time for the express purpose

of seeing Jen.

He found the cottage in the glen road near the village, and his knock

was answered by Jen herself. She recognised him instantly, but was too

pre-occupied to take much interest in the fact of his coming. He learned

that her mother had just died, and that the neighbours were in the

house, keeping vigil during the few sad days preceding the burial. It

was evident that there was little real sympathy between them and the

bereaved daughter, so he easily persuaded her to come out and walk a bit

up the road with him. She did so, evidently supposing that he had some

business with her, but too deeply buried in her sorrow to inquire what

it was.

They came to the house by the roadside where he had last seen her and

she had been unconscious of his presence. The place seemed to rouse her

from the dulness of grief, and she suddenly raised her head, like a

beautiful animal scenting some cause of excitement, and stood still,

looking round with brightened eyes, taking long deep breaths in the pure

frosty air. No doubt she had passed the same road many times since the

tryst, but the mind which has lately stood face to face with death

perceives more clearly the true relations of all things to itself; and,

in this spot, among all life's shiftings of the things that seem and are

not, she had stood and wrestled with the reality of her ghostly bondage.

All about them the hills were covered with the year's first snow. How

bright the light was upon their heights! how soft the shadows that

gathered in their slopes! The fields were white also, and the

hedgerows. Above them the sky was veiled with snow clouds, soft and

grey, except that at the verge of east and west there were faint

metallic lines, such as one sees upon clouds across snowfields, like the

pale reflections of a distant fire. Jen had come to a full stop now. She

raised her hands to her face and sobbed out like a little child.

Skelton stood by her, feeling his own feebleness. 'I know you are in

great trouble,' he said.

Her sobs did not last long; she soon mastered them, not by any art of

concealment but by rude force. Then standing shame-faced, with

half-averted head, she wiped her eyes with her apron.

'Yes, sir, I'm in great trouble, greater ner ye can know, fur death's

neither here nor there--it's living that's hard. Parson, he speaks out

about preparing to die, but to my mind it takes a sight more preparing

to know how to go on living.'

'I know that you have greater trouble than your mother's death. I know

that you love a young man who loves you, and also what it is that you

think keeps you apart from him.'

'And how do you know that, sir?' she asked, still with averted face.

Then he confessed, humbly enough, just how he did know it, and all that

he knew, and told her about his visit to Yarm. When he spoke of Yarm

and his visit to Daniel McGair she turned and looked full at him,

drinking in every word with hungry curiosity.

'Yes, sir, we left the place, an' I haven't heard o' him this nine year,

but I knowed he wasn't dead.'

'How did you know that, Jen?'

'Because, sir, when God A'mighty sees fit that he should die, I'll be

free o' him, that's all.'

'And aren't you going to marry?'

'Noä, sir. Johnnie an' me has talked it over, an' he says as how he'll

wait till such time as I'm free. An' I didn't say "no" to him, fur when

one knows what it is to love true, sir, one knows well it's noä use to

say as this thing's best or t'other, but just it's like being taken up

like a leaf by the wind an' moved whether one will or no. There's just

this diff'rence betwixt true love an' the common kind--the common kind

o' love moves ye i' the wrong way, an' true love i' the right; fur it's

a true word the blessed St. John said when he said that love is God.'

'Did St. John say that?' said Skelton.

'Yes, sir, I read it to mother just afore she died. An' Johnnie's gone

across the sea, sir, wi' his mother; he got a right good chance to

better hisself, an' I made him go. His ship sailed the day after

Christmas; an' I said, "Johnnie, I'll bide here, an' God 'ull take care

o' me as well as ye could yerself;" an' I said, "Johnnie, I'll pray

every day, night an' morning, that if ye can forget me, ye will; for if

ye can forget, then yer love's not o' the right sort, as I could take,

or God 'ud want ye to give; and if ye can't forget, then there's nowt to

say but as I'll bide here." An' I said, sir, as he munna think as loving

him made me sad, fur I was a big sight happier to love him, if he

forgets or if he comes again.'

'Will you live here; Jen, where the neighbours distrust you?'

'It 'ud just be the same any other place, sir, an' here I can work i'

the fields, spring and harvest, an' earn my own bread. I know the

fields, sir, an' the hills--they's like friends to me now, an' I knows

the dumb things about, an' they all knows me. It's a sight o' help one

can get, sir, when one's down wi' the sorrow o' all the world lying on

the heart, to have a kind look an' a word wi' the dogs an' cows when

they comes down the hills fur the milking. An' the children they mostly

lets come to me now, though they kep 'em from me at first.

Then he told her that he had come a long way on purpose to see if he

could help her; that he felt ashamed of having listened to her story,

and that it would give him happiness in some way or other to make her

life more easy. He explained that he had a great deal of money and many

friends, and could easily give her anything that these could procure. In

saying this he did not disguise from himself for a moment that his

motive was mixed, and that he desired to gain some hold over her, such

as benevolence could give, that he might further examine the problem of

her extraordinary misfortune. Even as he spoke he marvelled at the

strength of his respect for her, which could so outweigh his own

interest as to make it impossible that he should interfere in her

affairs otherwise than with all deference, as if she were a lady.

When he had made it quite clear to her that he was able and willing to

give her anything she should ask, she thought of his words a while, and

then answered--

'I thank ye, sir, but there's nowt ye can do o' that sort, fur if there

was I'd take it from Johnnie an' none other. But there's one thing I'll

ask, sir, an' wi' all yer kind offers ye can't but agree to it, fur it's

not much. Ye've found out this tale o' my life; there's none else as

knows it, save mother lying dead, an' Johnnie I telled fur love's sake,

an' him as lies palsied i' Yarm--God A'mighty only knows, sir, what

Dan'el McGair could tell on't--but this I ask, sir,--that ye'll keep all

ye knows an' say nowt. I did Dan'el a great wrong, for I smiled on him

whiles for the sake o' power; not but what he did me a worse wrong, so

far worse that whiles I think no woman has so sore a life as me; but I

did do him wrong, sir, and fur that reason I'll not ha' his name blazed

abroad, hanging on to a tale as 'ud buzz i' the ears o' all. To tell it

'ud not make _my_ life worse but better, fur now them as sees this thing

says dark things, an' speaks o' the devil an' worse. The times ha' been

when I cursed God an' prayed to die, but, thank Heaven, when I learned

what love was, I learned as God A'mighty can love us in spite o' our

wrong-doing, an' the pain it brings. Th' use o' such sore pain as mine,

sir, isna fur us to say, or to think great things to bear it patient;

but the use o' life, sir, to my thinking, is to keep all His creatures

from pain if we can, an' to take God's love like the sunshine, an' be

thankful. So I'll ask ye to keep what ye knows o' this tale an' not

speak on't, an' go no more to Yarm; an' if ye'll give me yer hand on

that, sir, I'll thank ye kindly.'

So he gave her his hand on it, and went away.

XII

A FREAK OF CUPID

CHAPTER I

The earth was white, the firmament was white, the plumage of the wind

was white. The wind flew between curling drift and falling cloud,

brushing all comers with its feathers of light dry snow. At the sides of

the road the posts and bars of log-fences stood above the drifts; on the

side of the hill the naked maple trees formed a soft brush of grey; just

in sight, and no more, the white tin roof and grey walls of a huge

church and a small village were visible; all else was unbroken snow. The

surface of an ice-covered lake, the sloping fields, the long straight

road between the fences, were as pure, in their far-reaching whiteness,

as the upper levels of some cloud in shadeless air.

A young Englishman was travelling alone through this region. He had set

out from the village and was about to cross the lake. A shaggy pony, a

small sleigh, a couple of buffalo-robes and a portmanteau formed his

whole equipment. The snow was light and dry; the pony trotted, although

the road was soft; the young man, wrapped in his fur-lined coat, had

little to do in driving.

In England no one would set out in such a storm; but this traveller had

learned that in Canada the snowy vast is regarded as a plaything, or a

good medium of transit, or at the worst, an encumbrance to be plodded

through as one plods through storms of rain. He had found that he was

not expected to remain at an inn merely because it snowed, and, being a

man of spirit, he had on this day, as on others, done what was expected

of him.

To-day, in the snow and wind, there was a slight difference from the

storms of other days. The innkeeper, who had given him his horse an hour

before by the walls of the great tin-roofed church, had looked at the

sky and the snow, and asked if he knew the road well; but this had been

accepted as an ignorant distrust of the foreign gentleman. Having

learned his lesson, that through falling snow he must travel, into the

heart of this greater snowstorm he travelled, valiant, if somewhat

doubtful.

When he descended upon the ice of the lake he was no longer accompanied

by the grey length of the log-fences. This road across the lake had been

well tracked after former snowfalls, and so the untrodden snow rose

high on either side; branches of fir and cedar, stuck at short intervals

in these snow walls, marked out the way. The pony ceased to trot. The

driver was only astonished that this cessation of speed had not come

sooner.

Standing up in his sleigh and looking round he could see two or three

other sleighs travelling across nearer the village. The village he could

no longer see, scarcely even the hill, nor was there any communication

over the deep untrodden snow between his road and that other on which

there were travellers.

Another hour passed, and now, as he went on slowly up the length of the

lake, all sound and sight of other sleighs were lost. The cloud was not

dark; the snow fell in such small flakes that it did not seem that even

an infinite number of them could bury the world; the wind drifting them

together, though strong, was not boisterous; the March evening did not

soon darken: and yet there was something in the determined action of

cloud and wind and snow, making the certainty that night would come with

no abatement, which caused even the inexperienced Englishman to perceive

that he was passing into the midst of a heavy storm.

As is frequently the case with travellers, he had certain directions

concerning the road which appeared to be adequate until he was actually

confronted with that small portion of the earth's surface to which it

was necessary to apply them. He was to take the first road which crossed

his, running from side to side of the lake; but the first cross track

appeared to him so narrow and so deeply drifted that he did not believe

it to be the public road he sought. 'Some farm, hidden in the level

maple bush just seen through the falling snow, sends an occasional cart

to the village by this by-path,' so he reassured himself; and the pony,

who had spied the track first and paused to have time to consider it, at

the word of command obediently plodded its continuous route. A quarter

of a mile farther on the traveller saw something on the road in front;

as the sound of his pony's jangling bells approached, a horse lifted its

head and shook its own bells. The horse, the sleigh which it ought to

have been drawing, were standing still, full in the centre of the road.

The first thought, that it was cheering to come upon the trace of

another wayfarer, was checked by the gloomy idea that some impassable

drift must bar the way.

The other sleigh was a rough wooden platform on runners. Upon it a man,

wrapped in a ragged buffalo-skin, lay prostrate. The Englishman jumped

to the ground and waded till he could lay his hand upon the recumbent

figure.

At the touch the man jumped fiercely, and shook himself from sleep.

Warm, luxurious sleep, only that, seemed to have enthralled him. His

cheeks were red, his aquiline nose, red also, suggested some amount of

strong drink; but his black eyes were bright, showing that the senses

were wholly alive. He looked defiant, inquiring. He was a

French-Canadian, apparently a _habitant_, but he understood the English

questions addressed to him. The curious thing was that he seemed to have

no reason for stopping. When he had with difficulty made way for the

gentleman to pass him on the road, he followed slowly, as it seemed

reluctantly. A mile farther on the Englishman, now far in front,

suspected that the other had again stopped, and wondered much. The man's

face had impressed him; the high cheek bones, the aquiline nose, the

clearness of the eye and complexion--these had not expressed dull folly.

Now the Englishman came to another cross road, wider but more deeply

drifted than the track he was on. He turned into it and ploughed the

drifts. When he reached the shore, where the land undulated, the drifts

were still deeper. There were no trees here; he could see no house;

there was hardly any evidence, except the evergreen branches stuck in

the sides, that the road had ever been trodden. The March dusk had now

fallen, yet not darkly. The full moon was beyond the clouds, and

whatever wave of light came from declining day or rising night was held

in by, and reflected softly from, the storm of pearl. After some debate

he turned back to the lake and his former road. It must lead somewhere;

he pressed steadily on toward the western end of the lake.

The western shore was level; he hardly knew when he was upon the land.

The glimmering night blinded the traveller; no ray of candle light was

in sight. He began to think that he was destined to see his horse slowly

buried, and himself to fight, as long as might be, a losing battle with

the fiends of the air.

At last the plodding pony stopped again resolutely. Long lines of

Lombardy poplars here met the road. They were but as the ghosts of

trees; their stately shape, their regular succession, inspired him with

some sentiment of romance which he did not stay to define. He dimly

discerned shrubs as if planted in a pleasure-ground. Wading and fumbling

he found a paling and a gate. The pony turned off the high road with

renewed courage in its motion; the Englishman, letting loose the rein,

found himself drawn slowly up a long avenue of the ghostly poplar trees.

The road was straight, the land was flat, the poplars were upright. The

simplicity affected him with the notion that he was coming to an

enchanted palace. The pony approached the door of a large house, dim to

the sight; its huge pointed tin roof, its stone sides, mantled as they

were with snowflakes and fringed with icicles at eaves and lintels,

hardly gave a dark outline in the glimmering storm. The rays of light

which twinkled through chinks of shutters might be analogous to the

stars produced by a stunned brain; it seemed to the Englishman that if

he went up and tried to knock on the door the ghostly house, the ghostly

poplar avenue, would vanish. The thought was born of the long monotony

of a danger which had called for no activity of brain or muscle on his

part. The pony knew better; it stopped before the door.

The traveller stood in a small porch raised a step or two from the

ground. The door was opened by a middle-aged Frenchwoman clad in a

peasant's gown of bluish-grey. Behind her, holding a lamp a little above

her head, stood a young girl, large, womanly in form, with dimpled

softness of face, and dressed in a rich but quaint garment of amber

colour. With raised and statuesque wrist she held the lamp aloft to keep

the light from dazzling her eyes. She was looking through the doorway

with the quiet interest of responsibility, nothing of which was

expressed in the servant's furrowed countenance.

'Is the master of the house at home?'

'There is no master.'

The girl spoke with a mellow voice and with a manner of soft dignity;

yet, having regarded the stranger, there leaped into her face, as it

seemed to him, behind the outward calm of the dark eyes and dimpling

curves, a certain excited interest and delight. The current of thought

thus revealed contrasted with the calm which she instinctively turned to

him, as the words which an actor speaks aside contrast with those which

are not soliloquy.

With more hesitation, more obvious modesty, he said--

'May I speak to the mistress of the house?'

'I am the mistress.'

He could but look upon her more intently. She could not have been more

than eighteen years of age. Her hair had the soft and loose manner of

lying upon her head that is often seen in hair which has, till lately,

been allowed to hang loose to the winds. Her dress, folded over the full

bosom and sweeping to the ground in ample curves, was, little as he

could have described a modern fashion, even to his eyes evidently

fantastic--such as a child might don at play. Above all, as evidence of

her youth, there was that inward quiver of delight at his appearance and

presence, veiled perfectly, but seen behind the veil, as one may detect

glee rising in the heart of a child even though it be upon its formal

behaviour.

'Can you tell me if there is any house within reach where I can stop

for the night?' He gave a succinct account of his journey, the lost

road, the increasing storm. 'My horse is dead tired, but it might go a

mile or so farther.'

The serving-woman, evincing some little curiosity, received from the

girl an interpretation in low and rapid French. The woman expressed by

her gestures some pity for man and beast. The girl replied with gentle

brevity--

'We know that the roads are snowed up. The next house is three miles

farther on.'

He hesitated, but his necessity was obvious.

'I am afraid I must beg for a night's shelter.'

He had been wondering a good deal what she would say, how she would

accede, and then he perceived that her dignity knew no circumlocution.

'I will send the man for your horse.' She said it with hardly a moment's

pause.

The woman gave him a small broom, an implement to the use of which he

had grown accustomed, and disappeared upon the errand. The girl stood

still in her statuesque pose of light-bearer. The young man busied

himself in brushing the snow from cap and coat and boots. As he brushed

himself he felt elation in the knowledge, not ordinarily uppermost, that

he was a good-looking fellow and a gentleman.