'When we arrived, she would walk into the cottage, and before

nurse or I realised what she was doing, she went straight through

the little passage which runs from front to back, out into the

garden. She stood a moment--in her shawls, with the little white

hood she has devised for herself drawn close round her head and

face--looking at the river with its rocks and foaming water, at the

shoulder of Nab Scar above the trees, at the stone house with the

red blinds opposite.

'"It looks just the same," she said, and the tears rolled down her

cheeks.

'We brought her in--nurse and I--and when she had been put

comfortably on the low couch I had sent from London beforehand, and

had taken some food, she was a little cheered. She made us draw her

to the window of the little back sitting-room, and she lay looking

out till it was almost dark. But as I foresaw, the pain of coming

is more than equal to any pleasure there may be.

'Yet she would come. During those last days in London, when she

would hardly speak to us, when she lay in the dark in that awful

room all day, and every attempt to feed her or comfort her made her

angry, I could not, for a long time, get her to say what she wished

about moving, except that she would not go back to Manchester.

'Her hand-glass could not be kept from her, and one morning she

cried bitterly when she saw that she could no longer so arrange her

laces as to completely hide the disfigurement of the right side of

the face.

'"No! I will _never_ go back to Merton Road!" she cried,

throwing down the glass; "no one shall see me!"

'But at night, after I hoped she was asleep, she sent nurse to say

that she wanted to go to--_Rydal!_--to the same cottage by the

Rotha we had stayed at on our honeymoon. Nurse said she could--she

could have an invalid-carriage from door to door. Would I write for

the rooms at once? And Sandy could join us there.

'So, after nine years, we are here again. The house is empty. We

have our old rooms. Nothing is changed in the valley. After she was

asleep, I went out along the river, keeping to a tiny path on the

steep right bank till I reached a wooden bridge, and then through a

green bit, fragrant with fast-springing grass and flowers, to that

point beside the lake I remember so well. I left her there one day,

sitting, and dabbling in the water, while I ran up Loughrigg. She

was nineteen. How she tripped over the hills!

'To-night there was a faint moon. The air was cold, but quite

still, and the reflections, both of the islands and of Nab Scar,

seemed to sink into unfathomed depths of shadowy water. Loughrigg

rose boldly to my left against the night sky; I could see the

rifle-butts and the soft blackness of the great larch-plantation on

the side of Silver How.

'There, to my right, was the tower of the little church, whitish

against the woods, and close beside it, amid the trees, I felt the

presence of Wordsworth's house, though I could not see it.

'O Poet! who wrote for me, not knowing--oh, heavenly valley!--you

have but one voice; it haunts my ears:--

_'Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,

The bowers where Lucy played;

And thine, too, is the last green field

That Lucy's eyes surveyed._'

'_May 10th_.--She never speaks of dying, and I dare not

speak of it. But sometimes she is like a soul wandering in terror

through a place of phantoms. Her eyes grow large and strained, she

pushes me away from her. And she often wakes at night, sinking in

black gulfs of fear, from which I cannot save her.

'Oh, my God! my heart is torn, my life is sickened with pity! Give

me some power to comfort--take from me this impotence, this

numbness. She, so little practised in suffering, so much of

a child still, called to bear this _monstrous_ thing. Savage,

incredible Nature! But behind Nature there is God--

'To-night she asked me to pray with her--asked it with reproach.

"You never say good things to me now!" And I could not explain

myself.

'It was in this way. When Dora was with her, she used to read and

pray with her. I would not have interfered for the world. When Dora

left, I thought she would use the little manual of prayers for the

sick that Dora had left behind; the nurse, who is a religious

woman, and reads to her a good deal, would have read this whenever

she wished. One night I offered to read it to her myself, but she

would not let me. And for the rest--in spite of our last talk--I

was so afraid of jarring her, of weakening any thought that might

have sustained her. 'But to-night she asked me, and for the first

time since our earliest married life I took her hand and prayed.

Afterwards she lay still, till suddenly her lip began to quiver.

'"I wasn't ever so very bad. I did love you and Sandy, and I did help

that girl,--you know--that Dora knew, who went wrong. And I am so

ill--SO ill!"'

'MAY 20TH.--A fortnight has passed. Sandy and his nurse are lodging

at a house on the hill; every morning he comes down here, and I

take him for a walk. He was very puzzled and grave at first when he

saw her, but now he has grown used to her look, and he plays

merrily about among the moss-grown rocks beside the river, while

she lies in the slung couch, to which nurse and I carry her on a

little stretcher, watching him. 'There was a bright hour this

morning. We are in the midst of a spell of dry and beautiful

weather, such as often visits this rainy country in the early

summer, before any visitors come. The rhododendrons and azaleas are

coming out in the gardens under Loughrigg--some little copses here

and there are sheets of blue--and the green is rushing over the

valley. We had put her among the rocks under a sycamore-tree--a

singularly beautiful tree, with two straight stems dividing its

rounded masses of young leaf. There were two wagtails perching on

the stones in the river, and swinging their long tails; and the

light flickered through the trees on to the water foaming round the

stones or slipping in brown cool sheets between them. There was a

hawthorn-tree in bloom near by; in the garden of the house opposite

a woman was hanging out some clothes to dry; the Grasmere coach

passed with a clatter, and Sandy with the two children from the

lodgings ran out to the bridge to look at it. 'Yes, she had a moment

of enjoyment! I bind the thought of it to my heart. Lizzie was

sitting sewing near the edge of the river, that she might look

after Sandy. He was told not to climb on to the stones in the

current of the stream, but as he was bent on catching the vain,

provoking wagtails who strutted about on them, the prohibition was

unendurable. As soon as Lizzie's head was bent over her work, he

would clamber in and out till he reached some quite forbidden rock;

and then, looking back with dancing eyes and the tip of his little

tongue showing between his white teeth, he would say, "Go on with

your work, Nana, DARLING!"--And his mother's look never left him

all the time. 'Once he had been digging with his little spade among

the fine grey gravel silted up here and there among the hollows of

the rocks. He had been digging with great energy, and for May the

air was hot. Lizzie looked up and said to him, "Sandy, it's time

for me to take you to bed"--that is, for his midday sleep. "Yes,"

he said, with a languid air, sitting down on a stone with his spade

between his knees--"yes, I think I'd better come to bed. My heart

is very dreary."

'What do you mean?'

'My heart is very dreary--dreary means tired, you know.'

'Oh, indeed!--where is your heart?'

'Here,' he said, laying his hand lackadaisically on the

small of his back.

'And then she smiled, for the first time for so many, many days! I

came to sit by her; she left her hand in mine; and after the child

was gone the morning slipped by peacefully, with only the sound of

the river and the wheels of a few passing carts to break the

silence.

'In the afternoon she asked me if I should not have to go back to

Manchester. How could all those men and those big printing-rooms

get on without me? I told her that John reported to me every other

day; that a batch of our best men had sent word to me, through him,

that everything was going well, and I was not to worry; that there

had been a strike of some importance among the Manchester

compositors, but that our men had not joined.

'She listened to it all, and then she shut her eyes and said:--

'"I'm glad you did that about the men. I don't understand quite--but

I'm glad."

'... You can see nothing of her face now in its white draperies

but the small, pointed chin and nose; and then the eyes, with their

circles of pain, the high centre of the brow, and a wave or two of

her pretty hair tangled in the lace edge of the hood.

'"_My darling,--my darling! God have mercy upon us!_"'

'_June 2nd.--"For the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this

commandment._" How profoundly must he who spoke the things

reported in this passage have conceived of marriage! _For the

hardness of your hearts._ Himself governed wholly by the inward

voice, unmoved by the mere external authority of the great Mosaic

name, he handles the law presented to him with a sort of sad irony.

The words imply the presence in him of a slowly formed and

passionately held ideal. Neither sin, nor suffering, nor death can

nor ought to destroy the marriage bond, once created. It is not

there for our pleasure, nor for its mere natural object,--but to

form the soul.

'The world has marched since that day, in law--still more, as it

supposes, in sentiment. But are we yet able to bear such a saying?

'... Then compare with these words the magnificent outburst in

which, a little earlier, he sweeps from his path his mother and his

brethren. There are plentiful signs--take the "corban" passage, for

instance, still more, the details of the Prodigal Son--of the same

deep and tender thinking as we find in the most authentic sayings

about marriage applied to the parental and brotherly relation. But

he himself, realising, as it would seem, with peculiar poignancy,

the sacredness of marriage and the claim of the family, is yet

alone, and must be alone to the end. The fabric of the Kingdom

rises before him; his soul burns in the fire of his message; and

the lost sheep call.

'She has been fairly at ease this afternoon, and I have been lying

on the grass by the lake, pondering these things. The narrative of

Mark, full as it is already of legendary accretion, brings one so

close to him; the living breath and tone are in one's ears.'

'_June 4th_.--These last two days she is much worse. The

local trouble is stationary; but there must be developments we know

nothing of elsewhere. For she perishes every day before our

eyes--we cannot give her sleep--there is such malaise, emaciation,

weariness.

'She is wonderfully patient. It seems to me, looking back, that a

few days ago came a change. I cannot remember any words that marked

it, but it is as though--without our knowing it--her eyes had

turned themselves irrevocably from us and from life, to the hills

of death. Yet--strange!--she takes more notice of those about her.

Yesterday she showed an interest just like her old self in the

children's going to a little fete at Ambleside. She would have them

all in--Sandy and the landlady's two little girls--to look at them

when they were dressed.--What strikes me with awe is that she has

no more tears, though she says every now and then the most touching

things--things that pierce to the very marrow.

'She told me to-day that she wished to see her father. I have

written to him this evening.'

'_June 6th_.--Purcell has been here a few hours, and has gone

back to-night. She received him with perfect calmness, though they

have not spoken to each other for ten years. He came in with his

erect, military port and heavy tread, looking little older, though

his hair is gray. But he blenched at sight of her.

'"You must kiss me on the forehead," she said to him feebly, "but,

please, very gently."

'So he kissed her, and sat down. He cleared his throat often, and

did not know what to say. But she asked him, by degrees, about some

of her mother's relations whom she had not seen for long, then

about himself and his health. The ice thawed, but the talk was

difficult. Towards the end he inquired of her--and, I think, with

genuine feeling--whether she had "sought salvation." She said

faintly, "No;" and he, looking shocked and shaken, bade her, with

very much of his old voice and manner, and all the old phraseology,

"lay hold of the merits of Jesus."

'Towards the end of his exhortations she interrupted him.

'"You must see Sandy, and you must kiss me again. I wasn't a good

daughter. But, oh! why wouldn't you make friends with me and David?

I tried--you remember I tried?"

'"I am ready to forgive all the past," he said, drawing himself

up: "I can say no more."

'"Well, kiss me!" she said, in a melancholy whisper. And he kissed

her again.

'Then I would not let him exhaust her any more, or take any set

farewell. I hurried him away as though for tea, and nurse and I

pronounced against his seeing her again.

'On our walk to the coach he broke out once more, and implored me,

with much unction and some dignity, not to let my infidel opinions

stand in the way, but to summon some godly man to see and talk with

her. I said that a neighbouring clergyman had been several times to

see her, since, as he probably knew, she had been a Churchwoman for

years. In my inward frenzy I seemed to be hurling all sorts of wild

sayings at his head; but I don't believe they came to speech, for I

know at the end we parted with the civility of strangers. I

promised to send him news. What amazed me was his endless curiosity

about the details of her illness. He would have the whole history

of the operation, and all the medical opinion she could remember

from the nurse. And on our walk he renewed the subject; but I could

bear it no more.

'Oh, my God! what does it matter to me _why_ she is dying?'

'Then, when I got home, I found her rather excited, and she

whispered to me: "He asked me if I had sought salvation, and

I said No. I didn't seek it, David; but it comes--when you are

here." Then her chest heaved, but with that strange instinct of

self-preservation she would not say a word more, nor would she let

me weep. She asked me to hold her hands in mine, and so she slept a

little.

'Dora writes that in a fortnight more she can get a holiday of a

week or two. Will she be in time?

'It is two months to-day since we went to London.'

On one of the last days in June Dora arrived. It seemed to her that

Lucy could have but a few days to live. Working both outwardly and

inwardly, the terrible disease had all but done its work. She had

nearly lost the power of swallowing, and lived mainly on the

morphia injections which were regularly administered to her. But at

intervals she spoke a good deal, and quite clearly.

And Dora had not been six hours with her before a curious thing

happened. The relation which, ever since their meeting as girls,

had prevailed between her and Lucy, seemed to be suddenly reversed.

She was no longer the teacher and sustainer; in the little dying

creature there was now a remote and heavenly power; it could not be

described, but Dora yielded with tears to the awe and sovereignty

of it.

She saw with some plainness, however, that it depended on the

relation between the husband and wife. Since she had been with them

last, it had been touched--this relation--by a Divine alchemy. The

self in both seemed to have dropped away. The two lives were no

longer two, but one--he cherishing, she leaning.

The night she came she pressed Lucy to take the Holy Communion.

Lucy assented, and the Communion was administered, with David

kneeling beside her pillow. But afterwards Lucy was troubled, and

when Dora proposed at night to read and pray with her, she said

faintly, 'No; David does.' And thenceforward, though she was all

gentleness, Dora did not find it very easy to get religious speech

with her, and went often--poor Dora!--sadly, and in fear.

Dora had been in the house five days, when new trouble followed on

the old. David one morning received a letter from Louie, forwarded

from Manchester, and when Dora followed him into the garden with a

message, she found him walking about distracted.

'Read it!' he said.

The letter was but a few scrawled lines:--

'Cecile has got diphtheria. Our doctor says so, but he is a devil. I

must have another--the best--and there is no money. If she dies,

you will never see me again, I swear. I dare say you will think it

a good job, but now you know.'

The writing was hardly legible, and the paper had been twisted and

crumpled by the haste of the writer.

'What is to be done?' said David, in pale despair. 'Can I leave this

house one hour?--one minute?'

Then a sudden thought struck him. He looked at Dora with a flash of

appeal.

'Dora, you have been our friend always, and you have been good to

Louie. Will you go? I need not say all shall be made easy. I could

get John to take you over. He has been several times to Paris for

me this last five years, and would be a help.'

That was indeed a struggle for Dora! Her heart clung to these

people she loved, and the devote in her yearned for those last

opportunities with the dying, on the hope of which she still fed

herself. To go from this deathbed, to that fierce mother, in those

horrible surroundings!

But just as she had taught Louie in the old days because David

Grieve asked her, so now she went, in the end, because he asked

her.

She was to be away six days at least. But the doctor thought it

possible she might return to find Lucy alive. David made every

possible arrangement--telegraphed to Louie that she was coming; and

to John directing him to meet her at Warrington and take her on;

wrote out the times of her journey; the address of a pension in the

Avenue Friedland, kept by an English lady, to which he happened to

be able to direct her; and the name of the English lawyer in Paris

who had advised him at the time of Louie's marriage, had done

various things for him since, and would, he knew, be a friend in

need.

Twelve hours after the arrival of Louie's letter, Dora tore herself

from Lucy. 'Don't say good-bye,' said David, his face working, and

to spare him and Lucy she went as though she were just going across

the road for the night. David saw her--a white and silent

traveller--into the car that was to take her on the first stage of

a journey which, apart from everything else, alarmed her provincial

imagination. David's gratitude threw her into a mist of tears as

she drove off. Surely, of all the self-devoted acts of Dora's life,

this mission and this leave-taking were not the least!

Lucy heard the wheels roll away. A stony, momentary sense of

desolation came over her as this one more strand was cut. But David

came in, and the locked lips relaxed. It had been necessary to tell

her the reason of Dora's departure. And in the course of the long

June evening David gathered from the motion of her face that she

wished to speak to him. He bent down to her, and she murmured:--

'Tell Louie I wished I'd been kinder--I pray God will let her keep

Cecile.... She must come to Manchester again when I'm gone.'

The night-watch was divided between David and the nurse. At five

o'clock in the summer morning--brilliant once more after storm and

rain--he injected morphia into the poor wasted arm, and she took a

few drops of brandy. Then, after a while, she seemed to sleep; and

he, stretched on a sofa beside her, and confident of waking at the

slightest sound, fell into a light doze.

Lucy woke when the sun was high, rather more than an hour later.

Her eyes were teased by a chink in the curtain; she hardly knew

what it was, but her dying sense shrank, and she vaguely thought of

calling David. But as she lay, propped up, she looked down on him,

and she saw his pale, sunken face, with the momentary softening of

rest upon it. And there wandered through her mind fragments of his

sayings to her in that last evening of theirs together in the

Manchester house,--especially, '_It can only be proved by

living--by every victory over the evil self_.' In its mortal

fatigue her memory soon lost hold of words and ideas; but she had

the strength not to wake him.

Then as she lay in what seemed to her this scorching light--in

reality it was one little ray which had evaded the thick curtains--

a flood of joy seemed to pour into her soul. 'I shall not live

beyond to-day,' she thought, 'but I know now I shall see him again.'

When at last she made a faint movement, and he woke at once, he saw

that the end was very near. He thought of Dora in Paris with a

pang, but there was no help for it. Through that day he never

stirred from her side in the darkened room, and she sank fast. She

spoke only one connected sentence--to say with great difficulty,

'Dying is long--but--_not_--painful.' The words woke in him a

strange echo; they had been among the last words of 'Lias, his

childhood's friend. But she breathed one or two names--the landlady

of the lodging-house, and the servants, especially the nurse.

They came in on tiptoe and kissed her. She had already thanked each

one.

Sandy was just going to bed, when David carried him in to her. One

of her last conscious looks was for him. He was in his nightgown,

with bare feet, holding his father tight round the neck, and

whimpering. They bent down to her, and he kissed her on the cheek,

as David told him, 'very softly.' Then he cried to go away from this

still, grey mother. David gave him to the nurse and came back.

The day passed, and the night began. The doctor in his evening

visit said it would be a marvel if she saw the morrow. David sat

beside the bed, his head bowed on the hand he held; the nurse was

in the farther corner. His whole life and hers passed before him;

and in his mind there hovered perpetually the image of the potter

and the wheel. He and she--the Hand so unfaltering, so divine had

bound them there, through resistance and anguish unspeakable. And

now, for him there was only a sense of absolute surrender and

submission, which in this hour of agony and exaltation rose

steadily into the ecstasy--ay, the _vision_ of faith! In the

pitying love which had absorbed his being he had known that 'best'

at last whereat his craving youth had grasped; and losing himself

wholly had found his God.

And for her, had not her weak life become one flame of love--a cup

of the Holy Grail, beating and pulsing with the Divine Life?

The dawn came. She pulled restlessly at her white wrapper--seemed

to be in pain--whispered something of 'a weight.' Then the last

change came over her. She opened her eyes--but they saw no longer.

Nature ceased to resist, and the soul had long since yielded

itself. With a meekness and piteousness of look not to be told,

never to be forgotten, Lucy Grieve passed away.

CHAPTER X

The very day after Lucy had been carried to her last rest in that

most poetic of all graveyards which bends its grassy shape to the

encircling Rotha and holds in trust the ashes of Wordsworth, David

Grieve started for Paris.

He had that morning received a telegram from Dora: 'Louie

disappeared. Have no clue. Can you come?' Two days before, the news

of Cecile's death from diphtheria had reached him in a letter from

poor Dora, rendered almost inarticulate by her grief for Lucy and

bitter regret for her own absence from her cousin's deathbed,

mingling with her pity for Louie's unfortunate child and her dread

and panic with regard to Louie herself.

But so long as that white form lay shrouded in the cottage upper

room, he could not move--and he could scarcely feel. The telegram

broke in upon a sort of lethargy which had held him ever since

Lucy's last breath. He started at once. On the way he spent two

hours at Manchester. On the table in his study there still lay the

medical book he had taken down from his scientific shelf on the

night of Dr. Mildmay's visit; in Lucy's room her dresses hung as

she had left them on the doors; a red woollen cap she had been

knitting for Sandy was thrown down half finished on the

dressing-table. Of the hour he spent in that room, putting away

some of the little personal possessions, still warm as it were from

her touch, let no more be said.

When he reached Paris he inquired for Dora at the _pension_ in

the Avenue Friedland, to which he had sent her. John, who had also

written to him, and was still in Paris, was staying, he knew, at an

hotel on the Quai Voltaire. But he went to Dora first.

Dora, however, was not at home. She had left for him the full

address of the house in the Paris _banlieue_ where she had

found Louie, and full directions as to how to reach it. He took one

of the open cabs and drove thither in the blazing July sun.

An interminable drive!--the whole length of the Avenue de la

Grande-Armée and the Avenue de Neuilly, past the Seine and the Rond

Pont de Courbevoie, until at last turning to the left into the wide

and villainously paved road that leads to Rueil, Bougival, and St.

Germain, the driver and David between them with difficulty

discovered a side street which answered to the name Dora had

several times given.

They had reached one of the most squalid parts of the western

_banlieue_. Houses half built and deserted in the middle,

perhaps by some bankrupt builder; small traders, bakers,

_charcutiers_, fried-fish sellers, lodged in structures

of lath and plaster, just run up and already crumbling;

_cabarets_ of the roughest and meanest kind, adorned with

high-sounding devices,--David mechanically noticed one which had

blazoned on its stained and peeling front, _A la renaissance du

Phénix_;--heaps of rubbish and garbage with sickly children

playing among them; here and there some small, ill-smelling

factory; a few melancholy shrubs in new-made gardens, drooping and

festering under a cruel sun in a scorched and unclean soil:--the

place repelled and outraged every sense. Was it here that little

Cecile had passed from a life of pain to a death of torture?

He rang at a sinister and all but windowless house, which he was

able to identify from Dora's directions. John opened to him, and in

a little room to the right, which looked on to a rank bit of

neglected garden, he found Dora. A woman, with a scowling brow and

greedy mouth, disappeared into the back premises as he entered.

Dora and he clasped hands. Then the sight of his face broke down

even her long-practised self-control, and she laid her head down on

the table and sobbed. But he showed little emotion; while John,

standing shyly on the other side of the room, and the weeping Dora

could hardly find words to tell their own story, so overwhelmed

were they by those indelible signs upon him of all that he had gone

through.

He asked them rapidly a number of questions.

In the first place Dora explained that she and John were engaged in

putting together whatever poor possessions the house contained of a

personal kind, that they might not either be seized for debt, or

fall into the claws of the old _bonne_, a woman of the lowest

type, who had already plundered all she could. As to the wretched

husband, very little information was forthcoming. John believed

that he had been removed to the hospital in a state of alcoholic

paralysis the very week that Cecile was taken ill; at any rate he

had made no sign.

The rest of the story which Dora had to tell may be supplemented by

a few details which were either unknown to his informants, or

remained unknown to David.

Louie, on her return to Paris with David's hundred pounds, had

promptly staked the greater part of it in certain Bourse

speculations. She was quite as sorely in need of money as she had

professed to be while in Manchester, but for more reasons than one,

as David had uncomfortably suspected. Not only did her husband

strip her of anything he could lay hands on, but a certain

fair-haired Alsatian artist a good deal younger than herself had

for some months been preying upon her. What his hold upon her

precisely was, Father Lenoir, her director, when David went to see

him, either could not or--because the matter was covered by the

confessional seal--would not say. The artist, Brenart by name, was

a handsome youth, with a droll facile tongue, and a recklessness of

temper matching her own. He became first known to her as one of her

husband's drinking companions, then, dazzled by the wife's mad

beauty, he began to haunt the handsome Madame Montjoie, as many

other persons had haunted her before him,--with no particular

results except to increase the arrogant self-complacency with which

Louie bore herself among her Catholic friends.

In the first year of his passion, Brenart came into a small

inheritance, much of which he spent on jewellery and other presents

for his idol. She accepted them without scruple, and his hopes

naturally rose high. But in a few months he ran through his money,

his drinking habits, under Montjoie's lead, grew upon him, and he

fell rapidly into a state of degradation which would have made it

very easy for Louie to shake him off, had she been so minded.

But by this time he had, no doubt, a curious spell for her. He

was a person of considerable gifts, an etcher of fantastic

promise, a clever musician, and the owner of a humorous _carillon_

of talk, to quote M. Renan's word, which made life in his

neighbourhood perpetually amusing for those, at any rate, who took

the grossness of its themes as a matter of course. Louie found on

the one hand that she could not do without him, in her miserable

existence; on the other that if he was not to starve she must keep

him. His misfortunes revealed the fact that there was neither

chivalry nor delicacy in him; and he learnt to live upon her with

surprising quickness, and on the most romantic pretexts.

So she made her pilgrimage to Manchester for money, and then she

played with her money to make it more, on the Bourse. But clever as

she was, luck was against her, and she lost. Her losses made her

desperate. So too did the behaviour of her husband, who robbed her

whenever he could, and spent most of his time on the pavements of

Paris, dragging himself from one low drinking-shop to another, only

coming home to cheat her out of fresh supplies, and goad his wife

to hideous scenes of quarrel and violence, which frightened the

life out of Cecile. Brenart, whom she could no longer subsidise,

kept aloof, for mixed reasons of his own. And the landlord, not to

be trifled with any longer, gave them summary notice of eviction.

While she was in these straits, Father Lenoir, who even during

these months of vacillating passion and temptation had exercised a

certain influence over her, came to call upon her one afternoon,

being made anxious by her absence from Ste. Eulalie. He found a

wild-eyed haggard woman in a half-dismantled apartment, whom, for

the first time, he could not affect by any of those arts of

persuasion or rebuke, in which his long experience as a guide of

souls had trained him. She would tell him nothing either about her

plans, or her husband; she did not respond to his skilful and

reproachful comments upon her failure to give them assistance in a

recent great function at Ste. Eulalie; nor was she moved by the

tone of solemn and fatherly exhortation into which he gradually

passed. He left her, fearing the worst.

On the following morning she fled to the wretched house on the

outskirts of Paris where Dora had found her. She went thither to

escape from her husband; to avoid the landlord's pursuit; to cut

herself adrift from the clergy of Ste. Eulalie, and to concert with

Brenart a new plan of life. But Brenart failed to meet her there,

and, a very few days after the flight, Cecile, already worn to a

shadow, sickened with diphtheria. Either the seeds were already in

her when they left Paris, or she was poisoned by the half-finished

drainage and general insanitary state of the quarter to which they

had removed.

From the moment the child took to her bed, Louie fell into the

blackest despair. She had often ill-used her daughter during these

last months; the trembling child, always in the house, had again

and again been made the scapegoat of her mother's miseries; but she

no sooner threatened to die than Louie threw everything else in the

world aside and was madly determined she should live.

She got a doctor, of an inferior sort, from the neighbourhood, and

when he seemed to her to bungle, and the child got no better, she

drove him out of the house with contumely. Then she herself tried

to caustic Cecile's throat, or she applied some of the old-wives'

remedies, suggested by the low servant she had taken. The result

was that the poor little victim was brought to the edge of the

grave, and Louie, reduced to abjectness, went and humbled herself

to the doctor and brought him back. This time he told her bluntly

that the child was dying and nothing could save her. Then, in her

extremity, she telegraphed to David. Her brother had written to her

twice since the beginning of Lucy's illness; but when she sent her

telegram, all remembrance of her sister-in-law had vanished from

Louie's mind--Lucy might never have existed; and whether she was

alive or dead mattered nothing.

When Dora came, she found the child speechless, and near the end.

Tracheotomy had been performed, but its failure was already clear.

It seemed a question of hours. John went off post-haste for a

famous doctor. The great man came, agreed with the local

practitioner that nothing more could be done, and that death was

imminent. Louie, beside herself, first turned and rent him, and

then fell in a dead faint beside Cecile's bed. While the nurse,

whom John had also brought from Paris, was tending both mother and

daughter, Dora sent John--who in these years had acquired a certain

smattering of foreign languages under the pressure of printing-room

needs and David's counsel--to inquire for and fetch a priest. She

was in an agony lest the child should die without the sacraments of

her Church.

The priest came--a young man of a heavy peasant type--bearing the

Host. Never did Dora forget that scene--the emaciated child gasping

her life away, the strange people, dimly seen amid the wreaths of

incense, who seemed to her to have flocked in from the street in

the wake of the priest, to look--the sacred words and gestures in

the midst, which, because of the quick unintelligible Latin, she

could only follow as a mystery of ineffable and saving power, the

same, so she believed, for Anglican and Catholic--and by the

bedside the sullen erect form of the mother, who could not be

induced to take any part whatever in the ceremony.

But when it was all over, and the little procession which had

brought the Host was forming once more, Louie thrust Dora and the

nurse violently away from the bed, and bent her ear down to

Cecile's mouth. She gave a wild and hideous cry; then drawing

herself to her full height, with a tragic magnificence of movement

she stretched out one shaking hand over the poor little wasted

body, while with the other she pointed to the priest in his white

officiating dress.

'Go out of this house!--go this _instant_! Who brought you in?

Not I! I tell you,--last night'--she flung the phrases out in

fierce gasps--' I gave God the chance. I said to Him, Make Cecile

well, and I'll behave myself--I'll listen to Father Lenoir. Much

good I've got by it all this time!--but I will. I'll live on a

crust, and I'll give all I can skin and scrape to those people at

Ste. Eulalie. If not--then I'll go to the devil--_to the devil!_

Do you hear? I swore that.'

Her voice sank to a hoarse whisper; she bent down, still keeping

everyone at bay and at a distance from her dead child,--though Dora

ran to her--her head turned over her shoulder, her glowing eyes of

hatred fixed upon the priest.

'She is mad!' he said to himself, receding quickly, lest the sacred

burden he bore should suffer any indignity.

At that moment she fell heavily on her knees beside the bed

insensible, her dark head lying on Cecile's arm. Dora, in a pale

trance of terror, closed little Cecile's weary eyes, the nurse

cleared the room, and they laid Louie on her bed.

When she revived, she crawled to the place where Cecile lay in her

white grave-dress strewn with flowers, and again put everyone away,

locking herself in with the body. But the rules of interment in the

case of infectious diseases are strict in France; the authorities

concerned intervened; and after scenes of indescribable misery and

violence, the little corpse was carried away, and, thanks to Dora's

and John's care, received tender and reverent burial.

The mother was too exhausted to resist any more. When Dora came

back from the funeral, the nurse told her that Madame Montjoie,

after having refused all meat or drink for two days, had roused

herself from what seemed the state of stupor in which the departure

of the funeral procession had left her, had asked for brandy, which

had been given her, and had then, of her own accord, swallowed a

couple of opium pills, which the doctor had so far vainly

prescribed for her, and was now heavily asleep.

Dora went to her own bed, too tired to stand, yet inexpressibly

relieved. Her bed was a heap of wraps contrived for her by the

nurse on the floor of the lower room--a bare den, reeking of damp,

which called itself the _salon_. But she had never rested

anywhere with such helpless thankfulness. For some hours at least,

agony and conflict were still, and she had a moment in which to

weep for Lucy, the news of whose death had now lain for two days a

dragging weight at her heart. Hateful memory!--she had forced her

way in to Louie with the letter, thinking in her innocence that the

knowledge of the brother's bereavement must touch the sister, or at

least momentarily divert her attention: and Louie had dashed it

down with the inconceivable words,--Dora's cheek burnt with anguish

and shame, as she tried to put them out of her mind for ever,--

'Very well. Now, then, you can marry him! You know you've always

wanted to!'

But at last that biting voice was hushed; there was not a sound in

the house; the summer night descended gently on the wretched

street, and in the midst of anxious discussion with herself as to

how she and John were to get Louie to England, she fell asleep.

When Dora awoke, Louie was not in the house. After a few hours of

opium-sleep, she must have noiselessly put together all her

valuables and money, a few trifles belonging to Cecile, and a small

parcel of clothes, and have then slipped out through the garden

door, and into a back lane or track, which would ultimately lead

her down to the bank of the river. None of the three other persons

sleeping in the house--Dora, the nurse, the old _bonne_, had

heard a sound.

When John arrived in the morning, his practical common sense

suggested a number of measures for Louie's pursuit, or for the

discovery of her fate, should she have made away with herself, as

he more than suspected--measures which were immediately taken by

himself, or by the lawyer, Mr. O'Kelly.

Everything had so far been in vain. No trace of the

fugitive--living or dead--could be found.

David, sitting with his arms on the deal table in the lower room,

and his face in his hands, listened in almost absolute silence to

the main facts of the story. When he looked up, it was to say,

'Have you been to Father Lenoir?'

No. Neither Dora nor John knew anything of Father Lenoir.

David went off at once. The good priest was deeply touched and

overcome by the story, but not astonished. He first told David of

the existence of Brenart, and search was instantly made for the

artist. He, too, was missing, but the police, whose cordial

assistance David, by the help of Lord Driffield's important friends

in Paris, was able to secure, were confident of immediate

discovery. Day after day passed, however; innumerable false clues

were started; but at the end of some weeks Louie's fate was much of

a secret as ever.

Dora and John had, of course, gone back to England directly after

David's arrival; and he now felt that his child and his work called

him. He returned home towards the middle of August, leaving the

search for his sister in Mr. O'Kelly's hands.

For five months David remained doggedly at his work in Prince's

Street. John watched him silently from day to day, showing him a

quiet devotion which sometimes brought his old comrade's hand upon

his shoulder in a quick touch of gratitude, or a flash to eyes

heavy with broken sleep. The winter was a bad one for trade; the

profits made by Grieve & Co., even on much business, were but

small; and in the consultative council of employés which David had

established the chairman constantly showed a dreaminess or an

irritability in difficult circumstances which in earlier days would

have cost him influence and success. But the men, who knew him

well, looked at each other askance, and either spoke their minds or

bore with him as seemed best. They were well aware that while wages

everywhere else had been cut down, theirs were undiminished; that

the profits from the second-hand book trade which remained

nominally outside the profit-sharing partnership were practically

all spent in furthering the social ends of it; and that the master,

in his desolate house, with his two maid-servants, one of them his

boy's nurse, lived as modestly as any of them, yet with help always

to spare for the sick and the unfortunate. To a man they remained

loyal to the firm and the scheme; but among even the best of them

there was a curious difference of opinion as to David and his ways.

They profited by them, and they would see him through; but there

was an uncomfortable feeling that, if such ideas were to spread,

they might cut both ways and interfere too much with the easy

living which the artisan likes and desires as much as any other

man.

Meanwhile, those who have followed the history of David Grieve with

any sympathy will not find it difficult to believe that this autumn

and winter were with him a time of intense mental anguish and

depression. The shock and tragedy of Louie's disappearance

following on the prolonged nervous exhaustion caused by Lucy's

struggle for life had brought him into a state similar to that in

which his first young grief had left him; only with this

difference, that the nature being now deeper and richer was but the

more capable of suffering. The passion of religious faith which had

carried him through Lucy's death had dwindled by natural reaction;

he believed, but none the less he walked in darkness. The cruelty

of his wife's fate, meditated upon through lonely and restless

nights, tortured beyond bearing a soul made for pity; and every now

and then wild fits of remorse for his original share in Louie's

sins and misfortunes would descend upon him, and leave no access to

reason.

His boy, his work, and his books, these were ultimately his

protections from himself. Sandy climbed about him, or got into

mischief with salutary frequency. The child slept beside his father

at night, and in the evenings was always either watching for him at

the gate or standing thumb in mouth with his face pressed against

the window, and his bright eye scanning the dusk.

For the rest, after a first period of utter numbness and

languor, David was once more able to read, and he read with

voracity--science, philosophy, belles lettres. Two subjects,

however, held his deepest mind all through, whatever might be added

to them--the study of ethics, in their bearing upon religious

conceptions, and the study of Christian origins. His thoughts

about them found occasional outlet, either in his talks with

Ancrum--whose love soothed him, and whose mind, with all its

weaknesses and its strong Catholic drift, he had long found to be

infinitely freer and more hospitable in the matter of ideas than

the average Anglican mind--or in his journal.

A few last extracts from the journal may be given. It should be

remembered that the southern element in him made such a mode of

expression more easy and natural to him than it ever can be to most

Englishmen.

'_November 2nd_.--It seems to me that last night was the

first night since she died that I have not dreamt of her. As a

rule, I am always with her in sleep, and for that reason I am the

more covetous of the sleep which comes to me so hardly. It is a

second life. Yet before her illness, during our married life, I

hardly knew what it was to dream.

'Two nights ago I thought I was standing beside her. She was lying

on the long couch under the sycamore tree whither we used to carry

her. At first, everything was wholly lifelike and familiar. Sandy

was somewhere near. She had the grey camel's hair shawl over her

shoulders, which I remember so well, and the white frilled cap

drawn loosely together under her chin, over bandages and dressings,

as usual. She asked me to fetch something for her from the house,

and I went, full of joy. There seemed to be a strange mixed sense

at the bottom of my heart that I had somehow lost her and found her

again.

'When I came back, nurse was there, and everything was changed.

Nurse looked at me with meaning, startled eyes, as much as to say,

"Look closely, it is not as you think." And as I went up to her,

lying still and even smiling on her couch, there was an

imperceptible raising of her little white hand as though to keep me

off. Then in a flash I saw that it was not my living Lucy; that it

could only be her spirit. I felt an awful sense of separation and

yet of yearning; sitting down on one of the mossy stones beside

her, I wept bitterly, and so woke, bathed in tears.

'... It has often seemed to me lately that certain elements in the

Resurrection stories may be originally traced to such experiences

as these. I am irresistibly drawn to believe that the strange and

mystic scene beside the lake, in the appendix chapter to the Gospel

of St. John, arose in some such way. There is the same mixture of

elements--of the familiar with the ghostly, the trivial with the

passionate and exalted--which my own consciousness has so often

trembled under in these last visionary months.

The well-known lake, the old scene of fishers and fishing-boats,

and on the shore the mysterious figure of the Master, the same, yet

not the same, the little, vivid, dream-like details of the fire of

coals, the broiled fish, and bread, the awe and longing of the

disciples--it is borne in upon me with extraordinary conviction

that the whole of it sprang, to begin with, from the dream of grief

and exhaustion. Then, in an age which attached a peculiar and

mystical importance to dreams, the beautiful thrilling fancy passed

from mouth to mouth, became almost immediately history instead of

dream,--just as here and there a parable misunderstood has taken

the garb of an event,--was after a while added to and made more

precise in the interest of apologetics, or of doctrine, or of the

simple love of elaboration, and so at last found a final

resting-place as an epilogue to the fourth Gospel.'

'NOVEMBER 4TH.--To-night I have dared to read again Browning's

"Rabbi ben Ezra." For months I have not been able to read it, or

think of it, though for days and weeks towards the end of her life

it seemed to be graven on my heart.

Look not thou down, but up!

To uses of a cup,

The festal board, lamp's flash, and trumpet's peal

The new wine's foaming glow,

The Master's lips a-glow!

Thou heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel?

'Let me think again, my God, of that astonishing ripening of her

last days!--of all her little acts of love and gratitude towards

me, towards her nurse, towards the people in the house, who had

helped to tend her--of her marvellous submission, when once the

black cloud of the fear of death, and the agony of parting from

life had left her.

'And such facts alone in the world's economy are to have no

meaning, point no-whither? I could as soon believe it as that, in

the physical universe, the powers of the magnet, or the flash of

the lightning, are isolated and meaningless--tell us nothing and

lead nowhere.

_'November 10th._--In the old days--there is a passage of the

kind in an earlier part of this journal--I was constantly troubled,

and not for myself only, but for others, the poor and unlearned

especially, who, as it seemed to me, would lose most in the

crumbling of the Christian mythology--as to the intellectual

difficulties of the approach to God. All this philosophical travail

of two thousand years--and so many doubts and darknesses! A

world athirst for preaching, and nothing simple or clear to

preach--when once the miracle-child of Bethlehem had been

dispossessed. And _now_ it is daylight-plain to me that in the

simplest act of loving self-surrender there is the germ of all

faith, the essence of all lasting religion. Quicken human service,

purify and strengthen human love, and have no fear but that the

conscience will find its God! For all the time this quickening

and this purification are His work in thee. Around thee are the

institutions, the ideals, the knowledge and beliefs, ethical or

intellectual, in which that work, that life, have been so far

fragmentarily and partially realised. Submit thyself and press

forward. Thou knowest well what it means to be _better:_ more

pure, more loving, more self-denying. And in thy struggle to be all

these, God cometh to thee and abides.... _But the greatest of

these is love!_'

_'November 20th._--To-day I have finished the last of my New

Testament tracts, the last at any rate for a time. While Ancrum

lives I have resolved to suspend them. They trouble him deeply; and

I, who owe him so much, will not voluntarily add to his burden. His

wife is with him, a somewhat heavy, dark-faced woman, with a

slumbrous eye, which may, however, be capable of kindling. They

have left Mortimer Street, and have gone to live in a little house

on the road to Cheadle. He seems perfectly happy, and though the

doctor is discouraging, I at least can see no change for the worse.

She sits by him and reads or works, without much talking, but is

all the time attentive to his lightest movement. Friends send them

flowers which brighten the little house, his "boys" visit him in

the evenings, he is properly fed, and altogether I am more happy

about him than I have been for long. It required considerable

courage, this move, on her part; for there are a certain number of

people still left who knew Ancrum at college, and remember the

story; and those who believed him a bachelor are of course

scandalised and wondering. But the talk, whatever it is, does not

seem to molest them much. He offered to leave Manchester, but she

would not let him. "What would he do away from you and his boys?"

she said to me. There is a heroism in it all the same.

'... So my New Testament work may rest a while.--During these

autumn weeks, it has helped me through some terrible hours.

'When I look back over the mass of patient labour which has

accumulated during the present century round the founder of

Christianity and the origins of his society--when I compare the

text-books of the day with the text-books of sixty years ago--I no

longer wonder at the empty and ignorant arrogance with which the

French eighteenth century treated the whole subject. The first

stone of the modern building had not been laid when Voltaire wrote,

unless perhaps in the Wolfenbuttel fragments. He knew, in truth,

no more than the Jesuits, much less in fact than the better men

among them.

'... It has been like the unravelling of a piece of fine and

ancient needlework--and so discovering the secrets of its make and

craftsmanship. A few loose ends were first followed up; then

gradually the whole tissue has been involved, till at last the

nature and quality of each thread, the purpose and the skill of

each stitch, are becoming plain, and what was mystery rises into

knowledge.

'... But how close and fine a web!--and how difficult and patient

the process by which Christian reality has to be grasped! There is

no short cut--one must toil.

'But after one has toiled, what are the rewards? Truth first--which

is an end in itself and not a means to anything beyond. Then--the

great figure of Christianity given back to you--with something at

least of the first magic, the first "natural truth" of look and

tone. Through and beyond dogmatic overlay, and Messianic theory and

wonder-loving addition, to recover, at least fragmentarily, the

actual voice, the first meaning, which is also the eternal meaning,

of Jesus--Paul--"John"!

'Finally--a conception of Christianity in which you discern once

more its lasting validity and significance--its imperishable place

in human life. It becomes simply that preaching of the Kingdom

of God which belongs to and affects you--you, the modern

European--just as Greek philosophy, Stoic or Cynic, was that

preaching of it which belonged to and affected Epictetus.'

'November 24th.--Mr. O'Kelly writes to me to-day his usual hopeless

report. No news! I do not even know whether she is alive, and I can

do nothing--absolutely nothing.

'Yes--let me correct myself, there is some news of an event which,

if we could find her, might simplify matters a little. Montjoie is

dead in hospital--at the age of thirty-six--

'Is there any other slavery and chain like that of temperament? As

I look back on the whole course of my relation to Louie, I am

conscious only of a sickening sense of utter failure. Our father

left her to me, and I have not been able to hold her back

from--nay, I have helped to plunge her into the most obvious and

commonplace ruin. Yet I am always asking myself, if it were to do

again, could I do any better? Has any other force developed in me

which would make it possible for me _now_ to break through the

barriers between her nature and mine, to love her sincerely, asking

for nothing again, to help her to a saner and happier life?

'If sometimes I dream that so it is, it is to _her_ I owe

it--to _her_ whom I carry on my bosom, and whose hand did

once, or so it seemed, unlock to me the gates of God. _Lucy! my

Lucy!_

'... All my past life becomes sometimes intolerable to me. I can

see nothing in it that is not tarnished and flecked with black

stains of egotism, pride, hardness, moral indolence.

'And the only reparation possible, "Be ye transformed by the

renewing of your minds," at which my fainting heart sinks.

'Sometimes I find much comfort in the saying of a lonely thinker,

"Let us humbly accept from God even our own nature; not that we are

called upon to accept the evil and the disease in us, but let us

accept _ourselves_ in spite of the evil and the disease."

_'Que vivre est difficile--Ô mon coeur fatigué!'_

CHAPTER XI

By the end of December David Grieve was near breaking down.

Dr. Mildmay insisted brusquely on his going away.

'As far as I can see you will live to be an old man,' he said, 'but

if you go on like this, it will be with shattered powers. You are

driving yourself to death, yet at the present moment you have no

natural driving force. It is all artificial, a matter of will. Do,

for heaven's sake, get away from these skies and these streets, and

leave all work and all social reforms behind. The first business of

the citizen--prate as you like!--is to keep his nerves and his

digestion in going order.'

David laughed and yielded. The advice, in fact, corresponded to an

inward thirst, and had, moreover, a coincidence to back it. In one

of the Manchester papers two or three mornings before he had seen

the advertisement of a farm to let, which had set vibrating all his

passion for and memory of the moorland. It was a farm about half a

mile from Needham Farm, on one of the lower slopes of Kinder Low.

It had belonged to a peasant owner, lately dead. The heirs wished

to sell, but failing a purchaser were willing to let on a short

lease.

It was but a small grazing farm, and the rent was low. David went

to the agent, took it at once, and in a few days, to the amazement

of Reuben and Hannah, to whom he wrote only the night before he

arrived, he and Sandy, and a servant, were established with a

minimum of furniture, but a sufficiency of blankets and coals, in

two or three rooms of the little grey-walled house.

'Well, it caps me, it do!' Hannah said to herself, in her

astonishment as she stood on her own doorstep the day after the

arrival, and watched the figures of David and Sandy disappearing

along the light crisp snow of the nearer fields in the direction of

the Red Brook and the sheep-fold. They had looked in to ask for

Reuben, and had gone in pursuit of him.

What on earth should make a man in the possession of his natural

senses leave a warm town-house in January, and come to camp in 'owd

Ben's' farm, was, indeed, past Hannah's divination. In reality, no

sudden resolve could have been happier. Sandy was a hardy little

fellow, and with the first breath of the moorland wind David felt a

load, which had been growing too heavy to bear, lifting from his

breast. His youth, his manhood, reasserted themselves. The bracing

clearness of what seemed to be the setting-in of a long frost put a

new life into him; winter's 'bright and intricate device' of

ice-fringed stream, of rimy grass, of snow-clad moor, of steel-blue

skies, filled him once more with natural joy, carried him out of

himself. He could not keep himself indoors; he went about with

Reuben or the shepherd, after the sheep; he fed the cattle at

Needham Farm, and brought his old knowledge to bear on the rearing

of a sickly calf; he watched for the grouse, or he carried his

pockets full of bread for the few blackbirds or moor-pippits that

cheered his walks into the fissured solitudes of the great Peak

plateau, walks which no one to whom every inch of the ground was

not familiar dared have ventured, seeing how misleading and

treacherous even light snow-drifts may become in the black bog-land

of these high and lonely moors; or he toiled up the side of the

Scout with Sandy on his back, that he might put the boy on one of

the boulders beside the top of the Downfall, and, holding him fast,

bid him look down at the great icicles which marked its steep and

waterless bed, gleaming in the short-lived sun.

The moral surroundings, too, of the change were cheering. There,

over the brow, in the comfortable little cottage, where he had

long since placed her, with a woman to look after her, was

Margaret--quite childish and out of her mind, but happy and well

cared for. He and Sandy would trudge over from time to time to see

her, he carrying the boy in a plaid slung round his shoulders when

the snow was deep. Once Sandy went to Frimley with the Needham Farm

shepherd, and when David came to fetch him he found the boy and

Margaret playing cat's-cradle together by the fire, and the

eagerness in Sandy's pursed lips, and on the ethereally blanched

and shrunken face of Margaret, brought the tears to David's eyes,

as he stood smiling and looking on. But she did not suffer; for

memory was gone; only the gentle 'imperishable child' remained.

And at Needham Farm he had never known the atmosphere so still.

Reuben was singularly cheerful and placid. Whether by the mere

physical weakening of years, or by some slow softening of the soul,

Hannah and her ways were no longer the daily scourge and perplexity

to her husband they had once been. She was a harsh and tyrannous

woman still, but not now openly viperish or cruel. With the

disappearance of old temptations, the character had, to some

extent, righted itself. Her sins of avarice and oppression towards

Sandy's orphans had raised no Nemesis that could be traced, either

within or without. It is doubtful whether she ever knew what

self-reproach might mean; in word, at any rate, she was to the end

as loudly confident as at the first. Nevertheless it might

certainly be said that at sixty she was a better and more tolerable

human being than she had been at fifty.

'Aye, if yo do but live long enoof, yo get past t' bad bits o' t'

road,' Reuben said one night, with a long breath, to David, and

then checked himself, brought up either by a look at his nephew's

mourning dress, or by a recollection of what David had told him of

Louie the night before.

It troubled Reuben indeed, something in the old fashion, that his

wife would show no concern whatever for Louie when he repeated to

her the details of that disappearance whereof so far he and she had

known only the bare fact.

'Aye, I thowt she'd bin and married soom mak o' rabblement,'

remarked Hannah. 'Yo doant suppose ony decent mon ud put up wi her.

What Davy wants wi lookin for her I doant know. He'll be hard-set

when he's fand her, I should think.'

She was equally impervious and sarcastic with regard to David's

social efforts. Her sharp tongue exercised itself on the 'poor way'

in which he seemed to live, and when Reuben repeated to her, with

some bewilderment, the facts which she had egged him on to get out

of David, her scorn knew no bounds.

'Weel, it's like t' Bible after aw, Hannah,' said Reuben, perplexed

and remonstrating; 'theer's things, yo'll remember, abeawt gien t'

coat off your back, an sellin aw a mon has, an th' loike, 'at fairly

beats me soomtimes.'

'Oh--go long wi yo!' said Hannah in high wrath. 'He an his loike'll

mak a halliblash of us aw soon, wi their silly faddle, an pamperin

o' workin men, wha never wor an never will be noa better nor they

should be. But--thank the Lord--_I_'ll not be theer to see.'

And after this communication she found it very difficult to treat

David civilly.

But to David's son--to Sandy--Hannah Grieve capitulated, for the

first and only time in her life.

On the second and third day after his arrival, Sandy came over with

the servant to ask Hannah's help in some small matter of the new

household. As they neared the farm door, Tim, the aged Tim, who was

slouching behind, was suddenly set upon by a new and ill-tempered

collie of Reuben's, who threatened very soon to shake the life out

of his poor toothless victim. But Sandy, who had a stick, rushed at

him, his cheeks and eyes glowing with passion.

'Get away! you great big dog, you! and leave my middle-sized dog

alone!'

And he belaboured and pulled at the collie, without a thought of

fear, till the farm-man and Hannah came and separated the

combatants,--stalking into the farm kitchen afterwards in a

speechless rage at the cowardly injustice which had been done to

Tim. As he sat in the big rocking-chair, fiercely cuddling Tim and

sucking his thumb, his stormy breath subsiding by degrees, Hannah

thought him, as she confessed to the only female friend she

possessed in the world, 'the pluckiest and bonniest little grig i'

th' coontry side.'

Thenceforward, so far as her queer temper would allow, she became

his nurse and slave, and David, with all the memorials of his own

hard childhood about him, could not believe his eyes, when he found

Sandy established day after day in the Needham Farm kitchen,

sucking his thumb in a corner of the settle, and ordering Hannah

about with the airs of a three-tailed bashaw. She stuffed him with

hot girdle-cakes; she provided for him a store of 'humbugs,' the

indigenous sweet of the district, which she made and baked with her

own hands, and had not made before for forty years; she took him

about with her, 'rootin,' as she expressed it, after the hens and

pigs and the calves; till, Sandy's exactions growing with her

compliance, the common fate of tyrants overtook him. He one day

asked too much and his slave rebelled. David saw him come in one

afternoon, and found him a minute or two after viciously biting the

blind-cord in the parlour, in a black temper. When his father

inquired what was the matter, Sandy broke out in a sudden wail of

tears.

'Why _can't_ she be a Kangawoo when I want her to?'

Whereupon David, with the picture of Hannah's grim figure, cap and

all, before his mind's eye, went into the first fit of side-shaking

laughter that had befallen him for many and many a month.

On a certain gusty afternoon towards the middle of February, David

was standing alone beside the old smithy. The frost, after a

temporary thaw, had set in again, there had been tolerably heavy

snow the night before, and it was evident from the shifting of the

wind and the look of the clouds that were coming up from the

north-east over the Scout that another fall was impending. But the

day had been fine, and the sun, setting over the Cheshire hills,

threw a flood of pale rose into the white bosom of the Scout and on

the heavy clouds piling themselves above it. It was a moment of

exquisite beauty and wildness. The sunlit snow gleamed against the

stormy sky; the icicles lining the steep channel of the Downfall

shone jagged and rough between the white and smoothly rounded banks

of moor, or the snow-wreathed shapes of the grit boulders; to his

left was the murmur of the Red Brook creeping between its frozen

banks; while close beside him about twenty of the moor sheep were

huddling against the southern wall of the smithy in prescience of

the coming storm. Almost within reach of his stick was the pan of

his childish joy, the water left in it by the December rains frozen

hard and white; and in the crevice of the wall he had just

discovered the mouldering remains of a toy-boat.

He stood and looked out over the wide winter world, rejoicing in

its austerity, its solemn beauty. Physically he was conscious of

recovered health; and in the mind also there was a new energy of

life and work. Nature seemed to say to him, "Do but keep thy heart

open to me, and I have a myriad aspects and moods wherewith to

interest and gladden and teach thee to the end;" while, as his eye

wandered to the point where Manchester lay hidden on the horizon,

the world of men, of knowledge, of duty, summoned him back to it

with much of the old magic and power in the call. His grief, his

love, no man should take from him; but he must play his part.

Yes--he and Sandy must go home--and soon. Yet even as he so

decided, the love of the familiar scene, its freedom, its

loneliness, its unstainedness, rose high within him. He stood lost

in a trance of memory. Here he and Louie had listened to 'Lias';

there, far away amid the boulders of the Downfall, they had waited

for the witch; among those snow-laden bushes yonder Louie had

hidden when she played Jenny Crum for the discomfiture of the

prayer-meeting; and it was on the slope at his feet that she had

pushed the butter-scotch into his mouth, the one and only sign of

affection she had ever given him, that he could remember, in all

their forlorn childhood.

As these things rose before him, the moor, the wind, the rising

voice of the storm became to him so many channels, whereby the

bitter memory of his sister rushed upon him and took possession.

Everything spoke of her, suggested her. Then with inexorable force

his visualising gift carried him on past her childhood to the

scenes of her miserable marriage; and as he thought of her child's

death, the desolation and madness of her flight, the mystery of her

fate, his soul was flooded once more for the hundredth time with

anguish and horror. Here in this place, where their childish lives

had been so closely intertwined, he could not resign himself for

ever to ignorance, to silence; his whole being went out in protest,

in passionate remorseful desire.

The wind was beginning to blow fiercely; the rosy glow was gone;

darkness was already falling. Wild gusts swept from time to time

round the white amphitheatre of moor and crag; the ghostly sounds

of night and storm were on the hills. Suddenly it was to him as

though he heard his name called from a great distance--breathed

shrilly and lingeringly along the face of the Scout.

'_David_!'

It was Louie's voice. The illusion was so strong that, as he raised

his hand to his ear, turning towards the Downfall, whence the sound

seemed to come, he trembled from head to foot.

'_David!_'

Was it the call of some distant boy or shepherd? He could not tell,

could not collect himself. He sank down on one of the grit-boulders

by the snow-wreathed door of the smithy and sat there long,

heedless of the storm and cold, his mind working, a sudden purpose

rising and unfolding, with a mysterious rapidity and excitement.

Early on the following morning he made his way down through the

deep snow to the station, having first asked Hannah to take charge

of Sandy for a day or two; and by the night mail he left London for

Paris.

It was not till he walked into Mr. O'Kelly's office, on the ground

floor of a house in the Rue d'Assas, at about eleven o'clock on the

next day, that he was conscious of any reaction. Then for a

bewildered instant he wondered why he had come, and what he was to

say.

But to his amazement the lawyer rose at once, throwing up his hands

with the gesture of one who notes some singular and unexpected

stroke of good fortune.

'This is _most_ extraordinary, Mr. Grieve! I have not yet

signed the letter on my desk--there it is!--summoning you to Paris.

We have discovered Madame Montjoie! As constantly happens, we have

been pursuing inquiries in all sorts of difficult and remote

quarters, and she is here--at our doors, living for some weeks

past, at any rate, without any disguise, at _Barbizon_, of all

places in the world! Barbizon _pres_ Fontainebleau. You know

it?'

David sat down.

'Yes,' he said, after an instant. 'I know it. Is he--is that man

Brenart there?'

'Certainly. He has taken a miserable studio, and is making, or

pretending to make, some winter studies of the forest. I hear that

Madame Montjoie looks ill and worn; the neighbours say the

_menage_ is a very uncomfortable one, and not likely to last

long. I wish I had better news for you, Mr. Grieve.'

And the lawyer, remembering the handsome hollow-eyed boy of twenty

who had first asked his help, studied with irrepressible curiosity

the man's noble storm-beaten look and fast grizzling hair, as David

sat before him with his head bent and his hat in his hands.

They talked a while longer, and then David said, rising:

'Can I get over there to-night? The snow will be deep in the

forest.'

'I imagine they will keep that main road to Barbizon open in some

fashion,' said the lawyer. 'You may find a sledge. Let me know how

you speed and whether I can assist you. But, I fear, '--he shrugged

his shoulders--'in the end this wild life _gets into the

blood_. I have seen it so often.'

He spoke with the freedom and knowledge of one who had observed

Louie Montjoie with some closeness for eleven years. David said

nothing in answer; but at the door he turned to ask a question.

'You can't tell me anything of the habits of this man--this

Brenart?'

'Stop!' said the lawyer, after a moment's thought; 'I remember this

detail--my agent told me that M. Brenart was engaged in some work

for "D--et Cie"'--he named a great picture-dealing firm on the

Boulevard St. Germain, famous for their illustrated books and

_editions de luxe_.--'He did not hear what it was, but--ah! I

remember,--it has taken him occasionally to Paris, or so he says,

and it has been these absences which have led to some of the worst

scenes between him and your sister. I suppose she put a jealous

woman's interpretation on them. You want to see her alone?--when

this man is out of the way? I have an idea: take my card and your

own to this person--' he wrote out an address--'he is one of the

junior partners in "D--et Cie"; I know him, and I got his firm

the sale of a famous picture. He will do me a good turn. Ask him

what the work is that M. Brenart is doing, and when he expects him

next in Paris. It is possible you may get some useful information.'

David took the card and walked at once to the Boulevard St.

Germain, which was close by. He was civilly received by the man to

whom O'Kelly had sent him, and learned from him that Brenart was

doing for the firm a series of etchings illustrating the forest in

winter, and intended to make part of a great book on Fontainebleau

and the Barbizon school. They were expecting the last batch from

him, were indeed desperately impatient for them. But he was a

difficult fellow to deal with--an exceedingly clever artist, but

totally untrustworthy. In his last letter to them he had spoken of

bringing the final instalment to them, and returning some corrected

proofs by February 16--'to-morrow, I see,' said the speaker,

glancing at an almanac on his office table. 'Well, we may get them,

and we mayn't. If we don't, we shall have to take strong measures.

And now, Monsieur, I think I have told you all I can tell you of

our relations to M. Brenart.'

David bowed and took his leave. He made his way through the great

shop with its picture-covered walls and its floors dotted with

stands on which lay exposed the new etchings and engravings of

the season. In front of him a lady in black was also making her

way to the door and the street. No one was attending her, and

instinctively he hurried forward to open the heavy glass door for

her. As he did so a sudden sharp presentiment shot through him. The

door swung to behind them, and he found himself in the covered

entrance of the shop face to face with Elise Delaunay.

The meeting was so startling that neither could disguise the shock

of it. He took off his hat mechanically; she grew white and leant

against the glass window.

'You!--how can it be you?' she said in a quick whisper, then

recovering herself--'Monsieur Grieve, old associations are painful,

and I am neither strong--nor--nor stoical. Which way are you

walking?'

'Towards the Rue de Seine,' he said, thrown into a bewildering mist

of memory by her gesture, the crisp agitated decision of her

manner. 'And you?'

'I also. We will walk a hundred yards together. What are you in

Paris for?'

'I am here on some business of my sister's,' he said evasively.

She raised her eyes, and looked at him long and sharply. He, on his

side, saw, with painful agitation, that her youth was gone, but not

her grace, not her singular and wiltful charm. The little face

under her black hat was lined and sallow, and she was startlingly

thin. The mouth had lost its colour, and gained instead the hard

shrewdness of a woman left to battle with the world and poverty

alone; but the eyes had their old plaintive trick; the dead gold of

the hair, the rings and curls of it against the white temples, were

still as beautiful as they had ever been; and the light form moved

beside him with the same quick floating gait.

'You have grown much older,' she said abruptly. 'You look as if you

had suffered--but what of that?--_C'est comme tout le monde_.'

She withdrew her look a moment, with a little bitter gesture, then

she resumed, drawn on by a curiosity and emotion she could not

control.

'Are you married?'

'Yes, but my wife is dead.'

She gave a start; the first part of the answer had not prepared her

for the second.

'_Ah, mon Dieu!_' she said, 'always grief--_always_! Is

it long?'

'Eight months. I have a boy. And you?--I heard sad news of you

once--the only time.'

'You might well,' she said, with a half-ironical accent, driving

the point of her umbrella restlessly into the crevices of the

stones, as they slowly crossed a paved street. 'My husband is only a

cripple, confined to his chair,--I am no longer an artist but an

artisan,--I have not painted a _picture_ for years,--but what

I paint sells for a trifle, and there is soup in the pot--of a

sort. For the rest I spend my life in making _tisane_, in

lifting weights too heavy for me, and bargaining for things to eat.'

'But--you are not unhappy!' he said to her boldly, with a change of

tone.

She stopped, struck by the indescribable note in his voice. They

had turned into a side street, whither she had unconsciously led

him. She stood with her eyes on the ground, then she lifted them

once more, and there was in them a faint beautiful gleam, which

transformed the withered and sharpened face.

'You are quite right,' she said, 'if he will only live. He depends

on me for everything. It is like a child, but it consoles. Adieu!'

That night David found himself in the little _auberge_ at

Barbizon. He had discovered a sledge to take him across the forest,

and he and his driver had pushed their way under a sky of lead and

through whirling clouds of fresh sleet past the central beechwood,

where the great boles stood straight and bare amid fantastic masses

of drift; through the rock and fir region, where all was white, and

the trees drooped under their wintry load; and beneath withered and

leaning oaks, throwing gaunt limbs here and there from out the

softening effacing mantle of the snow. Night fell when the journey

was half over, and as the lights of the sledge flashed from side to

side into these lonely fastnesses of cold, how was it possible to

believe that summer and joy had ever tabernacled here?

He was received at the inn, as his driver had brought him--with

astonishment. But Barbizon has been long accustomed, beyond most

places in France, to the eccentricities of the English and American

visitor; and being a home of artists, it understands the hunt for

"impressions," and easily puts up with the unexpected. Before a

couple of hours were over, David was installed in a freezing room,

and was being discussed in the kitchen, where his arrival produced

a certain animation, as the usual English madman in quest of a

sensation, and no doubt ready to pay for it.

There were, however, three other guests in the inn, as he found,

when he descended for dinner. They were all artists--young, noisy,

_bons camarades_, and of a rough and humble social type. To

them the winter at Barbizon was as attractive as anywhere else.

Life at the inn was cheap, and free; they had the digestion of

ostriches, eating anything that was put before them, and drinking

oceans of red wine at ten sous a litre; on bad days they smoked,

fed, worked at their pictures or played coarse practical jokes on

each other and the people of the inn; in fine weather there was

always the forest to be exploited, and the chance of some happy and

profitable inspiration.

They stared at David a good deal during the _biftek_, the black

pudding which seemed to be a staple dish of the establishment,

and the _omelette aux fines herbes_, which the landlord's wife

had added in honour of the stranger. One of them, behind the

shelter of his glasses, drew the outline of the Englishman's

head and face on the table-cloth, and showed it to his neighbour.

'Poetical, grand style, _hein_?'

The other nodded carelessly. '_Pourtant--l'hiver lui plaît_,'

he hummed under his breath, having some lines of Hugo's, which he

had chosen as a motto for a picture, running in his head.

After dinner everybody gathered round the great fire, which

the servant had piled with logs, while the flames, and the

wreaths of smoke from the four pipes alternately revealed and

concealed the rough sketches of all sorts--landscape, portrait,

_genre_--legacies of bygone visitors, wherewith the walls of

the _salle à manger_ were covered. David sat in his corner

smoking, ready enough to give an account of his journey across the

forest, and to speak when he was spoken to.

As soon as the strangeness of the new-comer had a little worn off,

the three young fellows plunged into a flood of amusing gossip

about the storm and the blocking of the roads, the scarcity of food

in Barbizon, the place in general, and its inhabitants. David fell

silent after a while, stiffening under a presentiment which was

soon realised. He heard his sister's wretched lot discussed with

shouts of laughter--the chances of Brenart's escape from the

mistress he had already wearied of and deceived--the perils of 'la

Montjoie's' jealousy. _'Il veut bien se debarrasser d'elle--mais

on ne plaisante pas avec une tigresse_!' said one of the

speakers. So long as there was information to be got which might

serve him he sat motionless, withdrawn into the dark, forcing

himself to listen. When the talk became mere scurrility and noise,

he rose and went out.

He passed through the courtyard of the inn, and turned down the

village street. The storm had gone down, and there were a few stars

amid the breaking clouds. Here and there a light shone from the low

houses on either hand; the snow, roughly shovelled from the foot

pavements, lay piled in heaps along the roadway, the white roofs

shone dimly against the wild sky. He passed Madame Pyat's

_maisonnette_, pausing a moment to look over the wall. Not a

sign of life in the dark building, and, between him and it, great

drifts of snow choking up and burying the garden. A little further

on, as he knew, lay the goal of his quest. He easily made out the

house from Mr. O'Kelly's descriptions, and he lingered a minute, on

the footway, under an overhanging roof to look at it. It was just a

labourer's cottage standing back a little from the street, and to

one side rose a high wooden addition which he guessed to be the

studio. Through the torn blind came the light of a lamp, and as he

stood there, himself invisible in his patch of darkness, he heard

voices--an altercation, a woman's high shrill note.

Then he crept back to the inn vibrating through all his being to

the shame of those young fellows' talk, the incredible difficulty

of the whole enterprise. Could he possibly make any impression upon

her whatever? What was done was done; and it would be a crime on

his part to jeopardise in the smallest degree the wholesome

brightness of Sandy's childhood by any rash proposals which it

might be wholly beyond his power to carry out.

He carried up a basket of logs to his room, made them blaze, and

crouched over them till far into the night. But in the end the

doubt and trouble of his mind subsided; his purpose grew clear

again. 'It was my own voice that spoke to me on the moor,' he

thought, 'the voice of my own best life.'

About eight o'clock, with the first light of the morning, he was

roused by bustle and noise under his window. He got up, and,

looking out, saw two sledges standing before the inn, in the cold

grey light. Men were busy harnessing a couple of horses to each,

and there were a few figures, muffled in great coats and carrying

bags and wraps, standing about.

'They are going over to Fontainebleau station,' he thought; 'if that

man keeps his appointment in Paris to-day, he will go with them.'

As the words passed through his mind, a figure came striding

up from the lower end of the street, a young fair-haired man,

in a heavy coat lined with sheepskin. His delicately made

face--naturally merry and _bon enfant_--was flushed and

scowling. He climbed into one of the sledges, complained of the

lateness of the start, swore at the ostler, who made him take

another seat on the plea that the one he had chosen was engaged,

and finally subsided into a moody silence, pulling at his

moustache, and staring out over the snow, till at last the signal

was given, and the sledges flew off on the Fontainebleau road,

under a shower of snowballs which a group of shivering bright-eyed

urchins on their way to school threw after them, as soon as the

great whips were at a safe distance.

David dressed and descended.

'Who was that fair-haired gentleman in the first sledge?' he

casually asked of the landlord who was bringing some smoking hot

coffee into the _salle à manger_.

'That was a M. Brenart, monsieur,' said the landlord, cheerfully,

absorbed all the while in the laying of his table. '_C'est un

drôle de corps, M. Brenart_. I don't take to him much myself;

and as for madame--_qui n'est pas madame!_'

He shrugged his shoulders, saw that there were no fresh rolls, and

departed with concern to fetch them.

David ate and drank. He would give her an hour yet.

When his watch told him that the time was come, he went out slowly,

inquiring on the way if there would be any means of getting to

Paris later in the day. Yes, the landlord thought a conveyance of

some sort could be managed--if monsieur would pay for it!

A few minutes later David knocked at the door of Brenart's house.

He could get no answer at all, and at last he tried the latch. It

yielded to his hand, and he went in.

There was no one in the bare kitchen, but there were the remains of

a fire, and of a meal. Both the crockery on the table and a few

rough chairs and stools the room contained struck him as being in

great disorder. There were two doors at the back. One led into a

back room which was empty, the other down a few steps into a

garden. He descended the steps and saw the long wooden erection of

the studio stretching to his left. There was a door in the centre

of its principal wall, which was ajar. He went up to it and softly

pushed it open. There, at the further end, huddled over an iron

stove, her face buried in her hands, her shoulders shaken with

fierce sobs, was Louie.

He closed the door behind him, and at the sound she turned,

hastily. When she saw who it was she gave a cry, and, sinking back

on her low canvas chair, she lay staring at him, and speechless.

Her eyes were red with weeping; her beauty was a wreck; and in face

of the despair which breathed from her, and from her miserable

surroundings, all doubt, all repulsion, all condemnation fled from

the brother's heart. The iron in his soul melted. He ran up to her,

and, kneeling beside her, he put his arms round her, as he had

never done in his life.

'Oh you poor thing--you poor thing!' he cried, scarcely knowing

what he said. He took her worn, tear-stained face, and, laying it

on his shoulder, he kissed her, breathing incoherent words of pity

and consolation.

She submitted a while, helpless with shock and amazement, and still

shaken with the tempest of her own passion. But there came a moment

when she pushed him away and tried desperately to recover herself.

'I don't know what you want--you're not going to have anything to

do with me now--you can't. Let me alone--it will be over soon--one

way or the other.'

And she sat upright, one hand clenched on her knees, her frowning

brows drawn together, and the tears falling in spite of her intense

effort to drive them back.

He found a painter's stool, and sat down by her, pale and

determined. He told her the history of his search; he implored her

to be guided by him, to let him take her home to England and

Manchester, where her story was unknown, save to Dora and John. He

would make a home for her near his own; he would try to comfort her

for the loss of her child; they would understand each other better,

and the past should be buried.

Louie looked at him askance. Every now and then she ceased to

listen to him at all; while, under the kindling of her own

thoughts, her wild eyes flamed into fresh rage and agony.

'Don't!--leave me alone!' she broke out at last, springing up. 'I don't

want your help, I don't want you; I only want _him_,--and I will have

him, or we shall kill each other.'

She paced to and fro, her hands clasped on her breast, her white

face setting into a ghastly calm. David gazed at her with horror.

This was another note! one which in all their experience of each

other he had never heard on her lips before. _She loved this

man_!--this mean wretch, who had lived upon her and betrayed

her, and, having got from her all she had to give, was probably

just about to cast her off into the abyss which yawns for such

women as Louie. He had thought of her flight to him before as the

frenzy of a nature which must have distraction at any cost from the

unfamiliar and intolerable weight of natural grief.

But this!--one moment it cut the roots from hope, the next it

nerved him to more vigorous action.

'You cannot have him,' he said, steadily and sternly. 'I have

listened to the talk here for your sake--he is already on the point

of deserting you--everyone else in this place knows that he is

tired of you--that he is unfaithful to you.'

She dropped into her chair with a groan. Even her energies were

spent--she was all but fainting--and her miserable heart knew, with

more certainty than David himself did, that all he said was true.

Her unexpected weakness, the collapse of her strained nerves,

filled him with fresh hopes. He came close to her again and

pleaded, by the memory of her child, of their father--that she

would yield, and go away with him at once.

'What should I do'--she broke in passionately, her sense of

opposition of absurdity reviving her, 'when I get to your hateful

Manchester? Go to church and say my prayers! And you? In a week or

two, I tell you, you would be sick of having soiled your hands with

such _mud_ as I am.'

She threw herself back in her chair with a superb gesture, and

folded her arms, looking him defiance.

'Try me,' he said quietly, while his lip trembled. 'I am not as I

was, Louie. There are things one can only learn by going

down--down--into the depths of sorrow. The night before Lucy

died--she could hardly speak--she sent you a message: "I wish I had

been kinder--ask her to come to Manchester when I am gone." I have

not seen her die--not seen her whole life turn to love--through

such unspeakable suffering--for nothing. Oh Louie--when we submit

ourselves to God--when we ask for His life--and give up our

own--then, and then only, there is peace--and strength. We

ourselves are nothing--creatures of passion--miserable--weak--but

in Him and through Him--'

His voice broke. He took her cold hand and pressed it tenderly. She

trembled in spite of herself, and closed her eyes.

'_Don't_--I know all about that--why did the child die? There

is no God--nothing. It's just talk. I told Him what I'd do--I vowed

I'd go to the bad, for good and all--and I have. There--let me

alone!'

But he only held her hand tighter.

'No I--never! Your trouble was awful--it might well drive you

mad. But others have suffered, Louie--no less--and yet have

believed--have hoped. It is not beyond our power--for it has been

done again and again!--by the most weak, the most miserable. Oh!

think of that--tear yourself first from the evil life--and you,

too, will know what it is to be consoled--to be strengthened. The

mere effort to come with me--I promise it you!--will bring you

healing and comfort. We make for ourselves the promise of eternal

life, by turning to the good. Then the hope of recovering our dear

ones--which was nothing to us before--rises and roots itself in our

heart. Come with me,--conquer yourself,--let us begin to love each

other truly, give me comfort and yourself--and you will bear to

think again of Cecile and of God--there will be calm and peace

beyond this pain.'

His eyes shone upon her through a mist. She said no more for a

while. She lay exhausted and silent, the tears streaming once more

down her haggard cheeks.

Then, thinking she had consented, he began to speak of arrangements

for the journey--of the possibility of getting across the forest.

Instantly her passion returned. She sprang up and put him away from

her.

'It is ridiculous, I tell you--_ridiculous!_ How can I decide

in such an instant? You must go away and leave me to think.'

'No,' he said firmly, 'my only chance is to stay with you.'

She walked up and down, saying wild incoherent things to herself

under her breath. She wore the red dress she had worn at

Manchester--now a torn and shabby rag--and over it, because of the

cold, a long black cloak, a relic of better days. Her splendid

hair, uncombed and dishevelled, hung almost loose round her head

and neck; and the emaciation of face and figure made her height and

slenderness more abnormal than ever as she swept tempestuously to

and fro.

At last she paused in front of him.

'Well, I dare say I'll go with you,' she said, with the old

reckless note. 'That fiend thinks he has me in his power for good,

he amuses himself with threats of leaving _me_--perhaps I'll

turn the tables.... But you must go--go for an hour. You can

find out about a carriage. There will be an old woman here

presently for the house-work. I'll get her to help me pack. You'll

only be in the way.'

'You'll be ready for me in an hour?' he said, rising reluctantly.

'Well, it don't look, does it, as if there was much to pack in this

hole!' she said with one of her wild laughs.

He looked round for the first time and saw a long bare studio,

containing a table covered with etcher's apparatus and some blocks

for wood engraving. There was besides an easel, and a picture upon

it, with a pretentious historical subject just blocked in, a tall

oak chair and stool of antique pattern, and in one corner a stand

of miscellaneous arms such as many artists affect--an old flintlock

gun or two, some Moorish or Spanish rapiers and daggers. The north

window was half blocked by snow, and the atmosphere of the place,

in spite of the stove, was freezing.

He moved to the door, loth, most loth, to go, yet well aware, by

long experience, of the danger of crossing her temper or her whims.

After all, it would take him some time to make his arrangements

with the landlord, and he would be back to the moment.

She watched him intently with her poor red eyes. She herself opened

the door for him, and to his amazement put a sudden hand on his

arm, and kissed him--roughly, vehemently, with lips that burnt.

'Oh, you fool!' she said, 'you fool!'

'What do you mean?' he said, stopping. 'I believe I _am_ a

fool, Louie, to leave you for a moment.'

'Nonsense! You are a fool to want to take me to Manchester, and I

am a fool to think of going. There:--if I had never been born!--oh!

go, for God's sake, go! and come back in an hour. I _must_

have some time, I tell you--' and she gave a passionate stamp--'to

think a bit, and put my things together.'

She pushed him out, and shut the door. With a great effort he

mastered himself and went.

He made all arrangements for the two-horse sledge that was to take

them to Fontainebleau. He called for his bill, and paid it. Then he

hung about the entrance to the forest, looking with an unseeing eye

at the tricks which the snow had been playing with the trees, at

the gleams which a pale and struggling sun was shedding over the

white world--till his watch told him it was time.

He walked briskly back to the cottage, opened the outer door, was

astonished to hear neither voice nor movement, to see nothing of

the charwoman Louie had spoken of--rushed to the studio and

entered.

She sat in the tall chair, her hands dropping over the arms, her

head hanging forward. The cold snow-light shone on her open and

glazing eyes--on the red and black of her dress, on the life-stream

dripping among the folds, on the sharp curved Algerian dagger at

her feet. She was quite dead. Even in the midst of his words of

hope, the thought of self-destruction--of her mother--had come upon

her and absorbed her. That capacity for sudden intolerable despair

which she had inherited, rose to its full height when she had

driven David from her--guided her mad steps, her unshrinking hand.

He knelt by her--called for help, laid his ear to her heart, her

lips. Then the awfulness of the shock, and of his self-reproach,

the crumbling of all his hopes, became too much to bear.

Consciousness left him, and when the woman of whom Louie had spoken

did actually come in, a few minutes later, she found the brother

lying against the sister's knee, his arms outstretched across her,

while the dead Louie, with fixed and frowning brows, sat staring

beyond him into eternity--a figure of wild fate--freed at last and

for ever from that fierce burden of herself.

EPILOGUE

_Alas!--Alas!_

--But to part from David Grieve under the impression of this scene

of wreck and moral defeat would be to misread and misjudge a life,

destined, notwithstanding the stress of exceptional suffering it

was called upon at one time to pass through, to singularly rich and

fruitful issues. Time, kind inevitable Time, dulled the paralysing

horror of his sister's death, and softened the memory of all that

long torture of publicity, legal investigation, and the like, which

had followed it. The natural healing 'in widest commonalty spread,'

which flows from affection, nature, and the direction of the mind

to high and liberating aims, came to him also as the months and

years passed. His wife's death, his sister's tragedy, left indeed

indelible marks; but, though scarred and changed, he was in the end

neither crippled nor unhappy. The moral experience of life had

built up in him a faith which endured, and the pangs of his own

pity did but bring him at last to rest the more surely on a pity

beyond man's. During the nights of semi-delirium which followed the

scene at Barbizon, John, who watched him, heard him repeat again

and again words which seemed to have a talismanic power over his

restlessness. 'Neither do I condemn thee. Come, and sin no more.'

They were fragments dropped from what was clearly a nightmare of

anguish and struggle; but they testified to a set of character,

they threw light on the hopes and convictions which ultimately

repossessed themselves of the sound man.

Two years passed. It was Christmas Eve. The firm of Grieve & Co. in

Prince's Street was shut for the holiday, and David Grieve, a mile

or two away, was sitting over his study fire with a book. He closed

it presently, and sat thinking.

There was a knock at his door. When he opened it he found Dora

outside. It was Dora, in the quasi-sister's garb she had assumed of

late--serge skirt, long black cloak, and bonnet tied with white

muslin strings under the throat. In her parish visiting among the

worst slums of Ancoats, she had found such a dress useful.

'I brought Sandy's present,' she said, looking round her

cautiously. 'Is his stocking hung up?'

'No! or the rascal would never go to sleep to-night. He is nearly

wild about his presents as it is. Give it to me. It shall go into

my drawer, and I will arrange everything when I go to bed

to-night.'

He looked at the puzzle-map she had brought with a childish

pleasure, and between them they locked it away carefully in a

drawer of the writing-table.

'Do sit down and get warm,' he said to her, pushing forward a

chair.

'Oh no! I must go back to the church. We shall be decorating till

late to-night. But I had to be in Broughton, so I brought this on

my way home.'

Then Sandy and I will escort you, if you will have us. He made me

promise to take him to see the shops. I suppose Market Street is a

sight.'

He went outside to shout to Sandy, who was having his tea, to get

ready, and then came back to Dora. She was standing by the fire

looking at an engagement tablet filled with entries, on the

mantelpiece.

'Father Russell says they have been asking you again to stand for

Parliament,' she said timidly, as he came in.

'Yes, there is a sudden vacancy. Old Jacob Cherritt is dead.'

'And you won't?'

He shook his head.

'No,' he said, after a pause. 'I am not their man; they would be

altogether disappointed in me.'

She understood the sad reverie of the face, and said no more.

No. For new friends, new surroundings, efforts of another type, his

power was now irrevocably gone; he shrank more than ever from the

egotisms of competition. But within the old lines he had recovered

an abundant energy. Among his workmen; amid the details now

fortunate, now untoward of his labours for the solution of certain

problems of industrial ethics; in the working of the remarkable

pamphlet scheme dealing with social and religious fact, which was

fast making his name famous in the ears of the England which thinks

and labours; and in the self-devoted help of the unhappy,--he was

developing more and more the idealist's qualities, and here and

there--inevitably--the idealist's mistakes. His face, as middle

life was beginning to shape it--with its subtle and sensitive

beauty--was at once the index of his strength and his limitations.

He and Dora stood talking a while about certain public schemes that

were in progress for the bettering of Ancoats. Then he said with

sudden emphasis:

_'Ah!_ if one could but jump a hundred years and see what

England will be like! But these northern towns, and this northern

life, on the whole fill one with hope. There is a strong social

spirit and strong individualities to work on.'

Dora was silent. From her Churchwoman's point of view the prospect

was not so bright.

'Well, people seem to think that co-operation is going to do

everything,' she said vaguely.

'We all cry our own nostrums,' he said, laughing; 'what co-operation

has done up here in the north is wonderful! It has been the making

of thousands. But the world is not going to give itself over wholly

to committees. There will be room enough for the one-man-power at

any rate for generations to come. What we want is leaders; but

leaders who will feel themselves "members of one body," instruments

of one social order.'

They stood together a minute in silence; then he went out to the

stairs and called: 'Sandy, you monkey, come along!'

Sandy came shouting and leaping downstairs, as lithe and handsome

as ever, and as much of a compound of the elf and the philosopher.

'I _know_ Auntie Dora's brought me a present,' he said,

looking up into her face,--'but father's locked it up!'

David chased him out of doors with contumely, and they all took the

tram to Victoria Street.

Once there, Sandy was in the seventh heaven. The shops were ablaze

with lights, and gay with every Christmas joy; the pavements were

crowded with a buying and gaping throng. He pulled at his father's

hand, exclaiming here and pointing there, till David, dragged

hither and thither, had caught some of the boy's mirth and

pleasure.

But Dora walked apart. Her heart was a little heavy and dull, her

face weary. In reality, though David's deep and tender gratitude

and friendship towards her could not express themselves too richly,

she felt, as the years went on, more and more divided from him and

Sandy. She was horrified at the things which David published, or

said in public; she had long dropped any talk with the child on all

those subjects which she cared for most. Young as he was, the boy

showed a marvellous understanding in some ways of his father's

mind, and there were moments when she felt a strange and dumb

irritation towards them both.

Christmas too, in spite of her Christian fervour, had always its

sadness for her. It reminded her of her father, and of the

loneliness of her personal life.

'How father would have liked all this crowd!' she said once to

David as they passed into Market Street.

David assented with instant sympathy, and they talked a little of

the vanished wanderer as they walked along, she with a yearning

passion which touched him profoundly.

He and Sandy escorted her up the Ancoats High Street, and at last

they turned into her own road. Instantly Dora perceived a little

crowd round her door, and, as soon as she was seen, a waving of

hands, and a Babel of voices.

'What is it?' she cried, paling, and began to run.

David and Sandy followed. She had already flown upstairs; but the

shawled mill-girls, round the door, flushed with excitement,

shouted their news into his ear.

'It's her feyther, sir, as ha coom back after aw these years--an

he's sittin by the fire quite nat'ral like, Mary Styles says--and

they put him in a mad-house in furrin parts, they did--an his

hair's quite white--an oh! sir, yo mun just goo up an look.'

Pushed by eager hands, and still holding Sandy, David, though half

unwilling, climbed the narrow stairs.

The door was half open. And there, in his old chair, sat Daddy, his

snow-white hair falling on his shoulders, a childish excitement and

delight on his blanched face. Dora was kneeling at his feet, her

head on his knees, sobbing.

David took Sandy up in his arms.

'Be quiet, Sandy; don't say a word.'

And he carried him downstairs again, and into the midst of the

eager crowd.

'I think,' he said, addressing them, 'I would go home if I were

you--if you love her.'

They looked at his shining eyes and twitching lips, and understood.

'Aye, sir, aye, sir, yo're abeawt reet--we'st not trouble her, sir.'

He carried his boy home, Sandy raining questions in a tumult of

excitement. Then when the child was put to bed he sat on in his

lonely study, stirred to his sensitive depths by the thought of

Dora's long waiting and sad sudden joy--by the realisation of the

Christmas crowds and merriment--by the sharp memory of his own

dead. Towards midnight, when all was still, he opened the locked

drawer which held for him the few things which symbolised and

summed up his past--a portrait of Lucy, by the river under the

trees, taken by a travelling photographer, not more than six weeks

before her death--a little collection of pictures of Sandy from

babyhood onwards--Louie's breviary--his father's dying letter--a

book which had belonged to Ancrum, his vanished friend. But though

he took thence his wife's picture, communing awhile, in a passion

of yearning, with its weary plaintive eyes, he did not allow

himself to sink for long into the languor of memory and grief. He

knew the perils of his own nature, and there was in him a stern

sense of the difficulty of living aright, and the awfulness of the

claim made by God and man on the strength and will of the

individual. It seemed to him that he had been 'taught of God'

through natural affection, through repentance, through sorrow,

through the constant energies of the intellect. Never had the

Divine voice been clearer to him, or the Divine Fatherhood more

real. Freely he had received--but only that he might freely give.

On this Christmas night he renewed every past vow of the soul, and

in so doing rose once more into that state and temper which is

man's pledge and earnest of immortality--since already, here and

now, it is the eternal life begun.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The History of David Grieve, by Mrs. Humphry Ward