miracle by price by irving e. cox, jr. _they said old doctor price was an inventive genius but no miracle worker. yet--if he didn't work miracles in behalf of an over-worked little guy named cupid, what was he doing?_ [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, october 1954. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] memo to: clayton, croyden and hammerstead, attorneys attention: william clayton from: walter gordon dear bill: enclosed is the itemized inventory of the furnishings of the late dr. edward price's estate. as you requested, i personally examined the laboratory. candidly, bill, you needed a psychiatrist for the job, not a graduate physicist. dr. price was undoubtedly an inventive genius a decade ago when he was still active in general electronics, but his lab was an embarrassing example of senile clutter. you had an idea, bill, that before he died price might have been playing around with a new invention which the estate could develop and patent. i found a score of gadgets in the lab, none of them finished and none of them built for any functional purpose that i could discover. only two seemed to be completed. one resembled a small, portable radio. it was a plastic case with two knobs and a two-inch speaker grid. there was no cord outlet. the machine may have been powered by batteries, for i heard a faint humming when i turned the knobs. nothing else. dr. price had left a handwritten card on the box. he intended to call it a semantic-translator, but he had noted that the word combination was awkward for commercial exploitation, and i suppose he held up a patent application until he could think of a catchier name. one sentence on that card would have amused you, bill. price wrote, "should wholesale for about three-fifty per unit." even in his dotage, he had an eye for profit. the semantic-translator--whatever that may mean--might have had possibilities. i fully intended to take it back with me to general electronics and examine it thoroughly. the second device, which price had labeled a transpositor, was large and rather fragile. it was a hollow cylinder of very small wires, perhaps a foot in diameter, fastened to an open-faced console crowded with a weird conglomeration of vacuum tubes, telescopic lenses and mirrors. the cylinder of wires was so delicate that the motion of my body in the laboratory caused it to quiver. standing in front of the wire coil were two brass rods. a kind of shovel-like chute was fixed to one rod (price called it the shipping board). attached to the second rod was a long-handled pair of tongs which he called the grapple. the transpositor was, i think, an outgrowth of price's investigation of the relationship between light and matter. you may recall, bill, the brilliant technical papers he wrote on that subject when he was still working in the laboratories of general electronics. at the time price was considered something of a pioneer. he believed that light and matter were different forms of the same basic element; he said that eventually science would learn how to change one into the other. i seriously believe that the transpositor was meant to do precisely that. in other words, price had expected to transpose the atomic structure of solid matter into light, and later to reconstruct the original matter again. now don't assume, bill, that price was wandering around in a senile delusion of fourth dimensional nonsense. the theory may be sound. our present knowledge of the physical world makes the basic structure of matter more of a mystery than it has ever been. not that i think price achieved the miracle. even in his most brilliant and productive period he could not have done it. as yet our accumulation of data is too incomplete for such an experiment. i believe that price created no more than a very realistic illusion with his arrangement of lenses and mirrors. i saw the illusion, too; i used the machine. there were two dials on the front of the console. one was lettered "time", and the other "distance". the "time" dial could be set for eons, centuries or hours, depending upon the position of a three-way switch beneath it; the "distance" dial could be adjusted to light years, thousand-mile units, or kilometers by a similar device. since there was no indication which position would produce what results, i left the dials untouched. i plugged the machine into an electric outlet and pushed the starter button. the coil of wire blazed with light and the chute slid rapidly in and out of the cylinder. that was all, at first. the starter button was labeled "the shipper", and i gathered that price had visualized the practical application of the transpositor as a device for transporting goods from one point to another. i looked around the lab for something i could put into the chute. there was a card, written in red, warning me not to load beyond the dimensional limits of the chute. the only thing i saw that was small enough was the little radio-like gadget price had called a semantic-translator. loaded horizontally, it just barely fit the chute. i pushed the shipper button a second time. again there was a blaze of light, brighter than before, which temporarily blinded me. for a moment i saw the semantic-translator in the heart of the fragile, wire cylinder. it had the glow of molten steel, pouring from a blast furnace. then it was gone. the chute shot back to the front of the machine. the tray was empty. was it an illusion? i believe that, bill, because later on, when i thought of using the grapple.... * * * * * miss bertha kent walked back the gravel trail from the dressing room. the early morning sun was bright and warm, but she held her woolen robe tight across her throat. she tried to avoid looking at the other camps--at the sleepy-eyed women coming out of tents, and the men starting morning fires in the stone rings. bitterness was etched in acid in her soul. she made herself believe it was because she hated yosemite. the vacation had been such a disappointment. she had expected so much and--as usual--it had all gone wrong. her hope had been so high when school closed; this year was going to be different! "are you going anywhere this summer?" miss emmy asked after the last faculty meeting in june. "to yosemite for a couple of weeks, i think." "the park's always crowded. you ought to meet a nice man up there, bertha." "i'm not interested in men," miss kent had replied frostily. "i'm a botany teacher and it helps me professionally if i spend part of the summer observing the phenomenon of nature." "don't kid me, bertha. you can drop the fancy lingo, too; school's out. you want a man as much as i do." that was true, miss kent admitted--in the quiet of her own mind. never aloud; never to anyone else. six years ago, when bertha kent had first started to teach, she had been optimistic about it. she wanted to marry; she wanted a family of her own--instead of wasting her lifetime in a high school classroom playing baby sitter for other people's kids. she had saved her money for all sorts of exotic summer vacations--tours, cruises, luxury hotels--but somehow something always went wrong. to be sure, she had met men. she was pretty; she danced well; she was never prudish; she liked the out-of-doors. all positive qualities: she knew that. the fault lay always with the men. when she first met a stranger, everything was fine. then, slowly, miss kent began to see his faults. men were simply adult versions of the muscle-bound knot-heads the administration loaded into her botany classes. bertha kent wanted something better, an ideal she had held in her mind since her childhood. the dream-man was real, too. she had met him once and actually talked to him when she was a child. she couldn't remember where; she couldn't recall his face. but the qualities of his personality she knew as she did her own heart. if they had existed once in one man, she would find them again, somewhere. that was the miracle she prayed for every summer. she thought the miracle had happened again when she first came to yosemite. she found an open campsite by the river. while she was putting up her tent, the man from the camp beside hers came to help. at first he seemed the prototype of everything she hated--a good-looking, beautifully co-ordinated physical specimen, as sharp-witted as a jellyfish. the front of his woolen shirt hung carelessly unbuttoned. she saw the mat of dark hair on his chest, the sculpted curves of sun-tanned muscle. no doubt he considered himself quite attractive. then, that evening after the fire-fall, the young man asked her to go with him to the ranger's lecture at camp curry. bertha discovered that he was a graduate physicist, employed by a large, commercial laboratory. they had at least the specialized area of science in common. by the time they returned from the lecture, they were calling each other by first names. the next day walt asked her to hike up the mist trail with him to nevada falls. the familiar miracle began to take shape. she lay awake a long time that night, looking at the dancing pattern of stars visible through the open flap of her tent. this was it; walt was the reality of her dream. she made herself forget that every summer for six years the same thing had happened. she always believed she had found her miracle; and always something happened to destroy it. for two days the idyll lasted. the inevitable awakening began the afternoon they drove along the wawona highway to see the mariposa grove of giant sequoias. they left their car in the parking area and walked through the magnificent stand of cathedral trees. the trail was steep and sometimes treacherous. twice walt took her arm to help her. for some reason that annoyed her; finally she told him, "i'm quite able to look after myself, walt." "so you've told me before." "after all, i've been hiking most of my life. i know exactly what to do--" "there isn't much you can't take care of for yourself, is there, bertha?" his voice was suddenly very cold. "i'm not one of these rattle-brained clinging vines, if that's what you mean. i detest a woman who is always yelping to a man for help." "independence is one thing, bertha; i like that in a woman. but somehow you make a man feel totally inadequate. you set yourself up as his superior in everything." "that's nonsense, walt. i'm quite ready to grant that you know a good deal more about physics than i do." "say it right, bertha. you respect the fact that i hold a phd." he smiled. "that isn't the same thing as respecting me for a person. i knew you didn't need my help on the trail, but it was a normal courtesy to offer it. it seems to me it would be just as normal for you to accept it. little things like that are important in relations between people." "forget it, walt." she slipped her hand through his. "there, see? i'll do it just the way you want." she was determined not to quarrel over anything so trivial, though what he said seemed childish and it tarnished the dream a little. but the rest was still good; the miracle could still happen. yet, in spite of all her effort, they disagreed twice more before they left the mariposa grove. bertha began to see walt as he was: brilliant, no doubt, in the single area of physical science, but basically no different from any other man. she desperately wished that she could love him; she earnestly wished that the ideal, fixed so long in her mind, might be destroyed. but slowly she saw the miracle slip away from her. that night, after the fire-fall, walt did not ask her to go with him to the lecture. miserable and angry, bertha kent went into her tent, but not to sleep. she lay staring at the night sky, and thinking how ugly the pin-point lights of distant suns were on the velvet void. as the hours passed, she heard the clatter of pans and voices as people at the other campsites retired. she heard walt when he returned, whistling tunelessly. he banged around for nearly an hour in the camp next to hers. he dropped a stack of pans; he overturned a box of food; he tripped over a tent line. she wondered if he were drunk. had their quarreling driven him to that? walt must have loved her, then. after a time all the coleman lanterns in the camp were out. still bertha kent did not sleep. the acid grief and bitterness tormented her with the ghost of another failure, another shattered dream. she listened to the soft music of the flowing stream, the gentle whisper of summer wind in the pines, but it gave her no peace. suddenly she heard quiet footsteps and the crackling of twigs behind her tent. she was terrified. it must be walt. if he had come home drunk, he could have planned almost any kind of violence by way of revenge. the footsteps moved closer. bertha shook off the paralysis of fear and reached for her electric lantern. she flashed the beam into the darkness. she saw the black bulk of a bear who was pawing through her food box. she was so relieved she forgot that a bear might also be a legitimate cause of fear. she ran from the tent, swinging the light and shooing the animal away as she would have chased a puppy. the bear swung toward her, roaring and clawing at the air. she backed away. the bear swung its paws again, and her food box shattered on the ground, in a crescendo of sound. bertha heard rapid footsteps under the pines. in the pale moonlight she saw walt. he was wearing only a pair of red-striped boxer shorts. he was swinging his arms and shouting, but the noise of the falling box had already frightened the bear away. walt stood in the moonlight, smiling foolishly. "i guess i came too late," he said. "i'm quite sure the bear would have left of its own accord, walt. they're always quite tame in the national parks, you know." as soon as she said it, she knew it was a mistake. even though he had done nothing, it would have cost her little to thank him. the words had come instinctively; she hadn't thought how her answer would affect him. walt turned on his heel stiffly and walked back to his tent. with a little forethought--a little kindness--bertha might even then have rescued her miracle. she knew that. she knew she had lost him now, for good. for the first time in her life she saw the dream as a barrier to her happiness, not an ideal. it held her imprisoned; it gave her nothing in exchange. she slept fitfully for the rest of the night. as soon as the sun was up, she pulled on her woolen robe and went to the dressing room to wash. she walked back along the gravel path, averting her eyes from the other camps and the men hunched over the smoking breakfast fires. she hated yosemite. she hated all the people crowded around her. she had made up her mind to pack her tent and head for home. this was just another vacation lost, another year wasted. she went into her tent and put on slacks and a bright, cotton blouse. then she sat disconsolate at her camp table surveying the mess the bear had made of her food box. there was nothing that she could rescue. she could drive to the village for breakfast, but the shops wouldn't open for another hour. behind her she heard walt starting his coleman stove. yesterday he would have offered her breakfast; now he'd ignored her. all along the stream camp fires were blazing in the stone rings. bertha wondered if she could ask the couple on the other side of her campsite for help. they had attempted to be friendly once before, and bertha hadn't responded with a great deal of cordiality. they weren't the type she liked--a frizzy-headed, coarse-voiced blonde, and a paunchy old man who hadn't enough sense to know what a fool he looked parading around camp in the faded bathing trunks he wore all day. suddenly a light flashed in bertha's face. a metal shovel slid out of nothingness and deposited a tiny, rectangular box on the table. for a long minute she stared at the box stupidly, vaguely afraid. her mind must be playing her tricks. such things didn't happen. she reached out timidly and touched the box. it seemed real enough. a miniature radio of some sort, with a two-inch speaker. she turned the dials. she heard a faint humming. the coarse-voiced blonde came toward the table. "we just heard what happened last night, miss kent," she said. "me and george. about the bear, i mean." bertha forced a smile. "it made rather a shambles, didn't it?" "gee, you can't make breakfast out of a mess like this. why don't you come and eat with us?" the blonde went on talking, apologizing for what she was serving and at the same time listing it with a certain pride. strangely, miss kent heard not one voice, but two. the second came tinnily from the little box on the table, "you poor, dried-up old maid. that guy who's been hanging around would have been over long before this, if you knew the first thing about being nice to a man." bertha gasped. "really, if that's the way you feel--" "why, honey, i just asked you over for breakfast," the blonde answered; at the same time the voice from the machine said, "i suppose george and me ain't good enough for you. o.k. by me, sister. i didn't really want you to come anyway." trembling, miss kent stood up. "i've never been so insulted!" "what's eating you, miss kent?" the blonde seemed genuinely puzzled, but again the voice came from the plastic box, "the old maid's off her rocker. you'd think she was reading my mind." switching her trim little hips, the blonde walked back to her own camp. bertha kent dropped numbly on the bench, staring at the ugly box. "reading my mind," the woman had said. somehow the machine had done precisely that, translating the blonde's spoken words into the real, emotional meaning behind them. it was a terrifying gadget. bertha was hypnotized by its potential horror--like the brutal, devastating truth spoken by a child. a camper walked past on the road, waving at miss kent and calling out a cheerful good morning. but again the machine read the real meaning behind the pleasant words. "so you've finally lost your man, miss kent. the way you dished out the orders, it's a wonder he stayed around as long as he did. and a pity: you're an attractive woman. you should make some man a good wife." they all thought that. the whole camp had been watching her, laughing at her. bertha felt helpless and alone. she needed--wanted--someone else; it surprised her when she faced that fact. then it dawned on her: the camper was right; the blonde was right. she had lost walt through her own ridiculous bull-headedness. in order to assert herself. to be an individualist, she had always thought. and what did that matter, if it imposed this crushing loneliness? for a moment a kind of madness seized her. it was the diabolical machine that was tormenting her, not the truth it told. she snatched a piece of her broken food box and struck at the plastic case blindly. there was a splash of fire; the gadget broke. she saw walt look up from his stove. she saw him move toward her. but she stood paralyzed by a shattering trauma of pain. the voice still came from the speaker, and this time it was her own. her mind was stripped naked; she saw herself whole, unsheltered by the protective veneer of rationalization. and she knew the pattern of the dream-man she had loved since her childhood; she knew why the dream had been self-defeating. for the idealization was her own father. that impossible paragon created by the worship of a child. the shock was its own cure. she was too well-balanced to accept the tempting escape of total disorientation. grimly she fought back the tide of madness, and in that moment she found maturity. she ran toward walt, tears of gratitude in her eyes. she felt his arms around her, and she clung to him desperately. "i was terrified; i needed you, walt; i never want to be alone again." "needed me?" he repeated doubtfully. "i love you." after a split-second's hesitation, she felt his lips warm on hers. from the corner of her eye she saw a chute dart out of nowhere and scoop up the broken plastic box from the camp table. they both vanished again. that was a miracle, too, she supposed; but not nearly as important as hers. then the reason of a logical mind asserted its own form of realism: of course, none of it had happened. the mind-reading gadget had been a device created in her own subconscious, a psychological trick to by-pass the dream that had held her imprisoned. she knew enough psychology to understand that. she ran her fingers through walt's dark hair and repeated softly, "i love you, walt gordon." * * * * * was it an illusion? i believe that, bill, because later on, when i thought of using the grapple, i brought the semantic-translator back from nowhere. apparently the smaller gadget had been in the console or behind it. i hadn't seen it when i searched, because my eyes had been hurt by the glare of light. in the process the translator somehow got twisted around, for the chute dragged it back vertically through the coil of wire. it touched the wall of the cylinder, and the whole machine exploded. it was impossible to save anything from the wreckage. but as a physicist i assure you, bill, the transposition of matter into light is, in terms of our present science, a physical impossibility. it is certainly not the sort of invention that could have been produced by a senile old man, pottering around in a home laboratory. the only thing i regret is that i had no opportunity to examine the semantic-translator, but i'm sure it would have proved just as much nonsense. i'm going up to yosemite tomorrow for a couple of weeks. if you want any further details on the price inventory, look me up at the office when i come home. yours, walt gordon distributed proofreaders "probable sons" by amy lefeuvre author of "cherry," "the odd one," etc. "_a little child shall lead them_." 1896 [illustration: the broken statue.] contents. chapter i. an unwelcome legacy chapter ii. david and goliath chapter iii. the first punishment chapter iv. mrs. maxwell's sorrow chapter v. a prodigal chapter vi. a promise kept chapter vii. cross-examination chapter viii. "he arose and came to his father" chapter ix. "a little child shall lead them" "probable sons." * * * * * chapter i. an unwelcome legacy. "children! they are a nuisance to everyone--my abomination, as you know, jack. why on earth they can not be kept out of sight altogether till they reach a sensible age is what puzzles me! and i suppose if anything could make the matter worse, it is that this is a girl." the tone of disgust with which the last word was uttered brought a laugh from sir edward wentworth's companion, who replied, as he took his cigar from his mouth and gazed critically into the worried, perplexed face of his host-"my dear fellow, she is not of an age yet to trouble you much. wait till she gets a bit older. when her education is finished, and she takes possession of you and your house, will be the time for you to look to us for pity!" "look here, sir edward," said a bright looking youth from the other side of the room, "i'll give you a bit of advice. send the child straight off to school. is she coming to-day? good. then pack her off to-morrow, and keep her there as long as is needful. then i will go down and inspect her, and if she grows up to be a moderately decent-looking girl, i will do you a good turn by taking her off your hands. she will have a nice little fortune, you informed us, and if you will give her something in addition, out of gratitude to me for relieving you of all responsibility concerning her, upon my word i think i should not do badly!" but sir edward was not in a mood to joke. he looked gloomily around upon his friends as they gathered around the smoking-room fire after a hard day's shooting, and remarked-"i know what is before me. i have seen it in my sister's family, and have heard something of all her toils and troubles. how thankful i was when she and hers were translated to australia, and the sea came between us! it is first the nurses, who run off with one's butler, make love to the keepers, and bring all kinds of followers about the house, who sometimes make off with one's plate. then it's the governesses, who come and have a try at the guests, or most likely in my case they would set their affections on me, and get the reins of government entirely into their hands. if it is school, then there is a mass of correspondence about the child's health and training; and, in addition, i shall have all the ladies in the neighborhood coming to mother the child and tell me how to train it. it is a bad look-out for me, i can tell you, and not one of you would care to be in my shoes." "what is the trouble, ned?" asked a new-comer, opening the door and glancing at the amused faces of those surrounding sir edward, all of whom seemed to be keenly enjoying their host's perplexity. "he has received a legacy to-day, that is all," was the response; "he has had an orphan niece and nurse sent to him from some remote place in the highlands. come, give us your case again, old fellow, for the benefit of your cousin." sir edward, a grave, abstracted-looking man, with an iron-grey moustache and dark, piercing eyes, looked up with a desponding shake of the head, and repeated slowly and emphatically-"a widowed sister of mine died last year, and left her little girl in the charge of an old school friend, who has now taken a husband to herself and discarded the child, calmly sending me the following letter:- 'dear sir: doubtless you will remember that your sister's great desire on her death-bed was that you should receive her little one and bring her up under your own eye, being her natural guardian and nearest relative. hearing, however, from you that you did not at that time feel equal to the responsibility, i came forward and volunteered to take her for a short while till you had made arrangements to receive her. i have been expecting to hear from you for some time, and as i have promised my future husband to fix the day for our marriage some time early next month, i thought i could not do better than send the child with her nurse to you without delay. she will reach you the day after you receive this letter. perhaps you will kindly send me word of her safe arrival. yours truly, anna kent.' now, lovell, what do you think of that? and sure enough, this afternoon, while we were out, the child and nurse appeared, and are in the house at this present moment. don't you think it a hard case for such a confirmed bachelor as i am?" "i do indeed," was the hearty reply; "but i think you will find a way out of it, ned. take a wife unto yourself, and she will relieve you of all responsibility." there was a general laugh at this, but in the midst of it the door slowly opened, and the subject of all this discussion appeared on the threshold, a fragile little figure, with long, golden-brown hair, and a pair of dark brown eyes that looked calmly and searchingly in front of her. clad in white, with her dimpled hands crossed in front of her, she stood there for a moment in silence, then spoke:-"where is my uncle edward?" "here," replied sir edward, as he looked helplessly round, first at his friends and then at his small niece. the child stepped up to him with perfect composure, and held out her little hand, which her uncle took, undergoing all the while a severe scrutiny from the pair of dark eyes fixed upon him. there was dead silence in the room. sir edward's companions were delighting in the scene, and his great discomfiture only heightened their enjoyment. "well," he said at length, rather feebly, "i think you know the look of me now, don't you? where is your nurse? ought you not to be in your bed? this is not the place for little girls, you know." "i was thinking you would kiss me," and the child's lips began to quiver, while a pink flush rose to her cheeks, and she glanced wistfully round, in the hope of seeing some sympathetic face near her. but sir edward could not bring himself to do this. laying his hand on the curly head raised to his, he patted it as he might his dog, and said,-"there, there! now you have introduced yourself to me, you can run away. what is your name? millicent, isn't it?" "milly is my name. and are all these gentlemen my uncles too?" the tone of doubtful inquiry was too much for the little company, and milly's question was answered by a shout of laughter. again the child's face flushed, and then a grey-haired man stepped forward. "come, wentworth, this is a severe ordeal for such a mite. i have grandchildren of my own, so am not so scared as you. now, little one, is that better?" and in an instant the child was lifted by him and placed upon his knee as he took a seat by the fire. milly heaved a short sigh. "i like this," she said, looking up at him confidingly. "does uncle edward really want me to go to bed? nurse said it wasn't time yet. nurse wanted her supper, so she sent me in here while she had it." "the reign of the nurse has begun," said sir edward. "well, it may be a very fine joke to all you fellows, but if i don't make my authority felt at once, it will be all up with me. lovell, be so good as to ring that bell." sir edward's voice was irate when his old butler appeared. "ford, take this child to her nurse, and tell her that she is never to appear in my presence again unless sent for. now, millicent, go at once." the child slid down from her seat, but though evidently puzzled at the quick, sharp words, she seemed to have no fear, for, going up to her uncle, she slipped her little hand into his. "are you angry, uncle? what does 'presence' mean? will you say, 'good-night; god bless you,' to me?" with the baby fingers clinging to his, what could sir edward say? "good-night; good-night, child! now go." "say, 'god bless you!'" persisted the little one, and it was not till her uncle muttered the desired words that she relinquished her hold and followed the butler sedately out of the room. chapter ii. david and goliath. sir edward wentworth was, as he expressed it, a "confirmed bachelor," and though during the autumn months he was quite willing to fill his house with his london friends, he was better pleased to live the greater part of the year in seclusion, occupying himself with looking after his estate and writing articles for several of the leading reviews of the day. the advent of his small niece was indeed a great trial to him, but, with his characteristic thoroughness, he determined that he would make the necessary arrangements for her comfort. accordingly he had a long interview with her nurse the following morning. it proved to be satisfactory. the nurse was a staid, elderly woman, who assured him she was accustomed to the sole charge of the child, and would keep her entirely under her own control. "i expect you would like her to be sent down to you in the evening--at dessert, perhaps, sir?" she inquired. sir edward pulled the ends of his moustache dubiously. "is it necessary? i thought children ought to be in bed at that time." "of course it shall be as you like, sir. you do not dine so late as some do. i thought you would expect to see her once in the day." after a little hesitation sir edward gave his permission; and when he found that milly neither screamed nor snatched for the fruit on the table, and did not herself engross the whole conversation, he became quite reconciled to the little white figure stealing in and occupying the chair that was always placed at his left-hand side for her. beyond this he saw very little of her while his guests were with him; but afterwards, when they had all left him, and he relapsed into his ordinary life, he was constantly coming across her. sometimes he would find her in the stables, her arms round the stable cat, and the grooms holding a voluble conversation with her, or among the cows at the bottom of the paddock, or feeding the pigs and fowls in the poultry yard. generally she was attended by fritz, a beautiful collie, who had, with the fickleness of his nature, transferred his affection from his master to her, and though uncertain in temper towards most, was never anything but amiable when with the little girl. her uncle's form approaching was quite a sufficient hint to her to make herself scarce. she would generally anticipate the usual formula: "now run away child, to nurse," by singing out cheerfully: "i am just off, uncle," and by the time he had reached the spot where she was standing the little figure would be running off in the distance, fritz close at her heels. one afternoon sir edward was returning from a stroll up the avenue when he saw the child at play among the trees, and for a moment he paused and watched her. she appeared to be very busy with a doll wrapped in a fur rug which she carefully deposited at the foot of the tree; then for some minutes she and fritz seemed to be having a kind of a game of hide and seek with one another, until she pushed him into a bush and commanded him to stay there. suddenly dog and child darted at each other, and then, to sir edward's amazement, he saw his little niece seize fritz by the throat and bring him to the ground. when both were rolling over one another, and fritz's short, sharp barks became rather indignant in tone, as he vainly tried to escape from the little hands so tightly round him, sir edward thought it high time to interfere. "millicent," he called out sharply, "come to me at once; what are you doing?" in an instant milly was upon her feet, and lifting a hot flushed little face to his, she placed herself in her favorite attitude when in his presence; her hands clasped behind her back, and feet closely planted together. "don't you know fritz might bite if you are so rough with him? were you trying to choke him?" demanded her uncle. "yes," she responded, breathless from her late exertions, "i was trying to kill him! he's a bear, and that's my lamb, and i am david; that's all." a child's games were beyond sir edward's comprehension. he looked down upon her with a knitted brow. she continued-"you see, he has to do for both, a bear and a lion, for they both came, and they both tried to get the lamb. nurse was the lion one day, but she is too big; i can't knock her down, though i try hard." "i will not have fritz knocked down in that fashion. he might hurt you," said sir edward, sternly. milly looked sorrowful; then brightening up, she asked-"but i may kill goliath, mayn't i? do you know that is one of my games. see, i'm david, and you see that big old tree standing by itself? that's goliath. he is looking at me now. do you see where his eyes come? just up there in those first branches. when it's windy he shakes his head at me fearful! he's a wicked, wicked old thing, and he thinks no one can knock him down. do you remember about him, uncle?" sir edward was becoming slightly interested. he leaned against a tree and took out a cigar. "no, i don't think i do," he said. "don't you remember? he stood up so proud, and called out: 'choose a man to come and fight me.' he's saying that to me now. i'm david, you know, and i'm going. just wait a moment till i'm ready." she darted away to where her doll was, and soon returned with a tiny calico bag, which she opened very carefully and disclosed to her uncle's puzzled gaze five round stones. "you see," she went on, "it's a pity i haven't a sling, but tom in the stable says he will make me a cattypot; that's a lovely sling, he says, which would kill anything. but it's all right; i pretend i have a sling, you know. now you wait here; i'm going to meet him. i'm not a bit afraid, though he looks so big, because david wasn't, you know. god helped him. now, goliath, i'm ready!" sir edward looked on in some amusement as milly stepped out with regular even steps until she was about twenty feet from the tree, then suddenly stopped. "i hear what you say, goliath. you say you'll give my body to be pecked at and eaten by the birds; but you won't do that, for i am coming, and i am going to kill you." and then with all her strength the child flung her stones one by one at the tree, pausing for some moments when she had done so. "he's quite dead, uncle," she said calmly, as she retraced her steps and stood before sir edward, again looking up at him with those earnest eyes of hers, "quite dead; and if i had a sword i would play at cutting off his head. i suppose you wouldn't lend me your sword hanging up in the hall, would you?" "most certainly not," was the quick reply. then taking his cigar from his mouth, sir edward asked: "and does all your play consist in killing people?" "i only try to kill the bear and lion and goliath, because they're so wicked and so strong." milly continued,-"this is such a lovely place to play in--trees are so nice to have games with. shall i tell you some more? do you see that little tree over there? that's where i sit when i'm the probable son, and when i've sat there a long time and been very miserable, and eaten some of the beech nuts that do for husks, then suddenly i think i will go home to my father. it's rather a long walk, but i get happier and happier as i go, and i get to walk very quick at last, and then i run when i see my father. do you see that nice big old tree right up there with the red leaves, uncle? that's him, and i run up and say, 'father, i have sinned; i am not fit to come back, but i am so sorry that i left you,' and then i just hug him and kiss him; and, do you know, i feel he hugs and kisses me back. he does in the story, you know. and then i have a nice little feast all ready. i get some biscuits from nurse, and a little jam, and some sugar and water, and i sit down and feel so happy to think i'm not the probable son any more, and haven't got to eat husks or be with the pigs. don't you think that's a beautiful game, uncle?" "do you get all your games from the bible?" inquired sir edward. "i somehow think it is not quite correct," and he looked very dubiously at his little niece as he spoke. "well," said milly, the earnest look coming into her eyes again, "i love the bible so much, you see. nurse tells me the stories ever so often, and i know lots and lots of them. but i like the probable son the best. do you like it?" sir edward replaced his cigar in his mouth and strolled on without a reply. his little niece's words awakened very uncomfortable feelings within his heart. years before he had known and loved his bible well. he had been active in christian work, and had borne many a scoff and jeer from his companions when at oxford for being "pious," as they termed it. but there came a time when coldness crept into his christianity, and worldly ambition and desires filled his soul. gradually he wandered farther and farther away from the right path, and when he came into his property he took possession of it with no other aim and object in life than to enjoy himself in his own way and to totally ignore both the past and future. beyond going to church once on sunday he made no profession of religion, but that custom he conformed to most regularly, and the vicar of the parish had nothing to complain of in the way in which his appeals for charity were met by the squire. it is needless to say that sir edward was not a happy man. there were times when he could not bear his own thoughts and the solitude of his position; and at such times there was a hasty departure for town, and some weeks of club life ensued, after which he would return to his home, and engross himself in both his literary and country occupations with fresh vigor. chapter iii. the first punishment. slowly but surely little milly was advancing in her uncle's favor. her extreme docility and great fearlessness, added to her quaintness of speech and action, attracted him greatly. he became interested in watching her little figure as it flitted to and fro, and the sunny laugh and bright childish voice about the house were no longer an annoyance to him. one day he was moved to anger by an accident that happened to a small statue in the hall and milly was the delinquent. her ball had rolled behind it, and both she and the dog were having a romp to get it, when in the scuffle the statue came to the ground and lay there in a thousand pieces. hearing the crash, sir edward came out of his study, and completely losing his temper, he turned furiously upon the child, giving vent to language that was hardly fit for her ears to hear. she stood before him with round, frightened eyes and quivering lips, her little figure upright and still, until she could bear it no longer; and then she turned and fled from him through the garden door out upon the smooth grassy lawn, where she flung herself down face foremost close to her favorite beech tree, there giving way to a burst of passionate tears. "i didn't mean it--oh! i didn't mean to break it," she sobbed aloud. "uncle edward is a fearful angry man; he doesn't love me a bit. i wish i had a father! i want a father like the probable son; he wouldn't be so angry!" and when later on nurse came, with an anxious face, to fetch her little charge in from the cold, wet grass, she had not the heart to scold her, for the tear-stained face was raised so pitifully to hers with the words,-"oh, nurse, dear, carry me in your arms. no one loves me here. i've been telling god all about it. he's the only one that isn't angry." that evening, at the accustomed time, milly stole quietly into the dining-room, wondering in her little heart whether her uncle was still angry with her. as she climbed into her chair, now placed on the opposite side of the large table, she eyed him doubtfully through her long eyelashes; then gathering courage from the immovable expression of his face, she said in her most cheerful tone,-"it's a very fine night, uncle." "is it?" responded sir edward, who was accustomed by this time to some such remark when his little niece wanted to attract his notice. then feeling really ashamed of his outburst a few hours before, he said, by way of excusing himself,--"look here, millicent, you made me exceedingly angry by your piece of mischief this afternoon. that statue can never be replaced, and you have destroyed one of my most valuable possessions. let it be a warning for the future. if ever you break anything again, i shall punish you most severely. do you understand?" "yes, uncle," she answered, looking up earnestly. "'you will punish me _most_ severely.' i will remember. i have been wondering why i broke it, when i didn't mean to do it. nurse says it was a most 'unfortunate accident.' i asked her what an accident was. she says it's a thing that happens when you don't expect it--a surprise, she called it. i'm sure it was a dreadful surprise to me, and to fritz, too; but i'll never play ball in the hall again, _never_!" a week later, and sir edward was in his study, absorbed in his books and papers, when there was a knock at his door, and, to his astonishment, his little niece walked in. this was so against all rules and regulations that his voice was very stern as he said,-"what is the meaning of this intrusion, millicent? you know you are never allowed to disturb me when here." milly did not answer for a moment. she walked up to her uncle, her small lips tightly closed, and then, standing in front of him with clasped hands, she said,-"i've come to tell you some dreadful news." sir edward pushed aside his papers, adjusted his glasses, and saw from the pallor of the child's face and the scared expression in her eyes, that it was no light matter that had made her venture into his presence uncalled for. "it's a dreadful surprise again," milly continued, "but i told nurse i must tell you at once. i--i felt so bad here," and her little hand was laid pathetically on her chest. "well, what is it? out with it, child! you are wasting my time," said her uncle impatiently. "i have--i have broken something else." there was silence. then sir edward asked drily,-"and what is it now?" "it's a--a flower-pot, that the gardener's boy left outside the tool-house. i--i--well, i put it on fritz's head for a hat, you know. he did look so funny, but he tossed up his head and ran away, and it fell, and it is smashed to bits. i have got the bits outside the door on the mat. shall i bring them in?" a flower-pot was of such small value in sir edward's eyes that he almost smiled at the child's distress. "well, well, you must learn not to touch the flower-pots in future. now run away, and do not disturb me again." but milly stood her ground. "i think you have forgot, uncle edward. you told me that if i broke anything again you would punish me '_most_ severely.' those were the words you said; don't you remember?" sir edward pulled the ends of his moustache and fidgeted uneasily in his chair. he always prided himself upon being a man of his word, but much regretted at the present moment that he had been so rash in his speech. "oh! ah! i remember," he said at length, meeting his little niece's anxious gaze with some embarrassment. then pulling himself together, he added sternly,-"of course you must be punished; it was exceedingly careless and mischievous. what does your nurse do when she punishes you?" "she never does punish me--not now," said milly plaintively. "when i was a very little girl i used to stand in the corner. i don't think nurse has punished me for years." sir edward was in a dilemma; children's punishments were quite unknown to him. milly seemed to guess at his difficulty. "how were you punished when you were a little boy, uncle?" "i used to be well thrashed. many is the whipping that i have had from my father!" "what is a whipping--like you gave fritz when he went into the game wood?" "yes." there was a pause. the child clasped her little hands tighter, and set her lips firmer, as she saw before her eyes a strong arm dealing very heavy strokes with a riding-whip. then she said in an awe-struck tone,-"and do you think that is how you had better punish me?" sir edward smiled grimly as he looked at the baby figure standing so erect before him. "no," he said; "i do not think you are a fit subject for that kind of treatment." milly heaved a sigh of relief. "and don't you know how to punish," she said after some minutes of awkward silence. there was commiseration in her tone. the situation was becoming ludicrous to sir edward, though there was a certain amount of annoyance at feeling his inability to carry out his threat. "nurse told me," continued his little niece gravely, "that she knew a little boy who was shut up in a dark cupboard for a punishment; but he was found nearly dead, and really died the next day, from fright. there is a dark cupboard on the kitchen stairs. i don't think i should be very frightened, because god will be in there with me. do you think that would do?" this was not acceptable. the child went on with knitted brows: "i expect the bible will tell you how to punish. i remember a man who picked up sticks on sunday--he was stoned dead; and elisha's servant was made a leper, and some children were killed by a bear, and a prophet by a lion, and annas and sophia were struck dead. all of them were punished 'most severely,' weren't they? if you forgave me a little bit, and left out the 'most severely,' it would make it easier, i expect." "perhaps i might do that," said poor sir edward, who by this time longed to dispense with the punishment altogether; "as it was only a flower-pot, i will leave out the 'most severely.'" milly's face brightened. "i think," she said, coming up to him and laying one hand on his knee--"i think if i were to go to bed instead of coming down to dessert with you this evening, that would punish me; don't you think so?" "very well, that will do. now run away, and let this be your last breakage. i cannot be worried with your punishments." "i will try to be very good, nurse, always," said milly while being tucked up in bed that night, "because uncle edward is very puzzled when he has to punish me. he doesn't know what to do. he looked quite unhappy and said it worried him." and sir edward as he finished his dinner in silence and solitude muttered to himself,-"that child is certainly a great nuisance at times, but, upon my word, i quite miss her this evening. children after all are original, if they are nothing else, and she is one of the most original that i have ever met." it was sunday morning, and sir edward was just starting for church. as he stood over the blazing fire in the hall buttoning a glove, a little voice came to him from the staircase: "uncle edward, may i come down and speak to you?" permission being given, milly danced down the stairs, and then, slipping her little hand into her uncle's, she lifted a coaxing face to his. "will you take me to church with you? nurse thinks i'm almost big enough now, and i have been to church in the afternoon sometimes." sir edward hesitated. "if you come, you will fidget, i expect. i cannot stand that." "i will sit as still as a mouse. i won't fidget." "if you behave badly i shall never take you again. yes, you may come. be quick and get ready." a few moments after, sir edward and his little niece were walking down the avenue, she clasping a large bible under her arm, and trying in vain to match her steps with his. the squire's pew was one of the old-fashioned high ones, and milly's head did not reach the top of it. very quiet and silent she was during the service, and very particular to follow her uncle's example in every respect, though she nearly upset his gravity at the outset by taking off her hat in imitation of him and covering her face with it. but when the sermon commenced her large dark eyes were riveted on the clergyman as he gave out the text so well known to her:-"_i will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, father, i have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son_"; and though the sermon was half an hour in length, her gaze never left the pulpit. "uncle edward," she said, when their steps at length turned homewards, "do you know, i heard all the sermon, and understood it pretty well except the long words. wasn't it nice to hear about the probable son?" "'prodigal,' you mean. cannot you pronounce your words properly?" sir edward's tone was irritable. he had not been feeling very comfortable under the good vicar's words. "i can't say that; i always forget it. nurse says one long word is as good as another sometimes. uncle, what did the clergyman mean by people running away from god? no one does, do they?" "a great many do," was the dry response. "but how can they? because god is everywhere. no one can't get away from god, and why do they want to? because god loves them so." "why did the prodigal want to get away?" milly considered. "i s'pose he wanted to have some a--aventures, don't you call them? i play at that, you know. all sorts of things happen to me before i sit down at the beech tree, but--but it's so different with god. why, i should be fearful unhappy if i got away from him. i couldn't, could i, uncle? who would take care of me and love me when i'm asleep? and who would listen to my prayers? why, uncle edward, i think i should die of fright if i got away from god. do tell me i couldn't." milly had stopped short, and grasped hold of sir edward's coat in her growing excitement. he glanced at her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. "you foolish child, there is no fear of your getting away from god. don't be so excitable. we will change the subject. i want to see maxwell, so we will go through the wood." maxwell was sir edward's head game-keeper, and a little later found them at his pretty cottage at the edge of the wood. it was milly's first visit, and mrs. maxwell, a motherly-looking body, greeted her with such a sunshiny smile that the child drew near to her instinctively. "what a lovely room," she exclaimed, looking round the homely little kitchen with a child's admiring eyes, "and what a beautiful cat! may i stroke her?" assent being given, milly was soon seated in a large cushioned chair, a fat tabby cat on her lap, and while sir edward was occupied with his keeper she was making fast friends with the wife. "uncle edward," she said, when they had taken their leave and were walking homewards, "mrs. maxwell has asked me to go to tea with her to-morrow. may i--all by myself?" "ask your nurse; i have no objection." "i should love to live in her house," continued the child eagerly; "it is all among the trees, and i love trees. and this wood is so lovely. why, i might get lost in it, mightn't i? i have never been here before. in my story-books, children always get lost in a wood. uncle edward, do you think the trees talk to one another? i always think they do. look at them now. they are just shaking their heads together and whispering, aren't they? whispering very gently to-day, because it is sunday. sometimes they get angry with one another and scream, but i like to hear them hum and sing best. nurse says it's the wind that makes them do it. don't you like to hear them? when i lie in bed i listen to them around the house, and i always want to sing with them. nurse doesn't like it. she says it's the wind moaning. i think it's the trees singing to god, and i love them when they do it. which do you think it is?" and so milly chatted on, and sir edward listened, and put in a word or two occasionally, and on the whole did not find his small niece bad company. he told her when they entered the house that she could go to church every sunday morning in future with him, and that sent milly to the nursery with a radiant face, there to confide to nurse that she had had a "lovely time," and was going to tea as often as she might with "mrs. maxwell in the wood." chapter iv. mrs. maxwell's sorrow. milly spent a very happy afternoon at the keeper's cottage the next day, and came down to dessert in the evening so full of her visit that she could talk of nothing else. "they were so kind to me, uncle. mrs. maxwell made a hot currant cake on purpose for me, and the cat had a red ribbon for company, and we sat by the fire and talked when maxwell was out, and she told me such lovely stories, and i saw a beautiful picture of the probable son in the best parlor, and mrs. maxwell took it down and let me have a good look at it. i am going to save up my money and buy one just like it for my nursery, and do you know, uncle--" she stopped short, but not for want of breath. putting her curly head on one side, she surveyed her uncle for a minute meditatively, then asked, a little doubtfully: "can you keep a secret, uncle edward? because i would like to tell you, only, you see, mrs. maxwell doesn't talk about it, and i told her i wouldn't--at least, not to the servants, you know." "i think you can trust me," sir edward said gravely. "this is it, then, and i think it's so wonderful. they have got a real live probable son." sir edward raised his eyebrows. his little niece continued: "yes, they really have. it was when i was talking about the picture mrs. maxwell took the corner of her apron and wiped her eyes, and said she had a dear son who had run away from home, and she hadn't seen him for nine years. just fancy! where was i nine years ago?" "not born." "but i must have been somewhere," and milly's active little brain now started another train of thought, until she got fairly bewildered. "i expect i was fast asleep in god's arms," she said at length, with knitted brows; "only, of course, i don't remember," and having settled that point to her satisfaction, she continued her story: "mrs. maxwell's 'probable son' is called tommy. he ran away when he was seventeen because he didn't like the blacksmith's shop. mrs. maxwell and i cried about him. he had such curly hair, and stood six feet in his stockings, and he was a _beautiful_ baby when he was little, and had croup and--and confusions, and didn't come to for four hours; but he would run away, though he laid the fire and put sticks on it and drew the water for mrs. maxwell before he went. and mrs. maxwell says he may be a soldier or a sailor now for all she knows, and he may be drownded dead, or run over, or have both his legs shot to pieces, or he may be in india with the blacks; but i told her he was very likely taking care of some pigs somewhere, and she got happy a little bit then, and we dried our tears, and she gave me some peppermint to suck. isn't it a wonderful story, uncle?" "very wonderful," was the response. "well, we were in the middle of talking when maxwell came in, so we hushed, because mrs. maxwell said, 'it makes my man so sad'; but, do you know, when maxwell was bringing me home through the wood he asked me what we had been talking about, and he said he knew it was about the boy because he could see it in mrs. maxwell's eye. and then i asked him if he would run and kiss tommy when he came back, and if he would make a feast; and he said he would do anything to get him home again." milly paused, then said wistfully,-"i wish i had a father, uncle edward. you see, nurse does for a mother, but fathers are so fond of their children, aren't they?" "it does not always follow that they are," sir edward replied. "the probable son's father loved him, and maxwell loves tommy, and then there was david, you know, who really had a wicked son, with long hair--i forget his name--and he cried dreadful when he was dead. i sometimes tell god about it when i'm in bed, and then he--he just seems to put his arms round me and send me off to sleep; at least, i think he does. nurse says god likes me to call him my father, but of course that isn't quite the same as having a father i can see. maxwell is a very nice father, i think. i told him i would pray for tommy every night when i go to bed, and then i told him that god had lots of probable sons, too--the clergyman said so on sunday, didn't he?--people who have run away from him. i've been asking god to make them come back. i hope he will let me know when they do. do you know any one who has run away from god, uncle?" "you are chattering too much, child," said sir edward irritably; "sit still and be quiet." milly instantly obeyed, and after some moments of silence her uncle said,-"i don't mind your going to maxwell's cottage, but you must never take fritz with you. he is not allowed in that wood at all. do you quite understand?" "yes, but i'm very sorry, for fritz doesn't like being left behind; the tears were in his eyes when nurse told him he wasn't to go with me. you see, no one talks to him like i do. he likes me to tell him stories, and i told him when i came back about my visit, so he wants to go. but i won't take him with me if you say no." when she was leaving him that night for bed, she paused a moment as she wished him good-night. "uncle edward, when you say your prayers to-night, will you ask god to make tommy come back home? his mother does want him so badly." "i will leave you to do that," was the curt reply. "well, if you don't want to pray for tommy, pray for god's probable sons, won't you? do, uncle edward. mrs. maxwell said the only thing that comforted her is asking god to bring tommy back." sir edward made no reply, only dismissed her more peremptorily than usual, and when she had left the room he leaned his arms on the chimney piece, and resting his head on them, gazed silently into the fire with a knitted brow. his thoughts did not soothe him, for he presently raised his head with a short laugh, saying to himself,-"where is my cigar-case? i will go and have a smoke to get rid of this fit of the blues. i shall have to curb that child's tongue a little. she is getting too troublesome." and while he was pacing moodily up and down the terrace outside, a little white-robed figure, with bent head and closed eyes, was saying softly and reverently as she knelt at her nurse's knee-"and, o god, bring tommy back, and don't let him be a probable son any more. bring him home very soon, please, and will you bring back all your probable sons who are running away from you, for jesus christ's sake. amen." sir edward did not escape several visits from ladies in the neighborhood offering to befriend his little niece, but all these overtures were courteously and firmly rejected. he told them the child was happy with her nurse, he did not wish her to mix with other children at present, and a year or two hence would be quite time enough to think about her education. so milly was left alone, more than one mother remarking with a shake of the head-"it's a sad life for a child, but sir edward is peculiar, and when he gets a notion into his head he keeps to it." the child was not unhappy, and when the days grew shorter, and her rambles out of doors were curtailed, she would lie on the tiger-skin by the hall fire with fritz for the hour together, pouring out to him all her childish confidences. sometimes her uncle would find her perched on the broad window-seat half-way up the staircase, with her little face pressed against the windowpanes, and late on one very cold afternoon in november he remonstrated with her. "it is too cold for you here, millicent," he said sternly; "you ought to be in the nursery." "i don't feel cold," she replied. "i don't like being in the nursery all day; and when it gets dark, nurse will have the lamp lit and the curtains drawn, and then there are only the walls and ceiling and the pictures to look at. i'm tired of them; i see them every day." "and what do you see here?" asked sir edward. "you come and sit down, and i will tell you. there's room, uncle; make fritz move a little. now, you look out with me. i can see such a lot from this window. i like looking out right into the world; don't you?" "are we not in the world? i thought we were." "i s'pose we are, but i mean god's world. the insides of houses aren't his world, are they? do you see my trees? i can see goliath from this window; he looks very fierce to-night; he has lost all his leaves, and i can almost hear him muttering to himself. and then, uncle, do you see those nice thin trees cuddling each other? i call those david and jon'than; they're just kissing each other, like they did in the wood, you know. do you remember? and there's my beech-tree over there, where i sit when i'm the probable son. it's too dark for you to see all the others. i have names for them all nearly, but i like to come and watch them, and then i see the stars just beginning to come out. do you know what i think about the stars? they're angels' eyes, and they look down and blink at me so kindly, and then i look up and blink back. we go on blinking at each other sometimes till i get quite sleepy. i watch the birds going to bed too. there is so much i can see from this window." "well, run along to the nursery now; you have been here long enough." milly jumped down from her seat obediently; then catching hold of her uncle's hand as he was moving away, she said,-"just one thing more i want to show you, uncle. i can see the high-road for such a long way over there, and when it is not quite so dark i sit and watch for tommy--that's maxwell's probable son, you know. i should be so glad if i were to see him coming along one day with his head hanging down, and all ragged and torn. he is sure to come some day--god will bring him--and if i see him coming first, i shall run off quick to maxwell and tell him, and then he will run out to meet him. won't it be lovely?" and with shining eyes milly shook back her brown curls and looked up into her uncle's face for sympathy. he patted her head, the nearest approach to a caress that he ever gave her, and left her without saying a word. another day, later still, he came upon her at the staircase window. he was dining out that night, and was just leaving the house, but stopped as he noticed his little niece earnestly waving her handkerchief up at the window. "what are you doing now?" he inquired as he passed down the stairs. milly turned round, her little face flushed, and eyes looking very sweet and serious. "i was just waving to god, uncle edward. i thought i saw him looking down at me from the sky." sir edward passed on, muttering inaudibly,-"i believe that child lives in the presence of god from morning to night". chapter v. a prodigal. "uncle edward, nurse and i are going shopping; would you like us to buy you anything? we are going in the dog-cart with harris." milly was dancing up and down on the rug inside the front door as she spoke. it was a bright, frosty morning, and sir edward was leaving the breakfast-room with the newspaper and a large packet of letters in his hand. he stopped and glanced at the little fur-clad figure as she stood there, eager anticipation written on her face, and his thoughts went back to the time when he as a boy looked upon a day's visit to the neighboring town--nine miles away--as one of his greatest pleasures. "yes," he said, slowly fumbling in his waistcoat pocket; "you can get me some pens and blotting paper at the stationer's. i will write down the kind i want, and here is the money. keep the change, and buy anything you like with it." milly's cheeks flushed with delight as she took the money-"what a lot it will buy!" she said. "thank you very much indeed. i was wanting to buy something my own self, and i've only a little cook gave me, but now i shall be quite rich." it was late in the afternoon when nurse and her little charge drove back, and sir edward met them coming up the avenue. milly's face was clouded, and there were traces of tears on her cheeks, and this was such an unusual sight that sir edward inquired of the nurse what was the matter. "she has not been good, sir, i am sorry to say. it isn't often that i have to pull her up, but she has given me such a fright and trouble this afternoon as i am not likely to forget in a hurry." "what has she been doing? but never mind; i will not detain you now. i can hear about it when we get in." nurse was evidently very disturbed in mind, for she poured into sir edward's ear, directly they were inside the hall, a confused story:-"i was in the grocer's, sir, and i knew i should be there some time; for cook, she gave me so many commissions i had to write a long list of them. i said to miss milly, 'you can stand outside, but don't go a step farther.' she knows she is never allowed to speak to such people; i've known, as i told her, children being carried bodily off and set down at a street corner with hardly a rag on their backs; and to think of her marching off with him, and never a thought of my anxiety--and the way i went rushing up and down the streets--and the policemen--they are perfectly useless to help a person, but can only stare at you and grin. i'm sure i never expected to light eyes on her again, and i lost my purse and my best umbrella; i left them both somewhere, but it was nigh on two hours i spent, and my shopping not near done, and he the greatest looking rascal that one might see coming out of jail. i'm sure i shouldn't have been so angry but to see her smiling face, as if she hadn't done any wrong at all, nor disobeyed me flatly, and most likely put herself in the way of catching the most infectious disease from the very look of him, and run the risk of being robbed and perhaps murdered, and not an idea in her head that she was a very naughty child, but quite expected me to see the reasonableness of it all!" nurse stopped for breath, whilst milly's hanging head, heaving chest, and quick sobs showed that by this time nurse's words had quite convinced her of her wrong-doing. sir edward was surprised at the interest he felt in his little niece's trouble. "i am afraid i cannot understand your story, nurse," he said quietly; "but i daresay miss millicent will tell me herself. come into the study, child, with me." he took her hand in his, and led her away, while nurse looked after him in astonishment, and ford, the old butler, standing by, said with great solemnity,-"you may well stare, nurse. mark my words, that child will be able to twist him round with her little finger one of these days. i see it a-developin'. it will be a terrible come-down to the master--but there, i will say that the women always conquer, and they begin it when they're in short frocks." "i don't see the remarkableness in a gentleman taking notice of his own sister's child," returned nurse testily; "the wonder is that he should hold her at arm's length as he does, and treat her as if she were a dog or a piece of furniture, without any feelings, and she his own flesh and blood, too. there's no 'coming down' to have a spark of humanity in his breast occasionally." and nurse sailed upstairs, the loss of her purse and umbrella having considerably ruffled her usually even temper. sir edward seated himself by the study fire, and milly stood before him, one little hand resting upon his knee and the other holding her tiny handkerchief to her eyes, and vainly trying to restrain her sobs. "now suppose you stop crying, and tell me what has happened!" her uncle said, feeling moved at seeing his usually self-contained little niece in such grief. milly applied her handkerchief vigorously to her eyes, and looking up with quivering lips, she said,-"i didn't mean to be naughty, uncle. nurse hasn't been angry with me like she is now for _years_, and i'm _so_ unhappy!" the pitiful tone and look touched sir edward's heart, and, on the impulse of the moment, he did what he had never as yet attempted--lifted her upon his knee, and told her to proceed with her story; and milly, after a final struggle with her tears, got the better of them, and was able to give him a pretty clear account of what had happened. "i had bought your pens and blotting-paper, uncle, and was going to a picture-shop to spend the rest of my money when nurse had finished at the grocer's. i was standing outside, when i saw a man coming along. he limped, and his hat was broken in, and he was so ragged that i thought he must be a probable son, and then i thought he might be tommy going home, and when i thought that, i couldn't think of nothing else, and i forgot all about nurse, and i forgot she told me to stay there, and i ran after him as hard as i could. i caught him up, and he looked very astonished when i asked him was his name tommy. he said, 'no,' and he laughed at me, and then i asked him was he a probable son, because he looked like one. he said he didn't know what kind of person that was. and then i had to explain it to him. he told me he had never had a home to run away from, so that wouldn't do; but he really looked just like the man i've seen in mr. maxwell's picture, and i told him so, and then i found out what he was, and i was so sorry, and yet i was so glad." milly paused, and her large, expressive eyes shone as she turned them up to her uncle's face, and her voice dropped almost to a whisper as she said,-"i found out he was one of god's probable sons. when i asked him if he had run away from god, he said yes, he supposed he had done that, so of course he was ragged and unhappy." "that is not always the case," put in sir edward, half touched, half amused. "sometimes it is very rich people who run away from god, and they get richer when they are away from him." milly looked puzzled. "but they can't be happy, uncle. oh, they never can be!" "perhaps not." "well, i talked to this poor man till we had walked quite away from the shops, and then he turned down a lane, and i went with him; and we were both rather tired, so we sat down together on some doorsteps inside an archway, and he told me all about himself. his name is jack, and his father and mother are dead, like mine; and he got drunk one night, and fell down and broke his arm, and then he went to a hospital; and when he got well and went back to his work again, his master couldn't take him, because some one else was in his place, and he couldn't get any work. i asked him were there no pigs to keep, but he said there weren't any in london, and he was there, and for six months, he told me, he had been 'on the tramp'; that's what he called it. i asked him what that meant, and he said just walking on every day to no place particular. and he said something about going to the bad, which i couldn't quite understand. then i asked him why he didn't go back to god, and he said he had been a good boy once, when he went to sunday-school, and he had a very good uncle who kept a baker's shop in london, and who wanted him to go and live with him, but he wouldn't, because he was too good for him. and i asked him why he wouldn't go to him now, and he said he couldn't tramp back again to london, it was too far, and he had no money. so then i opened my purse, and we counted over my money together, and he said it was just enough to take him back, if i would lend it to him. so, of course, i did, and he asked me my name and where i lived, and i told him." "the scoundrel!" muttered sir edward. milly paused. "why are you looking so angry, uncle? i was so glad to give him the money; and then we talked a good deal, and i begged him not to be one of god's probable sons any more. fancy! he wouldn't believe god loved him, and he wouldn't believe that god wanted him back! i told him i should be quite frightened to get away from god, and he--well, he almost didn't seem to care; he said no one cared what came of him, whether he was hung, dead, or not; and i told him no one cared for me much except nurse, but god did. i feel he loves me, and i know he loves jack just the same; doesn't he, uncle?" "and when did nurse find you?" inquired sir edward, evading this question. milly's little face, which had been gradually brightening with the interest of her story, now clouded over again, and she hung her head. "she was fearful angry with me. she was quite hot and red, and she snatched me away, and said that jack was a thief and--and a vagbag, or something like that. she scolded me all the way home, and i don't think she will ever love me again. she said it was just a chance she found me, and if she hadn't come along that lane i should have been lost forever! and she was angry most of all because i shook hands with jack and wished him good-bye. i don't think nurse would run and meet a probable son if she had one; she thinks all ragged people are wicked. but i'm--i'm dreadful sorry i was disobedient. do you think i have been very naughty, uncle edward?" sir edward twisted the ends of his moustache slowly. "i think you were naughty to run after a strange man like that, and i quite understand nurse's displeasure. you made her exceedingly anxious." "and is god very angry with me?" "god is not pleased with disobedient children." "may i kneel down and ask him to forgive me now?" sir edward hesitated. "i think you had better go to the nursery and do it there." "i don't want to see nurse till i have done it. may i? will you ask god to forgive me too?" "your prayer will be quite sufficient." milly slipped off his knee, and then, kneeling down with folded hands and closed eyes, she said softly,-"please god, will you forgive me! i'm so sorry i disobeyed nurse and ran away. and please take care of jack, and bring him back to you, for jesus christ's sake. amen." "now run along to nurse, and don't cry any more," said sir edward, as he rose from his seat. milly looked back wistfully as she reached the door. "do you think nurse is still angry?" "tell nurse from me that she is not to scold you any more. the loss of your money ought to be a lesson to you." "but i didn't lose it, uncle. i lent it to jack. he wouldn't let me give it to him; he said he would send it back to me in a letter." sir edward laughed unbelievingly, and milly trotted upstairs to be received with open arms by nurse at the nursery door. "there! never mind, my dear. i have been very angry with you, but you'll never do such a thing again. come and have your tea. i've had a cup already, and feel wonderful better. now, don't cry any more; bless your little heart, i can't bear to see you in tears." with that nurse took her up in her arms; and poor tired little milly whispered, as she clung to her,-"i was afraid you would never love me again. i've told god i'm sorry; do you quite forgive me?" "quite, my lamb," was the reply; "and as to loving you, i shouldn't give over doing that if you were twice as troublesome." chapter vi. a promise kept. about a fortnight later sir edward, who always opened the post-bag himself, found there a letter addressed to his little niece, and sent a message to the nursery to tell her to come down to him. she arrived very surprised at the summons, as sir edward always wished to be left undisturbed at his breakfast, but when she saw the letters on the table she cried out joyously,-"good morning, uncle edward. i know there's a letter from jack for me, isn't there? i've been waiting for it every day." "i think there may be, judging from the writing on the envelope. come here and open it." milly took the letter, and her little fingers fairly trembled with excitement as she opened it, saying softly to herself as she did so,-"i knew he would keep his promise. i knew he wasn't a thief." a money order dropped out. "well," said sir edward, "you were right, little woman, and we were wrong. would you like me to read it for you?" "yes, please, uncle." the letter read as follows:- "i am as good as my word, little miss, in sending you back what you lent me with many grateful thanks for the loan, as i reached london safe and have never touched a drop of drink since i seen you, and am in work at my uncle's, which is good of him to take me, and am getting good wages and goes to church again. and my uncle has a chum which is a street preacher, and comes along of plenty of fellows like i was, and i told him of your young fellow, tommy maxwell, and he will keep a look-out for him. tell the woman that fetched you sharp away that i'll hold up my head with her yet, and every night i asks god to bless you, for i hopes i am getting on the right track again, and thank you kindly for your talk, which is sticking to me. "yours obediently, "jack gray." sir edward laid the letter down in silence when he had finished reading it. milly's face was radiant. "i've never had a letter in my life before, uncle, but i don't quite understand all of it. will you explain it to me?" and this her uncle did, sending her upstairs at length to show it to nurse, but sitting wrapped in thought himself and leaving both his letters and breakfast untouched for some considerable time. that same day he went out driving in the afternoon with a young horse, and returning home met a traction engine, at which the horse instantly took fright and bolted. for some time sir edward kept steadily to his seat, and though powerless to check the animal's course was able to guide it; but in spite of all his efforts the trap was at last upset, and he was thrown violently to the ground. he had no groom with him, and the accident took place on a lonely road, so that it was not till an hour later that help came, in the shape of a farmer returning from market in his cart. he found sir edward unconscious, and the horse still feebly struggling to extricate himself from under the trap, which was badly broken. it was about seven o'clock in the evening when sir edward was brought home, and he had three ribs broken, besides some very severe injuries to his head. the doctor wished to telegraph for a nurse from london, but sir edward had a horror of them, and having recovered consciousness shook his head vehemently when it was suggested; and so it ended in milly's nurse volunteering to assist his valet in nursing him. poor little milly wandered about the house with fritz at her heels in a very woe-begone fashion. what with the anxiety in her heart lest her uncle should die, and the absence of her nurse--who could spare little time now to look after her--she felt most forlorn, and her greatest comfort was to go down to the keeper's cottage and talk to mrs. maxwell. sir edward was soon out of danger, but he was a long time recovering, and required most careful nursing. milly begged and entreated to go in and see him, but this was not allowed. at last permission was given by the doctor for a very short visit, and the child stole in on tip-toe, but insisted upon taking a large brown paper parcel in with her, the contents of which were unknown to all except herself. softly she crept up to the bed and looked at her uncle's bandaged head and worn face with the greatest awe. he put out his hand, which she took in hers, and then she said, her brown eyes fixed wistfully on his face,-"i've wanted to see you, uncle edward, for so long. i wish you would let me come in and help to nurse you." sir edward smiled, then shook his head. "i've been asking god to make you better so many times," she continued, softly stroking his hand as she spoke, "and he is going to make you live again; now isn't he? i wasn't quite sure whether you mightn't like to die best, but i didn't want you to. nurse says i mustn't stay a moment, but i've brought you a present. maxwell went to the town and got it for me with the money jack sent back to me. may i open it for you?" reading assent in his eyes, milly eagerly removed her brown paper, and then lifted on to the bed with difficulty a picture of the prodigal son, in a plain oak frame. "isn't it a lovely one, uncle edward? there's the prodigal son--i've learned to say it properly now--all in rags hurrying along the road, and there's his old father in the distance coming to meet him; and can you see the words underneath?--_'i will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, father, i have sinned against heaven, and before thee_.' i thought you would like it to look at while you are in bed. may i rest it against the rail at the bottom of your bed?--then you can see it beautifully." nurse came forward and helped the child to put the picture in the place she wished; and sir edward tried to look pleased, and said in a low tone,-"thank you, little one, i can see it well from there"; but under his breath he muttered, "has she a purpose in bringing that everlasting subject before me? i'm sick to death of it. i shall get rid of that picture when she is gone." but he did not. his eyes grew somewhat wistful as he gazed upon it, and later in the day, when nurse asked him if he would like to have it removed, he shook his head in the negative. no one could know his thoughts during those long days and nights of weariness and pain. the restlessness of body did not equal the restlessness of soul, and the past came back with a startling vividness. the wasted years, the misused talents, and above all, the fast-closed heart against its rightful owner, now seemed to stand up in judgment against him. often in his wretchedness would he groan aloud, and wish for unconsciousness to come to his aid and consign to oblivion his accusing memory. it was a cold, gray afternoon. mrs. maxwell's little kitchen was in perfect order. the fire shed flickering lights on the bright dish-covers on the wall, and the blue and white china on the old-fashioned dresser was touched with a ruddy glow. mrs. maxwell herself, seated in a wooden rocking-chair, in spotless white apron, was knitting busily as she talked; and milly on a low stool, the tabby in her arms, with her golden-brown curls in pretty disorder, and her large dark eyes gazing earnestly into the fire, completed the picture. "do you like winter, mrs. maxwell?" she was asking. "well, my dear, i can't say as i don't prefer the summer; but there!--the almighty sends it, and it must be right, and i don't think folks have a right to grumble and go rushing off to them foreign parts, a-leaving their own country and the weather god gives them, because they say they must have sunshine. i allays thinks they've no sunshine in their hearts, or they wouldn't be so up and down with the weather." "i think winter is a very lonely time, mrs. maxwell, and i'm so sorry for the trees. i was out this morning with fritz, and i talked to them and tried to cheer them up. and i think they feel they're nearly dead, poor things! and they were shivering with cold this morning; they were, really. i told them they would be happy when next summer comes, but they sighed and shook their heads; it's such a long time to wait, and they have nothing to do--they can only stand still. i was very sad this morning. after i had talked to them, i went down to the plantation at the bottom of the lawn, and on the way i came to a poor dead frog. fritz sniffed at him, but he didn't seem to be sorry. i don't know how he died. i thought perhaps he had stayed out in the cold and got frozen, he felt so very cold. i took him up and buried him, and i wondered if his mother would miss him; and then i went on a little farther, and there were some little bird's feathers all in a heap on the ground. i felt sure a cruel cat had been eating it up, and i couldn't help crying, for everything seemed to be dying. and when i got to the plantation i was a little comforted, for the fir-trees looked so comfortable and warm--they hadn't lost their leaves like the other trees--but do you know, in the middle of them all was a tall, thin, bare tree--he looked so lonely and unhappy, and he was the only one without any leaves." "one of those birches, i expect. my man, he said the other day that the fir plantation yonder wanted weeding out." "well, i couldn't bear to see him so sad, so i crept right in amongst the firs until i got to him, and then i put my arms right round him and cuddled him tight. i told him god would take care of him, and give him a beautiful new green dress next summer; but he seemed to feel the cold, and i expect the other trees aren't very kind to him. i always think the firs are very stiff and proud. i--i kissed him before i came away. it was a sad morning." milly's tone was truly pathetic, and mrs. maxwell, who loved to hear her childish fancies and never laughed at them, now looked up from her knitting sympathetically-"you're sad yourself, dear. is your uncle pretty well to-day?" "i think he is getting better, but he mustn't talk, and nurse won't let me see him. i think it's winter makes me sad, mrs. maxwell." there was silence for a few moments. milly stroked her cat thoughtfully, then she said,-"if uncle edward had died, what would have happened to me? should i have had to go to the workhouse?" "bless your little heart, no! why, my man and i was saying the other day that it's most sure as you'll be mistress of the property one day. sir edward he have no other kith or kin, as far as we know. workhouse, indeed! a place where they takes in tramps and vagabonds." "i heard some of the maids talking about it," pursued milly; "they said they wondered what would happen to me. i think he is my only uncle, so i couldn't go anywhere else. i wish i had a father, mrs. maxwell, i'm always wishing for one. i never remember my father. my mother i do, but she was always ill, and she didn't like me to bother her. do you know, i thought when i came to uncle edward that he would be a kind of father; miss kent said he would. but i'm afraid he doesn't like me to bother him either. i should like him to take me up in his arms and kiss me. do you think he ever will? i feel as if no one cares for me sometimes." "i think a certain little apple dumpling as i put in the oven for some one is smelling as if it wants to come out," was mrs. maxwell's brisk response as she bustled out of her chair, her old eyes moist with feeling. in an instant milly's pensiveness had disappeared. a baked apple dumpling had great charms for her, and no one would have believed that the light-hearted child with the merry laugh, now dancing around the room, and climbing up to the dresser for a plate, was the same as the one who had so sadly discoursed a few moments before on the mournfulness of winter and of her orphaned state. "did you make such nice apple dumplings for tommy?" she asked presently, busy with her fork and spoon, and looking supremely content with herself and surroundings. "ah! didn't i? i mind when he used to come in on saturdays from the forge, i always had a hot pudding for him. he used to say there was no one as cooked as well as mother." "he's a long time coming home, isn't he, mrs. maxwell? i get so tired of waiting. i wish he would come for christmas." "i'm not tired of waiting," mrs. maxwell said softly, "and i've waited these nine years, but it sometimes seems as if it is only yesterday as he went off. i feel at times like fretting sadly over him, and wish i knew if he was alive or dead, but then the lord do comfort one, and i know he sees just where he is, and he'll let me know when the right time comes." "i'm expecting him every day," said milly with a cheerful little nod. "i was telling god about him last night at my window on the stairs--and it seemed as if god said to me that he was coming very soon now. i shouldn't wonder if he came next week!" the keeper entered the cottage at this moment, and milly jumped off her seat at once. "i'm afraid it's time for me to be going back. nurse said i was to be in at four. are you going to take me, maxwell?" "don't i always see you safe and sound up at the house?" maxwell said good-humoredly, "and do you know it has struck four ten minutes ago? when you and my old woman get together to have a crack, as the saying is, you don't know how time passes. we shall have to run for it." milly was being rapidly covered up in a thick plaid by mrs. maxwell. "there now, my dearie, good-bye till next i see you, and don't be doleful in that big house by yourself. your uncle will soon be well, and nurse will be better able to see after you. i don't know what all those servants are after that they can't amuse you a bit." "nurse doesn't like me ever to go near the servants' hall," said milly; "i promised her i wouldn't. sarah stays in the nursery with me, but she runs away downstairs pretty often. good-bye, mrs. maxwell." it was getting dark. maxwell soon had the child in his strong arms, and was striding along at a great pace, when passing a rather dark corner, a man suddenly sprang out of the bushes and took to his heels. maxwell shouted out wrathfully: "let me see you in here again, and it will be the worse for you, you scoundrel!" "oh, maxwell," cried milly, "who is it?" "one of them skulking poachers--they're always in here after the rabbits. if i hadn't a-had you to look after and had my thick stick i would a-been after him." "but you wouldn't have hurt him?" "i should have taught him a lesson, that i should!" "but, maxwell, you mustn't, really! only think, he might be--tommy coming home! you couldn't see who it was, could you? it would be dreadful if you chased away tommy." "no fear o' that," maxwell said in a quieter tone. "my own son wouldn't skulk along like that. he was a ragged vagabond, that's what he was." "prodigal sons are nearly always ragged. he might have been some one's prodigal son, maxwell." "he was just a poacher, my dear, and i think i know the chap. he's staying at the blue dragon, and has been a-watching this place for some time." "perhaps he is one of god's prodigal sons," said milly softly, "like jack was." to this maxwell made no reply, but when he set her down in the brightly-lighted hall a little later, he said,-"don't you fret about our tommy. i should know him fast enough. he wouldn't run from his own father." and milly went in, and that night added another petition to her prayers:-"and please god, if the man who ran away from maxwell is a prodigal son, bring him back to his father for jesus' sake. amen." chapter vii. cross-examination. "nurse, where is miss millicent? i haven't seen her for days. fetch her in here this afternoon, and you go and get a little fresh air; i am well enough to be left alone now." sir edward's tone was impatient. he was getting to the convalescent stage, and nurse found him a most trying patient. nothing would please him, and he wearied both himself and her with his perpetual complaints. "i thought she would only worry you, sir. she has been asking me every day to come in and see you. i will fetch her at once." milly shortly appeared in a clean pinafore, her little face radiant with smiles. as she climbed up into the chair by the bedside and gently stroked the hand that was given her, she said with sparkling eyes,-"nurse says i may stay here all alone with you, uncle; won't that be lovely? may i give you your medicines, and be your nurse?" "i can't promise that, but you may sit there and talk to me." "what shall i talk about?" "anything you like. you never seem to be at a loss for conversation." milly considered for a moment. "i've had so few people to talk to lately, you see; i generally talk most to fritz. he understands, i'm sure, but he doesn't talk back. when will you be quite well again, uncle?" "not this side of christmas, i'm afraid." "oh dear, what a long time! but i'm very glad god has made you better. nurse said it was a mercy you hadn't broken your neck. do you know, uncle, i saw such a sad sight yesterday morning. i was down in the fir plantation with fritz, and we came upon a dear little rabbit caught in a steel trap. maxwell said a poacher had put it there, and he was very angry. the rabbit was quite dead, and his two hind legs were broken. wasn't it dreadful? what is a poacher, uncle?" "a thief--a man that steals game that isn't his." "maxwell says there are lots of poachers about. i'm so afraid he will think tommy is one when he comes back. i do hope he will be careful, because if it's dark he might make a mistake. wouldn't it be dreadful if he hurt his own prodigal son! and i expect tommy will look very like a poacher. he is sure to have ragged, dirty clothes. if i was----" here milly paused, and gazed dreamily in front of her for some minutes in silence. "well?" inquired sir edward, looking at his little niece with interest as she sat in her big chair, her elbows supported by her knees, and her chin resting in her hands, "are you going into a brown study?" "i was just thinking if i was a prodigal son--i mean a real one, not just playing at it, as i do--i would rather be one of god's prodigal sons, than belonging to any one else." "why?" "because i would know for certain he would meet me and take me back. nurse told me she had a cousin who ran away and made himself a soldier, and when he was sorry and wanted to come home, his father shut the door in his face, and wouldn't let him in. and then there's tommy, i can't help s'posing that his father mightn't know him. but god can't make mistakes. it must be lovely just to run right into god's arms, and hear him saying, _'bring forth the best robe, and put it on him.'_ i should love to have him say that to me." milly's little face glowed with pleasure at the thought, and she turned her expressive eyes toward her uncle, who lay with knitted brows listening to her. "and supposing if god would not receive you; supposing you had stayed away so long, and had refused to listen to his voice when he called, and then when you did want to come back, you felt it would be too late, what would you do then?" milly smiled. "why, uncle, it would be never too late for god, would it? maxwell said he would be glad to see tommy if he came back in the middle of the night, and god would never turn one of his prodigal sons away. he loves them so that he sent jesus to die for them. he would never say he couldn't have them back again." sir edward said no more, and after another pause the child went on. "i was asking mrs. maxwell the other day if she had some best clothes for tommy when he came home, and she took me upstairs into his little room, and opened a long drawer, and told me to look inside. and there were his best sunday coat and waistcoat and trousers, and a silk handkerchief with lavender in it, and a necktie with yellow and red stripes, and she told me they had been there for nine years, and she shakes them out and brushes them every saturday. he didn't run away in his best clothes, you know; he left them behind. so they're quite ready for him. the only thing mrs. maxwell hasn't got is the ring." "the what?" inquired sir edward, amused. "the ring," milly repeated earnestly. "maxwell will have to say, '_put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet_.' mrs. maxwell has got a pair of carpet slippers. i couldn't bear her not having any shoes ready for him, so we looked about and found a pair that are just too small for maxwell, and i put them in the drawer my own self. mrs. maxwell says he won't want a ring, and that she thinks the bible people dressed differently, and she said tommy was a poor man's son: it wasn't as if he was rich. but i don't know; i don't like to think we have no ring for him. i suppose you haven't one, uncle, that you would like to give him?" sir edward put his head back on his cushions and laughed aloud. then, noting milly's troubled face, he said: "wait till tommy comes back, little woman, and then it will be time enough to see about his ring, though i quite agree with his mother that it would be most unfitting." "you have had the picture i gave you taken away, uncle," said milly presently, her quick eyes roving round the room. "ah! you've had it hung up on the wall. that's nice there. you can see it from your bed. don't you like looking at it? doesn't it make you feel happy?" "i can't say it does," replied sir edward, glancing at the picture in question. "why ought it to make me feel happy?" "oh, it's so nice to think he is just getting home after being away so long. i wonder if he was a great time walking back. how long do you think it takes one of god's prodigal sons to get back to him, uncle?" "i should say a very long time, indeed," said sir edward, slowly. "but how long? two days, or six hours, or a week?" "it would depend perhaps on how long they had been away from him." "it's rather hard to understand," said milly, wrinkling her little brow perplexedly, "because god is everywhere, isn't he? and i should have thought he would have been close by them all the time. i was asking nurse about it, and she said that god was near them, only they wouldn't have anything to say to him, and did bad things and shut the lord jesus out of their heart, and let satan in, and then god had to leave them till they said they said they were sorry. i suppose directly they say: '_father, i have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son,_' then god just folds them in his arms and forgives them and takes them back again; isn't that it?" "look here, i think we have had enough of this subject. talk about something else." sir edward's tone was irritable. milly's ready tongue obeyed. "nurse says it's so cold to-day that she thinks it will snow. do you think it will? it is quite smoky by the river; nurse says it is a fog. i wondered where it all came from. do you think it might be god's breath, uncle?" as she was chatting on, suddenly there came a sharp knock at the door, and a visitor appeared. "thought i'd look you up, for i heard you were on the sick list. good gracious! you have been pretty bad, haven't you? will you put me up for a night or two? i expect you want a little cheerful company." talking volubly, major lovell--for it was he--came forward and looked with real concern on sir edward's altered face. "i'm very glad to see you," said the latter, heartily, holding out his hand. "come and stay for as long as you like. i'm sick to death of my own society." "and is this the small party that arrived so unexpectedly when i was here before?" inquired major lovell, looking down at milly, who still sat in the big chair, regarding the new-comer with her large brown eyes. "yes," said sir edward, a faint smile hovering about his lips as he remembered his horror of her advent; "she is taking charge of me this afternoon." milly held out her little hand with all the grace of a duchess. "i remember you," she said; "you were one of the gentlemen that laughed at me." "i don't think i could have been guilty of such rudeness, surely." "now, i think you may run away," sir edward said, "and tell nurse i will ring when i want her." milly obeyed, and confided to nurse that she hoped the "new gentleman" would not keep her away from her uncle. "for do you know, nurse, i like uncle edward so much better when he is in bed. he looks so sad, and speaks so softly. i wish i could sit with him every day." major lovell was a distant cousin of sir edward, and there existed a warm friendship between them. the very brightness of his tone seemed to do the invalid good, and milly was quite delighted to find that her uncle's visitor not only listened with interest to the account of her favorite games and pastimes, but insisted upon joining her in them, and the walls of the quiet old house rang again with merry mirth and laughter such as they had not known for years. upstairs in the sick room major lovell proved a wonderfully patient and skillful nurse; but there were times when all his bright cheeriness could not smooth the furrows in the invalid's brow, or take away the fretfulness of tone. one morning major lovell came down from an interview with him with a puzzled expression of face. catching sight of milly in the hall, equipped in hat and jacket, he asked,-"are you going out with nurse?" "no, nurse is busy--just by my own self, in the avenue with fritz. do come with me." the major consented, but with a graver face than usual, and then suddenly, very full of his own thoughts, said to the child,-"i believe your uncle has something on his mind. it strikes me from different things he has let drop that he is turning pious." "what is pious?" inquired milly, instantly. "what is it? a pious person thinks every one wicked but themselves, and condemns everybody and everything all round them. they are most objectionable people, little woman, so mind you never take up that line, and the worst of it is that they're so satisfied with their own goodness, that you can't crush them, try as much as you may." "and is uncle edward going to be like them?" asked the child, with a perplexed face. "i devoutly hope not. i shall do all in my power to prevent it." "what do pious people do?" questioned milly. "do! they give tracts away and sing hymns, and pull long faces over very well-bound bibles." "i like singing hymns," asserted milly, very emphatically; "everybody sings hymns to god, don't they? i listen to the birds, sometimes, and wish i could sing like them; and the trees sing, and the bees and flies. everything seems to sing out of doors in the summer time, but they've nearly all dropped asleep now till next year. what hymns do you sing, major lovell?" "bless the child! what do you take me for?" and the major laughed heartily as he spoke; then, with a twinkle in his eye, he went on gravely,-"i shall begin to think that you are pious if you don't take care. what else do you do besides sing hymns?" "i have a bible," said milly, solemnly, "and i just love it." "and what makes you love such a dry book as the bible? you can't understand a word of it." "oh, i can, major lovell, it's beautiful. i love nurse to read and read it to me. it tells about jesus, you know, and i love jesus, and he loves me. and it has such nice stories in it." major lovell gave a long, low whistle. "ah!" he said, shaking his head comically at the little figure walking by his side, "i'm very much afraid you may be at the bottom of it all. do you read the bible to your uncle? do you tell him that he has been wasting his life and not fulfilling the end for which he was created, in fact, that he is a wicked sinner? for that has been the substance of his talk with me this morning!" "uncle edward is a very good man," milly replied, warmly. "i don't know what you mean, major lovell; don't you read the bible?" "what will you think of me if i tell you i don't?" "perhaps you know it all by heart? i expect that is why." "i rather think i don't. you must not begin to catechise me too severely. who has brought you up in this pious fashion?" "i'm not pious. you said they were horrid people. but i thought all the grown-up people read the bible, except people like jack." "who is jack?" "he was a prodigal son, one of god's prodigal sons." "and what are they, may i ask?" milly did not answer for a minute, then she stopped short, and said very solemnly, raising her large dark eyes to the major's face,-"i wonder if you're a prodigal son. uncle edward said there were some rich ones. have you run away from god, major lovell?" "oh, come now," said the major, pinching her cheek good-naturedly; "i didn't bargain for this when i came out with you. you must keep your sermons for some one else. come along to the stables with me, and i will give you a ride." in an instant milly's gravity disappeared, and a little time afterwards she was laughing gleefully as she was being trotted round the stable-yard on a large bay mare; but she said to her nurse when she came in,-"major lovell is very nice, but very funny, and i can't always understand his talk, he says such difficult things." chapter viii. "he arose and came to his father." major lovell stayed a week, and sir edward seemed the better for his company, as far as his bodily health was concerned. but at heart he was very wretched, and his cousin's influence was not the sort to help him. "now, old chap, make haste and get well, and don't moon over yourself and your feelings. and come down to our place for christmas, won't you? you're getting quite in the blues by being so much alone." these were major lovell's parting words, and sir edward responded,-"no, thanks; i prefer being at home this christmas. why, i doubt if i shall leave my room by that time; i am as weak as a baby." the week before christmas sir edward was in an easy chair in the library, and, though still an invalid, was now making rapid progress towards recovery. he was conning over an article he had just written, before a blazing fire, when there was a knock at the door. a frown came to his face as he turned to see who the intruder was, but disappeared at the sight of his little niece, rosy and breathless, in out-door garments, and hugging a large piece of holly in her arms. "uncle edward, he has come!" "who has come?" "tommy--he really and truly has. ford told me just as i came in with nurse. he heard it from harris, and harris heard it from maxwell himself. he said, 'my lad has come, tell little missy,' and ford says harris said, 'he looked as if he could dance a jig for joy!' oh, uncle edward, may i go to them? nurse says it's too late, but i do want to be there. there's such a lot to be done now he has really come; and, uncle edward, may they kill one of the cows in the farm that are being fatted up? there's no calf, i'm afraid. may they? and may i go and tell them so? you will let me go, won't you?" [illustration: hugging a large piece of holly in her arms.] "most certainly not; it is much too late in the afternoon for you to be going down there. it is getting quite dark, and as to one of my cattle being disposed of in that way, i should not dream of allowing it for one moment." milly's eyes filled with tears, which she vainly tried to restrain. when her uncle spoke to her in that tone she knew it was useless to remonstrate. "they'll be having the feast without me," she said, with a little sob in her voice. "mrs. maxwell promised me i should be there when they had it, and i'm longing to see tommy." "then if mrs. maxwell promised you that, she will put off her feast till to-morrow," said sir edward in a softer tone. "and now be a sensible little woman, and wait patiently till the time comes. you may be sure his parents will like to have him to themselves the first night. run away now; i don't want to be disturbed." poor little milly crept out of the room feeling very crestfallen, and a short time after was lying on the hearth-rug before the nursery fire, her arms wound round fritz's neck, confiding to him the whole story, and comforting herself by conjecturing how and where the meeting had taken place. her little mind was so full of the subject that it was long before nurse could get her to sleep that night. her last words before she dropped off were,-"i wonder who will do the music and dancing!" the next morning, the instant her breakfast was over, milly obtained nurse's permission to go down to the keeper's cottage under charge of sarah, the nursery maid. she was away the whole morning, and about one o'clock a message came from mrs. maxwell to ask if she might stay to dinner with them. so that it was not till nearly four in the afternoon that she was brought up to the house, and then, flushed and excited, she poured into her nurse's ear a long account of all that she had been hearing and doing. "now, come, my dear, you mustn't talk forever," was nurse's remonstrance at last; "sir edward told me i could send you to him for a little when you came in, and i must make you tidy first." it was quite dusk when milly entered the library, but the bright firelight showed her the figure of her uncle leaning back in his easy chair, and indulging in a reverie. "well," he said, looking round, "where have you been all day? down at maxwell's, i suppose?" "yes," said milly, sedately; "and i'll tell you all about it, if you like. may i make myself comfortable first?" and after a minute's hesitation she climbed into the heavy armchair on the opposite side of the fireplace, making a pretty picture, as she leaned her curly head back on the cushion and gazed earnestly into her uncle's face. "we will have a crack together, uncle. that's what maxwell calls it, when mrs. maxwell and i talk over the fire. may i tell you all about tommy now?" "you may," was the amused reply. "well, you know, i ran as fast as i could down to the wood this morning, and sarah ran after me, and mrs. maxwell saw me coming and she ran to the door. i was rather out of breath, you see, so she just smoothed me down a little, and we kissed each other, and she cried a tiny bit, for i felt her tears on my face. then she took me in to see tommy--maxwell was out, and tommy was in the kitchen in one of maxwell's great-coats, and he was eating some bacon at the table for his breakfast. he got up when he saw me--he's a nice big man, uncle, but i think his hair wants cutting. we shook hands, and i told him i'd been expecting him ever so long. he looked rather shy, but after he had quite finished his breakfast, we had a very nice talk, and mrs. maxwell went bustling about getting dinner ready. tommy told me all about himself from the very beginning, but i really quite forget some of it. he never kept any pigs at all, but he kept some sheep instead--he went out to america and did it--and then he was a railway man, and then he had a fever, and then he got into bad company, and at last he came to london, and he was an omnibus man there, and then a cabman, and then he drank too much beer, and his money all went away, and he was ashamed of himself, and so he wouldn't write home, and then he smashed his cab against the lamp-post, and then he drank too much again." "i don't think you need tell me any more of his misdoings," said sir edward, drily. "but, you see, he had to get very bad before he got good, because he was a prodigal son. and he is sorry now. he said he never, never would have come home until he was a good man, only one day he listened to a man preaching a sermon in the middle of a street on a sunday night, and he felt uncomfortable, and then he was spoken to after by--now guess, uncle, who do you think?" sir edward could not guess, so milly went on triumphantly: "why, it was my jack, and he began to talk to him, and told him he was like him once, and he said he was looking out for a tommy maxwell. now wasn't that wonderful, when it was tommy himself he spoke to! well, tommy said he hadn't the face to go home till he was better, but jack told him not to wait a day longer, for his father and mother were waiting for him; but the strange thing was that even then tommy waited a whole two weeks before he made up his mind to come. now don't you think he was foolish, uncle?" "very foolish." "i couldn't quite understand it, but nurse says there are lots of people like that, waiting to make themselves better, instead of running home just as they are. she says some of god's prodigal sons do that; do you think many do, uncle?" "i daresay." "and tommy said, though he wanted to see his home again dreadfully, he had a great fight with himself to come at all. i didn't know prodigal sons found it so difficult--the one in the bible didn't, not when he once made up his mind. well, and so tommy got out at the station--i'm sorry he came by train, but jack's uncle paid for his ticket--i would rather he had run the whole way." "why would you?" asked sir edward, with a smile. "i think it would have been more proper if he had," said the child slowly, her head a little on one side, as she gazed thoughtfully into the fire. "i always run or walk the whole way when i play the prodigal son. i begin rather slowly, because it looks a long way off, but when i come near i hurry. i'm wanting to be there when i see my home. the prodigal son didn't have a train in the bible, and i think tommy might have tried to do without it." the tone of reproach at the end of her speech was too much for her uncle's gravity, and he laughed aloud. "i am afraid tommy has sadly disappointed you. did he take a cab from the station?" "no, he didn't do that. he got home in the afternoon, and maxwell was cleaning his gun on the doorstep, when he saw a shadow, and he looked up and there he was! oh! i should like to have been there, but i'm sorry to say maxwell didn't fall on his neck and kiss him. i asked tommy very carefully about it, and he said he took hold of both his hands and squeezed them tight, and he gave a shout, and mrs. maxwell was doing her washing in the back yard, and she heard it, and she shook all over so that she could hardly walk. she cried so much when she saw tommy that maxwell had to pat her on the back and give her a glass of water; and tommy he sat down on the little seat inside the porch, and he said--these were his very words, uncle--'i ain't fit to come home, father. i'm a disgrace to your name,' and mrs. maxwell--tommy told me--she just took his head between her two hands, and drew it to rest on her shoulder, and then she bent down and kissed him all over and she said:-"'my boy, who should you come to when you are in disgrace and trouble but your own father and mother?' "tommy said, when he told me this, 'it fair broke my heart, miss,' and then he gave a great sob, and i began to cry, and then mrs. maxwell came up, and her hands were all floury, for she was making an apple pudding, and she cried too, and then we all cried together--at least, tommy turned his head away and pretended he didn't, but i saw he did." milly paused for breath, and her eyes looked wistfully into the glowing coals before her. "i didn't know prodigal sons were sad when they came back, but tommy seemed so sad that he made me sad too. why do you think tommy cried, uncle?" sir edward did not reply. he was gazing dreamily into the fire, and something of the wistfulness in his little niece's face seemed to be reflected in his. he gave a start after a moment's silence. "eh, child? what are you saying? have you finished your story?" "why, no, uncle, not nearly. are you tired? nurse said i must not tire you too much." sir edward laughed, but it was not a happy laugh. "oh, finish your story by all means, little woman," he said, and milly continued:-"we all cheered up when mrs. maxwell asked me if i'd like to stay to dinner. i asked if it was the feast, and she laughed and said, 'yes.' she had a roast leg of pork in the oven, with some stuffing and apple sauce, and, uncle, it was lovely! maxwell came in just in time, and he looked so happy, and then we all sat down to dinner, but i asked maxwell to say first before we began: '_let us eat, and be merry, for this my son was dead, and is alive again, he was lost, and is found_.' he folded his hands and said it like grace, and mrs. maxwell said 'amen' when he had finished, and wiped her eyes with her apron. i told them we must all be very merry, but tommy wasn't, i'm afraid. he kept looking first at mrs. maxwell and then all round the kitchen, and then at maxwell, and then he sighed very big sighs. he said he couldn't believe he was at home, but he told me, when i asked him quietly afterwards, that he was really very happy, he only sighed and looked sad because he thought how foolish he had been to stay away so long. i was very sorry for one thing about him, uncle. he wasn't in his best clothes. they were all too small for him, and the slippers wouldn't fit him, but maxwell says he will buy him some new ones to-morrow. and tommy told me he wouldn't wear a ring if he had one. he asked me why he should, so i told him about the prodigal son in the bible--he seemed to like hearing about it, and he said he thought he was very like him. and then i asked about the music and dancing. i wanted to have that, but we couldn't manage it. mrs. maxwell said we had music in our hearts; how can we have that, uncle? i didn't hear any in mine, for i kept silent and listened for it." "i expect she meant you were so happy that you did not want any music to make you happier." "i was very happy. oh, uncle edward, why won't all the prodigal sons go home? i can't think why they like staying away. it is so lovely to think of tommy now! and every one would be just as happy, wouldn't they?" "i don't think all young men have such fond parents as your friend tommy has," said sir edward gravely. "haven't they? well, god's prodigal sons couldn't have a nicer father. i lie and think of them when i'm in bed sometimes, and i talk to god about them. i was so glad when jack went back to him. i think it is worst of all to stay a long way off from god, because he does love them so. i wonder if it is that they don't know whether god will take them back. tommy seemed half afraid till he came, that his father would be angry with him. i should like to see a prodigal son running back into god's arms so much! but i suppose he does it very quietly, and only the angels look down and see it!" "and what is this young scapegrace going to do now? live on his father and mother, or is he going to try and do some honest work?" sir edward's tone was rather impatient. milly looked up surprised. "do you mean tommy, uncle? are you angry with him? he told me he was going to look for work directly, and maxwell is coming up to speak to you about him to-morrow." "ah! i daresay--wants him to take the place of under-keeper, i suppose," and sir edward gave a little grunt of dissatisfaction at the thought. chapter ix. "a little child shall lead them." when sir edward retired to his room that night, he paced up and down for some time in front of his little niece's picture that she had given him. his brow was knitted, and he was thinking deeply. "i am longing to have peace," he muttered. "why cannot i make up my mind to seek it! '_i will arise_'--ay, easy to say; it's a hard and bitter thing for a backslider to retrace his steps. how the child stabs me sometimes, and how little she knows my past!" he stopped and gazed at the picture. "and the lord himself used this as an illustration. i could not want anything stronger." a deep-drawn sigh followed, then a heartfelt cry rose to heaven. "may god have mercy on me, and bring me back, for i can't bring myself!" the next morning sir edward had an interview with his keeper, who brought his son up with him, and as the tall, broad-shouldered young fellow stood before the squire, and in earnest, humble tones asked if he could be given a chance of redeeming his character by being employed on the estate, sir edward's severity relaxed, and after a long conversation with him he promised he would give him a trial. he smiled grimly to himself as father and son left him with warm expressions of gratitude. "so that is the child's hero! one whose example i might well follow. he has had the courage at last to take the step from which i am still shrinking. why should i fear that my welcome home would be less full of love and forgiveness than his?" it was christmas eve, a wild and stormy day. the wind raged ceaselessly round the old house, howling down the chimneys, and beating the branches of the trees outside against the window panes. milly had been very busy for some hours helping ford to decorate the hall and rooms with holly and evergreen, though ford would every now and then pause in his work, saying: "there, miss milly, i'm sure we're overdoing it. if the house was full of company now, i would take a pride in it, but i don't believe the master will notice whether it's done or not. it seems to me as he is getting more and more shut up into hisself lately. christmas is a dull time with us." all was finished at last, and milly went up to the nursery and stood at the window, her bright brown eyes eagerly scanning and taking note of every object out of doors. "it's a perfect hurricane," said nurse, presently, as she sat with her work in a comfortable chair by the fire. "if we feel it inland like this, what must it be at sea!" "i should like to be on the sea," said milly. "i love the wind, but i think it is getting a little bit too rough this afternoon. i'm rather afraid it will hurt the little trees. ford said if i went out i should be blown away. do you think, nurse, if the wind was very, very strong it would ever be able to blow me up to heaven?" "i am afraid not," said nurse, gravely, "and i don't think we could spare you, my dear. you would not like to leave this world yet awhile." "sometimes i think i should, and sometimes i think i shouldn't. i think i should like to be blown up to spend a day there, and then come back again. oh, nurse, goliath is screaming and cracking so! i wish the wind would knock him over, he is a horrid old tree. i always think he is making faces at me when i run past him. wouldn't it be nice to see him blown down?" "you mustn't wish that," said nurse, getting up from her chair and moving towards the door; "it's a dangerous thing for an old tree to be blown down. now i am going downstairs for a short time, so be a good child and don't get into mischief while i am away." milly remained at the window for some minutes after nurse's departure, then her quick eyes noticed a poor wretched little kitten mewing pitifully as she vainly tried to shelter herself from the violent blasts by crouching close to a tree. in an instant, without thought of consequences, the child darted to the nursery door and down the broad oak staircase. "poor pussy, i will run and fetch her in. i expect she has run away from the kitchen." sir edward was writing at his study table, when an unusually violent gust of wind caused him to raise his eyes and glance out of the window. there, to his amazement, he saw, under the old oak tree on the lawn, his little niece, her golden brown curls flying as she battled with the elements, and struggled vainly to stoop and take the kitten in her arms. he started up from his seat, but as he did so a blast that shook the house swept by; there was an awful cracking, then a crash, and, to his horror, a huge limb of the old oak came with an awful thud upon the very spot where his little niece was standing. "my god, save her!" was his agonized cry, as he saw at the same moment the little figure stagger and fall. then, forgetting his weakness and lack of physical strength, he dashed out of the house, and in another instant was standing over her. his first feeling was one of intense thankfulness to find that the branch in falling could have only slightly grazed her, as she was lying on the ground untouched by it; but as he raised the motionless figure, and noted a red mark on her forehead which was swelling rapidly, his heart sank within him. it did not take him long to carry her into her house, and he was met at the door by nurse, who wisely wasted no time in useless lamentation, but set to work at once to restore animation to her little charge. her efforts were successful. milly was only slightly stunned, but it had been a miraculous escape, and had the blow been an inch nearer her temple it might have been fatal. as it was, the child was more frightened than hurt, and when a little time after her uncle took her in his arms with unwonted tenderness, she clung to him and burst into passionate sobs. "take care of me, uncle! that nasty old goliath! he tried to kill me, he did! i saw him coming on the top of me. god only just saved me in time, didn't he?" when the bruise had been bathed and dressed by nurse, sir edward still kept her on his knee, and after nurse had left the room, and the child rested her little head on his shoulder in a very subdued frame of mind, he did, what he had never done yet--stooped over her and kissed her, saying: "you have been very near death this afternoon, little one, and i could ill have spared you." milly raised her large dark eyes to his. "if i had died i should have gone straight up to god, shouldn't i?" "yes, you would." "i should have liked that. i suppose he doesn't want me yet, or he would have sent for me." when she came down to her uncle that evening she raised a very sad little face to his from the opposite side of the table. "uncle edward, have you heard who goliath really did kill?" "do you mean the tree that came on you? no one else was hurt, i hope?" and sir edward's tone was a little anxious. "she was killed dead--quite dead and mangled, nurse said. it was the poor little kitten, uncle, that i ran out to fetch." the brown eyes were swimming with tears, and milly could not understand the smile that came to sir edward's lips. "only a kitten. well, it was sad, i daresay, but there are plenty of kittens about the place." "but, uncle, i've been thinking so much about this one. ford says she had run away from the stable. i expect she was going to be a prodigal kitten, perhaps, and now she'll never run away any more. it's so sad about her, and i think why it is sad is because nobody cares, not even nurse. she said she would rather it had been the kitten than me. poor little kitty, her mother will be missing her so to-night! do you think, uncle, the wind or goliath killed her? i think it was goliath. i just looked out of my window on the stairs before i came down. the wind has stopped now, and the trees seemed to be crying and sobbing together. i'm sure they were sorry for kitty. i think they were tired out themselves, too, they have been so knocked about to-day. i wish so much i had been just in time to save the dear little kitten." "we will not talk about her any more," said sir edward cheerfully. "have you seen tom maxwell lately?" milly's little tongue was only too ready to talk of him. "he helped nurse and me to get some holly in the wood yesterday. i have nice talks with him often. he says he is very happy, and this will be the best christmas he has spent in his life. uncle, i want to ask you something. i've been thinking of it a great deal to-day, only since i was knocked down this afternoon i've had such a pain in my head i left off thinking. but i've just remembered it now. you see it is really jesus christ's birthday to-morrow, and i was thinking i've been getting presents for every one in the house but him. nurse has been helping me with some of them. i've made nurse a kettleholder, and cook a needlebook, and i've bought a penknife for ford, and a thimble for sarah, and some handkerchiefs for maxwell and mrs. maxwell, and some woolen gloves for tommy. and i've nothing--no nothing for him. if i only knew something he would like." she paused, and a soft wistfulness came into her eyes. "i was thinking," she went on, "that perhaps i could put my present for him outside the nursery window on the ledge. and then when we are all in bed, and it is very quiet, i expect he might send an angel down to bring it up to him. i think he might do that, because he knows how much i want to give him something. but then i don't know what to give him. could you tell me, uncle?" "i think," said sir edward, gravely, "the only way you can give him a christmas present is to give something to the poor. he would rather have that. i will give you this to put in the plate to-morrow in church." and sir edward put his hand in his pocket, and rolled a coin across the table to his little niece. but milly was not satisfied. "this is your present," she said, doubtfully. "what will you give him this christmas besides? is money the only thing you can give him, uncle?" sir edward pushed back his chair and rose from the table. his feelings were almost getting beyond his control. with the one subject that was now always foremost in his thoughts, the child's question rang again in his ears, "is money the only thing you can give him, uncle?" and like a flash of light came a reply: "no, i can give myself back to him, my soul and body, that have now been so long in the keeping of his enemy." after a few minutes' silence he said, in a strangely quiet voice: "come, little one, it is bedtime; say 'good-night,' and run up to nurse!" milly came up to him, and as he stood with his back to the fire warming his hands, she took hold of the ends of his coat in her little hands, and, looking up at him, said: "uncle edward, you gave me a kiss like a father might have done this afternoon. would you mind very much giving me another?" sir edward looked down at the sweet little face raised so coaxingly to his, and then took her up in his arms; but after he had given her the desired kiss he said, with some effort,-"i want you to do something to-night, little one. when you say your prayers, ask that one of god's prodigal sons may be brought back this christmas time. it is one who wants to return. will you pray for him?" "yes, uncle," replied the child softly. "and will you tell me his name?" "no, i cannot do that." something in his face made his little niece refrain from asking further questions. she left him a moment later, and sir edward went to the smoking-room and seated himself in a chair by the fire. the chimes of the village church were ringing out merrily, and presently outside in the avenue a little company of carol singers were singing the sweet old christmas truths that none can hear untouched. "_glory to god in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men_." a sense of the love of god seemed to surround his soul, and this verse came into his mind as he mused:-"_i have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving-kindness have i drawn thee_." could he not trace in the events of the last few months the hand of a loving father gently calling his wanderer home? stricken down himself, placed on a sick bed for reflection, brought to the edge of the valley of the shadow of death, and then tenderly restored to life and health; the gentle voice and life of a little child pleading with him day by day, and that life having so lately been miraculously preserved from a great danger--all this filled his heart with the realization of the mercy and loving-kindness of god; and when again the past came up before him, and the tempter drew near again with the old refrain, "you have wandered too long, you have hardened your heart, and god has shut his ear to your cry!" sir edward, by the help and power of the divine spirit, was able to look up, and say from the depths of his heart,-"_father, i have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son."_ they were sitting in the study the next afternoon, the child upon his knee, when sir edward said suddenly,-"do you know that i have received a letter to-day about you?" "who from?" asked milly, with interest. "from my sister, your aunt, in australia. i wrote to her when you came, and she wants to have you out there, and bring you up among her own children. she says a friend of hers will take charge of you and take you to her next month. i must talk to nurse about it." the little hands clutched hold of his coat sleeve tightly, but not a word did milly say. sir edward noted a slight quivering of the lips, and a piteous gleam in the soft brown eyes. he waited in silence for a moment, then said cheerfully,-"won't you be glad to have a lot of boys and girls to play with, instead of staying here with a lonely old man?" still the child said nothing; but suddenly down went the curly head upon his arm, and the tears came thick and fast. sir edward raised the little face to his,-"we must not have tears on christmas day," he said. "what is the matter, don't you want to go?" "i suppose i must," sobbed milly. "ford told nurse the day i came that you hated children. i've always been thinking of it, but you have been so kind to me that i thought perhaps he had made a little mistake. miss kent didn't want me, and now you don't want me, and perhaps my aunt won't want me when i get there. i wish god wanted me, but i'm afraid he doesn't. nurse says she thinks he wants me to work for him when i grow up. i think--i think i'm rather like the little kitten yesterday, that nobody was sorry for when she died. you said there were plenty more kittens, didn't you?" "i don't think there are plenty of small millicents in this world," and sir edward's voice was husky. "now listen, little woman. i have been thinking over the matter, and have decided this afternoon to keep you with me. i find i do want you after all, and cannot afford to lose you. supposing we dry these tears, and talk about something else." and as the little arms were thrown round his neck, and a face full of smiles and tears like an april shower was lifted to his, the "confirmed old bachelor" took to his heart the little maiden whose very existence had so annoyed and distressed him only a few months before. "uncle edward," she said, a little time after, "do you know if that prodigal son you told me about last night has come back to god?" sir edward was silent for a minute, then very gravely and solemnly he said: "i think he has, little one. it has been a very happy christmas day to him, and you must pray now that he may not be ashamed to own his lord, who has so mercifully brought him back through the instrumentality of one of his lambs." when sarah went to school [illustration: it is not right for me to go (page 18)] when sarah went to school by elsie singmaster author of "when sarah saved the day" with illustrations [decoration] boston and new york houghton mifflin company _the riverside press cambridge_ copyright, 1910, by elsie singmaster all rights reserved including the right to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form _published october 1910_ printed in the u.s.a. to the memory of our grandmother sarah mattern singmaster "what did the other children do? and what were childhood, wanting you?" contents i. the dress parade 1 ii. "the normal" 21 iii. sarah loses her temper 44 iv. sarah explains 65 v. professor minturn's experiment 81 vi. the "christmas carol" 99 vii. sarah saves the day once more 121 viii. the result of professor minturn's experiment 139 ix. the state board 158 x. the chairman makes a speech 173 illustrations "it is not right for me to go" (page 18) _frontispiece_ on the threshold stood miss ellingwood 64 she seems to have fainted 146 he kept her beside him 186 from drawings by wilson c. dexter. when sarah went to school chapter i the dress parade across the angle of the post-and-rail fence at the lower corner of the wenners' yard, a board had been laid, and behind the board stood a short, slender, bright-eyed young girl, her hands busy with an assortment of small articles spread out before her. there were a few glass beads, a string of buttons, half a dozen small, worn toys, a basket of early apples, and a plate of crullers. when they were arranged to her satisfaction, she took an apple in one hand and a cruller in the other, and, climbing the fence, perched on the upper rail and began to eat. before she had taken more than two bites an extraordinary procession appeared round the corner of the house. ellen louisa, one of the wenner twins, dressed in a long gingham dress of her sister-in-law's, leaned affectionately upon the arm of the other twin, louisa ellen, who wore with ludicrous effect a coat and hat of their brother william's. clinging to louisa ellen's hand was a small fat boy. they solemnly approached the improvised store. "is any one at home in this store?" asked louisa ellen in a gruff voice. the proprietress slid down from the top of the fence. she spoke carefully, but she did not quite succeed in disguising her pennsylvania-german accent. "well, sir, what is it to-day?" "i want--" it was ellen louisa, who spoke in a simpering tone--"i want a penny's worth of what you can get the most of for a penny, missis. i want it for my little boy. apples will do. he has it sometimes in his stomach, and--" a loud crash interrupted ellen louisa's account of albert's delicate constitution. he had seized the propitious moment for the purloining of two crullers, and in order to establish his ownership, had taken a large bite out of each. it was the storekeeper's quick grab which brought the counter to the ground, and mingled all the wares in wild confusion on the grass. albert looked frightened. when, instead of scolding, sarah dropped to her knees and helped him gather up the toys, he stared at her, bewildered. "you'd catch it if i wasn't going to the normal to-morrow to be learned!" said sarah. "but to-day is a special day. what shall we play next?" the twins swiftly shed their superfluous garments, and became two thin little girls, who could scarcely be told apart. their plaid gingham aprons waved in the breeze as they danced about. "let us play 'uncle daniel,'" they cried together. even sixteen-year-old sarah hopped up and down at the brilliancy of the suggestion. uncle daniel swartz was their mother's brother, who lived on the next farm. after their mother and father had died, and their older brother had apparently disappeared into the frozen north, whither he had gone to seek his fortune, uncle daniel, who had long coveted the fine farm, had attempted to divide the little family and add the fertile acres to his own. it was sarah who had stubbornly opposed him, holding bravely out until william had come home. william had married pretty miss miflin, the district-school teacher, and, giving up his plans for further adventure, had settled down to become a truck farmer. already he was succeeding beyond his rosiest hopes. both he and his wife were anxious that sarah should go to school, and all the summer laura had been helping her to recall the small knowledge she had had before heavy care and responsibility had taken her from the district school. to-morrow she was to enter the sub-junior class of the normal school, which william and laura had attended. laura had corresponded with the principal, doctor ellis, and had engaged sarah's room. it had been a busy summer. sarah had kept up her geography after she had left school, but in other branches she had needed a good deal of tutoring. no one who saw her now, in her wild game with the twins, would have guessed that she had ever had any care or responsibility. she assumed first the character of uncle daniel; she told the twins that they must go to live with aunt mena, she tried to entice albert away. then she was uncle daniel's hired man, jacob kalb, who had translated his name to calf, because he was anxious to be thought english. in this rôle she was pursued round the barn by the twins, who brandished an old, disabled gun, which in sarah's hands had once terrified jacob kalb. once, in this delightful game, they passed close to the fence beyond which jacob himself was working. sarah balanced for a second on the upper rail. "jacob calf, you make me laugh!" she shrieked, and then jumped down backward. the twins held the gun aloft, screaming with delight. the game closed with a scene in the orphans' court, where uncle daniel demanded that he be made their guardian, and where william returned at exactly the proper and dramatic moment. "and now," announced sarah breathlessly, when it was all over, "i am going to say good-by to everything." a feeling of solemnity fell suddenly upon the twins and albert. who would be storekeeper on the morrow? who would be uncle daniel and jacob kalb and the judge of the orphans' court in swift succession? who would help them with their lessons? who would defend them if uncle daniel should ever come threatening again? who would draw bears and tigers and "nelephunts" and all manner of birds and beasts? "may we go fishing?" they would ask sister laura, and sister laura would answer, "yes, if sarah will go with you." "may we write with ink?"--"yes, if sarah will spread some newspapers on the table, and sit beside you with her book." would these treats be forbidden them? or would they be allowed to do as they chose? but even independence would be distasteful without sarah. each twin seized her by the hand. "it is a long time till christmas," mourned louisa ellen. "_ach_, stay by us!" wailed ellen louisa. "and grow up to be like jacob calf!" cried sarah derisively. "i guess not! i am going to be a teacher, and if you ever get in my school, then look out! you will then find out once if you don't study. i will then learn you latin and greek and algebray and more things than you ever heard of in the world, ellen louisa and louisa ellen. you would like to grow up like the fishes in the crick. good-by, crick!" sarah drew her hands away from the twins, and dabbled them in the cool, fresh water. "good-by, fishes! good-by, bridge! good-by, bushes! why, ellen louisa! louisa ellen!" sarah looked at them with an expression of comical surprise. louisa ellen and ellen louisa were crying. "stop it this minute!" she seized albert by the hand. albert had already opened his mouth, preparatory to joining his sisters in a wail. "albert and i will beat you to the barn." "one for the money, two for the show, three to make ready, and four to go!" louisa ellen and ellen louisa did not stop to dry their tears, but scampered over the ground like young colts, their skirts flying. when albert and sarah got to the door, the twins had vanished, and there ensued a game of hide and seek such as the old barn had never smiled upon. sarah climbed about like a monkey. she seemed to be in half a dozen places at once. the twins thought she was downstairs in one of the mangers, when suddenly her voice was heard from the top of the haymow. they played tag on the barn-floor, they sang, they danced, with sarah always in the lead. it was certain that the stately normal school would open its doors on the morrow to no such hoyden as this. they were in the midst of "barnum had a nelephunt, chumbo was his name, sir," when the barn-door opened, and a young woman appeared. she watched them for a moment silently. "well, young indians," she said. the oldest of the young indians clasped her hands in distress. "is it time to get supper already?" "not quite. and if four members of the family didn't insist upon having waffles, you shouldn't help at all. your clothes are all ready, and i want you to come and see them." the twins raced wildly toward the house, and sarah followed more slowly with her sister-in-law and albert. she looked shyly and gratefully at laura. she had not yet grown quite accustomed to having "teacher" a member of the family. she had so long looked up to her with awe and admiration that her constant presence in the house did not seem quite real. laura often laughed at her. "i should think, sarah, that after you had cleared up my outrageous bread-dough three times, and had taken my burnt pies from the oven, you would begin to feel fairly well acquainted with me." sarah flushed with embarrassment. it was true that laura was slow about learning to cook. but cooking was such an ordinary, every-day accomplishment! it was much more remarkable never to have had to cook. "but now you can make good bread and pies," she would insist. the whole summer had seemed like a dream. the house was no longer strange and dark and lonely as it had been after their father had died. sarah no longer crept fearfully about at night, fastening the shutters before dark, for fear that uncle daniel would try to get in. it had been a happy, happy summer. william came and went, whistling, teasing the twins, riding fat albert round on his shoulder. uncle daniel annoyed them no more. "teacher" bent with flushed face over the stove, laughing at her mistakes, and calling occasionally to sarah for help; and sarah herself sat by the window, a little table before her, on which were books and paper and pencils. the little table was gone from the window now, the lessons with laura were over, to-morrow night sarah would sleep away from home for the first time in her life. they had expected that the trolley company, which had given them a good price for the right of way through the farm, would have finished its line, and that sarah would have been able to go back and forth to school each week. but the tracks had just begun to creep out from the county-seat. the twins had run upstairs; their deep _ohs!_ and _achs!_ could be heard in the kitchen below. they shrieked for sarah, who was already on the steps. when she looked round the familiar room, she clasped her hands and then stood perfectly still. beside her bed was an open trunk, and spread out on the bed itself and on the twins' trundle-bed was her outfit for school. there were two school dresses, and a better dress and a best dress,--the last of red cashmere, with bands of silk. there were new shoes and a new coat and two hats and gloves and an umbrella and handkerchiefs and underwear, all marked with her name, and a gymnasium suit, and a scarlet kimono and a comfort and pencils and tablets and--sarah began suddenly to tremble--a little silver watch and chain and a fountain-pen. "the little watch was my first one, sarah," explained her sister-in-law. "it keeps good time. and the fountain-pen is from william, and the umbrella--" "and the umberella"--the twins and albert had seized upon it simultaneously--"the umberella is from us. william, he sold our spotty calf for us, and this is some of the money, and you can make it up and put it down, and it has a cover like a snake, and--look at it, once!" sarah took the umbrella in her hand. her school dresses had been tried on by laura, who had made them; she had known all about those. and william and laura had made a trip to town and had been very short and mysterious about the bundles they brought home. she had supposed they had brought a few things for her,--a new pair of shoes, perhaps, or a new shawl. but _these_ things! once, during her mother's lifetime, she had had a red woolen dress; she still cherished a patch which remained after it had been made over for one of the twins. except for that, her dresses had always been of gingham or calico. and two hats, when last year she had had only a sun-bonnet! and a fountain-pen, like laura's, and laura's own silver watch! a lump came into sarah's throat. perhaps laura felt a lump in her own. "come," she said brightly but a little huskily. "you must try these things on, and you must hurry if you are going to bake waffles for this hungry brood." with one hand she took the umbrella from sarah, with the other she unbuttoned her gingham dress. "children, shut down the trunk-lid and sit on it. now, sarah, the gymnasium suit first." sarah chuckled hysterically as she was helped into the flannel blouse and bloomers. "she looks like a bear," giggled louisa ellen. "like a pretty thin bear," said sister laura. "she will have to be fatter when she comes home. louisa ellen, run and get my work-basket. these elastics must be tightened. now, sarah, the school dresses, then the blue sailor suit and the blue hat. you are to wear those to-morrow." sarah stared down at her dress, still speechless with amazement and delight. "and now the red dress. your brother william chose this color, sarah, and your hat and coat match it." fat and silent albert opened his mouth to speak. "she looks like--" he began, but could think of nothing to which to compare her. "she don't look like nothing." "she looks like a--a fine lady," said louisa ellen. "_ach_, when can _we_ go to the normal?" laura had turned down the glass in the old-fashioned bureau. "now, sarah, take a good look, and then undress. these sleeves must be shortened a little. i can do that this evening. i'll pack the trunk while you get supper." sarah revolved obediently before the glass. but her eyes saw nothing. the lump in her throat seemed now to suffocate her; she struggled frantically to swallow it, but it only grew larger. the twins watched her in fright. presently louisa ellen slid down from the trunk, and went across the room and touched laura on the arm. "something is after sarah," she whispered in shocked surprise. never before had sarah behaved like this. laura laid down her work. "why, sarah, dear! what is the matter?" it was a moment before sarah could speak. she rubbed her eyes, then she looked down at the new red dress, and the new red coat, and then at the old gingham dress and apron on the floor, and at her hands, on which still lingered the marks of heavy toil. "i would rather stay at home," she faltered. "ellen louisa and louisa ellen can have my things, and--and when they are big, they can go in--in the normal. i--i would rather stay at home and do the work." laura sat down again in her chair by the window, and drew sarah to her knee. "why would you rather stay at home, sarah?" she asked gently. it was not strange that a reaction had come. there had been the struggle with uncle daniel, and then the long, hot months of summer, and now the immediate excitement of the afternoon. "tell me, sarah." "i am too dumb," wailed sarah. "nobody can't teach me nothing." "i thought i had taught you a good deal this summer." "but there won't be any teachers like you at the normal. i would rather stay at home. i am too old to go any more in the school. i am little but i am old." "like runty," cried louisa ellen. the twins had been listening in frightened and fascinated attention. runty was a pig which had never grown. "runty is little, but he is old." even sarah had to smile at this. "but you will have too much work to do," she said to laura. "it is not right for me to go." laura laughed. "cast no aspersions upon my ability to keep this house, young lady," she cried gayly. "and you will be no older than many of the girls and boys in your class. now take off your dress and go mix your batter, and in ten minutes i'll be there, and then william will come home, and then we'll have supper, and then you must go to bed early." when william came, there was no trace of sarah's tears. he teased her gayly, as william always did, and said, as he helped himself to a fifth waffle, that the first four samples were pretty good, and that now he was really beginning to eat. it was not until she was safely in bed that the lump came back into her throat. this going away to school seemed suddenly worse than the long struggle against uncle daniel. she was going to live among strangers,--she would hear no more dear, familiar pennsylvania-german, she would see only strange, critical faces. the normal students would probably laugh at her, as she laughed at jacob kalb. they might make rhymes about her, as she made rhymes about jacob. laura, who tiptoed into the room to put the red coat with its shortened sleeves into her trunk, heard her whisper. "what did you say, sarah?" she asked. sarah hid her face in her pillow in an agony of embarrassment. she could not possibly tell laura what she was saying to herself, and laura, thinking that she was talking in her sleep, tiptoed out again to complete her preparations for the next day's journey. before sarah went to sleep, she smothered an hysterical giggle. one possible rhyme which might occur to the normalites had come into her mind. it was that which she had been saying to herself. it was ominous, but she could not help laughing. it ran,- "sarah's dutch, she is not much." chapter ii "the normal" in the morning sarah found, fortunately, no time for regret or grief. she had said good-by to the twins and albert the night before, and though they had loudly insisted that they would be up in time to see her off, they did not wake and were not called. the three older members of the household had breakfast together, then the new trunk was lifted to the back of the spring-wagon, and sarah, in her new sailor suit and blue hat, climbed to her place between william and laura for the drive to the station. her heart beat so rapidly that she could not speak. she looked back at the broad, low-lying house, shadowed by a great hickory tree; at the friendly barn, which had been a playground for them all; and then at the winding, twisting stream, which made their land so fertile. was it possible that a few days ago she had wished to go away? up at uncle daniel's house, the family was already astir. jacob kalb crossed the barn-yard, milk-pail in hand, disdaining to look back, though he must have heard plainly the sound of the spring-wagon. "he will go in and peek out," laughed sarah. "jacob, he wouldn't miss nothing." "'jacob wouldn't miss anything' is what you mean, isn't it, sarah?" asked her sister-in-law. "_ach_, yes!" cried sarah penitently. "but what is coming?" she grew pale. down from the swartz house hurried aunt 'liza. "she can't stop me!" said sarah, gasping. william laughed. "no, indeed." aunt 'liza came to the side of the wagon. she had never approved of uncle daniel's methods. "here is something for sarah," she said. "i thought while she was going off i would make her a little cake, once, and a little apple _schnitz_. she liked always apple _schnitz_." sarah jumped down over the wheel of the spring-wagon. "_ach_, i thank myself." and she seized the stout lady in a fervent hug, which her aunt as fervently returned. "and now," said sarah happily, as she climbed back, "i am not cross over nobody, and nobody is cross over me. _ach_, i know i am talking dumb again! but after i get on the cars, i will say everything right." she could scarcely sit still. laura and william looked at each other and smiled. in all her life sarah had been on the train but once. that was six months ago, when, accompanied by the twins and "teacher," she had gone to the county-seat to protest against uncle daniel's being made their guardian. she was too much worried then to enjoy the roar of the great engine as it rushed upon them, the hurry with which they scrambled aboard, the wild thrill of delight as the train got under way. now she enjoyed each sensation to the full. there had never been such a wonderful train as this, whose seats were so luxuriously cushioned, which moved so swiftly, which was so filled with interesting persons. sarah waved her hand to william, she tried to call to him a final message to the twins, and then they were off. sarah drew a deep breath. "_ach!_" she wailed. "my trunk!" laura showed her the check. "your trunk is on the train, my dear." "_ach_, it is too wonderful!" cried sarah. "no, i won't say _ach_ any more. _ach_, but i am going to try!" she clapped her hand over her mouth and looked up comically. "_ach_--i can't express me without _ach_." "yes, you can," laura assured her. "see the girls opposite us. they're probably going to the normal school." sarah looked eagerly across the aisle. the girls were laughing and talking together as though they had not seen each other for a long time. they were tall and slender, and they were unlike any girls that sarah's admiring eyes had ever seen. one had blonde curly hair, the other was dark, with wide, lovely eyes. "do you think i will know those girls?" she whispered. "of course you will. those and many more." sarah clasped her hands happily. the stern and critical race with which she had peopled the normal school suddenly ceased to exist, and lovely creatures like these took its place. sarah's eyes brightened as she smoothed down her new blue dress. then she sighed. the bothersome consciousness of her own unworthiness overwhelmed her. "the normal will have a hard time to make me look like them," she said to herself. once, long ago, when her mother and father were still alive, and the twins scarcely more than babies, the wenners had taken a long holiday drive. one of the towns which they visited was that in which the normal school was situated. it was then that her father promised that if sarah studied, she should go there. she could see the school as plainly as though it were yesterday instead of eight weary years ago; she could hear her father's voice. her recollection of the low house and the barn and the creek which they had left that morning was not more vivid. before the train stopped, she saw the tall tower, which she remembered; she knew just how it overshadowed the other buildings. and there had been beautiful trees and tennis-courts and young people going back and forth. she scrambled down from the train, and clung close to laura, a little frightened by the noise and confusion about her, the loud greetings, the shouts of hackmen. "this way to the normal school. take my carriage, lady!" they picked their way round a great pile of trunks, and laura gave sarah's check to a baggage man. he touched his hat smilingly. "glad to see you back, miss." "does he know you?" asked sarah in awe. laura smiled. a pink glow had come into her cheeks. "no. he only recognizes me for an old student. we'll walk down to school. it isn't far, and we'll both enjoy it." a little farther down the street a grocer stood at the door of his shop, and to him laura said good-morning. "does _he_ know you?" asked sarah. "he remembers that i used to buy apples from him. that is the place to get the best apples in town. you see, coming back to school is like coming back home." "i never thought of that," said sarah slowly. she was to remember it clearly enough months afterward. "but--" they had turned a corner and come out before a wide green campus. "but this ain't--_ach_! isn't _my_ normal! it--it wasn't so big, and this--this isn't _my_ tower!" "no, the tower you saw is the little one over yonder. this is the new recitation building. this wasn't here then. see, over there on the main building is your tower. and this is the model school, and yonder is the infirmary, and away back there is the athletic field, and--ah, here we are!" and laura ran up the steps of the main building as though she were coming to school herself. the wide door stood open, there was a sound of cheerful talking from within. sarah heard a man's voice lifted suddenly above the rest. "why, mrs. wenner, how do you do? and this is your sister-in-law. we are glad to see you both." "thank you," answered laura. "sarah, this is dr. ellis. i think you said sarah was to have my old room." "yes," answered the principal. "eugene will take you up and give you the keys. here, eugene." in another minute they were in the elevator; then they went down a wide hall and turned a corner. "here we are. i wonder whether your room-mates are here." it was the bell-boy who answered as he flung the door open. "it looks so, miss." the two newcomers stood in the doorway and gasped. sarah was not entirely unacquainted with confusion. she knew what the kitchen at home looked like at the end of a morning's baking at which the twins and albert had been allowed to assist. but the twins and albert at their worst could accomplish nothing to equal this. a room in which two trunks are being unpacked is not expected to look very neat, but this confusion seemed the result of careful effort. there were dresses scattered here and there, not on the backs of chairs, or laid across the beds, but dropped to the floor and in heaps on the table. there were shoes, not set side by side, but widely scattered, a slipper and an overshoe on the bureau, a boot and a slipper on the radiator. a drawer had been taken from the bureau and laid on a bed; into it a trunk-tray had been emptied, helter skelter, as though its contents were waste paper. apparently the owner had been suddenly called away, for the tray still lay upside down across the drawer. to sarah's pennsylvania-german eyes, the scene was terrible. "you'll have to do some missionary work, sarah," laura said merrily. "this closet seems to be empty. hang your hat here, and take that bureau. we'll turn it this way so that the light is a little better. that is the way helen ellingwood used to have it when she and i roomed here together. the school wasn't so crowded and there were only two of us. now we'll take your pitcher down the hall and fill it, and by that time your trunk may come, and perhaps the owners of these clothes, also, and then we can clear up." they made their way round the trunks and boxes in the hall. a few doors away, a girl who was bending over her trunk stood up to let them pass. she turned her face away, but not before they had seen that it was streaked with black. her hands, too, were as black as ink, and she was crying. laura stopped at once. "why, what is the matter?" "i packed--a--bottle of ink--in my trunk, and it--it has broken. i--" laura looked into the depths of the trunk. "oh, my child! have you taken the bottle out?" "yes, but the ink is there yet." laura pushed back her cuffs. "can you get me a lot of newspapers and spread them thickly on your floor? there, in the sunshine. why, these things seem black to begin with. your gymnasium suit is black, isn't it? and here is a black skirt. see, it hasn't reached down to your books, and the trunk isn't stained." "but my white petticoats are--are all black." the girl's tears made white channels on her face. laura patted her on the shoulder. "then wash your face and hands, and run down to the book-room and get some ink eradicator, and i'll show you how to apply it. come, sarah." sarah's bright eyes shone. laura might not know how to make waffles, but she knew other, more wonderful things. sarah's heart swelled; she thought of albert and the twins in this safe care, and she slipped her hand into laura's without a word, and laura smiled down at her. as they came back through the hall, they heard a cheerful voice. "i'll unlock the door, eugene. yes, we're glad to be back. move that trunk in here, please. gertrude, you brought a trunk-cover, didn't you?" a dark-eyed girl appeared in the doorway. "yes, ethel." "they are our girls," whispered sarah. "yes, and they are evidently other people's girls." the hall was suddenly crowded with a welcoming throng. by this time, sarah's room-mates had appeared. one was tall and stout; she said that her name was ellen ritter. the other, who was equally stout but much shorter, said that she was mabel thorn. it was to her that the bureau-drawer belonged. she lifted the trunk-tray and slid the drawer into place. "our trunks must be out of here by night," she said. "they take them to the trunk-room. mine's ready." "and mine," said ellen ritter. she slammed down the lid, and pulled the trunk into the hall, and mabel pushed hers after it. two small, cleared spaces were left, otherwise there was no change in the appearance of the room. the girls did not return, even to close the door. sarah, staring after them, saw a smiling young woman poise for an instant on the sill, a hand on either jamb. "well, laura miflin!" she said. the speed with which sarah had flown to meet william upon his return from alaska was no greater than that with which laura crossed the room. "helen ellingwood!" she cried. "what are you doing here?" "i am going to teach elocution. why haven't you written to me? i didn't even know you were married. i live next door. and who is this, and how _are_ you?" and miss ellingwood pushed aside a pile of books and underclothes and collars and sat down on the edge of the bed. "these things don't belong 'to you nor none of your family,' i hope?" laura shook her head. "this is my sister-in-law, sarah wenner, question number one. i am very well and very happy, question number two. no, these do _not_ belong 'to me nor none of my family,' question number three. what would you do with them?" "spank the owners. perhaps they'll clear up, though. the first day is always demoralizing. now tell me everything you can think of." and miss ellingwood shifted to a more comfortable position, and while laura unpacked and sarah put away, the old friends chattered until dinner-time. the great dining-room, with all the confusion of the first day of school, was an awesome place to country-bred sarah. she was sure that she should never know one face from another. she should never learn to find her place. "you must sit at my table," said miss ellingwood. "there will be plenty of room there to-day, and this afternoon i shall have you assigned there permanently. this way"; and miss ellingwood put out a guiding hand. sarah began to take courage. the afternoon seemed as long as the morning had been short. directly after dinner, sarah went with laura to the train. she did not see the rushing engine so clearly now, nor watch the streaming white smoke; her eyes, fixed firmly upon a slender figure in a brown suit, were dimmed, and the strange lump of yesterday had come back into her throat. now, at last, the moment of separation had come. she walked slowly back to school, and about the grounds. laura would be getting home now, and william would have driven to the station to meet her. had the twins done just as they were told all day? had they remembered the deserted kittens in the barn? would laura be able to fix the fire for the night? sarah ate her supper with difficulty. miss ellingwood did not appear, the other students said little, sarah could not see her room-mates, or the ethel and gertrude who seemed a little less strange than the other students, or the girl who had packed the ink in her trunk. at the recollection of her woe-begone face, sarah smiled and felt better. "she is dumber yet than i," she said to herself. at seven o'clock there was a chapel service. the gongs rang in the halls, and there was a general opening of doors, and passing of footsteps. sarah followed her neighbors down the hall. at the entrance to the chapel stood miss ellingwood, a book in her hand. she was assigning seats which the students were to keep for the year. "wenner, row b, left, seat 32. down there to the left, sarah, near the girl in the white dress." sarah made her way down the sloping aisle. she had never been in any room larger than the little country church, and this chapel with its high ceiling, its fine chandeliers, seemed marvelous. in the chandeliers, strange to say, candles were burning instead of lamps. to her dismay, her seat was directly beneath one of them. she glanced upward uneasily. there was no contrivance to catch the drippings, and everybody must know that candles dripped. she looked down at her new blue dress; it would be impossible to get candle grease out of it. she meant to speak to the girl in the white dress; then she saw that mabel thorn was coming down the aisle. she took the next seat. "are you not afraid of the candles?" whispered sarah. "what candles?" "those, up there. they will drip on us." mabel tilted her head and looked up. then she grinned. "did you never hear of gas?" she asked. "stove gas," answered sarah. "our stove makes it when the wind is not right." "you never heard of illuminating gas?" sarah shook her head. "never." "where do you come from?" "near spring grove post-office." "well, the candles won't hurt you," laughed mabel. she got up and went across to the next row of seats to where the girl in white was sitting, and whispered to her, and they both turned and looked at sarah. then she came back to her place, as the chapel began to fill, and whispered to the girl on the other side, and she looked at sarah and laughed. sarah became slowly aware that she had said something very foolish. mabel did not wait for her when chapel was over, nor did she and ellen appear until bed-time. sarah had sat for a long time staring across the moonlit campus, and waiting to ask which bed she should take. there were a double and a single bed side by side. she supposed that the two friends would wish to sleep together, but she did not know. once she heard the doleful strains of "home, sweet home," played on a mouth organ, and some one called, "have mercy on the new students!" and there was a burst of laughter. when mabel and ellen finally arrived, they told her that she was to have the single bed. she supposed that now they would put the room in order. well, she would cover her head from the light, and be thankful. but they undressed and tumbled into bed, even before sarah was ready, without touching anything except the articles which were in their way. in a suspiciously short time, they were asleep. sarah lifted the clothes from the single bed and laid them on the chairs, then she attempted to blow out the light. mabel was wide awake in an instant. "turn it off there at the wall, you goose!" she said; and was at once apparently asleep. sarah made her way warily toward her bed. having said her prayers, she laid back the covers and jumped in. instantly there was a terrific crash, and she went down with spring and mattress to the floor. she was for the first second too terrified to breathe, then she picked herself up and found that she was not hurt. there was a faint light coming in through the transom, and she could see that the slats which supported the springs had become misplaced. with a little help, she could readjust them. "_ach_, would you please help me a little?" she begged. there was no response from the double bed. instead there came a heavy knock at the door. "who is out?" asked sarah faintly. if the principal himself had replied, she would not have been surprised. a stern "let me in!" answered her. she drew her dress on over her nightgown and went to the door. a strange figure stood without,--a tall woman in a long, flowered dressing-gown. "what was that noise?" sarah pointed to the bed. "i--i didn't know it would go--go down." "where are your room-mates?" mabel and ellen evidently thought it was time to manifest signs of life. "here, miss jones." "can you explain this?" "oh, no, we were asleep. weren't we, sarah?" "it just went down," stammered sarah. "i--i guess i jumped too hard on it." "what is your name?" it was the first time the wenner name had ever been mentioned with hesitation and shame. "sarah wenner." the tall figure was gone, its silent departure worse than threats, and sarah closed the door. mabel turned over lazily. "get up and help her fix the bed, ellen, i saved her from blowing out the light." ellen rose, grumbling. miss jones lived beneath them and was the strictest teacher in the school, she said. sarah would be haled to the office to-morrow. she helped to put the slats in place, and told sarah not to make any more noise. then, long after exhausted and terrified sarah had fallen asleep, she giggled with mabel until the night-watchman rapped at the door. that, mercifully, sarah did not hear. chapter iii sarah loses her temper when sarah opened her eyes, early the next morning, it was scarcely more than light. she was accustomed to spring out of bed before she was fully awake; there had been very little time in her life for the last, delicious nap of early morning. there was always the stock to be fed, the cows to be milked, and the milk to be taken to the creamery, and afterwards the twins to be roused and fed and sent to school. since laura's advent, life had been vastly easier, but the feeling of responsibility had not altogether vanished from sarah's mind. there was something about the happenings of the night before that sent her hurrying out of bed as she hurried when the fear of uncle daniel hung over her, when she used to get up before daybreak to assure herself that the twins and albert and the farm property were all safely in place. she could not at first make out where she was; then the prodigious chaos of the room recalled yesterday's experiences. and here was her own bed, pushed out a little from the wall, its covers all awry. she remembered now distinctly what had happened last night. ellen and mabel slept peacefully in their double bed; and as she remembered her sudden downfall and their lack of sympathy, her face flushed. snatches of their whispered talk, heard in drowsiness, came back to her, and she began slowly to guess that it was neither the carelessness of the school bedmakers nor her own light weight which had sent the spring and mattress tumbling to the floor. she felt a pang of fright as she remembered the stern teacher in the flowered gown. but surely, they would not punish her for an accident! presently a faint smile lifted the corners of her mouth. there was no doubt that it had been funny. but the girls might have waited until she was a little more at home. when she was dressed she sat down by the window. there was not a soul to be seen on the quiet campus, and not a sound to be heard. it was almost six o'clock, and she began to be hungry. she had forgotten to ask the breakfast hour. after a while there were faint noises, the opening of a distant door, the sound of sweeping down on the walks, and then the ringing of a great hand-bell. sarah heard it first in a far corner of the building, then it drew nearer and nearer, and she heard the swift steps of eugene, who carried it. as it went past the door, she put her hands over her ears. she smiled again, thinking that a bell like that might wake even albert and the twins. she began to be a little alarmed when she saw that neither ellen nor mabel stirred. she thought that mabel's eyes opened, but they closed again at once. had the girls grown suddenly deaf, or were they ill? sarah tiptoed toward the bed and stared at them. both were breathing regularly. but it was time to get up, and they would not wish to be late for breakfast. sarah laid her hand on ellen's shoulder. "stand up. it belled. _ach!_" no, thank fortune, they had not heard. sarah took a deep breath and amended her speech. "the bell rang," she called. "it is time to get up." still ellen did not respond, and she went to the other side of the bed and tried to rouse mabel. "it is time to get up!" a sleepy and cross "what?" answered her. "the bell rang. it is time to get up." mabel turned over on her other side. "let me be." once more sarah sat down by the window. why did these girls not wish to get up? didn't they wish any breakfast? didn't one have to get up? perhaps they were like the twins, who were cross at first but grateful afterwards. she touched ellen once more. "it is time to get up." ellen sat up in bed. "if you don't be quiet and stop bothering me i'll settle you. you needn't tell me when it's time to get up. i've been in this school for a year." with that she lay down again. once more sarah sat down by the window. the great building was astir now. she heard doors open and shut, she heard girl call to girl, she heard miss ellingwood moving round in her bedroom, and still her room-mates slept. then an electric bell rang, and motion and sound increased. sarah started toward the door. she would inquire whether that was the signal for breakfast, and she would go down. but a sharp voice stopped her. ellen and mabel had sprung out of bed as though tossed by springs. "sarah," commanded mabel, "run down the hall and fill this pitcher." a look of distress came into sarah's black eyes. "i am afraid i will be late." "nonsense! hurry." sarah flew down the hall. she met a score of girls going toward the elevator, and they looked at her smilingly. "you'd better hurry, youngster." "_ach_, i am!" answered sarah. to her amazement ellen and mabel were almost dressed when she returned. she would have set the pitcher down inside the door and then run, but mabel called again. "wait a minute. you're too late now to get in without permission, and you don't know where to go for that. see whether you can find a blue belt in that pile." sarah's tears dropped upon the pile of collars and ties and belts. "i would rather not go than be late," she said. the girls laughed. mabel took the belt from her hand and hung it over her arm, meaning to buckle it as she ran. "all right, you little goose," she said; and then the door closed behind them with a slam. sarah was desperately frightened. perhaps they called a roll and the absentees were punished. there was no one in sight in the hall from whom she could ask advice, and she began wearily to make her bed. "perhaps i will have to pack my trunk, too," she said to herself. "but if i do not know what to do and nobody will tell me, how shall i find out?" she felt a thrill of both terror and relief when she heard a footstep in the hall. it came directly to the door, there was a rap, then the door was pushed open. "why, sarah, don't you want any breakfast?" sarah made a brave effort to steady her voice. "yes, ma'am." "then why don't you come down?" "i--i was too late," stammered sarah. "well, come now, and to-morrow morning you will begin a little earlier." miss ellingwood held out a kindly hand. "won't you?" sarah stammered another "yes, ma'am." she could not say that she had been up since five o'clock, because that would involve explanation, and she did not wish to be a tale-bearer. she caught ellen ritter's eye as they went down between the long lines of tables, and ellen grinned and nudged mabel. but sarah did not care. some one was interested in her. miss ellingwood had left her breakfast and had come all the way upstairs to find her. she ate her breakfast cheerfully, answering shyly the remarks of her companions. "now, when the next bell rings, you must go to the chapel," said miss ellingwood. "take a tablet and pencil with you, and then you can write down your classes for the day. and if you get into any difficulty, come to me. the bell will ring at eight o'clock, and you know where the chapel is." at half-past seven sarah took her tablet and two neatly sharpened lead pencils, and stole out of her room. nobody should prevent her from being on time now. she went down quietly and opened the chapel door. then she realized that she had forgotten the number of her seat. if she had such difficulty with little things, what would she do when lessons began? suddenly she remembered with a throb of relief the chandelier whose dripping she had feared. she sat down in a chair which was, as nearly as she could guess, the one she had occupied the night before, and bent her head back to look up. yes, it was from this spot that she had seen the dangerous candles. she sighed thankfully, and proceeded to write her name on her note-books, and then to read the school catalogue, which gave a list of her lessons. there would be physiology, arithmetic, spelling, and political geography, to begin with. in each of these she would have three recitations a week, and she must pass an examination in them before the state board at the end of the year in order to enter the junior class. besides, she would have less frequent lessons in latin, history, and grammar. in these branches she would not have to be examined, except by her teachers, until the end of her junior year. each week she would also have an hour's exercise in drawing and in vocal music. and every other day she would have to spend three quarters of an hour in the gymnasium. sarah shook her head solemnly. it seemed like a large contract for so small a girl. all the morning she went to classes, gaining in each room a new book, a new note on her tablet, and a redder flush on her cheeks. by noon the pile of books had grown almost to her chin. she carried them proudly across the campus and up to her room. it was going to be hard, but not as hard as she had feared. she had naturally a quick mind, far quicker than she suspected. there were two branches in which she had a valuable advantage. political geography would be only a review. her father had been a dreamer, loving accounts of strange cities and far countries, and in the long evenings after he had become ill, he and sarah had pored over the atlas, following william on his long journey, and trying to picture the strange countries on the other side of the world. there were few countries which sarah could not bound, few rivers and cities which she could not locate. nor would spelling be hard. the wenners were naturally good spellers; even little albert could spell simple words like "cat" and "dog." but there were physiology and arithmetic and history. the history had already given her a bad fright. professor minturn, opening the course with a lecture on the interest and value of historical study, had suddenly looked about the class to find some one to read a paragraph from the text-book illustrating what he was saying. sarah's face, bent eagerly forward, attracted him, and he asked her her name and told her to read. the color flamed into her cheeks, and with trembling hands she found her place in the book, and then rose. instead of standing still, she walked to the front of the room, and, in a fashion learned before laura had come to teach the spring grove school, "toed" carefully a crack in the floor, lifted her book to a level with her chin, and began. "page three, chapter one, paragraph four. 'the study of history.'" wild laughter interrupted her, at which professor minturn frowned and sternly commanded silence. he was a nervous, easily irritated man, who never felt that his students worked hard enough. "go on, miss wenner." sarah read through the paragraph with a voice which she strenuously endeavored to make steady. it seemed to her that she had never seen so many _th_'s and _v_'s, which she was just learning to pronounce. but she got safely to the end, and then fled to her seat. "i have never heard a paragraph read more intelligently," commented professor minturn grimly, thereby adding to her confusion. of all her lessons, latin promised to be the most terrible. "i will not talk to the twins again about learning them latin," she said to herself, with a sigh. "but the teacher, he seems like a kind man. perhaps he will help me sometimes a little." in her room that afternoon, she handled the books as though they were loved dolls. sarah had never really owned a book. the school-books from which she had studied had belonged to william, and now were used by the twins. if anything remained of them after the twins were through with them, they would go to albert. but these were hers, they were new, she might write her own name in them, she might keep them all her life. the confusion in her room worried her, but she turned her back upon it, and set resolutely to work. by the time that ellen and mabel came in to prepare for gymnasium she had learned her history lesson and discovered that she need not study her spelling. the period of gymnasium proved to be another surprise. to a girl who climbed to the upper rung of the barn ladder and the top of a tall hickory tree, and who could churn butter and drive a fractious horse, the simple exercises with wands and dumb-bells were child's play. she wished to get back to her work, she wished to touch again the clean, white books. ellen and mabel laughed at her unmercifully. they had been in the normal school for a year, and had learned and invented many ways of shirking. after supper they announced that they were going to straighten up the room, and for five minutes, during which they had scarcely made a beginning, they worked diligently. then ellen threw herself down on the bed, and declared that she was tired. for a few minutes there was a welcome silence, then ellen began to giggle and got up and left the room. by the time she returned, mabel had taken her place on the bed. "sarah," ellen began pleasantly; and sarah, marking the place in her book, looked up despairingly. "what is it?" "i met the bell-boy in the hall, and he said that your brother is here." ellen was frightened by the sudden terror on sarah's face. "my brother!" "yes. oh, nothing is wrong. i think he is just here in town and wishes to see you. and there are people in the reception room, so eugene will bring him up here in a few minutes. mabel and i will go out." mabel got up quickly from the bed. "yes, of course." sarah rose to her feet. "_ach_, you needn't go! and"--she looked round the disorderly room--"couldn't we fix here a little up once?" ellen and mabel shouted with laughter. "there isn't time to fix here a little up once." when the door was closed, sarah looked about once more. she was frightened by william's coming, she was distressed that he should see such a room. ellen and mabel had not even made their beds. those, at least, she would spread up. if he would only delay for a few minutes, she might make the room look presentable. she drew the curtain across the alcove where the washstands stood, and hung her room-mates' dresses in the closets. for an instant she was tempted to toss them in on the floor and shut the door on them. but sarah had had too few nice dresses in her life to treat them roughly. the shoes were swept into the closets, the bureau drawers were filled and closed; then, as she heard a step in the hall, she smoothed her hair and went to the door. "wil--" she began, and then gasped. it was a man who stood without, but it was not william. no; it was not even a man. there was a fluffy tie above the collar of his rain-coat, his derby hat was pinned on with a hat-pin, the hand which he held out was decked with rings. "what do you mean?" demanded sarah, trembling. "aren't you glad to see me?" giggled ellen. "where is my brother william?" "i am your brother william. i--why, look at this room! she has put it all in order! mabel!" there was a burst of wild laughter, then the two girls ran down the hall to return the clothes to the girl to whose brother they belonged. "i never knew such a joke." sarah went inside and shut the door. then she locked it and stood with clenched hands. it was cruel to play such a trick. they had frightened her, and now she was desperately disappointed. and she had lost at least a half-hour, and it was only two hours until the lights were put out. she would not let the girls come in again; they would not study, they might visit their friends. with shaking hands she opened her books. but she could not study. she heard another burst of laughter. probably they were telling the other girls about it, and they were laughing at her. presently her heart ceased to beat so rapidly and she settled down to work once more. perhaps they would not come back. she knew that it was against the rules to go from room to room during study-hours, but they did not keep rules. "'man is the only living creature that can stand or walk erect,'" she began aloud. "'man is the only living creature that can stand or walk erect. the human skeleton--'" the knob was softly turned; then there was a knock at the door. sarah did not answer. "let us in, sarah." still sarah made no response. "open the door, sarah." "no, i am not going to open the door," cried sarah shrilly. "you can just stay out." a long silence succeeded. she settled again to her work. "'man is the only living creature that can stand or walk erect. the human skeleton--'" when there was another knock at the door, sarah started up furiously. "you can knock all night and i won't let you in," she shrieked. "you are all the time after me, you--" again the knob was turned. she did not realize that the voice which bade her unlock the door was lower and softer than those to which she had been listening. she was too angry to distinguish one voice from another. the girl who had withstood the persecutions of an uncle daniel would not endure forever the teasing of two girls of her own age. she seized her pitcher from the stand. not without much spilling of water on floor and bed, she climbed to the footboard. "will you go 'way, then!" "sarah, open the door." "i won't." and sarah turned the pitcher upside down, its mouth protruding from the transom. there was a splash, a quick exclamation, and then a stern command. "open this door, or i shall send for the principal." sarah moved but slowly, not from choice now, but from fright. a terrible, unbelievable suspicion entered her mind. it seemed that her hand would never be able to turn the key in the door, that strong little hand, which lifted so easily the great, brimming pitcher. if it had been the teacher who lived downstairs, the cross teacher with the flowered dressing-gown, she could have endured it. if it had been the principal himself, it would not have been so terrible. but standing on the threshold, wiping the water from her eyes, and with dripping hair and soaking shirt-waist, stood miss ellingwood. [illustration: on the threshold stood miss ellingwood] behind her, ellen ritter and mabel thorn twisted their faces to keep from exploding in shocked and delighted laughter, and down the hall, doors were opening and excited voices asked what was the matter. chapter iv sarah explains many years afterward sarah said that nothing in her life had ever frightened her like the sight of miss ellingwood standing outside her door, with the water dripping from her hair and dress. miss ellingwood herself came to laugh heartily at it, but no amount of teasing could ever induce sarah even to smile. it seemed an hour until miss ellingwood spoke, and in that time sarah saw clearly not only the laughing, triumphant faces of her room-mates immediately before her, but of all the family at home: william and laura, who were sending her to school at a great sacrifice, the twins and albert, who had faith in her, and to whom she should have been an example. she seemed to hear herself trying to explain to them. "you see, it was this way," she would begin. but she never got any further. there was no explanation, no excuse to make. "this," they would say, "this is what you do with your education!" in reality, it was only a moment until miss ellingwood spoke. her eyes flashed; it seemed to sarah that they would burn through her. "come to my room in half an hour. i don't want to hear anything from you now." then she turned to the girls laughing behind her, and her eyes flashed still more brightly. perhaps it was for their illumination that the flash existed. "you have been here for a year, and you know the rules of the school. dr. ellis will hold you responsible for any misconduct in this room, rather than a newcomer." ellen and mabel looked at each other guiltily as miss ellingwood's door closed behind her. then they went to their own room. sarah was not to be seen, and their uneasiness turned to fright. there was no exit save through the window, and they were on the third floor. it could not be possible that she was as badly frightened as that! "sarah!" cried mabel sharply. sarah appeared from the closet. she had taken off her school dress, and carried the blue one across her arm. "what are you going to do?" asked ellen. sarah did not answer. if she tried to speak, she should scream. she would at least put on her second-best dress and brush her hair before she went to miss ellingwood's room. she remembered in agony that she had never worn her red dress; probably she would never have an opportunity now, at least at the normal school. she looked at her little silver watch with eyes which could scarcely find the hands. mabel and ellen avoided each other's glance, and sat down by the table. "what is the history lesson for to-morrow, sarah?" asked ellen in a tone which was meant to be conciliatory. sarah silently pushed forward her note-book. she was dressed now and staring at her physiology. "man is the only living creature that can stand or walk erect." in what long-past stage of her life had she read that? at twenty-eight minutes past eight, she closed her book and went into the hall, where, watch in hand, she lingered outside miss ellingwood's door until the hand pointed to the half-hour. then, fearfully, she rapped. a low "come in" answered. it took all her strength to turn the knob. she saw nothing of the beautiful room with its books, its fireplace, its wide and crowded desk, its low tea-table; she saw only miss ellingwood entering from her bedroom beyond, her curls wet and shining, clad in a fresh, stiffly starched white shirt-waist and a dry skirt. she went across to the big chair before her desk, and turning her head away, stooped to straighten out some papers. she saw the blue dress, and the smooth hair. both judge and defendant, she said to herself, were dressed for the occasion. "now, sarah," she began, "suppose you tell me how it is that an inoffensive non-combatant, rapping at your door, is received with a shower of water. your room-mates asked me to get you to let them in. they said that you had locked them out, and they couldn't study. is this true?" "yes, ma'am," faltered sarah. "why did you do it?" "because--they--_ach_!" sarah burst into a flood of tears. she did not wish to tell on them, she could not bear to recount the foolish trick which had been played on her. it seemed so ridiculous now to have been taken in. it was so absurd,--her anxiety at hearing that william had come, her mystification at the foolish figure which met her at the door, her rage, when she realized what they had done. that was worst of all. "_ach_, if you will only let me make it up to you," she cried. "i will never do such a thing again. i will dry your hair if they are wet yet, and i could iron your shirt-waist, and if it is spoiled, i could try to earn some money to buy you a new one. or william would send me the money right away. i could give you my umbrella to make up, or my f-fountain-pen. they are new--they--" "mercy, child!" miss ellingwood put her arm round sarah, who in her anguish had moved close to her side. "don't cry about my clothes, _please_. they are almost dry already, and water couldn't hurt them. i'll forgive you willingly, entirely, sarah. but you must never do anything of the kind again. you see the evening study-hour is meant for work. you have long hours in the afternoon and earlier in the evening to play, and all day saturday, and you need every minute in study-hour. by the time you get settled to work again, you will have lost a whole hour." "i know it, i know it!" wailed sarah. "that is the trouble. they will not let me study. when--when they are out i can study, but not when they are with. i will have to go home. i am anyhow too dumb for anybody to learn me anything." miss ellingwood hid her face against sarah's shoulder. "say that again, dear." "_ach_, i mean i am too--too stupid to be taught." "that is better. now--" miss ellingwood meditated for an instant. she did not approve of putting three persons into a room; even she and laura had been a little crowded. it would be very difficult for this child to get into studious habits if she were constantly in the room with ellen and mabel. they were very evidently not diligent. "suppose you bring your books over here this evening, sarah. perhaps you can study here." sarah was not gone for two minutes. ellen and mabel had disappeared, and she gathered her books together, made another dab at her hair with her stiff brush, and was back. miss ellingwood had pulled a chair up to the side of her own desk. "there, sarah, is a chair and a foot-stool. now, if i can help you, ask me." and she bent her head over her own work. peace descended upon sarah's heart. once, she sighed, and miss ellingwood looked up. "are you tired?" "_ach_, no! i am just thinking. it is so nice and still here. i could learn the whole book through." once she ventured to ask a question. "please, ma'am, it gives a word here. i cannot say it right, s-y-n, swine, t-a-x, tax, swinetax. is that the way to say it?" "no. s-y-n, sin--syntax. it is not english to say, 'it gives a word here,' sarah. try again." "here is a word," said sarah painstakingly. "_ach_,--no, i don't mean _ach_! but will you tell me sometimes when i am wrong?" "yes, indeed." sarah gazed at miss ellingwood with deep admiration and gratitude, and set again to work. she had only the simple latin rules to commit to memory, and then all the lessons assigned her would be learned, even though it was not until the day after to-morrow that she recited them. but the page of rules was the most difficult task she had attempted. the words seemed to dance before her eyes, the lines were crooked, the letters blurred. she propped her head on her hand, and rubbed her eyes a countless number of times. miss ellingwood was too much engrossed by her task to see. each year under the direction of the teacher of elocution, the junior class gave a play. it was given usually the week before christmas, and miss ellingwood had selected an arrangement of dickens's "christmas carol," whose spirit was so appropriate to the season. she was going over it now, so that the parts should be fresh in her mind before she began to get acquainted with the juniors in her classes, and she smiled at old scrooge and sighed over tiny tim. she had quite forgotten the student at her side. then, suddenly, there was a dull little bump, as her guest slid from her chair to the floor, asleep. strange to say, the fall did not rouse her. miss ellingwood thought that she must be sleepy indeed. "come, sarah," she said. "you must get up and go to bed." with miss ellingwood's help, sarah got up slowly, and sat down on her chair, and was immediately asleep once more. miss ellingwood was a little frightened. the child was evidently exhausted, which was not strange after her passion of tears. miss ellingwood glanced at her again, then at the couch which had been made up for a guest who had not arrived. in a moment she went down the hall and rapped at the door of sarah's room. no one was within. smothered laughter a little farther down the hall implied the presence of ellen and mabel. miss ellingwood took a few steps in that direction, then returned. the warning bell would ring in a moment; after that, for fifteen minutes, the students were allowed to visit one another. this was really the first day of school, and rules were not so strictly kept. and miss ellingwood hated to scold. she pushed open sarah's door and went in, to look for her school dress and the things she would need for the night. the smothered laughter became open shrieks as the warning bell rang. "she's a perfect little spitfire," ellen ritter was saying. "i wish you could have seen her face when she saw me all dressed up. it was white and purple by turns, she was so angry." ethel davis and gertrude manley, going arm-in-arm down the hall, had stopped at the door to hear, and the group of sub-juniors opened to let them in. blonde ethel and dark-eyed gertrude were juniors, the next year they would be middlers, and after that seniors, and they sometimes allowed the dignity of their position to awe the sub-juniors. "i think it was a pretty mean trick to play on such a youngster," said ethel hotly. "now, if you had played it on mabel, or mabel on you, it might have had some point." "oh, she can take care of herself," laughed ellen. "you needn't worry about her! then she locked the door, and wouldn't let us in, and mabel and i were very anxious to study, and--" "doubtless," laughed gertrude. "well, we were, and we knocked and asked politely to be let in, and not a word would she say. so we went over to the new hall teacher and told her that we were afraid our little room-mate was ill. so she came over and rapped, and there was no answer but a wild yell. and then--" ellen rolled over on the bed, helpless with laughter, and mabel took up the tale. "then out of the transom came a pitcherful of water,--bang!" "not on miss ellingwood!" said ethel. "yes, right on miss ellingwood." mabel's cheeks were flushed with pleasure. ethel and gertrude never paid much attention to her, and it was delightful to have them listen so closely. "what did she do?" "told the youngster to come over in half an hour, and the youngster put on her sunday dress and went over." "and what then?" asked a breathless sub-junior. "did miss ellingwood nearly murder her? that's what i should have done." "no. i guess sarah told her the whole tale, because in a few minutes she came back and got her books, and she's been over there all evening. there'll be no more fun on this hall with a teacher's pet spying on us. i suppose miss ellingwood will come in after the retiring bell, and read us a lecture." but miss ellingwood did not appear except to say that sarah would spend the night with her, and that she wished everything to be very quiet. mabel and ellen looked at each other after she went out. "what did i say?" said mabel. "she'll tell everything we do." "we'll settle her," answered ellen cheerfully. "oh, dear, to-morrow the grind begins!" sarah did not see the sun rise the next morning, nor hear the first sounds of life in the great building. she did not even stir at the thunderous rising-bell. when she finally woke, she saw miss ellingwood standing by her bed. "it's time to get up, sarah." sarah rubbed her eyes. "the rising-bell has rung, dear, and you'll just have time to jump into my bathtub and then get dressed quickly. your things are all here." sarah looked confusedly about her, while she struggled out of bed. "did i stay here?" "yes." "all night?" "yes." "did i oversleep myself?" "no, you slept till just the proper time. now, run along." it was a pleasure to see the bright eyes and glowing cheeks with which sarah presently appeared. she had never seen a bathroom like miss ellingwood's, she had never smelled such soap or seen so many mysterious brushes and sponges. she had been a little frightened by the depth of the cool water in the tub which miss ellingwood had filled for her. she did not like to say that she had never been in a bathtub before, because miss ellingwood seemed to expect her to know all about bathtubs. miss ellingwood had never lived on a farm. never before had sarah dressed in such a physical and mental glow. she tied the ribbon on her hair just as the breakfast-bell began to ring. "come here, and i'll button your dress for you. i brought your school dress over. you poor little chicken, did you think that you would make a better impression on the ogress if you put on a better dress? if the girls bother you again, you must bring your books over here. now, come along." sarah drew a deep breath of delight. she had never had such a good time. she looked once more about the pretty room before the door closed. would she see it again? and then sarah's heart was guilty of a very wicked wish. "_ach_, i wish," she said to herself, as they went downstairs to breakfast, "i wish those girls would cut always up so that i could not study!" chapter v professor minturn's experiment it needed no "cutting-up" of sarah's room-mates to send her again to miss ellingwood's room. she had just settled fearfully to study the next evening, when there was a rap at the door, and miss ellingwood appeared. she was amused at herself because her room had seemed strangely lonely without the little figure bending over the table at her side. "don't you want to bring your books over to my room?" she asked; and sarah responded with delighted alacrity. when ellen and mabel came in and found that she had gone, they were not at all pleased. they knew that sarah had finished her geography lesson and they had hoped to have some help. when they discovered the neatly drawn maps in sarah's drawer in the table, they decided that they would do as well. "we'll get even with her for tattling," laughed mabel, as she prepared to copy them with tissue paper and black impression paper. as the days passed, it seemed to sarah that she was living in a new world. when she was not in class or in the gymnasium, she was in miss ellingwood's room, or walking with miss ellingwood. miss ellingwood helped her over the hard places in her work, she laughed at her mistakes in english, and corrected them, she let sarah help to serve the tea when the boys and girls came in in the afternoons. the juniors came oftenest; they were in miss ellingwood's class, and as the time for the giving of the "christmas carol" approached, they were there constantly. sarah had read the story; she knew how old scrooge's sordid heart, devoted to money-getting, was filled with the christmas spirit by the appearance of his dead partner, jacob marley, and by the three ghosts of christmas present, christmas past, and christmas future. ethel davis and gertrude manley were to be mrs. cratchit and fred's wife,--they were the leading women's parts. to sarah's thinking, there were no rôles so interesting as those of the ghosts, which were taken by boys. their costumes were so wonderful, they moved about so mysteriously, they were able to introduce so many original devices. perhaps next year, if she were promoted to the junior class, and if there were a ghost in the play, miss ellingwood might give the part to her, and then she would be completely happy. during the practicing, she took her books into miss ellingwood's bedroom, and sitting there at her work, she could hear the juniors laughing merrily. when it was time for the tableaux, in which scrooge was to see his past and future, and all the harm he had done in the present, they opened the door into the bedroom, so that they might have a double stage. it was then that edward ellis, dr. ellis's son, who was a junior and represented jacob marley, came and stood near sarah's table and recited his sepulchral part. "'expect the second spirit on the next night at the same hour!'" he would say, while his chains clanked and rattled, and the blood of one hearer, at least, congealed in her veins. "'the third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us.'" and then, "the apparition walked backward, and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open." sarah had heard miss ellingwood read the directions, and edward obeyed them with many ghostly variations. once sarah had been called upon to lift the window by jerks and starts. in the midst of all the delightful excitement of school life, sarah often scolded herself for not feeling perfectly happy and contented. she was learning more than she ever dreamed of learning, she had the constant association of miss ellingwood, she practically lived in miss ellingwood's luxurious rooms. but she had no life outside them, and it was that which troubled her. she realized that there was a great deal of fun in the school in which she had no share. there were parades which appeared simultaneously with the stroke of ten, beginning at the upper corner of the woman's side of the great building, and winding in and out the halls, and down the stairways, like a long snake, to the lower corner and back again. there were feasts by day and night; there was dancing in the gymnasium after the classes were over. sarah was not invited to the feasts, and she looked on silently at the dancing. it was true that she did not know how to dance, but if stout mabel thorn could learn, she could also, she was sure. she tried the steps sometimes when she was alone in miss ellingwood's room. mabel and ellen ignored her completely. they did not always speak to her when she came into the room. once they allowed her to search for her maps, which ellen had been tracing, and which she had hastily covered with her papers. gradually, the whole school became aware that her room-mates avoided her, and no one was clear-sighted enough to see that it was a compliment to sarah. when ellen and mabel were called to the office and reproved for making unnecessary noise, they complained loudly that sarah had reported them, forgetting the many times that miss jones had come upstairs in the middle of the night to remonstrate with them. the other students, even ethel davis and gertrude manley, who thought they were just, began to look a little askance at sarah. no fault is more hated by students than tale-bearing, and no suspicion flies more quickly. ellen's and mabel's rudeness did not trouble sarah. that did not seem worth worrying about. it was her failure to make friends with ethel and gertrude, and the other juniors whom she so admired, that troubled her. once she had called ethel by her first name, and ethel had responded with a quick, "what did you say, miss wenner?" she had grown accustomed to having her teachers call her miss wenner. but these boys and girls,--that was different. "at home," she said sorrowfully to herself, "i was always common" (friendly); "and here i am just the same. but these people do not like it, they are too high up." it could not be because she was a newcomer, because they were gracious to other newcomers. they called even the careless girl who spilled her ink, mary. they had teas in their room to which only newcomers were invited, but sarah was not among them. sarah was convinced that it was some grave fault in herself which made them avoid her. fortunately her work occupied most of her thoughts, and when that was over there were always her letters home to be written. she gave vivid, illustrated accounts of those same feasts and parades at which she looked longingly, and the home people never guessed that it was a lonely outsider who described them, sometimes in prose, sometimes in much-admired jingle. she even described ellen dressed to represent william, as though it were all a great joke, which she had enjoyed immensely. she told about edward ellis's wonderful "bobs," a collie, who could spring up to the low branches of the apple trees in the fields at the back of the campus, and who could perform many wonderful tricks. she drew pictures of him, and of professor minturn, who strode about the room while he lectured, and of the geography teacher, who always folded his hands so precisely, and sat so still. "sarah's so dumb, it makes him numb," she wrote brilliantly. laura and the twins wrote to her regularly, the twins with wild, childish scrawls, which hinted surprises at christmas, and laura with funny accounts of her own difficulties. "you should have seen my waffles last evening," she would say. "they were black on one side and a delicate buff on the other." "laura made waffles," the twins would write. "william ate seven and we four." occasionally there would come a note in william's clear hand. "enclosed find a little spending-money. we hear that you are doing well. be a good girl." it would have been a very ungrateful girl who could have been _very_ unhappy after that. there were christmas surprises in her cupboard, also. william's gifts of money had been well spent. on the shelf above the secretary at home, there had stood the battered school-books and a worn copy of "thaddeus of warsaw." poor thaddeus was to be overshadowed henceforth by several well-bound companions. there was "westward ho" for william, and "lorna doone" for laura, and "alice in wonderland" for the twins, and a fairy-book for albert. rarely does the approach of christmas find a person so entirely satisfied with her gifts as sarah was. but miss ellingwood had selected them, and miss ellingwood was infallible. there was another present which she was taking home. she had read halfway through the upper shelf of miss ellingwood's story-books, and she meant to remember them all, and then during the vacation, she would sit down before the fire after she had washed the supper dishes, and she would take albert in her arms, and a twin would perch on each side of her on the old settle, and they should hear some stories that were stories. she had become well acquainted with several of the professors who came in to call on miss ellingwood in the evenings. one was professor minturn, for whom she had read the paragraph of history on the first day of school. he seemed to grow more nervous each day, and more certain that his pupils might do more work if they would. "that sub-junior and junior history might just as well be combined," he would say irritably to miss ellingwood. "then they would finish the american history in the sub-junior year, and a thorough course of general history could be divided between the junior and the middle years. the present arrangement is senseless." one day he asked sarah to remain after class. the sub-juniors looked at one another and laughed. by this time, suspicion had spread through the whole school. "he probably wants to ask her whether you and ellen study your lessons," whispered mabel's neighbor. sarah was startled by the first question which professor minturn addressed to her. "are you well?" "yes, sir." "have you ever been sick?" "i had the measles and the mumps." this sounded like the questions of the gymnasium director. "and the whooping cough i had, too." "do you take regular exercise?" "yes, sir." "you like to study, don't you?" "yes, sir." "i thought so. how should you like to do a little extra work for me?" all sarah's life she had been doing extra physical work. she had taken her mother's duties gradually upon her shoulders as she became ill; she had then taken a large part of her father's work. but hitherto no one had ever complimented her by asking her to do extra study. her cheeks glowed. "i would like it very much." "very well," answered professor minturn, beaming with satisfaction. "i wish you to prepare eight pages of history instead of four. each day i shall ask you some questions after class." professor minturn smiled. he thought that he had discovered a way of trying a long-planned experiment. the geography teacher had long since noticed that sarah always knew her lessons. one day he asked her in his precise way whether she had been over the book before. "no, sir. but i studied geography with my father, and it is not so hard for me like it is for some people. i know what is in this book." the geography teacher gave her a little examination. "why, i believe you are ready for state board now. there isn't any reason why you should waste your time with this class. how would you like to come into the physical geography class with the juniors?" sarah gasped. that would bring her into constant association with ethel and gertrude, the objects of her devotion. "i--i am afraid i am too--too dumb, _ach_, stupid, i mean." the teacher laughed. all sarah's teachers laughed at her more or less. it was only yesterday that the gymnasium teacher had laughed at her because she talked about "planting the smallpox" when she meant vaccinating. "you aren't too stupid at all," the teacher of geography assured her. "to-morrow i'll speak to dr. ellis about it. in the mean time, you report with the juniors." sarah's room-mates were not at all pleased by her promotion. hereafter there would be no maps lying in her desk ready to be copied, and their marks would be materially lowered. they felt that her change of classes was a personal grievance. "no wonder that you get along," said ellen rudely. "you are what we call a teacher's pet. the other evening i went to miss ellingwood's room to get permission to go downstairs, and the latin teacher was helping you. i don't think it is fair." sarah opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, flushing scarlet. the latin teacher did help her, but not with her regular lessons. his helping her was a joke between him and miss ellingwood. they had a great many jokes together, many of which sarah did not understand. he said that he should have to have some excuse for coming to see miss ellingwood so often; he would pretend that sarah was his pupil. and so he used to give her simple sight translations to read. it was not part of her daily lesson; with that of course he never helped her at all. it was true that she studied her latin grammar very hard, so that she should be able to read at sight for mr. sattarlee without very much stumbling, and she paid all the more attention to her daily lessons. but he did not help her with them. ellen's remark seemed like an accusation of dishonesty. but she did not explain, she could not. it seemed like disloyalty to talk about the latin teacher and his coming to miss ellingwood's room. he seemed to belong to miss ellingwood, and if she were kind enough to allow sarah to be there when he came,--and he never came unless sarah was there,--it would be all the more contemptible to talk to ellen ritter about it. sarah hunted through her drawer for a fresh pencil and went back to miss ellingwood's room. her books had not been in her own room for a month, nor had she slept there. by this time sarah had begun to think that the curriculum was very carelessly planned. she was even with the juniors in history and physical geography and latin, which were the three most difficult subjects of the six which the juniors had to pass. she did not realize that she was growing a little tired. she could scarcely keep her eyes open until bedtime; it seemed to her that the juniors, busily practicing for their play, or mr. sattarlee, calling upon miss ellingwood, would never go. gymnasium had become more of a bore than ever. she disliked it before because it was monotonous; now her step lagged in the marches and her arms fell heavily in the drills because she was tired. she went walking less often with miss ellingwood; miss ellingwood went with mr. sattarlee. miss ellingwood had begun to be a little absent-minded. perhaps that was the reason that she did not notice that sarah's cheeks had lost their ruddy color, and that she no longer ran briskly down the hall when she came from class. sometimes, when miss ellingwood was away, sarah opened the door and peered out into the hall. down in gertrude's room there was the sound of merry laughter. she and ethel were constantly inventing some new entertainment. once, when they had put up a sign at the corner of the hall, notifying the public that they meant that evening to gratify a plebeian fondness for bermuda onions and bread and butter, sarah almost went to the feast. the notice begged all those who liked onions to come, and warned all others to spend the evening with their friends in distant parts of the building. sarah would cheerfully have eaten crow in such company. but she did not dare to go. chapter vi the "christmas carol" to sarah's surprise and delight, she had miss ellingwood almost entirely to herself the day of the play. miss ellingwood always prided herself upon the absence of the mad rush which is supposed to accompany and follow the dress rehearsal. she was especially anxious that this play should succeed, since it was the first appearance of her class. the dress rehearsal had been given the night before. sarah had watched it, entranced, from the edge of the stage, where she waited for possible errands. the juniors paid no attention to her, but she was too interested to care. the extraordinary make-up of old scrooge, the mysterious gliding about of the ghosts, the thrilling tableaux, directed by miss ellingwood from behind the scenes,--sarah had never dreamed of anything like this. and it would be still more wonderful the next night, from the front, when strange green and purple lights were to follow the ghosts about, and when there would be the added excitement of a large audience. this would be a story to tell the twins! but could the twins be persuaded to believe such wonders? sarah sighed a little. she was going home the day after the play, but it seemed weeks ahead. miss ellingwood slipped into the chapel for a last look about before she started with sarah for a walk. she glanced over the properties,--scrooge's bowl of gruel, his candlestick, the chains and money-boxes which were to be rattled upon the approach of jacob marley's ghost, the crutch for tiny tim, the old clothes for mrs. dilber. "it has all gone too smoothly," she said to sarah. "there hasn't been a hitch anywhere." "i should think that would be good," said sarah. miss ellingwood shook her head. "no, when things go so well at the rehearsal they don't go so well afterwards, usually. at any rate, nobody will be tired." "the ghosts went skating," said sarah. "i saw them go off with their skates, and take the car." miss ellingwood frowned. "that was a little risky." then she ran lightly down the steps. "but they'll be back. come on." she was only a little older than the oldest pupil in her classes, and it was difficult to be always grave and dignified. dr. ellis watched her and smiled. "i hope miss ellingwood's preparations are all made," he said to his secretary. "she's a fore-handed person." the secretary looked up quizzically at the sky. he was inclined to be pessimistic. "the leading members of the cast have gone out to the park to skate. they don't run the cars when it snows." dr. ellis also walked to the window and looked out. "was edward with them?" "yes." "then they'll be back. edward knows all about the cars." an hour later, miss ellingwood and sarah returned, laughing and covered with snow. miss ellingwood glanced in at the office-door. "have the boys come?" the secretary answered her. "no. i shouldn't be surprised if they didn't get here." some of the color faded from miss ellingwood's rosy cheeks. "but they _must_. what makes you say that?" "the cars don't run in snows like this." "but they could get a carriage and drive." the secretary shook his head dolefully. "there aren't many houses out there." "but they could walk." "not ten miles in this snow. not in time, anyway." miss ellingwood spent the next hour looking out of the window. the cars from the park connected with the normal school cars at the square. at the end of the hour, when darkness had fallen and no boys had appeared, miss ellingwood slipped into the dress which sarah had laid out for her, and ran down to the office. it was still snowing heavily. "they're not here?" "no." miss ellingwood went toward the telephone-booth. there was one way out of the difficulty. "i am going to telephone to the car-barn and ask them to send out a car. it doesn't make any difference what it costs." the secretary threw out a crumb of comfort. "dr. ellis attended to that, a few minutes ago." "oh, i'm so glad!" cried miss ellingwood, with a great rise of spirits. "then they'll certainly be here." she ate her supper with a good appetite, and then went up to the chapel. sarah dressed slowly. ellen and mabel, having seen the flurry which preceded other junior plays, laughed scornfully. they did not like miss ellingwood. "it'll be a failure," declared mabel. "i could manage a play better." she looked impertinently at sarah. "now don't you go and tell her, sarah." sarah did not answer. the walk had made her tired. she meant to go early to the chapel and take a book. then she could get a good seat, and could study her extra history lesson until the play began. she heard voices as she opened the chapel door. she thought at first that some one had mounted the stage for a final bit of practice, then she saw that it was miss ellingwood. just in front of the stage stood dr. ellis. "i've had a telephone message, miss ellingwood. they have tried to get a car out, but they say the snow is so soft and heavy that they can't get out and back before ten o'clock." "then my play is doomed!" "isn't there anything that can be done?" the principal was much disturbed. he prided himself upon the prompt performance of all school exercises. in this case, his own son helped to cause the failure. "nothing," answered miss ellingwood helplessly. "they have the principal parts. they're the play." "couldn't any one take their places?" "no, not possibly. all the junior boys are in the tableaux, and anyhow, no one knows the lines. i could do it myself, but i have to direct behind the scenes. it is hopeless." "we'll have to postpone it till after christmas, i suppose?" miss ellingwood sat down wearily on the nearest chair. "oh, i can't! all the spirit will have gone out of it. and it's a christmas play!" "then we will have to give it up." miss ellingwood looked at him dismally. then her brows knitted. could she take the parts? could they manage the tableaux without her? it would make no difference whether the ghosts were men or women. anything would be better than postponement. "perhaps," she began slowly. "no, it can't be done. i suppose a notice will have to be put up on the door, and if you will send eugene for some of the boys, we will straighten up the stage. the case is hopeless." it was at this moment that little sarah wenner appeared by the side of the tall principal. her cheeks were flushed, she clasped her hands across the bosom of her red dress. "is it anything i can do?" she asked. "i know what the ghosts should say, and where they should stand always. you begin here, and then you wheel a little piece up there and--_ach_, i know it all by heart. i heard them say it every evening when they practiced. you said--you said--" but the impulsive courage which had prompted her speech had fled, her voice failed, and she stood abashed, her face growing scarlet. it was several minutes before she dared to look up. she expected that miss ellingwood would reprove her sternly. she knew better than to interrupt older persons like that, but she had forgotten. she was always forgetting. in one awful moment of forgetfulness she had emptied a pitcher of water on miss ellingwood's head. her presumption in offering overwhelmed her. they would think that she was crazy. if she could only get away, where she would not need to look up and see the frowns on their faces. "_ach_," she began, "i do not know what i am talking about. sometimes i act so dumb. i--" she backed slowly away. "i--" suddenly miss ellingwood was at her side. she seized her arm, and held her for a moment without speaking. "wait a minute." then she looked up at dr. ellis. "i believe--i believe it could be done. come, sarah." dr. ellis followed them behind the scenes. "is there anything i can do?" "yes. postpone the ringing of the bell till a quarter after eight. and send all the juniors here at once. sarah, run up and get into your gymnasium suit, and bring two stiff petticoats and my long white wrapper, and tell ethel and gertrude to come as fast as they can. go like a breeze, sarah dear." sarah, in the character of jacob kalb pursuing the twins, never moved faster. ethel and gertrude, finishing their leisurely dressing, watched her fly down the hall, after she had summoned them. "that wild youngster's in her gym suit, and has a lot of white stuff over her arm. what can she be up to?" "hard to tell. let's hurry." when they clambered up to the stage, having taken the short cut through the chapel, they stood still, gaping. miss ellingwood's cheeks were red, her hair ruffled. "robert, you will have to read the part of marley's ghost from behind the scenes. you'll have to speak as edward did and move about. i'll help you. and sarah knows the other parts. as the ghost of christmas past,--here, sarah, is your tunic and your golden belt." miss ellingwood held up a handful of white and gold, digged from the bottom of the property-box. "it's really better to have a girl for this part. your hair must be down, there! and powdered, and you must make your voice as thin and clear as you can. as the ghost of christmas present, you will sit here on this throne. we will have it turned this way, so that there can be a prompter behind it. and as the ghost of christmas future, you will be in black. ethel and gertrude will help you dress, and there will be plenty of time. but oh, sarah, are you _sure_ you know the parts?" sarah looked round at the circle of astonished, doubting faces. "yes, ma'am," she declared solemnly. "believe me, i do." "then get into your dress, quickly, and then you and scrooge go over there and go over your parts. no, we'll do it here. if anybody comes into the chapel, and overhears, he'll just have to, that's all." there were early comers, visitors from town, who did not know that the hour had been changed. they heard murmurs from behind the curtain, but they laughed and talked among themselves, and paid no heed. the students did not appear until the bell rang. they were thankful for the last moment to finish a bit of packing or a visit. there were no study-hours,--this was one of the great occasions of the year. they did not know how narrowly they had missed having any play at all, or how its success still hung upon the slender thread of a small girl's memory. the cheerless, unpleasant room upon which the curtain lifted gave no hint of the christmas spirit which already excited the great school. scrooge sat beside his table, unshaven, wizened, clad in an old dressing-gown and slippers, with a night-cap on his head. he was eating a bowl of gruel, and at the same time trying to identify the peculiar substance of which it was made, and also to keep the audience from suspecting that there was anything the matter with it. when he discovered that it was cotton, he made a resolve of revenge upon the junior girls who had prepared it, which had nothing to do with the play. it helped him, however, to growl out maledictions upon the poor and those who relieved their distress. it was then that he was disturbed by the clanking of chains and money-boxes, and the voice of his old partner, marley, was heard faintly from behind the curtain which divided the front and back of the stage. marley reproved him for his grasping, cruel spirit, his sordid struggle for wealth, and scrooge cowered and listened in terror to the promise of the ghost that he should be visited by three others. the curtain went down and rose almost immediately. there had been only faint applause. scrooge had done his best, but the ghost, speaking from behind the scenes, had not the power to amuse and thrill which he would have had if he had been able to appear. miss ellingwood remembered, with a pang, edward ellis's delightful vanishing through the window. miss ellingwood's face was pale. she realized that the first scene had fallen flat. and they were depending for the success of the second upon little sarah wenner, who had never even practiced with the rest of the cast! it had been madness in sarah to offer, it had been worse than madness for miss ellingwood to accept. she peered out from behind the scenes, her hand on sarah's shoulder. scrooge was in bed, his night-cap tassel nodded from his pillow. it was time for sarah to go on. directions trembled on miss ellingwood's lips, but she said nothing. it was too late now to advise. the light was dim, and the audience could see nothing but the outlines of the old four-post bed, and a faint, tiny, white figure, which glided about, now slowly, now swiftly, once with a dash of yellow light upon it, once with a faint glow of purple. her dress was short, her feet were sandaled, she looked even shorter than she was. the audience gasped. they thought that edward ellis was to play the part. who was this sprite who moved about so lightly? they leaned forward breathlessly as the fairy thing approached scrooge's bed, and drew the curtain back. a trembling, faltering voice issued from within. "'are you the spirit whose coming was foretold me?'" it seemed to miss ellingwood that long moments passed before the answer came. the child had never been on any stage in all her life. miss ellingwood knew what stage fright was. she was suffering from it now herself. then faintly but clearly came the answer:-"'i am the ghost of christmas past.'" "'long past?' inquired the trembling scrooge." "'no, your past. rise and come with me.'" the lights went out, there was the sound of a great wind, then a wild cry which made the timid clutch one another's hands. "'i am afraid! i am afraid! i shall fall.'" the clear voice answered, "'bear but a touch of my hand upon your heart, and you shall be upheld in more than this.'" the curtain before the back of the stage was lifted, the light came on slowly. there, on the bench in an old-fashioned school-room, sat a small boy, tired, homesick, forlorn. to him entered a little girl, who threw her arms about his neck and told him that he was to come home. the little boy cried happily, and there was a strange echo from the front of the stage. "'it is i!' cried scrooge. 'i and my sister fanny.'" "'and here?' said the spirit." the curtain fell and at once was lifted. "'my old master fezziwig!' laughed scrooge." the laugh died away at the next scene, when he saw once more the girl whom he had jilted because she was poor. a wild horror was in his voice. "'leave me, spirit! i cannot bear it!'" the spirit in the white dress and with the streaming hair had already gone, and scrooge felt his way across the room to bed. when the curtain went up again, it was in a blaze of light. the bed-curtains were closely drawn, and sitting upon the green throne at the other end of the room was a little figure in a long green robe. even now her schoolmates did not know her. she laughed merrily as she called to scrooge, whose frightened face peered out from between the curtains. it brightened at sight of this cheerful ghost, but not for long. the ghost of christmas present had sad sights to show. the light faded, and though christmas bells rang merrily, one could not hear them or enjoy them because of starved, wolfish children living in misery, and poor cratchit and his family trying to make merry over their goose, while want stared them in the face. the audience sighed when the curtain fell once more and scrooge wandered about his room alone. by this time miss ellingwood had dropped her book and was devoting her whole attention to the tableaux. they were saddest of all now. sarah was a tall figure without shape. miss ellingwood had contrived a support far above her head for the black robe. the stage was almost dark, and scrooge had fallen upon his knees, as he watched the scenes of future christmases. tiny tim, the cratchit cripple, had died from want of care, scrooge himself lay in the churchyard, hideous mrs. dilber and her friends discussed his scant personal possessions, and the vast amount of his wealth went back into his business without ever having profited a human soul. the audience caught the spirit of scrooge's horror of himself, of his ecstatic joy at finding that he was still alive, and that there was time for him to redeem himself. they laughed and applauded, and there were those who cried. then when the applause had died down, there was a loud call for the ghosts. "it sounds like edward," said miss ellingwood. "run out and bow, sarah." sarah clutched miss ellingwood's dress. "_ach_, i cannot!" "yes, dear, you must." in a second she found herself in the middle of the stage. she saw the laughing, astonished faces, she saw dr. ellis applauding, she saw professor minturn smile, and back against the wall four tall boys, the real ghosts, who had come back at last. near them, there stood some one else, a little taller than they, who waved his hand. it was william; he had come to take her home. then her fright vanished. she was not sarah any more. she was the christmas spirit, just as in the old days, when she played with the twins, she had been jacob kalb or uncle daniel or the judge of the orphans' court by turns. "merry christmas!" she cried, and then, like tiny tim, "'god bless us, every one!'" mr. sattarlee was back of the scenes when she returned. he took both her hands in his. it was as though she had saved the day for him, instead of for miss ellingwood. "everybody is coming over to my rooms to have something to eat, sarah, and of course we want you." sarah smiled at him. "i thank myself, _ach_, i mean i am much obliged. but my brother is here, and--" "we will have him too. we couldn't get along without either of you." ethel and gertrude each held out a grateful hand. even a tale-bearer must have her due. "you saved the play, miss wenner." sarah's happy little smile died away. "_ach_, no, ma'am." but she could not be long unhappy. miss ellingwood's hand would not let her go. when william came he only said, "why, you little rascal!" which was praise enough. he talked and laughed with miss ellingwood and mr. sattarlee, and made friends with the boys, until he grew more wonderful than ever in the eyes of his little sister. she sat on the sofa beside miss ellingwood, and edward ellis and the other ghosts told them how they had walked home, despairing of getting there in time, but determined to do their best. ethel and gertrude glanced at them, and ethel shrugged her shoulders lightly. "how do you suppose she ever did it?" said gertrude. a mocking smile came into ethel's blue eyes. it was well for sarah that she did not hear; it would have grieved her heart almost as much as it hurt generous ethel's to say a thing so mean. "isn't it her usual occupation to listen and tell?" asked ethel. chapter vii sarah saves the day once more the fall term of school is a time of adjustment, and the spring term flies so quickly that it is hardly begun before it is over. it is in winter that most real work is accomplished. then, too, when the days are short, and life out of doors does not call so insistently, friendships quicken and school spirit grows. sarah felt very much better after her return from home. laura had sternly forbidden her to do any heavier work than drying dishes, and looking after the twins and albert, and she had told stories to her heart's content, and coasted and skated until she forgot that a grammar or a geography ever existed. now she worked diligently. it is safe to say that never had one small girl learned so much in so short a time. professor minturn was delighted with her progress; he regarded his theory that the sub-junior and the junior history could be combined as already proved. the geography professor cheered her enthusiastically on. he had meant to speak to dr. ellis about her transference from one class to the other, but he had forgotten it, and sarah proceeded undisturbed. mr. sattarlee continued to have her read at sight for him in the evenings. he had begun to be really interested in seeing how much she could do. class rivalry always came to a head at the annual gymnasium exhibition, which took place just before the close of the winter term. there were performances by individuals, elaborate swinging of clubs and heavy work of various kinds, gilbert dancing and intricate drills. the class which made the best record was given a silver cup. hitherto the cup had always been won by the middle or the senior class. each year the enthusiastic juniors made a frantic effort and failed. occasionally they excelled in individual work, but the other classes had the advantage of longer team-work in the drills. this year the senior class was weak, and the juniors would have had some hope, had it not been that the middlers were exceptionally strong. by this time the glow which followed the christmas vacation was gone, and sarah was once more a very tired girl. she had looked forward to the entertainment for weeks, but now that it was at hand, she wished with all her heart that she could go to bed instead of attending it. the sub-junior girls gave only an elementary wand-drill at the opening of the exhibition. the audience was still gathering; they formed merely the inconspicuous orchestra before the beginning of the real performance. when the drill was over, sarah was glad to climb the steps to the running-track, and look down sleepily over the crowd in search of miss ellingwood. the floor of the great gymnasium was divided into two parts. one was left bare for the exhibition; the other was covered by a steep tier of seats occupied by the invited guests of the faculty and the faculty themselves. the students, when they were not at work, watched from the wide running-track which circled the gymnasium. its railing was gayly decked with school and class banners, and it was crowded with close-packed groups of enthusiastic boys and girls. far above in the dusk, showed dimly the great beams which upheld the vaulted roof. presently sarah found miss ellingwood, sitting almost beneath her, with mr. sattarlee by her side. then sarah grew more and more sleepy. she heard the girls of her own class whispering round her. mabel and ellen were near by, but she did not turn her head, which rested comfortably against one of the upright supports of the great beam. below on the floor the girls of the middle class were beginning an elaborate swinging of indian clubs, moving in such perfect time with the music and with one another that the difficult task seemed the easiest in the world. already the girls of the junior class, who were to follow, were quietly slipping down the stairs. sarah saw them dimly, ethel and gertrude and all the others whom she so admired, and who paid no attention to her. the fact that she had saved their class play seemed to make them not more but even less friendly. the tears came into her eyes, and she brushed them angrily away. what a goose she was! she tightened her hold a little on the upright iron, and leaned her head against it once more. if she could only go over to the main building and go to bed! then suddenly she awoke. it seemed to her at first that she heard the cheering in her sleep; then it grew to a great roar all about her. the sub-juniors beside her were cheering, the group of boys of the middle class on the opposite side of the running-track were yelling madly, and "bobs," edward ellis's collie, who would not be left at home, was barking as though he would burst his throat. sarah made out the middle class yell:- "hip, hip, hooray, scarlet and gray, we win the day!" then, looking up, she saw the cause of the excitement. floating proudly from the great central beam, far above her head, was the scarlet and gray banner of the middle class. the banner must have been rolled up and fastened there by some adventurous climber, and a cord by which it could be unfurled carried down along the supports to the opposite side of the running-track. it was no wonder that the middlers had insisted upon having that particular spot. the cord had unfastened itself properly, and the great flag was left free to float back and forth in the slight breeze which came in round the many tall windows. there was a wild yell from the junior class, not of delight, but of disgust and dismay, and "bobs" changed his bark to a howl. the trick was a clever one, and it did not add to the comfort of the juniors to realize that there was nothing to be done. the next number on the programme was a minuet by the junior girls. they would have to give it, alas, under the colors of their rivals. edward ellis and half a dozen others tried to push their way through the close-packed ranks of the middlers, but dr. ellis saw them and motioned them back. meanwhile the middler girls went quietly on, not losing a beat of their time. when they finished, they marched out amid loud cheers and clapping of hands. the sub-juniors round sarah were dancing up and down. traditionally they were the friends of the middle class, and the middle class itself did not enjoy the sight of the great banner as much as they. "won't the juniors be furious?" laughed ellen ritter. "i can just see ethel davis and gertrude manley when they behold it. and they can't do a thing. good for 'em!" and the sub-juniors moved a little farther down the running-track, crowding the seniors behind them, so that they could see the faces of the junior girls when they caught the first glimpse of the scarlet flag. the same flame leaped suddenly in sarah's heart that had flared before she pursued jacob kalb with a gun, and before she had poured the water out through the transom. but this time she deliberated and laid her plans more slowly. she owed the members of her own class no loyalty. she looked up at the great beam far above her head. she tried to shake the iron upright upon which her hand rested and found it as firm as the boards beneath her feet; then she stared up again at the beam and down at the floor far below, and her eyes brightened. there was a junior flag just under her hand. the junior class would enter in the dark, the lights were to be entirely extinguished, so that they could slip to their places without being seen, and then the light would come, not from the electric globes, but from a stereopticon lantern at the end of the room, which would throw colored lights upon the performers. sarah knew all the arrangements. already the gymnasium director had risen to announce that the lights would be turned out, and that no one should be alarmed. sarah glanced about once more. it was fortunate that she was just above the entrance to the dressing-room, and in the most undesirable place on the track. there was no one within ten feet. she put her hand on the belt of her gymnasium suit to be sure that the buttons were all tight and that nothing should hamper her, and then she thought of the tall hickory tree at home, up which she had scrambled ever since she could remember, and smiled. the row of lights above the running-track faded and went out, and she put her arms round the slender iron pole. then those below were darkened, and with a spring her rubber-soled feet were on the railing. when she felt the great beam, she had one moment of awful fright. what if they should suddenly turn on the lights and she be discovered hanging in mid-air? she would not be able to keep her hold. there would be one agonized moment, then she would drop down, down to the floor beneath. but the fright did not make her stop. it vanished completely when she felt under her hands the cord which fastened the flag. she did not attempt to untie it, there was no time for that. there were two pins on the front of her blouse, which had fastened on the sub-junior badge which she had worn during her own drill. wrapping the middler flag round the beam, so that it was completely hidden, she pinned the junior flag to its edge, and then crept slowly back. she could see far below her the line of dim white figures crossing the gymnasium. in another instant they would be in their places, and then the lights would flare out. thankfully she felt the iron pole beneath her feet, and in wild panic slid down, the iron burning her hands like steam. then she stood holding desperately to it, panting. it was the man who managed the stereopticon who revealed the new banner. the junior girls in their white dresses wove back and forth in intricate figures, now in the gleam of violet, now in the glow of rose-color. now they spread out from one end of the wide floor to the other, now they were close together. presently there was a glow of yellow light which illuminated the whole gymnasium and rested especially upon the high beam. the stereopticon man had no sympathy with any particular class. he realized that the scarlet and gray flag was an object of interest, so he trained his light upon it. every eye in the gymnasium was lifted at once. bedlam broke loose, after an instant's pause, during which faculty and students and guests stared open-mouthed. where was the middler banner? who had dared to climb out there and remove it? and who had hung the junior banner there? "light blue and white, we're all right!" roared the junior boys. "wow, wow, wo-o-ow," howled "bobs." "bang, bang, bang," played the pianist, in a noble effort to be heard above the din. only the junior girls seemed undisturbed. they wove more intricate evolutions, deaf to the piano as they were; their powdered heads bowed to one another, their motion seemed to grow more light and fairy-like. presently one of them glanced upward, then another, and some one smiled faintly, and without another sign, they went on with more spirit than ever. a middler started at once to climb the pole, but was ordered back. then another tried it, and was sternly reproved. the flag must hang there now, there would be no more seasons of convenient darkness in which it might be torn down. the junior girls marched out, ethel davis and gertrude manley leading, as they led most affairs in their class. now it was the turn of the middler boys to take a taste of their own medicine, and give their drill under a rival banner. they gritted their teeth angrily. the displacement of their flag disturbed them sorely. the cup was theirs already, they were sure of that, but the celebration with which they meant to mark their victory was spoiled. anger may be a spur in a long jump or in putting the shot, but it does not conduce to good team-work. one of the middlers lifted his clubs too swiftly, another too slowly, and they did not begin in good form. and then there was the click of club against club, an evidence of carelessness of which not even the sub-juniors would be guilty. a giggle spread along the line of the juniors. the audience heard and the middlers themselves heard, and their faces grew hot and their hands unsteady. there was a bang, a crash, and an indian club flew in a wide curve, and sailed through the glass door which opened into the director's office. it was an unpardonable crime. "attention!" cried the director. "clubs at rest, right face, march." for the first time in the history of the school a middle class had failed, and the juniors had won the cup. sarah had slipped to the rear of the group of her classmates. she was desperately tired, and her hands burned like fire. if she could only go to bed! but no one was expected to leave until the end. it seemed to her that minutes lengthened into hours and still the entertainment dragged on. all round her she heard excited inquiry. what junior had crept out on the beam? was it edward ellis? "you didn't see a junior go up this side, did you, sarah?" asked mabel thorn; and sarah answered with a truthful and weary "no." she had sat down on the edge of a springboard, she did not hear even the loud cheering which followed the handing of the cup to the junior president. there was a rush for the stairs, and she was carried on unresisting. then she slipped aside and opened the door leading to the lower floor. from there a narrow passageway ran between the swimming-pool and the girls' dressing-room and thence led out of doors. the main exit was jammed with arguing, cheering students; she could not go out that way. as she passed the door of the girls' dressing-room, she heard the same excited questions shouted back and forth. ethel and gertrude were laughing and talking as they struggled out of their long cheese-cloth dresses. suddenly one of them called to her:-"who are you, out there? suppose you come in and untangle me!" sarah knew well enough that if they had known it was she they would not have called her. nevertheless, she went in and asked what she could do. "oh," said gertrude, "is it you, miss wenner? please unpin this down the back." "yes, ma'am," answered sarah. she could scarcely open her hand; it felt as though there were not a fragment of skin left on the palm, but she struggled bravely with the stubborn pins. it seemed to her a long time until she was able to extract the first one. "there is one out already," she said faintly. ethel turned to look at her and then came a little closer. "what's the matter? look at me, child!" the word slipped out involuntarily, and she corrected herself at once. "miss wenner, what is the matter? let me see your hand." and ethel seized it and pointed to the white dress. there was a slow-spreading, scarlet stain on it. "no," cried sarah. "leave me go. it is nothing. i--i just skinned myself a little. i--" ethel firmly opened her fingers. then gertrude looked at her other hand. it too was bleeding. sarah tried to pull her hands away. "_ach_, it is nothing. leave me be!" "it looks to me--" began ethel slowly. "as though you had been sliding down the pole in the gym," finished gertrude. "i skinned my hand there once before i learned how," said ethel. "but the gym hasn't been open for practice to-day, and this has just been done. how did you do it?" sarah had lost all power to struggle. "_ach_, it is nothing!" gertrude gasped. "did you climb up that pole and put our flag on the beam?" "answer her, please," commanded ethel. "yes, ma'am." "why?" "because--because--_ach_, leave me go!" the great low-ceiled locker-room was growing dim. sarah tried to jerk away. this time it was not embarrassment but terror which gave her strength. "you haven't any business to talk to me like this. i did it because i didn't want to see you drill under that other flag. i hate that other flag. and i hate--" sarah took a deep breath. her heart felt like a hard lump in her breast. there was a red flaming light before her eyes,--"i hate _you_!" chapter viii the result of professor minturn's experiment it was a long time before either ethel or gertrude answered. they had not been more surprised at sight of the junior banner above their heads. they were both accustomed to being liked, not hated. "what makes you say that?" asked ethel. her cheeks were hot. sarah's climbing to the roof of the gymnasium was not in accord with the character which she bore in the school. certainly that was not the way to please teachers, or to win their favor for herself. sarah's voice shook. she did not feel the pain in her hands. the lights had gone out, and they seemed to be alone in the locker-room. "because i meant it." then good english flew to the winds. "you are all the time cross over me. you are too high up. i am dumb and i can't always talk right, and i come from spring grove post-office, but i don't do _you_ anything. i never did you anything. i--" there was the spurt of a match, and gertrude lit the gas. then she laid her hands on sarah's shoulders and turned her to the light. her voice trembled also. "look here. you've been frank, and i shall, too. did you ever report your room-mates for making a noise?" "no." the answer was explosive. "do you tell miss ellingwood everything that you can find out?" sarah laughed hysterically. "i don't find out anything to tell her. how should i?" "did you never tell her about your room-mates?" "i never say nothing from them at all to nobody. i leave them alone. but they won't leave me alone. they made me throw water on miss ellingwood, they made me--" she looked about so wildly that the girls were frightened. gertrude put a steadying arm round her. "you were right. we have been mean." sarah looked at her piteously. "_ach_, i--i shouldn't have talked so. i--" ethel looked gravely into gertrude's eyes. "yes, you should," she said to sarah. "now, come over to our room and i'll tie up your hands for you. you mustn't tell anybody that it was you that slid down the pole." "no, ma'am. i wish i could go in my bed. if i don't go in my bed, i won't know my lessons for to-morrow." "you shall go to bed." but miss ellingwood's room was crowded with guests, and there was the sound of many voices in sarah's. "it is no place i can sleep," she cried. the pain in her hands had come back, and made her feel faint. it seemed to her that she should die if she could not sleep. "yes, there is," said ethel and gertrude together. and so with peaceful heart and bandaged hands, sarah slept in ethel's bed, while ethel and gertrude whispered together across the room. "it was in the air," said ethel. "everybody distrusted her." gertrude sat up in bed. "i think we've been hateful, _hateful_," she said. "listen!" "some people always talk in their sleep," answered ethel. "i guess she's tired, poor child. i'm not sleepy, are you?" "no," said gertrude, "i'm ashamed. are you?" following the gymnasium entertainment came a few days of examinations, then a day of hurried packing, before the scattering of five hundred boys and girls to their homes for a week. sarah was to go home; she had been thinking for a long time of the snowdrops which would be in bloom on the south side of the house, and the daffodils which must be poking up through the earth. but now at the last moment, she did not seem to care. if they would only let her go to bed and sleep and sleep! she feared that some day she might drop over asleep where she stood, and frighten miss ellingwood and ethel and gertrude. how absurd it would be to fall asleep in the middle of the day! mabel thorn and ellen ritter often took naps after dinner, but sarah had not slept in the daytime since she was a baby. if she had been a little older or a little less forgiving, she might have been slower to accept the friendship of ethel and gertrude, offered at once in many penitent and friendly ways. but almost immediately the hardness went out of her heart and the tremor from her voice when she saw them or spoke to them. finally she felt the same soft, happy thrill of relief that she had felt when aunt 'liza appeared with her gift of cake and _schnitz_. "nobody is cross over me, and i am not cross over anybody," she said to herself. and in a day or two she did tumble over as she had feared. ethel and gertrude were waiting for her on the steps. she was going with them to the shop to order viands for a feast to be held in their room that evening. miss ellingwood had gone walking, and sarah grew heated and impatient over the fastening of her sailor suit, and the tying of her red scarf. she did not wait for the elevator, but ran downstairs, jumping over the last step of each flight, and then going more sedately out past the office door. she remembered afterwards that she had felt a little dizzy, and that she had once put out her hand to steady herself. she saw professor minturn coming toward her on his way to the faculty meeting in the office, and she tried to straighten up and bow to him. instead, she pitched forward at his feet. in one step, professor minturn was beside her. he expected to see her scramble up, red-faced and embarrassed. "oh, i hope you haven't hurt yourself!" he began to say. but sarah did not move. "miss wenner!" he said, in a tone which brought dr. ellis and the secretary and eugene hurrying from the office. by that time, he had lifted her from the floor. "she seems to have fainted," he said. dr. ellis swept a pile of catalogues from the office-sofa. "lay her down there, minturn. eugene, get some water." the color was coming back faintly to sarah's cheeks when miss ellingwood walked in. then it vanished once more, and she lay limp and deadly white. "telephone for dr. brownlee," commanded dr. ellis. "ah, there, she's opening her eyes. look here, sarah!" sarah smiled faintly. "i feel so--so--queer," she whispered. "i would like to go in my bed." [illustration: she seems to have fainted] "you shall," dr. ellis assured her. "eugene, do you think you can carry her upstairs?" professor minturn held out his arms. he was frowning; he felt suddenly a great anxiety and uneasiness. but he was sure that he had asked the child whether she was well; he could not have been so careless as to give her extra work without ascertaining that. she had always looked strong. he could not believe that this pale child could be that same rosy-cheeked little girl who had worked with such spirit. "let me take her upstairs," he said nervously. by the time he returned, dr. brownlee was coming in at the front door. "you'll come down and tell us at once how she is and what is the matter, doctor?" he said. "she's a favorite pupil of mine." then he went in and took his seat by the window in the faculty room, among his colleagues who were waiting for him, and the meeting was called to order. dr. brownlee tapped at the door before the business was fairly begun. "i beg your pardon," he said. "i thought i could get back before your meeting was in session." "come in," invited dr. ellis. "how is your patient? what is the trouble?" dr. brownlee's answer was prompt and to the point. "overstudy." "impossible!" answered dr. ellis just as promptly. "she is a sub-junior, and the sub-junior branches are not hard, and she is a bright girl and was well prepared." dr. brownlee did not like to be contradicted. "she's been talking incoherently about extra history and extra geography and extra something else. i don't remember what the other is. she doesn't look like a girl who should have any extras of any kind. at least not now. i don't know what she looked like when she came here." "she looked like a strong, healthy country girl. she was slender, but she looked well. she has had regular exercise in the gymnasium, and she hasn't had any extra work to do, i am positive." professor minturn rose suddenly. "i have always had a theory that the sub-junior and the junior history could be advantageously combined. i thought miss wenner was a good subject upon whom to try it. i see now that i was wrong." and he sat down and stared out the window. the teacher of geography got more slowly to his feet. "i meant to report to you, dr. ellis, but i forgot it, that miss wenner had been taking the junior geography. she was considerably ahead of the sub-junior class, and so i allowed her to begin the physical geography, and perhaps she has been going a--a little faster than the--the rest of the class. she was so enthusiastic, it was a pleasure to teach her. i--i have never had a pupil like her." dr. ellis smiled queerly. "are there any more confessions to be made?" young mr. sattarlee rose from his place at the back of the room. he did not look at dr. ellis, or at any of his colleagues, but stared straight over their heads. there was no one in the room who did not know of his devotion to miss ellingwood, and sarah's constant association with her. "she has been reading a little latin at sight for me," he said. "she did it very well." "she seems to have done very well for all of you," said dr. ellis grimly. "i wish that i could feel that we had done as well by her." dr. brownlee stood motionless at the door. he was polite enough not to say, "i told you so," though restraining himself must have cost considerable effort. "put her to bed at once over in the infirmary where it's quiet," he commanded. "i'll see the nurse. and keep her there for two weeks. then, if she goes slowly for the rest of the year, doing only her own regular work, and that as easily as possible, she'll get through without any injury to herself. don't let her go home for the vacation. she isn't fit for the journey or the excitement of seeing people. i'll be down to-morrow morning again. good-by." at first sarah lay very still and stared at the infirmary ceiling. she did not remember being carried thither, and it seemed to her that she spent days in trying to realize where she was. she remembered afterwards that she was constantly disturbed by a person in a white dress who insisted that she must eat and drink when she did not wish to eat and drink. "it is very good," the person in white would say coaxingly, and sarah would rejoin politely but a little wearily,-"is it so? then won't you please eat it? i don't want to eat." but all her protestations made no difference; the hot broth or cold milk was poured down her throat. once a tall man spent several hours by her bed, and fed her and held her hand and was very strong and comforting. after he had gone she said to the nurse, as though she had made a great discovery, "why, that was william!" and the nurse laughed and said, "yes." slowly she began to distinguish other faces, those of three repentant professors, who brought her flowers and sent her fruit and squab, and miss ellingwood, equally repentant and even more attentive, who made sarah proud by whispering to her that she was going to marry mr. sattarlee, and that no one but sarah was to know it until school was over. presently ethel and gertrude came, one at a time, and one day, after she was sitting up, edward ellis, with his mother and an armful of flowers. "i never knew that being sick was like this!" she said to her nurse. "it isn't for everybody," answered the nurse, smiling. at the end of two weeks she was allowed to get up, and even to study a little. every one was anxious to help her. eugene sprang to take her up in the elevator, even though it was not elevator hours, and mabel and ellen said awkwardly that if she would come back and sleep in her own room they would be very quiet. fortunately, they made the offer before miss ellingwood, who said at once that she could not spare sarah. it was amazing how the sentiment of the school had changed during her illness. dr. ellis stopped her and spoke to her whenever he met her in the hall, and one day he asked her to come into his office. "sarah," he said, "i had a talk with your brother about you, and what he told me made me very proud to have you here, and more sorry than ever that between us we should have let you get sick. now every monday morning i want you to come in and report to me how you feel. no, we'd better make it friday evening. one is most apt to be tired on friday evening. and sarah,"--he smiled at the sudden flush of frightened color,--"you won't climb any more gymnasium beams, will you?" sarah clasped her hands. "_ach_, no! i--i was up before i thought. that is the trouble with me. i do things before i think always. i--i promise." she went out of the office with her old swift step. she felt almost entirely well physically. mentally, she seemed a stranger to herself. her illness, her watching miss ellingwood's happiness, her association with the older girls, made her feel grown up. she was homesick for the twins and albert and the farm and her old, childish self. the solicitude of the professors was amusing to see. "you have been over the year's work," professor minturn reminded her. "now you will have to do only a little reviewing, just a little each day, sarah." it was strange how to faculty and girls alike she had become sarah instead of miss wenner. "you needn't come to class regularly. you can spend that time in study, and i will give you a shorter recitation by yourself." "_ach_, no, i thank you!" cried sarah. it was only under special stress of surprise or gratitude that she said _ach_ now. "i will come to class, thank you." the geography teacher said that he would go over all the political geography with her, and mr. sattarlee did not say a word to miss ellingwood in the evenings until he had heard sarah's latin lesson for the next day. it must have been a good deal of a sacrifice, for they had many things to say to each other. and day by day the spring passed. the maples on the campus budded and burst into full leaf, the oaks and hickories followed more slowly. the air was full of the song of birds and the scent of flowers, and slowly the ruddy color came back to sarah's cheeks to stay. but she was strangely nervous. each hour that brought home and summer nearer brought also the dreaded ordeal of state board examinations a little closer. one might study faithfully through the year, and pass the faculty examinations brilliantly, and one's efforts count for nothing unless the state also put its seal upon the results. and sarah became each day more certain that she should not pass. "it's exactly like a funeral," wailed ethel davis. "they come on wednesday night, seven of them, county superintendents and normal school principals, and the next morning they begin to examine us, and in the afternoon they examine us again, and then they give us ice-cream for supper when nobody has any appetite for ice-cream, and in the evening sometimes there are left-over examinations, and then we spend the whole night worrying for fear we haven't passed, and they spend the whole of the next day correcting papers,--i'm always glad when it's sweltering hot!--and then they insult us by giving us more ice-cream for supper, and then we go into the chapel to hear whether we have passed." "i won't pass," said sarah in despair. "i can't pass." ethel laughed. "nonsense! of course you'll pass, child. why, you have only spelling and political geography and arithmetic and physiology to pass. and you always know your spelling, and you're ahead in geography. you are a little gosling. now suppose you had six branches, latin and history and physical geography and grammar and drawing and civil government. what would you do then, young lady?" "i should die," said sarah solemnly. "but you'll have them next year." "no," answered sarah. "i do not believe i will be here next year. the twins must soon have their chance. i cannot take two years to one class. and if they did let me come back, i would be taking arithmetic and spelling and geography and physiology over again, and you and gertrude would be two classes ahead of me. that is the way it would be." ethel looked at her sharply. "you come out for a walk," she said cheerfully; and she took sarah's books almost by force. she and gertrude had had a talk with dr. ellis, and no dragons could have insisted more firmly than they upon the carrying out of both the letter and the spirit of dr. brownlee's directions. chapter ix the state board there was a tradition that the day of the state board examinations was always fair. this year it was not to be belied. sarah, who had been awake since before daylight, watched the sun rise, clear and bright, as she dressed. miss ellingwood slept peacefully in her room next door, and the morning sweeping and dusting in the halls had not yet begun when sarah sat down on the window-seat with a pile of books before her. there were a dozen things at which she wished to take a final look. even her confidence in the wenner ability to spell had vanished under the strain of the last months, and she meant to glance rapidly through at least half the book. the thought of arithmetic plunged her into despair; there was no use in trying to review that. but she could take a final look at the geography and the physiology. then, strange to say, she did nothing but sit still and look out over the dewy campus until it was time to go to breakfast. "how do you feel?" asked miss ellingwood. "scared," answered sarah, trying to smile. the members of the board breakfasted at the secretary's table, which was next to miss ellingwood's. sarah, who could not keep her eyes away from them, felt that there was a terrible menace in the way they laughed and joked with one another. only exceedingly hard-hearted persons could laugh that way just before they assisted in such an inquisition as their examinations were said to be. there was one tall, brown-bearded man at the head of the table, who looked about smilingly at the whole dining-room; he doubtless imposed the most difficult questions of all he made sarah tremble. if only the day were over and she knew finally and certainly that she had not passed! they would be glad to see her at home, whether she succeeded or failed; and she could hide her stupid head at the farm, and the twins could have her chance. she tried not to think of how wretched she would be if she could never come back. she would never see ethel and gertrude again, she would never be able to think of the school with pleasure. she remembered often that laura had said that coming back to school was like coming back home. and laura did not have as many ties as sarah had and would have. both william and laura had graduated there, and eventually the twins and albert would come too. was she to disgrace them all? suddenly her sad meditations were interrupted by miss ellingwood. "you must eat, sarah. finish your coffee at least. see, they don't look so awesome, do they?" the brown-bearded chairman heard, and turned to miss ellingwood and laughed, and then went on to speak in a round, friendly voice. he had a strangely familiar accent. he spoke a little as sarah's father had spoken, and as henry ebert and uncle daniel and the other pennsylvania germans spoke. sarah thought that he might have come from spring grove itself, and was not far wrong, for he had learned his pennsylvania-german accent in another little town when he was a boy, and would never lose it. he had evidently, also, the pennsylvania-german fondness for a joke. "is she afraid we'll eat her up, miss ellingwood?" he asked; at which a good deal of sarah's fright evaporated. the chapel exercises were more solemn than usual. it was a little like a service before going into battle. at the door, sarah found dr. brownlee waiting to talk to her. he felt her pulse, and laughed at her frightened "did you ever have to take such examinations?" and told her that if she didn't pass, he'd give her still more bitter medicine. sarah almost skipped as she ran along the board-walk to the recitation building. the seats, which were assigned in the largest class-rooms, were not given according to classes. sarah was in the back of the great drawing-room, a junior boy beside her, a senior in front of her. clutched in her hot hand was her fountain-pen, a blotter, three newly sharpened pencils, and two erasers. if sarah failed, it was not to be for lack of tools. even edward ellis, who sat next her, was subdued, and gave her only a faint smile as she arranged them on her desk. in the front of the great room, dr. ellis talked to the board of examiners. this was the main examination room; from here all the papers were given out, and thither they were brought when collected. sarah watched the men absently, half of her mind trying to bound china, when suddenly they all turned and looked in her direction, and the man with the brown beard smiled. sarah was terror-stricken. was the principal telling them that she would not pass? perhaps he would come to her and say that it was hardly worth while for her to try. sarah did not blame her teachers for her breaking down; in her opinion it was her own natural "dumbness." but the examiner who distributed the papers had already left one on her desk, and she seized it, and gazed at the printed questions. at first they looked entirely unfamiliar. the two battles of saratoga? was it part of geography or physiology? it was certainly neither spelling nor arithmetic. she frowned and the questions seemed to vanish, and a blank page to stare her in the face. then, suddenly, she remembered. the battles of saratoga took place on september 19 and october 7, 1777. but it was a history question, and in history one was not examined until the end of one's junior year. history was one of ethel's and gertrude's subjects. but sarah was not there to reason, but to obey. she remembered her extra lessons, took courage, and read another question: "mention four causes of the civil war." that was easy! and there were only five questions in all. presently, when she had answered three, she ventured to lift her head. another paper had been laid on her desk. a new examiner had just passed, his head turned toward the other side of the room, as he answered a question from one of the seniors. this was a double paper: there were four questions in each of two branches, arithmetic and physiology. to sarah's great joy, these seemed even less difficult. she finished the first paper and attacked the second. before she had quite finished, the first examiner came to collect, and with a long sigh she passed in all the papers. she saw mabel thorn and ellen ritter get up and go out, and with them other sub-juniors, but she did not stir. she would wait until she was told to go. if perseverance would help her through, that should not be lacking. the distributor of papers looked at her a little sharply as he went by. "physical geography?" he asked. "yes, sir," answered sarah indistinctly. she was beginning to be confused. she could not remember whether she was to be examined in physical geography or not, but at least she would try. there were questions in latin on the same paper, and a half page of translation. the translation was easy. she remembered having read the little story with mr. sattarlee. but she could not understand why they should give her a latin paper. when one was given extra studies by mistake, did one have to take examinations in them? she was afraid to ask questions. mabel thorn had asked whether she must answer all the questions in order to pass, and the examiner had not answered her very pleasantly. evidently they did not like to be questioned. sarah was too excited to distinguish between necessary and unnecessary questions. bewildered, she set to work once more. the day was as hot as a june day can be. not a breath of air stirred the shades at the windows, which did not seem to keep out a bit of the hot sunshine. the examiners had large palm-leaf fans, which they waved tantalizingly back and forth. occasionally a student stopped writing long enough to fan himself with his examination-paper or to mop his brow. not so sarah. her hand seemed to stick to the paper, the perspiration ran down her cheeks, but she did not stop. once "bobs" ellis furnished a slight diversion. he wandered in in search of edward, and having found him walked lazily to the front of the room, and sat down, panting, to stare at the examiners. for a few minutes he contemplated them gravely, then he opened his mouth in a tremendous yawn and stalked out. every one but sarah laughed and felt better. at noon miss ellingwood tried to coax sarah to eat. "were they hard, sarah?" "i--i guess so." "you must lie down for a while after dinner," said miss ellingwood solicitously. "and you mustn't say a word or think about examinations." "yes, ma'am," answered sarah obediently. she had meant to ask miss ellingwood to help her to fathom the mystery of the morning's examinations, but if miss ellingwood did not wish to talk about examinations, she would not insist. but she did not lie down. she hunted up her spelling-book and glanced once more at "phthisis" and "relieve" and "receive," and all the words which bothered her. it was the middle of the afternoon before she realized that she had written the answers to seven sets of questions. several of the grammar questions had baffled her completely, and when an examiner had laid on her desk a sheet of drawing-paper, and had intimated that she was to draw the fern which was placed near her on a table, she had lifted her hand to protest. but no one seemed to see her hand, and she lowered it again and set desperately to work. edward ellis, next to her, was also drawing the fern, and he looked at her wonderingly. then he remembered that she had been taking some junior courses. it was that which had made her ill. perhaps they were going to let her try the junior examinations. and at any rate the board knew what it was about. edward stood in great awe of that august body, and did not dare to offer any objections to its proceedings. sarah was told also to draw the steps leading to the platform, and she proceeded to obey. she had had only elementary drawing. she saw with alarm that the boys near her were working with careful measurements and ruling. she knew nothing about ruling, or about holding up one's pencil and squinting past it, or the rules of perspective by which they worked so carefully. she only drew the steps as she had drawn things for the twins, as they looked to her. "political geography and arithmetic and physiology and spelling i was to be examined in," she said to herself. "i have been examined in arithmetic and physiology and history and latin and physical geography and grammar and drawing, but not yet in spelling or political geography. most of these things do not come till next year. _ach_, i do not know what it means!" the examiner had collected the papers once more, and laid a new one on her desk. sarah glanced at it, then finally she raised her voice in protest. "i don't take civil government," she said. "i never took it. i don't know anything about it. if i knew anything about it, i--" "what class are you?" asked the examiner shortly. "the sub-junior." "then you don't belong here." he spoke impatiently. he remembered that the papers which she had handed in in the morning were the most voluminous in the class. lengthy papers do not please gentlemen who have hundreds to examine. "you belong over in the other room, where the sub-juniors are being examined in spelling. you'll have to hurry. people that are late are sometimes refused admission." sarah gathered pencils and erasers and fountain-pen, and flew across the hall. the examiner there received her even less cheerfully. "you are very late," he said sharply. "spell 'picnicking.'" he was somewhat mollified by her prompt answer. ten sub-juniors had misspelled the word. sarah breathed a long sigh and found a seat. her mind was suddenly clear; she felt that she could not fail even if he gave her all the hard words in the book. here her foot was on its native heath. william would be able to forgive her for knowing nothing about latin, but no wenner would ever be able to forgive her for being a poor speller. long after the examiner had marked them, he continued to amuse himself by giving them all the "catchy," treacherous words he could think of. he coupled words on purpose to snare them, "four" and "forty," "precede" and "proceed," "defendant" and "precedent." he gave them all the short, trying words, like "fiery," which half the class spelled "f-i-r-e-y," and all the long words, which one does not expect to meet with outside the spelling-book, like "eleemosynary" and "monocotyledon" and "asseveration." when he finished, both he and the students were out of breath. of all the class only sarah had not missed a word. "are you the young lady who missed time by being sick?" he asked. "yes, sir." "umph!" said the examiner non-committally. ethel and gertrude waited for sarah outside the door, and walked across the campus with her. as in a dream she heard them discussing their questions. "the two battles of saratoga were on september 19 and october 7, 1777," said gertrude. "gates was in command of the americans and burgoyne of the british." "yes," answered ethel. "and the treaty of ghent was the one which ended the war of 1812, wasn't it?" "were those _your_ questions?" asked sarah wearily. "yes, what were yours like?" "_ach_, i don't know. 'i want,'"--she laughingly quoted a jingle which miss ellingwood often repeated,- "'i want to have my supper, and i want to go to bed,' and then i want to sleep and sleep and sleep, and then i will not know for a long time that i am put out of the normal school." chapter x the chairman makes a speech the wild uproar of the gymnasium entertainment did not compare in intensity with the suppressed excitement of the day following examinations. there were no school-exercises except a chapel-service in the morning, which the students wished might be longer, since it was all they had to occupy them during the long and tedious day. the girls wandered about from room to room, the seniors, who were to have a vacation of a week before commencement, packing their trunks half-heartedly, the others doing nothing. it did not seem worth while to begin anything until one knew whether one was to return. the board was closeted down in the principal's office, where they worked from breakfast till dark. sometimes a student, passing through the hall when the door was opened, saw them laboring at long tables, each with a great pile of papers before him and a pitcher of water hard by. if the student had hoped for hot weather so that the board might be uncomfortable, he prayed now much more fervently that their tempers might not be influenced by the heat. "they say the marks go down five points whenever the thermometer goes up one," laughed edward ellis. sarah slept until long after breakfast-time. when she woke miss ellingwood was writing at her desk. "am i put out?" asked sarah faintly. "not yet," answered miss ellingwood. "here is some breakfast for you." once in the history of the school, the board had finished its work before supper, and the students who were wandering about the fields back of the campus out of hearing of the bell had to get their reports from dr. ellis himself,--a sad duty for those who had failed. since then no one ever wandered away in the afternoon, for fear that the ominous bell might ring and he not be there to hear. usually it did not ring till eight o'clock, and sometimes it was ten. by that time hopes had often sunk very low, and there were strange rumors flying about. "they say that ten seniors have failed, and half the junior class," some one would announce. "they're debating about them now. dr. ellis thinks that some of them can be changed." the secretary always shook his head gloomily when applied to. "i never knew such a year," was his invariable response; and it never occurred to any one to suppose that he meant a good year. as usual there was ice-cream for supper. gertrude manley pretended to wave it aside. "at dinner i might have been able to eat a few mouthfuls," she groaned. "but now! no, thank you!" it was with a great sigh of relief that sarah watched her take a second helping. perhaps they were not as despairing as they seemed. it would be bad enough if she should not pass, but it would be much worse if ethel and gertrude should fail. sarah spent the hours after supper wandering up and down the hall which led to the chapel. she did not expect to pass; the calmer thought of to-day had convinced her that she had been the victim of some strange mistake in the giving out of the papers. it was altogether her own fault. she should have told them that she was not a junior. in spite of her certainty, however, she was wildly excited. no one could have been in the school for a minute and have remained calm. miss ellingwood was excited, and dr. ellis and eugene, who, when he passed an anxious boy in the hall, drew his finger across his throat to signify the operation in which the state board was engaged. presently ethel and gertrude came down the hall. "we were looking for you, sarah." "i don't believe it will ever ring," cried sarah. "hark!" said ethel. they heard the first faint ring of the gong on the boys' side of the building, then the bell rang sharply above their heads. "our fate is sealed!" cried gertrude. "we are doomed. come on to the slaughter!" she seized ethel by one hand and sarah by the other, and they were the first to reach the chapel-stairs. behind them doors were opening, and there was the sound of hurrying steps and excited voices. "let us sit here on the last row," suggested sarah. "so that we can be more easily borne hence," laughed gertrude. the state board was already seated on the platform. they were all talking and laughing as heartily as they had the day before. the chairman carried a paper in his hand. he made some joke about it, and his colleagues all laughed; then he laid it down on a long box on the table by his side. "the names are on that paper," whispered ethel. "yours is," answered sarah, "but mine isn't. i know that much." mercifully sarah was not kept long in suspense. the students had never gathered so quickly. the doors were closed, and then dr. ellis announced that the chairman would read the names of those who had passed. the brown-bearded chairman rose slowly, still laughing with the man next to him. then he looked out solemnly over the audience and the audience looked back solemnly at him. he lifted the paper from the table, looked at it solemnly too, and then laid it back. "nobody passed, perhaps," whispered sarah. the chairman had begun to speak. "ladies and gentlemen," he said. "i am not going to hurt you." at which there was a great laugh, and then a settling back into easier positions. "you all look so frightened and so sure that you have failed, that you make us feel that our judgment is at fault and that we have made a mistake to let any of you through. there, that's better! once, a good many years ago, when i was a little boy--" he stopped and looked at them comically over his glasses--"which would you rather have first, the story about the time when i was a little boy, or the names? all in favor of the names say '_ay_.'" the response left no room for doubt upon that question. "well, then. we'll take the sub-juniors first. those who have passed are--" the falling of the proverbial pin would have made a loud noise in the silence which ensued. sarah felt a frightened thrill run up and down her back. suppose she _should_ pass! how glorious it would be! then william and laura would feel that their faith in her had been warranted, that their sacrifice was not in vain. it would encourage the twins to study, it would astonish the neighbors. sarah leaned forward, one hand tight in ethel's, one in gertrude's. suppose she should pass! it seemed to her hours before she leaned limply back. her name was not on the list. she had been mad to expect it. mabel thorn's was there and ellen ritter's; she had thought they were stupid and lazy, yet they had passed. the girl who had packed her ink-bottle in her trunk had passed. even she could answer state board questions. any of these would have had sense enough to object if they had been given junior papers instead of some of their own. she felt her companions' hands tighten sympathetically on her own, and she struggled bravely to keep back the tears. she would not cry. not even if they expelled her would she cry. the cheerful voice went on reading. ethel and gertrude had passed; they let go of sarah's hands for an instant to clasp each other's, and smiled at each other above her head, while she looked at them sadly. they were middlers now, and in another year they would be seniors with all the senior privileges. they would study psychology and methods of teaching, and they would begin to teach in the model school and lead the gymnasium classes, and soon they would be gone. even if sarah were allowed to come back to redeem herself, they would be too far ahead to think of her. she would have to make friends anew, and-the list of juniors was finished and the speaker folded his paper. "the middlers have all passed," he said, smiling, and a wild cheer responded. the excitement was no longer to be kept under control. "as for the seniors--" the chairman paused. the cheer died down into silence. it was time once more to drop the proverbial pin. "they have all passed too." then bedlam suddenly broke loose. boys and girls were on their feet, there was cheer after cheer, and dr. ellis sat smiling and making no effort to subdue them. perhaps it would have been a relief to him to join. his pupils had never done so well. after a long time the chairman held up his hand. "i have still more to say," he declared. "and after i am through with the announcements you will still have to listen to my story about the time when i was a little boy. but first i have a story to tell about a little girl. "when we are boys and girls, we are taught to think that our teachers are infallible, that they can never make mistakes, and it is good for us to think so. it is equally good for us to find out later that teachers and grown-up people have made mistakes. it makes us feel easier about our own. "there is a young lady in this school who has found this out. she came here to learn something about books, after a hard experience had taught her many more valuable lessons, and this is the way the teachers treated her. instead of giving her as little to do as possible, and watching to see that she played, and taking her books away from her by force if necessary, they began to give her extra work to do. it wasn't altogether their fault, because they were not accustomed to having to restrain pupils. overstudy is a little like smallpox. many doctors wouldn't recognize smallpox because they have never seen a case. it was the same way with these teachers who let this girl work too hard. "that, one would think, was enough hardship for one year. but worse things were to happen to her. "yesterday--and this story is a terrible confession for a state board official to make--yesterday the state board gave her the wrong papers. the principal told us about her,--i suppose he meant us to mark her as easily as we could. but the examiner who distributed the sub-junior papers thought that the principal had said she was a sub-junior, and the examiner who distributed the junior papers thought she was a junior, and so both gave her papers, and she--" gertrude manley felt suddenly a head against her shoulder. "why, sarah!" she whispered, and saw only a bit of scarlet cheek. "and she," the chairman went on, "being accustomed to having extra work, said nothing and sawed wood, with this result." he unfolded again the paper in his hand. "she passed the arithmetic, physiology, and spelling which she was expected to pass, with good marks. she did not take the sub-junior political geography, but she passed the junior physical geography and the junior latin and the junior history with good marks. in these branches i believe she did the extra work during the winter. in the junior grammar, which includes the sub-junior grammar, she just made passing mark. we tried to persuade ourselves that she hadn't really passed, but she was too much for us. even when a fern and some steps were thrust before her to be drawn, she did not falter but drew them. the civil government paper she did not attempt, which surprised us greatly. it was very inconsiderate of the teacher of civil government not to give her extra lessons too. i think dr. ellis should speak to him about it. and now, what shall we do with this girl?" not one of the gasping students offered a suggestion. "well, there are several possibilities," went on the chairman. "we can say that inasmuch as she hasn't passed her sub-junior geography, she hasn't passed at all and will have to take the year over. but that doesn't seem fair. or we can say that she is a junior in spite of the geography. the only objection to that is that she will grow very lazy next year with nothing new to study but civil government. not all of us approve of that. then there is one other plan. we can make her a middler, with the provision that she makes up the civil government some time within the next two years. it is unprecedented, but it can be done. what does the school think of this plan?" the pupils looked about in complete mystification. was it all true, or was it only a story? then a few of them began to guess whom the chairman meant. one of them was edward ellis. "i think she should be made a middler," he said. [illustration: he kept her beside him] "very well, so be it." the chairman opened the box at his side. "i wish that state boards did not change, so that we might all come back here next year and make it easy for this young lady; but since we can't, we wish to apologize to her, and to give her a little present to remember us by." he lifted a great handful of roses from the box. "and now, good-by, and good luck." and he stood still with the bouquet in his hands, forgetting apparently the promised story of his boyhood. "well," he said, with a smile, his voice more pennsylvania-german than ever, "where is this sarah wenner, about whom i have been talking?" ethel davis's voice shook. "go and get your flowers, youngster." "i can't." "you must. run along." she rose to let sarah pass, and then some one near by stood up to see, and in a moment the school was on its feet and some one was singing. it was the old tune which for many years had closed the session of the state board, the long-metre doxology. they finished the first line as the chairman put the flowers into sarah's arms. then, seeing what a little girl she was, he laid his hand on her shoulder and kept her beside him, while he startled her with his great bass. and sarah gave up trying to puzzle out how what the chairman said could be true. she saw ethel smiling at her and gertrude waving her hand, and professor minturn and miss ellingwood and mr. sattarlee laughing together at the back of the room, and she grew a little less frightened and clasped her flowers a little more tightly in her arms. the troubles of the past year seemed to dwindle, the joys to grow, until it was all joy and happiness, and she lifted up her voice and sang out with all her heart. * * * * * transcriber's notes: obvious punctuation errors repaired. italic text is denoted by _underscores_. the guilty river by wilkie collins contents chapter i on the way to the river chapter ii the river introduces us chapter iii he shows himself chapter iv he explains himself chapter v he betrays himself chapter vi the return of the portfolio chapter vii the best society chapter viii the deaf lodger chapter ix mrs. roylake's game: first move chapter x warned! chapter xi warned again! chapter xii warned for the last time! chapter xiii the claret jug chapter xiv gloody settles the account chapter xv the miller's hospitality chapter xvi bribery and corruption chapter xvii utter failure chapter xviii the mistress of trimley deen chapter i on the way to the river for reasons of my own, i excused myself from accompanying my stepmother to a dinner-party given in our neighborhood. in my present humor, i preferred being alone--and, as a means of getting through my idle time, i was quite content to be occupied in catching insects. provided with a brush and a mixture of rum and treacle, i went into fordwitch wood to set the snare, familiar to hunters of moths, which we call sugaring the trees. the summer evening was hot and still; the time was between dusk and dark. after ten years of absence in foreign parts, i perceived changes in the outskirts of the wood, which warned me not to enter it too confidently when i might find a difficulty in seeing my way. remaining among the outermost trees, i painted the trunks with my treacherous mixture--which allured the insects of the night, and stupefied them when they settled on its rank surface. the snare being set, i waited to see the intoxication of the moths. a time passed, dull and dreary. the mysterious assemblage of trees was blacker than the blackening sky. of millions of leaves over my head, none pleased my ear, in the airless calm, with their rustling summer song. the first flying creatures, dimly visible by moments under the gloomy sky, were enemies whom i well knew by experience. many a fine insect specimen have i lost, when the bats were near me in search of their evening meal. what had happened before, in other woods, happened now. the first moth that i had snared was a large one, and a specimen well worth securing. as i stretched out my hand to take it, the apparition of a flying shadow passed, swift and noiseless, between me and the tree. in less than an instant the insect was snatched away, when my fingers were within an inch of it. the bat had begun his supper, and the man and the mixture had provided it for him. out of five moths caught, i became the victim of clever theft in the case of three. the other two, of no great value as specimens, i was just quick enough to secure. under other circumstances, my patience as a collector would still have been a match for the dexterity of the bats. but on that evening--a memorable evening when i look back at it now--my spirits were depressed, and i was easily discouraged. my favorite studies of the insect-world seemed to have lost their value in my estimation. in the silence and the darkness i lay down under a tree, and let my mind dwell on myself and on my new life to come. i am gerard roylake, son and only child of the late gerard roylake of trimley deen. at twenty-two years of age, my father's death had placed me in possession of his large landed property. on my arrival from germany, only a few hours since, the servants innocently vexed me. when i drove up to the door, i heard them say to each other: "here is the young squire." my father used to be called "the old squire." i shrank from being reminded of him--not as other sons in my position might have said, because it renewed my sorrow for his death. there was no sorrow in me to be renewed. it is a shocking confession to make: my heart remained unmoved when i thought of the father whom i had lost. our mothers have the most sacred of all claims on our gratitude and our love. they have nourished us with their blood; they have risked their lives in bringing us into the world; they have preserved and guided our helpless infancy with divine patience and love. what claim equally strong and equally tender does the other parent establish on his offspring? what motive does the instinct of his young children find for preferring their father before any other person who may be a familiar object in their daily lives? they love him--naturally and rightly love him--because he lives in their remembrance (if he is a good man) as the first, the best, the dearest of their friends. my father was a bad man. he was my mother's worst enemy; and he was never my friend. the little that i know of the world tells me that it is not the common lot in life of women to marry the object of their first love. a sense of duty had compelled my mother to part with the man who had won her heart, in the first days of her maidenhood; and my father had discovered it, after his marriage. his insane jealousy foully wronged the truest wife, the most long-suffering woman that ever lived. i have no patience to write of it. for ten miserable years she suffered her martyrdom; she lived through it, dear angel, sweet suffering soul, for my sake. at her death, my father was able to gratify his hatred of the son whom he had never believed to be his own child. under pretence of preferring the foreign system of teaching, he sent me to a school in france. my education having been so far completed, i was next transferred to a german university. never again did i see the place of my birth, never did i get a letter from home, until the family lawyer wrote from trimley deen, requesting me to assume possession of my house and lands, under the entail. i should not even have known that my father had taken a second wife but for some friend (or enemy)--i never discovered the person--who sent me a newspaper containing an announcement of the marriage. when we saw each other for the first time, my stepmother and i met necessarily as strangers. we were elaborately polite, and we each made a meritorious effort to appear at our ease. on her side, she found herself confronted by a young man, the new master of the house, who looked more like a foreigner than an englishman--who, when he was congratulated (in view of the approaching season) on the admirable preservation of his partridges and pheasants, betrayed an utter want of interest in the subject; and who showed no sense of shame in acknowledging that his principal amusements were derived from reading books, and collecting insects. how i must have disappointed mrs. roylake! and how considerately she hid from me the effect that i had produced! turning next to my own impressions, i discovered in my newly-found relative, a little light-eyed, light-haired, elegant woman; trim, and bright, and smiling; dressed to perfection, clever to her fingers' ends, skilled in making herself agreeable--and yet, in spite of these undeniable fascinations, perfectly incomprehensible to me. after my experience of foreign society, i was incapable of understanding the extraordinary importance which my stepmother seemed to attach to rank and riches, entirely for their own sakes. when she described my unknown neighbors, from one end of the county to the other, she took it for granted that i must be interested in them on account of their titles and their fortunes. she held me up to my own face, as a kind of idol to myself, without producing any better reason than might be found in my inheritance of an income of sixteen thousand pounds. and when i expressed (in excusing myself for not accompanying her, uninvited, to the dinner-party) a perfectly rational doubt whether i might prove to be a welcome guest, mrs. roylake held up her delicate little hands in unutterable astonishment. "my dear gerard, in your position!" she appeared to think that this settled the question. i submitted in silence; the truth is, i was beginning already to despair of my prospects. kind as my stepmother was, and agreeable as she was, what chance could i see of establishing any true sympathy between us? and, if my neighbors resembled her in their ways of thinking, what hope could i feel of finding new friends in england to replace the friends in germany whom i had lost? a stranger among my own country people, with the every-day habits and every-day pleasures of my youthful life left behind me--without plans or hopes to interest me in looking at the future--it is surely not wonderful that my spirits had sunk to their lowest ebb, and that i even failed to appreciate with sufficient gratitude the fortunate accident of my birth. perhaps the journey to england had fatigued me, or perhaps the controlling influences of the dark and silent night proved irresistible. this only is certain: my solitary meditations under the tree ended in sleep. i was awakened by a light falling on my face. the moon had risen. in the outward part of the wood, beyond which i had not advanced, the pure and welcome light penetrated easily through the scattered trees. i got up and looked about me. a path into the wood now showed itself, broader and better kept than any path that i could remember in the days of my boyhood. the moon showed it to me plainly, and my curiosity was aroused. following the new track, i found that it led to a little glade which i at once recognized. the place was changed in one respect only. a neglected water-spring had been cleared of brambles and stones, and had been provided with a drinking cup, a rustic seat, and a latin motto on a marble slab. the spring at once reminded me of a greater body of water--a river, at some little distance farther on, which ran between the trees on one side, and the desolate open country on the other. ascending from the glade, i found myself in one of the narrow woodland paths, familiar to me in the by-gone time. unless my memory was at fault, this was the way which led to an old water-mill on the river-bank. the image of the great turning wheel, which half-frightened half-fascinated me when i was a child, now presented itself to my memory for the first time after an interval of many years. in my present frame of mind, the old scene appealed to me with the irresistible influence of an old friend. i said to myself: "shall i walk on, and try if i can find the river and the mill again?" this perfectly trifling question to decide presented to me, nevertheless, fantastic difficulties so absurd that they might have been difficulties encountered in a dream. to my own astonishment, i hesitated--walked back again along the path by which i had advanced--reconsidered my decision, without knowing why--and turning in the opposite direction, set my face towards the river once more. i wonder how my life would have ended, if i had gone the other way? chapter ii the river introduces us i stood alone on the bank of the ugliest stream in england. the moonlight, pouring its unclouded radiance over open space, failed to throw a beauty not their own on those sluggish waters. broad and muddy, their stealthy current flowed onward to the sea, without a rock to diversify, without a bubble to break, the sullen surface. on the side from which i was looking at the river, the neglected trees grew so close together that they were undermining their own lives, and poisoning each other. on the opposite bank, a rank growth of gigantic bulrushes hid the ground beyond, except where it rose in hillocks, and showed its surface of desert sand spotted here and there by mean patches of health. a repellent river in itself, a repellent river in its surroundings, a repellent river even in its name. it was called the loke. neither popular tradition nor antiquarian research could explain what the name meant, or could tell when the name had been given. "we call it the loke; they do say no fish can live in it; and it dirties the clean salt water when it runs into the sea." such was the character of the river in the estimation of the people who knew it best. but i was pleased to see the loke again. the ugly river, like the woodland glade, looked at me with the face of an old friend. on my right hand side rose the venerable timbers of the water-mill. the wheel was motionless, at that time of night; and the whole structure looked--as remembered objects will look, when we see them again after a long interval--smaller than i had supposed it to be. otherwise, i could discover no change in the mill. but the wooden cottage attached to it had felt the devastating march of time. a portion of the decrepit building still stood revealed in its wretched old age; propped, partly by beams which reached from the thatched roof to the ground, and partly by the wall of a new cottage attached, presenting in yellow brick-work a hideous modern contrast to all that was left of its ancient neighbor. had the miller whom i remembered, died; and were these changes the work of his successor? i thought of asking the question, and tried the door: it was fastened. the windows were all dark excepting one, which i discovered in the upper storey, at the farther side of the new building. here, there was a dim light burning. it was impossible to disturb a person, who, for all i knew to the contrary, might be going to bed. i turned back to the loke, proposing to extend my walk, by a mile or a little more, to a village that i remembered on the bank of the river. i had not advanced far, when the stillness around me was disturbed by an intermittent sound of splashing in the water. pausing to listen, i heard next the working of oars in their rowlocks. after another interval a boat appeared, turning a projection in the bank, and rowed by a woman pulling steadily against the stream. as the boat approached me in the moonlight, this person corrected my first impression, and revealed herself as a young girl. so far as i could perceive she was a stranger to me. who could the girl be, alone on the river at that time of night? idly curious i followed the boat, instead of pursuing my way to the village, to see whether she would stop at the mill, or pass it. she stopped at the mill, secured the boat, and stepped on shore. taking a key from her pocket, she was about to open the door of the cottage, when i advanced and spoke to her. as far from recognizing her as ever, i found myself nevertheless thinking of an odd outspoken child, living at the mill in past years, who had been one of my poor mother's favorites at our village school. i ran the risk of offending her, by bluntly expressing the thought which was then in my mind. "is it possible that you are cristel toller?" i said. the question seemed to amuse her. "why shouldn't i be cristel toller?" she asked. "you were a little girl," i explained, "when i saw you last. you are so altered now--and so improved--that i should never have guessed you might be the daughter of giles toller of the mill, if i had not seen you opening the cottage door." she acknowledged my compliment by a curtsey, which reminded me again of the village school. "thank you, young man," she said smartly; "i wonder who you are?" "try if you can recollect me," i suggested. "may i take a long look at you?" "as long as you like." she studied my face, with a mental effort to remember me, which gathered her pretty eyebrows together quaintly in a frown. "there's something in his eyes," she remarked, not speaking to me but to herself, "which doesn't seem to be quite strange. but i don't know his voice, and i don't know his beard." she considered a little, and addressed herself directly to me once more. "now i look at you again, you seem to be a gentleman. are you one?" "i hope so." "then you're not making game of me?" "my dear, i am only trying if you can remember gerard roylake." while in charge of the boat, the miller's daughter had been rowing with bared arms; beautiful dusky arms, at once delicate and strong. thus far, she had forgotten to cover them up. the moment mentioned my name, she started back as if i had frightened her--pulled her sleeves down in a hurry--and hid the objects of my admiration as an act of homage to myself! her verbal apologies followed. "you used to be such a sweet-spoken pretty little boy," she said, "how should i know you again, with a big voice and all that hair on your face?" it seemed to strike her on a sudden that she had been too familiar. "oh, lord," i heard her say to herself, "half the county belongs to him!" she tried another apology, and hit this time on the conventional form. "i beg your pardon, sir. welcome back to your own country, sir. i wish you good-night, sir." she attempted to escape into the cottage; i followed her to the threshold of the door. "surely it's not time to go to bed yet," i ventured to say. she was still on her good behavior to her landlord. "not if you object to it, sir," she answered. this recognition of my authority was irresistible. cristel had laid me under an obligation to her good influence for which i felt sincerely grateful--she had made me laugh, for the first time since my return to england. "we needn't say good-night just yet," i suggested; "i want to hear a little more about you. shall i come in?" she stepped out of the doorway even more rapidly than she had stepped into it. i might have been mistaken, but i thought cristel seemed to be actually alarmed by my proposal. we walked up and down the river-bank. on every occasion when we approached the cottage, i detected her in stealing a look at the ugly modern part of it. there could be no mistake this time; i saw doubt, i saw anxiety in her face. what was going on at the mill? i made some domestic inquiries, beginning with her father. was the miller alive and well? "oh yes, sir. father gets thinner as he gets older--that's all." "did he send you out by yourself, at this late hour, in the boat?" "they were waiting for a sack of flour down there," she replied, pointing in the direction of the river-side village. "father isn't as quick as he used to be. he's often late over his work now." was there no one to give giles toller the help that he must need at his age? "do you and your father really live alone in this solitary place?" i said. a change of expression appeared in her bright brown eyes which roused my curiosity. i also observed that she evaded a direct reply. "what makes you doubt, sir, if father and i live alone?" she asked. i pointed to the new cottage. "that ugly building," i answered, "seems to give you more room than you want--unless there is somebody else living at the mill." i had no intention of trying to force the reply from her which she had hitherto withheld; but she appeared to put that interpretation on what i had said. "if you will have it," she burst out, "there is somebody else living with us." "a man who helps your father?" "no. a man who pays my father's rent." i was quite unprepared for such a reply as this: cristel had surprised me. to begin with, her father was "well-connected," as we say in england. his younger brother had made a fortune in commerce, and had vainly offered him the means of retiring from the mill with a sufficient income. then again, giles toller was known to have saved money. his domestic expenses made no heavy demand on his purse; his german wife (whose christian name was now borne by his daughter) had died long since; his sons were no burden on him; they had never lived at the mill in my remembrance. with all these reasons against his taking a stranger into his house, he had nevertheless, if my interpretation of cristel's answer was the right one, let his spare rooms to a lodger. "mr. toller can't possibly be in want of money," i said. "the more money father has, the more he wants. that's the reason," she added bitterly, "why he asked for plenty of room when the cottage was built, and why we have got a lodger." "is the lodger a gentleman?" "i don't know. is a man a gentleman, if he keeps a servant? oh, don't trouble to think about it, sir! it isn't worth thinking about." this was plain speaking at last. "you don't seem to like the lodger," i said. "i hate him!" "why?" she turned on me with a look of angry amazement--not undeserved, i must own, on my part--which showed her dark beauty in the perfection of its luster and its power. to my eyes she was at the moment irresistibly charming. i daresay i was blind to the defects in her face. my good german tutor used to lament that there was too much of my boyhood still left in me. honestly admiring her, i let my favorable opinion express itself a little too plainly. "what a splendid creature you are!" i burst out. cristel did her duty to herself and to me; she passed over my little explosion of nonsense without taking the smallest notice of it. "master gerard," she began--and checked herself. "please to excuse me, sir; you have set my head running on old times. what i want to say is: you were not so inquisitive when you were a young gentleman in short jackets. please behave as you used to behave then, and don't say anything more about our lodger. i hate him because i hate him. there!" ignorant as i was of the natures of women, i understood her at last. cristel's opinion of the lodger was evidently the exact opposite of the lodger's opinion of cristel. when i add that this discovery did decidedly operate as a relief to my mind, the impression produced on me by the miller's daughter is stated without exaggeration and without reserve. "good-night," she repeated, "for the last time." i held out my hand. "is it quite right, sir," she modestly objected, "for such as me to shake hands with such as you?" she did it nevertheless; and dropping my hand, cast a farewell look at the mysterious object of her interest--the new cottage. her variable humor changed on the instant. apparently in a state of unendurable irritation, she stamped on the ground. "just what i didn't want to happen!" she said to herself. chapter iii he shows himself i too, looked at the cottage, and made a discovery that surprised me at one of the upper windows. if i could be sure that the moon had not deceived me, the most beautiful face that i had ever seen was looking down on us--and it was the face of a man! by the uncertain light i could discern the perfection of form in the features, and the expression of power which made it impossible to mistake the stranger for a woman, although his hair grew long and he was without either moustache or beard. he was watching us intently; he neither moved nor spoke when we looked up at him. "evidently the lodger," i whispered to cristel. "what a handsome man!" she tossed her head contemptuously: my expression of admiration seemed to have irritated her. "i didn't want him to see you!" she said. "the lodger persecutes me with his attentions; he's impudent enough to be jealous of me." she spoke without even attempting to lower her voice. i endeavored to warn her. "he's at the window still," i said, in tones discreetly lowered; "he can hear everything you are saying." "not one word of it, mr. gerard." "what do you mean?" "the man is deaf. don't look at him again. don't speak to me again. go home--pray go home!" without further explanation, she abruptly entered the cottage, and shut the door. as i turned into the path which led through the wood i heard a voice behind me. it said: "stop, sir." i stopped directly, standing in the shadow cast by the outermost line of trees, which i had that moment reached. in the moonlight that i had left behind me, i saw again the man whom i had discovered at the window. his figure, tall and slim; his movements, graceful and easy, were in harmony with his beautiful face. he lifted his long finely-shaped hands, and clasped them with a frantic gesture of entreaty. "for god's sake," he said, "don't be offended with me!" his voice startled me even more than his words; i had never heard anything like it before. low, dull, and muffled, it neither rose nor fell; it spoke slowly and deliberately, without laying the slightest emphasis on any one of the words that it uttered. in the astonishment of the moment, i forgot what cristel had told me. i answered him as i should have answered any other unknown person who had spoken to me. "what do you want?" his hands dropped; his head sunk on his breast. "you are speaking, sir, to a miserable creature who can't hear you. i am deaf." i stepped nearer to him, intending to raise my voice in pity for his infirmity. he shuddered, and signed to me to keep back. "don't come close to my ear; don't shout." as he spoke, strong excitement flashed at me in his eyes, without producing the slightest change in his voice. "i don't deny," he resumed, "that i can hear sometimes when people take that way with me. they hurt when they do it. their voices go through my nerves as a knife might go through my flesh. i live at the mill, sir; i have a great favour to ask. will you come and speak to me in my room--for five minutes only?" i hesitated. any other man in my place, would, i think, have done the same; receiving such an invitation as this from a stranger, whose pitiable infirmity seemed to place him beyond the pale of social intercourse. he must have guessed what was passing in my mind; he tried me again in words which might have proved persuasive, had they been uttered in the customary variety of tone. "i can't help being a stranger to you; i can't help being deaf. you're a young man. you look more merciful and more patient than young men in general. won't you hear what i have to say? won't you tell me what i want to know?" how were we to communicate? did he by any chance suppose that i had learnt the finger alphabet? i touched my fingers and shook my head, as a means of dissipating his delusion, if it existed. he instantly understood me. "even if you knew the finger alphabet," he said, "it would be of no use. i have been too miserable to learn it--my deafness only came on me a little more than a year since. pardon me if i am obliged to give you trouble--i ask persons who pity me to write their answers when i speak to them. come to my room, and you will find what you want--a candle to write by." was his will, as compared with mine, the stronger will of the two? and was it helped (insensibly to myself) by his advantages of personal appearance? i can only confess that his apology presented a picture of misery to my mind, which shook my resolution to refuse him. his ready penetration discovered this change in his favour: he at once took advantage of it. "five minutes of your time is all i ask for," he said. "won't you indulge a man who sees his fellow-creatures all talking happily round him, and feels dead and buried among them?" the very exaggeration of his language had its effect on my mind. it revealed to me the horrible isolation among humanity of the deaf, as i had never understood it yet. discretion is, i am sorry to say, not one of the strong points in my character. i committed one more among the many foolish actions of my life; i signed to the stranger to lead the way back to the mill. chapter iv he explains himself giles toller's miserly nature had offered to his lodger shelter from wind and rain, and the furniture absolutely necessary to make a bedroom habitable--and nothing more. there was no carpet on the floor, no paper on the walls, no ceiling to hide the rafters of the roof. the chair that i sat on was the one chair in the room; the man whose guest i had rashly consented to be found a seat on his bed. upon his table i saw pens and pencils, paper and ink, and a battered brass candlestick with a common tallow candle in it. his changes of clothing were flung on the bed; his money was left on the unpainted wooden chimney-piece; his wretched little morsel of looking-glass (propped up near the money) had been turned with its face to the wall. he perceived that the odd position of this last object had attracted my notice. "vanity and i have parted company," he explained; "i shrink from myself when i look at myself now. the ugliest man living--if he has got his hearing--is a more agreeable man in society than i am. does this wretched place disgust you?" he pushed a pencil and some sheets of writing-paper across the table to me. i wrote my reply: "the place makes me sorry for you." he shook his head. "your sympathy is thrown away on me. a man who has lost his social relations with his fellow-creatures doesn't care how he lodges or where he lives. when he has found solitude, he has found all he wants for the rest of his days. shall we introduce ourselves? it won't be easy for me to set the example." i used the pencil again: "why not?" "because you will expect me to give you my name. i can't do it. i have ceased to bear my family name; and, being out of society, what need have i for an assumed name? as for my christian name, it's so detestably ugly that i hate the sight and sound of it. here, they know me as the lodger. will you have that? or will you have an appropriate nick-name? i come of a mixed breed; and i'm likely, after what has happened to me, to turn out a worthless fellow. call me the cur. oh, you needn't start! that's as accurate a description of me as any other. what's _your_ name?" i wrote it for him. his face darkened when he found out who i was. "young, personally attractive, and a great landowner," he said. "i saw you just now talking familiarly with cristel toller. i didn't like that at the time; i like it less than ever now." my pencil asked him, without ceremony, what he meant. he was ready with his reply. "i mean this: you owe something to the good luck which has placed you where you are. keep your familiarity for ladies in your own rank of life." this (to a young man like me) was unendurable insolence. i had hitherto refrained from taking him at his own bitter word in the matter of nick-name. in the irritation of the moment, i now first resolved to adopt his suggestion seriously. the next slip of paper that i handed to him administered the smartest rebuff that my dull brains could discover on the spur of the moment: "the cur is requested to keep his advice till he is asked for it." for the first time, something like a smile showed itself faintly on his lips--and represented the only effect which my severity had produced. he still followed his own train of thought, as resolutely and as impertinently as ever. "i haven't seen you talking to cristel before to-night. have you been meeting her in secret?" in justice to the girl, i felt that i ought to set him right, so far. taking up the pencil again, i told this strange man that i had just returned to england, after an absence of many years in foreign countries--that i had known cristel when we were both children--and that i had met her purely by accident, when he had detected us talking outside the cottage. seeing me pause, after advancing to that point in the writing of my reply, he held out his hand impatiently for the paper. i signed him to wait, and added a last sentence: "understand this; i will answer no more questions--i have done with the subject." he read what i had written with the closest attention. but his inveterate suspicion of me was not set at rest, even yet. "are you likely to come this way again?" he asked. i pointed to the final lines of my writing, and got up to go. this assertion of my will against his roused him. he stopped me at the door--not by a motion of his hand but by the mastery of his look. the dim candlelight afforded me no help in determining the color of his eyes. dark, large, and finely set in his head, there was a sinister passion in them, at that moment, which held me in spite of myself. still as monotonous as ever, his voice in some degree expressed the frenzy that was in him, by suddenly rising in its pitch when he spoke to me next. "mr. roylake, i love her. mr. roylake, i am determined to marry her. any man who comes between me and that cruel girl--ah, she's as hard as one of her father's millstones; it's the misery of my life, it's the joy of my life, to love her--i tell you, young sir, any man who comes between cristel and me does it at his peril. remember that." i had no wish to give offence--but his threatening me in this manner was so absurd that i gave way to the impression of the moment, and laughed. he stepped up to me, with such an expression of demoniacal rage and hatred in his face that he became absolutely ugly in an instant. "i amuse you, do i?" he said. "you don't know the man you're trifling with. you had better know me. you _shall_ know me." he turned away, and walked up and down the wretched little room, deep in thought. "i don't want this matter between us to end badly," he said, interrupting his meditations--then returning to them again--and then once more addressing me. "you're young, you're thoughtless; but you don't look like a bad fellow. i wonder whether i can trust you? not one man in a thousand would do it. never mind. i'm the one man in ten thousand who does it. mr. gerard roylake, i'm going to trust you." with this incoherent expression of a resolution unknown to me, he unlocked a shabby trunk hidden in a corner, and took from it a small portfolio. "men of your age," he resumed, "seldom look below the surface. learn that valuable habit, sir--and begin by looking below the surface of me." he forced the portfolio into my hand. once more, his beautiful eyes held me with their irresistible influence; they looked at me with an expression of sad and solemn warning. "discover for yourself," he said, "what devils my deafness has set loose in me; and let no eyes but yours see that horrid sight. you will find me here tomorrow, and you will decide by that time whether you make an enemy of me or not." he threw open the door, and bowed as graciously as if he had been a sovereign dismissing a subject. was he mad? i hesitated to adopt that conclusion. there is no denying it, the deaf man had found his own strange and tortuous way to my interest, in spite of myself. i might even have been in some danger of allowing him to make a friend of me, if i had not been restrained by the fears for cristel which his language and his manner amply justified, to my mind. although i was far from foreseeing the catastrophe that really did happen, i felt that i had returned to my own country at a critical time in the life of the miller's daughter. my friendly interference might be of serious importance to cristel's peace of mind--perhaps even to her personal safety as well. eager to discover what the contents of the portfolio might tell me, i hurried back to trimley deen. my stepmother had not yet returned from the dinner-party. as one of the results of my ten years' banishment from home, i was obliged to ask the servant to show me the way to my own room, in my own house! the windows looked out on a view of fordwitch wood. as i opened the leaves which were to reveal to me the secret soul of the man whom i had so strangely met, the fading moonlight vanished, and the distant trees were lost in the gloom of a starless night. chapter v he betrays himself the confession was entitled, "memoirs of a miserable man." it began abruptly in these words: i "i acknowledge, at the outset, that misfortune has had an effect on me which frail humanity is for the most part anxious to conceal. under the influence of suffering, i have become of enormous importance to myself. in this frame of mind, i naturally enjoy painting my own portrait in words. let me add that they must be written words because it is a painful effort to me (since i lost my hearing) to speak to anyone continuously, for any length of time. "i have also to confess that my brains are not so completely under my own command as i could wish. "for instance, i possess considerable skill (for an amateur) as a painter in water colors. but i can only produce a work of art, when irresistible impulse urges me to express my thoughts in form and color. the same obstacle to regular exertion stands in my way, if i am using my pen. i can only write when the fit takes me--sometimes at night when i ought to be asleep; sometimes at meals when i ought to be handling my knife and fork; sometimes out of doors when i meet with inquisitive strangers who stare at me. as for paper, the first stray morsel of anything that i can write upon will do, provided i snatch it up in time to catch my ideas as they fly. "my method being now explained, i proceed to the deliberate act of self-betrayal which i contemplate in producing this picture of myself." ii "i divide my life into two epochs--respectively entitled: before my deafness, and after my deafness. or, suppose i define the melancholy change in my fortunes more sharply still, by contrasting with each other my days of prosperity and my days of disaster? of these alternatives, i hardly know which to choose. it doesn't matter; the one thing needful is to go on. "in any case, then, i have to record that i passed a happy childhood--thanks to my good mother. her generous nature had known adversity, and had not been deteriorated by undeserved trials. born of slave-parents, she had not reached her eighteenth year, when she was sold by auction in the southern states of america. the person who bought her (she never would tell me who he was) freed her by a codicil, added to his will on his deathbed. my father met with her, a few years afterwards, in american society--fell (as i have heard) madly in love with her--and married her in defiance of the wishes of his family. he was quite right: no better wife and mother ever lived. the one vestige of good feeling that i still possess, lives in my empty heart when i dwell at times on the memory of my mother. "my good fortune followed me when i was sent to school. "our head master was more nearly a perfect human being than any other man that i have ever met with. even the worst-tempered boys among us ended in loving him. under his encouragement, and especially to please him, i won every prize that industry, intelligence, and good conduct could obtain; and i rose, at an unusually early age, to be the head boy in the first class. when i was old enough to be removed to the university, and when the dreadful day of parting arrived, i fainted under the agony of leaving the teacher--no! the dear friend--whom i devotedly loved. there must surely have been some good in me at that time. what has become of it now? "the years followed each other--and i was fortune's spoilt child still. "under adverse circumstances, my sociable disposition, my delight in the society of young people of my own age, might have exposed me to serious dangers in my new sphere of action. happily for me, my father consulted a wise friend, before he sent me to cambridge. i was entered at one of the smaller colleges; and i fell, at starting, among the right set of men. good examples were all round me. we formed a little club of steady students; our pleasures were innocent; we were too proud and too poor to get into debt. i look back on my career at cambridge, as i look back on my career at school, and wonder what has become of my better self." iii "during my last year at cambridge, my father died. "the profession which he had intended that i should follow was the bar. i believed myself to be quite unfit for the sort of training imperatively required by the law; and my mother agreed with me. when i left the university, my own choice of a profession pointed to the medical art, and to that particular branch of it called surgery. after three years of unremitting study at one of the great london hospitals, i started in practice for myself. once more, my persistent luck was faithful to me at the outset of my new career. "the winter of that year was remarkable for alternate extremes of frost and thaw. accidents to passengers in the streets were numerous; and one of them happened close to my own door. a gentleman slipped on the icy pavement, and broke his leg. on sending news of the accident to his house, i found that my chance-patient was a nobleman. "my lord was so well satisfied with my services that he refused to be attended by any of my elders and betters in the profession. little did i think at the time, that i had received the last of the favours which fortune was to bestow on me. i enjoyed the confidence and goodwill of a man possessing boundless social influence; and i was received most kindly by the ladies of his family. in one word, at the time when my professional prospects justified the brightest hopes that i could form, sudden death deprived me of the dearest and truest of all friends--i suffered the one dreadful loss which it is impossible to replace, the loss of my mother. we had parted at night when she was, to all appearance, in the enjoyment of her customary health. the next morning, she was found dead in her bed." iv "keen observers, who read these lines, will remark that i have said nothing about the male members of my family, and that i have even passed over my father with the briefest possible allusion to his death. "this curious reticence on my part, is simply attributable to pure ignorance. until affliction lay heavy on me, my father, my uncle, and my grandfather were hardly better known to me, in their true characters, than if they had been strangers passing in the street. how i contrived to become more intimately acquainted with my ancestors, i am now to reveal. "in the absence of any instructions to guide me, after my mother's death, i was left to use my own discretion in examining the papers which she had left behind her. reading her letters carefully, before i decided what to keep and what to destroy, i discovered a packet, protected by an unbroken seal, and bearing an inscription, addressed abruptly to my mother in these words: 'for fear of accidents, my dear, we will mention no names in this place. the sight of my handwriting will remind you of my devotion to your interests in the past, and will satisfy you that i am to be trusted in the service that i now offer to my good sister-friend. in the fewest words, let me tell you that i have heard of the circumstances under which your marriage has taken place. your origin has unfortunately become known to the members of your husband's family; their pride has been deeply wounded; and the women especially regard you with feelings of malignant hatred. i have good reason for fearing that they may try to excuse their inhuman way of speaking of you, by making public the calamity of your slave-birth. what deplorable influence might be exercised on your husband's mind, by such an exposure as this, i will not stop to inquire. it will be more to the purpose to say that i am able to offer you a sure means of protecting yourself--through information which i have unexpectedly obtained, and the source of which i am obliged to keep secret. if you are ever threatened by your enemies, open the packet which i have now sealed up, and you will command the silence of the bitterest man or woman who longs to injure you. i may add that absolute proof accompanies every assertion which my packet contains. keep it carefully, as long as you live--and god grant you may never have occasion to break the seal.' "such was the inscription; copied exactly, word for word. "i cannot even guess who my mother's devoted friend may have been. neither can i doubt that she would have destroyed the packet, but for the circumstance of her sudden death. "after hesitating a little--i hardly know why--i summoned my resolution, and broke the seal. of the horror with which i read the contents of the packet i shall say nothing. who ever yet sympathized with the sorrows and sufferings of strangers? let me merely announce that i knew my ancestors at last, and that i am now able to present them in their true characters, as follows: v "my grandfather was tried on a charge of committing willful murder--was found guilty on the clearest evidence--and died on the scaffold by the hangman's hands. "his two sons abandoned the family name, and left the family residence. they were, nevertheless, not unworthy representatives of their atrocious father, as will presently appear. "my uncle (a captain in the army) was discovered at the hazard table, playing with loaded dice. before this abject scoundrel could be turned out of his regiment, he was killed in a duel by one of his brother officers whom he had cheated. "my father, when he was little more than a lad, deserted a poor girl who had trusted him under a promise of marriage. friendless and hopeless, she drowned herself and her child. his was the most infamous in the list of the family crimes--and he escaped, without answering to a court of law or a court of honor for what he had done. "some of us come of one breed, and some of another. there is the breed from which i drew the breath of life. what do you think of me now?" vi "i looked back over the past years of my existence, from the time of my earliest recollections to the miserable day when i opened the sealed packet. "what wholesome influences had preserved me, so far, from moral contamination by the vile blood that ran in my veins? there were two answers to that question which, in some degree, quieted my mind. in the first place, resembling my good mother physically, i might hope to have resembled her morally. in the second place, the happy accidents of my career had preserved me from temptation, at more than one critical period of my life. on the other hand, in the ordinary course of nature, not one half of that life had yet elapsed. what trials might the future have in store for me? and what protection against them would the better part of my nature be powerful enough to afford? "while i was still troubled by these doubts, the measure of my disasters was filled by an attack of illness which threatened me with death. my medical advisers succeeded in saving my life--and left me to pay the penalty of their triumph by the loss of one of my senses. "at an early period of my convalescence, i noticed one day, with languid surprise, that the voices of the doctors, when they asked me how i had slept and if i felt better, sounded singularly dull and distant. a few hours later, i observed that they stooped close over me when they had something important to say. on the same evening, my day nurse and my night nurse happened to be in the room together. to my surprise, they had become so wonderfully quiet in their movements, that they opened the door or stirred the fire, without making the slightest noise. i intended to ask them what it meant; i had even begun to put the question, when i was startled by another discovery relating this time to myself. i was certain that i had spoken--and yet, i had not heard myself speak! as well as my weakness would let me, i called to the nurses in my loudest tones. "has anything happened to my voice?" i asked. the two women consulted together, looking at me with pity in their eyes. one of them took the responsibility on herself. she put her lips close to my ear; the horrid words struck me with a sense of physical pain: 'your illness has left you in a sad state, sir. you are deaf.'" vii "as soon as i was able to leave my bed, well-meaning people, in and out of the medical profession, combined to torment me with the best intentions. "one famous aural surgeon after another came to me, and quoted his experience of cases, in which the disease that had struck me down had affected the sense of hearing in other unhappy persons: they had submitted to surgical treatment, generally with cheering results. i submitted in my turn. all that skill could do for me was done, and without effect. my deafness steadily increased; my case was pronounced to be hopeless; the great authorities retired. "judicious friends, who had been waiting for their opportunity, undertook the moral management of me next. "i was advised to cultivate cheerfulness, to go into society, to encourage kind people who tried to make me hear what was going on, to be on my guard against morbid depression, to check myself when the sense of my own horrible isolation drove me away to my room, and, last but by no means least, to beware of letting my vanity disincline me to use an ear-trumpet. "i did my best, honestly did my best, to profit by the suggestions that were offered to me--not because i believed in the wisdom of my friends, but because i dreaded the effect of self-imposed solitude on my nature. since the fatal day when i had opened the sealed packet, i was on my guard against the inherited evil lying dormant, for all i knew to the contrary, in my father's son. impelled by that horrid dread, i suffered my daily martyrdom with a courage that astonishes me when i think of it now. "what the self-inflicted torture of the deaf is, none but the deaf can understand. "when benevolent persons did their best to communicate to me what was clever or amusing, while conversation was going on in my presence, i was secretly angry with them for making my infirmity conspicuous, and directing the general attention to me. when other friends saw in my face that i was not grateful to them, and gave up the attempt to help me, i suspected them of talking of me contemptuously, and amusing themselves by making my misfortune the subject of coarse jokes. "even when i deserved encouragement by honestly trying to atone for my bad behavior, i committed mistakes (arising out of my helpless position) which prejudiced people against me. sometimes, i asked questions which appeared to be so trivial, to ladies and gentlemen happy in the possession of a sense of hearing, that they evidently thought me imbecile as well as deaf. sometimes, seeing the company enjoying an interesting story or a good joke, i ignorantly appealed to the most incompetent person present to tell me what had been said--with this result, that he lost the thread of the story or missed the point of the joke, and blamed my unlucky interference as the cause of it. "these mortifications, and many more, i suffered patiently until, little by little, my last reserves of endurance felt the cruel strain on them, and failed me. my friends detected a change in my manner which alarmed them. they took me away from london, to try the renovating purity of country air. "so far as any curative influence over the state of my mind was concerned, the experiment proved to be a failure. "i had secretly arrived at the conclusion that my deafness was increasing, and that my friends knew it and were concealing it from me. determined to put my suspicions to the test, i took long solitary walks in the neighborhood of my country home, and tried to hear the new sounds about me. i was deaf to everything--with the one exception of the music of the birds. "how long did i hear the little cheering songsters who comforted me? "i am unable to measure the interval that elapsed: my memory fails me. i only know that the time came, when i could see the skylark in the heavens, but could no longer hear its joyous notes. in a few weeks more the nightingale, and even the loud thrush, became silent birds to my doomed ears. my last effort to resist my own deafness was made at my bedroom window. for some time i still heard, faintly and more faintly, the shrill twittering just above me, under the eaves of the house. when this last poor enjoyment came to an end--when i listened eagerly, desperately, and heard nothing (think of it, _nothing!_)--i gave up the struggle. persuasions, arguments, entreaties were entirely without effect on me. reckless what came of it, i retired to the one fit place for me--to the solitude in which i have buried myself ever since." viii "with some difficulty, i discovered the lonely habitation of which was in search. "no language can describe the heavenly composure of mind that came to me, when i first found myself alone; living the death-in-life of deafness, apart from creatures--no longer my fellow-creatures--who could hear: apart also from those privileged victims of hysterical impulse, who wrote me love-letters, and offered to console the 'poor beautiful deaf man' by marrying him. through the distorting medium of such sufferings as i have described, women and men--even young women--were repellent to me alike. ungratefully impatient of the admiration excited by my personal advantages, savagely irritated by tender looks and flattering compliments, i only consented take lodgings, on condition that there should be no young women living under the same roof with me. if this confession of morbid feeling looks like vanity, i can only say that appearances lie. i write in sober sadness; determined to present my character, with photographic accuracy, as a true likeness. "what were my habits in solitude? how did i get through the weary and wakeful hours of the day? "living by myself, i became (as i have already acknowledged) important to myself--and, as a necessary consequence, i enjoyed registering my own daily doings. let passages copied from my journal reveal how i got through the day." ix extracts from a deaf man's diary "monday.--six weeks today since i first occupied my present retreat. "my landlord and landlady are two hideous old people. they look as if they disliked me, on the rare occasions when we meet. so much the better; they don't remind me of my deafness by trying to talk, and they keep as much as possible out of my way. this morning, after breakfast, i altered the arrangement of my books--and then i made my fourth attempt, in the last ten days, to read some of my favorite authors. no: my taste has apparently changed since the time when i could hear. i closed one volume after another; caring nothing for what used to be deeply interesting to me. "reckless and savage--with a burning head and a cold heart--i went out to look about me. "after two hours of walking and thinking, i found that i had wandered to our county town. the rain began to fall heavily just as i happened to be passing a bookseller's shop. after some hesitation--for i hate exposing my deafness to strangers--i asked leave to take shelter, and looked at the books. "among them was a collection of celebrated trials. i thought of my grandfather; consulted the index; and, finding his name there, bought the work. the shopman (as i could guess from his actions and looks) proposed sending the parcel to me. i insisted on taking it away. the sky had cleared; and i was eager to read the details of my grandfather's crime. "tuesday--sat up late last night, reading my new book. my favorite poets, novelists, and historians have failed to interest me. i devoured the trials with breathless delight; beginning of course with the murder in which i felt a family interest. prepared to find my grandfather a ruffian, i confess i was surprised by the discovery that he was also a fool. the officers of justice had no merit in tracing the crime to him; his own stupidity delivered him into their hands. i read the evidence twice over, and put myself in his position, and saw the means plainly by which he might have set discovery at defiance. "in the preface to the trials i found an allusion, in terms of praise, to a work of the same kind, published in the french language. i wrote to london at once, and ordered the book." "wednesday.--is there some mysterious influence, in the silent solitude of my life, that is hardening my nature? is there something unnatural in the existence of a man who never hears a sound? is there a moral sense that suffers when a bodily sense is lost? "these questions have been suggested to me by an incident that happened this morning. "looking out of window, i saw a brutal carter, on the road before the house, beating an over-loaded horse. a year since i should have interfered to protect the horse, without a moment's hesitation. if the wretch had been insolent, i should have seized his whip, and applied the heavy handle of it to his own shoulders. in past days, i have been more than once fined by a magistrate (privately in sympathy with my offence) for assaults committed by me in the interests of helpless animals. what did i feel now? nothing but a selfish sense of uneasiness, at having been accidentally witness of an act which disturbed my composure. i turned away, regretting that i had gone to the window and looked out. "this was not an agreeable train of thought to follow. what could i do? i was answered by the impulse which commands me to paint. "i sharpened my pencils, and opened my box of colors, and determined to produce a work of art. to my astonishment, the brutal figure of the carter forced its way into my memory again and again. it (without in the least knowing why) as if the one chance of getting rid of this curious incubus, was to put the persistent image of the man on paper. it was done mechanically, and yet done so well, that i was encouraged to add to the picture. i put in next the poor beaten horse (another good likeness!); and then i introduced a life-like portrait of myself, giving the man the sound thrashing that he had deserved. strange to say, this representation of what i ought to have done, relieved my mind as if i had actually done it. i looked at the pre-eminent figure of myself, and felt good, and turned to my trials, and read them over again, and liked them better than ever." "thursday.--the bookseller has found a second-hand copy of the french trials, and has sent them to me (as he expresses it) 'on approval'. "i more than approve--i admire; and i more than admire--i imitate. these criminal stories are told with a dramatic power, which has impelled me to try if i can rival the clever french narrative. i found a promising subject by putting myself in my grandfather's place, and tracing the means by which it had occurred to me that he might have escaped the discovery of his crime. "i cannot remember having read any novel with a tenth part of the interest that absorbed me, in constructing my imaginary train of circumstances. so completely did the reality of the narrative impress itself on my mind, that i felt as if the murder that i was relating had been a crime committed by myself. it was my own ingenuity that hid the dead body, and removed the traces of blood--and my own self-control that presented me as an innocent person, when the victim was missing, and i was asked (among other respectable people) to say whether i thought he was living or dead." "a whole week has passed--and has been occupied by my new literary pursuit. "my inexhaustible imagination invents plots and conspiracies of which i am the happy hero. i set traps which invariably catch my enemies. i place myself in positions which are entirely new to me. yesterday, for instance, i invented a method of spiriting away a young person, whose disappearance was of considerable importance under the circumstances, and succeeded in completely bewildering her father, her friends, and the police: not a trace of her could they find. if i ever have occasion to do, in reality, what i only suppose myself to do in these exercises of ingenuity, what a dangerous man i may yet prove to be! "this morning, i rose, planning to amuse myself with a new narrative, when the ideal world in which i am now living, became a world annihilated by collision with the sordid interests of real life. "in plainer words, i received a written message from my landlord which has annoyed me--and not without good cause. this tiresome person finds himself unexpectedly obliged to give up possession of his house. the circumstances are not worth relating. the result is important--i am compelled to find new lodgings. where am i to go? "i left it to chance. that is to say, i looked at the railway time-table, and took a ticket for the first place, of which the name happened to catch my eye. arrived at my destination, i found myself in a dirty manufacturing town, with an ugly river running through it. "after a little reflection, i turned my back on the town, and followed the course of the river, in search of shelter and solitude on one or the other of its banks. an hour of walking brought me to an odd-looking cottage, half old and half new, attached to a water-mill. a bill in one of the windows announced that rooms were to be let; and a look round revealed a thick wood on my left hand, and a wilderness of sand and heath on my right. so far as appearances went, here was the very place for me. "i knocked at the door, and was admitted by a little lean sly-looking old man. he showed me the rooms--one for myself, and one for my servant. wretched as they were, the loneliness of the situation recommended them to me. i made no objections; and i consented to pay the rent that was asked. the one thing that remained to be done, in the interests of my tranquillity, was to ascertain if any other persons lived the cottage besides my new landlord. he wrote his answer to the question: 'nobody but my daughter.' with serious misgivings, i inquired if his daughter was young. he wrote two fatal figures: '18'. "here was a discovery which disarranged all my plans, just as i had formed them! the prospect of having a girl in the house, at the age associated with my late disagreeable experience of the sensitive sex, was more than my irritable temper could endure. i saw the old man going to the window to take down the bill. turning in a rage to stop him, i was suddenly brought to a standstill by the appearance of a person who had just entered the room. "was this the formidable obstacle to my tranquillity, which had prevented me from taking the rooms that i had chosen? yes! i knew the miller's daughter intuitively. delirium possessed me; my eyes devoured her; my heart beat as if it would burst out of my bosom. the old man approached me; he nodded, and grinned, and pointed to her. did he claim his parental interest in her? did he mean that she belonged to him? no! she belonged to me. she might be his daughter. she was my fate. "i don't know what it was in the girl that took me by storm. nothing in her look or her manner expressed the slightest interest in me. that famous "beauty" of mine which had worked such ravages in the hearts of other young women, seemed not even to attract her notice. when her father put his hand to his ear, and told her (as i guessed) that i was deaf, there was no pity in her splendid brown eyes; they expressed a momentary curiosity, and nothing more. possibly she had a hard heart? or perhaps she took a dislike to me, at first sight? it made no difference to my mind, either way. was she the most beautiful creature i had ever seen? not even that excuse was to be made for me. i have met with women of her dark complexion who were, beyond dispute, her superiors in beauty, and have looked at them with indifference. add to this, that i am one of the men whom women offend if they are not perfectly well-dressed. the miller's daughter was badly dressed; her magnificent figure was profaned by the wretchedly-made gown that she wore. i forgave the profanation. in spite of the protest of my own better taste, i resigned myself to her gown. is it possible adequately to describe such infatuation as this? quite possible! i have only to acknowledge that i took the rooms at the cottage--and there is the state of my mind, exposed without mercy! "how will it end?" chapter vi the return of the portfolio with that serious question the last of the leaves entrusted to me by the lodger at the mill came to an end. i betray no confidence in presenting this copy of his confession. time has passed since i first read it, and changes have occurred in the interval, which leave me free to exercise my own discretion, and to let the autobiography speak for itself. if i am asked what impression of the writer those extraordinary pages produced on me, i feel at a loss how to reply. not one impression, but many impressions, troubled and confused my mind. certain passages in the confession inclined me to believe that the writer was mad. but i altered my opinion at the next leaf, and set him down as a man with a bitter humor, disposed to make merry over his own bad qualities. at one time, his tone in writing of his early life, and his allusions to his mother, won my sympathy and respect. at another time, the picture of himself in his later years, and the defiant manner in which he presented it, almost made me regret that he had not died of the illness which had struck him deaf. in this state of uncertainty i may claim the merit of having arrived, so far as my own future conduct was concerned, at one positive conclusion. as strangers he and i had first met. as strangers i was determined we should remain. having made up my mind, so far, the next thing to do (with the clock on the mantel-piece striking midnight) was to go to bed. i slept badly. the events that had happened, since my arrival in england, had excited me i suppose. now and then, in the wakeful hours of the night, i thought of cristel with some anxiety. taking the loger's exaggerated language for what it was really worth, the poor girl (as i was still inclined to fear) might have serious reason to regret that he had ever entered her father's cottage. at the breakfast table, my stepmother and i met again. mrs. roylake--in an exquisite morning dress; with her smile in perfect order--informed me that she was dying with curiosity. she had heard, from the servants, that i had not returned to the house until past ten o'clock on the previous night; and she was absolutely bewildered by the discovery. what could her dear gerard have been doing, out in the dark by himself, for all that time? "for some part of the time," i answered, "i was catching moths in fordwitch wood." "what an extraordinary occupation for a young man! well? and what did you do after that?" "i walked on through the wood, and renewed my old associations with the river and the mill." mrs. roylake's fascinating smile disappeared when i mentioned the mill. she suddenly became a cold lady--i might even say a stiff lady. "i can't congratulate you on the first visit you have paid in our neighborhood," she said. "of course that bold girl contrived to attract your notice?" i replied that i had met with the "bold girl" purely by accident, on her side as well as on mine; and then i started a new topic. "was it a pleasant dinner-party last night?" i asked--as if the subject really interested me. i had not been quite four and twenty hours in england yet, and i was becoming a humbug already. my stepmother was her charming self again the moment my question had passed my lips. society--provided it was not society at the mill--was always attractive as a topic of conversation. "your absence was the only drawback," she answered. "i have asked the two ladies (my lord has an engagement) to dine here to-day, without ceremony. they are most anxious to meet you. my dear gerard! you look surprised. surely you know who the ladies are?" i was obliged to acknowledge my ignorance. mrs. roylake was shocked. "at any rate," she resumed, "you have heard of their father, lord uppercliff?" i made another shameful confession. either i had forgotten lord uppercliff, during my long absence abroad, or i had never heard of him. mrs. roylake was disgusted. "and this is a foreign education!" she exclaimed. "thank heaven, you have returned to your own country! we will drive out after luncheon, and pay a round of visits." when this prospect was placed before me, i remembered having read in books of sensitive persons receiving impressions which made their blood run cold; i now found myself one of those persons, for the first time in my life. "in the meanwhile," mrs. roylake continued, "i must tell you--excuse me for laughing; it seems so very absurd that you should not know who lord uppercliff's daughters are--i must tell you that lady rachel is the eldest. she is married to the honorable captain millbay, of the navy, now away in his ship. a person of extraordinary strength of mind (i don't mean the captain; i mean lady rachel); i admire her intellect, but her political and social opinions i must always view with regret. her younger sister, lady lena--not married, gerard; remember that!--is simply the most charming girl in england. if you don't fall in love with her, you will be the only young man in the county who has resisted lady lena. poor sir george--she refused him last week; you really _must_ have heard of sir george; our member of parliament; conservative of course; quite broken-hearted about lady lena; gone away to america to shoot bears. you seem to be restless. what are you fidgeting about? ah, i know! you want to smoke after breakfast. well, i won't be in your way. go out on the terrace; your poor father always took his cigar on the terrace. they say smoking leads to meditation; i leave you to meditate on lady lena. don't forget--luncheon at one o'clock, and the carriage at two." she smiled, and kissed her hand, and fluttered out of the room. charming; perfectly charming. and yet i was ungrateful enough to wish myself back in germany again. i lit my cigar, but not on the terrace. leaving the house, i took the way once more that led to fordwitch wood. what would mrs. roylake have said, if she had discovered that i was going back to the mill? there was no other alternative. the portfolio was a trust confided to me; the sooner i returned it to the writer of the confession--the sooner i told him plainly the conclusion at which i had arrived--the more at ease my mind would be. the sluggish river looked muddier than ever, the new cottage looked uglier than ever, exposed to the searching ordeal of sunlight. i knocked at the door on the ancient side of the building. cristel's father--shall i confess i had hoped that it might be cristel herself?--let me in. in by-gone days, i dimly remembered him as old and small and withered. advancing years had wasted him away, in the interval, until his white miller's clothes hung about him in empty folds. his fleshless face would have looked like the face of a mummy, but for the restless brightness of his little watchful black eyes. he stared at me in momentary perplexity, and, suddenly recovering himself, asked me to walk in. "are you the young master, sir? ah, yes, yes; i thought so. my girl cristy said she saw the young master last night. thank you kindly, sir; i'm pretty well, considering how i've fallen away in my flesh. i have got a fine appetite, but somehow or other, my meals don't show on me. you will excuse my receiving you in the kitchen, sir; it's the best room we have. did cristy tell you how badly we are off here for repairs? you being our landlord, we look to you to help us. we are falling to pieces, as it were, on this old side of the house. there's first drains----" he proceeded to reckon up the repairs, counting with his fleshless thumb on his skinny fingers, when he was interrupted by a curious succession of sounds which began with whining, and ended with scratching at the cottage door. in a minute after, the door was opened from without. a brown dog, of the companionable retriever breed, ran in and fawned upon old toller. cristel followed (from the kitchen garden), with a basket of vegetables on her arm. unlike the river and the cottage, she gained by being revealed in the brilliant sunlight. i now saw, in their full beauty, the luster of her brown eyes, the warm rosiness of her dark complexion, the delightful vivacity of expression which was the crowning charm of her face. she paused confusedly in the doorway, and tried to resist me when i insisted on relieving her of the basket. "mr. gerard," she protested, "you are treating me as if i was a young lady. what would they say at the great house, if they knew you had done that?" my answer would no doubt have assumed the form of a foolish compliment, if her father had not spared her that infliction. he returned to the all-important question, the question of repairs. "you see, sir, it's no use speaking to the bailiff. saving your presence, he's a miser with his master's money. he says, 'all right,' and he does nothing. there's first, as i told you just now, the truly dreadful state of the drains----" i tried to stop him by promising to speak to the bailiff myself. on hearing this good news, mr. toller's gratitude became ungovernable: he was more eager than ever, and more eloquent than ever, in returning to the repairs. "and then, sir, there's the oven. they do call bread the staff of life. it's a burnt staff at one time, and a clammy staff at another, in our domestic experience. satisfy yourself, sir; do please cross the kitchen and look with your own eyes at the state, the scandalous state, of the oven." his daughter interfered, and stopped him at the critical moment when he was actually offering his arm to conduct me in state across the kitchen. cristel had just put her pretty brown hand over his mouth, and said, "oh, father, do pray be quiet!" when we were all three disturbed by another interruption. a second door communicating, as i concluded from its position, with the new cottage, was suddenly opened. in the instant before the person behind it appeared, the dog looked that way--started up, frightened--and took refuge under the table. at the next moment, the deaf lodger walked into the room. it was he beyond all doubt who had frightened the dog, forewarned by instinct of his appearance. what i had read of his writing disposed me, now that i saw the man by daylight, to find something devilish in the expression of his face. no! strong as it was, my prejudice failed to make any discoveries that presented him at a disadvantage. his personal attractions triumphed in the clear searching light. i now perceived that his eyes were of that deeply dark blue, which is commonly and falsely described as resembling the color of the violet. to my thinking, they were so entirely beautiful that they had no right to be in a man's face. i might have felt the same objection to the pale delicacy of his complexion, to the soft profusion of his reddish-brown hair, to his finely shaped sensitive lips, but for two marked peculiarities in him which would have shown me to be wrong--that is to say: the expression of power about his head, and the signs of masculine resolution presented by his mouth and chin. on entering the room, the first person, and the only person, who attracted his attention was cristel. he bowed, smiled, possessed himself abruptly of her hand, and kissed it. she tried to withdraw it from his grasp, and met with an obstinate resistance. his gallantry addressed her in sweet words; and his voice destroyed their charm by the dreary monotony of the tone in which he spoke. "on this lovely day, cristel, nature pleads for me. your heart feels the sunshine and softens towards the poor deaf man who worships you. ah, my dear, it's useless to say no. my affliction is my happiness, when you say cruel things to me. i live in my fool's paradise; i don't hear you." he tried to draw her nearer to him. "come, my angel; let me kiss you." she made a second attempt to release herself; and this time, she wrenched her hand out of his grasp with a strength for which he was not prepared. that fiercest anger which turns the face pale, was the anger that had possession of cristel as she took refuge with her father. "you asked me to bear with that man," she said, "because he paid you a good rent. i tell you this, father; my patience is coming to an end. either he must go, or i must go. make up your mind to choose between your money and me." old toller astonished me. he seemed to have caught the infection of his daughter's anger. placed between cristel and his money, he really acted as if he preferred cristel. he hobbled up to his lodger, and shook his infirm fists, and screamed at the highest pitch of his old cracked voice: "let her be, or i won't have you here no longer! you deaf adder, let her be!" the sensitive nerves of the deaf man shrank as those shrill tones pierced them. "if you want to speak to me, write it!" he said, with rage and suffering in every line of his face. he tore from his pocket his little book, filled with blank leaves, and threw it at toller's head. "write," he repeated. "if you murder me with your screeching again, look out for your skinny throat--i'll throttle you." cristel picked up the book. she was gratefully sensible of her father's interference. "he shall know what you said to him," she promised the old man. "i'll write it myself." she took the pencil from its sheath in the leather binding of the book. controlling himself, the lover whom she hated advanced towards her with a persuasive smile. "have you forgiven me?" he asked. "have you been speaking kindly of me? i think i see it in your face. there are some deaf people who can tell what is said by looking at the speaker's lips. i am too stupid, or too impatient, or too wicked to be able to do that. write it for me, dear, and make me happy for the day." cristel was not attending to him, she was speaking to me. "i hope, sir, you don't think that father and i are to blame for what has happened this morning," she said. he looked where she was looking--and discovered, for the first time, that i was in the room. he had alluded to his wickedness a moment since. when his face turned my way, i thought it bore witness to his knowledge of his own character. "why didn't you come to my side of the house?" he said to me. "what am i to understand, sir, by seeing you here?" cristel dropped his book on the table, and hurried to me in breathless surprise. "he speaks as if he knew you!" she cried. "what does it mean?" "only that i met him last night," i explained, "after leaving you." "did you know him before that?" "no. he was a perfect stranger to me." he picked up his book from the table, and took his pencil out of cristel's hand, while we were speaking. "i want my answer," he said, handing me the book and the pencil. i gave him his answer. "you find me here, because i don't wish to return to your side of the house." "is that the impression," he asked, "produced by what i allowed you to read?" i replied by a sign in the affirmative. he inquired next if i had brought his portfolio with me. i put it at once into his hand. in some way unknown to me, i had apparently roused his suspicions. he opened the portfolio, and counted the loose leaves of writing in it carefully. while he was absorbed in this occupation, old toller's eccentricity assumed a new form. his little restless black eyes followed the movements of his lodger's fingers, as they turned over leaf after leaf of the manuscript, with such eager curiosity and interest that i looked at him in surprise. finding that he had attracted my notice, he showed no signs of embarrassment--he seized the opportunity of asking for information. "did my gentleman trust you, sir, with all that writing?" he began. "yes." "did he want you to read it?" "he did." "what's it all about, sir?" confronted by this cool inquiry, i informed mr. toller that the demands of curiosity had their limits, and that he had reached them. on this ground, i declined to answer any more questions. mr. toller went on with his questions immediately. "do you notice, sir, that he seems to set a deal of store by his writings? perhaps you can say what the value of them may be?" i shook my head. "it won't do, mr. toller!" he tried again--i declare it positively, he tried again. "you'll excuse me, sir? i've never seen his portfolio before. am i right if i think you know where he keeps it?" "spare your breath, mr. toller. once more, it won't do!" cristel joined us, amazed at his pertinacity. "why are you so anxious, father, to know about that portfolio?" she asked. her father seemed to have reasons of his own for following my example and declining to answer questions. more polite, however, than i had been, he left his resolution to be inferred. his daughter was answered by a few general remarks, setting forth the advantage to the landlord of having a lodger who had lost one of senses. "you see there's something convenient, my dear, in the circumstance of that nice-looking gentleman over there being deaf. we can talk about him before his face, just as comfortably as if it was behind his back. isn't that so, mr. gerard? don't you see it yourself, cristy? for instance, i say it without fear in his presence: 'tis the act of a fool to be fumbling over writings, when there's nothing in them that's not well known to himself already--unless indeed they are worth money, which i don't doubt is no secret to _you,_ mr. gerard? eh? i beg your pardon, sir, did you speak? no? i beg your pardon again. yes, yes, cristy, i'm noticing him; he's done with his writings. suppose i offer to put them away for him? you can see in his face he finds the tale of them correct. he's coming this way. what's he going to do next?" he was going to establish a claim on my gratitude, by relieving me of giles toller. "i have something to say to mr. roylake," he announced, with a haughty look at his landlord. "mind! i don't forget your screaming at me just now, and i intend to know what you meant by it. that will do. get out of the way." the old fellow received his dismissal with a low bow, and left the kitchen with a look at the lodger which revealed (unless i was entirely mistaken) a sly sense of triumph. what did it mean? the deaf man addressed me with a cold and distant manner. "we must understand each other," he said. "will you follow me to my side of the cottage?" i shook my head. "very well," he resumed; "we will have it out, here. when i trusted you with my confession last night, i left you to decide (after reading it) whether you would make an enemy of me or not. you remember that?" i nodded my head. "then i now ask you, mr. roylake: which are we--enemies or friends?" i took the pencil, and wrote my reply: "neither enemies nor friends. we are strangers from this time forth." some internal struggle produced a change in his face--visible for one moment, hidden from me in a moment more. "i think you will regret the decision at which you have arrived." he said that, and saluted me with his grandly gracious bow. as he turned away, he perceived cristel at the other end of the room, and eagerly joined her. "the only happy moments i have are my moments passed in your presence," he said. "i shall trouble you no more for to-day. give me a little comfort to take back with me to my solitude. i didn't notice that there were other persons present when i asked leave to kiss you. may i hope that you forgive me?" he held out his hand; it was not taken. he waited a little, in the vain hope that she would relent: she turned away from him. a spasm of pain distorted his handsome face. he opened the door that led to his side of the cottage--paused--and looked back at cristel. she took no notice of him. as he moved again to the door and left us, the hysterical passion in him forced its way outward--he burst into tears. the dog sprang up from his refuge under the table, and shook himself joyfully. cristel breathed again freely, and joined me at my end of the room. shall i make another acknowledgment of weakness? i began to fear that we might all of us (even including the dog!) have been a little hard on the poor deaf wretch who had gone away in such bitter distress. i communicated this view of the matter to cristel. she failed to see it as i did. the dog laid his head on her lap, asking to be caressed. she patted him while she answered me. "i agree with this old friend, mr. gerard. we were both of us frightened, on the very first day, when the person you are pitying came to lodge with us. i have got to hate him, since that time--perhaps to despise him. but the dog has never changed; he feels and knows there is something dreadful in that man. one of these days, poor ponto may turn out to be right.--may i ask you something, sir?" "of course!" "you won't think i am presuming on your kindness?" "you ought to know me better than that, cristel!" "the truth is, sir, i have been a little startled by what i saw in our lodger's face, when he asked if you were his enemy or his friend. i know he is thought to be handsome--but, mr. gerard, those beautiful eyes of his sometimes tell tales; and i have seen his pretty complexion change to a color that turned him into an ugly man. will you tell me what you wrote when you answered him?" i repeated what i had written, word for word. it failed to satisfy her. "he is very vain," she said, "and you may have wounded his vanity by treating him like a stranger, after he had given you his writings to read, and invited you to his room. but i thought i saw something much worse than mortification in his face. shall i be taking a liberty, if i ask how it was you got acquainted with him last night?" she was evidently in earnest. i saw that i must answer her without reserve; and i was a little afraid of being myself open to a suspicion of vanity, if i mentioned the distrust which i had innocently excited in the mind of my new acquaintance. in this state of embarrassment i took a young man's way out of the difficulty, and spoke lightly of a serious thing. "i became acquainted with your deaf lodger, cristel, under ridiculous circumstances. he saw us talking last night, and did me the honor to be jealous of me." i had expected to see her blush. to my surprise she turned pale, and vehemently remonstrated. "don't laugh, sir! there's nothing to be amused at in what you have just told me. you didn't go into his room last night? oh, what made you do that!" i described his successful appeal to my compassion--not very willingly, for it made me look (as i thought) like a weak person. little by little, she extracted from me the rest: how he objected to find a young man, especially in my social position, talking to cristel; how he insisted on my respecting his claims, and engaging not to see her again; how, when i refused to do this, he gave me his confession to read, so that i might find out what a formidable man i was setting at defiance; how i had not been in the least alarmed, and had treated him (as cristel had just heard) on the footing of a perfect stranger. "there's the whole story," i concluded. "like a scene in a play, isn't it?" she protested once more against the light tone that i persisted in assuming. "i tell you again, sir, this is no laughing matter. you have roused his jealousy. you had better have roused the fury of a wild beast. knowing what you know of him, why did you stay here, when he came in? and, oh, why did i humiliate him in your presence? leave us, mr. gerard--pray, pray leave us, and don't come near this place again till father has got rid of him." did she think i was to be so easily frightened as that? my sense of my own importance was up in arms at the bare suspicion of it! "my dear child," i said grandly, "do you really suppose i am afraid of that poor wretch? am i to give up the pleasure of seeing you, because a mad fellow is simple enough to think you will marry him? absurd, cristel--absurd!" the poor girl wrung her hands in despair. "oh, sir, don't distress me by talking in that way! do please remember who you are, and who i am. if i was the miserable means of your coming to any harm--i can't bear even to speak of it! pray don't think me bold; i don't know how to express myself. you ought never to have come here; you ought to go; you _must_ go!" driven by strong impulse, she ran to the place in which i had left my hat, and brought it to me, and opened the door with a look of entreaty which it was impossible to resist. it would have been an act of downright cruelty to persist in opposing her. "i wouldn't distress you, cristel, for the whole world," i said--and left her to conclude that i had felt the influence of her entreaties in the right way. she tried to thank me; the tears rose in her eyes--she signed to me to leave her, poor soul, as if she felt ashamed of herself. i was shocked; i was grieved; i was more than ever secretly resolved to go back to her. when we said good-bye--i have been told that i did wrong; i meant no harm--i kissed her. having traversed the short distance between the cottage and the wood, i remembered that i had left my walking-stick behind me, and returned to get it. cristel was leaving the kitchen; i saw her at the door which communicated with the lodger's side of the cottage. her back was turned towards me; astonishment held me silent. she opened the door, passed through it, and closed it behind her. going to that man, after she had repelled his advances, in my presence! going to the enemy against whom she had warned me, after i had first been persuaded to leave her! angry thoughts these--and surely thoughts unworthy of me? if it had been the case of another man i should have said he was jealous. jealous of the miller's daughter--in my position? absurd! contemptible! but i was still in such a vile temper that i determined to let cristel know she had been discovered. taking one of my visiting cards, i wrote on it: "i came back for my stick, and saw you go to him." after i had pinned this spiteful little message to the door, so that she might see it when she returned, i suffered a disappointment. i was not half so well satisfied with myself as i had anticipated. chapter vii the best society leaving the cottage for the second time, i was met at the door by a fat man of solemn appearance dressed in black, who respectfully touched his hat. my angry humor acknowledged the harmless stranger's salute by a rude inquiry: "what the devil do you want?" instead of resenting this uncivil language, he indirectly reproved me by becoming more respectful than ever. "my mistress desires me to tell you, sir, that luncheon is waiting." i was in the presence of a thoroughbred english servant--and i had failed to discover it until he spoke of his mistress! i had also, by keeping luncheon waiting, treated an english institution with contempt. and, worse even than this, as a misfortune which personally affected me, my stepmother evidently knew that i had paid another visit to the mill. i hurried along the woodland path, followed by the fat domestic in black. not used apparently to force his legs into rapid motion, he articulated with the greatest difficulty in answering my next question: "how did you know where to find me?" "mrs. roylake ordered inquiries to be made, sir. the head gardener--" there his small reserves of breath failed him. "the head gardener saw me?" "yes, sir." "when?" "hours ago, sir--when you went into toller's cottage." i troubled my fat friend with no more questions. returning to the house, and making polite apologies, i discovered one more among mrs. roylake's many accomplishments. she possessed two smiles--a sugary smile (with which i was already acquainted), and an acid smile which she apparently reserved for special occasions. it made its appearance when i led her to the luncheon table. "don't let me detain you," my stepmother began. "won't you give me some luncheon?" i inquired. "dear me! hav'n't you lunched already?" "where should i lunch, my dear lady?" i thought this would induce the sugary smile to show itself. i was wrong. "where?" mrs. roylake repeated. "with your friends at the mill of course. very inhospitable not to offer you lunch. when are we to have flour cheaper?" i began to get sulky. all i said was: "i don't know." "curious!" mrs. roylake observed. "you not only don't get luncheon among your friends: you don't even get information. to know a miller, and not to know the price of flour, is ignorance presented in one of its most pitiable aspects. and how is miss toller looking? perfectly charming?" i was angry by this time. "you have exactly described her," i said. mrs. roylake began to get angry, on her side. "surely a little coarse and vulgar?" she suggested, reverting to poor cristel. "would you like to judge for yourself?" i asked. "i shall be happy, mrs. roylake, to take you to the mill." my stepmother's knowledge of the world implied considerable acquaintance--how obtained i do not pretend to know--with the characters of men. discovering that she was in danger of overstepping the limits of my patience, she drew back with a skill which performed the retrograde movement without permitting it to betray itself. "we have carried our little joke, my dear gerard, far enough," she said. "i fancy your residence in germany has rather blunted your native english sense of humor. you don't suppose, i hope and trust, that i am so insensible to our relative positions as to think of interfering in your choice of friends or associates. if you are not aware of it already, let me remind you that this house is now yours; not mine. i live here--gladly live here, my dear boy--by your indulgence; fortified (i am sure) by your regard for your excellent father's wishes as expressed in his will--" i stopped her there. she had got the better of me with a dexterity which i see now, but which i was not clever enough to appreciate at time. in a burst of generosity, i entreated her to consider trimley deen as her house, and never to mention such a shocking subject as my authority again. after this, need i say that the most amiable of women took me out in her carriage, and introduced me to some of the best society in england? if i could only remember all the new friends to whom i made my bow, as well as the conversation in which we indulged, i might write a few pages here, interesting in a high degree to persons with well-balanced minds. unhappily, so far as my own impressions were concerned, the best society proved to be always the same society. every house that we entered was in the same beautiful order; every mistress of the house was dressed in the best taste; every master of the house had the same sensible remarks to make on conservative prospects at the coming election; every young gentleman wanted to know how my game preserves had been looked after in my absence; every young lady said: "how nice it must have been, mr. roylake, to find yourself again at trimley deen." has anybody ever suffered as i suffered, during that round of visits, under the desire to yawn and the effort to suppress it? is there any sympathetic soul who can understand me, when i say that i would have given a hundred pounds for a gag, and for the privilege of using it to stop my stepmother's pleasant chat in the carriage, following on our friends' pleasant chat in the drawing-room? finally, when we got home, and when mrs. roylake kindly promised me another round of visits, and more charming people in the neighborhood to see, will any good christian forgive me, if i own that i took advantage of being alone to damn the neighborhood, and to feel relieved by it? now that i was no longer obliged to listen to polite strangers, my thoughts reverted to cristel, and to the suspicions that she had roused in me. recovering its influence, in the interval that had passed, my better nature sharply reproached me. i had presumed to blame cristel, with nothing to justify me but my own perverted view of her motives. how did i know that she had not opened that door, and gone to that side of the cottage, with a perfectly harmless object in view? i was really anxious, if i could find the right way to do it, to make amends for an act of injustice of which i felt ashamed. if i am asked why i was as eager to set myself right with a miller's daughter, as if she had been a young lady in the higher ranks of life, i can only reply that no such view of our relative positions as this ever occurred to me. a strange state of mind, no doubt. what was the right explanation of it? the right explanation presented itself at a later time, when troubles had quickened my intellect, and when i could estimate the powerful influence of circumstances at its true value. i had returned to england, to fill a prominent place in my own little world, without relations whom i loved, without friends whose society i could enjoy. hopeful, ardent, eager for the enjoyment of life, i had brought with me to my own country the social habits and the free range of thought of a foreign university; and, as a matter of course, i failed to feel any sympathy with the society--new to me--in which my lot had been cast. beset by these disadvantages, i had met with a girl, possessed of remarkable personal attractions, and associated with my earliest remembrances of my own happy life and of my mother's kindness--a girl, at once simple and spirited; unspoilt by the world and the world's ways, and placed in a position of peril due to the power of her own beauty, which added to the interest that she naturally inspired. estimating these circumstances at their true value, did a state of mind which rendered me insensible to the distinctions that separate the classes in england, stand in any need of explanation? as i thought--and think still--it explained itself. my stepmother and i parted on the garden terrace, which ran along the pleasant southern side of the house. the habits that i had contracted, among my student friends in germany, made tobacco and beer necessary accompaniments to the process of thinking. i had nearly exhausted my cigar, my jug, and my thoughts, when i saw two men approaching me from the end of the terrace. as they came nearer, i recognized in one of the men my fat domestic in black. he stopped the person who was accompanying him and came on to me by himself. "will you see that man, sir, waiting behind me?" "who is he?" "i don't know, sir. he says he has got a letter to give you, and he must put it in your own hands. i think myself he's a beggar. he's excessively insolent--he insists on seeing you. shall i tell him to go?" the servant evidently expected me to say yes. he was disappointed; my curiosity was roused; i said i would see the insolent stranger. as he approached me, the man certainly did not look like a beggar. poor he might be, judging by his dress. the upper part of him was clothed in an old shooting jacket of velveteen; his legs presented a pair of trousers, once black, now turning brown with age. both garments were too long for him, and both were kept scrupulously clean. he was a short man, thickly and strongly made. impenetrable composure appeared on his ugly face. his eyes were sunk deep in his head; his nose had evidently been broken and not successfully mended; his grey hair, when he took off his hat on addressing me, was cut short, and showed his low forehead and his bull neck. an englishman of the last generation would, as i have since been informed, have set him down as a retired prize-fighter. thanks to my ignorance of the pugilistic glories of my native country, i was totally at a loss what to make of him. "have i the honor of speaking to mr. roylake?" he asked. his quiet steady manner prepossessed me in his favour; it showed no servile reverence for the accident of birth, on the one hand, and no insolent assertion of independence, on the other. when i had told him that my name was roylake, he searched one of the large pockets of his shooting jacket, produced a letter, and silently offered it to me. before i took the letter--seeing that he was a stranger, and that he mentioned no name known to me--i thought it desirable to make some inquiry. "is it a letter of your own writing?" i asked. "no, sir." "who sends you with it?" he was apparently a man of few words. "my master," was the guarded answer that this odd servant returned. i became as inquisitive as old toller himself. "who is your master?" i went on. the reply staggered me. speaking as quietly and respectfully as ever, he said: "i can't tell you, sir." "do you mean that you are forbidden to tell me?" "no, sir." "then what do you mean?" "i mean that i don't know my master's name." i instantly took the letter from him, and looked at the address. for once in a way, i had jumped at a conclusion and i had proved to be right. the handwriting on the letter, and the handwriting of the confession which i had read overnight, were one and the same. "are you to wait for an answer?" i asked, as i opened the envelope. "i am to wait, sir, if you tell me to do so." the letter was a long one. after running my eye over the first sentences, i surprised myself by acting discreetly. "you needn't wait," i said; "i will send a reply." the man of few words raised his shabby hat, turned about in silence, and left me. chapter viii the deaf lodger the letter was superscribed: "private and confidential." it was written in these words: "sir,--you will do me grievous wrong if you suppose that i am trying to force myself on your acquaintance. my object in writing is to prevent you (if i can) from misinterpreting my language and my conduct, on the only two occasions when we happen to have met. "i am conscious that you must have thought me rude and ungrateful--perhaps even a little mad--when i returned your kindness last night, in honoring me with a visit, by using language which has justified you in treating me as a stranger. "fortunately for myself, i gave you my autobiography to read. after what you now know of me, i may hope that your sense of justice will make some allowance for a man, tried (i had almost written, cursed) by such suffering as mine. "there are other deaf persons, as i have heard, who set me a good example. "they feel the consolations of religion. their sweet tempers find relief even under the loss of the most precious of all the senses. they mix with society; submitting to their dreadful isolation, and preserving unimpaired sympathy with their happier fellow-creatures who can hear. i am not one of those persons. with sorrow i say it--i never have submitted, i never can submit, to my hard fate. "let me not omit to ask your indulgence for my behavior, when we met at the cottage this morning. "what unfavorable impression i may have produced on you, i dare not inquire. so little capable am i of concealing the vile feelings which sometimes get the better of me, that miss cristel (observe that i mention her with respect) appears to have felt positive alarm, on your account, when she looked at me. "i may tell you, in confidence, that this charming person came to my side of the cottage, as soon as you had taken your departure, to intercede with me in your favour. 'if your wicked mind is planning to do evil to mr. roylake,' she wrote in my book, 'either you will promise me to give it up, or i will never allow you to see me again; i will even leave home secretly, to be out of your way.' in that strong language she expressed--how shall i refer to it?--shall i say the sisterly interest that she felt in your welfare?" i laid down the letter for a moment. if i had not already reproached myself for having misjudged cristel--and if i had not, in that way, done her some little justice in my own better thoughts--i should never have recovered my self-respect after reading the deaf man's letter. the good girl! the dear good girl! yes: that was how i thought of her, under the windows of my stepmother's boudoir--while mrs. roylake, for all i knew to the contrary, might be looking down at me, and when lady lena, the noble and beautiful, was coming to dinner! the letter concluded as follows: "to return to myself. i gave miss cristel the promise on which she had insisted; and then, naturally enough, i inquired into her motive for interfering in your favour. "she frankly admitted that she was interested in you. first: in grateful remembrance of old times, when you and your mother had been always good to her. secondly: because she had found you as kind and as friendly as ever, now that you were a man and had become the greatest landowner in the county. there was the explanation i had asked for, at my service. and, on that, she left me. "did i believe her when i was meditating on our interview, alone in my room? or did i suspect you of having robbed me of the only consolation that makes my life endurable? "no such unworthy suspicion as this was admitted to my mind. with all my heart, i believe her. and with perfect sincerity, i trust you. "if your knowledge of me has failed to convince you that there is any such thing as a better side to my nature, you will no doubt conclude that this letter is a trick of mine to throw you off your guard; and you will continue to distrust me as obstinately as ever. in that case, i will merely remind you that my letter is private and confidential, and i will not ask you to send me a reply. "i remain, sir, yours as you may receive me, "the deaf lodger i wonder what another man, in my position, would have done when he had read this letter? would he have seen in it nothing to justify some respect and some kindly feeling towards the writer? could he have reconciled it to his conscience to leave the afflicted man who had trusted him without a word of reply? for my part (do not forget what a young man i was in those days), i made up my mind to reply in the friendliest manner--that is to say, in person. after consulting my watch, i satisfied myself that i could go to the mill, and get back again, before the hour fixed for our late dinner--supper we should have called it in germany. for the second time that day, and without any hesitation, i took the road that led to fordwitch wood. crossing the glade, i encountered a stout young woman, filling a can with water from the spring. she curtseyed on seeing me. i asked if she belonged to the village. the reply informed me that i had taken another of my servants for a stranger. the stout nymph of the spring was my kitchen-maid; and she was fetching the water which we drank at the house; "and there's no water, sir, like _yours_ for all the country round." furnished with these stores of information, i went my way, and the kitchen-maid went hers. she spoke, of course, of having seen her new master, on returning to the servants' hall. in this manner, as i afterwards heard, the discovery of me at the spring, and my departure by the path that led to the mill, reached mrs. roylake's ears--the medium of information being the lady's own maid. so far, fordwitch wood seemed to be a place to avoid, in the interests of my domestic tranquillity. arriving at the cottage, i found the lodger standing by the open window at which i had first seen him. but on this occasion, his personal appearance had undergone a singular process of transformation. the lower part of his face, from his nostrils to his chin, was hidden by a white handkerchief tied round it. he had removed the stopper from a strangely shaped bottle, and was absorbed in watching some interesting condition in a dusky liquid that it contained. to attract his attention by speaking was of course out of the question; i could only wait until he happened to look my way. my patience was not severely tried: he soon replaced the stopper in the bottle, and, looking up from it, saw me. with his free hand, he quickly removed the handkerchief, and spoke. "let me ask you to wait in the boat-house," he said; "i will come to you directly." he pointed round the corner of the new cottage; indicating of course the side of it that was farthest from the old building. following his directions, i first passed the door that he used in leaving or returning to his room, and then gained the bank of the river. on my right hand rose the mill building, with its big waterwheel--and, above it, a little higher up the stream, i recognized the boat-house; built out in the water on piles, and approached by a wooden pier. no structure of this elaborate and expensive sort would have been set up by my father, for the miller's convenience. the boat-house had been built, many years since, by a rich retired tradesman with a mania for aquatic pursuits. our ugly river had not answered his expectations, and our neighborhood had abstained from returning his visits. when he left us, with his wherries and canoes and outriggers, the miller took possession of the abandoned boat-house. "it's the sort of fixture that don't pay nohow," old toller remarked. "suppose you remove it--there's a waste of money. suppose you knock it to pieces--is it worth a rich gentleman's while to sell a cartload of firewood?" neither of these alternatives having been adopted, and nobody wanting an empty boat-house, the clumsy mill boat, hitherto tied to a stake, and exposed to the worst that the weather could do to injure it, was now snugly sheltered under a roof, with empty lockers (once occupied by aquatic luxuries) gaping on either side of it. i was looking out on the river, and thinking of all that had happened since my first meeting with cristel by moonlight, when the voice of the deaf man made itself discordantly heard, behind me. "let me apologize for receiving you here," he said; "and let me trouble you with one more of my confessions. like other unfortunate deaf people, i suffer from nervous irritability. sometimes, we restlessly change our places of abode. and sometimes, as in my case, we take refuge in variety of occupation. you remember the ideal narratives of crime which i was so fond of writing at one time?" i gave the affirmative answer, in the usual way. "well," he went on, "my literary inventions have ceased to interest me. i have latterly resumed the chemical studies, associated with that happy time in my life when i was entering on the medical profession. unluckily for you, i have been trying an experiment to-day, which makes such an abominable smell in my room that i dare not ask you to enter it. the fumes are not only disagreeable, but in some degree dangerous. you saw me at the window, perhaps, with my nose and mouth protected before i opened the bottle?" i repeated the affirmative sign. he produced his little book of blank leaves, and opened it ready for use. "may i hope," he said, "that your visit is intended as a favorable reply to my letter?" i took the pencil, and answered him in these terms: "your letter has satisfied me that i was mistaken in treating you like a stranger. i have come here to express my regret at having failed to do you justice. pray be assured that i believe in your better nature, and that i accept your letter in the spirit in which you have written it." he read my reply, and suddenly looked at me. never had i seen his beautiful eyes so brightly soft, so irresistibly tender, as they appeared now. he held out his hand to me. it is one of my small merits to be (in the popular phrase) as good as my word. i took his hand; well knowing that the action committed me to accepting his friendship. in relating the events which form this narrative, i look back at the chain, as i add to it link by link--sometimes with surprise, sometimes with interest, and sometimes with the discovery that i have omitted a circumstance which it is necessary to replace. but i search my memory in vain, while i dwell on the lines that i have just written, for a recollection of some attendant event which might have warned me of the peril towards which i was advancing blindfold. my remembrance presents us as standing together with clasped hands; but nothing in the slightest degree ominous is associated with the picture. there was no sinister chill communicated from his hand to mine; no shocking accident happened close by us in the river; not even a passing cloud obscured the sunlight, shining in its gayest glory over our heads. after having shaken hands, neither he nor i had apparently anything more to say. a little embarrassed, i turned to the boat-house window, and looked out. trifling as the action was, my companion noticed it. "do you like that muddy river?" he asked. i took the pencil again: "old associations make even the ugly loke interesting to me." he sighed as he read those words. "i wish, mr. roylake, i could say the same. your interesting river frightens me." it was needless to ask for the pencil again. my puzzled face begged for an explanation. "when you were in my room," he said, "you may have noticed a second window which looks out on the loke. i have got into a bad habit of sitting by that window on moonlight nights. i watch the flow of the stream, and it seems to associate itself with the flow of my thoughts. nothing remarkable, so far--while i am awake. but, later, when i get to sleep, dreams come to me. all of them, sir, without exception connect cristel with the river. look at the stealthy current that makes no sound. in my last night's sleep, it made itself heard; it was flowing in my ears with a water-music of its own. no longer my deaf ears; i heard, in my dream, as well as you can hear. yes; the same water-music, singing over and over again the same horrid song: "fool, fool, no cristel for you; bid her good-bye, bid her good-bye." i saw her floating away from me on those hideous waters. the cruel current held me back when i tried to follow her. i struggled and screamed and shivered and cried. i woke up with a start that shook me to pieces, and cursed your interesting river. don't write to me about it again. don't look at it again. why did you bring up the subject? i beg your pardon; i had no right to say that. let me be polite; let me be hospitable. i beg to invite you to come and see me, when my room is purified from its pestilent smell. i can only offer you a cup of tea. oh, that river, that river, what devil set me talking about it? i'm not mad, mr. roylake; only wretched. when may i expect you? choose your own evening next week." who could help pitying him? compared with my sound sweet dreamless sleep, what dreadful nights were his! i accepted his invitation as a matter of course. when we had completed our arrangements, it was time for me to think of returning to trimley deen. moving towards the door, i accidentally directed his attention to the pier by which the boat-house was approached. his face instantly reminded me of cristel's description of him, when he was strongly and evilly moved. i too saw "his beautiful eves tell tales, and his pretty complexion change to a color which turned him into an ugly man." he seized my arm, and pointed to the pier, at the end of it which joined the river-bank. "pray accept my excuses; i can't answer for my temper if that wretch comes near me." with this apology he hurried away; and sly giles toller, having patiently waited until the coast was clear, accosted me with his best bow, and said: "beautiful weather, isn't it, sir?" i had no remarks to make on the weather; but i was interested in discovering what had happened at the cottage. "you have mortally offended the gentleman who has just left me," i said. "what have you done?" mr. toller had purposes of his own to serve, and kept those purposes (as usual) exclusively in view: _he_ presented deaf ears to me now! "i don't think i ever remember such wonderful weather, sir, in my time; and i'm an old fellow, as i needn't tell you. being at the mill just now, i saw you in the boat-house, and came to pay my respects. would you be so good as to look at this slip of paper, mr. gerard? if you will kindly ask what it is, you will in a manner help me." i knew but too well what it was. "the repairs again!" i said resignedly. "hand it over, you obstinate old man." mr. toller was so tickled by my discovery, and by the cheering prospect consequent on seeing his list of repairs safe in my pocket, that he laughed until i really thought he would shake his lean little body to pieces. by way of bringing his merriment to an end, i assumed a look of severity, and insisted on knowing how he had offended the lodger. my venerable tenant, trembling for his repairs, drifted into a question of personal experience, and seemed to anticipate that it might improve my temper. "when you have a woman about the house, mr. gerard, you may have noticed that she's an everlasting expense to you--especially when she's a young one. isn't that so?" i inquired if he applied this remark to his daughter. "that's it, sir; i'm talking of cristy. when her back's up, there isn't her equal in england for strong language. my gentleman has misbehaved himself in some way (since you were with us this morning, sir); how, i don't quite understand. all i can tell you is, i've given him notice to quit. a clear loss of money to me every week, and cristy's responsible for it. yes, sir! i've been worked up to it by my girl. if cristy's mother had asked me to get rid of a paying lodger, i should have told her to go to---we won't say where, sir; you'll know where when you're married yourself. the upshot of it is that i have offended my gentleman, for the sake of my girl: which last is a luxury i can't afford, unless i let the rooms again. if you hear of a tenant, say what a good landlord i am, and what sweet pretty rooms i've got to let." i led the way to the bank of the river, before mr. toller could make any more requests. we passed the side of the old cottage. the door was open; and i saw cristel employed in the kitchen. my watch told me that i had still two or three minutes to spare; and my guilty remembrance of the message that i had pinned to the door suggested an immediate expression of regret. i approached cristel with a petition for pardon on my lips. she looked distrustfully at the door of communication with the new cottage, as if she expected to see it opened from the other side. "not now!" she said--and went on sadly with her household work. "may i see you to-morrow?" i asked. "it had better not be here, sir," was the only reply she made. i offered to meet her at any other place which she might appoint. cristel persisted in leaving it to me; she spoke absently, as if she was thinking all the time of something else. i could propose no better place, at the moment, than the spring in fordwitch wood. she consented to meet me there, on the next day, if seven o'clock in the morning would not be too early for me. my german habits had accustomed me to early rising. she heard me tell her this--and looked again at the lodger's door--and abruptly wished me good evening. her polite father was shocked at this unceremonious method of dismissing the great man, who had only to say the word and stop the repairs. "where are your manners, cristy?" he asked indignantly. before he could say another word, i was out of the cottage. as i passed the spring on my way home, i thought of my two appointments. on that evening, my meeting with the daughter of the lord. on the next morning, my meeting with the daughter of the miller. lady lena at dinner; cristel before breakfast. if mrs. roylake found out _that_ social contrast, what would she say? i was a merry young fool; i burst out laughing. chapter ix mrs roylake's game: first move the dinner at trimley deen has left in my memory little that i can distinctly recall. only a faintly-marked vision of lady lena rewards me for doing my best to remember her. a tall slim graceful person, dressed in white with a simplicity which is the perfection of art, presents to my admiration gentle blue eyes, a pale complexion delicately touched with color, a well-carried head crowned by lovely light brown hair. so far, time helps the reviving past to come to life again--and permits nothing more. i cannot say that i now remember the voice once so musical in my ears, or that i am able to repeat the easy unaffected talk which once interested me, or that i see again (in my thoughts) the perfect charm of manner which delighted everybody, not forgetting myself. my unworthy self, i might say; for i was the only young man, honored by an introduction to lady lena, who stopped at admiration, and never made use of opportunity to approach love. on the other hand, i distinctly recollect what my stepmother and i said to each other when our guests had wished us good-night. if i am asked to account for this, i can only reply that the conspiracy to lead me into proposing marriage to lady lena first showed itself on the occasion to which i have referred. in her eagerness to reach her ends, mrs. roylake failed to handle the fine weapons of deception as cleverly as usual. even i, with my small experience of worldly women, discovered the object that she had in view. i had retired to the seclusion of the smoking-room, and was already encircled by the clouds which float on the heaven of tobacco, when i heard a rustling of silk outside, and saw the smile of mrs. roylake beginning to captivate me through the open door. "if you throw away your cigar," cried this amiable person, "you will drive me out of the room. dear gerard, i like your smoke." my fat man in black, coming in at the moment to bring me some soda water, looked at his mistress with an expression of amazement and horror, which told me that he now saw mrs. roylake in the smoking-room for the first time. i involved myself in new clouds. if i suffocated my stepmother, her own polite equivocation would justify the act. she settled herself opposite to me in an armchair. the agonies that she must have suffered, in preventing her face from expressing emotions of disgust, i dare not attempt to imagine, even at this distance of time. "now, gerard, let us talk about the two ladies. what do you think of my friend, lady rachel?" "i don't like your friend, lady rachel." "you astonish me. why?" "i think she's a false woman." "heavens, what a thing to say of a lady--and that lady my friend! her politics may very reasonably have surprised you. but surely her vigorous intellect ought to have challenged your admiration; you can't deny that?" i was not clever enough to be able to deny it. but i was bold enough to say that lady rachel seemed to me to be a woman who talked for the sake of producing effect. she expressed opinions, as i ventured to declare, which (in her position) i did not believe she could honestly entertain. mrs. roylake entered a vigorous protest. she assured me that i was completely mistaken. "lady rachel," she said, "is the most perfectly candid person in the whole circle of my acquaintance." with the best intentions on my part, this was more than i could patiently endure. "isn't she the daughter of a nobleman?" i asked. "doesn't she owe her rank and her splendor, and the respect that people show to her, to the fortunate circumstance of her birth? and yet she talks as if she was a red republican. you yourself heard her say that she was a thorough radical, and hoped she might live to see the house of lords abolished. oh, i heard her! and what is more, i listened so attentively to such sentiments as these, from a lady with a title, that i can repeat, word for word, what she said next. "we hav'n't deserved our own titles; we hav'n't earned our own incomes; and we legislate for the country, without having been trusted by the country. in short, we are a set of impostors, and the time is coming when we shall be found out." do you believe she really meant that? all as false as false can be--that's what i say of it." there i stopped, privately admiring my own eloquence. quite a mistake on my part; my eloquence had done just what mrs. roylake wished me to do. she wanted an opportunity of dropping lady rachel, and taking up lady lena, with a producible reason which forbade the imputation of a personal motive on her part. i had furnished her with the reason. thus far, i cannot deny it, my stepmother was equal to herself. "really, gerard, you are so violent in your opinions that i am sorry i spoke of lady rachel. shall i find you equally prejudiced, and equally severe, if i change the subject to dear lady lena? oh, don't say you think she is false, too!" here mrs. roylake made her first mistake. she over-acted her part; and, when it was too late, she arrived, i suspect, at that conclusion herself. "if you hav'n't seen that i sincerely admire lady lena," i said, as smartly as i could, "the sooner you disfigure yourself with a pair of spectacles, my dear lady, the better. she is very pretty, perfectly unaffected, and, if i may presume to judge, delightfully well-bred and well-dressed." my stepmother's face actually brightened with pleasure. reflecting on it now, i am strongly disposed to think that she had not allowed her feelings to express themselves so unreservedly, since the time when she was a girl. after all, mrs. roylake was paying her step-son a compliment in trying to entrap him into a splendid marriage. it was my duty to think kindly of my ambitious relative. i did my duty. "you really like my sweet lena?" she said. "i am so glad. what were you talking about, with her? she made you exert all your powers of conversation, and she seemed to be deeply interested." more over-acting! another mistake! and i could see through it! with no english subject which we could discuss in common, lady lena's ready tact alluded to my past life. mrs. roylake had told her that i was educated at a german university. she had heard vaguely of students with long hair, who wore hessian boots, and fought duels; and she appealed to my experience to tell her something more. i did my best to interest her, with very indifferent success, and was undeservedly rewarded by a patient attention, which presented the unselfish refinements of courtesy under their most perfect form. but let me do my step-mother justice. she contrived to bend me to her will, before she left the smoking-room--i am sure i don't know how. "you have entertained the charming daughters at dinner," she reminded me; "and the least you can do, after that, is to pay your respects to their noble father. in your position, my dear boy, you cannot neglect our english customs without producing the worst possible impression." in two words, i found myself pledged, under pretence of visiting my lord, to improve my acquaintance with lady lena on the next day. "and pray be careful," mrs. roylake proceeded, still braving the atmosphere of the smoking-room, "not to look surprised if you find lord uppercliff's house presenting rather a poor appearance just now." i was dying for another cigar, and i entirely misunderstood the words of warning which had just been addressed to me. i tried to bring our interview to a close by making a generous proposal. "does he want money?" i asked. "i'll lend him some with the greatest pleasure." mrs. roylake's horror expressed itself in a little thin wiry scream. "oh, gerard, what people you must have lived among! what shocking ignorance of my lord's enormous fortune! he and his family have only just returned to their country seat, after a long absence--parliament you know, and foreign baths, and so on--and their english establishment is not yet complete. i don't know what mistake you may not make next. do listen to what i want to say to you." listening, i must acknowledge, with an absent mind, my attention was suddenly seized by mrs. roylake--without the slightest conscious effort towards that end, on the part of the lady herself. the first words that startled me, in her flow of speech, were these: "and i must not forget to tell you of poor lord uppercliff's misfortune. he had a fall, some time since, and broke his leg. as i think, he was so unwise as to let a plausible young surgeon set the broken bone. anyway, the end of it is that my lord slightly limps when he walks; and pray remember that he hates to see it noticed. lady rachel doesn't agree with me in attributing her father's lameness to his surgeon's want of experience. between ourselves, the man seems to have interested her. very handsome, very clever, very agreeable, and the manners of a gentleman. when his medical services came to an end, he was quite an acquisition at their parties in london--with one drawback: he mysteriously disappeared, and has never been heard of since. ask lady lena about it. she will give you all the details, without her elder sister's bias in favour of the handsome young man. what a pretty compliment you are paying me! you really look as if i had interested you." knowing what i knew, i was unquestionably interested. although the recent return of lord uppercliff and his daughter to their country home had, as yet, allowed no opportunity of a meeting, out of doors, between the deaf lodger and the friends whom he had lost sight of--no doubt at the time of his serious illness--still, the inevitable discovery might happen on any day. what result would follow? and what would be the effect on lady rachel, when she met with the fascinating young surgeon, and discovered the terrible change in him? chapter x warned! we were alone in the glade, by the side of the spring. at that early hour there were no interruptions to dread; but cristel was ill at ease. she seemed to be eager to get back to the cottage as soon as possible. "father tells me," she began abruptly, "he saw you at the boathouse. and it seemed to him, that you were behaving yourself like a friend to that terrible man." i reminded her of my having expressed the fear that we had been needlessly hard on him; and, i added that he had written a letter which confirmed me in that opinion. she looked, not only disappointed, but even alarmed. "i had hoped," she said sadly, "that father was mistaken." "so little mistaken," i assured her, "that i am going to drink tea with the man who seems to frighten you. i hope he will ask you to meet--" she recoiled from the bare idea of an invitation. "will you hear what i want to tell you?" she said earnestly. "you may alter your opinion if you know what i have been foolish enough to do, when you saw me go to the other side of the cottage." "dear cristel, i know what i owe to your kind interest in me on that occasion!" before i could say a word of apology for having wronged her by my suspicions, she insisted on an explanation of what i had just said. "did he mention it in his letter?" she asked. i owned that i had obtained my information in this way. and i declared that he had expressed his admiration of her, and his belief in her, in terms which made it a subject of regret to me not to be able to show what he had written. cristel forgot her fear of our being interrupted. her dismay expressed itself in a cry that rang through the wood. "you even believe in his letter?" she exclaimed. "mr. gerard! his writing in that way to you about me is a proof that he lies; and i'll make you see it. if you were anybody else but yourself, i would leave you to your fate. yes, your fate," she passionately repeated. "oh, forgive me, sir! i'm behaving disrespectfully; i beg your pardon. no, no; let me go on. when i spoke to him in your best interests (as i did most truly believe) i never suspected what mischief i had done, till i looked in his face. then, i saw how he hated you, and how vilely he was thinking in secret of me--" pure delusion! how could i allow it to go on? i interrupted her. "my dear, you have quite mistaken him. as i have already said, he sincerely respects you--and he owns that he misjudged me when he and i first met." "what! is _that_ in his letter too? it's worse even than i feared. again, and again, and again, i say it"--she stamped on the ground in the fervor of her conviction--"he hates you with the hatred that never forgives and never forgets. you think him a good man. do you suppose i would have begged and prayed of my father to send him away, without having reasons that justified me? mr. gerard, you force me to tell you what my unlucky visit did put into his head. yes, he does believe--believes firmly--that you have forgotten what is due to your rank; that i have been wicked enough to forget it too; and that you are going to take me away from him. say what he may, and write what he may, he is deceiving you for his own wicked ends. if you go to drink tea with him, god only knows what cause you may have to regret it. forgive me for being so violent, sir; i have done now. you have made me very wretched, but you are too good and kind to mean it. good-bye." i took her hand, i pressed it tenderly; i was touched, deeply touched. no! let me write honestly. her eyes betrayed her, her voice betrayed her, while she said her parting words. what i saw, what i heard, was no longer within the limits of doubt. the sweet girl's interest in my welfare was not the merely friendly interest which she herself believed it to be. and i said just now that i was "touched." cant! lies! i loved her more dearly than i had ever loved her yet. there is the truth--stripped of poor prudery, and the mean fear of being called vain! what i might have said to her, if the opportunity had offered itself, may be easily imagined. before i could open my lips, a man appeared on the path which led from the mill to the spring--the man whom cristel had secretly suspected of a design to follow her. i felt her hand trembling in my hand, and gave it a little encouraging squeeze. "let us judge him," i suggested, "by what he says and does, on finding us together." without an attempt at concealment on his part, he advanced towards us briskly, smiling and waving his hand. "what, mr. roylake, you have already found out the virtues of your wonderful spring, and you are drinking the water before breakfast! i have often done it myself when i was not too lazy to get up. and this charming girl," he went on, turning to cristel, "has she been trying the virtues of the spring by your advice? she won't listen to me, or i should have recommended it long since. see me set the example." he took a silver mug from his pocket, and descended the few steps that led to the spring. allowing for the dreadful deaf monotony in his voice, no man could have been more innocently joyous and agreeable. while he was taking his morning draught, i appealed to cristel's better sense. "is this the hypocrite, who is deceiving me for his own wicked ends?" i asked. "does he look like the jealous monster who is plotting my destruction, and who will succeed if i am fool enough to accept his invitation?" poor dear, she was as obstinate as ever! "think over what i have said to you--think, for your own sake," was her only reply. "and a little for _your_ sake?" i ventured to add. she ran away from me, taking the path which would lead her home again. the deaf man and i were left together. he looked after her until she was out of sight. then he produced his book of blank leaves. but, instead of handing it to me as usual, he began to write in it himself. "i have something to say to you," he explained. it was only possible, while the book was in his possession, to remind him that i could hear, and that he could speak, by using the language of signs. i touched my lips, and pointed to him; i touched my ear, and pointed to myself. "yes," he said, understanding me with his customary quickness; "but i want you to remember as well as to hear. when i have filled this leaf, i shall beg you to keep it about you, and to refer to it from time to time." he wrote on steadily, until he had filled both sides of the slip of paper. "quite a little letter," he said. "pray read it." this is what i read: "you must have seen for yourself that i was incapable of insulting you and miss cristel by an outbreak of jealousy, when i found you together just now. only remember that we all have our weaknesses, and that it is my hard lot to be in a state of contest with the inherited evil which is the calamity of my life. with your encouragement, i may resist temptation in the future, and keep the better part of me in authority over my thoughts and actions. but, be on your guard, and advise miss cristel to be on her guard, against false appearances. as we all know, they lie like truth. consider me. pity me. i ask no more." straightforward and manly and modest--i appeal to any unprejudiced mind whether i should not have committed a mean action, if i had placed an evil construction on this? "am i understood?" he asked. i signed to him to give me his book, and relieved him of anxiety in these words: "if i had failed to understand you, i should have felt ashamed of myself. may i show what you have written to cristel?" he smiled, more sweetly and pleasantly than i had seen him smile yet. "if you wish it," he answered. "i leave it entirely to you. thank you--and good morning." having advanced a few steps on his way to the cottage, he paused, and reminded me of the tea-drinking: "don't forget to-morrow evening, at seven o'clock." chapter xi warned again! the breakfast hour had not yet arrived when i got home. i went into the garden to refresh my eyes--a little weary of the solemn uniformity of color in fordwitch wood--by looking at the flowers. reaching the terrace, in the first place, i heard below me a man's voice, speaking in tones of angry authority, and using language which expressed an intention of turning somebody out of the garden. i at once descended the steps which led to the flower-beds. the man in authority proved to be one of my gardeners; and the man threatened with instant expulsion was the oddly-dressed servant of the friend whom i had just left. the poor fellow's ugly face presented a picture of shame and contrition, the moment i showed myself. he piteously entreated me to look over it, and to forgive him. "wait a little," i said. "let me see if i have anything to forgive." i turned to the gardener. "what is your complaint of this man?" "he's a trespasser on your grounds, sir. and, his impudence, to say the least of it, is such as i never met with before." "what harm has he done?" "harm, sir?" "yes--harm. has he been picking the flowers?" the gardener looked round him, longing to refer me to the necessary evidence, and failing to discover it anywhere. the wretched trespasser took heart of grace, and said a word in his own defence. "nobody ever knew me to misbehave myself in a gentleman's garden," he said; "i own, sir, to having taken a peep at the flowers, over the wall." "and they tempted you to look a little closer at them?" "that's the truth, sir." "so you are fond of flowers?" "yes, sir. i once failed in business as a nurseryman--but i don't blame the flowers." the delightful simplicity of this was lost on the gardener. i heard the brute mutter to himself: "gammon!" for once i asserted my authority over my servant. "understand this," i said to him: "i don't confine the enjoyment of my garden to myself and my friends. any well-behaved persons are welcome to come here and look at the flowers. remember that. now you may go." having issued these instructions, i next addressed myself to my friend in the shabby shooting jacket; telling him to roam wherever he liked, and to stay as long as he pleased. instead of thanking me and using his liberty, he hesitated, and looked thoroughly ill at ease. "what's the matter now?" i asked. "i'm afraid you don't know, sir, who it is you are so kind to. i've been something else in my time, besides a nurseryman." "what have you been?" "a prize-fighter." if he expected me to exhibit indignation or contempt, he was disappointed. my ignorance treated him as civilly as ever. "what is a prize-fighter?" i inquired. the unfortunate pugilist looked at me in speechless bewilderment. i told him that i had been brought up among foreigners, and that i had never even seen an english newspaper for the last ten years. this explanation seemed to encourage the man of few words: it set him talking freely at last. he delivered a treatise on the art of prizefighting, and he did something else which i found more amusing--he told me his name. to my small sense of humor his name, so to speak, completed this delightfully odd man: it was gloody. as to the list of his misfortunes, the endless length of it became so unendurably droll, that we both indulged in unfeeling fits of laughter over the sorrows of gloody. the first lucky accident of the poor fellow's life had been, literally, the discovery of him by his present master. this event interested me. i said i should like to hear how it had happened. gloody modestly described himself as "one of the starving lot, sir, that looks out for small errands. i got my first dinner for three days, by carrying a gentleman's portmanteau for him. and he, if you please, was afterwards my master. he lived alone. bless you, he was as deaf then as he is now. he says to me, 'if you bawl in my ears, i'll knock you down.' i thought to myself, you wouldn't say that, master, if you knew how i was employed twenty years ago. he took me into his service, sir, because i was ugly. 'i'm so handsome myself;' he says, 'i want a contrast of something ugly about me.' you may have noticed that he's a bitter one--and bitterly enough he sometimes behaved to me. but there's a good side to him. he gives me his old clothes, and sometimes he speaks almost as kindly to me as you do. but for him, i believe i should have perished of starvation--" he suddenly checked himself. whether he was afraid of wearying me, or whether some painful recollection had occurred to him, it was of course impossible to say. the ugly face, to which he owed his first poor little morsel of prosperity, became overclouded by care and doubt. bursting into expressions of gratitude which i had certainly not deserved--expressions, so evidently sincere, that they bore witness to constant ill-usage suffered in the course of his hard life--he left me with a headlong haste of movement, driven away as i fancied by an unquiet mind. i watched him retreating along the path, and saw him stop abruptly, still with his back to me. his deep strong voice travelled farther than he supposed. i heard him say to himself: "what an infernal rascal i am!" he waited a little, and turned my way again. slowly and reluctantly, he came back to me. as he approached i saw the man, who had lived by the public exhibition of his courage, looking at me with fear plainly visible in the change of his color, and the expression of his face. "anything wrong?" i inquired. "nothing wrong, sir. might i be so bold as to ask--" we waited a little; i gave him time to collect his thoughts. perhaps the silence confused him. anyhow, i was obliged to help him to get on. "what do you wish to ask of me?" i said. "i wished to speak, sir--" he stopped again. "about what?" i asked. "about to-morrow evening." "well?" he burst out with it, at last. "are you coming to drink tea with my master?" "of course, i am coming! mr. gloody, do you know that you rather surprise me?" "i hope no offence, sir." "nonsense! it seems odd, my good fellow, that your master shouldn't have told you i was coming to drink tea with him. isn't it your business to get the things ready?" he shifted from one foot to another, and looked as if he wished himself out of my way. at a later time of my life, i have observed that these are signs by which an honest man is apt to confess that he has told, or is going to tell, a lie. as it was, i only noticed that he answered confusedly. "i can't quite say, mr. roylake, that my master didn't mention the thing to me." "but you failed to understand him--is that it?" "well, sir, if i want to ask him anything i have to write it. i'm slow at writing, and bad at writing, and he isn't always patient. however, as you reminded me just now, i have got to get the things ready. to cut it short, perhaps i might say that i didn't quite expect the tea-party would come off." "why shouldn't it come off?" "well, sir, you might have some other engagement." was this a hint? or only an excuse? in either case it was high time, if he still refused to speak out, that i should set him the example. "you have given me some curious information," i said, "on the subject of fighting with the fists; and you have made me understand the difference between 'fair hitting' and 'foul hitting'. are you hitting fair now? very likely i am mistaken--but you seem to me to be trying to prevent my accepting your master's invitation." he pulled off his hat in a hurry. "i beg your pardon, sir; i won't detain you any longer. if you will allow me, i'll take my leave." "don't go, mr. gloody, without telling me whether i am right or wrong. is there really some objection to my coming to tea tomorrow?" "quite a mistake, sir," he said, still in a hurry. "i've led you wrong without meaning it--being an ignorant man, and not knowing how to express myself. don't think me ungrateful, mr. roylake! after your kindness to me, i'd go through fire and water for you--i would!" his sunken eyes moistened, his big voice faltered. i let him leave me, in mercy to the strong feeling which i had innocently roused. but i shook hands with him first. yielding to one of my headlong impulses? yes. and doing a very indiscreet thing? wait a little--and we shall see. chapter xii warned for the last time! my loyalty towards the afflicted man, whose friendly advances i had seen good reason to return, was in no sense shaken. his undeserved misfortunes, his manly appeal to me at the spring, his hopeless attachment to the beautiful girl whose aversion towards him i had unhappily encouraged, all pleaded with me in his favour. i had accepted his invitation; and i had no other engagement to claim me: it would have been an act of meanness amounting to a confession of fear, if i had sent an excuse. still, while cristel's entreaties and cristel's influence had failed to shake me, gloody's strange language and gloody's incomprehensible conduct had troubled my mind. i felt vaguely uneasy; irritated by my own depression of spirits. if i had been a philosopher, i should have recognized the symptoms of a very common attack of a very widely-spread moral malady. the meanest of all human infirmities is also the most universal; and the name of it is self-esteem. it is perhaps only right to add that my patience had been tried by the progress of domestic events, which affected lady lena and myself--viewed as victims. calling, with my stepmother, at lord uppercliff's house later in the day, i perceived that lady rachel and mrs. roylake found (or made) an opportunity of talking together confidentially in a corner; and, once or twice, i caught them looking at lady lena and at me. even lord uppercliff (perhaps not yet taken into their confidence) noticed the proceedings of the two ladies, and seemed to be at a loss to understand them. when mrs. roylake and i were together again, on our way home, i was prepared to hear the praise of lady lena, followed by a delicate examination into the state of my heart. neither of these anticipations was realized. once more, my clever stepmother had puzzled me. mrs. roylake talked as fluently as ever; exhausting one common-place subject after another, without the slightest allusion to my lord's daughter, to my matrimonial prospects, or to my visits at the mill. i was secretly annoyed, feeling that my stepmother's singular indifference to domestic interests of paramount importance, at other times, must have some object in view, entirely beyond the reach of my penetration. if i had dared to commit such an act of rudeness, i should have jumped out of the carriage, and have told mrs. roylake that i meant to walk home. the day was sunday. i loitered about the garden, listening to the distant church-bell ringing for the afternoon service. without any cause that i knew of to account for it, i was so restless that nothing i could do attracted me or quieted me. returning to the house, i tried to occupy myself with my collection of insects, sadly neglected of late. useless! my own moths failed to interest me. i went back to the garden. passing the open window of one of the lower rooms which looked out on the terrace, i saw mrs. roylake reading a book in sad-colored binding. she was yawning over it fearfully, when she discovered that i was looking at her. equal to any emergency, this remarkable woman instantly handed to me a second and similar volume. "the most precious sermons, gerard, that have been written in our time." i looked at the book; i opened the book; i recovered my presence of mind, and handed it back. if a female humbug was on one side of the window, a male humbug was on the other. "please keep it for me till the evening," i said; "i am going for a walk." which way did i turn my steps? men will wonder what possessed me--women will think it a proceeding that did me credit--i took the familiar road which led to the gloomy wood and the guilty river. the longing in me to see cristel again, was more than i could resist. not because i was in love with her; only because i had left her in distress. beyond the spring, and within a short distance of the river, i saw a lady advancing towards me on the path which led from the mill. brisk, smiling, tripping along like a young girl, behold the mock-republican, known in our neighborhood as lady rachel! she held out both hands to me. but for her petticoats, i should have thought i had met with a jolly young man. "i have been wandering in your glorious wood, mr. roylake. anything to escape the respectable classes on sunday, patronizing piety on the way to afternoon church. i must positively make a sketch of the cottage by the mill--i mean, of course, the picturesque side of it. that fine girl of toller's was standing at the door. she is really handsomer than ever. are you going to see her, you wicked man? which do you admire--that gypsy complexion, or lena's lovely skin? both, i have no doubt, at your age. good-bye." when we had left each other, i thought of the absent captain in the navy who was lady rachel's husband. he was a perfect stranger--but i put myself in his place, and felt that i too should have gone to sea. old toller was alone in his kitchen, evidently annoyed and angry. "we are all at sixes and sevens, mr. gerard. i've had another row with that deaf-devil--my new name for him, and i think it's rather clever. he swears, sir, that he won't go at the end of his week's notice. says, if i think i'm likely to get rid of him before he has married cristy, i'm mistaken. threatens, if any man attempts to take her away, he'll shoot her, and shoot the man, and shoot himself. aha! old as i am, if he believes he's going to have it all his own way, he's mistaken. i'll be even with him. you mark my words: i'll be even with him." that old toller--the most exasperating of men, judged by a quick temper--had irritated my friend into speaking rashly was plain enough. nevertheless, i felt some anxiety (jealous anxiety, i am afraid) about cristel. after looking round the kitchen again, i asked where she was. "sitting forlorn in her bedroom, crying," her father told me. "i went out for a walk by the river, and i sat down, and (being sunday) i fell asleep. when i woke, and got home again just now, that was how i found her. i don't like to hear my girl crying; she's as good as gold and better. no, sir; our deaf-devil is not to blame for this. he has given cristy no reason to complain of him. she says so herself--and she never told a lie yet." "but, mr. toller," i objected, "something must have happened to distress her. has she not told you what it is?" "not she! obstinate about it. leaves me to guess. it's clear to my mind, mr. gerard, that somebody has got at her in my absence, and said something to upset her. you will ask me who the person is. i can't say i have found that out yet." "but you mean to try?" "yes; i mean to try." he answered me with little of the energy which generally distinguished him. perhaps he was fatigued, or perhaps he had something else to think of. i offered a suggestion. "when we are in want of help," i said, "we sometimes find it, nearer than we had ventured to expect--at our own doors." the ancient miller rose at that hint like a fish at a fly. "gloody!" he cried. "find him at once, mr. toller." he hobbled to the door--and looked round at me. "i've got burdens on my mind," he explained, "or i should have thought of it too." having done justice to his own abilities, he bustled out. in less than a minute, he was back again in a state of breathless triumph. "gloody has seen the person," he announced; "and (what do you think, sir?) it's a woman!" i beckoned to gloody, waiting modestly at the door, to come in, and tell me what he had discovered. "i saw her outside, sir--rapping at the door here, with her parasol." that was the servant's report. her parasol? not being acquainted with the development of dress among female servants in england, i asked if she was a lady. there seemed to be no doubt of it in the man's mind. she was also, as gloody supposed, a person whom he had never seen before. "how is it you are not sure of that?" i said. "well, sir, she was waiting to be let in; and i was behind her, coming out of the wood." "who let her in?" "miss cristel." his face brightened with an expression of interest when he mentioned the miller's daughter. he went on with his story without wanting questions to help him. "miss cristel looked like a person surprised at seeing a stranger--what _i_ should call a free and easy stranger. she walked in, sir, as if the place belonged to her." i am not suspicious by nature, as i hope and believe. but i began to be reminded of lady rachel already. "did you notice the lady's dress?" i asked. a woman who had seen her would have been able to describe every morsel of her dress from head to foot. the man had only observed her hat; and all he could say was that he thought it "a smartish one." "any particular color?" i went on. "not that i know of. dark green, i think." "any ornament in it?" "yes! a purple feather." the hat i had seen on the head of that hateful woman was now sufficiently described--for a man. sly old toller, leaving gloody unnoticed, and keeping his eye on me, saw the signs of conviction in my face, and said with his customary audacity: "who is she?" i followed, at my humble distance, the example of sir walter scott, when inquisitive people asked him if he was the author of the waverley novels. in plain english, i denied all knowledge of the stranger wearing the green hat. but, i was naturally desirous of discovering next what lady rachel had said; and i asked to speak with cristel. her far-seeing father might or might not have perceived a chance of listening to our conversation. he led me to the door of his daughter's room; and stood close by, when i knocked softly, and begged that she would come out. the tone of the poor girl's voice--answering, "forgive me, sir; i can't do it"--convicted the she-socialist (as i thought) of merciless conduct of some sort. assuming this conclusion to be the right one, i determined, then and there, that lady rachel should not pass the doors of trimley deen again. if her bosom-friend resented that wise act of severity by leaving the house, i should submit with resignation, and should remember the circumstance with pleasure. "i am afraid you are ill, cristel?" was all i could find to say, under the double disadvantage of speaking through a door, and having a father listening at my side. "oh no, mr. gerard, not ill. a little low in my mind, that's all. i don't mean to be rude, sir--pray be kinder to me than ever! pray let me be!" i said i would return on the next day; and left the room with a sore heart. old toller highly approved of my conduct. he rubbed his fleshless hands, and whispered: "you'll get it out of cristy to-morrow, and i'll help you." i found gloody waiting for me outside the cottage. he was anxious about miss cristel; his only excuse, he told me, being the fear that she might be ill. having set him at ease, in that particular, i said: "you seem to be interested in miss cristel." his answer raised him a step higher in my estimation. "how can i help it, sir?" an odd man, with a personal appearance that might excite a prejudice against him, in some minds. i failed to see it myself in that light. it struck me, as i walked home, that cristel might have made many a worse friend than the retired prize-fighter. a change in my manner was of course remarked by mrs. roylake's ready observation. i told her that i had been annoyed, and offered no other explanation. wonderful to relate, she showed no curiosity and no surprise. more wonderful still, at every fair opportunity that offered, she kept out of my way. my next day's engagement being for seven o'clock in the evening, i put mrs. roylake's self-control to a new test. with prefatory excuses, i informed her that i should not be able to dine at home as usual. impossible as it was that she could have been prepared to hear this, her presence of mind was equal to the occasion. i left the house, followed by my stepmother's best wishes for a pleasant evening. hoping to speak with cristel alone, i had arranged to reach the cottage before seven o'clock. on the river-margin of the wood, i was confronted by a wild gleam of beauty in the familiar view, for which previous experience had not prepared me. am i wrong in believing that all scenery, no matter how magnificent or how homely it may be, derives a splendor not its own from favouring conditions of light and shade? our gloomy trees and our repellent river presented an aspect superbly transfigured, under the shadows of the towering clouds, the fantastic wreaths of the mist, and the lurid reddening of the sun as it stooped to its setting. lovely interfusions of sobered color rested, faded, returned again, on the upper leaves of the foliage as they lightly moved. the mist, rolling capriciously over the waters, revealed the grandly deliberate course of the flowing current, while it dimmed the turbid earthy yellow that discolored and degraded the stream under the full glare of day. while my eyes followed the successive transformations of the view, as the hour advanced, tender and solemn influences breathed their balm over my mind. days, happy days that were past, revived. again, i walked hand in hand with my mother, among the scenes that were round me, and learnt from her to be grateful for the beauty of the earth, with a heart that felt it. we were tracing our way along our favorite woodland path; and we found a companion of tender years, hiding from us. she showed herself; blushing, hesitating, offering a nosegay of wild flowers. my mother whispered to me--i thanked the little mill-girl, and gave her a kiss. did i feel the child's breath, in my day-dream, still fluttering on my cheek? was i conscious of her touch? i started, trembled, returned reluctantly to my present self. a visible hand touched my arm. as i turned suddenly, a living breath played on my face. the child had faded into a vanishing shade: the perfected woman who had grown from her had stolen on me unawares, and was asking me to pardon her. "mr. gerard, you were lost in your thoughts; i spoke, and you never heard me." i looked at her in silence. was this the dear cristel so well known to me? or was it a mockery of her that had taken her place? "i hope i have not offended you?" she said. "you have surprised me," i answered. "something must have happened, since i saw you last. what is it?" "nothing." i advanced a step, and drew her closer to me. a dark flush discolored her face. an overpowering brilliancy flashed from her eyes; there was an hysterical defiance in her manner. "are you excited? are you angry? are you trying to startle me by acting a part?" i urged those questions on her, one after another; and i was loudly and confidently answered. "i dare say i am excited, mr. gerard, by the honor that has been done me. you are going to keep your engagement, of course? well, your friend, your favorite friend, has invited me to meet you. no! that's not quite true. i invited myself--the deaf gentleman submitted." "why did you invite yourself?" "because a tea-party is not complete without a woman." her manner was as strangely altered as her looks. that she was beside herself for the moment, i clearly saw. that she had answered me unreservedly, it was impossible to believe. i began to feel angry, when i ought to have made allowances for her. "is this lady rachel's doing?" i said. "what do you know of lady rachel, sir?" "i know that she has visited you, and spoken to you." "do you know what she has said?" "i can guess." "mr. gerard, don't abuse that good and kind lady. she deserves your gratitude as well as mine." her manner had become quieter; her face was more composed; her expression almost recovered its natural charm while she spoke of lady rachel. i was stupefied. "try, sir, to forget it and forgive it," she resumed gently, "if i have misbehaved myself. i don't rightly know what i am saying or doing." i pointed to the new side of the cottage, behind us. "is the cause there?" i asked. "no! no indeed! i have not seen him; i have not heard from him. his servant often brings me messages. not one message to-day." "have you seen gloody to-day?" "oh, yes! there's one thing, if i may make so bold, i should like to know. mr. gloody is as good to me as good can be; we see each other continually, living in the same place. but you are different; and he tells me himself he has only seen you twice. what have you done, mr. gerard, to make him like you so well, in that short time?" i told her that he had been found in my garden, looking at the flowers. "as he had done no harm," i said, "i wouldn't allow the servant to turn him out; and i walked round the flower-beds with him. little enough to deserve such gratitude as the poor fellow expressed--and felt, i don't doubt it." i had intended to say no more than this. but the remembrance of gloody's mysterious prevarication, and of the uneasiness which i had undoubtedly felt when i thought of it afterwards, led me (i cannot pretend to say how) into associating cristel's agitation with something which this man might have said to her. i was on the point of putting the question, when she held up her hand, and said, "hush!" the wind was blowing towards us from the river-side village, to which i have already alluded. i am not sure whether i have mentioned that the name of the place was kylam. it was situated behind a promontory of the river-bank, clothed thickly with trees, and was not visible from the mill. in the present direction of the wind, we could hear the striking of the church clock. cristel counted the strokes. "seven," she said. "are you determined to keep your engagement?" she had repeated--in an unsteady voice, and with a sudden change in her color to paleness--the strange question put to me by gloody. in his case i had failed to trace the motive. i tried to discover it now. "tell me why i ought to break my engagement," i said. "remember what i told you at the spring," she answered. "you are deceived by a false friend who lies to you and hates you." the man she was speaking of turned the corner of the new cottage. he waved his hand gaily, and approached us along the road. "go!" she said. "your guardian angel has forgotten you. it's too late now." instead of letting me precede her, as i had anticipated, she ran on before me--made a sign to the deaf man, as she passed him, not to stop her--and disappeared through the open door of her father's side of the cottage. i was left to decide for myself. what should i have done, if i had been twenty years older? say that my moral courage would have risen superior to the poorest of all fears, the fear of appearing to be afraid, and that i should have made my excuses to my host of the evening--how would my moral courage have answered him, if he had asked for an explanation? useless to speculate on it! had i possessed the wisdom of middle life, his book of leaves would not have told him, in my own handwriting, that i believed in his better nature, and accepted his friendly letter in the spirit in which he had written. explain it who can--i knew that i was going to drink tea with him, and yet i was unwilling to advance a few steps, and meet him on the road! "i find a new bond of union between us," he said, as he joined me. "we both feel _that._" he pointed to the grandly darkening view. "the two men who could have painted the mystery of those growing shadows and fading lights, lie in the graves of rembrandt and turner. shall we go to tea?" on our way to his room we stopped at the miller's door. "will _you_ inquire," he said, "if miss cristel is ready?" i went in. old toller was in the kitchen, smoking his pipe without appearing to enjoy it. "what's come to my girl?" he asked, the moment he saw me. "yesterday she was in her room, crying. to-day she's in her room, praying." the warnings which i had neglected rose in judgment against me. i was silent; i was awed. before i recovered myself, cristel entered the kitchen. her father whispered, "look at her!" of the excitement which had disturbed--i had almost said, profaned--her beautiful face, not a vestige remained. pale, composed, resolute, she said, "i am ready," and led the way out. the man whom she hated offered his arm. she took it! chapter xiii the claret jug i perceived but one change in the lodger's miserable room, since i had seen it last. a second table was set against one of the walls. our boiling water for the tea was kept there, in a silver kettle heated by a spirit-lamp. i next observed a delicate little china vase which held the tea, and a finely-designed glass claret jug, with a silver cover. other men, possessing that beautiful object, would have thought it worthy of the purest bordeaux wine which the arts of modern adulteration permit us to drink. this man had filled the claret jug with water. "all my valuable property, ostentatiously exposed to view," he said, in his bitterly facetious manner. "my landlord's property matches it on the big table." the big table presented a coarse earthenware teapot; cups and saucers with pieces chipped out of them; a cracked milk jug; a tumbler which served as a sugar basin; and an old vegetable dish, honored by holding delicate french sweet-meats for the first time since it had left the shop. my deaf friend, in boisterously good spirits, pointed backwards and forwards between the precious and the worthless objects on the two tables, as if he saw a prospect that delighted him. "i don't believe the man lives," he said, "who enjoys contrast as i do.--what do you want now?" this question was addressed to gloody, who had just entered the room. he touched the earthenware teapot. his master answered: "let it alone." "i make the tea at other times," the man persisted, looking at me. "what does he say? write it down for me, mr. roylake. i beg you will write it down." there was anger in his eyes as he made that request. i took his book, and wrote the words--harmless words, surely? he read them, and turned savagely to his unfortunate servant. "in the days when you were a ruffian in the prize-ring, did the other men's fists beat all the brains out of your head? do you think you can make tea that is fit for mr. roylake to drink?" he pointed to an open door, communicating with another bedroom. gloody's eyes rested steadily on cristel: she failed to notice him, being occupied at the moment in replacing the pin of a brooch which had slipped out of her dress. the man withdrew into the second bedroom, and softly closed the door. our host recovered his good humor. he took a wooden stool, and seated himself by cristel. "borrowed furniture," he said, "as well as borrowed tea-things. what a debt of obligation i owe to your excellent father. how quiet you are, dear girl. do you regret having followed the impulse which made you kindly offer to drink tea with us?" he suddenly turned to me. "another proof, mr. roylake, of the sisterly interest that she feels in you; she can't hear of your coming to my room, without wanting to be with you. ah, you possess the mysterious attractions which fascinate the sex. one of these days, _some_ woman will love you as never man was loved yet." he addressed himself again to cristel. "still out of spirits? i dare say you are tired of waiting for your tea. no? you have had tea already? it's gloody's fault; he ought to have told me that seven o'clock was too late for you. the poor devil deserved that you should take no notice of him when he looked at you just now. are you one of the few women who dislike an ugly man? women in general, i can tell you, prefer ugly men. a handsome man matches them on their own ground, and they don't like that. 'we are so fond of our ugly husbands; they set us off to such advantage.' oh, i don't report what they say; i speak the language in which they think.--mr. roylake, does it strike you that the cur is a sad cynic? by-the-by, do you call me 'the cur' (as i suggested) when you speak of me to other people--to miss cristel, for instance? my charming young friends, you both look shocked; you both shake your heads. perhaps i am in one of my tolerant humors to-day; i see nothing disgraceful in being a cur. he is a dog who represents different breeds. very well, the english are a people who represent different breeds: saxons, normans, danes. the consequence, in one case, is a great nation. the consequence, in the other case, is the cleverest member of the whole dog family--as you may find out for yourself if you will only teach him. ha--how i am running on. my guests try to slip in a word or two, and can't find their opportunity. enjoyment, miss cristel. excitement, mr. roylake. for more than a year past, i have not luxuriated in the pleasures of society. i feel the social glow; i love the human family; i never, never, never was such a good man as i am now. let vile slang express my emotions: isn't it jolly?" cristel and i stopped him, at the same moment. we instinctively lifted our hands to our ears. in his delirium of high spirits, he had burst through the invariable monotony of his articulation. without the slightest gradation of sound, his voice broke suddenly into a screech, prolonged in its own discord until it became perfectly unendurable to hear. the effect that he had produced upon us was not lost on him. his head sank on his breast; horrid shudderings shook him without mercy; he said to himself not to us: "i had forgotten i was deaf." there was a whole world of misery in those simple words. cristel kept her place, unmoved. i rose, and put my hand kindly on his shoulder. it was the best way i could devise of assuring him of my sympathy. he looked up at me, in silence. his book of leaves was on the table; he did once more, what he had already done at the spring. instead of using the book as usual, he wrote in it himself, and then handed it to me. "let me spare your nerves a repetition of my deaf discord. sight, smell, touch, taste--i would give them all to be able to hear. in reminding me of that vain aspiration, my infirmity revenges itself: my deafness is not accustomed to be forgotten. well! i can be silently useful; i can make the tea." he rose, and, taking the teapot with him, went to the table that had been placed against the wall. in that position, his back was turned towards us. at the same time, i felt his book gently taken out of my hand. cristel had been reading, while i read, over my shoulder. she wrote on the next blank leaf: "shall i make the tea?" "now," she said to me, "notice what happens." following him, she touched his arm, and presented her request. he shook his head in token of refusal. she came back to her place by me. "you expected that?" i said. "yes." "why did you ask me to notice his refusal?" "because i may want to remind you that he wouldn't let me make the tea." "mysteries, my dear?" "yes: mysteries." "not to be mentioned more particularly?" "i will mention one of them more particularly. after the tea has been made, you may possibly feel me touch your knee under the table." i was fool enough to smile at this, and wise enough afterwards to see in her face that i had made a mistake. "what is your touch intended to mean?" i asked. "it means, 'wait,' she said." my sense of humor was, by this time, completely held in check. that some surprise was in store for me, and that cristel was resolved not to take me into her confidence, were conclusions at which i naturally arrived. i felt, and surely not without good cause, a little annoyed. the lodger came back to us with the tea made. as he put the teapot on the table, he apologized to cristel. "don't think me rude, in refusing your kind offer. if there is one thing i know i can do better than anybody else, that thing is making tea. do you take sugar and milk, mr. roylake?" i made the affirmative sign. he poured out the tea. when he had filled two cups, the supply was exhausted. cristel and i noticed this. he saw it, and at once gratified our curiosity. "it is a rule," he said, "with masters in the art of making tea, that one infusion ought never to be used twice. if we want any more, we will make more; and if you feel inclined to join us, miss cristel, we will fill the third cup." what was there in this (i wondered) to make her turn pale? and why, after what he had just said, did i see her eyes willingly rest on him, for the first time in my experience? entirely at a loss to understand her, i resignedly stirred my tea. on the point of tasting it next, felt her hand on my knee, under the table. bewildered as i was, i obeyed my instructions, and went on stirring my tea. our host smiled. "your sugar takes a long time to melt," he said--and drank his tea. as he emptied the cup, the touch was taken off me. i followed his example. in spite of his boasting, the tea was the worst i ever tasted. i should have thrown it out of the window, if they had offered us such nasty stuff at trimley deen. when i set down my cup, he asked facetiously if i wished him to brew any more. my negative answer was a masterpiece of strong expression, in the language of signs. instead of sending for gloody to clear the table, he moved away the objects near him, so as to leave an empty space at his disposal. "i ought perhaps to have hesitated, before i asked you to spend the evening with me," he said, speaking with a gentleness and amiability of manner, strongly in contrast with his behavior up to this time. "it is my misfortune, as you both well know, to be a check on conversation. i dare say you have asked yourselves: how is he going to amuse us, after tea? if you will allow me, i propose to amuse you by exhibiting the dexterity of my fingers and thumbs. before i was deaf, i should have preferred the piano for this purpose. as it is, an inferior accomplishment must serve my turn." he opened a cupboard in the wall, close by the second table, and returned with a pack of cards. cristel imitated the action of dealing cards for a game. "no," he said, "that is not the amusement which i have in view. allow me to present myself in a new character. i am no longer the lodger, and no longer the cur. my new name is more honorable still--i am the conjurer." he shuffled the pack by pouring it backwards and forwards from one hand to the other, in a cascade of cards. the wonderful ease with which he did it prepared me for something worth seeing. cristel's admiration of his dexterity expressed itself by a prolonged clapping of hands, and a strange uneasy laugh. as his excitement subsided, her agitation broke out. i saw the flush again on her face, and the fiery brightness in her eyes. once, when his attention was engaged, she stole a look at the door by which gloody had left the room. did this indicate another of the mysteries which, by her own confession, she had in preparation for me? my late experience had not inclined me favorably towards mysteries. i devoted my whole attention to the conjurer. whether he chose the easiest examples of skill in sleight of hand is more than i know. i can only say that i never was more completely mystified by any professor of legerdemain on the public platform. after the performance of each trick, he asked leave to time himself by looking at his watch; being anxious to discover if he had lost his customary quickness of execution through recent neglect of the necessary practice. of cristel's conduct, while he was amusing us, i can only say that it justified mrs. roylake's spiteful description of her as a bold girl. the more cleverly the tricks were performed, the more they seemed to annoy and provoke her. "i hate being puzzled!" she said, addressing herself of course to me. "yes, yes; his fingers are quicker than my eyes--i have heard that explanation before. when he has done one of his tricks, i want to know how he does it. conjurers are people who ask riddles, and, when one can't guess them, refuse to say what the answer is. it's as bad as calling me a fool, to suppose that i like being deceived. ah," she cried, with a shocking insolence of look and manner, "if our friend could only hear what i am saying!" he had paused while she was speaking, observing her attentively. "your face doesn't encourage me," he said, with a patience and courtesy of manner which it was impossible not to admire. "i am coming gradually to my greatest triumph; and i think i can surprise and please you." he timed his last trick, and returned to the table placed against the wall. "excuse me for a moment," he resumed; "i am suffering as usual, after drinking tea. i so delight in it that the temptation to-night was more than i could resist. tea disagrees with my weak stomach. it always produces thirst." "what nonsense he talks!" cristel exclaimed. "all mere fancy! he reminds me of the old song called 'the nervous man.' do you know it, mr. roylake?" in spite of my efforts to prevent her, she burst out with the first verse of a stupid comic song. spared by his deafness from this infliction of vulgarity, our host filled a tumbler from the water in the claret jug, and drank it. as he set the tumbler down, we were startled by an accident in the next room. the floor was suddenly shaken by the sound of a heavy fall. the fall was followed by a groan which instantly brought me to my feet. although his infirmity made him unconscious of the groan, my friend felt the vibration of the floor, and saw me start up from my chair. he looked even more alarmed than i was, judging by the ghastly change that i saw in his color; and he reached the door of the second room as soon as i did. it is needless to say that i allowed him to enter first. on the point of following him, i felt myself roughly pulled back. when i turned round, and saw cristel, i did really and truly believe that she was mad. the furious impatience in her eyes, the frenzied strength of her grasp on my arm, would have led most other men to form the same conclusion. "come!" she cried. "no! not a word. there isn't a moment to lose." she dragged me across the room to the table on which the claret jug stood. she filled the tumbler from it, as _he_ had filled the tumbler. the material of which the jug had been made was so solid (crystal, not glass as i had supposed) that the filling of the two tumblers emptied it. cristel held the water out to me, gasping for breath, trembling as if she saw some frightful reptile before her instead of myself. "drink it," she said, "if you value your life!" i should of course have found it perfectly easy to obey her, strange as her language was, if i had been in full possession of myself. between distress and alarm, my mind (i suppose) had lost its balance. with or without a cause, i hesitated. she crossed the room, and threw open the window which looked out on the river. "you shan't die alone," she said. "if you don't drink it, i'll throw myself out!" i drank from the tumbler to the last drop. it was not water. it had a taste which i can compare to no drink, and to no medicine, known to me. i thought of the other strange taste peculiar to the tea. at last, the tremendous truth forced itself on my mind. the man in whom my boyish generosity had so faithfully believed had attempted my life. cristel took the tumbler from me. my poor angel clasped her free arm round my neck, and pressed her lips, in an ecstasy of joy, on my cheek. the next instant, she seized the claret jug, and dashed it into pieces on the floor. "get the jug from his washhand-stand," she said. when i gave it to her, she poured some of the water upon the broken fragments of crystal scattered on the floor. i had put the jug back in its place, and was returning to cristel, when the poisoner showed himself, entering from the servant's room. "don't be alarmed," he said. "gloody's name ought to be glutton. an attack of giddiness, thoroughly well deserved. i have relieved him. you remember, mr. roylake, that i was once a surgeon--" the broken claret jug caught his eye. we have all read of men who were petrified by terror. of the few persons who have really witnessed that spectacle, i am one. the utter stillness of him was really terrible to see. cristel wrote in his book an excuse, no doubt prepared beforehand: "that fall in the next room frightened me, and i felt faint. i went to get some water from the jug you drank out of, and it slipped from my hand." she placed those words under his eyes--she might just as well have shown them to the dog. a dead man, erect on his feet--so he looked to our eyes. so he still looked, when i took cristel's arm, and led her out of that dreadful presence. "take me into the air!" she whispered. a burst of tears relieved her, after the unutterable suspense that she had so bravely endured. when she was in some degree composed again, we walked gently up and down for a minute or two in the cool night air. "don't speak to me," she said, as we stopped before her father's door. "i am not fit for it yet; i know what you feel." i pressed her to my heart, and let the embrace speak for me. she yielded to it, faintly sighing. "to-morrow?" i whispered. she bent her head, and left me. walking home through the wood, i became aware, little by little, that my thoughts were not under the customary control. over and over again, i tried to review the events of that terrible evening, and failed. fragments of other memories presented themselves--and then deserted me. nonsense, absolute nonsense, found its way into my mind next, and rose in idiotic words to my lips. i grew too lazy even to talk to myself. i strayed from the path. the mossy earth began to rise and sink under my feet, like the waters in a ground-swell at sea. i stood still, in a state of idiot-wonder. the ground suddenly rose right up to my face. i remember no more. my first conscious exercise of my senses, when i revived, came to me by way of my ears. leaden weights seemed to close my eyes, to fetter my movements, to silence my tongue, to paralyze my touch. but i heard a wailing voice, speaking close to me, so close that it might have been my own voice: i distinguished the words; i knew the tones. "oh, my master, my lord, who am i that i should live--and you die! and you die!" was it her warm young breath that quickened me with its vigorous life? i only know that the revival of my sense of touch did certainly spring from the contact of her lips, pressed to mine in the reckless abandonment of grief without hope. her cry of joy, when my first sigh told her that i was still a living creature, ran through me like an electric shock. i opened my eyes; i held out my hand; i tried to help her when she raised my head, and set me against the tree under which i had been stretched helpless. with an effort i could call her by her name. even that exhausted me. my mind was so weak that i should have believed her, if she had declared herself to be a spirit seen in a dream, keeping watch over me in the wood. wiser than i was, she snatched up my hat, ran on before me, and was lost in the darkness. an interval, an unendurable interval, passed. she returned, having filled my hat from the spring. but for the exquisite coolness of the water falling on my face, trickling down my throat, i should have lost my senses again. in a few minutes more, i could take that dear hand, and hold it to me as if i was holding to my life. we could only see each other obscurely, and in that very circumstance (as we confessed to each other afterwards) we found the needful composure before we could speak. "cristel! what does it mean?" "poison," she answered. "and _he_ has suffered too." to my astonishment, there was no anger in her tone: she spoke of him as quietly as if she had been alluding to an innocent man. "do you mean that he has been at death's door, like me?" "yes, thank god--or i should never have found you here. poor old gloody came to us, in search of help. 'my master's in a swoon, and i can't bring him to.' directly i heard that, i remembered that you had drunk what he had drunk. what had happened to him, must have happened to you. don't ask me how long it was before i found you, and what i felt when i did find you. i do so want to enjoy my happiness! only let me see you safely home, and i ask no more." she helped me to rise, with the encouraging words which she might have used to a child. she put my arm in hers, and led me carefully along through the wood, as if i had been an old man. cristel had saved my life--but she would hear of no allusion to it. she knew how the poisoner had plotted to get rid of me--but nothing that i could say induced her to tell me how she had made the discovery. in view of trimley deen, my guardian angel dropped my arm. "go on," she said, "and let me see the servant let you in, before i run home." if she had not been once more wiser than i was, i should have taken her with me to the house; i should have positively refused to let her go back by herself. nothing that i could say or do had the slightest effect on her resolution. does the man live who could have taken leave of her calmly, in my place? she tore herself away from me, with a sigh of bitterness that was dreadful to hear. "oh, my darling," i said, "do i distress you?" "horribly," she answered; "but you are not to blame." those were her farewell words. i called after her. i tried to follow her. she was lost to me in the darkness. chapter xiv gloody settles the account a night of fever; a night, when i did slumber for a few minutes, of horrid dreams--this was what i might have expected, and this is what really happened. the fresh morning air, flowing through my open window, cooled and composed me; the mercy of sleep found me. when i woke, and looked at my watch, i was a new man. the hour was noon. i rang my bell. the servant announced that a man was waiting to see me. "the same man, sir, who was found in the garden, looking at your flowers." i at once gave directions to have him shown up into my bedroom. the delay of dressing was more than i had patience to encounter. unless i was completely mistaken, here was the very person whom i wanted to enlighten me. gloody showed himself at the door, with a face ominously wretched, as well as ugly. i instantly thought of cristel. "if you bring me bad news," i said, "don't keep me waiting for it." "it's nothing that need trouble you, sir. i'm dismissed from my master's service--that's all." it was plainly not "all." relieved even by that guarded reply, i pointed to a chair by the bedside. "do you believe that i mean well by you?" i asked. "i do, sir, with all my heart." "then sit down, gloody, and make a clean breast of it." he lifted his enormous fist, by way of emphasizing his answer. "i was within a hair's breadth, sir, of striking him. if i hadn't kept my temper, i might have killed him." "what did he do?" "flew into a furious rage. i don't complain of that; i daresay i deserved it. please to excuse my getting up again. i can't look you in the face, and tell you of it." he walked away to the window. "even a poor devil, like me, does sometimes feel it when he is insulted. mr. roylake, he kicked me. say no more about it, sir! i would never have mentioned it, if i hadn't had something else to tell you; only i don't know how." in this difficulty, he came back to my bedside. "look here, sir! what i say is--that kick has wiped out the debt of thanks i owe him. yes. i say the account between us two is settled now, on both sides. in two words, sir, if you mean to charge him before the magistrates with attempting your life, i'll take my bible oath he did attempt it, and you may call me as your witness. there! now it's out." what his master had no doubt inferred, was what i saw plainly too. cristel had saved my life, and had been directed how to do it by the poor fellow who had suffered in my cause. "we will wait a little before we talk of setting the law in force," i said. "in the meantime, gloody, i want you to tell me what you would tell the magistrate if i called you as a witness." he considered a little. "the magistrate would put questions to me--wouldn't he, sir? very good. you put questions to me, and i'll answer them to the best of my ability." the investigation that followed was far too long and too wearisome to be related here. if i give the substance of it, i shall have done enough. sometimes when he was awake, and supposed that he was alone--sometimes when he was asleep and dreaming--the cur had betrayed himself. (it was a paltry vengeance, i own, to gratify a malicious pleasure--as i did now--in thinking of him and speaking of him by the degrading name which his morbid humility had suggested. but are the demands of a man's dignity always paid in the ready money of prompt submission?) anyway, it appeared that gloody had heard enough, in the sleeping moments and the solitary moments of his master, to give him some idea of the jealous hatred with which the cur regarded me. he had done his best to warn me, without actually betraying the man who had rescued him from starvation or the workhouse--and he had failed. but his resolution to do me good service, in return for my kindness to him, far from being shaken, was confirmed by circumstances. when his master returned to the chemical studies which have been already mentioned, gloody was employed as assistant, to the extent of his limited capacity for making himself useful. he had no reason to suppose that i was the object of any of the experiments, until the day before the tea-party. then, he saw the dog enticed into the new cottage, and apparently killed by the administration of poison of some sort. after an interval, a dose of another kind was poured down the poor creature's throat, and he began to revive. a lapse of a quarter of an hour followed; the last dose was repeated; and the dog soon sprang to his feet again, as lively as ever. gloody was thereupon told to set the animal free; and was informed at the same time that he would be instantly dismissed, if he mentioned to any living creature what he had just seen. by what process he arrived at the suspicion that my safety might be threatened, by the experiment on the dog, he was entirely unable to explain. "it was borne in on my mind, sir; and that's all i can tell you," he said. "i didn't dare speak to you about it; you wouldn't have believed me. or, if you did believe me, you might have sent for the police. the one way of putting a stop to murdering mischief (if murdering mischief it might be) was to trust miss cristel. that she was fond of you--i don't mean any offence, sir--i pretty well guessed. that she was true as steel, and not easily frightened, i didn't need to guess; i knew it." gloody had done his best to prepare cristel for the terrible confidence which he had determined to repose in her, and had not succeeded. what the poor girl must have suffered, i could but too readily understand, on recalling the startling changes in her look and manner when we met at the river-margin of the wood. she was pledged to secrecy, under penalty of ruining the man who was trying to save me; and to her presence of mind was trusted the whole responsibility of preserving my life. what a situation for a girl of eighteen! "we made it out between us, sir, in two ways," gloody proceeded. "first and foremost, she was to invite herself to tea. and, being at the table, she was to watch my master. whatever she saw him drink, she was to insist on your drinking it too. you heard me ask leave to make the tea?" "yes." "well, that was one of the signals agreed on between us. when he sent me away, we were certain of what he had it in his mind to do." "and when you looked at miss cristel, and she was too busy with her brooch to notice you, was that another signal?" "it was, sir. when she handled her silver ornament, she told me that i might depend on her to forget nothing, and to be afraid of nothing." i remembered the quiet firmness in her face, after the prayer that she had said in her own room. her steady resolution no longer surprised me. "did you wonder, sir, what possessed her," gloody went on, "when she burst out singing? that was a signal to me. we wanted him out of our way, while you were made to drink what he had drunk out of the jug." "how did you know that he would not drink the whole contents of the jug?" "you forget, sir, that i had seen the dog revived by two doses, given with a space of time between them." i ought to have remembered this, after what he had already told me. my intelligence brightened a little as i went on. "and your accident in the next room was planned, of course?" i said. "do you think he saw through it? i should say, no; judging by his looks. he turned pale when he felt the floor shaken by your fall. for once in a way, he was honest--honestly frightened." "i noticed the same thing, sir, when he picked me up, off the floor. a man who can change his complexion, at will, is a man we hav'n't heard of yet, mr. roylake." i had been dressing for some time past; longing to see cristel, it is needless to say. "is there anything more," i asked, "that i ought to know?" "only one thing, mr. roylake, that i can think of," gloody replied. "i'm afraid it's miss cristel's turn next." "what do you mean?" "while the deaf man lodges at the cottage, he means mischief, and his eye is on miss cristel. early this morning, sir, i happened to be at the boat-house. somebody (i leave you to guess who it is) has stolen the oars." i was dressed by this time, and so eager to get to the cottage, that i had already opened my door. what i had just heard brought me back into the room. as a matter of course, we both suspected the same person of stealing the oars. had we any proof to justify us? gloody at once acknowledged that we had no proof. "i happened to look at the boat," he said, "and i missed the oars. oh, yes; i searched the boat-house. no oars! no oars!" "and nothing more that you have forgotten, and ought to tell me?" "nothing, sir." i left gloody to wait my return; being careful to place him under the protection of the upper servants--who would see that he was treated with respect by the household generally. chapter xv the miller's hospitality on the way to toller's cottage, my fears for cristel weighed heavily on my mind. that the man who had tried to poison me was capable of committing any other outrage, provided he saw a prospect of escaping with impunity, no sane person could hesitate to conclude. but the cause of my alarm was not to be traced to this conviction. it was a doubt that made me tremble. after what i had myself seen, and what gloody had told me, could i hope to match my penetration, or the penetration of any person about me whom i could trust, against the fathomless cunning, the satanic wickedness, of the villain who was still an inmate with cristel, under her father's roof? i have spoken of his fathomless cunning, and his satanic wickedness. the manner in which the crime had been prepared and carried out would justify stronger expressions still. such was the deliberate opinion of the lawyer whom i privately consulted, under circumstances still to be related. "let us arrive at a just appreciation of the dangerous scoundrel whom we have to deal with," this gentleman said. "his preliminary experiment with the dog; his resolution to make suspicion an impossibility, by drinking from the same tea which he had made ready for you; his skilled preparation of an antidote, the color of which might court appearances by imitating water--are there many poisoners clever enough to provide themselves beforehand with such a defence as this? how are you to set the circumstances in their true light, on your side? you may say that you threw out the calculations, on which he had relied for securing his own safety, by drinking his second dose of the antidote while he was out of the room; and you can appeal to the fainting-fits from which you and he suffered on the same evening, as a proof that the action of the poison was partially successful; in your case and in his, because you and he were insufficiently protected by half doses only of the antidote. a bench of jesuits would understand these refinements. a bench of british magistrates would look at each other, and say: where is the medical evidence? no, mr. roylake, we must wait. you can't even turn him out of the cottage before he has had the customary notice to quit. the one thing to take care of--in case some other suspicions of ours turn out to be well founded--is that our man shall not give us the slip. one of my clerks, and one of your gamekeepers shall keep watch on his lodgings, turn and turn about, till his time is up. go where he may after that, he shall not escape us." i may now take up the chain of events again. on reaching toller's cottage, i was distressed (but hardly surprised) to hear that cristel, exhausted after a wakeful night, still kept her bed, in the hope of getting some sleep. i was so anxious to know if she was at rest, that her father went upstairs to look at her. i followed him--and saw ponto watching on the mat outside her door. did this indicate a wise distrust of the cur? "a guardian i can trust, sir," the old man whispered, "while i'm at the mill." he looked into cristel's room, and permitted me to look over his shoulder. my poor darling was peacefully asleep. judging by the miller's manner, which was as cool and composed as usual, i gathered that cristel had wisely kept him in ignorance of what had happened on the previous evening. the inquiry which i had next in my mind was forestalled by old toller. "our deaf-devil, mr. gerard, has done a thing this morning which puzzles me," he began; "and i should like to hear what you think of it. for the first time since we have had him here, he has opened his door to a visitor. and--what a surprise for you!--it's the other devil with the hat and feather who got at my cristy, and made her cry." that this meeting would be only too likely to happen, in due course of time, i had never doubted. that it had happened, now, confirmed me in my resolution to keep guard over cristel at the cottage, till the cur left it. i asked, of course, how those two enemies of mine had first seen each other. "she was just going to knock at our door, mr. gerard, when she happened to look up. there he was, airing himself at his window as usual. do you think she was too much staggered at the sight of him to speak? at any rate, he got the start of her. 'wait till i come down,' says he--and there he was, almost as soon as he said it. they went into his place together; and for best part of an hour they were in each other's company. every man has his failings; i don't deny that i'm a little inquisitive by nature. between ourselves, i got under the open window and listened. at a great disadvantage, i needn't tell you; for she was obliged to write what she had to say. but _he_ talked. i was too late for the cream of it; i only heard him wish her good-bye. 'if your ladyship telegraphs this morning,' says he, 'when will the man come to me?' now what do you say to that?" "more than i have time to say now, mr. toller. can you find me a messenger to take a note to trimley deen?" "we have no messengers in this lonesome place, sir." "very well. then i must take my own message. you will see me again, as soon as i can get back." mr. toller's ready curiosity was roused in a moment. "perhaps, you wish to have a look at the repairs?" he suggested in his most insinuating manner. "i wish to see what her ladyship's telegram brings forth," i said; "and mean to be here when 'the man' arrives." my venerable tenant was delighted. "turn him inside out, sir, and get at his secrets. i'll help you." returning to trimley deen, i ordered the pony-chaise to be got ready, and a small portmanteau to be packed--speaking in the hall. the sound of my voice brought mrs. roylake out of the morning-room. she was followed by lady rachel. if i could only have heard their private conference, i should have seen the dangerous side of the cur's character under a new aspect. "gerard!" cried my stepmother, "what did i hear just now? you can't be going back to germany!" "certainly not," i answered. "going to stay with some friends perhaps?" lady rachel suggested. "i wonder whether i know them?" it was spitefully done--but, in respect of tone and manner, done to perfection. the pony-chaise drew up at the door. this was another of the rare occasions in my life on which i acted discreetly. it was necessary for me to say something. i said, "good morning." nothing had happened at the cottage, during the interval of my absence. clever as he was, old toller had never suspected that i should return to him (with luggage!) in the character of a self-invited guest. his jaw dropped, and his wicked little eyes appealed to the sky. merciful providence! what have i done to deserve this? there, as i read him, was the thought in the miller's mind, expressed in my best english. "have you got a spare bed in the house?" i asked. mr. toller forgot the respect due to the person who could stop the repairs at a moment's notice. he answered in the tone of a man who had been grossly insulted: "no!" but for the anxieties that oppressed me, i should have only perceived the humorous side of old toller's outbreak of temper. he had chosen his time badly, and he got a serious reply. "understand this," i said: "either you receive me civilly--or you make up your mind to find a flour-mill on some other property than mine." this had its effect. the miller's servility more than equalled his insolence. with profuse apologies, he offered me his own bedroom. i preferred a large old-fashioned armchair which stood in a corner of the kitchen. listening in a state of profound bewilderment--longing to put inquisitive questions, and afraid to do so--toller silently appealed to my compassion. i had nothing to conceal; i mentioned my motive. without intending it, i had wounded him in one of his most tender places; the place occupied by his good opinion of himself. he said with sulky submission: "much obliged, mr. gerard. my girl is safe under my protection. leave it to me, sir--leave it to me." i had just reminded old toller of his age, and of the infirmities which age brings with it, when his daughter--pale and languid, with signs of recent tears in her eyes--entered the kitchen. when i approached her, she trembled and drew back; apparently designing to leave the room. her father stopped her. "mr. gerard has something to tell you," he said. "i'm off to the mill." he took up his hat, and left us. submitting sadly, she let me take her in my arms, and try to cheer her. but when i alluded to what i owed to her admirable devotion and courage, she entreated me to be silent. "don't bring it all back!" she cried, shuddering at the remembrances which i had awakened, "father said you had something to tell me. what is it?" i repeated (in language more gentle and more considerate) what i had already said to her father. she took my hand, and kissed it gratefully. "you have your mother's face, and your mother's heart," she said; "you are always good, you are never selfish. but it mustn't be. how can i let you suffer the discomfort of staying here? indeed, i am in no danger; you are alarming yourself without a cause." "how can you be sure of that?" i asked. she looked reluctantly at the door of communication. "must i speak of him?" "only to tell me," i pleaded, "whether you have seen him since last night." she had both seen him and heard from him, on reaching home. "he opened that door," she told me, "and threw on the floor one of the leaves out of his book. after doing that, he relieved me from the sight of him." "show me the leaf, cristel." "father has got it. i thought he was asleep in the armchair. he snatched it out of my hand. it isn't worth reading." she turned pale, nevertheless, when she replied in those terms. i could see that i was disturbing her, when i asked if she remembered what the cur had written. but our position was far too serious to be trifled with. "i suppose he threatened you?" i said, trying to lead her on. "what did he say?" "he said, if any attempt was made to remove me out of his reach, after what had happened that evening, my father would find him on the watch day and night, and would regret it to the end of his life. the wretch thinks me cruel enough to have told my father of the horrors we went through! you know that he has dismissed his poor old servant? was i wrong in advising gloody to go to you?" "you were quite right. he is at my house--and i should like to keep him at trimley deen; but i am afraid he and the other servants might not get on well together?" "will you let him come here?" she spoke earnestly; reminding me that i had thought it wrong to leave her father, at his age, without someone to help him. "if an accident separated me from him," she went on, "he would be left alone in this wretched place." "what accident are you thinking of?" i asked. "is there something going on, cristel, that i don't know of?" had i startled her? or had i offended her? "can we tell what may or may not happen to us, in the time to come?" she asked abruptly. "i don't like to think of my father being left without a creature to take care of him. gloody is so good and so true; and they always get on well together. if you have nothing better in view for him--?" "my dear, i have nothing half so good in view; and gloody, i am sure, will think so too." i privately resolved to insure a favorable reception for the poor fellow, by making him the miller's partner. bank notes in toller's pocket! what a place reserved for gloody in toller's estimation! but i confess that cristel's allusion to a possible accident rather oppressed my mind, situated as we were at that time. what we talked of next has slipped from my memory. i only recollect that she made an excuse to go back to her room, and that nothing i could say or do availed to restore her customary cheerfulness. as the twilight was beginning to fade, we heard the sound of a carriage. the new man had arrived in a fly from the station. before bedtime, he made his appearance in the kitchen, to receive the domestic instructions of which a stranger stood in need. a quiet man and a civil man: even my prejudiced examination could discover nothing in him that looked suspicious. i saw a well-trained servant--and i saw nothing more. old toller made a last attempt to persuade me that it was not worth a gentleman's while to accept his hospitality, and found me immovable. i was equally obstinate when cristel asked leave to make up a bed for me in the counting-house at the mill. with the purpose that i had in view, if i accepted her proposal i might as well have been at trimley deen. left alone, i placed the armchair and another chair for my feet, across the door of communication. that done, i examined a little door behind the stairs (used i believe for domestic purposes) which opened on a narrow pathway, running along the river-side of the house. it was properly locked. i have only to add that nothing happened during the night. the next day showed no alteration for the better, in cristel. she made an excuse when i proposed to take her out with me for a walk. her father's business kept him away from the cottage, and thus gave me many opportunities of speaking to her in private. i was so uneasy, or so reckless--i hardly know which--that i no longer left it to be merely inferred that i had resolved to propose marriage to her. "my sweet girl, you are so wretched, and so unlike yourself, in this place, that i entreat you to leave it. come with me to london, and let me make you safe and happy as my wife." "oh, mr. roylake!" "why do you call me, 'mr roylake'? have i done anything to offend you? there seems to be some estrangement between us. do you believe that i love you?" "i wish i could doubt it!" she answered. "why?" "you know why." "cristel! have i made some dreadful mistake? the truth! i want the truth! do you love me?" a low cry of misery burst from her. was she mastered by love, or by despair? she threw herself on my breast. i kissed her. she murmured, "oh don't tempt me! don't tempt me!" again and again, i kissed her. "ah," i broke out, in the ecstasy of my sense of relief, "i know that you love me, now!" "yes," she said, simply and sadly, "i do love you." my selfish passion asked for more even than this. "prove it by being my wife," i answered. she put me back from her, firmly and gently. "i will prove it, gerard, by not letting you disgrace yourself." with those horrible words--put into her mouth, beyond all doubt by the woman who had interfered between us--she left me. the long hours of the day passed: i saw her no more. people who are unable to imagine what i suffered, are not the people to whom i now address myself. after all the years that have passed--after age and contact with the world have hardened me--it is still a trial to my self-control to look back to that day. events i can remember with composure. to events, therefore, let me return. no communication of any sort reached us from the cur. towards evening, i saw him pacing up and down on the road before the cottage, and speaking to his new servant. the man (listening attentively) had the master's book of leaves in his hand, and wrote in it from time to time as replies were wanted from him. he was probably receiving instructions. the cur's discretion was a bad sign. i should have felt more at ease, if he had tried to annoy cristel, or to insult me. towards bedtime, old toller's sense of hospitality exhibited marked improvement. he was honored and happy to have me under his poor roof--a roof, by the way, which was also in need of repairs--but he protested against my encountering the needless hardship of sleeping in a chair, when a bed could be set up for me in the counting-house. "not what you're used to, mr. gerard. empty barrels, and samples of flour, and account-books smelling strong of leather, instead of velvet curtains and painted ceilings; but better than a chair, sir--better than a chair!" i was as obstinate as ever. with thanks, i insisted on the chair. feverish, anxious, oppressed in my breathing--with nerves unstrung, as a doctor would have put it--i disturbed the order of the household towards twelve o'clock by interfering with old toller in the act of locking up the house-door. "let me get a breath of fresh air," i said to him, "or there will be no sleep for me to-night." he opened the door with a resignation to circumstances, so exemplary that it claimed some return. i promised to be back in a quarter of an hour. old toller stifled a yawn. "i call that truly considerate," he said--and stifled another yawn. dear old man! stepping into the road, i first examined the cur's part of the cottage. not a sound was audible inside; not a creature was visible outside. the usual dim light was burning behind the window that looked out on the road. nothing, absolutely nothing, that was suspicious could i either hear or see. i walked on, by what we called the upper bank of the river; leading from the village of kylam. the night was cloudy and close. now the moonlight reached the earth at intervals; now again it was veiled in darkness. the trees, at this part of the wood, so encroached on the bank of the stream as considerably to narrow and darken the path. seeing a possibility of walking into the river if i went on much farther, i turned back again in the more open direction of kylam, and kept on briskly (as i reckon) for about five minutes more. i had just stopped to look at my watch, when i saw something dark floating towards me, urged by the slow current of the river. as it came nearer, i thought i recognized the mill-boat. it was one of the dark intervals when the moon was overcast. i was sufficiently interested to follow the boat, on the chance that a return of the moonlight might show me who could possibly be in it. after no very long interval, the yellow light for which i was waiting poured through the lifting clouds. the mill-boat, beyond all doubt--and nobody in it! the empty inside of the boat was perfectly visible to me. even if i had felt inclined to do so, it would have been useless to jump into the water and swim to the boat. there were no oars in it, and therefore no means of taking it back to the mill. the one thing i could do was to run to old toller and tell him that his boat was adrift. on my way to the cottage, i thought i heard a sound like the shutting of a door. i was probably mistaken. in expectation of my return, the door was secured by the latch only; and the miller, looking out of his bedroom window, said: "don't forget to lock it, sir; the key's inside." i followed my instructions, and ascended the stairs. surprised to hear me in that part of the house, he came out on the landing in his nightgown. "what is it?" he asked. "nothing very serious," i said. "the boat's adrift. i suppose it will run on shore somewhere." "it will do that, mr. gerard; everybody along the river knows the boat." he held up his lean trembling hand. "old fingers don't always tie fast knots." he went back into his bed. it was opposite the window; and the window, being at the side of the old cottage, looked out on the great open space above the river. when the moonlight appeared, it shone straight into his eyes. i offered to pull down the blind. "thank you kindly, sir; please to let it be. i wake often in the night, and i like to see the heavens when i open my eyes." something touched me behind: it was the dog. like his noble and beautiful race, ponto knew his friends. he licked my hand, and then he walked out through the bedroom door. instead of taking his usual place, on the mat before cristel's room, he smelt for a moment under the door--whined softly--and walked up and down the landing. "what's the matter with the dog?" i asked. "restless to-night," said old toller. "dogs _are_ restless sometimes. lie down!" he called through the doorway. the dog obeyed, but only for a moment. he whined at the door again--and then, once more, he walked up and down the landing. i went to the bedside. the old man was just going to sleep. i shook him by the shoulder. "there's something wrong," i said. "come out and look at ponto." he grumbled--but he came out. "better get the whip," he said. "before you do that," i answered, "knock at your daughter's door." "and wake her?" he asked in amazement. i knocked at the door myself. there was no reply. i knocked again, with the same result. "open the door," i said, "or i will do it myself." he obeyed me. the room was empty; and the bed had not been slept in. standing helpless on the threshold of the door, i looked into the empty room; hearing nothing but my heart thumping heavily, seeing nothing but the bed with the clothes on it undisturbed. the sudden growling of the dog shook me back (if i may say so) into the possession of myself. he was looking through the balusters that guarded the landing. the head of a man appeared, slowly ascending the stairs. acting mechanically, i held the dog back. thinking mechanically, i waited for the man. the face of the new servant showed itself. the dog frightened him: he spoke in tones that trembled, standing still on the stairs. "my master has sent me, sir--" a voice below interrupted him. "come back," i heard the cur say; "i'll do it myself. toller! where is toller?" the enraged dog, barking furiously, struggled to get away from me. i dragged him--the good honest creature who was incapable of concealments and treacheries!--into his master's room. in the moment before i closed the door again, i saw toller down on his knees with his arms laid helplessly on the window-sill, staring up at the sky as if he had gone mad. there was no time for questions; i drove poor ponto back into the room, and shut the door. on the landing, i found myself face to face with the cur. "_you!_" he said. i lifted my hand. the servant ran between us. "for god's sake, control yourself, sir! we mean no harm. it's only to tell mr. toller that his boat is missing." "mr. toller knows it already," i said. "no honest man would touch your master if he could help it. i warn him to go; and i make him understand me by a sign." i pointed down the stairs, and turned my head to look at him. he was no longer before me. his face, hideously distorted by rage and terror, showed itself at the door of cristel's empty room. he rushed out on me; his voice rose to the detestable screech which i had heard once already. "where have you hidden her? give her back to me--or you die." he drew a pistol out of the breast-pocket of his coat. i seized the weapon by the barrel, and snatched it away from him. as the charge exploded harmlessly between us, i struck him on the head with the butt-end of the pistol. he dropped on the landing. the door of toller's room opened behind me. he stood speechless; the report of the pistol had terrified him. in the instant when i looked at the old man, i saw, through the window of his room, a rocket soar into the sky, from behind the promontory between us and kylam. some cry of surprise must, i suppose, have escaped me. toller suddenly looked round towards the window, just as the last fiery particles of the rocket were floating slowly downwards against the black clouds. i had barely time enough to see this, before a trembling hand was laid on my shoulder, from behind. the servant, white with terror, pointed to his master. "have you killed him?" the man said. the same question must have been in the mind of the dog. he was quiet now. doubtfully, reluctantly, he was smelling at the prostrate human creature. i knelt down, and put my hand on the wretch's heart. ponto, finding us both on a level together, gave me the dog's kiss; i returned the caress with my free hand. the servant saw me, with my attention divided in this way between the animal and the man. "damn it, sir," he burst out indignantly, "isn't a christian of more importance than a dog?" a christian!--but i was in no humor to waste words. "are you strong enough to carry him to his own side of the house?" i asked. "i won't touch him, if he's dead!" "he is _not_ dead. take him away!" all this time my mind was pre-occupied by the extraordinary appearance of the rocket, rising from the neighborhood of a lonely little village between midnight and one in the morning. how i connected that mysterious signal with a possibility of tracing cristel, it is useless to inquire. that was the thought in me, when i led my lost darling's father back to his room. without stopping to explain myself, i reminded him that the cottage was quiet again, and told him to wait my return. in the kitchen, i overtook the servant and his burden. the door of communication (by which they had entered) was still open. "lock that door," i said. "lock it yourself," he answered; "i'll have nothing to do with this business." he passed through the doorway, and along the passage, and ascended his master's stairs. it struck me directly that the man had suggested a sure way of protecting toller, during my absence. the miller's own door was already secured; i took the key, so as to be able to let myself in again--then passed through the door of communication--fastened it--and put the key in my pocket. the third door, by which the cur entered his lodgings, was of course at my disposal. i had just closed it, when i discovered that i had a companion. ponto had followed me. i felt at once that the dog's superior powers of divination might be of use, on such an errand as mine was. we set out together for kylam. wildly hurried--without any fixed idea in my mind--i ran to kylam, for the greater part of the way. it was now very dark. on a sandy creek, below the village, i came in contact with something solid enough to hurt me for the moment. it was the stranded boat. a smoker generally has matches about him. helped by my little short-lived lights, i examined the interior of the boat. there was absolutely nothing in it but a strip of old tarpaulin--used, as i guessed, to protect the boat, or something that it carried, in rainy weather. the village population had long since been in bed. silence and darkness mercilessly defied me to discover anything. for a while i waited, encouraging the dog to circle round me and exercise his sense of smell. any suspicious person or object he would have certainly discovered. nothing--not even the fallen stick of the rocket--rewarded our patience. determined to leave nothing untried, i groped, rather than found, my way to the village ale house, and succeeded at last in rousing the landlord. he hailed me from the window (naturally enough) in no friendly voice. i called out my name. within my own little limits, it was the name of a celebrated person. the landlord opened his door directly; eager to answer my questions if he could do it. nothing in the least out of the common way had happened at kylam. no strangers had been seen in, or near, the place. the stranded boat had not been discovered; and the crashing flight of the rocket into the air had failed to disturb the soundly-sleeping villagers. on my melancholy way back, fatigue of body--and, far worse, fatigue of mind--forced me to take a few minutes' rest. the dimly-flowing river was at my feet; the river on which i had seen cristel again, for the first time since we were children. thus far, the dreadful loss of her had been a calamity, held away from me in some degree by events which had imperatively taken possession of my mind. in the darkness and the stillness, the misery of having lost her was free to crush me. my head dropped on the neck of the dog, nestling close at my side. "oh, ponto!" i said to him, "she's gone!" nobody could see me; nobody could despise me--i burst out crying. chapter xvi bribery and corruption twice, i looked into toller's room during the remainder of the night, and found him sleeping. when the sun rose, i could endure the delay no longer. i woke him. "what is it?" he asked peevishly. "you must be the last person who saw cristel," i answered. "i want to know all that you can tell me." his anger completely mastered him; he burst out with a furious reply. "it's you two--you my landlord, and him my lodger--who have driven cristy away from her home. she said she would go, and she has gone. get out of my place, sir! you ought to be ashamed to look at me." it was useless to reason with him, and it was of vital importance to lose no time in instituting a search. after the reception i had met with, i took care to restore the key of the door leading into the new cottage, before i left him. it was his key; and the poor distracted old man might charge me with taking away his property next. as i set forth on my way home, i found the new man-servant on the look-out. his first words showed that he was acting under orders. he asked if i had found the young lady; and he next informed me that his master had revived some hours since, and "bore no malice." this outrageous assertion suddenly fired me with suspicion. i believed that the cur had been acting a part when he threatened me with his pistol, and that he was answerable for the disappearance of cristel. my first impulse now was to get the help of a lawyer. the men at my stables were just stirring when i got home. in ten minutes more, i was driving to our town. the substance of the professional opinion which i received has been already stated in these pages. one among my answers to the many questions which my legal adviser put to me led him to a conclusion that made my heart ache. he was of opinion that my brief absence, while i was taking that fatal "breath of air" on the banks of the river, had offered to cristel her opportunity of getting away without discovery. "her old father," the lawyer said, "was no doubt in his bed, and you yourself found nobody watching, in the neighborhood of the cottage." "employ me in some way!" i burst out. "i can't endure my life, if i'm not helping to trace cristel." he was most kind. "i understand," he said. "try what you can get those two ladies to tell you--and you may help us materially." mrs. roylake was nearest to me. i appealed to her womanly sympathies, and was answered by tears. i made another attempt; i said i was willing to believe that she meant well, and that i should be sorry to offend her. she got up, and indignantly left the room. i went to lady rachel next. she was at home, but the servant returned to me with an excuse: her ladyship was particularly engaged. i sent a message upstairs, asking when i might hope to be received. the servant was charged with the delivery of another excuse: her ladyship would write. after waiting at home for hours i was foolish enough to write, on my side; and (how could i help it?) to express myself strongly. the she-socialist's reply is easy to remember: "dear mr. roylake, when you have recovered your temper, you will hear from me again." even my stepmother gained by comparison with this. to rest, and do nothing, was to exercise a control over myself of which i was perfectly incapable. i went back to the cottage. having no hopeful prospect in any other quarter, i persisted in believing that toller must have seen something or heard something that might either help me, or suggest an idea to my legal adviser. on entering the kitchen, i found the door of communication wide open, and the new servant established in the large armchair. "i'm waiting for my master, sir." he had got over his fright, and had recovered his temper. the respectful side of him was turned to me again. "your master is with mr. toller?" "yes, sir." what i felt, amply justified the lawyer in having exacted a promise from me to keep carefully out of the cur's presence. "you might knock him on the head again, mr. roylake, and might hit a little too hard next time." but i had an idea of my own. i said, as if speaking to myself: "i would give a five pound note to know what is going on upstairs." "i shall be glad to earn it, sir," the fellow said. "if i make a clean breast of what i know already, and if i tell you to-morrow what i can find out--will it be worth the money?" i began to feel degraded in my own estimation. but i nodded to him, for all that. "i am the innocent cause, sir, of what happened last night," he coolly resumed. "we kept a look-out on the road and saw you, though you didn't see us. but my master never suspected you (for reasons which he kept to himself) of making use of the boat. i reminded him that one of us had better have an eye on the slip of pathway, between the cottage and the river. this led to his sending me to the boathouse--and you know what happened afterwards. my master, as i suppose, is pumping mr. toller. that's all, sir, for to-night. when may i have the honor of expecting you to-morrow morning?" i appointed an hour, and left the place. as i entered the wood again, i found a man on the watch. he touched his hat, and said: "i'm the clerk, sir. your gamekeeper is wanted for his own duties to-night; he will relieve me in the morning." i went home with my mind in a ferment of doubt. if i could believe the servant, the cur was as innocent of the abduction of cristel as i was. but could i trust the servant? the events of the next morning altered the whole complexion of affairs fatally for the worse. arriving at the cottage, i found a man prostate on the road, dead drunk--and the cur's servant looking at him. "may i ask something?" the man said. "have you been having my master watched?" "yes." "bad news, in that case, sir. your man there is a drunken vagabond; and my master has gone to london by the first train." when i had recovered the shock, i denied, for the sake of my own credit, that the brute on the road could be a servant of mine. "why not, sir?" "do you think i should have been kept in ignorance of it, if my gamekeeper had been a drunkard? his fellow servants would have warned me." the man smiled. "i'm afraid, sir, you don't know much about servants. it's a point of honor among us never to tell tales of each other to our masters." i began to wish that i had never left germany. the one course to take now was to tell the lawyer what had happened. i turned away to get back, and drive at once to the town. the servant remembered, what i had forgotten--the five pound note. "wait and hear my report, sir," he suggested. the report informed me: first, that mr. toller was at the mill, and had been there for some time past. secondly: that the cur had been alone, for a while, on mr. toller's side of the cottage, in mr. toiler's absence--for what purpose his servant had not discovered. thirdly: that the cur had returned to his room in a hurry, and had packed a few things in his travelling-bag. fourthly: that he had ordered the servant to follow, with his luggage, in a fly which he would send from the railway station, and to wait at the london terminus for further orders. fifthly, and lastly: that it was impossible to say whether the drunkenness of the gamekeeper was due to his own habits, or to temptation privately offered by the very person whose movements he had been appointed to watch. i paid the money. the man pocketed it, and paid me a compliment in return: "i wish i was your servant, sir." chapter xvii utter failure my lawyer took a serious view of the disaster that had overtaken us. he would trust nobody but his head clerk to act in my interests, after the servant had been followed to the london terminus, and when it became a question of matching ourselves against the deadly cunning of the man who had escaped us. provided with money, and with a letter to the police authorities in london, the head clerk went to the station. i accompanied him to point out the servant (without being allowed to show myself), and then returned to wait for telegraphic information at the lawyer's office. this was the first report transmitted by the telegram: the cur had been found waiting for his servant at the terminus; and the two had been easily followed to the railway hotel close by. the clerk had sent his letter of introduction to the police--had consulted with picked men who joined him at the hotel--had given the necessary instructions--and would return to us by the last train in the evening. in two days, the second telegram arrived. our man had been traced to the thames yacht club in albemarle street--had consulted a yachting list in the hall--and had then travelled to the isle of wight. there, he had made inquiries at the squadron yacht club, and the victoria yacht club--and had returned to london, and the railway hotel. the third telegram announced the utter destruction of all our hopes. as far as marseilles, the cur had been followed successfully, and in that city the detective officers had lost sight of him. my legal adviser insisted on having the men sent to him to explain themselves. nothing came of it but one more repetition of an old discovery. when the detective police force encounters intelligence instead of stupidity, in seven cases out of ten the detective police force is beaten. there were still two persons at our disposal. lady rachel might help us, as i believed, if she chose to do it. as for old toller, i suggested (on reflection) that the lawyer should examine him. the lawyer declined to waste any more of my money. i called again on lady rachel. this time, i was let in. i found the noble lady smoking a cigarette and reading a french novel. "this is going to be a disagreeable interview," she said. "let us get it over, mr. roylake, as soon as possible. tell me what you want--and speak as freely as if you were in the company of a man." i obeyed her to the letter; and i got these replies: "yes; i did have a talk, in your best interests, with miss toller. she is as sensible as she is charming, and as good as she is sensible. we entirely agreed that the sacrifice must be on her side; and that it was due to her own self-respect to prevent a gentleman of your rank from ruining himself by marrying a miller's daughter." the next reply was equally free from the smallest atom of sympathy on lady rachel's part. "you are quite right--your deaf man was at his window when i went by. we recognized each other and had a long talk. if i remember correctly, he said you knew of his reasons for concealing his name. i gave my promise (being a matter of perfect indifference to me) to conceal it too. one thing led to another, and i discovered that you were his hated rival in the affections of miss toller. i proved worthy of his confidence in me. that is to say, i told him that mrs. roylake and i would be only too glad, as representing your interests, if he succeeded in winning the young lady. i asked if he had any plans. he said one of his plans had failed. what it was, and how it had failed, he did not mention. i asked if he could devise nothing else. he said, "yes, if i was not a poor man." in my place, you would have offered, as i did, to find the money if the plan was approved of. he produced some manuscript story of an abduction of a lady, which he had written to amuse himself. the point of it was that the lover successfully carried away the lady, by means of a boat, while the furious father's attention was absorbed in watching the high road. it seemed to me to be a new idea. "if you think you can carry it out," i said, "send your estimate of expenses to me and mrs. roylake, and we will subscribe." we received the estimate. but the plan has failed, and the man is off. i am quite certain myself that miss toller has done what she promised to do. wherever she may be now, she has sacrificed herself for your sake. when you have got over it, you will marry my sister. i wish you good morning." between lady rachel's hard insolence, and mrs. roylake's sentimental hypocrisy, i was in such a state of irritation that i left trimley deen the next morning, to find forgetfulness, as i rashly supposed, in the gay world of london. i had been trying my experiment for something like three weeks, and was beginning to get heartily weary of it, when i received a letter from the lawyer. "dear sir,--your odd tenant, old mr. toller, has died suddenly of rupture of a blood-vessel on the brain, as the doctor thinks. there is to be an inquest, as i need hardly tell you. what do you say to having the report of the proceedings largely copied in the newspapers? if it catches his daughter's eye, important results may follow." to speculate in this way on the impulse which might take its rise in my poor girl's grief--to surprise her, as it were, at her father's grave--revolted me. i directed the lawyer to take no steps whatever in the matter, and to pay the poor old fellow's funeral expenses, on my account. he had died intestate. the law took care of his money until his daughter appeared; and the mill, being my property, i gave to toller's surviving partner--our good gloody. and what did i do next? i went away travelling; one of the wretchedest men who ever carried his misery with him to foreign countries. go where i might on the continent of europe, the dreadful idea pursued me that cristel might be dead. chapter xviii the mistress of trimley deen three weary months had passed, when a new idea was put into my head by an englishman whom i met at trieste. he advised turning my back on europe, and trying the effect of scenes of life that would be new to me. i hired a vessel, and sailed out of the civilized world. when i next stood on _terra firma,_ my feet were on the lovely beach of one of the pacific islands. what i suffered i have not told yet, and do not design to tell. the bitterness of those days hid itself from view at the time--and shall keep its concealment still. even if i could dwell on my sorrows with the eloquence of a practised writer, some obstinate inner reluctance would persist in holding me dumb. more than a year had passed before i returned to trimley deen, and alarmed my stepmother by "looking like a foreign sailor." the irregular nature of my later travels had made it impossible to forward the few letters that had arrived for me. they were neatly laid out on the library table. the second letter that i took up bore the postmark of genoa. i opened it, and discovered that the-no! i cannot write of him by that mean name; and his own name is still unknown to me. let me call him--and, oh, don't think that i am deceived again!--let me call him the penitent. the letter had been addressed to me from his deathbed, and had been written under dictation. it contained an extraordinary enclosure--a small torn fragment of paper with writing on it. "read the poor morsel that i send to you first" (the letter began). "my time on earth is short; you will save me explanations which may be too much for my strength." on one side of the fragment, i found these words: "... cruise to the mediterranean for my wife's health. if cristel isn't afraid of passing some months at sea..." on the other side, there was a fragment of conclusion: "... thoroughly understand. all ready. write word what night, and what ... loving brother, stephen toller." i instantly remembered the miller's rich brother; thinking of him for the first time since he had been in my mind for a moment, on the night of my meeting with cristel. on the fourteenth page of this narrative toller's brother will be found briefly alluded to in a few lines. i returned eagerly to the letter. thus it was continued: "that bit of torn paper i found under the bed, while i was secretly searching mr. toller's room. i had previously suspected you. from my own examination of his face, when he refused to humor my deafness by writing what i asked him to tell me, i suspected mr. toller next. you will see in the fragment, what i saw--that toller the brother had a yacht, and was going to the mediterranean; and that toller the miller had written, asking him to favour cristel's escape. the rest, cristel herself can tell you. "i know you had me followed. at marseilles, i got tired of it, and gave your men the slip. at every port in the mediterranean i inquired for the yacht, and heard nothing of her. they must have changed their minds on board, and gone somewhere else. i refer you to cristel again. "arrived at genoa, on my way back to england, i met with a skilled italian surgeon. he declared that he could restore my hearing--but he warned me that i was in a weak state of health, and he refused to answer for the result of the operation. without hesitating for a moment, i told him to operate. i would have given fifty lives for one exquisite week of perfect hearing. i have had three weeks of perfect hearing. otherwise, i have had a life of enjoyment before i die. "it is useless to ask your pardon. my conduct was too infamous for that. will you remember the family taint, developed by a deaf man's isolation among his fellow-creatures? but i had some days when my mother's sweet nature tried to make itself felt in me, and did not wholly fail. i am going to my mother now: her spirit has been with me ever since my hearing was restored; her spirit said to me last night: "atone, my son! give the man whom you have wronged, the woman whom he loves." i had found out the uncle's address in england (which i now enclose) at one of the yacht clubs. i had intended to go to the house, and welcome her on her return. you must go instead of me; you will see that lovely face when i am in my grave. good-bye, roylake. the cold hand that touches us all, sooner or later, is very near to me. be merciful to the next scoundrel you meet, for the sake of the cur." i say there _was_ good in that suffering man; and i thank god i was not quite wrong about him after all. arriving at mr. stephen toller's country seat, by the earliest train that would take me there, i found a last trial of endurance in store for me. cristel was away with her uncle, visiting some friends. cristel's aunt received me with kindness which i can never forget. "we have noticed lately that cristel was in depressed spirits; no uncommon thing," mrs. stephen toller continued, looking at me with a gentle smile, "since a parting which i know you must have felt deeply too. no, mr. roylake, she is not engaged to be married--and she will never be married, unless you forgive her. ah, you forgive her because you love her! she thought of writing to tell you her motives, when she visited her father's grave on our return to england. but i was unable to obtain your address. perhaps, i may speak for her now?" i knew how lady rachel's interference had appealed to cristel's sense of duty and sense of self-respect; i had heard from her own lips that she distrusted herself, if she allowed me to press her. but she had successfully concealed from me the terror with which she regarded her rejected lover, and the influence over her which her father had exercised. always mindful of his own interests, the miller knew that he would be the person blamed if he allowed his daughter to marry me. "they will say i did it, with an eye to my son-in-law's money; and gentlefolks may ruin a man who lives by selling flour." that was how he expressed himself in a letter to his brother. the whole of the correspondence was shown to me by mrs. stephen toller. after alluding to his wealthy brother's desire that he should retire from business, the miller continued as follows: "what you are ready to do for me, i want you to do for cristy. she is in danger, in more ways than one, and i am obliged to get her away from my house as if i was a smuggler, and my girl contraband goods. i am a bad hand at writing, so i leave cristy to tell you the particulars. will you receive her, brother stephen? and take care of her? and do it as soon as possible?" mr. stephen toller's cordial reply mentioned that his vessel was ready to sail, and would pass the mouth of the loke on her southward voyage. his brother caught at the idea thus suggested. i have alluded to giles toller's sly look to his lodger, when i returned the manuscript of the confession. the old man's unscrupulous curiosity had already applied a second key to the cupboard in the lodger's room. there he had found the "criminal stories" mentioned in the journal--including the story of abduction referred to by lady rachel. this gave him the very idea which his lodger had already relied on for carrying cristel away by the river (under the influence, of course, of a soporific drug), while her father was keeping watch on the road. the secreting of the oars with this purpose in view, had failed as a measure of security. the miller's knowledge of the stream, and his daughter's ready courage, had suggested the idea of letting the boat drift, with cristel hidden in it. two of the yacht's crew, hidden among the trees, watched the progress of the boat until it rounded the promontory, and struck the shore. there, the yacht's boat was waiting. the rocket was fired to re-assure her father; and cristel was rowed to the mouth of the river, and safely received on board the yacht. thus (with his good brother's help) the miller had made the river his guilty accomplice in the abduction of his own child! when i had read the correspondence, we spoke again of cristel. "to save time," mrs. stephen toller said, "i will write to my husband to-day, by a mounted messenger. he shall only tell cristel that you have come back to england, and you shall arrange to meet her in our grounds when she returns. i am a childless woman, mr. roylake--and i love her as i should have loved a daughter of my own. where improvement (in external matters only) has seemed to be possible, it has been my delight to improve her. your stepmother and lady rachel will acknowledge, even from their point of view, that there is a mistress who is worthy of her position at trimley deen." when cristel returned the next day, she found that her uncle had deserted her, and suddenly discovered a man in the shrubbery. what that man said and did, and what the result of it was, may be inferred if i relate a remarkable event. mrs. roylake has retired from the domestic superintendence of trimley deen. produced from scanned images of public domain material from the google print project.) [illustration: the picturesque figure stood in the center.] the girl scouts at rocky ledge or _nora's real vacation_ by lilian garis author of "the girl scout pioneers," "the girl scouts at bellaire," "the girl scouts at sea crest," "the girl scouts at camp comalong," etc. _illustrated_ new york cupples & leon company the girl scout series by lilian garis cloth. 12mo. frontispiece. the girl scout pioneers or, winning the first b. c. the girl scouts at bellaire or, maid mary's awakening the girl scouts at sea crest or, the wig wag rescue the girl scouts at camp comalong or, peg of tamarack hills the girl scouts at rocky ledge or, nora's real vacation _other volumes in preparation_ cupples & leon company, new york copyright, 1922, by cupples & leon company the girl scouts at rocky ledge _printed in u. s. a._ contents i. jim or jerry: ted or elizabeth ii. the attic iii. a broken dream iv. transplanted v. the woods at rocky ledge vi. a prince in hiding vii. cap to the rescue viii. the story alma did not tell ix. a misadventure x. a novel initiation xi. too much teasing xii. a diversion nobly earned xiii. crawling in the shadows xiv. circumstantial evidence xv. waif of the wildwoods xvi. lady bountiful junior xvii. a picnic and otherwise xviii. the little lord's confession xix. a deserted tryst xx. the worst fright of all xxi. strange disclosures xxii. the danger squad in action xxiii. raiding the attic xxiv. fulfillment the girl scouts at rocky ledge chapter i jim or jerry: ted or elizabeth "do you mind if i call you jim?" "why no--that is----" "and may i call the lady aunt elizabeth?" "elizabeth?" "if you don't mind; i'd love to." "but the fact is----" "you see, i have always wanted a man named jim to protect me, and now that i've got you i'd love to have you as jim. then, i have perfectly loved the aunt elizabeths. they're always so lacy and cameo like." she stood off and critically inspected the smiling woman in the most modern of costumes. "you're really too young," continued the girl, "but you'll grow old soon i hope, don't you think so?" "i'm afraid i shall----" "then that's that. and i'm glad we are settling things so quickly. could i see my attic room now, aunt elizabeth?" "attic room?" "isn't it?" "not exactly. we were giving you the yellow room; it's so cheerful and pretty." "well, of course, i don't want to be too particular, and it's lovely of you, dear aunt elizabeth, but all girls taken in are put in attic rooms, aren't they?" "taken in?" "yes, sort of adopted you know. the attic always gives the shadowy ghost business." there was just a hint of disappointment in the child's manner now. "we've got a first rate attic room," suggested the man who was tilting up and down in a heel and toe exercise. "and what do you say, ted, i mean elizabeth," he chuckled, "if we give----" "jerry, don't talk nonsense," interrupted the young woman not unkindly but with some decision. "i am sure she would rather have the pretty----" "but, please, could i see the attic room?" came rather timidly the very thread of a voice from the little girl. "it's ghostly." this from jerry. "that would be just perfect. does the roof slant so it gives you the nightmare on your chest, you know? and does the moon sort of make faces in the windows?" interest was overcoming timidity. "that may be the trouble," replied the man, with a chuckle. "but i'll tell you, little girl. suppose we take the yellow room until you have a chance to inspect thoroughly. you see your--er--aunt elizabeth has had it all planned and fixed up----" "oh yes. do excuse me for being impolite. you see, i've been thinking about it so long. the school was lovely, and the teachers all very kind, but it was sort of a regular kindness, you know, and did not have any of my dreams coming true in it. do you dream an awful lot here?" "day dreams or night dreams?" asked the man. "oh, wake-dreams, of course. the other kind don't mean anything. just stickers in your brain sort of pricking, you know. but the wake-dreams can come true, if you plague them long enough. i guess they get tired fighting you off and they have to give in and happen. what do you want to call me?" this was a sudden digression and marked with a complete flopping down of the talkative child. "your name is nora, isn't it?" replied the young woman who seemed rather glad to sit down herself. they were on the big square porch and rockers were plentiful. "yes, my name is nora, and it's pretty good, but hard to rhyme easily. then i would rather have you call me the name you have always called your dream child." "mine was bob," blurted the man, "but bob wouldn't exactly suit you." "oh, yes it would," she jumped up again and left the rocker swaying wildly. "bob would be splendid for me. would it suit you, aunt elizabeth? what was your pet name?" "i think nora too pretty to drop. besides, don't you really think a name is a part of one's self and ought to be loved and respected?" "that's just it. i want to--that is, if you don't mind, i want to be the self i planned, not this one i didn't have anything to say about. it's just like religion. when we grow up big as i am, we ought to be allowed to choose." her manner was even more babyish than her appearance. "big as i am!" jerry repeated this to a rosebush. as a matter of fact she was not much bigger than a child of eight years might be, but she claimed a few more birthdays and she looked about as substantial as a wind flower. her eyes were blue, her hair light and fluffy, and she wore such a tiny white slip of a dress, socks and sandals and a white lace hat! grown up? she looked just like an old-fashioned baby. "then, shall i be bobbs?" asked nora a moment later, with hope in her voice. "ye-e-s, and if--the auntie wants to soften it she can call you babette," ventured jerry. "and now, if the christenings are over, suppose we go inside and freshen up. come along bob, you are going to be my helper now, aren't you?" jerry's eyes twinkled with his voice. he was, plainly, enjoying himself. "i'd love to help--especially with outdoor work," replied the girl. "and you measure land, don't you?" she asked. "yes, that's about it. in other words i'm a surveyor," explained jerry. "and aunt elizabeth helps. isn't that lovely? we won't, any of us, have old pesky house work to think about. i haven't ever dreamed a dream, not a single one, about housekeeping. some one always does that for me, or i just don't think about it at all and it's all done beautifully," boasted nora. "i love your place. it's so romantic," she expanded her arms and fluffy little skirt to fill the big chair. "i feel, somehow, everything is going to come true now." relief toned this statement while she looked wistfully out of blue eyes, and any one might have easily guessed that something very dear was included in that word "everything." the young woman, who was threatened with being made over into an old aunt elizabeth with laces and cameos to boot, gazed intently at the small personality. she realized it was a personality, a little dreamer, a big romancer, and a very weird sample of the modern girl, self-trained. he who was to become "jim" on the spot, seemed tickled to death over it all, and kept snapping his brown eyes, first at the newly named bobbs and then his life's partner, until glints of fun-sparks charged the very air. "it might be a good idea to put on tags for a day or two," he suggested playfully. "i would hate to spoil the program by calling elizabeth here just ted." "oh, do you think it will be hard? i didn't mean to make trouble, and, if you say so, i'll just put the dream back again on its peg and let it stay there. it really doesn't have to come true right now. there are so many new things to talk about," temporized nora, considerately. "i think it would be lots better to try things out for a little while under our own names," suggested the young woman, eagerly. "and i have always loved the name nora, so you see, _my_ dream will be coming true, at any rate," she smiled. "goody--goody! it's all right, then. i'll be nora, and you'll be ted, that's pretty: what does it mean?" "theodora," answered the man promptly. "then it is prettier than the old-fashioned elizabeth," agreed the child. "really, things are different when you think about them than what they are when--you run right into them, aren't they?" "sure thing, especially water wagons and book agents," joked jerry. "and jerry is lovely, too, just as nice as jim. i knew a lovely old tramp dog named jerry." again the wistful blue eyes dreamed. "that's real nice," added the owner of the popular name. "was he--gentle?" "as a lamb. i used to ride on his back!" "and was he--er--handsome?" "he had the loveliest ears, all little pleaty wrinkles, and such big, floppy feet----" "all right, i'll be content to be his namesake, only don't expect me to howl when the phonograph plays. i can't undertake to do that," demurred the affable jerry. they all laughed a little at this protest, for jerry manton seemed good natured enough to "howl" if occasion demanded it. even the moon might have inspired him "doggerly" so to speak. mrs. manton picked up the little hand satchel that nora kept at her side when the other baggage was being disposed of, and gently urged the little visitor into the nest, there to settle that other question of attic or guest room. the short bright curls bobbed up and down incredulously, as their surprised owner looked in on the yellow room, a moment later. "golden! perfectly golden!" exclaimed the child. "but, of course, one could never get the nightmare in this lovely bird cage." she stopped, apparently reasoning out bird cages, nightmares and ghostly attics. "and i have simply got to have a strange experience," she scratched her heels together anxiously. "i just couldn't give that up," she decided. "but you do think this is a pretty room?" asked the hostess, her own soft eyes embracing affectionately the golden space before them. "glorious!" declared nora rapturously. "and i'm afraid it has been rather silly to get set on certain things without really knowing about them. dreams are uncertain, after all." jerry was just coming up the rustic stairs. "but the attic is a real spook parlor," he chimed in, "and i've always loved it myself. i have a corner for my trash, and the sleeping quarters aren't bad. you see this place was built with government money, and that's always--well, real money," he finished, significantly. "but jerry," again came the opposition from mrs. manton, "you know we have scarcely had time to look that attic over since we came here. it seems perfectly absurd to let nora go up there," she paused. "i know it's clean, for vita takes a pride in fixing attics, but why----" "now ted," the voice was as soft as a boy's, "why not let our little girl have her way?" "i really am not objecting," said the wife with a smile, "i'm just qualifying." "but who dares qualify day dreams?" asked the man, with a comical twist in his voice. nora stood on the threshold, uncertainly. "i guess maybe," she pondered, "we think a lot about dreams when we haven't real things to think about, like playthings, for real," she finished. "that's exactly it, dear," said mrs. manton, "and day dreams are not always healthy, either." "all the same," insisted jerry, "i'm strong for that attic. it smells just like the woods after my men have made a good, clean cutting. come along, girlie, and let me show it to you." chapter ii the attic "how's this?" asked the man. "oh, wonderful! those beams, they slant just like the story books say," declared nora, ecstatically. "good enough to give you the right sort of nightmare, eh? well, that's nice. ted is always after the cobwebs, but i don't let her spoil them if i'm around. you see, cobwebs have a lot to do in my business." "cobwebs?" nora poked her little head in between two chummy beams. "what do cobwebs do in surveying?" "they make a cross line on my object glass. i'll show you when i get around to it," replied jerry. "now see here, here's the secret chest," he was opening a big wooden box, "and by a miracle," he continued, "it does hold clothes, duds, et-cet-tee-ra." "the people who had this place gave a big party, i believe," explained mrs. ted, "and they left a lot of their costumes here. we have never had any chance to make use of them," she finished, slapping her hands on the work apron that partly covered her own mannish costume. apparently she disdained the frivolous things. "but just look!" nora was almost in the big cedar chest; in fact, nothing more than a bump of white, ending in two small brown spots that waggled like sandaled feet, was visible. presently the curly head emerged in a cloud of brilliant, spangly stuff, very evidently the costumes. "aren't these just wonderful!" "oh yes," agreed jerry, "they're nice and shiny. but just look at this spook cabinet. do you know what a spook cabinet is, nora?" "no, what?" she dropped the costumes back into the big chest instantly. "they're just a box of tricks. but this is the box empty. see here," jerry opened, with some difficulty, the long narrow closet that was built in a corner of the attic room. "i have always wondered why this had a ventilator at the top----" he began. "jerry!" called his wife rather sharply. "please don't do all the exploring in one day. nora must change her things and come down stairs. she may want something to eat after her journey." mrs. ted's tone of voice was plainly against that cabinet. "all right, ted, i'll subside," replied the jolly man. "the fact is----" he whispered to nora, "our ted hates ghosts; and every time i talk about this here upright coffin, she objects," and he gave one of his boyish twisted yelps, as if he wanted to yell but didn't dare so gurgled instead, and it was very plain he said this out of pure mischief; nevertheless, it did cause the little girl to clench her small fists and start suddenly. "come right down stairs," insisted the hostess imperatively. "i'm very sure, nora dear, you will find something more interesting in vita's cake box than you could dig out of that dusty hole." "vita! what a queer name!" exclaimed nora, following mrs. manton out from the interesting attic. "her whole name is more than that. it's vittoria, but since she does our cooking and is both vital and vitaminous, we cut it down to an easy word implying both," explained ted. "you see, nora, we are keen on short cuts." the little girl was thinking something like that. in fact, she was so fascinated with the realities of her visit she had almost lost the last shred of faith in her picturesque dreams. "if i had ever named a cook," she was deciding, "i should surely have given her susan or betsy or maybe jennie. but vita means more and makes you think of good victuals." the open stairs were built winding from the big field stone hearth in the first room, clear up to the attic chamber, and, as they descended, nora looked about the quaint, rustic place in rapturous admiration. indeed, no dream of her great life series had ever included this. gone with the jim-aunt elizabeth idea was going the rag-rug four-poster plan, that had seemed almost indelibly outlined on her whimsical picture plate. she sighed a little, as she felt she should, on the "grave of her dreams;" but there was jerry calling from the open door: "here you are, nora! come and meet cap." "cap! a boy!" she asked excitedly. "not the regular kind, but he's some boy just the same." jerry was clapping his hands like a boy himself, just as a big shaggy dog bounded down the path and up the few steps to the square porch. "oh, what a beauty! i have always loved a big dog!" exclaimed nora. "what's his name?" "captain," replied the proud master. "here cap, come shake hands with nora." the dog cocked one ear up inquisitively, looked over the small girl with majestic indifference, walked around her twice and finally flung his bushy tail out with a swish that fanned nora's cheek as she bent over to make friends. "isn't he lovely! just like the picture in my first story book; the big dog that dragged the lost man out of the snow drifts," said nora, almost breathless with delight. "he is exactly that sort," explained jerry. "he came from the other side and was a captain in the big war." "oh," sighed nora wistfully. "he must know an awful lot." "he surely does, eh, old boy?" and the big shaggy head was patted affectionately. meanwhile vita, the italian woman who held the office of housekeeper, was depositing a mess of freshly-picked dandelions in a pan on the kitchen table. she smiled pleasantly at the little stranger, and at a single glance nora knew she and vita were sure to be friends. "now, you know us all," announced the hostess. "vita and captain complete the circle." "not counting the crow, and the rabbits and the cat and the----" "the animal kingdom is not included," ted interrupted her husband. "when we get to checking up the animals please, after captain count in cyclone." "cyclone! a horse?" asked nora. "yes, the horse," answered jerry. "he can climb trees, crawl through gullies and swim the river like a bear, according to ted." "well, hardly all of that," qualified the smiling owner of the saddle horse cyclone. "but he is a wonderful horse, nora. i am sure you will want to ride him." "oh, i'd be dreadfully afraid," demurred the girl. "but perhaps----" "you aren't going to be afraid of anything around here, bobbie," jerry assured the small girl, who looked smaller by contrast to the big man and the robust, athletic young woman; both perfect models of "america's best." considering the very short time little nora had been at the nest, it appeared much, in the way of acquaintance, had been accomplished. "if you will just run off, jerry-boy, and manage to find something to keep you busy for a half hour or so," begged his wife finally, "perhaps nora and i will be able to settle down to the comforts of home." "am i not included?" he asked teasingly. "sometimes, but just now we need space," replied she, who was affectionately styled teddy. "that being the case----. come along cap," and the next moment a very happy, boyish man and a wildly happy dog went scampering off through the "flap-jack" path in the clearance. the path was made of selected flat stones scattered at stepping intervals, and it was jerry who insisted they reminded him of vita's best flap-jacks. the coming of nora to the lodge in the wilderness was the result of what seemed a necessity. the child was the daughter of theodora crane's best friend naomie blair, an artist so highly temperamental that, after a series of nerve episodes, she finally seemed forced to go to western mountains and leave little nora at a select school. the school was select to the point of isolation, and the teachers had advised theodora, who was in charge of nora, that the child was so nervous, high strung and fanciful, that the doctors had ordered a complete change of surroundings. these characteristics were already showing in nora's conduct; but with that understanding of childhood always a part of pure affection for it, theodora was pleased, rather than worried, over the prospects ahead. nora herself seemed bewildered and fascinated. her love of "dream things" was plainly a part of her nature, at the same time she was quickly learning that only happy realities can make happy dreams. in the small satchel that nora clung to was found no suitable change of anything like practical clothing, in fact her dress was so fussy, be-ribboned and be-frilled, that teddy hesitated about offering any of it to the briars and brambles of the timberland. "i pick out all my own dresses, you know," the little girl explained. "nannie wasn't able to do any shopping so she had the catalogues sent to me by mail." "nannie?" "that's mother, of course. but she is so little and delicate i could never think of calling her mother," declared nora. "she likes nannie better." "you have quite a talent for names or re-names," joked teddy. "i am wondering how i should have liked the 'lizzie' you chose for me." "not lizzie! elizabeth," in a shocked voice. "same lady, i believe. but let's hold on to ted until we get acquainted or things may go on end," advised good-natured mrs. manners. "besides, there's our auto, that's 'lizzie' to jerry." nora did not ask why. she was in the yellow room, changing, and the blue roses in the filmy little dress she selected were not bluer than her own wondering eyes. "i tell you what would be just the thing for you, dear," said teddy suddenly. "you must join the girl scouts!" "girl scouts!" "yes, you know about them, don't you?" "i've read about them, but i really never could, aunt teddy. i couldn't be one of those wild, uncultured girls." a delicious laugh escaped teddy. "wild and uncultured!" she repeated. then, seeing the pitifully blank look on nora's face she dropped the subject. "here's your closet," she explained next, opening the door of a built-in wardrobe, "and you better slip these little pads on the ends of hangers when you put pretty things on them. you see, we have very few fancy things out here, and these hangers are cut from our birch trees. i had a visitor last year who was so afraid of snakes she spent all her time around the lodge, so she made these pine pads with fancy stocking ends. i have never needed to use them." the pads were little cushions of pine needles sewed in silk stocking ends, with a long open seam along the side. these slipped onto the hangers and were tied with tapes at the hook. nora quickly adjusted one for her dotted swiss dress and another for her pink rose silk. these, strange to tell, she had carried in her hand bag. "and here is your dresser," teddy further introduced. "see what lovely deep drawers." "aren't they? i'd love to put lavender and rosemary in the corners. do you--like those perfumes?" "well, yes, as perfumes. but i'm so used to the odor of freshly cut trees i'm afraid my finer taste is disappearing," said the other quietly. into the drawer nora was placing such an outlay of finery as any young bride might have boasted of. selecting from catalogues was only too evident in the lacy garments, with little ribbons, and tiny rose buds; pretty in themselves but absurd on the undergarments of a growing child. then, there was an ivory set, mirror, comb, brush, etc. as the surprised teddy glimpsed the display over a khaki covered shoulder she had difficulty in choking back a laugh. "naomie would be as silly as that," she pondered, silently, reflecting that the same sort of whims in dress and finery had been a real part of naomie blair's young girlhood. nora was placing her pretty things on the big dresser, with skilled little fingers, and that the fancy, private, exclusive school had helped to make silly traits even more pronounced in little nora, was too evident. wisely, however, mrs. ted said not a word in opposition. things must move slowly, she realized, if the quaint little dreamer was not to be too rudely shocked out of her fancies. it was all very exciting even to the placid, well balanced young woman. to have the daughter of her girlhood friend come into her very arms, like a little bird battered in the storm of life's uncertainties, with tired wings falling against the bright window pane of love; then to see the dreams unfolded with the jims, elizabeths, ghosts and attic fancies, ready to reel off like an actual moving-picture--it was all very surprising, not to say astonishing, for the sensible, modern mantons. but could this same bright-eyed lady have looked into the summer ahead, and forseen the new fields of fancies that nora was about to explore, she might have been still more amazed. playing mother to a butterfly is not often a very satisfactory experience, but there was nora, and if ever a child needed a mother this little "whimsy" did. "to think of calling her mother nannie," reflected mrs. manton, "and if only i could have called such a child 'daughter.'" jerry was back from his enforced trip to the lumberland, and his whistle trickled in the window on a flood of sunshine. "oh, let's go down," exclaimed nora, brushing things hastily into the dresser drawer and neglecting to tie her sash in an even bow. "i'm so anxious to see your outdoors, i could easily believe there are fairies in these thick, tangly woods." "our birds and little animal friends are just as interesting as fairies," remarked mrs. ted, "but you must know them and they must know you." "how ever could one get acquainted with birds?" asked nora, stopping a moment on her way out to answer jerry's whistle. "we don't know how, but we know we do," replied mrs. ted, giving the flying window curtain a jerk to let the sun stream in. "some day i must tell you about the poor little blue-jay we took in and nursed. he got so fond of us i could hardly get him to fly away." "i had a canary once, nannie sent it for christmas, but i had to let him go," said nora. "he was just breaking his heart in that tiny, little cage. i never wanted a bird again." "they are pathetic when caged," agreed mrs. manton, "but when out in their own woods they seem to be the very happiest little creatures of all creation. run along," she said, as nora waited politely. "that jerry-boy is getting impatient." as the child fluttered off, her yellow ringlets dancing and her dainty little skirts swishing around the half tied ribbon sash, mrs. ted smiled and pondered: "another little blue-jay to love; but she will surely want to fly away in her sky of dreams, and i pity the tired wings when night comes," sighed the potential mother. chapter iii a broken dream it was evening at the nest, and the quiet settling down on the woodlands vibrated with a melody, at once silent and musical. little nora fairly trembled with expectation. what would the night bring? she was determined to sleep in that attic under the big, dark rafters. as a matter of fact nora was fascinated with fear; just as one may stop on a river bridge and feel like jumping in. "just pound on the floor, kitten, if you get scared. we'll run up and get you, quickly enough," declared jerry, secretly proud of nora's pluck. "but really, dear," objected mrs. ted, "i would rather you would----" "now ted, you know well enough you had a heap of fun the night you and jettie slept in the haunted house. never mind the trouble you made in the neighborhood, you had your fun," and he clapped his brown hands on his knee and laughed, until cap, the big dog, rolled over in his sleep and grunted inquiringly. this reminder caused ted to smile indulgently, and when nora twined her warm little arms around the same teddie's neck, it seemed to the adopted mother she could not deny her anything--she might sleep on the roof if the whim occurred to her just then. while the family, which included vita and the big tiger cat, besides cap and a cage of newly adopted birds, were either talking or listening to talk, vita, from the kitchen door, was acting rather queerly. she would shuffle back and forth, start to speak and hesitate, cough, spill pans and make other unusual noises, until ted called out: "what's the matter, vita? you seem to be having a lot of trouble." "not trouble, just worry," replied the elderly servant in good english, but strongly accented. "worry?" repeated jerry. "why vita, you never worry. what's wrong? come in and tell us about it." at this invitation vita showed herself in the comfortable sitting room, towel in hand and head wagging. "it's like this," she began, "that attic----" "oh, that's it, is it? now don't you go worrying about the attic," interrupted jerry. "if our little girl wants to dream one dream out up there, why shouldn't she? i like her spirit." "but when--there's the pretty room----" "why vita!" it was ted who interrupted this time. "i'm surprised that you should interfere!" "now, you know, dear, vita means no harm," jerry broke in, always eager to smooth things out. "but there really doesn't seem any cause for all this anxiety." "i would say, please," ventured the housekeeper, "a little girl might get scared up in that black garret," and she made her dark eyes glare, plainly with the intent of frightening nora out of her plans. "then it will be over, anyhow," spoke up the child, "and i might as well get scared tonight as any other night," she concluded loftily. "right-o!" sang out jerry. "i can tell sure thing, kitten, that you and i are going to have a heap of fun in these diggings. when you get through with one scare we'll invent another, and in that way we'll be able to keep things interesting." vita threw back her head, rolled her eyes again and made a queer sort of gurgle. then she swished her dish towel in the air with such a jerk it snapped like a whip, and realizing further argument would be useless, she turned back into her own quarters. as she went out, man and wife exchanged questioning glances. they plainly asked each other why their maid should be so concerned, but with nora present it was unwise to put the query into words, so it remained unanswered. nothing but sheer pity prevented mrs. jerry manton, better known as ted, from bursting into delicious laughter at the sight of nora in her boudoir finery, as, an hour later, she picked her way up into that attic. jerry kept discreetly at a distance, but he too saw the figure, so like the model of an old time master painting, as she climbed the stairs, unlighted candle in hand, with cap at the little pink heels that just peeked out from under a very beautiful, dainty night-robe. her candle was not lighted--cousin ted, (the latest name given the hostess) would not permit the lighting, as she argued it was dangerous to carry the little flame so near to the flimsy robe: never-the-less, nora wanted the candle, and she carried it along to complete the picture. at the door ted touched a button and the convenient big electric bulb, ordinarily used by jerry when he went to the attic workroom, showered a welcome light over the dark rafters and the queer eerie, lofty quarters. "isn't it wonderful!" said nora, in a voice so shaky the wonder part seemed rather awful. "if you get the least bit nervous, dear, you come right down to the yellow room," cautioned ted. "we will leave the hall lights on, and cap wanders about all night. so if you hear him don't be alarmed." "it would be nice----" nora paused, then continued, "if cap would sleep up here on this lovely landing. couldn't we give him a pillow?" "i'm sure he wouldn't stay long," objected ted. "our cap is a wonderful night watchman and has a regular beat to cover. he will be sure to visit you more than once before morning." she was turning away reluctantly. the circumstances exacted full strength of her own courage--to leave that little wisp of a child up in the lonely attic just to satisfy a whim. but ted knew the only sure way to effect a cure for the fanciful nonsense was to let it burn out: it could never be successfully suppressed. hence the decision and the attic quarters. "good night, cousin ted," said nora bravely. "and don't worry about me. i'm sure to sleep and dream beautifully in that nice, fresh bed." "it is fresh; i changed it all as vita seemed so opposed to letting you come up here," said ted, thoughtfully. "but while vita is very queer in some respects, she is loyal and faithful, always." nora threw her small arms around ted's neck impulsively. "if only nannie liked housekeeping," she sighed. "couldn't we have perfectly lovely times in a little house of our own?" "your mother is sure to change her ideas when she grows stronger," replied the young woman, charitably. "naomie has what is termed the artistic temperament. as a rule it is greatly and sadly in need of discipline." nora sighed and pressed a loving pair of trembling lips on mrs. manton's brown cheek. "i'm so glad i found you, anyhow. and cousin jerry is just the very loveliest big jolly man! i'm sure i'm going to be very happy here," she finished with an impressive sigh. "i know you are, dear. we have more kinds of things to do in this big woodland! just wait until you go out surveying with us!" ted promised, "then you will see some of the wonders of the great outdoors. there's jerry's whistle now. i must run away and get him his bread and milk. would you believe that great, big baby has a bowl of milk and two cuts of home made bread every night? he says his mother always told her children a story when they took this extra meal, and he insists he would break up the family circle if he failed to take his nightly supply." "break up the family? do they come here?" "oh, bless you, no. jerry just fancies the other two brothers in canada and the sister who is a nurse in the mountains, all eat bread and milk at nine-thirty p. m." she laughed a little, caressing ripple. even nora knew that this young wife cherished any filial view held up by her husband. ted was gone, and presently it was time to turn out the big bulb light that dangled from the rafters. nora peered into the looking glass at her own little face to make doubly sure of herself. then she made a complete survey of the room. "just to know that any noise isn't here," she apologized to herself, poking her yellow head into a nest of cobwebs and jerking back with a little gasp. "oh!" she panted, "cousin jerry wants cobwebs for his surveying instruments. i must be sure to remember where that nest is." over by the chimney a line of paper bags hung and these now seemed "spooky" in the shadowy light. other hanging things in the low parts of the attic that were set away from the center, the latter which was forming the unfinished bed room, all added to the grotesque outline. "but i've got to do it," declared little nora, crawling at last under the fresh bed covering cousin ted had provided. "i'll leave the light on for a little while just to try it," decided nora, her yellow head buried so deeply beneath the covers that it was quite impossible to tell light from darkness. a little click from somewhere brought her up straight in the bed, a moment later. she listened with all her alert senses but nothing else happened. with a new feeling, somewhat akin to disappointment, nora once more settled down, first, however, she actually turned off the light, and only the slim streak from the far away hall showed a single beam that framed the chimney line. being brave--as brave as all this--was really a new experience to nora, but she had promised herself to "hold out"; and then cousin jerry had seemed so proud of her pluck she would never disappoint him. "makes me feel almost as big as a boy," she encouraged herself, "and won't i have a wonderful story to write barbara." now she thought of barbara, the tom-boy girl at school: she who could climb and romp, laugh and cry, defy the prim madams who conducted the school, it was certainly conducted not "run," and the misses baily were types of teachers such as the most carping critic might depict, black string eye-glasses and all. the vision flitted before the blinking eyes of nora. she was so glad to get away from school restrictions and perhaps--well perhaps cousin jerry and cousin ted might get to love her so fondly they would not send her back. what was that! over by the big chest! quickly nora struck a match and lighted her candle. a figure moved, there was no mistake about it, a person, a real live person was surely over by the spook cabinet. nora almost stopped breathing. she was afraid to call out and still more afraid to remain quiet. there it was again! "oh! oh! cousin ted!" she did call, but in such a thread of a voice she scarcely heard it herself. the next moment cap sniffed his big, warm nose up under her arm. "oh, cap, i'm so glad! stay with me. i'm frightened!" she whispered, drawing his tawny head closer. then it occurred to her that the big dog had not barked. she knew he could scent a stranger in any part of the house, and she was equally sure a real person had moved over by the cabinet. who could it be? her first sudden fright was now giving place to reason. the intruder must be human, and perhaps whoever it was, he was giving cap something he liked. but that would not account for his submission, for cap was not a dog to take things from strangers. horrible thoughts of chloroform stifled the girl. she even fancied she did detect a strange, depressing odor. what if she should be drugged! an attempt to move found her too frightened to put one foot over the side of that bed. why had she waited so long? a sickening fear was coming on. oh, suppose it should be unconsciousness? there was a stir. cap was knocking things about. now he dashed over and was surely bounding up on someone. "down!" came the command. it was given in the voice of vita! chapter iv transplanted nora was too surprised now to even think coherently. that vita should be up in her attic! "down, down cap!" the housekeeper was ordering, while the dog, evidently realizing something very unusual was occurring, added his part to the confusion. "vita!" called nora in a subdued voice, "come over this way!" "hush! don't wake the folks," cautioned the maid, now beside nora's bed. "i--just--come to--shut the window----" "oh, is there a window over there?" "a little one," evaded vita. "but why do you come up to this dirty place?" "it isn't dirty, and i like attics." nora's was confident now and her voice betrayed some resentment. "you like it?" vita sniffed so hard the candle almost choked to death. "why yes; why shouldn't i? i'm romantic you know." "roman----" "oh, you don't understand. i'm sort of booky, like a story, you know," explained nora loftily. "i love things that are like the parts of a story." it was difficult to make certain that this lusty italian understood; but even in the dim light, her dark eyes seemed kind and full of smiling glints, and her ruddy cheeks dimpled all over like a big tufted pin cushion, giving nora a feeling of security mingled with curiosity. why did vita come up? there was no draft from any window. was there even a window? "i tell you, baby," the woman began, as if answering nora's silent questions, "you be a very good little girl and go down to the pretty sun-gold room; yes?" the big warm arm was cuddling the little form in the bed, and cap was so happy he put both paws gingerly on the coverlet, snapping a very short bark of a question right into nora's face. "quiet, boy!" whispered nora. "we are having a lovely party but we must not wake our neighbors." the big shaggy head burrowed down into the covers, and nora felt like a little queen on a throne with her servants bowing at her feet. "go on, vita," she ordered grandly. "i tell you a nice little story, then you go downstairs on tippy toes, yes?" "but vita dear, i did so want to stay up here," pouted nora. "it is no good up here. all crazy like, and make you scared--awful." this was said in a very positive tone. "why? what should i be afraid of? i slept alone at boarding school and the winds made dreadful noises sometimes." protested nora. "never mind. you be vita's good baby and vita give you nice--very good cake tomorrow," coaxed the woman, who now seemed anxious to leave the attic herself. she stirred uneasily. "well," sighed nora, "i suppose i can't have any peace if i don't." she threw down the coverlet. "but see, my little clock says eleven, and i don't want to disturb anyone on my very first night. you go down whatever way you came up, vita; and i'll creep down the front way." the woman's relief was so evident nora scarcely knew whether to be grateful or suspicious. "now everything be all right," whispered vita happily, "and you sleep just like the angel. here cap, you go very still," and she patted the dog with a little shove that urged him toward the door. he understood, evidently, for very quietly indeed he shuffled down, his four feet softer than velvet slippers, as he carried his huge body down the darkened stairway. nora first poked her head out to make sure the coast was clear, then with a motion to vita, who stood with candle in hand at the attic door, she swept down the stairs and entered the yellow room, into which a soft light from the hall fell in a welcoming path. the bed covers were turned down--vita must have been determined that nora should use that bed, and the window was properly opened, for the soft breeze stirred the scrim curtains, and a wonderful woodland scent stole into the room. "it is much better down here," nora was forced to admit as she snuggled into the gold and blue coverlet. "i guess i was a nuisance to be so obstinate." a few minutes later a step in the hall glided to the electric light button, and the click that followed turned off the light. that must have been ted, of course, and she must have known that nora was now safely tucked in the comfortable bed in the guest room. "she was waiting for me too," mused nora with a twinge of compunction. "i do wonder why they made such a fuss about me staying in the attic?" it was delicious to have every one anxious about her,--so short a time ago no one but the circle angel at the baily school seemed to care whether she slept in her bed or out on the old, tattered hammock, that barbara wanted to make a tree climber out of; and now in this lovely little bungalow, called the nest, there were so many beds for her she couldn't choose. all the same, with the insistence of her fancies, visions of goblins and goo-gees up in the attic pranced through her excited brain and made the queerest pictures. she shivered as she remembered them. "but vita is nothing like a spirit worker," mused the child. "and she is so kind and seems so fond of me." then she had an inspiration. "i have it," she all but exclaimed aloud. "vita knows what is wrong and is afraid i will find out. she is not frightened at it or she would not go prowling around in the dark," continued the reasoning, "but she has a secret and it is in that attic." as if this conclusion settled all disturbing doubts, nora humped over once or twice and then gave in to the sleep her tired little self was so sorely in need of. it was the end of a long and too well filled day. she had left the select school with all the instructions of the misses baily fairly hissing in her ears. then there was barbara's fun making, in the way of a train letter with all sorts of wild premonitions (they were funny but somehow the train incidents took on the threats of danger barbara had outlined). but after all, no one had kidnapped her and here she was--yes, asleep in the big fluffy bed in the lovely yellow room. a whistle--jerry's--brought her back. the daylight was streaming in through that wonderful dew laden vine. and oh, the scent! it was not flowers but woodlands. a bird chirped a polite good morning, and without the usual eye rubbing nora was sitting up straight and silently thanking the maker of good things for such a wonderful day. for the first time in her life she felt that her clothes were not appropriate, and it was some moments before she could decide just which little gown to appear in. they really seemed out of place in that rugged country--her laces and ribbons and fine fussings. "i suppose the girl scouts do wear practical things," she reflected, "but that horrid khaki!" the thought sent a little shudder through the small, frail shoulders, and nora, donning her belgian blue, with brown sandals and two colored socks, was ready, presently, to meet her newly adopted relations. cap was at her door when she opened it, and this, more than anything else, sent a thrill of joy to her heart. even a wonderful big dog to welcome her when any dog would surely want to be out doors with jerry on such a morning! "come along, bob," called a man's voice from the lower hall. "we can hardly spare time to eat--there is so much to see this morning." nora was beside him as he continued: "the kittens are tumbling out of their box, the puppies are fighting over a feather, the chicks are testing their strength on a nice, lively, fat little worm, and oh yes! the calf jumped over the moon--the moon being ted's home made gate," he finished, with that boyish laugh that always made the house ring merrily. vita was just coming into the dining room with the muffins as nora passed her. there was no mistaking the sly wink--the big dark eyes fairly sparkled glints as the maid signalled nora not to say anything about the attic episode. nora smiled and nodded, and then the muffins were placed before mrs. ted. "sleep well, dear?" asked that lady presently. "wonderfully," replied nora, just a bit cautiously. "i heard you come down stairs and was rather glad you changed your mind," continued the hostess, while she poured jerry's coffee. "it is much pleasanter on the second floor." for a moment nora wondered whether this was being said to disguise the real happening. did mrs. manton know that vita had gone up to rouse her? "maybe rain today," interrupted the maid, although the sun shone brightly at the moment. "now vittoria!" objected jerry. "you ought to know better than to say rain when i have to go away out to the back woods, and i want to have some real work done today." he glanced over his shoulder at the streaming sunlight. "you're a fraud, or else you are not awake yet," he went on. "there is no more sign of rain than of snow." "i agree with you for once, jerry," chimed in ted. "the grass was knitted with cobwebs, the sun came up grey, and besides all that the jelly jelled. now vita, you see you are completely left. it is not going to rain." vita laughed good naturedly. "then i say it is goin' to shine," she added, and nora now felt certain her talk had been made to interrupt the comment on the night before. breakfast passed off in a gale of pleasantries. the home of the mantons seemed jollier every moment, to nora. "how about the woods?" asked jerry, while they lingered over the coffee. "i'm ready," replied ted, "and i'm sure nora will want to come." "oh yes," with a glance at her inadequate costume. "will this dress be all right?" "if it's the strongest you have with you," replied ted. "but we have some very saucy briars and brush. we must see about a real woodsy outfit for you." she paused a moment, then continued, "i am sure you will like the girl scouts when you get to know more about them. i know a group of the girls and to my thinking they are the real thing in girls." nora flushed slightly. one point she had made up her mind on. she was not going to lose her identity by joining in with a group of girls who, she imagined, just did as they were told, and apparently had no ideas of their own. nora had seen some of the girl scout literature and it had not impressed her favorably. it was plain and practical, while she longed for novelty. "well, bob is going to be my scout, at any rate," chimed in jerry, quick to sense possible embarrassment. the shade of nora's cheeks gave him his cue. "we won't talk about the regular scouts until--well, until later," he finished, in the foolish way he had of making a boy of himself. it was rather foolish, but so jolly. he would wind up everything in just the way nora never expected, as if his words said themselves. the visitor was conscious now of something unpleasant stealing in upon her. would mrs. manton oblige her to be different? couldn't she dream and play and fancy all the wonderful things she had been storing up for so long? wasn't this her dream vacation? nannie, that play mother of hers, _she_ knew would not want her to change her peculiar characteristics. this sort of reasoning flashed before her mind as the party prepared for a day in the woods. so the little girl in belgian blue went along with the big man in his knickers and brown blouse, and with the young woman in her service uniform. nora made an odd little figure, but she was, as she had always been, a picture of a girl. chapter v the woods at rocky ledge out in the woods! forgotten was the dread idea of a scout uniform or the possible program of a scout ritual. nora romped with cap, discovering new delights at every few paces and only pausing to exchange salutations with birds, bees and butterflies. the sky was as blue as her gown, and her eyes matched the entire scheme. her golden hair tossed in the wind like new corn silk, and when jerry and ted slyly inspected their charge at a safe distance, a most comprehensive nod of a pair of wise heads told volumes to the woodlands and the surrounding nature audience. yes, nora would do. now life at the nest seemed complete. even this dreamy, romantic little bit of humanity was a real child, and to the pair of adopted parents she seemed as beautiful as a wild flower. "now ted, you just hold back on that scout stuff," jerry had the temerity to suggest. "we don't want to scare her off, first shot. and you can see she's opposed." "she doesn't understand," replied ted. "but, of course, there is no need to urge her. no hurry, at any rate." "i don't know as i like the tom-boy idea," continued jerry. "she's very pretty just as she is." ted laughed knowingly. "you're the boy who pulls down the shades rather than say 'no' to the peddlers," she reminded him. "it is easy to understand why you are opposing the scouts." he adjusted his tripod and seemed to have found something very absorbing at that moment. nevertheless, his big shoulders shook, and his curly head wagged a little suspiciously. they were surveying the end of a big strip of woodland. all over the young forest could be seen the yellow stripes that marked the trees that were to be spared, while those unmarked were doomed for the woodman's ax. birds liked the yellow-banded trees best, to judge from the perches they made upon such, but of course, they could not have known that the other, not so fortunate, needed their musical sympathy to make less gloomy the approaching execution. "see! just see!" nora called, running back from the wild grape-vine cave. "do come over and see this--little play house. it's perfect as can be, with vine draperies, and moss carpet, and real wild-rose decoration. cap led me to it, i guess it's his secret place." she was panting with sheer joy. the woods were new to the girl from the boarding school, where walks were confined to the limits of neuritis and neuralgia as "enjoyed" by the baily sisters. "cap'll show you," replied jerry. "he has nothing to do but hunt while ted and i work for our living." "oh, could i help?" nora felt like an intruder upon their industry. "not just today, but pretty soon. perhaps the day after." this was another of jerry's characteristic replies. nora understood them better now. "but it is real fun--fun to look through that spy glass. do you have cobwebs in there?" asking this brought back to her mind the cobweb nest in the attic. jerry's reply, however, forestalled further reflection in that direction at the moment. "some day, pretty soon, perhaps the day after tomorrow," he laughed again, "i'll show you all about this and the cobwebs. ted has some town stuff to attend to; and listen, bobbs" (he stepped over and whispered in nora's ear), "ted is a perfect terror if she is held too late in the woods. she would starve us to death, like as not, if i didn't get back before the clock cooled striking. so you and cap just run along and find out what the fairies want from the village, while we mark a few more spots." was there ever such a jolly man? once again he had quickly avoided embarrassment to nora. he would not even let her think she should be useful. "yes," called mrs. manton from her position astride a small white birch, "you and cap have a good time, nora. he will teach you to explore." willingly nora ran back to the bower she had discovered. surely it had been fashioned by elves and fairies, for it was perfect in every detail. unconscious of time, she flitted about making a little window in the wild grape vine, and fashioning a door between the hazel-nut boughs. a murmuring song escaped her lips, while cap now and then yelped sharply, impatient to be understood and receive attention. "why, cap!" asked nora in reply to one of these outbursts, "i don't quite understand your language. what is it?" the big dog was vainly trying to make nora see a nest of late sparrows. the tiny feathered babies could just stretch their little heads above the rim of the straw cup of a nest they cuddled in, and when cap found them he knew he should notify somebody. the bush was so low, although it was safely sheltered by the thick vines, and a wild trumpet vine loaned two beautiful flowers to cheer the little birds during their mother's absence. still, cap felt certain it was dangerous for such tiny creatures to be there in the very path of any wild, rough animal happening by. nora had never seen such baby birds before. first, she wanted to fondle them, but cap gave warning and she desisted. then, she wanted to feed them, as if birds could eat the black berries she offered them. but presently the mother bird flew into the bower with such a wild, shrill call, nora knew her own presence was not desired so near the baby birds, so she followed cap out into the clearance. as she did she saw approaching a group of girls, and they wore the girl scout uniform. at the sight something within nora seemed to tighten up. the girls were coming straight to the bower and their laughing voices had the strange effect of all but chilling nora. without waiting to exchange so much as a smile she called cap and ran off to the surveyor's camp. "well," she heard one girl exclaim, as she sped away, "one would think we were--indians." nora's ears stung as her cheeks flamed. "there! wasn't that just what one might expect? as if a girl couldn't do just as she pleased in the woodlands! and they were her own cousin jerry's lands too," nora scoffed. "what's the matter, nora?" asked mrs. manton, as she panting, sank down on a freshly-cut stump. "you don't mean to tell me you are actually afraid of those little girls, just because they wear uniforms?" "oh, no, cousin ted, i am not afraid of them," her voice would shake somehow, "but i didn't know them." "i see. well, we must all get acquainted in these pretty parts. the birds and the furry things never wait for an introduction," replied ted, kindly. "come along with me, bobbs," called jerry, who was packing up his instruments. "i need help with this chain; it is bound to snarl." "jerry!" called out mrs. ted rather sharply. "you really must not interfere every time i attempt to tell nora something useful. i want her to know the girl scouts, and the sooner she makes up her mind to do so the happier she will be. the scouts are all over this place you know, jerry," and the laughter of the girls up at the bower attested to the truth of that statement. "anyone who is not interested in scouting will have a poor chance of a real vacation in the woodlands," concluded mrs. manton. "but we are going to scout," insisted the man with the tripod on his shoulder. "the only thing is, we are going to do it in our own way. isn't that so, bobbs?" young and simple minded as was nora, she was fully conscious of a difference of opinions regarding her management. jerry was surely siding with her, even in her whims, whereas ted, mother-like, felt the necessity of giving advice. that was it. she had never before known anything the least bit mother-like. would she find the relationship too irksome? there was the hint of a tear in her blinking eye when she pulled the kinky tape out for jerry and felt it snap back into its leather case. after all, things were not exactly as she had pictured them at the nest. first, she was dragged down from her attic--she felt now she had been dragged down in the very middle of the night by that great, big vita, and now, there were those horrid girl scouts being held up as examples for her to follow and imitate. well, she would never be a scout. each time the question presented itself she felt more decidedly against it. she would always have big cousin jerry to stand by her, and if cousin ted---"want to come to town with me, dear?" called the owner of the name she was opposing. "sure she does. she is going to ride cyclone. aren't you, bobbs?" this was from jerry. "i couldn't ride a big horse," faltered the confused girl. "we will go in our handsome ca--our little tame flivver," interrupted ted. "when you want to ride a horse you will have plenty of time to practice." mrs. manton had assembled her tools. nora marvelled at the strong hands that could so skillfully wield the sharp hatchet and the dangerous-looking trimming knife. into the loop at her belt ted carelessly slipped the glittering tools, and as she did so nora recalled the sight of the dainty hands she had been accustomed to admiring. what would the ladies who visited the school say to a person like cousin ted? they were ready to leave for the cottage. over the hill the girl scouts were calling their mysterious "wha-hoo," and to nora it sounded like a call to battle. what had at first been merely an indifference was now assuming the proportions of actual dislike. how was nora to know she was a very much spoiled little girl? and how was she to guess what the cost of her change of heart would mean to her? she was a total stranger to the word "snob." her training had been one straight line of avoiding this, that, and the other thing; but as for doing this, that and everything, no place was given in the curriculum. mrs. manton, herself a product of the most modern college, knew the weakness of little nora's character at a glance, but to introduce strength and purpose! to bend the vine without crushing the tendrils! this very first day was marked with a danger signal. if nora slighted the scouts, they who came almost daily to ted for information and companionship, there was sure to be trouble. it was this surety that prompted ted to say with decision: "the sooner nora gets acquainted the happier she will be." meanwhile the girls of chickadee patrol had all but forgotten about the stranger. they were after specimens and had discovered more than one new bird's nest. cameras were clicking, notes being taken, and so many interesting matters were being attended to, it was not strange that the sight of one little girl in a pretty blue frock, with a disdainful expression on her otherwise attractive face, might have been forgotten for the time. if there were really fairies in those woods they should have intervened just then, for it would have been so much easier for nora to have met the scouts as companions, whereas she, holding away from the very idea of organization, kept building up a dislike which threatened to cause her much unhappiness. the woodlands were broad enough for both to roam, but it was inevitable that both should meet some day, and, under what circumstances? chapter vi a prince in hiding when nora wrote to barbara she drew word pictures of the beauties at woodland wilds. she shed a tear of real joy when writing about cousin jerry and captain, and when she fondly recited the virtues of cousin ted she felt she put more in that one word "motherly" than could otherwise have been conveyed. it was in the writing of that letter that she took account of her actual self, for in wording it she had naturally summed up. "i am not just sure whether i entirely suit or not," she told barbara. "sometimes i feel so different. of course they all love me, even vita the cook, and i love them fondly, but don't you know, babs, you always told me i saw 'foohey' and you would not explain what it was to be that way? but i guess i am, whatever it is, for a lot of alterations have already been ordered," she wrote. "my new outdoor clothes have arrived," the letter ran, "they are of brown cloth" (she avoided the use of the word khaki) "and they will stand a lot of hard wear. cousin jerry says we get them that color and so we won't scare the birds and other woodland creatures. they are supposed to think we are part of the landscape." nora then told of the attic, and its chest of treasures, and added she expected to try on a couple of outfits the very first day she was free from accompanying the surveying party. all of which showed the visitor was "taking root," as jerry would have said. a long tramp out in a marshy territory was to be undertaken by the two veterans, ted and jerry, but because of the bad footing nora was not asked to go along. this provided the very opportunity nora had been waiting for, and hardly had the reliable old flivver "fluvved" away, then she hurried up to the attic in search of a costume. "come on, cap," she whispered, eluding vita, but unwilling to go up in the attic alone. she had not forgotten the suspicions of her first night. too glad to obey, cap led the way, and presently nora forgot even the "spook cabinet" in her interest over the open costume chest. things were mussed and musty, rumpled and wrinkled and crinkled; but what colors and what a lot of bright tinsel! "oh joy," she exclaimed, dragging from the tangles a real fauntleroy costume. "i have always wanted to see how i would look dressed in this sort of outfit," she thought, for the black velvet "knickers," the little velvet jacket, and the lace blouse were all there, and yes, there was a wonderful, bright silk scarf to go around the waist. the cap was prettiest of all, and it was resting on nora's yellow curls before cap could possibly make out what the whole proceedings meant. he stood over in his corner and blinked, but nora insisted on having his opinion. "isn't it wonderful, cap? and don't you like nora in it?" she demanded. he gave one of his peculiar exclamations rather louder than she had expected, and to prevent the sounds from reaching vita's ears, nora put both arms around cap's neck and hugged him into silence. she was very much excited. ever since her arrival at the nest she had been planning a private masquerade, and now the time had come for her to indulge in it. fanciful dream child that she was, the character of little lord fauntleroy had always strongly appealed to her, and as for most girls the boy's costume had a peculiar charm for her heroic ventures into the world of make-believe. "we'll take them down stairs," she told cap. "we can dress much more comfortably in my room." poking her head out to make sure vita was not around, she tucked the velvets and laces into her arms and hurried to the next floor. seldom had she locked the hall door, but she did so now, dismissing cap peremptorily, for there was no need of his protection on the second floor. "i suppose it's too big," she reasoned, when the little knickers were pulled up as high as the button and button hole line. yes, it was big, this costume had been worn by a gay lady at a big country club dance, and little nora was scarcely a sample of the personality for which the jaunty outfit had been created. but mere size did not worry her. it was effect that she craved. the lacy blouse fell into place quite naturally, and it did look boyish, while the overblouse of black velvet completed the fauntleroy picture. "if the buckles would only stay buckled," she sighed, trying for the third time to fasten the knee straps and keep them that way. it was not pretty at all to have them slink down below her knees, like an untidy schoolboy; and a pin had no possible effect on the heavy, velvety finish. "i know," breathed nora, "i'll roll them." and she did that skillfully; for in the season just past many and many a sock had she rolled and they had stayed, although barbara never could acquire the same knack. it was all finally finished, and she inspected herself in the mirror, slanted to the very last angle to show the full length. a pat of the cap, a brash of the tie and a swish of the flying scarf gave the finishing touches. really nora made "a perfectly stunning" little lord fauntleroy. had she been more accustomed to the sayings of the day she might well have exclaimed, "all dressed up and no place to go," but her culture admitted of no such expressive parlance. instead, she asked herself in the looking glass: "wonder if i dare go outside? it is so comfortable to wear this style"; and she skipped around as every other girl on earth has ever done the very moment she felt relieved of the trammel of skirts. the morning was unusually quiet. vita must be away picking greens, the surveyors were miles out, and there was no one but cap to criticise. why shouldn't she stroll out grandly in her princely costume? she did. the birds twittered and the rabbits scurried and the pet squirrel stood up and begged. but nora was not feeding the animals this morning, instead, she flounced her lace sleeve in a most courtly gesture and passed on to the cedar tree grove. cedars seemed more appropriate for velvets than did the other wild trees; besides, no underbrush grew in the cedar grove, and it was much safer for costly finery. on the rustic seat nora felt exactly as she had felt the day miss baily took her to sit for her picture, except that she crossed her legs comfortably now, whereas, then, she was not even allowed to cross her hands. presently the actress removed her (his) cap and poised it on the arm of the chair. did lord fauntleroy go out in his grounds alone? perhaps she should have called cap to go along. then came thoughts of nannie. why must she, little nora, always be so far away from that pretty mother? and why did the picture life--the make-believe--charm her like some secret failing? did other girls really like the horrid brown uniforms never pictured in books, that is, never, until very lately? so raced her unruly thoughts. everything was so still, but nora was not lonely--her own reflections kept her such noisy company that isolation had no terror for her. just outside the cedar grove a strip of road waited for traffic. few persons passed, but even woodlands must have roads, just as skies must have clouds. feeling more at home in her costume every moment, nora stepped proudly outside the grove into the clearance. a fat little hoptoad crossed the path, but otherwise the prince was lord of all he surveyed. the whole world was busy, evidently, and even a visiting prince attracted no attention in the wild woodlands. nora wanted to whistle. she felt a prince, with hands in pockets inspecting his domain, would surely whistle, but she had never made much of a success at the wind song--it was barbara who did all the whistling for both. still, she tried now, and the sound wasn't any worse than the cracked call of the blue-jay, except that it did not carry so far. what would barbara say to this game of characters? a companion would add to the possibilities of good times, nora secretly admitted, but what companion could she find in these wilds? just as a sense of loneliness came creeping over her she heard the leaves somewhere crackle. the next moment a girl appeared a few paces up the road, and called to her quickly: "oh, i say boy! have you seen the girl scouts----" the voice stopped as suddenly as it had started. the girl in uniform looked so surprised, nora was conscious of scrutiny, even at the distance between them. she turned her head instinctively and so evaded a direct look; but presently the girl called again: "i am looking for the girls who are going over to the ledge. did you happen to see them pass this way?" "no," faltered nora, in a voice not her own. "i just came along. i'm looking for a car----" "oh, i saw one. it drove down the turn----" "thanks," jerked out nora, taking the cue to escape, and waving her hand in lieu of further conversation. she dodged behind the heavy elderberry bush and almost gasped in fright. what would a girl scout think of her in such a costume? of course, she had no possible opportunity of seeing her face, and she surely could never recognize her again. making positive she could get back to the nest without again stepping out into the roadway, nora sped back as quickly as her feet could carry her. it was always these scouts; a sense of humiliation was now added to that of dislike. would they all talk about her? perhaps make fun of her or think her odd and foolish? too inexperienced to realize that the entire blame was her own, nora crept up to the flap-jack path that led directly to the cottage door. here she was stopped again, for vita sat out by the big stump, either counting or selecting something from her apron. so engrossed was she in her task she did not hear nora's footfall, and this gave the "prince" another chance to escape detection. she darted back into the arbor and waited. the only other way to enter the house was at front and she might meet almost anyone in that way. her game was losing its charm. she would have given much to be free of the finery and garbed again in her own simple clothes. it was rather mortifying to be considered queer, and that one saving grace, a sense of humor, was entirely lacking in the girl's make-up. otherwise she might have jumped down from a tree and frightened vita out of her wits, thus making a lark out of a difficulty. she waited impatiently. what could vita be doing that so held her attention? then the attic memories flashed back to nora's mind and she wondered. "cousin ted leaves too much to that maid," she was deciding. "i might be able to help by keeping a lookout." but for what? vita was surely trustworthy and even extremely kind to nora, the intruder. a burr pricked the knee that refused to hold fast to the buckled finery. it must have been rather a nuisance to dress like that. nora rolled the band tighter and lost her fancy hat in the effort. voices! girls' laughter. the scouts, of course, and coming back toward the cottage! without waiting to consider vita's opinion, nora sprang from her hiding place and darted up the path into the cottage. voices within as well as without! cousin ted was back from the woods and had company. how could nora reach her room without being seen? she crouched behind the kitchen cabinet, hoping the voices would leave the hall and enter the living room, but, evidently, there was a reason for delay, and the big seat was right at the foot of the stairway! now vita's flat slippers patted the stones and she was coming into the kitchen. disgusted with the entire affair, nora turned into the back stairway. she had never mounted those stairs, they were used only by the maid, but just now there seemed no other avenue of escape. she heard the shuffling feet of vita as she climbed the bare treads. they were narrow and dark, only a small window cut in an opening somewhere allowed enough light to penetrate to make sure the steps were those of stairs. a narrow landing marked the line where the second floor must be. then there was another turn, a sort of sharp twist in the queer ladder-like climb. nora was too far up now to hear vita's step in the kitchen. "but this must lead to the attic," she reasoned. "i may as well go on up as to go--down." cobwebs a-plenty here. she jerked back from their tangles, fearing spiders and other crawling things. "oh," she exclaimed. "i do wish i had not come this way. it's so--spooky!" at every step the darkness increased and the light dwindled. reaching a good-sized platform, nora stood, thankful to draw an easy breath. she could just about see that she had only one short flight of steps to go to reach a door. "i would never have believed this house was so high," she pondered. "i feel as if i came up from a cellar to a tower." then, resolutely, the pilgrim started on again. only a few steps and she found herself face to face with two doors. they were unpainted and each stood at angles from the landing. "which?" she asked instinctively; for, while she wanted to reach the attic, she was careful to remember which way she had come in this crooked, gloomy place. besides this, the attic was a mysterious part of that pretty house, nora realized. "it must be all right to go in here--all of the rooms are ours and cousin ted said they were all kept clean." with this caution she pushed open one of the unpainted doors and stepped inside. she gasped! the place was in almost total darkness! chapter vii cap to the rescue where was she? what could be so black? nora gasped--it was so stifling. fumbling in the strange place her hand found the door and as she pressed against it she heard it shut! "oh mercy!" she exclaimed aloud. "i'm shut in this awful place!" now her eyes could make out the rafters. it was the attic, but what part of it? the faintest gleam of light breaking in from above followed the rough beams. the frightened girl fell back breathing hard and feeling faint. to faint in the attic! surely that would be romantic! but she didn't want to faint all alone up there and maybe die and not be found for years, as she had read happened once to a bride who went up to look for her grandmother's quilt. she was so dizzy. she really must sit down. not even a hazy fear of rats roused her, for it was unbearably hot and stuffy. "o-o-o-h!" that was the end of nora for the time being. she succumbed to the first faint she had ever performed, and there was no one to see her, no one to rescue her, not one even to know where she was! such a little prince! velvets and ribbons brushed cobwebs and dust, as she slumped down, down----! of all her life's dreams what she dreamed when she breathed again seemed the strangest. but it was all broken up like pieces of stars mashed into flashes of dazzling light, and there was no more head nor tail to it. all she could think of was how tired she was, and she knew she just had to sleep. if spiders had any talent for observing, those in that cubby hole would have had a wonderful story to tell to the crawling things in roof and rafters, but even they did not so much as try, with a web, to arouse the half-conscious child, and one lacy net was so near nora's face her gasps of breath swayed and rocked the baby spider in its cradle. so there she was asleep now, and glad not to know! downstairs supper had been prepared and everyone was waiting for nora. who had seen her? where had she spent the afternoon? "vita," said jerry sharply, "you know you were not to let the child go off these grounds alone." "i no see her, never. she no come out from the house," protested the frightened vita. "well, we have got to search," decided ted, her bronzed face plainly showing alarm, and her brown eyes blinking with unnamed fears. "where has cap been?" again demanded jerry. "he should have been with her." "he went with the scouts; they asked for him, and of course, i let him go as usual. i did not know nora was going out, in fact, i thought she was going to write to her school mates," replied ted. "but don't let us waste time. i'll take the north way, vita you go by the ledge, and jerry, i suppose you will jump on a horse and scout every way." "yes, i'll take cap and send him on ahead." all the laugh was gone from jerry's voice now. how quickly the cloud of anxiety can darken the brightest home? more than an hour later all three searchers returned to the nest and admitted they could not find nora. "she couldn't be in the house, could she?" asked ted, disconsolately. "we looked hastily, but it was best to do all the outdoor looking first," replied jerry. "do you suppose she went to visit anyone? did she make friends with alma and wyn, our pet scouts?" "i wish she had. there's that about the scouts, they go in groups," answered ted, with feeling. "let us look over the house more carefully. but why should she hide?" a loud bark from cap answered that question. "here! cap knows where she is. let him find her," exclaimed jerry, joyfully. "it's at the kitchen door," added ted, hurrying in that direction. "quick, open the door, vita!" commanded jerry, while the dog barked wildly. vita put a trembling hand on the door that led to the back stairs and opened into the kitchen. no sooner had she done so than cap bounded past her, and the next moment the big dog and the forlorn little prince tumbled into the room. "nora!" exclaimed both jerry and ted. "it isn't! it can't be!" faltered the surprised maid. "this is boy----" "boy nothing!" almost shouted jerry, so glad to see nora in any guise that her strange costume interested him not at all. "the poor little darling," cried ted, gathering the black velvet form up into her arms. "what ever happened to you, dear?" nora brushed a dusty hand over her blinking eyes. "oh, i am so glad i am saved. i thought i would surely die." "up attic. why baby! no one could die in our attic. cap knew you were up there and if you had not tumbled down just when you did he would have gone through the wall to find you, wouldn't you, old fellow?" jerry asked fondly. the saint bernard was in his native element at the rescue work, and he licked nora's hand contentedly. ted had gathered the child up into her arms and vita was already busy getting a refreshing drink. jerry, manlike, just looked on, happy beyond words, for in the bad hour previous he was a prey to keen anxiety, and during the process made up his mind in the future to keep nora closer to the family circle at all times. nora had not yet come to the point of talking. her swoon and its consequent haziness left her in a daze, and with the mother-like arms about her, and the breath of cap reviving her, and cousin jerry's big soft eyes encouraging her, the relief from her fright was slowly creeping over her and it was so delicious she had no idea of dispelling it with mere words. "i know," said teddie softly, "you were playing parts, dressing up in the duds from the big chest." "did you go to sleep in the trunk?" ventured jerry, slyly. "no, i don't know just where i was--i was----" faltered nora, now beginning to feel a little foolish in her boy's outfit. "she went up wrong stairs and i guess, maybe, she got lost in the big open attic," vita volunteered, apparently anxious to forestall further questions. "no, it was not opened. it was shut tight--very tight," snapped nora. she resented vita's explanation. somehow she felt vita was to blame. "then you must have struck the spook closet," said jerry, his old happy tones ringing through the small kitchen. "say ted, let's get into the other room. can you walk, bobbs, or shall big cousin jerry carry you?" "oh, i can walk all right," replied nora, slipping to the floor from teddie's lap. "but i was so stiff and cramped and--i guess i must have fainted." "you must have been up there all the time we were hunting for you, and the attic is always hot," added ted. "i never thought of looking there." "but cap did. he knew where you were the moment he came in the house," said jerry proudly. "i tell you, cap is a regular life-saver. he will have to get another medal for this; even if he didn't drag you out of the spook cabinet, he did tumble in the kitchen with you." both jerry and ted were too considerate to show surprise at nora's appearance, but vita could not or did not attempt to hide her astonishment. "guess she thinks the fairies had you," said jerry softly, when vita stood in the doorway, her hands on her capable hips and her mouth wide open in a gasp of surprise. but nora had an uncertain feeling that vita, as sole tenant of the back stairway, should have made better arrangements than to have a door that would spring shut like that, right at the very top of the dark place. it was at this point a mistake was made. nora did not express herself and vita had no idea of explaining. mr. and mrs. jerry were supposed to know all about the nest, but did they! in the excitement of finding nora, the actual hiding place was not being considered. quickly as the little girl recovered her self-possession and took part in the conversation, everyone enjoyed a good hearty laugh, naturally led by jerry. "what special kind of prince were you, bobbs?" he asked jovially. "i did not know they hid in dark attics." "oh, yes they did," contradicted ted. "don't you remember the princes in the tower?" "i don't, but it doesn't matter. they must have been in a tower or you would not have included the fact in your college course," replied jerry, always ready to tease on that score. whenever ted found a new specimen in the woods, or questioned about a strange bird, he would invariably ascribe the matter to "her college course." nora was anxious to get out of the ill-fated costume. she wanted to run upstairs and change, now that her knees had stopped shaking, but ted insisted she take her supper just as she was, and readily made a merry time out of the near catastrophe. again nora missed the point--no sense of humor was a sad lack in so active a girl. cap regarded her with an eye almost twinkling. did he know the attic secret that she had been unable even to realize was a secret? "your clothes fit pretty well," said jerry, "but i think i like you best in your little girl blue dress. guess, after all, girls really shouldn't wear----" "now, there you go again, jerry manton," interrupted ted. "as if the costume had anything to do with nora getting lost." and all the while nora was thinking: "if they only knew." but she had never had any one to confide in, except barbara, and now she did not know exactly how to tell her story. besides, how silly it would be to say she had actually been out in the roadway in the fauntleroy clothes? and if they ever knew she had been seen and spoken to by a girl scout! the fear of humiliation crushed back any desire to tell the whole story and so it remained as it appeared, an incident of no more importance than a case of being lost in the attic. all the horrors of the black hole, all the terrors of her fright and faintness, besides what actually happened when she finally burst through that door and all but fell head-long down the dark stairs--this nora crushed back from her lips, and only dared to think of it as something she would write in her secret diary. perhaps she would tell barbara. it was too thrilling to remain a secret with no one but herself to ponder upon it. a refreshing bath, more beef tea and a bedtime story told by the affectionate cousin teddie one hour later, all but dispelled the trying memory. the story was one read from a favorite woodland series, in which children, birds and furry things found days of happiness in the carefree hours, far away from artificial restrictions of "do" and "don't." the girls mentioned in the story were not spoken of as scouts, but nora suspected they must have been very much like such in ideals. "you see," said teddie gently, when she had finished the interesting story, "girls who love nature find real joy in studying the woods and learning to love the woodland creatures. you have had no chance to know what such pleasure means, dear." "no," said nora faintly. and at that moment she decided to put on her new uniform the very next morning, and then go forth with cousin ted and cousin jerry in quest of the adventures promised. "i guess," she began timidly, "it is better, cousin teddie, for me to go along with you every day, if you don't mind." "why, i can't bear to leave you home, either with vita or to your own resources," declared ted. "but i didn't want to urge you. your experience today may be a good thing in the end--it may help to cure you of the artificiality you have been absorbing so deeply. i will have to write your mother a bit of advice. i do not believe her little daughter is getting the sort of education best for her. now, roll over and go to sleep." she pressed a fond kiss on the warm cheek. "and nora love, don't bother about dreaming," finished mrs. jerry manton, in a tone of voice not learned during her famous "college course." chapter viii the story alma did not tell under a canvas tent sheltered by a particularly broad chestnut tree and surrounded by a group of beautiful white birch, the girls of chickadee patrol, girl scouts, were listening, all attention, to the very wildest tale they had ever given ears to. alma was talking. "honestly girls," she insisted, "he was a real prince, dressed in black velvet and a beautiful jaunty cap----" "alma! alma!" shouted her companions in derision. "where did you see the fairies? just imagine in broad daylight in the woodlands----" teased one. "then, i shall not tell you anything more about it," desisted the abused one. "as if i wasn't surprised. why, i was so dumfounded i could not ask him if he saw you, and i was miles behind the crowd." "now girls, let alma tell," chirped doro, in her lispy voice. "go ahead, al. _i_ believe you saw prince charming." "was he old enough to ride a horse?" asked laddie, christened eulalia. she was defying her dentist on a piece of fudge two days old. "honestly, girls," began alma again, "i never saw a boy so beautiful. light curls----" "oh!!!" came a chorus that stopped the narrator and sent her pouting over to the bed couch, where she pouted still more. "then, all right, i am absolutely through," she declared quite as if she meant it. "now just see what you have done," mourned treble. she was so tall the girls always considered her in that clef. "don't you mind them, allie. i know perfectly well there are even flying cupids in the big woodlands, and i fully expect to bring a couple home to lunch----" cushions in one big bang stopped treble. at this rate alma's story would never be published, orally or otherwise. in the scout tent the evening was being spent in recreation: hence the fun they were having with alma. at a table fashioned from an upside-down packing case, with real hand carved legs where the boards were knocked out and the hatchet braces left standing, sat three of the chickadees, discussing the new girl scout stories. "i just love the first," insisted thistle whose name was as scotch as the emblem. "i liked the mill story and i just loved that wild, exciting time the girls had trying to win back--was it dagmar?" "oh, yes, i remember," chimed in betta. they were referring to the first volume, "the girl scout pioneers," but others of the group spoke up for their particular choice of the series, naming, "the girl scouts at bellaire" and "the girl scouts at sea crest." "you may have those," offered doro, "but i perfectly love this." she held up the last book published. it was entitled "the girl scouts at camp comalong." "why is that such a prize?" inquired pell. "oh, haven't you read it? well, it is a real story of the most interesting girl, peg of the hills." this brought about a general discussion of the entire series, and although the method being used is not usually employed to remind readers of the other books of a series, perhaps, since the girls were speaking for themselves, it will be accepted. alma was whispering her prince charming story into the ears of doro. doro was accredited the very best listener among the chicks and she had not the faintest idea of interrupting the story teller. of course, it was nora whom alma had encountered, and it was not difficult to understand why her companions should discredit the tale. a prince in the woodlands, indeed! "louder, alma," begged treble, catching only enough of the story to make her curious. "well, you won't believe me." "we will! we will! hear! hear!" shouted betta, whose full appellation was none other than betta-be-good, given because she had a habit of lecturing. "she did see a real prince," chimed in doro. "and he did wear buckles and laces and everything." "where, oh where, fair maid? lead me thither and hither and yon," moaned pell mell. "next to a movie star i love a prince best," she finished dramatically, although it was common knowledge that pell loved nothing so well as rushing about and falling over adventures. she actually fell over the ridge, that is as far down as the big flat rock, before her chums decided she was hereafter to be known as pell mell. "that is all there is to tell," announced alma, in a tone tinctured with finality. she knew perfectly well the girls would never rest until they had sought out the darling prince, and she also knew it would be lots of fun to make them "sit up and beg" for the details they had been scoffing at. "where, alma?" "near the bend, alma?" "wasn't it over by the nest, al?" "she said she saw him over by the ledge." all this and much more was thrown out as bait, but in the parlance of the tribe, alma did not "bite," she merely picked up a discarded book and proceeded to read. "well, there was a prince, i'm sure of that," persisted pell, determined to make alma repeat her story. "let's go prince hunting tomorrow," suggested betta. "with treble's moth scoop?" joked wyn. "i suppose none of you happen to know that mrs. jerry manton has a visitor," spoke doro. she gave the statement a tone implying: "why wouldn't the prince be the visitor?" "oh, that's so," drawled thistle. "maybe it's the duke." this brought out a new shout of nonsense. "duke!" roared betta. "keep on and we'll have him on the throne." "there are no more thrones," informed pell. "don't you know the war made every thing democratic?" this turned the joke into a serious moment, for even the rollicking scouts did not feel inclined to enlarge upon so serious a thought. presently everyone was speculating upon the possibility of the little stranger being the one entertained by the mantons. "couldn't we call?" suggested wyn. "mrs. manton is always lovely to us, and if she has such a little cherub on her hands we ought to help her care for him." "cherub, wynnie! why, we would have to get a cage for anything like that in this camp. he would be eaten by bugs, moths and beetles." a dash at a flying thing confirmed this opinion from treble. "now, if you all have finished your skylarking i would like to study," announced alma. "i have to learn all that new class lesson, and i hope to get out of the tenderfoot tribe before next week. no fun swimming in a barrel." she referred to the water restrictions of "tenderfoots." "hush girls! alma is thinking," joked pell. "please don't interrupt the spell----" poor alma could stand the teasing no longer. she picked up her manual and headed for the tent occupied by those very studious scouts who chose the company of the leader to that of the distracting girls. "chickadees never scratch," fired betta as alma stepped over protruding feet and reached the tent flap. "now chick-a-dee, peep! peep! pretty for the ladies----" but the girl with the manual was gone. "what do you make of it?" asked pell, when the titters subsided. "she saw something different, that's sure," replied treble. "she told me all about it," put in thistle proudly. "and it was really a wonderful child all done up in black velvets and ribbons," she declared. "i see nothing to do but ask mrs. manton about it," suggested wyn. "it looks like a first class lot of fun." "ask her if she is entertaining a boy in velvet pants?" said treble, so foolishly, the girls all but rolled under the table and the oil lamp shook dangerously in the merriment. "when they're velvet they're never pants," spoke wyn, as soon as speaking amounted to anything. "trousers," amended treble. "nor those," objected pell. "when they have cute little buckles and go with a jaunty cap----" "they're knickers," finished betta. "not a--tall," shouted treble. "i know better than that myself. you're thinking of golf. didn't i see lord fauntleroy play his dearest?" "did you really? well, what did _he_ call call them?" demanded thistle. she had been so busy enjoying the fun that this was her first attempt at making any. "i have it," sang out laddie. "they're bloomers." "oh no, rompers," insisted thistle. "rompers are much prettier." "what ever would you girls have done this evening if alma's little story did not furnish you with debate material," scoffed doro. "the story alma never told," chanted lad. "all the same," declared treble, "it is perfectly delicious. who's going to make the call on mrs. jerry manton?" the shout that followed this question brought a protest from the next tent where candidates were studying manuals. "let's take a vote on it," suggested thistle, when quiet seemed possible. "since every one wants to go and we haven't heard the mantons were going to give a picnic or anything like that--why--the best thing to do is to draw lots." "how tragic! draw lots! i say we make it numbers from doro's cap. here girls, get busy and numb." a page of note paper was quickly numbered and torn into squares. then the lot was tossed into doro's cap--it was the deepest for the little girl did not wear her hair bobbed. when the cap was filled she was the one chosen to hold it, and upon the highest chair she presently stood while the girls jumped for numbers. the four highest were to constitute the committee and the lot fell to betta, pell, wyn and thistle. it was arranged that these four should go in the morning to call upon mrs. jerry manton, their good friend and erstwhile preceptor in woodlore, and it was fully expected that the young visitor would then naturally be introduced. and this was the very day that nora donned her new service suit. chapter ix a misadventure the idea of meeting a prince (the girls easily believed the pretty boy in the velvet suit was at least a near-prince) brought to the chickadees a delicious thrill. "you know," reasoned thistle next morning, "the manton's are government people, and there are lots of foreign nobles down at washington." "that's so," agreed doro. "he might have come up to the woods for his health." the tent was quickly made ready for inspection and when the woodcraft class was dismissed, the girls were free to make the all-important call. it was but a short distance from camp chickadee to the nest, and the four girls, constituting the committee, covered the ground speedily. vita answered the knock and told pell, who was spokeswoman, that: "mrs. manton no come back yet." nora not only heard the voices but she had seen the girls coming, and feeling that she, as a member of the family, should "do the honors," she summoned courage to greet the callers. "cousin teddie will not be back before lunch time," said nora sweetly. "won't you come in and wait?" "oh, no, thank you," faltered thistle, observing one truant curl that had escaped the confines of nora's field hat. "we may come over later in the afternoon--after drill," finished the scout. pell was more composed. "are you visiting rocky ledge?" she asked cordially. "oh, yes. i expect to stay quite a while," replied nora. she liked the roguish smile pell bestowed upon her--it was, somehow, a little like barbara. "then perhaps you would like to visit camp," pressed thistle. "we love callers, don't we, girls?" this provided an opportunity for general conversation, and presently, no one knew just how it happened, but the scouts and nora the rebel, were having a perfectly splendid time on the side porch, talking about the things girls love to discuss, but which always appear to the onlooker or listener as a series of giggles and gasps. nora was so glad she wore the khaki suit. all her old love of finery was, for the time, lost in the joy of feeling "in place" instead of "out of place." and the girls at close range did look very well in their uniforms. betta and thistle especially were just like models--nora remembered that wonderful girl scout poster, and her former dislike for the uniform now threatened to turn to keen admiration. just so long as anything "made a picture" the artistic little soul was sure to be satisfied. changing an opinion was as simple a task for nora as changing a hair ribbon, but it had been rather unpleasant to have the scouts always held up as paragons. admitting she had not yet visited the ledge, nora was straightway invited to do so, as the four scouts expected to meet the other troup members out gathering sweet fern there. "vita," she called back to the maid in the kitchen, "you keep cap home, i'll be back in a little while." "oh, no," objected vita. "mr. jerry, he say you don't go never without cap----" "but i am with the girls now," declared nora a little sharply. she was so afraid the others might guess that it was she who wore the velvets! looking very closely at each, however, she had not recognized the one who accosted her on the fatal dress-parade day. alma was not in the party this time, so of course, nora was correct in her opinion. "doesn't mr. manton like to have you go out alone?" asked thistle, innocently. "well, you see," stumbled nora, "i am not very well acquainted yet." "was there a little boy visiting the mantons the other day?" ventured betta. she was almost consumed with curiosity, and as they turned their backs on the cottage the chance for unravelling the prince mystery seemed lost to them. "a boy? no," replied nora. "i am the only one who has been here." a flame of color swept her face and although she stooped to pick up an acorn at the moment, at least two of the scouts noticed the flush. "light curls," whispered wyn. "she has very pretty ringlets----" "lots of girls have, of course," scoffed betta. "you surely don't think she's twins?" "no," faltered the other, never dreaming how much closer than twins nora was to the little prince. but wyn was not easily satisfied. what was the sense of being appointed a committee to investigate and not do it? she picked a wonderful spray of pink clover before she asked nora again: "do you ever see a little boy, a very fancy dressed boy, around the cottage? one of our girls dreamed she saw one and we have been trying to persuade her she had a vision." a sigh of relief escaped nora's lips. it should be easy to laugh the story over, since only one girl had seen her and that one had but a glimpse of her. she felt she would die of embarrassment now, if ever she were really found out. and only a few days ago it had seemed so trifling a thing! as she was about to reply to wyn her hat fell off and down tumbled the curls. "what wonderful curls," exclaimed wyn innocently. "why do you hide them under a hat?" "oh, i don't," replied nora bravely, shaking out the golden cloud that tossed about her ears. "but when we go into brambles it is more comfortable to have one's head tidy," she finished. "say, wyn," charged thistle, "do you suppose nora has no other interest than in your visionary prince and yellow curls? please allow her to listen to some of my woodland lore." "oh, yes," mocked betta. "tell her all about your little fish in the brook that wouldn't go near treble's hook." a scamper brookward responded to this sally. "oh, there's jimmie," cried thistle. "hey jimsby!" she hailed to a small boy in a big boat. "wait for us. we are going up to the ledge. give us a row?" everyone, including nora, ran towards the edge of the stream that rippled through willows. jimmie with his boat was rare good fortune to come upon, and the scouts were instantly eager to procure seats in the big, old skiff. nora's timidity forced her to hold back, but she was too self-conscious to admit it. "come on, little nora," called out thistle good naturedly. "i have a place for you right alongside of me." "oh yes. thistles never sink, you know," added wyn. nora's heart heat fast. could she say she would so much rather walk to the ledge? "hurry up, sister," sang out betta. "thistle wants to get out of rowing and you are her excuse." taking her fright literally in her hand and casting it into the brook, nora stepped into jimmie's boat, smiling as if she were expecting the best good time of her life. a thought of her nervous mother barely had time to shape itself before all were seated, and the freckled faced jimmie handed over the oars, without so much as uttering either a protest or agreeing to the piracy. "don't you love a little lake like this?" asked betta, noticing how silent was her companion. "i have never been on the water," said nora truthfully. "at our school we are not allowed to take part in any dangerous sports." "oh," exclaimed thistle. "how you must miss good times." "but we have many lovely parties and dances and all that sort of thing," explained nora. her voice was entirely friendly and the difference of opinions by no means clashed. it was delightful. the girls sang, whistled, shouted and coo-heed, as occasion demanded, the occasion being that of answering bird calls from shore. imitating birds was counted as the latest outdoor sport, and the chickadees vied with one another in the accomplishment. "she's leakin'," said jimmie without warning or apology. "i should say she is!" cried wyn, jerking her feet up from the bottom of the boat. "jimmie jimbsy! why didn't you say so?" "oh, you didn't give me a chance," replied the lad frankly. "oh, is it dangerous?" gasped nora. her cheeks went pale instantly. "no, just gives us a chance to show who is the best swimmer. you can swim, of course?" asked wyn. "no, not a stroke," replied the frightened nora. "don't you mind wynnie, nora," spoke up betta. "there's no possibility of any one having to swim. this boat would sail the rapids, wouldn't she, jimmie?" "here's another hat," offered thistle. "say, jim! at least you ought to bring a tin can," she said in her jolliest tone. they were actually bailing out. the water managed to make cold little puddles in the bottom of the boat, and with the "large party aboard" as pell charged wyn because she happened to weigh a few more pounds than the others, the inflow threatened to bear the little craft down to the water's edge, uncomfortably close. but the girls were making a lark of it. every time a hat emptied a shout went up, and every time a hat leaked a groan moaned out. "all in a life time," boomed thistle. "but don't any one dare tell that story about the philosopher and the boatman." "never heard it," responded betta, lifting a particularly well filled hat to the boat's edge. jimmie was now rowing. "assisting him in that capacity," as pell expressed it, was wyn. "we gotta reach the ledge," joked thistle, "and i for one hate walking on the water." "we betta----" "betta-be-good," went up the shout as betta attempted to preach. she never got farther than that first mispronounced two syllables nowadays. nora was now regarding the situation with more calmness. after the first fright it did not seem so dangerous, and the skill with which the jolly scouts handled the task of bailing, was fascinating. but suddenly something happened; no one shouted, no one even spoke, but in a twinkling the entire boatload of girls were scrambling in the water. chapter x a novel initiation "quick girls! get nora!" this was the order given by pell, who in emergencies assumed leadership. "here nora," called betta, "just put your hand on my shoulder. we can almost walk in. don't be frightened." but nora was terribly frightened. that water! and not being able to swim a stroke! "look!" called out thistle, who was now standing in the more shallow water, "it is only up to my shoulders. just bring nora out here and she can wade in," announced the scotch girl. the sight of thistle actually standing on her feet brought to nora the first free breath she had breathed since that awful thing happened. now she had courage to stop choking and do as she had been told. "why, you swam that time," puffed betta to whom nora had struggled. did she really swim? she felt herself buoyed up for a moment somehow, in fact she had never gone down. before that supporting move had lost its endurance her hand was safely on betta's shoulder, and both were moving slowly but securely towards the bank. "that's it," pell encouraged. "no need for any trouble if you just keep--cool!" "cool enough," grumbled thistle. "i hate lakes for that," she continued to call out. "how's that!" asked betta when she reached the shallow water from which point all were wading in. "wonderful!" exclaimed nora. her relief was so great it seemed to her pure joy. "your first?" asked wyn. "first?" repeated nora. "first ducking," added wyn. "if so it is your official initiation. you are now a full fledged member of the chickadees." it was easy for nora to laugh--she felt she would never do anything but laugh, it was so good to be safe within reach of shore once again. thistle and wyn threw their wet heads back and emitted a "coo-hee." the call was taken up by the others, and instead of the incident being of an alarming nature it was thus turned into a lark. "coo-hee! coo-hee!" sounded along the little lake basin, while shouts of laughter and expressions of opinion about bobbed heads after an unexpected ducking, were snapped from scout to scout as the party waded in. so near the edge they were loath to emerge. no possibility of getting any wetter or spoiling anything more generally, but there was a possibility of more fun. "where's that jimbsy boy?" demanded pell. "we didn't leave him to the sharks, did we?" "look," replied thistle, pointing to a little slash in the lake's outline. it was a pocket full of water just about big enough to float the upturned boat that jimmie was pushing in through it. "poor boy! and we never asked him what he was out after," reflected betta. "maybe he had an order to bring a boat load of passengers from the ledge." "we'll take up a collection for him," proposed pell. "what'll we collect?" asked wyn. "opinions," replied the first. "they're most plentiful." nora was out of water and shaking herself like a poodle. now that it was all over, the thrill was unmistakable. "look who's coming!" called out one of the girls, and turning around nora glimpsed ted coming down the narrow path. "quick, nora, hide!" exclaimed wyn. "then spring out and surprise her." obeying, nora jumped behind a big bush. even in the excitement she realized what companionship meant. it was so much more fun than playing at foolish dressing up and imagination games. could she have but understood more clearly she would have recognized in that situation the theory of having girls "do" to learn, and that active sport of the young is one of the standards of scout teaching. she listened as the girls greeted mrs. manton. no gasps of alarm nor expressions of fear were exchanged, for cousin ted was of the scout calibre herself. "better hang on the hickory limbs and dry, before your leader sees you," she cautioned. "those uniforms won't be fit for parade." "and mine was all beautifully pressed," whimpered pell. "so were all our suits, mrs. manton," asserted thistle, "because we were calling on you first." "really! did you see my little girl?" "oh, yes," drawled betta. "i so want her to grow into scouting," continued mrs. manton, and at that nora felt she could make her presence known. but a quick snap of a stick from betta, as she swished it back of nora's bush, kept her from stepping out. "does she like the water?" asked wyn, with a suppressed giggle. "i am afraid she has had little chance to get acquainted with it," replied ted. "nora has been developed at one angle. this sort of experience would probably give her nervous prostration." that was the cue. nora jumped out! "child!" "the very same!" pronounced thistle grandly, waving a dripping arm. mrs. manton was too surprised to do more than look at nora. her brown eyes were twinkling and her mouth twitching in a broad grin. presently she jumped past betta and threw her arms around nora. "you darling baby!" she exclaimed, all unmindful of the water she was blotting up from nora's new suit. "how ever did you--come here and get--like--this?" "chick-chick-chick-chickadees!" sang out a chorus. "cluck! cluck! cluck!" if one could look pretty after a ducking in a strange lake, nora did. her curls liked nothing better, and her cheeks pinked up prettily, while her eyes--they were as blue as the violets that listened in the underbrush. "you don't mind her initiation, do you, mrs. manton?" asked wyn. "why no. in fact, i'm delighted," replied the young woman. "but why the secret? i have been left out in the cold," she said, genially. "only candidates are informed," said wyn, keeping up the joke. "was that really it? was this a private initiation, and am i intruding?" "all over," sang out betta. "the bars are down and the guests welcome." "betta be goin' up the hill a bit," suggested thistle. "this is no place for dripping chicks." "the sun _would_ be helpful," agreed pell. "i don't mind the water when it's fresh, but i hate to get mildewed." "hey!" came a call from somewhere. "wanta get in again?" "we certainly do not," yelled back wyn. "jimbsy james, you're a fraud. what ails your yacht, anyway?" "all right, then," called back jimmie good naturedly. "i'll be goin'. so long!" "so long yourself," called back wyn, "and send your bill to headquarters." "were you--in his boat?" asked ted, a light beginning to break through the girls' perpetual nonsense. "we were, momentarily," replied betta. "but we needed exercise so we decided to walk," she finished. nora saw how friendly the girls all were with ted, and felt a pang, not of jealousy, but of regret. why had she never known such companionship? "i must go back to my trees," said mrs. manton, when the girls had found a clear path of sunshine. "i have some important marking to do. nora, you follow directions and you need not fear earth, sky or water. these little scouts are impervious to all catastrophes." and nora had almost expected to be sent home for a rub down, a hot drink and all the other coddling! "oh, i'm all right," she hurried to reply. "i'll be home----" "when the ceremonies are over," interrupted thistle. "we are due at the ledge long ago, and if we don't soon make it i am afraid we will all be kept in tonight." "in those wet things?" protested wyn. "not for me. i'm going back to camp and change. come along nora. we have an extra outfit in our box and we'll lend it to you. thistle is a regular fish, she is never happy when dry skinned." mrs. manton had disappeared in the winding path and nora was secretly glad of wyn's invitation. she could not as yet actually enjoy wet clothes. the girls had managed to save their hats and caps, but even these still dripped and could not be comfortably worn to keep off the strong sun's rays that beat down in the clear spots along the lake's edge. "we'll have some trouble explaining to the general," remarked thistle as they started back to camp. "and this was the day we were to finish our collection." "but look, what we did collect," answered wyn under her breath, referring to nora. "did you ever see anyone so pleased as our friend?" "she looked happy," assented thistle. "but say, scoutie; whatever are we going to tell the girls about the prince?" "let's say we drowned him," suggested wyn, foolishly. "that will give alma a lovely murder mystery to work upon." nora overheard the word "prince" and surmised correctly it was meant for her fauntleroy. she longed to turn back to the nest rather than meet the other girl who might recognize her. "it's so near lunch time----" she began. "oh, no girlie," protested betta. "you are the only specimen we have collected today, and if you don't come back with us we will all get dreadful marks. come along. be a sport and help us out." "yes, we will be considered life savers, perhaps," added thistle. "of course, we won't say we did anything noble----" "nor say we didn't," drawled wyn. thus urged, nora had no choice, so she set off with her new companions towards chickadee camp. chapter xi too much teasing swept off her foolish feet of fancy and landed safely on the more practical ground of girls' life, nora presently found herself in the canvas tent, actually donning a scout uniform. no ivory dressing comb nor shell-back mirror, instead a wooden box for a dressing table, and a bowl of cool, clear water fresh from the velvet-rimmed pool, and a glass--the piece that fell from a wagon and was splintered up so no one would touch its "bad luck," so pell rescued it and painted a four-leaf clover on its jagged edge! that was a scout mirror. it was a revelation to the pampered child. and like so many others who are blamed for their circumstances, nora was fascinated with the glimpse given of a real world. here girls lived as human beings privileged to invent their own tools which would be used in modelling the skilled game of a happy life. "of course," explained pell, "we go through quite some formality before we really become scouts, but necessity knows no law, and this is necessity." "it's just wonderful," admitted the stranger, all the while fighting down a sense of guilt that she should ever have disliked the scouts and their standards. "now we want you to meet alma," announced wyn. "she's one of our little tenderfoots, and so romantic? she will be sure to want to adopt you, for just wait until you see if betta doesn't say we found you in the lake!" she predicted. alma came from the leader's tent. she had been studying--those tests were soon to be held. "just see our little pond-lily," began thistle, while nora, now somewhat accustomed to the girls' jokes, managed not to blush too furiously. "oh!" began alma, then she stopped. nora felt in that moment she was discovered and that the prince would soon cease to be a mystery. "well, alma, this is nora--nora----" "blair," added nora, realizing her full name had not been given the girls before. "oh, how do you do?" faltered alma. "i thought at first i had met you before." "no. nora is the visitor at the mantons," explained wyn, "and we all had a ducking--we initiated nora and had a lovely time. you missed it, al." "sorry," said alma, still eyeing nora. "but we spoiled our uniforms," rattled on wyn. "that wretch, jimmie freckles, dumped us right out into the lake." "and i was brought back to your camp to be redressed," nora managed to say. she felt if she did not say something the girl with the lovely, glossy, brown hair, who was staring at her, would penetrate her secret. "alma has visions," went on wyn. "she saw a real prince in your woods one day; didn't you, alma?" "i saw a little boy in a velvet suit----" "and he had curls." "and he had dimples." "and he had lovely gold buckles on his slippers." "and he had----" but alma turned on her heel and left the girls to finish their description without her aid. nora was greatly relieved when she left. "honestly," explained thistle, "alma insists she did see a little boy in your woods. did you ever come across such a child?" "never," replied nora, then, "i really must hurry home, i am afraid i am late for lunch now." "won't you stay? we are to have----" "thank you, pell, but cousin ted and cousin jerry will be so anxious to hear all the news----" "but you must keep secrets--make secrets if you haven't any to keep," advised betta, who had taken a fancy to nora. in fact all the girls showed unusual interest in the little visitor. "oh, i know how to do that," nora replied truthfully. then, with many invitations and a number of suggestions as to spending some days and even a few evenings, nora finally managed to race off toward the nest, after betta walked with her out of the camp grounds and watched while she hurried down the road. it was a very short distance to wildwoods, and before betta turned back to camp chickadee she had seen faithful cap run out to meet nora. "now, are you satisfied, alma?" asked wyn. "you would insist the visitor was a boy." "it may be her brother," replied the brown-haired one, "but honestly, girls, and no joking, he had curls just like hers," said alma. "but isn't she sweet?" asked wyn. "princes aside, i like her most as well as alma's vision," declared thistle. "and did you notice how matter-of-fact she donned bluebird's outfit? what are we going to say to her if she happens back tonight?" "gone to the tailor's to be pressed," suggested pell, glibly. "there come the others. now for a lecture." but instead, miss beckwith, the leader, came up smiling. "we heard all about it, girls," she began. "met that precious james jimmie jimsby of yours, and he said it was in no way your fault." "bless the boy!" murmured pell. "we shall certainly have to adopt the list of jays. first we capsize his boat and then he pleads for us. now isn't that gallant?" "but becky," began thistle, sidling up to the popular leader, "we have had such a wonderful experience. we have converted a real rebel." "rebel!" exclaimed wyn. "how do you know nora was anything like that?" "well, mrs. ted manton said as much, didn't she?" "she didn't," replied pell crisply. "she merely said that nora had very little experience in girls' sports." "i know," interrupted the leader. "mrs. manton has mentioned her to me, and i am very glad you have succeeded in interesting her. i fancy she is a very capable child, with too much time on her hands." "oh," sighed betta. "if we had only known it we could have borrowed some. what ever shall we do to get in a day's work now?" "lunch first and then do double quick duty," suggested the young leader. "it has been rather a lost day, counting by the usual results, but then, we have to figure in the new friend." "you're a love, becky," declared treble. "i am sure you are going to help me with my basket. it has to be done tomorrow, if i am to get full credit for it." "where's alma?" asked miss beckwith, suddenly. "pouting," replied wyn. "you are not to know it, of course, but alma's in love!" a shout corroborated the statement. "she may be hanging up wet clothes," suggested pell. "when they're in love they do foolish things like that, i've heard tell." "girls! didn't you hang up your wet things yet?" miss beckwith asked in real surprise. a rush to the back of the tent, where the garments had been hastily heaped, gave response. presently there was a contest being held to see who could hang up the most material in the smallest space and with the fewest clothes pins; at least that appeared to be the attempt the happy four were making; but when the lunch bell sounded, each and all were ready for the fresh corn, new potatoes, string beans and macaroni--a menu especially designed for culprits who fall in lakes and forget to hang up their uniforms to dry. everyone talked of the little stranger, and also everyone praised her beauty. she was so cute, so sweet, so adorable, and pell even went so far as to whisper to thistle that she was "peachy," although all slang was taboo at the table. "and alma," confided wyn, "we were so sorry not to be able to locate your prince----" "girls," alma exclaimed. "if you say prince to me again i'll scream." "you did this time," said betta, "and we don't mind it at all. you scream really prettily." "hush," spoke doro. she was down at the far end of the table and had not been with the girls on their eventful trip. "i think we have teased enough, really. let the poor little prince rest." "good idea," chimed another who also had missed the expedition. "we have a new plan to propose, and with all that prince stuff we can't get your attention. becky is going to take us to the glen tomorrow morning, and we want volunteers to make up the lunch baskets." "call that a new plan?" mocked wyn. "why, that's as old as the scouts. first thing i ever did was to volunteer to make up a basket for my big sister, and she picked it up and walked off with it." "didn't even thank you?" asked miss beckwith, who always took part in the girls' fun. "well, she may have," replied wyn, "but that didn't impress me. it was those sandwiches and those cakes----" "you didn't make those, wynnie?" demanded treble. "if you did we won't ask for volunteers. we'll wish the job on you." alma was quiet during all the merry chatting, but thistle, who could not resist one more thrust, said next: "thinking of him, dearie?" she asked. "and his little velvet coat----" but the joke had a most astonishing effect. alma sniffed, breathed in quick little gasps, and the next moment asked to be excused from the table. "she's crying!" declared betta. "horrid girls!" murmured doro. "i told you she had had enough of princes." "but to cry! alma isn't like that," said wyn in real surprise. miss beckwith, who had reached the end of her lunch and was waiting for the others to finish, slipped away after alma. this left the girls to wonder, and they did that in all the ways known to girlhood. then it was definitely decided the first girl who mentioned the word prince should be made to pay a heavy fine. all felt truly sorry for little alma, but it was the wise and understanding janet beckwith who gathered the sobbing girl into her arms and soothed the sighs, tears, and protestations. "just teasing, dear," she insisted. "you must not mind their nonsense. they, every one, love you dearly." "but i did see a real prince, becky. and--and they won't believe me," sobbed out alma. miss beckwith wondered. "a real prince?" she repeated. "yes. i was near enough to see all his pretty--things," alma paused in her sobbing to relate. "he had all velvet clothes, and such a pretty black cap. oh becky!" she sobbed afresh, "can you ever imagine what it is to have the--girls--all making fun of you?" "now, alma dear," again soothed the leader, "i am really surprised that you should take this so seriously. you know the girls are not making fun of you----" "they--said i had--a vision," she sobbed as heavily as ever. "and i am determined to find out who that was--and prove it to them." miss beckwith was sorely puzzled. naturally she supposed the girl was romancing. but why should she take it so seriously? "come, now, dear," she urged. "we have talked it all out and the only thing that worries you is that the girls do not believe you, isn't it? "yes, that's the worst of it." "then, let's sleep over it and see what the morrow will bring in the way--of light." becky scarcely knew just what to propose so she threw the responsibility on the "morrow." alma was over her "spell" presently. but the prince had, by no means, lost his real personal identity to the sensitive little scout. chapter xii a diversion nobly earned ted's pleasure, shown when nora's transformation was revealed to her in a dripping little "pond lily" on the edge of mirror lake, was not to be compared with jerry's joys when he first beheld his bobbs in the girl scout uniform. they were waiting for nora when she returned at lunch time. "pretty kipper, nifty, all right and no kiddin'." these were some of the exclamations he gave vent to. "but i thought you didn't like little girls in anything but skirts," ted reminded him. "i didn't but i do," he replied jerry-like. "now what do you say bobbie, to a try at horse back ridin'?" he always dropped his g's when perfectly happy. "i'd like to try it," admitted nora proudly. she might not have realized it but the trim little service costume had already emancipated her. she was no longer the creature of catalogued toilet accessories, "send no money" and "we guarantee money's worth or money back," etc. the new nora was like a butterfly leaving its cocoon--although the drying process had been facilitated by the loan of a new blouse and bloomers from the chickadees' wardrobe. vita came out to announce lunch and she stood dumbfounded. vita was not americanized to the point of diplomacy. "you lose your good clothes? those t'ings not yours?" she asked blandly. "i have one like this," replied nora. she did know how to respond to interference, and had not yet quite forgiven vita for the attic episode. "don't you like it, vita?" asked jerry, his brown eyes twinkling. "we were thinking of getting you one like it--for your tramps through the woods, you know." the italian woman scowled. she lacked a sense of humor as well as some other details of americanization. "don't tease her, jerry," ted ordered. "he is only fooling, vita," she assured the perplexed maid, while visions of the fat woman in a jaunty little scout uniform filtered through the brains of both ted and nora. during lunch time conversation ran to the important occurrence of the morning, but ted did not know all about the ducking in the lake, and since betta had cautioned nora to keep secrets and if necessary to make them, it seemed unwise to tell every single detail: thus nora reasoned. so it happened neither ted nor jerry knew whether the first swim was intentional or accidental, and both respected the "secrets of the order," as jerry put it. "the girls are coming over this afternoon with a manual," the candidate said as tea was finished, "and then i'll have to do some studying." "i see where cap and i will have to paddle our own canoe hereafter," lamented jerry. "that's just the way with you girls. i get you all broke in and you race off and join up with the indians. well," he sighed deeply, "i suppose ted and i and cap will have to go on our picnics alone, in spite of all our plans." "oh, cousin jerry! did you have a picnic planned!" eagerly asked nora, leaving her place at the table to join jerry on the big couch. "i did but i haven't," he replied, with pretended disappointment. "what good are picnics for girl scouts? they want big game with real guns and elephant meat for supper," he finished pompously. "oh, cousin jerry!" pouted nora. "if you really had a picnic planned couldn't we have it, and couldn't i invite my scout friends?" "'course you could, kitten," jerry gave in. "i'll fix up the finest little picnic those scouts ever heard tell of. just you wait and see." "but we are going to celebrate privately this evening, nora," ted added. "how would you like to go to a picture play?" "oh, i'd love it, of course. i do so love motion pictures, and the misses baily are so fussy about letting any of us go." "i'll bet," agreed jerry. "want you to see mother goose and little jack horner----" "both of which are each," interrupted ted. "guess you had better read up your nursery rhymes, jerry." "well, i didn't take your college course, theodora, but i went to sunday school a lot--had to," he admitted, shamelessly. "then, it's all settled for this evening," continued ted, quite as if there had been no break in the conversation. "we will ride into lenox and see the 'movies.' i know it's a good picture this week and it isn't mother goose either." "glad of that. i hate the old lady myself," scoffed jerry. "this afternoon i must go out to moorlands, ted," he said next, seriously. "suppose you and nora take the day off and loaf? you did a lot of hard work this morning----" "but i want to finish pegging off the west end," ted interrupted. "oh, could i help you, cousin ted?" begged nora. "i would just love to do some real surveying." "and i would love to have you, certainly. we will rest for one full hour, then i'll let you carry the chains and drops, and off we go to the west end. how's that?" "lovely. will cap come?" "sartin sure," declared jerry. "i never let the youngsters go out on location without the big dog, do i cap?" cap brushed his plumy tail against jerry's elbow and made eyes at his master, agreeing with everything he said, as usual. later, when the hour's rest had been taken, nora and cousin ted made their way to the grounds that were to be surveyed. nora carried the "chain" which she wanted to call a tape line until ted explained that carpenters had tape lines and surveyors used "chains," and the term really meant an exact land measurement. the heavy instruments were already in position, and when the work of measuring the land with her eye, as nora declared the process to be, was actually begun, the apprentice was quite fascinated. "now, show me the cobweb," she insisted as ted adjusted the delicate eye piece. "there. do you see that mark outside the little drop of alcohol?" asked ted. "the very small line like that on miss baily's thermometer?" "yes, the line that frames the drop," explained ted, "that's the finest substance we can get, and it's cobweb." nora peered through the telescope. she was seeing a drop of alcohol shift from level to level as ted moved the transit, but she was thinking of the night she discovered the cobwebs in the attic. somehow attic fancies clung to her, tenaciously, and had she been at all superstitious she surely would have called the attic unlucky. just see the trouble that fauntleroy acting got her into. "it wouldn't take many webs to make such tiny marks," she said finally, as ted moved off to "spot a tree." "i guess i won't have to gather many for cousin jerry for that little marking." ted had moved off and with her small hatchet was hacking a piece out of the bark of a tree--spotting it, as she termed it. then she returned to the telescope and sought the level. "what's the little weight on the string?" nora next asked. "oh, that's our plumb-bob," replied the surveyor. "bob shows us just when a line is straight. now watch." over a peg in the ground ted swung the heavy little pendulum, first to right then to the left, and so on until it fell directly on the mark. "now see, that is plumb," said ted. nora gazed intently at the drop. "everything has to be just exactly, hasn't it?" she queried, wondering why. "first, you strain your alcohol with cobwebs, then you drop your bob on the little peg straight as the string----" "that is just where we get the expression from," her companion assured her. "nothing can be straighter." "and how do you get the mark on the tree?" "look through the glass again." so the first lesson in surveying went on. it was fascinating to nora, and when ted decided enough land had been "chained off" nora wanted to mark a few trees for her own use. "couldn't i chop a nick in this one? it is so beautiful, and when we come another day i can add another nick--just like a calendar." mrs. manton readily agreed, so long as nora did not use a mark that might confuse the surveyors; and so interesting was the work, time flew and the afternoon was soon waning. while in the woods more than once nora had reason to be thankful for her practical scout uniform, for she climbed trees, sought wild grapes from high limbs, gathered wild columbine and enjoyed the wildwoods as only a novice can. birds scarcely flew from the path, and she marvelled they were so tame, but ted explained they had no cause for fear, as the woods were their own and danger would be a new experience to them. when finally cap came back from his rambles and it was decided that no more surveying nor "play-veying" should be indulged in, instruments were gathered again, and reluctantly nora followed mrs. manton out into the path, newly beaten down by those who had been following spots, bobs, cobwebs, chains, telescopes, compasses, transits and all the other skilled implements used. "are you really a surveyor?" she asked ted, just wondering what she would call herself in barbara's letter. "yes, that or a civil engineer," replied ted. "that is really what i studied in the famous college course jerry is always teasing about." "it is sort of artist work, isn't it?" "a wonderful sort. just see what good times i have out among birds, flowers, wildwoods, and the whole clean, untamed world," said theodora manton. "some women may like indoors, but give me the woods and the fields and all of this," she finished, sweeping her free brown hand before her with a gesture that encompassed glorious creation. nora pondered. how many worlds were there after all? how different this was from that which she knew at school? would she ever enjoy the other now, after all this? she glanced at her scratched hands and smiled. what manicuring would erase those, and yet how precious they would seem when cousin jerry would hear what she had done to help with his wonderful surveying? "and we must fix up and look pretty for tonight," said her companion, as if reading nora's thoughts. "i so seldom want to go out evenings i really have to think what to wear." "do we dress up?" queried nora. "a little, that is we don't wear these," indicating the khaki. "but all the lenox folks are professionals in one line or the other, and you know dear, they always claim a social code of their own." nora was not positive she entirely understood, but she guessed that professionals, if they were anything like her cousin ted, would wear just such clothes as they liked best and felt most comfortable in, and she wondered how such would look in a theatre. "another rest, then an early dinner and we'll be off," announced mrs. manton when they reached the nest. "nora darling, you have made me very happy today," the brown eyes embraced nora while the hands were still burdened with instruments. "i will write at once to your mother and ask her----" but a shout of jerry's interrupted the most interesting clause. chapter xiii crawling in the shadows "you jump in the car and wait a few minutes," said ted to nora. it was almost dusk and the moving picture party was about to set out for lenox in the trim little car which, ted insisted, was tamed, educated and "fed from her hand" when it went out of gas. nora willingly complied with the order to take her seat and wait. dark shadows fell from the trees to the narrow roadway, and while alone there nora was just wondering if everything was going to happen in one single day. cousins jerry and ted had many things to look after before setting out, for while vita was a capable houseworker, she knew nothing of home management. some minutes passed and the others had not yet come to the car where nora sat so quietly that the squirrels had no idea a single human being was in the black car. one gay little furred skipper had the audacity to hop on the running board, but nora from the depths of her cushions, never stirred. a rustling of the leaves, much heavier than the tread of squirrels could possibly have been, gave her a start. she just peeked out in time to see something crawl across the road and continue on toward the path to the cottage. "oh, what was that!" nora barely whispered. then she raised her head and gazed intently at the crawling thing, that now was not more than an outline in the coming darkness. for the moment she was too surprised to jump out and follow. could it be a bear or some big animal? certainly it was no small woodland creature, and as it passed the car she could hear queer, jerky breathing. being so near the house there was no need for alarm as to her personal safety, so she did jump out now and ran to meet ted and jerry who were just turning in from the barn drive. "oh," nora exclaimed breathlessly. "did you see--anything?" "anything?" repeated jerry. "i mean did you see--anything queer?" "why no," replied ted. "but nora, you look as if you had." "i did, really. something stole out of the bushes and crept across the path, toward the kitchen." nora was still short of breath from her fright. "now bobbs! you don't mean to say that some wild, roaring lion----" but nora interrupted jerry. "honestly cousin jerry," she declared, "i did see something, and we can't go out and leave vita alone until we find out what it was." "bravo! spoken like a scout!" sang out the irrepressible jerry. "now let's all have a look." "over there," directed nora, and while neither mr. nor mrs. manton appeared to take the matter seriously, they did, never-the-less, follow nora's directions and quietly prowl along the path. "there," exclaimed nora. "i saw it again!" "i thought i saw something scamper off myself," admitted ted. "what do you suppose it can be?" she stepped out squarely in the driveway and stood watching. "give me a look and i'll announce," said jerry, his cap in one hand and a great stick, more like a tree limb he had hastily snatched up, in the other. he was going to have some fun out of it, at any rate. he never could miss a chance like this. thrashing down the bushes from the drive to the garden path took but a few moments, then they were within sight of the door. "what's the matter?" called out vita. "you find big snake?" "no, we're looking for it," answered jerry. "did he come your way?" "i no see, not any," said vita fully. she never depended upon the scant englishothers were apt to employ. while speaking she kept moving from one spot on the path to another, and her actions seemed so absurd ted questioned the maid again. "now vita, you know perfectly well you have seen something," she insisted. "and we are not going away until we find out what is around here. just look at cap sniffing! he knows," continued mrs. manton, moving up nearer to vita and closer to the house. "nothing a-tall. everything all right--good," persisted vita backing to the doorway. "say vi," called jerry in his cheeriest voice, "who's your friend? are you trying to hide him behind your skirts? i told you, ted, she should wear a uniform." "oh, jerry, do stop your nonsense," begged ted. "we shall be late for the pictures. just run in and look around the house. of course everything is all right, but we don't want nora worrying while we're away and vita's alone." nora had been looking sharply from one dark spot to another but no further disturbance appeared. "nothing could get into the house with vita right at the door," she reasoned aloud. "i suppose it was just something from the woods. maybe one of those 'possums you told me about, cousin jerry." "maybe, and again maybe not," he answered. "but just wait until i shake this stick over the premises. vita will feel a lot safer when i wave the wand of warning over the place," and he entered the house with vita so close to his heels that both nora and mrs. manton looked surprised. "queer, how she acts," admitted mrs. manton. "i just wonder---but of course she is only hurrying to get us off. she knows we will miss the first show if we do not get away at once." jerry was soon out, stick in hand, and a broad grin on his handsome face. "nary a thing," he announced. "nora, i am afraid your scouting has gone to your head. that, or you are seeing things." before nora might have replied ted insisted they hurry off or give up the trip to lenox, entirely. "i'm ready," nora said, instead of commenting on the moving shadow. "i shouldn't like to miss that picture." "all aboard!" sang out jerry, and when the little car shot out of the woods into the splendid turnpike--the pride of all motorists for many miles around--vita might have entertained her mysterious visitor (if she really had one) to her heart's content, for all of the party bound cityward. since her arrival at woodlands nora had little chance for auto rides, there were so many more interesting things to do, so that the short trip to lenox now seemed something of a luxury. but the evening's entertainment was even more delightful. the attractive little theatre was so prettily made up with colored paper flowers over the lights, with breezy electric fans and such simple contrivances as, in the larger city, nora had not seen, it all appeared new, novel and attractive. it was quaint and cosy, and such an effect was ever delightful to the fanciful daughter of a woman who called herself nannie instead of mother. all about them people greeted the mantons, and it was plain they were held in high esteem by many, farmers as well as more cultured folks, plain or dressed up--all had a pleasant word or a cordial greeting for the government surveyor and his attractive wife. nora wondered if the girl scouts ever came in to see the pictures, but ted expressed the opinion that when they did come they came in a crowd and made a regular party of the occasion. "but they have so many pleasures of their own for evenings," she told nora, "i shouldn't fancy they would want to come under an ordinary roof often during the summer months." after the big picture with all its wizard scenes had been enjoyed, they started back towards wildwoods. it was then that the fear of that crawling thing again crowded down on nora and caused her to shiver until she actually shook. "too cool?" inquired ted, unfolding a soft knitted scarf from her end of the seat. "no, just shivery," truthfully answered the imaginative nora. it was very dark along the country road, and only the flashing lights of passing cars penetrated the dense blackness of the tree-tunnels through which the party rode. it may have been this or it may have been the accumulated fatigue of her big, full day, but at any rate, nora felt very much inclined to huddle up to cousin ted and hide. the humming of the motor was like a lullaby, and the voices of ted and jerry mingled so evenly that presently nora forgot, then she forgot to think, and then she stopped thinking. she was sound asleep in the cosy comfort of theodora manton's encircling arm. "i'll lift her," she heard a voice whisper. it had seemed only a minute since she entered the car and here she was home, at the very door, with vita standing there, lantern in hand. "oh, thank you, cousin jerry," spoke up nora bravely. "i am wide awake now. how perfectly silly to fall asleep?" "how perfectly sensible," he contradicted. "i wish you had not awakened. i should have had a great joke to tell your girl scouts," he teased. nora laughed lightly. she was on the ground and anxious to get into the cottage. why she felt so timid was not clear even to herself, but somewhere within her dread lurked, and when ted proposed lemonade and crackers nora excused herself on the grounds of being deliciously sleepy. for once she accepted vita's offer to light her lights and make the window right for the night. "you go quick asleep?" vita remarked, turning down the soft summer covering from the little bed. "oh, yes. i fell asleep in the car," returned nora, yawning. "that's good. then you hear no storm----" "but there is no sign of a storm, vita." "oh, but maybe. or maybe, yes, some big birds fly and make screech----" "vita!" exclaimed nora sharply. "what ever are you talking about? are you trying to--scare me?" "oh, no. no get scared at--any t'ing." mumbled vita while her own excited manner seemed real cause for alarm. "i just like to know when my little girl sleep very good, like baby." truth to tell nora was too sleepy to argue, otherwise she might have demanded an explanation. vita was plainly excited, and this fact coupled with that of her strange actions earlier in the evening was unquestionably enough to cause suspicion; but rest to a girl afflicted with "nerves" is a precious thing, and when it came to nora she had no idea of risking its loss by any sort of argument. but vita seemed to want to linger longer. first she looked at one window, then at another. she even plumped a cushion--as if that were necessary to a night's comfort! "where do you sleep, vita?" asked nora, drowsily. "oh, in a good bed, in the little room by kitchen," replied the maid. nora recalled the maid's room. it was on the first floor just off the kitchen. so it could not have been vita who slept in the attic. "would vita get you a nice cold glass of water?" asked the solicitous one, still anxious to please. "oh, vita," a yawn interrupted, "i am so sleepy----" "then i go----" "yes, you go. good night, vita," said nora sweetly, "and i hope i sleep as soundly as i threaten to and as well as you want me to," finished nora. "isn't that being a very good girl?" "very, very good," said vita happily. then she went out quietly and left nora to her coveted slumber. chapter xiv circumstantial evidence but being converted to scouting could not at once cure nora of her dream habits. being so long alone in school, and having a brain insatiable for creative material, she usually went to bed to think and she went to sleep to dream. "i never felt so deliciously tired," she murmured. "but i do wonder what ailed vita." presently blue eyes cuddled in their white satin blankets with brown fringe borders (a way nora had of describing eye lids and lashes), and then the panorama began. first it was the scout memory. she, as the bravest scout that had ever joined a troup, dramatically saved someone from drowning. next, nora as the actress in the picture shown at lenox, performed the daring feat of swinging from the great rock with strikingly better effect than had she whose name graced the program. the third dream installment had to do with something very indistinct but horribly terrifying. it revealed a crawling thing that first crossed the path, then climbed the morning glory vine right up to nora's window, and now--yes now--it was choking her! had she screamed? she found herself sitting up straight in bed and she felt as if her very curls had straightened out in fright. there--was a noise! she listened, put her hand out and switched on the light. it was nothing in her room, but seemed somewhere--yes, there it was again and it surely was up in the attic! was that someone moaning? dream dizzy still, nora could form no definite resolve, either to call or to remain quiet. she simply lay fascinated with fright. the noise ceased. still she lay--listening. then other sounds penetrated the night. that was feet--shuffling of feet and they seemed just above her head! quickly nora reached out again and touched the button that switched off the light. she would rather lay hidden deeply in the bed clothing than be exposed to whatever was prowling in the attic, should it come down the stairs. then she thought she heard whispering, but that might have been her excited imagination. she drew the covers closer and with her head buried from sound she could no longer listen, and not possibly hear. but after, what seemed to the frightened girl, a very long time she ventured to poke her head out again, just as she heard a stealthful step on the stairs. "oh!" she gasped aloud. then "vita!" she called faintly. "yes, i come. sh-s-!" nora had not expected to hear that voice. she merely called vita because she did not want to call cousin ted, and she felt the intruder was dangerously near. but there was vita! "what is it? you have bad dream?" asked the maid in a whisper, standing now beside the bed. "no, it was no dream." nora's voice was not very low, in fact she was angry. "i did hear things and there's no use telling me it was the wind. it wasn't," she snapped. "sh-s-!" again vita warned. "it is no good to wake cousins. i was up the stairs for that old window. it slam--you hear it?" "what could slam a window tonight?" "i do-no!" in the way foreigners have of not understanding when ignorance is more convenient. "i must go to bed now. you all right?" "say vita!" charged nora. "if you don't tell me the truth i'll--i'll--just shout!" "no, not too much noise," coaxed the big woman, who in her night robe looked like a masquerade figure. "what do you want i should get you?" "nothing. i don't want anything but for you to tell me who is up in that attic!" demanded nora sharply. "me--vittoria, is up attic." "who was with you?" "cap." "where is he now?" "he go down--back way." "now vita--" nora stopped. she was baffled. this woman could confuse her so and then walk off demurely, just as she had done that other night. finally nora began again: "all right, vita, but you just listen." she was shaking a small finger toward the face with the black flashing eyes. "if you don't tell me all about your secret i shall tell uncle jerry. now do you understand?" "secret? what is 'secret'?" "the thing up in the attic is a secret," persisted nora, although she feared her voice might disturb the others now. "that thing big cap. he always at night sniff so much," said vita. "now, i go to bed," she spoke this very emphatically. "i go to bed and you go to sleep." "all right, go," ordered nora. "and don't you dare go up in that attic again tonight. i was just having the most----" but her audience had vanished and the house was empty, so to speak, so why orate or harangue? all sleep and its delightful attributes had flown. nora was so wide awake she felt she would never sleep again, and worse still, she was angry. what did that old vita mean by her attic tricks? if it were she who was up there why did she moan? and if it were something else why did the woman try to conceal it? "now, i have a scout duty," nora promised herself. "i must fathom that mystery and protect cousin theodora and cousin gerald from that unscrupulous woman." visions of crimes hidden in the attic, memory of her own incarceration there when the trap door, as she now regarded the door with the spring lock snapped shut, filtered through her excited brain, and when she remembered how she had almost died up there, and how it might have been years before her skeleton would have been discovered, just as so many others had fared on secret attic trips, it did seem to nora that she should arise at once and immediately start her investigations. humor and tragedy hopelessly mixed. "but it's so late," she figured out, "and would it be fair to wake cousin ted when she is so tired and after her taking me to that beautiful picture?" convincing herself that this was why she did not immediately begin her brave scout work, she once more attempted to quiet her nerves by thinking of all the sheep miss baily had recommended to skip over fences and lull one to sleep. but sleep was far out of the reach of frisky sheep, and nora lay there thinking of so many things, her head threatened to ache and a miserable day promised to dawn upon her if she did not soon succumb. "perhaps i wronged poor vita. there may not have been anything wicked in the attic after all," she soothed herself. "why couldn't she go up there if she wanted to? and maybe she stubbed her toe." it was not very consoling but the best nora could work up in the way of consolation. one thing certain, vita was honorable. she was a trusted servant, and in the short time nora had been at the nest, many small favors, peculiar to good cooks, had come nora's way through vita's intervention. such happy thoughts finally dispelled the other unfriendly mental visitors, and when vita stole past the door again and looked in through the darkness, all she heard was the even breathing of little nora blair, who might or might not have been dreaming of horrible attic noises. the day brings wisdom, and when nora again dressed in the borrowed khaki suit (she had suddenly taken a dislike to her own fancy dresses), the glorious sunshine of the bright summer morning mocked the terrors of the night. a step in the hall. "i bring your fruit," said vita kindly through the open door; and there she stood with a small dish of such delicious berries to be eaten off stems by hand--surely nora had wronged this kind, tender-hearted foreigner. nora was somewhat conscience stricken as she accepted the peace offering. "oh, thank you, vita," she exclaimed. "i was just coming down." "but the jerries are out early and you no need hurry," explained vita. "i make nice breakfast when you come." "cousin ted gone out?" asked nora. "yes, she say you stay home, not go after them, they must 'bob swamp.'" "bob swamp? oh, you mean use the plumb-bob in the swamp. i understand, vita." it was really remarkable how well both understood today and how dense both had been last night. "very well, i'll eat my fruit here by the window, and later try your lovely biscuits," said nora, with a smile rarely used outside the family. the housemaid shuffled off. looking after her, nora wondered. "i do believe she is trying to keep on good terms with me for something--something queer," she decided. "certainly she is afraid i will tell cousin ted about the attic business." she paused with a big red strawberry half way to her lips. "well, i have a secret, anyhow," she decided, "and i like alma, she makes me think of myself--she is sort of shy and sensitive. perhaps i shall make her my confidante." of all the scouts alma seemed most congenial, and having a real secret was the first definite step in nora's summer career. but are secrets wise and are they safe to carry around in so big and open a place as rocky ledge? chapter xv waif of the wildwoods it was so much better than dreams. not only did nora feel the importance of having a real secret, but she also realized that the same circumstance had actually made vita her abject slave. not a wish was expressed by the visitor in vita's presence but the maid would, if it were possible at all, see to its fulfillment. "i believe i'll tell alma," nora decided one morning after a visit and return to and from camp chickadee. almost daily she made those trips and the scouts had become such friends with her she was now regarded quite as one of their number. expecting to join formally as soon as the other candidates of rocky ledge were ready and the counsellor should come down from the city, nora studied her manual and prepared for the honor. in the meantime she was privileged to enjoy many of the scout activities. but "the secret" was really more engrossing just now. it provided her with a personal importance--what girl does not enjoy the possession of a knowledge others have not and everyone would love to have? it was thrilling. alma, the tenderfoot scout, who from the first had espoused nora's cause and even confided in her the real story of the woodland prince, met her daily at a wonderful rendezvous, and there the two girls, away from teasing companions, enjoyed confidences and built air castles. "i'll tell her today," the resolve was repeated as nora started out. she arrived first, and while waiting had a race with cap all the way to the three oaks and back again. "dogs have to run faster," explained nora breathlessly, when cap won by more than he needed to establish his claim. "if you could not run faster than human beings, cap, you could never have been made a red cross messenger, as you were in the awful war." the arrival of alma cut short the encomium. salutations were brief for both were eager to "tell each other a lot of things." "alma, do you think you could keep a secret?" the question was so trite and time worn alma smiled before answering in the affirmative. "because," continued nora, "this is the biggest secret i have ever had, and barbara and i have had a great many." "i have to have secrets," returned alma, "because none of the girls seem to understand me. they tease, you know, they almost made me homesick one night; they kept teasing and teasing about the prince; and miss beckwith had a hard time to make me stop crying." nora winced. "well, this isn't that sort of a secret," she said presently. "it's about our attic." "what about it?" "oh, it's a lot to tell. we had better sit on the big log under the chestnut tree and be comfortable before i start." then began the story of the first night at wildwoods when nora was determined to sleep in the attic. many an exclamation of surprise was thrown in by the more practical alma, but this in no way turned the narrator from her course. she sent thrill after thrill up and down alma's spine, and she even voiced a suspicion that vita might have a member of "some den of thieves hidden in the attic, although she is the soul of honesty," nora was particular to state. but it was the incident that occurred the night they went to lenox that really caused alma to exclaim tragically: "nora, you should tell mrs. manton! it is not safe to hide anything so serious as that. suppose the thing comes crawling down some night and vita is not there to drive it back?" "oh, she doesn't drive it back," nora had not actually visualized the terror in that way. "she just kept me from finding out----" "what?" interrupted alma when nora paused from sheer excitement. "i don't know what!" "what do you think?" "well, maybe it's a--really alma, i don't dare think. i did not know how frightened i was till i started talking about it. why, i am just all creeps," admitted nora. "here cap," she shouted, as the dog attempted to wander off, "don't go away. come on, alma. i guess we had better go out by the road. why, i am just as frightened as if the--thing were around here!" she gasped. "maybe it is," said alma cruelly, picking up her knitting upon which she had not taken a stitch, and following nora out of the little woodland into the more open field that flanked the narrow roadway. they hurried. alma tripped and nora almost screamed. "why, what is the matter?" asked the scout. "you haven't seen anything?" "no, but i feel so queer. you know, alma" (she loved an audience), "i am queer and i do believe i sometimes feel things in advance. miss baily always said i did." "she must have been queer herself," retorted alma. "i had those wild ideas, too, until i joined the scouts. that's the reason mother had me join. she said i was too much alone----" it was difficult to talk while hurrying over newly-cut stumps with which the field was so thickly strewn. the surveyor's men had hewn many a fine young birch and numbers of ambitious young maples there, for this was one of the forests lately cleared. "here come the girls," exclaimed nora, as they looked down the road. "alma, promise not to say a single word----" "why, nora blair! as if i would divulge a secret----" "excuse me, alma. i did not mean just that. but when one does not realize the importance----" "i do realize it. but it's all right, nora. i know just how you feel," conceded alma, amiably. "there. i have to go with pell to get some grasses from the ledge. i'm sorry i can't walk home with you. you don't mind----" "not in the least, alma. i was just jumpy while we talked--that way. besides, i always have cap. good bye. i'll see you tomorrow morning." "won't you wait for the girls?" "i'm afraid if i do i'll stay talking. hello," she called out as pell and thistle came up. "alma and i have had such a lovely time out in the oak woods i am late for my--chores," she finished, laughing. "what do you chore, nora?" asked pell. her face was beaming with the health of camp life and her voice vibrated youth and happiness. "she chores chores of course," thistle assisted. "i am sure the nest is a lot nicer place to live and work in than camp chickadee--when pell mell is our inspector," she finished, with a pout. "nora, would you believe it that wretched girl left her shoes outside of camp last night and this morning they were gone--to a goat preserve somewhere," explained pell. "she has my second best 'sneaks' on now, yet she will malign me----" "why and whither away?" interrupted thistle, seeing nora about to escape. "oh, i really must. i'll see you later," promised the blonde girl, whose hair, always so fair, seemed to have taken on a shade of pure gold since exposed to the open sunshine of rocky ledge. so with paths divided they separated, and that was how it came to pass that nora was alone when she encountered the wonderful adventure. taking to the lane path, a walk she seldom thought of following, nora, keyed up with her excitement following the telling of her story to alma, felt she must get off somewhere and "collect herself" before going back to the house. perhaps her head was down, and she may have ventured along as do much older and more serious folk when engaged in some perplexing problem, at any rate nora was down the lane and into a strange grove before she realized it. she looked up with a start. "where ever am i?" she said, if not aloud, certainly loud enough for her own hearing. the place was a veritable camp of low pines, and so dark it was beneath the thickly woven boughs, nora felt as if she had stepped from day to night. "but so pretty," she commented. then she looked about for cap. it would not be wise to stray into such a lonely place without his reliable protection. he marched up with a very military air as she called his name. evidently the place, strange to nora, was familiar to him, for he did not so much as raise his shaggy head to glance around him. "stay here," she whispered. then, turning to survey the place, she almost froze with fright. over in under a very low tree she saw something move--it was like a bundle of rags and it--yes, it had a head! "oh, mercy!" she gasped. "what's that?" the black bundle rolled over and sat up. two big, brown eyes glared at her! the head was covered with a shawl. was it a woman? frozen now with genuine fright nora tried to move, but felt more like sinking down. "oh!" she breathed. then she saw how small it was. there! it was humping up. like a queer sort of animal the bundle took shape on huddled shoulders, and from the outline eyes glared. it was not more than twenty feet from where nora stood, but the almost night darkness of the grove helped make illusions terrifying. now it was on knees and now it stood up! "oh," cried nora. "who are you?" a little girl--a poor little ragged girl, evidently more frightened than nora herself. "oh, do come here," cried nora, as soon as she saw how she had been deceived. "i won't hurt you." the child was now standing. what a sorry little figure! the part that was not eyes seemed just rags, and two bare feet pressed upon the brown pine needles like chunks of withered wood. her head was covered with an ugly gray scarf and yet the day was warm enough to feel the sun's rays even through the dense trees. "what's your name, little girl?" asked nora, venturing a step nearer. the eyes rolled and then a smile broke over that frightened face. "i'm lucia," replied the child, and her voice was as pretty as her name. chapter xvi lady bountiful junior hearing that small, fluty voice nora sighed with relief. "come here, little girl," she said gently. "i won't hurt you." "please, i can't. i must run----" "oh, no; don't run," begged nora, as the child showed every sign of escaping. "i am all alone. i just want to talk to you." "but i must not. i have to run," insisted the other. "why?" "because----" the voice had dropped many tones. "will any one hurt you if you don't?" this was merely a chance question of nora's. she could not think quickly of just the right thing to say and was anxious to detain the child. "yes, no, maybe," a shrug of the small shoulders proclaimed foreign mannerisms. her dark eyes also bespoke the alien. "well, i won't let anyone hurt you," declared nora bravely. "i'm a girl scout, do you know what that means?" "yes, i know. it means crazy," promptly replied lucia. "crazy?" nora was somewhat taken back. then it dawned upon her that foreigners had a way of saying things--perhaps--"crazy" meant something else to the child. "why do you say 'crazy'?" nora asked next. "oh, they dress funny, and they run all over and they climb trees like--crazy," said lucia. nora saw she was correct in her free translation. crazy was a comprehensive term to lucia. "don't you like them, the scouts?" pressed nora. "the little one--i like. the big ones chase me one day," came the indifferent answer. "i have to go, i must run sure now," declared lucia, putting out her small hands to make a hole in the bushes through which to escape. "oh, please don't go yet," begged nora. "i have just found you and i want to--know you." "i don't dast," replied lucia. "i have to hide now," she was getting through the break when nora took hold of the long skirt. at this lucia looked around sharply, and her dark eyes flashed dangerously. "are you hungry?" nora asked. this was a tactful thing to ask and offered immediate postponement of flight for lucia. "sure," she replied, beaming. "what you got?" "nothing--just now," faltered nora. "but i can bring you lots of good things. you wait here----" "oh, no, i get caught," interrupted the woods wraith. "then i ketch--it." nora was sorely puzzled, but being nora she had no idea of allowing such an interest to escape. she said next: "if you tell me where to leave things for you, i'll bring them and you can get them when no one is around. would that be all right?" "maybe," replied the exasperating lucia. "but when you get it?" "oh, any time, i live near here and i can just run over and be back before you have to go. where do you go to?" "i can't tell," answered lucia with more foreign tone than she had yet assumed. "you mean you do not dare tell me where you live?" "yes, that's what i mean." "why?" "i don't dast," again came that quaint, childish negative. "who would do anything to you?" "nick." if nora was eager to talk, surely lucia was determined to be very brief. what could she mean by "nick." again lucia held the bush back into an open gate. and again nora tugged at the skirt. "if i bring you a lovely sweet pie will you come back and talk to me here?" begged nora. "where will you put the pie?" "can't you come and get it?" "i don't know." it was aggravating. the child seemed purposely obtuse. nora had an instinctive feeling that somehow she was the object of abuse. her cringing manner indicated oppression. "now, lucia," she began again, "if you come here every day i'll come all alone, except for cap, and i'll bring you lovely things to eat. wouldn't you like that?" "sure." "then you will come?" "what time?" "in the morning--about this time. would that be all right for you?" "if nick is gone." "who is nick?" "very bad man. i hate nick." this last sentence was so purely american, that even nora guessed the child had come from mixed surroundings. holding to her shawl nora could feel, she imagined, a shudder pass through the slim frame at the very mention of the name nick. lucia dragged her scarf off a bush. "i go now," she said with just a tinge of politeness. "you bring pie?" "yes, a big pie. don't forget to come." "i come--sure." the queer figure stood for a moment out in the clear sunlight, and nora had a chance to see her features. she was pretty, strikingly so, in spite of her pinched cheeks and her too lustrous eyes. "please--you don't tell anybody?" came the appeal. "i work all day and pull weeds, but like to sleep little bit by the big trees, sometimes." then nora guessed. "you mean you are sick and come here to rest?" "please." "well, you just come here whenever you want to, lucia," said nora with feeling. "the idea of a tiny tot like you working at pulling weeds! and with all those heavy rags on you! it's a shame!" she declared indignantly. "you don't tell?" the child persisted anxiously. "no, lucia. i'll never tell. i have a lot of secrets, and this one i won't even tell alma." "good bye." like a frightened animal the waif sped across the field and dodged into the next clump of shrubbery. "she is afraid of being seen," reasoned nora. "who ever saw such a pitiful little thing?" then it dawned upon her that cap had not even sniffed suspiciously. "did you like her, cap?" she asked, patting the patient animal, that all during the broken conversation had lain at nora's feet without so much as a single growl. "did you feel sorry for her, too, cap?" he may have or there may have been some other reason for his indifference, but now he was willing and anxious to go home. it was lunch time and cap never needed an announcement. nora followed him. she was too astonished to know even what to think. that a little beggar girl should hide in the bushes to rest from hard work! "i'll bring her the nicest things vita can bake," she concluded. then came the thought: how would she get vita to give her the supplies without making known the use she was to put them to? picnics were common. these would surely supply an excuse for carrying out food, and, after all, wouldn't it be a picnic for lucia? nora's heart was fluttering. "i never knew what a vacation was before," she told cap. "here i am having a love of a time and doing things worth remembering." how different from the fashionable summers she had been accustomed to! nowadays she hardly had time to look in a glass, and yet she was enjoying every hour. it was like discovering something new continually, and did nora but know the secret of the adventure it was simply that she was discovering her own resources--she was getting acquainted with nora blair. but miracles are not common, and nora was not yet completely transformed from a sensitive, secretive girl, to an honest, frank, fearless girl scout. even the new discovery of lucia and her sad plight was now locked up in her breast. but should it have been? chapter xvii a picnic and otherwise a rush of events followed. chief among them was that of a girl scout picnic, inaugurated by ted and jerry, carried out by nora and enjoyed by all. it was a delightful hike out to the ledge, that big, rugged rock that leaned over a pretty, disjoined lake, made up of tributaries from springs and rain flows. rocky ledge was exactly that--narrow, rocky; a table or shelf that leaned out just far enough to form a little portico over the frivolous waters beneath. it was a charmed spot, with many thrilling legends to its credit, and being different from the entire scenery surrounding, it gave the place its name--just like one girl different from her companions will stand out as an example, if she happens to be that kind of different that is interesting. not that other parts of this territory were commonplace. no, indeed. there was a fertile farm country, jerry's precious forests, ted's wonderful butterfly haunts and even nora's cedar groves; but these did not touch the high spot enjoyed by that novel little ledge; hence the whole territory was known as rocky ledge. the picnic marked midsummer's festivity. chickadee patrol invited members from other camps out to the ledge, and when pell insisted that thistle and her aids "do up enough grub" for those invited, a strike was narrowly averted. "you know, pell mell, the mantons will bring barrels of things to eat, so why should we make samples of our miserable home-cooking failures?" demanded thistle. betta was standing hard by egging her on. "they will bring the lunch, that is, the lunch, but what about a little four o'clock snack? there are silver springs out there with water cress on the cob, and i know our girls are never loath to nibble a bite or two when out on location," pell reminded her mutinous crew. that was pell. she had a way of getting things done and at the same time making a joke of it. "is nora going to be inducted?" asked betta. next to alma, betta was the most avowed champion of the girl from the nest. "yes, we had a letter today and becky told us we would have a business meeting wednesday, when your precious babe nora will be led to the stake. she will accept the halter of allegiance to pell, betta and the rest of the mob----" "if you feel so frisky, pell, i wish you would work off some of the extra on this tin can. i am supposed to open it with a souvenir trick can opener. i am sure betta brought it from the state fair, b. c. 150. it has all the ear marks of antiquity without any of the teeth," declared wyn, who was struggling with an implement, curious and wonderful. "that's a perfectly good can opener," defended betta. "jimbsy purloined it from his own mother's table----" "which supports my theory," interrupted wyn. "his mother's table is none other than antique. but there! it did cut--my hand into the bargain," and she defied all her first-aid rules by sticking a finger in her mouth. "glad it cut something." "where's alma?" asked laddie. "she always gets out of the drudgery." "alma was tagged along to town to buy things," explained thistle. "becky is hearing her lessons on the way. alma is our little freshman, you know, girls, and while she doesn't wear mourning, she is often in sorrow." "she has a great time with nora, i notice," remarked doro. "i fancy between the two of them they have fixed it up about the prince. shouldn't be a bit surprised if they invited him to the picnic." "now, remember," ordered wyn, "don't dare say prince. say duke if you must, but spare alma's feelings on the princeling. but honestly, girls, wasn't it a joke?" "not to alma," answered treble. "she certainly had a vision if she did not see a prince. here she comes. look at the bundles! land sakes alive! if it's more grub i'm going to duck. my fingers are mooing now from spreading butter," and treble plastered a slab of the yellow paste on a square of bread, quite as if it were intended as mortar for a sky-scraper. an hour later they were on their way. nora might have ridden out to the ledge in the little runabout, but she preferred to walk with the girls. "i'm so excited about joining," she confided to betta and alma, her hike partners. "i feel as if i were going to have my final exams." "you don't want to," advised betta. "you know your manual perfectly, and have nothing to worry about. but we shall all be so glad, nora, when you are really a scout. it is all well enough to be a lone scout out in the wilderness, but while we're around there is no sense in such isolation." "the lone scout! oh, i was fascinated reading about the provisions for such an individual arrangement. just imagine being a troop of one," said nora. "about as interesting as laddie's collection of one piece of genuine mica," replied betta. "as much as i detest the girls" (she gave alma's arms an affectionate squeeze in explanation), "still, i would rather be pestered with them than to be a lone scout on the big mountain. there, nora! that would make a stunning title for your coming book." "what book?" demanded the unsuspecting nora. "the one that is coming next," serenely replied betta. "but let us hasten! see yon girls are turning into the other yon road," she went on. "we betta----" a warning chuckle from alma, cut short her "betta." until this attractive girl learned to respect the all-american r she would never know peace with her companions. joining the others the merry party hiked along; singing, whistling, calling, laughing and making noises peculiar to girls out on picnics bent. mr. and mrs. manton rode to the ledge, deposited their treat and were ready to be on their way and leave the girls to their own good time, almost as soon as the party arrived. "oh, stay," besought pell. "we are counting on having you in for our games----" "i wish i could," replied the big brown jerry. "but the fact is this wife of mine has planned a little picnic all of her own. you see, when she got me in on this she knew i could not back out on hers. yes," he sighed affectedly, "she has made me promise to take her out canoeing, and i am not sure what terror she has set for me at the end of the stream." "oh, are you really going down the stream?" cried treble. "i have just longed for a ride down through the rapids----" "well, you best not take it," spoke up mrs. ted. "i am going down the stream only to explore. and i would not go without the strong arm of a man at the keel." "oh, jimbsy, where art thou?" wailed thistle. "why didn't we treat you right! your gallant craft----" "get the water there, cicero," shouted doro. "this lunch is to have lemonade a la carte, and there isn't a drop of water in the house. sorry to disturb the oration----" "gimme the pail," snapped the interrupted thistle. "i never yet started anything that doro didn't finish." but even the delightful lunch, served on a grassy table with every girl holding down her own table cloth, for a light little breeze flirted outrageously with the service--even all this did not tempt the scouts to tarry long from the delights of the great, wild open; and before the normal eating hour had passed the girls were formed in groups and circles, to suit their individual and collective tastes, and through field and glen their laughter supplied the marching tune. nora was clinging to alma, with a motive. she had seen the great field of corn just behind the ledge, where fertility could be depended upon, and she was wondering, secretly, if little lucia might pick weeds out there? "could we go over to those gardens?" she asked the leaders, when the other girls had all chosen their points for exploration. "why, certainly. i am glad to see that you are interested in real gardens," replied miss beckwith. "those are called the italian gardens because italians work there, not because they bear any resemblance to the wonderful gardens of italy." the temptation was strong within nora to tell alma just why she wanted to go up close to the big women with hoes and rakes; but the memory of lucia's dark eyes, that looked so like dewy pansies when the child begged: "you will never tell," that memory sealed nora's lips, while she eagerly sought out any small figure that might be that of the little slave of labor. "i don't like those horrid women," said alma. "why don't you want to go over the other way, out into the pretty woodlands, nora? come on and let's run back. i am almost afraid of that ugly creature coming over that dug-up place," alma declared. "i don't like her, either," admitted nora. "i only wanted to see--them work--close by." "going in for scientific gardening when we make you a real scout?" alma continued, as they both hurried back to the uncultivated territory. "lots of girls are trying it, but it's wickedly hard on the hands." "oh, i hadn't thought of that, alma. but i just----" she stopped and looked frankly into alma's gray eyes. "alma," she began again with an unexpected sigh, "would you think me mean if i asked you to do something to help me without, well, without explaining fully?" she floundered. "why, no, certainly not, nora. you must have good reason for not wanting to confide----" "i do want to confide," nora quickly took up the charge. "but this is not my own affair. i have promised not to tell." "then don't bother to explain," said alma, generously. "i'll do all i can to help you. i am sure it's for a good cause." "the noblest charity----" nora checked herself. "i'll tell you. i want to take my picnic lunch to--some place----" it was next to impossible to go on without going all the way. "nora, darling! you are truly a brave scout!" declared the admiring alma. "there you haven't touched your lovely lunch. saved it for a secret charity. just you wait until you are received into the band of chickadees! i'll be your sponsor if i am allowed it, and i'll find a way----" "alma! alma!" gasped nora, tragically. "you really must do nothing of the kind. as happy as i am now at the idea of being a scout, i shouldn't even join if i thought that in any way this secret would become known." she was breathless at the very thought, and had jerked alma to a standstill right in the middle of a mud patch, in her excitement. "oh, don't worry," soothed alma. "i had no idea of telling any part of the secret, that, of course, i really don't know anything about. i was just planning what i might say to your especial credit if the promoter should call upon me," she finished with a tinge of disappointment. "then help me carry my lunch back to--the woods near our house," said nora while the glance she exchanged was a unspoken volume. "i hope you are not going to give it away to some wild animal," alma could not refrain from remarking. "oh, no indeed," nora assured her companion. "then why do you not eat it?" "i have promised----" "maybe it's jimmie," said alma, with a sly little chuckle. "jimmie! why i have never spoken to him!" "oh, you should," the scout assured her. "he is such a nice, useful boy." "does he work on the farms?" asked nora seriously. "i guess he doesn't really work any place in particular, but almost every place in general," replied alma. "but let's hurry. the others will think we got hoed in with the corn." so they did hurry back to the picnic and back to their strategy. chapter xviii the little lord's confession it was all over. nora had been made a girl scout. to celebrate the enrollment jerry and ted gave a "large party" at the nest, and of all her memorable social functions, this to nora seemed most delightful. every one came, even becky the patrol leader, and in their uniforms all freshly pressed out, the white summer blouse being allowed for the festive occasion, the party looked quite novel, and the girls had a wonderful time, dancing, playing games and inventing new fun provokers at every turn. nora as the guest of honor was honored indeed, and accepted her compliments most gracefully. "it was all a matter of opportunity," said ted aside to jerry, referring to nora's change of heart. "she is just as good a scout as any of them." this was a proud boast. "the woods are full of them," said jerry the champion of all girls, scouts and near scouts. "just give them the chance." but up in her own room nora was pondering. "it's just like getting married," she reflected. "that is, i guess it is," she amended wisely. "one must clear up every secret and fix all the old troubles when one gets married, and one must clear up all the old worries and secrets when she joins the scouts," concluded the systematic, little self-appointed conscience cleaner. there was that matter of the prince. never did alma mention it nor never did nora hear any of the other scouts refer to it without feeling guilty. "i just ought to tell alma the whole truth," she was now deciding. it was the day after the great event. but came the thought of alma's certain surprise that she, nora, her true friend and confidante, should have deceived her so long. pride did not melt into humility with the bestowing of the pretty scout emblem, so nora did not see her way clear to tell that silly story of her lord fauntleroy escapade. she was repeating her scout promise "to do my duty to god and country and to help others at all times," and she mentally made the promise again. "to help others." that clause charged her. was she helping alma? did she not know, really, that the one glimpse of the person in velvets had left kind and considerate little alma guessing ever since, and also that it had put her in a ridiculous position with her companions? "i know, i'll write her a letter." the inspiration satisfied, and thus started the most remarkable correspondence--but let others tell it. "she got a letter!" exclaimed wyn. "what's wonderful about that?" asked betta. "it's from the prince, that's what," declared the first speaker. "prince!" "the very same," chimed in treble, stretching her long self from the bench to the boat swing. "what nonsense!" scoffed betta. "alma may be romantic, but she is not crazy." (lucia to the contrary.) "just ask her," suggested wyn. "she's hugging that letter as tight as tu' pence. i always told you alma was madly in love----" "hush!" doro's warning suspended operations along that line. alma was upon them. "letter?" asked wyn, innocently. "yes, and if you like you may read it. it's from----" "the prince?" blurted treble, shooting her hand out. "i'm corporal," said thistle, pompously. "let me have it, dear." "perhaps i should read it myself," said alma, pettishly, thus prolonging the agony. "it is so--personal." "yes, do," begged wyn, coiling and uncoiling in sheer expectancy. "here's a seat," offered betta. "the sun's there," warned thistle amiably. "take this seat, alma," and she moved over so generously, the bench all but tipped end on end. every one waited. alma took out her letter--it was in her crocheted bag and one could see how she treasured it. what a thrill! but treble pinched betta and almost spoiled the start. "i received it this morning," said alma, "and, of course, it didn't come through the mail." "how?" asked wyn. "jimmie!" replied alma. "oh-o-o-o-oh!" the shout was mortifying, betta came to the rescue. "jimmie isn't your prince--alma?" she asked sweetly. "jimmie!" alma's tone was caustic. "as if that freckled face----" "here! easy on the jimbsy!" warned treble. "he's a perfectly fine little scout, and if ever this patrol extends to co-ed----!" "let alma read her letter," ordered thistle, the corporal. "how'd you say you got it?" persisted wyn. "jimmie brought it." "where did he get it?" again asked the irrepressible wyn. "he was pledged not to tell, but just see the stationery." the envelope was passed around; all commented favorably. "you see," began alma, "this was written as a confession." the older girl shouted again. treble nudged wyn almost off the bench. "don't mind them, alma, i'm listening," said betta sharply. "oh, we all are," chimed in doro. alma folded her letter. "if you are--going to--tease----" she faltered. "here!" yelled thistle, quite uncorporal like, "the very first one that speaks will be dumped into the lake. proceed alma." from that point things went along better. again alma looked promising. "as i said, the letter is a confession." then ignoring a number of subdued interruptions, she went on. "it is signed 'your loving prince.'" could you blame them for howling? "your loving--prince!!!!" repeated wynnie. "and is there a jimbsy to that?" "i told you," said the offended alma, "the only thing jimmie had to do with it was to deliver it." "so far as you know," interjected doro, "but jimmie is a far-sighted lad." "let me read it, alma," said thistle in desperation. "i can't see why some girls can't have more manners." "and why some can't have some?" retaliated treble. "once more, shall i read it?" asked alma, sighing. "you shall," declared betta. "the first one that interrupts---oh, i say girls, it is almost time for drill. have some sense and let's hear it." murmurs approved. "'i feel constrained to write this, dear,'" alma actually read, "'because i feel i have done you a great injustice.'" (moans.) "'after you saw me and i fleed----'" alma paused. "he means flew, of course." this started another outburst, and what he didn't mean by "fleed" simply wasn't worth meaning. "go ahead, alma, we know he--fleed," prompted betta. "'after i ran'" (prudent alma), "'i never had the courage to make myself known to you,'" she perused. "'but when i heard your companions taunt you----'" "there! taunting her! i told you to be good----" wyn's interruption was inevitable. "it is no use in my trying to be sociable," said the sensitive alma. "but i thought you would all be interested." "there is not much more to read," announced the popular member. "he just says that soon--soon he will come." "oh, joy!" shouted doro, rolling over in the grass. "let me know in time!" "they're just idiots, alma. come on with me and leave them to guess the rest," proposed the astute betta, the confidante of girls. "_i_ want to hear it if nobody else does." without even a giggle they jumped up and seized alma. one could not be sure whose arm was most restraining, but she changed her mind about going with betta. instead she opened the famed sheet again and read: "'my conscience has troubled me ever since, dear, but i was forced to do as i did. drop your answer----'" she paused. "i don't intend to read that part," she calmly announced, and no amount of coaxing would induce her to relent. no one should know where the letter to the prince was to be mailed, alma was determined on that point at least. chapter xix a deserted tryst nora was disconsolate. for two days the dainties left for lucia had remained untouched. the bread box which vita had given her to play with, and into which the food was deposited for lucia, stood upon the tree stump with the sliced lamb, the piece of cake, and the big orange which comprised the last installment offered by the sympathetic nora, just as she had left it. "can anything have happened to her?" nora asked herself. she was almost too disappointed to sit down and rest in the cool, quiet shade. cap sniffed the box but did not put a paw up to beg, and even the big noisy blue-jay scorned a few crumbs that lay on a fallen leaf. "suppose he--murdered her!" it was not unusual for a girl like nora to think the very worst first, in fact the normal, childish mind is very apt to leap at a sensation, but only the high spot is sensed, the detail is always conspicuously lacking. "of course she is deadly sick. oh, why didn't she let me know where she lived," nora wailed secretly. "i could visit her and bring her all sorts of lovely things----" she lifted the paper napkin that covered the food offering. "what's this?" she exclaimed. a stiff little green leaf made of very shiny paper appeared, and with it, nora found, was an old fashioned nose-gay, the sort beloved by the italians and the polish peasantry. nora picked up the spray. it was tied with a green ribbon and somehow gave nora a distinct shock. "oh! she's dead, this is what they--have at funerals!" tears welled up into the blue eyes, and hands holding the silent message trembled. nora sat down and cap nosed up to her; he knew something was the matter. such a pathetic little bouquet! one stiff pink rose, one yellow daisy, two bright red carnations and three very stiff green leaves, all made of a sort of oil-cloth paper. a tear fell into the heart of the rose. if it were not really a flower it was at least a good picture of one, just as a photograph can so vividly remind one of the original. nora went back to the box. "when can she have put it here?" she wondered. it was under the paper plate. then she recalled that this last donation had been hastily deposited in the box, for it was late and nora had to hurry back to get ready for her own tea at the time she placed it there. "i must have it put right on her flowers," she pondered. "poor, abused, little lucia!" picking up the untouched food nora discovered a slip of soiled paper beneath it. there was writing on it, a scrawl of some kind. she carried it to the light out from under the dense trees. "yes, it's a note," murmured nora, as if cap, her only companion, understood. and it just says "'goodbye, with love.'" nora read and reread the scribble. it was written, she decided, in lucia's hand, for it was such a crooked, uneven scrawl. the paper was a leaf torn from a book, and this assured nora that at some time lucia must have gone to school. "after all my joy, the party, the enrollment and everything, this has to come," thought the discouraged girl. "i hoped today i could induce her to come over and see ted and jerry." it was too disappointing. for the first few days nora had felt it was safer to allow lucia to have her way, and when she waited and waited, until the italian girl appeared, then coaxed and urged that she come over to the cottage, lucia showed signs of real fright. she would have run from the tree-tent and never returned, if nora had not promised to agree to her secrecy. after that the benefactor brought the food but was never able to get more than a fleeting glimpse of lucia, as she scurried off like a little black rabbit with her precious food and her strange secret. and now she was really gone and had said goodbye. "why didn't i tell alma?" sighed nora, regretfully. "she might have known a better way to have helped her." too late to reason thus, nora with a heavy heart again covered the tin box, hoping something would bring lucia back; then she took the quaint floral token and started for the nest. her plans to help lucia had included everything from a change of home to a complete change of identity, for nora felt the stranger must have been in sore need, and why couldn't she induce cousin ted to adopt such a pretty, forlorn child? it was characteristic of nora to decide on the most dramatic course, for such a possibility as a mother, father, or family in the background of lucia's life was not thought of. and was this to be the end of her precious secret? she squeezed the paper bouquet until the humble ribbon wrinkled into a sad bit of stuff, and then decided to put the token away with her most precious belongings. maybe lucia would come back, and if she ever did nora decided positively she would then tell someone about the child, even tell cousin ted if need be, and, certainly, alma. "and now i must go to my letter box," she told cap, the faithful. looking up and down, in and out, far and near, to make sure no one saw her, nora followed the trail to the bent willow--the hiding place of alma's correspondence with the fabled prince. she had been there, the moss was a shade lighter where feet had pressed the velvet nap, and the leaves of the bushes were still "inside out" from a hasty brushing made to clear a path to the bent willow. under the stone, as directed, alma had placed her answer to the prince's letter, and finding it there she quickly hid the envelope in her deepest blouse pocket. she would read it in more comfort, enjoy it more at home, with the door locked. "what an exciting vacation i am having, really!" she reflected. "when i came all i could think of was pretty things." had she been that nora once so filled with foolish fancies that life, brief as it had been to her, seemed too full of nonsense to admit of real joys with girl companions, and any number of adventures? "a real vacation indeed," concluded the girl in khaki, holding close lucia's flowers and alma's letter. she was sorely tempted to peek into the latter, but that would spoil the delicious secret reading, which to be complete would have to be made in solitude. it had been days since she went out "on location" with the cousins--jerry always called surveying "doing location," as the moving picture folks termed their work, but so many other things claimed her attention it seemed difficult to get them all in. cousin ted was very busy herself, but had managed to write nora's mother. a glowing account of the scout interests was surely given in that letter, and jerry was disappointed when ted refused to ask permission for nora to stay during the winter. to this, woman-like, mrs. jerry manton had not agreed, because to go to school in the wilderness is always more picturesque than practical. but nora had endeared herself to those generous hearts, and even the thought of that real mother with an unreal name did not thrill her as did the knowledge that she had "made good" with these devoted friends. home now--that is to the nest, nora rushed up to her room to devour alma's letter. she ignored vita's appeal to come see the wonderful flowers sent from some one for mrs. manton. she must read the letter before going down to dinner. in the biggest chair by the open window beyond locked doors she unfolded the precious page. "she writes a pretty hand," was the first comment. then she read: "'camp chickadee. "'my dear prince: "'how wonderful to get a letter from you! as you have guessed i did think of you ever since. please tell me who you are and where you live? we scouts would love to know you and perhaps we can tell you some interesting things about america, if, as i surmise, you are a visitor here.'" "oh mercy," gasped nora. "i have only made matters worse. she actually believes i am a prince. what ever shall i do?" the letter lay mute and yet accusing. nora had written alma a first letter to prepare her for the second. true, she did not explain--but she fancied somehow alma would come to the tree, and then perhaps they would meet and settle the whole troublesome business. "but it's worse, heaps worse," sighed nora. the call from down stairs was unanswered, for she must plan something else and that quickly. first she thought of writing another letter with a complete and full confession, but she dreaded it, shrank from it and finally abandoned the idea. "if it only were not alma," she sighed. "i would almost enjoy the joke on some of the others, but alma!" nothing could be worse than this nagging at her conscience. she must conquer it. and here was the new trouble about lucia! "i always thought secrets were such fun, and yet these are positively--tragic," she thought. "if only i could tell alma about lucia, at least that would be a comfort." another call from vita. cousin ted and cousin jerry were in now. the cheery whistle and the joyful "whoo-hoo!" must be answered. "oh, dear me!" sighed nora. "i suppose things always happen that way." she gave lucia's flowers an affectionate squeeze, dropped them into her ivory box, slipped alma's letter under the cushion and went down to dinner. chapter xx the worst fright of all it was growing dusk--the sunset seemed in a great hurry to get away, and day time was evidently going to the same party. the mantons failed to induce nora to accompany them on a "bug hunt," jerry's term for ted's moth expedition. vita too seemed in haste to get somewhere, and altogether the evening was especially popular to make escapes in. nora was going over to camp, she announced, and would be there long before dark. the girls would come home with her, she had assured the prudent ted. so everything was settled and the nest would be unoccupied, with cap as guard, for that evening. not a smile broke the serious look on nora's face. it was evident the program for the evening included something very important. "goodbye," called out ted. "be sure to go over to camp, right away, or the dark will--catch you." "yes'm," echoed jerry, "and mr. dark knows no distinctions at wildwoods. he throws a big black blanket over the whole kaboodle." nora replied, but even the joke did not cheer her. a few minutes later she stood at the foot of the attic stairs, drew a long breath; then dashed up. over to the chest that contained the costumes long ignored, she literally dashed, yanked up the lid and dragged out the lord fauntleroy outfit. she counted the pieces, waist, jacket, knickers, sash--where was the cap? nervously she fumbled over the tangle of garments, but did not find it. "i had better dress first," she decided, "and come up again for the cap. i am--so--nervous----" no need to make the confession, for even her hands, young and usually steady, actually dropped the velvet coat right on the dusty attic floor. no time for looking in the mirror. the knickers were kept up with round garters now, a scout acquisition, and the thin white blouse that went under the jacket, went under very quickly--fullness and strings jabbed in wherever space allowed. in a remarkably short time she was inside the entire outfit. one glimpse in the glass assured her she was again garbed as the fickle prince. then for the cap. "i have time to run and get it," she assured herself. "of course, i must have that cap." back to the attic, now a shade darker, and then again into the mysteries of the costume chest, she rummaged. "oh, dear," she sighed. "i'll be--here it is! thank goodness!" she just jabbed it on her head. a sound startled her. she stood still, every sense alert. "what was it?" she instinctively asked. again. it--was--a low--moan! pausing only long enough to make sure her nerves were not fooling her, nora heard again, distinctly, a sound, a human or inhuman moan! then she rushed down the stairs, kept on rushing until she reached the street door, and realizing no person was upon the premises, ran down the road, straight for chickadee camp. no thought of her appearance concerned her; she must get the girls to come back and find out what was in the attic! only once she stopped, just to make sure the cap was not going to fall off her yellow head. voices and laughter came to meet her. that was thistle and wyn---gulping back a choking, nervous gasp, she rushed on. the next minute she dashed into chickadee camp and stood before an amazed group of scouts. "the prince!" went up a shout. "my prince!" corrected alma. "why, it's nora----" "girls!" gasped the intruder. "listen, please, i am no prince----" "you are indeed. just look at the dandy outfit. alma, we most humbly apologize----" "wyn," shouted thistle, "please listen! can't you see there is something the matter?" "oh, there is really, girls," panted nora. "come quick! there is someone--dying in our--attic!" "dying?" "i was up there--getting these things, and i--heard the awfulest moans----" "maybe it was cap," suggested treble. her eyes had not wandered from the surprising spectacle. "oh, no, he was outside," said nora, "and no one is home, not even vita. oh, please do come! i know someone is in agony," and her voice trailed off into agony of her own. "i'll lead," volunteered thistle. "come along, every one. alma, you can take care of your--prince," she could not resist injecting. "oh alma," sighed nora. "i was planning to come to explain to you----" "you don't need to," and a most affectionate and all encompassing look went from alma to nora. "i know all--about it now, and you are my prince, just the same." "come along, you two lovers," ordered thistle the leader. "you had a 'crush' on nora from the first, alma. now we all know why. fall in there, betta. no need to wait for guns----" "i am not going without some weapon of defense," declared betta. "nora knows her own attic, and she knows when someone is moaning. it may be a lunatic. there is always an asylum in a pretty place like this." "oh, is there?" cried nora. "i would be afraid to face a--lunatic in that big, dark, attic----" "i should think you would, lunatic or just plain, human being," agreed laddie. "you look delectable enough for anyone to just eat you up----" "can't you girls realize this is an emergency, not a debate?" snapped thistle. "we don't suppose nora is dying of fright just for fun. betta, run over and tell becky." "oh, don't let's have her along," interrupted treble, bent on making the most of the adventure. "you know she would have to do something we wouldn't." "right," agreed wyn. "come along scouts! 'jeuty' calls us." they had been "coming along" all the time. these expressions merely gave vent to pent up energy. nora, although thoroughly frightened, was thankful that the dark helped hide her dismay. alma had her arm, and alma was thinking in terms of "prince," even the pretender was conscious of that. the girls giggled and talked, as they always did, and as betta took time to remark, "they would be apt to do it at their own funerals." there was no suppressing wyn, and treble fell but a peg below in volubility. "look out there!" called thistle. everyone halted. "what?" demanded wyn. "a puddle," replied the heartless leader. "and i'm responsible for the shine on your shoes, lunatic or no lunatic," she declared loudly. "when my turn comes to lead for a week i'll have that wretched girl up every day at dawn," threatened betta. "she has the cruelest way of raising one's hopes." "had you hopes for the lunatic in the mud puddle?" demanded laddie. "you had better get your sense valve working," suggested doro. "we are almost there." "right," added treble. "i can see the gate light now." "how ever will we go up there in the dark?" nora asked alma. "i will be afraid to go into the house." "don't you worry, dear," alma was still under the influence. "we will all go in together, and thistle isn't afraid of man or beast." arrived at the nest nora was confronted with a light at the back of the house. "someone home?" suggested thistle. "there shouldn't be," declared nora. "everyone is out for the evening." "where is vita?" asked the same leader. they had stopped at the natural hedge, and now stood under the picturesque, homemade arc light--jerry's lantern with the red globe. "vita went out somewhere. she often does, and you see i was going over to camp, so there was, really, no one at home." "your dying princess has come down stairs to die," suggested the irrepressible wyn. "princess?" scoffed nora. "or was it merely a maid in waiting--excuse me, your _man_ in waiting." "wyn," shouted laddie, "can't you see you are making yourself ridiculous at a time like this?" she probably couldn't for she went off into a gale of laughter and had to go behind a bush to enjoy it. "there is someone in the kitchen," declared treble. "here she comes!" she did; she came right out and greeted them. it was vita! chapter xxi strange disclosures for a moment no one spoke--they were all so surprised. "hello!" called out vita. "what's this? a party?" her english was perfect. "no, it isn't vita," nora managed to answer. "i was almost scared to death----" "let me tell her, nora," interrupted thistle, the leader. "i'm not going in that house with her until cousin ted comes home," declared nora. "vita is always putting me off. she knows what that noise up in the attic is." "have you heard it before?" asked betta. "yes, a number of times----" "then, if the moaner did not die before, nora, what makes you think the present attack would be fatal?" wyn came out from the bush to inquire. "land sakes, wyn! will you hush? fun is all right in its place but this is serious," warned pell. "looks it," whispered the same wyn, into betta's unwilling ear. "nonsense, standing here like a----" "serenading party," finished laddie. "let's begin." "serenading?" an uncertain and feeble whistle followed, but in the dark no one owned up to it. "you coming in? no?" asked and answered vita. "no. we are not coming in," declared nora, who had stepped up to the door at which the spacious vita stood. "we heard a noise up in the attic and we were coming in to investigate, but we won't now." the girls were audibly disappointed. they said so outright. "perhaps she doesn't know a thing about it," suggested laddie. "don't you think, nora, we ought to go in and look around?" "no, i don't. she is in the plot, or secret or whatever it is," declared nora aside. "when i first came here i heard it----" "why didn't you tell us?" demanded doro. the parade had come to a useless halt. "i don't know," murmured nora. "you know i had queer ideas at first," she faltered, unconsciously smoothing down the pretty little velvet knickers and slipping a nervous hand into an inadequate pocket. "we know, but we all have--at first," admitted laddie. "i used to think i would love thistle, and see what she has done to us with her old bossing." the challenge went unanswered. "can't we go to the bench and talk it over?" suggested betta, unwilling to leave the scene thus unsatisfied. "oh, no, please don't," begged nora. "i don't know just what i fear, but actually, girls," she did whisper this, "i am as much afraid of vita now as i am of the thing up in the attic." "your nice, fat, good natured vita?" asked pell in surprise. the person spoken of had gone indoors discreetly. "i don't mean that i am afraid of her all the time," nora hastened to correct. "she is as good as gold, generally, and i am sure vita is honorable. but it is that attic affair--she is in some way connected with that, and i am not going to take a chance of getting frightened again tonight. you have no idea how i felt, up there all alone, in fact i was all alone in the house when i heard that groan." "groan?" wyn could not resist. "i thought it was a moan?" but no one paid any attention to the remark. betta suggested they agree with nora and all go back to camp. "we can bring nora back home about the time she expects her cousin jerry," betta's suggestion included. "there is no sense in subjecting her to more terror with the italian woman." "for once i agree with you, betta," answered thistle. "march back to the chickadee, every scout of you, and see that you don't wallow in that mud puddle." "but the prince?" inquired wyn. "is he to walk through ordinary mud puddles?" "no. of course not. you and the other big girl, treble by name, are to carry him. avaunt!" ordered the leader. "oh please----" protested nora; but in vain. she was upon the shoulders of wyn and treble before she had a chance to finish her useless appeal. "put your royal arms around me," chanted treble. "if you don't you may be dumped," warned the other slave. "listen!" ordered someone. "here comes the whole camp! are we out after hours?" "if we are we can plead emergency," explained thistle. "how could we wait for permission when someone was moaning to death?" they took up the march in real earnest. as faithful scouts they always kept to regulations and found pleasure in doing so. only nora's call of distress had lured them away as darkness was setting in. "please let me walk," begged nora. "i know you must get back as quickly as you can, and i am sure i have given you enough trouble." "we love to carry you," insisted wyn. "besides, we know it's our last chance. alma will be unconscious in the throes of love from this on," she finished with a lurch that brought the erstwhile prince to "his" feet in spite of their intentions. a few more accidents, minor and major, according to the way said accidents were accepted, and the squad arrived at chickadee. nora was now more embarrassed than ever. how could she again go in among all those sensibly-clad girls in that ridiculous costume? besides, now she was bound to tell the whole miserable story. "where have you girls been?" began becky, who stood waiting. "did you not know this was story night?" "we have been out scouting, and we did," replied thistle in her most docile tone. "becky, love, we have the bravest thrill of our entire career to unfold." "begin, please, by explaining the infraction of hours," said miss beckwith, although her manner belied her demand, and the summer twilight lasted. "the thrill is none other than someone, anyone, dying of moans," said wyn. "we have with us tonight----" at this she craned her neck over the tallest of them to locate little nora. but she, the guest of honor, was hiding behind treble. "when you hear the whole wonderful tale," promised pell, "you will only be sorry you were not along. we have been out gunning for attic ghosts." after more talk of this variety nora was dragged forth. how pretty she looked in the camp light! a glow from the fire that had been lighted for stories, surrounded the little prince, and, as the picturesque figure stood in the center of the group of admiring eyes, even the glory of the modern scout uniform was threatened with eclipse. in the late twilight the effect was entrancing. "isn't she darling?" "just look at those--panties?" "oh, don't you remember----" "sweet alice ben bolt." "no, not alice, but the night we fought over those bloomers," recalled treble. "they're not bloomers. they're rompers." then began that whole foolish debate which ended up by thistle declaring they might be overalls for all it mattered, if only the girls would let nora tell her story. pell and treble agreed. the introduction was briefly outlined for becky's benefit, then nora was allowed to tell it as it appeared to her--that is, she was allowed to begin to tell it that way, but what with the interruptions, the suggestions, the questions, and the qualifying clauses, it was small wonder the willing culprit made poor headway. as the story took the shape of a confession nora seemed to be the culprit, but judging from the approval voiced by the multitude they all had little regard for _her_ brand of "crime." in other words, nora only imagined she had offended, the entire detail made a most interesting story as it was told around the campfire blaze of chickadee patrol. she admitted frankly that her early notions were anything but practical, she bravely recounted her weakness for fancy things, including ivory bureau sets and pink ribbons, to which more than one chickadee added her own little admission, in fact, pell said she always did and always would love pink; brown khaki and smoked pearl buttons to the contrary notwithstanding. the telling of her attempt at attic tenancy brought forth peal after peal of laughter, in which nora joined. then she told all about her disguise as the fabled and famous prince. "i think it is all too jolly for words," insisted laddie, "and what do you say, girls, to our adopting prince adorable for our mascot?" this precipitated more trouble. nora was put on the table, that long box used when weather was pleasant and drenched when weather was wet, and from that grandstand, or throne, she was called upon to make silly speeches, prompted by wyn and interrupted by betta. alma objected. she insisted nora had hinted to her something she ought to tell the others. and she further maintained it was a matter serious enough to put a stop to all nonsense, and "if the girls aren't willing to listen quietly, i shall take nora over to the other tent, where she can tell becky in peace," threatened alma. this put a soft pedal on all unnecessary sounds: even wyn desisted. "tell us, nora, please do tell," begged wyn. "we have had fun enough to give our poor jaws a rest. mine are aching from laughing." so nora began. chapter xxii the danger squad in action it was a fascinating tale. every detail told by nora took on new value as it was silently applauded by her eager audience. thus encouraged she waxed eloquent, and when she finished all about the wearing of the fauntleroy costume, then her desire to tell alma the truth, when she knew the scouts were teasing the tenderfoot, the recital might well have been called a credit, even to the girl who felt guilty of its secrets. "you see," she said naã¯vely, "i was always so much alone. i had no companion but barbara, and she agreed with everything i said." "what a change this must be!" murmured wyn. "hush!" warned betta. "funny as you are, wynnie, you _can_ be rude." "and now, girls," said nora in a brand new tone of voice, "as i have told you all of that, i feel anxious to tell you something else. i have another secret and i think it is much more serious than anything else that has happened on this wonderful vacation." "out with it," begged some one, but nora did not hear the thoughtless phrase. miss beckwith sat with the girls, encouraging their confidences, and the usual safety in numbers was surely a clue to the satisfaction of the novel meeting. secrets were best shared by the multitude, then what one was not wise enough to know, some one would surely be clever enough to guess--so far as solution of the problem went. "one day when i was wandering around--it was the day we had such a wonderful time----" nora started. "when you learned to swim?" prompted wynnie. "i think it was. well, i just walked along a lane i had never found before," continued the prince--for she was still that noble character, "and under a cave of pines--they grew so thick i could hardly see there, it was almost as dark as night; and right there, in a bed of leaves i saw something move." just who was it that choked back wyn's interruption does not matter, but presently nora continued: "at first, of course, i thought it was a dog or something like that, but all of a sudden it sat up!" "oh!" exclaimed the sympathetic alma. "yes, it sat up and looked at me with eyes like coals of fire." "nora!" shouted laddie. "i am all goose flesh, please tell us who had the eyes." "i'm trying to," said nora, realizing the value of pauses. "i was so frightened i wanted to run, but before i could do so the creature showed how frightened she was----" "she!" this was betta. "yes, it was a poor, miserable little girl, all rags and eyes, and so sad looking! really girls, my heart went out to her," declared the story teller in her most nora-esque manner. titters barely tinctured the atmosphere. miss beckwith begged the girls to listen politely. "i managed to get her to tell me her name," said nora next. "and it was lucia." "lucia," repeated a chorus in perfect time, pronouncing it "luchia." "yes, a poor, neglected, little italian girl, who has to work on one of the big farms----" "there!" almost shouted alma. "i knew when you saved your picnic lunch it was for something noble. it was for lucia, wasn't it?" "yes, but after bringing her food for days she suddenly disappeared." "what happened to her?" asked pell. "how can i tell?" sighed nora. "i have done everything to find out. i have even had cousin ted drive me around the big farms hoping to get a glimpse of her, but i never saw any one who even looked like her. then, i haven't told you the most pathetic part," she paused again. "the last day i went to fetch her a lovely piece of pie, you know i used to put food in a big tin box vita gave me; well, there was all that i had left the day before. of course, i was awfully disappointed and i felt so--sorry i had not told you girls----" "if you had, nora," said miss beckwith, gently, "we might have found a way to help the child." "i know that, becky, and i am telling this now partly to----" "ease your conscience," prompted pell. "yes; i don't want any more secrets. they are more worry than they can possibly be worth," said nora tritely. "you were telling us about the box," prompted alma. "oh, yes; but i must hurry, i have to go home very soon. it is time the folks were back." "tell us the rest and we won't interrupt once," promised wyn in a contrite tone, and she seemed to mean it. "i found a little paper bouquet in the box," nora continued. "and a scribbled bit of paper." "what was on it?" betta could not help asking. "just a few words, 'goodbye, i love you.'" nora stopped suddenly. "the poor, little thing," commiserated alma. "and could you find no way to tell who she was or where she lived?" "i didn't dare ask anyone outright," answered nora, "because you see, i had promised not to tell anyone about meeting her. she was in terror of a man she called nick." "nick?" repeated a number. "yes; she would only say he was a bad man, and i know she feared him for she would tremble so when she mentioned his name." miss beckwith had remained in the background. if she knew a way to solve the mystery, evidently she did not think the time had come to disclose it. "but when i found she was gone--i knew what a mistake i had made in not telling anyone about it. even if she was afraid, i could surely have trusted--alma," sighed nora. in the semi-darkness none could see the look of affection alma threw out. her sensitive soul had found solace in the companionship of the almost equally sensitive nora. "i must go," insisted nora. "the folks will be home and i am going to tell them about that attic noise tonight, vita or no vita." "you are perfectly right in that," said miss beckwith. "come along, girls, we will all see nora home this time." they wanted to carry her back, but costumed and all that she was, nora felt little like partaking in their frolic. she feared something. that moaning was human, of this she was certain; and it was equally certain that vita was in too good health when she appeared at the door, to have been in any way implicated, physically. "if your folks have not returned will you come back and stay all night?" suggested betta. "we could leave a message for them and you know you have not stayed a single night at camp yet." "i am sure they are at home, i see the light in the living room," responded nora. "but thank you, just the same, betta. i shall love to stay a night soon, i have been counting on having that treat before this vacation is over." they had rounded the curve and the nest was now in full view. presently they were at the door and nora touched the knocker. there was no immediate response and she wondered. "i can see inside, the curtain is up, and i don't see a soul," she declared. "nor hear a sound," added pell who was listening at the keyhole. here was another cause for wonderment. nora rapped the knocker until the sound seemed doubly loud, reverberating in the dusk. but there was no answer. "what can it mean?" asked nora anxiously. "i am sure some one lighted the lights, can they have gone out looking for me?" "can't you get in?" asked miss beckwith. "yes. i know where to find the emergency key. but i don't think i'll go in." nora seemed doomed to spend the night at camp after all. the girls crowded around. plainly any excitement was a welcome diversion for them. "maybe the groaner lighted up," suggested wyn, facetiously. "she seems to like traveling." "you are so brave, wynnie," said miss beckwith, "i wonder would you be brave enough to go in and investigate?" "certainly," came the quick rejoinder. "i'd like nothing better. volunteers?" she called out. "hush!" begged nora. "it may be that vita is upstairs and has not heard us, although she must have heard that knock." again she rapped the knocker. "hark!" said betta. "i honestly thought i heard a cry." everyone was now breathless. "i do hear some one crying," declared alma. "whoever can it be?" "that up-attic person, i'm sure," said wyn. "better get the key, nora. we can't let them cry to death while we are all here, listening in." "i think i heard crying," said miss beckwith. "perhaps you had better open the door, nora." from under the fern dish nora procured the key. miss beckwith took it, and presently the door was open. the hall was flooded with light, but everyone instinctively stepped back. there was no sound. "where's cap?" asked nora. "we left him here." "there is really nothing to fear," said miss beckwith. "here we are, a half dozen of us. i think we had better go inside. maybe poor old cap is locked in somewhere and held captive." "oh, that's so," replied nora. "he has a habit of getting in closets and he might have sprung the door shut. sometimes he moans----" that was enough to excite practical sympathy, and everyone promptly stepped inside. once within, it did not seem so fearful. pell prowled around and wyn made foolish noises; but nora hung back. after satisfying themselves there was nothing wrong on the first floor they decided to investigate the second. "i can always hear it right over my room," said nora when the band of chickadees inundated that territory. "there! did you hear that?" "yes, someone is crying upstairs," declared miss beckwith, "and we must see who it is." "but suppose----" "here's cap. he would not let anyone touch us," declared nora. "but becky----" "come along, girls, that is not the voice of a man or woman. come, we must do something. it sounds like----" bouncing up on nora, cap whined. "there, he knows, he wants me to go up. what is it, cap?" nora asked again, and again the dog whined piteously. now, everyone was willing to lead, yet they formed quite an orderly drill. this was an emergency and emergency always means order for scouts. chapter xxiii raiding the attic no one could tell just how they got there, but realizing that some one was suffering they had all followed cap to the attic, and there waited again for the sound that was to lead them to the victim. "there's a cabinet over there," nora whispered. "a person might hide in that." she was holding on to alma and looked odd, indeed, still dressed in that gorgeous velvet costume. "here's another light--this will show us the far end there," said miss beckwith, snapping on the extra bulb. "there it is!" gasped pell. "oh, it is somewhere--yes, come over here," she cried. "surely that's a child!" the faint cry, that was almost like a sob, sounded again. it must be over under the low beams. nora forgot her terror now, for she knew the secret place of the long, rumbling attic, and no sooner had she heard the distinct cry than she brushed past all the others, dragged up a big dust curtain, then stopped. "here! here!" she called frantically. "it's a little girl. bring the candle!" thistle was beside her with the extra light. "oh, mercy!" gasped nora. "it's lucia." "lucia," repeated the others. "yes, my own little darling lucia. oh, child," she cried out, "what has happened to you? how ever did you get here?" "go away. please, go away. i can't tell you. oh, where is vita? vita come!" begged a voice, while nora tried in vain to soothe her. "let me there!" ordered miss beckwith. "the poor little thing!" she continued. "she evidently has had a fit of hysteria. just see her gasp! keep quiet, dear," she said gently. "you are all right now. we will take care of you. there! stop sobbing. don't you know the girls?" "she knows me, don't you, lucia?" asked nora, anxiously. "oh, i am so glad we found her. she might have died." "don't let us waste time in talking. here girls. use your first aid, now. we must carry her down stairs to the air," ordered miss beckwith. they carried her down carefully and laid her on a couch by the window. "where is this?" the girl murmured. then she looked into nora's face and something of the terror left her own. "angel," she said simply, blinking uncertainly. "you know this little girl, don't you, lucia?" pressed becky now, anxious to arouse her. "yes," she said. nora cast a look of appeal at the director. she wanted to speak to the sick girl. becky motioned she might do so. "lucia," began nora, very gently, "where did--you--come from?" "i run away from--nick," she gasped, and again that look of terror flashed across the little pinched face. "don't be frightened; you are here with me, nora, now," said the girl in the velvet suit. "no one can touch you here." "where--is--vita? she not come back, bring doctor?" that was it. vita had gone for a doctor. "she'll be here soon," soothed miss beckwith. the scouts stood spell bound. how wonderful to have found the poor little waif right in nora's own attic! there was a sound below. vita came stamping up the stairs. "what is it?" she panted. then seeing the crowd. "you come--save my poor little lucia!" "yes, vita, we are here," replied nora, sensing now the part that vita had been playing. "we brought her down." "poor lucia. vita's baby--vita's bambino," crooned the woman, as she leaned over the couch and chaffed the trembling hands. it was a pathetic picture. the brilliantly-lighted room was like a stage with this strange drama being enacted upon it. the row of scouts were unconsciously standing like a patrol at attention, while nora in fauntleroy dress, stood at lucia's head; and the woman in the quaint peasant attire bent over; and then, there on the soft, bright couch, lay the inert figure with the great eyes staring out from under the bandage, evidently put on the hot forehead by vita. no questions asked, every one could see the child was kin to vita, but not her own child, perhaps her granddaughter. "she will be all right now, i think, vita," said miss beckwith. "she just had a spell of hysteria, didn't she?" "oh, she have a fit very bad," whispered the woman. "i run for doctor, quick, but he is no place----" her voice droned off into a low sound of foreign words, lamentation and wailings. "why was she shut up there?" asked nora. "she beg for dark--she never go in light when fit comes," vita managed to make them understand. "i always hide her--she runs from nick like anything. but he no hurt her, never. just one time he scare her. she always cry so much he t'ink she might get better, and he scare her. lucia run away and come to vita, every time." "he didn't really hurt her," miss beckwith was both asking vita and explaining to the girls. "hysterical children must have a dread of something, and i suppose she seized on that." lucia now sat up and looked about her. all the fear had left her, and her black eyes shone with relief. "she's all right now, aren't you, lucia?" thistle ventured to ask. the other girls were still spellbound. "lovely," replied the child, actually rubbing her brown hand on the soft couch cover almost as if she were saying, "nice! nice!" "there come cousin jerry and cousin ted!" exclaimed nora. "i'll bring them right up." "what mrs. jerry say?" asked vita, anxiously. "oh, that will be all right, vita," said nora, running along. "she'll understand everything." it is marvelous what sympathy can explain. no need for words to fill out the gaps. "well, what a reception!" exclaimed the surprised ted. "i never expected such a party as this." her eyes fell upon lucia. "a refugee?" she asked kindly. "vita's little girl, cousin ted," said nora, promptly. "we found her--sick." she did not say where. "she is in good hands now, i am sure," said mrs. manton, glancing around at the patrol. "we were detained with our fractious car--should have been home ages ago. did you need anything? have you had a doctor?" "she seemed merely hysterical," explained becky. "i don't think she needs a doctor tonight. she will probably sleep well after the excitement--and exhaustion," she added in an undertone. "well, of all things," exclaimed mrs. manton, suddenly getting a good look at nora. "have you been having a masquerade?" "a little scout party," miss beckwith replied, to save nora embarrassment. "this has been an eventful evening." "must have been," agreed the hostess. "shall we all go down and leave the child to rest?" she proposed. "_we_ must go," assured the leader. "it is not ten o'clock, i hope?" "no, and we'll run you over in our car--if the car will run. mr. manton is out tinkering with it. that's how he missed the excitement," ted explained. nora hung back with lucia. she felt she had found her after so much anxiety, she was almost afraid the child would be spirited away if she should lose sight of her now. "how nice!" said vita, and the relief in her own voice proved that the big woman had been suffering no little anxiety, herself. "i go home now, vita," said lucia, humbly. "i'm sorry, vita." "oh, you don't have to go home, lucia," nora hurried to interrupt. "you can stay right here. you don't want to go hide in the dark any more, do you lucia?" "but i don't want to make the trouble." "she is so good when the fit is gone," said vita, affectionately. "poor lucia, she can no help it." "of course, she can't. i'll tell you, vita, we'll ask cousin ted and i'm sure she'll let us fix lucia up in that nice attic bed. would you like that, lucia?" enthused nora. "she love the attic," said vita. "she come every time, and i must hide her. but i no like to make the bother----" "and that was why you kept it secret!" said nora. "well, vita, i did think you were--mean," she paused to soften the word, "but now i know why. and i am so glad to find lucia again. you see, i knew her before." "you bring her the cakes----" "and you knew that, too?" nora's secrets were fast evaporating. "well, at any rate, vita, you gave me a nice tin box and all the good things you could make, so i won't blame you. i'll run along and ask cousin ted about the attic. dear me! what a blessing the girls came over with me! we might have been going on this way--for weeks and not have found out," she added. "but the girls have to hurry off; it is getting time to answer the night roll call. i'll be back in a minute, vita," she was talking fast. "don't let lucia move until i tell you," she warned. "all right, little nora," replied vita fondly. "i have two little girls, now; yes, lucia?" "the girls have to leave without hearing this whole wonderful story, nora," said ted, as they crowded out to the car, "but i have asked them to come over tomorrow. they will die of curiosity in the meantime if miss beckwith does not keep them too busy to get into such mischief," added the young woman jocularly. "oh, nora!" called out wyn, "you come right over about daylight, will you? we'll leave a tent flap loose and you can crawl in. i would have nervous prostration if i had to wait until after inspection to hear the sequel. good night!" "good night! good night! everybody!" went up the customary shout, and when the reliable little car, so recently called fractious by its owner, rumbled out into the roadway, the scouts were actually singing their camp song. how wonderful to be girls! and how wonderful to be girl scouts! chapter xxiv fulfillment "of course, she'll come over. didn't i say i'd leave a flap up?" asked wyn. it was so early that the very chickadees, after whom the patrol had been named, were still asleep in their own tree-top scout tents. "as if she could get out of bed----" "why couldn't she? after last night i wonder if she will ever feel safe in bed again. seems to me," said the incorrigible wynnie, "she could do lots more good sitting up--raiding attics and things like that." "but chicks," said thistle from a rumpled pillow, "isn't that child a dream?" "you mean didn't that child dream----" "no, i do not. i think she is the most adorable thing. why, she looks exactly like a painting we have----" "there--there," soothed treble. "don't get homesick," pell called out. "we have a few more days to go before time to break camp and you want to be in at the big party, don't you?" "i think the prince part simply the most marvelous story i have ever heard," said treble, under her breath. it was too early to join in a general wake-up. "leave it to alma," whispered laddie. "i always said these quiet little girls have the most fun. i heard wyn groaning in her sleep after every one else was aslumber. that's the kind of fun _she_ has." "looks as if nora had not walked in _her_ sleep, at any rate," put in betta. "i move we get up and slick things up early. how do we know but the myth flew away in the night?" "we don't, but she didn't," replied treble crisply. "but hark to a familiar sound. it calls arise----" then began the duties, and in spite of their anxiety to get over to the nest, the scouts did succeed in performing their tasks with the usual accuracy and unusual alacrity. at nine o'clock they were free. no need to ask what anyone was going to do that morning. every girl scout who had been in "the raid" was ready to run before the day's orders had been read from the bulletin. they headed for the mantons' cottage. "did you ever?" "no, i never!" this was a part of the meaningless contribution in words offered as the girls came up to the nest. they had seen the tableau on the front porch. "hello!" called out nora. "'lo, yourself," sang back thistle. "too early for a fashionable call?" asked treble. "come along, girls," mrs. manton welcomed them. "i am sure nora has been anxiously waiting for you. i'll let her tell you the news," she finished, indicating the chairs for the party. lucia was in a big steamer chair. it almost swallowed up the tiny figure, but she had a way of reclining, quite gracefully. "how are you today, lucia?" asked alma. "oh, i'm all right," replied the child, pinking through her dark skin. she looked very pretty in one of nora's bright rose dresses, with the same color hair ribbon, and her feet encased in a pair of white slippers. no wonder she was "all right." "she's going to stay," said nora proudly. "we've adopted her." "quick work," remarked laddie. "but i don't blame you. she looks as if she grew right here in this lovely big wild wood. don't you like it, lucia?" "lots, much," said the child. "we found out all about it, of course," continued nora. "lucia won't mind if i tell you?" she questioned. "no," said the stranger. the single word indicated her timidity. "you see, she is the daughter of vita's daughter who died last year," nora explained. "she has been living with cousins, and the man nick, of whom she was so frightened, is the cousin's husband." lucia now seemed to shrink back, and at that sign nora signaled the girls to leave the porch and adjourn to more convenient quarters for their confidences. once away from the restriction, words flew back and forth in questions and answers, until wyn wanted to know if it was all a duet between alma and nora, or could they make it a chorus? "and he didn't beat her?" demanded pell. "and she is really related to vita, not kidnapped?" asked betta. "you didn't find her all bruised up----" "now girls," scoffed nora. "i know perfectly well you don't think anything of the kind. you all know vita was always kind and generous----" "whew!" whistled wyn. "how we can change! i thought she was a regular bear this time yesterday morning." "i think your cousins are perfectly splendid," said betta, sensibly. "is she really going to adopt the child?" "we had a doctor this morning," said nora with an important air, "and he advised change of scene----" "let's take her over to chickadee!" interrupted thistle. "that would be a distinct and decided change." "oh, hush," begged alma. "what else did the doctor say, nora?" "she is hysterical--all came from the fright of her mother's sudden death," continued nora. "but girls, i don't know how much to thank you," she broke off. "being a scout has done much for me." "we believe you," said wyn in her usual bantering way. "but say, little girl, are you going back to that school where they teach you to wear silk underwear in the cold, blasty winter weather? couldn't you make out to get adopted at the nest yourself?" a laugh, then a set of laughs, followed this. "you are coming over to camp tonight, remember," said alma, seriously. "we have not initiated you yet, you know." "how about that first formal ducking, with jimbsy in the background?" pell reminded them. "that seemed all right for an initiation." mrs. manton was coming down the path with the inevitable letter. was there ever a story finished without "a letter"? mr. jerry followed up. it was, as you have guessed, from nora's mother, and she did grant permission for her to stay. "so," said mrs. teddy manton, otherwise theodora, while the real jerry looked over her shoulder at the letter, and cap sniffed approvingly at nora's khaki skirt, "we expect to have nora go to school in town this winter, and perhaps next summer we will all be back again at rocky ledge." "this was a real vacation," sighed nora, "the best i ever had." "three cheers!" yelled the scouts; and lucia from her porch was truly sorry she had ever called those girls "crazy." it was all so comfortable and safe now. even her "bad fit" was gone with the winds, and how lovely to be out in the sunlight and have nothing to fear! again came a riotous shout from the girls on and off the bench. "chick! chick! chick-a-dees!" they yelled. and it must have been wyn who echoed: "cut! cut! ka-dah! cut!" girl scouts are many and their adventures equally numerous, from mountain to valley, over hill and dale, and their further activities will be told of in the next volume of this series, which will be entitled: the girl scouts at spindlewood knoll. the end. the girl scout series by lilian garis 12mo. cloth. illustrated. jacket in full colors price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid the highest ideals of girlhood as advocated by the foremost organizations of america form the background for these stories and while unobtrusive there is a message in every volume. 1. the girl scout pioneers, _or winning the first b. c._ a story of the true tred troop in a pennsylvania town. two runaway girls, who want to see the city, are reclaimed through troop influence. the story is correct in scout detail. 2. the girl scouts at bellaire, _or maid mary's awakening_ the story of a timid little maid who is afraid to take part in other girls' activities, while working nobly alone for high ideals. how she was discovered by the bellaire troop and came into her own as "maid mary" makes a fascinating story. 3. the girl scouts at sea crest, _or the wig wag rescue_ luna land, a little island by the sea, is wrapt in a mysterious seclusion, and kitty scuttle, a grotesque figure, succeeds in keeping all others at bay until the girl scouts come. 4. the girl scouts at camp comalong, _or peg of tamarack hills_ the girls of bobolink troop spend their summer on the shores of lake hocomo. their discovery of peg, the mysterious rider, and the clearing up of her remarkable adventures afford a vigorous plot. 5. the girl scouts at rocky ledge, _or nora's real vacation_ nora blair is the pampered daughter of a frivolous mother. her dislike for the rugged life of girl scouts is eventually changed to appreciation, when the rescue of little lucia, a woodland waif, becomes a problem for the girls to solve. send for our free illustrated catalogue cupples & leon company, publishers, new york the ruth fielding series by alice b. emerson 12mo. illustrated. price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid ruth fielding was an orphan and came to live with her miserly uncle. her adventures and travels will hold the interest of every reader. ruth fielding of the red mill _or jasper parloe's secret_ ruth fielding at briarwood hall _or solving the campus mystery_ ruth fielding at snow camp _or lost in the backwoods_ ruth fielding at lighthouse point _or nita, the girl castaway_ ruth fielding at silver ranch _or schoolgirls among the cowboys_ ruth fielding on cliff island _or the old hunter's treasure box_ ruth fielding at sunrise farm _or what became of the raby orphans_ ruth fielding and the gypsies _or the missing pearl necklace_ ruth fielding in moving pictures _or helping the dormitory fund_ ruth fielding down in dixie _or great days in the land of cotton_ ruth fielding at college _or the missing examination papers_ ruth fielding in the saddle _or college girls in the land of gold_ ruth fielding in the red cross _or doing her bit for uncle sam_ ruth fielding at the war front _or the hunt for a lost soldier_ ruth fielding homeward bound _or a red cross worker's ocean perils_ ruth fielding down east _or the hermit of beach plum point_ ruth fielding in the great northwest _or the indian girl star of the movies_ ruth fielding on the st. lawrence _or the queer old man of the thousand islands_ cupples & leon company, publishers, new york [illustration: "i think my trunk is on this train," she said.--_page 7._] molly brown's freshman days by nell speed _with four half-tone illustrations by charles l. wrenn_ new york hurst & company publishers copyright, 1912, by hurst & company contents chapter page i. wellington 5 ii. their neighbor 19 iii. the professor 32 iv. a busy day 46 v. the kentucky spread 62 vi. knotty problems 75 vii. an incident of the coffee cups 86 viii. concerning clubs,--and a tea party 99 ix. rumors and mysteries 115 x. jokes and croaks 130 xi. exmoor college 140 xii. sunday morning breakfast 152 xiii. trickery 164 xiv. an inspiration 177 xv. planning and wishing 188 xvi. the mclean supper 204 xvii. a midnight adventure 216 xviii. the football game 230 xix. three friends 241 xx. miss steel 255 xxi. a bachelor's pocket 266 xxii. christmas--mid-years--and the wanderthirst 276 xxiii. sophomores at last 291 illustrations "i think my trunk is on this train," she said. _frontispiece_ page "i wish you would tell me your receipt for making friends, molly," exclaimed nance. 51 "i'm scared to death," she announced. then she struck a chord and began. 60 it was quite the custom for girls to prepare breakfasts in their rooms. 152 molly brown's freshman days chapter i. wellington. "wellington! wellington!" called the conductor. the train drew up at a platform, and as if by magic a stream of girls came pouring out of the pretty stucco station with its sloping red roof and mingled with another stream of girls emptying itself from the coaches. everywhere appeared girls,--leaping from omnibuses; hurrying down the gravel walk from the village; hastening along the university drive; girls on foot; girls on bicycles; girls running, and girls strolling arm in arm. few of them wore hats; many of them wore sweaters and short walking skirts of white duck or serge, and across the front of each sweater was embroidered a large "w" in cadet blue, the mystic color of wellington university. in the midst of a shouting, gesticulating mob stood mr. murphy, baggage master, smiling good naturedly. "now, young ladies, one at a time, please. we've brought down all the baggage left over by the 9.45. if your trunk ain't on this train, it'll come on the next. all in good time, please." a tall girl with auburn hair and deep blue eyes approached the group. there was a kind of awkward grace about her, the grace which was hers by rights and the awkwardness which comes of growing too fast. she wore a shabby brown homespun suit, a shade darker than her hair, and on her head was an old brown felt which had plainly seen service the year before. but knotted at her neck was a tie of burnt-orange silk which seemed to draw attention away from the shiny seams and frayed hem and to cry aloud: "look at me. i am the color of a winter sunset. never mind the other old togs." surely there was something very brave and jaunty about this young girl who now pushed her way through the crowd of students and endeavored to engage the attention of the baggage-master. "i think my trunk was on this train," she said timidly. "i hope it is. it came from louisville to philadelphia safely, and when i re-checked it they told me it would be on this train." now, murphy, the baggage master, had his own peculiar method of conducting business, and it was strictly a partial and prejudiced one. if he liked the face of a student, he always waited on her first, regardless of how many other students were ahead of her; and, as he told his wife later, he "took a fancy to that overgrown gal from the fust." "i beg your pardon, but mr. murphy is engaged," put in a haughty looking young woman with black eyes that snapped angrily. "now, miss judith," said the baggage master, who knew many of the students by name, "don't go fer to git excited. i ain't made no promises to no one. it's plain to see this here young lady is a newcomer, and, as sich, she gits my fust consideration." "oh, please excuse me," said the girl in shabby brown. "i'm not used to--i mean i haven't traveled very much." judith turned irritably away. "i should think you hadn't," she said in a low voice, but loud enough to be overheard. "freshies have a lot to learn and one is to respect their elders." the new girl put down her straw suit case and leaned against the wall of the station. she looked tired and there was a streak of soot across her cheek. the trip from kentucky in this warm september weather was not the pleasantest journey in the world. while she waited for mr. murphy to return with news of her trunk, her attention was claimed by two girls standing at her elbow who were talking cheerfully together. "yes," said one of them, a plump, brown-eyed girl with brown hair, a slightly turned-up nose and a humorous twitch to her lips, "i have a room at queen's cottage. it's the best i could do unless i went into one of the expensive suites in the dormitories, and you know i might as well expect to take the royal suite on the mauretania and sail for europe as do that." the other girl laughed. "you'd be quite up to doing anything with your enterprising ways, nance oldham," she exclaimed. "oh, are you going to queen's cottage?" here broke in the girl in shabby brown. "i'm there, too. my name is molly brown. i come from kentucky. i feel awfully forlorn and homesick arriving at the university station without knowing a soul." there was a kind of ringing note to molly brown's voice which made the other girls listen more closely. "i wonder if she doesn't sing," thought nance oldham, giving her a quick, scrutinizing glance. "yes, i am at queen's cottage," she continued aloud, "but that's about all i can tell you. i feel like a greeny, too. we'll soon learn, i suppose. this is miss brinton, miss brown." caroline brinton was rather a nondescript young person with dreamy eyes and an absent-minded manner. she came from philadelphia, and she greeted the new acquaintance rather coldly. "your trunk ain't here, yet, miss," called the baggage master. "like enough it'll come on the 6.50." molly looked disturbed, while the black-eyed judith standing nearby flashed a triumphant smile, as much as to say: "it only serves you right for pushing in out of turn." "what are we to do now?" she asked of her new friends, rather helplessly. "take the 'bus up to wellington," said brisk nance oldham. "i know that much. there's one filling up now. we'd better hurry and get seats." the three girls crowded into the long, narrow side-seated vehicle already half filled with students. even at this early stage in their acquaintance, the bonds of loneliness and sympathy had drawn them together. "i'm a stranger in a strange land," molly brown had confided to the listening ear of nance oldham. "i had made up my mind not to be homesick. i really didn't know what the feeling was like, because i have never had a chance to learn. but i know now it's a kind of an all-gone sensation. i suppose little orphans have it when they first go into an orphan asylum." "oh, you'll soon get over it," answered nance. "it's because you live so far away. kentucky, didn't you say?" molly nodded and looked the other way. the memory of an old brick house with broad piazzas and many windows blurred her vision for a moment. but she resolutely pressed her lips together and began to watch the passing scenery, as new and strange to her as the scenery in a foreign land. the road leading to wellington university skirted a pretty village and then plunged straight into the country between rolling meadow lands tinged a golden brown with the autumn sun. and there in the distance were the gray towers of wellington, silhouetted against the sky like a mediæval castle. molly brown clasped her hands and smiled a heavenly smile. "is that it?" she exclaimed rapturously. "it must be," answered nance, who also felt some quiet and reserved flutterings. "it is," said miss brinton. "i came down to engage my room, so i know." in the meantime, there was a busy conversation going on around them. "i'm going to cut gym this year. it interferes too much," exclaimed a tiny girl with birdlike motions and intelligent, beady little eyes as bright and alert as the eyes of a little brown bird. but evidently molly was not the only person who had noticed this resemblance, for one of the students called out: "now, jennie wren, you must admit that gym never had any charms for you and it's a great relief to give it up." "of course she must," put in another girl. "the only exercise jennie wren ever takes is to hop about on the lawn and prune her feathers." "never!" cried jennie wren. "i never wear them, not even quills. i belong to the s. p. c. a." "is there much out-of-door life here?" asked molly brown, of a tall, somewhat older girl sitting opposite her. "this new girl may have timid manners," thought nance oldham; "but she is not afraid to talk to strangers. i suppose that's the friendly southern way. she hasn't been in wellington a quarter of an hour and she has already made three friends,--caroline and the station-master and me. and now she's getting on famously with that older girl. what i like about her is that she isn't a bit self-conscious and she takes it for granted everybody's going to be kind." "oh, yes, lots of it," the older girl was saying to molly kindly. "if you have a taste for that kind of thing, you may indulge it to your heart's content. there is a splendid swimming pool attached to the gym, and there are golf links, of course. you know they are quite famous in this part of the world. then, there are the tennis courts, and we'll still have some canoeing on the lake before the weather gets too cold and later glorious skating. besides all that, there are perfectly ripping walks for miles around. the college has several saturday afternoon walking clubs." "but don't these things interfere with--with lectures?" asked molly, who was really quite ignorant regarding college life, although she had passed her entrance examinations without any conditions whatever. the older girl laughed pleasantly. she was not good looking, but she had a fine face and molly liked her immensely. "oh, no, you'll find there's plenty of time for everything you want to get in, because most things have their season, and most girls specialize, anyhow. a golf fiend is seldom a tennis fiend, and there are lots of walking fiends who don't like either." molly's liking for this big girl and her grave, fine face increased as the conversation progressed. she had a most reassuring, kindly manner and molly noticed that the other girls treated her with a kind of deferential respect and called her "miss stewart." she learned afterward that miss stewart was a senior and a member of the "octogons," the most coveted society in the university. she led in all the athletic sports, was quite a wonderful musician and had composed an operetta for her class and most of the music for the class songs. it was whispered also that she was very rich, though no one would ever have guessed this secret from mary stewart herself, who was careful never to allude to money and dressed very simply and plainly. the omnibus now turned into the avenue which led to the college campus and there was general excitement of a subdued sort among the new girls and greetings and calls from the older girls as they caught glimpses of friends strolling on the lawn. "queen's cottage," called the driver and molly stood up promptly, shrinking a little as twenty pairs of eyes turned curiously in her direction. then the big girl leaned over and took her hand kindly. "won't you look me up to-morrow?" she said. "my name is mary stewart, and i stop at no. 16 on the quadrangle. perhaps i can help you get things straightened out a bit and show you the ropes." "oh, thank you," said molly, with that musical ring to her voice which never failed to thrill her hearers. "it's awfully nice of you. what time shall i come?" "i'll see you in chapel in the morning, and we'll fix the time then," called miss stewart as molly climbed out, dragging her straw telescope over the knees of the other passengers, followed by nance oldham, who had waited for her to take the initiative. as the two girls stood watching the disappearing vehicle, they became the prey to the most extreme loneliness. "i feel as if i had just left the tumbrel on the way to my execution," observed molly, trying to laugh, although the corners of her mouth turned persistently down. "but, anyway, i'm glad we are together," she continued, slipping her arm through nance's. "queen's cottage does seem so remote and lonesome, doesn't it? just a thing apart." the two girls gazed uncertainly at the rather dismal-looking shingled house, stained brown and covered with a mantle of old vines which appeared to have been prematurely stripped of their foliage. it was somewhat isolated, at least it seemed so at first. the next house was quite half a block on and was a cheerful place, all stucco and red roof like the station. "well, here goes," molly went on. "if it's queen's, why then, so be it," and she marched up the walk and rang the front door bell, which resounded through the hall with a metallic clang. "shure, i'm after bein' wit' you in a moment," called a voice from above. "you're the new young ladies, i'm thinkin', and glad i am to see you." there was the sound of heavy footsteps down the stairs and the door was opened by mrs. murphy, wife of the baggage master and housekeeper for queen's cottage. she was a middle-aged irish woman with a round, good-natured face and she beamed on the girls with motherly interest as she ushered them into the parlor. "since ye be the fust comers, ye may be the fust choosers," she said; "and if ye be friends, ye may like to be roommates, surely, and that's a good thing. it's better to room with a friend than a stranger." the two girls looked at each other with a new interest. it had not occurred to them that they might be roommates, but had not they already, with the swiftness peculiar to girls, bridged the gulf which separates total strangers, and were now on the very verge of plunging into intimate friendship? would it not be better to seize this opportunity than to wait for other chances which might not prove so agreeable? "shall we not?" asked molly with that charming, cordial manner which appeared to win her friends wherever she went. "it would be a great relief," answered nance, who was yet to learn the value of showing real pleasure when she felt it. nevertheless, nance, under her whimsical, rather sarcastic outer shell, had a warm and loyal heart. thus molly brown and nance oldham, quite opposites in looks and temperaments, became roommates during their freshman year at wellington college and thus, from this small beginning, the seeds of a life-long friendship were sown. the two girls chose a big sunny room on the third floor looking over a portion of the golf links. molly liked it because it had blue wallpaper and nance because it had a really commodious closet. chapter ii. their neighbor. molly brown was the youngest member of a numerous family of older brothers and sisters. her father had been dead many years, and in order to rear and educate her children, mrs. brown had been obliged to mortgage, acre by acre, the fine old place where molly and her brothers and sisters had been born and brought up. every time anybody in the brown family wanted to do anything that was particularly nice, something had to go, either a cow or a colt or a piece of land, according to the needs of the moment. a two-acre lot represented molly's college education--two perfectly good acres of orchard. "if you don't bring back at least one golden apple in return for all these nice juicy ones that are going for your education, molly, you are no child of mine," mrs. brown had laughingly exclaimed when she kissed her daughter good-bye. "i'll bring back the three golden apples of the hesperides, mother, and make the family rich and happy," cried molly, and from that moment the three golden apples became a secret symbol to her, although she had not decided in her mind exactly what they represented. "but," as molly observed to herself, "anybody who has had two acres of winter sweets, pippins and greenings spent on her, must necessarily engage to win a few." those two fruitful acres, however, while they provided a fund for an education, did not extend far into the margin and there was little left for clothes. that was perhaps one of the reasons why molly had felt so disturbed about the delay in receiving her trunk. "i can stand traveling in this old brown rag for economy's sake," she thought; "but i would like to put on the one decent thing i own for my first day at college. i was a chump not to have brought something in my suit case besides a blouse. however, what's done can't be undone," and she stoically went to work to remove the stains of travel and put on a fresh blue linen shirtwaist; while nance oldham, who had been more far-sighted, made herself spic and span in a duck skirt and a white linen blouse. she had little to say during the process of making her toilet, and molly wondered if, after all, she would like a roommate so peculiarly reserved and whimsical as this new friend. she hoped there would be lots of nice girls in the house of the right sort, girls who meant business, for while molly meant to enjoy herself immensely, she meant business decidedly, and she didn't want to get into a play set and be torn away from her studies. as these thoughts flitted through her mind she heard voices coming up the stairs. "now, mrs. murphy, i do hope you've got something really decent. you know, i hadn't expected to come back this year. i thought i would stay in france with grandmamma, but at the last moment i changed my mind, and i've come right here from the ship without engaging a thing at all. i'll take anything that's a single." the voice had a spoiled, imperious sound, like that of a person in the habit of having her own way. "i have a single, miss, but it's a small one, and they do say you've got a deal of belongings." "let's see it. let's see it, quick, granny murphy," and from the noise without our two young persons judged that this despotic stranger had placed her hands on mrs. murphy's shoulders and was running her along the passage. "now, you'll be giving me apoplexy, miss, surely, with your goings-on," cried the woman breathlessly, as she opened the door next theirs. "who's in there? two freshies?" "yes, miss. they only just arrived an hour ago." "greenies from greenville, green county," chanted the young woman, who did not seem to mind being overheard by the entire household. "very well, i'll take this little hole-in-the-wall. i won't move any of my things in, except some books and cushions. and now, off wit' yer. here's something for your trouble." "oh, thank you, thank you, miss." the two girls seemed to hear the irish woman being shoved out in the hall. then the door was banged after her and was locked. "dear me, what an obstreperous person," observed nance. "i wonder if she's going to give us a continuous performance." "i don't know," answered molly. "she'll be a noisy neighbor if she does. but she sounds interesting, living in france with her grandmamma and so on." nance glanced at her watch. "wouldn't you like to go for a stroll before supper? we have an hour yet. i'm dying to see the famous quadrangle and the cloisters and a few other celebrated spots i've heard about. aren't you?" "and incidentally rub off a little of our greenness," said molly, recalling the words of the girl next door. as the two girls closed the door to their room and paused on the landing, the door adjoining burst open and a human whirlwind blew out of the single room and almost knocked them over. "i beg your pardon," said nance stiffly, giving the human whirlwind a long, cool, brown glance. molly, a little behind her friend, examined the stranger with much curiosity. she could not quite tell why she had imagined her to be a small black-eyed, black-haired person, when here stood a tall, very beautiful young woman. her hair was light brown and perfectly straight. she had peculiarly passionate, fiery eyes of very dark gray, of the "smouldering kind," as nance described them later; her features were regular and her mouth so expressive of her humors that her friends could almost read her thoughts by the curve of her sensitive lips. even in that flashing glimpse the girls could see that she was beautifully dressed in a white serge suit and a stunning hat of dull blue, trimmed with wings. but instead of continuing her mad rush, which seemed to be her usual manner of doing things, the young woman became suddenly a zephyr of mildness and gentleness. "excuse my precipitate methods," she said. "i never do things slowly, even when there's no occasion to hurry. it's my way, i suppose. are you freshmen? perhaps you'd like for me to show you around college. i'm a soph. i'm fairly familiar." nance pressed her lips together. she was not in the habit of making friends off-hand. molly, in fact, was almost her first experience in this kind of friendship. but molly brown, who had never consciously done a rude thing in her life, exclaimed: "that would be awfully nice. thanks, we'll come." they followed her rather timidly down the steps. across the campus the pile of gray buildings, in the september twilight, more than ever resembled a fine old castle. as they hastened along, the sophomore gave them each a quick, comprehensive glance. "my name is frances andrews," she began suddenly, and added with a peculiar intonation, "i was called 'frank' last year. i'm so glad we are to be neighbors. i hope we shall have lots of good times together." molly considered this a particular mark of good nature on the part of an older girl to two freshmen, and she promptly made known their names to frances andrews. all this time nance had remained impassive and quiet. ten girls, arm in arm, were strolling toward them across the soft green turf of the campus, singing as in one voice to the tune of "maryland, my maryland": "oh, wellington, my wellington, oh, how i love my wellington!" suddenly frances andrews, who was walking between the two young girls, took them each firmly by the arm and led them straight across the campus, giving the ten girls a wide berth. there was so much fierce determination in her action that molly and nance looked at her with amazement. "are those seniors?" asked nance, thinking perhaps it was not college etiquette to break through a line of established and dignified characters like seniors. "no; they are sophomores singing their class song," answered frances. "aren't you a sophomore?" demanded nance quickly. "yes." "curious she doesn't want to meet her friends," thought molly. but there were more interesting sights to occupy her attention just then. they had reached the great gray stone archway which formed the entrance to the quadrangle, a grassy courtyard enclosed on all sides by the walls of the building. heavy oak doors of an antique design opened straight onto the court from the various corridors and lecture rooms and at one end was the library, a beautiful room with a groined roof and stained glass windows, like a chapel. low stone benches were ranged along the arcade of the court, whereon sat numerous girls laughing and talking together. although she considered that undue honors were being paid them by having as guide this dashing sophomore, somehow molly still felt the icy grip of homesickness on her heart. nance seemed so unsympathetic and reserved and there was a kind of hardness about this frances andrews that made the warm-hearted, affectionate molly a bit uncomfortable. suddenly nance spied her old friend, caroline brinton, in the distance, and rushed over to join her. as she left, three girls came toward them, talking animatedly. "hello, jennie wren!" called frances gayly. it was the same little bird-like person who had been in the bus. "howdy, rosamond. how are you, lotta? it's awfully nice to be back at the old stand again. let me introduce you to my new almost-roommate, miss brown," went on frances hurriedly, as if to fill up the gaps of silence which greeted them. "how do you do, miss andrews," said jennie wren, stiffly. rosamond chase, who had a plump figure and a round, good-natured face, was slightly warmer in her greeting. "how are you, frankie? i thought you were going to france this winter." the other girl who had a turned-up nose and blonde hair, and was called "peggy parsons," sniffed slightly and put her hands behind her back as if she wished to avoid shaking hands. molly was so shocked that she felt the tears rising to her eyes. "i wish i had never come to college," she thought, "if this is the way old friends treat each other." she slipped her arm through frances andrews' and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. "won't you show me the cloisters?" she said. "i'm pining to see what they are like." "come along," said frances, quite cheerfully, in spite of the fact that she had just been snubbed by three of her own classmates. lifting the latch of a small oak door fitted under a pointed arch, she led the way through a passage to another oak door which opened directly on the cloisters. molly gave an exclamation of pleasure. "oh," she cried, "are we really allowed to walk in this wonderful place?" "as much as you like before six p. m.," answered frances. "how do you do, miss pembroke?" a tall woman with a grave, handsome face was waiting under the arched arcade to go through the door. "so you decided to come back to us, miss andrews. i'm very glad of it. come into my office a moment. i want a few words with you before supper." "you can find your way back to queen's by yourself, can't you, miss brown?" asked frances. "i'll see you later." and in another moment, molly brown was quite alone in the cloisters. she was glad to be alone. she wanted to think. she paced slowly along the cloistered walk, each stone arch of which framed a picture of the grassy court with an italian fountain in the center. "it's exactly like an old monastery," she said to herself. "i wonder anybody could ever be frivolous or flippant in such an old world spot as this. i could easily imagine myself a monk, telling my beads." she sat down on a stone bench and folded her hands meditatively. "so far, i've really only made one friend at college," she thought to herself, for nance oldham was too reserved to be called a friend yet, "and that friend is frances andrews. who is she? what is she? why do her classmates snub her and why did miss pembroke, who belonged to the faculty, wish to speak with her in her private office?" it was all queer, very queer. somehow, it seemed to molly now that what she had taken for whirlwind manners was really a tremendous excitement under which frances andrews was laboring. she was trying to brazen out something. "just the same, i'm sorry for her," she said out loud. at that moment, a musical, deep-throated bell boomed out six times in the stillness of the cloisters. there was the sound of a door opening, a pause and the door closed with a clicking noise. molly started from her reverie. it was six o'clock. she rushed to the door of antique design through which she had entered just fifteen minutes before. it was closed and locked securely. she knocked loudly and called: "let me out! let me out! i'm locked in!" then she waited, but no one answered. in the stillness of the twilit courtyard she could hear the sounds of laughter and talking from the quadrangle. they grew fainter and fainter. a gray chill settled down over the place and molly looked about her with a feeling of utter desolation. she had been locked in the cloisters for the night. chapter iii. the professor. molly beat and kicked on the door wildly. then she called again and again but her voice came back to her in a ghostly echo through the dim aisles of the cloistered walk. she sat down on a bench and burst into tears. how tired and hungry and homesick she was! how she wished she had never heard of college, cold, unfriendly place where people insulted old friends and they locked doors at six o'clock. the chill of the evening had fallen and the stars were beginning to show themselves in the square of blue over the cloisters. molly shivered and folded her arms. she had not worn her coat and her blue linen blouse was damp with dew. "can this be the only door into the cloisters?" she thought after the first attack of homesick weeping had passed. she rose and began to search along the arcade which was now almost black. there were doors at intervals but all of them locked. she knocked on each one and waited patiently. "oh, heavens, let me get out of this place to-night," she prayed, lifting her eyes to the stars with an agonized expression. suddenly, the high mullioned window under which she was standing, glowed with a light just struck. then, someone opened a casement and a man's voice called: "is anyone there? i thought i heard a cry." "i am," said molly, trying to stifle the sobs that would rise in her throat. "i've been locked in, or rather out." "why, you poor child," exclaimed the voice again. "wait a moment and i'll open the door." there were sounds of steps along the passage; a heavy bolt was thrust back and a door held open while molly rushed into the passage like a frightened bird out of the dark. "it's lucky i happened to be in my study this evening," said the man, leading the way toward a square of light in the dark corridor. "of course the night watchman would have made his rounds at eight, but an hour's suspense out there in the cold and dark would have been very disagreeable. how in the world did it happen?" by this time they had reached the study and molly found herself in a cozy little room lined from ceiling to floor with books. on the desk was a tray of supper. the owner of the study was a studious looking young man with kindly, quizzical brown eyes under shaggy eyebrows, a firm mouth and a cleft in his chin, which molly had always heard was a mark of beauty in a woman. "you must be a freshman?" he said looking at her with a shade of amusement in his eyes. "i am," replied molly, bravely trying to keep her voice from shaking. "i only arrived an hour or so ago. i--i didn't know they would lock----" she broke down altogether and slipping into a big wicker chair sobbed bitterly. "oh, i wish--i wish i'd stayed at home." "why, you poor little girl," exclaimed the man. "you have had a beastly time for your first day at college, but you'll come to like it better and better all the time. come, dry your eyes and i'll start you on your way to your lodgings. where are you stopping?" "queen's." "suppose you drink some hot soup before you go. it will warm you up," he added kindly, taking a cup of hot bouillon from the tray and placing it on the arm of her chair. "but it's your supper," stammered molly. "nonsense, there's plenty more. do as i tell you," he ordered. "i'm a professor, you know, so you'll have to obey me or i'll scold." molly drank the soup without a word. it did comfort her considerably and presently she looked up at the professor and said: "i'm all right now. i hope you'll excuse me for being so silly and weak. you see i felt so far away and lonesome and it's an awful feeling to be locked out in the cold about a thousand miles from home. i never was before." "i'm sure i should have felt the same in your place," answered the professor. "i should probably have imagined i saw the ghosts of monks dead and gone, who might have walked there if the cloisters had been several hundreds of years older, and i would certainly have made the echoes ring with my calls for help. the cloisters are all right for 'concentration' and 'meditation,' which i believe is what they are intended to be used for on a warm, sunny day; but they are cold comfort after sunset." "is this your study?" asked molly, rising and looking about her with interest, as she started toward the door. "i should say that this was my play room," he replied, smiling. "play room?" "yes, this is where i hide from work and begin to play." he glanced at a pile of manuscript on his desk. "i reckon work is play and play is work to you," observed molly, regarding the papers with much interest. she had never before seen a manuscript. "if you knew what an heretical document that was, you would not make such rash statements," said the professor. "i'm sure it's a learned treatise on some scientific subject," laughed molly, who had entirely regained her composure now, and felt not the least bit afraid of this learned man, with the kind, brown eyes. he seemed quite old to her. "if i tell you what it is, will you promise to keep it a secret?" "i promise," she cried eagerly. "it's the libretto of a light opera," he said solemnly, enjoying her amazement. "did you write it?" she asked breathlessly. "not the music, but the words and the lyrics. now, i've told you my only secret," he said. "you must never give me away, or the bottom would fall out of the chair of english literature at wellington college." "i shall never, never tell," exclaimed molly; "and thank you ever so much for your kindness to-night." they clasped hands and the professor opened the door for her and stood back to let her pass. then he followed her down the passage to another door, which he also opened, and in the dim light she still noticed that quizzical look in his eyes, which made her wonder whether he was laughing at her in particular, or at things in general. "can you find your way to queen's cottage?" he asked. "oh, yes," she assured him. "it's the last house on the left of the campus." the next moment she found herself running along the deserted quadrangle walk. under the archway she flew, and straight across the campus--home. it was not yet seven o'clock, and the queen's cottage girls were still at supper. a number of students had arrived during the afternoon and the table was full. there were several freshmen; molly identified them by their silence and looks of unaccustomedness, and some older girls, who were chattering together like magpies. "where have you been?" demanded nance oldham, who had saved a seat for her roommate next to her own. all conversation ceased, and every eye in the room was turned on blushing molly. "i--i've been locked up," she answered faintly. "locked up?" repeated several voices at once. "where?" "in the cloisters. i didn't realize it was six o'clock, and some one locked the door." molly had been prepared for a good deal of amusement at her expense, and she felt very grateful when, instead of hoots of derision, a nice junior named sallie marks, with an interesting face and good dark eyes, exclaimed: "why, you poor little freshie! what a mediæval adventure for your first day. and how did you finally get out?" "one of the professors heard me call and let me out." "which one?" demanded several voices at once. "i don't know his name," replied molly guardedly, remembering that she had a secret to keep. "what did he look like?" demanded frances andrews, who had been unusually silent for her until now. "he had brown eyes and a smooth face and reddish hair, and he was middle aged and quite nice," said molly glibly. "what, you don't mean to say it was epiménides antinous green?" "who?" demanded molly. "never mind, don't let them guy you," said sallie marks. "it was evidently professor edwin green who let you in. he is professor of english literature, and i'll tell you for your enlightenment that he was nicknamed in a song 'epiménides' after a greek philosopher, who went to sleep when he was a boy and woke up middle-aged and very wise, and 'antinous' after a very handsome greek youth. don't you think him good-looking?" "rather, for an older person," said molly thoughtfully. "he's not thirty yet, my child," said frances andrews. "at least, so they say, and he's so clever that two other colleges are after him." "and he's written two books," went on sally. "haven't you heard of them--'philosophical essays' and 'lyric poetry.'" molly was obliged to confess her ignorance regarding professor edwin green's outbursts into literature, but she indulged in an inward mental smile, remembering the lyrics in the comic opera libretto. "he's been to harvard and oxford, and studied in france. he's a perfect infant prodigy," went on another girl. "it's a ripping thing for the 'squib,'" molly heard another girl whisper to her neighbor. she knew she would be the subject of an everlasting joke, but she hoped to live it down by learning immediately everything there was to know about wellington, and becoming so wise that nobody would ever accuse her again of being a green freshman. mrs. maynard, the matron, came in to see if she was all right. she was a motherly little woman, with a gentle manner, and molly felt a leaning toward her at once. "i hope you'll feel comfortable in your new quarters," said mrs. maynard. "you'll have plenty of sunshine and a good deal more space when you get your trunks unpacked, although the things inside a trunk do sometimes look bigger than the trunk." molly smiled. there was not much in her trunk to take up space, most certainly. she had nicknamed herself when she packed it "molly few clothes," and she was beginning to wonder if even those few would pass muster in that crowd of well-dressed girls. "oh, have the trunks really come, miss oldham?" she asked her roommate. "yes, just before supper. i've started unpacking mine." "thank goodness. i've got an old ham and a hickory nut cake and some beaten biscuits and pickles and blackberry jam in mine, and i can hardly wait to see if anything has broken loose on my clothes, such as they are." nance oldham opened her eyes wide. "i've always heard that southern people were pretty strong on food," she said, "and this proves it." "wait until you try the hickory nut cake, and you won't be so scornful," answered molly, somehow not liking this accusation regarding the appetites of her people. "did i hear the words 'hickory nut cake' spoken?" demanded frances andrews, who apparently talked to no one at the table except freshmen. "yes, i brought some. come up and try it to-night," said molly hospitably. "that would be very jolly, but i can't to-night, thanks," said frances, flushing. and then molly and nance noticed that the other sophomores and juniors at the table were all perfectly silent and looking at her curiously. "i hope you'll all come," she added lamely, wondering if they were accusing her of inhospitality. "not to-night, my child," said sally marks, rising from the table. "thank you, very much." as the two freshmen climbed the stairs to their room a little later, they passed by an open door on the landing. "come in," called the voice of sally. "i was waiting for you to pass. this is my home. how do you like it?" "very much," answered the two girls, really not seeing anything particularly remarkable about the apartment, except perhaps the sign on the door which read "pax vobiscum," and would seem to indicate that the owner of the room had a christian spirit. "your name is 'molly brown,' and you come from kentucky, isn't that so?" asked sally marks, taking molly's chin in her hand and looking into her eyes. "and yours?" went on the inquisitive sally, turning to molly's roommate. "is nance oldham, and i come from vermont," finished nance promptly. "you're both dears. and i am ever so glad you are in queens. you won't think i'm patronizing if i give you a little advice, will you?" "oh, no," said the two girls. "you know wellington's full of nice girls. i don't think there is a small college in this country that has such a fine showing for class and brains. but among three hundred there are bound to be some black sheep, and new girls should always be careful with whom they take up." "but how can we tell?" asked nance. "oh, there are ways. suppose, for instance, you should meet a girl who was good-looking, clever, rich, with lots of pretty clothes, and all that, and she seemed to have no friends. what would you think?" "why, i might think there was something the matter with her, unless she was too shy to make friends." "but suppose she wasn't?" persisted sally. "then, there would surely be something the matter," said nance. "well, then, children, if you should meet a girl like that in college, don't get too intimate with her." sally marks led them up to their own room, just to see how they were fixed, she said. later, when the two girls had crawled wearily into bed, after finishing the unpacking, molly called out sleepily: "nance"--she had forgotten already to say miss oldham--"do you suppose that nice junior could have meant miss andrews?" "i haven't a doubt of it," said nance. "just the same, i'm sorry for the poor thing," continued molly. "i'm sorry for anybody who's walking under a cloud, and i don't think it would do any harm to be nice to her." "it wouldn't do her any harm," said nance. "epiménides antinous green," whispered molly to herself, as she snuggled under the covers. the name seemed to stick in her memory like a rhyme. "funny i didn't notice how young and handsome he was. i only noticed that he had good manners, if he did treat me like a child." chapter iv. a busy day. the next day was always a chaotic one in molly's memory--a jumble of new faces and strange events. at breakfast she made the acquaintance of the freshmen who were staying at queen's cottage--four in all. one of these was julia kean, "a nice girl in neutral tints," as molly wrote home to her sister, "with gray eyes and brown hair and a sense of humor." she came to be known as "judy," and formed an intimate friendship with molly and nance, which lasted throughout the four years of their college course. "how do you feel after your night's rest?" she called across the table to molly in the most friendly manner, just as if they had known each other always. "you look like the 'lady of the sea' in that blue linen that just matches your eyes." she began looking molly over with a kind of critical admiration, narrowing her eyes as an artist does when he's at work on a picture. "i'd like to make a poster of you in blue-and-white chalk. i'd put you on a yellow, sandy beach, against a bright blue sky, in a high wind, with your dress and hair blowing----" and with eyes still narrowed, she traced an imaginary picture with one hand and shaped her ideas with the other. molly laughed. "you must be an artist," she said, "with such notions about posing." "a would-be one, that's all. 'not yet, but soon,' is my motto." "that's a bad motto," here put in nance oldham. "it's like the spanish saying of '_hasta mañana_.' you are very apt to put off doing things until next day." julia kean looked at her reproachfully. "you've read my character in two words," she said. "why don't you introduce me to your friends, judy?" asked a handsome girl next to her, who had quantities of light-brown hair piled on top of her head. "i haven't been introduced myself," replied judy; "but i never could see why people should stop for introductions at teas and times like this. we all know we're all right, or else we wouldn't be here." "of course," said frances andrews, who had just come in, "why all this formality, when we are to be a family party for the next eight months? why not become friends at once, without any preliminaries?" sally marks, who had given them the vague yet meaningful warning the night before, appeared to be absorbed in her coffee cup, and the other two sophomores at the table were engaged in a whispered conversation. "nevertheless, i will perform the introductions," announced judy kean. "this is miss margaret wakefield, of washington, d. c.; miss edith coles, of rhode island; miss jessie lynch, of wisconsin, and miss mabel hinton, of illinois. as for me, my name is julia kean, and i come from--nowhere in particular." "you must have had a birthplace," insisted that accurate young person, nance oldham. "if you could call a ship a birthplace, i did," replied judy. "i was born in mid-ocean on a stormy night. hence my stormy, restless nature." "but how did it happen?" asked molly. "oh, it was all simple enough. papa and mamma were on their way back from japan, and i arrived a bit prematurely on board ship. i began life traveling, and i've been traveling ever since." "you'll have to stay put here; awhile, at least," said sally marks. "i hope so. i need to gather a little moss before i become an habitual tramp." "hadn't we better be chasing along?" said frances andrews. "it's almost time for chapel." no one answered and molly began to wonder how long this strange girl would endure the part of a monologist at college. for that was what her attempts at conversation seemed to amount to. she admired frances's pluck, at any rate. whatever she had done to offend, it was courageous of her to come back and face the music. chapel was an impressive sight to the new girls. the entire body of students was there, and the faculty, including professor edwin green, who gave each girl the impression he was looking at her when he was really only gazing into the imaginary bull's-eye of an imaginary camera, and saw not one of them. molly decided his comeliness was more charm than looks. "the unknown charm," she wrote her sister. "his ears are a little pointed at the top, and he has brown eyes like a collie dog. but it was nice of him to have given me his soup," she added irrelevantly, "and i shall always appreciate it." after chapel, when molly was following in the trail of her new friends, feeling a bit strange and unaccustomed, some one plucked her by the sleeve. it was mary stewart, the nice senior with the plain, but fine face. "i'll expect you this evening after supper," she said. "i'm having a little party. there will be music, too. i thought perhaps you might like to bring a friend along. it's rather lonesome, breaking into a new crowd by one's self." it never occurred to molly that she was being paid undue honors. for a freshman, who had arrived only the afternoon before, without a friend in college, to be asked to a small intimate party by the most prominent girl in the senior class, was really quite remarkable, so nance oldham thought; and she was pleased to be the one molly chose to take along. the two girls had had a busy, exciting day. they had not been placed in the same divisions, b and o being so widely separated in the alphabet, and were now meeting again for the first time since lunch. molly had stretched her length on her couch and kicked off her pumps, described later by judy kean as being a yard long and an inch broad. [illustration: "i wish you would tell me your receipt for making friends, molly," exclaimed nance.--_page 51._] "i wish you would tell me your receipt for making friends, molly," exclaimed nance. "you are really a perfect wonder. don't you find it troublesome to be so nice to so many people?" "i'd find it lots harder not to be nice," answered molly. "besides, it's a rule that works both ways. the nicer you are to people, the nicer they are to you." "but don't you think lots of people aren't worth the effort and if you treat them like sisters, they are apt to take advantage of it and bore you afterwards?" molly smiled. "i've never been troubled that way," she said. "now, don't tell me," cried nance, warming to the argument, "that that universally cordial manner of yours doesn't bring a lot of rag-tags around to monopolize you. if it hasn't before, it will now. you'll see." "you make me feel like the leader of coxey's army," laughed molly; "because, you see, i'm a kind of a rag-tag myself." her eyes filled with tears. she was thinking of her meagre wardrobe. nance was silent. she was slow of speech, but when she once began, she always said more than she intended simply to prove her point; and now she was afraid she had hurt molly's feelings. she was provoked with herself for her carelessness, and when she was on bad terms with herself she appeared to be on bad terms with everybody else. of course, in her heart of hearts, she had been thinking of frances andrews, whom she felt certain molly would never snub sufficiently to keep her at a distance. the two girls went about their dressing without saying another word. nance was coiling her smooth brown braids around her head, while molly was looking sorrowfully at her only two available dresses for that evening's party. one was a blue muslin of a heavenly color but considerably darned, and the other was a marquisette, also the worse for wear. suddenly nance gave a reckless toss of her hair brush in one direction and her comb in another, and rushed over to molly, who was gazing absently into the closet. "oh, molly," she cried impetuously, seizing her friend's hand, "i'm a brute. will you forgive me? i'm afraid i hurt your feelings. it's just my unfortunate way of getting excited and saying too much. i never met any one i admired as much as you in such a short time. i wish i did know how to be charming to everybody, like you. it's been ground into me since i was a child not to make friends with people unless it was to my advantage, and i found out they were entirely worthy. and it's a slow process, i can tell you. you are the very first chance acquaintance i ever made in my life, and i like you better than any girl i ever met. so there, will you say you have forgiven me?" "of course, i will," exclaimed molly, flushing with pleasure. "there is nothing to forgive. i know i'm too indiscriminate about making friends. mother often complained because i would bring such queer children out to dinner when i was a child. indeed, i wasn't hurt a bit. it was the word 'rag-tag,' that seemed to be such an excellent description of the clothes i must wear this winter, unless some should drop down from heaven, like manna in the desert for the children of israel." without a word, nance pulled a box out from under her couch and lifted the lid. it disclosed a little hand sewing machine. "can you sew?" she asked. "after a fashion." "well, i can. it's pastime with me. i'd rather make clothes than do lots of other things. now, suppose we set to work and make some dresses. how would you like a blue serge, with turn-over collar and cuffs, like that one miss marks is wearing, that fastens down the side with black satin buttons?" "oh, nance, i couldn't let you do all that for me," protested molly. "besides, i haven't the material or anything." "why don't you earn some money, molly?" suggested nance. "there are lots of different ways. mrs. murphy, the housekeeper, was telling me about them. one of the girls here last year actually blacked boots--but, of course, you wouldn't do anything so menial as that." "wouldn't i?" interrupted molly. "just watch me. that's a splendid idea, nance. it's a fine, honorable labor, as colonel robert wakefield said, when his wife had to take in boarders." molly slipped on the blue muslin. "it really doesn't make any difference what she wears," thought nance, looking at her friend with covert admiration. "she'd be a star in a crazy quilt." the two girls hurried down to supper. molly was thoughtful all through that conversational meal. her mind was busy with a scheme by which she intended to remove that unceasing pressure for funds which bade fair to be an ever-increasing bugbear to her. no. 16 on the quadrangle turned out to be a very luxurious and comfortable suite of rooms, consisting of quite a large parlor, a little den or study and a bedroom. mary stewart met them at the door in such a plain dress that at first molly was deceived into thinking it was just an ordinary frock until she noticed the lines. and in a few moments nance took occasion to inform her that simplicity was one of the most expensive things in the world, which few people could afford, and furthermore that mary stewart's gray, cottony-looking dress was a dream of beauty and must have come from paris. there were six or seven other girls in the crowd, including that little bird-like, bright-eyed creature they called "jennie wren," whose real name was jane wickham. the only other girl they knew was judith blount, who had been so snubby to molly the day before about the luggage. all these girls were musical, as the freshmen were soon to learn, and belonged to the college glee club. "what a pretty room!" exclaimed molly to her hostess, after she had been properly introduced and enthroned in a big tapestry chair, in which she unconsciously made a most delightful and colorful picture. "i'm glad you like it. i have some trouble keeping it from getting cluttered up with 'truck,' as we call it. it's about like hercules trying to clean the augean stables, i think, but i try and use the den for an overflow, and only put the things i'm really fond of in here. that helps some." "they are certainly lovely," said the young freshman, looking wistfully at the head of "the unknown woman," between two brass candlesticks on the mantel shelf. on the bookshelves stood "the winged victory," and hanging over the shelves on the opposite side of the room was an immense photograph of botticelli's "primavera." the only other pictures were two japanese prints and the only other furniture was a baby grand piano and some chairs. it was really a delightfully empty and beautiful place, and molly felt suddenly strangely crude and ignorant when she recalled the things she had intended to do to her part of the room at queen's cottage toward beautifying it. she was engaged in mentally clearing them all out, when a voice at her elbow said: "are you thinking of taking the vows, miss brown?" it was judith blount, who had drawn up a chair beside her's. there was something very patronizing and superior in miss blount's manner, but molly was determined to ignore it, and smiled sweetly into the black eyes of the haughty sophomore. "taking what vows?" she asked. "why, i understood you had become a cloistered nun." molly flushed. so the story was out. it didn't take long for news to travel through a girl's college. "i wasn't cloistered very long," she answered. "and the only vow i took was never to be caught there again after six o'clock." "how did you like epiménides? i hear he's made a great joke of it," she continued, without waiting for molly to answer. "he's rather humorous, you know. even in his most serious work, it will come out." "i don't think there was much to joke about," put in molly, feeling a little indignant. "i was awfully forlorn and miserable." "the real joke was that he called you 'little miss smith,'" said judith. molly's moods reflected themselves in her eyes just as the passing clouds are mirrored in two blue pools of water. a shadow passed over her face now and her eyes grew darker, but she kept very quiet, which was her way when her feelings were hurt. then mary stewart began to play on the piano, and molly forgot all about the sharp-tongued sophomore, who, she strongly suspected, was trying to be disagreeable, but for what reason for the life of her molly could not see. never before had she heard any really good playing on the piano, and it seemed to her now that the music actually flowed from mary's long, strong fingers, in a melodious and liquid stream. other music followed. judith sang a gypsy song, in a rich contralto voice, that molly thought was a little coarse. jennie wren, who could sing exactly like a child, gave a solo in the highest little piping soprano. two girls played on mandolins, and mary stewart, who appeared to do most things, accompanied them on a guitar. then came supper, which was rather plain, molly thought, and consisted simply of tea and cookies. "i suppose it's artistic not to have much to eat," her thoughts continued, but she made up her mind to invite mary stewart to supper before the old ham and the hickory nut cake were consumed by hungry freshmen. "it seems to me that with such a voice as yours you must sing, miss brown," here broke in mary stewart. "will you please oblige the company?" "i wouldn't like to sing after all this fine music," protested molly. "besides, i don't know anything but darky songs." "the very girl we want for our hallowe'en vaudeville," cried jennie wren. "what do you use, a guitar or a piano?" "either, a little," answered molly, blushing crimson; "but i haven't any more voice than a rabbit." "fire away," cried jennie wren, thrusting a guitar into her hands. molly was actually trembling with fright when she found herself the center of interest in this musical company. [illustration: "i'm scared to death," she announced. then she struck a chord and began.--_page 60._] "i'm scared to death," she announced, as she faintly tuned the guitar. then she struck a chord and began: "ma baby loves shortnin', ma baby loves shortnin' bread; ma baby loves shortnin', mammy's gwine make him some shortnin' bread." before she had finished, everybody in the room had joined in. then she sang: "ole uncle rat has come to town, to buy his niece a weddin' gown, oo-hoo!" "a quarter to ten," announced some one, and the next moment they had all said good-night and were running as fast as their feet could carry them across the campus, "scuttling in every direction like a lot of rats," as judith remarked. "lights out at ten o'clock," whispered nance breathlessly, as they crept into their room and undressed in the dark. it was very exciting. they felt like a pair of happy criminals who had just escaped the iron grasp of the law. when molly brown dropped into a deep and restful sleep that night, she never dreamed that she had already become a noted person in college, though how it happened, it would be impossible to say. it might have been the cloister story, but, nevertheless, molly--overgrown child that she may have seemed to professor green--had a personality that attracted attention wherever she was. chapter v. the kentucky spread. "molly, you look a little worried," observed nance oldham, two days before the famous spread was to take place, it having been set for friday evening. molly was seated on her bed, in the midst of a conglomerate mass of books and clothes, chewing the end of a pencil while she knitted her brows over a list of names. "not exactly worried," she replied. "but, you know, nance, giving a party is exactly like some kind of strong stimulant with me. it goes to my head, and i seem to get intoxicated on invitations. once i get started to inviting, i can't seem to stop." "molly brown," put in nance severely, "i believe you've just about invited the whole of wellington college to come here friday night. and because you are already such a famous person, everybody has accepted." "i think i can about remember how many i asked," she replied penitently. "there are all the girls in the house, of course." "frances andrews?" molly nodded. "and all the girls who were at miss stewart's the other night." "what, even that girl who makes catty speeches. that black-eyed blount person?" "yes, even so," continued molly sadly. "i really hadn't intended to ask her, nance, but i do love to heap coals of fire on people's heads, and besides, i just told you, when i get started, i can't seem to stop. when i was younger, i've been known to bring home as many as six strange little girls to dinner at once." "the next time you give a party," put in nance, "we'd better make out the list beforehand, and then you must give me your word of honor not to add one name to it." "i'll try to," replied molly with contrition, "but it's awfully hard to take the pledge when it comes to asking people to meals, even spreads." the two girls examined the list together, and molly racked her brains to try and remember any left-outs, as she called them. "i'm certain that's all," she said at last. "that makes twenty, doesn't it? oh, nance, i tremble for the old ham and the hickory nut cake. do you think they'll go round? aunty, she's my godmother, is sending me another box of beaten biscuits. she has promised to keep me supplied. you know, i have never eaten cold light bread in my life at breakfast, and i'd just as soon choke down cold potatoes as the soggy bread they give us here. but beaten biscuit and ham and home-made pickles won't be enough, even with hickory nut cake," she continued doubtfully. "i have a chafing dish. we can make fudge; then there's tea, you know. we can borrow cups and saucers from the others. but we'll have to do something else for their amusement besides feed them. have you thought of anything?" "lillie and millie," these were two sophomores at queen's, "have a stunt they have promised to give. it's to be a surprise. and jennie wren has promised to bring her guitar and oblige us with a few selections, but, oh, nance, except for the eatin', i'm afraid it won't be near such a fine party as mary stewart's was." "eatin's the main thing, child. don't let that worry you," replied nance consolingly. "i think i have an idea of something which would interest the company, but i'm not going to tell even you what it is." nance had a provoking way of keeping choice secrets and then springing them when she was entirely ready, and wild horses could not drag them out of her before that propitious moment. on friday evening the girls began to arrive early, for, as has been said, molly was already an object of interest at wellington college, and the fame of her beaten biscuits and old ham had spread abroad. some of the guests, like mary stewart, came because they were greatly attracted toward the young freshman; and others, like judith blount, felt only an amused curiosity in accepting the invitation. as a general thing, judith was a very exclusive person, but she felt she could safely show her face where mary stewart was. "this looks pretty fine to me," observed that nice, unaffected young woman herself, shaking hands with molly and nance. "it's good of you to say so," replied molly. "your premises would make two of our's, i'm thinking." "but, look at your grand buffet. how clever of you! one of you two children must have a genius for arrangement." the study tables had been placed at one end of the room close together, their crudities covered with a white cloth borrowed from mrs. murphy, and on these were piled the viands in a manner to give the illusion of great profusion and plenty. "it's molly," laughed nance; "she's a natural entertainer." "not at all," put in molly. "i come of a family of cooks." "and did your cook relatives marry butlers?" asked judith. molly stifled a laugh. somehow judith couldn't say things like other girls. there was always a tinge of spite in her speeches. "where i come from," she said gravely, "the cooks and butlers are colored people, and the old ones are almost like relatives, they are so loyal and devoted. but there are not many of those left now." the room was gradually filling, and presently every guest had arrived, except frances andrews. "we won't wait for her," said molly to lillie and millie, the two inseparable sophomores, who now quietly slipped out. presently, nance, major domo for the evening, shoved all the guests back onto the divans and into the corners until a circle was formed in the centre of the room. she then hung a placard on the knob of the door which read: mahomet, the cock of the east, _vs._ chantecler, the cock of the west. there was a sound of giggling and scuffling, the door opened and two enormous, man-sized cocks entered the room. both fowls had white bodies made by putting the feet through the sleeves of a nightgown, which was drawn up around the neck and over the arms, the fullness gathered into the back and tied into a rakish tail. a persian kimono was draped over mahomet to represent wings and a tightly fitting white cap with a point over the forehead covered his head. his face was powdered to a ghastly pallor with talcum and his mouth had been painted with red finger-nail salve into a cruel red slash across his countenance. chantecler was of a more engaging countenance. a small red felt bedroom slipper formed his comb and a red silk handkerchief covered his back hair. the two cocks crowed and flapped their wings and the fight began, amid much laughter and cheering. twice chantecler was almost spurred to death, but it was mahomet's lot to die that evening, and presently he expired with a terrible groan, while the cock of the west placed his foot on mahomet's chest and crowed a mighty crow, for the west had conquered the east. that was really the great stunt of the evening, and it occupied a good deal of time. molly began carving the ham, which she had refused to do earlier, because a ham, properly served, should appear first in all its splendid shapely wholeness before being sliced into nothingness. therefore she now proceeded to cut off thin portions, which crumbled into bits under the edge of the carving knife borrowed from mrs. murphy. but the young hostess composedly heaped it upon the plates with pickle and biscuit, and it was eaten so quickly that she had scarcely finished the last serving before the plates were back again for a second allowance. during the hot fudge and hickory nut cake course, the door opened and a scotch laddie, kilted and belted in the most approved manner entered the room. his knees were bare, he wore a little scotch cap, a black velvet jacket and a plaidie thrown over one shoulder. but the most perfect part of his get-up was his miniature bagpipe, which he blew on vigorously, and presently he paused and sang a scotch song. "nance!" cried several of the queen's cottage girls, for it was difficult to recognize the quiet young girl from vermont in this rakish disguise. in the midst of the uproar there was a loud knock on the door. "come in," called molly, a little frightened, thinking, perhaps, the kindly matron had for once rebelled at the noise they were making. slowly the door opened and an old hag stepped into the room. she was really a terrible object, and some of the girls shrieked and fell back as she advanced toward the jolly circle. her nose was of enormous length, and almost rested on her chin, like a staff, like the nose of "the last leaf on the tree." also, she had a crooked back and leaned heavily on a stick. on her head was a high pointed witch's cap. she wore black goggles, and had only two front teeth. the witch produced a pack of cards which she dexterously shuffled with her black gloved hands. then she sat down on the floor, beckoning to the girls to come nearer. "half-a-minute fortune for each one," she observed in a muffled, disguised voice, but it was a very fulsome minute, as judy remarked afterward, for what little she said was strictly to the point. to judith blount she said: "english literature is your weak point. look out for danger ahead." this seemed simple enough advice, but judith flushed darkly, and several of the girls exchanged glances. molly, for some reason, recalled what judith had said about professor edwin green. many of the other girls came in for knocks, but they were very skillful ones, deftly hidden under the guise of advice. to jennie wren the witch said: "be careful of your friends. don't ever cultivate unprofitable people." to nance oldham she said: "you will always be very popular--if you stick to popular people." it was all soon over. molly's fortune had been left to the last. the strange witch had gone so quickly from one girl to another that they had scarcely time to take a breath between each fortune. "as for you," she said at last, turning to molly, "i can only say that 'kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than norman blood,' and by the end of your freshman year you will be the most popular girl in college." "who are you?" cried molly, suddenly coming out of her dream. "yes, who are you?" cried judith, breaking through the circle and seizing the witch by the arm. with a swift movement the witch pushed her back and she fell in a heap on some girls who were still sitting on the floor. "i will know who you are," cried jennie wren, with a determined note in her high voice, as she grasped the witch by the arm, and it did look for a moment as if the kentucky spread were going to end in a free-for-all fight, when suddenly, in the midst of the scramble and cries, came three raps on the door, and the voice of the matron called: "young ladies, ten o'clock. lights out!" the girls always declared that it was the witch who had got near the door and pushed the button which put out every light in the room. at any rate, the place was in total darkness for half a minute, and when molly switched the lights on again for the girls to find their wraps the witch had disappeared. in another instant the guests had vanished into thin air and across the moonlit campus ghostly figures could be seen flitting like shadows over the turf toward the dormitories, for there was no time to lose. at a quarter past ten the gates into the quadrangle would be securely locked. nance lit a flat, thick candle, known in the village as "burglar's terror," and in this flickering dim light the two girls undressed hastily. suddenly molly exclaimed in a whisper: "nance, i believe it was frances andrews who dressed up as that witch, and i'm going to find out, rules or no rules." she slipped on her kimono and crept into the hall. the house was very still, but she tapped softly on frances' door. there was no answer, and opening the door she tiptoed into the room. a long ray of moonlight, filtering in through the muslin curtains, made the room quite light. there was a smell of lavender salts in the air, and mollie could plainly see frances in her bed. a white handkerchief was tied around her head, as if she had a headache, but she seemed to be asleep. "frances," called molly softly. frances gave a stifled sob that was half a groan and turned over on her side. "frances," called molly again. frances opened her eyes and sat up. "is anything the matter?" she asked. molly went up to the bedside. even in the moonlight she could see that frances' eyes were swollen with crying. "i was afraid you were ill," whispered molly. "why didn't you come to the spread?" "i had a bad headache. it's better now. good night." molly crept off to her room. was it frances, after all, who had broken up her party? molly was inclined to think it was not, and yet---"at any rate, we'll give her the benefit of the doubt, nance," she whispered. but there were no doubts in nance's mind. chapter vi. knotty problems. "i tell you things do hum in this college!" exclaimed judy kean, closing a book she had been reading and tossing it onto the couch with a sigh of deep content. "i don't see how you can tell anything about it, judy," said nance severely. "you've been so absorbed in 'the broad highway' every spare moment you've had for the last two days that you might as well have been in kalamazoo as in college." "nance, you do surely tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," said judy good naturedly. "i know i have the novel habit badly. it's because i had no restraint put upon me in my youth, and if i get a really good book like this one, i just let duty slide." "why don't you put your talents to some use and write, then?" demanded nance, who enjoyed preaching to her friends. "art is more to my taste," answered judy. "well, art is long and time is fleeting. why don't you get busy and do something?" exclaimed the other vehemently. "what do you intend to be?" judy had a trick of raising her eyebrows and frowning at the same time, which gave her a serio-comic expression and invested her most earnest speeches with a touch of humor. but she did not reply to nance's question, having spent most of her life indulging her very excellent taste without much thought for the future. "what do you intend to be?" she asked presently of nance, who had her whole future mapped out in blocks: four years at college, two years studying languages in europe, four years as teacher in a good school, then as principal, perhaps, and next as owner of a school of her own. "why, i expect to teach languages," said nance without a moment's hesitation. "of course, a teacher. i might have known!" cried judy. "you've commenced already on me--your earliest pupil! "'teacher, teacher, why am i so happy, happy, happy, in my sunday school?'" she broke off with her song suddenly and seized nance's hand. "please don't scold me, nance, dear. i know life isn't all play, and that college is a serious business if one expects to take the whole four years' course. i've already had a warning. it came this morning. it's because i've been cutting classes. and i have been entirely miserable. that's the reason i've been so immersed in 'the broad highway.' i've been trying to drown my sorrows in romance. i know i'm not clever----" "nonsense," interrupted the other impatiently. "you are too clever, you silly child. that's what is the matter with you, but you don't know how to work. you have no system. what you really need is a good tutor. you must learn to concentrate----" "concentrate," laughed judy. "that's something i never could do. as soon as i try my thoughts go skylarking." "how do you do it?" "well, i sit very still and dig my toes into the soles of my shoes and my finger nails into the palms of my hands and say over and over the thing i'm trying to concentrate on." the girls were still laughing joyously when molly came in. her face wore an expression of unwonted seriousness, and she was frowning slightly. three things had happened that morning which worried her considerably. the first shock came before breakfast when she had looked in her handkerchief box where she kept her funds promiscuously mixed up with handkerchiefs and orris root sachet bags and found one crumpled dollar bill and not a cent more. there was a kind of blind spot in molly's brain where money was concerned, little of it as she had possessed in her life. she never could remember exactly how much she had on hand, and change was a meaningless thing to her. and now it was something of a blow to her to find that one dollar must bridge over the month's expenses, or she must write home for more, a thing she did not wish to do, remembering the two acres of apple orchard which had been sunk in her education. "and it's all gone in silk attire and riotous living," she said to herself, for she had bought herself ten yards of a heavenly sky blue crêpey material which she and nance proposed to make into a grand costume, also she had entertained numbers of friends at various times to sundaes in the village. one of the other of her triple worries was a note she had received that morning from judith blount, and the third was another note, about both of which she intended to ask the advice of her two most intimate friends. "what's bothering you, child?" demanded judy, quick to notice any change in her adored molly's face. "oh, several things. these two notes for one." she drew two envelopes from her pocket and opening the first one, began to read aloud: "'dear miss brown: "'since you come of a family of cooks and are expert on the subject, i am going to ask you to take charge of a little dinner i am giving to-morrow night in my rooms to my brother and some friends. i shall expect you to be chief cook, but not bottle-washer. you'll have an assistant for that; but i'd like you to wait on the table, seeing you are so good at those things. don't bother about cap and apron. i have them. "'yours with thanks in advance, "'judith blount.'" the note was written on heavy cream-colored paper with two greek letters embossed at the top in dark blue. judith lived in the beta phi house, which was divided into apartments, and occupied by eight decidedly well-to-do girls, the richest girls in college, as a matter of fact. it was called "the millionaire's club," and was known to be the abode of snobbishness, although molly, who had been there once to a tea, had been entirely unconscious of this spirit. judy and nance were speechless with indignation after molly had finished reading the note. "what do you think of that?" she exclaimed, breaking the silence. "it's a rank insult," cried nance. "if you were a man, you could challenge her to a duel," cried judy; "but being a girl, you'll have to take it out in ignoring her." "it's written in such a matter-of-fact way," continued molly, "that i can't believe it's entirely unusual. after sober, second thought, i believe i'll ask sallie before i answer it." "speaking of angels--there is sallie!" cried judy, as that young woman herself hurried past the door on her way to a class. "what is it? make it quick. i'm late now!" ejaculated sallie, popping her head in at the door with a smile on her face to counteract her abrupt manner. "who's in trouble now?" the three freshmen stood silently about her while she perused judith's note. "did you ever hear of such a thing?" burst out judy with hot indignation. "oh, yes, lots of times, little one. it's quite customary for freshmen to act as waitresses when girls in the older classes entertain in their rooms. the freshies like to do it because they get such good food. i do think this note is expressed, well--rather unfortunately. it has a sort of between-the-lines superiority. but judith is always like that. you just have to take her as you find her and ignore her faults. you'd better accept, molly, with good grace. you'll enjoy the food, too. to-morrow--let me see, that's new england boiled dinner night, isn't it? you'll probably have beefsteak and mushrooms and grape fruit and ice cream and all the delicacies of the season." "very well, if you advise it, i'll accept, like a lady," said molly resignedly. "it's customary," answered sallie, smiling cheerfully and waving her hand as she hurried down the hall. "well, that's settled," continued molly sighing. somehow, judith blount did get on her nerves. "now, the other note is even more serious in a way. listen to this." before reading it, she carefully closed the door, drew the other girls into the far end of the room and began in a low voice: "'dear miss brown: "'may i have the pleasure of being your escort to the sophomore-freshman ball? let me know whether you intend to wear one of your cerulean shades. the carriage will stop for us at eight o'clock. you might leave the answer at my door to-night. "'yours faithfully, "'frances andrews.'" the girls looked at each other in consternation. "what's to be done?" "say you have another engagement," advised judy, who was not averse at times to telling polite fibs in order to extricate herself from a difficulty. but molly was the very soul of truth, and even small fibs were not in her line. "hasn't any one else asked you yet?" asked nance. "no; you see, it's a week off, and i suppose they are just beginning to think of partners now." "all i can say is that if you do go with her you are done for," announced nance solemnly. molly sat down in the morris chair and wrinkled her brows. "i do wish she hadn't," she said. "she just regards you as a sort of life preserver," exclaimed judy. "she's trying to keep above the surface by holding on to you. if i were you, i wouldn't be bothered with her." "of course, i know," said molly, "that frances andrews did something last year that put her in the black books with her class. she's trying to live it down, and they are trying to freeze her out. nobody has anything to do with her, and she's not invited to anything except the big entertainments like this. i can't help feeling sorry for her, and i don't see how it would do me any harm to go with her. but i just don't want to go, that's all. i'd rather take a beating than go." "well, then you are a chump for considering it!" exclaimed judy, whose self-indulgent nature had little sympathy for people who would do uncomfortable things. "then, on the other hand," continued molly, "suppose my going would help her a little, don't you think it would be mean to turn her down? oh, say you think i ought to do it, because i'm going to, hard as it seems." nance went over and put her arms around her friend, quite an unusual demonstration with her, while judy seized her hand and patted it tenderly. "really, molly, you are quite the nicest person in the world," she exclaimed. then she added: "by the way, molly, can you spare the time to tutor me for a month or so? i don't know what the rates are, but we can settle about that later. nance tells me i must get busy or else take my walking papers. i'd be afraid of a strange tutor. i'm a timid creature. but i think i might manage to learn a few things from you, molly, dear." did judy understand the look of immense relief which instantly appeared on molly's sensitive face? if she did she made no sign. "now, don't say no," she went on. "i know you are awfully busy, and all that, but it would be just an act of common charity." "say no?" cried molly, laughing lightly. "i can hardly wait to say yes," and she cheerfully got out six pairs of muddy boots from the closet, enveloped herself in a large apron, slipped on a pair of old gloves and went to work to clean and black them. molly had become official bootblack at queen's cottage at ten cents a pair when they were not muddy, and fifteen cents when they were. when she had completed her lowly job she sat down at her desk and wrote two notes. one was to judith blount, in which she accepted her invitation to wait at table in the most polite and correct terms, and signed her name "mary carmichael washington brown." the second letter, which was to frances andrews, was also a note of acceptance. then molly removed her collar, rolled up her sleeves, kicked off her pumps--a signal that she was going to begin work--and sat down to cram mathematics,--the very hardest thing in life to her and the subject which was to be a stumbling block in her progress always. chapter vii. an incident of the coffee cups. molly turned up at the beta phi house about five o'clock the next evening. she wore a blue linen so that if any grease sputtered it would fall harmlessly on wash goods, and in other ways attired herself as much like a maid as possible with white collar and cuffs and a very plain tight arrangement of the hair. "if i'm to be a servant, i might as well look like one," she thought, as she marched upstairs and rapped on judith's door. "come in," called the voice of jennie wren. "judith's gone walking with her guests," she explained; "but she left her orders with me, and i'll transmit them to you," she added rather grandly. "you are to do the cooking. here are all the things in the ice box, and there's the gas stove on the trunk. miss brinton and i will set the table." molly gathered that caroline brinton, the unbending young woman from philadelphia, had been chosen as her assistant. the tiny ice box was stuffed full of provisions. there was the inevitable beefsteak, as sallie had predicted; also canned soup; a head of celery, olives, grape fruits, olive oil, mushrooms, cheese--really, a bewildering display of food stuffs. "did miss blount decide on the courses?" molly asked jennie wren. "no; she got the raw material and left the rest entirely with you. 'tell her to get up a good dinner for six people,' she said. 'i don't care how she does it, only she must have it promptly at six-fifteen.'" there were only two holes to the gas stove and likewise only two saucepans to fit over them, so that it behooved molly to look alive if she were to prepare dinner for six in an hour and a quarter. "where's the can opener?" she called. a calm, experienced cook with the patience of a saint might have felt some slight irritability if she had been placed in molly's shoes that evening. nothing could be found. there was no can opener, no ice pick, the coffeepot had a limited capacity of four cups, and there was no broiler for the steak. it had to be cooked in a pan. it must be confessed also that it was the first time in her life molly had ever cooked an entire meal. she had only made what her grandmother would have called "covered dishes," or surprise dishes, and she now found preparing a dinner of four courses for six people rather a bewildering task. at last there came the sound of voices in the next room. she put on the beefsteak. her cheeks were flaming from the heat of the little stove. her back ached from leaning over, and her head ached with responsibility and excitement. "is everything all right?" demanded judith, blowing into the room with an air of "if it isn't it will be the worse for you." "i believe so," answered molly. "why did you put the anchovies on crackers?" demanded the older girl irritably. "they should have been on toast." "because there wasn't enough bread for one thing, and because there was no way to toast it if there had been," answered molly shortly. no cook likes to be interfered with at that crucial moment just before dinner. "here are your cap and apron," went on judith. "you know how to wait, don't you? always hand things at the left side." "water happens to be poured from the right," answered molly, pinning on the little muslin cap. she was in no mood to be dictated to by judith blount or any other black-eyed vixen. judith made no answer. she seemed excited and absent-minded. caroline placed the anchovies while molly poured the soup into cups, there being no plates. the voices of the company floated in to her. jennie wren had joined them, making the sixth. she heard a man's voice exclaim: "i say, ju-ju, i call this very luxurious. we never had anything so fine as this at harvard. you always could hold up the parent and get what you wanted. now, i never had the nerve. and, by the way, have you got a cook, too?" "only for to-night," answered judith. "we usually eat downstairs with the others." "you're working some poor little freshman, ten to one," answered judith's brother, for that was evidently who it was. then molly heard some one run up a brilliant scale and strike a chord and a good baritone voice began singing: "'oh, i'm a cook and a captain bold, and a mate of the nancy brig, and a bo'sun tight and a midshipmatemite, and the crew of the captain's gig.'" "why don't you join in, eddie? but i forgot. it would never do for a professor of english literature at a girls' college to lift his voice in ribald song." some one laughed. molly recognized the voice instantly. she knew that professor edwin green was dining at judith's that night, and her inquiring mind reached out even further into the realms of conjecture, and she guessed who was the author of his light opera. "cousin edwin, will you sit there, next to me?" said judith's voice. "cousin?" repeated molly. "so that's it, is it?" then other voices joined in--mary stewart, jennie wren and martha schaeffer, a rich girl from chicago, who roomed in that house. they gobbled down the first course as people usually dispatch relishes, and as caroline removed the dishes, molly appeared with the soup. none of the girls recognized her, of course, which was perfectly good college etiquette, although mary stewart smiled when molly placed her cup of soup and whispered: "good work." molly gave her a grateful look, and professor edwin green, looking up, caught a glimpse of molly's flushed face, and smiled, too. "i say, ju-ju, who's your head waitress?" molly could not help overhearing richard blount ask when she had left the room. "oh, just a little southern girl named smith, or something," answered judith carelessly. "that young lady," said professor edwin green, "is miss molly brown, of kentucky." the young freshman's face was crimson when she brought in the steak and placed it in front of mr. blount. then she took her stand correctly behind his chair, with a plate in her hand, waiting for him to carve. sometimes two members of the same family are so unlike that it is almost impossible to believe that blood from the same stock runs in their veins. so it was with richard blount and his sister, judith. she was tall and dark and arrogant, and he was short and blond and full of good-humored gayety. he rallied all the girls at the table. he teased his cousin edwin. he teased his sister, and then he ended by highly praising the food, looking all the time from one corner of his mild blue eyes at molly's flushed face. "really," he exclaimed, "a french chef must have broiled this steak. not even delmonico, nor oscar himself at the waldorf, could have done it better. isn't it the top-notch, eddie? what's this? mushroom sauce? by jupiter, it's wonderful to come out here in the wilds and get such food." mary stewart began to laugh. after all, it was just good-natured raillery. "why, mr. blount," she said, "there is something to be found here that is lots better than porter-house steak." "what is it? name it, please!" cried richard. "if i must miss the train, i must have some, whatever it is--cream puffs or chocolate fudge?" "it's kentucky ham of the finest, what do you call it--breed? three years old. you've never eaten ham until you've tasted it." she smiled charmingly at molly, who pretended to look unconscious while she passed the vegetables. judith endeavored to change the subject. she was angry with mary for thus bringing her freshman waitress into prominence. but molly was destined to be the heroine of the evening in spite of all efforts against it. "old kentucky ham!" cried richard blount, starting from his chair with mock seriousness, "where is it? i implore you to tell me. my soul cries out for old ham from the dark and bloody battleground of kentucky!" everybody began to laugh, and judith exclaimed: "do hush, richard. you are so absurd! did he behave this way at harvard all the time, cousin edwin?" "oh, yes; only more so. but tell me more of this wonderful ham, miss stewart." molly wondered if professor green really understood that it was all a joke on her when he asked that question. suddenly she formed a resolution. following her assistant into the next room, she whispered: "which would you rather do, miss brinton? go over to queen's and ask nance to give you the rest of my ham or wait on the table while i go?" "i'd rather get the ham," replied miss brinton, whose proud spirit was crushed by the menial service she had been obliged to undertake that evening. the dinner progressed. in a little while molly had cleared the table and was preparing to bring on the grape-fruit salad when caroline appeared with the remnants of the ham. molly removed it from its wrappings and, placing it on a dish, bore it triumphantly into the next room. "what's this?" cried richard blount. "do my eyes deceive me? am i dreaming? is it possible----" "the old ham, or, rather, the attenuated ghost of the old ham!" ejaculated mary stewart. even judith joined in the burst of merriment, and professor green's laugh was the gayest of all. molly returned with the carving knife and fork, and richard blount began to snip off small pieces. "'ham bone am very sweet,'" he sang, one eye on molly. "it is certainly wonderful," exclaimed professor green, as he tasted the delicate meat; "but it seems like robbery to deprive the owner of it." "now, edwin, you keep quiet, please," interrupted richard. "i've heard that some owners of old hams are just as fond of things sweeter than ham bones. a five-pound box ought to be the equivalent of this, eh?" "really, richard, you go too far," put in judith, frowning at her brother. but richard took not the slightest notice of her, nor did he pause until he had cleaned the ham bone of every scrap of meat left on it. "aren't you going to catch your train?" asked judith. "i think not to-night, ju-ju," he answered, smiling amiably. "edwin, can you put me up? if not, i'll stop at the inn in the village." "no, indeed, you won't, dick. you must stop with me. i have an extra bed, solely in hopes you might stay in it some night. and later this evening we might run over--er--a few notes." he looked consciously at richard, then he gave molly a swift, quizzical glance, remembering probably that he had confided to her and her alone that he was the author of the words of a comic opera. having cleared the table, molly now returned with the coffee. the cups jaggled as she handed them. she was very weary, and her arms ached. when she had reached professor edwin green, richard blount, with his nervous, quick manner, suddenly started from his chair and exclaimed: "now, i know whom you remind me of--ellen terry at sixteen." nobody but molly realized for a moment that he was talking to her, and she was so startled that her wrist gave a twist and over went the tray and three full coffee cups straight on to the knees of the august professor of english literature. there was a great deal of noise, molly remembered. she herself was so horrified and stunned that she stood immovable, clutching the tray wildly, as a drowning person clings to a life preserver. she heard judith cry: "how stupid! how could you have been so unpardonably awkward!" at the same moment mary stewart said: "it was entirely your fault, mr. blount. you frightened the poor child with your wild behavior." and professor green said: "don't scold, judith. i'm to blame. i joggled the tray with my elbow. there's no harm done, at any rate. these gray trousers will be much improved by being dyed _cafe au lait_." then richard blount rose from the table and marched straight over to where molly was standing transfixed, still miserably holding to the tray. "miss brown," he said humbly, "i want to apologize. all this must have been very trying for you, and you have behaved beautifully. i hope you will forgive me. my only excuse is that i am always forgetting my little sister and her friends are not still children. will you forgive me?" he looked so manly and good-natured standing there before her with his hand held out, that molly felt what slight indignation there was in her heart melting away at once. she put her hand in his. "there is nothing to forgive, mr. blount," she said, and the young man who was a musician pricked up his ears when he heard that soft, musical voice. "and i've robbed you of your ham," he continued. "it was a pleasure to know you enjoyed it," she said. presently molly began clearing the table. richard sat down at the piano. it was evident that he never wandered far from his beloved instrument, and the girls gathered around him while he ran over the first act of his new opera. professor edwin green said good night and took himself and his coffee-soaked trousers home to his rooms. "you can follow later, dickie," he called. as he passed molly, standing by the door, he smiled at her again, and molly smiled back, though she was quite ready to cry. "the ham was delicious," he said. "thank you very much." that night, when molly had wearily climbed the stairs to her room and flung herself on her couch, nance, writing at her desk, called over: "well, how was the beefsteak?" "i didn't get any," said molly. "even if there had been any left, i was too tired to eat anything. i'm afraid i wasn't born to be anybody's cook, nance, or waitress, either." and molly turned her face to the wall and wept silently. lest we forget, we will say now that two days after this episode of the coffee cups, there came, by express for miss molly brown, a five-pound box of candy without a card, and the girls at queen's cottage feasted right royally for almost two evenings. chapter viii. concerning clubs,--and a tea party. at the first meeting of the freshman class of 19--, margaret wakefield of washington, d. c., had been elected president. just how this came about no one could exactly say. she could not have been accused of electioneering for herself, and yet she made an impression somehow and had won the election by a large majority. "anybody who can talk like that ought to be president of something," molly had observed good naturedly. "she could make a real inauguration speech, i believe, and she knows all about parliamentary law, whatever that is." "she dashed off the class constitution just as easily as if she were writing a letter home," said judy. "that's not so easy, either," added nance mournfully. the girls were silent. it had gradually leaked out as their friendship progressed that nance's home was not an abode of happiness by any means. and yet nance had written a theme on "home," which was so well done that she had been highly complimented by miss pomeroy, who had read it aloud to the class. molly often wondered just what manner of woman nance's mother was, and she soon had an opportunity of finding out for herself. but the conversation about the new class president continued. "president wakefield wants us to have bi-monthly meetings," continued judy. "she wishes to divide the class into committees and have a chairman for each committee--" "committees for what?" demanded molly. "dear knows," laughed judy, "but her father's a congressman, and she has inherited his passion for law and order, i suppose. she wants to conduct a debate on woman's suffrage to meet saturdays. it's to be called 'the woman's franchise club,' and she wishes to establish by-laws and resolutions and a number of other things that are greek to me, for 'the political body corporate.' she says it's a crying shame that women know so little about the constitution of their own country, and in establishing a debating society, she hopes to do some missionary work in that line." judy had risen and was waving her arms dramatically while her voice rose and fell like an old-time orator's. "i suppose we ought," said molly; "but i'd rather put it off a year or so. there are so many other things to enjoy first. besides, it will be four years before i reach the voting age, and by that time i hope my 'intellects' will have developed sufficiently to take in the constitution of the country." "anyhow," exclaimed judy, "i'm proud to have a class president who's such a first-class public speaker, because it takes it all off our shoulders. whenever there's a speech to be made or anything public and embarrassing to be done, we'll just vote for her to do it, because she will enjoy it so much." "but are you going to join the debating club?" asked nance. "i suppose it's our duty to," replied molly; "but i do hate to pin myself down. suppose we say we'll go to one and listen?" "well, you'd better settle it now, because here comes the president sailing up the walk. she's going the rounds now, i suppose, and in another two minutes she'll be springing the question on us." judy, who was sitting at the front window of her own room, nodded down into the yard and smiled politely, and the girls had just time to settle among themselves what they were going to say when there was a smart rap on the door and president wakefield entered. she wore rather masculine-looking clothes, and carried a business-like small-sized suit case in one hand and a notebook in the other. "hello, girls!" she began; "i'm so glad i caught you together. it saves telling over the same thing three times. i want to know first exactly how you stand on the woman's suffrage question. now, don't be afraid to be frank about it, and speak your minds. of course, i'm sure that, being women who are seeking the higher education, you are all of you on the right side--the side of the thinking woman of to-day----" here judy sneezed so violently that she almost upset the little three-legged clover-leaf tea table at her elbow. "how do you feel on the subject, molly?" molly smiled broadly, while nance cleared her throat and judy blew her nose and exclaimed: "i think i must be taking cold. excuse me while i get a sweater," and disappeared in the closet. "i--i'm afraid i don't know very much about the subject, margaret. you see, i was brought up in the country, and i haven't had a chance to go into woman's suffrage very deeply." "there is no time like the present for beginning, then," said margaret promptly, opening the business-like little suit case. "read these two pamphlets and you'll get the gist of the entire subject clearly and concisely expressed. i will call on you for an opinion next week after you've had time to study the question a bit." molly took the pamphlets and began hastily turning the leaves. she wanted to laugh, but she felt certain it would offend margaret deeply not to be taken seriously, and she controlled her facial muscles with an effort while she waited for attack no. two. "nance, have you taken any interest in this question?" continued margaret, who seemed to have the patience of a fanatic spreading his belief. "i know something about it," replied nance quietly. "you see, my mother is president of a woman's suffrage association, and she spends most of her time going about the country making speeches for the national association." "what, is your mother mrs. anna oldham, the famous clubwoman?" cried margaret. nance nodded her head silently. "why, she is one of the greatest authorities on women's suffrage in the country!" exclaimed margaret with great enthusiasm. "it says so here. look, it gives a little sketch of her life and titles. she is president of two big societies and an officer in five others. it's all in this little book called 'famous club women in america and england.' dear me," continued margaret modestly, "i think i'd better resign and give the chair to you, nance. i'm nobody to be preaching to you when you must know the subject from beginning to end." nance smiled in her curious, whimsical way. "have you ever eaten too much of something, margaret," she said, "and then hated it ever afterward?" "why, yes," replied the president, "that has happened to every one, i suppose. mince pie and i have been strangers to each other for many years on that account." "well," continued nance, "i've been fed on clubs until i feel like a strausberg goose. i've had them crammed down my throat since i was five years old. when i was twelve, i was my mother's secretary, and i've sent off thousands of just such pamphlets as you are distributing now. i learned to write on the typewriter so i could copy my mother's speeches. i've been usher at club conventions and page at committee meetings. i've distributed hundreds of badges with 'votes for women' printed on them. i had to make a hundred copies of mother's speech on 'the constitution and by-laws of the united states,' and send them to a hundred different women's clubs. so, you see," she added, simply, frowning to keep back her tears, "i think i'll take a rest from clubs while i'm at college and begin to enjoy life a little with molly and judy." margaret wakefield, who was really a very nice girl and exceedingly well-bred, leaned over and placed a firm, rather large hand on nance's. "i should think you had had enough," she exclaimed, giving the hand a warm squeeze. seeing teardrops glistening in nance's eyes, she rose and started to the door. "if ever you do want to come to any of the meetings, you will be very welcome, girls," she said; "but you don't want to overdo anything in life, you know, and if there are things that interest you more than woman's suffrage you oughtn't to sacrifice yourselves. people should follow their own bent, i think. good-bye," she went on, smiling brightly, "and don't bother to read the pamphlets, molly, dear, if you don't want to. it's a poor way to carry a point to make a bugbear of the subject." she went out quietly and closed the door. "i call her a perfect lady," exclaimed molly, trying not to look at nance, but wishing at the same time that her friend would give way just once and have a good cry. "let's cut study this afternoon and take a walk," exclaimed judy. "trot along and get on your sweaters. it's much too glorious to stay indoors. nance, can't you do your theme after supper? molly, you look a little peaked. it will do you good to breathe the fresh, untainted air of the pine woods." judy, it must be confessed, was always glad of a good excuse to get away from her books. "splendid!" cried molly with enthusiasm. "and i'll bring my english tea basket," went on judy. "who's got any cookies?" "i have," said nance, now fully recovered. in five minutes the three girls had started across the campus to the road and presently were making for the pine woods that bordered the pretty lake. everybody seemed to be out roaming the country that beautiful autumn afternoon. parties of girls came swinging past, who had been on long tramps through the woods and over to the distant hills which formed a blue and misty background to the lovely rolling country. the lake was dotted with canoes and rowboats, and from far down the road that wound its way through the valley there came the sound of singing. presently a wagon-load of girls emerged into view, followed by another wagon filled with autumn leaves and evergreens. "it's the sophomore committee on decoration," judy explained. apparently she knew everything that happened at college. "they are getting the decorations for the gym. for the ball to-morrow night." molly quickly changed the subject. she had had two invitations to go to the sophomore-freshman ball since she had accepted frances andrews' offer, and several of the sophomores had been to see her to ask her to change her mind, but, having given her word, molly intended to keep it, no matter what was to pay. "let's go to the upper end of the lake," she suggested. "it's wilder and much prettier," and she led the way briskly along the path through the pine woods. in a little while they came out at the other end of the small body of water where the woods abruptly ended at the foot of a hill called "round head," which the girls proceeded to climb. from this eminence could be seen a widespreading panorama of hills and valleys, little streams and bits of forests, and beyond the pine woods the college itself, its campus spread at its feet like a mat of emerald green. the girls paused breathlessly and judy put down her tea basket. "here's where a little refreshment might be very welcome," she said, opening her basket of which she was justly proud, for not many girls at wellington could boast of such a possession. she filled the little kettle from the bottle of water she had taken the precaution to bring along, and they sat down in a circle on the turf. the autumn had been a dry one, and the ground was not damp. nibbling cookies and sweet chocolate, they waited for the water to boil. "look, here comes some one," whispered judy, indicating the figure of a man appearing around the side of the hill. "i do hope it's not a tramp," exclaimed nance uneasily. molly brown hoped so, too, although she said nothing. but she felt nervous, as who wouldn't in that lonely place? as the man came nearer, it became plain that he was making straight for them, and he did most assuredly look like a wanderer of some kind. he was dressed in an old suit of rough gray, wore an old felt hat and carried a staff like a pilgrim. the girls sat quite still and said nothing. there had been a silent understanding among them that it was better not to run. as the man drew nearer, molly became suddenly conscious of the fact that across the gray trousers just above the knees was a deep coffee-colored stain. the next moment the man stood before them, leaning on his staff, his hat under his arm. it was "epiménides antinous green." "confess now," he said, smiling at all of them and looking at molly, whom he knew best of the three, "you took me for a tramp?" "not exactly for a tramp," answered molly; "but for one who tramps." "what's the difference, miss brown?" he asked laughing. "oh, everything. clothes----" she paused, blushing deeply. her eyes had fallen on the coffee stain. "why doesn't he have it cleaned off?" she thought, frowning slightly. "and--and looks," she continued out loud. "even in the walk," judy finished. "perhaps we can give you a cup of tea, professor," she added politely. the professor was only too glad for a cup of tea. he had been roaming the hills all day, he said, and he was tired and thirsty. while he sipped the fragrant beverage, he glanced at his watch. "the truth is, i had an appointment at this spot at four-thirty," he announced. "i was to meet my young brother george, familiarly known as 'dodo.' he's at exmoor college, ten miles over, and was to walk across the valley to the rendezvous, and i was to conduct him safely to my rooms for supper. he was afraid to enter the college by the front gate for fear of meeting several hundreds of young women. he runs like a scared rabbit if he sees a girl a block off." "won't it give him an awful shock when he catches a glimpse of us waiting here on the hilltop?" asked molly. "it's a shock that won't hurt him," replied the professor. "we'll see what happens, at any rate." he put his cup and saucer on the ground, while his quizzical eyes, which seemed to laugh even when his face was serious, turned toward molly. and molly was well worth looking at that afternoon, although she herself was much dissatisfied with her appearance. her auburn hair had almost slipped down her back. her blue linen shirtwaist was decidedly blousey at the waist line. "it's because i haven't enough shape to keep it down," she was wont to complain. her cheeks were glowing and her eyes as calmly blue as the summer skies. "perhaps we'd better start on," said nance uneasily. she always felt an inexplicable shyness in the presence of men, and her friends had been known to nickname her "old maid." but before professor green could protest that he was only too glad to have his bashful brother make the acquaintance of three charming college girls, judy, ever on the alert, exclaimed, "look, there he comes around the side of the hill." the professor rose and signaled with his hat, chuckling to himself, as he watched his youthful brother pause irresolutely on the hillside. "come on, dodo," he shouted, making a trumpet of his hands. "i believe not this afternoon, thank you," dodo trumpeted back. "i have an important engagement at six." the girls could not keep from laughing. "it's a shame to frighten the poor soul like that," exclaimed molly. "we'll start back, professor, and leave him in peace." but the professor was a man of determination, and had made up his mind to bring his shy brother into the presence of ladies that afternoon, very attractive ladies at that, of george's own age, with simple, unaffected manners, calculated to make a shy young man forget for the moment that he had an affliction of agonizing diffidence. "george," called the professor, running a little way down the hillside, "come back and don't be a fool." the wretched lad turned his scarlet face in their direction and began to climb the hill. he was a tall, overgrown youth, with large hands and feet, and when he stood in their midst, holding his cap nervously in both hands, while the professor performed the introductions, he looked like a soldier facing the battle. it remained for molly and judy to put him at his ease, however, with tea and cookies and questions about exmoor college, while the professor conversed with nance about life at wellington, and which study she liked best. at last the spirit of george emerged from its shy retreat, and he forgot to feel self-conscious or afraid. they rose, packed the tea things and started back. and it was the professor who carried judy's tea basket, while george, glancing from molly's blue eyes to judy's soft gray ones, strolled between them and related a thrilling tale of college hazing. "that was a swift remedy, was it not, miss oldham?" observed the professor, laughing under his breath. but undoubtedly the cure was complete, for that very evening molly received a note, written in a crabbed boyish hand, and signed "george green," inviting the three girls to ride over to exmoor on the trolley the following saturday and spend the day. miss green, an older sister, would act as chaperone. and not a few thrills did these young ladies experience at the prospect. chapter ix. rumors and mysteries. how many warm-hearted, impetuous people get themselves into holes because of those two qualities which are very closely allied indeed; and molly brown was one of those people. carried away by emotions of generosity, she found herself constantly going farther than she realized at the moment. why, for instance, could she not have put frances andrews off with an excuse for a day or so? some one would surely have asked her to the sophomore-freshman ball. and if she had only liked frances, matters would have been different. if it had been an act of friendship, of deep devotion. but in spite of herself, she could not bring herself to trust that strange girl, beautiful and clever as she undoubtedly was, and sorry as molly was for her. after all, it was rather selfish of frances to have obtained the promise from molly. did she think it would reinstate her in the affections of her class to be seen in the company of the popular young freshman? all this time, molly said nothing to her friends, but on the morning of the ball she could not conceal from judy and nance her apprehension and general depression. and seeing their friend's lack-lustre eye and drooping countenance, they held a counsel of war in judy's small bedroom. at the end of this whispered conference, judy was heard to remark: "i'm afraid of the girl, to tell you the truth. her fiery eyes and her two-pronged tongue seem to take all the spirit out of me." "i'm not afraid of her," said nance, who had a two-pronged tongue of her own, once she was stirred into action. "you wait here for me, and when i come back, you can go and notify the sophomores of what's happened. of course, molly will get to the ball all right. the thing is to extricate her from the situation by the most tactful and surest means." judy laughed. "no," she answered, "the thing is not to let molly know we have saved her life." "if frances hadn't done that witch's stunt and said all those malicious things at molly's kentucky spread, i don't think i should have minded so much. and do you know, judy, that the report has spread abroad that she and molly had prepared the whole thing beforehand, speeches and all and were in league together? you see, molly was the only one who wasn't hit." "you don't mean it," cried judy. "then, more than ever, i want to spare the child the humiliation she might have to suffer if she went with frances to-night. go forth to battle, nance, and may the saints preserve you." nance girded her sweater about her like a coat of mail, stiffened her backbone, pressed her lips together and marched out to the fray. she never told even judy exactly what took place between frances and her in that small room, with its bewildering array of fine trappings, silver combs and brushes, yellow silk curtains at the window, turkish rugs, books and pictures. no one had ever seen the room except molly the night of the spread, when it was too dark to make out what was in it. there was no loud talking. whatever was said was of the tense quiet kind, and presently nance emerged unscathed from the encounter. "she made me give my word of honor not to tell what was said," she announced to the palpitating judy, "but she's writing the note to molly now; so go quickly and inform someone that molly has no escort for the ball." judy departed much mystified and nance remained discreetly away from her own room until she perceived frances steal down the hall, push a note under their door and then hurry back, bang her own door and lock it. then, after a moment's grace, nance marched boldly to their chamber. molly was reading the note. "what do you think, nance?" she exclaimed with a tone of evident relief in her voice, "frances andrews can't go to-night." "indeed, and what reason does she give?" asked nance, feeling very much like a conspirator now that she was obliged to face molly. "none. she simply says 'i'm sorry i can't go to-night. hope you'll enjoy it. f. a.' how does she expect me to get there, i wonder, at the eleventh hour?" nance examined her finger nails attentively. "perhaps she's seen to that," she replied after a pause. "nance," said molly, presently, "i'm so relieved that i think i'll have to 'fess up. it's mean of me, i know, and i feel awfully ungenerous to be so glad. you see, nobody can ever tell what strange, freakish thing she's going to do. of course she was the witch. i knew it from the conscious look that came into her face when i told her about it afterwards." "the mistake she has made is being defiant instead of repentant," said nance. "instead of trying to brazen it out, she ought to 'walk softly,' as the bible says, and keep quiet. she is the most embittered soul i ever met in all my life. if hatred counted for much, her hatred for her own class would burn it to a cinder." there was a sound of hurrying footsteps on the stairs and judy burst into the room. her face was aflame and she flung herself into a chair panting for breath. "what's your hurry?" asked molly, slipping on her jacket. "excuse me, i must be chasing along to french. tell her the news, nance." no need to tell judy news, who had news of her own. "i tell you, nance," she exclaimed, "there are times when i think the position of a freshman is one of the lowliest things in life. the first sophomore i met was judith blount. i did feel a little timid, but i told her what had happened. 'you can tell your friend,' she said, 'that we sophomores are not so gullible as all that, and if her nerve has failed her at the last moment, it's her fault, not ours.'" "why, judy," exclaimed nance, "you didn't know you were jumping from the frying pan right into the fire when you told that to judith blount, who has never liked molly from the beginning. it's jealousy, pure and simple, i think; although there almost seems to be something more behind it sometimes. she takes such pains to be disagreeable. was anyone else there to hear you?" "oh, yes. she was surrounded by her satellites, jennie wren and a few others." the two girls sat in gloomy silence for a few minutes. after that rebuff, they hardly cared to circulate the bit of news any further in the sophomore class, which, it must be confessed, had the reputation of being run by a clique of the most arrogant and snobbish set of girls wellington college had ever known. "let's go and tell our woes to nice old sally marks," suggested judy, and off they marched in search of the good-natured funny sally, whose room was on the floor below. "come in," she called at their tap on the door, and noticing at once their serious faces, she exclaimed: "i declare, i am beginning to feel like the oracle at delphi. what's the trouble, now, my children?" "you ought never to have gone to judith blount," she continued after they had unburdened their secrets. but having gone to her, "it would be well," so spake the oracle, "to sit back and hold tight. the news is certain to spread, and of course only judith and her ring would believe that molly sent you out to find her an escort. there is one thing sure: molly is obliged to go to the dance, not only because she has so many friends, but because she figures, i am told, so largely in 'jokes & croaks,' and it would be sport spoiled if she wasn't there when the things are read out. now, trot along, children, i'm cramming for an exam., and i'm busier than the busiest person in wellington to-day." the afternoon dragged itself slowly along. nance took her best dress out of its wrappings, heated a little iron and smoothed out its wrinkles. she lifted molly's blue crepe from its hanger and laid it on the couch. "it was made in the simplest possible way out of the least possible goods in the least possible time," she informed judy, who had wickedly cut a class and sat moping in her friend's room. "isn't it pretty? we made it together, and i'm really quite puffed up about the result. it's empire, you know," she added proudly. the dress did indeed show the short empire waist. the round neck was cut out and finished with a frill of creamy lace which molly happened to have, and there had not been much of a struggle with the sleeves, which came only to the elbow and were to all intents and purposes shapeless. but the color was the thing, as molly had said. "i'd be willing to drown in a color like that," judy observed. judy was quite a _poseuse_ about colors and assured her friends that she could never wear red because it inflamed her temper and made her cross; that violet quieted her nerves; green stirred her ambitions, and blue aroused her sympathies. while they were looking at the dress, margaret wakefield and jessie lynch, her roommate and boon companion, after rapping on the door, sailed into the room. "we came to consult about clothes," they announced. "is this to be an evening dress affair, or what's proper to wear?" "the best you have," replied judy, "at least that's what i was told by the oracular sally below stairs." "for the love of heaven, don't tell that to jessie," cried margaret. "if you give her so much rope, she'll be wearing purple velvet and cloth of gold." jessie laughed good-naturedly. she was already considered the best dressed and prettiest girl in the freshman class, and it was a joke at queen's cottage that she had been obliged to apply to the matron for more closet room, because the large one she shared with margaret wakefield was not nearly adequate for her numerous frocks. it had been a constant wonder to the other girls in the house that these two opposite types could have become such intimate friends; but friends they were, and continued to be throughout their college course, although jessie never could rake up an interest in the u. s. constitution or woman's suffrage, either. the two girls really formed a sort of combination of brains and beauty, and it became generally known that jessie would hardly have pulled through the four years, except for the indefatigable efforts of her faithful friend, margaret. mabel hinton, a queen's cottage freshman, now popped her head in at the door, which was half open. she was a very odd character, but she was popular with her friends, who called her "the martian," probably because she had a phenomenal intellect and wore enormous glasses in tortoise shell frames which made her eyes look like a pair of full moons. "i thought i heard a racket," she said in her crisp, catchy voice. "i suppose you are all discussing the news." "news? what news?" they demanded. she closed the door carefully and came farther into the room. "gather around me, girls," she said mysteriously, enjoying their curiosity. "but what is it, mabel? don't keep us in suspense," cried judy, always impatient. "well, there is evidence that someone was going to set fire to the gym. to-night," she began, in a whisper. "this morning a bundle of oil-soaked rags was discovered in a closet, and then they began to search and found several other bundles like the first. there was a lot of excitement, and the prex came over. they tried to keep it quiet, but the story leaked out, of course, and is still leaking----" she smiled. the girls exchanged horrified glances. what terrible disaster might not have befallen them if the rags had not been discovered? "of course it was the work of an insane person," said margaret wakefield. "of course, but who? is she one of the students or some outside person?" with a common instinct, judy and nance looked up at the same moment. their glances met. without making a sound, judy's lips formed the word "frances." "is the dance to take place, then?" asked jessie. "oh, yes. it's all been hushed up and things will go on just as usual. i'm going to look on from the balcony. i shan't mingle with the dancers, because they knock off my spectacles and generally upset my equilibrium." the door opened and molly appeared in their midst like a gracefully angular wraith, for her face looked white, her shoulders drooped and her long slim arms hung down at her sides dejectedly. "why, molly, dear, has anything happened to you?" cried nance. "no, i won't say that nothing has happened," answered molly, sinking into a chair and resting her chin on her hand. "i have been put through an ordeal this day, why, i can never tell you, but i am glad you are all here so that i can tell you about it." they pressed about her, full of sympathy and friendliness, while judy, who loved comfort and recognized the needs of the flesh under the most trying circumstances, lit nance's alcohol lamp and put on the kettle to make tea. "but what is it?" they all demanded, seeing that molly had fallen into a silence. "i've been with the president for the last hour," she said, "though for what reason i can't explain. i can't imagine why i was sent for and brought to her private office. she was very nice and kind. she asked me a lot of questions about myself and all of queen's girls. i was glad enough to answer them, because we have nothing to be ashamed of, have we, girls?" molly rose and stood before them, spreading out her hands with a kind of deprecating gesture. the circle of faces before her almost seemed abashed under the steady gaze of her clear blue eyes. "it was a pleasure to tell her what nice girls were stopping at queen's cottage." "did she mention?" began judy and pointed to the dividing wall of the next room. "oh, yes, i was coming to that. but what do i know about----" mollie stopped short and caught her breath. her eyes turned towards the door, which was opened softly. there stood frances andrews. she had evidently just come in, for she still wore her sweater and tam o' shanter, and brought with her the smell of the fresh piney air. "it's all right about your escort for to-night, miss brown. you are to go with miss stewart, who has got special privilege from the sophomore president to take you. good-bye. i hope you'll have a ripping time. i shan't see you at supper. i'm going off on the 6.15 train and won't be back until sunday night." there was such a tense feeling in the circle of freshmen as frances stood there, that, as judy remarked afterwards, they almost crackled with electricity. it was quite late, and as most of the girls intended to dress for the party before supper, they took their departure immediately without any comment. "is anything special the matter?" asked molly, after they had gone and she was left alone with her friends. they told her the strange story which mabel hinton had reported to them a little while before. "but that is the work of a lunatic," exclaimed molly, horrified. "and i suppose," went on nance, "that the reason prexy sent for you was that she suspected a certain person, who shall be nameless, and she was told that you were the only person who had ever been nice to her, and furthermore that you were going to the dance with her." "of course that must be the reason," said molly, "and of course it's absurd, i mean suspecting frances andrews. she might be accused of many things, but she is certainly in her right mind. she's much cleverer than lots of the girls in her class." "clever, yes. but should you call her balanced?" molly did not answer. she felt anxious and frightened, and a rap on the door at that moment made her jump with nervousness. it proved to be one of the maids of the house with two boxes of flowers, both for molly. one was pink roses and contained the card of mary stewart, and the other was violets, and contained no card whatever. she divided the violets in half and made her two friends wear them that night to the dance. chapter x. jokes and croaks. "i'm beginning to feel that we shall issue happily out of all our troubles," cried judy kean, bursting into her friends' room without knocking, "and the reason why i feel that way is because when i am clothed in silk attire my soul is clothed in joy. especially when there's dancing to follow. button me up, someone, please, so that i may take a good look at my resplendent form in your mirror. i can't see more than a square inch of neck in my own two by four." the girls stood back to admire their friend, who indulged her artistic fancy in rather theatrical clothes much too old for her, but who usually succeeded in gaining the effect she sought. "dear me, 'she walks in beauty like the night,'" said molly laughing. "you look like a charming and very youthful widow-lady, judy, but how comes it you are wearing black?" "black is for certain types," replied judy sagely, "and i am one of them. next to black my bilious skin takes on a dazzling, creamy tint and my mouse-colored hair assumes a yellow glint that is not its own." the girls laughed at their erratic friend, who was, indeed, dressed in black chiffon, from the fluffy folds of which her vivacious young face glowed like a flower. "if you object to me, wait until you see jessie," cried judy. "she might be going to the opera, she is so fine. she is wearing pink satin that glistens all over like a christmas tree with little shiny things." as a matter of fact, nance, whose well balanced and correct tastes in most things rarely failed her, was the most suitably dressed of our girls, in her pretty white lingerie frock. at eight o'clock that evening molly rolled away luxuriously in a village hack with mary stewart, holding her roses tenderly and carefully under her gray eiderdown cape, so as not to crush them. "i'm awfully glad i was so lucky as to draw you this evening, molly," the older girl was saying. "i'm the lucky one," answered molly, her thoughts reverting to the strange discovery of the morning. "oh, miss stewart, what did frances andrews do last year to get herself into such a mess and be frozen out by all her class this year?" "i'll tell you perhaps some day, but not to-night. we want to enjoy ourselves to-night. can you guide, molly?" "like a streak. i always guided at home at the school dances, because i was the tallest girl in my class." "i'm a guider, too," laughed mary, "and when two guiders come together, i imagine it's a good deal like a tug of war." during the ride over to the gymnasium, neither of the girls mentioned the thing uppermost in their minds: the attempt to set the gymnasium on fire that night. nor was the rumor referred to by anyone at the dance later. it was a strictly forbidden topic, the president herself having issued orders. the great room was a mass of foliage and bunting, japanese lanterns and incandescent lights in many colors, and it was really quite a brilliant affair according to molly's notions, who had never seen anything but small country dances usually given at the schoolhouse several miles from her home. lovely music floated from behind a screen of palms and lovely girls floated on the floor in couples, to the strains of the latest waltz. "i'm afraid i'm going to be an awful wallflower," thought molly, feeling suddenly overgrown and awkward in the midst of this swirling mass of grace and beauty. "i can't help feeling queer and i don't seem to recognize anybody." but molly had plenty of partners that evening, and after that first delightful waltz, it was nearly an hour before she caught a glimpse of mary stewart again in the crowd of dancers. "isn't it jolly?" called judy, as they dashed past each other in a romping barn dance. "i never thought i could have such a good time at a manless party," jessie lynch confided to molly while they rested against the wall later. "but, really, it's quite as good fun." "isn't it?" replied molly. "i think i never had a better time in my life. but i'm afraid our roommates and friends are not enjoying it very much," she added ruefully, pointing to the gallery, where seated in a silent bored row were margaret wakefield, nance oldham and mabel hinton. "of course," said jessie, "you would never expect mabel to join this mad throng, but i'm surprised at nance and margaret." "margaret prefers conversation parties, i suppose, and nance is not fond of dancing, either. she would always rather look on, she says." the two girls were standing near the musicians and from the other side of the screen of palms they now heard a voice say: "have you danced with the fantastic empress josephine as yet?" "not as yet," came the answer with a laugh. "but be careful, she is near----" molly moved away hastily, her face crimson. jessie had heard the question also and recognized the voice of judith blount. "why, molly," she exclaimed, glancing at her face, "you don't think they meant----" "yes," said molly, trying to smile naturally, "i do." she glanced down at her home-made dress. perhaps it did look amateurish. she and nance had worked very hard over it, but, after all, they were not experienced dressmakers. "why, you look perfectly charming," went on jessie generously. "the color is exactly right for you----" "yes, color," answered molly, "but there ought to be something besides color to a dress, you know. never mind, i shouldn't be such a sensitive plant, jessie. one ought not to mind being called fantastic. it's not nearly so bad as being called--well, malicious--cruel. i'd rather be fantastic than any of those things. but i did think the dress was pretty when we made it." "come along, and let's get some lemonade, molly. your dress is sweet and suits you exactly, so there." then someone came up and claimed jessie for the next dance, but molly was grateful to the pretty butterfly creature for her assurances and she resolved to forget all about her dress. as she lingered in the corner, uncertain whether to stay where she was or join her friends in the gallery, mary stewart made her way through the crowd and called: "oh, here you are. some of the seniors are just outside and want to meet you. will you come?" "i should think i would," replied molly, joyfully. fantastic, or not, she had one good friend among the older girls. "this is miss molly brown of kentucky," announced mary stewart presently to a dozen august seniors who shook her hand and began asking her questions. "we had two reasons for wanting to meet you, miss brown," here put in a very handsome big girl, who spoke in an authoritative tone, which made everybody stop and listen. (she was, in fact, the president of the senior class.) "one of course was just to make your acquaintance, and the other was to ask if you would do us a favor. we are going to have a living picture show friday week for the benefit of the students' fund, and we wondered if you would pose in one of the pictures, maybe several, we haven't decided on them yet. but that dress must be in one of them, don't you think so, mary? one of romney's lady hamilton pictures for instance, with a white gauze fichu; or a sir thomas lawrence portrait----" "you don't think it's too fantastic?" asked molly. "what, that lovely blue thing? heavens, no! it's charming----" molly had barely time to thank her and accept the invitation, when she and mary were dragged off to make up the big circle of "right and left all around," which wound up the dance. after this whirling romp, three loud raps were heard and gradually the noise of talking and laughter subsided into absolute silence. a girl had mounted the platform. she carried a megaphone in one hand and a book in the other. she was the official reader of her class, and now proceeded to recite through the megaphone all the best and most amusing material from "jokes & croaks." according to time honored custom, the jokes were greeted with applause and laughter, and the croaks with groans and laughter, and anybody who groaned at a joke or applauded a croak, if she happened to be caught, was publicly humiliated by being made to stand up and face the jeers of the multitude. the girls finally decided, after many ludicrous mistakes, that the jokes were on the sophomores and the croaks were on the freshmen. for instance, here was a croak: "a lady of notable luck, who cared not for turkey or duck, cried, 'give me old ham and i don't give a slam, if it comes from vermont or kaintuck.'" this was greeted with laughing groans, and molly for the first time realized the significance of her roommate's name. margaret wakefield figured in several croaks, as "the suffragette of queen's." in fact queen's girls came in for a good many croaks and began to wait fearfully for what was to come next. but the witticisms were all quite good-natured, even the last, which called forth so many merry groans that they soon ceased to be groans at all and became uproarious laughter, and molly, very red and laughing, too, was the centre of all eyes. this was the croak: "they have locked me in the cloisters, they have fastened up the gate! oh, let me out; oh, let me out. it's getting very late. 'tis said the ghosts of classes gone do wander here at night. oh, let me out; oh, let me out, before i die of fright! and then there rang a clarion voice. it's tone was loud and clear. 'oh, dry your eyes and cease your cries, for help, i ween, is near. but promise me one little thing before i ope the gate: oh, never pass the coffee tray, if i am sitting nigh; or, if you pass the coffee tray, oh, then, just pass me by!'" it was all very jolly and delightful, and for the first time the girls felt that they were really a part of the college life. mary stewart was very sweet to molly when she took her home that night, and the young freshman never realized until long afterwards, when she was a senior herself, what a nice thing her friend had done; for sophomore-freshman receptions were an old story to mary stewart. chapter xi. exmoor college. busy days followed the sophomore-freshman ball. the girls were "getting into line," as judy variously expressed it; "showing their mettle; and putting on steam for the winter's work." the story of the incendiary had been reported exaggerated and had gradually died out altogether. frances andrews had returned to college, more brazenly facetious than ever, breaking into conversations, loudly interrupting, making jokes which no one laughed at except molly and judy out of charity. she was a strange girl and led a lonely life, but she was too much like the crater of a sleeping volcano, which might shoot off unexpectedly at any moment, and most of the girls gave her a wide berth. the weather grew cold and crisp. there was a smell of smoke in the air from burning leaves and from the chimneys of the faculty homes wherein wood fires glowed cheerfully. at last saturday arrived. it was the day of the excursion to exmoor, and it was with more or less anxiety regarding the weather that the three girls scanned the skies that morning for signs of rain. but the heavens were a deep and cloudless blue and the air mildly caressing, neither too cold nor too warm. "it is like the indian summers we have at home," exclaimed molly, when, an hour later, they turned their faces toward the village through which the trolley passed. mabel hinton, passing them as they started, had called out: "art off on a picnic?" and they had answered: "we art." some other girls had cried: "whither away so early, oh?" and they had cried: "to exmoor! to exmoor, for now the day has come at last!" paraphrasing a song judy was in the habit of singing. indeed the day seemed so perfect and joyous that they could hardly keep from singing aloud instead of just humming when they boarded the trolley car. through the country they sped swiftly. the valley unfolded itself before them in all its beauty and the misty blue hills in the distance seemed to draw nearer. over everything there was a sense of autumn peace which comes when the world is drowsing off into his deep sleep. "exmoor!" called the conductor at last, and the three girls stepped off at a charming rustic station. with a clang of the bell which rang out harshly in the still air, the car flew on. the three girls looked at the empty station. then they looked at each other with a kind of mock consternation, for nothing really mattered. "where is dodo?" asked judy, with the smile of the victor, since she had predicted only a few moments before that dodo might by this time have become so frightened at his boldness that he would suddenly become extinct like his namesake, the dodo-bird. "well, if dodo is really extinct," said molly, "we'll just take a little walk back through the fields. epiménides thought nothing of it. he expects to walk to-day and meet us at lunch." but dodo was not extinct that morning, and they beheld him now running down the steep road as fast as his heavy boots could carry him. "behold, his spirit has risen from its fossil remains and he now walks among us in the guise of a man," chanted judy. "don't make us laugh, judy, just as the poor soul arrives without enough breath to apologize," said nance, and the next instant the embarrassed young man stood before them blushing and stammering as if he had been caught in the act of picking a pocket or committing some other slight crime which required explanation. "i'm terribly sorry--have you waited long?--the schedule was changed--i didn't know--you should have come half an hour later--i don't mean that--i mean i wasn't ready--" he broke off in an agony of embarrassment and the girls burst out laughing. "don't you be caring," said judy. "we're here and nothing else really matters." "i shouldn't have thought the station of a man's college could be so deserted," observed molly, looking about the empty place. dodo assured her that plenty of people would be there in half an hour, when the train arrived; just then everybody was either in the village on the other side of the buildings, or down on the football grounds watching the morning practice game. there was to be a real game that afternoon. "you see, it's only a small college," he went on. "there are only two hundred and fifty in all. the standards are so high it's rather hard to get in, but we are heavily endowed and can afford to keep up the standards," he added proudly. they climbed the road to the college almost in silence and in ten minutes emerged on a level elevation or table land which commanded a view of the entire countryside. here stood the college buildings, built of red brick, seasoned and mellowed with time. they were a beautiful and dignified group of buildings, and there was a decidedly old world atmosphere about the place and the campus with splendid elm trees. molly had once heard judith blount refer to exmoor as that "one-horse, old-fashioned little college," and she was not prepared for anything so fine and impressive as this. nor was she prepared for the surprise of miss green, sister of professor edwin and dodo. the girls had pictured her a middle-aged spinster, having heard she was older than the professor himself, who seemed a thousand to them. and here, waiting for them, in the living room of the chapter house, was a very charming and girlish young woman with edwin's brown eyes and cleft chin and george's blonde hair; the ease and graciousness of one brother and the youthful fairness of the other. she had come down from new york the night before especially to meet them, she said. rather an expensive trip, they thought, for one day's pleasure, since it took about seven hours and meant usually one meal and of course at night a berth on the sleeper. "at first i thought i couldn't manage it for this week," she continued, "but edwin was so insistent and no one has ever been known to refuse him anything he really wanted." edwin! but why edwin? why not the youthful and blushing dodo? so molly wondered, while they were conducted over the entire college; the beautiful little gothic chapel with its stained glass windows; through the splendid old library which was much smaller than the one at wellington, but much more "atmospheric" as judy had remarked; then through the dormitories where they remained discreetly in the corridors, and finally back to the chapter house, in which george lodged with some thirty schoolmates. there on the piazza was professor edwin green waiting for them. he had made an early start, he said, and walked the whole distance in less than three hours. some other young men came up and were introduced, and the entire gay party, nance shyly sticking closely beside miss green, went off to view the village, which was a quaint old place well worth visiting, they were told. the train had evidently come in, and crowds of people were hurrying up the road. there was a sound of a horn and a coach dashed in sight filled with students wearing crimson streamers in their buttonholes. "it's a crowd of repton fellows come over to see their team licked," george explained, "but look, edwin, here comes dickie blount. i thought he was in chicago." "evidently he isn't," said the professor, his eyes smiling, his mouth serious. it was richard blount, the hero of the ham bone, and he straightway attached himself to molly and declined to leave her side for the rest of the day. "don't tell me that that delightful, joking, jolly person is brother to judith," whispered judy in molly's ear. molly nodded. "there's no family resemblance, but it's true, nevertheless." motor cars and carriages of all varieties now began to arrive. the whole countryside had turned out to see the great game between the two local college teams, and the wellington girls pinned green rosettes in their buttonholes to signify that their sympathies were all for exmoor. "it's the most exciting, jolliest time i ever had in all my life," cried molly to professor green, who walked on her other side. "and to think i have never seen a football game before in all my life." "i must draw a diagram for you and show you what some of the plays are, or you will be in a muddle," said the professor, looking at her gravely, almost, as molly thought, as if she were one of his english literature pupils. at lunch, according to the etiquette of the place, george and his guests were placed at the senior table. there was no smoking nor loud talking and the students behaved themselves most decorously, although george confided to judy that ordinarily pandemonium prevailed. after lunch they started for the grounds in a triumphal procession; for our wellington freshmen and their chaperone had an escort of at least four or five young men apiece. nance looked bewildered and shy and happy; judy was never more sparkling nor prettier, and molly was in her gayest, brightest humor. they had hardly left the chapter house behind them and proceeded in a snake-like procession across the campus, when a black and prancing, though rather bony, steed dashed up bearing a young lady in a faultlessly fitting riding habit. it was judith blount. nobody looked particularly thrilled at judith's appearance, not even judith's brother, and judy almost exclaimed out loud: "bother! why couldn't she stay at home just once?" "how do you do, cousin grace?" called judith from her perch. "i heard you were going to be down and i couldn't resist riding over to see you." "how are you, judith? i'm so glad to see you," answered cousin grace in a tone without much heart to it. "why didn't you come sooner? we've just finished lunch." "thanks, i had a sandwich early. i suppose you are off for the grounds. go ahead. i'll get cousin edwin to help me tie up this old animal somewhere. we'll follow right behind." molly was almost certain that cousin edwin was about to place this office on the shoulders of his younger brother, but glancing again at the flushed and happy face of dodo at the side of judy, the professor relented and dropped behind to look after his relation. never had molly been so wildly excited as she was over the football game that afternoon. it was a wonderful picture, the two teams lined up against each other; crowds of people yelling themselves hoarse; the battle cry of the repton team mingling with the warlike cry of the exmoor students. the cheer leaders at the heads of the cheer sections made the welkin ring continuously. at last a young man, who seemed to be a giant in size and strength, dashed like a wild horse across the russian steppes straight up the field with the ball under his arm, and from the insane behavior of the green men, including professor edwin green and his fair sister, molly became suddenly aware that the game was over and exmoor had won. the cheering section could yell no more, because to a man it had lost its voice; but, oh, the glad burst of song from the exmoor students as they leaped into the field and bore the conquering giant around on their shoulders. and, oh! the dejection of the men of crimson as they stalked sadly from the scene of their humiliation. at last the whole glorious day was over and the girls found themselves on the way to the trolley station. richard blount and his cousin, miss green, had hastened on ahead. they were to take the six o'clock train back to new york. "cousin edwin, why can't you hire a horse in the village and ride back to wellington with me?" asked judith, when they paused at the chapter house for her to mount her black steed. "because i'm engaged to take these young ladies home by trolley, judith," answered the professor firmly. judith leaped on her horse without assistance, gave the poor animal a savage lash with her whip and dashed across the campus without another word. the ride back at sunset was even more perfect than the morning trip. the professor of english literature appeared to have been temporarily changed into a boy. he told them funny stories and bits of his own college experiences, and made them talk, too. almost before they knew it, the conductor was calling: "wellington!" chapter xii. sunday morning breakfast. it was quite the custom at wellington for girls to prepare breakfasts on sunday morning in their rooms. there was always the useful boneless chicken to be creamed in one's chafing dish; and in another, eggs to be scrambled with a lick and a promise, at these impromptu affairs; and it was a change from the usual codfish balls of the sunday house breakfast. [illustration: it was quite the custom for girls to prepare breakfast in their rooms.--_page 152._] on this particular sunday morning, judy was very busy; for the breakfast party was of her giving, in molly's and nance's room; her own "singleton" being too small. she was also very angry in her tempestuous and unrestrained way, and having emptied the vials of her wrath on molly's head, she was angrier with herself for giving away to temper. although it was judy's party, molly, as usual kind-hearted and grandly hospitable, had invited frances andrews. then she had gone and confessed her sins to judy, who flared up and said things she hadn't intended, and molly had wept a little and owned that she was entirely at fault. but what could be done? frances was invited and had accepted. to atone for her sins, poor molly had made popovers as a surprise and arranged to bake them in mrs. murphy's oven. but the hostess being gloomy, the company was gloomy, since the one is apt to reflect the humor of the other. however, as the coffee began to send forth its cheerful aroma from judy's russian samovar, discord took wings and harmony reigned. it was a very comfortable and sociable party. most of the girls wore their kimonos, it being a time for rest and relaxation; but when frances andrews swept into the room in a long lavender silk _peignoir_ trimmed with frills of lace, all cotton crepe japanese dressing gowns faded into insignificance. "there is no doubt that college girls are a hungry lot," remarked margaret wakefield, settling herself comfortably to dispose of food and conversation and arouse argument, a thing she deeply enjoyed. "so much brain work requires nourishment," observed mabel hinton. "there is not much brain nourishment at queen's," put in frances andrews. "i've been living on raw eggs and sweet chocolate for the last week. the table has run down frightfully." sallie marks was a loyal queen's girl, and resented this slur on the table of the establishment which was sheltering her now for the third year. "the food here is quite as good as it is at any of the other houses," she said coldly to the unfortunate frances, who really had not intended to give offence. "pardon me, but i don't agree with you," replied frances, "and i have a right to my own opinion, i suppose." judy gave molly a triumphant glance, as much as to say, "you see what you have done." everybody looked a little uncomfortable, and margaret wakefield, equal to every occasion, launched into a learned discussion on how many ounces of food the normal person requires a day. once more the talk flowed on smoothly. but where frances was, it would seem there were always hidden reefs which wrecked every subject, no matter how innocent, the moment it was launched. "molly, i can trade compliments with you," put in jessie lynch, taking not the slightest notice of her roommate's discourse. "it's one of those very indirect, three-times-removed compliments, but you'll be amused by it." "really," said molly, "do tell me what it is before i burst with curiosity." "i said 'trade,'" laughed jessie, who liked a compliment herself extremely. "oh, of course," replied molly. "i have any number i can give you in exchange. how do you care for this one? mary stewart thinks you are very attractive." "does she, really? that's nice of her," exclaimed jessie, blushing with pleasure as if she hadn't been told the same thing dozens of times before. "i think she's fine; not exactly pretty, you know, but fine." "i suppose you don't know how her father made his money?" broke in frances. there was a silence, and molly, feeling that she was about to be mortified again by something disagreeable, cried hastily: "oh, dear, i forgot the surprise. do wait a moment," and dashed from the room. while she was gone, nance and judy began filling up the intervals with odd bits of conversation, helped out by the other girls, and frances andrews did not have another opportunity to put in her oar. suddenly she rose and swept to the door. "you would none of you feel interested to know, i suppose, that mary stewart's father started life as a bootblack----" "that's what i'm starting life as," cried molly, who now appeared carrying a large tray covered with a napkin. "i am the official bootblack of queen's, and i make sometimes one-fifty a week at it. i hope i'll do as well as mr. stewart in the business. have a popover?" she unfolded the napkin and behold a pile of golden muffins steaming hot. there were wild cries of joy from the kimonoed company. "and now, jessie, i'll take my second-hand, roundabout compliment----" she began, when judy interrupted her. "won't you have a popover, miss andrews?" she asked in a cold, exasperated tone. "thanks; i eat the european breakfast usually--coffee and roll----" "yes, i've been there," answered judy. "i'll say good morning. i've enjoyed your little party immensely," and frances marched out of the room and banged the door. "i should think you would have learned a lesson by this time, molly brown," cried judy hotly. "there is always a row whenever that girl is around. she can't be nice, and there is no use trying to make her over." "i'm sorry," said molly penitently. "i wish i could understand why she behaves that way when she knows it's going to take away what few friends she has." "i think i can tell you," put in mabel hinton. "nobody likes her, and nobody expects any good of her. if you are constantly on the lookout for bad traits, they are sure to appear. it's almost a natural law. everybody was expecting this to-day, and so it happened, of course. if we had been cordial and sweet to her, she never would have said that about mary stewart or the food at queen's, either." "dear me, are we listening to a sermon," broke in judy flippantly. but, in spite of judy's interruption, mabel's speech made an impression on the girls, some of whom felt a little ashamed of their attitude toward frances andrews. "did you ever see a dog that had been kicked all its life?" went on mabel; "how it snarls and bites and snaps at anybody who tries to pet it? well, frances is just a poor kicked dog. she's done something she ought not to have done, and she's been kicked out for it, and she's so sore and unhappy, she snarls at everybody who comes near her." "mabel, you're a brick!" exclaimed sallie marks. "i started the fight this morning and i'm ashamed of it. i'm going to make a resolution to be nice to that poor girl hereafter, no matter how horrid she is. it will be an interesting experiment, if for no other reason." "let's form a society," put in molly, "to reinstate frances andrews, and the way to do it will be to be as nice as we can to her and to say nice things about her to the other girls." "good work!" cried margaret wakefield, scenting another opportunity to draw up a constitution, by-laws and resolutions. "we will call a first meeting right now, and elect officers. i move that molly be made chairman of the meeting." "i second the motion," said sallie heartily. "all in favor say 'aye.'" there was a chorus of laughing "ayes" and a society was actually established that morning, molly, as founder, being elected president. it consisted of eight members, all freshmen, except the good-natured sallie marks, who condescended, although a junior, to join. "suppose we vote on a name now," continued margaret who wished to leave nothing undone in creating the club. "each member has a right to suggest two names, votes to be taken afterward." it was all very business-like, owing to margaret's experienced methods, but the girls enjoyed it and felt quite important. as a matter of fact, it was the first society to be established that year in the freshman class, and it developed afterward into a very important organization. among the various names suggested were "the optimists," "the bluebirds," "the glad hands," mentioned by sallie marks, and "the happy hearts." "they are all too sentimental," said the astute margaret, looking them over. "there'll be so many croaks about us if we choose one of these names that we'll be crushed with ridicule. how about these initials--'g.f.' what do they stand for?" "gold fishes," replied mabel hinton promptly. the others laughed, but the name pleased them, nevertheless. "you see," went on mabel, "a gold fish always radiates a cheerful glow no matter where he is. he is the most amiable, contented little optimist in the animal kingdom, and he swims just as happily in a finger bowl as he does in a fish pond. he was evidently created to cheer up the fish tribe and i'm sure he must succeed in doing it." the explanation was received with applause, and when the votes were taken, "g.f." was chosen without a dissenting voice. it was decided that the club was to meet once a week, it's object, to be, in a way, the promotion of kindliness, especially toward such people as frances andrews, who were friendless. "we'll be something like the misericordia society in italy," observed judy, "only, instead of looking after wounded and hurt people, we'll look after wounded and hurt feelings." it was further moved, seconded and the motion carried that the society should be a secret one; that reports should be read each week by members who had anything to report; and, by way of infusing a little sociability into the society, it was to give an entertainment, something unique in the annals of wellington; subject to be thought of later. it was noon by the time the first meeting of the g. f. society was ready to disband. but the girls had really enjoyed it. in the first place, there was an important feeling about being an initial member of a club which had such a beneficial object, and was to be so delightfully secretive. there was, in fact, a good deal of knight errantry in the purpose of the g. f.'s, who felt not a little like amazonian cavaliers looking for adventure on the highway. "really, you know," observed jessie, "we should be called 'the friends of the wallflowers,' like some men at home, who made up their minds one new year's night at a ball to give a poor cross-eyed, ugly girl who never had partners the time of her life, just once." "did they do it?" asked nance, who imagined that she was a wallflower, and was always conscious when the name was mentioned. "they certainly did," answered jessie, "and when i saw the girl afterward in the dressing room, she said to me, 'oh, jessie, wasn't it heaven?' she cried a little. i was ashamed." "by the way, jessie, i never got my compliment," said molly. "pay it to me this instant, or i shall be thinking i haven't had a 'square deal.'" "well, here it is," answered jessie. "it has been passed along considerably, but it's all the more valuable for taking such a roundabout route to get to you. i'll warn you beforehand that you will probably have an electric shock when you hear it. you know i have some cousins who live up in new york. one of them writes to me----" "girl or man?" demanded judy. "man," answered jessie, blushing. there was a laugh at this, because jessie's beaux were numerous. "his best friend," she continued, "has a sister, and that sister--do you follow--is an intimate friend----" "'an intimate friend of an intimate friend,'" one of the girls interrupted. "yes," said jessie, "it's obscure, but perfectly logical. my cousin's intimate friend's sister has an intimate friend--miss green----" "oh, ho!" cried judy. "now we are getting down to rock bottom." "and miss green told her intimate friend who told my cousin's intimate friend's sister--it's a little involved, but i think i have it straight--who told her brother who told my cousin who wrote it to me." "but what did he write," they demanded in a chorus. "that one of miss green's brothers was crushed on a charming red-headed girl from kentucky." molly's face turned crimson. "but dodo is crushed on judy," she laughed. "it may be," said jessie. "rumors are most generally twisted." the first meeting of the g. f.'s now disbanded and the members scattered to dress for the early sunday dinner. they all attended vespers that afternoon, and in the quiet hour of the impressive service more than one pondered seriously upon the conversation of the morning and the purpose of the new club. chapter xiii. trickery. it was several days before the g. f.'s had an opportunity to practise any of their new resolutions on frances andrews. the eccentric girl was in the habit of skipping meals and eating at off hours at a little restaurant in the village, or taking ice cream sundaes in the drug store. at last, however, she did appear at supper in a beautiful dinner dress of lavender crêpe de chine with an immense bunch of violets pinned at her belt. she looked very handsome and the girls could not refrain from giving her covert glances of admiration as she took her seat stonily at the table. it was the impetuous, precipitate judy who took the lead in the promotion of kindliness and her premature act came near to cutting down the new club in its budding infancy. "you must be going to a party," she began, flashing one of her ingratiating smiles at frances. frances looked at her with an icy stare. "i--i mean," stammered judy, "you are wearing such an exquisite dress. it's too fine for ordinary occasions like this." frances rose. "mrs. markham," she said to the matron of queen's, "if i can't eat here without having my clothes sneered at, i shall be obliged to have my meals carried to my room hereafter." then she marched out of the dining room. mrs. markham looked greatly embarrassed and nobody spoke for some time. "good heavens!" said judy at last in a low voice to molly, "what's to be done now?" "why don't you write her a little note," replied molly, "and tell her that you hadn't meant to hurt her feelings and had honestly admired her dress." "apologize!" exclaimed judy, her proud spirit recoiling at the ignoble thought. "i simply couldn't." but since her attack on molly, judy had been very much ashamed of herself, and she was now taking what she called "self-control in broken doses," like the calomel treatment; that night she actually wrote a note to frances and shoved it under the door. in answer to this abject missive she received one line, written with purple ink on highly scented heavy note paper: "dear miss kean," it ran, "i accept your apology. "yours sincerely, "frances le grand andrews." "le grand, that's a good name for her," laughed judy, sniffing at the perfumed paper with some disgust. but she wrote an elaborate report regarding the incident and read it aloud to the assembled g. f.'s at their second meeting. in the meantime, sallie marks had her innings with the redoubtable frances, and retreated, wearing the sad and martyred smile of one who is determined not to resent an insult. one by one the g.f.'s took occasion to be polite and kind to the scornful, suspicious frances. her malicious speeches were ignored and her vulgarities--and she had many of them--passed lightly over. little by little she arrived at the conclusion that refinement did not mean priggishness and that vulgarity was not humor. of course the change came very gradually. not infrequently after a sophomore snub, the whipped dog snarled savagely; or she would brazenly try to shock the supper table with a coarse, slangy speech. but with the persistent friendliness of the queen's girls, the fires in her nature began to die down and the intervals between flare-ups grew longer each day. frances andrews was the first "subject" of the g.f.'s, and they were as interested in her regeneration as a group of learned doctors in the recovery of a dangerously ill patient. in the meantime, the busy college life hummed on and molly felt her head swimming sometimes with its variety and fullness. what with coaching judy, blacking boots, making certain delicious sweetmeats called "cloudbursts,"--the recipe of which was her own secret,--which sold like hot cakes; keeping up the social end and the study end, molly was beginning to feel tired. a wanness began to show in the dark shadows under her eyes and the pinched look about her lips even as early as the eventful evening when she posed for the senior living picture show. "this child needs some make-up," the august senior president had exclaimed. "where's the rouge and who's got my rabbit's foot? no, burned cork makes too broad a line. give me one of the lighter colored eyebrow pencils. you mustn't lose your color, little girl," she said, dabbing a spot of red on each of molly's pale cheeks. "your roses are one of your chief attractions." a great many students and some of the faculty had bought tickets for this notable occasion, and the gymnasium was well filled before the curtain was drawn back from a gigantic gold frame disclosing mary stewart as joan of arc in the picture by bastien le page, which hangs in the metropolitan museum of art in new york. there was no attempt to reproduce the atmospheric visions of the angel and the knight in armor, only the poor peasant girl standing in the cabbage patch, her face transfigured with inspiration. when molly saw mary stewart pose in this picture at the dress rehearsal, she could not help recalling the story of the bootblack father. "she has a wonderful face, and i call it beautiful, if other people don't," she said to herself. as for our little freshman, so dazed and heavy was she with fatigue, the night of the entertainment, that she never knew she had created a sensation, first as botticelli's "flora," barefooted and wearing a greek dress constructed of cheesecloth, and then as "mrs. hamilton," in the blue crepe with a gauzy fichu around her neck. after the exhibition, when all the actors were endeavoring to collect their belongings in the confusion of the green room, sallie marks came running behind the scenes. "prexy has specially requested you to repeat the flora picture," she announced, breathlessly. "is prexy here?" they demanded, with much excitement. "she is so," answered sallie. "she's up in the balcony with professor green and miss pomeroy." "well, what do you think, we've been performing before 'queen victoria and other members of the royal family,' like p. t. barnum, and never knew a thing about it," said a funny snub-nosed senior. "'daily demonstrations by the delighted multitude almost taking the form of ovations,'" she proceeded. "don't talk so much, lulu, and help us, for heaven's sake! where's molly brown of kentucky?" called the distracted president. molly came forth at the summons. overcome by an extreme fatigue, she had been sitting on a bench in a remote corner of the room behind some stage property. "here, little one, take off your shoes and stockings, and get into your flora costume, quick, by order of prexy." in a few minutes, molly stood poised on the tips of her toes in the gold frame. the lights went down, the bell rang, and the curtains were parted by two freshmen appointed for this duty. for one brief fleeting glance the audience saw the immortal flora floating on thin air apparently, and then the entire gymnasium was in total darkness. a wave of conversation and giggling filled the void of blackness, while on the stage the seniors were rushing around, falling over each other and calling for matches. "who's light manager?" "where's lulu?" "lulu! lulu!" "where's the switch?" "lulu's asleep at the switch," sang a chorus of juniors from the audience. "i'm not," called lulu. "i'm here on the job, but the switch doesn't work." "telephone to the engineer." "light the gas somebody." but there were no matches, and the only man in the house was in the balcony. however, he managed to grope his way to the steps leading to the platform, where he suddenly struck a match, to the wild joy of the audience. choruses from various quarters had been calling: "don't blow out the gas!" "keep it dark!" and one girl created a laugh by announcing: "the present picture represents a 'nocturne' by whistler." then the janitor began lighting gas jets along the wall and finally a lonesome gas jet on the stage faintly illumined the scene of confusion. the gigantic gilt frame outlined a dark picture of hurrying forms, and huddled in the foreground lay a limp white object, for botticelli's "flora" had fainted away. the confusion increased. the president joined the excited seniors and presently the doctor appeared, fetched by the professor of english literature. "flora" was lifted onto a couch; her own gray cape thrown over her, and opening her eyes in a few minutes, she became molly brown of kentucky. she gazed confusedly at the faces hovering over her in the half light; the doctor at one side, the president at the other; mary stewart and professor green standing at the foot and a crowd of seniors like a mob in the background. suddenly molly sat up. she brushed her auburn hair from her face and pointed vaguely toward the hall: "i saw her when she----" she began. her eye caught professor green's, and she fell back on the couch. "you saw what, my child?" asked the president kindly. "i reckon i was just dreaming," answered molly, her southern accent more marked than ever before. the president of the senior class now hurried up to the president of wellington university. "miss walker," she exclaimed, her voice trembling with indignation, "we have just found out, or, rather, the engineer has discovered, that some one has cut the electric wires. it was a clean cut, right through. i do think it was an outrage." she was almost sobbing in her righteous anger. the president's face looked very grave. "are you sure of this?" she asked. "it's true, ma'am," put in the engineer, who had followed close on the heels of the senior. without a word, president walker rose and walked to the centre of the platform. with much subdued merriment the students were leaving the gymnasium in a body. lifting a small chair standing near, she rapped with it on the floor for order. instantly, every student faced the platform, and those who had not reached the aisles sat down. "young ladies," began the president in her calm, cultivated tones that could strike terror to the heart of any erring student, "i wish to speak a word with you before you leave the gymnasium to-night. probably most of you are aware by this time that the accident to the electric lighting was really not an accident at all, but the result of a deliberate act by some one in this room. of course, i realize, that in so large a body of students as we have at wellington university there must, of necessity, be some black sheep. these we endeavor, by every effort, to regenerate and by mid-years it is usually not a difficult matter to discover those who are in earnest and those who consider wellington college merely a place of amusement. those who do consider it as such, naturally, do not--er--remain with us after mid-years." to molly, sitting on the platform, and to other trembling freshmen in the audience, the president seemed for the moment like a great and stern judge, who had appointed mid-years as the time for a general execution of criminals. "i consider," went on the speaker in slow and even tones, "idleness a most unfortunate quality, and i am prepared to combat it and to convince any of my girls who show that tendency that good hard work and only good hard work will bring success. a great many girls come here preferring idleness and learn to repent it--before mid-years." a wave of subdued laughter swept over the audience. "but," said the president, her voice growing louder and sterner, "young ladies, i am not prepared to combat chicanery and trickery by anything except the most severe measures, and if there is one among you who thinks and believes she can commit such despicable follies as that which has been done to-night, and escape--i would say to her that she is mistaken. i shall not endure such treachery. it shall be rooted out. for the honor and the illustrious name of this institution, i now ask each one of you to help me, and if there is one among you who knows the culprit and does not report it to me at once, i shall hold that girl as responsible as the real culprit. you may go now, and think well over what i have said." the president retired and the students filed soberly and quietly from the gymnasium. "how do you feel now, dear?" asked president walker, leaning over molly and taking her hand. "much better, thank you," answered molly, timidly. "could you hear what i was saying to the girls?" continued the president, looking at her closely. "yes," faltered molly. "think over it, then. and you had better stay in bed a few days until you feel better. have you prescribed for her, doctor?" the doctor nodded. he was a bluff, kindly scotchman. "a little anæmic and tired out. a good tonic and more sleep will put her to rights." mary stewart had telephoned for a carriage to take molly home, and judy, filled with passionate devotion when anything was the matter, hurried ahead to turn down the bed, lay out gown and wrapper and make a cup of bouillon out of hot water and a beef juice capsule; and finally assist her beloved friend--whom she occasionally chastened--to remove her clothes and get into bed. "i may not have many chances to wait on you, molly, darling," she exclaimed, when molly protested at so much devotion. "i may not have a chance after mid-years." if she had mentioned death itself, she could not have used a more tragic tone. "judy," cried molly, slipping her arms around her friend's neck, "i'm not going to let you go at mid-years if i have to study for two." chapter xiv. an inspiration. "this is like having a bedroom _salon_," exclaimed molly with a hospitable smile to some dozen guests who adorned the divans and easy chairs, the floor and window sills of her room. surely there was nothing molly liked better than to entertain, and when she had callers, she always entertained them with refreshments of some kind. often it had to be crackers and sweet chocolate, and she had even been reduced to tea. but usually her family kept her supplied with good things and her larder was generally well stocked. she lay in bed, propped up with pillows, and scattered about the bed were text-books and papers. "you've been studying again, you naughty child," exclaimed mary stewart, shaking her finger. "didn't dr. mclean tell you to go easy for the next week?" "go easy, indeed," laughed molly. "you might as well tell a trapeze actor to do the giant-swing and hold on tight at the same time. but it's worth losing a few days to find out what loving friends i have. your pink roses are the loveliest of all," she added, squeezing her friend's hand. "tell us exactly who sent you each bunch?" demanded jessie, passing a box of ginger-snaps, while judy performed miracles with a tea ball, a small kettle and a varied assortment of cups and saucers. "i have a right to ask you," continued jessica, "because you asked the same question of me last tuesday when two boxes came." "no suitor sent me any of these, mistress jessica," answered molly, "because i haven't any. miss stewart sent the pink ones, and the president of the senior class sent the red ones. judy brought me the double violets and nance the lilies of the valley, bless them both, and another senior the pot of pansies. the seniors have certainly been sweet and lovely." "there's one you haven't accounted for," interrupted jessie. "the violets?" asked molly, blushing slightly. "oh, ho!" cried jessie in her high, musical voice, "trying to crawl, were you? you can't deceive old grandmamma sharp-eyes. honor bright, who sent the violets?" "to tell you the truth, i don't know. i suspected frances andrews, but when i thanked her for them, she looked horribly embarrassed and said she hadn't sent them. i was afraid she would go down and get some after my break, but thank goodness, she had the good taste not to." "you mean to say they were anonymous?" demanded jessie. "i mean to say that thing, but i suppose some of the seniors who preferred to remain unknown sent them." "it's just possible," put in mary, and the subject was dropped. "let's talk about the only thing worth talking about just now," broke in judy. "the flopping of flora; or, who cut the wires?" "why talk about it?" said molly. "you could never reach any conclusion, and guessing doesn't help." "oh, just as a matter of interest," replied judy. "for instance, if we were detectives and put on the case, how would we go about finding the criminal?" "i should look for a silly mischief-maker," said mary stewart. "some foolish girl who wanted to do a clever thing. freshmen at boys' colleges are often like that." "you don't think it was a freshman, do you, miss stewart?" cried mabel hinton, turning her round spectacles on mary like a large, serious owl. "oh, no, indeed. i was only joking. i haven't the remotest notion who it is." "if i were a detective on the case," said mabel hinton, "i should look for a junior who was jealous of the seniors. some one who had a grudge, perhaps." "if i were a detective," announced margaret wakefield, in her most judicial manner, "i should look for some one who had a grudge against molly." "of course; i never thought of that. it did happen just as molly was about to give the encore, didn't it?" "it did," answered margaret. the girls had all stopped chattering in duets and trios to listen. "has any one in the world the heart to have a grudge against you, you sweet child?" exclaimed mary stewart, placing her rather large, strong hand over molly's. the young freshman looked uncomfortable. "i hope not," she said, smiling faintly. "i never meant to give offence to any one." pretty soon the company dispersed and molly was left alone with her two best friends. "judy," she said, "will you please settle down to work this instant? you know you have to write your theme and get it in by to-morrow noon, and you haven't touched it so far." nance was already deep in her english. molly turned her face to the wall and sighed. "i can't do it," she whispered to herself; "i simply cannot do it." but what she referred to only she herself knew. in the meantime judy chewed the end of her pencil and looked absently at her friend's back. presently she gave the pad on her lap an impatient toss in one direction and the pencil in another, and flung herself on the foot of molly's couch. "don't scold me, molly. i never compose, except under inspiration, and inspiration doesn't seem to be on very good terms with me just now. she hasn't visited me in an age." "nonsense! you know perfectly well you can write that theme if you set your mind to it, judy kean. you are just too lazy. you haven't even chosen a subject, i'll wager anything." "no," said judy sadly. "why don't you write a short story? you have plenty of material with all your travel----" "i know what i'll write," judy interrupted her excitedly, "the motives of crime." "how absurd," objected molly. "besides, don't you think that's a little personal just now, when the whole school is talking about the wire-cutter?" "not at all. we are all trying to run down the criminal, anyhow. i shall take the five great motives which lead to crime: anger, jealousy, hatred, envy and greed. it will make an interesting discourse. you'll see if it doesn't." "the idea of your writing on such a subject," laughed molly. "you're not a criminal lawyer or a prosecuting attorney." "i admit it," answered judy, "and i suppose lawyer margaret wakefield ought to be the one to handle the subject. but, nevertheless, i am fired with inspiration, and i intend to write it myself. i shall not see you again until the deed is done, if it takes all night. by the way, lend me some coffee, will you? i'm all out, and i always make some on the samovar for keeping-awake purposes when i'm going to work at night." "i don't know what i'm going to do with you, judy," sighed molly, as the incorrigible girl sailed out of the room, a jar of coffee under one arm and her writing pad under the other. at first she wrote intermittently, rumpling up her hair with both hands and chewing her pencil savagely; but gradually her thoughts took form and the pencil moved steadily along, almost like "spirit-writing" it seemed to her, until the essay was done. it was half-past three o'clock and rain and hail beat a dismal tattoo on her window pane. she had not even noticed the storm, having hung a bed quilt over her window and tacked a dressing gown across the transom to conceal the light of the student's lamp from the watchful matron. putting out her light and removing all signs of disobedience, she now cheerfully went to bed. "motives for crime," she chuckled to herself. "i suppose i'm committing a small crime for disobeying the ten-o'clock rule, and my motive is to hand in a theme on time to-morrow." the next morning when judy read over her night's work, she enjoyed it very much. "it's really quite interesting," she said to herself. "i really don't see how i ever did it." she delivered the essay at miss pomeroy's office and felt vastly proud when she laid it on the table near the desk. her own cleverness told her that she had done a good thing. "i don't believe wordsworth ever enjoyed his own works more than i do mine," she observed, as she strolled across the campus. "and because i've been _bon enfant_, i shall now take a rest and go forth in search of amusement." she turned her face toward the village, where a kind of oriental bazaar was being held by some syrians. it would be fun, she thought, to look over their bangles and slippers and bead necklaces. in the meantime, miss pomeroy was engaged in reading over judy's theme, which, having been handed in last, had come to her notice first. such is the luck of the procrastinator. she smiled when she saw the title, but the theme interested her greatly, and presently she tucked it into her long reticule, familiar to every wellington girl, and hastened over to the president's house. "emma," she said (the two women were old college mates, and were emma and louise in private), "i think this might interest you. it's a theme by one of my freshman girls. a strange subject for a girl of seventeen, but she's quite a remarkable person, if she would only apply herself. somehow, it seems, whether consciously or unconsciously, to bear on what has been occupying us all so much since last friday." the president put on her glasses and began to read judy's theme. every now and then she gave a low, amused chuckle. "the child writes like marie corelli," she exclaimed, laughing. "and yet it is clever and it does suggest----" she paused and frowned. "i wonder if she could and doesn't dare tell?" she added slowly. "i wonder," echoed miss pomeroy. "is she one of the queen's cottage girls? they appear to be rather a remarkable lot this year." "some of them are very bright," said miss pomeroy. "louise," said the president suddenly, "frances andrews is one of the girls at that house, is she not?" "yes," nodded the other, with a queer look on her face. "she's clever," said the president. "she's deep, emma. it is impossible to make any definite statement about her. one must go very slowly in these things. but after what happened last year, you know----" she paused. even with her most intimate friend she disliked to discuss certain secrets of the institution openly. "yes," said miss pomeroy, "she is either very deep or entirely innocent." "some one is guilty," sighed the president. "i do wish i knew who it was." judy's theme not only received especial mention by miss pomeroy, but it was read aloud to the entire class and was later published in the college paper, _the commune_, to judy's everlasting joy and glory. she was congratulated about it on all sides and her heart was swollen with pride. "i think i'll take to writing in dead earnest," she said to molly, "because i have the happy faculty of writing on subjects i don't know anything about, and no one knows the difference." "i wish you'd take to doing anything in dead earnest," molly replied, giving her friend a little impatient shake. chapter xv. planning and wishing. "mrs. anna oldham, the famous suffragette, will speak in the gymnasium on saturday afternoon, at four o'clock, on 'woman's suffrage.' all those interested in this subject are invited to be present." molly and judy, with a crowd of friends, on the way from one classroom to another one busy friday had paused in front of the bulletin board in the main corridor. "mrs. anna oldham?" they repeated, trying to remember where they had heard the name before. "why, judy," whispered molly, "that must be nance's mother. do you--do you suppose nance knows?" "if she does, she has never mentioned it. you know she never tells anything. she's a perfect clam. but this, somehow, is different." both girls thought of their own mothers immediately. surely they would have shouted aloud such news as nance had. "shall we mention it to her, or do you think we'd better wait and let her introduce the subject?" asked molly. "surely she corresponds with her own mother," exclaimed judy without answering molly's question. "her father writes to her about once a week, i know; but i don't think she hears very often from mrs. oldham. you see, her mother's away most of the time lecturing." "lecturing--fiddlesticks!" cried judy indignantly. "what kind of a mother is she, i'd like to know? i'll bet you anything nance doesn't know at all she's going to be here. i think we ought to tell her, molly." "poor nance," answered molly. "i don't know which would mortify her most: to know or not to know. suppose we find out in some tactful roundabout way whether she knows, and then i'll offer to go in with you saturday night and give her mother my bed." judy cordially consented to this arrangement, having a three-quarter bed in her small room, although secretly she was not fond of sharing it and preferred both her bed and her room to herself. it was not until much later in the day that they saw nance, who appeared to be radiantly and buoyantly happy. her usually quiet face was aglow with a soft light, and as she passed her two friends she waved a letter at them gayly. "you see, she knows and she is delighted," exclaimed judy. "just as we would be. oh, molly, wait until you see my mother, if you want to meet a thing of beauty and a joy forever. you'd think i was her mother instead of her being mine, she is so little and sweet and dainty." molly laughed. "isn't she coming up soon? i'd dearly love to meet her." "i'm afraid not. you know papa is always flying off on trips and mamma goes with him everywhere. i used to, too, before i decided to be educated. it was awfully exciting. we often got ready on a day's notice to go thousands of miles, to san francisco or alaska or mexico, anywhere. papa is exactly like me, or, rather, i am exactly like him, only he is a hundred times better looking and more fascinating and charming than i can ever hope to be." "you funny child," exclaimed molly; "how do you know you are not all those things right now?" "i know i'm not," sighed judy. "papa is brilliant, and not a bit lazy. he works all the time." "so would you if you only wanted to. you only choose to be lazy. if i had your mind and opportunities there is no end to what i would do." judy looked at her in surprise. "why, molly, do you think i have any mind?" she asked. "one of the best in the freshman class," answered her friend. "but look, here are some letters!" she paused in the hall of queen's cottage to look over a pile of mail which had been brought that afternoon. there were several letters for the girls; judy's bi-weeklies from both her parents, who wrote to her assiduously, and molly's numerous home epistles from her sisters and mother. but there were two, one for each of the girls, with the exmoor postmark on them. molly opened hers first. "oh, judy," she exclaimed, "do you remember that nice exmoor sophomore named 'upton?' he wants to come over saturday afternoon to call and go walking. dodo has probably written the same thing to you. i see you have an exmoor letter." "he has," answered judy, perusing her note. "he wishes the honor of my company for a short walk. evidently they don't think we have many engagements since they don't give us time to answer their notes." "judy!" "molly!" the two girls looked at each other for a brief moment and then broke into a laugh. "nance's letter must have been from one of the others, andy mclean, perhaps, that was why she was so----" judy paused. somehow, it didn't seem very kind to imply that poor nance was elated over her first beau. "dear, sweet old nance!" cried molly, her heart warming to her friend. "she will probably have them by the dozens some of these days." "i'm sure i should camp on her trail if i were a man," said judy loyally. "but, molly," she added, laughing again, "what are we to do about old mrs. oldham?" "oh, dear! i hadn't thought of that. and poor nance would have enjoyed the walk so much more than a learned discourse on woman's rights." just before supper time nance burst into the room. she was humming a waltz tune; her cheeks looked flushed, and she went briskly over to the mirror and glanced at her image quickly, while she took off her tam and sweater. the girls had never seen her looking so pretty. they waited for her to mention the note, but she talked of other things until judy, always impatient to force events, exclaimed: "what was that note you were waving at us this afternoon, nance?" "oh, that was from----" a tap on the door interrupted her and margaret wakefield entered. "oh, nance," she cried, "i am so excited over your mother's coming to speak at college to-morrow afternoon. isn't it fine of her? it's miss bowles, professor in advanced math., who is bringing her, you know, of course?" except that her face turned perfectly white, nance showed no sign whatever that she had received a staggering blow, but her two friends felt for her deeply and molly came to her rescue. "by the way, nance, dearest," she said, "i thought you might want to have your mother with you to-morrow night, and i was going to offer you my bed and turn in with judy." "thanks, molly," answered nance, huskily; "that would be nice." very little ever escaped the alert eyes of margaret wakefield; but if she noticed anything strange in nance's manner, she made no comment whatever. she was a fine girl, full of sympathy and understanding, with a certain well-bred dignity of manner that is seldom seen in a young girl. "it will be quite a gala event at queen's if mrs. oldham eats supper here," she said gently; "but no doubt she will be claimed by some of the faculty." then she slipped quietly out of the room, just in time, for quiet, self-contained nance burst suddenly into a storm of weeping and flung herself on the bed. "and she never even took the trouble to tell me," she sobbed brokenly. "she has probably forgotten that i am even going to wellington." it was a difficult moment for molly and judy. would it be more tactful to slip out of the room or to try and comfort nance? after all, she had had very little sympathy in her life, and sympathy was what she craved and love, too, molly felt sure of this, and with an instinct stronger than reason, she slipped down beside her friend on the couch and put her arms around her. "darling, sweetest nance," she cried, "i am sure the message will come. perhaps she'll telegraph, and they will telephone from the village. judy and i love you so dearly, it breaks our hearts to see you cry like this. doesn't it, judy?" "indeed, it does," answered judy, who was kneeling at the side of the couch with her cheek against nance's hand. it was a comfort to nance to realize that she had gained the friendship and affection of these two loving, warm-hearted girls. never in her life had she met any girls like them, and presently the bitterness in her heart began to melt away. "perhaps she will telegraph," she said, drying her eyes. "it was silly of me to take on so, but, you see, i had a little shock--i'm all right now. you're dears, both of you." judy went into her own room and returned in a moment with a large bottle of german cologne. filling the stationary wash basin with cold water she poured in a liberal quantity of the cologne. "now, dearest nance," she said, "bathe your face in that, and then powder with molly's pink rice powder, and all will be as if it never had been," she added, smiling. the others smiled, too. somehow, nance's outburst had done her more good than harm. for the first time in her life she had been coddled and sympathized with and petted. it was almost worth while to have suffered to have gained such rewards. after all, there were some pleasant things in life. for instance, the note which had come to her that afternoon from young andy mclean, son of dr. mclean, the college physician. to think that she, "the little gray mouse," as her father had often called her, had inspired any one with a desire to see her again. it was almost impossible to believe, but there was the young scotchman's note to refute all contrary arguments. "dear miss oldham," it said, in a good, round handwriting, "i have been wanting so much to see you again since our jolly day at exmoor. i am bringing some fellows over on saturday to supper at my father's. if you should happen to be in about four o'clock, may i call? how about a walk before supper? i can't tell you how disappointed i'll be if you have another engagement. "yours sincerely, "andrew mclean, 2d." of course, she would have to give up the walk now, but it was pleasant to have been remembered and perhaps he would come again. that night at supper nance was unusually bright and talkative. she answered all the many questions concerning her famous mother so easily and pleasantly that even margaret wakefield must have been deceived. the two sophomores at queen's were giving a dance that evening, and while the girls sat in the long sitting room waiting for the guests to arrive, judy took occasion to whisper to molly: "why should she have to appear at the lecture, anyhow?" "because it would be disrespectful not to," answered molly. "she must be there, of course. would you go gallivanting off with a young man if your mother was going to give a lecture here?" "i should say not; but that's different." "no, no," persisted molly; "it's never different when it's your mother, even when she doesn't behave like one. can't you see that nance would rather die than have people know that her mother isn't exactly like other mothers?" the next day was one of the busiest in the week for molly. two of her morning hours she spent coaching judy in latin. then there were her lace collars to be done up, her stockings to be darned; a trip to be made to the library, where she stood in line for more than twenty minutes waiting for a certain volume of the encyclopædia britannica, and spent more than an hour extracting notes on "norse mythology." it was well on toward lunch time when she finally hastened across the campus to queen's to fill some orders for "cloud-bursts," which were intended to be part of the refreshments for certain saturday evening suppers. so weary was she and so intent on getting through in what she called "schedule time," that she almost ran into professor edwin green before she even recognized him. "oh, i beg your pardon," she exclaimed, a wave of color sweeping over her pale face. "why are you hurrying so fast on saturday?" he asked pleasantly. "don't you ever give yourself a holiday?" "oh, yes; lots of them," she answered; "but i'm a little rushed to-day with some extra duties." she thought of the "cloud-bursts," which must be made and packed in boxes by the afternoon. "you are overdoing it, miss brown. you are not obeying the doctor's orders. when i see you there to-night i shall confront you in his presence with the charge of disobedience." "there to-night?" repeated molly. "certainly. have you forgotten about the supper to-night?" "but i'm not invited." "oh, yes, you are," answered the professor, with a knowing smile. "you'll probably find the note waiting for you. and you must be sure and come, because the mclean's are real characters. they will interest you, i am sure." "poor nance," was molly's first thought. and her second thought was: "if her mother is invited out to dine, she can accept." her face brightened at this, and without knowing it, she smiled. molly led such a busy, concentrated life, that when she did relax for a few moments, she sometimes seemed absent-minded and inattentive. the professor was looking at her closely. "you are pleased at being asked to the mclean's?" he said. "i was thinking of something else," she said. "i was wondering if, after all, nance couldn't arrange to go. of course, she'll be invited, too; but, you see, her mother is to be here." "is mrs. oldham, the suffragette, her mother?" he asked in surprise. "yes." "mrs. oldham is to dine at the president's to-night. i know, because i was asked to meet her, but"--he looked at her very hard indeed--"i had another engagement." "then nance can go. isn't it beautiful? i am so glad!" molly clasped her hands joyously. professor green gave her such a beautiful, beaming smile that it fairly transfigured his face. "you are a very good friend, miss brown," he said gently; "but would not miss oldham rather be with her mother, that is, in case the president should invite her, too, which is highly probable?" "oh, i hope she won't. you see, nance has never had much pleasure with young people, and"--it was difficult to explain--"and her mother----" she hesitated. "her mother, being the most famous clubwoman in america, hasn't spent much time at home? is that it?" "well, yes," admitted molly. "in fact, she hardly remembers she has a daughter," she added indignantly, and then bit her lip, feeling that she was bordering on disloyalty. the professor cleared his throat and thrust his hands into his pockets. he was really very boyish-looking to be so old. "so you have set your heart on miss oldham's going to the supper to-night?" he said gravely. "if there is any fun going, judy and i would be sorry to have her miss it," she answered. "and i don't suppose it would be thrilling to dine at the president's with a lot of learned older people." "i'm just on my way to president walker's now," pursued the professor thoughtfully. "in fact, i was just about to deliver my regrets in person regarding dinner to-night, and having some business to attend to with miss walker, i thought i would call. while i am there, it is possible--well, in fact, miss brown, there should be a good fairy provided by providence to grant all unselfish wishes. she would not be a busy fairy by any means, i am afraid, except when she hovered around you. good morning," and lifting his hat, the professor hastened away, leaving molly in a state of half-pleased perplexity. on the table in her room she found a note from mrs. mclean, inviting her to supper that evening. two other invitations from the same lady were handed to nance and judy, but nance was at that moment seated at her desk accepting an invitation from miss walker to dine there with her mother at seven. she was writing the answer very carefully and slowly, in her best handwriting, and on her best monogram note paper. "do you think that's good enough?" she demanded, handing the note to molly to read. "why, yes," answered molly, looking it over hastily while she prepared to write her own answer to mrs. mclean, and then she threw herself into the business of "cloud-bursts." just as the lunch gong sounded, bridget, the irish waitress at president walker's house, appeared at their half-open door. "a note for miss oldham," she said; "and the president says no answer is necessary. good afternoon, ma'am; they'll be waitin' lunch if i don't make haste." "'my dear miss oldham,'" nance read aloud. "'i have just learned that you are invited to a young people's supper party to-night at mrs. mclean's, and i therefore hasten to release you from your engagement to dine with me. your mother will spare you, i am sure, on this one evening, and i hope you will enjoy yourself with your friends. with kindest regards, believe me, "'cordially yours, "'emma k. walker.'" "isn't she a brick?" cried judy, dancing around the room and clapping her hands. "it was awfully nice of her," said nance thoughtfully. "i wonder how she knew i was invited to the mclean's?" "some good fairy must have told her," answered molly, half to herself, as she stirred brown sugar into a saucepan. chapter xvi. the mclean supper. nance did get a telegram from her mother that afternoon. it was very vague about trains and merely said: "arrive in wellington about two this afternoon. meet me. mother." fortunately, the girls were as familiar with the train schedule as with their own class schedules, and knew exactly what train she meant. "it's the two-fifteen, of course," announced judy. "shall we go down with you to meet her, nance?" "why, yes; i think mother would like that very much," answered nance, pleased with the idea. "she loves attention." therefore, when the two-fifteen pulled into wellington station, our three freshmen, together with margaret wakefield heading a deputation from the freshman suffrage club, and miss bowles, teacher in higher mathematics, were waiting on the platform. "there she is!" cried nance, with a note of eagerness in her voice that made molly's heart ache. they all moved forward to meet a gaunt, tired-looking woman, with a sallow, faded complexion and a nervous manner; but her brilliant, clear brown eyes offset her unprepossessing appearance. glowing with intelligence and with feverish energy they flashed their message to the world, like two mariner's lights at sea, and those who caught that burning glance forgot the tired face and distraught manner of the woman of clubs. "how are you, my dear?" she said, kissing nance quite casually, without noticing where the kiss was going to land, and scarcely glancing at her daughter. she had evidently been making notes on the trip down and still carried a pencil and some scrap paper in one hand, while the other grasped her suit case, of which nance promptly relieved her. she shook hands cordially with miss bowles, and the girls whom nance introduced, searching the face of each, as a recruiting officer might examine applicants for the army. then they all climbed into the bus and presently she plunged into a discussion with miss bowles on the advance of the suffrage movement in england and america. "and this is the woman," whispered judy to molly dramatically, "who has spoken before legislatures and represented the suffrage party abroad and been regent of colonial dames and president of national societies for the purification of politics and--and lecturer on 'the history of legislation----'" "how under the sun can you remember it all?" interrupted molly. "i don't think i have got them straight," answered judy, "but they all sound alike, anyhow, so what's the odds?" molly discreetly took herself off to judy's room that afternoon, leaving nance and her mother together for the short time that elapsed before the lecture was to begin. but nance soon followed them. "mother wants to be alone," she said. "she has some notes to look over, and she has never read her day-before-yesterday's mail yet. by the way, you are not going to the lecture, are you?" "of course we are," answered the girls in the same breath. "but the walk?" "that can be postponed until to-morrow," answered molly promptly. "the boys are going to spend the night at the mclean's, you know." thus nance's happiness was all arranged for by her two devoted friends. the gymnasium was only half full when the girls escorted "the most distinguished clubwoman in america" across the campus and into the great hall. the freshmen had turned out in full force, partly to do honor to nance and partly because president margaret wakefield had been talking up the lecture beforehand. miss walker and others of the faculty were there, and in a far gallery seat molly caught a glimpse of professor green, whose glance seemed to be turned unseeingly in her direction. if judy and molly had had any fears as to how the absent-minded member of clubs was going to conduct herself on the platform, all doubts were soon dispelled. after the introduction made by the president, the lecturer's nervous manner entirely disappeared. she approached the front of the platform with a composure marvelous to see, and in a cultivated, trained voice--not her everyday voice, by any means--she delivered an address of fervid and passionate eloquence; a plea for woman's rights and universal suffrage so convincing that the most obstinate "anti" would have been won over. after the lecture there was an impromptu reception on the platform; then tea at miss bowles' room and at last home to dress for the supper parties. judy and molly had hastened ahead, leaving nance to tear her mother from her circle of admirers with the plea that she would be too late. at twenty minutes before seven they hurried in, mrs. oldham looking so frail and exhausted that it hardly seemed possible she could keep up. while her poor daughter dashed into her own clothes, her mother sat limp and inert during the process of having her hair beautifully arranged with lightning speed by the deft and handy judy, while molly gave the weary woman aromatic spirits of ammonia in a glass of water and presently hooked her into a dinner dress which was really very handsome, of black lace over gray satin. "thank you, my dears," she said amiably, giving an absent-minded glance at herself in the glass. "you are very kind, i am sure. i am such a busy woman i have little time to spare for beautifying; but i must say miss kean has improved my appearance by that high arrangement of hair." they were surprised that she remembered judy's name until they learned from nance later that such was her training in meeting strangers, she never forgot a name or face. "now, where am i going?" continued the famous clubwoman. "you will drop me there, you say? you are going somewhere, nance?" "yes, mother," answered nance patiently. it was the third time she had told her mother that fact. at last they got her be-nubiaed and be-caped, and at exactly two minutes past seven o'clock deposited her at the president's front door. then, with feelings of indescribable relief, they ran gayly across the campus, chattering and laughing like magpies. ten minutes later they were seated at mrs. mclean's large round supper table. professor green, seated just opposite nance, gave her happy, glowing face a long questioning look, then turning to molly next to him, he said: "she is enjoying it, isn't she?" "yes," whispered molly; "thanks to you, good fairy." "but the wish must come before the fairy acts, so that, after all, one is far more important than the other," he replied. "wasn't the lecture wonderful?" asked molly. "very remarkable," he answered. "women like that should take to the platform and leave families to other women to rear." "they certainly can't do both," said molly, remembering poor nance's outburst the afternoon before. "and if you have the vote," went on the professor in a louder voice, and with a kind of mock solemnity, "what will you do with it?" "they'll pitch all the men out of office, professor," called dr. mclean, who had overheard this question; "and they'll do all the work, too, and we men will begin to enjoy life a little. we've been slaves long enough. i'm for the emancipation of men," he cried, "and woman's suffrage is the only way to bring it about." they all laughed at this original view of the question, and mrs. mclean, a charming woman with a beautiful scotch accent, impossible to imitate, observed: "my dear, the women are just as great slaves as the men, and they work much harder, if only you knew it. but you don't because we are careful to conceal it. there are _vera_ few women who do not wear their company manners in the presence of a man, take my word for it." "is that the reason you are always so charming, mrs. mclean?" put in professor green. "but i suspect you have only company manners." "not at all, professor; young andy will tell you that i can be rude enough at times." andy mclean, a tall, raw-boned youth with sandy hair and a thin, intelligent face, was too deeply engaged in conversation at that moment with nance, to hear his mother's speech. "let him alone, he's busy," remarked his father with a humorous smile. "there's an old song we sing at home," went on mrs. mclean, "'there's nae luck in tha' hoose when the gude man's awa',' but it should be the gude wife, for if ever a house goes to sixes and sevens it is my own house when i leave the two andys and take ship for scotland for a bit of a visit. there's nae luck in the hoose for certain, and glad they are to get me back again, if 'tis only for their own personal comfort." "hoity, toity, mother," exclaimed the doctor; "we're joost as glad to have you for your ainsel', my dear." "now, is it so, then?" laughed the gude wife. "well, that's satisfying assurance, truly." they found the doctor and his wife very amusing, and molly liked lawrence upton, too, who was seated on her other side. he was a typical college youth, tall and stalwart, his brown hair brushed back in a pompadour, his clear, ruddy complexion glowing with vigor. in fact, he was one of the leading athletes at exmoor, and had won a championship at high jumping and running. "i hope we'll have some dancing after dinner, miss brown," he said. "i hear southern girls fairly float, and i'd like to have a chance to find it out." "i'm afraid you'll be disappointed with me, then," answered molly. "i've been leading at most of the college dances this fall, and it's ruination to good dancing, you know. a leader is always pulling against the bit like a badly trained horse." "you look to me like a thoroughbred, miss brown," said the gallant youth. "i'm not afraid of your pulling against the bit." there _was_ some dancing after dinner in the mclean's long, old-fashioned drawing-room, while mrs. mclean herself played long old-fashioned waltzes on the piano, funny hop polkas and schottisches of antique origin. they enjoyed it immensely, however, fitting barn dances to the schottisches and mazurkas and two steps to the polkas. twice professor green engaged molly in a waltz. she had anticipated that his dancing would be as old-fashioned as the music, but to her surprise, she found him thoroughly up to date. in fact, she was obliged to admit that the professor in english literature danced better than any of the younger men at mrs. mclean's that night. it was really the most delightful evening molly had spent since she had been at wellington. to nance, it was the most delightful evening of her entire life and judy, who always enjoyed the last time best of all, told mrs. mclean when they left that she had never had a better time in her life. after the dance, they sat around the big open fire, roasting chestnuts, while dr. mclean sang a funny song called "wee wullie," and judy followed with an absurd "piece" on the piano called "birdie's dead," in schottische time, which sent them into shrieks of laughter and amused dr. mclean so that he laid his head on his wife's shoulder and wept with joy. sitting in the inglenook by the fireplace, professor green said to molly: "i have been waiting to say something to you, miss brown, and i will ask you to regard it as confidential." she looked up thinking perhaps it was the comic opera he was going to talk about, but she was vastly mistaken. "when, as botticelli's flora, you came to that night with the words, 'i saw her----' you did not guess, did you, that i, too, had seen her?" they looked at each other and a flash of understanding passed between them. they now shared two secrets. "i always wanted to tell you," he continued in a low voice, "how much i admired your generous silence. you are a very remarkable young woman." with that the party broke up. later, stretching her long slenderness in the three-quarter bed beside judy, molly smiled to herself, and decided that some older men were almost as nice as some young ones. chapter xvii. a midnight adventure. just about this time a new figure appeared at wellington college. she was known as "inspector of dormitories," and her office was mainly sanitary, and did not infringe on the duties of the matrons. the new inspector lodged at queen's, since there was an empty room in that establishment, and her name was miss steel. "if she had had her choice of all the names in the english language, she could not have chosen a more suitable one," remarked judy who had taken a violent dislike to miss steel from the first. she was indeed a steel-like person, steely eyes, steel-gray hair, pale, thin lips, and at her belt metallic chains from which jangled notebook and pencil. when she spoke, which was rarely, her voice was sharp and incisive, and cut the air like a knife. but her most objectionable quality, the girls thought, was that she never made any sound when she walked, the reason being that she had rubber heels on her shoes. the first real encounter the girls had with miss steel was at a thanksgiving eve spread given by the combined g. f. society, most of the members having received bountiful thanksgiving boxes from home. nance's neglected and lonely father had sent her a five-pound box of candy in lieu of the usual box, which takes a woman to plan and pack, and judy's devoted parents, always on the fly, had shipped her a box of fruit. all the others had received regular boxes full of thanksgiving cheer, and the feast was to be a grand one. each member invited guests, and by general vote extra ones were asked: frances andrews, who declined because she was going away, and two freshmen who lived in the village, and were working their way through college. judith blount was to be there by invitation of pretty jessie lynch, and molly had invited mary stewart. most of the girls wore fancy costumes, and molly's and nance's large room was the scene of an extravaganza. the feast was piled on four study tables placed in an unbroken row and covered with a white cloth. jessie had worn her famous ballet costume, and was as pretty as a little captive sprite. judith was in a gorgeous turkish dress consisting of full yellow silk trousers, a tunic of transparent net and embroidered turkish slippers. nance wore her scotch costume, and at the last minute molly, who had been too busy even to think of a costume all day, dressed herself up charmingly like a tyrolean peasant in what she could collect from the other girls. a great many of the guests had arrived and the room was filled when a chambermaid appeared in the doorway with a tray of cards. "some gentlemen to call, miss," she said, endeavoring not to smile at a little boy blue and a little lord fauntleroy, who were waltzing together. there were four cards on the tray: "mr. edwin green," "mr. george theodore green," "andrew mclean, 2d," and "mr. lawrence upton." "well, of all the strange times to pay a call," exclaimed molly. "will you say that we are very sorry, but we must be excused this evening," she said to the maid. the servant bowed and slipped away, while all the girls in the room pounced on the cards. "well, i never! four beaux, and one of them a professor!" cried jessie, showing the cards to judith. "miss brown could hardly claim cousin edwin as a beau," said judith, her black eyes snapping. "his younger brother, george, often drags him into things, and poor cousin edwin consents to go because george is so timid, but as for paying a social call on a freshman, even the most self-confident freshman could hardly regard a visit from him as that." "i don't regard it as that," ejaculated molly. she was not accustomed to sharp-tongued people, and it was really difficult for her to deal with them properly, as judy could, and nance, too. but she forced herself to remember that judith was a guest in her room, and was about to partake of some of her good kentucky fare. she turned away without saying another word, and fortunately the maid came back just then and relieved the strained situation. "the gentlemen say they must see you, ma'am," she said; "and if you won't come down to them, they'll just come upstairs." "what?" cried a chorus of girls. suddenly there was a wild scramble on the stairs; shouts of laughter, a sound of heavy boots thumping along the hall, and four tall young men burst into the room. there were shrieks from disappearing boy blues and fauntleroys, who endeavored to cover their extremities with sofa cushions, the captive sprite rushed into a closet and a wild scene of disorder and pandemonium followed. "don't be frightened, ladies," said the tallest young man, who wore correct evening clothes, from his opera hat and pearl studs to his pointed patent leather pumps. his hair was light and curly, and he had a long yellow mustache, like lord dundreary's. "ladies! ladies! why all this excitement?" called another of the quartette, dressed in full black and white checked trousers, a short tan overcoat, a red tie and a brown derby. the third young man wore a smoking jacket and white duck trousers, and the fourth was dressed in an english golf suit and visored cap. "oh, you villains!" cried jessica, popping her head out of the closet. "you have frightened us almost to death. do you think i wouldn't know you, margaret wakefield, even in that sporting suit. come over here and show yourself!" the bogus gentlemen were indeed three of the evening's hostesses and one of the guests. mary stewart wore the evening clothes, borrowed from her brother for a senior play to take place shortly. judy had on the golf suit, sallie marks the dinner coat and margaret the rakish sporting costume. "but where did you get the cards?" asked judith, ashamed of herself, now that the visitors' real identity was disclosed. "i wrote to dodo and asked him for them," answered judy, giving her a look, as much as to say, "what affair is it of yours?" after the banquet was commenced and the fun waxed fast and furious, there was a cakewalk at the last, with a box of "cloud-bursts" as the prize, the eight hostesses taking turns as judges. "after this wild orgy, i think we'd better be leaving," said mary stewart. "it's getting cold and late, but we've had a glorious time. will you permit a gentleman to kiss you on the cheek, molly?" "that i will," answered molly, "and proud of the honor." slipping on a skirt and a long ulster, mary took her departure with judith and the other girls, who did not have rooms at queen's, and pretty soon the party had disbanded. "i'll stay and help you gather up the loaves and fishes," judy announced. "it'll soon be ten, but we can hang a dressing gown over the transom and draw the blinds and no one will know the difference just this once," she added, proceeding to carry out her ideas of deception. "i'm still hungry," observed nance. "i had to wait on so many people i didn't have a chance to eat any supper myself." "so am i famished," said molly; "but i was ashamed to confess it." "i'd like a cup of hot tea," observed judy, who had waited on nobody but herself. "when mrs. markham comes around," cautioned nance, "in case she knocks on the door, one of us be ready to put out the light. judy, you slip into the closet. she's been known to come in, you know, after one of these jamborees." "mrs. markham's away," answered judy. "'steel beads' is taking her place until after thanksgiving." the girls munched their sandwiches and talked in low voices. suddenly there was a sharp rap on the door. instantly the light went out and there was dead silence. judy, crawling on all fours toward the closet, was about to conceal herself behind protecting skirts, when the rap was repeated. "well, what is it?" called nance, the boldest among them, "the light is out." there was no answer and the rap was not repeated. the girls waited a few moments, and then cautiously lighting a student's lamp with a green shade, proceeded with their supper. judy looked at her watch. it was a quarter of eleven. again they were interrupted. this time by some pebbles thrown against the window. molly raised the sash softly and gazed down into the darkness below. "what is it?" she called. "it's margaret," answered a voice from the yard. "for the love of heaven, can't you let me in? i'll explain afterward. i wouldn't mind ringing up mrs. markham, but i'm afraid of that steel woman." "wait a minute," answered molly, and closing the window, she turned to consult with the others. "there's nothing to be done but to go down," they decided, and molly insisted on being the sacrificial lamb. judy made her slip on her nightgown over her dress, and her dressing gown over that, in order to appear in the proper guise in case anything happened. but they were doomed to another shock that night. just as molly opened the door she came face to face with miss steel standing outside in the hall. "oh, i beg your pardon," said molly politely, feeling thankful she had put on her nightgown, "i thought i heard a noise outside." "you seem to be sitting up very late to-night, miss brown," said miss steel, looking at her coldly. "i was told to enforce the ten o'clock rule in mrs. markham's absence, and i must ask you to get to bed at once, unless you wish to be reported." "i'm sorry," said molly. the woman seemed unnecessarily stern, she thought, because, after all, this was not a boarding school, but a college. however, she went back, and closed and bolted the door. in her heart she felt a contempt for any one who would creep about and listen at people's doors. mrs. markham would have been incapable of it. just then there came another pebble against the window. judy crept to the window this time. "wait, margaret," she called. "miss steel is about." there was perfect stillness for several long black minutes. the three girls sat in a row on the floor listening with strained ears and to judy at least the adventure was not without its enjoyment. at last they felt that it might be safe to act. taking off their shoes they moved noiselessly to the window and looked down. there stood the courageous margaret in full view on the roof of the piazza. she had actually shinned up one of the pillars, which was not such a difficult feat as it might seem, as the railing around the piazza had placed her within reach of the wooden grillwork and swinging onto that she had drawn herself up to the roof. she had skinned her wrist and stumped one of her stockinged toes, having removed her shoes and hidden them under the house, but she appeared now the very figure of courage and action, waiting for the next move. the three girls stood looking down at her in a state of fearful uncertainty as to what should be done next, and as if this were not exciting enough, three light telegraphic taps were heard on the door. "that's not miss steel," whispered judy. "who is it," she called softly through the keyhole. "jessie," came the answer. instantly the door was opened and jessie crept in. "miss steel is up," she whispered. "i saw her on the landing below just now. be careful. i am scared to death because margaret hasn't come back." for an answer, they led her to the window and pointed to the shadowy figure of her roommate on the piazza roof. because molly had conceived a dislike and distrust for miss steel, she made up her mind to outwit her and save her friend. she reflected that if margaret tried any of the girls on the second floor whose windows opened on the roof, she might get in but she would still have the third flight to make and as the stairs creaked at every step, it would be a difficult matter. fortunately miss steel's room was on the other side of the hall. "i have a scheme," she whispered at last. "now, don't any one move. i can manage it without making a sound." there was a ball of twine on the mantelpiece. thank heavens for that. she tied one end to the back of a cane chair, which she let slowly out of the window. then, snipping off the end of the cord, she gave it to nance to hold. another chair, which was fortunately smaller, she let down in the same way and finally a stool. margaret placed one on top of the other, mounted the precarious and toppling pyramid, and with the strength of arm and wrist which showed her gymnasium training, pulled herself to the window sill and was in the room. "be quiet," they whispered. "miss steel is about." the four girls lay down on the couches and waited a long time. judy really fell asleep in the interval before they dared risk pulling back the chairs. it was, in fact, a risky business, and had to be done cautiously and carefully to keep them from bumping against the walls of the house. at last, however, the whole thing was accomplished. margaret explained that she had gone over to one of the other houses to return the clothes she had borrowed and had joined another thanksgiving party and stayed longer than she had intended. they also had been held up by the matron, and had been obliged to put out the lights and hide everything under the bed. she had escaped from the house by a miracle without being found out, and had trusted to luck and her friends for getting into queen's unobserved. and now, at last, the adventure was almost over. after another interminable wait, judy and margaret and jessie crept off to their rooms. judy's door was still ajar when she saw a flash of light on the stairs, which heralded the approach of miss steel, still fully clothed, and walking noiselessly as usual. judy closed her door and locked it softly. "only a spy would wear felt slippers," she said to herself scornfully. then she laughed. "it was rather good fun to be sure, but would it have mattered so much, after all, if margaret had boldly come in at the front door and explained?" they would never have gone to all that trouble to deceive nice mrs. markham, her thoughts continued as she removed her manly attire, but miss steel was different. as for molly, her thoughts were about the same as judy's. "a lady doesn't creep," she was thinking, as she thankfully crawled into bed; "a lady doesn't listen at doors or wear soundless slippers in order to walk like a cat. no, miss steel is decidedly not a lady." and when molly came to this decision about a person, she avoided them carefully ever afterward. her definition of a "lady" was about the same as a man's definition of a "gentleman." it had nothing whatever to do with birth or education. chapter xviii. the football game during those fast flying weeks which tread on one another's heels so rapidly between thanksgiving and christmas, came one of the most important events of the season. it was announced on the bulletin board as the "harboard-snail football game," and was, in fact, a grand burlesque on a game played not long before between two university teams. quite half of the wellington students took part in the affair and those who were not actively engaged were placed in the cheer sections to yell themselves hoarse. there were a dozen doctors, an ambulance, stretcher bearers, trained nurses and the two teams in proper football attire. everybody in college turned out one saturday afternoon to witness this elaborate parody. a coach drove over from exmoor fairly alive with students, and the fields outside the wellington athletic grounds were black with people. judy was a member of the corps of physicians who were all dressed alike in frock coats reaching well below the knees, gray trousers and silk hats. they had imposing mustaches, carried bags of instruments and were the most ludicrous of all the actors that day. but it was the stretcher bearers who seemed to excite the greatest merriment in the grand parade which took place before the game began. they were dressed something like "slivers," the famous clown, in full white pantaloons and long white coats cut in at the waist with wide skirts. the members of the cheering sections which headed the grand column were dressed in every sort of absurd burlesque of a college boy's clothes that could be devised. "how they ever collected all those ridiculous costumes is a marvel to me," exclaimed president walker to dr. mclean, whose face had turned an apoplectic purple from laughter and who occasionally let out a roar of joy that could be heard all the way across the field. following the cheering sections in the parade were the two teams, hardly recognizable at all as human beings. their wigs of tousled hair stood out all over their heads like the petals of enormous chrysanthemums. most of them wore nose guards or their faces were made up in a savage and barbaric fashion. in their wadded football suits, stuffed out of all human recognition, they resembled trussed fowls. in the vanguard of this strange and ludicrous procession stalked a gigantic figure of liberty. she was about fifteen feet high, and her draperies reached to the ground. her long red hair blew in the breezes and she carried a wellington banner, which she majestically waved over the heads of the multitude. by her side ran a dwarf. they were the mascots of the two sides. "why, if that isn't our little friend, miss molly brown," exclaimed dr. mclean, pointing to liberty. "she's a bonnie lass and a sweet one. think now, of her being able to walk on those sticks without losing her balance. it's a verra great achievement, i'm thinking, for a giddy-headed young woman. for they're all giddy-headed at seventeen or thereabouts." it was indeed molly, the only girl in all wellington who could walk on stilts. the seniors had advertised in _the commune_ for a first-class "stiltswoman," and molly had promptly offered her services. jessie had been selected as the dwarf. "i hope the child won't fall and break her neck," said mrs. mclean on the other side of the doctor. "it's verra dangerous. suppose she should become suddenly faint----" "don't suppose anything of the sort, mither. you've no grounds for thinkin' the lass will tumble. she seems to be at home in the air." professor green, just beyond mrs. mclean, frowned, and put his hands in his pockets. he wondered if dr. mclean had forgotten that he had been sent for just three weeks before when molly had fainted in the gymnasium, and the professor breathed a sigh of relief when liberty presently descended to the earth and the game began. it was one of the bloodiest and roughest games in the history of football. the ambulance bell rang constantly. every time a victim fell, the cheering section on the other side set up a wild yell. doctors and nurses were scattered all about the edges of the field attending to the wounded and the stretchers were busy every minute. as fast as one man tumbled another jumped into his place, and at last when there came a touchdown the players seemed to have fallen on top of each other in a mad squirming mass. people laughed that day who were rarely seen to smile. even miss steel's severe expression relaxed into a cold, steely smile. molly had gathered up her long cheesecloth robe and was sitting with jessie on a bench at the side of the field. "isn't it perfect, jessie?" she was saying. "i don't think i ever enjoyed anything so much in all my life. it will make a wonderful letter home." jessie smiled absently. with a pair of field glasses, she was searching the faces of the spectators for two friends (men, of course), who had motored over to see the sport. at her belt was pinned the most enormous bunch of violets ever seen. in fact, they were two bunches worn as one, from her two admirers. presently judith joined them on the bench. ever since the thanksgiving spread she had endeavored to be very nice to molly. "hello, ju-ju!" called jessie; "you are a sight." "i know it," she said. "i feel that i am a disgrace to the sex. i only hope i'm not recognizable." "your shiny black eye is the only familiar thing about you. the rest is entirely disguised." "i think i'd recognize that ring, miss blount," put in molly. "almost everybody knows that emerald by sight now, who knows you at all." judith glanced quickly at her finger. "do you know," she exclaimed, "i forgot i was wearing it? how stupid of me! i am booked to take rosamond's place in a minute. will one of you girls take care of it for me? i shall be much obliged." "you'd better take it, jessie," said molly, looking rather doubtfully at the ring. she had only one piece of jewelry to her name, a string of sapphires, which had belonged to her mother when she was a girl. but the ring was too big for jessie's slender, pretty little fingers. "i can't," she said, "unless i wear it on my thumb, and it might slip off, you know. you'll have to take it, molly." molly slipped it on her finger and held it up for admiration. "it's the most beautiful ring i ever saw," she exclaimed. "it's the color of deep green sea water. not that i ever saw any, but i've heard tell of it," she added, laughing. "you don't mean to say you have never seen the ocean!" cried judith in a pleasant tone of voice. molly had never seen her so amiable before. "no," replied the freshman, "this is the nearest i have ever been to it." "well, thanks for taking care of my ring," went on judith. "i'll see you after the game," and she departed to take up her duties on the field, just as rosamond, at the appointed time, with a gash across her face, made with finger-nail salve, was borne from the field on a stretcher. after the game came another grand procession in which all the wounded took part, molly on stilts, with jessie running beside her, as before. all that morning molly had felt buoyed up by the fun and excitement of the great burlesque. but, now that the game was over, as she strode along on the giant stilts, she began to feel the same overpowering fatigue she had experienced that night at the living picture show. for a week she had been living on her nerves. often at night she had not slept, but had tossed about on her bed trying to recall her lessons or make mental notes of things she intended to do. on cold mornings, her feet and hands were numb and dead and judy often made her run across the campus and back to start her circulation. and now that numbness began to climb from her toes straight up her body. molly turned unsteadily and with shaky strides at least six feet long, hastened across the field. her feeling that she must get out of the noise and turmoil, away from everybody in the world, carried her back of a row of sheds under which the players sat during the intermissions. once in this quiet place she let herself down from the stilts. she was conscious of being very cold. there was a deep red light in the western sky from the setting sun, then the numbness reached her brain and she remembered nothing more until she opened her eyes and saw dr. mclean at one side of her and professor green at the other. "here she comes back at last," exclaimed the doctor. "aye, lass, it's a good thing this young man has an observant eye. otherwise ye might have been lying out here in the cold all night. you feel better now, don't you?" "yes, doctor," answered molly weakly. "i don't like these fainting spells, my lass. you're not made of iron, child. you'll have to give up one thing or t'other--study or play." but there were other things molly did beside studying and playing. of course the doctor did not know about the "cloud-bursts" and the shoe-blacking and the tutoring. "aye, here comes one of my associates with a carriage," he went on, chuckling to himself. "shall we have a consultation now, dr. kean?" judy, still in her absurd burlesque costume, had driven up in one of the village surreys. as the two men lifted molly into the back seat, she noticed for the first time that she was wearing a man's overcoat. it was dark blue and felt warm and comfortable. she slipped her hands into the deep pockets and snuggled down into its folds. certainly she felt shivery about the spine, and her hands and feet, which were never known to be warm, were now like lumps of ice. as the doctor was still wearing his great coat of scotch tweed, it was evidently the coat of the professor of english literature she had appropriated. "it's awfully good of you to lend me your coat," she said to professor green, who was standing at the side of the carriage while the doctor climbed in beside her. "i'm afraid you'll take cold without it." "nonsense," he said, almost gruffly, "i'm not dressed in cheesecloth." "but i have on a white sweater under all this," said molly timidly. the carriage drove away, however, without his saying another word, and later that afternoon, after molly had taken a nap and felt rested and refreshed, she engaged one of the maids at queen's cottage to return professor green's overcoat with a message of thanks. then, with a sigh of relief, because when she had borrowed anything it always weighed heavily on her mind, and because she felt somehow that the professor was provoked with her, she turned over and went to sleep again. just as the clock in the chapel tower sounded midnight she sat up in bed. "what is it, molly, dear?" asked nance, who was wakeful and uneasy about her friend. molly was looking at her right hand wildly. "the ring!" she cried. "judith's emerald ring--it's gone!" the ring was indeed gone. neither of her friends had seen it on her finger since she had been in her room. it was gone--lost! "it must have slipped off my finger when i fainted," sobbed the poor girl. nance had summoned judy at this trying crisis, and the two girls endeavored to comfort their friend, who seemed to be working herself into a state of feverish excitement. "never mind, we'll find it in the morning, molly," cried nance. "you know exactly where it was you fell, don't you? somewhere behind the sheds. it's sure to be there. judy and i promise to go there first thing, don't we, judy?" "yes, indeed," acquiesced judy, who loved her morning sleep better than anything in life. but judy was learning unselfishness since she had been associating with molly and nance. there was no more sleep for poor molly that night, however, and she lay through the dragging hours with strained nerves and throbbing temples wondering what would happen if she did not find the ring. chapter xix. three friends. nance was still sound asleep when molly crept from her bed and dressed herself. it was a dismal cold morning. a fine snow was falling and she shivered as she tied a scarf around her head, threw her long gray eiderdown cape over her shoulders and slipped from the room, without waking her friend, who was weary after the excitements of the day before. across the wind-swept campus she hastened, anxiety lending swiftness to her steps, and at last reached the athletic field. at the far end snuggled several low wooden sheds like a group of animals trying to keep warm by staying close together. "i must hurry," molly thought, "or the snow will be so thick i shall never be able to find the ring," and summoning all her energy she ran as fast as she could straight to the spot where she remembered to have dropped the day before behind the sheds. breathless and tingling all over with little prickly chills, she knelt down and began to search in the dead grass, brushing the snow away as she hunted. she had not stopped to find gloves, neither had she wasted any time lacing her boots, but had slipped on some pumps at the side of the bed. for a long time molly searched every inch of the ground back of the sheds where she might have been. then, with an ever-growing feeling of desperation, she hunted in the field itself, across which she had followed the parade. and it was here that judy and nance found her so absorbed in her search that she had not even noticed their approach. "oh, molly, molly! what are we going to do with you?" cried nance, seizing her by the arm impulsively. "you'll kill yourself by your imprudence. why didn't you wait and let us look?" molly opened her mouth to answer, and the words came out in a husky whisper. she had entirely lost her voice from hoarseness, without even knowing that she had caught cold. "i've looked everywhere," she whispered, "and i haven't found it. i couldn't have lost it while i was on the stilts, because i never let go of them for a moment. it must have been when i fainted." "judy, you take her home while i look again," volunteered nance. "take her to the infirmary, you mean," answered judy, and she promptly led molly by a short cut toward the last house on the far side of the campus, where stood the small college hospital. molly obediently allowed herself to be piloted along. her cheeks were burning; there was a feverish light in her eyes, and she no longer felt cold at all, but hot all over with little chills along her spine. "i'm afraid i'm a great nuisance, judy, dear. i hope you'll forgive me, but i'm really in great trouble," she said huskily, as judy confided her to one of the two nurses at the hospital. "don't worry," was judy's parting command. "we'll find the ring. it can't possibly be lost utterly. it's too big and green. i'll see judith blount, too. some one may have found it and returned it to her by this time. i'll leave a notice on the bulletin board and stand my little st. joseph on his head," she added laughing. "you may be sure i'll leave nothing undone to find that old ring." the first thing judy did after breakfast that sunday morning was to pay a visit to judith blount. there was a placard on her door announcing to whom it might concern that judith was busy and did not wish to be disturbed, but judy knocked boldly and at an impatient "who is it?" replied: "i wish to see you on important business. please unlock the door." judy couldn't make out why judith blount looked so white and uneasy when she entered the room; nor why her expression changed to one of intense relief a moment later. "i came to ask you," began judy abruptly, "if any one had found your emerald ring." "miss brown has my ring," answered judith promptly. "didn't you know that molly had fainted and is now ill in the hospital and the ring is lost?" "my emerald ring lost?" judith almost shouted. "don't carry on so about it," put in judy. "it'll be found. molly herself was up at dawn this morning. she stole away before anybody could stop her, and went to the field to look for it, but she hasn't been able to find it, and neither has nance, who looked for it later. nance has gone down to the village to find the surrey that took molly home. we are all doing everything we can and in the meantime i thought i would tell you so that you could help us." judy could be very impudent when she wanted to, and she was impudent now, as she stood looking straight into judith's angry black eyes. "she should have been more careful," burst out judith in a rage. "how do i know that----" she stopped, frightened at what she was about to say. "better not say that," said judy calmly. "it simply wouldn't go, you know, and you must know as well as i do that it would be absolutely false." "how do you know what i was going to say?" "i could guess," said judy, shrugging her shoulders. "i can often guess things you would like to say, but don't, miss blount. what i came for was to ask you to help us find the ring. molly is very ill, and, of course, it's the loss of the ring as much as anything else that's made her so. we're all doing the best we can, and if you'll just kindly add your efforts to ours, it might help some." "supposing the ring isn't found, what redress have i? it's been in our family for generations. it was brought over from france by a huguenot ancestor----" "nice place to be wearing it, then, at a football game!" exclaimed judy indignantly. "and then forcing other people to take charge of it for you! redress, indeed! do you want molly to pay you for your ring? i tell you, miss blount, that a person who really had huguenot ancestors would never have suggested such a thing. it wouldn't have been huguenot etiquette." and judy flung herself out of the room and down the steps before the astonished judith had time to realize that she had been insulted by an upstart of a freshman. it looked very much for a day or two as if molly were going to have a congestion in one lung. for several days she was a very sick girl. she had a strange delirium that she was looking for something while she was walking on stilts. many times she asked the nurse if sapphires were as valuable as emeralds, and once she demanded to know if an emerald as large as her little finger nail was worth much money, say, two acres of good orchard land. but the lung was not congested, as dr. mclean had at first thought. in a day or two the fever subsided and by thursday she was able to sit up in bed, propped by many pillows and see judy and nance. her room was a bower of flowers. they had even come from exmoor, lawrence upton having sent her a box of lovely pink roses. mrs. mclean had brought her a bunch of red berries from the woods, and one day two cards were brought up, one of which looked familiar: miss grace green and mr. edwin green, inquiring as to the improvement in miss molly brown's condition, were pleased to hear that she was better. and now nance and judy sat on either side the young invalid, each trying to assume a cheerful expression and each feeling that whatever disagreeable things had happened--and several had happened--they must be hidden from molly at all costs. judith blount had scattered reports around college of an extremely hateful character which molly's friends had done their best to suppress. the ring had never been found, although everything had been done that could be thought of in the way of advertising and searching. moreover, miss steel had asked twice of molly's condition in a very meaning tone of voice, and had wished to know exactly when the nurse thought molly would be able to see visitors. these things the girls knew, and since molly was still weak and very hoarse, her friends were careful to keep off dangerous subjects. strange to say, molly had never mentioned the ring to any one since she had been in the hospital. "everybody has been so beautifully kind," she was saying, "and really, i think the rest is going to do me so much good, that when i get well i'll be better than i was before i got sick," she added, laughing. "we've missed you terribly," said nance dolefully. "queen's just a dead old hole without you, molly, dear," went on judy affectionately. molly smiled lovingly at her two friends. "you are the dearest----" she began, taking a hand of each when the nurse entered. "miss stewart would like to see you, miss brown." "oh, yes," cried molly; "do ask her to come up." nance and judy did not linger after mary stewart's arrival. her face also wore a serious look, and she took molly's hand and gazed down into her face almost with a compassionate expression. "how are you, molly, dear?" "oh, i'm much better," replied molly, cheerfully. "i shall be up by to-morrow, the doctor says, and i expect to go back to queen's sunday." mary sat down and drew her chair up close to the little white bed. "it's almost providential my being in the hospital like this," went on molly, "it's rested me so. you see, i was terribly worried about something when i came here." "and you aren't worried any longer?" "no; i've conquered it. i know it's got to be faced; but i believe there will be a way out of it, and i'm not frightened any more. i have always had a kind of blind faith like that when things look very black." "you are talking of the emerald ring, aren't you, molly?" "yes, mary. i know it hasn't been found, of course. i can tell that by the girls' faces, and i know that judith blount is--well, she is your friend, mary----" "oh, no; not now," put in mary. "we've had a--er--difference of opinion that has--well, not to put too fine a point on it, broken up our friendship. i always admired her, without ever really liking her." molly looked at mary and a very tender expression came into her heavenly blue eyes. "was the difference about me?" she asked presently. mary hesitated. "yes, molly; since you force me to tell you, it was." "she has been saying some horrid things? of course, i knew she would. i was prepared for that. and i could tell----" molly paused. "no, no, i mustn't!" she exclaimed hastily. "what could you tell, molly?" "don't ask me. i would never speak to myself again, if i did tell. she has been saying that i never lost the ring, that i was poor and needed the money, and things like that. tell me honestly, isn't that the truth?" mary nodded her head and frowned. there was a silence, and presently mary's strong, brown fingers closed over molly's slender ones. "molly," she began in a business-like tone of voice, "i'm almost glad that this subject has come up because i came here really to----" she broke off. "it's very hard," she began again. "i hardly know how to put it. you knew, molly, dear, that i was rich, didn't you?" "why, yes; i guessed you must be, although you have been careful not to mention it yourself. you're the most high-bred, finest girl i ever knew, mary," she added impetuously. mary laughed. "that's nice of you to say such things, dear, because i haven't but one ancestor on my paternal side and that's father, but he's generations in himself, he's so splendid. but to go on, molly, dear, i am rich, not ordinarily rich, but enormously, vastly rich. it's absurd, really, because we'll never spend it, and we don't care a rap about saving it; but whatever father touches just turns to gold." "i wish he'd touch something for me," laughed molly, wistfully. "now, listen to me, dear, and don't interrupt. father adores me to that extent that i could spend any amount of money and he would just smile and say: 'go ahead, little mary, go as far as you like.' but, you see, i only want a few very nice things, consequently, i can't be extravagant to save my life." molly laughed aloud at this naïve confession. "the point i'm coming to is this, molly: judith blount is being exceedingly horrid over that ring. i believe myself it will be found eventually. but until it is found, i want you--now don't interrupt me and don't carry on, please--i want you to ask her the value of her old ring and give her the money for it. if she chooses to be ill-bred, she must be treated with ill-bred methods." "but, dearest mary, i can't----" began molly. "yes, you can. i haven't known you but a few months, molly, but i've learned to love you in that time. and when i really care for any one, which is seldom, she becomes a sister to me. you are my little sister, and shall always be. i shall never change. and between sisters there must be no foolish pride. now, molly, i want to settle this thing with judith blount once and for all, through you, of course. she is not to know i had anything to do with it. you must tell her that you have raised the money and would like to pay her the full value of the ring. when the ring is found, she can give you back the money. that will stop her wicked, wagging tongue, at least." molly tried hard not to cry, but the tears welled up in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. she took mary's hand and kissed it. "i wish i could kiss you, dearest mary," she sobbed; "but you see, i've got such a bad cold." how could she thank mary for her generous offer or explain that her family would never allow her to accept the money, even if she felt she could herself? "you are the finest, noblest, most generous girl," she went on brokenly. "no, i'm not," said mary. "it's easy to do things for people we love and easier still when we have the money to do it with. if i hadn't been so fond of you, molly, and had been obliged to deny myself besides, that would have been generosity. this is only a pleasure. a sort of self-gratification, because i've adopted you, you see, as my little sister." molly lay quietly for a while with her cheek pressed against mary's hand. "are you thinking it over?" asked mary at last, patting her cheek. "i'm thinking how happy i am," answered molly. "as soon as you are well, then," went on mary, rising to go, "you must have an interview with judith and settle the whole thing." molly smiled up at her friend and squeezed her hand. there are times when two friends need not speak to express what they think. "even if i never win the three golden apples," she reflected after mary had gone, "i have won three friends that are as true as gold." chapter xx. miss steel. with the wonderful powers of recuperation which natures like molly's have, on sunday morning she was up and dressed, almost dancing about her room in the infirmary, long before it was time for dr. mclean to call and grant her permission to leave. it was good to be up and well again; it was good to be at college, for she had been homesick for wellington since she had been shut up in the hospital, and better still, it was good to have friends, such friends as she had. as for the emerald ring--a shadow darkened her face. the thought of the emerald ring would push its way into her mind. "i believe it will come out all right," she said to herself. "i believe it--i believe it! i couldn't help losing it, and if it isn't found, i can't help that, either. i just won't be miserable, that's all. i feel too happy and too well." "are you at home to visitors this morning, miss brown?" asked a sharp unmusical voice at the door. "oh, yes; do come in," answered molly, rising to meet miss steel, who had walked up the uncarpeted steps and along the echoing corridor without making a sound, as usual. molly's manners were unfailingly cordial to visitors, and when she shook hands with miss steel and insisted on making her take the armchair, that flint-like person visibly softened a little and faintly smiled. molly wondered why the sanitary inspector had called on her, but she appreciated attentions from anybody and was as grateful for being popular as if it were something entirely new and strange to her. she showed miss steel her flowers and pinned a lovely pink rose on the inspector's granite-colored cloth coat. she made light of her illness, and rejoiced that she was returning in a few hours to dear old queen's. she was, in fact, so wonderfully sweet and charming that sunday morning that it must have been very difficult even for the stony inspector to touch on the real business of her visit. at last, however, miss steel buckled on her armor of decision, averted her eyes for a moment from molly's glowing face and plunged in. "i don't suppose, miss brown, you suspected my title of 'dormitory inspector' here was merely a nominal one, and that i had another motive in being at wellington college?" molly hardly liked to tell her that they had long considered her a spy and detested her for that reason. she said nothing, therefore, and sat in her favorite position when listening intently with her hands clasping one knee and her shoulders drooping; a very wrong position indeed, considering that it would eventually make her round-shouldered and hollow chested; but molly was never more graceful or comfortable than when she adopted this unhealthful attitude. "i am an inspector," went on the other, "but i am an inspector of police, that is, a detective. doubtless you have heard of certain mysterious things that have happened at wellington this autumn; the attempt to burn the gymnasium, which we now believe was only a practical joke to frighten the sophomore class; the cutting of the electric wires one night, and there are a few other things you have not heard; for instance, miss walker has received lately several anonymous letters--two of them about you----" molly started. "about me?" she exclaimed. "yes," said miss steel, watching her closely. "but they were not disagreeable letters, strange to say, since anonymous letters usually are. they expressed the most ardent admiration for you. they mentioned that you had enemies who were trying to ruin your reputation." "how absurd!" exclaimed molly indignantly. she detested anything deceitful and underhand with all her soul. "when did these letters come?" "just since you have been at the infirmary." "they must be about the emerald ring," broke in molly. "exactly," answered the inspector. "you have lost a valuable emerald ring belonging to another girl who is making it disagreeable for you." "but i didn't want to take care of her ring," protested molly. "she insisted on it. it was too big for my finger, and when i fainted it must have slipped off. i've done everything i could to find it, but she needn't worry. she'll be paid for it, if two acres of good apple orchard that were to have paid my college expenses have to go." "nonsense, child!" exclaimed miss steel, suddenly melting into a human being. "i'm going to find that ring for you if it takes the rest of this winter." molly seized her hand joyfully. by one of those swift flashes of insight which come to us when we least expect them, it was revealed to molly that she had made a friend of the inspector. "i have been here almost a month," continued miss steel, giving the girl's hand a little vicelike squeeze, which was her way of expressing cordiality, "and i have found out a great many things. a girls' college is a strange place. there is a good deal of wire-pulling and petty jealousy among a certain class of girls, and yet i have reason to know that the code of honor here is exceedingly high, and i find myself growing more and more interested in the girls and their lives. nowhere but in college could such devoted friendships be formed. they are elevating and fine, especially for selfish girls, who learn how to be unselfish by example. the girls develop each other. your g. f. society, for instance, has had a remarkably refining and, shall i say, quieting effect on miss andrews----" molly started. she was amazed at the inspector's insight into the college life. "which brings me to the point i have been aiming to reach. since i have been here i have taken pains to learn the history of miss andrews as well as to study her character. she is a strange girl. doubtless you know the incident of last year?" molly shook her head. "to begin at the beginning: miss andrews' parents were rather strange people. her father is a city politician who never made any secret of his grafting methods. her mother was an actress and is dead. frances hadn't been brought up to any code of honor. she had been allowed to do as she chose, and had all the money she wanted to spend. if she is vulgar and pretentious, it isn't really her fault. last year she offended her class by telling a falsehood. she was under honor, according to the custom here when a student leaves the premises, to be back from some visit by ten o'clock sunday night. she missed the ten o'clock train and took the train which arrived at midnight. however, as luck would have it, the ten o'clock train was delayed by a washout and drew into wellington station just in front of the train frances was on. she, of course, found this out immediately, and taking advantage of it, she gave out that she had been on the earlier train, which saved all unnecessary explanations. it must have been a great temptation for a girl brought up as she had been. but truth always comes to the top, sooner or later, and as the president of her own class happened to have been on the earlier train, she was found out. she was summoned by the student council, tried and found guilty. then she was treated, i imagine, something in the same way that a french soldier is expelled from the army. figuratively speaking, her sword was broken and her epaulettes torn from her uniform!" "how terrible!" exclaimed molly. "yes; it was pretty severe. but she was very defiant, and said dreadful things, denounced her class and college. few girls would have had the courage to return to college next year, but she came back, hoping to live her dishonor down, and when she found her class to a member ignored her very existence, she became almost insane with bitterness and rage, and having studied her character closely, i judge that for a while, until your secret society took her in hand, she was hardly responsible for her actions. "now, miss walker is very sorry for frances andrews; but she considers her a dangerous element in college, and at mid-years she would like some definite reason for asking her not to come back. i am speaking plainly, because miss walker is convinced that you know a definite reason and through some mistaken idea of kindness, you keep it to yourself. in fact, miss brown, miss walker is convinced that you and you alone saw frances andrews cut the wires in the gymnasium that night." "but i didn't," cried molly, much excited; "or, rather, it wasn't miss andrews." miss steel looked at her in surprise, so sure was she that molly would confirm her suspicions. molly sat down again and clasped her knees with her long arms. her cheeks were crimson and her eyes blazing. "who was it, then?" asked the inspector. "i can't tell you that, miss steel. if i should give you the girl's name i should be dishonored all my life. i have been brought up to believe that the one who tells is as low as the one who did the deed. when we were children, my mother would never listen to a telltale. i do think it was a wicked, mischievous thing to have done--a contemptible thing; but i'd rather you found out the name of the girl in some other way than through me, especially right now----" "why right now?" but molly would not reply. miss steel could see nothing but truth in the depths of molly's troubled blue eyes. she took the girl's hand in her's and looked at her gravely. "you are a fine girl, miss brown," she said, "and if you tell me that the girl who cut the wires was not miss andrews, i believe you implicitly. of course, miss walker would never tell miss andrews not to return to wellington without something very definite and tangible on which to base her dismissal. luke andrews, the girl's father, is as hot-headed and high tempered as his daughter, and he would probably make a great deal of trouble and cause a great deal of publicity if frances were asked to leave college quietly." "i'm sorry for her," said molly. "i think she might have been helped if she had had just a little more time. after all, the worse thing about her is her bringing up." "and this other girl whom you are shielding, miss brown, does she deserve so much generosity from you?" molly closed her lips firmly. "that isn't the question with me, miss steel," she said at last. "the question is: could i ever show my face again if i told." "but no one need ever know, that is, no one but the president and me." "you don't understand," said molly wearily. "it's with me, you see. i could never be on comfortable terms with myself again. i should always be thinking that i hadn't behaved--well, like a gentleman." then the inspector did a most surprising thing. she went over and kissed molly. "i wouldn't for worlds keep you from being true to yourself, my child," she exclaimed. "it's a rare quality, and one which will make you devoted friends all your life, because people will always know they can trust you." molly looked at the inspector, and lo and behold, a strange transformation had taken place in that inscrutable, expressionless face. the cold gray eyes were softened by a mist of tears and the thin lips were actually quivering. she looked almost beautiful at that moment, and molly suddenly put her arms around her neck and laid her head on the flat, hard chest. "you'll forgive me, won't you, miss steel?" "i will, indeed, dear," answered the other, patting molly's cheek. "and now, don't bother about all this business. get well and strong. don't overwork, and i promise to find that ring for you if i have to turn the college upside down to do it." then she gave molly a warm, motherly squeeze, kissed her on the forehead and took her departure as quietly as she had come. chapter xxi. a bachelor's pocket. miss steel was a very busy woman that afternoon. she was shut up with judy kean for half an hour; she visited the livery stable in the village, she paid a call on dr. mclean and finally she went to see professor green. it is in professor green's study on the cloisters that we now find her, sitting bolt upright in her chair, alert and bright-eyed. at such times as this, miss steel is not unlike a hunting dog on the scent of his quarry. professor green sits at his desk. he looks tired, and his heavy reddish eyebrows are drawn together in a frown. when the inspector came into the room he had pushed a pile of manuscript under some loose papers, but a sheet had slipped off and now lay in plain view. across it was written in a bold hand: "exeunt fairies in disorder, leaving wood sprite at left centre. "the song of the wood sprite." "i hope you will pardon this intrusion, professor. i see you are very busy," the inspector began, glancing at the manuscript with a look of some slight amusement. the professor hastily covered up the sheet. "not at all," he said politely; "i'm just idling away a little time. what can i do for you?" he had seen miss steel about the building and most of the faculty knew her by this time as "inspector of dormitories." "do you remember helping a young lady who fainted on the day of the football game?" "oh, yes, certainly," replied the professor, absent-mindedly fingering a paper cutter. "you lent her your overcoat that afternoon, didn't you?" "why, yes; i believe i did." "have you worn the coat since?" "certainly," he answered, laughing; "every day, and several times a day. it's the only one i have. are you a detective?" "yes. do you ever put things in the pockets of your coat?" the professor smiled shamefacedly like a schoolboy culprit. "in one of them. there's been a hole in the other one for a long time--two years at least." "would you mind letting me see that coat?" he lifted the blue overcoat from a hook on the door and placed it on a chair beside miss steel. "am i a suspect?" he asked politely. "has anything been lost?" the detective seized the overcoat and began rummaging through the pockets with a practised hand. "yes," she answered; "something has been lost, and extremely disagreeable things have been said by the owner about it." "about me?" asked the professor, still groping in the dark. "no, no; about the girl who lost it." "miss brown?" the detective did not reply. she had run her hand through the hole in the pocket and was now searching the corners between the lining and the cloth. "ha!" she cried at last, exactly like the detective in a play. "here it is!" with a swift movement she extricated her hand from the bottomless pocket and displayed between her thumb and forefinger a large emerald ring. "why, that's the ring of my cousin, judith blount!" exclaimed the professor in amazement. "and i have had it in my pocket all this time. great heavens! what an extraordinary thing, and how did it get there?" "miss blount forced miss brown to take charge of it while she was playing football. after miss brown came to from her faint, she must have been very cold and slipped her hands in the pockets of this coat for warmth----" "she did," confirmed the professor. "and the ring slipped off. when she found it was lost she got up at dawn next day and went out in her slippers in the snow to find it, and nearly caught her death. but she's had no thanks for her trouble from your relation, i can assure you. nothing but abuse----" "what!" shouted the professor. "you mean to say that judith has dared to insinuate----" "she has," said miss steel. "and she whom miss brown has shielded--great heavens! this is too much." he began walking up and down the room in a rage. "shielded from what?" "i am not at liberty to tell you," he replied. "the girl repented of what she did. i know that, but she's an ungrateful little wretch." a scholarly professor of english literature, however, is no match for a well-trained detective, and with a knowing smile on her lips the inspector rose to leave. "you may return the ring," she said. "it will be a great relief to miss molly brown of kentucky to know it has been found. she was about to give up two acres of good apple orchard to pay for it; the land, in fact, which was to provide the money for her college expenses." and with that she sailed out of the room and went straight to the home of president walker, with whom she spent the better part of an hour. professor green followed close on her heels. he did not pause at miss walker's pretty stucco residence, however, but hastened down the campus and rang the bell at queen's cottage. miss brown was in, he learned from the maid. she had only arrived from the infirmary that afternoon. the professor waited in the sitting room deserted by the students at that hour, those who were not studying in their rooms being at vespers. presently molly appeared, looking very slender and tall, like a pale flower swaying on its stalk. the professor rushed up and seized her hand unceremoniously. "my dear child!" he cried, "how am i ever going to make my apologies to you for all this trouble of which i have been the unconscious cause?" "for what----" began molly, too much astonished to finish her question. "the ring! the ring! it's been concealed in the ragged lining of my shabby old overcoat all this time, and that clever detective of dormitories, or whatever she is, ferreted it out just now. perhaps i should have thought of it myself; but, you see, i hadn't even heard the ring had been lost. i am afraid you suffered a great deal." "i did at first; but after i grew better i never let myself slip back into that state again. i kept believing it would be found. i was so sure of it that i haven't really been unhappy at all. you see, everybody is so beautifully kind and no one believed----" "great heavens!" interrupted the professor, storming excitedly around the room, "that ungrateful, wicked girl to have made such an accusation--she shall hear from me what she owes to you! i'll take the ring to her myself later. she is my cousin, and her brother is as near to me as my own brother, but----" "you aren't going to tell prexy?" cried molly. "i must. besides, i nearly gave it away to miss steel." "oh, well, if that's the case, she knows already. she's a detective, and if you let two words slip, she can easily guess the rest. there's no keeping anything from her. you may be sure prexy knows it by this time." "i'm rather relieved," said the professor. "judith will probably be well punished; but she should be." "i've always wondered," said molly, after a short pause, "why judith did it." the professor looked at her closely with his humorous brown eyes. "have you no idea why?" he asked. "except for mischief and to annoy the seniors," she answered. "possibly," he said. "a girl who has been spoiled and petted as she has will give in to almost any whim that seizes her. however, such actions are not tolerated at wellington, and she will have to learn a few pretty stiff lessons if she expects to remain here." then professor green shook hands with molly, gave her a little paternal advice about taking care of her health, and took his departure. his next destination was the president's house, where he waited in the drawing-room until miss steel had terminated her interview. he was prepared for a round scolding from his old friend, who had known him since his early youth, but the president was inclined to be lenient with the young man. "it all goes to show," she said at the end of the interview, "that murder will out. but why did the foolish girl do that mischievous thing? what did she have to gain by it?" he shrugged his shoulders. "jealous of some one prettier and more popular than herself, probably," he answered. the president sighed. "who can understand the intricacies of a young girl's heart," she said. "i have been studying them for twenty years, and they are still a closed book to me." when professor green a little later returned the emerald ring to his cousin, he cut the visit as short as possible. he told her that she had deliberately and wrongfully accused one who had shielded her even at the risk of offending the president of wellington college, and that it was he who had given the detective, already suspicious, the clue she wanted. judith wept bitterly, but her cousin showed no signs of relenting. "if you want to be loved," he said, "learn unselfishness and gentleness and truthfulness. these are the qualities that make men and women beloved. you will never gain anything by cheating and lying." the end of the episode was a pretty severe punishment for judith blount. she was suspended from college for three weeks and was compelled to resign from all societies for the rest of the winter. she left college next morning early, and no one saw her again until after christmas, when she returned a much chastened and quieted young woman. a few days after she had gone molly received a note from her from new york. it read: "dear miss brown: "will you forgive me? i am very unhappy. "judith blount." you may be sure that molly's reply was prompt and forgiving. chapter xxii. christmas--mid-years--and the wanderthirst. there are few lonelier and more dismal experiences in life than christmas away from home for the first time. molly felt her heart sink as the great day approached. one morning a trainload of chattering, laughing girls pulled out of the wellington station. judy hanging recklessly to the last step, waved her handkerchief until molly's figure grew indistinct in the distance, and nance on the crowded platform called out again and again, "good-bye, molly, dear. good-bye!" molly almost regretted that she had ever left kentucky, as the christmas train became a point of black on the horizon. "i might have ended my days as a teacher in a country school-house and been happier than this," she thought desperately, starting back to college. some one came running up behind her. it was mary stewart who had been down to see some classmates off. she was to take the night train to new york. "when do you get off?" she asked, slipping her arm through molly's like the good comrade she was. "i'm surprised you didn't leave yesterday, with such a long journey before you." "i'm not going home this christmas," replied molly. "not going?" began mary. "you're to be left at queen's by yourself?" molly nodded, vainly endeavoring to smile cheerfully. "then you're to go with me. i'll come right along now and help you pack," announced mary decisively. "but, mary, i can't. i haven't anything--money or clothes----" "don't say 'but' to me! i've got everything. i've even got the drawing-room to myself on the night train to new york. you shall go with me. i don't know why i never thought of it before. we'll have a beautiful christmas together. since mother's death, five years ago, christmas has been a dismal time at our house. you'll be just the person to cheer us up. it will be like having a child in the house. you shall have a christmas tree and hang up your stocking. father will be delighted and so will brother willie." thus overruled, molly was borne triumphantly to new york that same evening, and spent one of the most wonderful christmases of her life in mary's beautiful home on riverside drive. as her mother and godmother both wisely sent her checks for christmas gifts, she was not embarrassed by any lack of ready money. she was even rich enough to purchase a new evening dress and a pretty blouse which mary had ordered to be sent up on approval, and not for many a year afterward did she guess why those charming things happened to be such bargains. but molly was a very inexperienced young person, and knew little concerning prices at that time. mary's father was a fine man, quiet and self-contained, with a splendid rugged face. he treated his only daughter with indescribable tenderness, and called her "little mary." they did not see much of "brother willie," a sophomore at yale, and very busy enjoying his holiday. he regarded molly as a child and his sister as an old maid, but condescended to take them to the theatre twice. but all good things must come to an end, and it seemed just a little while before molly found herself back at her old desk in her room at queen's, writing a "bread-and-butter" letter to mr. stewart, which pleased him mightily, since mary's guests had never before taken that trouble. judy came back radiantly happy. she had had a glorious time in washington with her "vagabond" parents, as she called them. nance, too, had enjoyed her christmas with her father and busy mother, who had come home to rest during the holidays. only one of queen's girls did not join the jolly circle that now congregated in the most hospitable room in the house to "swap" holiday experiences. but a letter had arrived from the missing member addressed to "miss m. c. w. brown," and beginning: "my dear molly brown." "good-bye," the letter ran. "i'm off for europe and grandmamma, by the _kismet_, sailing the eighteenth. i am afraid i was too much like a bull in a china shop at college. i was always breaking something, mostly rules. i've done lots of foolish things, and i am sorry. they were jokes, of course, most of them, and intended to frighten silly self-important people. i've learned a great deal from you and your friends, but i'd rather practice my new wisdom on other people. if you ever see me again you'll find me changed. i may enter a convent for a few years in france and learn to keep quiet. you did what you could for me, and so did the others. you are a first rate lot and you make a jolly good freshman class. i shall miss you, and i shall miss old wellington. i wouldn't have come back this year if i hadn't felt the call of its two gray towers. somehow, it's been more of a home to me than most places, and when i'm quite old and forgotten i shall go back and see it again some day. good-bye again, and good luck. i've told mrs. murphy to give you my persian prayer rug. it's just your color of blue. "f. andrews." molly read the letter aloud and the girls were half sorry and half relieved over its contents. after all, frances was a very disturbing element, but as margaret wakefield announced later at a meeting of the g. f. society, she had responded to kind treatment, and she, margaret, moved that they send her a combination steamer letter of farewell and a bunch of violets to cheer her on her lonely voyage. the movement was promptly seconded by molly, carried by universal acclaim, and the resolution put into effect immediately. after christmas comes the terror of every freshman's heart--the mid-year examinations. as the dreaded week approached, lights burned late in every house on the campus and nobody offered any interference. behind closed doors sat scores of weary maidens with pale concentrated faces bent over text-books. judy kean made a record at queen's. she crammed history for thirty-six hours at a stretch, only stopping for food occasionally or to snatch a half hour's nap. it was saturday and bitter cold. examinations were to begin on monday, and there yet remained two more blessed days of respite. molly, in a long, gray dressing gown, with a towel wrapped around her head, had been cramming mathematics since six in the morning, and now at eleven o'clock, she lifted her eyes from the hated volume and looked about her with a dazed expression as if she had suddenly awakened from a black dream. nance had hurried into the room. "molly, for heaven's sake, go to judy. i think she's losing her mind. she has overstudied and it has affected her brain. i can't do anything with her at all." "what?" cried molly, rushing down the hall, her long, gray wrapper trailing after her in voluminous folds. she opened judy's door unceremoniously and marched in. the room looked as if a cyclone had struck it. the contents of the bureau drawers were dumped onto the floor; the closet was emptied, clothes and books piled about on the bed and chairs, and judy's two trunks filled up what floor space remained. judy herself was working feverishly. she had packed a layer of books in one of the trunks and was now folding up her best dresses. "julia kean, what are you doing?" cried molly in a stern voice. judy gave her a constrained nod. "don't bother me now. there's a dear. i'm in a dreadful hurry." molly shook her violently by the shoulder. she had a feeling that judy was asleep and must be waked up. "get up from there this minute and answer my question," she commanded. "what was your question?" asked judy with an embarrassed little laugh. "oh, yes, you asked what i was doing. i should think you could see i wasn't gathering cowslips on the campus." "are you running away, judy?" asked molly, trying another tack. "yes, my mariucci," cried judy, quoting a popular song, "'_i'm gona packa my trunk and taka my monk and sail for sunny it._'" molly refused even to smile at this witticism. "i know what you're doing," she exclaimed. "you are running away from examinations. you're a coward. you are no better than a deserter from the army in time of war. it's bad enough in time of peace, but just before the battle--i'm so ashamed and disappointed in you that i can hardly understand how i ever could have loved you so much." judy went on stolidly packing, rolling her clothes into little bundles and stuffing them in anywhere she could find a place between her numerous books. "have you lost your nerve, judy, dear?" said molly, after a minute, kneeling down beside her friend and seizing her hands. "i suppose so," said judy, extricating her hands, and speaking in a hard, strained voice in an effort to keep from breaking down. "i'd rather not stay here and be disgraced by flunking, but there's another reason beside that, molly. i know i look like a deserter and deserve to be shot, but there's another reason," she wailed; "there's another good reason." "why, judy, dearest, what can it be?" asked molly gently. "they're going to italy," she burst out. "they're sailing on monday. i got the letter to-day, and, oh, i can't stand it--i can't endure it. they'll be in sicily in a few weeks--and without me! mamma hates the cold. so do i. i'm numb now with it. oh, molly, they'll be sailing without me, and i want to go. you can't understand what the feeling is. there is something in me that is calling all the time, and i can't help hearing it and answering. in my mind i can live through every bit of the voyage. at first it's cold, bitter cold, and then after a few days we get into the gulf stream and gradually it grows warmer. even in the winter time the air is soft and smells of the south. at last the azores come--cunning little islands snuggling down out there in the atlantic--and finally you see a long line of coast--it's africa; then gibraltar and the mediterranean--oh, molly--and algiers, lovely algiers, nestling down between the hills and looking across such a harbor! you can see the domes of the mosques as you sail in and arab boys come out in funny little boats and offer to row you to shore. it's delightfully warm and you smell flowers everywhere. the sky is a deep blue. it's like june. and then, after algiers, comes italy----" judy had risen to her feet now, and her eyes had an uncanny expression in them. she appeared to have lost sight entirely of the little room at queen's, and through the chaos of books and clothing, she was seeing a vision of the south. "come back to earth, judy," said molly, gently pulling her sleeve. "wouldn't your mother and father be angry with you for giving up college and joining them uninvited?" "angry?" cried judy. "of course not. even if i just caught the steamer, it would be all right, they would fix it up somehow, and they would be glad--oh, so glad! what a glorious time we will have together. perhaps we shall spend a few weeks in capri. i shall try and make them stay a while in capri. such a view there is at capri across the bay. papa loves naples. he even loves its dirtiness and calls it 'local color.' we'll have to stay there a week to satisfy him, and then mamma will make us go to ravello. she's mad about it; and then i'll have my choice--it's venice, of course; but we'll wait until it's warmer for venice. april is perfect there, and then rome after easter. oh, molly, molly, help me pack! i'm off--i'm off--isn't it glorious, italy, when the spring begins, the roses and the violets and the fresias----" judy began running about the room, snatching her things from the bed and chairs and tossing them into the trunks helter-skelter. molly watched her in silence for a while. she must collect her ideas, and think of something to say. but not now. it was like arguing with a lunatic to say anything now. at last judy's feverish energy burned itself out and she sat down on the bed exhausted. "so you're going to give up four splendid years at college and all the friends you've made--nance and me and margaret and jessie, and nice old sallie marks and mabel, all the fun and the jolly times, the delightful, glorious life we have here--and for what? for a three months' trip you have taken before, and will take again often, no doubt. just for three short, paltry little months' pleasure, you're going to give up things that will be precious to you for the rest of your life. it's not only the book learning, it's the associations and the friends----" "i don't see why i should lose my friends," broke in judy sullenly. "they'll never be the same again. they couldn't after such a disappointment as this. you see, you'll always be remembered as a coward who turned and ran when examinations came--you lost your nerve and dropped out and even pretty little jessie has the courage to face it. oh, judy, but i'm disappointed in you. it's a hard blow to come now when we're all fighting to save ourselves and pull through safely. and you--one of the cleverest and brightest girls in the class. don't tell me your father will be pleased. he'll be mortified, i'm certain of it. he's much too fine a man to admire a cowardly act, no matter whose act it is. you'll see. he'll be shocked and hurt. if he had thought it was right for you to give up college on the eve of examinations, he would have written for you to come. it will be a crushing blow to him, judy." judy lay on her bed, her hands clasped back of her head. there was a defiant look on her face, and she kicked the quilt up and down with one foot, like an impatient horse pawing the ground. then, suddenly, she collapsed like a pricked balloon. burying her face in the pillows, she began sobbing bitterly, her body shaking convulsively with every sob. it was a terrible sight to see judy cry, and molly hoped she would be spared such another experience. without saying another word, molly began quietly unpacking the trunks and putting the things back in their places. then she pulled the empty trunks into the hall. this done, she filled a basin with water, recklessly poured in an ample quantity of judy's german cologne, and sitting on the side of the bed, began bathing her friend's convulsed and swollen face. gradually judy's sobs subsided, her weary eyelids drooped and presently she dropped off into a deep, exhausted sleep. nance crept into the room. "she's all right now," whispered molly. "she's had an attack of the 'wanderthirst,' but it's passed." all day and all night judy slept, and on sunday morning she was her old self once more, gay and laughing and full of fun. that afternoon she was an usher at vespers in wellington chapel, with molly and nance, and wore her best suit and a big black velvet hat. she never alluded again to her attack of wanderthirst, but her devotion to molly deepened and strengthened as the days flew by until it became as real to her as her love for her mother and father. once in the midst of the dreaded examinations they did not seem so dreadful after all. the girls at queen's came out of the fight with "some wounds, but still breathing," as margaret wakefield had put it. molly had a condition in mathematics. "i got it because i expected it," she said. but judy came through with flying colors--not a single black mark against her. jessie barely pulled through, and her friends rejoiced that the prettiest, most frivolous member of the freshman class had made such a valiant fight and won. chapter xxiii. sophomores at last. "freshman, arise! gird on thy sword! captivity is o'er. to arms! to arms! for, lo! thou art a daring sophomore!" the words of this stirring song floated in through the open windows at queen's one warm night in early june. moonlight flooded the campus, and the air was sweet with the perfume of lilac and syringa. a group of sophomores had gathered in front of the house to serenade the freshmen at queen's, who had immediately repaired to the piazza to acknowledge this unusual honor paid them by their august predecessors. "i think it would be far more appropriate if they sang: "'when all the saints who from their labors rest,'" remarked mabel hinton, who, in order to make a record, had studied herself into a human skeleton. "well," said molly brown, "when i left home last september, one of my brothers cheerfully informed me that i looked like 'a rag and a bone and a hank of hair.' i am afraid i don't feel very saint-like now, because i have gained ten pounds, and i'm not tired of anything, except packing my clothes. i'm so sorry to leave blessed old queen's that i could kiss her brown cheek, if it didn't look foolish." "well, go and kiss the side of the house then," put in judy. "you have a poetic nature, molly; but i wouldn't have it changed. i like it just as it is." "do you know," interrupted margaret wakefield, "that queen's, from having once been scorned as a residence, has now become a very popular abode, and there were so many applications for rooms here for next year that the registrar has had to make a waiting list for the first time in connection with queen's. think of that at old queen's!" "it's because it's the residence of a distinguished person," announced molly. "i think we should put a brass plate on the front door, stating that in this house lived a class president who possessed every attribute for the office. she was versed in parliamentary law, she had an executive mind, and she was beloved by all who knew her." margaret was pleased at this compliment. "_voyons, voyons, que vous me flattez!_" she exclaimed. "it's your warm southern nature that makes you so enthusiastic. now, the real reason why old brown queen's, with her moldering vines, is so popular all of a sudden is because you are here." it was molly's turn now to be pleased. "we won't argue such a personal matter," she said, squeezing margaret's hand. "but i'm glad i'm booked here for next year. i was afraid nance would want a 'singleton,' she has such a retiring nun-like nature." "me?" exclaimed nance, disregarding english in her amazement. "why, i've had the happiest winter of my whole life with you, molly. if there's a chance for another one like it, i'm only too thankful." "certainly mary carmichael washington brown is a modest soul," thought judy, who happened to know that her friend had had some five or six tempting offers to move into better quarters the next year at no greater expense to herself. one was from mary stewart, who was to return next winter for a post-graduate course. another was from judith blount, who had proposed molly for membership in the beta phi society next year, and had furthermore invited the surprised young freshman to take the study of her apartment for a bedroom and offered her the constant use of her sumptuous sitting room. certainly, if ever there was an expression of true remorse and repentance, that was one, molly thought, and the allusion to roommates reminded her that she must say good-bye to judith, for there would be no time in the morning for last farewells. "i am going over to the beta phi house for a minute," she announced. "any one want to come along?" margaret and jessie, who had friends in that "abode of fashion," as it was called, joined her, and presently the three white figures were lost in the shadows on the campus. "she is going to say farewell to black-eyed judith," observed judy in a low voice to nance, "and all i would say is what the colored preacher said: 'can the le-o-pard change his spots?'" nance smiled gravely. she did not possess judy's prejudiced nature, but her convictions were strong. "do you think she's a 'le-o-pard,' judy?" she asked. "she may be a domesticated one," said judy, "of the genus known as 'cat.'" "aren't you ashamed, judy?" exclaimed nance, reprovingly. but it must be confessed that a few doubts still lurked in her own heart concerning the sincerity of proud judith's repentance. in the meantime, the three freshmen had separated in the upper hall of the beta phi house, and molly had given a timid rap with judith's fine brass knocker. instantly the door flew open and she found herself precipitated into a roomful of people, at least it seemed so at first, who had just subsided into quiet because some one was going to play. molly was about to retreat in great confusion when miss grace green seized one hand and mary stewart the other. judith came forward with a show of extreme cordiality and richard blount left the piano and actually ran the full length of the room, exclaiming: "it's miss molly brown of kentucky!" molly knew she was breaking into a party, but there was nothing to do but make a call of a few minutes and then take her leave as gracefully as possible under the circumstances. professor edwin green had also shaken her by the hand warmly, and pushing up a chair had insisted on her sitting down. they had all drawn their chairs around her in a semicircle, and richard blount had brought over the piano stool and placed it directly in front of her so that he could look straight at her. in fact, here sat the little freshman, blushing crimson and painfully embarrassed, enthroned in a large armchair, and gathered around her was a circle of very delightful, not to say, admiring persons. as one of these persons was judith's brother and two were her near cousins, molly thought she could explain their excessive cordiality. they knew the story of the ring and they were anxious to make amends. she recalled, with a furtive inner smile, the last time she was in those rooms, when, as a waitress, she had upset the coffee on the professor's knees. how glad she was that the painful experience was well over and forgotten by now. but she was glad about many things that evening. she was happy to see that mary and judith had made up their differences, and were once more friends. she knew that mary, who had the kindest heart in the world, could never stay angry long. "i didn't know that judith was giving a party," molly began, still very much embarrassed. "i just dropped in to say good-bye because i am leaving to-morrow morning." "to-morrow morning?" repeated richard blount. "wasn't it lucky for me you happened in to-night. i had expected to call on you to-morrow afternoon, and think how disappointed i should have been to have found the nest empty and the bird flown." "so you are really off to-morrow?" broke in professor green. "i am so sorry. i was going to ask you to have tea in the cloisters with my sister and me in the afternoon." again molly smiled to herself. tea in the cloisters, with a distinguished professor and his charming sister! only nine months before she had been a lonely, shivering little waif of a freshman locked in the cloisters. the words of the sophomore "croak" came back to her: "they have locked me in the cloisters; they have fastened up the gate. oh, let me out! oh, let me out! it's growing very late." "i am sorry that my ticket is bought and my berth engaged, and the expressman coming for my trunk to-morrow at nine," she said. "if all those things were not so, i should love to drink soup----" she stopped and flushed a deep red. what absurd trick of the mind had made her say "soup"? "i mean tea," she went on hastily, hoping no one had heard the break. miss green was talking with mary stewart. richard blount was twirling on the piano stool, his hands deep in his pockets, and judith was engaged at a side table in pouring lemonade into glasses. there was a twinkle of amusement in the professor's brown eyes, and he gave molly a delightful smile. "i must be going," she said anxiously, rising. "not till you've had a glass of lemonade, for i made it myself," said richard, gallantly handing her one on a plate. molly looked doubtfully toward judith. "i don't want to be like that young man in the rhyme," she said. "'there was a young man so benighted, he never knew when he was slighted. he'd go to a party and eat just as hearty, as if he'd been really invited.'" everybody laughed, and judith suddenly becoming a model hostess, exclaimed: "indeed, you must stay, molly, and have some lemonade. richard didn't make it at all. he only squeezed the lemons." molly, therefore, remained and had a beautiful time, and when she really did take her departure the entire party, including judith, escorted her across the moonlit campus to the door of queen's. but molly was still certain that it was the ring episode and nothing else that made them all so polite and attentive. and so she informed nance and judy that night as she unlocked her trunk for the third time in ten minutes to stuff in some overlooked belonging. but judy sniffed the air and exclaimed: "ring, nothing! it's popularity!" molly smiled and went to bed, feeling that her last day at wellington had been a decided improvement on the first one. the next morning queen's cottage was a pandemonium of trunks and bags and excited young women, rushing up and down the halls. cries could be heard from every room in the house of: "the laundress hasn't brought my shirtwaists! perfidious woman!" "the expressman's here!" "is your trunk strapped?" "i've got to sleep in an upper berth." "don't forget to write me." "where are you to be this summer?" "i can't get this top down and the trunk man's waiting!" "oh, dear, do hurry! we'll miss the bus!" "young ladies, the bus is coming," called the voice of mrs. markham from the front door. and then, with a fluttering of handkerchiefs and many a last call of "good-bye," the bus-load of girls moved sedately down the avenue. molly, looking back at the twin gray towers of wellington, understood why frances andrews wanted so much to return. "how glad i am to be only a sophomore," she cried. "i shall have three more years at wellington!" the end. transcriber's note: besides some minor printer's errors the following correction has been made: on page 172 "professor" has been changed to "president" (the doctor at one side, the president at the other). otherwise the original has been preserved, including inconsistent spelling and hyphenation. google books (harvard college library) transcriber's notes: 1. page scan source: https://books.google.com/books?id=zk0raaaayaaj&pg (harvard college library) the saintsbury affair [frontispiece: _as i came up, emptied a chatelaine purse upon barney's tray_. frontispiece. _see page 23_.] the saintsbury affair by roman doubleday author of "the hemlock avenue mystery," "the red house on rowan street," etc. with illustrations by j. v. mcfall boston little, brown, and company 1912 _copyright, 1911, 1912_, by little, brown, and company. -----_all rights reserved_ published, february, 1912 _electrotyped and printed by the colonial press c. b. simonds & co., boston, u.s.a._ contents chapter i. the beginning of the tangle. ii. two lovely ladies. iii. the unexpected happens. iv. crossed wires. v. bertillon methods and some others. vi. the frat supper. vii. chiefly gossip. viii. some of jean's ways. ix. a gleam of light. x. ways that are dark. xi. the simmering samovar. xii. on the trail of diavolo. xiii. the samovar explodes. xiv. tangled heart-strings. xv. the outlaw. xvi. the gift-bond. xvii. a voice from the past. xviii. a rescue. xix. cards on the table. xx. the ultimate discovery. illustrations as i came up, his listener emptied a chatelaine purse upon barney's tray _frontispiece_ "he was diavolo's partner," he said vehemently _page_ 137 "i believe it," said a voice that startled us all _page_ 186 there lay a pathetic little heap on the daghestan rug on my floor _page_ 290 the saintsbury affair chapter i the beginning of the tangle let me see where the story begins. perhaps i can date it from the telephone invitation to dinner which i received one monday from my dear and kind friend mrs. whyte. "and see that you are just as clever and agreeable as your naturally morose nature will permit," she said saucily. "i have a charming young lady here as my guest, and i want you to make a good impression." "another?" i gasped. "so soon?" "i don't wonder that your voice is choked with surprise and gratitude," she retorted, and i could see with my mind's eye how her eyebrows went up. "you _don't_ deserve it,--i'll admit that freely. but i am of a forgiving nature." "you are so near to being an angel," i interrupted, "that it gives me genuine pleasure to suffer martyrdom at your behest. i welcome the opportunity to show you how devotedly i am your slave. who is the young lady this time?" "miss katherine thurston. now if you would only talk in that way to _her_,--" "i won't," i said hastily. "at least, not until her hair is as white as yours is,--it can never be as lovely. but for your sake i will undertake to be as witty and amiable and generally delightful as i think it safe to be, having due regard for the young lady's peace of mind,--." i rang off just in time to escape the "you conceited puppy!" which i knew was panting to get on the wire. mrs. whyte's speech was at times that of an older generation. so that was how i came to go to mrs. whyte's dinner that memorable monday evening, and to meet katherine thurston. but now that i come to look at it in this historical way, i see that i shall have to begin a little farther back, or you won't understand the significance of what took place that night. i already had another engagement for that evening, but i thought i could fit the two appointments in, by getting away from mrs. whyte's by ten o'clock. under the circumstances she would forgive an early departure. my other engagement was of a peculiar and unescapable nature. it had come about in this way. there was a man in our town who had always interested me to an unusual degree, though my personal acquaintance with him was of the slightest. he was an architect, kenneth clyde by name, and he had done some of the best public buildings in the state. he had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, and was related to half a dozen of the "old families" of the town. (i am comparatively new myself. but i soon saw that clyde belonged to the inner circle of saintsbury.) and yet, with all his professional success and his social privileges, there was something about the man that expressed an excessive humility. it was not diffidence or shyness,--he had all the self-possession that goes with good breeding. but he held himself back from claiming public credit or accepting any public place, though i knew that more than once it had been pressed upon him in a way that made it difficult for him to evade it. he persistently kept himself in the background, until his desire to remain inconspicuous almost became conspicuous in turn. he was the man, for instance, who did all the work connected with the organization of our boat club, but he refused to accept any office. he was always ready to lend a hand with any public enterprise that needed pushing, but his name never figured on the committees that appeared in the newspapers. and yet, if physiognomy counts for anything, he was not born to take a back seat. he was approaching forty at this time, and in spite of his consistent modesty, he was one of the best known men in saintsbury. as i say, he had always interested me as a man out of the ordinary, and when he walked into my law office a few days before that telephone call from mrs. whyte, i was uncommonly pleased at the idea that he should have come to me for legal advice when he might have had anything he wanted from the older lawyers in town whom he had known all his life. i guessed at a glance that it was professional advice he wanted, from the curiously tense look that underlay his surface coolness. "i have come to you, mr. hilton," he said directly, "partly because you are enough of a stranger here to regard me and my perplexities in an impersonal manner, and so make it easier for me to discuss them." "yes," i said encouragingly. he had hesitated after his last words as though he found it hard to really open up the subject matter. "but that is only a part of my reason for asking you to consider my case," he went on with a certain repressed intensity. "i believe, from what i have seen of you, that you have both physical and moral courage, and that you will look at the matter as a man, as well as a lawyer." i nodded, not caring to commit myself until i understood better what he meant. "first, read this letter," he said, and laid before me a crumpled sheet which he had evidently been clutching in his hand inside of his coat pocket. it was a half sheet of ruled legal cap, and in the center was written, in a bold, well-formed hand,---"i need $500. you may bring it to my office monday night at ten. no fooling on either side, you understand." "blackmail!" i said. clyde nodded. "what is the best way of dealing with a blackmailer?" he asked, looking at me steadily. "that may depend on circumstances," i said evasively. i felt that, as he had suggested, he was trying to appeal to my sympathies as a man rather than to my judgment as a lawyer. "i heard of one case," he said casually, "where a prominent man was approached by a blackmailer who had discovered some compromising secret, and he simply told the fellow that if he gave the story to the papers, as he threatened to do, he would shoot him and take the consequences, since life wouldn't be worth living in any event, if that story came out. i confess that course appeals to my common-sense. it is so conclusive." "i infer, however, that you didn't take that tone with this fellow when he first approached you," i said, touching the paper on my desk. "this is not his first demand." "no. the first time that it came, i was paralyzed, in a manner. i had been dreading something of that sort,--discovery, i mean,--for years. i had gone softly, to avoid notice, i had only half lived my life, i had felt each day to be a reprieve. then _he_ came,--and asked money for keeping my secret. it seemed a very easy way of escape. in a way, it made me feel safer than before. i knew now where the danger was, and how to keep it down. it was only a matter of money. i paid, and felt almost cheerful. but he came again, and again. he has grown insolent." he drew his brows together sternly as he looked at the written threat which lay before us. he did not look like a man afraid. "can you tell me the whole situation?" i asked. "if i know all the facts, i can judge better,--and you know that you speak in professional confidence." "i want to tell you," he said. "i--he knew--the fact is, i was sentenced to be hanged for a murder some fifteen years ago in texas. the sentence is still suspended over me. i escaped before it was executed." a lawyer learns not to be surprised at any confession, for the depths of human nature which are opened to his professional eye are so amazing that he becomes accustomed to strange things, but i admit that i was staggered at my client's confidence. i picked up and folded and refolded the paper before i could speak quite casually. "and no one knows that fact? your name--?" "i was known by another name at the time,--an assumed name. i'll tell you the whole story. but one word first,--i was and am innocent." he looked at me squarely but appealingly as he spoke, and suddenly i saw what the burden was which he had been carrying for fifteen years,--nearly half his life. "i believe you," i said, and unconsciously i held out my hand. he gripped it as a drowning man clutches a spar, and a dull flush swept over his face. his hand was trembling visibly as he finally drew it away, but he tried to speak lightly. "that's what i couldn't induce the judge or jury to do," he said. "let me tell you how it all came about. it was in august of 1895. i had graduated in june,--i was twenty-three,--and before settling down to my new profession i went off on a vacation trip with a fellow i had come to know pretty well at the university during my last year there. he was not the sort of a friend i cared to introduce to my family, but there are worse fellows than poor henley was. he was merely rather wild and lawless, with an instinct for gambling which grew upon him. we went off avowedly for a lark,--to see life, henley put it. i knew his tastes well enough to guess beforehand that the society to which he would introduce me would not be creditable. the clydes are as well known in this state as bunker hill is in boston, and i felt a responsibility toward the name. so i insisted that on our travels i should be tom johnson." "i see. then when the trouble came you were known by that name instead of your own?" "yes. that's how i was able to come back here and to go on living my natural life." "that was fortunate. that situation was much easier to manage than if it had been the other way around." clyde had picked up a paper knife and was examining it with absent attention, and instead of answering my remark directly he looked up with a frank smile. "you can't imagine what it means to me to be able to talk this over with you," he said. "all these years i have carried it--here. why, it is like breathing after being half suffocated." "i understand." "you want to know the details, though," he went on more gravely. "we were together for several weeks, going from one city to another. henley had a special faculty for striking up acquaintance with picturesque rascals, and for a time i found it very interesting as well as novel. it was a side of life i had never before come close to. but gradually i couldn't help seeing that henley was helping out an uncommon knack with the cards by the tricks of a sharper. we quarrelled over it more than once, and things began to grow uncomfortable. the old irresponsible comradeship was chilled, though i didn't yet feel like cutting loose from him. one night we had been playing cards in a saloon in houston, texas,--henley and i and two men we had picked up. they were rough and ready westerners, and a sort to stand no fooling. we had all been drinking a little, but not enough to lose our heads. i saw henley make a misdeal and i told him so. he was furious, and we all but came to blows in the quarrel that followed. i left him with the others and went off by myself. that evening had finally sickened me with the swine's husks i had been eating, and i suddenly determined to quit it then and there and get back to my own life, my own name, and my own people. i walked down to the station, found that a train for the north was just about to pull out, and jumped aboard. i was an hour away from houston before i remembered something that made me change my hasty plan. i had left my bag in the room at the hotel, and though i didn't care about the clothes or the other things, there was-well, there is no reason why i should not tell you. there was a girl's picture in an inside compartment, and some letters, and i couldn't leave them to chance. i had simply forgotten all about that matter in my angry passion, but the thought now was like a dash of cold water, bringing me to my senses. i got out of the train at the next stop,--a place called lester. it was just midnight. i found that the first train i could catch to take me back to houston would go through at five in the morning, and i walked up and down that deserted platform,--for even the station agent went off to sleep after the midnight train went through,--for five mortal hours. i had time to think things over, and to realize that i had been playing with pitch as no clyde had a right to." he paused for an instant, as though he were living the moment over, but i did not speak. i wanted him to tell the story in his own way. "i caught the five o'clock train back and was in houston soon after six. i went at once to the hotel and to my room. henley's room communicated with mine. the door between them was ajar, and i pushed it open to speak to him. he was leaning over the table, on which cards were scattered about, and he was quite dead, from a knife thrust between the shoulders." clyde had been speaking in a composed manner, like one telling an entirely impersonal tale, but at this point he paused and a look of embarrassment clouded his face. "i find it hard to explain to you or to myself why i did so foolish a thing as i did next, but i was rather shaken up by weeks of dissipation, and the racketing of the night before and my excited, sleepless night had thrown me off my balance. when i saw henley dead over the cards, i realized in a flash how bad it would look for me after my row with him in the saloon the night before. i jumped back into my own room and began stuffing my things into my bag pell-mell to make my escape." "the worst thing you could have done." "of course. and it proved so. i had left my room-door ajar, a sweeper in the halls saw my mad haste, and it made him suspicious. when i stepped out of my room, the proprietor stopped me. of course the whole thing was uncovered. i was arrested, tried for murder, and, as i told you, sentenced to be hanged." he finished grimly. his manner was studiedly unemotional. "and yet you had a perfect alibi, if you could prove it." "but i couldn't. no one knew i took that train. the train conductors were called, but neither of them remembered me. the station agent at lester, with whom i had had some conversation about the first train back, was killed by an accident the next day. the fact that i was out of houston from eleven until six was something i could not prove. and it was the one thing that would have saved me." "but neither could they prove, i take it, that you were in the hotel that night." "they tried to. the clerk testified that four men came in shortly after eleven and went up to henley's room. one of them was henley, two were strangers, and the fourth he had taken for granted to be me. my lawyer pressed him on that point, of course, and forced him to admit that he had not noticed particularly, but had assumed that it was i from the fact that he was with henley, and because he was about my size and figure. drinks had been sent up, and an hour later two of the men had quietly come down and gone out. nothing further had been heard from our room until the sweeper reported in the morning that he had seen me acting like a man distracted, through the partly open door. everything seemed to turn against me. i was bent on saving my name at any rate, so i could not be entirely open about my past history, and that prejudiced my case." "what is your own theory of the affair and of the missing third man?" i asked. "i suppose the men whom i had left with henley in the saloon had picked up a fourth man for the game and gone to henley's room. he probably tried to cheat again, and they were ready for him. one of them stabbed him. then the other two waited quietly in the room while the actual slayer walked out, to make sure that he had a clear passage, and then they followed after he had had time to disappear. they were hard-bitted men, but not thugs." "you were tried and sentenced. how did you get away?" "after the sentence, and while i was on the way back to jail, i made my escape. i have always believed that the deputy sheriff who had me in charge gave me the opportunity intentionally. certainly he fired over my head, and made a poor show at guessing my direction. i think he had doubts of the justice of the verdict and took that way of reversing the decision of the court, but of course i can never know." "then you came back here? this had been your home before?" "yes. it was the way to avoid comment. kenneth clyde was well known here, and nobody in saintsbury even heard of the trial of one tom johnson in houston. i have thought it best to go on living my life just as i should have done in any event. and i have done so, except that i have never-but that doesn't matter." from the expression that swept over his face i guessed what the exception was. he had never dared to marry. "then this man--?" i prompted. a fleeting smile passed over clyde's face. he spoke with light cynicism. "as you say, then this man. i had almost come to believe that the past was dead and buried and that i would be justified in forgetting it myself. then this man came into my office one day, affected surprise at seeing me, called me tom johnson, and laughed in my face when i denied the name. i was panic-stricken. i bought his silence. of course he came again. as i said at the beginning, i am tired of the situation." there was a tone in his voice that would have held a warning for the blackmailer if he had heard it. "how much does the man know? do you know whether he has anything to prove his charges?" "it seems that he was in the court-house as a spectator during the trial. he didn't know me at the time, though he might, for he seems to have been in this neighborhood time and again,--at least in the state. he is a trouble man himself,--some ten years ago he shot and killed a state senator here in saintsbury. he was acquitted, because he got some friends to swear that senator benbow had made a motion as though to draw a gun, though he was found afterwards to be unarmed. but popular anger was so aroused against him, he had to leave the state, and he has drifted down stream ever since,--pretty far down, i imagine; fairly subterranean at times. all this i have found out since he forced his acquaintance upon me. i knew nothing of him before." "what is his name? where is he to be found?" "alfred barker. he has an office in the ph[oe]nix building at present. whether he has any legitimate business i do not know. he hangs out under the shingle of the western land and improvement co., but i have a feeling that that is only a cover." "a man who has lived that sort of a life is probably vulnerable," i said cheerfully. "i'll see what i can find out about him. in the meantime, i, as your attorney, will keep this appointment for you next monday evening." "i thought that would probably be your plan. but now that i have put it into your hands, i am more than half sorry i did not keep it to myself and meet him with a revolver." i shook my head. "for a burnt child, you have curiously little respect for the fire of the law." clyde had risen, and he stood looking at me with an impersonal sternness that made his eyes hard. "my life, and, what i value far more, my reputation, my name, are in that fellow's hands. and he is an unhung murderer,--his life is already forfeit." "his time will come," i said hastily. my new client looked altogether too much as though he were disposed to hurry on the slow-paced law! i could not encourage such reflections. clyde nodded, but with an absent air, as though he were following his own thoughts rather than my words, and soon took his leave. when i decided to take up the practice of the law, i had fancied, in my youthful ignorance, that it was a sort of glorified compound of a detective story and gems of oratory. i had now been at it for some years, and so far my detective instincts had been chiefly required in the search for missing authorities in the law books, and my oratorical gifts had been exercised almost exclusively on delinquent debtors who didn't want to pay their debts. you can therefore imagine that clyde's interview left me pleasantly excited. this was the real thing! this was the case i long had sought and mourned because i found it not! not for worlds would i have missed the opportunity of meeting his blackmailing correspondent. to face a rascal was no uncommon experience, unfortunately; but to face so complete and melodramatic a rascal, and to try to wrest from him some incriminating admission that would give me a controlling hold on him in my turn,--that was something that did not come often into the day's work. very much to my surprise, i found unexpected light upon the career of alfred barker not farther away than my own office. my first step was to set my clerk, adam fellows, to looking up the court and newspaper records of barker's connection with the killing of senator benbow. when i mentioned his name to fellows i saw by his sudden change of expression that i had touched some sore chord,--and if fellows had an ambition it was to conceal his feelings, moreover. "you know barker, then?" i said abruptly. "yes," he said, in a very low voice,--and i guessed in what connection. i may say here that fellows was a souvenir of my first trial case and of an early enthusiasm for humanity. one day, not long after my admission to the bar, (this was before i came to saintsbury,) the court assigned to me the defense of a young fellow who had no lawyer. he was a clerk in a city office, and was charged with embezzlement by his employers. the money had gone for race-track gambling, and he could not deny his guilt; but by bringing out the facts of his youth and his unfortunate associations, i was able to get a minimum sentence for him,--the best that could be expected under the circumstances. when his sentence expired, i was on the lookout for him, and took him into my own office as a clerk. i had nothing he could embezzle, for one thing, and the dogged stoicism with which he had met his fate interested me. besides, i knew it would be difficult for him to get work, particularly as he did not have an engaging personality. i think that in a manner he was grateful, but he never could forget that he carried the stigma of a convict, and he imagined that everyone else was remembering it also. this moodiness had grown upon him instead of wearing off. it used to make me impatient,--but it is easy enough for one whose withers are unwrung to be impatient with the galled jade's tendency to wince. "what do you know of him?" i asked. "i know that where he is, there is deviltry, but no one ever catches him," he said bitterly. "someone else will pay all right, but the law doesn't touch him." "did he get you into trouble?" i asked bluntly. "he made me believe he could make a fortune for me. he kept me going with hopes that the next time, the next time, i would win enough to square things up. it was his doing, not mine, really. but he did nothing that the law takes note of." he spoke with unusual excitement and feeling, and i didn't think any good would come of a discussion of moral responsibility at that time. "well, look up everything possible about that affair when benbow was killed," i said. "i want to see if there is anything in that which would give a hold on him." "oh, there won't be," he said, scornfully. "he plays safe. but if there is any justice in heaven, he will come a cropper some day. only it won't be by process of law. no convict stripes for _him_." "let me know as soon as you find the record," i said, turning away. his bitterness only grew if you gave it opportunity. i then took occasion to visit the ph[oe]nix building, in order to locate the office which i expected to visit the monday evening following. i wanted to know my way without wasting time. as i entered, i noticed a man standing before the building directory which hung opposite the elevators. he was a tall, athletic fellow, in clothes that suggested an engineer or fireman. his hat was pulled down over the upper part of his face, but his powerful, smooth-shaven jaw showed the peculiar blue tint of very dark men. all this i saw without consciously looking, but in a moment i had reason to notice him more closely. the elevator gate opened, and a man stepped out,--a rather shabby, untidy man, with a keen eye. he glanced at me carelessly, then his eye fell upon the tall young fellow before the bulletin board, and he smiled. he stepped up near him. "hello! you here?" he said, softly. then, deliberately, "are you married yet?" the tall fellow turned and lunged toward him, but the other ducked and slipped adroitly out of his way and ran down to the open doorway and so into the street. the tall fellow made no attempt to follow. i think that lurch toward the other had been partly the result of surprise. but not wholly. he stood now, leaning against the wall, apparently waiting for the elevator, but i saw that his two fists had not yet unclenched themselves, and his blue-black jaw was squared in a way that told of locked teeth. he jerked his hat down farther over his face as he saw me looking at him, and turned away. he was breathing hard. "can you direct me to mr. barker's office?" i asked the elevator man. "his office is in no. 23, second floor, but he ain't in. that was he that came down with me and went out." "oh, all right. i'll come again," i said, and turned away. the tall young fellow had gone. had he, too, come to look up mr. barker? at any rate, i should know barker when we met again. chapter ii two lovely ladies i am trying to give you this story as it opened up step by step before me and around me, not merely as i came to see it afterwards, looking backward. but of course i shall have to select my scenes. the story ran sometimes, like a cryptogram, through other events that seemed at the time to mean something entirely different, and i also did some living and working and thinking along other lines through those days. but these matters i eliminate in telling the tale. they were equally important to me at the time but now they are forgotten, and the links of the story are the only things that stand out in my memory. mrs. whyte's dinner was an important link, but before that there came another incident most significant, as i saw afterwards,--or, rather, two related incidents. there was an old beggar on the street-corner right across from my office for whom i had an especial affection. of course he made a show of being a merchant rather than a beggar, by having a tray of cut flowers in summer and hot peanuts in winter and newspapers at all seasons, on a tripod arrangement beside him; and the police knew better than to see if he sometimes held up a wayfarer for more than the price of his wares. i was fond of him because he was so imperturbably cheerful, rain or shine, and so picturesque and resourceful in flattery. he was an old soldier; and one leg that had danced in days agone, and that had most heedlessly carried him to the firing line in half a dozen battles of our own civil war was buried at gettysburg. barney seemed to regard this as a peculiarly fortunate circumstance, since it had made it possible for him to use a crutch. that crutch was a rare and wonderful possession, according to barney. hearing him dilate on its convenience and comfortableness, you might almost come to believe that he meant it all. well, you'll understand from this that i not only liked but respected barney, and i usually stopped to get a flower when i passed his stand on leaving my office. on that monday,--that eventful and ever-to-be-remembered monday,--i saw as i approached that barney was holding forth in the spell-binding manner i knew, to another listener,--a young fellow, i thought at first. but as i came up, his listener emptied a chatelaine purse upon barney's tray, and my surprised glance from the jingling shower of silver to the face of the impetuous donor showed me that it was a young girl,--a gallant, boyish-faced girl, whose eyes were shining into barney's with the enthusiasm of a hero-worshipper. "i'll never forget that,--never!" she cried, in a voice thrilled with emotion. "it was great." and on the instant she turned on her heel like a boy and marched off down the street. i looked at barney with suspended disapproval, and for once, to do him credit, he looked abashed. "faith, and who'd think the chit would have all that money about her and her that reckless in shcattering it about!" he exclaimed. then, recovering himself, he thrust the coins carelessly in his pocket (perhaps to get them out of my accusing sight) and ran on, confidentially,-"it's the lord's own providince that she turned it over to me, instead of carrying it about to the shops where temptation besets a young girl on all sides. it's too full their pretty heads are of follolls and such, for it's light-headed they are at that age, and that's the lord's truth." "you worked on her sympathies," i said sternly. "you saw she was a warm-hearted young girl, and you played up to her. you made yourself out a hero, you rascal." "you're the keen gentleman," said barney admiringly. "sure and you'd make a good priest, saving your good looks, for you'd see the confession in the heart before a poor lying penitent had time to think of a saving twist to give it that might look like the truth and save him a penance." "never mind me and my remarkable qualities," i said severely. "what were you telling that girl?" barney bent over his flowers to shift the shades which protected them from the sun, but after a moment's hesitation he answered, without looking up. "she has the way with her, that bit! when she looked me in the eye and says 'tell me what i ask,' i knew my commanding officer, and it's not barney that risks a court-martial for disobedience! no, sir! if she didn't keep at me to tell her how i lost my leg, now! your honor couldn't have held out agin her, not to be the man you are." i knew the story of that lost leg, and how shy barney was of retailing that heroic bit of his history, and i wondered less at the girl's emotion than at her success in drawing the hidden tale from him. he didn't tell it to many. while i marvelled he looked up with the twinkle i couldn't help liking. "she didn't give me time to tell her that that bit story wasn't the kind you pay to hear, but it would maybe have chilled the warm heart of her to have me push her silver back, and i wouldn't do that even if i had to keep the money to save her feelin's, the darlin'." "awfully hard on you, i know," i said, letting us both down with the help of a little irony. "where's my rosebud, you rascal?" he lifted a slender vase from the covered box beneath his table and brought out the flower he had reserved for me. it was a creamy white bud, deepening into a richer shade that hinted at stores of gold at the sealed-up heart. as he held it out silently, something in his whimsical face told me his thought. "yes, you are right," i said casually, as i took the flower. "it _does_ look like her." barney's eyes wrinkled appreciatively. "there was a mistake somewhere, sir, when you were born outside of eire. but you got it straight this time." i went home to dress for mrs. whyte's dinner, and when i was ready i slipped into my pocket, to show my hostess, a little locket which held a miniature of my mother. mrs. whyte and my mother had been schoolmates,--that was why she was so much kinder to me than i could ever have deserved on my own account,--and i knew she would like to see the picture. i opened the case to look at it myself (my mother is still living, thank heaven, and unchangeably young) and i was struck with the youthful modernity of it. perhaps it was because the old style of dressing the hair had come back that it looked so of the present generation rather than of the past. it had been painted for my father in the days of their courtship, and on his death i had begged for the portrait, though my mother had refused to let me have the old case he carried. i had therefore spent some time and care in selecting a new case and had decided finally on one embellished with emeralds set in the form of a heart. i thought it symbolical of my dear mother's young-heartedness, but i found out afterwards that she especially objected to emeralds! such are the hazards run by a mere man when he tries to deal with the greater mysteries. i have dwelt on this locket because it played an important part in after affairs,--and a very different part from what i designed for it when i slipped it into my pocket to show it to mrs. whyte. it is a good two miles from my lodgings to mrs. whyte's, but i was early and i wanted exercise, so i walked. it was within a few minutes of seven when i came to her highly respectable street. as i turned the corner of her block my attention was caught by the sight of a young girl in excited colloquy with the driver of a cab, which stood before the house adjoining mrs. whyte's. i think i should have looked for a chance to be of service in any case, but when i saw, as i did at once, that the girl with so gallant a bearing was the same girl who had impulsively emptied her purse among barney's flowers, and that the driver seemed to be bullying her, i felt that it was very distinctly my affair. "but i tell you that i _have_ no money," she was saying with dramatic emphasis, "and there is nobody at home, and i can't get in, and if you will come to-morrow--" "gammon," the man interrupted roughly. (she had not chosen her jehu with discrimination.) "you can't work that game on me--" "i can give you my watch as a pledge," she said eagerly. by that time i was near enough to interfere. (i always was lucky. here i was ready if necessary to go through fire and water--a certain amount of each, at any rate--to get a better knowledge of the frank-hearted girl whose enthusiasm had so touched me in the afternoon, and all that fate asked was a cabman's fare and a few stern words delivered with an air! fate is no bargainer worthy the name.) "it was most awfully good of you to come to the rescue," said the girl, in the direct and gallant manner that i felt was a part of herself. "i was just beginning to wonder what under the sun i _should_ do. you see, i--i spent all my money down town, and i took a cab up, thinking i'd get the money here to pay the man, and now i find the house locked up and not a soul at home,--and me on the doorstep like a charity child without a penny!" "that, was unlucky, certainly," i said. "i am more than glad that i could be of service. but now that the cabman is disposed of, how are you going to get into the house?" she turned and looked at the house dubiously. "i--don't--know. unless i find an open window,--just a teeny one would be big enough. but gene is very particular about my not being undignified. i think," she added, with a delightfully confidential smile, "that gene would rather have me be dignified and hungry than undignified and comfortable. under those circumstances would you advise me to hunt for an open window?" "it's a delicate point to decide. who is gene? that might have some bearing on the question." she looked surprised at my ignorance. "oh, he's my brother,--my twin. he lives in that house. so does mr. ellison. he's my guardian. but it surely looks as though nobody were at home!" "don't you live there, too?" i demanded in surprise. "oh, no. i'm at miss elwood's school at dunstan. i don't mean i am there this minute, because of course i am here; but i'm supposed to be there. i just came down to surprise gene because it is our birthday--you see we have only one between us--and now i can't get in!" and she threw out her hands dramatically. (the worst part of trying to reproduce miss benbow's language accurately is that it sounds silly in type, but it never sounded silly when she was looking at you with her big, ambiguous eyes, and you were waiting, always in affectionate amusement, for the next absurdity. i sometimes wondered whether that frank air of hers was nature's disguise for a maid's subtlety, or whether her subtle witchery lay really in the fact that she was so transparent that you could see her thoughts breathe.) "i have always heard that it was wise," i said, with a grandfatherly air, "to save out at least a street-car fare before flinging all one's broad gold pieces to the beggar in the street." she looked a little startled, then swiftly comprehending. i knew she must have bit her inner lip to keep from smiling, but she spoke sedately. "a street-car fare wouldn't help me to get into the house, would it? and that's the trouble now. though of course if i had had a street-car fare i shouldn't have had any trouble with the cabman and you wouldn't have had to come to the rescue, so another time i'll be careful and remember--" "heavens, and they say a woman isn't logical!" i cried. "i hadn't thought out the sequence. i'm mighty glad that you were not wise when you flung away your purse since i was going to so profit by it. but now the question is, what are you going to do? i can't go off and leave you, like a charity child on the doorstep without a penny, not to mention a dinner. haven't you any friends in the neighborhood?" "not what you would call _friends_, exactly, though i suppose they wouldn't let me starve if they knew. there's a mrs. whyte,--" "of course! in that red brick house next door. what luck! i'm going there for dinner." she glanced at my evening garb and drew down the corners of her lips comically. "she won't like having a charity child thrust upon her when she is having a dinner party." "oh, that won't make the slightest difference in the world," i protested eagerly. "mrs. whyte is the kindest woman,--and besides, it's your birthday,--" she looked at me under her lashes. "you're just a man. you don't understand," she said, with large tolerance. "see how i am dressed,--shirt-waist and linen collar! i didn't prepare for a party. oh, i believe gene is having a birthday party somewhere,--that's why everybody is away! and me supperless! isn't it a shame?" she looked at me with tragedy on her face,--and a delicious consciousness of its effectiveness in the corner of her eye. "why didn't you come home earlier?" i asked, wondering (though it really wasn't my business) what she had been doing since i saw her leave barney. "you mean after i left that perfectly beautiful old soldier? how did you know about him and me, by the way?" "oh, i'm a friend of his, too. i happened to be quite near. my name, by the way, is robert hilton. i'll be much obliged if you'll remember it." "why, of course i'll remember. my name is jean benbow, and it is so nearly the same as gene's because we are twins, but really his name is eugene, and when he does something to make himself famous i suppose they will call him that. well, after the soldier, and i wish i had had fifty times as much to give him, though that makes a sum that i simply can't do in my head,--not that it matters, because he didn't get it,--i remembered that i was going to get a birthday present for gene, but i didn't remember, you see, that i hadn't any money. i don't think money is a nice thing to have on your mind, anyway. so i went to a bookstore and looked at some books and the first thing i knew they were closing up, and i hadn't yet decided. have you ever noticed how time just _flies_ when you are doing something you are interested in, and then if it is lessons or the day before a holiday or anything like that, how it literally _drags?_" "i have noticed that phenomenon,--and time is giving an example of flying this very minute. really, i think you'd better come over to mrs. whyte's--" "oh, there's minnie coming back now! she'll let me in," miss benbow interrupted me. a bareheaded young woman, from her dress evidently a housemaid, was hurriedly crossing the service court toward the ellison back door, and without further words miss benbow started toward her across the lawn. "wave your hand if it is all right. i'll wait," i called after her. the maid halted when she saw that fleet figure crossing the grass, they conferred a moment, then miss benbow waved a decisive hand to me, and they disappeared together in the rear of the house. something ran through my brain about the ceasing of exquisite music,--i wished i could remember the exact words, because they seemed so to fit the occasion. miss benbow certainly had a way of keeping your attention on the _qui vive_. even after i had made my bow before mrs. whyte and had been presented to the beautiful miss thurston, i had intervals of absent-mindedness during which i wondered what miss benbow could be doing all alone in that big house. this was all the more complimentary to her memory, because miss thurston was a young woman to occupy the whole of any man's attention under ordinary or even moderately extraordinary circumstances. i had to admit that this time mrs. whyte had played a masterstroke. and that does not spell overweening conceit on my part, either! it required no special astuteness to read the concealed cryptogram in mrs. whyte's plans. i had had experience! so, unless i made a wild guess, had miss thurston. there could be no other explanation, consistent with my self-respect, of the cold dignity, the pointed iciness, that marked her manner toward me. she was a stately young woman by nature, but mere stateliness does not lead a young woman to fling out signs of "keep off the grass" when a young man is introduced. i guessed at once that she had experienced mrs. whyte's friendly interest in the same (occasionally embarrassing) way that i had, and that she wished me to understand from the beginning that she was not to be regarded as _particeps criminis_ in any schemes which mrs. whyte might be entertaining regarding my life, liberty, and happiness. her intent was so clear that it amused as well as piqued me, and i set myself to being as good company as my limited gifts made possible. i knew that it was good policy, in such a case, to give mrs. whyte no reason for shaking her lovely locks at me afterwards; but partly i exerted myself to do my prettiest because miss thurston attracted me to an extraordinary degree. that does not indicate any special susceptibility on my part, either. she was (and is, i am happy to say,) one of the most charming women i have ever met. no, that is not the word. she made no effort to charm. she merely was. she wrapped herself in a veil of aloofness, sweet and cool, and looked out at you with a wistful, absent air that made you long to go into that chill chamber where she dwelt and kiss some warmth and tenderness upon her lips and a flash into her dreamy eye. i'm afraid that, in spite of my disclaimer, you will think me susceptible. well, you may, then. i admit that i determined, within five minutes after my first bow, that i was not going to lose the advantage of knowing miss thurston, or permit her to forget me. (i cemented this determination before the evening was over with an act which had consequences i could never have anticipated.) i am not going to dwell in detail upon the incidents of that dinner, because i want to get to the extraordinary events that followed it; but there were one or two matters that i must mention, because of the bearing they had on after events. "i hear," said mr. whyte at a pause in the chatter, "that they are talking of nominating clyde for mayor." i happened to be looking at miss thurston when he spoke, and i saw a sort of _breathless_ look come over her, as though every nerve were listening. "do you think he would take it?" mrs. whyte asked. "that's the rub, confound the man. i don't understand clyde. if ever there was a man fitted for public life, it is he. his father was governor, his grandfather was a united states senator, and he has all the qualities and faculties that made them distinguished. yet here he buries himself in a private office and barricades himself against all public honors and preferment. i don't understand it." (i did. i had wondered myself, but now i understood.) "perhaps he doesn't care for the sort of thing that other men value," said miss thurston. i fancied a trace of bitterness under her sweet indifference. "it isn't that," said mr. whyte, frowningly. "he is thoroughly alive. and he doesn't keep out of public matters so long as he can work behind a committee. everybody knows what he has done for the city without letting his name get into the papers. i think it's a crank notion he's got." "it probably goes back to some disappointing love affair," said mrs. whyte, impressively. "that sort of thing will take the ambition out of a man like--like poison." "but wouldn't we have heard of it?" asked miss thurston, lifting her penciled eyebrows. "we have known kenneth clyde all his life, you and i, and there never has been anything talked of--" "there wouldn't be," interrupted mrs. whyte. "he wouldn't talk. but what else, i ask you, could change the reckless, ambitious, arrogant boy that he was,--you know he was, katherine,--into the abnormally modest man he has become,--" "i don't think he is abnormally modest," miss thurston interrupted in her turn. "he merely doesn't care for newspaper fame,--and who does? he has grown into a finer man than his early promise. if saintsbury can get him for mayor,--" "he won't take it," mr. whyte said pessimistically. "you'd have to hypnotize him to make him accept." "do you believe in hypnotism, mr. hilton?" mrs. whyte turned to me, evidently fearing that i would feel "out" of this intimate conversation. "believe that it can be exercised? why, yes, i suppose there is no doubt of that. but i don't believe i should care to let anyone experiment on me. "fake. that's what it is," said mr. whyte. "superstition." "now, carroll, i know you're terribly wise, but you don't know _everything_," said mrs. whyte. "i'm sure i sometimes know what you are thinking--" "that's telepathy, my angel, not hypnotism. only you don't. you think you do, but i'll bet i could fool you nine times out of--nineteen!" "i once saw a girl who was hypnotized, and it was horrible," said miss thurston. "she was lying in a show window of a shop, home in blankville. she had been put to sleep, i learned, by some hypnotist who was exhibiting on the vaudeville stage, and who invited people to come up from the audience. i could just imagine how the pretty, silly, ignorant girl had been dared to go up. then he was to awaken her publicly on the stage after forty-eight hours, and in the meantime she was exhibited on a cot in the window of a shop as an advertisement. i can't make you understand how unspeakably _horrible_ it seemed to me." "where do you suppose her soul was?" asked mrs. whyte curiously. "i don't know. but i know that there is something wicked about separating the soul and body. it is a partial murder." "bet you she was shamming," said mr. whyte, cynically. "oh, no, it was real,--terribly real," she cried. i had no opinions on the subject, but i thought miss thurston's earnestness very becoming, it brought such a spark into her dark eyes and broke up her rather severe tranquillity by a touch of undeniable feeling. but mr. whyte was unmoved. "my dear katherine, if there were any secret means by which one person could control the will of another and make him do what the controlling will commanded, the trusts would have bought it up long ago. a knowledge of how to do that would be worth millions,--and the millions would be ready for the man who could teach the trick." "there are some things that money cannot buy," said miss thurston quietly. "i never happened to run across them," said the cynical whyte. "i have happened to run across things enough that money _wouldn't_ buy," said mrs. whyte, significantly. but miss thurston took up his challenge (which i guessed was flung out for that purpose) with a fervor that transformed her. "money cannot buy knowledge," she cried. "to know how to control another's soul may be wicked knowledge,--i believe it is,--but it is knowledge nevertheless, and it is not at the command of your millionaires. money cannot buy any of the best things in the world. it cannot buy love or loyalty or faith--or knowledge." "you talk like ellison," said whyte, with good-humored contempt. "he goes on about knowledge of hidden forces, and i believe he is ready to believe in every charlatan that comes along and claims to know about the mysteries of nature or how to extract gold from sea-water, or to use the sun's rays to run his automobile." "i'm glad he cares about something," said mrs. whyte, impatiently. "certainly he doesn't care about anything human. he is a cold-blooded machine." "well," said whyte, judicially, "he has done pretty well by the benbow children." "how has he done well by them? eugene has grown up in his house, to be sure, but he has grown up without much help from his uncle, i can tell you that. and jean has been poked off at school when she ought to have been coming out in society." "miss benbow is at home this evening," i contributed. "i happened to meet her on my way here. she said she had come down from school to celebrate her birthday with her brother." "oh, is that so? well, i'll warrant her uncle didn't know she was coming, nor will he know that she has been here when she is gone." "she strikes me as a young lady who would make her presence noticed," i suggested. "she is a dear child," said miss thurston, warmly. "i must look her up to-morrow. i haven't seen much of her, but i know gene, and i am devoted to him." now do you wonder that i liked miss thurston? i liked her so much that i renewed my vow that she should not slip off into the outer circle of bowing acquaintanceship; and if she was afraid to be nice to me because she regarded me as in sympathy with mrs. whyte's matchmaking schemes, i would clear her mind of that apprehension without delay. i seized the opportunity immediately we were alone together. "it is more than kind of mrs. whyte to give me such a chance to know her friends," i said. we were supposed to be looking at mr. whyte's books,--which were worth seeing. "just because a man is engaged is no sign that he doesn't enjoy pleasant society." "oh!" she breathed. "mrs. whyte doesn't know," i said, looking at her steadily. she laughed softly, and a color and kindness came into her face that made her deliciously human. "i see! but there _is_ someone--?" "there certainly is," i said, and drew the little miniature of my mother from my pocket. "don't let mrs. whyte see it." (she would have recognized it!) "how sweet she is!" she exclaimed. "i don't wonder!" "the sweetest woman i ever knew," i said, and took the locket back jealously. my jest somewhat irked me now, with those candid eyes looking surprise at me from the picture. "and now will you be friends with me, instead of treating me as though i probably needed a snubbing to keep me on my good behavior?" "the very best of friends," she cried, and laughed so merrily that mr. whyte, from the other side of the room, called out with interest,-"you young people seem to be having a very good time. what's the joke?" "carroll!" mrs. whyte checked him in a warning undertone,--at which miss thurston and i looked at each other and laughed silently. i have no doubt the poor dear lady thought her plot was brewing beautifully. it was a shame to plot against her, but then it made her happy for the time. and it did most completely break down the icy barrier thrown out by miss thurston, so i tried to stifle the protests of my conscience. my judgment came later,--judgment, sentence, and execution. but i had a very good time that evening. i had ordered a taxicab at a quarter before ten, so that i might waste no time getting down to the ph[oe]nix building for the appointment with alfred barker. as i went down the walk to the street, i glanced at the silent house in the next lot. there was no light in any window. i indulged in a moment's conjecture as to where miss benbow could be, but even as the thought went through my mind, i saw a light flare up in the corner room downstairs. miss benbow was exploring, then. or the rest of the family had come home. certainly i must manage somehow to see her again. but i confess i completely forgot both miss benbow and miss thurston as my cab whirled me down to the business part of town. i concentrated my mind on the question of how to deal with the blackmailer, and tried to prepare myself beforehand for his probable lines of attack or defense. at the same time i told myself judicially that the situation might develop in some unexpected way. it did. most completely unexpected. i shall have to tell it in detail. chapter iii the unexpected happens i went directly to the ph[oe]nix building, on the second floor of which barker had his office under cover of the name of the western land and improvement company. the door was ajar, and the gas was burning inside, so i went in. the room was empty. i tried the door of an inner office, but found it locked, and by the curtained glass of the door i could see that there was no light in that room. i inferred that barker had been called away, and had left the door open for clyde. i closed the door, not wishing to have barker see me from the hall and turn back, and sat down by the desk under the gaslight to await his return. on the desk were a few circulars of the western land and improvement company which looked as though they had served the purpose of giving verisimilitude to mr. barker's office for a long time. i guessed the same theatrical and decorative mission in the display baskets of apples, sheaves of heavy-headed wheat, and samples of other grains and fruits which adorned the room--though somewhat dustily. i had soon exhausted the visible means of supporting meditation, and my thoughts went back to the evening at the whytes'. i took my mother's miniature from my pocket, and looked at it with a rueful consciousness that she would most sweetly and conclusively disapprove of the use which i had made of her counterfeit. she would ask if my legal training had so perverted my instinct for simple truth that i could justify sophistries like that! i had been lecturing myself in her name for some minutes, holding the miniature up before me to give point to the lesson, when i suddenly had that queer feeling--you know it--of being watched. i felt i was not alone. i jumped to my feet and looked about me. the room was quite empty except for the desk, a chair or two besides mine, and the baskets of fruit and grain which stood on a low table by the window. if there was any person on the premises, he must be in the unlighted inner room with the locked door. instantly it flashed upon me that barker was probably in there, waiting for clyde. he had so arranged things that, hidden himself, he could survey the outer room, and when i entered instead of clyde, he simply lay perdu. in that case, there was no use waiting for his return by way of the hall! i returned the locket to my pocket, looked ostentatiously at my watch, picked up my cane, and left the room. he would suppose my patience exhausted. but i did not go down the stairs. instead i walked to the end of a short diverging hall which commanded a view of the door. if barker was inside, he would have to come out sometime, unless he took the fire escape, and i could wait as late as he could. i wanted to meet him, also i wanted to see if my queer sensation of being watched had any foundation in fact. i had waited perhaps fifteen minutes when the rattle of the elevator broke the silence. it stopped at the second floor, and a man came rapidly down the main hall and turned toward the office of the w.l.&i. co. it was barker himself! i recognized him perfectly. so my intuitions had been merely a feminine case of nerves! i was not a little disgusted with myself. i lingered a few moments, (so as to give barker a chance to see that he had not kept me waiting), then i sauntered slowly in the direction of the office. i was opposite the elevator when i was startled by a shot. for a moment i did not realize that the sound came from barker's room. when i did, i made a jump toward it, and the elevator man, who had been waiting since barker got out, came only a step behind me. we pushed the door open,--it yielded at once,--and there, outstretched on the floor, lay barker. i dropped on my knee beside him and turned him over. he turned astonished and inquiring eyes upon me, and made a slight motion with his hand, but even while i was holding up his head, the consciousness faded from his eyes, his head fell forward, and i knew it was a dead man whom i laid down upon the bare floor of his dingy office. i had never before seen a man die, and the solemnity of the event swept everything else out of my mind for the moment. but soon i began to realize the situation. "do you see a weapon anywhere about?" i asked the elevator man, glancing myself about the room. "no, sir. there ain't none." "then he was murdered, and his murderer is in there," i said in a low voice, indicating the inner office by a glance. the man immediately backed toward the door,--and i didn't blame him. it gives one a curious feeling to think of interfering with someone who has no restraining prejudices against taking the life of people with whom he is displeased. but for the credit of my superior civilization, i could not join the retreat. "i'm going in," i said, and laid my hand on the doorknob. the door was locked. "is there anyone on this floor at this time?" i asked the elevator man. "no, sir." "or in the building?" "the watchman." "find him. or, first, telephone to the police station. then send the watchman here and then go out on the street and try to find a policeman. bring in anybody who looks equal to breaking in the door. i'll wait here and see that he doesn't get out--if i can prevent it." the man seemed glad to go, and i took a position at one side of the inner door with my hand on the back of a stout office chair. an unarmed man does feel at a disadvantage before a gun! the very silence seemed full of menace. in a few minutes there was a sound of running feet in the hall, and the watchman came in. "he won't be in there by this time," he said at once. "the fire escape runs by the window!" and with the courage of assured safety he opened the door with a pass key. the room was empty, and the window, open to the fire escape, showed that the watchman's surmise was justified. the escape ran down to an alley that opened in turn upon the street. the murderer could have made his descent and joined the theater crowds on the street without the slightest difficulty. he had had at least ten minutes' clear time before we looked vainly out into the night after him. we were still at the window when the police arrived,--the officer on the beat, whom the elevator man had soon found, and a sergeant with another man from the station. the sergeant took charge. "man dead," he said briefly. "and the murderer gone by the window, eh? tell me what you know about it." i told him the facts as i have given them above. he lit the gas in the private office and examined the door between the rooms. "easy enough," he said. the upper half of the door consisted of four panes of glass, behind which hung a flimsy curtain. but the lower right-hand pane was gone, leaving merely an open space before the curtain. "he sat here watching for him through the curtain,--dark in here, light on the outside,--and then, when he came in, he shot through this opening without unlocking the door, dropped the curtain, and quietly went out by the window. he could be five blocks from here by the time you telephoned, and where he may be now,--well, the devil knows. here is where he sat waiting." we all looked with interest at the inner room. a chair had been drawn up in front of the door and beside it was a table with a basket of apples on it. the murderer had been munching apples while waiting for his victim! the peelings and cores had been dropped into an office waste-basket beside the chair. it was a curious detail, gruesome just because it was so commonplace and matter of fact. i shivered as i turned away. by this time the coroner had arrived. he immediately took possession of the premises. i followed his every movement as he went from one room to the other, for i was by no means easy in my mind as to the revelations that might develop. if barker had committed any of his profitable secrets to writing, his death would not of necessity clear the slate for kenneth clyde! but they did not seem to make any compromising discoveries. the desk in the outer office held nothing whatsoever but the decoy circulars which i had already examined, a dried bottle of ink, and some unused pens and penholders. the inner office held a cheap wooden table, but the drawer in it was empty. there was nothing on the table but the basket of apples. the coroner then went through barker's pockets. he laid out on the floor, and then listed in a note-book, these items: a worn purse, with eighty dollars in bills. three dollars and fifteen cents in loose change. a ring with six keys. a narrow memorandum book, worn on the edges. a pocket-knife, handkerchief, and a small comb. there were no papers. barring the note-book, there was nothing identifying about the dead man's possessions. i longed to get that into my hands. "perhaps this will give some clue as to his associates," i said, boldly picking it up. but the coroner was not a man to be interfered with. he promptly took it out of my hands, and tied it with the other articles into barker's handkerchief with a severely official air. "that will be examined into in due time," he said. "officer, you can take the body down and then lock the rooms and give me the keys." i watched while they carried the limp form down to the waiting patrol wagon, and saw the police sergeant place the seal of the law upon the place. i was at least as much interested as the coroner in seeing that no enterprising reporter, for example, should have an opportunity to spring a sensational story involving more reputable people than barker. as i turned up the empty street, i looked at my watch. it was half past twelve. clyde's appointment with barker had been for ten, and i had heard the town clock strike as i turned into the ph[oe]nix building. when had he been shot? i could not be sure. i had waited for some time, perhaps an hour, before i had had that curious sensation of being watched and had gone out into the hall. i _had_ been watched! the eyes of the murderer in the darkened room had been fixed upon me under the gaslight, while he waited. what would have happened if i had stayed in the room? would he have shot his victim just the same? probably. the locked door between would in any event have given him the minute he needed to gain the fire-escape. he had planned it well. it was all so perfectly simple. a great criminologist once said that every crime, like the burrowings of an underground animal, leaves marks on the surface by which its course can be traced. perhaps. but it takes eyes to see. i didn't know whether i most hoped or feared that the course of barker's murderer would be traced. chapter iv crossed wires when i awoke the next morning from a short and unrestful interval of sleep, it was with an oppressive sense of something being wrong. then i remembered. wrong it was, certainly, but it was not my affair. the only way in which it touched me (so i thought then) was as it affected my client, clyde. how would he take the news? i imagined his receiving it in one way and another, and i felt that there were embarrassing contingencies connected with the matter. finally i determined to call him up by my room telephone, if possible, and tell him the news as news. i rang him up, therefore, before going down to my breakfast. perhaps "central" was sleepy or tired, or the wires were crossed at some unknown point on the circuit. i didn't get clyde and i couldn't attract central's attention after the first response, though i shook the receiver and made remarks. then suddenly, across the silence, out of space and into space, a man's voice spoke with passion: "but barker is dead, i tell you! you are free! now will you marry me?" and then again the buzzing silence of the "dead" wires! talk about the benefits of modern inventions! they don't come without their compensating disadvantages. i hung to that telephone till central finally woke up and sleepily inquired if i were "waiting." "who was on this wire just now?" i demanded. "nobody," she said sweetly. i called for "information," and laid the case before that encyclopedic sphinx. someone had been talking across my wire and in the interests of justice and everything else that would appeal to her, i must know who it was. with a rising accent and perfect temper she assured me that she didn't know, that no one knew, that if they knew they wouldn't tell, and that i probably had been dreaming, anyhow. i knew better than that, but i saw that there was no way of getting the information from her. i should have to go to headquarters,--and then probably the girl would not be able to answer. but who was it that knew, before the papers were fairly on the street, that barker was dead? who was it that would cry, with passion, "_now_ will you marry me?" i gave up the attempt to get clyde, and went down to breakfast. i had a suite of rooms in a private family hotel where everybody knew everybody else, and as i entered the common breakfast room i was assailed by questions. never before had i so completely held the center of the stage! i could hardly get a moment myself to read the account in the paper which had set them all to gossiping. it was fairly accurate. the police reporter had his story from headquarters. it was not until i read at the end, "at this writing the police have found no clue," that i realized, by my sense of relief, the anxiety with which i had followed the report. i wanted to see clyde, but i thought it best to go to my own office first, and communicate with him from there. fellows had not arrived when i reached there,--the first time in years that i had known him to be late. when he came he looked excited, though with his usual stoicism he tried to conceal all evidence of his feelings. "well, your friend barker has met with his come-up-ance," i said at last, knowing he would not speak. "yes," he assented, and a nervous smile twitched his lips involuntarily. "but not at the hands of the law. i told you the law couldn't reach him." "the law will probably reach the man who did it." fellows did not speak for a moment. then he said slowly, "he was killed as justly as though it had been done under the order of the court. shall i look up these cases for you now, mr. hilton?" "was barker married?" i asked abruptly, disregarding his readiness to get to work. "i don't know." he looked surprised. "i wish you would find out. also, if possible, who she is, where she lives, any gossip about her,--everything possible." "how shall i find out?" "oh, i leave that to you," i said confidently. fellows was not learned in law books, but he was a great fellow for finding out things. i was usually content to accept the results without inquiring too closely how he obtained them. "all right," he said, shortly. some minutes later he looked up from his work to remark, with his familiar bitterness, "i suppose, like as not, he has a wife who will be heart-broken over his death, scoundrel as he was, though if he had once been in prison no woman would look at him." i had been thinking. "i'm not so sure she will be heart-broken, but you might find out about that, with the other things. now call up mr. clyde's office, and find out if he can see me if i come over." "mr. clyde is ready to see you," he reported after a minute. i went over at once,--the distance was not great. clyde was alone, and he looked up and nodded when i entered. his manner was pleasant enough, yet i was instantly aware of something of reserve that had not been there at our former interview. "he is sorry he took me into his confidence, now that it has turned out this way," i thought to myself. "well, somebody saved us the trouble of paying further attention to mr. barker," he said lightly. "so it seems." "did you speak to him at all?" "no." "i didn't know but that you might have seen him since--since i spoke to you about him." "i did see him the other day, but not to speak to him." and i told him of the incident in the ph[oe]nix building. he listened with close attention. "i have no doubt he had enemies on all sides," he said with a certain tone of satisfaction. "from what we know of his methods, it is easy to guess that. he has lived an underground life for years, but always keeping on the safe side of the law. his end was bound to come sooner or later." "do you know whether he was married?" "i don't know. how should i?" "i merely wondered." for some reason i did not care to repeat that puzzling communication i had heard over the phone. "i know nothing about him. if he has any family, they will probably come forward to claim the body. but i doubt very much that the man who fired the shot will ever be taken." "what makes you so sure?" "he planned things carefully. and he is probably supported this minute by a sense of right,--and my sympathies are with him." he flung up his head with open defiance of my supposed prejudices. "don't forget that barker may have committed some of his valuable secrets to writing," i warned. he looked startled for a moment, then he threw up his head. "i don't believe it. he's dead, and a good job done." it was not my place to croak on such an occasion, but as i walked down the street to my own office, i reflected that the law would not look at a shot from ambush in that light, no matter what the judgment of the lord might be. i stopped at barney's stand for my buttonhole rose,--and at once i knew, by the gleam in his eye, that he had something special to tell me. "so it's yourself is the celebrity this morning, mr. hilton," he said eagerly. "i? oh, no. i wasn't killed and didn't kill anybody." "but ye know a power about the happenin's, i'll be bound." "yes, i know as much as anybody does," i said, supposing that he wanted to ask me about some particular. "it's the hard and revengeful heart he must have, and him so young, to shoot a man that the law has set right," said barney, craftily. "what?" i said sharply. "what do you mean, barney?--if you mean anything!" "sure, an' i can't be tellin' ye anything that ye didn't know!" "have they found the murderer?" i asked, yet with a nervous dread of his answer. "divil a bit. he found himself, and couldn't keep the secret," barney said, entirely happy in being able to give me this surprising information. "the officer on the beat this morning tould me that the whole departmint fell over itself when the young lad walked into the station with his head up like a play-actin' gossoon, and says, 'i killed him for that he killed me fayther.' the exthra will be out by now." i heard the boys calling an extra as he spoke, and i waited and beckoned the first one that hove into sight. there, on the glaring front, i read: "murderer confesses eugene benbow gives himself up to the police. fired the fatal shot to avenge his father. "barker killed senator benbow ten years ago and was acquitted on the plea of self-defense. "the slayer of alfred barker has been found. driven by the spur of a guilty conscience, he gives himself up to the police. the fatal shot was fired by eugene benbow, the son of senator josephus benbow, who was shot and killed by barker in saintsbury just ten years ago. "senator benbow, whose home was in deming, was in attendance on the state legislature when he fell foul of barker, who was trying to lobby through a measure which benbow did not hesitate to call a steal. he was instrumental in defeating barker's measure, and this led to bitterness and threats on both sides. one day they met on the street, and after some hot words barker drew his revolver and shot benbow dead. when brought to trial, he succeeded in convincing the jury that he believed (?) his life to be in danger from a motion which benbow made toward his pocket, although it was proved that the senator was, as a matter of fact, unarmed. "young benbow was at that time a lad of ten. the tragedy made a deep impression upon him, and he grew up, dreaming of revenge. yesterday he heard that barker was in town, and at once armed himself. last night he carried his deadly purpose into effect. "it seems that after shooting barker in his office in the ph[oe]nix building, young benbow returned to the rooms which he occupies in the house of mr. howard ellison, who is his guardian and a distant relative. he spent the night there, and apparently decided then to give himself up, for he appeared at police headquarters at half-past six, in a highly nervous condition, and astonished the sergeant by declaring himself the person who shot alfred barker. the special officers who had been detailed to investigate the murder have been recalled." "the poor little girl!" i said to myself. the vision of jean benbow as i had seen her last night, gallant and boyish, rose before me. this would be a terrible morning for her. i do not often make the mistake of rushing in where i know that only angels may safely tread, yet i was filled with a well-nigh irresistible impulse to go and look out for her. that was absurd, of course, since she was with friends,--only i should have liked some assurance that they would understand her! i hardly thought of her brother, though, since he was her twin, he could be nothing but a boy, and certainly presented a touching figure, with his medieval ideas of personal vengeance. but i was to have ample occasion to think of eugene. before the morning was over, mr. howard ellison's card was brought to me. mr. ellison, who followed his card, was elderly, rather small and somewhat bent, but alert mentally and active physically. he had the dry, keen, impersonal aspect of a student, and i could see at a glance why mrs. whyte thought him cold-blooded. he was given to a sarcastic turn of speech which heightened this impression--and did him an injustice if, as a matter of fact, he was especially tender-hearted. "you have probably seen the papers this morning, mr. hilton." i bowed. "i have come to see if you will undertake that young fool's defense. as his guardian, i suppose it devolves on me to see that he is provided with a lawyer." i am not in criminal practice, and ordinarily i should not have cared for such a retainer, but in this instance i did not hesitate for a moment. "i shall be very glad to do so." "that's all right, then. you look after things, and let me know if there is anything i have to know. i am engaged in some important researches, and it is most inconvenient to have interruptions, but of course in such a case i shall have to put up with it." "possibly you may even find them interesting," i said, in amaze. he took me up at once. "events are not interesting, mr. hilton. they are merely happenings,--unrelated and unintelligent. take this case. gene dislikes barker. that is interesting in a measure, although it is rather obvious. but he goes and shoots him, and what is there interesting in that? it is the mere explosive event. besides, gene was a fool to go and tell the police about it. that was hardly--gentlemanly." "i suppose it weighed on his conscience." "conscience,--fiddlededee! what is conscience? merely your idea of what someone else would think about you if he knew. if you are satisfied yourself that your actions are justified, what have you to do with the opinions of other people or the upbraidings of conscience? if it was right to kill barker, it was sheer foolishness to tell." "do you think it is ever right to kill?" "young man, your experience of life is limited if you can put that question seriously and sincerely. i studied surgery as a young man and spent three years in a hospital in vienna. after that i was for two years connected with the english army in india. i have no foolish prejudices left about taking life--when necessary." "you have belonged to privileged classes," i said, striving to match his nonchalance. "but unfortunately your young cousin does not." "no, he has been merely a young fool," he said concisely. "but jean insisted that i should come and see you about it. she is his sister." "i am honored by miss benbow's confidence," i said. i felt a good deal more than i expressed. if i didn't do the best that could be done for her brother, it would be merely because i didn't know how. "will you tell me something about the young man? he lives with you?" "yes. he has the library for his study. of course he has the run of the house. the only stipulation i ever made was that he should keep out of my way and not distract my mind. this is the consideration which he shows!" "how long has he lived with you?" "why, ever since the family was broken up. barker shot senator benbow, you know, and his wife died soon after. shock. you know, there is something interesting in the question how a purely mental blow can have effect on the physical plane. well, benbow was a cousin, and as my own wife was dead, there seemed to be plenty of room in the house for the boy, so i took him. i supposed he would grow up the way other boys did. i simply told him never to bother me. for the rest he could do as he liked." "he seems to have followed your teaching. how old is he?" "just twenty. it was his birthday yesterday. he was celebrating last night with some of his college mates." "how? where, and with whom?" "at his fraternity house. they had a supper for him. he is a senior at vandeventer college." "i see. you were out for dinner, too, last night, were you not?" he looked up sharply, surprised, almost suspicious. "how do you know that?" "i understood that no one was at home." "well, you are right, though i don't remember telling you. i had dinner at the club to meet a distinguished professor of psychology who is here. it is a subject in which i am interested." "may i ask who compose your household?" "me, first. then gene. then mrs. crosswell, the housekeeper, and minnie, the houseworker. there's a yardman and a laundress, but they don't live in the house." "were both the women away last night?" "no, minnie was at home. mrs. crosswell has been away for a few days." "miss benbow arrived last night." "yes, i believe so. i didn't see her till this morning. she came rushing into my room most inconsiderately with this confounded report in her hand,--the paper, i mean. what possessed gene to do such a thing--" "he must have been laboring under some excitement that carried him away--" "man, i am not talking about the shooting. that may or may not have been justified. but why he should make all this trouble by going to the police!" "do you know if anything happened at his supper to excite him?" "yes. his chum, al chapman, has been in to see me. it seems that some one spoke of seeing alfred barker, and it upset gene. he came away early." "what sort of a boy is he? violent? revengeful?" "i can't say that i have noticed. he never bothered me much. i have an idea that he is a pretty hard student,--" "has he been working hard?--overstraining himself?" he grinned. "brainstorm idea? well, perhaps you might work it. he has been doing a little extra latin with a tutor. you might make the most of that." "who is his tutor?" "mr. garney. one of the instructors at vandeventer." i made a note of mr. garney's name, also of al chapman's. "you don't think of anything else that i ought to know,--anything having a bearing on benbow's actions or his state of mind?" he hesitated, looked at me and shifted his eyes to the window, and finally pursed up his lips and shook his head. "no." "then let us go down to the jail so that i can meet my client." we went down together to the jail and were admitted to see eugene benbow. certainly he did not look like a murderer as we are apt to picture one. he was a tall, slender youth, with a sensitive face, and in spite of his nervousness he had the best manners i ever saw. he was sitting with his face in his hands when we came in, but he sprang to his feet at once with a self-forgetful courtesy that made him seem like an anxious host rather than a prisoner. "so good of you to come, uncle howard," he murmured. "i--i'm afraid i have disturbed you,--i'm so sorry,--" "sorry!" snorted mr. ellison. "much good it does to think of that now. and what you ever expected to have come from your going to the police with that story--well, there's no use talking. this is mr. hilton, gene. he is a lawyer, and he is going to look after your case, now that you're in for it." eugene bowed. "oh, that's most kind of you. it won't be any trouble? i'm so sorry to put you to any inconvenience--" "don't let that disturb you," i said. "mr. ellison was kind enough to think i might be of use,--" "and now i'll leave you to talk things over," said mr. ellison, plainly anxious to get away. "when i'm wanted, you know where to call on me, mr. hilton." and he hurried away. "that's what i wanted," i said, cheerfully. i could see that the boy was in so nervous a condition that the first necessity was to steady him. "we want to talk this over together. you know, of course, that anything and everything that you tell me is in professional confidence, and that you should not hesitate to be perfectly frank." "i have nothing to hide," he said. "if you will tell me what you want to know,--" "when did the idea of killing barker come to you?" i asked, watching him closely. an involuntary shudder ran through him at my words, but he answered at once and with apparent frankness. "i don't know. i don't remember thinking of it at all. beforehand, i mean." "when did you think of it?" "why, when i woke up. then i remembered." "you mean that you went home and went to sleep last night?" "yes. not to bed. i threw myself down on the couch in the library and went to sleep with my clothes on. it was about five when i woke up--and remembered. then i had to wait,--" he looked at me with anxious appeal for understanding,--"i _had_ to wait until some one would be up at the station,--" "tell me what you were doing yesterday. it was your twentieth birthday, mr. ellison says." "yes. why, i attended lectures at the u all forenoon. then after lunch mr. garney came over for an hour,--he's tutoring me in latin. at four i went to the gym,--guess i was there about an hour. then i went home and read awhile, until it was time to go to the frat house for supper. the fellows were giving me a spread because it was my birthday." "did anything come up that annoyed you? was anything said--about barker, for instance?" the boy frowned. "yes. grig--i mean jim gregory--said that he saw barker in town the other day. the other fellows shut him up. grig is new here. he didn't know how it would make me feel." "how _did_ it make you feel?" the boy's slim white hands were gripping the edges of his chair nervously. "desperate," he said, in a voice to match. "here i was, singing and laughing and drinking and having a jolly time, and there was my father dead, shot down and unavenged,--oh, it all seemed suddenly horrible to me. i couldn't stay." "you went away early, then. what time was it?" "i don't know. i never thought of looking. does it make any difference?" "i don't know that it does. then what did you do? did you go direct to the ph[oe]nix building?" he frowned thoughtfully. "no, i must have gone home first, mustn't i? yes, of course i went home. my revolver was there. i went into the library and threw myself down on the couch to think it out,--and then--why, then i must have got my revolver and gone out." "was your revolver in the library?" "yes. in the table drawer. uncle howard gave it to me that morning, in the library, and i just locked it into the drawer." "by the way, how did you know that barker's office was in the ph[oe]nix building?" "i don't know. i just knew it, somehow." "what made you think that he would be there at that time of the night? it wouldn't be likely, under ordinary circumstances." "i don't know. i didn't think. i suppose i just took it for granted." he looked puzzled and anxious, as though he were afraid that he was not answering my questions satisfactorily. "what did you have to drink at your spread?" i asked, thinking that perhaps there might be some explanation in that direction for his vague recollections. "oh, champagne," he said, quickly. "did you drink much?" "two glasses, i think." "are you accustomed to champagne?" "i've taken it only once or twice before." "then i don't wonder that your memory is not quite clear. but tell me what you can of your movements. i want to follow your actions from the time you left the house." he leaned forward, one elbow resting on the table between us, and fixed his eyes with anxious intentness on a crack in the floor. "i went down to the ph[oe]nix building--" "did you walk?" he hesitated a moment. "yes." "go on." "i went up to barker's office on the second floor,--" "how did you know that it was his office? excuse my interrupting, but i want to follow all the details. barker's name wasn't on the door." "i don't remember how i knew. perhaps i asked somebody." "whom?" "i don't remember that i did ask. but i knew the place. i went in through the outer office to an inner room. there was no one there. i locked the door between the two rooms and waited inside for barker to come. there was a light in the outer office, but the room i was in was lit only by the light that came in through the glass door between the two rooms. there was a curtain over this glass door, and i pulled it aside to watch. a man came in, sat down and waited awhile, and then went away. then barker came. i fired through the door,--one of the little panes of glass was broken, and i fired through that. then--then i opened the window and climbed down the fire-escape and got out into the street. there were crowds of people going home from the theaters, and i fell in with the crowd." "and went home?" "yes." he drew a sigh, as of relief, and looked up at me. it is one of the indications that this universe is under divine direction that a lie cannot masquerade successfully for the truth for an extended period. as eugene talked, it had been coming more and more strongly into my mind that he was not telling the truth. he was going too cautiously. he seemed to be picking his way among uncertainties with a studious design to present only irrefutable facts to my scrutiny. and yet the accident that had put me on the other side of that closed door should enable me to refute some of his facts, it seemed to me. i felt that i must make sure. "you say that a man came into the office and waited awhile and then went away. did you know him?" "no. he was a stranger." "would you know him if you saw him?" he hesitated. "no, i think not. i can't recall his face." "or how he was dressed? business suit, or evening dress?" "oh, business suit, i should think." "you naturally would think so,--unless you knew," i added to myself. then i asked abruptly, "are you fond of apples, mr. benbow?" he looked surprised and politely puzzled. "apples?" "yes. raw apples." "no, i don't care for them." "but you eat them?" "why, no, i don't, as it happens. i don't like them." "now let's go back to barker's office," i said, thinking hard. "can you describe the office,--the arrangement of the furniture, for instance?" he dropped his eyes again to the floor, and frowned intently, as though he were searching his memory. but in a moment he looked up with a whimsical, deprecatory smile. "i'm afraid i can't! i can't seem to remember things connectedly. do you suppose it was the champagne?" "that is possible," i said, thoughtful in my turn. it was quite possible that the champagne _was_ accountable for his vagueness. then i remembered another point. "you say that you went home after you climbed down the fire-escape." "yes. not at once, i think. i seem to remember walking the streets." "when you woke up this morning, where were you?" "on the couch in the library." "dressed?" "yes." "then you threw yourself down there when you came in and went to sleep, just as you did earlier in the evening, when you came home from the supper?" "i suppose so." "when you woke up and remembered what you had done, you wanted to give yourself up at once to the police?" "yes, of course. a gentleman would have to do that, wouldn't he?" "undoubtedly," i said, with gravity to match his own. "but why didn't you think of doing that last night?" he looked nonplussed. "i--don't know! i couldn't have been quite myself." then he looked up earnestly. "but if i remember shooting barker, that is the main thing, isn't it?" "i'm afraid so," i said, looking at him steadily. "you _do_ remember that?" "yes. distinctly." but he looked absent and thoughtful, as though the memory were not quite as clear as his words would imply. "by the way, how did you know barker when he came in?" a sharp change came over his expression. his young face looked set and stern as that of an avenging angel. "i was by my father's side when barker shot him," he said quietly. "i didn't know. i can understand your feeling. but this idea of avenging him,--have you cherished it all these years?" "no, not in that way," he said thoughtfully. "i think it just came over me of a sudden." "what did you do with the revolver afterwards?" "i threw it into an alley as i went by." (it was never found.) "you spoke to no one of your plan?" "no." "and there was no one with you? you were quite alone all the time?" "i was quite alone." i talked with him for some time, but there was nothing more definitely bearing upon the problem which was forming in my mind,--and which was a very different problem from the question how to handle the case of a confessed murderer. i went away with this new and puzzling question putting everything else out of my mind,--was his confession true? of course on the face of it, the question looked absurd. men don't go about confessing to crimes they have not committed,--unless there is some powerful reason for their belying themselves. if eugene benbow was lying, he had chosen his position well to escape detection. i could see that it would have been hard to defend him in the face of such circumstantial evidence as surrounded him, if he had been arrested on suspicion instead of on his own confession. and yet--i could not get rid of the idea that he was concealing or inventing something which might put a very different light on things. he might not have recognized me as the man who sat waiting in barker's office, he might even have failed to notice that i was in evening dress, but how explain away the eaten apple? a man very fond of apples might have eaten one while waiting and given no special thought to the matter, but a man who didn't like apples wouldn't pick one up casually and eat it without taking notice of what he was doing. and those apple parings were quite fresh. that was a small but obstinate fact. i could not forget it. had someone been with benbow? then i remembered his vagueness, his failure to identify me as the strange visitor, and i was inclined to change my question to--had benbow been there at all? and yet what possible motive could he have for making a false confession? the only reasonable explanation would be that he was trying to shield someone. but no one else had as yet been accused. the psychology of that situation was not complete. i must try to understand the boy's nature, before theorizing. and, first of all, i must verify my facts. chapter v bertillon methods and some others the first thing to do, i saw clearly, was to go back to barker's office and verify my recollections of the place, particularly of the apple peelings. fortune favored me. the rooms had been locked up the night before by the police, and were therefore undisturbed, and the chief did not hesitate, under the present conditions, to give me the keys. "our work is done," he said complacently. "the murderer is found." i didn't remind him that the force had had precious little to do with putting eugene benbow behind bars. i took the keys and went to the place of the tragedy. i let myself into the office, and locked the door after me, so that i might be undisturbed during my examination. it looked quite as bare and unattractive as i remembered it. here was the chair and table where i had sat examining my mother's locket when i had received that curious impression of being watched. i examined the glass door between the two rooms and sat down in the chair which had been drawn up near it, in the inner office. it commanded a full view of the outer office; and the curtain which fell over the glass made the fact that one pane was broken unnoticeable. here the assassin sat and watched me, and here he had sat when barker entered. i paused a moment to be thankful that the light in the outer office had been good! beside the chair, in a waste-basket, was the heap of apple parings i had noticed. it needed only a glance to show me that they had curled and withered and turned dark since i saw them. then they were freshly cut,--no question about that. the man who had sat there waiting and watching had been munching apples. and eugene benbow did not like apples! i carefully gathered up the parings and spread them out on the table. they showed two colors. plainly he had sampled different varieties. then i glanced at the basket of apples which still stood on the table. it was like the three in the other room. i picked up one of the apples--and whistled. cut sharply into the tough skin was the imprint of teeth! the murderer would seem to have tested this apple by the primitive method of biting it; and he had not liked the flavor. i picked up another. the mark of teeth was on this also, and even plainer. it struck me that the mark showed irregularities that ought to help in identifying the owner. they were evidently crowded teeth, with no space between them, and on both sides the crowding had forced two of the teeth outward in a wedge. if a man could be identified by his finger print, why not by the print of his teeth? especially when he had teeth so peculiar. i hastily locked the office, postponing further examination of the rooms until i should have had taken measures to preserve the records of the two bitten apples. i had an idea that my dentist could help me there. as i came out into the hall, i saw a man with gray hair and beard--a countryman, i gathered at first glance,--who stood looking at the door of the western improvement company in a dazed kind of way. i passed him, and then hesitated, wondering if i should, in common humanity, speak to him. he looked bewildered or ill. but he paid no attention to me or my halt, and i walked on, thinking that he was probably merely one of the morbidly curious who are attracted to the scene of any crime. it seemed strange, afterwards, when i realized that i had had the chance offered me of getting into touch with the man who was going to be so important a link in my chain of evidence, and that i had almost lost the chance. but as it turned out, it was as well. but i must tell things in order. i found dr. kenton more than ready to be interested. he was an enthusiast in his profession, and though his dissertations on acclusial contacts and marsupial elevations (i know that's wrong, but it sounds like that)--though these things bored me when i wanted to make a sitting short, i was now glad to draw upon his professional interest. "i want you to look at the marks of teeth in these apples," i said. "distinct, aren't they?" "beautiful! beautiful!" he murmured. "can you make a wax model like that, so as to hold that record permanently?" "certainly. nothing easier." "then i wish you would. could you, perhaps, make a set of teeth that would fit those marks?" he examined the apples carefully, and nodded his head. "i can." "then i commission you to do that also. should you say there was anything peculiar about those teeth? anything identifying?" "yes. certainly. the jaw is uncommonly narrow for an adult--" "but you are sure it is an adult?" i asked anxiously. the possibility that a child might have been sampling barker's apples struck me for the first time. but dr. kenton reassured me. "it is an adult, is it not?" "i don't know who it is. what i want to do is to use this record to identify the man who bit these apples,--let's call him adam for the present. i am hoping that his inherited taste for the fatal fruit may in time lead to his fall. in other words, dr. kenton, i am trying to identify a criminal of whom i have, at present, no information except that i believe him to be the man who put his teeth into these apples. if i find my suspicions focusing upon anyone in particular, i shall call upon you to examine his teeth. you understand, of course, that all this is in professional confidence and in the cause of justice." dr. kenton's eyes lighted up with a glow of triumph. he put out his hand. "let me shake hands with you. that is an idea which i have been urging through the dental journals for years. the insurance companies should require dental identification in any case of uncertainty. there is no means of identification so absolutely certain." "i am glad to have you confirm my impression, doctor. now, you will have to take this impression before the fruit withers, and then i want you to come with me to the morgue and get an impression of the teeth of alfred barker, the man who was killed last night in the ph[oe]nix building." "did he bite that?" dr. kenton asked, with a tone of awe. "i am sure he did _not_. i want to be able to prove he did not, if that claim should be made." and i explained to him enough of the situation to secure his sympathetic understanding. "i see. i see. well, nothing will be easier to establish than whether he did or didn't. whoever it was that left this record of an important part of his anatomy can be identified." "if we can first catch him," i said. "surely. but it is an uncommon jaw,--narrow and prominent." "then i shall want to have you see my client eugene benbow. it will not be necessary for you to do anything more than to look at him, will it?" "that will be enough. i can tell at a glance whether his jaw has this conformation. or, find out who his dentist is, and i will get the information from him without his knowing it." "good. now when can you go with me to the morgue? the sooner the better." he made an appointment for later in the day, and i left him. i hurried back to my office, for there were a number of things i had to see to before going to keep my appointment with dr. kenton. while i was yet a block away, i saw a young girl running down the street toward me. it did not occur to me that she was coming for me until she came near enough for me to recognize jean benbow. then i hastened to meet her. "what is it?" i asked anxiously. "come quick," she exclaimed--and even then i noticed that her swift run had not taken her breath away. "there's another one here to look after." i didn't understand what she meant, but i saw that i was needed somewhere and i broke into a run myself. she guided me to barney's stand. behind it, on the ground, lay a man, with a beautiful woman--katherine thurston it was--dabbling his head with a wet handkerchief while barney poured something out of a bottle into a tin dipper. (barney could be guaranteed to keep some of the joy of life with him under the most desolating of conditions.) "if you'll give him a sup of this, mr. hilton," he said confidentially, as i came up, "'tis all the poor cratur will need. a wooden leg is the divil for kneeling down, and i couldn't be asking a lady like that to handle the shtuff, ye understand." i took the dipper and knelt down beside the fallen man,--and at once i recognized him as the rustic whom i had seen, looking dazed and bewildered, outside of barker's office a few hours before. he opened his eyes, looked about vacantly, and made a feeble effort to rise. "drink this, and you will feel better," i said. (a sniff had convinced me that barney's prescription wasn't half bad.) he drank it and coughed. "he's coming around all right," i said. "what happened? faint?" barney rubbed his chin dubiously. "i'm thinking he had his wits about him all right when he made out to faint jist at the time the ladies was coming by. if it wa'n't for the sinse he showed in that, i'd say he was a bit looney." "why?" "he came down the street like a drunk man, but he wasn't drunk, begging the ladies' pardon, i could see that with me eyes shut. when he came by my bit of a stand he took hould of it with both hands and leaned across to look at me like i was his ould brother. 'he's dead,' he says. 'who's dead,' says i. 'he's dead,' says he again. 'he's escaped.' and with that he fell to the ground, and if the ladies hadn't come out that minute from yon door, and yourself came running, it's meself that would have had to go down on me wooden knee that don't bend, to lift his head off the stones." i spoke to the man, trying to learn his name and address. he was not unconscious but he seemed dazed or distrustful, and i could get nothing from him. by this time quite a group of people had gathered about us,--indeed, i wondered that they had not come before, but as a matter of fact the man had fallen only a few seconds before i came upon the scene. (miss thurston and jean had been up to my office, it appeared, and had been coming away at that moment.) the few words that barney repeated from the man's dazed remarks before he fell, and the fact that i had seen him in the ph[oe]nix building of course made me feel that i wanted to keep him under my own surveillance until i could find out what, if anything, he knew of barker. i therefore hurried a boy off to call a carriage, and when it came i helped the old man in and drove to the st. james hospital. "what's the matter with him?" i asked the attending physician--after i had got him installed. "hard to tell yet. he fainted on the street, you say? he is obviously exhausted, but what the cause or the outcome may be, i can't tell you yet." "i want you to let me know the minute he is sufficiently restored to talk. and don't let anyone talk to him until i have seen him." the doctor raised his eyebrows. i handed him my card. "there is a possibility that he may know something about the barker murder," i said. the doctor looked surprised. "why, i thought the murderer had confessed. is there anything further to investigate?" "we haven't all of the facts yet," i answered. "this man may know something, and again he may not. but don't let him talk to anyone until i have quizzed him. will you see to that?" "oh, all right," he said easily. "the old fellow isn't likely to be quite himself until he has slept the clock around, i judge. i'll telephone you when he is able to see visitors. what makes you think he knows anything about it?" "oh, just a guess," i said. really, come to look at it, i had very slight foundation for the feeling i had that something was going to come out of the old man's revelations; but that isn't the first or the last time that an unreasoning impulse has been of more value to me than all the learning of the schools. chapter vi the frat supper in the meantime, there were two people i wanted to question,--al chapman, the fellow who had told mr. ellison about the frat supper, and mr. garney, his tutor. i found al chapman at the fraternity house, where i had gone to make inquiries for him. he was a serious, studious-looking boy, and he came to meet me with his finger still marking a place in a copy of cicero's de senectute. "i am mr. hilton," i explained. "mr. ellison has asked me to act as eugene benbow's lawyer, and i wanted to ask you some questions about your birthday supper, you know." he nodded, solemnly. evidently he felt it a funereal occasion. "i have no doubt that you can give me some useful information that will help to explain benbow's actions," i said, as cheerfully as possible. "i wish you would tell me about the supper." "we didn't think it would end like this!" he said tragically. "it isn't ended yet. perhaps you can help me make a good ending. tell me what happened as far as you remember it." "nothing happened out of the ordinary until we were smoking after the banquet was over. then we got to telling weird stories--and someone told of a mountain feud, you know, and how they carried it on for years and years as long as anybody was left, and gene said he didn't blame anyone for feeling that way, and we talked back and forth, you know, some saying one thing and some another, and then one of the new fellows, gregory, sung out to gene and asked him when he was going to settle things with the man that shot his father. of course the other fellows tried to squelch him,--they all knew how gene would feel about that,--and gene, he got stiff, the way he does when he doesn't want to go to smash, and said he didn't know where the wretch was, and grig, the fool, says, 'why, he's here in town. i saw him on main street the other day, and a man pointed him out as the man that killed senator benbow.' then somebody threw a pillow at grig, and somebody else gave him a kick, and the fellows all began to talk loud and fast at once, and things passed off. i saw gene tried to stick it out, because he didn't want to break up the shindig, but after a little while he slipped out and i knew he had gone. i have wished a thousand times that i had gone with him, but just then i thought he would rather be alone. besides, i wanted to stay and help finish grig off." "have you any idea how benbow knew that barker was in the ph[oe]nix building? was that mentioned?" "no, i didn't notice that it was. but that's on main street, you know, and grig said main street." "yes, perhaps. had benbow been drinking,--enough to affect him?" young chapman looked somewhat embarrassed. "we don't--usually--" "but you did on this occasion?" "well, it was a birthday, you see,--rather special. and we only had two bottles--" "among how many?" "twelve of us." "well, if benbow didn't have more than his share, that ought not to have knocked him senseless." i rose. i hadn't learned anything that eugene had not already told me. chapman rose, also, but looked anxious and unsatisfied. "we've been wondering, sir," he broke out desperately. "will they--i mean, is it--will he--be hung?" (isn't that like youth? jumping to the end of the story, and considering life done at the first halt in the race!) "if he should be convicted of murder in the first degree, that is the penalty," i said. "but he hasn't been tried yet, much less convicted." "we didn't think on his birthday that he would go out like that," said chapman, solemnly. "it's as cicero says, even a young man cannot be sure on any day that he will live till nightfall." i glanced at the book in his hand. his classical quotation was obviously new! "are you reading de senectute?" i asked. "i'm doing it in latin,--yes, sir. this is an english translation which mr. garney lent me today to show me what a poor rendering i had made. this is translated by andrew peabody, and he makes it sound like english! gene was doing it with me. i don't suppose we will ever do any more latin together." "don't be too sure of that. you may both come to know more of old age, in latin, in english, and in life, than you now guess. but i want to ask you another question. do you know benbow's associates or friends outside of the university?" "what sort of associates?" asked chapman, looking puzzled. "any sort,--good, bad or indifferent. especially the bad and indifferent." the young fellow looked offended. "gene doesn't have associates of that kind," he said, indignantly. "nothing in his life to hide?" "no, _sir_. you wouldn't ask that if you knew him." "i'm glad to hear it," i said absently. of course i was glad to hear it, but it did not help out the half-theory i was considering that benbow might somehow have been "in" with barker's murderer, though not himself the active assailant, and have been forced, by fear or favor, to protect the criminal. but there was no use committing myself to any theory until i had more material to work with. "will you come down to my office this afternoon and let me take your deposition about what happened at the birthday supper? i want to get that on record while it is clear in your memory. and will you bring two or three others,--fellows who were there and heard it all? if worst comes to worst, i want to be able to prove that he acted under the immediate impulse of passion aroused by what gregory said." "yes, i see. i'll bring all of them, if you like." "bring as many as care to come. be there by four, if you can," i said. that would give me time for my interview with dr. kenton. i am not going to take time here to recount the details of that interview. suffice it to say that dr. kenton made an examination of barker's teeth which established clearly that he was not the man who had bit the apples i had found in his inner office. he took a wax impression which would be enough to make this fact indisputable thereafter. while he was engaged in this task, i took occasion to ask the coroner about the articles which had been found in barker's pockets. he was now willing to allow me to examine the little collection. in addition to the things which i had noticed in the evening, i now saw that there was a part of a worn time-table, and two empty envelopes with pencil figuring on the back. the small memorandum book which i had noticed before engaged my special attention. a number of the front pages had been torn out. on some of the other pages were pencil figurings which held no significance that i could see. on the last page was what appeared to be a summary. at any rate, i recognized in some of the figures the total of the scribbled sums in addition and subtraction on the inside pages. this list seemed to have some coherence, and as the coroner had doubts about the propriety of letting me have the book, i made a copy of it, as follows: deering 97.50 junius 17.25 dickinson 52.00 hawthorne 69.75 lyndale 35.00 sweet valley 217.25 illington 40.00 eden valley 32.00 (+1000) dunstan 27.00 i recognized the names as those of towns in the state, but that was not very illuminating. from the time-table, barker had probably swung around this circle, and the figures might mean the amount he had made at each town. or they might mean something entirely different. i needed more light before forming even a conjecture on the subject. as i was about to replace the memorandum book, i made a surprising discovery. running my finger over the edges of the leaves to see whether any other pages were used, i discovered a folded piece of paper stuck between two of the leaves, which had evidently escaped the casual examination the book had previously received. i unfolded it. it was an uncashed check for $250, made payable to "bearer" and signed by howard ellison! the date was only three days old. all this i saw at a glance. i was about to replace the paper when the coroner, who had been examining the other articles, looked up and saw it. he took it from my hand and examined it in turn. "that's curious," was his comment. "ellison is young benbow's uncle, isn't he?" "something of that sort." "he will be two hundred and fifty dollars ahead, since barker didn't cash the check, eh?" "i suppose the check belongs to his estate, in any event." "if he has one. no one has claimed the body." "what will become of it, then?" "oh, there was money enough in his pockets to pay for his burial. the authorities will see to it in any case." "by the way, if any relatives should turn up, i'd like to know. do you know whether barker was ever married?" "i have never heard. if he was, his wife will probably let us hear from her. this will be reported in all the papers everywhere." "true. there ought to be some news in a day or two, if she intends to come forward at all. i'll call your office up later." when kenton was through with his piece of work, i took him with me to the jail, and while i talked to eugene for a few minutes, dr. kenton stood by and took observations. when we were again outside he shook his head. "he's not the man. i don't need to examine his teeth. the shape of the jaw is sufficient. whom else do you suspect?" "no one in particular. but if it wasn't barker and wasn't benbow, it was someone else. who that someone is, i shall endeavor to find out." but though i spoke firmly, i had to acknowledge to myself that so far i had very little to go on. doubtless he had many enemies, as clyde had suggested, but they did not come forward. neither did his friends, if he had any. he was an isolated man. and yet he held many strings connected with other lives. that check of ellison's meant something. but gene had confessed! i felt that my only hope lay in finding out who, in eugene's circle of acquaintances, would have good reason to wish barker removed, would be unscrupulous enough to kill him,--and sufficiently influential with eugene to induce him to take another's crime upon himself. i gained little from the frat boys, though i examined them all that afternoon, and had my clerk fellows, who was a notary, take their formal depositions for future use if necessary. they all testified to the remarks made by gregory and the disturbing effect which the incident had had upon benbow, but when i tried to probe for outside entanglements, influences, or relations, i drew a blank every time. so far as his college mates knew, gene benbow was merely an exemplary student, more interested in his books than in athletics, but a "good fellow" for all that. it was evident that his shooting of barker had filled them not only with surprise but with secret admiration. they hadn't expected it of him. "i'll go to mrs. whyte," i said to myself. "she's a woman and his next door neighbor. more, she is mrs. whyte. she will know, if anyone does." chapter vii chiefly gossip i went accordingly to mrs. whyte's that very same evening. on the way i stopped at mr. ellison's to interview minnie, the maid. i didn't expect any very important evidence from her, but as she was the only one who could have seen benbow after he left the banquet, and would know whether or not he was alone, i wanted to hear what she had to say. she came into the library at mr. ellison's summons,--a very pretty girl, but also evidently a very timid girl. at each question i asked, she glanced mutely at mr. ellison, as if trying to read his wishes before venturing to answer. i guessed that mr. ellison might perhaps be somewhat severe with his servants, and that the timid minnie would far rather lie than encounter his displeasure. "this is nothing to frighten you, miss doty," i said gently, trying to draw her eyes to me from mr. ellison,--and without complete success. "i am not a policeman. i just want to ask a few questions that will help me to understand things myself. you were the only person in the house last night, i believe. is that so?" "yes," she said, drawing a quick breath, and with a darting glance at mr. ellison. "yes, gene and i were both dining out," mr. ellison put in, "and mrs. crosswell, the housekeeper, is away for the week. so minnie was left in charge of the house." "you weren't afraid?" i said smilingly, trying to ease her nervous tension. but the obtuse ellison again took the word from her mouth. "why should she be afraid? i told her to lock up the house and let no one in." "can you hear the door-bell from your room?" i asked, remembering jean benbow's vain efforts to make herself heard at the front door. minnie had evidently been gossiping in the neighborhood, instead of guarding the house! "yes--not always," she stammered, nervously. "you didn't hear miss benbow ring." "not at first," she said in a low voice. i guessed she was afraid of a scolding for being out of the house, and shaped my next question so as to spare her an explicit statement. "it was you who let miss benbow in, wasn't it?" "yes," she murmured, hardly above a breath. her eyes fell, and the color came and went in her face. "did you leave the house at all after letting her in?" "no," she said quickly, lifting her eyes. i was sure she spoke the truth that time. "then can you tell me when mr. benbow came in?" "no, sir. i--i don't know." "could he get in without your knowing?" "he has a latch-key to the side door,--the library door," said mr. ellison. "he uses the library for his study." "then you wouldn't know whether he came in at all last night?" i said to minnie. "oh, yes, he came in," she said quickly. "how do you know?" "i--i saw him--go out," she stammered, with sudden confusion. "when?" "i--didn't notice." "but you saw him leave the house?" "yes, sir. he came down--he went down the steps from the library, and went off." "off to the street, you mean?" "yes, sir." "did he speak to you?" "oh, no, sir. he didn't see me." "where were you?" she hesitated and stammered. "in the dining room." i felt sure that this time she was not telling the truth, but mr. ellison unconsciously came to her support. "there is a bay window in the dining room which overlooks the library entrance," he volunteered. "was mr. benbow alone?" "yes, sir." "you are sure about that?" "oh, yes, he was quite alone," she said positively. "you didn't see any stranger here during the evening, either with mr. benbow or otherwise?" "no, sir, there wasn't anybody here at all," she said with a definiteness that was convincing. i let her go at that,--to her evident relief. i had seen the trepidation of perfectly innocent witnesses too often to attach any great weight to her nervousness, but at the same time i had a feeling that she had not been perfectly frank. but probably the fact that she had been out of the house when she was supposed to be in it was enough to give her that atmosphere of something concealed. "that confirms mr. benbow's statement that he came home for his revolver," i said to ellison, who, i was sure, had listened carefully, though he had made a show of indifference and inattention. "i thought possibly someone might have seen him and talked with him who could throw some light on the matter, but it seems not. how is miss benbow?" "jean? oh, she's all right. no business to be here, mixing up in things that concern men, but what can you expect nowadays? of course she had to come interfering." "if you think she would care to see me,--" he shook his head impatiently. "miss thurston is with her. they are talking things over for all they are worth." i rose to depart. then the thought which had been in the background of my mind all along came forward. after all, i might as well be the one to tell him. "mr. ellison, they found a check signed by you in barker's pocket. you will probably hear of it, if you didn't already know." he puckered his eyelids and looked at me narrowly. "where did you get that bit of information?" "i saw the check." "a check payable to barker?" "no, it was made payable to bearer." "indeed?" he laughed a little maliciously. "i wonder how barker got hold of it!" "barker had ways of getting money," i said drily. there was no reason why he should take me into his confidence, of course--and, judging from what i knew of barker, probably there was every reason why he should not,--but his reserve was somewhat tantalizing! it would have been natural for him to mention the fact of his own acquaintance or business dealings with barker when he first interviewed me,--unless they were of the nature that people don't discuss. had barker been levying blackmail on him also? in spite of his inscrutability, i was sure my information had disturbed him, though he was not surprised. had he been nerving himself for the discovery? i reflected that ease, long continued, makes people soft. mr. ellison was probably less fit to meet trouble than jean. i went down the street to the next house, where mr. whyte and my dear white-haired friend were sitting on the front porch, taking in the pleasant evening air. (it was early in october.) they appeared to have been sitting quiet in the sympathetic silence of the long married, but from the way in which whyte wrung my hand i could see that the quiet covered a good deal of emotional strain. "what _can_ be done for the poor boy?" was mrs. whyte's first question. "i don't know yet. i am simply gathering the facts at present." "it's a terrible business," said mr. whyte. "ellison tells me that he has asked you to defend gene, but i don't see that the boy has left you much legal ammunition. he confesses the shooting." "the law will have to take cognizance of the facts attending the shooting,--his youth, the provocation, the circumstances. i don't despair. but i want to know everything possible,--his temperament, his associations, his friends. you can help me here, mrs. whyte." "how? dear knows i'll be glad to." "has he ever talked about avenging his father's death? has that been on his mind?" "he never spoke of it. i don't believe it was on his mind. you see, he was only ten years old at the time, and though it must, of course, have been a great shock, he was really nothing but a child, and a child soon forgets. senator benbow's death killed his wife, but i don't think gene realizes that. mr. ellison took eugene to live with him and put jean into a good boarding-school, and they both have been happy enough. eugene has grown up just like other boys, except that he has been more alone. i have made a point of having him over here a good deal, just because he was growing up with no women about, over at mr. ellison's. of course his sister has been here a good deal, holidays and so on, but that's different." "did he go anywhere else, so far as you know?" "i know that he did not. he is too shy and reserved to care much for society. he loves to read and dream, and aside from his college mates, i don't believe that he has any friends that you could call intimate. in fact, i can't flatter myself that he really cared to come over here to see me, except when katherine thurston was here visiting me." "he had the good taste then to admire miss thurston?" mr. whyte chuckled across the gloom. "he has been her devoted slave for a year past." "now, carroll," mrs. whyte began in protest, but before she could give it further expression we were interrupted by an approaching visitor. clyde came swinging up the walk with an eager stride. "good evening!" he called cheerily, lifting his hat. "what a perfect evening it is! i don't wonder you are all out of doors. evening, hilton." his vigorous, even happy, manner, was most alien to our mood. it struck us like laughter at a funeral. "we were just speaking of poor gene benbow," said mrs. whyte, with delicate reproof in her voice. "oh, yes, of course. he was a friend of yours, wasn't he?" he said, toning his manner down to a different key from that in which he had come. "was and is," said whyte simply. "yes, of course," said clyde, hastily, trying to right himself with the current. "poor fellow, as you say. he must have brooded over his father's death a great deal to have such a purpose develop in his mind. but barker richly deserved his fate, for that matter." "oh, i'm not wasting any sympathy on barker," said mrs. whyte, and something in her crisp tones told me that clyde was not wholly _persona grata_ with the warm-hearted lady. "it's gene i'm thinking about." "of course. naturally," he said, quickly. then, as the pause was beginning to be awkward, he asked tentatively, "i wonder if i might see miss thurston." "she isn't at home," said mrs. whyte (and i was sure from her voice that she found a certain satisfaction in denying his request). "she has gone to spend the night with jean." "with whom?" he asked sharply. "with jean benbow,--eugene's sister, you know. she is here at mr. ellison's,--came up home last night to celebrate their birthday, poor child." "this thing has been an awful blow to katherine," said mr. whyte, taking his cigar from his mouth, and dropping his voice. "i didn't know she had it in her to feel so deeply for a friend's trouble. she is always so self-possessed and calm that i suppose i thought she had no feelings. but, by jove, she was crushed. i never saw anyone look so overwhelmed with grief. she couldn't have felt it more if she had been eugene's mother." "heavens, carroll, katherine isn't as old as _that!_" said mrs. whyte impatiently. "well, then, his sweetheart!" said whyte, half-laughing. "i won't say as his sister. his sister was twice as plucky and sensible about it as katherine was, for that matter. _she_ didn't go all to pieces." "miss thurston is very sympathetic," said clyde, in a tone which did not wholly match his words. he rose and stood for a moment, hesitating, as though he had not yet said what he came to say. "they have been to see me again to-day about running for mayor on the citizens' ticket," he said at last, half-deprecatingly. "i--i almost think i will let them put my name up." (he glanced at me with a smile as he spoke, knowing that i would understand his new attitude in the matter.) "that is,--unless my friends dissuade me." "good enough!" cried whyte. "go ahead! we'll work for you to a man." "i wondered what you and mrs. whyte would say about it,--and miss thurston," he added, haltingly. "i can tell you that," said mrs. whyte, in her most decisive tones. "katherine won't care a pin who is mayor of saintsbury until she knows what is to come to gene benbow." "yes, of course," said clyde, uncomfortably. "i'm awfully sorry about all this distress. if there is anything at all that i can do,--" "thank you," said mrs. whyte, somewhat loftily. "i'll tell katherine." and clyde departed, knowing that in this quarter at least he was not quite forgiven for being alive and free and ambitious while gene benbow was lying in prison. i think that i, though his newest friend, was the one most sympathetic toward him that evening. i could understand how the relief, the new feeling of security, which had followed barker's death, had made the whole world seem new-made for him. besides, he had no such feeling of personal friendship for gene as the rest of the group had. "i'll tell katherine all right," said mrs. whyte, somewhat maliciously, i thought. "oh, yes, i'll tell katherine that he came around to talk about the political situation, this evening of all times." "now, clara," said her husband pacifically. "the nomination is an important matter, and we can't stop living just because gene benbow is in trouble." "he has never liked gene," said mrs. whyte, defensively. "whenever he finds gene here with katherine, or finds that he has taken her out walking, or anything like that, he just stands and glowers." "perhaps he is jealous," said whyte, with a subdued chuckle. "he has no right to be jealous. if katherine enjoys gene's society, she has a perfect right to choose it. not that there is anything of _that_ sort between them! katherine is not old enough to be gene's mother, but she is older, and she would never allow anything of that sort to happen. besides, if she had wanted kenneth clyde, she could have had him years ago." "i wonder why she has never married," said whyte, blowing smoke rings into the air. "too much sense," said mrs. whyte crisply. then, quite obviously recollecting that this was not the view to present to me, she added, significantly, "when mr. right comes, it will be a different matter." "she wouldn't have a word to throw to the rightest mr. right in the world just now," said mr. whyte. "she is taking gene's trouble pretty hard. but that little jean is a wonder! she will be a heart-wrecker all right." "now, carroll, don't put any such ideas into her head. she is a mere child." "she is gene's twin," said mr. whyte, shrewdly. "if his devotion to katherine is to be treated respectfully, you can't act as though jean were just out of the kindergarten. i'll bet she has had a broader experience with love-affairs than katherine has." "you don't know anything about it," was mrs. whyte's crushing response, and after that the conversation became more general. i had listened with the greatest interest, not only because of the light which the conversation threw on the character of the boy whom i wished to understand, but because of the vivid interest in jean benbow which my brief encounter with her had aroused. she was, as mrs. whyte said, merely a child, and even youthful for her years, but a sure instinct told me that she would be past mistress of the game where hearts are trumps. i was soon to prove this surmise correct! young garney, gene's latin tutor, fell a victim at sight. by chance (if there be chance, which i sometimes doubt,) that affair began in my own office--and ended where none of us would have guessed. i had asked garney to come to my office, to see if he could tell me anything helpful about gene, when jean stumbled in,--or ricochetted in, rather. jean never did anything that suggested stumbling. but that interview was too important to be dismissed in a few words. i shall have to tell it in detail, later on. but before i come to that, there was a strange event which i must record. it befell that same evening, after i left the whytes. chapter viii some of jean's ways i have noticed that ideas usually come to me at the moment of awaking. the next morning i came back to a consciousness of gene benbow's affairs with a perplexity which was momentarily illuminated by the thought, "why don't i look up barker's home? he must have been staying somewhere, and the people there may know something about him." why hadn't i thought of that before? however, yesterday had been a pretty busy day as it was. i turned at once to the city directory, and then to the telephone directory. there was no indication in either that such a person as alfred barker lived in saintsbury. the western land and improvement co. appeared in the telephone directory, but that of course was no help. i called up the police department and asked if they could tell me where barker had lived. yes, they had investigated,--26 angus avenue, was the number. "and, by the way," my informant added, "barker's body has been claimed." "by whom?" i demanded. "collier, the undertaker. he says that a woman came to his place last night and gave him directions and money, but would not give her name. she was veiled, and he knows nothing about her, except that she paid him to see that the body was decently interred." "that's all you know?" "that's all anybody knows." "collier is in charge, then?" "yes." that was interesting, so far as it went. was the woman who had provided for barker's burial merely some benevolent stranger who had been emotionally stirred by the newspaper accounts, (that sort of thing happens more frequently than you would believe,) or was there some closer bond? the answer seemed as hidden as everything else connected with this strange affair. on my way to my office, i hunted up 26 angus avenue. it was such a place as i might have expected,--a shabby house in a row, on a semi-obscure street. my ring was answered by a young woman of about twenty,--an unkempt, heavy-eyed young woman, who didn't look happy. she listened unresponsively while i preferred my request for some information about mr. barker, and left me standing in the hall while she returned to some dark back room. i heard her say, "ma! here's another wants to know things." and presently ma appeared, hot from the kitchen, and somewhat fretted. "i can't be answering questions all day," she said, at me rather than to me. "there was a string of people here all day yesterday, taking my time. just because mr. barker roomed here is no reason why i should know all about him." "you probably know more than any of the rest of us," i said, deferentially. "had mr. barker been long with you?" "long enough, but that don't mean that i know much about him. he was here awhile in the summer two years ago, and when he was in town afterwards he would come here to see if i could give him a room. but he never stayed long at a time. i think he was some kind of a traveling man,--here to-day and gone to-morrow. he has been here now for the last six weeks, but he never had any visitors or received any letters and i don't know the names and addresses of any of his relatives,--and that's what i told the police and all the rest of them!" she finished breathless but still defiant. "that seems to cover the ground pretty thoroughly," i laughed. "but i shall have to ask another question on my own account. was he married?" "no!" said the girl positively. i had not noticed that she had returned. she was standing in the doorway behind me. "not that we know," said the mother, more guardedly, and with an anxious look at her daughter. "did he leave any effects here?" "you can see the room, like all the rest," she said, with grim impartiality. "i'd like to." she led the way up a narrow stairway from the front hall to a rear room on the second floor. she opened the door with a key which she took from her pocket, and stepped inside. "land sakes!" she exclaimed. the reason was clear. the room was all upset. the contents of a trunk, which stood in one corner, were scattered upon the floor, the drawers of the bureau were open, and a writing desk near the window had evidently been thoroughly searched. every drawer was open, and papers were scattered upon the floor. "land sakes!" she repeated. "gertie, come here." gertie came, and swept the room with the unsurprised and comprehending eye of the practical young woman of to-day. "someone got in through the window," she said briefly. "you know that clasp doesn't catch, anybody could get in. well, i hope they are satisfied now!" from her tone i understood that she hoped just the opposite. "we might all have been murdered in our beds!" exclaimed the mother. "oh, it wasn't us they were after," said gertie carelessly. "it was him! i tell you,--" she stopped suddenly and bit her lip. "but who could ever have known that the catch didn't work?" demanded the mother in a baffled manner. "to whom did you show the room yesterday?" i asked. "anyone who had an opportunity to examine the room inside could have made plans for returning at night." "well, first it was the police, and they told me not to let anyone touch anything,--though i knew that myself. then there were people all day long,--curiosity seekers, i call them. there was one little old gentleman that came up first,--i say old, but he was as spry as any of them. something like a bird in the way he turned his head." it suggested mr. ellison exactly! "with spectacles?" i asked. "yes. gold-brimmed. gray hair that curled up at the ends." "anyone else you remember? was there a tall young man, fresh-shaven, with rather a blue-black tint where the beard had been taken off?" "there was!" cried gertie. "i saw that! he came last night, about seven." "well, i didn't let him go up," said the mother. "i was tired bothering with them." "but you told him which room mr. barker had," said gertie. "who was he?" "i don't know. i saw such a looking man with mr. barker the other day, and i just asked out of curiosity." "i will have to report this to the police," said the woman wearily. "no end of trouble. if you please, sir, i'll lock the door now." "one moment!" i had been standing beside the writing desk, and my eye had caught a few words written on a sheet of letter paper,--the beginning of an unfinished letter. "is this mr. barker's writing, do you know?" the letter read: "my dear wife:--so i have found my little runaway! did she think that she could hide away from her hubby? don't fool yourself, little one!" gertie had snatched the paper from my hand and read it with startled eyes. "i don't believe it," she said, violently. "that--is not his writing!" she flung the paper down, and left the room. "what is it?" asked her mother, fretfully. "an unfinished letter to his wife,--if it is his." "we never knew much about him," she said, looking troubled. i could easily guess a part of the story that troubled her. i had no excuse for further lingering, so i left mrs. barrows (she asked my name and gave me her own at parting) and went down to my office. fellows was waiting for me, and it struck me at once that his manner was weighted with unusual significance. "well?" i asked. he always waited, like a dog, for a sign. "barker was married," he said. "he married a mary doherty up in claremont four years ago, when he was forty. she was twenty." "is that all you have found out?" "all so far." "that's good, so far as it goes, but i can add to it. she ran away from him, is probably now in saintsbury, and the chances are that it was she who empowered collier the undertaker to arrange for his burial. advertise in the papers for mary doherty, and say that she will learn of something to her advantage by communicating with me. i'll make it to her advantage! keep the advertisement going until i tell you to stop. that's all." fellows went off and i knew the matter would be attended to faithfully and with intelligence. but several times during the day i noticed that he was unlike himself. he was absent-minded and he looked unmistakably worried. it frets me to have people about me who are obviously burdened with secret sorrows they will ne'er impart, and i finally spoke. "what in thunder is the matter with you today, fellows? what's on your mind?" "nothing," he said quickly. but after a minute or so he looked up with that same disturbed air. "who would have thought that he had a wife?" "that's not especially astonishing." "i never thought that there could be a woman--a woman who could care for him, i mean." "she probably didn't. she ran away." "still it must have been a terrible shock. and if she cared about burying him,--" "you're too tender-hearted, fellows," i said. but i confess that i liked his betrayal of sympathy. he was too unemotional as a rule. well, that brings me down to my interview with garney, which took place that afternoon. mr. garney was one of the regular faculty at vandeventer college, and to meet his convenience i asked him to fix the time and place for the interview which i desired. he said he would come to my office at four, and he kept his appointment promptly. i had told jean benbow that if she could come to my office at half past four, i would take her down to see her brother. she came fifteen minutes ahead of time,--and that's how she came into the story. into that part of the story, i mean. but i had all that garney could probably tell me before she came in and disconcerted him. i think my first question surprised him. "mr. garney, do you know anything to eugene benbow's discredit?" he looked at me with an intentness that i found was habitual with him, as though he weighed my words before he answered them. "you don't mean trivial faults?" "no. i mean anything serious." he shook his head. "no. he is an exceptionally fine fellow in every way. high-spirited and honorable. i suppose his sensitiveness to his family honor, as he conceives it, may be called a fault, since it has unbalanced him to the extent of leading him into a crime." "you know of no absorbing entanglement, either with man or woman?" "no," he said, evidently puzzled by my question. "have you ever heard him express vengefulness toward barker?" "oh, yes," he said, decidedly. "i know that he has brooded over that. he does not talk of it in general, i believe, but he has been a special pupil of mine, and he has taken me somewhat into his confidence. that barker should have escaped all punishment for the slaying of his father has worn upon him. he spoke of it only once, but then he expressed himself in such a way that i knew he had been carrying it in his mind a long time." "then you believe that he really shot barker?" he stared at me, amazed. "of course." "you think of nothing that would prompt him to assert his guilt, if, in point of fact, he should not be guilty?" i never saw a man look more astonished. "if you really mean that, i can only say that i can think of nothing short of insanity which would make him say he shot barker if he didn't. why, he has confessed. do you mean to say that you think the confession false? and if so, why?" "i am not thinking yet. i am merely gathering facts of all sorts. when i get them all together, i expect to discover the truth, whatever it may be." "i supposed his confession was conclusive. but i suppose you lawyers get to looking at everything with suspicion. have you anything to support your extraordinary hypothesis beyond your natural desire to clear your client?" i had no intention of taking him extensively into my confidence, but i was saved the necessity of answering at all by the opening of my office door. jean benbow put her head in, with a shy, childlike dignity. "am i too early?" she whispered. "i couldn't wait." "come in," i smiled. she came in, glanced carelessly at my visitor, and walked over to my window. she was dressed in an autumnal brown, with a trim little hat that somehow made her look more mature and less childish than she had seemed before, though still more like a frank brown-faced boy than a young lady. i saw that carney's eyes followed her to the window with a look of startled attention. "i think that is all i wanted to ask you at this time," i said, meaning to imply that the interview was ended. "yes," he said, irrelevantly, without taking his eyes from jean. i rose. "i may come to you again, mr. garney,--" at the name, jean turned swiftly and came to us. "oh, are you mr. garney?" she asked eagerly, putting out her hand. "i'm so glad to meet you. gene has told me about you. i'm gene's twin sister, jean." he looked like a man in a dream, and i could see that his voice had caught in his throat. he took her hand and held it, looking down at her. "i didn't know that gene had a sister," he said at last. "if that isn't like a boy!" she said with quick indignation. "at any rate, he has told me about you!" "nothing bad, i hope?" he smiled faintly, but i felt that he was almost breathlessly waiting for her reassurance. "mercy, no! he thinks you know an awful lot." then she drew back a step, threw up her head to look him steadily in the eye, and said clearly, "mr. garney, i think gene did exactly right. and i am proud of him." i saw that she meant to permit no misunderstanding as to her position but i doubted whether garney cared a rap what she might think. it wasn't her opinions that he cared about. it was herself. i admit that it annoyed me. i wanted to get her out of his sight. "it is time for us to go, miss benbow," i said abruptly. "you are going down to the jail?" asked garney quickly. i saw that it was on the tip of his tongue to propose going with us. "yes, we are going," i said, looking at him steadily. "you, i believe, are going back to your classroom." an angry look came over his face as he caught my meaning. i saw that he would not forget it, but i didn't care. was i to stand by and say nothing while he tumbled his wits at her feet? it was absurd. she wasn't old enough to understand and defend herself. we parted definitely at the street door, and i walked jean so fast down the block that i was ashamed when i suddenly realized what i was doing. "i beg your pardon," i said, slowing up. she had kept up manfully, though breathlessly. "oh, i like to walk fast," she said staunchly. "did you see your brother yesterday?" "yes. but only for a minute. and there was a horrid man who kept hanging around in a most ill-bred manner, so that i really couldn't talk to gene comfortably. i believe he did it on purpose!" "it is quite possible," i admitted. she looked at me sideways under her long lashes. "your voice sounds as though you were laughing at me inside." "let me laugh with you, instead," i said hastily. "the man was there on purpose. prisoners are not allowed to see visitors alone, speaking generally." she was thoughtful for a few moments. "then how are we going to arrange to get him out?" "i thought you were going to leave that to me." "not _leave_ it to you," she said gently. "of course i am glad to have you help, because there are lots of times when a man is very useful. but gene is _my_ brother, you know." "yes, of course," i said, trying to catch her thought. "so of course i am going to be in it. all the time." "in what, child?" "in the plans for his escape." she set her face into lines of determination which i saw was intended to overwhelm any vain opposition that i might raise to her plan. "a lawyer doesn't usually take that method of getting a man out of prison," i said apologetically. "i hadn't thought of it." "but isn't it the best way?" she said urgently. "of course i don't know as much about the law as you do,--of _course_ not,--but doesn't the law just _have_ to do something to a man when he shoots another man,--even if he is perfectly right to do it?" it was an appalling question. i could not answer. she did not need anything more than my face, apparently, for she went on quickly. "so that's why i thought it would be quicker and better, and would settle things once for all and be done with it," she explained. "now, there are lots of ways we can help him to escape. you know we are twins." "yes. what of that?" she hesitated a moment. "isn't there any way i could get into gene's room for a minute without having that horrid man watching?" "perhaps. what then?" "we could change clothes. i'd wear a rain coat that came down to the ground and a wide hat with a heavy veil, and extra high heels on my shoes. and you'd be there to distract the attention of the horrid man,--_that_ would be your part, and it's a very difficult and important part, too. then gene would just walk down the corridor,--i'd have to remind him to take little steps and not to hurry too much,--and then after awhile they would come and look into the cell to see if he was all safe and they'd see me. and i'd just say 'good day' politely, and walk off." she looked at me eagerly, waiting for my criticism. i looked as sympathetic as possible. "it's a very pretty plan, miss jean, but your brother is quite a bit taller than you are, isn't he? i'm afraid that might be noticed." she looked crestfallen, but only for a moment. "then i don't see but what we shall have to get him out through the window," she said. "i have read of such things," i granted her. "oh, yes, i have read quantities of stories where prisoners were helped to escape," she said eagerly. "it always can be done,--one way if not another. last night i was trying to think it out, and i had six plans all thought out. what's the use of being twins, if it doesn't count for something?" "i am sure it counts for a great deal, miss jean, even if--" "but i _shall_ be able to," she cried, cutting across my unspoken words. "i must. of course when i am talking to gene i am as cheerful as possible, and i don't let him see that i--i'm a _bit_ afraid, but truly, you know, i--i--i don't like it." her lips were quivering. "dear child! now, listen to me. we'll make an agreement. let me have the first shot in this business. if we can get him out through the front door, with everybody cheering and shaking his hands, that will be better than an escape through the window, and living in hiding and in fear the rest of his life, won't it? but if that doesn't work,--if i see surely that the only way to save him from the vengeance of the law is to steal him away,--then i am with you, to the bitter end. i'll meet you with disguise, rope ladder, anything you can think of. but let me have my chance first, in my own way. agreed?" she stopped in the street to put out her hand and shake mine firmly. her eyes were as bright and steady as pilot lights. "i think you are perfectly splendid," she said with conviction. i have forgotten some important things in my life and i expect to forget a good many more, but i shall never forget the thrill that came to me with that absurd, girlish endorsement! i think it was the way she said it that made it seem so much like a gold medal pinned upon my breast. "i shall arrange for you to have a quiet talk with your brother, and then i'll leave you for a while. you will probably be watched, but i think you can speak without being overheard. i want you to remember carefully what your brother says." "and tell you?" she asked doubtfully, leaping ahead of my words, as i found she had a way of doing. "if he asks you to send a message to anyone, or asks about anyone in particular, i want to know it. your brother is keeping something from me, miss jean, and i must find out what it is, in order to do him justice. i think there is someone else involved in this affair, and that he is keeping silence to his own hurt. just remember that this is what i must find out about, somehow, and if he says anything--_anything_--that would show who is in his mind, that you must tell me." "i understand," she said, wide-eyed. "but whom could he care for so much as that?" "you can't help me by a guess?" "no. i'm afraid not. gene writes beautiful letters when he wants to, but not like girls' letters, you know. not about every little thing." we found gene, as i had found him before, the polite, nice-mannered boy, evidently trying somewhat anxiously to deport himself as a gentleman should under unrehearsed conditions. "i have brought your sister for a little visit," i said. "i am coming for her after a little. i have arranged that you shall not be disturbed, so you may talk to her freely and without hesitation." "oh, thank you! i hope i am not putting you to any trouble. i'm so sorry, jean, that you should have to come here to see me. it isn't at all the right place for a girl." he looked as apologetic and disturbed as though he had brought her there inadvertently. i left them together for half an hour and then went back for jean. eugene detained me for a moment after jean had said her last cooing goodbye. "i wish you would tell her not to come here," he said anxiously. "it won't look well. i can stand it alone all right. honest, i can." i couldn't help liking the boy, though his anxiety to save his sister from unpleasant comment was somewhat inconsistent with his action in bringing this greater anxiety to her. "i don't believe i could keep her away," i said. "you will have to stand that as a part--of it all." he flushed in instant comprehension. i should have been ashamed of prodding him, if i hadn't felt that it was necessary to make him as uncomfortable as possible in order to get him out of his heroics and make him confess more ingenuously than he had done up to this time. i joined jean, and walked to the car with her. "well?" i asked. "he didn't say anything," she answered gravely. "of course i told him that i thought he had done exactly right, and that i was proud of him, and that you were going to take care of all the law business and make it all right, and he wasn't to worry and i would come and see him. of _course_ i am not going back to school." "you will live with your uncle, mr. ellison?" "yes." "i'm afraid it will be a lonely and trying time for you. i wish i might do something to make things easier for you. will you let me know if there ever is anything i can do?" "you can come and tell me how things are going," she said wistfully. "i don't understand about law, you know, and--it's lonesome waiting. if i could _do_ something,--" "you promised to leave that to me, you know," i said, anxious to keep her from forgetting what an important person i was in this affair! she did not answer for a moment, and then she looked up with a brave assumption of cheer. "i'd be ashamed to get blue when gene is so plucky. he doesn't think about himself at all. he is only worried to death for fear miss thurston should be disturbed." "is he great friends with miss thurston?" "oh, yes, indeed. he asked about her first of all, and over and over again. he wanted me to be sure and go and see her at once, and tell her that he is all right." "shall i put you on the car here, then? i am going down to st. james' hospital to see our man." "oh, mayn't i go with you?" she cried eagerly. "you know i have a share in him, too." "of course you have,--a very large share. yes, come on. we'll see what he has to say for himself." as it turned out, he had more to say for us than for himself. chapter ix a gleam of light the white-capped attendant at the hospital led us up a flight of broad, easy steps, to a large sunny room where convalescents were allowed to try their new strength. here "our man" was sitting in a large arm-chair, wrapped in a blanket. "he simply wouldn't stay in bed," the nurse explained in an undertone. "he says he must go home, but he really isn't strong enough to walk across the room without help." "is there anything the matter with him? beyond exhaustion, i mean," i asked. jean had run across the room and was bending over the old man with a coaxing concern in her face that was charming. she was like an elfin sprite trying to express sympathy for some poor, huddled-up toad. "that's enough," said the nurse crisply. "no, there doesn't seem to be anything else wrong. but it will take a week at least before he is able to take care of himself. his mind will grow stronger as he does." "isn't his mind right?" "you can talk to him," she said, non-committally. "don't tire him." and with that she left us. jean came running back to meet me and put me properly into touch with things. "he isn't happy," she explained hastily. "you must be cheerful, and not bother him.--here is mr. hilton who has come to see you, mr. jordan. now you can have a nice little talk with _him_." her tone indicated that this was indeed a privilege which might make up for many slings from unkind fortune. mr. jordan made an impatient gesture as though he would throw off the blanket which was binding his arms. "what am i doing here?" he asked querulously. "i want to get away. how did i get here?" "you fainted away on the street, mr. jordan," i answered. "we brought you here to have you taken care of. of course you may go as soon as you are able to. do you want to go home? wouldn't it be best for some member of your family or some friend to come for you?" [illustration: "_he was diavolo's partner," he said vehemently_. page 137.] he let his chin sink upon his breast, and closed his eyes. jean telegraphed me a look of comment, interpretation and exhortation. i half guessed what she meant, but i was too keen on my own trail to consider making things easy for the old man. "i believe you came to saintsbury to look up alfred barker," i said, quietly. he did not answer or open his eyes, but i felt that his silence was now alert instead of dormant, and presently a slow shiver ran over his frame. "it was a shock to you to find that he was dead, was it not?" he roused himself to look at me. "i can't get at diavolo except through him. he was diavolo's partner," he said vehemently. "i am quite ready to believe that," i said heartily. but jean had the good sense not to be frivolous. she was smoothing the old man's hand softly. "who is diavolo?" she asked simply. "if i knew! he was careful enough not to give his name." he was trembling with excitement and his voice broke in his throat. i began to see that this was a story which i must get, and also that i should have to get it piecemeal from his distracted mind. "where did you meet diavolo?" i asked. "why, at eden valley." the name struck an echo in my brain. of what was eden valley reminiscent? "what was he doing there?" i asked, questioning at hazard. the old man clutched the arms of his chair with his hands and leaned forward to look into my face. "you never heard of him?" "not a word." he nodded heavily and sank back in his chair. "he gave a show," he said dully. "in the opery house. to show off how he could hypnotize people." a slow tear gathered in his eye. i began to get a coherent idea. "oh, diavolo was the name assumed for show purposes by a man who went around giving exhibitions of hypnotism. is that it?" "yes." "what did alfred barker have to do with it?" "he was with him. he was the man that engaged the opery house and done the rest of the business. diavolo kep' in the background. nobody knows who diavolo was, but alfred barker left a trail i could follow." excitement had made his voice almost strong, and brought back a momentary energy. "what did you want to follow him for?" his face worked with passion. "to get back my thousand!" he cried, clenching his trembling hands. "how did he get your thousand?" "he got it from the bank, on a check he made me sign while i was hypnotized!" suddenly i remembered,--eden valley, 32.00 plus 1000. that was a part of the memoranda in barker's note-book. a memorandum of the profits of their trip! but i must understand it better. "did you let diavolo hypnotize you?" i asked. "i didn't think he could," the old farmer admitted, hanging his head. "i thought my will was too strong for him to get control of me. he called for people to come up from the audience and i laughed with the rest to see him make fools of the boys,--making them eat tallow candles for bananas, and scream when he threw a cord at them and said it was a snake, and things like that. but i was mighty proud of my strong will, and the boys dared me to go up and let him have a try at me, so i went." "and did he make you sign a check?" i asked, incredulously. "not then. that was too public. he knew his business too well for that. but he got control of me." there was something pitiable in the man's trembling admission. "he hypnotized me before i knew it, and when i came to, i was standing on a chair in the middle of the stage, trying to pull my pants up to my knees, because he had told me that i was an old maid, and there was a mouse on the floor, and the boys out in front were rolling over with laughter." "that was very unkind," said jean, indignantly. "i was ashamed and i was mad," the old man continued, "and i knew the boys would make everlasting fun of me, so next day i went up to see him at the hotel. i thought if i could talk to him, man to man, and without the fancy fixings of the stage, i could maybe find out how it was did. he was pleasant and smiling and talked easy, and then i don't remember one thing after that. just a smoke in my mind. i suppose he hypnotized me without my knowing it." "that is possible, i suppose, since he had had control of your will before. what next?" "the next thing i knew, i was walking up the road home, feeling queer and dizzy in my head. i couldn't remember how i got out of the hotel, nor nothing. and i didn't know what had really happened until i went to the bank to draw some money a month afterwards, and they told me i had checked it all away." "is that possible?" i asked doubtfully. "easy enough," he said bitterly. "i could see it clear enough afterwards. if he could make me believe i was an old maid afraid of a mouse, couldn't he just as easy make me think i owed him a thousand dollars and was making a check to pay it? i had my check book in my pocket when i went there, and it showed my balance, of course, so it was easy enough for them to find out how much they could ask for and not get turned down by the bank. the last check was torn out but the stub not filled in. and the bank showed me the canceled check all right." "payable to whom?" "to alfred barker. but he was only the hired man, i could see that. diavolo was the real one. barker came and went when _he_ lifted his finger. but alfred barker's name was on the check, so _his_ name wouldn't show. i had time to think it all out afterwards." it was an amazing story, but i could not pronounce it incredible, especially when i recalled that significant "plus" of $1000 at eden valley, in barker's memorandum book. "what did you do about it? anything?" "i tried to follow them. diavolo showed in other places, and i thought i could find them. i see there wasn't no use going to law about it, because i couldn't deny that i had signed the check, and i understand it ain't against the law to hypnotize a man. but if i could find them, i bet i could get some satisfaction out of barker's hide, if i could catch him alone. i wasn't going to take any more chances with diavolo." he shuddered. "you never caught up with them?" "no. they had always just gone on. then they stopped the show business and i lost track of them, till i heard that barker was in saintsbury. i came as fast as i could, but--i was too late." his head fell forward on his breast, and he looked ready to collapse. his loss, the long pursuit, the disheartening ending, had broken him. jean looked at me anxiously, and i understood, but it seemed to be too important to get all the information possible from the old man at once to give more than the barest consideration to his feelings. i poured a little whiskey into the cup of my pocket flask, and after he had choked it down he looked more equal to further cross-examination. "did you ever hear barker address diavolo by name?" i asked. "no. i tell you he was the hired man." "what did diavolo look like?" "he was about your height and build. thin dark face. long black hair and a soft black beard. queer eyes that gave you the shivers." it was not an identifying description. probably nineteen men out of twenty are of my height and build, which is in all respects medium; the long hair and black beard were probably stage properties; and the queer eyes might be merely mr. jordan's afterthought of what the hypnotizer's eyes ought to be. "would you know him again if you saw him without his hair and beard?" he looked surprised, and then doubtful. "i don't know." but at this point the attendant nurse came up, and intimated plainly that i was a trespasser and transgressor, and that the interview was ended. "i'll come to-morrow and take you out for a drive, if the doctor thinks you are strong enough to go," i said, by way of keeping the door open for further details. "i must go home," he said, querulously. "the faster you get strong, the sooner you can go. till to-morrow, then." jean walked beside me quietly and sedately till we were outside. then she turned to me with a flash of intense feeling. "what are you going to do for him?" "find diavolo," i answered promptly. "and make him give back the thousand dollars?" "if possible," i answered absently. my mind was more actively engaged with other features of the story than with the defrauding of the old farmer, and i was not sorry when i could put jean on her car, so that i could wander off by myself to think the matter over. how far, if at all, this affair of diavolo might have a bearing upon the murder mystery was uppermost in my mind. suppose diavolo and his "hired man" had quarreled. suppose they had quarreled to the death? it was, of course, quite probable that a man of barker's type would have many enemies, but here i was dealing not with probabilities but with a fact, however small it might be. there had been, in the recent past, an intimate relation between barker and a man who was capable of touring the country as a hypnotist, a man who concealed his identity,--ha, a motive! they had quarreled over the division of the thousand dollars, and barker had threatened to expose him! his own death had followed! this chain had developed so rapidly and vividly in my imagination that it was a cold shock when my common sense recalled that i must establish some connection between diavolo and gene benbow to make the thread complete. whatever part gene had played or had not played in the tragedy itself, he had confessed to the shot. the confession itself was a fact and must be accounted for, whether the thing confessed was a fact or not. up to this time the only theory in my mind that was compatible with gene's innocence was the theory of romantic self-sacrifice on his part. i had felt that if he was not guilty he was trying to save someone who was. whom would gene benbow wish to save at any cost? who had killed barker? who was diavolo? would one name answer all three questions? that was what i must find out. chapter x ways that are dark my preliminary investigations along the diavolo trail extended over considerable time, and were intertwined with various other matters of more or less interest, but i shall condense the account here, so as to get on to the more intricate affairs that followed. to begin with, i wrote to the theatrical manager of each and every town that had been listed in barker's note-book, asking if "diavolo" had appeared there, under what management he had come, what his real name was, how he could be reached, and whether they had any letter, contract, or other writing of his. then i wrote to the metropolitan agencies, and to various bureaux of information in the larger cities, and to all the public and private societies and persons whom i knew to have an interest in the occult, asking, in a word, if they knew who "diavolo" was, and how and where one might come into communication with him. i threw out these baited lines in every direction that i could think of. very soon the first answers came in. after i had received three or four i began to make bets with myself on the contents of the next one, though it soon became obviously unsportsmanlike to wager on what was so near a certainty. they were all alike. the man who had been placarded as "diavolo" had never been seen anywhere until he had come to the theatre in the evening for the performance. all business matters had been handled by his agent, alfred barker. barker had made the arrangements beforehand, sometimes by letter, sometimes in person, and he had always accompanied diavolo at the time of the performance and looked after everything. "barker looked out for diavolo as carefully as though he were a prima donna with a $10,000 throat," wrote one imaginative manager. "shouldn't wonder but what he was a woman, come to think of it. he had a squeaky kind of voice on the stage, and he kept himself to himself in a very noticeable way. he wore a beard, but it may have grown in a store. i know his hair came out of a shop all right." most of the answers were less imaginative, but equally unsatisfactory. barker had stood in front of diavolo and shielded him from observation so effectively that no one but barker really knew what he looked like. and barker could not now be consulted! before long i began to receive answers to the inquiries i had flung farther afield as to the reputation of diavolo among those who might be supposed to know all professional hypnotists. these replies were also of a surprising and disappointing uniformity. no one working under that name was known. most of my correspondents contented themselves with this bald assertion, but some of them made suggestions which led me on to further inquiry. one man suggested that "diavolo" might possibly be one jacob hahnen, who had disappeared from the professional field some two years before, following his arrest on account of the death on the stage of one of his hypnotized victims, while in a state of trance. that looked like a plausible suggestion, and i at once engaged a detective to trace jacob hahnen. i may say here, (not to mislead you as far as i was misled,) that hahnen established a perfect alibi, so that pursuit went for nothing. i did not waste time or money on another suggestion, which was to the effect that a famous hypnotist who was supposed to have died in california some years ago, might have gone into retirement for reasons of his own, and have come out of it temporarily under an alias. it might of course be possible, but there was nothing tangible to work upon. one thing became clear to me in the course of this investigation. there were more professional hypnotists in the country than i had had any idea of, and their ways were dark and devious. they were accustomed to work under assumed names, and more or less to cover their tracks and hide in burrows. i came across some quite amazing literature on the subject,--circulars issued by schools of hypnotism, offering to teach, in a course of so many lessons, for so much money, the art of controlling people by occult power. "a knowledge of this wonderful faculty," one announcement claimed, "will enable you to control the will of the person to whom you are talking, without his consent or even his knowledge. think of the advantage this will give you in your business! all taught in twenty lessons, mailed in plain cover." "lies and nonsense," i said to myself. but something within me bristled uneasily, as at the approach of an evil spirit. it had not been nonsense to poor old william jordan. i took to reading scientific books on hypnotism, to discover what powers or disabilities were actually admitted or claimed for this abnormal state. it was not quite so bad as the commercial exploitation of the subject, but it was disquieting enough. in general it seemed to be assumed that a normal person could not be hypnotized without his consent the first time, but that if he once yielded to the will of the hypnotizer, his own will would be so weakened thereby that afterwards he might find it quite impossible to resist. it was a moot question whether a person could be compelled to commit a crime while in a hypnotized state. some writers insisted that a person's moral principles would guide him, even though his mind and will were paralyzed. i confess it looked to me to be open to question. morality is generally more of a surface matter than mind, and would therefore be more easily bent. it was a tremendous relief to get away from this commerce with the powers of darkness to talk with jean benbow,--though my part in the conversation was not conspicuous. i was rather like the wooden trellis upon which she could train her flowers of fancy! william jordan grew stronger under the care of the hospital, but he was not a young man, and he had had a heartbreaking experience. it was some time before he was equal to the return to eden valley, and in the meantime i saw as much of him as i could, encouraging him to talk about diavolo whenever he was in the mood, in the hope that something might develop which would serve me as a clue. several times i took him out driving, and whenever possible i got jean to go with us. this was partly because the old man had taken a fancy to her, and she put him at his talkative ease, and partly because she was a delightful little companion on her own account. one day, when we were out toward the suburbs, she said suddenly, "oh, let's go down that street." we went accordingly, and came presently to a quaint old church, covered with ivy. "that is where i am to be married," said jean with quiet seriousness. she leaned forward as we drew nearer to watch it intently. "really!" i exclaimed. "may i ask if the day is set?" "oh, no," she said simply. "i only mean that when i am married i shall be married in that church." "why, pray?" "my mother was married there," she said gently, and a look of moonbeams came into her eyes. "oh! that makes it seem more reasonable. but aren't you taking a good deal for granted in assuming that you are going to be married? maybe you will grow up to be a nice little old maid, with a tabby cat and a teapot. what then?" she did not answer my foolish gibe for a minute, and i feared i had offended her. but after a moment she said, with that quaint seriousness of hers: "do you know, that is a very hard question to decide. i have thought about it so often. it would be very splendid, of course, to fall in love with some great hero, and go through all sorts of awful tragedies, and then have it come out happily in the end, and of course one would have to be married if it came out happily, though it is kind of hard to think of what could happen next that would be interesting enough to make a proper climax, don't you think so? _just_ to live happy ever after seems sort of tame. so i have wondered whether, on the whole, it would not be more romantic to cherish a secret passion and grow old like withered rose leaves and have faded letters tied with a worn ribbon to be found in your desk when you were dead." i considered the situation with proper seriousness. "who would write the letters?" i asked. "oh,--" "some young man who was desperately in love with you, of course?" "why, yes," she admitted. "well, what would you do with him? i don't believe any young man with proper feelings on the subject would be willing to efface himself in order to let you cherish his memory. he'd rather you would cherish him. i'm sure i should, if it were i." "oh!" she murmured with a startled dismay that was delicious. "did you happen to have any young man in particular in mind," i asked, "or is the position vacant?" she looked up at me from under thick eyelashes in a rather bewildering way. "quite vacant," she said. "i'm supposed to be rather a good letter-writer," i suggested. "i should have to be particular, if they are going to last a long time and be read over and over again," she said demurely. "have you had any experience in writing that special kind of a letter?" (the sly puss!) "no experience at all. but you would find me willing to learn and industrious." "i'll consider your application," she said, with dignity. "but i haven't yet decided that on the whole i should not prefer a wedding to a package of yellow letters. i don't know. i can just see myself sitting by a window in the fading twilight, with those letters in my lap, and it looks awfully interesting. but it would be disconcerting--isn't that the right word?--if no one else saw how romantic and beautiful it was. of course i should know myself, and that counts for a good deal, but it does seem more _lonesome_ than a wedding, when you come to think of it, doesn't it?" "it certainly does. whatever you may have to say against weddings, they are not lonesome." "oh, well, i don't have to decide just yet," she said, with an air of relief. "it is a long way off. only, if i ever _do_ get married, it will be in that little church, no matter if i am off at the north pole when i am engaged and intend to go back there to set up housekeeping the next day. i made a vow about it, so as to be quite sure that i should have the strength of mind to insist on it. when you have made a vow, you just _have_ to carry it out, you know, in spite of torrents or floods or _anything_." i agreed heartily. and the time came when the memory of that foolish chatter just about saved my reason. chapter xi the simmering samovar one day it occurred to me to ask fellows if he was keeping up my advertisement for mary doherty, from which i had heard nothing so far. his start and confusion were an obvious confession. "n-no, not now. i did run it several times." "i told you to keep it in until further orders. don't you remember?" he did not answer. i could not understand his manner. "i am sorry if you didn't understand. we have probably lost an opportunity,--certainly have lost time. i count on getting important information from mrs. barker, if we can find her." "what sort of information?" asked fellows doggedly. i thought he was trying to minimize the results of his neglect. "well, almost any information that would enable us to fix barker's associates would probably be valuable. more particularly, i want to find out whether there is anyone who wants to marry her and couldn't while barker was alive." i succeeded in attracting fellows' attention, at least. he stared at me in silence, as though he were turning the thought over. "i'll advertise again," he said, but without enthusiasm. i think it was that day that i had a disconcerting interview with burleigh, the editor of the saintsbury samovar. i have mentioned, i believe, that some independent public-spirited citizens were trying to make clyde run for mayor. (it was one of those anti-ring waves of reform which strike a city once in so often, and are temporarily successful because good business men work at them for a season. the success is seldom, if ever, more than temporary, because the good business men go back to their jobs as soon as things are running smoothly, while the ring politicians never really drop their jobs for a minute.) well, clyde had cold-shouldered the proposition, but rather half-heartedly. probably there is no man living who does not have some political ambition. certainly clyde had it. with his wide interest in public matters, his natural power over men, and his ancestry and associations, i knew that nothing but the shadow of fear at his elbow had kept him out of the political game, and i was therefore not surprised when, a few days after the barker tragedy had ceased to occupy the upper right-hand corner of the first page of the newspapers, that space was given up to announcing that kenneth clyde had consented to accept the reform party's nomination. i sympathized with the relief which i knew lay back of the acceptance. this was the political situation when i met burleigh. he was the editor of the evening paper which supported the ring and damned reform, and of course i knew where he stood as regards clyde's candidacy. but when he stopped me on the street that noon, he didn't speak of clyde. "hello, how's the lawyerman?" he said, taking my hand where it hung by my side and shaking it without regard to my wishes in the matter. i resented his familiarity with my hand and with my profession, but the convention of politeness, which makes it impossible for us to tell people our real feelings about them, constrained me to civility. "very well, thank you," i said, carelessly, and made a move to go on my way. he turned and fell into step with me. "i'd like to ask what you lawyers call a hypothetical question," he said. "just a joke, you understand,--a case some of the boys were talking about in our office. read of it in some novel, i guess. some said it would be that way and some said it wouldn't. in law, you know." "well, what is the question?" i asked, as politely as my feelings would permit. (funny idea people have, that a lawyer learns law for the purpose of supplying gratuitous opinions to chance acquaintances! i shouldn't think of asking burleigh to send me the samovar for a year, just to satisfy my curiosity!) "why, it's this. if a man has been convicted of murder--the man in the story was--and then makes his escape and lives somewhere else for twenty years or so, and is finally discovered and identified, how does he stand in regard to the law?" you may guess how i felt! the hypothetical case was so exactly clyde's case that for a moment my brain was paralyzed. i was so afraid of betraying my surprise that i did not speak. i merely nodded and smoked and kept my eyes on the ground. "there's no statute of limitations to run on a sentence of the court, is there?" he asked, eagerly. "no," i said, with professional deliberation. "no, if you are sure that you have your facts all straight. but you don't often get law entirely disentangled from facts, and they often have unexpected effects on a question. what novel did you get that from?" "oh,--i don't know. i just heard the boys talking about it, and i wondered." but he looked so eager that i could not help feeling the question was more significant to him than mere literary curiosity would explain. "you think, then, that there might be some element in the situation that would perhaps complicate it?" he asked. "it is never safe to form an opinion without knowing all the facts," i said, oracularly. "but if the facts are as i stated them,--an escape from justice after conviction, and nothing else,--then the man is still liable to the law, isn't he?" "probably," i said, with a shrug intended to intimate that the matter was of no special interest to me. "how did it turn out in your story?" burleigh looked at me sideways for a moment. then he said, imperturbably, "why, i believe he made the mistake of going into politics, and so the thing came out. he was hung--in the story. politics is no place for a man who has a past that he doesn't want to have come out." "no doubt you are right about that," i said lightly. "of course i am. i'm in the business," he said emphatically. "if a man has a past--that sort of a past, i mean,--he ought to know enough to stick to--philanthropy or architecture or collecting, or something else nice and private. this your street? well, good day, mr. hilton. glad i met you." he tipped his hat and left me. you can imagine the state of my mind. i puzzled over the situation for an hour, and then telephoned clyde and asked him to drop into my office. clyde came that same afternoon. i told him of the burleigh interview as directly as possible. "now you can judge for yourself whether it means anything sinister," i concluded. "the samovar is for the ring, of course," he said, thoughtfully. "of course. and burleigh's recommendation that a man in that predicament should confine himself to architecture, or some kindred avocation, instead of trying to break into politics, didn't sound altogether accidental." he nodded comprehendingly, and smoked in silence for a few moments. then he looked up with a smile. "i think i'll go on the theory that it was accidental." i hadn't expected that, and i couldn't approve. "as your lawyer, i must warn you that you are taking a serious risk," i said earnestly. "if barker shared his secret with someone, who has gone with it to burleigh, you are exactly in your old situation. it would be better to let the sleeping samovar lie and give up the mayoralty." he continued to smoke for a minute, but i saw the obstinate look in his eye that a mettled horse tales on when he doesn't mean to heed your hints. "you don't understand, hilton," he said after a moment, "but since barker's death i have felt free for the first time in fifteen years. i like the sensation. very likely i have gone drunk on it and lost my senses, but i like the feeling so much that i am going to snap my fingers at burleigh and pretend that he has no more power to influence my actions than he would have had if--well, if tom johnson had never got into trouble." "you think the mayoralty is worth the risk?" i asked. "the mayoralty? no! not for a minute. but--this sense of freedom is." "but it is your freedom that you are risking." he stood up, and though i could not commend his judgment, i had to admire his courage. there was something finely determined in his attitude as he tossed away his cigar and put his hands in his pockets. "i am going to have it out with my evil destiny this time," he said, with a quick laugh. "better be hanged than to skulk longer. i shall go on the theory that burleigh has merely been reading some giddy detective stories." "don't forget that there are some crimes which don't achieve the immortality of a detective story, because they are never explained," i said warningly. he merely smiled, but i knew my warning would go for nothing,--and secretly i was glad. there are things more to be desired than safety. chapter xii on the trail of diavolo jordan gained rapidly in strength, and was soon in condition to return, a sadder, wiser, and poorer man, to eden valley. i determined, however, to accompany him, and see if i could gather on the ground any further details about the serpent, my inquiries by mail bringing, as i have told, but unsatisfactory answers. but before leaving saintsbury, i called again upon my client in the jail. i found him, as always, the gentle, nice-mannered, puzzling youth. "i am going away for a while in your interests," i said, by way of greeting. "that's awfully good of you," he said gratefully. then with polite concern he added, "i hope you aren't giving yourself any trouble--" "oh, i sha'n't mind a little inconvenience when it is in the way of business," i said drily. "it may be a matter of entire indifference to you, but i want to win my case!" "oh, yes, of course," he said with anxious courtesy. i could see that he had no idea what i meant! there was no use trying to arouse him in that way, and i might as well accept his attitude. "did you know that barker had a partner?" i asked abruptly. he shook his head with an air of distaste. "no. i know nothing about him. i shouldn't, you know." "you never heard of diavolo?" "not the opera?" he asked doubtfully. "no. a professional hypnotist with whom barker was connected in a business way." "no, i never heard of him." "did you ever hear of william jordan? or of eden valley?" "no." he looked puzzled. "i have an idea that it may have been diavolo who shot barker!" i said carelessly. he looked surprised, and then, deferentially and hesitatingly, he expressed his dissent. "i suppose you feel that you have to fight for me, as my lawyer, but--what's the use in this case? i don't understand these things, of course, but i'd rather have it settled with as little fuss as possible. i shot him, and i am not sorry, and--i'd like to have it all over with as soon as possible." his voice was steady enough, and the gallant lift of his head made me think of his sister, but i thought i saw a look of dread somewhere back in his eye. perhaps he was beginning to weaken! i determined to press the point a little. "and yet it is a pity to have your life run into the sand in that way," i said earnestly. "there might be much for you in the future,--success, love, honor,--" i watched him closely. his face quivered under the probe, but he did not speak. "miss thurston is heartbroken," i added, relentlessly. he looked at me as a dumb animal under the knife might look, and then he dropped his face into his hands. i pressed the matter while he was at my mercy. "if you did not shoot barker,--if you are in fact innocent,--don't, for heaven's sake, let any foolish idea of saving someone else lead you to lie about it. there could be no one worthy of saving at that cost. and, besides, if you are lying, i am going to find out the truth in spite of you." he lifted his head, but he did not look at me. "i am not lying. why should i? i supposed anyone would believe a man who said he had done--a thing like that." "i wish you would tell me about it again,--just what you did." (i wanted to see if his story would vary.) he dropped his eyes to the floor thoughtfully. "i went to his office," he said slowly. "i went through the outer office and into the inner office. they were both empty. i locked the door and waited. i watched through a hole in the curtain over the glass in the door. a man came in, waited a little, and went out. then barker came. i waited till he came close to the door. then i fired. i saw him fall. then i went down the fire-escape and got out into the street." as he finished, he raised his eyes from the floor and looked at me. his glance was not entirely frank, and yet i could not call it evasive. "there was no one else in the room with you?" "no one." "you saw no one else at any time except the man who came into the outer office?" "no one else." "and him you do not know?" "no." "if i should tell you it was i?" he looked at me, puzzled and doubtful. "was it you?" "wouldn't you know? didn't you see the man's face?" he hesitated. "n-no." "then how did you know it wasn't barker?" "why,--it wasn't." "since you meant to give yourself up to the police, why did you go down the fire-escape instead of out through the hall?" he looked distressed. "i--don't know." then he seemed to gather his ideas together. "my mind is confused about much that happened that night, mr. hilton. the only thing that stands out very clearly is the fact that i shot him. and that is the only thing that is really important, isn't it?" and that was the most that i got out of the interview. i had to admit, in face of this, that it was partly obstinacy which made me hold to the idea that he was not telling the whole truth. the fact that he had not recognized me, though he must have had me under close observation for a long time, and the fact that some one in the inner room had been eating apples, and that some one not he,--this was really all i had to support my point of view. but these were facts, both of them, and a fact is a very obstinate thing. a very small fact is enough to overthrow a whole battalion of fair-seeming fabrications. i felt that i was not throwing in my fortune with the weaker side when i determined to follow the lead of those two small facts to the bitter end. the pursuit led me in the first place to eden valley. i took poor william jordan to his home, a farm lying just outside of the village, (and not more than two hundred miles from saintsbury,) and then i returned to the village. it was a country town of about 2000, with one main hotel. i judged that diavolo and barker would have to lodge there if anywhere, and on inquiry i found my guess correct. they were not forgotten. "oh, that hypnotist chap!" said the landlord. "yes, he was here in the summer. had a show at the masonic hall. say, that's a great stunt, isn't it? ever see him?" "no. what was he like?" "oh, he was made up, you know,--mephistopheles style. black pointed beard and long black hair and a queer glittering eye." "but when he was not made up? you saw him here in the hotel in his natural guise, didn't you?" "nope. funny thing, that. he kept in his room, and the man that was with him, barker i think his name was, he did the talking and managed everything. diavolo acted as though he didn't want to be seen off the stage. wore a long cape and a slouch hat when he went out, and had his meals all sent up." "was he tall or short?" "medium. rather slim. long, thin hands. say, when he waved those hands before the face of that old farmer sitting on a chair on the stage, it was enough to make the shivers run down your back. i don't know whether it was all a fake or not. most people here think it was, but i swan, it was creepy." "did you know the farmer?" "oh, yes,--old jordan. lives near here. terrible set up about having a strong will, and said nobody could hypnotize him. say, it was funny to see him think he was a cat, chasing a rat, and then suddenly believe that he was an old maid and scared to death of a mouse, and jumping up on a chair and screaming in a squeaky little voice." "diavolo woke him up, didn't he?" "oh, yes. and then the old man tore things around. he came here the next day to see the man in the daylight, and dare him to try it again." "did he do it?" i asked, wondering how much of jordan's story was known to his neighbors. "oh, i guess not. he went up to diavolo's room, i remember, and when he came out he wouldn't talk, but just went off home." "and you never heard diavolo's real name?" "nope. trade secret, i suppose. probably born bill jones, or something else that wouldn't look as well on the billboards as diavolo." i went to the masonic hall, where the "show" was given, but there i met the same difficulties. barker had made all the arrangements and been the mouthpiece. the mysterious diavolo had appeared only at the last moment, cloaked and made up for stage effect, and had held no conversation with anyone. they all thought his assumption of mystery a part of his profession. i saw in it a persistent care to hide his identity. i could only hope that some momentary carelessness or some accident would give me a clue. his very anxiety to hide his real name made more plausible my theory that barker's knowledge of it might have been the occasion of his death. in the olden times, the masons who constructed the secret passages under castle and moat were usually slain when the work was done, as the most effective way of ensuring their silence. from eden valley, i went to illington, the next place mentioned in barker's memorandum book. here it was much the same. the two men had stopped at the hotel over night, but diavolo had kept out of sight, while barker had transacted all the business and made all the arrangements. i realized that i was dealing with people who used concealment as a part of their business. the same story met me at sweet valley, at lyndale, at hawthorn, at dickinson. it was not until i reached junius that i found what i had hoped for and had begun to despair of finding,--a personal recollection of diavolo. "oh, yes," the landlady at the hotel said. "he was here. raised the--i should say, raised his namesake with a toothache." she was a jolly landlady, and she laughed at her own near-profanity till she shook. she had probably worked the same joke off before. i smiled,--it wasn't hard, in face of her own jollity. "what did he do?" i asked. "oh, tramped up and down his room just like an ordinary man. couldn't eat his supper. kept a hot water bottle to his face, though i told mr. barker it was the worst thing he could do. mr. barker was distracted. it was getting to be near the hour for the performance, and diavolo wouldn't go on. not that i blame him. a jumping tooth is enough to upset even a wizard." "how did it turn out?" "oh, he went to a dentist and had it out, and--" things danced before my eyes. i felt like shouting "now hast thou delivered mine enemy into my hands." it seemed almost incredible that what i could hardly have dreamed of as a possibility could be the plain actual fact. "do you know what dentist he visited?" i asked, trying to speak casually. "oh, yes. mr. barker inquired at the office, and went with him. diavolo was very careful about not being seen, and even then he wore a wig. i knew it was a wig, because he had got it crooked, tossing about, and some light hairs showed about his ear." "what dentist did you send him to?" i asked anxiously. "dr. shaw." "and he isn't dead or moved away or anything like that?" "oh, no! he has his office right around the corner. he boards in the house, and i always like to throw business in the way of my boarders when i can." "i think i shall have to see him on my own account," i said. i almost expected an earthquake to swallow up dr. shaw before i could get around the corner, but i found the office still in place, all right, and the doctor himself, looking rather pathetically glad to see some one enter. he was a dapper little man, with a silky moustache and an eternal smile. (not that his looks matter! but whenever i think of that interview, i see that humble, ingratiating smile.) "what can i do for you?" he asked gently and caressingly. "i am not in need of your professional services, doctor shaw, but i should like to obtain some information from you, if you will allow me to take some of your time at your regular rates. i am a lawyer, and i am anxious to establish the identity of a man who was here in the summer under the name of diavolo,--a professional hypnotist. mrs. goodell, of the winslow house, tells me that she sent him to you to be relieved of a toothache." "yes, i remember. i extracted a tooth for him," dr. shaw said at once. "i could perhaps have saved it, but it would have required treatment, and he insisted upon having it extracted, as he was to appear on the stage that evening." "was there anything peculiar about the formation of his jaw, do you remember? any irregularity, for instance?" the dentist smiled. "yes. decided irregularity. his jaw was peculiarly long and narrow, and the teeth, which were large, were crowded. on both sides the upper teeth formed a v." "like this?" i asked, taking the model which dr. kenton had made for me from my pocket. "exactly like that," he said, after examining it critically. "wasn't this made from his mouth?" "that is what i want to ascertain." "it would be extraordinary to find two persons with the same marked peculiarity," he said thoughtfully. "would that peculiarity be enough to establish the man's identity?" i asked. "perhaps not. but i could identify diavolo positively and beyond question, if that is what you mean. there were other distinguishing marks. the first lower left molar was gone, and replaced by a bridge, for instance. and the second molars in the upper jaw had both been extracted,--probably to relieve the crowding. the conformation was unmistakable, and very unusual." "then if i ever get my hands on diavolo, you can identify him, regardless of grease paint and wig?" "unquestionably." "i hope most heartily that i may be able to give you the opportunity. you have done me a great service as it is. for the present, i can only tell you that your information will serve the cause of justice." can you guess my elation? i should certainly have astonished the staid people of the prim little town if i had allowed myself to express the state of my feelings. my wild goose chase had not been so wild, after all! i had not yet bagged the game, to be sure, but i felt that i had winged it. certainly i ought to be able to convince any jury that if barker's former partner was in the room from which the fatal shot had been fired, the chances were strong that he had had something to do with it. and that he was there i could prove. the apple in which he had left the imprint of his curiously irregular teeth was freshly bitten; and the toothache which had driven the cautious diavolo from his cover of silence and forced him, by stress of physical agony, to the intimate personal relation of a patient with his dentist, had identified him as the man. it only remained to find--him! what eugene benbow's connection with the affair could have been was so much of a mystery that i could form no conjecture. one thing at a time. when i had unearthed diavolo, the other things might clear themselves up. sometimes one missing piece will make a puzzle fall into shape and everything appear coherent. i had been away from saintsbury on this search for over a week, and i was anxious to get back. i wanted to find out whether my advertisement for mary doherty had brought any answer. i wondered whether benbow had grown more communicative. i wanted to see jean, who must be having a time of it, living with her queer, unaffectionate guardian. i wondered whether fellows had attended to things at the office. but i didn't think of the one thing that had actually happened. i found out what it was when the newsboys came on the train with the saintsbury papers. the evening samovar had exploded. it had come out with clyde's story. chapter xiii the samovar explodes the saintsbury papers were thrown on our train several stations beyond the town. i bought one, of course, and unfolded it with a cheerful feeling of being near home again,--and there stared at me from the first page the glaring headlines,- clyde a criminal the reform candidate for mayor a fugitive from justice amazing record of crime and concealment discovered by the samovar i tore my way through the leaded paragraphs. the only thing that was news to me was the clue on which the samovar had worked. according to the high-flown account, barker had left at the samovar office, on the night on which he was killed, a large sealed envelope addressed to himself, with the added direction: "if this is not called for within five days, it is to be opened by the managing editor of the samovar." it would appear that this was the errand that was occupying barker while i sat waiting for him in his office! i could not refrain from pausing to admire the rascal's cleverness. he was anticipating--not the death which came so swiftly, but--a visit from clyde, or possibly clyde's representative, and he had adroitly made it impossible for clyde to control the situation by force or coercion. the story was written out and in the hands of the paper which would most gladly profit by the disclosure, though it was still, for five days, subject to barker's own recall, if he were properly treated! it certainly was a reserve of the most unquestionable value in diplomatic negotiations. the samovar went on to say that after the sensation of barker's death, the envelope had been held inviolate for the specified time, and had then been opened by burleigh in the presence of witnesses. the story as written by barker was then set forth in full. it recited briefly that barker had been present at a court trial in houston, texas, some fifteen years before, at which one tom johnson had been convicted of the murder of a man named henley, and sentenced to death. the prisoner had escaped from the sheriff immediately after conviction, and had never been captured. then mr. barker proceeded: "two or three years ago i saw mr. kenneth clyde in saintsbury, and greatly to my surprise, i recognized in him the missing tom johnson. i charged him with the identity, and he did not deny it. he then and afterwards freely admitted to me that he was the man who, under another name, had been convicted of murder and had made his escape. i have refrained from making this information public out of consideration for mr. clyde, but i feel it a public duty to leave this record where, if certain contingencies should arise, it may be found." (the contingency which the writer had in mind was probably a refusal on the part of clyde to continue paying blackmail. that would undoubtedly have made mr. barker's public duty weigh upon his tender conscience.) the samovar then went on to say that the story at first seemed incredible, and therefore the witnesses were all sworn to secrecy until the matter could be investigated. a special representative had been sent to texas to look it up. the writer then modestly emphasized the difficulties of the undertaking, and his own astonishing cleverness in mastering them. he had actually found the court records to establish the tale of the late lamented mr. barker, whose untimely taking off with this public service still unperformed would have been nothing less (under the present political circumstances) than a civic calamity. tom johnson had been convicted of the treacherous and bloody murder of his friend. (the details were then given in substantial agreement with the story which clyde had told me.) "but who," the happy historian went on to say, "who would have guessed, who would have dared suggest, who would have ventured to believe, that this obscure criminal, snatching the stolen cloak of freedom from the heedless hands of careless officials, and skulking off with it by the underground passages known to the criminal classes,--who would have believed that this false friend, this wretch, this felon, was none other than the reform candidate for mayor of saintsbury? the charge is so incredible that we may well be asked,--where lies the proof of identity, beyond the word of alfred barker, now cold in death? the man who so long had successfully covered up his past, may well have felt, when barker met his tragic fate, that at last he could walk in security, since the one witness who, in a period of fifteen years, had identified him, was now disposed of. but murder will out. the truth, though crushed to earth, will live again. the sun in the heavens has been summoned as a witness. while tom johnson was in jail, awaiting trial, an enterprising paper of the place secured several photographs of the prisoner. these our representative found in an old file of the paper. we reproduce below, side by side, the photographs of tom johnson, lying under an unexecuted sentence for murder, and of kenneth clyde, reform candidate for mayor. they speak for themselves." they did, indeed. it was like a blow in the face to see the pictures side by side, even in the coarse newspaper print. the handsome, defiant face of the younger man had been softened and refined and had grown thoughtful,--but it was the same face. if clyde had wanted to deny the accusation (though i knew that he would not think for a moment of that course,) it would have been fruitless. the photographs made it impossible. as i studied them, i thought that any woman who loved him,--his mother or another,--should certainly be ready to give thanks on her knees for the changes that the fifteen years had wrought. as a young fellow he had clearly been rather _too_ handsome. that any man with so much of the "beauty of the devil" had been marked by the stars for a tumultuous career was most obvious. there was spiritual tragedy in every lineament. on the other hand, there was no deviltry in the seriously handsome face of the man of to-day. you did not even think first of his good looks, the deeper significance of character had so come to the surface. certainly, the shadow under which clyde had lived had fostered the best in him. the newspaper scribe ended his paragraph with a cruel innuendo: "the sudden death of alfred barker at a time when clyde had most to fear from the secret in his knowledge would have had a sinister appearance, if that apparent mystery had not been promptly solved by the confession of eugene benbow. clyde should acknowledge his indebtedness to the convenient benbow." the fact that i had had a bad quarter of an hour convincing myself that clyde had had nothing to do with the matter did not make me less indignant with the astute newspaper scribbler. and i saw further complications in the subject. if i cleared gene--as i fully meant to do--it would be necessary to do it by bringing the real murderer to light. to clear gene by simply proving that he was not on the spot (assuming that to be possible) would be merely to transfer the shadow of doubt to clyde. it was a bad tangle. the moment i reached the saintsbury station, i tried to get into communication with clyde. he might not care to have me act as his legal adviser in this more serious development of his case, but at least i must give him the opportunity to decline. it was eight o'clock when the train pulled in, and i went at once to the private telephone booth and tried to get clyde. his office was closed and did not answer,--i had expected that. his residence telephone likewise "didn't answer." then i called up the chief of police, and asked whether clyde had been arrested, basing my inquiry on the samovar story. he had not,--though it took me some time to get that statement out of the close-mouthed officials of the law. then i called up mr. whyte's residence, hoping to get some hint of the situation as it affected my friends. it was jean benbow's voice that answered my call. "oh, it's _you!_" she cried, and the intonation of her voice was the most flattering thing i have ever heard in my life--almost. "oh, i always did know that there must be special providences for special occasions, and if anybody ever thinks there aren't, i'll tell them about your calling up at just this moment, and they'll _know_. the most _dreadful_ thing has happened,--" "i have seen the evening samovar. is that what you mean?" "oh, _yes!_ mrs. whyte is at my elbow and she says i must tell you to come right up here in a jiffy--only she didn't say jiffy, but that is what she meant. she says now that i must not stand here and keep you talking, though really i know it is i that is talking,--or should i say am talking? but you understand. and mrs. whyte says you must jump into a cab and come up at once. mr. whyte wants to consult with you." the communication stopped with an abruptness that suggested external assistance. it was jean herself who admitted me. she must have been watching out for me, for she had the door open and was half way down the steps to meet me before i was fairly on mr. whyte's cement walk. "oh, but i am thankful to see you," she said earnestly. "ever since that paper came this afternoon, i have been in a dream! i mean an awful dream, you know,--almost a nightmare. it seemed so unreal. though i suppose that is what real life is like, maybe?" she looked at me inquiringly. "i never saw anything like it before, and i have lived a real life for many more years than you have," i answered, meaning to reassure her. she looked at me under her lashes. "oh, not so very many more! not enough to--to make any real difference. but you don't know how queer it seems to me to have things happening like this all around you. first gene, and now mr. clyde. do you believe it is true, mr. hilton?" "i can't form an opinion from newspaper tales alone," i said evasively. by this time we were at the door, where mrs. whyte was waiting, with mr. whyte at her shoulder. they both looked worried. "you have seen the paper?" whyte asked, while we were shaking hands. "yes. on the train. do you know where clyde is?" "no. i tried to get him by 'phone, but i couldn't find him, and he knows where to find me, if he wants to. what do you think of it?" i could only repeat that i could not express an opinion without more reliable information,--blessed subterfuge of the lawyer! mrs. whyte broke in emphatically. "well, i for one do not believe it. you needn't look so wise, carroll, as though you meant to imply that we can't be sure of anyone until he is dead. i knew kenneth clyde when he wore knickerbockers and i knew his father and his uncle, and i simply don't believe it. the samovar is nothing but a political scandal-monger, anyway." "it was a long time ago, clara," whyte said deprecatingly. "clyde was young, and you know he was a wild youngster. and there may have been provocations of which we know nothing." "you are trying to excuse him, as though you thought the story true," cried mrs. whyte indignantly. "i simply say that i don't believe it. not for a moment." "i believe it," said a voice that startled us all. katherine thurston was standing on the landing of the stairs, looking down upon us as we were grouped in the hall. there was a tall lamp on the newel which threw a white light on her face, but it was not the lamp-light which gave it the look of subdued radiance that held our gaze. i confess i stared quite greedily, careless of what she was saying. but mrs. whyte recovered herself first,--naturally. "katherine! what are you saying? come down!" she came down slowly. there was a curious stillness upon her, as though she had come strangely upon peace in the midst of a storm. [illustration: _"i believe it," said a voice that startled us all_. page _186_.] "i should think you would at least wait for a little better evidence before believing such a thing of--of _any_ friend!" mrs. whyte chided indignantly. something like a ripple passed over miss thurston's face. she was actually smiling! "i don't mean that i am eager to believe evil reports of mr. clyde," she said gently. "but--it explains so much. i think it probably is true because it would--explain. and, of course," she added, lifting her head with a proud gesture that would have sent clyde to his knees, "of course it makes not an atom of difference in our feeling toward _him_. we know what he is." man is a curious animal. i was not in love with katherine thurston. i had never come within hailing distance of her heart and would have been somewhat afraid of it if i had; i had even suspected that the artificial calm which lay between her and clyde covered emotional possibilities, past, present, or to come; and yet, now that i saw the whole tale written on her unabashed face, i felt suddenly as though a rich and coveted galleon were sailing away, forever out of my reach! it was probably only a bare moment that we were all held there silent, but the moment was so tense that its revelations were not to be counted by time. then jean, who stood beside me, suddenly clasped my arm with both her hands, in a gesture that i felt to be a warning. i looked down at her inquiringly. she nodded slightly toward the french window which opened from the library upon a side porch, and following her gesture i saw the shadow of a stooping man outside. before i could reach the window, it was pushed open from without, and kenneth clyde stepped into the room. i don't think we were surprised,--we had reached a state of mind where the unexpected seemed natural,--but when clyde stepped instantly aside from the window and stood in the shadow of the bookcase, we awoke to a realization of what his coming meant. "i beg your pardon for entering in this unceremonious way," he said (and there was a thrill of excitement in his voice that went through us all like a laughing challenge) "but i have been dodging the police for an hour, and i know i am followed now. if you would draw the curtain, hilton,--" i drew the curtains over the windows, and whyte closed the door into the hall. i think he locked it. the three women had followed us into the library, and though they stood silent and breathless, i do not think that clyde could have had much doubt in his mind as to whether he held their sympathy. "i had to come for just a moment before i got out of town," he said in a hurried undertone. he spoke to the room, but his eyes were on katherine thurston, who stood silent at a little distance. "tut, tut, man, you mustn't leave town," cried whyte. "the worst thing you could possibly do! ask hilton here. he's a lawyer." clyde smiled at me, but went on rapidly. "i am not asking advice of counsel on this,--i am acting on my own responsibility. i cannot take the risk of giving myself up to the authorities. i know what that means. i am going away,--there is nothing else to do. but i could not go without coming here for a moment. you--my friends--have a right to ask an account of me." he paused for a second in his rapid speech, and then went on with a deeper ring in his voice. "the newspaper story is true, so far as my conviction by a texas court fifteen years ago goes. but i was convicted through a mistake. i am innocent of murder. but i could not prove it. that--" he laughed somewhat unsteadily, and his eyes held miss thurston's,--"that is the story of my life." we had none of us moved while he spoke, partly because he was so still himself, partly from a feeling of overshadowing danger which might descend if we stirred. but now katherine thurston moved toward him and he took a step to meet her. i think they had both forgotten all the rest of the world. "couldn't you have trusted me?" she asked, in tenderest reproach. "i couldn't trust myself," he answered in a low voice. "ah, there you were wrong!" she said quickly. "so many years! and now--" "now i must go and see if there is any way to gather up the broken fragments." "could i not help in some way? may i not go with you?" she asked simply. "you _would_ do that?" he demanded. "anywhere," she answered. he lifted her fingers to his lips and hid their trembling upon her white hand. "no, you cannot go," he said, with a break in his voice. "then i will wait for you here," she said. "oh, my god!" he breathed. we came to our senses then, and mrs. whyte swept us out into the hall with one wave of her matronly arm. they must have that moment of complete understanding to themselves. we hovered at the foot of the stairs, waiting to speak again with clyde, yet too upset in our minds to have any clear idea of what we could suggest or needed to ask. mrs. whyte, in a surge of emotion, caught jean to her buxom bosom,--against which the child looked like a star-flower on a brocaded silk hillock. jean's eyes were shining,--and not her eyes alone; her whole face was alight with a tender radiance. whyte gripped my shoulder to turn my attention. "see here, hilton, he mustn't run away. it would look like guilt. you must tell him, as a lawyer, that it would be the worst thing he could do. if he is innocent, the law will protect him,--" "the law has already condemned him," i reminded him. "the situation is difficult. he is not a man merely accused, his defense unpresented. he has been tried, convicted, and sentenced." "good heavens!" he gasped. "then if he puts himself in the hands of the law, there will be nothing left but to see the execution of the sentence? is that what you mean?" "yes. that is the situation. there have been cases where men who had escaped from prison have lived for years exemplary lives and reached civic honors, yet, when recognized and apprehended, they had to go back to prison and serve out the unexpired sentence of the man condemned years before." "but if the sentence was unwarranted?" "of course we would try to make a fight on it," i said, but without much confidence. "but the sentence was pronounced by a duly qualified court, and it will not be easy to upset it at this late day. it would be a thousand times harder now to find any evidence there may be in his favor than it could have been then, when the events were fresh in the memory of everybody. and unless we can discover some new evidence having a bearing on the matter, we would have no ground on which to ask for a re-opening of the case." "that's terrible," he said. then, dropping his voice, "is the death penalty in force there?" i nodded. "the man was a fool to hang around home," whyte protested energetically, as he took the situation in. "why didn't he have sense enough to go to south america or africa, or the south sea islands when he first escaped?" as if in answer to his question, the library door opened, and katherine thurston stood framed in the doorway. she had the same curiously still air that i had noticed when she stood on the stairs,--as though her spirit had found the way into a region of mysterious peace. "he has gone," she said quietly. there was a sudden tap at the front door, and then, without further warning or delay, it was opened, and a police officer stood there. "is mr. clyde in the house?" he asked directly. "no," whyte answered. the officer glanced about the room with a swift survey of us all. "he's gone, then?" he said. no one answered. "sorry to have troubled you," he said, touching his helmet, and immediately went out. we heard low voices and hurried steps passing around the house. "oh, they'll find him!" cried mrs. whyte in dismay. "he can't have got a safe distance yet." "hush!" warned whyte. he stepped to the library and looked out. then after a moment he came back to us. "they are watching the house. the longer they watch, the better! do you know his plans, hilton?" i shook my head. miss thurston had faded away like a wraith but mrs. whyte and jean were hanging on our words. "no, i have no idea where he is going, or what he means to do. the police are very close on his heels. i confess it looks dubious that he will get very far." jean laughed out suddenly and clapped her hands together. "why, of course he will escape! after they have come to know about each other!" she exclaimed. "nothing else would be possible, _now!_" whyte and i exchanged glances. as a matter of fact, we would all like to live in a rose-colored world, where things would happen of necessity as they do in properly constructed fairy tales, but it takes the confidence of a jean to announce such faith in the face of unsympathetic experience. chapter xiv tangled heart-strings there was racing and chasing on saintsbury lea the next morning. the office of the samovar was besieged by people who wanted to know whether the charge against clyde was a campaign lie, a poor joke, or a startling truth. reporters and inquiring friends camped on clyde's doorstep, blockaded his office,--and insisted on extracting some information from his lawyer! information is a valuable commodity which a lawyer is trained not to give away for nothing, so my visitors went away not much wiser than they came. "has clyde been arrested?" was asked everywhere. apparently not. "but why didn't burleigh, in the interests of justice, give his information to the police before publishing it broadcast and giving clyde a chance to get away?" probably burleigh cared more for a samovar scoop than for the interests of justice, and more for helping the campaign against clyde than for either. possibly, also, he did not care to take upon himself the responsibility of lodging a formal accusation against clyde. he might, in that case, be held responsible for it. "but how had clyde got the warning?" nobody knew. he had simply disappeared. of course his disappearance was considered equivalent to a confession of guilt. the wires were hot with his description, and the noon editions had columns of conjecture and reassuring reports that the police were in possession of valuable clues which could not be made public. i could barely get time to run through my accumulated mail. a good part of this related to alfred barker. i had started inquiries backward along the shadowy track of that slippery gentleman's career, hoping that i might come across some trail of diavolo's in that direction. so far as results went, mr. barker might have been the most commonplace and harmless of mortals. he had lived here, he had done business there, he had been through bankruptcy and he had been promoter of several business schemes that were little better than bankruptcy, but chiefly he had managed to be unknown for long intervals. how some of those intervals were filled, i could in a manner guess. probably his venture as business manager for diavolo was an instance. and that one had not been particularly successful financially, except in the deal with jordan, if i might regard barker's note-book as an accounting of the profits. i was busy in an inner office, trying to assimilate my mail, when fellows, my clerk, brought me word that miss thurston was waiting to see me. as i knew we should be liable to interruptions in the outer office, i had him bring her in. i saw at a glance that this was a different woman from the self-possessed woman of the world i had known. she was human, womanly. her eyes met mine with a shy appeal for sympathy. "we all come to you for advice," she said with a deprecating smile. "that is the chief compensation of my profession." "there are three things that i want to speak to you about," she continued. "first, mr. clyde's safety. i have been thinking about things all night, turning them in my mind one way and another, and that is the point that must be considered first. if he is taken, or gives himself up, what prospect is there that he will ever be cleared?" "very little, miss thurston. you wish me to be frank." "i want to know the exact truth. in the eyes of the law, he is merely an escaped convict?" "yes." she was perfectly quiet and self-controlled. i could see that she merely expected me to confirm the impression which her intelligence had already discerned. she did not hesitate in her quiet speech. "then the second thing is to get word to him. i have written him a letter." (she laid it on my table,--a nice, thick letter it was, too!) "i have told him in this letter that i am ready to go with him to any island of the sea or desert jungle where he will be safe. i want you to know, because it may happen that you will get word to him only by telegraphing. but tell him what i have told you, if you cannot give him my letter. if you should see him, the letter will be enough to make him understand. and if he should hesitate on my account, and talk about not letting me sacrifice myself,--he may, you know,--will you make him--understand?" there was a mist in her eyes as she finished. if she looked at clyde with that look, he would have to be a man of iron not to yield! "trust me to do the very best i can to deliver your commission. but clyde has disappeared, as you know. i may not hear from him before you do." "yes, i know. i am only providing for the chance,--in case you do. i have been thinking of everything, trying to put myself into his mind, and i think he will come or send to you." she spoke with quiet assurance. "i shall be only too glad to serve you--or him." "then there is another matter." a slightly embarrassed air replaced the fine lack of self-consciousness which i had been admiring. "i wish that you would tell eugene benbow." i felt myself stiffen. unconsciously i was politely obtuse. "tell him what? i beg pardon!" "tell him about mr. clyde's escape and--everything that has gone before." "oh, yes, certainly. he will be interested." "and tell him--about my message." "you wish him to know?" i asked, in a matter-of-fact manner. "yes, i wish him to know,--but i don't want to be the one to tell him." "you think it will hurt him?" i asked, determined to draw her out, since she had given me the opening. i realized that to women emotions are facts, and that impressions, attitudes and relations are quite as substantial as any of the more material things of which the law takes notice. it might be that the key to gene's mysteriousness lay in emotions rather than in facts. she lifted her eyes with something of an effort, but i saw that she had determined to treat me with frankness. "it probably _will_ hurt him," she said, "but it will be salutary." "in the long run, yes. but--poor fellow!" "i know! but it wasn't my fault. you know a boy of his poetic and romantic sort simply has to adore someone, and i even thought it was better for him to waste his emotional efflorescence on me than on some woman who might not have understood." "i am quite sure you are right," i said. but at the same time i could not help a feeling of dumb sympathy with poor gene, and a certain impatience with her philosophic view of the situation. as kipling says, it is easy for the butterfly upon the load to preach contentment to the toad. the toad, too, has some rights. "besides, he knew always--or, at least, for a long time--that mr. clyde was more to me than anyone else. he always was," she continued bravely, "even in the old times, before--anything happened. and i knew, as a girl does, that i was more to him than anyone else. then, when he drew away and would not say what i had expected, of course i was hurt and angry and very, very unhappy. but when years and years had gone by, and i saw that what i wanted was not coming, i determined to keep him as a friend. i knew that something had happened, something against his will. so i realized that it was wrong to blame him, and that i must keep what i could have, on the best terms possible. it was really eugene that made me come to this understanding of myself." "i see." "of course gene knew from the beginning that it was a case of the moth and the star,--don't smile! i mean simply on account of our respective ages, of course. but to make sure that he should not misunderstand, i--told him something about mr. clyde." "that was fine and generous of you," i cried warmly, ashamed of my momentary reproach. she flushed with sensitive appreciation of my change of attitude. "i even told him that if he could ever render a service to mr. clyde, it would be the same as if he did it for me. i thought it would be a good thing to awaken his chivalry in that way." "but you had no reason at that time to suppose that mr. clyde was in danger?" "no specific reason," she said, with some hesitation. "but i felt that something overshadowed him. a woman knows things without reason, sometimes." "and you told eugene?" "yes. partly i wanted to let him feel there was something he could do for me,--you understand. and partly, too, i wanted to enlist his interest for mr. clyde, if an opportunity should ever come up where he needed help that eugene could give. you never can tell." "you can't ordinarily," i admitted. "but at present poor gene has put himself out of the way of doing a service for anyone. his hands will be tied for a long time." "but--you do think there is a possibility of getting him off, don't you? he is so young!" miss thurston rose as she spoke, and in spite of her kindly tone in regard to gene, i could see that the important part of the interview was over when clyde passed out of our conversation. "of course i should not admit anything else," i answered, and she departed, leaving me impressed anew with the important part which women play in the affairs of men. truly, sentiments may be stronger than ropes, and emotions more devastating than floods. and the woman who is all tenderness and quivering watchfulness for one man will be as indifferent as nature to the sufferings of another. i was sorry for gene. prison was not the worst of his trials. it was not a particularly pleasant mission on which miss thurston had sent me. i went to the jail for an interview with gene with very uncomfortable anticipations. it isn't pleasant to hit a man whose hands are tied,--and that my communication would be in the nature of a blow to him i could not doubt. he looked nervous and harassed, and the innate courtesy which characterized him was, i felt, the only thing that kept him from resenting my visit. "i hope you haven't come to talk about that wretched barker," he said at once, trying to smile, but betraying the effort in the attempt. "not unless you wish to." he shook his head. "no. i told you all about it once. i don't want to think about it any more. it makes me--ill." "very well. we'll gossip about our friends instead. have you heard about clyde?" he half turned aside, but answered with apparent indifference. "yes, they let me see the papers." "he has disappeared, it seems. there has been no trace of him, yet." there was a hint of youthful scorn in his voice as he answered. "well, if he likes to live that way. i think on the whole i should prefer to give myself up and have it over with." "clyde insists that he is innocent. that would of course make a difference in the feeling about giving oneself up. his conscience is not involved in the question. besides," i added, seeing my chance to discharge miss thurston's commission, "he has to think not alone of himself. miss thurston's happiness is bound up in his safety." the boy did not speak. i could feel, however, that he was holding every nerve tense. i knew what he wanted to know, and i went on, with as casual an air as i could muster. "it seems that they have been in love with each other for years, but of course with the knowledge that this possibility of exposure was hanging over him, he could not speak. now that it is out, and the worst is known, they have come to an understanding. it was inevitable, under the circumstances." "do you mean she will marry him?" he asked, in a low voice. "probably, in time. for the present, of course his whereabouts are unknown. but i should think that probably, in the end, she will go to him. at her age," i added deliberately, "a woman has a right to choose her fate. she will not go to it in ignorance." he laughed, but without mirth. "as you say, she is old enough to know her own mind," he said, somewhat brutally. then he added, bitterly, "it seems i did not shoot barker quite soon enough." "why _did_ you shoot him?" i asked. his eyes fell. "because he killed my father." then he turned his shoulder to me with an impatient gesture. "i told you i would not talk about that any more." and he wouldn't. for all his good manners, my client had a vein of obstinacy that was almost as useful, in case of need, as plain rudeness would have been. when i left gene, i fell in with some friends who insisted upon having me give an account of myself over a dinner at the club, so it was something after nine when i reached my rooms. i lived at that time, as i think i may have mentioned, in an apartment hotel. my own suite was on the third floor. as i stepped out of the elevator, i saw three men lounging in the neighborhood of my door. they saw me, and set up a shout of "here he is," which brought in two more who had apparently been taking the air on the fire-escape. "to what am i indebted,--?" i began. they grinned cheerfully and simultaneously. "oh, we just wanted to find out if you couldn't give us a story about clyde," the foremost explained,--and i recognized the clan. they were reporters on the trail of breakfast food for the great american public. "come in, and tell me what you want to find out," i said resignedly. "if you can extract any information from my subconscious self, i hope you will share it with me." "you'll read it in the papers to-morrow," said the cheerful tall one. "have you any idea where clyde is?" "why, yes," i answered thoughtfully,--and they all leaned forward like dogs on a leash. "of course it is only a guess,--" "yes, yes, we understand," they chorused eagerly. "well, gentlemen, i figure it out this way. mr. clyde did not possess an aeroplane, and it is extremely doubtful that he was able to borrow one before he left. the most rapid means of transportation available to him would therefore be the automobile or the chou chou cars. he has been gone about twenty-four hours. multiply twenty-four hours by forty miles and you get the radius of a circle of which saintsbury is the center--" they interrupted my demonstration with shouts and jeers. "you trifle with the power of the press," said the tall one. "wait till to-morrow morning and you will see what happens to your remarks. the public will have reason to understand that we have reason to understand that mr. hilton has reason to understand that mr. clyde is not a thousand miles distant from saintsbury at this time!" while i had been speaking, my eye had fallen upon the stub of a cigar on the mantel. now, i had not been in my room since morning,--and i do not smoke before luncheon. while i talked nonsense to the men, my mind was engaged with that cigar stub. i had no reason to suppose that the chambermaids on that floor smoked, and nobody else was supposed to have access to my rooms. i sauntered across the room and picked up the stub and tossed it in the grate. it was fresh and moist. my eye went about the room. half a dozen books from my shelves were lying about,--and it was absurd to suppose that the chambermaids had been indulging in my favorite brands of literature. "let me offer you a cigar, gentlemen," i said, and went to the adjoining bedroom, closing the door behind me. my cigars were not in the bedroom, but the excuse served. there, with his feet on my best embroidered cushions, with my choicest edition de luxe on his knees and a grin on his face, sat clyde. chapter xv the outlaw i shook my head at clyde, and returned to the sitting room. "have you seen clyde since the news came out, mr. hilton?" the energetic reporter demanded, as i was passing the cigars around. "i have been out of town. i only returned last evening." "it seems that he left his office without any instructions, and nobody knows how to get his orders. and at his home nothing is known. he simply walked out of the door and disappeared." "then the chances are that he is far enough away by this time." "but he'll be caught," the man said confidently. "it is one of the hardest things in the world for a man to be lost in this world of rapid communication. his description has been wired all over the country. the police in every city in the land will have their eyes open. sooner or later--and the chances are that it will be sooner--some one will tap him on the shoulder and say, 'you're wanted, mr. clyde.' and he'll forget himself and answer to the name. they all do it. sooner or later." he wagged his head wisely. "that's so," chimed in the others, and story after story was told of the unconscious way in which men in hiding would betray themselves. it was entertaining enough, but i was on needles to have them go, and i got rid of them as soon as i could. i waited until i saw them actually leave the building before i dared let clyde out of the bedroom. he came out smiling and undisturbed. "are your prophetic friends safely out of the way?" he asked. "all gone. how in the name of mystery did you get in here?" "you look more surprised than hospitable!" "and more anxious than either, i dare say, if my looks show my feelings. how are you going to get away?" "walk away. and very soon. but first, i wonder if you could get me something to eat. absurd how dependent we civilized beings are on our meals! there may be more serious matters to be considered, but at present my chief anxiety is as to whether you happen to have a box of crackers and a piece of cheese in your rooms." "we'll do better than that," i answered, and i promptly telephoned to a near-by restaurant for a substantial meal. "now, while we are waiting, tell me how you got in," i said. "oh, that was easy. i simply walked up. i thought i should find you, but you are an abominably early riser. the maids were cleaning the rooms, and so i simply watched for an opportunity to slip into one room while they were in the other. you have comfortable diggings here, and i commend your taste in pictures, but i vow i never saw so hungry a place in my life." "have you really had nothing all day?" "nothing since yesterday noon. it was about the middle of the afternoon yesterday that a fellow came to my office,--a man i had never seen. he told me that he was a typesetter on the samovar. 'beg pardon,' he said, 'but you're mr. clyde, aren't you?' i acknowledged it. he said, 'i'm a machine operator on the samovar, and i had a "take" just now that had a story about you in it. some dirty story about your having been convicted of murder and escaping before you were hung.' 'indeed?' i said. 'it was kind of you to warn me. to whom am i indebted?' he looked down and shuffled his feet. 'oh, i'm nothing but a machine operator, but i don't want to see a man that is bucking the ring knifed.' and that is all that i know about him." "some local politician, probably." "yes," he laughed. "it is a queer world, the way we are bound up with each other. if i hadn't accepted that nomination on the citizens' ticket, that bow-legged little machine man, who probably had to lose a day's wage to get away and warn me, would never have bothered. he took the trouble because i was _his_ candidate." "by the way, i saw miss thurston to-day. she gave me this letter to get to you if i should have a chance." and i gave him her letter and turned away to arrange his supper while he should read it. i rather fancy he forgot his hunger for a few minutes. i could guess something of what miss thurston must have written by his face. it was white with emotion when he finished. he put the letter into his pocket-book, carefully. then he turned to me, half laughing but without speaking, and wrung my hand. we understood each other without anything further. "what, specifically, did you come back for?" i asked, while he was eating. "well, partly because the enemy would be looking for me elsewhere, but chiefly because i had to get some money. how much have you about you?" i emptied my pockets and spread the loot before him. "not so bad," he said. "i'll give you a check for it, and date it yesterday. then i should like to have you, as my lawyer, take possession of the papers in my desk. there are insurance policies that have to be taken care of, and some other matters that can't be neglected. and the lord knows when i can come back." "no one else knows," i assured him. he smiled. i could see that he was too uplifted to really care very much about such trivialities as i had my mind upon. "you don't advise me to stay and brazen it out, then?" he said, quizzically. "on the contrary, i advise you to clear out. i don't see the ghost of a chance for you if the law gets its hands upon you." "then a judicial error can never be corrected?" "the only thing that would give us any excuse for reopening the case would be some new evidence having a bearing on the situation. have you any reason to suppose that you can unearth any significant facts now which you could not discover when the affair was fresh in the memory of everyone?" he shook his head. "no. that looks hopeless, i must admit. you advise me, then, to bury myself somewhere beyond reach of the extradition laws?" "exactly. and, considering everything, i can imagine worse fates." he smiled. "so can i," he said musingly. for a man with a price on his head, he seemed singularly happy. it was clear that the letter in his pocket was the most potent writ in the world just then. then he put dreams aside, and gave me specific directions as to certain matters of business that he wished looked after. it was on toward eleven o'clock before our talk was finished, and he rose to his feet. "what are your plans now?" i asked. "to get out of town, first. i must walk. let me have that stick of yours, will you? i think i shall have to go stooping over a cane, to escape notice. and when i have an address to give you, i'll let you know." "all right," i agreed. he pulled his hat into a bedraggled shape over his ears, and walked stiffly about the room, bent over the cane. i had not guessed him so good an actor. i walked with him down the street a few minutes later,--and i knew that he carried a lighter heart into exile than he had carried through all the popularity and success of the last fifteen years. after making sure that he was not followed or observed, i left him, and returned home. i took a different route, one that brought me through a little park, where a fountain plashed in the soft night air, and the trees bent over the benches whereon homeless tramps and cosy "twos" enjoyed the last minute of freedom. as i crossed the park by one of the diagonal asphalt paths, my eye was caught by the familiar aspect of the drooping shoulders of a man who sat beside a girl on a secluded bench. it looked like fellows. he moved slightly, and i saw that i was not mistaken. that he should be spending the evening in the park was not remarkable, but that he should be in close conversation with a girl was distinctly surprising. but i was very glad to see it. a girl would be the best panacea for his moodiness. i would not embarrass him by giving any sign of recognition. i therefore walked past with my eyes ahead, but just as i came opposite, the girl moved and the light of the street lamp fell on her face. i had seen her before,--for a minute i could not remember where. then it came to me. she was minnie doty, mr. ellison's housemaid. how in the name of wonder had fellows picked up an acquaintance with her? i wished afterwards that my delicacy had not led me to go by without speaking. chapter xvi the gift-bond for some days i was so much occupied with clyde's affairs, and other business matters which demanded my professional attention, that i saw little of any of my friends in a social way, but toward the end of the week mr. whyte asked me over the telephone to come up to dinner. i was only too glad to go, but i confess that when i saw jean was not expected, i was so disappointed that i began wondering how i could cut the evening short enough to give me a chance to run in at the next door. "i asked jean to come over," said mrs. whyte, unconsciously answering my unspoken question, "but the dear child had something else on for this evening." mr. whyte chuckled without disguise. "jean has a beau," he said, with an air. "and if she has, carroll," mrs. whyte took him up, with instant sex-championship, "it is nothing to make remarks about. jean is quite old enough to receive attention, and he is an unexceptionable young man. i don't think it is delicate of you to make comments." "who is making the comments?" he demanded good-humoredly. "well, you _implied_ comments, and i don't want you to do it when jean is around. when a girl has no mother and is, besides, as wilful as jean is,--and she _is_ wilful, katherine, although i admit she is charming about it, and i should be in love with her myself if i were a man,--the sooner such a girl is married to a steady young man, the better." "is the steady young man mr. garney?" i asked. the annoyance with which i had observed his prostration before jean probably betrayed itself in my voice, for miss thurston looked up to answer reassuringly. "oh, it is not a serious matter. mr. garney was a friend of eugene's, and jean, bless her heart, would listen to a jointed doll if it could say 'gene.' besides, it was mr. ellison who asked him to come over this evening. he seems to have quite taken mr. garney up,--has him over frequently." "by the way, clara," said mr. whyte, "i asked ellison for that contribution to your day nursery. you would have done better to ask him yourself. he turned me down hard,--said he had just had to make a thousand dollar payment unexpectedly and was hard up." the talk shifted, but i confess it had made me uncomfortable. i had had nothing against garney until i saw him bowled over by jean, and then i immediately took a violent dislike to him. yet she probably regarded his devotion merely as pleasantly flattering. i was uncommonly glad, therefore, to find jean waiting for me in my office the next afternoon. fellows was away, and she was sitting at my desk in a stillness that was more than patient. it was tense. an odd-shaped package was clasped in her hands. "well, little story-book girl, are you waiting for the prince?" i hailed her. there was something in her sweet absurdities that always made me feel as though we were playing a game. "i was waiting for you," she said sedately. "lucky me! and poor disappointed prince! i can see him, in a green velvet suit, with a long, dejected feather in his drooping cap, waiting around the corner of your imagination for you to give a glance in his direction. that's all that would be necessary to bring him to life. instead of that, you are wasting your thoughts--wasting them according to _his_ notion, of course, not mine!--on a chap who is already alive!" she smiled perforce at my foolery, but her smile was a trifle tremulous. i felt a trouble back of it, that must be treated respectfully. "is there anything the matter, miss jean?" i asked. "there's gene!" she said, a little reproachfully. her eyes searched mine. "oh, i know! of course! but there isn't anything new?" she hesitated the barest moment. "that's enough," she breathed. "but _that_ is coming out all right!" i said reassuringly. she turned her questioning eyes upon me again, and her look went deeper than ever before. it suddenly struck me that i was foolish to insist upon regarding and treating her as a child. her eyes were unfathomable, but the mystery that veiled them belonged to womanhood, rather than to childhood. "do you say that just to keep me from fretting," she asked gravely, "or do you really know anything that is going to save gene? really and truly clear him and--and give him back to me?" the seriousness and maturity of her manner had so impressed me--i was on the point of saying "had so imposed on me," and i don't know but what that would be the right word--that i took the hazard of answering her with the bare and simple truth. "no, i don't know anything that is going to clear your brother. but i have a confidence which i feel sure is going to mean a victory. i can't say anything more. but it is a long time yet to the trial." she seemed to shiver a little at the word, and withdrew her eyes. i waited for a moment, thinking that if she had any special anxiety on her mind she would of necessity betray it if left to herself, but when she spoke it was on a totally different matter. "you are going away?" it was a statement rather than a question. "what makes you think that?" i parried. i had indeed a very definite intention of going away, but i hadn't mentioned it to anyone, and i didn't care to have my plans known. "why, i thought you would probably go to hunt up mr. clyde. when you find him, i wish you would give him this." and she handed me an old letter in a faded envelope. "but you are quite likely to see mr. clyde as soon as i do," i protested. "i'd rather you had it," she said vaguely. "there is no hurry. sometime he would like to have it. it is an old letter that my father wrote to my mother many years ago. he mentions mr. clyde in it, and says nice things about him, so i thought he might like to keep it." "i am sure he would," i said warmly. "you are a dear little girl to think of it. and if you really want me to take charge of it, i will. i shall probably see mr. clyde sometime, or at least hear from him. but i shall be jealous of mr. clyde pretty soon. here you give me an interesting letter, to be handed on to mr. clyde. and miss thurston gives me a lovely thick letter--but not for me at all, only for me to hand to mr. clyde. happy mr. clyde!" she listened with an uncertain smile and wistful eyes, as though she were holding back some brooding thought. there was something odd in her manner that half worried me. "i have something for you, too," she said after a moment. "i have been looking through an old trunk of keepsakes that i keep at uncle howard's,--things that belonged to my mother, mostly,--letters and presents from my father, and all marked. she had kept that letter because it was written on her birthday, once, when he was away from home. and then--" he hesitated a moment, and then extended the package to me,--"this is for you, if you will please take it, as a keepsake." "how sweet of you," i murmured. but when i unwrapped the packet, i was dumbfounded. it was a beautiful mother-of-pearl cigar case, mounted in silver, and set with an elaborate monogram in small diamonds. "why, child!" i exclaimed in protest. "it was my father's," she explained. "it was a presentation thing,--he was always getting them. you see, he was always doing splendid things for people. i like to remember that he was that kind of a man." "but shouldn't it go to gene?" "no, he gave it to me for my very own, because i was so proud of it. i want you to have it,--to remember me by." "i'm not going to forget you,--ever," i said, taking both her hands in mine. forget her! i realized at that moment that i had taken her for granted as belonging in my life permanently. i simply could not imagine having her go out of it. the idea raised a queer sort of tumult within me. "then you will take it," she said, again pressing the case upon me. "because i want you to have it,--i want you to." "i am very proud to have it," i said gravely. to refuse that urgent voice, those beseeching eyes, would have been impossible. i'm not a graven image. she beamed at my acceptance. it was exactly like a rain-drenched flower lifting its head again. "and i want a good-bye present from you to me, too," she said with a sort of breathless haste, leaning toward me in her eagerness. "a 'good-bye' present! why, my going away is not serious enough for all that ceremony. i shall be back before you really know that i have gone." "but you'll give me something, won't you?" she persisted, putting my disclaimer aside. "some little thing, you know! your pencil, or something like that." "i can do better by you than that," i cried gaily. i opened my office safe and took from it' the locket with the emerald heart of which i have already spoken. it was the only thing i possessed which could by any stretch of courtesy be considered a worthy exchange for the cigar case. her eyes widened like a child's at the sight of the trinket. "but not for me, surely," she cried. "for no one else in the world. i got it, intending it for this portrait of my mother,--which you see i am going to take out; it doesn't fit very well;--and then i discovered that my mother hated the idea of emeralds. so you see it hadn't been intended for her, really. it was waiting for you,--if you will accept it. you don't dislike emeralds?" she did not answer except by a little choked laugh, but her face was eloquent for her. suddenly she lifted the locket to her lips. "oh, come!" i cried, feeling that i must somehow break the tension under which she was laboring. "perfume on the violets is nothing to such extravagance as kisses on the emeralds. speaking of violets, let us go down and see if barney has any to-day. he might, by luck. if he has, we'll buy him out." i picked up the cigar case to put it away, and i confess i was on the point of putting it into my safe when some instinct struck me between the eyes and i pretended i had only gone there to lock up. i brought the case back in my hand, then formally transferred the cigars from my own case to it, tossed that into the waste-basket, and slipped the be-diamonded thing into my pocket as calmly as though diamonds were my daily wear. she beamed, and for the first time the trouble that had been hovering in her eyes seemed to melt quite away. "oh, thank you!" she cried. "you _do_ understand beautifully. i think you are a story-book man yourself." "do you know, i always have felt that i had undeveloped capacities in that direction," i admitted confidentially. "only it took a story-book girl to find them out. come, we will celebrate the day with violets." barney had heaps of violets, fortunately, and we had great fun finding places to fasten them upon her. barney needed only a crumb of encouragement to show himself up picturesquely, and i was glad to set him going, for i wanted to see the shadow on jean's face entirely disappear. they had become good friends on their own account, it seemed, and jean was cheeking him delightfully in return for some of his sly remarks, when suddenly she stopped and i felt a little shiver run through her. another man had stopped before barney's stand,--mr. garney, the latin tutor. his eyes were so eagerly intent upon jean that he hardly took note of my presence. "you look like flora herself, miss benbow," he said, raising his hat. "are violets your favorites?" (i saw that he was laying the information away for future reference, and i wanted to choke him on the spot.) "they are to-day," she answered, demurely. "but i may prefer something else to-morrow." (wasn't that neat, and dear of her?) i was very glad to have this opportunity of seeing jean and mr. garney together, because i admit that mrs. whyte's gossip had disturbed me. i therefore made no move to hurry jean away, but pretended to talk to barney while i watched the other two together. i fancy barney understood the situation pretty well, for he glanced shrewdly from me to mr. garney and back, as though he would see if i, too, understood. but the result of my observation of their mutual attitude was wholly reassuring. garney was crazy about her, of course,--that was obvious. but jean was heart-whole and unimpressed. of that i felt quite sure, and i recognized the fact with a relief that measured my previous disturbance. so long as she was not dazzled, no harm could come of it. he couldn't marry her against her will! how well i remember all the trivial events of that afternoon! after loading her down with violets, we went to a confectioner's and had some gorgeous variety of ice-cream, and i did my best to restore her to her usual rose-colored view of life. she responded beautifully, and we had a very gay time. but when i left her at her own door, finally, the wistfulness returned. "you _are_ going away, aren't you?" she asked. "why, i shall have to, in order to feel that i have a right to keep that cigar-case, since it was given to me as a good-bye present." she stood very still for a moment, searching me with her deep eyes. then she put out her hand impulsively. "good-bye," she said breathlessly, and fled into the house. chapter xvii a voice from the past the next day brought me a strange letter from william jordan, the defrauded farmer whom i had left in eden valley. he wrote: "dear mr. hilton:--i don't know as i ought to say anything, because maybe it ain't you after all, and if it be you, i suppose you don't want me to know or you would have guve your name, but at the same time i don't see who else it could be, and i ain't used to taking presents without saying thank you. this is what i mean. i got a letter from the first national bank at saintsbury the other day and there was a cashier's check for $1000 in it, for me, and nothing to explain why they sent it. i wrote to find out if it was a mistake and they say no they sent it per instructions but can't give no names. i suppose it is meant to make up for the thousand that diavolo got, but nobody knows about him but you. anyhow i am very thankful, and if you don't want the thanks yourself you can pass them on to the right party if you know who he is. "your respectively, "william jordan." i wrote promptly to mr. jordan telling him that i was not his unknown benefactor and that i was almost as interested as he could be in learning who the donor was. it was clearly significant. whoever had sent it _knew!_ whether the restitution was prompted by remorse or by benevolence, it indicated knowledge of the loss. i laid the situation before fellows, who already knew about jordan. "do you think you can possibly discover who bought that check?" he looked dubious. "bank business is always confidential." "well, it's up to you, because i am going away for a trip. but i'll give you a starter. howard ellison's account may possibly show a similar debit." "mr. ellison has been buying some new microscopes and other apparatus," fellows said casually. "how in the world do you know that?" i asked. fellows was the most surprising fellow. he flushed and looked embarrassed. i did not press the point, because i knew if he didn't want to answer he wouldn't. "ellison certainly had some connection with barker," i said, watching him. "there was a check of ellison's in barker's pocket when he was killed." fellows looked up with interest. "then that would belong to his widow. if he has one," he added, as an afterthought. "undoubtedly it would." "may i ask if you know the amount?" "two hundred and fifty." he looked disappointed. "you think that isn't enough to induce her to come forward?" "oh, i suppose it might be worth claiming," he said slowly. "but i think his widow's chief gain is in her freedom from a rascal." "you can't help sympathizing with the man who shot him, can you?" i said. his cheek twitched. perhaps it was a checked smile. "i sympathize with him and i think he did a service to the community," he said in a low voice. "you are probably quite right," i mused. "and yet the law would not see it in that light." "oh, the law!" he said, with the contempt that the blind goddess never failed to arouse. jean had been right in guessing that i meant to go away, but she was wrong in thinking that it was on clyde's account. probably i should have taken her more into my confidence, but it is always my impulse, both personally and professionally, to work out my theories by myself, without discussing them. the truth of the matter was that i was still on the trail of diavolo. i had found, in my accumulated mail, a report of his appearance in a small missouri town at a date somewhat later than the shows on the route i had already traced. it struck me that there might be significance both in the date and the distance. the jordan coup had probably frightened them a little. they had jumped to this far-away point for one engagement, and then had retired to private life, barker coming to saintsbury. on the bare chance of discovering some particulars that might have significance, i set out for this town. i believe that i was upheld secretly by a feeling that somewhere, somehow, sometime, the truth would be revealed, if i only followed the trail long enough. at first i was met with the same baffling haze of obscurity. the local manager had taken diavolo on as an emergency to fill a blank caused by the illness of a scheduled performer for that week. he doubted that he had appeared anywhere else in the state. he had never heard of him before, but was persuaded by barker's fluency to give him a show, especially as his price was cheap. "that manager of his, barker, said that diavolo was a great man who had given shows long ago but was getting too high up in the world now to have his name connected with the business. said he was really out of the business, but was making a little tour incog. to get some ready money, and as he had the newspaper reports to show from other places, i took him on." "did he make good?" "you bet. he's the goods, all right. say, it's a funny stunt, isn't it? i'm used to fake mysteries, of course,--i see enough of that sort. but when you run up against the real thing, like what diavolo put up, it makes you feel the devil is in it, for a fact. don't it, now?" "it does. and i want to catch him. do you know anything that would help me to identify him? if you wanted him again, how would you go to work to find him?" "look up barker." "but barker is dead, and his knowledge has died with him." the manager shook his head. "you've got your work cut out for you, then. barker was the only one to come into the open. diavolo always stood back and let barker do the talking. might have thought diavolo was deaf and dumb for all you heard of him until he stepped out on the stage. then he talked all right,--stage patter, of course, but clever." "you think then that this was not his first appearance on the stage?" "hard to say. barker said he was an old un, but that he had given it up to go into something else,--something respectable. i didn't believe it at the time, on general principles, but maybe he was giving it to me straight." i then followed the trail to the hotel where diavolo had stopped, and here i encountered a girl who had her wits about her and knew how to use her eyes. she was the daughter of the landlady, and she acted as clerk, waitress, or chambermaid, as occasion required. she looked up with more than professional interest when i mentioned diavolo's name. "you mean that dude that was here in the summer and read people's thoughts at the orpheum? say, wasn't he great! know him?" "not so well as i hope to. what did he look like?" "oh, he had black hair and a beard, and eyes that kind of looked through you. say, it's hard to describe a man, you all look so much alike,--oh, _dress_ so much alike, you know. but diavolo was different, though i don't just know how to explain it. he was a sure-enough swell off the stage, wasn't he?" "what makes you think that?" "why, i heard that man that was with him,--barker, his name was,--i heard him say--you see, i was in the hall, and the transom of that room won't shut, so you just can't help hearing,--and barker had a high voice anyway, and he said, 'you're a fool to give it up.' i didn't know what he was giving up, of course, but barker went on, 'you can make money at this business hand over fist if you let me manage things, and you aren't making any money being respectable. what's respectability compared to the coin?' i often thought of that afterwards. there's something in it. and still, respectability is worth something," she added thoughtfully. "was that all you heard? what did diavolo say to that?" "oh, i couldn't hear anything he said, because he spoke so low, but barker said, kind of laughing, 'just remember that i've got you on the hip, my boy. if i mention in the right place that you and the hypnotist diavolo are one and the same, where will you be then?' and diavolo must 'a' said something angry, for i heard mr. barker say, kind of sarcastic, 'no, you won't kill me, nor you won't do any other fool thing. you'll join in with me for good and all and we'll gather in the shekels.' and then i heard something that sounded uncommon like a chair swung over a man's head,--i've seen them do that in the bar room when they got excited,--and mr. barker popped out of the room in a hurry. he was pretending to laugh but i could see that he was some scared inside. and i don't blame him. when diavolo looked at you, you didn't want to say that your soul was your own unless he gave you leave." "did he ever look at you?" i asked curiously. she tossed her saucy head. "that's different! no, he didn't try any of his hypnotizing tricks on me." "did you see any signs of bad feeling between them afterwards? was there any more quarrelling?" "not that i heard. i guess the little man knew better." "which one do you mean by the little man?" she shrugged her shoulders. "oh, mr. barker, of course. not that he _was_ much smaller than mr. diavolo if you weighed them, perhaps, but you know what i mean. mr. barker made me think of the man showing off the tiger at the circus. you could see that for all his show of not being afraid, he didn't dare turn his back for a minute." that remark seemed to me to express the situation very vividly, and i had no doubt that her native shrewdness had correctly grasped the relation between the two men. and her positive testimony that diavolo had threatened to kill barker if the latter divulged his identity was certainly significant. was it not most probable that that was what had happened later? how eugene benbow had become involved in the fatal affair i could not even guess. after my interviews with the manager and the landlady's daughter, i seemed to have sucked oakdale dry so far as information concerning diavolo went. but instead of returning at once to saintsbury, i determined to run on to houston. i wanted to go over the records of clyde's trial there, with a view to seeing whether there was any flaw or technicality of which it might be possible to take advantage. clyde was probably fleeing the country as fast as he could make his way by the underground, but there was always the possibility that his affairs might be brought to a sudden climax. i thought that the critical moment had arrived with unceremonious haste when, after registering in a houston hotel, i looked up and saw clyde himself crossing the lobby to take the elevator. for a moment i hesitated whether to accost him or not, but he saw me and at once turned back and came over. "hello! you here?" he said easily. "come on up to my room, if you aren't busy." "all right," i responded, making an effort to match his casual manner. when we reached his room, i saw that despite his self-possession he looked harassed and worn. the long inner strain had suddenly come to the surface. "you didn't come for me?" he asked nervously as we shook hands. "certainly not. i had no idea that you would be so rash, to use no stronger word, as to come here." he threw out his hands with a helpless gesture. "i couldn't help it. it seemed all along as though i _must_ be able to find some evidence in my favor if i came myself. i didn't dare to come before, for fear of a chance recognition, but now that the danger had appeared, i was driven to taking chances." "how long have you been here?" "twenty-four hours." "you are lucky to have remained undetected so long. now i hope you'll stay in your room till night and then get away as quickly and quietly as possible." "there's nothing else to do," he said heavily. "i have been to lester. the places are all changed and the people are new. everything has passed away--except the official record of the trial and the sentence." "of course it would all be changed," i said, as lightly as possible. "but i am going to examine the account of the trial and see if there was anything in the procedure which will give us a loophole. but you mustn't stay here to complicate matters. you must get away,--as i have told you before." he did not answer for a moment, but sat with bent head. then he spoke slowly. "i wonder if life would be worth having on the terms you suggest. expatriation, separation from everything that you care for, everyone who makes your public, from all your associations and ambitions,--" "you could establish new associations. you would see life from a different angle, and that is no small advantage. and--pardon me--you would not need to go alone." he looked up swiftly at that. "never! do you think that i would let--_anyone_ make so mad a choice?--dower her with such a life as i must live henceforward, dodging in the shadows, afraid of hearing my own name, an outlaw and a skulker? if i regard life for myself as of dubious value under such conditions, do you think i am so hopelessly mean as to ask anyone to share it with me?" of course i could understand his point of view, though he looked so handsome as he repudiated the idea that i guessed miss thurston would not have regarded the lot as wholly forlorn. "no," he said, walking restlessly up and down the narrow room, "i'll take my medicine, but i won't involve anyone else. i'll make as good a fight as i can, and i won't skulk,--" he was interrupted. there was a tap at the door, and immediately it was opened and a police officer stepped inside. he glanced from me to clyde and picked his man unerringly. "mr. clyde, i presume?" clyde nodded. "yes. you want me?" "yes, sir,"--deprecatingly. "you mean i am to go with you now?" "yes, sir,"--firmly. clyde smiled at me wryly. "i suppose i ought to know something of the etiquette of these affairs, but i am afraid i am not up. how about my personal papers? will i be allowed to turn them over to you?" "certainly, unless the officer has a warrant for them," i said, with an assured air, intended to impress the officer. clyde took from an inner pocket a packet of letters, old and worn. "these are the letters that took me back from lester," he said with a smile. "they were in the bag which i had left in my room at houston. that was the only reason i went back that morning. if--well, if the time should come when you think best, give them to k. t., and tell her that i have carried them always. she will understand then,--" "i will not fail," i said, much moved. so it had been katherine thurston all the time! "and that reminds me that i have here a letter which miss benbow charged me to give you,--an old letter written by her father. she thought you might care to keep it. perhaps, under the circumstances, you'd better read it and then return it to me for safe keeping." "i remember senator benbow very well,--a fine man!" clyde said. he spoke absently, and i guessed that his mind was on other matters, but i had no intention of letting him disregard jean's remembrance, or of letting the letter which she had treasured go into the hands of any careless court official. "it concerns you, she said. read it, and then i will take charge of it." i handed him the old letter in its faded envelope, and turned to speak to the officer while clyde should read it. the detective had watched us closely, but so long as clyde made no move to leave the room--or to draw a revolver--he showed no disposition to interfere with our arrangements. "how did you get information about him?" i asked the officer, merely to leave clyde to himself for a moment. "from saintsbury. the police there are looking for him, and they wired us to be on the lookout." "then you agree with jerome's theory that the villain always returns to the scene of his crime in the last act?" i said. "jerome? does he say that?" the man looked puzzled. "well, maybe he has found it so in new york. but i don't quite know what you mean by the last act." a faint sound from clyde made me turn. he was standing, supporting himself against the table, with a face so marked by emotion that i was startled into a cry. whether his emotion was terror or joy or merely awe, i could not tell from his look, his face was so curiously changed. he held out to me the letter which he had been reading, and when i took it he dropped into the chair by the table and let his head fall upon his arm. i felt that it was the unconscious attitude of prayer, and i unfolded the letter with more anxiety than i can express. this is what i read: "on the train, near lester, texas, "august 30th, 1895." "my dear love:--midnight has just blown across the sky, and here is the thirtieth,--the day for which i always stay awake so that i may send you a birthday greeting on the very first minute of time that has a right to carry it. i am throwing a kiss in your direction now, and if you are not conscious of it this minute, you will know when you receive this missive that although your devoted husband was traveling (and dead tired) he waited awake for the express purpose of saying 'happy birthday' to you into space. "i left houston an hour ago on my way to st. louis, and we have just passed lester, a little way station and our first stop. whom do you think i saw there, of all persons in the world? kenneth clyde! i didn't know that he was in this part of the country, and i can't imagine what he could want of lester, which, to judge from what i saw of it, consists of a platform, a freight shed, and three houses. he evidently had come up from houston on my train, though i didn't know it until i saw him jump off at lester and rush for the station agent, who was lounging by the shed. whatever he wanted he didn't get it, for he was rowing the agent so hard that he didn't see or hear me, though i hallooed to him. i suspect that he found he had got on the wrong train by mistake and wanted to get back. if so, he will have to wait until morning, when the local comes along,--long enough to cool his fit of temper. i like kenneth and believe he has the makings of a man in him, for all that he is somewhat unbroken. if i ever have a chance to hold out a helping hand to the boy, i'll certainly do it. "i'll be home in a fortnight, and i count the days until i shall see you, my own. kiss the two ingenious gene-iuses for their dad. joe." i caught clyde's hand and wrung it. "it's a miracle! that is, it is the new evidence which will give us a chance to re-open the case. and it is conclusive. man, there could never have been anything more complete. and to come now, at this moment!" "it is the helping hand that he offered," clyde said, with an unsteady laugh. "and little jean sent it to me, you say?" "yes. she had been looking over some old mementoes of her father, and she merely thought this letter might interest you because you were mentioned in it." the officer apparently thought we were taking too much time mooning over old family letters. "if you are ready, mr. clyde,--" he suggested courteously. "yes, all right. i'm ready. you will take the necessary steps, hilton?" "of course. i can't at this moment think of anything that would give me more pleasure. i'll go down with you at once." but i didn't. as we stepped into the hall, a boy with a telegram came toward me. it was a forwarded message from oakdale, where they had failed to find me: "come back to onct. there is a trouble on the girl. barney." "he means jean," i exclaimed, handing the slip to clyde. "i know he means jean. confound him for not being more explicit. what can have happened?" "you'll go at once, of course?" said clyde promptly. "i can't go till a train starts." and then i remembered how my going would affect clyde. "i'll have time to lay this letter of yours before the court before i go, in any event. and i shouldn't want to take any chances of a train wreck with that document in my pocket." but you can imagine the fever i was in till i could get off. i saw the proper officials and took the necessary steps to secure judicial recognition of the important paper which was to restore clyde's life, liberty, and happiness, and though he could not, of course, be released at a moment's notice, i had the satisfaction of seeing the procedure started that would enable him in a short time to face the world a free man, with the secret terror that had shadowed his life for fifteen years forever laid. but i went through it all like a man in a dream. through all that was said and done i was hearing every moment, like a persistent cry,-"come back at once! jeans needs you,--jean needs you!" after leaving the court house i still had hours--ages!--to wait at the station, and the pictures my imagination conjured up were not soothing company. i had telegraphed barney that i was coming, but after that i could do nothing but fret myself to a fever waiting. i got off, finally, but all through the night and all the next day the singing wheels of the train were beating out the refrain,-"she _needs_ me! she _needs_ me!" chapter xviii a rescue i had rather expected that when i reached saintsbury, barney would be on hand to give an explanation of his urgent message, but no barney was to be seen. i took a taxi to my office, which was across the street from barney's stand. for the first time within my memory, barney's stand was shut up and the owner gone. i told the chauffeur to wait and went up to my office. perhaps fellows could throw some light on things,--unless he too had disappeared. someone was there. i heard talking before i entered,--the loud and unfamiliar tones of a man's voice. i went in without knocking. fellows was there, at my desk. his start of surprise turned into unmistakable confusion as he saw me. his own chair was occupied by a pretty girl, whom i recognized at once as minnie doty, the houseworker at mr. ellison's, and the girl whom i had seen with fellows in the park. the third person in the room was a tall man who stood before the window, hat in hand. evidently he was the man whose voice i had heard. "well, i must be going," he said now after a moment's awkward pause, and moved toward the door. as he turned from the window the light fell upon his shaven jaw, blue-black under the skin, and i recognized him. he was the man barker had addressed with a taunting question about his marriage. "don't leave the room," i said quietly, keeping my position before the door. "fellows, introduce me." a gleam of amusement crossed fellows' sardonic countenance. leaning against the edge of my desk, he indicated the seated girl with a slight gesture. "mr. hilton, allow me to present you to mrs. alfred barker!" "how do you do?" the girl said nervously, trying to rise to the social requirements of the occasion. "how long have you known this fact, fellows?" i asked, watching him closely. "for some time," he said easily. "miss doty--mary doherty her name was originally, but she changed it to minnie doty when she ran away from her husband and got a position as houseworker at mr. ellison's--she answered our advertisement for mary doherty, to learn something to her advantage. i talked with her,--she didn't want to be known as barker's wife or in any way connected with the inquest, so i agreed to keep her secret for a short time, because--" "because she was afraid this man, whose name i don't know,--" "it's timothy royce, and i'm in the fire department. anything else you would like to know?" the tall man threw in defiantly. "yes. i'd like to know if it was you who telephoned to miss doty, early in the morning after barker was killed, 'barker is dead and now you must marry me.' was that you?" "oh, tim!" cried miss doty,--or whatever she preferred to be called. "oh, tim, i knew they would find it out!" "what of it?" said royce doggedly. "anybody is welcome to know that i want to marry you." "i see. and when barker asked you in the hall that day if you were married yet, and you drew back to hit him,--" "it was his devilishness," said royce concisely. "he had just spotted min and me, and he knew well enough i couldn't marry while he was above ground, and he was rubbing it in. that night that he was killed, min and i had gone out to talk things over. i wanted her to run away with me, but she said she couldn't while he was alive, and the next morning, when the patrolman on our beat told me barker was dead, i tried to telephone min. i couldn't go to her, because i was on duty. i knew it would break her up, being a woman, even though he was ugly as sin to her. women are that way, i suppose. she even saw about getting him buried. but she was scairt to death of having to come forward and tell things and be talked about and have to appear at the inquest and all that, and letting it be known about her and me,-"where were you the night that barker was killed?" i asked abruptly. the man looked honest, there was an honest ring in his voice,--but suppose that after all i had the real murderer here in my office, covering his trail with palaver? fellows' eyes were on the floor. "we went out to lake park on the electric, min and me," he answered promptly. and then he added unnecessarily, "we went out on the seven o'clock car and stayed there all evening." "now i know you are lying," i said coolly. "minnie was at home a few minutes before seven. i saw her let miss benbow in." "there's a lie somewhere, but i'm not fathering it," royce retorted hotly. "miss benbow was waiting in the back entry to be let in when we got there, and it was nearer three than two, because the power gave out and we were tied up for over two hours half way between here and the park, waiting every minute to go on." "good heavens! was miss benbow waiting outside till three in the morning?" "not outside,--in the back entry. it seems that she came home unexpected, and finding the house shut up, she waited, thinking of course min would come home some time. and so she did. you see, everybody was away from home that evening, so minnie was free. but miss benbow is a good sort all right. when min said she'd lose her place if mrs. crosswell found out about her going off, miss benbow said right off that she wouldn't tell." i held down any adequate expression of my feelings. i merely asked, "what sort of a place is the back entry?" "oh, it was quite clean and nice," minnie spoke up from the depths of her handkerchief. "there's an old rocking chair that i sit in to peel potatoes and things like that. she went to sleep in the old chair and didn't come to no harm. we leave the entry unlocked so that the iceman can get at the refrigerator in the morning." the thought of jean cooped up in that dark back entry until three in the morning, even admitting the comfort of the old rocking chair, was sufficiently disturbing, but aside from that there was something perplexing about the story. somehow it did not fit in with my previous idea of the events of that night. i struggled to fix the discrepancy. "how about mr. benbow?" i asked minnie suddenly. "you told me you saw him leave the house." "i did!" "when? if you were away from the house before seven,--" "it was just as i was taking min back home,--a little before three," royce interrupted. "just as we were going along the side of the house, past the room min said was the library, the door opened, and mr. benbow came out and ran down the steps. min didn't want him to see her, so we stood still in the shadow till he was in the street. then we went on to the back of the house." "you gave me to understand that it was earlier in the evening," i said reproachfully. "i didn't say when," she murmured miserably. "and i couldn't tell you it was at three o'clock, or it would all have come out! and it is nobody's business, anyhow. i wish i had never answered that advertisement of yours!" fellows stirred slightly and his eye met mine. i caught his hint not to frighten the timid minnie if i wanted to get any information from her. "did you tell miss benbow that you had seen her brother leave the house at three?" i asked, to fill time. "not then," she said meekly. "i didn't think about it. i told her the other day." "well, now you know the whole story, and i guess min and i will go," said royce,--and this time i did not try to prevent his departure. "min wanted me to come, because that young man was hanging around to make her tell about things, and she didn't know what she had ought to tell and what not. but there ain't nothing we need to be afraid of coming out, only min hates to be in the papers." "good day," i said. "and thank you for coming." as the door closed behind them, i turned to fellows. "follow them. don't lose sight of him. i don't feel sure yet that he has told the truth. we may need him." "all right," said fellows. "i've been having her watched for weeks to find out who her young man was. i just worked it out yesterday, and got them here five minutes before you came in." "well, make sure that we can locate him if necessary," i said. this was not the time to discuss his method of handling things. the door had hardly swung shut behind him when it opened again and barney stumped in,--an anxious-looking barney. "you're here! i missed you," he said. "barney, what is it?" i cried. to wait for him to put what he had to say into words seemed suddenly next to impossible. "i don't know wot it is, sir, but it's trouble," he said doggedly. "she guv me a letter for ye, and here it is." i tore it open, and behind the incoherent words i seemed to hear jean's serious, appealing voice: "dear mr. hilton:--i just must write to you, because i couldn't bear it if you should ever think back and feel hurt because i hadn't. i can't tell you all about it, but i want you to remember that i have a reason, a very important reason, for what i am going to do. i can't explain, but it is on account of gene. you will know afterwards what i mean. "but there is one other thing i want to tell you. i have just found out that minnie told you she saw gene leave the house that night, as she was coming in. that is a mistake,--i didn't tell her so, because i didn't know what difference it might make. but gene was fast asleep on the couch in the library when minnie and i came into the house (and that was three o'clock) so if she saw someone going off by the side door just before, it wasn't gene. you see, it was this way. when i ran back to speak to the girl i thought was minnie, i found it wasn't minnie but a friend of hers who works in the next house, and she said minnie had gone out but would be right back, so i went into the back entry and waited for her, because i wouldn't go to mrs. whyte's when she was having a party. and minnie didn't come till three. when we got in i saw a light in the library, and i went in, and there was gene asleep. i kissed him very softly but i didn't wake him up, because you know how boys are, wanting their sisters to be so awfully dignified. and though i was perfectly safe and comfortable waiting beside the refrigerator, it wasn't exactly dignified, and minnie was scared to death about being found out. so i didn't wake gene. and it has been a great comfort ever since to me to remember how peaceful he looked, because that shows he felt innocent in his mind and not with a guilty conscience to keep him awake like lady macbeth. "i can't say anything more, because i have promised over and over again not to say a thing about the plan to save gene, but i will just say this,--if you should happen to hear that i was married, will you please, _please_ understand and believe that it was to help gene, and that of course i must do anything for him. "yours faithfully" (a blot made it look like "tearfully"), "jean benbow." it was incoherent enough (except for the part about gene, which i put aside in my mind to think out later,) but one thing seemed clear,--that she was married or about to be married, and that she had been lured into this madness by some delusion that in this way she was going to be able to help her brother. i glanced at the envelope. it had not been through the mails. "when and where did you get this, barney?" "yisterday, yer honor. she brought it to me herself. an' she wanted to bind me by great oaths out of a book that i wouldn't give it to you till afther to-day had gone by. sez i, how can i give it to him till he comes here, an' his office man sez he won't be here for a week yet,--for i had been to find out on my own account,--god forgive me for deceivin' the innocent." "it wasn't her letter, then, that made you telegraph, if you only got it yesterday. was there anything else?" his eyes fell, and he shifted his weight on his crutch uneasily. "i saw her cryin' and i knew she was carryin' sorrow," he said at last, defiantly. "when? where? tell me everything, can't you? did you know anything of her plan to be married? do you know where she is?" "i know only what i see,--an' that was that she was unhappy. it was this way. she came by my stand many a time, asking this about you and that about you, an' when would you be back, an' i cud see that there was more on her heart than a gurrul like her should be carryin'. then one night i saw her cryin',--" "where?" "'twas in her own home, sure. her head was down on the windy-sill, an' it was dark, and she never mistrusted there was anybody about the place watchin',--an' no more there was, seein' i wouldn't count an old codger like meself anybody. she was sobbin' and talkin' aloud to herself,--" he broke off and looked at me with fierce reproach. "i telegraphed for ye then, sor." "and i came at once. then this letter,--she brought you this yesterday?" "that was it. an' if you hadn't come by this train, sor, i would have opened it meself." he looked at me defiantly. "she says here--at least, i think she means to say, that she is going to be married,--and in mad foolishness. wait till i see what i can learn by telephone." i got mr. ellison's house first. mrs. crosswell, who answered, was sure that miss benbow was not at home, but did not have any idea where she was. did not know whether she had taken anything with her when she left the house or not. i then called up mrs. whyte, explained that a letter from jean suggested a possible elopement, and begged her to go over and see if she could find out where jean went, when she left the house, and whether she had taken any things that would indicate a contemplated permanent departure. i then took my head in my hands and thought, holding down the terror that surged up every other moment and almost made thinking impossible. "if you hear that i am married," she had said. was it garney? never mind. garney or anyone else, people could not be married without certain preliminaries, without leaving certain records. there must have been a license. i took barney with me in the cab, and we whirled up to the court house. "have you any record of issuing a marriage license for jean benbow within the last few days?" i demanded of the clerk. why has the lord made so many stupid people? my question had to be handed on from one clerk to another and record after record after record examined,--and here every wasted minute was wearing away this "day," this critical day, over which jean had wished her secret to be kept. i held my watch in my hand while they searched. at last they found it. "looks like jack put this memorandum where it wouldn't be found too easy," the successful searcher said significantly to his fuming superior. it was quite possible,--for the memorandum showed the issue of a license for the marriage of allen king garney and jean benbow, and it was dated the day before. she had stipulated with barney that i should not receive her letter till after to-day, which meant that this was _the_ day. and here it was drawing toward five o'clock. then, out of the intense anxiety which fused all thought and feeling into one passionate will to save her, came the inspiration. she had said, on that drive when i took her and old william jordan out into the country, that if ever she were married it would be _there_, in the vine-covered church of the old suburb where her mother had stood a bride. the recollection was almost like a voice,--"don't you remember?" i did,--oh, i did! every word, every look. my hand was shaking as i turned the pages of the city directory, trying to identify the church which i knew only by its location, and to discover the name of its minister. then i turned again to the telephone. there was no connection with the church, but i succeeded at last in getting the minister's house. "no, mr. arnold is not at home," a gentle feminine voice answered. "he has gone to the church to perform a marriage ceremony." "can you catch him?--stop him? is it too late?" i cried desperately over the wire. "oh, the wedding was at four o'clock," the shocked voice answered. "oh, is there anything wrong? i am sure henry didn't know,--we thought it so romantic, a secret wedding,--" i hung up the receiver regardless of her emotions and went back to my cab on the run, while the listening office force enjoyed the sensation. "go to the little church at the corner of olympia and hazel streets," i said to the chauffeur, "and get there as soon as you can without being arrested. _get_ there." then i told barney what i had discovered. there was no reasonable ground for supposing that i would be in time to prevent disaster, yet i must go on, even against reason. and surely providence would interfere to save her! i could so easily understand how she had been misled. garney had made her believe that he could help gene. perhaps he had suggested that i was not giving the case proper attention. he had offered some impossible assistance if she would marry him, and she, with her romantic, schoolgirlish, unreal ideas of the way things were done in the world, had consented all the more readily because it involved a sacrifice on her part. the cab swung up to the curb, i jumped up the church steps, and pushed my way through the swinging baize doors. the room was dim, but i could see a group of three before the altar,--garney, yes; and the minister; and jean. they turned to look as i stormed down the aisle, and moved slightly apart. i caught jean's hands in mine and looked into her eyes. "jean! are you married?" a mist of tears dimmed the brightness of her eyes. "oh, i'm _glad_ you've come," she said, quiveringly. still holding her hands i turned to the minister. "have you married these two, sir?" "not yet. the young lady appears to have been detained,--" "i took the wrong car! i was just explaining,--" for a moment the room swam before my eyes. i was in time! "it was just an accident," jean was saying. "then when i found i was wrong, i came back as soon as possible and--now i am ready!" "ready!" i crushed her hands until she drew them away with a little gasp. i turned impatiently to garney, who stood motionless, white-faced, watching her. of course he knew the game was up, but he did not move. "go!" i said. "i'll settle with you later." i don't know whether he heard me. his eyes were fixed upon jean with mingled anger, longing, and despair. "you waited till he should come! you left word for him to follow you!" he said pantingly. "in spite of your promises, you never meant to keep your word. you do not care about your brother. you thought you could trick me--" "oh, no, no!" she cried, breaking from me and going to him with hands extended. "i am here! i am ready. i will marry you now,--" "jean!" i cried. "you don't understand," she said, turning breathlessly to me. "he is going to help us save gene. he knows something,--he said he would tell me if we were married,--" "nonsense. it was a trick. if mr. garney has any information that will benefit your brother,--" "he might hand it over to you, i suppose!" garney said with a sneer. "very well, i will. investigate that ex-convict that you keep in your office. you may find something that will be of interest. but if you hadn't come--" he moistened his dry lips, then turned abruptly and walked up the aisle. i saw that he tried to hurry, but he walked unsteadily and steadied himself by the pews. i once saw a gambler who had staked everything on a desperate game, and lost, stagger like that from the room. "what did he mean about an ex-convict?" jean asked in a shocked voice. "not mr. fellows? and what would he have to do with it?" "nothing," i said promptly, putting certain uncomfortable recollections out of my mind. "don't you see that mr. garney was merely deceiving you? he had nothing to tell, no help to give you. he merely wanted to marry you. jean, jean! how could you do so mad a thing?" "for gene!" she said reproachfully. "why, i'd do anything. and mr. garney said he surely would tell me when we were married, and if i cared for gene i would do it. he wouldn't tell me beforehand, because he--he doesn't like you!" she dropped her eyes in delicious confusion. "you see, he is--_jealous_ of you! he didn't want me to wear this!" she touched the locket she wore on a chain about her neck,--the locket i had given her just before leaving saintsbury. "how did he know i had given you the locket?" i asked. "i don't know. he just guessed." she looked shy and conscious--and charming. but something puzzled me. "you didn't tell him? you are sure of that?" "why, yes," she said, looking surprised. "i never told anybody. not anybody at all. it was a kind of a--secret." how do ideas come to us? i thought i was wholly absorbed in jean, and was conscious merely of a desire to soothe and calm her by taking things naturally, but now something seemed to nudge my attention and to urge, "don't you see what that means? don't you see? don't you see?" i did see--in a flash. that locket! it had not been out of my locked desk until i gave it to jean, except once,--the night of barker's murder. i had taken it to mrs. whyte's that evening, and had shown the portrait to miss thurston for a minute. i was sure she had not even seen the outside of the case, which was out of my hand but a moment. but later that evening, while i sat in barker's office waiting, i had taken the locket from my pocket and had sat under the gaslight examining it--in full view of the concealed murderer who had watched me from the dark inner room, and who, a few minutes later, shot barker from that same concealment. the whole thing flashed before my mind. "wait here," i said, and dashed for the door by which garney had left. he was a block away, evidently waiting for a street car which i could see approaching. "take me down to that car," i said to the chauffeur, and we were off at the word. barney was still in the cab. "you go back with the cab, barney, and take miss benbow home. i must see garney before he gets away." we reached the street just as the car, which had halted to take on garney, started up again. i sprang from the step of the cab to the rear platform of the car. garney turned and looked at me with surprise that changed quickly to anger. "are you following me?" he demanded under his breath. "i told you we should have to have a settlement." "settle what? you've won," he said, with a shrug. he went inside, while i remained on the platform, thinking out a plan of action. when the conductor came for my fare i said a few words to him. he looked amazed. "when we pass a policeman, slow up a bit," i continued. "if the man tries to get off before we pick up an officer, help me stop him. that's all." we swung around a corner, saw a policeman standing outside the curb,--and the car stopped without signal. i jumped off and explained the situation to him in a word. he at once boarded the waiting car with me and approached the unconscious garney. "you're wanted," he said quietly. garney rose, furious but also frightened. he looked at me. "what damn foolishness is this?" he said, trying to bluster. "i haven't time for any nonsense. i have to catch a train. i'm going away." "come on, and don't make a disturbance," the officer said. "but i tell you it is a mistake. you'll suffer for it. it is not a criminal offense to try to get married." "perhaps not," i said, taking the word from the police officer without warrant. "you are under arrest because i charge you with the murder of alfred barker." i never saw a man faint before. he crumpled up like a collapsed balloon. we lifted him to the sidewalk so that the car could go on, and the patrolman called up the wagon. but before garney came back to consciousness, i had lifted the moustached lip that masked his narrow jaw. the crowded teeth were pushed out on each side to form a v, exactly like the model made from the apple bitten in barker's office. chapter xix cards on the table the crowd dispersed as the patrol wagon took garney and the officer away, but one man lingered and fell into step with me as i turned away. it was mr. ellison. i had not noticed him in the crowd. "what's all this?" he asked, twisting his head to look up at me, bird-fashion. "walk with me, and i'll tell you," i said. "i am going down to see benbow." and as we walked i told him of the surprising developments of the last few hours,--that garney, the latin tutor, and gene's friend, was the man with crooked teeth who had been eating apples in barker's inner office while waiting for his victim, who had observed and recognized my locket; and that garney was diavolo the hypnotist who had threatened to kill his partner, barker, if his identity were disclosed. (i may say here, to anticipate events which befell later, that this identity was absolutely established by dr. shaw, the dentist who had extracted a tooth for diavolo,--the first case in the law reports, i believe, where identity was established by the teeth. by that time every link was so clear that garney's confession was hardly needed,--though he did break down in the end and make a plea of "guilty.") ellison listened with his peculiar interest,--an interest in events rather than in persons, and in ideas more than either. at the end he nodded his alert head rapidly. "yes, i knew garney had practised hypnotism but i thought it was years ago. barker told me, in strict confidence." "barker!" he nodded. "yes. i didn't say anything about it, because people seemed to think it wasn't good form for me to have any civil relations with the man who had killed my second cousin, but as a matter of fact, i knew him fairly well. gene would turn white at the mention of his name, so i didn't mention it. that check for $250--you remember?" "yes." "well, that was to pay for a course of lessons in hypnotism. he promised to get me a practical teacher who had been a public performer,--garney, in fact. he hadn't made the arrangements yet, but he was confident that he could bring it about. and i was eager to have the opportunity to investigate the matter, scientifically, you understand. if he could teach me how to do it, i would understand the thing,--the rationale of it, i mean. but it was strictly confidential, because of garney's position in the university." "did he know you knew?" "no. barker was killed before he could arrange it. i went to his room the next day, to see if i could by chance recover that check, which hadn't been presented at the bank, but his dragon landlady gave me no chance,--and then you told me that you saw it in his pocket the next day. so i let things take their own course." "somebody did break into his rooms that night," i said. "that has never been cleared up." "garney!" said ellison, shrewdly. "he has in his possession certain books which i know barker had in his room the day before. he undoubtedly removed them, with any papers or other matters that might have connected him with barker or revealed his practices." "how do you know he has them?" i asked, amazed. "oh, i have made a point of seeing a good deal of garney lately. you see, i am interested in the occult, scientifically. and since barker couldn't act as go-between, i have been cultivating garney on my own account." "yes, and given him a chance to work on miss benbow's feelings," i groaned. "why, it never occurred to me that he was interested in her," he said blandly. "that was too obvious to attract your attention, doubtless," i could not refrain from saying. "well, you have cleared up a good many points, mr. ellison, but i'd like to ask another question. did you send a thousand dollars to william jordan, and if so, why?" for the first time he looked embarrassed. "why yes," he said, nodding his head deliberately. "jean told me about him and his loss. it struck me that it was an unnecessary piece of hard luck that he should suffer as an individual for an advancement of knowledge which will benefit the race. he didn't care anything about hypnotism scientifically. i did. i had fostered its development, so far as lay within my power. so, in a manner, i was responsible for his loss. not immediately, of course, and yet not so remotely, either, since i was encouraging barker. at any rate, i felt that i should be more comfortable if i made it up to the old farmer. when hypnotism is no longer a mystery but an understood science, such things won't happen!" he beamed with enthusiasm, and i saw that i had never understood the man. he was an idealist. "i hope they won't," i said doubtfully. "but hypnotism seems to me devil's work, both for the hypnotizer and the victim. think of jordan, and look at garney. aside from his crimes, the man is somehow abnormal. he has the look of a haunted man. he faints like a woman when he is discovered. no, no hypnotism for me, thank you. but in any event, your action in reimbursing poor old jordan does you credit." he waved that aside. "what i should like to know," he said, changing the subject, "is how gene became involved in this affair. if garney shot barker, why did gene say he did? he isn't as fond of garney as all that. you don't suppose--" he stopped suddenly and looked at me hard. "you don't suppose that garney hypnotized him, _and sent him to shoot barker?_ that would be neat! damnable, of course, but damnably neat!" "i don't know," i said slowly. i had been afraid to face that idea myself. "i am going to see him now. perhaps, with the news of garney's arrest for a lever, i may get the truth from him. if you don't mind, i want to see him alone." "all right. i'll leave you here." but as he turned away, fellows came up from behind and fell into step with me. i think he had been watching for the chance. "royce's story is all right, mr. hilton," he said. "the cars _were_ tied up on the park line the night that barker was shot. and i have seen the conductor. he knows royce, who is a fireman at engine house no. 6, and he remembers seeing him on the stalled car, with a girl." "a good alibi, but he won't need to prove it now," i said. "we have found barker's murderer. it is a man named allen garney." "oh, ho!" fellows exclaimed, in obvious surprise. "do you know him?" i asked, recalling the damaging charge which garney had made against fellows. "i know who he is, and i know that there was something between him and barker in the old days,--on the quiet. garney didn't care to be seen with him, but in a way they were pals. in fact, i went to see him the other day to make some inquiries about barker's past. he was rather rude in getting rid of me." "you frightened him. he didn't want to be identified as having any connection with barker. i see. that's why he used your name as a scapegoat to turn my attention from himself. he suggested that you might have shot barker yourself, fellows!" "did he?" said fellows, grimly. "well, if i had, it would only have been the execution of justice. barker was a murderer." "you mean in killing senator benbow?" "more than that. do you remember the story that the samovar printed about mr. clyde?" "well, rather!" "it brought to my mind a story that barker once told me. when i was a fresh kid from the country and he was teaching me the ways of the world and of the race-track, he told me that he had once stabbed a man in a texas hotel for cheating at cards. he said that he and three other men were playing in the room of one of them, and that was the one that was killed. he told me that another man was arrested, tried and convicted, while he sat in the court room and watched the proceedings." "what a monster!" "he told the story merely to point out that every man had to take his chances,--good luck or bad,--just as it came. he was a great believer in luck. it was his luck to escape and the other man's luck to be convicted by mistake. but he said that the man escaped and was not hung. the clyde story was so much like barker's story that i wondered whether it might not be the same, and i went to garney to ask if he knew whether barker was the man who killed henley. he would not admit knowing anything, but he let slip a word in his first anger that he could not take back. it _was_ barker." "the villain! and he claimed to be merely a spectator in the court room, and that that was how he came to recognize clyde! he probably studied his face pretty carefully during the days when he was watching clyde in the dock where he knew he should have been himself! i don't wonder he recognized him. what a man!" "i wonder if we can prove it," exclaimed fellows. "we have just discovered an old letter which will completely establish an alibi for clyde,--i'll tell you the details later. but whether we can get your story before the court or not, it is undoubtedly the inner truth of the matter and it rounds out the story of barker's villainy very completely. and he met the treachery he dealt out to others. he was slain by the hand of the false friend he trusted and whom he probably had never wronged." "but if garney killed him, what about benbow?" "i am going to see him now, and see if i can find out what it is that he is concealing. i'm glad i don't have to swear out a warrant against you, fellows!" fellows smiled quite humanly as he turned away. i found benbow thinner, more nervous, and less self-possessed than i had ever seen him before. i was glad to see these signs of disintegration in his baffling reserve. "i have had a strenuous afternoon," i said, as we shook hands. "since four o'clock i have discovered barker's widow, spoiled an elopement, and had your latin tutor, garney, arrested." he looked surprised, naturally, but nothing more. "what for?" he asked. "for complicity in a murder," i said, watching him closely. "oh, impossible!" he exclaimed. "not mr. garney!" his natural manner, his genuine look of surprise and inquiry, were disconcerting. i saw i must work my way carefully. "did you know that mr. garney had hypnotic powers?" i asked. ah, there my probe went home! his tell-tale face flushed and his eyes evaded mine. "i can tell you nothing about that," he said, with dignified reserve. "perhaps i may be able to tell you something that will be news to you, even though you knew of his practices. he is known on the vaudeville stage as diavolo, and he has toured, giving exhibitions in hypnotism." "i didn't know that," he said,--and i could not doubt his sincerity. "it must have been a long time ago." "no longer ago than last summer. he kept his own name from the public. but i infer that you did know something of his practices in private?" "yes," he said, hesitatingly. "did you ever allow him to hypnotize you?" i asked abruptly. he was obviously discomposed, but he tried to cover his embarrassment by assuming an air of careless frankness. "oh, yes. i believe i was a good subject. mr. garney was trying to develop my mental powers by hypnotism. he told me some remarkable accounts of idiots who had been mentally stimulated by hypnotic suggestion to do creditable work in their classes." "was that the direction in which his suggestions were made?" i asked, as casually as possible. i must try to get from him, without disturbing his sensibilities, as clear an account as he could give me, or would give me, of his peculiar relations with garney. "oh, yes. it was just to help me with my latin. and it did help," he added, defensively. i could see that he was not entirely at ease over the admission. "how often did you put yourself under his influence?" "oh, i don't remember. half a dozen times, perhaps." "did you remember afterwards what he had said or done to you while you were hypnotized?" "not a thing! i just went to sleep, and woke up. it isn't different from any other kind of sleep," he explained, with a youthful air of wisdom, "only that a part of you stays awake inside and takes lessons from your teacher while you don't know it." "so i understand," i said gently. his assumption of superior knowledge touched me. "was it hard to go to sleep?" "the first time it wasn't easy. something inside of my brain seemed to snap awake just as i was going off,--over and over again. but at last i went off. after that it was easier each time. once he hypnotized me in class and i found i had been making a brilliant recitation, though i didn't remember anything about it myself. and once he hypnotized me while i was asleep, and i never knew it at all until he told me afterwards and showed me some things i had written while asleep." "did mr. garney ever speak to you of alfred barker?" "no." his manner froze, as it always did at any mention of barker. "you did not know, then, that there was enmity between the two men?" "no. i didn't know that mr. garney knew--_him_--at all." he swerved from pronouncing the name. "yes, barker had acted as his business manager in the vaudeville business, and they had quarreled. now tell me something else. did garney hypnotize you the day that you hunted up barker to shoot him?" "no." a look of dawning uneasiness and indignation crossed his face. "did you see him that evening at all?" "no," he said, with obvious relief. "now will you tell me again just what happened that evening,--the order of the events?" (my object really was to see whether he would change his story. i had no need to refresh my own memory, as his former account was entirely clear in my mind.) "beginning with the banquet?" he asked. "yes, begin there." "well, everything went smoothly until jim gregory mentioned seeing barker on the street. that spoiled the evening for me. i got away as soon as i could." "alone?" "yes." "just where did you go?--what streets?" "oh, i don't know. i didn't notice. i went home and threw myself down on the couch in the library and read cicero to get my mind quiet. things were whirling so in my brain!" this was new! evidently his memory was clearer than when he made his first statement to me. "do you remember what you were reading?" i asked, to pin his recollection definitely. "yes, it was de senectute,--an english version mr. garney had lent me." i stopped to think. that was the book young chapman had had in his hand the day i hunted him up,--the day after the murder. "are you certain it was that book and no other you read?" i asked. i felt that i had a thread in my fingers,--a filmy thread that might break if i did not work carefully. "quite sure. i picked it up at first just to read anything, because it was lying there. mr. garney had left it that afternoon. and then i became interested in it. it was quieting. it made me feel that after all life is short and what was the use of cherishing ill-will and bitterness towards--well, even a rascal like barker. it would all be over so soon." "and with that thought in your mind, you went off and shot him, did you?" i asked with a smile. he looked perplexed, and did not answer. "you didn't have another copy of de senectute about? i want to be sure." "i am sure. mr. garney left it with me that afternoon and asked me to pass it on to chapman when i had looked it over." "and you did?" "no. i--i haven't been back to the house, you know, since--since that morning." "but chapman had it the next day. he said mr. garney had given it to him." gene looked puzzled and thoughtful. "i don't see--" "as i understand it, the servants were away that evening. mr. garney could not have come in unless you yourself admitted him, could he?" "oh, for that matter, he had my latchkey for the side door,--directly into the library. he used to drop in--" he hesitated, and his momentary embarrassment gave me the clue. "when he came to try his hypnotic stunts?" i asked lightly. "yes," gene nodded, looking relieved at my manner. "but he didn't come that evening?" "no. i dropped asleep. i slept awfully hard. when i woke up the gas was on full blaze." he caught himself up and looked startled. "it was morning, then?" i said, quickly. "yes," he said slowly, evidently trying to puzzle something out. "i must have gone to sleep--again." "but you don't remember that, do you?" i asked. "you think you must have,--but do you _remember_ it, as you do the first?" the perspiration sprang out on his white forehead. "i remembered when i woke up that i had killed barker in the night." "you remember that you thought in the morning that you had killed barker in the night," i said sharply, "but do you remember killing him? do you remember, as a matter of fact, going to his office? tell me something you saw or did, to prove that you actually remember the events of the night." his face was pitiable. "i can't! i remember going to sleep over the de senectute and i remember waking up in the morning with the gas burning in the sunshine,--and i know, of course, that i went out in the night and killed barker,--_but i can't remember it!_ do you suppose i am losing my mind?" "i think you are just recovering possession of it," i said, unsteadily. "by the way, i told you a few minutes ago that garney had been arrested for complicity in a murder. you don't ask whose." "whose?" he demanded, startled. "alfred barker's." "i don't understand--at all," he faltered. "garney was in barker's inner office the night barker was shot. if you were there, you saw him." he shook his head. "i did not see him." "did you see me?" "where?" "in barker's outer office." "no." "yet i was there. i was the strange man who came in and waited. do you remember you told me you saw a stranger come in?" "i--remember that i told you." "but you don't remember what the man looked like? you didn't recognize me as the man?" he put his hands up suddenly and clutched his head. "do you think i was out of my head that night? was i--was i--under his influence? do you mean that i was hypnotized when i shot barker?" "that is what i have thought possible, but i have changed my mind on that point. benbow, i don't believe that you were out of your room that night after you returned from the frat supper." he was shaking so that he could not speak, but i saw the piteous questioning of his eyes. "i'll tell you briefly the points that have made the matter at last clear, in spite of yourself," i said, reassuringly. "tell me this, first,--when you came into the house that evening, after you left the boys at the banquet, was the house lit up or dark?" "dark. i lit the gas in the library. i did not go into the rest of the house." "exactly. well, i saw the gas lit in the library that evening, and it was just a few minutes before ten. i had supposed that your sister and at least one servant were in the house, but i have learned they were not. therefore, when i saw the light flare up just before ten in the library, you were there." "yes," he said, trying to follow. "you threw yourself down on the couch and read cicero from a book which the next day was in the hands of chapman. you don't know how long you were reading, but you were sound asleep on that couch at three o'clock the next morning, for your sister came in and saw you." "jean?" he murmured, perplexedly. "yes, jean. never mind the details. now it is not humanly possible that after reading yourself quiet at ten you could have reached barker's office by foot before i reached there in a taxicab so as to secrete yourself in the inner room before i came. neither is it humanly possible that after shooting him at eleven, you could have fled for your life down the fire-escape, skulked through the streets, and then come home and gone composedly to sleep by three, only to wake at six and remember for the first time that a gentleman who has had the misfortune to shoot a man is in honor bound to give himself up to the law." he drew his hand over his eyes in a dazed fashion. i went on. "minnie, the maid, and her escort, came home at three that night and saw a man leaving the house by the library door. she took for granted that it was you. but your sister came into the room a few minutes later and saw you asleep on the couch. the man who left the house was not you." "who was it?" he asked, very low. "it was the man who had your latchkey to the library door. it was the man who picked up the de senectute which you had been reading and passed it on to chapman the next day. it was the man who knew how to hypnotize you in your sleep and make your brain believe what he wished it to believe. _it was the man who had just shot barker from his inner office and who impressed upon your dormant brain the scene he had just been through and made you believe you had acted his part in it_. it was allen garney." benbow looked too paralyzed to really understand the situation. that didn't matter. all the missing pieces of the puzzle were now in my hands and i saw that i could prove my case and clear gene in spite of his false confession and his traitorous memory. i thought of jean! it was another and the most convincing indication of garney's abnormality that he should have desired to wed the sister of his victim. that was strangely revolting. but his passion had carried him beyond his judgment. "the chances are that hypnotizing you was not a part of his original plan," i said thoughtfully, going over the links in my own mind. "he shot barker because barker knew too much about his past, and was not to be trusted to keep it a secret. and his suspicion was justified. barker had already given his secret away to mr. ellison. whether he knew that instance of bad faith or not, he evidently felt that there was no real safety for him until barker was dead. so he laid a careful plan to kill him, and carried it out. but an unsolved murder mystery never ceases to be a menace to the murderer. the police would make investigations, and his past connection with barker might possibly come out. the fact that he searched barker's rooms the next night shows that he was not easy on that point, even then. there might have been papers in barker's possession which would turn inquiry upon him. so,--you offered him the opportunity of making him secure." "i? how?" "he saw the light burning in your study. he came in,--perhaps to establish an alibi, perhaps merely to get away from himself. he found you asleep,--a condition in which he had already hypnotized you. he saw his opportunity. by making you believe that you had shot barker, by making you confess, he would forever turn the possibility of inquiry from himself. there would be no mystery to provoke backward inquiries along the past. and, if i may say so, you had made it easier for him to fix that idea in your mind because, as a matter of fact, you had harbored ideas of vengeance against barker. the thought of killing him was not wholly alien to you. you had prepared the way for the impression garney wanted you to have,--and he knew that fact. you had revealed that side of your mind to him. he used the bitterness which was already there as the foundation for the idea of revenge. therefore, when you awoke, and came back to your senses, the idea that you had shot barker did not strike you as an impossibility. you remembered it dimly, but there was no intrinsic impossibility in it. do you see that?" "yes," he said, in a low voice. "i never could understand why some points were so clear and positive in my mind, and yet i could not remember the connecting links. it was like remembering spots in a dream." "those spots were the points garney had emphasized to you, undoubtedly. he took you with him, mentally, step by step, but things he failed to touch upon would be blank in your mind. how about your revolver, gene? did he know where you kept it?" "yes. i showed it to him that afternoon." "then undoubtedly he took it away when he left. and he remembered to impress upon you the thought that you had thrown it away. he was careful,--yet he betrayed himself unconsciously. those apples which he ate without thought were a stronger witness against him than his careful tissue of lies. but it's all right now. take my word for it. it was the cleverest scheme a criminal brain ever worked out, but the righteousness on which the world is built would not permit it to triumph. as soon as we can get the matter before the court, you will be free." "mr. hilton, there is a telephone call for you at the office," interrupted an attendant. i shook hands with gene and went to the office, where i found the receiver down, waiting for me. i hardly recognized katherine thurston's voice at first. "is that you, mr. hilton? oh, thank goodness i have found you! jean has gone away. i'm terribly worried--" "what makes you think she is gone? didn't barney bring her home in a cab an hour ago? i told him to." "he did. i was waiting at mr. ellison's for news when she came. she told me everything,--the poor child had been terribly imposed on. that man made her believe that he could clear gene,--" "so he could have done, if he had wanted to!" "well, that is what she believed, and so she consented to marry him. but of course she was dreadfully worked up over it all, and when she came home with barney and told me about your coming and saving her at the last moment, she was so excited that she was hardly coherent. so i made her lie down and try to rest, and i left her in her room. just now i went back to see her, and she was gone. minnie says she went away, with a handbag, immediately after i left, and said that she was not coming back. when i remember the nervous and excited state she was in, i am dreadfully worried." "how long ago did she leave the house, according to minnie?" "nearly an hour ago. do you think she could possibly have gone to that man?" "not at all," i said promptly. "he is in custody." "but he might have some agents--" "i think not. and jean is a wise child in her own way. the chances are that she is safe somewhere. but i'll let the police know, and i'll go down to the railway station myself. i'll call you up from time to time to see if you have any news." i reported the matter to police headquarters, and while i could see that they were not greatly impressed with the urgency of discovering a young woman of twenty who had been lost sight of for less than an hour, i confess that i felt more apprehensive than i had admitted to miss thurston. you see, jean wasn't a reasonable young woman. she was--jean. chapter xx the ultimate discovery jean had so few acquaintances in saintsbury that there was little chance of finding her off on a visit. i went to the railway station and tried to discover whether anyone there had seen her or sold a ticket to dunstan, but i found nothing. i believe it was superstition more than anything else that sent me finally to barney. he was at his stand, selling papers as calmly as though this chaotic day were like any other. "barney, miss benbow is lost," i said, without preliminary. "she has left mr. ellison's house, and told the maid she was not coming back. i have been to the station to inquire. for heaven's sake, suggest something that i can do." barney listened sympathetically, but without any manifestation of concern. "gone, has she? and not coming back! and i'll warrant you haven't had a chance to talk to her since i got her home from the church." "of course i haven't. i've been at the jail. barney, we've arrested garney, and he is the man that killed barker, and benbow will be cleared. but i am not going to talk about anything until i find that girl. so don't ask questions. tell me something to do." barney's eyes grew round as saucers, but he was an old soldier. he knew when to obey. but he would do it in his own way. "i'm thinking, mr. hilton, that if ye mind your own affairs, ye'll best be mindin' hers." "is that impertinence, barney?" "divil a bit, your honor, and you with a face on you that would scare a banshee into saying prayers!" "then, i am in no mood for guessing riddles." he gave me a glance that made me feel inexpressibly young. "i'm thinkin' i saw the young leddy go up yonder," he said, nodding toward the building where i had my office. "if she was goin' away forever, maybe she wanted to say good-bye!" could it be possible? i dashed across the street and up the stairs without waiting for the slow elevator. i opened the door,--and there lay a pathetic little heap on the daghestan rug on my floor. [illustration: _there lay a pathetic little heap on the daghestan rug on my floor_. page _290_.] it was a moment before i realized that the tired child was merely asleep. i had dropped down beside her and lifted her head upon my arm, when she opened her eyes with a start. then something wonderful and dazzling swam up from her unconscious eyes to meet my gaze,--and i knew in a bewildering flash that it was no child but a woman that i held in my arms. my heart went from me. i did not realize that i had kissed her. she lay quite still for a moment, but her white eyelids fell slowly to hide her eyes from mine. "thank heaven you are safe!" i murmured. "how could you frighten me so?" she withdrew herself gently from my arms and rose. her hat was on my desk, between the inkstand and the mucilage. she picked it up and proceeded to stab it to her head. "i must have fallen asleep," she murmured, keeping her downcast eyes from me. "i just came in to say good-bye, and i waited, and told mr. fellows he could leave the door unlocked, because i was sure you would come, and i was so tired,--" "good-bye indeed! where do you think you are going?" "i am going back to miss elwood's school," she said, with the gentle inflexibility i always enjoyed. "i seem to do nothing but get into trouble when i am away from there. i didn't tell anyone but minnie, because i didn't want to have to argue about it, but i thought i ought to say good-bye to you,--" "i am glad you remembered to be polite to me," i said, getting possession of her hands, "because i have a lot of things to tell you. that is,--if you will promise to marry me first!" "don't!" she said, breathlessly, drawing away. "you--forget!" "forget what?" "the other girl!" "there is no other girl,--never was and never will be," i protested. "what in the world do you mean, child?" she looked at me with troubled eyes. "katherine thurston said that you said there was--someone." "oh!" i gasped. that foolish, forgotten incident of the locket! i felt myself blushing,--at least i had that grace. "let me explain, dear. when mrs. whyte introduced me to miss thurston, i thought she would be more willing to be friends if she were assured that i was not going to bother her with any love-making. so, just to make things pleasant, i showed her a miniature which i had in my pocket and told her that it was a picture of the only woman in the world to me." "and wasn't that true?" she asked gravely. "it was,--but it isn't true now. darling, it was my mother's face,--the one i took out of this locket." i touched the jeweled trifle which lay upon her breast. "oh!" a look of terror came into her eyes, as though she drew back from an abyss. "oh, and i might have married that man!" "jean! did that have anything to do with it?" "why, i thought that, since i should never marry anyone else, it would be awfully selfish to refuse to save gene," she said simply. "and if you were going to marry some strange person, why,--it didn't matter. that's what i _thought_." "oh, jean, jean!" i cried, taking her into my arms. what was the use of talking common-sense to a creature like that? i gave it up, and talked her own tongue instead! but after awhile she looked up under her lashes. "was i foolish to believe mr. garney?" "of course you were, my darling. but perhaps it was a guided foolishness. jean, what you told me about his recognizing that locket gave me a clue to the man who shot barker. dear, it was not gene. it was mr. garney himself." "oh! can it be true?" "only too true." i told her some of the strange disconnected links which had at last been knit into a strong chain of evidence. "was that what he meant to tell me when we were married?" she asked, her eyes full of horror. "no, i do not believe he ever meant to tell you anything,--or at most some wild tale like that one about fellows,--which might have made trouble for us, too, if the real discovery had not come so soon. he merely wanted to get you to marry him, by hook or crook. he felt perfectly safe, i am sure. he thought he had the whole thing in his hands when he forced gene to believe and to confess what would forever close future investigation." "and gene will now go free?" "perfectly free,--free to dance at our wedding. don't forget that," i said. she laughed,--which was what i wanted. i could not let her break nervously under all this emotional strain. "then everything has turned out happily except for poor mr. clyde!" she said, clasping her hands hard together. "oh, my precious child, i quite forgot all about mr. clyde! he is just as happy as the rest of us. that letter of yours, you angel of all good tidings, is going to save him. it was from your father, you know, and it proves that mr. clyde was not in houston that fatal night. i had to leave him to come back to look after you, but that is going to be all straightened out in a very short time. all because of that letter, dearest girl! see how things have worked out!" she looked at me, breathless, bewildered, trying to understand all these marvels. then suddenly she burst into nervous tears. it was just as well. it relieved the emotional strain--and it gave me a chance to comfort her. it was some time before i remembered that miss thurston and mr. ellison and mrs. whyte and the police department were still uninformed that miss jean benbow need not be the object of further search. "you see!" i pointed out to her. "you put all the rest of the world out of my mind. now stand here and tell me what i shall say to mrs. whyte." and i took down the office telephone. "tell her that since i have lost my train, i'll come back for awhile," she said demurely. "is that your only reason for staying, young lady?" "isn't that enough?" "there are other trains!" "but i have lost the one i wanted!" "what have you found instead?" she would not answer. "what have you found?" i insisted, drawing her to me. but what my story-book girl told me i shall not repeat. the end. at the foot of the rainbow by gene stratton-porter "and the bow shall be set in the cloud; and i will look upon it, that i may remember the everlasting covenant between god and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth." --genesis, ix-16. contents i. the rat-catchers of the wabash ii. ruben o'khayam and the milk pail iii. the fifty coons of the canoper iv. when the kingfisher and the black bass came home v. when the rainbow set its arch in the sky vi. the heart of mary malone vii. the apple of discord becomes a jointed rod viii. when the black bass struck ix. when jimmy malone came to confession x. dannie's renunciation xi. the pot of gold gene stratton-porter a little story of her life and work for several years doubleday, page & company have been receiving repeated requests for information about the life and books of gene stratton-porter. her fascinating nature work with bird, flower, and moth, and the natural wonders of the limberlost swamp, made famous as the scene of her nature romances, all have stirred much curiosity among readers everywhere. mrs. porter did not possess what has been called "an aptitude for personal publicity." indeed, up to the present, she has discouraged quite successfully any attempt to stress the personal note. it is practically impossible, however, to do the kind of work she has done--to make genuine contributions to natural science by her wonderful field work among birds, insects, and flowers, and then, through her romances, to bring several hundred thousands of people to love and understand nature in a way they never did before--without arousing a legitimate interest in her own history, her ideals, her methods of work, and all that underlies the structure of her unusual achievement. her publishers have felt the pressure of this growing interest and it was at their request that she furnished the data for a biographical sketch that was to be written of her. but when this actually came to hand, the present compiler found that the author had told a story so much more interesting than anything he could write of her, that it became merely a question of how little need be added. the following pages are therefore adapted from what might be styled the personal record of gene stratton-porter. this will account for the very intimate picture of family life in the middle west for some years following the civil war. mark stratton, the father of gene stratton-porter, described his wife, at the time of their marriage, as a "ninety-pound bit of pink porcelain, pink as a wild rose, plump as a partridge, having a big rope of bright brown hair, never ill a day in her life, and bearing the loveliest name ever given a woman--mary." he further added that "god fashioned her heart to be gracious, her body to be the mother of children, and as her especial gift of grace, he put flower magic into her fingers." mary stratton was the mother of twelve lusty babies, all of whom she reared past eight years of age, losing two a little over that, through an attack of scarlet fever with whooping cough; too ugly a combination for even such a wonderful mother as she. with this brood on her hands she found time to keep an immaculate house, to set a table renowned in her part of the state, to entertain with unfailing hospitality all who came to her door, to beautify her home with such means as she could command, to embroider and fashion clothing by hand for her children; but her great gift was conceded by all to be the making of things to grow. at that she was wonderful. she started dainty little vines and climbing plants from tiny seeds she found in rice and coffee. rooted things she soaked in water, rolled in fine sand, planted according to habit, and they almost never failed to justify her expectations. she even grew trees and shrubs from slips and cuttings no one else would have thought of trying to cultivate, her last resort being to cut a slip diagonally, insert the lower end in a small potato, and plant as if rooted. and it nearly always grew! there is a shaft of white stone standing at her head in a cemetery that belonged to her on a corner of her husband's land; but to mrs. porter's mind her mother's real monument is a cedar of lebanon which she set in the manner described above. the cedar tops the brow of a little hill crossing the grounds. she carried two slips from ohio, where they were given to her by a man who had brought the trees as tiny things from the holy land. she planted both in this way, one in her dooryard and one in her cemetery. the tree on the hill stands thirty feet tall now, topping all others, and has a trunk two feet in circumference. mrs. porter's mother was of dutch extraction, and like all dutch women she worked her special magic with bulbs, which she favoured above other flowers. tulips, daffodils, star flowers, lilies, dahlias, little bright hyacinths, that she called "blue bells," she dearly loved. from these she distilled exquisite perfume by putting clusters, & time of perfect bloom, in bowls lined with freshly made, unsalted butter, covering them closely, and cutting the few drops of extract thus obtained with alcohol. "she could do more different things," says the author, "and finish them all in a greater degree of perfection than any other woman i have ever known. if i were limited to one adjective in describing her, 'capable' would be the word." the author's father was descended from a long line of ancestors of british blood. he was named for, and traced his origin to, that first mark stratton who lived in new york, married the famous beauty, anne hutchinson, and settled on stratton island, afterward corrupted to staten, according to family tradition. from that point back for generations across the sea he followed his line to the family of strattons of which the earl of northbrooke is the present head. to his british traditions and the customs of his family, mark stratton clung with rigid tenacity, never swerving from his course a particle under the influence of environment or association. all his ideas were clear-cut; no man could influence him against his better judgment. he believed in god, in courtesy, in honour, and cleanliness, in beauty, and in education. he used to say that he would rather see a child of his the author of a book of which he could be proud, than on the throne of england, which was the strongest way he knew to express himself. his very first earnings he spent for a book; when other men rested, he read; all his life he was a student of extraordinarily tenacious memory. he especially loved history: rollands, wilson's outlines, hume, macauley, gibbon, prescott, and bancroft, he could quote from all of them paragraphs at a time contrasting the views of different writers on a given event, and remembering dates with unfailing accuracy. "he could repeat the entire bible," says mrs. stratton-porter, "giving chapters and verses, save the books of generations; these he said 'were a waste of gray matter to learn.' i never knew him to fail in telling where any verse quoted to him was to be found in the bible." and she adds: "i was almost afraid to make these statements, although there are many living who can corroborate them, until john muir published the story of his boyhood days, and in it i found the history of such rearing as was my father's, told of as the customary thing among the children of muir's time; and i have referred many inquirers as to whether this feat were possible, to the muir book." all his life, with no thought of fatigue or of inconvenience to himself, mark stratton travelled miles uncounted to share what he had learned with those less fortunately situated, by delivering sermons, lectures, talks on civic improvement and politics. to him the love of god could be shown so genuinely in no other way as in the love of his fellowmen. he worshipped beauty: beautiful faces, souls, hearts, beautiful landscapes, trees, animals, flowers. he loved colour: rich, bright colour, and every variation down to the faintest shadings. he was especially fond of red, and the author carefully keeps a cardinal silk handkerchief that he was carrying when stricken with apoplexy at the age of seventy-eight. "it was so like him," she comments, "to have that scrap of vivid colour in his pocket. he never was too busy to fertilize a flower bed or to dig holes for the setting of a tree or bush. a word constantly on his lips was 'tidy.' it applied equally to a woman, a house, a field, or a barn lot. he had a streak of genius in his make-up: the genius of large appreciation. over inspired biblical passages, over great books, over sunlit landscapes, over a white violet abloom in deep shade, over a heroic deed of man, i have seen his brow light up, his eyes shine." mrs. porter tells us that her father was constantly reading aloud to his children and to visitors descriptions of the great deeds of men. two "hair-raisers" she especially remembers with increased heart-beats to this day were the story of john maynard, who piloted a burning boat to safety while he slowly roasted at the wheel. she says the old thrill comes back when she recalls the inflection of her father's voice as he would cry in imitation of the captain: "john maynard!" and then give the reply. "aye, aye, sir!" his other until it sank to a mere gasp: favourite was the story of clemanthe, and her lover's immortal answer to her question: "shall we meet again?" to this mother at forty-six, and this father at fifty, each at intellectual top-notch, every faculty having been stirred for years by the dire stress of civil war, and the period immediately following, the author was born. from childhood she recalls "thinking things which she felt should be saved," and frequently tugging at her mother's skirts and begging her to "set down" what the child considered stories and poems. most of these were some big fact in nature that thrilled her, usually expressed in biblical terms; for the bible was read twice a day before the family and helpers, and an average of three services were attended on sunday. mrs. porter says that her first all-alone effort was printed in wabbly letters on the fly-leaf of an old grammar. it was entitled: "ode to the moon." "not," she comments, "that i had an idea what an 'ode' was, other than that i had heard it discussed in the family together with different forms of poetic expression. the spelling must have been by proxy: but i did know the words i used, what they meant, and the idea i was trying to convey. "no other farm was ever quite so lovely as the one on which i was born after this father and mother had spent twenty-five years beautifying it," says the author. it was called "hopewell" after the home of some of her father's british ancestors. the natural location was perfect, the land rolling and hilly, with several flowing springs and little streams crossing it in three directions, while plenty of forest still remained. the days of pioneer struggles were past. the roads were smooth and level as floors, the house and barn commodious; the family rode abroad in a double carriage trimmed in patent leather, drawn by a matched team of gray horses, and sometimes the father "speeded a little" for the delight of the children. "we had comfortable clothing," says mrs. porter, "and were getting our joy from life without that pinch of anxiety which must have existed in the beginning, although i know that father and mother always held steady, and took a large measure of joy from life in passing." her mother's health, which always had been perfect, broke about the time of the author's first remembrance due to typhoid fever contracted after nursing three of her children through it. she lived for several years, but with continual suffering, amounting at times to positive torture. so it happened, that led by impulse and aided by an escape from the training given her sisters, instead of "sitting on a cushion and sewing a fine seam"--the threads of the fabric had to be counted and just so many allowed to each stitch!--this youngest child of a numerous household spent her waking hours with the wild. she followed her father and the boys afield, and when tired out slept on their coats in fence corners, often awaking with shy creatures peering into her face. she wandered where she pleased, amusing herself with birds, flowers, insects, and plays she invented. "by the day," writes the author, "i trotted from one object which attracted me to another, singing a little song of made-up phrases about everything i saw while i waded catching fish, chasing butterflies over clover fields, or following a bird with a hair in its beak; much of the time i carried the inevitable baby for a woman-child, frequently improvised from an ear of corn in the silk, wrapped in catalpa leaf blankets." she had a corner of the garden under a big bartlett pear tree for her very own, and each spring she began by planting radishes and lettuce when the gardening was done; and before these had time to sprout she set the same beds full of spring flowers, and so followed out the season. she made special pets of the birds, locating nest after nest, and immediately projecting herself into the daily life of the occupants. "no one," she says, "ever taught me more than that the birds were useful, a gift of god for our protection from insect pests on fruit and crops; and a gift of grace in their beauty and music, things to be rigidly protected. from this cue i evolved the idea myself that i must be extremely careful, for had not my father tied a 'kerchief over my mouth when he lifted me for a peep into the nest of the humming-bird, and did he not walk softly and whisper when he approached the spot? so i stepped lightly, made no noise, and watched until i knew what a mother bird fed her young before i began dropping bugs, worms, crumbs, and fruit into little red mouths that opened at my tap on the nest quite as readily as at the touch of the feet of the mother bird." in the nature of this child of the out-of-doors there ran a fibre of care for wild things. it was instinct with her to go slowly, to touch lightly, to deal lovingly with every living thing: flower, moth, bird, or animal. she never gathered great handfuls of frail wild flowers, carried them an hour and threw them away. if she picked any, she took only a few, mostly to lay on her mother's pillow--for she had a habit of drawing comfort from a cinnamon pink or a trillium laid where its delicate fragrance reached her with every breath. "i am quite sure," mrs. porter writes, "that i never in my life, in picking flowers, dragged up the plant by the roots, as i frequently saw other people do. i was taught from infancy to cut a bloom i wanted. my regular habit was to lift one plant of each kind, especially if it were a species new to me, and set it in my wild-flower garden." to the birds and flowers the child added moths and butterflies, because she saw them so frequently, the brilliance of colour in yard and garden attracting more than could be found elsewhere. so she grew with the wild, loving, studying, giving all her time. "i fed butterflies sweetened water and rose leaves inside the screen of a cellar window," mrs. porter tells us; "doctored all the sick and wounded birds and animals the men brought me from afield; made pets of the baby squirrels and rabbits they carried in for my amusement; collected wild flowers; and as i grew older, gathered arrow points and goose quills for sale in fort wayne. so i had the first money i ever earned." her father and mother had strong artistic tendencies, although they would have scoffed at the idea themselves, yet the manner in which they laid off their fields, the home they built, the growing things they preserved, the way they planted, the life they led, all go to prove exactly that thing. their bush--and vine-covered fences crept around the acres they owned in a strip of gaudy colour; their orchard lay in a valley, a square of apple trees in the centre widely bordered by peach, so that it appeared at bloom time like a great pink-bordered white blanket on the face of earth. swale they might have drained, and would not, made sheets of blue flag, marigold and buttercups. from the home you could not look in any direction without seeing a picture of beauty. "last spring," the author writes in a recent letter, "i went back with my mind fully made up to buy that land at any reasonable price, restore it to the exact condition in which i knew it as a child, and finish my life there. i found that the house had been burned, killing all the big trees set by my mother's hands immediately surrounding it. the hills were shorn and ploughed down, filling and obliterating the creeks and springs. most of the forest had been cut, and stood in corn. my old catalpa in the fence corner beside the road and the bartlett pear under which i had my wild-flower garden were all that was left of the dooryard, while a few gnarled apple trees remained of the orchard, which had been reset in another place. the garden had been moved, also the lanes; the one creek remaining out of three crossed the meadow at the foot of the orchard. it flowed a sickly current over a dredged bed between bare, straight banks. the whole place seemed worse than a dilapidated graveyard to me. all my love and ten times the money i had at command never could have put back the face of nature as i knew it on that land." as a child the author had very few books, only three of her own outside of school books. "the markets did not afford the miracles common with the children of today," she adds. "books are now so numerous, so cheap, and so bewildering in colour and make-up, that i sometimes think our children are losing their perspective and caring for none of them as i loved my few plain little ones filled with short story and poem, almost no illustration. i had a treasure house in the school books of my elders, especially the mcguffey series of readers from one to six. for pictures i was driven to the bible, dictionary, historical works read by my father, agricultural papers, and medical books about cattle and sheep. "near the time of my mother's passing we moved from hopewell to the city of wabash in order that she might have constant medical attention, and the younger children better opportunities for schooling. here we had magazines and more books in which i was interested. the one volume in which my heart was enwrapt was a collection of masterpieces of fiction belonging to my eldest sister. it contained 'paul and virginia,' 'undine,' 'picciola,' 'the vicar of wakefield,' 'pilgrim's progress,' and several others i soon learned by heart, and the reading and rereading of those exquisitely expressed and conceived stories may have done much in forming high conceptions of what really constitutes literature and in furthering the lofty ideals instilled by my parents. one of these stories formed the basis of my first publicly recognized literary effort." reared by people who constantly pointed out every natural beauty, using it wherever possible to drive home a precept, the child lived out-of-doors with the wild almost entirely. if she reported promptly three times a day when the bell rang at meal time, with enough clothing to constitute a decent covering, nothing more was asked until the sabbath. to be taken from such freedom, her feet shod, her body restricted by as much clothing as ever had been worn on sunday, shut up in a schoolroom, and set to droning over books, most of which she detested, was the worst punishment ever inflicted upon her she declares. she hated mathematics in any form and spent all her time on natural science, language, and literature. "friday afternoon," writes mrs. porter, "was always taken up with an exercise called 'rhetoricals,' a misnomer as a rule, but let that pass. each week pupils of one of the four years furnished entertainment for the assembled high school and faculty. our subjects were always assigned, and we cordially disliked them. this particular day i was to have a paper on 'mathematical law.' "i put off the work until my paper had been called for several times, and so came to thursday night with excuses and not a line. i was told to bring my work the next morning without fail. i went home in hot anger. why in all this beautiful world, would they not allow me to do something i could do, and let any one of four members of my class who revelled in mathematics do my subject? that evening i was distracted. 'i can't do a paper on mathematics, and i won't!' i said stoutly; 'but i'll do such a paper on a subject i can write about as will open their foolish eyes and make them see how wrong they are.'" before me on the table lay the book i loved, the most wonderful story in which was 'picciola' by saintine. instantly i began to write. breathlessly i wrote for hours. i exceeded our limit ten times over. the poor italian count, the victim of political offences, shut by napoleon from the wonderful grounds, mansion, and life that were his, restricted to the bare prison walls of fenestrella, deprived of books and writing material, his one interest in life became a sprout of green, sprung, no doubt, from a seed dropped by a passing bird, between the stone flagging of the prison yard before his window. with him i had watched over it through all the years since i first had access to the book; with him i had prayed for it. i had broken into a cold sweat of fear when the jailer first menaced it; i had hated the wind that bent it roughly, and implored the sun. i had sung a paean of joy at its budding, and worshipped in awe before its thirty perfect blossoms. the count had named it 'picciola'--the little one--to me also it was a personal possession. that night we lived the life of our 'little one' over again, the count and i, and never were our anxieties and our joys more poignant. "next morning," says mrs. porter, "i dared my crowd to see how long they could remain on the grounds, and yet reach the assembly room before the last toll of the bell. this scheme worked. coming in so late the principal opened exercises without remembering my paper. again, at noon, i was as late as i dared be, and i escaped until near the close of the exercises, through which i sat in cold fear. when my name was reached at last the principal looked at me inquiringly and then announced my inspiring mathematical subject. i arose, walked to the front, and made my best bow. then i said: 'i waited until yesterday because i knew absolutely nothing about my subject'--the audience laughed--'and i could find nothing either here or in the library at home, so last night i reviewed saintine's masterpiece, "picciola."' "then instantly i began to read. i was almost paralyzed at my audacity, and with each word i expected to hear a terse little interruption. imagine my amazement when i heard at the end of the first page: 'wait a minute!' of course i waited, and the principal left the room. a moment later she reappeared accompanied by the superintendent of the city schools. 'begin again,' she said. 'take your time.' "i was too amazed to speak. then thought came in a rush. my paper was good. it was as good as i had believed it. it was better than i had known. i did go on! we took that assembly room and the corps of teachers into our confidence, the count and i, and told them all that was in our hearts about a little flower that sprang between the paving stones of a prison yard. the count and i were free spirits. from the book i had learned that. he got into political trouble through it, and i had got into mathematical trouble, and we told our troubles. one instant the room was in laughter, the next the boys bowed their heads, and the girls who had forgotten their handkerchiefs cried in their aprons. for almost sixteen big foolscap pages i held them, and i was eager to go on and tell them more about it when i reached the last line. never again was a subject forced upon me." after this incident of her schooldays, what had been inclination before was aroused to determination and the child neglected her lessons to write. a volume of crude verse fashioned after the metre of meredith's "lucile," a romantic book in rhyme, and two novels were the fruits of this youthful ardour. through the sickness and death of a sister, the author missed the last three months of school, but, she remarks, "unlike my schoolmates, i studied harder after leaving school than ever before and in a manner that did me real good. the most that can be said of what education i have is that it is the very best kind in the world for me; the only possible kind that would not ruin a person of my inclinations. the others of my family had been to college; i always have been too thankful for words that circumstances intervened which saved my brain from being run through a groove in company with dozens of others of widely different tastes and mentality. what small measure of success i have had has come through preserving my individual point of view, method of expression, and following in after life the spartan regulations of my girlhood home. whatever i have been able to do, has been done through the line of education my father saw fit to give me, and through his and my mother's methods of rearing me. "my mother went out too soon to know, and my father never saw one of the books; but he knew i was boiling and bubbling like a yeast jar in july over some literary work, and if i timidly slipped to him with a composition, or a faulty poem, he saw good in it, and made suggestions for its betterment. when i wanted to express something in colour, he went to an artist, sketched a design for an easel, personally superintended the carpenter who built it, and provided tuition. on that same easel i painted the water colours for 'moths of the limberlost,' and one of the most poignant regrets of my life is that he was not there to see them, and to know that the easel which he built through his faith in me was finally used in illustrating a book. "if i thought it was music through which i could express myself, he paid for lessons and detected hidden ability that should be developed. through the days of struggle he stood fast; firm in his belief in me. he was half the battle. it was he who demanded a physical standard that developed strength to endure the rigours of scientific field and darkroom work, and the building of ten books in ten years, five of which were on nature subjects, having my own illustrations, and five novels, literally teeming with natural history, true to nature. it was he who demanded of me from birth the finishing of any task i attempted and who taught me to cultivate patience to watch and wait, even years, if necessary, to find and secure material i wanted. it was he who daily lived before me the life of exactly such a man as i portrayed in 'the harvester,' and who constantly used every atom of brain and body power to help and to encourage all men to do the same." marriage, a home of her own, and a daughter for a time filled the author's hands, but never her whole heart and brain. the book fever lay dormant a while, and then it became a compelling influence. it dominated the life she lived, the cabin she designed for their home, and the books she read. when her daughter was old enough to go to school, mrs. porter's time came. speaking of this period, she says: "i could not afford a maid, but i was very strong, vital to the marrow, and i knew how to manage life to make it meet my needs, thanks to even the small amount i had seen of my mother. i kept a cabin of fourteen rooms, and kept it immaculate. i made most of my daughter's clothes, i kept a conservatory in which there bloomed from three to six hundred bulbs every winter, tended a house of canaries and linnets, and cooked and washed dishes besides three times a day. in my spare time (mark the word, there was time to spare else the books never would have been written and the pictures made) i mastered photography to such a degree that the manufacturers of one of our finest brands of print paper once sent the manager of their factory to me to learn how i handled it. he frankly said that they could obtain no such results with it as i did. he wanted to see my darkroom, examine my paraphernalia, and have me tell him exactly how i worked. as i was using the family bathroom for a darkroom and washing negatives and prints on turkey platters in the kitchen, i was rather put to it when it came to giving an exhibition. it was scarcely my fault if men could not handle the paper they manufactured so that it produced the results that i obtained, so i said i thought the difference might lie in the chemical properties of the water, and sent this man on his way satisfied. possibly it did. but i have a shrewd suspicion it lay in high-grade plates, a careful exposure, judicious development, with self-compounded chemicals straight from the factory, and c.p. i think plates swabbed with wet cotton before development, intensified if of short exposure, and thoroughly swabbed again before drying, had much to do with it; and paper handled in the same painstaking manner had more. i have hundreds of negatives in my closet made twelve years ago, in perfect condition for printing from to-day, and i never have lost a plate through fog from imperfect development and hasty washing; so my little mother's rule of 'whatsoever thy hands find to do, do it with thy might,' held good in photography." thus had mrs. porter made time to study and to write, and editors began to accept what she sent them with little if any changes. she began by sending photographic and natural history hints to recreation, and with the first installment was asked to take charge of the department and furnish material each month for which she was to be paid at current prices in high-grade photographic material. we can form some idea of the work she did under this arrangement from the fact that she had over one thousand dollars' worth of equipment at the end of the first year. the second year she increased this by five hundred, and then accepted a place on the natural history staff of outing, working closely with mr. casper whitney. after a year of this helpful experience mrs. porter began to turn her attention to what she calls "nature studies sugar coated with fiction." mixing some childhood fact with a large degree of grown-up fiction, she wrote a little story entitled "laddie, the princess, and the pie." "i was abnormally sensitive," says the author, "about trying to accomplish any given thing and failing. i had been taught in my home that it was black disgrace to undertake anything and fail. my husband owned a drug and book store that carried magazines, and it was not possible to conduct departments in any of them and not have it known; but only a few people in our locality read these publications, none of them were interested in nature photography, or natural science, so what i was trying to do was not realized even by my own family. "with them i was much more timid than with the neighbours. least of all did i want to fail before my man person and my daughter and our respective families; so i worked in secret, sent in my material, and kept as quiet about it as possible. on outing i had graduated from the camera department to an illustrated article each month, and as this kept up the year round, and few illustrations could be made in winter, it meant that i must secure enough photographs of wild life in summer to last during the part of the year when few were to be had. "every fair day i spent afield, and my little black horse and load of cameras, ropes, and ladders became a familiar sight to the country folk of the limberlost, in rainbow bottom, the canoper, on the banks of the wabash, in woods and thickets and beside the roads; but few people understood what i was trying to do, none of them what it would mean were i to succeed. being so afraid of failure and the inevitable ridicule in a community where i was already severly criticised on account of my ideas of housekeeping, dress, and social customs, i purposely kept everything i did as quiet as possible. it had to be known that i was interested in everything afield, and making pictures; also that i was writing field sketches for nature publications, but little was thought of it, save as one more, peculiarity, in me. so when my little story was finished i went to our store and looked over the magazines. i chose one to which we did not subscribe, having an attractive cover, good type, and paper, and on the back of an old envelope, behind the counter, i scribbled: perriton maxwell, 116 nassau street, new york, and sent my story on its way. "then i took a bold step, the first in my self-emancipation. money was beginning to come in, and i had some in my purse of my very own that i had earned when no one even knew i was working. i argued that if i kept my family so comfortable that they missed nothing from their usual routine, it was my right to do what i could toward furthering my personal ambitions in what time i could save from my housework. and until i could earn enough to hire capable people to take my place, i held rigidly to that rule. i who waded morass, fought quicksands, crept, worked from ladders high in air, and crossed water on improvised rafts without a tremor, slipped with many misgivings into the postoffice and rented a box for myself, so that if i met with failure my husband and the men in the bank need not know what i had attempted. that was early may; all summer i waited. i had heard that it required a long time for an editor to read and to pass on matter sent him; but my waiting did seem out of all reason. i was too busy keeping my cabin and doing field work to repine; but i decided in my own mind that mr. maxwell was a 'mean old thing' to throw away my story and keep the return postage. besides, i was deeply chagrined, for i had thought quite well of my effort myself, and this seemed to prove that i did not know even the first principles of what would be considered an interesting story. "then one day in september i went into our store on an errand and the manager said to me: 'i read your story in the metropolitan last night. it was great! did you ever write any fiction before?' "my head whirled, but i had learned to keep my own counsels, so i said as lightly as i could, while my heart beat until i feared he could hear it: 'no. just a simple little thing! have you any spare copies? my sister might want one.' "he supplied me, so i hurried home, and shutting myself in the library, i sat down to look my first attempt at fiction in the face. i quite agreed with the manager that it was 'great.' then i wrote mr. maxwell a note telling him that i had seen my story in his magazine, and saying that i was glad he liked it enough to use it. i had not known a letter could reach new york and bring a reply so quickly as his answer came. it was a letter that warmed the deep of my heart. mr. maxwell wrote that he liked my story very much, but the office boy had lost or destroyed my address with the wrappings, so after waiting a reasonable length of time to hear from me, he had illustrated it the best he could, and printed it. he wrote that so many people had spoken to him of a new, fresh note in it, that he wished me to consider doing him another in a similar vein for a christmas leader and he enclosed my very first check for fiction. "so i wrote: 'how laddie and the princess spelled down at the christmas bee.' mr. maxwell was pleased to accept that also, with what i considered high praise, and to ask me to furnish the illustrations. he specified that he wanted a frontispiece, head and tail pieces, and six or seven other illustrations. counting out the time for his letter to reach me, and the material to return, i was left with just one day in which to secure the pictures. they had to be of people costumed in the time of the early seventies and i was short of print paper and chemicals. first, i telephoned to fort wayne for the material i wanted to be sent without fail on the afternoon train. then i drove to the homes of the people i wished to use for subjects and made appointments for sittings, and ransacked the cabin for costumes. the letter came on the eight a.m. train. at ten o'clock i was photographing colonel lupton beside my dining-room fireplace for the father in the story. at eleven i was dressing and posing miss lizzie huart for the princess. at twelve i was picturing in one of my bed rooms a child who served finely for little sister, and an hour later the same child in a cemetery three miles in the country where i used mounted butterflies from my cases, and potted plants carried from my conservatory, for a graveyard scene. the time was early november, but god granted sunshine that day, and short focus blurred the background. at four o'clock i was at the schoolhouse, and in the best-lighted room with five or six models, i was working on the spelling bee scenes. by six i was in the darkroom developing and drying these plates, every one of which was good enough to use. i did my best work with printing-out paper, but i was compelled to use a developing paper in this extremity, because it could be worked with much more speed, dried a little between blotters, and mounted. at three o'clock in the morning i was typing the quotations for the pictures, at four the parcel stood in the hall for the six o'clock train, and i realized that i wanted a drink, food, and sleep, for i had not stopped a second for anything from the time of reading mr. maxwell's letter until his order was ready to mail. for the following ten years i was equally prompt in doing all work i undertook, whether pictures or manuscript, without a thought of consideration for self; and i disappointed the confident expectations of my nearest and dearest by remaining sane, normal, and almost without exception the healthiest woman they knew." this story and its pictures were much praised, and in the following year the author was asked for several stories, and even used bird pictures and natural history sketches, quite an innovation for a magazine at that time. with this encouragement she wrote and illustrated a short story of about ten thousand words, and sent it to the century. richard watson gilder advised mrs. porter to enlarge it to book size, which she did. this book is "the cardinal." following mr. gilder's advice, she recast the tale and, starting with the mangled body of a cardinal some marksman had left in the road she was travelling, in a fervour of love for the birds and indignation at the hunter, she told the cardinal's life history in these pages. the story was promptly accepted and the book was published with very beautiful half-tones, and cardinal buckram cover. incidentally, neither the author's husband nor daughter had the slightest idea she was attempting to write a book until work had progressed to that stage where she could not make a legal contract without her husband's signature. during the ten years of its life this book has gone through eight different editions, varying in form and make-up from the birds in exquisite colour, as colour work advanced and became feasible, to a binding of beautiful red morocco, a number of editions of differing design intervening. one was tried in gray binding, the colour of the female cardinal, with the red male used as an inset. another was woodsgreen with the red male, and another red with a wild rose design stamped in. there is a british edition published by hodder and stoughton. all of these had the author's own illustrations which authorities agree are the most complete studies of the home life and relations of a pair of birds ever published. the story of these illustrations in "the cardinal" and how the author got them will be a revelation to most readers. mrs. porter set out to make this the most complete set of bird illustrations ever secured, in an effort to awaken people to the wonder and beauty and value of the birds. she had worked around half a dozen nests for two years and had carried a lemon tree from her conservatory to the location of one nest, buried the tub, and introduced the branches among those the birds used in approaching their home that she might secure proper illustrations for the opening chapter, which was placed in the south. when the complete bird series was finished, the difficult work over, and there remained only a few characteristic wabash river studies of flowers, vines, and bushes for chapter tail pieces to be secured, the author "met her jonah," and her escape was little short of a miracle. after a particularly strenuous spring afield, one teeming day in early august she spent the morning in the river bottom beside the wabash. a heavy rain followed by august sun soon had her dripping while she made several studies of wild morning glories, but she was particularly careful to wrap up and drive slowly going home, so that she would not chill. in the afternoon the author went to the river northeast of town to secure mallow pictures for another chapter, and after working in burning sun on the river bank until exhausted, she several times waded the river to examine bushes on the opposite bank. on the way home she had a severe chill, and for the following three weeks lay twisted in the convulsions of congestion, insensible most of the time. skilled doctors and nurses did their best, which they admitted would have availed nothing if the patient had not had a constitution without a flaw upon which to work. "this is the history," said mrs. porter, "of one little tail piece among the pictures. there were about thirty others, none so strenuous, but none easy, each having a living, fighting history for me. if i were to give in detail the story of the two years' work required to secure the set of bird studies illustrating 'the cardinal,' it would make a much larger book than the life of the bird." "the cardinal" was published in june of 1903. on the 20th of october, 1904, "freckles" appeared. mrs. porter had been delving afield with all her heart and strength for several years, and in the course of her work had spent every other day for three months in the limberlost swamp, making a series of studies of the nest of a black vulture. early in her married life she had met a scotch lumberman, who told her of the swamp and of securing fine timber there for canadian shipbuilders, and later when she had moved to within less than a mile of its northern boundary, she met a man who was buying curly maple, black walnut, golden oak, wild cherry, and other wood extremely valuable for a big furniture factory in grand rapids. there was one particular woman, of all those the author worked among, who exercised herself most concerning her. she never failed to come out if she saw her driving down the lane to the woods, and caution her to be careful. if she felt that mrs. porter had become interested and forgotten that it was long past meal time, she would send out food and water or buttermilk to refresh her. she had her family posted, and if any of them saw a bird with a straw or a hair in its beak, they followed until they found its location. it was her husband who drove the stake and ploughed around the killdeer nest in the cornfield to save it for the author; and he did many other acts of kindness without understanding exactly what he was doing or why. "merely that i wanted certain things was enough for those people," writes mrs. porter. "without question they helped me in every way their big hearts could suggest to them, because they loved to be kind, and to be generous was natural with them. the woman was busy keeping house and mothering a big brood, and every living creature that came her way, besides. she took me in, and i put her soul, body, red head, and all, into sarah duncan. the lumber and furniture man i combined in mclean. freckles was a composite of certain ideals and my own field experiences, merged with those of mr. bob burdette black, who, at the expense of much time and careful work, had done more for me than any other ten men afield. the angel was an idealized picture of my daughter. "i dedicated the book to my husband, mr. charles darwin porter, for several reasons, the chiefest being that he deserved it. when word was brought me by lumbermen of the nest of the black vulture in the limberlost, i hastened to tell my husband the wonderful story of the big black bird, the downy white baby, the pale blue egg, and to beg back a rashly made promise not to work in the limberlost. being a natural history enthusiast himself, he agreed that i must go; but he qualified the assent with the proviso that no one less careful of me than he, might accompany me there. his business had forced him to allow me to work alone, with hired guides or the help of oilmen and farmers elsewhere; but a limberlost trip at that time was not to be joked about. it had not been shorn, branded, and tamed. there were most excellent reasons why i should not go there. much of it was impenetrable. only a few trees had been taken out; oilmen were just invading it. in its physical aspect it was a treacherous swamp and quagmire filled with every plant, animal, and human danger known in the worst of such locations in the central states. "a rod inside the swamp on a road leading to an oil well we mired to the carriage hubs. i shielded my camera in my arms and before we reached the well i thought the conveyance would be torn to pieces and the horse stalled. at the well we started on foot, mr. porter in kneeboots, i in waist-high waders. the time was late june; we forced our way between steaming, fetid pools, through swarms of gnats, flies, mosquitoes, poisonous insects, keeping a sharp watch for rattlesnakes. we sank ankle deep at every step, and logs we thought solid broke under us. our progress was a steady succession of prying and pulling each other to the surface. our clothing was wringing wet, and the exposed parts of our bodies lumpy with bites and stings. my husband found the tree, cleared the opening to the great prostrate log, traversed its unspeakable odours for nearly forty feet to its farthest recess, and brought the baby and egg to the light in his leaf-lined hat. "we could endure the location only by dipping napkins in deodorant and binding them over our mouths and nostrils. every third day for almost three months we made this trip, until little chicken was able to take wing. of course we soon made a road to the tree, grew accustomed to the disagreeable features of the swamp and contemptuously familiar with its dangers, so that i worked anywhere in it i chose with other assistance; but no trip was so hard and disagreeable as the first. mr. porter insisted upon finishing the little chicken series, so that 'deserve' is a poor word for any honour that might accrue to him for his part in the book." this was the nucleus of the book, but the story itself originated from the fact that one day, while leaving the swamp, a big feather with a shaft over twenty inches long came spinning and swirling earthward and fell in the author's path. instantly she looked upward to locate the bird, which from the size and formation of the quill could have been nothing but an eagle; her eyes, well trained and fairly keen though they were, could not see the bird, which must have been soaring above range. familiar with the life of the vulture family, the author changed the bird from which the feather fell to that described in "freckles." mrs. porter had the old swamp at that time practically untouched, and all its traditions to work upon and stores of natural history material. this falling feather began the book which in a few days she had definitely planned and in six months completely written. her title for it was "the falling feather," that tangible thing which came drifting down from nowhere, just as the boy came, and she has always regretted the change to "freckles." john murray publishes a british edition of this book which is even better liked in ireland and scotland than in england. as "the cardinal" was published originally not by doubleday, page & company, but by another firm, the author had talked over with the latter house the scheme of "freckles" and it had been agreed to publish the story as soon as mrs. porter was ready. how the book finally came to doubleday, page & company she recounts as follows: "by the time 'freckles' was finished, i had exercised my woman's prerogative and 'changed my mind'; so i sent the manuscript to doubleday, page & company, who accepted it. they liked it well enough to take a special interest in it and to bring it out with greater expense than it was at all customary to put upon a novel at that time; and this in face of the fact that they had repeatedly warned me that the nature work in it would kill fully half its chances with the public. mr. f.n. doubleday, starting on a trip to the bahamas, remarked that he would like to take a manuscript with him to read, and the office force decided to put 'freckles' into his grip. the story of the plucky young chap won his way to the heart of the publishers, under a silk cotton tree, 'neath bright southern skies, and made such a friend of him that through the years of its book-life it has been the object of special attention. mr. george doran gave me a photograph which mr. horace macfarland made of mr. doubleday during this reading of the mss. of 'freckles' which is especially interesting." that more than 2,000,000 readers have found pleasure and profit in mrs. porter's books is a cause for particular gratification. these stories all have, as a fundamental reason of their existence, the author's great love of nature. to have imparted this love to others--to have inspired many hundreds of thousands to look for the first time with seeing eyes at the pageant of the out-of-doors--is a satisfaction that must endure. for the part of the publishers, they began their business by issuing "nature books" at a time when the sale of such works was problematical. as their tastes and inclinations were along the same lines which mrs. porter loved to follow, it gave them great pleasure to be associated with her books which opened the eyes of so great a public to new and worthy fields of enjoyment. the history of "freckles" is unique. the publishers had inserted marginal drawings on many pages, but these, instead of attracting attention to the nature charm of the book, seemed to have exactly a contrary effect. the public wanted a novel. the illustrations made it appear to be a nature book, and it required three long slow years for "freckles" to pass from hand to hand and prove that there really was a novel between the covers, but that it was a story that took its own time and wound slowly toward its end, stopping its leisurely course for bird, flower, lichen face, blue sky, perfumed wind, and the closest intimacies of the daily life of common folk. ten years have wrought a great change in the sentiment against nature work and the interest in it. thousands who then looked upon the world with unobserving eyes are now straining every nerve to accumulate enough to be able to end life where they may have bird, flower, and tree for daily companions. mrs. porter's account of the advice she received at this time is particularly interesting. three editors who read "freckles" before it was published offered to produce it, but all of them expressed precisely the same opinion: "the book will never sell well as it is. if you want to live from the proceeds of your work, if you want to sell even moderately, you must cut out the nature stuff." "now to put in the nature stuff," continues the author, "was the express purpose for which the book had been written. i had had one year's experience with 'the song of the cardinal,' frankly a nature book, and from the start i realized that i never could reach the audience i wanted with a book on nature alone. to spend time writing a book based wholly upon human passion and its outworking i would not. so i compromised on a book into which i put all the nature work that came naturally within its scope, and seasoned it with little bits of imagination and straight copy from the lives of men and women i had known intimately, folk who lived in a simple, common way with which i was familiar. so i said to my publishers: 'i will write the books exactly as they take shape in my mind. you publish them. i know they will sell enough that you will not lose. if i do not make over six hundred dollars on a book i shall never utter a complaint. make up my work as i think it should be and leave it to the people as to what kind of book they will take into their hearts and homes.' i altered 'freckles' slightly, but from that time on we worked on this agreement. "my years of nature work have not been without considerable insight into human nature, as well," continues mrs. porter. "i know its failings, its inborn tendencies, its weaknesses, its failures, its depth of crime; and the people who feel called upon to spend their time analyzing, digging into, and uncovering these sources of depravity have that privilege, more's the pity! if i had my way about it, this is a privilege no one could have in books intended for indiscriminate circulation. i stand squarely for book censorship, and i firmly believe that with a few more years of such books, as half a dozen i could mention, public opinion will demand this very thing. my life has been fortunate in one glad way: i have lived mostly in the country and worked in the woods. for every bad man and woman i have ever known, i have met, lived with, and am intimately acquainted with an overwhelming number of thoroughly clean and decent people who still believe in god and cherish high ideals, and it is upon the lives of these that i base what i write. to contend that this does not produce a picture true to life is idiocy. it does. it produces a picture true to ideal life; to the best that good men and good women can do at level best. "i care very little for the magazine or newspaper critics who proclaim that there is no such thing as a moral man, and that my pictures of life are sentimental and idealized. they are! and i glory in them! they are straight, living pictures from the lives of men and women of morals, honour, and loving kindness. they form 'idealized pictures of life' because they are copies from life where it touches religion, chastity, love, home, and hope of heaven ultimately. none of these roads leads to publicity and the divorce court. they all end in the shelter and seclusion of a home. "such a big majority of book critics and authors have begun to teach, whether they really believe it or not, that no book is true to life unless it is true to the worst in life, that the idea has infected even the women." in 1906, having seen a few of mrs. porter's studies of bird life, mr. edward bok telegraphed the author asking to meet him in chicago. she had a big portfolio of fine prints from plates for which she had gone to the last extremity of painstaking care, and the result was an order from mr. bok for a six months' series in the ladies' home journal of the author's best bird studies accompanied by descriptions of how she secured them. this material was later put in book form under the title, "what i have done with birds," and is regarded as authoritative on the subject of bird photography and bird life, for in truth it covers every phase of the life of the birds described, and contains much of other nature subjects. by this time mrs. porter had made a contract with her publishers to alternate her books. she agreed to do a nature book for love, and then, by way of compromise, a piece of nature work spiced with enough fiction to tempt her class of readers. in this way she hoped that they would absorb enough of the nature work while reading the fiction to send them afield, and at the same time keep in their minds her picture of what she considers the only life worth living. she was still assured that only a straight novel would "pay," but she was living, meeting all her expenses, giving her family many luxuries, and saving a little sum for a rainy day she foresaw on her horoscope. to be comfortably clothed and fed, to have time and tools for her work, is all she ever has asked of life. among mrs. porter's readers "at the foot of the rainbow" stands as perhaps the author's strongest piece of fiction. in august of 1909 two books on which the author had been working for years culminated at the same time: a nature novel, and a straight nature book. the novel was, in a way, a continuation of "freckles," filled as usual with wood lore, but more concerned with moths than birds. mrs. porter had been finding and picturing exquisite big night flyers during several years of field work among the birds, and from what she could have readily done with them she saw how it would be possible for a girl rightly constituted and environed to make a living, and a good one, at such work. so was conceived "a girl of the limberlost." "this comes fairly close to my idea of a good book," she writes. "no possible harm can be done any one in reading it. the book can, and does, present a hundred pictures that will draw any reader in closer touch with nature and the almighty, my primal object in each line i write. the human side of the book is as close a character study as i am capable of making. i regard the character of mrs. comstock as the best thought-out and the cleanest-cut study of human nature i have so far been able to do. perhaps the best justification of my idea of this book came to me recently when i received an application from the president for permission to translate it into arabic, as the first book to be used in an effort to introduce our methods of nature study into the college of cairo." hodder and stoughton of london published the british edition of this work. at the same time that "a girl of the limberlost" was published there appeared the book called "birds of the bible." this volume took shape slowly. the author made a long search for each bird mentioned in the bible, how often, where, why; each quotation concerning it in the whole book, every abstract reference, why made, by whom, and what it meant. then slowly dawned the sane and true things said of birds in the bible compared with the amazing statements of aristotle, aristophanes, pliny, and other writers of about the same period in pagan nations. this led to a search for the dawn of bird history and for the very first pictures preserved of them. on this book the author expended more work than on any other she has ever written. in 1911 two more books for which mrs. porter had gathered material for long periods came to a conclusion on the same date: "music of the wild" and "the harvester." the latter of these was a nature novel; the other a frank nature book, filled with all outdoors--a special study of the sounds one hears in fields and forests, and photographic reproductions of the musicians and their instruments. the idea of "the harvester" was suggested to the author by an editor who wanted a magazine article, with human interest in it, about the ginseng diggers in her part of the country. mr. porter had bought ginseng for years for a drug store he owned; there were several people he knew still gathering it for market, and growing it was becoming a good business all over the country. mrs. porter learned from the united states pharmacopaeia and from various other sources that the drug was used mostly by the chinese, and with a wholly mistaken idea of its properties. the strongest thing any medical work will say for ginseng is that it is "a very mild and soothing drug." it seems that the chinese buy and use it in enormous quantities, in the belief that it is a remedy for almost every disease to which humanity is heir; that it will prolong life, and that it is a wonderful stimulant. ancient medical works make this statement, laying special emphasis upon its stimulating qualities. the drug does none of these things. instead of being a stimulant, it comes closer to a sedative. this investigation set the author on the search for other herbs that now are or might be grown as an occupation. then came the idea of a man who should grow these drugs professionally, and of the sick girl healed by them. "i could have gone to work and started a drug farm myself," remarks mrs. porter, "with exactly the same profit and success as the harvester. i wrote primarily to state that to my personal knowledge, clean, loving men still exist in this world, and that no man is forced to endure the grind of city life if he wills otherwise. any one who likes, with even such simple means as herbs he can dig from fence corners, may start a drug farm that in a short time will yield him delightful work and independence. i wrote the book as i thought it should be written, to prove my points and establish my contentions. i think it did. men the globe around promptly wrote me that they always had observed the moral code; others that the subject never in all their lives had been presented to them from my point of view, but now that it had been, they would change and do what they could to influence all men to do the same." messrs. hodder and stoughton publish a british edition of "the harvester," there is an edition in scandinavian, it was running serially in a german magazine, but for a time at least the german and french editions that were arranged will be stopped by this war, as there was a french edition of "the song of the cardinal." after a short rest, the author began putting into shape a book for which she had been compiling material since the beginning of field work. from the first study she made of an exquisite big night moth, mrs. porter used every opportunity to secure more and representative studies of each family in her territory, and eventually found the work so fascinating that she began hunting cocoons and raising caterpillars in order to secure life histories and make illustrations with fidelity to life. "it seems," comments the author, "that scientists and lepidopterists from the beginning have had no hesitation in describing and using mounted moth and butterfly specimens for book text and illustration, despite the fact that their colours fade rapidly, that the wings are always in unnatural positions, and the bodies shrivelled. i would quite as soon accept the mummy of any particular member of the rameses family as a fair representation of the living man, as a mounted moth for a live one." when she failed to secure the moth she wanted in a living and perfect specimen for her studies, the author set out to raise one, making photographic studies from the eggs through the entire life process. there was one june during which she scarcely slept for more than a few hours of daytime the entire month. she turned her bedroom into a hatchery, where were stored the most precious cocoons; and if she lay down at night it was with those she thought would produce moths before morning on her pillow, where she could not fail to hear them emerging. at the first sound she would be up with notebook in hand, and by dawn, busy with cameras. then she would be forced to hurry to the darkroom and develop her plates in order to be sure that she had a perfect likeness, before releasing the specimen, for she did release all she produced except one pair of each kind, never having sold a moth, personally. often where the markings were wonderful and complicated, as soon as the wings were fully developed mrs. porter copied the living specimen in water colours for her illustrations, frequently making several copies in order to be sure that she laid on the colour enough brighter than her subject so that when it died it would be exactly the same shade. "never in all my life," writes the author, "have i had such exquisite joy in work as i had in painting the illustrations for this volume of 'moths of the limberlost.' colour work had advanced to such a stage that i knew from the beautiful reproductions in arthur rackham's 'rheingold and valkyrie' and several other books on the market, that time so spent would not be lost. mr. doubleday had assured me personally that i might count on exact reproduction, and such details of type and paper as i chose to select. i used the easel made for me when a girl, under the supervision of my father, and i threw my whole heart into the work of copying each line and delicate shading on those wonderful wings, 'all diamonded with panes of quaint device, innumerable stains and splendid dyes,' as one poet describes them. there were times, when in working a mist of colour over another background, i cut a brush down to three hairs. some of these illustrations i sent back six and seven times, to be worked over before the illustration plates were exact duplicates of the originals, and my heart ached for the engravers, who must have had job-like patience; but it did not ache enough to stop me until i felt the reproduction exact. this book tells its own story of long and patient waiting for a specimen, of watching, of disappointments, and triumphs. i love it especially among my book children because it represents my highest ideals in the making of a nature book, and i can take any skeptic afield and prove the truth of the natural history it contains." in august of 1913 the author's novel "laddie" was published in new york, london, sydney and toronto simultaneously. this book contains the same mixture of romance and nature interest as the others, and is modelled on the same plan of introducing nature objects peculiar to the location, and characters, many of whom are from life, typical of the locality at a given period. the first thing many critics said of it was that "no such people ever existed, and no such life was ever lived." in reply to this the author said: "of a truth, the home i described in this book i knew to the last grain of wood in the doors, and i painted, it with absolute accuracy; and many of the people i described i knew more intimately than i ever have known any others. taken as a whole it represents a perfectly faithful picture of home life, in a family who were reared and educated exactly as this book indicates. there was such a man as laddie, and he was as much bigger and better than my description of him as a real thing is always better than its presentment. the only difference, barring the nature work, between my books and those of many other writers, is that i prefer to describe and to perpetuate the best i have known in life; whereas many authors seem to feel that they have no hope of achieving a high literary standing unless they delve in and reproduce the worst. "to deny that wrong and pitiful things exist in life is folly, but to believe that these things are made better by promiscuous discussion at the hands of writers who fail to prove by their books that their viewpoint is either right, clean, or helpful, is close to insanity. if there is to be any error on either side in a book, then god knows it is far better that it should be upon the side of pure sentiment and high ideals than upon that of a too loose discussion of subjects which often open to a large part of the world their first knowledge of such forms of sin, profligate expenditure, and waste of life's best opportunities. there is one great beauty in idealized romance: reading it can make no one worse than he is, while it may help thousands to a cleaner life and higher inspiration than they ever before have known." mrs. porter has written ten books, and it is not out of place here to express her attitude toward them. each was written, she says, from her heart's best impulses. they are as clean and helpful as she knew how to make them, as beautiful and interesting. she has never spared herself in the least degree, mind or body, when it came to giving her best, and she has never considered money in relation to what she was writing. during the hard work and exposure of those early years, during rainy days and many nights in the darkroom, she went straight ahead with field work, sending around the globe for books and delving to secure material for such books as "birds of the bible," "music of the wild," and "moths of the limberlost." every day devoted to such work was "commercially" lost, as publishers did not fail to tell her. but that was the work she could do, and do with exceeding joy. she could do it better pictorially, on account of her lifelong knowledge of living things afield, than any other woman had as yet had the strength and nerve to do it. it was work in which she gloried, and she persisted. "had i been working for money," comments the author, "not one of these nature books ever would have been written, or an illustration made." when the public had discovered her and given generous approval to "a girl of the limberlost," when "the harvester" had established a new record, that would have been the time for the author to prove her commercialism by dropping nature work, and plunging headlong into books it would pay to write, and for which many publishers were offering alluring sums. mrs. porter's answer was the issuing of such books as "music of the wild" and "moths of the limberlost." no argument is necessary. mr. edward shuman, formerly critic of the chicago record-herald, was impressed by this method of work and pointed it out in a review. it appealed to mr. shuman, when "moths of the limberlost" came in for review, following the tremendous success of "the harvester," that had the author been working for money, she could have written half a dozen more "harvesters" while putting seven years of field work, on a scientific subject, into a personally illustrated work. in an interesting passage dealing with her books, mrs. porter writes: "i have done three times the work on my books of fiction that i see other writers putting into a novel, in order to make all natural history allusions accurate and to write them in such fashion that they will meet with the commendation of high schools, colleges, and universities using what i write as text books, and for the homes that place them in their libraries. i am perfectly willing to let time and the hearts of the people set my work in its ultimate place. i have no delusions concerning it. "to my way of thinking and working the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began. if in one small degree it shows him where he can be a gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier man, it is a wonder-working book. if it opens his eyes to one beauty in nature he never saw for himself, and leads him one step toward the god of the universe, it is a beneficial book, for one step into the miracles of nature leads to that long walk, the glories of which so strengthen even a boy who thinks he is dying, that he faces his struggle like a gladiator." during the past ten years thousands of people have sent the author word that through her books they have been led afield and to their first realization of the beauties of nature her mail brings an average of ten such letters a day, mostly from students, teachers, and professional people of our largest cities. it can probably be said in all truth of her nature books and nature novels, that in the past ten years they have sent more people afield than all the scientific writings of the same period. that is a big statement, but it is very likely pretty close to the truth. mrs. porter has been asked by two london and one edinburgh publishers for the privilege of bringing out complete sets of her nature books, but as yet she has not felt ready to do this. in bringing this sketch of gene stratton-porter to a close it will be interesting to quote the author's own words describing the limberlost swamp, its gradual disappearance under the encroachments of business, and her removal to a new field even richer in natural beauties. she says: "in the beginning of the end a great swamp region lay in northeastern indiana. its head was in what is now noble and dekalb counties; its body in allen and wells, and its feet in southern adams and northern jay the limberlost lies at the foot and was, when i settled near it, exactly as described in my books. the process of dismantling it was told in, freckles, to start with, carried on in 'a girl of the limberlost,' and finished in 'moths of the limberlost.' now it has so completely fallen prey to commercialism through the devastation of lumbermen, oilmen, and farmers, that i have been forced to move my working territory and build a new cabin about seventy miles north, at the head of the swamp in noble county, where there are many lakes, miles of unbroken marsh, and a far greater wealth of plant and animal life than existed during my time in the southern part. at the north end every bird that frequents the central states is to be found. here grow in profusion many orchids, fringed gentians, cardinal flowers, turtle heads, starry campions, purple gerardias, and grass of parnassus. in one season i have located here almost every flower named in the botanies as native to these regions and several that i can find in no book in my library. "but this change of territory involves the purchase of fifteen acres of forest and orchard land, on a lake shore in marsh country. it means the building of a permanent, all-year-round home, which will provide the comforts of life for my family and furnish a workshop consisting of a library, a photographic darkroom and negative closet, and a printing room for me. i could live in such a home as i could provide on the income from my nature work alone; but when my working grounds were cleared, drained and ploughed up, literally wiped from the face of the earth, i never could have moved to new country had it not been for the earnings of the novels, which i now spend, and always have spent, in great part upon my nature work. based on this plan of work and life i have written ten books, and 'please god i live so long,' i shall write ten more. possibly every one of them will be located in northern indiana. each one will be filled with all the field and woods legitimately falling to its location and peopled with the best men and women i have known." chapter 1 the rat-catchers of the wabash "hey, you swate-scented little heart-warmer!" cried jimmy malone, as he lifted his tenth trap, weighted with a struggling muskrat, from the wabash. "varmint you may be to all the rist of creation, but you mane a night at casey's to me." jimmy whistled softly as he reset the trap. for the moment he forgot that he was five miles from home, that it was a mile farther to the end of his line at the lower curve of horseshoe bend, that his feet and fingers were almost freezing, and that every rat of the ten now in the bag on his back had made him thirstier. he shivered as the cold wind sweeping the curves of the river struck him; but when an unusually heavy gust dropped the ice and snow from a branch above him on the back of his head, he laughed, as he ducked and cried: "kape your snowballing till the fourth of july, will you!" "chick-a-dee-dee-dee!" remarked a tiny gray bird on the tree above him. jimmy glanced up. "chickie, chickie, chickie," he said. "i can't till by your dress whether you are a hin or a rooster. but i can till by your employmint that you are working for grub. have to hustle lively for every worm you find, don't you, chickie? now me, i'm hustlin' lively for a drink, and i be domn if it seems nicessary with a whole river of drinkin' stuff flowin' right under me feet. but the old wabash ain't runnin "wine and milk and honey" not by the jug-full. it seems to be compounded of aquil parts of mud, crude ile, and rain water. if 'twas only runnin' melwood, be gorry, chickie, you'd see a mermaid named jimmy malone sittin' on the kingfisher stump, combin' its auburn hair with a breeze, and scoopin' whiskey down its gullet with its tail fin. no, hold on, chickie, you wouldn't either. i'm too flat-chisted for a mermaid, and i'd have no time to lave off gurglin' for the hair-combin' act, which, chickie, to me notion is as issential to a mermaid as the curves. i'd be a sucker, the biggest sucker in the gar-hole, chickie bird. i'd be an all-day sucker, be gobs; yis, and an all-night sucker, too. come to think of it, chickie, be domn if i'd be a sucker at all. look at the mouths of thim! puckered up with a drawstring! oh, hell on the wabash, chickie, think of jimmy malone lyin' at the bottom of a river flowin' with melwood, and a puckerin'-string mouth! wouldn't that break the heart of you? i know what i'd be. i'd be the black bass of horseshoe bend, chickie, and i'd locate just below the shoals headin' up stream, and i'd hold me mouth wide open till i paralyzed me jaws so i couldn't shut thim. i'd just let the pure stuff wash over me gills constant, world without end. good-by, chickie. hope you got your grub, and pretty soon i'll have enough drink to make me feel like i was the bass for one night, anyway." jimmy hurried to his next trap, which was empty, but the one after that contained a rat, and there were footprints in the snow. "that's where the porrage-heart of the scotchman comes in," said jimmy, as he held up the rat by one foot, and gave it a sharp rap over the head with the trap to make sure it was dead. "dannie could no more hear a rat fast in one of me traps and not come over and put it out of its misery, than he could dance a hornpipe. and him only sicond hand from hornpipe land, too! but his feet's like lead. poor dannie! he gets just about half the rats i do. he niver did have luck." jimmy's gay face clouded for an instant. the twinkle faded from his eyes, and a look of unrest swept into them. he muttered something, and catching up his bag, shoved in the rat. as he reset the trap, a big crow dropped from branch to branch on a sycamore above him, and his back scarcely was turned before it alighted on the ice, and ravenously picked at three drops of blood purpling there. away down the ice-sheeted river led dannie's trail, showing plainly across the snow blanket. the wind raved through the trees, and around the curves of the river. the dark earth of the banks peeping from under overhanging ice and snow, looked like the entrance to deep mysterious caves. jimmy's superstitious soul readily peopled them with goblins and devils. he shuddered, and began to talk aloud to cheer himself. "elivin muskrat skins, times fifteen cints apiece, one dollar sixty-five. that will buy more than i can hold. hagginy! won't i be takin' one long fine gurgle of the pure stuff! and there's the boys! i might do the grand for once. one on me for the house! and i might pay something on my back score, but first i'll drink till i swell like a poisoned pup. and i ought to get mary that milk pail she's been kickin' for this last month. women and cows are always kickin'! if the blarsted cow hadn't kicked a hole in the pail, there'd be no need of mary kicking for a new one. but dough is dubious soldering. mary says it's bad enough on the dish pan, but it positively ain't hilthy about the milk pail, and she is right. we ought to have a new pail. i guess i'll get it first, and fill up on what's left. one for a quarter will do. and i've several traps yet, i may get a few more rats." the virtuous resolve to buy a milk pail before he quenched the thirst which burned him, so elated jimmy with good opinion of himself that he began whistling gayly as he strode toward his next trap. and by that token, dannie macnoun, resetting an empty trap a quarter of a mile below, knew that jimmy was coming, and that as usual luck was with him. catching his blood and water dripping bag, dannie dodged a rotten branch that came crashing down under the weight of its icy load, and stepping out on the river, he pulled on his patched wool-lined mittens as he waited for jimmy. "how many, dannie?" called jimmy from afar. "seven," answered dannie. "what for ye?" "elivin," replied jimmy, with a bit of unconscious swagger. "i am havin' poor luck to-day." "how mony wad satisfy ye?" asked dannie sarcastically. "ain't got time to figure that," answered jimmy, working in a double shuffle as he walked. "thrash around a little, dannie. it will warm you up." "i am no cauld," answered dannie. "no cauld!" imitated jimmy. "no cauld! come to observe you closer, i do detect symptoms of sunstroke in the ridness of your face, and the whiteness about your mouth; but the frost on your neck scarf, and the icicles fistooned around the tail of your coat, tell a different story. "dannie, you remind me of the baptizin' of pete cox last winter. pete's nothin' but skin and bone, and he niver had a square meal in his life to warm him. it took pushin' and pullin' to get him in the water, and a scum froze over while he was under. pete came up shakin' like the feeder on a thrashin' machine, and whin he could spake at all, 'bless jasus,' says he, 'i'm jist as wa-wa-warm as i wa-wa-want to be.' so are you, dannie, but there's a difference in how warm folks want to be. for meself, now, i could aisily bear a little more hate." "it's honest, i'm no cauld," insisted dannie; and he might have added that if jimmy would not fill his system with casey's poisons, that degree of cold would not chill and pinch him either. but being dannie, he neither thought nor said it. '"why, i'm frozen to me sowl!" cried jimmy, as he changed the rat bag to his other hand, and beat the empty one against his leg. "say, dannie, where do you think the kingfisher is wintering?" "and the black bass," answered dannie. "where do ye suppose the black bass is noo?" "strange you should mintion the black bass," said jimmy. "i was just havin' a little talk about him with a frind of mine named chickie-dom, no, chickie-dee, who works a grub stake back there. the bass might be lyin' in the river bed right under our feet. don't you remimber the time whin i put on three big cut-worms, and skittered thim beyond the log that lays across here, and he lept from the water till we both saw him the best we ever did, and nothin' but my old rotten line ever saved him? or he might be where it slumps off just below the kingfisher stump. but i know where he is all right. he's down in the gar-hole, and he'll come back here spawning time, and chase minnows when the kingfisher comes home. but, dannie, where the nation do you suppose the kingfisher is?" "no' so far away as ye might think," replied dannie. "doc hues told me that coming on the train frae indianapolis on the fifteenth of december, he saw one fly across a little pond juist below winchester. i believe they go south slowly, as the cold drives them, and stop near as they can find guid fishing. dinna that stump look lonely wi'out him?" "and sound lonely without the bass slashing around! i am going to have that bass this summer if i don't do a thing but fish!" vowed jimmy. "i'll surely have a try at him," answered dannie, with a twinkle in his gray eyes. "we've caught most everything else in the wabash, and our reputation fra taking guid fish is ahead of any one on the river, except the kingfisher. why the diel dinna one of us haul out that bass?" "ain't i just told you that i am going to hook him this summer?" shivered jimmy. "dinna ye hear me mention that i intended to take a try at him mysel'?" questioned dannie. "have ye forgotten that i know how to fish?" "'nough breeze to-day without starting a highlander," interposed jimmy hastily. "i believe i hear a rat in my next trap. that will make me twilve, and it's good and glad of it i am for i've to walk to town when my line is reset. there's something mary wants." "if mary wants ye to go to town, why dinna ye leave me to finish your traps, and start now?" asked dannie. "it's getting dark, and if ye are so late ye canna see the drifts, ye never can cut across the fields; fra the snow is piled waist high, and it's a mile farther by the road." "i got to skin my rats first, or i'll be havin' to ask credit again," replied jimmy. "that's easy," answered dannie. "turn your rats over to me richt noo. i'll give ye market price fra them in cash." "but the skinnin' of them," objected jimmy for decency sake, though his eyes were beginning to shine and his fingers to tremble. "never ye mind about that," retorted dannie. "i like to take my time to it, and fix them up nice. elivin, did ye say?" "elivin," answered jimmy, breaking into a jig, supposedly to keep his feet warm, in reality because he could not stand quietly while dannie pulled off his mittens, got out and unstrapped his wallet, and carefully counted out the money. "is that all ye need?" he asked. for an instant jimmy hesitated. missing a chance to get even a few cents more meant a little shorter time at casey's. "that's enough, i think," he said. "i wish i'd staid out of matrimony, and then maybe i could iver have a cint of me own. you ought to be glad you haven't a woman to consume ivery penny you earn before it reaches your pockets, dannie micnoun." "i hae never seen mary consume much but calico and food," dannie said dryly. "oh, it ain't so much what a woman really spinds," said jimmy, peevishly, as he shoved the money into his pocket, and pulled on his mittens. "it's what you know she would spind if she had the chance." "i dinna think ye'll break up on that," laughed dannie. and that was what jimmy wanted. so long as he could set dannie laughing, he could mold him. "no, but i'll break down," lamented jimmy in sore self-pity, as he remembered the quarter sacred to the purchase of the milk pail. "ye go on, and hurry," urged dannie. "if ye dinna start home by seven, i'll be combing the drifts fra ye before morning." "anything i can do for you?" asked jimmy, tightening his old red neck scarf. "yes," answered dannie. "do your errand and start straight home, your teeth are chattering noo. a little more exposure, and the rheumatism will be grinding ye again. ye will hurry, jimmy?" "sure!" cried jimmy, ducking under a snow slide, and breaking into a whistle as he turned toward the road. dannie's gaze followed jimmy's retreating figure until he climbed the bank, and was lost in the woods, and the light in his eyes was the light of love. he glanced at the sky, and hurried down the river. first across to jimmy's side to gather his rats and reset his traps, then to his own. but luck seemed to have turned, for all the rest of dannie's were full, and all of jimmy's were empty. but as he was gone, it was not necessary for dannie to slip across and fill them, as was his custom when they worked together. he would divide the rats at skinning time, so that jimmy would have just twice as many as he, because jimmy had a wife to support. the last trap of the line lay a little below the curve of horseshoe bend, and there dannie twisted the tops of the bags together, climbed the bank, and struck across rainbow bottom. he settled his load to his shoulders, and glanced ahead to choose the shortest route. he stopped suddenly with a quick intake of breath. "god!" he cried reverently. "hoo beautifu' are thy works." the ice-covered wabash circled rainbow bottom like a broad white frame, and inside it was a perfect picture wrought in crystal white and snow shadows. the blanket on the earth lay smoothly in even places, rose with knolls, fell with valleys, curved over prostrate logs, heaped in mounds where bushes grew thickly, and piled high in drifts where the wind blew free. in the shelter of the bottom the wind had not stripped the trees of their loads as it had those along the river. the willows, maples, and soft woods bent almost to earth with their shining burden; but the stout, stiffly upstanding trees, the oaks, elms, and cottonwoods defied the elements to bow their proud heads. while the three mighty trunks of the great sycamore in the middle looked white as the snow, and dwarfed its companions as it never had in summer; its wide-spreading branches were sharply cut against the blue background, and they tossed their frosted balls in the face of heaven. the giant of rainbow bottom might be broken, but it never would bend. every clambering vine, every weed and dried leaf wore a coat of lace-webbed frostwork. the wind swept a mist of tiny crystals through the air, and from the shelter of the deep woods across the river a cardinal whistled gayly. the bird of good cheer, whistling no doubt on an empty crop, made dannie think of jimmy, and his unfailing fountain of mirth. dear jimmy! would he ever take life seriously? how good he was to tramp to town and back after five miles on the ice. he thought of mary with almost a touch of impatience. what did the woman want that was so necessary as to send a man to town after a day on the ice? jimmy would be dog tired when he got home. dannie decided to hurry, and do the feeding and get in the wood before he began to skin the rats. he found walking uncertain. he plunged into unsuspected hollows, and waded drifts, so that he was panting when he reached the lane. from there he caught the gray curl of smoke against the sky from one of two log cabins side by side at the top of the embankment, and he almost ran toward them. mary might think they were late at the traps, and be out doing the feeding, and it would be cold for a woman. on reaching his own door, he dropped the rat bags inside, and then hurried to the yard of the other cabin. he gathered a big load of wood in his arms, and stamping the snow from his feet, called "open!" at the door. dannie stepped inside and filled the empty box. with smiling eyes he turned to mary, as he brushed the snow and moss from his sleeves. "nothing but luck to-day," he said. "jimmy took elivin fine skins frae his traps before he started to town, and i got five more that are his, and i hae eight o' my own." mary looked such a dream to dannie, standing there all pink and warm and tidy in her fresh blue dress, that he blinked and smiled, half bewildered. "what did jimmy go to town for?" she asked. "whatever it was ye wanted," answered dannie. "what was it i wanted?" persisted mary. "he dinna tell me," replied dannie, and the smile wavered. "me, either," said mary, and she stooped and picked up her sewing. dannie went out and gently closed the door. he stood for a second on the step, forcing himself to take an inventory of the work. there were the chickens to feed, and the cows to milk, feed, and water. both the teams must be fed and bedded, a fire in his own house made, and two dozen rats skinned, and the skins put to stretch and cure. and at the end of it all, instead of a bed and rest, there was every probability that he must drive to town after jimmy; for jimmy could get helpless enough to freeze in a drift on a dollar sixty-five. "oh, jimmy, jimmy!" muttered dannie. "i wish ye wadna." and he was not thinking of himself, but of the eyes of the woman inside. so dannie did all the work, and cooked his supper, because he never ate in jimmy's cabin when jimmy was not there. then he skinned rats, and watched the clock, because if jimmy did not come by eleven, it meant he must drive to town and bring him home. no wonder jimmy chilled at the trapping when he kept his blood on fire with whiskey. at half-past ten, dannie, with scarcely half the rats finished, went out into the storm and hitched to the single buggy. then he tapped at mary malone's door, quite softly, so that he would not disturb her if she had gone to bed. she was not sleeping, however, and the loneliness of her slight figure, as she stood with the lighted room behind her, struck dannie forcibly, so that his voice trembled with pity as he said: "mary, i've run out o' my curing compound juist in the midst of skinning the finest bunch o' rats we've taken frae the traps this winter. i am going to drive to town fra some more before the stores close, and we will be back in less than an hour. i thought i'd tell ye, so if ye wanted me ye wad know why i dinna answer. ye winna be afraid, will ye?" "no," replied mary, "i won't be afraid." "bolt the doors, and pile on plenty of wood to keep ye warm," said dannie as he turned away. just for a minute mary stared out into the storm. then a gust of wind nearly swept her from her feet, and she pushed the door shut, and slid the heavy bolt into place. for a little while she leaned and listened to the storm outside. she was a clean, neat, beautiful irish woman. her eyes were wide and blue, her cheeks pink, and her hair black and softly curling about her face and neck. the room in which she stood was neat as its keeper. the walls were whitewashed, and covered with prints, pictures, and some small tanned skins. dried grasses and flowers filled the vases on the mantle. the floor was neatly carpeted with a striped rag carpet, and in the big open fireplace a wood fire roared. in an opposite corner stood a modern cooking stove, the pipe passing through a hole in the wall, and a door led into a sleeping room beyond. as her eyes swept the room they rested finally on a framed lithograph of the virgin, with the infant in her arms. slowly mary advanced, her gaze fast on the serene pictured face of the mother clasping her child. before it she stood staring. suddenly her breast began to heave, and the big tears brimmed from her eyes and slid down her cheeks. "since you look so wise, why don't you tell me why?" she demanded. "oh, if you have any mercy, tell me why!" then before the steady look in the calm eyes, she hastily made the sign of the cross, and slipping to the floor, she laid her head on a chair, and sobbed aloud. chapter ii ruben o'khayam and the milk pail jimmy malone, carrying a shinning tin milk pail, stepped into casey's saloon and closed the door behind him. "e' much as wine has played the infidel, and robbed me of my robe of honor--well, i wonder what the vinters buy one-half so precious as the stuff they sell." jimmy stared at the back of a man leaning against the bar, and gazing lovingly at a glass of red wine, as he recited in mellow, swinging tones. gripping the milk pail, jimmy advanced a step. the man stuck a thumb in the belt of his norfolk jacket, and the verses flowed on: "the grape that can with logic absolute the two and seventy jarring sects confute: the sovereign alchemist that in a trice life's leaden metal into gold transmute." jimmy's mouth fell open, and he slowly nodded indorsement of the sentiment. the man lifted his glass. "ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, before we too into the dust descend; yesterday this day's madness did prepare; to-morrow's silence, triumph, or despair: drink! for you know not whence you came nor why: drink! for you know not why you go nor where." jimmy set the milk pail on the bar and faced the man. "'fore god, that's the only sensible word i ever heard on my side of the quistion in all me life. and to think that it should come from the mouth of a man wearing such a go-to-hell coat!" jimmy shoved the milk pail in front of the stranger. "in the name of humanity, impty yourself of that," he said. "fill me pail with the stuff and let me take it home to mary. she's always got the bist of the argumint, but i'm thinkin' that would cork her. you won't?" questioned jimmy resentfully. "kape it to yoursilf, thin, like you did your wine." he shoved the bucket toward the barkeeper, and emptied his pocket on the bar. "there, casey, you be the sovereign alchemist, and transmute that metal into melwood pretty quick, for i've not wet me whistle in three days, and the belly of me is filled with burnin' autumn leaves. gimme a loving cup, and come on boys, this is on me while it lasts." the barkeeper swept the coin into the till, picked up the bucket, and started back toward a beer keg. "oh, no you don't!" cried jimmy. "come back here and count that 'leaden metal,' and then be transmutin' it into whiskey straight, the purest gold you got. you don't drown out a three-days' thirst with beer. you ought to give me 'most two quarts for that." the barkeeper was wise. he knew that what jimmy started would go on with men who could pay, and he filled the order generously. jimmy picked up the pail. he dipped a small glass in the liquor, and held near an ounce aloft. "i wonder what the vinters buy one-half so precious as the stuff they sell?" he quoted. "down goes!" and he emptied the glass at a draft. then he walked to the group at the stove, and began dipping a drink for each. when jimmy came to a gray-haired man, with a high forehead and an intellectual face, he whispered: "take your full time, cap. who's the rhymin' inkybator?" "thread man, boston," mouthed the captain, as he reached for the glass with trembling fingers. jimmy held on. "do you know that stuff he's giving off?" the captain nodded, and rose to his feet. he always declared he could feel it farther if he drank standing. "what's his name?" whispered jimmy, releasing the glass. "rubaiyat, omar khayyam," panted the captain, and was lost. jimmy finished the round of his friends, and then approached the bar. his voice was softening. "mister ruben o'khayam," he said, "it's me private opinion that ye nade lace-trimmed pantalettes and a sash to complate your costume, but barrin' clothes, i'm entangled in the thrid of your discourse. bein' a boston man meself, it appeals to me, that i detict the refinemint of the east in yer voice. now these, me frinds, that i've just been tratin', are men of these parts; but we of the middle east don't set up to equal the culture of the extreme east. so, mr. o'khayam, solely for the benefit you might be to us, i'm askin' you to join me and me frinds in the momenchous initiation of me new milk pail." jimmy lifted a brimming glass, and offered it to the thread man. "do you transmute?" he asked. now if the boston man had looked jimmy in the eye, and said "i do," this book would not have been written. but he did not. he looked at the milk pail, and the glass, which had passed through the hands of a dozen men in a little country saloon away out in the wilds of indiana, and said: "i do not care to partake of further refreshment; if i can be of intellectual benefit, i might remain for a time." for a flash jimmy lifted the five feet ten of his height to six; but in another he shrank below normal. what appeared to the thread man to be a humble, deferential seeker after wisdom, led him to one of the chairs around the big coal base burner. but the boys who knew jimmy were watching the whites of his eyes, as they drank the second round. at this stage jimmy was on velvet. how long he remained there depended on the depth of melwood in the milk pail between his knees. he smiled winningly on the thread man. "ye know, mister o'khayam," he said, "at the present time you are located in one of the wooliest parts of the wild east. i don't suppose anything woolier could be found on the plains of nebraska where i am reliably informed they've stuck up a pole and labeled it the cinter of the united states. being a thousand miles closer that pole than you are in boston, naturally we come by that distance closer to the great wool industry. most of our wool here grows on our tongues, and we shear it by this transmutin' process, concerning which you have discoursed so beautiful. but barrin' the shearin' of our wool, we are the mildest, most sheepish fellows you could imagine. i don't reckon now there is a man among us who could be induced to blat or to butt, under the most tryin' circumstances. my mary's got a little lamb, and all the rist of the boys are lambs. but all the lambs are waned, and clusterin' round the milk pail. ain't that touchin'? come on, now, ruben, ile up and edify us some more!" "on what point do you seek enlightenment?" inquired the thread man. jimmy stretched his long legs, and spat against the stove in pure delight. "oh, you might loosen up on the work of a man," he suggested. "these lambs of casey's fold may larn things from you to help thim in the striss of life. now here's jones, for instance, he's holdin' togither a gang of sixty gibbering atalyans; any wan of thim would cut his throat and skip in the night for a dollar, but he kapes the beast in thim under, and they're gettin' out gravel for the bed of a railway. bingham there is oil. he's punchin' the earth full of wan thousand foot holes, and sendin' off two hundred quarts of nitroglycerine at the bottom of them, and pumpin' the accumulation across continents to furnish folks light and hate. york here is runnin' a field railway between bluffton and celina, so that i can get to the river and the resurvoir to fish without walkin'. haines is bossin' a crew of forty canadians and he's takin' the timber from the woods hereabouts, and sending it to be made into boats to carry stuff across sea. meself, and me partner, dannie micnoun, are the lady-likest lambs in the bunch. we grow grub to feed folks in summer and trap for skins to cover 'em in winter. corn is our great commodity. plowin' and hoein' it in summer, and huskin' it in the fall is sich lamb-like work. but don't mintion it in the same brith with tendin' our four dozen fur traps on a twenty-below-zero day. freezing hands and fate, and fallin' into air bubbles, and building fires to thaw out our frozen grub. now here among us poor little, transmutin', lambs you come, a raging lion, ripresentin' the cultour and rayfinement of the far east. by the pleats on your breast you show us the style. by the thrid case in your hand you furnish us material so that our women can tuck their petticoats so fancy, and by the book in your head you teach us your sooperiority. by the same token, i wish i had that book in me head, for i could just squelch dannie and mary with it complate. say, mister o'khayam, next time you come this way bring me a copy. i'm wantin' it bad. i got what you gave off all secure, but i take it there's more. no man goin' at that clip could shut off with thim few lines. do you know the rist?" the thread man knew the most of it, and although he was very uncomfortable, he did not know just how to get away, so he recited it. the milk pail was empty now, and jimmy had almost forgotten that it was a milk pail, and seemed inclined to resent the fact that it had gone empty. he beat time on the bottom of it, and frequently interrupted the thread man to repeat a couplet which particularly suited him. by and by he got to his feet and began stepping off a slow dance to a sing-song repetition of lines that sounded musical to him, all the time marking the measures vigorously on the pail. when he tired of a couplet, he pounded the pail over the bar, stove, or chairs in encore, until the thread man could think up another to which he could dance. "wine! wine! wine! red wine! the nightingale cried to the rose," chanted jimmy, thumping the pail in time, and stepping off the measures with feet that scarcely seemed to touch the floor. he flung his hat to the barkeeper, and his coat on a chair, ruffled his fingers through his thick auburn hair, and holding the pail under one arm, he paused, panting for breath and begging for more. the thread man sat on the edge of his chair, and the eyes he fastened on jimmy were beginning to fill with interest. "come fill the cup and in the fire of spring your winter-garment of repentance fling. the bird of time has but a little way to flutter and the bird is on the wing." smash came the milk pail across the bar. "hooray!" shouted jimmy. "besht yet!" bang! bang! he was off. "ird ish on the wing," he chanted, and his feet flew. "come fill the cup, and in the firesh of spring--firesh of spring, bird ish on the wing!" between the music of the milk pail, the brogue of the panted verses, and the grace of jimmy's flying feet, the thread man was almost prostrate. it suddenly came to him that here might be a chance to have a great time. "more!" gasped jimmy. "me some more!" the thread man wiped his eyes. "wether the cup with sweet or bitter run, the wine of life keeps oozing drop by drop, the leaves of life keep falling one by one." away went jimmy. "swate or bitter run, laves of life kape falling one by one." bang! bang! sounded a new improvision on the sadly battered pail, and to a new step jimmy flashed back and forth the length of the saloon. at last he paused to rest a second. "one more! just one more!" he begged. "a book of verses underneath the bough, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou beside me singing in the wilderness. oh, wilderness were paradise enough!" jimmy's head dropped an instant. his feet slowly shuffled in improvising a new step, and then he moved away, thumping the milk pail and chanting: "a couple of fish poles underneath a tree, a bottle of rye and dannie beside me a fishing in the wabash. were the wabash paradise? hully gee! tired out, he dropped across a chair facing the back and folded his arms. he regained breath to ask the thread man: "did you iver have a frind?" he had reached the confidential stage. the boston man was struggling to regain his dignity. he retained the impression that at the wildest of the dance he had yelled and patted time for jimmy. "i hope i have a host of friends," he said, settling his pleated coat. "damn hosht!" said jimmy. "jisht in way. now i got one frind, hosht all by himself. be here pretty soon now. alwaysh comesh nights like thish." "comes here?" inquired the thread man. "am i to meet another interesting character?" "yesh, comesh here. comesh after me. comesh like the clock sthriking twelve. don't he, boys?" inquired jimmy. "but he ain't no interesting character. jisht common man, dannie is. honest man. never told a lie in his life. yesh, he did, too. i forgot. he liesh for me. jish liesh and liesh. liesh to mary. tells her any old liesh to keep me out of schrape. you ever have frind hish up and drive ten milesh for you night like thish, and liesh to get you out of schrape?" "i never needed any one to lie and get me out of a scrape," answered the thread man. jimmy sat straight and solemnly batted his eyes. "gee! you musht misshed mosht the fun!" he said. "me, i ain't ever misshed any. always in schrape. but dannie getsh me out. good old dannie. jish like dog. take care me all me life. see? old folks come on same boat. women get thick. shettle beside. build cabinsh together. work together, and domn if they didn't get shmall pox and die together. left me and dannie. so we work together jish shame, and we fallsh in love with the shame girl. dannie too slow. i got her." jimmy wiped away great tears. "how did you get her, jimmy?" asked a man who remembered a story. "how the nation did i get her?" jimmy scratched his head, and appealed to the thread man. "dannie besht man. milesh besht man! never lie--'cept for me. never drink--'cept for me. alwaysh save his money--'cept for me. milesh besht man! isn't he besht man, spooley?" "ain't it true that you served dannie a mean little trick?" asked the man who remembered. jimmy wasn't quite drunk enough, and the violent exercise of the dance somewhat sobered him. he glared at the man. "whatsh you talkin' about?" he demanded. "i'm just asking you," said the man, "why, if you played straight with dannie about the girl, you never have had the face to go to confession since you married her." "alwaysh send my wife," said jimmy grandly. "domsh any woman that can't confiss enough for two!" then he hitched his chair closer to the thread man, and grew more confidential. "shee here," he said. "firsht i see your pleated coat, didn't like. but head's all right. great head! sthuck on frillsh there! want to be let in on something? got enough city, clubsh, an' all that? want to taste real thing? lesh go coon huntin'. theysh tree down canoper, jish short pleashant walk, got fify coons in it! nobody knowsh the tree but me, shee? been good to ush boys. sat on same kind of chairs we do. educate ush up lot. know mosht that poetry till i die, shee? 'wonner wash vinters buy, halfsh precious ash sthuff shell,' shee? i got it! let you in on real thing. take grand big coon skinch back to boston with you. ringsh on tail. make wife fine muff, or fur trimmingsh. good to till boysh at club about, shee?" "are you asking me to go on a coon hunt with you?" demanded the thread man. "when? where?" "corshally invited," answered jimmy. "to-morrow night. canoper. show you plashe. bill duke's dogs. my gunsh. moonsh shinin'. dogs howlin'. shnow flying! fify coonsh rollin' out one hole! shoot all dead! take your pick! tan skin for you myself! roaring big firesh warm by. bag finesh sandwiches ever tasted. milk pail pure gold drink. no stop, slop out going over bridge. take jug. big jug. toss her up an' let her gurgle. dogsh bark. fire pop. guns bang. fifty coons drop. boysh all go. want to get more education. takes culture to get woolsh off. shay, will you go?" "i wouldn't miss it for a thousand dollars," said the thread man. "but what will i say to my house for being a day late?" "shay gotter grip," suggested jimmy. "never too late to getter grip. will you all go, boysh?" there were not three men in the saloon who knew of a tree that had contained a coon that winter, but jimmy was jimmy, and to be trusted for an expedition of that sort; and all of them agreed to be at the saloon ready for the hunt at nine o'clock the next night. the thread man felt that he was going to see life. he immediately invited the boys to the bar to drink to the success of the hunt. "you shoot own coon yourself," offered the magnanimous jimmy. "you may carrysh my gunsh, take first shot. first shot to missher o'khayam, boysh, 'member that. shay, can you hit anything? take a try now." jimmy reached behind him, and shoved a big revolver into the hand of the thread man. "whersh target?" he demanded. as he turned from the bar, the milk pail which he still carried under his arm caught on an iron rod. jimmy gave it a jerk, and ripped the rim from the bottom. "thish do," he said. "splendid marksh. shinesh jish like coon's eyesh in torch light." he carried the pail to the back wall and hung it over a nail. the nail was straight, and the pail flaring. the pail fell. jimmy kicked it across the room, and then gathered it up, and drove a dent in it with his heel that would hold over the nail. then he went back to the thread man. "theresh mark, ruben. blash away!" he said. the boston man hesitated. "whatsh the matter? cansh shoot off nothing but your mouth?" demanded jimmy. he caught the revolver and fired three shots so rapidly that the sounds came almost as one. two bullets pierced the bottom of the pail, and the other the side as it fell. the door opened, and with the rush of cold air jimmy gave just one glance toward it, and slid the revolver into his pocket, reached for his hat, and started in the direction of his coat. "glad to see you, micnoun," he said. "if you are goingsh home, i'll jish ride out with you. good night, boysh. don't forgetsh the coon hunt," and jimmy was gone. a minute later the door opened again, and this time a man of nearly forty stepped inside. he had a manly form, and a manly face, was above the average in looks, and spoke with a slight scotch accent. "do any of ye boys happen to know what it was jimmy had with him when he came in here?" a roar of laughter greeted the query. the thread man picked up the pail. as he handed it to dannie, he said: "mr. malone said he was initiating a new milk pail, but i am afraid he has overdone the job." "thank ye," said dannie, and taking the battered thing, he went out into the night. jimmy was asleep when he reached the buggy. dannie had long since found it convenient to have no fence about his dooryard. he drove to the door, dragged jimmy from the buggy, and stabled the horse. by hard work he removed jimmy's coat and boots, laid him across the bed, and covered him. then he grimly looked at the light in the next cabin. "why doesna she go to bed?" he said. he summoned courage, and crossing the space between the two buildings, he tapped on the window. "it's me, mary," he called. "the skins are only half done, and jimmy is going to help me finish. he will come over in the morning. ye go to bed. ye needna be afraid. we will hear ye if ye even snore." there was no answer, but by a movement in the cabin dannie knew that mary was still dressed and waiting. he started back, but for an instant, heedless of the scurrying snow and biting cold, he faced the sky. "i wonder if ye have na found a glib tongue and light feet the least part o' matrimony," he said. "why in god's name couldna ye have married me? i'd like to know why." as he closed the door, the cold air roused jimmy. "dannie," he said, "donsh forget the milk pail. all 'niciate good now." chapter iii the fifty coons of the canoper near noon of the next day, jimmy opened his eyes and stretched himself on dannie's bed. it did not occur to him that he was sprawled across it in such a fashion that if dannie had any sleep that night, he had taken it on chairs before the fireplace. at first jimmy decided that he had a head on him, and would turn over and go back where he came from. then he thought of the coon hunt, and sitting on the edge of the bed he laughed, as he looked about for his boots. "i am glad ye are feeling so fine," said dannie at the door, in a relieved voice. "i had a notion that ye wad be crosser than a badger when ye came to." jimmy laughed on. "what's the fun?" inquired dannie. jimmy thought hard a minute. here was one instance where the truth would serve better than any invention, so he virtuously told dannie all about it. dannie thought of the lonely little woman next door, and rebelled. "but, jimmy!" he cried, "ye canna be gone all nicht again. it's too lonely fra mary, and there's always a chance i might sleep sound and wadna hear if she should be sick or need ye." "then she can just yell louder, or come after you, or get well, for i am going, see? he was a thrid peddler in a dinky little pleated coat, dannie. he laid up against the counter with his feet crossed at a dancing-girl angle. but i will say for him that he was running at the mouth with the finest flow of language i iver heard. i learned a lot of it, and cap knows the stuff, and i'm goin' to have him get you the book. but, dannie, he wouldn't drink with us, but he stayed to iducate us up a little. that little spool man, dannie, iducatin' jones of the gravel gang, and bingham of the standard, and york of the 'lectric railway, and haines of the timber gang, not to mintion the champeen rat-catcher of the wabash." jimmy hugged himself, and rocked on the edge of the bed. "oh, i can just see it, dannie," he cried. "i can just see it now! i was pretty drunk, but i wasn't too drunk to think of it, and it came to me sudden like." dannie stared at jimmy wide-eyed, while he explained the details, and then he too began to laugh, and the longer he laughed the funnier it grew. "i've got to start," said jimmy. "i've an awful afternoon's work. i must find him some rubber boots. he's to have the inestimable privilege of carryin' me gun, dannie, and have the first shot at the coons, fifty, i'm thinkin' i said. and if i don't put some frills on his cute little coat! oh, dannie, it will break the heart of me if he don't wear that pleated coat!" dannie wiped his eyes. "come on to the kitchen," he said, "i've something ready fra ye to eat. wash, while i dish it." "i wish to heaven you were a woman, dannie," said jimmy. "a fellow could fall in love with you, and marry you with some satisfaction. crimminy, but i'm hungry!" jimmy ate greedily, and dannie stepped about setting the cabin to rights. it lacked many feminine touches that distinguished jimmy's as the abode of a woman; but it was neat and clean, and there seemed to be a place where everything belonged. "now, i'm off," said jimmy, rising. "i'll take your gun, because i ain't goin' to see mary till i get back." "oh, jimmy, dinna do that!" pleaded dannie. "i want my gun. go and get your own, and tell her where ye are going and what ye are going to do. she'd feel less lonely." "i know how she would feel better than you do," retorted jimmy. "i am not going. if you won't give me your gun, i'll borrow one; or have all my fun spoiled." dannie took down the shining gun and passed it over. jimmy instantly relented. he smiled an old boyish smile, that always caught dannie in his softest spot. "you are the bist frind i have on earth, dannie," he said winsomely. "you are a man worth tying to. by gum, there's nothing i wouldn't do for you! now go on, like the good fellow you are, and fix it up with mary." so dannie started for the wood pile. in summer he could stand outside and speak through the screen. in winter he had to enter the cabin for errands like this, and as jimmy's wood box was as heavily weighted on his mind as his own, there was nothing unnatural in his stamping snow on jimmy's back stoop, and calling "open!" to mary at any hour of the day he happened to be passing the wood pile. he stood at a distance, and patiently waited until a gray and black nut-hatch that foraged on the wood covered all the new territory discovered by the last disturbance of the pile. from loosened bark dannie watched the bird take several good-sized white worms and a few dormant ants. as it flew away he gathered an armload of wood. he was very careful to clean his feet on the stoop, place the wood without tearing the neat covering of wall paper, and brush from his coat the snow and moss so that it fell in the box. he had heard mary tell the careless jimmy to do all these things, and dannie knew that they saved her work. there was a whiteness on her face that morning that startled him, and long after the last particle of moss was cleaned from his sleeve he bent over the box trying to get something said. the cleaning took such a length of time that the glint of a smile crept into the grave eyes of the woman, and the grim line of her lips softened. "don't be feeling so badly about it, dannie," she said. "i could have told you when you went after him last night that he would go back as soon as he wakened to-day. i know he is gone. i watched him lave." dannie brushed the other sleeve, on which there had been nothing at the start, and answered: "noo, dinna ye misjudge him, mary. he's goin' to a coon hunt to-nicht. dinna ye see him take my gun?" this evidence so bolstered dannie that he faced mary with confidence. "there's a traveling man frae boston in town, mary, and he was edifying the boys a little, and jimmy dinna like it. he's going to show him a little country sport to-nicht to edify him." dannie outlined the plan of jimmy's campaign. despite disapproval, and a sore heart, mary malone had to smile--perhaps as much over dannie's eagerness in telling what was contemplated as anything. "why don't you take jimmy's gun and go yoursilf?" she asked. "you haven't had a day off since fishing was over." "but i have the work to do," replied dannie, "and i couldna leave--" he broke off abruptly, but the woman supplied the word. "why can't you lave me, if jimmy can? i'm not afraid. the snow and the cold will furnish me protiction to-night. there'll be no one to fear. why should you do jimmy's work, and miss the sport, to guard the thing he holds so lightly?" the red flushed dannie's cheeks. mary never before had spoken like that. he had to say something for jimmy quickly, and quickness was not his forte. his lips opened, but nothing came; for as jimmy had boasted, dannie never lied, except for him, and at those times he had careful preparation before he faced mary. now, he was overtaken unawares. he looked so boyish in his confusion, the mother in mary's heart was touched. "i'll till you what we'll do, dannie," she said. "you tind the stock, and get in wood enough so that things won't be frazin' here; and then you hitch up and i'll go with you to town, and stay all night with mrs. dolan. you can put the horse in my sister's stable, and whin you and jimmy get back, you'll be tired enough that you'll be glad to ride home. a visit with katie will be good for me; i have been blue the last few days, and i can see you are just aching to go with the boys. isn't that a fine plan?" "i should say that is a guid plan," answered the delighted dannie. anything to save mary another night alone was good, and then--that coon hunt did sound alluring. and that was how it happened that at nine o'clock that night, just as arrangements were being completed at casey's, dannie macnoun stepped into the group and said to the astonished jimmy: "mary wanted to come to her sister's over nicht, so i fixed everything, and i'm going to the coon hunt, too, if you boys want me." the crowd closed around dannie, patted his back and cheered him, and he was introduced to mister o'khayam, of boston, who tried to drown the clamor enough to tell what his name really was, "in case of accident"; but he couldn't be heard for jimmy yelling that a good old irish name like o'khayam couldn't be beat in case of anything. and dannie took a hasty glance at the thread man, to see if he wore that hated pleated coat, which lay at the bottom of jimmy's anger. then they started. casey's wife was to be left in charge of the saloon, and the thread man half angered casey by a whispered conversation with her in a corner. jimmy cut his crowd as low as he possibly could, but it numbered fifteen men, and no one counted the dogs. jimmy led the way, the thread man beside him, and the crowd followed. the walking would be best to follow the railroad to the canoper, and also they could cross the railroad bridge over the river and save quite a distance. jimmy helped the thread man into a borrowed overcoat and mittens, and loaded him with a twelve-pound gun, and they started. jimmy carried a torch, and as torch bearer he was a rank failure, for he had a careless way of turning it and flashing it into people's faces that compelled them to jump to save themselves. where the track lay clear and straight ahead the torch seemed to light it like day; but in dark places it was suddenly lowered or wavering somewhere else. it was through this carelessness of jimmy's that at the first cattle-guard north of the village the torch flickered backward, ostensibly to locate dannie, and the thread man went crashing down between the iron bars, and across the gun. instantly jimmy sprawled on top of him, and the next two men followed suit. the torch plowed into the snow and went out, and the yells of jimmy alarmed the adjoining village. he was hurt the worst of all, and the busiest getting in marching order again. "howly smoke!" he panted. "i was havin' the time of me life, and plum forgot that cow-kitcher. thought it was a quarter of a mile away yet. and liked to killed meself with me carelessness. but that's always the way in true sport. you got to take the knocks with the fun." no one asked the thread man if he was hurt, and he did not like to seem unmanly by mentioning a skinned shin, when jimmy malone seemed to have bursted most of his inside; so he shouldered his gun and limped along, now slightly in the rear of jimmy. the river bridge was a serious matter with its icy coat, and danger of specials, and the torches suddenly flashed out from all sides; and the thread man gave thanks for dannie macnoun, who reached him a steady hand across the ties. the walk was three miles, and the railroad lay at from twenty to thirty feet elevation along the river and through the bottom land. the boston man would have been thankful for the light, but as the last man stepped from the ties of the bridge all the torches went out save one. jimmy explained they simply had to save them so that they could see where the coon fell when they began to shake the coon tree. just beside the water tank, and where the embankment was twenty feet sheer, jimmy was cautioning the boston man to look out, when the hunter next behind him gave a wild yell and plunged into his back. jimmy's grab for him seemed more a push than a pull, and the three rolled to the bottom, and half way across the flooded ditch. the ditch was frozen over, but they were shaken, and smothered in snow. the whole howling party came streaming down the embankment. dannie held aloft his torch and discovered jimmy lying face down in a drift, making no effort to rise, and the thread man feebly tugging at him and imploring some one to come and help get malone out. then dannie slunk behind the others and yelled until he was tired. by and by jimmy allowed himself to be dragged out. "who the thunder was that come buttin' into us?" he blustered. "i don't allow no man to butt into me when i'm on an imbankmint. send the fool back here till i kill him." the thread man was pulling at jimmy's arm. "don't mind, jimmy," he gasped. "it was an accident! the man slipped. this is an awful place. i will be glad when we reach the woods. i'll feel safer with ground that's holding up trees under my feet. come on, now! are we not almost there? should we not keep quiet from now on? will we not alarm the coons?" "sure," said jimmy. "boys, don't hollo so much. every blamed coon will be scared out of its hollow!" "amazing!" said the thread man. "how clever! came on the spur of the moment. i must remember that to tell the club. do not hollo. scare the coon out of its hollow!" "oh, i do miles of things like that," said jimmy dryly, "and mostly i have to do thim before the spur of the moment; because our moments go so domn fast out here mighty few of thim have time to grow their spurs before they are gone. here's where we turn. now, boys, they've been trying to get this biler across the tracks here, and they've broke the ice. the water in this ditch is three feet deep and freezing cold. they've stuck getting the biler over, but i wonder if we can't cross on it, and hit the wood beyond. maybe we can walk it." jimmy set a foot on the ice-covered boiler, howled, and fell back on the men behind him. "jimminy crickets, we niver can do that!" he yelled. "it's a glare of ice and roundin'. let's crawl through it! the rist of you can get through if i can. we'd better take off our overcoats, to make us smaller. we can roll thim into a bundle, and the last man can pull it through behind him." jimmy threw off his coat and entered the wrecked oil engine. he knew how to hobble through on his toes, but the pleated coat of the boston man, who tried to pass through by stooping, got almost all jimmy had in store for it. jimmy came out all right with a shout. the thread man did not step half so far, and landed knee deep in the icy oil-covered slush of the ditch. that threw him off his balance, and jimmy let him sink one arm in the pool, and then grabbed him, and scooped oil on his back with the other hand as he pulled. during the excitement and struggles of jimmy and the thread man, the rest of the party jumped the ditch and gathered about, rubbing soot and oil on the boston man, and he did not see how they crossed. jimmy continued to rub oil and soot into the hated coat industriously. the dogs leaped the ditch, and the instant they struck the woods broke away baying over fresh tracks. the men yelled like mad. jimmy struggled into his overcoat, and helped the almost insane boston man into his and then they hurried after the dogs. the scent was so new and clear the dogs simply raged. the thread man was wild, jimmy was wilder, and the thirteen contributed all they could for laughing. dannie forgot to be ashamed of himself and followed the example of the crowd. deeper and deeper into the wild, swampy canoper led the chase. with a man on either side to guide him into the deepest holes and to shove him into bushy thickets, the skinned, soot-covered, oil-coated boston man toiled and sweated. he had no time to think, the excitement was so intense. he scrambled out of each pitfall set for him, and plunged into the next with such uncomplaining bravery that dannie very shortly grew ashamed, and crowding up beside him he took the heavy gun and tried to protect him all he could without falling under the eye of jimmy, who was keeping close watch on the boston man. wild yelling told that the dogs had treed, and with shaking fingers the thread man pulled off the big mittens he wore and tried to lift the gun. jimmy flashed a torch, and sure enough, in the top of a medium hickory tree, the light was reflected in streams from the big shining eyes of a coon. "treed!" yelled jimmy frantically. "treed! and big as an elephant. company's first shot. here, mister o'khayam, here's a good place to stand. gee, what luck! coon in sight first thing, and mellen's food coon at that! shoot, mister o'khayam, shoot!" the thread man lifted the wavering gun, but it was no use. "tell you what, ruben," said jimmy. "you are too tired to shoot straight. let's take a rist, and ate our lunch. then we'll cut down the tree and let the dogs get cooney. that way there won't be any shot marks in his skin. what do you say? is that a good plan?" they all said that was the proper course, so they built a fire, and placed the thread man where he could see the gleaming eyes of the frightened coon, and where all of them could feast on his soot and oil-covered face. then they opened the bag and passed the sandwiches. "i really am hungry," said the weary thread man, biting into his with great relish. his jaws moved once or twice experimentally, and then he lifted his handkerchief to his lips. "i wish 'twas as big as me head," said jimmy, taking a great bite, and then he began to curse uproariously. "what ails the things?" inquired dannie, ejecting a mouthful. and then all of them began to spit birdshot, and started an inquest simultaneously. jimmy raged. he swore some enemy had secured the bag and mined the feast; but the boys who knew him laughed until it seemed the thread man must suspect. he indignantly declared it was a dirty trick. by the light of the fire he knelt and tried to free one of the sandwiches from its sprinkling of birdshot, so that it would be fit for poor jimmy, who had worked so hard to lead them there and tree the coon. for the first time jimmy looked thoughtful. but the sight of the thread man was too much for him, and a second later he was thrusting an ax into the hands accustomed to handling a thread case. then he led the way to the tree, and began chopping at the green hickory. it was slow work, and soon the perspiration streamed. jimmy pulled off his coat and threw it aside. he assisted the thread man out of his and tossed it behind him. the coat alighted in the fire, and was badly scorched before it was rescued. but the thread man was game. fifty times that night it had been said that he was to have the first coon, of course he should work for it. so with the ax with which casey chopped ice for his refrigerator, the boston man banged against the hickory, and swore to himself because he could not make the chips fly as jimmy did. "iverybody clear out!" cried jimmy. "number one is coming down. get the coffee sack ready. baste cooney over the head and shove him in before the dogs tear the skin. we want a dandy big pelt out of this!" there was a crack, and the tree fell with a crash. all the boston man could see was that from a tumbled pile of branches, dogs, and men, some one at last stepped back, gripping a sack, and cried: "got it all right, and it's a buster." "now for the other forty-nine!" shouted jimmy, straining into his coat. "come on, boys, we must secure a coon for every one," cried the thread man, heartily as any member of the party might have said it. but the rest of the boys suddenly grew tired. they did not want any coons, and after some persuasion the party agreed to go back to casey's to warm up. the thread man got into his scorched, besooted, oil-smeared coat, and the overcoat which had been loaned him, and shouldered the gun. jimmy hesitated. but dannie came up to the boston man and said: "there's a place in my shoulder that gun juist fits, and it's lonesome without it. pass it over." only the sorely bruised and strained thread man knew how glad he was to let it go. it was dannie, too, who whispered to the thread man to keep close behind him; and when the party trudged back to casey's it was so surprising how much better he knew the way going back than jimmy had known it coming out, that the thread man did remark about it. but jimmy explained that after one had been out a few hours their eyes became accustomed to the darkness and they could see better. that was reasonable, for the thread man knew it was true in his own experience. so they got back to casey's, and found a long table set, and a steaming big oyster supper ready for them; and that explained the thread man's conference with mrs. casey. he took the head of the table, with his back to the wall, and placed jimmy on his right and dannie on his left. mrs. casey had furnished soap and towels, and at least part of the boston man's face was clean. the oysters were fine, and well cooked. the thread man recited more of the wonderful poem for dannie's benefit, and told jokes and stories. they laughed until they were so weak they could only pound the table to indicate how funny it was. and at the close, just as they were making a movement to rise, casey proposed that he bring in the coon, and let all of them get a good look at their night's work. the thread man applauded, and casey brought in the bag and shook it bottom up over the floor. therefrom there issued a poor, frightened, maltreated little pet coon of mrs. casey's, and it dexterously ran up casey's trouser leg and hid its nose in his collar, its chain dragging behind. and that was so funny the boys doubled over the table, and laughed and screamed until a sudden movement brought them to their senses. the thread man was on his feet, and his eyes were no laughing matter. he gripped his chair back, and leaned toward jimmy. "you walked me into that cattle-guard on purpose!" he cried. silence. "you led me into that boiler, and fixed the oil at the end!" no answer. "you mauled me all over the woods, and loaded those sandwiches yourself, and sored me for a week trying to chop down a tree with a pet coon chained in it! you----! you----! what had i done to you?" "you wouldn't drink with me, and i didn't like the domned, dinky, little pleated coat you wore," answered jimmy. one instant amazement held sway on the thread man's face; the next, "and damned if i like yours!" he cried, and catching up a bowl half filled with broth he flung it squarely into jimmy's face. jimmy, with a great oath, sprang at the boston man. but once in his life dannie was quick. for the only time on record he was ahead of jimmy, and he caught the uplifted fist in a grip that jimmy's use of whiskey and suffering from rheumatism had made his master. "steady--jimmy, wait a minute," panted dannie. "this mon is na even wi' ye yet. when every muscle in your body is strained, and every inch of it bruised, and ye are daubed wi' soot, and bedraggled in oil, and he's made ye the laughin' stock fra strangers by the hour, ye will be juist even, and ready to talk to him. every minute of the nicht he's proved himself a mon, and right now he's showed he's na coward. it's up to ye, jimmy. do it royal. be as much of a mon as he is. say ye are sorry!" one tense instant the two friends faced each other. then jimmy's fist unclenched, and his arms dropped. dannie stepped back, trying to breathe lightly, and it was between jimmy and the thread man. "i am sorry," said jimmy. "i carried my objictions to your wardrobe too far. if you'll let me, i'll clean you up. if you'll take it, i'll raise you the price of a new coat, but i'll be domn if i'll hilp put such a man as you are into another of the fiminine ginder." the thread man laughed, and shook jimmy's hand; and then jimmy proved why every one liked him by turning to dannie and taking his hand. "thank you, dannie," he said. "you sure hilped me to mesilf that time. if i'd hit him, i couldn't have hild up me head in the morning." chapter iv when the kingfisher and the black bass came home "crimminy, but you are slow." jimmy made the statement, not as one voices a newly discovered fact, but as one iterates a time-worn truism. he sat on a girder of the limberlost bridge, and scraped the black muck from his boots in a little heap. then he twisted a stick into the top of his rat sack, preparatory to his walk home. the ice had broken on the river, and now the partners had to separate at the bridge, each following his own line of traps to the last one, and return to the bridge so that jimmy could cross to reach home. jimmy was always waiting, after the river opened, and it was a remarkable fact to him that as soon as the ice was gone his luck failed him. this evening the bag at his feet proved by its bulk that it contained just about one-half the rats dannie carried. "i must set my traps in my own way," answered dannie calmly. "if i stuck them into the water ony way and went on, so would the rats. a trap is no a trap unless it is concealed." "that's it! go on and give me a sarmon!" urged jimmy derisively. "who's got the bulk of the rats all winter? the truth is that my side of the river is the best catching in the extrame cold, and you get the most after the thaws begin to come. the rats seem to have a lot of burrows and shift around among thim. one time i'm ahead, and the nixt day they go to you: but it don't mane that you are any better trapper than i am. i only got siven to-night. that's a sweet day's work for a whole man. fifteen cints apace for sivin rats. i've a big notion to cut the rat business, and compete with rocky in ile." dannie laughed. "let's hurry home, and get the skinning over before nicht," he said. "i think the days are growing a little longer. i seem to scent spring in the air to-day." jimmy looked at dannie's mud-covered, wet clothing, his blood-stained mittens and coat back, and the dripping bag he had rested on the bridge. "i've got some music in me head, and some action in me feet," he said, "but i guess god forgot to put much sintimint into me heart. the breath of spring niver got so strong with me that i could smell it above a bag of muskrats and me trappin' clothes." he arose, swung his bag to his shoulder, and together they left the bridge, and struck the road leading to rainbow bottom. it was late february. the air was raw, and the walking heavy. jimmy saw little around him, and there was little dannie did not see. to him, his farm, the river, and the cabins in rainbow bottom meant all there was of life, for all he loved on earth was there. but loafing in town on rainy days, when dannie sat with a book; hearing the talk at casey's, at the hotel, and on the streets, had given jimmy different views of life, and made his lot seem paltry compared with that of men who had greater possessions. on days when jimmy's luck was bad, or when a fever of thirst burned him, he usually discoursed on some sort of intangible experience that men had, which he called "seeing life." his rat bag was unusually light that night, and in a vague way he connected it with the breaking up of the ice. when the river lay solid he usually carried home just twice the rats dannie had, and as he had patronized dannie all his life, it fretted jimmy to be behind even one day at the traps. "be jasus, i get tired of this!" he said. "always and foriver the same thing. i kape goin' this trail so much that i've got a speakin' acquaintance with meself. some of these days i'm goin' to take a trip, and have a little change. i'd like to see chicago, and as far west as the middle, anyway." "well, ye canna go," said dannie. "ye mind the time when ye were married, and i thought i'd be best away, and packed my trunk? when ye and mary caught me, ye got mad as fire, and she cried, and i had to stay. just ye try going, and i'll get mad, and mary will cry, and ye will stay at home, juist like i did." there was a fear deep in dannie's soul that some day jimmy would fulfill this long-time threat of his. "i dinna think there is ony place in all the world so guid as the place ye own," dannie said earnestly. "i dinna care a penny what anybody else has, probably they have what they want. what _i_ want is the land that my feyther owned before me, and the house that my mither kept. and they'll have to show me the place they call eden before i'll give up that it beats rainbow bottom--summer, autumn, or winter. i dinna give twa hoops fra the palaces men rig up, or the thing they call 'landscape gardening'. when did men ever compete with the work of god? all the men that have peopled the earth since time began could have their brains rolled into one, and he would stand helpless before the anatomy of one of the rats in these bags. the thing god does is guid enough fra me." "why don't you take a short cut to the matin'-house?" inquired jimmy. "because i wad have nothing to say when i got there," retorted dannie. "i've a meetin'-house of my ain, and it juist suits me; and i've a god, too, and whether he is spirit or essence, he suits me. i dinna want to be held to sharper account than he faces me up to, when i hold communion with mesel'. i dinna want any better meetin'-house than rainbow bottom. i dinna care for better talkin' than the 'tongues in the trees'; sounder preachin' than the 'sermons in the stones'; finer readin' than the books in the river; no, nor better music than the choir o' the birds, each singin' in its ain way fit to burst its leetle throat about the mate it won, the nest they built, and the babies they are raising. that's what i call the music o' god, spontaneous, and the soul o' joy. give it me every time compared with notes frae a book. and all the fine places that the wealth o' men ever evolved winna begin to compare with the work o' god, and i've got that around me every day." "but i want to see life," wailed jimmy. "then open your eyes, mon, fra the love o' mercy, open your eyes! there's life sailing over your heid in that flock o' crows going home fra the night. why dinna ye, or some other mon, fly like that? there's living roots, and seeds, and insects, and worms by the million wherever ye are setting foot. why dinna ye creep into the earth and sleep through the winter, and renew your life with the spring? the trouble with ye, jimmy, is that ye've always followed your heels. if ye'd stayed by the books, as i begged ye, there now would be that in your heid that would teach ye that the old story of the rainbow is true. there is a pot of gold, of the purest gold ever smelted, at its foot, and we've been born, and own a good living richt there. an' the gold is there; that i know, wealth to shame any bilious millionaire, and both of us missing the pot when we hold the location. ye've the first chance, mon, fra in your life is the great prize mine will forever lack. i canna get to the bottom of the pot, but i'm going to come close to it as i can; and as for ye, empty it! take it all! it's yours! it's fra the mon who finds it, and we own the location." "aha! we own the location," repeated jimmy. "i should say we do! behold our hotbed of riches! i often lay awake nights thinkin' about my attachmint to the place. "how dear to me heart are the scanes of me childhood, fondly gaze on the cabin where i'm doomed to dwell, those chicken-coop, thim pig-pen, these highly piled-wood around which i've always raised hell." jimmy turned in at his own gate, while dannie passed to the cabin beyond. he entered, set the dripping rat bag in a tub, raked open the buried fire and threw on a log. he always ate at jimmy's when jimmy was at home, so there was no supper to get. he went out to the barn, wading mud ankle deep, fed and bedded his horses, and then went over to jimmy's barn, and completed his work up to milking. jimmy came out with the pail, and a very large hole in the bottom of it was covered with dried dough. jimmy looked at it disapprovingly. "i bought a new milk pail the other night. i know i did," he said. "mary was kicking for one a month ago, and i went after it the night i met ruben o'khayam. now what the nation did i do with that pail?" "i have wondered mysel'," answered dannie, as he leaned over and lifted a strange looking object from a barrel. "this is what ye brought home, jimmy." jimmy stared at the shining, battered, bullet-punctured pail in amazement. slowly he turned it over and around, and then he lifted bewildered eyes to dannie. "are you foolin'?" he asked. "did i bring that thing home in that shape?" "honest!" said dannie. "i remember buyin' it," said jimmy slowly. "i remember hanging on to it like grim death, for it was the wan excuse i had for goin', but i don't just know how--!" slowly he revolved the pail, and then he rolled over in the hay and laughed until he was tired. then he sat up and wiped his eyes. "great day! what a lot of fun i must have had before i got that milk pail into that shape," he said. "domned if i don't go straight to town and buy another one; yes, bedad! i'll buy two!" in the meantime dannie milked, fed and watered the cattle, and jimmy picked up the pail of milk and carried it to the house. dannie came by the wood pile and brought in a heavy load. then they washed, and sat down to supper. "seems to me you look unusually perky," said jimmy to his wife. "had any good news?" "splendid!" said mary. "i am so glad! and i don't belave you two stupids know!" "you niver can tell by lookin' at me what i know," said jimmy. "whin i look the wisest i know the least. whin i look like a fool, i'm thinkin' like a philosopher." "give it up," said dannie promptly. you would not catch him knowing anything it would make mary's eyes shine to tell. "sap is running!" announced mary. "the divil you say!" cried jimmy. "it is!" beamed mary. "it will be full in three days. didn't you notice how green the maples are? i took a little walk down to the bottom to-day. i niver in all my life was so tired of winter, and the first thing i saw was that wet look on the maples, and on the low land, where they are sheltered and yet get the sun, several of them are oozing!" "grand!" cried dannie. "jimmy, we must peel those rats in a hurry, and then clean the spiles, and see how mony new ones we will need. to-morrow we must come frae the traps early and look up our troughs." "oh, for pity sake, don't pile up work enough to kill a horse," cried jimmy. "ain't you ever happy unless you are workin'?" "yes," said dannie. "sometimes i find a book that suits me, and sometimes the fish bite, and sometimes it's in the air." "git the condinser" said jimmy. "and that reminds me, mary, dannie smelled spring in the air to-day." "well, what if he did?" questioned mary. "i can always smell it. a little later, when the sap begins to run in all the trees, and the buds swell, and the ice breaks up, and the wild geese go over, i always scent spring; and when the catkins bloom, then it comes strong, and i just love it. spring is my happiest time. i have more news, too!" "don't spring so much at wance!" cried jimmy, "you'll spoil my appetite." "i guess there's no danger," replied mary. "there is," said jimmy. "at laste in the fore siction. 'appe' is frinch, and manes atin'. 'tite' is irish, and manes drinkin'. appetite manes atin' and drinkin' togither. 'tite' manes drinkin' without atin', see?" "i was just goin' to mintion it meself," said mary, "it's where you come in strong. there's no danger of anybody spoilin' your drinkin', if they could interfere with your atin'. you guess, dannie." "the dominick hen is setting," ventured dannie, and mary's face showed that he had blundered on the truth. "she is," affirmed mary, pouring the tea, "but it is real mane of you to guess it, when i've so few new things to tell. she has been setting two days, and she went over fifteen fresh eggs to-day. in just twinty-one days i will have fiftane the cunningest little chickens you ever saw, and there is more yet. i found the nest of the gray goose, and there are three big eggs in it, all buried in feathers. she must have stripped her breast almost bare to cover them. and i'm the happiest i've been all winter. i hate the long, lonely, shut-in time. i am going on a delightful spree. i shall help boil down sugar-water and make maple syrup. i shall set hins, and geese, and turkeys. i shall make soap, and clane house, and plant seed, and all my flowers will bloom again. goody for summer; it can't come too soon to suit me." "lord! i don't see what there is in any of those things," said jimmy. "i've got just one sign of spring that interests me. if you want to see me caper, somebody mention to me the first rattle of the kingfisher. whin he comes home, and house cleans in his tunnel in the embankment, and takes possession of his stump in the river, the nixt day the black bass locates in the deep water below the shoals. thin you can count me in. there is where business begins for jimmy boy. i am going to have that bass this summer, if i don't plant an acre of corn." "i bet you that's the truth!" said mary, so quickly that both men laughed. "ahem!" said dannie. "then i will have to do my plowing by a heidlicht, so i can fish as much as ye do in the day time. i hereby make, enact, and enforce a law that neither of us is to fish in the bass hole when the other is not there to fish also. that is the only fair way. i've as much richt to him as ye have." "of course!" said mary. "that is a fair way. make that a rule, and kape it. if you both fish at once, it's got to be a fair catch for the one that lands it; but whoever catches it, _i_ shall ate it, so it don't much matter to me." "you ate it!" howled jimnmy. "i guess not. not a taste of that fish, when he's teased me for years? he's as big as a whale. if jonah had had the good fortune of falling in the wabash, and being swallowed by the black bass, he could have ridden from peru to terre haute, and suffered no inconvanience makin' a landin'. siven pounds he'll weigh by the steelyard i'll wager you." "five, jimmy, five," corrected dannie. "siven!" shouted jimmy. "ain't i hooked him repeated? ain't i seen him broadside? i wonder if thim domn lines of mine have gone and rotted." he left his supper, carrying his chair, and standing on it he began rummaging the top shelf of the cupboard for his box of tackle. he knocked a bottle from the shelf, but caught it in mid-air with a dexterous sweep. "spirits are movin'," cried jimmy, as he restored the camphor to its place. he carried the box to the window, and became so deeply engrossed in its contents that he did not notice when dannie picked up his rat bag and told him to come on and help skin their day's catch. mary tried to send him, and he was going in a minute, but the minute stretched and stretched, and both of them were surprised when the door opened and dannie entered with an armload of spiles, and the rat-skinning was all over. so jimmy went on unwinding lines, and sharpening hooks, and talking fish; while dannie and mary cleaned the spiles, and figured on how many new elders must be cut and prepared for more on the morrow; and planned the sugar making. when it was bedtime, and dannie had gone an jimmy and mary closed their cabin for the night, mary stepped to the window that looked on dannie's home to see if his light was burning. it was, and clear in its rays stood dannie, stripping yard after yard of fine line through his fingers, and carefully examining it. jimmy came and stood beside her as she wondered. "why, the domn son of the rainbow," he cried, "if he ain't testing his fish lines!" the next day mary malone was rejoicing when the men returned from trapping, and gathering and cleaning the sugar-water troughs. there had been a robin at the well. "kape your eye on, mary" advised jimmy. "if she ain't watched close from this time on, she'll be settin' hins in snowdrifts, and pouring biling water on the daffodils to sprout them." on the first of march, five killdeers flew over in a flock, and a half hour later one straggler crying piteously followed in their wake. "oh, the mane things!" almost sobbed mary. "why don't they wait for it?" she stood by a big kettle of boiling syrup at the sugar camp, almost helpless in jimmy's boots and dannie's great coat. jimmy cut and carried wood, and dannie hauled sap. all the woods were stirred by the smell of the curling smoke and the odor of the boiling sap, fine as the fragrance of flowers. bright-eyed deer mice peeped at her from under old logs, the chickadees, nuthatches, and jays started an investigating committee to learn if anything interesting to them was occurring. one gayly-dressed little sapsucker hammered a tree near by and scolded vigorously. "right you are!" said mary. "it's a pity you're not big enough to drive us from the woods, for into one kittle goes enough sap to last you a lifetime." the squirrels were sure it was an intrusion, and raced among the branches overhead, barking loud defiance. at night the three rode home on the sled, with the syrup jugs beside them, and mary's apron was filled with big green rolls of pungent woolly-dog moss. jimmy built the fires, dannie fed the stock, and mary cooked the supper. when it was over, while the men warmed chilled feet and fingers by the fire, mary poured some syrup into a kettle, and just as it "sugared off" she dipped streams of the amber sweetness into cups of water. all of them ate it like big children, and oh, but it was good! two days more of the same work ended sugar making, but for the next three days dannie gathered the rapidly diminishing sap for the vinegar barrel. then there were more hens ready to set, water must be poured hourly into the ash hopper to start the flow of lye for soap making, and the smoke house must be gotten ready to cure the hams and pickled meats, so that they would keep during warm weather. the bluebells were pushing through the sod in a race with the easter and star flowers. one morning mary aroused jimmy with a pull at his arm. "jimmy, jimmy," she cried. "wake up!" "do you mane, wake up, or get up?" asked jimmy sleepily. "both," cried mary. "the larks are here!" a little later jimmy shouted from the back door to the barn: "dannie, do you hear the larks?" "ye bet i do," answered dannie. "heard ane goin' over in the nicht. how long is it now till the kingfisher comes?" "just a little while," said jimmy. "if only these march storms would let up 'stid of down! he can't come until he can fish, you know. he's got to have crabs and minnies to live on." a few days later the green hylas began to pipe in the swamps, the bullfrogs drummed among the pools in the bottom, the doves cooed in the thickets, and the breath of spring was in the nostrils of all creation, for the wind was heavy with the pungent odor of catkin pollen. the spring flowers were two inches high. the peonies and rhubarb were pushing bright yellow and red cones through the earth. the old gander, leading his flock along the wabash, had hailed passing flocks bound northward until he was hoarse; and the brahma rooster had threshed the yellow dorkin until he took refuge under the pig pen, and dare not stick out his unprotected head. the doors had stood open at supper time, and dannie staid up late, mending and oiling the harness. jimmy sat by cleaning his gun, for to his mortification he had that day missed killing a crow which stole from the ash hopper the egg with which mary tested the strength of the lye. in a basket behind the kitchen stove fifteen newly hatched yellow chickens, with brown stripes on their backs, were peeping and nestling; and on wing the killdeers cried half the night. at two o'clock in the morning came a tap on the malone's bedroom window. "dannie?" questioned mary, half startled. "tell jimmy!" cried dannie's breathless voice outside. "tell him the kingfisher has juist struck the river!" jimmy sat straight up in bed. "then glory be!" he cried. "to-morrow the black bass comes home!" chapter v when the rainbow set its arch in the sky "where did jimmy go?" asked mary. jimmy had been up in time to feed the chickens and carry in the milk, but he disappeared shortly after breakfast. dannie almost blushed as he answered: "he went to take a peep at the river. it's going down fast. when it gets into its regular channel, spawning will be over and the fish will come back to their old places. we figure that the black bass will be home to-day." "when you go digging for bait," said mary, "i wonder if the two of you could make it convanient to spade an onion bed. if i had it spaded i could stick the sets mesilf." "now, that amna fair, mary," said dannie. "we never went fishing till the garden was made, and the crops at least wouldna suffer. we'll make the beds, of course, juist as soon as they can be spaded, and plant the seed, too." "i want to plant the seeds mesilf," said mary. "and we dinna want ye should," replied dannie. "all we want ye to do, is to boss." "but i'm going to do the planting mesilf," mary was emphatic. "it will be good for me to be in the sunshine, and i do enjoy working in the dirt, so that for a little while i'm happy." "if ye want to put the onions in the highest place, i should think i could spade ane bed now, and enough fra lettuce and radishes." dannie went after a spade, and mary malone laughed softly as she saw that he also carried an old tin can. he tested the earth in several places, and then called to her: "all right, mary! ground in prime shape. turns up dry and mellow. we will have the garden started in no time." he had spaded but a minute when mary saw him run past the window, leap the fence, and go hurrying down the path to the river. she went to the door. at the head of the lane stood jimmy, waving his hat, and the fresh morning air carried his cry clearly: "gee, dannie! come hear him splash!" just why that cry, and the sight of dannie macnoun racing toward the river, his spade lying on the upturned earth of her scarcely begun onion bed, should have made her angry, it would be hard to explain. he had no tackle or bait, and reason easily could have told her that he would return shortly, and finish anything she wanted done; but when was a lonely, disappointed woman ever reasonable? she set the dish water on the stove, wiped her hands on her apron, and walking to the garden, picked up the spade and began turning great pieces of earth. she had never done rough farm work, such as women all about her did; she had little exercise during the long, cold winter, and the first half dozen spadefuls tired her until the tears of self-pity rolled. "i wish there was a turtle as big as a wash tub in the river" she sobbed, "and i wish it would eat that old black bass to the last scale. and i'm going to take the shotgun, and go over to the embankment, and poke it into the tunnel, and blow the old kingfisher through into the cornfield. then maybe dannie won't go off too and leave me. i want this onion bed spaded right away, so i do." "drop that! idjit! what you doing?" yelled jimmy. "mary, ye goose!" panted dannie, as he came hurrying across the yard. "wha' do ye mean? ye knew i'd be back in a minute! jimmy juist called me to hear the bass splash. i was comin' back. mary, this amna fair." dannie took the spade from her hand, and mary fled sobbing to the house. "what's the row?" demanded jimmy of the suffering dannie. "i'd juist started spadin' this onion bed," explained dannie. "of course, she thought we were going to stay all day." "with no poles, and no bait, and no grub? she didn't think any such a domn thing," said jimmy. "you don't know women! she just got to the place where it's her time to spill brine, and raise a rumpus about something, and aisy brathin' would start her. just let her bawl it out, and thin--we'll get something dacent for dinner." dannie turned a spadeful of earth and broke it open, and jimmy squatted by the can, and began picking out the angle worms. "i see where we dinna fish much this summer," said dannie, as he waited. "and where we fish close home when we do, and where all the work is done before we go." "aha, borrow me rose-colored specks!" cried jimmy. "i don't see anything but what i've always seen. i'll come and go as i please, and mary can do the same. i don't throw no 'jeminy fit' every time a woman acts the fool a little, and if you'd lived with one fiftane years you wouldn't either. of course we'll make the garden. wish to goodness it was a beer garden! wouldn't i like to plant a lot of hop seed and see rows of little green beer bottles humpin' up the dirt. oh, my! what all does she want done?" dannie turned another spadeful of earth and studied the premises, while jimmy gathered the worms. "palins all on the fence?" asked dannie. "yep," said jimmy. "well, the yard is to be raked." "yep." "the flooer beds spaded." "yep." "stones around the peonies, phlox, and hollyhocks raised and manure worked in. all the trees must be pruned, the bushes and vines trimmed, and the gooseberries, currants, and raspberries thinned. the strawberry bed must be fixed up, and the rhubarb and asparagus spaded around and manured. this whole garden must be made----" "and the road swept, and the gate sandpapered, and the barn whitewashed! return to grazing, nebuchadnezzar," said jimmy. "we do what's raisonable, and then we go fishin'. see?" three beds spaded, squared, and ready for seeding lay in the warm spring sunshine before noon. jimmy raked the yard, and dannie trimmed the gooseberries. then he wheeled a barrel of swamp loam for a flower bed by the cabin wall, and listened intently between each shovelful he threw. he could not hear a sound. what was more, he could not bear it. he went to jimmy. "say, jimmy," he said. "dinna ye have to gae in fra a drink?" "house or town?" inquired jimmy sweetly. "the house!" exploded dannie. "i dinna hear a sound yet. ye gae in fra a drink, and tell mary i want to know where she'd like the new flooer bed she's been talking about." jimmy leaned the rake against a tree, and started. "and jimmy," said dannie. "if she's quit crying, ask her what was the matter. i want to know." jimmy vanished. presently he passed dannie where he worked. "come on," whispered jimmy. the bewildered dannie followed. jimmy passed the wood pile, and pig pen, and slunk around behind the barn, where he leaned against the logs and held his sides. dannie stared at him. "she says," wheezed jimmy, "that she guesses she wanted to go and hear the bass splash, too!" dannie's mouth fell open, and then closed with a snap. "us fra the fool killer!" he said. "ye dinna let her see ye laugh?" "let her see me laugh!" cried jimmy. "let her see me laugh! i told her she wasn't to go for a few days yet, because we were sawin' the kingfisher's stump up into a rustic sate for her, and we were goin' to carry her out to it, and she was to sit there and sew, and umpire the fishin', and whichiver bait she told the bass to take, that one of us would be gettin' it. and she was pleased as anything, me lad, and now it's up to us to rig up some sort of a dacint sate, and tag a woman along half the time. you thick-tongued descindint of a bagpipe baboon, what did you sind me in there for?" "maybe a little of it will tire her," groaned dannie. "it will if she undertakes to follow me," jimmy said. "i know where horse-weeds grow giraffe high." then they went back to work, and presently many savory odors began to steal from the cabin. whereat jimmy looked at dannie, and winked an 'i-told-you-so' wink. a garden grows fast under the hands of two strong men really working, and by the time the first slice of sugar-cured ham from the smoke house for that season struck the sizzling skillet, and mary very meekly called from the back door to know if one of them wanted to dig a little horse radish, the garden was almost ready for planting. then they went into the cabin and ate fragrant, thick slices of juicy fried ham, seasoned with horse radish; fried eggs, freckled with the ham fat in which they were cooked; fluffy mashed potatoes, with a little well of melted butter in the center of the mound overflowing the sides; raisin pie, soda biscuit, and their own maple syrup. "ohumahoh!" said jimmy. "i don't know as i hanker for city life so much as i sometimes think i do. what do you suppose the adulterated stuff we read about in papers tastes like?" "i've often wondered," answered dannie. "look at some of the hogs and cattle that we see shipped from here to city markets. the folks that sell them would starve before they'd eat a bit o' them, yet somebody eats them, and what do ye suppose maple syrup made from hickory bark and brown sugar tastes like?" "and cold-storage eggs, and cotton-seed butter, and even horse radish half turnip," added mary. "bate up the cream a little before you put it in your coffee, or it will be in lumps. whin the cattle are on clover it raises so thick." jimmy speared a piece of salt-rising bread crust soaked in ham gravy made with cream, and said: "i wish i could bring that thrid man home with me to one meal of the real thing nixt time he strikes town. i belave he would injoy it. may i, mary?" mary's face flushed slightly. "depends on whin he comes," she said. "of course, if i am cleaning house, or busy with something i can't put off----" "sure!" cried jimmy. "i'd ask you before i brought him, because i'd want him to have something spicial. some of this ham, and horse radish, and maple syrup to begin with, and thin your fried spring chicken and your stewed squirrel is a drame, mary. nobody iver makes turtle soup half so rich as yours, and your green peas in cream, and asparagus on toast is a rivilation--don't you rimimber 'twas father michael that said it? i ought to be able to find mushrooms in a few weeks, and i can taste your rhubarb pie over from last year. gee! but i wish he'd come in strawberrying! berries from the vines, butter in the crust, crame you have to bate to make it smooth--talk about shortcake!" "what's wrong wi' cherry cobbler?" asked dannie. "or blackberry pie?" "or greens cooked wi' bacon?" "or chicken pie?" "or catfish, rolled in cornmeal and fried in ham fat?" "or guineas stewed in cream, with hard-boiled eggs in the gravy?" "oh, stop!" cried the delighted mary. "it makes me dead tired thinkin' how i'll iver be cookin' all you'll want. sure, have him come, and both of you can pick out the things you like the best, and i'll fix thim for him. pure, fresh stuff might be a trate to a city man. when dolan took sister katie to new york with him, his boss sent them to a five-dollar-a-day house, and they thought they was some up. by the third day poor katie was cryin' for a square male. she couldn't touch the butter, the eggs made her sick, and the cold-storage meat and chicken never got nearer her stomach than her nose. so she just ate fish, because they were fresh, and she ate, and she ate, till if you mintion new york to poor katie she turns pale, and tastes fish. she vows and declares that she feeds her chickens and hogs better food twice a day than people fed her in new york." "i'll bet my new milk pail the grub we eat ivery day would be a trate that would raise him," said jimmy. "provided his taste ain't so depraved with saltpeter and chalk he don't know fresh, pure food whin he tastes it. i understand some of the victims really don't." "your new milk pail?" questioned mary. "that's what!" said jimmy. "the next time i go to town i'm goin' to get you two." "but i only need one," protested mary. "instead of two, get me a new dishpan. mine leaks, and smears the stove and table." "be gorry!" sighed jimmy. "there goes me tongue, lettin' me in for it again. i'll look over the skins, and if any of thim are ripe, i'll get you a milk pail and a dishpan the nixt time i go to town. and, by gee! if that dandy big coon hide i got last fall looks good, i'm going to comb it up, and work the skin fine, and send it to the thrid man, with me complimints. i don't feel right about him yet. wonder what his name railly is, and where he lives, or whether i killed him complate." "any dry goods man in town can tell ye," said dannie. "ask the clerk in the hotel," suggested mary. "you've said it," cried jimmy. "that's the stuff! and i can find out whin he will be here again." two hours more they faithfully worked on the garden, and then jimmy began to grow restless. "ah, go on!" cried mary. "you have done all that is needed just now, and more too. there won't any fish bite to-day, but you can have the pleasure of stringin' thim poor sufferin' worms on a hook and soaking thim in the river." "'sufferin' worms!' sufferin' job!" cried jimmy. "what nixt? go on, dannie, get your pole!" dannie went. as he came back jimmy was sprinkling a thin layer of earth over the bait in the can. "why not come along, mary?" he suggested. "i'm not done planting my seeds," she answered. "i'll be tired when i am, and i thought that place wasn't fixed for me yet." "we can't fix that till a little later," said jimmy. "we can't tell where it's going to be grassy and shady yet, and the wood is too wet to fix a sate." "any kind of a sate will do," said mary. "i guess you better not try to make one out of the kingfisher stump. if you take it out it may change the pool and drive away the bass." "sure!" cried jimmy. "what a head you've got! we'll have to find some other stump for a sate." "i don't want to go until it gets dry under foot, and warmer" said mary. "you boys go on. i'll till you whin i am riddy to go." "there!" said jimmy, when well on the way to the river. "what did i tell you? won't go if she has the chance! jist wants to be asked." "i dinna pretend to know women," said dannie gravely. "but whatever mary does is all richt with me." "so i've obsarved," remarked jimmy. "now, how will we get at this fishin' to be parfectly fair?" "tell ye what i think," said dannie. "i think we ought to pick out the twa best places about the black bass pool, and ye take ane fra yours and i'll take the ither fra mine, and then we'll each fish from his own place." "nothing fair about that," answered jimmy. "you might just happen to strike the bed where he lays most, and be gettin' bites all the time, and me none; or i might strike it and you be left out. and thin there's days whin the wind has to do, and the light. we ought to change places ivery hour." "there's nothing fair in that either," broke in dannie. "i might have him tolled up to my place, and juist be feedin' him my bait, and here you'd come along and prove by your watch that my time was up, and take him when i had him all ready to bite." "that's so for you!" hurried in jimmy. "i'll be hanged if i'd leave a place by the watch whin i had a strike!" "me either," said dannie. "'tis past human nature to ask it. i'll tell ye what we'll do. we'll go to work and rig up a sort of a bridge where it's so narrow and shallow, juist above kingfisher shoals, and then we'll toss up fra sides. then each will keep to his side. with a decent pole either of us can throw across the pool, and both of us can fish as we please. then each fellow can pick his bait, and cast or fish deep as he thinks best. what d'ye say to that?" "i don't see how anything could be fairer than that," said jimmy. "i don't want to fish for anything but the bass. i'm goin' back and get our rubber boots, and you be rollin' logs, and we'll build that crossing right now." "all richt," said dannie. so they laid aside their poles and tackle, and dannie rolled logs and gathered material for the bridge, while jimmy went back after their boots. then both of them entered the water and began clearing away drift and laying the foundations. as the first log of the crossing lifted above the water dannie paused. "how about the kingfisher?" he asked. "winna this scare him away?" "not if he ain't a domn fool," said jimmy; "and if he is, let him go!" "seems like the river would no be juist richt without him," said dannie, breaking off a spice limb and nibbling the fragrant buds. "let's only use what we bare need to get across. and where will we fix fra mary?" "oh, git out!" said jimmy. "i ain't goin' to fool with that." "well, we best fix a place. then we can tell her we fixed it, and it's all ready." "sure!" cried jimmy. "you are catchin' it from your neighbor. till her a place is all fixed and watin', and you couldn't drag her here with a team of oxen. till her you are going to fix it soon, and she'll come to see if you've done it, if she has to be carried on a stritcher." so they selected a spot that they thought would be all right for mary, and not close enough to disturb the bass and the kingfisher, rolled two logs, and fished a board that had been carried by a freshet from the water and laid it across them, and decided that would have to serve until they could do better. then they sat astride the board, dannie drew out a coin, and they tossed it to see which was heads and tails. dannie won heads. then they tossed to see which bank was heads or tails, and the right, which was on rainbow side, came heads. so jimmy was to use the bridge. then they went home, and began the night work. the first thing jimmy espied was the barrel containing the milk pail. he fished out the pail, and while dannie fed the stock, shoveled manure, and milked, jimmy pounded out the dents, closed the bullet holes, emptied the bait into it, half filled it with mellow earth, and went to mary for some corn meal to sprinkle on the top to feed the worms. at four o'clock the next morning, dannie was up feeding, milking, scraping plows, and setting bolts. after breakfast they piled their implements on a mudboat, which dannie drove, while jimmy rode one of his team, and led the other, and opened the gates. they began on dannie's field, because it was closest, and for the next two weeks, unless it were too rainy to work, they plowed, harrowed, lined off, and planted the seed. the blackbirds followed along the furrows picking up grubs, the crows cawed from high tree tops, the bluebirds twittered about hollow stumps and fence rails, the wood thrushes sang out their souls in the thickets across the river, and the king cardinal of rainbow bottom whistled to split his throat from the giant sycamore. tender greens were showing along the river and in the fields, and the purple of red-bud mingled with the white of wild plum all along the wabash. the sunny side of the hill that sloped down to rainbow bottom was a mass of spring beauties, anemones, and violets; thread-like ramps rose rank to the scent among them, and round ginger leaves were thrusting their folded heads through the mold. the kingfisher was cleaning his house and fishing from his favorite stump in the river, while near him, at the fall of every luckless worm that missed its hold on a blossom-whitened thorn tree, came the splash of the great black bass. every morning the bass took a trip around horseshoe bend food hunting, and the small fry raced for life before his big, shear-like jaws. during the heat of noon he lay in the deep pool below the stump, and rested; but when evening came he set out in search of supper, and frequently he felt so good that he leaped clear of the water, and fell back with a splash that threw shining spray about him, or lashed out with his tail and sent widening circles of waves rolling from his lurking place. then the kingfisher rattled with all his might, and flew for the tunnel in the embankment. some of these days the air was still, the earth warmed in the golden sunshine, and murmured a low song of sleepy content. some days the wind raised, whirling dead leaves before it, and covering the earth with drifts of plum, cherry, and apple bloom, like late falling snow. then great black clouds came sweeping across the sky, and massed above rainbow bottom. the lightning flashed as if the heavens were being cracked open, and the rolling thunder sent terror to the hearts of man and beast. when the birds flew for shelter, dannie and jimmy unhitched their horses, and raced for the stables to escape the storm, and to be with mary, whom electricity made nervous. they would sit on the little front porch, and watch the greedy earth drink the downpour. they could almost see the grass and flowers grow. when the clouds scattered, the thunder grew fainter; and the sun shone again between light sprinkles of rain. then a great, glittering rainbow set its arch in the sky, and it planted one of its feet in horseshoe bend, and the other so far away they could not even guess where. if it rained lightly, in a little while dannie and jimmy could go back to their work afield. if the downpour was heavy, and made plowing impossible, they pulled weeds, and hoed in the garden. dannie discoursed on the wholesome freshness of the earth, and jimmy ever waited a chance to twist his words, and ring in a laugh on him. he usually found it. sometimes, after a rain, they took their bait cans, and rods, and went down to the river to fish. if one could not go, the other religiously refrained from casting bait into the pool where the black bass lay. once, when they were fishing together, the bass rose to a white moth, skittered over the surface by dannie late in the evening, and twice jimmy had strikes which he averred had taken the arm almost off him, but neither really had the bass on his hook. they kept to their own land, and fished when they pleased, for game laws and wardens were unknown to them. truth to tell, neither of them really hoped to get the bass before fall. the water was too high in the spring. minnows were plentiful, and as jimmy said, "it seemed as if the domn plum tree just rained caterpillars." so they bided their time, and the signs prohibiting trespass on all sides of their land were many and emphatic, and mary had instructions to ring the dinner bell if she caught sight of any strangers. the days grew longer, and the sun was insistent. untold miles they trudged back and forth across their land, guiding their horses, jerked about with plows, their feet weighted with the damp, clinging earth, and their clothing pasted to their wet bodies. jimmy was growing restless. never in all his life had he worked so faithfully as that spring, and never had his visits to casey's so told on him. no matter where they started, or how hard they worked, dannie was across the middle of the field, and helping jimmy before the finish. it was always dannie who plowed on, while jimmy rode to town for the missing bolt or buckle, and he generally rolled from his horse into a fence corner, and slept the remainder of the day on his return. the work and heat were beginning to tire him, and his trips to casey's had been much less frequent than he desired. he grew to feel that between them dannie and mary were driving him, and a desire to balk at slight cause, gathered in his breast. he deliberately tied his team in a fence corner, lay down, and fell asleep. the clanging of the supper bell aroused him. he opened his eyes, and as he rose, found that dannie had been to the barn, and brought a horse blanket to cover him. well as he knew anything, jimmy knew that he had no business sleeping in fence corners so early in the season. with candor he would have admitted to himself that a part of his brittle temper came from aching bones and rheumatic twinges. some way, the sight of dannie swinging across the field, looking as fresh as in the early morning, and the fact that he had carried a blanket to cover him, and the further fact that he was wild for drink, and could think of no excuse on earth for going to town, brought him to a fighting crisis. dannie turned his horses at jimmy's feet. "come on, jimmy, supper bell has rung," he cried. "we mustn't keep mary waiting. she wants us to help her plant the sweet potatoes to-nicht." jimmy rose, and his joints almost creaked. the pain angered him. he leaned forward and glared at dannie. "is there one minute of the day whin you ain't thinkin' about my wife?" he demanded, oh, so slowly, and so ugly! dannie met his hateful gaze squarely. "na a minute," he answered, "excepting when i am thinking about ye." "the hell you say!" exploded the astonished jimmy. dannie stepped out of the furrow, and came closer. "see here, jimmy malone," he said. "ye ain't forgot the nicht when i told ye i loved mary, with all my heart, and that i'd never love another woman. i sent ye to tell her fra me, and to ask if i might come to her. and ye brought me her answer. it's na your fault that she preferred ye. everybody did. but it is your fault that i've stayed on here. i tried to go, and ye wouldna let me. so for fifteen years, ye have lain with the woman i love, and i have lain alone in a few rods of ye. if that ain't man-hell, try some other on me, and see if it will touch me! i sent ye to tell her that i loved her; have i ever sent ye to tell her that i've quit? i should think you'd know, by this time, that i'm na quitter. love her! why, i love her till i can see her standin' plain before me, when i know she's a mile away. love her! why, i can smell her any place i am, sweeter than any flower i ever held to my face. love her! till the day i dee i'll love her. but it ain't any fault of yours, and if ye've come to the place where i worry ye, that's the place where i go, as i wanted to on the same day ye brought mary to rainbow bottom." jimmy's gray jaws fell open. jimmy's sullen eyes cleared. he caught dannie by the arm. "for the love of hivin, what did i say, dannie?" he panted. "i must have been half asleep. go! you go! you leave rainbow bottom! thin, by god, i go too! i won't stay here without you, not a day. if i had to take my choice between you, i'd give up mary before i'd give up the best frind i iver had. go! i guess not, unless i go with you! she can go to----" "jimmy! jimmy!" cautioned dannie. "i mane ivery domn word of it," said jimmy. "i think more of you, than i iver did of any woman." dannie drew a deep breath. "then why in the name of god did ye say that thing to me? i have na betrayed your trust in me, not ever, jimmy, and ye know it. what's the matter with ye?" jimmy heaved a deep sigh, and rubbed his hands across his hot, angry face. "oh, i'm just so domn sore!" he said. "some days i get about wild. things haven't come out like i thought they would." "jimmy, if ye are in trouble, why do ye na tell me? canna i help ye? have'nt i always helped ye if i could?" "yes, you have," said jimmy. "always, been a thousand times too good to me. but you can't help here. i'm up agin it alone, but put this in your pipe, and smoke it good and brown, if you go, i go. i don't stay here without you." "then it's up to ye na to make it impossible for me to stay," said dannie. "after this, i'll try to be carefu'. i've had no guard on my lips. i've said whatever came into my heid." the supper bell clanged sharply a second time. "that manes more hivin on the wabash," said jimmy. "wish i had a bracer before i face it." "how long has it been, jimmy?" asked dannie. "etarnity!" replied jimmy briefly. dannie stood thinking, and then light broke. jimmy was always short of money in summer. when trapping was over, and before any crops were ready, he was usually out of funds. dannie hesitated, and then he said, "would a small loan be what ye need, jimmy?" jimmy's eyes gleamed. "it would put new life into me," he cried. "forgive me, dannie. i am almost crazy." dannie handed over a coin, and after supper jimmy went to town. then dannie saw his mistake. he had purchased peace for himself, but what about mary? chapter vi the heart of mary malone "this is the job that was done with the reaper, if we hustle we can do it ourselves, thus securing to us a little cheaper, the bread and pie upon our pantry shelves. eat this wheat, by and by, on this beautiful wabash shore, drink this rye, by and by, eat and drink on this beautiful shore." so sang jimmy as he drove through the wheat, oats and rye accompanied by the clacking machinery. dannie stopped stacking sheaves to mop his warm, perspiring face and to listen. jimmy always with an eye to the effect he was producing immediately broke into wilder parody: "drive this mower, a little slower, on this beautiful wabash shore, cuttin' wheat to buy our meat, cuttin' oats, to buy our coats, also pants, if we get the chance. by and by, we'll cut the rye, but i bet my hat i drink that, i drink that. drive this mower a little slower, in this wheat, in this wheat, by and by." the larks scolded, fluttering over head, for at times the reaper overtook their belated broods. the bobolinks danced and chattered on stumps and fences, in an agony of suspense, when their nests were approached, and cried pitifully if they were destroyed. the chewinks flashed from the ground to the fences and trees, and back, crying "che-wink?" "che-wee!" to each other, in such excitement that they appeared to be in danger of flirting off their long tails. the quail ran about the shorn fields, and excitedly called from fence riders to draw their flocks into the security of rainbow bottom. frightened hares bounded through the wheat, and if the cruel blade sheared into their nests, dannie gathered the wounded and helpless of the scattered broods in his hat, and carried them to mary. then came threshing, which was a busy time, but after that, through the long hot days of late july and august, there was little to do afield, and fishing was impossible. dannie grubbed fence corners, mended fences, chopped and corded wood for winter, and in spare time read his books. for the most part jimmy kept close to dannie. jimmy's temper never had been so variable. dannie was greatly troubled, for despite jimmy's protests of devotion, he flared at a word, and sometimes at no word at all. the only thing in which he really seemed interested was the coon skin he was dressing to send to boston. over that he worked by the hour, sometimes with earnest face, and sometimes he raised his head, and let out a whoop that almost frightened mary. at such times he was sure to go on and give her some new detail of the hunt for the fifty coons, that he had forgotten to tell her before. he had been to the hotel, and learned the thread man's name and address, and found that he did not come regularly, and no one knew when to expect him; so when he had combed and brushed the fur to its finest point, and worked the skin until it was velvet soft, and bleached it until it was muslin white, he made it into a neat package and sent it with his compliments to the boston man. after he had waited for a week, he began going to town every day to the post office for the letter he expected, and coming home much worse for a visit to casey's. since plowing time he had asked dannie for money as he wanted it, telling him to keep an account, and he would pay him in the fall. he seemed to forget or not to know how fast his bills grew. then came a week in august when the heat invaded even the cool retreat along the river. out on the highway passing wheels rolled back the dust like water, and raised it in clouds after them. the rag weeds hung wilted heads along the road. the goldenrod and purple ironwort were dust-colored and dust-choked. the trees were thirsty, and their leaves shriveling. the river bed was bare its width in places, and while the kingfisher made merry with his family, and rattled, feasting from abram johnson's to the gar-hole, the black bass sought its deep pool, and lay still. it was a rare thing to hear it splash in those days. the prickly heat burned until the souls of men were tried. mary slipped listlessly about or lay much of the time on a couch beside a window, where a breath of air stirred. despite the good beginning he had made in the spring, jimmy slumped with the heat and exposures he had risked, and was hard to live with. dannie was not having a good time himself. since jimmy's wedding, life had been all grind to dannie, but he kept his reason, accepted his lot, and ground his grist with patience and such cheer as few men could have summoned to the aid of so poor a cause. had there been any one to notice it, dannie was tired and heat-ridden also, but as always, dannie sank self, and labored uncomplainingly with jimmy's problems. on a burning august morning dannie went to breakfast, and found mary white and nervous, little prepared to eat, and no sign of jimmy. "jimmy sleeping?" he asked. "i don't know where jimmy is," mary answered coldly. "since when?" asked dannie, gulping coffee, and taking hasty bites, for he had begun his breakfast supposing that jimmy would come presently. "he left as soon as you went home last night," she said, "and he has not come back yet." dannie did not know what to say. loyal to the bone to jimmy, loving each hair on the head of mary malone, and she worn and neglected; the problem was heartbreaking in any solution he attempted, and he felt none too well himself. he arose hastily, muttering something about getting the work done. he brought in wood and water, and asked if there was anything more he could do. "sure!" said mary, in a calm, even voice. "go to the barn, and shovel manure for jimmy malone, and do all the work he shirks, before you do anything for yoursilf." dannie always had admitted that he did not understand women, but he understood a plain danger signal, and he almost ran from the cabin. in the fear that mary might think he had heeded her hasty words, he went to his own barn first, just to show her that he did not do jimmy's work. the flies and mosquitoes were so bad he kept his horses stabled through the day, and turned them to pasture at night. so their stalls were to be cleaned, and he set to work. when he had finished his own barn, as he had nothing else to do, he went on to jimmy's. he had finished the stalls, and was sweeping when he heard a sound at the back door, and turning saw jimmy clinging to the casing, unable to stand longer. dannie sprang to him, and helped him inside. jimmy sank to the floor. dannie caught up several empty grain sacks, folded them, and pushed them under jimmy's head for a pillow. "dannish, didsh shay y'r nash'nal flowerish wash shisle?" asked jimmy. "yes," said dannie, lifting the heavy auburn head to smooth the folds from the sacks. "whysh like me?" "i dinna," answered dannie wearily. "awful jagsh on," murmured jimmy, sighed heavily, and was off. his clothing was torn and dust-covered, his face was purple and bloated, and his hair was dusty and disordered. he was a repulsive sight. as dannie straightened jimmy's limbs he thought he heard a step. he lifted his head and leaned forward to listen. "dannie micnoun?" called the same even, cold voice he had heard at breakfast. "have you left me, too?" dannie sprang for a manger. he caught a great armload of hay, and threw it over jimmy. he gave one hurried toss to scatter it, for mary was in the barn. as he turned to interpose his body between her and the manger, which partially screened jimmy, his heart sickened. he was too late. she had seen. frightened to the soul, he stared at her. she came a step closer, and with her foot gave a hand of jimmy's that lay exposed a contemptuous shove. "you didn't get him complately covered," she said. "how long have you had him here?" dannie was frightened into speech. "na a minute, mary; he juist came in when i heard ye. i was trying to spare ye." "him, you mane," she said, in that same strange voice. "i suppose you give him money, and he has a bottle, and he's been here all night." "mary," said dannie, "that's na true. i have furnished him money. he'd mortgage the farm, or do something worse if i didna; but i dinna where he has been all nicht, and in trying to cover him, my only thought was to save ye pain." "and whin you let him spind money you know you'll never get back, and loaf while you do his work, and when you lie mountain high, times without number, who is it for?" then fifteen years' restraint slid from dannie like a cloak, and in the torture of his soul his slow tongue outran all its previous history. "ye!" he shouted. "it's fra jimmy, too, but ye first. always ye first!" mary began to tremble. her white cheeks burned red. her figure straightened, and her hands clenched. "on the cross! will you swear it?" she cried. "on the sacred body of jesus himself, if i could face him," answered dannie. "anything! everything is fra ye first, mary!" "then why?" she panted between gasps for breath. "tell me why? if you have cared for me enough to stay here all these years and see that i had the bist tratemint you could get for me, why didn't you care for me enough more to save me this? oh, dannie, tell me why?" and then she shook with strangled sobs until she scarce could stand alone. dannie macnoun cleared the space between them and took her in his arms. her trembling hands clung to him, her head dropped on his breast, and the perfume of her hair in his nostrils drove him mad. then the tense bulk of her body struck against him, and horror filled his soul. one second he held her, the next, jimmy smothering under the hay, threw up an arm, and called like a petulant child, "dannie! make shun quit shinish my fashe!" and dannie awoke to the realization that mary was another man's, and that man, one who trusted him completely. the problem was so much too big for poor dannie that reason kindly slipped a cog. he broke from the grasp of the woman, fled through the back door, and took to the woods. he ran as if fiends were after him, and he ran and ran. and when he could run no longer, he walked, but he went on. just on and on. he crossed forests and fields, orchards and highways, streams and rivers, deep woods and swamps, and on, and on he went. he felt nothing, and saw nothing, and thought nothing, save to go on, always on. in the dark he stumbled on and through the day he staggered on, and he stopped for nothing, save at times to lift water to his parched lips. the bushes took his hat, the thorns ripped his shirt, the water soaked his shoes and they spread and his feet came through and the stones cut them until they bled. leaves and twigs stuck in his hair, and his eyes grew bloodshot, his lips and tongue swollen, and when he could go no further on his feet, he crawled on his knees, until at last he pitched forward on his face and lay still. the tumult was over and mother nature set to work to see about repairing damages. dannie was so badly damaged, soul, heart, and body, that she never would have been equal to the task, but another woman happened that way and she helped. dannie was carried to a house and a doctor dressed his hurts. when the physician got down to first principles, and found a big, white-bodied, fine-faced scotchman in the heart of the wreck, he was amazed. a wild man, but not a whiskey bloat. a crazy man, but not a maniac. he stood long beside dannie as he lay unconscious. "i'll take oath that man has wronged no one," he said. "what in the name of god has some woman been doing to him?" he took money from dannie's wallet and bought clothing to replace the rags he had burned. he filled dannie with nourishment, and told the woman who found him that when he awoke, if he did not remember, to tell him that his name was dannie macnoun, and that he lived in rainbow bottom, adams county. because just at that time dannie was halfway across the state. a day later he awoke, in a strange room and among strange faces. he took up life exactly where he left off. and in his ears, as he remembered his flight, rang the awful cry uttered by mary malone, and not until then did there come to dannie the realization that she had been driven to seek him for help, because her woman's hour was upon her. cold fear froze dannie's soul. he went back by railway and walked the train most of the way. he dropped from the cars at the water tank and struck across country, and again he ran. but this time it was no headlong flight. straight as a homing bird went dannie with all speed, toward the foot of the rainbow and mary malone. the kingfisher sped rattling down the river when dannie came crashing along the bank. "oh, god, let her be alive!" prayed dannie as he leaned panting against a tree for an instant, because he was very close now and sickeningly afraid. then he ran on. in a minute it would be over. at the next turn he could see the cabins. as he dashed along, jimmy malone rose from a log and faced him. a white jimmy, with black-ringed eyes and shaking hands. "where the hell have you been?" jimmy demanded. "is she dead?" cried dannie. "the doctor is talking scare," said jimmy. "but i don't scare so easy. she's never been sick in her life, and she has lived through it twice before, why should she die now? of course the kid is dead again," he added angrily. dannie shut his eyes and stood still. he had helped plant star-flowers on two tiny cross-marked mounds at five mile hill. now, there were three. jimmy had worn out her love for him, that was plain. "why should she die now?" to dannie it seemed that question should have been, "why should she live?" jimmy eyed him belligerently. "why in the name of sinse did you cut out whin i was off me pins?" he growled. "of course i don't blame you for cutting that kind of a party, me for the woods, all right, but what i can't see is why you couldn't have gone for the doctor and waited until i'd slept it off before you wint." "i dinna know she was sick," answered dannie. "i deserve anything ony ane can say to me, and it's all my fault if she dees, but this ane thing ye got to say ye know richt noo, jimmy. ye got to say ye know that i dinna understand mary was sick when i went." "sure! i've said that all the time," agreed jimmy. "but what i don't understand is, why you went! i guess she thinks it was her fault. i came out here to try to study it out. the nurse-woman, domn pretty girl, says if you don't get back before midnight, it's all up. you're just on time, dannie. the talk in the house is that she'll wink out if you don't prove to her that she didn't drive you away. she is about crazy over it. what did she do to you?" "nothing!" exclaimed dannie. "she was so deathly sick she dinna what she was doing. i can see it noo, but i dinna understand then." "that's all right," said jimmy. "she didn't! she kapes moaning over and over 'what did i do?' you hustle in and fix it up with her. i'm getting tired of all this racket." all dannie heard was that he was to go to mary. he went up the lane, across the garden, and stepped in at the back door. beside the table stood a comely young woman, dressed in blue and white stripes. she was doing something with eggs and milk. she glanced at dannie, and finished filling a glass. as she held it to the light, "is your name macnoun?" she inquired. "yes," said dannie. "dannie macnoun?" she asked. "yes," said dannie. "then you are the medicine needed here just now," she said, as if that were the most natural statement in the world. "mrs. malone seems to have an idea that she offended you, and drove you from home, just prior to her illness, and as she has been very sick, she is in no condition to bear other trouble. you understand?" "do ye understand that i couldna have gone if i had known she was ill?" asked dannie in turn. "from what she has said in delirium i have been sure of that," replied the nurse. "it seems you have been the stay of the family for years. i have a very high opinion of you, mr. macnoun. wait until i speak to her." the nurse vanished, presently returned, and as dannie passed through the door, she closed it after him, and he stood still, trying to see in the dim light. that great snowy stretch, that must be the bed. that tumbled dark circle, that must be mary's hair. that dead white thing beneath it, that must be mary's face. those burning lights, flaming on him, those must be mary's eyes. dannie stepped softly across the room, and bent over the bed. he tried hard to speak naturally. "mary" he said, "oh, mary, i dinna know ye were ill! oh, believe me, i dinna realize ye were suffering pain." she smiled faintly, and her lips moved. dannie bent lower. "promise," she panted. "promise you will stay now." her hand fumbled at her breast, and then she slipped on the white cover a little black cross. dannie knew what she meant. he laid his hand on the emblem precious to her, and said softly, "i swear i never will leave ye again, mary malone." a great light swept into her face, and she smiled happily. "now ye," said dannie. he slipped the cross into her hand. "repeat after me," he said. "i promise i will get well, dannie." "i promise i will get well, dannie, if i can," said mary. "na," said dannie. "that winna do. repeat what i said, and remember it is on the cross. life hasna been richt for ye, mary, but if ye will get well, before the lord in some way we will make it happier. ye will get well?" "i promise i will get well, dannie," said mary malone, and dannie softly left the room. outside he said to the nurse, "what can i do?" she told him everything of which she could think that would be of benefit. "now tell me all ye know of what happened," commanded dannie. "after you left," said the nurse, "she was in labor, and she could not waken her husband, and she grew frightened and screamed. there were men passing out on the road. they heard her, and came to see what was the matter." "strangers?" shuddered dannie, with dry lips. "no, neighbors. one man went for the nearest woman, and the other drove to town for a doctor. they had help here almost as soon as you could. but, of course, the shock was a very dreadful thing, and the heat of the past few weeks has been enervating." "ane thing more," questioned dannie. "why do her children dee?" "i don't know about the others," answered the nurse. "this one simply couldn't be made to breathe. it was a strange thing. it was a fine big baby, a boy, and it seemed perfect, but we couldn't save it. i never worked harder. they told me she had lost two others, and we tried everything of which we could think. it just seemed as if it had grown a lump of flesh, with no vital spark in it." dannie turned, went out of the door, and back along the lane to the river where he had left jimmy. "'a lump of flesh with na vital spark in it,'" he kept repeating. "i dinna but that is the secret. she is almost numb with misery. all these days when she's been without hope, and these awful nichts, when she's watched and feared alone, she has no wished to perpetuate him in children who might be like him, and so at their coming the 'vital spark' is na in them. oh, jimmy, jimmy, have ye mary's happiness and those three little graves to answer for?" he found jimmy asleep where he had left him. dannie shook him awake. "i want to talk with ye," he said. jimmy sat up, and looked into dannie's face. he had a complaint on his lips but it died there. he tried to apologize. "i am almost dead for sleep," he said. "there has been no rest for anyone here. what do you think?" "i think she will live," said dannie dryly. "in spite of your neglect, and my cowardice, i think she will live to suffer more frae us." jimmy's mouth opened, but for once no sound issued. the drops of perspiration raised on his forehead. dannie sat down, and staring at him jimmy saw that there were patches of white hair at his temples that had been brown a week before; his colorless face was sunken almost to the bone, and there was a peculiar twist about his mouth. jimmy's heart weighed heavily, his tongue stood still, and he was afraid to the marrow in his bones. "i think she will live," repeated dannie. "and about the suffering more, we will face that like men, and see what can be done about it. this makes three little graves on the hill, jimmy, what do they mean to ye?" "domn bad luck," said jimmy promptly. "nothing more?" asked dannie. "na responsibility at all. ye are the father of those children. have ye never been to the doctor, and asked why ye lost them?" "no, i haven't," said jimmy. "that is ane thing we will do now," said dannie, "and then we will do more, much more." "what are you driving at?" asked jimmy. "the secret of mary's heart," said dannie. the cold sweat ran from the pores of jimmy's body. he licked his dry lips, and pulled his hat over his eyes, that he might watch dannie from under the brim. "we are twa big, strong men," said dannie. "for fifteen years we have lived here wi' mary. the night ye married her, the licht of happiness went out for me. but i shut my mouth, and shouldered my burden, and went on with my best foot first; because if she had na refused me, i should have married her, and then ye would have been the one to suffer. if she had chosen me, i should have married her, juist as ye did. oh, i've never forgotten that! so i have na been a happy mon, jimmy. we winna go into that any further, we've been over it once. it seems to be a form of torture especially designed fra me, though at times i must confess, it seems rough, and i canna see why, but we'll cut that off with this: life has been hell's hottest sweat-box fra me these fifteen years." jimmy groaned aloud. dannie's keen gray eyes seemed boring into the soul of the man before him, as he went on. "now how about ye? ye got the girl ye wanted. ye own a guid farm that would make ye a living, and save ye money every year. ye have done juist what ye pleased, and as far as i could, i have helped ye. i've had my eye on ye pretty close, jimmy, and if ye are a happy mon, i dinna but i'm content as i am. what's your trouble? did ye find ye dinna love mary after ye won her? did ye murder your mither or blacken your soul with some deadly sin? mon! if i had in my life what ye every day neglect and torture, heaven would come doon, and locate at the foot of the rainbow fra me. but, ye are no happy, jimmy. let's get at the root of the matter. while ye are unhappy, mary will be also. we are responsible to god for her, and between us, she is empty armed, near to death, and almost dumb with misery. i have juist sworn to her on the cross she loves that if she will make ane more effort, and get well, we will make her happy. now, how are we going to do it?" another great groan burst from jimmy, and he shivered as if with a chill. "let us look ourselves in the face," dannie went on, "and see what we lack. what can we do fra her? what will bring a song to her lips, licht to her beautiful eyes, love to her heart, and a living child to her arms? wake up, mon! by god, if ye dinna set to work with me and solve this problem, i'll shake a solution out of ye! what i must suffer is my own, but what's the matter with ye, and why, when she loved and married ye, are ye breakin' mary's heart? answer me, mon!" dannie reached over and snatched the hat from jimmy's forehead, and stared at an inert heap. jimmy lay senseless, and he looked like death. dannie rushed down to the water with the hat, and splashed drops into jimmy's face until he gasped for breath. when he recovered a little, he shrank from dannie, and began to sob, as if he were a sick ten-year-old child. "i knew you'd go back on me, dannie," he wavered. "i've lost the only frind i've got, and i wish i was dead." "i havena gone back on ye," persisted dannie, bathing jimmy's face. "life means nothing to me, save as i can use it fra mary, and fra ye. be quiet, and sit up here, and help me work this thing out. why are ye a discontented mon, always wishing fra any place save home? why do ye spend all ye earn foolishly, so that ye are always hard up, when ye might have affluence? why does mary lose her children, and why does she noo wish she had na married ye?" "who said she wished she hadn't married me?" cried jimmy. "do ye mean to say ye think she doesn't?" blazed dannie. "i ain't said anything!" exclaimed jimmy. "na, and i seem to have damn poor luck gettin' ye to say anything. i dinna ask fra tears, nor faintin' like a woman. be a mon, and let me into the secret of this muddle. there is a secret, and ye know it. what is it? why are ye breaking the heart o' mary malone? answer me, or 'fore god i'll wring the answer fra your body!" and jimmy keeled over again. this time he was gone so far that dannie was frightened into a panic, and called the doctor coming up the lane to jimmy before he had time to see mary. the doctor soon brought jimmy around, prescribed quiet and sleep; talked about heart trouble developing, and symptoms of tremens, and dannie poured on water, and gritted his teeth. and it ended by jimmy being helped to dannie's cabin, undressed, and put into bed, and then dannie went over to see what he could do for the nurse. she looked at him searchingly. "mr. macnoun, when were you last asleep?" she asked. "i forget," answered dannie. "when did you last have a good hot meal?" "i dinna know," replied dannie. "drink that," said the nurse, handing him the bowl of broth she carried, and going back to the stove for another. "when i have finished making mrs. malone comfortable, i'm going to get you something to eat, and you are going to eat it. then you are going to lie down on that cot where i can call you if i need you, and sleep six hours, and then you're going to wake up and watch by this door while i sleep my six. even nurses must have some rest, you know." "ye first," said dannie. "i'll be all richt when i get food. since ye mention it, i believe i am almost mad with hunger." the nurse handed him another bowl of broth. "just drink that, and drink slowly," she said, as she left the room. dannie could hear her speaking softly to mary, and then all was quiet, and the girl came out and closed the door. she deftly prepared food for dannie, and he ate all she would allow him, and begged for more; but she firmly told him her hands were full now, and she had no one to depend on but him to watch after the turn of the night. so dannie lay down on the cot. he had barely touched it when he thought of jimmy, so he got up quietly and started home. he had almost reached his back door when it opened, and jimmy came out. dannie paused, amazed at jimmy's wild face and staring eyes. "don't you begin your cursed gibberish again," cried jimmy, at sight of him. "i'm burning in all the tortures of fire now, and i'll have a drink if i smash down casey's and steal it." dannie jumped for him, and jimmy evaded him and fled. dannie started after. he had reached the barn before he began to think. "i depend on you," the nurse had said. "jimmy, wait!" he called. "jimmy, have ye any money?" jimmy was running along the path toward town. dannie stopped. he stood staring after jimmy for a second, and then he deliberately turned, went back, and lay down on the cot, where the nurse expected to find him when she wanted him to watch by the door of mary malone. chapter vii the apple of discord becomes a jointed rod "what do you think about fishing, dannie?" asked jimmy malone. "there was a licht frost last nicht," said dannie. "it begins to look that way. i should think a week more, especially if there should come a guid rain." jimmy looked disappointed. his last trip to town had ended in a sodden week in the barn, and at dannie's cabin. for the first time he had carried whiskey home with him. he had insisted on dannie drinking with him, and wanted to fight when he would not. he addressed the bottle, and dannie, as the sovereign alchemist by turns, and "transmuted the leaden metal of life into pure gold" of a glorious drunk, until his craving was satisfied. then he came back to work and reason one morning, and by the time mary was about enough to notice him, he was jimmy at his level best, and doing more than he had in years to try to interest and please her. mary had fully recovered, and appeared as strong as she ever had been, but there was a noticeable change in her. she talked and laughed with a gayety that seemed forced, and in the midst of it her tongue turned bitter, and jimmy and dannie fled before it. the gray hairs multiplied on dannie's head with rapidity. he had gone to the doctor, and to mary's sister, and learned nothing more than the nurse could tell him. dannie was willing to undertake anything in the world for mary, but just how to furnish the "vital spark," to an unborn babe, was too big a problem for him. and jimmy malone was growing to be another. heretofore, dannie had borne the brunt of the work, and all of the worry. he had let jimmy feel that his was the guiding hand. jimmy's plans were followed whenever it was possible, and when it was not, dannie started jimmy's way, and gradually worked around to his own. but, there never had been a time between them, when things really came to a crisis, and dannie took the lead, and said matters must go a certain way, that jimmy had not acceded. in reality, dannie always had been master. now he was not. where he lost control he did not know. he had tried several times to return to the subject of how to bring back happiness to mary, and jimmy immediately developed symptoms of another attack of heart disease, a tendency to start for town, or openly defied him by walking away. yet, jimmy stuck to him closer than he ever had, and absolutely refused to go anywhere, or to do the smallest piece of work alone. sometimes he grew sullen and morose when he was not drinking, and that was very unlike the gay jimmy. sometimes he grew wildly hilarious, as if he were bound to make such a racket that he could hear no sound save his own voice. so long as he stayed at home, helped with the work, and made an effort to please mary, dannie hoped for the best, but his hopes never grew so bright that they shut out an awful fear that was beginning to loom in the future. but he tried in every way to encourage jimmy, and help him in the struggle he did not understand, so when he saw that jimmy was disappointed about the fishing, he suggested that he should go alone. "i guess not!" said jimmy. "i'd rather go to confission than to go alone. what's the fun of fishin' alone? all the fun there is to fishin' is to watch the other fellow's eyes when you pull in a big one, and try to hide yours from him when he gets it. i guess not! what have we got to do?" "finish cutting the corn, and get in the pumpkins before there comes frost enough to hurt them." "well, come along!" said jimmy. "let's get it over. i'm going to begin fishing for that bass the morning after the first black frost, if i do go alone. i mean it!" "but ye said--" began dannie. "hagginy!" cried jimmy. "what a lot of time you've wasted if you've been kaping account of all the things i've said. haven't you learned by this time that i lie twice to the truth once?" dannie laughed. "dinna say such things, jimmy. i hate to hear ye. of course, i know about the fifty coons of the canoper, and things like that; honest, i dinna believe ye can help it. but na man need lie about a serious matter, and when he knows he is deceiving another who trusts him." jimmy became so white that he felt the color receding, and turned to hide his face. "of course, about those fifty coons noo, what was the harm in that? nobody believed it. that wasna deceiving any ane." "yes, but it was," answered jimmy. "the boston man belaved it, and i guiss he hasn't forgiven me, if he did take my hand, and drink with me. you know i haven't had a word from him about that coon skin. i worked awful hard on that skin. some way, i tried to make it say to him again that i was sorry for that night's work. sometimes i am afraid i killed the fellow." "o-ho!" scoffed dannie. "men ain't so easy killed. i been thinkin' about it, too, and i'll tell ye what i think. i think he goes on long trips, and only gets home every four or five months. the package would have to wait. his folks wouldna try to send it after him. he was a monly fellow, all richt, and ye will hear fra him yet." "i'd like to," said jimmy, absently, beating across his palm a spray of goldenrod he had broken. "just a line to tell me that he don't bear malice." "ye will get it," said dannie. "have a little patience. but that's your greatest fault, jimmy. ye never did have ony patience." "for god's sake, don't begin on me faults again," snapped jimmy. "i reckon i know me faults about as well as the nixt fellow. i'm so domn full of faults that i've thought a lot lately about fillin' up, and takin' a sleep on the railroad." a new fear wrung dannie's soul. "ye never would, jimmy," he implored. "sure not!" cried jimmy. "i'm no good catholic livin', but if it come to dyin', bedad i niver could face it without first confissin' to the praste, and that would give the game away. let's cut out dyin', and cut corn!" "that's richt," agreed dannie. "and let's work like men, and then fish fra a week or so, before ice and trapping time comes again. i'll wager i can beat ye the first row." "bate!" scoffed jimmy. "bate! with them club-footed fingers of yours? you couldn't bate an egg. just watch me! if you are enough of a watch to keep your hands runnin' at the same time." jimmy worked feverishly for an hour, and then he straightened and looked about him. on the left lay the river, its shores bordered with trees and bushes. behind them was deep wood. before them lay their open fields, sloping down to the bottom, the cabins on one side, and the kingfisher embankment on the other. there was a smoky haze in the air. as always the blackbirds clamored along the river. some crows followed the workers at a distance, hunting for grains of corn, and over in the woods, a chewink scratched and rustled among the deep leaves as it searched for grubs. from time to time a flock of quail arose before them with a whirr and scattered down the fields, reassembling later at the call of their leader, from a rider of the snake fence, which inclosed the field. "bob, bob white," whistled dannie. "bob, bob white," answered the quail. "i got my eye on that fellow," said jimmy. "when he gets a little larger, i'm going after him." "seems an awful pity to kill him," said dannie. "people rave over the lark, but i vow i'd miss the quail most if they were both gone. they are getting scarce." "well, i didn't say i was going to kill the whole flock," said jimmy. "i was just going to kill a few for mary, and if i don't, somebody else will." "mary dinna need onything better than ane of her own fried chickens," said dannie. "and its no true about hunters. we've the river on ane side, and the bluff on the other. if we keep up our fishing signs, and add hunting to them, and juist shut the other fellows out, the birds will come here like everything wild gathers in national park, out west. ye bet things know where they are taken care of, well enough." jimmy snipped a spray of purple ironwort with his corn-cutter, and stuck it through his suspender buckle. "i think that would be more fun than killin' them. if you're a dacint shot, and your gun is clane" (jimmy remembered the crow that had escaped with the eggs at soap-making), "you pretty well know you're goin' to bring down anything you aim at. but it would be a dandy joke to shell a little corn as we husk it, and toll all the quail into rainbow bottom, and then kape the other fellows out. bedad! let's do it." jimmy addressed the quail: "quailie, quailie on the fince, we think your singin's just imminse. stay right here, and live with us, and the fellow that shoots you will strike a fuss." "we can protect them all richt enough," laughed dannie. "and when the snow comes we can feed cardinals like cheekens. wish when we threshed, we'd saved a few sheaves of wheat. they do that in germany, ye know. the last sheaf of the harvest they put up on a long pole at christmas, as a thank-offering to the birds fra their care of the crops. my father often told of it." "that would be great," said jimmy. "now look how domn slow you are! why didn't you mintion it at harvest? i'd like things comin' for me to take care of them. gee! makes me feel important just to think about it. next year we'll do it, sure. they'd be a lot of company. a man could work in this field to-day, with all the flowers around him, and the colors of the leaves like a garden, and a lot of birds talkin' to him, and not feel afraid of being alone." "afraid?" quoted dannie, in amazement. for an instant jimmy looked startled. then his love of proving his point arose. "yes, afraid!" he repeated stubbornly. "afraid of being away from the sound of a human voice, because whin you are, the voices of the black divils of conscience come twistin' up from the ground in a little wiry whisper, and moanin' among the trees, and whistlin' in the wind, and rollin' in the thunder, and above all in the dark they screech, and shout, and roar,'we're after you, jimmy malone! we've almost got you, jimmy malone! you're going to burn in hell, jimmy malone!'" jimmy leaned toward dannie, and began in a low voice, but he grew so excited as he tried to picture the thing that he ended in a scream, and even then dannie's horrified eyes failed to recall him. jimmy straightened, stared wildly behind him, and over the open, hazy field, where flowers bloomed, and birds called, and the long rows of shocks stood unconscious auditors of the strange scene. he lifted his hat, and wiped the perspiration from his dripping face with the sleeve of his shirt, and as he raised his arm, the corn-cutter flashed in the light. "my god, it's awful, dannie! it's so awful, i can't begin to tell you!" dannie's face was ashen. "jimmy, dear auld fellow," he said, "how long has this been going on?" "a million years," said jimmy, shifting the corn-cutter to the hand that held his hat, that he might moisten his fingers with saliva and rub it across his parched lips. "jimmy, dear," dannie's hand was on jimmy's sleeve. "have ye been to town in the nicht, or anything like that lately?" "no, dannie, dear, i ain't," sneered jimmy, setting his hat on the back of his head and testing the corn-cutter with his thumb. "this ain't casey's, me lad. i've no more call there, at this minute, than you have." "it is casey's, juist the same," said dannie bitterly. "dinna ye know the end of this sort of thing?" "no, bedad, i don't!" said jimmy. "if i knew any way to ind it, you can bet i've had enough. i'd ind it quick enough, if i knew how. but the railroad wouldn't be the ind. that would just be the beginnin'. keep close to me, dannie, and talk, for mercy sake, talk! do you think we could finish the corn by noon?" "let's try!" said dannie, as he squared his shoulders to adjust them to his new load. "then we'll get in the pumpkins this afternoon, and bury the potatoes, and the cabbage and turnips, and then we're aboot fixed fra winter." "we must take one day, and gather our nuts," suggested jimmy, struggling to make his voice sound natural, "and you forgot the apples. we must bury thim too." "that's so," said dannie, "and when that's over, we'll hae nothing left to do but catch the bass, and say farewell to the kingfisher." "i've already told you that i would relave you of all responsibility about the bass," said jimmy, "and when i do, you won't need trouble to make your adieus to the kingfisher of the wabash. he'll be one bird that won't be migrating this winter." dannie tried to laugh. "i'd like fall as much as any season of the year," he said, "if it wasna for winter coming next." "i thought you liked winter, and the trampin' in the white woods, and trappin', and the long evenings with a book." "i do," said dannie. "i must have been thinkin' of mary. she hated last winter so. of course, i had to go home when ye were away, and the nichts were so long, and so cold, and mony of them alone. i wonder if we canna arrange fra one of her sister's girls to stay with her this winter?" "what's the matter with me?" asked jimmy. "nothing, if only ye'd stay," answered dannie. "all i'll be out of nights, you could put in one eye," said jimmy. "i went last winter, and before, because whin they clamored too loud, i could be drivin' out the divils that way, for a while, and you always came for me, but even that won't be stopping it now. i wouldn't stick my head out alone after dark, not if i was dying!" "jimmy, ye never felt that way before," said dannie. "tell me what happened this summer to start ye." "i've done a domn sight of faleing that you didn't know anything about," answered jimmy. "i could work it off at casey's for a while, but this summer things sort of came to a head, and i saw meself for fair, and before god, dannie, i didn't like me looks." "well, then, i like your looks," said dannie. "ye are the best company i ever was in. ye are the only mon i ever knew that i cared fra, and i care fra ye so much, i havna the way to tell ye how much. you're possessed with a damn fool idea, jimmy, and ye got to shake it off. such a great-hearted, big mon as ye! i winna have it! there's the dinner bell, and richt glad i am of it!" that afternoon when pumpkin gathering was over and jimmy had invited mary out to separate the "punk" from the pumpkins, there was a wagon-load of good ones above what they would need for their use. dannie proposed to take them to town and sell them. to his amazement jimmy refused to go along. "i told you this morning that casey wasn't calling me at prisent," he said, "and whin i am not called i'd best not answer. i have promised mary to top the onions and bury the cilery, and murder the bates." "do what wi' the beets?" inquired the puzzled dannie. "kill thim! kill thim stone dead. i'm too tinder-hearted to be burying anything but a dead bate, dannie. that's a thousand years old, but laugh, like i knew you would, old ramphirinkus! no, thank you, i don't go to town!" then dannie was scared. "he's going to be dreadfully seek or go mad," he said. so he drove to the village, sold the pumpkins, filled mary's order for groceries, and then went to the doctor, and told him of jimmy's latest developments. "it is the drink," said that worthy disciple of esculapius. "it's the drink! in time it makes a fool sodden and a bright man mad. few men have sufficient brains to go crazy. jimmy has. he must stop the drink." on the street, dannie encountered father michael. the priest stopped him to shake hands. "how's mary malone?" he asked. "she is quite well noo," answered dannie, "but she is na happy. i live so close, and see so much, i know. i've thought of ye lately. i have thought of coming to see ye. i'm na of your religion, but mary is, and what suits her is guid enough for me. i've tried to think of everything under the sun that might help, and among other things i've thought of ye. jimmy was confirmed in your church, and he was more or less regular up to his marriage." "less, mr. macnoun, much less!" said the priest. "since, not at all. why do you ask?" "he is sick," said dannie. "he drinks a guid deal. he has been reckless about sleeping on the ground, and noo, if ye will make this confidential?"--the priest nodded--"he is talking aboot sleeping on the railroad, and he's having delusions. there are devils after him. he is the finest fellow ye ever knew, father michael. we've been friends all our lives. ye have had much experience with men, and it ought to count fra something. from all ye know, and what i've told ye, could his trouble be cured as the doctor suggests?" the priest did a queer thing. "you know him as no living man, dannie," he said. "what do you think?" dannie's big hands slowly opened and closed. then he fell to polishing the nails of one hand on the palm of the other. at last he answered, "if ye'd asked me that this time last year, i'd have said 'it's the drink,' at a jump. but times this summer, this morning, for instance, when he hadna a drop in three weeks, and dinna want ane, when he could have come wi' me to town, and wouldna, and there were devils calling him from the ground, and the trees, and the sky, out in the open cornfield, it looked bad." the priest's eyes were boring into dannie's sick face. "how did it look?" he asked briefly. "it looked," said dannie, and his voice dropped to a whisper, "it looked like he might carry a damned ugly secret, that it would be better fra him if ye, at least, knew." "and the nature of that secret?" dannie shook his head. "couldna give a guess at it! known him all his life. my only friend. always been togither. square a mon as god ever made. there's na fault in him, if he'd let drink alone. got more faith in him than any ane i ever knew. i wouldna trust mon on god's footstool, if i had to lose faith in jimmy. come to think of it, that 'secret' business is all old woman's scare. the drink is telling on him. if only he could be cured of that awful weakness, all heaven would come down and settle in rainbow bottom." they shook hands and parted without dannie realizing that he had told all he knew and learned nothing. then he entered the post office for the weekly mail. he called for malone's papers also, and with them came a slip from the express office notifying jimmy that there was a package for him. dannie went to see if they would let him have it, and as jimmy lived in the country, and as he and dannie were known to be partners, he was allowed to sign the book, and carry away a long, slender, wooden box, with a boston tag. the thread man had sent jimmy a present, and from the appearance of the box, dannie made up his mind that it was a cane. straightway he drove home at a scandalous rate of speed, and on the way, he dressed jimmy in a broadcloth suit, patent leathers, and a silk hat. then he took him to a gold cure, where he learned to abhor whiskey in a week, and then to the priest, to whom he confessed that he had lied about the number of coons in the canoper. and so peace brooded in rainbow bottom, and all of them were happy again. for with the passing of summer, dannie had learned that heretofore there had been happiness of a sort, for them, and that if they could all get back to the old footing it would be well, or at least far better than it was at present. with mary's tongue dripping gall, and her sweet face souring, and jimmy hearing devils, no wonder poor dannie overheated his team in a race to carry a package that promised to furnish some diversion. jimmy and mary heard the racket, and standing on the celery hill, they saw dannie come clattering up the lane, and as he saw them, he stood in the wagon, and waved the package over his head. jimmy straightened with a flourish, stuck the spade in the celery hill, and descended with great deliberation. "i mintioned to dannie this morning," he said "that it was about time i was hearin' from the thrid man." "oh! do you suppose it is something from boston?" the eagerness in mary's voice made it sound almost girlish again. "hunt the hatchet!" hissed jimmy, and walked very leisurely into the cabin. dannie was visibly excited as he entered. "i think ye have heard from the thread mon," he said, handing jimmy the package. jimmy took it, and examined it carefully. he never before in his life had an express package, the contents of which he did not know. it behooved him to get all there was out of the pride and the joy of it. mary laid down the hatchet so close that it touched jimmy's hand, to remind him. "now what do you suppose he has sent you?" she inquired eagerly, her hand straying toward the packages. jimmy tested the box. "it don't weigh much," he said, "but one end of it's the heaviest." he set the hatchet in a tiny crack, and with one rip, stripped off the cover. inside lay a long, brown leather case, with small buckles, and in one end a little leather case, flat on one side, rounding on the other, and it, too, fastened with a buckle. jimmy caught sight of a paper book folded in the bottom of the box, as he lifted the case. with trembling fingers he unfastened the buckles, the whole thing unrolled, and disclosed a case of leather, sewn in four divisions, from top to bottom, and from the largest of these protruded a shining object. jimmy caught this, and began to draw, and the shine began to lengthen. "just what i thought!" exclaimed dannie. "he's sent ye a fine cane." "a hint to kape out of the small of his back the nixt time he goes promenadin' on a cow-kitcher! the divil!" exploded jimmy. his quick eyes had caught a word on the cover of the little book in the bottom of the box. "a cane! a cane! look at that, will ye?" he flashed six inches of grooved silvery handle before their faces, and three feet of shining black steel, scarcely thicker than a lead pencil. "cane!" he cried scornfully. then he picked up the box, and opening it drew out a little machine that shone like a silver watch, and setting it against the handle, slipped a small slide over each end, and it held firmly, and shone bravely. "oh, jimmy, what is it?" cried mary. "me cane!" answered jimmy. "me new cane from boston. didn't you hear dannie sayin' what it was? this little arrangemint is my cicly-meter, like they put on wheels, and buggies now, to tell how far you've traveled. the way this works, i just tie this silk thrid to me door knob and off i walks, it a reeling out behind, and whin i turn back it takes up as i come, and whin i get home i take the yardstick and measure me string, and be the same token, it tells me how far i've traveled." as he talked he drew out another shining length and added it to the first, and then another and a last, fine as a wheat straw. "these last jints i'm adding," he explained to mary, "are so that if i have me cane whin i'm riding i can stritch it out and touch up me horses with it. and betimes, if i should iver break me old cane fish pole, i could take this down to the river, and there, the books call it 'whipping the water.' see! cane, be jasus! it's the jim-dandiest little fishing rod anybody in these parts iver set eyes on. lord! what a beauty!" he turned to dannie and shook the shining, slender thing before his envious eyes. "who gets the black bass now?" he triumphed in tones of utter conviction. there is no use in taking time to explain to any fisherman who has read thus far that dannie, the patient; dannie, the long-suffering, felt abused. how would you feel yourself? "the thread man might have sent twa," was his thought. "the only decent treatment he got that nicht was frae me, and if i'd let jimmy hit him, he'd gone through the wall. but there never is anything fra me!" and that was true. there never was. aloud he said, "dinna bother to hunt the steelyards, mary. we winna weigh it until he brings it home." "yes, and by gum, i'll bring it with this! look, here is a picture of a man in a boat, pullin' in a whale with a pole just like this," bragged jimmy. "yes," said dannie. "that's what it's made for. a boat and open water. if ye are going to fish wi' that thing along the river we'll have to cut doon all the trees, and that will dry up the water. that's na for river fishing." jimmy was intently studying the book. mary tried to take the rod from his hand. "let be!" he cried, hanging on. "you'll break it!" "i guess steel don't break so easy," she said aggrievedly. "i just wanted to 'heft' it." "light as a feather," boasted jimmy. "fish all day and it won't tire a man at all. done--unjoint it and put it in its case, and not go dragging up everything along the bank like a living stump-puller. this book says this line will bear twinty pounds pressure, and sometimes it's takin' an hour to tire out a fish, if it's a fighter. i bet you the black bass is a fighter, from what we know of him." "ye can watch me land him and see what ye think about it," suggested dannie. jimmy held the book with one hand and lightly waved the rod with the other, in a way that would have developed nerves in an indian. he laughed absently. "with me shootin' bait all over his pool with this?" he asked. "i guess not!" "but you can't fish for the bass with that, jimmy malone," cried mary hotly. "you agreed to fish fair for the bass, and it wouldn't be fair for you to use that, whin dannie only has his old cane pole. dannie, get you a steel pole, too," she begged. "if jimmy is going to fish with that, there will be all the more glory in taking the bass from him with the pole i have," answered dannie. "you keep out," cried jimmy angrily to mary. "it was a fair bargain. he made it himself. each man was to fish surface or deep, and with his own pole and bait. i guess this is my pole, ain't it?" "yes," said mary. "but it wasn't yours whin you made that agreemint. you very well know dannie expected you to fish with the same kind of pole and bait that he did; didn't you, dannie?" "yes," said dannie, "i did. because i never dreamed of him havin' any other. but since he has it, i think he's in his rights if he fishes with it. i dinna care. in the first place he will only scare the bass away from him with the racket that reel will make, and in the second, if he tries to land it with that thing, he will smash it, and lose the fish. there's a longhandled net to land things with that goes with those rods. he'd better sent ye one. now you'll have to jump into the river and land a fish by hand if ye hook it." "that's true!" cried mary. "here's one in a picture." she had snatched the book from jimmy. he snatched it back. "be careful, you'll tear that!" he cried. "i was just going to say that i would get some fine wire or mosquito bar and make one." dannie's fingers were itching to take the rod, if only for an instant. he looked at it longingly. but jimmy was impervious. he whipped it softly about and eagerly read from the book. "tells here about a man takin' a fish that weighed forty pounds with a pole just like this," he announced. "scat! jumpin' jehosophat! what do you think of that!" "couldn't you fish turn about with it?" inquired mary. "na, we couldna fish turn about with it," answered dannie. "na with that pole. jimmy would throw a fit if anybody else touched it. and he's welcome to it. he never in this world will catch the black bass with it. if i only had some way to put juist fifteen feet more line on my pole, i'd show him how to take the bass to-morrow. the way we always have come to lose it is with too short lines. we have to try to land it before it's tired out and it's strong enough to break and tear away. it must have ragged jaws and a dozen pieces of line hanging to it, fra both of us have hooked it time and again. when it strikes me, if i only could give it fifteen feet more line, i could land it." "can't you fix some way?" asked mary. "i'll try," answered dannie. "and in the manetime, i'd just be givin' it twinty off me dandy little reel, and away goes me with mr. bass," said jimmy. "i must take it to town and have its picture took to sind the thrid man." and that was the last straw. dannie had given up being allowed to touch the rod, and was on his way to unhitch his team and do the evening work. the day had been trying and just for the moment he forgot everything save that his longing fingers had not touched that beautiful little fishing rod. "the boston man forgot another thing," he said. "the dude who shindys 'round with those things in pictures, wears a damn, dinky, little pleated coat!" chapter viii when the black bass struck "lots of fish down in the brook, all you need is a rod, and a line, and a hook," hummed jimmy, still lovingly fingering his possessions. "did dannie iver say a thing like that to you before?" asked mary. "oh, he's dead sore," explained jimmy. "he thinks he should have had a jinted rod, too." "and so he had," replied mary. "you said yoursilf that you might have killed that man if dannie hadn't showed you that you were wrong." "you must think stuff like this is got at the tin-cint store," said jimmy. "oh, no i don't!" said mary. "i expect it cost three or four dollars." "three or four dollars," sneered jimmy. "all the sinse a woman has! feast your eyes on this book and rade that just this little reel alone cost fifteen, and there's no telling what the rod is worth. why it's turned right out of pure steel, same as if it were wood. look for yoursilf." "thanks, no! i'm afraid to touch it," said mary. "oh, you are sore too!" laughed jimmy. "with all that money in it, i should think you could see why i wouldn't want it broke." "you've sat there and whipped it around for an hour. would it break it for me or dannie to do the same thing? if it had been his, you'd have had a worm on it and been down to the river trying it for him by now." "worm!" scoffed jimmy. "a worm! that's a good one! idjit! you don't fish with worms with a jinted rod." "well what do you fish with? humming birds?" "no. you fish with--" jimmy stopped and eyed mary dubiously. "you fish with a lot of things," he continued. "some of thim come in little books and they look like moths, and some like snake-faders, and some of them are buck-tail and bits of tin, painted to look shiny. once there was a man in town who had a minnie made of rubber and all painted up just like life. there were hooks on its head, and on its back, and its belly, and its tail, so's that if a fish snapped at it anywhere it got hooked." "i should say so!" exclaimed mary. "it's no fair way to fish, to use more than one hook. you might just as well take a net and wade in and seine out the fish as to take a lot of hooks and rake thim out." "well, who's going to take a lot of hooks and rake thim out?" "i didn't say anybody was. i was just saying it wouldn't be fair to the fish if they did." "course i wouldn't fish with no riggin' like that, when dannie only has one old hook. whin we fish for the bass, i won't use but one hook either. all the same, i'm going to have some of those fancy baits. i'm going to get jim skeels at the drug store to order thim for me. i know just how you do," said jimmy flourishing the rod. "you put on your bait and quite a heavy sinker, and you wind it up to the ind of your rod, and thin you stand up in your boat----" "stand up in your boat!" "i wish you'd let me finish!--or on the bank, and you take this little whipper-snapper, and you touch the spot on the reel that relases the thrid, and you give the rod a little toss, aisy as throwin' away chips, and off maybe fifty feet your bait hits the water, 'spat!' and 'snap!' goes mr. bass, and 'stick!' goes the hook. see?" "what i see is that if you want to fish that way in the wabash, you'll have to wait until the dredge goes through and they make a canal out of it; for be the time you'd throwed fifty feet, and your fish had run another fifty, there'd be just one hundred snags, and logs, and stumps between you; one for every foot of the way. it must look pretty on deep water, where it can be done right, but i bet anything that if you go to fooling with that on our river, dannie gets the bass." "not much, dannie don't 'gets the bass,'" said jimmy confidently. "just you come out here and let me show you how this works. now you see, i put me sinker on the ind of the thrid, no hook of course, for practice, and i touch this little spring here, and give me little rod a whip and away goes me bait, slick as grase. mr. bass is layin' in thim bass weeds right out there, foreninst the pie-plant bed, and the bait strikes the water at the idge, see! and 'snap,' he takes it and sails off slow, to swally it at leisure. here's where i don't pull a morsel. jist let him rin and swally, and whin me line is well out and he has me bait all digistid, 'yank,' i give him the round-up, and thin, the fun begins. he leps clear of the water and i see he's tin pound. if he rins from me, i give him rope, and if he rins to, i dig in, workin' me little machane for dear life to take up the thrid before it slacks. whin he sees me, he makes a dash back, and i just got to relase me line and let him go, because he'd bust this little silk thrid all to thunder if i tried to force him onpleasant to his intintions, and so we kape it up until he's plum wore out and comes a promenadin' up to me boat, bank i mane, and i scoops him in, and that's sport, mary! that's man's fishin'! now watch! he's in thim bass weeds before the pie-plant, like i said, and i'm here on the bank, and i think he's there, so i give me little jinted rod a whip and a swing----" jimmy gave the rod a whip and a swing. the sinker shot in air, struck the limb of an apple tree and wound a dozen times around it. jimmy said things and mary giggled. she also noticed that dannie had stopped work and was standing in the barn door watching intently. jimmy climbed the tree, unwound the line and tried again. "i didn't notice that domn apple limb stickin' out there," he said. "now you watch! right out there among the bass weeds foreninst the pie-plant." to avoid another limb, jimmy aimed too low and the sinker shot under the well platform not ten feet from him. "lucky you didn't get fast in the bass weeds," said mary as jimmy reeled in. "will, i got to get me range," explained jimmy. "this time----" jimmy swung too high. the spring slipped from under his unaccustomed thumb. the sinker shot above and behind him and became entangled in the eaves, while yards of the fine silk line flew off the spinning reel and dropped in tangled masses at his feet, and in an effort to do something jimmy reversed the reel and it wound back on tangles and all until it became completely clogged. mary had sat down on the back steps to watch the exhibition. now, she stood up to laugh. "and that's just what will happen to you at the river," she said. "while you are foolin' with that thing, which ain't for rivers, and which you don't know beans about handlin', dannie will haul in the bass, and serve you right, too!" "mary," said jimmy, "i niver struck ye in all me life, but if ye don't go in the house, and shut up, i'll knock the head off ye!" "i wouldn't be advisin' you to," she said. "dannie is watching you." jimmy glanced toward the barn in time to see dannie's shaking shoulders as he turned from the door. with unexpected patience, he firmly closed his lips and went after a ladder. by the time he had the sinker loose and the line untangled, supper was ready. by the time he had mastered the reel, and could land the sinker accurately in front of various imaginary beds of bass weeds, dannie had finished the night work in both stables and gone home. but his back door stood open and therefrom there protruded the point of a long, heavy cane fish pole. by the light of a lamp on his table, dannie could be seen working with pincers and a ball of wire. "i wonder what he thinks he can do?" said jimmy. "i suppose he is trying to fix some way to get that fifteen feet more line he needs," replied mary. when they went to bed the light still burned and the broad shoulders of dannie bent over the pole. mary had fallen asleep, but she was awakened by jimmy slipping from the bed. he went to the window and looked toward dannie's cabin. then he left the bedroom and she could hear him crossing to the back window of the next room. then came a smothered laugh and he softly called her. she went to him. dannie's figure stood out clear and strong in the moonlight, in his wood-yard. his black outline looked unusually powerful in the silvery whiteness surrounding it. he held his fishing pole in both hands and swept a circle about him that would have required considerable space on lake michigan, and made a cast toward the barn. the line ran out smoothly and evenly, and through the gloom mary saw jimmy's figure straighten and his lips close in surprise. then dannie began taking in line. that process was so slow, jimmy doubled up and laughed again. "be lookin' at that, will ye?" he heaved. "what does the domn fool think the black bass will be doin' while he is takin' in line on that young windlass?" "there'd be no room on the river to do that," answered mary serenely. "dannie wouldn't be so foolish as to try. all he wants now is to see if his line will run, and it will. whin he gets to the river, he'll swing his bait where he wants it with his pole, like he always does, and whin the bass strikes he'll give it the extra fifteen feet more line he said he needed, and thin he'll have a pole and line with which he can land it." "not on your life he won't!" said jimmy. he opened the back door and stepped out just as dannie raised the pole again. "hey, you! quit raisin' cain out there!" yelled jimmy. "i want to get some sleep." across the night, tinged neither with chagrin nor rancor, boomed the big voice of dannie. "believe i have my extra line fixed so it works all right," he said. "awful sorry if i waked you. thought i was quiet." "how much did you make off that?" inquired mary. "two points," answered jimmy. "found out that dannie ain't sore at me any longer and that you are." next morning was no sort of angler's weather, but the afternoon gave promise of being good fishing by the morrow. dannie worked about the farms, preparing for winter; jimmy worked with him until mid-afternoon, then he hailed a boy passing, and they went away together. at supper time jimmy had not returned. mary came to where dannie worked. "where's jimmy?" she asked. "i dinna, know" said dannie. "he went away a while ago with some boy, i didna notice who." "and he didn't tell you where he was going?" "no." "and he didn't take either of his fish poles?" "no." mary's lips thinned to a mere line. "then it's casey's," she said, and turned away. dannie was silent. presently mary came back. "if jimmy don't come till morning," she asked, "or comes in shape that he can't fish, will you go without him?" "to-morrow was the day we agreed on," answered dannie. "will you go without him?" persisted mary. "what would he do if it were me?" asked dannie. "when have you iver done to jimmy malone what he would do if he were you?" "is there any reason why ye na want me to land the black bass, mary?" "there is a particular reason why i don't want your living with jimmy to make you like him," answered mary. "my timper is being wined, and i can see where it's beginning to show on you. whativer you do, don't do what he would." "dinna be hard on him, mary. he doesna think," urged dannie. "you niver said twer words. he don't think. he niver thought about anybody in his life except himself, and he niver will." "maybe he didna go to town!" "maybe the sun won't rise in the morning, and it will always be dark after this! come in and get your supper." "i'd best pick up something to eat at home," said dannie. "i have some good food cooked, and it's a pity to be throwin' it away. what's the use? you've done a long day's work, more for us than yoursilf, as usual; come along and get your supper." dannie went, and as he was washing at the back door, jimmy came through the barn, and up the walk. he was fresh, and in fine spirits, and where ever he had been, it was a sure thing that it was nowhere near casey's. "where have you been?" asked mary wonderingly. "robbin' graves," answered jimmy promptly. "i needed a few stiffs in me business so i just went out to five mile and got them." "what are ye going to do with them, jimmy?" chuckled dannie. "use thim for bass bait! now rattle, old snake!" replied jimmy. after supper dannie went to the barn for the shovel to dig worms for bait, and noticed that jimmy's rubber waders hanging on the wall were covered almost to the top with fresh mud and water stains, and dannie's wonder grew. early the next morning they started for the river. as usual jimmy led the way. he proudly carried his new rod. dannie followed with a basket of lunch mary had insisted on packing, his big cane pole, a can of worms, and a shovel, in case they ran out of bait. dannie had recovered his temper, and was just great-hearted, big dannie again. he talked about the south wind, and shivered with the frost, and listened for the splash of the bass. jimmy had little to say. he seemed to be thinking deeply. no doubt he felt in his soul that they should settle the question of who landed the bass with the same rods they had used when the contest was proposed, and that was not all. when they came to the temporary bridge, jimmy started across it, and dannie called to him to wait, he was forgetting his worms. "i don't want any worms," answered jimmy briefly. he walked on. dannie stood staring after him, for he did not understand that. then he went slowly to his side of the river, and deposited his load under a tree where it would be out of the way. he lay down his pole, took a rude wooden spool of heavy fish cord from his pocket, and passed the line through the loop next the handle and so on the length of the rod to the point. then he wired on a sharp bass hook, and wound the wire far up the doubled line. as he worked, he kept an eye on jimmy. he was doing practically the same thing. but just as dannie had fastened on a light lead to carry his line, a souse in the river opposite attracted his attention. jimmy hauled from the water a minnow bucket, and opening it, took out a live minnow, and placed it on his hook. "riddy," he called, as he resank the bucket, and stood on the bank, holding his line in his fingers, and watching the minnow play at his feet. the fact that dannie was a scotchman, and unusually slow and patient, did not alter the fact that he was just a common human being. the lump that rose in his throat was so big, and so hard, he did not try to swallow it. he hurried back into rainbow bottom. the first log he came across he kicked over, and grovelling in the rotten wood and loose earth with his hands, he brought up a half dozen bluish-white grubs. he tore up the ground for the length of the log, and then he went to others, cramming the worms and dirt with them into his pockets. when he had enough, he went back, and with extreme care placed three of them on his hook. he tried to see how jimmy was going to fish, but he could not tell. so dannie decided that he would cast in the morning, fish deep at noon, and cast again toward evening. he rose, turned to the river, and lifted his rod. as he stood looking over the channel, and the pool where the bass homed, the kingfisher came rattling down the river, and as if in answer to its cry, the black bass gave a leap, that sent the water flying. "ready!" cried dannie, swinging his pole over the water. as the word left his lips, "whizz," jimmy's minnow landed in the middle of the circles widening about the rise of the bass. there was a rush and a snap, and dannie saw the jaws of the big fellow close within an inch of the minnow, and he swam after it for a yard, as jimmy slowly reeled in. dannie waited a second, and then softly dropped his grubs on the water just before where he figured the bass would be. he could hear jimmy smothering oaths. dannie said something himself as his untouched bait neared the bank. he lifted it, swung it out, and slowly trailed it in again. "spat!" came jimmy's minnow almost at his feet, and again the bass leaped for it. again he missed. as the minnow reeled away the second time, dannie swung his grubs higher, and struck the water "spat," as the minnow had done. "snap," went the bass. one instant the line strained, the next the hook came up stripped clean of bait. then dannie and jimmy really went at it, and they were strangers. not a word of friendly banter crossed the river. they cast until the bass grew suspicious, and would not rise to the bait; then they fished deep. then they cast again. if jimmy fell into trouble with his reel, dannie had the honesty to stop fishing until it worked again, but he spent the time burrowing for grubs until his hands resembled the claws of an animal. sometimes they sat, and still-fished. sometimes, they warily slipped along the bank, trailing bait a few inches under water. then they would cast and skitter by turns. the kingfisher struck his stump, and tilted on again. his mate, and their family of six followed in his lead, so that their rattle was almost constant. a fussy little red-eyed vireo asked questions, first of jimmy, and then crossing the river besieged dannie, but neither of the stern-faced fishermen paid it any heed. the blackbirds swung on the rushes, and talked over the season. as always, a few crows cawed above the deep woods, and the chewinks threshed about among the dry leaves. a band of larks were gathering for migration, and the frosty air was vibrant with their calls to each other. killdeers were circling above them in flocks. a half dozen robins gathered over a wild grapevine, and chirped cheerfully, as they pecked at the frosted fruit. at times, the pointed nose of a muskrat wove its way across the river, leaving a shining ripple in its wake. in the deep woods squirrels barked and chattered. frost-loosened crimson leaves came whirling down, settling in a bright blanket that covered the water several feet from the bank, and unfortunate bees that had fallen into the river struggled frantically to gain a footing on them. water beetles shot over the surface in small shining parties, and schools of tiny minnows played along the banks. once a black ant assassinated an enemy on dannie's shoe, by creeping up behind it and puncturing its abdomen. noon came, and neither of the fishermen spoke or moved from their work. the lunch mary had prepared with such care they had forgotten. a little after noon, dannie got another strike, deep fishing. mid-afternoon found them still even, and patiently fishing. then it was not so long until supper time, and the air was steadily growing colder. the south wind had veered to the west, and signs of a black frost were in the air. about this time the larks arose as with one accord, and with a whirr of wings that proved how large the flock was, they sailed straight south. jimmy hauled his minnow bucket from the river, poured the water from it, and picked his last minnow, a dead one, from the grass. dannie was watching him, and rightly guessed that he would fish deep. so dannie scooped the remaining dirt from his pockets, and found three grubs. he placed them on his hook, lightened his sinker, and prepared to skitter once more. jimmy dropped his minnow beside the kingfisher stump, and let it sink. dannie hit the water at the base of the stump, where it had not been disturbed for a long time, a sharp "spat," with his worms. something seized his bait, and was gone. dannie planted his feet firmly, squared his jaws, gripped his rod, and loosened his line. as his eye followed it, he saw to his amazement that jimmy's line was sailing off down the river beside his, and heard the reel singing. dannie was soon close to the end of his line. he threw his weight into a jerk enough to have torn the head from a fish, and down the river the black bass leaped clear of the water, doubled, and with a mighty shake tried to throw the hook from his mouth. "got him fast, by god!" screamed jimmy in triumph. straight toward them rushed the fish. jimmy reeled wildly; dannie gathered in his line by yard lengths, and grasped it with the hand that held the rod. near them the bass leaped again, and sped back down the river. jimmy's reel sang, and dannie's line jerked through his fingers. back came the fish. again dannie gathered in line, and jimmy reeled frantically. then dannie, relying on the strength of his line thought he could land the fish, and steadily drew it toward him. jimmy's reel began to sing louder, and his line followed dannie's. instantly jimmy went wild. "stop pullin' me little silk thrid!" he yelled. "i've got the black bass hooked fast as a rock, and your domn clothes line is sawin' across me. cut there! cut that domn rope! quick!" "he's mine, and i'll land him!" roared dannie. "cut yoursel', and let me get my fish!" so it happened, that when mary malone, tired of waiting for the boys to come, and anxious as to the day's outcome, slipped down to the wabash to see what they were doing, she heard sounds that almost paralyzed her. shaking with fear, she ran toward the river, and paused at a little thicket behind dannie. jimmy danced and raged on the opposite bank. "cut!" he yelled. "cut that domn cable, and let me bass loose! cut your line, i say!" dannie stood with his feet planted wide apart, and his jaws set. he drew his line steadily toward him, and jimmy's followed. "ye see!" exulted dannie. "ye're across me. the bass is mine! reel out your line till i land him, if ye dinna want it broken." "if you don't cut your domn line, i will!" raved jimmy. "cut nothin'!" cried dannie. "let's see ye try to touch it!" into the river went jimmy; splash went dannie from his bank. he was nearer the tangled lines, but the water was deepest on his side, and the mud of the bed held his feet. jimmy reached the crossed lines, knife in hand, by the time dannie was there. "will you cut?" cried jimmy. "na!" bellowed dannie. "i've give up every damn thing to ye all my life, but i'll no give up the black bass. he's mine, and i'll land him!" jimmy made a lunge for the lines. dannie swung his pole backward drawing them his way. jimmy slashed again. dannie dropped his pole, and with a sweep, caught the twisted lines in his fingers. "noo, let's see ye cut my line! babby!" he jeered. jimmy's fist flew straight, and the blood streamed from dannie's nose. dannie dropped the lines, and straightened. "you--" he panted. "you--" and no other words came. if jimmy had been possessed of any small particle of reason, he lost it at the sight of blood on dannie's face. "you're a domn fish thief!" he screamed. "ye lie!" breathed dannie, but his hand did not lift. "you are a coward! you're afraid to strike like a man! hit me! you don't dare hit me!" "ye lie!" repeated dannie. "you're a dog!" panted jimmy. "i've used you to wait on me all me life!" "that's the god's truth!" cried dannie. but he made no movement to strike. jimmy leaned forward with a distorted, insane face. "that time you sint me to mary for you, i lied to her, and married her meself. now, will you fight like a man?" dannie made a spring, and jimmy crumpled up in his grasp. "noo, i will choke the miserable tongue out of your heid, and twist the heid off your body, and tear the body to mince-meat," raved dannie, and he promptly began the job. with one awful effort jimmy tore the gripping hands from his throat a little. "lie!" he gasped. "it's all a lie!" "it's the truth! before god it's the truth!" mary malone tried to scream behind them. "it's the truth! it's the truth!" and her ears told her that she was making no sound as with dry lips she mouthed it over and over. and then she fainted, and sank down in the bushes. dannie's hands relaxed a little, he lifted the weight of jimmy's body by his throat, and set him on his feet. "i'll give ye juist ane chance," he said. "is that the truth?" jimmy's awful eyes were bulging from his head, his hands were clawing at dannie's on his throat, and his swollen lips repeated it over and over as breath came, "it's a lie! it's a lie!" "i think so myself," said dannie. "ye never would have dared. ye'd have known that i'd find out some day, and on that day, i'd kill ye as i would a copperhead." "a lie!" panted jimmy. "then why did ye tell it?" and dannie's fingers threatened to renew their grip. "i thought if i could make you strike back," gasped jimmy, "my hittin' you wouldn't same so bad." then dannie's hands relaxed. "oh, jimmy! jimmy!" he cried. "was there ever any other mon like ye?" then he remembered the cause of their trouble. "but, i'm everlastingly damned," dannie went on, "if i'll gi'e up the black bass to ye, unless it's on your line. get yourself up there on your bank!" the shove he gave jimmy almost upset him, and jimmy waded back, and as he climbed the bank, dannie was behind him. after him he dragged a tangled mass of lines and poles, and at the last up the bank, and on the grass, two big fish; one, the great black bass of horseshoe bend; and the other nearly as large, a channel catfish; undoubtedly, one of those which had escaped into the wabash in an overflow of the celina reservoir that spring. "noo, i'll cut," said dannie. "keep your eye on me sharp. see me cut my line at the end o' my pole." he snipped the line in two. "noo watch," he cautioned, "i dinna want contra deection about this!" he picked up the bass, and taking the line by which it was fast at its mouth, he slowly drew it through his fingers. the wiry silk line slipped away, and the heavy cord whipped out free. "is this my line?" asked dannie, holding it up. jimmy nodded. "is the black bass my fish? speak up!" cried dannie, dangling the fish from the line. "it's yours," admitted jimmy. "then i'll be damned if i dinna do what i please wi' my own!" cried dannie. with trembling fingers he extracted the hook, and dropped it. he took the gasping big fish in both hands, and tested its weight. "almost seex," he said. "michty near seex!" and he tossed the black bass back into the wabash. then he stooped, and gathered up his pole and line. with one foot he kicked the catfish, the tangled silk line, and the jointed rod, toward jimmy. "take your fish!" he said. he turned and plunged into the river, recrossed it as he came, gathered up the dinner pail and shovel, passed mary malone, a tumbled heap in the bushes, and started toward his cabin. the black bass struck the water with a splash, and sank to the mud of the bottom, where he lay joyfully soaking his dry gills, parched tongue, and glazed eyes. he scooped water with his tail, and poured it over his torn jaw. and then he said to his progeny, "children, let this be a warning to you. never rise to but one grub at a time. three is too good to be true! there is always a stinger in their midst." and the black bass ruefully shook his sore head and scooped more water. chapter ix when jimmy malone came to confession dannie never before had known such anger as possessed him when he trudged homeward across rainbow bottom. his brain whirled in a tumult of conflicting passions, and his heart pained worse than his swelling face. in one instant the knowledge that jimmy had struck him, possessed him with a desire to turn back and do murder. in the next, a sense of profound scorn for the cowardly lie which had driven him to the rage that kills encompassed him, and then in a surge came compassion for jimmy, at the remberence of the excuse he had offered for saying that thing. how childish! but how like jimmy! what was the use in trying to deal with him as if he were a man? a great spoiled, selfish baby was all he ever would be. the fallen leaves rustled about dannie's feet. the blackbirds above him in chattering debate discussed migration. a stiff breeze swept the fields, topped the embankment, and rushed down circling about dannie, and setting his teeth chattering, for he was almost as wet as if he had been completely immersed. as the chill struck in, from force of habit he thought of jimmy. if he was ever going to learn how to take care of himself, a man past thirty-five should know. would he come home and put on dry clothing? but when had jimmy taken care of himself? dannie felt that he should go back, bring him home, and make him dress quickly. a sharp pain shot across dannie's swollen face. his lips shut firmly. no! jimmy had struck him. and jimmy was in the wrong. the fish was his, and he had a right to it. no man living would have given it up to jimmy, after he had changed poles. and slipped away with a boy and gotten those minnows, too! and wouldn't offer him even one. much good they had done him. caught a catfish on a dead one! wonder if he would take the catfish to town and have its picture taken! mighty fine fish, too, that channel cat! if it hadn't been for the black bass, they would have wondered and exclaimed over it, and carefully weighed it, and commented on the gamy fight it made. just the same he was glad, that he landed the bass. and he got it fairly. if jimmy's old catfish mixed up with his line, he could not help that. he baited, hooked, played, and landed the bass all right, and without any minnows either. when he reached the top of the hill he realized that he was going to look back. in spite of jimmy's selfishness, in spite of the blow, in spite of the ugly lie, jimmy had been his lifelong partner, and his only friend, and stiffen his neck as he would, dannie felt his head turning. he deliberately swung his fish pole into the bushes, and when it caught, as he knew it would, he set down his load, and turned as if to release it. not a sight of jimmy anywhere! dannie started on. "we are after you, jimmy malone!" a thin, little, wiry thread of a cry, that seemed to come twisting as if wrung from the chill air about him, whispered in his ear, and dannie jumped, dropped his load, and ran for the river. he couldn't see a sign of jimmy. he hurried over the shaky little bridge they had built. the catfish lay gasping on the grass, the case and jointed rod lay on a log, but jimmy was gone. dannie gave the catfish a shove that sent it well into the river, and ran for the shoals at the lower curve of horseshoe bend. the tracks of jimmy's crossing were plain, and after him hurried dannie. he ran up the hill, and as he reached the top he saw jimmy climb on a wagon out on the road. dannie called, but the farmer touched up his horses and trotted away without hearing him. "the fool! to ride!" thought dannie. "noo he will chill to the bone!". dannie cut across the fields to the lane and gathered up his load. with the knowledge that jimmy had started for town came the thought of mary. what was he going to say to her? he would have to make a clean breast of it, and he did not like the showing. in fact, he simply could not make a clean breast of it. tell her? he could not tell her. he would lie to her once more, this one time for himself. he would tell her he fell in the river to account for his wet clothing and bruised face, and wait until jimmy came home and see what he told her. he went to the cabin and tapped at the door; there was no answer, so he opened it and set the lunch basket inside. then he hurried home, built a fire, bathed, and put on dry clothing. he wondered where mary was. he was ravenously hungry now. he did all the evening work, and as she still did not come, he concluded that she had gone to town, and that jimmy knew she was there. of course, that was it! jimmy could get dry clothing of his brother-in-law. to be sure, mary had gone to town. that was why jimmy went. and he was right. mary had gone to town. when sense slowly returned to her she sat up in the bushes and stared about her. then she arose and looked toward the river. the men were gone. mary guessed the situation rightly. they were too much of river men to drown in a few feet of water; they scarcely would kill each other. they had fought, and dannie had gone home, and jimmy to the consolation of casey's. where should she go? mary malone's lips set in a firm line. "it's the truth! it's the truth!" she panted over and over, and now that there was no one to hear, she found that she could say it quite plainly. as the sense of her outraged womanhood swept over her she grew almost delirious. "i hope you killed him, dannie micnoun," she raved. "i hope you killed him, for if you didn't, i will. oh! oh!" she was almost suffocating with rage. the only thing clear to her was that she never again would live an hour with jimmy malone. he might have gone home. probably he did go for dry clothing. she would go to her sister. she hurried across the bottom, with wavering knees she climbed the embankment, then skirting the fields, she half walked, half ran to the village, and selecting back streets and alleys, tumbled, half distracted, into the home of her sister. "holy vargin!" screamed katy dolan. "whativer do be ailin' you, mary malone?" "jimmy! jimmy!" sobbed the shivering mary. "i knew it! i knew it! i've ixpicted it for years!" cried katy. "they've had a fight----" "just what i looked for! i always told you they were too thick to last!" "and jimmy told dannie he'd lied to me and married me himsilf----" "he did! i saw him do it!" screamed katy. "and dannie tried to kill him----" "i hope to hivin he got it done, for if any man iver naded killin'! a carpse named jimmy malone would a looked good to me any time these fiftane years. i always said----" "and he took it back----" "just like the rid divil! i knew he'd do it! and of course that mutton-head of a dannie micnoun belaved him, whativer he said." "of course he did!" "i knew it! didn't i say so first?" "and i tried to scrame and me tongue stuck----" "sure! you poor lamb! my tongue always sticks! just what i ixpicted!" "and me head just went round and i keeled over in the bushes----" "i've told dolan a thousand times! i knew it! it's no news to me!" "and whin i came to, they were gone, and i don't know where, and i don't care! but i won't go back! i won't go back! i'll not live with him another day. oh, katy! think how you'd feel if some one had siparated you and dolan before you'd iver been togither!" katie dolan gathered her sister into her arms. "you poor lamb," she wailed. "i've known ivery word of this for fiftane years, and if i'd had the laste idea 'twas so, i'd a busted jimmy malone to smithereens before it iver happened!" "i won't go back! i won't go back!" raved mary. "i guess you won't go back," cried katy, patting every available spot on mary, or making dashes at her own eyes to stop the flow of tears. "i guess you won't go back! you'll stay right here with me. i've always wanted you! i always said i'd love to have you! i've told thim from the start there was something wrong out there! i've ixpicted you ivry day for years, and i niver was so surprised in all me life as whin you came! now, don't you shed another tear. the lord knows this is enough, for anybody. none at all would be too many for jimmy malone. you get right into bid, and i'll make you a cup of rid-pipper tay to take the chill out of you. and if jimmy malone comes around this house i'll lav him out with the poker, and if dannie micnoun comes saft-saddering after him i'll stritch him out too; yis, and if dolan's got anything to say, he can take his midicine like the rist. the min are all of a pace anyhow! i've always said it! if i wouldn't like to get me fingers on that haythen; never goin' to confission, spindin' ivrything on himself you naded for dacent livin'! lit him come! just lit him come!" thus forestalled with knowledge, and overwhelmed with kindness, mary malone cuddled up in bed and sobbed herself to sleep, and katy dolan assured her, as long as she was conscious, that she always had known it, and if jimmy malone came near, she had the poker ready. dannie did the evening work. when he milked he drank most of it, but that only made him hungrier, so he ate the lunch he had brought back from the river, as he sat before a roaring fire. his heart warmed with his body. irresponsible jimmy always had aroused something of the paternal instinct in dannie. some one had to be responsible, so dannie had been. some way he felt responsible now. with another man like himself, it would have been man to man, but he always had spoiled jimmy; now who was to blame that he was spoiled? dannie was very tired, his face throbbed and ached painfully, and it was a sight to see. his bed never had looked so inviting, and never had the chance to sleep been further away. with a sigh, he buttoned his coat, twisted an old scarf around his neck, and started for the barn. there was going to be a black frost. the cold seemed to pierce him. he hitched to the single buggy, and drove to town. he went to casey's, and asked for jimmy. "he isn't here," said casey. "has he been here?" asked dannie. casey hesitated, and then blurted out, "he said you wasn't his keeper, and if you came after him, to tell you to go to hell." then dannie was sure that jimmy was in the back room, drying his clothing. so he drove to mrs. dolan's, and asked if mary were there for the night. mrs. dolan said she was, and she was going to stay, and he might tell jimmy malone that he need not come near them, unless he wanted his head laid open. she shut the door forcibly. dannie waited until casey closed at eleven, and to his astonishment jimmy was not among the men who came out. that meant that he had drank lightly after all, slipped from the back door, and gone home. and yet, would he do it, after what he had said about being afraid? if he had not drank heavily, he would not go into the night alone, when he had been afraid in the daytime. dannie climbed from the buggy once more, and patiently searched the alley and the street leading to the footpath across farms. no jimmy. then dannie drove home, stabled his horse, and tried jimmy's back door. it was unlocked. if jimmy were there, he probably would be lying across the bed in his clothing, and dannie knew that mary was in town. he made a light, and cautiously entered the sleeping room, intending to undress and cover jimmy, but jimmy was not there. dannie's mouth fell open. he put out the light, and stood on the back steps. the frost had settled in a silver sheen over the roofs of the barns and the sheds, and a scum of ice had frozen over a tub of drippings at the well. dannie was bitterly cold. he went home, and hunted out his winter overcoat, lighted his lantern, picked up a heavy cudgel in the corner, and started to town on foot over the path that lay across the fields. he followed it to casey's back door. he went to mrs. dolan's again, but everything was black and silent there. there had been evening trains. he thought of jimmy's frequent threat to go away. he dismissed that thought grimly. there had been no talk of going away lately, and he knew that jimmy had little money. dannie started for home, and for a rod on either side he searched the path. as he came to the back of the barns, he rated himself for not thinking of them first. he searched both of them, and all around them, and then wholly tired, and greatly disgusted, he went home and to bed. he decided that jimmy had gone to mrs. dolan's and that kindly woman had relented and taken him in. of course that was where he was. dannie was up early in the morning. he wanted to have the work done before mary and jimmy came home. he fed the stock, milked, built a fire, and began cleaning the stables. as he wheeled the first barrow of manure to the heap, he noticed a rooster giving danger signals behind the straw-stack. at the second load it was still there, and dannie went to see what alarmed it. jimmy lay behind the stack, where he had fallen face down, and as dannie tried to lift him he saw that he would have to cut him loose, for he had frozen fast in the muck of the barnyard. he had pitched forward among the rough cattle and horse tracks and fallen within a few feet of the entrance to a deep hollow eaten out of the straw by the cattle. had he reached that shelter he would have been warm enough and safe for the night. horrified, dannie whipped out his knife, cut jimmy's clothing loose and carried him to his bed. he covered him, and hitching up drove at top speed for a doctor. he sent the physician ahead and then rushed to mrs. dolan's. she saw him drive up and came to the door. "send mary home and ye come too," dannie called before she had time to speak. "jimmy lay oot all last nicht, and i'm afraid he's dead." mrs. dolan hurried in and repeated the message to mary. she sat speechless while her sister bustled about putting on her wraps. "i ain't goin'," she said shortly. "if i got sight of him, i'd kill him if he wasn't dead." "oh, yis you are goin'," said katy dolan. "if he's dead, you know, it will save you being hanged for killing him. get on these things of mine and hurry. you got to go for decency sake; and kape a still tongue in your head. dannie micnoun is waiting for us." together they went out and climbed into the carriage. mary said nothing, but dannie was too miserable to notice. "you didn't find him thin, last night?" asked mrs. dolan. "na!" shivered dannie. "i was in town twice. i hunted almost all nicht. at last i made sure you had taken him in and i went to bed. it was three o'clock then. i must have passed often, wi'in a few yards of him." "where was he?" asked katy. "behind the straw-stack," replied dannie. "do you think he will die?" "dee!" cried dannie. "jimmy dee! oh, my god! we mauna let him!" mrs. dolan took a furtive peep at mary, who, dry-eyed and white, was staring straight ahead. she was trembling and very pale, but if katy dolan knew anything she knew that her sister's face was unforgiving and she did not in the least blame her. dannie reached home as soon as the horse could take them, and under the doctor's directions all of them began work. mary did what she was told, but she did it deliberately, and if dannie had taken time to notice her he would have seen anything but his idea of a woman facing death for any one she ever had loved. mary's hurt went so deep, mrs. dolan had trouble to keep it covered. some of the neighbors said mary was cold-hearted, and some of them that she was stupefied with grief. without stopping for food or sleep, dannie nursed jimmy. he rubbed, he bathed, he poulticed, he badgered the doctor and cursed his inability to do some good. to every one except dannie, jimmy's case was hopeless from the first. he developed double pneumonia in its worst form and he was in no condition to endure it in the lightest. his labored breathing could be heard all over the cabin, and he could speak only in gasps. on the third day he seemed a little better, and when dannie asked what he could do for him, "father michael," jimmy panted, and clung to dannie's hand. dannie sent a man and remained with jimmy. he made no offer to go when the priest came. "this is probably in the nature of a last confession," said father michael to dannie, "i shall have to ask you to leave us alone." dannie felt the hand that clung to him relax, and the perspiration broke on his temples. "shall i go, jimmy?" he asked. jimmy nodded. dannie arose heavily and left the room. he sat down outside the door and rested his head in his hands. the priest stood beside jimmy. "the doctor tells me it is difficult for you to speak," he said, "i will help you all i can. i will ask questions and you need only assent with your head or hand. do you wish the last sacrament administered, jimmy malone?" the sweat rolled off jimmy's brow. he assented. "do you wish to make final confession?" a great groan shook jimmy. the priest remembered a gay, laughing boy, flinging back a shock of auburn hair, his feet twinkling in the lead of the dance. here was ruin to make the heart of compassion ache. the father bent and clasped the hand of jimmy firmly. the question he asked was between jimmy malone and his god. the answer almost strangled him. "can you confess that mortal sin, jimmy?" asked the priest. the drops on jimmy's face merged in one bath of agony. his hands clenched and his breath seemed to go no lower than his throat. "lied--dannie," he rattled. "sip-rate him--and mary." "are you trying to confess that you betrayed a confidence of dannie macnoun and married the girl who belonged to him, yourself?" jimmy assented. his horrified eyes hung on the priest's face and saw it turn cold and stern. always the thing he had done had tormented him; but not until the past summer had he begun to realize the depth of it, and it had almost unseated his reason. but not until now had come fullest appreciation, and jimmy read it in the eyes filled with repulsion above him. "and with that sin on your soul, you ask the last sacrament and the seal of forgiveness! you have not wronged god and the holy catholic church as you have this man, with whom you have lived for years, while you possessed his rightful wife. now he is here, in deathless devotion, fighting to save you. you may confess to him. if he will forgive you, god and the church will ratify it, and set the seal on your brow. if not, you die unshriven! i will call dannie macnoun." one gurgling howl broke from the swollen lips of jimmy. as dannie entered the room, the priest spoke a few words to him, stepped out and closed the door. dannie hurried to jimmy's side. "he said ye wanted to tell me something," said dannie. "what is it? do you want me to do anything for you?" suddenly jimmy struggled to a sitting posture. his popping eyes almost burst from their sockets as he clutched dannie with both hands. the perspiration poured in little streams down his dreadful face. "mary," the next word was lost in a strangled gasp. then came "yours" and then a queer rattle. something seemed to give way. "the divils!" he shrieked. "the divils have got me!" snap! his heart failed, and jimmy malone went out to face his record, unforgiven by man, and unshriven by priest. chapter x dannie's renunciation so they stretched jimmy's length on five mile hill beside the three babies that had lacked the "vital spark." mary went to the dolans for the winter and dannie was left, sole occupant of rainbow bottom. because so much fruit and food that would freeze were stored there, he was even asked to live in jimmy's cabin. dannie began the winter stolidly. all day long and as far as he could find anything to do in the night, he worked. he mended everything about both farms, rebuilt all the fences and as a never-failing resource, he cut wood. he cut so much that he began to realize that it would get too dry and the burning of it would become extravagant, so he stopped that and began making some changes he had long contemplated. during fur time he set his line of traps on his side of the river and on the other he religiously set jimmy's. but he divided the proceeds from the skins exactly in half, no matter whose traps caught them, and with jimmy's share of the money he started a bank account for mary. as he could not use all of them he sold jimmy's horses, cattle and pigs. with half the stock gone he needed only half the hay and grain stored for feeding. he disposed of the chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese that mary wanted sold, and placed the money to her credit. he sent her a beautiful little red bank book and an explanation of all these transactions by dolan. mary threw the book across the room because she wanted dannie to keep her money himself, and then cried herself to sleep that night, because dannie had sent the book instead of bringing it. but when she fully understood the transactions and realized that if she chose she could spend several hundred dollars, she grew very proud of that book. about the empty cabins and the barns, working on the farms, wading the mud and water of the river bank, or tingling with cold on the ice went two dannies. the one a dull, listless man, mechanically forcing a tired, overworked body to action, and the other a self-accused murderer. "i am responsible for the whole thing," he told himself many times a day. "i always humored jimmy. i always took the muddy side of the road, and the big end of the log, and the hard part of the work, and filled his traps wi' rats from my own; why in god's name did i let the deil o' stubbornness in me drive him to his death, noo? why didna i let him have the black bass? why didna i make him come home and put on dry clothes? i killed him, juist as sure as if i'd taken an ax and broken his heid." through every minute of the exposure of winter outdoors and the torment of it inside, dannie tortured himself. of mary he seldom thought at all. she was safe with her sister, and although dannie did not know when or how it happened, he awoke one day to the realization that he had renounced her. he had killed jimmy; he could not take his wife and his farm. and dannie was so numb with long-suffering, that he did not much care. there come times when troubles pile so deep that the edge of human feeling is dulled. he would take care of mary, yes, she was as much jimmy's as his farm, but he did not want her for himself now. if he had to kill his only friend, he would not complete his downfall by trying to win his wife. so through that winter mary got very little consideration in the remorseful soul of dannie, and jimmy grew, as the dead grow, by leaps and bounds, until by spring dannie had him well-nigh canonized. when winter broke, dannie had his future well mapped out. and that future was devotion to jimmy's memory, with no more of mary in it than was possible to keep out. he told himself that he was glad she was away and he did not care to have her return. deep in his soul he harbored the feeling that he had killed jimmy to make himself look victor in her eyes in such a small matter as taking a fish. and deeper yet a feeling that, everything considered, still she might mourn jimmy more than she did. so dannie definitely settled that he always would live alone on the farms. mary should remain with her sister, and at his death, everything should be hers. the night he finally reached that decision, the kingfisher came home. dannie heard his rattle of exultation as he struck the embankment and the suffering man turned his face to the wall and sobbed aloud, so that for a little time he stifled jimmy's dying gasps that in wakeful night hours sounded in his ears. early the next morning he drove through the village on his way to the county seat, with a load of grain. dolan saw him and running home he told mary. "he will be gone all day. now is your chance!" he said. mary sprang to her feet, "hurry!" she panted, "hurry!" an hour later a loaded wagon, a man and three women drew up before the cabins in rainbow bottom. mary, her sister, dolan, and a scrub woman entered. mary pointed out the objects which she wished removed, and dolan carried them out. they took up the carpets, swept down the walls, and washed the windows. they hung pictures, prints, and lithographs, and curtained the windows in dainty white. they covered the floors with bright carpets, and placed new ornaments on the mantle, and comfortable furniture in the rooms. there was a white iron bed, and several rocking chairs, and a shelf across the window filled with potted hyacinths in bloom. among them stood a glass bowl, containing three wonderful little gold fish, and from the top casing hung a brass cage, from which a green linnet sang an exultant song. you should have seen mary malone! when everything was finished, she was changed the most of all. she was so sure of dannie, that while the winter had brought annoyance that he did not come, it really had been one long, glorious rest. she laughed and sang, and grew younger with every passing day. as youth surged back, with it returned roundness of form, freshness of face, and that bred the desire to be daintily dressed. so of pretty light fabrics she made many summer dresses, for wear mourning she would not. when calmness returned to mary, she had told the dolans the whole story. "now do you ixpict me to grieve for the man?" she asked. "fiftane years with him, through his lying tongue, whin by ivery right of our souls and our bodies, dannie micnoun and i belanged to each other. mourn for him! i'm glad he's dead! glad! glad! if he had not died, i should have killed him, if dannie did not! it was a happy thing that he died. his death saved me mortal sin. i'm glad, i tell you, and i do not forgive him, and i niver will, and i hope he will burn----" katy dolan clapped her hand over mary's mouth. "for the love of marcy, don't say that!" she cried. "you will have to confiss it, and you'd be ashamed to face the praste." "i would not," cried mary. "father michael knows i'm just an ordinary woman, he don't ixpict me to be an angel." but she left the sentence unfinished. after mary's cabin was arranged to her satisfaction, they attacked dannie's; emptying it, cleaning it completely, and refurnishing it from the best of the things that had been in both. then mary added some new touches. a comfortable big chair was placed by his fire, new books on his mantle, a flower in his window, and new covers on his bed. while the women worked, dolan raked the yards, and freshened matters outside as best he could. when everything they had planned to do was accomplished, the wagon, loaded with the ugly old things mary despised, drove back to the village, and she, with little tilly dolan for company, remained. mary was tense with excitement. all the woman in her had yearned for these few pretty things she wanted for her home throughout the years that she had been compelled to live in crude, ugly surroundings; because every cent above plainest clothing and food, went for drink for jimmy, and treats for his friends. now she danced and sang, and flew about trying a chair here, and another there, to get the best effect. every little while she slipped into her bedroom, stood before a real dresser, and pulled out its trays to make sure that her fresh, light dresses were really there. she shook out the dainty curtains repeatedly, watered the flowers, and fed the fish when they did not need it. she babbled incessantly to the green linnet, which with swollen throat rejoiced with her, and occasionally she looked in the mirror. she lighted the fire, and put food to cook. she covered a new table, with a new cloth, and set it with new dishes, and placed a jar of her flowers in the center. what a supper she did cook! when she had waited until she was near crazed with nervousness, she heard the wagon coming up the lane. peeping from the window, she saw dannie stop the horses short, and sit staring at the cabins, and she realized that smoke would be curling from the chimney, and the flowers and curtains would change the shining windows outside. she trembled with excitement, and than a great yearning seized her, as he slowly drove closer, for his brown hair was almost white, and the lines on his face seemed indelibly stamped. and then hot anger shook her. fifteen years of her life wrecked, and look at dannie! that was jimmy malone's work. over and over, throughout the winter, she had planned this home-coming as a surprise to dannie. book-fine were the things she intended to say to him. when he opened the door, and stared at her and about the altered room, she swiftly went to him, and took the bundles he carried from his arms. "hurry up, and unhitch, dannie," she said. "your supper is waiting." and dannie turned and stolidly walked back to his team, without uttering a word. "uncle dannie!" cried a child's voice. "please let me ride to the barn with you!" a winsome little maid came rushing to dannie, threw her arms about his neck, and hugged him tight, as he stooped to lift her. her yellow curls were against his cheek, and her breath was flower-sweet in his face. "why didn't you kiss aunt mary?" she demanded. "daddy dolan always kisses mammy when he comes from all day gone. aunt mary's worked so hard to please you. and daddie worked, and mammy worked, and another woman. you are pleased, ain't you, uncle dannie?" "who told ye to call me uncle?" asked dannie, with unsteady lips. "she did!" announced the little woman, flourishing the whip in the direction of the cabin. dannie climbed down to unhitch. "you are goin' to be my uncle, ain't you, as soon as it's a little over a year, so folks won't talk?" "who told ye that?" panted dannie, hiding behind a horse. "nobody told me! mammy just said it to daddy, and i heard," answered the little maid. "and i'm glad of it, and so are all of us glad. mammy said she'd just love to come here now, whin things would be like white folks. mammy said aunt mary had suffered a lot more'n her share. say, you won't make her suffer any more, will you?" "no," moaned dannie, and staggered into the barn with the horses. he leaned against a stall, and shut his eyes. he could see the bright room, plainer than ever, and that little singing bird sounded loud as any thunder in his ears. and whether closed or open, he could see mary, never in all her life so beautiful, never so sweet; flesh and blood mary, in a dainty dress, with the shining, unafraid eyes of girlhood. it was that thing which struck dannie first, and hit him hardest. mary was a careless girl again. when before had he seen her with neither trouble, anxiety or, worse yet, fear, in her beautiful eyes? and she had come to stay. she would not have refurnished her cabin otherwise. dannie took hold of the manger with both hands, because his sinking knees needed bracing. "dannie," called mary's voice in the doorway, "has my spickled hin showed any signs of setting yet?" "she's been over twa weeks," answered dannie. "she's in that barrel there in the corner." mary entered the barn, removed the prop, lowered the board, and kneeling, stroked the hen, and talked softly to her. she slipped a hand under the hen, and lifted her to see the eggs. dannie staring at mary noted closer the fresh, cleared skin, the glossy hair, the delicately colored cheeks, and the plumpness of the bare arms. one little wisp of curl lay against the curve of her neck, just where it showed rose-pink, and looked honey sweet. and in one great surge, the repressed stream of passion in the strong man broke, and dannie swayed against his horse. his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he caught at the harness to steady himself, while he strove to grow accustomed to the fact that hell had opened in a new form for him. the old heart hunger for mary malone was back in stronger force than ever before; and because of him jimmy lay stretched on five mile hill. "dannie, you are just fine!" said mary. "i've been almost wild to get home, because i thought iverything would be ruined, and instid of that it's all ixactly the way i do it. do hurry, and get riddy for supper. oh, it's so good to be home again! i want to make garden, and fix my flowers, and get some little chickens and turkeys into my fingers." "i have to go home, and wash, and spruce up a bit, for ladies," said dannie, leaving the barn. mary made no reply, and it came to him that she expected it. "damned if i will!" he said, as he started home. "if she wants to come here, and force herself on me, she can, but she canna mak' me." just then dannie stepped in his door, and slowly gazed about him. in a way his home was as completely transformed as hers. he washed his face and hands, and started for a better coat. his sleeping room shone with clean windows, curtained in snowy white. a freshly ironed suit of underclothing and a shirt lay on his bed. dannie stared at them. "she think's i'll tog up in them, and come courtin'" he growled. "i'll show her if i do! i winna touch them!" to prove that he would not, dannie caught them up in a wad, and threw them into a corner. that showed a clean sheet, fresh pillow, and new covers, invitingly spread back. dannie turned as white as the pillow at which he stared. "that's a damn plain insinuation that i'm to get into ye," he said to the bed, "and go on living here. i dinna know as that child's jabber counts. for all i know, mary may already have picked out some town dude to bring here and farm out on me, and they'll live with the bird cage, and i can go on climbin' into ye alone." here was a new thought. mary might mean only kindness to him again, as she had sent word by jimmy she meant years ago. he might lose her for the second time. and again a wave of desire struck dannie, and left him staggering. "ain't you comin', uncle dannie?" called the child's voice at the back door. "what's your name, little lass?" inquired dannie. "tilly," answered the little girl promptly. "well, tilly, ye go tell your aunt mary i have been in an eelevator handlin' grain, and i'm covered wi' fine dust and chaff that sticks me. i canna come until i've had a bath, and put on clean clothing. tell her to go ahead." the child vanished. in a second she was back. "she said she won't do it, and take all the time you want. but i wish you'd hurry, for she won't let me either." dannie hurried. but the hasty bath and the fresh clothing felt so good he was in a softened mood when he approached mary's door again. tilly was waiting on the step, and ran to meet him. tilly was a dream. almost, dannie understood why mary had brought her. tilly led him to the table, and pulled back a chair for him, and he lifted her into hers, and as mary set dish after dish of food on the table, tilly filled in every pause that threatened to grow awkward with her chatter. dannie had been a very lonely man, and he did love mary's cooking. until then he had not realized how sore a trial six months of his own had been. "if i was a praying mon, i'd ask a blessing, and thank god fra this food," said dannie. "what's the matter with me?" asked mary. "i have never yet found anything," answered dannie. "and i do thank ye fra everything. i believe i'm most thankful of all fra the clean clothes and the clean bed. i'm afraid i was neglectin' myself, mary." "will, you'll not be neglected any more," said mary. "things have turned over a new leaf here. for all you give, you get some return, after this. we are going to do business in a businesslike way, and divide even. i liked that bank account, pretty will, dannie. thank you, for that. and don't think i spint all of it. i didn't spind a hundred dollars all togither. not the price of one horse! but it made me so happy i could fly. home again, and the things i've always wanted, and nothing to fear. oh, dannie, you don't know what it manes to a woman to be always afraid! my heart is almost jumping out of my body, just with pure joy that the old fear is gone." "i know what it means to a mon to be afraid," said dannie. and vividly before him loomed the awful, distorted, dying face of jimmy. mary guessed, and her bright face clouded. "some day, dannie, we must have a little talk," she said, "and clear up a few things neither of us understand. 'til thin we will just farm, and be partners, and be as happy as iver we can. i don't know as you mean to, but if you do, i warn you right now that you need niver mintion the name of jimmy malone to me again, for any reason." dannie left the cabin abruptly. "now you gone and made him mad!" reproached tilly. during the past winter mary had lived with other married people for the first time, and she had imbibed some of mrs. dolan's philosophy. "whin he smells the biscuit i mane to make for breakfast, he'll get glad again," she said, and he did. but first he went home, and tried to learn where he stood. was he truly responsible for jimmy's death? yes. if he had acted like a man, he could have saved jimmy. he was responsible. did he want to marry mary? did he? dannie reached empty arms to empty space, and groaned aloud. would she marry him? well, now, would she? after years of neglect and sorrow, dannie knew that mary had learned to prefer him to jimmy. but almost any man would have been preferable to a woman, to jimmy. jimmy was distinctly a man's man. a jolly good fellow, but he would not deny himself anything, no matter what it cost his wife, and he had been very hard to live with. dannie admitted that. so mary had come to prefer him to jimmy, that was sure; but it was not a question between him and jimmy, now. it was between him, and any marriageable man that mary might fancy. he had grown old, and gray, and wrinkled, though he was under forty. mary had grown round, and young, and he had never seen her looking so beautiful. surely she would want a man now as young, and as fresh as herself; and she might want to live in town after a while, if she grew tired of the country. could he remember jimmy's dreadful death, realize that he was responsible for it, and make love to his wife? no, she was sacred to jimmy. could he live beside her, and lose her to another man for the second time? no, she belonged to him. it was almost daybreak when dannie remembered the fresh bed, and lay down for a few hours' rest. but there was no rest for dannie, and after tossing about until dawn he began his work. when he carried the milk into the cabin, and smelled the biscuit, he fulfilled mary's prophecy, got glad again, and came to breakfast. then he went about his work. but as the day wore on, he repeatedly heard the voice of the woman and the child, combining in a chorus of laughter. from the little front porch, the green bird warbled and trilled. neighbors who had heard of her return came up the lane to welcome a happy mary malone. the dead dreariness of winter melted before the spring sun, and in dannie's veins the warm blood swept up, as the sap flooded the trees, and in spite of himself he grew gladder and yet gladder. he now knew how he had missed mary. how he had loathed that empty, silent cabin. how remorse and heart hunger had gnawed at his vitals, and he decided that he would go on just as mary had said, and let things drift; and when she was ready to have the talk with him she had mentioned, he would hear what she had to say. and as he thought over these things, he caught himself watching for furrows that jimmy was not making on the other side of the field. he tried to talk to the robins and blackbirds instead of jimmy, but they were not such good company. and when the day was over, he tried not to be glad that he was going to the shining eyes of mary malone, a good supper, and a clean bed, and it was not in the heart of man to do it. the summer wore on, autumn came, and the year tilly had spoken of was over. dannie went his way, doing the work of two men, thinking of everything, planning for everything, and he was all the heart of mary malone could desire, save her lover. by little mary pieced it out. dannie never mentioned fishing; he had lost his love for the river. she knew that he frequently took walks to five mile hill. his devotion to jimmy's memory was unswerving. and at last it came to her, that in death as in life, jimmy malone was separating them. she began to realize that there might be things she did not know. what had jimmy told the priest? why had father michael refused to confess jimmy until he sent dannie to him? what had passed between them? if it was what she had thought all year, why did it not free dannie to her? if there was something more, what was it? surely dannie loved her. much as he had cared for jimmy, he had vowed that everything was for her first. she was eager to be his wife, and something bound him. one day, she decided to ask him. the next, she shrank in burning confusion, for when jimmy malone had asked for her love, she had admitted to him that she loved dannie, and jimmy had told her that it was no use, dannie did not care for girls, and that he had said he wished she would not thrust herself upon him. on the strength of that statement mary married jimmy inside five weeks, and spent years in bitter repentance. that was the thing which held her now. if dannie knew what she did, and did not care to marry her, how could she mention it? mary began to grow pale, and lose sleep, and dannie said the heat of the summer had tired her, and suggested that she go to mrs. dolan's for a weeks rest. the fact that he was willing, and possibly anxious to send her away for a whole week, angered mary. she went. chapter xi the pot of gold mary had not been in the dolan home an hour until katy knew all she could tell of her trouble. mrs. dolan was practical. "go to see father michael," she said. "what's he for but to hilp us. go ask him what jimmy told him. till him how you feel and what you know. he can till you what dannie knows and thin you will understand where you are at." mary was on the way before mrs. dolan fully finished. she went to the priest's residence and asked his housekeeper to inquire if he would see her. he would, and mary entered his presence strangely calm and self-possessed. this was the last fight she knew of that she could make for happiness, and if she lost, happiness was over for her. she had need of all her wit and she knew it. father michael began laughing as he shook hands. "now look here, mary," he said, "i've been expecting you. i warn you before you begin that i cannot sanction your marriage to a protestant." "oh, but i'm going to convart him!" cried mary so quickly that the priest laughed harder than ever. "so that's the lay of the land!" he chuckled. "well, if you'll guarantee that, i'll give in. when shall i read the banns?" "not until we get dannie's consint," answered mary, and for the first her voice wavered. father michael looked his surprise. "tut! tut!" he said. "and is dannie dilatory?" "dannie is the finest man that will ever live in this world," said mary, "but he don't want to marry me." "to my certain knowledge dannie has loved you all your life," said father michael. "he wants nothing here or hereafter as he wants to marry you." "thin why don't he till me so?" sobbed mary, burying her burning face in her hands. "has he said nothing to you?" gravely inquired the priest. "no, he hasn't and i don't belave he intinds to," answered mary, wiping her eyes and trying to be composed. "there is something about jimmy that is holding him back. mrs. dolan thought you'd help me." "what do you want me to do, mary?" asked father michael. "two things," answered mary promptly. "i want you to tell me what jimmy confissed to you before he died, and then i want you to talk to dannie and show him that he is free from any promise that jimmy might have got out of him. will you?" "a dying confession--" began the priest. "yes, but i know--" broke in mary. "i saw them fight, and i heard jimmy till dannie that he'd lied to him to separate us, but he turned right around and took it back and i knew dannie belaved him thin; but he can't after jimmy confissed it again to both of you." "what do you mean by 'saw them fight?'" father michael was leaning toward mary anxiously. mary told him. "then that is the explanation to the whole thing," said the priest. "dannie did believe jimmy when he took it back, and he died before he could repeat to dannie what he had told me. and i have had the feeling that dannie thought himself in a way to blame for jimmy's death." "he was not! oh, he was not!" cried mary malone. "didn't i live there with them all those years? dannie always was good as gold to jimmy. it was shameful the way jimmy imposed on him, and spint his money, and took me from him. it was shameful! shameful!" "be calm! be calm!" cautioned father michael. "i agree with you. i am only trying to arrive at dannie's point of view. he well might feel that he was responsible, if after humoring jimmy like a child all his life, he at last lost his temper and dealt with him as if he were a man. if that is the case, he is of honor so fine, that he would hesitate to speak to you, no matter what he suffered. and then it is clear to me that he does not understand how jimmy separated you in the first place." "and lied me into marrying him, whin i told him over and over how i loved dannie. jimmy malone took iverything i had to give, and he left me alone for fiftane years, with my three little dead babies, that died because i'd no heart to desire life for thim, and he took my youth, and he took my womanhood, and he took my man--" mary arose in primitive rage. "you naden't bother!" she said. "i'm going straight to dannie meself." "don't!" said father michael softly. "don't do that, mary! it isn't the accepted way. there is a better! let him come to you." "but he won't come! he don't know! he's in jimmy's grip tighter in death than he was in life." mary began to sob again. "he will come," said father michael. "be calm! wait a little, my child. after all these years, don't spoil a love that has been almost unequaled in holiness and beauty, by anger at the dead. let me go to dannie. we are good friends. i can tell him jimmy made a confession to me, that he was trying to repeat to him, when punishment, far more awful than anything you have suffered, overtook him. always remember, mary, he died unshriven!" mary began to shiver. "your suffering is over," continued the priest. "you have many good years yet that you may spend with dannie; god will give you living children, i am sure. think of the years jimmy's secret has hounded and driven him! think of the penalty he must pay before he gets a glimpse of paradise, if he be not eternally lost!" "i have!" exclaimed mary. "and it is nothing to the fact that he took dannie from me, and yet kept him in my home while he possessed me himsilf for years. may he burn----" "mary! let that suffice!" cried the priest. "he will! the question now is, shall i go to dannie?" "will you till him just what jimmy told you? will you till him that i have loved him always?" "yes," said father michael. "will you go now?" "i cannot! i have work. i will come early in the morning." "you will till him ivirything?" she repeated. "i will," promised father michael. mary went back to mrs. dolan's comforted. she was anxious to return home at once, but at last consented to spend the day. now that she was sure dannie did not know the truth, her heart warmed toward him. she was anxious to comfort and help him in the long struggle which she saw that he must have endured. by late afternoon she could bear it no longer and started back to rainbow bottom in time to prepare supper. for the first hour after mary had gone dannie whistled to keep up his courage. by the second he had no courage to keep. by the third he was indulging in the worst fit of despondency he ever had known. he had told her to stay a week. a week! it would be an eternity! there alone again! could he bear it? he got through to mid-afternoon some way, and then in jealous fear and foreboding he became almost frantic. one way or the other, this thing must be settled. fiercer raged the storm within him and at last toward evening it became unendurable. at its height the curling smoke from the chimney told him that mary had come home. an unreasoning joy seized him. he went to the barn and listened. he could hear her moving about preparing supper. as he watched she came to the well for water and before she returned to the cabin she stood looking over the fields as if trying to locate him. dannie's blood ran hotly and his pulses were leaping. "go to her! go to her now!" demanded passion, struggling to break leash. "you killed jimmy! you murdered your friend!" cried conscience, with unyielding insistence. poor dannie gave one last glance at mary, and then turned, and for the second time he ran from her as if pursued by demons. but this time he went straight to five mile hill, and the grave of jimmy malone. he sat down on it, and within a few feet of jimmy's bones, dannie took his tired head in his hands, and tried to think, and for the life of him, he could think but two things. that he had killed jimmy, and that to live longer without mary would kill him. hour after hour he fought with his lifelong love for jimmy and his lifelong love for mary. night came on, the frost bit, the wind chilled, and the little brown owls screeched among the gravestones, and dannie battled on. morning came, the sun arose, and shone on dannie, sitting numb with drawn face and bleeding heart. mary prepared a fine supper the night before, and patiently waited, and when dannie did not come, she concluded that he had gone to town, without knowing that she had returned. tilly grew sleepy, so she put the child to bed, and presently she went herself. father michael would make everything right in the morning. but in the morning dannie was not there, and had not been. mary became alarmed. she was very nervous by the time father michael arrived. he decided to go to the nearest neighbor, and ask when dannie had been seen last. as he turned from the lane into the road a man of that neighborhood was passing on his wagon, and the priest hailed him, and asked if he knew where dannie macnoun was. "back in five mile hill, a man with his head on his knees, is a-settin' on the grave of jimmy malone, and i allow that would be dannie macnoun, the damn fool!" he said. father michael went back to the cabin, and told mary he had learned where dannie was, and to have no uneasiness, and he would go to see him immediately. "and first of all you'll tell him how jimmy lied to him?" "i will!" said the priest. he entered the cemetery, and walked slowly to the grave of jimmy malone. dannie lifted his head, and stared at him. "i saw you," said father michael, "and i came in to speak with you." he took dannie's hand. "you are here at this hour to my surprise." "i dinna know that ye should be surprised at my comin' to sit by jimmy at ony time," coldly replied dannie. "he was my only friend in life, and another mon so fine i'll never know. i often come here." the priest shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and then he sat down on a grave near dannie. "for a year i have been waiting to talk with you," he said. dannie wiped his face, and lifting his hat, ran his fingers through his hair, as if to arouse himself. his eyes were dull and listless. "i am afraid i am no fit to talk sensibly," he said. "i am much troubled. some other time----" "could you tell me your trouble?" asked father michael. dannie shook his head. "i have known mary malone all her life," said the priest softly, "and been her confessor. i have known jimmy malone all his life, and heard his dying confession. i know what it was he was trying to tell you when he died. think again!" dannie macnoun stood up. he looked at the priest intently. "did ye come here purposely to find me?" "yes." "what do ye want?" "to clear your mind of all trouble, and fill your heart with love, and great peace, and rest. our heavenly father knows that you need peace of heart, and rest, dannie." "to fill my heart wi' peace, ye will have to prove to me that i'm no responsible fra the death of jimmy malone; and to give it rest, ye will have to prove to me that i'm free to marry his wife. ye can do neither of those things." "i can do both," said the priest calmly. "my son, that is what i came to do." dannie's face grew whiter and whiter, as the blood receded, and his big hands gripped at his sides. "aye, but ye canna!" he cried desperately. "ye canna!" "i can," said the priest. "listen to me! did jimmy get anything at all said to you?" "he said, 'mary,' then he choked on the next word, then he gasped out 'yours,' and it was over." "have you any idea what he was trying to tell you?" "na!" answered dannie. "he was mortal sick, and half delirious, and i paid little heed. if he lived, he would tell me when he was better. if he died, nothing mattered, fra i was responsible, and better friend mon never had. there was nothing on earth jimmy would na have done for me. he was so big hearted, so generous! my god, how i have missed him! how i have missed him!" "your faith in jimmy is strong," ventured the bewildered priest, for he did not see his way. dannie lifted his head. the sunshine was warming him, and his thoughts were beginning to clear. "my faith in jimmy malone is so strong," he said, "that if i lost it, i never should trust another living mon. he had his faults to others, i admit that, but he never had ony to me. he was my friend, and above my life i loved him. i wad gladly have died to save him." "and yet you say you are responsible for his death!" "let me tell ye!" cried dannie eagerly, and began on the story the priest wanted to hear from him. as he finished father michael's face lighted. "what folly!" he said, "that a man of your intelligence should torture yourself with the thought of responsibility in a case like that. any one would have claimed the fish in those circumstances. priest that i am, i would have had it, even if i fought for it. any man would! and as for what followed, it was bound to come! he was a tortured man, and a broken one. if he had not lain out that night, he would a few nights later. it was not in your power to save him. no man can be saved from himself, dannie. did what he said make no impression on you?" "enough that i would have killed him with my naked hands if he had na taken it back. of course he had to retract! if i believed that of jimmy, after the life we lived together, i would curse god and mon, and break fra the woods, and live and dee there alone." "then what was he trying to tell you when he died?" asked the bewildered priest. "to take care of mary, i judge." "not to marry her; and take her for your own?" dannie began to tremble. "remember, i talked with him first," said father michael, "and what he confessed to me, he knew was final. he died before he could talk to you, but i think it is time to tell you what he wanted to say. he--he--was trying--trying to tell you, that there was nothing but love in his heart for you. that he did not in any way blame you. that--that mary was yours. that you were free to take her. that----" "what!" cried dannie wildly. "are ye sure? oh, my god!" "perfectly sure!" answered father michael. "jimmy knew how long and faithfully you had loved mary, and she had loved you----" "mary had loved me? carefu', mon! are ye sure?" "i know," said father michael convincingly. "i give you my priestly word, i know, and jimmy knew, and was altogether willing. he loved you deeply, as he could love any one, dannie, and he blamed you for nothing at all. the only thing that would have brought jimmy any comfort in dying, was to know that you would end your life with mary, and not hate his memory." "hate!" cried dannie. "hate! father michael, if ye have come to tell me that jimmy na held me responsible fra his death, and was willing fra me to have mary, your face looks like the face of god to me!" dannie gripped the priest's hand. "are ye sure? are ye sure, mon?" he almost lifted father michael from the ground. "i tell you, i know! go and be happy!" "some ither day i will try to thank ye," said dannie, turning away. "noo, i'm in a little of a hurry." he was half way to the gate when he turned back. "does mary know this?" he asked. "she does," said the priest. "you are one good man, dannie, go and be happy, and may the blessing of god go with you." dannie lifted his hat. "and jimmy, too," he said, "put jimmy in, father michael." "may the peace of god rest the troubled soul of jimmy malone," said father michael, and not being a catholic, dannie did not know that from the blessing for which he asked. he hurried away with the brightness of dawn on his lined face, which looked almost boyish under his whitening hair. mary malone was at the window, and turmoil and bitterness were beginning to burn in her heart again. maybe the priest had not found dannie. maybe he was not coming. maybe a thousand things. then he was coming. coming straight and sure. coming across the fields, and leaping fences at a bound. coming with such speed and force as comes the strong man, fifteen years denied. mary's heart began to jar, and thump, and waves of happiness surged over her. and then she saw that look of dawn, of serene delight on the face of the man, and she stood aghast. dannie threw wide the door, and crossed her threshold with outstretched arms. "is it true?" he panted. "that thing father michael told me, is it true? will ye be mine, mary malone? at last will you be mine? oh, my girl, is the beautiful thing that the priest told me true?" "the beautiful thing that the priest told him!" mary malone swung a chair before her, and stepped back. "wait!" she cried sharply. "there must be some mistake. till me ixactly what father michael told you?" "he told me that jimmy na held me responsible fra his death. that he loved me when he died. that he was willing i should have ye! oh, mary, wasna that splendid of him. wasna he a grand mon? mary, come to me. say that it's true! tell me, if ye love me." mary malone stared wide-eyed at dannie, and gasped for breath. dannie came closer. at last he had found his tongue. "fra the love of mercy, if ye are comin' to me, come noo, mary" he begged. "my arms will split if they dinna get round ye soon, dear. jimmy told ye fra me, sixteen years ago, how i loved ye, and he told me when he came back how sorry ye were fra me, and he--he almost cried when he told me. i never saw a mon feel so. grand old jimmy! no other mon like him!" mary drew back in desperation. "you see here, dannie micnoun!" she screamed. "you see here----" "i do," broke in dannie. "i'm lookin'! all i ever saw, or see now, or shall see till i dee is 'here,' when 'here' is ye, mary malone. oh! if a woman ever could understand what passion means to a mon! if ye knew what i have suffered through all these years, you'd end it, mary malone." mary gave the chair a shove. "come here, dannie," she said. dannie cleared the space between them. mary set her hands against his breast. "one minute," she panted. "just one! i have loved you all me life, me man. i niver loved any one but you. i niver wanted any one but you. i niver hoped for any hivin better than i knew i'd find in your arms. there was a mistake. there was an awful mistake, when i married jimmy. i'm not tillin' you now, and i niver will, but you must realize that! do you understand me?" "hardly," breathed dannie. "hardly!" "will, you can take your time if you want to think it out, because that's all i'll iver till you. there was a horrible mistake. it was you i loved, and wanted to marry. now bend down to me, dannie micnoun, because i'm going to take your head on me breast and kiss your dear face until i'm tired," said mary malone. an hour later father michael came leisurely down the lane, and the peace of god was with him. a radiant mary went out to meet him. "you didn't till him!" she cried accusingly. "you didn't till him!" the priest laid a hand on her head. "mary, the greatest thing in the whole world is self-sacrifice," he said. "the pot at the foot of the rainbow is just now running over with the pure gold of perfect contentment. but had you and i done such a dreadful thing as to destroy the confidence of a good man in his friend, your heart never could know such joy as it now knows in this sacrifice of yours; and no such blessed, shining light could illumine your face. that is what i wanted to see. i said to myself as i came along, 'she will try, but she will learn, as i did, that she cannot look in his eyes and undeceive him. and when she becomes reconciled, her face will be so good to see.' and it is. you did not tell him either, mary malone!" [illustration: "they shouted and cheered; then mr. trelawny put his hand on her head." page 310. _esther's charge._] esther's charge a story for girls by e. everett-green author of "squib and his friends," "the young pioneers," "in the days of chivalry," etc, etc. _illustrated_ new york a. l. burt, publisher contents. i. a little manager, 1 ii. the boys, 26 iii. an anxious charge, 52 iv. the sweets of freedom, 78 v. at the crag, 104 vi. the shorn sheep, 130 vii. days of sunshine, 156 viii. the city of refuge, 182 ix. the magician's cave, 208 x. confessions, 234 xi. mr. trelawny, 262 xii. a new charge, 291 esther's charge. chapter i. a little manager. "where is miss esther, genefer?" "i think she's at the linen-press, marm, putting away the things from the wash." "tell her to come to me when she has done that. i want to speak to her." "yes, marm, i will. can i do anything else for you?" "no, thank you. i have all i want. but send miss esther to me quickly." mrs. st. aiden was lying on a couch in a very pretty, dainty, little room, which opened upon a garden, blazing with late spring and early summer flowers. the lawn was still green, and looked like velvet, and the beds and borders of flowers were carefully tended, as could be seen at a glance. the gravel paths were rolled and weeded, and everything was in exquisite order, both within and without the house. everything also was on a very small scale; and the lady herself, who was clad in deep widow's weeds, was small and slim also, and looked as if she were somewhat of an invalid, which indeed was the case. rather more than a year ago her husband had died after a very short illness, and she had never been well since, although she was not exactly ill of any disease. she was weak and easily upset, and she had to depend a good deal upon her servants and her only daughter. she had never been accustomed to think for herself. captain st. aiden had always done the thinking and the managing as long as he lived, and the poor lady felt very helpless when he was taken from her. when the servant had gone she took up again a letter which she had been reading, and kept turning the leaves of it over and over again, sighing, and seeming troubled and perplexed. she also kept looking across the room towards the door at short intervals, sometimes saying half aloud as she did so,-"i wish esther would come!" presently the door opened, and a little girl came into the room with very quiet steps. she was dressed daintily in a white frock, with black sash and bows. she had a grave little face, that was generally rather pale, and looked small beneath the wide brow and big gray eyes. perhaps it looked smaller for the flowing mass of wavy hair, a dusky chestnut color, that flowed over the child's shoulders and hung below her waist. it was very beautiful hair, soft and silky, with a crisp wave in it that made it stand off from her face like a cloud. it looked dark in the shadow, but when the sun shone upon it, it glistened almost like gold. mrs. st. aiden was very proud of esther's hair, and considered it her chief beauty; but it was a source of considerable trouble to the little girl herself, for it took a great deal of brushing and combing to keep it in order, and tangled dreadfully when she played games. then often the weight and heat of it made her head ache, especially at night; and she used to long to have a cropped head like other little children she sometimes saw, or, at least, to have only moderately long hair, like her two little friends at the rectory, prissy and milly polperran. "did you want me, mama?" asked esther, coming forwards towards the couch. "yes, dear, i did. i want to talk to you about something very serious. i have a letter here from your uncle arthur. he wants to send his two little boys here for three years, because he has just got an appointment that will take him out of the country all that time. i don't know what to think about it; it is so very sudden." it was sudden, and mrs. st. aiden looked rather piteously at esther. it seemed so hard for her to have to decide upon such a step in a hurry, and her brother wanted an answer at once. he had to make his own arrangements very quickly. esther was quite used to being her mother's confidante and adviser. even in her father's lifetime she had often been promoted to this post during his frequent absences. when he lay dying, he had taken esther's hands in his, and looking into her serious eyes, so like his own, had told her to take great care of mama always, and try to be a help and comfort to her. her father had often called her his "wise little woman," and had talked to her much more gravely and seriously than most fathers do to their young children. esther, too, having no brothers or sisters, had grown up almost entirely with her elders, and, therefore, she had developed a gravity and seriousness not usual at her age, though she was by no means lacking in the capacity for childish fun on the rare occasions when she was free to indulge in it. she was ten years old at this time, and she was not taller than many children are at seven or eight; but there was a thoughtful look upon the small face and in the big gray eyes which was different from what is generally to be seen in the eyes of children of that age. "two little boys!" repeated esther gravely; "they will be my cousins, i suppose. how old are they, and what are their names, mama?" "the elder is nine, and the other rather more than a year younger. he does not mention their names, but i know the elder is called philip, after our grandfather. i'm not quite sure about the second. arthur is such a very bad correspondent, and poor ada died when the second boy was born. you see it was like this, esther. the grandmother on the mother's side kept house for him, and took care of the children after their mother died--she was living with him then. she died a year ago, and things have been going on in the same groove at his house. but now comes this appointment abroad, and he can neither take the boys nor leave them at home alone. they are not fit for school yet, he says. of course they are not ready for public school, but i should have thought they might--well, never mind that. what he says is that they want taking in hand by a good governess or tutor, and suggests that they should come to me, and that i should find such a person, and that you should share the lessons, and get a good start with your education." esther's eyes began to sparkle beneath their long black lashes. she had an ardent love of study, and hitherto she had only been able to pick up such odd crumbs as were to be had from the desultory teaching of her mother, or from the study of such books as she could lay hands upon in that little-used room that was called the study, though nobody ever studied there save herself. in her father's lifetime esther had been well grounded, but since his death her education had been conducted in a very haphazard fashion. she had a wonderful thirst after knowledge, and in her leisure hours would almost always be found poring over a book; but of real tuition she had now hardly any, and the thought of a regular governess or tutor made her eyes sparkle with joy. "o mama! could we?" "could we what, esther?" "have a governess or tutor here as well as two boys?" "not in the house itself, of course. but he or she could lodge in the place, i suppose, and come every day. your uncle is very liberal in his ideas, esther. he is going to let his own big house. he has had an offer already, and he suggests paying over three or four hundred pounds a year to me, if i will undertake the charge of the two boys. of course that would make it all very easy in some ways." esther's eyes grew round with wonder. she knew all about her mother's affairs, and how difficult it sometimes was to keep everything in the dainty state of perfection expected, upon the small income they inherited. to have this income doubled at a stroke, and only two boys to keep and a tutor's salary to pay out of it! why, that would be a wonderful easing of many burdens which weighed heavily sometimes upon esther's youthful shoulders. she had often found it so difficult to satisfy her delicate mother's wishes and whims, and yet to keep the weekly bills down to the sum genefer said they ought not to exceed. "o mama, what a lot of money!" "your uncle is a well-to-do man, my dear, and he truly says that terms at good private schools, where the holidays have to be provided for as well, run into a lot of money. and he does not think the boys are fit for school yet. he says they want breaking in by a tutor first. they have had a governess up till now, but he thinks a tutor would be better, especially as there is no man in this house. i hope he does not mean that the boys are very naughty and troublesome. i don't know what i shall do with them if they are." the lady sighed, and looked at esther in that half helpless way which always went to the little girl's heart. she bent over and kissed her brow. "never mind, mama dear. i will take care of the boys," she said, in her womanly way. "they are both younger than i. i think it will be nice to have regular lessons again. i think papa would have been pleased about that. and perhaps i shall like having boys to play with too; only it will be strange at first." "we could keep a girl, then, to help genefer and janet," said mrs. st. aiden. "the boys will have to have the big attic up at the top of the house, and the study to do lessons in. i hope they will not be very noisy; and there is the garden to play in. but they must not break the flowers, or take the fruit, or spoil the grass, or cut up the gravel. you will have to keep them in order, esther. i can't have the place torn up by a pair of riotous boys." "i will take care of them, mama dear," answered esther bravely, though her heart sank just a little at the thought of the unknown element about to be introduced into her life. she had had so little experience of boys--there was only little herbert at the rectory who ever came here, and he was quite good, and under the care of his elder sisters. would these boys let her keep them in order as bertie was kept by prissy and milly? she hoped they would, and she said nothing of her misgivings to her mother. "do you think you will say 'yes' to uncle arthur?" "i think i must, my dear. i don't like to refuse; and, of course, there are advantages. your education has been a difficulty. i have not the health myself, and we cannot afford a governess for you, and this is the first time arthur has ever asked me to do anything for him. and, really, i might be able to keep a little pony carriage, and get out in the summer, with this addition to our income. i always feel that if i could get out more i should get back my health much quicker." esther's eyes sparkled again at these words, and a little pink flush rose in her cheeks. it was the thing of all others she had always wished for her mother--a dear little pony, and a little low basket carriage in which she could drive her out. in father's days they had had one, and esther had been allowed to drive the quiet pony when she was quite a little child. but that belonged to the old life, before the father had been taken away and they had come here to live, right down in cornwall, at this little quaint hermitage, as the house was called. since then no such luxury could be dreamed of. it had been all they could do to make ends meet, and keep the mother content with what could be done by two maids, and one man coming in and out to care for the garden. and even so, esther often wondered how they would get on, if it were not for all that mr. trelawny did for them. "o mama!" she cried, "could we really have a pony again?" "we will think about it. i should like to, if we could. it seems a pity that that nice little stable should stand empty; and there is the little paddock too. the pony could run there when he wasn't wanted, and that would save something in his keep. i have always been used to my little drives, and i miss them very much. but, of course, i shall not make up my mind in a hurry. i should like to see mr. trelawny about it all even before i write to uncle arthur." a little shadow fell over esther's face. she felt sure she knew what was coming. "i wish, dear, you would just run up to the crag and ask mr. trelawny if he would come down and see me about this." the shadow deepened as the words were spoken, but esther made only one effort to save herself the task. "couldn't genefer go, mama? it is so hot!" "it will be getting cooler every hour now, and there is plenty of shade through the wood. have you had a walk to-day?" "no, mama; i have been busy. saturday is always a busy day, you know." "then a walk will do you good, and you will go much quicker than genefer. bring mr. trelawny back with you if you can. you can tell him a little about it, and he will know that it is important. you have time to go and come back before your tea-time." esther did not argue the matter any more. she had never betrayed to any living creature this great fear which possessed her. she was half ashamed of it, yet she could never conquer it. she was more afraid of mr. trelawny than of anything in the world beside. he was like the embodiment of all the wizards, and genii, and magicians, and giants which she had read of in her fairy story-books, or of the mysterious historic personages over whom she had trembled when poring over the pages of historical romance. he was a very big man, with a very big voice, and he always talked in a way which she could not fully understand, and which almost frightened her out of her wits. it was the greatest possible penance to have to go up to his great big house on the hill, and she never approached it without tremors and quakings of heart. she fully believed that it contained dungeons, oubliettes, and other horrors. she had been told that the crags beneath were riddled with great hollow caves, where monks had hidden in times of persecution, and where smugglers had hidden their goods and fought desperate battles with the excise officers and coast-guardsmen. the whole place seemed to her to be full of mystery and peril, and the fit owner and guardian was this gigantic cornish squire, with his roiling voice, leonine head, and autocratic air. he was always asking her why she did not oftener come to see him, but esther would only shrink away and answer in her low, little voice that she had so much to do at home. and then he would laugh one of his big, sonorous laughs, that seemed to fill the house; and it was he who had given her the name of the "little manager," and when he called her by it he did so with an air of mock homage which frightened her more than anything else. at other times he would call her "goldylocks," and pretend he was going to cut off her hair to make a cable for his yacht, which lay at anchor in the bay; and he would tell her a terrible story about a man who sought to anchor in the middle of a whirlpool, the cable being made of maidens' hair--only the golden strand gave way, and so he got drowned instead of winning his wife by his act of daring boldness. this story was in verse, and he would roll it out in his big, melodious voice; and she was always obliged to listen, for the fascination was strong upon her. and then in the night she would lie shivering in her bed, picturing mr. trelawny and his yacht going round and round in the dreadful whirlpool, and her own chestnut-brown hair being the cable which had failed to hold fast! and yet mr. trelawny was a very kind friend to them. he was a relation, too, though not at all a near one, and had been very fond of esther's father, who was his kinsman. when the widow and child had been left with only a small provision, mr. trelawny had brought them to this pretty house at the foot of the hill upon which his big one stood. he had installed them there, and he would not take any rent for it. and he sent down his own gardener several times a week to make the garden trim and bright, and keep it well stocked with flowers and fruit. once a week he always came down himself and gave an eye to everything. mrs. st. aiden looked forward to these visits, as they broke the monotony of her life, and mr. trelawny was always gentle to the helpless little widow. but esther always tried to keep out of the way when she could, and the worst of it was that she was afraid mr. trelawny had a suspicion of this, and that it made him tease her more than ever. however, she never disobeyed her mother, or refused to do what was asked of her, and she knew that such a step as this one would never be taken without mr. trelawny's approval. indeed, she saw that he ought to be asked, since the house was his; and, perhaps, he would not like two boys to be brought there. esther had heard that boys could be very mischievous beings, and, though she could not quite think what they did, she saw that the lord of the manor had a right to be consulted. the hermitage lay nestling just at the foot of a great craggy hill, that was clothed on one side with wood--mostly pine and spruce fir; but on the other it was all crag and cliff, and looked sheer down upon the tumbling waves of the great atlantic. near to the hermitage, along the white road, lay a few other houses, and the little village of st. maur, with its quaint old church and pretty village green. there were hills and moors again behind it, wild, and bleak, and boundless, as it seemed to the little girl whenever she climbed them. but st. maur itself was a sheltered little place; the boom of the sea only sounded when the surf was beating very strong, and it was so sheltered from the wind that trees grew as they grew nowhere else in the neighborhood, and flowers flourished in the gardens as esther had never seen them flourish in the other places where she had lived. geraniums grew into great bushes, and fuchsias ran right up the houses as ivy did in the north, and roses bloomed till christmas, and came on again quite early in the spring, so that they seemed to have flowers all the year round. that was a real delight to the little girl, who loved the garden above any other place; and with a book and an apple, crouched down in the arbor or some pleasant flowery place, she would find a peace and contentment beyond all power of expression. as she climbed the path through the pine woods leading to mr. trelawny's great house, she began to wonder what it would be like to have her precious solitude invaded by a pair of little boys. "i wish they were rather littler, so that i could take care of them," said esther to herself. "i should like to be a little mother to them, and teach them to say their prayers, and wash their hands and faces, and keep their toys nice and tidy. but perhaps they are too big to care for being taken care of. if they are, i don't quite know what i shall do with them. but we shall have lessons a good part of the day, i suppose, and that will be interesting. perhaps i shall be able to help them with theirs. only they may know more than i do." musing like this, esther soon found herself at the top of the hill, and coming out of the wood, saw the big, curious house right in front of her. she never looked at it without a little tremor, and she felt the thrill run through her to-day. it was such a very old house, and there were such lots of stories about it. once it had been a castle, and people had fought battles over it; but that was so long, long ago that there was hardly anything left of that old building. then it had been a monastery, and there were lots of rooms now where the monks had lived and walked about; and the gardens were as they made them, and people said that at night you could still see the old monks flitting to and fro. but for a long time it had been a house where people lived and died in the usual way, and trelawnys had been there for nearly three hundred years now. esther had a private belief that this mr. trelawny had been there for almost all that time, and that he had made or found the elixir of life which the historical romances talked about, so that he continued living on and on, and knew everything, and was strange and terrible. he always did seem to know everything that had happened, and his stories were at once terrifying and entrancing. if only she could have got over her fear of him, she would have enjoyed listening; as it was, she always felt half dead with terror. "hallo, madam! and whither away so very fast?" cried a great deep voice from somewhere out of the heart of the earth; and esther stopped short, with a little strangled cry of terror, for it was mr. trelawny's voice, and yet he was nowhere to be seen. "wait a minute and i'll come!" said the voice again, and esther stood rooted to the spot with fear. there was a curious little sound of tap, tap, tapping somewhere underground not far away, and in another minute a great rough head appeared out of one of those crevices in the earth which formed one of the many terrors of the crag, and a huge man dragged himself slowly out of the fissure, a hammer in his hand and several stones clinking in one of his big pockets. he was covered with earth and dust, which he proceeded to shake off as a dog does when he has been burrowing, whilst esther stood rooted to the spot, petrified with amazement, and convinced that he had come up from some awful subterranean cavern, known only to himself, where he carried on his strange magic lore. "well, madam?" he said, making her one of his low bows. when he called her madam and bowed to her esther was always more frightened than ever. "to what happy accident may i attribute the honor of this visit?" "mama sent me," said esther, seeking to steady her voice, though she was afraid to speak more than two or three words at a time. "ah, that is it--mama sent you. it was no idea of your own. alas, it is ever so! nobody seeks the poor old lonely hermit for his own sake. so mama has sent you, has she, miss goldylocks? and what is your errand?" "mama asks if you will please read this letter, and then come and see her and advise her what to do." mr. trelawny took the letter, gave one of his big laughs, and looked quizzically at esther. "does your mama ever take advice, my dear?" esther's eyes opened wide in astonishment. "yes, of course she does. mama never does anything until she has been advised by everybody." the big, rolling laugh sounded out suddenly, and esther longed to run away. she never knew whether she were being laughed at herself, and she did not like that thought. "may i say you will come soon?" she asked, backing a little way down the hillside. "wait a moment, child; i will come with you," answered the big man, turning his fossils out of his pocket, and putting them, with his hammer, inside a hollow tree. "do you know what this letter says?" "oh yes; mama read it to me." "ah, of course. the 'little manager' must be consulted first. well, and what does she say about it?" "mama? oh, i think----" "no, not mama; the 'little manager' herself. what do you want to do about it?" esther summoned up courage to reply sedately,-"i think perhaps it might be a good plan. you see, i should get a good education then, and i should like that very much. it would be a great advantage in many ways----" but esther left off suddenly, for mr. trelawny was roaring with laughter again. "hear the child!" he cried to the empty air, as it seemed; "she is asked if she likes boy-playfellows, and she replies with a dissertation on the advantages of a liberal education! hear that, ye shades of all the sages! a great advantage!--yes, my dear, i think it will be a great advantage. you will learn to be young at last, perhaps, after being grown-up ever since you were shortened. a brace of boys will wake you up a bit, and, if i read between the lines correctly, this pair are going to turn out a precious pair of pickles." esther understood very little of this speech, but she tingled from head to foot with the consciousness that fun was being poked at her. "i think mama will do as you advise about it," she said, not being able to think of anything else to say. the big man in the rough clothes was looking down at her with a twinkle in his eyes. he got hold of her hand and made her look up at him. "now tell me, child--don't be afraid to speak the truth--do you want these young cubs to come, or don't you? would it make life pleasanter to you or only a burden?" "i don't think i can quite tell till i've tried," said esther, shaking all over, but striving to keep her fears to herself; "but i think it might be nice to have two little boys to take care of." "to take care of, eh? you haven't enough on your hands as it is?" "i used often to wish i'd a brother or a sister to play with; that was before papa died. since then i haven't had so much time to think about it, but perhaps it would be pleasant." "you do play sometimes then?" "yes; when the little polperrans come to see me, or when i go to see them." "and you know how to do it when you try?" esther was a little puzzled, and answered doubtfully,-"i know how to play the games they play. i don't know any besides." mr. trelawny suddenly flung her hand away from him and burst into a great laugh. "i think i shall advise your mother to import these two young monkeys," he said over his shoulder; and to esther's great relief, she was allowed to walk the rest of the way home by herself, mr. trelawny striding on at a great rate, and muttering to himself all the while, as was his habit. later on, when he had gone back again, and esther crept in her mouse-like fashion to her mother's side, she found her closing a letter she had just written. "mr. trelawny advises me to have the boys, dear," she said; "so i have been writing to your uncle. i suppose it is the best thing to do, especially as mr. trelawny has undertaken to find a suitable tutor. that would have been difficult for me; but he is a clever man, and knows the world. he will be sure to select the right person." "yes, mama," said esther gently; but she shook in her shoes the while. a tutor selected by mr. trelawny might surely be a very terrible person. suppose he came from underground, and was a sort of magician himself! chapter ii. the boys. it was growing very exciting. the life of the little house, which had hitherto run so quietly in its grooves, now seemed all at once changed and expanded. there was an air of bustle pervading the upper regions. genefer, and a stout young maid lately engaged as joint-helper to her and the cook, were busy for two whole days in turning out a great attic which formed the top story of the little house, making room in other holes and corners for the boxes and odds and ends which had been stored there, and furbishing up this place as a bedroom for the boys, who were expected in a week's time. esther was immensely interested. she had always thought the big attic a very charming place, only when it was dusty and dark there had not been much to attract her there. now the dormer windows stood open to sun and air, and commanded wide views in many directions over the valley in which st. maur stood. two little white beds and the needful furniture did not take up a great deal of space, and there would be ample room for the boys to frisk about, collect treasures, and range them on the various shelves and ledges, without inconveniencing anybody, or bringing disorder into the rest of the house. moreover there was an access to the attic from the back staircase, so that nothing dirty or disagreeable need be brought into the mistress's part of the house at all. genefer regarded this arrangement as a great boon, though esther sometimes wondered why. the answer she got to her questions was generally the same, though it did not greatly enlighten her. "boys will be boys, all the world over, miss esther," genefer would say with a shake of the head; and when she repeated this aphorism to her mother, mrs. st. aiden would sometimes sigh and say rather plaintively,-"oh, i hope we shall not find we have made a great mistake!" and that used to set esther wondering still more. for her own part, she looked forward to the advent of these cousins with a great amount of interest. she had told the little polperrans all about it, and they were greatly excited too. "i am glad they are younger than you," said prissy, as they walked home from church together. when esther's mother was not able to get to church, esther sat in the rectory pew, and her little friends generally walked with her as far as her own gate, which was about a quarter of a mile farther off than the rectory. "you will be able to keep them in order. boys want that. they get obstreperous if they are left alone. bertie is sometimes a little bit like that, but i never let him get the upper hand. it would never do." prissy was twelve years old, and had helped her mother at home and in the parish for quite a long time now. she was more grown-up in her ways than esther, though not perhaps so thoughtful. she used to tell esther that when she was old enough she meant to marry a clergyman and have a parish of her own; and esther would listen with a sense of great respect and admiration, for she certainly felt that she should be very sorry to have a parish to care for. it was quite enough to have to help her mother to manage one little house. "i hope they will be good boys," she said rather timidly; "i should think they are. they have had a grandmother and a governess as well as their father." "i think grandmothers often spoil boys," prissy answered, with her customary air of decision. "ours does; i don't much like when she comes. she is often quite rude to me, and doesn't listen to what i say; but she pets bertie, and gives him things, and lets him talk to her as much as he likes. i call that showing favoritism; i don't approve of it at all. in the parish mother never lets that sort of thing be." "who was that funny man in spectacles sitting in mr. trelawny's pew?" asked milly, who was walking in front with bertie, but who suddenly turned back to ask the question. esther had not even noticed him. she never looked towards mr. trelawny if she could help it. often his great, deep-set eyes would be fixed upon her face, and that made her blush and tremble, and so she never glanced his way willingly. she had not even seen that there had been a stranger with him. "i don't know," answered prissy, as esther evidently had no information to give; "i've never seen him before. i suppose he's a friend of mr. trelawny's, but he doesn't often have a visitor at the crag. he's a queer man, mother says; though father always likes him." "the other man looked like an owl; his spectacles were quite round," remarked herbert; "most people's are oval. when the sun got on them they looked as if they were made of fire--like a big cat's eyes shining in the dark." "oh, don't," cried esther quickly. "don't what?" asked herbert, staring. esther colored and looked half ashamed. "i don't know quite. i felt afraid. i always do feel a little afraid of mr. trelawny. i wonder who the other gentleman is." esther was soon to know. she had spent her sunday afternoon curled up in the garden with a book, and she had not even heard the bell when it rang. she had no idea there were visitors with her mother, and when she came in at half-past four to pour out her afternoon tea, which on sunday they shared together, she gave a great jump and dropped her book, for there was mr. trelawny sitting beside her mother, and a strange gentleman standing looking out of the window, and he had on round spectacles, just such as herbert had described. he stepped forward and picked up esther's book, and gave it into her hands with a smile; and as she stepped timidly forward to shake hands with mr. trelawny, she heard him say,-"this is one of your future pupils, earle." so this was the tutor. it had never occurred to esther that he would come so soon, or that he would be a friend of mr. trelawny's. somehow the whole thing frightened her a good deal. she was shaking all over as she gave her hand to mr. earle; and he seemed to notice it, for he laughed and said,-"so you seem to think that tutor spells ogre, little miss esther. we shall have to see if we can't get over that impression somehow." then mr. trelawny's great laugh rang out through the room, and he exclaimed in his big voice,-"oh, you won't have much trouble with her ladyship here. she will only want the birch-rod occasionally. she's a mighty hand at books, as it is--quite a budding blue-stocking, if that isn't a mixed metaphor. it's the boys you'll want that cane of mine for.--eh, esther? a pair of young pickles, i take it, that will take a deal of breaking-in. you tell them when they come that i've a fine array of sticks and canes from all parts of the world for mr. earle to take his choice of. he'll thrash some discipline into them, never you fear. you shan't have all the breaking-in to do. he's a fine hand at swishing, you'll see." then the other gentleman said something in a language esther did not understand, at which mr. trelawny broke out into one of his rolling laughs, and esther got away behind the tea-table, and began pouring out the tea with very shaking hands; and though mr. earle came and took the cups, and talked to her quite kindly, her heart was all in a flutter, for she thought he was like the cruel old witch in the fairy-tale, who was so kind to the little boys and girls till she had got them into her house and into the cage, and then began to beat and starve them. the thought of the array of sticks and canes up at the crag, of which the tutor was to have the choice, seemed to swim before her eyes all the while. "it is a pity you are always so shy and awkward with mr. trelawny, esther," said her mother a little plaintively when the gentlemen had gone. "he is really very kind, and would make a great pet of you if you would let him; but you're always so cold and distant, and seem frightened out of your wits. it's really very silly of you. and you never will call him uncle, though he has asked you more times than i can count." "i can never remember," answered esther in a very small voice. "it always goes out of my head. besides, he isn't my uncle." "no, not exactly; but he's a kind of cousin, and you might just as well do as he asks. it vexes me when your manners are so bad just when he comes. i thought you were going to cry or to faint just now. it is so silly to be frightened when gentlemen have a little bit of fun. it doesn't mean anything." there were tears in esther's eyes, but she held them bravely back. "i can't help being frightened at mr. trelawny, mama. i know he is kind but he does frighten me. is mr. earle a friend of his? and is he really our tutor?" "he will be soon. but the boys are to have a week to settle down first before beginning lessons. yes, mr. earle is the son of an old friend of mr. trelawny's; and he is very clever, and a great lover of the same things that interest mr. trelawny so much. so, for a time, at least, he will live up at the crag, and come down every day for your lessons. the rest of the time he and mr. trelawny can spend together in their laboratory, or whatever they call it. there are a lot of experiments they want to make together." esther tried hard to subdue the tremor which took hold of her at this thought, but it really was rather terrible to think that their tutor would be another of those mysterious magicians, such as she had read about in romances, who lived all day, when they could manage it, shut up with crucibles and other strange things, trying all sorts of experiments, and seeking after the elixir of life, or other mysterious compounds, that would change everything into gold, or give them power such as no men possessed before. but it was no use trying to seek sympathy from her mother, or even from genefer. they could not understand her fear of mr. trelawny. they did not believe that he had subterranean places where he lived when he was alone, or that he could see through the earth, and come up just where he chose, and know everything that was going on overhead. grown-up people never seemed to understand these things. even prissy would say, "oh, nonsense!" when esther tried to explain the source of her fears. but millie and bertie would listen open-mouthed; and when the children met the next day, prissy being with her mother, the little boy broke out at once with a piece of startling intelligence. "he's mr. earle, and he's going to be your tutor; and he's very clever, and he's found out a great many things, and he's going to find out a lot more with mr. trelawny. i heard father say they were going to have an electric eye, that could see through walls and things. i expect he's got electric eyes in his head now, and that's why he wears those funny spectacles. i suppose he's going to make a pair for mr. trelawny, and then he'll be able to see everything too. it won't be any use trying to run away from them then. why, they'll see you right through the hillside." esther began to quake all over. "o bertie, they couldn't!" "but they can!" he argued stoutly. "i heard father trying to explain to mother. he said they had things that went right through the hill, and could ring bells or something on the other side. but you can't see it. i suppose it's a sort of familiar spirit that does it, but the electric eye has got something to do with it. it's going to be very queer up there, i think. perhaps they'll want children's blood for some of their experiments, like the old wizard of the mountains. i'll lend the book to you again, if you like. it tells you lots of things about him." "no, please, don't," said esther, who already remembered more than she desired of the blood-curdling story; "besides, i thought your mother had taken the book away." "yes, but we found it again when the house was cleaned, and it's in our cupboard now. i like it awfully." "i don't," replied esther, whose imagination was considerably more vivid than that of the stolid and horror-loving herbert. "i don't want to read it any more. mr. trelawny's quite bad enough alone." "only he's not alone any more," said milly; "he's got your tutor with him." esther went home in a very subdued frame of mind. she had so looked forward to regular lessons with a tutor, who could really explain things to her, and teach her the things she longed to know; and it was hard that he should turn out to be a strange and mysterious being, second only in terrors to mr. trelawny himself. that's what came of trusting him with the task of choosing the tutor. oh dear! it seemed as though life were going to be rather a hard thing for esther in the future. however, there really was not much time to think about it all, for the boys were coming. they would be here very soon, and the preparations for their arrival filled up every bit of spare time, and occupied the whole household. then came the afternoon upon which they were to arrive. they were to leave london very early in the morning, their father putting them in charge of the guard of the train, who was to see them safely to their journey's end; and mr. trelawny had volunteered to drive as far as the junction, twelve miles away, and save them the little slow piece upon the local line. the boys' father had hoped to have time to bring them down himself, but at the last it had proved impossible. however, they were to be dispatched under official escort, and were bound to turn up safe and sound. it was with a very fluttering heart that esther stood at the gate looking down the stretch of white road which led up to the house. she pitied the little boys being met by the terrible mr. trelawny, and pictured them crouched up in the carriage like a pair of frightened mice watched over and guarded by a monster cat. her mother had suggested that she should go to meet them also, but esther's courage had not been equal to the ordeal of the long drive with mr. trelawny. so there she was waiting at the gate, her heart in her mouth each time the roll of wheels was heard upon the road, running indoors now and then, just to see that everything was in readiness for the travelers' tea, when the little fellows should have arrived, but never long away from her post beside the gate. at last she heard the unmistakable sound of the beat of a pair of horses' feet upon the hard road. that must be the carriage. the color came and went in her cheeks. she called out to genefer that they were really coming at last, and then stood with the gate wide open behind her, whilst the odd-job man stood a little in the rear, ready to help with the luggage. round the bend in the road dashed the carriage. esther heard a clamor of voices before it had stopped. there were two heads poked far out of the window, and two shrill voices were exchanging a perfect hurricane of comment and question. she saw that each boy was being held from behind by a hand upon his collar; then the carriage stopped, and the voices became audible. "let go, old bobby!" cried one voice. "here we are!" "the carriage can't get through the gate," shrieked the other. "oh, drive on, drive on, coachman, and let us stick fast. it would be such fun!" "there, get out with you, you young pickles!" spoke mr. trelawny's deep bass from within the carriage. "i'm thankful to deliver you up with sound skins and whole bones. don't you see your cousin esther waiting to speak to you? take off your caps, and behave like little gentlemen, if you know how to." the boys were out in a trice, but they had not even a look for esther. both had darted round to the horses, and stood under their noses, reaching up to stroke them, perfectly fearless, and asking the coachman a hundred questions about them. mr. trelawny came behind and took them each by the collar once more. "didn't you hear me tell you to go and speak to your cousin?" "oh, she's only a girl, and she'll always be there. i like horses best," remarked one youngster in a perfectly audible voice; and sensitive little esther bit her lip, though she felt no anger in her heart. after all, she was only a girl. "i don't want to stay in this poky little house. i'll go on with you, and live in your house instead." the next moment, to esther's unspeakable astonishment and dismay, both the boys had scrambled back into the carriage, and were clinging tightly to the seats, shrieking out to the coachman,-"drive on! drive on! this isn't the house! we're going to live with the bobby man!" esther stood perfectly aghast, unable either to speak or move. she did not know which impressed her most--the extraordinary behavior of her cousins, or their perfect fearlessness towards mr. trelawny, whom they treated without a particle of respect. his face was rather grim, though there was a humorous gleam in his eyes as he put out his long, strong arms, and hauled the obstreperous boys out of the carriage, amid much squealing, and kicking, and roars of laughter. it was all play, but a sort of play that esther did not understand in the least. with a boy held fast in each hand, mr. trelawny turned to the grave-faced little girl and said,-"i had meant to present these two young gentlemen to your mother myself, but i think the only thing i can do is to get away as fast as i can. perhaps they will come to their senses then;" and so saying, he made a sudden dive into the carriage, which had now been relieved of the luggage with which it had been piled. the boys were after him like a shot, and esther was in terror lest they should be run over before the carriage got safely away; but at last this was achieved, after much shouting and bawling and scrimmaging; and though both boys set off in pursuit like a pair of street arabs, the horses soon left them behind, and they returned panting and breathless to the little gate. [illustration: "how d'ye do? hadn't time to speak to you before."--page 43. _esther's charge._] "he's a jolly old buffer," said one of the boys; "i'd like to have gone with him." "i shall go and see him every day," remarked the other. "he said he lived close by." then they reached the gate once more, and held out their rather smutty paws to esther. "how d'ye do? hadn't time to speak to you before. are we all going to live in this funny little box of a place?" "it's our house," answered esther shyly, much more afraid of the boys than they of her; indeed they did not seem to know what fear or shyness was. "i think you'll find there's plenty of room inside; and we have a very nice little garden." "call this a garden!" said the boy, with a look round; "i call it a pocket-handkerchief!" then they both laughed, and esther laughed too, for there was something infectious about their high spirits, though they did talk in a fashion she had never heard before. "come and see mama first," she said, "and then i'll take you up-stairs to wash your hands, and then we'll have tea together. i daresay you are hungry." they followed her into the little drawing-room where mrs. st. aiden lay. on her face there was a look of some perplexity, for she had heard a great deal of shouting and laughing, and was in some anxiety to know what it could mean. now she was looking upon a couple of little boys, in plain dark-blue knickerbocker suits, both having round faces and curly hair, though that of the elder boy was dark brown, and his eyes were a bright hazel; whilst the younger was blue-eyed, his hair the color of burnished gold, and his face, when at rest, wore a sort of cherubic expression that went to his aunt's heart. "my dears, i am very glad to see you," she said. "come and kiss me, and tell me which is philip and which is percy." the boys looked at each other, and a gleam came into their eyes. "we'll kiss you to-day," said the elder one, advancing, and speaking with the air of one making a great concession, "because we've just come, and crump said we were to. but we're not going to kiss every day. that's like women and girls. boys don't kiss like that. so you won't expect it, you know." then the pair advanced simultaneously; each gave and received a kiss, and stood back again, the younger one wiping the salute from his face with the cuff of his jacket. "i hope you're not a kissing girl," he said in a low voice to esther, who stood behind lost in amaze, "because i shan't let you kiss me." "and which is philip and which is percy?" asked mrs. st. aiden again, more disposed to be afraid of the boys than they of her. "oh, we don't call ourselves by these affected names--nobody does," said the elder of the pair in lofty tones. "i suppose i'm philip, but really i hardly know. they all call me pickle, and him puck. you'll have to do the same." "i am not very fond of nicknames," said mrs. st. aiden, not quite pleased. "i shall call you by your right names whilst you are in my house." "call away; we shan't answer!" cried pickle, with one of the ringing laughs which took off just a little from the bluntness of his speech.--"come along, puck, we've done it all now.--oh, one thing more. crump sent his love to you, and was sorry he couldn't come down and see you. i think that's all." "but i don't understand. who is crump?" asked mrs. st. aiden rather breathlessly. "oh, only father," answered puck, as he sidled out at the door; and then making a dash across into the dining-room, he set up a great whoop of delight, for there was a splendid tea set out--chicken, and ham, and tarts, and devonshire cream, and several kinds of cake and jam; and the boys had scrambled on to their chairs in a twinkling, and were calling out to somebody to make haste and give them their tea, as they were just starving. "but you haven't washed your hands," said esther aghast. they contemplated their grubby little paws with great equanimity. "mine aren't dirty to speak of," said pickle. "mine are quite clean," asserted puck, with an angelic smile. "we're not like cats and girls, who are always washing," added pickle. "do give us our tea. we're so hungry and thirsty!" "but you haven't said grace!" said esther, whereupon the boys began to laugh. "grown-up people don't say grace now. it's not the fashion. but fire away if you want to. crump used to make us try, but we always burst out laughing in the middle, so we gave it up." esther said grace gravely, and the boys did not laugh that time. then she helped them to what they wanted, regarding them rather in the light of wild animals, upon whose next acts there was no depending. and yet it was rather interesting, and she wanted to know more about them and their odd ways. "why do you call your father crump?" she asked tentatively. "well, we have to call him something," said pickle, with his mouth full, and they both began to giggle. "it's my name," said puck, after a short pause. "i thought of it in bed one night. we laughed for nearly an hour afterwards. we've called him it ever since." "does he like it?" they stared at her round-eyed and amazed. "i don't know. we never asked him. we've always got some name for him. you've got to call people something." "why don't you call him father?" asked esther mildly; but at that question they both went off into fits of laughter, and she felt herself getting red without knowing why. "what's your name?" asked puck, when he had recovered himself; but his brother cut in by saying,-"you know it's esther--old bobby told us that." "so he did; and he said you were frightened at him, and that we should have to teach you better. fancy being frightened at an old buffer like that--a jolly one too!" esther sat in silent amaze. she knew they were talking of mr. trelawny, but she was dumfounded at their audacity, and it was rather disconcerting to hear that he was aware of her feelings towards him. she hoped that he took her silence for a grown-up reserve. "you mustn't call mr. trelawny names," she said. "he's quite an old gentleman, and you must treat him with respect." "i said he was a nice old buffer," said puck, as though after that nothing more could be expected of him. "but you call him 'old bobby,' and i can't think how you dare. it isn't at all respectful. i wonder he lets you." "well, he shouldn't play the bobby on us then," answered pickle. "he said he'd come to carry us off, and he marched us out of the station like a pair of prisoners. we had to call him bobby after that. i want to go and see his house. can we go up after tea?" esther shook her head. she was not prepared for such a move. "you'd better wait for another time for that," she said. "i'll show you our house when you're done with tea." "all right; but there isn't much to show, i should think. it's the funniest little box i was ever in. but perhaps we'll get some fun out of it, all the same. crump said the sea was quite near. that'll be jolly fun. i like the sea awfully." "i don't go there very often," said esther. "mama does not care about it. the coast is rather dangerous, you know." but both boys began to laugh, as they seemed to do at whatever she said; and esther let them finish their tea in silence, and then took them the round of the small premises. they liked their attic, which was a comfort; and they liked the stable and little coach-house, and the bit of paddock and orchard beyond; and they looked with great approval at the pine wood stretching upwards towards the craggy heights between them and the sea, where esther told them mr. trelawny's house stood. it could not be seen from there, but she showed them the path which led up to it and they cried, "jolly, jolly, jolly!" and hopped about from one foot to another, and esther wondered if it would be possible for them to go to that strange old house upon the summit of the crag, and not feel afraid of it. it was a comfort to esther that they were not unkind to her cat. they were rather disgusted that there was no dog belonging to the house; but they seemed kind-hearted boys, and left the cat in peace by the kitchen fire. they had been up so early that morning that they were sleepy before their usual bed-time; and esther was rather relieved when, at last, they were safely shut into their room for the night, having indignantly declined the offices of genefer as nursery-maid, saying that they could do everything for themselves and each other. esther showed them up to their room herself, half fascinated, half repelled by their odd words and ways. their parting good night, shouted through the door to her, was characteristic in the extreme. "we're going to call you tousle," one of them bawled through the key-hole; "you've got such a mop of hair hanging down, you know." chapter iii. an anxious charge. "how quiet they are!" thought esther, as she dressed herself next morning. "i daresay they are fast asleep still. they must be tired after that long journey yesterday. they shall sleep as long as they like this morning. i will tell genefer not to call them. they are funny boys, but i think i shall soon get fond of them. puck is so pretty, and looks as though he could be very good by himself. i hope we shall be happy together soon. i shall take care of them, and show them everything; and perhaps they will teach me some new games." genefer came in at this moment to brush out esther's mane of hair. the little girl had dispensed with other help at her toilet, but the great, thick, waving mass of curly hair was beyond her strength, and genefer took great pride in brushing and combing it. she was almost as proud of esther's hair as mrs. st. aiden herself. "o genefer," said the little girl, "i think we won't call the boys yet. they seem quite quiet, and i daresay they are asleep. we will let them have their sleep out this first morning." genefer made a sound between a snort and a laugh. "lord love you, miss, them boys have been up and out this two hours! they were off before ever i was down, and i'm no lie-a-bed. they had got the door opened and were away to the pine wood. old sam he saw them scuttling up the path like a pair of rabbits. there'll be no holding that pair, i can see. boys will be boys, as i always did say." esther's face was full of anxiety and trouble. "o genefer! and they don't know their way about a bit! and all the holes, and crags, and rocks on the other side! perhaps some harm will come to them, and i promised to take care of them! oh, please, let me go, and i'll run after them and see if i can't fetch them home! they said something about the sea last night. suppose they fall into one of the pools and get drowned!" but genefer only gave another snort. "you take my word for it. miss esther, them boys isn't born to be drowned. now don't you worrit so, child. they'll be all right. that sort never comes to any harm. you might as well go looking for a needle in a haystack, as for a boy out on the spree, as they call it. you go down and get your breakfast, and take up your mama's. we'll have them down again safe and sound, and as hungry as hunters, before you're done. it's not a bit of good your worriting after them. they can take good care of themselves, as one can see with half an eye." esther always submitted to genefer's judgment, but it was with an anxious heart that she went down-stairs, and gazed up at the pine-clad hillside, hoping to see some signs of the returning boys. but there was nothing visible, and she went into the dining-room with a grave face, feeling as though she had somehow been unfaithful to her charge. breakfast at the hermitage was at nine o'clock, and esther always took up the tray to her mother's room. mrs. st. aiden seldom came down-stairs before noon, though she talked of getting up earlier now that the summer was coming. but esther was fond of waiting on her, and she liked being waited upon. afterwards esther would eat her solitary breakfast, with a book propped up in front of her on the table; and she never thought of being lonely, especially as smut always sat on a chair beside her, and had his saucer of milk replenished each time she poured out her own tea afresh. but to-day esther did not get her book; she was much too anxious, and kept rising and walking over to the window every few minutes, rather to the discomfort of the placid cat, who could not think what had come to his little mistress that day. esther was thankful that her mother had not seemed much alarmed by the news that the boys had gone out for a walk before breakfast. "boys like that sort of thing, i suppose," she said. "their father said they were active and independent, and that we must not make ourselves anxious over them needlessly." then she had taken up her letters and begun to read them; and esther stole away, wishing she could be as calm and tranquil over the disappearance of the boys as other people were. "i'm sure they have gone up to the crag," she kept saying to herself, "and they may have got into some awful place, and all sorts of things may be happening!" esther could not have explained to genefer or anybody grown up her horror and misgiving respecting the vicinity of the crag; but it was a very real terror to her, and it had become greater since she had heard bertie's account of the electric eye, and other awful things which were likely to be going on there now. mr. trelawny had an assistant now, and was going to do still stranger things. suppose he wanted blood, or brains, or something human for his experiments! she shivered at the bare thought. suddenly she jumped up with a stifled cry. through the open window she heard the sound of steps and voices; but before she had time to reach it again, the sunlight was darkened by the approach of a tall figure, and esther saw that the missing boys were being led home by mr. earle, who had his hand upon the collar of each, as though he had found them a slippery pair of customers, and was resolved that they should not escape him. "here are your boys, miss esther," he remarked, walking in and depositing each of them upon the chair set ready at table for him. "i hope you have not been anxious about this pair of young rascals; and will you tell your mother, with my compliments, that i am ready to begin regular study with you all any day she may like to send word! you need not wait till next week unless you like." there was rather a grim smile upon mr. earle's face, and the round spectacles glinted in the sunshine till esther thought they must certainly be "electric eyes"--though what electric eyes were she had not the faintest notion, which, however, did not tend to allay her uneasiness. "thank you, sir," she said rather faintly; "i will tell mother." then she plucked up her courage to add, "may i give you a cup of coffee after your walk?" "thank you; but i have breakfasted already," answered mr. earle with a smile, which made esther just a little less afraid of him. "we keep early hours up at the crag; and a good thing too for these young sinners!" and he threw a scathing look at the boys, who were sitting marvelously quiet in their places, looking exceedingly demure, not to say sheepish, though they stole glances across the table at each other, showing that the spirit of mischief within them was only temporarily in abeyance. mr. earle nodded to them all and walked off through the window, and esther looked curiously at her two charges as she poured out the coffee. "where did you go?" she asked. "why, up to old bobby's of course!" answered pickle, his mouth full of bread and butter. "why can't we live up there, instead of in this little band-box? it's no end of a jolly place. do you go often?" "not very," answered esther with a little shiver. "that's what he said," remarked puck indistinctly, "but you'll have to come oftener now." "why?" "oh, because he said we might come as often as you brought us. i want to go every day." "i don't think mr. trelawny would like that." "oh, he wouldn't mind. he said he didn't mind how many visits you paid him. he said little girls were worth twice as much as boys, but that's all tommy rot." esther's eyes opened rather wider. "i don't know what tommy rot is," she said. puck burst out laughing. "she doesn't know much, does she, pickle?" he cried. "i wonder why old bobby likes girls better than boys?" "perhaps they're nicer to eat," suggested pickle; and the two boys went off into fits of laughter, whilst esther shook silently, wondering if that could have anything to do with it. to judge by their appetites, the boys were none the worse for their morning's walk--they put away the food in a fashion that astonished esther; but as she sat watching them at their meal, she noticed some very queer marks upon their clothes, which she did not think had been there last night--stains, and little holes, looking rather like burns; and presently she asked,-"what have you been doing to yourselves?" and pointed to the marks. puck began to giggle, and pickle answered boldly,-"oh, i suppose that must have been some of the stuff that smelt so nasty in the tanks." "what tanks?" "don't you know? haven't you ever been down there? in that jolly old cave under old bobby's house." esther felt a cold thrill creeping through her. "i don't know what you mean," she said faintly. "well, you must be a precious ninny!" laughed pickle, with a good-humored contempt; "fancy living here all these years, and not knowing that!" "we haven't been here so very long," said esther. "well, you've been here longer than we have anyhow. and we've found it out already." she was shivering a little, yet was consumed by curiosity. "tell me about it," she said. pickle was quite ready to do that. he had appeased his first hunger, and he loved to hear himself talk, especially when he had an appreciative audience; and esther's eager and half-frightened face bespoke the keenness of her interest. "well, you see, we woke up early, and didn't see any fun in lying in bed; so we got up and dressed and went out, and there was the path up through the wood, and we knew old bobby's house was somewhere up there. so it seemed a good plan just to go and look him up, you know." "we often go out early at home," added puck, "and look people up. sometimes we wake them up throwing things into their windows, or at them, if they're shut. sometimes they throw water at us, and that's awful fun. one old fellow did that, and we went and got the garden-hose, and his window was wide open, and we just soused his room with water. you should have seen him rushing to shut it up! but there isn't always a hose and pump handy," and he looked pathetic for a moment. "well," continued pickle, "we got up the hill easy enough, and it was a jolly place. we forgot all about going to the house, there was such lots to see and explore. that was how we found the cave--poking about all over. there are no end of little crevasses and things--places you can swarm down and climb up again. we had a fine time amongst them; and then we found this one. we climbed down the chimney, but there are two more ways of getting in. old bobby came by one, and turned us out by the other." "i've heard him speak of an underground place," said esther in a low voice. "he said he'd show it to me, but i didn't want to go." puck stared at her in amaze. "why on earth not?" he asked. "i thought it would be dark," she said, not caring to explain further; and both boys laughed. "it is rather dark; but not so very when you've got used to it," said pickle, "and boys don't mind that sort of thing. i don't know where the light gets in; but there are cracks, he said. anyhow we got down a queer, narrow hole like a chimney, and dropped right down into a sort of huge fireplace--big enough to cook half a dozen men." "o pickle!" "well, it was. i expect, perhaps, they did cook men there in the olden times--when people were persecuted, you know, and they had places for torturing them," remarked pickle, who had a boy's relish for horrors. "that sort of place would be just the very thing. and afterwards smugglers had it, and i daresay they murdered the excisemen in there if they got a chance. i never saw such queer marks as there were on the stones--did you, puck? i should think they must be human blood. you know that won't wash out if it has once been spilt when there's a murder. i've read lots of stories about that. if you only cut yourself, it doesn't seem to leave a stain; but that's different from murder." esther's face was as white as her frock. pickle enjoyed the impression he was producing. "well, i don't know what they use the cave for now, but something very queer anyhow. i never saw such odd things as they have got; it was just like the places you read of about wizards and magicians and the things they do. and there were tanks with lids, and we took off the lids and looked in, and they did smell. we put our fingers into some of them, and they smelt worse. and one of them burnt me!" and pickle held up a couple of bandaged fingers as though in proof of his assertion. "old bobby tied them up," said puck. "he said it served pickle right for meddling. he was in a rage with us for getting in and looking at his things. i expect he's got his enemies pickling in those tanks. i expect he's lured them to his cave and murdered them, and hidden them away, so that the stuff will eat them all up, and nobody will find their bodies. that's what i should like to do to all the nasty people when i'm a man. when you have a sort of castle on a crag, with underground caves to it, you can do just as you like, you know." "how did mr. trelawny find you?" asked esther, who was all in a tremor at this confirmation of her own suspicions--suspicions she had scarcely dared to admit even to herself. "well, i'm coming to that," said pickle; "it wasn't very long after we'd been down. we heard a funny scrunching noise somewhere up overhead, and then a sort of hollow echoing sound. we couldn't make it out at first, but soon we knew what it must be. it was steps coming down-stairs--tramp, tramp, tramp--nearer and nearer." "o pickle! weren't you frightened?" "well, not exactly; but we thought we'd better hide in case it might be smugglers, or murderers, or something. there wasn't time to get up the chimney again, and i'm not sure if you can get out that way, though you can get down easy enough. anyhow it would take some time. so we crouched behind a big stone and waited; and there were two men coming down talking to each other, and their voices echoed up and down and made such funny noises; and when they got down into the cave, it was old bobby himself, and that owl fellow who brought us home." "mr. earle," said esther. "earle or owl--what's the odds? i shall call him the owl; he's just like one with those round gig-lamps. well, they came down together, and then, of course, we knew it was all right; so out we jumped with a screech--and i say, puck, didn't we scare them too?" both boys went off into fits of laughter at the recollection of the start they had given their seniors, and then pickle took up the thread of the tale. "but old bobby was in a jolly wax too. he boxed both of us on the ears, and told us we'd no business there--" "he was afraid we'd found out something about the pickled corpses," interrupted puck. "people never like that sort of thing found out; but, of course, we shouldn't go telling about it--at least only to a few special people. "he went on at us ever so long, calling us little trespassers and spies, and wondering we had not killed ourselves; and then he led us along a funny sort of passage, and out through a door in the hillside right under the house. but they hadn't come in that way. they had come down a lot of steps; so we know that the cave is just under the house, and that old bobby and the owl get to it by a private way of their own. but i could find the door we went out by easily, though there is a great bush in front of it, and you can't see it when you've got a few paces off." "and there's a path right down to the sea," cried puck. "it's a regular smugglers' den. he got less cross when we were out, and told us a lot of things about smugglers. but he said we weren't ever to come there again--at least not alone. he said you might bring us, if we'd give our word of honor to obey you. he seemed to want you to come, tousle. i'm sure i don't know why, for girls are no good in jolly places like that." "i don't think i want to go," answered esther, putting it as mildly as possible; "i don't like underground places." but she wanted the boys to enjoy themselves; and after breakfast she asked leave to take them as far as the fishing village that nestled under the crags upon which mr. trelawny's house stood. of course there was another way to it along the road, which, though longer, was easier walking than climbing the hill and scrambling down the crags on the other side. the boys were willing to go the less adventurous way, as they had explored the cliff already, and esther felt more light of heart, thinking that along the road they could not come to any harm. but she was soon to realize that some boys find facilities for mischief and pranks wherever they are. the mercurial spirits of her charges kept her in a constant flutter of anxiety. they would get under horses' feet, climb up into strange carts to chat with the carters, jump over brooks, heedless of wet feet, chase the beasts at pasture as fearlessly as they chased butterflies, and make the acquaintance of every dog they met, whether amiable or the reverse. they even insisted upon taking an impromptu ride upon a pony out at grass, and enjoyed a gallop round the field on its bare back. esther, whose life until recently had been passed mainly in garrison towns, and who had not acquired the fearlessness of the country child, looked on in wondering amaze at these pranks, and listened with a sense of wonder and awe as the boys described their exploits at their own home, the things they did, and the things they meant to do. down by the shore there was no holding the pair. they tore about the little quay and landing place in the greatest excitement. they got into the boats lying beneath, and scrambled from one to the other, rocking them in a fashion that sent esther's heart into her mouth. she felt like a hen with ducklings to rear. she had not courage to follow the boys into the swaying boats, and could only stand watching them with anxious eyes, begging them to be careful, and not to fall into the water. "bless your heart, missie!" said an old fisherman whom esther knew, because he often brought them fish and lobsters in his basket fresh from the sea, "they won't come to no harm. bless you! boys allers will be boys, and 'tisn't no good fur to try and hold them back. them's not the kind that hurts. you sit here and watch them comfortable like. they're as happy as kings, they are." the old man spoke in the soft, broad way which esther was getting to understand now, but which puzzled her at first, as it would puzzle little people if i were to write it down the way the old man spoke it. she rather liked the funny words and turns of expression now, and she enjoyed sitting by old master pollard, as she called him, watching the boys and listening to his tales, which he was always ready to tell when he had a listener. the boys had a glorious morning, paddling and shrimping with some of the fisher lads of the place. they only returned to esther when they were growing ravenous for their dinner. she was glad to get them home quickly, driven by the pangs of hunger; and she told them that master pollard had said he would take them out fishing one of these days, and show them how the lobster-pots were set, and various other mysteries. esther knew something about lobster-pots, having been with the old man to visit his sometimes; so she rose in the estimation of her cousins, especially as some of the lads had told them that "old pollard were once a smuggler himself, long ago, when he was a lad," though this esther was disposed indignantly to deny. "well, i hope he was, anyhow," said puck; "i shall ask him to tell us all about it. i wonder if he knows all about the cave, and whether they pickled corpses up there in his time." the boys would have gone down to the shore again after their early dinner, but their aunt had another suggestion to make. "mrs. polperran has been in, and wants you all to go to the rectory for the afternoon, and have tea in the garden. i said i would send you all, so that you can make friends with your little playfellows." "who is mrs. poll-parrot?" asked pickles, with a sly look in his eyes. "polperran, dear. mr. polperran is our clergyman, and his children are esther's little friends, and will be your friends too." "the rev. poll-parrot," said puck under his breath; and then both boys went off into fits of laughter. "i don't think you ought to speak like that, puck," said mrs. st. aiden, with mild reproof. "you must remember he is a clergyman, and you must be respectful." puck's blue eyes twinkled. it did not seem as though he had very much respectfulness in his composition; but he did not reply. both the boys treated the gentle invalid with more consideration than they seemed disposed to bestow upon anybody else. they did nothing more free and easy than to dub her "aunt saint," and though mrs. st. aiden suggested that aunt alicia would be better, she did not stand out against the other appellation. "you look like a saint on a church window," pickle remarked judicially, "so it seems to fit you better;" and mrs. st. aiden smiled indulgently, for it was less trouble to give way than to insist. it was with some trepidation that esther conducted her young charges to the rectory that day. the little polperrans had been so very well brought up, and were so "proper behaved"--as genefer called it--themselves, that she was fearful of the effect that might be produced upon them by the words and ways of the newly-imported pair. mrs. polperran herself came out to welcome them upon their approach, and pickle, when introduced, went boldly up to her with outstretched hand. "how do you do, mrs. poll-parrot? is this the cage you live in?" now mrs. polperran was just a little hard of hearing, so that she only caught the drift of the speech, and not the exact words, and she smiled and nodded her head. "yes, dear; this is my house, and that is the garden where you will often come and play, i hope; and there is an orchard beyond with a swing in it; and here are your little friends all ready to make your acquaintance," and she indicated her three children, who had been close beside her all the time. prissy's face was rather red, and bertie had his handkerchief tucked into his mouth in a very odd way, whilst milly was looking divided between the desire to laugh and the fear of prissy; however, mrs. polperran did not observe these small signs, but told her children to take care of their little guests, and sailed back to the house herself, where there was always work to be done. "pretty poll! pretty poll! scratch a poll, polly!" cried puck softly, capering on the grass-plot as the lady disappeared. "you are a very rude little boy," said prissy with an air of displeasure and a glance at esther, as much as to ask her why she did not reprove such impertinence; but bertie made a dash at puck, seized him by the hand, and cried out,-"come along! come along! oh, won't we have some fun now!" immediately the three boys dashed off together full tilt, and milly, after a wavering glance in the direction of her sister and esther, rushed headlong after them. the elder pair were left for the moment alone, and prissy looked inquiringly into esther's flushed face. "i don't think your cousins are very nice boys," she remarked with some severity; "i should think they have been very badly brought up." esther felt a little tingle of vexation at hearing her cousins thus criticised, though after all she was not quite sure that she could deny prissy's charge. "they have no mother, you see," she said. "ah, well, perhaps that does make a difference. fathers often spoil their children, when there is no mother; i've heard mama say so herself," she said. "you will have to be a little mother to them, esther, and teach them better. i'm not going to hear my mother called names, and i shall tell them so." prissy proceeded to do this with great firmness when the children met a little later. pickle listened to her speech with most decorous gravity, while puck's pretty face dimpled all over with laughter. "pretty polly! pretty polly!--doesn't she talk well!" he exclaimed; and to prissy's infinite astonishment and dismay, milly and bertie rolled to and fro in helpless mirth, whilst pickle looked up in her flushed face and said,-"you know little poll-parrots are called lovebirds. it isn't pretty-behaved at all to get so angry about it.--scratch her poll, tousle; perhaps that'll put her in a better temper. why, she's sticking her feathers up all over; she'll peck somebody next!" and pickle made a show of drawing back in fear, whilst his admirers became perfectly limp with laughter. it was the first time the younger pair had ever tasted of the sweets of liberty. without exactly knowing it, they had been under prissy's rule from their babyhood upwards. it had been as natural to them to obey her as to obey their mother, and they had come to regard her almost in the light of a grown-up person whose word must, as a matter of course, be law. and yet the germs of rebellion must surely have been in their hearts, or they would hardly have sprung up so quickly. "we never have any fun at home," said bertie, in a subdued whisper, when the boys and milly had had their tea and had taken themselves off to the farthest corner of the orchard; "whenever we think of anything nice to do, prissy always says we mustn't." "why do you tell her?" asked puck, and at that bertie and milly exchanged glances. it had never occurred to them as possible to keep anything from prissy. "we mean to have some fun here, puck and i," said pickle, "and we shan't go and tell everything beforehand. we tell when it's done. it's a much better way." milly and bertie sat open-mouthed in admiration at such audacity and invention. "i never thought of that!" said milly softly. "we thought of it a long time ago," said puck, with a touch of pride and patronage in his voice. "well," said pickle suddenly, "you don't seem such a bad pair of youngsters; so suppose we let you know when we've got our next plan on hand, and you come too." "oh!" cried milly, and "oh!" cried bertie. a look of slow rapture dawned upon their faces. they realized that a time of glorious emancipation was at hand, when they might be able to get into mischief like other happy little boys and girls. chapter iv. the sweets of freedom. "you can do as you like, milly; but i shall go!" small herbert set his foot to the ground with a gesture of immovable firmness. milly watched him with admiring eyes, still halting between two opinions. "oh, but, bertie, isn't it naughty?" "i don't care if it is. i'm going." it was like hoisting the signal of revolt--revolt from the rule of the elder sister. they both knew that prissy would never go, or let them go either, if she knew of the plan. and to slip away unknown to her, though not a difficult matter upon a saturday afternoon, would mark an epoch in the life of this pair of properly-brought-up children, as both instinctively felt, though they could not have expressed themselves upon the subject. "it's our holiday afternoon," said bertie stoutly, his square face looking squarer than ever. "nobody's told us never to go out of the orchard; we're allowed to know pickle and puck. they say they're going out for a lark on saturday afternoon, and i'm going with them." milly's eyes were growing brighter and brighter; she looked with open admiration upon herbert. he was younger than herself, but at this moment he seemed the older of the pair. "bertie," she asked, in a voice that was little above a whisper, "what _is_ a lark?" bertie hesitated a moment. "it's something we don't ever get here," he answered, with a note of resentment in his voice; "but pickle and puck know all about it, and i mean to learn too." "o bertie!--and so will i!" "that's right. i'd like you to come too. i don't see why you should be a little cockney any more than i!" "o bertie! what's that?" "well, i don't just exactly know; but it's something i heard father say." "what did he say?" "well, i'll tell you. i was in his study learning my latin declension; and i was behind the curtain, and i think he'd forgotten i was there. mother came in, and they talked, and i stopped my ears and was learning away, when i heard them say something about puck and pickle. then i listened." "what did they say?" "mother was saying she was afraid they were naughty, rude boys, and would teach us mischief; and then father laughed and said he didn't much mind if they did." "o bertie!" "he did, i tell you," answered bertie, swelling himself out, as though he felt his honor called in question. "they talked a good while, and i couldn't understand it all; but i heard father say he'd rather i were a bold cornish boy, even if i did get into mischief sometimes, than grow up a little timid cockney." "i wonder what he meant," said milly in an awestruck tone; "i never heard of a cockney before." "i think it must mean something like a girl," said bertie, with a note of perhaps unconscious contempt in his voice, "for mother said something, and then father said, 'you see, you were brought up a cockney yourself, my dear, and you can do as you like about the girls; but i want herbert to be a true cornish boy, and he doesn't seem to be one yet.' that's what he said; and now i'm going to find out what it is to be a cornish boy, and i'm going to be one. you can go on being a cockney if you like." "but i won't!" cried milly rebelliously; "i'll be a cornish boy too!" "you can't be a boy, but you can come along with us if you like," said bertie patronizingly; "pickle and puck said you could, though puck did say he thought girls cried and spoiled things after a bit." "i don't cry!" answered milly sturdily; and, indeed, she had most of her father in her of the three polperran children. they had been brought up under the rule of a mother who had very strict ideas of training and discipline, and had lived the greater part of her life in towns, so that country ways would always be more or less strange to her. they had never run wild, even now that they had returned to their father's native county, and were in the midst of moors and crags, and almost within sound of the sea. they still kept to their prim little walks along the road, and if they played out of doors, it was always in the orchard--never on the open moorland, or by the rocks and pools of the shore. prissy was really a little copy of her mother, and she had no taste for anything strange, and was rather afraid of solitude and of the boom of the sea. so she kept her younger pair well in hand, and they had never seriously thought of rebellion until the arrival upon the scene of pickle and puck. from that moment the horizon of their lives seemed to widen. here were two boys who actually dared to call their mother mrs. poll-parrot to her face, and their father the reverend poll! they habitually spoke of their own father as crump, and had dubbed the redoubtable mr. trelawny "old bobby"! these were flights of boldness beyond the wildest dreams of the little polperrans. at first they had been almost overcome with fear, but familiarity had changed that feeling into one of growing wonder and admiration. for these boys were not only bold in word--they were daring beyond expression in deed. already they had explored some of the hidden mysteries of the crag; they had been out lobster-catching with old pollard; and they had tumbled into one of the deep pools in the rocks, and had been hauled out dripping by a fisherman who luckily chanced to be near at hand. now they were learning to swim, mr. trelawny having decided that that must be the next step in their education; and although they had not had many lessons, pickle could already keep himself afloat several strokes, and puck was not far behind. and all this had been done in three weeks, as well as other minor acts, of which the heroes themselves thought simply nothing, though bertie and milly were filled with admiration. prissy disapproved of them utterly and entirely; nor was this very difficult to understand. she gave herself the sort of airs which pickle and puck openly ridiculed. they persisted in calling her "pretty polly," and she retaliated by calling them rude, ill-mannered boys, and openly pitying esther for the infliction of their company. "if prissy would be nice to them, they would be nice to her," milly remarked sagely once, "and then things would be better. but they always get quarreling, and then it's no good trying to settle anything. everything goes wrong." "that's because prissy is such a cockney," cried bertie, airing his new word with satisfaction; "esther would never make half the fuss about every little thing. pickle and puck like esther, though they do laugh at her rather. but they won't have either esther or prissy with them when we have our lark on saturday afternoon. they'll only take you and me." "well, i'll go!" cried milly, throwing to the winds all allegiance to prissy; "i want to see what a lark is like. i'm tired of being a cockney." "hurrah!" cried bertie, feeling all the glow that follows a bold stand against domestic tyranny; "we'll all have a regular lark together, and we'll tell father all about it afterwards. he won't scold, and then mother can't." saturday afternoon was the children's holiday. at the hermitage lessons went on regularly now on every morning of the week, and five afternoons; and it was the same at the rectory, where father and mother taught their children, or superintended their lessons when not able to be with them the whole time. but on saturday afternoons all were free to do as they pleased. prissy always went with her mother to give out the books at the lending library, of which she was practically librarian, and very proud of her position. esther was always busy at home with little household duties, which she had less time for now during the week. this left the younger children quite free to follow out their own plans, and so far they had spent their holiday afternoon together. once they had played in the orchard, and once they had gone down to the shore, where the pair from the hermitage had displayed to their admiring companions the progress they had made in the art of swimming. "i mean to ask father to let me learn to swim too," said herbert, whose ideas were soaring to untold heights. "i'm sure that would be one way of growing to be a cornish boy. all the boys and men here can swim." pickle and puck, however, had no intention of wasting all half-holidays in such peaceful and unadventurous fashion, and they had given out very decidedly that on the following saturday they should have "a lark." they had not further specified what form this lark was to take, but had merely declared their willingness that herbert and milly should share it, provided they wouldn't go and talk of it beforehand. "we don't want miss prig sticking her nose into our business anyhow," said pickle, using a second name they had recently evolved for prissy. "we'll go where we like, and do what we like, and when we get home we'll tell them all about it. that's what puck and i always do, and it's much the best plan. grown-ups are always worrying after you if you say a word. they'll be much happier if they think we are safe here in the orchard." it had been a moot point all the week with bertie and milly whether or not they should dare to join in the projected "lark"; but bertie's resolution was now irrevocably taken, and milly threw prudence and subservience to the four winds, and swore adhesion to the new league of liberty. they met in the rectory orchard, whither pickle and puck were supposed to be going to spend the saturday afternoon. esther was at ease about them there, for she had a belief that in that house everything went by routine, and that herbert and milly would restrain their comrades from any overt acts of independence and daring. there were rabbits to be visited, and cows to be driven in from the glebe pasture, and various other mild delights which always seemed quite exciting to her. she let her charges go with an easy mind; and as for prissy, it never so much as occurred to her that after her admonition, "mind you are very good!" milly or bertie would venture to dream of such a thing as leaving the premises unknown to anybody in the house, and without obtaining leave. pickle and puck arrived, brimming over with excitement and the delights of anticipation. "where is everybody?" they asked at once. "they're all out," answered milly, skipping about. "there's nobody to stop us or say 'don't.' what are we going to do? have you decided?" "of course we have. we're going to get a boat, and go out to that island where those jolly rocks are, and where nobody lives. we've got some jolly cakes and things in this basket. we shall light a fire of dried seaweed, and be castaways from a wreck, and have a scrumptious time till it's time to go home again." bertie's eyes grew round with anticipation. milly jumped into the air with delight; but then suddenly looking grave, she exclaimed,-"but how shall we get there?" "in a boat, of course." "but then we shall have to have a man with us, and that costs such a lot of money." "come along, silly-billy!" cried pickle with good-humored scorn; "you'll soon see how we do things, puck and i. a man, indeed! as though we'd have a great lumbering gowk to spoil all our fun, and have to pay him too! no fear!" pickle took a short cut across country towards the shore. it was safer than the road in many ways, and the path he selected did not lead to the fishing village, but to a little cove half a mile away to the right. milly danced beside him chattering gleefully. "o pickle, can you row yourself?" "of course i can. puck and i rowed old pollard's boat about for him the other day amongst the lobster-pots. anybody can row--at least anybody with any sense. you only have to put the oar in the water and pull it out again. even a girl could do that." "we've never been let try," said milly. "we hardly ever go in a boat. mother doesn't like it. sometimes father takes us out on a fine evening, but not often. he's busy, and mother generally thinks it too cold or damp or something." "i'm glad i wasn't brought up in a poll-parrot's cage," was pickle's remark; "your mother seems worse than aunt saint, and she's pretty silly about boys." "i believe mother was a cockney," said milly gravely. "perhaps that is why, though i don't quite know what a cockney is." pickle laughed, but they were going too fast for much conversation. it was rough walking, but they did not want to lose time. "here we are!" shouted pickle, as they came suddenly upon a little cleft in the fringe of moorland they were skirting, and could see right down to the shining sea. "here's the place, and here's the old boat. i've settled with the old fellow for it, and he promised to leave the oars and things in all ready. oh, jolly! jolly! jolly! now we'll have a lark!" this little creek was an offshoot of the bay, and a small tumble-down hut stood just beneath the overhanging crags. a boat lay rocking in the water, moored to a ring in the rock, and the owner had been true to his promise, and had left the oars and rudder and stretchers all in place. with shouts of ecstasy the children tumbled in. this was something like independence! not a creature was there to say them nay. they were afloat in a boat of their very own, about to row over to that enchanted and enchanting island which millie and bertie had often gazed at wonderingly and wistfully, but had never dreamed of exploring in their own persons. the boat was a safe old tub, heavy and cumbersome, but steady in the water. the sea was very smooth, and the tide was falling, so that the efforts of the youthful rowers to get clear of the creek were crowned with success, although pickle and puck had only very elementary ideas as to rowing. bertie took the rudder, and as he had sometimes steered the boat when his father rowed them about the bay, he had some idea of keeping a straight course, and avoiding rocks and buoys. the island looked quite near to shore from the cliffs above; but it seemed rather a long way off when the boat was on the water, slowly traveling out towards it. pickle and puck soon cast off their coats and waistcoats, and the drops stood upon their brows; but they would not be beaten, and pulled on manfully, though they did feel as though the island must be behaving in a very shabby manner, and retiring gradually from them as they approached. still, the delight of being out in a boat by themselves made amends for much, and milly, who had taken her place in the bows, screamed aloud with joy and excitement. she looked over the edge, and cried out that there were the loveliest things to be seen along the bottom. she would have been happy enough on the water the whole afternoon; but the two rowers were very glad when, after prolonged and gallant efforts on their part, they at last felt the keel of the boat grating upon the longed-for shore. "i'm hot and thirsty, i know!" cried pickle; "i shall have a swim first thing. there's a jolly pool. i shall just swim about there, i can swim across it, i believe, and it isn't deep anywhere." "i'll come too!" cried puck; "i'm just sweating all over!" "prissy says people oughtn't to bathe when they're hot," remarked milly doubtfully; but pickle only laughed and said,-"pretty polly talks an awful lot of rubbish. the hotter you are the jollier it is. you come along too, bert." bertie drew his breath hard. this was indeed freedom! milly would have loved to join the party, but desisted from motives of propriety. she had not brought her bathing dress, and, indeed, she was hardly ever allowed to use it at any time. so she went off to explore the wonders of the island, leaving the boys to enjoy their bath and dry themselves in the hot sunshine afterwards. "i wish i were a boy too," she said to herself; "but anyhow i won't be a little cockney, even if i am a girl." certainly the island was a most entrancing place. there were pools where sea-anemones displayed their flower-like beauty, and others lined with green seaweed that looked like moss, where little fishes swam about, and shrimps turned somersaults, and limpets stuck tight to the side, as though a part of the solid rock. then on the top of the island, where the water never came, a coarse kind of grass grew, and some little flowers and sea-poppies; and milly found many treasures in the way of tiny shells, which would make lovely decorations for the doll's house at home. she could have enjoyed herself for hours like this; but the boys turned up before very long, rosy and wet-headed from their bath, and declared they must have something to eat quick, and that they must make a fire and boil their very tiny kettle, just for the sake of feeling that they really were castaways upon a desert island. "i've found some water that isn't salt!" cried milly; "it's in a deep pool above high-water mark. it must be rain-water, i suppose; but it's quite nice, for i drank some." and pickle gave a shout of joy, for the boys were terribly thirsty, and though they had provided themselves with a kettle and some tea, they had never thought of bringing water. puck said that sea-water boiled would be sure to be quite nice, for boiling was sure to take the salt out of it somehow. milly, however, knew better, and was proud of her find; and she and puck ran off to fill the kettle, whilst pickle and bertie set to gathering dry seaweed, and putting it in a hole in the rocks which was rather like a fire-grate, and over which they could easily put on the kettle to boil. it was tremendously exciting and interesting work--the sort of play the rectory children had never indulged in before, though they had secretly longed after it. [illustration: "pickle soon had a merry little fire burning."--page 95. _esther's charge._] "i'm the captain, and you're the bo'sun, bertie," explained pickle; "puck's the cabin-boy, and milly's a passenger. everybody else has been drowned dead, and we've been cast ashore on the island. so we have to light a fire as a signal to any passing ship to come and take us off." "oh, but we don't want to be taken off!" shrieked milly; "we want to stay all the afternoon! if they see our fire perhaps they'll come too soon. we don't want that." however, pickle decreed that this risk must be run, as they must have their tea, and all castaways lighted a fire when they could. he had matches ready, and very soon the dry seaweed kindled, and a merry little fire was soon burning in the hole. it was not long before the kettle boiled, and very proud was milly of being permitted to put in the tea, and officiate at the dispensing of the liquid. they had only one mug, and some lumps of sugar, and no milk; but that mattered very little. castaways could not expect luxuries, and the cakes were excellent. bertie was in rampant spirits. this was true liberty, and he was eager for remaining on the island permanently. there was a hole on the other side where they could sleep upon a bed of dried seaweed; and then in the mornings they could bathe in the pool, and he could learn to swim, and milly could cook their food, and they would catch fish, and crabs, and shrimps, and live like princes. puck was rather taken by the idea. "we shouldn't have any lessons then with the old owl," he remarked. "i don't like lessons. it's such a waste of time, when one might be having fun. i can't see what good lessons are to anybody. i asked crump once if he remembered the dates of all the kings and queens, and he said he was afraid he didn't, though he could have said them off pat when he was my age. if one may forget everything as soon as one grows up, what's the use of making such a fuss about learning them?" "crump says it trains the mind to learn," said pickle, jumping up; "but i should think living on an island and doing everything for oneself would train it much more. let's go and see the hole, bert. p'r'aps we won't stay to-day--we've not brought quite enough things; but we might collect them here for a bit, and then when we've got enough we might come over, and let the boat go adrift, and live like cave-men as long as we liked. it would do for our city of refuge, you know," and he looked across at puck, who capered in great glee. "of course, of course, of course!" he shouted; "we ought to have a city of refuge!" "what's that?" asked bertie eagerly. "oh, it's all in the bible," answered puck. "we found it one day, and told crump; and we asked if we might have one, and he said yes, if we could find it; and so we made it. it was out on the stable roof--such a jolly place!--no avenger of blood could ever get up there. crump did try once; but he stuck fast, and we sat and roared at him. it was a fine city of refuge. we always went there when people were angry. once we were up there nearly all day; and if we'd had more gingerbread we'd never have come down till they'd promised not to punish us. but miss masters sat at the bottom of the ladder that time, and she whipped us when we had to come down. that was what i call being real mean. what's the good of a city of refuge if the avenger of blood sits waiting for you at the bottom of the ladder? we asked crump to tell her never to do it again, but i don't know if he ever did. soon after that we came here, and the old owl teaches us instead." "and you haven't got a city of refuge here?" asked the breathless milly. "no; but i think we shall want one," said pickle seriously. "there's something about old bobby and the owl that i don't quite like. they can be very jolly; but they seem to think they're going to have it very much their own way. i don't like giving in to a pair of old fogies like that. i think this island might come in very useful." "prissy could never find us here!" cried milly under her breath; "we could do the loveliest things! oh, do let us have a city of refuge!" they explored the island with breathless interest. it seemed an excellent place for their design. there was no danger of its ever being covered at high tide; there was a rent in one side, not quite a cave, but a deep fissure, which would give protection from wind and some shelter from rain, and prove an excellent place of concealment. there was the big pool for bathing in, and little pools for keeping their treasures in the way of anemones and other sea-water creatures. and though the tides might wash away the old treasures, there would be new ones deposited instead, and altogether it seemed a most desirable sort of place. "we'll collect things here," said pickle with decision. "that was the worst of our other city of refuge; there was no place to keep anything. we had just to carry up with us what we wanted, and unless we could get down into the house without being seen we couldn't get anything more. once jim, the stable-boy, brought us some apples; but he didn't generally know when we were up there. we'll lay in a regular store of things, and then if they get cross we can come here and stop for a week. they'll be so frightened by that time that they'll never think of being angry when we get back, if we don't stay here always." "are you sure?" asked milly eagerly. "i feel as though mother would get angrier and angrier the longer we stayed away." but pickle looked immensely wise. "no, it isn't like that," he said; "they begin by getting angrier and angrier, but then they get frightened, and when they're just as frightened as they can be, then if you go back they don't scold--at least hardly at all. they're only all in a tremble lest you've got wet or something like that--as if one were a cat. it's very stupid of them, but it's very convenient for us. you get more fun and less scolding that way." "o pickle! how do you know?" "oh, we've tried it so often, and with different nurses and governesses, and with granny and crump. we know all about that sort of thing. crump was the worst to reckon on. he would sometimes say very little that day, but take it out of you next. but then crump was crump, and one never minded much what he did. i wish we had him here now." "would he let you have a city of refuge out here?" asked milly wonderingly. "of course he would. crump isn't like a pack of silly women, who always think one is going to kill oneself. crump likes boys to do things for themselves, and not be always hanging round and asking other people to take care of them. i'm going to be a soldier when i grow up, and soldiers have to learn how to do lots of things; and puck will be either a soldier or a sailor. crump said we might choose for ourselves; and when we had chosen we must stick to it like bricks, and so we will." "i'm going to be a cornish boy!" cried bertie; "my father said so. cornish boys can all swim, and row boats, and wrestle, and things like that. we'll learn all about that at the city of refuge. it's the women who spoil everything. let's pass a law that no woman shall ever be allowed to set foot on our island." "then you mustn't count me a woman!" cried milly appealingly. "of course not!" answered all the boys at once; and pickle went on judicially--"we shan't count all girls as women--only the very stupid ones like pretty polly. tousle may come as a visitor sometimes; and you may come always, milly, if you'll be jolly and not tell secrets. i don't count people like you women. you have some sense." "and perhaps if you get regularly jolly, you won't ever be a woman," added puck consolingly. "i should think there must be some way of stopping it. when old bobby or the owl are in good temper i'll ask them about it. they have all sorts of funny things in bottles and tanks, and they can do lots of queer things. i'll ask them if they can't do something to stop you always being a woman. you'd like that very much, wouldn't you?" "oh yes!" cried milly eagerly. "if i could be a cornish boy i should be quite happy." but time was flying fast, and, unless the children wanted their secret to escape them too soon, they would have to be going back. they had had a fine time out on the island, and the tide had begun to flow again, and had floated their boat, which, for above an hour, had been lying stranded amid the rocks. so in they all tumbled, and rowed back homewards, reaching the creek as the clock in the village church chimed out the hour of six. "we shall just get home in time!" cried milly, "and nobody will know we haven't been playing about near home all the time.--pickle, may we tell father about the city of refuge--just as a secret? i'm sure he won't mind; and if he doesn't tell mother it will be all right." "well, i'll think about it," answered pickle, in his capacity of captain; "but don't you tell anything till i give you leave." chapter v. at the crag. "you must come, tousle; you must, you must, you must!" the boys were dancing round her like a pair of wild indians, and esther gave up the unequal struggle. "i'll come if you want me very much," she said rather wearily, "but i think you'd enjoy yourselves just as much without me." "well, it's not so much that we couldn't do without you ourselves," returned puck, with his habitual candor; "but old bobby says he won't have us without our keeper, and that means you, though i'm sure i don't know why he should call you that." "nor i," answered esther, shaking her head. she felt very little power over the mercurial pair whom she had vainly tried to make her charge. they were fond of her, in a fashion, and she was fond of them. their arrival had brought a new element into her life; and there were many happy hours when they played together joyously, and esther forgot her gravity and grown-up ways, and laughed and raced about and shouted gleefully, as other children do. yet it could not be denied that the boys brought many new anxieties into her life, and the uncertainty as to what they would do next kept her upon tenter-hooks from week's end to week's end. they did not want to give trouble and pain; they only wanted to amuse themselves and to be left alone. they were accustomed to liberty and independence, and were on the whole very well able to take care of themselves. but they were full of spirit, and they delighted in mischief; and something in the prim and proper methods prevailing in this little place stirred up the spirit of mischief within them, and led them to commit more pranks, perhaps, than they would otherwise have thought of. mrs. st. aiden took things easily, fortunately for esther. the boys amused her. she did not see very much of them, and on the whole they behaved nicely towards her, having received rather explicit commands on this point from their father. they could not always restrain their mischievous devices even where she was concerned. one morning when her breakfast-tray was brought up, and she uncovered the plate where some little hot dainty generally reposed, behold there was a large toad sitting upon an empty plate, and gazing at her with its jewel-like eyes; and the shout of laughter which followed upon her startled scream betrayed the presence of the lurking conspirators, who had deftly made an exchange of plates whilst esther's back was turned, just before she took the tray up-stairs. still, in spite of sundry tricks of this sort, mrs. st. aiden did not object on the whole to the presence of the boys in the house. she liked to hear their racy accounts of what they did from day to day, and there was always mr. trelawny to fall back upon if they threatened to become too much for her. a long afternoon at the crag had been promised to the boys for some while, on the first half-holiday when their conduct through the week had won them the right to the treat. mr. earle was to be the judge on this point, and it was some time before he could honestly say it was deserved. mr. earle was exciting esther's admiration by the way he was obtaining the upper hand of the restless and obstreperous boys. at first they had obviously regarded lesson hours as so much time for the invention of tricks for the interruption of study, and the playing off of practical jokes. but gradually they had come to an understanding that their tutor regarded matters differently, and that he had just as definite ideas as they upon the subject. then had come a certain battle of wills between the belligerents, and little by little it became evident that the tutor was becoming the victor. he did not often have to resort to corporal chastisement, though he had once given pickle a sound caning for insubordination, and puck had had two or three good cuts across his grubby little hand. but he had other ways of showing that he meant to be master in study hours; and esther had come to have a great admiration for him, and a sense of confidence in his presence, although the halo of dread which surrounded all persons connected with the crag still continued to cling about him. it had been a great relief to her when saturday after saturday mr. earle had looked through his mark book and had shaken his head at the proposal of the promised treat. she did not want pickle and puck to be naughty, but she did not in the least want to go up with them to spend the afternoon at mr. trelawny's house. and yet it was understood that she was to accompany the boys, "to keep them in order," as the master of the house said, though esther knew perfectly that if anybody succeeded in keeping the pair in order it would be himself or mr. earle. "he likes you, tousle," said pickle shrewdly; "he likes you a lot better than us. i don't think he cares for us a bit; but he's fond of you. i can't think why you don't like him." "i never said i didn't like him," said esther nervously. "no; but anybody not a fool could see it with half an eye. i can't think why you don't. he's an awfully jolly old boy, for all he's so gruff and such an old tyrant. he'd like you to like him i'm sure. i can't think why you don't." "you'd much better," advised puck, "or perhaps you'll make him angry, and then he might put you into one of his tanks and use you for his experiments. i think it's silly of you always to run away and hide when he comes. he's always asking where you have gone to, and when we tell him you're hiding away from him, he looks as if he didn't quite like it, though he always laughs his big, gruff laugh." "o puck! why do you tell?" "well, we must speak the truth," said puck with an air of virtue; "and you know you do always scuttle away when he comes." "never mind," cried pickle, who was in a mighty hurry to be off; "come along now, and let's go up. we may go any time after dinner, you know." "it's so hot!" said esther with a little sigh. "would it do if i came a little later? the sun makes my head ache." "oh, but it's all in the wood, and i don't believe he'll have us without you. do come along. boys never have headaches. i don't see why girls should have either." esther yielded. she did not want to spoil the boys' holiday afternoon, but she did wish that her going with them had not been a condition. her fears of the crag and its master did not diminish from the things she heard dropped by older people about the things going on there, now that mr. trelawny had an assistant in his experiments. the scientific names she heard spoken sounded terrible in her ears; and she pictured the two men in their gloomy cave, sitting up all the night through pursuing wonderful and mysterious researches, and her books of historical romance, which told of the secret machinations of wizards and magicians, acquired for her a new fascination and a new terror. the three children started off through the pine woods, but esther was soon left far behind. the boys clambered hither and thither, rushing about with the inexhaustible energy of children; but esther's feet lagged wearily, and her small face was pale. there were shadows beneath her eyes, and she pulled off her hat and fanned herself with it, thinking the way to the crag had never seemed so long before. esther's head had taken to aching a good deal of late. at night she could not always sleep. her lessons seemed to dance before her eyes, and she would dream about them even after she got off to slumber-land. it had been a great pleasure to esther to have regular lessons with somebody like mr. earle, who could explain everything she wanted to know, and who never reproved her for asking questions; but perhaps the strain of regular work, in addition to that of the two boys in the house and the anxiety she was often in about them and their doings, was rather much for her. at any rate, she had been feeling her head a good deal for the past fortnight, and would so much rather have spent the afternoon quietly at home than have faced first the long walk up the hill and then all the tremors and excitements of the crag. but esther was not accustomed to think first of herself, and she plowed her way bravely upwards, till at last they arrived in front of the grim-looking old house perched upon its crag, and saw the two gentlemen sitting out on the terrace, rather as though waiting for their guests. the boys gave a whoop and a bound, and dashed towards them. when esther reached the terrace they were both swarming about mr. trelawny like a pair of young monkeys. he was laughing in his rather grim fashion, and esther heard him saying in his deep voice,-"no, i won't have that impudence from you, you young jackanapes. if your father lets you behave so, he ought to know better. when i was a boy we were made to respect our elders, and if we couldn't do it, we had to keep it to ourselves. you may call me uncle bob, if you like, as my name happens to be robert; but every time you call me old bobby you'll get a good sound box on the ear--so now you understand." the boys laughed, but they knew perfectly that mr. trelawny was in earnest, and that he would be as good as his word. they had found out that from mr. earle, who had absolutely forbidden the use of nicknames in school hours, and had insisted that they should speak of esther by her proper name, and address him as mr. earle--a thing that seemed to astonish them not a little. out of school hours, however, they considered that they had full liberty of speech, and the next minute puck exclaimed,-"here's tousle coming along. she didn't want to come a bit. we had to bully her into it. she can't bear the crag." a quick flush mounted to esther's cheek as she heard, and her heart beat fast. how she did wish the boys would not say such things! she didn't seem able to make them understand how terrifying it was for her that mr. trelawny should be told of her shrinking from him and his house. shyness with esther was like a real physical pain, and she would rather have received a sharp blow than be obliged to face mr. trelawny after these words had just been spoken. he threw the boys from him, and went and took her by the hand. "well, little miss esther, and how do you do? you are quite a stranger here. we must make you change your opinion of the crag and its owner. now you shall tell me what you would like to do and to see, since you are here." "oh, thank you, but i don't mind," answered esther nervously. "i like sitting here and watching the beautiful sea." "well, we'll sit here till you have cooled down, and we have drunk our coffee, and then we will see if we can't find something more exciting to amuse ourselves." a man-servant came out almost immediately, bearing cups of coffee on a tray; and this was very good, with plenty of milk and sugar for the little people. the boys chattered away, and esther found herself able to sit in a quiet corner and be silent, for if ever mr. trelawny asked her a question, pickle or puck always broke in with an answer before she could get in a word. presently the boys could be quiet no longer. "come along and show us things," they cried, getting upon the rails of mr. trelawny's chair, and tweaking his thick, grizzled hair. "we know you've got an awful lot of jolly things up here. come along and show us them. why, even tousle hasn't seen half, and she's lived here ever so long." a smart rap on the knuckles brought pickle quickly to the ground. "speak properly of your cousin whilst you are in my house," said mr. trelawny. "what did i say?" asked pickle, aggrieved. "oh, bother! why can't we call people what we like? i think you're a regular old tyrant." "well, you needn't come near me unless you like," was the equable response; "but if you do, you'll have to behave yourself. so just you mind that." the brothers exchanged glances; but it was evidently not diplomatic to quarrel with the master of the house at this juncture, and they felt that in the matter of argument they would get the worst of it with him. so they only made a covert grimace at the back of his head, and said,-"come along, then. show us your house. we want to see all the queer old places we've heard about. was there once a monk walled up in the cellar? and did you dig out his skeleton? and did his ghost go prowling about tapping on the doors and making groans?" "not in my time," answered mr. trelawny. "there is a story about the finding of a skeleton down below, though how it came there nobody could say. it was all guess-work.--come, little miss esther; i know you are a historian, and i have some things i think will interest you," and mr. trelawny held out his great hand, into which esther was obliged to slip her little cold fingers, though she felt them trembling all over as she did so. mr. trelawny looked down at her for a moment, but said nothing. the boys dashed hither and thither through the rooms, making remarks and asking questions, which they did not always wait to hear answered. but by and by they got interested in the interesting tales mr. trelawny had to tell about the fine old house in which he lived, and even esther lost her fears for a while in the breathless delight of hearing the story of some of the pictured ladies and armed warriors whose portraits hung upon the walls of the corridors and rooms. it was later on, when they were taken into the great laboratory at the top of the house, that her fears began to come back. there was a strange smell in the place, and it was full of the queerest things, the very names of which were terrible. then mr. trelawny did some wonderful things with wires and lights; and presently mr. earle was sent down into the cave, right at the very bottom of the house, underneath its foundations, and he and mr. trelawny passed messages to each other without so much as a speaking-tube or a wire between them, and everything seemed so strange and uncanny that even the boys were quite silent, whilst esther felt as though she should be stifled in the atmosphere of this weird place. but the boys were not frightened, though they were greatly astonished at some of the things they saw and heard. nothing would serve them but that they must go down into the cave again themselves, and see what was going on there; and esther felt as though her heart would stop beating altogether as she felt her hand grasped by that of this big, terrible wizard, and knew that he was leading her down, down, down into the very heart of the earth. she dared not resist. his grasp was too strong for that. she was afraid if she angered him he would begin to flash more fire, and perhaps annihilate her altogether. her teeth chattered in her mouth. her breath came and went in great gasps. if he had not had such firm hold of her hand, she would almost have fallen. at all times esther had a fear of underground places. she had never done more than just peep into a cave before this; and now she was going down, down, down into the very heart of the earth--into that terrible place the boys had told her of, where all sorts of unthinkable horrors were practised, or had been in bygone days, and where, for all she knew, skeletons were still pickling in great tanks. she dared not even think of anything more. they entered the cave through a sort of trap-door communicating with the house above. the boys were delighted to go by this way. mr. earle was there, moving about like a gnome in the gloom; and the voices of the boys, as they cried out their questions, and exclaimed over the strange things they saw, sounded hollow and strange, and went echoing away down the vaulted passages, as though taken up and repeated by half a hundred unseen demons. the air of the place seemed oppressive and difficult to breathe. the sullen booming of the sea beneath added to the awfulness of the darkness and the horror. esther threw a few scared glances round her, and felt as though everything was swimming in a mist before her eyes. it seemed as though a cold hand was grasping at her throat, hindering her breath and numbing her limbs. she knew that she was being walked about from place to place, but she could see nothing and hear nothing plainly. the boys were making the place ring with their shouts and strange calls, and it seemed to her as though the cave were full of dancing forms, and as though she could not breathe any longer. then all of a sudden it seemed to get quite dark. the sound of voices died away in her ears. she thought she was left alone in this awful place; perhaps she had been put into one of the tanks. she was suffocating, and could hear nothing but the wild beating of her own heart; and then even that seemed to stop, and she remembered nothing more. when she opened her eyes again the sun was shining, and it was all warm and bright round her, and somebody had fast hold of her, and was making her feel so comfortable and restful that she did not want to move. she could not think where she was, but it was certainly out of doors. the wind fanned her brow, and she could see the sky and the sea and a bit of waving fern or tree. then there was the sound of a step close by, and suddenly mr. earle loomed into view, carrying a glass in his hand, and when his eyes met hers he smiled and said,-"ah, that is better!" and then esther felt herself lifted up, and saw that it was mr. trelawny who was holding her so comfortably. he was sitting on the ground, and she was on his knee, resting against his broad shoulder; and now he bent and looked into her face with a smile, and said,-"so, so, my little girl; that is better, that is better. now drink what mr. earle has brought you, and you will feel yourself again." esther held out her hand obediently, but it shook so much that mr. earle would not give the glass into her hand, but knelt down on one knee and held it to her lips. it was not nice medicine at all, and it made her choke and cough when she had swallowed it, but it seemed to warm her all through; and when she had finished the draught she felt able to lift up her head, though it was rather appalling to find herself alone out on the hillside, with only mr. trelawny and mr. earle beside her. she remembered everything now--the terrible cave, the strange sights and sounds there, and that feeling of giddiness and weakness which had come over her. she sat up and looked round her, and then she shivered again a little, for just behind them was a dark gap which she knew must lead into the cave. were they going to take her back into it again? mr. earle had hold of her hand, and his finger was on the little wrist. he looked into her face with a smile, and asked,-"what is the matter now?" "nothing, thank you, sir." "you are frightened," he said quietly. "were you afraid of the darkness in there just now?" "i--i don't know if it was the darkness exactly. i think it was everything." she made another little movement, and then added wistfully, "please, may i go home?" "no hurry," said mr. trelawny's big voice just in her ear. "we will go back to my house first, and see what all this means." and then esther felt herself lifted bodily in those great, strong arms, and carried baby-fashion up the steep pathway towards the house on the top of the crag. "o mr. trelawny, i'm too heavy to be carried!" she cried. "you're not half as heavy as you should be. i must know about that too. we've got you a prisoner between us, my little maid, and we shall not let you go till we've----" mr. trelawny stopped suddenly, because mr. earle had begun to speak to him in the strange language esther had heard him use upon another occasion. she shut her eyes tightly, and tried to be brave; but if only she might have gone home by herself! the crag was a very terrible place to come to. even the boys seemed to have disappeared. there was no sign of them about the great, quiet house. mr. trelawny carried her into the drawing-room, which did not look as though it were often used, though it was bright and sunny; and he laid her down upon a wide sofa, and took a chair close to her. mr. earle stood a little way off, looking out of the window. if esther had had the courage to look into the face above her, she would have seen that it was full of a very kindly concern and interest, but she dared not raise her eyes. she felt like a prisoner awaiting sentence, and only wondered whether she would ever be free to run home again. "now tell me, child," said mr. trelawny's big voice, "what is the matter with my little friend?" "nothing, thank you, sir." "can't you call me uncle robert, like that pair of urchins, who are no kith or kin of mine, though you are? esther, i was very fond of your father. won't you try to be a little fond of me? i will be your friend, if you will let me." she looked up at him then, and her heart beat fast. it was all so very strange and unexpected. she did not know what to say; but she put out her hand and laid it on his, and he smiled and patted it, and said,-"there, that is better. now tell me about these headaches of yours. we ought to find a cure for them. has mr. earle been working you too hard?" esther felt a thrill run through her again. how was it he knew anything about her headaches? she had not even told her mother, and it never occurred to her that the boys could have spoken the word. yet, to be sure, once or twice lately she had not cared to join their games because her head ached so badly towards evening. but it was not the lessons. they must not think that. her lessons were the great pleasure of her life. "oh no, no!" she answered earnestly; "indeed it is not that. please, don't stop the lessons. i do like them so very much." mr. earle came forward then, smiling and saying,-"i don't want to lose my pupil either, but health comes before pleasure--even before learning." "i'm sure it isn't the lessons," said esther again. "sometimes i think perhaps it's my hair. it makes my head so hot, and at night i can't always sleep." mr. trelawny lifted the heavy mass of curly locks and weighed it in his hand. he looked at mr. earle, and they spoke a few words together in the strange tongue. "did you ever complain to your mother about your hair?" asked mr. trelawny, with a gleam in his deepset eyes. "yes," answered esther, "i often used to ask her if i mightn't have it short like milly polperran; but she doesn't like me to tease about it, so i've given it up." mr. trelawny reached out his hand towards a table upon which lay a pair of sharp scissors in a sheath. the gleam in his eyes was deepening. mr. earle said something in the foreign tongue, and he answered back in his sharp, decisive way. esther lay still, wondering; but they were both behind her, and she could not see. then came a strange, grating sound close to her head, another, and another; and before she realized what was happening, mr. trelawny suddenly laid upon her lap a great mass of waving chestnut hair, exclaiming as he did so,-"there, my dear! take that home to your mother with my best compliments; and as for me, i shall have to find a new name for little goldylocks." then esther realized that her hair had been cut off by mr. trelawny, and she lay looking at it with thrills of excitement running through her. what would her mother say when she got home? and what would it feel like to be relieved of that great floating mass of hair? how delightful to have no tugging and pulling at the knots morning and night, often when her head was aching and tender, and every pull seemed to hurt more than the last! she must get up and feel what it was like. so she sat up and passed her hands over her head. mr. trelawny and mr. earle were looking at her and laughing. esther had to laugh too; but how light and cool it felt! "it is nice!" she exclaimed. "i feel as if i'd got a new head! oh. i hope mama will not mind much!" "look here, sir," said mr. earle; "you're not as good a barber as a lady had a right to expect. give me the scissors, and let me put a more artistic finish to your work. we must send her home looking less like a hearth broom than she does at the present moment." they all laughed again at that, and the color began to come back into esther's cheeks. this was something rather exciting, and it had driven away her fears for the time being. she sat quite still whilst mr. earle snipped and cut, and walked round and round her, and quarreled with mr. trelawny about the proper way of trimming a lady's hair; and in the end they put her upon the sofa, and told her to look at herself in the great mirror opposite. when she did this she began to laugh out loud. "will it always stand on end like that?" she asked, for the wave in her hair made it set off from her face and stand round it rather like the aureole round the heads of saints in the church windows. "i don't think genefer will think it tidy like that. can't i brush it and make it lie smooth, like mr. earle's?" they got a brush, but the hair set them at defiance, and stood out in its own way. but it was delightful to have no heavy mane hanging down behind. esther declared her headache almost gone, and so she was allowed to go out and find the boys, who had been set to play by themselves for an hour. the shrieks of delight they set up at sight of esther with her cropped head made her laugh and glow like a child; and she looked altogether so much brighter and merrier that the two gentlemen exchanged glances and nodded their heads, as though quite satisfied with the high-handed measure they had taken. "we shall call you roundhead now!" cried puck, dancing round her in an ecstasy of amusement; but mr. trelawny came up and took him by the ears, saying in his gruffest way,-"you will call your cousin by her proper name, or you will never come to my house again. now, do you understand?" "do you mean really?" asked puck, wriggling away and facing round. "i mean really and truly," was the emphatic answer. "you've got to learn manners, you two, whilst you are here; and if mr. earle knocks some knowledge into your thick skulls, i'll knock a little respect for other people into your democratic little minds. so mind, if you don't behave yourselves properly to your cousin, and speak to her properly too, you'll never have the chance of coming to the crag again." chapter vi. the shorn sheep. "i think you ought to come home with us, uncle bob, after cutting off esther's tousle like that. i expect aunt saint will be in a jolly old wax." the children had finished their tea out on the terrace, and a very nice tea it had been. esther was looking brighter than she had done at first, and a little bit of color had stolen into her face; but her eyes still had a tired look in them, and there were dark marks underneath. mr. trelawny paused beside her, and passed his big hands over the cropped head. the touch was kindly, and esther tried to conquer the little thrill of fear which ran through her. she felt as though she had behaved herself badly at the wizard's house, and that he had been very indulgent to her when he might have been very angry. she could not conquer her old fears all at once; but she resolved to try and mingle some liking with them for this big, strange man, who seemed wishful to be regarded as an uncle. "what does the shorn sheep say herself about that?" asked mr. trelawny, bending down to look into esther's face. she made herself return the glance, and said timidly,-"i think i should be much obliged if you would, uncle robert. you would explain to mama better than i can." a smile lit up the rugged features of the cornishman. "to be sure i will then, my dear. i'll take all the blame, which is certainly all mine. i've got a few things i want to say to your mother, so i'll come down now and say them." so when the shadows had grown a little longer, and the sea was lit up like a sheet of gold, the little party of four started down the hill again, the boys tearing about like a pair of wild animals, mr. trelawny following more soberly, holding esther's hand in his, and helping her over the bits of rough ground; though, as he remarked laughingly, it was "like helping a bit of thistle-down over a hedge." mr. trelawny told esther a great many interesting things during that walk--things about birds and insects, which she had never known before. he did not frighten her at all the whole way, and when she asked a timid question he always had a full and interesting answer ready. then he told her that he had a number of books full of pictures of live creatures in his library, and said she must come up another day and look at them. and though esther could never think of the crag without a certain shrinking and fear, yet she did want to see the pictures very much, if only they would not take her into those awful underground places, or into the rooms where all those strange things went on. when they got home, there was a sound of voices coming from the open drawing-room windows. the boys had rushed headlong in, and now came tumbling out again. "it's only mrs. poll-parrot and pretty polly!" cried the pair in a breath; whereupon mr. trelawny took the two heads, one in either hand, and knocked them pretty smartly together. "mind your manners, boys!" he said in his big gruff voice, and strode on, holding esther's hand, whilst pickle and puck remained behind, staring after him and rubbing their heads with an air of injured innocence. "he's rather an old beast sometimes, i think," said puck rather ruefully. "i don't quite like him always." "he makes us do as he says," added pickle, "like mr. earle--i mean the owl. i think it's rather interfering of them." meantime mr. trelawny had entered the window, drawing esther after him. "good evening, madam," he said in his breezy way--"good evening to you all. mrs. st. aiden, i have come to make my peace with you. tell me first what you think of your shorn lamb." then he pushed esther forward, and the child stood before her mother, the color coming and going in her face rather too fast to please mr. trelawny, who looked at her from under his bushy brows and shook his head once or twice. mrs. st. aiden gave a little gasp, almost a little scream. mrs. polperran stared, and began to laugh; while prissy cried out in unveiled astonishment,-"o esther, your hair, your hair! where has it gone?" "here it is," said mr. trelawny, producing a packet wrapped in soft paper, and laying it upon mrs. st. aiden's knee. "i daresay some enterprising hairdresser would give a pretty penny for it. now, miss prissy, you run off with your little friend here. i want to talk a little to these good ladies." prissy rose, and esther was glad to escape with her into the garden. it was delightful to have such a cool, comfortable head; but all the talk about herself made her feel hot and shy. "o esther!" cried prissy, "you do look so funny. but i've often heard mother say that it is bad for you having such a great head of hair. what was it made mr. trelawny cut it off? don't you think it was taking a great liberty without your mother's leave?" "i don't know," answered esther slowly. "i don't think mama would ever have let him." the boys came running up now, and the four children were soon well hidden from view in the clipped yew arbor, which was esther's especial haunt. "i thought he cut it off to use it in his experiments," said pickle. "i've read of magicians who took people's hair, and then they used to burn bits of it and make them come to them in their sleep. i expect that's what he's done it for. i expect that you'll often be walking up to the cave in your sleep now." esther began shaking at once, but prissy said, with her grown-up air of reproof,-"you are talking great nonsense, philip." (prissy very often called the boys philip and percy, to their own unspeakable disgust.) "there are no magicians now; and besides, it was all nonsense when there were any. and mr. trelawny gave esther's hair back to mrs. st. aiden just now. i saw him." but pickle wasn't going to be shut up like that. "i expect he kept some of it back for himself," he said; "and you needn't pretend to know such a mighty lot about mr. trelawny and what he can do. if he isn't a magician, he's something uncommonly like it. you should have seen the things he did to-day for us to see; and he'd have done some funnier ones still, only _she_ went and flopped down in a heap on the floor, and then they had to carry her out, and they wouldn't go back any more." "what did you do, esther?" asked prissy. "i don't know. i felt funny down there, and everything seemed going round, and i didn't know anything about the rest." "well, she just spoiled the fun," said puck. "they were going to show us some things--skeletons in the tanks, i expect, or jolly things like that--but when _she_ went flop they didn't seem to think a bit about us. they hustled us away up to the house, and wouldn't show us anything more. that's always the way when there are girls. they are always sure to spoil the fun." "i'm very sorry," said esther penitently, "but i didn't mean to. only i don't like underground places. they make me feel queer." "i've heard father speak about mr. trelawny's cave," said prissy. "i don't think he likes it much. quite a little while ago i heard him say to mother that he was afraid, now mr. earle had come, that there might be something horrid happening there. i can't quite remember the words, but he said something like that. and mother said she was afraid he was reckless, and too fond of experiments. i wonder what he does there, and what father is afraid of." "people always are afraid of magicians and wizards," said pickle with a sly look of triumph at prissy; and for a moment she was silent, feeling as though she had been somehow caught in a trap. "well, i think he's a very odd sort of man; and i don't think he'd any business to cut off your hair, esther. did you know he was going to do it?" "no, i never thought of such a thing. i only said it made my head hot at nights, or something like that. and then he got a big pair of scissors and cut it all off in a minute." "i think it looks rather nice like that," said prissy, with a critical glance, "though it does stand on end rather. i should think you would enjoy not having it combed out at nights." "i've decided now!" cried puck, shouting out suddenly the great new idea. "i shall call you ess now. it'll do for esther, and for shorn sheep too. old bobby calls you that himself now, so he can't scold us. you shall be ess. don't you think that's a nice, easy, short name?" mr. trelawny was soon seen stalking away up the path towards the crag, and mrs. polperran's voice was heard calling for prissy. esther stole back to her mother's side, and asked timidly,-"you're not vexed with me, mama dear? indeed i did not know what he was going to do." "no, dear, i suppose not. it's no use making a trouble of it now it's done. it was certainly a liberty to take; but it's never any use being angry with mr. trelawny--he only laughs and makes a joke of it. besides, he always has looked upon you rather in the light of his ward. your father did write to him before he died, asking him to give an eye to us, and to take care of us both if we wanted it. i suppose he thinks he has some rights over you; and he has been very kind to us, so we must not say too much." esther listened very gravely. she did not know exactly what a ward might be, but she fancied that it made her in some sort the property of the redoubtable mr. trelawny. it was rather an alarming notion; but esther said nothing, for it had been her endeavor all these past months, since her father's death, never to trouble her mother needlessly. "you should have told me about your headaches, dear," said mrs. st. aiden, stroking esther's hand. "perhaps we could have cured them then without the sacrifice of your pretty hair." "o mama, they weren't so very bad. i didn't want to worry you. but i think i shall be much better now without my hair." "and what made you faint in the cave, dear? you frightened mr. trelawny and mr. earle, i think." esther thought it had been the other way; but she only said, after a little hesitation,-"there didn't seem any air down there, and it was all so dark and queer, it made me feel funny; but i didn't know i fainted." "well, i have told mr. trelawny not to take you there again. i have always had that sort of dislike to caves and underground places myself. men don't understand that sort of thing; but you had better never go there again, esther." "oh, thank you, mama!" cried esther earnestly. it was an immense relief to feel that she need never go back to the cave, and that mr. trelawny had been told not to take her there. she could almost face the idea of going up to the crag to see the books, if she were safe from that terrible place. things seemed suddenly to be brighter and happier altogether. esther was quite lively that evening; and as genefer brushed the shorn head at night she remarked,-"well, miss esther, it's made a good bit of difference to your looks; but i always did say to the missus that it was a pity to let you grow such a mane of hair now. very likely you would have had it grow thin and poor as you grew up; but if you keep it cropped short for a few years, you'll have a nice head of hair when you're a young lady and want it again." on sunday afternoon milly and bertie polperran came to the hermitage to spend the time with their little friends there, as on saturday they had not met. prissy taught a little class in the sunday school; but milly and bertie were free, only that they had some little verses and part of a hymn to learn, and they had leave to say them to esther to-day. esther had been rather exercised in her mind about the fashion in which pickle and puck spent their sundays. they went to church in the morning with her, and kept her pretty much on tenter-hooks all the time, although they had never done anything very outrageous so far. but their eyes always seemed everywhere, and nothing escaped their observation; and they would giggle in a subdued yet sufficiently audible fashion, if anything amused them, and sometimes try to make esther or their little friends opposite join them in their ill-timed hilarity. after having been to church, they seemed to consider that for them sunday had ended, and they played about and amused themselves just as they pleased. "crump always played with us on sunday afternoons," they would say when esther suggested something more quiet and decorous, according to her ideas. they did not seem to understand why they should be more quiet on sunday than on any other day, and it was not quite easy for esther to explain. "they must have been badly brought up," prissy would say in her prim, grown-up fashion. "i think their father must be a very strange sort of man." but when esther spoke to genefer, she was a little comforted by hearing her say,-"you see, miss esther, the poor little boys have had no mother to teach them, and gentlemen don't think of things quite like mothers. i don't think they mean to be naughty a bit, but they've not been taught as you have. perhaps they'll get into better ways living here for a spell. but it's no good preaching at them. that'll never do it. you only get at children by making them love you. then they like the things you like, and they learn different ways. they're getting fond of you, miss esther, my dear. they'll begin to copy you by and by, whether they know it or not." esther did not think pickle and puck had much notion of copying anybody; but she thought they were growing fond of her in a fashion, and she was certainly growing fond of them. if they brought new anxiety into her life, they brought a considerable amount of pleasure and variety too. she did not at all regret the arrangement, although she wished the boys had been just a little younger, so that she might have had more influence over them. "we're going to have a sunday school, and you're to teach!" cried milly, running up to esther as she sat in the yew arbor, thinking that the four little ones would rather be alone together. "we've learned our lessons, and pickle and puck have learned something, too; and now we're going to come and be a class, and you're to teach us." there was plenty of room in the summer-house for the class; and a chair was set for esther, whilst her four scholars occupied the fixed bench that ran round the arbor. they came in with looks of decorous gravity, and the boys pulled their forelocks, and milly made a courtesy, whilst esther felt half-embarrassed at so much respect and deference. the little polperrans repeated their lessons with the readiness of those accustomed to such tasks. pickle followed with a fair show of fluency; and puck said a short text with great deliberation, prompted from time to time by milly, who had evidently "coached" him up in it. at the close he looked up into esther's face and asked with due solemnity, evidently put up to the right phraseology by either bertie or milly,-"please, teacher, what is the sin that so easily besets us?" there was a faint giggle from bertie; but puck had thrown himself into his part, and was as solemn as a judge. esther was a little embarrassed at the position in which she found herself, but she strove to find a suitable answer. "i think it's different things with different people," she said after a pause. "you know some people are naughty in some ways, and some in others. we don't all sin alike." pickle here broke in eagerly,-"let's think of the naughty things people do. mr. trelawny cut off your hair yesterday without asking leave. wasn't that a sort of sin?" esther was rather taken aback at this method of treating the subject; but before she had found words in which to reply, the boy had broken out again,-"i tell you what i think it is--the sin that so easily besets him is doing just as he likes, and being what crump calls 'lord high everything.' don't you think that's uncle bob's sin, ess?" esther looked straight at pickle, and answered with some spirit,-"i know somebody else who always wants to do as he likes, and cares very little what other people say or think." pickle looked suddenly taken aback. "my stars!" he exclaimed. bertie pointed one finger at pickle and another at puck. his square face was bubbling over with a subdued sense of humor. "she means you," said puck: "i know she does. it's just what you're always saying. you do what you like, and don't care what people say. if it's a sin, it's your sin too." "oh dear!" cried pickle, really interested now; "i never thought of that before. did you mean that, ess?" esther's face was rosy red now; she spoke truthfully, however. "i think i did, pickle. you know you do like your own way. but i think we all like that. i suppose that's one of the sins that easily besets us all." "i don't think it besets you," said pickle loyally; "you're always doing things you don't like, to spare other people, or because they want you to." "it besets prissy!" cried milly eagerly; "she always wants her own way. she likes to be 'lord high everything' too. she's been as cross as two sticks lately, because bertie and i have kept secrets from her, and she can't do just as she likes with us." but esther did not think this a very profitable turn to the talk, and she said slowly and rather shyly,-"i don't think we need bother about other people's sins. it would be better to leave these alone, i think, and just to try and find out our own. if we know what they are, perhaps we can get over them; but if we don't know them, we shall never fight against them properly." "there's some sense in that!" cried pickle eagerly. "there was a picture i once saw on a church window of a man fighting with a dragon. i asked the old verger what it meant, and he said it was what all of us had to do some time or other. i didn't know what he meant, but crump told me he meant that we all had to fight against sins, only they weren't live green dragons with red eyes and crinkly wings now; and we didn't always know when one was trying to get the best of us, but we'd got to try and be ready to fight. i suppose that's the sort of thing you mean, ess? we've got to find out what our sins are. let's have a think about it now. i don't mind fighting, if i only know what to fight." "i'd like it to be a green dragon with red eyes," said puck; "there'd be some sense in that." "well, but if there aren't any dragons left, we have to do it the other way," cried pickle eagerly. "now, let's think about it. we'll all think. at least i don't think esther needs. i don't think she's got any sins." "o pickle, don't say that!" "well, i don't think you have. you're always good. look at the marks you get; and the owl has never had to scold you once. i don't believe you could think of any sin that besets you." "yes, indeed i can," answered esther--"ever so many. i've got one in my head this very minute." "what's that? do tell." esther's face grew red, but she answered bravely,-"yes, i'll tell you if you like, because, perhaps, if i tell, i shall be able to fight it better. i'm often so frightened about things nobody else is." the children eyed her wonderingly. "but i don't call that a sin," cried pickle. "you can't help being frightened--you're a girl." "yes, but i don't think girls ought to be cowards," answered esther, her face still flushed. "i want to learn to be brave. i think being afraid when there isn't any reason is a sort of sin." she paused and hesitated, and then added in a lower voice, "i think we ought to remember that god can always take care of us, and then we need not be afraid any more." the children were silent for a few minutes. something in esther's manner impressed them, they hardly knew why. they felt that she was speaking to them out of the depths of her heart, and that she meant every word she said. "do you ever think about god?" asked pickle at last. "yes," answered esther in a low voice, "but not as often as i ought to. i shouldn't be so frightened often, if i thought about him more." "why? what difference would it make?" "oh, don't you see? suppose you were frightened by something, and felt all alone, with nobody to help you. and then suppose you remembered that your father was looking at you all the time through a window somewhere with a glass, and that he saw you though you didn't see him. and if you knew that he could send somebody to help you if you wanted it really, why, you wouldn't be afraid any more, would you?" "no, i suppose not. it would be silly." "i think, perhaps, it is silly; and what is silly can be a sin, i think," said esther steadily. "i want not to be frightened so often, and i think that is the sin that most easily besets me. i am going to try and fight against it, because it makes me forget about god always seeing us and taking care of us, and that is wrong, i know." "i wonder what my sin is!" cried pickle. "i expect i've got a lot. esther, do you think it's a sin to call people by nicknames? old--i mean uncle robert makes a great fuss about it." "i--i don't think it's perhaps the names exactly," said esther, with a little hesitation--"at least not amongst ourselves. but to older people it doesn't seem quite respectful, and children ought to treat older people with respect. i think it says so in the bible somewhere. i'm sure it means it often. you know that even jesus was obedient, and 'subject to' joseph and mary, though he was god's son all the time." "we don't mean any harm," said puck. "crump used only to laugh, and call us cheeky little beggars." "well," said esther, with a little gentle decision in her tone, "i don't think it sounds at all nice for little boys to speak of their father as crump." "don't you, really? do you mean you would call it a sin?" "i don't know whether i am old enough to judge about that," answered esther, "but it doesn't seem to me like honoring our fathers and mothers to speak of them like that, and that would be disobeying one of the commandments." "well, i never thought of it like that," said pickle, in the tone of one open to conviction; "but i don't mind giving that up, if it is a sort of a sin. i did sometimes think that when people were there cr--i mean father--didn't always quite like it. but i'm sure we must have lots of sins besides that. that's only quite a little one." "i'm greedy; that's my sin," said bertie. "i always want the biggest egg or the nicest cake. i don't always get them, but i want them. i shall have to fight against that." "i don't like getting up in the morning," said milly; "and i get cross with prissy often; and i hate my sums, and scribble on my slate instead of doing them. i think i'm lazy, for i'm always so glad when we can't do lessons, or visitors come when i'm practising. and sometimes i don't practise all my time, but run out into the garden for a little while, if nobody is about, and pretend i've been at the piano all the time. i don't mean i say so, because nobody asks me; but i pretend it to myself, and i suppose that's a sort of lie." "i sometimes tell stories," said puck. "i say i've done things and seen them, and i haven't really--at least not just as i say them. i like to pretend things are bigger than they are, and that we're braver, and stronger, and cleverer." "and i like to do just as i like," said pickle, remembering how the conversation had begun. "i don't like mr. earle when he interferes, and makes us do things his way; and i get in a rage sometimes because he sees through us and stops the things we want to do. i think i've got a lot of sins--more than any of the rest of you. i'm the eldest, and so i suppose i should have. at least esther's older; but then she's good. i don't call it a sin to be afraid. girls and women are made that way. it's much worse to be always wanting your own way, and not caring for anything or anybody so long as you get it." pickle had faced the flaw in his character or training with a good deal of candor, although, perhaps, there was a touch of pride in the feeling that he had a bigger sin to battle with than anybody else. esther's voice was now heard saying gently,-"then if we all know what is the sin that so easily besets us, we ought to be able to fight against it better, and to help one another to fight too. i think it would be nice to help each other when we can. there is something somewhere about bearing one another's burdens. i should think that would be the same sort of thing." "and let's have a sunday school rather often," said milly, "and tell each other how we're getting on. i should like to know if esther stops being afraid of things; and i'll tell how often i've been lazy at lessons, or have got angry with prissy. now and then i'm angry with mother too"--here milly's face got very red--"and sometimes i say naughty things to her very softly, because i know she doesn't hear them. i think that's quite a sin--don't you, esther?" the sound of the tea-bell broke up the sunday school at that moment, and the children trooped to the house, where genefer had a nice tea waiting for them in the dining-room. that night she remarked to her little charge how well-behaved they had all been that sunday afternoon. esther's face grew rather rosy as she answered,-"yes, we are all going to try to be good, and fight our sins. but, genefer, i wanted to tell them that we must ask jesus to help us, and i didn't quite know how to say it, and so i didn't. i think it's very hard to be really brave." "you'll get braver as you get older, miss esther," said the woman sympathetically, "and the little folks will soon find out that they want help for their bits of battles, and you can talk about how that's to be had another time." "i--yes, i will try," said esther earnestly. "i hope i shall grow braver, and then it will be less hard." chapter vii. days of sunshine. somehow after that saturday at the crag, and the sunday following, on which some good resolutions had been made, esther found that her life became decidedly brighter and happier. mr. earle was particularly kind to her in study hours. he put aside for a time the lessons on arithmetic, which had often haunted her at night, for sums were rather a trouble to the little girl; and, instead, he brought from the crag some beautiful books on natural history, and gave her chapters to read about the structure and habits of wild animals, which was very interesting; and then, when the boys had done their tasks, he would tell them all delightful tales about these animals, some of which he had shot himself in different parts of the world. mr. earle was a capital hand at telling a story. they soon found that out; and the boys began to understand that he was a tutor quite worth pleasing. on the days when they had been industrious and well-behaved, he never minded stopping for half an hour or more before time, to help them with some bit of work of their own, or to tell them exciting stories. but if they had been idle, or impertinent, or unruly, he just packed them off to their own pursuits with a few cutting words; and if he stayed at all, it was to tell esther something about the pictures in her book, and the boys were not permitted to remain or to hear a word. "you're not fit for civilized society--be off with you!" mr. earle would say in his quick, authoritative way; and it was no use their putting on coaxing or defiant airs, as they had done to their father in old days. mr. earle would neither be coaxed nor defied. he sent them straight off with an air of cutting contempt, which pickle, at least, was old enough to feel and to wince under. "if you can't behave yourselves like gentlemen, you're not fit company for a lady," was another of his maxims; and both pickle and puck began rather to dread provoking these speeches from their inflexible tutor. and then mr. earle was well worth pleasing, as they soon began to find. upon the wednesday following that eventful saturday, when he came down in the afternoon (for he always went back to the crag between half-past twelve and two), he walked into the study and swept all the books back into their places, and said, with a happy twinkle in his eye,-"get your hats, and come along. we're going to have a lesson in navigation this afternoon." the boys gave a whoop of delight. they did not exactly know what navigation might be, but they scented something delightful; and as they had been remarkably good for the past days, it seemed to come like a reward of virtue. esther's face brightened with pleasure and curiosity. she wondered what was going to happen; but there was no delay in getting off, and soon they were all walking down to the shore, where they found old pollard waiting for them, not in his cranky old tub, but in the tight, trim boat belonging to the crag, that was kept in order by the old fisherman, and had beautiful white sails curled up in readiness, two masts, and a figurehead like a swan with a gracefully-arched neck. esther knew the look of the boat, and had once been out in it with mr. trelawny, but had been too much afraid of him to enjoy her sail at all. now, however, her eyes kindled and danced, for she dearly loved the water, and was never the least seasick; and when the boys understood that they were going out for a sail, they yelled and danced and shouted like a pair of wild indians. the old fisherman sat with the helm in his hand, but mr. earle managed the sails, and he went about his business as though he were a sailor himself, and talked in queer terms with the old man, whilst the boys listened agape, and wished they knew what it meant. they soon found, however, that they had not come out simply to be idle. they were soon in the middle of a lecture upon ropes and rigging, sails and spars, and began to understand that this sailing was not a mere game, but that there was a vast deal to learn about it, and that a whole new world of thoughts and ideas was opening before them. but it was very interesting, for puck always meant to be a sailor, and he was eager to learn as many new words as his little head could take in. it was interesting too because the things mr. earle told them explained many mysteries which they had come across in story-books, and had never understood. the boys did not lack for wits, and were clever with their fingers too, so it was not a difficult task to get them into the way of furling or unfurling a sail, or learning to distinguish between the different ropes and spars. when they passed by other boats, mr. earle pointed out different parts of them, and expected them to remember the names; and, on the whole, he was satisfied with the sharpness of his pupils, and he found them tolerably well-behaved too. "if you boys are thinking of the army and the navy for professions," he remarked once to them, with his rather grim yet not unkindly smile, "the sooner you get all this fooling out of your heads the better." "what fooling?" asked pickle, with a little flush in his cheek, for the word did not quite please him. "i mean the foolish trick of treating all the world as though there was perfect equality there--as though a little shaver like you had the same rights of speech and remark as grown-up people who have served their apprenticeship, and gone through their training--as though your opinions were of the least consequence to anybody, and you had any right to air them when they are not wanted, and to have any say in the way in which your affairs are regulated. i mean all that, and a good deal more. if you don't get the better of that stuff these next few years, you'll find yourself in some trouble when you're under discipline." pickle flushed slowly. he had a fairly good understanding of the admonition addressed to them; but puck felt it rather beyond him. "i don't understand," he said. "well, i'll explain. a soldier and a sailor have nothing in the world to do at first but just to obey orders. there is no answering back, no questioning commands, no loitering, or any nonsense like that. in old-fashioned days boys were trained like that at home--at least the majority were; a father or a mother gave the word, and there was an end of it. then, when those boys went out into life they had learned unquestioning obedience, and it had become second nature to them. nowadays things are vastly changed--whether for the better or the worse time will show, but i have my own opinions on the point." pickle and puck exchanged glances, and the elder boy said slowly,-"cr--i mean father--sometimes told us we should have to have the nonsense licked out of us some day. but we did generally obey him. of course we didn't obey miss masters. i don't see how anybody could expect it. she was just an old frump, and her rules were all bosh. i don't think father thought much of her himself." "you may not think very much of your superior officer some day," said mr. earle grimly, "but you'll have to obey him, or he'll know the reason why." "ah! but a man is different." "yes, a much harder nut to crack, as you will find to your cost. if you had a spark of chivalry in your composition, you would know better than to speak slightingly of women. no really brave or noble-minded man ever does that." mr. earle did not spare his pupils; yet in spite of his sharp speeches pickle and puck liked him better and better every day, and began to take good care not to get into his black-books. they found that that did not pay at all. navigation lessons were not all play, as the boys soon found; and there was some pretty hard work in the way of sums bound up with it, as well as a great deal to notice and remember. but it was the sort of thing that they liked. and later on they were allowed to make rough models of ships themselves, and try to get the ropes and spars right; and this was like a new game, and kept them busy and happy for hours together. and then they were taken up to the crag to see certain models of ships there; and mr. trelawny put them through their paces, and seemed really quite pleased with them, and made them a present of a small model yacht, which became the most prized of their possessions. esther did not learn the navigation so thoroughly as the boys, though she began to feel quite knowing on the subject of spars and rigging and nautical terms. she used to sit beside the old fisherman at the helm when the boat went out, and look at the clouds and the sea, and dream her own dreams or get the old man to tell her some of his stories, which he was always ready to do. her head hardly ever ached now; and mr. earle always seemed to know when it did, and gave her the sort of lessons that did not make it any worse. the boys were very nice too--much more companionable than they had been at first; and she was always ready to cut out and hem the sails for them, and help them with her clever little fingers when they got into difficulties over their rigging. and they soon found that her sharp eyes saw things quite as soon as theirs, and that she could often help them out of a difficulty; so instead of treating her with a sort of boyish contempt, they came to look upon her as a valuable assistant, and included her in their games. then about this time another great pleasure and interest came into esther's life. it was about a fortnight after the visit to the crag, when her mother called her one day, and said, with a smiling face,-"esther dear, do you think you remember how to drive?" esther's face colored with surprise and pleasure. when she was quite a little girl her father had taught her both to ride and drive, for they kept a little pony carriage for the mother, and she used to be allowed sometimes to drive the pony, though generally only when her father sat beside her. it seemed a long time now since she had done anything of the kind, but she fancied the power would soon come back, and answered eagerly,-"o mama dear, i think i remember. why do you ask?" "because i have been talking things over with mr. trelawny, and he has found me a nice quiet little pony, and a little light carriage, and mr. earle is going to drive it down this evening, and give you a lesson in driving, for the pony has been used to children, and is said to be quite safe; but i should like you to have a few more lessons before you take me out." esther clasped her hands in ecstasy. "o mama! are you going to have a little carriage again?" "yes, dear--at least it is to be like this; it will be my carriage, but it will be kept up at the crag, where they have plenty of room, and a good coachman to look after things. and mr. earle is putting up a telephone from this house to the stables there, so that we can send for it when we want. and perhaps, by and by, if we like, we shall have it here; but i am always afraid of things going wrong with live creatures." esther's eyes were bright. she would have better liked, for some things, that the pony should live in their own little stable, where she could visit it with apples and sugar; and the thought of the telephone to the crag was a little alarming to her--she hardly knew why. but she was making a great effort to conquer her groundless fears, and had met mr. trelawny lately several times, almost without a tremor. and certainly the pony would have added to her cares, for her mother would not have been able to tell her anything about it, and if the man had neglected it in any way it would have been so difficult to find out. "i see, mama," she said slowly. "perhaps that is best. how nice it will be for you to get drives again!" "yes, we shall both enjoy that. mr. trelawny wants you to get out into the fresh air as much as possible. we shall both get rosy cheeks, i hope, when we have our daily drives." the boys were greatly excited by the news that a pony was coming, and the three children stood together at the gate to watch the road leading downwards from the crag to their house. "here it comes! here it comes!" cried puck, capering with excitement; "here is mr. earle driving along. oh, what a jolly little pony! he's got a mane like yours before it was cut off, essie--all in a tousle. and look how he tosses his head! i'm sure he's a jolly little beggar. i wonder if we may ride him sometimes. we used to ride at home. there was a pony there to mow the lawns, and we had him in turns in the field often." mr. trelawny appeared at this moment from the direction of the pine wood. "well," he said, on seeing the children, "and what are you all in such a state of jubilation about?" "oh, the pony, the pony!" shouted puck; "isn't he a jolly little fellow! where did he come from, uncle bob? and why didn't you drive down with him too?" "my legs are too long for that little affair," laughed mr. trelawny. "it is only meant for fairies and ladies," and he laid his hand on esther's head, so that she looked up quickly with a blush and a smile. mrs. st. aiden appeared from the house, and mr. trelawny offered her his arm and led her down towards the gate. mr. earle had drawn up the little equipage now, and the children were crowding round the pony, patting and praising him--a state of affairs to which he seemed quite accustomed, and which appeared to suit him very well. "he is a darling!" cried esther delightedly. [illustration: "'he is a darling!' cried esther delightedly."--page 168. _esther's charge._] "what is his name?" asked puck. "he was called punch at his last home," answered mr. earle, "and he is used to little people.--now, little miss esther, are you going to be bold, and see how well you can drive him? i have come to see what sort of a whip you make." esther's face was in a glow. it was such a pretty little carriage, and everything about the pony was charming--his flowing mane and tail, the bright, silver-mounted harness, the red-leather frontlet and saddle pad, and the bright brown of the reins where she would hold them. it was all so spick and span and well turned out--much better than anything she had known in past days. "i can drive," began pickle with sudden eagerness, and then he clapped his hand to his mouth and turned away. "i'll run and get a bit of sugar for punch," he cried; and he dashed off, pulling puck after him. "look here," he said, when they were a little way off; "i was just going to ask to have the first drive myself; but it's esther's pony, and she must go. don't you go and say anything; and if she offers, don't you take it. she's always doing things for us. we won't go and be pigs now she's got something nice herself." "all right," answered puck, whose mouth was watering for a ride on the pony, or a drive behind him; "she shall go first. but i suppose when she comes back we might have a turn?" "well, we will if they offer it us; but don't let's ask. we mustn't be greedy, you know; and we mustn't pretend we've ever done such a mighty lot of driving and riding, because you know we haven't--only just a little now and then. crump was always saying we must have ponies and learn properly; but we never did." puck colored up a little, for he had been rehearsing in his head some of the things he meant to tell esther about his prowess in the saddle and as a whip. but he remembered that he had resolved not to romance so much, just as pickle was keeping in mind that he must not always expect to be the leader, and have the best place in everything. so they ran away to the house together to get the sugar; and esther, after looking round a little uncertainly, let herself be handed into the carriage by mr. earle. "i thought perhaps the boys would like the first turn," she said. "ladies first is the right motto," said mr. trelawny. "now let us see how you hold your reins and whip. you won't want much whip for this fellow, so you can leave that in its socket for the present.--now, earle, in with you, and let us see how the little lady can drive you.--you are not afraid, my dear?" esther looked up with candid eyes. "no--at least, hardly at all. i'm not afraid, now mr. earle is here to help me. i like it very much, but i haven't driven for a very long time. i might do something wrong if there was nobody here to help me." then she drew up her reins and chirruped to punch, who threw up his head and started at a brisk trot; and esther felt her heart beating with excitement and delight, just dashed with a nervous tremor, for punch went very fast, and there were several corners to turn in the winding road. but the pony was a well-trained little fellow, and knew his business, and there was nothing in his way. he dashed along in fine style, mr. earle encouraging both him and his driver; and then esther had the delight of drawing up at the rectory gate to show her new accomplishment to the little polperrans, who came flocking out to admire and exclaim. it was a very enchanting half-hour that esther spent taking her first lesson; but she was in rather a hurry to get back, for she wanted the boys to enjoy the new pleasure also. so mr. earle took them each a turn, looking rather sharp after them; but they had a very fair notion of driving, and were perfectly fearless, yet at the same time they were fond of animals, and had no desire to use the whip unreasonably, or otherwise to harass the pony. punch gave the greatest satisfaction to all, and was declared to be a "perfect darling" by esther, and "a jolly little brick" by the boys. "mr. earle will take you out every day for a week, esther," said her mother, when the carriage had gone, "and after that he thinks you will be able to drive me out." esther's face glowed with pleasure, and pickle cried out,-"we can drive you too, aunt saint!" but to his surprise his aunt shook her head, smiling the while, and said,-"i think, dear, i should feel safer with esther, thank you." "well, that's funny," said puck; "i thought women always felt so much safer when they had a man driving them." then mrs. st. aiden laughed and kissed him, and said he should drive her out some day, when he was a man. nice things seemed to happen often now. for after the pony and carriage had been a few weeks in use, and esther had grown to be quite an experienced little whip, the children heard that mr. trelawny was going to keep his birthday, and that it was to be celebrated by an excursion to an old ruin, and that little people as well as their parents were to be allowed to go. esther clasped her hands in ecstasy when she heard this. she had never seen a ruin yet, though she had so often heard of them; and as her knowledge of history had greatly enlarged during the past few months, she was quite delighted to think of seeing any place which had played a part in the strange doings of olden times. mr. trelawny's house had done that; but esther could never quite conquer her fears of that place. she did not go very often even now, though the boys scrambled up the steep path as often as they dared, when she was out driving. but a real old castle would be delightful; and mr. earle gave them a whole history of the things that had happened there, and showed them pictures of the kind of old windows and arches they would see, and taught esther the names of the different moldings, so that she might know them when she saw them. she was to drive herself in the pony carriage, and have one companion, either grown-up or not as she liked, and puck had leave to go in the tiny back seat, which had been added in order that the three children might go out together. "of course you'll take me," cried pickle, dancing round esther in his excited fashion. she hesitated a little, and then said,-"pickle dear, i should like you best; but i feel as though i ought to ask prissy polperran. i'm afraid she sometimes thinks i am unkind to her. we used to be a good deal together, but i haven't time now that i have so many more things to do." "oh, bother that young poll-parrot!" cried pickle; "i don't see why you should be bothered by her. she's a regular kill-joy. you know she is." "it would be kind," said esther gently; "she would like it very much. but you may drive her, pickle, if mama and mr. earle don't mind." "not i, thank you!" answered pickle scornfully. "i can't abide the stuck-up minx. she's a little prig. she's----" pickle suddenly stopped short. the sunday class in the arbor still went on, and the children discussed with interest each week how they were "getting on with their sins," and how many dragons they had killed. they also had a little book now, and esther wrote down in it what good resolutions they made week by week. it was rather like a "sunday game" to the little people; nevertheless it was not without its effect upon them. pickle's sudden stop was due to the remembrance that they had last sunday resolved to try and be kind to other people, and always do as they would be done by; so that saying all these things about prissy was not quite according to their rule. "oh, bother!" he said, and looked at esther, and then began to laugh. in a minute he spoke again,-"all right, ess. take pretty polly. i suppose she will like it, and they don't have half the fun we do. i'll try to be civil to her all day too, if i can; but she is such a precious----" another stop and another laugh. "i say, essie, i think we make too many resolutions. i'm always tripping over some of them. don't let's have any new ones till we've learned how to keep these." "i'll let bertie have the dicky behind," said puck suddenly--"he'd like it; and i don't care so very much, if pretty polly is going instead of pickle." "thank you, boys," said esther; "it is very nice of you. i should like to have you best, but i think we ought to try and be kind." the young folks did not enjoy themselves any the less for the small sacrifice they had made. the delight of the polperrans at being driven in esther's little carriage made amends to her for the loss of the boys; and prissy was quite nice and merry, and never once put on her grown-up airs of superiority. pickle and puck occupied the box seat of a big wagonette, and were permitted by the driver to hold the reins now and then up the hill, or along the level, so they had nothing left to wish for; and it was a very merry and happy party that arrived by midday at the old ruined castle perched commandingly on the summit of a crag, not so very unlike the one where mr. trelawny lived. prissy had been there once before, and showed esther a great many of the wonders it contained--the great banqueting hall, with a part of its beautiful vaulted roof still standing; the old chapel, where the tracery of the windows was wonderful in its graceful beauty; and the ancient keep, with the thick walls, in which little passages could run without interfering with them. mr. trelawny was a capital host, and knew how to make people enjoy themselves. there was plenty to eat, and plenty to do; but he seemed fondest of getting all the little people about him, and telling them the wonderful stories of battles and sieges and escapes which had taken place around these very walls. "show us the prisons!" cried pickle. "aren't there some dungeons underneath? and isn't there a block or an ax or something like that? i like those jolly old underground places. i'd soon have got out though, if i'd been a prisoner." "i'll show you one prison, anyhow," answered mr. trelawny; "but i think you'd be puzzled how to get out of it, if once you were shut in." esther felt her breath coming and going. she did so hope there were no underground places here. the old feeling of horror came back directly she heard this talk. she felt as though everything had suddenly been spoiled. she didn't want to think about poor wretched prisoners, shut out from the light of day, lying in chains down in those terrible places. she couldn't think how all the children seemed to want to go and look. it made her feel sick and miserable; and yet she did not like to hang back when everybody else was moving. she thought of her resolution not to be frightened of fancied terrors; but this was not fancy. these were real prisons, and real people had been shut up there; and perhaps she would hear of horrid things that were done to them, which would make her feel all creepy at night, and not let her go to sleep. her feet lagged more and more as the party trooped on after mr. trelawny, laughing and asking questions; and then esther suddenly found that she could not make up her mind to go with the rest. she turned tail, and ran in the opposite direction, and threw herself down on the warm grass, shaking all over. "what is the matter?" asked a voice close beside her. she gave a great jump, and looked round with scared eyes. there was mr. earle sitting very near indeed to her, with a sketch-book in his hand. she wished then she had not come, or had seen him in time to run somewhere else. "what is the matter?" he asked again quite kindly. "i--i don't know. they were going down to the dungeons. i didn't want to go--that's all." "there is nothing very pretty down there; come and look at my drawing, and tell me how you like it. isn't that a fine bit of molding there? do you know people come from all over the country to see it. it's one of the best bits that exist in the world--or at least in this country." "how nicely you draw!" said esther admiringly, feeling the cold tremors abating. "what a lot of things you can do, mr. earle! it must be nice to be clever." "very, i should think," he answered with a smile. "would you like to learn to sketch some day?" "oh, very much, only there are so many things to learn. there does not seem time for them all." "no, that's the worst of it; it is like picking up pebbles on the seashore. one can never get more than a few out of all the millions there. still, if we make these few our own we have done something." mr. earle went on with his drawing, and esther sat watching him, feeling soothed and comforted, she did not know why. her thoughts went off on their own wonderings, and presently she said suddenly,-"mr. earle, is it wrong to be afraid of things--i mean of things that don't hurt, like dark places and cellars?" "it is not wrong, but it is often inconvenient." "you don't mind them, i suppose?" "not now. i used to be afraid of the dark once when i was a little boy." "how did you cure yourself?" "my mother asked me to try and get over it. so she taught me to say my prayers first, and then walk over the dark part of the house every night alone. i used to make believe that an angel came with me. after that i soon stopped being afraid." esther sat very still for a little while, a light coming slowly into her face. "do you think the angel was there really, mr. earle?" "i should not be very much surprised," he answered gravely, and they sat in silence till the rest came back. chapter viii. the city of refuge. it must not be supposed that the city of refuge was forgotten or neglected all this time. saturday afternoons had always been kept sacred to it, except when some other attraction took the children elsewhere. the changes which had taken place on the other days did not affect saturday to any great extent. mr. earle was always up at the crag on that afternoon, shut up in the laboratory with mr. trelawny. he did not volunteer either drives or sails on that day, and other people were busy too. esther always had a number of little saturday duties to think of; prissy was safely shut up in the lending library; and the four younger children invariably spent the leisure time together, and almost as regularly got the old fisherman's boat and took a trip across to their island. but they had kept this a profound secret, and, so far, there had been no danger of its escaping them. mr. polperran had not been told about the island, but bertie had had leave to whisper to him that they had a very nice place they went to down by the sea, and he had said it was all right, and he was glad they should play there. for mr. polperran was a cornishman born and bred, and he did not wish his children to grow up timid or dependent. he would have brought them up more robustly had it not been for the fears and prejudices of his wife, who had lived almost all her previous life in london. as it was, he was quite pleased for his little son to have boy companions to teach him bolder sorts of games than he had ever learned at home, and he told mrs. polperran not to mind if milly and bertie did come back wet and dirty. they were getting good from the salt water and from their companions, and the rest mattered nothing. so the secret of the island never transpired in that house, and esther always thought that pickle and puck spent their saturday afternoons in the rectory orchard. orders had been issued to the fishermen generally, and pollard in particular, that the children were not to be permitted to go out alone in a boat; and had they attempted to embark down at the little quay in the village, they would have been quickly stopped. but pickle had had the wits to foresee that from the first, and had made his bargain with the queer, old, half-daft man who lived at the creek, and who was very glad to let the little gentleman have the use of his boat for a few hours on saturday, for the payment of the shilling which pickle always gave him. pocket-money was plentiful with the two boys, who had come with an ample store, and who received their usual amount weekly from their aunt. there was not much chance of spending it in such a quiet place. fishing-tackle and sweet stuff from the one village shop absorbed a little, but there was always a shilling for "jonah," as they called him, whenever they wanted the boat, and the old fellow was cunning enough not to say a word about it, so that nobody in the place knew that the children made a practise of being out on the water alone. to be sure, there was not a great deal of risk in this. the boat was very safe and heavy; their island was not far away, and was well within shelter of the bay. they were not strong enough to care to row farther out to sea, and the weather through the summer had been exceptionally fine and calm. "i wish we could get a nice breezy day," pickle had often said; "then we'd hoist up the sail and have a jolly time. but it never blows on saturday afternoon. i call it a swindle." there was a sail to the boat, and the boys were learning more and more of the management of a sailing craft. they often went out with mr. earle in the _swan_, and sometimes he would take the tiller and make them manage the sail, whilst sometimes he would take the sail and set them on to steer. they were growing expert now, and they had never been lacking in boldness from the first. one day mr. trelawny came down himself, and puck was put in charge of the tiller and pickle of the sheet; and between them, with only a little assistance and instruction, they managed to get the boat through the water very creditably. "you'll make a pair of good jack-tars in time," had been mr. trelawny's encouraging verdict at the end of the voyage; and ever since pickle and puck had been burning and yearning for a chance of displaying their prowess by taking a sail quite on their own account. they had begged to have the _swan_ for their experiment, but had been forbidden. "don't try to run before you can walk," mr. earle had advised. "this is a ticklish coast, and you don't know much about it yet. and though the weather has been very settled, nobody knows what may happen. sometimes a gale of wind gets up just when one expects it least. you'd be in a nice predicament if that were to happen. you must wait till you're older and stronger before you go sailing alone." "i call that rot," pickle said rather loftily in private to his brother afterwards; "we could do it perfectly well now, i'm sure." but as pickle was really trying to cure himself of his self-will and desire to do everything his own way, he did not say anything more about having the _swan_ to go sailing in. perhaps he felt that mr. earle's "no" was a different sort of thing from his father's, and that coaxing and teasing would be thrown away here. so the two things together kept him quiet. nevertheless there was a great desire in his mind to show off his prowess and skill in the art of practical navigation, and it had been quite a disappointment to him that saturday after saturday came and went, and there was not enough breeze in the bay to fill the sail of "jonah's" old boat. "it seems as if it was just to spite us," he grumbled more than once; "but it'll have to come some day, and then you'll see what you'll see." it did not seem much like coming this breathless september afternoon. the sun shone as fiercely as if it were the height of summer. there was neither a cloud to be seen in the sky nor a breath of air to be felt. "it'll be precious hot pulling across," said puck rather ruefully, "but i suppose we'd better go." "oh yes; and then we can have a jolly bathe, and paddle about all the time in the pools. besides, milly and bertie can pull a bit now; we can take turns with those old sweeps." bertie and milly were always all eagerness to go across. to them the island was a veritable city of refuge. prissy could never find them there, and that was in itself a wonderful boon on holiday afternoons. true, prissy was generally all the time in the parish room; but there had been occasions when she had turned up unexpectedly, and had interrupted and condemned the most charming games. there was none of the delicious security from interruption at home that was one of the greatest charms of the island. and the very fact of going thither by themselves in a boat was an immense attraction to the rectory children, who were hardly ever taken out upon the water, even when mr. trelawny did offer them a sail in the _swan_. mrs. polperran could not conquer her nervous fears for them when out in a boat. she hated the water herself, and feared it for the little ones. she had an idea that mr. trelawny was a very headstrong, rash sort of man, and she almost always found some excuse for declining his invitations to her children. if they had known this themselves they would have been much distressed; but happily they were in ignorance, and supposed that mr. trelawny only cared about pickle and puck, who regarded him in the light of a new relation. however, the bliss of these excursions to the island had made a wonderful difference in their lives. there was always something to look forward to all the week. and they had now the delightful sense of having a place all their own--a real city of refuge, where even prissy could never find them; and they were gradually collecting there a miscellaneous assortment of treasures, keeping in view the possibility that they might some day really have to flee to their island home for safety from some peril, and desirous to have some useful stores laid up there in readiness. most saturdays they made some additions to their supplies. they had an old tin box which pickle had begged from genefer, and this was hidden in a cleft of the rocks in the little creek which formed their most sheltered hiding-place. the stores were all hidden away in this box, and kept very well. they tasted the biscuits and the chocolate-sticks each time, to make sure they were keeping all right, and milly declared that they grew "more and more delicious" with the flight of time. the heat was very great to-day upon the water, but when they reached the island they could find all sorts of nice places to shelter themselves in. shoes and stockings were off in a moment, and milly's skirts were soon tucked right away, so that she could paddle with the best of them. "oh, i do wish we could live here always, and not have to go home at all!" she cried. "i'd like to sail away to the other side of the world, and live on a coral island, and eat bread-fruit, and have a delicious time. i wonder how long it would take to get there. i wonder why nobody does nice interesting things except in books. why doesn't mr. trelawny go and see nice places like that when he has a boat of his own, instead of always living up there in a house and staring at things with an electric eye?" "i don't believe he's got an electric eye," said puck. "his eyes are just like everybody else's!" "i heard father say he had," said bertie quickly; "so he must have it, i'm sure." "well, i don't much believe he has," reiterated puck. "i asked essie if he had only the other day, and she didn't know; and aunt saint said she thought it was all nonsense." "perhaps it's mr. earle then," said milly; "but somebody's got one up there, i know. i think father said they couldn't do all their experiments unless one of them had an electric eye." "mr. earle's eyes are just like other people's when he takes off his spectacles," returned puck. "i'll tell you what that is," said pickle, who came up at the moment; "i was telling essie about it only last night. i think she was rather frightened. i've been asking lots of things about electricity, and it's awfully queer sort of stuff--all in volts and things. and you can switch it on and off as you like. i suppose that's what they do with their eyes--sometimes they're like other people's eyes, and sometimes they're electric. and you have to have a complete circuit, you know. i think that's what mr. earle uses his spectacles for. i think it completes the circuit." "yes, because they're round," added puck; and the three younger ones regarded pickle with looks of respect, as one who has been dabbling deep in the fount of knowledge. suddenly in the midst of their play pickle broke into a shout of triumph. "look, look, look!" he cried, and pointed out to sea. "what is it?" asked the others, staring, but seeing nothing, till bertie suddenly realized his meaning, and clapped his hands in triumph. "a breeze! a breeze!" he shouted. "now we can go sailing! it's coming up beautifully!" milly began to caper wildly. she had been longing unspeakably to participate in the delights of which she had heard. she thought that sailing on the water must be just the most delightful thing in the whole world, and had shed a few tears in private because she had never been in the _swan_, and bertie only once. "oh, come along, come along!" she cried ecstatically. "can we really have a sail?" her confidence in pickle was by this time unbounded. he seemed to her almost as wise and as resourceful as a grown-up person, without all the tiresome prudence that seemed to come with the advance of years. if he took them they would be as safe as if they were with mr. trelawny himself, and pickle's own confidence in his powers was little less. good resolutions were cast to the winds. perhaps pickle did not even know that this was the case. he had so longed for a breeze which would enable him to sail the fisherman's big boat, and it never occurred to him to regard this desire as a part and parcel of the self-will he had tried to get the better of. he had given up teasing for leave to go out in the _swan_ alone. but that was quite different. she was a fast-sailing boat, and perhaps wanted somebody more skilled to manage her properly; but this old tub was as safe as a house, he was perfectly certain of that. besides, they need not go any distance, but just sail round and round or backwards and forwards in the bay. he knew quite well by this time how to tack and put the boat's head about. he could manage that old tub as well as "jonah" himself. "shall we go and find a coral island?" asked milly, as they tumbled one over the other in their haste. "i--i don't quite know," answered pickle, not wishful to seem backward in the spirit of adventure, but rather doubtful as to the course to take for such a goal. "perhaps to-day we'd better not go so very far. we can look for a coral island next time." "shall we take some provisions with us, in case we're wrecked?" asked milly with beaming face, as though that would be the crowning delight to the adventure. "we might perhaps," said pickle; "one gets jolly hungry out sailing. we often have something to eat when we're out in the _swan_." milly ran off to the storehouse for supplies, whilst the boys made a rush for the boat. little puffs of wind were coming up from the west, dimpling the water, which had been as smooth as oil, and making it all ruffled and pretty. the sun, too, began to be obscured by a light film of cloud, and away over the land great banks of lurid-looking vapor began piling themselves slowly up in the sky; but the children were much too busy to think of looking out for signs like these, nor would they have been much the wiser had they noticed them. some cornish children, no older than milly and bertie, might have guessed from the look of sky and sea, and from the strange, heavy feeling in the air, that there was going to be a storm. but mrs. polperran had managed to bring up her young family in wonderful ignorance of such matters. bertie had never been allowed to run down to the shore to play with or amongst the fishermen's children; and so long as the sun was shining they never thought of such a thing as rain. there was sunshine still over the sea, though it was not so bright and hot as it had been. "isn't it nice?" cried milly, who was in a perfect ecstasy. "it isn't too hot now, and there's a lovely little breeze coming up, and it's all so pretty and nice. here's our basket; there are some cakes left, and i've put in some biscuits. let's take a drink of water out of the fountain, and then we can go for ever so long." the children kept their "fountain" replenished in dry weather from a can they brought over, filled from the well behind the fisherman's cottage. they liked drinking from the cleft in the rocks, but unless there had been rain quite lately the cleft was apt to be dry. however, they satisfied their thirst before embarking, and milly held her breath as she watched the old sail slowly swelling itself out as the puffs of wind caught it. it was the most entrancing experience to see the island just gliding away from them, as it seemed, for the boat did not appear to be moving, and yet there was quite a gap between them and it. then the sheet began to draw. pickle gave a shout of triumph as they felt the movement, and saw the little ripple of water round the prow. "she's off! she's off!" shouted both the boys in triumph. "set her head out to sea, bertie. that's right. hold her so. now we shall go. the wind's fresher away from shore. oh jolly, jolly, jolly! don't we go along?" milly had no words just at first. it was too delightful and wonderful. here they were actually in a boat of their very own, heading out for the beautiful green and golden sea lying away ahead of them, sparkling and dimpling in the westering light. they did not so much as glance towards land, where the masses of black sulphurous-looking clouds were piling themselves above the tall crags. they only saw the beautiful, shining sea, and felt the bird-like motion of the boat as she rushed through the dimpling waves. this was something like sailing. no laborious pulling at those heavy oars that moved so slowly through the water, and often hardly seemed to make the boat move at all; nothing to do but sit still, just holding sheet and rudder, and watch the water curling away from the bow as the boat pursued her course. when the puffs of wind came up more strongly they seemed almost to fly, and when they died down a little the sail would flap for a few minutes against the mast, and then puck would alter their course a little, and soon it would be drawing again beautifully. they did not care where they went or what they did. they were having a glorious sail, and they were full of delight and triumph. nobody could say now that they could not manage a boat. "only if we tell," said milly, frankly expressing the thought in words, "perhaps they'll never let us go again." "that is so stupid of people," said pickle; "they are always like that. if they'd know we went over to our city of refuge alone in a boat, i believe they'd have stopped us; but we never came to any harm, and now that we can sail like bricks, and manage a boat quite easily, they'd go on, saying just the same things as when we'd never been out or had any lessons. so it's no good talking; we'd better keep it our secret, like the island. but now that the windy time of year is coming, we can go out sailing often. we'll have jolly fun, if some stupid old fisherman doesn't see us and tell; but there seems nobody about to-day anyway." "i expect it was too hot and bright for fishing," said milly. "i know fishermen like dull days or the nights best." a low rumble from the shore boomed through the air, and the children looked round. "i think it's a thunderstorm over there," said puck, "but it's jolly and fine out here." "there! i saw a flash of lightning come out of the big black cloud!" cried milly. "it was so pretty. i don't mind lightning when i'm right away from it out here. i don't much like it at home. let's sail away from it, pickle, right away. it's quite fine the way we're going, and we go so fast. we shan't have it at all. and when mother wonders why we're not wet or anything, we shall just say it didn't rain where we were. it's like the israelites and the land of goshen." pickle looked just a little doubtfully at the weather. the sun was almost obscured now, though it still shone over the sea away to the west and south. the wind was coming up in squally gusts behind them, and sending the boat dancing along merrily. it was certainly great fun sailing on like that, but the waves were beginning to grow rather bigger out here than they had looked from inside the bay, and when the wind came rushing along, there were sometimes little crests of foam to be seen, and now and then these dashed into the boat. "i think, perhaps, we'd better put her about now," he said, with a look of wise command directed towards puck; "the storm might come over here, you know, and then we should get very wet--at least if it rained. you know how to put her helm round, puck, don't you? or shall i come and do it?" "of course i know," answered puck rather indignantly; "you just manage the sail. it always flaps a great deal when we put her round on the other tack." milly and bertie, greatly impressed by this nautical language, sat as still as mice watching their companions. milly was rather disappointed at hearing they were to go back, but now that the sun was obscured and the wind getting up, it wasn't quite so nice upon the water, and bertie was looking very solemn indeed. "you're not frightened, are you?" she whispered. "oh no; only my inside feels funny," he answered, trying to put a brave face on matters. "i don't think i mind going home so very much." milly had no qualms of seasickness such as were troubling bertie, but she did think the boat was rocking rather wildly, and the sail seemed to be flapping and pulling them over, and the water was very near the edge of the boat, which seemed to be dipping quite down. she gave a little shriek, and threw herself towards the other side. pickle was fighting fiercely with the sail, and she went to his assistance, and only just in time. "we must get it down," he said; and milly helped with all her might, so that in a few more minutes the boat lay rocking on the waves, the sail furled up round the mast, whilst bertie called out dismally that the water was all over his feet, and pickle told him rather sharply to get the water can and bail it out as fast as he could. "you didn't turn her head right a bit," he said to puck. "we were nearly capsized that time." "then it was your fault with the sail," retorted puck, who was rather frightened. "i didn't do anything wrong." "let's go home now," cried milly, a little piteously, though struggling hard against her rising fears; "the sun's gone in, and i think it's going to rain, and oh! what a flash of lightning that was!" the boom of the thunder almost immediately after was even more alarming. poor little bertie, who was feeling very sick and queer, began to cry; and pickle looked towards the shore, and marveled how they could ever have got all that way from it in such a little time. "we can never row back," was the thought in his heart; "we must get the sail up again somehow. we've sailed the _swan_ backwards and forwards. why on earth won't this old tub do the same? it must be puck's fault." he saw that the spirit of the party was becoming damped, and he was the more resolved to keep up a bold front himself. "we must just pull her round with the sweeps," he said in his commanding way, "and then we'll get the sail up all right. it's only just the tacking that is a bit difficult. we'll be racing home in a jiffy, you'll see." this was consoling to milly, who was half ashamed of her sudden fears, and now that the boat ceased to rock and plunge so wildly she began to recover her courage; and it was rather grand to be helping pickle to pull the old boat round. she could do that quite well, as well as help bertie with the bailing out, which he only prosecuted languidly, looking almost ready to cry. his face had a sickly greenish hue too, which rather distressed milly, but pickle said,-"he's only seasick. puck felt like that once or twice. he'll be better soon." when the boat was really headed for the shore, pickle tried experiments with the sail; but do as he would, he couldn't make the boat sail towards land. it would sail away, or it would sail sideways, but towards shore it would not go; and indeed they seemed to be getting slowly farther and farther away, and bertie suddenly burst into miserable crying, begging to be taken home, because he was so very poorly. pickle was beginning to wish very sincerely that they had never left their island. he looked back towards it with longing eyes. it would be a real city of refuge now, but alas! it looked almost as far away as the mainland. "can't we row to it?" asked milly, following the direction of his eyes. "i'm quite cool now. i'm rather cold. i should like to row if we can't sail. we got out here so very quickly, it can't take so very long to row back." it seemed the only thing to do, and pickle consented to try. he took one oar, and milly the other. puck kept the tiller, and put the boat's head for their city of refuge, whilst bertie lay along the bottom of the boat, heedless of damp or discomfort, only longing to be at home in his little bed. "i hope father won't call it being a cockney," he once said pitifully to milly, "but i can't help it. i do feel so sick. i wish we'd never come." "i dare say cornish boys are sometimes sick at sea," answered milly consolingly. she hardly knew whether she wished they had not come or not. there was something rather exciting in the adventure, and if only they could get back to their city of refuge she thought she should be quite glad. it would make them feel that they really were sailors, to be able to manage a boat in a storm. milly had her back to the shore now, and was pulling her oar very manfully. she thought they seemed to be going very fast through the water, though the waves were rather bigger than she liked, and seemed sometimes to rise up very near the edge of the boat. still she thought they seemed to be getting through them very fast, and made up her mind that they would soon be at their journey's end now. she almost wondered why puck did not exclaim that they were close in now. he only sat holding the tiller with a very solemn expression on his face. "the waves are getting very big," he said at last; "i don't much like the look of them. this boat doesn't swim nicely, like the _swan_. they look as though they'd come in on us every time." then milly looked over her shoulder, and gave a little cry of astonishment and dismay. "why, we're farther off than when we started!" she cried. "i think we get farther and farther away every minute," said puck. "i should like to pull round, and put up the sail again, and go round the world like that. we should come to our island again upside down, you know, and it would be much easier." "it's the wind and the tide against us," said pickle, with a rather anxious face. "we shall never get home at this rate." a sob from bertie was the only response to this remark. milly was trying to choke back her tears, because she didn't want it cast in her teeth that girls always cried. "what can we do?" said puck. "i think we'd better do as you said," answered pickle--"get her head round, and put up a bit of sail, and run before the wind. i don't think the old boat is safe going against these big waves. she'll be all right the other way, and we shall fall in with some ship soon, and they'll take us on board; or perhaps we shall get to a coral island after all." "i'd rather go home," sobbed bertie; and milly wondered if it was very silly of her, but she wanted much more now to be at home than to see a coral island. pickle put on a brave face, for he felt that he was the captain, and must support the failing courage of his crew; but he began to wish from the bottom of his heart that he had not thrown aside his good resolutions quite so quickly, and that he had never tried to sail a boat before mr. earle had given him leave. chapter ix. the magician's cave. esther had taken her mother for a little drive upon that hot september afternoon, but they had not stayed out so long as usual. the banks of cloud rising in the sky had frightened mrs. st. aiden, and esther turned the pony's head for home, not very wishful herself to test punch's nerve in a thunderstorm. they got home, however, before the first rumble sounded, and mrs. st. aiden went up-stairs to lie down. she said that the heavy air made her head ache, and that perhaps she should get a nap before tea-time. esther had taken off her hat, and was watching the first flashes of the lightning amid the piled-up clouds, when the little maid came to say that there was a poor woman who wanted to speak to one of the ladies, and should she tell the mistress, or would miss esther see her? "oh, i'll go," said esther; "mother must not be disturbed." she ran down to the back gate. genefer was out, and for the moment there was only the little maid available for any service. the cook was picking fruit in the garden over the road. she must not be hindered, as the rain would very likely soon come. esther did not remember ever to have seen this wrinkled old woman before. she did not know in the least who she was, nor what she wanted. she could only just understand her when she spoke, for she had a very broad, soft accent, and used many funny words that the little girl hardly understood. at first she thought the woman must be making a mistake in what she was saying; for she was telling esther that the little gentlemen, and little miss milly from the rectory, were out in a boat on the bay, and that she was afraid there was a storm coming on, and had come up to tell somebody lest they should come to harm. it was some time before esther could be persuaded that there was not a mistake somewhere. she could not believe that pickle and puck and the little polperrans could possibly be out in a boat by themselves. but the old woman assured her that they were, and told her, in a half-frightened way, how they came down on most saturdays and took her husband's old boat across to the little island opposite, where they played for a few hours and then came back. but it had always been calm and quiet on the water hitherto, and she had had no uneasiness on their account; but now the wind was getting up, and it looked like a storm coming, and she thought she ought to tell somebody, and didn't know what to do lest her old man should be vexed with her. so she had come to see the ladies about it. perhaps they could send somebody. "oh yes," answered esther quickly, casting about in her mind what to do; "i think i could find somebody who would help. is the storm going to come very quickly?" "i don't think so very quick, missie, and they'll be all safe on the island; they don't come back ever till a good bit later than this. but i don't like to think of them trying to get the heavy old boat home alone, with the wind blowing off shore like this. i don't think as they could do it; and it might get blown out to sea, and they would be skeered like." esther was a little scared herself at the bare thought. she turned things quickly over in her mind. she had to take command of the situation. genefer was away for the afternoon. cook was no good in an emergency, as she always lost her head; and it was one of esther's tenets that her mother must be spared all worry and anxiety. whatever was to be done she must do herself, and her thoughts flew instantly to mr. earle. he had become something like a real friend to the little girl during these past weeks. she was not without a certain timid fear of his cleverness, his stores of occult knowledge, and the things in which he took part up at the crag, which made folks shake their heads sometimes, and say that they feared some hurt to somebody would be the result. yet for all that esther believed in him thoroughly, and felt that he was certain to go to the aid of the boys if he knew their predicament, and it must be her work to let him know as soon as possible. she looked up at the threatening sky, but thunder and lightning did not frighten esther much. she would have been glad of company through the dark pine wood, but she was not really afraid to go alone. she was more afraid of approaching the crag at a time when it was popularly supposed that the master and his assistant were always engaged upon one of their uncanny experiments; but there seemed nothing else to be done, since the pony carriage had been already sent back by the boy in charge. after dismissing the woman with a small fee and a few words of thanks, esther put on her hat once more and commenced the climb to the crag. she had got about half-way there when she uttered a little exclamation of joy, for there was mr. earle himself swinging away down the path as if to meet her. she ran eagerly forward to meet him. "o mr. earle, did they tell you too?" "tell me what?" he asked, stopping short and looking straight at her. "what are you doing here all alone, with a storm coming up?" "o mr. earle, it's the boys. i'm afraid about them. i was coming to ask you what to do." and then she plunged into the story, and told him exactly what the old woman had told her. mr. earle's face looked a little grim as he heard, and his eyes scanned the clouds overhead and the aspect of things in general. "look here," he said to esther in his clear, decisive way; "i'll tell you what we must do. leave me to see after the boys. i'll go after them in the _swan_; for they ought not to be alone any distance from land, with the wind getting up and blowing off shore. but if i do that for you, you must go up to the crag for me with a message; and if the storm breaks, or looks very like breaking, you must stop up there till it's over. i'll leave word as i pass your house where you are, so that nobody will be uneasy about you." esther shook a little at the thought of going alone to the crag, but she never thought of shirking. "what is the message?" she asked. "it's like this," said mr. earle, speaking rapidly and clearly: "mr. trelawny and i are at a stand-still in some of our experiments for a certain chemical, which has been on order from london for some time. we think the carrier may have brought it to-day, and i'm on my way to the little shop to see if it's been left. mr. trelawny is waiting for me in some impatience. you must take word that i shall probably be detained, and that i want him not to go on any farther till i come back. you can remember that, can't you? you had better send merriman to fetch him to come and see you; then you can explain all about it, and if you have once got him safe out of the laboratory, you keep him out. i don't want him to go on experimenting without me. it wants two for that sort of thing. do you understand?" "yes," answered esther, and then the pair parted. mr. earle went swinging down the path which passed the hermitage and led to the village where the carrier's cart deposited parcels; and esther, with a very grave face, went slowly upwards towards the house upon the crag. she was glad to think she need not seek mr. trelawny himself amid his crucibles and retorts and strange apparatus; but she was a little afraid at having to face him all alone, although she had been trying hard to conquer her fears of him, and she had to own that he was always especially kind to her. she could not walk very fast here, for the ground was steep, and she had tired her limbs by hurrying along the first part of the way. the air seemed very hot and close about her, and she felt the sort of ache in her head which thunder often brought. all of a sudden she gave a little jump, and stopped short, for she saw a strange thing just in front of her--a little spiral of sulphurous smoke, curling upwards from the ground, very much as she had read that it did when volcanoes were going to have an eruption; and she very nearly forgot everything else, and turned to run away, when her steps were arrested by something even more alarming--the distinct sound of a groan, proceeding, as it seemed, from the very heart of the earth. esther's feet seemed rooted to the spot. she could not run away now; she had not the power. meantime her wits were hard at work, and in a few moments she realized that she was close to the hole which the boys called the chimney of the underground cave, and the smoke she saw was coming up from that place, whilst the groan must surely have been uttered by some person down there. all the old terror of that subterranean cave came like a flood over esther--all the talk of the boys about prisoners and victims, and her own vague and fearful imaginings of the horrors of such places. she was shaking all over, and beads of moisture stood upon her brow. reason for the moment had taken wing, and it seemed to esther as though she had suddenly come upon some fearful mystery of human suffering. there was some wretched human being in that cave, groaning in pain--bound, perhaps, in fetters, and awaiting some terrible doom. could she leave him like that? having made this discovery, ought she not to pursue it farther? her heart beat to suffocation at the bare thought, but she fought fiercely with her fears. had she not resolved to overcome them? and how could she leave this poor creature without seeking to do something? with failing limbs she crept towards the mouth of the shaft. she had looked down it many times before this, when the boys had been with her. but then there had been no smoke curling out of it, and no blood-curdling sounds coming up. she could not put her head right over it to-day, for the smoke choked her and made her cough; and immediately there seemed to come from below a sort of muffled cry. esther caught her breath and called back,-"is there anybody down there?" "yes; come to me! help!" spoke the voice, which sounded from the very depths of the earth. and esther's resolve was taken. she must go. she must go herself, and at once. to summon help from the crag might be worse than useless. this miserable victim was probably imprisoned there by the master of that place. esther's mind had gone back for the moment to its old standpoint, and mr. trelawny was the terrible magician, whose doings were so full of mystery if not of iniquity. if any captive were there, he had placed him in that terrible prison. his servants were probably in collusion with their master. if anything could be done, it must be done quickly and by herself alone. "i'm coming!" she cried down the mouth of the shaft, and then set off to run for the door in the hillside, the position of which she knew perfectly by this time. the boys had often shown it to her, and had shown her the trick of opening it. but they had never gone in. mr. trelawny had forbidden them to do so, knowing their mischievous tendencies. esther had the free right of entrance, but she would sooner have put her head into a lion's mouth than have exercised it. she had never been in since that first day when she had had to be carried out by mr. trelawny. she had hoped never to have to enter the fearful place again. but she must to-day, she plainly must, though her knees were quaking at the bare thought. she had had one or two talks with mr. earle about fear of the dark and how to conquer it. esther was not afraid of the dark in the ordinary sense of the word. she was not afraid of going about in the dark in her own home; for she had tried that, and only now and then, when in a nervous mood, had felt any fear. but she knew that she could not bear strange underground dark places, and she had once asked mr. earle if he thought she ought to go there to get used to them. but he had looked at her for a few moments, and had then said,-"no, i do not think so--not unless there were some object to be gained by it. there are many people in the world who dislike underground places, and avoid them. as a rule there is no call for them to conquer the dislike. of course, if one could do any good by going, if there were some sufficient reason for it--if it were to help somebody else, for instance--then it would be right to try and overcome one's repugnance. but without some such motive, i do not see that any one would be greatly benefited by going into uncongenial places of the kind." esther thought of all this as she ran along. hitherto it had been a comfort to her to think of this decision. but now it seemed to her that the time had come when she was bound to go. somebody wanted help. there was nobody but herself to give it. she might not be able to accomplish much, but at least she ought to go and see. to turn and run away would be like the priest and levite in the parable, who left the poor man wounded and half dead. everybody knew that they were wicked. she must try and copy the good samaritan, who, she knew, was the type of jesus himself. that thought came to her like a ray of comfort, and it helped to drive back the flood of her fears. then she remembered what mr. earle had said about what his mother told him to do; and, just as she reached the strange old door in the hillside, esther dropped upon her knees and buried her face in her hands. it was only for a few seconds, but when she got up again she felt that she could go into the cave. a few minutes before, it had seemed as if it were almost impossible. the heavy door yielded to her touch. she knew it would swing back again when she let it go, so she took a big stone with her and set it wide open. there would be comfort in the feeling that there was light and air behind her, though the cave looked fearfully dark and gloomy, and the strange smell inside it, as she went slowly forward, brought back some of the dizzy feeling she had experienced upon her first visit. a heavy groan smote upon her ears, and she gave a start and clasped her hands tightly together. she was through the passage now, and could just see the outline of the great dim cave. but where the living thing was that was making these sounds she could not guess. she stood quite still, and called timidly,-"is anybody there?" "yes, child," answered a voice which she knew, now that she heard it more plainly. "come a little nearer. i can't see you. i'm afraid i've been an old fool; and if i haven't blinded myself, i shall have better luck than i deserve." esther sprang forward with a little cry of relief. it was no chained captive, no unknown, mysterious prisoner. it was mr. trelawny himself, and he was hurt. in a moment she was by his side, bending over him, seeing a very blackened face and a brow drawn with pain. mr. trelawny was half sitting, half lying upon the cold floor of the cave, and there was a lot of broken glass all about him. so much she could see, and not much beside. "o uncle robert, i am so sorry! what can i do?" "isn't there a lot of glass about?" "yes." "well, there is a broom somewhere about. get it and sweep it away, and i'll try to get up. every time i've tried to move i've got my hands cut. i can't see a thing, and i've little power to help myself." esther forgot all about being afraid now that there was something to do. she found the broom, and was soon sweeping away like a little housemaid. now and then a groan broke from mr. trelawny, and at last she said gently,-"i think there's no more glass. please, are you very much hurt?" "earle will tell me i ought to have been blown into a thousand fragments," was the rather grim reply. "i think i've got off cheap. but i've had a tremendous electric shock; and i'm a good bit cut and burnt, i expect. if only my eyes are spared, i'll not grumble at anything else. how came you here, child? i thought i should have an hour or more to wait till earle got back." esther explained then what had happened, for mr. trelawny, although in much pain, had all his wits about him; and when he knew that mr. earle might be detained, he said to esther,-"then you must be my attendant messenger instead. go up by those stairs into the house, and fetch down merriman and another of the men. i don't think i can get up there without more help than your little hands can give." esther quickly obeyed. she knew the way up into the house, and the key was in the door, so that she had no difficulty in getting there. the hall above was almost as dark by that time as the cave below; for the storm had gathered fast, and the black clouds seemed hanging right over them. but esther had other things to think of now, and she quickly summoned the men, and sent them down to mr. trelawny; and then, being used in her own house to illness, she ran for the housekeeper, and begged her to get oil and linen rag and wine and soup ready, because mr. trelawny had burnt and hurt himself, and somebody must look after him, till the doctor came, and he could not well be sent for till after the storm had gone by, for it was going to be a very bad one. so before very long mr. trelawny was lying at full length upon a great wide oak settle in the hall, and esther was gently bathing his cut and blackened and blistered face and hands, and covering up the bad places with oiled rag, as she had seen genefer do when cook had burnt herself one day. mr. trelawny kept his eyes closed, and he drew his breath rather harshly, like one in pain, and his brows were drawn into great wrinkles. "do i hurt you?" esther asked from time to time. the housekeeper seemed to think that esther had better do the actual handling of the patient while she kept her supplied with the things she wanted. mr. trelawny's servants--and especially the women servants--stood in considerable awe of him. he never liked any attentions from a woman that a man could bestow, and the housekeeper preferred to remain discreetly in the background, leaving esther to play the part of nurse. esther was well used to the _rã´le_, and had a gentle, self-contained way with her that had come from her long tendance upon her mother. her touch was very soft and gentle, but it was not uncertain and timid. indeed she did not feel at all afraid of mr. trelawny now, only afraid of hunting him. "no, no, child," he answered when she put the question; "your little hands are like velvet. they don't hurt at all. but what's all that noise overhead?" "it's the rain," answered esther. "there is such a storm coming up. hark! don't you hear the thunder? and there was such a flash of lightning." mr. trelawny put his hand up to his eyes, and made an effort to open them, but desisted almost immediately, with an exclamation of suffering. esther clasped her soft little hands round one of his in token of sympathy. she could understand the terrible fear which must possess him just now. the servants had moved away by this time. they knew that the master did not like being looked at and fussed over. he had made a sign with his hand which they had understood to be one of dismissal, and esther was alone with him now in this big place. the storm was raging fearfully, but the child was not frightened. she had other things to think of, and she was thinking very hard. "i hope mr. earle has got the boys safe," she said, with a tone of anxiety in her voice. there was no reply. mr. trelawny was suffering keenly both in mind and body. esther looked at him, and realized that this was so. she hardly meant to speak the words out loud, but they came into her head and they passed her lips almost before she was aware of it. "jesus can stop the storms and make them quiet again, and keep people safe in them. and he can make blind people see." there was no reply; but esther felt one of the bandaged hands feel about as if for something, and she put her own little hand into it at once. the fingers closed over it, and the man and the child sat thus together for a very long time. then there was a little stir in the hall, as the butler appeared, bringing tea; and mr. trelawny told esther to get some, and give him a cup, as he was very thirsty. she was glad enough to serve him, and did so daintily and cleverly; and before they had finished, the storm had very much abated. the rain still fell, and the wind blew; but the sun was beginning to shine out again, and esther knew that the worst was over now. "it is light again now," she said. "it was so dark all that time--almost as dark as the cave." mr. trelawny looked more himself now. the pain of his burns was soothed by the dressing laid upon them, and the lines in his face had smoothed themselves out. "ah, the cave!" he repeated. "i thought that the cave was your special abhorrence, esther. how came you to be there all alone to-day?" "i came after you," answered esther. "i heard somebody groan and call for help." "did you know who was calling?" "no, the voice sounded so muffled and strange." "i wonder you weren't afraid, you timid little mouse. suppose it had been some great, rough smuggler fellow, such as used to live in that cave long ago!" "but i knew he was hurt; he was groaning and calling for help." "and that gave you courage?" esther hesitated. "i don't think i felt very brave, but i knew i ought to go." "why ought you?" "o uncle robert, you know we ought always to help people when they are in trouble--especially if they are hurt." "didn't you think you might get hurt too?" esther's face was rosy now, though he could not see it. "i thought a great many silly things," she confessed softly. "i think i have been very silly and cowardly often, but i'm going to try not to be any more. i don't think i should mind going down into the cave again now." "tell me what you thought about it before," said mr. trelawny, in his imperious way; and though it was rather a hard command to obey, esther thought it might, perhaps, amuse him to hear some of the things that she and the boys together had imagined about him, and perhaps he would tell her then how much of it all was true. so she told what puck had said about the tanks where skeletons were pickled, and about the electric eye, and the elixir of life, and the different things that different persons had said, and the interpretation the boys had put upon their words, and how she had fancied that the groans she heard that day must proceed from some miserable captive destined for one of the tanks. it was rather hard to say all this, for some of it sounded quite silly now; but esther bravely persevered, for she thought if she could once talk it right out she might never feel so frightened again. mr. trelawny lay still, and she could not quite see the expression on his face, because it was partly covered up; but at last he seemed able to contain himself no longer, and he broke into a real laugh--not quite so loud or so gruff as usual, but very hearty for all that. at the sound of that laugh esther's fears seemed to take wing. it must all have been nonsense, she was sure. nobody who had really been doing wicked and cruel things would laugh to know that they had been found out. "i shall have to take you over my laboratory one of these days, and really show you my pickled skeletons, and my electric eye, and all the other mysteries. now you need not shake, my dear. i have nothing in pickle worse than a specimen animal; and as for the electric eye, that is very far from being perfect, and it will be a long while before i can make you understand its use, or what we mean by the term. anyhow, it is not an eye that we carry about with us. in your mind it would not be an eye at all, though it has some analogy to one. and as for the elixir of life, my dear, i would not drink of it if i were to find it. to live forever in this mortal world of ours would be a poor sort of thing; and we know that there is an elixir of life preparing for us, of which we shall all drink one day--all to whom it is given, that is. and then there will be new heavens and a new earth, and we shall all be glorified together." esther sat very still, trying to take in the magnitude of that idea, and feeling that she should never be afraid of mr. trelawny again, now that she had spoken so freely of her fears to him, and he had been so kind, and had said such nice things. the shadows were beginning to fall now, and she was wondering how long she would have to stay here. she did not mean to leave mr. trelawny till mr. earle got back to take care of him; but she began to wish that he would come, and that she might get news of the boys. at last the sound of a firm, ringing step was heard without, and esther sprang to her feet. the big door was open, for it was quite warm still, though the rain had taken the sultriness out of the air. she ran out, and met mr. earle face to face. he was wet through and almost dripping, but he looked as quiet and composed as ever. "o mr. earle, where are the boys?" "safe at home in bed, like a pair of drowned rats. it was a good thing you came to warn me, esther, or they might have been miles out at sea by this time, or else at the bottom of it." esther's face paled a little. "o mr. earle, what did they do?" "you'd better run home and hear all about it from them. i thought you'd be back before i was." "o mr. earle, i couldn't go till you came. mr. trelawny has hurt himself. they've sent for the doctor now. but they couldn't just at first, the storm was so bad. please, will you go to him? then i can go home. but may i come again to-morrow to see how he is?" mr. earle had uttered a startled exclamation at hearing esther's words, and was now striding into the hall, almost forgetful of her. "trelawny!" she heard him exclaim; and then mr. trelawny said in his dry way,-"yes; crow over me now as much as you like. i neglected your valuable advice, and see the result!" mr. earle went and bent down over him; and esther, feeling her task done, took her hat and stole out into the soft dusk, and ran down the hill home as fast as she could. chapter x. confessions. esther found genefer at the door on the lookout for her. "o miss esther, my dear, i am glad to see you! i was getting fidgety about you--so long away up there, and the storm and all. but you are not wet through at all events," feeling the condition of her clothing and the temperature of her hands. "why did you stay such a time up there after the storm was over?" "i stayed with mr. trelawny; he has been hurt. i found him in the cave where he tries his experiments. i didn't like to leave him till mr. earle came back. but the boys, genefer--what about them?" "oh, they're in bed--the best place for them too. they were just soaked to the skin, and master percy had some of the pluck taken out of him. i don't know just what it was all about. i was busy getting them put into a hot bath, and then tucked up between hot blankets. master philip doesn't seem any the worse. he was asking for you all the time. i said you would go up as soon as you got in." "i will," said esther. "i've had my tea up at the crag. how is mama?" "lying down still with a headache. she got a bit upset when the boys were brought in, so when i'd seen to them i coaxed her to go to bed, and i hope she's asleep. the thunder upset her head, as it almost always does. i wouldn't go to her unless she calls to you going by." esther lingered a moment by her mother's door, but no voice summoned her in, so she went up-stairs, and soon heard pickle's unmistakable tones urging her to speed. "is that you, essie? come along! what a time you've been! we've got such things to tell you! come on!" esther pushed open the boys' door, and entered the room where two small beds stood side by side, and a small boy occupied each. puck was snuggled down in his, though his eyes were wide open; but pickle was sitting up, quivering with excitement to tell his tale to more sympathetic ears than those of either mr. earle or genefer. "o esther! why didn't you come before? we've such things to tell you! where have you been?" "up with mr. trelawny at the crag. he's hurt himself. i had to stay with him. o pickle, what were you doing? the old fisherman's wife said you were on the little island, and couldn't get back. did mr. earle come and fetch you?" "oh, she let on to somebody, did she? i didn't quite understand about that part of it. well, perhaps it was a good thing she did. but, i say, esther, we did have a jolly old time of it for a bit. we went such a sail by ourselves. if it hadn't been for that stupid storm coming up and spoiling it, we could have showed everybody that we could manage a boat first-rate." "bertie was sick," chimed in puck from his nest, "and i didn't like it when we couldn't get to shore. i thought we were going to be upset and drowned once. i didn't like that part of it." esther looked from one to the other in some bewilderment and anxiety. "o boys, what did you do?" then pickle plunged headlong into the story. it was all rather mixed up and difficult for esther to follow, but she began to understand that the boys had taken advantage of their liberty on saturdays to go off regularly to the little island, and that they had kept this "city of refuge" quite as a secret of their own. "i shouldn't have minded telling you," said pickle, "only we thought perhaps you'd tell mrs. poll-parrot, or pretty polly, and then all the fun would have been gone." "it wouldn't have been a city of refuge if the avenger of blood could come after us in another boat and take us away," added puck. "i'm afraid it won't be a city of refuge any longer now. i wish we hadn't gone sailing, but just gone home. then nobody would have known anything." "were you out on the water in the storm?" asked esther, with a little shiver. "o pickle, you should not have been so disobedient. you know mr. earle and mr. trelawny would not let you sail the boat alone." "not the _swan_," said pickle quickly, "but nobody had said anything about that old tub." esther looked rather grave, and a quick wave of color swept over pickle's face. "i wanted to do it," he said in rather a low voice; "perhaps that was why it seemed all right." "you might have been drowned," said esther in a voice of awe; "mr. earle said so himself." "i thought so once," said the boy; "i was frightened then." "tell me about it," said esther with a little shiver. she sat down on the side of puck's bed, and he got fast hold of her hand. he was more subdued than pickle, though esther could see that even the bold elder boy had received a considerable shock to his nerves. his eyes were bright, and he was excited and not quite himself. "we had always wanted so much to sail the boat," said he in response to esther, "but there had never been any wind. and to-day, when it began just to blow a little, it seemed just the very thing. so we got in and went off, and it was delicious. we did it beautifully, and it was all pretty and sunny on the sea, and we went along finely. but by and by the waves got bigger, and bertie began to get sick, and some of them wanted to get home again. so we tried to tack her round as mr. earle does, but she wouldn't go against the wind a bit, and the waves splashed in and wet us. and then we tried to row, but we only got farther and farther away from land, and the sea got rougher and rougher. and bertie was sick and frightened, and everybody wanted to get home, and we couldn't." "o pickle, how dreadful! what did you do?" "well, we had to turn round at last and run before the wind," answered the boy, with as much of the sailor air as he could assume. "i saw it was the only thing to try for. the waves were all right if you didn't try to meet them; and we thought perhaps we should meet a ship which would take us up." "that might have been rather nice," said puck, "only it got so dark, and then the thunder and lightning came; and oh, how it did rain! we couldn't see anything. we felt like being all alone on the sea. i was frightened then, and bertie was awfully sick, and milly began to cry. i wanted to cry, too, only i thought it would be like a girl." esther was shivering herself at the bare picture of all these horrors. she had nothing but sympathy for the boys now, though she knew that it had been the spirit of disobedience which had prompted them to this daring escapade. "oh, what did you do?" she asked, in a voice that was little more than a whisper. "we couldn't do anything but sail on and on," answered pickle; "but puck said,-"yes, we could. milly proposed it. we all said our prayers; and milly reminded us about jesus walking on the water, and making the storm stop. so we asked him to come and do the same for us." "the storm did stop by and by," said esther in a low voice. "yes, it did--almost just after we'd been praying," said puck; "and when the rain went away and the sun came out, we saw the _swan_ coming after us as hard as ever it could come. bertie thought perhaps it was jesus coming to us on the water, but it was only mr. earle." "perhaps jesus sent him to you," said esther in a low voice. "he said it was you who sent him," said pickle the practical. "yes, in one way," answered esther, coloring up, for she was shy of uttering her deeper thoughts; "but i shouldn't have known if the old woman hadn't come up. perhaps it was jesus who sent her--i mean, put it into her head to come." "do you think so?" asked puck, with wide-open eyes, and esther answered softly and steadily,-"yes, i do." puck suddenly scrambled up in his bed and got upon his knees. "genefer put us to bed without our prayers--she was in such a hurry," he said. "i'd like to say my prayers now, because i'm very much obliged, if it was like that. it's mean not to thank people when they've done things for you. let's all say our prayers together." esther immediately knelt down beside the little bed, and in a moment pickle was out and on his knees beside her. they both hid their faces, and a few half-whispered words and snorts from puck, who was very much in earnest, alone broke the silence of the upper room. but presently esther felt that the child kneeling beside her was quivering all over, and suddenly pickle broke down and began to sob uncontrollably. this was a strange thing in pickle, who had hardly shed a tear all the months he had been under the roof of the hermitage, and esther was distressed and almost frightened at the sudden vehemence of the outburst. she put her arms round him, and rather to her surprise he did not repulse her overture of sympathy, but clung to her convulsively, weeping silently, but with great gasping sobs, that seemed wrung from him by some power too strong to be resisted. puck crept into bed again, and watched his brother with wondering eyes. but nature was claiming her dues now from both, and puck's eyes grew heavy with sleep even as he watched, and soon shut themselves up altogether. not even curiosity, or the remains of the excitements through which they had passed, could keep him longer from the land of dreams. "pickle dear," said esther gently at last, "won't you let me put you to bed? you will be getting cold." "don't go away then," he said between his sobs. "hold my hand and sit with me. i don't want to be left alone." how well esther understood that appeal! she knew without any telling that if left alone all the horrors of that dangerous voyage would come back over the boy's mind, as they had never done at the moment when the things were happening. she felt as though a bond of sympathy had been established between herself and her manly little cousin. hitherto he had never shown weakness in her presence. now he was clinging to her as though he felt her presence to be a source of strength and refreshment. she held his hands, and sometimes spoke softly to him, and presently the sobs ceased. but he did not on that account let go his hold upon her. she felt the grasp of his fingers tighten on her hands. "esther," he said presently, "i was the one who thought of it all and planned it all. it was disobedience. i think i knew it was all the time, only i wouldn't think about it. i wanted to do as i liked. i always do. esther, suppose the boat had gone down and we had been drowned, would that have been dying in one's sins?" "o pickle, i don't know!" "i know there's something in the bible about dying in our sins. i thought it meant going to hell. esther, should i have gone to hell?" "o pickle dear, i don't think so!" "don't you? but i was being naughty all the time." "we are all naughty very often," said esther gently, "but you know jesus said he would give eternal life to every one who believed in him. you do believe in jesus, don't you, pickle, even though you forget and are naughty sometimes?" "yes, i do," answered the boy, very soberly and steadily. "it was the only thing that helped us not to be very badly afraid when it was all dark and the thunder and lightning came. but it was milly who thought of it. she cried, but she helped us the most. and when the rain seemed to be right off, and we saw the sun coming through again, and there was the _swan_ racing along after us, why, then it did just seem as though he were coming to us on the water, as puck said." "i think he was," said esther, with a little quiver in her voice; and pickle squeezed her hands, and she squeezed his, and they were silent a few minutes. then the boy spoke again,-"essie, i must go to-morrow and tell mr. polperran all about this." "won't he know from milly and bertie?" "yes, but i must tell him too. it wasn't their fault. it was i who did everything--getting the boat, and the city of refuge, and then going sailing when there was a breeze. that's what i want to tell him. he trusted me to take care of the little ones--he told me so once--and i nearly drowned them. and it wasn't that i forgot about what mr. earle had said about not trying to sail alone. i remembered it every bit, but i didn't choose to obey. i pretended to myself that he had only said we mustn't sail the _swan_, but i knew he'd never let us go sailing alone in any boat. i'll tell him so, and get him to set me a punishment; and i'll tell mr. polperran too, and ask him to forgive milly and bertie, and only to be angry with me." pickle spoke with subdued vehemence, and with great earnestness. esther approved his resolution. "mr. polperran is a very kind man," she said. "i don't think he'll be angry exactly; and you will never do it any more." "i'm going to try and be obedient," said pickle with a little sigh. "mr. earle is always telling us that we shall never be any good anywhere till we learn to obey; but i never quite believed him before. i do now." pickle was growing soothed and comforted now. esther sat beside him till he dropped off to sleep. he was thoroughly tired out, and the burst of tears had relieved the overcharged brain. when he was sound asleep, the little girl covered him up and kissed him in motherly fashion, and stole away to see if her mother had awakened. mrs. st. aiden was ready now to hear the story of the adventures of her little daughter, and a modified account of the peril in which the boys had placed them. she shuddered a little over the latter, but was not conversant enough with the subject to thoroughly realize how near the children had been to a tragic death. she was more immediately interested in the accident that mr. trelawny had met with in his cave-like laboratory, and made esther repeat the story of her adventure more than once. "dear, dear, poor man! i do hope his sight will not be permanently injured; it would be such a terrible loss. mr. polperran has always been afraid of some accident. he has said to me many times that he was afraid mr. trelawny was sometimes too eager to be cautious; and, poor man, i am afraid it was so to-day. what a good thing you found him when you did, esther! it must have been so bad for him down there in that lonely place. you will be more of a favorite with him than ever." esther's eyes opened rather wide at that. "am i a favorite?" she asked; and her mother broke into a little laugh. "have you never found that out yet, child? ah! you are always so frightened at him. perhaps you will get over that now. you will find that he does not mean to eat you." "i think i have been rather silly," said esther soberly; "but i have been trying not to be so afraid of things lately." "yes, that is wise; for mr. trelawny is really our very kind friend, though he is strange and sometimes rough in his ways. and i have not quite forgiven him yet for cutting off your hair." "i have been so much more comfortable without it, mama," said esther, ruffling up her wavy crop. "my head never aches now, and it is so nice not to have all the tangles to pull out." "well, dear, i have got used to it now, and if you are more comfortable i am glad. all the same, it was a liberty for anybody to take; but mr. trelawny is not like anybody else, and it is no use minding." next day esther and pickle were the only two able to go to church from the hermitage. puck was sleeping on so soundly that genefer would not have him wakened; and mrs. st. aiden was still feeling the effects of the storm of the previous day, and was not able to attempt the service, though she was able now to go to church sometimes. the children looked eagerly towards the rectory pew, but nobody appeared there except prissy, who was looking very prim and rather severe; and she would not throw so much as a glance towards esther and pickle, though the little girl was really anxious to catch her eye and telegraph a question to her. at the proper place in the service mr. polperran rose, and said in a voice which had a little tremor in it, that a father and mother desired to return thanks to almighty god for the preservation of their own children, and some others, in a great danger to which they had been exposed. it came quite unexpectedly, and pickle threw a hasty glance at esther, whilst the color flamed all over his face; and as the words of the general thanksgiving were spoken, with the special clause which sounded strangely impressive as read by mr. polperran that day, his head sank lower upon his folded arms, and esther saw his shoulders heave, and felt her own warm tears gathering under their long lashes. but it comforted her to hear this public recognition of god's care for his children in their peril. it seemed to bring home to her the mysterious and wonderful truth about the fall of the sparrow--the individual care and love which god feels towards every single living atom in his vast creation. and the sound of the fervent amen which passed through the church at the close seemed to speak of the universal brotherhood of those who owned the lord as their master; and though esther could not have told the reason of it, a strange sense of sweetness came into her soul, and a peaceful assurance of god's fatherhood crept over her spirit and took up its habitation there. pickle was wonderfully quiet and attentive during the rest of the service, even listening to the sermon as he had never listened before. was it a coincidence, or had the father's heart been moved by what he had heard yesterday, so that he had prepared his discourse after the return of his children from their hour of peril? esther did not know, but she gave a little start when the clergyman read out his text, for it was nothing more or less than the account of how the lord came to his disciples walking on the water, and how his presence with them there brought them immediately to the desired haven. pickle squeezed her hand tight as the impressive words were read out, and his attention never wavered for a moment during the whole of the simple discourse, which went home to many hearts that day; for it was known all over the place by this time that the rector's children had been in great danger, and there was something in mr. polperran's way of dealing with his subject which showed that his heart was full of thankfulness for their escape, and that he could not forget the peril in which they had been placed. at the close of the service esther and pickle remained in their places till the congregation had pretty well dispersed, and then found their way round to the vestry door from which the clergyman would take his departure. the boy's resolve had only been strengthened by the emotions of the morning. he must ask the forgiveness of milly and bertie's father before he could be happy again. mr. polperran came out looking rather absorbed, but when his eyes fell upon the two children his face lighted. he put out both his hands towards pickle, and drew the little boy towards himself, saying,-"they tell me that you were their greatest help, and never lost courage, and saved the boat from being upset by your clever handling. my dear, brave, little man, i shall not forget that. if you had not had the presence of mind to get the boat round and let her run before the wind, she must have been swamped." pickle was so taken aback by receiving praise and kindness instead of blame that for a moment his breath seemed taken away, but then he burst out with all the greater emphasis,-"o sir, you mustn't call me brave; you mustn't think me clever, or anything that is good. i was very naughty and disobedient, and i led them all into it. it was all my fault. they would never have thought of it but for me. i don't think they would ever have gone in a boat at all, even to the city of refuge, if i hadn't taken them. it was disobedience. perhaps they didn't think of it, but i did. i want to be punished for it; i don't want to be praised. i was very conceited, and thought i knew such a precious lot. when the storm came, i found i didn't know anything. i was frightened, though perhaps they didn't know. but i was. i knew i had done wrong. i thought god was angry with us. it was milly who helped us most. it's she you ought to praise. i was naughty. i'm very sorry. i want to ask you to forgive me." the last words came out almost with a sob. they were not easy words for pickle to speak. he had not been used to make confession of his misdeeds, or to ask forgiveness. in the old days he had taken things much more lightly. but something new seemed to have come into his life now; and perhaps mr. polperran understood, for he sat down a little while upon the low stone wall, and talked very gravely and kindly to pickle, and then forgave him fully for his share in the act of disobedience which might have ended so badly, and sent the children home with warm hearts and smiling faces, although there was real seriousness in their hearts. "he is a very nice man," said pickle with emphasis. "i think he is very good too. i like him better than mrs. pol--polperran. but i'll tell her i'm sorry when i see her next. i shan't like to, but i will. i'm sorry bertie's sick and has got a cold. but i daresay he'll be better soon." puck was up and dressed when they got back, and quite interested to hear about the thanksgiving, and the sermon, and the talk with mr. polperran afterwards. he was not quite so serious as pickle, but then he had not quite the same weight upon his conscience. he had always been used to follow the lead of his brother, and though he was quite aware that they had been disobedient to a certain extent, he had not the same burden of responsibility as that which weighed upon the elder boy. mr. earle had not been in church, so there was no news of mr. trelawny; and after the early dinner, esther and pickle walked up to ask after him. puck felt indisposed for the exertion, and remained at home. mrs. st. aiden expressed her intention of walking as far as the rectory to inquire for milly and bertie, and puck said he would like to go with her. as esther and pickle climbed the hill, he asked her about mr. trelawny, and listened with immense interest as she told the tale of her doings that afternoon. "weren't you afraid to go in? i thought you couldn't bear the cave. o essie, i wish i had been there! but i never thought you'd dare go in." "i didn't want to much," answered esther in her grave way, "but it seemed like my duty." pickle pondered a while, and then said suddenly,-"it's better to be frightened doing our duty than frightened because we've been disobedient and naughty and horrid things have come that needn't have done if we'd been good." esther turned this over in her mind for a while, and then looked at pickle with a kindling smile. "and yet we were both helped and taken care of. pickle, i do think jesus is very, very good." "so do i," he answered, looking down and kicking the soft pine-needles under his feet; and after that they walked in silence up to the crag. nobody was about upon the terrace, which seemed strange on such a fine afternoon; but mr. earle came down to see the children, and gave them the report of mr. trelawny. "his eyes are bandaged up still, and will have to be for some little time yet; and the burns, though they are not deep or dangerous, are rather painful. he says nobody touches them so gently as his 'little nurse.' that is you, esther. he is to be kept quite quiet for a few days, and then the doctor will be able to judge better what is the extent of the mischief. that is as much as i can tell you to-day." esther's face was full of concern. "oh, i am so sorry. can i go and see him?" fancy her asking this of her own accord! "if he had not just dropped asleep you should have done so. he would have liked it; but he must not be disturbed, for he had a bad night, and now he has taken a draught, and perhaps will sleep some hours. but i will tell him you have been to ask, and will come and see him another day." "to-morrow," said esther promptly; "and please, mr. earle, mama says she thinks we had better have a week's holiday, so that you can stay with mr. trelawny, and we can go blackberrying and nutting. we didn't have a holiday in august because we had not worked long enough." "i am much obliged to your mother for the kind thought," said mr. earle. "i think a holiday will do none of you any harm just now, and i shall be glad to have the time with my old friend." he stopped and looked rather earnestly at esther, and then said,-"what was it that took you into the cave to find mr. trelawny on saturday?" "i heard him groan and call out. the sound came through the chimney." "did you know who it was?" "no; but it was somebody who wanted help." "i thought you were too frightened to go into underground places. didn't you once tell me so?" esther's face crimsoned over, but pickle broke in,-"that's what i said just now; but she went because she thought it was her duty." "i thought somebody wanted help, and it would be unkind not to," said esther, hanging her head. "but you were afraid?" "rather." she paused and hesitated, and then looked up quickly into mr. earle's face. "i remembered what you had told me about when you were a little boy, and what your mother had said. i did that too. then i wasn't so frightened." she knew he understood, for she felt the touch of his hand upon her shoulder. she was too shy to look up again, but next moment she heard him ask another question. "esther, suppose you had been afraid, and had not gone in and got mr. trelawny safely out of the cave, do you know what would have happened?" "no." "if he had lain there till i got back, he would have been a dead man." esther started and looked up with scared eyes, and pickle drew a long whistling breath. "oh, i say!" he murmured, with staring eyes. "it is quite true," went on mr. earle. "you would not understand if i were to try and tell you; but mr. trelawny had been trying a dangerous experiment. i do not think he knew himself how dangerous it was. the first explosion was enough to injure him and reduce him to the state in which you found him; but there was worse afterwards. he probably did not know it, not being able to see; but there was something going on all the time which must quite shortly after you left the cave with him have made a second and a worse explosion. had anybody been there then he could not have lived. i suppose the thunderstorm prevented this sound from being heard, but a number of things down below are shattered to atoms that were all safe in their places when the servants went down at your bidding." esther's face had grown pale with excitement and awe. it was rather a terrible thing to feel how nearly mr. trelawny had lost his life. suppose she had not heard him. suppose she had let her fears get the better of her. oh, how glad she was that she had been trying to conquer them before! that had made it much easier when the moment for proving herself came. the children walked very gravely away hand in hand. then pickle suddenly burst out,-"i say, essie, it's you who have taken the palm after all. you are really the heroine. i used to think girls were no good. but i think it's boys now." "o pickle, i don't think i like to be praised. i've been so silly often and often. but i am very happy and glad. still i don't think i should have dared to go in if it hadn't been for what mr. earle told me once." "what did he tell you? i wanted to ask." then esther told of the talk in the old ruin, and pickle listened very attentively. "what a lot of different things god had to see to that afternoon," he remarked very soberly, after a long pause; "i do think it was awfully good of him." "so do i," answered esther softly; "i should like always to do what he wants us to now." "well, we'll try," said pickle with emphasis. "i think after all this it would be mean not to." chapter xi. mr. trelawny. "i'm not sure that mama will let them go. we have been very much disappointed and displeased," said prissy in her primmest way. "i'm not blaming you, esther; you knew no more about it than i did myself. but the children had all conspired together to deceive us. of course we have been very much hurt, mother and i." "i think children always like a secret," said esther in her gentle, womanly way, which was not in the least like prissy's primness; "but i know that my boys were most to blame, and pickle is very sorry indeed for his disobedience. but i hope mrs. polperran will let milly and bertie come with us, even if you do not care to come. we have got our lunch in baskets, and punch will carry everything, and we can ride him in turns if we are tired, and mr. earle says there are splendid nuts and blackberries in mr. trelawny's woods. we shall have such a nice time!" "i'll go and ask mother," said prissy. "of course milly and bertie would like it, but after what has occurred, you know--" and there prissy stopped short, pursed up her lips, and looked unutterable things. esther could not help feeling glad that the boys were waiting at the gate with punch. she was not sure whether pickle's penitence would stand the strain of these airs on prissy's part. she felt her own cheeks tingling a little. she felt that she did not at all like her boys found fault with by prissy, even though she knew they had been naughty. pickle had owned up his fault to mr. polperran like a man, and had received forgiveness. it did not seem quite fair to esther that anything more should be said about it. the next minute mrs. polperran came in, kind and fussy, as was her way. "if you are going with them, esther dear, i will send them. but i have been very much shocked and disturbed, as you will understand. i had always been able to trust my children before. it has been very sad to think that they have been instructed in the ways of deceitfulness." mrs. polperran shook her head, and esther felt her cheeks growing red. she knew that there had been disobedience, but she was sure that her boys had not meant to deceive. they had been accustomed to liberty and a good bit of their own way. they had not been brought up under any obligation to tell everything they did. it was not fair to accuse them of deceit. it was a great relief at this moment to see mr. polperran's head appear over that of his wife in the doorway. "tut, tut, tut, my dear! don't let us call things by harder names than we need. the little ones did tell me that they had a place down on the shore where they went and played, and i gave them free leave to do so. indeed, i was glad they should have bolder spirits to play with. i didn't know they went off to the island; but, upon my word, i don't think i should have interfered if i had. the bay is perfectly safe, and that tub of old jerry's could hardly overturn with anything the children might do. of course they were wrong to try and sail it, and to leave the shelter of the bay; but the boys have seen their fault, and all the children have asked and obtained forgiveness. now, i don't want another word said about it. they were sufficiently punished by their fright, and they have learned a lesson they will not forget. don't weaken the effect of it by talking too much. what has esther come about to-day?" esther's invitation was soon repeated, and mr. polperran's kind face beamed. "to be sure, to be sure!--just the very thing for little folks. let them go? why, of course. they can't get into any danger up there, and i don't think they'll try to. bertie wants the current of his thoughts changed. it will do him good to go. i'll answer for it there will be no getting into mischief now. come, mama; you don't grudge them a day's pleasuring, i'm sure. i'll go and fetch the young rascals down, and start them all off together." mrs. polperran raised no objection, though she looked a little doubtful. prissy decided not to accompany the party, and esther did not seek to shake her determination; she could not help feeling that they would be happier without her. milly and bertie came down clinging to their father's hands. milly looked none the worse for the adventure of the saturday afternoon. bertie had not quite got his color back, but the threatening of cold had been averted by prompt measures, and, as mr. polperran always declared, there was nothing like fresh air and the breath of the sea and the woods for dissipating any little ailment and putting people in trim again. "now, be good boys and girls, all of you," he said; "have plenty of fun, but don't get into mischief. learn to be brave lads and lassies, making friends with nature wherever you go. that's the way to grow up fine men and women. don't you be afraid of anything in the world except doing wrong." punch was at the gate with the little people, a basket slung on each shoulder, and a saddle on his back. bertie was lifted up for a ride, as his legs were the smallest, and he had been a little poorly for two days after the adventure in the boat. but his eyes were dancing now with delight at the prospect before him; and when they started off and had turned the corner, milly gave a little hop, skip, and jump, and cried,- [illustration: "punch was at the gate, with bertie in the saddle."--page 266. _esther's charge._] "oh, how nice it is to get away! i am so glad that prissy isn't coming!" esther was very nearly saying, "so am i," and she saw that the words were on the very tip of pickle's ready tongue. but she was glad that he did not speak them, but only looked at her with a laugh in his eyes, and puck asked solemnly,-"has she been lecturing you all round?" "oh yes," sighed milly, "ever so much worse than father and mother. father was very kind indeed, though he made me feel more sorry about it than anybody. but he understands about what we feel like--i mean, he knows that it is nice to do things, and to get away from people, and to play we're sailing off to coral islands and places like that. i don't think he's going to stop our going out in the old boat to the city of refuge." "isn't he? how jolly of him!" cried pickle; "i thought our city of refuge was gone forever." "i don't think he minds a bit," cried bertie, "for i talked about it a lot, and he said he'd come with us some day and see it. i said i thought the avenger of blood would always be coming after us now. i meant prissy, you know, and he knew it. and then he laughed and said he thought the avenger of blood would think a long time before following us there; and i'm sure he meant that prissy would be frightened, and i dare say she would." "besides, if we have the boat she can't come," cried puck. "i was afraid mr. earle would be the avenger of blood, and would come in the _swan_." "i don't think anybody will come," said milly. "i heard father telling mother that he was very glad we had some games like what he and his brothers used to play. he said he'd rather we got into a scrape now and then, than grow up afraid to wet our feet, like so many little cats." pickle burst out laughing, and the party felt inspirited by the feeling that mr. polperran's sympathy was with them in their love of adventure, although not in their disobedience to definite commands. they distinguished very clearly between the two. it was a perfect september day, and they had a delightful time wandering through the great copses on mr. trelawny's property, filling their baskets with blackberries, and feasting themselves at the same time. at noon they had a delightful surprise, for mr. earle found them out, and brought them a big jar of cream and some excellent cake, and shared their picnic with them at their own eager request. they were all very fond of mr. earle by this time, and they wanted to know about mr. trelawny too. but mr. earle could not tell them much on this score. he was still kept in bed, and was not allowed to have the bandage off his eyes. esther was very sorry indeed to hear this. she could not think what mr. trelawny would do. he had always been so active and independent, and she did not think he had ever spent a day in bed before. "he will very likely be up again to-morrow. he does not like stopping there, i can tell you," said mr. earle, "but there is nothing that makes people feel so helpless as not being able to see. but for that he would never be so quiet." "would he like some blackberries?" asked puck, opening the basket and looking in. "let's pick out some of the very best for him, and you tell him we gathered them for him, and hope he'll like them." so mr. earle departed presently with the pick of the spoil, and the children sat and talked about mr. trelawny, thinking how sad it was for him to be half blind and not able to do anything, and wondering if they could do anything to cheer him up. "children can't do things for grown-ups," said milly, rather disconsolately. "it's only grown-ups who do things for children. but you did something for mr. trelawny, essie, when you got him out of the cave. i should like to have done that. you saved his life, didn't you?" "yes!" cried pickle; but esther said,-"no--at least i mean it wasn't really like that. i went and told the servants, and they got him out." "but if you hadn't gone in when he called, if you'd run away as some silly people would have done, he'd have been a deader as sure as a gun," chimed in pickle eagerly. "mr. earle said so his very self." this act of esther's was very interesting to all the children, and certainly she found that all her old fears of mr. trelawny had vanished away. the very next day she was admitted to his darkened room, where he was lying on a couch with a bandage over his eyes, and his hand and arm bound up too. she sat beside him quite a long time, telling him all about her own adventure that day, about what had befallen the boys on the same afternoon, and about their doings these last days--how they had been often up in the woods getting nuts and blackberries, and how they were enjoying their holiday. esther found that mr. trelawny was a very nice person to talk to, although his voice was still rather loud, and he had a quick, imperious way of asking a question which sometimes made her jump. but he was always interested in what she said. he made her explain exactly where they went each day, and how the trees were looking, and what things they found in the woods, and what all the live creatures were doing. indeed esther found that she had to notice things much more closely than she had ever done before, and this was rather interesting, she thought. she and the boys all began noticing everything, so that esther might tell about it to mr. trelawny; and she was sure he liked it, though he did not exactly say so, but made his funny snorts, and seemed trying to trip her up with his questions. but she was not afraid of him now, and she did not mind if she did make a mistake. she found she was learning a great deal more than she had ever known before about the world she lived in, and that in itself was very interesting. one day at the end of the week, she came in to her mother and found her with an open letter in her hand and a rather perplexed face. "is anything the matter, mama?" she asked. "o my dear! i hardly know. no, nothing is the matter, but it is such a sudden thing to suggest. i have got a letter from mr. trelawny." "o mama! then can he see again?" "no, my dear. it was not written by him, but only at his dictation. there is a good deal of reason in what he says, but it is all so unexpected." "what is it, mama?" "he asks if i will shut up the hermitage for the winter, and come with you all and stay at the crag." "o mama! why?" "to keep him company, he says. to cheer him up. to make a little life about the old house for a poor blind man." "but, mama, he isn't going to be blind, is he?" cried esther, distressed. "i hope not indeed, dear. he has seen the oculist again, and hopes are held out--strong hopes, he says--that he will recover the sight of one eye, at least. but recovery will be slow, and it must not be forced, or he may lose his sight altogether. for the next few months he will have to be content to use other people's eyes more than his own. of course that is much better than being always blind. but the poor man feels it a good deal, one can see." "and he wants us to go and stay with him?" "that is what he asks--to stay for the winter months, and see how we get on. as he says, he is very dependent upon mr. earle, and it would be much more convenient if the boys were living in his house, so that the lessons could be given there; and then, as he cannot read or study or employ himself as he has been used to do, a silent house, with nobody to speak to for the greater part of the day, would be very dreary for him. he says that he has no kinsfolk except ourselves. your father was the last blood relation of whom he knows anything, and he seems to feel that we belong to him in a certain sort of way. what do you think about it, esther, my dear? do you think we ought to go?" esther's face was quite flushed and eager. "o mama, if we can help him, i think we ought!" "he says we might bring genefer as my maid, and make any arrangements we liked about the other servants, and he would see that the house and garden here were properly cared for. of course, it would be a great saving of trouble and expense in a way, but it would not be quite like living at home. mr. trelawny would be the master, and we should all have to keep his rules. but that might be a good thing for the boys. i sometimes think they want a stronger hand over them." "i think it would be a very good plan," said esther; "they are getting so much better, and they are fond of mr. trelawny. he would make them obey, and they would like it. they always obey mr. earle now, and they like him better than anybody almost." "it would be more the sort of life they have been accustomed to--a big house and a man's authority," said mrs. st. aiden reflectively. "and mr. trelawny is a sort of guardian to you, and has been a most kind friend to me since your father died. we must not forget that. he asks it as a favor to himself. you can read the letter if you like." esther did so, and looked up with the sparkle of tears in her eyes. "o mama, you will go, won't you?" "i suppose so, dear, if you like the plan, and think you could all be happy there. as he says, it is a big house, and we should have our own rooms, and the boys' noise need not trouble him more than he cares about. i don't think their father would mind. after all, it is only a long visit. he only asks us just for the winter months." "he wants us to go as soon as we can," said esther. "yes, you see he feels his blindness so much, and a merry houseful about him would cheer him up. well, dear, would you like to run up and tell him that we will try the experiment? it will save me the trouble of writing, and i think he will like to hear it from your lips. and mr. trelawny is always in a hurry to carry out his plans." esther smiled a little at that. she knew very well that mr. trelawny never waited an hour if he could help it. it was his impatience of delay that had caused the accident which had partly destroyed his sight, and might have caused his death. "i should like to go, mama, if you like me to. i have done my lessons for to-day. the boys are having their navigation. i don't do that with them." "well, then, run off, dear, with the answer. i don't see how we could refuse. and i always think that this house in the winter is just a little damp. i shall be glad to be out of it before the fall of the leaf." esther had her hat in her hand, and was soon on her way to the crag. how strange to think that before long she might be actually an inmate of that house! and how much stranger still that she was not a bit afraid of the prospect! it was a beautiful afternoon--as warm as summer; and when esther approached the house, she gave a little jump of surprise, for there was mr. trelawny lying on a couch on the terrace, his eyes still bandaged up so that he could see nothing, but at least he could breathe the fresh wind blowing softly off the sea, and esther knew how he would like that. she ran forward, forgetting all about her old shyness. "o mr. trelawny, how nice for you to be out of doors!" "ha! is that my little goldylocks?" said the invalid, stretching out the hand he could use. "so you have found your way up to the old blind man, have you? i suppose you have not brought me any letter from your mother yet. that would be too soon." esther clasped her two hands around that of mr. trelawny, and said,-"mama said i might run up and tell you. she has got your letter, and we think it so kind of you. we should like very much to come and pay you a nice long visit, if you don't think we shall be in your way." his strong fingers closed over her little hands in a tight grip; she could see that his mouth was smiling, and that there was pleasure in every line of his face. "is that so, little woman? have you taken counsel together over the blind man's request? of course your mother would not settle anything so important without the leave of the 'little manager.'" esther did not mind being teased now, not one bit. she gave a little soft laugh as she answered,-"we think it would be a very nice plan, if you like it too. i know the boys will be just delighted. they think this is the very nicest house in the whole place, and i think it will suit mama. she will enjoy this nice sunny terrace in fine weather, and the view of the sea. we can't see a bit of the sea from our house." "and will somebody else enjoy it too?" asked mr. trelawny. "what about my little goldylocks herself?" "oh, i shall like it!" answered esther softly, stroking the hand she held. "i think it is beautiful up here, and i like being useful. do you think i can be useful to you, uncle robert, if i come?" "i mean to make you very useful, little woman," he said. "it was partly for that reason i thought out the plan. i want a little niece or granddaughter of my own to wait upon me and take care of me. as i haven't got one quite of my own, i have to do the next best thing, and try to steal one who will do instead." a little while ago esther would have shaken in her shoes at the notion of being stolen by mr. trelawny, but now she listened to these words with only a little thrill of pleasure. "i should like to be your little granddaughter," she said. "you must tell me what you want me to do." he drew her down beside him on the couch, and passed his hand over her head. "you will have to learn how to be eyes for me, for a little while at any rate, goldylocks, and to do the same for me that the dog does for the blind man--lead me about, and take care that i don't fall. will that be a great nuisance, little woman?" "oh no! i like taking care of people," answered esther earnestly; "only i am so sorry you want taking care of at all. but it won't be for very long. you will be able to see again soon, won't you?" "i hope so, my little maid, i hope so. they give me good words when i ask the question myself. but they all tell me i must be patient--be patient; and, esther, though i am an old man, and ought to have learned that lesson long ago, i find that i have not done so. i find it harder to be patient than anything else in the world, and it is harder to learn lessons when we are old than when we are young. hallo! hallo!--what's this?" this exclamation was caused by mr. trelawny's becoming aware of something warm and damp dropping upon his hand. esther hastily dashed the drops from her eyes, but her old friend knew whence they had come, and something like a quiver passed over his face. "child, child, you must not cry," he said. "i was only wishing i could be blind instead of you for a little while," said esther, with a little catch in her voice. her hands were held very closely by mr. trelawny's strong fingers; his voice was not a bit gruff as he answered,-"i believe you, my dear, i believe you. you are like your father, and he was the most unselfish man i ever knew. i believe you would give me the eyes out of your head if you had power to do it; and as you have not that, you must learn to use them for my benefit, and i shall expect them to see a great deal. tell me what you see now." esther looked round and scarcely knew where to begin, but she was thinking too much of mr. trelawny to be self-conscious, and soon she was telling him just how the sea looked, with the great burning track of yellow light across it, as the sun slowly sank; and how big and golden-red the sun grew as it drew near to the horizon; and how the little fishing boats were all coming home; and in which direction the clouds were sailing; and how the white-winged seagulls were fishing in the bay, and wheeling round and round, calling to each other with their strange, mournful cries. it was very interesting, she thought, to try to make somebody else see it all; and mr. trelawny evidently could, for he sometimes interrupted to tell her things she had not noticed herself, so that she often looked quickly at him to make sure that he really was not "peeping." for she knew he must not try to use his eyes yet, even though he might be able to see by and by with one of them at any rate. "if the sun is dipping, you must run home, childie," he said at last. "run home and tell your mother that i am very grateful to her for humoring a blind man's fancy, and that the sooner she and her tribe can come and take possession, the better he will be pleased." "i will tell her," answered esther. "i think we could come quite soon. there will not be so very much to do, and if we should leave anything behind, we can easily fetch it away afterwards. i will talk to genefer about that. she and i will do the packing, you know." "of course, of course; the 'little manager' will manage all that. i shall soon be managed out of house and home, i expect. what a wide field the crag will give to such an enterprising little woman!" "you are teasing me now," said esther, laughing, and bending down she kissed him on the lips, and then talking her hat, ran lightly down the hill towards home, a very warm feeling in her heart towards the redoubtable owner, who had once been the very terror of her life. half-way down she encountered the boys, who were running to meet her, brimful of excitement. "o essie! essie! is it true?" "are we going to live up there?" "did he really ask us too? oh, won't it be jolly? won't it be scrumptious? aunt saint said you'd gone to settle it all. do say that it's all settled now." "yes, quite," answered esther; "mr. trelawny wants us to go as soon as ever we can. he says the house seems so empty and lonely now that he can't read or go about or amuse himself as he used to do. and he wants mr. earle so much more now; that is another reason. you must be very good and nice, boys, and not give trouble. we mustn't worry him now that he's ill." "we won't," cried pickle earnestly. "we'll be as good as gold. i mean, we'll try to be as good as we can.--won't we, puck?" "we will," answered that young man solemnly. "i should like mr. trelawny to like us. perhaps, then, he'll let us stay always. i mean till crump--no, till father comes back or we go to school. i don't like it when mr. earle is angry with us, and i don't want uncle bob to be either." "i think it'll be awfully nice," said pickle, as they wended their way home again through the wood. "i shall try and help uncle bob too. aunt saint said he wanted you, essie, because you would be like a pair of eyes to him. i know why he thought that. you're always doing kind things for other people, and you don't care about yourself if other people are happy. i just know if i were to be ill, i should like to have you come and see me and sit with me. it can't be just because you're a girl, for that pretty polly is a girl, and she thinks herself very good too, but i'd sooner have a toad come to sit with me than her." "o pickle, don't talk like that!" "i'd twice as soon have the toad," cried puck; "toads are nice things, and they have such funny eyes--like precious stones. she's just a prig, and i can't abide her. we won't ever ask her up to play at the crag. i shall tell uncle bob about her, and he won't let her come then." "that would be unkind," said esther gently. "i don't think we ought to be unkind to prissy. she tries to be very good, you know, and she is always obedient." pickle and puck were silent for a minute. they had been thinking, very seriously for them, about obedience of late. they had recognized their own failure, and had been sorry for it. in the old days they had taken this matter too lightly, but they were learning better now. "well," said puck at length, "she may be obedient, but she's nasty too. you're obedient and nice, essie. i like you. but if you say we've got to ask prissy, we will; only i hope uncle bob will laugh the priggishness out of her if she comes." great excitement reigned in the little house during the next days, for there seemed no reason to postpone the arrangement if it were really to be carried out. esther and genefer were busy putting away household things, and packing up personal belongings. the boys flitted hither and thither, helping and hindering, and made daily excursions to the crag to get news of mr. trelawny, and tell him how they were getting on. lessons were not to be recommenced till the party got up to their new quarters, and the cart came daily to fetch away boxes that were ready for removing. milly and bertie were rather sorrowful at the thought of losing their playmates, but puck brought good news from the crag. "uncle bob says you may come up every saturday afternoon and play with us. he doesn't think we shall go sailing in the _swan_ very often now, because the sea gets rough in the winter; but there are no end of jolly things to do up there, and uncle bob says we may have you up whenever you can come on saturdays. esther can ask prissy too, if she wants her, but you are our friends. prissy never cares to play with us." this was delightful news, for the crag had never, been anything but a mysterious region of wonders to the rectory children. mr. trelawny had sometimes asked the parents to send them; but mrs. polperran did not entirely approve of mr. trelawny, and she was half afraid lest some harm should come to her brood through his love of practical joking. it was very exciting to think of visiting there now, and seeing all the strange things that were said to exist in that house. "is he really a magician or a wizard?" asked milly with bated breath. "i don't believe he is," answered pickle. "i believe he's just a nice, jolly old gentleman; only he's very clever, and people don't understand, and call him names. i don't believe there are any magicians left now. i believe he's just the same as other people." "but the pickled skeletons in the tanks," urged milly. "i don't believe there are any really," answered puck, with a note of regret in his voice; "i don't think he pickles anything except specimens that go into bottles. we shall find out all about it when we go to live there. but i don't believe he's a bit of a magician, and essie doesn't think so either. she isn't a bit afraid of him now." the day for the flitting arrived in due course, and the carriage and a last cart were sent down to the hermitage to convey mrs. st. aiden and her belongings. genefer remained behind to shut up the house, and the boys preferred to climb the hill by the path through the wood. but esther drove up with her mother by the zigzag road, and as the great easy carriage rolled smoothly along, mrs. st. aiden said with a little sigh,-"we must persuade your uncle robert to go driving with us, esther. he is one of those men who have never cared to drive, but it would do him good, i am sure. this is a most comfortable carriage. it will be delightful to have the use of it, and i am sure it will do him good to get out as much as possible." "i dare say he would drive with you, mama," answered esther. "we will try to coax him. but i don't think anybody would care very much about driving all alone." mr. trelawny was standing in the hall to welcome them. he had a stick in his hand, but he laid it down and drew esther towards him and kissed her. "you will be a substitute for that now, my little maid," he said. "we are going to have some good times together, are we not?" the boys came rushing in at this moment, helter-skelter, bringing an atmosphere of life and jollity with them. "uncle bob!" cried puck, rushing up and seizing his hand, almost gasping and choking in his eagerness and excitement, "we've thought of such a plan for you. we'll do lessons by ourselves for a little while, and mr. earle shall make you an electric eye to see with, till your own gets quite well." chapter xii. a new charge. esther found out very soon that mr. trelawny's threat of making her his "little white slave" was not altogether an idle one. she had laughed when he spoke the words upon a former visit to the crag, but she soon found that he did take up a great deal of her time and care, and very willingly was the service rendered that his helplessness made needful. it seemed to be less irksome to mr. trelawny to be led about by the little girl than by any other person--even mr. earle; and, of course, a good deal of mr. earle's time was now taken up by lessons. esther found that her regular studies were very much interrupted by the demands made upon her time by mr. trelawny; but on the other hand, she thought she was learning as much with him, as though she had been in the schoolroom all the time. his mind seemed like a perfect storehouse of information; and as he took his leisurely walks abroad, he would teach esther all manner of things--history, geography, physiology, geology, and all sorts of things with long names that esther never learned. all she knew was that she was learning interesting things every day of her life, and that the world seemed to be growing a bigger and more beautiful and wonderful place than she had had the least idea of before. mr. trelawny was a wonderful teacher; but he expected his lessons to be understood and remembered. again and again he would put a sudden question to his little companion, asking her about something he had told her on a previous occasion, or making sure that she understood the bearing of some new piece of information he was giving her. esther soon conquered her first shyness, and was not a bit afraid to ask questions and to say when she did not understand. she found that mr. trelawny, though not quite so well used to teaching as mr. earle, was never impatient or vexed at being asked to explain himself. what did vex him was for anybody to make believe to understand a thing he was saying, and then show later on that it had not been understood at all. as long as the fine weather lasted there were delightful things to do. sometimes it was a long drive, which mrs. st. aiden generally shared; sometimes a sail in the _swan_ with mr. earle and the boys, which was always a great pleasure. then there was a great excitement for a few days in the place, for the mackerel had come into the bay in shoals; and the _swan_ went out with the other boats, and the little polperrans went in her, and they all had spinners, and caught mackerel by the dozen, and fine fun they had out of it till the fish disappeared as suddenly as they had come. mr. trelawny was getting quite strong again, but he was still forbidden to make any attempt to use his eyes, and went about with a bandage and a shade. perhaps it was this that made him stoop a little in his walk, as he had never done before. certainly his hair had begun to grow white rather quickly. he had never seemed to be an old man before. esther had never thought of him as old until just lately, although he used to speak of himself in a half-joking way as an old fellow; but he did begin to look old now, though he seemed strong and well in himself. he liked to be out of doors as much as possible, and esther was nearly always his companion. she found this interesting in many ways. one was that she had her lessons in a new and interesting fashion from him. another was that she got to know a great many fresh people, and heard a great many interesting things about them. mr. trelawny owned a good deal of land all round the crag, and the people who lived in the cottages were his tenants. he had known them all his life, and they had known him. there had been trelawnys at the crag for several hundreds of years. esther found out that mr. trelawny, in spite of his gruffness, was very much respected and loved. she liked very much to go with him to see the cottagers and fisher folk, and listen whilst they talked to him and told him all about themselves, their troubles, their bits of good luck, their perplexities with their sons and daughters, and all the different things which went to make up the sum of their simple lives. she grew fond of the simple people herself, who always had a smile and soft word for "the little lady." she thought it must be very nice to have mr. trelawny's power to help them in times of need, to advise them in their troubles, to rebuke those who wanted a sharp reproof, and to warn those who were in danger of falling into bad habits or idle ways. often after these visits mr. trelawny would talk to esther a great deal about the family they had just visited, telling her its history, what sort of people they had shown themselves in the past, and what kind of treatment they had required. some children might have been bored by this sort of thing, but esther was never bored. it seemed to her very interesting, and she always listened with great attention. "you must help me at christmas time this year, little woman," he said one crisp december day, as they were walking home together. "there are a lot of old fashions we keep up at christmas here. it's one of the relics of old times that no trelawny has had the disposition to do away with. some people say that the time has gone by for that sort of thing, and that it is obsolete and only a form of pauperization. perhaps they may be right. but in my day i shall change nothing. i'm too much the old tory for that. and you will help me this year, won't you? you ought to see how everything is done." "i should like to," answered esther eagerly; "what is it you do?" "give a great feed--dinner, the people call it--in the hall at the crag, to which every tenant and his family is entitled to come, even to the babies, if the mothers choose to bring them. no questions are asked, nobody is turned away. every tenant has the right to be there, and to eat and drink to his heart's content. five o'clock is the hour for the feed, and after that they sing carols or old songs and make speeches. i come in and drink a glass with them, as the trelawnys have always done; and when they can eat and drink no more, there is a great giving of presents all round. bran pies or a christmas-tree for the children, and clothing or nets or tools for the grown folks. we keep it up till ten o'clock, and then sing 'god save the queen,' and send them all off to their homes. it used to be done on christmas eve or on christmas day, but now it's on boxing day, as we think that home is the right place for folks on christmas day itself. you will have to be my right hand, little woman, in all the preparations we have to make." esther was skipping along gaily: her face was aglow. "how nice!" she exclaimed; "i shall like to help and to see them all. may i come with you, uncle robert, when you go to see them at dinner-time?" "of course you may, my dear. indeed i particularly wish you to be with me. i want to present you to the people then. it will be the best opportunity for it." esther raised her eyes with a questioning look, but then, remembering that he could not see, she said softly,-"i don't think i quite understand, uncle robert." his clasp upon her fingers tightened; he did not speak for a while, and then he said slowly,-"no, childie, i know you don't. i am debating in my mind whether or not to tell you." esther looked up again with the same shade of perplexity in her eyes, but she asked no further question. she knew she would be told if mr. trelawny thought it well. at last he spoke, but rather as though to himself and not to her. it was as if he were debating some point in his own mind. "i don't know why she should not be told. the queen was no older when she found out that in all probability she would one day have a kingdom to rule, and her first wish and resolve were that she might grow up a good woman. i believe it would be the same with this child in a very little kingdom. i want her to grow up feeling what are the duties which will some day be hers." esther's heart was beating rather fast by this time. she felt as though something momentous was going to be spoken, and she was not wrong. they had reached the terrace by this time, and with the shelter of the house behind them, and the sunlight falling full upon it, the place was quite warm--so warm that mr. trelawny seated himself under the veranda, and drew the little girl between his knees. "my dear," he said, "i suppose you are too young ever to have wondered who will live at the crag after i am gone." esther did not speak. it had certainly never entered her head to think about such a thing as this. "i am the last of the trelawnys," continued the old man; "i have not a single blood relation of that name to come after me. once i thought it would be otherwise. for three happy years i had a wife living with me here, and a little boy who had just learned to call me 'daddy.' then they were both taken away. it was all so long ago that the folks here have almost forgotten, and some of them speak of me as a bachelor. but i have never forgotten. i never could care for anybody else. i have lived my life alone, and i have nobody to come after me--nobody to love me now." esther suddenly raised the hand she held and carried it to her lips. "we all love you, uncle robert," she said softly. he stooped and kissed her, putting his arm round her and holding her close. for with all her clinging, affectionate ways, esther had never yet spoken of loving her father's old kinsman. "thank you for telling me so, childie. yes, i believe you, my dear. esther, do you know that you are the only blood relation i have in the world?" she shook her head, and he felt the motion. "but that is so, my child. your father was my only kinsman. at one time i looked upon him as my heir. then he too was taken. i brought his wife and child to be near me, but i do not think i at once formed any plan for the future. the estate and income are my own property. i can dispose of them as i will. but i want to find a successor who will love the old place, and who will be a merciful as well as a just monarch in the little kingdom which lies around the crag." he paused, and esther neither spoke nor moved. "kingdom is perhaps an obsolete word in these leveling days, yet down here amongst these simple folk the owner of the crag wields no small power. it is a power i should fear to put into any but just and merciful hands. little esther, do you think you could be a just and merciful ruler here some day? would you try--like our good and gracious queen--to 'be good,' to love your people, to be a wise and god-fearing ruler, if ever that power were to be entrusted to you?" she hid her face upon his shoulder. she was startled, overcome, almost frightened. he felt her shiver through all her little frame. he saw that she had understood, and that it was all a very solemn and sacred thing to her. he held her very closely as he went on speaking. "little esther, it is a great charge, and you are but a little girl now, but you will grow older every year; and i believe i shall be spared many years longer myself, though i do not expect ever to be the same man that i was before my accident. i have talked to your mother about this, and she is willing that you should continue to live with me, to learn the ways of the place, and how to be its mistress one day. my will is drawn up, leaving all to you. i am just waiting till i have my sight back to sign it. i think you are learning every day to love and understand the people better and better. perhaps some day you will take my name, so as to keep the old name with the old acres; but there is time enough to think of that. you have always been used to having the charge of something or somebody. it will only be adding a new one to the list. do you think your little shoulders are strong enough to bear the burden? will you be my little girl now, and be good to the people when i am gone?" her tears came at that, not loudly or noisily, but raining down very fast. "o uncle robert, i will do what i can. i will try to be good. but, please, don't talk as though i were going to have it all. i can't bear that. i only want to help you, and learn to do things as you do them." "that is all i ask, my dear. i hope that is all that will be laid upon you for a good many years to come. indeed, you would never have the sole burden in your childhood and youth, of course. but i should like to feel that you were growing up in the traditions of the place, knowing what is before you, just as you would know it if you were in very truth the little niece or granddaughter that i call you." for a few days after that talk esther went about with a very grave face, and was absorbed in a multitude of new thoughts. but children quickly grow used to an idea, and so it was here. the little girl never spoke of it to anybody but mr. trelawny and her mother, but she began to have an understanding of the new charge which would one day in all probability be hers; and she followed mr. trelawny about more assiduously than ever, waiting upon him, watching him, trying to forestall all his wants and to understand all that he was doing; whilst he, on his part, took her more and more into his confidence, both feeling that a new and very tender bond had been established between them. the coming christmas festivities kept the boys fully engrossed. they had leave to go into penzance with mr. earle to make their purchases, and they were full of mystery and excitement for days before and after. at last they could bear the burden of their great secret no longer, and pulling esther into their room one day, a little before christmas day, they whispered the tremendous secret. "esther, we've got it; we got it all by ourselves. nobody knows--not even mr. earle. would you like to see it? it is such a funny thing; but we know what it must be, and we've bought it. it was very expensive, but we don't care if only he likes it. would you like to see it first?" "what is it?" asked esther, infected by the air of mystery around her. the boys' room was almost dark, for the light was fading fast. puck was quivering all over in his excitement. he seemed able to contain himself no longer, and burst suddenly into speech. "it's an electric eye--an electric eye for mr. trelawny. we found it at last in a bicycle shop. come here, esther, and look. you know people do have such accidents on bicycles. i expect they knock out their eyes and have electric ones put in. it's rather big, but mr. trelawny has such big holes for his. i expect it'll go in.--pickle, open the door and we'll show her." pickle was fumbling under the carpet for a key, which was hidden in some crevice in the boards and when that was brought to light a cupboard was unlocked, and then suddenly one of the boys did something, and immediately a bright ray of white light shone forth from a small glass ball which had somewhat the look of an eye. "there, there, look!" cried puck, dancing up and down in his excitement; "there it is--an electric eye! do you think he'll like it? don't you think he'll be pleased? just see what a light it gives! he'd be able to see with that in the dark as well as in the light." esther was immensely impressed, though rather perplexed. the eye was certainly very wonderful, and could be turned on and off at will; but whether it would help mr. trelawny in his present condition she did not feel quite certain, but the boys had no manner of doubt. "won't it be jolly when he can go about without that horrid old shade, and without a stick, or anybody to lead him? i can't think why he didn't have one before, but i suppose he couldn't find one. we hunted all over, and people only laughed when we asked. but one man told us he'd seen something like one in the bicycle shop, and sure enough there it was. sometimes it gets empty and has to be filled up, but mr. earle could do that, i'm sure. he can do lots of things with electricity. i can't think why he hasn't made uncle bob an electric eye all this time, but i'm glad he hasn't, because we shall so like to give it him." it was hard work waiting for christmas eve, when the presentation was to be made; but the preparations for the great feast took up much time and attention, and drew off the boys' thoughts from the engrossing subject of the electric eye. but when the dusk of christmas eve had really come, and when mr. trelawny suddenly appeared in their midst, showering parcels about him in the twilight, like a miniature snowstorm, then the boys made a rush upon him, and the electric eye was produced and exhibited, pickle being the principal speaker, though puck kept up a running, breathless commentary, almost choking in his excitement and ecstatic hopes. mr. trelawny received the gift, and felt it all over. then he turned his head towards mr. earle, and said,-"come, earle; we must retire and see what we can do with this wonderful eye. you're a bit of a genius, according to these young men, and we'll see whether you understand adjusting it or not." mr. earle's face lighted up, and he marched off with mr. trelawny, whilst the servants brought in lamps, and the children, in breathless delight, opened the parcels which had been showered upon them. the fairies must surely have whispered in mr. trelawny's ears, for the secret desire of every heart seemed to be gratified. there were the daintiest of working and writing materials for esther, together with just the very books she would have chosen for herself had the whole world's library been at her disposal. there were model boats for the boys, and tools, and knives, and charts, and books; and the children had little presents for one another, which had to be opened and explained and admired; and mrs. st. aiden had not forgotten, or been forgotten, and her couch was the center of the busy, happy group. then suddenly the door was thrown open and in stalked mr. trelawny, without his shade, and walking erect, with his eyes looking just as they did of old, save that they were protected by a pair of spectacles with thick glasses. the children did not know that there had been any previous rehearsal of such a scene as this, and that mr. trelawny had been permitted to try to use his eyes by degrees for the last week or more. even esther did not know this--it was to be kept for a christmas surprise; and now, with the glint of the light upon the spectacles, it was small wonder that puck broke into a shout of triumph, and yelled at the top of his voice,-"the electric eye; the electric eye! three cheers for uncle bob and mr. earle and the electric eye!" esther had run forward and was grasping the hand of her kind old friend. her eyes were brimming over with tears of joy. "o uncle robert, can you really see?" "yes, my little maid; i can see everything clearly again, thank god! let me have a good look at the face of my little woman, for once i thought i should never see it again." it was hard to say who was happiest that night--mr. trelawny with his newly-restored gift, which, if somewhat impaired, would still be strong and serviceable again; or the boys, in their conviction that they had found the means whereby this result had been achieved; or mrs. st. aiden, who had found a safe shelter for herself and her child under the care of this kind and wealthy kinsman; or little esther, who somehow felt that, though another charge had been given her, yet the burden which had rested rather heavily upon her since her father's death had somehow been wonderfully lightened. there was uncle robert now to care for them and think for them, and she was so glad it should be so. and she somehow felt almost certain that the crag would always be their home now. she was more sure of it upon the night of the feast, when mr. trelawny took her by the hand and led her into the big hall that was filled from end to end with people she knew, crowded together at the long tables. she did not understand all the speech that mr. trelawny made, for he spoke it in the broad dialect of the country and fisher folk. but they understood, and they shouted and cheered; and then mr. trelawny put his hand upon her head, and said,-"you must make them a little bow, my dear, and i will make a speech for you. don't you understand that they are paying homage to you? they are accepting you as my little grand-daughter, who will one day rule here in my stead, and they are promising to love and be loyal to you, as i hope you will be loyal and true to them." and then mr. trelawny stooped and lifted her up in his arms and kissed her before them all; and esther, as she ran away, overcome with all the honor and notice she was receiving, felt as though such a wonderful christmas-tide could never come again. the end. a. l. burt's publications for young people by popular writers, 97-99-101 reade street, new york. =bonnie prince charlie:= a tale of fontenoy and culloden. by g. a. henty. with 12 full-page illustrations by gordon browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. the adventures of the son of a scotch officer in french service. the boy, brought up by a glasgow bailie, is arrested for aiding a jacobite agent, escapes, is wrecked on the french coast, reaches paris, and serves with the french army at dettingen. he kills his father's foe in a duel, and escaping to the coast, shares the adventures of prince charlie, but finally settles happily in scotland. "ronald, the hero, is very like the hero of 'quentin durward.' the lad's journey across france, and his hairbreadth escapes, make up as good a narrative of the kind as we have ever read. for freshness of treatment and variety of incident mr. henty has surpassed himself."--_spectator._ =with clive in india=; or, the beginnings of an empire. by g. a. henty. with 12 full-page illustrations by gordon browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. the period between the landing of clive as a young writer in india and the close of his career was critical and eventful in the extreme. at its commencement the english were traders existing on sufferance of the native princes. at its close they were masters of bengal and of the greater part of southern india. the author has given a full and accurate account of the events of that stirring time, and battles and sieges follow each other in rapid succession, while he combines with his narrative a tale of daring and adventure, which gives a lifelike interest to the volume. "he has taken a period of indian history of the most vital importance, and he has embroidered on the historical facts a story which of itself is deeply interesting. young people assuredly will be delighted with the volume."--_scotsman._ =the lion of the north=: a tale of gustavus adolphus and the wars of religion. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by john schã�nberg. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. in this story mr. henty gives the history of the first part of the thirty years' war. the issue had its importance, which has extended to the present day, as it established religious freedom in germany. the army of the chivalrous king of sweden was largely composed of scotchmen, and among these was the hero of the story. "the tale is a clever and instructive piece of history, and as boys may be trusted to read it conscientiously, they can hardly fail to be profited."--_times._ =the dragon and the raven=; or, the days of king alfred. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by c. j. staniland, r.i. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. in this story the author gives an account of the fierce struggle between saxon and dane for supremacy in england, and presents a vivid picture of the misery and ruin to which the country was reduced by the ravages of the sea-wolves. the hero, a young saxon thane, takes part in all the battles fought by king alfred. he is driven from his home, takes to the sea and resists the danes on their own element, and being pursued by them up the seine, is present at the long and desperate siege of paris. "treated in a manner most attractive to the boyish reader."--_athenã¦um._ =the young carthaginian:= a story of the times of hannibal. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by c. j. staniland, r.i. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. boys reading the history of the punic wars have seldom a keen appreciation of the merits of the contest. that it was at first a struggle for empire, and afterward for existence on the part of carthage, that hannibal was a great and skillful general, that he defeated the romans at trebia, lake trasimenus, and cannã¦, and all but took rome, represents pretty nearly the sum total of their knowledge. to let them know more about this momentous struggle for the empire of the world mr. henty has written this story, which not only gives in graphic style a brilliant description of a most interesting period of history, but is a tale of exciting adventure sure to secure the interest of the reader. "well constructed and vividly told. from first to last nothing stays the interest of the narrative. it bears us along as on a stream whose current varies in direction, but never loses its force."--_saturday review._ =in freedom's cause:= a story of wallace and bruce. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by gordon browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. in this story the author relates the stirring tale of the scottish war of independence. the extraordinary valor and personal prowess of wallace and bruce rival the deeds of the mythical heroes of chivalry, and indeed at one time wallace was ranked with these legendary personages. the researches of modern historians have shown, however, that he was a living, breathing man--and a valiant champion. the hero of the tale fought under both wallace and bruce, and while the strictest historical accuracy has been maintained with respect to public events, the work is full of "hairbreadth 'scapes" and wild adventure. "it is written in the author's best style. full of the wildest and most remarkable achievements, it is a tale of great interest, which a boy, once he has begun it, will not willingly put on one side."--_the schoolmaster._ =with lee in virginia:= a story of the american civil war. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by gordon browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. the story of a young virginian planter, who, after bravely proving his sympathy with the slaves of brutal masters, serves with no less courage and enthusiasm under lee and jackson through the most exciting events of the struggle. he has many hairbreadth escapes, is several times wounded and twice taken prisoner; but his courage and readiness and, in two cases, the devotion of a black servant and of a runaway slave whom he had assisted, bring him safely through all difficulties. "one of the best stories for lads which mr. henty has yet written. the picture is full of life and color, and the stirring and romantic incidents are skillfully blended with the personal interest and charm of the story."--_standard._ =by england's aid=; or, the freeing of the netherlands (1585-1604). by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by alfred pearse, and maps. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. the story of two english lads who go to holland as pages in the service of one of "the fighting veres." after many adventures by sea and land, one of the lads finds himself on board a spanish ship at the time of the defeat of the armada, and escapes only to fall into the hands of the corsairs. he is successful in getting back to spain under the protection of a wealthy merchant, and regains his native country after the capture of cadiz. "it is an admirable book for youngsters. it overflows with stirring incident and exciting adventure, and the color of the era and of the scene are finely reproduced. the illustrations add to its attractiveness."--_boston gazette._ =by right of conquest=; or, with cortez in mexico. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by w. s. stacey, and two maps. 12mo, cloth, price $1.50. the conquest of mexico by a small band of resolute men under the magnificent leadership of cortez is always rightly ranked among the most romantic and daring exploits in history. with this as the groundwork of his story mr. henty has interwoven the adventures of an english youth, roger hawkshaw, the sole survivor of the good ship swan, which had sailed from a devon port to challenge the mercantile supremacy of the spaniards in the new world. he is beset by many perils among the natives, but is saved by his own judgment and strength, and by the devotion of an aztec princess. at last by a ruse he obtains the protection of the spaniards, and after the fall of mexico he succeeds in regaining his native shore, with a fortune and a charming aztec bride. "'by right of conquest' is the nearest approach to a perfectly successful historical tale that mr. henty has yet published."--_academy._ =in the reign of terror:= the adventures of a westminster boy. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by j. schã�nberg. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. harry sandwith, a westminster boy, becomes a resident at the chateau of a french marquis, and after various adventures accompanies the family to paris at the crisis of the revolution. imprisonment and death reduce their number, and the hero finds himself beset by perils with the three young daughters of the house in his charge. after hairbreadth escapes they reach nantes. there the girls are condemned to death in the coffin-ships, but are saved by the unfailing courage of their boy protector. "harry sandwith, the westminster boy, may fairly be said to beat mr. henty's record. his adventures will delight boys by the audacity and peril they depict.... the story is one of mr. henty's best."--_saturday review._ =with wolfe in canada=; or, the winning of a continent. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by gordon browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. in the present volume mr. henty gives an account of the struggle between britain and france for supremacy in the north american continent. on the issue of this war depended not only the destinies of north america, but to a large extent those of the mother countries themselves. the fall of quebec decided that the anglo-saxon race should predominate in the new world; that britain, and not france, should take the lead among the nations of europe; and that english and american commerce, the english language, and english literature, should spread right round the globe. "it is not only a lesson in history as instructively as it is graphically told, but also a deeply interesting and often thrilling tale of adventure and peril by flood and field."--_illustrated london news._ =true to the old flag:= a tale of the american war of independence. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by gordon browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. in this story the author has gone to the accounts of officers who took part in the conflict, and lads will find that in no war in which american and british soldiers have been engaged did they behave with greater courage and good conduct. the historical portion of the book being accompanied with numerous thrilling adventures with the redskins on the shores of lake huron, a story of exciting interest is interwoven with the general narrative and carried through the book. "does justice to the pluck and determination of the british soldiers during the unfortunate struggle against american emancipation. the son of an american loyalist, who remains true to our flag, falls among the hostile redskins in that very huron country which has been endeared to us by the exploits of hawkeye and chingachgook."--_the times._ =the lion of st. mark:= a tale of venice in the fourteenth century. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by gordon browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. a story of venice at a period when her strength and splendor were put to the severest tests. the hero displays a fine sense and manliness which carry him safely through an atmosphere of intrigue, crime, and bloodshed. he contributes largely to the victories of the venetians at porto d'anzo and chioggia, and finally wins the hand of the daughter of one of the chief men of venice. "every boy should read 'the lion of st. mark.' mr. henty has never produced a story more delightful, more wholesome, or more vivacious."--_saturday review._ =a final reckoning:= a tale of bush life in australia. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by w. b. wollen. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. the hero, a young english lad, after rather a stormy boyhood, emigrates to australia, and gets employment as an officer in the mounted police. a few years of active work on the frontier, where he has many a brush with both natives and bushrangers, gain him promotion to a captaincy, and he eventually settles down to the peaceful life of a squatter. "mr. henty has never published a more readable, a more carefully constructed, or a better written story than this."--_spectator._ =under drake's flag:= a tale of the spanish main. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by gordon browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. a story of the days when england and spain struggled for the supremacy of the sea. the heroes sail as lads with drake in the pacific expedition, and in his great voyage of circumnavigation. the historical portion of the story is absolutely to be relied upon, but this will perhaps be less attractive than the great variety of exciting adventure through which the young heroes pass in the course of their voyages. "a book of adventure, where the hero meets with experience enough, one would think, to turn his hair gray."--_harper's monthly magazine._ =by sheer pluck:= a tale of the ashanti war. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by gordon browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. the author has woven, in a tale of thrilling interest, all the details of the ashanti campaign, of which he was himself a witness. his hero, after many exciting adventures in the interior, is detained a prisoner by the king just before the outbreak of the war, but escapes, and accompanies the english expedition on their march to coomassie. "mr. henty keeps up his reputation as a writer of boys' stories. 'by sheer pluck' will be eagerly read."--_athenã¦um._ =by pike and dyke:= a tale of the rise of the dutch republic. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by maynard brown, and 4 maps. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. in this story mr. henty traces the adventures and brave deeds of an english boy in the household of the ablest man of his age--william the silent. edward martin, the son of an english sea-captain, enters the service of the prince as a volunteer, and is employed by him in many dangerous and responsible missions, in the discharge of which he passes through the great sieges of the time. he ultimately settles down as sir edward martin. "boys with a turn for historical research will be enchanted with the book, while the rest who only care for adventure will be students in spite of themselves."--_st. james' gazette._ =st. george for england:= a tale of cressy and poitiers. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by gordon browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. no portion of english history is more crowded with great events than that of the reign of edward iii. cressy and poitiers; the destruction of the spanish fleet; the plague of the black death; the jacquerie rising; these are treated by the author in "st. george for england." the hero of the story, although of good family, begins life as a london apprentice, but after countless adventures and perils becomes by valor and good conduct the squire, and at last the trusted friend of the black prince. "mr. henty has developed for himself a type of historical novel for boys which bids fair to supplement, on their behalf, the historical labors of sir walter scott in the land of fiction."--_the standard._ =captain's kidd's gold:= the true story of an adventurous sailor boy. by james franklin fitts. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. there is something fascinating to the average youth in the very idea of buried treasure. a vision arises before his eyes of swarthy portuguese and spanish rascals, with black beards and gleaming eyes--sinister-looking fellows who once on a time haunted the spanish main, sneaking out from some hidden creek in their long, low schooner, of picaroonish rake and sheer, to attack an unsuspecting trading craft. there were many famous sea rovers in their day, but none more celebrated than capt. kidd. perhaps the most fascinating tale of all is mr. fitts' true story of an adventurous american boy, who receives from his dying father an ancient bit of vellum, which the latter obtained in a curious way. the document bears obscure directions purporting to locate a certain island in the bahama group, and a considerable treasure buried there by two of kidd's crew. the hero of this book, paul jones garry, is an ambitious, persevering lad, of salt-water new england ancestry, and his efforts to reach the island and secure the money form one of the most absorbing tales for our youth that has come from the press. =captain bayley's heir:= a tale of the gold fields of california. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by h. m. paget. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. a frank, manly lad and his cousin are rivals in the heirship of a considerable property. the former falls into a trap laid by the latter, and while under a false accusation of theft foolishly leaves england for america. he works his passage before the mast, joins a small band of hunters, crosses a tract of country infested with indians to the californian gold diggings, and is successful both as digger and trader. "mr. henty is careful to mingle instruction with entertainment; and the humorous touches, especially in the sketch of john holl, the westminster dustman, dickens himself could hardly have excelled."--_christian leader._ =for name and fame=; or, through afghan passes. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by gordon browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. an interesting story of the last war in afghanistan. the hero, after being wrecked and going through many stirring adventures among the malays, finds his way to calcutta and enlists in a regiment proceeding to join the army at the afghan passes. he accompanies the force under general roberts to the peiwar kotal, is wounded, taken prisoner, carried to cabul, whence he is transferred to candahar, and takes part in the final defeat of the army of ayoub khan. "the best feature of the book--apart from the interest of its scenes of adventure--is its honest effort to do justice to the patriotism of the afghan people."--_daily news._ =captured by apes:= the wonderful adventures of a young animal trainer. by harry prentice. 12mo, cloth, $1.00. the scene of this tale is laid on an island in the malay archipelago. philip garland, a young animal collector and trainer, of new york, sets sail for eastern seas in quest of a new stock of living curiosities. the vessel is wrecked off the coast of borneo and young garland, the sole survivor of the disaster, is cast ashore on a small island, and captured by the apes that overrun the place. the lad discovers that the ruling spirit of the monkey tribe is a gigantic and vicious baboon, whom he identifies as goliah, an animal at one time in his possession and with whose instruction he had been especially diligent. the brute recognizes him, and with a kind of malignant satisfaction puts his former master through the same course of training he had himself experienced with a faithfulness of detail which shows how astonishing is monkey recollection. very novel indeed is the way by which the young man escapes death. mr. prentice has certainly worked a new vein on juvenile fiction, and the ability with which he handles a difficult subject stamps him as a writer of undoubted skill. =the bravest of the brave=; or, with peterborough in spain. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by h. m. paget. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. there are few great leaders whose lives and actions have so completely fallen into oblivion as those of the earl of peterborough. this is largely due to the fact that they were overshadowed by the glory and successes of marlborough. his career as general extended over little more than a year, and yet, in that time, he showed a genius for warfare which has never been surpassed. "mr. henty never loses sight of the moral purpose of his work--to enforce the doctrine of courage and truth. lads will read 'the bravest of the brave' with pleasure and profit; of that we are quite sure."--_daily telegraph._ =the cat of bubastes=: a story of ancient egypt. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. a story which will give young readers an unsurpassed insight into the customs of the egyptian people. amuba, a prince of the rebu nation, is carried with his charioteer jethro into slavery. they become inmates of the house of ameres, the egyptian high-priest, and are happy in his service until the priest's son accidentally kills the sacred cat of bubastes. in an outburst of popular fury ameres is killed, and it rests with jethro and amuba to secure the escape of the high-priest's son and daughter. "the story, from the critical moment of the killing of the sacred cat to the perilous exodus into asia with which it closes, is very skillfully constructed and full of exciting adventures. it is admirably illustrated."--_saturday review._ =with washington at monmouth:= a story of three philadelphia boys. by james otis. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. three philadelphia boys, seth graydon "whose mother conducted a boarding-house which was patronized by the british officers;" enoch ball, "son of that mrs. ball whose dancing school was situated on letitia street," and little jacob, son of "chris, the baker," serve as the principal characters. the story is laid during the winter when lord howe held possession of the city, and the lads aid the cause by assisting the american spies who make regular and frequent visits from valley forge. one reads here of home life in the captive city when bread was scarce among the people of the lower classes, and a reckless prodigality shown by the british officers, who passed the winter in feasting and merry-making while the members of the patriot army but a few miles away were suffering from both cold and hunger. the story abounds with pictures of colonial life skillfully drawn, and the glimpses of washington's soldiers which are given show that the work has not been hastily done, or without considerable study. =for the temple:= a tale of the fall of jerusalem. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by s. j. solomon. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. mr. henty here weaves into the record of josephus an admirable and attractive story. the troubles in the district of tiberias, the march of the legions, the sieges of jotapata, of gamala, and of jerusalem, form the impressive and carefully studied historic setting to the figure of the lad who passes from the vineyard to the service of josephus, becomes the leader of a guerrilla band of patriots, fights bravely for the temple, and after a brief term of slavery at alexandria, returns to his galilean home with the favor of titus. "mr. henty's graphic prose pictures of the hopeless jewish resistance to roman sway add another leaf to his record of the famous wars of the world."--_graphic._ =facing death=; or, the hero of the vaughan pit. a tale of the coal mines. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by gordon browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "facing death" is a story with a purpose. it is intended to show that a lad who makes up his mind firmly and resolutely that he will rise in life, and who is prepared to face toil and ridicule and hardship to carry out his determination, is sure to succeed. the hero of the story is a typical british boy, dogged, earnest, generous, and though "shamefaced" to a degree, is ready to face death in the discharge of duty. "the tale is well written and well illustrated, and there is much reality in the characters. if any father, clergyman, or schoolmaster is on the lookout for a good book to give as a present to a boy who is worth his salt, this is the book we would recommend."--_standard._ =tom temple's career.= by horatio alger. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. tom temple, a bright, self-reliant lad, by the death of his father becomes a boarder at the home of nathan middleton, a penurious insurance agent. though well paid for keeping the boy, nathan and his wife endeavor to bring master tom in line with their parsimonious habits. the lad ingeniously evades their efforts and revolutionizes the household. as tom is heir to $40,000, he is regarded as a person of some importance until by an unfortunate combination of circumstances his fortune shrinks to a few hundreds. he leaves plympton village to seek work in new york, whence he undertakes an important mission to california, around which center the most exciting incidents of his young career. some of his adventures in the far west are so startling that the reader will scarcely close the book until the last page shall have been reached. the tale is written in mr. alger's most fascinating style, and is bound to please the very large class of boys who regard this popular author as a prime favorite. =maori and settler:= a story of the new zealand war. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by alfred pearse. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. the renshaws emigrate to new zealand during the period of the war with the natives. wilfrid, a strong, self-reliant, courageous lad, is the mainstay of the household. he has for his friend mr. atherton, a botanist and naturalist of herculean strength and unfailing nerve and humor. in the adventures among the maoris, there are many breathless moments in which the odds seem hopelessly against the party, but they succeed in establishing themselves happily in one of the pleasant new zealand valleys. "brimful of adventure, of humorous and interesting conversation, and vivid pictures of colonial life."--_schoolmaster._ =julian mortimer:= a brave boy's struggle for home and fortune. by harry castlemon. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. here is a story that will warm every boy's heart. there is mystery enough to keep any lad's imagination wound up to the highest pitch. the scene of the story lies west of the mississippi river, in the days when emigrants made their perilous way across the great plains to the land of gold. one of the startling features of the book is the attack upon the wagon train by a large party of indians. our hero is a lad of uncommon nerve and pluck, a brave young american in every sense of the word. he enlists and holds the reader's sympathy from the outset. surrounded by an unknown and constant peril, and assisted by the unswerving fidelity of a stalwart trapper, a real rough diamond, our hero achieves the most happy results. harry castlemon has written many entertaining stories for boys, and it would seem almost superfluous to say anything in his praise, for the youth of america regard him as a favorite author. "=carrots=:" just a little boy. by mrs. molesworth. with illustrations by walter crane. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "one of the cleverest and most pleasing stories it has been our good fortune to meet with for some time. carrots and his sister are delightful little beings, whom to read about is at once to become very fond of."--_examiner._ "a genuine children's book; we've seen 'em seize it, and read it greedily. children are first-rate critics, and thoroughly appreciate walter crane's illustrations."--_punch._ =mopsa the fairy.= by jean ingelow. with eight page illustrations. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "mrs. ingelow is, to our mind, the most charming of all living writers for children, and 'mopsa' alone ought to give her a kind of pre-emptive right to the love and gratitude of our young folks. it requires genius to conceive a purely imaginary work which must of necessity deal with the supernatural, without running into a mere riot of fantastic absurdity; but genius miss ingelow has and the story of 'jack' is as careless and joyous, but as delicate, as a picture of childhood."--_eclectic._ =a jaunt through java:= the story of a journey to the sacred mountain. by edward s. ellis. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. the central interest of this story is found in the thrilling adventures of two cousins, hermon and eustace hadley, on their trip across the island of java, from samarang to the sacred mountain. in a land where the royal bengal tiger runs at large; where the rhinoceros and other fierce beasts are to be met with at unexpected moments; it is but natural that the heroes of this book should have a lively experience. hermon not only distinguishes himself by killing a full-grown tiger at short range, but meets with the most startling adventure of the journey. there is much in this narrative to instruct as well as entertain the reader, and so deftly has mr. ellis used his material that there is not a dull page in the book. the two heroes are brave, manly young fellows, bubbling over with boyish independence. they cope with the many difficulties that arise during the trip in a fearless way that is bound to win the admiration of every lad who is so fortunate as to read their adventures. =wrecked on spider island=; or, how ned rogers found the treasure. by james otis. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. a "down-east" plucky lad who ships as cabin boy, not from love of adventure, but because it is the only course remaining by which he can gain a livelihood. while in his bunk, seasick, ned rogers hears the captain and mate discussing their plans for the willful wreck of the brig in order to gain the insurance. once it is known he is in possession of the secret the captain maroons him on spider island, explaining to the crew that the boy is afflicted with leprosy. while thus involuntarily playing the part of a crusoe, ned discovers a wreck submerged in the sand, and overhauling the timbers for the purpose of gathering material with which to build a hut finds a considerable amount of treasure. raising the wreck; a voyage to havana under sail; shipping there a crew and running for savannah; the attempt of the crew to seize the little craft after learning of the treasure on board, and, as a matter of course, the successful ending of the journey, all serve to make as entertaining a story of sea-life as the most captious boy could desire. =geoff and jim:= a story of school life. by ismay thorn. illustrated by a. g. walker. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "this is a prettily told story of the life spent by two motherless bairns at a small preparatory school. both geoff and jim are very lovable characters, only jim is the more so; and the scrapes he gets into and the trials he endures will, no doubt, interest a large circle of young readers."--_church times._ "this is a capital children's story, the characters well portrayed, and the book tastefully bound and well illustrated."--_schoolmaster._ "the story can be heartily recommended as a present for boys."--_standard._ =the castaways=; or, on the florida reefs. by james otis. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. this tale smacks of the salt sea. it is just the kind of story that the majority of boys yearn for. from the moment that the sea queen dispenses with the services of the tug in lower new york bay till the breeze leaves her becalmed off the coast of florida, one can almost hear the whistle of the wind through her rigging, the creak of her straining cordage as she heels to the leeward, and feel her rise to the snow-capped waves which her sharp bow cuts into twin streaks of foam. off marquesas keys she floats in a dead calm. ben clark, the hero of the story, and jake, the cook, spy a turtle asleep upon the glassy surface of the water. they determine to capture him, and take a boat for that purpose, and just as they succeed in catching him a thick fog cuts them off from the vessel, and then their troubles begin. they take refuge on board a drifting hulk, a storm arises and they are cast ashore upon a low sandy key. their adventures from this point cannot fail to charm the reader. as a writer for young people mr. otis is a prime favorite. his style is captivating, and never for a moment does he allow the interest to flag. in "the castaways" he is at his best. =tom thatcher's fortune.= by horatio alger, jr. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. like all of mr. alger's heroes, tom thatcher is a brave, ambitious, unselfish boy. he supports his mother and sister on meager wages earned as a shoe-pegger in john simpson's factory. the story begins with tom's discharge from the factory, because mr. simpson felt annoyed with the lad for interrogating him too closely about his missing father. a few days afterward tom learns that which induces him to start overland for california with the view of probing the family mystery. he meets with many adventures. ultimately he returns to his native village, bringing consternation to the soul of john simpson, who only escapes the consequences of his villainy by making full restitution to the man whose friendship he had betrayed. the story is told in that entertaining way which has made mr. alger's name a household word in so many homes. =birdie=: a tale of child life. by h. l. childe-pemberton. illustrated by h. w. rainey. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "the story is quaint and simple, but there is a freshness about it that makes one hear again the ringing laugh and the cheery shout of children at play which charmed his earlier years."--_new york express._ =popular fairy tales.= by the brothers grimm. profusely illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "from first to last, almost without exception, these stories are delightful."--_athenã¦um._ sacred and profane love a novel in three episodes by arnold bennett 1905 to my friend eden phillpotts the novelist for whom man and nature are inseparable with profound respect for the classical dignity of his aim and equal admiration for the austere splendour of his performance contents part i in the night part ii three human hearts part iii the victory _'how i have wept, the long night through, over the poor women of the past, so beautiful, so tender, so sweet, whose arms have opened for the kiss, and who are dead! the kiss--it is immortal! it passes from lip to lip, from century to century, from age to age. men gather it, give it back, and die.'_--guy de maupassant. sacred and profane love part i in the night i for years i had been preoccupied with thoughts of love--and by love i mean a noble and sensuous passion, absorbing the energies of the soul, fulfilling destiny, and reducing all that has gone before it to the level of a mere prelude. and that afternoon in autumn, the eve of my twenty-first birthday, i was more deeply than ever immersed in amorous dreams. i, in my modern costume, sat down between two pairs of candles to the piano in the decaying drawing-room, which like a spinster strove to conceal its age. a generous fire flamed in the wide grate behind me: warmth has always been to me the first necessary of life. i turned round on the revolving stool and faced the fire, and felt it on my cheeks, and i asked myself: 'why am i affected like this? why am i what i am?' for even before beginning to play the fantasia of chopin, i was moved, and the tears had come into my eyes, and the shudder to my spine. i gazed at the room inquiringly, and of course i found no answer. it was one of those rooms whose spacious and consistent ugliness grows old into a sort of beauty, formidable and repellent, but impressive; an early victorian room, large and stately and symmetrical, full--but not too full--of twisted and tortured mahogany, green rep, lustres, valances, fringes, gilt tassels. the green and gold drapery of the two high windows, and here and there a fine curve in a piece of furniture, recalled the empire period and the deserted napoleonic palaces of france. the expanse of yellow and green carpet had been married to the floor by two generations of decorous feet, and the meaning of its tints was long since explained away. never have i seen a carpet with less individuality of its own than that carpet; it was so sweetly faded, amiable, and flat, that its sole mission in the world seemed to be to make things smooth for the chairs. the wall-paper looked like pale green silk, and the candles were reflected in it as they were reflected in the crystals of the chandelier. the grand piano, a collard and collard, made a vast mass of walnut in the chamber, incongruous, perhaps, but still there was something in its mild and indecisive tone that responded to the furniture. it, too, spoke of evangelicalism, the christian year, and a dignified reserved confidence in christ's blood. it, too, defied the assault of time and the invasion of ideas. it, too, protested against chopin and romance, and demanded thalberg's variations on 'home, sweet home.' my great-grandfather, the famous potter--second in renown only to wedgwood--had built that georgian house, and my grandfather had furnished it; and my parents, long since dead, had placidly accepted it and the ideal that it stood for; and it had devolved upon my aunt constance, and ultimately it would devolve on me, the scarlet woman in a dress of virginal white, the inexplicable offspring of two changeless and blameless families, the secret revolutionary, the living lie! how had i come there? i went to the window, and, pulling the curtain aside, looked vaguely out into the damp, black garden, from which the last light was fading. the red, rectangular house stood in the midst of the garden, and the garden was surrounded by four brick walls, which preserved it from four streets where dwelt artisans of the upper class. the occasional rattling of a cart was all we caught of the peaceable rumour of the town; but on clear nights the furnaces of cauldon bar ironworks lit the valley for us, and we were reminded that our refined and inviolate calm was hemmed in by rude activities. on the east border of the garden was a row of poplars, and from the window i could see the naked branches of the endmost. a gas-lamp suddenly blazed behind it in acre lane, and i descried a bird in the tree. and as the tree waved its plume in the night-wind, and the bird swayed on the moving twig, and the gas-lamp burned meekly and patiently beyond, i seemed to catch in these simple things a glimpse of the secret meaning of human existence, such as one gets sometimes, startlingly, in a mood of idle receptiveness. and it was so sad and so beautiful, so full of an ecstatic melancholy, that i dropped the curtain. and my thought ranged lovingly over our household--prim, regular, and perfect: my old aunt embroidering in the breakfast-room, and rebecca and lucy ironing in the impeachable kitchen, and not one of them with the least suspicion that adam had not really waked up one morning minus a rib. i wandered in fancy all over the house--the attics, my aunt's bedroom so miraculously neat, and mine so unkempt, and the dark places in the corridors where clocks ticked. i had the sense of the curious compact organism of which my aunt was the head, and into which my soul had strayed by some caprice of fate. what i felt was that the organism was suspended in a sort of enchantment, lifelessly alive, unconsciously expectant of the magic touch which would break the spell, and i wondered how long i must wait before i began to live. i know now that i was happy in those serene preliminary years, but nevertheless i had the illusion of spiritual woe. i sighed grievously as i went back to the piano, and opened the volume of mikuli's chopin. just as i was beginning to play, rebecca came into the room. she was a maid of forty years, and stout; absolutely certain of a few things, and quite satisfied in her ignorance of all else; an important person in our house, and therefore an important person in the created universe, of which our house was for her the centre. she wore the white cap with distinction, and when an apron was suspended round her immense waist it ceased to be an apron, and became a symbol, like the apron of a freemason. 'well, rebecca?' i said, without turning my head. i guessed urgency, otherwise rebecca would have delegated lucy. 'if you please, miss carlotta, your aunt is not feeling well, and she will not be able to go to the concert to-night.' 'not be able to go to the concert!' i repeated mechanically. 'no, miss.' 'i will come downstairs.' 'if i were you, i shouldn't, miss. she's dozing a bit just now.' 'very well.' i went on playing. but chopin, who was the chief factor in my emotional life; who had taught me nearly all i knew of grace, wit, and tenderness; who had discovered for me the beauty that lay in everything, in sensuous exaltation as well as in asceticism, in grief as well as in joy; who had shown me that each moment of life, no matter what its import, should be lived intensely and fully; who had carried me with him to the dizziest heights of which passion is capable; whose music i spiritually comprehended to a degree which i felt to be extraordinary--chopin had almost no significance for me as i played then the most glorious of his compositions. his message was only a blurred sound in my ears. and gradually i perceived, as the soldier gradually perceives who has been hit by a bullet, that i was wounded. the shock was of such severity that at first i had scarcely noticed it. what? my aunt not going to the concert? that meant that i could not go. but it was impossible that i should not go. i could not conceive my absence from the concert--the concert which i had been anticipating and preparing for during many weeks. we went out but little, aunt constance and i. an oratorio, an amateur operatic performance, a ballad concert in the bursley town hall--no more than that; never the hanbridge theatre. and now diaz was coming down to give a pianoforte recital in the jubilee hall at hanbridge; diaz, the darling of european capitals; diaz, whose name in seven years had grown legendary; diaz, the liszt and the rubenstein of my generation, and the greatest interpreter of chopin since chopin died--diaz! diaz! no such concert had ever been announced in the five towns, and i was to miss it! our tickets had been taken, and they were not to be used! unthinkable! a photograph of diaz stood in a silver frame on the piano; i gazed at it fervently. i said: 'i will hear you play the fantasia this night, if i am cut in pieces for it to-morrow!' diaz represented for me, then, all that i desired of men. all my dreams of love and freedom crystallized suddenly into diaz. i ran downstairs to the breakfast-room. 'you aren't going to the concert, auntie?' i almost sobbed. she sat in her rocking-chair, and the gray woollen shawl thrown round her shoulders mingled with her gray hair. her long, handsome face was a little pale, and her dark eyes darker than usual. 'i don't feel well enough,' she replied calmly. she had not observed the tremor in my voice. 'but what's the matter?' i insisted. 'nothing in particular, my dear. i do not feel equal to the exertion.' 'but, auntie--then i can't go, either.' 'i'm very sorry, dear,' she said. 'we will go to the next concert.' 'diaz will never come again!' i exclaimed passionately. 'and the tickets will be wasted.' 'my dear,' my aunt constance repeated, 'i am not equal to it. and you cannot go alone.' i was utterly selfish in that moment. i cared nothing whatever for my aunt's indisposition. indeed, i secretly accused her of maliciously choosing that night of all nights for her mysterious fatigue. 'but, auntie,' i said, controlling myself, 'i must go, really. i shall send lucy over with a note to ethel ryley to ask her to go with me.' 'do,' said my aunt, after a considerable pause, 'if you are bent on going.' i have often thought since that during that pause, while we faced each other, my aunt had for the first time fully realized how little she knew of me; she must surely have detected in my glance a strangeness, a contemptuous indifference, an implacable obstinacy, which she had never seen in it before. and, indeed, these things were in my glance. yet i loved my aunt with a deep affection. i had only one grievance against her. although excessively proud, she would always, in conversation with men, admit her mental and imaginative inferiority, and that of her sex. she would admit, without being asked, that being a woman she could not see far, that her feminine brain could not carry an argument to the end, and that her feminine purpose was too infirm for any great enterprise. she seemed to find a morbid pleasure in such confessions. as regards herself, they were accurate enough; the dear creature was a singularly good judge of her own character. what i objected to was her assumption, so calm and gratuitous, that her individuality, with all its confessed limitations, was, of course, superior--stronger, wiser, subtler than mine. she never allowed me to argue with her; or if she did, she treated my remarks with a high, amused tolerance. 'wait till you grow older,' she would observe, magnificently ignorant of the fact that my soul was already far older than hers. this attitude naturally made me secretive in all affairs of the mind, and most affairs of the heart. we took in the county paper, the _staffordshire recorder,_ and the _rock_ and the _quiver_. with the help of these organs of thought, which i detested and despised, i was supposed to be able to keep discreetly and sufficiently abreast of the times. but i had other aids. i went to the girls' high school at oldcastle till i was nearly eighteen. one of the mistresses there used to read continually a red book covered with brown paper. i knew it to be a red book because the paper was gone at the corners. i admired the woman immensely, and her extraordinary interest in the book--she would pick it up at every spare moment--excited in me an ardent curiosity. one day i got a chance to open it, and i read on the title-page, _introduction to the study of sociology_, by herbert spencer. turning the pages, i encountered some remarks on napoleon that astonished and charmed me. i said: 'why are not our school histories like this?' the owner of the book caught me. i asked her to lend it to me, but she would not, nor would she give me any reason for declining. soon afterwards i left school. i persuaded my aunt to let me join the free library at the wedgwood institution. but the book was not in the catalogue. (how often, in exchanging volumes, did i not gaze into the reading-room, where men read the daily papers and the magazines, without daring to enter!) at length i audaciously decided to buy the book. i ordered it, not at our regular stationer's in oldcastle street, but at a little shop of the same kind in trafalgar road. in three days it arrived. i called for it, and took it home secretly in a cardboard envelope-box. i went to bed early, and i began to read. i read all night, thirteen hours. o book with the misleading title--for you have nothing to do with sociology, and you ought to have been called _how to think honestly_--my face flushed again and again as i perused your ugly yellowish pages! again and again i exclaimed: 'but this is marvellous!' i had not guessed that anything so honest, and so courageous, and so simple, and so convincing had ever been written. i am capable now of suspecting that spencer was not a supreme genius; but he taught me intellectual courage; he taught me that nothing is sacred that will not bear inspection; and i adore his memory. the next morning after breakfast i fell asleep in a chair. 'my dear!' protested aunt constance. 'ah,' i thought, 'if you knew, aunt constance, if you had the least suspicion, of the ideas that are surging and shining in my head, you would go mad--go simply mad!' i did not care much for deception, but i positively hated clumsy concealment, and the red book was in the house; at any moment it might be seized. on a shelf of books in my bedroom was a novel called _the old helmet_, probably the silliest novel in the world. i tore the pages from the binding and burnt them; i tore the binding from spencer and burnt it; and i put my treasure in the covers of _the old helmet_. once rebecca, a person privileged, took the thing away to read; but she soon brought it back. she told me she had always understood that _the old helmet_ was more, interesting than that. later, i discovered _the origin of species_ in the free library. it finished the work of corruption. spencer had shown me how to think; darwin told me what to think. the whole of my upbringing went for naught thenceforward. i lived a double life. i said nothing to my aunt of the miracle wrought within me, and she suspected nothing. strange and uncanny, is it not, that such miracles can escape the observation of a loving heart? i loved her as much as ever, perhaps more than ever. thank heaven that love can laugh at reason! so much for my intellectual inner life. my emotional inner life is less easy to indicate. i became a woman at fifteen--years, interminable years, before i left school. i guessed even then, vaguely, that my nature was extremely emotional and passionate. and i had nothing literary on which to feed my dreams, save a few novels which i despised, and the bible and the plays and poems of shakespeare. it is wonderful, though, what good i managed to find in those two use-worn volumes. i knew most of the song of solomon by heart, and many of the sonnets; and i will not mince the fact that my favourite play was _measure for measure_. i was an innocent virgin, in the restricted sense in which most girls of my class and age are innocent, but i obtained from these works many a lofty pang of thrilling pleasure. they illustrated chopin for me, giving precision and particularity to his messages. and i was ashamed of myself. yes; at the bottom of my heart i was ashamed of myself because my sensuous being responded to the call of these masterpieces. in my ignorance i thought i was lapsing from a sane and proper ideal. and then--the second miracle in my career, which has been full of miracles--i came across a casual reference, in the _staffordshire recorder_, of all places, to the _mademoiselle de maupin_ of thã©ophile gautier. something in the reference, i no longer remember what, caused me to guess that the book was a revelation of matters hidden from me. i bought it. with the assistance of a dictionary, i read it, nightly, in about a week. except _picciola_, it was the first french novel i had ever read. it held me throughout; it revealed something on nearly every page. but the climax dazzled and blinded me. it was exquisite, so high and pure, so startling, so bold, that it made me ill. when i recovered i had fast in my heart's keeping the new truth that in the body, and the instincts of the body, there should be no shame, but rather a frank, joyous pride. from that moment i ceased to be ashamed of anything that i honestly liked. but i dared not keep the book. the knowledge of its contents would have killed my aunt. i read it again; i read the last pages several times, and then i burnt it and breathed freely. such was i, as i forced my will on my aunt in the affair of the concert. and i say that she who had never suspected the existence of the real me, suspected it then, when we glanced at each other across the breakfast-room. upon these apparent trifles life swings, as upon a pivot, into new directions. i sat with my aunt while lucy went with the note. she returned soon with the reply, and the reply was: 'so sorry i can't accept your kind invitation. i should have liked to go awfully. but fred has got the toothache, and i must not leave him.' the toothache! and my very life, so it seemed to me, hung in the balance. i did not hesitate one second. 'hurrah!' i cried. 'she can go. i am to call for her in the cab.' and i crushed the note cruelly, and threw it in the fire. 'tell him to call at ryleys',' i said to rebecca as she was putting me and my dress into the cab. and she told the cabman with that sharp voice of hers, always arrogant towards inferiors, to call at ryleys.' i put my head out of the cab window as soon as we were in oldcastle street. 'drive straight to hanbridge,' i ordered. the thing was done. ii he was like his photograph, but the photograph had given me only the most inadequate idea of him. the photograph could not render his extraordinary fairness, nor the rich gold of his hair, nor the blue of his dazzling eyes. the first impression was that he was too beautiful for a man, that he had a woman's beauty, that he had the waxen beauty of a doll; but the firm, decisive lines of the mouth and chin, the overhanging brows, and the luxuriance of his amber moustache, spoke more sternly. gradually one perceived that beneath the girlish mask, beneath the contours and the complexion incomparably delicate, there was an individuality intensely and provocatively male. his body was rather less than tall, and it was muscular and springy. he walked on to the platform as an unspoilt man should walk, and he bowed to the applause as if bowing chivalrously to a woman whom he respected but did not love. diaz was twenty-six that year; he had recently returned from a tour round the world; he was filled full of triumph, renown, and adoration. as i have said, he was already legendary. he had become so great and so marvellous that those who had never seen him were in danger of forgetting that he was a living human being, obliged to eat and drink, and practise scales, and visit his tailor's. thus it had happened to me. during the first moments i found myself thinking, 'this cannot be diaz. it is not true that at last i see him. there must be some mistake.' then he sat down leisurely to the piano; his gaze ranged across the hall, and i fancied that, for a second, it met mine. my two seats were in the first row of the stalls, and i could see every slightest change of his face. so that at length i felt that diaz was real, and that he was really there close in front of me, a seraph and yet very human. he was all alone on the great platform, and the ebonized piano seemed enormous and formidable before him. and all around was the careless public--ignorant, unsympathetic, exigent, impatient, even inimical--two thousand persons who would get value for their money or know the reason why. the electric light and the inclement gaze of society rained down cruelly upon that defenceless head. i wanted to protect it. the tears rose to my eyes, and i stretched out towards diaz the hands of my soul. my passionate sympathy must have reached him like a beneficent influence, of which, despite the perfect self-possession and self-confidence of his demeanour, it seemed to me that he had need. i had risked much that night. i had committed an enormity. no one but a grown woman who still vividly remembers her girlhood can appreciate my feelings as i drove from bursley to hanbridge in the cab, and as i got out of the cab in the crowd, and gave up my ticket, and entered the glittering auditorium of the jubilee hall. i was alone, at night, in the public places, under the eye of the world. and i was guiltily alone. every fibre of my body throbbed with the daring and the danger and the romance of the adventure. the horror of revealing the truth to aunt constance, as i was bound to do--of telling her that i had lied, and that i had left my maiden's modesty behind in my bedroom, gripped me at intervals like some appalling and exquisite instrument of torture. and yet, ere diaz had touched the piano with his broad white hand, i was content, i was rewarded, and i was justified. the programme began with chopin's first ballade. there was an imperative summons, briefly sustained, which developed into an appeal and an invocation, ascending, falling, and still higher ascending, till it faded and expired, and then, after a little pause, was revived; then silence, and two chords, defining and clarifying the vagueness of the appeal and the invocation. and then, almost before i was aware of it, there stole forth from under the fingers of diaz the song of the soul of man, timid, questioning, plaintive, neither sad nor joyous, but simply human, seeking what it might find on earth. the song changed subtly from mood to mood, expressing that which nothing but itself could express; and presently there was a low and gentle menace, thrice repeated under the melody of the song, and the reply of the song was a proud cry, a haughty contempt of these furtive warnings, and a sudden winged leap into the empyrean towards the eternal spirit. and then the melody was lost in a depth, and the song became turgid and wild and wilder, hysteric, irresolute, frantically groping, until at last it found its peace and its salvation. and the treasure was veiled in a mist of arpeggios, but one by one these were torn away, and there was a hush, a pause, and a preparation; and the soul of man broke into a new song of what it had found on earth--the magic of the tenderness of love--an air so caressing and so sweet, so calmly happy and so mournfully sane, so bereft of illusions and so naã¯ve, that it seemed to reveal in a few miraculous phrases the secret intentions of god. it was too beautiful; it told me too much about myself; it vibrated my nerves to such an unbearable spasm of pleasure that i might have died had i not willed to live.... it gave place momentarily to the song of the question and the search, but only to return, and to return again, with a more thrilling and glorious assurance. it was drowned in doubt, but it emerged triumphantly, covered with noble and delicious ornaments, and swimming strongly on mysterious waves. and finally, with speed and with fire, it was transformed and caught up into the last ecstasy, the ultimate passion. the soul swept madly between earth and heaven, fell, rose; and there was a dreadful halt. then a loud blast, a distortion of the magic, an upward rush, another and a louder blast, and a thunderous fall, followed by two massive and terrifying chords.... diaz was standing up and bowing to his public. what did they understand? did they understand anything? i cannot tell. but i know that they felt. a shudder of feeling had gone through the hall. it was in vain that people tried to emancipate themselves from the spell by the violence of their applause. they could not. we were all together under the enchantment. some may have seen clearly, some darkly, but we were equal before the throne of that mighty enchanter. and the enchanter bowed and bowed with a grave, sympathetic smile, and then disappeared. i had not clapped my hands; i had not moved. only my full eyes had followed him as he left the platform; and when he returned--because the applause would not cease--my eyes watched over him as he came back to the centre of the platform. he stood directly in front of me, smiling more gaily now. and suddenly our glances met! yes; i could not be mistaken. they met, and mine held his for several seconds.... diaz had looked at me. diaz had singled me out from the crowd. i blushed hotly, and i was conscious of a surpassing joy. my spirit was transfigured. i knew that such a man was above kings. i knew that the world and everything of loveliness that it contained was his. i knew that he moved like a beautiful god through the groves of delight, and that what he did was right, and whom he beckoned came, and whom he touched was blessed. and my eyes had held his eyes for a little space. the enchantment deepened. i had read that the secret of playing chopin had died with chopin; but i felt sure that evening, as i have felt sure since, that chopin himself, aristocrat of the soul as he was, would have received diaz as an equal, might even have acknowledged in him a superior. for diaz had a physique, and he had a mastery, a tyranny, of the keyboard that chopin could not have possessed. diaz had come to the front in a generation of pianists who had lifted technique to a plane of which neither liszt nor rubinstein dreamed. he had succeeded primarily by his gigantic and incredible technique. and then, when his technique had astounded the world, he had invited the world to forget it, as the glass is forgotten through which is seen beauty. and diaz's gift was now such that there appeared to intervene nothing between his conception of the music and the strings of the piano, so perfected was the mechanism. difficulties had ceased to exist. the performance of some pianists is so wonderful that it seems as if they were crossing niagara on a tight-rope, and you tremble lest they should fall off. it was not so with diaz. when diaz played you experienced the pure emotions caused by the unblurred contemplation of that beauty which the great masters had created, and which diaz had tinted with the rare dyes of his personality. you forgot all but beauty. the piano was not a piano; it was an arabian magic beyond physical laws, and it, too, had a soul. so diaz laid upon us the enchantment of chopin and of himself. mazurkas, nocturnes, waltzes, scherzos, polonaises, preludes, he exhibited to us in groups those manifestations of that supreme spirit--that spirit at once stern and tender, not more sad than joyous, and always sane, always perfectly balanced, always preoccupied with beauty. the singular myth of a chopin decadent, weary, erratic, mournful, hysterical, at odds with fate, was completely dissipated; and we perceived instead the grave artist nourished on bach and studious in form, and the strong soul that had dared to look on life as it is, and had found beauty everywhere. ah! how the air trembled and glittered with visions! how melody and harmony filled every corner of the hall with the silver and gold of sound! how the world was changed out of recognition! how that which had seemed unreal became real, and that which had seemed real receded to a horizon remote and fantastic!... he was playing the fifteenth prelude in d flat now, and the water was dropping, dropping ceaselessly on the dead body, and the beautiful calm song rose serenely in the dream, and then lost itself amid the presaging chords of some sinister fate, and came again, exquisite and fresh as ever, and then was interrupted by a high note like a clarion; and while diaz held that imperious, compelling note, he turned his face slightly from the piano and gazed at me. several times since the first time our eyes had met, by accident as i thought. but this was a deliberate seeking on his part. again i flushed hotly. again i had the terrible shudder of joy. i feared for a moment lest all the five towns was staring at me, thus singled out by diaz; but it was not so: i had the wit to perceive that no one could remark me as the recipient of that hurried and burning glance. he had half a dozen bars to play, yet his eyes did not leave mine, and i would not let mine leave his. he remained moveless while the last chord expired, and then it seemed to me that his gaze had gone further, had passed through me into some unknown. the applause startled him to his feet. my thought was: 'what can he be thinking of me?... but hundreds of women must have loved him!' in the interval an attendant came on to the platform and altered the position of the piano. everybody asked: 'what's that for?' for the new position was quite an unusual one; it brought the tail of the piano nearer to the audience, and gave a better view of the keyboard to the occupants of the seats in the orchestra behind the platform. 'it's a question of the acoustics, that's what it is,' observed a man near me, and a woman replied: 'oh, i see!' when diaz returned and seated himself to play the berceuse, i saw that he could look at me without turning his head. and now, instead of flushing, i went cold. my spine gave way suddenly. i began to be afraid; but of what i was afraid i had not the least idea. i fixed my eyes on my programme as he launched into the berceuse. twice i glanced up, without, however, moving my head, and each time his burning blue eyes met mine. (but why did i choose moments when the playing of the piece demanded less than all his attention?) the berceuse was a favourite. in sentiment it was simpler than the great pieces that had preceded it. its excessive delicacy attracted; the finesse of its embroidery swayed and enraptured the audience; and the applause at the close was mad, deafening, and peremptory. but diaz was notorious as a refuser of encores. it had been said that he would see a hall wrecked by an angry mob before he would enlarge his programme. four times he came forward and acknowledged the tribute, and four times he went back. at the fifth response he halted directly in front of me, and in his bold, grave eyes i saw a question. i saw it, and i would not answer. if he had spoken aloud to me i could not have more clearly understood. but i would not answer. and then some power within myself, hitherto unsuspected by me, some natural force, took possession of me, and i nodded my head.... diaz went to the piano. he hesitated, brushing lightly the keys. 'the prelude in f sharp,' my thought ran. 'if he would play that!' and instantly he broke into that sweet air, with its fateful hushed accompaniment--the trifle which chopin threw off in a moment of his highest inspiration. 'it is the thirteenth prelude,' i reflected. i was disturbed, profoundly troubled. the next piece was the last, and it was the fantasia, the masterpiece of chopin. in the fantasia there speaks the voice of a spirit which has attained all that humanity may attain: of wisdom, of power, of pride and glory. and now it is like the roll of an army marching slowly through terrific defiles; and now it is like the quiet song of royal wanderers meditating in vast garden landscapes, with mossy masonry and long pools and cypresses, and a sapphire star shining in the purple sky on the shoulder of a cypress; and now it is like the cry of a lost traveller, who, plunging heavily through a virgin forest, comes suddenly upon a green circular sward, smooth as a carpet, with an antique statue of a beautiful nude girl in the midst; and now it is like the oratory of richly-gowned philosophers awaiting death in gorgeous and gloomy palaces; and now it is like the upward rush of winged things that are determined to achieve, knowing well the while that the ecstasy of longing is better than the assuaging of desire. and though the voice of this spirit speaking in the music disguises itself so variously, it is always the same. for it cannot, and it would not, hide the strange and rare timbre which distinguishes it from all others--that quality which springs from a pure and calm vision, of life. the voice of this spirit says that it has lost every illusion about life, and that life seems only the more beautiful. it says that activity is but another form of contemplation, pain but another form of pleasure, power but another form of weakness, hate but another form of love, and that it is well these things should be so. it says there is no end, only a means; and that the highest joy is to suffer, and the supreme wisdom is to exist. if you will but live, it cries, that grave but yet passionate voice--if you will but live! were there a heaven, and you reached it, you could do no more than live. the true heaven is here where you live, where you strive and lose, and weep and laugh. and the true hell is here, where you forget to live, and blind your eyes to the omnipresent and terrible beauty of existence.... no, no; i cannot--i cannot describe further the experiences of my soul while diaz played. when words cease, music has scarcely begun. i know now--i did not know it then--that diaz was playing as perhaps he had never played before. the very air was charged with exquisite emotion, which went in waves across the hall, changing and blanching faces, troubling hearts, and moistening eyes.... and then he finished. it was over. in every trembling breast was a pang of regret that this spell, this miracle, this divine revolution, could not last into eternity.... he stood bowing, one hand touching the piano. and as the revolution he had accomplished in us was divine, so was he divine. i felt, and many another woman in the audience felt, that no reward could be too great for the beautiful and gifted creature who had entranced us and forced us to see what alone in life was worth seeing: that the whole world should be his absolute dominion; that his happiness should be the first concern of mankind; that if a thousand suffered in order to make him happy for a moment, it mattered not; that laws were not for him; that if he sinned, his sin must not be called a sin, and that he must be excused from remorse and from any manner of woe. the applauding multitude stood up, and moved slightly towards the exits, and then stopped, as if ashamed of this readiness to desert the sacred temple. diaz came forward three times, and each time the applause increased to a tempest; but he only smiled--smiled gravely. i could not see distinctly whether his eyes had sought mine, for mine were full of tears. no persuasions could induce him to show himself a fourth time, and at length a middle-aged man appeared and stated that diaz was extremely gratified by his reception, but that he was also extremely exhausted and had left the hall. we departed, we mortals; and i was among the last to leave the auditorium. as i left the lights were being extinguished over the platform, and an attendant was closing the piano. the foyer was crowded with people waiting to get out. the word passed that it was raining heavily. i wondered how i should find my cab. i felt very lonely and unknown; i was overcome with sadness--with a sense of the futility and frustration of my life. such is the logic of the soul, and such the force of reaction. gradually the foyer emptied. iii 'you think i am happy,' said diaz, gazing at me with a smile suddenly grave; 'but i am not. i seek something which i cannot find. and my playing is only a relief from the fruitless search; only that. i am forlorn.' 'you!' i exclaimed, and my eyes rested on his, long. yes, we had met. perhaps it had been inevitable since the beginning of time that we should meet; but it was none the less amazing. perhaps i had inwardly known that we should meet; but, none the less, i was astounded when a coated and muffled figure came up swiftly to me in the emptying foyer, and said: 'ah! you are here! i cannot leave without thanking you for your sympathy. i have never before felt such sympathy while playing.' it was a golden voice, pitched low, and the words were uttered with a very slight foreign accent, which gave them piquancy. i could not reply; something rose in my throat, and the caressing voice continued: 'you are pale. do you feel ill? what can i do? come with me to the artists' room; my secretary is there.' i put out a hand gropingly, for i could not see clearly, and i thought i should reel and fall. it touched his shoulder. he took my arm, and we went; no one had noticed us, and i had not spoken a word. in the room to which he guided me, through a long and sombre corridor, there was no sign of a secretary. i drank some water. 'there, you are better!' he cried. 'thank you,' i said, but scarcely whispering. 'how fortunate i ventured to come to you just at that moment! you might have fallen'; and he smiled again. i shook my head. i said: 'it was your coming--that--that--made me dizzy!' 'i profoundly regret--' he began. 'no, no,' i interrupted him; and in that instant i knew i was about to say something which society would, justifiably, deem unpardonable in a girl situated as i was. 'i am so glad you came'; and i smiled, courageous and encouraging. for once in my life--for the first time in my adult life--i determined to be my honest self to another. 'your voice is exquisitely beautiful,' he murmured. i thrilled. of what use to chronicle the steps, now halting, now only too hasty, by which our intimacy progressed in that gaunt and echoing room? he asked me no questions as to my identity. he just said that he would like to play to me in private if that would give me pleasure, and that possibly i could spare an hour and would go with him.... afterwards his brougham would be at my disposal. his tone was the perfection of deferential courtesy. once the secretary came in--a young man rather like himself--and they talked together in a foreign language that was not french nor german; then the secretary bowed and retired.... we were alone.... there can be no sort of doubt that unless i was prepared to flout the wisdom of the ages, i ought to have refused his suggestion. but is not the wisdom of the ages a medicine for majorities? and, indeed, i was prepared to flout it, as in our highest and our lowest moments we often are. moreover, how many women in my place, confronted by that divine creature, wooed by that wondrous personality, intoxicated by that smile and that voice, allured by the appeal of those marvellous hands, would have found the strength to resist? i did not resist, i yielded; i accepted. i was already in disgrace with aunt constance--as well be drowned in twelve feet of water as in six! so we drove rapidly away in the brougham, through the miry, light-reflecting streets of hanbridge in the direction of knype. and the raindrops ran down the windows of the brougham, and in the cushioned interior we could see each other darkly. he did his best to be at ease, and he almost succeeded. my feeling towards him, as regards the external management, the social guidance, of the affair, was as though we were at sea in a dangerous storm, and he was on the bridge and i was a mere passenger, and could take no responsibility. who knew through what difficult channels we might not have to steer, and from what lee-shores we might not have to beat away? i saw that he perceived this. when i offered him some awkward compliment about his good english, he seized the chance of a narrative, and told me about his parentage: how his mother was scotch, and his father danish, and how, after his father's death, his mother had married emilio diaz, a spanish teacher of music in edinburgh, and how he had taken, by force of early habit, the name of his stepfather. the whole world was familiar with these facts, and i was familiar with them; but their recital served our turn in the brougham, and, of course, diaz could add touches which had escaped the _staffordshire recorder_, and perhaps all other papers. he was explaining to me that his secretary was his stepfather's son by another wife, when we arrived at the five towns hotel, opposite knype railway station. i might have foreseen that that would be our destination. i hooded myself as well as i could, and followed him quickly to the first-floor. i sank down into a chair nearly breathless in his sitting-room, and he took my cloak, and then poked the bright fire that was burning. on a small table were some glasses and a decanter, and a few sandwiches. i surmised that the secretary had been before us and arranged things, and discreetly departed. my adventure appeared to me suddenly and over-poweringly in its full enormity. 'oh,' i sighed, 'if i were a man like you!' then it was that, gazing up at me from the fire, diaz had said that he was not happy, that he was forlorn. 'yes,' he proceeded, sitting down and crossing his legs; 'i am profoundly dissatisfied. what is my life? eight or nine months in the year it is a homeless life of hotels and strange faces and strange pianos. you do not know how i hate a strange piano. that one'--he pointed to a huge instrument which had evidently been placed in the room specially for him--'is not very bad; but i made its acquaintance only yesterday, and after to-morrow i shall never see it again. i wander across the world, and everybody i meet looks at me as if i ought to be in a museum, and bids me make acquaintance with a strange piano.' 'but have you no friends?' i ventured. 'who can tell?' he replied. 'if i have, i scarcely ever see them.' 'and no home?' 'i have a home on the edge of the forest of fontainebleau, and i loathe it.' 'why do you loathe it?' 'ah! for what it has witnessed--for what it has witnessed.' he sighed. 'suppose we discuss something else.' you must remember my youth, my inexperience, my lack of adroitness in social intercourse. i talked quietly and slowly, like my aunt, and i know that i had a tremendous air of sagacity and self-possession; but beneath that my brain and heart were whirling, bewildered in a delicious, dazzling haze of novel sensations. it was not i who spoke, but a new being, excessively perturbed into a consciousness of new powers. i said: 'you say you are friendless, but i wonder how many women are dying for love of you.' he started. there was a pause. i felt myself blushing. 'let me guess at your history,' he said. 'you have lived much alone with your thoughts, and you have read a great deal of the finest romantic poetry, and you have been silent, especially with men. you have seen little of men.' 'but i understand them,' i answered boldly. 'i believe you do,' he admitted; and he laughed. 'so i needn't explain to you that a thousand women dying of love for one man will not help that man to happiness, unless he is dying of love for the thousand and first.' 'and have you never loved?' the words came of themselves out of my mouth. 'i have deceived myself--in my quest of sympathy,' he said. 'can you be sure that, in your quest of sympathy, you are not deceiving yourself tonight?' 'yes,' he cried quickly, 'i can.' and he sprang up and almost ran to the piano. 'you remember the d flat prelude?' he said, breaking into the latter part of the air, and looking at me the while. 'when i came to that note and caught your gaze'--he struck the b flat and held it--'i knew that i had found sympathy. i knew it! i knew it! i knew it! do you remember?' 'remember what?' 'the way we looked at each other.' 'yes,' i breathed, 'i remember.' 'how can i thank you? how can i thank you?' he seemed to be meditating. his simplicity, his humility, his kindliness were more than i could bear. 'please do not speak like that,' i entreated him, pained. 'you are the greatest artist in the world, and i am nobody--nobody at all. i do not know why i am here. i cannot imagine what you have seen in me. everything is a mystery. all i feel is that i am in your presence, and that i am not worthy to be. no matter how long i live, i shall never experience again the joy that i have now. but if you talk about thanking me, i must run away, because i cannot stand it--and--and--you haven't played for me, and you said you would.' he approached me, and bent his head towards mine, and i glanced up through a mist and saw his eyes and the short, curly auburn locks on his forehead. 'the most beautiful things, and the most vital things, and the most lasting things,' he said softly, 'are often mysterious and inexplicable and sudden. and let me tell you that you do not know how lovely you are. you do not know the magic of your voice, nor the grace of your gestures. but time and man will teach you. what shall i play?' he was very close to me. 'bach,' i ejaculated, pointing impatiently to the piano. i fancied that bach would spread peace abroad in my soul. he resumed his place at the piano, and touched the keys. 'another thing that makes me more sure that i am not deceiving myself to-night,' he said, taking his fingers off the keys, but staring at the keyboard, 'is that you have not regretted coming here. you have not called yourself a wicked woman. you have not even accused me of taking advantage of your innocence.' and ere i could say a word he had begun the chromatic fantasia, smiling faintly. and i had hoped for peace from bach! i had often suspected that deep passion was concealed almost everywhere within the restraint and the apparent calm of bach's music, but the full force of it had not been shown to me till this glorious night. diaz' playing was tenfold more impressive, more effective, more revealing in the hotel parlour than in the great hall. the chromatic fantasia seemed as full of the magnificence of life as that other fantasia which he had given an hour or so earlier. instead of peace i had the whirlwind; instead of tranquillity a riot; instead of the poppy an alarming potion. the rendering was masterly to the extreme of masterliness. when he had finished i rose and passed to the fireplace in silence; he did not stir. 'do you always play like that?' i asked at length. 'no,' he said; 'only when you are there. i have never played the chopin fantasia as i played it to-night. the chopin was all right; but do not be under any illusion: what you have just heard is bach played by a chopin player.' then he left the piano and went to the small table where the glasses were. 'you must be in need of refreshment,' he whispered gaily. 'nothing is more exhausting than listening to the finest music.' 'it is you who ought to be tired,' i replied; 'after that long concert, to be playing now.' 'i have the physique of a camel,' he said. 'i am never tired so long as i am sure of my listeners. i would play for you till breakfast to-morrow.' the decanter contained a fluid of a pleasant green tint. he poured very carefully this fluid to the depth of half an inch in one glass and three-quarters of an inch in another glass. then he filled both glasses to the brim with water, accomplishing the feat with infinite pains and enjoyment, as though it had been part of a ritual. 'there!' he said, offering me in his steady hand the glass which had received the smaller quantity of the green fluid. 'taste.' 'but what is it?' i demanded. 'taste,' he repeated, and he himself tasted. i obeyed. at the first mouthful i thought the liquid was somewhat sinister and disagreeable, but immediately afterwards i changed my opinion, and found it ingratiating, enticing, and stimulating, and yet not strong. 'do you like it?' he asked. i nodded, and drank again. 'it is wonderful,' i answered. 'what do you call it?' 'men call it absinthe,' he said. 'but--' i put the glass on the mantelpiece and picked it up again. 'don't be frightened,' he soothed me. 'i know what you were going to say. you have always heard that absinthe is the deadliest of all poisons, that it is the curse of paris, and that it makes the most terrible of all drunkards. so it is; so it does. but not as we are drinking it; not as i invariably drink it.' 'of course,' i said, proudly confident in him. 'you would not have offered it to me otherwise.' 'of course i should not,' he agreed. 'i give you my word that a few drops of absinthe in a tumbler of water make the most effective and the least harmful stimulant in the world.' 'i am sure of it,' i said. 'but drink slowly,' he advised me. i refused the sandwiches. i had no need of them. i felt sufficient unto myself. i no longer had any apprehension. my body, my brain, and my soul seemed to be at the highest pitch of efficiency. the fear of being maladroit departed from me. ideas--delicate and subtle ideas--welled up in me one after another; i was bound to give utterance to them. i began to talk about my idol chopin, and i explained to diaz my esoteric interpretation of the fantasia. he was sitting down now, but i still stood by the fire. 'yes, he said, 'that is very interesting.' 'what does the fantasia mean to you?' i asked him. 'nothing,' he said. 'nothing!' 'nothing, in the sense you wish to convey. everything, in another sense. you can attach any ideas you please to music, but music, if you will forgive me saying so, rejects them all equally. art has to do with emotions, not with ideas, and the great defect of literature is that it can only express emotions by means of ideas. what makes music the greatest of all the arts is that it can express emotions without ideas. literature can appeal to the soul only through the mind. music goes direct. its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but which the soul can never translate. therefore all i can say of the fantasia is that it moves me profoundly. i _know how_ it moves me, but i cannot tell you; i cannot even tell myself.' vistas of comprehension opened out before me. 'oh, do go on,' i entreated him. 'tell me more about music. do you not think chopin the greatest composer that ever lived? you must do, since you always play him.' he smiled. 'no,' he said, 'i do not. for me there is no supremacy in art. when fifty artists have contrived to be supreme, supremacy becomes impossible. take a little song by grieg. it is perfect, it is supreme. no one could be greater than grieg was great when he wrote that song. the whole last act of _the twilight of the gods_ is not greater than a little song of grieg's.' 'i see,' i murmured humbly. '_the twilight of the gods_--that is wagner, isn't it?' 'yes. don't you know your wagner?' 'no. i--' 'you don't know _tristan_?' he jumped up, excited. 'how could i know it?' i expostulated. 'i have never seen any opera. i know the marches from _tannhã¤user_ and _lohengrin_, and "o star of eve!"' 'but it is impossible that you don't know _tristan_!' he exclaimed. 'the second act of _tristan_ is the greatest piece of love-music--no, it isn't.' he laughed. 'i must not contradict myself. but it is marvellous--marvellous! you know the story?' 'yes,' i said. 'play me some of it.' 'i will play the prelude,' he answered. i gulped down the remaining drops in my glass and crossed the room to a chair where i could see his face. and he played the prelude to the most passionately voluptuous opera ever written. it was my first real introduction to wagner, my first glimpse of that enchanted field. i was ravished, rapt away. 'wagner was a great artist in spite of himself,' said diaz, when he had finished. 'he assigned definite and precise ideas to all those melodies. nothing could be more futile. i shall not label them for you. but perhaps you can guess the love-motive for yourself.' 'yes, i can,' i said positively. 'it is this.' i tried to hum the theme, but my voice refused obedience. so i came to the piano, and played the theme high up in the treble, while diaz was still sitting on the piano-stool. i trembled even to touch the piano in his presence; but i did it. 'you have guessed right,' he said; and then he asked me in a casual tone: 'do you ever play pianoforte duets?' 'often,' i replied unsuspectingly, 'with my aunt. we play the symphonies of beethoven, mozart, schubert, haydn, and overtures, and so on.' 'awfully good fun, isn't it?' he smiled. 'splendid!' i said. 'i've got _tristan_ here arranged for pianoforte duet,' he said. 'tony, my secretary, enjoys playing it. you shall play part of the second act with me.' 'me! with you!' 'certainly.' 'impossible! i should never dare! how do you know i can play at all?' 'you have just proved it to me,' said he. 'come; you will not refuse me this!' i wanted to leave the vicinity of the piano. i felt that, once out of the immediate circle of his tremendous physical influence, i might manage to escape the ordeal which he had suggested. but i could not go away. the silken nets of his personality had been cast, and i was enmeshed. and if i was happy, it was with a dreadful happiness. 'but, really, i can't play with you,' i said weakly. his response was merely to look up at me over his shoulder. his beautiful face was so close to mine, and it expressed such a naã¯ve and strong yearning for my active and intimate sympathy, and such divine frankness, and such perfect kindliness, that i had no more will to resist. i knew i should suffer horribly in spoiling by my coarse amateurishness the miraculous finesse of his performance, but i resigned myself to suffering. i felt towards him as i had felt during the concert: that he must have his way at no matter what cost, that he had already earned the infinite gratitude of the entire world--in short, i raised him in my soul to a god's throne; and i accepted humbly the great, the incredible honour he did me. and i was right--a thousand times right. and in the same moment he was like a charming child to me: such is always in some wise the relation between the creature born to enjoy and the creature born to suffer. 'i'll try,' i said; 'but it will be appalling.' i laughed and shook my head. 'we shall see how appalling it will be,' he murmured, as he got the volume of music. he fetched a chair for me, and we sat down side by side, he on the stool and i on the chair. 'i'm afraid my chair is too low,' i said. 'and i'm sure this stool is too high,' he said. 'suppose we exchange.' so we both rose to change the positions of the chair and the stool, and our garments touched and almost our faces, and at that very moment there was a loud rap at the door. i darted away from him. 'what's that?' i cried, low in a fit of terror. 'who's there?' he called quietly; but he did not stir. we gazed at each other. the knock was repeated, sharply and firmly. 'who's there?' diaz demanded again. 'go to the door,' i whispered. he hesitated, and then we heard footsteps receding down the corridor. diaz went slowly to the door, opened it wide, slipped out into the corridor, and looked into the darkness. 'curious!' he commented tranquilly. 'i see no one.' he came back into the room and shut the door softly, and seemed thereby to shut us in, to enclose us against the world in a sweet domesticity of our own. the fire was burning brightly, the glasses and the decanter on the small table spoke of cheer, the curtains were drawn, and through a half-open door behind the piano one had a hint of a mysterious other room; one could see nothing within it save a large brass knob or ball, which caught the light of the candle on the piano. 'you were startled,' he said. 'you must have a little more of our cordial--just a spoonful.' he poured out for me an infinitesimal quantity, and the same for himself. i sighed with relief as i drank. my terror left me. but the trifling incident had given me the clearest perception of what i was doing, and that did not leave me. we sat down a second time to the piano. 'you understand,' he explained, staring absently at the double page of music, 'this is the garden scene. when the curtain goes up it is dark in the garden, and isolda is there with her maid brangaena. the king, her husband, has just gone off hunting--you will hear the horns dying in the distance--and isolda is expecting her lover, tristan. a torch is burning in the wall of the castle, and as soon as she gives him the signal by extinguishing it he comes to her. you will know the exact moment when they meet. then there is the love-scene. oh! when we arrive at that you will be astounded. you will hear the very heart-beats of the lovers. are you ready?' 'yes.' we began to play. but it was ridiculous. i knew it would be ridiculous. i was too dazed, and artistically too intimidated, to read the notes. the notes danced and pranced before me. all i could see on my page was the big black letters at the top, 'zweiter aufzug.' and furthermore, on that first page both the theme and the accompaniment were in the bass of the piano. diaz had scarcely anything to do. i threw up my hands and closed my eyes. 'i can't,' i whispered, 'i can't. i would if i could.' he gently took my hand. 'my dear companion,' he said, 'tell me your name.' i was surprised. memories of the bible, for some inexplicable reason, flashed through my mind. 'magdalen,' i replied, and my voice was so deceptively quiet and sincere that he believed it. i could see that he was taken aback. 'it is a holy name and a good name,' he said, after a pause. 'magda, you are perfectly capable of reading this music with me, and you will read it, won't you? let us begin afresh. leave the accompaniment with me, and play the theme only. further on it gets easier.' and in another moment we were launched on that sea so strange to me. the influence of diaz over me was complete. inspired by his will, i had resolved intensely to read the music correctly and sympathetically, and lo! i was succeeding! he turned the page with the incredible rapidity and dexterity of which only great pianists seem to have the secret, and in conjunction with my air in the bass he was suddenly, magically, drawing out from the upper notes the sweetest and most intoxicating melody i had ever heard. the exceeding beauty of the thing laid hold on me, and i abandoned myself to it. i felt sure now that, at any rate, i should not disgrace myself.' 'unless it was chopin,' whispered diaz. 'no one could ever see two things at once as well as wagner.' we surged on through the second page. again the lightning turn of the page, and then the hunters' horns were heard departing from the garden of love, receding, receding, until they subsided into a scarce-heard drone, out of which rose another air. and as the sound of the horns died away, so died away all my past and all my solicitudes for the future. i surrendered utterly and passionately to the spell of the beauty which we were opening like a long scroll. i had ceased to suffer. the absinthe and diaz had conjured a spirit in me which was at once feverish and calm. i was reading at sight difficult music full of modulations and of colour, and i was reading it with calm assurance of heart and brain. deeper down the fever raged, but so separately that i might have had two individualities. enchanted as i was by the rich and complex concourse of melodies which ascended from the piano and swam about our heads, this fluctuating tempest of sound was after all only a background for the emotions to which it gave birth in me. naturally they were the emotions of love--the sense of the splendour of love, the headlong passion of love, the transcendent carelessness of love, the finality of love. i saw in love the sole and sacred purpose of the universe, and my heart whispered, with a new import: 'where love is, there is god also.' the fever of the music increased, and with it my fever. we seemed to be approaching some mighty climax. i thought i might faint with ecstasy, but i held on, and the climax arrived--a climax which touched the limits of expression in expressing all that two souls could feel in coming together. 'tristan has come into the garden,' i muttered. and diaz, turning his face towards me, nodded. we plunged forward into the love-scene itself--the scene in which the miracle of love is solemnized and celebrated. i thought that of all miracles, the miracle which had occurred that night, and was even then occurring, might be counted among the most wondrous. what occult forces, what secret influences of soul on soul, what courage on his part, what sublime immodesty and unworldliness on mine had brought it about! in what dreadful disaster would it not end! ... i cared not in that marvellous hectic hour how it would end. i knew i had been blessed beyond the common lot of women. i knew that i was living more intensely and more fully than i could have hoped to live. i knew that my experience was a supreme experience, and that another such could not be contained in my life.... and diaz was so close, so at one with me.... a hush descended on the music, and i found myself playing strange disturbing chords with the left hand, irregularly repeated, opposing the normal accent of the bar, and becoming stranger and more disturbing. and diaz was playing an air fragmentary and poignant. the lovers were waiting; the very atmosphere of the garden was drenched with an agonizing and exquisite anticipation. the whole world stood still, expectant, while the strange chords fought gently and persistently against the rhythm. 'hear the beating of their hearts,' diaz' whisper floated over the chords. it was too much. the obsession of his presence, reinforced by the vibrating of his wistful, sensuous voice, overcame me suddenly. my hands fell from the keyboard. he looked at me--and with what a glance! 'i can bear no more,' i cried wildly. 'it is too beautiful, too beautiful!' and i rushed from the piano, and sat down in an easy-chair, and hid my face in my hands. he came to me, and bent over me. 'magda,' he whispered, 'show me your face.' with his hands he delicately persuaded my hands away from my face, and forced me to look on him. 'how dark and splendid you are, magda!' he said, still holding my hands. 'how humid and flashing your eyes! and those eyelashes, and that hair--dark, dark! and that bosom, with its rise and fall! and that low, rich voice, that is like dark wine! and that dress--dark, and full of mysterious shadows, like our souls! magda, we must have known each other in a previous life. there can be no other explanation. and this moment is the fulfilment of that other life, which was not aroused. you were to be mine. you are mine, magda!' there is a fatalism in love. i felt it then. i had been called by destiny to give happiness, perhaps for a lifetime, but perhaps only for a brief instant, to this noble and glorious creature, on whom the gods had showered all gifts. could i shrink back from my fate? and had he not already given me far more than i could ever return? the conventions of society seemed then like sand, foolishly raised to imprison the resistless tide of ocean. nature, after all, is eternal and unchangeable, and everywhere the same. the great and solemn fact for me was that we were together, and he held me while our burning pulses throbbed in contact. he held me; he clasped me, and, despite my innocence, i knew at once that those hands were as expert to caress as to make music. i was proud and glad that he was not clumsy, that he was a master. and at that point i ceased to have volition.... iv when i woke up, perplexed at first, but gradually remembering where i was, and what had occurred to me, the realistic and uncompromising light of dawn had commenced its pitiless inquiry, and it fell on the brass knob, which i had noticed a few hours before, from the other room, and on another brass knob a few feet away. my eyes smarted; i had disconcerting sensations at the back of my head; my hair was brittle, and as though charged with a dull electricity; i was conscious of actual pain, and an incubus, crushing but intangible, lay heavily, like a physical weight, on my heart. after the crest of the wave the trough--it must be so; but how profound the instinct which complains! i listened. i could hear his faint, regular breathing. i raised myself carefully on one elbow and looked at him. he was as beautiful in sleep as in consciousness; his lips were slightly parted, his cheek exquisitely flushed, and nothing could disarrange that short, curly hair. he slept with the calmness of the natural innocent man, to whom the assuaging of desires brings only content. i felt that i must go, and hastily, frantically. i could not face him when he woke; i should not have known what to say; i should have been abashed, timid, clumsy, unequal to myself. and, moreover, i had the egoist's deep need to be alone, to examine my soul, to understand it intimately and utterly. and, lastly, i wanted to pay the bill of pleasure at once. i could never tolerate credit; i was like my aunt in that. therefore, i must go home and settle the account in some way. i knew not how; i knew only that the thing must be done. diaz had nothing to do with that; it was not his affair, and i should have resented his interference. ah! when i was in the bill-paying mood, how hard i could be, how stony, how blind! and that morning i was like a malay running amok. think not that when i was ready to depart i stopped and stooped to give him a final tender kiss. i did not even scribble a word of adieu or of explanation. i stole away on tiptoe, without looking at him. this sounds brutal, but it is a truth of my life, and i am writing my life--at least, i am writing those brief hours of my existence during which i lived. i had always a sort of fierce courage; and as i had proved the courage of my passion in the night, so i proved the courage of my--not my remorse, not my compunction, not my regret--but of my intellectual honesty in the morning. proud and vain words, perhaps. who can tell? no matter what sympathies i alienate, i am bound to say plainly that, though i am passionate, i am not sentimental. i came to him out of the void, and i went from him into the void. he found me, and he lost me. between the autumn sunset and the autumn sunrise he had learnt to know me well, but he did not know my name nor my history; he had no clue, no cord to pull me back. i passed into the sitting-room, dimly lighted through the drawn curtains, and there was the score of _tristan_ open on the piano. yes; and if i were the ordinary woman i would add that there also were the ashes in the cold grate, and so symbolize the bitterness of memory and bring about a pang. but i have never regretted what is past. the cinders of that fire were to me cinders of a fire and nothing more. in the doorway i halted. to go into the corridor was like braving the blast of the world, and i hesitated. possibly i hesitated for a very little thing. only the women among you will guess it. my dress was dark and severe. i had a simple, dark cloak. but i had no hat. i had no hat, and the most important fact in the universe for me then was that i had no hat. my whole life was changed; my heart and mind were in the throes of a revolution. i dared not imagine what would happen between my aunt and me; but this deficiency in my attire distressed me more than all else. at the other end of the obscure corridor was a chambermaid kneeling down and washing the linoleum. ah, maid! would i not have exchanged fates with you, then! i walked boldly up to her. she seemed to be surprised, but she continued to wring out a cloth in her pail as she looked at me. 'what time is it, please?' i asked her. 'better than half-past six, ma'am,' said she. she was young and emaciated. 'have you got a hat you can lend me? or i'll buy it from you.' 'a hat, ma'am?' 'yes, a hat,' i repeated impatiently. and i flushed. 'i must go out at once, and i've--i've no hat and i can't--' it is extraordinary how in a crisis one's organism surprises one. i had thought i was calm and full of self-control, but i had almost no command over my voice. 'i've got a boat-shaped straw, ma'am, if that's any use to you,' said the girl kindly. what she surmised or what she knew i could not say. but i have found out since in my travels, that hotel chambermaids lose their illusions early. at any rate her tone was kindly. 'get it me, there's a good girl,' i entreated her. and when she brought it, i drew out the imitation pearl pins and put them between my teeth, and jammed the hat on my head and skewered it savagely with the pins. 'is that right?' 'it suits you better than it does me, ma'am, i do declare,' she said. 'oh, ma'am, this is too much--i really couldn't!' i had given her five shillings. 'nonsense! i am very much obliged to you,' i whispered hurriedly, and ran off. she was a good girl. i hope she has never suffered. and yet i would not like to think she had died of consumption before she knew what life meant. i hastened from the hotel. a man in a blue waistcoat with shining black sleeves was moving a large cocoa-nut mat in the hall, and the pattern of the mat was shown in dust on the tiles where the mat had been. he glanced at me absently as i flitted past; i encountered no other person. the square between the hotel and the station was bathed in pure sunshine--such sunshine as reaches the five towns only after a rain-storm has washed the soot out of the air. i felt, for a moment, obscene in that sunshine; but i had another and a stronger feeling. although there was not a soul in the square, i felt as if i was regarding the world and mankind with different eyes from those of yesterday. then i knew nothing; to-day i knew everything--so it seemed to me. it seemed to me that i understood all sorts of vague, subtle things that i had not understood before; that i had been blind and now saw; that i had become kinder, more sympathetic, more human. what these things were that i understood, or thought i understood, i could not have explained. all i felt was that a radical change of attitude had occurred in me. 'poor world! poor humanity! my heart melts for you!' thus spoke my soul, pouring itself out. the very stone facings of the station and the hotel seemed somehow to be humanized and to need my compassion. i walked with eyes downcast into the station. i had determined to take the train from knype to shawport, a distance of three miles, and then to walk up the hill from shawport through oldcastle street to bursley. i hoped that by such a route at such an hour, i should be unlikely to meet acquaintances, of whom, in any case, i had few. my hopes appeared to be well founded, for the large booking-hall at the station was thronged with a multitude entirely strange to me--workmen and workwomen and workgirls crowded the place. the first-class and second-class booking-windows were shut, and a long tail of muscular men, pale men, stout women, and thin women pushed to take tickets at the other window. i was obliged to join them, and to wait my turn amid the odour of corduroy and shawl, and the strong odour of humanity; my nostrils were peculiarly sensitive that morning. some of the men had herculean arms and necks, and it was these who wore pieces of string tied round their trousers below the knee, disclosing the lines of their formidable calves. the women were mostly pallid and quiet. all carried cans, or satchels, or baskets; here and there a man swung lightly on his shoulder a huge bag of tools, which i could scarcely have raised from the ground. everybody was natural, direct, and eager; and no one attempted to be genteel or refined; no one pretended that he did not toil with his hands for dear life. i anticipated that i should excite curiosity, but i did not. the people had a preoccupied, hurried air. only at the window itself, when the ticket-clerk, having made me repeat my demand, went to a distant part of his lair to get my ticket, did i detect behind me a wave of impatient and inimical interest in this drone who caused delay to busy people. it was the same on the up-platform, the same in the subway, and the same on the down-platform. i was plunged in a sea of real, raw life; but i could not mingle with it; i was a bit of manufactured lace on that full tide of nature. the porters cried in a different tone from what they employed when the london and manchester expresses, and the polite trains generally, were alongside. they cried fraternally, rudely; they were at one with the passengers. i alone was a stranger. 'these are the folk! these are the basis of society, and the fountain of _our_ wealth and luxury!' i thought; for i was just beginning, at that period, to be interested in the disquieting aspects of the social organism, and my ideas were hot and crude. i was aware of these people on paper, but now, for the first time, i realized the immense rush and sweep of their existence, their nearness to nature, their formidable directness. they frightened me with their vivid humanity. i could find no first-class carriage on the train, and i got into a compartment where there were several girls and one young man. the girls were evidently employed in the earthenware manufacture. each had her dinner-basket. most of them were extremely neat; one or two wore gloves. from the young man's soiled white jacket under his black coat, i gathered that he was an engineer. the train moved out of the station and left the platform nearly empty. i pictured the train, a long procession of compartments like ours, full of rough, natural, ungenteel people. none of my companions spoke; none gave me more than a passing glance. it was uncanny. still, the fundamental, cardinal quality of my adventure remained prominent in my being, and it gave me countenance among these taciturn, musing workgirls, who were always at grips with the realities of life. 'ah,' i thought, 'you little know what i know! i may appear a butterfly, but i have learnt the secret meaning of existence. i am above you, beyond you, by my experience, and by my terrible situation, and by the turmoil in my heart!' and then, quite suddenly, i reflected that they probably knew all that i knew, that some of them might have forgotten more than i had ever learnt. i remembered an absorbing correspondence about the manners of the five towns in the columns of the _staffordshire recorder_--a correspondence which had driven aunt constance to conceal the paper after the second week. i guessed that they might smile at the simplicity of my heart could they see it. meaning of existence! why, they were reared in it! the naturalness of natural people and of natural acts struck me like a blow, and i withdrew, whipped, into myself. my adventure grew smaller. but i recalled its ecstasies. i dwelt on the romantic perfection of diaz. it seemed to me amazing, incredible, that diaz, the glorious and incomparable diaz, had loved me--_me_! out of all the ardent, worshipping women that the world contained. i wondered if he had wakened up, and i felt sorry for him. so far, i had not decided how soon, if at all, i should communicate with him. my mind was incapable of reaching past the next few hours--the next hour. we stopped at a station surrounded by the evidences of that tireless, unceasing, and tremendous manufacturing industry which distinguishes the five towns, and i was left alone in the compartment. the train rumbled on through a landscape of fiery furnaces, and burning slag-heaps, and foul canals reflecting great smoking chimneys, all steeped in the mild sunshine. could the toil-worn agents of this never-ending and gigantic productiveness find time for love? perhaps they loved quickly and forgot, like animals. thoughts such as these lurked sinister and carnal, strange beasts in the jungle of my poor brain. then the train arrived at shawport, and i was obliged to get out. i say 'obliged,' because i violently wished not to get out. i wished to travel on in that train to some impossible place, where things were arranged differently. the station clock showed only five minutes to seven. i was astounded. it seemed to me that all the real world had been astir and busy for hours. and this extraordinary activity went on every morning while aunt constance and i lay in our beds and thought well of ourselves. i shivered, and walked quickly up the street. i had positively not noticed that i was cold. i had scarcely left the station before fred ryley appeared in front of me. i saw that his face was swollen. my heart stopped. of course, he would tell ethel.... he passed me sheepishly without stopping, merely raising his hat, and murmuring the singular words: 'we're both very, very sorry.' what in the name of heaven could they possibly know, he and ethel? and what right had he to ...? did he smile furtively? fred ryley had sometimes a strange smile. i reddened, angry and frightened. the distance between the station and our house proved horribly short. and when i arrived in front of the green gates, and put my hand on the latch, i knew that i had formed no plan whatever. i opened the right-hand gate and entered the garden. the blinds were still down, and the house looked so decorous and innocent in its age. my poor aunt! what a night she must have been through! it was inconceivable that i should tell her what had happened to me. indeed, under the windows of that house it seemed inconceivable that the thing had happened which had happened. inconceivable! grotesque! monstrous! but could i lie? could i rise to the height of some sufficient and kindly lie? a hand drew slightly aside the blind of the window over the porch. i sighed, and went wearily, in my boat-shaped straw, up the gravelled path to the door. rebecca met me at the door. it was so early that she had not yet put on an apron. she looked tired, as if she had not slept. 'come in, miss,' she said weakly, holding open the door. it seemed to me that i did not need this invitation from a servant. 'i suppose you've all been fearfully upset, wondering where i was,' i began, entering the hall. my adventure appeared fantastically unreal to me in the presence of this buxom creature, whom i knew to be incapable of imagining anything one hundredth part so dreadful. 'no, miss; i wasn't upset on account of you. you're always so sensible like. you always know what to do. i knew as you must have stopped the night with friends in hanbridge on account of the heavy rain, and perhaps that there silly cabman not turning up, and them tramcars all crowded; and, of course, you couldn't telegraph.' this view that i was specially sagacious and equal to emergencies rather surprised me. 'but auntie?' i demanded, trembling. 'oh, miss!' cried rebecca, glancing timidly over her shoulder, 'i want you to come with me into the dining-room before you go upstairs.' she snuffled. in the dining-room i went at once to the window to draw up the blinds. 'not that, not that!' rebecca appealed, weeping. 'for pity's sake!' and she caught my hand. i then noticed that lucy was standing in the doorway, also weeping. rebecca noticed this too. 'lucy, you go to your kitchen this minute,' she said sharply, and then turned to me and began to cry again. 'miss peel--how can i tell you?' 'why do you call me miss peel?' i asked her. but i knew why. the thing flashed over me instantly. my dear aunt was dead. 'you've got no aunt,' said rebecca. 'my poor dear! and you at the concert!' i dropped my head and my bosom on the bare mahogany table and cried. never before, and never since, have i spilt such tears--hot, painful drops, distilled plenteously from a heart too crushed and torn. 'there, there!' muttered rebecca. 'i wish i could have told you different--less cruel; but it wasn't in me to do it.' 'and she's lying upstairs this very moment all cold and stiff,' a wailing voice broke in. it was lucy, who could not keep herself away from us. 'will you go to your kitchen, my girl!' rebecca drove her off. 'and the poor thing's not stiff either. her poor body's as soft as if she was only asleep, and doctor says it will be for a day or two. it's like that when they're took off like that, he says. oh, miss carlotta--' 'tell me all about it before i go upstairs,' i said. i had recovered. 'your poor aunt went to bed just as soon as you were gone, miss,' said rebecca. 'she would have it she was quite well, only tired. i took her up a cup of cocoa at ten o'clock, and she seemed all right, and then i sends lucy to bed, and i sits up in the kitchen to wait for you. not a sound from your poor aunt. i must have dropped asleep, miss, in my chair, and i woke up with a start like, and the kitchen clock was near on one. thinks i, perhaps miss carlotta's been knocking and ringing all this time and me not heard, and i rushes to the front door. but of course you weren't there. the porch was nothing but a pool o' water. i says to myself she's stopping somewhere, i says. and i felt it was my duty to go and tell your aunt, whether she was asleep or whether she wasn't asleep.... well, and there she was, miss, with her eyes closed, and as soft as a child. i spoke to her, loud, more than once. "miss carlotta a'n't come," i says. "miss carlotta a'n't come, ma'am," i says. she never stirred. thinks i, this is queer this is. and i goes up to her and touches her. chilly! then i takes the liberty of pushing back your poor aunt's eyelids, and i could but see the whites of her eyes; the eyeballs was gone up, and a bit outwards. yes; and her poor dear chin was dropped. thinks i, here's trouble, and miss carlotta at the concert. i runs to our bedroom, and i tells lucy to put a cloak on and fetch dr. roycroft. "who for?" she says. "never you mind who for!" i says, says i. "you up and quick. but you can tell the doctor it's missis as is took." and in ten minutes he was here, miss. but it's only across the garden, like. "yes," he said, "she's been dead an hour or more. failure of the heart's action," he said. "she died in her sleep," he said. "thank god she died in her sleep if she was to die, the pure angel!" i says. i told the doctor as you were away for the night, miss. and i laid her out, miss, and your poor auntie wasn't my first, either. i've seen trouble--i've--' and rebecca's tears overcame her voice. 'i'll go upstairs with you, miss,' she struggled out. one thought that flew across my mind was that doctor roycroft was very intimate with the ryleys, and had doubtless somehow informed them of my aunt's death. this explained fred ryley's strange words and attitude to me on the way from the station. the young man had been too timid to stop me. the matter was a trifle, but another idea that struck me was not a trifle, though i strove to make it so. my aunt had died about midnight, and it was at midnight that diaz and i had heard the mysterious knock on his sitting-room door. at the time i had remarked how it resembled my aunt's knock. occasionally, when the servants overslept themselves, aunt constance would go to their rooms in her pale-blue dressing-gown and knock on their door exactly like that. could it be that this was one of those psychical manifestations of which i had read? had my aunt, in passing from this existence to the next, paused a moment to warn me of my terrible danger? my intellect replied that a disembodied soul could not knock, and that the phenomenon had been due simply to some guest or servant of the hotel who had mistaken the room, and discovered his error in time. nevertheless, the instinctive part of me--that part of us which refuses to fraternize with reason, and which we call the superstitious because we cannot explain it--would not let go the spiritualistic theory, and during all my life has never quite surrendered it to the attacks of my brain. there was a long pause. 'no,' i said; 'i will go upstairs alone;' and i went, leaving my cloak and hat with rebecca. already, to my hypersensitive nostrils, there was a slight odour in the darkened bedroom. what lay on the bed, straight and long and thin, resembled almost exactly my aunt as she lived. i forced myself to look on it. except that the face was paler than usual, and had a curious transparent, waxy appearance, and that the cheeks were a little hollowed, and the lines from the nose to the corners of the mouth somewhat deepened, there had been no outward change.... and _this_ once was she! i thought, where is she, then? where is the soul? where is that which loved me without understanding me? where is that which i loved? the baffling, sad enigma of death confronted me in all its terrifying crudity. the shaft of love and the desolation of death had struck me almost in the same hour, and before these twin mysteries, supremely equal, i recoiled and quailed. i had neither faith nor friend. i was solitary, and my soul also was solitary. the difficulties of being seemed insoluble. i was not a moral coward, i was not prone to facile repentances; but as i gazed at that calm and unsullied mask i realized, whatever i had gained, how much i had lost. at twenty-one i knew more of the fountains of life than aunt constance at over sixty. poor aged thing that had walked among men for interminable years, and never _known_! it seemed impossible, shockingly against nature, that my aunt's existence should have been so! i pitied her profoundly. i felt that essentially she was girlish compared to me. and yet--and yet--that which she had kept and which i had given away was precious, too--indefinably and wonderfully precious! the price of knowledge and of ecstasy seemed heavy to me then. the girl that had gone with diaz into that hotel apartment had come out no more. she had expired there, and her extinction was the price, oh, innocence! oh, divine ignorance! oh, refusal! none knows your value save her who has bartered you! and herein is the woman's tragedy. there in that mausoleum i decided that i must never see diaz again. he was fast in my heart, a flashing, glorious treasure, but i must never see him again. i must devote myself to memory. on the dressing-table lay a brown-paper parcel which seemed out of place there. i opened it, and it contained a magnificently-bound copy of _the imitation of christ_. upon the flyleaf was written: 'to dearest carlotta on attaining her majority. with fondest love. c.p.' it was too much; it was overwhelming. i wept again. soul so kind and pure! the sense of my loss, the sense of the simple, proud rectitude of her life, laid me low. v train journeys have too often been sorrowful for me, so much so that the conception itself of a train, crawling over the country like a snake, or flying across it like a winged monster, fills me with melancholy. trains loaded with human parcels of sadness and illusion and brief joy, wandering about, crossing, and occasionally colliding in the murk of existence; trains warmed and lighted in winter; trains open to catch the air of your own passage in summer; night-trains that pierce the night with your yellow, glaring eyes, and waken mysterious villages, and leave the night behind and run into the dawn as into a station; trains that carry bread and meats for the human parcels, and pillows and fountains of fresh water; trains that sweep haughtily and wearily indifferent through the landscapes and the towns, sufficient unto yourselves, hasty, panting, formidable, and yet mournful entities: i have understood you in your arrogance and your pathos. that little journey from knype to shawport had implanted itself painfully in my memory, as though during it i had peered too close into the face of life. and now i had undertaken another, and a longer one. three months had elapsed--three months of growing misery and despair; three months of tedious familiarity with lawyers and distant relatives, and all the exasperating camp-followers of death; three months of secret and strange fear, waxing daily. and at last, amid the expostulations and the shrugs of wisdom and age, i had decided to go to london. i had little energy, and no interest, but i saw that i must go to london; i was driven there by my secret fear; i dared not delay. and not a soul in the wide waste of the five towns comprehended me, or could have comprehended me had it been so minded. i might have shut up the house for a time. but no; i would not. always i have been sudden, violent, and arbitrary; i have never been able to tolerate half-measures, or to wait upon occasion. i sold the house; i sold the furniture. yes; and i dismissed my faithful rebecca and the clinging lucy, and they departed, god knows where; it was as though i had sold them into slavery. again and again, in the final week, i cut myself to the quick, recklessly, perhaps purposely; i moved in a sort of terrible languor, deaf to every appeal, pretending to be stony, and yet tortured by my secret fear, and by a hemorrhage of the heart that no philosophy could stanch. and i swear that nothing desolated me more than the strapping and the labelling of my trunks that morning after i had slept, dreamfully, in the bed that i should never use again--the bed that, indeed, was even then the property of a furniture dealer. had i wept at all, i should have wept as i wrote out the labels for my trunks: 'miss peel, passenger to golden cross hotel, london. euston via rugby,' with two thick lines drawn under the 'euston.' that writing of labels was the climax. with a desperate effort i tore myself up by the roots, and all bleeding i left the five towns. i have never seen them since. some day, when i shall have attained serenity and peace, when the battle has been fought and lost, i will revisit my youth. i have always loved passionately the disfigured hills and valleys of the five towns. and as i think of oldcastle street, dropping away sleepily and respectably from the town hall of bursley, with the gold angel holding a gold crown on its spire, i vibrate with an inexplicable emotion. what is there in oldcastle street to disturb the dust of the soul? i must tell you here that diaz had gone to south america on a triumphal tour of concerts, lest i forget! i read it in the paper. so i arrived in london on a february day, about one o'clock. and the hall-porter at the golden cross hotel, and the two pale girls in the bureau of the hotel, were sympathetic and sweet to me, because i was young and alone, and in mourning, and because i had great rings round my eyes. it was a fine day, blue and mild. at half-past three i had nothing in the world to do. i had come to london without a plan, without a purpose, with scarcely an introduction; i wished simply to plunge myself into its solitude, and to be alone with my secret fear. i walked out into the street, slowly, like one whom ennui has taught to lose no chance of dissipating time. i neither liked nor disliked london. i had no feelings towards it save one of perplexity. i thought it noisy, dirty, and hurried. its great name roused no thrill in my bosom. on the morrow, i said, i would seek a lodging, and perhaps write to ethel ryley. meanwhile i strolled up into trafalgar square, and so into charing cross road. and in charing cross road--it was the curst accident of fate--i saw the signboard of the celebrated old firm of publishers, oakley and dalbiac. it is my intention to speak of my books as little as possible in this history. i must, however, explain that six months before my aunt's death i had already written my first novel, _the jest_, and sent it to precisely oakley and dalbiac. it was a wild welter of youthful extravagances, and it aimed to depict london society, of which i knew nothing whatever, with a flippant and cynical pen. oakley and dalbiac had kept silence for several months, and had then stated, in an extremely formal epistle, that they thought the book might have some chance of success, and that they would be prepared to publish it on certain terms, but that i must not expect, etc. by that time i had lost my original sublime faith in the exceeding excellence of my story, and i replied that i preferred to withdraw the book. to this letter i had received no answer. when i saw the famous sign over a doorway the impulse seized me to enter and get the manuscript, with the object of rewriting it. soon, i reflected, i might not be able to enter; the portals of mankind might be barred to me for a space.... i saw in a flash of insight that my salvation lay in work, and in nothing else. i entered, resolutely. a brougham was waiting at the doors. after passing along counters furnished with ledgers and clerks, through a long, lofty room lined with great pigeon-holes containing thousands of books each wrapped separately in white paper, i was shown into what the clerk who acted as chamberlain called the office of the principal. this room, too, was spacious, but so sombre that the electric light was already burning. the first thing i noticed was that the window gave on a wall of white tiles. in the middle of the somewhat dingy apartment was a vast, square table, and at this table sat a pale, tall man, whose youth astonished me--for the firm of oakley and dalbiac was historic. he did not look up exactly at the instant of my entering, but when he did look up, when he saw me, he stared for an instant, and then sprang from his chair as though magically startled into activity. his age was about thirty, and he had large, dark eyes, and a slight, dark moustache, and his face generally was interesting; he wore a dark gray suit. i was nervous, but he was even more nervous; yet in the moment of looking up he had not seemed nervous. he could not do enough, apparently, to make me feel at ease, and to show his appreciation of me and my work. he spoke enthusiastically of _the jest_, begging me neither to suppress it nor to alter it. and, without the least suggestion from me, he offered me a considerable sum of money in advance of royalties. at that time i scarcely knew what royalties were. but although my ignorance of business was complete, i guessed that this man was behaving in a manner highly unusual among publishers. he was also patently contradicting the tenor of his firm's letter to me. i thanked him, and said i should like, at any rate, to glance through the manuscript. 'don't alter it, miss peel, i beg,' he said. 'it is "young," i know; but it ought to be. i remember my wife said--my wife reads many of our manuscripts--by the way--' he went to a door, opened it, and called out, 'mary!' a tall and slim woman, extremely elegant, appeared in reply to this appeal. her hair was gray above the ears, and i judged that she was four or five years older than the man. she had a kind, thin face, with shining gray eyes, and she was wearing a hat. 'mary, this is miss peel, the author of _the jest_--you remember. miss peel, my wife.' the woman welcomed me with quick, sincere gestures. her smile was very pleasant, and yet a sad smile. the husband also had an air of quiet, restrained, cheerful sadness. 'my wife is frequently here in the afternoon like this,' said the principal. 'yes,' she laughed; 'it's quite a family affair, and i'm almost on the staff. i distinctly remember your manuscript, miss peel, and how very clever and amusing it was.' her praise was spontaneous and cordial, but it was a different thing from the praise of her husband. he obviously noticed the difference. 'i was just saying to miss peel--' he began, with increased nervousness. 'pardon me,' i interrupted. 'but am i speaking to mr. oakley or mr. dalbiac?' 'to neither,' said he. 'my name is ispenlove, and i am the nephew of the late mr. dalbiac. mr. oakley died thirty years ago. i have no partner.' 'you expected to see a very old gentleman, no doubt,' mrs. ispenlove remarked. 'yes,' i smiled. 'people often do. and frank is so very young. you live in london?' 'no,' i said; 'i have just come up.' 'to stay?' 'to stay.' 'alone?' 'yes. my aunt died a few months ago. i am all that is left of my family.' mrs. ispenlove's eyes filled with tears, and she fingered a gold chain that hung from her neck. 'but have you got rooms--a house?' 'i am at a hotel for the moment.' 'but you have friends?' i shook my head. mr. ispenlove was glancing rapidly from one to the other of us. 'my dear young lady!' exclaimed his wife. then she hesitated, and said: 'excuse my abruptness, but do let me beg you to come and have tea with us this afternoon. we live quite near--in bloomsbury square. the carriage is waiting. frank, you can come?' 'i can come for an hour,' said mr. ispenlove. i wanted very much to decline, but i could not. i could not disappoint that honest and generous kindliness, with its touch of melancholy. i could not refuse those shining gray eyes. i saw that my situation and my youth had lacerated mrs. ispenlove's sensitive heart, and that she wished to give it balm by being humane to me. we seemed, so rapid was our passage, to be whisked on an arabian carpet to a spacious drawing-room, richly furnished, with thick rugs and ample cushions and countless knicknacks and photographs and delicately-tinted lampshades. there was a grand piano by steinway, and on it mendelssohn's 'songs without words.' the fire slumbered in a curious grate that projected several feet into the room--such a contrivance i had never seen before. near it sat mrs. ispenlove, entrenched behind a vast copper disc on a low wicker stand, pouring out tea. mr. ispenlove hovered about. he and his wife called each other 'dearest.' 'ring the bell for me, dearest.' 'yes, dearest.' i felt sure that they had no children. they were very intimate, very kind, and always gently sad. the atmosphere was charmingly domestic, even cosy, despite the size of the room--a most pleasing contrast to the offices which we had just left. mrs. ispenlove told her husband to look after me well, and he devoted himself to me. 'do you know,' said mrs. ispenlove, 'i am gradually recalling the details of your book, and you are not at all the sort of person that i should have expected to see.' 'but that poor little book isn't _me_,' i answered. 'i shall never write another like it. i only--' 'shall you not?' mr. ispenlove interjected. 'i hope you will, though.' i smiled. 'i only did it to see what i could do. i am going to begin something quite different.' 'it appears to me,' said mrs. ispenlove--'and i must again ask you to excuse my freedom, but i feel as if i had known you a long time--it appears to me that what you want immediately is a complete rest.' 'why do you say that?' i demanded. 'you do not look well. you look exhausted and worn out.' i blushed as she gazed at me. could she--? no. those simple gray eyes could not imagine evil. nevertheless, i saw too plainly how foolish i had been. i, with my secret fear, that was becoming less a fear than a dreadful certainty, to permit myself to venture into that house! i might have to fly ignominiously before long, to practise elaborate falsehood, to disappear. 'perhaps you are right,' i agreed. the conversation grew fragmentary, and less and less formal. mrs. ispenlove was the chief talker. i remember she said that she was always being thrown among clever people, people who could do things, and that her own inability to do anything at all was getting to be an obsession with her; and that people like me could have no idea of the tortures of self-depreciation which she suffered. her voice was strangely wistful during this confession. she also spoke--once only, and quite shortly, but with what naã¯ve enthusiasm!--of the high mission and influence of the novelist who wrote purely and conscientiously. after this, though my liking for her was undiminished, i had summed her up. mr. ispenlove offered no commentary on his wife's sentiments. he struck me as being a reserved man, whose inner life was intense and sufficient to him. 'ah!' i reflected, as mrs. ispenlove, with an almost motherly accent, urged me to have another cup of tea, 'if you knew me, if you knew me, what would you say to me? would your charity be strong enough to overcome your instincts?' and as i had felt older than my aunt, so i felt older than mrs. ispenlove. i left, but i had to promise to come again on the morrow, after i had seen mr. ispenlove on business. the publisher took me down to my hotel in the brougham (and i thought of the drive with diaz, but the water was not streaming down the windows), and then he returned to his office. without troubling to turn on the light in my bedroom, i sank sighing on to the bed. the events of the afternoon had roused me from my terrible lethargy, but now it overcame me again. i tried to think clearly about the ispenloves and what the new acquaintance meant for me; but i could not think clearly. i had not been able to think clearly for two months. i wished only to die. for a moment i meditated vaguely on suicide, but suicide seemed to involve an amount of complicated enterprise far beyond my capacity. it amazed me how i had managed to reach london. i must have come mechanically, in a heavy dream; for i had no hope, no energy, no vivacity, no interest. for many weeks my mind had revolved round an awful possibility, as if hypnotized by it, and that monotonous revolution seemed alone to constitute my real life. moreover, i was subject to recurring nausea, and to disconcerting bodily pains and another symptom. 'this must end!' i said, struggling to my feet. i summoned the courage of an absolute disgust. i felt that the power which had triumphed over my dejection and my irresolution and brought me to london might carry me a little further. leaving the hotel, i crossed the strand. innumerable omnibuses were crawling past. i jumped into one at hazard, and the conductor put his arm behind my back to support me. he was shouting, 'putney, putney, putney!' in an absent-minded manner: he had assisted me to mount without even looking at me. i climbed to the top of the omnibus and sat down, and the omnibus moved off. i knew not where i was going; putney was nothing but a name to me. 'where to, lady?' snapped the conductor, coming upstairs. 'oh, putney,' i answered. a little bell rang and he gave me a ticket. the omnibus was soon full. a woman with a young child shared my seat. but the population of the roof was always changing. i alone remained--so it appeared to me. and we moved interminably forward through the gas-lit and crowded streets, under the mild night. occasionally, when we came within the circle of an arc-lamp, i could see all my fellow-passengers very clearly; then they were nothing but dark, featureless masses. the horses of the omnibus were changed. a score of times the conductor came briskly upstairs, but he never looked at me again. 'i've done with you,' his back seemed to say. the houses stood up straight and sinister, thousands of houses unendingly succeeding each other. some were brilliantly illuminated; some were dark; and some had one or two windows lighted. the phenomenon of a solitary window lighted, high up in a house, filled me with the sense of the tragic romance of london. why, i cannot tell. but it did. london grew to be almost unbearably mournful. there were too many people in london. suffering was packed too close. one can contemplate a single affliction with some equanimity, but a million griefs, calamities, frustrations, elbowing each other--no, no! and in all that multitude of sadnesses i felt that mine was the worst. my loneliness, my fear, my foolish youth, my inability to cope with circumstance, my appalling ignorance of the very things which i ought to know! it was awful. and yet even then, in that despairing certainty of disaster, i was conscious of the beauty of life, the beauty of life's exceeding sorrow, and i hugged it to me, like a red-hot iron. we crossed a great river by a great bridge--a mysterious and mighty stream; and then the streets closed in on us again. and at last, after hours and hours, the omnibus swerved into a dark road and stopped--stopped finally. 'putney!' cried the conductor, like fate. i descended. far off, at the end of the vista of the dark road, i saw a red lamp. i knew that in large cities a red lamp indicated a doctor: it was the one useful thing that i did know. i approached the red lamp, cautiously, on the other side of the street. then some power forced me to cross the street and open a wicket. and in the red glow of the lamp i saw an ivory button which i pushed. i could plainly hear the result; it made me tremble. i had a narrow escape of running away. the door was flung wide, and a middle-aged woman appeared in the bright light of the interior of the house. she had a kind face. it is astounding, the number of kind faces one meets. 'is the doctor in?' i asked. i would have given a year of my life to hear her say 'no.' 'yes, miss,' she said. 'will you step in?' events seemed to be moving all too rapidly. i passed into a narrow hall, with an empty hat-rack, and so into the surgery. from the back of the house came the sound of a piano--scales, played very slowly. the surgery was empty. i noticed a card with letters of the alphabet printed on it in different sizes; and then the piano ceased, and there was the humming of an air in the passage, and a tall man in a frock-coat, slippered and spectacled, came into the surgery. 'good-evening, madam,' he said gruffly. 'won't you sit down?' 'i--i--i want to ask you--' he put a chair for me, and i dropped into it. 'there!' he said, after a moment. 'you felt as if you might faint, didn't you?' i nodded. the tears came into my eyes. 'i thought so,' he said. 'i'll just give you a draught, if you don't mind.' he busied himself behind me, and presently i was drinking something out of a conical-shaped glass. my heart beat furiously, but i felt strong. 'i want you to tell me, doctor,' i spoke firmly, 'whether i am about to become a mother.' 'ah?' he answered interrogatively, and then he hummed a fragment of an air. 'i have lost my husband,' i was about to add; but suddenly i scorned such a weakness and shut my lips. 'since when--' the doctor began. * * * * * 'no,' i heard him saying. 'you have been quite mistaken. but i am not surprised. such mistakes are frequently made--a kind of auto-suggestion.' 'mistaken!' i murmured. i could not prevent the room running round me as i reclined on the sofa; and i fainted. but in the night, safely in my room again at the hotel, i wondered whether that secret fear, now exorcised, had not also been a hope. i wondered.... part ii three human hearts i and now i was twenty-six. everyone who knows jove knows the poignant and delicious day when the lovers, undeclared, but sure of mutual passion, await the magic moment of avowal, with all its changeful consequences. i resume my fragmentary narrative at such a day in my life. as for me, i waited for the avowal as for an earthquake. i felt as though i were the captain of a ship on fire, and the only person aware that the flames were creeping towards a powder magazine. and my love shone fiercely in my heart, like a southern star; it held me, hypnotized, in a thrilling and exquisite entrancement, so that if my secret, silent lover was away from me, as on that fatal night in my drawing-room, my friends were but phantom presences in a shadowy world. this is not an exaggerated figure, but the truth, for when i have loved i have loved much.... my drawing-room in bedford court, that night on which the violent drama of my life recommenced, indicated fairly the sorts of success which i had achieved, and the direction of my tastes. the victim of diaz had gradually passed away, and a new creature had replaced her--a creature rapidly developed, and somewhat brazened in the process under the sun of an extraordinary double prosperity in london. i had soon learnt that my face had a magic to win for me what wealth cannot buy. my books had given me fame and money. and i could not prevent the world from worshipping the woman whom it deemed the gods had greatly favoured. i could not have prevented it, even had i wished, and i did not wish, i knew well that no merit and no virtue, but merely the accident of facial curves, and the accident of a convolution of the brain, had brought me this ascendancy, and at first i reminded myself of the duty of humility. but when homage is reiterated, when the pleasure of obeying a command and satisfying a caprice is begged for, when roses are strewn, and even necks put down in the path, one forgets to be humble; one forgets that in meekness alone lies the sole good; one confuses deserts with the hazards of heredity. however, in the end fate has no favourites. a woman who has beauty wants to frame it in beauty. the eye is a sensualist, and its appetites, once aroused, grow. a beautiful woman takes the same pleasure in the sight of another beautiful woman as a man does; only jealousy or fear prevents her from admitting the pleasure. i collected beautiful women.... elegance is a form of beauty. it not only enhances beauty, but it is the one thing which will console the eye for the absence of beauty. the first rule which i made for my home was that in it my eye should not be offended. i lost much, doubtless, by adhering to it, but not more than i gained. and since elegance is impossible without good manners, and good manners are a convention, though a supremely good one, the society by which i surrounded myself was conventional; superficially, of course, for it is the business of a convention to be not more than superficial. some persons after knowing my drawing-room were astounded by my books, others after reading my books were astounded by my drawing-room; but these persons lacked perception. given elegance, with or without beauty itself, i had naturally sought, in my friends, intellectual courage, honest thinking, kindness of heart, creative talent, distinction, wit. my search had not been unfortunate.... you see heaven had been so kind to me! that night in my drawing-room (far too full of bric-a-brac of all climes and ages), beneath the blaze of the two empire chandeliers, which vicary, the musical composer, had found for me in chartres, there were perhaps a dozen guests assembled. vicary had just given, in his driest manner, a description of his recent visit to receive the accolade from the queen. it was replete with the usual quaint vicary details--such as the solemn warning whisper of an equerry in vicary's ear as he walked backwards, '_mind the edge of the carpet';_ and we all laughed, i absently, and yet a little hysterically--all save vicary, whose foible was never to laugh. but immediately afterwards there was a pause, one of those disconcerting, involuntary pauses which at a social gathering are like a chill hint of autumn in late summer, and which accuse the hostess. it was over in an instant; the broken current was resumed; everybody pretended that everything was as usual at my receptions. but that pause was the beginning of the downfall. with a fierce effort i tried to escape from my entrancement, to be interested in these unreal shadows whose voices seemed to come to me from a distance, and to make my glance forget the door, where the one reality in the world for me, my unspoken lover, should have appeared long since. i joined unskilfully in a conversation which vicary and mrs. sardis and her daughter jocelyn were conducting quite well without my assistance. the rest were chattering now, in one or two groups, except lord francis alcar, who, i suddenly noticed, sat alone on a settee behind the piano. here was another unfortunate result of my preoccupation. by what negligence had i allowed him to be thus forsaken? i rose and went across to him, penitent, and glad to leave the others. there are only two fundamental differences in the world--the difference between sex and sex, and the difference between youth and age. lord francis alcar was sixty years older than me. his life was over before mine had commenced. it seemed incredible; but i had acquired the whole of my mundane experience, while he was merely waiting for death. at seventy, men begin to be separated from their fellow-creatures. at eighty, they are like islets sticking out of a sea. at eighty-five, with their trembling and deliberate speech, they are the abstract voice of human wisdom. they gather wisdom with amazing rapidity in the latter years, and even their folly is wise then. lord francis was eighty-six; his faculties enfeebled but intact after a career devoted to the three most costly of all luxuries--pretty women, fine pictures, and rare books; a tall, spare man, quietly proud of his age, his ability to go out in the evening unattended, his amorous past, and his contributions to the history of english printing. as i approached him, he leaned forward into his favourite attitude, elbows on knees and fingertips lightly touching, and he looked up at me. and his eyes, sunken and fatigued and yet audacious, seemed to flash out. he opened his thin lips to speak. when old men speak, they have the air of rousing themselves from an eternal contemplation in order to do so, and what they say becomes accordingly oracular. 'pallor suits you,' he piped gallantly, and then added: 'but do not carry it to extremes.' 'am i so pale, then?' i faltered, trying to smile naturally. i sat down beside him, and smoothed out my black lace dress; he examined it like a connoisseur. 'yes,' he said at length. 'what is the matter?' lord francis charged this apparently simple and naã¯ve question with a strange intimate meaning. the men who surround a woman such as i, living as i lived, are always demanding, with a secret thirst, 'does she really live without love? what does she conceal?' i have read this interrogation in the eyes of scores of men; but no one, save lord francis, would have had the right to put it into the tones of his voice. we were so mutually foreign and disinterested, so at the opposite ends of life, that he had nothing to gain and i nothing to lose, and i could have permitted to this sage ruin of a male almost a confessor's freedom. moreover, we had an affectionate regard for each other. i said nothing, and he repeated in his treble: 'what is the matter?' 'love is the matter!' i might have passionately cried out to him, had we been alone. but i merely responded to his tone with my eyes. i thanked him with my eyes for his bold and flattering curiosity, senile, but thoroughly masculine to the last. and i said: 'i am only a little exhausted. i finished my novel yesterday.' it was my sixth novel in five years. 'with you,' he said, 'work is simply a drug.' 'lord francis,' i expostulated, 'how do you know that?' 'and it has got such a hold of you that you cannot do without it,' he proceeded, with slow, faint shrillness. 'some women take to morphia, others take to work.' 'on the contrary,' i said, 'i have quite determined to do no more work for twelve months.' 'seriously?' 'seriously.' he faced me, vivacious, and leaned against the back of the settee. 'then you mean to give yourself time to love?' he murmured, as it were with a kind malice, and every crease in his veined and yellow features was intensified by an enigmatic smile. 'why not?' i laughed encouragingly. 'why not? what do you advise?' 'i advise it,' he said positively. 'i advise it. you have already wasted the best years.' 'the best?' 'one can never afterwards love as one loves at twenty. but there! you have nothing to learn about love!' he gave me one of those disrobing glances of which men who have dedicated their existence to women alone have the secret. i shrank under the ordeal; i tried to clutch my clothes about me. the chatter from the other end of the room grew louder. vicary was gazing critically at his chandeliers. 'does love bring happiness?' i asked lord francis, carefully ignoring his remark. 'for forty years,' he quavered, 'i made love to every pretty woman i met, in the search for happiness. i may have got five per cent. return on my outlay, which is perhaps not bad in these hard times; but i certainly did not get even that in happiness. i got it in--other ways.' 'and if you had to begin afresh?' he stood up, turned his back on the room, and looked down at me from his bent height. his knotted hands were shaking, as they always shook. 'i would do the same again,' he whispered. 'would you?' i said, looking up at him. 'truly?' 'yes. only the fool and the very young expect happiness. the wise merely hope to be interested, at least not to be bored, in their passage through this world. nothing is so interesting as love and grief, and the one involves the other. ah! would i not do the same again!' he spoke gravely, wistfully, and vehemently, as if employing the last spark of divine fire that was left in his decrepit frame. this undaunted confession of a faith which had survived twenty years of inactive meditation, this banner waved by an expiring arm in the face of the eternity that mocks at the transience of human things, filled me with admiration. my eyes moistened, but i continued to look up at him. 'what is the title of the new book?' he demanded casually, sinking into a chair. '_burning sappho_,' i answered. 'but the title is very misleading.' 'bright star!' he exclaimed, taking my hand. 'with such a title you will surely beat the record of the good dame.' 'hsh!' i enjoined him. jocelyn sardis was coming towards us. the good dame was the sobriquet which lord francis had invented to conceal--or to display--his courteous disdain of the ideals represented by mrs. sardis, that pillar long established, that stately dowager, that impeccable _doyenne_ of serious english fiction. mrs. sardis had captured two continents. her novels, dealing with all the profound problems of the age, were read by philosophers and politicians, and one of them had reached a circulation of a quarter of a million copies. her dignified and indefatigable pen furnished her with an income of fifteen thousand pounds a year. jocelyn sardis was just entering her mother's world, and she had apparently not yet recovered from the surprise of the discovery that she was a woman; a simple and lovable young creature with brains amply sufficient for the making of apple-pies. as she greeted lord francis in her clear, innocent voice, i wondered sadly why her mother should be so anxious to embroider the work of nature. i thought if jocelyn could just be left alone to fall in love with some average, kindly stockbroker, how much more nearly the eternal purpose might be fulfilled.... 'yes, i remember,' lord francis was saying. 'it was at st. malo. and what did you think of the breton peasant?' 'oh,' said jocelyn, 'mamma has not yet allowed us to study the condition of the lower classes in france. we are all so busy with the new settlement.' 'it must be very exhausting, my dear child,' said lord francis. i rose. 'i came to ask you to play something,' the child appealed to me. 'i have never heard you play, and everyone says--' 'jocelyn, my pet,' the precise, prim utterance of mrs. sardis floated across the room. 'what, mamma?' 'you are not to trouble miss peel. perhaps she does not feel equal to playing.' my blood rose in an instant. i cannot tell why, unless it was that i resented from mrs. sardis even the slightest allusion to the fact that i was not entirely myself. the latent antagonism between us became violently active in my heart. i believe i blushed. i know that i felt murderous towards mrs. sardis. i gave her my most adorable smile, and i said, with sugar in my voice: 'but i shall be delighted to play for jocelyn.' it was an act of bravado on my part to attempt to play the piano in the mood in which i found myself; and that i should have begun the opening phrase of chopin's first ballade, that composition so laden with formidable memories--begun it without thinking and without apprehension--showed how far i had lost my self-control. not that the silver sounds which shimmered from the broadwood under my feverish hands filled me with sentimental regrets for an irrecoverable past. no! but i saw the victim of diaz as though i had never been she. she was for me one of those ladies that have loved and are dead. the simplicity of her mind and her situation, compared with my mind and my situation, seemed unbearably piteous to me. why, i knew not. the pathos of that brief and vanished idyll overcame me like some sad story of an antique princess. and then, magically, i saw the pathos of my present position in it as in a truth-revealing mirror. my fame, and my knowledge and my experience, my trained imagination, my skill, my social splendour, my wealth, were stripped away from me as inessential, and i was merely a woman in love, to whom love could not fail to bring calamity and grief; a woman expecting her lover, and yet to whom his coming could only be disastrous; a woman with a heart divided between tremulous joy and dull sorrow; who was at once in heaven and in hell; the victim of love. how often have i called my dead carlotta the victim of diaz! let me be less unjust, and say that he, too, was the victim of love. what was diaz but the instrument of the god? jocelyn stood near me by the piano. i glanced at her as i played, and smiled. she answered my smile; her eyes glistened with tears; i bent my gaze suddenly to the keyboard. 'you too!' i thought sadly, 'you too!... one day! one day even you will know what life is, and the look in those innocent eyes will never be innocent again!' then there was a sharp crack at the other end of the room; the handle of the door turned, and the door began to open. my heart bounded and stopped. it must be he, at last! i perceived the fearful intensity of my longing for his presence. but it was only a servant with a tray. my fingers stammered and stumbled. for a few instants i forced them to obey me; my pride was equal to the strain, though i felt sick and fainting. and then i became aware that my guests were staring at me with alarmed and anxious faces. mrs. sardis had started from her chair. i dropped my hands. it was useless to fight further; the battle was lost. 'i will not play any more,' i said quickly. 'i ought not to have tried to play from memory. excuse me.' and i left the piano as calmly as i could. i knew that by an effort i could walk steadily and in a straight line across the room to vicary and the others, and i succeeded. they should not learn my secret. 'poor thing!' murmured mrs. sardis sympathetically. 'do sit down, dear.' 'won't you have something to drink?' said vicary. 'i am perfectly all right,' i said. 'i'm only sorry that my memory is not what it used to be.' and i persisted in standing for a few moments by the mantelpiece. in the glass i caught one glimpse of a face as white as milk, jocelyn remained at her post by the piano, frightened by she knew not what, like a young child. 'our friend finished a new work only yesterday,' said lord francis shakily. he had followed me. 'she has wisely decided to take a long holiday. good-bye, my dear.' these were the last words he ever spoke to me, though i saw him again. we shook hands in silence, and he left. nor would the others stay. i had ruined the night. we were all self-conscious, diffident, suspicious. even vicary was affected. how thankful i was that my silent lover had not come! my secret was my own--and his. and no one should surprise it unless we chose. i cared nothing what they thought, or what they guessed, as they filed out of the door, a brilliant procession of which i had the right to be proud; they could not guess my secret. i was sufficiently woman of the world to baffle them as long as i wished to baffle them. then i noticed that mrs. sardis had stayed behind; she was examining some lustre ware in the further drawing-room. 'i'm afraid jocelyn has gone without her mother,' i said, approaching her. 'i have told jocelyn to go home alone,' replied mrs. sardis. 'the carriage will return for me. dear friend, i want to have a little talk with you. do you permit?' 'i shall be delighted,' i said. 'you are sure you are well enough?' 'there is nothing whatever the matter with me,' i answered slowly and distinctly. 'come to the fire, and let us be comfortable. and i told emmeline palmer, my companion and secretary, who just then appeared, that she might retire to bed. mrs. sardis was nervous, and this condition, so singular in mrs. sardis, naturally made me curious as to the cause of it. but my eyes still furtively wandered to the door. 'my dear co-worker,' she began, and hesitated. 'yes,' i encouraged her. she put her matron's lips together: 'you know how proud i am of your calling, and how jealous i am of its honour and its good name, and what a great mission i think we novelists have in the work of regenerating the world.' i nodded. that kind of eloquence always makes me mute. it leaves nothing to be said. 'i wonder,' mrs. sardis continued, 'if you have ever realized what a power _you_ are in england and america to-day.' 'power!' i echoed. 'i have done nothing but try to write as honestly and as well as i could what i felt i wanted to write.' 'no one can doubt your sincerity, my dear friend,' mrs. sardis said. 'and i needn't tell you that i am a warm admirer of your talent, and that i rejoice in your success. but the tendency of your work--' 'surely,' i interrupted her coldly, 'you are not taking the trouble to tell me that my books are doing harm to the great and righteous anglo-saxon public!' 'do not let us poke fun at our public, my dear,' she protested. 'i personally do not believe that your books are harmful, though their originality is certainly daring, and their realism startling; but there exists a considerable body of opinion, as you know, that strongly objects to your books. it may be reactionary opinion, bigoted opinion, ignorant opinion, what you like, but it exists, and it is not afraid to employ the word "immoral."' 'what, then?' 'i speak as one old enough to be your mother, and i speak after all to a motherless young girl who happens to have genius with, perhaps, some of the disadvantages of genius, when i urge you so to arrange your personal life that this body of quite respectable adverse opinion shall not find in it a handle to use against the fair fame of our calling.' 'mrs. sardis!' i cried. 'what do you mean?' i felt my nostrils dilate in anger as i gazed, astounded, at this incarnation of mediocrity who had dared to affront me on my own hearth; and by virtue of my youth and my beauty, and all the homage i had received, and the clear sincerity of my vision of life, i despised and detested the mother of a family who had never taken one step beyond the conventions in which she was born. had she not even the wit to perceive that i was accustomed to be addressed as queens are addressed?... then, as suddenly as it had flamed, my anger cooled, for i could see the painful earnestness in her face. and mrs. sardis and i--what were we but two groups of vital instincts, groping our respective ways out of one mystery into another? had we made ourselves? had we chosen our characters? mrs. sardis was fulfilling herself, as i was. she was a natural force, as i was. as well be angry with a hurricane, or the heat of the sun. 'what do you mean?' i repeated quietly. 'tell me exactly what you mean.' i thought she was aiming at the company which i sometimes kept, or the freedom of my diversions on the english sabbath. i thought what trifles were these compared to the dilemma in which, possibly within a few hours, i should find myself. 'to put it in as few words as possible,' said she, 'i mean your relations with a married man. forgive my bluntness, dear girl.' 'my--' then my secret was not my secret! we were chattered about, he and i. we had not hidden our feeling, our passions. and i had been imagining myself a woman of the world equal to sustaining a difficult part in the masque of existence. with an abandoned gesture i hid my face in my hands for a moment, and then i dropped my hands, and leaned forward and looked steadily at mrs. sardis. her eyes were kind enough. 'you won't affect not to understand?' she said. i assented with a motion of the head. 'many persons say there is a--a liaison between you,' she said. 'and do you think that?' i asked quickly. 'if i had thought so, my daughter would not have been here to-night,' she said solemnly. 'no, no; i do not believe it for an instant, and i brought jocelyn specially to prove to the world that i do not. i only heard the gossip a few days ago; and to-night, as i sat here, it was borne in upon me that i must speak to you to-night. and i have done so. not everyone would have done so, dear girl. most of your friends are content to talk among themselves.' 'about me? oh!' it was the expression of an almost physical pain. 'what can you expect them to do?' asked mrs. sardis mildly. 'true,' i agreed. 'you see, the circumstances are so extremely peculiar. your friendship with her--' 'let me tell you'--i stopped her--'that not a single word has ever passed between me and--and the man you mean, that everybody might not hear. not a single word!' 'dearest girl,' she exclaimed; 'how glad i am! how glad i am! now i can take measures to--. 'but--' i resumed. 'but what?' in a flash i saw the futility of attempting to explain to a woman like mrs. sardis, who had no doubts about the utter righteousness of her own code, whose rules had no exceptions, whose principles could apply to every conceivable case, and who was the very embodiment of the vast stolid london that hemmed me in--of attempting to explain to such an excellent, blind creature why, and in obedience to what ideal, i would not answer for the future. i knew that i might as well talk to a church steeple. 'nothing,' i said, rising, 'except that i thank you. be sure that i am grateful. you have had a task which must have been very unpleasant to you.' she smiled, virtuously happy. 'you made it easy,' she murmured. i perceived that she wanted to kiss me; but i avoided the caress. how i hated kissing women! 'no more need be said,' she almost whispered, as i put my hand on the knob of the front-door. i had escorted her myself to the hall. 'only remember your great mission, the influence you wield, and the fair fame of our calling.' my impulse was to shriek. but i merely smiled as decently as i could; and i opened the door. and there, on the landing, just emerging from the lift, was ispenlove, haggard, pale, his necktie astray. he and mrs. sardis exchanged a brief stare; she gave me a look of profound pain and passed in dignified silence down the stairs; ispenlove came into the flat. 'nothing will convince her now that i am not a liar,' i reflected. it was my last thought as i sank, exquisitely drowning, in the sea of sensations caused by ispenlove's presence. ii without a word, we passed together into the drawing-room, and i closed the door. ispenlove stood leaning against the piano, as though intensely fatigued; he crushed his gibus with an almost savage movement, and then bent his large, lustrous black eyes absently on the flat top of it. his thin face was whiter even than usual, and his black hair, beard, and moustache all dishevelled; the collar of his overcoat was twisted, and his dinner-jacket rose an inch above it at the back of the neck. i wanted to greet him, but i could not trust my lips. and i saw that he, too, was trying in vain to speak. at length i said, with that banality which too often surprises us in supreme moments: 'what is it? do you know that your tie is under your ear?' and as i uttered these words, my voice, breaking of itself and in defiance of me, descended into a tone which sounded harsh and inimical. 'ah!' he murmured, lifting his eyes to mine, 'if you turn against me to-night, i shall--' 'turn against you!' i cried, shocked. 'let me help you with your overcoat!' and i went near him, meaning to take his overcoat. 'it's finished between mary and me,' he said, holding me with his gaze. 'it's finished. i've no one but you now; and i've come--i've come--' he stopped. we read one another's eyes at arm's length, and all the sorrow and pity and love that were in each of us rose to our eyes and shone there. i shivered with pleasure when i saw his arms move, and then he clutched and dragged me to him, and i hid my glowing face on his shoulder, in the dear folds of his overcoat, and i felt his lips on my neck. and then, since neither of us was a coward, we lifted our heads, and our mouths met honestly and fairly, and, so united, we shut our eyes for an eternal moment, and the world was not. such was the avowal. i gave up my soul to him in that long kiss; all that was me, all that was most secret and precious in me, ascended and poured itself out through my tense lips, and was received by him. i kissed him with myself, with the entire passionate energy of my being--not merely with my mouth. and if i sighed, it was because i tried to give him more--more than i had--and failed. ah! the sensation of his nearness, the warmth of his face, the titillation of his hair, the slow, luxurious intake of our breaths, the sweet cruelty of his desperate clutch on my shoulders, the glimpses of his skin through my eyelashes when i raised ever so little my eyelids! pain and joy of life, you were mingled then! i remembered that i was a woman, and disengaged myself and withdrew from him. i hated to do it; but i did it. we became self-conscious. the brilliant and empty drawing-room scanned us unfavourably with all its globes and mirrors. how difficult it is to be natural in a great crisis! our spirits clamoured for expression, beating vainly against a thousand barred doors of speech. there was so much to say, to explain, to define, and everything was so confused and dizzily revolving, that we knew not which door to open first. and then i think we both felt, but i more than he, that explanations and statements were futile, that even if all the doors were thrown open together, they would be inadequate. the deliciousness of silence, of wonder, of timidity, of things guessed at and hidden.... 'it makes me afraid,' he murmured at length. 'what?' 'to be loved like that.... your kiss ... you don't know.' i smiled almost sadly. as if i did not know what my kiss had done! as if i did not know that my kiss had created between us the happiness which brings ruin! 'you _do_ love me?' he demanded. i nodded, and sat down. 'say it, say it!' he pleaded. 'more than i can ever show you,' i said proudly. 'honestly,' he said, 'i can't imagine what you have been able to see in me. i'm nothing--i'm nobody--' 'foolish boy!' i exclaimed. 'you are you.' the profound significance of that age-worn phrase struck me for the first time. he rushed to me at the word 'boy,' and, standing over me, took my hand in his hot hand. i let it lie, inert. 'but you haven't always loved me. i have always loved _you_, from the moment when i drove with you, that first day, from the office to your hotel. but you haven't always loved me.' 'no,' i admitted. 'then when did you--? tell me.' 'i was dull at first--i could not see. but when you told me that the end of _fate and friendship_ was not as good as i could make it--do you remember, that afternoon in the office?--and how reluctant you were to tell me, how afraid you were to tell me?--your throat went dry, and you stroked your forehead as you always do when you are nervous--there! you are doing it now, foolish boy!' i seized his left arm, and gently pulled it down from his face. oh, exquisite moment! 'it was brave of you to tell me--very brave! i loved you for telling me. you were quite wrong about the end of that book. you didn't see the fine point of it, and you never would have seen it--and i liked you, somehow, for not seeing it, because it was so feminine--but i altered the book to please you, and when i had altered it, against my conscience, i loved you more.' 'it's incredible! incredible!' he muttered, half to himself. 'i never hoped till lately that you would care for me. i never dared to think of such a thing. i knew you oughtn't to! it passes comprehension.' 'that is just what love does,' i said. 'no, no,' he went on quickly; 'you don't understand; you can't understand my feelings when i began to suspect, about two months ago, that, after all, the incredible had happened. i'm nothing but your publisher. i can't talk. i can't write. i can't play. i can't do anything. and look at the men you have here! i've sometimes wondered how often you've been besieged--' 'none of them was like you,' i said. 'perhaps that is why i have always kept them off.' i raised my eyes and lips, and he stooped and kissed me. he wanted to take me in his arms again, but i would not yield myself. 'be reasonable,' i urged him. 'ought we not to think of our situation?' he loosed me, stammering apologies, abasing himself. 'i ought to leave you, i ought never to see you again.' he spoke roughly. 'what am i doing to you? you who are so innocent and pure!' 'i entreat you not to talk like that,' i gasped, reddening. 'but i must talk like that,' he insisted. 'i must talk like that. you had everything that a woman can desire, and i come into your life and offer you--what?' 'i _have_ everything a woman can desire,' i corrected him softly. 'angel!' he breathed. 'if i bring you disaster, you will forgive me, won't you?' 'my happiness will only cease with your love,' i said. 'happiness!' he repeated. 'i have never been so happy as i am now; but such happiness is terrible. it seems to me impossible that such happiness can last.' 'faint heart!' i chided him. 'it is for you i tremble,' he said. 'if--if--' he stopped. 'my darling, forgive me!' how i pitied him! how i enveloped him in an effluent sympathy that rushed warm from my heart! he accused himself of having disturbed my existence. whereas, was it not i who had disturbed his? he had fought against me, i knew well, but fate had ordained his defeat. he had been swept away; he had been captured; he had been caught in a snare of the high gods. and he was begging forgiveness, he who alone had made my life worth living! i wanted to kneel before him, to worship him, to dry his tears with my hair. i swear that my feelings were as much those of a mother as of a lover. he was ten years older than me, and yet he seemed boyish, and i an aged woman full of experience, as he sat there opposite to me with his wide, melancholy eyes and restless mouth. 'wonderful, is it not,' he said, 'that we should be talking like this to-night, and only yesterday we were mr. and miss to each other?' 'wonderful!' i responded. 'but yesterday we talked with our eyes, and our eyes did not say mr. or miss. our eyes said--ah, what they said can never be translated into words!' my gaze brooded on him like a caress, explored him with the unappeasable curiosity of love, and blinded him like the sun. could it be true that heaven had made that fine creature--noble and modest, nervous and full of courage, impetuous and self-controlled, but, above all things, fine and delicate--could it be true that heaven had made him and then given him to me, with his enchanting imperfections that themselves constituted perfection? oh, wonder, wonder! oh, miraculous bounty which i had not deserved! this thing had happened to me, of all women! how it showed, by comparison, the sterility of my success and my fame and my worldly splendour! i had hungered and thirsted for years; i had travelled interminably through the hot desert of my brilliant career, until i had almost ceased to hope that i should reach, one evening, the pool of water and the palm. and now i might eat and drink and rest in the shade. wonderful! 'why were you so late to-night?' i asked abruptly. 'late?' he replied absently. 'is it late?' we both looked at the clock. it was yet half an hour from midnight. 'of course it isn't--not _very_,' i said. i was forgetting that. everybody left so early.' 'why was that?' i told him, in a confusion that was sweet to me, how i had suffered by reason of his failure to appear. he glanced at me with tender amaze. 'but i am fortunate to-day,' i exclaimed. 'was it not lucky they left when they did? suppose you had arrived, in that state, dearest man, and burst into a room full of people? what would they have thought? where should i have looked?' 'angel!' he cried. 'i'm so sorry. i forgot it was your evening. i must have forgotten. i forgot everything, except that i was bound to see you at once, instantly, with all speed.' poor boy! he was like a bird fluttering in my hand. millions of women must have so pictured to themselves the men who loved them, and whom they loved. 'but still, you _were_ rather late, you know,' i smiled. 'do not ask me why,' he begged, with an expression of deep pain on his face. 'i have had a scene with mary. it would humiliate me to tell you--to tell even you--what passed between us. but it is over. our relations in the future can never, in any case, be more than formal.' a spasm of fierce jealousy shot through me--jealousy of mary, my friend mary, who knew him with such profound intimacy that they could go through a scene together which was 'humiliating.' i saw that my own intimacy with him was still crude with the crudity of newness, and that only years could mellow it. mary, the good, sentimental mary, had wasted the years of their marriage--had never understood the value of the treasure in her keeping. why had they always been sad in their house? what was the origin of that resigned and even cheerful gloom which had pervaded their domestic life, and which i had remarked on my first visit to bloomsbury square? were these, too, mysteries that i must not ask my lover to reveal? resentment filled me. i came near to hating mary, not because she had made him unhappy--oh no!--but because she had had the priority in his regard, and because there was nothing about him, however secret and recondite, that i could be absolutely sure of the sole knowledge of. she had been in the depths with him. i desired fervently that i also might descend with him, and even deeper. oh, that i might have the joy and privilege of humiliation with him! 'i shall ask you nothing, dearest,' i murmured. i had risen from my seat and gone to him, and was lightly touching his hair with my fingers. he did not move, but sat staring into the fire. somehow, i adored him because he made no response to the fondling of my hand. his strange acceptance of the caress as a matter of course gave me the illusion that i was his wife, and that the years had mellowed our intimacy. 'carlotta!' he spoke my name slowly and distinctly, savouring it. 'yes,' i answered softly and obediently. 'carlotta! listen! our two lives are in our hands at this moment--this moment while we talk here.' his rapt eyes had not stirred from the fire. 'i feel it,' i said. 'what are we to do? what shall we decide to do?' he slowly turned towards me. i lowered my glance. 'i don't know,' i said. 'yes, you do, carlotta,' he insisted. 'you do know.' his voice trembled. 'mary and i are such good friends,' i said. 'that is what makes it so--' 'no, no, no!' he objected loudly. his nervousness had suddenly increased. 'don't, for god's sake, begin to argue in that way! you are above feminine logic. mary is your friend. good. you respect her; she respects you. good. is that any reason why our lives should be ruined? will that benefit mary? do i not tell you that everything has ceased between us?' 'the idea of being false to mary--' 'there's no question of being false. and if there was, would you be false to love rather than to friendship? between you and me there is love; between mary and me there is not love. it isn't her fault, nor mine, least of all yours. it is the fault of the secret essence of existence. have you not yourself written that the only sacred thing is instinct? are we, or are we not, to be true to ourselves?' 'you see,' i said, 'your wife is so sentimental. she would be incapable of looking at the affair as--as we do; as i should in her place.' i knew that my protests were insincere, and that all my heart and brain were with him, but i could not admit this frankly. ah! and i knew also that the sole avenue to peace and serenity, not to happiness, was the path of renunciation and of obedience to the conventions of society, and that this was precisely the path which we should never take. and on the horizon of our joy i saw a dark cloud. it had always been there, but i had refused to see it. i looked at it now steadily. 'of course,' he groaned, 'if we are to be governed by mary's sentimentality--' 'dear love,' i whispered, 'what do you want me to do?' 'the only possible, honest, just thing. i want you to go away with me, so that mary can get a divorce.' he spoke sternly, as it were relentlessly. 'does she guess--about me?' i asked, biting my lip, and looking away from him. 'not yet. hasn't the slightest notion, i'm sure. but i'll tell her, straight and fair.' 'dearest friend,' i said, after a silence. 'perhaps i know more of the world than you think. perhaps i'm a girl only in years and situation. forgive me if i speak plainly. mary may prove unfaithfulness, but she cannot get a decree unless she can prove other things as well.' he stroked his forehead. as for me, i shuddered with agitation. he walked across the room and back. 'angel!' he said, putting his white face close to mine like an actor. 'i will prove whether your love for me is great enough. i have struck her. i struck her to-night in the presence of a servant. and i did it purposely, in cold blood, so that she might be able to prove cruelty. ah! have i not thought it all out? have i not?' a sob, painfully escaping, shook my whole frame. 'and this was before you had--had spoken to me!' i said bitterly. not myself, but some strange and frigid force within me uttered those words. 'that is what love will do. that is the sort of thing love drives one to,' he cried despairingly. 'oh! i was not sure of you--i was not sure of you. i struck her, on the off chance.' and he sank on the sofa and wept passionately, unashamed, like a child. i could not bear it. my heart would have broken if i had watched, without assuaging, my boy's grief an instant longer than i did. i sprang to him. i took him to my breast. i kissed his eyes until the tears ceased to flow. whatever it was or might be, i must share his dishonour. 'my poor girl!' he said at length. 'if you had refused me, if you had even judged me, i intended to warn you plainly that it meant my death; and if that failed, i should have gone to the office and shot myself.' 'do not say such things,' i entreated him. 'but it is true. the revolver is in my pocket. ah! i have made you cry! you're frightened! but i'm not a brute; i'm only a little beside myself. pardon me, angel!' he kissed me, smiling sadly with a trace of humour. he did not understand me. he did not suspect the risk he had run. if i had hesitated to surrender, and he had sought to move me by threatening suicide, i should never have surrendered. i knew myself well enough to know that. i had a conscience that was incapable of yielding to panic. a threat would have parted us, perhaps for ever. oh, the blindness of man! but i forgave him. nay, i cherished him the more for his childlike, savage simplicity. 'carlotta,' he said, 'we shall leave everything. you grasp it?--everything.' 'yes,' i replied. 'of all the things we have now, we shall have nothing but ourselves.' 'if i thought it was a sacrifice for you, i would go out and never see you again.' noble fellow, proud now in the certainty that he sufficed for me! he meant what he said. 'it is no sacrifice for me,' i murmured. 'the sacrifice would be not to give up all in exchange for you.' 'we shall be exiles,' he went on, 'until the divorce business is over. and then perhaps we shall creep back--shall we?--and try to find out how many of our friends are our equals in moral courage.' 'yes,' i said. 'we shall come back. they all do.' 'what do you mean?' he demanded. 'thousands have done what we are going to do,' i said. 'and all of them have thought that their own case was different from the other cases.' 'ah!' 'and a few have been happy. a few have not regretted the price. a few have retained the illusion.' 'illusion? dearest girl, why do you talk like this?' i could see that my heart's treasure was ruffled. he clasped my hand tenaciously. 'i must not hide from you the kind of woman you have chosen,' i answered quietly, and as i spoke a hush fell upon my amorous passion. 'in me there are two beings--myself and the observer of myself. it is the novelist's disease, this duplication of personality. when i said illusion, i meant the supreme illusion of love. is it not an illusion? i have seen it in others, and in exactly the same way i see it in myself and i see it in you. will it last?--who knows? none can tell.' 'angel!' he expostulated. 'no one can foresee the end of love,' i said, with an exquisite gentle sorrow. 'but when the illusion is as intense as mine, as yours, even if its hour is brief, that hour is worth all the terrible years of disillusion which it will cost. darling, this precious night alone would not be too dear if i paid for it with the rest of my life.' he thanked me with a marvellous smile of confident adoration, and his disengaged hand played with the gold chain which hung loosely round my neck. 'call it illusion if you like,' he said. 'words are nothing. i only know that for me it will be eternal. i only know that my one desire is to be with you always, never to leave you, not to miss a moment of you; to have you for mine, openly, securely. carlotta, where shall we go?' 'we must travel, mustn't we?' 'travel?' he repeated, with an air of discontent. 'yes. but where to?' 'travel,' i said. 'see things. see the world.' 'i had thought we might find some quiet little place,' he said wistfully, and as if apologetically, where we could be alone, undisturbed, some spot where we could have ourselves wholly to ourselves, and go walks into mountains and return for dinner; and then the long, calm evenings! dearest, our honeymoon!' our honeymoon! i had not, in the pursuit of my calling, studied human nature and collected documents for nothing. with how many brides had i not talked! how many loves did i not know to have been paralyzed and killed by a surfeit in the frail early stages of their existence! inexperienced as i was, my learning in humanity was wiser than the experience of my impulsive, generous, magnanimous lover, to whom the very thought of calculation would have been abhorrent. but i saw, i felt, i lived through in a few seconds the interminable and monotonous length of those calm days, and especially those calm evenings succeeding each other with a formidable sameness. i had watched great loves faint and die. and i knew that our love--miraculously sweet as it was--probably was not greater than many great ones that had not stood the test. you perceive the cold observer in me. i knew that when love lasted, the credit of the survival was due far more often to the woman than to the man. the woman must husband herself, dole herself out, economize herself so that she might be splendidly wasteful when need was. the woman must plan, scheme, devise, invent, reconnoitre, take precautions; and do all this sincerely and lovingly in the name and honour of love. a passion, for her, is a campaign; and her deadliest enemy is satiety. looking into my own heart, and into his, i saw nothing but hope for the future of our love. but the beautiful plant must not be exposed to hazard. suppose it sickened, such a love as ours--what then? the misery of hell, the torture of the damned! only its rich and ample continuance could justify us. 'my dear,' i said submissively, 'i shall leave everything to you. the idea of travelling occurred to me; that was all. i have never travelled further than cannes. still, we have all our lives before us.' 'we will travel,' he said unselfishly. 'we'll go round the world--slowly. i'll get the tickets at cook's to-morrow.' 'but, dearest, if you would rather--' 'no, no! in any case we shall always have our evenings.' 'of course we shall. dearest, how good you are!' 'i wish i was,' he murmured. i was glad, then, that i had never allowed my portrait to appear in a periodical. we could not prevent the appearance in american newspapers of heralding paragraphs, but the likelihood of our being recognised was sensibly lessened. 'can you start soon?' he asked. 'can you be ready?' 'any time. the sooner the better, now that it is decided.' 'you do not regret? we have decided so quickly. ah! you are the merest girl, and i have taken advantage--' i put my hand over his mouth. he seized it, and kept it there and kissed it, and his ardent breath ran through my fingers. 'what about your business?' i said. 'i shall confide it to old tate--tell him some story--he knows quite as much about it as i do. to-morrow i will see to all that. the day after, shall we start? no; to-morrow night. to-morrow night, eh? i'll run in to-morrow and tell you what i've arranged. i must see you to-morrow, early.' 'no,' i said. 'do not come before lunch.' 'not before lunch! why?' he was surprised. but i had been my own mistress for five years, with my own habits, rules, privacies. i had never seen anyone before lunch. and to-morrow, of all days, i should have so much to do and to arrange. was this man to come like an invader and disturb my morning? so felt the celibate in me, instinctively, thoughtlessly. that deep-seated objection to the intrusion of even the most loved male at certain times is common, i think, to all women. women are capable of putting love aside, like a rich dress, and donning the _peignoir_ of matter-of-fact dailiness, in a way which is an eternal enigma to men.... then i saw, in a sudden flash, that i had renounced my individual existence, that i had forfeited my habits and rules, and privacies, that i was a man's woman. and the passionate lover in me gloried in this. 'come as soon as you like, dearest friend,' i said. 'nobody except mary will know anything till we are actually gone,' he remarked. 'and i shall not tell her till the last thing. afterwards, won't they chatter! god! let 'em.' 'they are already chattering,' i said. and i told him about mrs. sardis. 'when she met you on the landing,' i added, 'she drew her own conclusions, my poor, poor boy!' he was furious. i could see he wanted to take me in his arms and protect me masculinely from the rising storm. 'all that is nothing,' i soothed him. 'nothing. against it, we have our self-respect. we can scorn all that.' and i gave a short, contemptuous laugh. 'darling!' he murmured. 'you are more than a woman.' 'i hope not.' and i laughed again, but unnaturally. he had risen; i leaned back in a large cushioned chair; we looked at each other in silence--a silence that throbbed with the heavy pulse of an unutterable and complex emotion--pleasure, pain, apprehension, even terror. what had i done? why had i, with a word--nay, without a word, with merely a gesture and a glance--thrown my whole life into the crucible of passion? why did i exult in the tremendous and impetuous act, like a martyr, and also like a girl? was i playing with my existence as an infant plays with a precious bibelot that a careless touch may shatter? why was i so fiercely, madly, drunkenly happy when i gazed into those eyes? 'i suppose i must go,' he said disconsolately. i nodded, and the next instant the clock struck. 'yes,' he urged himself, 'i must go.' he bent down, put his hands on the arms of the chair, and kissed me violently, twice. the fire that consumes the world ran scorchingly through me. every muscle was suddenly strained into tension, and then fell slack. my face flushed; i let my head slip sideways, so that my left cheek was against the back of the chair. through my drooping eyelashes i could see the snake-like glitter of his eyes as he stood over me. i shuddered and sighed. i was like someone fighting in vain against the sweet seduction of an overwhelming and fatal drug. i wanted to entreat him to go away, to rid me of the exquisite and sinister enchantment. but i could not speak. i shut my eyes. this was love. the next moment i heard the soft sound of his feet on the carpet. i opened my eyes. he had stepped back. when our glances met he averted his face, and went briskly for his overcoat, which lay on the floor by the piano. i rose freed, re-established in my self-control. i arranged his collar, straightened his necktie with a few touches, picked up his hat, pushed back the crown, which flew up with a noise like a small explosion, and gave it into his hands. 'thank you,' he said. 'to-morrow morning, eh? i shall get to know everything necessary before i come. and then we will fix things up.' 'yes,' i said. 'i can let myself out,' he said. i made a vague gesture, intended to signify that i could not think of permitting him to let himself out. we left the drawing-room, and passed, with precautions of silence, to the front-door, which i gently opened. 'good-night, then,' he whispered formally, almost coldly. i nodded. we neither of us even smiled. we were grave, stern, and stiff in our immense self-consciousness. 'too late for the lift,' i murmured out there with him in the vast, glittering silence of the many-angled staircase, which disappeared above us and below us into the mysterious unseen. he nodded as i had nodded, and began to descend the broad, carpeted steps, firmly, carefully, and neither quick nor slow. i leaned over the baluster. when the turns of the staircase brought him opposite and below me, he stopped and raised his hat, and we exchanged a smile. then he resolutely dropped his eyes and resumed the descent. from time to time i had glimpses of parts of his figure as he passed story after story. then i heard his tread on the tessellated pavement of the main hall, the distant clatter of double doors, and a shrill cab-whistle. this was love, at last--the reality of love! he would have killed himself had he failed to win me--killed himself! with the novelist's habit, i ran off into a series of imagined scenes--the dead body, with the hole in the temples and the awkward attitude of death; the discovery, the rush for the police, the search for a motive, the inquest, the rapid-speaking coroner, who spent his whole life at inquests; myself, cold and impassive, giving evidence, and mary listening to what i said.... but he lived, with his delicate physical charm, his frail distinction, his spiritual grace; and he had won me. the sense of mutual possession was inexpressibly sweet to me. and it was all i had in the world now. when my mind moved from that rock, all else seemed shifting, uncertain, perilous, bodeful, and steeped in woe. the air was thick with disasters, and injustice, and strange griefs immediately i loosed my hold on the immense fact that he was mine. 'how calm i am!' i thought. it was not till i had been in bed some three hours that i fully realized the seismic upheaval which my soul had experienced. iii i woke up from one of those dozes which, after a sleepless night, give the brief illusion of complete rest, all my senses sharpened, and my mind factitiously active. and i began at once to anticipate frank's coming, and to arrange rapidly my plans for closing the flat. i had determined that it should be closed. then someone knocked at the door, and it occurred to me that there must have been a previous knock, which had, in fact, wakened me. save on special occasions, i was never wakened, and emmeline and my maid had injunctions not to come to me until i rang. my thoughts ran instantly to frank. he had arrived thus early, merely because he could not keep away. 'how extremely indiscreet of him!' i thought. 'what detestable prevarications with emmeline this will lead to! i cannot possibly be ready in time if he is to be in and out all day.' nevertheless, the prospect of seeing him quickly, and the idea of his splendid impatience, drenched me with joy. 'what is it?' i called out. emmeline entered in that terrible mauve dressing-gown which i had been powerless to persuade her to discard. 'so sorry to disturb you,' said emmeline, feeling her loose golden hair with one hand, 'but mrs. ispenlove has called, and wants to see you at once. i'm afraid something has happened.' '_mrs_. ispenlove?' my voice shook. 'yes. yvonne came to my room and told me that mrs. ispenlove was here, and was either mad or very unwell, and would i go to her? so i got up at once. what shall i do? perhaps it's something very serious. not half-past eight, and calling like this!' 'let her come in here immediately,' i said, turning my head on the pillow, so that emmeline should not see the blush which had spread over my face and my neck. it was inevitable that a terrible and desolating scene must pass between mary ispenlove and myself. i could not foresee how i should emerge from it, but i desperately resolved that i would suffer the worst without a moment's delay, and that no conceivable appeal should induce me to abandon frank. i was, as i waited for mrs. ispenlove to appear, nothing but an embodied and fierce instinct to guard what i had won. no consideration of mercy could have touched me. she entered with a strange, hysterical cry: 'carlotta!' i had asked her long ago to use my christian name--long before i ever imagined what would come to pass between her husband and me; but i always called her mrs. ispenlove. the difference in our ages justified me. and that morning the difference seemed to be increased. i realized, with a cruel justice of perception quite new in my estimate of her, that she was old--an old woman. she had never been beautiful, but she was tall and graceful, and her face had been attractive by the sweetness of the mouth and the gray beneficence of the eyes; and now that sweetness and that beneficence appeared suddenly to have been swallowed up in the fatal despair of a woman who discovers that she has lived too long. gray hair, wrinkles, crow's-feet, tired eyes, drawn mouth, and the terrible tell-tale hollow under the chin--these were what i saw in mary ispenlove. she had learnt that the only thing worth having in life is youth. i possessed everything that she lacked. surely the struggle was unequal. fate might have chosen a less piteous victim. i felt profoundly sorry for mary ispenlove, and this sorrow was stronger in me even than the uneasiness, the false shame (for it was not a real shame) which i experienced in her presence. i put out my hands towards her, as it were, involuntarily. she sprang to me, took them, and kissed me as i lay in bed. 'how beautiful you look--like that!' she exclaimed wildly, and with a hopeless and acute envy in her tone. 'but why--' i began to protest, astounded. 'what will you think of me, disturbing you like this? what will you think?' she moaned. and then her voice rose: 'i could not help it; i couldn't, really. oh, carlotta! you are my friend, aren't you?' one thing grew swiftly clear to me: that she was as yet perfectly unaware of the relations between frank and myself. my brain searched hurriedly for an explanation of the visit. i was conscious of an extraordinary relief. 'you are my friend, aren't you?' she repeated insistently. her tears were dropping on my bosom. but could i answer that i was her friend? i did not wish to be her enemy; she and frank and i were dolls in the great hands of fate, irresponsible, guiltless, meet for an understanding sympathy. why was i not still her friend? did not my heart bleed for her? yet such is the power of convention over honourableness that i could not bring myself to reply directly, 'yes, i am your friend.' 'we have known each other a long time,' i ventured. 'there was no one else i could come to,' she said. her whole frame was shaking. i sat up, and asked her to pass my dressing-gown, which i put round my shoulders. then i rang the bell. 'what are you going to do?' she demanded fearfully. 'i am going to have the gas-stove lighted and some tea brought in, and then we will talk. take your hat off, dear, and sit down in that chair. you'll be more yourself after a cup of tea.' how young i was then! i remember my naã¯ve satisfaction in this exhibition of tact. i was young and hard, as youth is apt to be--hard in spite of the compassion, too intellectual and arrogant, which i conceived for her. and even while i forbade her to talk until she had drunk some tea, i regretted the delay, and i suffered by it. surely, i thought, she will read in my demeanour something which she ought not to read there. but she did not. she was one of the simplest of women. in ten thousand women one is born without either claws or second-sight. she was that one, defenceless as a rabbit. 'you are very kind to me,' she said, putting her cup on the mantelpiece with a nervous rattle; 'and i need it.' 'tell me,' i murmured. 'tell me--what i can do.' i had remained in bed; she was by the fireplace. a distance between us seemed necessary. 'you can't do anything, my dear,' she said. 'only i was obliged to talk to someone, after all the night. it's about frank.' 'mr. ispenlove!' i ejaculated, acting as well as i could, but not very well. 'yes. he has left me.' 'but why? what is the matter?' even to recall my share in this interview with mary ispenlove humiliates me. but perhaps i have learned the value of humiliation. still, could i have behaved differently? 'you won't understand unless i begin a long time ago,' said mary ispenlove. 'carlotta, my married life has been awful--awful--a tragedy. it has been a tragedy both for him and for me. but no one has suspected it; we have hidden it.' i nodded. i, however, had suspected it. 'it's just twenty years--yes, twenty--since i fell in love,' she proceeded, gazing at me with her soft, moist eyes. 'with--frank,' i assumed. i lay back in bed. 'no,' she said. 'with another man. that was in brixton, when i was a girl living with my father; my mother was dead. he was a barrister--i mean the man i was in love with. he had only just been called to the bar. i think everybody knew that i had fallen in love with him. certainly he did; he could not help seeing it. i could not conceal it. of course i can understand now that it flattered him. naturally it did. any man is flattered when a woman falls in love with him. and my father was rich, and so on, and so on. we saw each other a lot. i hoped, and i kept on hoping. some people even said it was a match, and that i was throwing myself away. fancy--throwing myself away--me!--who have never been good for anything! my father did not care much for the man; said he was selfish and grasping. possibly he was; but i was in love with him all the same. then i met frank, and frank fell in love with me. you know how obstinate frank is when he has once set his mind on a thing. frank determined to have me; and my father was on his side. i would not listen. i didn't give him so much as a chance to propose to me. and this state of things lasted for quite a long time. it wasn't my fault; it wasn't anybody's fault.' 'just so,' i agreed, raising my head on one elbow, and listening intently. it was the first sincere word i had spoken, and i was glad to utter it. 'the man i had fallen in love with came nearer. he was decidedly tempted. i began to feel sure of him. all i wanted was to marry him, whether he loved me a great deal or only a little tiny bit. i was in that state. then he drew away. he scarcely ever came to the house, and i seemed never to be able to meet him. and then one day my father showed me something in the _morning post_. it was a paragraph saying that the man i was in love with was going to marry a woman of title, a widow and the daughter of a peer. i soon found out she was nearly twice his age. he had done it to get on. he was getting on very well by himself, but i suppose that wasn't fast enough for him. carlotta, it nearly killed me. and i felt so sorry for him. you can't guess how sorry i felt for him. i felt that he didn't know what he had missed. oh, how happy i should have made him! i should have lived for him. i should have done everything for him. i should have ... you don't mind me telling you all this?' i made an imploring gesture. 'what a shame!' i burst out. 'ah, my dear!' she said, 'he didn't love me. one can't blame him.' 'and then?' i questioned, with an eagerness that i tried to overcome. 'frank was so persevering. and--and--i _did_ admire his character. a woman couldn't help admiring his character, could she? and, besides, i honestly thought i had got over the other affair, and that i was in love with him. i refused him once, and then i married him. he was as mad for me as i had been for the other one. yes, i married him, and we both imagined we were going to be happy.' 'and why haven't you been?' i asked. 'this is my shame,' she said. 'i could not forget the other one. we soon found that out.' 'did you _talk_ about it, you--and frank?' i put in, amazed. 'oh _no_!' she said. 'it was never mentioned--never once during fifteen years. but he knew; and i knew that he knew. the other one was always between us--always, always, always! the other one was always in my heart. we did our best, both of us; but it was useless. the passion of my life was--it was invincible. i _tried_ to love frank. i could only like him. fancy his position! and we were helpless. because, you know, frank and i are not the sort of people that go and make a scandal--at least, that was what i thought,' she sighed. 'i know different now. well, he died the day before yesterday.' 'who?' 'crettell. he had just been made a judge. he was the youngest judge on the bench--only forty-six.' 'was _that_ the man?' i exclaimed; for crettell's character was well known in london. 'that was the man. frank came in yesterday afternoon, and after he had glanced at the paper, he said: "by the way, crettell's dead." i did not grasp it at first. he repeated: "crettell--he's dead." i burst into tears. i couldn't help it. and, besides, i forgot. frank asked me very roughly what i was crying for. you know, frank has much changed these last few months. he is not as nice as he used to be. excuse me talking like this, my dear. something must be worrying him. well, i said as well as i could while i was crying that the news was a shock to me. i tried to stop crying, but i couldn't. i sobbed. frank threw down the paper and stamped on it, and he swore. he said: "i know you've always been in love with the brute, but you needn't make such a damn fuss about it." oh, my dear, how can i tell you these things? that angered me. this was the first time in our married life that crettell had been even referred to, and it seemed to me that frank put all the hatred of fifteen years into that single sentence. why was i angry? i didn't know. we had a scene. frank lost his temper, for the first time that i remember, and then he recovered it. he said quietly he couldn't stand living with me any more; and that he had long since wanted to leave me. he said he would never see me again. and then one of the servants came in, and--' 'what?' 'nothing. i sent her out. and--and--fran didn't come home last night.' there was a silence. i could find nothing to say, and mary had hidden her face. i utterly forgot myself and my own state in this extraordinary hazard of matrimony. i could only think of mary's grief--a grief which, nevertheless, i did not too well comprehend. 'then you love him now?' i ventured at length. she made no reply. 'you love him--is that so?' i pursued. 'tell me honestly.' i spoke as gently as it was in me to speak. 'honestly!' she cried, looking up. 'honestly! no! if i loved him, could i have been so upset about crettell? but we have been together so long. we are husband and wife, carlotta. we are so used to each other. and generally he is so good. we've got on very well, considering. and now he's left me. think of the scandal! it will be terrible! terrible! a separation at my age! carlotta, it's unthinkable! he's mad--that's the only explanation. haven't i tried to be a good wife to him? he's never found fault with me--never! and i'm sure, as regards him, i've had nothing to complain of.' 'he will come back,' i said. 'he'll think things over and see reason.' and it was just as though i heard some other person saying these words. 'but he didn't come _home_ last night,' mary insisted. 'what the servants are thinking i shouldn't like to guess.' 'what does it matter what the servants think?' i said brusquely. 'but it _does_ matter. he didn't come _home_. he must have slept at a hotel. fancy, sleeping at a hotel, and his home waiting for him! oh, carlotta, you're too young to understand what i feel! you're very clever, and you're very sympathetic; but you can't see things as i see them. wait till you've been married fifteen years. the scandal! the shame! and me only too anxious to be a good wife, and to keep our home as it should be, and to help him as much as i can with my stupid brains in his business!' 'i can understand perfectly,' i asserted. 'i can understand perfectly.' and i could. the futility of arguing with mary, of attempting to free her ever so little from the coils of convention which had always bound her, was only too plainly apparent. she was--and naturally, sincerely, instinctively--the very incarnation and mouthpiece of the conventionality of society, as she cowered there in her grief and her quiet resentment. but this did not impair the authenticity of her grief and her resentment. her grief appealed to me powerfully, and her resentment, almost angelic in its quality, seemed sufficiently justified. i knew that my own position was in practice untenable, that logic must always be inferior to emotion. i am intensely proud of my ability to see, then, that no sentiment can be false which is sincere, and that mary ispenlove's attitude towards marriage was exactly as natural, exactly as free from artificiality, as my own. can you go outside nature? is not the polity of londoners in london as much a part of nature as the polity of bees in a hive? 'not a word for fifteen years, and then an explosion like that!' she murmured, incessantly recurring to the core of her grievance. 'i did wrong to marry him, i know. but i _did_ marry him--i _did_ marry him! we are husband and wife. and he goes off and sleeps at a hotel! carlotta, i wish i had never been born! what will people say? i shall never be able to look anyone in the face again.' 'he will come back,' i said again. 'do you think so?' this time she caught at the straw. 'yes,' i said. 'and you will settle down gradually; and everything will be forgotten.' i said that because it was the one thing i could say. i repeat that i had ceased to think of myself. i had become a spectator. 'it can never be the same between us again,' mary breathed sadly. at that moment emmeline palmer plunged, rather than came, into my bedroom. 'oh, miss peel--' she began, and then stopped, seeing mrs. ispenlove by the fireplace, though she knew that mrs. ispenlove was with me. 'anything wrong?' i asked, affecting a complete calm. it was evident that the good creature had lost her head, as she sometimes did, when i gave her too much to copy, or when the unusual occurred in no matter what form. the excellent emmeline was one of my mistakes. 'mr. ispenlove is here,' she whispered. none of us spoke for a few seconds. mary ispenlove stared at me, but whether in terror or astonishment, i could not guess. this was one of the most dramatic moments of my life. 'tell mr. ispenlove that i can see nobody,' i said, glancing at the wall. she turned to go. 'and, emmeline,' i stopped her. 'do not tell him anything else.' surely the fact that frank had called to see me before nine o'clock in the morning, surely my uneasy demeanour, must at length arouse suspicion even in the simple, trusting mind of his wife! 'how does he know that i am here?' mary asked, lowering her voice, when emmeline had shut the door; 'i said nothing to the servants.' i was saved. her own swift explanation of his coming was, of course, the most natural in the world. i seized on it. 'never mind how,' i answered. 'perhaps he was watching outside your house, and followed you. the important thing is that he has come. it proves,' i went on, inventing rapidly, 'that he has changed his mind and recognises his mistake. had you not better go back home as quickly as you can? it would have been rather awkward for you to see him here, wouldn't it?' 'yes, yes,' she said, her eyes softening and gleaming with joy. 'i will go. oh, carlotta! how can i thank you? you are my best friend.' 'i have done nothing,' i protested. but i had. 'you are a dear!' she exclaimed, coming impulsively to the bed. i sat up. she kissed me fervently. i rang the bell. 'has mr. ispenlove gone?' i asked emmeline. 'yes,' said emmeline. in another minute his wife, too, had departed, timorously optimistic, already denying in her heart that it could never be the same between them again. she assuredly would not find frank at home. but that was nothing. i had escaped! i had escaped! 'will you mind getting dressed at once?' i said to emmeline. 'i should like you to go out with a letter and a manuscript as soon as possible.' i got a notebook and began to write to frank. i told him all that had happened, in full detail, writing hurriedly, in gusts, and abandoning that regard for literary form which the professional author is apt to preserve even in his least formal correspondence. 'after this,' i said, 'we must give up what we decided last night. i have no good reason to offer you. the situation itself has not been changed by what i have learnt from your wife. i have not even discovered that she loves you, though in spite of what she says, which i have faithfully told you, i fancy she does--at any rate, i think she is beginning to. my ideas about the rights of love are not changed. my feelings towards you are not changed. nothing is changed. but she and i have been through that interview, and so, after all, everything is changed; we must give it all up. you will say i am illogical. i am--perhaps. it was a mere chance that your wife came to me. i don't know why she did. if she had not come, i should have given myself to you. supposing she had written--i should still have given myself to you. but i have been in her presence. i have been with her. and then the thought that you struck her, for my sake! she said nothing about that. that was the one thing she concealed. i could have cried when she passed it over. after all, i don't know whether it is sympathy for your wife that makes me change, or my self-respect--say my self-pride; i'm a proud woman. i lied to her through all that interview. 'oh, if i had only had the courage to begin by telling her outright and bluntly that you and i had settled that i should take her place! that would have stopped her. but i hadn't. and, besides, how could i foresee what she would say to me and how she would affect me? no; i lied to her at every point. my whole attitude was a lie. supposing you and i had gone off together before i had seen her, and then i had met her afterwards, i could have looked her in the face--sorrowfully, with a heart bleeding--but i could have looked her in the face. but after this interview--no; it would be impossible for me to face her with you at my side! don't i put things crudely, horribly! i know everything that you will say. you could not bring a single argument that i have not thought of. 'however, arguments are nothing. it is how i feel. fate is against us. possibly i have ruined your life and mine without having done anything to improve hers; and possibly i have saved us all three from terrible misery. possibly fate is with us. no one can say. i don't know what will happen in the immediate future; i won't think about it. if you do as i wish, if you have any desire to show me that i have any influence over you, you will go back to live with your wife. where did you sleep last night? or did you walk the streets? you must not answer this letter at present. write to me later. do not try to see me. i won't see you. we _mustn't_ meet. i am going away at once. i don't think i could stand another scene with your wife, and she would be sure to come again to me. 'try to resume your old existence. you can do it if you try. remember that your wife is no more to blame than you are, or than i am. remember that you loved her once. and remember that i act as i am acting because there is no other way for me. _c'est plus fort que moi,_ i am going to torquay. i let you know this--i hate concealment; and anyway you would find out. but i shall trust you not to follow me. i shall trust you. you are saying that this is a very different woman from last night. it is. i haven't yet realized what my feelings are. i expect i shall realize them in a few days. i send with this a manuscript. it is nothing. i send it merely to put emmeline off the scent, so that she shall think that it is purely business. now i shall _trust_ you.--c. p.' i commenced the letter without even a 'dear frank,' and i ended it without an affectionate word. 'i should like you to take these down to mr. ispenlove's office,' i said to emmeline. 'ask for him and give them to him yourself. there's no answer. he's pretty sure to be in. but if he isn't, bring them back. i'm going to torquay by that eleven-thirty express--isn't it?' 'eleven-thirty-five,' emmeline corrected me coldly. when she returned, she said she had seen mr. ispenlove and given him the letter and the parcel. iv i had acquaintances in torquay, but i soon discovered that the place was impossible for me. torquay is the chosen home of the proprieties, the respectabilities, and all the conventions. nothing could dislodge them from its beautiful hills; the very sea, as it beats primly, or with a violence that never forgets to be discreet, on the indented shore, acknowledges their sway. aphrodite never visits there; the human race is not continued there. people who have always lived within the conventions go there to die within the conventions. the young do not flourish there; they escape from the soft enervation. since everybody is rich, there are no poor. there are only the rich, and the servitors, who get rich. these two classes never mix--even in the most modest villas they live on opposite sides of the house. the life of the town is a vast conspiracy on the part of the servitors to guard against any danger of the rich taking all their riches to heaven. you can, if you are keen enough, detect portions of this conspiracy in every shop. on the hills each abode stands in its own undulating grounds, is approached by a winding drive of at least ten yards, is wrapped about by the silence of elms, is flanked by greenhouses, and exudes an immaculate propriety from all its windows. in the morning the rich descend, the servitors ascend; the bosky and perfectly-kept streets on the hills are trodden with apologetic celerity by the emissaries of the servitors. the one interminable thoroughfare of the town is graciously invaded by the rich, who, if they have not walked down for the sake of exercise, step cautiously from their carriages, enunciate a string of orders ending with the name of a house, and cautiously regain their carriages. each house has a name, and the pride of the true servitor is his ability to deduce instantly from the name of the house the name of its owner and the name of its street. in the afternoon a vast and complicated game of visiting cards is played. one does not begin to be serious till the evening; one eats then, solemnly and fully, to the faint accompaniment of appropriate conversation. and there is no relief, no surcease from utmost conventionality. it goes on night and day; it hushes one to sleep, and wakes one up. on all but the strongest minds it casts a narcotizing spell, so that thought is arrested, and originality, vivacity, individuality become a crime--a shame that must be hidden. into this strange organism i took my wounded heart, imagining that an atmosphere of coma might help to heal it. but no! within a week my state had become such that i could have cried out in mid union street at noon: 'look at me with your dead eyes, you dead who have omitted to get buried, i am among you, and i am an adulteress in spirit! and my body has sinned the sin! and i am alive as only grief can be alive. i suffer the torture of vultures, but i would not exchange my lot with yours!' and one morning, after a fortnight, i thought of monte carlo. and the vision of that place, which i had never seen, too voluptuously lovely to be really beautiful, where there are no commandments, where unconventionality and conventionality fight it out on even terms, where the adulteress swarms, and the sin is for ever sinned, and wounded hearts go about gaily, where it is impossible to distinguish between virtue and vice, and where toleration in fine clothes is the supreme social goddess--the vision of monte carlo, as a place of refuge from the exacerbating and moribund and yet eternal demureness of torquay, appealed to me so persuasively that i was on my way to the riviera in two hours. in that crisis of my life my moods were excessively capricious. let me say that i had not reached exeter before i began to think kindly of torquay. what was torquay but an almost sublime example of what the human soul can accomplish in its unending quest of an ideal? i left england on a calm, slate-coloured sea--sea that more than any other sort of sea produces the reflective melancholy which makes wonderful the faces of fishermen. how that brief voyage symbolized for me the mysterious movement of humanity! we converged from the four quarters of the universe, passed together an hour, helpless, in somewhat inimical curiosity concerning each other, and then, mutually forgotten, took wing, and spread out into the unknown. i think that as i stood near the hot funnel, breasting the wind, and vacantly staring at the smooth expanse that continually slipped from under us, i understood myself better than i had done before. my soul was at peace--the peace of ruin after a conflagration, but peace. sometimes a little flame would dart out--flame of regret, revolt, desire--and i would ruthlessly extinguish it. i felt that i had nothing to live for, that no energy remained to me, no interest, no hope. i saw the forty years of probable existence in front of me flat and sterile as the sea itself. i was coldly glad that i had finished my novel, well knowing that it would be my last. and the immense disaster had been caused by a chance! why had i been born with a vein of overweening honesty in me? why should i have sacrificed everything to the pride of my conscience, seeing that consciences were the product of education merely? useless to try to answer the unanswerable! what is, is. and circumstances are always at the mercy of character. i might have been wrong, i might have been right; no ethical argument could have bent my instinct. i did not sympathize with myself--i was too proud and stern--but i sympathized with frank. i wished ardently that he might be consoled--that his agony might not be too terrible. i wondered where he was, what he was doing. i had received no letter from him, but then i had instructed that letters should not be forwarded to me. my compassion went out after him, followed him into the dark, found him (as i hoped), and surrounded him like an alleviating influence. i thought pityingly of the ravage that had been occasioned by our love. his home was wrecked. our lives were equally wrecked. our friends were grieved; they would think sadly of my closed flat. even the serio-comic figure of emmeline touched me; i had paid her three months' wages and dismissed her. where would she go with her mauve _peignoir_? she was over thirty, and would not easily fall into another such situation. imagine emmeline struck down by a splinter from our passionate explosion! only yvonne was content at the prospect of revisiting france. '_ah! qu'on est bien ici, madame_!' she said, when we had fixed ourselves in the long and glittering _train de grand luxe_ that awaited us at calais. once i had enjoyed luxury, but now the futility of all this luxurious cushioned arrogance, which at its best only corresponded with a railway director's dreams of paradise, seemed to me pathetic. could it detain youth, which is for ever flying? could it keep out sorrow? could it breed hope? as the passengers, so correct in their travelling costumes, passed to and fro in the corridors with the subdued murmurs always adopted by english people when they wish to prove that they are not excited, i thought: 'does it matter how you and i go southwards? the pride of the eye, and of the palate, and of the limbs, what can it help us that this should be sated? we cannot leave our souls behind.' the history of many of these men and women was written on their faces. i wondered if my history was written on mine, gazing into the mirrors which were everywhere, but seeing nothing save that which i had always seen. then i smiled, and yvonne smiled respectfully in response. was i not part of the immense pretence that riches bring joy and that life is good? on every table in the restaurant-cars were bunches of fresh flowers that had been torn from the south, and would return there dead, having ministered to the illusion that riches bring joy and that life is good. i hated that. i could almost have wished that i was travelling southwards in a slow, slow train, third class, where sorrow at any rate does not wear a mask. great grief is democratic, levelling--not downwards but upwards. it strips away the inessential, and makes brothers. it is impatient with all the unavailing inventions which obscure the brotherhood of mankind. i descended from the train restlessly--there were ten minutes to elapse before the departure--and walked along the platform, glimpsing the faces in the long procession of windows, and then the flowers and napery in the two restaurant-cars: wistful all alike, i thought--flowers and faces! how fanciful, girlishly fanciful, i was! opposite the door of the first car stood a gigantic negro in the sober blue and crimson livery of the international sleeping car company. he wore white gloves, like all the servants on the train: it was to foster the illusion; it was part of what we paid for. 'when is luncheon served?' i asked him idly. he looked massively down at me as i shivered slightly in my furs. he contemplated me for an instant. he seemed to add me up, antipathetically, as a product of western civilization. 'soon as the train starts, madam,' he replied suavely, in good american, and resumed nonchalantly his stare into the distance of the platform. 'thank you!' i said. i was glad that i had encountered him on that platform and not in the african bush. i speculated upon the chain of injustice and oppression that had warped his destiny from what it ought to have been to what it was. 'and he, too, is human, and knows love and grief and illusion, like me,' i mused. a few yards further on the engine-driver and stoker were busy with coal and grease. 'five minutes hence, and our lives, and our correctness, and our luxury, will be in their grimy hands,' i said to myself. strange world, the world of the _train de grand luxe_! but a world of brothers! i regained my carriage, exactly, after all, as the inhabitants of torquay regained theirs. then the wondrous self-contained microcosm, shimmering with gilt and varnish and crystal, glorious in plush and silk, heavy with souls and all that correct souls could possibly need in twenty hours, gathered itself up and rolled forward, swiftly, and more swiftly, into the wide, gray landscapes of france. the vibrating and nerve-destroying monotony of a long journey had commenced. we were summoned by white gloves to luncheon; and we lunched in a gliding palace where the heavenly dreams of a railway director had received their most luscious expression--and had then been modestly hidden by advertisements of hotels and brandy. the southern flowers shook in their slender glasses, and white gloves balanced dishes as if on board ship, and the electric fans revolved ceaselessly. as i was finishing my meal, a middle-aged woman whom i knew came down the car towards me. she had evidently not recognised me. 'how do you do, miss kate?' i accosted her. it was the younger of vicary's two maiden sisters. i guessed that the other could not be far away. she hesitated, stopped, and looked down at me, rather as the negro had done. 'oh! how do you do, miss peel?' she said distantly, with a nervous simper; and she passed on. this was my first communication, since my disappearance, with the world of my london friends and acquaintances. i perceived, of course, from miss kate's attitude that something must have occurred, or something must have been assumed, to my prejudice. perhaps frank had also vanished for a time, and the rumour ran that we were away together. i smiled frigidly. what matter? in case miss vicary should soon be following her sister, i left without delay and went back to my coupã©; it would have been a pity to derange these dames. me away with frank! what folly to suppose it! yet it might have been. i was in heart what these dames probably took me for. i read a little in the _imitation of christ_ which aunt constance had meant to give me, that book which will survive sciences and even christianity itself. 'think not that thou hast made any progress,' i read, 'unless thou feel thyself inferior to all ... behold how far off thou art yet from true charity and humility: which knows not how to be angry or indignant, with any except one's self.' night fell. the long, illuminated train roared and flashed on its invisible way under a dome of stars. it shrieked by mysterious stations, dragging furiously its freight of luxury and light and human masks through placid and humble villages and towns, of which it ignored everything save their coloured signals of safety. ages of oscillation seemed to pass. in traversing the corridors one saw interior after interior full of the signs of wearied humanity: magazines thrown aside, rugs in disorder, hair dishevelled, eyes heavy, cheeks flushed, limbs in the abandoned attitudes of fatigue--here and there a compartment with blinds discreetly drawn, suggesting the jealous seclusion of love, and here and there a group of animated tatlers or card-players whose nerves nothing could affect, and who were incapable of lassitude; on every train and every steamer a few such are to be found. more ages passed, and yet the journey had but just begun. at length we thundered and resounded through canyons of tall houses, their faã§ades occasionally bathed in the cold, blue radiance of arc-lights; and under streets and over canals. paris! the city of the joy of life! we were to see the muddied skirts of that brilliant and sinister woman. we panted to a standstill in the vast echoing cavern of the gare du nord, stared haughtily and drowsily at its bustling confusion, and then drew back, to carry our luxury and our correctness through the lowest industrial quarters. belleville, menilmontant, and other names of like associations we read on the miserable, forlorn stations of the ceinture, past which we trailed slowly our disgust. we made a semicircle through the secret shames that beautiful paris would fain hide, and, emerging, found ourselves in the deserted and stony magnificence of the gare de lyon, the gate of the south. here, where we were not out of keeping, where our splendour was of a piece with the splendour of the proudest terminus in france, we rested long, fretted by the inexplicable leisureliness on the part of a _train de grand luxe_, while gilded officials paced to and fro beneath us on the platforms, guarding in their bureaucratic breasts the secret of the exact instant at which the great express would leave. i slept, and dreamed that the misses vicary had brought several pairs of white gloves in order to have me dismissed from the society of the train. a hand touched me. it was yvonne's. i awoke to a renewal of the maddening vibration. we had quitted paris long since. it was after seven o'clock. '_on dit que le diner est servi, madame_ said yvonne. i told her to go, and i collected my wits to follow her. as i was emerging into the corridor, miss kate went by. i smiled faintly, perhaps timidly. she cut me completely. then i went out into the corridor. a man was standing at the other end twirling his moustaches. he turned round. it was frank. he came towards me, uncertainly swaying with the movement of the swaying train. 'good god!' he muttered, and stopped within a yard of me. i clung convulsively to the framework of the doorway. our lives paused. 'why have you followed me, frank?' i asked gloomily, in a whisper. i had meant to be severe, offended. i had not meant to put his name at the end of my question, much less to utter it tenderly, like an endearment. but i had little control over myself. i was almost breathless with a fatal surprise, shaken with terrible emotion. 'i've not followed you,' he said. 'i joined the train at paris. i'd no idea you were on the train till i saw you in the corner asleep, through the window of the compartment. i've been waiting here till you came out.' 'have you seen the vicarys?' 'yes,' he answered. 'ah! you've been away from london all this time?' 'i couldn't stay. i couldn't. i've been in belgium and holland. then i went to paris. and now--you see me.' 'i'm going to mentone,' i said. 'i had thought of monte carlo first, but i changed my mind. where are you going to?' 'mentone,' he said. we talked in hard, strained tones, avoiding each other's eyes. a string of people passed along the car on their way to dinner. i withdrew into my compartment, and frank flattened himself against a window. 'come in here a minute,' i said, when they were gone. he entered the compartment and sat down opposite to me and lifted his hand, perhaps unconsciously, to pull the door to. 'no,' i said; 'don't shut it. leave it like that.' he was dressed in a gray tourist suit. never before had i seen him in any but the formal attire of london. i thought he looked singularly graceful and distinguished, even romantic, in that loose, soft clothing. but no matter what he wore, frank satisfied the eye. we were both extremely nervous and excited and timid, fearing speech. 'carlotta,' he said at last--i had perceived that he was struggling to a resolution--'this is the best thing that could have happened. whatever we do, everybody will believe that we are running off together.' 'i think they have been believing that ever since we left london,' i said; and i told him about miss kate's treatment of me at lunch. 'but how can that affect us?' i demanded. 'mary will believe it--does believe, i'm sure. long before this, people will have enlightened her. and now the vicarys have seen us, it's all over. our hand is forced, isn't it?' 'frank,' i said, 'didn't you think my letter was right?' 'i obeyed it,' he replied heavily. 'i haven't even written to you. i meant to when i got to mentone.' 'but didn't you think i was right?' 'i don't know. yes--i suppose it was.' his lower lip fell. 'of course i don't want you to do anything that you--' 'dinner, please,' said my negro, putting his head between us. we both informed the man that we should not dine, and i asked him to tell yvonne not to wait for me. 'there's your maid, too,' said frank. 'how are we going to get out of it? the thing's settled for us.' 'my dear, dear boy!' i exclaimed. 'are we to outrage our consciences simply because people think we have outraged them?' 'it isn't my conscience--it's yours,' he said. 'well, then--mine.' i drew down my veil; i could scarcely keep dry eyes. 'why are you so hard, carlotta?' he cried. 'i can't understand you. i never could. but you'll kill me--that's what you'll do.' impulsively i leaned forward; and he seized my hand. our antagonism melted in tears. oh the cruel joy of that moment! who will dare to say that the spirit cannot burn with pleasure while drowning in grief? or that tragedy may not be the highest bliss? that instant of renunciation was our true marriage. i realize it now--a union that nothing can soil nor impair. 'i love you; you are fast and fast in my heart,' i murmured. 'but you must go back to mary. there is nothing else.' and i withdrew my hand. he shook his head. 'you've no right, my dearest, to tell me to go back to mary. i cannot.' 'forgive me,' i said. 'i have only the right to ask you to leave me.' 'then there is no hope?' his lips trembled. ah! those lips! i made a sign that there was no hope. and we sat in silence, overcome. a servant came to arrange the compartment for sleeping, and we were obliged to assume nonchalance and go into the corridor. all the windows of the corridor were covered with frost traceries. the train with its enclosed heat and its gleaming lamps was plunging through an ice-gripped night. i thought of the engine-driver, perched on his shaking, snorting, monstrous machine, facing the weather, with our lives and our loves in his hand. 'we'll leave each other now, frank,' i said, 'before the people begin to come back from dinner. go and eat something.' 'but you?' 'i shall be all right. yvonne will get me some fruit. i shall stay in our compartment till we arrive.' 'yes. and when we do arrive--what then? what are your wishes? you see, i can't leave the train before we get to mentone because of my registered luggage.' he spoke appealingly. the dear thing, with his transparent pretexts! 'you can ignore us at the station, and then leave mentone again during the day.' 'as you wish,' he said. 'good-night!' i whispered. 'good-bye!' and i turned to my compartment. 'carlotta!' he cried despairingly. but i shut the door and drew the blinds. yvonne was discretion itself when she returned. she had surely seen frank. no doubt she anticipated piquant developments at mentone. all night i lay on my narrow bed, with yvonne faintly snoring above me, and the harsh, metallic rattle of the swinging train beneath. i could catch the faint ticking of my watch under the thin pillow. the lamp burnt delicately within its green shade. i lay almost moveless, almost dead, shifting only at long intervals from side to side. sometimes my brain would arouse itself, and i would live again through each scene of my relationship with frank and mary. i often thought of the engine-driver, outside, watching over us and unflinchingly dragging us on. i hoped that his existence had compensations. v early on the second morning after that interview in the train i sat on my balcony in the hã´tel d'ã�cosse, full in the tremendous sun that had ascended over the mediterranean. the shore road wound along beneath me by the blue water that never receded nor advanced, lopping always the same stones. a vivid yellow electric tram, like a toy, crept forward on my left from the direction of vintimille and italy, as it were swimming noiselessly on the smooth surface of the road among the palms of an intense green, against the bright blue background of the sea; and another tram advanced, a spot of orange, to meet it out of the variegated tangle of tinted houses composing the old town. high upon the summit of the old town rose the slim, rose-coloured cupola of the church in a sapphire sky. the regular smiting sound of a cracked bell, viciously rung, came from it. the eastern prospect was shut in by the last olive-clad spurs of the alps, that tread violently and gigantically into the sea. the pathways of the hotel garden were being gently swept by a child of the sun, who could not have sacrificed his graceful dignity to haste; and many peaceful morning activities proceeded on the road, on the shore, and on the jetty. a procession of tawny fishing-boats passed from the harbour one after another straight into the eye of the sun, and were lost there. smoke climbed up softly into the soft air from the houses and hotels on the level of the road. the trams met and parted, silently widening the distance between them which previously they had narrowed. and the sun rose and rose, bathing the blue sea and the rich verdure and the glaring white architecture in the very fluid of essential life. the whole azure coast basked in it like an immense cat, commencing the day with a voluptuous savouring of the fact that it was alive. the sun is the treacherous and tyrannical god of the south, and when he withdraws himself, arbitrary and cruel, the land and the people shiver and prepare to die. it was such a morning as renders sharp and unmistakable the division between body and soul--if the soul suffers. the body exults; the body cries out that nothing on earth matters except climate. nothing can damp the glorious ecstasy of the body baptized in that air, caressed by that incomparable sun. it laughs, and it laughs at the sorrow of the soul. it imperiously bids the soul to choose the path of pleasure; it shouts aloud that sacrifice is vain and honour an empty word, full of inconveniences, and that to exist amply and vehemently, to listen to the blood as it beats strongly through the veins, is the end of the eternal purpose. ah! how easy it is to martyrize one's self by some fatal decision made grandly in the exultation of a supreme moment! and how difficult to endure the martyrdom without regret! i regretted my renunciation. my body rebelled against it, and even my soul rebelled. i scorned myself for a fool, for a sentimental weakling--yes, and for a moral coward. every argument that presented itself damaged the justice of my decision. after all, we loved, and in my secret dreams had i not always put love first, as the most sacred? the reality was that i had been afraid of what mary would think. true, my attitude had lied to her, but i could not have avoided that. decency would have forbidden me to use any other attitude; and more than decency--kindness. ought the course of lives to be changed at the bidding of mere hazard? it was a mere chance that mary had called on me. i bled for her grief, but nothing that i could do would assuage it. i felt sure that, in the impossible case of me being able to state my position to her and argue in its defence, i could force her to see that in giving myself to frank i was not being false to my own ideals. what else could count? what other consideration should guide the soul on its mysterious instinctive way? frank and i had a right to possess each other. we had a right to be happy if we could. and the one thing that had robbed us of that right was my lack of courage, caused partly by my feminine mentality (do we not realize sometimes how ignobly feminine we are?), and partly by the painful spectacle of mary's grief.... and her grief, her most intimate grief, sprang not from thwarted love, but from a base and narrow conventionality. thus i declaimed to myself in my heart, under the influence of the seductive temptations of that intoxicating atmosphere. 'come down,' said a voice firmly and quietly underneath me in the orange-trees of the garden. i started violently. it was frank's voice. he was standing in the garden, his legs apart, and a broad, flat straw hat, which i did not admire, on his head. his pale face was puckered round about the eyes as he looked up at me, like the face of a person trying to look directly at the sun. 'why,' i exclaimed foolishly, glancing down over the edge of the balcony, and shutting my white parasol with a nervous, hurried movement, 'have--have you come here?' he had disobeyed my wish. he had not left mentone at once. 'come down,' he repeated persuasively, and yet commandingly. i could feel my heart beating against the marble parapet of the balcony. i seemed to be caught, to be trapped. i could not argue with him in that position. i could not leave him shouting in the garden. so i nodded to pacify him, and disappeared quickly from the balcony, almost scurrying away. and in the comparative twilight of my room i stopped and gave a glance in the mirror, and patted my hair, and fearfully examined the woman that i saw in the glass, as if to discern what sort of woman she truly was, and what was the root of her character. i hesitated and snatched up my gloves. i wanted to collect my thoughts, and i could not. it was impossible to think clearly. i moved in the room, dazed. i stood by the tumbled bed, fingering the mosquito curtains. they might have been a veil behind which was obscured the magic word of enlightenment i needed. i opened the door, shut it suddenly, and held the knob tight, defying an imagined enemy outside. 'oh!' i muttered at last, angry with myself, 'what is the use of all this? you know you must go down to him. he's waiting for you. show a little common-sense and go without so much fuss.' and so i descended the stairs swiftly and guiltily, relieved that no one happened to see me. in any case, i decided, nothing could induce me to yield to him after my letter and after what had passed in the train. the affair was beyond argument. i felt that i could not yield, and that though it meant the ruin of happiness by obstinacy, i could not yield. i shrank from yielding in that moment as men shrink from public repentance. he had not moved from his post in the garden. we shook hands. a band of italian musicians wandered into the garden and began to sing verdi to a vigorous thrumming of guitars. they sang as only italians can sing--as naturally as they breathed, and with a rich and overflowing innocent joy in the art which nature had taught them. they sang loudly, swingingly, glancing full of naive hope up at the windows of the vast, unresponsive hotel. 'so you are still in mentone,' i ventured. 'yes,' he said. 'come for a walk.' 'but--' 'come for a walk.' 'very well,' i consented. 'as i am?' 'as you are. i saw you all in white on the balcony, and i was determined to fetch you out.' 'but could you see who it was from the road?' 'of course i could. i knew in an instant.' we descended, he a couple of paces in front of me, the narrow zigzag path leading down between two other hotels to the shore road. 'what will happen now?' i asked myself wildly. my head swam. it seemed that nothing would happen. we turned eastwards, walking slowly, and i began to resume my self-control. only the simple and the humble were abroad at that early hour: purveyors of food, in cheerfully rattling carts, or hauling barrows with the help of grave and formidable dogs; washers and cleaners at the doors of highly-decorated villas, amiably performing their tasks while the mighty slept; fishermen and fat fisher-girls, industriously repairing endless brown nets on the other side of the parapet of the road; a postman and a little policeman; a porcelain mender, who practised his trade under the shadow of the wall; a few loafers; some stable-boys exercising horses; and children with adorable dirty faces, shouting in their high treble as they played at hopscotch. i felt very closely akin to these meek ones as we walked along. they were so human, so wistful. they had the wonderful simplicity of animals, uncomplicated by the disease of self-consciousness; they were the vital stuff without the embroidery. they preserved the customs of their ancestors, rising with the sun, frankly and splendidly enjoying the sun, looking up to it as the most important thing in the world. they never attempted to understand what was beyond them; they troubled not with progress, ideals, righteousness, the claims of society. they accepted humbly and uninquiringly what they found. they lived the life of their instincts, sometimes violent, often kindly, and always natural. why should i have felt so near to them? a calm and gentle pleasure filled me, far from intense, but yet satisfying. i determined to enjoy the moment, or, perhaps, without determination, i gave myself up, gradually, to the moment. i forgot care and sorrow. i was well; i was with frank; i was in the midst of enchanting natural beauty; the day was fair and fresh and virgin. i knew not where i was going. shorewards a snowy mountain ridge rose above the long, wide slopes of olives, dotted with white dwellings. a single sail stood up seawards on the immense sheet of blue. the white sail appeared and disappeared in the green palm-trees as we passed eastwards. presently we left the sea, and we lost the hills, and came into a street of poor little shops for simple folk, that naã¯vely exposed their cheap and tawdry goods to no matter what mightiness should saunter that way. and then we came to the end of the tram-line, and it was like the end of the world. and we saw in the distance abodes of famous persons, fabulously rich, defying the sea and the hills, and condescending from afar off to the humble. we crossed the railway, and a woman ran out from a cabin with a spoon in one hand and a soiled flag in the other, and waved the flag at a towering black engine that breathed stertorously in a cutting. already we were climbing, and the road grew steeper, and then we came to custom-houses--unsightly, squalid, irregular, and mean--in front of which officials laughed and lounged and smoked. we talked scarcely at all. 'you were up early this morning,' he said. 'yes; i could not sleep.' 'it was the same with me.' we recovered the sea; but now it was far below us, and the footprints of the wind were marked on it, and it was not one blue, but a thousand blues, and it faded imperceptibly into the sky. the sail, making mentone, was much nearer, and had developed into a two-masted ship. it seemed to be pushed, rather than blown, along by the wind. it seemed to have rigidity in all its parts, and to be sliding unwillingly over a vast slate. the road lay through craggy rocks, shelving away unseen on one hand, and rising steeply against the burning sky on the other. we mounted steadily and slowly. i did not look much at frank, but my eye was conscious of his figure, striding leisurely along. now and then, when i turned to glance behind, i saw our shadows there diagonally on the road, and again i did not care for his hat. i had not seen him in a straw hat till that morning. we arrived at a second set of french custom-houses, deserted, and then we saw that the gigantic side of the mountain was cleft by a fissure from base to summit. and across the gorge had been thrown a tiny stone bridge to carry the road. at this point, by the bridge, the face of the rock had been carved smooth, and a great black triangle painted on it. and on the road was a common milestone, with 'france' on one side and 'italia' on the other. and a very old man was harmlessly spreading a stock of picture postcards on the parapet of the bridge. my heart went out to that poor old man, whose white curls glinted in the sunlight. it seemed to me so pathetic that he should be just there, at that natural spot which the passions and the blood of men long dead had made artificial, tediously selling postcards in order to keep his worn and creaking body out of the grave. 'do give him something,' i entreated frank. and while frank went to him i leaned over the other parapet and listened for the delicate murmur of the stream far below. the split flank of the hill was covered with a large red blossom, and at the base, on the edge of the sea, were dolls' houses, each raising a slanted pencil of pale smoke. then we were in italy, and still climbing. we saw a row of narrow, slattern cottages, their backs over the sea, and in front of them marched to and fro a magnificent soldier laced in gold, with chinking spurs and a rifle. suddenly there ran out of a cottage two little girls, aged about four years and eight years, dirty, unkempt, delicious, shrill, their movements full of the ravishing grace of infancy. they attacked the laced soldier, chattering furiously, grumbling at him, intimidating him with the charming gestures of spoilt and pouting children. and he bent down stiffly in his superb uniform, and managed his long, heavy gun, and talked to them in a deep, vibrating voice. he reasoned with them till we could hear him no more. it was so touching, so exquisitely human! we reached the top of the hill, having passed the italian customs, equally vile with the french. the terraced grounds of an immense deserted castle came down to the roadside; and over the wall, escaped from the garden, there bloomed extravagantly a tangle of luscious yellow roses, just out of our reach. the road was still and deserted. we could see nothing but the road and the sea and the hills, all steeped, bewitched, and glorious under the sun. the ship had nearly slid to mentone. the curving coastline of italy wavered away into the shimmering horizon. and there were those huge roses, insolently blooming in the middle of winter, the symbol of the terrific forces of nature which slept quiescent under the universal calm. perched as it were in a niche of the hills, we were part of that tremendous and ennobling scene. long since the awkward self-consciousness caused by our plight had left us. we did not use speech, but we knew that we thought alike, and were suffering the same transcendent emotion. was it joy or sadness? rather than either, it was an admixture of both, originating in a poignant sense of the grandeur of life and of the earth. 'oh, frank,' i murmured, my spirit bursting, 'how beautiful it is!' our eyes met. he took me and kissed me impetuously, as though my utterance had broken a spell which enchained him. and as i kissed him i wept, blissfully. nature had triumphed. vi we departed from mentone that same day after lunch. i could not remove to his hotel; he could not remove to mine, for this was mentone. we went to monte carlo by road, our luggage following. we chose monte carlo partly because it was the nearest place, and partly because it has some of the qualities--incurious, tolerant, unprovincial--of a capital city. if we encountered friends there, so much the better, in the end. the great adventure, the solemn and perilous enterprise had begun. i sent yvonne for a holiday to her home in laroche. why? ah, why? perhaps for the simple reason that i had not the full courage of my convictions. we seldom have--_nous autres_. i felt that, if she had remained, yvonne would have been too near me in the enterprise. i could not at first have been my natural self with her. i told the astonished and dissatisfied yvonne that i would write to her as soon as i wanted her. yet in other ways i had courage, and i found a delicious pleasure in my courage. when i was finally leaving the hotel i had frank by my side. i behaved to him as to a husband. i publicly called him 'dear.' i asked his advice in trifles. he paid my bill. he even provided the money necessary for yvonne. my joy in the possession of this male creature, whose part it now was to do for me a thousand things that hitherto i had been forced to do for myself, was almost naive. i could not hide it. i was at last a man's woman. i had a protector. yes; i must not shrink from the equivocal significance of that word--i had a protector. frank was able to get three rooms at the hotel de paris at monte carlo. i had only to approve them. we met in our sitting-room at half-past three, ready to go out for a walk. it would be inexact to say that we were not nervous. but we were happy. he had not abandoned his straw hat. 'don't wear that any more,' i said to him, smiling. 'but why? it's quite new.' 'it doesn't suit you,' i said. 'oh, that doesn't matter,' he laughed, and he put it on. 'but i don't like to see you in it,' i persisted. 'well, you'll stand it this afternoon, my angel, and i'll get another to-morrow.' 'haven't you got another one here?' i asked, with discontent. 'no,' and he laughed again. 'but, dear--' i pouted. he seemed suddenly to realize that as a fact i did not like the hat. 'come here,' he said, charmingly grave; and he led me by the hand into his bedroom, which was littered with clothes, small parcels, boots, and brushes. one chair was overturned. 'heavens!' i muttered, pretending to be shocked at the disorder. he drew, me to a leather box of medium size. 'you can open it,' he said. i opened it. the thing was rather a good contrivance, for a man. it held a silk hat, an opera hat, a bowler hat, some caps, and a soft panama straw. 'and you said you had no others!' i grumbled at him. 'well, which is it to be?' he demanded. 'this, of course,' i said, taking the bowler. i reached up, removed the straw hat from his head, and put the bowler in its place. 'there!' i exclaimed, satisfied, giving the bowler a pat--there!' he laughed, immensely content, enraptured, foolishly blissful. we were indeed happy. before opening the door leading to the corridor we stopped and kissed. on the seaward terrace of the vast, pale, floriated casino, so impressive in its glittering vulgarity, like the bride-cake of a stockbroker's wedding, we strolled about among a multifarious crowd, immersed in ourselves. we shared a contempt for the architecture, the glaring flower-beds, and the false distinction of the crowd, and an enthusiasm for the sunshine and the hills and the sea, and whatever else had escaped the hands of the casino administration. we talked lightly and freely. care seemed to be leaving us; we had no preoccupations save those which were connected with our passion. then i saw, standing in an attitude of attention, the famous body-servant of lord francis alcar, and i knew that lord francis could not be far away. we spoke to the valet; he pointed out his master, seated at the front of the terrace, and told us, in a discreet, pained, respectful voice, that our venerable friend had been mysteriously unwell at monte carlo, and was now taking the air for the first time in ten days. i determined that we should go boldly and speak to him. 'lord francis,' i said gently, after we had stood some seconds by his chair, unremarked. he was staring fixedly at the distance of the sea. he looked amazingly older than when i had last talked with him. his figure was shrunken, and his face rose thin and white out of a heavy fur overcoat and a large blue muffler. in his eyes there was such a sadness, such an infinite regret, such a profound weariness as can only be seen in the eyes of the senile. he was utterly changed. 'lord francis,' i repeated, 'don't you know me?' he started slightly and looked at me, and a faint gleam appeared in his eyes. then he nodded, and took a thin, fragile alabaster hand out of the pocket of his overcoat. i shook it. it was like shaking hands with a dead, starved child. he carefully moved the skin and bone back into his pocket. 'are you pretty well?' i said. he nodded. then the faint gleam faded out of his eyes; his head fell a little, and he resumed his tragic contemplation of the sea. the fact of my presence had dropped like a pebble into the strange depths of that aged mind, and the waters of the ferocious egotism of senility had closed over it, and it was forgotten. his rapt and yet meaningless gaze frightened me. it was as if there was more desolation and disillusion in that gaze than i had previously imagined the whole earth to contain. useless for frank to rouse him for the second time. useless to explain ourselves. what was love to him, or the trivial conventions of a world which he was already quitting? we walked away. from the edge of the terrace i could see a number of boats pulling to and fro in the water. 'it's the pigeon-shooting,' frank explained. 'come to the railings and you'll be able to see.' i had already heard the sharp popping of rifles. i went to the railings, and saw a number of boxes arranged in a semicircle on a green, which was, as it were, suspended between the height of the terrace and the sea. suddenly one of the boxes collapsed with a rattle, and a bird flew out of the ruin of it. there were two reports of a gun; the bird, its curving flight cut short, fell fluttering to the grass; a dog trotted out from the direction of the gun unseen beneath us, and disappeared again with the mass of ruffled feathers in its mouth. then two men showed themselves, ran to the collapsed box, restored it, and put in it a fresh victim, and disappeared after the dog. i was horrified, but i could not remove my eyes from the green. another box fell flat, and another bird flew out; a gun sounded; the bird soared far away, wavered, and sank on to the surface of the sea, and the boats converged towards it in furious haste. so the game proceeded. i saw a dozen deaths on the green; a few birds fell into the sea, and one escaped, settling ultimately on the roof of the casino. 'so that is pigeon-shooting,' i said coldly, turning to frank. 'i suppose it goes on all day?' he nodded. 'it's just as cruel as plenty of other sports, and no more,' he said, as if apologizing for the entire male sex. 'i presume so,' i answered. 'but do you know, dear, if the idea once gets into my head that that is going on all day, i shan't be able to stop here. let us have tea somewhere.' not until dinner did i recover from the obsession of that continual slaughter and destruction of beautiful life. it seemed to me that the casino and its gorgeous gardens were veritably established on the mysterious arched hollow, within the high cliff, from which death shot out all day and every day. but i did recover perfectly. only now do i completely perceive how violent, how capricious and contradictory were my emotions in those unique and unforgettable hours. we dined late, because i had deprived myself of yvonne. already i was almost in a mind to send for her. the restaurant of the hotel was full, but we recognised no one as we walked through the room to our table. 'there is one advantage in travelling about with you,' said frank. 'what is it?' i asked. 'no matter where one is, one can always be sure of being with the most beautiful woman in the place.' i was content. i repaid him by being more than ever a man's woman. i knew that i was made for that. i understood why great sopranos have of their own accord given up even the stage on marriage. the career of literature seemed to me tedious and sordid in comparison with that of being a man's woman. in my rich black dress and my rings and bracelets i felt like an eastern empress; i felt that i could adequately reward homage with smiles, and love with fervid love. and i felt like a cat--idle, indolently graceful, voluptuously seeking warmth and caresses. i enveloped frank with soft glances, i dazed him with glances. he ordered a wine which he said was fit for gods, and the waiter brought it reverently and filled our glasses, with a ritual of precautions. later during the dinner frank asked me if i would prefer champagne. i said, 'no, of course not.' but he said, 'i think you would,' and ordered some. 'admit,' he said, 'that you prefer champagne.' 'well, of course,' i replied. but i drank very little champagne, lest i should be too happy. frank's wonderful face grew delicately flushed. the room resounded with discreet chatter, and the tinkle of glass and silver and porcelain. the upper part of it remained in shadow, but every table was a centre of rosy light, illuminating faces and jewels and napery. and in my sweet illusion i thought that every face had found the secret of joy, and that even the old had preserved it. pleasure reigned. pleasure was the sole goddess. and how satisfying then was the worship of her! life had no inconveniences, no dark spots, no pitfalls. the gratification of the senses, the appeasing of appetites that instantly renewed themselves--this was the business of the soul. and as the wine sank lower in the bottles, and we cooled our tongues with ices, and the room began to empty, expectation gleamed and glittered in our eyes. at last, except a group of men smoking and talking in a corner, we were the only diners left. 'shall we go?' frank said, putting a veil of cigarette smoke between us. i trembled. i was once more the young and timid girl. i could not speak. i nodded. in the hall was vicary, talking to the head-porter. he saw us and started. 'what! vicary!' i murmured, suddenly cooled. 'i want to speak to you,' said vicary. 'where can we go?' 'this way,' frank replied. we went to our sitting-room, silent and apprehensive. 'sit down,' said vicary, shutting the door and standing against it. he was wearing a tourist suit, with a gray overcoat, and his grizzled hair was tumbling over his hard, white face. 'what's the matter?' frank asked. 'anything wrong?' 'look here, you two,' said vicary, 'i don't want to discuss your position, and i'm the last person in this world to cast the first stone; but it falls to me to do it. i was coming down to nice to stay with my sisters, and i've come a little further. my sisters wired me they had seen you. i've been to mentone, and driven here from there. i hoped i should get here earlier than the newspapers, and i have done, it seems.' 'earlier than the newspapers?' frank repeated, standing up. 'try to keep calm,' vicary continued. 'your wife's body was found in the thames at seven o'clock last night. the doctors say it had been in the water for forty-eight hours. your servants thought she had gone to you. but doubtless some thoughtful person had told her that you two were wandering about europe together.' '_my wife_' cried frank. and the strange and terrible emphasis he put on the word 'wife' proved to me in the fraction of a second that in his heart i was not his wife. a fearful tragedy had swept away the structure of argument in favour of the rights of love which he had built over the original conventionality of his mind. poor fellow! he fell back into his chair and covered his eyes. 'i thank god my mother didn't live to see this!' he cried. and then he rushed to his bedroom and banged the door. 'my poor girl!' said vicary, approaching me. 'what can i--i'm awfully--' i waved him away. 'what's that?' he exclaimed, in a different voice, listening. i ran to the bedroom, and saw frank lifting a revolver. 'you've brought me to this, carlotta!' he shouted. i sprang towards him, but it was too late. part iii the victory i when i came out of the house, hurried and angrily flushing, i perceived clearly that my reluctance to break a habit and my desire for physical comfort, if not my attachment to the girl, had led me too far. i was conscious of humiliation. i despised myself. the fact was that i had quarrelled with yvonne--yvonne, who had been with me for eight years, yvonne who had remained sturdily faithful during my long exile. now the woman who quarrels with a maid is clumsy, and the woman who quarrels with a good maid is either a fool or in a nervous, hysterical condition, or both. possibly i was both. i had permitted yvonne too much liberty. i had spoilt her. she was fidelity itself, goodness itself; but her character had not borne the strain of realizing that she had acquired power over me, and that she had become necessary to me. so that morning we had differed violently; we had quarrelled as equals. the worst side of her had appeared suddenly, shockingly. and she had left me, demonstrating even as she banged the door that she was at least my mistress in altercation. all day i fought against the temptation to eat my pride, and ask her to return. it was a horrible, a deplorable, temptation. and towards evening, after seven hours of solitude in the hotel in the avenue de kleber, i yielded to it. i knew the address to which she had gone, and i took a cab and drove there, hating myself. i was received with excessive rudeness by a dirty and hag-like concierge, who, after refusing all information for some minutes, informed me at length that the young lady in question had quitted paris in company with a gentleman. the insolence of the concierge, my weakness and my failure, the bitter sense of lost dignity, the fact that yvonne had not hesitated even a few hours before finally abandoning me--all these things wounded me. but the sharpest stab of all was that during our stay in paris yvonne must have had secret relations with a man. i had hidden nothing from her; she, however, had not reciprocated my candour. i had imagined that she lived only for me.... well, the truth cannot be concealed that the years of wandering which had succeeded the fatal night at monte carlo had done little to improve me. what would you have? for months and months my ears rang with frank's despairing shout: '_you've_ brought me to this, carlotta!' and the profound injustice of that cry tainted even the sad sweetness of my immense sorrow. to this day, whenever i hear it, as i do still, my inmost soul protests, and all the excuses which my love found for him seem inadequate and unconvincing. i was a broken creature. (how few know what it means to be broken--to sink under a tremendous and overwhelming calamity! and yet who but they can understandingly sympathize with the afflicted?) as for my friends, i did not give them the occasion to desert me; i deserted them. for the second time in my career i tore myself up by the roots. i lived the nomad's life, in the usual european haunts of the nomad. and in five years i did not make a single new friend, scarcely an acquaintance. i lived in myself and on myself, nursing grief, nursing a rancour against fate, nursing an involuntary shame.... you know, the scandal of which i had been the centre was appalling; it touched the extreme. it must have nearly killed the excellent mrs. sardis. i did not dare to produce another novel. but after a year or so i turned to poetry, and i must admit that my poetry was accepted. but it was not enough to prevent me from withering--from shrivelling. i lost ground, and i was still losing it. i was becoming sinister, warped, peculiar, capricious, unaccountable. i guessed it then; i see it clearly now. the house of the odious concierge was in a small, shabby street off the boulevard du montparnasse. i looked in vain for a cab. even on the wide, straight, gas-lit boulevard there was not a cab, and i wondered why i had been so foolish as to dismiss the one in which i had arrived. the great, glittering electric cars floated horizontally along in swift succession, but they meant nothing to me; i knew not whence they came nor whither they went. i doubt if i had ever been in a tram-car. without a cab i was as helpless and as timid as a young girl, i who was thirty-one, and had travelled and lived and suffered! never had i been alone in the streets of a large city at night. and the september night was sultry and forbidding. i was afraid--i was afraid of the men who passed me, staring at me. one man spoke to me, and i literally shook with fear as i hastened on. what would i have given to have had the once faithful yvonne by my side! presently i came to the crossing of the boulevard raspail, and this boulevard, equally long, uncharitable, and mournful with the other, endless, stretching to infinity, filled me with horror. yes, with the horror of solitude in a vast city. oh, you solitary, you who have felt that horror descending upon you, desolating, clutching, and chilling the heart, you will comprehend me! at the corner, of the two boulevards was a glowing cafe, the cafã© du dome, with a row of chairs and little tables in front of its windows. and at one of these little tables sat a man, gazing absently at a green glass in a white saucer. i had almost gone past him when some instinct prompted me to the bravery of looking at him again. he was a stoutish man, apparently aged about forty-five, very fair, with a puffed face and melancholy eyes. and then it was as though someone had shot me in the breast. it was as if i must fall down and die--as if the sensations which i experienced were too acute--too elemental for me to support. i have never borne a child, but i imagine that the woman who becomes a mother may feel as i felt then, staggered at hitherto unsuspected possibilities of sensation. i stopped. i clung to the nearest table. there was ice on my shuddering spine, and a dew on my forehead. 'magda!' breathed the man. he had raised his eyes to mine. it was diaz, after ten years. at first i had not recognised him. instead of ten, he seemed twenty years older. i searched in his features for the man i had known, as the returned traveller searches the scene of his childhood for remembered landmarks. yes, it was diaz, though time had laid a heavy hand on him. the magic of his eyes was not effaced, and when he smiled youth reappeared. 'it is i,' i murmured. he got up, and in doing so shook the table, and his glass was overturned, and scattered itself in fragments on the asphalte. at the noise a waiter ran out of the cafe, and diaz, blushing and obviously making a great effort at self-control, gave him an order. 'i should have known you anywhere,' said diaz to me, taking my hand, as the waiter went. the ineptitude of the speech was such that i felt keenly sorry for him. i was not in the least hurt. my sympathy enveloped him. the position was so difficult, and he had seemed so pathetic, sitting there alone on the pavement of the vast nocturnal boulevard, so weighed down by sadness, that i wanted to comfort him and soothe him, and to restore him to all the brilliancy of his first period. it appeared to me unjust and cruel that the wheels of life should have crushed him too. and so i said, smiling as well as i could: 'and i you.' 'won't you sit down here?' he suggested, avoiding my eyes. and thus i found myself seated outside a cafe, at night, conspicuous for all montparnasse to see. we never know what may lie in store for us at the next turning of existence. 'then i am not much changed, you think?' he ventured, in an anxious tone. 'no,' i lied. 'you are perhaps a little stouter. that's all.' how hard it was to talk! how lamentably self-conscious we were! how unequal to the situation! we did not know what to say. 'you are far more beautiful than ever you were,' he said, looking at me for an instant. 'you are a woman; you were a girl--then.' the waiter brought another glass and saucer, and a second waiter followed him with a bottle, from which he poured a greenish-yellow liquid into the glass. 'what will you have?' diaz asked me. 'nothing, thank you,' i said quickly. to sit outside the cafe was already much. it would have been impossible for me to drink there. 'ah! as you please, as you please,' diaz snapped. 'i beg your pardon.' 'poor fellow!' i reflected. 'he must be suffering from nervous irritability.' and aloud, 'i'm not thirsty, thank you,' as nicely as possible. he smiled beautifully; the irritability had passed. 'it's awfully kind of you to sit down here with me,' he said, in a lower voice. 'i suppose you've heard about me?' he drank half the contents of the glass. 'i read in the papers some years ago that you were suffering from neurasthenia and nervous breakdown,' i replied. 'i was very sorry.' 'yes,' he said; 'nervous breakdown--nervous breakdown.' 'you haven't been playing lately, have you?' 'it is more than two years since i played. and if you had heard me that time! my god!' 'but surely you have tried some cure?' 'cure!' he repeated after me. 'there's no cure. here i am! me!' his glass was empty. he tapped on the window behind us, and the procession of waiters occurred again, and diaz received a third glass, which now stood on three saucers. 'you'll excuse me,' he said, sipping slowly. 'i'm not very well to-night. and you've--why did you run away from me? i wanted to find you, but i couldn't.' 'please do not let us talk about that,' i stopped him. 'i--i must go.' 'oh, of course, if i've offended you--' 'no,' i said; 'i'm not at all offended. but i think--' 'then, if you aren't offended, stop a little, and let me see you home. you're sure you won't have anything?' i shook my head, wishing that he would not drink so much. i thought it could not be good for his nerves. 'been in paris long?' he asked me, with a slightly confused utterance. 'staying in this quarter? many english and americans here.' then, in setting down the glass, he upset it, and it smashed on the pavement like the first one. 'damn!' he exclaimed, staring forlornly at the broken glass, as if in the presence of some irreparable misfortune. and before i could put in a word, he turned to me with a silly smile, and approaching his face to mine till his hat touched the brim of my hat, he said thickly: 'after all, you know, i'm the greatish pianist in the world.' the truth struck me like a blow. in my amazing ignorance of certain aspects of life i had not suspected it. diaz was drunk. the ignominy of it! the tragedy of it! he was drunk. he had fallen to the beast. i drew back from that hot, reeking face. 'you don't think i am?' he muttered. 'you think young what's-his-name can play ch--chopin better than me? is that it?' i wanted to run away, to cease to exist, to hide with my shame in some deep abyss. and there i was on the boulevard, next to this animal, sharing his table and the degradation! and i could not move. there are people so gifted that in a dilemma they always know exactly the wisest course to adopt. but i did not know. this part of my story gives me infinite pain to write, and yet i must write it, though i cannot persuade myself to write it in full; the details would be too repulsive. nevertheless, forget not that i lived it. he put his face to mine again, and began to stammer something, and i drew away. 'you are ashamed of me, madam,' he said sharply. 'i think you are not quite yourself--not quite well,' i replied. 'you mean i am drunk.' 'i mean what i say. you are not quite well. please do not twist my words.' 'you mean i am drunk,' he insisted, raising his voice. 'i am not drunk; i have never been drunk. that i can swear with my hand on my heart. but you are ashamed of being seen with me.' 'i think you ought to go home,' i suggested. 'that is only to get rid of me!' he cried. 'no, no,' i appealed to him persuasively. 'do not wound me. i will go with you as far as your house, if you like. you are too ill to be alone.' at that moment an empty open cab strolled by, and, without pausing for his answer, i signalled the driver. my heart beat wildly. my spirit was in an uproar. but i was determined not to desert him, not to abandon him to a public disgrace. i rose from my seat. 'you're very good,' he said, in a new voice. the cab had stopped. 'come!' i entreated him. he rapped uncertainly on the window, and then, as the waiter did not immediately appear, he threw some silver on the table, and aimed himself in the direction of the cab. i got in. diaz slipped on the step. 'i've forgotten somethin',' he complained. 'what is it? my umbrella--yes, my umbrella--_pã©pin_ as they say here. 'scuse me moment.' his umbrella was, in fact, lying under a chair. he stooped with difficulty and regained it, and then the waiter, who had at length arrived, helped him into the cab, and he sank like a mass of inert clay on my skirts. 'tell the driver the address,' i whispered. the driver, with head turned and a grin on his face, was waiting. 'rue de douai,' said diaz sullenly. 'what number?' the driver asked. 'does that regard you?' diaz retorted crossly in french. 'i will tell you later.' 'tell him now,' i pleaded. 'well, to oblige you, i will. twenty-seven. but what i can't stand is the impudence of these fellows.' the driver winked at me. 'just so,' i soothed diaz, and we drove off. i have never been happier than in unhappiness. happiness is not joy, and it is not tranquillity. it is something deeper and something more disturbing. perhaps it is an acute sense of life, a realization of one's secret being, a continual renewal of the mysterious savour of existence. as i crossed paris with the drunken diaz leaning clumsily against my shoulder, i was profoundly unhappy. i was desolated by the sight of this ruin, and yet i was happier than i had been since frank died. i had glimpses and intimations of the baffling essence of our human lives here, strange, fleeting comprehensions of the eternal wonder and the eternal beauty.... in vain, professional writer as i am, do i try to express myself. what i want to say cannot be said; but those who have truly lived will understand. we passed over the seine, lighted and asleep in the exquisite parisian night, and the rattling of the cab on the cobble-stones roused diaz from his stupor. 'where are we?' he asked. 'just going through the louvre,' i replied. 'i don't know how i got to the other s-side of the river,' he said. 'don't remember. so you're coming home with me, eh? you aren't 'shamed of me?' 'you are hurting me,' i said coldly, 'with your elbow.' 'oh, a thousand pardons! a thous' parnds, magda! that isn't your real name, is it?' he sat upright and turned his face to glance at mine with a fatuous smile; but i would not look at him. i kept my eyes straight in front. then a swerve of the carriage swung his body away from me, and he subsided into the corner. the intoxication was gaining on him every minute. 'what shall i do with him?' i thought. i blushed as we drove up the avenue de l'opera and across the grand boulevard, for it seemed to me that all the gay loungers must observe diaz' condition. we followed darker thoroughfares, and at last the cab, after climbing a hill, stopped before a house in a street that appeared rather untidy and irregular. i got out first, and diaz stumbled after me, while two women on the opposite side of the road stayed curiously to watch us. hastily i opened my purse and gave the driver a five-franc-piece, and he departed before diaz could decide what to say. i had told him to go. i did not wish to tell the driver to go. i told him in spite of myself. diaz, grumbling inarticulately, pulled the bell of the great door of the house. but he had to ring several times before finally the door opened; and each second was a year for me, waiting there with him in the street. and when the door opened he was leaning against it, and so pitched forward into the gloom of the archway. a laugh--the loud, unrestrained laugh of the courtesan--came from across the street. the archway was as black as night. 'shut the door, will you?' i heard diaz' voice. 'i can't see it. where are you?' but i was not going to shut the door. 'have you got a servant here?' i asked him. 'she comes in the mornings,' he replied. 'then there is no one in your flat?' 'not a shoul,' said diaz. 'needn't be 'fraid.' i'm not afraid,' i said. 'but i wanted to know. which floor is it?' 'third. i'll light a match.' then i pushed to the door, whose automatic latch clicked. we were fast in the courtyard. diaz dropped his matches in attempting to strike one. the metal box bounced on the tiles. i bent down and groped with both hands till i found it. and presently we began painfully to ascend the staircase, diaz holding his umbrella and the rail, and i striking matches from time to time. we were on the second landing when i heard the bell ring again, and the banging of the front-door, and then voices at the foot of the staircase. i trembled lest we should be over-taken, and i would have hurried diaz on, but he would not be hurried. happily, as we were halfway between the second and third story, the man and the girl whose voices i heard stopped at the second. i caught sight of them momentarily through the banisters. the man was striking matches as i had been. '_c'est ici_,' the girl whispered. she was dressed in blue with a very large hat. she put a key in the door when they had stopped, and then our matches went out simultaneously. the door shut, and diaz and i were alone on the staircase again. i struck another match; we struggled on. when i had taken his key from diaz' helpless hand, and opened his door and guided him within, and closed the door definitely upon the outer world, i breathed a great sigh. every turn of the stair had been a station of the cross for me. we were now in utter darkness. the classical effluvium of inebriety mingled with the classical odour of the furnished lodging. but i cared not. i had at last successfully hidden his shame. no one could witness it now but me. so i was glad. neither of us said anything as, still with the aid of matches, i penetrated into the flat. silently i peered about until i perceived a pair of candles, which i lighted. diaz, with his hat on his head and his umbrella clasped tightly in his hand, fell into a chair. we glanced at each other. 'you had better go to bed,' i suggested. 'take your hat off. you will feel better without it.' he did not move, and i approached him and gently took his hat. i then touched the umbrella. 'no, no, no!' he cried suddenly; 'i'm always losing this umbrella, and i won't let it out of my sight.' 'as you wish,' i replied coldly. i was standing by him when he got up with a surprising lurch and put a hand on my shoulder. he evidently meant to kiss me. i kept him at arm's length, feeling a sort of icy anger. 'go to bed,' i repeated fiercely. 'it is the only place for you.' he made inarticulate noises in his throat, and ultimately achieved the remark: 'you're very hard, magda.' then he bent himself towards the next room. 'you will want a candle,' i said, with bitterness. 'no; i will carry it. let me go first.' i preceded him through a tiny salon into the bedroom, and, leaving him there with one candle, came back into the first room. the whole place was deplorable, though not more deplorable than i had expected from the look of the street and the house and the stairs and the girl with the large hat. it was small, badly arranged, disordered, ugly, bare, comfortless, and, if not very dirty, certainly not clean; not a home, but a kennel--a kennel furnished with chairs and spotted mirrors and spotted engravings and a small upright piano; a kennel whose sides were covered with enormous red poppies, and on whose floor was something which had once been a carpet; a kennel fitted with windows and curtains; a kennel with actually a bed! it was the ready-made human kennel of commerce, which every large city supplies wholesale in tens of thousands to its victims. in that street there were hundreds such; in the house alone there were probably a score at least. their sole virtue was their privacy. ah the blessedness of the sacred outer door, which not even the tyrant concierge might violate! i thought of all the other interiors of the house, floor above floor, and serried one against another--vile, mean, squalid, cramped, unlovely, frowsy, fetid; but each lighted and intensely alive with the interplay of hearts; each cloistered, a secure ground where the instincts that move the world might show themselves naturally and in secret. there was something tragically beautiful in that. i had heard uncomfortable sounds from the bedroom. then diaz called out: 'it's no use. can't do it. can't get into bed.' i went directly to him. he sat on the bed, still clasping the umbrella, one arm out of his coat. his gloomy and discouraged face was the face of a man who retires baffled from some tremendously complicated problem. 'put down your umbrella,' i said. 'don't be foolish.' 'i'm not foolish,' he retorted irritably. 'don't want to loosh thish umbrella again.' 'well then,' i said, 'hold it in the other hand, and i will help you.' this struck him as a marvellous idea, one of those discoveries that revolutionize science, and he instantly obeyed. he was now very drunk. he was nauseating. the conventions which society has built up in fifty centuries ceased suddenly to exist. it was impossible that they should exist--there in that cabin, where we were alone together, screened, shut in. i lost even the sense of convention. i was no longer disgusted. everything that was seemed natural, ordinary, normal. i became his mother. i became his hospital nurse. and at length he lay in bed, clutching the umbrella to his breast. nothing had induced him to loose it from both hands at once. the priceless value of the umbrella was the one clearly-defined notion that illuminated his poor devastated brain. i left him to his inanimate companion. ii i should have left then, though i had a wish not to leave. but i was prevented from going by the fear of descending those sinister stairs alone, and the necessity of calling aloud to the concierge in order to get out through the main door, and the possible difficulties in finding a cab in that region at that hour. i knew that i could not have borne to walk even to the end of the street unprotected. so i stayed where i was, seated in a chair near the window of the larger room, saturating myself in the vague and heavy flood of sadness that enwraps the fretful, passionate city in the night--the night when the commonest noises seem to carry some mystic message to the listening soul, the night when truth walks abroad naked and whispers her secrets. a gas-lamp threw its radiance on the ceiling in bars through the slits of the window-shutters, and then, far in the middle wilderness of the night, the lamp was extinguished by a careful municipality, and i was left in utter darkness. long since the candles had burnt away. i grew silly and sentimental, and pictured the city in feverish sleep, gaining with difficulty inadequate strength for the morrow--as if the city had not been living this life for centuries and did not know exactly what it was about! and then, sure as i had been that i could not sleep, i woke up, and i could see the outline of the piano. dawn had begun. and not a sound disturbed the street, and not a sound came from diaz' bedroom. as of old, he slept with the tranquillity of a child. and after a time i could see the dust on the piano and on the polished floor under the table. the night had passed, and it appeared to be almost a miracle that the night had passed, and that i had lived through it and was much the same carlotta still. i gently opened the window and pushed back the shutters. a young woman, tall, with a superb bust, clothed in blue, was sweeping the footpath in long, dignified strokes of a broom. she went slowly from my ken. nothing could have been more prosaic, more sane, more astringent. and yet only a few hours--and it had been night, strange, voluptuous night! and even now a thousand thousand pillows were warm and crushed under their burden of unconscious dreaming souls. but that tall woman must go to bed in day, and rise to meet the first wind of the morning, and perhaps never have known the sweet poison of the night. i sank back into my chair.... there was a sharp, decisive sound of a key in the lock of the entrance-door. i jumped up, fully awake, with beating heart and blushing face. someone was invading the flat. someone would catch me there. of course it was his servant. i had entirely forgotten her. we met in the little passage. she was a stout creature and appeared to fill the flat. she did not seem very surprised at the sight of me, and she eyed me with the frigid disdain of one who conforms to a certain code for one who does not conform to it. she sat in judgment on my well-hung skirt and the rings on my fingers and the wickedness in my breast, and condemned me to everlasting obloquy. 'madame is going?' she asked coldly, holding open the door. 'no, madame,' i said. 'are you the _femme de mã©nage_ of monsieur?' 'yes, madame.' 'monsieur is ill,' i said, deciding swiftly what to do. 'he does not wish to be disturbed. he would like you to return at two o'clock.' long before two i should have departed. 'monsieur knows well that i have another _mã©nage_ from twelve to two,' protested the woman. 'three o'clock, then,' i said. _bien_, madame,' said she, and, producing the contents of a reticule: 'here are the bread, the butter, the milk, and the newspaper, madame.' 'thank you, madame.' i took the things, and she left, and i shut the door and bolted it. in anticipation, the circumstances of such an encounter would have caused me infinite trouble of spirit. 'but after all it was not so very dreadful,' i thought, as i fastened the door. 'do i care for his _femme de mã©nage_?' the great door of the house would be open now, and the stairs no longer affrighting, and i might slip unobserved away. but i could not bring myself to leave until i had spoken with diaz, and i would not wake him. it was nearly noon when he stirred. i heard his movements, and a slight moaning sigh, and he called me. 'are you there, magda?' how feeble and appealing his voice! for answer i stepped into his bedroom. the eye that has learned to look life full in the face without a quiver of the lid should find nothing repulsive. everything that is is the ordered and calculable result of environment. nothing can be abhorrent, nothing blameworthy, nothing contrary to nature. can we exceed nature? in the presence of the primeval and ever-continuing forces of nature, can we maintain our fantastic conceptions of sin and of justice? we are, and that is all we should dare to say. and yet, when i saw diaz stretched on that wretched bed my first movement was one of physical disgust. he had not shaved for several days. his hair was like a doormat. his face was unclean and puffed; his lips full and cracked; his eyes all discoloured. if aught can be vile, he was vile. if aught can be obscene, he was obscene. his limbs twitched; his features were full of woe and desolation and abasement. he looked at me heavily, mournfully. 'diaz, diaz!' said my soul. 'have you come to this?' a great and overmastering pity seized me, and i went to him, and laid my hand gently on his. he was so nervous and tremulous that he drew away his hand as if i had burnt it. 'oh, magda,' he murmured, 'my head! there was a piece of hot brick in my mouth, and i tried to take it out. but it was my tongue. can i have some tea? will you give me some cold water first?' strange that the frank and simple way in which he accepted my presence there, and assumed my willingness to serve him, filled me with a new joy! he said nothing of the night. i think that diaz was one of the few men who are strong enough never to regret the past. if he was melancholy, it was merely because he suffered bodily in the present. i gave him water, and he thanked me. 'now i will make some tea,' i said. and i went into the tiny kitchen and looked around, lifting my skirts. 'can you find the things?' he called out. 'yes,' i said. 'what's all that splashing?' he inquired. 'i'm washing a saucepan,' i said. 'i never have my meals here,' he called. 'only tea. there are two taps to the gas-stove--one a little way up the chimney.' yes, i was joyous, actively so. i brought the tea to the bedroom with a glad smile. i had put two cups on the tray, which i placed on the night-table; and there were some biscuits. i sat at the foot of the bed while we drank. and the umbrella, unperceived by diaz, lay with its handle on a pillow, ludicrous and yet accusing. 'you are an angel,' said diaz. 'don't call me that,' i protested. 'why not?' 'because i wish it,' i said. 'angel' was ispenlove's word. 'then, what shall i call you?' 'my name is carlotta peel,' i said. 'not magdalen at all.' it was astounding, incredible, that he should be learning my name then for the first time. 'i shall always call you magda,' he responded. 'and now i must go,' i stated, when i had explained to him about the servant. 'but you'll come back?' he cried. no question of his coming to me! i must come to him! 'to a place like this?' i demanded. unthinkingly i put into my voice some of the distaste i felt for his deplorable apartments, and he was genuinely hurt. i believe that in all honesty he deemed his apartments to be quite adequate and befitting. his sensibilities had been so dulled. he threw up his head. 'of course,' he said, 'if you--' 'no, no!' i stopped him quickly. 'i will come here. i was only teasing you. let me see. i'll come back at four, just to see how you are. won't you get up in the meantime?' he smiled, placated. 'i may do,' he said. 'i'll try to. but in case i don't, will you take my key? where did you put it last night?' 'i have it,' i said. he summoned me to him just as i was opening the door. 'magda!' 'what is it?' i returned. 'you are magnificent,' he replied, with charming, impulsive eagerness, his eyes resting upon me long. he was the old diaz again. 'i can't thank you. but when you come back i shall play to you.' i smiled. 'till four o'clock,' i said. 'magda,' he called again, just as i was leaving, 'bring one of your books with you, will you?' i hesitated, with my hand on the door. when i gave him my name he had made no sign that it conveyed to him anything out of the ordinary. that was exactly like diaz. 'have you read any of them?' i asked loudly, without moving from the door. 'no,' he answered. 'but i have heard of them.' 'really!' i said, keeping my tone free from irony. 'well, i will not bring you one of my books.' 'why not?' i looked hard at the door in front of me. 'for you i will be nothing but a woman,' i said. and i fled down the stairs and past the concierge swiftly into the street, as anxious as a thief to escape notice. i got a fiacre at once, and drove away. i would not analyze my heart. i could not. i could but savour the joy, sweet and fresh, that welled up in it as from some secret source. i was so excited that i observed nothing outside myself, and when the cab stopped in front of my hotel, it seemed to me that the journey had occupied scarcely a few seconds. do you imagine i was saddened by the painful spectacle of diaz' collapse in life? no! i only knew that he needed sympathy, and that i could give it to him with both hands. i could give, give! and the last thing that the egotist in me told me before it expired was that i was worthy to give. my longing to assuage the lot of diaz became almost an anguish. iii i returned at about half-past five, bright and eager, with vague anticipations. i seemed to have become used to the house. it no longer offended me, and i had no shame in entering it. i put the key into the door of diaz' flat with a clear, high sense of pleasure. he had entrusted me with his key; i could go in as i pleased; i need have no fear of inconveniencing him, of coming at the wrong moment. it seemed wonderful! and as i turned the key and pushed open the door my sole wish was to be of service to him, to comfort him, to render his life less forlorn. 'here i am!' i cried, shutting the door. there was no answer. in the smaller of the two tiny sitting-rooms the piano, which had been closed, was open, and i saw that it was a pleyel. but both rooms were empty. 'are you still in bed, then?' i said. there was still no answer. i went cautiously into the bedroom. it, too, was empty. the bed was made, and the flat generally had a superficial air of tidiness. evidently the charwoman had been and departed; and doubtless diaz had gone out, to return immediately. i sat down in the chair in which i had spent most of the night. i took off my hat and put it by the side of a tiny satchel which i had brought, and began to wait for him. how delicious it would be to open the door to him! he would notice that i had taken off my hat, and he would be glad. what did the future, the immediate future, hold for me? a long time i waited, and then i yawned heavily, and remembered that for several days i had had scarcely any sleep. i shut my eyes to relieve the tedium of waiting. when i reopened them, dazed, and startled into sudden activity by mysterious angry noises, it was quite dark. i tried to recall where i was, and to decide what the noises could be. i regained my faculties with an effort. the noises were a beating on the door. 'it is diaz,' i said to myself; 'and he can't get in!' and i felt very guilty because i had slept. i must have slept for hours. groping for a candle, i lighted it. 'coming! coming!' i called in a loud voice. and i went into the passage with the candle and opened the door. it was diaz. the gas was lighted on the stairs. between that and my candle he stood conspicuous in all his details. swaying somewhat, he supported himself by the balustrade, and was thus distant about two feet from the door. he was drunk--viciously drunk; and in an instant i knew the cruel truth concerning him, and wondered that i had not perceived it before. he was a drunkard--simply that. he had not taken to drinking as a consequence of nervous breakdown. nervous breakdown was a euphemism for the result of alcoholic excess. i saw his slow descent as in a vision, and everything was explained. my heart leapt. 'i can save him,' i said to myself. 'i can restore him.' i was aware of the extreme difficulty of curing a drunkard, of the immense proportion of failures. but, i thought, if a woman such as i cannot by the lavishing of her whole soul and body deliver from no matter what fiend a man such as diaz, then the world has changed, and the eternal aphrodite is dead. 'i can save him!' i repeated. oh, heavenly moment! 'aren't you coming in?' i addressed him quietly. 'i've been waiting for you.' 'have you?' he angrily replied. 'i waited long enough for you.' 'well,' i said, 'come in.' 'who is it?' he demanded. 'i inzizt--who is it?' 'it's i,' i answered; 'magda.' 'that's no' wha' i mean,' he went on. 'and wha's more--you know it. who is it addrezzes you, madame?' 'why,' i humoured him, 'it's you, of course--diaz.' there was the sound of a door opening on one of the lower storeys, and i hoped i had pacified him, and that he would enter; but i was mistaken. he stamped his foot furiously on the landing. 'diaz!' he protested, shouting. 'who dares call me diaz? wha's my full name?' 'emilio diaz,' i murmured meekly. 'that's better,' he grumbled. 'what am i?' i hesitated. 'wha' am i?' he roared; and his voice went up and down the echoing staircase. 'i won't put foot ev'n on doormat till i'm told wha' i am here.' 'you are the--the master,' i said. 'but do come in.' 'the mas'r! mas'r of wha'?' 'master of the pianoforte,' i answered at once. he smiled, suddenly appeased, and put his foot unsteadily on the doormat. 'good!' he said. 'but, un'stan', i wouldn't ev'n have pu' foot on doormat--no, not ev'n on doormat--' and he came in, and i shut the door, and i was alone with my wild beast. 'kiss me,' he commanded. i kissed him on the mouth. 'you don't put your arms roun' me,' he growled. so i deposited the candle on the floor, and put my arms round his neck, standing on tip-toe, and kissed him again. he went past me, staggering and growling, into the sitting-room at the end of the passage, and furiously banged down the lid of the piano, so that every cord in it jangled deafeningly. 'light the lamp,' he called out. 'in one second,' i said. i locked the outer door on the inside, slipped the key into my pocket, and picked up the candle. 'what were you doing out there?' he demanded. 'nothing,' i said. 'i had to pick the candle up.' he seized my hat from the table and threw it to the floor. then he sat down. 'nex' time,' he remarked, 'you'll know better'n to keep me waiting.' i lighted a lamp. 'i'm very sorry,' i said. 'won't you go to bed?' 'i shall go to bed when i want,' he answered. 'i'm thirsty. in the cupboard you'll see a bottle. i'll trouble you to give it me, with a glass and some water.' 'this cupboard?' i said questioningly, opening a cupboard papered to match the rest of the wall. 'yes.' 'but surely you can't be thirsty, diaz?' i protested. 'must i repea' wha' i said?' he glared at me. 'i'm thirsty. give me the bottle.' i took out the bottle nearest to hand. it was of a dark green colour, and labelled 'extrait d'absinthe. pernod fils.' 'not this one, diaz?' 'yes,' he insisted. 'give it me. and get a glass and some water.' 'no,' i said firmly. 'wha'? you won't give it me?' 'no.' he jumped up recklessly and faced me. his hat fell off the back of his head. 'give me that bottle!' his breath poisoned the room. i retreated in the direction of the window, and put my hand on the knob. 'no,' i said. he sprang at me, but not before i had opened the window and thrown out the bottle. i heard it fall in the roadway with a crash and scattering of glass. happily it had harmed no one. diaz was momentarily checked. he hesitated. i eyed him as steadily as i could, closing the while the window behind me with my right hand. 'he may try to kill me,' i thought. my heart was thudding against my dress, not from fear, but from excitement. my situation seemed impossible to me, utterly passing belief. yesterday i had been a staid spinster, attended by a maid, in a hotel of impeccable propriety. today i had locked myself up alone with a riotous drunkard in a vile flat in a notorious parisian street. was i mad? what force, secret and powerful, had urged me on?... and there was the foul drunkard, with clenched hands and fiery eyes, undecided whether or not to murder me. and i waited. he moved away, inarticulately grumbling, and resumed with difficulty his hat. 'ver' well,' he hiccupped morosely, 'ver' well; i'm going. tha's all.' he lurched into the passage, and then i heard him fumbling a long time with the outer door. he left the door and went into his bedroom, and finally returned to me. he held one hand behind his back. i had sunk into a chair by the small table on which the lamp stood, with my satchel beside it. 'now!' he said, halting in front of me. 'you've locked tha' door. i can't go out.' 'yes,' i admitted. 'give me the key.' i shook my head. 'give me the key,' he cried. 'i mus' have the key.' i shook my head. then he showed his right hand, and it held a revolver. he bent slightly over the table, staring down at me as i stared up at him. but as his chin felt the heat rising from the chimney of the lamp, he shifted a little to one side. i might have rushed for shelter into some other room; i might have grappled with him; i might have attempted to soothe him. but i could neither stir nor speak. least of all, could i give him the key--for him to go and publish his own disgrace in the thoroughfares. so i just gazed at him, inactive. 'i s'll kill you!' he muttered, and raised the revolver. my throat became suddenly dry. i tried to make the motion of swallowing, and could not. and looking at the revolver, i perceived in a swift revelation the vast folly of my inexperience. since he was already drunk, why had i not allowed him to drink more, to drink himself into a stupor? drunkards can only be cured when they are sober. to commence a course of moral treatment at such a moment as i had chosen was indeed the act of a woman. however, it was too late to reclaim the bottle from the street. i saw that he meant to kill me. and i knew that previously, during our encounter at the window, i had only pretended to myself that i thought there was a risk of his killing me. i had pretended, in order to increase the glory of my martyrdom in my own sight. moreover, my brain, which was working with singular clearness, told me that for his sake i ought to give up the key. his exposure as a helpless drunkard would be infinitely preferable to his exposure as a murderer. yet i could not persuade myself to relinquish the key. if i did so, he would imagine that he had frightened me. but i had no fear, and i could not bear that he should think i had. he fired. my ears sang. the room was full of a new odour, and a cloud floated reluctantly upwards from the mouth of the revolver. i sneezed, and then i grew aware that, firing at a distant of two feet, he had missed me. what had happened to the bullet i could not guess. he put the revolver down on the table with a groan, and the handle rested on my satchel. 'my god, magda!' he sighed, pushing back his hair with his beautiful hand. he was somewhat sobered. i said nothing, but i observed that the lamp was smoking, and i turned down the wick. i was so self-conscious, so irresolute, so nonplussed, that in sheer awkwardness, like a girl at a party who does not know what to do with her hands, i pushed the revolver off the satchel, and idly unfastened the catch of the satchel. within it, among other things, was my sedative. i, too, had fallen the victim of a habit. for five years a bad sleeper, i had latterly developed into a very bad sleeper, and my sedative was accordingly strong. a notion struck me. 'drink a little of this, my poor diaz!' i murmured. 'what is it?' he asked. 'it will make you sleep,' i said. with a convulsive movement he clutched the bottle and uncorked it, and before i could interfere he had drunk nearly the whole of its contents. 'stop!' i cried. 'you will kill yourself!' 'what matter!' he exclaimed; and staggered off to the darkness of the bedroom. i followed him with the lamp, but he had already fallen on the bed, and seemed to be heavily asleep. i shook him; he made no response. 'at any cost he must he roused,' i said aloud. 'he must be forced to walk.' there was a knocking at the outer door, low, discreet, and continuous. it sounded to me like a deliverance. whoever might be there must aid me to waken diaz. i ran to the door, taking the key out of my pocket, and opened it. a tall woman stood on the doormat. it was the girl that i had glimpsed on the previous night in the large hat ascending the stairs with a man. but now her bright golden head was uncovered, and she wore a blue _peignoir_, such as is sold ready made, with its lace and its ribbons, at all the big paris shops. we both hesitated. 'oh, pardon, madame,' she said, in a thin, sweet voice in french. 'i was at my door, and it seemed to me that i heard--a revolver. nothing serious has passed, then? pardon, madame.' 'nothing, thank you. you are very amiable, madame,' i replied stiffly. 'all my excuses, madame,' said she, turning away. 'no, no!' i exclaimed. 'i am wrong. do not go. someone is ill--very ill. if you would--' she entered. 'where? what is it?' she inquired. 'he is in the bedroom--here.' we both spoke breathlessly, hurrying to the bedroom, after i had fetched the lamp. 'wounded? he has done himself harm? ah!' 'no,' i said, 'not that.' and i explained to her that diaz had taken at least six doses of my strong solution of trional. i seized the lamp and held it aloft over the form of the sleeper, which lay on its side cross-wise, the feet projecting a little over the edge of the bed, the head bent forward and missing the pillow, the arms stretched out in front--the very figure of abandoned and perfect unconsciousness. and the girl and i stared at diaz, our shoulders touching, in the kennel. 'he must be made to walk about,' i said. 'you would be extremely kind to help me.' 'no, madame,' she replied. 'he will be very well like that. when one is alcoholic, one cannot poison one's self; it is impossible. all the doctors will tell you as much. your friend will sleep for twenty hours--twenty-four hours--and he will waken himself quite re-established.' 'you are sure? you know?' 'i know, madame. be tranquil. leave him. he could not have done better. it is perfect.' 'perhaps i should fetch a doctor?' i suggested. 'it is not worth the pain,' she said, with conviction. 'you would have vexations uselessly. leave him.' i gazed at her, studying her, and i was satisfied. with her fluffly locks, and her simple eyes, and her fragile face, and her long hands, she had, nevertheless, the air of knowing profoundly her subject. she was a great expert on males and all that appertained to them, especially their vices. i was the callow amateur. i was compelled to listen with respect to this professor in the professor's garb. i was impressed, in spite of myself. 'one might arrange him more comfortably,' she said. and we lifted the senseless victim, and put him on his back, and straightened his limbs, as though he had been a corpse. 'how handsome he is!' murmured my visitor, half closing her eyes. 'you think so?' i said politely, as if she had been praising one of my private possessions. 'oh yes. we are neighbours, madame. i have frequently remarked him, you understand, on the stairs, in the street.' 'has he been here long?' i asked. 'about a year, madame. you have, perhaps, not seen him since a long time. an old friend?' 'it is ten years ago,' i replied. 'ah! ten years! in england, without doubt?' 'in england, yes.' 'ten years!' she repeated, musing. 'i am certain she has a kind heart,' i said to myself, and i decided to question her: 'will you not sit down, madame?' i invited her. 'ah, madame! it is you who should sit down,' she said quickly. 'you must have suffered.' we both sat down. there were only two chairs in the room. 'i would like to ask you,' i said, leaning forward towards her, 'have you ever seen him--drunk--before?' 'no,' she replied instantly; 'never before yesterday evening.' 'be frank,' i urged her, smiling sadly. 'why should i not be frank, madame?' she said, with a grave, gentle appeal. it was as if she had said: 'we are talking woman to woman. i know one of your secrets. you can guess mine. the male is present, but he is deaf. what reason, therefore, for deceit?' 'i am much obliged to you,' i breathed. 'not at all,' she said. 'decidedly he is alcoholic--that sees itself,' she proceeded. 'but drunk--no!... he was always alone.' 'always alone?' 'always.' her eyes filled. i thought i had never seen a creature more gentle, delicate, yielding, acquiescent, and fair. she was not beautiful, but she had grace and distinction of movement. she was a parisienne. she had won my sympathy. we met in a moment when my heart needed the companionship of a woman's heart, and i was drawn to her by one of those sudden impulses that sometimes draw women to each other. i cared not what she was. moreover, she had excited my curiosity. she was a novelty in my life. she was something that i had heard of, and seen--yes, and perhaps envied in secret, but never spoken with. and she shattered all my preconceptions about her. 'you are an old tenant of this house?' i ventured. 'yes,' she said; 'it suits me. but the great heats are terrible here.' 'you do not leave paris, then?' 'never. except to see my little boy.' i started, envious of her, and also surprised. it seemed strange that this ribboned and elegant and plastic creature, whose long, thin arms were used only to dalliance, should be a mother. 'so you have a little boy?' 'yes; he lives with my parents at meudon. he is four years old. 'excuse me,' i said. 'be frank with me once again. do you love your child, honestly? so many women don't, it appears.' 'do i love him?' she cried, and her face glowed with her love. 'i adore him!' her sincerity was touching and overwhelming. 'and he loves me, too. if he is naughty, one has only to tell him that he will make his _petite mã¨re_ ill, and he will be good at once. when he is told to obey his grandfather, because his grandfather provides his food, he says bravely: "no, not grandpapa; it is _petite mã¨re_!" is it not strange he should know that i pay for him? he has a little engraving of the queen of italy, and he says it is his _petite mã¨re_. among the scores of pictures he has he keeps only that one. he takes it to bed with him. it is impossible to deprive him of it.' she smiled divinely. 'how beautiful!' i said. 'and you go to see him often?' 'as often as i have time. i take him out for walks. i run with him till we reach the woods, where i can have him to myself alone. i never stop; i avoid people. no one except my parents knows that he is my child. one supposes he is a nurse-child, received by my parents. but all the world will know now,' she added, after a pause. 'last monday i went to meudon with my friend alice, and alice wanted to buy him some sweets at the grocer's. in the shop i asked him if he would like _dragã©es_, and he said "yes." the grocer said to him, "yes who, young man?" "yes, _petite mã¨re_," he said, very loudly and bravely. the grocer understood. we all lowered our heads.' there was something so affecting in the way she half whispered the last phrase, that i could have wept; and yet it was comical, too, and she appreciated that. 'you have no child, madame?' she asked me. 'no,' i said. 'how i envy you!' 'you need not,' she observed, with a touch of hardness. 'i have been so unhappy, that i can never be as unhappy again. nothing matters now. all i wish is to save enough money to be able to live quietly in a little cottage in the country.' 'with your child,' i put in. 'my child will grow up and leave me. he will become a man, and he will forget his _petite mã¨re.'_ 'do not talk like that,' i protested. she glanced at me almost savagely. i was astonished at the sudden change in her face. 'why not?' she inquired coldly. 'is it not true, then? do you still believe that there is any difference between one man and another? they are all alike--all, all, all! i know. and it is we who suffer, we others.' 'but surely you have some tender souvenir of your child's father?' i said. 'do i know who my child's father is?' she demanded. 'my child has thirty-six fathers!' 'you seem very bitter,' i said, 'for your age. you are much younger than i am.' she smiled and shook her honey-coloured hair, and toyed with the ribbons of her _peignoir_. 'what i say is true,' she said gently. 'but, there, what would you have? we hate them, but we love them. they are beasts! beasts! but we cannot do without them!' her eyes rested on diaz for a moment. he slept without the least sound, the stricken and futile witness of our confidences. 'you will take him away from paris soon, perhaps?' she asked. 'if i can,' i said. there was a sound of light footsteps on the stair. they stopped at the door, which i remembered we had not shut. i jumped up and went into the passage. another girl stood in the doorway, in a _peignoir_ the exact counterpart of my first visitor's, but rose-coloured. and this one, too, was languorous and had honey-coloured locks. it was as though the mysterious house was full of such creatures, each with her secret lair. 'pardon, madame,' said my visitor, following and passing me; and then to the newcomer: 'what is it, alice?' 'it is monsieur duchatel who is arrived.' 'oh!' with a disdainful gesture. '_je m'en fiche._ let him go.' 'but it is the nephew, my dear; not the uncle.' 'ah, the nephew! i come. _bon soir, madams, et bonne nuit_.' the two _peignoirs_ fluttered down the stairs together. i returned to my diaz, and seeing his dressing-gown behind the door of the bedroom, i took it and covered him with it. iv his first words were: 'magda, you look like a ghost. have you been sitting there like that all the time?' 'no,' i said; 'i lay down.' 'where?' 'by your side.' 'what time is it?' 'tea-time. the water is boiling. 'was i dreadful last night?' 'dreadful? how?' 'i have a sort of recollection of getting angry and stamping about. i didn't do anything foolish?' 'you took a great deal too much of my sedative,' i answered. 'i feel quite well,' he said; 'but i didn't know i had taken any sedative at all. i'm glad i didn't do anything silly last night.' i ran away to prepare the tea. the situation was too much for me. 'my poor diaz!' i said, when we had begun to drink the tea, and he was sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes full of sleep, his chin rough, and his hair magnificently disarranged, 'you did one thing that was silly last night.' 'don't tell me i struck you?' he cried. 'oh no!' and i laughed. 'can't you guess what i mean?' 'you mean i got vilely drunk.' i nodded. 'magda,' he burst out passionately, seeming at this point fully to arouse himself, to resume acutely his consciousness, 'why were you late? you said four o'clock. i thought you had deceived me. i thought i had disgusted you, and that you didn't mean to return. i waited more than an hour and a quarter, and then i went out in despair.' 'but i came just afterwards,' i protested. 'you had only to wait a few more minutes. surely you could have waited a few more minutes?' 'you said four o'clock,' he repeated obstinately. 'it was barely half-past five when i came,' i said. 'i had meant never to drink again,' he went on. 'you were so kind to me. but then, when you didn't come--' 'you doubted me, diaz. you ought to have been sure of me.' 'i was wrong.' 'no, no!' i said. 'it was i who was wrong. but i never thought that an hour and a half would make any difference.' there was a pause. 'ah, magda, magda!'--he suddenly began to weep; it was astounding--'remember that you had deserted me once before. remember that. if you had not done that, my life might have been different. it _would_ have been different.' 'don't say so,' i pleaded. 'yes, i must say so. you cannot imagine how solitary my life has been. magda, i loved you.' and i too wept. his accent was sincerity itself. i saw the young girl hurrying secretly out of the five towns hotel. could it be true that she had carried away with her, unknowing, the heart of diaz? could it be true that her panic flight had ruined a career? the faint possibility that it was true made me sick with vain grief. 'and now i am old and forgotten and disgraced,' he said. 'how old are you, diaz?' 'thirty-six,' he answered. 'why,' i said, 'you have thirty years to live.' 'yes; and what years?' 'famous years. brilliant years.' he shook his head. 'i am done for--' he murmured, and his head sank. 'are you so weak, then?' i took his hand. 'are you so weak? look at me.' he obeyed, and his wet eyes met mine. in that precious moment i lived. 'i don't know,' he said. 'you could not have looked at me if you had not been strong, very strong,' i said firmly. 'you told me once that you had a house near fontainebleau. have you still got it?' 'i suppose so.' 'let us go there, and--and--see.' 'but--' 'i should like to go,' i insisted, with a break in my voice. 'my god!' he exclaimed in a whisper, 'my god!' i was sobbing violently, and my forehead was against the rough stuff of his coat. v and one morning, long afterwards, i awoke very early, and the murmuring of the leaves of the forest came through the open window. i had known that i should wake very early, in joyous anticipation of that day. and as i lay he lay beside me, lost in the dreamless, boyish, natural sleep that he never sought in vain. he lay, as always, slightly on his right side, with his face a little towards me--his face that was young again, and from which the bane had passed. it was one of the handsomest, fairest faces in the world, one of the most innocent, and one of the strongest; the face of a man who follows his instincts with the direct simplicity of a savage or a child, and whose instincts are sane and powerful. seen close, perfectly at rest, as i saw it morning after morning, it was full of a special and mysterious attraction. the fine curves of the nostrils and of the lobe of the ear, the masterful lines of the mouth, the contours of the cheek and chin and temples, the tints of the flesh subtly varying from rose to ivory, the golden crown of hair, the soft moustache. i had learned every detail by heart; my eyes had dwelt on them till they had become my soul's inheritance, till they were mystically mine, drawing me ever towards them, as a treasure draws. gently moving, i would put my ear close, close, and listen to the breath of life as it entered regularly, almost imperceptibly, vivifying that organism in repose. there is something terrible in the still beauty of sleep. it is as though the spiritual fabric hangs inexplicably over the precipice of death. it seems impossible, or at least miraculous, that the intake and the expulsion upon which existence depends should continue thus, minute by minute, hour by hour. it is as though one stood on the very confines of life, and could one trace but one step more, one single step, one would unveil the eternal secret. i would not listen long; the torture was too sweet, too exquisite, and i would gently slide back to my place.... his hand was on the counterpane, near to my breast--the broad hand of the pianist, with a wrist of incredible force, and the fingers tapering suddenly at the end to a point. i let my own descend on it as softly as snow. ah, ravishing contact! he did not move. and while my small hand touched his i gazed into the spaces of the bedroom, with its walls of faded blue tapestry and its white curtains, and its marble and rosewood, and they seemed to hold peace, as the hollows of a field hold dew; they seemed to hold happiness as a great tree holds sunlight in its branches; and outside was the murmuring of the leaves of the forest and the virginal freshness of the morning. surely he must wake earlier that day! i pursed my lips and blew tenderly, mischievously, on his cheek, lying with my cheek full on the pillow, so that i could watch him. the muscles of his mouth twitched, his inner being appeared to protest. and then began the first instinctive blind movement of the day with him. his arms came forward and found my neck, and drew me forcibly to him, and then, just before our lips touched, he opened his eyes and shut them again. so it occurred every morning. ere even his brain had resumed activity his heart had felt its need of me. this it was that was so wonderful, so overpowering! and the kiss, languid and yet warm, heavy with a human scent, with the scent of the night, honest, sensuous, and long--long! as i lay thus, clasped in his arms, i half closed my eyes, and looked into his eyes through my lashes, smiling, and all was a delicious blur.... it was the summit of bliss! no! i have never mounted higher! i asked myself, astounded, what i had done that i should receive such happiness, what i had done that existence should have no flaw for me. and what _had_ i done? i know not, i know not. it passes me. i am lost in my joy. for i had not even cured him. i had anticipated painful scenes, interminable struggles, perhaps a relapse. but nothing of the kind. he had simply ceased at once the habit--that was all. we never left each other. and his magnificent constitution had perfectly recovered itself in a few months. i had done nothing. 'magda,' he murmured indistinctly, drawing his mouth an inch away from mine, 'why can't your dark hair always be loose over your shoulders like that? it is glorious!' 'what ideas you have!' i murmured, more softly than he. 'and do you know what it is to-day?' 'no.' 'you've forgotten?' i pouted. 'yes.' 'guess.' 'no; you must tell me. not your birthday? not mine?' 'it's just a year since i met you,' i whispered timidly. our mouths met again, and, so enlocked, we rested, savouring the true savour of life. and presently my hand stole up to his head and stroked his curls. every morning he began to practise at eight o'clock, and continued till eleven. the piano, a steinway in a hundred steinways, was in the further of the two drawing-rooms. he would go into the room smoking a cigarette, and when he had thrown away the cigarette i would leave him. and as soon as i had closed the door the first notes would resound, slow and solemn, of the five-finger exercises with which he invariably commenced his studies. that morning, as often, i sat writing in the enclosed garden. i always wrote in pencil on my knee. the windows of the drawing-room were wide open, and diaz' music filled the garden. the sheer beauty of his tone was such that to hear him strike even an isolated note gave pleasure. he created beauty all the time. his five-finger exercises were lovely patterns of sound woven with exact and awful deliberation. it seemed impossible that these should be the same bald and meaningless inventions which i had been wont to repeat. they were transformed. they were music. the material in which he built them was music itself, enchanting the ear as much by the quality of the tone as by the impeccable elegance of the form. to hear diaz play a scale, to catch that measured, tranquil succession of notes, each a different jewel of equal splendour, each dying precisely when the next was born--this was to perceive at last what music is made of, to have glimpses of the divine magic that is the soul of the divinest art. i used to believe that nothing could surpass the beauty of a scale, until diaz, after writing formal patterns in the still air innumerably, and hypnotizing me with that sorcery, would pass suddenly to the repetition of fragments of bach. and then i knew that hitherto he had only been trying to be more purely and severely mechanical than a machine, and that now the interpreter was at work. i have heard him repeat a passage fifty times--and so slowly!--and each rendering seemed more beautiful than the last; and it was more beautiful than the last. he would extract the final drop of beauty from the most beautiful things in the world. washed, drenched in this circumambient ether of beauty, i wrote my verse. perhaps it may appear almost a sacrilege that i should have used the practising of a diaz as a background for my own creative activity. i often thought so. but when one has but gold, one must put it to lowly use. so i wrote, and he passed from bach to chopin. usually he would come out into the garden for five minutes at half-past nine to smoke a cigarette, but that morning it had struck ten before the music ceased. i saw him. he walked absent-minded along the terrace in the strange silence that had succeeded. he was wearing his riding-breeches, for we habitually rode at eleven. and that morning i did not hide my work when he came. it was, in fact, finished; the time had arrived to disclose it. he stopped in front of me in the sunlight, utterly preoccupied with himself and his labours. he had the rapt look on his face which results from the terrible mental and spiritual strain of practising as he practised. 'satisfied?' i asked him. he frowned. 'there are times when one gets rather inspired,' he said, looking at me, as it were, without seeing me. 'it's as if the whole soul gets into one's hands. that's what's wanted.' 'you had it this morning?' 'a bit.' he smiled with candid joy. 'while i was listening--' i began. 'oh!' he broke in impulsively, violently, 'it isn't you that have to listen. it's i that have to listen. it's the player that has to listen. he's got to do more than listen. he's got to be _in_ the piano with his inmost heart. if he isn't on the full stretch of analysis the whole blessed time, he might just as well be turning the handle of a barrel-organ.' he always talked about his work during the little 'recess' which he took in the middle of the morning. he pretended to be talking to me, but it was to himself that he talked. he was impatient if i spoke. 'i shall be greater than ever,' he proceeded, after a moment. and his attitude towards himself was so disengaged, so apart and aloof, so critically appreciative, that it was impossible to accuse him of egoism. he was, perhaps, as amazed at his own transcendent gift as any other person could be, and he was incapable of hiding his sensations. 'yes,' he repeated; 'i think i shall be greater than ever. you see, a chopin player is born; you can't make him. with chopin it's not a question of intellect. it's all tone with chopin--_tone_, my child, even in the most bravura passages. you've got to get it.' 'yes,' i agreed. he gazed over the tree-tops into the blue sky. 'i may be ready in six months,' he said. 'i think you will,' i concurred, with a judicial air. but i honestly deemed him to be more than ready then. twelve months previously he had said: 'with six hours' practice a day for two years i shall recover what i have lost.' he had succeeded beyond his hopes. 'are you writing in that book?' he inquired carelessly as he threw down the cigarette and turned away. 'i have just finished something,' i replied. 'oh!' he said, 'i'm glad you aren't idle. it's so boring.' he returned to the piano, perfectly incurious about what i did, self-absorbed as a god. and i was alone in the garden, with the semicircle of trees behind me, and the faã§ade of the old house and its terrace in front. and lying on the lawn, just under the terrace, was the white end of the cigarette which he had abandoned; it breathed upwards a thin spiral of blue smoke through the morning sunshine, and then it ceased to breathe. and the music recommenced, on a different plane, more brilliantly than before. it was as though, till then, he had been laboriously building the bases of a tremendous triumphal arch, and that now the two wings met, dazzlingly, soaringly, in highest heaven, and the completed arch became a rainbow glittering in the face of the infinite. he played two of his great concert pieces, and their intricate melodies--brocaded, embroidered, festooned--poured themselves through the windows into the garden in a procession majestic and impassioned, perturbing the intent soul of the solitary listener, swathing her in intoxicating sound. it was the unique virtuoso born again, proudly displaying the ultimate sublime end of all those slow-moving exercises to which he had subdued his fingers. not for ten years had i heard him play so. when we first came into the house i had said bravely to myself: 'his presence shall not deter me from practising as i have always done.' and one afternoon i had sat down to the piano full of determination to practise without fear of him, without self-consciousness. but before my hands had touched the keys shame took me, unreasoning, terror-struck shame, and i knew in an instant that while he lived i should never more play the piano. he laughed lightly when i told him, and i called myself silly. yet now, as i sat in the garden, i saw how right i had been. and i wondered that i should ever have had the audacity even to dream of playing in his house; the idea was grotesque. and he did not ask me to play, save when there arrived new orchestral music arranged for four hands. then i steeled myself to the ordeal of playing with him, because he wished to try over the music. and he would thank me, and say that pianoforte duets were always very enjoyable. but he did not pretend that i was not an amateur, and he never--thank god!--suggested that we should attempt _tristan_ again.... at last he finished. and i heard distantly the bell which he had rung for his glass of milk. and, remembering that i was not ready for the ride, i ran with guilty haste into the house and upstairs. the two bay horses were waiting, our english groom at their heads, when i came out to the porch. diaz was impatiently tapping his boot with his whip. he was not in the least a sporting man, but he loved the sensation of riding, and the groom would admit that he rode passably; but he loved more to strut in breeches, and to imitate in little ways the sporting man. i had learnt to ride in order to please him. 'come along,' he exclaimed. his eyes said: 'you are always late.' and i was. some people always know exactly what point they have reached in the maze and jungle of the day, just as mariners are always aware, at the back of their minds, of the state of the tide. but i was not born so. diaz helped me to mount, and we departed, jingling through the gate and across the road into a glade of the forest, one of those long sandy defiles, banked on either side, and over-shadowed with tall oaks, which pierce the immense forest like rapiers. the sunshine slanted through the crimsoning leafwork and made irregular golden patches on the dark sand to the furthest limit of the perspective. and though we could not feel the autumn wind, we could hear it in the tree-tops, and it had the sound of the sea. the sense of well-being and of joy was exquisite. the beauty of horses, timid creatures, sensitive and graceful and irrational as young girls, is a thing apart; and what is strange is that their vast strength does not seem incongruous with it. to be above that proud and lovely organism, listening, apprehensive, palpitating, nervous far beyond the human, to feel one's self almost part of it by intimate contact, to yield to it, and make it yield, to draw from it into one's self some of its exultant vitality--in a word, to ride--yes, i could comprehend diaz' fine enthusiasm for that! i could share it when he was content to let the horses amble with noiseless hoofs over the soft ways. but when he would gallop, and a strong wind sprang up to meet our faces, and the earth shook and thundered, and the trunks of the trees raced past us, then i was afraid. my fancy always saw him senseless at the foot of a tree while his horse calmly cropped the short grass at the sides of the path, or with his precious hand twisted and maimed! and i was in agony till he reined in. i never dared to speak to him of this fear, nor even hint to him that the joy was worth less than the peril. he would have been angry in his heart, and something in him stronger than himself would have forced him to increase the risks. i knew him! ... ah! but when we went gently, life seemed to be ideal for me, impossibly perfect! it seemed to contain all that i could ever have demanded of it. i looked at him sideways, so noble and sane and self-controlled. and the days in paris had receded, far and dim and phantom-like. was it conceivable that they had once been real, and that we had lived through them? and was this diaz, the world-renowned darling of capitals, riding by me, a woman whom he had met by fantastic chance? had he really hidden himself in my arms from the cruel stare of the world and the insufferable curiosity of admirers who, instead of admiring, had begun to pity? had i in truth saved him? was it i who would restore him to his glory? oh, the astounding romance that my life had been! and he was with me! he shared my life, and i his! i wondered what would happen when he returned to his bright kingdom. i was selfish enough to wish that he might never return to his kingdom, and that we might ride and ride for ever in the forest. and then we came to a circular clearing, with an iron cross in the middle, where roads met, a place such as occurs magically in some ballade of chopin's. and here we drew rein on the leaf-strewn grass, breathing quickly, with reddened cheeks, and the horses nosed each other, with long stretchings of the neck and rattling of bits. 'so you've been writing again?' said diaz, smiling quizzically. 'yes,' i answered. 'i've been writing a long time, but i haven't let _you_ know anything about it; and just to-day i've finished it.' 'what is it--another novel?' 'no; a little drama in verse.' 'going to publish it?' 'why, naturally.' diaz was aware that i enjoyed fame in england and america. he was probably aware that my books had brought me a considerable amount of money. he had read some of my works, and found them excellent--indeed, he was quite proud of my talent. but he did not, he could not, take altogether seriously either my talent or my fame. i knew that he always regarded me as a child gracefully playing at a career. for him there was only one sort of fame; all the other sorts were shadows. a supreme violinist might, perhaps, approach the real thing, in his generous mind; but he was incapable of honestly believing that any fame compared with that of a pianist. the other fames were very well, but they were paste to the precious stone, gewgaws to amuse simple persons. the sums paid to sopranos struck him as merely ridiculous in their enormity. he could not be called conceited; nevertheless, he was magnificently sure that he had been, and still was, the most celebrated person in the civilized world. certainly he had no superiors in fame, but he would not admit the possibility of equals. of course, he never argued such a point; it was a tacit assumption, secure from argument. and with that he profoundly reverenced the great composers. the death of brahms affected him for years. he regarded it as an occasion for universal sorrow. had brahms condescended to play the piano, diaz would have turned the pages for him, and deemed himself honoured--him whom queens had flattered! 'did you imagine,' i began to tease him, after a pause, 'that while you are working i spend my time in merely existing?' 'you exist--that is enough, my darling,' he said. 'strange that a beautiful woman can't understand that in existing she is doing her life's work!' and he leaned over and touched my right wrist below the glove. 'you dear thing!' i murmured, smiling. 'how foolish you can be!' 'what's the drama about?' he asked. 'about la valliã¨re,' i said. 'la valliã¨re! but that's the kind of subject i want for my opera!' 'yes,' i said; 'i have thought so.' 'could you turn it into a libretto, my child?' 'no, dearest.' 'why not?' 'because it already is a libretto. i have written it as such.' 'for me?' 'for whom else?' and i looked at him fondly, and i think tears came to my eyes. 'you are a genius, magda!' he exclaimed. 'you leave nothing undone for me. the subject is the very thing to suit villedo.' 'who is villedo?' 'my jewel, you don't know who villedo is! villedo is the director of the opã©ra comique in paris, the most artistic opera-house in europe. he used to beg me every time we met to write him an opera.' 'and why didn't you?' 'because i had neither the subject nor the time. one doesn't write operas after lunch in hotel parlours; and as for a good libretto--well, outside wagner, there's only one opera in the world with a good libretto, and that's _carmen_.' diaz, who had had a youthful operatic work performed at the royal school of music in london, and whose numerous light compositions for the pianoforte had, of course, enjoyed a tremendous vogue, was much more serious about his projected opera than i had imagined. he had frequently mentioned it to me, but i had not thought the idea was so close to his heart as i now perceived it to be. i had written the libretto to amuse myself, and perhaps him, and lo! he was going to excite himself; i well knew the symptoms. 'you wrote it in that little book,' he said. 'you haven't got it in your pocket?' 'no,' i answered. 'i haven't even a pocket.' he would not laugh. 'come,' he said--'come, let's see it.' he gathered up his loose rein and galloped off. he could not wait an instant. 'come along!' he cried imperiously, turning his head. 'i am coming,' i replied; 'but wait for me. don't leave me like that, diaz.' the old fear seized me, but nothing could stop him, and i followed as fast as i dared. 'where is it?' he asked, when we reached home. 'upstairs,' i said. and he came upstairs behind me, pulling my habit playfully, in an effort to persuade us both that his impatience was a simulated one. i had to find my keys and unlock a drawer. i took the small, silk-bound volume from the back part of the drawer and gave it to him. 'there!' i exclaimed. 'but remember lunch is ready.' he regarded the book. 'what a pretty binding!' he said. 'who worked it?' 'i did.' 'and, of course, your handwriting is so pretty, too!' he added, glancing at the leaves. '"la valliã¨re, an opera in three acts."' we exchanged a look, each of us deliciously perturbed, and then he ran off with the book. he had to be called three times from the garden to lunch, and he brought the book with him, and read it in snatches during the meal, and while sipping his coffee. i watched him furtively as he turned over the pages. 'oh, you've done it!' he said at length--'you've done it! you evidently have a gift for libretto. it is neither more nor less than perfect! and the subject is wonderful!' he rose, walked round the table, and, taking my head between his hands, kissed me. 'magda,' he said, 'you're the cleverest girl that was ever born.' 'then, do you think you will compose it?' i asked, joyous. 'do i think i will compose it! why, what do you imagine? i've already begun. it composes itself. i'm now going to read it all again in the garden. just see that i'm not worried, will you?' 'you mean you don't want me there. you don't care for me any more.' it amused me to pretend to pout. 'yes,' he laughed; 'that's it. i don't care for you any more.' he departed. 'have no fear!' i cried after him. 'i shan't come into your horrid garden!' his habit was to resume his practice at three o'clock. the hour was then half-past one. i wondered whether he would allow himself to be seduced from the piano that afternoon by the desire to compose. i hoped not, for there could be no question as to the relative importance to him of the two activities. to my surprise, i heard the piano at two o'clock, instead of at three, and it continued without intermission till five. then he came, like a sudden wind, on to the terrace where i was having tea. diaz would never take afternoon tea. he seized my hand impulsively. 'come down,' he said--'down under the trees there.' 'what for?' 'i want you.' 'but, diaz, let me put my cup down. i shall spill the tea on my dress.' 'i'll take your cup.' 'and i haven't nearly finished my tea, either. and you're hurting me.' 'i'll bring you a fresh cup,' he said. 'come, come!' and he dragged me off, laughing, to the lower part of the garden, where were two chairs in the shade. and i allowed myself to be dragged. 'there! sit down. don't move. i'll fetch your tea.' and presently he returned with the cup. 'now that you've nearly killed me,' i said, 'and spoilt my dress, perhaps you'll explain.' he produced the silk-bound book of manuscript from his pocket and put it in my unoccupied hand. 'i want you to read it to me aloud, all of it,' he said. 'really?' 'really.' 'what a strange boy you are!' i chided. then i drank the tea, straightened my features into seriousness, and began to read. the reading occupied less than an hour. he made no remark when it was done, but held out his hand for the book, and went out for a walk. at dinner he was silent till the servants had gone. then he said musingly: 'that scene in the cloisters between louise and de montespan is a great idea. it will be magnificent; it will be the finest thing in the opera. what a subject you have found! what a subject!' his tone altered. 'magda, will you do something to oblige me?' 'if it isn't foolish.' 'i want you to go to bed.' 'out of the way?' i smiled. 'go to bed and to sleep,' he repeated. 'but why?' 'i want to walk about this floor. i must be alone.' 'well,' i said, 'just to prove how humble and obedient i am, i will go.' and i held up my mouth to be kissed. wondrous, the joy i found in playing the decorative, acquiescent, self-effacing woman to him, the pretty, pouting plaything! i liked him to dismiss me, as the soldier dismisses his charmer at the sound of the bugle. i liked to think upon his obvious conviction that the libretto was less than nothing compared to the music. i liked him to regard the whole artistic productivity of my life as the engaging foible of a pretty woman. i liked him to forget that i had brought him alive out of paris. i liked him to forget to mention marriage to me. in a word, he was diaz, and i was his. and as i lay in bed i even tried to go to sleep, in my obedience, because i knew he would wish it. but i could not easily sleep for anticipating his triumph of the early future. his habits of composition were extremely rapid. it might well occur that he would write the entire opera in a few months, without at all sacrificing the piano. and naturally any operatic manager would be loath to refuse an opera signed by diaz. villedo, apparently so famous, would be sure to accept it, and probably would produce it at once. and diaz would have a double triumph, a dazzling and gorgeous re-entry into the world. he might give his first recital in the same week as the _premiã¨re_ of the opera. and thus his shame would never be really known to the artistic multitude. the legend of a nervous collapse could be insisted on, and the opera itself would form a sufficient excuse for his retirement.... and i should be the secret cause of all this glory--i alone! and no one would ever guess what diaz owed to me. diaz himself would never appreciate it. i alone, withdrawn from the common gaze, like a woman of the east, diaz' secret fountain of strength and balm--i alone should be aware of what i had done. and my knowledge would be enough for me. i imagine i must have been dreaming when i felt a hand on my cheek. 'magda, you aren't asleep, are you?' diaz was standing over me. 'no, no!' i answered, in a voice made feeble by sleep. and i looked up at him. 'put something on and come downstairs, will you?' 'what time is it?' 'oh, i don't know. one o'clock.' 'you've been working for over three hours, then!' i sat up. 'yes,' he said proudly. 'come along. i want to play you my notion of the overture. it's only in the rough, but it's there.' 'you've begun with the overture?' 'why not, my child? here's your dressing-gown. which is the top end of it?' i followed him downstairs, and sat close by him at the piano, with one limp hand on his shoulder. there was no light in the drawing-rooms, save one candle on the piano. my slipper escaped off my bare foot. as diaz played he looked at me constantly, demanding my approval, my enthusiasm, which i gave him from a full heart. i thought the music charming, and, of course, as he played it...! 'i shall only have three motives,' he said. 'that's the la valliã¨re motive. do you see the idea?' 'you mean she limps?' 'precisely. isn't it delightful?' 'she won't have to limp much, you know. she didn't.' 'just the faintest suggestion. it will be delicious. i can see morenita in the part. well, what do you think of it?' i could not speak. his appeal, suddenly wistful, moved me so. i leaned forward and kissed him. 'dear girl!' he murmured. then he blew out the candle. he was beside himself with excitement. 'diaz,' i cried, 'what's the matter with you? do have a little sense. and you've made me lose my slipper.' 'i'll carry you upstairs,' he replied gaily. a faint illumination came from the hall, so that we could just see each other. he lifted me off the chair. 'no!' i protested, laughing. 'and my slipper.... the servants!' 'stuff!' i was a trifle in those arms. vi the triumphal re-entry into the world has just begun, and exactly as diaz foretold. and the life of the forest is over. we have come to paris, and he has taken paris, and already he is leaving it for other shores, and i am to follow. at this moment, while i write because i have not slept and cannot sleep, his train rolls out of st. lazare. last night! how glorious! but he is no longer wholly mine. the world has turned his face a little from my face.... it was as if i had never before realized the dazzling significance of the fame of diaz. i had only once seen him in public. and though he conquered in the jubilee hall of the five towns, his victory, personal and artistic, at the opera comique, before an audience as exacting, haughty, and experienced as any in europe, was, of course, infinitely more striking--a victory worthy of a diaz. i sat alone and hidden at the back of a _baignoire_ in the auditorium. i had drawn up the golden grille, by which the occupants of a _baignoire_ may screen themselves from the curiosity of the _parterre_. i felt like some caged eastern odalisque, and i liked so to feel. i liked to exist solely for him, to be mysterious, and to baffle the general gaze in order to be more precious to him. ah, how i had changed! how he had changed me! it was thursday, a subscription night, and, in addition, all paris was in the theatre, a crowded company of celebrities, of experts, and of perfectly-dressed women. and no one knew who i was, nor why i was there. the vogue of a musician may be universal, but the vogue of an english writer is nothing beyond england and america. i had not been to a rehearsal. i had not met villedo, nor even the translator of my verse. i had wished to remain in the background, and diaz had not crossed me. thus i gazed through the bars of my little cell across the rows of bald heads, and wonderful coiffures, and the waving arms of the conductor, and the restless, gliding bows of the violinists, and saw a scene which was absolutely strange and new to me. and it seemed amazing that these figures which i saw moving and chanting with such grace in a palace garden, authentic to the last detail of historical accuracy, were my la valliã¨re and my louis, and that this rich and coloured music which i heard was the same that diaz had sketched for me on the piano, from illegible scraps of ruled paper, on the edge of the forest. the full miracle of operatic art was revealed to me for the first time. and when the curtain fell on the opening act, the intoxicating human quality of an operatic success was equally revealed to me for the first time. how cold and distant the success of a novelist compared to this! the auditorium was suddenly bathed in bright light, and every listening face awoke to life as from an enchantment, and flushed and smiled, and the delicatest hands in france clapped to swell the mighty uproar that filled the theatre with praise. paris, upstanding on its feet, and leaning over balconies and cheering, was charmed and delighted by the fable and the music, in which it found nothing but the sober and pretty elegance that it loves. and paris applauded feverishly, and yet with a full sense of the value of its applause--given there in the only french theatre where the claque has been suppressed. and then the curtain rose, and la valliã¨re and louis tripped mincingly forward to prove that after all they were morenita and montfã©riot, the darlings of their dear paris, and utterly content with their exclusively parisian reputation. three times they came forward. and then the applause ceased, for paris is not naples, and it is not madrid, and the red curtain definitely hid the stage, and the theatre hummed with animated chatter as elegant as diaz' music, and my ear, that loves the chaste vivacity of the french tongue, was caressed on every side by its cadences. 'this is the very heart of civilization,' i said to myself. 'and even in the forest i could not breathe more freely.' i stared up absently at benjamin constant's blue ceiling, meretricious and still adorable, expressive of the delicious decadence of paris, and my eyes moistened because the world is so beautiful in such various ways. then the door of the _baignoire_ opened. it was diaz himself who appeared. he had not forgotten me in the excitements of the stage and the dressing-rooms. he put his hand lightly on my shoulder, and i glanced at him. 'well?' he murmured, and gave me a box of bonbons elaborately tied with rich ribbons. and i murmured, 'well?' the glory of his triumph was upon him. but he understood why my eyes were wet, and his fingers moved soothingly on my shoulder. 'you won't come round?' he asked. 'both villedo and morenita are dying to meet you.' i shook my head, smiling. 'you're satisfied?' 'more than satisfied,' i answered. 'the thing is wonderful.' 'i think it's rather charming,' he said. 'by the way, i've just had an offer from new york for it, and another from rome.' i nodded my appreciation. 'you don't want anything?' 'nothing, thanks,' i said, opening the box of bonbons, 'except these. thanks so much for thinking of them.' 'well--' and he left me again. in the second act the legend--has not the tale of la valliã¨re acquired almost the quality of a legend?--grew in persuasiveness and in magnificence. it was the hour of la valliã¨re's unwilling ascendancy, and it foreboded also her fall. the situations seemed to me to be poignantly beautiful, especially that in which la valliã¨re and montespan and the queen found themselves together. and morenita had perceived my meaning with such a sure intuition. i might say that she showed me what i had meant. diaz, too, had given to my verse a voice than which it appeared impossible that anything could be more appropriate. the whole effect was astonishing, ravishing. and within me--far, far within the recesses of my glowing heart--a thin, clear whisper spoke and said that i, and i alone, was the cause of that beauty of sight and sound. not morenita, and not montfã©riot, not diaz himself, but magda, the self-constituted odalisque, was its author. i had thought of it; i had schemed it; i had fashioned it; i had evoked the emotion in it. the others had but exquisitely embroidered my theme. without me they must have been dumb and futile. on my shoulders lay the burden and the glory. and though i was amazed, perhaps naively, to see what i had done, nevertheless i had done it--i! the entire opera-house, that complicated and various machine, was simply a means to express me. and it was to my touch on their heartstrings that the audience vibrated. with all my humility, how proud i was--coldly and arrogantly proud, as only the artist can be! i wore my humility as i wore my black gown. even diaz could not penetrate to the inviolable place in my heart, where the indestructible egoism defied the efforts of love to silence it. and yet people say there is nothing stronger than love. at the close of the act, while the ringing applause, much more enthusiastic than before, gave certainty of a genuine and extraordinary success, i could not help blushing. it was as if i was in danger of being discovered as the primal author of all that fleeting loveliness, as if my secret was bound to get about, and i to be forced from my seclusion in order to receive the acclamations of paris. i played nervously and self-consciously with my fan, and i wrapped my humility closer round me, until at length the tumult died away, and the hum of charming, eager chatter reassured my ears again. diaz did not come. the entr'acte stretched out long, and the chatter lost some of its eagerness, and he did not come. perhaps he could not come. perhaps he was too much engaged, too much preoccupied, to think of the gallantry which he owed to his mistress. a man cannot always be dreaming of his mistress. a mistress must be reconciled to occasional neglect; she must console herself with chocolates. and they were chocolates from marquis's, in the passage des panoramas.... then he came, accompanied. a whirl of high-seasoned, laughing personalities invaded my privacy. diaz, smiling humorously, was followed by a man and a cloaked woman. 'dear lady,' he said, with an intimate formality, 'i present mademoiselle morenita and monsieur villedo. they insisted on seeing you. mademoiselle, monsieur--mademoiselle peel.' i stood up. 'all our excuses,' said villedo, in a low, discreet voice, as he carefully shut the door. 'all our excuses, madame. but it was necessary that i should pay my respects--it was stronger than i.' and he came forward, took my hand, and raised it to his lips. he is a little finicking man, with a little gray beard, and the red rosette in his button-hole, and a most consummate ease of manner. 'monsieur,' i replied, 'you are too amiable. and you, madame. i cannot sufficiently thank you both.' morenita rushed at me with a swift, surprising movement, her cloak dropping from her shoulders, and taking both my hands, she kissed me impulsively. 'you have genius,' she said; 'and i am proud. i am ashamed that i cannot read english; but i have the intention to learn in order to read your books. our diaz says wonderful things of them.' she is a tall, splendidly-made, opulent creature, of my own age, born for the footlights, with an extremely sweet and thrilling voice, and that slight coarseness or exaggeration of gesture and beauty which is the penalty of the stage. she did not in the least resemble a la valliã¨re as she stood there gazing at me, with her gleaming, pencilled eyes and heavy, scarlet lips. it seemed impossible that she could refine herself to a la valliã¨re. but that woman is the drama itself. she would act no matter what. she has always the qualities necessary to a rã´le. and the gods have given her green eyes, so that she may be la valliã¨re to the very life. i began to thank her for her superb performance. 'it is i who should thank you,' she answered. 'it will be my greatest part. never have i had so many glorious situations in a part. do you like my limp?' she smiled, her head on one side. success glittered in those orbs. 'you limp adorably,' i said. 'it is my profession to make compliments,' villedo broke in; and then, turning to morenita, '_n'est-ce pas, ma belle crã©ature_? but really'--he turned to me again--'but very sincerely, all that there is of most sincerely, dear madame, your libretto is made with a virtuosity astonishing. it is _du thã©ã¢tre_. and with that a charm, an emotion...! one would say--' and so it continued, the flattering stream, while diaz listened, touched, and full of pride. 'ah!' i said. 'it is not i who deserve praise.' an electric bell trembled in the theatre. morenita picked up her cloak. '_mon ami_,' she warned villedo. 'i must go. diaz, _mon petit_! you will persuade mademoiselle peel to come to the room of the directeur later. madame, a few of us will meet there--is it not so, villedo? we shall count on you, madame. you have hidden yourself too long.' i glanced at diaz, and he nodded. as a fact, i wished to refuse; but i could not withstand the seduction of morenita. she had a physical influence which was unique in my experience. 'i accept,' i said. '_a tout ã  l'heure_, then,' she twittered gaily; and they left as they had come, villedo affectionately toying with morenita's hand. diaz remained behind a moment. 'i am so glad you didn't decline,' he said. 'you see, here in this theatre morenita is a queen. i wager she has never before in all her life put herself out of the way as she has done for you to-night.' 'really!' i faltered. and, indeed, as i pondered over it, the politeness of these people appeared to be marvellous, and so perfectly accomplished. villedo, who has made a european reputation and rejuvenated his theatre in a dozen years, is doubtless, as he said, a professional maker of compliments. in his position a man must be. but, nevertheless, last night's triumph is officially and very genuinely villedo's. while as for morenita and diaz, the mere idea of these golden stars waiting on me, the librettist, effacing themselves, rendering themselves subordinate at such a moment, was fantastic. it passed the credible.... a diaz standing silent and deferential, while an idolized prima donna stepped down from her throne to flatter me in her own temple! all that i had previously achieved of renown seemed provincial, insular. but diaz took his own right place in the spacious salon of villedo afterwards, after all the applause had ceased, and the success had been consecrated, and the enraptured audience had gone, and the lights were extinguished in the silent auditorium. it is a room that seems to be furnished with nothing but a grand piano and a large, flat writing-table and a few chairs. on the walls are numberless signed portraits of singers and composers, and antique playbills of the opã©ra comique, together with strange sinister souvenirs of the great fires which have destroyed the house and its patrons in the past. when diaz led me in, only villedo and the principal artists and pouvillon, the conductor, were present. pouvillon, astonishingly fat, was sitting on the table, idly swinging the electric pendant over his head; while morenita occupied villedo's armchair, and villedo talked to montfã©riot and another man in a corner. but a crowd of officials of the theatre ventured on diaz' heels. and then came monticelli, the _premiã¨re danseuse_, in a coat and skirt, and then some of her rivals. and as the terrible director did not protest, the room continued to fill until it was full to the doors, where stood a semicircle of soiled, ragged scene-shifters and a few fat old women, who were probably dressers. who could protest on such a night? the democracy of a concerted triumph reigned. everybody was joyous, madly happy. everybody had done something; everybody shared the prestige, and the rank and file might safely take generals by the hand. diaz was then the centre of attraction. it was recognised that he had entered that sphere from a wider one, bringing with him a radiance brighter than he found there. he was divine last night. all felt that he was divine. he spoke to everyone with an admirable modesty, gaily, his eyes laughing. several women kissed him, including morenita. not that i minded. in the theatre the code is different, coarser, more banal. he alone raised this crowd above its usual level and gave it distinction. someone suggested that, as the piano was there, he should play, and the demand ran from mouth to mouth. villedo, appreciating its audacity, made a gesture to indicate that such a thing could not be asked. but diaz instantly said that, if it would give pleasure, he would play with pleasure. and he sat down to the piano, and looked round, smiling, and the room was hushed in a moment, and each face was turned towards him. 'what?' he ejaculated. and then, as no definite recommendation was offered, he said: 'do you wish that i improvise?' the idea was accepted with passionate, noisy enthusiasm. a cold perspiration broke out over my whole body. i must have turned very pale. 'you are not ill, madame?' asked that ridiculous fop, montfã¨riot, who had been presented to me, and was whispering the most fatuous compliments. 'no, i thank you.' the fact was that diaz, since his retirement, had not yet played to anyone except myself. this was his first appearance. i was afraid for him. i trembled for him. i need not have done. he was absolutely master of his powers. his fingers announced, quite simply, one of the most successful airs from _la valliã¨re_, and then he began to decorate it with an amazing lacework of variations, and finished with a bravura display such as no pianist could have surpassed. the performance, marvellous in itself, was precisely suited to that audience, and it electrified the audience; it electrified even me. diaz fought his way through kisses and embraces to villedo, who stood on his toes and wept and put his arms round diaz' neck. '_cher maã®tre_,' he cried, 'you overwhelm us!' 'you are too kind, all of you,' said diaz. 'i must ask permission to retire. i have to conduct mademoiselle peel to her hotel, and there is much for me to do during the night. you know i start very early to-morrow.' '_hã©las!_ morenita sighed. i had blushed. decidedly i behaved like a girl last night. but, indeed, the new, swift realization, as diaz singled me out of that multitude, that after all he utterly belonged to me, that he was mine alone, was more than i could bear with equanimity. i was the proudest woman in the universe. i scorned the lot of all other women. the adieux were exchanged, and there were more kisses. '_au revoir! bon voyage_! much success over there.' the majority of these good, generous souls were in tears. villedo opened a side-door, and we escaped into a corridor, only morenita and one or two others accompanying us to the street. and on the pavement a carpet had been laid. the electric brougham was waiting. i gathered up my skirt and sprang in. diaz followed, smiling at me. he put his head out of the window and said a few words. morenita blew a kiss. villedo bowed profoundly. the carriage moved in the direction of the boulevard.... i had carried him off. oh, the exquisite dark intimacy of the interior of that smooth-rolling brougham! when, after the theatre, a woman precedes a man into a carriage, does she not publish and glory in the fact that she is his? is it not the most delicious of avowals? there is something in the enforced bend of one's head as one steps in. and when the man shuts the door with a masculine snap-i wondered idly what morenita and villedo thought of our relations. they must surely guess. we went down the boulevard and by the rue royale into the place de la concorde, where vehicles flitted mysteriously in a maze of lights under the vast dome of mysterious blue. and paris, in her incomparable toilette of a june night, seemed more than ever the passionate city of love that she is, recognising candidly, with the fearless intellectuality of the latin temperament, that one thing only makes life worth living. how soft was the air! how languorous the pose of the dim figures that passed us half hidden in other carriages! and in my heart was the lofty joy of work done, definitely accomplished, and a vista of years of future pleasure. my happiness was ardent and yet calm--a happiness beyond my hopes, beyond what a mortal has the right to dream of. nothing could impair it, not even diaz' continued silence as to a marriage between us, not even the imminent brief separation that i was to endure. 'my child,' said diaz suddenly, 'i'm very hungry. i've never been so hungry.' 'you surely didn't forget to have your dinner?' i exclaimed. 'yes, i did,' he admitted like a child; 'i've just remembered.' 'diaz!' i pouted, and for some strange reason my bliss was intensified, 'you are really terrible! what can i do with you? you will eat before you leave me. i must see to that. we can get something for you at the hotel, perhaps.' 'suppose we go to a supper restaurant?' he said. without waiting for my reply, he seized the dangling end of the speaking-tube and spoke to the driver, and we swerved round and regained the boulevard. and in the private room of a great, glittering restaurant, one of a long row of private rooms off a corridor, i ate strawberries and cream and sipped champagne while diaz went through the entire menu of a supper. 'your eyes look sad,' he murmured, with a cigar between his teeth. 'what is it? we shall see each other again in a fortnight.' he was to resume his career by a series of concerts in the united states. a new york agent, with the characteristic enterprise of new york agents, had tracked diaz even into the forest and offered him two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for forty concerts on the condition that he played at no concert before he played in new york. and in order to reach new york in time for the first concert, it was imperative that he should catch the _touraine_ at havre. i was to follow in a few days by a hamburg-american liner. diaz had judged it more politic that we should not travel together. in this he was undoubtedly right. i smiled proudly. 'i am both sad and happy,' i answered. he moved his chair until it touched mine, and put his arm round my neck, and brought my face close to his. 'look at me,' he said. and i looked into his large, splendid eyes. 'you mustn't think,' he whispered, 'that, because i don't talk about it, i don't feel that i owe everything to you.' i let my face fall on his breast. i knew i had flushed to the ears. 'my poor boy,' i sobbed, 'if you talk about that i shall never forgive you.' it was heaven itself. no woman has ever been more ecstatically happy than i was then. he rang for the bill. we parted at the door of my hotel. in the carriage we had exchanged one long, long kiss. at the last moment i wanted to alter the programme, go with him to his hotel to assist in his final arrangements, and then see him off at early morning at the station. but he refused. he said he could not bear to part from me in public. perhaps it was best so. just as i turned away he put a packet into my hand. it contained seven banknotes for ten thousand francs each, money that it had been my delight to lend him from time to time. foolish, vain, scrupulous boy! i knew not where he had obtained- * * * * * it is now evening. diaz is on the sea. while writing those last lines i was attacked by fearful pains in the right side, and cramp, so that i could not finish. i can scarcely write now. i have just seen the old english doctor. he says i have appendicitis, perhaps caused by pips of strawberries. and that unless i am operated on at once--and that even if--he is telephoning to the hospital. diaz! no; i shall come safely through the affair. without me diaz would fall again. i see that now. and i have had no child. i must have a child. even that girl in the blue _peignoir_ had a--chance is a strange-_extract translated from 'le temps,' the paris evening paper_. obsequies of miss pell (_sic_). the obsequies of mademoiselle pell, the celebrated english poetess, and author of the libretto of _la valliã¨re_, were celebrated this morning at eleven o'clock in the church of st. honorã© d'eylau. the chief mourners were the doctor who assisted at the last moments of mademoiselle pell, and m. villedo, director of the opã©ra-comique. among the wreaths we may cite those of the association of dramatic artists, of madame morenita, of the management of the opã©ra-comique, and of the artists of the opã©ra-comique. mass was said by a vicar of the parish, and general absolution given by m. le curã© marbeau. during the service there was given, under the direction of m. lãªtang, chapel-master, the _funeral march_ of beethoven, the _kyrie_ of neidermeyer, the _pie jesu_ of stradella, the _ego sum_ of gounod, the _libera me_ of s. rousseau. m. deep officiated at the organ. after the ceremony the remains were transported to the cemetery of pã¨re-lachaise and cremated. basil everman by elsie singmaster basil everman. martin luther. the story of his life. with frontispiece. the long journey. frontispiece in color. emmeline. illustrated. katy gaumer. illustrated. gettysburg. illustrated. when sarah went to school. illustrated. when sarah saved the day. illustrated. houghton mifflin company boston and new york basil everman by elsie singmaster [illustration: logo] boston and new york houghton mifflin company _the riverside press cambridge_ copyright, 1920, by elsie singmaster lewars all rights reserved contents i. the shadow on a bright day 1 ii. mother and daughter 13 iii. a waltonville commencement and an inquisitive stranger 28 iv. mr. utterly makes the acquaintance of mrs. scott 45 v. mr. utterly continues his search 54 vi. a new piano 67 vii. utterly spends a pleasant evening 83 viii. utterly is put upon his mettle 93 ix. mrs. scott's party 101 x. "my brother basil was different!" 119 xi. a duet and what came of it 128 xii. growing pains 143 xiii. richard writes a note 155 xiv. an anxious night 164 xv. explanations 176 xvi. further explanations 189 xvii. mrs. lister takes to her bed 208 xviii. mrs. lister has two callers 223 xix. mrs. lister opens an old bureau 234 xx. basil's room has a new visitor 239 xxi. a question put to richard 251 xxii. a confidence betrayed 258 xxiii. a waltonville delilah 267 xxiv. a deepening shadow 279 xxv. dr. scott pays a call 286 xxvi. "let us be entirely frank with one another" 293 xxvii. epilogue 302 basil everman chapter i the shadow on a bright day richard lister's mother stood at the head of the stairs and called a little impatiently. she was a large, middle-aged woman who looked older than she was in the black silk dress and bonnet with strings which was the churchand party-going costume of women of her years and time. middle age had not yet begun to dress in light colors and flowery hats like youth. when, above the sound of a tinkling piano, a young voice answered, "i'm coming!" she returned to her room, without expecting, however, that richard would keep his promise at once. walton college, on whose campus mrs. lister lived, of which her husband was president, and from which her only son was being graduated to-day, had not yet dreamed of being a "greater walton." satisfied with its own modest aims, it had not opened its eyes to that "wider vision" of religion and education and "service" which was to be loudly proclaimed by the next generation. even games with other colleges were as yet unheard of; the students were still kept at their books and it was expected of them that they learn their lessons. each was required to deliver an oration on commencement day, the first speaker saluting in old-fashioned english pronunciation _auditores_, _curatores_, _professores_, and _comites_, and making humorous allusions to _puellæ_. only in admitting the daughters of the professors, and once an ambitious girl from the village, was the college a little ahead of its own times. waltonville, like its college, belonged to an order which was elsewhere passing. lying a little north of mason and dixon's line, it resembled in many pleasant ways a southern town. the broad streets were quiet and thickly shaded and the houses were plainly built of red brick with noble white pillars. the young people gathered in the twilight and talked and sang; occasionally a group of students lifted their voices in _integer vitæ_ or "there's music in the air"; and those citizens who lived near the campus could hear a chanted "bonus-a-um" or "amo-amas-amat" from the room of the latin professor, who was a stern drillmaster. otherwise the village was as quiet as the country. the civil war was still the chief topic of discussion among the older men. dr. lister, dr. scott, who was the teacher of english--waltonville was careful about titles--and dr. green, the village physician, met many times in the long vacation and talked about grant and sherman and lee. dr. lister had served a brief term at the end of the war; dr. scott had been too young to enlist, but had lost father and brothers; dr. green, who was still younger, had had no personal experience of war, nor, so far as any one knew, of its losses. of dr. green, waltonville knew comparatively little. mrs. lister remembered his single year at the college, whither he had come, self-prepared, to enter the senior class. an unexpected legacy had given him the opportunity, passionately desired and as passionately despaired of, of studying medicine. he was older than the other students, a tall, dark, quiet man who allowed himself no diversions, who belonged to no fraternities, and who cared nothing apparently for girls. his companions knew, however, that he was not always silent. he burst occasionally into fierce and eloquent harangues, condemning and scorning those who wasted their time in idleness or love-making. his successful efforts to educate himself gave him an air of authority. the students knew also that he went now and then, as many of them did, to see margie ginter, the daughter of the hotel-keeper, but they believed that he went merely to be amused by her bad grammar, and that for him her round figure, her childish mouth, and the touches of her pretty hand on arm or knee had no temptation. when the ginters left, margie sent back to him letters with misspelled addresses which the students did not believe he answered. after being entirely lost to the view of waltonville, green returned. he had become a physician, but the four years of preparation had lengthened to six, during which he had changed into a weary and disappointed man. he had come, he explained, to see old dr. percy, now retiring from his practice, and offering the good-will of his business for sale. he had hoped that dr. everman would recommend him and that others would remember him. when he heard that dr. everman had died, he expressed to mrs. lister so hearty an admiration for her imposing and learned father and so unfeigned a regret that he was gone, that he won at once her valuable support. it was not long before he ceased to look like a beaten man, his thin frame filled out, he walked briskly, and began to exhibit some of the scolding eloquence of his college days. in waltonville class distinctions continued. the college people, the clergymen, dr. green, and the lawyers who attended a sleepy court in april and august, made up one class; all other white persons another. the servants were negroes who lived in low, neat cabins along a grassy lane which bounded the town on its eastern side. waltonville had never been a slave-holding community, but some of the older negroes had been attached to the same family for several generations. 'manda gates, mrs. lister's cook, had served her mother, and miss thomasina davis's 'melia had held her in her arms the day she was born. there was neither strife nor envy between waltonville's classes. mrs. lister respected mr. underwood, the storekeeper, but did not invite him to dinner, and mrs. underwood would have been greatly disturbed at the prospect of entertaining mrs. lister. the old house, in whose exact center mrs. lister stood when she called richard, had been built sixty years earlier for her father, president richard everman, and had descended to his son-in-law and successor. it was a broad, pleasant house with high ceilings and with woodwork of solid oak. one side of the first floor was divided into library and sitting-room and the other into dim, long double parlors. dining-room and kitchen were in a wing at the back. on a level with mrs. lister the bedrooms opened each with an elaborately dressed and inviting bed, dim in the pleasant light which filtered in through bowed shutters. above in the third story were other bedrooms and a large, otherwise empty attic in which stood the reservoir which held the supply of water for the house. as a little girl, she had come with her two companions, her brother basil and thomasina davis, to steal short peeps at the tank in which they could easily have been drowned. she was the only one of the three who was really afraid. thomasina insisted upon running boldly into the room and little basil was found afterwards there alone. basil's desire to investigate was always keener than his fear of danger. having waited for ten minutes, mrs. lister now returned to her post in the hall, and raised her voice in three successive calls. at the last impatient summons, the piano in the parlor ceased its clangor with a series of great chords, rolling under a fine, clear touch from the lowest of the yellowed keys to the uppermost treble. in the bass the tones were indescribably mournful, as though the aged instrument cried out in pain under the strong fingers of youth; in the treble they sounded a light cackle, half childish, half senile, like the laughter of an old man. the piano, bought years ago for basil, resembled an old man in many ways; its teeth were yellow, it creaked as though rheumatism had taken a permanent abode in its joints, and it was swathed in a covering of warm red felt. though it was the only object in mrs. lister's house which was not exactly adapted to the use to which it was put, and though it reminded her of misery, she would not have dreamed of selling it or of giving it away of of exchanging it for another instrument, any more than she would have sold or given away or exchanged an aged relative. a piano once was a piano forever, and no dismal sound from its depths, no fierce sarcasm from richard could depreciate it in her eyes. "richard!" before the player had righted the piano stool or had closed the square lid over the yellowed keys, mrs. lister called again. "yes, mother!" he took the stairway in four great leaps, the last of which his mother stepped aside to avoid. but she did not escape the bear's hug with which he grasped her. he was a tall, spare young fellow, scarcely more than a lad, with crisp, light hair and dark eyes. "yes, mother! yes, mother! yes, mother!" "your cap and gown are there on my bed, and you must change your tie and do it quickly." "the procession will form in one half-hour, mother, and they can't possibly begin till i tune up. i have half a mind to be late so i can see 'em squirm." richard took the tie from his mother's hand and stationed himself before the glass in her bedroom, where the walnut furniture was heaviest and most elaborately carved. "think of it, my last morning in chapel! no more eight o'clocks! no more pol econ, no more chemistry, no more worthless stuff of any sort!" "i hope you know your speech _thoroughly_, richard." "i do, oh, i do!" "i could never memorize well, and i was always frightened when i had to say a piece in school. aren't you at _all_ nervous?" "not at all. i'm cool-headed and cold-hearted. _morituri te salutamus_, that is, 'we, about to die, salute you!'" "you are not going to say that, richard!" "no, mother, darling!" richard folded his black gown about him. "i bow like this, till my long wings touch the ground, and i say, '_alius annus cum perpetua sua agitatione abiit, et alia classis in vitæ limine est_,' etc. wouldn't old jehu skin me alive if i failed? it is bad enough that eleanor bent is ahead of me, of _me_, if you please--faculty family and all that. now, good-bye, mother. have a little more faith in me than you look, or i may rush to your shoulder weeping." with a "farewell, great queen, live forever," and a light touch of lips on his mother's broad, smooth cheek, he was gone, down the polished banister. when the screen door had slammed, mrs. lister sat for a while quietly by her bed. there was, now that richard was started, plenty of time. she had been up since six o'clock, but she was not tired, being a person of almost inexhaustible vigor. the house was in perfect order, 'manda was singing in the kitchen, and she had a short breathing space. she loved those moments in which, her tasks finished, she could sit perfectly still, almost without thinking, yet vividly conscious of her blessings, of her good husband, of her fine son, and of her pleasant home. above all, she was thankful that she was content, that she was driven by no wild impulses as was thomasina davis, who often sat with her in the morning and in the evening heard a concert in baltimore. she visited baltimore--which she called "baltimer"--in the fall and again in the spring, after having made detailed, dignified, and long-announced plans, and there, with the aid of a commissionnaire, made her purchases for six months. she enjoyed these journeys, but she was always glad to get home with her silks and linens, her little stories of the courteous attentions of the baltimoreans, of the baked blue-fish, and of the stately house of her old cousin on fayette street. but now, even with all her morning's work done and richard started on his way, she was not at peace. his playing disturbed her, not because the piano was old and gave forth so many painful sounds, but because music had sad associations. she believed that it roused strange passions in the human heart, that it made men and women queer, abnormal, sometimes even wicked. it was connected in her mind with a quality called "genius" which animated the minds of poets and musicians and artists and made them a little more than human and at the same time a good deal less. it was a general conviction among quiet people of the time that those who could write or paint or sing beyond a mere amateur excellence were "wild," like poor mr. poe, about whom a tradition lingered among her baltimore cousins. genius was not a necessary part of greatness; her father and her husband were great men, but they were also sober, dignified, comprehensible, reasonable, which geniuses were not. thomasina davis had wrong ideas and she put them into richard's head. she had spent all but three years of her life in waltonville, but those three in new york, under the instruction of a famous pianist, had made her wish to be a concert player. fortunately family duties had called her home, and now, those duties long since done, she lived alone in the homestead set back in the garden on the street which led to the college. while she condemned thomasina, mrs. lister remembered with a stirring of the heart all the hundreds of times she had pressed her latch. thomasina had three pupils; cora scott, who attained technical correctness; eleanor bent, who played with all the imperfect brilliancy of one who learns easily; and richard, who attained both correctness and brilliancy. mrs. lister explained to strangers that thomasina did not need to give lessons; she blushed when her quarterly bill arrived, and shivered when she heard her talk to richard about playing. "you must read poetry, richard, and _feel_ it; that is the way and the only way for youth to gain emotional experience. 'magic mirror thou hast none except thy manifest heart; and save thine own anguish or ardor, else no amulet.' when you have learned to feel, then you can play." richard was not a genius--thank god! it seemed impossible that he should be graduating; that he should be no longer her lovely, placid baby, who had done so much to heal an old hurt. though he would have to go away for a few years for further study, he would come back to teach in the college and would perhaps some day be its president, like his father and grandfather. then she could stay on in the house which was like the outer shell of her soul, not to leave it until she left this life. richard might marry--ought to marry--a pretty, biddable girl like cora scott. cora would do her duty by her mother-in-law. mrs. lister's life, now so uneventful, had had its great sorrow, its unsatisfied passion. there was another love, stronger almost than that for husband and son, because its object needed no longer the loving affection which sought to serve him, had never, indeed, needed it while he lived. it was at such times as this, upon holidays, anniversaries, and other great days, that she thought most of the past, most of her father in his white stock and his bands, he having been a clergyman as well as a scholar; of her mother who seemed to her dim recollection very different from, but who was, nevertheless, very much like herself; and most of all of her brother basil, for whom she had the rare and passionate affection of sister for brother of a dorothy wordsworth or a eugénie de guerin; that affection which equals in intensity a lover's, which brooks no rival, and which is almost certain to result in misery. she thought of them all now, sitting in her room. she could hear the laughter of the faculty and the boys and girls gathering for the procession; she knew that it was time for her to go, but she could not move. how long, long ago it all was! yet how close they were, especially basil, who had been of all most vivid, most bright. presently, moved by an irresistible impulse, she left her chair by the window and climbed the stairs into the low-pitched third story. there she laid her hand upon a door. she desired intensely to go in; the touch of the knob restored to her an old mood of grief, the phase in which one feels that seeking, importuning, one must find. basil was here; his wide, bright gaze sought her eyes, as she often fancied, with reproach. all dead persons seemed to mrs. lister to look like that; her father did, as she remembered some little service unrendered, some command forgotten. basil's gaze was like his father's, yet different. he seemed to reproach, not his sister, but his creator for having laid him low, banishing him from the sunshine when his contemporaries still had years of life before them. this was his room; here he had slept and idled and whistled and sung; here had been unpacked and put away his belongings sent home after he was dead; here lingered still an odor of disinfectants and still more subtly an odor of tobacco, not approved of in the lister house; here were his pens and pencils and his books, shabby little editions of greek plays, lined and annotated, which he carried about with him. here he had sat by the window, indifferent to heat and cold, alone, doing, alas! nothing. surely if she entered she would find him, would hear him speak, would see him smile! surely-mrs. lister took her hand from the knob and went down the steps. this was richard's commencement day; it was wrong to give her mind free course in the region which invited. basil was at peace; must be at peace, nothing could disturb him. he was gone almost entirely from human recollection. the old fear that the world might come to know about him, that things might be "found out," was laid. she, too, must forget him; that was the only way to live. dr. lister had said, many years ago, that basil's belongings should be destroyed; that this was the first step toward her recovery. but dr. lister spoke of him no more and to richard he was a vague ghost. changes in the faculty of the college, the death of old friends in the town had contributed to forgetfulness. most of all, mrs. lister's own grief was of the variety which endures no mention of the dead and which creates the oblivion which it is likely most bitterly to resent. basil was dead and forgotten. chapter ii mother and daughter in a little house overlooking the fields on the far side of waltonville, where mrs. margie bent, of waltonville's middle class, lived with her daughter eleanor, preparations for commencement were in progress. the house was pale gray in color, and had about its little porch a mass of pink climbing roses with dark foliage and thick clusters of bloom. before it lay a smooth lawn, and back of it a tiny garden, symmetrically divided by grass paths. there were no outbuildings, there was no stick or weed; the little establishment looked like a playhouse or the model for an architect's picture. one did not ascribe to its inhabitants any academic aspirations. waltonville was accustomed to think of the little house as "back of" the town. yet the town was in a truer sense back of the little gray house, which looked out upon a wide sweep of open country. before it the fields dipped in a long and beautiful slope, then rose a few miles away to a low range of blue hills. a part of the land was cultivated, but there remained many stretches of woodland, especially along a wandering stream whose silver course could be followed for a long distance, and from which rose mist, now in thick, obscuring masses, now in transparent vapor. beyond the low hills was another higher range. here and there in the pleasant valley were farmhouses and large barns whose dimensions and design were copied from the barns of lancaster county not many miles away. within the little house was the same clean prettiness. the furniture was simple and plain and there was a great deal of exquisite hand-sewing; hem-stitching on the white curtains, heavy initials on the linen, and beautiful embroidery on eleanor's clothes in the closets. in the little parlor stood a bookcase filled with handsome and well-chosen books, and in the dining-room there were both bookcase and desk, the latter now neatly closed. little mrs. bent was helping her tall daughter into the commencement dress which she had made with her own unresting hands. her fair hair curled about her forehead, her short upper lip made her look like a little girl, and her whole appearance was at once attractive and pathetic. mrs. scott, whose inquisitive spirit made her wish to know every one in waltonville by sight and as much about each person as she could discover, said of mrs. bent that she looked and acted like a lady, though she was none. thomasina davis, whose kindly spirit made her judge her acquaintances with sympathy, said that she believed that mrs. bent was a good woman who had suffered cruelly. thomasina remembered her perfectly as margie ginter, the daughter of the most unpleasant, sodden, law-breaking tavern-keeper waltonville had ever had, but did not think evil of her on that account. she knew that margie had been light as thistledown, too easily pleased, too careless of the company she kept, entirely too free with her smiles, and a source of anxiety to the mothers of the young men of the town and to those who had the well-being of the college boys at heart; but she did not believe any of the serious accusations made against her by the older women; had not believed them when they were made and did not believe them now that they were occasionally recalled. margie had left waltonville long ago with her father for another tavern in another state, and after a few years had returned with a married name and with a little girl whom she called "nellie," and with means for very simple living. whether her income had its source in the ill-gotten gains of her father or in the property of a deceased husband, or in some other less creditable source, waltonville did not know. a few persons speculated about her when she returned, but she and her little daughter were soon accepted and ignored. if there had been any one to compare margie ginter with mrs. bent, he would scarcely have believed her to be the same person. margie ginter had lived indifferently in a miserable tavern; mrs. bent conducted her little house with the most exquisite tidiness, and maintained therein the most perfect order. her linens were less elegant than mrs. lister's, but they were no less beautifully laundered, no less elaborately marked. margie had longed for constant company, and a succession of the most idle of pleasures; mrs. bent shrank even from the back-door calls of her neighbors. margie had been confident, assured in all her motions, and almost impertinent in her glances at those whose disapproval she surmised; mrs. bent was humble, even frightened. margie had never gone to church, but mrs. bent took a little side pew in the college church and sat there at each service. to margie had come some mighty metamorphosis, changing her instincts, changing her very soul, as completely as a human body could have changed its position at a "right-about face." the process had not been easy; it had written pathetic lines in the countenance which had once expressed only light-heartedness. the tall daughter whom she was helping into her embroidered commencement dress was as dark as her mother was fair and as direct of gaze as her mother was timid. her gray eyes were singularly clear and bright; they held the glance so that her other features, beautiful as they were, became unimportant. her other features, except her nose and her upper lip, were like her mother's; she had evidently a maternal inheritance, permeated and strengthened by a different strain. she had not inherited, it was clear, from little mrs. bent the good mind which put her at the head of her class in college. mrs. bent was not a dull person, and she had certainly strength of will, but she had no aptitude for books even though she sat from time to time with one of eleanor's volumes in her hand and listened for hours together while eleanor read to her. sometimes when her daughter was not about she looked in a puzzled, frightened way over what eleanor had been reading, and she kept an old grammar hidden under a pile of neatly folded clothes in her bureau drawer. poor little mrs. bent made a brave effort to follow her swan in her flight. she had not, however, risen far, even in her effort to speak as others spoke. her mistakes were those of a low stratum. falling from her pretty lips in her youth and heard by uncritical ears, they had not seemed so dreadful. now they were shocking. in her anxiety to do well, she sometimes formed new words upon the analogy of those which she knew. "i thicken it with cream and i thinnen it with vinegar," she would say sweetly. sometimes a sudden "them there," long pruned from eleanor's speech, slipped from her mother's tongue. "them there" mrs. bent knew was execrable and was tortured by that knowledge. eleanor was now almost twenty years old, and seldom do twenty years flow with such smooth current. she could not remember when she had come to waltonville to live, and she could recall distinctly only one incident in her life before she started to the village school. children, in families where the past is frequently referred to, recall, or imagine that they recall, many incidents, but to eleanor nothing was recalled. the single incident which she remembered was impressed upon her by terror. her mother and she were walking together upon a shady street when a man stopped them and spoke to them. "so you've come back, margie!" was all that eleanor could remember but the words remained in her mind. the man had laid his hand on her mother's arm, and mrs. bent had jerked away and had hurried down the street. eleanor had seen the man a hundred times since, a heavy, dissipated creature named bates who sat all day on the porch of the hotel. when she went to school the teacher, a newcomer in waltonville, asked her her father's name and she had stood bewildered. "her father is dead, i guess," said the little girl next to her. eleanor nodded solemnly. a day or two later, when the teacher's question came to her mind again, she repeated it to her mother. mrs. bent, whose experience had not prepared her for the questions of a first day in school, stared at her daughter. "the teacher asked me, and a little girl said she guessed he was dead, and so i said he was dead. was that right, mother?" mrs. bent's face grew deathly pale, so that long afterwards the incident came back to eleanor. "yes, that was right," said she. another problem suggested itself. "were we ever away from here?" "why do you ask that?" "because that man said, 'so you've come back.'" mrs. bent shivered. "yes, we were away from here once. don't think of that man, and don't ever speak to him. if he comes toward you, you run, nellie." then mrs. bent took the little girl roughly by the arm. "children should be seen and not heard--remember that!" from eleanor's first year in school a few vivid experiences remained. racing home, she had fallen and had cut her head and several stitches had to be put in under her thick hair. a neighbor, running for the old doctor, had returned with the newcomer, dr. green, who had dismissed the spectators and had hurt her terribly. then he had carried her to bed, where she slept for a long time and waked with a burning pain in her head, the first pain she had ever had. when he came the next day, she was better and he had sat by her bed for a long time, asking her question after question about her lessons. he spoke in a stern, fierce tone, as though nothing about her education or about the world pleased him. he corrected savagely her inherited errors in speech as though he could re-make her language in a morning. her eyes closed in the middle of a sentence, and when she woke he was no longer in the room. but it seemed to her that a voice was still about, going on and on and on. another excited voice made answer after a long time, "i ain't a-goin' to do it!" if it was dr. green's voice and if it was to mrs. bent that he was speaking, their knowledge of one another had advanced far beyond the stage of casual acquaintance. their dialogue was not a conversation, but a quarrel. the next day, when eleanor sat up against the pillows, dr. green brought her a book. he had written "eleanor" on the fly-leaf. "nellie is a nonsensical name," he declared. "it must be changed." eleanor looked at her mother. "i don't care," said mrs. bent. if eleanor had been dragged from the grave instead of suffering a small scalp wound, she could have been no more terrified. her face was tear-stained, her color was gone, and one hand closed and opened constantly upon the other. in her eyes shone not only anguish, but a fierce anger. she seemed to take little pleasure in this friend of her youth. the picture book was the first of a long series of books which appeared in the little house. first came story-books, wonder-tales, fairy-tales, "robinson crusoe," "swiss family robinson," then a set of scott, then poetry. presently a bookcase had to be bought, then another. she was allowed to go henceforth to dr. green's untidy office, or, at least, her mother did not reprove her when she came late from school because dr. green had called to her to stop, or to climb into his buggy and go with him into the country. she had ceased to be afraid of him; once or twice she ventured a shy touch of hand. there was a need in little eleanor's soul which he supplied, a precocious intellectual curiosity which was now wakening. presently she began to ask questions and dr. green answered them. curt and positive as he was with others, he never was curt with her. he sometimes examined her to see what she had retained, and smiled to himself over the success of his teachings. eleanor had gained all unconsciously a knowledge far superior to that of cora scott or even to that of richard lister. neither dr. scott nor dr. lister talked to their offspring about world politics, about the literature of their own country and all others, about the trees by the wayside and the stars in the heavens as dr. green talked to little eleanor bent. it was when she repeated at home, as nearly as she could in his language, all his wisdom, that mrs. bent took to studying her grammar in the evenings, after eleanor had gone to bed, and hiding it under her pillow. eleanor was deeply impressed by what she read and was also acutely conscious of the world about her. she had vivid impressions of each detail of the landscape before the door; of the smooth, concave fields rising to the blue hills, which rose in turn to mountains of paler blue; of the winding stream with its accompanying mists; of the journeying sun with its single moment of rest through all the year in a deep cradle in the southwestern ridge; of the distant, dim sound of the train which made its way along the next valley with rhythmic thunder; of the peace of quiet afternoons and evenings; of the changing light. she had not yet, though she was graduating from college, begun to observe or to understand the sorrows or sufferings of human beings or the strange complexities and thwartings of human life. she lived within herself without speculating about other people, even about the life so close to her, to which she was so thoroughly accustomed that its shrinking, its various and inconsistent characteristics, did not seem strange to her. in her eighth year she followed to the cemetery the funeral of the father of one of her schoolmates, and saw from a distance his widow throw herself upon his coffin. she pictured thenceforth her mother in the same situation and regarded her with tender awe. in only one respect did she fear her mother. the dreadful "them there" was pruned out of her own speech by dr. green's continued admonitions and, having learned her lesson, she proceeded to pass it on. "mother, you must not say 'them there.' dr. green says that it is outlandish talk." mrs. bent rose from her place at one side of the little table. her eyes looked no more wild when eleanor was brought home to her bleeding. "don't you dare to tell your mother how to talk! that is a dreadful sin, a dreadful, dreadful sin!" eleanor burst into tears; her mother did not stay to comfort her, but went upstairs to her room and there remained until eleanor started to school. eleanor heard her talking to herself, heard her pacing back and forth, and did not dare to go to her. it was only after many days that their old pleasant relations were restored. eleanor and her mother went nowhere to pay social visits and few persons came into their little house. they were so situated with reference to their nearest neighbors that either the making of a long journey or the scaling of a sharp picket fence was a necessary preliminary to the borrowing of a lemon or a recipe. the nearest neighbor, who often needed lemons, had suggested a gate through the common fence, but it had never been cut. the successive pastors of the college church came at proper intervals to call. there were no aid societies or "busy bees" in the church government, and the young people were not drawn into association by oyster suppers or similar entertainments. nor was mrs. bent drawn into the company of the older women. mrs. scott, whose pew was near by, walked with her once or twice a year to the corner and had always some impertinent inquiry to make. only a week ago she had asked about eleanor's future. "nursing, perhaps, mrs. bent? young women are taking up nursing." a person with a sharper tongue than mrs. bent's might have asked whether cora meant to take up nursing. but mrs. bent said, with her gentle, frightened air, "oh, i think not!" "then, teaching, perhaps?" "she hasn't said anything yet about teaching." "fit her for something, mrs. bent. i suppose she will have to earn her living?" mrs. bent smiled and passed on, not seeming to realize that mrs. scott's last sentence was a question. mrs. scott was still talking. she said, in conclusion, that she had great difficulty in finding maids; that colored girls were almost worse than nobody and that white girls had wrong and proud notions. if she meant to imply that eleanor had wrong or proud notions, mrs. bent did not understand. if she had a "place" in waltonville society, she knew, alas! where that place was. if mrs. scott had suspected the ambitions which filled the mind of pretty eleanor, she would have run after mrs. bent. eleanor had become inspired with a desire to write, an ambition put into her head by dr. green, and zealously cultivated by him, and she had got into shape, without telling any one but her mother, several stories which were not without merit. one she had ventured to send away and to-day the excitement of graduation was dulled by the approach of a more important event. the editor of "willard's magazine" to which she had sent "professor ellenborough's last class" had written to say that a representative of that magazine would call upon her in the course of the week. it was improbable that they would send a messenger from new york to distant and inaccessible waltonville unless her story was really to be accepted! yet acceptance was outside the bounds of possibility. "i shouldn't eat or sleep for a week," she declared as the embroidered commencement dress went over her head and her white shoulders. mrs. bent looked up at her with her most frightened expression. her duckling had proved to be a swan--there was no doubt of that. "don't set yourself on it," she said, remembering sundry very different disappointments of her own. "things often don't turn out like we want they should." mrs. bent's hands trembled; she would have given her life to have things turn out the way eleanor wanted they should. even now there was another happiness approaching, of which eleanor knew nothing. going one day to thomasina's house, mrs. bent had asked thomasina to do a service for her and eleanor. "i don't like to put you to trouble," she explained nervously. "i want to sell my piano." "yes?" said thomasina. was poor little mrs. bent in financial difficulties? it would be a great pity if eleanor had to discontinue her lessons. "that is, not exactly to sell it, but to change it." "yes," said thomasina, who never interrupted or tried to complete the sentences of other persons. "for a better one." "yes." thomasina saw that her guess was wrong. "but i don't know much about--about such things." mrs. bent had meant to say about pianos, but she suddenly could not remember whether the i was long or short. she knew that one or the other was very wrong, but she could not remember which she had used a moment ago. "i'll be very glad to help you." mrs. bent's relief showed on her face and she breathed a long sigh. "what kind of piano do you want, mrs. bent?" "a large one," answered mrs. bent, knowing now certainly that she had the wrong word. "a grand piano?" "that is it, exactly." thomasina hazarded the name of the best by way of elimination. "that is it," said mrs. bent. "if you will pick it out when you go to the city, the money part will be fixed. it is a commencement present to her." mrs. bent rose to go. she was invited to stay longer, and she would have liked to sit forever in the pleasant room, but she was afraid. when she had gone, thomasina stood for a moment frowning, then bit her lip. she wondered a good deal about mrs. bent, and she was to wonder still more when she saw the large check in the hand of the salesman in baltimore from whose stock she selected the finest piano. not only the amount, but the signature of the check astonished her. the piano, now at the railroad station upon its side, its shining rosewood swathed in many folds of flannel and canvas and rubber, was to be delivered while eleanor was at commencement. if she had dreamed of its presence, her cheeks would have been still redder, her shining eyes still happier. she laid her black gown over her arm and took her black cap by its tassel. "get your bonnet, mother." a glance at the clock frightened mrs. bent. eleanor should be off at once or she would meet the men with the piano. mrs. bent had given explicit charges as to the time of its delivery. she was to let the carriers, whose chief she knew to be trustworthy, into the house before she started. "i'm not ready yet. you go quick, and i'll come right away." "you'll surely wait for me afterwards?" "oh, yes." she followed eleanor to the door, and watched her pass the corner. the emotion which shone from her eyes was sufficiently intense to explain even a greater metamorphosis than that which had changed margie ginter into mrs. bent. almost at once the piano, towering high above the horses which drew it, lumbered in from the other direction. all had turned out well. chapter iii a waltonville commencement and an inquisitive stranger the railroad, a fifty-mile spur of the baltimore & northern, ran to waltonville, but not beyond it. miles away across the beautiful valley which lay spread before mrs. bent's little house, the main line was dimly discernible by the long trail of white smoke visible now and then against the blue hills, and, when the wind blew from the west, by the faint, distant roar of flying trains. the officials of the b. & n. had originally intended that it should pass through waltonville, and the reason for their change of mind was an unusual one. the railroad engineer brought his family to waltonville for the summer, and waltonville received them as it did all unintroduced strangers. the engineer and his wife and children did not exist for waltonville. therefore, the railroad swerved far away to another village which was reported as larger, more important, and approached with less expense, and in the course of a few years waltonville was made the terminus of a branch road leaving the main line at a junction fifty miles away. its loss was, however, not unmixed with gain; it remained as it was, unaspiring, peaceful, still, and beautiful. the students, the commencement visitors, the agents for commercial firms, the few persons haled to court, traveled from the east and south on the b. & n. those who came from other directions either made a wide détour by rail or approached, as they had approached from time immemorial, by horseback or carriage. the last train on the eve of commencement day had been late. there was good reason for delay, traffic being heavy. beside the usual travelers from village to village, there were at least fifty fathers and mothers and sisters of college boys, and there were four traveling men--in this fashion, at least, the conductor classified his passengers. starting was long deferred; first the main-line train was behind time; then the engine of the waltonville train moved slowly, as though it felt in every wheel and valve its heavy burden. the traveling men scolded; the staid fathers and mothers and pretty sisters sat quietly, as though this slow journey were a not unsuitable preparation for the solemnities of the morrow. the lateness of the train would be one more interesting detail of a delightful experience. in a few days the doubtful fame of the "nine o'clock" would have spread far beyond waltonville. there was one passenger whom the conductor was not able to classify, a tall man who wore a beard sharply pointed in a new fashion, young, but how young it was hard to say. he was handsomely dressed, and his bags were of a different pattern from the square leather cases of the agents and the unwieldy and bulging satchels carried by other travelers. he rode in the smoking-car and smoked steadily. once or twice he rose and walked up and down the aisle, complaining of the roughness of his progress. when a passenger took the seat in front of him, he leaned forward and made comment as though communion with a fellow being were suddenly imperative. "this is a beastly road!" the newcomer turned toward him, blinking, as though his mind had to exert itself to understand. he regarded the pointed beard and the handsome tie near him with some astonishment. "what did you say?" "i said this was a beastly road. i can apply still other adjectives." "i guess it's good enough for those that have to travel on it," answered the mild voice. "i myself don't travel much. the testimony of our church is rather against traveling." the handsome young man sat back with a muttered "humph!" he was not in the least interested in churches or testimonies or those who thought of them seriously; his mind was occupied with certain literary problems which he considered important. at present he was engaged in a quest which he expected confidently would make him famous. for fifteen minutes he stared out the window, until the darkening pane gave back only his own countenance. then he turned in his seat and spoke to the man behind him. this man was very friendly; he explained at once that he was going to waltonville to see his only son graduate and that mother and the girls were in the other car. the sending of his son to college had been a heavy expense, but the boy had justified all his hopes and would be able to pay back into the family treasury the amount which he had received. "my name is illington," said he in conclusion. instead of giving his name in return, the young man asked a question. "are you acquainted in waltonville?" "a little." mr. illington shifted his position so that he might talk more comfortably. he thought of offering to sit with the young man. "did you ever hear of any one named basil everman?" the answer came with a kindly, frowning effort to remember. "no and yes. the name sounds familiar." "do you know whether such a person lives in waltonville now?" "no, sir, i don't." "did you _really_ ever know of such a person?" the kindly man shook his head. "i can't say that i _really_ did. but the name sounds--" the young man turned away as if to say, "that will do." he lifted to the seat beside him the smaller of his bags and opened it. upon the top of a pile of fine, smoothly folded clothes lay three old magazines, bound in pale covers which were now dull with age. in each one he opened to an anonymous article. "the roses of pæstum," an essay, was one; "bitter bread," a story, was another. the third was a long poem, "storm." he opened them, evidently without any intention of exhibiting them to his neighbor, but with the purpose of furnishing some reassurance to himself. having looked at them earnestly one after the other, he returned them to the bag, closed it, and set it on the floor. once more he appealed to the man behind him. "you're sure you don't know anything about any evermans?" "i'm afraid i don't, sir. but--" the young man took a little notebook from his pocket and wrote in it a few words which his neighbor, curiously peering over his shoulder, could see plainly. "approach to shrine. a prophet in his own country." the inscription made the observer feel a vague mortification. "you might ask the conductor," he suggested. "thank you," was the solemn answer. then, in slightly uneven script, the stranger added to his notes, "ask the conductor," and placed an exclamation point after the words. the conductor, approaching from the rear, was halted and the question put. "did you ever hear the name basil everman?" "never." the conductor also felt a kindly unwillingness to give a negative answer. "but i've only been on this run fifteen years, and my home's at the other end. but you can ask the brakeman; he lives in waltonville." the young man's notebook was still in his hand. he wrote in it, "ask the brakeman about b. e., the incomparable," and followed it with three exclamation points. the brakeman answered that he, too, was ignorant of basil everman. he perched on the arm of the inquirer's seat. he said that he lived in waltonville because it was cheaper and his wife liked to keep chickens. he gave various other reasons why his wife liked the country. he preferred the city. when the brakeman had gone, mr. illington began to prophesy the probable outcome of the next presidential election, and the young man, making some incoherent excuse, rose to go into the other car. but the other car was crowded, and he had to come back, heavy bags in hand. when mr. illington, not in the least offended, asked him whether he was a traveling man, he answered so gruffly that he was left in peace. in spite of the fact that this was the eve of commencement and that numerous fathers and mothers were to be its guests, the waltonville hotel sent no porters to the station to meet the train. it was taken for granted that those persons who were able to travel were able also to carry their hand luggage. those who had trunks or sample cases sent black jerry down from the hotel after they had registered. the young man knew nothing of old jerry, so he carried his many changes of clothing, his silver-mounted toilet articles, and his books in his own hand. he stepped from the train almost before it stopped, anxious to secure for himself as good accommodations as were to be had, and asked of the amused station agent the location of the best hotel. the agent looked after his rapidly disappearing figure and winked at the baggage-man as if to say, "i wonder what he will think of it when he sees it!" when the young man reached the hotel, having stumbled and almost fallen on protruding bricks in the uneven pavement, the expression of weariness on his face changed to one of disgust. the hotel was small; its furnishings were poor and rickety; it was not clean; and it was saturated throughout with the odors of stale beer and stale cooking. to engage a room one must enter the bar-room and endure the scrutiny of half a dozen pairs of curious eyes peering out of dull, bloated faces. the young man set his bags down heavily and asked for the best room in the house. the landlord looked at him with a sour smile. "they're all pretty much alike." "any with baths?" "no, sir." "isn't this a college town?" "i believe they call it that." "humph!" said the stranger. then he wrote his name, "evan utterly, new york," in a square hand in the untidy, blotted register and the landlord gave him a key to number five. "first room at the head of the stairs. you can find it. name's on the door." "thank you," said mr. utterly. he intended to convey stern reproof by his tone so that the landlord should burn with mortification. but his tone was not reproving, it was exclamatory. his eyes had lifted to a picture hung above the dingy mirror behind the bar. it was a poor old english print, representing the arrival of the stage at an inn door. from the stage window leaned the head of a young girl, who looked with a frightened expression at the coarse face of the landlord, while a little dog barked furiously at the horses. the poor picture seemed to have some powerful fascination for the stranger. his tone became eager. "did you ever hear of any one named basil everman?" he asked. "never." "how long have you been here?" "ten years." "did you ever hear of any one by the name of everman?" the landlord turned to wait upon the first of the advancing fathers. "never," said he. into the face of one of the loafers came a startled look. this was the lawyer, bates, who had dulled a fine mind by dissipation and of whom little eleanor bent lived in terror. the mention of basil everman seemed to amaze him. his brow was for an instant furrowed as though he tried to concentrate all his powers of mind upon some long-past circumstance, but he was not able, at this hour of the day, to concentrate upon anything, and presently the fumes of liquor and tobacco and the warm summer air sent him back into the state of somnolence from which he had been roused. utterly found a hard, uneven bed in an unaired room and spent a wretchedly uncomfortable night filled with foolish dreams of impossible quests. so depressed was he with the last search, which seemed to extend over years and years and lead nowhere, that his first act upon waking was to reach out and take in his hand the thin old magazines which lay in his bag on a chair near by and open to "bitter bread." "it was late afternoon when she reached her destination," he read. "there, instead of the eager face of arnold, she saw looking from the inn door the cruel face of corbin; there, instead of arnold's welcoming voice, she heard the sharp bark of corbin's unfriendly dog." having read the two sentences, which seemed to restore his confidence, utterly rose, dressed himself in white flannel, and went down to the dining-room. breakfast was, as was to be expected, poor. but among the mildly excited persons with whom the room was filled, utterly was at first the only one who complained. mothers and fathers were nervous with fear that john and harry might not do well; sisters watched, bright-eyed, for brothers and the friends of brothers. mr. illington stopped at utterly's end of one of the long, untidy tables to bid him good-morning. he called him now by his name, having consulted the hotel register, and offered in friendly fashion to introduce him to "the girls." there was, utterly said to himself, but one person with a mind in the room. the person whom he thus distinguished was dr. green, who came late and brought with him the strong odor of drugs which betrayed his profession. he moved his chair as though he would have liked to relieve a black mood by tossing it above his head, and perhaps by slamming it down upon the floor. his quick motions and his bright eyes indicated an abundance of physical and mental energy, neither of which had, perhaps, full exercise. having waited long for a late-appearing housekeeper, he had at last sped down the street to the hotel. now he ordered breakfast sharply and impatiently. old jerry, waiter as well as man-of-all-work, obeyed him spryly with many a chuckled "yes, doctor; yes, mars'r," which indicated that the doctor was a less formidable person than he seemed. "that good-for-nothin' jinnie ought to go to geo'gia trade, mars'r, that's where she ought to be sent a-flyin'. didn't get you no breakfus! yes, mars'r, these is meant for cakes." old jerry looked toward the kitchen. "that one out there's like jinnie, mars'r. the wimmen, they is all alike, seems to me." the doctor looked as though he agreed with jerry's humorous disgust with the sex. utterly, watching him, grew more certain that here at last was promise of intelligence. he might have been less sure of the doctor's intelligence could he have seen the complete turn of head and body which followed his own exit. "these," said dr. green, "go clad as the angels." jerry bent to pick up the doctor's napkin, and once bent to the floor, found it difficult to rise, so convulsed was he. "yes, mars'r, that am so." stopping at the bar on his way from the dining-room, utterly asked the hotel-keeper the name of the teacher of english at the college. the hotel-keeper regarded his white apparel with unconcealed astonishment, and shook his head. "can't tell you. don't believe you can do any business out there this morning. they're having their graduating exercises. is your line books?" "yes," answered utterly. "that's my line." his disgust with the ignorance of those whom he had encountered and his recollection of his uncomfortable night faded as he walked, an hour later, out toward the campus. here was waltonville, after all, as he imagined it, and in order that such a waltonville might be preserved, it was endurable that some discomforts should be preserved also. here was a broad street, sloping up to the college gates; here were tall trees and broad lawns, and everywhere masses of roses and honeysuckle which one had a right to expect in this latitude and longitude in june. he looked with admiration at the graceful curve of the black railing which protected those who went up the steps to dr. green's office, and stopped stock-still when he came to thomasina's gateway and saw her straight flagged walk and her flowers, and said, "by jove!" when he heard the music of the bees in the blossoming honey locust. the campus was surrounded by a brick wall with high, thick, brick posts, all covered with ivy which was now sending out clean, bright little shoots. the old buildings were covered so that they seemed to be constructed of green vines. in the distance the academic procession was approaching, the gowned and hooded shepherds of the flock leading, the boys and girls, similarly gowned, following sedately after. from the chapel toward which they advanced came the sound of music, a festival march well played on a sweet-toned old organ. a bit of poetry came to utterly's mind: "who are these coming to the sacrifice?... what little town by river or sea shore, or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, is emptied of its folk this pious morn?" "how delightfully attic!" he said to himself, not without satisfaction in the knowledge which made this comment possible. the various members of the procession were not so set upon the significance of their orderly march that they did not notice the stranger as he stood watching them. all the professors saw him and envied him a little his youth and his elegance, and were at the same time a little amused. eleanor bent saw him and flushed, then grew very white. here, perhaps, was the stranger who was to call upon her! her heart was wax, as yet unwritten upon, but this day plastic and ready for a lover's signature. she was, at the thought that utterly might be the coming messenger of "willard's magazine," at once excited and alarmed. she was so ignorant--what should she say to so imposing and elegant a person? seeing that the body of the chapel was filled, utterly climbed one of the two broad staircases which led to the rear gallery, and from there looked down upon the bonnets of the ladies and upon the flower-decked platform on which faculty and graduates were now taking their places. there were two other occupants of the gallery--at the organ a handsome boy, who was evidently a senior, since his black gown lay on the bench beside him, and the same tall gentleman redolent of drugs who had breakfasted at the hotel. the boy was playing vigorously. his touch was clear and true, and utterly, who possessed, along with many other serviceable and unserviceable bits of knowledge, an acquaintance with organ music, listened with surprise to his spirited and accurate work. his eyes then passed from one member of the faculty to another, resting longest upon president lister, short, dark-skinned, and jewish in appearance, and upon a tall, slender, smooth-shaven man whom he guessed to be the professor of english. in these two, he decided, after contemplating them and their colleagues, was concentrated the intellectual strength of walton college. when the processional was finished, the player slid off the organ bench, slipped into his gown, straightened his shoulders, whispered a "hello!" at the doctor, and left the gallery. a much smaller boy emerged, red-faced, from the interior of the organ, and to him utterly signaled a demand for a programme. during the long prayer, he read the list of graduates. the first name upon which his eye fell, that of eleanor bent, startled him so that he almost exclaimed aloud, and for a few moments he continued to stare at it as though he were not quite certain that he read aright. but the name was unmistakable, as well as the young woman's part on the programme--"eleanor bent, valedictory." utterly slid along the bench toward the doctor, who was much surprised to find him close by when he lifted his head after the prayer. there was a strange, excited look in the doctor's eyes. at the programme which utterly held out to him he glared almost savagely. he did not like utterly's looks; he was an effeminate dandy. utterly had drawn a heavy line under eleanor bent's name, and he pointed to it now with his pencil. "is that a _young_ lady?" he whispered rather stupidly. the doctor looked at him with unfriendly astonishment. "naturally!" "i mean--is there another person of that name in the town?--an aunt, perhaps, or--" "no," said dr. green, "there isn't." "and here!" mr. utterly's pencil moved to another point. "'richard everman lister.' do you know anything of him?" the doctor jerked his head toward the organ. "that was he." "did you ever hear of a basil everman?" it was impossible to tell whether this jerk of head signified impatience or negation. utterly pointed again to richard's name. he did not observe or choose to observe that the doctor objected to this whispered questioning. "do you know anything about his relatives?" "i know them all." "and there is no basil everman?" the doctor turned his shoulder now with an unmistakable intention to say no more. as utterly slid back to his place, he saw an old catalogue in another pew and leaned forward to secure it. among the former presidents of the college was richard everman, who was also professor of greek. basil--who but a professor of greek would give his son such a name? mr. utterly glared at dr. green. was this foolish doctor trying to conceal something from him, something which he had every right to know? he had a moment's silly suspicion that the conductor and the hotel-keeper and the brakeman and the doctor might have conspired against him. putting the old catalogue into his pocket, he gave his attention to the speaker, that same bright-eyed, blond richard who was beginning his "_auditores_, _comites_, _professores_," in a clear voice and with a smiling face. utterly smiled back, partly in response and partly at the old-fashioned english pronunciation, antiquated even to him, though he was years older than these children. between richard lister and eleanor bent came ten speakers, each addressing a tense and motionless audience, sympathetic with aspiring youth, sympathetic in turn with each attentive parent and sister, and breathing audible sighs with each concluding bow. of all the boys only richard was composed. the only girl in the class beside eleanor, cora scott, made no impression upon utterly except that she was a frail little thing, what color and prettiness she might have overshadowed, blotted out by the black gown in which she was swathed. of them all, no one failed, but there were slight hesitations and cheeks red with embarrassment. the topics which they discussed might well have excited older heads than theirs. especially were the theories of mr. darwin, penetrating after many years to walton college, now torn, shredded, cast to the winds. but eleanor bent--here was no blotting-out, but rather a heightening of vivid beauty. utterly, who did not have an enthusiastic temperament, said to himself that he had never seen a more charming girl. she walked well in her approach to the center of the platform, she bowed gracefully, she had, he decided, the most wonderful gray eyes he had ever seen, and the most musical, low voice. she was in a sense his discovery also, and this evening he would talk to her and learn just how remarkable she was. her address was merely an elaborate farewell, flowery, perhaps, but appropriately and becomingly flowery, matching well the roses and the honeysuckle and the southern inflections of her sweet young voice. while the degrees were being conferred, utterly consulted again the catalogue in his pocket. the name of the teacher of english was scott, henry harrington scott; was certainly the smooth-faced gentleman. he lived probably in one of the pleasant houses on the campus with their domestic resemblance to the classic architecture of the large buildings. he looked with interest at richard everman lister when he returned to his place on the organ bench for the recessional. richard's countenance was frank and open; there had descended to him, if he were at all related to this mysterious basil, no outward trace, at least, of the interesting qualities of mind and soul which distinguished the author of "bitter bread" and "roses of pæstum." chapter iv mr. utterly makes the acquaintance of mrs. scott when utterly started from the hotel to call upon the professor of english, the three members of the scott family were still at the dinner table. mrs. scott occupied the chief seat, a small, birdlike creature with quick motions and a sharp tongue which helped to shape staccato notes as varied as those of a catbird. she condemned now in rapid succession the decorations of the chapel, president lister's address, and eleanor bent's color, which she believed was not altogether natural. little cora, who sat to her mother's left, was, to most persons acquainted with the family, a negligible quantity. she had gone through college because college was at hand, and she would now assume, it was to be expected, like the other girls in waltonville, an attitude of waiting, which was to her mother not without its precise object. "richard lister never looked at any one else," she often insisted to her husband. "richard is very young," dr. scott would remind her in his nervous way. he stammered when he addressed his wife, who seldom allowed him to finish his long, beautiful sentences. sometimes she helped him with a word, sometimes she finished the sentence herself, radically altering his meaning, and proceeding precipitately to some lighter theme. he sat opposite his wife and awaited impatiently the moment of release. about twenty-five years after he was married, he had made for himself a refuge in a room adjoining his classroom. here a single wide window opened upon a part of the prospect which mrs. bent and her daughter enjoyed daily; here was a fireplace and here ample space for shelves. he transported himself thither with desk, pamphlets, old books, and all other movable possessions except his clothes, to spend that part of his time which was not devoted to eating or sleeping or teaching. there mrs. scott did not seek him out, having everything in her own hands, and needing no advice upon any subject domestic or foreign. he had an intense desire for a little fame, both because he did not wish to be wholly forgotten, and because he longed for association with those who were working in the same field. he wrote short articles for the "era" and longer articles for the "continent," and occasionally he received letters in comment from scholars. he read widely, and his mind, quickened by some modern instance, offered at once a parallel from literature or history. an eruption of ætna reminded him of magnificent and almost forgotten lines of cowper; a summer evening recalled stanza upon stanza; in spring he thought in verse. occasionally he received for his compositions a small honorarium. the first he had passed with fatal gallantry to mrs. scott. when she spent it for an atrocious "head of an arab" in arabian colors, he determined to use the next for books. but she expected a continuation of these perquisites and was quick to suspect their arrival. instead of adding new volumes of pater or old editions of the poetry of robert herrick to his library, he added new pieces of statuary and other objects of doubtful value to his wife's collection. when the precious slips of paper passed from his hand, he was tempted to wonder why he had married. but loyalty was a religion with him and he would be loyal even in thought. the vacant place opposite cora belonged to her brother walter, or, as he preferred to sign himself, w. simpson scott, a product peculiarly his mother's, moulded by her hand, holding her convictions. earnestly advised in his boyhood that without a large income one could do and be nothing in the world, he had accepted a position with an uncle, a manufacturer in new york, and had risen until he was now his uncle's chief assistant at a salary well known in waltonville. he proved himself to be equal to all those commercial emergencies in which a little sharp dealing goes farther than a good deal of hard work. he came home about twice a year, bringing with him the most recent of slang, the most fashionable of wardrobes, the latest musical-comedy songs, and the most contemptuous opinion of waltonville. to the scott household the closing of the college for the summer brought little change. the time that dr. scott had spent in the classroom he would spend now in his study; the time that cora had spent with her books she would spend embroidering. mrs. scott's life would know at first no change, but in august she would take cora to atlantic city to meet walter, and dr. scott would spend a month in heavenly quiet and with an entirely negligible indigestion. when evan utterly reached the porch steps, mrs. scott stood still at the foot of the stairway which she was about to ascend and looked and listened, regretting the chance which had taken her husband to the porch before her. somehow utterly in his beautiful white clothes had escaped her attention at the morning exercises, or she would have had up to this time an uncomfortable period of speculation. vaguely provoked because she was not summoned at once, she stood still, her eyes roving from the parlor, with its gilt chairs and its pale upholstery, to the sitting-room, with its table spread with cora's presents. there could be no better time to entertain a stranger! she heard utterly comment upon the attic beauty of the campus; then his voice sank. he was still talking about waltonville's charm, but she suspected a confidential communication. she determined to wait until she heard more. there was only one situation in life in which she was truly patient and in such a situation she now waited and listened. when a single clear statement reached her alert ears, she moved nearer to the door. the stranger had said that he was a member of the staff of "willard's magazine"! she had a passion for literature, she believed, and here was doubtless a very celebrated literary man at her door! she laid her hand lightly upon the latch, thereby producing a little sound which the stranger could not hear, but which dr. scott could not mistake. surely he would rise at once and invite her to join them! but her husband gave no sign of summoning her. patience became impatience. she could hear in his voice the tone which he assumed when he was bored or when he was talking with persons whom he did not like. she could still hear only unintelligible fragments of the conversation. she clicked the latch again. dr. scott did not like the stranger, either for himself or his clothes or his speech. it was a period when anglomania affected the rising generation and this youth used english pronunciations as he might have used a monocle, with evident and painful effort. in what he had to say dr. scott was not the least interested. he had begun to open the mail which lay on the chair beside him and he wished desperately that the young man would state his errand and go. when utterly asked finally for basil everman, dr. scott was not able to help him in his search. he said that he had lived in waltonville for only about fifteen years and that he did not remember that he had ever heard of basil. richard everman had been president of the college and he had had one child, a daughter who was now mrs. lister. from her the family history could doubtless be learned. it might be that basil was her uncle. dr. scott stirred uneasily, as he was wont to do when he was anxious to be left in peace. mrs. scott had moved to the side of the doorway from which she could see the stranger. he seemed to her each moment more distinguished in appearance. she was certain that he hailed from that distant boston which she adored without having seen. when she saw him reach for his hat and stick, which he had laid on the porch floor beside him, she lifted the latch and walked out. she was just in the nick of time. neither the conductor nor the brakeman nor even the hotel-keeper was as offensive to utterly as this man who professed to teach english literature. he did not exhibit his magazines or explain why he sought basil everman. for once, dr. scott did as he was expected and desired to do. rising, he presented the stranger to mrs. scott with a cordiality which only hope of his own escape could have inspired. now, at least, he need not talk. perhaps he could even leave the stranger entirely in her hands. this was, he explained with a chesterfieldian bow, mr. utterly, who was making inquiry about some one named basil everman. mrs. scott seated herself with a finality of manner which made it necessary for utterly to be seated also. "oh, yes?" said she eagerly and inquiringly. "do you know anything of him?" asked utterly. "why, yes. he was a brother of mrs. lister. he died--" "died!" repeated utterly. "oh, yes, before we came to waltonville. i believe he lived away from home. he died of some contagious disease and he wasn't buried here, i know that. i think he was a bit _wild_." mrs. scott looked at the stranger with some deep meaning. dr. scott flushed during this rush of words. it was strange that she should know so much about basil everman and he so little, but whether he had never heard his name, or whether he had known and had forgotten were questions of too little importance to solve or to explain. "what do you mean by 'wild'?" asked utterly with blunt curiosity. "oh, he--he didn't do things as other people did them," answered mrs. scott vaguely. "you never saw him?" "no." "nor heard anything of him but that?" "no." mrs. scott made the acknowledgment with reluctance. when utterly said that her not knowing more was very singular, her curiosity became almost a physical distress. "was there anything remarkable about him?" she asked. "rather!" utterly now took hat and stick firmly in his hand. "where do the listers live?" mrs. scott ignored the question. it annoyed her to think of this brilliant stranger in the hands of mrs. lister even though his business was with her. "if you are interested in hearing about basil everman"--the name slipped from her lips as though it had long waited just behind them--"you might like to meet some waltonville people here to-morrow evening. they could tell you a great deal." utterly accepted the invitation with alacrity. if he were still in waltonville, he should like nothing better. "there is another citizen of waltonville whom i should like to meet," said he. mrs. scott's mind traveled rapidly down the list of professors. she almost purred in her satisfaction. "i shall be glad to ask any one. that person is--" when utterly answered "miss eleanor bent," mrs. scott looked astonished and disapproving. utterly read her countenance with amusement. it was evident that miss bent did not move in mrs. scott's circle. the worse for mrs. scott! he explained that he was to call on miss bent that evening by appointment. she was, thank fortune! here and alive and easy to find. then, with a polite good-afternoon, he descended the steps and started toward the listers' white house. dr. scott and his wife spoke simultaneously. "what on earth does he want?" demanded mrs. scott of dr. scott and of the universe. "the man is a stranger! why did you invite him here like that?" "we are told to entertain strangers," replied mrs. scott flippantly. "what _does_ he want here? what does he want with eleanor bent? what is this about mrs. lister's brother?" "i don't know. i didn't ask. it's none of my affair." "perhaps she has applied somewhere for a position. what--" dr. scott gathered up his papers and books. he dropped the "fortnightly review" and almost groaned to see that magazine and cover had parted company. then he bestowed upon his wife one of the glances of incredulous astonishment which he had cast upon her during all but a very brief period of their married life, and fled. that a party involved the making of ice-cream and that he would be required to furnish the motive power for its manufacture in the middle of to-morrow's hot afternoon was not the least disturbing of the reflections which this unfortunate incident introduced into his mind. chapter v mr. utterly continues his search hat and cane in hand and carrying under his arm the three old magazines which he contemplated from time to time so earnestly, utterly ascended the steps of the lister porch. there, in mid-afternoon, dr. lister sat alone, the dinner guests having departed to join the general exodus on the five-o'clock train. mrs. lister had gone upstairs to change her black dress for one of lighter weight, and now sat quietly and happily beside her window. such periods of unhappiness as she had lived through that morning were followed by spaces of calm when a crust seemed to form over the grief which could still burn so fiercely. the house was very still; the only movement indoors was that of the thin curtains swaying gently in the summer air. hearing a strange voice on the porch, she made haste to complete her change of apparel. she was as punctilious in the small relations of life as she was in its more important principles. perhaps the visitor did not wish to see her; if he lingered she would go quietly down into the hall and find out. dr. lister had seen utterly and had wondered who he was. now, saying to himself that waltonville was seldom glorified by so well-clad a figure, he rose to meet his guest. dr. lister loved greek and taught his boys and girls faithfully, but without much enthusiasm for their capabilities or possibilities. his mind was more intently occupied with the affairs of the great world which seemed to lie so far away, with prospective changes in the english cabinet, with ominous stirrings in the east. it seemed to him at the first glance that his guest belonged to that interesting outer world. "this is dr. lister?" utterly saw the eager eyes. here was a man! "i am mr. utterly of 'willard's magazine.' can you spare me a few moments of your time?" dr. lister motioned the stranger to one of the comfortable chairs. he had been thinking of a few minutes' sleep before supper, but he gave it up willingly and even eagerly in the prospect of a talk with this keen stranger. "my vacation began at noon, sir. i shall be glad to give you all the time you wish." utterly sat with the magazines in his hand. this waltonville, he said, was charming. "a new yorker would find it rather dull," answered dr. lister. "there would be compensation here for anything new york could offer," said utterly, without meaning it in the least. "this peaceful attic flavor"--with a gesture toward the green trees and the smooth lawn and dr. lister's canna beds--"makes one feel that after all some persons and some places do arrive at serenity. we never do in new york. we don't know what serenity is." then utterly descended from the pedestal upon which dr. lister had for the moment established him. he added a "don't you know" to his sentence. "we don't know what serenity is, don't you know." the phrase was still not common property in america, but it offended dr. lister's ear. "i listened with great pleasure to your boys and girls, especially to the playing of your own boy--i believe it was your son who played the organ?" "yes," said dr. lister. "i stood at the campus gate and watched your peaceful procession with envy and i might say with awe. i felt that it wasn't real. i seemed to have stepped back just about two thousand years. you ought to keep it forever as a spectacle. pilgrimages ought to be made here, not by train, but on foot. everything in the world is changing--you have something that is old. i couldn't help thinking of 'thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,' and so forth, don't you know?" dr. lister shifted his knees so that the one which had been uppermost was now beneath the other. who was this strange, bearded, sentimental youth, robed like the lilies, who quoted poetry at first acquaintance? dr. lister read poetry, but he did not quote it to men whom he did not know. he wished that the young man, still running eloquently on about the attic scene, would state his errand and go. he thought longingly of his couch in the cool study. then, in the still afternoon, thus far so like any other commencement afternoon, he was startled out of all sleepiness. "it is difficult to understand how basil everman with such an environment could have looked so keenly and seeingly at the grimmer side of life." dr. lister turned his head. "i didn't understand you." "i said that it is difficult to understand how basil everman, with such an environment as this in his youth, could have presented so completely a side of life so grim and terrible." "_basil everman!_" repeated dr. lister. still he could not believe that he had heard aright. he had been sleepy and he had misunderstood. "why, yes! it surely is not possible that dr. lister does not know basil everman!" "basil everman was my wife's brother. he has been dead for twenty years!" "you did not know him as a writer?" utterly's eyes arraigned dr. lister for stupidity or some worse fault. "no. what do you mean?" dr. lister lowered his voice. his impressions of basil everman, whom he had not known, were not extensive, but they were very positive. he had been a strange youth who had brought sorrow, and sorrow only, to those who loved him, talented without question, but lacking in balance of mind. he had often felt for him a stern disapproval, coupled with a half-defined jealousy because of the devotion of his sister to a memory which was best put away. "i am a member of the staff of 'willard's magazine,'" explained utterly. "some weeks ago i looked carefully over the old files with a view to making a comparison of the shorter fiction of to-day with that which was being written twenty-five years or more ago. ours to-day is vastly superior." suddenly utterly's words came in a flood. he grew ardent and excited. "we are beginning to learn from the french and russians. we are learning the beauty of the lowly, even of the degraded. we are learning to look at life with our eyes and not with our puritanic moral sense. i have no words with which to express my contempt for that dull, blind, wickedly perverted thing called puritanism." dr. lister now sat motionless, his knees a limp parallel. his perfect quiet, the intentness of his gaze, the complete stillness of all about them, suggested to utterly a breathless moment in a play. he felt that he was talking well, that he had never talked better in his life. "but here, twenty years ago, was an exception, a glorious, shining exception. i found a story called 'bitter bread,' an essay called 'roses of pæstum,' and a poem called 'storm.' every one who has read them considers them extraordinary. they exhibit not only marvelous imaginative power, but an extensive experience of life, the experience of a man who has seen many things and felt all things. i am not one of those who hold that genius finds both its source and its material in itself, furnishing at once its own fuel and its own fire." utterly paused for breath. here was a well-expressed sentiment of which he must make mental and afterwards written note. "but--" began dr. lister. utterly lifted his hand. "we found after a good deal of searching that one of the original manuscripts had been preserved. it was mailed from waltonville, pennsylvania, though the answer was to be sent to baltimore. i had another errand here, and i was anxious to discover what i could about this contributor of twenty-five years ago, who promised such extraordinary things and who then, as far as we know, ceased to write. i belong to that class of biographers who believe that all is sacred and valuable in the development of genius. the facts of a writer's life are of transcendent importance. the power of imagination fails after a certain point, rather it does not begin until a certain degree of experience has been reached. a writer must have _lived_. i am hungry to know all you can tell me of basil everman. i mean to write about him at length." utterly settled himself a little more comfortably in his chair. "you say that he is dead? how unfortunate!" "yes," said dr. lister slowly. "he has been dead for twenty years." "did he die here?" "no. he died away from home in an epidemic. it was not possible to bring his body home. his death seriously affected my wife, who is his sister, and who lost her father about the same time. i never saw basil everman either in life or death." "and you never knew or suspected that he wrote?" "i never heard that he was supposed to have talent of any sort. he was very young." "so was keats when he wrote 'st. agnes eve.' surely basil everman's sister knew about his talent!" "i do not believe she ever knew that he had published any writings." "may i see her?" "i--i will see." dr. lister rose, bewildered, and went slowly toward the door. surely mary alcestis could have known nothing of this! the idea that she might have mental reservations was new. he was certain that she would be shocked by this inquiry and he wished that there were time to prepare her for it. he could, if she wished, ask the stranger to come at another time, or he could excuse her entirely. he found her in the hall. he had a fleeting impression that she had been for some time where she stood now, by the stairway with her hand on the newel post. but she came forward at once, her smooth and slightly pale face showing only its usual expression of placid content. "did you have a rest, mother?" asked dr. lister. "yes," she answered in her steady voice. "all that i needed." "there is a literary man here who comes from a new york magazine who wishes to speak to you." "to me?" repeated mrs. lister. it was not a question, real or rhetorical, it was simply a mechanical repetition of her husband's words. "yes. he wishes, strangely enough, mother, to ask you about some literary work of your brother basil's." "of basil's." mrs. lister did not seem so much surprised as benumbed. dr. lister was now certain that she had heard the stranger, and had tried, and was still trying, to gather herself together. "he says that your brother sent to his magazine many years ago some remarkable compositions which they published anonymously. did you know of them?" "he used to write some," said mrs. lister in a childish way. "he played some, too, on the piano. no, i didn't know that anything was published." "will you come out and speak to this gentleman? do you feel able to speak to him?" mrs. lister walked toward the door without answering. she rested her hand for an instant on the door frame and felt for the step with perceptible confusion. if the sunshine looked suddenly dark, and the honeysuckle seemed to exhale a sickly odor, it was not the first time in her life that under like circumstances she had held her head bravely. she had heard every word the stranger had said. if she had put on spectacles of some strange, distorting medium, he could not have looked more monstrous, more frightful to her. she gave him a cold hand because his own hand reached for it, and then sat down. utterly repeated his account of the finding of basil everman's stories and his estimate of his genius. he expressed in even more realistic phrase his admiration for the insight of the younger generation of writers. he said that modern literature was finding material in thieves, drunkards, in what had hitherto been considered bottomless pits. even keats had said that truth was beauty. he recounted with witty embroidery how he had asked the brakeman and the conductor and the person whom he called "mine host" about basil everman and how none of them could tell him anything. "but the little tavern gave the whole thing away. the heroine of 'bitter bread' takes refuge in just such a place; there is the identical worn doorstep and the fly-blown bottles and the print over the bar which pictures exactly her own arrival. there, at least, basil everman must have been long enough to have a photographic impression printed on his sensitive brain." dr. lister's hands, lying upon the arms of his chair, straightened themselves as though, using them as a fulcrum, he meant to rise with a mighty spring. the tavern was not a place for mary alcestis's brother to be connected with! but he looked at mrs. lister and sat still. her face was a little whiter, but it was unruffled. now that he had been so unwise as to let her see this creature, the interview had better be conducted as she chose. "then i went to the house of the professor of english and he knew nothing. if it hadn't been for the tavern, i should have despaired entirely. will you"--utterly, looking at mrs. lister decided that so victorian a person could not possibly understand or appreciate her brother. "will you tell me about basil everman? will you not tell me everything?" mrs. lister began in a smooth voice as though she were reciting a well-conned lesson. not a quiver betrayed her spinning world. "basil was born here in this house. my father was president of the college before dr. lister. basil was his only son and i his only daughter. he had no other children. basil was only twenty-five years old when he died. he died of diphtheria." mrs. lister had evidently concluded. "in baltimore," she added as though that put a period to her sentence. "yes?" said utterly. mary alcestis smiled a meaningless little smile and said nothing. "that isn't all, mrs. lister!" cried utterly. "yes." "oh, but mrs. lister!" utterly was delighted to see that suddenly her eyes burned and her hands twitched. "what was he like? do you remember him distinctly? what did he look like?" "_remember him!_" said mrs. lister's heart. "_remember basil!_" aloud she said steadily and clearly, "he was quite tall and slender. he had black hair, curly hair. his eyes were large and bright." "you have photographs of him, of course?" dr. lister rose at mrs. lister's command to fetch the album from the parlor table. he recalled more and more distinctly those long hours when she had lain sleepless at his side suffering her abnormal and unwholesome grief for her brother. he moved his chair closer to hers as he handed the stranger basil's picture. "what extraordinary eyes!" said utterly. "they look like another pair of eyes i've seen recently." he frowned, but could not remember what eyes. "that is, their shape is the same. what color were they?" "basil had gray eyes." "you surely must have known that he was wonderful!" "he was bright," conceded mrs. lister. "was he a graduate of this college?" "no." "he must have traveled a great deal. he could not have written 'roses of pæstum' without having been at pæstum, and one does not get to pæstum without going through some other places. i think your father was extraordinarily wise to let him get his education in that way. did he live abroad?" "he was never abroad." "he never saw pæstum!" "no." utterly looked at mrs. lister as though he did not believe her. again dr. lister's hands flattened on the arms of his chair. "extraordinary! and he lived here in this house!" utterly looked up at the walls as though he expected them to bear a memorial plate or some other record. "was he"--he turned impatiently to dr. lister--"are there no interesting facts about him, no _memorabilia_, no traditions of any kind? if he has been dead only twenty years, he should still be alive in the minds of men and women, especially of women. a man like that couldn't simply grow up and die, like a vegetable! we used to think the brontës had only lived and grown up and died, but we are learning differently. it was silly ever to have thought otherwise. moreover, the reading public is determined to have the facts about those whom it admires. you cannot keep people from knowing," concluded utterly in a harsh tone, some basic rudeness in his nature showing suddenly through the outer veneer. he was certain that they were withholding something from him, certain that mrs. lister knew a great deal more than she would tell. to him basil everman grew each moment more unusual, more mysterious, the position of the scholar who should discover him more to be desired. if he could see dr. lister alone, he might be able to learn more. he rose and asked whether he might leave the magazines until the next day. "i suppose you will wish to read them?" "certainly," answered dr. lister, rising also. "basil everman stands only second to edgar allan poe among the _littérateurs_ of the united states; of that even this small amount of work gives ample proof. it is the most deplorable tragedy in the history of american literature that the amount should be so small. are you _sure_ there is nothing else?" "other magazines of the period might have something, might they not?" suggested dr. lister. "have you thought of looking there? if the style is so individual, you should be able to recognize the work of the author elsewhere." "even if i did, i couldn't ask questions. don't you see that i don't want any one else to find out now? any calling of the attention of another magazine to basil everman would bring a representative here at once. there is no reason why i shouldn't have the facts as well as any one else." mrs. lister rose heavily. the interview had been prolonged a moment too long and her composure was gone. what she said startled her husband more than anything that had preceded. "do you know all the facts about homer, or about shakespeare, or other writers? i know that you don't know anything about shakespeare because there are some people who think that bacon wrote his works. why _should_ you know?" "we should never cease to give thanks if we could find out, dear lady," answered utterly. "i'll give you a hundred dollars a word for any authentic information about shakespeare, and a thousand for any about homer. homer and shakespeare have been dead for centuries and men are still trying to find out about them. _and will keep on trying_," he added. when utterly was well out of sight, dr. lister took his wife's hand. "why, my dear! what is it?" mrs. lister turned upon him a gray face. she looked old, terrified, distraught. "that is a wolfish man," said she. "make them leave poor basil in his grave! i will tell nothing about basil. i have nothing to tell about him." chapter vi a new piano richard lister had been a placid, comfortable baby, though his birth had followed a period of deep anguish in his mother's life. to her he was a miracle, an incredible phenomenon, his dependence upon her for every need of his little being the most heavenly experience she had ever had. he slept a proper and wholesome number of hours and remained awake long enough for ample petting, and for the first twelve years of his life he was scarcely out of her sight. she tended him awake and watched him while he slept, enduring with considerable pain the sight of him in the arms of any one except his father or thomasina davis or 'manda. when he was five years old, she entered upon a period of anxiety whose beginning she had set for this time. she compelled herself to realize that she could not have him always; that the small imitations of mannish clothes which he wore would be presently exchanged for full-grown originals which he would put on and off without her aid. he would have, moreover, some day a wife who would supersede his mother in the delectable kingdom of his heart. she began also to anticipate the moment when she must begin to discipline him, and to dread the various forms of infant crime for which she searched her mind. presently he would cease to obey promptly; he would refuse to put his toys away neatly on the low shelf of the cupboard assigned to him; he would stamp and scream like other naughty little boys. he might, alas, take pennies from her pocketbook. then there would be the fondness for tobacco and playing-cards on whose account he would have to be struggled with and possibly whipped. she had never been whipped, and she had good reason to doubt the efficacy of whipping, but she would not allow her own observation to contradict biblical injunction. no one but herself, however, should lay hand or switch upon richard, hideous as such necessity would be to her. but richard needed no whipping and his mother could decide upon no moment when the discipline, to which she had given so many hours of anxious thought, should begin. he continued, up to and long past the age of five, to be the most biddable little child that ever lived, satisfied with what he had, requiring no other companionship than that of his father and mother and 'manda, playing a great deal by himself, and never screaming or stamping or taking pennies from pocketbooks. he liked, as he grew older, to have little cora scott come to play with him, but to the scotts he would not go without his mother, having a wholly justifiable fear of walter. he was allowed each pleasant morning in summer to cross the broad, grassy field back of the campus to a little stream, tin bait-can, fishing-rod, and package of lunch in hand, and a great old straw hat of his father's on his head. as he sat and fished, 'manda could watch him from the kitchen window and his mother could gloat over him from a window above. even dr. lister left his work once an hour to see how he fared. if it were a baking morning 'manda would go down with a fresh patty-cake or a handful of cookies. luck was always poor with richard, probably because he sang constantly while he fished. his repertoire was composed of hymns and songs of a rather solemn cast. he was particularly fond of the lengthy liturgical service of the church, and prayed the lord a hundred times in a morning to have mercy upon him. the fervor with which he expressed this plea frightened his mother, who feared that such intense emotion indicated a spirit not long for this world. sometimes in the evenings he and 'manda held a concert at the kitchen door, 'manda in her rocking-chair on the porch, richard on the lowest step, hands on knees, eyes gazing upon the meadow with its shadowy trees and its myriad fireflies or looking up at the stars. 'manda was loath to leave upon such occasions and sat long after the hour when she was usually in the colored settlement. richard was the soloist and always selected and began the hymns. frequently the two took liberties with the original form. richard made a long pause after each line of "i was a wandering sheep," and 'manda's rich contralto inserted an eerie, tender, indescribably deep and rich "po' lamb!" the refrain varied constantly and the variety indicated a keen instinct for harmony. when he changed to "swing low, sweet chariot," or "hallelu," or "these bones shall rise again," 'manda ceased to rock, and bending forward, hands on knees, joined in at the beginning, her rich voice furnishing a background for the child's soprano with its piercing sweetness. in her performance was all the savagery of deepest africa and besides all spiritual meanings and desires. thomasina davis, sitting often with dr. and mrs. lister on the porch on the other side of the house, commanded every one to stop and listen. "it makes clear the universal kinship of believers," said she with shining eyes. "there are a hundred thrilling suggestions in that duet of blue-eyed anglo-saxon and black-haired african." dr. lister smiled back at thomasina. mrs. lister did not understand exactly what she meant, but she smiled also and obeyed willingly the command for silence. no sound in the world was so sweet to her as richard's voice. little richard liked also to preach. the audience which he usually selected was, like that of st. anthony, one of fishes. in imagination he saw before him, from his pulpit on the bank, a decorous congregation and a tuneful choir. his performance, while it shocked his mother, yet gave her hope that he might incline toward the ministry. her father, for whom he was named, had had theological training and used to preach in the college church. it seemed to her often that she could see in richard's solemn gestures a resemblance to those of the grave old man. richard's discourses suggested no such probability to his father, eavesdropping from behind a convenient tree. they were pleasant to dr. lister, who sometimes feared that a boy who was never uproarious, who always remembered to wipe his shoes on the mat, and who never carried toads or mice in his pockets, might be too amiable and good. he wished for a little temper, a little disobedience, a little steel under the satin. when richard cried out, "oh, you darned fishes!" in imitation of the ice man whom mrs. lister could neither silence nor reform, his father was convulsed. when richard grew older and ceased to sing, his mother, while she missed his hymns, was content. thus had basil sung when he was a little boy. at thomasina's suggestion, richard had begun early to take music lessons from her. except that he had often to be summoned from the old piano to other duties, and that he often called to his mother to listen to little melodies which he invented or to certain resolutions of chords which pleased him, and which were to her ear like any other musical sounds, he gave no disturbing sign of special interest in music. sometimes he repeated stories of musicians which thomasina told him, about beethoven who was an accomplished player at the age of nine, and who had become deaf when he had scarcely left his youth, and about handel who had become blind. richard's face would glow and his eyes shine with tears. "could you imagine, mother, how he felt when he knew that he could never hear again? he never heard his greatest works. think of it, mother, what a fearful thing that would be!" mrs. lister could not imagine it and would not think of it, having but slight conception of the pleasures which harmonious sound can give to the ear of the musician. thus had basil called upon her for sympathy in his strange, incomprehensible satisfactions. she wished that thomasina would not tell richard such stories. richard was always busy. he kept a series of little notebooks, neatly indexed; he cut clippings from newspapers and filed them away; he divided his day into periods for each sort of study, for exercise, and for play. soon after he entered college, his voice returned, a clear, serviceable tenor. he led the glee club which then took no long journeys round the country, but sang for its own amusement and that of the college, and he played the chapel organ and the assembly room piano. he continued to practice at home, but his practice was chiefly that of dull exercises and unending scales which roused no alarm in his mother's breast, and which his father regarded fearfully as the indication of a rather feeble intellect seeking exercise which involved no mental or physical effort. richard called out no more with tears, "oh, mother, did you know that handel was blind?" cried out no more, "oh, mother, listen!" in ecstasy over some sound which he had produced, no more, "that is to be played _delicatessimente_, mother. isn't that a beautiful word?" richard's musical passion, at least so it seemed to his mother, had died a natural death. she could not quite understand why he sought the society of cora scott so seldom and that of thomasina for several hours daily--but that was a choice to be thankful for at his age. in the fall he would have to begin in earnest to prepare for whatever profession he was to follow. so far there had been no family discussion of this matter. mrs. lister had not quite given up her hopes that he might become a preacher. of the other professions open to him, medicine, law, and teaching, she hoped that he would choose teaching. then they could all stay here, forever. as a matter of fact--alas, for poor mrs. lister!--richard's plans were made, and of them in their entirety one person knew beside himself. under richard's satin there was steel. his life-work had been selected and he meant to begin to-morrow. his commencement money would buy him a clavier and to it he intended to devote the summer. he could have it in his own room where it would disturb no one and where he could look upon it when he woke and practice upon it when he was supposed to be in bed. he knew that his mother was not fond of music, but his mother would let him have his way, had always let him have his way. he did not realize that thus far his way had been hers. in the fall he would go to study with faversham in new york, and therefore it was probable that he would be at home no more. thus lightly does youth arrange for itself. if poor mary alcestis could have looked into richard's mind as he sat beside her at the dinner table when commencement was over, and could there have read its hopes and plans so alien to her own, her heart would have been nearly broken. thomasina davis was not sanguine about mrs. lister's easy yielding to richard's wishes. she was prepared to talk to his parents by the hour if need be; she would have been willing to live on bread and water and go without shoes so that he should be able to study. she was determined to behold in him the fruit of her labors. faversham had been a fellow pupil in the three happy years away from waltonville; to send richard lister to him with supple, well-trained fingers and with fine taste, to have richard say to him that he was a pupil of thomasina davis, was a reward she had promised herself since richard had sat beside her piano on a high chair, enchanted by her music. thomasina, unlike mrs. lister, had a profound respect, an adoration, indeed, for genius. this adoration was innate, but it owed its strength to certain events in her past, a past which seemed to mrs. lister to have been pathetically empty of most of women's joys. when commencement and the commencement dinner were over, richard felt suddenly restless. he realized that there was nothing that he must do, that no lessons waited. he sat for a while talking with his mother's guests, then he went out to the kitchen, meaning to escape across the campus to the chapel and play. that was what he wanted and needed, the touch of the smooth keys under his fingers, the sound of the full, rich organ tones, to give him, instead of this sense of idleness and emptiness, a consciousness of all the work that was beginning. but there were obstacles in the way of his playing. the chapel organ and the assembly room piano were public; he would have an audience in a few minutes, and he did not wish an audience. if he could find some one to play duets with him, he would have the volume of sound for which his ear longed. thomasina was away; only cora scott remained. cora did not read well, but they could play compositions which she knew. 'manda paused in her dishwashing to regard him with a warm and beaming glance which expressed entire sympathy with him in his flight. "goin' to git out, honey?" "yes, 'mandy, i'se goin' to git out." making a wide détour in the shrubbery and round the back of the chapel, he approached the scotts' porch. then he stopped short. there in white splendor sat the stranger whom he had seen that morning in the chapel gallery. he turned promptly away. "no sitting for an hour listening to that!" said he. then it was, swayed by the slight incident of evan utterly's presence, that richard, who had hitherto sailed in such a calm domestic stream, turned his boat into another and an alien channel. he said to himself that he would play, that he would perish if he did not play. he considered going to thomasina's, even though she was not at home and rousing 'melia from her afternoon nap to let him in. but when he had reached thomasina's gate, he thought of eleanor bent. eleanor played well; he had heard her at thomasina's. she was pretty and bright, but not very friendly. there was, he believed, something queer about her and her mouselike little mother. he had a vague feeling that his own mother would not quite approve of his going to their house. but he had set his mind upon playing the eighth symphony, and, if possible, several other symphonies. he had, he remembered suddenly and happily, a volume of music belonging to eleanor bent, which he had carried away by accident from thomasina's. he would take this round to eleanor, and if she were not cordial or the piano not tolerable, he would come away. with the same care he stole back through the shrubbery to the kitchen door and succeeded, after ludicrous blunders, in getting through 'manda the volume which he sought. as he crossed the campus again, he saw utterly rising from his chair. but the die was cast; it was with eleanor bent that he wished to play and not with cora scott. he kept on his way through the college gate and down the broad street which led to the other side of the town, whistling softly as he went, and feeling a sense of freedom and adventure. mrs. bent let him in from the little front porch to the neat little hall. he explained that he was richard lister and that he had come to return a book of eleanor's, and she invited him into the parlor, saying that eleanor would appear in a few minutes. eleanor had had a surprise, she explained, which had delayed their dinner. her cheeks were flushed; she seemed to be excited. there was nothing queer to richard's eye, either in mrs. bent, or, at his first glance, in the interior of her little house. all was fresh and neat and simple and in good taste. there was a picture opposite the door, a view of the castel angelo, exactly like one which hung in his father's study; there were pretty curtains, there was--richard stopped short in the doorway, the bright color in his fair cheeks fading rapidly away and then as suddenly returning. here before him in the parlor of this little gray house, unknown of him, was a new piano! moreover, it was a magnificent grand piano, finer than thomasina's, finer, indeed, than any piano he had ever seen. he did not need to read the name on the front; its very shape was familiar to him from catalogues at which he had gazed in inexpressible longing. "why, mrs. bent!" cried richard. mrs. bent smiled in her frightened way at his confusion and delight. "that is the surprise," said she. "it is hers. it came while she was at the exercises." "it looks as though it hadn't been touched!" "it hasn't. she had sort of a queer spell when she saw it"--was that right, or was it "seen"?--"i said she would better eat something." "it was a surprise to her?" "yes." "how glorious! i wish some one would surprise me that way!" left alone, richard walked round and round staring at the shining rosewood and the gleaming keys. he had expected--he almost laughed aloud as he remembered--an upright piano of a poor make, covered with a velvet cover laden with vases and photographs. thus was the scott piano decorated. and here was really a grand piano, and the best grand piano that could be bought! if he might only play it! eleanor found him walking about. she held out her hand, like her mother all excitement and friendliness. she still wore her beautiful embroidered dress, full in the skirt and low in the neck. her hair was ruffled and her eyes more than ever brilliant. there were no introductory explanations. richard forgot to say why he had come, never explained, indeed, until long afterward when together, as is the custom of those in like case, they made each impulse, each trivial incident of their association the subject of conversation. "it hasn't been touched," said eleanor. "when i saw it i forgot how to play!" "does miss thomasina know about it?" "she selected it in baltimore. she had known about it for weeks and i knew nothing. it doesn't seem as though it could be real. will you, oh, will you play it first?" richard turned pale once more. "i'm not sure that i can play either. i'm not sure that i ever touched a piano!" "oh, you can! something with great, heavy, rolling, smashing chords. i know that if i touch it it will disappear, and i can't possibly wait till miss thomasina comes home. i never could have got through commencement if i had known it was here." "nor i. if i had met it, i would have followed it like the children follow the elephant, and some one else might have saluted the audience. it makes commencement seem like three cents." "now, play!" commanded eleanor. "mother!" mrs. bent came to the door. richard saw her look at her daughter, and the glance was worth coming farther than this to see. it adored her, swept over her from head to foot, devoured her. something of its intensity entered into richard. eleanor was older than he; she had stood ahead of him in school; she had scarcely spoken to him a dozen times; but she became in that moment a creature to be admired, to be cherished. life changed for him, boyhood was left behind. he met eleanor's eyes and saw in them youth, curiosity about himself, restlessness, a reflection, it seemed to him, of the confused emotions of his own heart. it was eleanor's gaze which first turned away. "the concert is going to begin, mother." mrs. bent sat down in the bay window and eleanor took a chair from which she could watch richard's beautiful hands. once after he had taken his place on the stool, he looked into her eager face, then he let his hands fall upon the keys. he shut his eyes to keep back starting tears. he remembered that some one had said that life held few moments to which a man would say, "stay, thou art so fair!" the saying was not true. here was such a moment; there would be for him, he knew, a thousand more. a schumann nachtstück, a bach prelude, a mozart sonata rolled from under his fingers, which then danced into a jig, performances allowed by thomasina. there were others, forbidden except under her own direction and in careful, studious sections. these richard now hazarded boldly and played them not ill. a dozen compositions finished, he whirled round upon the piano stool. "won't you play, now?" "i can't." "will you play with me?" "there is nothing here." "i brought the second volume of beethoven with me." "i will try," promised eleanor. richard spread the music open on the rack. both had been trained by thomasina, both played easily and well, both knew their parts. shoulders and hands touched; sometimes richard laughed aloud from sheer pleasure, sometimes he sang an air, sometimes he stopped to give directions. at that eleanor laughed a little nervously. richard seemed to all his mates to hold himself above them, to be dictatorial. he had seemed all of this to eleanor, but now she obeyed instantly. in the bay window mrs. bent sat and watched. she could not have looked at them with anything but pleasure. eleanor was so young, so pretty. there was no mother in waltonville who would not have been pleased to see her daughter playing duets with richard lister. but a shadow had settled on mrs. bent's face. the look which had transfigured her changed to a look of anxiety and trouble. she had years ago made wise plans for her life and eleanor's--they had begun to seem now not wise, but insane. they were wicked, because they were made in one of the rages into which she had fallen, like her father, in her youth; they were stupid, because they had taken no account of the future; and they were selfish, because they had taken no account of anything but her own fury. when dr. green drove by in his buggy, mrs. bent laid her hand with a gesture which was almost melodramatic across her heart, and stared after him, as though the sight of him had for an instant illuminated her despair. in another instant, however, the shadow returned to her face and she bent over her sewing. dr. green drove by, returned and passed again, drove a mile or two into the country and passed the fourth time. he thought that eleanor was playing, and he said, "good for her!" he took a great deal of credit to himself for eleanor. the afternoon light softened, shadows began to spread over the little garden. when richard rose to go, mrs. bent had vanished, and the two young people looked at each other, startled and a little bewildered, trying to hide their confusion. eleanor did not say "come back," nor did richard ask whether he might come again, but the volume was left open on the piano. chapter vii utterly spends a pleasant evening utterly sat for three hours with eleanor bent on her mother's porch, talking. he did not arrive until eight o'clock, which was late in waltonville, and she had been nervously watching for him for an hour. she was consumed with impatience to hear what he had to say. if her story had not been accepted, she wished to know it at once; if, perchance, he had come to advise her to write no more--that also she wished to know at once. she did not wish the young man--if that gorgeously clad young man were really the messenger of the gods--to stay long; she needed, after the excitement of the day, to be alone, to be quiet, to touch her piano in the darkness, the piano dedicated in such a surprising and poetic way. she was too restless to play it now. she sat for a while beside her mother, who was sewing beneath the pleasant lamp; then she struck a few chords; then she went out to the porch, calling to her mother not to expect anything. "they might merely be sending an agent to town to ask people to subscribe to their old magazine, or even to ask me to be agent. john simms has been and he is going away. that is it, i am sure, mother." when she saw approaching through the twilight the tall figure of the stranger, she summoned mrs. bent and let that frightened little woman greet him. utterly anticipated in the evening's call a pleasant experience. the wide landscape lay soft and beautiful in the moonlight, a panorama spread for his delectation. he called it, in the city-dweller's metaphor, a beautiful stage-set. after she had greeted him, mrs. bent went back to her work. except for a few moments an hour later when she came out to put on the porch table a tray with a plate of cake and tinkling glasses, utterly saw her no more. he regarded the young woman before him with a critical eye. she was beautiful, of that there was no question. she was talented also, and though she was still immature and provincial, she was not awkward or self-conscious. she accepted the announcement which he had come to make as quietly as any of the older, more sophisticated women with whom he associated would have accepted it. "i hope you are pleased." "very much," answered eleanor in a quiet voice which belied the tumult within. it seemed to her that she could hardly breathe. "and you will keep on writing?" "oh, _yes_!" said eleanor. "you keep notebooks, i suppose, and record all your impressions?" "yes." "and you read a great deal?" "yes." "how do you mean to get new impressions? are you going to stay here?" utterly's voice now disparaged waltonville. "i had not thought of going away," said eleanor. "i have just graduated to-day and i haven't any particular plans." "you and your mother are alone?" "yes." "couldn't you have a winter in new york?" "i had thought that sometime i might go to boston," said eleanor. utterly sniffed the air. he had, he said, little opinion of boston as an experience. boston was of the past. no one got experience of anything but the past there, and the past one ought to try to get away from. "a writer must have stimulation," he went on. "a woman's talent is, in far greater degree than a man's, dependent upon outside influences; it is far less self-nourished and self-originated; she must have life, though not too much life, and she must hold herself in a measure separate from it." utterly added to this sage prescription a "don't you know," and eleanor answered with a hesitating "yes." she was, in spite of her confusion, a little amused. utterly had come half a day too late; had he presented himself last evening instead of this, he might have made a deeper impression. presently he ceased to ask questions and began to orate. in this audience he found none of the stupid dullness which he had observed in dr. scott, none of the silent unresponsiveness of dr. lister. all that he would have said yesterday to his fellow travelers if they had had minds to understand, all that he would have said to-day to dr. lister and dr. scott, if they had had ears to hear, all that he would have said at any time to any one who would listen, he said now. he discussed schools of writing, ancient and modern; he discussed the influence of shelley upon the young browning, the place of edgar allan poe in american literature and in english literature as a whole, and finally, the ethics of biographical writing. the heat with which he spoke upon the last topic was the sudden bursting into flame of the embers which had smoldered since the afternoon. had the world a right to all it could learn of the lives of geniuses, or had it not? it most assuredly had, declared utterly. an author's acts in the world, an artist's, a musician's, were as much the property of the world as they were the property of the recording angel--if modern theology had not banished that person from modern life. he spoke of the invaluable revelations of old letters, which proved so clearly that no matter how long the world believed that writers evolved from their inner consciousness the material of their work, in the end it was proved to have a foundation in actual experience. time and scholarly investigation were showing what was long suspected and long denied, that charlotte brontë's own life had furnished her with her "stuff." experience in life, however, must, so said utterly, go only so far, must stop short before a man or woman was bound to obligations which would rob him of his freedom. only a few great men had been men of family, or, being men of family, had got on with their families. there was byron, for instance, and there was shelley, and there were dozens of others on the tip of his tongue. to the most of this fluent outpouring his dazzled audience made only polite general responses. she knew, thank fortune! a good deal about each of the authors whom he mentioned. shelley she had read from cover to cover and byron also, and charlotte brontë, of course. but she did not know much about them as human beings, dr. scott having an old-fashioned way of requiring a reading of the works of great authors, rather than a knowledge of their lives. finally utterly spoke of the works of basil everman. one could almost make up basil everman's life from his works, so clearly did they indicate the storm and stress of spirit in which he must constantly have lived. "i believe i don't know who basil everman was," confessed eleanor, mortified by her own ignorance. "was he related to dr. lister?" "of course you don't know!" utterly leaned back in his chair, his voice sharp with sarcasm. "it is apparently the deliberate intention of this community not only to quench all sparks of divine fire, but to hide their ashes. basil everman was the brother of the wife of your college president; he grew up in this town, a person of extraordinary mind; he died. but nobody remembers him or seems to want to remember him. it is an attitude not peculiar to waltonville; it is characteristic of keokuk, ishpeming, and many other communities, bourgeois, intolerable, insane." when utterly went at eleven o'clock, eleanor flew to her mother. she was excited and elated, her wonderful day had sloped to no anticlimax. "they have taken my story, mother, and i am to have seventy-five dollars!" "seventy-five dollars! land of love!" repeated mrs. bent. "why, eleanor!" mrs. bent's cheeks grew red, then pale. "mr. utterly thinks that i really can amount to something. he thinks we should go to new york, mother, and sometime to europe. he says one must have many different things to write about, and of course that is true. are you pleased, mother?" "oh, yes!" mrs. bent gasped, as though events were happening too fast for her to follow. "and, mother, did you ever know any one by the name of basil everman when you lived here long ago?" mrs. bent rose and gathered her work together. her face reddened again with the flush which came and went so easily. she looked not only startled, but frightened. for some reason eleanor remembered the long-past encounter with drunken bates on the shady street. as mrs. bent answered, she walked out into the darkened kitchen, her voice coming back with a muffled sound. "he didn't talk about basil everman!" "yes, he did. he said that basil everman wrote wonderfully, and that nobody in waltonville appreciated him or was willing to tell anything about him. did you know him, mother?" "yes," answered mrs. bent. "i knew him." she came back into the lamplight. "ain't you sleepy, eleanor?" but eleanor was not to be thus easily turned away. basil everman was richard lister's uncle and that was enough to make him interesting. "did you know him well, mother?" mrs. bent put out her hand toward the lamp. "start upstairs, then i'll outen the light." "did you say you knew him well, mother?" "not so very well." "did you know about his writing?" "no." "is richard anything like him?" "no." "was he anything like mrs. lister?" "no." mrs. bent turned out the lamp and followed eleanor up the stairs. at the head she bade her good-night. at the window of her room, which looked toward the garden and the houses of the town, she sat a long time. there was on her face the same expression of alarm that had rested there when she sat in the parlor listening to richard and eleanor play. it was the expression of one who felt herself to be entangled in a net from which there was no escape. eleanor was certain that she should not close her eyes. she had been waiting hours for this moment, when she might sit down by her window and think of richard lister, of the crisp waves of his hair, of his strong young hands which moved so swiftly. it seemed to her that he had played not only upon the piano, but upon her, making her fingers fly faster and more lightly than they had ever moved. her heart expanded, her soul seemed to burgeon and to bloom. she wanted to think not only of this day's experience, but of the past. she had seen richard daily at college for four years, she had sat with him in the same classes, but she had never known that he was like this! she had met him, also, coming and going from thomasina's. he must have made, though she was unconscious of it at the time, a deep impression upon her, because she could recall every motion of his light-stepping figure as he moved from the flag walk to let her pass. she remembered the straight line in which his coat fell from his shoulders as he sat at thomasina's piano, she could see his flashing smile. she tried to remember the details of the appearance of others, and decided with satisfaction that she had forgotten them. she heard the clock strike twelve, then one, and still she sat by the window, every faculty alert, the heavenly consciousness of expansion and growth growing keener. she remembered hours of discouragement when time moved so slowly and nothing seemed to get done. now everything moved toward a happy conclusion. the moonlight had never shone so soft, the night air had never been so sweet. after she had gone to bed, a tiny misgiving crept into her pleasant meditations, the forerunner of a score of anxious questions which had long been shaping themselves without her knowledge. for a moment she could not quite grasp the cause, and lay still, her heart beating faster and faster. she had done--she realized it now in a flash--a dreadful thing. in "professor ellenborough's last class" she had made humorous use of some of the small mannerisms of the college professors. little habits of dr. lister's were described; his constant swinging of his foot, the tendency of his shoelaces to dangle, and his drawing-in of his breath with a click against his cheek. dr. scott's den was there, though in reality eleanor's material was drawn from dr. green's office. but she had come since morning to look at dr. lister and dr. scott from a different angle, and it seemed to her that in using them even to so small an extent she had done a monstrous thing. the isolation of her mother and herself, their complete separation from waltonville and its citizens, became for the first time a source of anxiety. hitherto she had been indifferent to the fact that she was almost unacquainted with mrs. lister. now it became a serious matter. she remembered that her volume of mozart sonatas had appeared mysteriously--that was why richard had come to the house and not to see her! the duets had been an afterthought, suggested by the new piano. he had merely happened to have the book with him, being on his way doubtless to thomasina's. he would come to-morrow to fetch it--it was evidently his dear, careless way to leave things about--and then he would come no more. if he did not come again--eleanor looked out over the moonlit fields and faced another problem, more serious than the recollection of dr. lister's dangling shoelaces--or if he came to-morrow and took his book away and made her feel that they were strangers, then she would suspect that for richard and the listers, and therefore for waltonville, she and her mother were unknown because they were unknowable. if waltonville were merely careless or thoughtless or indifferent--that was nothing. but if waltonville were deliberate, that was another matter. she could not sleep, though she longed now intensely to sleep. another disturbing thought roused her to greater wakefulness. her mother seemed always to have ample supplies of money for their needs. but the price of the beautiful piano must have been enormous--had her mother been unwisely extravagant? she should be told about their affairs. when, at last, she fell asleep, it was to disturbing dreams. bates appeared to threaten her and she fled from him. she called upon richard lister to rescue her, and richard proved to be not himself, but dr. green, who would have none of her. this imaginary behavior of dr. green was not unjust, since all day eleanor had not thought of him who was next to her mother her best friend. chapter viii utterly is put upon his mettle in the morning utterly continued the search which was the chief object of his visit to waltonville. passing the house of dr. green soon after breakfast, he beheld that gentleman sitting inside his window. dr. green looked up absent-mindedly and bowed. utterly stopped short. "i have had an amusing time hunting for my basil everman," said he in his high, clear voice. dr. green laid his paper on his knee and looked over his spectacles. "did you find him?" "i found he was mrs. lister's brother, but not much more. they seem singularly averse to answering questions about him, to say nothing of offering any information." "possibly there isn't anything to offer," said dr. green, returning to his paper. thus dismissed, utterly departed, having taken a long and astonished stare into dr. green's chaotic office, and having decided that he never saw a spot better suited to the harboring of germs. now he sought the cemetery beside the college church, and there gave expression to a "by jove!" the building copied exactly the old colonial church first built on that spot, and was as beautiful in proportions and design as any colonial building he had ever seen. still looking up, he walked round it, gazing at the tall steeple with its fine lantern and at the high, narrow windows with their delicate, diamond-patterned old glass. then with another "by jove!" he began to search for the family plot of the evermans. without difficulty he found the place where richard everman and his wife lay side by side under heavy slabs of marble. of their son basil there was no memorial. for a while he wandered about reading names and inscriptions, then, shaking his head in strong disapproval of death and all its emblems, he passed through the gate once more and out to the street. he decided that he would wander about and steep himself in waltonville's primitive atmosphere. he grew more and more baffled and angry, and more certain that information was being kept from him. descriptive sentences formed themselves tantalizingly in his mind. "here in this quiet spot, surrounded by quiet influences, belonging to the family of a clergyman, growing up under the shadow of the old church, was developing one of the most somber geniuses to which our nation has given birth." until noon, still constructing sentences, he wandered unhappily. in the afternoon he returned to the listers' for his magazines. again dr. lister sat on the porch; utterly said to himself angrily that his manner was as stolid as his mind was stupid. dr. lister agreed with him that basil everman's contributions to "willard's magazine" were remarkable, that they gave extraordinary promise. "then it is certain that basil everman had extraordinary experience of life, and that that experience is the property of those interested in him." "not necessarily." dr. lister reversed the position of his knees as was his habit. he now made what was for him a long speech. "i have talked at length with mrs. lister about him. even after these many years it is difficult for her to speak of him. there is apparently no foundation whatsoever for your supposition that he led a life in any way different from the ordinary life of a young man in this community. he was an omnivorous reader, and, i gather, a reader of most careful taste. it is my judgment that any one who carried about with him volumes of euripides and æschylus did not--" "did he do that?" utterly took out his notebook. "--did not need any personal experience with the strange contrarieties of the human mind or the strange twists of fate in order to write either 'roses of pæstum' or 'bitter bread.' i am sorry for your disappointment, mr. utterly, but there really is nothing beside the simple facts which we have told you. if there were any possibility of establishing a posthumous fame for basil, surely an affectionate sister would be the last to withhold information leading to such a result! i think--if you will allow a much older man to express an opinion--i think you are building upon entirely false premises. the constructive power of the human imagination is greater than you are willing to believe. what deep or wide experience could this young man have had? he could not have been much over twenty when he wrote these articles. they were published--at least two were published--before he died, and then he was less than twenty-five. he must have been living here at home when they were written. he had never been away from home except for occasional visits to baltimore. his ability to imagine the heat, the blue sky, the loneliness of pæstum without ever having been to italy is proved beyond a doubt; why could he not picture the heat and the passion of the human heart of which each one of us has such conclusive proof within him?" utterly did not care for general speculations. "how did he happen to die in baltimore?" he asked. "he happened to be there on business when he was smitten with malignant diphtheria," explained dr. lister again patiently. "his death occurred about the same time as that of his father. mrs. lister lost in a short period her father and her brother. she lost also in a sense her home, since her father's death made it necessary to call a new president to the college. she returned to this house upon her marriage. you will understand, i am sure, how gladly she would furnish you with information if it would in the slightest degree give her brother that fame for which he probably longed. you will understand also, i am sure, that your inquiry, since it is so unlikely to bear any profitable fruit, is trying to her." "but it will be profitable." "my dear sir, the world has moved too far and too fast for this small contribution, excellent as it is, to be of great account!" dr. lister spoke with politeness, but there had crept into his voice at last a note of impatience. he thought again of a nap. mrs. lister had accepted an invitation to mrs. scott's for the evening, and an evening at mrs. scott's was not to be endured without all possible physical and mental fortifying of one's self. he wished most earnestly that the young man would go. "and he left nothing else?" "nothing." "no notes?" "nothing." utterly bade his host farewell and went across the campus and out the gate. for a second he was convinced that his errand was a fool's errand. but "bitter bread" and "roses of pæstum" did exist--an account of their author was valuable, even if he had never written another line. debating with himself whether he should now shake the dust of waltonville from his feet or whether he should make another effort to shake from its stupid mind some of the recollections which in spite of all testimony to the contrary must exist, he walked back to the hotel. there, he discovered, the question had been decided for him. the four-o'clock train, which had gone, was the last train that day. he was almost as angry as he would have been if the b. & n. had arranged its schedule to try his patience and if basil everman had lived his brief life, had written his great works, and had died to spite him. then, as he turned away from questioning the landlord, he took heart once more. above the damp, unpleasant bar with its dripping glasses, its show of tawdry bottles, hung, faded and fly-blown, the picture described in "bitter bread." utterly set his lips and swung out his hands with a crack of the joints. the listers notwithstanding, the stolid landlord behind the bar notwithstanding, he would learn what was to be learned about basil everman. even if basil everman had never written anything, he would still pursue his search. at that moment he found before him and close to him a vessel of testimony more important than the old picture. this was one of the miserable sodden creatures whom he had seen in the bar-room and on the hotel porch, perhaps the most forlorn and disreputable of them all. it was afternoon; he had recovered from the morning's stupor and evening drowsiness was not yet upon him. "you were asking yesterday about young basil everman," said he with a thick tongue. "i knew young basil everman." utterly's loathing of the bloated face, the soiled clutching hand, was not as keen as his pleasure. "i was a good friend to him," said the drunkard. utterly drew the miserable creature across the hall to a dark little parlor where dampness and the odor of beer were only a shade less unpleasant, that same parlor where margie ginter had entertained her admiring friends. there he sat him down in the most comfortable chair. "what is your name?" "my name is bates." "what do you do for a living?" bates explained that he was a lawyer, but that business was poor and he could not really earn a living. it had not always been this way; when basil everman was young, things had been different, very different. he had associated with the best people then, he had had plenty of money. now he had nothing. contemplating his misery, bates wept. with leaping heart utterly took his measure. "i will give you five dollars if you will tell me everything you know about basil everman." at this munificent offer bates wept again and made an unsuccessful effort to stroke the hand of his benefactor, who realized that he might have purchased the commodity he was bargaining for with a quarter of a dollar. bates began making apologies for himself, to which utterly listened impatiently and which he presently cut short. "about basil everman," said he. "did you know him when he was a boy?" bates said that he had known basil always. weeping he described basil in his childhood. "he would hold my hand, this one." he put out his hand palsied by dissipation. "i would tell him stories and stories." "and then you knew him when he was a young man?" said utterly briskly. bates blinked at him uncomprehendingly. the brief period of sobriety was passing. he was already, in anticipation, drunk upon utterly's bounty. then he mumbled something about a pretty girl. utterly leaned forward, his soul crying eureka! but the well was almost dry. bates could only complain that basil had got a girl away from him, that mary alcestis would never speak to him nowadays, and that he had had bad luck for thirty years. utterly closed the door; he coaxed, he cajoled, he suggested. but bates only wept or smiled in a maudlin way. presently he began to whine for his five dollars in a loud tone, and angry, yet encouraged, utterly gave him his easily earned fee and let him go. now, utterly determined, he would shake waltonville. he would go to mrs. scott's party and sit by the gilt table which he had seen through the window, and shake waltonville well. chapter ix mrs. scott's party mrs. scott did not announce, when she sent cora round the campus with her invitations, that mr. utterly was to be her guest. she was not certain, in the first place, that he would remain in waltonville--what kept him here she could not imagine. in the second place, she preferred to behave as though distinguished persons were her daily visitors. she invited, besides the three listers, and thomasina davis, who had that afternoon returned from philadelphia, dr. green and professor and mrs. myers of the german department. the college society was limited in summer when all but a few of the faculty sought a cooler spot. she liked to give parties, having an unalterable conviction that upon her depended the literary and social life of the feminine portion of waltonville. her parties were not like mrs. lister's, to which the ladies took their sewing and where there were many good things to eat. she set her astonished and frightened guests down to little tables, furnished them with paper and pencil and required them to write, beside the words "popular bishop" or "little misses' adoration" or "curiosity depicter," the names of the famous individuals whose initials were thus indicated and whose qualities or achievements were thus described. in planning her entertainments she always had consideration for the slight attainments of her guests and never included from her long list of eminent persons "eulogizes antipodes" or "eminently zealous" or "won england's greatness." for this party she provided no entertainment. mr. utterly would be there, and during her impatient waiting inside her screen door she had heard that he did not lack words or a will to use them. thomasina davis could talk well when she wished, and there were richard and cora to sing and play. moreover, there was herself! cora put on one of her prettiest dresses, and, parasol and little bag in hand, devoted a large part of the morning to her errand. at the myerses she did not linger; at the listers she sat long enough to be certain that richard was nowhere about; at thomasina's she stayed for an hour, enjoying the cool, pleasant parlor and the quiet, and wishing that richard would come. she admired the chintz curtains which thomasina substituted for her winter hangings, she liked the bare floors and the cool gray walls which her mother thought were so very homely and she loved to listen to thomasina's voice. thomasina seemed to be so complete, and though she gave so much to other people, she seemed to be so wholly sufficient for herself. it must be dreadful, cora thought, to grow old and not to have been married, even though one had everything else, good looks and a lovely house and beautiful clothes and perfect independence. even those could not compensate for being an old maid. but thomasina really seemed not to mind. she could, cora believed, always be happy with her books and her music and her flowers. one always felt, when one was leaving her on a rainy morning after one's lesson, when the day looked interminable, that it did not look interminable to her, and that even if she were alone she would still be content. cora wished that she herself did not care so desperately for other people, especially for richard lister. she had hoped in vain to see him this morning either at his mother's or here. but his mother said that he would come to the party--there was that to look forward to. having dispatched her messenger and having set herself and her maid to the baking of cake and her husband to the turning of the ice-cream freezer, mrs. scott was relieved to see that the stranger was still in waltonville after the four-o'clock train had gone. she grew more and more elated as the hours passed. she had read of the curious and interesting behavior of celebrated persons at parties--perhaps she would henceforth have her own anecdotes to relate. she had asked a number of persons about basil everman, including her black 'celie, who rolled her eyes and promised to inquire of the older members of the settlement. she reported that 'manda had said there was no harm in marse basil and that virginia's mother had said there was no good in him. he didn't do much of anything and he was "pow'ful good-lookin'." when she thought of eleanor bent, mrs. scott's curiosity grew torturing in its keenness. was eleanor trying to get some sort of literary position? dr. scott, when questioned, said that she was the best pupil he had, the best he had ever had, he believed, but that she was hardly prepared for any literary position. "besides, the bents wouldn't know of any," said mrs. scott. dr. scott was on the last lap of his task. back and arms ached and perspiration streamed from his body. when mrs. scott asked in sudden uneasiness whether she had better provide a game of authors or some similar entertainment, he looked up at her with the expression of a kindly, inoffensive animal prepared for sacrifice and entirely aware of the intentions of his master. he longed for his quiet study, longed for his comfortable chair, longed for his english magazine with a new article by pater. the prospect of an evening spent in company with the stranger and with the myerses was almost intolerable. even the listers and dr. green and thomasina davis, for whom he had usually the friendliest regard, seemed to acquire unpleasant qualities. when mrs. scott suggested his hanging chinese lanterns from the roof of the porch, he rebelled and fled. utterly arrived early, and mrs. scott, to her intense annoyance, was not quite ready to receive him, nor was dr. scott. while she struggled with the most elaborate of her dresses and her husband labored with his necktie, utterly sat on the front porch with cora, who answered him in monosyllables. cora was always ready for everything, and in her quiet way was equal to any task which might fall to her lot. she did not like the stranger, and when he began to sing the praises of eleanor bent's appearance and pretty manners and bright mind, she felt a sharp antagonism. she was thankful when her mother billowed noisily down the stairway, her silk skirts rustling, for then she could sit chin on hand on the step and look off toward the dim bulk of the lister house. as mrs. scott reached the porch, professor and mrs. myers came into sight. except with a view to providing a sufficient number for her party, mrs. scott had no special reason for inviting them. professor myers spoke english with difficulty, and his wife scarcely spoke at all in any language, and never upon subjects which did not have to do with the nursery or the kitchen. mrs. scott felt that neither was worthy for an instant of the brilliant give-and-take of her own conversation. beside the tall stranger professor myers looked like a fat and very dull cherub. when utterly addressed mrs. myers, with what was to mrs. scott delightful courtesy, she looked upon his overtures with an emotion which was plainly alarm. she answered him only with a shake of the head and a faint smile which to mrs. scott savored of imbecility. before mrs. scott could "save him," as she phrased it, from the myerses, the listers had come. at sight of utterly in the midst of her friends, mrs. lister gave a little gasp and tightened her grasp on her husband's arm. "would you like to go home, mother?" asked dr. lister, himself annoyed. "i'll make excuses for you, and richard and i will go on." "what's the matter?" asked richard, from the other side of his mother. thus mrs. lister liked to walk and sit and live, beside and close to the two whom she loved. "nothing is the matter," said she in an even tone, and, more erect than ever, she mounted the steps and replied to mrs. scott's greetings. she selected a chair as far from mr. utterly as possible. he, she was sure, looked sorry to see her. had he meant to conduct a sort of symposium about basil? but she had come in the nick of time and she would stay and if necessary outstay him. when thomasina davis arrived in her soft, flowing gray dress with her great red fan in her hand, utterly almost gave audible expression to his favorite "by jove!" here was, at last, he said to himself, a real person, here was some one with spirit and sense, and, unless he read all signs wrongly, with a mind. there was a little stir among mrs. scott's guests. mrs. lister's face lost its stiff look as she cried, "why, thomasina, when did you come back?" dr. scott's face glowed, and richard and cora sprang up from the step and escorted her in, one on each side. thomasina had a singularly bright glance and a singularly winning smile. she bestowed them both upon the tall stranger who greeted her with the lowest of bows. she wondered where mrs. scott had found this citizen of the world. she did not accept the offer of his chair, but swept back to sit by mrs. lister and to bestow upon mrs. myers just as beaming a smile. once established she talked to mrs. myers about her babies. she spoke english and mrs. myers german, but there was perfect understanding between them. dr. green was the only guest who had not arrived. he had no patients at this hour; indeed, he sat deliberately waiting until it drew near the time when waltonville customarily served its ice-cream. upon arriving he would take a sardonic delight in complimenting dr. scott upon the excellence of his product. he believed that every married man had his symbol of subjection, every hercules his distaff. dr. scott's was an ice-cream freezer. his failure to arrive on time did not disturb any one, least of all his hostess. she established herself beside utterly and looked up at him with an expression which had been used long ago with telling effect upon dr. scott, but which was now reserved for persons of greater brilliancy and promise. she asked leading questions, putting into practice for once the precept that it is more polite to let others talk than to talk one's self. what was being done in boston in a literary way? she looked amazed, yet became immediately sympathetic when utterly laughed at boston. such iconoclasm was daring and delightful. what, then, was doing in new york? utterly answered at length. as he had discoursed to eleanor bent, so he now discoursed to mrs. scott and her guests, especially to thomasina davis. american literature, if such a thing as american literature could be said to exist, was in a parlous state. america had never done much of importance. there were, of course, poe and whitman, but-"but longfellow!" cried mrs. scott. utterly laughed. "a few sonnets! you don't take longfellow seriously, my dear mrs. scott." up to this moment mrs. scott had taken longfellow very seriously indeed. "and bryant! and whittier!" she cried in more explosive tones. "'thanatopsis,' mr. utterly! and 'snow-bound'!" "the feeble expression of a little talent at peace with itself and the world." "oh, naughty, naughty!" cried mrs. scott, playfully. "you astonish me!" she looked about at her neighbors as if to say, "oh, see what i've got!" no one else made any response. if silence is a tribute to eloquence and a plea for further utterance, utterly was thoroughly justified in going on. he could see the shimmer of thomasina's beautiful dress, the slow waving to and fro of her great fan, and once or twice the gleam of her bright eyes. he fancied that thomasina hung upon his words. he sought to surpass himself, and little by little he shed his veneer of fine manners. to the mouth agape beside him he brought large mouthfuls. there were anecdotes of celebrated writers, true and untrue, pleasant and unpleasant, new and ancient, widely circulated or unknown, published and sometimes not fit for publication. this man, the author of peculiarly spiritual essays and exhortations, was in private life peculiarly unspiritual and evil. for a day each week his long-suffering wife imprisoned him in a room and the next day herself carried the products of his sober meditation to the publishers so that she and her children might live. the last chapters of lawrence miller's brilliant novel had been written in prison. edward dillingham did not dare to leave a little western town where, unknown, he had found for many years a haven. but the moral state of american writers was, as utterly pictured it, nothing to compare with that of literary men abroad. he wandered now into the past and demolished famous reputations, as sacred in waltonville as those of biblical heroes and heroines. mrs. scott was enchanted. trying with all her might to impress upon her tenacious memory each incident, each smart expression, she paid small heed to her other guests, and did not observe that upon dr. lister's countenance astonishment struggled with weariness, that professor myers was half and mrs. myers wholly asleep, and that thomasina was perfectly silent and that therefore she neither admired nor agreed. on the step cora and richard exchanged an occasional whisper, and once or twice richard turned an impertinently inquiring face toward the speaker. cora was amused and made no effort to restrain him. it became at last evident to mrs. scott that her guest was not receiving that attention which his parts deserved. professor myers, awaking as if from a dream, sat up in his chair with a loud exclamation. "it is true, there is nothing worth in american literature, nothing!" utterly had left that subject so far behind that professor myers's inattention was clear even to mrs. scott. thus recalled to the fact that all were not able to enjoy the mental food which she found palatable, she summoned cora and richard to the piano, and they obeyed promptly, miss thomasina following after. utterly at once left his place on the porch and went in to sit beside thomasina on the parlor sofa. cora sang in a pretty voice to richard's accompaniment. once or twice he corrected her in his commanding young way and she obeyed smilingly and gratefully. to thomasina the state of cora's mind was as plain as the blush on her cheek. then the two played furiously together. the piano was a generation younger than the lister piano, but it had long since passed its first youth. as a demonstration of digital agility and of power to make a loud noise, the performance was a success; otherwise it was worse than a failure. cora glanced out of the corner of her eye at richard. upon his face was an expression of excitement. it frightened her in a vague way, and she was thankful when thomasina called a gentle "quietly, children!" utterly bent toward thomasina. "have you lived long in waltonville, miss davis?" "all my life." thomasina answered without that pleasant enthusiasm inciting to further talk which was one of her chief charms. she liked this stranger less and less. "that is about forty-five years." utterly was about to express a polite doubt of thomasina's having lived anywhere that long, but thought better of it. "it is a very interesting town, isn't it?" "very," answered thomasina shortly. "one feels that the lives spent here must be happy." "not necessarily. the average of happiness is probably no higher here than elsewhere. people carry the material of happiness in their hearts." utterly listened a little impatiently. it was a period when abstract opinions fell oftener from the lips of men than of women. "did you ever know basil everman?" he asked. thomasina laid her crimson fan across her knees. the children came suddenly to a climax and somewhat boisterously, went to bring in the refreshments provided by mrs. scott, the sound of voices from the porch had sunk to a gentle murmur. into thomasina's face came a bewildered expression; she looked at the same time incredulous, and intensely desirous of hearing more. "did i know basil everman?" she repeated the question as though she were trying to make herself believe that it had really been uttered. "yes," said utterly, "basil everman." "i knew him all his life." "will you tell me about him?" "tell you what about him?" "tell me what he looked like, how he spoke and walked--all your impressions of him." thomasina lifted her fan and held it spread out against her breast as though it were a shield. she could not quite trust the stranger, though he had uttered a magic name. "what do _you_ know about him?" "he published some anonymous work in 'willard's magazine' and we are anxious to learn everything we can about his history." "basil everman!" said thomasina again, slowly. then the words came rapidly, as rapidly as she could speak. "how he looked? he was tall and very slender. i should say his most remarkable feature was his eyes. they were gray with flecks of black in them. they seemed almost to give out light. webster's eyes are said to have had that effect. if you had ever seen basil, you would know what that meant. he was extraordinarily quick of mind and speech and motion. sometimes, as a boy, he seemed to give an impression of actual flight. he had mentally also the gift of wings. he seemed to live in a different world, to have deeper emotions and more vivid mental experiences than the rest of mankind. he was the most radiant person i ever knew--i think that is the best word for him. he was a creature of great promise. he--" utterly turned his head to follow the direction of thomasina's gaze, which seemed to expand as her speech ceased. he could not see the white, startled face of mrs. lister, cameo-like, against the black foliage of the honeysuckle vines. it was plain to thomasina that what she was saying gave mrs. lister distress. moreover, she remembered, now that her first bewilderment had passed, the stranger's astonishing and ill-natured gossip. "and then?" utterly was sure of his quarry at last. "there isn't much more." from thomasina's voice the life had gone. "he died when he was a very young man." utterly looked about him furiously. he did not know what had stopped thomasina, but, moved either from within or without, she had paused. he raised his voice so that dr. green, approaching, heard him many yards away. "basil everman was a great writer," he declared for mrs. lister's benefit. "worth a dozen longfellows and bryants and whittiers. the world has a right to know all about him, and those who keep back the facts of his life are cheating him of the fame which he deserves, they are willfully and intentionally doing him an injury. it is a strange thing that here in this college community, where one would expect an interest in literature, nobody is interested or can tell anything or will tell anything about this man. i would give," cried utterly in conclusion, "a thousand dollars for one of his stories!" mrs. scott said "gracious alive!" then dr. green began to talk in a loud voice about nothing. he saw mrs. lister's white, shocked face and watched a little uneasily the rapid pulse in her neck. he continued to talk until richard and cora had finished passing the ice-cream and cake. the stranger seemed to be drowned by his words. then every one sat dully. utterly said no more. mrs. lister waited for him to go. he waited for thomasina and she waited for mrs. lister. finally mrs. myers rose, still half asleep. thomasina found utterly at her side. "may i come to see you to-morrow morning?" "yes." "would you like to see basil everman's stories?" "yes." "i'd quite forgotten about basil everman," said dr. green as he and thomasina passed through the campus gate. "he was mrs. lister's brother and he has been dead for many years, hasn't he?" "yes." "did you know that he was a writer?" "yes." "and that he published what he wrote?" "no." "i think he had just gone away when i entered college. this man utterly was at commencement. i never saw a man i liked less. what did you do while you were away?" "i bought some clothes and visited an old friend and selected a piano, a very fine piano for eleanor bent." "she plays well, doesn't she?" "yes, but not as well as richard lister." in the darkness thomasina turned upon dr. green an inquiring glance. "it is the finest piano in the county." dr. green did not seem interested in eleanor bent's piano. "this man said he found some stories of basil everman's; wasn't that it?" "yes." "was basil everman an extraordinary person?" thomasina stumbled a little on the brick pavement whose roughnesses she should have known thoroughly. "there have been two persons in waltonville in fifty years who have been ambitious," said she grimly. "i was one, and basil everman was the other. in addition to his ambition, basil had genius. he could have done anything. he is dead, he died before he had really lived. and here am i, burning to the socket!" dr. green looked at thomasina in amazement. they had traversed the flag walk and had come to her broad doorstone upon which a light from within shone dimly. it was evident that she was deeply stirred. dr. green was not in the habit of giving much thought to the problems of other people, and now it came upon him with a shock that she could hardly have arrived at the peaceful haven in which she seemed to spend her days without some sort of voyage to reach it. disappointed ambition was enough to chasten any one, thought dr. green, and dr. green knew. "you mean you would like to have been a musician?" thomasina answered cheerfully, already ashamed of herself. "yes," she said; "that is what i mean. thank you for seeing me safely home." dr. green bade her good-night, and went swiftly out the flag walk. basil everman's step could have been no more rapid or more light. inside her door thomasina stripped from head and shoulders the filmy lace with which she had covered them. then she went into her parlor and turned out the light and opened a long french door at the back of the room and sat down in a deep chair just inside it and looked out upon her garden. the garden was shut in by a high wall; in the center stood a pair of old, low-spreading apple trees; round its edge ran a flag walk, and between the wall and the walk were beds in which grew all manner of sweet flowers. dr. scott, when he first saw it, had said "san marco!" and thomasina's eyes had glowed. "it has required the most herculean of labors to establish it and the greatest niagaras of water. you are the first human being who has known what i have tried to do. you have been there, of course?" "no," answered dr. scott, sadly, "i have never been there." now the moon floated over its scented loveliness. there was neither sound nor motion except that of a moth, huge and heavy-winged. thomasina herself sat perfectly still, her hands folded in her lap. presently she raised them, one to each burning cheek. "what is to come of this?" said she aloud. after a while she rose and stepped out into the garden and began to pace up and down. an hour later, when even mrs. scott was asleep, thomasina was still pacing up and down. dr. and mrs. lister did not cross the campus directly, but went round by one of the paths, since a direct course would have brought upon them the company of the myerses. mrs. lister was trembling; her husband felt her lean more and more heavily upon him. "mother," said he impatiently, "what is the matter? what is it that troubles you?" mrs. lister did not answer until they had reached the porch. "they dare not drag poor basil from his grave! i can't have it! it can't be!" "but is there anything against basil? did he commit any crime? did he wrong any one? this young man is ill-bred, but he is evidently sincere in his admiration. what is there to fear? what can be found out?" mrs. lister answered hesitatingly, choosing her words. "he did not get on with my father. he--he went away. he was always strange--we loved him dearly. i--oh, thomas, he went away in anger and we couldn't find him; we never saw him or heard of him till he was dead. no one knew that he was alienated from us. i cannot endure it that any one should know!" then richard came up on the porch. "little cora might have amounted to something with another mother," said he. "who is this man utterly? he sat there beside miss thomasina and rattled like a dry gourd full of seeds. what is his business here?" dr. lister remembered that richard had been out of the room when utterly had said his say about basil everman. mrs. lister found in his absence one cause for thankfulness. she answered with an evasion and the three went into the house. chapter x "my brother basil was different!" in the morning utterly sought thomasina early. he looked about her beautiful room and out into the quiet garden and his hopes rose. here was atmosphere! if he had only seen miss davis first, he might have saved a great deal of time. he had accounted to himself for her sudden silence the evening before. mrs. lister was within hearing and her morbid attitude toward the memory of her brother was doubtless known to her friends. he had brought with him the copies of "willard's magazine" and had laid them on the table beside him. thomasina, cool and pretty in a white dress, sat in a winged chair inside her garden door and rested her slippered feet on a footstool. the excitement had disappeared from her brown eyes, and she had evidently slept in the few hours which she had allowed herself. utterly, who arrived with such high hopes, went away in anger. thomasina either would or could tell him nothing; insisted, indeed, that there was nothing to tell. "he was brighter than other people and he did things in a different way--if mrs. scott really thinks he was 'wild' as you say, that is the source of her impression. but she is a newcomer, and--" thomasina hesitated, flushed, and then said exactly what she had determined not to say--"if it were not for her husband's position she would be entirely outside the circle in which basil everman moved." "but mrs. lister does not speak of him frankly; there's no gainsaying that!" "i dare say she didn't approve of everything he said or did. few sisters do wholly approve of their brothers. the style of basil's writing would probably not have been appreciated by one brought up on maria edgeworth. but she loved him with her whole soul. did you ever read maria edgeworth, mr. utterly? do you know about 'rosamund and the purple jar'?" utterly brushed maria edgeworth aside. he was certain that while mrs. lister had risen up like a stone wall against him, this person was laughing at him. "did basil everman come here?" "a thousand times. i chased him under the piano usually. he was a very dignified, polite little boy, and i was a very undignified and impolite little girl." "miss davis--" utterly moved impatiently in his chair--"i have journeyed all the way from new york to be told that this really extraordinary young man, of whom this whole community ought to be proud, was chased round the leg of the piano and that he had gray eyes. what do you suppose would become of literary biography or of any sort of biography if all the relatives and friends of talented men acted as you do?" "i dare say it would be greatly improved," said thomasina, smiling. "i dare say many of the facts which make biographies interesting are inventions." the nearer utterly approached the railroad station and the farther the b. & n. train drew him from waltonville, the more certain did he become that he had been cheated. during the days following his visit, mrs. lister told her husband more about basil. the facts came out gradually. to dr. lister the revelation was almost incredible. it was not that the facts were so startling, but that mary alcestis could have remained silent all these years of their married life: she who was so open, so confiding, so dependent upon him for advice and sympathy in everything. as she proceeded with her story, he was still more astonished at her amazing conclusions. "basil was different from other children even when he was a little boy. i remember that my mother said that he used to require less sleep than other children, and that when she would go to his crib, she would find him lying awake and staring in the strangest way at nothing. she used to be afraid when he was a little boy that he might go blind, he looked at her so steadily. he never cried loudly like other children when he was tired or hungry, but sat with great tears rolling down his cheeks. even as a little boy he liked to be alone. he was forever disappearing and being found in queer places, such as a pew in the college church in the dark. sometimes he would sit alone in the dark tank room in the third story. he said he had 'strange thoughts' there. "as he grew older, he would not accommodate himself to the ways of the household, would not come to meals regularly. he didn't seem to care whether he ate or not. he didn't come to breakfast on time, and he would not go to bed at the proper hour. then my father said he could not have any breakfast, and my father took his lamp away at nine o'clock. "he would not study the subjects which were assigned to him. it was almost intolerable to my father as president of the college. he would not even open his mathematics. he said life was too short. i believe that was the only time he ever said anything in answer to my father. he took punishment without even crying out." "punishment!" repeated dr. lister. mrs. lister gasped. "once or twice my father punished him--corporally. "once he went away on a walking trip to the ragged mountains alone. we didn't know where he had gone, and when people asked where he was, we had to--to invent. my father used to try to pretend that it made no difference, that he had done his best and that god would not hold him responsible. but i used to hear him at his window at night. he used to pray there. "basil used to go down and sit at the edge of the colored settlement and hear them sing. it was as though he let himself dwell on all evil things." "oh, mother, not evil things!" protested dr. lister. "some of the songs were evil. you could hear him singing them afterwards in his room. they were songs that made you shiver." "did he ever drink or gamble, or do anything of that kind?" "i don't know certainly. my father kept some things from me. i know, though, that my father fetched him from the tavern once. he used to sing sometimes as he came home. you could hear him coming from far away." "but, mother, surely you can see in 'bitter bread' why he went walking to the ragged mountains! he wanted new impressions, different impressions from those of humdrum people. did you never suspect that he was trying to write? did you never see anything he wrote? didn't your father realize that here was no ordinary boy, here no ordinary talent?" "my father found one of his stories and read it. it was then that he told basil that he could not stay if he continued in his course. my father really didn't mean that he was to go away, but he took him at his word. then we tried to find him again and again. his going away killed my father. all the clues led nowhere. we didn't hear anything about him till he was dead and buried. then my father died." mrs. lister became excited. "i feel as though it would kill me. i thought at the time i couldn't live. everything came at once." "but, mother, it is all so long ago!" "it is all as plain and dreadful as though it were yesterday. i have been afraid for twenty years that people would find out about basil, that they would put this and that together. i have thought of mrs. scott finding it out and of how she would talk and talk and of all the tradespeople knowing, and--" "but, my darling, what could they know?" mrs. lister seemed suddenly to repent her vehemence. "that he was alienated from us," said she. "isn't that enough? and i shall never get over grieving for him. if he had done as my father wished he might have been here with us yet, and not be lying in his grave!" "but he did live intensely. he probably got more happiness out of a day than ordinary mortals get out of a month. and you must learn not to grieve. it's unnatural. you have richard and all your friends--and me!" mrs. lister was slow to take comfort. for several days she did little but wander round the quiet house. it dawned upon her presently that the house was unusually quiet and that she had seen little of richard since commencement. in the thought of him she found at last her accustomed consolation. he was normal; he would give her no hours of misery as basil had. he would do just what she wanted him to do--he was _darling_--even to think of him healed. but where was richard? probably at thomasina's. mrs. lister put on her bonnet and walked thither. richard was not there, and thomasina in her trying way would talk of nothing but his musical talent. she had an annoying fashion of assuming that people agreed with her. when mrs. lister reached home, richard had not come. during the absence of his wife, dr. lister had visited the third story and looked through some of basil's belongings. in the bottom of his little trunk lay his books, his tiny euripides and his æschylus with their poor print and their many notes. how strange it was to think of these books as the pocket companions of a young man! how mad to pick quarrels with any young man who went thus companioned! the old bureau in which mrs. lister kept basil's clothing was locked. from it came still a faint, indeterminate, sickening odor of disinfectants, and more faintly still that of tobacco. in the corner stood his stick, that stick which he had doubtless carried with him into the ragged mountains. dr. lister saw him suddenly, his cane held aloft like a banner, his eyes shining. he felt a chilling sensation along his spine. then he smiled. thus traditions of haunted rooms were established. the boy was dead, _dead_. dr. lister said the word aloud. the shrine was empty, deserted, forlorn. for a long time he sat by the window in the dim, hot room. he meant to shake off the vague, uncanny sensations which he felt; he said to himself that he was too sober and too old for any such nonsense as this. but while he sat still, his eyes now on the smooth white bed, now on a faded picture of basil's mother above the bed, now on the bureau with its linen cover and its beadwork pincushion, his heart began to throb. he remembered a picture of basil somewhere in the house, a picture brighter, younger, less severe than the one in the family album; he must ask mary alcestis to find it for him. he saw the boy, eager, alert, with a sort of strangeness about him as his sister had said, the unnatural product of this puritanic household in which he was set to grow. he did not like regular meals--even dr. lister had hated them in his youth. he had not liked to go to bed when other people went or to get up when they got up. did any boy ever like it in the history of the world? his father had once or twice punished him--"corporally." a portrait of dr. everman hung in the library--it was difficult to fancy that delicate hand clutching a weapon, especially a weapon brandished over his own flesh and blood! dr. lister was a placid person to whom the consciousness of immortality was not ever present. he had had few personal griefs; he had had little christian experience; he was not quite certain, indeed, that immortality was desirable. but now there swept into his heart, along with a passionate grief for this forgotten lad, a passionate demand that he should not be dead, but that he should have made up to him somewhere, somehow, his loss of the sunshine and the pleasant breeze and the chance to go on with what was unquestionably remarkable work. he wished, though from quite another reason than mrs. lister's, that the stranger had not come. the search could lead nowhere; the boy was dead and all his unborn works had perished with him. the thought of him hurt, and in spite of his admonitions to his wife, dr. lister mourned him. chapter xi a duet and what came of it richard lister played with eleanor bent for the first time on the afternoon of commencement day, which was thursday. he played with her also on friday and saturday and again on monday and tuesday. in the mornings he played with thomasina, who was certain that she had never seen her beloved pupil so anxious for perfection. never was there such gilding of the lily, such painstaking practice of trill and mordent. she would have opened her brown eyes to their greatest possible diameter could she have known that what he practiced with her in the mornings he played with eleanor bent in the afternoons, when he displayed all the fine shadings of expression, all the tricks of fingering which he had learned from her. with eleanor's mistakes he was patient, to himself he allowed no mistakes. as little as thomasina suspected that his playing with her was for the time mere practicing for a more important audience, so little did richard suspect that the young lady beside him neglected all other tasks in order to prepare as well as she could to support his treble. on two evenings of the week, they read poetry together, sitting on the little porch facing the wide valley and each taking a turn. they looked at the beautiful prospect, then they read again. each watched the other. when eleanor's eyes were turned definitely toward the western mountains and her head away from him, richard's eyes took their fill of her. when his eyes were upon his book, she learned by heart each line of his countenance. she had quite forgotten by now her uncertainties and fears. within doors mrs. bent sat under her lamp, forever embroidering beautiful things. together the two read "abt vogler," together "a toccata of galuppi's." thomasina, appealed to by richard, produced "a toccata of galuppi's" and played it smilingly. "curious, isn't it? you've been reading browning. yes, take it with you." to richard eleanor carried from her neat bookcases, volume after volume. "how many books you have!" "my mother gives them to me, and dr. green has given me a great many." "your mother and dr. green have good taste," said richard. together they read the "blessed damozel," together "love among the ruins," together "staff and scrip." then in an instant the old, common miracle was wrought. life was short and troubled and often tragic--one must have companionship to make it endurable. looking up they met each other's eyes. richard's hands trembled, a solemn thrill was succeeded by a warm wave of emotion, all emotions which seemed to gather themselves into one. he could not look long into the bright eyes so near him, he could say nothing, he must rise and go away, even though eleanor begged, trembling, "oh, do not go!" he had not reckoned upon anything like this, was not prepared for it. "i have forgotten something. i will come to-morrow." richard went home and sat by his window and looked out over the campus with its deep shadows, a broad shadow here by the chapel, a lesser shadow by the scott house. he heard in a daze his mother's voice and his father's footstep, and when all was quiet once more he gave to his youthful fancy, still clean and fresh, free rein. he leaned his head against the window frame, then, hiding his eyes, he laid his cheek on his folded arms. the night seemed to excite while it blessed him. he began to be sorry that he had left her. what was she doing now? had she thought him rude? did she think of him at all when he was not with her? she seemed far above him, she had been more conscientious about college work, she knew more than he did. but he would work, there should be no limit to his working. if only he had his clavier now! he would have at least the noblest profession in the world. he began to count the years before he could amount to anything. and she was already complete, already perfect! when he thought of thomasina, it was to bless her for setting his feet in the right way and for guarding him and guiding him. he thought of his mother with a slight feeling of uneasiness about her opinion of eleanor. she had never even invited eleanor to the house. but that should not worry him. his mother loved him, wished him to be happy; she would not deny him that which would be the most blessed source of happiness. he would tell her about eleanor to-morrow. it should be a casual sentence at first, a word or two about the pretty house or the magnificent piano or the many books. it was long past midnight when he went to bed and almost morning when he fell asleep. he was certain that he was the only person awake in waltonville and he felt as though he were guarding his beloved. mrs. bent said nothing to her daughter about the sudden and frequent visits of this young man. certainly no two persons could be more safely or profitably employed than in playing or reading together! she did not listen to what they read, but sat wrapped in her own thoughts, or in that blankness of mind which serves even the most mentally active for thought at times. there were now many moments when she looked worried and harassed. a course which had once seemed reasonable was beginning to seem more and more mad. on wednesday evening richard returned, having kept himself away since tuesday afternoon. he had said nothing to his mother about eleanor or her books or her piano. he had been making vague plans. certain expressions of his mother's came back to him; a sigh when he sat down at the piano, and an unflattering opinion of thomasina's finger exercises, heard by mrs. lister as she passed the house. thomasina, she had said, had been "tinkling and banging," two favorite words from her small musical vocabulary. richard felt that the time was not propitious. he would wait a day or two until the confusion in his mind had given place to those even and regular processes which had always been his. he found eleanor seated on the upper step of the porch, trying to read by the failing light, and he sat down and leaned against the other pillar from where he could watch her. she told him what she had been doing, how she had practiced--this a little wistfully--all the morning, and how she had found that dr. green had sat in his carriage listening to her for dear knows how long. "he's a funny soul," said eleanor. "he's always bossing me and correcting me, but i love him. aren't you very fond of him?" "i don't know that i am," said richard, conscious of a sudden cooling of whatever emotion he had felt toward dr. green. "well, i am," said eleanor. "did you ever hear how he disposes of his books?" "no." "if he begins a book and doesn't like its theories, he drops it into his waste-basket. then his virginia carefully fishes it out and carries it down to the cabins. she has a lot of shelves made of soap-boxes, and there stand billings on the eye and jackson on bones and piatt on dear knows what." eleanor talked easily and well. her teachers and her friend miss thomasina and her acquaintance mr. utterly would have been astonished to hear her. it seemed to her that some confining band within her had parted and that she was expanding out of the former compass of her body and her mind. she talked about the moonlight, about the lovely valley, about the poetry she had been reading. suddenly she turned to richard. "what are you going to do this fall?" "i'm going to study music." richard woke from a trance to his uneasy thoughts. "how lovely!" eleanor sighed. she was beginning to know him and now he would go away; he would become famous, he would forget her entirely. to her came also a determination to be more devoted to her work, to grow as he grew. "when are you going away?" "in the fall." "and where will you study?" "in new york, with faversham." "miss thomasina's friend?" "yes." "how fortunate you are!" eleanor meant not only that he was fortunate to be able to do as he pleased, but that he was fortunate to be richard. "then you'll forget all about waltonville." "it's not likely." richard remembered miserably that after all nothing was settled. an exceeding high mountain blocked his path and it was growing higher and higher. he looked out over the valley, chin on hand. it seemed to eleanor that he shut her out of his thoughts, that he had already forgotten her. "i have written a story that has been accepted," she said timidly, forgetting all her fears and compunctions about what she had written. "it has been accepted by 'willard's magazine' and it is to be published very soon. a mr. utterly came here to tell me." richard's comment came after a long pause. "i think that is splendid!" "i haven't told any one but my mother," faltered eleanor, certain that he must think her boastful and conceited. it seemed to her that again he left in a sudden, unceremonious way. again richard sat by his window. he would have liked to walk the floor, but he was afraid that his mother would hear and that she would come to his room and talk to him. he must have this time alone. he had accomplished nothing, was accomplishing nothing. only a little while ago he had been so happy and so certain of himself and of all that he was going to do. but eleanor bent had had a story accepted for publication! he did not believe that dr. scott, whom he called "old scotty," had ever dreamed of such an honor. that man utterly had come to tell her! utterly had seemed a counterfeit, but he must be a man of some parts or he would not hold a responsible position. she was now even farther above him than before. to-morrow his own future must be definitely settled. the next afternoon he went to see thomasina. she would help him as she had always helped him. she sat upon her throne by the garden door with a new life of beethoven open on the table by her side; she had put it down as he came in to take up a piece of sewing. "it is amazing and incredible and inspiring to contemplate the obstacles which great spirits have overcome," said thomasina with shining eyes. "physical defects, mental defects, opposition of relatives, of all mankind, of fate itself--none of them ever daunted an earnest man set upon achieving a great thing. all great achievement seems to have had the history of paul's! 'in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.' richard--" her bright eyes searched his troubled face--"what is the matter, my dear?" "everything," said richard. "suppose we begin with one thing." richard slapped his cap up and down on his knee. "i want to get to work." "why don't you?" "what do you suppose my father and mother will say to my studying music?" "the sooner you hear what they have to say the better for all of you. your parents are persons of excellent common sense. and i have some news for you. henry faversham is to be in baltimore for a few days before long." richard's head whirled. "do you suppose i could play for him there? do you suppose he will ever take me as a pupil?" "certainly he will! i haven't spent all these years teaching you to have you refused by anybody." "suppose i did go, what should i prepare to play?" the unhappy look was gone from richard's face. thomasina had the gift of wings, no less than basil everman. moreover, she lifted others out of fog-dimmed valleys up to mountain peaks. richard's eyes shone, his cheeks glowed, ambition and aspiration now quickened by a new motive, took up their abode once more in his breast. on his way home mrs. scott called to him from her porch. impatiently he obeyed the summons. he did not like her, and had never disliked her so much as he did at this moment. she had many foolish questions to ask. what did he think of her friend mr. utterly? what did he suppose was mr. utterly's business with eleanor bent? she understood that he had spent an evening with her. the bents were strange people, they behaved well, yet everything that one knew definitely about mrs. bent was that she was a hotel-keeper's daughter. richard said shortly in reply that he had had no conversation with mr. utterly and that he knew none of his business. "and i do think it is the most pathetic thing about your uncle basil," said mrs. scott. "my uncle basil," repeated richard. "what of him?" mrs. scott's hands clasped one another in a gesture of amazement. "why mr. utterly said--why where were you?--oh, yes, you were in the kitchen so kindly helping cora!--he said your uncle wrote wonderfully. i think it's very strange--" richard was suddenly certain that his neighbor wished to "get something out of him." "oh, that!" said he, without having any idea what she meant. mrs. scott made him promise to come the next afternoon to play with cora. he could not escape. he almost added poor, inoffensive cora to her mother and the metallic piano in the limbo to which he consigned them. now his wings drooped. he decided that after supper he would lie down for a few minutes to get rid of the sharp pain which too much practicing had put into the back of his neck. then he would join his father and mother on the porch and settle the important business of his future. at the supper table he asked about his uncle basil and his mother answered placidly, prepared for the question. "he had published anonymously some stories and this mr. utterly came to ask questions about his life." "why wasn't i told?" "you haven't been here very much of late, my dear." "where are the stories?" "mr. utterly has them." "couldn't we get them?" "perhaps we could." "how did mrs. scott know about him?" "mr. utterly went there to inquire." "did you know they had been published?" "no. you had better stay with us this evening. we scarcely know our boy." there was to be no escaping to his room. mrs. lister laid her arm across his shoulders and together they went out to the porch. the air was cool and sweet; near by a woodpecker tapped slowly, wrens chattered, anxious about their late nestlings, song sparrows trilled, and flickers and robins hopped under the spray which dr. lister was sending over his cannas and elephant ears. mrs. lister, with richard at her side, felt her heart at rest. utterly had vanished definitely, leaving no trail behind him. she could now think of richard's future, both immediate and far removed. she asked him whether he would like to pay a visit to dr. lister's kin in st. louis. "no, indeed," said richard. "but you used to want to go out there!" "but i don't now, mother--unless you want me to take you," he added with sudden compunction. "oh, no," said mrs. lister. further conversation was postponed by the arrival of the myerses to call. when all possible themes of common interest had been discussed and they had moved on to talk of the same subjects at the scotts', darkness had come. mrs. lister did not wish to give up the idea of a visit. "you have had a busy winter and this fall you will go to the university, and you may wish to do something else in vacations." richard cleared his throat. he sat about a dozen feet away from his father and mother and facing them as a culprit might have sat. "but i don't wish to go to the university, mother." "what do you wish to do?" richard almost said passionately, "you know what i wish to do!" but he would have been wrong. mrs. lister was certain that richard had put away all childish things. "i wish to study music." mrs. lister dropped her hands, palm upward, into her lap. "i thought you were over _that_!" said she, much more sharply than richard had ever heard her speak. "i thought you had given it up." "i have never given it up for a minute. i never shall give it up." mrs. lister gasped. richard might almost as well have announced that he had ceased to think of her or love her. she could not brook difference of opinion in her son. "it cannot be. i cannot hear of it. you are a man and you must do a man's work." "it is a man's work!" cried richard. the pain in the back of his neck was growing more acute. "father, don't you consider it a man's work?" dr. lister moved uneasily. "we haven't had musicians in the family thus far. suppose you tell us about it." richard drew a long breath. "it's what i have wanted to do ever since i have wanted to do anything! i have planned for it all my life. i have practiced for professional, not for amateur playing. the two are very different. miss thomasina has drilled me with the greatest care. i have taken pains with my german and french and italian. i have talent, miss thomasina says so, and i know that i have no other talent, at least. i--" "thomasina has been encouraging you, i suppose?" said mrs. lister. "she was my teacher, of course she encouraged me. i am prepared for faversham. i--" "faversham?" mrs. lister's tone was as nearly scornful as she could make it. it was as though she alluded to a mountebank. "i have often told you about him, mother. he is the greatest teacher in new york and he is miss thomasina's old friend. she has prepared me for him as though she were a pupil teacher." "what is a pupil teacher?" asked mrs. lister in the same tone. "he is the pupil of a great master who prepares younger pupils according to the master's methods. miss thomasina is the most wonderful person i know." after that sentence there was a pause, which grew longer and longer. "your mother would like you to be a preacher or a teacher like your father and grandfather," said dr. lister at last. "or, perhaps a lawyer or doctor." "i could not be a doctor. i hate the sight of dr. green's office with all the bottles and knives. and a lawyer--i think a lawyer's business is hideous. they make people pay to get what is theirs by right, and they help to cheat the poor. they defend murderers when they know they are murderers and try to hang innocent men. i'm not interested in sick bodies or in crimes. i'm willing to be a teacher, but it must be a teacher of music." "to take children to teach, like thomasina, for pay?" "why, certainly, for pay! a musician must live like any one else. i wouldn't want to take absolute babies or too many stupid children, but i'd be perfectly willing to begin that way." "you would cover me with shame!" "mother!" dr. lister tapped the arms of his chair nervously. above all things in the world he disliked acrimonious discussion between members of the same family. mrs. lister was hard on the boy. besides, she was becoming a little ridiculous. he was apt to put off disagreeable duties in the hope that they would not have to be performed or that they might cease to be disagreeable. "we needn't decide it all at this moment." "it is decided," said mrs. lister. "mr. utterly thought he played very well. i suppose he has had opportunity to judge." "i consider mr. utterly a poor judge of anything," mrs. lister went on vehemently. it seemed to her agonized eyes that richard looked like basil. basil never argued, but he took his own way. "i cannot have it," said she. "i will not have it. you are my child. i brought you into the world. i have some rights in you. if you persist--" mrs. lister stopped, terrified, at a bitter reminiscence suggested by her tone and her words. she put up her hand to hide her eyes. richard was frightened. it could not be that they would seriously oppose him, that he could not persuade them! it could not be that he would have to work his own way. it could not be that he must hurt and defy his mother! he thought of eleanor bent, successful, honored, sought out, lost to him. "it will not be necessary for you even to get a new piano, mother. i can use miss thomasina's and the assembly room piano. i am going to spend my commencement money for a clavier. it will not make any noise that can be heard when the door of my room is shut. i need not practice at home at all. i will not be a nuisance in the least." mrs. lister looked at him as though he had struck her. "it is not money," she said slowly. "and it is not noise. but what you wish to do is impossible." she rose and went into the house. richard turned to his father. "i am sorry for mother," said he. "but i am going to study music." here at last was steel under the satin. chapter xii growing pains eleanor did not yield without a struggle to the tyranny of this new affection. the seclusion in which she and her mother lived, a natural shyness as deep, though not as manifest, as that which her mother had so strangely developed, and the keen ambition implanted and nourished by dr. green had prevented thus far the characteristic seeking of youth for emotion to match its own. nor had she been humiliated by the failure of a lover to seek her. waltonville had seemed to offer no one who was not too old or too young or too dull or already married. she admired her teachers, dr. lister and dr. scott, and would have selected dr. scott as a specimen of her favorite masculine type. now she found herself changed. she could not rise in the morning and fill her leisurely summer day as she had planned. the long mornings and longer afternoons and quiet evenings were not hers to divide and use. instead of steady practicing at exercises and scales, she practiced the bass or treble of duets; instead of sitting at her desk for many quiet productive hours, she sat on the porch or in the little parlor. plots which she had expected to crystallize promptly now that school was over, refused to progress beyond the point where she had left them in her notebooks; images grew dim, words refused to fit themselves to thought, thought itself was dull and valueless. she could put her mind upon one object, richard lister; could wish for but one thing, his company. in the mornings she was least possessed. then she had still the hope of his coming; the childish belief that if she practiced a certain number of hours or wrote a certain number of pages, the fates would reward her. if afternoon did not bring him, she tried vainly to work, as though she would by her very striving win a blessing. the evenings, if he did not appear, were intolerable. at bedtime she made up her mind definitely to think of him no more, to make to-morrow a day of accomplishment. she saw herself in a dim future greeting him placidly from some tall peak of literary achievement, but she knew while she planned that literary achievement, hitherto so intensely desired, allured no more. in anger at herself she wept. "i am a fool! i will do differently! i will not think of him!" the excuses which she invented for him only made a bad matter worse. he was under no obligation to come to see her. then he did not need her as she needed him! he was surely under no obligation to come to see her every day since he was preparing for the splendid career which was to be his. but she would never shut him out from any career of hers! he was spending his days in the society of his father and mother or of thomasina or--with cora scott. the first possibility she could endure, the second was tolerable, though it brought a pang. but that he could be seeking out cora scott, little, quiet, dull cora scott! that could not be believed. a score of pin-pricking anxieties, which she would have laughed at at another time, rose now to vex her. there was a new gown which did not fit; there was an entirely imaginary coolness in thomasina's greeting; there was, especially, the outrageous use she had made of dr. lister's shoelaces and dr. scott's den. her unconsciousness of the offense made it all the more terrible since it seemed to indicate a lack of fine feeling. it was now impossible for her to understand how she could have ever committed so grave a fault. when richard had not presented himself for three days, she deliberately collected the meager facts which she knew about her mother and herself. her mother had been the daughter of the tavern-keeper--eleanor saw the present tavern-keeper. she had gone away from waltonville and had married and had afterwards returned. her father was dead long since; that she had told eleanor definitely; and her husband was dead also, and she could not bear to speak of either of them or be spoken to about them. she had ample means for their simple living--enough, indeed, for such a luxury as the finest piano in waltonville, enough so that she and eleanor could go to new york or boston for the next winter if they wished. her money came to her each month from a lawyer in baltimore who attended to her affairs. there was the total which eleanor possessed. it was a total with which she might have been still longer satisfied if it had not been for richard and the contrast between his situation and her own. he knew all the details of his family history. one grandfather had perished in the civil war, another had been the honored president of the college. one ancestor, indeed, had signed the declaration of independence. if only there were a single bent or ginter to place beside him, only a single bent or ginter about whom one could even speak! steadily bits of the past came into her quickened mind. there was the insulting familiarity of bates, the sodden drunkard. but he would have known her mother when she lived at the tavern and he might not always have been as he was now. "am i growing mad?" said eleanor in horror of herself. she remembered also the scolding voice which had gone on and on, which connected itself with her cut head, and which had on another occasion wakened her at night. she heard her mother's voice, weeping, angry, and a single ungrammatical protest, "i ain't going to do it!" "that i have imagined," said eleanor. the simple expedient of asking her mother occurred to her and was rejected. old habit persisted; she had never forgotten her first rebuff. she still stood, in spite of her superior knowledge, her superior height, and various other superiorities, in awe of little margie. when the need of a confidant for some of her trouble became too pressing to be resisted, she went to dr. green, to whom she had gone in all childish complaints. his independent custom of following his own will with complete indifference to all else appeared suddenly a most desirable quality. she would tell him about dr. lister's shoelaces. dr. green hailed her loudly and directed her to his inner office while he saw a patient in the outer room. the night was warm and the odor of chemicals more oppressive than usual. eleanor looked about with the amused astonishment with which the chaos always filled her. how could a human being live in such a state when all might be put to rights in a day? in the corners on the floor was piled an accumulation of medical journals covering five years. dr. green's method of filing consisted apparently of a left-handed fling for the "journal," a right-handed fling for the "lancet," and a toss over the head for the "medical courier." in the fourth corner a spigot dripped water steadily into a rusty sink. in the upper corners were dusty spider webs, and over all the light of an unshaded lamp glared. sitting in the midst in her beautiful clothes, eleanor looked like a visiting princess. when dr. green came back, he sat down in the swivel chair before his desk and looked at her carefully, as though seeking some sign of illness. there was for an instant a hungry look in his eyes; he regarded her a little as her mother regarded her, or as mrs. lister regarded richard. it was a look which only thomasina had ever detected; it had made her laugh when he talked about young men encumbering themselves with families. "why don't you have a wife?" asked eleanor. dr. green stared. "what!" "why don't you have a wife?" eleanor waved her hand toward the pile of "lancets." "she'd fix you up." dr. green continued to stare. he flushed and blinked. eleanor had changed somehow, had gathered from some source a new self-assurance. she had gathered also a new beauty. "i don't see anything the matter with you." he laid his finger tips on her wrist. "what did you come for? to see me or to borrow a book?" "i came to see you." "you don't look exactly happy about it." "i'm not happy." "what's the matter with you?" "i've gotten dreadfully worried about something." "'gotten' is obsolete, my dear, and an ugly word at best. what's worrying you?" eleanor suddenly blushed scarlet. she had known for three weeks that "willard's magazine" would publish "professor ellenborough's last class." "i've written a story." "you have!" dr. green brought the seat of his swivel chair down upon the base with a slam. "what sort of story? where is it?" "i sent it away." she could not help enjoying the telling. she felt her throat swell and her fingers tingle. she forgot even richard and realized only that her hopes had been realized. she saw herself a little girl in dr. green's buggy, traveling along a country road. her clasped hands lay in her lap and were covered by his strong grasp. "you must amount to something, eleanor," he had said. it had seemed to her that he was almost crying. "your story didn't come back, did it?" said dr. green now. "three times. but at last it has been accepted by 'willard's magazine.'" dr. green gave a little start. though he was a purist, he allowed himself certain vivid expressions. "the dickens you say!" again the hungry look came back into his eyes and was gone. he looked eleanor over from top to toe, as though expecting her triumph to have left some visible mark upon her. "aren't you surprised?" "i am overwhelmed. did you bring the story to read to me?" "oh, no!" "when did you hear from them?" "a mr. utterly came to tell me." "that lily of the field! on commencement day? and you are telling me _now_! why, eleanor!" "i had to get used to it. then i got worried." "worried? what about?" "it is a college story, and i wrote it without ever dreaming that waltonville might read it or that any one would take it. i have represented people here in it." "not by name!" "no; but i said one professor in the story had dangling shoelaces." "whose?" "dr. lister's." "do his shoelaces dangle? what else?" "i described a den like dr. scott's." "is that all?" "yes." "well, as far as the shoelaces are concerned, perhaps it'll teach lister to keep his tied. and scott doesn't have a den; he has a neat, dustless resting-place from terror by day and tempest by night. tell them it's my den. does your mother know?" "of course." after this there was a little silence. dr. green looked at the floor. "no one else, i suppose?" "richard lister knows." eleanor believed that she had succeeded in saying the name naturally and easily. "richard lister! how does he come to know?" "he has been playing duets with me. i--i just happened to tell him." "richard is such a nice, sleek, silky mother's boy! i expect he'll be a preacher. did you read him the story?" "no. of course not. i wouldn't read it to any one. i only told him it had been accepted." "what are you going to do next?" dr. green rose and began to walk up and down. he seemed possessed by a sort of rage. "are you going to sit here and wait for some one to say, 'eleanor, be mine!' meanwhile making tatting or lambrequins with string, or are you going to improve your mind and amount to something? you haven't done anything yet, you know! you do know that, don't you?" "oh, perfectly," answered eleanor. "i don't know what i'm going to do. it depends on mother. i--" dr. green swept "mother" aside and eleanor's further explanations with her. "you ought to have experiences; you ought to see pictures and hear fine music and see the world. you--why, eleanor, you're young, you have talent, you have the finest of prospects! i wouldn't think of anything else. i'd make all my plans for every minute of the day to accomplish one end. you haven't any encumbrances, you haven't any duties! but you must realize that you can't serve two masters. if you have talent, it's a trust, and you've got to improve it. if you don't, if you betray the trust, you'll suffer all your life." he came back and bent over her. "my dear eleanor, promise to listen to what i say!" eleanor's voice refused to obey her bidding. she felt an excitement almost as intense as dr. green's and confidence in herself returned. "promise me!" "i promise." then she rose unsteadily. dr. green's eyes disturbed her. "i must go home. mother will want me." dr. green did not go with her to the door; instead he tramped up and down his untidy room. "'mother will want me!'" said he when she had gone. eleanor's mood lasted until morning. but when richard did not come, morning, afternoon, or evening, either that day or the next, ambition became once more ashes in her mouth. it was all very well for dr. green to command her to write. writing could be accomplished only with a mind at peace; talent was not a friend, but a fickle mistress, the companion of happy hours and not a panacea for heartache. she could not understand how her mother, completing her little round of daily duties, could be so quiet, so content. presently the sight bred resentment. no sympathetic heart could be at rest when one's own was so ill at ease. when another day passed and still richard did not come, she grew, for the first time in her life, irritable. presently she put a question without preface as she and her mother sat together in the little dining-room on a rainy evening. the house had seemed all day like a prison. "mother, i wish you would tell me something about my father." mrs. bent's head bowed itself lower over her work. the question had all the suddenness of an unexpected thunderbolt. "what do you want to know about him?" "who he was, where he came from, who his people were." "he was tall," answered mrs. bent. "he hadn't many relatives. he lived in baltimore." eleanor saw her mother's hand shake. she had the uncomfortable sensation of one who is pursuing a perfectly correct course, but who is at the same time made to feel that he is entirely wrong. "could he write?" "could he write?" repeated mrs. bent. "stories, i mean. i thought that perhaps i had inherited my talent--if i have any talent--from him. i thought perhaps he had written." "i never heard anything of his writing stories." mrs. bent was folding up her work as though she planned for flight, but eleanor was determined that the conversation should not end. "mother--" mrs. bent stood upright. "i've worked for you and slaved for you," said she thickly. with her flushed face and her eagerness she looked as she had looked twenty years before. with her prettiness something else returned, a certain vulgarity, long shed away. "you have everything you need, don't you?" "why, mother!" "i've given up enough so that you could have things, i guess, and sewed for you and washed and ironed for you, and--" "oh, mother, don't!" cried eleanor. "i didn't mean to worry you, i only thought i would like to know. it's a sort of a mystery." "it ain't no mystery to me," said mrs. bent. then she began to cry. "i hear somebody coming. go in and entertain your fine beau that makes you ashamed of your mother!" eleanor stood appalled. this must be finished, talked out. "why, mother, i--" "there is some one on the porch, i tell you!" eleanor listened. her breath came in a sob. then she went to answer the door. richard was there with a book. he stood for a few minutes and talked, then he sat down at the piano and opened the volume upon the rack. "i have exactly thirty minutes to stay," said he. "shall we play?" eleanor sat down beside him, her hands like ice. as well play as sit, dumbly. when he had gone, she went to her mother's closed door. she did not mean to persist in her inquiries, her soft "mother!" asked only for pardon. but mrs. bent made no answer. she was, however, not asleep; she believed, lying exhausted in her little iron bed, that at last, after years of fierce guarding of her tongue, she had done for herself. chapter xiii richard writes a note mrs. lister was relieved in mind when, from day to day, richard said no more about the choice of a profession. what he was to be was not as important as what he was not to be. having given up so easily his own plans, he would, she was certain, agree with whatever plans might be made for him. he had never disobeyed in his life and he would not disobey now. she thought with comfort of his acquiescent years. it was true that he seemed to be taking a little time to recover from the defeat of his plans, but that was only natural. he went quietly about the house, spending most of the day in his own room. when he was away for a whole afternoon, he was of course with thomasina. his mother determined not even to ask where he had been. she smoothed his bed with the tenderest of touches, she fetched and carried, she consulted with 'manda about the viands which he liked best. the summer took on once more its normal character. the waltonville ladies gave their little parties and mrs. scott discovered or invented new devices for the showing-up of their ignorance. she had always been tiresome to mrs. lister and this summer she became intolerable. she patterned her conversation after that of utterly, happy to give rein to an inborn tendency to gossip and to make the most of the small foibles of her acquaintances, a tendency which association with thomasina and mrs. lister had somewhat curbed. never had mrs. lister had to endure so much of her society. she "ran in" in the mornings; she called with a quiet cora in the afternoons, and with a still more silent dr. scott in the evenings. always she inquired for richard. sometimes she asked outright; again she pretended to see him just vanishing round the corner of the hall. she thought he was not well; she was afraid that he practiced too much and took too little physical exercise; she wondered what he meant to do with himself in the fall. walter, she was thankful to say, had had no difficulty in deciding upon a life-work. presently mrs. lister invited cora to supper and cora came gladly, prettily dressed and ready with her little fund of small talk. it seemed as though all the pleasant characteristics which had been left out of mrs. scott's nature had been given her daughter. mrs. lister thought that she had never seen her so sweet. that richard was quite unlike himself was clear to every one. he answered in monosyllables; he did not address cora except in general conversation; he teased no one, not even 'manda who waited for some comment upon her biscuit; and after supper, rising suddenly, he pleaded an engagement and went away. his mother was stricken numb and dumb, his father looked astonished, and cora's eyes expressed not so much amazement as cruel pain. "why, richard!" cried mrs. lister. but richard was gone. it was cora who recovered most quickly. dr. lister blinked for a second before answering the question which she promptly put to him, first with amazement at richard, then in sympathy with her evident astonishment and pain, then at her question. she inquired about the politics of modern italy, and in a second, he answered her as carefully as he would have answered her father. was she interested in modern italy? cora even managed a little laugh as she answered that it was the interesting look of italy on the map which had always attracted her. she paid dr. lister a pretty compliment about his teaching at which he flushed with pleasure and carried her off to the library. if poor cora wilted a little after her first instinctive flash in her own defense, he did not observe, so absorbed was he in showing her his books. both dr. and mrs. lister walked across the campus with her when it was time to go home, her little figure proceeding straight and slender between them. she now talked about nothing, though she spoke steadily in a high, clear voice. when they reached the porch, she did not invite them to come in. from her sitting-room mrs. scott asked where richard was. "he's--" for an instant little cora meant to say, "richard didn't come in"; then she proceeded composedly into the bright light. "dr. and mrs. lister brought me home." "where was richard?" "he had an engagement." "an engagement! do you mean to say that he wasn't at supper?" "yes, he was at supper." "an engagement with whom?" "i didn't ask. perhaps--" cora's voice failed her for a second. with whom in waltonville could richard have an engagement when he might have been with her?--"perhaps with miss thomasina." "an engagement with thomasina! when you were there to supper!" mrs. scott's ferret eyes seemed to pierce to cora's soul. "when did this engagement begin?" "about an hour ago." "thomasina is a fool," declared mrs. scott. then she repeated, "a fool." "oh, no, mother!" said cora lightly. "good-night." she went up the stairs with an even, steady step. at the top, where all sound was lost in the thick carpet, she stood still, her hand on the banister. "nothing dreadful has happened," said she to herself. "he might easily have gone to miss thomasina's, he's so crazy about music." after a while she said again, "nothing dreadful"; then she went into her room and closed the door, and all dressed in her best as she was, lay down and hid her face in her pillow. when richard came home at eleven o'clock, his father and mother had gone to bed. he heard them talking, and they heard him come in. he saw his mother standing in her white gown at her door as he came up the stairs. she had determined to be patient even with this vagary. "good-night, richard," said she. "good-night, darling." "good-night," said richard. he went into his room, and for the first time in his life turned the key in the lock, stealthily, slowly, and noiselessly. when, with a shaking hand, he had lit his lamp, he sat down at his desk and wrote a note and pinned it to a newspaper clipping and fastened them both to his pincushion. then, his hands still shaking, he undressed and blew out his light and lay down upon his bed. his cheeks were scarlet, his hands cold; he lay motionless. at this moment the world revolved that richard might be happy, stars shone to light his way, flowers bloomed to make his path sweet, streams ran to make music for him. last night he had been unhappy, worried, uncertain of everything. now everything was different, everything was glorified. no one had ever been so happy, it was doubtful whether any one could ever have known what happiness was before this transfigured moment. he had not meant to be rude to cora; he had scarcely realized even yet that he had been rude, and still less had he meant to give his mother pain. he had read in the morning paper, his eye falling accidentally upon it as it lay on the arm of his father's chair, that henry faversham was to be in baltimore the next day, and he had to tell thomasina--that was all, at first. his mother would not have accepted this excuse for leaving and the only course was to leave without excuse. he had so little to say to cora and she had so little to say to any one, that time spent with her was wasted unless they could play, and playing was impossible upon the aged lister piano. if he waited until she was ready to go home, thomasina might have gone to bed, or if she went home early, mrs. scott would entrap him in her spidery way. he _had_ to see thomasina, so he rose and went. when, excited and elated, he left thomasina, he did not go home. he had a letter to henry faversham; he had certain compositions of his own which she had selected; he had the recollection of a smooth hand on either cheek and a light kiss on his forehead. "why, miss thomasina is _young_!" said richard. he did not go home, because he was afraid that he might find cora still there, or his mother might be waiting to reprove him. he was determined to endure no more reproof, to take part in no more argument. argument was undignified and worse than useless. it left opponents with opinions unchanged, but deeply offended with one another; it prevented one from working for a whole day; it numbed one's mind and paralyzed one's hand and blinded one's eyes. so, to avoid an encounter that night, richard went to see eleanor bent. he _had_ to see eleanor as he had had to see thomasina. it was after nine o'clock and he was suddenly frightened lest she might have gone to bed, and he took a short cut down a lane and ran. eleanor came promptly to the door and then out to the porch in the soft dark night, and sat down on the upper step. all day she and her mother had avoided each other's eyes. she was forlorn and deeply troubled. "no, i wasn't thinking of bed. i have always hated to go to bed." she bent forward and the light from the doorway shone on her dark hair and made her bright eyes gleam, and the little breeze which blew across her to richard brought the faint scent of perfume. her voice seemed to have deepened overnight and she spoke with a little tremolo as though she were not quite in command of it. richard told his story, at once calmed and further excited. when one has found in one human being both stimulation and peace, a die is cast. he was going to-morrow to baltimore to see faversham and arrange for his winter's work. he was going to play for him, to show him his compositions. it was already late and he could not stay. he merely wanted her to know, to think of him. eleanor leaned a little toward him. "oh, don't go yet," said she, her voice trembling. this, it seemed to her, was the beginning of the end. "i must," said richard. "when will you come again?" would he ever come, or would he leave her to watch for him, day after day, to do nothing but watch for him? he had already risen; it was possible that he might never come back. she was filled with nameless terror. her mother-"you look sorry," said richard. his voice was not like hers, but high and clear. thomasina did not guess what her kiss had done for richard. he held out his hand and eleanor took it and rose. "i am sorry because you are going away. i haven't any plans except to stay here. i am not sure that i can write any more and the winter looks very long. i ought to go away, but i don't know just how. i--i wish you were going to be here to play with me and read with me sometimes. i--" "miss thomasina is here," said richard lightly. "she will play with you." eleanor smiled, but she seemed to shrink within herself. then richard laughed and crossed the lane of light which separated them and put his arm round her shoulders and drew her back into the deep shadows. he laid his hand beneath her chin and tipped her head back against his breast. "do you love me?" asked richard. eleanor yielded slowly to his arm. she felt his lips on her cheek, her hair, her eyes, at first lightly. then he laughed and kissed her on the mouth. "well?" said he. "have you nothing to say?" eleanor lifted her hand to his cheek. "nothing," said she. in a second a sound from within doors drove them apart. eleanor knew that her mother would not appear, but already richard stood on the steps. he would bring her music, he said, when he could come at a less unearthly hour. this evening he had come out for a walk after they had had company. he hoped that mrs. bent was well. it was strange that all of yesterday's rain had not cleared the air. his mother prophesied a day of storms to-morrow and his mother always knew. now richard lay wide-eyed upon his bed. the soft breeze fanned his cheek and wafted the curtains like waving arms into the room. toward morning the breeze quickened to a gale. it lifted his note and newspaper clipping from the pincushion and carried them across to the farthest corner under the bookcase. by this time he was asleep. chapter xiv an anxious night in the morning richard breakfasted with his father and mother. the breeze had died down and the day was already intensely warm. mrs. lister had given a large part of the night to thoughts of him and her pale face showed the effect of her vigil. she had determined upon second thought that his offense could not be overlooked, and for the first time in his life she was thoroughly angry with him. he had not only offended, but he had caused her to offend also. she could not forget cora's brown, astonished eyes. if it had been mrs. scott to whom he had been rude, she might have found an excuse for him. but only the most wanton cruelty could hurt cora. her indignation deepened, when, after her household labors were finished, she could not find the object of her just wrath. he was not in his room, nor in his father's study, nor on the porch, and there was no sound from the chapel organ or the assembly room piano. she had prepared her reproach and she wished to deliver it at once. but she was to be denied still longer the relief of expression. richard did not come to his dinner. occasionally he had lunch with thomasina, to which objection was made only when dinner had been prepared with a special view to his taste. mrs. lister always missed him and never really enjoyed a meal without him, but she felt that such absences were good for her, since they helped to prepare for the day, now so rapidly approaching, when he would go away altogether. this was not a propitious time for him to absent himself, not only because his mother wished to see him, but because 'manda had baked waffles. mrs. lister could eat nothing and 'manda scolded about the pains she had taken to prepare food which her "fambly" would not touch. when he had not appeared at three o'clock, mrs. lister passed from a state of anger into one of acute anxiety. she could not rest, could not lie down, could not sew. the heat was intolerable. she sought her husband in his study. "where is richard?" she demanded. "what has got into the boy? last evening he insulted cora scott by walking out as soon as he had had his supper, and now he has gone away, apparently to stay all day, without saying a word to his mother." dr. lister looked up, startled. "hasn't he come?" "he hasn't been here since eight o'clock this morning!" "he can't be very far away." "but _where_ is he?" "perhaps with thomasina?" "thomasina lies down every afternoon. she'd send him home if he hadn't sense enough to come. besides, i think she's gone away." "perhaps he's in the chapel or the assembly room, practicing." "there isn't a sound from that direction, not a sound. i've sat at my window and listened and listened." mrs. lister began to cry. "but, mother! this is a grown man, this is not a child!" "he is a child in his father's house. he owes us respect if he's fifty years old." mrs. lister crossed the room and looked out between the slats of the bowed shutter across the shimmering campus. "there are thunderheads above the trees and"--her voice took on a tragic tone--"mrs. scott is coming!" dr. lister rose from the couch where he had been napping. "shan't i excuse you? it's too hot to see any one, least of all, mrs. scott." "no. richard might be there. something might have happened to him and she is coming to tell us!" "nothing has happened to him, my dear." mrs. lister met mrs. scott at the door. the heat which smote her face as she opened it was so great that she urged her guest to come quickly into the cool parlor. surely mrs. scott would not have ventured out unless she had some special purpose! perhaps she had come to speak about richard's behavior to cora! the idea was fantastic, but it seemed to mrs. lister in her alarm perfectly reasonable. or she might pretend to know nothing about it, yet make mrs. lister the most miserable of human beings. mrs. scott agreed that it was hot, but she did not continue to dwell upon the weather or allow mrs. lister to dwell upon it. even to dr. lister, sitting across in his study in a position from which he could see neither of the two ladies or be seen by them, it was plain that she had come upon business of importance. he pictured them both, mary alcestis, large, benign, gentle, and slow of speech, mrs. scott, small, eager, ferret-like. he heard the two opening sentences, mrs. lister's pleasant compliment to mrs. scott's energy, mrs. scott's answering boast that the heat could not "throw her out of her stride." her voice then went on and on. it was confidential and pleasant enough in tone and dr. lister could not understand a word, but he was certain that she was worrying mrs. lister. it was undoubtedly wrong and un-christian, but he hated her. he rose, intending to cross the hall and relieve mary alcestis of some of the burden of conversation. then he stood still by his desk. the softly murmuring voice rose to a tone approximating that in which mrs. scott addressed her family. "i thought you would want to know it, mrs. lister. i thought you ought to know it." "i didn't understand exactly what you said." "i said that your richard had been visiting morning, noon, and night, since commencement, eleanor bent," repeated mrs. scott. "i said that people thought it very strange that dr. lister's son should devote his time to her. he plays duets with her on a beautiful new piano that dear knows where she got, and her mother sits by watching them. i guess she has her own intentions. the piano must have cost a thousand dollars." promptly and smoothly came mrs. lister's answer. "i have heard thomasina say often that miss bent plays very well. and he is not there morning, noon, and night, as you say, mrs. scott. he is here almost all the time. and after all"--the pause between mrs. lister's words suggested to her husband a straight gaze and a head somewhat lifted--"after all, it is richard's affair, isn't it, and not any one else's?" mrs. scott was too astonished to answer. she was furious at richard and almost as angry at cora, who, when informed, would say nothing about his visits to eleanor except that he was his own master. she had expected that mrs. lister would grow deathly white and perhaps faint. "i should dislike to have my walter show any attention to a person in such an anomalous position," said she, rising. "i came out of the kindness of my heart." "i don't know what you mean by an 'anomalous position,'" said mrs. lister, rising also. "i am sure mrs. bent and her daughter are very quiet, retiring people." she went with mrs. scott to the door and let her out into the burning sunshine. she did not return to the study, but went directly to her room. dr. lister sat for a few minutes with his pen poised over his paper, then, when she did not return, he began a letter. he was amused at mrs. scott's feline retaliation and was grateful to the gods for having given him a mary alcestis. there was nothing to be distressed about in the fact that richard played duets with eleanor bent, who was a bright, pretty girl. he said to himself vaguely that if the young rascal didn't come home soon, he would go and fetch him. hearing a low rumble of thunder, he rejoiced that a change of temperature was at hand. richard did not come home to supper. mrs. lister ate nothing and made no pretense of eating. the rumbling of thunder continued, growing loud very gradually, as though the storm were only slowly gathering force. she rose from the table and went from window to window, not so much to see whether they were securely fastened as to look out in every direction. there was still the vividly blue sky in all quarters but the northwest, where there was a low, but slowly rising, bank of dark cloud with white-tipped thunderheads above it. she grew more and more pale, more and more wretched. her anxiety seemed to weigh down her cheeks and add ten years to her age. richard must have been hurt; he might have gone for a walk and have fallen and be lying somewhere helpless. "but there isn't any place to fall from, mother!" said dr. lister, now as anxious as she. presently, as the sky grew darker and the thunder louder, she wept. "i will go to thomasina's," said dr. lister, "and i'll stop at dr. green's and--" "do not ask them any questions!" cried mrs. lister. "do not let them know! people will get to talking!" "but, mother, we must find him!" "i cannot have any one know that richard does not obey us," insisted mary alcestis. "you can look in at the window. thomasina's curtains are always up to the sky and dr. green hasn't any in his front office." dr. lister put on a raincoat and took an umbrella and started out against the high wind. the search seemed unreal, weird, impossible. richard was not at thomasina's, for the house was dark, and dr. green was alone. dr. lister went to the assembly room and to the chapel and to all the rooms of the recitation building. he stood in the doorway of each one until a bright flash of lightning or several flashes had illuminated each corner. at the door of dr. scott's study he knocked. within, dr. scott sat at the window watching the wide valley magically illuminated by the flashing light, which was now rosy, now bright blue. he had seen nothing of richard. dr. lister said that he had brought richard an umbrella thinking that he was here. he supposed that by now he was at home. under the first heavy drops of rain, he hurried back to his house. as he neared the porch, the sight of a figure approaching from the opposite direction, or, rather, being blown from the opposite direction, startled and relieved him. "richard!" said he. he saw to his amazement that the figure was not that of richard, but the broader form of his mother. "i thought i would look for him," she gasped, blown finally to the porch step and there firmly seized by her husband. "i couldn't stay in the house and do nothing." "where have you been?" "i thought he might be about s-s-somewhere. i went to see." she quickened her steps. "perhaps he is here. oh, i am sure he has come home!" but he had not come home. his mother called as she opened the door and was answered only by a faint echo from the upper story. she walked with tottering step into the study and sat down and smoothed her hair back into its proper place. her face was contorted, her lips trembling. dr. lister laid his hand on her shoulder. "my dear, you are so strange! what is back of this? had you any words with him about anything?" mrs. lister laid her hands palm upward on her lap. with a start at each new roll of thunder she began to speak. the first words made her husband frown; they had long been the sign and signal of trouble. as he listened, he grew amazed, then sick at heart. "my brother basil--" mrs. lister paused and looked dumbly at her husband. "yes, my dear--" "my brother basil left us to--to follow the daughter of the village tavern-keeper. that was the last straw, that was what worked on my father's health and finally killed him. he never saw basil again. you've said to me so often that basil was past, that we needn't think of him or trouble about him or break our hearts over him. but he is not past. nothing ever is. you cannot get away from the things you do and that other people do. they keep on forever, from generation to generation." "mary alcestis, tell me plainly what you mean!" "it was this woman who calls herself mrs. bent whom he followed away. her name was margie ginter." dr. lister drew up a chair and sat down by mrs. lister. "how much of this is suspicion? how much do you really _know_?" mrs. lister started again. the storm increased in intensity without breaking. the rain fell in slow, heavy drops, audible as they struck the roof of the porch. her voice, on a high and monotonous key, seemed to fill the house. "she lived here at the tavern. it was a terrible place. people who keep places of that kind pay some attention to public opinion now, but they didn't then. we found that he went there--my father thought it was to drink. then one evening i came upon them, him and the girl, on cherry street in the dark, walking together under the thick trees. i was not often out alone in the evening, but it seemed that this had to happen. i heard her talking to basil and i told my father. in a little while they left here, and then he went also." "do you mean that your father could compel them to leave?" "no, i think they were just going. and basil went too." "and then?" "then, afterwards, he died. and she came back here, brazenly, with a little child and a married name. once she spoke to me on the street. she said she would like to talk to me about him, but i told her i couldn't. i had richard with me in the coach and it was right out in the open street. i was afraid to go out for weeks." "did she ever make any other effort to speak to you?" "no; she seemed afraid." "but if what you think is true, the girl should be older than she is! it can't be, mother!" "i believe that she is older than she says. how else should she have got ahead of our richard in school? that is the only way to account for it." dr. lister remembered the astonishing maturity of eleanor's mind. "and i know what my eyes tell me!" cried mrs. lister. "her eyes are basil's eyes. it was her eyes mr. utterly was thinking of when he saw basil's picture. i knew it. her walk is his. she is basil over again. for all these years i have had to look at her in church and on the street. i had begun to feel a little safe because i thought that now she might go away. then this man came with his hateful inquiries." "poor mary alcestis!" "i couldn't forbid her to go to college. i couldn't do anything but"--mrs. lister now broke down completely--"but watch and pray." "and you never told me!" "i couldn't tell any one about basil. if you had known what a sweet little boy he was, perhaps i could have told you. and richard--oh, richard, richard!" "i heard mrs. scott." "i went there to look for him." "to the bents'!" "yes, through all the lanes. it was quite dark and no one saw me. but i fell once; i was so excited and the lane was rough. miss bent and her mother were sitting together like innocent people, but he was not there. i said to myself that if he was i would go in and bring him home." "but, mother, this about richard is imagination run mad!" "all the dreadful things i ever imagined came true. when he sits at the piano, he looks like basil. it's something in them, it--hark!" dr. lister sprang up and went to the door. as he opened it the wind set the flame of the lamps quivering. there was a shrill, wailing sound. "what is it?" cried mrs. lister. "nothing but the wind," answered dr. lister, his own nerves badly shaken. he came back into the study. "mrs. scott exaggerates till she lies. suppose he has gone there to play for a few hours! they are both pupils of thomasina's." "thomasina's ideas are all wrong--about _everything_," said mrs. lister. "she never had a brother or a child, she has had no experience. she puts a higher value on talent than on the ten commandments. where _is_ richard?" she sprang up. her cry was lost in the breaking of the storm. "this very house is rocking!" dr. lister drew her down once more beside him. "at this moment we can do nothing but wait." "i've gone through this misery before," said she piteously. "it isn't new to me." dr. lister tried to persuade her to lie down, but she would not stir. the storm reached a climax, seemed to recede, and advanced in greater fury. silently, hand in hand, the two waited. chapter xv explanations by midnight, when the fury of the storm had abated, there was still no richard. mrs. lister would not hear of going to bed, but sat stiffly upon the sofa in the study or wandered through the house. with a candle she explored the third story, venturing even into the tank room where the dim light cast flickering shadows on the brown unfinished walls and ceiling. she remembered with horror the old story of the bride locked into a chest and found mouldering after many years, and a more recent and sentimental tale of a young woman, who, discovering that she was merely the foster child of her parents, fell fainting to the floor before the old trunk into which she had been prying, and there remained until she was accidentally stumbled upon. mrs. lister did not climb the projecting beam and look into the tank--that madness she forbade herself. she went into richard's room and opened distractedly the cupboard door, then laid back the covers on the bed as she had always laid back richard's covers, every night of his life. as dr. lister sat beside her, he heard the whole story of basil everman, and his first puritanic disapproval of basil's course gave place to protesting amazement. "something within him seemed to impel him to do wrong things," said mrs. lister. "it wasn't that he didn't love us. i am convinced that he loved us dearly. _but he had to have his own way!_" "'_had to have his own way!_'" dr. lister repeated the words to himself. his own way, which led him to "roses of pæstum" and "bitter bread"! if they had only let him have his own way, unmolested, or had helped him to it, poor basil might not have turned into this unpleasant by-path. certainly the friendship between richard and eleanor bent must end. could there be any serious feeling between them? with this new light upon the girl's mental inheritance and with quickened recollection of her as she had sat in his classes, came deeper alarm. there were moments when mrs. lister, in her fright and exhaustion, seemed to confuse basil and richard. basil had been out in such storms; she had waited and watched for him all night long. he had been gone not only all night, but days and nights. sometimes he had been almost within call, but he had insisted upon watching the storms. he was sorry to have troubled them, but he would not change any of his idle, purposeless ways. she had tried and her father had tried to find a precedent for basil, but in vain. "i never heard of any one so strange and willful but mr. poe, until mr. utterly told those dreadful stories. and now richard is--is like them!" "did basil never announce his departures?" "he knew that my father would forbid him wasting his time in idleness and wandering. he knew that my father would prevent him. so he simply went." at one o'clock and at two o'clock there was still no richard. the house assumed a different appearance after the customary hour for retiring. the high ceilings seemed in some strange fashion to rise, the walls to expand, the shadows to darken. another storm approached, broke over waltonville, and died away. mrs. lister, selecting a darkened window, looked out and saw that the scotts were stirring. her anger with mrs. scott almost suffocated her. poor mary alcestis was not created to bear heroic passions. again and again dr. lister begged her to rest. "you will be utterly worn out. richard will not come any sooner because you wait for him." "but where can he be?" wailed mary alcestis. dr. lister determined that at dawn he would set forth, make a round of the village and all the neighboring walks, and then go to thomasina davis's and take counsel with her. if richard had not come by eight o'clock, his disappearance must be made public. he could have no reason for going away and search could be no longer postponed. having acknowledged this to himself, dr. lister became as much a victim of terror as his wife. there had never been a more obedient son; to attribute callous indifference to him was wicked. that he could thoughtlessly or intentionally have brought upon them such cruel anxiety was unthinkable. in his distress dr. lister began to tramp up and down the long study. then, at last, as dawn was breaking, richard came home. in the study the watchers still sat with the shades drawn, not realizing that outside a gray light was already exhibiting the ruin wrought in the night. the smooth grass was strewn with branches and twigs, the cannas lay flat, gardens were flooded, and at the campus gate a tree lay across the street. at the first click of the latch mrs. lister screamed, then held her hand across her lips. nervous strength had forsaken her. but she gathered herself together and dr. lister, watching her, failed to see the entrance of the prodigal. her form stiffened, the distress on her face altered to a stern and savage disapproval. she looked suddenly and uncannily like the portrait of the austere old man above her head. the night's vigil seemed to have removed the plumpness which disguised her physical resemblance to her father and her indignation destroyed the placid good nature which was her usual mood. she felt no weak impulse to throw herself upon her son's shoulder or to reinforce her maternal influence by any appeal to his affection. when he entered, bedraggled, wet, black with railroad dust, he saw, first of all, his mother, sitting like a judge before him. he saw his father also, but his father seemed as usual a little indifferent to him and his needs, and even to this adventure. "mother!" he cried from the doorway. mrs. lister did not answer. that the boy was amazed, that he could not account for their waiting presence was evident, but she did not help him to straighten out the puzzling situation in which he found himself. "you have been up all night!" mrs. lister allowed the evident truth of this assertion to serve for an answer. she felt as though she could never speak, as though her throat were paralyzed, her tongue dead in her mouth. a lover, hearing his mistress explain her faithlessness, could have been no more powerless to express the sense of injury within him. there was a great gulf between her and her son, who till this moment had seemed almost as much a part of her as he was in the months preceding his birth. richard sat down inside the door. "you didn't get my message, then?" still she did not speak. "what message, richard?" asked dr. lister. "we have had no message. we only knew that you vanished yesterday after breakfast." "i found i had to go," explained richard. then he paused. his words sounded as strange to him as to his parents. "i wrote a note telling you where i was going and i fastened it to my pincushion where i was certain mother would find it. i missed the train home, and i came on the freight and it was delayed. i tried to telegraph, but the wires were down. didn't you find my note, mother?" "there was no note on your pincushion," said mrs. lister in a hollow voice. richard turned and ran up the steps. the two waiting below could hear him throw up the blinds. he descended in his fashion, three steps at a time, carrying two bits of paper in his hand. "there, mother, they were under the edge of the bookcase! they must have blown there. i am so sorry that you have been anxious." his voice trembled, his father saw that he was almost exhausted. mrs. lister did not lift the papers from her lap where he laid them. in the confusion of her mind, one intention was firm. she would not learn his excuse from any paper. "but, richard--" dr. lister, returning to the comfortable habits of every day, changed his right knee for his left. "why did you go away and where did you go?" richard straightened his shoulders. "i heard that henry faversham was to be in baltimore for a few days and yesterday i saw in the paper that he had come. i knew that he accepted no pupils without having first heard them play, and i thought it would be better to see him in baltimore than to make the long trip to new york. miss thomasina had written him about me and had given me a letter to him, and i expected certainly to go down and back in a day. mother, of course she didn't know that i had gone without telling you! you know she would have told you herself rather than have that happen." dr. lister cleared his throat. "but, richard, has it been our custom to communicate with one another by newspaper slips or written notes?" "no," said richard. he drew a deeper breath and looked his father in the eyes. "i couldn't have any argument about it, father. i _had_ to go. there was no time for argument. i thought it would be easier for everybody if i just went. i am deeply sorry that you had this anxiety. i didn't mean you should." mrs. lister saw the pleading eyes, heard the pleading voice, saw the even more eloquent grime and the white, streaked cheeks, but she made no affectionate sign of yielding, no tender motion to her son to come to that bosom which had thus far been a pillow for all his troubles. hereditary motives were no less strong in her than in her son. "please, mother!" "you'd better get a bath and go to bed." for the sake of saving his life, richard could not have kept his lips from quivering. "when did you have anything to eat, my boy?" asked dr. lister. "i'm not hungry," answered richard steadily. "but how lately have you eaten?" "not very lately," confessed richard. "i didn't think much about eating yesterday." for an instant his face was lightened by pleasant recollection. "i'm really not hungry. please, mother, don't bother! you ought to go to bed; you're more tired than i." mrs. lister paid no heed to richard's protests. she went to the kitchen and filled a tray and carried it upstairs. when he came from his bath, he found it there and ate, like a criminal in his cell. then with a long sigh, he lay down. he threw his arm round the unused pillow beside his own on his broad bed and smiled. he heard for an instant heavenly harmonies, then he was asleep. even now that richard had come home, mrs. lister would not lie down. she changed her dress for her usual morning apparel and put away the remains of his breakfast which he had placed on a chair outside his door, so that 'manda might not suspect the strange doings of the night, then she went into the study. dr. lister lay on the couch. when she entered, he opened his eyes for a second, then closed them again, and she sat down and waited. in a little while, as though the tremendous disturbance of her mind was transferred through the still air to his sleepy brain, he opened his eyes wide and sat bolt upright. "yes, yes, my dear! what is it?" mrs. lister made no apology for any telepathic means by which she might have awakened him. it was his business to be awake. "this thing must be settled, thomas." from the vague borderland of sleep, dr. lister tried honestly and vainly to understand just what must be settled. "what thing, mother?" mrs. lister gave him a look in which astonishment and impatience were mingled. "richard can't have anything to do with this girl; he can't play with her, or see her, or talk to her; it isn't decent or right." "you mean he must be told about basil?" dr. lister remembered now the events and revelations of the night. "it must be stopped. everything must be stopped. our child must do what is right." the revelations of the night seemed to dr. lister like illusions. "you are sure of all you told me, mother?" "i am sure." "do you know where they went after they left here--the girl and her father, i mean?" "we heard it was a little town in ohio called marysville." "you never caused any inquiry to be made there?" "oh, no!" "basil wasn't with them when he died, was he?" "no." "we can't do anything at this minute. we'll have to learn whether richard has gone any farther than to play the piano a few times with this young lady and i'll find out about these plans and intentions of his." "his plans and intentions!" repeated mrs. lister. "he's old enough to have them, my dear. i think we'd better let him have his music, don't you?" mrs. lister gave her husband another long, level, and astonished glance. then she sought her own room. richard came downstairs for lunch, white and with dark-rimmed eyes. but he was clean and his eyes shone. faversham had accepted him, had said he would be glad to have him. he had sent messages to miss thomasina; he had said a hundred things which she must hear at once. "he talked about her as though he were in love with her," thought richard whose thoughts ran in one channel. faversham had played for him, had talked about beethoven and john sebastian bach. faversham had heard and had torn up his small compositions and had put them into the wastebasket, smiling. "you don't want those to appear in collections of your works, my boy!" he had said. richard would not have exchanged places with the queen of england, or the czar of all the russias, who still held enviable positions in those days, or with any great character of history past or present. as for the future, he intended to be one of the great characters. and there was sweet eleanor, waiting, perhaps even at this instant, for him to come up the little walk. if he could only tell his father and mother now about henry faversham and all the things that he had said! he must make them see that music was the breath of life to him; that he must be a musician, could be nothing else. but he would not make them try to see now. his mother's features were too tense, her disapproval too evident, his own voice too tremulous. he would stay at home in the early part of the evening and explain to them, persuade them. now he must find hungrier ears than theirs. as richard pushed back his chair, mrs. lister's eyes sought her husband's, and thus prompted, he asked his son, a little unwillingly, where he was going. "i am going to miss thomasina's." "and after that?" mrs. lister was not quite sure whether she had asked the question, or whether he had announced his plans in defiance. "afterwards i am going to play duets with eleanor bent." he did not mean to say exactly that. in both him and his mother forces were operating which carried them farther along the path appointed than either had any intention of proceeding. here, to richard, was another subject upon which there could be no arguing. "eleanor bent plays very well, and she has the finest piano in waltonville, the only piano really, except miss thomasina's. it is a young and strong piano"--richard smiled pleasantly--"without a tin mandolin inside it like the scotts'. i wish you could hear it, mother." he waited for a second for an answer, but no answer came. into his face rushed a flood of brilliant color. cora scott had never made her case plainer, never betrayed herself more helplessly. he turned and went out of the room and upstairs quickly. when he came down, dr. lister called him into the study. "richard, you have caused your mother and me very grave anxiety." "i know. i'm very sorry and i told mother so. i didn't mean to, and nobody can regret it more than i do." he could hardly wait to be gone. "i'm going away for a few days, and i should like you to stay with your mother." "why, of course!" "i mean that i should like you to stay here at the house." "all the time!" gasped richard. "yes." "what for?" "suppose we say that it is to show your mother that you are really sorry." "but i can show her that without staying in the house! when are you going?" "at four o'clock." "then i can see miss thomasina before you go." "it is after two now." "but i must, father!" dr. lister had never so loathed managing other people. "you'll be back before i start?" "yes." richard flew across the campus and down the street. his father often made trips away in the interest of the college, but he did not often go so suddenly. richard remembered that his mother had planned to accompany him to pittsburgh. was he going to pittsburgh now? why didn't she go too? was she staying at home to watch him? miss thomasina, he heard from amelia, had gone away. now he could see eleanor. then he groaned. he could not rush in upon her and off! turning homeward he found his father completing his preparations for departure. "where are you going?" "to baltimore, then to pittsburgh." "i thought you were going to pittsburgh, mother!" his mother looked at him reproachfully. did he not know that she never left him? "no, darling," said mary alcestis. "my place is here." chapter xvi further explanations for three days richard roamed like a caged creature from room to room. an impulse to immediate rebellion soon spent itself. his intentions had not changed, his position was not to be receded from, but the necessity for a new step was not yet pressing. he would wait, he could afford to wait for three days, reckless and unconsidered and foolish as his promise had been. he did not remember that eleanor might be unhappy. in the meanwhile he would make his plans. he walked up and down or sat at his window chin on hand. when mrs. scott came within his line of vision he made a childish grimace in her direction. she came no nearer than the common walk which led from both houses to the college gate, being entirely satisfied with her recent visit to mrs. lister. richard thought of writing to eleanor, but promptly abandoned the idea of substituting a cool and unresponsive sheet of paper for a glowing cheek. he had inherited none of his uncle basil's facility with a pen. he must tell her everything, except that he had had to steal away and that he was received like a returning prodigal, and he must watch her as he talked. it occurred to him after the first day that his father might have a really good reason for requiring him to stay with his mother. could she be suffering from some dangerous and treacherous disease and for that reason need constant company? the possibility frightened him and he went at once to find her. mary alcestis sat at the window of her bedroom, her little sewing-table beside her and a sock of richard's stretched over her hand. thus placed and thus occupied, she forgot for short periods her misery and with it his. it was difficult at best for her to put herself in the place of one who had experiences alien to her nature. her large, sweet face now beamed upon her son. richard, she was sure, would soon see, if he had not seen already, the blessedness of doing that which was exactly right. "no, darling, i am not sick," said she. "there is nothing whatever the matter with me." richard read his mother's mind. she need not think that he was yielding, that he would ever yield--there should be demonstration of that immediately upon his father's return. he took from his desk-drawer those neat notebooks which his mother admired without knowing their contents and turned from page to page. here were his first transpositions and here his first exercises. how often he had worked at music when greek and mathematics were supposed to be his occupation, until transposing had become much easier than reading greek and until musical phrases stood for distinct ideas. here were simple compositions, hymns, little tunes, and more elaborate exercises in counterpoint, worked out and agonized over by him and thomasina, whose knowledge of harmony had been acquired because of his necessities. here were sketches for greater works--his eyes glowed. concerto, symphony, opera--his ambition was boundless. weeks had passed since he had looked into his notebooks and in the meantime he had changed. his long conversation with faversham, his new emotional experience, made all that he had done thus far seem puerile, undeveloped. he had now so much better plans! he studied his notes, covered sheets of music-paper with sketches, hummed a hundred airs, rewrote, and longed for eleanor's piano. faversham had opened undreamed-of vistas, and here he was doing nothing for three precious days which could never be his again! once he sat down at the piano. he lifted his long fingers over a great chord and let his hands fall--the result was a combination of tinkling and slightly discordant sounds, dying away with metallic echoes and even with a sharp wooden crack of the old frame. at the very end, he heard a gentle sigh and knew that his mother sat in the study across the hall. he longed at that to bring both hands and arms thumping down upon the yellow keys. it was a richard far removed from the one who had once preached to the fishes. thomasina, to his keen disappointment, did not appear. the necessity for some one to talk to, the discomfort of repression, grew less tolerable. he went for the mail, his mother waiting for him on the porch, not with outspoken intention of staying there until he should return, but with every appearance to his mind of a jailer watching the short exercise of a prisoner. he stopped at thomasina's door, but found that she was still absent. he met cora scott and answered her shortly, saying yes, it was a pleasant day. what he meant was that it was a long and hateful and intolerable day. here was a heart aching for a word, here a mind which would have welcomed, cherished, and kept inviolate all confidences! richard knew it and hated the heart upon cora's sleeve. that evening, the second of dr. lister's absence, black 'manda sat herself down on the kitchen porch to rest before she went on her way to the cabins, and there she lifted up her voice in "i was a wandering sheep." richard heard her from the front porch and sprang up from the hammock and went round the house. his clear and steady tenor took the melody from her, lifted it and went on with it, the deep tones of 'manda proceeding undisturbed. they sang one stanza, then another and another, 'manda's "po' lamb" booming out. when they had finished, mrs. lister looked for richard to return. she was almost smiling, the duet recalled so many blessed hours. but richard did not return. he led off in "hallelu," then "swing low, sweet chariot." he sat down with 'manda and an old-time concert began. suddenly the singers forsook religious themes. 'manda's repertoire was not altogether that of the church; it included a variety of songs which richard had up to this time never heard, mournful, uncanny, without intelligible words to express their burden of savagery, songs learned she knew not how long ago, unsung she knew not for how long. mrs. lister stopped her ears. but that did not stop the sound. she went through the house into the kitchen and looked out. richard sat on the upper step, a writing-pad on his knee, the light from the door falling on his bent head. "now, 'manda, that last line once more. how perfectly extraordinary!" mrs. lister went back to her chair. cora scott heard the singing clearly as she sat at her window and cried, and told her mother, when she came to her door, having heard also and being curious to know whether cora heard, that she was very sleepy and had gone to bed. her voice sounded sleepy. eleanor bent, walking restlessly on a pretended errand to thomasina's, heard and stood still in the thick shadow of the maple trees and listened. richard was away, surely he was away! but here he was at home, singing! and his last word had been a promise to come again. he had taken her in his arms, had kissed her, and had not come back. was he angry or offended? had she said anything to hurt him? at that instant all her frightened questions returned. it was in just such a black shadow that hideous, sodden bates from the hotel had taken her mother by the arm. she ceased to hear richard's singing, ceased to feel the soft breeze of the summer night, ceased to hear the sound of voices on the other side of the street which a moment before had warned her to go on her way. she heard that scolding, masculine voice out of the past, she saw again her mother's strange outbreak of anger. was it what she _was_ that had offended richard? and what _was_ she? mrs. lister went a second time through the house to the kitchen door. "richard, you mustn't keep 'manda any longer. she'll be all tired out to-morrow." 'manda rose heavily and tremulously. she had seemed to herself for the last half-hour to be a very different person in a very different place. now she was once again only an old, homely, and fat darkey. "yes'sum, miss mary als'tis," said she. richard followed his mother into the house. "the old girl's got a lot of queer tunes in her head. i've written some of them down. something could be made of them." mrs. lister's heart sank. in the morning richard went again for the mail. this afternoon his father would come home, and then there would be an end to this nonsense. his evening's course was planned. he would go straight to eleanor and would tell her everything. his fancy, restrained for the last few days so that he might not make himself too miserable, now leaped all restraint. he recalled eleanor in her seat in the classroom, sought her out in her pew in church, dwelt upon her at her piano, adored her on the little porch in the evening light. he basked in each remembered smile, he counted each clustering curl. it was only four days since he had seen her, but he paled with fear lest some ill might have befallen her, or that some change might have lessened her regard. he must have her promise to marry him before he could go on with his work. he felt sharply impatient with this interruption to his steady course. shut into the house a year ago with a cold, he had read the accumulated chapters of a serial story at whose hero's failure he had laughed to thomasina. "no christina light could drive any steady man off his track like that!" thomasina had smiled and had said nothing. he remembered the story now with irritation. but it had no meaning for him; he was going to have his eleanor, he had her already. coming back through the hot sunshine from the post-office, he handed his mother his father's letters and sat down in the hammock with the papers and magazines. he glanced at the headlines of the paper and threw it aside; it was not a period when the news was exciting. then he stripped off the covers of the august magazines. as he opened the first, he started visibly. he glanced at his mother and saw that she was occupied and his eyes dropped once more to the "table of contents" and rested there, his cheeks reddening. here was eleanor's story "professor ellenborough's last class," and here was another story, "bitter bread," by basil everman! mrs. lister, looking up, met his astonished eyes and took instant alarm. "what is the matter, richard?" "why, mother, here is a story written by my uncle basil and reprinted! it is called 'bitter bread.' it is very long." richard turned page after page. she neither moved nor spoke. "and at the beginning there is a note, telling about it. listen! 'in his small output, basil everman may be said to have equaled edgar allan poe in originality and power. an essay "roses of pæstum," a vivid descriptive poem "storm," and a single story "bitter bread," which we republish, were originally printed in this magazine. they prove the extraordinary genius of this young man, long since dead. basil everman was born in waltonville, pennsylvania, and died in baltimore at the age of twenty-five. his productions surpass in quality, we believe, all other productions of their time.' "mother, how perfectly splendid! aren't you pleased?" richard waited for no answer. "he wasn't so very much older than i. mother--" he meant to ask questions, but respect for his mother's silence was bred into him. his head bent lower. "there is another story here and another note. 'we print in this issue another story from waltonville, a contribution very different in character, but also exhibiting the promise of talent of a high order, "professor ellenborough's last class, by eleanor bent."' "won't scotty champ his bit?" demanded richard as he looked up boldly. "i wonder what kind of a story eleanor would write. i--" richard meant to say that this was not the first knowledge he had had of her success, but he saw that his mother looked at him with fright and anger. "mother, in the name of common sense, what is the matter with the people in this house?" mrs. lister rose unsteadily. "you have never before spoken to your mother in such a way, richard!" mrs. lister entered the door, ascended the steps, and lay down upon her couch. richard, frightened and repentant, followed at once, and hung over her, begging to be allowed to wait upon her. "shall i darken the room, mother?" "yes, richard, please." "shall i bring you a drink?" "no, richard, thank you." "shall i take myself downstairs?" "yes, richard, please." richard ran down the steps. "in six hours father will be here, then let us hope that sanity will return to this demented household." richard read "professor ellenborough's last class" and smiled; then he read "bitter bread" and was filled with awe. it was english and it was prose, but it was like the old greek stuff that he had pegged away over for so many years. it made him see for the first time sense and beauty in the old greek stuff. perhaps he had been up to this time very stupid. he felt, with all his good opinion of himself, that even after a second reading of "bitter bread" he could not understand it wholly. humbled, he took from the long line of texts on his father's shelf a familiar and hated volume and looked into it. he had never expected to look into it again, but now as he read ideas for music came into his mind. while he read, he held "willard's magazine" on his knee. it was overwhelming, ennobling, to be connected with so great a man. he longed to read the story to his mother, to make her see in it what he saw, to ask a hundred questions about basil. he reviewed all the facts that he knew; the locked room which had been basil's; the conviction, early impressed upon him, that it was not to be entered, was not, indeed, a place where one would wish to be. "i hope, when i am dead, no one will treat my room that way," said richard. to die with work undone, with life waiting! how cruel! he wondered whether basil had known that he must die. shivering, he went out of the cool study into the sunshine. dr. lister returned, as was expected, at four o'clock. he looked white and tired. when richard met him with the word that mrs. lister was not well, he went at once to her room. there, weeping, she told him about "professor ellenborough's last class." what he had to tell made her feel no better. she said that she did not wish any supper; she would stay where she was, and when he had told richard he should come back. "tell him at once," said mary alcestis as she hid her face in the pillow. together richard and his father had a quiet supper. the table shone with its array of old silver, and upon the meal 'manda had done her best. both men ate heartily. richard gave his father an account of the few unimportant incidents of his absence, but dr. lister gave in return no account of his journey. "mother was sitting on the porch when suddenly she said she didn't feel well and went upstairs. she wouldn't let me do anything for her. i think it was uncle basil's story which made her feel badly. i hope nobody will ever bury me like that! i don't even know what he looked like!" when supper was over the two went into the study and there dr. lister closed the door. he took the chair behind his desk, and then, as though dissatisfied with that magisterial position, crossed the room and sat down by one of the low windows. richard waited, standing by the desk, impatient to be gone, and prepared for some unwelcome command. had his father visited his acquaintances in baltimore and was he to be ordered to johns hopkins? he rejected this as untenable. his father would not treat him like a baby. was it an ultimatum, favorable or unfavorable, about music? he trembled. several seconds passed before dr. lister began to speak, and he had in that time exchanged twice the position of his knees. so long was the silence that richard gave expression to his impatience. "father, the queerest air of mystery pervades this house. mother is not ill; she is offended with me. she will scarcely speak to me. i made an entirely innocent remark, and off she went. if i have done anything to bring this about, i am sorry and i'll try to correct it. if my speaking about uncle basil hurt her feelings, i'll never do that again. but i can't be treated like a baby." dr. lister blinked. "sit down, richard. it is nothing that you have done that troubles your mother. it is a condition which has risen without your will entirely." "i have an engagement this evening, father!" "i'll not keep you long." dr. lister paused again, this time to steady his voice. he had had no knowledge of disappointed love from his own experience, mary alcestis having fallen like a ripe peach into his hand, but he could imagine the discomforts of the situation. richard found a seat in a corner of the sofa. his heart beat a little more rapidly and he was puzzled by his father's gravity. he seemed to see the edge of a cloud, as yet no larger than a man's hand, but none the less ominous. "i must tell you about your uncle basil, richard." "well," said richard, "go ahead. he's a very mysterious person to me so far." "your grandfather had two children, your mother and basil. upon basil he founded many hopes and began early in his youth a most careful system of training so that he should waste no time, but should become what dr. everman himself was, a careful and thorough student of greek. "a certain amount of instruction basil listened to willingly, but his nature was not one which submitted itself to regular, long-continued training of any sort. he was a very handsome, talented lad, but a cruel disappointment to his father. he would not graduate from the college, refusing peremptorily to spend his time upon subjects in which he had no interest. he learned to read greek fluently; indeed, he had a passionate admiration for the literary beauties of the language, but to his father's great chagrin he would go no deeper." "then he was not like browning's grammarian who never got anything out of life but a funeral on a high mountain," said richard gayly. uncle basil had nothing to do with him, the little cloud had disappeared. "finally, after some difficulty with his father, he left home." "he was grown up, i suppose," said richard. "there isn't much to do in waltonville." "he left home, as i have said, and after a year he died of malignant diphtheria in a lodging-house in baltimore. his father's death followed close upon his. thus your mother was in a short time bereft of father, only brother, and also of her home, since this house is the property of the college. i was elected to your grandfather's place, as it happened, and i brought her back." richard looked up at the picture of his grandfather. he was tempted to say, "handsome old boy." "slowly your mother returned to a normal condition of mind, but she has never recovered from the death of your uncle. her father and mother were old, she and basil were born late in their lives, and to him she looked for companionship. his death away from home, waited upon by strangers, almost unhinged her mind. "after you were born she sat less in basil's room in the third story; she began to take an interest in life; she became wrapped up in you, in caring for you, in making plans for your future. you were to do what basil was to have done, to--" "but it's not safe to plan what children are to do!" cried richard. "you don't know what their plans may be. i'm sorry for mother, but i should think she would have known that!" "that is true to a certain point. your mother has feared that you would show some of those traits which distressed her in basil, that intense absorption in matters which are to her the least important in life, to the utter exclusion of those which seem to her to be more practical and valuable. she does not understand persons of a different temperament, especially the temperament to which regular meals"--here dr. lister smiled a little at richard--"and neat clothes and the good opinion of the public are adiaphora." "i have always done what she wanted me to do like a lamb," declared richard in a hard tone. he moved now toward the edge of his chair. "you have always been an obedient son." "what does mother consider matters of no importance?" "in basil's case it was art, literature, and music which she thought he set above everything else." "was my uncle basil musical?" "to a certain extent." dr. lister wondered uneasily how he would ever approach the point of his discourse. "to go on, richard--" "why did mother ever let me take lessons?" "she thought you would in that way exhaust in your childhood any enthusiasm you might have and you would then give your mind to other things." "glory!" said richard. then, "i am very sorry for my uncle basil." "he deserved some sympathy. we all do in this contrary world. i--" "i cannot see why greek should seem any more practical than music to my mother." "greek is the language of the new testament." "i cannot see what this has to do with me, anyhow, father. i have been in this house or on the porch for three days." dr. lister began to speak with nervous haste. "the history of your uncle basil has recently been opened by this man utterly, who came here to find out what he could about him. your mother was willing to give him only the most meager information. in this she was justified, for the young man seemed bound to prove that no one could have written as basil wrote without having had the terrible experiences about which he wrote. "when i urged her to tell him what she knew, she told me that for a year before his death basil had been estranged; that his father had died from the shock of his death; that waltonville had never suspected the alienation; and that she had always had an intense dread of its being suspected. "after that i could only send mr. utterly on his way with the surface facts of basil's life, hoping that the matter would end there. "but now a new element has entered into the situation. your mother had not even then confided in me the whole of your uncle's story. her affection for him and her pride in the good name of the family had kept her lips closed. a day or two ago she told me more. this has a relation to you, but not, i trust, richard, a very vital relation. i wish she had told me long ago. i have hoped it would not be necessary to tell you--perhaps it isn't really necessary now." richard's face expressed a mild curiosity. his father seemed to be making a great deal of nothing. "when you were in baltimore, mrs. scott came to see your mother and told her, with all her impertinence, that you had been spending a good deal of time with eleanor bent. your mother said in response that eleanor was a bright, pretty girl and that it was your affair." richard felt that now his father was a very direct and satisfactory _raconteur_. "that night, while we waited for you to come home, your mother told me the whole story of your uncle. he was attached, it seems, to margie ginter, the daughter of the tavern-keeper, and it was she whom he followed away. your mother had come upon them in the twilight, and had overheard a conversation between them." "mother is suspicious," said richard. "from their conversation she had every reason to suspect a close intimacy. at any rate, they went away and basil went away. sometime after his death, this margie returned with a little girl." richard's eyes darkened. the cloud had increased in size. his father regretted the orderly way in which he had presented the facts, one after the other. he wished that he had said abruptly, "eleanor bent is your first cousin, and if there is anything between you it must end." "here she stayed, richard." richard seemed still more puzzled than alarmed. "you mean mrs. bent? but she is a widow, her name is bent. what an atrocious suspicion!" dr. lister raised his hand. "quietly, richard! your mother will hear!" richard's blazing eyes said that that made little difference. "i know that she calls herself mrs. bent and her name may be mrs. bent. the point is that her daughter is like basil." he quoted unconsciously from mrs. lister's sentences. "she walks like him, her coloring is like his, her eyes are his, and she has begun to show talent like his." "i should need better proof than that!" declared richard. "i needed more proof also, and so i went to the little town in ohio where the ginters were said to have gone. that is where i have been. the father and daughter and a tall young man who was superior to them are dimly remembered. they didn't stay long. marysville, it seemed, could not endure ginter. i talked to the squire." "my uncle basil may have married her and afterwards she may have married a second time!" "it is possible," agreed dr. lister. "i hope that is the way of it." "well, then, what is all this fuss about?" demanded richard rudely. "nothing is eleanor's fault! nothing can make any difference in my feeling for her! when i am able i mean to marry her." "richard!" "well?" dr. lister described briefly the consequences of such an alliance. his remarks were made to fill time, to give richard an opportunity to get hold of himself. richard clasped and unclasped his hands, fitting his fingers neatly together. he did not lift his eyes, he wished only to get away, but he did not feel certain of his power of locomotion. "mother had no right to let this go on!" "she didn't dream of such a thing. be fair!" "not dream of it! did she suppose i could associate day after day with a girl like eleanor and not love her?" "she didn't know you associated with her. i hope you have come to no sort of understanding." richard answered only with a setting of his jaw. what he had done was his business. they should pry no farther; his heart was bleeding, but they should not count the drops. as soon as he felt certain of his knees he would fly. dr. lister gave his body a little comfort against the back of his chair. "i have no objection to your following music as a career, richard, and i am sure we can win your mother over also. we want to do what is best for you--that is our chief desire in life. we will give you every possible opportunity here and abroad. what did mr. faversham say about your playing?" richard had now got to his feet. it seemed to him that he kept on and on rising. insult had been added to injury. "i have nothing to tell," said he with dignity, and so got himself away. chapter xvii mrs. lister takes to her bed surely there could have been no more remarkable coincidence than this proximity in "willard's magazine" of the work of basil everman and of eleanor bent. it seemed to mrs. lister that their connection must be blazoned thereby to the world, that the two compositions must bear on their faces evidence which the least discerning could interpret. things done in secret could not be hidden; all her efforts of years to save the name of basil from disgrace were of no avail before the power of god's law. she had given one painful, fascinated reading to the "scarlet letter"; to her, now, basil and his companion were approaching the scaffold in the market-place for their final acknowledgment of common guilt. after a few days she rose, white and trembling, from her bed and went once more into a suspicious world. she had faced it for twenty years, she would face it again. but in spite of her terror, the coincidence apparently suggested nothing to waltonville, brought back no damning recollection to any human being. the memory of mankind is short; that which she had desired was accomplished; basil's swinging step, his bright eyes, his dark, beautiful hair were long ago forgotten; the step so like his, the eyes lit by the same fire, the mass of dark curls recalled his image as little as did this youthful writing connect itself with his work. as a matter of fact, eleanor's account of a semi-pathetic, semi-humorous college incident was not in the least like basil's work, but to mary alcestis writing was writing. waltonville's response to basil's story was varied. mrs. scott did not think it in any way remarkable; it reminded her, she said, of the productions of edgar allan poe, and was therefore a little old-fashioned. "he gave us long ago our fill of horrors," said she lightly. "and i don't think this is even as horrible as 'the black cat' and it certainly doesn't compare with 'the murders in the rue morgue.'" with utterly's opinions as a stepping-stone she had leaped far above him, as one might leap from a supporting hand into a high saddle. she talked until her husband blushed, until his soul writhed. as for basil everman's story, she thought utterly had been absurd to talk about a thousand dollars. "i warrant that mrs. lister has searched through every old trunk in the attic," said she. dr. scott stirred with one of his uneasy little motions, but made no other answer. he was having a restless, unhappy summer, the worst he had passed since his marriage. there was literally nothing in life which was worth while. he longed to go away, he longed for the companionship of those with kindred tastes and gentle ways, he longed for a sight of the foreign lands of which he dreamed. he stood sometimes and looked about his house with its frivolous and worthless gauds; he thought of the bill for mrs. scott's outing, postponed a little this year beyond its usual date, and then of how simply one could live in italy for a springtime. italy!--he took a book from his shelf and opened it. "a city of marble, did i say? nay, rather a golden city, paved with emerald. for truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with gold or bossed with jasper. beneath the unsullied sea drew in, deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave.... it lay along the face of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their masts at evening, than a bar of the sunset that could not pass away; but for its power, it must have seemed to them that they were sailing in the expanse of heaven, and this a great planet whose orient edge widened through the ether. a world from which all ignoble care and petty thoughts were banished, with all the common and poor elements of life. no foulness nor tumult in those tremulous streets, that filled, or fell, beneath the moon; but rippled music of majestic change, or thrilling silence. no weak walls could rise above them; no low-roofed cottage, or straw-built shed. only the strength as of rock, and the finished setting of stones most precious. and round them, far as the eye could reach, still the soft moving of stainless waters, proudly pure; as not the flower, so neither the thorn nor the thistle, could grow in the glancing field. ethereal strength of alps, dreamlike, vanishing in high procession beyond the torcellan shore; blue islands of paduan hills, poised in the golden west. above free winds and fiery clouds ranging at their will;--brightness out of the north, and balm from the south, and the stars of evening and morning clear in the limitless light of arched heaven and circling sea." dr. scott sighed and took down another book, then for hours he was dull to the passing of time. sometimes he was able to lose himself in dreams. but when he woke his house was all the more intolerable and even his study offered no balm. late july brought walter for a visit and walter seemed more than ever worldly, smart, progressive, and intolerable. cora sat in her room silent and white-faced. sometimes she read for a long time from one of her padded poets. mrs. scott longed for atlantic city and complained about the listers. to dr. scott the story of basil everman exhibited all the cruel sadness of human fate. his imagination was fertile and he reconstructed basil, an alien spirit in the everman house. his speech was not the speech of puritanic theology, his ways could not have been the ways of mary alcestis. he was so soon a ghost, wandering forlorn, his work only begun when life was ended! dr. scott meant to talk to thomasina davis about him--she surely would remember him. he saw no reason why "bitter bread" should not make a little book. would the listers think of him as the editor for such a volume? so happy an event was hardly, in this disappointing world, probable; nevertheless, though he knew himself to be reckoning without any host whatever, he began to put together editorial words and phrases. then, remembering utterly, who had a certain right as a discoverer, he ceased dreaming. mrs. scott thought eleanor's story poor and called attention to the fact that she had taken dr. green's office as a model for untidiness, at which he laughed immoderately. he said that eleanor might use himself or his office as a model at any time or to any extent she wished. "undoubtedly she has some kind of a pull," was mrs. scott's next comment. "pull?" repeated dr. scott nervously. "yes, influence over the editor," explained mrs. scott, "pull" in this sense being a new usage adopted from walter. "perhaps a financial influence. they seem to have money." thomasina davis, when she opened her copy of "willard's magazine," grew pale; then she put it aside and went to walk up and down her garden. it was a long time before serenity returned to her countenance. later in the day she went to the bents' to congratulate eleanor. it was probable, she thought, that no one else in waltonville but dr. scott would say anything to her. eleanor looked ill and troubled, not as one would expect a rising author to look, and her mother looked even more distressed. they sat on the porch with mrs. bent watching her daughter anxiously, from the background, the dark circles under her eyes telling of sleepless nights. "you ought to take eleanor away for a vacation," advised thomasina. "there is no place superior to waltonville, but you have to go away sometimes to realize it. perhaps she would like to go somewhere with me." to thomasina's astonishment eleanor burst into tears, and rising, overwhelmed with mortification, went indoors. "she ain't very well," explained mrs. bent, who was overwhelmed also. "please do excuse her, miss davis. she has studied hard and she has practiced too much since she got her piano. that is, she did, but she don't now." "perhaps she ought to see dr. green." "perhaps." but mrs. bent's forehead did not smooth itself out at the suggestion. her anxieties tightened about her daily like a coil of wire long ago flung out and now being wound closer and closer. thomasina said nothing to mrs. lister about basil's story. they had never talked about him, for though they had been intimate companions, mary alcestis had shut her out with every one else from her grief. she believed that thomasina had thought even when they were children that she did not love him enough, was not always amiable with him. not love basil! it was because she had loved him so dearly, so desperately, that she had tried to watch over him, to lead him, to admonish him. a woman who had never been really in love, who had never married, who had never had children, who had always maintained even toward dr. lister an air of mental equality, could not be expected to know the height and depth of love which mary alcestis knew. thomasina, for all her bright mind and all her knowledge of many things, had had little experience of life's realities. from others the listers had comments in plenty. "to the relatives of basil everman, waltonville, pennsylvania," had come to be a familiar address to the postmaster. editors wrote asking whether there had not been preserved other compositions of basil everman. they would welcome even fragmentary notes. could not anything be found by searching? dr. lister went to the attic and opened the little trunk and took the euripides and the æschylus down to his study. he laid his hand for an instant on the upper drawer of the old bureau where basil's clothes were packed, but did not open it. these clothes should long, long ago have been given away or burned. a few old friends wrote to dr. scott for information about his distinguished fellow citizen. the story was to be followed in "willard's" by "roses of pæstum" and "storm." it promised to be fashionable to reprint old material. dr. lister heard nothing from mr. utterly, but imagined him swelling with pride and heard his sharp, high voice going on interminably about the rights of the public in all the details of an author's life. richard sat about quietly, holding a book in his hand, but not reading. his first experience with pain appalled him. so this was the world, was it? this was life? was this dull shade the real color of the sky, this heavy vapor the atmosphere? he could not reconcile so malevolent a trick of fate with any conception of benevolence. presently he began to resent his misery. he had done nothing to deserve this pain. to his side, as he sat in dr. lister's study or on the porch, his mother made frequent journeys. "dinner-time, richard," said mary alcestis gently. "fried chicken, richard," she would add hopefully. or, "'manda has just finished baking, richard. would you like a little cake? it would please 'manda, richard." or--now mrs. lister's heart throbbed with hope--"would you like to have the piano tuned, richard?" to all these suggestions he returned a polite, "no, i thank you, mother." no tuning or feeding could help either the piano or richard now. once he turned upon his mother with a question. "mother, do you mean to say that during all these years, you and mrs. bent have never exchanged a word about--this matter?" "she came up to me once on the street with her little girl," confessed mrs. lister tremulously. "but of course i couldn't talk to her there--or anywhere!" "what did she say?" "she said she wanted to talk to me about basil." finally mrs. lister yielded her citadel. "richard, your father and i have been talking about music. we think that when you get your clavier with your commencement money, we had better get a piano also. father thinks i should go with you to baltimore and that it would be well to ask thomasina to go too. you could have it to practice on now, and then it would be here when you came from--from new york, richard." richard made no answer. "would you like that, dear?" richard laid his book on the table before him. he remembered the things which had been said about music, about art, about him! he laid his head down on his arms. "a grand piano, richard!" said mrs. lister, appealingly. "papa thinks--" "i would like to be let alone!" said richard. "that is all i ask." but mrs. lister had not yet made the hardest of her sacrificial suggestions. she was grieved by richard's response, but she had determined to bear anything. "i am thinking of that young girl," said she timidly. "what young girl?" asked richard with a warning savageness. "of miss bent. i don't like you to seem rude to her. i don't suppose she knows anything about her history. i can't believe she does. perhaps you might make another call on her--with thomasina. i am sure she would go with you if you would ask her. there would not be anything strange in it. then you would go away and it would be--over. you will have new scenes." in answer richard simply looked at his mother. he believed that her mind was affected by long brooding over his uncle basil; thus only could her behavior and her conversation be explained. to embrace eleanor bent, to stay away from her for days, and then to call upon her with thomasina davis! it was, indeed, a fantastic scheme. presently he went away. his father's sisters sent once more from st. louis an urgent invitation and to their quiet household he was persuaded to go. mary alcestis composed a letter saying that he had not been well and that he did not care at the present time for gayety. before mailing the letter she wrote another saying that he had lived so entirely with older folk that it was good for him to have gayety and go about with young people. when she had finished this letter the possibility of a western daughter-in-law disturbed her. in the end she destroyed both letters and he set out unencumbered by directions. casually in dr. green's office dr. lister asked about the marriage of first cousins and dr. green reached into the irregular pile of "lancets" behind him and dragged out a copy, sending thereby the superincumbent stack to the floor. upon it he did not bestow a glance. "there, read the pleasant catalogue! deaf children, dumb children, children malformed, children susceptible to disease, children with rickets, no children at all. i can give you a dozen articles if this doesn't suffice." early in august the listers went to call upon thomasina. in her living-room there was a single dim light, only a little brighter than the moonlight outside. the rest of waltonville whose rooms blazed, wondered often how she made her parlor so restful, so comfortable to talk in. from the garden through the long doors came the odor of jasmine and sweet clematis and the heavier scent of august lilies. she had been walking in her garden and when she came in to meet her guests there appeared with her a slender young figure in a white dress. eleanor had come to show that she was not a fool, that she could talk sensibly and not burst out crying. her heart had changed from a delicate throbbing organ into a hard lump, but her eyes were dry. at sight of eleanor, mrs. lister drew closer to dr. lister, who looked at her in return as sternly as he ever looked at any one. thomasina asked at once about richard, where he was and how soon he would be at home. mrs. scott had come to her with her story, and thomasina, concealing her surprise, had said that she saw nothing unsuitable in such a friendship. in a few hours she ceased even to be surprised, she felt only an aching envy for youth and happiness. she did not share dr. green's opinion that youthful marriages were suicidal. but something evidently had gone wrong between richard and eleanor. could mrs. scott have made trouble between them! mrs. lister told where richard had gone and said they did not know when he would return. "he is going to new york late in the fall," she explained. "he is going to be a musician." thomasina's arm felt the throb of eleanor's heart. before the listers had found seats, the knocker sounded again. now the scotts arrived. this was the evening that dr. scott had set as the limit of his boredom. things had grown no better; they had, on the contrary, grown worse. but when he had set out, mrs. scott announced her intention of accompanying him, and she was now at his side, effervescent, sharp-voiced, and more than usually trying to her husband. eleanor lingered, feeling awkward and unhappy. she wished to be alone with her own thoughts of richard, alone with her never-ending effort to account for his silence, his departure without a good-bye. perhaps he would write to her! the possibility made her happy for a second. she waited a pause in the conversation so that she might go home, but none came. when dr. green arrived, the talk grew more rapid and the opportunity seemed farther away. of the hard feeling which she had exhibited against eleanor, mrs. scott gave now no sign. she spoke of "our budding authoress" with whom she said she had had little opportunity thus far to become acquainted. how, she asked, with her sweetest expression, did one write? she drew a picture of eleanor sitting before a ream of paper, laying aside finished sheets with machine-like regularity. eleanor made no answer; she did not wish to be rude, but she had no words. it was before the days when the reporter penetrated through the boudoir of the writer or artist into the more secret regions of his work-room to watch hands flitting above a typewriter, or to photograph preoccupation at a flower-laden mahogany desk. eleanor blushed as though she had been asked to describe the process of putting on her clothes. her silence did not suggest to mrs. scott the propriety of stopping. "what are you going to do, miss bent?" "what do you mean, mrs. scott?" "i mean are you going to bury your talent in waltonville or are you going into the great world? i hear that women are going into all the fields of men. perhaps you will be a reporter and write us all up!" "i have no plans for anything of that kind." "you speak as though waltonville were a cemetery, mrs. scott," said thomasina. "where did you get the idea for your little story?" persisted mrs. scott. it was clear now that eleanor was being baited. even mrs. lister felt sympathy. eleanor's cheeks flamed; their color could be seen even in the dim light. thomasina was about to answer, when dr. green interposed. "out of her head, mrs. scott, where all authors that are worth while get theirs. that's where shakespeare got his and where basil everman got his. their heads are differently stocked from ours. you don't suppose they have to see everything they write about, do you? mrs. lister, i have been deeply interested in basil everman. i suppose it is too much to hope for--but is it possible that anything else will turn up?" "i'm afraid not," answered dr. lister. "there is a chance of something in other magazines of the time, but i fancy they have been pretty carefully gone over in that hope." mrs. scott, never long quiet, turned to mrs. lister. "cora had a letter from richard." "did she?" said mrs. lister. "that was nice." she spoke smoothly, but a sudden pang of sympathy for eleanor shot through her heart. eleanor must love richard, could not do otherwise. his caring for cora became suddenly undesirable; his tragedy had lifted him above her. mrs. lister was glad now that he was going away, to win fame, to separate himself from waltonville. he could never emancipate himself from mrs. scott if he were her son-in-law. that fate she could not wish any one, least of all her dear child. the occasion of his letter to cora was the return of a book long since lent him and forgotten. "i told him he must write at once and explain why he had kept it so long," explained mary alcestis simply. eleanor moved suddenly closer to mrs. lister. "i read about basil everman," said she hurriedly. "i was mortified to see my poor story published in the same magazine with his. i think he was wonderful. it makes waltonville seem like a different place when one realizes that he lived here. it must have been wonderful to be with him, to help him. there is a poem about 'a brother, a sister, anything to thee!' my mother says she remembers him well. i think she knew him _quite_ well and admired him very much. i told her she ought to come to you and talk to you about him." "yes," said mrs. lister faintly. it seemed to her that she went on saying "yes" interminably. she saw tearful mrs. bent, laying her hand on richard's coach, her little gray-eyed daughter clinging to her and staring round-eyed at the other baby. she had not described this incident in full either to dr. lister or to richard. she could not confess how sharply she had refused to talk to mrs. bent; how she had backed away, literally pulling the coach from under her hand; how eyes and voice had expressed horror and anger. it was not likely, whatever her daughter might think, that mrs. bent would approach her again! but equally dreadful things had happened. she looked at poor eleanor now as she had looked at her mother; then she rose to go. the next morning she stayed in bed, waiting for the blow to fall. chapter xviii mrs. lister has two callers mrs. lister would not at first see dr. green. she insisted that she was only tired and that she would be out of bed and downstairs by to-morrow. she had been like this after her father and basil had died, and she had recovered then without the help of a doctor. it was her mind and not her body which was ailing and there was no medicine for her mind. nor should richard be sent for. she answered the suggestion impatiently. "i am only too thankful that he is away. i want him to be away. i used to want him to be here always and to have this house when we are gone and marry cora scott and have little children, but now i believe the best thing for him is to stay away. i think i did wrong to dissuade you when you had the call from the new york college, papa. we would have plenty for him, wouldn't we, even if he doesn't succeed with his music?" dr. lister laughed. "don't add that to your other worries, mary alcestis! richard is not the kind to fail." "i could easily economize in the house. there are many things one can do without if one only thinks so." most of the time she lay still thinking. she turned over and over in her mind the old days, their routine, their precepts. she tried to excuse basil, to find some flaw in his bringing-up. but she had had exactly the same bringing-up and she had always been obedient to her parents and to the laws of society and of god. the flaw must have been in him. she thought of mrs. bent as a young girl with her pretty face. she had seemed, at least, superior to her father and her station. it was not perhaps her fault that she had gone astray, and helped others to go astray. she had not had any bringing-up, poor soul, except what she had given herself. but one could not excuse her, could not look lightly upon dreadful sin! again mary alcestis heard that frantic pleading in the dark on cherry street, saw again basil's bending face in the light of the dim street lamp. "it would be best to go away," said basil distinctly. when, at last, she tried to go downstairs, she found herself unequal to the exertion. she rose, walked about the room, and returned as quickly as possible to bed, her knees trembling, darkness before her eyes. then, at last, she consented to have dr. green prescribe for her. she could lie here no longer; she must be up and about her business, which was the defending of her house and her name from disgrace. dr. green came, whistling softly, up the stairs and into her room. there he let his tall figure down into an armchair. his eyes were unusually bright, his hair had just been trimmed, his clothes were, comparatively speaking, smooth. he was really, thought mrs. lister, rather a handsome man. he said that her illness was merely exhaustion due to the heat. he would send her some medicine and she must stay in bed for another week. he expected to go to baltimore for a few days and she was upon no account to stir until he got back. "you take life far too strenuously. i dare say you are saving 'manda all the time." when his taking of her pulse and his somewhat perfunctory inquiry about her symptoms were over, he did not go. the room was deliciously cool after the blazing heat through which he had walked and there was even a slight breeze, blowing in between the slats of the bowed shutters and swaying the curtains gently. 'manda came presently with a tray and a glass of lemonade and he called down the blessings of heaven upon her in his extravagant way. when she had gone he asked mrs. lister, by way of opening a pleasant and soothing conversation, whether she had read eleanor bent's story. "yes," answered mrs. lister. "did you think it was a good story?" mrs. lister answered with a fainter "yes." she was determined to give poor eleanor her due; indeed, "professor ellenborough's last class" was not nearly so "wild" as she expected. then she ventured a question. "dr. green, if a person has talent, is it likely to be inherited, or does it spring up of itself?" dr. green, strange to say, flushed scarlet. mrs. lister grew panic-stricken. what had she said? what did he know? what might she not have put into his head? she wished that he would go, she became suddenly afraid of her own tongue. he began a lengthy dissertation upon the laws of heredity as laid down by scientists. some one among eleanor's ancestors had certainly had brains and had used them. she had a very good mind; she might go far if she could be brought to value her talent as it should be valued; if she could be persuaded to hold it higher than any marital experience, for instance. "i do not think marriage is for every one," agreed mary alcestis. "there are some people who do not seem equal to its demands." dr. green sniffed the pleasant air. "i think eleanor would be equal to it. i meant it would probably ruin her career. i think the majority of young people have been tricked, trapped, by the instinct to mate." "oh!" said mary alcestis. "i don't agree with you." "she ought to have new experiences of life," went on dr. green. "she should get out of this back water into the fuller current." he was rather pleased with his metaphor. a gleam of hope illuminated mrs. lister's despair. "perhaps we could help," she said eagerly. "her mother must have found her education and her clothing rather expensive. she always wears such very pretty clothes. and she takes lessons from thomasina, and i hear--i hear she has a very fine piano. if we could do anything in a quiet way for her, i am sure dr. lister would be willing. i--we should be very, very glad." "i think there is no lack of money," said dr. green. then with a promptness which indicated to mrs. lister a connection in his mind between the two subjects, he began to speak of basil everman. "your brother must have been a very brilliant person." mary alcestis's body moved with a slight convulsive motion under the bed-covers. "he was a dear little boy," said she. "he and thomasina davis and i used to play together." "his death was a calamity," said dr. green. "but i needn't tell you that, for no one could value him as highly as you do, naturally. but it was a pity, a very great pity. i suppose we will have a book about him some day. eleanor bent might do such a piece of work when she's older. biography is far more interesting and far harder to do well than fiction. eleanor--" "did you say you were going to baltimore?" asked mrs. lister faintly. dr. green pulled out his watch. "i am going to baltimore in exactly one half-hour and i have a satchel to pack. good-bye and do as i tell you." mrs. lister lay in a cold perspiration. eleanor writing a book about basil! she tried to grip the smooth sheet drawn tightly over the smooth mattress; finally she put both hands over her face. she forgot basil, she forgot richard, she forgot everything except a prayer that she might not scream. thomasina came in the front door as dr. green went out. she was told by him that mrs. lister was only exhausted by the heat, that company would do her good, and that she, thomasina, should go upstairs and stay as long as she could. she glanced about as she went through the hall, her mind filled with pleasant recollections of the former dwellers in the high-ceilinged rooms. a friendship handed down from generation to generation as was hers with the everman family was rare and precious. she laid her rose-colored parasol on the hall table and went slowly up the stairs. when she had almost reached the top, she heard the sound of a smothered sob, and remembered with a pang the days when she had sat with mary alcestis beside her father's coffin. poor mary alcestis had had a good deal to bear. what could be the matter now? surely, surely nothing could have happened to richard! thomasina hastened her steps. mrs. lister lay face downward, her cheek pressed deep into the pillow. her hands were clenched above her head and the bed shook with the violence of her weeping. she had now passed the limit of endurance. thomasina went close to the ample bed with its quivering figure. "mary alcestis, i am here and i will stay with you. if it does you good to cry, i'll stand guard, so cry away." thomasina bowed one shutter a little more closely and closed the door and then sat down in the chair which dr. green had left. there could be nothing the matter with richard, or dr. green would have told her. mrs. lister did not, as thomasina suggested, have her cry out. she tried at once to control herself, and succeeded bravely with her tears. but the hysterical impulse was not spent. it would have been better if she had continued to weep, but instead she began to talk, and having begun, could not stop. she told thomasina the whole story of basil from the day of his birth as though thomasina had never seen or heard of him. "we did everything we could for him, father and i--everything. i felt i must make up mother's loss to him. we--" "_everything except understand him_," said thomasina to herself. "we prayed--that is father did--with him, and talked with him, and labored with him, and watched for him." "_but did not sympathize with him_," said thomasina, again to herself. "but when it came to margie ginter, oh, thomasina! it was too hard with father the president of the college and so admir--" "to margie ginter!" repeated thomasina. "oh, hush, thomasina! do not speak so loud! i have never talked about it with you, because it was my own brother, and i wanted you to think as well as you could of him, and because we have never talked about such things. but you must know, thomasina!" "i know nothing!" "i mean you will have to know, because it is creeping out." "creeping out!" thomasina's voice was horror-struck. "what is creeping out?" "he began to go with margie ginter here. he walked with her in the evenings and he used to go often to the tavern. you know how we used to run past the tavern, thomasina!" "this is madness, mary alcestis!" "it is not. i saw them and heard them. i was coming home from your house and i heard them. she was pleading with basil to help her and he said it would be best to go away. she was crying, and i followed them down cherry street. i felt i must know so as to tell my father. it was very dark and a storm was coming, but i followed them nevertheless." "followed them?" "it was my duty. don't look at me like that, thomasina! do you suppose i would believe anything against basil i didn't have to believe? i never loved any one more than him--not even richard, you know that. i have had this hanging over me for years. you haven't had much experience with trouble or sorrow or you would understand better than you do. and then this dreadful mr. utterly from new york determined to pry into our affairs. it is a wonder that i am living to-day, indeed it is!" "basil did nothing that could not be published to the world!" said thomasina sharply. "what is the matter with you? what are you afraid of? have you repeated this to any one else?" "you know me better than that," said mrs. lister with dignity. "you have been my companion since we were children. how can you ask such a question?" "but what do you mean? what is there to suspect about basil? what is creeping out?" "you are so sharp-witted about many things, thomasina. you know so much more than i do in so many ways. you know what i mean and yet you pretend that you do not!" "i do not know what you mean!" "even mr. utterly saw that eleanor bent has eyes like basil and he never saw her but once or twice. you can't fail to see it! and there is this writing!" thomasina always sat quietly, but now she seemed to have turned to stone. after a long time mary alcestis took her hands from her eyes and looked up. "you look at me as though i were a fool and wicked, too, thomasina." thomasina made no answer, but continued to stare with a face as white as mrs. lister's sheets. mrs. lister sat up suddenly in bed. "i hear some one downstairs, i believe it is dr. lister. will you tell him, thomasina, that i am trying to sleep?" thomasina rose quickly. "you are a fool, mary alcestis," said she slowly. "oh, thomasina!" mary alcestis laid herself down. "this is an invention of your own brain. shame upon you, mary alcestis!" mrs. lister now covered her face with the sheet. thomasina went out and closed the door. the astonishment in her eyes had changed to a sick horror. she held feebly to the hand rail as she descended the steps. for the first moment in her life she looked old. she heard dr. lister moving about in his study, but she did not deliver mary alcestis's message. it made no difference to her whether or not mary alcestis was disturbed in her sleep. forgetting to raise her sunshade, she crossed the sunniest spaces of the campus without feeling the heat, and went down the street past her own gateway to dr. green's office. there she waited, sitting straight in a small stiff chair until black virginia, in answer to her ring, entered from a distant quarter of the house. virginia blinked away the last drowsiness of her mid-morning nap as she looked admiringly at thomasina. "doctor's gone away, miss thomas'." "where to?" "baltimore." "i saw him less than an hour ago." "yessum, but he went to the train like a cyclone." "when will he be back?" "couple o' days, i guess. was yo' sick, miss thomas'?" thomasina rose unsteadily. "no." "shall i write anything on the slate?" "no, thank you, virginia." "can i get you a glass o' water, miss thomas'?" "no, thank you." with a dragging step, thomasina proceeded on her way. she opened her door and entered the hall and looked up the broad stairway toward the second floor. the stairway seemed very steep, and she stepped quickly into her parlor and shut the door and sat down in the nearest chair. by this time she looked like death. chapter xix mrs. lister opens an old bureau mrs. lister lay motionless for many moments after thomasina had left. exhausted both mentally and physically she was for a little while dull to her own woes. she should not have talked to thomasina, but neither should thomasina have responded as she did. thomasina had put her in the wrong, she had not acted like a friend. "as though i made it up!" sobbed mary alcestis. "what does she think i am?" once more she dropped into a doze which was not so much physical as mental. she dreamed that a dreadful danger threatened them all, like the collapse of the solid lister house, and under the impression of the dream she stepped from bed without being fully awake. once on her feet, she understood its significance and determined to carry out that which she had long intended. she felt under the edge of the bed for her slippers and put them on and wrapped round her a capacious dressing-gown. locomotion, tried at first warily, proved easier than she expected. opening the door, she stood still and listened. dr. lister was doubtless comfortable in the conviction that she was asleep and would consequently be lost in his book until dinner-time. opening the door more widely, she stepped out into the hall. she was not accustomed to stealing about her own house and her weakness and the throbbing of her heart terrified her. but with the foresight of one accustomed to sly deeds, she closed the door softly. if her husband came upstairs he would think that she was asleep and he would not disturb her. she went stealthily along the hall to the stairway and stopped once more. there were certain steps that creaked so that they could be heard all over the house, but she knew which steps they were and with painful care stepped over them. her dressing-gown got in her way and almost tripped her, and she steadied herself by the aid of the banister and stood for a long time trembling. "i shall say i am going to find something i need," she planned. "i have a perfect right to go into my own attic." but mercifully she heard no sound nearly as loud as the throbbing of her own heart. each step made her feel weaker and more miserable as it lifted her into the hot darkness of the third-story hall with its smell of dry wood and camphor and other faintly odorous objects. the shutters were closed tight and the blinds were drawn, but through them and through the roof the sun penetrated until the air was furnace-heated. she gasped, feeling a sharp pain in her head, but she moved on, her hand against the wall, to the door of basil's room. there she turned the key and entered. the temperature was higher than that of the hall and the odors stronger and more significant. each simple article of furniture, the narrow bed, the high, old-fashioned bureau, the little washstand with its spartan fittings, a single chair, a little table, the old trunk, all was as it had been for twenty years. in it was no life or reminder of life; it was empty, terrible as an old burial vault. she did not open a window and thereby admit a breath of saving though heated air; her purpose must be quickly accomplished and admitted of no discovery and no interruption. she believed that if any one should come upon her suddenly at this moment she would die of shock. she went directly to the old bureau and opened the upper drawer. there, each garment wrapped in paper with a little piece of camphor in its folds, lay specimens of basil's clothes going as far back as a little winter coat discarded when he was five. how often had she wept over them! how speedily her husband or thomasina would have consigned them to the flames, refusing to connect a human life with the garments of the past, now so grotesque! thrusting her hand beneath the lower layer, she brought out a key and with it opened the second drawer. then she stood very still. the drawer was not filled to the top, but held only a few large, thick old tablets in a pile, a few books, a small handful of letters, a half-dozen pens and pencils, a little penwiper and a half-dozen packages of paper thickly covered with writing in a small, delicate hand. she lifted the tablets and, trembling, turned the yellowed pages, also covered with close writing. she lifted the packages of paper and laid them softly back. when she took the letters in her hand, tears ran down her cheeks. here was her father's handwriting, here her own, here even her mother's. only once had mrs. everman left her home, and it was then, upon the occasion of a funeral in her family, that she had written to her children. that he had kept this letter, which, when it came, he had been too young to read, or even to understand, was a redeeming, a consoling incident in basil's life. the little penwiper moved her most strongly. she remembered when it was made, what scraps of her own dresses composed it; she laid it carefully away. but she treated the relics of basil's mind with no such tenderness. she lifted one of the packages of manuscript in her hands. she was not mad or wicked, poor mary alcestis, she was only devoted to what was seemly and right. this was a duty which she owed basil, a duty which she should have performed long ago. persons changed their opinions as they grew older and he, could he have survived, would have come to regret those stories of love and crime and hate which he had written, which would now so cruelly reveal his soul. had not mr. utterly confirmed all her own convictions on this point? loving basil, she would do exactly as she knew he would wish her to do! she would do it quickly. certain remarks of dr. lister's in other connections made her fear that he would be not upon her side and that of basil's good, but upon the side of basil's youth. standing tall, loosely wrapped in her long robe, she looked for once in her life heroic, like a sybil or prophetess. her hands grasped the paper and she tried to tear the whole across. but the paper was still tough in spite of its age and she had to lay the package down and take a few sheets at a time. the slow process made her nervous; it seemed hours since she had come into the room. she tore the half-dozen sheets across, then dropped them into the pitcher on the little washstand. when she had finished she would carry them downstairs. 'manda had a good fire at this time of day. she lifted six other sheets and tore them across. she remembered dimly the story of the manuscript of some famous and important book accidentally fed day after day to the fire. but that was a great work of philosophy or history or theology, it was not anything like poor basil's stories! she saw as she proceeded a few clear words, "hunger knows no niceties and passion no laws," and she shuddered. they could not too soon perish, these utterances of basil's sad, uncontrolled youth! suddenly she began to feel faint. she remembered again the story of the bride locked into the great chest. but that was nonsense! dr. lister would soon find her. was he not coming, did she not hear steps, a voice, did she not feel--not a hand touching her--but a breath upon her cheek? thomasina had said--what was it thomasina had said? she pushed the drawer shut, all but a crack, then she moved slowly and with dignity toward basil's bed. she would lie down and after a little rest strength would return. then she would go on, tearing the papers into finer and ever finer bits. chapter xx basil's room has a new visitor dr. lister read the "times" and "public opinion" until he heard 'manda setting the dinner-table. then he folded his papers, glanced out through the pleasant medium of dim green light under his awning, raised his arms above his head in a motion which relieved cramped muscles, yawned, and wondered about mary alcestis. reproaching himself because he had not gone directly to her side when he came in, he went upstairs. he found her door closed and upon listening with his ear against the frame, felt confident that he heard a gentle breathing. he opened the door, holding the knob so that it should make no noise, and looked into the darkened room. when his vision reached the bedspread, turned down over the bed's foot, he withdrew. what mary alcestis needed was sleep. she needed also absence from these familiar scenes. he determined that he would propose a journey, much as he disliked leaving his pleasant home in summer. they might go and bring richard home, all returning by way of niagara falls; they might even take him directly to new york and see him settled there. by next summer he would look back on his miseries with astonishment at himself. youth was so resilient; it changed and forgot, thank god! tiptoeing downstairs dr. lister ate his dinner, still more reassured by 'manda's statement that her mistress had given orders early in the morning that she was not to be disturbed. as he sat alone at his meal, he thought of basil who had so often sat here looking over the broad meadow toward the creek where he, like richard, had fished when he was a little boy. how pleasant it was to be safe and alive, with friends, bodily comforts, good books; how dreadful to be struck down, cut off from life and sunshine and work. how sad to be forgotten, to have no place in the memory of man, even in the minds of one's contemporaries. his thoughts turned from basil's life to his own. what had he done to be remembered except by a few persons connected with him by ties of blood? a few short texts edited, a few boys and girls taught a little greek! alas, during the most of his adult years he had been satisfied to get merely his academic work done and to make no further effort. this house, he believed, with all its soft comforts had been bad for him; he had had so many more plans, so many high ambitions when he was a struggling young man, before mary alcestis had begun to pillow his existence. he saw once more basil in this quiet house. how he must have filled it with unrest and discontent! when he had finished his dinner, he went to his wife's door. again he was certain of the breathing which was restoring her to herself. as he descended the stairs he heard a strange and startling sound, a loud, thin twang metallic and musical. he had forgotten that the old piano gave occasional expression to a complaint over the misery and dreariness of age and felt for an instant his flesh creep. then, smiling at himself, he went on to his study. but he could not read. the musical vibration lingered in the air, disturbing him. he even walked into the parlor and laid his hand on the red cover of basil's old piano. he hoped that it would make no such sound again, he felt that it would disturb him greatly. he walked about uneasily and then returned to his study and got out of the lower drawer of his desk some old notes. he had once made plans for a translation of the "medea," he had even begun it--was it now too late to snatch a little fame from the passing years? he turned over his old notes eagerly, then more slowly. but his taste had changed as had his handwriting and the lines seemed stiff, the whole stilted and poor. young faces seemed to smile at him. poetry, even in translation, was for the basils and not for him. medea did not companion with mary alcestis! he lay down to his afternoon nap. at four o'clock he woke with a start. he had been wandering in a deep cave and great waters fell and rushed about him. sometimes delicious peace and coolness encircled him; again he struggled in a steaming bath. rousing, he remembered suddenly that he was a man of family with a sick wife whom he had not seen for a good many hours. he went rapidly toward the stairway and for the third time approached the closed door. this time he did not stop to listen, but rapped and turned the knob. to his astonishment, mary alcestis was not there. moreover, the covers lay over the foot of the bed just as they had lain in the morning, and he saw now that the drapery was not merely the spread, but sheet and blanket as well. was it possible that the bed could have been empty when he looked before? at once he went from room to room. she had doubtless sought greater coolness in another spot. richard's room--she was not there, one guestroom, another--she was nowhere. he remembered the attic and went toward the steps. "mary alcestis!" he called. the echoes of his own voice answered him. she could not be so mad as to sit in basil's room on a day like this! he took the steps in bounds. he found her on basil's bed. her eyes were open and she greeted him with a feeble smile. "i called you, thomas, but i guess you didn't hear." "why, mary alcestis! what are you doing here? how long have you been here?" "not so very long." the statement was true so far as mary alcestis knew. she thought that she had slept a little while. "i came up to get something i wanted and i found i hadn't strength to get back. you will help me, won't you?" dr. lister lifted the window and thrust open the shutter, pushing hard to free it from the vines. it was like an oven out of doors, but the air there was at least better than this! "i am afraid the flies will come in, thomas," protested mary alcestis in a stronger voice. "let them!" said dr. lister. "of course i didn't hear you! i have been again and again to your door and i thought you were asleep and that sleep was the best medicine for you. come, my dear, you must try to get downstairs at once. this atmosphere is enough to sicken a well person." "i--i came up on an errand. i didn't mean to stay long." mary alcestis's eyes sought the bureau. had she closed the drawer? "then i grew faint, i guess, from the heat. if i had a little food i would feel stronger, then i could walk downstairs. does 'manda have lunch ready?" dr. lister's eyes had followed her glance, had seen the slightly open drawer, the key in the lock. it was easy to guess the nature of her employment, the old mournful, brooding inspection of basil's property! he saw also a scrap of paper on the floor. had basil left papers? "lunch is over," said he. "mary alcestis--" but this was not the time for questioning. he went down to the kitchen and brought back a cup of broth, which she drank slowly. she looked no more with anxiety at the bureau and he saw that the drawer was closed and the key gone from the lock. in a few minutes she made her way downstairs with the aid of his arm and sank upon her bed. her eyes were heavy. "how lovely it is here! if i can get a good nap, i'll feel much better. then," said mary alcestis to her soul, "i shall finish what i began." before dr. lister had covered her she was asleep. he went out and closed the door and straightway climbed the third story steps. he had never wondered what was in the old bureau, he naturally avoided thinking of it at all. now a suspicion had entered his mind, rousing his curiosity. there was, he was convinced, some object here which his wife did not wish him to see, something which helped to keep grief alive, some mystery which had better be at once probed. he did not believe that even yet she had told him everything about her brother. in the upper drawer lay the neat packages of basil's clothing, he felt of each one--here was no mystery. the second drawer was locked, but access to it was easy since he had only to lift out the upper drawer. but there was a wooden partition between them. had mary alcestis carried the key away with her? he explored among the paper bundles. slipped into one, he found the key. when he had opened the locked drawer, he stood for a long time motionless before it. he saw the tablets, the sheaves of paper, the small parcel of old letters, the little penwiper, the pens and pencils. first he took up one of the pens, holding it in his hand and staring at it. after a while he took up a tablet and turned back the cover. he read the first page, bringing it close to his somewhat nearsighted eyes. at the bottom, he whispered what he read aloud as he turned the page: "now doth he forget medea and his sons that he may make his bed with creon's daughter." he read on. the moments passed. the dreaded enemies anticipated by mary alcestis drifted in at the window and out again, and at last the campus clock struck five. supper in the lister house was early. he began to turn the pages rapidly and five or six at a time. they were covered with close writing; here and there were bars of music with greek words between them. he took up another of the thick books. here, closely copied, was "bitter bread"; here were other titles--"the dust of battle" with an explanatory sentence beneath it: "the fire of hell shall not touch the legs of him who is covered with the dust of battle in the road of god." here was "obsession," here "victory," here "shame." he opened the third book, saw poetry and blinked eyes which had begun to ache. he saw loose sheets of paper, and the string which had held them. when he put the string round them, he saw that some had been taken out of the package. he opened the other drawers--they contained only more camphor-scented, carefully wrapped packages of clothing. he went prowling about, he lifted the pillows from the bed, he looked into the pitcher on the little washstand. from it he dipped the fragments of paper and laid them on the bureau. "passion makes its own laws"--he read, seeing exactly what mary alcestis had thought and what she had begun to do. oh, miserable mary alcestis! his coat had capacious pockets. these he filled and went to his study. he emptied the contents into the drawer which contained his own meager original work. then he went back to the third story, fastened the window and the drawer, and, locking the door, carried the key and the remaining manuscripts away with him. at nine o'clock that evening he stepped quietly from the side door of his study across to dr. scott's room in recitation hall where he saw a light. mrs. lister had wakened, had taken more broth, and again slept peacefully. her intention to destroy basil's manuscript brought peace to her mind. she would have lost that peace suddenly and completely could she have seen her husband as he appeared before dr. scott, his spectacles awry, his face flushed, his eyes burning. dr. lister had complete confidence in dr. scott's judgment and in his sense of honor. it was necessary to lay a certain matter before one whose judgment was sound and who could be entirely trusted, and he was grateful because he had such a friend. "will you come to my study for a few minutes?" he asked. dr. scott rose at once. there was a stealthy appearance in their advance. dr. scott looked back over his shoulder toward his house. if his wife saw him from the porch she would be just as likely as not to call to him; not because she wanted him or needed him, but because she was curious. when they reached the lister house safely, dr. lister explained in a low tone that mrs. lister was not well and was asleep. he opened the door quietly and tiptoed into his study and then closed the door into the hall. "scott--" he began and paused. now that he was about to impart his discovery, it seemed melodramatic, impossible. "yes?" said dr. scott. he had sat down on the side of the desk opposite dr. lister's chair. his eye fell upon the old books with their close writing and he wondered whether lister had called him to consult him about compositions of his own. he had hoped for something more interesting, but after all, what could excite a man more than conviction of his own powers? dr. scott wondered how he would get out of an uncomfortable situation. then, at dr. lister's words, he felt the blood beating through his wrists and in the vein in his neck. "i have found a quantity of manuscript belonging to basil everman. i did not know until this afternoon that it existed. it has been stored away for many years as having no value beyond that of a souvenir of basil for whom mrs. lister--" his voice changed a little. he had not quite forgiven mary alcestis--"for whom mrs. lister had a very deep affection. i wish to have your opinion of them before i speak to her about their value, of which she has, i am sure, no conception." dr. scott reached across the table. his motion was swift, eager, unlike him. he might have been said to pounce, hawk-like, upon the old books and papers and his hand shook as he touched first of all one of the unbound sheaves. he shielded his eyes from the glare of the lamp, his figure relaxed, became motionless, except for the turning of pages. dr. lister sat at first quietly, one knee thrown over the other, his foot swinging. after a while his guest looked up at him, in his face intense annoyance amounting almost to disgust. he tried to cover this revelation of his inner feeling, but was too late. "don't mind saying just what you think," said dr. lister. "nothing in the world would be so unfortunate as for us to set too high a value upon basil's writings." but it was not basil's writings which annoyed. "i wish you would stop swinging your foot!" dr. lister looked astonished, then he laughed. he went upstairs to glance in upon a sleeping mary alcestis. all compunctions had now departed from his breast. when he came back to the study, dr. scott asked a question. "how old was he?" "about twenty-five." "incredible!" he bent again over basil everman's writing. dr. lister opened a notebook and read for a few minutes and laid it down, surfeited with basil everman. he crossed the hall and walked up and down the long parlor. when he went back within reach of dr. scott's whisper, he heard, "it seems to me you've come perilously near committing a sort of murder. what was his family about?" "they thought him a little wild. that is between you and me, scott." "wild!" repeated dr. scott, and still again, "wild!" again dr. lister started upon a promenade through the parlor where basil had walked, past the old piano, under the old portraits. when he came back to the study, dr. scott had ceased reading. "i forgot my glasses," said he. "i've read myself almost blind. and anyway, i can't read any more. two hours of this is like two hours of euripides; it takes life out of you. was he really here, in this house, in waltonville?" dr. scott drew the word out to a dreary length. "do you think anything can be made of them?" "my dear lister! you know and i know that they can be published as they stand. there are lines which might be annotated, but that is all. they are unique, priceless. they help to redeem the nation from charges such as utterly's. he was right about them in the wildest of his extravagance." dr. lister thrust his hands into his pockets. "it would help mrs. lister to see that they should be published if--" "she will surely publish them with pride and joy!" "i didn't mean that exactly as it sounded. i mean, she would, i am sure, be glad if you would arrange to select, to edit--that is if--when they are published." dr. scott put his hand again between his eyes and the light. if he could have chosen a task from all the tasks in the world, barring the greater work of the creative writer, it would have been such a task as this. he rose and slipped his hand into the front of his coat. in this position he had received mrs. scott's "yes." this moment was to be classed with that; it was later to be placed above it in quality and in importance. "i should count myself the most fortunate of men," said he. "i envy mrs. lister her relationship to basil everman. i wish--" the hall clock had begun to strike and he paused to count the strokes. "it is time for me to go. when can this work begin? there are only six more weeks of vacation." his eagerness made dr. lister uneasy. "when i have talked it over with mrs. lister i will let you know at once," said he. then, having closed the door behind his friend, he stood thinking deeply. chapter xxi a question put to richard mary alcestis did not dream, as she lay comfortably in her bed the next morning breathing the cooler air and watching the shadows on the wall, that there moved about her house a plotter against her peace far more dangerous than an enemy from without. she thought that her husband looked at her with unusual gravity and she was touched by his solicitude, not suspecting that he searched her face for signs of recovery in order that he might deal her a cruel blow. at the end of the second day she rose and sat by her window looking out over the pleasant greensward and recalling the hours when she had sat there with tiny richard beside her. she felt happier; it did not seem rational that mrs. bent would speak now after having been silent for so many years, especially if poor basil were allowed to sink once more into oblivion. when his manuscripts were really destroyed, she believed that the course of life would be again smooth. dr. lister, coming in, took her hand and found it cool; he looked into her eyes and saw that they were bright and clear, and thereupon began what he had to say. "my dear, there is a matter which we shall have to discuss." he spoke cheerfully, having decided that a cheerful air would help mary alcestis. "yes," said she, thinking of richard's music. she was prepared to grant richard anything. "it concerns basil." she gave a little cry. "oh, papa, can you not let basil rest! if any one should pursue and hound me after i was dead as people pursue and hound basil, i should not rest in my grave! let us not talk about him! i was just thinking how richard used to lie there in his crib and how sweet he was. he was always a lovely boy. i am sorry that i opposed him and i am willing to give up entirely. i told you that!" "we cannot put basil aside," said dr. lister. "i suppose that something dreadful happened while i was sick. i ought not to have gone to bed. perhaps she has been here or that young girl. perhaps that young girl has known all along. oh, i hope richard has made her no promises. i hope--" "you are working yourself into a dangerous condition of excitement. will you hear what i have to say quietly, or shall i go away and finish another time?" "you had better say it now." "this has to do with basil alone. when you lay on the bed in his room, i saw your eyes turn toward the bureau. i connected your uneasiness with something in the open drawer. when i came back from the kitchen with your broth, the drawer was closed, the key gone; then i was sure. i do not like mysteries, so i went upstairs and looked again." "the drawer was locked!" "yes, my dear, but i found the key." mrs. lister's cheeks paled, then crimsoned. she looked now at her husband, now out the window, saying nothing. she expected to feel a terrible indignation, but she waited in vain. instead she felt a deep relief. if she had only obeyed her husband long ago and had destroyed all basil's possessions, she would have been far happier. now dr. lister might destroy them, all his clothes, his childish toys, his youthful writings, and she need think of them no more. at last her grief was stale, she wished to think no more of basil. "i found in the bureau a great many manuscripts of basil's." "tear them up," said mary alcestis. "you know you advised me long ago to destroy everything. i had just begun when i fainted." "i never advised you to tear up any writings." "you said basil's 'things.'" "i meant basil's clothing, you know that. did you not suspect, after mr. utterly was here, that these papers might be valuable?" mary alcestis made no answer. "these writings of basil's can never be destroyed. it would be like murder." "but who will ever read them?" she wailed. "i cannot bear to. basil had such strange ideas. and richard will not care for them, poor richard. he thinks basil ruined his life. it is dreadful how things can go on and on!" "other persons will care for them." "other persons! what other persons?" "all persons who care for good literature," answered dr. lister steadily. mrs. lister turned head and shoulder so that she could look into his eyes. "you would not think of having them _published_!" "without any question i should have them published!" "he was only a boy." she began in a trembling voice her first skirmish. "they are surely not worth publication. we might prize them, but others wouldn't. do you not see that, papa?" "he was more than a boy and he was an extraordinarily fine writer of english. why, mother, his very ghost would cry out upon us! do you suppose he spent his days and nights, writing and polishing in order that his compositions might lie in an old bureau in an attic? we should be traitors to him!" "i would rather be a traitor to him in that way than be responsible for publishing his--his sins!" cried mrs. lister wildly. "if his writings are really good, people would come flocking about us like wolves. that mr. utterly reminded me of a wolf. they would ferret things out, they would--" "from whom would they ferret anything out?" "they might make her believe it was her duty to tell. if mr. utterly talked to her he might persuade her. he would tell her it was an honor. oh, i could not endure it!" "mother, that is sheer nonsense!" mrs. lister turned a still more direct gaze into her husband's eyes. "it is not your affair. you have nothing to do with it. you had no right to unlock basil's bureau. you--" she bowed her head on the arm of her chair. "oh, thomas, forgive me! i don't know what i'm saying. i think of richard. i don't care about basil. i have cherished his memory and i have had only misery and shame. i think about richard and his children and the good name of my dear father. don't let us bring this matter to light! i beseech of you, dear thomas!" dr. lister took the hand which sought his. he almost yielded to this desperate pleading. did anything in the world really matter as much as this? would basil's fame survive more than a few generations? would a publisher even consider the bringing out of the work of a man so long gone? was it not better that he should remain dead than that his sister's heart should ache? then dr. lister saw in basil's handwriting certain clear sentences, certain lines of verse. his face crimsoned. "i have shown basil's compositions in confidence to scott," said he, firmly. mary alcestis began to cry. "he thinks they are admirable, mother." dr. lister drew an unwilling head to his shoulder. "my dear, let me take this burden from you. i have taken other burdens, and i should have borne this long ago." "he could see nothing derogatory to basil in them?" sobbed mary alcestis. "nothing. he would be outraged by such a suggestion. he would arrange them, edit them, and write a life of basil from the information you gave him and in a certain sense under your direction." "in a certain sense?" repeated mary alcestis, warily. "he would do no prying. he would use the material you gave him and ask no questions. he would consult no one but you and perhaps thomasina whose recollection of basil should have value." "i told her," sobbed mrs. lister. "i think i had a sort of hysteria. i didn't know what i was saying." "what did she say?" "she said i was a fool." dr. lister could not restrain a smile. "that was a hard word from thomasina. i should think it would have done you good." "it didn't," said mrs. lister. "if scott could do this work, he would do it admirably and i believe it would be the greatest satisfaction of his life. i think he might even forget mrs. scott for a while." "it has come upon me too suddenly. richard should be consulted. it is richard whom it most concerns." "i shall write to richard." "i must see what you write!" "surely." dr. lister helped mary alcestis to bed, then he stated his views to richard and also her views and dr. scott's views. in the morning he read her the letter. "i think you are a little hard on basil," said she and wept. in four days dr. lister had an answer. the envelope contained two sheets. "dear mother," read one, "i am willing for you and father to do as you think best about basil everman's writings." on the other sheet richard had written, "dear father, i do not give a hang for basil everman. do as you please." dr. lister jumped. richard! smiling broadly, he started upstairs to show both letters; then he returned from the hall and dropped richard's note to him in fine pieces into the waste-paper basket. "i must be losing my mind!" said he. chapter xxii a confidence betrayed when she returned from mrs. lister's bedside, thomasina sat for a long time looking into her garden. the light shimmered above the flower-beds, the plants were drooping. the air even in her cool room was heavy and hard to breathe. summoned to lunch, she ate only enough to prevent alarmed inquiries from 'melia, then she went upstairs. she took off her dress and put on a cool and flowing gown and lay down upon her couch and closed her eyes. after a while she rose and opened a drawer in her bureau and took out a little inlaid box, and from it lifted a package of letters. she did not read them or even open the package, but looked at them and laid them back. once more she lay down upon her couch and hot tears rolled from under her eyelids and out upon her cheeks. after a long time she fell asleep. in the morning she went again to dr. green's office. she rang the bell and entered and sat down to wait virginia's pleasure, almost certain that dr. green had not come back. when virginia appeared, lithe and shapely and deliberate of motion, thomasina had reached a point which she seldom allowed herself even to approach. virginia looked in consternation at her flushed face. "you sure you not sick, miss thomas'?" "no, virginia. has the doctor come?" "no, miss thomas'." "virginia"--thomasina could be no longer restrained--"why don't you keep the doctor's office in better order? look at that corner. and at that!" virginia leaned against the door. "don't believe doctor he could find things if it was too clean, miss thomas'. could i get you something--glass of water or something? you look all wore out." thomasina smiled faintly. the race disarmed anger. "no, i thank you." she started to dr. green's office on a third morning. as she was about to leave her door she saw the doctor entering the gate. "i got back on the nine o'clock train," he explained. "this morning virginia came early--early, if you please--to tell me that you have been twice to my office. she suspects all sorts of afflictions. surely you are not ill!" thomasina led the way into her parlor and sat down upon her throne-like chair. her pale face wore both a judicial and an embarrassed air. "you should have a wife, dr. green. virginia should be taken in hand, dealt with, commanded, bullied." "i agree with you. you are thinking of my office. i suppose when i'm away, virginia's 'on the town' as she says." "but a wife could make a fine girl of virginia." dr. green looked at thomasina with faint astonishment. it was not like her to assume so intimate and bantering an air. "i hope there is nothing serious the matter. what are your symptoms? do you not think it is the intense heat that has affected you?" "the heat never troubles me. it is a patient of yours who worries me. i mean mrs. lister." "mrs. lister! there's no reason to worry about her. there was nothing seriously wrong with her when i went away and i found no message when i got back." "they wouldn't send a message about this. her trouble is not to be cured by medicine, it is of the mind." dr. green pursed his lips and frowned. he was surprised at thomasina and was prepared to give her his most earnest attention. she would not speak to him in this fashion without good reason. he rested his arms on the arms of his chair and leaned forward, his hands clasped lightly. whatever his origin, he was a person of distinguished presence, and, except in the matter of order in his office, of fastidious taste. "well, miss thomasina," said he in his clear, deliberate, well-modulated voice. when thomasina began to speak in a high tone, as though she were forcing herself a little, he frowned again; as she went on a dull color stole into his cheek and his motionless figure seemed to stiffen. he might well blush to hear so extraordinary a betrayal of confidence. "dr. green, basil everman, mrs. lister's brother, about whom we have recently heard so much and of whom you and i spoke upon one occasion, was a good man, but he was a genius, and it is the common fate of geniuses to be misunderstood. they are often denied by their friends the possession of common and sometimes of moral sense. basil wore flowing neckties at a period when neckties were small; he used well-selected words when the rest of mankind were indifferent to their speech; he drew sometimes a parallel from the classics--consequently waltonville thought him queer. you know waltonville's attitude of mind?" "perfectly." "but he did worse, he did not always come to meals on time, or go, candle in hand, in solemn procession to bed when the rest of the family went, old dr. everman in his white stock, mary alcestis looking tearfully back over her shoulder, hoping in terror that basil might at that moment be heard on the porch. they attributed to him strange motives and stranger acts. they watched him, were embarrassed for him, apologized for him. they thought of him, in moments of unusual charity, as not quite sound. they thought in other moments a good deal worse of him. basing their opinion on stupid coincidences, they blamed upon him actual crimes. they did not wish to believe these things of basil. over what she really believes is true, mrs. lister has been for many years breaking her heart. it is that which ails her, and not the heat." "how foolish!" said dr. green, leaning back in his chair. "let the past bury its dead. middle life, you see, with no mental exercise. how very foolish!" "but the dead aren't buried, they are in our midst, and as long as eleanor bent is in sight, mrs. lister must worry her heart out." "eleanor bent!" repeated dr. green, bending forward once more. "what has she to do with it?" thomasina looked down at the floor. she hesitated; perhaps remembering at this moment that she had never before betrayed the confidence of a friend. perhaps it was because she had a sickening conviction that her whole course in this matter was that of a fool. "the listers have imagined--at least mrs. lister has from these stupid coincidences--has imagined it for years, weeping over it in secret--that eleanor bent is her brother basil's daughter." "extraordinary!" said dr. green slowly. "does any one else have this notion?" "i think not. basil was as much forgotten as though he had never been born." "what are these coincidences?" "mrs. lister saw the two together, followed them, indeed, and says that margie ginter was clinging to basil's arm and pleading with him and crying. in the second place, he went away from waltonville about the time that the ginters went. in the third, eleanor has in mrs. lister's eyes a strong resemblance to him. then there is this writing." "writing?" queried dr. green. "yes, eleanor's writing. what is more likely than that she should have inherited talent from basil everman?" "the fact that her work bears not the remotest resemblance to his has nothing to do with the question, i presume?" "writing is writing," answered thomasina in her lightest tone. she waited for a word from dr. green, but none came. "margie ginter was a good girl, i have always believed," she went on. "she was in a dreadful position here. if basil had anything to do with her, it was to help her in some fashion. he was--" thomasina did not go on with her sentence; it seemed difficult for her to say what he was. "as for the resemblance, eleanor has gray eyes and so had he, and a light step and so had he, but others have bright eyes and a light step." dr. green still said nothing. he seemed to give each sentence of thomasina's careful consideration. "it is a pity for mary alcestis to have worried for so many years." her voice seemed to lose its strength. "one can't do much for a woman as foolish as that," said dr. green. "i should say she deserves to have the punishment exactly suited to her case." "it is a pity, too, for little mrs. bent," went on thomasina. "what no one knows will not hurt mrs. bent." "no one knows now," answered thomasina. "but mary alcestis told me. she is in a hysterical condition and there is no telling to whom she may break out. it would be most unfortunate to have this pried out of her by--well, say by mrs. scott." again dr. green was silent. "it's a pity, too, for eleanor," said thomasina. "i think it very unlikely that mrs. lister will let such a mad tale become public--you say it is a mad tale." "it is a pity for richard, too." "richard least of all," answered dr. green. "i can't see how he would be affected." "then you have not been watching the young people." "i don't understand you." "i mean that richard is evidently in love with eleanor and that his mother has found it out--therefore his absence and her tears." "is eleanor in tears?" dr. green's tone sharpened. "yes, a part of the time eleanor is in tears." "she had better cry than think of marrying," declared dr. green. "such a match would be the end of her work. it would be the greatest mistake, it would be a calamity. she has every prospect of success. i do not believe that she can be seriously impressed with that silky mother's boy. if she is, let her get over it!" "you have always taken a great interest in her." "yes," answered dr. green. "i have. she has possibilities." "i saw by accident your check for her piano," said thomasina. "it lay on the desk in the company's office." "did you?" asked dr. green coolly. his tone could have been no more severe if thomasina had opened and read one of his letters. "what did you conclude from that?" thomasina did not answer his question. "it is worst of all for basil everman," said she. "when one thinks of him, it becomes monstrous. doesn't it seem so to you, dr. green?" green rose to his feet. he met thomasina's eyes coolly. "miss thomasina--" thomasina lifted her hand. "what i concluded was simply that you knew more about mrs. bent and her daughter than the rest of us," said she. "i am sure that eleanor has an honorable paternity and mrs. bent a history that could be safely revealed. but one could not go to her and ask her!" "from your own account the danger of this myth becoming public is so small as to be almost negligible. since mrs. bent and her daughter are not likely to stay in waltonville, it is wholly negligible. as for my connection with the bents--it is this--i believe that eleanor has a mind of great promise. i have tried to influence her and i shall continue to try." "i am sorry that i told you," said thomasina faintly. "there is no reason that you should be," said dr. green. "if mrs. lister needs any further attention i shall have her case already diagnosed." when he had gone, thomasina sat down in her high-backed chair. her face was deathly pale, her hands lay limply in her lap, her eyes were closed. suddenly she sat upright. "i believe he has lied to me," said she. her hands gripped the arms of her chair, her eyes seemed to be fixed intently upon objects outside her parlor. she saw dr. green and heard him speak; she saw also another figure and heard also another voice. "i would like for you to choose a pie-anna"--why was it that the one suggested the other? thomasina remembered dr. green distinctly in his queer, opinionated, misogynistic youth. had he ever even spoken to margie ginter before she had returned to waltonville? she thought of eleanor, followed the lines of her body, the contour of her face. there was a line from brow to chin, there was a shapely nose, there was--but she could think no more. she rose and walked up and down the room, her brain weary with speculation. after a long time she said aloud, "oh, _basil_!" chapter xxiii a waltonville delilah pacing his quiet study, sitting before his desk, eating his absent-minded meals, lying sleepless in his bed, dr. scott waited impatiently. in another month school would begin, but school work had become routine which would take only his time and would not interrupt his mental processes. he had read the last of basil everman's compositions and had made complete and elaborate plans for their presentation to the world, even though dr. lister had warned him that mrs. lister's consent must first be gained. dr. scott did not believe for an instant that she would refuse. she would rejoice as any sensible person would in this late fame for her brother. already he saw before him "miscellaneous studies, basil everman," "the poems of basil everman," "bitter bread and other stories, basil everman," "translations from the greek, basil everman." the books would need no wide advertising to float them; they would come gradually and certainly into favor. they should be smoothly bound in dark blue, excellently printed on thick, light, creamy paper in large type, and on the title-page of each should stand "the works of basil everman, vol.--, henry harrington scott, editor." he gave a half-day to deciding whether "professor of english literature in walton college" should be added. he saw before him his own sentences, few in number, rich in meaning. he wrote them down, some on slips of paper which he carried with him on long walks into the country or held in his hand in the twilight as he sat in his study. "everman's style," he wrote, "combines the freshness and lightness of youth with the more solid qualities which belong to maturity. he ornamented dexterously the subjects whose impressiveness was enhanced by an embroidery of words and with equal taste pruned rigorously those passages whose truth was best set forth undecked." here and there he underlined a word as an indication that it was to be further considered and its suitability scrutinized. he placed basil in the everman house, saw him walking the streets and wrote a sentence which pleased him mightily. the sentence was to please poor mary alcestis: "the history of basil everman offers a positive answer to that problem about which there is and will always be frequent contention--whether the human soul finds within itself the material for such presentations." basil everman had found tragedy, gloom, passion in his own heart and in the literature which he read and not in his own experience. he determined to quote passages which he had loved and cherished--cherished, it might well seem for this end: basil everman "sensed that old greek question, yet unanswered. the unconquerable specter still flitting among the forest trees at twilight; rising ribbed out of the sea sand; white, a strange aphrodite--out of the sea foam; stretching its gray, cloven wings among the clouds; turning the light of their sunsets into blood." another sentence he meant to use which was still new and whose applicability he saw as yet vaguely: "she is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with eastern merchants; and, as leda, was the mother of helen of troy, and, as saint anne, the mother of mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands." he considered the sources for the brief biography. there was mary alcestis, first and most important. there were, he hoped, letters. and there was thomasina. his delight in his work set the machinery of his mind into swift revolution. he recalled with satisfaction his short contributions to contemporary literature and got down the scrapbooks in which he had preserved them. here was an admirable paragraph--there was one which should be recast. he read again the carefully preserved letters which he had received in agreement and commendation. when the works of basil everman appeared, vreeland and lewis and wilson would in all probability write to him again. he was still not middle-aged; there might be before him deeper literary satisfactions than the editing of another man's work, extraordinary as that work was. he might see some happy day his own productions beautifully printed, beautifully bound, his own name in gold on dark-blue cloth--henry harrington scott. in the glow which pervaded his spirit, old feelings revived, feelings which had no connection with literary matters. he began to remember once more not only why he had married, but why he had married mrs. scott. he saw her blue eyes, unsharpened and unfaded; he saw her eager face; he heard--alas for him!--her siren tones of appreciation and admiration. he had not, he knew, justified himself in her eyes, but that should all be changed; he promised himself that she should think well of him, that he would still achieve that success which every woman has a right to expect in the man whom she marries. even walter--supercilious, prosperous walter, jingling coin in his pocket--should think well of him. to cora's opinion he attributed no value. but he anticipated more and more pleasantly the moment when he should tell mrs. scott his happy secret. that his condition might become apparent to the sharp eyes which daily reviewed him, that it might require some cunning to conceal from his wife the aura of renewed hopes in which he walked, did not occur to him. if the evidences of excitement had been hers, if she had shown signs of interest in affairs unknown to him, he would have let her proceed, unquestioned and unmolested, glad in his secret soul that he did not have to know. but mrs. scott's position was different. she planned a gayer august than ever before, and such an expression of countenance as that brought by dr. scott to breakfast could have been inspired only by some small literary success. had the work which he had done been paid for? mrs. scott had long since lost interest in successes which were not accompanied by money, and since she had heard from mr. utterly of the prices paid for promising stories, she had despised in secret her husband's receipts. it seemed to her that now he must have achieved something worth while. in his absence on one of his long walks, she visited his study and turned over his papers. but he had left accessible no written word of his own, and basil everman's manuscript lay safely in dr. lister's desk drawer, awaiting mrs. lister's decision. she slipped out of their envelopes several letters, but found only a few small bills for books. neither an invitation to write an article in exchange for a hundred dollars nor an actual check for ten dollars appeared. she frowned and for several days said less than usual. then, dr. scott's preoccupation increasing, she pleaded general weariness and a severe headache and stayed in bed. in the evening dr. scott went to sit for an hour in her room. she lay high on her pillows with a flutter of lace and ribbons about her, and he sat by the window, a pleasant breeze fanning him, a young moon smiling at him over the shoulder of the lister house. the lister house was dark and somber in the deep shadow and its almost sinister appearance might have warned him to keep its secrets. but he was not warned. mrs. scott talked about his work, about the drudgery of the classroom, about the dull boys and girls upon whom he wasted so many weary hours, about the pittance he received. she wished for him leisure, larger pay, opportunities such as he deserved. "it is all you need to bring you out. i get angry at the conditions under which you slave in this dull town when you might take a high place elsewhere and become famous." "you rate me highly, my dear," said dr. scott. nevertheless he smiled. "no, i don't," contradicted mrs. scott. "here is mrs. lister's brother writing a few things and dull things at that, and having his name heralded through the whole world; and here is eleanor bent, a nobody, with her name in every one's mouth." dr. scott looked out of the window. he had suffered--and blushed with shame for it--acute envy of eleanor and her youth. "you could do so much better! you are older and more learned and you have had more experience and more outlook on the world." dr. scott glanced back into the room. his eyes settled themselves on the figure on the bed. if he could have seen mrs. scott clearly, he would have recalled the disillusioning years between his wedding day and this moment. but he saw in the dusk only the motion of a hand which seemed to brush away a tear. this was the wife of his bosom, a part of himself! "i am to have an enviable opportunity," said he slowly. "the listers have asked me--that is, dr. lister has asked me--to edit and prepare for publication the works of mrs. lister's brother, basil everman." "you mean that story and those other things!" mrs. scott's voice was flat, disappointed, angry. "those and many equally valuable compositions which have accidentally come to light after many years." "'accidentally come to light'!" repeated mrs. scott, with fine scorn. "didn't i tell you they would ransack every chest in the attic after what utterly said? are they really worth anything?" "they are magnificent," said dr. scott, trying to keep his voice steady. "they will form a notable addition to the literature of america, to the literature indeed of the world." "of all things!" with a vigor which escaped the notice of her husband mrs. scott sat suddenly upright. "won't this town be surprised!" "oh, my dear!" protested dr. scott. "nothing is to be said, nothing! it is all in the air as yet. nothing is decided definitely. oh, my dear, not a word to any one!" "i am glad to hear that nothing has been decided definitely," said mrs. scott. "glad, indeed! what have they offered you to do this work, henry?" dr. scott's whole body quivered. "offered me?" "yes; what have they offered to pay you?" "we haven't said anything about pay." "were you going to do it for nothing?" mrs. scott's tone implied that exactly this particular lunacy was to have been expected. "it is a very great honor to be asked," answered dr. scott nervously. "it will, i am convinced, be an opportunity, leading probably to other things." "to other things!" repeated mrs. scott. "i want something more substantial than opportunities leading to other things. i am sick of honors without pay. why, utterly said he would give a thousand dollars for another story! a thousand dollars is almost as much as you earn in an entire year. they'll make a fortune, and they are well off already! i shouldn't be surprised if they could live without dr. lister's salary. and he gets five hundred dollars more a year than you do. if you charge them well, they'll think better of you. i'll warrant they're trying to get it done here because they think you'll do it for nothing and for no other reason whatever. i am pretty sick of the listers anyhow. here is poor cora in love with richard and encouraged by all of them since she was a baby and he running round now with that miserable bent girl. i would make them pay well for every hour i spent on their work! they will make enough out of it, i'll warrant! why, it is like finding money for them! i--" dr. scott lifted his hand with an uncertain motion to his head. thus might samson have felt of his shorn pate when he lifted it from the lap of delilah. "oh, my dear!" said he. "oh, my dear!" "i mean it all," insisted mrs. scott. "every last word." then, to his unspeakable discomfort, she stepped from bed and came across the room and kissed him. "i'd charge either by the hour for my work, or else i'd ask a high percentage on the sale of the books and have an iron-bound agreement to see the publisher's accounts. you cannot be too careful. this is the time for you to take council with walter, papa. you have no idea how keen he is; you have never had patience with him or done him justice. i think you should send word to him to come here. he would be glad to make the trip for such a reason. you could go to see him, but if he came here he could talk to the listers himself. he is certainly the one to make the contract. i do not see why you should trouble yourself with the matter at all." mrs. scott took silence for consent, or at least for respectful consideration of her suggestions. "you think it over," said she, as she returned to bed. "you will see that i am right." dr. scott slept uneasily. he dreamed of impending avalanches and of being compelled to enter, not entirely clothed, into the presence of some august tribunal. when he woke early on a cloudy morning, he lay for a while very still with his eyes turned away from the sleeping figure at his side. after a long time he rose quickly and, taking his clothing, stole into the spare room to dress. something had happened to him overnight. a situation long suspended had crystallized, long dully seen, had become plain. betrayed and cajoled, he had revealed a secret entrusted to him. he laid no blame upon his wife. he said, without bitterness, that he should have known, did know mrs. scott. it seemed to him--and herein lay the source of his misery--that his own moral fiber must have been gradually weakening or he could not have so failed himself. when he heard mrs. scott stirring, he came into the room. "i hope you feel quite well." "oh, yes!" she did not regret yesterday's strategy, but she was thinking that now yesterday's tasks were still to be done. "i think you ought to write to walter right after breakfast, henry." dr. scott straightened his tall figure. his declaration of independence had been formulated. "it is none of walter's business. he is perfectly incapable of managing this affair. his instincts are those of the counting-house. he is to know nothing about it. if you speak of it to any one, i shall give the whole thing up, both the work and the money--if there is any money involved. my sense of honor will not allow me to proceed with it for a day." brush in hand, mrs. scott looked at him with amazement. unfortunately she had never been spoken to in this fashion in all her married life. "do you think you've succeeded so well, henry, that you can't take any advice?" "i know better than you do whether i've succeeded or failed. i'm speaking of this particular instance, and what i say is this, if you breathe a word of what i have told you to walter, or to any one, i give the whole thing up! work like this is generally paid for, but i do not care whether it is paid or not. i should be glad to do it for nothing. since you do care for money, you had better see that you don't lose whatever there is in it by talking about it." he went downstairs, his knees shaking under him, but a heavenly sense of freedom in his heart. in the dining-room he found cora standing by the window waiting for the advent of her elders. he had meant to talk to her, but this was not the time. he felt a sudden, keen pity for her white face and her drooping shoulders. she was so steady, so occupied with her own small concerns, so--if the truth must be told--dull; he did not think her capable of any grand passion or deep sorrow. it was not easy, he was certain, for her to bear her trouble under her mother's eye. but she would get over it, she was young. it might make it harder for her if he talked to her about it. all day he hung about the house. mrs. scott was packing her trunks, but he was afraid that some one might come in. he was not yet quite as free as he thought. to-morrow she would be gone and he could breathe for a little while in peace. then his sensitive soul reproached him. when at dark, dr. lister came to tell him that mrs. lister had consented to the publication of basil's work, and he went to tell mrs. scott, she smiled from one corner of her mouth. "did you suppose she wouldn't consent?" said she. chapter xxiv a deepening shadow as the days passed the friendly relations between mrs. bent and her daughter were not restored. mrs. bent looked at eleanor furtively, cried when she was away from her, and redoubled all her self-sacrificing toil. the sound of a step on the porch made her shiver. she spoke to eleanor and eleanor spoke to her as though there were an ever-present danger of another breaking-through of the thin crust which masked a crater of seething emotion. mrs. bent need not have feared that her daughter would open the subject which had led to so unpleasant a scene. no one who had the run of dr. green's library could fail to know that there were other forms of existence beside the conventional unions of waltonville's married folk and eleanor had, with youth's eagerness to learn the ways of a wider world, followed the lives of a few historical examples of other sorts of union. she had believed herself to be in this matter, as in others, broad-minded. but now her opinions had changed; a fearful possibility threatened her. she came to believe that her mother waited an opportunity to confide in her a secret no longer to be hidden and grown too heavy to bear alone. in her fright she avoided her mother, and when they were together interrupted with some foolishness each sentence which promised to be serious. "i am sorry for her," cried eleanor to herself. "i am sorry, but i cannot listen to her." in the middle of a hot august afternoon she determined to go for a walk. if she went a long distance and came home tired and drank no coffee for her supper, it might be that she could sleep through the night. she had no goal in view; she would simply go on until she was tired and then turn for the long walk home. as she dressed she reproached herself for her weakness. she would persuade her mother to go away from waltonville; it was said that time and new scenes cured troubles of the mind. they would go to a larger place where no one would inquire into their business or even know them. "but i don't want to know anything about it!" said eleanor to herself. "i don't want her to tell me! if she tells me i shall die!" standing before her mirror she brushed her dark hair with long, sweeping motions of her arm. her eyes met their reflection. "i am beautiful," said eleanor. "there is some satisfaction in that." then her cheeks crimsoned. neither her eyes nor her dark hair nor her height had come from her mother--from whom had they come? she gave up her intention to walk and threw herself face downward upon her bed. "i will not hear anything about it," said she. "i will think only of going away." but her fears were stronger than her will. her mind traveled again its old round. there was sodden, debauched bates, with his rude and intimate salutation; there was the impertinent freedom of mrs. scott; there was the appraising stare of walter simpson scott; there was her mother's embarrassed unwillingness to talk about basil everman; there was also that strange voice which she had heard long ago, that voice which seemed to reprove and to beseech her mother. "she is good!" cried eleanor. "and i am wicked and hateful!" presently she was wakened by the opening of the door in the hall below, and she sprang up, deceived for an instant into thinking that richard lister had returned and was asking for her. then she lay down, dizzily. the voice was not richard's, but dr. green's older, deeper tones which asked, "is eleanor at home?" when her mother answered that she had gone out, eleanor closed her eyes. he had probably come to invite her to ride into the country with him. but she could not go; she could not bear the heat or the light or his bright eyes. their expression disturbed her, had disturbed her subconsciously for weeks, the look of hunger which had brightened them when she had told him of her success with "professor ellenborough's last class" reminding her of the eyes of a caged animal, of strong feeling kept under, but there, waiting to blaze out. she had been repelled by it. dr. green, told that she was out, did not go away. he said, instead, "it is you i wish to see, margie." eleanor heard a step, the opening of a door into the dining-room, then its sharp closing. she sat up on the edge of her bed. had her mother sent for dr. green? that was not possible, both from the nature of his greeting and because her mother had only her to send on errands. could it be that she was ill, and that he had observed it and had come to remonstrate with her for not having medical advice? if there was anything the matter with her mother, she must know. she rose quickly and went on with her dressing. then her face grew white. dr. green had called her mother "margie!" moreover, he was now loudly and rudely remonstrating with her. he was, one might say, storming at mrs. bent. it was as though the caged animal in his breast had escaped. eleanor stood still, her figure straight, one hand pressing the thick coil of her dark hair close to her head, the other holding a long pin. her hair was drawn back closely; the unsoftened line of her forehead and cheek changed her expression, gave her a different and austere cast of countenance. she stood motionless, regarding herself absently until her arms dropped. it was dr. green, of course, who had long ago scolded her mother! downstairs green's voice rose and fell, rose and fell. there was the heat of anger in it, there was a tone of command, there was no softer tone. but eleanor no longer heard. again she gathered her hair back from her face and stood looking at herself. she saw the single line of austerity; she turned her head now this way, now that. then she sat down once more on the edge of her bed. for more than an hour she watched the ticking clock. it was half-past two when dr. green's first angry sentence fell upon the quiet air; it was four when he closed the door behind him. when at last she went downstairs, her mother had gone into the garden. mrs. bent came in and put the supper on the table slowly, and called eleanor. when supper was eaten and the dishes put away, she joined her daughter on the porch. "i have something i must tell you," said she. "i--" eleanor sprang up in panic. "i can't stop now, mother. i must go for the mail. i have important mail coming. i must go." mrs. bent looked at her, then down at the floor. she twisted her hands together. "all right." eleanor walked swiftly through the dusk. "i don't want to hear anything," said she. "i will not hear anything." as she approached the college gate she halted for an instant, out of breath and panting. two men were coming slowly toward her from the other side. she heard dr. lister's clear, high voice and dr. scott's answering laugh. not only had mrs. lister given her consent to the publication of basil's manuscript, but the publisher of "willard's," who was also a publisher of books, had said in answer to dr. scott's inquiry that he would be deeply interested in any work of basil everman's. last, but not least, mrs. scott had gone to atlantic city. her husband had many reasons for cheerfulness. "i wish that each day had forty-eight hours and that every one was a working hour," eleanor heard him say gayly. then, as dr. lister turned to go back to his own door, dr. scott called after him, "so richard is back!" "yes," answered dr. lister. "he came the day before yesterday by way of niagara. mrs. lister is getting him ready to go to new york." "when does he go?" "to-morrow. i'm going with him. his teacher doesn't usually begin so early, but he is making a special case of richard." "he's a lucky boy." a meeting with dr. scott at the gate could not be avoided. he lifted his hat and came to eleanor's side with courtly alacrity. he had no longer envy for any living soul. he told her as they walked along about basil everman, about his youth, about the extraordinary achievement which was to startle the reading world. "we lack information about the two years of his absence from waltonville. they were his richest years. but we must be grateful for what we have." he looked down kindly. the summer, he thought, had been hard on eleanor as it had been hard on every one. "it makes one wish to be very diligent, doesn't it--such a record as this lad's?" tears came into eleanor's eyes. she longed to say, "yes, but what if no diligence avails?" but she could not trust herself to say anything. at the door of the post-office dr. scott bowed himself away. so richard was here, had been here since the day before yesterday and had not been to see her! then eleanor put a period upon the episode of richard. as she stepped out the door, she encountered him coming in. their eyes met and clung to one another, their cheeks crimsoned. "eleanor!" cried richard. "well?" said eleanor. richard seemed to be struggling to find words in which to answer. when he sought in vain, she looked at him, unsmilingly, from under level brows. "i wish you would let me pass," said she. she did not go in the direction of the little gray house, but out toward the far end of waltonville. there was nothing to be afraid of even after dark in the quiet country roads, and at home there was a great deal to be afraid of. chapter xxv dr. scott pays a call dr. scott manufactured beautiful phrases as he walked to thomasina's. he thought of his last visit to her house, when he had been accompanied, when his most polished sentences had hung, unfinished, on the air while mrs. scott spoke of matters totally unrelated to the subject in hand. this call would be very different. he hoped that thomasina would let him sit in the semi-darkness of her parlor, and look out into her garden. he was punctilious about appearances; he had not the least instinct of a don juan, and he would have been horrified to have any one suppose that his affections wandered for an instant. but to-night he did not care for appearances. if a suspicious spouse had been upon his track, if the whole village had been at gaze, he would still have gone to call upon thomasina. she was of basil everman's generation, she would be able to talk well about him. she was a keen observer who would have remembered and noted incidents and traits that even his sister might have forgotten. he had many questions to ask; he would be scholarly and elaborate and impressive--dr. scott at his best. it would disappoint him keenly to find that thomasina was not at home, or that there were other callers to claim her attention. but thomasina was at home and she was alone. she was pale, but paleness was not unbecoming. he looked at her with admiration. she was distinguished, she was a personage, she was the most notable citizen of waltonville, and he was proud of her friendship. she inquired for mrs. scott and for cora. she was not unaware of cora's trouble. she spoke of richard and of the opportunities before him. "he has talent and time and youth and ambition and ample means," said she. "it sounds too promising." "oh, he'll be chastened, poor lad. we all are, sooner or later!" "miss thomasina--" dr. scott paused; a sentence hovered upon the edge of recollection; he tried to identify and complete it. was it something about "a girl to go gypsying with through all the world"? such a girl he seemed to see before him. "yes?" said thomasina encouragingly. "i am to have an extraordinary opportunity thanks to mrs. lister." "yes?" said thomasina with a little more curiosity. her heart was still sore at thought of mary alcestis. "i am to edit her brother's works!" "what works?" asked thomasina. "works which they have found; other stories, poems, translations, an incredibly rich and valuable collection." thomasina leaned forward, an intensely eager look in her brown eyes. "works they have found! where?" "i think they were put away. i think from what dr. lister said her grief for her brother was so great that she could not bear to have them touched." "and who has touched them now?" asked thomasina in a hard voice. "i think--it is my impression--that dr. lister found them and persuaded her." thomasina sank back in her chair. "did you know basil everman well?" asked dr. scott. "yes." thomasina's voice was now a whisper. "i wonder whether you would talk to me about him. i must prepare a biographical chapter and the material is so very scant." thomasina rose unsteadily, and asked to be excused for a moment. she went out into the hall and climbed the stairs slowly. when she came back she carried her little inlaid box as though it contained precious and fragile jewels. she stood before dr. scott and held it out. "here are basil everman's letters," said she. "they show all his plans and hopes. they were written to _me_." the first utterance of a bride could have been no more filled with sweet triumph. "i did not know that any of his plans had been carried out. i did not know anything survived. you may use the letters if you wish." dr. scott felt like richard that there were moments in life to which one could say, "linger, thou art so fair!" thomasina still held out the little box. "do you wish me to look at them now?" "if you will." he put out a shaking hand. he would have thought long before exchanging this experience for a year of the opportunities of a boswell. thomasina took up a book; then she walked into her garden; then she crossed the hall, closing both doors behind her, and practiced finger exercises in her music room. the light, delicate arpeggios and runs and trills came faintly to dr. scott's enchanted ears. thus had thomasina quieted her soul a thousand times. when she returned there remained but one letter in the little box. dr. scott was not reading; he sat staring at the floor. it seemed to him that he had helped to open the tomb of a queen ta, that he had touched the jewels with which the hands of love had decked her. then he looked up. thomasina regarded him; alive, breathing, lovely, she was not in the least like queen ta. he felt that he must speak, but his eloquence, slow, but equal to every occasion, failed him now. "if you will tell me what passages you wish to use, i shall copy them for you." "may i say that they were written to you?" an inward light illumined thomasina's face. it was not pride, it was an emotion more intense, more exalted. "you have been honored above most women," said dr. scott. thomasina took one of the letters in her hand. "say they were written to a friend. his biography does not need me, and i had rather be invisible beside him." thus thomasina, who longed, in mrs. lister's opinion, for fame! "now i must go over to the listers to say good-bye to richard." together dr. scott and thomasina crossed the campus and at the listers' door dr. scott said good-night. he could scarcely wait to get back to his study and to his pen. he did not mean to stop at his house; indeed, he thought it unlikely that his house would see him until dawn, but remembering a need for matches, he ran up the steps. there sitting on the doorstep, a valise beside her, was a small figure. "cora!" said dr. scott. "what in the world are you doing here?" cora rose stiffly. it seemed that she had been waiting a long time. "i came back on the nine o'clock train." "where is your mother?" "she is at atlantic city. i told her that i wouldn't stay." the last sentence startled dr. scott even more than cora's unexpected appearance. he unlocked the door and picked up the valise. there was a new tone in her sweet voice, a tone which disturbed him, but when he got the lamp lighted and had a good look at her round little face, it would doubtless seem imaginary. surely it could not be that she had come home so as to be near richard lister! when the lamp was lit, it seemed to reveal the same cora, a little white and tired and travel-stained, but surely not wild or violent! "sit down, my dear!" cora sat down heavily on a little gilt chair. "are you hungry?" "no, i thank you," she answered, true to her polite type. dr. scott sat himself down on the second step. "what does this return mean, my dear? you went away to have a change." cora looked at him, looked long at him. in that look certain messages passed from her to her father. for a long time she did not answer, then she burst into tears. "i am not crying because i want to cry," said she angrily. "or because i feel like crying. i am tired, that is why i cry. i came home because i couldn't stand the dullness." "the dullness!" dr. scott was bewildered. "of atlantic city!" "i want something to do," demanded cora, "something for my mind. you have always treated me like a baby. you've sent me to school and put me out of your thoughts. you don't even talk to me intelligently; i mean that you don't talk to me as if i were intelligent. you talk to miss thomasina and dr. lister in an entirely different way. i can study as well as richard and--and as--" but the name of her rival cora could not pronounce. "i have a better mind than walter. walter can't do anything but make money. you should hear him with his friends at atlantic city, you should hear him only ten minutes! and he wants me to like those people!" "my dear--" but cora had not said all she had to say. "mother thinks i have failed because i am not engaged to richard. he never thought of me. i am convinced that he never thought of me. it has made me appear like a crazy person. i don't know what the listers think of me." then cora gave her father a shock of many volts. she had not read her padded poets or her bible in vain. nor was her paternity entirely without evidence. "i don't wish to go in solemn procession all my days because of the bitterness of my soul." for the first time in his life, dr. scott's reaction from a thrilling experience was expressed in terms of money. he determined at that instant that his work on basil everman's writings must be paid for; he determined, moreover, that henceforth the whole of his salary should not be handed over as heretofore. he put his arm round his weeping daughter. "don't cry, cora! you will have plenty left in life. sometime you will smile over this trouble. you and i will work together, and by and by we will go abroad." chapter xxvi "let us be entirely frank with one another" eleanor walked far out on the country road. she met no one and felt no fear. there was in her heart, on the contrary, a bitter satisfaction in feeling that she was doing what cora scott would not dream of doing and what mrs. lister would heartily disapprove of. she felt a sullen indifference to waltonville's rules of conduct. as she went on she made plans. as soon as arrangements could be completed, they would go away to return no more. she would leave behind her all the gifts which dr. green had showered upon her since her childhood. she saw his strong-featured face, animated by intellect and will, and then margie's frightened eyes and her trembling mouth. for herself she would not have anything to do with love in any of its manifestations. but when she had turned back, she said under her breath, "oh, richard, richard!" as she passed dr. green's door, walking rapidly because she felt sudden compunction on her mother's account, he appeared on the step and spoke to her with astonishment. "where have you been at this hour, eleanor?" eleanor looked up at him, hating his authoritative voice. "i've been walking in the country." "come in. i wish to speak to you." "it's late; my mother does not know where i am." "a few minutes won't make any difference. i'll walk home with you." against her will eleanor went slowly up the steps and into the untidy rooms. she sat down upon the edge of a chair in the office and dr. green sat opposite her. "i have persuaded your mother to go away from waltonville." "have you?" said eleanor. "aren't you interested?" "oh, yes." eleanor's tone belied her words. "it is time that you were getting away." "why?" asked eleanor perversely. "so that you may possess the world. you didn't expect to stay here forever, did you?" eleanor made no answer. there were certain conditions under which she would have been willing to stay here forever. dr. green looked at her impatiently. "you had plans for your future. where is the young woman who was going to be george eliot and jane austen in one, pray? you haven't forgotten her?" "she has ceased to exist. i'm not interested in writing." "not interested in writing! nonsense!" he began to argue for learning, for travel, for education. he reminded eleanor of her achievements, of her fine mind; he told her that it was sinful to think of anything but her own mental progress in these formative years. she had no responsibilities, no cares, nothing to look after but herself. she should go to school, continuing her work at a university. "but i am not interested in writing," repeated eleanor. "what are you interested in, then?" dr. green looked angrily at the pretty creature who listened unmoved to his harangue. "i spoke to you, eleanor. i asked you what you are interested in?" eleanor rose, tall and slim, and looked at him across the untidy office. it seemed to her that he knew about richard and that he was mocking her. "that is my own affair." dr. green rose also and for an instant the two faced one another, eye meeting eye. "eleanor," he announced distinctly, "if you ever speak to me like that again, i shall punish you." eleanor measured the distance to the door, her eye creeping along the floor. then she looked back at dr. green. he had turned pale, the fine, severe line of his forehead and cheek were outlined plainly against the dark woodwork of the door behind him. "i am going home," said eleanor. dr. green stepped between her and the door. "you can't go like this!" said he earnestly. "i can go any way i choose," said eleanor. "you have no authority over me. i know perfectly well what is in your mind when you threaten me. it has been coming to me slowly for a long time, but i was too dull to understand until to-day." dr. green still stood before the outer door. a deep red rose from neck to forehead. "your mother and i had very little in common," said he at last. then, after a long pause, "she has had every comfort, she has not suffered, she has lived exactly the quiet, domestic, undisturbed life she wanted to live." still eleanor said nothing. "and she has had you." eleanor made a tiny motion with her hand. "all my boyhood i starved for learning. when i finished my college course and was about to enter the medical school, i found myself carried away. i had starved myself in other ways. i had known no women. your mother was very pretty. i blame myself entirely. but she couldn't see any necessity for my going on. she was satisfied with things as they were. i had ambitions; she--" dr. green did not finish his sentence, but it was impossible not to know what was in his mind. "i gave her all i had to leave me free to go on, and that, with what she had from her father, was enough for her to live on. she went away. _but she didn't tell me about you!_" dr. green's hands clenched. "we had had hard times, but i didn't deserve that! i found her here by mere chance. she had even taken another name! but i don't wish to cast any blame on her." "i don't want to hear anything said against her," said eleanor bluntly. "i am not going to say anything against her," protested dr. green, "except that she has had the easier part." "i don't see that," said eleanor. she went rapidly toward the door. "you will go away from waltonville?" "yes." "where would you like to go?" "where i can get work, teaching or something of that kind." "eleanor!" cried dr. green. she paused, her hand on the knob. "if you have any feeling for me at all, you won't even make it necessary for me to tell you what i'm going to do." then she went down the office steps. dr. green let her go alone. when she had gone, he sat and looked about. "the little monkey!" said he, aloud. then suddenly he rose with a mighty spring and opened the door. though the hour was late he strode up the street toward the college. at thomasina's he glanced in, but the house was dark. as he went through the campus gate, he saw that there was a light in dr. lister's study; it might be that she was there--if so, well and good; it would save him some words. in dr. lister's study richard and his father and mother and thomasina sat together. there were traces of tears on mrs. lister's face, as was natural to one who was bidding farewell this evening to a happy era. dr. lister swung his foot rapidly; he anticipated with delight his journey to new york. thomasina sat with richard on the sofa. he was thin; his boyish good looks were gone, but good looks of a better sort had come to take their place. he discussed impersonal matters with a manly air. all four were glad to see dr. green. the moments had grown a little difficult and thomasina took advantage of his coming to make her adieux. "i'll see you next month, my dear. if i can persuade your mother to come, too, we'll have a fine time." green's tall figure barred the way to the hall. "please wait a minute, miss thomasina," said he. "i have something to say to all of you and it is easier to say it to all of you together. miss thomasina told me some days ago that you, mrs. lister, have been misled by several coincidences into thinking that eleanor bent was the daughter of your brother basil." mrs. lister looked aghast. "that is a great mistake," said dr. green. "eleanor bent is my daughter. i fell in love with her mother when i was here and followed her away. before eleanor was born, we separated, and when i came here to practice i found them. her mother was established and was not willing to readjust her life and i deferred to her. it was an absurd mistake. eleanor's ideas of a departed parent were already fixed; otherwise it would have been more absurd." having finished his speech, dr. green was left without a response. one would have thought that he had stricken his audience dumb. after a long time dr. lister swung his right knee over his left. "mrs. lister thought she resembled her brother," said he. "she resembles _me_," said dr. green. "but her talent!" said mrs. lister, beginning to cry. green smiled grimly. "that couldn't have been inherited from me, i suppose?" said he. "i asked mrs. bent about basil everman. she said that she had been persecuted by john bates, then sinking into debauchery, and that your brother had protected her. she looked upon him as a sort of saint george." "oh! oh! oh!" wept mary alcestis. richard rose to his feet. "does eleanor know this?" he demanded. "she knows now," said dr. green sorely. "by gad, you've got her into a pretty mess between you!" said richard. thomasina sat with her hand covering her eyes. suddenly she took it away and looked sharply at mary alcestis. "this isn't the time to cry!" "you cannot understand," sobbed mary alcestis. "can i not?" said thomasina softly. mrs. lister looked at thomasina; then she crossed the room and sat down beside her. "you said i was a fool, thomasina. i was just that." she stared at thomasina as though she saw her now for the first time. she did not even know the moment when dr. green left them to themselves. the college clock struck eleven as dr. green went through the campus gate. but he did not go home, even though that was a late hour for waltonville. he went across the town to the little gray house where the light still burned in the dining-room. when he walked in, mrs. bent looked up at him helplessly. "i am trying to talk to her. i tell her that both of us was wrong. i was too much for gayety and going, and i didn't appreciate learning. but i appreciate learning now. i didn't know i should come to be ashamed." eleanor's face looked frozen. "you kill me, mother, when you talk about being ashamed. i'm never ashamed of you. i don't see why we need to talk about it. let it go." "he was always kind to you," said mrs. bent. "your books he gave you and your pie-anna and even your name that you like so well and your learning and you get your mind from him, and--" "they are all hers by right," said dr. green. "and he might go somewheres else and be a great doctor. i heard people say it often. i was hard to get along with," sobbed mrs. bent. "and i was afraid you would grow up ashamed of me. oh, i done wrong!" still eleanor said nothing. "do not make it harder for us than you must, my dear," said dr. green at last. "there have been some matters i didn't give heed to because i wanted you to come to something. i didn't know you had a question in your mind. i am more ambitious for you than i was for myself. an early and unconsidered marriage like your mother's and mine--" now eleanor lifted her head. "oh! oh! oh!" she cried as mrs. lister had cried. "what is it?" asked dr. green. "let us be entirely frank with one another." "i did not understand that you had _married_ my mother!" cried eleanor. "oh, i think you have been wrong and foolish and wicked, not so much to me as to one another!" at midnight, when dr. green went out the little gate, he saw a dark figure in the shadow. it did not frighten or surprise him. "well, richard?" "i'm not going in. i wanted just a glimpse of her, that was all. i can't stand seeing her and talking to her and then having to come away." "you have had your glimpse?" "yes. i'm fortified till the morning." without further confidences, richard took the first short cut that offered. chapter xxvii epilogue in late august of the next year, thomasina came slowly across the green from the lister house toward the campus gate. mrs. lister had begged her to stay longer, but she had felt a need for quietness. mrs. lister had been talking about basil; she had not yet exhausted all possibilities for conversation in his strange posthumous fame, or in his attachment to thomasina, so long unsuspected. she did not ask many questions at one time of thomasina; they came slowly, a question or two this week, another question next month. sometimes she wept. "there are times when i can see just how i thought that dreadful thing about basil and there are other times when i just cannot understand!" "i wouldn't think of it," said thomasina cheerfully. "and, anyway, mary alcestis, you didn't hurt any one but yourself." a flood of tears choked mrs. lister's voice. "i could explain it to basil. he was always very kind and understanding." she looked at thomasina with a sort of angry astonishment. "you are always so calm, and i--i am homesick to see basil. i shall never be altogether at peace until i see him." "yes," said thomasina, "i can understand that." "you ought to be with richard as much as you can," said mrs. lister. "in another month he will have gone back to new york." thomasina smiled. across from the chapel drifted the sound of music. richard had spent a day inside the old organ and had coaxed and wheedled it into a new sound. he was now on the organ bench with eleanor beside him. for richard at his happiest moments there was still a favorite form of expression, the chants of his boyhood. with full organ he sang the ambrosian hymn. the gregorian music, the summer evening, richard's voice--thomasina was never to forget them. "we believe that thou shalt come to be our judge: we therefore pray thee, help thy servants: whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood. make them to be numbered with thy saints: in glory ever-lasting.... o lord, have mercy upon us: have mercy upon us. o lord, let thy mercy be upon us: as our trust is in thee." then richard established a deep and majestic foundation for his clear tenor: "o lord, in thee have i trusted: let me never be confounded!" "she is a nice girl," said mrs. lister, her voice trembling. music was still terrible to mary alcestis. "i am satisfied. i believe she will make a good wife to richard. he wants her to write, but i don't believe she thinks much about writing now. and her mother is a nice woman," added mrs. lister. "she has excellent ideas and she has trained eleanor." thomasina intended to stop for a moment in the chapel and went so far as the threshold. then, seeing the two heads close together, she turned away. she did not fear interrupting richard and eleanor--there was no one among all her acquaintances, least of all these two, whom she could interrupt. but she turned away. youth, with its confidence and its ignorance, was alien to her mood; youth which knew nothing of heartache, which had no visions of a loved body, covered--how many years ago!--with earth, of lonely days, of nights filled with rebellion. even mary alcestis, who thought herself so wise in grief, knew nothing. the scott house was closed, the scott family scattered, in happy separation, mrs. scott with her son at atlantic city and dr. scott and little cora exploring in italy. thinking of them, thomasina smiled. she saw dr. scott enchanted, inarticulate. it seemed to her that each of her friends had that which his heart desired--even mrs. bent, whom waltonville still called mrs. bent, though it knew better, who stayed in her little gray house adoring her household gods, and even dr. green, who seemed to crave management by his daughter. neither dr. green nor mrs. bent felt apparently any reviving flame of affection, but jealousy at least was gone. both now had eleanor. each one, it seemed to thomasina, entering her gate, had some hearth whereat to warm himself, some eyes wherein to see himself reflected. the latch of her door felt cold, the cool hall vault-like. the house was empty; she shivered as she entered it. she moved across her parlor. on the shelf nearest her throne-like chair stood four books, which she took one by one into her hand and then put back. all had been completed as dr. scott had planned, all had been brought out in perfection to the delight of the discerning. she did not open them, did not need to open them to read. "the admirers of basil everman are grateful to his friend thomasina davis, of waltonville, to whom he wrote constantly during the last years of his life his aspirations and his plans. miss davis has allowed his biographer to make extracts from his correspondence." here was fame--the only fame for which thomasina cared! when she sat down before the garden door, tears were in her eyes. her flowers offered their incense to the sky; the sound of richard's music was carried softly to her by the evening breeze. the hour was enchanted. she was too wise not to know that it was a space set apart, that unhappiness, discontent, a fierce resistance to life as it was, would have their hours also. but this was reality--to that she held with a divine stubbornness--this hour in which basil, young, radiant, immortal, stood beside her. for such hours as this, infrequent though they were, she had declined other loves, refused to sit at warmer hearths. "saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs, answer 'yes!'" remembered thomasina. "'i, sergius, live!'" said she, aloud. then, folding her hands, she sat quietly. the riverside press cambridge. massachusetts u. s. a. book was produced from images made available by the hathitrust digital library.) +-------------------------------------------------+ |transcriber's note: | | | |obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ challenge by v. sackville-west [illustration: logo] george h. doran company publishers new york printed in great britain dedication acaba embeo sin tiro, men chuajañi; lirenas, berjaras tiri ochi busñe, changeri, ta armensalle. epilogue a man and a woman leaned idly over the balustrade watching the steady stream of guests that mounted the magnificent staircase. the marble of the balustrade was cool beneath the woman's bare arms, for it was summer, and the man, without interrupting his murmur of comment and anecdote, glanced admiringly at her, and thought that, in spite of her forty years, she, with diamonds in her hair and the great ropes of pearls over her shoulders, need not fear comparison with all the beauty of london assembled at that ball. her beauty and dignity melted pleasantly, for him, into the wealth of the house, the lights, the abundance of flowers, and the distant orchestra. again the idea that this woman, for the asking, would decorate his own house with her presence, and would ornament his own distinguished name, played flatteringly through his mind. he reflected with gratification that it lay within his power to do her this honour. for, a vain man, he never questioned but that the favour would lie entirely on his side. he pointed out to her the famous general on the stairs, escorting his daughter; the new american beauty; the young man recently succeeded to fabulous estates; the indian prince who had turned the heads of half the women in london. skilful, she paid him the compliment of interest and amusement, letting it be understood that he was himself of far greater interest to her than the personages who served as pegs to his wit. as he paused once, she revived the conversation:-'there is a man i have never seen before; that tall, dark man. and the handsome woman with him--she must be his wife.' 'why must she be his wife?' he asked, amused. 'because i am sure she is the type of woman he would marry, stately and correct; am i not right?' 'you are quite right; she is his wife. he has been and still is a very successful man; an under-secretary at thirty-five, and in the cabinet before he was forty. many people think that he will be the next viceroy.' at that moment the man on the stairs looked up, and his eyes met those of the woman leaning on the balustrade above. 'what a wonderful face!' she exclaimed, startled, to her companion. 'wonderful--but he looks as though he had learnt all the sorrow of the world.--he looks--what shall i say?--so weary.' 'then he has no business to,' he answered with a smile. 'he has everything man can wish for: power, wealth, and, as you can see, an admirable wife. as usual, however, your perception is unerring: he's the most cynical fellow i ever came across. he believes in nothing--and is incidentally the only real philanthropist i know. his name is perfectly familiar to you. it is davenant.' 'oh,' she said, carried away by her interest, 'is that julian davenant? of course every one has heard of him. stay,' she added, searching in her memory, 'wasn't there some extraordinary story about him as a young man? some crazy adventure he engaged in? i don't remember exactly....' the man at her side began to laugh. 'there was indeed,' he replied; 'do you remember an absurd tiny republic named herakleion, which has since been absorbed by greece?' 'herakleion?' she murmured. 'why, i have been there in a yacht, i believe; a little greek port; but i didn't know it had ever been an independent republic?' 'dear me, yes,' he said, 'it was independent for about a hundred years, and julian davenant as a young man was concerned in some preposterous revolution in those parts; all his money comes, you know, from his vine-growing estates out there. i am a little vague myself as to what actually happened. he was very young at the time, not much more than a boy.' 'how romantic,' said the woman absently, as she watched julian davenant shaking hands with his hostess. 'very romantic, but we all start by being romantic until we have outgrown it, and any way, don't you think we are going, you and i, rather too much out of our way this evening to look for romance?' said the man, leaning confidentially a little nearer. * * * * * * but these two people have nothing to do with the story. part i--julian i on sunday, after the races were over, the diplomatic, indigenous, and cosmopolitan society of herakleion, by virtue of a custom they never sought to dispute, streamed through the turnstiles of the race-course to regain their carriages and to drive for an hour in the ilex avenue consecrated to that purpose outside the suburbs of the town. like the angels on jacob's ladder, the carriages went up one side and down the other, at a slow walk, the procession invariably headed by the barouche of the french legation, containing m. lafarge, chief of the mission, his beard spread fan-like over his frock-coat, but so disposed as to reveal the rosette in his button-hole, peeping with a coy red eye at the passing world; madame lafarge, sitting erect and bowing stiffly from her unassailable position as dictator to social herakleion; and, on the _strapontin_, julie lafarge, repressed, sallow-faced daughter of the emissaries of france. streaming after the barouche came mere humanity, some in victorias, some in open cabs, all going at a walk, and down the centre rode the young men of the place, and down the centre alexander christopoulos, who dared all and to whom all was forgiven, drove his light buggy and american trotter at a rattling pace and in a cloud of dust. the diplomatic carriages were distinguished by the presence of a chasseur on the box, though none so gorgeous as the huge scarlet-coated chasseur of the french legation. it was commonly said that the danish minister and his wife, who were poor, denied themselves food in order to maintain their carriage for the sunday drive. the rich greeks, on the other hand, from generation to generation, inherited the family brake, which was habitually driven by the head of the clan on the box, his wife beside him, and his sons and unmarried daughters sitting two by two, on the six remaining seats behind. there had been a rush of scandal when alexander christopoulos had appeared for the first time alone in his buggy, his seat in the family brake conspicuously empty. there remained, however, his four sisters, the virgins of herakleion, whose ages ranged from thirty-five to forty, and whose batteries were unfailingly directed against the latest arrival. the fifth sister had married a banker in frankfort, and was not often mentioned. there were, besides the brakes of the rich greeks, the wagonettes of the english davenants, who always had english coachmen, and frequently absented themselves from the sunday drive to remind herakleion that, although resident, they were neither diplomatic, indigenous, nor cosmopolitan, but unalterably english. they were too numerous and too influential to be disregarded, but when the name of davenant was mentioned in their absence, a murmur was certain to make itself heard, discreet, unvindictive, but none the less remorseless, 'ah yes, the english levantines.' sunshades were lowered in the ilex avenue, for the shadows of the ancient trees fell cool and heavy across the white dust. through the ilexes, the sea glimmered on a lower level, washing idly on the shore; vainly blue, for herakleion had no eyes for the sea. the sea was always there, always blue, just as mount mylassa was always there, behind the town, monotonous and immovable. the sea was made for the transport of merchandise and to provide man with fish. no one had ever discovered a purpose in mount mylassa. when the french barouche had reached the end of the avenue, it turned gravely in a wide circle and took its place at the head of the descending carriages. when it had reached its starting-point, the entrance to the avenue, it detached itself from the procession and continued on its way towards the town. the procession did not follow it. another turn up and down the avenue remained for the procession, and the laughter became perceptibly brighter, the smiles of greeting more cordial, with the removal of madame lafarge's influence. it was known that the barouche would pass the race-course at its former dignified walk, but that, once out of sight, madame lafarge would say, '_grigora_, vassili!' to the chasseur, that the horses would be urged into a shambling trot and that the ladies in the carriage would open their sunshades to keep off the glare of the sun which beat down from heaven and reverberated from the pavements and the white walls of the houses as they drove through the streets of the deserted town. deserted, for that part of the population which was not within doors strolled in the ilex avenue, looking at the carriages. a few lean dogs slept on door-steps where the shadow of the portico fell sharply dividing the step into a dark and a sunny half. the barouche rolled along the wide quay, where here and there the parapet was broken by a flight of steps descending to the water; passed the casino, white, with palms and cacti growing hideously in the forecourt; rolled across the square _platia_, where a group of men stood lounging within the cool and cavernous passage-way of the club. madame lafarge stopped the barouche. a young man detached himself from the group with a slightly bored and supercilious expression. he was tall beyond the ordinary run of frenchmen; had dark eyes under meeting eyebrows in an ivory face, and an immensely high, flat, white brow, from which the black wavy hair grew straight back, smoothed to the polish of a black greyhound. 'our persian miniature,' the fat american wife of the danish minister, called him, establishing herself as the wit of herakleion, where any one with sufficient presumption could establish him or herself in any chosen rôle. the young man had accepted the title languidly, but had taken care that it should not die forgotten. madame lafarge said to him in a tone which conveyed a command rather than proffered a favour, 'if you like, we can drive you to the legation.' she spoke in a booming voice that burst surprisingly out of the compression of a generously furnished bust. the young man, accepting the offer, seated himself beside julie on the _strapontin_ opposite his chief, who sat silent and majestically bearded. the immense chasseur stood stiffly by the side of the carriage, his eyes gazing unblinkingly across the _platia_, and the tips of his long drooping whiskers obscuring the braid of his scarlet collar. madame lafarge addressed herself to the group of men,-'i did not see you at the races?' her graciousness did not conceal the rebuke. she continued,-'i shall hope to welcome you presently at the legation.' with a bow worthy of theodora, whom she had once been told that she resembled, she gave the order to drive on. the loaded barouche, with the splendid red figure on the box, rolled away across the dazzling square. the french legation stood back behind a grille in the main street of the town, built of white stucco like the majority of the houses. inside, it was cool and dark, the venetian blinds were drawn, and the lighted candles in the sconces on the walls reflected pleasantly, and with a curious effect of freshening night, in the polished floors. gilt chairs were arranged in circles, and little tables stood about, glitteringly laden with tall tumblers and bottles of coloured sirops. madame lafarge surveyed these things as she had surveyed them every sunday evening since julie could remember. the young man danced attendance in his languid way. 'the chandeliers may be lighted,' her excellency said to the chasseur, who had followed. the three stood watching while the candles sprang into little spears of light under the touch of the taper, madame lafarge contrasting displeasedly the lemon sallowness of her daughter's complexion with the warm magnolia-like pallor of the secretary's face. the contrast caused her to speak sharply,-'julie, you had better go now and take off your hat.' when her submissive daughter had gone, she said,-'julie is looking ill. the summer does not suit her. but what is to be done? i cannot leave herakleion.' 'obviously,' murmured the secretary, 'herakleion would fall all to pieces. your sunday evenings,' he continued, 'the races ... your picnics....' 'impossible,' she cried with determination. 'one owes a duty to the country one represents, and i have always said that, whereas politics are the affairs of men, the woman's social obligation is no less urgent. it is a great career, armand, and to such a career one must be prepared to sacrifice one's personal convenience.' 'and one's health ... the health of one's children,' he added, looking down at his almond nails. 'if need be,' she replied with a sigh, and, fanning herself, repeated, 'if need be.' the rooms began to fill. a little middle-aged greek, his wrinkled saffron face curiously emphasised by the beautiful whiteness of his hair and moustaches, took his stand near madame lafarge, who in speaking to him looked down on the top of his head over the broad plateau of her bust. 'these cool rooms of yours,' he murmured, as he kissed her hand. 'one cannot believe in the heat of the sun outside.' he made this remark every other sunday. lafarge came up and took the little greek banker by the arm. 'i hear,' he said, 'that there is fresh trouble in the islands.' 'we can leave it to the davenants,' said christopoulos with an unpleasant smile. 'but that is exactly what i have always urged you not to do,' said the french minister, drawing the little greek into a corner. 'you know the proverbial reputation of the english: you do not see them coming, but they insinuate themselves until one day you open your eyes to the fact that they are there. you will be making a very great mistake, my dear friend, if you allow the davenants to settle disputes in the islands. have you forgotten that in the last generation a davenant caused himself to be elected president?' 'considering that they are virtually kings, i do not see that the nominal title of president can make a vast difference.' lafarge sent his eyes round the room and through the doorway into the room beyond; he saw the familiar, daily faces, and returned to the charge. 'you are pleased to be sarcastic, i know. nevertheless allow me to offer you my advice. it is not a question of kingship or presidency. it is a question of a complete break on the part of the islands. they are small, but their strategic value is self-evident. remember italy has her eye upon them.... the davenants are democrats, and have always preached liberty to the islanders. the davenant wealth supports them. can you calmly contemplate the existence of an independent archipelago a few miles from your shore?' a dull red crept under the banker's yellow skin, giving him a suffused appearance. 'you are very emphatic.' 'the occasion surely warrants emphasis.' the rooms were by now quite full. little centres of laughter had formed themselves, and were distinguishable. alexander christopoulos had once boasted that he could, merely by looking round a room and arguing from the juxtaposition of conversationalists, give a fairly accurate _résumé_ of what every one was saying. he also claimed to tell from the expression of the danish excellency whether she was or was not arriving primed with a new epigram. he was now at the side of the danish excellency, fat, fair, and foolish, but good-natured, and having a fund of veritable humanity which was lacking in most of her colleagues. the careful english of alexander reached his father's ears through the babel,-'the empress eugénie set the fashion of wearing _décolleté_ in the shape the water in your bath makes round your shoulders....' lafarge went on,-'the davenants are sly; they keep apart; they mix with us, but they do not mingle. they are like oil upon water. where is william davenant now, do you know?' 'he is just arriving,' said christopoulos. lafarge saw him then, bowing over his hostess's hand, polite, but with absent eyes that perpetually strayed from the person he was talking to. behind him came a tall, loose-limbed boy, untidy, graceful; he glanced at the various groups, and the women looked at him with interest. a single leap might carry him at any moment out of the room in which his presence seemed so incongruous. the tall mirrors on the walls sent back the reflection of the many candles, and in them the same spectral company came and went that moved and chattered in the rooms. 'at least he is not on the islands,' said christopoulos. 'after all,' said lafarge, with a sudden weariness, 'perhaps i am inclined to exaggerate the importance of the islands. it is difficult to keep a true sense of proportion. herakleion is a little place. one forgets that one is not at the centre of the world.' he could not have tracked his lassitude to its origin, but as his eyes rested again on the free, generous limbs of the davenant boy, he felt a slight revolt against the babble, the coloured sirops, and the artificially lighted rooms from which the sun was so carefully excluded. the yellow skin of little christopoulos gave him the appearance of a plant which has been deprived of light. his snowy hair, too, soft and billowy, looked as though it had been deliberately and consistently bleached. he murmured a gentle protest to the minister's words,-'surely not, dear excellency, surely you do not exaggerate the importance of the islands. we could not, as you say, tolerate the existence of an independent archipelago a few miles from our shores. do not allow my sarcasm to lead you into the belief that i underestimate either their importance, or the value, the compliment of your interest in the politics of our country. the friendship of france....' his voice died away into suave nothings. the french minister emerged with an effort from his mood of temporary discontent, endeavouring to recapture the habitual serenity of his life. 'and you will remember my hint about the davenants?' christopoulos looked again at william davenant, who, perfectly courteous but incorrigibly absent-minded, was still listening to madame lafarge. 'it is a scandal,' she was saying, resuming her conversation in the intervals of interruption occasioned by newly-arriving guests, 'a scandal that the museum should remain without a catalogue....' 'i will remember,' said christopoulos. 'i will tell alexander to distract that youth's attention; one davenant the less, you follow me, to give us any trouble.' 'pooh! a schoolboy,' interjected the minister. christopoulos pursed his lips and moved his snowy head portentously up and down. 'a schoolboy, but nevertheless he probably shares the enthusiasms of his age. the islands are sufficiently romantic to appeal to his imagination. remember, his grandfather ruled there for a year.' 'his grandfather? _un farceur!_' said lafarge. christopoulos assented, and the two men, smiling tolerantly, continued to look across at the unconscious boy though their minds were already occupied by other things. madame lafarge, catching sight of them, was annoyed by her husband's aloofness from the social aspect of her weekly reception. it pleased her--in fact, she exacted--that a certain political atmosphere should pervade any gathering in her drawing-rooms, but at the same time she resented a political interview which deprived, at once, her guests of a host and herself of a _cavalier servente_. she accordingly stared at christopoulos while continuing her conversation with william davenant, until the little greek became aware of her gaze, and crossed the room obediently to the unspoken summons. william davenant moved away in relief; he knew his duty to madame lafarge, but performed it wearily and without pleasure. it was now over for a month, he thought, deciding that he would not be expected to attend the three succeeding sundays. he paused beside his son, who had been captured by two of the sisters christopoulos and who, with two russian secretaries, was being forced to join in a round game. the sisters gave little shrieks and peals of laughter; it was their idea of merriment. they sat one on each side of julian davenant, on a small gilt sofa covered with imitation tapestry. near by, listening to the game with a gentle and languorous smile upon his lips, stood the persian minister, who understood very little french, his fine oriental figure buttoned into the traditional frock-coat, and a black lamb's-wool fez upon his head. he was not very popular in herakleion; he did not know enough french to amuse the women, so, as at present, he silently haunted the circles of the younger generation, with mingled humility and dignity. william davenant paused there for a moment, met his son's eyes with a gleam of sympathy, then passed on to pay his monthly duty to influence and fashion. the danish excellency whispered behind her fan to alexander christopoulos as he passed, and the young man screwed in his eyeglass to examine the retreating back of the englishman. the red-coated chasseur came round, gravely offering sandwiches on a tray. 'uneatable,' said alexander christopoulos, taking one and hiding it beneath his chair. the courage of the young man! the insolence! 'julie will see you,' giggled the danish excellency. 'and what if she does?' he retorted. 'you have no respect, no veneration,' she chided him. 'for _maman_ lafarge? _la bonne bourgeoise!_' he exclaimed, but not very loudly. 'alexander!' she said, but her tone said, 'i adore you.' 'one must be something,' the young christopoulos had once told himself; 'i will be insolent and contemptuous; i will impose myself upon herakleion; my surroundings shall accept me with admiration and without protest.' he consequently went to oxford, affected to speak greek with difficulty, interlarded his english with american slang, instituted a polo club, and drove an american trotter. he was entirely successful. unlike many a greater man, he had achieved his ambition. he knew, moreover, that madame lafarge would give him her daughter for the asking. 'shall i make julie sing?' he said suddenly to the danish excellency, searching among the moving groups for the victim of this classic joke of herakleion. 'alexander, you are too cruel,' she murmured. he was flattered; he felt himself an irresistible autocrat and breaker of hearts. he tolerated the danish excellency, as he had often said in the club, because she had no other thought than of him. she, on the other hand, boasted in her fat, good-humoured way to her intimates,-'i may be a fool, but no woman is completely a fool who has realised the depths of man's vanity.' julie lafarge, who was always given to understand that one day she would marry the insolent alexander, was too efficiently repressed to be jealous of the danish excellency. under the mischievous influence of her friend, eve davenant, she would occasionally make an attempt to attract the young man; a pitiable, grotesque attempt, prompted by the desire to compel his homage, to hear herself called beautiful--which she was not. so far she did not delude herself that she had succeeded, but she did delude herself that it gave him pleasure to hear her sing. she stood now beside a little table, dispensing sirops in tall tumblers, very sallow in her white muslin, with a locket on a short gold chain hanging between the bones of her neck. her very thin brown arms, which were covered with small black hairs, protruded ungracefully from the short sleeves of her dress. alexander presented himself before her; she had seen him coming in one of the mirrors on the walls. madame lafarge cherished an affection for these mirrors, because thanks to them her drawing-rooms always appeared twice as crowded as they really were. alexander uttered his request in a tone at once beseeching and compelling; she thought him irresistible. nevertheless, she protested: there were too many people present, her singing would interrupt all conversation, her mother would be annoyed. but those standing near by seconded alexander, and madame lafarge herself bore down majestically upon her daughter, so that all protest was at an end. julie stood beside the open piano with her hands loosely folded in a rehearsed and approved attitude while the room disposed itself to listen, and alexander, who was to accompany her, let his fingers roam negligently over the keyboard. chairs were turned to face the piano, people drifted in from the farther drawing-room, young men leaned in the doorways and against the walls. lafarge folded his arms across his chest, freeing his imprisoned beard by an upward movement of his chin, and smiled encouragingly and benignly at his daughter. speech dropped into whispers, whispers into silence. alexander struck a few preliminary chords. julie sang; she sang, quite execrably, romantic german music, and out of the roomful of people only three, herself, her father, and her mother, thought that she sang well. despite this fact she was loudly applauded, congratulated, and pressed for more. julian davenant, taking advantage of the diversion to escape from the sisters christopoulos, slipped away to one of the window recesses where he could partly conceal himself behind the stiff, brocaded curtain. horizontal strings of sunlight barred the venetian blind, and by peeping between its joints he could see the tops of the palms in the legation forecourt, the iron grille which gave on to the main street, and a victoria standing near the grille, in the shade, the horse covered over with a flimsy, dust-coloured sheet, and the driver asleep inside the carriage, a fly-whisk drooping limply in his hand. he could hear the shrill squeaking of the tram as it came round the corner, and the clang of its bell. he knew that the sea lay blue beyond the white town, and that, out in the sea, lay the islands, where the little grapes were spread, drying into currants, in the sun. he returned to the darkened, candle-lit room, where julie lafarge was singing 'im wunderschönen monat mai.' looking across the room to the door which opened on to the landing at the top of the stairs, he saw a little stir of arrival, which was suppressed in order to avoid any interruption to the music. he distinguished the new-comer, a short, broad, middle-aged woman, out of breath after mounting the stairs, curiously draped in soft copper-coloured garments, with gold bangles on her bare arms, and a wreath of gold leaves round her dark head. he knew this woman, a singer. he neither liked nor disliked her, but had always thought of her as possessing a strangely classical quality, all the stranger because of her squat, almost grotesque ugliness; although not a dwarf, her great breadth gave her the appearance of one; but at the same time she was for him the embodiment of the wealth of the country, a kind of demeter of the islands, though he thought of demeter as having corn-coloured hair, like the crops over which she presided, and this woman had blue-black hair, like the purple of the grapes that grew on the islands. he had often heard her sing, and hoped now that she was arriving in her professional capacity, which seemed probable, both from her dress, and from the unlikelihood that she, a singer and a woman of the native people, would enter madame lafarge's house as a guest, renowned though she was, and fêted, in the capitals of europe. he saw lafarge tiptoe out to receive her, saw madame lafarge follow, and noted the faintly patronising manner of the minister's wife in shaking hands with the artist. applause broke out as julie finished her song. the greek singer was brought forward into the room amid a general movement and redistribution of groups. alexander christopoulos relinquished his place at the piano, and joined the davenant boy by the window. he appeared bored and languid. 'it is really painful ... as well listen to a macaw singing,' he said. 'you are not musical, are you, julian? you can scarcely imagine what i endured. have you heard this woman, kato?' julian said that he had. 'quite uneducated,' christopoulos said loftily. 'any woman in the fields sings as well. it was new to paris, and paris raved. you and i, my dear julian, have heard the same thing a hundred times. shall we escape?' 'i must wait for my father,' said julian, who detested his present companion; 'he and i are going to dine with my uncle.' 'so am i,' christopoulos answered, and, leaning over to the english boy, he began to speak in a confidential voice. 'you know, my dear julian, in this society of ours your father is not trusted. but, after all, what is this society? _un tas de rastas._ do you think i shall remain here long? not i. _je me fiche des balcans._ and you? are you going to bury yourself on those islands of yours, growing grapes, ripening olives? what? that satisfied the old generations. what have i to do with a banking house in herakleion, you with a few vineyards near the coast? i shall marry, and spend the rest of my life in paris.' 'you're ambitious to-day,' julian said mildly. 'ambitious! shall i tell you why? yesterday was my twenty-fifth birthday. i've done with herakleion....' 'conquered it, you mean,' said julian, 'squeezed it dry.' the other glanced at him suspiciously. 'are you laughing at me? confound your quiet manner, julian, i believe my family is right to mistrust your family. very well, then: conquered it. believe me, it isn't worth conquering. don't waste your youth on your vineyards, but come with me. let the islands go. they are always in trouble, and the trouble is getting more acute. they are untidy specks on the map. don't you hear the call of paris and the world?' julian, looking at him, and seeing the laughable intrigue, was mercifully saved from replying, for at that moment madame kato began to sing. she sang without accompaniment, songs of the people, in a curiously guttural voice with an occasionally nasal note, songs no different from those sung in the streets or, as christopoulos had said, in the fields, different only in that, to this peasant music, half melancholy, half emotional, its cadence born of physical labour, she brought the genius of a great artist. as she stood there, singing, julian reflected that her song emphasised the something classical, something massive, something monumental, about her, which overshadowed what might have been slightly grotesque in her appearance. she was, indeed, a demeter of the vineyards. she should have stood singing in the sun, not beneath the pale mockery of the candles. 'entirely uneducated,' christopoulos said again, shifting his shoulders as he leaned against the wall. 'that is why paris liked her: as a contrast. she was clever enough to know that. contrasts are always artistically effective.' he went off, pleased, to repeat his facile epigram to the danish excellency. madame lafarge was looking round to see whether the audience had approved of the innovation. the audience was waiting to hear the expression of an opinion which it might safely follow. presently the word, 'uneducated' was on every lip. julian remained at the window, chained there by his natural reserve and shyness; he looked up at the lighted chandeliers, and down at their reflection in the floors; he saw the faces of people turned towards him, and the back of their heads in the mirrors; he saw armand, the french secretary, with the face of a persian prince, offering red sirop to madame kato. he wished to go and speak to her, but his feet would not carry him forward. he felt himself apart from the talk and the easy laughter. presently mlle lafarge, seeing him there alone, came to him with her awkward and rather touching grace as a hostess. 'you know, i suppose,' she said to him, 'that madame kato is a friend of eve's? will you not come and speak to her?' released, he came. the singer was drinking her red sirop by the piano. the persian minister in the black fez was standing near, smiling gently at her with his usual mournful smile. 'you will not remember me, julian davenant,' the boy said in a low, shy voice. he spoke in greek involuntarily, feeling that french would be an outrage in the presence of this so splendidly hellenic woman. armand had moved away, and they stood isolated, caressed by the vague smile of the persian minister. kato set down her glass of red sirop on the top of the piano. she leaned against the piano talking to the english boy, her arms akimbo, as a peasant woman might lean in the doorway of her house gossiping in the cool of the evening, her little eyes keen and eager. the muscles of her arms and of her magnificent neck curved generously beneath her copper draperies, mocking the flimsy substance, and crying out for the labour of the vineyards. her speech was tinged with the faint accent of the islands, soft and slurring. it was more familiar to julian davenant than the harsher greek of the town, for it was the speech of the women who had brought him up as a child, women of the islands, his nurses in his father's big house in the _platia_ of herakleion. it murmured to him now in the rich voice of the singer beneath the chandelier. 'eve; i have not seen her yet. you must tell her that i have returned and that she must come to my concert on wednesday. tell her that i will sing one song for her, but that all the other songs must be for my audience. i have brought back a new repertoire from munich, which will please herakleion better, i hope, than the common music it despises.' she laughed a little. 'it has taken me thirty years to discover that mankind at large despises the art of its own country. only the exotic catches the ear of fashion. but eve has told me that you do not care for music?' 'i like your music,' he said. 'i will tell you why: because you are musically uneducated.' he looked at her; she was smiling. he wondered whether she had overheard a whisper in the humming room. 'i speak without sarcasm,' she added; 'i envy you your early ignorance. in fact, i believe i have uttered a paradox, and that the words education and music are incompatible. music is the emotional art, and where education steps in at the door emotion flies out at the window. we should keep education for literature, painting, architecture, and sculpture. music is the medium to which we turn when these more intellectual mediums fail us.' julian listened with only half his brain. this peasant, this artist, spoke to him with the superficial ease of drawing-rooms; she employed words that matched ill with her appearance and with the accent of her speech. the native songs were right upon her lips, as the names of architecture and sculpture were wrong. he was offended in his sensitiveness. demeter in analysis of the arts! she was watching him. 'ah, my young friend,' she said, 'you do not understand. i spoke to you as the cousin of eve, who is a child, but who always understands. she is purely sentient, emotional.' he protested,-'i have always thought of eve as exceptionally sophisticated.' kato said,-'you are right. we are both right. eve is childlike in many ways, but she is also wise beyond her years. she will grow, believe me, into a woman of exceptional attraction, and to such women existence is packed with danger. it is one of providence's rare pieces of justice that they should be provided with a natural weapon of self-defence. to a lion his claws,' she said, smiling, 'and to the womanly woman the gift of penetration. tell me, are you fond of eve?' julian was surprised. he replied, naïf again and like a schoolboy,-'she's my cousin. i haven't thought much about her. she's only a child. i haven't seen her yet either. i arrived from england this morning.' they were more than ever isolated from the rest of the room. madame lafarge, talking to don rodrigo valdez, the spanish minister, who had a birdlike head above his immensely high white collar, glanced now and then resentfully at the singer, but otherwise the room was indifferent. the sunlight between the cracks of the venetian blinds had grown fainter, and the many candles were coming into their own. a few people had already taken their leave. an excited group of men had gathered round little christopoulos, and the words 'local politics' shrieked from every gesture. 'i shall not be expected to sing again,' said kato with a slight return to her ironical manner. 'will you not come with eve to my concert on wednesday? or, better, will you come to my house on wednesday evening after the concert? i shall be alone, and i should like to talk to you.' 'to me?' broke from him, independently of his will. 'remember,' she said, 'i am from the islands. that is my country, and when my country is in trouble i am not indifferent. you are very young, mr davenant, and you are not very often in herakleion, but your future, when you have done with oxford and with england'--she made a large gesture--'lies in the islands. you will hear a great deal about them; a little of this i should like you to hear from me. will you come?' the patriot beneath the artist! he would come, flattered, important; courted, at his nineteen years, by a singer of european reputation. popularity was to him a new experience. he expanded beneath its warmth. 'i will come to the concert first with eve.' william davenant, in search of his son, and light-hearted in his relief at the end of the monthly duty, was bowing to madame kato, whom he knew both as a singer and as a figure of some importance in the troubled politics of the tiny state. they had, in their lives, spent many an hour in confabulation, when his absent-minded manner left the man, and her acquired polish the woman. he deferred to her as a controlling agent in practical affairs, spoke of her to his brother with admiration. 'a remarkable woman, robert, a true patriot; sexless, i believe, so far as her patriotism lies. malteios, you say? well, i know; but, believe me, she uses him merely as a means to her end. not a sexless means? damn it, one picks up what weapons come to one's hand. she hasn't a thought for him, only for her wretched country. she is a force, i tell you, to be reckoned with. forget her sex! surely that is easy, with a woman who looks like a toad. you make the mistake of ignoring the people when it is with the people that you have to deal. hear them speak about her: she is an inspiration, a local joan of arc. she works for them in paris, in berlin, and in london; she uses her sex, for them and for them alone. all her life is dedicated to them. she gives them her voice, and her genius.' madame kato did not know that he said these things about her behind her back. had she known, she would have been surprised neither at the opinions he expressed nor at the perception which enabled him to express them, for she had seen in him a shrewd, deliberate intellect that spoke little, listened gravely, and settled soberly down at length upon a much tested and corroborated opinion. madame lafarge, and the women to whom he paid his courtly, rather pompous duty in public, thought him dull and heavy, a true englishman. the men mistrusted him in company with his brother robert, silence, in the south, breeding mistrust as does volubility in the north. the rooms were emptier now, and the candles, burning lower, showed long icicles of wax that overflowed on to the glass of the chandeliers. the tall tumblers had been set down, here and there, containing the dregs of the coloured sirops. madame lafarge looked hot and weary, drained of her early sunday energy, and listening absently to the parting compliments of christopoulos. from the other room, however, still came the laughter of the christopoulos sisters, who were winding up their round game. 'come, julian,' said william davenant, after he had spoken and made his farewells to madame kato. together they went down the stairs and out into the forecourt, where the hotter air of the day greeted them after the coolness of the house, though the heat was no longer that of the sun, but the closer, less glaring heat of the atmosphere absorbed during the grilling hours of the afternoon. the splendid chasseur handed them their hats, and they left the legation and walked slowly down the crowded main street of the town. ii the town house of the davenants stood in the _platia_, at right angles to the club. on the death of old mr davenant--'president davenant,' as he was nicknamed--the town and the country properties had been divided between the two inheriting brothers; herakleion said that the brothers had drawn lots for the country house, but in point of fact the matter had been settled by amicable arrangement. william davenant, the elder of the brothers, widowed, with an only son away for three-quarters of the year at school in england, was more conveniently installed in the town, within five minutes reach of the central office, than robert, who, with a wife and a little girl, preferred the distance of his country house and big garden. the two establishments, as time went on, became practically interchangeable. the rue royale--herakleion was so cosmopolitan as to give to its principal thoroughfare a french name--was at this hour crowded with the population that, imprisoned all day behind closed shutters, sought in the evening what freshness it could find in the cobbled streets between the stucco houses. the street life of the town began between five and six, and the davenants, father and son, were jostled as they walked slowly along the pavements, picking their way amongst the small green tables set outside the numerous cafés. at these tables sat the heterogenous elements that composed the summer population of the place, men of every nationality: old gamblers too disreputable for monte carlo; young levantines, natives, drinking absinthe; turks in their red fezzes; a few rakish south americans. the trams screamed discordantly in their iron grooves, and the bells of the cinema tinkled unceasingly. between the tramlines and the kerb dawdled the hired victorias, few empty at this time of day, but crowded with families of levantines, the men in straw hats, the women for the most part in hot black, very stout, and constantly fanning their heavily powdered faces. now and then a chasseur from some diplomatic house passed rapidly in a flaming livery. mr davenant talked to his son as they made their way along. 'how terrible those parties are. i often wish i could dissociate myself altogether from that life, and god knows that i go merely to hear what people are saying. they know it, and of course they will never forgive me. julian, in order to conciliate herakleion, you will have to marry a greek.' 'alexander christopoulos attacked me to-day,' julian said. 'wanted me to go to paris with him and see the world.' he did not note in his own mind that he refrained from saying that madame kato had also, so to speak, attacked him on the dangerous subject of the islands. they turned now, having reached the end of the rue royale, into the _platia_, where the cavernous archway of the club stained the white front of the houses with a mouth of black. the houses of the _platia_ were large, the hereditary residences of the local greek families. the christopoulos house stood next to the club, and next to that was the house of the premier, his excellency platon malteios, and next to that the italian consulate, with the arms of italy on a painted hatchment over the door. the centre of the square was empty, cobbled in an elaborate pattern which gave the effect of a tessellated pavement; on the fourth side of the square were no houses, for here lay the wide quay which stretched right along above the sea from one end of the town to the other. the davenant house faced the sea, and from the balcony of his bedroom on the second floor julian could see the islands, yellow with little white houses on them; in the absolute stillness and limpidity of the air he could count the windows on aphros, the biggest island, and the terraces on the slope of the hills. the first time he had arrived from school in england he had run up to his bedroom, out on to the balcony, to look across the _platia_ with its many gaudily striped sunblinds, at the blue sea and the little yellow stains a few miles out from the shore. at the door of the davenant house stood two horses ready saddled in the charge of the door-keeper, fat aristotle, an islander, who wore the short bolero and pleated fustanelle, like a kilt, of his country. the door-keepers of the other houses had gathered round him, but as mr davenant came up they separated respectfully and melted away to their individual charges. the way lay along the quays and down the now abandoned ilex avenue. the horses' hoofs padded softly in the thick dust. the road gleamed palely beneath the thick shadows of the trees, and the water, seen between the ancient trunks, was almost purple. the sun was gone, and only the last bars of the sunset lingered in the sky. at the tip of the pier of herakleion twinkled already the single light of phosphorescent green that daily, at sunset, shone out, to reflect irregularly in the water. they passed out of the avenue into the open country, the road still skirting the sea on their left, while on their right lay the strip of flat country crowded in between mount mylassa and the sea, carefully cultivated by the labourers of the davenants, where the grapes hung on the festooned branches looped from pole to pole. william davenant observed them critically, thinking to himself, 'a good harvest.' julian davenant, fresh from an english county, saw as with a new eye their beauty and their luxuriance. he rode loosely in the saddle, his long legs dangling, indisputably english, though born in one of the big painted rooms overlooking the _platia_ of herakleion, and reared in the country until the age of ten. he had always heard the vintage discussed since he could remember. he knew that his family for three generations had been the wealthiest in the little state, wealthier than the greek banking-houses, and he knew that no move of the local politics was entirely free from the influence of his relations. his grandfather, indeed, having been refused a concession he wanted from the government, had roused his islands to a declaration of independence under his own presidency--a state of affairs which, preposterous as it was, had profoundly alarmed the motley band that made up the cabinet in herakleion. what had been done once, could be repeated.... granted his concession, julian's grandfather had peaceably laid down the dignity of his new office, but who could say that his sons might not repeat the experiment? these things had been always in the boy's scheme of life. he had not pondered them very deeply. he supposed that one day he would inherit his father's share in the concern, and would become one of the heads of the immense family which had spread like water over various districts of the mediterranean coasts. besides the davenants of herakleion, there were davenants at smyrna, davenants at salonica, davenants at constantinople. colonies of davenants. it was said that the levant numbered about sixty families of davenants. julian was not acquainted with them all. he did not even know in what degree of relationship they stood to him. every time that he passed through london on his way to school, or, now, to oxford, he was expected to visit his great-uncle, sir henry, who lived in an immense house in belgrave square, and had a business room downstairs where julian was interviewed before luncheon. in this room hung framed plans of the various davenant estates, and julian, as he stood waiting for sir henry, would study the plan of herakleion, tracing with his finger the line of the quays, the indent of the _platia_, the green of the race-course, the square which indicated the country house; in a corner of this plan were the islands, drawn each in separate detail. he became absorbed, and did not notice the entrance of sir henry till the old man's hand fell on his shoulder. 'ha! looking at the plan, are you? familiar to you, what? so it is familiar to me, my boy. never been there, you know. yet i know it. i know my way about. know it as though i had seen it.' he didn't really know it, julian thought--he didn't feel the sun hot on his hands, or see the dazzling, flapping sunblinds, or the advertisements written up in greek characters in the streets. sir henry went on with his sermon. 'you don't belong there, boy; don't you ever forget that. you belong here. you're english. bend the riches of that country to your own purpose, that's all right, but don't identify yourself with it. impose yourself. make 'em adopt your methods. that's the strength of english colonisation.' the old man, who was gouty, and leaned his hands on the top of a stick, clapped the back of one hand with the palm of the other and blew out his lips, looking at his great-nephew. 'yes, yes, remember that. impose yourself. on my soul, you're a well-grown boy. what are you? nineteen? great overgrown colt. get your hair cut. foreign ways; don't approve of that. big hands you've got; broad shoulders. loosely put together. hope you're not slack. can you ride?' 'i ride all day out there,' said julian softly, a little bewildered. 'well, well. come to luncheon. keep a head on your shoulders. your grandfather lost his once; very foolish man. wonder he didn't lose it altogether. president indeed! stuff and nonsense. not practical, sir, not practical.' sir henry blew very hard. 'let's have no such rubbish from you, boy. what'll you drink? here, i'll give you the best: herakleion, 1895. best year we ever had. hope you appreciate good wine; you're a wine-merchant, you know.' he cackled loudly at his joke. julian drank the wine that had ripened on the slopes of mount mylassa, or possibly on the islands, and wished that the old man had not so blatantly called him a wine-merchant. he liked sir henry, although after leaving him he always had the sensation of having been buffeted by spasmodic gusts of wind. he was thinking about sir henry now as he rode along, and pitying the old man to whom those swags of fruit meant only a dusty bottle, a red or a blue seal, and a date stamped in gold numerals on a black label. the light was extraordinarily tender, and the air seemed almost tangible with the heavy, honeyed warmth that hung over the road. julian took off his gray felt hat and hung it on the high peak of his saddle. they passed through a little village, which was no more than a score of tumbledown houses sown carelessly on each side of the road; here, as in the rue royale, the peasants sat drinking at round tables outside the café to the harsh music of a gramophone, with applause and noisy laughter. near by, half a dozen men were playing at bowls. when they saw mr davenant, they came forward in a body and laid eager hands on the neck of his horse. he reined up. julian heard the tumult of words: some one had been arrested, it was vassili's brother. vassili, he knew, was the big chasseur at the french legation. he heard his father soothing, promising he would look into the matter; he would, if need be, see the premier on the morrow. a woman flung herself out of the café and clasped julian by the knee. they had taken her lover. would he, julian, who was young, be merciful? would he urge his father's interference? he promised also what was required of him, feeling a strange thrill of emotion and excitement. ten days ago he had been at oxford, and here, to-day, kato had spoken to him as to a grown man, and here in the dusk a sobbing woman was clinging about his knee. this was a place in which anything, fantastic or preposterous, might come to pass. as they rode on, side by side, his father spoke, thinking aloud. an absent-minded man, he gave his confidence solely in this, so to speak, unintentional manner. long periods, extending sometimes over months, during which his mind lay fallow, had as their upshot an outbreak of this audible self-communion. julian had inherited the trait; his mind progressed, not regularly, but by alternate stagnation and a forward bound. 'the mistake that we have made lies in the importation of whole families of islanders to the mainland. the islands have always considered themselves as a thing apart, as, indeed, historically, they always were. a hundred years is not sufficient to make them an intrinsic part of the state of herakleion. i cannot wonder that the authorities here dislike us. we have introduced a discontented population from the islands to spread sedition among the hitherto contented population of the mainland. if we were wise, we should ship the whole lot back to the islands they came from. now, a man is arrested on the islands by the authorities, and what happens? he is the brother of vassili, an islander living in herakleion. vassili spreads the news, it flies up and down the town, and out into the country. it has greeted us out here already. in every café of the town at this moment the islanders are gathered together, muttering; some will get drunk, perhaps, and the municipal police will intervene; from a drunken row the affair will become political; some one will raise the cry of "liberty!", heads will be broken, and to-morrow a score of islanders will be in jail. they will attribute their imprisonment to the general hostility to their nationality, rather than to the insignificant brawl. vassili will come to me in herakleion to-morrow. will i exercise my influence with malteios to get his brother released? i shall go, perhaps, to malteios, who will listen to me suavely, evasively.... it has all happened a hundred times before. i say, we ought to ship the whole lot back to where they came from.' 'i suppose they are really treated with unfairness?' julian said, more speculation than interest in his tone. 'i suppose a great many people would think so. the authorities are certainly severe, but they are constantly provoked. and, you know, your uncle and i make it up to the islanders in a number of private ways. ninety per cent. of the men on the islands are employed by us, and it pays us to keep them devoted to us by more material bonds than mere sentiment; also it alleviates their discontent, and so obviates much friction with herakleion.' 'but of course,' said julian quickly, 'you don't allow malteios to suspect this?' 'my dear boy! what do you suppose? malteios is president of herakleion. of course, we don't mention such things. but he knows it all very well, and winks at it--perforce. our understanding with malteios is entirely satisfactory, entirely. he is on very wholesome terms of friendly respect to us.' julian rarely pronounced himself; he did so now. 'if i were an islander--that is, one of a subject race--i don't think i should be very well content to forgo my liberty in exchange for underhand compensation from an employer whose tactics it suited to conciliate my natural dissatisfaction.' 'what a ridiculous phrase. and what ridiculous sentiments you occasionally give vent to. no, no, the present arrangement is as satisfactory as we can hope to make it, always excepting that one flaw, that we ought not to allow islanders in large numbers to live upon the mainland.' they turned in between the two white lodges of the country house, and rode up the drive between the tall, pungent, untidy trees of eucalyptus. the house, one-storied, low, and covered with wistaria and bougainvillea, glimmered white in the uncertain light. the shutters were flung back and the open windows gaped, oblong and black, at regular intervals on the upper floor. on the ground level, a broad veranda stretched right along the front of the house, and high french windows, opening on to this, yellow with light, gave access to the downstairs rooms. 'holà!' mr davenant called in a loud voice. 'malista, kyrie,' a man's voice answered, and a servant in the white fustanelle of the islands, with black puttees wound round his legs, and red shoes with turned-up toes and enormous rosettes on the tip, came running to hold the horses. 'they have taken vassili's brother, kyrie,' he said as mr davenant gave him the reins. julian was already in the drawing-room, among the chintz-covered sofas, loaded little tables, and ubiquitous gilt chairs. four fat columns, painted to represent lapis-lazuli, divided the room into two halves, and from their corinthian capitals issued flames made of red tinsel and painted gray smoke, which dispersed itself realistically over the ceiling. he stood in the window, absently looking out into the garden across the veranda, where the dinner table was laid for six. pots of oleander and agapanthus stood along the edge of the veranda, between the fat white columns, with gaps between them through which one might pass out into the garden, and beyond them in the garden proper the fruit gleamed on the lemon-trees, and, somewhere, the sea whispered in the dusk. the night was calm and hot with the serenity of established summer weather, the stars big and steady like sequins in the summer sky. the spirit of such serenity does not brood over england, where to-day's pretence of summer will be broken by the fresh laughter of to-morrow's shower. the rose must fall to pieces in the height of its beauty beneath the fingers of sudden and capricious storm. but here the lemons hung, swollen and heavily pendulous, among the metallic green of their leaves, awaiting the accomplished end of their existence, the deepening of their gold, the fuller curve of their ripened luxuriance, with the complacency of certainty; fruit, not for the whim of the elements, but progressing throughout the year steadfastly towards the hand and the basket of the picker. here and there the overburdened stem would snap, and the oblong ball of greenish-gold would fall with a soft and melancholy thud, like a sigh of regret, upon the ground beneath the tree; would roll a little way, and then be still. the little grove stretched in ordered lines and spaces, from the veranda, where the windows of the house threw rectangles of yellow light on to the ground in the blackness, to the bottom of the garden, where the sea washed indolently against the rocks. presently he would see eve, his eyes would meet her mocking eyes, and they would smile at one another out of the depths of their immemorial friendship. she was familiar to him, so familiar that he could not remember the time when, difficult, intractable, exasperating, subtle, incomprehensible, she had not formed part of his life. she was as familiar to him as the house in the _platia_, with its big, empty drawing-room, the walls frescoed with swinging monkeys, broken columns, and a romantic land and seascape; as the talk about the vintage; as the preposterous politics, always changing, yet always, monotonously, nauseatingly, pettishly, the same. she was not part of his life in england, the prosaic life; she was part of his life on the greek seaboard, unreal and fantastic, where the most improbable happenings came along with an air of ingenuousness, romance walking in the garments of every day. after a week in herakleion he could not disentangle the real from the unreal. it was the more baffling because those around him, older and wiser than he, appeared to take the situation for granted and to treat it with a seriousness that sometimes led him, when, forgetful, he was off his guard, to believe that the country was a real country and that its statesmen, platon malteios, gregori stavridis, and the rest, were real statesmen working soberly towards a definite end. that its riots were revolutions; that its factions were political parties; that its discordant, abusive, wrangling chamber was indeed a senate. that its four hundred stout soldiers, who periodically paraded the _platia_ under the command of a general in a uniform designed by a theatrical costumier in buda-pesth, were indeed an army. that the _platia_ itself was a forum. that the society was brilliant; that its liaisons had the dignity of great passions. that his aunt, who talked weightily and contradicted every one, including herself--the only person who ever ventured to do such a thing--was indeed a political figure, an egeria among the men in whose hands lay the direction of affairs. in his more forgetful moments, he was tempted to believe these things, when he saw his father and his uncle robert, both unbending, incisive, hard-headed business men, believing them. as a rule, preserving his nice sense of perspective, he saw them as a setting to eve. he was beginning to adjust himself again to the life which faded with so extraordinary a rapidity as the express or the steamer bore him away, three times a year, to england. it faded always then like a photographic proof when exposed to the light. the political jargon was the first to go--he knew the sequence--'civil war,' 'independent archipelago,' 'overthrow of the cabinet,' 'a threat to the malteios party,' 'intrigues of the stavridists,' the well-known phrases that, through sheer force of reiteration, he accepted without analysis; then, after the political jargon, the familiar figures that he saw almost daily, sharp, his father's chief clerk; aristotle, the door-keeper, his tussore fustanelle hanging magisterially from the rotundity of his portentous figure; madame lafarge, erect, and upholstered like a sofa, driving in her barouche; the young men at the club, languid and insolent and licentious; then, after the familiar figures, the familiar scenes; and lastly eve herself, till he could no longer recall the drowsy tones of her voice, or evoke her eyes, that, though alive with malice and mockery, were yet charged with a mystery to which he could give no name. he was sad when these things began to fade. he clung on to them, because they were dear, but they slipped through his fingers like running water. their evanescence served only to convince him the more of their unreality. then, england, immutable, sagacious, balanced; oxford, venerable and self-confident, turning the young men of the nation as by machinery out of her mould. law-abiding england, where men worked their way upwards, attaining power and honour in the ripeness of years. london, where the houses were of stone. where was herakleion, stucco-built and tawdry, city of perpetually-clanging bells, revolutions, and prime ministers made and unmade in a day? herakleion of the yellow islands, washed by too blue a sea. where? eve had never been to england, nor could he see any place in england for her. she should continue to live as she had always lived, among the vines and the magnolias, attended by a fat old woman who, though english, had spent so many years of her life in herakleion that her english speech was oddly tainted by the southern lisp of the native greek she had never been able to master; old nana, who had lost the familiarity of one tongue without acquiring that of another; the ideal duenna for eve. then with a light step across the veranda a young greek priest came into the room by one of the french windows, blinking and smiling in the light, dressed in a long black soutane and black cap, his red hair rolled up into a knob at the back of his head according to the fashion of his church. he tripped sometimes over his soutane as he walked, muscular and masculine inside that feminine garment, and when he did this he would gather it up impatiently with a hand on which grew a pelt of wiry red hairs. father paul had instituted himself as a kind of private chaplain to the davenants. eve encouraged him because she thought him picturesque. mrs robert davenant found him invaluable as a lieutenant in her campaign of control over the peasants and villagers, over whom she exercised a despotic if benevolent authority. he was therefore free to come and go as he pleased. the population, julian thought, was flowing back into his recovered world. england and oxford were put aside; not forgotten, not indistinct, not faded like herakleion was wont to fade, but merely put aside, laid away like winter garments in summer weather. he was once more in the kingdom of stucco and adventure. eve was coming back to him, with her strange shadowy eyes and red mouth, and her frivolity beneath which lay some force which was not frivolous. there were women who were primarily pretty; women who were primarily motherly; women who, like mrs robert davenant, were primarily efficient, commanding, successful, metallic; women who, like kato, were consumed by a flame of purpose which broke, hot and scorching, from their speech and burned relentlessly in their eyes; women who were primarily vain and trifling; he found he could crowd eve into no such category. he recalled her, spoilt, exquisite, witty, mettlesome, elusive, tantalising; detached from such practical considerations as punctuality, convenience, reliability. a creature that, from the age of three, had exacted homage and protection.... he heard her indolent voice behind him in the room, and turned expectantly for their meeting. iii it was, however, during his first visit to the singer's flat that he felt himself again completely a citizen of herakleion; that he felt himself, in fact, closer than ever before to the beating heart of intrigue and aspiration. kato received him alone, and her immediate comradely grasp of his hand dispelled the shyness which had been induced in him by the concert; her vigorous simplicity caused him to forget the applause and enthusiasm he had that afternoon seen lavished on her as a public figure; he found in her an almost masculine friendliness and keenness of intellect, which loosened his tongue, sharpened his wits, set him on the path of discovery and self-expression. kato watched him with her little bright eyes, nodding her approval with quick grunts; he paced her room, talking. 'does one come, ever, to a clear conception of one's ultimate ambitions? not one's personal ambitions, of course; they don't count.' ('how young he is,' she thought.) 'but to conceive clearly, i mean, exactly what one sets out to create, and what to destroy. if not, one must surely spend the whole of life working in the dark? laying in little bits of mosaic, without once stepping back to examine the whole scheme of the picture.... one instinctively opposes authority. one struggles for freedom. why? why? what's at the bottom of that instinct? why are we, men, born the instinctive enemies of order and civilisation, when order and civilisation are the weapons and the shields we, men, have ourselves instituted for our own protection? it's illogical. 'why do we, every one of us, refute the experience of others, preferring to gain our own? why do we fight against government? why do i want to be independent of my father? or the islands independent of herakleion? or herakleion independent of greece? what's this instinct of wanting to stand alone, to be oneself, isolated, free, individual? why does instinct push us towards individualism, when the great wellbeing of mankind probably lies in solidarity? when the social system in its most elementary form starts with men clubbing together for comfort and greater safety? no sooner have we achieved our solidarity, our hierarchy, our social system, our civilisation, than we want to get away from it. a vicious circle; the wheel revolves, and brings us back to the same point from which we started.' 'yes,' said kato, 'there is certainly an obscure sympathy with the rebel, that lies somewhere dormant in the soul of the most platitudinous advocate of law and order.' she was amused by his generalisations, and was clever enough not to force him back too abruptly to the matter she had in mind. she thought him ludicrously, though rather touchingly, young, both in his ideas and his phraseology; but at the same time she shrewdly discerned the force which was in him and which she meant to use for her own ends. 'you,' she said to him, 'will argue in favour of society, yet you will spend your life, or at any rate your youth, in revolt against it. youth dies, you see, when one ceases to rebel. besides,' she added, scrutinising him, 'the time will very soon come when you cease to argue and begin to act. believe me, one soon discards one's wider examinations, and learns to content oneself with the practical business of the moment. one's own bit of the mosaic, as you said.' he felt wholesomely sobered, but not reproved; he liked kato's penetration, her vivid, intelligent sympathy, and her point of view which was practical without being cynical. 'i have come to one real conclusion,' he said, 'which is, that pain alone is intrinsically evil, and that in the lightening or abolition of pain one is safe in going straight ahead; it is a bit of the mosaic worth doing. so in the islands....' he paused. kato repressed a smile; she was more and more touched and entertained by his youthful, dogmatic statements, which were delivered with a concentration and an ardour that utterly disarmed derision. she was flattered, too, by his unthinking confidence in her; for she knew him by report as morose and uncommunicative, with relapses into rough high spirits and a schoolboy sense of farce. eve had described him as inaccessible.... 'when you go, as you say, straight ahead,' he resumed, frowning, his eyes absent. kato began to dwell, very skilfully, upon the topic of the islands.... certain events which madame kato had then predicted to julian followed with a suddenness, an unexpectedness, that perplexed the mind of the inquirer seeking, not only their origin, but their chronological sequence. they came like a summer storm sweeping briefly, boisterously across the land after the inadequate warning of distant rumbles and the flash of innocuous summer lightning. the thunder had rumbled so often, it might be said that it had rumbled daily, and the lightning had twitched so often in the sky, that men remained surprised and resentful long after the rough little tornado had passed away. they remained staring at one another, scratching their heads under their straw hats, or leaning against the parapet on the quays, exploring the recesses of their teeth with the omnipresent toothpick, and staring across the sea to those islands whence the storm had surely come, as though by this intense, frowning contemplation they would finally provide themselves with enlightenment. groups of men sat outside the cafés, their elbows on the tables, advancing in tones of whispered vehemence their individual positive theories and opinions, beating time to their own rhetoric and driving home each cherished point with the emphatic stab of a long cigar. in the casino itself, with the broken windows gaping jaggedly on to the forecourt, and the red curtains of the atrium hanging in rags from those same windows, men stood pointing in little knots. 'here they stood still,' and 'from here he threw the bomb,' and those who had been present on the day were listened to with a respect they never in their lives had commanded before and never would command again. there was no sector of society in herakleion that did not discuss the matter with avidity; more, with gratitude. brigandage was brigandage, a picturesque but rather _opéra bouffe_ form of crime, but at the same time an excitement was, indubitably, an excitement. the ministers, in their despatches to their home governments, affected to treat the incident as the work of a fortuitous band rather than as an organised expedition with an underlying political significance, nevertheless they fastened upon it as a pretext for their wit in herakleion, where no sardonic and departmental eye would regard them with superior tolerance much as a grown-up person regards the facile amusement of a child. at the diplomatic dinner parties very little else was talked of. at tea parties, women, drifting from house to house, passed on as their own the witticisms they had most recently heard, which became common property until reclaimed from general circulation by the indignant perpetrators. from the drawing-rooms of the french legation, down to village cafés where the gramophone grated unheard and the bowls lay neglected on the bowling alley, one topic reigned supreme. what nobody knew, and what everybody wondered about, was the attitude adopted by the davenants in the privacy of their country house. what spoken or unspoken understanding existed between the inscrutable brothers? what veiled references, or candid judgments, escaped from william davenant's lips as he lay back in his chair after dinner, a glass of wine--wine of his own growing--between his fingers? what indiscretions, that would have fallen so delectably upon the inquisitive ears of herakleion, did he utter, secure in the confederacy of his efficient and vigorous sister-in-law, of the more negligible robert, the untidy and taciturn julian, the indifferent eve? it was as universally taken for granted that the outrage proceeded from the islanders as it was ferociously regretted that the offenders could not, from lack of evidence, be brought to justice. they had, at the moment, no special grievance; only their perennial grievances, of which everybody was tired of hearing. the brother of vassili, a quite unimportant labourer, had been released; m. lafarge had interested himself in his servant's brother, and had made representations to the premier, which malteios had met with his usual urbane courtesy. an hour later the fellow had been seen setting out in a rowing boat for aphros. all, therefore, was for the best. yet within twenty-four hours of this proof of leniency.... the élite were dining on the evening of these unexpected occurrences at the french legation to meet two guests of honour, one a distinguished albanian statesman who could speak no language but his own, and the other an englishman of irregular appearances and disappearances, an enthusiast on all matters connected with the near east. in the countries he visited he was considered an expert who had the ear of the english cabinet and house of commons, but by these institutions he was considered merely a crank and a nuisance. his conversation was after the style of the more economical type of telegram, with all prepositions, most pronouns, and a good many verbs left out; it gained thereby in mystery what it lost in intelligibility, and added greatly to his reputation. he and the albanian had stood apart in confabulation before dinner, the englishman arguing, expounding, striking his open palm with the fingers of the other hand, shooting out his limbs in spasmodic and ungraceful gestures, the albanian unable to put in a word, but appreciatively nodding his head and red fez. madame lafarge sat between them both at dinner, listening to the englishman as though she understood what he was saying to her, which she did not, and occasionally turning to the albanian to whom she smiled and nodded in a friendly and regretful way. whenever she did this he made her a profound bow and drank her health in the sweet champagne. here their intercourse perforce ended. half-way through dinner a note was handed to m. lafarge. he gave an exclamation which silenced all his end of the table, and the englishman's voice was alone left talking in the sudden hush. 'turkey!' he was saying. 'another matter! ah, ghost of abdul hamid!' and then, shaking his head mournfully, 'world-treachery--world-conspiracy....' 'ah, yes,' said madame lafarge, rapt, 'how true that is, how right you are.' she realised that no one else was speaking, and raised her head interrogatively. lafarge said,-'something has occurred at the casino, but there is no cause for alarm; nobody has been hurt. i am sending a messenger for further details. this note explicitly says'--he consulted it again--'that no one is injured. a mere question of robbery; an impudent and successful attempt. a bomb has been thrown,'--('_mais ils sont donc tous apaches?_' cried condesa valdez. lafarge went on)--'but they say the damage is all in the atrium, and is confined to broken windows, torn hangings, and mirrors cracked from top to bottom. glass lies plentifully scattered about the floor. but i hope that before very long we may be in possession of a little more news.' he sent the smile of a host round the table, reassuring in the face of anxiety. a little pause, punctuated by a few broken ejaculations, followed upon his announcement. 'how characteristic of herakleion,' cried alexander christopoulos, who had been anxiously searching for something noteworthy and contemptuous to say, 'that even with the help of a bomb we can achieve only a disaster that tinkles.' the danish excellency was heard to say tearfully,-'a robbery! a bomb! and practically in broad daylight! what a place, what a place!' 'those islands again, for certain!' madame delahaye exclaimed, with entire absence of tact; her husband, the french military attaché, frowned at her across the table; and the diplomatists all looked down their noses. then the englishman, seeing his opportunity, broke out,-'very significant! all of a piece--anarchy--intrigue--no strong hand--free peoples. too many, too many. small nationalities. chips! cut-throats, all. so!'--he drew his fingers with an expressive sibilant sound across his own throat. 'asking for trouble. yugo-slavs--bah! poles--pfui! eastern empire, that's the thing. turks the only people'--the albanian, fortunately innocent of english, was smiling amiably as he stirred his champagne--'great people. armenians, wash-out. quite right too. herakleion, worst of all. not even a chip. only the chip of a chip.' 'and the islands,' said the danish excellency brightly, 'want to be the chip of a chip of a chip.' 'yes, yes,' said madame lafarge, who had been getting a little anxious, trying to provoke a laugh, 'fru thyregod has hit it as usual--_elle a trouvé le mot juste_,' she added, thinking that if she turned the conversation back into french it might check the englishman's truncated eloquence. out in the town, the quay was the centre of interest. a large crowd had collected there, noisy in the immense peace of the evening. far, far out, a speck on the opal sea, could still be distinguished the little boat in which the three men, perpetrators of the outrage, had made good their escape. beyond the little boat, even less distinct, the sea was dotted with tiny craft, the fleet of fishing-boats from the islands. the green light gleamed at the end of the pier. on the quay, the crowd gesticulated, shouted, and pointed, as the water splashed under the ineffectual bullets from the carbines of the police. the chief of police was there, giving orders. the police motor-launch was to be got out immediately. the crowd set up a cheer; they did not know who the offenders were, but they would presently have the satisfaction of seeing them brought back in handcuffs. it was at this point that the entire lafarge dinner-party debouched upon the quay, the women wrapped in their light cloaks, tremulous and excited, the men affecting an amused superiority. they were joined by the chief of police, and by the christopoulos, father and son. it was generally known, though never openly referred to, that the principal interest in the casino was held by them, a fact which explained the saffron-faced little banker's present agitation. 'the authorities must make better dispositions,' he kept saying to madame lafarge. 'with this example before them, half the blackguards of the country-side will be making similar attempts. it is too absurdly easy.' he glared at the chief of police. 'better dispositions,' he muttered, 'better dispositions.' 'this shooting is ridiculous,' alexander said impatiently, 'the boat is at least three miles away. what do they hope to kill? a fish? confound the dusk. how soon will the launch be ready?' 'it will be round to the steps at any moment now,' said the chief of police, and he gave an order in an irritable voice to his men, who had continued to let off their carbines aimlessly and spasmodically. in spite of his assurance, the launch did not appear. the englishman was heard discoursing at length to madame lafarge, who, at regular intervals, fervently agreed with what he had been saying, and the danish excellency whispered and tittered with young christopoulos. social distinctions were sharply marked: the diplomatic party stood away from the casual crowd, and the casual crowd stood away from the rabble. over all the dusk deepened, one or two stars came out, and the little boat was no longer distinguishable from the fishing fleet with its triangular sails. finally, throbbing, fussing, important, the motor-launch came churning to a standstill at the foot of the steps. the chief of police jumped in, alexander followed him, promising that he would come straight to the french legation on his return and tell them exactly what had happened. in the mirrored drawing-rooms, three hours later, he made his recital. the gilt chairs were drawn round in a circle, in the middle of which he stood, aware that the danish excellency was looking at him, enraptured, with her prominent blue eyes. 'of course, in spite of the start they had had, we knew that they stood no chance against a motor-boat, no chance whatsoever. they could not hope to reach aphros before we overtook them. we felt quite confident that it was only a question of minutes. we agreed that the men must have been mad to imagine that they could make good their escape in that way. sterghiou and i sat in the stern, smoking and talking. what distressed us a little was that we could no longer see the boat we were after, but you know how quickly the darkness comes, so we paid very little attention to that. 'presently we came up with the fishing smacks from aphros, and they shouted to us to keep clear of their tackle--impudence. we shut off our engines while we made inquiries from them as to the rowing-boat. rowing-boat? they looked blank. they had seen no rowing-boat--no boat of any sort, other than their own. the word was passed, shouting, from boat to boat of the fleet; no one had seen a rowing-boat. of course they were lying; how could they not be lying? but the extraordinary fact remained'--he made an effective pause--'there was no sign of a rowing-boat anywhere on the sea.' a movement of appreciative incredulity produced itself among his audience. 'not a sign!' alexander repeated luxuriously. 'the sea lay all round us without a ripple, and the fishing smacks, although they were under full sail, barely moved. it was so still that we could see their reflection unbroken in the water. there might have been twenty of them, dotted about--twenty crews of bland liars. we were, i may as well admit it, nonplussed. what can you do when you are surrounded by smiling and petticoated liars, leaning against their masts, and persisting in idiotic blankness to all your questions? denial, denial, was all their stronghold. they had seen nothing. but they must be blind to have seen nothing? they were very sorry, they had seen nothing at all. would the gentlemen look round for themselves, they would soon be satisfied that nothing was in sight. 'as for the idea that the boat had reached aphros in the time at their disposal, it was absolutely out of the question. 'i could see that sterghiou was getting very angry; i said nothing, but i think he was uncomfortable beneath my silent criticism. he and his police could regulate the traffic in the rue royale, but they could not cope with an emergency of this sort. from the very first moment they had been at fault. and they had taken at least twenty minutes to get out the motor-launch. sterghiou hated me, i feel sure, for having accompanied him and seen his discomfiture. 'anyway, he felt he must take some sort of action, so he ordered his men to search all the fishing smacks in turn. we went the round, a short throbbing of the motors, and then silence as we drew alongside and the men went on board. of course, they found nothing. i watched the faces of the islanders during this inspection; they sat on the sides of their boats, busy with their nets, and pretending not to notice the police that moved about, turning everything over in their inefficient way, but i guessed their covert grins, and i swear i caught two of them winking at one another. if i had told this to sterghiou, i believe he would have arrested them on the spot, he was by then in such a state of exasperation, but you can't arrest a man on a wink, especially a wink when darkness has very nearly come. 'and there the matter remains. we had found nothing, and we were obliged to turn round and come back again, leaving that infernally impudent fleet of smacks in possession of the battle-ground. oh, yes, there is no doubt that they got the best of it. because, naturally, we have them to thank.' 'have you a theory, alexander?' some one asked, as they were intended to ask. alexander shrugged. 'it is so obvious. a knife through the bottom of the boat would very quickly send her to the bottom, and a shirt and a fustanelle will very quickly transform a respectable bank-thief into an ordinary islander. who knows that the two ruffians i saw winking were not the very men we were after? a sufficiently ingenious scheme altogether--too ingenious for poor sterghiou.' iv these things came, made their stir, passed, and were forgotten, leaving only a quickened ripple upon the waters of herakleion, of which julian davenant, undergraduate, aged nineteen, bordering upon twenty, was shortly made aware. he had arrived from england with no other thought in his mind than of his riding, hawking, and sailing, but found himself almost immediately netted in a tangle of affairs of which, hitherto, he had known only by the dim though persistent echoes which reached him through the veils of his deliberate indifference. he found now that his indifference was to be disregarded. men clustered round him, shouting, and tearing with irascible hands at his unsubstantial covering. he was no longer permitted to remain a boy. the half-light of adolescence was peopled for him by a procession of figures, fortunately distinct by virtue of their life-long familiarity, figures that urged and upbraided him, some indignant, some plaintive, some reproachful, some vehement, some dissimulating and sly; many vociferous, all insistent; a crowd of human beings each playing his separate hand, each the expounder of his own theory, rooted in his own conviction; a succession of intrigues, men who took him by the arm, and, leading him aside, discoursed to him, a strange medley of names interlarding their discourse with concomitant abuse or praise; men who flattered him; men who sought merely his neutrality, speaking of his years in tones of gentle disparagement. men who, above all, would not leave him alone. who, by their persecution, even those who urged his youth as an argument in favour of his neutrality, demonstrated to him that he had, as a man, entered the arena. for his part, badgered and astonished, he took refuge in a taciturnity which only tantalised his pursuers into a more zealous aggression. his opinions were unknown in the club where the men set upon him from the first moment of his appearance. he would sit with his legs thrown over the arm of a leather arm-chair, loose-limbed and gray-flannelled, his mournful eyes staring out of the nearest window, while greek, diplomat, or foreigner argued at him with gesture and emphasis. they seemed to him, had they but known, surprisingly unreal for all their clamour, pompous and yet insignificant. his father was aware of the attacks delivered on his son, but, saying nothing, allowed the natural and varied system of education to take its course. he saw him standing, grave and immovable, in the surging crowd of philosophies and nationalities, discarding the charlatan by some premature wisdom, and assimilating the rare crumbs of true worldly experience. he himself was ignorant of the thoughts passing in the boy's head. he had forgotten the visionary tumult of nineteen, when the storm of life flows first over the pleasant, easy meadows of youth. himself now a sober man, he had forgotten, so completely that he had ceased to believe in, the facile succession of convictions, the uprooting of beliefs, the fanatical acceptance of newly proffered creeds. he scarcely considered, or he might perhaps not so readily have risked, the possible effect of the queer systems of diverse ideals picked up, unconsciously, and put together from the conversation of the mountebank administrators of that tiny state, the melodramatic champions of the oppressed poor, and the professional cynicism of dago adventurers. if, sometimes, he wondered what julian made of the talk that had become a jargon, he dismissed his uneasiness with a re-affirmation of confidence in his impenetrability. 'broaden his mind,' he would say. 'it won't hurt him. it doesn't go deep. foam breaking upon a rock.' so might sir henry have spoken, to whom the swags of fruit were but the vintage of a particular year, put into a labelled bottle. julian had gone more than once out of a boyish curiosity to hear the wrangle of the parties in the chamber. sitting up in the gallery, and leaning his arms horizontally on the top of the brass railing, he had looked down on the long tables covered with red baize, whereon reposed, startlingly white, a square sheet of paper before the seat of each deputy, and a pencil, carefully sharpened, alongside. he had seen the deputies assemble, correctly frock-coated, punctiliously shaking hands with one another, although they had probably spent the morning in one another's company at the club--the club was the natural meeting-place of the greeks and the diplomats, while the foreigners, a doubtful lot, congregated either in the gambling-rooms or in the _jardin anglais_ of the casino. he had watched them taking their places with a good deal of coughing, throat-clearing, and a certain amount of expectoration. he had seen the premier come in amid a general hushing of voices, and take his seat in the magisterial arm-chair in the centre of the room, behind an enormous ink-pot, pulling up the knees of his trousers and smoothing his beard away from his rosy lips with the tips of his fingers as he did so. julian's attention had strayed from the formalities attendant upon the opening of the session, and his eyes had wandered to the pictures hanging on the walls: aristidi patros, the first premier, after the secession from greece, b. 1760, d. 1831, premier of the republic of herakleion from 1826 to 1830; pericli anghelis, general, 1774-1847; constantine stavridis, premier from 1830 to 1835, and again from 1841 to 1846, when he died assassinated. the portraits of the other premiers hung immediately below the gallery where julian could not see them. at the end of the room, above the doors, hung a long and ambitious painting executed in 1840 and impregnated with the romanticism of that age, representing the declaration of independence in the _platia_ of herakleion on the 16th september--kept as an ever memorable and turbulent anniversary--1826. the premier, patros, occupied the foreground, declaiming from a scroll of parchment, and portrayed as a frock-coated young man of godlike beauty; behind him stood serried ranks of deputies, and in the left-hand corner a group of peasants, like an operatic chorus, tossed flowers from baskets on to the ground at his feet. the heads of women clustered at the windows of the familiar houses of the _platia_, beneath the fluttering flags with the colours of the new republic, orange and green. julian always thought that a portrait of his grandfather, for twelve months president of the collective archipelago of hagios zacharie, should have been included among the notables. he had tried to listen to the debates which followed upon the formal preliminaries; to the wrangle of opponents; to the clap-trap patriotism which so thinly veiled the desire of personal advancement; to the rodomontade of panaïoannou, commander-in-chief of the army of four hundred men, whose sky-blue uniform and white breeches shone among all the black coats with a resplendency that gratified his histrionic vanity; to the bombastic eloquence which rolled out from the luxuriance of the premier's beard, with a startling and deceptive dignity in the trappings of the ancient and classic tongue. malteios used such long, such high-sounding words, and struck his fist upon the red baize table with such emphatic energy, that it was hard not to believe in the authenticity of his persuasion. julian welcomed most the moments when, after a debate of an hour or more, tempers grew heated, and dignity--that is to say, the pretence of the sobriety of the gathering--was cast aside in childish petulance. 'the fur flew,' said julian, who had enjoyed himself. 'christopoulos called panaïoannou a fire-eater, and panaïoannou called christopoulos a money-grubber. "where would you be without my money?" "where would you be without my army?" "army! can the valiant general inform the chamber how many of his troops collapsed from exhaustion on the _platia_ last independence day, and had to be removed to the hospital?" and so on and so forth. they became so personal that i expected the general at any moment to ask christopoulos how many unmarried daughters he had at home.' malteios himself, president of the little republic, most plausible and empiric of politicians, was not above the discussion of current affairs with the heir of the davenants towards whom, it was suspected, the thoughts of the islanders were already turning. the president was among those who adopted the attitude of total discouragement. the interference of a headstrong and no doubt quixotic schoolboy would be troublesome; might become disastrous. having dined informally with the davenant brothers at their country house, he crossed the drawing-room after dinner, genial, a long cigar protruding from his mouth, to the piano in the corner where eve and julian were turning over some sheets of music. 'may an old man,' he said with his deliberate but nevertheless charming suavity, 'intrude for a moment upon the young?' he sat down, removing his cigar, and discoursed for a little upon the advantages of youth. he led the talk to julian's oxford career, and from there to his future in herakleion. 'a knotty little problem, as you will some day find--not, i hope, for your own sake, until a very remote some day. perhaps not until i and my friend and opponent gregori stavridis are figures of the past,' he said, puffing smoke and smiling at julian; 'then perhaps you will take your place in herakleion and bring your influence to bear upon your very difficult and contrary islands. oh, very difficult, i assure you,' he continued, shaking his head. 'i am a conciliatory man myself, and not unkindly, i think i may say; they would find gregori stavridis a harder taskmaster than i. they are the oldest cause of dispute, your islands, between gregori stavridis and myself. now see,' he went on, expanding, 'they lie like a belt of neutral territory, your discontented, your so terribly and unreasonably discontented islands, between me and stavridis. we may agree upon other points; upon that point we continually differ. he urges upon the senate a policy of severity with which i cannot concur. i wish to compromise, to keep the peace, but he is, alas! perpetually aggressive. he invades the neutral zone, as it were, from the west--periodical forays--and i am obliged to invade it from the east; up till now we have avoided clashing in the centre.' malteios, still smiling, sketched the imaginary lines of his illustration on his knee with the unlighted tip of his cigar. 'i would coax, and he would force, the islanders to content and friendliness.' julian listened, knowing well that malteios and stavridis, opponents from an incorrigible love of opposition for opposition's sake, rather than from any genuine diversity of conviction, had long since seized upon the islands as a convenient pretext. neither leader had any very definite conception of policy beyond the desire, respectively, to remain in, or to get himself into, power. between them the unfortunate islands, pulled like a rat between two terriers, were given ample cause for the discontent of which malteios complained. malteios, it was true, adopted the more clement attitude, but for this clemency, it was commonly said, the influence of anastasia kato was alone responsible. through the loud insistent voices of the men, julian was to remember in after years the low music of that woman's voice, and to see, as in a vignette, the picture of himself in kato's flat among the cushions of her divan, looking again in memory at the photographs and ornaments on the shelf that ran all round the four walls of the room, at the height of the top of a dado. these ornaments appeared to him the apotheosis of cosmopolitanism. there were small, square wooden figures from russia, a few inches high, and brightly coloured; white and gray danish china; little silver images from spain; miniature plants of quartz and jade; battersea snuff-boxes; photographs of an austrian archduke in a white uniform and a leopard-skin, of a mexican in a wide sombrero, mounted on a horse and holding a lasso, of mounet-sully as the blinded oedipus. every available inch of space in the singer's room was crowded with these and similar trophies, and the shelf had been added to take the overflow. oriental embroideries, heavily silvered, were tacked up on the walls, and on them again were plates and brackets, the latter carrying more ornaments; high up in one corner was an ikon, and over the doors hung open-work linen curtains from the bazaars of constantinople. among the many ornaments the massive singer moved freely and spaciously, creating havoc as she moved, so that julian's dominating impression remained one of setting erect again the diminutive objects she had knocked over. she would laugh good-humouredly at herself, and would give him unequalled turkish coffee in little handleless cups, like egg-cups, off a tray of beaten brass set on a small octagonal table inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and all the while she would talk to him musically, earnestly, bending forward, and her restless fingers would turn the bangles round and round upon her arms. he could not think kato unreal, though many of the phrases upon her lips were the same as he heard from the men in the club; he could not think her unreal, when her voice broke over the words 'misery' and 'oppression,' and when her eyes burned their conviction into his. he began to believe in the call of the islands, as he listened to the soft, slurring speech of their people in her voice, and discovered, listening to her words with only half his mind, the richness of the grapes in the loose coils of her dark hair, and the fulvous colouring of the islands in the copper draperies she always affected. it seemed to julian that, at whatever time of day he saw her, whether morning, afternoon, or evening, she was always wearing the same dress, but he supposed vaguely that this could not actually be so. like his father, he maintained her as a woman of genuine patriotic ardour, dissociating her from herakleion and its club and casino, and associating her with the islands where injustice and suffering, at least, were true things. he lavished his enthusiasm upon her, and his relations learned to refrain, in his presence, from making the usual obvious comments on her appearance. he looked upon her flat as a sanctuary and a shrine. he fled one day in disgust and disillusionment when the premier appeared with his ingratiating smile in the doorway. julian had known, of course, of the liaison, but was none the less distressed and nauseated when it materialised beneath his eyes. he fled to nurse his soul-sickness in the country, lying on his back at full length under the olive-trees on the lower slopes of mount mylassa, his hands beneath his head, his horse moving near by and snuffing for pasture on the bare terraces. the sea, to-day of the profoundest indigo, sparkled in the sun below, and between the sea and the foot of the mountain, plainly, as in an embossed map, stretched the strip of flat cultivated land where he could distinguish first the dark ilex avenue, then the ribbon of road, then the village, finally the walled plantation which was his uncle's garden, and the roofs of the low house in the centre. the bougainvillea climbing over the walls and roof of his uncle's house made a warm stain of magenta. herakleion was hidden from sight, on the other hand, by the curve of the hill, but the islands were visible opposite, and, caring only for them, he gazed as he had done many times, but now their meaning and purport crystallised in his mind as never before. there was something symbolical in their detachment from the mainland--in their clean remoteness, their isolation; all the difference between the unfettered ideal and the tethered reality. an island land that had slipped the leash of continents, forsworn solidarity, cut adrift from security and prudence! one could readily believe that they made part of the divine, the universal discontent, that rare element, dynamic, life-giving, that here and there was to be met about the world, always fragmentary, yet always full and illuminating, even as the fragments of beauty. this was a day which julian remembered, marked, as it were, with an asterisk in the calendar of his mind, by two notes which he found awaiting him on his return to the house in the _platia_. aristotle handed them to him as he dismounted at the door. the first he opened was from eve. 'i am so angry with you, julian. what have you done to my kato? i found her in tears. she says you were with her when the premier came, and that you vanished without a word. 'i know your _sauts de gazelle_; you are suddenly bored or annoyed, and you run away. very naïf, very charming, very candid, very fawn-like--or is it, hideous suspicion, a pose?' he was surprised and hurt by her taunt. one did not wish to remain, so one went away; it seemed to him very simple. the second note was from kato. 'julian, forgive me,' it ran; 'i did not know he was coming. forgive me. send me a message to say when i shall see you. i did not know he was coming. forgive me.' he read these notes standing in the drawing-room with the palely-frescoed walls. he looked up from reading them, and encountered the grinning faces of the painted monkeys and the perspective of the romantic landscape. the colours were faint, and the rough grain of the plaster showed through in tiny lumps. why should kato apologise to him for the unexpected arrival of her lover? it was not his business. he sat down and wrote her a perfectly polite reply to say that he had nothing to forgive and had no intention of criticising her actions. the sense of unreality was strong within him. it seemed that he could not escape the general determination to involve him, on one side or the other, in the local affairs. besides the men at the club, sharp, the head clerk at the office, spoke to him--'the people look to you, mr julian; better keep clear of the islands if you don't want a crowd of women hanging round kissing your hands--, murmured to him in the hall when he went to dine at the french legation; walters, the _times_ correspondent in herakleion, winked to him with a man to man expression that flattered the boy. 'i know the balkans inside out, mind you; nearly lost my head to the bulgars and my property to the serbs; i've been held to ransom by albanian brigands, and shot at in the streets of athens on december the second; i've had my rooms ransacked by the police, and i could have been a rich man now if i'd accepted half the bribes that i've had offered me. so you can have my advice, if you care to hear it, and that is, hold your tongue till you're sure you know your own mind.' the women, following the lead, chattered to him. he had never known such popularity. it was hard, at times, to preserve his non-committal silence, yet he knew, ignorant and irresolute, that therein lay his only hope of safety. they must not perceive that they had taken him unawares, that he was hopelessly at sea in the mass of names, reminiscences, and prophecies that they showered upon him. they must not suspect that he really knew next to nothing about the situation.... he felt his way cautiously and learnt, and felt his strength growing. in despite of sharp's warning, he went across to the islands, taking with him father paul. eve exclaimed that he took the priest solely from a sense of the suitability of a retinue, and julian, though he denied the charge, did not do so very convincingly. he had certainly never before felt the need of a retinue. he had always spent at least a week of his holidays on aphros, taking his favourite hawk with him, and living either in his father's house in the village, or staying with the peasants. when he returned, he was always uncommunicative as to how he had passed his time. because he felt the stirring of events in the air, and because he knew from signs and hints dropped to him that his coming was awaited with an excited expectancy, he chose to provide himself with the dignity of an attendant. he had, characteristically, breathed no word of his suspicions, but moved coldly self-reliant in the midst of his uncertainties. father paul only thought him more than usually silent as he busied himself with the sail of his little boat and put out to sea from the pier of herakleion. aphros lay ahead, some seven or eight miles--a couple of hours' sailing in a good breeze. his white sails were observed some way off by the villagers, who by chance were already assembled at the weekly market in the village square. they deserted the pens and stalls to cluster round the top of the steps that descended, steep as an upright ladder, and cut in the face of the rock, from the market place straight down to the sea, where the white foam broke round the foot of the cliff. julian saw the coloured crowd from his boat; he distinguished faces as he drew nearer, and made out the flutter of handkerchiefs from the hands of the women. the village hung sheerly over the sea, the face of the white houses flat with the face of the brown rocks, the difference of colour alone betraying where the one began and the other ended, as though some giant carpenter had planed away all inequalities of surface from the eaves down to the washing water. the fleet of fishing-boats, their bare, graceful masts swaying a little from the perpendicular as the boats ranged gently at their moorings with the sigh of the almost imperceptible waves, lay like resting seagulls in the harbour. 'they are waiting to welcome you--feudal, too feudal,' growled father paul, who, though himself the creature and dependent of the davenants, loudly upheld his democratic views for the rest of mankind. 'and why?' muttered julian. 'this has never happened before. i have been away only four months.' three fishermen wearing the white kilted fustanelle and tasselled shoes were already on the jetty with hands outstretched to take his mooring-rope. eager faces looked down from above, and a hum went through the little crowd as julian sprang on to the jetty, the boat rocking as his weight released it--a hum that died slowly, like the note of an organ, fading harmoniously into a complete silence. paul knew suddenly that the moment was significant. he saw julian hesitate, faltering as it were between sea and land, his dark head and broad shoulders framed in an immensity of blue, the cynosure of the crowd above, still silent and intent upon his actions. he hesitated until his hesitation became apparent to all. paul saw that his hands were shut and his face stern. the silence of the crowd was becoming oppressive, when a woman's voice rang out like a bell in the pellucid air,-'liberator!' clear, sudden, and resonant, the cry vibrated and hung upon echo, so that the mind followed it, when it was no more heard, round the island coast, where it ran up into the rocky creeks, and entered upon the breeze into the huts of goat-herds on the hill. julian slowly raised his head as at a challenge. he looked up into the furnace of eyes bent upon him, lustrous eyes in the glow of faces tanned to a golden brown, finding in all the same query, the same expectancy, the same breathless and suspended confidence. for a long moment he gazed up, and they gazed down, challenge, acceptance, homage, loyalty, devotion, and covenant passing unspoken between them; then, his hesitation a dead and discarded thing, he moved forward and set his foot firmly upon the lowest step. the silence of the crowd was broken by a single collective murmur. the crowd--which consisted of perhaps not more than fifty souls, men and women--parted at the top as his head and shoulders appeared on the level of the market-place. paul followed, tripping over his soutane on the ladder-like stairs. he saw julian's white shoes climbing, climbing the flight, until the boy stood deliberately upon the market-place. a few goats were penned up for sale between wattled hurdles, bleating for lost dams or kids; a clothes-stall displayed highly-coloured handkerchiefs, boleros for the men, silk sashes, puttees, tasselled caps, and kilted fustanelles; a fruit-stall, lined with bright blue paper, was stacked from floor to ceiling with oranges, figs, bunches of grapes, and scarlet tomatoes. an old woman, under an enormous green umbrella, sat hunched on the back of a tiny gray donkey. julian stood, grave and moody, surveying the people from under lowered brows. they were waiting for him to speak to them, but, as a contrast to the stifled volubility seething in their own breasts, his stillness, unexpected and surprising, impressed them more than any flow of eloquence. he seemed to have forgotten about them, though his eyes dwelt meditatively on their ranks; he seemed remote, preoccupied; faintly disdainful, though tolerant, of the allegiance they had already, mutely, laid at his feet, and were prepared to offer him in terms of emotional expression. he seemed content to take this for granted. he regarded them for a space, then turned to move in the direction of his father's house. the people pressed forward after him, a whispering and rustling bodyguard, disconcerted but conquered and adoring. their numbers had been increased since the news of his landing had run through the town. fishermen, and labourers from olive-grove and vineyard, men whose lives were lived in the sun, their magnificent bare throats and arms glowed like nectarines in the white of the loose shirts they wore. knotted handkerchiefs were about their heads, and many of them wore broad hats of rough straw over the handkerchief. ancestrally more italian than greek, for the original population of the archipelago of hagios zacharie had, centuries before, been swamped by the settlements of colonising genoese, they resembled the peasants of southern italy. the headman of the village walked with them, tsantilas tsigaridis, sailor and fisherman since he could remember, whose skin was drawn tightly over the fine bony structure of his face, and whose crisp white hair escaped in two bunches over his temples from under the red handkerchief he wore; he was dressed, incongruously enough, in a blue english jersey which mrs davenant had given him, and a coffee-coloured fustanelle. behind the crowd, as though he were shepherding them, nico zapantiotis, overseer of the davenant vineyards, walked with a long pole in his hand, a white sheepdog at his heels, and a striped blue and white shirt fluttering round his body, open at the throat, and revealing the swelling depth of his hairy chest. between these two notables pressed the crowd, bronzed and coloured, eyes eager and attentive and full of fire, a gleam of silver ear-rings among the shiny black ringlets. bare feet and heelless shoes shuffled alike over the cobbles. at the end of the narrow street, where the children ran out as in the story of the pied piper to join in the progress, the doorway of the davenant house faced them. it was raised on three steps between two columns. the monastery had been a genoese building, but the greek influence was unmistakable in the columns and the architrave over the portico. julian strode forward as though unconscious of his following. paul became anxious. he hurried alongside. 'you must speak to these people,' he whispered. julian mounted the steps and turned in the dark frame of the doorway. the people had come to a standstill, filling the narrow street. it was now they who looked up to julian, and he who looked down upon them, considering them, still remote and preoccupied, conscious that here and now the seed sown in the club-rooms must bear its fruit, that life, grown impatient of waiting for a summons he did not give, had come to him of its own accord and ordered him to take the choice of peace or war within its folded cloak. if he had hoped to escape again to england with a decision still untaken, that hope was to be deluded. he was being forced and hustled out of his childhood into the responsibilities of a man. he could not plead the nebulousness of his mind; action called to him, loud and insistent. in vain he told himself, with the frown deepening between his brows, and the people who watched him torn with anxiety before that frown--in vain he told himself that the situation was fictitious, theatrical. he could not convince himself of this truth with the fire of the people's gaze directed upon him. he must speak to them; they were silent, expectant, waiting. the words broke from him impelled, as he thought, by his terror of his own helplessness and lack of control, but to his audience they came as a command, a threat, and an invitation. 'what is it you want of me?' he stood on the highest of the three steps, alone, the back of his head pressed against the door, and a hand on each of the flanking columns. the black-robed priest had taken his place below him, to one side, on the ground level. julian felt a sudden resentment against these waiting people, that had driven him to bay, the resentment of panic and isolation, but to them, his attitude betraying nothing, he appeared infallible, dominating, and inaccessible. tsantilas tsigaridis came forward as spokesman, a gold ring hanging in the lobe of one ear, and a heavy silver ring shining dully on the little finger of his brown, knotted hand. 'kyrie,' he said, 'angheliki zapantiotis has hailed you. we are your own people. by the authorities we are persecuted as though we were bulgars, we, their brothers in blood. last week a score of police came in boats from herakleion and raided our houses in search of weapons. our women ran screaming to the vineyards. such weapons as the police could find were but the pistols we carry for ornament on the feast-days of church, and these they removed, for the sake, as we know, not being blind, of the silver on the locks which they will use to their own advantage. by such persecutions we are harried. we may never know when a hand will not descend on one of our number, on a charge of sedition or conspiracy, and he be seen no more. we are not organised for resistance. we are blind beasts, leaderless.' a woman in the crowd began to sob, burying her face in her scarlet apron. a man snarled his approval of the spokesman's words, and spat violently into the gutter. 'and you demand of me?' said julian, again breaking his silence. 'championship? leadership? you cannot say you are unjustly accused of sedition! what report of aphros could i carry to herakleion?' he saw the people meek, submissive, beneath his young censure, and the knowledge of his power surged through him like a current through water. 'kyrie,' said the old sailor, reproved, but with the same inflexible dignity, 'we know that we are at your mercy. but we are your own people. we have been the people of your people for four generations. the authorities have torn even the painting of your grandfather from the walls of our assembly room....' 'small blame to them,' thought julian; 'that shows their good sense.' tsantilas pursued,-' ... we are left neither public nor private liberty. we are already half-ruined by the port-dues which are directed against us islanders and us alone.' a crafty look came into his eyes. 'here, kyrie, you should be in sympathy.' julian's moment of panic had passed; he was now conscious only of his complete control. he gave way to the anger prompted by the mercenary trait of the levantine that marred the man's natural and splendid dignity. 'what sympathy i may have,' he said loudly, 'is born of compassion, and not of avaricious interest.' he could not have told what instinct urged him to rebuke these people to whose petition he was decided to yield. he observed that with each fresh reproof they cringed the more. 'compassion, kyrie, and proprietary benevolence,' tsantilas rejoined, recognising his mistake. 'we know that in you we find a disinterested mediator. we pray to god that we may be allowed to live at peace with herakleion. we pray that we may be allowed to place our difficulties and our sorrows in your hands for a peaceful settlement.' julian looked at him, majestic as an arab and more cunning than a jew, and a slightly ironical smile wavered on his lips. 'old brigand,' he thought, 'the last thing he wants is to live at peace with herakleion; he's spoiling for a stand-up fight. men on horses, himself at their head, charging the police down this street, and defending our house like a beleaguered fort; rifles cracking from every window, and the more police corpses the better. may i be there to see it!' his mind flew to eve, whom he had last seen lying in a hammock, drowsy, dressed in white, and breathing the scent of the gardenia she held between her fingers. what part would she, the spoilt, the exquisite, play if there were to be bloodshed on aphros? all this while he was silent, scowling at the multitude, who waited breathless for his next words. 'father will half kill me,' he thought. at that moment tsigaridis, overcome by his anxiety, stretched out his hands towards him, surrendering his dignity in a supreme appeal,-'kyrie? i have spoken.' he dropped his hands to his sides, bowed his head, and fell back a pace. julian pressed his shoulders strongly against the door; it was solid enough. the sun, striking on his bare hand, was hot. the faces and necks and arms of the people below him were made of real flesh and blood. the tension, the anxiety in their eyes was genuine. he chased away the unreality. 'you have spoken,' he said, 'and i have accepted.' the woman named angheliki zapantiotis, who had hailed him as liberator, cast herself forward on to the step at his feet, as a stir and a movement, that audibly expressed itself in the shifting of feet and the releasing of contained breaths, ruffled through the crowd. he lifted his hand to enjoin silence, and spoke with his hand raised high above the figure of the woman crouching on the step. he told them that there could now be no going back, that, although the time of waiting might seem to them long and weary, they must have hopeful trust in him. he exacted from them trust, fidelity, and obedience. his voice rang sharply on the word, and his glance circled imperiously, challenging defiance. it encountered none. he told them that he would never give his sanction to violence save as a last resort. he became intoxicated with the unaccustomed wine of oratory. 'an island is our refuge; we are the garrison of a natural fortress, that we can hold against the assault of our enemies from the sea. we will never seek them out, we will be content to wait, restrained and patient, until they move with weapons in their hands against us. let us swear that our only guilt of aggression shall be to preserve our coasts inviolate.' a deep and savage growl answered him as he paused. he was flushed with the spirit of adventure, the prerogative of youth. the force of youth moved so strongly within him that every man present felt himself strangely ready and equipped for the calls of the enterprise. a mysterious alchemy had taken place. they, untutored, unorganised, scarcely knowing what they wanted, much less how to obtain it, had offered him the formless material of their blind and chaotic rebellion, and he, having blown upon it with the fire of his breath, was welding it now to an obedient, tempered weapon in his hands. he had taken control. he might disappear and the curtains of silence close together behind his exit; paul, watching, knew that these people would henceforward wait patiently, and with confidence, for his return. he dropped suddenly from his rhetoric into a lower key. 'in the meantime i lay upon you a charge of discretion. no one in herakleion must get wind of this meeting; father paul and i will be silent, the rest lies with you. until you hear of me again, i desire you to go peaceably about your ordinary occupations.' 'better put that in,' he thought to himself. 'i know nothing, nor do i wish to know,' he continued, shrewdly examining their faces, 'of the part you played in the robbery at the casino. i only know that i will never countenance the repetition of any such attempt; you will have to choose between me and your brigandage.' he suddenly stamped his foot. 'choose now! which is it to be?' 'kyrie, kyrie,' said tsigaridis, 'you are our only hope.' 'lift up your hands,' julian said intolerantly. his eyes searched among the bronzed arms that rose at his command like a forest of lances; he enjoyed forcing obedience upon the crowd and seeing their humiliation. 'very well,' he said then, and the hands sank, 'see to it that you remember your promise. i have no more to say. wait, trust, and hope.' he carried his hand to his forehead and threw it out before him in a gesture of farewell and dismissal. he suspected himself of having acted and spoken in a theatrical manner, but he knew also that through the chaos of his mind an unextinguishable light was dawning. v julian in the candour of his inexperience unquestioningly believed that the story would not reach herakleion. before the week was out, however, he found himself curiously eyed in the streets, and by the end of the week, going to dinner at the french legation, he was struck by the hush that fell as his name was announced in the mirrored drawing-rooms. madame lafarge said to him severely,-'jeune homme, vous avez été très indiscret,' but a smile lurked in her eyes beneath her severity. an immense serbian, almost a giant, named grbits, with a flat, mongolian face, loomed ominously over him. 'young man, you have my sympathy. you have disquieted the greeks. you may count at any time upon my friendship.' his fingers were enveloped and crushed in grbits' formidable handshake. the older diplomatists greeted him with an assumption of censure that was not seriously intended to veil their tolerant amusement. 'do you imagine that we have nothing to do,' don rodrigo valdez said to him, 'that you set out to enliven the affairs of herakleion?' fru thyregod, the danish excellency, took him into a corner and tapped him on the arm with her fan with that half flirtatious, half friendly familiarity she adopted towards all men. 'you are a dark horse, my dark boy,' she said meaningly, and, as he pretended ignorance, raising his brows and shaking his head, added, 'i'm much indebted to you as a living proof of my perception. i always told them; i always said, "carl, that boy is an adventurer," and carl said, "nonsense, mabel, your head is full of romance," but i said, "mark my words, carl, that boy will flare up; he's quiet now, but you'll have to reckon with him."' he realised the extent of the gratitude of social herakleion. he had provided a flavour which was emphatically absent from the usual atmosphere of these gatherings. every legation in turn, during both the summer and the winter season, extended its hospitality to its colleagues with complete resignation as to the lack of all possibility of the unforeseen. the rules of diplomatic precedence rigorously demanding a certain grouping, the danish excellency, for example, might sit before her mirror fluffing out her already fluffy fair hair with the complacent if not particularly pleasurable certainty that this evening, at the french legation, she would be escorted in to dinner by the roumanian minister, and that on her other hand would sit the italian counsellor, while to-morrow, at the spanish legation, she would be escorted to dinner by the italian counsellor and would have upon her other hand the roumanian minister--unless, indeed, no other minister's wife but madame lafarge was present, in which case she would be placed on the left hand of don rodrigo valdez. she would have preferred to sit beside julian davenant, but he, of course, would be placed amongst the young men--secretaries, young greeks, and what not--at the end of the table. these young men--'les petits jeunes gens du bout de la table,' as alexander christopoulos, including himself in their number, contemptuously called them--always ate mournfully through their dinner without speaking to one another. they did not enjoy themselves, nor did their host or hostess enjoy having them there, but it was customary to invite them.... fru thyregod knew that she must not exhaust all her subjects of conversation with her two neighbours this evening, but must keep a provision against the morrow; therefore, true to her little science, she refrained from mentioning julian's adventure on aphros to the roumanian, and discoursed on it behind her fan to the italian only. other people seemed to be doing the same. julian heard whispers, and saw glances directed towards him. distinctly, herakleion and its hostesses would be grateful to him. he felt slightly exhilarated. he noticed that no greeks were present, and thought that they had been omitted on his account. he reflected, not without a certain apprehensive pleasure, that if this roomful knew, as it evidently did, the story would not be long in reaching his father. who had betrayed him? not paul, he was sure, nor kato, to whom he had confided the story. (tears had come into her eyes, she had clasped her hands, and she had kissed him, to his surprise, on his forehead.) he was glad on the whole that he had been betrayed. he had come home in a fever of exaltation and enthusiasm which had rendered concealment both damping and irksome. little incidents, of significance to him alone, had punctuated his days by reminders of his incredible, preposterous, and penetrating secret; to-night, for instance, the chasseur in the hall, the big, scarlet-coated chasseur, an islander, had covertly kissed his hand.... his father took an unexpected view. julian had been prepared for anger, in fact he had the countering phrases already in his mind as he mounted the stairs of the house in the _platia_ on returning from the french legation. his father was waiting, a candle in his hand, on the landing. 'i heard you come in. i want to ask you, julian,' he said at once, 'whether the story i have heard in the club to-night is true? that you went to aphros, and entered into heaven knows what absurd covenant with the people?' julian flushed at the reprimanding tone. 'i knew that you would not approve,' he said. 'but one must do something. those miserable, bullied people, denied the right to live....' 'tut,' said his father impatiently. 'have they really taken you in? i thought you had more sense. i have had a good deal of trouble in explaining to malteios that you are only a hot-headed boy, carried away by the excitement of the moment. you see, i am trying to make excuses for you, but i am annoyed, julian, i am annoyed. i thought i could trust you. paul, too. however, you bring your own punishment on your head, for you will have to keep away from herakleion in the immediate future.' 'keep away from herakleion?' cried julian. 'malteios' hints were unmistakable,' his father said dryly. 'i am glad to see you are dismayed. you had better go to bed now, and i will speak to you to-morrow.' mr davenant started to go upstairs, but turned again, and came down the two or three steps, still holding his candle in his hand. 'come,' he said in a tone of remonstrance, 'if you really take the thing seriously, look at it at least for a moment with practical sense. what is the grievance of the islands? that they want to be independent from herakleion. if they must belong to anybody, they say, let them belong to italy rather than to greece or to herakleion. and why? because they speak an italian rather than a greek patois! because a lot of piratical genoese settled in them five hundred years ago! well, what do you propose to do, my dear julian? hand the islands over to italy?' 'they want independence,' julian muttered. 'they aren't even allowed to speak their own language,' he continued, raising his voice. 'you know it is forbidden in the schools. you know that the port-dues in herakleion ruin them--and are intended to ruin them. you know they are oppressed in every petty as well as in every important way. you know that if they were independent they wouldn't trouble herakleion.' 'independent! independent!' said mr davenant, irritable and uneasy. 'still, you haven't told me what you proposed to do. did you mean to create a revolution?' julian hesitated. he did not know. he said boldly,-'if need be.' mr davenant snorted. 'upon my word,' he cried sarcastically, 'you have caught the emotional tone of aphros to perfection. i suppose you saw yourself holding panaïoannou at bay? if these are your ideas, i shall certainly support malteios in keeping you away. i am on the best of terms with malteios, and i cannot afford to allow your quixotism to upset the balance. i can obtain almost any concession from malteios,' he added thoughtfully, narrowing his eyes and rubbing his hand across his chin. julian watched his father with distaste and antagonism. 'and that is all you consider?' he said then. 'what else is there to consider?' mr davenant replied. 'i am a practical man, and practical men don't run after chimeras. i hope i'm not more cynical than most. you know very well that at the bottom of my heart i sympathise with the islands. come,' he said, with a sudden assumption of frankness, seeing that he was creating an undesirable rift between himself and his son, 'i will even admit to you, in confidence, that the republic doesn't treat its islands as well as it might. you know, too, that i respect and admire madame kato; she comes from the islands, and has every right to hold the views of an islander. but there's no reason why you should espouse those views, julian. we are foreigners here, representatives of a great family business, and that business, when all's said and done, must always remain our first consideration.' 'yet people here say,' julian argued, still hoping for the best against the cold disillusionment creeping over him, 'that no political move can be made without allowing for your influence and uncle robert's. and my grandfather, after all....' 'ah, your grandfather!' said mr davenant, 'your grandfather was an extremely sagacious man, the real founder of the family tradition, though i wouldn't like malteios to hear me say so. he knew well enough that in the islands he held a lever which gave him, if he chose to use it, absolute control over herakleion. he only used it once, when he wanted something they refused to give him; they held out against him for a year, but ultimately they came to heel. a very sagacious man.... don't run away with the idea that he was inspired by anything other than a most practical grasp--though i don't say it wasn't a bold one--a most practical grasp of the situation. he gave the politicians of herakleion a lesson they haven't yet forgotten. he paused, and, as julian said nothing, added-'we keep very quiet, your uncle robert and i, but malteios, and stavridis himself, know that in reality we hold them on a rope. we give them a lot of play, but at any moment we choose, we can haul them in. a very satisfactory arrangement. tacit agreements, to my mind, are always the most satisfactory. and so you see that i can't tolerate your absurd, uneducated interference. why, there's no end to the harm you might do! some day you will thank me.' as julian still said nothing, he looked at his son, who was standing, staring at the floor, a deep frown on his forehead, thunderous, unconvinced. mr davenant, being habitually uncommunicative, felt aggrieved that his explanatory condescension had not been received with a more attentive deference. he also felt uneasy. julian's silences were always disquieting. 'you are very young still,' he said, in a more conciliatory tone, 'and i ought perhaps to blame myself for allowing you to go about so freely in this very unreal and bewildering place. perhaps i ought not to have expected you to keep your head. malteios is quite right: herakleion is no place for a young man. don't think me hard in sending you away. some day you will come back with, i hope, a better understanding.' he rested his hand kindly for a moment on julian's shoulder, then turned away, and the light of his candle died as he passed the bend of the stairs. on the following evening julian, returning from the country-house where he had spent the day, was told that the premier was with mr davenant and would be glad to see him. he had ridden out to the country, regardless of the heat, turning instinctively to eve in his strange and rebellious frame of mind. for some reason which he did not analyse, he identified her with aphros--the aphros of romance and glamour to which he so obstinately clung. to his surprise she listened unresponsive and sulky. 'you are not interested, eve?' then the reason of her unreasonableness broke out. 'you have kept this from me for a whole week, and you confide in me now because you know the story is public property. you expect me to be interested. grand merci!' 'but, eve, i had pledged myself not to tell a soul.' 'did you tell kato?' 'damn your intuition!' he said angrily. she lashed at him then, making him feel guilty, miserable, ridiculous, though as he sat scowling over the sea--they were in their favourite place at the bottom of the garden, where under the pergola of gourds it was cool even at that time of the day--he appeared to her more than usually unmoved and forbidding. after a long pause,-'julian, i am sorry.--i don't often apologise.--i said i was sorry.' he looked coldly at her with his mournful eyes, that, green in repose, turned black in anger. 'your vanity makes me ill.' 'you told kato.' 'jealousy!' she began to protest; then, with a sudden change of front,-'you know i am jealous. when i am jealous, i lie awake all night. i lose all sense of proportion. it's no joke, my jealousy; it's like an open wound. i put up a stockade round it to protect it. you are not considerate.' 'can you never forget yourself? do you care nothing for the islands? are you so self-centred, so empty-headed? are all women, i wonder, as vain as you?' they sat on the parapet, angry, inimical, with the coloured gourds hanging heavily over their heads. far out to sea the islands lay, so pure and fair and delicate that julian, beholding them, violently rejected the idea that in this possession of such disarming loveliness his grandfather had seen merely a lever for the coercion of recalcitrant politicians. they lay there as innocent and fragile as a lovely woman asleep, veiled by the haze of sunshine as the sleeper's limbs by a garment of lawn. julian gazed till his eyes and his heart swam in the tenderness of passionate and protective ownership. he warmed towards his grandfather, the man whose generous ideals had been so cynically libelled by the succeeding generation. no man deserving the name could be guilty of so repulsive an act of prostitution.... 'they will see me here again,' he exclaimed, striking his fist on the parapet. to the startled question in eve's eyes he vouchsafed an explanation. 'malteios is sending me away. but when his term of office is over, i shall come back. it will be a good opportunity. we will break with herakleion over the change of government. kato will restrain malteios so long as he is in power, i can trust her; but i shall make my break with stavridis.' in his plans for the future he had again forgotten eve. 'you are going away?' 'for a year or perhaps longer,' he said gloomily. her natural instinct of defiant secrecy kept the flood of protest back from her lips. already in her surprisingly definite philosophy of life, self-concealment held a sacred and imperious position. secrecy--and her secrecy, because disguised under a superficial show of expansiveness, was the more fundamental, the more dangerous--secrecy she recognised as being both a shield and a weapon. therefore, already apprehending that existence in a world of men was a fight, a struggle, and a pursuit, she took refuge in her citadel. and, being possessed of a picturesque imagination, she had upon a certain solemn occasion carried a symbolic key to the steps which led down to the sea from the end of the pergola of gourds, and had flung it out as far as she was able into the guardianship of the waters. she remembered this now as she sat on the parapet with julian, and smiled to herself ironically. she looked at him with the eye of an artist, and thought how his limbs, fallen into their natural grace of relaxed muscularity, suggested the sculptural ease of stone far more than the flat surfaces of canvas. sculptural, she thought, was undoubtedly the adjective which thrust itself upon one. in one of her spasmodic outbursts of activity she had modelled him, but, disdainful of her own talents, had left the clay to perish. then she remembered acutely that she would not see him again. 'my mythological julian....' she murmured, smiling. a world of flattery lay in her tone. 'you odd little thing,' he said, 'why the adjective?' she made an expressive gesture with her hands. 'your indifference, your determination--you're so intractable, so contemptuous, so hard--and sometimes so inspired. you're so fatally well suited to the islands. prince of aphros?' she launched at him insinuatingly. she was skilful; he flushed. she was giving him what he had, half unconsciously, sought. 'siren!' he said. 'am i? perhaps, after all, we are both equally well suited to the islands,' she said lightly. and for some reason their conversation dropped. yet it sufficed to send him, stimulated, from her side, full of self-confidence; he had forgotten that she was barely seventeen, a child! and for him the smile of pride in her eyes had been the smile of aphros. in the house, on his way through, he met father paul. 'everything is known,' said the priest, wringing his hand with his usual energy. 'what am i to do? malteios wants me to leave herakleion. shall i refuse? i am glad to have met you,' said julian, 'i was on my way to find you.' 'go, if malteios wants you to go,' the priest replied, 'the time is not ripe yet; but are you determined, in your own mind, to throw in your lot with hagios zacharie? remember, i cautioned you when we were still on aphros: you must be prepared for a complete estrangement from your family. you will be running with the hare, no longer hunting with the hounds. have you considered?' 'i am with the islands.' 'good,' said the priest, making a sign over him. 'go, all the same, if malteios exacts it; you will be the more of a man when you return. malteios' party will surely fall at the next elections. by then we shall be ready, and i will see that you are summoned. god bless you.' 'will you go out to eve in the garden, father? she is under the pergola. go and talk to her.' 'she is unhappy?' asked the priest, with a sharp look. 'a little, i think,' said julian, 'will you go?' 'at once, at once,' said paul, and he went quickly, through the grove of lemon-trees, stumbling over his soutane.... julian returned to herakleion, where he found his father and malteios in the big frescoed drawing-room, standing in an embrasure of the windows. the premier's face as he turned was full of tolerant benignity. 'ah, here is our young friend,' he began paternally. 'what are these stories i hear of you, young man? i have been telling your father that when i was a schoolboy, a _lycéen_--i, too, tried to meddle in politics. take my advice, and keep clear of these things till you are older. there are many things for the young: dancing, poetry, and love. politics to the old and the middle-aged. of course, i know your little escapade was nothing but a joke ... high spirits ... natural mischief....' the interview was galling and humiliating to julian; he disliked the premier's bantering friendliness, through which he was not sufficiently experienced to discern the hidden mistrust, apprehension, and hostility. his father, compelled to a secret and resentful pride in his son, was conscious of these things. but julian, his eyes fixed on the middle button of the premier's frock-coat, sullen and rebellious, tried to shut his ears to the prolonged murmur of urbane derision. he wished to look down upon, to ignore malteios, the unreal man, and this he could not do while he allowed those smooth and skilful words to flow unresisted in their suave cruelty over his soul. he shut his ears, and felt only the hardening of his determination. he would go; he would leave herakleion, only to return with increase of strength in the hour of fulfilment. dismissed, he set out for kato's flat, hatless, in a mood of thunder. his violence was not entirely genuine, but he persuaded himself, for he had lately been with eve, and the plausible influence of herakleion was upon him. he strode down the street, aware that people turned to gaze at him as he went. on the quay, the immense grbits rose suddenly up from the little green table where he sat drinking vermouth outside a café. 'my young friend,' he said, 'they tell me you are leaving herakleion? 'they are wise,' he boomed. 'you would break their toys if you remained. but _i_ remain; shall i watch for you? you will come back? i have hated the greeks well. shall we play a game with them? ha! ha!' his huge laugh reverberated down the quay as julian passed on, looking at the visiting card which the giant had just handed to him:- srgján grbits. _attaché à la légation de s.m. le roi des serbes, croates, et slovènes._ 'grbits my spy!' he was thinking. 'fantastic, fantastic.' kato's flat was at the top of a four-storied house on the quay. on the ground floor of the house was a cake-shop, and, like every other house along the sea-front, over every window hung a gay, striped sunblind that billowed slightly like a flag in the breeze from the sea. inside the cake-shop a number of levantines, dressed in their hot black, were eating sweet things off the marble counter. julian could never get eve past the cake-shop when they went to kato's together; she would always wander in to eat _choux à la crème_, licking the whipped cream off her fingers with a guilty air until he lent her his handkerchief, her own being invariably lost. julian went into the house by a side-door, up the steep narrow stairs, the walls painted in pompeian red with a slate-coloured dado; past the first floor, where on two frosted glass doors ran the inscription: koninklijke nederlandsche stoomboot-maatschappij; past the second floor, where a brass plate said: th. mavrudis et fils, cie. d'assurance; past the third floor, where old grigoriu, the money-lender, was letting himself in by a latchkey; to the fourth floor, where a woman in the native dress of the islands admitted him to kato's flat. the singer was seated on one of her low, carpet-covered divans, her throat and arms, as usual, bare, the latter covered with innumerable bangles; her knees wide apart and a hand placed resolutely upon each knee; before her stood tsigaridis, the headman of aphros, his powerful body encased in the blue english jersey mrs davenant had given him, and from the compression of which his pleated skirt sprang out so ridiculously. beside kato on the divan lay a basket of ripe figs which he had brought her. their two massive figures disproportionately filled the already overcrowded little room. they regarded julian gravely. 'i am going away,' he said, standing still before their scrutiny, as a pupil before his preceptors. kato bowed her head. they knew. they had discussed whether they should let him go, and had decided that he might be absent from herakleion until the next elections. 'but you will return, kyrie?' tsigaridis spoke respectfully, but with urgent authority, much in the tone a regent might adopt towards a youthful king. 'of course i shall return,' julian answered, and smiled and added, 'you mustn't lose faith, tsantilas.' the fisherman bowed with that dignity he inherited from unnamed but remotely ascending generations; he took his leave of kato and the boy, shutting the door quietly behind him. kato came up to julian, who had turned away and was staring out of the window. from the height of this fourth story one looked down upon the peopled quay below, and saw distinctly the houses upon the distant islands. 'you are sad,' she said. she moved to the piano, which, like herself, was a great deal too big for the room, and which alone of all the pieces of furniture was not loaded with ornaments. julian had often wondered, looking at the large expanse of lid, how kato had so consistently resisted the temptation to put things upon it. the most he had ever seen there was a gilt basket of hydrangeas, tied with a blue ribbon, from which hung the card of the premier. he knew that within twenty-four hours he would be at sea, and that herakleion as he would last have seen it--from the deck of the steamer, white, with many coloured sunblinds, and, behind it, mount mylassa, rising so suddenly, so threateningly, seemingly determined to crowd the man-built town off its narrow strip of coast into the water--herakleion, so pictured, would be but a memory; within a week, he knew, he would be in england. he did not know when he would see herakleion again. therefore he abandoned himself, on this last evening, to aphros, to the memory of eve, and to romance, not naming, not linking the three that took possession of and coloured all the daylight of his youth, but quiescent, sitting on the floor, his knees clasped, and approaching again, this time in spirit, the island where the foam broke round the foot of the rocks and the fleet of little fishing-boats swayed like resting seagulls in the harbour. he scarcely noticed that, all this while, kato was singing. she sang in a very low voice, as though she were singing a lullaby, and, though the words did not reach his consciousness, he knew that the walls of the room had melted into the warm and scented freedom of the terraces on aphros when the vintage was at its height, and when the air, in the evening, was heavy with the smell of the grape. he felt eve's fingers lightly upon his brows. he saw again her shadowy gray eyes, red mouth, and waving hair. he visualised the sparkle that crept into her eyes--strange eyes they were! deep-set, slanting slightly upwards, so ironical sometimes, and sometimes so inexplicably sad--when she was about to launch one of her more caustic and just remarks. how illuminating her remarks could be! they always threw a new light; but she never insisted on their value; on the contrary, she passed carelessly on to something else. but whatever she touched, she lit.... one came to her with the expectation of being stimulated, perhaps a little bewildered, and one was not disappointed. he recalled her so vividly--yet recollection of her could never be really vivid; the construction of her personality was too subtle, too varied; as soon as one had left her one wanted to go back to her, thinking that this time, perhaps, one would succeed better in seizing and imprisoning the secret of her elusiveness. julian caught himself smiling dreamily as he conjured her up. he heard the murmur of her seductive voice,-'i love you, julian.' he accepted the words, which he had heard often from her lips, dreamily as part of his last, deliberate evening, so losing himself in his dreams that he almost failed to notice when the music died and the notes of kato's voice slid from the recitative of her peasant songs into conversation with himself. she left the music-stool and came towards him where he sat on the floor. 'julian,' she said, looking down at him, 'your cousin eve, who is full of perception, says you are so primitive that the very furniture is irksome to you and that you dispense with it as far as you can. i know you prefer the ground to a sofa.' he became shy, as he instantly did when the topic of his own personality was introduced. he felt dimly that eve, who remorselessly dragged him from the woods into the glare of sunlight, alone had the privilege. at the same time he recognised her methods of appropriating a characteristic, insignificant in itself, and of building it up, touching it with her own peculiar grace and humour until it became a true and delicate attribute, growing into life thanks to her christening of it; a method truly feminine, exquisitely complimentary, carrying with it an insinuation faintly exciting, and creating a link quite separately personal, an understanding, almost an obligation to prove oneself true to her conception.... 'so you are leaving us?' said kato, 'you are going to live among other standards, other influences, "_dont je ne connais point la puissance sur votre coeur_." how soon will it be before you forget? and how soon before you return? we want you here, julian.' 'for the islands?' he asked. 'for the islands, and may i not say,' said kato, spreading her hands with a musical clinking of all her bangles, 'for ourselves also? how soon will it be before you forget the islands?' she forced herself to ask, and then, relapsing, 'which will fade first in your memory, i wonder--the islands? or kato?' 'i can't separate you in my mind,' he said, faintly ill at ease. 'it is true that we have talked of them by the hour,' she answered, 'have we talked of them so much that they and i are entirely identified? do you pay me the compliment of denying me the mean existence of an ordinary woman?' he thought that by answering in the affirmative he would indeed be paying her the greatest compliment that lay within his power, for he would be raising her to the status of a man and a comrade. he said,-'i never believed, before i met you, that a woman could devote herself so whole-heartedly to her patriotism. we have the islands in common between us; and, as you know, the islands mean more than mere islands to me: a great many things to which i could never give a name. and i am glad, yes, so glad, that our friendship has been, in a way, so impersonal--as though i were your disciple, and this flat my secret school, from which you should one day discharge me, saying "go!"' never had he appeared to her so hopelessly inaccessible as now when he laid his admiration, his almost religious idealisation of her at her feet. he went on,-'you have been so infinitely good to me; i have come here so often, i have talked so much; i have often felt, when i went away, that you, who were accustomed to clever men, must naturally....' 'why not say,' she interrupted, 'instead of "clever men," "men of my own age? my own generation"?' he looked at her doubtfully, checked. she was standing over him, her hands on her hips, and he noticed the tight circles of fat round her bent wrists, and the dimples in every joint of her stumpy hands. 'but why apologise?' she added, taking pity on his embarrassment, with a smile both forgiving and rueful for the ill she had brought upon herself. 'if you have enjoyed our talks, be assured i have enjoyed them too. for conversations to be as successful as ours have been, the enjoyment cannot possibly be one-sided. i shall miss them when you are gone. you go to england?' after a moment she said,-'isn't it strange, when those we know so intimately in one place travel away to another place in which we have never seen them? what do i, kato, know of the houses you will live in in england, or of your english friends? as some poet speaks, in a line i quoted to you just now, of all the influences _dont je ne connais pas la puissance sur votre coeur_! perhaps you will even fall in love. perhaps you will tell this imaginary woman with whom you are to fall in love, about our islands?' 'no woman but you would understand,' he said. 'she would listen for your sake, and for your sake she would pretend interest. does eve listen when you talk about the islands?' 'eve doesn't care about such things. i sometimes think she cares only about herself,' he replied with some impatience. 'you ...' she began again, but, checking herself, she said instead, with a grave irony that was lost upon him, 'you have flattered me greatly to-day, julian. i hope you may always find in me a wise preceptor. but i can only point the way. the accomplishment lies with you. we will work together?' she added, smiling, 'in the realms of the impersonal? a philosophic friendship? a platonic alliance?' when he left her, she was still, gallantly, smiling. part ii--eve i after spending nearly two years in exile, julian was once more upon his way to herakleion. on deck, brooding upon a great coil of rope, his head bare to the winds, absorbed and concentrated, he disregarded all his surroundings in favour of the ever equi-distant horizon. he seemed to be entranced by its promise. he seemed, moreover, to form part of the ship on which he travelled; part of it, crouching as he did always at the prow, as a figurehead forms part; part of the adventure, the winged gallantry, the eager onward spirit indissoluble from the voyage of a ship in the midst of waters from which no land is visible. the loneliness--for there is no loneliness to equal the loneliness of the sea--the strife of the wind, the generosity of the expanse, the pure cleanliness of the nights and days, met and matched his mood. at moments, feeling himself unconquerable, he tasted the full, rare, glory of youth and anticipation. he did not know which he preferred: the days full of sunlight on the wide blue sea, or the nights when the breeze was fresher against his face, and the road more mysterious, under a young moon that lit the ridges of the waves and travelled slowly past, overhead, across the long black lines of cordage and rigging. he knew only that he was happy as he had never been happy in his life. his fellow-passengers had watched him when he joined the ship at brindisi, and a murmur had run amongst them, 'julian davenant--son of those rich davenants of herakleion, you know--great wine-growers--they own a whole archipelago'; some one had disseminated the information even as julian came up the gangway, in faded old gray flannels, hatless, in a rage with his porter, who appeared to be terrified out of all proportion. then, suddenly, he had lost all interest in his luggage, tossed some money to the porter, and, walking for'ard, had thrown himself down on the heap of ropes and stared straight in front of him to sea, straining his eyes forward to where greece might lie. from here he had scarcely stirred. the people who watched him, benevolent and amused, thought him very young. they saw that he relieved the intensity of his vigil with absurd and childlike games that he played by himself, hiding and springing out at the sailors, and laughing immoderately when he had succeeded in startling them--he fraternised with the sailors, though with no one else--or when he saw somebody trip over a ring in the deck. his humour, like his body, seemed to be built on large and simple lines.... in the mornings he ran round and round the decks in rubber-soled shoes. then again he flung himself down and continued with unseeing eyes to stare at the curve of the horizon. not wholly by design, he had remained absent from herakleion for nearly two years. the standards and systems of life on that remote and beautiful seaboard had not faded for him, this time, with their usual astonishing rapidity; he had rather laid them aside carefully and deliberately, classified against the hour when he should take them from their wrappings; he postponed the consideration of the mission which had presented itself to him, and crushed down the recollection of what had been, perhaps, the most intoxicating of all moments--more intoxicating even, because more unexpected, than the insidious flattery of eve--the moment when paul had said to him beneath the fragmentary frescoes of the life of saint benedict, in a surprised voice, forced into admission,-'you have the quality of leadership. you have it. you have the secret. the people will fawn to the hand that chastens.' paul, his tutor and preceptor, from whom he had first learnt, so imperceptibly that he scarcely recognised the teaching as a lesson, of the islands and their problems both human and political, paul had spoken these words to him, renouncing the authority of the master, stepping aside to admit the accession of the pupil. from the position of a regent, he had abased himself to that of a prime minister. julian had accepted the acknowledgement with a momentary dizziness. in later moments of doubt, the words had flamed for him, bright with reassurance. and then he had banished them with the rest. that world of romance had been replaced by the world of healthy and prosaic things. the letters he periodically received from eve irritated him because of their reminder of an existence he preferred to regard, for the moment, as in abeyance. 'and so you are gone: _veni, vidi, vici_. you were well started on your career of devastation! you hadn't done badly, all things considered. herakleion has heaved an "ouf!" of relief. you, unimpressionable? _allons donc!_ you, apathetic? you, placid, unemotional, unawakened? _tu te payes ma tête!_ 'ah, the limitless ambition i have for you! 'i want you to rule, conquer, shatter, demolish. 'haul down the simpering gods, the pampered gods, and put yourself in their place. it is in your power. 'why not? you have _le feu sacré_. stagnation is death, death. burn their temples with fire, and trample their altars to dust.' this letter, scrawled in pencil on a sheet of torn foolscap, followed him to england immediately after his departure. then a silence of six months. then he read, written on spacious yellow writing-paper, with the monogram e.d. embossed in a triangle of mother-of-pearl, vivid and extravagant as eve herself- they are trying to catch me, julian! i come quite near, quite near, and they hold very quiet their hand with the crumbs in it. i see the other hand stealing round to close upon me--then there's a flutter--_un battement d'ailes--l'oiseau s'est de nouveau dérobé!_ they remain gazing after me, with their mouths wide open. they look so silly. and they haven't robbed me of one plume--not a single plume. 'julian! why this mania for capture? this wanting to take from me my most treasured possession--liberty? when i want to give, i'll give freely--largesse with both hands, showers of gold and flowers and precious stones--(don't say i'm not conceited!) but i'll never give my liberty, and i'll never allow it to be forced away from me. i should feel a traitor. i couldn't walk through a forest and hear the wind in the trees. i couldn't listen to music. (ah, julian! this afternoon i steeped myself in music; grieg, elf-like, mischievous, imaginative, romantic, so latin sometimes in spite of his northern blood. you would love grieg, julian. in the fairyland of music, grieg plays gnome to debussy's magician.... then "khovantchina," of all music the most sublime, the most perverse, the most _bariolé_, the most abandoned, and the most desolate.) i could have no comradeship with a free and inspired company. i should have betrayed their secrets, bartered away their mysteries....' he had wondered then whether she were happy. he had visualised her, turbulent, defiant; courting danger and then childishly frightened when danger overtook her; deliciously forthcoming, inventive, enthusiastic, but always at heart withdrawn; she expressed herself truly when she said that the bird fluttered away from the hand that would have closed over it. he knew that she lived constantly, from choice, in a storm of trouble and excitement. yet he read between the lines of her letters a certain dissatisfaction, a straining after something as yet unattained. he knew that her heart was not in what she described as 'my little round of complacent amourettes.' the phrase had awoken him with a smile of amusement to the fact that she was no longer a child. he felt some curiosity to see her again under the altered and advanced conditions of her life, yet, lazy and diffident, he shrank from the storm of adventure and responsibility which he knew would at once assail him. the indolence he felt sprang largely from the certainty that he could, at any moment of his choice, stretch out his hand to gather up again the threads that he had relinquished. he had surveyed herakleion, that other world, from the distance and security of england. he had the conviction that it awaited him, and this conviction bore with it a strangely proprietary sense in which eve was included. he had listened with amusement and tolerance to the accounts of her exploits, his sleepy eyes bent upon his informant with a quiet patience, as a man who listens to a familiar recital. he had dwelt very often upon the possibility of his return to herakleion, but, without a full or even a partial knowledge of his motives, postponed it. yet all the while his life was a service, a dedication. then the letters which he received began to mention the forthcoming elections; a faint stir of excitement pervaded his correspondence; eve, detesting politics, made no reference, but his father's rare notes betrayed an impatient and irritable anxiety; the indications grew, culminating in a darkly allusive letter which, although anonymous, he took to be from grbits, and finally in a document which was a triumph of illiterate dignity, signed by kato, tsigaridis, zapantiotis, and a double column of names that broke like a flight of exotic birds into the mellow enclosure of the cathedral garden where it found him. conscious of his ripened and protracted strength, he took ship for greece. he had sent no word to announce his coming. a sardonic smile lifted one corner of his mouth as he foresaw the satisfaction of taking eve by surprise. a standing joke between them (discovered and created, of course, by her, the inventive) was the invariable unexpectedness of his arrivals. he would find her altered, grown. an unreasoning fury possessed him, a jealous rage, not directed against any human being, but against time itself, that it should lay hands upon eve, his eve, during his absence; taking, as it were, advantage while his back was turned. and though he had often professed to himself a lazy indifference to her devotion to him, julian, he found intolerable the thought that that devotion might have been transferred elsewhere. he rose and strode thunderously down the deck, and one of his fellow-travellers, watching, whistled to himself and thought,-'that boy has an ugly temper.' then the voyage became a dream to julian; tiny islands, quite rosy in the sunlight, stained the sea here and there only a few miles distant, and along the green sea the ship drew a white, lacy wake, broad and straight, that ever closed behind her like an obliterated path, leaving the way of retreat trackless and unavailable. one day he realised that the long, mountainous line which he had taken for a cloud-bank, was in point of fact the coast. that evening, a sailor told him, they were due to make herakleion. he grew resentful of the apathy of passengers and crew. the coast-line became more and more distinct. presently they were passing aphros, and only eight miles lay between the ship and the shore. the foam that gave it its name was breaking upon the rocks of the island.... after that a gap occurred in his memory, and the scene slipped suddenly to the big frescoed drawing-room of his father's house in the _platia_, where the peace and anticipation of his voyage were replaced by the gaiety of voices, the blatancy of lights, and the strident energy of three violins and a piano. he had walked up from the pier after the innumerable delays of landing; it was then eleven o'clock at night, and as he crossed the _platia_ and heard the music coming from the lighted and open windows of his father's house, he paused in the shadows, aware of the life that had gone on for over a year without him. 'and why is that surprising? i'm an astounding egotist,' he muttered. he was still in his habitual gray flannels, but he would not go to his room to change. he was standing in the doorway of the drawing-room on the first floor, smiling gently at finding himself still unnoticed, and looking for eve. she was sitting at the far end of the room between two men, and behind her the painted monkeys grimaced on the wall, swinging by hands and tails from the branches of the unconvincing trees. he saw her as seated in the midst of that ethereal and romantic landscape. skirting the walls, he made his way round to her, and in the angle he paused, and observed her. she was unconscious of his presence. young christopoulos bent towards her, and she was smiling into his eyes.... in eighteen months she had perfected her art. julian drew nearer, critically, possessively, and sarcastically observing her still, swift to grasp the essential difference. she, who had been a child when he had left her, was now a woman. the strangeness of her face had come to its own in the fullness of years, and the provocative mystery of her person, that withheld even more than it betrayed, now justified itself likewise. there seemed to be a reason for the red lips and ironical eyes that had been so incongruous, so almost offensive, in the face of the child. an immense fan of orange feathers drooped from her hand. her hair waved turbulently round her brows, and seemed to cast a shadow over her eyes. he stood suddenly before her. for an instant she gazed up at him, her lips parted, her breath arrested. he laughed easily, pleased to have bettered her at her own game of melodrama. he saw that she was really at a loss, clutching at her wits, at her recollection of him, trying desperately to fling a bridge across the gulf of those momentous months. she floundered helplessly in the abrupt renewal of their relations. seeing this, he felt an arrogant exhilaration at the discomfiture which he had produced. she had awoken in him, without a word spoken, the tyrannical spirit of conquest which she induced in all men. then she was saved by the intervention of the room; first by christopoulos shaking julian's hand, then by dancers crowding round with exclamations of welcome and surprise. mr davenant himself was brought, and julian stood confused and smiling, but almost silent, among the volubility of the guests. he was providing a sensation for lives greedy of sensation. he heard madame lafarge, smiling benevolently at him behind her lorgnon, say to don rodrigo valdez,-'_c'est un original que ce garçon._' they were all there, futile and vociferous. the few new-comers were left painfully out in the cold. they were all there: the fat danish excellency, her yellow hair fuzzing round her pink face; condesa valdez, painted like a courtesan; armand, languid, with his magnolia-like complexion; madame delahaye, enterprising and equivocal; julie lafarge, thin and brown, timidly smiling; panaïoannou in his sky-blue uniform; the four sisters christopoulos, well to the front. these, and all the others. he felt that, at whatever moment during the last eighteen months he had timed his return, he would have found them just the same, complete, none missing, the same words upon their lips. he accepted them now, since he had surrendered to herakleion, but as for their reality as human beings, with the possible exceptions of grbits the giant, crashing his way to julian through people like an elephant pushing through a forest, and of the persian minister, hovering on the outskirts of the group with the gentle smile still playing round his mouth, they might as well have been cut out of cardboard. eve had gone; he could see her nowhere. alexander, presumably, had gone with her. captured at last by the danish excellency, julian had a stream of gossip poured into his ears. he had been in exile for so long, he must be thirsty for news. a new english minister had arrived, but he was said to be unsociable. he had been expected at the races on the previous sunday, but had failed to put in an appearance. armand had had an affair with madame delahaye. at a dinner-party last week, rafaele, the councillor of the italian legation, had not been given his proper place. the russian minister, who was the doyen of the _corps diplomatique_, had promised to look into the matter with the chef du protocole. once etiquette was allowed to become lax.... the season had been very gay. comparatively few political troubles. she disliked political troubles. she--confidentially--preferred personalities. but then she was only a woman, and foolish. she knew that she was foolish. but she had a good heart. she was not clever, like his cousin eve. eve? a note of hostility and reserve crept into her expansiveness. eve was, of course, very charming, though not beautiful. she could not be called beautiful; her mouth was too large and too red. it was almost improper to have so red a mouth; not quite _comme il faut_ in so young a girl. still, she was undeniably successful. men liked to be amused, and eve, when she was not sulky, could be very amusing. her imitations were proverbial in herakleion. imitation was, however, an unkindly form of entertainment. it was perhaps a pity that eve was so _moqueuse_. nothing was sacred to her, not even things which were really beautiful and touching--patriotism, or moonlight, or art--even greek art. it was not that she, mabel thyregod, disapproved of wit; she had even some small reputation for wit herself; no; but she held that there were certain subjects to which the application of wit was unsuitable. love, for instance. love was the most beautiful, the most sacred thing upon earth, yet eve--a child, a chit--had no veneration either for love in the abstract or for its devotees in the flesh. she wasted the love that was offered her. she could have no heart, no temperament. she was perhaps fortunate. she, mabel thyregod, had always suffered from having too warm a temperament. a struggle ensued between them, fru thyregod trying to force the personal note, and julian opposing himself to its intrusion. he liked her too much to respond to her blatant advances. he wondered, with a brotherly interest, whether eve were less crude in her methods. the thought of eve sent him instantly in her pursuit, leaving fru thyregod very much astonished and annoyed in the ball-room. he found eve with a man he did not know sitting in her father's business-room. she was lying back in a chair, listless and absent-minded, while her companion argued with vehemence and exasperation. she exclaimed,-'julian again! another surprise appearance! have you been wearing a cap of invisibility?' seeing that her companion remained silent in uncertainty, she murmured an introduction,-'do you know my cousin julian? prince ardalion miloradovitch.' the russian bowed with a bad grace, seeing that he must yield his place to julian. when he had gone, unwillingly tactful and full of resentment, she twitted her cousin,-'implacable as always, when you want your own way! i notice you have neither outgrown your tyrannical selfishness nor left it behind in england.' 'i have never seen that man before; who is he?' 'a russian. not unattractive. i am engaged to him,' she replied negligently. 'you are going to marry him?' she shrugged. 'perhaps, ultimately. more probably not.' 'and what will he do if you throw him over?' julian asked with a certain curiosity. 'oh, he has a fine _je-m'en-fichisme_; he'll shrug his shoulders, kiss the tips of my fingers, and die gambling,' she answered. when eve said that, julian thought that he saw the whole of miloradovitch, whom he did not know, quite clearly; she had lit him up. they talked then of a great many things, extraneous to themselves, but all the while they observed one another narrowly. she found nothing actually new in him, only an immense development along the old, careless, impersonal lines. in appearance he was as untidy as ever; large, slack-limbed, rough-headed. he, however, found much that was new in her; new, that is, to his more experienced observation, but which, hitherto, in its latent form had slept undiscovered by his boyish eyes. his roaming glance took in the deliberate poise and provocative aloofness of her self-possession, the warm roundness of her throat and arms, the little _mouche_ at the corner of her mouth, her little graceful hands, and white skin that here and there, in the shadows, gleamed faintly gold, as though a veneer of amber had been brushed over the white; the pervading sensuousness that glowed from her like the actual warmth of a slumbering fire. he found himself banishing the thought of miloradovitch.... 'have you changed?' he said abruptly. 'look at me.' she raised her eyes, with the assurance of one well-accustomed to personal remarks; a slow smile crept over her lips. 'well, your verdict?' 'you are older, and your hair is brushed back.' 'is that all?' 'do you expect me to say that you are pretty?' 'oh, no,' she said, snapping her fingers, 'i never expect compliments from you, julian. on the other hand, let me pay you one. your arrival, this evening, has been a triumph. most artistic. let me congratulate you. you know of old that i dislike being taken by surprise.' 'that's why i do it.' 'i know,' she said, with sudden humility, the marvellous organ of her voice sinking surprisingly into the rich luxuriance of its most sombre contralto. he noted with a fresh enjoyment the deep tones that broke like a honeyed caress upon his unaccustomed ear. his imagination bore him away upon a flight of images that left him startled by their emphasis no less than by their fantasy. a cloak of black velvet, he thought to himself, as he continued to gaze unseeingly at her; a dusky voice, a gipsy among voices! the purple ripeness of a plum; the curve of a southern cheek; the heart of red wine. all things seductive and insinuating. it matched her soft indolence, her exquisite subtlety, her slow, ironical smile. 'your delicious vanity,' he said unexpectedly, and, putting out his hand he touched the hanging fold of silver net which was bound by a silver ribbon round one of her slender wrists. ii herakleion. the white town. the sun. the precipitate coast, and mount mylassa soaring into the sky. the distant slope of greece. the low islands lying out in the jewelled sea. the diplomatic round, the calculations of gain, the continuous and plaintive music of the islands, the dream of rescue, the ardent championship of the feebler cause, the strife against wealth and authority. the whole fabric of youth.... these were the things abruptly rediscovered and renewed. the elections were to take place within four days of julian's arrival. father paul, no doubt, could add to the store of information kato had already given him. but father paul was not to be found in the little tavern he kept in the untidy village close to the gates of the davenants' country house. julian reined up before it, reading the familiar name, xenodochion olympos, above the door, and calling out to the men who were playing bowls along the little gravelled bowling alley to know where he might find the priest. they could not tell him, nor could the old islander tsigaridis, who sat near the door, smoking a cigar, and dribbling between his fingers the beads of a bright green rosary. 'the _papá_ is often absent from us,' added tsigaridis, and julian caught the grave inflection of criticism in his tone. the somnolent heat of the september afternoon lay over the squalid dusty village; in the whole length of its street no life stirred; the dogs slept; the pale pink and blue houses were closely shuttered, with an effect of flatness and desertion. against the pink front of the tavern splashed the shadows of a great fig-tree, and upon its threshold, but on one side the tree had been cut back to prevent any shadows from falling across the bowling-alley. julian rode on, enervated by the too intense heat and the glare, and, giving up his horse at his uncle's stables, wandered in the shade under the pergola of gourds at the bottom of the garden. he saw father paul coming towards him across the grass between the lemon-trees; the priest walked slowly, his head bent, his hands clasped behind his back, a spare black figure among the golden fruit. so lean, so lank he appeared, his natural height accentuated by his square black cap; so sallow his bony face in contrast to his stringy red hair. julian likened him to a long note of exclamation. he advanced unaware of julian's presence, walking as though every shuffling step of his flat, broad-toed shoes were an accompaniment to some laborious and completed thought. 'perhaps,' julian reflected, watching him, 'by the time he reaches me he'll have arrived at his decision.' he speculated amusedly as to the priest's difficulties: an insurgent member of the flock? a necessary repair to the church? nothing, nothing outside herakleion. a tiny life! a priest, a man who had forsworn man's birthright. the visible in exchange for the invisible world. a life concentrated and intense; tight-handed, a round little ball of a life. no range, no freedom. village life under a microscope; familiar faces and familiar souls. julian seemed to focus suddenly the rays of the whole world into a spot of light which was the village, and over which the priest's thin face was bent poring with a close, a strained expression of absorption, so that his benevolent purpose became almost a force of evil, prying and inquisitive, and from which the souls under his charge strove to writhe away in vain. to break the image, he called out aloud,-'you were very deeply immersed in your thoughts, father?' 'yes, yes,' paul muttered. he took out his handkerchief to pass it over his face, which julian now saw with surprise was touched into high lights by a thin perspiration. 'is anything wrong?' he asked. 'nothing wrong. your father is very generous,' the priest added irrelevantly. julian, still under the spell, inquired as to his father's generosity. 'he has promised me a new iconostase,' said paul, but he spoke from an immense distance, vagueness in his eyes, and with a trained, obedient tongue. 'the old iconostase is in a disgraceful state of dilapidation,' he continued, with a new, uncanny energy; 'when we cleaned out the panels we found them hung with bats at the back, and not only bats, but, do you know, julian, the mice had nested there; the mice are a terrible plague in the church. i am obliged to keep the consecrated bread in a biscuit tin, and i do not like doing that; i like to keep it covered over with a linen cloth; but no, i cannot, all on account of the mice. i have set traps, and i had got a cat, but since she caught her foot in one of the traps she has gone away. i am having great trouble, great trouble with the mice.' 'i know,' said julian, 'i used to have mice in my rooms at oxford.' 'a plague!' cried paul, still fiercely energetic, but utterly remote. 'one would wonder, if one were permitted to wonder, why he saw fit to create mice. i never caught any in my traps; only the cat's foot. and the boy who cleans the church ate the cheese. i have been very unfortunate--very unfortunate with the mice,' he added. would they never succeed in getting away from the topic? the garden was populated with mice, quick little gray objects darting across the path. and paul, who continued to talk vehemently, with strange, abrupt gestures, was not really there at all. 'nearly two years since you have been away,' he was saying. 'i expect you have seen a great deal; forgotten all about paul? how do you find your father? many people have died in the village; that was to be expected. i have been kept busy, funerals and christenings. i like a full life. and then i have the constant preoccupation of the church; the church, yes. i have been terribly concerned about the iconostase. i have blamed myself bitterly for my negligence. that, of course, was all due to the mice. a man was drowned off these rocks last week; a stranger. they say he had been losing in the casino. i have been into herakleion once or twice, since you have been away. but it is too noisy. the trams, and the glare.... it would not seem noisy to you. you no doubt welcome the music of the world. you are young, and life for you contains no problems. but i am very happy; i should not like you to think i was not perfectly happy. your father and your uncle are peculiarly considerate and generous men. your uncle has promised to pay for the installation of the new iconostase and the removal of the old one. i forgot to tell you that. completely perished, some of the panels.... and your aunt, a wonderful woman.' julian listened in amazement. the priest talked like a wound-up and crazy machine, and all the while julian was convinced that he did not know a word he was saying. he had once been grave, earnest, scholarly, even wise.... he kept taking off and putting on his cap, to the wild disordering of his long hair. 'he's gone mad,' julian thought in dismay. julian despaired of struggling out of the quicksands that sucked at their feet. he thought desperately that if the priest would come back, would recall his spirit to take control of his wits, all might be well. the tongue was babbling in an empty body while the spirit journeyed in unknown fields, finding there what excruciating torment? who could tell! for the man was suffering, that was clear; he had been suffering as he walked across the grass, but he had suffered then in controlled silence, spirit and mind close-locked and allied in the taut effort of endurance; now, their alliance shattered by the sound of a human voice, the spirit had fled, sweeping with it the furies of agony, and leaving the mind bereaved, chattering emptily, noisily, in the attempt at concealment. he, julian, was responsible for this revelation of the existence of an unguessed secret. he must repair the damage he had done. 'father!' he said, interrupting, and he took the priest strongly by the wrist. their eyes met. 'father!' julian said again. he held the wrist with the tensest effort of his fingers, and the eyes with the tensest effort of his will. he saw the accentuated cavities of the priest's thin face, and the pinched lines of suffering at the corners of the mouth. paul had been strong, energetic, masculine. now his speech was random, and he quavered as a palsied old man. even his personal cleanliness had, in a measure, deserted him; his soutane was stained, his hair lank and greasy. he confronted julian with a scared and piteous cowardice, compelled, yet seeking escape, then as he slowly steadied himself under julian's grip the succeeding emotions were reflected in his eyes: first shame; then a horrified grasping after his self-respect; finally, most touching of all, confidence and gratitude; and julian, seeing the cycle completed and knowing that paul was again master of himself, released the wrist and asked, in the most casual voice at his command, 'all right?' he had the sensation of having saved some one from falling. paul nodded without speaking. then he began to ask julian as to how he had employed the last eighteen months, and they talked for some time without reference to the unaccountable scene that had passed between them. paul talked with his wonted gentleness and interest, the strangeness of his manner entirely vanished; julian could have believed it a hallucination, but for the single trace left in the priest's disordered hair. red strands hung abjectly down his back. julian found his eyes drawn towards them in a horrible fascination, but, because he knew the scene must be buried unless paul himself chose to revive it, he kept his glance turned away with conscious deliberation. he was relieved when the priest left him. 'gone to do his hair'--the phrase came to his mind as he saw the priest walk briskly away, tripping with the old familiar stumble over his soutane, and saw the long wisps faintly red on the black garment. 'like a woman--exactly!' he uttered in revolt, clenching his hand at man's degradation. 'like a woman, long hair, long skirt; ready to listen to other people's troubles. unnatural existence; unnatural? it's unnatural to the point of viciousness. no wonder the man's mind is unhinged.' he was really troubled about his friend, the more so that loyalty would keep him silent and allow him to ask no questions. he thought, however, that if eve volunteered any remarks about paul it would not be disloyal to listen. the afternoon was hot and still; eve would be indoors. the traditions of his english life still clung to him sufficiently to make him chafe vaguely against the idleness of the days; he resented the concession to the climate. a demoralising place. a place where priests let their hair grow long, and went temporarily mad.... he walked in the patchy shade of the lemon-trees towards the house in a distressed and irascible frame of mind. he longed for action; his mind was never content to dwell long unoccupied. he longed for the strife the elections would bring. the house glared very white, and all the green shutters were closed; behind them, he knew, the windows would be closed too. another contradiction. in england, when one wanted to keep a house cool, one opened the windows wide. he crossed the veranda; the drawing-room was dim and empty. how absurd to paint sham flames on the ceiling in a climate where the last thing one wanted to remember was fire. he called,-'eve!' silence answered him. a book lying on the floor by the writing-table showed him that she had been in the room; no one else in that house would read albert samain. he picked it up and read disgustedly,- '... des roses! des roses encore! je les adore à la souffrance. elles ont la sombre attirance des choses qui donnent la mort.' 'nauseating!' he cried, flinging the book from him. certainly the book was eve's. certainly she had been in the room, for no one else would or could have drawn that mask of a faun on the blotting paper. he looked at it carelessly, then with admiration; what malicious humour she had put into those squinting eyes, that slanting mouth! he turned the blotting paper idly--how like eve to draw on the blotting paper!--and came on other drawings: a demon, a fantastic castle, a half-obliterated sketch of himself. once he found his name, in elaborate architectural lettering, repeated all over the page. then he found a letter of which the three first words: 'eternal, exasperating eve!' and the last sentence, ' ... votre réveil qui doit être charmant dans le désordre fantaisiste de votre chambre,' made him shut the blotter in a scurry of discretion. here were all the vivid traces of her passage, but where was she? loneliness and the lack of occupation oppressed him. he lounged away from the writing-table, out into the wide passage which ran all round the central court. he paused there, his hands in his pockets, and called again,-'eve!' 'eve!' the echoing passage answered startlingly. presently another more tangible voice came to him as he stood staring disconsolately through the windows into the court. 'were you calling mith eve, mathter julian? the'th rethting. thall i tell her?' he was pleased to see nana, fat, stayless, slipshod, slovenly, benevolent. he kissed her, and told her she was fatter than ever. 'glad i've come back, nannie?' 'why, yeth, thurely, mathter julian.' nana's demonstrations were always restrained, respectful. she habitually boasted that although life in the easy south might have induced her to relax her severity towards her figure, she had never allowed it to impair her manners. 'can i go up to eve's room, nannie?' 'i thuppoth tho, my dear.' 'nannie, you know, you ought to be an old negress.' 'why, dear lord! me black?' 'yes; you'd be ever so much more suitable.' he ran off to eve's room upstairs, laughing, boyish again after his boredom and irritability. he had been in eve's room many times before, but with his fingers on the door handle he paused. again that strange vexation at her years had seized him. he knocked. inside, the room was very dim; the furniture bulked large in the shadows. scent, dusk, luxury lapped round him like warm water. he had an impression of soft, scattered garments, deep mirrors, chosen books, and many little bottles. suddenly he was appalled by the insolence of his own intrusion--an unbeliever bursting into a shrine. he stood silent by the door. he heard a drowsy voice singing in a murmur an absurd childish rhyme,- 'il était noir comme un corbeau, ali, ali, ali, alo, macachebono, la roustah, la mougah, la roustah, la mougah, allah! 'il était de bonne famille, sa mère élevait des chameaux, macachebono....' he discerned the bed, the filmy veils of the muslin mosquito curtains, falling apart from a baldaquin. the lazy voice, after a moment of silence, queried,-'nana?' it was with an effort that he brought himself to utter,-'no; julian.' with an upheaval of sheets he heard her sit upright in bed, and her exclamation,-'who said you might come in here?' at that he laughed, quite naturally. 'why not? i was bored. may i come and talk to you?' he came round the corner of the screen and saw her sitting up, her hair tumbled and dark, her face indistinct, her shoulders emerging white from a foam of lace. he sat down on the edge of her bed, the details of the room emerging slowly from the darkness; and she herself becoming more distinct as she watched him, her shadowy eyes half sarcastic, half resentful. 'sybarite!' he said. she only smiled in answer, and put out one hand towards him. it fell listlessly on to the sheets as though she had no energy to hold it up. 'you child,' he said, 'you make me feel coarse and vulgar beside you. here am i, burning for battle, and there you lie, wasting time, wasting youth, half-asleep, luxurious, and quite unrepentant.' 'surely even you must find it too hot for battle?' 'i don't find it too hot to wish that it weren't too hot. you, on the other hand, abandon yourself contentedly; you are pleased that it is too hot for you to do anything but glide voluptuously into a siesta in the middle of the day.' 'you haven't been here long, remember, julian; you're still brisk from england. only wait; herakleion will overcome you.' 'don't!' he cried out startlingly. 'don't say it! it's prophetic. i shall struggle against it; i shall be the stronger.' she only laughed murmurously into her pillows, but he was really stirred; he stood up and walked about the room, launching spasmodic phrases. 'you and herakleion, you are all of a piece.--you shan't drag me down.--not if i am to live here.--i know one loses one's sense of values here. i learnt that when i last went away to england. i've come back on my guard.--i'm determined to remain level-headed.--i refuse to be impressed by fantastic happenings.... 'why do you stop so abruptly?' did her voice mock him? he had stopped, remembering paul. already he had blundered against something he did not understand. an impulse came to him to confide in eve; eve lying there, quietly smiling with unexpressed but unmistakable irony; eve so certain that, sooner or later, herakleion would conquer him. he would confide in her. and then, as he hesitated, he knew suddenly that eve was not trustworthy. he began again walking about the room, betraying by no word that a moment of revelation, important and dramatic, had come and passed on the tick of a clock. yet he knew he had crossed a line over which he could now never retrace his steps. he would never again regard eve in quite the same light. he absorbed the alteration with remarkable rapidity into his conception of her. he supposed that the knowledge of her untrustworthiness had always lain dormant in him waiting for the test which should some day call it out; that was why he was so little impressed by what he had mistaken for new knowledge. 'julian, sit down; how restless you are. and you look so enormous in this room, you frighten me.' he sat down, closer to her than he had sat before, and began playing with her fingers. 'how soft your hand is. it is quite boneless,' he said, crushing it together; 'it's like a little pigeon. so you think herakleion will beat me? i dare say you are right. shall i tell you something? when i was on my way here, from england, i determined that i would allow myself to be beaten. i don't know why i had that moment of revolt just now. because i am quite determined to let myself drift with the current, whether it carry me towards adventures or towards lotus-land.' 'perhaps towards both.' 'isn't that too much to hope?' 'why? they are compatible. c'est le sort de la jeunesse.' 'prophesy adventures for me!' 'my dear julian! i'm far too lazy.' 'lotus-land, then?' 'this room isn't a bad substitute,' she proffered. he wondered then at the exact extent of her meaning. he was accustomed to the amazing emotional scenes she had periodically created between them in childhood--scenes which he never afterwards could rehearse to himself; scenes whose fabric he never could dissect, because it was more fantastic, more unreal, than gossamer; scenes in which storm, anger, and heroics had figured; scenes from which he had emerged worried, shattered, usually with the ardent impress of her lips on his, and brimming with self-reproach. a calm existence was not for her; she would neither understand nor tolerate it. the door opened, and old nana came shuffling in. 'mith eve, pleath, there'th a gentleman downstairth to thee you. here'th hith card.' julian took it. 'eve, it's malteios.' that drowsy voice, indifferent and melodious,-'tell him to go away, nana; tell him i am resting.' 'but, dearie, what'll your mother thay?' 'tell him to go away, nana.' 'he'th the prime minithter,' nana began doubtfully. 'eve!' julian said in indignation. 'but, mith eve, you know he came latht week and you forgot he wath coming and you wath out.' 'is that so, eve? is he here by appointment with you to-day?' 'no.' 'i shall go down to him and find out whether you are speaking the truth.' he went downstairs, ignoring eve's voice that called him back. the premier was in the drawing-room, examining the insignificant ornaments on the table. their last meeting had been a memorable one, in the painted room overlooking the _platia_. when their greetings were over, julian said,-'i believe you were asking for my cousin, sir?' 'that is so. she promised me,' said the premier, a sly look coming over his face, 'that she would give me tea to-day. shall i have the pleasure of seeing her?' 'what,' thought julian, 'does this old scapegrace politician, who must have his mind and his days full of the coming elections, want with eve? and want so badly that he can perform the feat of coming out here from herakleion in the heat of the afternoon?' aloud he said, grimly because of the lie she had told him,-'she will be with you in a few moments, sir.' in eve's dark room, where nana still stood fatly and hopelessly expostulating, and eve pretended to sleep, he spoke roughly,-'you lied to me as usual. he is here by appointment. he is waiting. i told him you would not keep him waiting long. you must get up.' 'i shall do nothing of the sort. what right have you to dictate to me?' 'you're making mathter julian croth--and he tho thweet-tempered alwayth,' said nana's warning voice. 'does she usually behave like this, nana?' 'oh, mathter julian, it'th dreadful--and me alwayth thaving her from her mother, too. and loothing all her thingth, too, all the time. i can't keep anything in it'th plathe. only three dayth ago the lotht a diamond ring, but the never cared. the thpanith gentleman thent it to her, and the never thanked him, and then lotht the ring. and the never notithed or cared. and the getth dretheth and dretheth, and won't put them on twith. and flowerth and chocolathes thent her--they all thpoil her tho--and the biteth all the chocolathes in two to thee what'th inthide, and throwth them away and thayth the dothn't like them. that exathperating, the ith.' 'leave her to me, nannie.' 'mith naughtineth,' said nana, as she left the room. they were alone. 'eve, i am really angry. that old man!' she turned luxuriously on to her back, her arms flung wide, and lay looking at him. 'you are very anxious that i should go to him. you are not very jealous of me, are you, julian?' 'why does he come?' he asked curiously. 'you never told me....' 'there are a great many things i never tell you, my dear.' 'it is not my business and i am not interested,' he answered, 'but he has come a long way in the heat to see you, and i dislike your callousness. i insist upon your getting up.' she smiled provokingly. he dropped on his knees near her. 'darling, to please me?' she gave a laugh of sudden disdain. 'fool! i might have obeyed you; now you have thrown away your advantage.' 'have i?' he said, and, slipping his arm beneath her, he lifted her up bodily. 'where shall i put you down?' he asked, standing in the middle of the room and holding her. 'at your dressing-table?' 'why don't you steal me, julian?' she murmured, settling herself more comfortably in his grasp. 'steal you? what on earth do you mean? explain!' he said. 'oh, i don't know; if you don't understand, it doesn't matter,' she replied with some impatience, but beneath her impatience he saw that she was shaken, and, flinging one arm round his neck, she pulled herself up and kissed him on the mouth. he struggled away, displeased, brotherly, and feeling the indecency of that kiss in that darkened room, given by one whose thinly-clad, supple body he had been holding as he might hold a child's. 'you have a genius for making me angry, eve.' he stopped: she had relaxed suddenly, limp and white in his arms; with a long sigh she let her head fall back, her eyes closed. the warmth of her limbs reached him through the diaphanous garment she wore. he thought he had never before seen such abandonment of expression and attitude; his displeasure deepened, and an uncomplimentary word rose to his lips. 'i don't wonder....' flashed through his mind. he was shocked, as a brother might be at the betrayal of his sister's sexuality. 'eve!' he said sharply. she opened her eyes, met his, and came to herself. 'put me down!' she cried, and as he set her on her feet, she snatched at her spanish shawl and wrapped it round her. 'oh!' she said, an altered being, shamed and outraged, burying her face, 'go now, julian--go, go, go.' he went, shaking his head in perplexity: there were too many things in herakleion he failed to understand. paul, eve, malteios. this afternoon with eve, which should have been natural, had been difficult. moments of illumination were also moments of a profounder obscurity. and why should malteios return to-day, when in the preceding week, according to nana, he had been so casually forgotten? why so patient, so long-suffering, with eve? was it possible that he should be attracted by eve? it seemed to julian, accustomed still to regard her as a child, very improbable. malteios! the premier! and the elections beginning within four days--that he should spare the time! rumour said that the elections would go badly for him; that the stavridists would be returned. a bad look-out for the islands if they were. rumour said that stavridis was neglecting no means, no means whatsoever, by which he might strengthen his cause. he was more unscrupulous, younger, more vigorous, than malteios. the years of dispossession had added to his determination and energy. malteios had seriously prejudiced his popularity by his liaison with kato, a woman, as the people of herakleion never forgot, of the islands, and an avowed champion of their cause. was it possible that eve was mixed up in malteios' political schemes? julian laughed aloud at the idea of eve interesting herself in politics. but perhaps kato herself, for whom eve entertained one of her strongest and most enduring enthusiasms, had taken advantage of their friendship to interest eve in malteios' affairs? anything was possible in that preposterous state. eve, he knew, would mischievously and ignorantly espouse any form of intrigue. if malteios came with any other motive he was an old satyr--nothing more. julian's mind strayed again to the elections. the return of the stavridis party would mean certain disturbances in the islands. disturbances would mean an instant appeal for leadership. he would be reminded of the day he had spent, the only day of his life, he thought, on which he had truly lived, on aphros. tsigaridis would come, grave, insistent, to hold him to his undertakings, a figure of comedy in his absurdly picturesque clothes, but also a figure full of dignity with his unanswerable claim. he would bring forward a species of moral blackmail, to which julian, ripe for adventure and sensitive to his obligations, would surely surrender. after that there would be no drawing back.... 'i have little hope of victory,' said malteios, to whom julian, in search of information, had recourse; and hinted with infinite suavity and euphemism, that the question of election in herakleion depended largely, if not entirely, on the condition and judicious distribution of the party funds. stavridis, it appeared, had controlled larger subscriptions, more trustworthy guarantees. the christopoulos, the largest bankers, were unreliable. alexander had political ambitions. an under-secretaryship.... christopoulos _père_ had subscribed, it was true, to the malteios party, but while his right hand produced the miserable sum from his right pocket, who could tell with what generosity his left hand ladled out the drachmæ into the gaping stavridis coffers? safe in either eventuality. malteios knew his game. the premier enlarged blandly upon the situation, regretful, but without indignation. as a man of the world, he accepted its ways as herakleion knew them. julian noted his gentle shrugs, his unfinished sentences and innuendoes. it occurred to him that the premier's frankness and readiness to enlarge upon political technique were not without motive. buttoned into his high frock-coat, which the climate of herakleion was unable to abolish, he walked softly up and down the parquet floor between the lapis columns, his fingers loosely interlaced behind his back, talking to julian. in another four days he might no longer be premier, might be merely a private individual, unostentatiously working a dozen strands of intrigue. the boy was not to be neglected as a tool. he tried him on what he conceived to be his tenderest point. 'i have not been unfavourable to your islanders during my administration,'--then, thinking the method perhaps a trifle crude, he added, 'i have even exposed myself to the attack of my opponents on that score; they have made capital out of my clemency. had i been a less disinterested man, i should have had greater foresight. i should have sacrificed my sense of justice to the demands of my future.' he gave a deprecatory and melancholy smile. 'do i regret the course i chose? not for an instant. the responsibility of a statesman is not solely towards himself or his adherents. he must set it sternly aside in favour of the poor, ignorant destinies committed to his care. i lay down my office with an unburdened conscience.' he stopped in his walk and stood before julian, who, with his hands thrust in his pockets, had listened to the discourse from the depths of his habitual arm-chair. 'but you, young man, are not in my position. the door i seek is marked exit; the door you seek, entrance. i think i may, without presumption, as an old and finished man, offer you a word of prophecy.' he unlaced his fingers and pointed one of them at julian. 'you may live to be the saviour of an oppressed people, a not unworthy mission. remember that my present opponents, should they come to power, will not sympathise with your efforts, as i myself--who knows?--might have sympathised.' julian, acknowledging the warning, thought he recognised the style of the senate chamber, but failed to recognise the sentiments he had heard expressed by the premier on a former occasion, on this same subject of his interference in the affairs of the islands. he ventured to suggest as much. the premier's smile broadened, his deprecatory manner deepened. 'ah, you were younger then; hot-headed; i did not know how far i could trust you. your intentions, excellent; but your judgment perhaps a little precipitate? since then, you have seen the world; you are a man. you have returned, no doubt, ready to pick up the weapon you tentatively fingered as a boy. you will no longer be blinded by sentiment, you will weigh your actions nicely in the balance. and you will remember the goodwill of platon malteios?' he resumed his soft walk up and down the room. 'within a few weeks you may find yourself in the heart of strife. i see you as a young athlete on the threshold, doubtless as generous as most young men, as ambitious, as eager. discard the divine foolishness of allowing ideas, not facts, to govern your heart. we live in herakleion, not in utopia. we have all shed, little by little, our illusions....' after a sigh, the depth of whose genuineness neither he nor julian could accurately diagnose, he continued, brightening as he returned to the practical,-'stavridis--a harsher man than i. he and your islanders would come to grips within a month. i should scarcely deplore it. a question based on the struggle of nationality--for, it cannot be denied, the italian blood of your islanders severs them irremediably from the true greek of herakleion--such questions cry for decisive settlement even at the cost of a little bloodletting. submission or liberty, once and for all. that is preferable to the present irritable shilly-shally.' 'i know the alternative i should choose,' said julian. 'liberty?--the lure of the young,' said malteios, not unkindly. 'i said that i should scarcely deplore such an attempt, for it would fail; herakleion could never tolerate for long the independence of the islands. yes, it would surely fail. but from it good might emerge. a friendlier settlement, a better understanding, a more cheerful submission. believe me,' he added, seeing the cloud of obstinate disagreement upon julian's face, 'never break your heart over the failure. your islands would have learnt the lesson of the inevitable; and the great inevitable is perhaps the least intolerable of all human sorrows. there is, after all, a certain kindliness in the fate which lays the obligation of sheer necessity upon our courage.' for a moment his usual manner had left him; he recalled it with a short laugh. 'perhaps the thought that my long years of office may be nearly at an end betrays me into this undue melancholy,' he said flippantly; 'pay no attention, young man. indeed, whatever i may say, i know that you will cling to your idea of revolt. am i not right?' once more the keen, sly look was in his eyes, and julian knew that only the malteios who desired the rupture of the islands with his own political adversary, remained. he felt, in a way, comforted to be again upon the familiar ground; his conception of the man had been momentarily disarranged. 'your excellency is very shrewd,' he replied, politely and evasively. malteios shrugged and smiled the smile that had such real charm; and as he shrugged and smiled the discussion away into the region of such things dismissed, his glance travelled beyond julian to the door, his mouth curved into a more goatish smile amidst his beard, and his eyes narrowed into two slits till his whole face resembled the mask of the old faun that eve had drawn on the blotting paper. 'mademoiselle!' he murmured, advancing towards eve, who, dressed in white, appeared between the lapis-lazuli columns. iii madame lafarge gave a picnic which preceded the day of the elections, and to julian davenant it seemed that he was entering a cool, dark cavern roofed over with mysterious greenery after riding in the heat across a glaring plain. the transition from the white herakleion to the deep valley, shut in by steep, terraced hills covered with olives, ilexes, and myrtles--a valley profound, haunted, silent, hallowed by pools of black-green shadow--consciousness of the transition stole over him soothingly, as his pony picked its way down the stony path of the hill-side. he had refused to accompany the others. early in the morning he had ridden over the hills, so early that he had watched the sunrise, and had counted, from a summit, the houses on aphros in the glassy limpidity of the grecian dawn. the morning had been pure as the treble notes of a violin, the sea below bright as a pavement of diamonds. the islands lay, clear and low, delicately yellow, rose, and lilac, in the serene immensity of the dazzling waters. they seemed to him to contain every element of enchantment; cleanly of line as cameos, yet intangible as a mirage, rising lovely and gracious as aphrodite from the white flashes of their foam, fairy islands of beauty and illusion in a sea of radiant and eternal youth. a stream ran through the valley, and near the banks of the stream, in front of a clump of ilexes, gleamed the marble columns of a tiny ruined temple. julian turned his pony loose to graze, throwing himself down at full length beside the stream and idly pulling at the orchids and magenta cyclamen which grew in profusion. towards midday his solitude was interrupted. a procession of victorias accompanied by men on horseback began to wind down the steep road into the valley; from afar he watched them coming, conscious of distaste and boredom, then remembering that eve was of the party, and smiling to himself a little in relief. she would come, at first silent, unobtrusive, almost sulky; then little by little the spell of their intimacy would steal over him, and by a word or a glance they would be linked, the whole system of their relationship developing itself anew, a system elaborated by her, as he well knew; built up of personal, whimsical jokes; stimulating, inventive, she had to a supreme extent the gift of creating such a web, subtly, by meaning more than she said and saying less than she meant; giving infinite promise, but ever postponing fulfilment. 'a flirt?' he wondered to himself, lazily watching the string of carriages in one of which she was. but she was more elemental, more dangerous, than a mere flirt. on that account, and because of her wide and penetrative intelligence, he could not relegate her to the common category. yet he thought he might safely make the assertion that no man in herakleion had altogether escaped her attraction. he thought he might apply this generalisation from m. lafarge, or malteios, or don rodrigo valdez, down to the chasseur who picked up her handkerchief. (her handkerchief! ah, yes! she could always be traced, as in a paper-chase, by her scattered possessions--a handkerchief, a glove, a cigarette-case, a gardenia, a purse full of money, a powder-puff--frivolities doubly delightful and doubly irritating in a being so terrifyingly elemental, so unassailably and sarcastically intelligent.) eve, the child he had known unaccountable, passionate, embarrassing, who had written him the precocious letters on every topic in a variety of tongues, imaginative exceedingly, copiously illustrated, bursting occasionally into erratic and illegible verse; eve, with her desperate and excessive passions; eve, grown to womanhood, grown into a firebrand! he had been entertained, but at the same time slightly offended, to find her grown; his conception of her was disarranged; he had felt almost a sense of outrage in seeing her heavy hair piled upon her head; he had looked curiously at the uncovered nape of her neck, the hair brushed upwards and slightly curling, where once it had hung thick and plaited; he had noted with an irritable shame the softness of her throat in the evening dress she had worn when first he had seen her. he banished violently the recollection of her in that brief moment when in his anger he had lifted her out of her bed and had carried her across the room in his arms. he banished it with a shudder and a revulsion, as he might have banished a suggestion of incest. springing to his feet, he went forward to meet the carriages; the shadowed valley was flicked by the bright uniforms of the chasseurs on the boxes and the summer dresses of the women in the victorias; the laughter of the danish excellency already reached his ears above the hum of talk and the sliding hoofs of the horses as they advanced cautiously down the hill, straining back against their harness, and bringing with them at every step a little shower of stones from the rough surface of the road. the younger men, greeks, and secretaries of legations, rode by the side of the carriages. the danish excellency was the first to alight, fat and babbling in a pink muslin dress with innumerable flounces; julian turned aside to hide his smile. madame lafarge descended with her customary weightiness, beaming without benevolence but with a tyrannical proprietorship over all her guests. she graciously accorded her hand to julian. the chasseurs were already busy with wicker baskets. 'the return to nature,' alexander christopoulos whispered to eve. julian observed that eve looked bored and sulky; she detested large assemblies, unless she could hold their entire attention, preferring the more intimate scope of the _tête-à-tête_. amongst the largest gathering she usually contrived to isolate herself and one other, with whom she conversed in whispers. presently, he knew, she would be made to recite, or to tell anecdotes, involving imitation, and this she would perform, at first languidly, but warming with applause, and would end by dancing--he knew her programme! he rarely spoke to her, or she to him, in public. she would appear to ignore him, devoting herself to don rodrigo, or to alexander, or, most probably, to the avowed admirer of some other woman. he had frequently brought his direct and masculine arguments to bear against this practice. she listened without replying, as though she did not understand. fru thyregod was more than usually sprightly. 'now, armand, you lazy fellow, bring me my camera; this day has to be immortalised; i must have pictures of all you beautiful young men for my friends in denmark. fauns in a grecian grave! let me peep whether any of you have cloven feet.' madame lafarge put up her lorgnon, and said to the italian minister in a not very low voice,-'i am so fond of dear fru thyregod, but she is terribly vulgar at times.' there was a great deal of laughter over fru thyregod's sally, and some of the young men pretended to hide their feet beneath napkins. 'eve and julie, you must be the nymphs,' the danish excellency went on. eve took no notice; julie looked shy, and the sisters christopoulos angry at not being included. 'now we must all help to unpack; that is half the fun of the picnic,' said madame lafarge, in a business-like tone. under the glare of her lorgnon armand and madame delahaye attacked one basket; they nudged and whispered to one another, and their fingers became entangled under the cover of the paper wrappings. eve strolled away, valdez followed her. the persian minister who had come unobtrusively, after the manner of a humble dog, stood gently smiling in the background. julie lafarge never took her adoring eyes off eve. the immense grbits had drawn julian on one side, and was talking to him, shooting out his jaw and hitting julian on the chest for emphasis. fru thyregod, with many whispers, collected a little group to whom she pointed them out, and photographed them. 'really,' said the danish minister peevishly, to condesa valdez, 'my wife is the most foolish woman i know.' during the picnic every one was very gay, with the exception of julian, who regretted having come, and of miloradovitch, of whom eve was taking no notice at all. madame lafarge was especially pleased with the success of her expedition. she enjoyed the intimacy that existed amongst all her guests, and said as much in an aside to the roumanian minister. 'you know, _chère excellence_, i have known most of these dear friends so long; we have spent happy years together in different capitals; that is the best of diplomacy: _ce qu'il y a de beau dans la carrière c'est qu'on se retrouve toujours_.' 'it is not unlike a large family, one may say,' replied the roumanian. 'how well you phrase it!' exclaimed madame lafarge. 'listen, everybody: his excellency has made a real _mot d'esprit_, he says diplomacy is like a large family.' eve and julian looked up, and their eyes met. 'you are not eating anything, ardalion semeonovitch,' said armand (he had once spent two months in russia) to miloradovitch, holding out a plate of sandwiches. 'no, nor do i want anything,' said miloradovitch rudely, and he got up, and walked away by himself. 'dear me! _ces russes!_ what manners!' said madame lafarge, pretending to be amused; and everybody looked facetiously at eve. 'i remember once, when i was in russia, at the time that stolypin was prime minister,' don rodrigo began, 'there was a serious scandal about one of the empress's ladies-in-waiting and a son of old princess golucheff--you remember old princess golucheff, excellency? she was a bariatinsky, a very handsome woman, and serge radziwill killed himself on her account--he was a pole, one of the kieff radziwills, whose mother was commonly supposed to be _au mieux_ with stolypin (though stolypin was not at all that kind of man; he was _très province_), and most people thought that was the reason why serge occupied such a series of the highest court appointments, in spite of being a pole--the poles were particularly unpopular just then; i even remember that stanislas aveniev, in spite of having a russian mother--she was an orloff, and her jewels were proverbial even in petersburg--they had all been given her by the grand duke boris--stanislas aveniev was obliged to resign his commission in the czar's guard. however, casimir golucheff....' but everybody had forgotten the beginning of his story and only madame lafarge was left politely listening. julian overheard eve reproducing, in an undertone to armand, the style and manner of don rodrigo's conversation. he also became aware that, between her sallies, fru thyregod was bent upon retaining his attention for herself. he was disgusted with all this paraphernalia of social construction, and longed ardently for liberty on aphros. he wondered whether eve were truly satisfied, or whether she played the part merely with the humorous gusto of an artist, caught up in his own game; he wondered to what extent her mystery was due to her life's pretence? later, he found himself drifting apart with the danish excellency; he drifted, that is, beside her, tall, slack of limb, absent of mind, while she tripped with apparent heedlessness, but with actual determination of purpose. as she tripped she chattered. fair and silly, she demanded gallantry of men, and gallantry of a kind--perfunctory, faintly pitying, apologetic--she was accorded. she had enticed julian away, with a certain degree of skill, and was glad. eve had scowled blackly, in the one swift glance she had thrown them. 'your cousin enchants don rodrigo, it is clear,' fru thyregod said with malice as they strolled. julian turned to look back. he saw eve sitting with the spanish minister on the steps of the little temple. in front of the temple, the ruins of the picnic stained the valley with bright frivolity; bits of white paper fluttered, tablecloths remained spread on the ground, and laughter echoed from the groups that still lingered hilariously; the light dresses of the women were gay, and their parasols floated above them like coloured bubbles against the darkness of the ilexes. 'what desecration of the dryads' grove,' said fru thyregod, 'let us put it out of sight,' and she gave a little run forward, and then glanced over her shoulder to see if julian were following her. he came, unsmiling and leisurely. as soon as they were hidden from sight among the olives, she began to talk to him about himself, walking slowly, looking up at him now and then, and prodding meditatively with the tip of her parasol at the stones upon the ground. he was, she said, so free. he had his life before him. and she talked about herself, of the shackles of her sex, the practical difficulties of her life, her poverty, her effort to hide beneath a gay exterior a heart that was not gay. 'carl,' she said, alluding to her husband, 'has indeed charge of the affairs of norway and sweden also in herakleion, but herakleion is so tiny, he is paid as though he were a consul.' julian listened, dissecting the true from the untrue; although he knew her gaiety was no effort, but merely the child of her innate foolishness, he also knew that her poverty was a source of real difficulties to her, and he felt towards her a warm, though a bored and slightly contemptuous, friendliness. he listened to her babble, thinking more of the stream by which they walked, and of the little magenta cyclamen that grew in the shady, marshy places on its banks. fru thyregod was speaking of eve, a topic round which she perpetually hovered in an uncertainty of fascination and resentment. 'do you approve of her very intimate friendship with that singer, madame kato?' 'i am very fond of madame kato myself, fru thyregod.' 'ah, you are a man. but for eve ... a girl.... after all, what is madame kato but a common woman, a woman of the people, and the mistress of malteios into the bargain?' fru thyregod was unwontedly serious. julian had not yet realised to what extent alexander christopoulos had transferred his attentions to eve. 'you know i am an unconventional woman; every one who knows me even a little can see that i am unconventional. but when i see a child, a nice child, like your cousin eve, associated with a person like kato, i think to myself, "mabel, that is unbecoming."' she repeated,-'and yet i have been told that i was too unconventional. yes, carl has often reproached me, and my friends too. they say, "mabel, you are too soft-hearted, and you are too unconventional." what do you think?' julian ignored the personal. he said,-'i should not describe eve as a "nice child."' 'no? well, perhaps not. she is too ... too....' said fru thyregod, who, not having very many ideas of her own, liked to induce other people into supplying the missing adjective. 'she is too important,' julian said gravely. the adjective in this case was unexpected. the danish excellency could only say,-'i think i know what you mean.' julian, perfectly well aware that she did not, and caring nothing whether she did or no, but carelessly willing to illuminate himself further on the subject, pursued,-'her frivolity is a mask. her instincts alone are deep; _how_ deep, it frightens me to think. she is an artist, although, she may never produce art. she lives in a world of her own, with its own code of morals and values. the eve that we all know is a sham, the product of her own pride and humour. she is laughing at us all. the eve we know is entertaining, cynical, selfish, unscrupulous. the real eve is ...' he paused, and brought out his words with a satisfied finality, 'a rebel and an idealist.' then, glancing at his bewildered companion, he laughed and said,-'don't believe a word i say, fru thyregod: eve is nineteen, bent only upon enjoying her life to the full.' he knew, nevertheless, that he had swept together the loose wash of his thought into a concrete channel; and rejoiced. fru thyregod passed to a safer topic. she liked julian, and understood only one form of excitement. 'you bring with you such a breath of freshness and originality,' she said, sighing, 'into our stale little world.' his newly-found good humour coaxed him into responsiveness. 'no world can surely ever be stale to you, fru thyregod; i always think of you as endowed with perpetual youth and gaiety.' 'ah, julian, you have perfect manners, to pay so charming a compliment to an old woman like me.' she neither thought her world stale or little, nor herself old, but pathos had often proved itself of value. 'everybody knows, fru thyregod, that you are the life and soul of herakleion.' they had wandered into a little wood, and sat down on a fallen tree beside the stream. she began again prodding at the ground with her parasol, keeping her eyes cast down. she was glad to have captured julian, partly for her own sake, and partly because she knew that eve would be annoyed. 'how delightful to escape from all our noisy friends,' she said; 'we shall create quite a scandal; but i am too unconventional to trouble about that. i cannot sympathise with those limited, conventional folk who always consider appearances. i have always said, "one should be natural. life is too short for the conventions." although, i think one should refrain from giving pain. when i was a girl, i was a terrible tomboy.' he listened to her babble of coy platitudes, contrasting her with eve. 'i never lost my spirits,' she went on, in the meditative tone she thought suitable to _tête-à-tête_ conversations--it provoked intimacy, and afforded agreeable relief to her more social manner; a woman, to be charming, must be several-sided; gay in public, but a little wistful philosophy was interesting in private; it indicated sympathy, and betrayed a thinking mind,--'i never lost my spirits, although life has not always been very easy for me; still, with good spirits and perhaps a little courage one can continue to laugh, isn't that the way to take life? and on the whole i have enjoyed mine, and my little adventures too, my little harmless adventures; carl always laughs and says, "you will always have adventures, mabel, so i must make the best of it,"--he says that, though he has been very jealous at times. poor carl,' she said reminiscently, 'perhaps i have made him suffer; who knows?' julian looked at her; he supposed that her existence was made up of such experiments, and knew that the arrival of every new young man in herakleion was to her a source of flurry and endless potentialities which, alas, never fulfilled their promise, but which left her undaunted and optimistic for the next affray. 'why do i always talk about myself to you?' she said, with her little laugh; 'you must blame yourself for being too sympathetic.' he scarcely knew how their conversation progressed; he wondered idly whether eve conducted hers upon the same lines with don rodrigo valdez, or whether she had been claimed by miloradovitch, to whom she said she was engaged. did she care for miloradovitch? he was immensely rich, the owner of jewels and oil-mines, remarkably good-looking; dashing, and a gambler. at diplomatic gatherings he wore a beautiful uniform. julian had seen eve dancing with him; he had seen the russian closely following her out of a room, bending forward to speak to her, and her ironical eyes raised for an instant over the slow movement of her fan. he had seen them disappear together, and the provocative poise of her white shoulders, and the richness of the beautiful uniform, had remained imprinted on his memory. he awoke with dismay to the fact that fru thyregod had taken off her hat. she had a great quantity of soft, yellow hair into which she ran her fingers, lifting its weight as though oppressed. he supposed that the gesture was not so irrelevant to their foregoing conversation, of which he had not noticed a word, as it appeared to be. he was startled to find himself saying in a tone of commiseration,-'yes, it must be very heavy.' 'i wish that i could cut it all off,' fru thyregod cried petulantly. 'why, to amuse you, only look....' and to his horror she withdrew a number of pins and allowed her hair to fall in a really beautiful cascade over her shoulders. she smiled at him, parting the strands before her eyes. at that moment eve and miloradovitch came into view, wandering side by side down the path. of the four, miloradovitch alone was amused. julian was full of a shamefaced anger towards fru thyregod, and between the two women an instant enmity sprang into being like a living and visible thing. the russian drew near to fru thyregod with some laughing compliment; she attached herself desperately to him as a refuge from julian. julian and eve remained face to face with one another. 'walk with me a little,' she said, making no attempt to disguise her fury. 'my dear eve,' he said, when they were out of earshot, 'i should scarcely recognise you when you put on that expression.' he spoke frigidly. she was indeed transformed, her features coarsened and unpleasing, her soft delicacy vanished. he could not believe that he had ever thought her rare, exquisite, charming. 'i don't blame you for preferring fru thyregod,' she returned. 'i believe your vanity to be so great that you resent any man speaking to any other woman but yourself,' he said, half persuading himself that he was voicing a genuine conviction. 'very well, if you choose to believe that,' she replied. they walked a little way in angry silence. 'i detest all women,' he added presently. 'including me?' 'beginning with you.' he was reminded of their childhood with its endless disputes, and made an attempt to restore their friendship. 'come, eve, why are we quarrelling? i do not make you jealous scenes about miloradovitch.' 'far from it,' she said harshly. 'why should he want to marry you?' he began, his anger rising again. 'what qualities have you? clever, seductive, and entertaining! but, on the other hand, selfish, jealous, unkind, pernicious, indolent, vain. a bad bargain. if he knew you as well as i.... jealousy! it amounts to madness.' 'i am perhaps not jealous where miloradovitch is concerned,' she said. 'then spare me the compliment of being jealous of me. you wreck affection; you will wreck your life through your jealousy and exorbitance.' 'no doubt,' she replied in a tone of so much sadness that he became remorseful. he contrasted, moreover, her violence, troublesome, inconvenient, as it often was, with the standardised and distasteful little inanities of fru thyregod and her like, and found eve preferable. 'darling, you never defend yourself; it is very disarming.' but she would not accept the olive-branch he offered. 'sentimentality becomes you very badly, julian; keep it for fru thyregod.' 'we have had enough of fru thyregod,' he said, flushing. 'it suits you to say so; i do not forget so easily. really, julian, sometimes i think you very commonplace. from the moment you arrived until to-day, you have never been out of fru thyregod's pocket. like alexander, once. like any stray young man.' 'eve!' he said, in astonishment at the outrageous accusation. 'my little julian, have you washed the lap-dog to-day? carl always says, "mabel, you are fonder of your dogs than of your children--you are really dreadful," but i don't think that's quite fair,' said eve, in so exact an imitation of fru thyregod's voice and manner that julian was forced to smile. she went on,-'i expect too much of you. my imagination makes of you something which you are not. i so despise the common herd that i persuade myself that you are above it. i can persuade myself of anything,' she said scathingly, wounding him in the recesses of his most treasured vanity--her good opinion of him; 'i persuade myself that you are a titan amongst men, almost a god, but in reality, if i could see you without prejudice, what are you fit for? to be fru thyregod's lover!' 'you are mad,' he said, for there was no other reply. 'when i am jealous, i am mad,' she flung at him. 'but if you are jealous of me....' he said, appalled. 'supposing you were ever in love, your jealousy would know no bounds. it is a disease. it is the ruin of our friendship.' 'entirely.' 'you are inordinately perverse.' 'inordinately.' 'supposing i were to marry, i should not dare--what an absurd thought--to introduce you to my wife.' a truly terrible expression came into her eyes; they narrowed to little slits, and turned slightly inwards; as though herself aware of it, she bent to pick the little cyclamen. 'are you trying to tell me, julian....' 'you told me you were engaged to miloradovitch.' she stood up, regardless, and he saw the tragic pallor of her face. she tore the cyclamen to pieces beneath her white fingers. 'it is true, then?' she said, her voice dead. he began to laugh. 'you do indeed persuade yourself very easily.' 'julian, you must tell me. you must. is it true?' 'if it were?' 'i should have to kill you--or myself,' she replied with the utmost gravity. 'you are mad,' he said again, in the resigned tone of one who states a perfectly established fact. 'if i am mad, you are unutterably cruel,' she said, twisting her fingers together; 'will you answer me, yes or no? i believe it is true,' she rushed on, immolating herself, 'you have fallen in love with some woman in england, and she, naturally, with you. who is she? you have promised to marry her. you, whom i thought so free and splendid, to load yourself with the inevitable fetters!' 'i should lose caste in your eyes?' he asked, thinking to himself that eve was, when roused, scarcely a civilised being. 'but if you marry miloradovitch you will be submitting to the same fetters you think so degrading.' 'miloradovitch,' she said impatiently, 'miloradovitch will no more ensnare me than have the score of people i have been engaged to since i last saw you. you are still evading your answer.' 'you will never marry?' he dwelt on his discovery. 'nobody that i loved,' she replied without hesitation, 'but, julian, julian, you don't answer my question?' 'would you marry me if i wanted you to?' he asked carelessly. 'not for the world, but why keep me in suspense? only answer me, are you trying to tell me that you have fallen in love? if so, admit it, please, at once, and let me go; don't you see, i am leaving fru thyregod on one side, i ask you in all humility now, julian.' 'for perhaps the fiftieth time since you were thirteen,' he said, smiling. 'have you tormented me long enough?' 'very well: i am in love with the islands, and with nothing and nobody else.' 'then why had fru thyregod her hair down her back? you're lying to me, and i despise you doubly for it,' she reverted, humble no longer, but aggressive. 'fru thyregod again?' he said, bewildered. 'how little i trust you,' she broke out; 'i believe that you deceive me at every turn. kato, too; you spend hours in kato's flat. what do you do there? you write letters to people of whom i have never heard. you dined with the thyregods twice last week. kato sends you notes by hand from herakleion when you are in the country. you use the islands as dust to throw in my eyes, but i am not blinded.' 'i have had enough of this!' he cried. 'you are like everybody else,' she insisted; 'you enjoy mean entanglements, and you cherish the idea of marriage. you want a home, like everybody else. a faithful wife. children. i loathe children,' she said violently. 'you are very different from me. you are tame. i have deluded myself into thinking we were alike. you are tame, respectable. a good citizen. you have all the virtues. i will live to show you how different we are. ten years hence, you will say to your wife, "no, my dear, i really cannot allow you to know that poor eve." and your wife, well trained, submissive, will agree.' he shrugged his shoulders, accustomed to such storms, and knowing that she only sought to goad him into a rage. 'in the meantime, go back to fru thyregod; why trouble to lie to me? and to kato, go back to kato. write to the woman in england, too. i will go to miloradovitch, or to any of the others.' he was betrayed into saying,-'the accusation of mean entanglements comes badly from your lips.' in her heart she guessed pretty shrewdly at his real relation towards women: a self-imposed austerity, with violent relapses that had no lasting significance, save to leave him with his contemptuous distaste augmented. his mind was too full of other matters. for kato alone he had a profound esteem. eve answered his last remark,-'i will prove to you the little weight of my entanglements, by dismissing miloradovitch to-day; you have only to say the word.' 'you would do that--without remorse?' 'miloradovitch is nothing to me.' 'you are something to him--perhaps everything.' 'cela ne me regarde pas,' she replied. 'would you do as much for me? fru thyregod, for instance? or kato?' interested and curious, he said,-'to please you, i should give up kato?' 'you would not?' 'most certainly i should not. why suggest it? kato is your friend as much as mine. are all women's friendships so unstable?' 'be careful, julian: you are on the quicksands.' 'i have had enough of these topics,' he said, 'will you leave them?' 'no; i choose my own topics; you shan't dictate to me.' 'you would sacrifice miloradovitch without a thought, to please me--why should it please me?--but you would not forgo the indulgence of your jealousy! i am not grateful. our senseless quarrels,' he said, 'over which we squander so much anger and emotion.' but he did not stop to question what lay behind their important futility. he passed his hand wearily over his hair, 'i am deluded sometimes into believing in their reality and sanity. you are too difficult. you ... you distort and bewitch, until one expects to wake up from a dream. sometimes i think of you as a woman quite apart from other women, but at other times i think you live merely by and upon fictitious emotion and excitement. must your outlook be always so narrowly personal? kato, thank heaven, is very different. i shall take care to choose my friends amongst men, or amongst women like kato,' he continued, his exasperation rising. 'julian, don't be so angry: it isn't my fault that i hate politics.' he grew still angrier at her illogical short-cut to the reproach which lay, indeed, unexpressed at the back of his mind. 'i never mentioned politics. i know better. no man in his senses would expect politics from any woman so demoralisingly feminine as yourself. besides, that isn't your rôle. your rôle is to be soft, idle; a toy; a siren; the negation of enterprise. work and woman--the terms contradict one another. the woman who works, or who tolerates work, is only half a woman. the most you can hope for,' he said with scorn, 'is to inspire--and even that you do unconsciously, and very often quite against your will. you sap our energy; you sap and you destroy.' she had not often heard him speak with so much bitterness, but she did not know that his opinions in this more crystallised form dated from that slight moment in which he had divined her own untrustworthiness. 'you are very wise. i forget whether you are twenty-two or twenty-three?' 'oh, you may be sarcastic. i only know that i will never have my life wrecked by women. to-morrow the elections take place, and, after that, whatever their result, i belong to the islands.' 'i think i see you with a certain clearness,' she said more gently, 'full of illusions, independence, and young generosities--_nous passons tous par là_.' 'talk english, eve, and be less cynical; if i am twenty-two, as you reminded me, you are nineteen.' 'if you could find a woman who was a help and not a hindrance?' she suggested. 'ah!' he said, 'the blue bird! i am not likely to be taken in; i am too well on my guard.--look!' he added, 'fru thyregod and your russian friend; i leave you to them,' and before eve could voice her indignation he had disappeared into the surrounding woods. iv on the next day, the day of the elections, which was also the anniversary of the declaration of independence, herakleion blossomed suddenly, and from the earliest hour, into a striped and fluttering gaudiness. the sun shone down upon a white town beflagged into an astonishing gaiety. everywhere was whiteness, whiteness, and brilliantly coloured flags. white, green, and orange, dazzling in the sun, vivid in the breeze. and, keyed up to match the intensity of the colour, the band blared brassily, unremittingly, throughout the day from the centre of the _platia_. a parrot-town, glaring and screeching; a monkey-town, gibbering, excited, inconsequent. all the shops, save the sweet-shops, were shut, and the inhabitants flooded into the streets. not only had they decked their houses with flags, they had also decked themselves with ribbons, their women with white dresses, their children with bright bows, their carriages with paper streamers, their horses with sunbonnets. bands of young men, straw-hatted, swept arm-in-arm down the pavements, adding to the din with mouth organs, mirlitons, and tin trumpets. the trams flaunted posters in the colours of the contending parties. immense char-à-bancs, roofed over with brown holland and drawn by teams of mules, their harness hung with bells and red tassels, conveyed the voters to the polling-booths amid the cheers and imprecations of the crowd. herakleion abandoned itself deliriously to political carnival. in the immense, darkened rooms of the houses on the _platia_, the richer greeks idled, concealing their anxiety. it was tacitly considered beneath their dignity to show themselves in public during that day. they could but await the fruition or the failure of their activities during the preceding weeks. heads of households were for the most part morose, absorbed in calculations and regrets. old christopoulos, looking more bleached than usual, wished he had been more generous. that secretaryship for alexander.... in the great sala of his house he paced restlessly up and down, biting his finger nails, and playing on his fingers the tune of the many thousand drachmæ he might profitably have expended. the next election would not take place for five years. at the next election he would be a great deal more lavish. he had made the same resolution at every election during the past thirty years. in the background, respectful of his silence, themselves dwarfed and diminutive in the immense height of the room, little knots of his relatives and friends whispered together, stirring cups of tisane. heads were very close together, glances at old christopoulos very frequent. visitors, isolated or in couples, strolled in unannounced and informally, stayed for a little, strolled away again. a perpetual movement of such circulation rippled through the houses in the _platia_ throughout the day, rumour assiduous in its wake. fru thyregod alone, with her fat, silly laugh, did her best wherever she went to lighten the funereal oppression of the atmosphere. the greeks she visited were not grateful. unlike the populace in the streets, they preferred taking their elections mournfully. by midday the business of voting was over, and in the houses of the _platia_ the greeks sat round their luncheon-tables with the knowledge that the vital question was now decided, though the answer remained as yet unknown, and that in the polling-booths an army of clerks sat feverishly counting, while the crowd outside, neglectful of its meal, swarmed noisily in the hope of news. in the houses of the _platia_, on this one day of the year, the greeks kept open table. each vast dining-room, carefully darkened and indistinguishable in its family likeness from its neighbour in the house on either side, offered its hospitality under the inevitable chandelier. in each, the host greeted the new-comer with the same perfunctory smile. in each, the busy servants came and went, carrying dishes and jugs of orangeade--for levantine hospitality, already heavily strained, boggled at wine--among the bulky and old-fashioned sideboards. all joyousness was absent from these gatherings, and the closed shutters served to exclude, not only the heat, but also the strains of the indefatigable band playing on the _platia_. out in the streets the popular excitement hourly increased, for if the morning had been devoted to politics, the afternoon and evening were to be devoted to the annual feast and holiday of the declaration of independence. the national colours, green and orange, seemed trebled in the town. they hung from every balcony and were reproduced in miniature in every buttonhole. only here and there an islander in his fustanelle walked quickly with sulky and averted eyes, rebelliously innocent of the brilliant cocarde, and far out to sea the rainbow islands shimmered with never a flag to stain the distant whiteness of the houses upon aphros. the houses of the _platia_ excelled all others in the lavishness of their patriotic decorations. the balconies of the club were draped in green and orange, with the arms of herakleion arranged in the centre in electric lights for the evening illumination. the italian consulate drooped its complimentary flag. the house of platon malteios--premier or ex-premier? no one knew--was almost too ostentatiously patriotic. the cathedral, on the opposite side, had its steps carpeted with red and the spaciousness of its porch festooned with the colours. from the central window of the davenant house, opposite the sea, a single listless banner hung in motionless folds. it had, earlier in the day, occasioned a controversy. julian had stood in the centre of the frescoed drawing-room, flushed and constrained. 'father, that flag on our house insults the islands. it can be seen even from aphros!' 'my dear boy, better that it should be seen from aphros than that we should offend herakleion.' 'what will the islanders think?' 'they are accustomed to seeing it there every year.' 'if i had been at home....' 'when this house is yours, julian, you will no doubt do as you please; so long as it is mine, i beg you not to interfere.' mr davenant had spoken in his curtest tones. he had added,-'i shall go to the cathedral this afternoon.' the service in the cathedral annually celebrated the independence of herakleion. julian slipped out of the house, meaning to mix with the ill-regulated crowd that began to collect on the _platia_ to watch for the arrival of the notables, but outside the door of the club he was discovered by alexander christopoulos who obliged him to follow him upstairs to the christopoulos drawing-room. 'my father is really too gloomy for me to confront alone,' alexander said, taking julian's arm and urging him along; 'also i have spent the morning in the club, which exasperates him. he likes me to sit at home while he stands looking at me and mournfully shaking his head.' they came into the sala together, where old christopoulos paced up and down in front of the shuttered windows, and a score of other people sat whispering over their cups of tisane. white dresses, dim mirrors, and the dull gilt of furniture gleamed here and there in the shadows of the vast room. 'any news? any news?' the banker asked of the two young men. 'you know quite well, father, that no results are to be declared until seven o'clock this evening.' alexander opened a section of a venetian blind, and as a shaft of sunlight fell startlingly across the floor a blare of music burst equally startlingly upon the silence. 'the _platia_ is crowded already,' said alexander, looking out. the hum of the crowd became audible, mingled with the music; explosions of laughter, and some unexplained applause. the shrill cry of a seller of iced water rang immediately beneath the window. the band in the centre continued to shriek remorselessly an antiquated air of the paris boulevards. 'at what time is the procession due?' asked fru thyregod over julian's shoulder. 'at five o'clock; it should arrive at any moment,' julian said, making room for the danish excellency. 'i adore processions,' cried fru thyregod, clapping her hands, and looking brightly from julian to alexander. alexander whispered to julie lafarge, who had come up,-'i am sure fru thyregod has gone from house to house and from legation to legation, and has had a meal at each to-day.' somebody suggested,-'let us open the shutters and watch the procession from the balconies.' 'oh, what a good idea!' cried fru thyregod, clapping her hands again and executing a pirouette. down in the _platia_ an indefinite movement was taking place; the band stopped playing for the first time that day, and began shuffling with all its instruments to one side. voices were then heard raised in tones of authority. a cleavage appeared in the crowd, which grew in length and width as though a wedge were being gradually driven into that reluctant confusion of humanity. 'a path for the procession,' said old christopoulos, who, although not pleased at that frivolous flux of his family and guests on to the balconies of his house, had joined them, overcome by his natural curiosity. the path cut in the crowd now ran obliquely across the _platia_ from the end of the rue royale to the steps of the cathedral opposite, and upon it the confetti with which the whole _platia_ was no doubt strewn became visible. the police, with truncheons in their hands, were pressing the people back to widen the route still further. they wore their gala hats, three-cornered, with upright plumes of green and orange nodding as they walked. 'look at sterghiou,' said alexander. the chief of police rode vaingloriously down the route looking from left to right, and saluting with his free hand. the front of his uniform was crossed with broad gold hinges, and plaits of yellow braid disappeared mysteriously into various pockets. one deduced whistles; pencils; perhaps a knife. although he did not wear feathers in his hat, one knew that only the utmost self-restraint had preserved him from them. here the band started again with a march, and sterghiou's horse shied violently and nearly unseated him. 'the troops!' said old christopoulos with emotion. debouching from the rue royale, the army came marching four abreast. as it was composed of only four hundred men, and as it never appeared on any other day of the year, its general panaïoannou always mobilised it in its entirety on the national festival. this entailed the temporary closing of the casino in order to release the croupiers, who were nearly all in the ranks, and led to a yearly dispute between the general and the board of administration. 'there was once a croupier,' said alexander, 'who was admitted to the favour of a certain grand-duchess until the day when, indiscreetly coming into the dressing-room where the lady was arranging and improving her appearance, he said, through sheer force of habit, "madame, les jeux sont faits?" and was dismissed for ever by her reply, "rien ne va plus."' the general himself rode in the midst of his troops, in his sky-blue uniform, to which the fantasy of his buda-pesth costumier had added for the occasion a slung hussar jacket of white cloth. his gray moustache was twisted fiercely upwards, and curved like a scimitar across his face. he rode with his hand on his hip, slowly scanning the windows and balconies of the _platia_, which by now were crowded with people, gravely saluting his friends as he passed. around him marched his bodyguard of six, a captain and five men; the captain carried in one hand a sword, and in the other--nobody knew why--a long frond of palm. the entire army tramped by, hot, stout, beaming, and friendly. at one moment some one threw down a handful of coins from a window, and the ranks were broken in a scramble for the coppers. julian, who was leaning apart in a corner of his balcony, heard a laugh like a growl behind him as the enormous hand of grbits descended on his shoulder. 'remember the lesson, young man: if you are called upon to deal with the soldiers of herakleion, a fistful of silver amongst them will scatter them.' julian thought apprehensively that they must be overheard, but grbits continued in supreme unconsciousness,-'look at their army, composed of shop-assistants and croupiers. look at their general--a general in his spare moments, but in the serious business of his life a banker and an intriguer like the rest of them. i doubt whether he has ever seen anything more dead in his life than a dead dog in a gutter. i could pick him up and squash in his head like an egg.' grbits extended his arm and slowly unfolded the fingers of his enormous hand. at the same time he gave his great laugh that was like the laugh of a good-humoured ogre. 'at your service, young man,' he said, displaying the full breadth of his palm to julian, 'whenever you stand in need of it. the stavridists will be returned to-day; lose no time; show them your intentions.' he impelled julian forward to the edge of the balcony and pointed across to the davenant house. 'that flag, young man: see to it that it disappears within the hour after the results of the elections are announced.' the army was forming itself into two phalanxes on either side of the cathedral steps. panaïoannou caracoled up and down shouting his orders, which were taken up and repeated by the busy officers on foot. meanwhile the notables in black coats were arriving in a constant stream that flowed into the cathedral; old christopoulos had already left the house to attend the religious ceremony; the foreign ministers and consuls attended out of compliment to herakleion; madame lafarge had rolled down the route in her barouche with her bearded husband; malteios had crossed the _platia_ from his own house, and stavridis came, accompanied by his wife and daughters. still the band played on, the crowd laughed, cheered, or murmured in derision, and the strident cries of the water-sellers rose from all parts of the _platia_. suddenly the band ceased to play, and in the hush only the hum of the crowd continued audible. the religious procession came walking very slowly from the rue royale, headed by a banner and by a file of young girls, walking two by two, in white dresses, with wreaths of roses on their heads. as they walked they scattered sham roses out of baskets, the gesture reminiscent of the big picture in the senate-room. it was customary for the premier of the republic to walk alone, following these young girls, black and grave in his frock-coat after their virginal white, but on this occasion, as no one knew who the actual premier was, a blank space was left to represent the problematical absentee. following the space came the premier's habitual escort, a posse of police; it should have been a platoon of soldiers, but panaïoannou always refused to consent to such a diminution of his army. 'they say,' grbits remarked to julian in this connection, 'that the general withdraws even the sentries from the frontier to swell his ranks.' 'herakleion is open to invasion,' said julian, smiling. grbits replied sententiously, with the air of one creating a new proverb,-'herakleion is open to invasion, but who wants to invade herakleion?' the crowd watched the passage of the procession with the utmost solemnity. not a sound was now heard but the monotonous step of feet. religious awe had hushed political hilarity. archbishop and bishops; archmandrites and _papás_ of the country districts, passed in a mingling of scarlet, purple and black. all the pomp of herakleion had been pressed into service--all the clamorous, pretentious pomp, shouting for recognition, beating on a hollow drum; designed to impress the crowd; and perhaps, also, to impress, beyond the crowd, the silent islands that possessed no army, no clergy, no worldly trappings, but that suffered and struggled uselessly, pitiably, against the tinsel tyrant in vain but indestructible rebellion. * * * * * * as five o'clock drew near, the entire population seemed to be collected in the _platia_. the white streak that had marked the route of the procession had long ago disappeared, and the square was now, seen from above, only a dense and shifting mass of people. in the christopoulos drawing-room, where julian still lingered, talking to grbits and listening to the alternate foolishness, fanaticism, and ferocious good-humour of the giant, the greeks rallied in numbers with only one topic on their lips. old christopoulos was frankly biting his nails and glancing at the clock; alexander but thinly concealed his anxiety under a dribble of his usual banter. the band had ceased playing, and the subtle ear could detect an inflection in the very murmur of the crowd. 'let us go on to the balcony again,' grbits said to julian; 'the results will be announced from the steps of malteios' house.' they went out; some of the greeks followed them, and all pressed behind, near the window openings. 'it is a more than usually decisive day for herakleion,' said old christopoulos, and julian knew that the words were spoken at, although not to, him. he felt that the greeks looked upon him as an intruder, wishing him away so that they might express their opinions freely, but in a spirit of contrariness he remained obstinately. a shout went up suddenly from the crowd: a little man dressed in black, with a top-hat, and a great many white papers in his hand, had appeared in the frame of malteios' front-door. he stood on the steps, coughed nervously, and dropped his papers. 'inefficient little rat of a secretary!' cried alexander in a burst of fury. 'listen!' said grbits. a long pause of silence from the whole _platia_, in which one thin voice quavered, reaching only the front row of the crowd. 'stavridis has it,' grbits said quietly, who had been craning over the edge of the balcony. his eyes twinkled maliciously, delightedly, at julian across the group of mortified greeks. 'an immense majority,' he invented, enjoying himself. julian was already gone. slipping behind old christopoulos, whose saffron face had turned a dirty plum colour, he made his way downstairs and out into the street. a species of riot, in which the police, having failed successfully to intervene, were enthusiastically joining, had broken out in the _platia_. some shouted for stavridis, some for malteios; some railed derisively against the islands. people threw their hats into the air, waved their arms, and kicked up their legs. some of them were vague as to the trend of their own opinions, others extremely determined, but all were agreed about making as much noise as possible. julian passed unchallenged to his father's house. inside the door he found aristotle talking with three islanders. they laid hold of him, urgent though respectful, searching his face with eager eyes. 'it means revolt at last; you will not desert us, kyrie?' he replied,-'come with me, and you will see.' they followed him up the stairs, pressing closely after him. on the landing he met eve and kato, coming out of the drawing-room. the singer was flushed, two gold wheat-ears trembled in her hair, and she had thrown open the front of her dress. eve hung on her arm. 'julian!' kato exclaimed, 'you have heard, platon has gone?' in her excitement she inadvertently used malteios' christian name. 'it means,' he replied, 'that stavridis, now in power, will lose no time in bringing against the islands all the iniquitous reforms we know he contemplates. it means that the first step must be taken by us.' his use of the pronoun ranged himself, kato, aristotle, the three islanders, and the invisible islands into an instant confederacy. kato responded to it,-'thank god for this.' they waited in complete confidence for his next words. he had shed his aloofness, and all his efficiency of active leadership was to the fore. 'where is my father?' 'he went to the cathedral; he has not come home yet, kyrie.' julian passed into the drawing-room, followed by eve and kato and the four men. outside the open window, fastened to the balcony, flashed the green and orange flag of herakleion. julian took a knife from his pocket, and, cutting the cord that held it, withdrew flag and flag-staff into the room and flung it on to the ground. 'take it away,' he said to the islanders, 'or my father will order it to be replaced. and if he orders another to be hung out in its place,' he added, looking at them with severity, 'remember there is no other flag in the house, and none to be bought in herakleion.' at that moment a servant from the country-house came hurriedly into the room, drew julian unceremoniously aside, and broke into an agitated recital in a low voice. eve heard julian saying,-'nicolas sends for me? but he should have given a reason. i cannot come now, i cannot leave herakleion.' and the servant,-'kyrie, the major-domo impressed upon me that i must on no account return without you. something has occurred, something serious. what it is i do not know. the carriage is waiting at the back entrance; we could not drive across the _platia_ on account of the crowds.' 'i shall have to go, i suppose,' julian said to eve and kato. 'i will go at once, and will return, if possible, this evening. nicolas would not send without an excellent reason, though he need not have made this mystery. possibly a message from aphros.... in any case, i must go.' 'i will come with you,' eve said unexpectedly. v in almost unbroken silence they drove out to the country-house, in a hired victoria, to the quick, soft trot of the two little lean horses, away from the heart of the noisy town; past the race-course with its empty stands; under the ilex-avenue in a tunnel of cool darkness; along the road, redolent with magnolias in the warmth of the evening; through the village, between the two white lodges; and round the bend of the drive between the bushes of eucalyptus. eve had spoken, but he had said abruptly,-'don't talk; i want to think,' and she, after a little gasp of astonished indignation, had relapsed languorous into her corner, her head propped on her hand, and her profile alone visible to her cousin. he saw, in the brief glance that he vouchsafed her, that her red mouth looked more than usually sulky, in fact not unlike the mouth of a child on the point of tears, a very invitation to inquiry, but, more from indifference than deliberate wisdom, he was not disposed to take up the challenge. he too sat silent, his thoughts flying over the day, weighing the consequences of his own action, trying to forecast the future. he was far away from eve, and she knew it. at times he enraged and exasperated her almost beyond control. his indifference was an outrage on her femininity. she knew him to be utterly beyond her influence: taciturn when he chose, ill-tempered when he chose, exuberant when he chose, rampageous, wild; insulting to her at moments; domineering whatever his mood, and regardless of her wishes; yet at the same time unconscious of all these things. alone with her now, he had completely forgotten her presence by his side. her voice broke upon his reflections,-'thinking of the islands, julian?' and her words joining like a cogwheel smoothly on to the current of his mind, he answered naturally,-'yes,' 'i thought as much. i have something to tell you. you may not be interested. i am no longer engaged to miloradovitch.' 'since when?' 'since yesterday evening. since you left me, and ran away into the woods. i was angry, and vented my anger on him.' 'was that fair?' 'he has you to thank. it has happened before--with others.' roused for a second from his absorption, he impatiently shrugged his shoulders, and turned his back, and looked out over the sea. eve was again silent, brooding and resentful in her corner. presently he turned towards her, and said angrily, reverting to the islands,-'you are the vainest and most exorbitant woman i know. you resent one's interest in anything but yourself.' as she did not answer, he added,-'how sulky you look; it's very unbecoming.' was no sense of proportion or of responsibility ever to weigh upon her beautiful shoulders? he was irritated, yet he knew that his irritation was half-assumed, and that in his heart he was no more annoyed by her fantasy than by the fantasy of herakleion. they matched each other; their intangibility, their instability, were enough to make a man shake his fists to heaven, yet he was beginning to believe that their colour and romance--for he never dissociated eve and herakleion in his mind--were the dearest treasures of his youth. he turned violently and amazingly upon her. 'eve, i sometimes hate you, damn you; but you are the rainbow of my days.' she smiled, and, enlightened, he perceived with interest, curiosity, and amused resignation, the clearer grouping of the affairs of his youthful years. fantasy to youth! sobriety to middle-age! carried away, he said to her,-'eve! i want adventure, eve!' her eyes lit up in instant response, but he could not read her inward thought, that the major part of his adventure should be, not aphros, but herself. he noted, however, her lighted eyes, and leaned over to her. 'you are a born adventurer, eve, also.' she remained silent, but her eyes continued to dwell on him, and to herself she was thinking, always sardonic although the matter was of such perennial, such all-eclipsing importance to her,-'a la bonne heure, he realises my existence.' 'what a pity you are not a boy; we could have seen the adventure of the islands through together.' ('the islands always!' she thought ruefully.) 'i should like to cross to aphros to-night,' he murmured, with absent eyes.... ('gone again,' she thought. 'i held him for a moment.') when they reached the house no servants were visible, but in reply to the bell a young servant appeared, scared, white-faced, and, as rapidly disappearing, was replaced by the old major-domo. he burst open the door into the passage, a crowd of words pressing on each other's heels in his mouth; he had expected julian alone; when he saw eve, who was idly turning over the letters that awaited her, he clapped his hand tightly over his lips, and stood, struggling with his speech, balancing himself in his arrested impetus on his toes. 'well, nicolas?' said julian. the major-domo exploded, removing his hand from his mouth,-'kyrie! a word alone....' and as abruptly replaced the constraining fingers. julian followed him through the swing door into the servants' quarters, where the torrent broke loose. 'kyrie, a disaster! i have sent men with a stretcher. i remained in the house myself looking for your return. father paul--yes, yes, it is he--drowned--yes, drowned--at the bottom of the garden. come, kyrie, for the love of god. give directions. i am too old a man. god be praised, you have come. only hasten. the men are there already with lanterns.' he was clinging helplessly to julian's wrist, and kept moving his fingers up and down julian's arm, twitching fingers that sought reassurance from firmer muscles, in a distracted way, while his eyes beseechingly explored julian's face. julian, shocked, jarred, incredulous, shook off the feeble fingers in irritation. the thing was an outrage on the excitement of the day. the transition to tragedy was so violent that he wished, in revolt, to disbelieve it. 'you must be mistaken, nicolas!' 'kyrie, i am not mistaken. the body is lying on the shore. you can see it there. i have sent lanterns and a stretcher. i beg of you to come.' he spoke, tugging at julian's sleeve, and as julian remained unaccountably immovable he sank to his knees, clasping his hands and raising imploring eyes. his fustanelle spread its pleats in a circle on the stone floor. his story had suddenly become vivid to julian with the words, 'the body is lying on the shore'; 'drowned,' he had said before, but that had summoned no picture. the body was lying on the shore. the body! paul, brisk, alive, familiar, now a body, merely. the body! had a wave, washing forward, deposited it gently, and retreated without its burden? or had it floated, pale-faced under the stars, till some man, looking by chance down at the sea from the terrace at the foot of the garden, caught that pale, almost phosphorescent gleam rocking on the swell of the water? the old major-domo followed julian's stride between the lemon-trees, obsequious and conciliatory. the windows of the house shone behind them, the house of tragedy, where eve remained as yet uninformed, uninvaded by the solemnity, the reality, of the present. later, she would have to be told that a man's figure had been wrenched from their intimate and daily circle. the situation appeared grotesquely out of keeping with the foregoing day, and with the wide and gentle night. from the paved walk under the pergola of gourds rough steps led down to the sea. julian, pausing, perceived around the yellow squares of the lanterns the indistinct figures of men, and heard their low, disconnected talk breaking intermittently on the continuous wash of the waves. the sea that he loved filled him with a sudden revulsion for the indifference of its unceasing movement after its murder of a man. it should, in decency, have remained quiet, silent; impenetrable, unrepentant, perhaps; inscrutable, but at least silent; its murmur echoed almost as the murmur of a triumph.... he descended the steps. as he came into view, the men's fragmentary talk died away; their dim group fell apart; he passed between them, and stood beside the body of paul. death. he had never seen it. as he saw it now, he thought that he had never beheld anything so incontestably real as its irrevocable stillness. here was finality; here was defeat beyond repair. in the face of this judgment no revolt was possible. only acceptance was possible. the last word in life's argument had been spoken by an adversary for long remote, forgotten; an adversary who had remained ironically dumb before the babble, knowing that in his own time, with one word, he could produce the irrefutable answer. there was something positively satisfying in the faultlessness of the conclusion. he had not thought that death would be like this. not cruel, not ugly, not beautiful, not terrifying--merely unanswerable. he wondered now at the multitude of sensations that had chased successively across his mind or across his vision: the elections, fru thyregod, the jealousy of eve, his incredulity and resentment at the news, his disinclination for action, his indignation against the indifference of the sea; these things were vain when here, at his feet, lay the ultimate solution. paul lay on his back, his arms straight down his sides, and his long, wiry body closely sheathed in the wet soutane. the square toes of his boots stuck up, close together, like the feet of a swathed mummy. his upturned face gleamed white with a tinge of green in the light of the lanterns, and appeared more luminous than they. so neat, so orderly he lay; but his hair, alone disordered, fell in wet red wisps across his neck and along the ground behind his head. at that moment from the direction of herakleion there came a long hiss and a rush of bright gold up into the sky; there was a crackle of small explosions, and fountains of gold showered against the night as the first fireworks went up from the quays. rockets soared, bursting into coloured stars among the real stars, and plumes of golden light spread themselves dazzlingly above the sea. faint sounds of cheering were borne upon the breeze. the men around the body of the priest waited, ignorant and bewildered, relieved that some one had come to take command. their eyes were bent upon julian as he stood looking down; they thought he was praying for the dead. presently he became aware of their expectation, and pronounced with a start,-'bind up his hair!' fingers hastened clumsily to deal with the stringy red locks; the limp head was supported, and the hair knotted somehow into a semblance of its accustomed roll. the old major-domo quavered in a guilty voice, as though taking the blame for carelessness,-'the hat is lost, kyrie.' julian let his eyes travel over the little group of men, islanders all, with an expression of searching inquiry. 'which of you made this discovery?' it appeared that one of them, going to the edge of the sea in expectation of the fireworks, had noticed, not the darkness of the body, but the pallor of the face, in the water not far out from the rocks. he had waded in and drawn the body ashore. dead paul lay there deaf and indifferent to this account of his own finding. 'no one can explain....' ah, no! and he, who could have explained, was beyond the reach of their curiosity. julian looked at the useless lips, unruffled even by a smile of sarcasm. he had known paul all his life, had learnt from him, travelled with him, eaten with him, chaffed him lightly, but never, save in that one moment when he had gripped the priest by the wrist and had looked with steadying intention into his eyes, had their intimate personalities brushed in passing. julian had no genius for friendship.... he began to see that this death had ended an existence which had run parallel with, but utterly walled off from, his own. in shame the words tore themselves from him,-'had he any trouble?' the men slowly, gravely, mournfully shook their heads. they could not tell. the priest had moved amongst them, charitable, even saintly; yes, saintly, and one did not expect confidences of a priest. a priest was a man who received the confidences of other men. julian heard, and, possessed by a strong desire, a necessity, for self-accusation, he said to them in a tone of urgent and impersonal justice, as one who makes a declaration, expecting neither protest nor acquiescence,-'i should have inquired into his loneliness.' they were slightly startled, but, in their ignorance, not over-surprised, only wondering why he delayed in giving the order to move the body on to the stretcher and carry it up to the church. farther up the coast, the rockets continued to soar, throwing out bubbles of green and red and orange, fantastically tawdry. julian remained staring at the unresponsive corpse, repeating sorrowfully,-'i should have inquired--yes, i should have inquired--into his loneliness.' he spoke with infinite regret, learning a lesson, shedding a particle of his youth. he had taken for granted that other men's lives were as promising, as full of dissimulated eagerness, as his own. he had walked for many hours up and down paul's study, lost in an audible monologue, expounding his theories, tossing his rough head, emphasising, enlarging, making discoveries, intent on his egotism, hewing out his convictions, while the priest sat by the table, leaning his head on his hand, scarcely contributing a word, always listening. during those hours, surely, his private troubles had been forgotten? or had they been present, gnawing, beneath the mask of sympathy? a priest was a man who received the confidences of other men! 'carry him up,' julian said, 'carry him up to the church.' he walked away alone as the dark cortège set itself in movement, his mind strangely accustomed to the fact that paul would no longer frequent their house and that the long black figure would no longer stroll, tall and lean, between the lemon-trees in the garden. the fact was more simple and more easily acceptable than he could have anticipated. it seemed already quite an old-established fact. he remembered with a shock of surprise, and a raising of his eyebrows, that he yet had to communicate it to eve. he knew it so well himself that he thought every one else must know it too. he was immeasurably more distressed by the tardy realisation of his own egotism in regard to paul, than by the fact of paul's death. he walked very slowly, delaying the moment when he must speak to eve. he sickened at the prospect of the numerous inevitable inquiries that would be made to him by both his father and his uncle. he would never hint to them that the priest had had a private trouble. he rejoiced to remember his former loyalty, and to know that eve remained ignorant of that extraordinary, unexplained conversation when paul had talked about the mice. mice in the church! he, julian, must see to the decent covering of the body. and of the face, especially of the face. an immense golden wheel flared out of the darkness; whirled, and died away above the sea. in the dim church the men had set down the stretcher before the iconostase. julian felt his way cautiously amongst the rush-bottomed chairs. the men were standing about the stretcher, their fishing caps in their hands, awed into a whispering mysticism which julian's voice harshly interrupted,-'go for a cloth, one of you--the largest cloth you can find.' he had spoken loudly in defiance of the melancholy peace of the church, that received so complacently within its ready precincts the visible remains from which the spirit, troubled and uncompanioned in life, had fled. he had always thought the church complacent, irritatingly remote from pulsating human existence, but never more so than now when it accepted the dead body as by right, firstly within its walls, and lastly within its ground, to decompose and rot, the body of its priest, among the bodies of other once vital and much-enduring men. 'kyrie, we can find only two large cloths, one a dust-sheet, and one a linen cloth to spread over the altar. which are we to use?' 'which is the larger?' 'kyrie, the dust-sheet, but the altar-cloth is of linen edged with lace.' 'use the dust-sheet; dust to dust,' said julian bitterly. shocked and uncomprehending, they obeyed. the black figure now became a white expanse, under which the limbs and features defined themselves as the folds sank into place. 'he is completely covered over?' 'completely, kyrie.' 'the mice cannot run over his face?' 'kyrie, no!' 'then no more can be done until one of you ride into herakleion for the doctor.' he left them, re-entering the garden by the side-gate which paul had himself constructed with his capable, carpenter's hands. there was now no further excuse for delay; he must exchange the darkness for the unwelcome light, and must share out his private knowledge to eve. those men, fisher-folk, simple folk, had not counted as human spectators, but rather as part of the brotherhood of night, nature, and the stars. he waited for eve in the drawing-room, having assured himself that she had been told nothing, and there, presently, he saw her come in, her heavy hair dressed high, a fan and a flower drooping from her hand, and a fringed spanish shawl hanging its straight silk folds from her escaping shoulders. before her indolence, and her slumbrous delicacy, he hesitated. he wildly thought that he would allow the news to wait. tragedy, reality, were at that moment so far removed from her.... she said in delight, coming up to him, and forgetful that they were in the house in obedience to a mysterious and urgent message,-'julian, have you seen the fireworks? come out into the garden. we'll watch.' he put his arm through her bare arm,-'eve, i must tell you something.' 'fru thyregod?' she cried, and the difficulty of his task became all but insurmountable. 'something serious. something about father paul.' her strange eyes gave him a glance of undefinable suspicion. 'what about him?' 'he has been found, in the water, at the bottom of the garden.' 'in the water?' 'in the sea. drowned.' he told her all the circumstances, doggedly, conscientiously, under the mockery of the tinsel flames that streamed out from the top of the columns, and of the distant lights flashing through the windows, speaking as a man who proclaims in a foreign country a great truth bought by the harsh experience of his soul, to an audience unconversant with his alien tongue. this truth that he had won, in the presence of quiet stars, quieter death, and simple men, was desecrated by its recital to a vain woman in a room where the very architecture was based on falsity. still he persevered, believing that his own intensity of feeling must end in piercing its way to the foundations of her heart. he laid bare even his harassing conviction of his neglected responsibility,-'i should have suspected ... i should have suspected....' he looked at eve; she had broken down and was sobbing, paul's name mingled incoherently with her sobs. he did not doubt that she was profoundly shocked, but with a new-found cynicism he ascribed her tears to shock rather than to sorrow. he himself would have been incapable of shedding a single tear. he waited quietly for her to recover herself. 'oh, julian! poor paul! how terrible to die like that, alone, in the sea, at night....' for a moment her eyes were expressive of real horror, and she clasped julian's hand, gazing at him while all the visions of her imagination were alive in her eyes. she seemed to be on the point of adding something further, but continued to cry for a few moments, and then said, greatly sobered, 'you appear to take for granted that he has killed himself?' he considered this. up to the present no doubt whatever had existed in his mind. the possibility of an accident had not occurred to him. the very quality of repose and peace that he had witnessed had offered itself to him as the manifest evidence that the man had sought the only solution for a life grown unendurable. he had acknowledged the man's wisdom, bowing before his recognition of the conclusive infallibility of death as a means of escape. cowardly? so men often said, but circumstances were conceivable--circumstances in the present case unknown, withheld, and therefore not to be violated by so much as a hazarded guess--circumstances were conceivable in which no other course was to be contemplated. he replied with gravity,-'i do believe he put an end to his life.' the secret reason would probably never be disclosed; even if it came within sight, julian must now turn his eyes the other way. the secret which he might have, nay, should have, wrenched from his friend's reserve while he still lived, must remain sacred and unprofaned now that he was dead. not only must he guard it from his own knowledge, but from the knowledge of others. with this resolution he perceived that he had already blundered. 'eve, i have been wrong; this thing must be presented as an accident. i have no grounds for believing that he took his life. i must rely on you to support me. in fairness on poor paul.... he told me nothing. a man has a right to his own reticence.' he paused, startled at the truth of his discovery, and cried out, taking his head between his hands,-'oh god! the appalling loneliness of us all!' he shook his head despairingly for a long moment with his hands pressed over his temples. dropping his hands with a gesture of discouragement and lassitude, he regarded eve. 'i've found things out to-night, i think i've aged by five years. i know that paul suffered enough to put an end to himself. we can't tell what he suffered from. i never intended to let you think he had suffered. we must never let any one else suspect it. but imagine the stages and degrees of suffering which led him to that state of mind; imagine his hours, his days, and specially his nights. i looked on him as a village priest, limited to his village; i thought his long hair funny; god forgive me, i slightly despised him. you, eve, you thought him ornamental, a picturesque appendage to the house. and all that while, he was moving slowly towards the determination that he must kill himself.... perhaps, probably, he took his decision yesterday, when you and i were at the picnic. when fru thyregod.... for months, perhaps, or for years, he had been living with the secret that was to kill him. he knew, but no one else knew. he shared his knowledge with no one. i think i shall never look at a man again without awe, and reverence, and terror.' he was trembling strongly, discovering his fellows, discovering himself, his glowing eyes never left eve's face. he went on talking rapidly, as though eager to translate all there was to translate into words before the aroused energy deserted him. 'you vain, you delicate, unreal thing, do you understand at all? have you ever seen a dead man? you don't know the meaning of pain. you inflict pain for your amusement. you thing of leisure, you toy! your deepest emotion is your jealousy. you can be jealous even where you cannot love. you make a plaything of men's pain--you woman! you can change your personality twenty times a day. you can't understand a man's slow, coherent progression; he, always the same person, scarred with the wounds of the past. to wound you would be like wounding a wraith.' under the fury of his unexpected outburst, she protested,-'julian, why attack me? i've done, i've said, nothing.' 'you listened uncomprehendingly to me, thinking if you thought at all, that by to-morrow i should have forgotten my mood of to-night. you are wrong. i've gone a step forward to-day. i've learnt.... learnt, i mean, to respect men who suffer. learnt the continuity and the coherence of life. days linked to days. for you, an episode is an isolated episode.' he softened. 'no wonder you look bewildered. if you want the truth, i am angry with myself for my blindness towards paul. poor little eve! i only meant half i said.' 'you meant every word; one never speaks the truth so fully as when one speaks it unintentionally.' he smiled, but tolerantly and without malice. 'eve betrays herself by the glibness of the axiom. you know nothing of truth. but i've seen truth to-night. all paul's past life is mystery, shadow, enigma to me, but at the same time there is a central light--blinding, incandescent light--which is the fact that he suffered. suffered so much that, a priest, he preferred the supreme sin to such suffering. suffered so much that, a man, he preferred death to such suffering! all his natural desire for life was conquered. that irresistible instinct, that primal law, that persists even to the moment when darkness and unconsciousness overwhelm us--the fight for life, the battle to retain our birthright--all this was conquered. the instinct to escape from life became stronger than the instinct to preserve it! isn't that profoundly illuminating?' he paused. 'that fact sweeps, for me, like a great searchlight over an abyss of pain. the pain the man must have endured before he arrived at such a reversal of his religion and of his most primitive instinct! his world was, at the end, turned upside down. a terrifying nightmare. he took the only course. you cannot think how final death is--so final, so simple. so simple. there is no more to be said. i had no idea....' he spoke himself with the simplicity he was trying to express. he said again, candidly, evenly, in a voice from which all the emotion had passed,-'so simple.' they were silent for a long time. he had forgotten her, and she was wondering whether she dared now recall him to the personal. she had listened, gratified when he attacked her, resentful when he forgot her, bored with his detachment, but wise enough to conceal both her resentment and her boredom. she had worshipped him in his anger, and had admired his good looks in the midst of his fire. she had been infinitely more interested in him than in paul. shocked for a moment by paul's death, aware of the stirrings of pity, she had quickly neglected both for the sake of the living julian. she reviewed a procession of phrases with which she might recall his attention. 'you despise me, julian.' 'no, i only dissociate you. you represent a different sphere. you belong to herakleion. i love you--in your place.' 'you are hurting me.' he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her towards the fight. she let him have his way, with the disconcerting humility he had sometimes found in her. she bore his inspection mutely, her hands dropping loosely by her sides, fragile before his strength. he found that his thoughts had swept back, away from death, away from paul, to her sweetness and her worthlessness. 'many people care for you--more fools they,' he said. 'you and i, eve, must be allies now. you say i despise you. i shall do so less if i can enlist your loyalty in paul's cause. he has died as the result of an accident. are you to be trusted?' he felt her soft shoulders move in the slightest shrug under the pressure of his hands. 'do you think,' she asked, 'that you will be believed?' 'i shall insist upon being believed. there is no evidence--is there?--to prove me wrong.' as she did not answer, he repeated his question, then released her in suspicion. 'what do you know? tell me!' after a very long pause, he said quietly,-'i understand. there are many ways of conveying information. i am very blind about some things. heavens! if i had suspected that truth, either you would not have remained here, or paul would not have remained here. a priest! unheard of.... a priest to add to your collection. first miloradovitch, now paul. moths pinned upon a board. he loved you? oh,' he cried in a passion, 'i see it all: he struggled, you persisted--till you secured him. a joke to you. not a joke now--surely not a joke, even to you--but a triumph. am i right? a triumph! a man, dead for you. a priest. you allowed me to talk, knowing all the while.' 'i am very sorry for paul,' she said absently. he laughed at the pitiably inadequate word. 'have the courage to admit that you are flattered. more flattered than grieved. sorry for paul--yes, toss him that conventional tribute before turning to the luxury of your gratified vanity. that such things can be! surely men and women live in different worlds?' 'but, julian, what could i do?' 'he told you he loved you?' she acquiesced, and he stood frowning at her, his hands buried in his pockets and his head thrust forward, picturing the scenes, which had probably been numerous, between her and the priest, letting his imagination play over the anguish of his friend and eve's indifference. that she had not wholly discouraged him, he was sure. she would not so easily have let him go. julian was certain, as though he had observed their interviews from a hidden corner, that she had amusedly provoked him, watched him with half-closed, ironical eyes, dropped him a judicious word in her honeyed voice, driven him to despair by her disregard, raised him to joy by her capricious friendliness. they had had every opportunity for meeting. eve was strangely secretive. all had been carried on unsuspected. at this point he spoke aloud, almost with admiration,-'that you, who are so shallow, should be so deep!' a glimpse of her life had been revealed to him, but what secrets remained yet hidden? the veils were lifting from his simplicity; he contemplated, as it were, a new world--eve's world, ephemerally and clandestinely populated. he contemplated it in fascination, acknowledging that here was an additional, a separate art, insistent for recognition, dominating, imperative, forcing itself impudently upon mankind, exasperating to the straight-minded because it imposed itself, would not be denied, was subtle, pretended so unswervingly to dignity that dignity was accorded it by a credulous humanity--the art which eve practised, so vain, so cruel, so unproductive, the most fantastically prosperous of impostors! she saw the marvel in his eyes, and smiled slightly. 'well, julian?' 'i am wondering,' he cried, 'wondering! trying to pierce to your mind, your peopled memory, your present occupation, your science. what do you know? what have you heard? what have you seen? you, so young.... who are not young. how many secrets like the secret of paul are buried away in your heart? that you will never betray? do you ever look forward to the procession of your life? you, so young. i think you have some extraordinary, instinctive, inherited wisdom, some ready-made heritage, bequeathed to you by generations, that compensates for the deficiencies of your own experience. because you are so young. and so old, that i am afraid.' 'poor julian,' she murmured. a gulf of years lay between them, and she spoke to him as a woman to a boy. he was profoundly shaken, while she remained quiet, gently sarcastic, pitying towards him, who, so vastly stronger than she, became a bewildered child upon her own ground. he had seen death, but she had seen, toyed with, dissected the living heart. she added, 'don't try to understand. forget me and be yourself. you are annoying me.' she had spoken the last words with such impatience, that, torn from his speculations, he asked,-'annoying you? why?' after a short hesitation she gave him the truth,-'i dislike seeing you at fault.' he passed to a further bewilderment. 'i want you infallible.' rousing herself from the chair where she had been indolently lying, she said in the deepest tones of her contralto voice,-'julian, you think me worthless and vain; you condemn me as that without the charity of any further thought. you are right to think me heartless towards those i don't love. you believe that i spend my life in vanity. julian, i only ask to be taken away from my life; i have beliefs, and i have creeds, both of my own making, but i'm like a ship without a rudder. i'm wasting my life in vanity. i'm capable of other things. i'm capable of the deepest good, i know, as well as of the most shallow evil. nobody knows, except perhaps kato a little, how my real life is made up of dreams and illusions that i cherish. people are far more unreal to me than my own imaginings. one of my beliefs is about you. you mustn't ever destroy it. i believe you could do anything.' 'no, no,' he said, astonished. but she insisted, lit by the flame of her conviction. 'yes, anything. i have the profoundest contempt for the herd--to which you don't belong. i have believed in you since i was a child; believed in you, i mean, as something olympian of which i was frightened. i have always known that you would justify my faith.' 'but i am ordinary, normal!' he said, defending himself. he mistrusted her profoundly; wondered what attack she was engineering. experience of her had taught him to be sceptical. 'ah, don't you see, julian, when i am sincere?' she said, her voice breaking. 'i am telling you now one of the secrets of my heart, if you only knew it. the gentle, the amiable, the pleasant--yes, they're my toys. i'm cruel, i suppose. i'm always told so. i don't care; they're worth nothing. it does their little souls good to pass through the mill. but you, my intractable julian....' 'kyrie,' said nicolas, appearing, 'tsantilas tsigaridis, from aphros, asks urgently whether you will receive him?' 'bring him in,' said julian, conscious of relief, for eve's words had begun to trouble him. outside, the fireworks continued to flash like summer lightning. vi tsigaridis came forward into the room, his fishing cap between his fingers, and his white hair standing out in bunches of wiry curls round his face. determination was written in the set gravity of his features, even in the respectful bow with which he came to a halt before julian. interrupted in their conversation, eve had fallen, back, half lying, in her arm-chair, and julian, who had been pacing up and down, stood still with folded arms, a frown cleaving a deep valley between his brows. he spoke to tsigaridis,-'you asked for me, tsantilas?' 'i am a messenger, kyrie.' he looked from the young man to the girl, his age haughty towards their youth, his devotion submissive towards the advantage of their birth. he said to julian, using almost the same words as he had used once before,-'the people of aphros are the people of your people,' and he bowed again. julian had recovered his self-possession; he no longer felt dazed and bewildered as he had felt before eve. in speaking to tsigaridis he was speaking of things he understood. he knew very well the summons tsigaridis was bringing him, the rude and fine old man, single-sighted as a prophet, direct and unswerving in the cause he had at heart. he imagined, with almost physical vividness, the hand of the fisherman on his shoulder, impelling him forward. 'kyrie,' tsigaridis continued, 'to-day the flag of herakleion flew from the house of your honoured father until you with your own hand threw it down. i was in herakleion, where the news was brought to me, and there is no doubt that by now it is known also on aphros. your action can be interpreted only in one way. i know that to-day'--he crossed himself devoutly--'father paul, who was our friend and yours, has met his death; i break in upon your sorrow; i dared not wait; even death must not delay me. kyrie, i come to bring you back to aphros.' 'i will go to-night,' said julian without hesitation. 'my father and my uncle are in herakleion, and i will start from here before they can stop me. have you a boat?' 'i can procure one,' said tsigaridis, very erect, and looking at julian with shining eyes. 'then i will meet you at the private jetty in two hours' time. we shall be unnoted in the darkness, and the illuminations will be over by then.' 'assuredly,' said the fisherman. 'we go in all secrecy,' julian added. 'tsantilas, listen: can you distribute two orders for me by nightfall? i understand that you have organised a system of communications?' the old man's face relaxed slowly from its stern dignity; it softened into a mixture of slyness and pride and tenderness--the tenderness of a father for his favourite child. almost a smile struggled with his lips. a strange contortion troubled his brows. slowly and portentously, he winked. 'then send word to aphros,' said julian, 'that no boat be allowed to leave the islands, and send word round the mainland recalling every available islander. is it possible? i know that every islander in herakleion to-night is sitting with boon companions in buried haunts, talking, talking, talking. call them together, tsantilas.' 'it will be done, kyrie.' 'and madame kato--she must be informed.' 'kyrie, she sends you a message that she leaves herakleion by to-night's train for athens. when her work is done in athens, she also will return to aphros.' tsigaridis took a step forward and lifted julian's hands to his lips as was his wont. he bowed, and with his patriarchal gravity left the room. julian in a storm of excitement flung himself upon his knees beside eve's chair. 'eve!' he cried. 'oh, the wild adventure! do you understand? it has come at last. paul--i had almost forgotten the islands for him, and now i must forget him for the islands. too much has happened to-day. to-morrow all herakleion will know that the islands have broken away, and that i and every islander are upon aphros. they will come at first with threats; they will send representatives. i shall refuse to retract our declaration. then they will begin to carry out their threats. panaïoannou--think of it!--will organise an attack with boats.' he became sunk in practical thought, from which emerging he said more slowly and carefully, 'they will not dare to bombard the island because they know that italy and greece are watching every move, and with a single man-of-war could blow the whole town of herakleion higher than mount mylassa. kato will watch over us from athens.... they will dare to use no more than reasonable violence. and they will never gain a footing.' eve was leaning forward; she put both hands on his shoulders as he knelt. 'go on talking to me,' she said, 'my darling.' in a low, intense voice, with unseeing eyes, he released all the flood of secret thought that he had, in his life, expressed only to paul and to kato. 'i went once to aphros, more than a year ago; you remember. they asked me then, through tsigaridis, whether i would champion them if they needed championship. i said i would. father was very angry. he is incomprehensibly cynical about the islands, so cynical that i have been tempted to think him merely mercenary, anxious to live at peace with herakleion for the sake of his profits. he is as cynical as malteios, or any stay-in-power politician here. he read me a lecture and called the people a lot of rebellious good-for-nothings. eve, what do i care? one thing is true, one thing is real: those people suffer. everything on earth is empty, except pain. paul suffered, so much that he preferred to die. but a whole people doesn't die. i went away to england, and i put herakleion aside, but at the bottom of my heart i never thought of anything else; i knew i was bound to those people, and i lived, i swear to you, with the sole idea that i should come back, and that this adventure of rescue would happen some day exactly as it is happening now. i thought of kato and of tsigaridis as symbolical, almost mythological beings; my tutelary deities; kato vigorous, and tsigaridis stern. eve, i would rather die than read disappointment in that man's eyes. i never made him many promises, but he must find me better than my word.' he got up and walked once or twice up and down the room, beating his fist against his palm and saying,-'whatever good i do in my life, will be done in the islands.' he came back and stood by eve. 'eve, yesterday morning when i rode over the hills i saw the islands lying out in the sea.... i thought of father, cynical and indifferent, and of stavridis, a self-seeker. i wondered whether i should grow into that. i thought that in illusion lay the only loveliness.' 'ah, how i agree!' she said fervently. he dropped on his knees again beside her, and she put her fingers lightly on his hair. 'when tsigaridis came, you were telling me that you believed in me--heaven knows why. for my part, i only believe that one can accomplish when one has faith in a cause, and is blind to one's own fate. and i believe that the only cause worthy of such faith, is the redemption of souls from pain. i set aside all doubt. i will listen to no argument, and i will walk straight towards the object i have chosen. if my faith is an illusion, i will make that illusion into a reality by the sheer force of my faith.' he looked up at eve, whose eyes were strangely intent on him. 'you see,' he said, fingering the fringe of her spanish shawl, 'herakleion is my battleground, and if i am to tilt against windmills it must be in herakleion. i have staked out herakleion for my own, as one stakes out a claim in a gold-mining country. the islands are the whole adventure of youth for me.' 'and what am i?' she murmured to him. he looked at her without appearing to see her; he propped his elbow on her knee, leant his chin in his palm, and went on talking about the islands. 'i know that i am making the thing into a religion, but then i could never live, simply drifting along. aimless.... i don't understand existence on those terms. i am quite prepared to give everything for my idea; father can disinherit me, and i know i am very likely to be killed. i don't care. i may be mistaken; i may be making a blunder, an error of judgment. i don't care. those people are mine. those islands are my faith. i am blind.' 'and you enjoy the adventure,' she said. 'of course, i enjoy the adventure. but there is more in it than that,' he said, shaking his head; 'there is conviction, burnt into me. fanatical. whoever is ready to pay the ultimate price for his belief, has a right to that belief. heaven preserve me,' he cried, showing his fist, 'from growing like father, or malteios, or stavridis. eve, you understand.' she murmured again,-'and what am i? what part have i got in this world of yours?' again he did not appear to hear her, but making an effort to get up, he said,-'i promised to meet tsantilas, and i must go,' but she pressed her hands on his shoulders and held him down. 'stay a little longer. i want to talk to you.' kneeling there, he saw at last that her mouth was very resolute and her eyes full of a desperate decision. she sat forward in her chair, so close to him that he felt the warmth of her body, and saw that at the base of her throat a little pulse was beating quickly. 'what is it, eve?' 'this,' she said, 'that if i let you go i may never see you again. how much time have you?' he glanced at the heavy clock between the lapis columns. 'an hour and a half.' 'give me half an hour.' 'do you want to stop me from going?' 'could i stop you if i tried?' 'i should never listen to you.' 'julian,' she said, 'i rarely boast, as you know, but i am wondering now how many people in herakleion would abandon their dearest ideals for me? if you think my boast is empty--remember paul.' he paused for a moment, genuinely surprised by the point of view she presented to him. 'but i am different,' he said then, quite simply and with an air of finality. she laughed a low, delighted laugh. 'you have said it: you are different. of course you are different. so different, that you never notice me. people cringe to me--oh, i may say this to you--but you, julian, either you are angry with me or else you forget me.' she looked at the clock, and for the first time a slight loss of self-assurance came over her, surprising and attractive in her, who seemed always to hold every situation in such contemptuous control. 'only half an hour,' she said, 'and i have to say to you all that which i have been at such pains to conceal--hoping all the while that you would force the gates of my concealment, trample on my hypocrisy!' her eyes lost their irony and became troubled; she gazed at him with the distress of a child. he was uneasily conscious of his own embarrassment; he felt the shame of taking unawares the self-reliant in a moment of weakness, the mingled delight and perplexity of the hunter who comes suddenly upon the nymph, bare and gleaming, at the edge of a pool. all instinct of chivalry urged him to retreat until she should have recovered her self-possession. he desired to help her, tender and protective; and again, relentlessly, he would have outraged her reticence, forced her to the uttermost lengths of self-revelation, spared her no abasement, enjoyed her humiliation. simultaneously, he wanted the triumph over her pride, the battle joined with a worthy foe; and the luxury of comforting her new and sudden pathos, as he alone, he knew, could comfort it. she summoned in him, uncivilised and wholly primitive, a passion of tyranny and a passion of possessive protection. he yielded to the former, and continued to look at her in expectation, without speaking. 'help me a little, julian,' she murmured piteously, keeping her eyes bent on her hands, which were lying in her lap. 'look back a little, and remember me. i can remember you so well: coming and going and disregarding me, or furiously angry with me; very often unkind to me; tolerant of me sometimes; negligently, insultingly, certain of me always!' 'we used to say that although we parted for months, we always came together again.' she raised her eyes, grateful to him, as he still knelt on the floor in front of her, but he was not looking at her; he was staring at nothing, straight in front of him. 'julian,' she said, and spoke of their childhood, knowing that her best hope lay in keeping his thoughts distant from the present evening. her distress, which had been genuine, had passed. she had a vital game to play, and was playing it with the full resources of her ability. she swept the chords lightly, swift to strike again that chord which had whispered in response. she bent a little closer to him. 'i have always had this belief in you, of which i told you. you and i both have in us the making of fanatics. we never have led, and never should lead, the tame life of the herd.' she touched him with that, and regained command over his eyes, which this time she held unswervingly. but, having forced him to look at her, she saw a frown gathering on his brows; he sprang to his feet, and made a gesture as if to push her from him. 'you are playing with me; if you saw me lying dead on that rug you would turn from me as indifferently as from paul.' at this moment of her greatest danger, as he stood towering over her, she dropped her face into her hands, and he looked down only upon the nape of her neck and her waving hair. before he could speak she looked up again, her eyes very sorrowful under plaintive brows. 'do i deserve that you should say that to me? i never pretended to be anything but indifferent to those i didn't love. i should have been more hypocritical. you despise me now, so i pay the penalty of my own candour. i have not the pleasant graces of a fru thyregod, julian; not towards you, that is. i wouldn't offer you the insult of an easy philandering. i might make your life a burden; i might even kill you. i know i have often been impossible towards you in the past. i should probably be still more impossible in the future. if i loved you less, i should, no doubt, love you better. you see that i am candid.' he was struck, and reflected: she spoke truly, there was indeed a vein of candour which contradicted and redeemed the petty deceits and untruthfulnesses which so exasperated and offended him. but he would not admit his hesitation. 'i have told you a hundred times that you are cruel and vain and irredeemably worthless.' she answered after a pause, in the deep and wonderful voice which she knew so well how to use,-'you are more cruel than i; you hurt me more than i can say.' he resisted his impulse to renounce his words, to pretend that he had chosen them in deliberate malice. as he said nothing, she added,-'besides, have i ever shown myself any of those things to you? i haven't been cruel to you; i haven't even been selfish; you have no right to find fault with me.' she had blundered; he flew into a rage. 'your damned feminine reasoning! your damned personal point of view! i can see well enough the fashion in which you treat other men. i don't judge you only by your attitude towards myself.' off her guard, she was really incapable of grasping his argument; she tried to insist, to justify herself, but before his storm of anger she cowered away. 'julian, how you frighten me.' 'you only pretend to be frightened.' 'you are brutal; you mangle every word i say,' she said hopelessly. he had reduced her to silence; he stood over her threateningly, much as a tamer of wild beasts who waits for the next spring of the panther. desperate, her spirit flamed up again, and she cried,-'you treat me monstrously; i am a fool to waste my time over you; i am accustomed to quite different treatment.' 'you are spoilt; you are accustomed to flattery--flattery which means less than nothing,' he sneered, stamping upon her attempt at arrogance. 'ah, julian!' she said, suddenly and marvellously melting, and leaning forward she stretched out both hands towards him, so that he was obliged to take them, and she drew him down to his knees once more beside her, and smiled into his eyes, having taken command and being resolved that no crisis of anger should again arise to estrange them, 'i shall never have flattery from you, shall i? my turbulent, impossible julian, whose most meagre compliment i have treasured ever since i can remember! but it is over now, my time of waiting for you'--she still held his hands, and the smile with which she looked at him transfigured all her face. he was convinced; he trembled. he strove against her faintly,-'you choose your moment badly; you know that i must leave for aphros.' 'you cannot!' she cried in indignation. as his eyes hardened, she checked herself; she knew that for her own safety she must submit to his will without a struggle. spoilt, irrational as she was, she had never before so dominated her caprice. her wits were all at work, quick slaves to her passion. 'of course you must go,' she said. she played with his fingers, her head bent low, and he was startled by the softness of her touch. 'what idle hands,' he said, looking at them; 'you were vain of them, as a child.' but she did not wish him to dwell upon her vanity. 'julian, have i not been consistent, all my life? are you taking me seriously? do you know that i am betraying all the truth? one hasn't often the luxury of betraying all the truth. i could betray even greater depths of truth, for your sake. are you treating what i tell you with the gravity it deserves? you must not make a toy of my secret. i have no strength of character, julian. i suppose, in its stead, i have been given strength of love. do you want what i offer you? will you take the responsibility of refusing it?' 'is that a threat?' he asked, impressed and moved. she shrugged slightly and raised her eyebrows; he thought he had never so appreciated the wonderful mobility of her face. 'i am nothing without the person i love. you have judged me yourself: worthless--what else?--cruel, vain. all that is true. hitherto i have tried only to make the years pass by. do you want me to return to such an existence?' his natural vigour rebelled against her frailty. 'you are too richly gifted, eve, to abandon yourself to such slackness of life.' 'i told you i had no strength of character,' she said with bitterness, 'what are my gifts, such as they are, to me? you are the thing i want.' 'you could turn your gifts to any account.' 'with you, yes.' 'no, independently of me or any other human being. one stands alone in work. work is impersonal.' 'nothing is impersonal to me,' she replied morosely, 'that's my tragedy.' she flung out her hands. 'julian, i cherish such endless dreams! i loathe my life of petty adventures; i undertake them only in order to forget the ideal which until now has been denied me. i have crushed down the vision of life with you, but always it has remained at the back of my mind, so wide, so open, a life so free and so full of music and beauty, julian! i would work--for you. i would create--for you. i don't want to marry you, julian. i value my freedom above all things. bondage is not for you or me. but i'll come with you anywhere--to aphros if you like.' 'to aphros?' he repeated. 'why not?' she put in, with extraordinary skill,-'i belong to the islands no less than you.' privately she thought,-'if you knew how little i cared about the islands!' he stared at her, turning her words over in his mind. he was as reckless as she, but conscientiously he suggested,-'there may be danger.' 'i am not really a coward, only in the unimportant things. and you said yourself that they could never invade the island,' she added with complete confidence in his statement. he dreamt aloud,-'i have only just found her. this is herakleion! she might, who knows? be of use to aphros.' she wondered which consideration weighed most heavily with him. 'you were like my sister,' he said suddenly. she gave a rueful smile, but said nothing. 'no, no!' he cried, springing up. 'this can never be; have you bewitched me? let me go, eve; you have been playing a game with me.' she shook her head very slowly and tears gathered in her eyes. 'then the game is my whole life, julian; put me to any test you choose to prove my sincerity.' she convinced him against his will, and he resented it. 'you have deceived me too often.' 'i have been obliged to deceive you, because i could not tell you the truth.' 'very plausible,' he muttered. she waited, very well acquainted with the vehemence of his moods and reactions. she was rewarded; he said next, with laughter lurking in his eyes,-'ever since i can remember, i have quarrelled with you several times a day.' 'but this evening we have no time to waste in quarrelling,' she replied, relieved, and stretching out her hands to him again. as he took them, she added in a low voice, 'you attract me fatally, my refractory julian.' 'we will go to aphros,' he said, 'as friends and colleagues.' 'on any terms you choose to dictate,' she replied with ironical gravity. a flash of clear-sightedness pierced his attempt at self-deception; he saw the danger into which they were deliberately running, he and she, alone amidst fantastic happenings, living in fairyland, both headstrong and impatient creatures, unaccustomed to forgo their whims, much less their passions.... he was obliged to recognise the character of the temple which stood at the end of the path they were treading, and of the deity to whom it was dedicated; he saw the temple with the eyes of his imagination as vividly as his mortal eyes would have seen it: white and lovely amongst cypresses, shadowy within; they would surely enter. eve he certainly could not trust; could he trust himself? his honesty answered no. she observed the outward signs of what was passing in his mind, he started, he glanced at her, a look of horror and vigorous repudiation crossed his face, his eyes dwelt on her, then she saw--for she was quick to read him--by the slight toss of his head that he had banished sagacity. 'come on to the veranda,' she said, tugging at his hand. they stood on the veranda, watching the lights in the distance; the sky dripped with gold; balls of fire exploded into sheaves of golden feathers, into golden fountains and golden rain; golden slashes like the blades of scimitars cut across the curtain of night. eve cried out with delight. fiery snakes rushed across the sky, dying in a shower of sparks. at one moment the whole of the coast-line was lit up by a violet light, which most marvellously gleamed upon the sea. 'fairyland!' cried eve, clapping her hands. she had forgotten aphros. she had forgotten paul. the fireworks were over. tsigaridis pulled strongly and without haste at his oars across a wide sea that glittered now like black diamonds under the risen moon. the water rose and fell beneath the little boat as gently and as regularly as the breathing of a sleeper. in a milky sky, spangled with stars, the immense moon hung flat and motionless, casting a broad path of rough silver up the blackness of the waters, and illuminating a long stretch of little broken clouds that lay above the horizon like the vertebræ of some gigantic crocodile. the light at the tip of the pier showed green, for they saw it still from the side of the land, but as they drew farther out to sea and came on a parallel line with the light, they saw it briefly half green, half ruby; then, as they passed it, looking back they saw only the ruby glow. tsigaridis rowed steadily, silently but for the occasional drip of the water with the lifting of an oar, driving his craft away from the lights of the mainland--the stretch of herakleion along the coast--towards the beckoning lights in the heart of the sea. for ahead of them clustered the little yellow lights of the sheerly-rising village on aphros; isolated lights, three or four only, low down at the level of the harbour, then, after a dark gap representing the face of the cliff, the lights in the houses, irregular, tier above tier. but it was not to these yellow lights that the glance was drawn. high above them all, upon the highest summit of the island, flared a blood-red beacon, a fierce and solitary stain of scarlet, a flame like a flag, like an emblem, full of hope as it leapt towards the sky, full of rebellion as it tore its angry gash across the night. in the moonlight the tiny islands of the group lay darkly outlined in the sea, but the moonlight, placid and benign, was for them without significance: only the beacon, insolently red beneath the pallor of the moon, burned for them with a message that promised to all men strife, to others death, and to the survivors liberty. the form of aphros was no more than a silhouette under the moon, a silhouette that rose, humped and shadowy, bearing upon its crest that flower of flame; dawn might break upon an island of the purest loveliness, colour blown upon it as upon the feathers of a bird, fragile as porcelain, flushed as an orchard in blossom; to-night it lay mysterious, unrevealed, with that single flame as a token of the purpose that burned within its heart. tenderness, loveliness, were absent from the dark shape crowned by so living, so leaping an expression of its soul. here were resolution, anticipation, hope, the perpetual hope of betterment, the undying chimera, the sublime illusion, the lure of adventure to the rebel and the idealist alike. the flame rang out like a bugle call in the night, its glare in the darkness becoming strident indeed as the note of a bugle in the midst of silence. a light breeze brushed the little boat as it drew away from the coast, and tsigaridis with a word of satisfaction shipped his oars and rose, the fragile craft rocking as he moved; eve and julian, watching from the prow, saw a shadow creep along the mast and the triangular shape of a sail tauten itself darkly against the path of the moon. tsigaridis sank back into an indistinguishable block of intenser darkness in the darkness at the bottom of the boat. a few murmured words had passed,-'i will take the tiller, tsigaridis.' 'malista, kyrie,' and the silence had fallen again, the boat sailing strongly before the breeze, the beacon high ahead, and the moon brilliant in the sky. eve, not daring to speak, glanced at julian's profile as she sat beside him. he was scowling. had she but known, he was intensely conscious of her nearness, assailed again with that now familiar ghost, the ghost of her as he had once held her angrily in his arms, soft, heavy, defenceless; and his fingers as they closed over the tiller closed as delicately as upon the remembered curves of her body; she had taken off her hat, and the scent of her hair reached him, warm, personal she was close to him, soft, fragrant, silent indeed, but mysteriously alive; the desire to touch her grew, like the desire of thirst; life seemed to envelop him with a strange completeness. still a horror held him back: was it eve, the child to whom he had been brotherly? or eve, the woman? but in spite of his revulsion--for it was not his habit to control his desires--he changed the tiller to the other hand, and his free arm fell round her shoulders; he felt her instant yielding, her movement nearer towards him, her shortened breath, the falling back of her head; he knew that her eyes were shut; his fingers moulded themselves lingeringly round her throat; she slipped still lower within the circle of his arm, and his hand, almost involuntarily, trembled over the softness of her breast. part iii--aphros i in the large class-room of the school-house the dejected group of greek officials sat among the hideous yellow desks and benches of the school-children of aphros. passion and indignation had spent themselves fruitlessly during the preceding evening and night. to do the islanders justice, the greeks had not been treated with incivility. but all demands for an interview with the highest authority were met not only with a polite reply that the highest authority had not yet arrived upon the island, but also a refusal to disclose his name. the greek officials, having been brought from their respective lodgings to the central meeting-point of the school, had been given the run of two class-rooms, one for the men, of whom there were, in all, twenty, and one for the women, of whom there were only six. they were told that they might communicate, but that armed guards would be placed in both rooms. they found most comfort in gathering, the six-and-twenty of them, in the larger class-room, while the guards, in their kilted dresses, sat on chairs, two at each entrance, with suspiciously modern and efficient-looking rifles laid across their knees. a large proportion of the officials were, naturally, those connected with the school. they observed morosely that all notices in the pure greek of herakleion had already been removed, also the large lithographs of malteios and other former presidents, so that the walls of pitch pine--the school buildings were modern, and of wood--were now ornamented only with maps, anatomical diagrams, and some large coloured plates published by some english manufacturing firm for advertisement; there were three children riding a gray donkey, and another child trying on a sun-bonnet before a mirror; but any indication of the relationship of aphros to herakleion there was none. 'it is revolution,' the postmaster said gloomily. the guards would not speak. their natural loquacity was in abeyance before the first fire of their revolutionary ardour. from vine-cultivators they had become soldiers, and the unfamiliarity of the trade filled them with self-awe and importance. outside, the village was surprisingly quiet; there was no shouting, no excitement; footsteps passed rapidly to and fro, but they seemed to be the footsteps of men bent on ordered business; the greeks could not but be impressed and disquieted by the sense of organisation. 'shall we be allowed to go free?' they asked the guards. 'you will know when he comes,' was all the guards would reply. 'who is he?' 'you will know presently.' 'has he still not arrived?' 'he has arrived.' 'we heard nothing; he must have arrived during the night.' to this they received no answer, nor any to their next remark,-'why so much mystery? it is, of course, the scatterbrained young englishman.' the guards silently shrugged their shoulders, as much as to say, that any one, even a prisoner, had a right to his own opinion. the school clock pointed to nine when the first noise of agitation began in the street. it soon became clear that a large concourse of people was assembling in the neighbourhood of the school; a slight excitement betrayed itself by some shouting and laughter, but a voice cried 'silence!' and silence was immediately produced. those within the school heard only the whisperings and rustlings of a crowd. they were not extravagantly surprised, knowing the islanders to be an orderly, restrained, and frugal race, their emotions trained into the sole channel of patriotism, which here was making its supreme demand upon their self-devotion. the greeks threw wondering glances at the rifles of the guards. ostensibly school-teachers, post and telegraph clerks, and custom-house officers, they were, of course, in reality the spies of the government of herakleion, and as such should have had knowledge of the presence of such weapons on the island. they reflected that, undesirable as was a prolonged imprisonment in the school-house, at the mercy of a newly-liberated and probably rancorous population, a return to herakleion might prove a no less undesirable fate at the present juncture. outside, some sharp words of command were followed by the click of weapons on the cobblestones; the postmaster looked at the chief customs-house clerk, raised his eyebrows, jerked his head, and made a little noise: 'tcha!' against his teeth, as much as to say, 'the deceitful villains! under our noses!' but at the back of his mind was, 'no further employment, no pension, for any of us.' a burst of cheering followed in the street. the voice cried 'silence!' again, but this time was disregarded. the cheering continued for some minutes, the women's note joining in with the men's deep voices, and isolated words were shouted, all with the maximum of emotion. the greeks tried to look out of the windows, but were prevented by the guards. some one in the street began to speak, when the cheering had died away, but through the closed windows it was impossible to distinguish the words. a moment's hush followed this speaking, and then another voice began, reading impressively--it was obvious, from the unhesitating and measured scansion, that he was reading. sections of his address, or proclamation, whichever it was, were received with deep growls of satisfaction from the crowd. at one moment he was wholly interrupted by repeated shouts of 'viva! viva! viva!' and when he had made an end thunderous shouts of approval shook the wooden building. the greeks were by now very pale; they could not tell whether this proclamation did not contain some reference, some decision, concerning themselves. after the proclamation, another voice spoke, interrupted at every moment by various cries of joy and delight, especially from the women; the crowd seemed alternately rocked with enthusiasm, confidence, fire, and laughter. the laughter was not the laughter of amusement so much as the grim laughter of resolution and fraternity; an extraordinarily fraternal and unanimous spirit seemed to prevail. then silence again, broken by voices in brief confabulation, and then the shifting of the crowd which, to judge from the noise, was pressing back against the school-buildings in order to allow somebody a passage down the street. the door opened, and zapantiotis, appearing, announced,-'prisoners, the president.' the word created a sensation among the little herd of hostages, who, for comfort and protection, had instinctively crowded together. they believed themselves miraculously rescued, at least from the spite and vengeance of the islanders, and expected to see either malteios or stavridis, frock-coated and top-hatted, in the doorway. instead, they saw julian davenant, flushed, untidy, bareheaded, and accompanied by two immense islanders carrying rifles. he paused and surveyed the little speechless group, and a faint smile ran over his lips at the sight of the confused faces of his prisoners. they stared at him, readjusting their ideas: in the first instance they had certainly expected julian, then for one flashing moment they had expected the president of herakleion, then they were confronted with julian. a question left the lips of the postmaster,-'president of what?' perhaps he was tempted madly to think that neither malteios, nor stavridis, but julian, had been on the foregoing day elected president of herakleion. zapantiotis answered gravely,-'of the archipelago of san zacharie.' 'are we all crazy?' cried the postmaster. 'you see, gentlemen,' said julian, speaking for the first time, 'that the folly of my grandfather's day has been revived.' he came forward and seated himself at the schoolmaster's desk, his bodyguard standing a little behind him, one to each side. 'i have come here,' he said, 'to choose amongst you one representative who can carry to herakleion the terms of the proclamation which has just been read in the market-place outside. these terms must be communicated to the present government. zapantiotis, hand the proclamation to these gentlemen.' the outraged greeks came closer together to read the proclamation over each other's shoulder; it set forth that the islands constituting the archipelago of san zacharie, and including the important island of aphros, by the present proclamation, and after long years of oppression, declared themselves a free and independent republic under the presidency of julian henry davenant, pending the formation of a provisional government; that if unmolested they were prepared to live in all peace and neighbourly good-fellowship with the republic of herakleion, but that if molested in any way they were equally prepared to defend their shores and their liberty to the last drop of blood in the last man upon the islands. there was a certain nobleness in the resolute gravity of the wording. julian wore a cryptic smile as he watched the greeks working their way through this document, which was in the italianate greek of the islands. their fingers pointed certain paragraphs out to one another, and little repressed snorts came from them, snorts of scorn and of indignation, and glances were flung at julian lounging indifferently in the schoolmaster's chair. the doors had been closed to exclude the crowd, and of the islanders, only zapantiotis and the guards remained in the room. although it was early, the heat was beginning to make itself felt, and the flies were buzzing over the window-panes. 'if you have finished reading, gentlemen,' said julian presently, 'i shall be glad if you will decide upon a representative, as i have much to attend to; a boat is waiting to take him and these ladies to the shore.' immense relief was manifested by the ladies. 'this thing,' said the head of the school, hitting the proclamation with his closed fingers, 'is madness; i beg you, young man--i know you quite well--to withdraw before it is too late.' 'i can have no argument; i give you five minutes to decide,' julian replied, laying his watch on the desk. his followers had no longer cause to fret against his indecision. seeing him determined, the greeks excitedly conferred; amongst them the idea of self-preservation, rather than of self-immolation, was obviously dominant. herakleion, for all the displeasure of the authorities, was, when it came to the point, preferable to aphros in the hands of the islanders and their eccentric, if not actually bloodthirsty, young leader. the postmaster presented himself as senior member of the group; the schoolmaster as the most erudite, therefore the most fitted to represent his colleagues before the senate; the head clerk of the customs-house urged his claim as having the longest term of official service. the conference degenerated into a wrangle. 'i see, gentlemen, that i must take the decision out of your hands,' julian said at length, breaking in upon them, and appointed the customs-house clerk. but in the market-place, whither the greek representative and the women of the party were instantly hurried, the silent throng of population waited in packed and coloured ranks. the men stood apart, arms folded, handkerchiefs bound about their heads under their wide straw hats--they waited, patient, confident, unassuming. none of them was armed with rifles, although many carried a pistol or a long knife slung at his belt; the customs-house clerk, through all his confusion of mingled terror and relief, noted the fact; if he delivered it at a propitious moment, it might placate an irate senate. no rifles, or, at most, eight in the hands of the guards! order would very shortly be restored in aphros. nevertheless, that sense of organisation, of discipline, of which the greeks had been conscious while listening to the assembling of the crowd through the boards of the school-house, was even more apparent here upon the market-place. these islanders knew their business. a small file of men detached itself as an escort for the representative and the women. julian came from the school at the same moment with his two guards, grim and attentive, behind him. a movement of respect produced itself in the crowd. the customs-house clerk and his companions were not allowed to linger, but were marched away to the steps which led down to the jetty. they carried away with them as their final impression of aphros the memory of the coloured throng and of julian, a few paces in advance, watching their departure. the proclamation, the scene in the school-house, remained as the prelude to the many pictures which populated julian's memory, interchangeably, of that day. he saw himself, speaking rarely, but, as he knew, to much purpose, seated at the head of a table in the village assembly-room, and, down each side of the table, the principal men of the islands, tsigaridis and zapantiotis on his either hand, grave counsellors; he heard their speech, unreproducibly magnificent, because a bodyguard of facts supported every phrase; because, in the background, thronged the years of endurance and the patient, steadfast hope. he heard the terms of the new constitution, and the oath of resolution to which every man subscribed. with a swimming brain, and his eyes fixed upon the hastily-restored portrait of his grandfather, he heard the references to himself as head of the state--a state in which the citizens numbered perhaps five thousand. he heard his own voice, issuing orders whose wisdom was never questioned: no boat to leave the islands, no boats to be admitted to the port, without his express permission, a system of sentries to be instantly instituted and maintained, day and night. as he delivered these orders, men rose in their places, assuming the responsibility, and left the room to execute them without delay. he saw himself later, still accompanied by tsigaridis and zapantiotis, but having rid himself of his two guards, in the interior of the island, on the slopes where the little rough stone walls retained the terraces, and where between the trunks of the olive-trees the sea moved, blue and glittering, below. here the island was dry and stony; mule-paths, rising in wide, low steps, wandered up the slopes and lost themselves over the crest of the hill. a few goats moved restlessly among cactus and bramble-bushes, cropping at the prickly stuff, and now and then raising their heads to bleat for the kids that, more light-hearted because not under the obligation of searching for food amongst the vegetation, leapt after one another, up and down, in a happy chain on their little stiff certain legs from terrace to terrace. an occasional cypress rose in a dark spire against the sky. across the sea, the town of herakleion lay, white, curved, and narrow, with its coloured sunblinds no bigger than butterflies, along the strip of coast that mount mylassa so grudgingly allowed it. the stepped paths being impassable for carts, tsigaridis had collected ten mules with panniers, that followed in a string. julian rode ahead upon another mule; zapantiotis walked, his tall staff in his hand, and his dog at his heels. julian remembered idly admiring the health which enabled this man of sixty-five to climb a constantly-ascending path under a burning sun without showing any signs of exhaustion. as they went, the boy in charge of the mules droned out a mournful native song which julian recognised as having heard upon the lips of kato. the crickets chirped unceasingly, and overhead the seagulls circled uttering their peculiar cry. they had climbed higher, finally leaving behind them the olive-terraces and coming to a stretch of vines, the autumn vine-leaves ranging through every shade of yellow, red, and orange; here, away from the shade of the olives, the sun burned down almost unbearably, and the stones of the rough walls were too hot for the naked hand to touch. here it was that the grapes were spread out, drying into currants--a whole terrace heaped with grapes, over which a party of young men, who sat playing at dice beneath a rough shelter made out of reeds and matting, were mounting guard. julian, knowing nothing of this business, and present only out of interested curiosity, left the command to zapantiotis. a few stone-pines grew at the edge of the terrace; he moved his mule into their shade while he watched. they had reached the summit of the island--no doubt, if he searched far enough, he would come across the ruins of last night's beacon, but he preferred to remember it as a living thing rather than to stumble with his foot against ashes, gray and dead; he shivered a little, in spite of the heat, at the thought of that flame already extinguished--and from the summit he could look down upon both slopes, seeing the island actually as an island, with the sea below upon every side, and he could see the other islands of the group, speckled around, some of them too tiny to be inhabited, but all deserted now, when in the common cause every soul had been summoned by the beacon, the preconcerted signal, to aphros. he imagined the little isolated boats travelling across the moonlit waters during the night, as he himself had travelled; little boats, each under its triangular sail, bearing the owner, his women, his children, and such poor belongings as he could carry, making for the port or the creeks of aphros, relying for shelter upon the fraternal hospitality of the inhabitants. no doubt they, like himself, had travelled with their eyes upon the beacon.... the young men, grinning broadly and displaying a zest they would not have contributed towards the mere routine of their lives, had left their skeleton shelter and had fallen to work upon the heaps of drying grapes with their large, purple-stained, wooden shovels. zapantiotis leant upon his staff beside julian's mule. 'see, kyrie!' he had said. 'it was a crafty thought, was it not? ah, women! only a woman could have thought of such a thing.' 'a woman?' 'anastasia kato,' the overseer had replied, reverent towards the brain that had contrived thus craftily for the cause, but familiar towards the great singer--of whom distinguished european audiences spoke with distant respect--as towards a woman of his own people. he probably, julian had reflected, did not know of her as a singer at all. beneath the grapes rifles were concealed, preserved from the fruit by careful sheets of coarse linen; rifles, gleaming, modern rifles, laid out in rows; a hundred, two hundred, three hundred; julian had no means of estimating. he had dismounted and walked over to them; the young men were still shovelling back the fruit, reckless of its plenty, bringing more weapons and still more to light. he had bent down to examine more closely. 'italian,' he had said then, briefly, and had met tsigaridis' eye, had seen the slow, contented smile which spread on the old man's face, and which he had discreetly turned aside to conceal. then julian, with a glimpse of all those months of preparation, had ridden down from the hills, the string of mules following his mule in single file, the shining barrels bristling out of the panniers, and in the market-place he had assisted, from the height of his saddle, at the distribution of the arms. two hundred and fifty, and five hundred rounds of ammunition to each.... he thought of the nights of smuggling represented there, of the catch of fish--the 'quick, shining harvest of the sea'--beneath which lay the deadlier catch that evaded the eyes of the customs-house clerks. he remembered the robbery at the casino, and was illuminated. money had not been lacking. these were not the only pictures he retained of that day; the affairs to which he was expected to attend seemed to be innumerable; he had sat for hours in the village assembly-room, while the islanders came and went, surprisingly capable, but at the same time utterly reliant upon him. throughout the day no sign came from herakleion. julian grew weary, and could barely restrain his thoughts from wandering to eve. he would have gone to her room before leaving the house in the morning, but she had refused to see him. consequently the thought of her had haunted him all day. one of the messages which reached him as he sat in the assembly-room had been from her: would he send a boat to herakleion for nana? he had smiled, and had complied, very much doubting whether the boat would ever be allowed to return. the message had brought him, as it were, a touch from her, a breath of her personality which clung about the room long after. she was near at hand, waiting for him, so familiar, yet so unfamiliar, so undiscovered. he felt that after a year with her much would still remain to be discovered; that there was, in fact, no end to her interest and her mystery. she was of no ordinary calibre, she who could be, turn by turn, a delicious or plaintive child, a woman of ripe seduction, and--in fits and starts--a poet in whose turbulent and undeveloped talent he divined startling possibilities! when she wrote poetry she smothered herself in ink, as he knew; so mingled in her were the fallible and the infallible. he refused to analyse his present relation to her; a sense, not of hypocrisy, but of decency, held him back; he remembered all too vividly the day he had carried her in his arms; his brotherliness had been shocked, offended, but since then the remembrance had persisted and had grown, and now he found himself, with all that brotherliness of years still ingrained in him, full of thoughts and on the brink of an adventure far from brotherly. he tried not to think these thoughts. he honestly considered them degrading, incestuous. but his mood was ripe for adventure; the air was full of adventure; the circumstances were unparalleled; his excitement glowed--he left the assembly-room, walked rapidly up the street, and entered the davenant house, shutting the door behind him. the sounds of the street were shut out, and the water plashed coolly in the open courtyard; two pigeons walked prinking round the flat edge of the marble basin, the male cooing and bowing absurdly, throwing out his white chest, ruffling his tail, and putting down his spindly feet with fussy precision. when julian appeared, they fluttered away to the other side of the court to resume their convention of love-making. evening was falling, warm and suave, and overhead in the still blue sky floated tiny rosy clouds. in the cloisters round the court the frescoes of the life of saint benedict looked palely at julian, they so faded, so washed-out, he so young and so full of strength. their pallor taught him that he had never before felt so young, so reckless, or so vigorous. he was astonished to find eve with the son of zapantiotis, learning from him to play the flute in the long, low room which once had been the refectory and which ran the full length of the cloisters. deeply recessed windows, with heavy iron gratings, looked down over the roofs of the village to the sea. in one of these windows eve leaned against the wall holding the flute to her lips, and young zapantiotis, eager, handsome, showed her how to place her fingers upon the holes. she looked defiantly at julian. 'nico has rescued me,' she said; 'but for him i should have been alone all day. i have taught him to dance.' she pointed to a gramophone upon a table. 'where did that come from?' julian said, determined not to show his anger before the islander. 'from the café,' she replied. 'then nico had better take it back; they will need it.' julian said, threats in his voice, 'and he had better see whether his father cannot find him employment; we have not too many men.' 'you left me the whole day,' she said when nico had gone; 'i am sorry i came with you, julian; i would rather go back to herakleion; even nana has not come. i did not think you would desert me.' he looked at her, his anger vanished, and she was surprised when he answered her gently, even amusedly,-'you are always delightfully unexpected and yet characteristic of yourself: i come back, thinking i shall find you alone, perhaps glad to see me, having spent an unoccupied day, but no, i find you with the best-looking scamp of the village, having learnt from him to play the flute, taught him to dance, and borrowed a gramophone from the local café!' he put his hands heavily upon her shoulders with a gesture she knew of old. 'i suppose i love you,' he said roughly, and then seemed indisposed to talk of her any more, but told her his plans and arrangements, to which she did not listen. they remained standing in the narrow window-recess, leaning, opposite to one another, against the thick stone walls of the old genoese building. through the grating they could see the sea, and, in the distance, herakleion. 'it is sufficiently extraordinary,' he remarked, gazing across the bay, 'that herakleion has made no sign. i can only suppose that they will try force as soon as panaïoannou can collect his army, which, as it was fully mobilised no later than yesterday, ought not to take very long.' 'will there be fighting?' she asked, with a first show of interest. 'i hope so,' he replied. 'i should like you to fight,' she said. swaying as he invariably did between his contradictory opinions of her, he found himself inwardly approving her standpoint, that man, in order to be worthy of woman, must fight, or be prepared to fight, and to enjoy the fighting. from one so self-indulgent, so pleasure-loving, so reluctant to face any unpleasantness of life, he might pardonably have expected the less heroic attitude. if she resented his absence all day on the business of preparations for strife, might she not equally have resented the strife that called him from her side? he respected her appreciation of physical courage, and remodelled his estimate to her advantage. to his surprise, the boat he had sent for nana returned from herakleion. it came, indeed, without nana, but bearing in her place a letter from his father:- 'dear julian,--by the courtesy of m. stavridis--by whose orders this house is closely guarded, and for which i have to thank your folly--i am enabled to send you this letter, conditional on m. stavridis's personal censorship. your messenger has come with your astonishing request that your cousin's nurse may be allowed to return with the boat to aphros. i should have returned with it myself in the place of the nurse, but for m. stavridis's very natural objection to my rejoining you or leaving herakleion. 'i am at present too outraged to make any comment upon your behaviour. i try to convince myself that you must be completely insane. m. stavridis, however, will shortly take drastic steps to restore you to sanity. i trust only that no harm will befall you--for i remember still that you are my son--in the process. in the meantime, i demand of you most urgently, in my own name and that of your uncle and aunt, that you will send back your cousin without delay to herakleion. m. stavridis has had the great kindness to give his consent to this. a little consideration will surely prove to you that in taking her with you to aphros you have been guilty of a crowning piece of folly from every point of view. i know you to be headstrong and unreflecting. try to redeem yourself in this one respect before it is too late. 'i fear that i should merely be wasting my time by attempting to dissuade you from the course you have chosen with regard to the islands. my poor misguided boy, do you not realise that your effort is _bound_ to end in disaster, and will serve but to injure those you most desire to help? 'i warn you, too, most gravely and solemnly, that your obstinacy will entail _very serious consequences_ for yourself. i shall regret the steps i contemplate taking, but i have the interest of our family to consider, and i have your uncle's entire approval. 'i am very deeply indebted to m. stavridis, who, while unable to neglect his duty as the first citizen of herakleion, has given me every proof of his personal friendship and confidence. w. davenant.' julian showed this letter to eve. 'what answer shall you send?' 'this,' he replied, tearing it into pieces. 'you are angry. oh, julian, i love you for being reckless.' 'i see red. he threatens me with disinheriting me. he takes good care to remain in stavridis' good books himself. do you want to go back?' 'no, julian.' 'of course, father is quite right: i am insane, and so are you. but, after all, you will run no danger, and as far compromising you, that is absurd: we have often been alone together before now. besides,' he added brutally, 'you said yourself you belonged to the islands no less than i; you can suffer for them a little if necessary.' 'i make no complaint,' she said with an enigmatic smile. they dined together near the fountain in the courtyard, and overhead the sky grew dark, and the servant brought lighted candles for the table. julian spoke very little; he allowed himself the supreme luxury of being spoilt by a woman who made it her business to please him; observing her critically, appreciatively; acknowledging her art; noting with admiration how the instinct of the born courtesan filled in the gaps in the experience of the child. he was, as yet, more mystified by her than he cared to admit. but he yielded himself to her charm. the intimacy of this meal, their first alone together, enveloped him more and more with the gradual sinking of night, and his observant silence, which had originated with the deliberate desire to test her skill and also to indulge his own masculine enjoyment, insensibly altered into a shield against the emotion which was gaining him. the servant had left them. the water still plashed into the marble basin. the candles on the table burned steadily in the unruffled evening, and under their light gleamed the wine--rough, native wine, red and golden--in the long-necked, transparent bottles, and the bowl of fruit: grapes, a cut melon, and bursting figs, heaped with the lavishness of plenty. the table was a pool of light, but around it the court and cloisters were full of dim, mysterious shadows. opposite julian, eve leaned forward, propping her bare elbows on the table, disdainfully picking at the fruit, and talking. he looked at her smooth, beautiful arms, and little white hands that he had always loved. he knew that he preferred her company to any in the world. her humour, her audacity, the width of her range, the picturesqueness of her phraseology, her endless inventiveness, her subtle undercurrent of the personal, though 'you' or 'i' might be entirely absent from her lips all seemed to him wholly enchanting. she was a sybarite of life, an artist; but the glow and recklessness of her saved her from all taint of intellectual sterility. he knew that his life had been enriched and coloured by her presence in it; that it would, at any moment, have become a poorer, a grayer, a less magical thing through the loss of her. he shut his eyes for a second as he realised that she could be, if he chose, his own possession, she the elusive and unattainable; he might claim the redemption of all her infinite promise; might discover her in the rôle for which she was so obviously created; might violate the sanctuary and tear the veils from the wealth of treasure hitherto denied to all; might exact for himself the first secrets of her unplundered passion. he knew her already as the perfect companion, he divined her as the perfect mistress; he reeled and shrank before the unadmitted thought, then looked across at her where she sat with an open fig half-way to her lips, and knew fantastically that they were alone upon an island of which he was all but king. 'a deserted city,' she was saying, 'a city of portuguese settlers; pink marble palaces upon the edge of the water; almost crowded into the water by the encroaching jungle; monkeys peering through their ruined windows; on the sand, great sleepy tortoises; and, twining in and out of the broken doorways of the palaces, orchids and hibiscus--that is trincomali! would you like the tropics, i wonder, julian? their exuberance, their vulgarity?... one buys little sacks full of precious stones; one puts in one's hand, and lets the sapphires and the rubies and the emeralds run through one's fingers.' their eyes met; and her slight, infrequent confusion overcame her.... 'you aren't listening,' she murmured. 'you were only fifteen when you went to ceylon,' he said, gazing at the blue smoke of his cigarette. 'you used to write to me from there. you had scarlet writing-paper. you were a deplorably affected child.' 'yes,' she said, 'the only natural thing about me was my affectation.' they laughed, closely, intimately. 'it began when you were three,' he said, 'and insisted upon always wearing brown kid gloves; your voice was even deeper then than it is now, and you always called your father robert.' 'you were five; you used to push me into the prickly pear.' 'and you tried to kill me with a dagger; do you remember?' 'oh, yes,' she said quite gravely, 'there was a period when i always carried a dagger.' 'when you came back from ceylon you had a tiger's claw.' 'with which i once cut my initials on your arm.' 'you were very theatrical.' 'you were very stoical.' again they laughed. 'when you went to ceylon,' he said, 'one of the ship's officers fell in love with you; you were very much amused.' 'the only occasion, i think, julian, when i ever boasted to you of such a thing? you must forgive me--il ne faut pas m'en vouloir--remember i was only fifteen.' 'such things amuse you still,' he said jealously. 'c'est possible,' she replied. he insisted,-'when did you really become aware of your own heartlessness?' she sparkled with laughter. 'i think it began life as a sense of humour,' she said, 'and degenerated gradually into its present state of spasmodic infamy.' he had smiled, but she saw his face suddenly darken, and he got up abruptly, and stood by the fountain, turning his back on her. 'my god,' she thought to herself in terror, 'he has remembered paul.' she rose also, and went close to him, slipping her hand through his arm, endeavouring to use, perhaps unconsciously, the powerful weapon of her physical nearness. he did not shake away her hand, but he remained unresponsive, lost in contemplation of the water. she hesitated as to whether she should boldly attack the subject--she knew her danger; he would be difficult to acquire, easy to lose, no more tractable than a young colt--then in the stillness of the night she faintly heard the music of the gramophone playing in the village café. 'come into the drawing-room and listen to the music, julian,' she said, pulling at his arm. he came morosely; they exchanged the court with its pool of light for the darkness of the drawing-room; she felt her way, holding his hand, towards a window seat; sat down, and pulled him down beside her; through the rusty iron grating they saw the sea, lit up by the rising moon. 'we can just hear the music,' she whispered. her heart was beating hard and fast: they had been as under a spell, so close were they to one another, but now she was bitterly conscious of having lost him. she knew that he had slipped from the fairyland of aphros back to the world of principles, of morals both conventional and essential. in fairyland, whither she had enticed him, all things were feasible, permissible, even imperative. he had accompanied her, she thought, very willingly, and they had strayed together down enchanted paths, abstaining, it is true, from adventuring into the perilous woods that surrounded them, but hand in hand, nevertheless, their departure from the path potential at any rate, if not imminent. they had been alone; she had been so happy, so triumphant. now he had fled her, back to another world inhabited by all the enemies she would have had him forget: her cruelties, her vanities--her vanities! he could never reconcile her vanities and her splendour; he was incapable of seeing them both at the same time; the one excluded the other, turn and turn about, in his young eyes; her deceptions, her evasions of the truth, the men she had misled, the man, above all, that she had killed and whose death she had accepted with comparative indifference. these things rose in a bristling phalanx against her, and she faced them, small, afraid, and at a loss. for she was bound to admit their existence, and the very vivid, the very crushing, reality of their existence, all-important to her, in julian's eyes; although she herself might be too completely devoid of moral sense, in the ordinary acceptance of the word, to admit any justification for his indignation. she knew with sorrow that they would remain for ever as a threat in the background, and that she would be fortunate indeed if in that background she could succeed in keeping them more or less permanently. her imagination sighed for a potion of forgetfulness. failing that, never for an instant must she neglect her rôle of calypso. she knew that on the slightest impulse to anger on julian's part--and his impulses to anger were, alas, both violent and frequent--all those enemies in their phalanx would instantly rise and range themselves on his side against her. coaxed into abeyance, they would revive with fatal ease. she knew him well in his present mood of gloom. she was afraid, and a desperate anxiety to regain him possessed her. argument, she divined, would be futile. she whispered his name. he turned on her a face of granite. 'why have you changed?' she said helplessly. 'i was so happy, and you are making me so miserable.' 'i have no pity for you,' he said, 'you are too pitiless yourself to deserve any.' 'you break my heart when you speak to me like that.' 'i should like to break it,' he replied, unmoved. she did not answer, but presently he heard her sobbing. full of suspicion, he put out his hand and felt the tears running between her fingers. 'i have made you cry,' he said. 'not for the first time,' she answered. she knew that he was disconcerted, shaken in his harshness, and added,-'i know what you think of me sometimes, julian. i have nothing to say in my own defence. perhaps there is only one good thing in me, but that you must promise me never to attack.' 'what is it?' 'you sound very sceptical,' she answered wistfully. 'my love for you; let us leave it at that.' 'i wonder!' he said; and again, 'i wonder!...' she moved a little closer to him, and leaned against him, so that her hair brushed his cheek. awkwardly and absent-mindedly, he put his arms round her; he could feel her heart beating through her thin muslin shirt, and lifting her bare arm in his hand he weighed it pensively; she lay against him, allowing him to do as he pleased; physically he held her nearer, but morally he was far away. humiliating herself, she lay silent, willing to sacrifice the pride of her body if therewith she might purchase his return. but he, awaking with a start from his brooding grievances, put her away from him. if temptation was to overcome him, it must rush him by assault; not thus, sordid and unlit.... he rose, saying,-'it is very late; you must go to bed; good-night.' ii panaïoannou attempted a landing before sunrise on the following day. a few stars were still visible, but the moon was paling, low in the heavens, and along the eastern horizon the sky was turning rosy and yellow above the sea. earth, air, and water were alike bathed in purity and loveliness. julian, hastily aroused, remembered the islands as he had seen them from the mainland on the day of madame lafarge's picnic. in such beauty they were lying now, dependent on his defence.... excited beyond measure, he dressed rapidly, and as he dressed he heard the loud clanging of the school bell summoning the men to arms; he heard the village waking, the clatter of banging doors, of wooden soles upon the cobbles, and excited voices. he rushed from his room into the passage, where he met eve. she was very pale, and her hair was streaming round her shoulders. she clung to him. 'oh, julian, what is it? why are they ringing the bells? why are you dressed? where are you going?' he explained, holding her, stroking her hair. 'boats have been sighted, setting out from herakleion; i suppose they think they will take us by surprise. you know, i have told off two men to look after you; you are to go into the little hut which is prepared for you in the very centre of the island. they will never land, and you will be perfectly safe there. i will let you know directly they are driven off. you must let me go, darling.' 'oh, but you? but you?' she cried desperately. 'they won't come near me,' he replied laughing. 'julian, julian,' she said, holding on to his coat as he tried to loosen her fingers, 'julian, i want you to know: you're all my life, i give you myself, on whatever terms you like, for ever if you like, for a week if you like; you can do with me whatever you choose; throw me away when you've done with me; you think me worthless; i care only for you in the world.' he was astonished at the starkness and violence of the passion in her eyes and voice. 'but i am not going into any danger,' he said, trying to soothe her. 'for god's sake, kiss me,' she said, distraught, and seeing that he was impatient to go. 'i'll kiss you to-night,' he answered tempestuously, with a ring of triumph as one who takes a decision. 'no, no: now.' he kissed her hair, burying his face in its thickness. 'this attack is a comedy, not a tragedy,' he called back to her as he ran down the stairs. the sentry who had first sighted the fleet of boats was still standing upon his headland, leaning on his rifle, and straining his eyes over the sea. julian saw him thus silhouetted against the morning sky. day was breaking as julian came up the mule-path, a score of islanders behind him, walking with the soft, characteristic swishing of their white woollen skirts, and the slight rattle of slung rifles. all paused at the headland, which was above a little rocky creek; the green and white water foamed gently below. out to sea the boats were distinctly visible, dotted about the sea, carrying each a load of men; there might be twenty or thirty, with ten or fifteen men in each. 'they must be out of their senses,' tsigaridis growled; 'their only hope would have lain in a surprise attack at night--which by the present moonlight would indeed have proved equally idle--but at present they but expose themselves to our butchery.' 'the men are all at their posts?' julian asked. 'malista, kyrie, malista.' they remained for a little watching the boats as the daylight grew. the colours of the dawn were shifting, stretching, widening, and the water, turning from iron-gray to violet, began along the horizon to reflect the transparency of the sky. the long, low, gray clouds caught upon their edges an orange flush; a sudden bar of gold fell along the line where sky and water met; a drift of tiny clouds turned red like a flight of flamingoes; and the blue began insensibly to spread, pale at first, then deepening as the sun rose out of the melting clouds and flooded over the full expanse of sea. to the left, the coast of the mainland, with mount mylassa soaring, and herakleion at its base, broke the curve until it turned at an angle to run northward. smoke began to rise in steady threads of blue from the houses of herakleion. the red light died away at the tip of the pier. the gulls circled screaming, flashes of white and gray, marbled birds; and beyond the thin line of foam breaking against the island the water was green in the shallows. all round aphros the islanders were lying in pickets behind defences, the naturally rocky and shelving coast affording them the command of every approach. the port, which was the only really suitable landing-place, was secure, dominated as it was by the village; no boat could hope to live for five minutes under concentrated rifle fire from the windows of the houses. the other possible landing-places--the creeks and little beaches--could be held with equal ease by half a dozen men with rifles lying under shelter upon the headlands or on the ledges of the rocks. julian was full of confidence. the danger of shelling he discounted, firstly because herakleion possessed no man-of-war, or, indeed, any craft more formidable than the police motor-launch, and secondly because the authorities in herakleion knew well enough that italy, for reasons of her own, neither wholly idealistic nor disinterested, would never tolerate the complete destruction of aphros. moreover, it would be hopeless to attempt to starve out an island whose population lived almost entirely upon the fish caught round their own shores, the vegetables and fruit grown upon their own hillsides, the milk and cheeses from their own rough-feeding goats, and the occasional but sufficient meat from their own sheep and bullocks. 'kyrie,' said tsigaridis, 'should we not move into shelter?' julian abandoned the headland regretfully. for his own post he had chosen the davenant house in the village. he calculated that panaïoannou, unaware of the existence of a number of rifles on the island, would make his first and principal attempt upon the port, expecting there to encounter a hand to hand fight with a crowd diversely armed with knives, stones, pitchforks, and a few revolvers--a brief, bloody, desperate resistance, whose term could be but a matter of time, after which the village would fall into the hands of the invaders and the rebellion would be at an end. at most, panaïoannou would argue, the fighting would be continued up into the main street of the village, the horizontal street that was its backbone, terminating at one end by the market-place above the port, and at the other by the davenants' house; and ramifications of fighting--a couple of soldiers here and there pursuing a fleeing islander--up the sloping, narrow, stepped streets running between the houses, at right angles from the main street, up the hill. julian sat with his rifle cocked across his knees in one of the window recesses of his own house, and grinned as he anticipated panaïoannou's surprise. he did not want a massacre of the fat, well-meaning soldiers of herakleion--the casino, he reflected, must be closed to-day, much to the annoyance of the gambling dagos; however, they would have excitement enough, of another kind, to console them--he did not want a massacre of the benevolent croupier-soldiers he had seen parading the _platia_ only two days before, but he wanted them taught that aphros was a hornets' nest out of which they had better keep their fingers. he thought it extremely probable that after a first repulse they would refuse to renew the attack. they liked well enough defiling across the _platia_ on independence day, and recognising their friends amongst the admiring crowd, but he doubted whether they would appreciate being shot down in open boats by an enemy they could not even see. in the distance, from the windows of his own house, he heard firing, and from the advancing boats he could see spurts of smoke. he discerned a commotion in one boat; men got up and changed places, and the boat turned round and began to row in the opposite direction. young zapantiotis called to him from another window,-'you see them, kyrie? some one has been hit.' julian laughed exultantly. on a table near him lay a crumpled handkerchief of eve's, and a gardenia; he put the flower into his buttonhole. behind all his practical plans and his excitement lay the memory of his few words with her in the passage; under the stress of her emotion she had revealed a depth and vehemence of truth that he hitherto scarcely dared to imagine. to-day would be given to him surely more than his fair share for any mortal man: a fight, and the most desirable of women! he rejoiced in his youth and his leaping blood. yet he continued sorry for the kindly croupier-soldiers. the boats came on, encouraged by the comparative silence on the island. julian was glad it was not the fashion among the young men of herakleion, his friends, to belong to the army. he wondered what grbits was thinking of him. he was probably on the quay, watching through a telescope. or had the expedition been kept a secret from the still sleeping herakleion? surely! for he could distinguish no crowd upon the distant quays across the bay. a shot rang out close at hand, from some window of the village, and in one of the foremost boats he saw a man throw up his hands and fall over backwards. he sickened slightly. this was inevitable, he knew, but he had no lust for killing in this cold-blooded fashion. kneeling on the window-seat he took aim between the bars of the grating, and fired a quantity of shots all round the boat; they splashed harmlessly into the water, but had the effect he desired; the boat turned round in retreat. firing crackled now from all parts of the island. the casualties in the boats increased. in rage and panic the soldiers fired wildly back at the island, especially at the village; bullets ping-ed through the air and rattled on the roofs; occasionally there came a crash of broken glass. once julian heard a cry, and, craning his head to look down the street, he saw an islander lying on his face on the ground between the houses with his arms outstretched, blood running freely from his shoulder and staining his white clothes. 'my people!' julian cried in a passion, and shot deliberately into a boat-load of men. 'god!' he said to himself a moment later, 'i've killed him.' he laid down his rifle with a gesture of horror, and went out into the courtyard where the fountain still played and the pigeons prinked and preened. he opened the door into the street, went down the steps and along the street to where the islander lay groaning, lifted him carefully, and dragged him into the shelter of the house. zapantiotis met him in the court. 'kyrie,' he said, scared and reproachful, 'you should have sent me.' julian left him to look after the wounded man, and returned to the window; the firing had slackened, for the boats were now widely dispersed over the sea, offering only isolated targets at a considerable distance. time had passed rapidly, and the sun had climbed high overhead. he looked at the little dotted boats, bearing their burden of astonishment, death, and pain. was it possible that the attack had finally drawn away? at that thought, he regretted that the fighting had not given an opportunity of a closer, a more personal struggle. an hour passed. he went out into the village, where life was beginning to flow once more into the street and market-place; the villagers came out to look at their broken windows, and their chipped houses; they were all laughing and in high good-humour, pointing proudly to the damage, and laughing like children to see that in the school-house, which faced the sea and in which the remaining greek officials were still imprisoned, nearly all the windows were broken. julian, shaking off the people, men and women, who were trying to kiss his hands or his clothes, appeared briefly in the class-room to reassure the occupants. they were all huddled into a corner, behind a barricade of desks and benches. the one guard who had been left with them had spent his time inventing terrible stories for their distress. the wooden wall opposite the windows was pocked in two or three places by bullets. as julian came out again into the market-place he saw old tsigaridis riding down on his great white mule from the direction of the hills, accompanied by two runners on foot. he waited while the mule picked its way carefully and delicately down the stepped path that led from the other side of the market-place up into the interior of the island. 'they are beaten off, tsantilas.' 'no imprudences,' said the grave old man, and recommended to the people, who came crowding round his mule, to keep within the shelter of their houses. 'but, tsantilas, we have the boats within our sight; they cannot return without our knowledge in ample time to seek shelter.' 'there is one boat for which we cannot account--the motor-boat--it is swift and may yet take us by surprise,' tsigaridis replied pessimistically. he dismounted from his mule, and walked up the street with julian by his side, while the people, crestfallen, dispersed with lagging footsteps to their respective doorways. the motor-launch, it would appear, had been heard in the far distance, 'over there,' said tsigaridis, extending his left arm; the pickets upon the eastern coasts of the island had distinctly heard the echo of its engines--it was, fortunately, old and noisy--but early in the morning the sound had ceased, and since then had not once been renewed. tsigaridis inferred that the launch was lying somewhere in concealment amongst the tiny islands, from where it would emerge, unexpectedly and in an unexpected place, to attack. 'it must carry at least fifty men,' he added. julian revelled in the news. a motor-launch with such a crew would provide worthier game than little cockleshell rowing-boats. panaïoannou himself might be of the party. julian saw the general already as his prisoner. he remembered eve. so long as the launch lay in hiding he could not allow her to return to the village. it was even possible that they might have a small gun on board. he wanted to see her, he ached with the desire to see her, but, an instinctive epicurean, he welcomed the circumstances that forced him to defer their meeting until nightfall.... he wrote her a note on a leaf of his pocket-book, and despatched it to her by one of tsigaridis' runners. the hours of waiting fretted him, and to ease his impatience he started on a tour of the island with tsigaridis. they rode on mules, nose to tail along the winding paths, not climbing up into the interior, but keeping to the lower track that ran above the sea, upon the first flat ledge of the rock, all around the island. in some places the path was so narrow and so close to the edge that julian could, by leaning sideways in his saddle, look straight down the cliff into the water swirling and foaming below. he was familiar with almost every creek, so often had he bathed there as a boy. looking at the foam, he murmured to himself,-'aphros....' there were no houses here among the rocks, and no trees, save for an occasional group of pines, whose little cones clustered among the silvery branches, quite black against the sky. here and there, above creeks or the little sandy beaches where a landing for a small boat would have been possible, the picket of islanders had come out from their shelter behind the boulders, and were sitting talking on the rocks, holding their rifles upright between their knees, while a solitary sentinel kept watch at the extremity of the point, his kilted figure white as the circling seagulls or as the foam. a sense of lull and of siesta lay over the afternoon. at every picket julian asked the same question, and at every picket the same answer was returned,-'we have heard no engines since earliest morning, kyrie.' round the curve of the island, the first tiny, uninhabited islands came into view. some of them were mere rocks sticking up out of the sea; others, a little larger, grew a few trees, and a boat could have hidden, invisible from aphros, on their farther side. julian looked longingly at the narrow stretches of water which separated them. he even suggested starting to look for the launch. 'it would be madness, kyrie.' above a little bay, where the ground sloped down less abruptly, and where the sand ran gently down under the thin wavelets, they halted with the picket of that particular spot. their mules were led away by a runner. julian enjoyed sitting amongst these men, hearing them talk, and watching them roll cigarette after cigarette with the practised skill of their knotty fingers. through the sharp lines of their professional talk, and the dignity of their pleasant trades--for they were all fishermen, vintagers, or sheep and goat-herds--he smiled to the hidden secret of eve, and fancied that the soft muslin of her garments brushed, as at the passage of a ghost, against the rude woollen garments of the men; that her hands, little and white and idle, fluttered over their hardened hands; that he alone could see her pass amongst their group, smile to him, and vanish down the path. he was drowsy in the drowsy afternoon; he felt that he had fought and had earned his rest, and, moreover, was prepared to rise from his sleep with new strength to fight again. rest between a battle and a battle. strife, sleep, and love; love, sleep, and strife; a worthy plan of life! he slept. when he woke the men still sat around him, talking still of their perennial trades, and without opening his eyes he lay listening to them, and thought that in such a simple world the coming and going of generations was indeed of slight moment, since in the talk of crops and harvests, of the waxing and waning of moons, of the treachery of the sea or the fidelity of the land, the words of the ancestor might slip unchanged as an inheritance to grandson and great-grandson. of such kindred were they with nature, that he in his half-wakefulness barely distinguished the voices of the men from the wash of waves on the shore. he opened his eyes. the sun, which he had seen rising out of the sea in the dawn, after sweeping in its great flaming arc across the sky, had sunk again under the horizon. heavy purple clouds like outpoured wine stained the orange of the west. the colour of the sea was like the flesh of a fig. unmistakably, the throb of an engine woke the echoes between the islands. all eyes met, all voices hushed; tense, they listened. the sound grew; from a continuous purr it changed into separate beats. by mutual consent, and acting under no word of command, the men sought the cover of their boulders, clambering over the rocks, carrying their rifles with them, white, noiseless, and swift. julian found himself with three others in a species of little cave the opening of which commanded the beach; the cave was low, and they were obliged to crouch; one man knelt down at the mouth with his rifle ready to put to his shoulder. julian could smell, in that restricted place, the rough smell of their woollen clothes, and the tang of the goat which clung about one man, who must be a goat-herd. then before their crouching position could begin to weary them, the beat of the engines became insistent, imminent; and the launch shot round the curve, loaded with standing men, and heading directly for the beach. a volley of fire greeted them, but the soldiers were already overboard, waist-deep in water, plunging towards the shore with their rifles held high over their heads, while the crew of the launch violently reversed the engines and drove themselves off the sand by means of long poles, to save the launch from an irrevocable grounding. the attack was well planned, and executed by men who knew intimately the lie of the coast. with loud shouts, they emerged dripping from the water on to the beach. they were at least forty strong; the island picket numbered only a score, but they had the advantage of concealment. a few of the soldiers dropped while yet in the water; others fell forward on to their faces with their legs in the water and their heads and shoulders on dry land; many gained a footing but were shot down a few yards from the edge of the sea; the survivors flung themselves flat behind hummocks of rock and fired in the direction of the defending fire. everything seemed to have taken place within the compass of two or three minutes. julian had himself picked off three of the invaders; his blood was up, and he had lost all the sickening sense of massacre he had felt during the early part of the day. he never knew how the hand to hand fight actually began; he only knew that suddenly he was out of the cave, in the open, without a rifle, but with his revolver in his grasp, backed and surrounded by his own shouting men, and confronted by the soldiers of herakleion, heavily impeded by their wet trousers, but fighting sheerly for their lives, striving to get at him, losing their heads and aiming wildly, throwing aside their rifles and grappling at last bodily with their enemies, struggling not to be driven back into the sea, cursing the islanders, and calling to one another to rally, stumbling over the dead and the wounded. julian scarcely recognised his own voice in the shout of, 'aphros!' he was full of the lust of fighting; he had seen men roll over before the shot of his revolver, and had driven them down before the weight of his fist. he was fighting joyously, striking among the waves of his enemies as a swimmer striking out against a current. all his thought was to kill, and to rid his island of these invaders; already the tide had turned, and that subtle sense of defeat and victory that comes upon the crest of battle was infusing respectively despair and triumph. there was now no doubt in the minds of either the attackers or the defenders in whose favour the attack would end. there remained but three alternatives: surrender, death, or the sea. already many were choosing the first, and those that turned in the hope of regaining the launch were shot down or captured before they reached the water. the prisoners, disarmed, stood aside in a little sulky group under the guard of one islander, watching, resignedly, and with a certain indifference born of their own secession from activity, the swaying clump of men, shouting, swearing, and stumbling, and the feeble efforts of the wounded to drag themselves out of the way of the trampling feet. the sand of the beach was in some places, where blood had been spilt, stamped into a dark mud. a wounded soldier, lying half in and half out of the water, cried out pitiably as the salt water lapped over his wounds. the decision was hastened by the crew of the launch, who, seeing a bare dozen of their companions rapidly overpowered by a superior number of islanders, and having themselves no fancy to be picked off at leisure from the shore, started their engines and made off to sea. at that a cry of dismay went up; retreat, as an alternative, was entirely withdrawn; death an empty and unnecessary display of heroism; surrender remained; they chose it thankfully. iii julian never knew, nor did he stop to inquire, why eve had returned to the village without his sanction. he only knew that as he came up the street, escorted by all the population, singing, pressing around him, taking his hands, throwing flowers and even fruit in his path, holding up their children for him to touch, he saw her standing in the doorway of their house, the lighted courtyard yellow behind her. she stood there on the highest of the three steps, her hands held out towards him. he knew, too, although no word was spoken, that the village recognised them as lovers. he felt again the triumphant completeness of life; a fulfilment, beyond the possibility of that staid world that, somewhere, moved upon its confused, mercenary, mistaken, and restricted way. here, the indignities of hypocrisy were indeed remote. there, men shorn of candour entangled the original impulse of their motives until in a sea of perplexity they abandoned even to the ultimate grace of self-honesty; here, in an island of enchantment, he had fought for his dearest and most constituent beliefs--o honourable privilege! unhindered and rare avowal!--fought, not with secret weapons, but with the manhood of his body; and here, under the eyes of fellow-creatures, their presence no more obtrusive than the presence of the sea or the evening breeze, under their unquestioning eyes he claimed the just reward, the consummation, the right of youth, which in that pharisaical world would have been denied him. eve herself was familiar with his mood. whereas he had noted, marvelled, and rejoiced at the simplicity with which they came together, before that friendly concourse of people, she had stretched out her hands to him with an unthinking gesture of possession. she had kept her counsel during the unpropitious years, with a secrecy beyond the determination of a child; but here, having gained him for her own; having enticed him into the magical country where the standards drew near to her own standards; where she, on the one hand, no less than he upon the other, might fight with the naked weapons of nature for her desires and beliefs--here she walked at home and without surprise in the perfect liberty; that liberty which he accepted with gratitude, but she as a right out of which man elsewhere was cheated. he had always been surprised, on the rare occasions when a hint of her philosophy, a fragment of her creed, had dropped from her lips unawares. from these fragments he had been incapable of reconstructing the whole. he had judged her harshly, too young and too ignorant to query whether the falseness of convention cannot drive those, temperamentally direct and uncontrolled, into the self-defence of a superlative falseness.... he had seen her vanity; he had not seen what he was now, because himself in sympathy, beginning to apprehend, her whole-heartedness that was, in its way, so magnificent. very, very dimly he apprehended; his apprehension, indeed, limited chiefly to the recognition of a certain correlation in her to the vibrant demands alive in him: he asked from her, weakness to fling his strength into relief; submission to entice his tyranny; yet at the same time, passion to match his passion, and mettle to exalt his conquest in his own eyes; she must be nothing less than the whole grace and rarity of life for his pleasure; flattery, in short, at once subtle and blatant, supreme and meticulous, was what he demanded, and what she was, he knew, so instinctively ready to accord. as she put her hand into his, he felt the current of her pride as definitely as though he had seen a glance of understanding pass between her and the women of the village. he looked up at her, smiling. she had contrived for herself a garment out of some strip of dark red silk, which she had wound round her body after the fashion of an indian sari; in the opening of that sombre colour her throat gleamed more than usually white, and above her swathed slenderness her lips were red in the pallor of her face, and her waving hair held glints of burnish as the leaves of autumn. she was not inadequate in her anticipation of his unspoken demands: the exploitation of her sensuous delicacy was all for him--for him! he had expected, perhaps, that after her proud, frank welcome before the people, she would turn to him when they were alone; but he found her manner full of a deliberate indifference. she abstained even from any allusion to her day's anxiety. he was reminded of all their meetings when, after months, she betrayed no pleasure at his return, but rather avoided him, and coldly disregarded his unthinking friendliness. many a time, as a boy, he had been hurt and puzzled by this caprice, which, ever meeting him unprepared, was ever renewed by her. to-night he was neither hurt nor puzzled, but with a grim amusement accepted the pattern she set; he could allow her the luxury of a superficial control. with the harmony between them, they could play the game of pretence. he delighted in her unexpectedness. her reticence stirred him, in its disconcerting contrast with his recollection of her as he had left her that morning. she moved from the court into the drawing-room, and from the drawing-room back into the court, and he followed her, impersonal as she herself, battening down all outward sign of his triumph, granting her the grace of that epicurean and ironic chivalry. he knew their quietness was ominous. they moved and spoke like people in the near, unescapable neighbourhood of a wild beast, whose attention they must on no account arouse, whose presence they must not mention, while each intensely aware of the peril, and each alive to the other's knowledge of it. she spoke and laughed, and he, in response to her laughter, smiled gravely; silence fell, and she broke it; she thought that he took pleasure in testing her power of reviving their protective talk; the effort increased in difficulty; he seemed to her strangely and paralysingly sinister. harmony between them! if such harmony existed, it was surely the harmony of hostility. they were enemies that evening, not friends. if an understanding existed, it was, on her part, the understanding that he was mocking her; on his part, the understanding that she, in her fear, must preserve the veneer of self-assurance, and that some fundamental convention--if the term was not too inherently contradictory--demanded his co-operation. he granted it. on other occasions his manner towards her might be rough, violent, uncontrolled; this evening it was of an irreproachable civility. for the first time in her life she felt herself at a disadvantage. she invented pretext after feverish pretext for prolonging their evening. she knew that if she could once bring a forgetful laugh to julian's lips, she would fear him less; but he continued to smile gravely at her sallies, and to watch her with that same unbending intent. in the midst of her phrase she would look up, meet his eyes bent upon her, and forget her words in confusion. once he rose, and stretched his limbs luxuriously against the background of the open roof and the stars; she thought he would speak, but to her relief he sat down again in his place, removed his eyes from her, and fell to the dissection, grain by grain, of a bunch of grapes. she continued to speak; she talked of kato, even of alexander christopoulos; she scarcely knew he was not listening to her until he broke with her name into the heart of her sentence, unaware that he interrupted. he stood up, came round to her chair, and put his hand upon her shoulder; she could not control her trembling. he said briefly, but with all the repressed triumph ringing in his voice, 'eve, come'; and without a word she obeyed, her eyes fastened to his, her breath shortened, deceit fallen from her, nothing but naked honesty remaining. she had lost even her fear of him. in their stark desire for each other they were equals. he put out his hand and extinguished the candles; dimness fell over the court. 'eve,' he said, still in that contained voice, 'you know we are alone in this house.' she acquiesced, 'i know,' not meaning to speak in a whisper, but involuntarily letting the words glide out with her breath. as he paused, she felt his hand convulsive upon her shoulder; her lids lay shut upon her eyes like heavy petals. presently he said wonderingly,-'i have not kissed you.' 'no,' she replied, faint, yet marvellously strong. he put his arm round her, and half carried her towards the stairs. 'let me go,' she whispered, for the sake of his contradiction. 'no,' he answered, holding her more closely to him. 'where are you taking me, julian?' he did not reply, but together they began to mount the stairs, she failing and drooping against his arm, her eyes still closed and her lips apart. they reached her room, bare, full of shadows, whitewashed, with the windows open upon the black moonlit sea. 'eve!' he murmured exultantly. 'aphros!...' iv the lyric of their early days of love piped clear and sweet upon the terraces of aphros. their surroundings entered into a joyous conspiracy with their youth. between halcyon sky and sea the island lay radiantly; as it were suspended, unattached, coloured like a rainbow, and magic with the enchantment of its isolation. the very foam which broke around its rocks served to define, by its lacy fringe of white, the compass of the magic circle. to them were granted solitude and beauty beyond all dreams of lovers. they dwelt in the certainty that no intruder could disturb them--save those intruders to be beaten off in frank fight--no visitor from the outside world but those that came on wings, swooping down out of the sky, poising for an instant upon the island, that halting place in the heart of the sea, and flying again with restless cries, sea-birds, the only disturbers of their peace. from the shadow of the olives, or of the stunted pines whose little cones hung like black velvet balls in the transparent tracery of the branches against the sky, they lay idly watching the gulls, and the tiny white clouds by which the blue was almost always flaked. the population of the island melted into a harmony with nature like the trees, the rocks and boulders, or the roving flocks of sheep and herds of goats. eve and julian met with neither curiosity nor surprise; only with acquiescence. daily as they passed down the village street, to wander up the mule-tracks into the interior of aphros, they were greeted by smiles and devotion that were as unquestioning and comfortable as the shade of the trees or the cool splash of the water; and nightly as they remained alone together in their house, dark, roofed over with stars, and silent but for the ripple of the fountain, they could believe that they had been tended by invisible hands in the island over which they reigned in isolated sovereignty. they abandoned themselves to the unbelievable romance. he, indeed, had striven half-heartedly; but she, with all the strength of her nature, had run gratefully, nay, clamantly, forward, exacting the reward of her patience, demanding her due. she rejoiced in the casting aside of shackles which, although she had resolutely ignored them in so far as was possible, had always irked her by their latent presence. at last she might gratify to the full her creed of living for and by the beloved, in a world of beauty where the material was denied admittance. in such a dream, such an ecstasy of solitude, they gained marvellously in one another's eyes. she revealed to julian the full extent of her difference and singularity. for all their nearness in the human sense, he received sometimes with a joyful terror the impression that he was living in the companionship of a changeling, a being strayed by accident from another plane. the small moralities and tendernesses of mankind contained no meaning for her. they were burnt away by the devastating flame of her own ideals. he knew now, irrefutably, that she had lived her life withdrawn from all but external contact with her surroundings. her sensuality, which betrayed itself even in the selection of the arts she loved, had marked her out for human passion. he had observed her instinct to deck herself for his pleasure; he had learnt the fastidious refinement with which she surrounded her body. he had marked her further instinct to turn the conduct of their love into a fine art. she had taught him the value of her reserve, her evasions, and of her sudden recklessness. he never discovered, and, no less epicurean than she, never sought to discover, how far her principles were innate, unconscious, or how far deliberate. they both tacitly esteemed the veil of some slight mystery to soften the harshness of their self-revelation. he dared not invoke the aid of unshrinking honesty to apportion the values between their physical and their mental affinity. what was it, this bond of flesh? so material, yet so imperative, so compelling, as to become almost a spiritual, not a bodily, necessity? so transitory, yet so recurrent? dying down like a flame, to revive again? so unimportant, so grossly commonplace, yet creating so close and tremulous an intimacy? this magic that drew together their hands like fluttering butterflies in the hours of sunlight, and linked them in the abandonment of mastery and surrender in the hours of night? that swept aside the careful training, individual and hereditary, replacing pride by another pride? this unique and mutual secret? this fallacious yet fundamental and dominating bond? this force, hurling them together with such cosmic power that within the circle of frail human entity rushed furiously the tempest of an inexorable law of nature? they had no tenderness for one another. such tenderness as might have crept into the relationship they collaborated in destroying, choosing to dwell in the strong clean air of mountain-tops, shunning the ease of the valleys. violence was never very far out of sight. they loved proudly, with a flame that purged all from their love but the essential, the ideal passion. 'i live with a mænad,' he said, putting out his hand and bathing his fingers in her loosened hair. from the rough shelter of reeds and matting where they idled then among the terraced vineyards, the festoons of the vines and the bright reds and yellows of the splay leaves, brilliant against the sun, framed her consonant grace. the beautiful shadows of lacing vines dappled the ground, and the quick lizards darted upon the rough terrace walls. he said, pursuing his thought,-'you have never the wish of other women--permanency? a house with me? never the inkling of such a wish?' 'trammels!' she replied, 'i've always hated possessions.' he considered her at great length, playing with her hair, fitting his fingers into its waving thicknesses, putting his cheek against the softness of her cheek, and laughing. 'my changeling. my nymph,' he said. she lay silent, her arms folded behind her head, and her eyes on him as he continued to utter his disconnected sentences. 'where is the eve of herakleion? the mask you wore! i dwelt only upon your insignificant vanity, and in your pride you made no defence. most secret pride! incredible chastity of mind! inviolate of soul, to all alike. inviolate. most rare restraint! the expansive vulgarity of the crowd! my eve....' he began again,-'so rarely, so stainlessly mine. beyond mortal hopes. you allowed all to misjudge you, myself included. you smiled, not even wistfully, lest that betray you, and said nothing. you held yourself withdrawn. you perfected your superficial life. that profound humour.... i could not think you shallow--not all your pretence could disguise your mystery--but, may i be forgiven, i have thought you shallow in all but mischief. i prophesied for you'--he laughed--'a great career as a destroyer of men. a great courtesan. but instead i find you a great lover. _une grande amoureuse._' 'if that is mischievous,' she said, 'my love for you goes beyond mischief; it would stop short of no crime.' he put his face between his hands for a second. 'i believe you; i know it.' 'i understand love in no other way,' she said, sitting up and shaking her hair out of her eyes; 'i am single-hearted. it is selfish love: i would die for you, gladly, without a thought, but i would sacrifice my claim on you to no one and to nothing. it is all-exorbitant. i make enormous demands. i must have you exclusively for myself.' he teased her,-'you refuse to marry me.' she was serious. 'freedom, julian! romance! the world before us, to roam at will; fairs to dance at; strange people to consort with, to see the smile in their eyes, and the tolerant "lovers!" forming on their lips. to tweak the nose of propriety, to snatch away the chair on which she would sit down! who in their senses would harness the divine courser to a mail-cart?' she seemed to him lit by an inner radiance, that shone through her eyes and glowed richly in her smile. 'vagabond!' he said. 'is life to be one long carnival?' 'and one long honesty. i'll own you before the world--and court its disapproval. i'll release you--no, i'll leave you--when you tire of me. i wouldn't clip love's golden wings. i wouldn't irk you with promises, blackmail you into perjury, wring from you an oath we both should know was made only to be broken. we'll leave that to middle-age. middle-age--i have been told there is such a thing? sometimes it is fat, sometimes it is wan, surely it is always dreary! it may be wise and successful and contented. sometimes, i'm told, it even loves. we are young. youth!' she said, sinking her voice, 'the winged and the divine.' when he talked to her about the islands, she did not listen, although she dared not check him. he talked, striving to interest her, to fire her enthusiasm. he talked, with his eyes always upon the sea, since some obscure instinct warned him not to keep them bent upon her face; sometimes they were amongst the vines, which in the glow of their september bronze and amber resembled the wine flowing from their fruits, and from here the sea shimmered, crudely and cruelly blue between those flaming leaves, undulating into smooth, nacreous folds; sometimes they were amongst the rocks on the lower levels, on a windier day, when white crests spurted from the waves, and the foam broke with a lacy violence against the island at the edge of the green shallows; and sometimes, after dusk, they climbed to the olive terraces beneath the moon that rose through the trees in a world strangely gray and silver, strangely and contrastingly deprived of colour. he talked, lying on the ground, with his hands pressed close against the soil of aphros. its contact gave him the courage he needed.... he talked doggedly; in the first week with the fire of inspiration, after that with the perseverance of loyalty. these monologues ended always in the same way. he would bring his glance from the sea to her face, would break off his phrase in the middle, and, coming suddenly to her, would cover her hair, her throat, her mouth, with kisses. then she would turn gladly and luxuriously towards him, curving in his arms, and presently the grace of her murmured speech would again bewitch him, until upon her lips he forgot the plea of aphros. there were times when he struggled to escape her, his physical and mental activity rebelling against the subjection in which she held him. he protested that the affairs of the islands claimed him; that herakleion had granted but a month for negotiations; precautions must be taken, and the scheme of government amplified and consolidated. then the angry look came over her face, and all the bitterness of her resentment broke loose. having captured him, much of her precocious wisdom seemed to have abandoned her. 'i have waited for you ten years, yet you want to leave me. do i mean less to you than the islands? i wish the islands were at the bottom of the sea instead of on the top of it.' 'be careful, eve.' 'i resent everything which takes you from me,' she said recklessly. another time she cried, murky with passion,-'always these councils with tsigaridis and the rest! always these secret messages passing between you and kato! give me that letter.' he refused, shredding kato's letter and scattering the pieces into the sea. 'what secrets have you with kato, that you must keep from me?' 'they would have no interest for you,' he replied, remembering that she was untrustworthy--that canker in his confidence. the breeze fanned slightly up the creek where they were lying on the sand under the shadow of a pine, and out in the dazzling sea a porpoise leapt, turning its slow black curve in the water. the heat simmered over the rocks. 'we share our love,' he said morosely, 'but no other aspect of life. the islands are nothing to you. an obstacle, not a link.' it was a truth that he rarely confronted. 'you are wrong: a background, a setting for you, which i appreciate.' 'you appreciate the picturesque. i know. you are an artist in appreciation of the suitable stage-setting. but as for the rest....' he made a gesture full of sarcasm and renunciation. 'give me up, julian, and all my shortcomings. i have always told you i had but one virtue. i am the first to admit the insufficiency of its claim. give yourself wholly to your islands. let me go.' she spoke sadly, as though conscious of her own irremediable difference and perversity. 'yet you yourself--what were your words?--said you believed in me; you even wrote to me, i remember still, "conquer, shatter, demolish!" but i must always struggle against you, against your obstructions. what is it you want? liberty and irresponsibility, to an insatiable degree!' 'because i love you insatiably.' 'you are too unreasonable sometimes' ('reason!' she interrupted with scorn, 'what has reason got to do with love?') 'you are unreasonable to grudge me every moment i spend away from you. won't you realise that i am responsible for five thousand lives? you must let me go now; only for an hour. i promise to come back to you in an hour.' 'are you tired of me already?' 'eve....' 'when we were in herakleion, you were always saying you must go to kato; now you are always going to some council; am i never to have you to myself?' 'i will go only for an hour. i _must_ go, eve, my darling.' 'stay with me, julian. i'll kiss you. i'll tell you a story.' she stretched out her hands. he shook his head, laughing, and ran off in the direction of the village. when he returned, she refused to speak to him. but at other times they grew marvellously close, passing hours and days in unbroken union, until the very fact of their two separate personalities became an exasperation. then, silent as two souls tortured, before a furnace, they struggled for the expression that ever eludes; the complete, the satisfying expression that shall lay bare one soul to another soul, but that, ever failing, mockingly preserves the unwanted boon of essential mystery. that dumb frenzy outworn, they attained, nevertheless, to a nearer comradeship, the days, perhaps, of their greatest happiness, when with her reckless fancy she charmed his mind; he thought of her then as a vagrant nymph, straying from land to land, from age to age, decking her spirit with any flower she met growing by the way, chastely concerned with the quest of beauty, strangely childlike always, pure as the fiercest, tallest flame. he could not but bow to that audacity, that elemental purity, of spirit. untainted by worldliness, greed, or malice.... the facts of her life became clearer to him, startling in their consistency. he could not associate her with possessions, or a fixed abode, she who was free and elusive as a swallow, to whom the slightest responsibility was an intolerable and inadmissible yoke from beneath which, without commotion but also without compunction, she slipped. on no material point could she be touched--save her own personal luxury, and that seemed to grow with her, as innocent of effort as the colour on a flower; she kindled only in response to music, poetry, love, or laughter, but then with what a kindling! she flamed, she glowed; she ranged over spacious and fabulous realms; her feet never touched earth, they were sandal-shod and carried her in the clean path of breezes, and towards the sun, exalted and ecstatic, breathing as the common air the rarity of the upper spaces. at such times she seemed a creature blown from legend, deriving from no parentage; single, individual, and lawless. he found that he had come gradually to regard her with a superstitious reverence. he evolved a theory, constructed around her, dim and nebulous, yet persistent; perforce nebulous, since he was dealing with a matter too fine, too subtle, too unexplored, to lend itself to the gross imperfect imprisonment of words. he never spoke of it, even to her, but staring at her sometimes with a reeling head he felt himself transported, by her medium, beyond the matter-of-fact veils that shroud the limit of human vision. he felt illuminated, on the verge of a new truth; as though by stretching out his hand he might touch something no hand of man had ever touched before, something of unimaginable consistency, neither matter nor the negation of matter; as though he might brush the wings of truth, handle the very substance of a thought.... he felt at these times like a man who passes through a genuine psychical experience. yes, it was as definite as that; he had the glimpse of a possible revelation. he returned from his vision--call it what he would, vision would serve as well as any other word--he returned with that sense of benefit by which alone such an excursion--or was it incursion?--could be justified. he brought back a benefit. he had beheld, as in a distant prospect, a novel balance and proportion of certain values. that alone would have left him enriched for ever. practical as he could be, theories and explorations were yet dear to him: he was an inquisitive adventurer of the mind no less than an active adventurer of the world. he sought eagerly for underlying truths. his apparently inactive moods were more accurately his fallow moods. his thought was as an ardent plough, turning and shifting the loam of his mind. yet he would not allow his fancy to outrun his conviction; if fancy at any moment seemed to lead, he checked it until more lumbering conviction could catch up. they must travel ever abreast, whip and reins alike in his control. youth--were the years of youth the intuitive years of perception? were the most radiant moments the moments in which one stepped farthest from the ordered acceptance of the world? moments of danger, moments of inspiration, moments of self-sacrifice, moments of perceiving beauty, moments of love, all the drunken moments! eve moved, he knew, permanently upon that plane. she led an exalted, high-keyed inner life. the normal mood to her was the mood of a sensitive person caught at the highest pitch of sensibility. was she unsuited to the world and to the necessities of the world because she belonged, not here, but to another sphere apprehended by man only in those rare, keen moments that julian called the drunken moments? apprehended by poet or artist--the elect, the aristocracy, the true path-finders among the race of man!--in moments when sobriety left them and they passed beyond? was she to blame for her cruelty, her selfishness, her disregard for truth? was she, not evil, but only alien? to be forgiven all for the sake of the rarer, more distant flame? was the standard of cardinal virtues set by the world the true, the ultimate standard? was it possible that eve made part of a limited brotherhood? was indeed a citizen of some advanced state of such perfection that this world's measures and ideals were left behind and meaningless? meaningless because unnecessary in such a realm of serenity? aphros, then--the liberty of aphros--and aphros meant to him far more than merely aphros--that was surely a lovely and desirable thing, a worthy aim, a high beacon? if eve cared nothing for the liberty of aphros, was it because in _her_ world (he was by now convinced of its existence) there was no longer any necessity to trouble over such aims, liberty being as natural and unmeditated as the air in the nostrils? (not that this would ever turn him from his devotion; at most he could look upon aphros as a stage upon the journey towards that higher aim--the stage to which he and his like, who were nearly of the elect, yet not of them, might aspire. and if the day should ever come when disillusion drove him down; when, far from becoming a citizen of eve's far sphere, he should cease to be a citizen even of aphros and should become a citizen merely of the world, no longer young, no longer blinded by ideals, no longer nearly a poet, but merely a grown, sober man--then he would still keep aphros as a bright memory of what might have been, of the best he had grasped, the possibility which in the days of youth had not seemed too extravagantly unattainable.) but in order to keep his hold upon this world of eve's, which in his inner consciousness he already recognised as the most valuable rift of insight ever vouchsafed to him, it was necessary that he should revolutionise every ancient gospel and reputable creed. the worth of eve was to him an article of faith. his intimacy with her was a privilege infinitely beyond the ordinary privilege of love. whatever she might do, whatever crime she might commit, whatever baseness she might perpetrate, her ultimate worth, the core, the kernel, would remain to him unsullied and inviolate. this he knew blindly, seeing it as the mystic sees god; and knew it the more profoundly that he could have defended it with no argument of reason. what then? the poet, the creator, the woman, the mystic, the man skirting the fringes of death--were they kin with one another and free of some realm unknown, towards which all, consciously or unconsciously, were journeying? where the extremes of passion (he did not mean only the passion of love), of exaltation, of danger, of courage and vision--where all these extremes met--was it there, the great crossways where the moral ended, and the divine began? was it for eve supremely, and to a certain extent for all women and artists--the visionaries, the lovely, the graceful, the irresponsible, the useless!--was it reserved for them to show the beginning of the road? youth! youth and illusion! to love eve and aphros! when those two slipped from him he would return sobered to the path designated by the sign-posts and milestones of man, hoping no more than to keep as a gleam within him the light glowing in the sky above that unattainable but remembered city. he returned to earth; eve was kneading and tormenting a lump of putty, and singing to herself meanwhile; he watched her delicate, able hands, took one of them, and held it up between his eyes and the sun. 'your fingers are transparent, they're like cornelian against the light,' he said. she left her hand within his grasp, and smiled down at him. 'how you play with me, julian,' she said idly. 'you're such a delicious toy.' 'only a toy?' he remembered the intricate, untranslatable thoughts he had been thinking about her five minutes earlier, and began to laugh to himself. 'a great deal more than a toy. once i thought of you only as a child, a helpless, irritating, adorable child, always looking for trouble, and turning to me for help when the trouble came.' 'and then?' 'then you made me think of you as a woman,' he replied gravely. 'you seemed to hesitate a good deal before deciding to think of me as that.' 'yes, i tried to judge our position by ordinary codes; you must have thought me ridiculous.' 'i did, darling.' her mouth twisted drolly as she said it. 'i wonder now how i could have insulted you by applying them to you,' he said with real wonderment; everything seemed so clear and obvious to him now. 'why, how do you think of me now?' 'oh, god knows!' he replied. 'i've called you changeling sometimes, haven't i?' he decided to question her. 'tell me, eve, how do you explain your difference? you outrage every accepted code, you see, and yet one retains one's belief in you. is one simply deluded by your charm? or is there a deeper truth? can you explain?' he had spoken in a bantering tone, but he knew that he was trying an experiment of great import to him. 'i don't think i'm different, julian; i think i feel things strongly, no more.' 'or else you don't feel them at all.' 'what do you mean?' 'well--paul,' he said reluctantly. 'you have never got over that, have you?' 'exactly!' he exclaimed. 'it seems to you extraordinary that i should still remember paul, or that his death should have made any impression upon me. i ought to hate you for your indifference. sometimes i have come very near to hating you. but now--perhaps my mind is getting broader--i blame you for nothing because i believe you are simply not capable of understanding. but evidently you can't explain yourself. i love you!' he said, 'i love you!' he knew that her own inability to explain herself--her unself-consciousness--had done much to strengthen his new theories. the flower does not know why or how it blossoms.... on the day that he told her, with many misgivings, that kato was coming to aphros, she uttered no word of anger, but wept despairingly, at first without speaking, then with short, reiterated sentences that wrung his heart for all their unreason,-'we were alone. i was happy as never in my life. i had you utterly. we were alone. alone! alone!' 'we will tell kato the truth,' he soothed her; 'she will leave us alone still.' but it was not in her nature to cling to straws of comfort. for her, the sunshine had been unutterably radiant; and for her it was now proportionately blackened out. 'we were alone,' she repeated, shaking her head with unspeakable mournfulness, the tears running between her fingers. for the first time he spoke to her with a moved, a tender compassion, full of reverence. 'your joy ... your sorrow ... equally overwhelming and tempestuous. how you feel--you tragic child! yesterday you laughed and made yourself a crown of myrtle.' she refused to accompany him when he went to meet kato, who, after a devious journey from athens, was to land at the rear of the island away from the curiosity of herakleion. she remained in the cool house, sunk in idleness, her pen and pencil alike neglected. she thought only of julian, absorbingly, concentratedly. her past life appeared to her, when she thought of it at all, merely as a period in which julian had not loved her, a period of waiting, of expectancy, of anguish sometimes, of incredible reticence supported only by the certainty which had been her faith and her inspiration.... to her surprise, he returned, not only with kato but with grbits. every word and gesture of the giant demonstrated his enormous pleasure. his oddly mongolian face wore a perpetual grin of triumphant truancy. his good-humour was not to be withstood. he wrung eve's hands, inarticulate with delight. kato, her head covered with a spangled veil--julian had never seen her in a hat--stood by, looking on, her hands on her hips, as though grbits were her exhibit. her little eyes sparkled with mischief. 'he is no longer an officer in the serbian army,' she said at last, 'only a free-lance, at julian's disposal. is it not magnificent? he has sent in his resignation. his career is ruined. the military representative of serbia in herakleion!' 'a free-lance,' grbits repeated, beaming down at julian. (it annoyed eve that he should be so much the taller of the two). 'we sent you no word, not to lessen your surprise,' said kato. they stood, all four, in the courtyard by the fountain. 'i told you on the day of the elections that when you needed me i should come,' grbits continued, his grin widening. 'of course, you are a supreme fool, grbits,' said kato to him. 'yes,' he replied, 'thank heaven for it.' 'in athens the sympathy is all with the islands,' said kato. she had taken off her veil, and they could see that she wore the gold wheat-ears in her hair. her arms were, as usual, covered with bangles, nor had she indeed made any concessions to the necessities of travelling, save that on her feet, instead of her habitual square-toed slippers, she wore long, hideous, heelless, elastic-sided boots. eve reflected that she had grown fatter and more stumpy, but she was, as ever, eager, kindly, enthusiastic, vital; they brought with them a breath of confidence and efficiency, those disproportionately assorted travelling companions; julian felt a slight shame that he had neglected the islands for eve; and eve stood by, listening to their respective recitals, to grbits' startling explosions of laughter, and kato's exuberant joy, tempered with wisdom. they both talked at once, voluble and excited; the wheat-ears trembled in kato's hair, grbits' white regular teeth flashed in his broad face, and julian, a little bewildered, turned from one to the other with his unsmiling gravity. 'i mistrust the forbearance of herakleion,' kato said, a great weight of meditated action pressing on behind her words; 'a month's forbearance! in athens innumerable rumours were current: of armed ships purchased from the turks, even of a gun mounted on mylassa--but that i do not believe. they have given you, you say, a month in which to come to your senses. but they are giving themselves also a month in which to prepare their attack,' and she plied him with practical questions that demonstrated her clear familiarity with detail and tactic, while grbits contributed nothing but the cavernous laugh and ejaculations of his own unquestioning optimism. v the second attack on aphros was delivered within a week of their arrival. eve and kato, refusing the retreat in the heart of the island, spent the morning together in the davenant house. in the distance the noise of the fighting alternately increased and waned; now crackling sharply, as it seemed, from all parts of the sea, now dropping into a disquieting silence. at such times eve looked mutely at the singer. kato gave her no comfort, but, shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders, expressed only her ignorance. she found that she could speak to julian sympathetically of eve, but not to eve sympathetically of julian. she had made the attempt, but after the pang of its effort, had renounced it. their hostility smouldered dully under the shelter of their former friendship. now, alone in the house, they might indeed have remained for the most time apart in separate rooms, but the common anxiety which linked them drew them together, so that when kato moved eve followed her, unwillingly, querulously; and expressions of affection were even forced from them, of which they instantly repented, and by some phrase of veiled cruelty sought to counteract. no news reached them from outside. every man was at his post, and julian had forbidden all movement about the village. by his orders also the heavy shutters had been closed over the windows of the davenant drawing-room, where eve and kato sat, with the door open on to the courtyard for the sake of light, talking spasmodically, and listening to the sounds of the firing. at the first quick rattle kato had said, 'machine-guns,' and eve had replied, 'yes; the first time--when we were here alone--he told me they had a machine-gun on the police-launch;' then kato said, after a pause of firing, 'this time they have more than one.' eve raised tormented eyes. 'anastasia, he said he would be in shelter.' 'would he remain in shelter for long?' kato replied scornfully. eve said,-'he has grbits with him.' kato, crushing down the personal preoccupation, dwelt ardently on the fate of her country. she must abandon to eve the thought of julian, but of the islands at least she might think possessively, diverting to their dear though inanimate claim all the need of passion and protection humanly denied her. from a woman of always intense patriotism, she had become a fanatic. starved in one direction, she had doubled her energy in the other, realising, moreover, the power of that bond between herself and julian. she could have said with thorough truthfulness that her principal cause of resentment against eve was eve's indifference towards the islands--a loftier motive than the more human jealousy. she had noticed julian's reluctance to mention the islands in eve's presence. alone with herself and grbits, he had never ceased to pour forth the flood of his scheme, both practical and utopian, so that kato could not be mistaken as to the direction of his true preoccupations. she had seen the vigour he brought to his governing. she had observed with a delighted grin to grbits that, despite his socialistic theories, julian had in point of fact instituted a complete and very thinly-veiled autocracy in hagios zacharie. she had seen him in the village assembly, when, in spite of his deferential appeals to the superior experience of the older men, he steered blankly past any piece of advice that ran contrary to the course of his own ideas. she knew that, ahead of him, when he should have freed himself finally of herakleion (and that he would free himself he did not for a moment doubt), he kept always the dream of his tiny, ideal state. she revered his faith, his energy, and his youth, as the essence in him most worthy of reverence. and she knew that eve, if she loved these things in him, loved them only in theory, but in practice regarded them with impatient indifference. they stole him away, came between him and her.... kato knew well eve's own ideals. courage she exacted. talents she esteemed. genius, freedom, and beauty she passionately worshipped as her gods upon earth. but she could tolerate nothing material, nor any occupation that removed her or the other from the blind absorption of love. kato sighed. far otherwise would she have cared for julian! she caught sight of herself in a mirror, thick, squat, black, with little sparkling eyes; she glanced at eve, glowing with warmth, sleek and graceful as a little animal, idle and seductive. outside a crash of firing shook the solid house, and bullets rattled upon the roofs of the village. it was intolerable to sit unoccupied, working out bitter speculations, while such activity raged around the island. to know the present peril neither of julian nor of aphros! to wait indefinitely, probably all day, possibly all night! 'anastasia, sing.' kato complied, as much for her own sake as for eve's. she sang some of her own native songs, then, breaking off, she played, and eve drew near to her, lost and transfigured by the music; she clasped and unclasped her hands, beautified by her ecstasy, and kato's harsh thoughts vanished; eve was, after all, a child, an all too loving and passionate child, and not, as kato sometimes thought her, a pernicious force of idleness and waste. wrong-headed, tragically bringing sorrow upon herself in the train of her too intense emotions.... continuing to play, kato observed her, and felt the light eager fingers upon her arm. 'ah, kato, you make me forget. like some drug of forgetfulness that admits me to caves of treasure. underground caves heaped with jewels. caves of the winds; zephyrs that come and go. i'm carried away into oblivion.' 'tell me,' kato said. obedient to the lead of the music, eve wandered into a story,-'riding on a winged horse, he swept from east to west; he looked down upon the sea, crossed by the wake of ships, splashed here and there with islands, washing on narrow brown stretches of sand, or dashing against the foot of cliffs--you hear the waves breaking?--and he saw how the moon drew the tides, and how ships came to rest for a little while in harbours, but were homeless and restless and free; he passed over the land, swooping low, and he saw the straight streets of cities, and the gleam of fires, the neat fields and guarded frontiers, the wider plains; he saw the gods throned on ida, wearing the clouds like mantles and like crowns, divinely strong or divinely beautiful; he saw things mean and magnificent; he saw the triumphal procession of a conqueror, with prisoners walking chained to the back of his chariot, and before him white bulls with gilded horns driven to the sacrifice, and children running with garlands of flowers; he saw giants hammering red iron in northern mountains; he saw all the wanderers of the earth; io the tormented, and all gipsies, vagabonds, and wastrels: all jongleurs, poets, and mountebanks; he saw these wandering, but all the staid and solemn people lived in the cities and counted the neat fields, saying, "this shall be mine and this shall be yours." and sometimes, as he passed above a forest, he heard a scurry of startled feet among crisp leaves, and sometimes he heard, which made him sad, the cry of stricken trees beneath the axe.' she broke off, as kato ceased playing. 'they are still firing,' she said. 'things mean and magnificent,' quoted kato slowly. 'why, then, withhold julian from the islands?' she had spoken inadvertently. consciousness of the present had jerked her back from remembrance of the past, when eve had come almost daily to her flat in herakleion, bathing herself in the music, wrapped up in beauty; when their friendship had hovered on the boundaries of the emotional, in spite of--or perhaps because of?--the thirty years that lay between them. 'i heard the voice of my fantastic eve, of whom i once thought,' she added, fixing her eyes on eve, 'as the purest of beings, utterly removed from the sordid and the ugly.' eve suddenly flung herself on her knees beside her. 'ah, kato,' she said, 'you throw me off my guard when you play to me. i'm not always hard and calculating, and your music melts me. it hurts me to be, as i constantly am, on the defensive. i'm too suspicious by nature to be very happy, kato. there are always shadows, and ... and tragedy. please don't judge me too harshly. tell me what you mean by sordid and ugly--what is there sordid or ugly in love?' kato dared much; she replied in a level voice,-'jealousy. waste. exorbitance. suspicion. i am sometimes afraid of your turning julian into another of those men who hoped to find their inspiration in a woman, but found only a hindrance.' she nodded sagely at eve, and the gold wheat-ears trembled in her hair. eve darkened at julian's name; she got up and stood by the door looking into the court. kato went on,-'you are so much of a woman, eve, that it becomes a responsibility. it is a gift, like genius. and a great gift without a great soul is a curse, because such a gift is too strong to be disregarded. it's a force, a danger. you think i am preaching to you'--eve would never know what the words were costing her--'but i preach only because of my belief in julian--and in you,' she hastened to add, and caught eve's hand; 'don't frown, you child. look at me; i have no illusions and no sensitiveness on the score of my own appearance; look at me hard, and let me speak to you as a sexless creature.' eve was touched in spite of her hostility. she was also shocked and distressed. there was to her, so young herself, so insolently vivid in her sex-pride, something wrong and painful in kato's renouncement of her right. she had a sense of betrayal. 'hush, anastasia,' she whispered. they were both extremely moved, and the constant volleys of firing played upon their nerves and stripped reserve from them. 'you don't realise,' said kato, who had, upon impulse, sacrificed her pride, and beaten down the feminine weakness she branded as unworthy, 'how finely the balance, in love, falters between good and ill. you, eve, are created for love; any one who saw you, even without speaking to you, across a room, could tell you that.' she smiled affectionately; she had, at that moment, risen so far above all personal vanity that she could bring herself to smile affectionately at eve. 'you said, just now, with truth i am sure, that shadows and tragedy were never very far away from you; you're too _rare_ to be philosophical. i wish there were a word to express the antithesis of a philosopher; if i could call you by it, i should have said all that i could wish to say about you, eve. i'm so much afraid of sorrow for you and julian....' 'yes, yes,' said eve, forgetting to be resentful, 'i am afraid, too; it overcomes me sometimes; it's a presentiment.' she looked really haunted, and kato was filled with an immense pity for her. 'you mustn't be weak,' she said gently. 'presentiment is only a high-sounding word for a weak thought.' 'you are so strong and sane, kato; it is easy for you to be--strong and sane.' they broke off, and listened in silence to an outburst of firing and shouts that rose from the village. grbits burst into the room early in the afternoon, his flat sallow face tinged with colour, his clothes torn, and his limbs swinging like the sails of a windmill. in one enormous hand he still brandished a revolver. he was triumphantly out of breath. 'driven off!' he cried. 'they ran up a white flag. not one succeeded in landing. not one.' he panted between every phrase. 'julian--here in a moment. i ran. negotiations now, we hope. sea bobbing with dead.' 'our losses?' said kato sharply. 'few. all under cover,' grbits replied. he sat down, swinging his revolver loosely between his knees, and ran his fingers through his oily black hair, so that it separated into straight wisps across his forehead. he was hugely pleased and good-humoured, and grinned widely upon eve and kato. 'good fighting--though too much at a distance. julian was grazed on the temple--told me to tell you,' he added, with the tardy haste of a child who has forgotten to deliver a message. 'we tied up his head, and it will be nothing of a scratch.--driven off! they have tried and failed. the defence was excellent. they will scarcely try force again. i am sorry i missed the first fight. i could have thrown those little fat soldiers into the sea with one hand, two at a time.' kato rushed up to grbits and kissed him; they were like children in their large, clumsy excitement. julian came in, his head bandaged; his unconcern deserted him as he saw kato hanging over the giant's chair. he laughed out loud. 'a miscellaneous fleet!' he cried. 'coastal steamers, fort tugs, old chirkets from the bosphorus--who was the admiral, i wonder?' 'panaïoannou,' cried grbits, 'his uniform military down one side, and naval down the other.' 'their white flag!' said julian. 'sterghiou's handkerchief!' said grbits. 'coaling steamers, mounting machine-guns,' julian continued. 'stavridis must have imagined that,' said kato. 'play us a triumphal march, anastasia!' said grbits. kato crashed some chords on the piano; they all laughed and sang, but eve, who had taken no part at all, remained in the window-seat staring at the ground and her lips trembling. she heard julian's voice calling her, but she obstinately shook her head. he was lost to her between kato and grbits. she heard them eagerly talking now, all three, of the negotiations likely to follow. she heard the occasional shout with which grbits recalled some incident in the fighting, and julian's response. she felt that her ardent hatred of the islands rose in proportion to their ardent love. 'he cares nothing for me,' she kept repeating to herself, 'he cares for me as a toy, a pastime, nothing more; he forgets me for kato and the islands. the islands hold his true heart. i am the ornament to his life, not life itself. and he is all my life. he forgets me....' pride alone conquered her tears. later, under cover of a white flag, the ex-premier malteios was landed at the port of aphros, and was conducted--since he insisted that his visit was unofficial--to the davenant house. peace and silence reigned. grbits and kato had gone together to look at the wreckage, and eve, having watched their extraordinary progress down the street until they turned into the market-place, was alone in the drawing-room. julian slept heavily, his arms flung wide, on his bed upstairs. zapantiotis, who had expected to find him in the court or in the drawing-room, paused perplexed. he spoke to eve in a low voice. 'no,' she said, 'do not wake mr davenant,' and, raising her voice, she added, 'his excellency can remain with me.' she was alone in the room with malteios, as she had desired. 'but why remain thus, as it were, at bay?' he said pleasantly, observing her attitude, shrunk against the wall, her hand pressed to her heart. 'you and i were friends once, mademoiselle. madame?' he substituted. 'mademoiselle,' she replied levelly. 'ah? other rumours, perhaps--no matter. here upon your island, no doubt, different codes obtain. far be it from me to suggest.... an agreeable room,' he said, looking round, linking his fingers behind his back, and humming a little tune; 'you have a piano, i see; have you played much during your leisure? but, of course, i was forgetting: madame kato is your companion here, is she not? and to her skill a piano is a grateful ornament. ah, i could envy you your evenings, with kato to make your music. paris cries for her; but no, she is upon a revolutionary island in the heart of the ægean! paris cries the more. her portrait appears in every paper. madame kato, when she emerges, will find her fame carried to its summit. and you, mademoiselle eve, likewise something of a heroine.' 'i am here in the place of my cousin,' eve said, looking across at the ex-premier. he raised his eyebrows, and, in a familiar gesture, smoothed away his beard from his rosy lips with the tips of his fingers. 'is that indeed so? a surprising race, you english. very surprising. you assume or bequeath very lightly the mantle of government, do you not? am i to understand that you have permanently replaced your cousin in the--ah!--presidency of hagios zacharie?' 'my cousin is asleep; there is no reason why you should not speak to me in his absence.' 'asleep? but i must see him, mademoiselle.' 'if you will wait until he wakes.' 'hours, possibly!' 'we will send to wake him in an hour's time. can i not entertain you until then?' she suggested, her natural coquetry returning. she left the wall against which she had been leaning, and, coming across to malteios, gave him her fingers with a smile. the ex-premier had always figured picturesquely in her world. 'mademoiselle,' he said, kissing the fingers she gave him, 'you are as delightful as ever, i am assured.' they sat, malteios impatient and ill at ease, unwilling to forego his urbanity, yet tenacious of his purpose. in the midst of the compliments he perfunctorily proffered, he broke out,-'children! _ces gosses.... mais il est fou, voyons, votre cousin_. what is he thinking about? he has created a ridiculous disturbance; well, let that pass; we overlook it, but this persistence.... where is it all to end? obstinacy feeds and grows fat upon obstinacy; submission grows daily more impossible, more remote. his pride is at stake. a threat, well and good; let him make his threat; he might then have arrived at some compromise. i, possibly, might myself have acted as mediator between him and my friend and rival, gregori stavridis. in fact, i am here to-day in the hope that my effort will not come too late. but after so much fighting! tempers run high no doubt in the islands, and i can testify that they run high in herakleion. anastasia--probably you know this already--madame kato's flat is wrecked. yes, the mob. we are obliged to keep a cordon of police always before your uncle's house. neither he nor your father and mother dare to show themselves at the windows. it is a truly terrible state of affairs.' he reverted to the deeper cause of his resentment,-'i could have mediated, in the early days, so well between your cousin and gregori stavridis. pity, pity, pity!' he said, shaking his head and smiling his benign, regretful smile that to-day was tinged with a barely concealed bitterness, 'a thousand pities, mademoiselle.' he began again, his mind on herakleion,-'i have seen your father and mother, also your uncle. they are very angry and impotent. because the people threw stones at their windows and even, i regret to say, fired shots into the house from the _platia_, the windows are all boarded over and they live by artificial light. i have seen them breakfasting by candles. yes. your, father, your mother, and your uncle, breakfasting together in the drawing-room with lighted candles on the table. i entered the house from the back. your father said to me apprehensively, "i am told madame kato's flat was wrecked last night?" and your mother said, "outrageous! she is infatuated, either with those islands or with that boy. she will not care. all her possessions, littering the quays! an outrage." your uncle said to me, "see the boy, malteios! talk to him. we are hopeless." indeed they appeared hopeless, although not resigned, and sat with their hands hanging by their sides instead of eating their eggs; your mother, even, had lost her determination. 'i tried to reassure them, but a rattle of stones on the boarded windows interrupted me. your uncle got up and flung away his napkin. "one cannot breakfast in peace," he said petulantly, as though that constituted his most serious grievance. he went out of the room, but the door had scarcely closed behind him before it reopened and he came back. he was quite altered, very irritable, and all his courteous gravity gone from him. "see the inconvenience," he said to me, jerking his hands, "all the servants have gone with my son, all damned islanders." i found nothing to say.' 'kato may return to herakleion with you?' eve suggested after a pause during which malteios recollected himself, and tried to indicate by shrugs and rueful smiles that he considered the bewilderment of the davenants a deplorable but nevertheless entertaining joke. at the name of kato a change came over his face. 'a fanatic, that woman,' he replied; 'a martyr who will rejoice in her martyrdom. she will never leave aphros while the cause remains.--a heroic woman,' he said, with unexpected reverence. he looked at eve, his manner veering again to the insinuating and the crafty; his worse and his better natures were perpetually betraying themselves. 'would she leave aphros? no! would your cousin leave aphros? no! they have between them the bond of a common cause. i know your cousin. he is young enough to be an idealist. i know madame kato. she is old enough to applaud skilfully. hou!' he spread his hands. 'i have said enough.' eve revealed but little interest, though for the first time during their interview her interest was passionately aroused. malteios watched her, new schemes germinating in his brain; they played against one another, their hands undeclared, a blind, tentative game. this conversation, which had begun as it were accidentally, fortuitously, turned to a grave significance along a road whose end lay hidden far behind the hills of the future. it led, perhaps, nowhere. it led, perhaps.... eve said lightly,-'i am outdistanced by kato and my cousin; i don't understand politics, or those impersonal friendships.' 'mademoiselle,' malteios replied, choosing his words and infusing into them an air of confidence, 'i tell you an open secret, but one to which i would never refer save with a sympathetic listener like yourself, when i tell you that for many years a friendship existed between myself and madame kato, political indeed, but not impersonal. madame kato,' he said, drawing his chair a little nearer and lowering his voice, 'is not of the impersonal type.' eve violently rebelled from his nearness; fastidious, she loathed his goatish smile, his beard, his rosy lips, but she continued to smile to him, a man who held, perhaps, one of julian's secrets. she was aware of the necessity of obtaining that secret. of the dishonour towards julian, sleeping away his hurts and his fatigue in the room above, she was blindly unaware. love to her was a battle, not a fellowship. she must know! already her soul, eagerly receptive and bared to the dreaded blow, had adopted the theory of betrayal. in the chaos of her resentments and suspicions, she remembered how kato had spoken to her in the morning, and without further reflection branded that conversation as a blind. she even felt a passing admiration for the other woman's superior cleverness. she, eve, had been completely taken in.... so she must contend, not only against the islands, but against kato also? anguish and terror rushed over her. she scarcely knew what she believed or did not believe, only that her mind was one seething and surging tumult of mistrust and all-devouring jealousy. she was on the point of abandoning her temperamentally indirect methods, of stretching out her hands to malteios, and crying to him for the agonising, the fiercely welcome truth, when he said,-'impersonal? do you, mademoiselle, know anything of your sex? ah, charming! disturbing, precious, indispensable, even heroic, tant que vous voudrez, but impersonal, no! man, yes, sometimes. woman, never. never.' he took her hand, patted it, kissed the wrist, and murmured, 'chère enfant, these are not ideas for your pretty head.' she knew from experience that his preoccupation with such theories, if no more sinister motive, would urge him towards a resumption of the subject, and after a pause full of cogitation he continued,-'follow my advice, mademoiselle: never give your heart to a man concerned in other affairs. you may love, both of you, but you will strive in opposite directions. your cousin, for example.... and yet,' he mused, 'you are a woman to charm the leisure of a man of action. the toy of a conqueror.' he laughed. 'fortunately, conquerors are rare.' but she knew he hovered round the image of julian. 'believe me, leave such men to such women as kato; they are more truly kin. you--i discover you--are too exorbitant; love would play too absorbing a rôle. you would tolerate no rival, neither a person nor a fact. your eyes smoulder; i am near the truth?' 'one could steal the man from his affairs,' she said almost inaudibly. 'the only hope,' he replied. a long silence fell, and his evil benevolence gained on her; on her aroused sensitiveness his unspoken suggestions fell one by one as definitely as the formulated word. he watched her; she trembled, half compelled by his gaze. at length, under the necessity of breaking the silence, she said,-'kato is not such a woman; she would resent no obstacle.' 'wiser,' he added, 'she would identify herself with it.' he began to banter horribly,-'ah, child, eve, child made for love, daily bless your cousinship! bless its contemptuous security. smile over the confabulations of kato and your cousin. smile to think that he, she, and the islands are bound in an indissoluble triology. if there be jealousy to suffer, rejoice in that it falls, not to your share, but to mine, who am old and sufficiently philosophical. age and experience harden, you know. else, i could not see anastasia kato pass to another with so negligible a pang. yet the imagination makes its own trouble. a jealous imagination.... very vivid. pictures of anastasia kato in your cousin's arms--ah, crude, crude, i know, but the crudity of the jealous imagination is unequalled. not a detail escapes. that is why i say, bless your cousinship and its security.' he glanced up and met her tortured eyes. 'as i bless my philosophy of the inevitable,' he finished softly, caressing her hand which he had retained all the while. no effort at 'impossible!' escaped her; almost from the first she had blindly adopted his insinuations. she even felt a perverse gratitude towards him, and a certain fellowship. they were allies. her mind was now set solely upon one object. that self-destruction might be involved did not occur to her, nor would she have been deterred thereby. like samson, she had her hands upon the columns.... 'madame kato lives in this house?' asked malteios, as one who has been following a train of thought. she shook her head, and he noticed that her eyes were turned slightly inwards, as with the effort of an immense concentration. 'you have power,' he said with admiration. bending towards her, he began to speak in a very low, rapid voice; she sat listening to him, by no word betraying her passionate attention, nodding only from time to time, and keeping her hands very still, linked in her lap. only once she spoke, to ask a question, 'he would leave herakleion?' and malteios replied, 'inevitably; the question of the islands would be for ever closed for him;' then she said, producing the words from afar off, 'he would be free,' and malteios, working in the dark, following only one of the two processes of her thought, reverted to kato; his skill could have been greater in playing upon the instrument, but even so it sufficed, so taut was the stringing of the cords. when he had finished speaking, she asked him another question, 'he could never trace the thing to me?' and he reassured her with a laugh so natural and contemptuous that she, in her ingenuity, was convinced. all the while she had kept her eyes fastened on his face, on his rosy lips moving amongst his beard, that she might lose no detail of his meaning or his instructions, and at one moment he had thought, 'there is something terrible in this child,' but immediately he had crushed the qualm, thinking, 'by this recovery, if indeed it is to be, i am a made man,' and thanking the fate that had cast this unforeseen chance across his path. finally she heard his voice change from its earnest undertone to its customary platitudinous flattery, and turning round she saw that julian had come into the room, his eyes already bent with brooding scorn upon the emissary. vi she was silent that evening, so silent that grbits, the unobservant, commented to kato; but after they had dined, all four, by the fountain in the court, she flung aside her preoccupation, laughed and sang, forced kato to the piano, and danced with reckless inspiration to the accompaniment of kato's songs. julian, leaning against a column, watched her bewildering gaiety. she had galvanised grbits into movement--he who was usually bashful with women, especially with eve, reserving his enthusiasm for julian--and as she passed and re-passed before julian in the grasp of the giant she flung at him provocative glances charged with a special meaning he could not interpret; in the turn of her dance he caught her smile and the flash of her eyes, and smiled in response, but his smile was grave, for his mind ran now upon the crisis with herakleion, and, moreover, he suffered to see eve so held by grbits, her turbulent head below the giant's shoulder, and regretted that her gaiety should not be reserved for him alone. across the court, through the open door of the drawing-room, he could see kato at the piano, full of delight, her broad little fat hands and wrists racing above the keyboard, her short torso swaying to the rhythm, her rich voice humming, and the gold wheat ears shaking in her hair. she called to him, and, drawing a chair close to the piano, he sat beside her, but through the door he continued to stare at eve dancing in the court. kato said as she played, her perception sharpened by the tormented watch she kept on him,-'eve celebrates your victory of yesterday,' to which he replied, deceived by the kindly sympathy in her eyes,-'eve celebrates her own high spirits and the enjoyment of a new partner; my doings are of the last indifference to her.' kato played louder; she bent towards him,-'you love her so much, julian?' he made an unexpected answer,-'i believe in her.' kato, a shrewd woman, observed him, thinking,--'he does not; he wants to convince himself.' she said aloud, conscientiously wrenching out the truth as she saw it,-'she loves you; she is capable of love such as is granted to few; that is the sublime in her.' he seized upon this, hungrily, missing meanwhile the sublime in the honesty of the singer,-'since i am given so much, i should not exact more. the islands.... she gives all to me. i ought not to force the islands upon her.' 'grapes of thistles,' kato said softly. 'you understand,' he murmured with gratitude. 'but why should she hamper me, anastasia? are all women so irrational? what am i to believe?' 'we are not so irrational as we appear,' kato said, 'because our wildest sophistry has always its roots in the truth of instinct.' eve was near them, crying out,-'a tarantella, anastasia!' julian sprang up; he caught her by the wrist,-'gipsy!' 'come with the gipsy?' she whispered. her scented hair blew near him, and her face was upturned, with its soft, sweet mouth. 'away from aphros?' he said, losing his head. 'all over the world!' he was suddenly swept away by the full force of her wild, irresponsible seduction. 'anywhere you choose, eve.' she triumphed, close to him, and wanton. 'you'd sacrifice aphros to me?' 'anything you asked for,' he said desperately. she laughed, and danced away, stretching out her hands towards him,-'join in the saraband, julian?' she was alone in her room. her emotion and excitement were so intense that they drained her of physical strength, leaving her faint and cold; her eyes closed now and then as under the pressure of pain; she yawned, and her breath came shortly between her lips; she sat by the open window, rose to move about the room, sat again, rose again, passed her hand constantly over her forehead, or pressed it against the base of her throat. the room was in darkness; there was no moon, only the stars hung over the black gulf of the sea. she could see the long, low lights of herakleion, and the bright red light of the pier. she could hear distant shouting, and an occasional shot. in the room behind her, her bed was disordered. she wore only her spanish shawl thrown over her long nightgown; her hair hung in its thick plait. sometimes she formed, in a whisper, the single word, 'julian!' she thought of julian. julian's rough head and angry eyes. julian when he said, 'i shall break you,' like a man speaking to a wild young supple tree. (her laugh of derision, and her rejoicing in her secret fear!) julian in his lazy ownership of her beauty. julian when he allowed her to coax him from his moroseness. julian when she was afraid of him and of the storm she had herself aroused: julian passionate.... julian whom she blindly wanted for herself alone. that desire had risen to its climax. the light of no other consideration filtered through into her closely shuttered heart. she had waited for julian, schemed for julian, battled for julian; this was the final battle. she had not foreseen it. she had tolerated and even welcomed the existence of the islands until she began to realise that they took part of julian from her. then she hated them insanely, implacably; including kato, whom julian had called their tutelary deity, in that hatred. had julian possessed a dog, she would have hated that too. the ambitions she had vaguely cherished for him had not survived the test of surrendering a portion of her own inordinate claim. she had joined battle with the islands as with a malignant personality. she was fighting them for the possession of julian as she might have fought a woman she thought more beautiful, more unscrupulous, more appealing than herself, but with very little doubt of ultimate victory. julian would be hers, at last; more completely hers than he had been even in those ideal, uninterrupted days before grbits and kato came, the days when he forgot his obligations, almost his life's dream for her. love all-eclipsing.... she stood at the window, oppressed and tense, but in the soft silken swaying of her loose garments against her limbs she still found a delicately luxurious comfort. julian had been called away, called by the violent hammering on the house-door; it had then been after midnight. two hours had passed since then. no one had come to her, but she had heard the tumult of many voices in the streets, and by leaning far out of the window she could see a great flare burning up from the market-place. she had thought a house might be on fire. she could not look back over her dispositions; they had been completed in a dream, as though under direct dictation. it did not occur to her to be concerned as to their possible miscarriage; she was too ignorant of such matters, too unpractical, to be troubled by any such anxiety. she had carried out malteios' instructions with intense concentration; there her part had ended. the fuse which she had fired was burning.... if julian would return, to put an end to her impatience! (down in the market-place the wooden school-buildings flamed and crackled, redly lighting up the night, and fountains of sparks flew upward against the sky. the lurid market-place was thronged with sullen groups of islanders, under the guard of the soldiers of herakleion. in the centre, on the cobbles, lay the body of tsigaridis, on his back, arms flung open, still, in the enormous pool of blood that crept and stained the edges of his spread white fustanelle. many of the islanders were not fully dressed, but had run out half-naked from their houses, only to be captured and disarmed by the troops; the weapons which had been taken from them lay heaped near the body of tsigaridis, the light of the flames gleaming along the blades of knives and the barrels of rifles, and on the bare bronzed chests of men, and limbs streaked with trickles of bright red blood. they stood proudly, contemptuous of their wounds, arms folded, some with rough bandages about their heads. panaïoannou, leaning both hands on the hilt of his sword, and grinning sardonically beneath his fierce moustaches, surveyed the place from the steps of the assembly-room). eve in her now silent room realised that all sounds of tumult had died away. a shivering came over her, and, impelled by a suddenly understood necessity, she lit the candles on her dressing-table and, as the room sprang into light, began flinging the clothes out of the drawers into a heap in the middle of the floor. they fluttered softly from her hands, falling together in all their diverse loveliness of colour and fragility of texture. she paused to smile to them, friends and allies. she remembered now, with the fidelity of a child over a well-learnt lesson, the final words of malteios, 'a boat ready for you both to-night, secret and without delay,' as earlier in the evening she had remembered his other words, 'midnight, at the creek at the back of the islands ...'; she had acted upon her lesson mechanically, and in its due sequence, conscientious, trustful. she stood amongst her clothes, the long red sari which she had worn on the evening of julian's first triumph drooping from her hand. they foamed about her feet as she stood doubtfully above them, strangely brilliant herself in her spanish shawl. they lay in a pool of rich delicacy upon the floor. they hung over the backs of chairs, and across the tumbled bed. they pleased her; she thought them pretty. stooping, she raised them one by one, and allowed them to drop back on to the heap, aware that she must pack them and must also dress herself. but she liked their butterfly colours and gentle rustle, and, remembering that julian liked them too, smiled to them again. he found her standing there amongst them when after a knock at her door he came slowly into her room. he remained by the door for a long while looking at her in silence. she had made a sudden, happy movement towards him, but inexplicably had stopped, and with the sari still in her hand gazed back at him, waiting for him to speak. he looked above all, mortally tired. she discovered no anger in his face, not even sorrow; only that mortal weariness. she was touched; she to whom those gentler emotions were usually foreign. 'julian?' she said, seized with doubt. 'it is all over,' he began, quite quietly, and he put his hand against his forehead, which was still bandaged, raising his arm with the same lassitude; 'they landed where young zapantiotis was on guard, and he let them through; they were almost at the village before they were discovered. there was very little fighting. they have allowed me to come here. they are waiting for me downstairs. i am to leave.' 'yes,' she said, and looked down at her heap of clothes. he did not speak again, and gradually she realised the implication of his words. 'zapantiotis....' she said. 'yes,' he said, raising his eyes again to her face, 'yes, you see, zapantiotis confessed it all to me when he saw me. he was standing amongst a group of prisoners, in the market-place, but when i came by he broke away from the guards and screamed out to me that he had betrayed us. betrayed us. he said he was tempted, bribed. he said he would cut his own throat. but i told him not to do that.' she began to tremble, wondering how much he knew. he added, in the saddest voice she had ever heard,-'zapantiotis, an islander, could not be faithful.' then she was terrified; she did not know what was coming next, what would be the outcome of this quietness. she wanted to go towards him, but she could only remain motionless, holding the sari up to her breast as a means of protection. 'at least,' he said, 'old zapantiotis is dead, and will never know about his son. where can one look for fidelity? tsigaridis is dead too, and grbits. i am ashamed of being alive.' she noticed then that he was disarmed. 'why do you stand over there, julian?' she said timidly. 'i wonder how much you promised zapantiotis?' he said in a speculative voice; and next, stating a fact, 'you were, of course, acting on malteios' suggestion.' 'you know?' she breathed. she was quite sure now that he was going to kill her. 'zapantiotis tried to tell me that too--in a strange jumble of confessions. but they dragged him away before he could say more than your bare name. that was enough for me. so i know, eve.' 'is that all you were going to say?' he raised his arms and let them fall. 'what is there to say?' knowing him very well, she saw that his quietness was dropping from him; she was aware of it perhaps before he was aware of it himself. his eyes were losing their dead apathy, and were travelling round the room; they rested on the heap of clothes, on her own drawing of himself hanging on the wall, on the disordered bed. they flamed suddenly, and he made a step towards her. 'why? why? why?' he cried out with the utmost anguish and vehemence, but stopped himself, and stood with clenched fists. she shrank away. 'all gone--in an hour!' he said, and striding towards her he stood over her, shaken with a tempest of passion. she shrank farther from him, retreating against the wall, but first she stooped and gathered her clothes around her again, pressing her back against the wall and cowering with the clothes as a rampart round her feet. but as yet full realisation was denied her; she knew that he was angry, she thought indeed that he might kill her, but to other thoughts of finality she was, in all innocence, a stranger. he spoke incoherently, saying, 'all gone! all gone!' in accents of blind pain, and once he said, 'i thought you loved me,' putting his hands to his head as though walls were crumbling. he made no further reproach, save to repeat, 'i thought the men were faithful, and that you loved me,' and all the while he trembled with the effort of his self-control, and his twitching hands reached out towards her once or twice, but he forced them back. she thought, 'how angry he is! but he will forget, and i shall make up to him for what he has lost.' so, between them, they remained almost silent, breathing hard, and staring at one another. 'come, put up your clothes quickly,' he said at last, pointing; 'they want us off the island, and if we do not go of our own accord they will tie our hands and feet and carry us to the boat. let us spare ourselves that ludicrous scene. we can marry in athens to-morrow.' 'marry?' she repeated. 'naturally. what else did you suppose? that i should leave you? now? put up your clothes. shall i help you? come!' 'but--marry, julian?' 'clearly: marry,' he replied in a harsh voice, and added, 'let us go. for god's sake, let us go now! i feel stunned, i mustn't begin to think. let us go.' he urged her towards the door. 'but we had nothing to do with marriage,' she whispered. he cried, so loudly and so bitterly that she was startled,-'no, we had to do only with love--love and rebellion! and both have failed me. now, instead of love, we must have marriage; and instead of rebellion, law. i shall help on authority, instead of opposing it.' he broke down and buried his face in his hands. 'you no longer love me,' she said slowly, and her eyes narrowed and turned slightly inwards in the way malteios had noticed. 'then the islands....' he pressed both hands against his temples and screamed like one possessed, 'but they were all in all in all! it isn't the thing, it's the soul behind the thing. in robbing me of them you've robbed me of more than them--you've robbed me of all the meaning that lay behind them.' he retained just sufficient self-possession to realise this. 'i knew you were hostile, how could i fail to know it? but i persuaded myself that you were part of aphros, part of all my beliefs, even something beyond all my beliefs. i loved you, so you and they had to be reconciled. i reconciled you in secret. i gave up mentioning the islands to you because it stabbed me to see your indifference. it destroyed the illusion i was cherishing. so i built up fresh, separate illusions about you. i have been living on illusions, now i have nothing left but facts. i owe this to you, to you, to you!' 'you no longer love me,' she said again. she could think of nothing else. she had not listened to his bitter and broken phrases. 'you no longer love me, julian.' 'i was so determined that i would be deceived by no woman, and like every one else i have fallen into the trap. because you were you, i ceased to be on my guard. oh, you never pretended to care for aphros; i grant you that honesty; but i wanted to delude myself and so i was deluded. i told myself marvellous tales of your rarity; i thought you were above even aphros. i am punished for my weakness in bringing you here. why hadn't i the strength to remain solitary? i reproach myself; i had not the right to expose my islands to such a danger. but how could i have known? how could i have known?' 'clearly you no longer love me,' she said for the third time. 'zapantiotis sold his soul for money--was it money you promised him?' he went on. 'so easily--just for a little money! his soul, and all of us, for money. money, father's god; he's a wise man, father, to serve the only remunerative god. was it money you promised zapantiotis?' he shouted at her, seizing her by the arm, 'or was he, perhaps, like paul, in love with you? did you perhaps promise him yourself? how am i to know? there may still be depths in you--you woman--that i know nothing about. did you give yourself to zapantiotis? or is he coming to-night for his reward? did you mean to ship me off to athens, you and your accomplices, while you waited here in this room--_our_ room--for your lover?' 'julian!' she cried--he had forced her on to her knees--'you are saying monstrous things.' 'you drive me to them,' he replied; 'when i think that while the troops were landing you lay in my arms, here, knowing all the while that you had betrayed me--i could believe anything of you. monstrous things! do you know what monstrous things i am thinking? that you shall not belong to zapantiotis, but to me. yes, to me. you destroy love, but desire revives, without love; horrible, but sufficient. that's what i am thinking. i dare say i could kiss you still, and forget. come!' he was beside himself. 'your accusations are so outrageous,' she said, half-fainting, 'your suggestions are obscene, julian; i would rather you killed me at once.' 'then answer me about zapantiotis. how am i to know?' he repeated, already slightly ashamed of his outburst, 'i'm readjusting my ideas. tell me the truth; i scarcely care.' 'believe what you choose,' she replied, although he still held her, terrified, on the ground at his feet, 'i have more pride than you credit me with--too much to answer you.' 'it was money,' he said after a pause, releasing her. she stood up; reaction overcame her, and she wept. 'julian, that you should believe that of me! you cut me to the quick--and i gave myself to you with such pride and gladness' she added almost inaudibly. 'forgive me; i suppose you, also, have your own moral code; i have speculated sufficiently about it, heaven knows, but that means very little to me now,' he said, more quietly, and with even a spark of detached interest and curiosity. but he did not pursue the subject. 'what do you want done with your clothes? we have wasted quite enough time.' 'you want me to come with you?' 'you sound incredulous; why?' 'i know you have ceased to love me. you spoke of marrying me. your love must have been a poor flimsy thing, to topple over as it has toppled! mine is more tenacious, alas. it would not depend on outside happenings.' 'how dare you accuse me?' he said,' you destroy and take from me all that i care for' ('yes,' she interpolated, as much bitterness in her voice as in his own--but all the time they were talking against one another--'you cared for everything but me'), 'then you brand my love for you as a poor flimsy thing. if you have killed it, you have done so by taking away the one thing....' 'that you cared for more than for me,' she completed. 'with which i would have associated you. you yourself made that association impossible. you hated the things i loved. now you've killed those things, and my love for you with them. you've killed everything i cherished and possessed.' 'dead? irretrievably?' she whispered. 'dead.' he saw her widened and swimming eyes, and added, too much stunned for personal malice, yet angry because of the pain he was suffering,-'you shall never be jealous of me again. i think i've loved all women, loving you--gone through the whole of love, and now washed my hands of it; i've tested and plumbed your vanity, your hideous egotism'--she was crying like a child, unreservedly, her face hidden against her arm--'your lack of breadth in everything that was not love.' as he spoke, she raised her face and he saw light breaking on her--although it was not, and never would be, precisely the light he desired. it was illumination and horror; agonised horror, incredulous dismay. her eyes were streaming with tears, but they searched him imploringly, despairingly, as in a new voice she said,-'i've hurt you, julian ... how i've hurt you! hurt you! i would have died for you. can't i put it right? oh, tell me! will you kill me?' and she put her hand up to her throat, offering it. 'julian, i've hurt you ... my own, my julian. what have i done? what madness made me do it? oh, what is there now for me to do? only tell me; i do beseech you only to tell me. shall i go--to whom?--to malteios? i understand nothing; you must tell me. i wanted you so greedily; you must believe that. anything, anything you want me to do.... it wasn't sufficient, to love you, to want you; i gave you all i had, but it wasn't sufficient. i loved you wrongly, i suppose; but i loved you, i loved you!' he had been angry, but now he was seized with a strange pity; pity of her childish bewilderment: the thing that she had perpetrated was a thing she could not understand. she would never fully understand.... he looked at her as she stood crying, and remembered her other aspects, in the flood-time of her joy, careless, radiant, irresponsible; they had shared hours of illimitable happiness. 'eve! eve!' he cried, and through the wrenching despair of his cry he heard the funeral note, the tear of cleavage like the downfall of a tree. he took her in his arms and made her sit upon the bed; she continued to weep, and he sat beside her, stroking her hair. he used terms of endearment towards her, such as he had never used in the whole course of their passionate union, 'eve, my little eve'; and he kept on repeating, 'my little eve,' and pressing her head against his shoulder. they sat together like two children. presently she looked up, pushing back her hair with a gesture he knew well. 'we both lose the thing we cared most for upon earth, julian: you lose the islands, and i lose you.' she stood up, and gazed out of the window towards herakleion. she stood there for some time without speaking, and a fatal clearness spread over her mind, leaving her quite strong, quite resolute, and coldly armoured against every shaft of hope. 'you want me to marry you,' she said at length. 'you must marry me in athens to-morrow, if possible, and as soon as we are married we can go to england.' 'i utterly refuse,' she said, turning round towards him. he stared at her; she looked frail and tired, and with one small white hand held together the edges of her spanish shawl. she was no longer crying. 'do you suppose,' she went on, 'that not content with having ruined the beginning of your life for you--i realise it now, you see--i shall ruin the rest of it as well? you may believe me or not, i speak the truth like a dying person when i tell you i love you to the point of sin; yes, it's a sin to love as i love you. it's blind, it's criminal. it's my curse, the curse of eve, to love so well that one loves badly. i didn't see. i wanted you too blindly. even now i scarcely understand how you can have ceased to love me.--no, don't speak. i do understand it--in a way; and yet i don't understand it. i don't understand that an idea can be dearer to one than the person one loves.... i don't understand responsibilities; when you've talked about responsibilities i've sometimes felt that i was made of other elements than you.... but you're a man, and i'm a woman; that's the rift. perhaps it's a rift that can never be bridged. never mind that. julian, you must find some more civilised woman than myself; find a woman who will be a friend, not an enemy. love makes me into an enemy, you see. find somebody more tolerant, more unselfish. more maternal. yes, that's it,' she said, illuminated, 'more maternal; i'm only a lover, not a mother. you told me once that i was of the sort that sapped and destroyed. i'll admit that, and let you go. you mustn't waste yourself on me. but, oh, julian,' she said, coming close to him, 'if i give you up--because in giving you up i utterly break myself--grant me one justice: never doubt that i loved you. promise me, julian. i shan't love again. but don't doubt that i loved you; don't argue to yourself, "she broke my illusions, therefore she never loved me," let me make amends for what i did, by sending you away now without me.' 'i was angry; i was lying; i wanted to hurt you as you had hurt me,' he said desperately. 'how can i tell what i have been saying to you? i've been dazed, struck.... it's untrue that i no longer love you. i love you, in spite, in spite.... love can't die in an hour.' 'bless you,' she said, putting her hand for a moment on his head, 'but you can't deceive me. oh,' she hurried on, 'you might deceive yourself; you might persuade yourself that you still loved me and wanted me to go with you; but i know better. i'm not for you. i'm not for your happiness, or for any man's happiness. you've said it yourself: i am different. i let you go because you are strong and useful--oh, yes, useful! so disinterested and strong, all that i am not--too good for me to spoil. you have nothing in common with me. who has? i think i haven't any kindred. i love you! i love you better than myself!' he stood up; he stammered in his terror and earnestness, but she only shook her head. 'no, julian.' 'you're too strong,' he cried, 'you little weak thing; stronger than i.' she smiled; he was unaware of the very small reserve of her strength. 'stronger than you,' she repeated; 'yes.' again he implored her to go with him; he even threatened her, but she continued to shake her head and to say in a faint and tortured voice,-'go now, julian; go, my darling; go now, julian.' 'with you, or not at all.' he was at last seriously afraid that she meant what she said, 'without me.' 'eve, we were so happy. remember! only come; we shall be as happy again.' 'you mustn't tempt me; it's cruel,' she said, shivering. 'i'm human.' 'but i love you!' he said. he seized her hands, and tried to drag her towards the door. 'no,' she answered, putting him gently away from her. 'don't tempt me, julian, don't; let me make amends in my own way.' her gentleness and dignity were such that he now felt reproved, and, dimly, that the wrong done was by him towards her, not by her towards him. 'you are too strong--magnificent, and heartbreaking,' he said in despair. 'as strong as a rock,' she replied, looking straight at him and thinking that at any moment she must fall. but still she forced her lips to a smile of finality. 'think better of it,' he was beginning, when they heard a stir of commotion in the court below. 'they are coming for you!' she cried out in sudden panic. 'go; i can't face any one just now....' he opened the door on to the landing. 'kato!' he said, falling back. eve heard the note of fresh anguish in his voice. kato came in; even in that hour of horror they saw that she had merely dragged a quilt round her shoulders, and that her hair was down her back. in this guise her appearance was indescribably grotesque. 'defeated, defeated,' she said in lost tones to julian. she did not see that they had both involuntarily recoiled before her; she was beyond such considerations. 'anastasia,' he said, taking her by the arm and shaking her slightly to recall her from her bemusement, 'here is something more urgent--thank god, you will be my ally--eve must leave aphros with me; tell her so, tell her so; she refuses.' he shook her more violently with the emphasis of his words. 'if he wants you....' kato said, looking at eve, who had retreated into the shadows and stood there, half fainting, supporting herself against the back of a chair. 'if he wants you....' she repeated, in a stupid voice, but her mind was far away. 'you don't understand, anastasia,' eve answered; 'it was i that betrayed him.' again she thought she must fall. 'she is lying!' cried julian. 'no,' said eve. she and kato stared at one another, so preposterously different, yet with currents of truth rushing between them. 'you!' kato said at last, awaking. 'i am sending him away,' said eve, speaking as before to the other woman. 'you!' said kato again. she turned wildly to julian. 'why didn't you trust yourself to me, julian, my beloved?' she cried; 'i wouldn't have treated you so, julian; why didn't you trust yourself to me?' she pointed at eve, silent and brilliant in her coloured shawl; then, her glance falling upon her own person, so sordid, so unkempt, she gave a dreadful cry and looked around as though seeking for escape. the other two both turned their heads away; to look at kato in that moment was more than they could bear. presently they heard her speaking again; her self-abandonment had been brief; she had mastered herself, and was making it a point of honour to speak with calmness. 'julian, the officers have orders that you must leave the island before dawn; if you do not go to them, they will fetch you here. they are waiting below in the courtyard now. eve,'--her face altered,--'eve is right: if she has indeed done as she says, she cannot go with you. she is right; she is more right, probably, than she has ever been in her life before or ever will be again. come, now; i will go with you.' 'stay with eve, if i go,' he said. 'impossible!' replied kato, instantly hardening, and casting upon eve a look of hatred and scorn. 'how cruel you are, anastasia!' said julian, making a movement of pity towards eve. 'take him away, anastasia,' eve murmured, shrinking from him. 'see, she understands me better than you do, and understands herself better too,' said kato, in a tone of cruel triumph; 'if you do not come, julian, i shall send up the officers.' as she spoke she went out of the room, her quilt trailing, and her heel-less slippers clacking on the boards. 'eve, for the last time....' a cry was wrenched from her,-'go! if you pity me!' 'i shall come back.' 'oh, no, no!' she replied, 'you'll never come back. one doesn't live through such things twice.' she shook her head like a tortured animal that seeks to escape from pain. he gave an exclamation of despair, and, after one wild gesture towards her, which she weakly repudiated, he followed kato. eve heard their steps upon the stairs, then crossing the courtyard, and the tramp of soldiers; the house-door crashed massively. she stooped very slowly and mechanically, and began to pick up the gay and fragile tissue of her clothes. vii she laid them all in orderly fashion across the bed, smoothing out the folds with a care that was strangely opposed to her usual impatience. then she stood for some time drawing the thin silk of the sari through her fingers and listening for sounds in the house; there were none. the silence impressed her with the fact that she was alone. 'gone!' she thought, but she made no movement. her eyes narrowed and her mouth became contracted with pain. 'julian ...' she murmured, and, finding some slippers, she thrust her bare feet into them with sudden haste and threw the corner of her shawl over her shoulder. she moved now with feverish speed; any one seeing her face would have exclaimed that she was not in conscious possession of her will, but would have shrunk before the force of her determination. she opened the door upon the dark staircase and went rapidly down; the courtyard was lit by a torch the soldiers had left stuck and flaring in a bracket. she had some trouble with the door, tearing her hands and breaking her nails upon the great latch, but she felt nothing, dragged it open, and found herself in the street. at the end of the street she could see the glare from the burning buildings of the market-place, and could hear the shout of military orders. she knew she must take the opposite road; malteios had told her that. 'go by the mule-path over the hill; it will lead you straight to the creek where the boat will be waiting,' he had said. 'the boat for julian and me,' she kept muttering to herself as she speeded up the path stumbling over the shallow steps and bruising her feet upon the cobbles. it was very dark. once or twice as she put out her hand to save herself from falling she encountered only a prickly bush of aloe or gorse, and the pain stung her, causing a momentary relief. 'i mustn't hurry too much,' she said to herself, 'i mustn't arrive at the creek before they have pushed off the boat. i mustn't call out....' she tried to compare her pace with that of julian, kato, and the officers, and ended by sitting down for a few minutes at the highest point of the path, where it had climbed over the shoulder of the island, and was about to curve down upon the other side. from this small height, under the magnificent vault studded with stars, she could hear the sigh of the sea and feel the slight breeze ruffling her hair. 'without julian, without julian--no, never,' she said to herself, and that one thought revolved in her brain. 'i'm alone,' she thought, 'i've always been alone.... i'm an outcast, i don't belong here....' she did not really know what she meant by this, but she repeated it with a blind conviction, and a terrible loneliness overcame her. 'oh, stars!' she said aloud, putting up her hands to them, and again she did not know what she meant, either by the words or the gesture. then she realised that it was dark, and standing up she thought, 'i'm frightened,' but there was no reply to the appeal for julian that followed immediately upon the thought. she clasped her shawl round her, and tried to stare through the night; then she thought 'people on the edge of death have no need to be frightened,' but for all that she continued to look fearfully about her, to listen for sounds, and to wish that julian would come to take care of her. she went down the opposite side of the hill less rapidly than she had come up. she knew she must not overtake julian and his escort. she did not really know why she had chosen to follow them, when any other part of the coast would have been equally suitable for what she had determined to do. but she kept thinking, as though it brought some consolation, 'he passed along this path five--ten--minutes ago; he is there somewhere, not far in front of me.' and she remembered how he had begged her to go with him. ' ... but i couldn't have gone!' she cried, half in apology to the dazzling happiness she had renounced, 'i was a curse to him--to everything i touch. i could never have controlled my jealousy, my exorbitance.... he asked me to go, to be with him always,' she thought, sobbing and hurrying on; and she sobbed his name, like a child, 'julian! julian! julian!' presently the path ceased to lead downhill and became flat, running along the top of the rocky cliff about twenty feet above the sea. she moved more cautiously, knowing that it would bring her to the little creek where the boat was to be waiting; as she moved she blundered constantly against boulders, for the path was winding and in the starlight very difficult to follow. she was still fighting with herself, 'no, i could not go with him; i am not fit.... i don't belong here....' that reiterated cry. 'but without him--no, no, no! this is quite simple. will he think me bad? i hope not; i shall have done what i could....' her complexity had entirely deserted her, and she thought in broad, childish lines. 'poor eve!' she thought suddenly, viewing herself as a separate person, 'she was very young' (in her eyes youth amounted to a moral virtue), 'julian, julian, be a little sorry for her,--i was cursed, i was surely cursed,' she added, and at that moment she found herself just above the creek. the path descended to it in rough steps, and with a beating heart she crept down, helping herself by her hands, until she stood upon the sand, hidden in the shadow of a boulder. the shadows were very black and hunched, like the shadows of great beasts. she listened, the softness of her limbs pressed against the harshness of the rocks. she heard faint voices, and, creeping forward, still keeping in the shadows, she made out the shape of a rowing-boat filled with men about twenty yards from the shore. 'kato has gone with him!' was her first idea, and at that all her jealousy flamed again--the jealousy that, at the bottom of her heart, she knew was groundless, but could not keep in check. anger revived her--'am i to waste myself on him?' she thought, but immediately she remembered the blank that that one word 'never!' could conjure up, and her purpose became fixed again. 'not life without him,' she thought firmly and unchangeably, and moved forward until her feet were covered by the thin waves lapping the sandy edge of the creek. she had thrown off her shoes, standing barefoot on the soft wet sand. here she paused to allow the boat to draw farther away. she knew that she would cry out, however strong her will, and she must guard against all chance of rescue. she waited at the edge of the creek, shivering, and drawing her silk garments about her, and forcing herself to endure the cold horror of the water washing round her ankles. how immense was the night, how immense the sea!--the oars in the boat dipped regularly; by now it was almost undistinguishable in the darkness. 'what must i do?' she thought wildly, knowing the moment had come. 'i must run out as far as i can....' she sent an unuttered cry of 'julian!' after the boat, and plunged forward; the coldness of the water stopped her as it reached her waist, and the long silk folds became entangled around her limbs, but she recovered herself and fought her way forward. instinctively she kept her hands pressed against her mouth and nostrils, and her staring eyes tried to fathom this cruelly deliberate death. then the shelving coast failed her beneath her feet; she had lost the shallows and was taken by the swell and rhythm of the deep. a thought flashed through her brain, 'this is where the water ceases to be green and becomes blue'; then in her terror she lost all self-control and tried to scream; it was incredible that julian, who was so near at hand, should not hear and come to save her; she felt herself tiny and helpless in that great surge of water; even as she tried to scream she was carried forward and under, in spite of her wild terrified battle against the sea, beneath the profound serenity of the night that witnessed and received her expiation. glasgow: w. collins sons and co. ltd. don orsino by f. marion crawford author of "the three fates," "zoroaster," "dr. claudius," "saracinesca," etc. new york grosset & dunlap publishers 1891, macmillan and co. reprinted january, april, december, 1893; june, 1894; january, november, 1895; june, 1896, january, 1898, june, 1899; july, 1901 june, 1903; june, 1905; january, 1907. _fifty-sixth thousand_ norwood press j.s. cushing & co.--berwick & smith norwood mass. u.s.a. don orsino. chapter i. don orsino saracinesca is of the younger age and lives in the younger rome, with his father and mother, under the roof of the vast old palace which has sheltered so many hundreds of saracinesca in peace and war, but which has rarely in the course of the centuries been the home of three generations at once during one and twenty years. the lover of romance may lie in the sun, caring not for the time of day and content to watch the butterflies that cross his blue sky on the way from one flower to another. but the historian is an entomologist who must be stirring. he must catch the moths, which are his facts, in the net which is his memory, and he must fasten them upon his paper with sharp pins, which are dates. by far the greater number of old prince saracinesca's contemporaries are dead, and more or less justly forgotten. old valdarno died long ago in his bed, surrounded by sons and daughters. the famous dandy of other days, the duke of astrardente, died at his young wife's feet some three and twenty years before this chapter of family history opens. then the primeval prince montevarchi came to a violent end at the hands of his librarian, leaving his english princess consolable but unconsoled, leaving also his daughter flavia married to that other giovanni saracinesca who still bears the name of marchese di san giacinto; while the younger girl, the fair, brown-eyed faustina, loved a poor frenchman, half soldier and all artist. the weak, good-natured ascanio bellegra reigns in his father's stead, the timidly extravagant master of all that wealth which the miser's lean and crooked fingers had consigned to a safe keeping. frangipani too, whose son was to have married faustina, is gone these many years, and others of the older and graver sort have learned the great secret from the lips of death. but there have been other and greater deaths, beside which the mortality of a whole society of noblemen sinks into insignificance. an empire is dead and another has arisen in the din of a vast war, begotten in bloodshed, brought forth in strife, baptized with fire. the france we knew is gone, and the french republic writes "liberty, fraternity, equality" in great red letters above the gate of its habitation, which within is yet hung with mourning. out of the nest of kings and princes and princelings, and of all manner of rulers great and small, rises the solitary eagle of the new german empire and hangs on black wings between sky and earth, not striking again, but always ready, a vision of armed peace, a terror, a problem--perhaps a warning. old rome is dead, too, never to be old rome again. the last breath has been breathed, the aged eyes are closed for ever, corruption has done its work, and the grand skeleton lies bleaching upon seven hills, half covered with the piecemeal stucco of a modern architectural body. the result is satisfactory to those who have brought it about, if not to the rest of the world. the sepulchre of old rome is the new capital of united italy. the three chief actors are dead also--the man of heart, the man of action and the man of wit, the good, the brave and, the cunning, the pope, the king and the cardinal--pius the ninth, victor emmanuel the second, giacomo antonelli. rome saw them all dead. in a poor chamber of the vatican, upon a simple bed, beside which burned two waxen torches in the cold morning light, lay the body of the man whom none had loved and many had feared, clothed in the violet robe of the cardinal-deacon. the keen face was drawn up on one side with a strange look of mingled pity and contempt. the delicate, thin hands were clasped together on the breast. the chilly light fell upon the dead features, the silken robe and the stone floor. a single servant in a shabby livery stood in a corner, smiling foolishly, while the tears stood in his eyes and wet his unshaven cheeks. perhaps he cared, as servants will, when no one else cares. the door opened almost directly upon a staircase and the noise of the feet of those passing up and down upon the stone steps disturbed the silence in the death chamber. at night the poor body was thrust unhonoured into a common coach and driven out to its resting-place. in a vast hall, upon an enormous catafalque, full thirty feet above the floor, lay all that was left of the honest king. thousands of wax candles cast their light up to the dark, shapeless face, and upon the military accoutrements of the uniform in which the huge body was clothed. a great crowd pressed to the railing to gaze their fill and go away. behind the division tall troopers in cuirasses mounted guard and moved carelessly about. it was all tawdry, but tawdry on a magnificent scale--all unlike the man in whose honour it was done. for he had been simple and brave. when he was at last borne to his tomb in the pantheon, a file of imperial and royal princes marched shoulder to shoulder down the street before him, and the black charger he had loved was led after him. in a dim chapel of st. peter's lay the pope, robed in white, the jewelled tiara upon his head, his white face calm and peaceful. six torches burned beside him; six nobles of the guard stood like statues with drawn swords, three on his right hand and three on his left. that was all. the crowd passed in single file before the great closed gates of the julian chapel. at night he was borne reverently by loving hands to the deep crypt below. but at another time, at night also, the dead man was taken up and driven towards the gate to be buried without the walls. then a great crowd assembled in the darkness and fell upon the little band and stoned the coffin of him who never harmed any man, and screamed out curses and blasphemies till all the city was astir with riot. that was the last funeral hymn. old rome is gone. the narrow streets are broad thoroughfares, the jews' quarter is a flat and dusty building lot, the fountain of ponte sisto is swept away, one by one the mighty pines of villa ludovisi have fallen under axe and saw, and a cheap, thinly inhabited quarter is built upon the site of the enchanted garden. the network of by-ways from the jesuits' church to the sant' angelo bridge is ploughed up and opened by the huge corso vittorio emmanuele. buildings which strangers used to search for in the shade, guide-book and map in hand, are suddenly brought into the blaze of light that fills broad streets and sweeps across great squares. the vast cancelleria stands out nobly to the sun, the curved front of the massimo palace exposes its black colonnade to sight upon the greatest thoroughfare of the new city, the ancient arco de' cenci exhibits its squalor in unshadowed sunshine, the portico of octavia once more looks upon the river. he who was born and bred in the rome of twenty years ago comes back after a long absence to wander as a stranger in streets he never knew, among houses unfamiliar to him, amidst a population whose speech sounds strange in his ears. he roams the city from the lateran to the tiber, from the tiber to the vatican, finding himself now and then before some building once familiar in another aspect, losing himself perpetually in unprofitable wastes made more monotonous than the sandy desert by the modern builder's art. where once he lingered in old days to glance at the river, or to dream of days yet older and long gone, scarce conscious of the beggar at his elbow and hardly seeing the half dozen workmen who laboured at their trades almost in the middle of the public way--where all was once aged and silent and melancholy and full of the elder memories--there, at that very corner, he is hustled and jostled by an eager crowd, thrust to the wall by huge, grinding, creaking carts, threatened with the modern death by the wheel of the modern omnibus, deafened by the yells of the modern newsvendors, robbed, very likely, by the light fingers of the modern inhabitant. and yet he feels that rome must be rome still. he stands aloof and gazes at the sight as upon a play in which rome herself is the great heroine and actress. he knows the woman and he sees the artist for the first time, not recognising her. she is a dark-eyed, black-haired, thoughtful woman when not upon the stage. how should he know her in the strange disguise, her head decked with gretchen's fair tresses, her olive cheek daubed with pink and white paint, her stately form clothed in garments that would be gay and girlish but which are only unbecoming? he would gladly go out and wait by the stage door until the performance is over, to see the real woman pass him in the dim light of the street lamps as she enters her carriage and becomes herself again. and so, in the reality, he turns his back upon the crowd and strolls away, not caring whither he goes until, by a mere accident, he finds himself upon the height of sant' onofrio, or standing before the great fountains of the acqua paola, or perhaps upon the drive which leads through the old villa corsini along the crest of the janiculum. then, indeed, the scene thus changes, the actress is gone and the woman is before him; the capital of modern italy sinks like a vision into the earth out of which it was called up, and the capital of the world rises once more, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable, before the wanderer's eyes. the greater monuments of greater times are there still, majestic and unmoved, the larger signs of a larger age stand out clear and sharp; the tomb of hadrian frowns on the yellow stream, the heavy hemisphere of the pantheon turns its single opening to the sky, the enormous dome of the world's cathedral looks silently down upon the sepulchre of the world's masters. then the sun sets and the wanderer goes down again through the chilly evening air to the city below, to find it less modern than he had thought. he has found what he sought and he knows that the real will outlast the false, that the stone will outlive the stucco and that the builder of to-day is but a builder of card-houses beside the architects who made rome. so his heart softens a little, or at least grows less resentful, for he has realised how small the change really is as compared with the first effect produced. the great house has fallen into new hands and the latest tenant is furnishing the dwelling to his taste. that is all. he will not tear down the walls, for his hands are too feeble to build them again, even if he were not occupied with other matters and hampered by the disagreeable consciousness of the extravagances he has already committed. other things have been accomplished, some of which may perhaps endure, and some of which are good in themselves, while some are indifferent and some distinctly bad. the great experiment of italian unity is in process of trial and the world is already forming its opinion upon the results. society, heedless as it necessarily is of contemporary history, could not remain indifferent to the transformation of its accustomed surroundings; and here, before entering upon an account of individual doings, the chronicler may be allowed to say a few words upon a matter little understood by foreigners, even when they have spent several seasons in rome and have made acquaintance with each other for the purpose of criticising the romans. immediately after the taking of the city in 1870, three distinct parties declared themselves, to wit, the clericals or blacks, the monarchists or whites, and the republicans or beds. all three had doubtless existed for a considerable time, but the wine of revolution favoured the expression of the truth, and society awoke one morning to find itself divided into camps holding very different opinions. at first the mass of the greater nobles stood together for the lost temporal power of the pope, while a great number of the less important families followed two or three great houses in siding with the royalists. the republican idea, as was natural, found but few sympathisers in the highest class, and these were, i believe, in all cases young men whose fathers were blacks or whites, and most of whom have since thought fit to modify their opinions in one direction or the other. nevertheless the red interest was, and still is, tolerably strong and has been destined to play that powerful part in parliamentary life, which generally falls to the lot of a compact third party, where a fourth does not yet exist, or has no political influence, as is the case in rome. for there is a fourth body in rome, which has little political but much social importance. it was not possible that people who had grown up together in the intimacy of a close caste-life, calling each other "thee" and "thou," and forming the hereditary elements of a still feudal organisation, should suddenly break off all acquaintance and be strangers one to another. the brother, a born and convinced clerical, found that his own sister had followed her husband to the court of the new king. the rigid adherent of the old order met his own son in the street, arrayed in the garb of an italian officer. the two friends who had stood side by side in good and evil case for a score of years saw themselves suddenly divided by the gulf which lies between a roman cardinal and a senator of the italian kingdom. the breach was sudden and great, but it was bridged for many by the invention of a fourth, proportional. the points of contact between white and black became grey, and a social power, politically neutral and constitutionally indifferent, arose as a mediator between the contents and the malcontents. there were families that had never loved the old order but which distinctly disliked the new, and who opened their doors to the adherents of both. there is a house which has become grey out of a sort of superstition inspired by the unfortunate circumstances which oddly coincided with each movement of its members to join the new order. there is another, and one of the greatest, in which a very high hereditary dignity in the one party, still exercised by force of circumstances, effectually forbids the expression of a sincere sympathy with the opposed power. another there is, whose members are cousins of the one sovereign and personal friends of the other. a further means of amalgamation has been found in the existence of the double embassies of the great powers. austria, france and spain each send an ambassador to the king of italy and an ambassador to the pope, of like state and importance. even protestant prussia maintains a minister plenipotentiary to the holy see. russia has her diplomatic agent to the vatican, and several of the smaller powers keep up two distinct legations. it is naturally neither possible nor intended that these diplomatists should never meet on friendly terms, though they are strictly interdicted from issuing official invitations to each other. their point of contact is another grey square on the chess-board. the foreigner, too, is generally a neutral individual, for if his political convictions lean towards the wrong side of the tiber his social tastes incline to court balls; or if he is an admirer of italian institutions, his curiosity may yet lead him to seek a presentation at the vatican, and his inexplicable though recent love of feudal princedom may take him, card-case in hand, to that great stronghold of vaticanism which lies due west of the piazza di venezia and due north of the capitol. during the early years which followed the change, the attitude of society in rome was that of protest and indignation on the one hand, of enthusiasm and rather brutally expressed triumph on the other. the line was very clearly drawn, for the adherence was of the nature of personal loyalty on both sides. eight years and a half later the personal feeling disappeared with the almost simultaneous death of pius ix. and victor emmanuel ii. from that time the great strife degenerated by degrees into a difference of opinion. it may perhaps be said also that both parties became aware of their common enemy, the social democrat, soon after the disappearance of the popular king whose great individual influence was of more value to the cause of a united monarchy than all the political clubs and organisations in italy put together. he was a strong man. he only once, i think, yielded to the pressure of a popular excitement, namely, in the matter of seizing rome when the french troops were withdrawn, thereby violating a ratified treaty. but his position was a hard one. he regretted the apparent necessity, and to the day of his death he never would sleep under the roof of pius the ninth's palace on the quirinal, but had his private apartments in an adjoining building. he was brave and generous. such faults as he had were no burden to the nation and concerned himself alone. the same praise may be worthily bestowed upon his successor, but the personal influence is no longer the same, any more than that of leo xiii. can be compared with that of pius ix., though all the world is aware of the present pope's intellectual superiority and lofty moral principle. let us try to be just. the unification of italy has been the result of a noble conception. the execution of the scheme has not been without faults, and some of these faults have brought about deplorable, even disastrous, consequences, such as to endanger the stability of the new order. the worst of these attendant errors has been the sudden imposition of a most superficial and vicious culture, under the name of enlightenment and education. the least of the new government's mistakes has been a squandering of the public money, which, when considered with reference to the country's resources, has perhaps no parallel in the history of nations. yet the first idea was large, patriotic, even grand. the men who first steered the ship of the state were honourable, disinterested, devoted--men like minghetti, who will not soon be forgotten--loyal, conservative monarchists, whose thoughts were free from exaggeration, save that they believed almost too blindly in the power of a constitution to build up a kingdom, and credited their fellows almost too readily with a purpose as pure and blameless as their own. can more be said for these? i think not. they rest in honourable graves, their doings live in honoured remembrance--would that there had been such another generation to succeed them. and having said thus much, let us return to the individuals who have played a part in the history of the saracinesca. they have grown older, some gracefully, some under protest, some most unbecomingly. in the end of the year 1887 old leone saracinesca is still alive, being eighty-two years of age. his massive head has sunk a little between his slightly rounded shoulders, and his white beard is no longer cut short and square, but flows majestically down upon his broad breast. his step is slow, but firm still, and when he looks up suddenly from under his wrinkled lids, the fire is not even yet all gone from his eyes. he is still contradictory by nature, but he has mellowed like rare wine in the long years of prosperity and peace. when the change came in rome he was in the mountains at saracinesca, with his daughter-in-law, corona and her children. his son giovanni, generally known as prince of sant' ilario, was among the volunteers at the last and sat for half a day upon his horse in the pincio, listening to the bullets that sang over his head while his men fired stray shots from the parapets of the public garden into the road below. giovanni is fifty-two years old, but though his hair is grey at the temples and his figure a trifle sturdier and broader than of old, he is little changed. his son, orsino, who will soon be of age, overtops him by a head and shoulders, a dark youth, slender still, but strong and active, the chief person in this portion of my chronicle. orsino has three brothers of ranging ages, of whom the youngest is scarcely twelve years old. not one girl child has been given to giovanni and corona and they almost wish that one of the sturdy little lads had been a daughter. but old saracinesca laughs and shakes his head and says he will not die till his four grandsons are strong enough to bear him to his grave upon their shoulders. corona is still beautiful, still dark, still magnificent, though she has reached the age beyond which no woman ever goes until after death. there are few lines in the noble face and such as are there are not the scars of heart wounds. her life, too, has been peaceful and undisturbed by great events these many years. there is, indeed, one perpetual anxiety in her existence, for the old prince is an aged man and she loves him dearly. the tough strength must give way some day and there will be a great mourning in the house of saracinesca, nor will any mourn the dead more sincerely than corona. and there is a shade of bitterness in the knowledge that her marvellous beauty is waning. can she be blamed for that? she has been beautiful so long. what woman who has been first for a quarter of a century can give up her place without a sigh? but much has been given to her to soften the years of transition, and she knows that also, when she looks from her husband to her four boys. then, too, it seems more easy to grow old when she catches a glimpse from time to time of donna tullia del ferice, who wears her years ungracefully, and who was once so near to becoming giovanni saracinesca's wife. donna tullia is fat and fiery of complexion, uneasily vivacious and unsure of herself. her disagreeable blue eyes have not softened, nor has the metallic tone of her voice lost its sharpness. yet she should not be a disappointed woman, for del ferice is a power in the land, a member of parliament, a financier and a successful schemer, whose doors are besieged by parasites and his dinner-table by those who wear fine raiment and dwell in kings' palaces. del ferice is the central figure in the great building syndicates which in 1887 are at the height of their power. he juggles with millions of money, with miles of real estate, with thousands of workmen. he is director of a bank, president of a political club, chairman of half a dozen companies and a deputy in the chambers. but his face is unnaturally pale, his body is over-corpulent, and he has trouble with his heart. the del ferice couple are childless, to their own great satisfaction. anastase gouache, the great painter, is also in rome. sixteen years ago he married the love of his life, faustina montevarchi, in spite of the strong opposition of her family. but times had changed. a new law existed and the thrice repeated formal request for consent made by faustina to her mother, freed her from parental authority and brotherly interference. she and her husband passed through some very lean years in the beginning, but fortune has smiled upon them since that. anastase is very famous. his character has changed little. with the love of the ideal republic in his heart, he shed his blood at mentana for the great conservative principle, he fired his last shot for the same cause at the porta pia on the twentieth of september 1870; a month later he was fighting for france under the gallant charette--whether for france imperial, regal or republican he never paused to ask; he was wounded in fighting against the commune, and decorated for painting the portrait of gambetta, after which he returned to rome, cursed politics and married the woman he loved, which was, on the whole, the wisest course he could have followed. he has two children, both girls, aged now respectively fifteen and thirteen. his virtues are many, but they do not include economy. though his savings are small and he depends upon his brush, he lives in one wing of an historic palace and gives dinners which are famous. he proposes to reform and become a miser when his daughters are married. "misery will be the foundation of my second manner, my angel," he says to his wife, when he has done something unusually extravagant. but faustina laughs softly and winds her arm about his neck as they look together at the last great picture. anastase has not grown fat. the gods love him and have promised him eternal youth. he can still buckle round his slim waist the military belt of twenty years ago, and there is scarcely one white thread in his black hair. san giacinto, the other saracinesca, who married faustina's elder sister flavia, is in process of making a great fortune, greater perhaps than the one so nearly thrust upon him by old montevarchi's compact with meschini the librarian and forger. he had scarcely troubled himself to conceal his opinions before the change of government, being by nature a calm, fearless man, and under the new order he unhesitatingly sided with the italians, to the great satisfaction of flavia, who foresaw years of dulness for the mourning party of the blacks. he had already brought to rome the two boys who remained to him from his first marriage with serafina baldi--the little girl who had been born between the other two children had died in infancy--and the lads had been educated at a military college, and in 1887 are both officers in the italian cavalry, sturdy and somewhat thick-skulled patriots, but gentlemen nevertheless in spite of the peasant blood. they are tall fellows enough but neither of them has inherited the father's colossal stature, and san giacinto looks with a very little envy on his young kinsman orsino who has outgrown his cousins. this second marriage has brought him issue, a boy and a girl, and the fact that he has now four children to provide for has had much to do with his activity in affairs. he was among the first to see that an enormous fortune was to be made in the first rush for land in the city, and he realised all he possessed, and borrowed to the full extent of his credit to pay the first instalments on the land he bought, risking everything with the calm determination and cool judgment which lay at the root of his strong character. he was immensely successful, but though he had been bold to recklessness at the right moment, he saw the great crash looming in the near future, and when the many were frantic to buy and invest, no matter at what loss, his millions were in part safely deposited in national bonds, and in part as securely invested in solid and profitable buildings of which the rents are little liable to fluctuation. brought up to know what money means, he is not easily carried away by enthusiastic reports. he knows that when the hour of fortune is at hand no price is too great to pay for ready capital, but he understands that when the great rush for success begins the psychological moment of finance is already passed. when he dies, if such strength as his can yield to death, he will die the richest man in italy, and he will leave what is rare in italian finance, a stainless name. of one person more i must speak, who has played a part in this family history. the melancholy spicca still lives his lonely life in the midst of the social world. he affects to be a little old-fashioned in his dress. his tall thin body stoops ominously and his cadaverous face is more grave and ascetic than ever. he is said to have been suffering from a mortal disease these fifteen years, but still he goes everywhere, reads everything and knows every one. he is between sixty and seventy years old, but no one knows his precise age. the foils he once used so well hang untouched and rusty above his fireplace, but his reputation survives the lost strength of his supple wrist, and there are few in rome, brave men or hairbrained youths, who would willingly anger him even now. he is still the great duellist of his day; the emaciated fingers might still find their old grip upon a sword hilt, the long, listless arm might perhaps once more shoot out with lightning speed, the dull eye might once again light up at the clash of steel. peaceable, charitable when none are at hand to see him give, gravely gentle now in manner, count spicca is thought dangerous still. but he is indeed very lonely in his old age, and if the truth be told his fortune seems to have suffered sadly of late years, so that he rarely leaves rome, even in the hot summer, and it is very long since he spent six weeks in paris or risked a handful of gold at monte carlo. yet his life is not over, and he has still a part to play, for his own sake and for the sake of another, as shall soon appear more clearly. chapter ii. orsino saracinesca's education was almost completed. it had been of the modern kind, for his father had early recognised that it would be a disadvantage to the young man in after life if he did not follow the course of study and pass the examinations required of every italian subject who wishes to hold office in his own country. accordingly, though he had not been sent to public schools, orsino had been regularly entered since his childhood for the public examinations and had passed them all in due order, with great difficulty and indifferent credit. after this preliminary work he had been at an english university for four terms, not with any view to his obtaining a degree after completing the necessary residence, but in order that he might perfect himself in the english language, associate with young men of his own age and social standing, though of different nationality, and acquire that final polish which is so highly valued in the human furniture of society's temples. orsino was not more highly gifted as to intelligence than many young men of his age and class. like many of them he spoke english admirably, french tolerably, and italian with a somewhat roman twang. he had learned a little german and was rapidly forgetting it again; latin and greek had been exhibited to him as dead languages, and he felt no more inclination to assist in their resurrection than is felt by most boys in our day. he had been taught geography in the practical, continental manner, by being obliged to draw maps from memory. he had been instructed in history, not by parallels, but as it were by tangents, a method productive of odd results, and he had advanced just far enough in the study of mathematics to be thoroughly confused by the terms "differentiation" and "integration." besides these subjects, a multitude of moral and natural sciences had been made to pass in a sort of panorama before his intellectual vision, including physics, chemistry, logic, rhetoric, ethics and political economy, with a view to cultivating in him the spirit of the age. the ministry of public instruction having decreed that the name of god shall be for ever eliminated from all modern books in use in italian schools and universities, orsino's religious instruction had been imparted at home and had at least the advantage of being homogeneous. it must not be supposed that orsino's father and mother were satisfied with this sort of education. but it was not easy to foresee what social and political changes might come about before the boy reached mature manhood. neither giovanni nor his wife were of the absolutely "intransigent" way of thinking. they saw no imperative reason to prevent their sons from joining at some future time in the public life of their country, though they themselves preferred not to associate with the party at present in power. moreover giovanni saracinesca saw that the abolition of primogeniture had put an end to hereditary idleness, and that although his sons would be rich enough to do nothing if they pleased, yet his grandchildren would probably have to choose between work and genteel poverty, if it pleased the fates to multiply the race. he could indeed leave one half of his wealth intact to orsino, but the law required that the other half should be equally divided among all; and as the same thing would take place in the second generation, unless a reactionary revolution intervened, the property would before long be divided into very small moieties indeed. for giovanni had no idea of imposing celibacy upon his younger sons, still less of exerting any influence he possessed to make them enter the church. he was too broad in his views for that. they promised to turn out as good men in a struggle as the majority of those who would be opposed to them in life, and they should fight their own battles unhampered by parental authority or caste prejudice. many years earlier giovanni had expressed his convictions in regard to the change of order then imminent. he had said that he would fight as long as there was anything to fight for, but that if the change came he would make the best of it. he was now keeping his word. he had fought as far as fighting had been possible and had sincerely wished that his warlike career might have offered more excitement and opportunity for personal distinction than had been afforded him in spending an afternoon on horseback, listening to the singing of bullets overhead. his amateur soldiering was over long ago, but he was strong, brave and intelligent, and if he had been convinced that a second and more radical revolution could accomplish any good result, he would have been capable of devoting himself to its cause with a single-heartedness not usual in these days. but he was not convinced. he therefore lived a quiet life, making the best of the present, improving his lands and doing his best to bring up his sons in such a way as to give them a chance of success when the struggle should come. orsino was his eldest born and the results of modern education became apparent in him first, as was inevitable. orsino was at this time not quite twenty-one years of age, but the important day was not far distant and in order to leave a lasting memorial of the attaining of his majority prince saracinesca had decreed that corona should receive a portrait of her eldest son executed by the celebrated anastase gouache. to this end the young man spent three mornings in every week in the artist's palatial studio, a place about as different from the latter's first den in the via san basilio as the basilica of saint peter is different from a roadside chapel in the abruzzi. those who have seen the successful painter of the nineteenth century in his glory will have less difficulty in imagining the scene of gouache's labours than the writer finds in describing it. the workroom is a hall, the ceiling is a vault thirty feet high, the pavement is of polished marble; the light enters by north windows which would not look small in a good-sized church, the doors would admit a carriage and pair, the tapestries upon the walls would cover the front of a modern house. everything is on a grand scale, of the best period, of the most genuine description. three or four originals of great masters, of titian, of reubens, of van dyck, stand on huge easels in the most favourable lights. some scores of matchless antique fragments, both of bronze and marble, are placed here and there upon superb carved tables and shelves of the sixteenth century. the only reproduction visible in the place is a very perfect cast of the hermes of olympia. the carpets are all of shiraz, sinna, gjordez or old baku--no common thing of smyrna, no unclean aniline production of russo-asiatic commerce disturbs the universal harmony. in a full light upon the wall hangs a single silk carpet of wonderful tints, famous in the history of eastern collections, and upon it is set at a slanting angle a single priceless damascus blade--a sword to possess which an arab or a circassian would commit countless crimes. anastase gouache is magnificent in all his tastes and in all his ways. his studio and his dwelling are his only estate, his only capital, his only wealth, and he does not take the trouble to conceal the fact. the very idea of a fixed income is as distasteful to him as the possibility of possessing it is distant and visionary. there is always money in abundance, money for faustina's horses and carriages, money for gouache's select dinners, money for the expensive fancies of both. the paint pot is the mine, the brush is the miner's pick, and the vein has never failed, nor the hand trembled in working it. a golden youth, a golden river flowing softly to the red gold sunset of the end--that is life as it seems to anastase and faustina. on the morning which opens this chronicle, anastase was standing before his canvas, palette and brushes in hand, considering the nature of the human face in general and of young orsino's face in particular. "i have known your father and mother for centuries," observed the painter with a fine disregard of human limitations. "your father is the brown type of a dark man, and your mother is the olive type of a dark woman. they are no more alike than a red indian and an arab, but you are like both. are you brown or are you olive, my friend? that is the question. i would like to see you angry, or in love, or losing at play. those things bring out the real complexion." orsino laughed and showed a remarkably solid set of teeth. but he did not find anything to say. "i would like to know the truth about your complexion," said anastase, meditatively. "i have no particular reason for being angry," answered orsino, "and i am not in love--" "at your age! is it possible!" "quite. but i will play cards with you if you like," concluded the young man. "no," returned the other. "it would be of no use. you would win, and if you happened to win much, i should be in a diabolical scrape. but i wish you would fall in love. you should see how i would handle the green shadows under your eyes." "it is rather short notice." "the shorter the better. i used to think that the only real happiness in life lay in getting into trouble, and the only real interest in getting out." "and have you changed your mind?" "i? no. my mind has changed me. it is astonishing how a man may love his wife under favourable circumstances." anastase laid down his brushes and lit a cigarette. reubens would have sipped a few drops of rhenish from a venetian glass. teniers would have lit a clay pipe. dã¼rer would perhaps have swallowed a pint of nã¼remberg beer, and greuse or mignard would have resorted to their snuff-boxes. we do not know what michelangelo or perugino did under the circumstances, but it is tolerably evident that the man of the nineteenth century cannot think without talking and cannot talk without cigarettes. therefore anastase began to smoke and orsino, being young and imitative, followed his example. "you have been an exceptionally fortunate man," remarked the latter, who was not old enough to be anything but cynical in his views of life. "do you think so? yes--i have been fortunate. but i do not like to think that my happiness has been so very exceptional. the world is a good place, full of happy people. it must be--otherwise purgatory and hell would be useless institutions." "you do not suppose all people to be good as well as happy then," said orsino with a laugh. "good? what is goodness, my friend? one half of the theologians tell us that we shall be happy if we are good and the other half assure us that the only way to be good is to abjure earthly happiness. if you will believe me, you will never commit the supreme error of choosing between the two methods. take the world as it is, and do not ask too many questions of the fates. if you are willing to be happy, happiness will come in its own shape." orsino's young face expressed rather contemptuous amusement. at twenty, happiness is a dull word, and satisfaction spells excitement. "that is the way people talk," he said. "you have got everything by fighting for it, and you advise me to sit still till the fruit drops into my mouth." "i was obliged to fight. everything comes to you naturally--fortune, rank--everything, including marriage. why should you lift a hand?" "a man cannot possibly be happy who marries before he is thirty years old," answered orsino with conviction. "how do you expect me to occupy myself during the next ten years?" "that is true," gouache replied, somewhat thoughtfully, as though the consideration had not struck him. "if i were an artist, it would be different." "oh, very different. i agree with you." anastase smiled good-humouredly. "because i should have talent--and a talent is an occupation in itself." "i daresay you would have talent," gouache answered, still laughing. "no--i did not mean it in that way--i mean that when a man has a talent it makes him think of something besides himself." "i fancy there is more truth in that remark than either you or i would at first think," said the painter in a meditative tone. "of course there is," returned the youthful philosopher, with more enthusiasm than he would have cared to show if he had been talking to a woman. "what is talent but a combination of the desire to do and the power to accomplish? as for genius, it is never selfish when it is at work." "is that reflection your own?" "i think so," answered orsino modestly. he was secretly pleased that a man of the artist's experience and reputation should be struck by his remark. "i do not think i agree with you," said gouache. orsino's expression changed a little. he was disappointed, but he said nothing. "i think that a great genius is often ruthless. do you remember how beethoven congratulated a young composer after the first performance of his opera? 'i like your opera--i will write music to it.' that was a fine instance of unselfishness, was it not. i can see the young man's face--" anastase smiled. "beethoven was not at work when he made the remark," observed orsino, defending himself. "nor am i," said gouache, taking up his brushes again. "if you will resume the pose--so--thoughtful but bold--imagine that you are already an ancestor contemplating posterity from the height of a nobler age--you understand. try and look as if you were already framed and hanging in the saracinesca gallery between a titian and a giorgione." orsino resumed his position and scowled at anastase with a good will. "not quite such a terrible frown, perhaps," suggested the latter. "when you do that, you certainly look like the gentleman who murdered the colonna in a street brawl--i forget how long ago. you have his portrait. but i fancy the princess would prefer--yes--that is more natural. you have her eyes. how the world raved about her twenty years ago--and raves still, for that matter." "she is the most beautiful woman in the world," said orsino. there was something in the boy's unaffected admiration of his mother which contrasted pleasantly with his youthful affectation of cynicism and indifference. his handsome face lighted up a little, and the painter worked rapidly. but the expression was not lasting. orsino was at the age when most young men take the trouble to cultivate a manner, and the look of somewhat contemptuous gravity which he had lately acquired was already becoming habitual. since all men in general have adopted the fashion of the mustache, youths who are still waiting for the full crop seem to have difficulty in managing their mouths. some draw in their lips with that air of unnatural sternness observable in rough weather among passengers on board ship, just before they relinquish the struggle and retire from public life. others contract their mouths to the shape of a heart, while there are yet others who lose control of the pendant lower lip and are content to look like idiots, while expecting the hairy growth which is to make them look like men. orsino had chosen the least objectionable idiosyncrasy and had elected to be of a stern countenance. when he forgot himself he was singularly handsome, and gouache lay in wait for his moments of forgetfulness. "you are quite right," said the frenchman. "from the classic point of view your mother was and is the most beautiful dark woman in the world. for myself--well in the first place, you are her son, and secondly i am an artist and not a critic. the painter's tongue is his brush and his words are colours." "what were you going to say about my mother?" asked orsino with some curiosity. "oh--nothing. well, if you must hear it, the princess represents my classical ideal, but not my personal ideal. i have admired some one else more." "donna faustina?" enquired orsino. "ah well, my friend--she is my wife, you see. that always makes a great difference in the degree of admiration--" "generally in the opposite direction," orsino observed in a tone of elderly unbelief. gouache had just put his brush into his mouth and held it between his teeth as a poodle carries a stick, while he used his thumb on the canvas. the modern painter paints with everything, not excepting his fingers. he glanced at his model and then at his work, and got his effect before he answered. "you are very hard upon marriage," he said quietly. "have you tried it?" "not yet. i will wait as long as possible, before i do. it is not every one who has your luck." "there was something more than luck in my marriage. we loved each other, it is true, but there were difficulties--you have no idea what difficulties there were. but faustina was brave and i caught a little courage from her. do you know that when the serristori barracks were blown up she ran out alone to find me merely because she thought i might have been killed? i found her in the ruins, praying for me. it was sublime." "i have heard that. she was very brave--" "and i a poor zouave--and a poorer painter. are there such women nowadays? bah! i have not known them. we used to meet at churches and exchange two words while her maid was gone to get her a chair. oh, the good old time! and then the separations--the taking of rome, when the old princess carried all the family off to england and stayed there while we were fighting for poor france--and the coming back and the months of waiting, and the notes dropped from her window at midnight and the great quarrel with her family when we took advantage of the new law. and then the marriage itself--what a scandal in rome! but for the princess, your mother, i do not know what we should have done. she brought faustina to the church and drove us to the station in her own carriage--in the face of society. they say that ascanio bellegra hung about the door of the church while we were being married, but he had not the courage to come in, for fear of his mother. we went to naples and lived on salad and love--and we had very little else for a year or two. i was not much known, then, except in rome, and roman society refused to have its portrait painted by the adventurer who had run away with a daughter of casa montevarchi. perhaps, if we had been rich, we should have hated each other by this time. but we had to live for each other in those days, for every one was against us. i painted, and she kept house--that english blood is always practical in a desert. and it was a desert. the cooking--it would have made a billiard ball's hair stand on end with astonishment. she made the salad, and then evolved the roast from the inner consciousness. i painted a chaudfroid on an old plate. it was well done--the transparent quality of the jelly and the delicate ortolans imprisoned within, imploring dissection. well, must i tell you? we threw it away. it was martyrdom. saint anthony's position was enviable compared with ours. beside us that good man would have seemed but a humbug. yet we lived through it all. i repeat it. we lived, and we were happy. it is amazing, how a man may love his wife." anastase had told his story with many pauses, working hard while he spoke, for though he was quite in earnest in all he said, his chief object was to distract the young man's attention, so as to bring out his natural expression. having exhausted one of the colours he needed, he drew back and contemplated his work. orsino seemed lost in thought. "what are you thinking about?" asked the painter. "do you think i am too old to become an artist?" enquired the young man. "you? who knows? but the times are too old. it is the same thing." "i do not understand." "you are in love with the life--not with the profession. but the life is not the same now, nor the art either. bah! in a few years i shall be out of fashion. i know it. then we will go back to first principles. a garret to live in, bread and salad for dinner. of course--what do you expect? that need not prevent us from living in a palace as long as we can." thereupon anastase gouache hummed a very lively little song as he squeezed a few colours from the tubes. orsino's face betrayed his discontentment. "i was not in earnest," he said. "at least, not as to becoming an artist. i only asked the question to be sure that you would answer it just as everybody answers all questions of the kind--by discouraging my wish do anything for myself." "why should you do anything? you are so rich!" "what everybody says! do you know what we rich men, or we men who are to be rich, are expected to be? farmers. it is not gay." "it would be my dream--pastoral, you know--normandy cows, a river with reeds, perpetual angelus, bread and milk for supper. i adore milk. a nymph here and there--at your age, it is permitted. my dear friend, why not be a farmer?" orsino laughed a little, in spite of himself. "i suppose that is an artist's idea of farming." "as near the truth as a farmer's idea of art, i daresay," retorted gouache. "we see you paint, but you never see us at work. that is the difference--but that is not the question. whatever i propose, i get the same answer. i imagine you will permit me to dislike farming as a profession." "for the sake of argument, only," said gouache gravely. "good. for the sake of argument. we will suppose that i am myself in all respects what i am, excepting that i am never to have any land, and only enough money to buy cigarettes. i say, 'let me take a profession. let me be a soldier.' every one rises up and protests against the idea of a saracinesca serving in the italian army. why? remember that your father was a volunteer officer under pope pius ninth.' it is comic. he spent an afternoon on the pincio for his convictions, and then retired into private life. 'let me serve in a foreign army--france, austria, russia, i do not care.' they are more horrified than ever. 'you have not a spark of patriotism! to serve a foreign power! how dreadful! and as for the russians, they are all heretics.' perhaps they are. i will try diplomacy. 'what? sacrifice your convictions? become the blind instrument of a scheming, dishonest ministry? it is unworthy of a saracinesca!' i will think no more about it. let me be a lawyer and enter public life. 'a lawyer indeed! will you wrangle in public with notaries' sons, defend murderers and burglars, and take fees like the old men who write letters for the peasants under a green umbrella in the street? it would be almost better to turn musician and give concerts.' 'the church, perhaps?' i suggest. 'the church? are you not the heir, and will you not be the head of the family some day? you must be mad.' 'then give me a sum of money and let me try my luck with my cousin san giacinto.' 'business? if you make money it is a degradation, and with these new laws you cannot afford to lose it. besides, you will have enough of business when you have to manage your estates.' so all my questions are answered, and i am condemned at twenty to be a farmer for my natural life. i say so. 'a farmer, forsooth! have you not the world before you? have you not received the most liberal education? are you not rich? how can you take such a narrow view! come out to the villa and look at those young thoroughbreds, and afterwards we will drop in at the club before dinner. then there is that reception at the old principessa befana's to-night, and the duchessa della seccatura is also at home.' that is my life, monsieur gouache. there you have the question, the answer and the result. admit that it is not gay." "it is very serious, on the contrary," answered gouache who had listened to the detached jeremiah with more curiosity and interest than he often shewed. "i see nothing for it, but for you to fall in love without losing a single moment." orsino laughed a little harshly. "i am in the humour, i assure you," he answered. "well, then--what are you waiting for?" enquired gouache, looking at him. "what for? for an object for my affections, of course. that is rather necessary under the circumstances." "you may not wait long, if you will consent to stay here another quarter of an hour," said anastase with a laugh. "a lady is coming, whose portrait i am painting--an interesting woman--tolerably beautiful--rather mysterious--here she is, you can have a good look at her, before you make up your mind." anastase took the half-finished portrait of orsino from the easel and put another in its place, considerably further advanced in execution. orsino lit a cigarette in order to quicken his judgment, and looked at the canvas. the picture was decidedly striking and one felt at once that it must be a good likeness. gouache was evidently proud of it. it represented a woman, who was certainly not yet thirty years of age, in full dress, seated in a high, carved chair against a warm, dark background. a mantle of some sort of heavy, claret-coloured brocade, lined with fur, was draped across one of the beautiful shoulders, leaving the other bare, the scant dress of the period scarcely breaking the graceful lines from the throat to the soft white hand, of which the pointed fingers hung carelessly over the carved extremity of the arm of the chair. the lady's hair was auburn, her eyes distinctly yellow. the face was an unusual one and not without attraction, very pale, with a full red mouth too wide for perfect beauty, but well modelled--almost too well, gouache thought. the nose was of no distinct type, and was the least significant feature in the face, but the forehead was broad and massive, the chin soft, prominent and round, the brows much arched and divided by a vertical shadow which, in the original, might be the first indication of a tiny wrinkle. orsino fancied that one eye or the other wandered a very little, but he could not tell which--the slight defect made the glance disquieting and yet attractive. altogether it was one of those faces which to one man say too little, and to another too much. orsino affected to gaze upon the portrait with unconcern, but in reality he was oddly fascinated by it, and gouache did not fail to see the truth. "you had better go away, my friend," he said, with a smile. "she will be here in a few minutes and you will certainly lose your heart if you see her." "what is her name?" asked orsino, paying no attention to the remark. "donna maria consuelo--something or other--a string of names ending in aragona. i call her madame d'aragona for shortness, and she does not seem to object." "married? and spanish?" "i suppose so," answered gouache. "a widow i believe. she is not italian and not french, so she must be spanish." "the name does not say much. many people put 'd'aragona' after their names--some cousins of ours, among others--they are aranjuez d'aragona--my father's mother was of that family." "i think that is the name--aranjuez. indeed i am sure of it, for faustina remarked that she might be related to you." "it is odd. we have not heard of her being in rome--and i am not sure who she is. has she been here long?" "i have known her a month--since she first came to my studio. she lives in a hotel, and she comes alone, except when i need the dress and then she brings her maid, an odd creature who never speaks and seems to understand no known language." "it is an interesting face. do you mind if i stay till she comes? we may really be cousins, you know." "by all means--you can ask her. the relationship would be with her husband, i suppose." "true. i had not thought of that; and he is dead, you say?" gouache did not answer, for at that moment the lady's footfall was heard upon the marble floor, soft, quick and decided. she paused a moment in the middle of the room when she saw that the artist was not alone. he went forward to meet her and asked leave to present orsino, with that polite indistinctness which leaves to the persons introduced the task of discovering one another's names. orsino looked into the lady's eyes and saw that the slight peculiarity of the glance was real and not due to any error of gouache's drawing. he recognised each feature in turn in the one look he gave at the face before he bowed, and he saw that the portrait was indeed very good. he was not subject to shyness. "we should be cousins, madame," he said. "my father's mother was an aranjuez d'aragona." "indeed?" said the lady with calm indifference, looking critically at the picture of herself. "i am orsino saracinesca," said the young man, watching her with some admiration. "indeed?" she repeated, a shade less coldly. "i think i have heard my poor husband say that he was connected with your family. what do you think of my portrait? every one has tried to paint me and failed, but my friend monsieur gouache is succeeding. he has reproduced my hideous nose and my dreadful mouth with a masterly exactness. no--my dear monsieur gouache--it is a compliment i pay you. i am in earnest. i do not want a portrait of the venus of milo with red hair, nor of the minerva medica with yellow eyes, nor of an imaginary medea in a fur cloak. i want myself, just as i am. that is exactly what you are doing for me. myself and i have lived so long together that i desire a little memento of the acquaintance." "you can afford to speak lightly of what is so precious to others," said gouache, gallantly. madame d'aranjuez sank into the carved chair orsino had occupied. "this dear gouache--he is charming, is he not?" she said with a little laugh. orsino looked at her. "gouache is right," he thought, with the assurance of his years. "it would be amusing to fall in love with her." chapter iii. gouache was far more interested in his work than in the opinions which his two visitors might entertain of each other. he looked at the lady fixedly, moved his easel, raised the picture a few inches higher from the ground and looked again. orsino watched the proceedings from a little distance, debating whether he should go away or remain. much depended upon madame d'aragona's character, he thought, and of this he knew nothing. some women are attracted by indifference, and to go away would be to show a disinclination to press the acquaintance. others, he reflected, prefer the assurance of the man who always stays, even without an invitation, rather than lose his chance. on the other hand a sitting in a studio is not exactly like a meeting in a drawing-room. the painter has a sort of traditional, exclusive right to his sitter's sole attention. the sitter, too, if a woman, enjoys the privilege of sacrificing one-half her good looks in a bad light, to favour the other side which is presented to the artist's view, and the third person, if there be one, has a provoking habit of so placing himself as to receive the least flattering impression. hence the great unpopularity of the third person--or "the third inconvenience," as the romans call him. orsino stood still for a few moments, wondering whether either of the two would ask him to sit down. as they did not, he was annoyed with them and determined to stay, if only for five minutes. he took up his position, in a deep seat under the high window, and watched madame d'aragona's profile. neither she nor gouache made any remark. gouache began to brush over the face of his picture. orsino felt that the silence was becoming awkward. he began to regret that he had remained, for he discovered from his present position that the lady's nose was indeed her defective feature. "you do not mind my staying a few minutes?" he said, with a vague interrogation. "ask madame, rather," answered gouache, brushing away in a lively manner. madame said nothing, and seemed not to have heard. "am i indiscreet?" asked orsino. "how? no. why should you not remain? only, if you please, sit where i can see you. thanks. i do not like to feel that some one is looking at me and that i cannot look at him, if i please--and as for me, i am nailed in my position. how can i turn my head? gouache is very severe." "you may have heard, madame, that a beautiful woman is most beautiful in repose," said gouache. orsino was annoyed, for he had of course wished to make exactly the same remark. but they were talking in french, and the frenchman had the advantage of speed. "and how about an ugly woman?" asked madame d'aragona. "motion is most becoming to her--rapid motion--the door," answered the artist. orsino had changed his position and was standing behind gouache. "i wish you would sit down," said the latter, after a short pause. "i do not like to feel that any one is standing behind me when i am at work. it is a weakness, but i cannot help it. do you believe in mental suggestion, madame?" "what is that?" asked madame d'aragona vaguely. "i always imagine that a person standing behind me when i am at work is making me see everything as he sees," answered gouache, not attempting to answer the question. orsino, driven from pillar to post, had again moved away. "and do you believe in such absurd superstitions?" enquired madame d'aragona with a contemptuous curl of her heavy lips. "monsieur de saracinesca, will you not sit down? you make me a little nervous." gouache raised his finely marked eyebrows almost imperceptibly at the odd form of address, which betrayed ignorance either of worldly usage or else of orsino's individuality. he stepped back from the canvas and moved a chair forward. "sit here, prince," he said. "madame can see you, and you will not be behind me." orsino took the proffered seat without any remark. madame d'aragona's expression did not change, though she was perfectly well aware that gouache had intended to correct her manner of addressing the young man. the latter was slightly annoyed. what difference could it make? it was tactless of gouache, he thought, for the lady might be angry. "are you spending the winter in rome, madame?" he asked. he was conscious that the question lacked originality, but no other presented itself to him. "the winter?" repeated madame d'aragona dreamily. "who knows? i am here at present, at the mercy of the great painter. that is all i know. shall i be here next month, next week? i cannot tell. i know no one. i have never been here before. it is dull. this was my object," she added, after a short pause. "when it is accomplished i will consider other matters. i may be obliged to accompany their royal highnesses to egypt in january. that is next month, is it not?" it was so very far from clear who the royal highnesses in question might be, that orsino glanced at gouache, to see whether he understood. but gouache was imperturbable. "january, madame, follows december," he answered. "the fact is confirmed by the observations of many centuries. even in my own experience it has occurred forty-seven times in succession." orsino laughed a little, and as madame d'aragona's eyes met his, the red lips smiled, without parting. "he is always laughing at me," she said pleasantly. gouache was painting with great alacrity. the smile was becoming to her and he caught it as it passed. it must be allowed that she permitted it to linger, as though she understood his wish, but as she was looking at orsino, he was pleased. "if you will permit me to say it, madame," he observed, "i have never seen eyes like yours." he endeavoured to lose himself in their depths as he spoke. madame d'aragona was not in the least annoyed by the remark, nor by the look. "what is there so very unusual about my eyes?" she enquired. the smile grew a little more faint and thoughtful but did not disappear. "in the first place, i have never seen eyes of a golden-yellow colour." "tigers have yellow eyes," observed madame d'aragona. "my acquaintance with that animal is at second hand--slight, to say the least." "you have never shot one?" "never, madame. they do not abound in rome--nor even, i believe, in albano. my father killed one when he was a young man." "prince saracinesca?" "sant' ilario. my grandfather is still alive." "how splendid! i adore strong races." "it is very interesting," observed gouache, poking the stick of a brush into the eye of his picture. "i have painted three generations of the family, i who speak to you, and i hope to paint the fourth if don orsino here can be cured of his cynicism and induced to marry donna--what is her name?" he turned to the young man. "she has none--and she is likely to remain nameless," answered orsino gloomily. "we will call her donna ignota," suggested madame d'aragona. "and build altars to the unknown love," added gouache. madame d'aragona smiled faintly, but orsino persisted in looking grave. "it seems to be an unpleasant subject, prince." "very unpleasant, madame," answered orsino shortly. thereupon madame d'aragona looked at gouache and raised her brows a little as though to ask a question, knowing perfectly well that orsino was watching her. the young man could not see the painter's eyes, and the latter did not betray by any gesture that he was answering the silent interrogation. "then i have eyes like a tiger, you say. you frighten me. how disagreeable--to look like a wild beast!" "it is a prejudice," returned orsino. "one hears people say of a woman that she is beautiful as a tigress." "an idea!" exclaimed gouache, interrupting. "shall i change the damask cloak to a tiger's skin? one claw just hanging over the white shoulder--omphale, you know--in a modern drawing-room--a small cast of the farnese hercules upon a bracket, there, on the right. decidedly, here is an idea. do you permit, madame!" "anything you like--only do not spoil the likeness," answered madame d'aragona, leaning back in her chair, and looking sleepily at orsino from beneath her heavy, half-closed lids. "you will spoil the whole picture," said orsino, rather anxiously. gouache laughed. "what harm if i do? i can restore it in five minutes--" "five minutes!" "an hour, if you insist upon accuracy of statement," replied gouache with a shade of annoyance. he had an idea, and like most people whom fate occasionally favours with that rare commodity he did not like to be disturbed in the realisation of it. he was already squeezing out quantities of tawny colours upon his palette. "i am a passive instrument," said madame d'aragona. "he does what he pleases. these men of genius--what would you have? yesterday a gown from worth--to-day a tiger's skin--indeed, i tremble for to-morrow." she laughed a little and turned her head away. "you need not fear," answered gouache, daubing in his new idea with an enormous brush. "fashions change. woman endures. beauty is eternal. there is nothing which may not be made becoming to a beautiful woman." "my dear gouache, you are insufferable. you are always telling me that i am beautiful. look at my nose." "yes. i am looking at it." "and my mouth." "i look. i see. i admire. have you any other personal observations to make? how many claws has a tiger, don orsino? quick! i am painting the thing." "one less than a woman." madame d'aragona looked at the young man a moment, and broke into a laugh. "there is a charming speech. i like that better than gouache's flattery." "and yet you admit that the portrait is like you," said gouache. "perhaps i flatter you, too." "ah! i had not thought of that." "you should be more modest." "i lose myself--" "where?" "in your eyes, madame. one, two, three, four--are you sure a tiger has only four claws? where is the creature's thumb--what do you call it? it looks awkward." "the dew-claw?" asked orsino. "it is higher up, behind the paw. you would hardly see it in the skin." "but a cat has five claws," said madame d'aragona. "is not a tiger a cat? we must have the thing right, you know, if it is to be done at all." "has a cat five claws?" asked anastase, appealing anxiously to orsino. "of course, but you would only see four on the skin." "i insist upon knowing," said madame d'aragona. "this is dreadful! has no one got a tiger? what sort of studio is this--with no tiger!" "i am not sarah bernhardt, nor the emperor of siam," observed gouache, with a laugh. but madame d'aragona was not satisfied. "i am sure you could procure me one, prince," she said, turning to orsino. "i am sure you could, if you would! i shall cry if i do not have one, and it will be your fault." "would you like the animal alive or dead?" inquired orsino gravely, and he rose from his seat. "ah, i knew you could procure the thing!" she exclaimed with grateful enthusiasm. "alive or dead, gouache? quick--decide!" "as you please, madame. if you decide to have him alive, i will ask permission to exchange a few words with my wife and children, while some one goes for a priest." "you are sublime, to-day. dead, then, if you please, prince. quite dead--but do not say that i was afraid--" "afraid? with, a saracinesca and a gouache to defend your life, madame? you are not serious." orsino took his hat. "i shall be back in a quarter of an hour," he said, as he bowed and went out. madame d'aragona watched his tall young figure till he disappeared. "he does not lack spirit, your young friend," she observed. "no member of that family ever did, i think," gouache answered. "they are a remarkable race." "and he is the only son?" "oh no! he has three younger brothers." "poor fellow! i suppose the fortune is not very large." "i have no means of knowing," replied gouache indifferently. "their palace is historic. their equipages are magnificent. that is all that foreigners see of roman families." "but you know them intimately?" "intimately--that is saying too much. i have painted their portraits." madame d'aragona wondered why he was so reticent, for she knew that he had himself married the daughter of a roman prince, and she concluded that he must know much of the romans. "do you think he will bring the tiger?" she asked presently. "he is quite capable of bringing a whole menagerie of tigers for you to choose from." "how interesting. i like men who stop at nothing. it was really unpardonable of you to suggest the idea and then to tell me calmly that you had no model for it." in the meantime orsino had descended the stairs and was hailing a passing cab. he debated for a moment what he should do. it chanced that at that time there was actually a collection of wild beasts to be seen in the prati di castello, and orsino supposed that the owner might be induced, for a large consideration, to part with one of his tigers. he even imagined that he might shoot the beast and bring it back in the cab. but, in the first place, he was not provided with an adequate sum of money nor did he know exactly how to lay his hand on so large a sum as might be necessary, at a moment's notice. he was still under age, and his allowance had not been calculated with a view to his buying menageries. moreover he considered that even if his pockets had been full of bank notes, the idea was ridiculous, and he was rather ashamed of his youthful impulse. it occurred to him that what was necessary for the picture was not the carcase of the tiger but the skin, and he remembered that such a skin lay on the floor in his father's private room--the spoil of the animal giovanni saracinesca had shot in his youth. it had been well cared for and was a fine specimen. "palazzo saracinesca," he said to the cabman. now it chanced, as such things will chance in the inscrutable ways of fate, that sant' ilario was just then in that very room and busy with his correspondence. orsino had hoped to carry off what he wanted, without being questioned, in order to save time, but he now found himself obliged to explain his errand. sant' ilario looked, up in some surprise as his son entered. "well, orsino? is anything the matter?" he asked. "nothing serious, father. i want to borrow your tiger's skin for gouache. will you lend it to me?" "of course. but what in the world does gouache want of it? is he painting you in skins--the primeval youth of the forest?" "no--not exactly. the fact is, there is a lady there. gouache talks of painting her as a modern omphale, with a tiger's skin and a cast of hercules in the background--" "hercules wore a lion's skin--not a tiger's. he killed the nemean lion." "did he?" inquired orsino indifferently. "it is all the same--they do not know it, and they want a tiger. when i left they were debating whether they wanted it alive or dead. i thought of buying one at the prati di castello, but it seemed cheaper to borrow the skin of you. may i take it?" sant' ilario laughed. orsino rolled up the great hide and carried it to the door. "who is the lady, my boy?" "i never saw her before--a certain donna maria d'aranjuez d'aragona. i fancy she must be a kind of cousin. do you know anything about her?" "i never heard of such a person. is that her own name?" "no--she seems to be somebody's widow." "that is definite. what is she like?" "passably handsome--yellow eyes, reddish hair, one eye wanders." "what an awful picture! do not fall in love with her, orsino." "no fear of that--but she is amusing, and she wants the tiger." "you seem to be in a hurry," observed sant' ilario, considerably amused. "naturally. they are waiting for me." "well, go as fast as you can--never keep a woman waiting. by the way, bring the skin back. i would rather you bought twenty live tigers at the prati than lose that old thing." orsino promised and was soon in his cab on the way to gouache's studio, having the skin rolled up on his knees, the head hanging out on one side and the tail on the other, to the infinite interest of the people in the street. he was just congratulating himself on having wasted so little time in conversation with his father, when the figure of a tall woman walking towards him on the pavement, arrested his attention. his cab must pass close by her, and there was no mistaking his mother at a hundred yards' distance. she saw him too and made a sign with her parasol for him to stop. "good-morning, orsino," said the sweet deep voice. "good-morning, mother," he answered, as he descended hat in hand, and kissed the gloved fingers she extended to him. he could not help thinking, as he looked at her, that she was infinitely more beautiful even now than madame d'aragona. as for corona, it seemed to her that there was no man on earth to compare with her eldest son, except giovanni himself, and there all comparison ceased. their eyes met affectionately and it would have been, hard to say which was the more proud of the other, the son of his mother, or the mother of her son. nevertheless orsino was in a hurry. anticipating all questions he told her in as few words as possible the nature of his errand, the object of the tiger's skin, and the name of the lady who was sitting to gouache. "it is strange," said corona. "i have never heard your father speak of her." "he has never heard of her either. he just told me so." "i have almost enough curiosity to get into your cab and go with you." "do, mother." there was not much enthusiasm in the answer. corona looked at him, smiled, and shook her head. "foolish boy! did you think i was in earnest? i should only spoil your amusement in the studio, and the lady would see that i had come to inspect her. two good reasons--but the first is the better, dear. go--do not keep them waiting." "will you not take my cab? i can get another." "no. i am in no hurry. good-bye." and nodding to him with an affectionate smile, corona passed on, leaving orsino free at last to carry the skin to its destination. when he entered the studio he found madame d'aragona absorbed in the contemplation of a piece of old tapestry which hung opposite to her, while gouache was drawing in a tiny hercules, high up in the right hand corner of the picture, as he had proposed. the conversation seemed to have languished, and orsino was immediately conscious that the atmosphere had changed since he had left. he unrolled the skin as he entered, and madame d'aragona looked at it critically. she saw that the tawny colours would become her in the portrait and her expression grew more animated. "it is really very good of you," she said, with a grateful glance. "i have a disappointment in store for you," answered orsino. "my father says that hercules wore a lion's skin. he is quite right, i remember all about it." "of course," said gouache. "how could we make such a mistake!" he dropped the bit of chalk he held and looked at madame d'aragona. "what difference does it make?" asked the latter. "a lion--a tiger! i am sure they are very much alike." "after all, it is a tiresome idea," said the painter. "you will be much better in the damask cloak. besides, with the lion's skin you should have the club--imagine a club in your hands! and hercules should be spinning at your feet--a man in a black coat and a high collar, with a distaff! it is an absurd idea." "you should not call my ideas absurd and tiresome. it is not civil." "i thought it had been mine," observed gouache. "not at all. i thought of it--it was quite original." gouache laughed a little and looked at orsino as though asking his opinion. "madame is right," said the latter. "she suggested the whole idea--by having yellow eyes." "you see, gouache. i told you so. the prince takes my view. what will you do?" "whatever you command--" "but i do not want to be ridiculous--" "i do not see--" "and yet i must have the tiger." "i am ready." "doubtless--but you must think of another subject, with a tiger in it." "nothing easier. noble roman damsel--colosseum--tiger about to spring--rose--" "just heaven! what an old story! besides, i have not the type." "the 'mysteries of dionysus,'" suggested gouache. "thyrsus, leopard's skin--" "a bacchante! fie, monsieur--and then, the leopard, when we only have a tiger." "indian princess interviewed by a man-eater--jungle--new moon--tropical vegetation--" "you can think of nothing but subjects for a dark type," said madame d'aragona impatiently. "the fact is, in countries where the tiger walks abroad, the women are generally brunettes." "i hate facts. you who are enthusiastic, can you not help us?" she turned to orsino. "am i enthusiastic?" "yes, i am sure of it. think of something." orsino was not pleased. he would have preferred to be thought cold and impassive. "what can i say? the first idea was the best. get a lion instead of a tiger--nothing is simpler." "for my part i prefer the damask cloak and the original picture," said gouache with decision. "all this mythology is too complicated--too pompeian--how shall i say? besides there is no distinct allusion. a hercules on a bracket--anybody may have that. if you were the marchessa di san giacinto, for instance--oh, then everyone would laugh." "why? what is that?" "she married my cousin," said orsino. "he is an enormous giant, and they say that she has tamed him." "ah no! that would not do. something else, please." orsino involuntarily thought of a sphynx as he looked at the massive brow, the yellow, sleepy eyes, and the heavy mouth. he wondered how the late aranjuez had lived and what death he had died. he offered the suggestion. "it would be appropriate," replied madame d'aragona. "the sphynx in the desert. rome is a desert to me." "it only depends on you--" orsino began. "oh, of course! to make acquaintances, to show myself a little everywhere--it is simple enough. but it wearies me--until one is caught up in the machinery, a toothed wheel going round with the rest, one only bores oneself, and i may leave so soon. decidedly it is not worth the trouble. is it?" she turned her eyes to orsino as though asking his advice. orsino laughed. "how can you ask that question!" he exclaimed. "only let the trouble be ours." "ah! i said you were enthusiastic." she shook her head, and rose from her seat. "it is time for me to go. we have done nothing this morning, and it is all your fault, prince." "i am distressed--i will not intrude upon your next sitting." "oh--as far as that is concerned--" she did not finish the sentence, but took up the neglected tiger's skin from the chair on which it lay. she threw it over her shoulders, bringing the grinning head over her hair and holding the forepaws in her pointed white fingers. she came very near to gouache and looked into his eyes, her closed lips smiling. "admirable!" exclaimed gouache. "it is impossible to tell where the woman ends and the tiger begins. let me draw you like that." "oh no! not for anything in the world." she turned away quickly and dropped the skin from her shoulders. "you will not stay a little longer? you will not let me try?" gouache seemed disappointed. "impossible," she answered, putting on her hat and beginning to arrange her veil before a mirror. orsino watched her as she stood, her arms uplifted, in an attitude which is almost always graceful, even for an otherwise ungraceful woman. madame d'aragona was perhaps a little too short, but she was justly proportioned and appeared to be rather slight, though the tight-fitting sleeves of her frock betrayed a remarkably well turned arm. not seeing her face, one might not have singled her out of many as a very striking woman, for she had neither the stateliness of orsino's mother, nor the enchanting grace which distinguished gouache's wife. but no one could look into her eyes without feeling that she was very far from being an ordinary woman. "quite impossible," she repeated, as she tucked in the ends of her veil and then turned upon the two men. "the next sitting? whenever you like--to-morrow--the day after--name the time." "when to-morrow is possible, there is no choice," said gouache, "unless you will come again to-day." "to-morrow, then, good-bye." she held out her hand. "there are sketches on each of my fingers, madame--principally, of tigers." "good-bye then--consider your hand shaken. are you going, prince?" orsino had taken his hat and was standing beside her. "you will allow me to put you into your carriage." "i shall walk." "so much the better. good-bye, monsieur gouache." "why say, monsieur?" "as you like--you are older than i." "i? who has told you that legend? it is only a myth. when you are sixty years old, i shall still be five-and-twenty." "and i?" enquired madame d'aragona, who was still young enough to laugh at age. "as old as you were yesterday, not a day older." "why not say to-day?" "because to-day has a to-morrow--yesterday has none." "you are delicious, my dear gouache. good-bye." madame d'aragona went out with orsino, and they descended the broad staircase together. orsino was not sure whether he might not be showing too much anxiety to remain in the company of his new acquaintance, and as he realised how unpleasant it would be to sacrifice the walk with her, he endeavoured to excuse to himself his derogation from his self-imposed character of cool superiority and indifference. she was very amusing, he said to himself, and he had nothing in the world to do. he never had anything to do, since his education had been completed. why should he not walk with madame d'aragona and talk to her? it would be better than hanging about the club or reading a novel at home. the hounds did not meet on that day, or he would not have been at gouache's at all. but they were to meet to-morrow, and he would therefore not see madame d'aragona. "gouache is an old friend of yours, i suppose," observed the lady. "he was a friend of my father's. he is almost a roman. he married a distant connection of mine, donna faustina montevarchi." "ah yes--i have heard. he is a man of immense genius." "he is a man i envy with all my heart," said orsino. "you envy gouache? i should not have thought--" "no? ah, madame, to me a man who has a career, a profession, an interest, is a god." "i like that," answered madame d'aragona. "but it seems to me you have your choice. you have the world before you. write your name upon it. you do not lack enthusiasm. is it the inspiration that you need?" "perhaps," said orsino glancing meaningly at her as she looked at him. "that is not new," thought she, "but he is charming, all the same. they say," she added aloud, "that genius finds inspiration everywhere." "alas, i am not a genius. what i ask is an occupation, and permanent interest. the thing is impossible, but i am not resigned." "before thirty everything is possible," said madame d'aragona. she knew that the mere mention of so mature an age would be flattering to such a boy. "the objections are insurmountable," replied orsino. "what objections? remember that i do not know rome, nor the romans." "we are petrified in traditions. spicca said the other day that there was but one hope for us. the americans may yet discover italy, as we once discovered america." madame d'aragona smiled. "who is spicca?" she enquired, with a lazy glance at her companion's face. "spicca? surely you have heard of him. he used to be a famous duellist. he is our great wit. my father likes him very much--he is an odd character." "there will be all the more credit in succeeding, if you have to break through a barrier of tradition and prejudice," said madame d'aragona, reverting rather abruptly to the first subject. "you do not know what that means." orsino shook his head incredulously. "you have never tried it." "no. how could a woman be placed in such a position?" "that is just it. you cannot understand me." "that does not follow. women often understand men--men they love or detest--better than men themselves." "do you love me, madame?" asked orsino with a smile. "i have just made your acquaintance," laughed madame d'aragona. "it is a little too soon." "but then, according to you, if you understand me, you detest me." "well? if i do?" she was still laughing. "then i ought to disappear, i suppose." "you do not understand women. anything is better than indifference. when you see that you are disliked, then refuse to go away. it is the very moment to remain. do not submit to dislike. revenge yourself." "i will try," said orsino, considerably amused. "upon me?" "since you advise it--" "have i said that i detest you?" "more or less." "it was only by way of illustration to my argument. i was not serious." "you have not a serious character, i fancy," said orsino. "do you dare to pass judgment on me after an hour's acquaintance?" "since you have judged me! you have said five times that i am enthusiastic." "that is an exaggeration. besides, one cannot say a true thing too often." "how you run on, madame!" "and you--to tell me to my face that i am not serious! it is unheard of. is that the way you talk to your compatriots?" "it would not be true. but they would contradict me, as you do. they wish to be thought gay." "do they? i would like to know them." "nothing is easier. will you allow me the honour of undertaking the matter?" they had reached the door of madame d'aragona's hotel. she stood still and looked curiously at orsino. "certainly not," she answered, rather coldly. "it would be asking too much of you--too much of society, and far too much of me. thanks. good-bye." "may i come and see you?" asked orsino. he knew very well that he had gone too far, and his voice was correctly contrite. "i daresay we shall meet somewhere," she answered, entering the hotel. chapter iv. the rage of speculation was at its height in rome. thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of persons were embarked in enterprises which soon afterwards ended in total ruin to themselves and in very serious injury to many of the strongest financial bodies in the country. yet it is a fact worth recording that the general principle upon which affairs were conducted was an honest one. the land was a fact, the buildings put up were facts, and there was actually a certain amount of capital, of genuine ready money, in use. the whole matter can be explained in a few words. the population of rome had increased considerably since the italian occupation, and house-room was needed for the newcomers. secondly, the partial execution of the scheme for beautifying the city had destroyed great numbers of dwellings in the most thickly populated parts, and more house-room was needed to compensate the loss of habitations, while extensive lots of land were suddenly set free and offered for sale upon easy conditions in all parts of the town. those who availed themselves of these opportunities before the general rush began, realised immense profits, especially when they had some capital of their own to begin with. but capital was not indispensable. a man could buy his lot on credit; the banks were ready to advance him money on notes of hand, in small amounts at high interest, wherewith to build his house or houses. when the building was finished the bank took a first mortgage upon the property, the owner let the house, paid the interest on the mortgage out of the rent and pocketed the difference, as clear gain. in the majority of eases it was the bank itself which sold the lot of land to the speculator. it is clear therefore that the only money which actually changed hands was that advanced in small sums by the bank itself. as the speculation increased, the banks could not of course afford to lock up all the small notes of hand they received from various quarters. this paper became a circulating medium as far as vienna, paris and even london. the crash came when vienna, paris and london lost faith in the paper, owing, in the first instance, to one or two small failures, and returned it upon rome; the banks, unable to obtain cash for it at any price, and being short of ready money, could then no longer discount the speculator's further notes of hand; so that the speculator found himself with half-built houses upon his hands which he could neither let, nor finish, nor sell, and owing money upon bills which he had expected to meet by giving the bank a mortgage on the now valueless property. that is what took place in the majority of cases, and it is not necessary to go into further details, though of course chance played all the usual variations upon the theme of ruin. what distinguishes the period of speculation in rome from most other manifestations of the kind in europe is the prominent part played in it by the old land-holding families, a number of which were ruined in wild schemes which no sensible man of business would have touched. this was more or less the result of recent changes in the laws regulating the power of persons making a will. previous to 1870 the law of primogeniture was as much respected in rome as in england, and was carried out with considerably greater strictness. the heir got everything, the other children got practically nothing but the smallest pittance. the palace, the gallery of pictures and statues, the lands, the villages and the castles, descended in unbroken succession from eldest son to eldest son, indivisible in principle and undivided in fact. the new law requires that one half of the total property shall be equally distributed by the testator amongst all his children. he may leave the other half to any one he pleases, and as a matter of practice he of course leaves it to his eldest son. another law, however, forbids the alienation of all collections of works of art either wholly or in part, if they have existed as such for a certain length of time, and if the public has been admitted daily or on any fixed days, to visit them. it is not in the power of the borghese, or the colonna, for instance, to sell a picture or a statue out of their galleries, nor to raise money upon such an object by mortgage or otherwise. yet these works of art figure at a very high valuation, in the total property of which the testator must divide one half amongst his children, though in point of fact they yield no income whatever. but it is of no use to divide them, since none of the heirs could be at liberty to take them away nor realise their value in any manner. the consequence is, that the principal heir, after the division has taken place, finds himself the nominal master of certain enormously valuable possessions, which in reality yield him nothing or next to nothing. he also foresees that in the next generation the same state of things will exist in a far higher degree, and that the position of the head of the family will go from bad to worse until a crisis of some kind takes place. such a case has recently occurred. a certain roman prince is bankrupt. the sale of his gallery would certainly relieve the pressure, and would possibly free him from debt altogether. but neither he nor his creditors can lay a finger upon the pictures, nor raise a centime upon them. this man, therefore, is permanently reduced to penury, and his creditors are large losers, while he is still _de jure_ and _de facto_ the owner of property probably sufficient to cover all his obligations. fortunately, he chances to be childless, a fact consoling, perhaps, to the philanthropist, but not especially so to the sufferer himself. it is clear that the temptation to increase "distributable" property, if one may coin such, an expression, is very great, and accounts for the way in which many roman gentlemen have rushed headlong into speculation, though possessing none of the qualities necessary for success, and only one of the requisites, namely, a certain amount of ready money, or free and convertible property. a few have been fortunate, while the majority of those who have tried the experiment have been heavy losers. it cannot be said that any one of them all has shown natural talent for finance. let the reader forgive these dry explanations if he can. the facts explained have a direct bearing upon the story i am telling, but shall not, as mere facts, be referred to again. i have already said that ugo del ferice had returned to rome soon after the change, had established himself with his wife, donna tullia, and was at the time i am speaking about, deeply engaged in the speculations of the day. he had once been, tolerably popular in society, having been looked upon as a harmless creature, useful in his way and very obliging. but the circumstances which had attended his flight some years earlier had become known, and most of his old acquaintances turned him the cold shoulder. he had expected this and was neither disappointed nor humiliated. he had made new friends and acquaintances during his exile, and it was to his interest to stand by them. like many of those who had played petty and dishonourable parts in the revolutionary times, he had succeeded in building up a reputation for patriotism upon a very slight foundation, and had found persons willing to believe him a sufferer who had escaped martyrdom for the cause, and had deserved the crown of election to a constituency as a just reward of his devotion. the romans cared very little what became of him. the old blacks confounded victor emmanuel with garibaldi, cavour with persiano, and silvio pellico with del ferice in one sweeping condemnation, desiring nothing so much as never to hear the hated names mentioned in their houses. the grey party, being also roman, disapproved of ugo on general principles and particularly because he had been a spy, but the whites, not being romans at all and entertaining an especial detestation for every distinctly roman opinion, received him at his own estimation, as society receives most people who live in good houses, give good dinners and observe the proprieties in the matter of visiting-cards. those who knew anything definite of the man's antecedents were mostly persons who had little histories of their own, and they told no tales out of school. the great personages who had once employed him would have been magnanimous enough to acknowledge him in any case, but were agreeably disappointed when they discovered that he was not amongst the common herd of pension hunters, and claimed no substantial rewards save their politeness and a line in the visiting lists of their wives. and as he grew in wealth and importance they found that he could be useful still, as bank directors and members of parliament can be, in a thousand ways. so it came to pass that the count and countess del ferice became prominent persons in the roman world. ugo was a man of undoubted talent. by his own individual efforts, though with small scruple as to the means he employed, he had raised himself from obscurity to a very enviable position. he had only once in his life been carried away by the weakness of a personal enmity, and he had been made to pay heavily for his caprice. if donna tullia had abandoned him when he was driven out of rome by the influence of the saracinesca, he might have disappeared altogether from the scene. but she was an odd compound of rashness and foresight, of belief and unbelief, and she had at that time felt herself bound by an oath she dared not break, besides being attached to him by a hatred of giovanni saracinesca almost as great as his own. she had followed him and had married him without hesitation; but she had kept the undivided possession of her fortune while allowing him a liberal use of her income. in return, she claimed a certain liberty of action when she chose to avail herself of it. she would not be bound in the choice of her acquaintances nor criticised in the measure of like or dislike she bestowed upon them. she was by no means wholly bad, and if she had a harmless fancy now and then, she required her husband to treat her as above suspicion. on the whole, the arrangement worked very well. del ferice, on his part, was unswervingly faithful to her in word and deed, for he exhibited in a high degree that unfaltering constancy which is bred of a permanent, unalienable, financial interest. bad men are often clever, but if their cleverness is of a superior order they rarely do anything bad. it is true that when they yield to the pressure of necessity their wickedness surpasses that of other men in the same degree as their intelligence. not only honesty, but all virtue collectively, is the best possible policy, provided that the politician can handle such a tremendous engine of evil as goodness is in the hands of a thoroughly bad man. those who desired pecuniary accommodation of the bank in which del ferice had an interest, had no better friend than he. his power with the directors seemed to be as boundless as his desire to assist the borrower. but he was helpless to prevent the foreclosure of a mortgage, and had been moved almost to tears in the expression of his sympathy with the debtor and of his horror at the hard-heartedness shown by his partners. to prove his disinterested spirit it only need be said that on many occasions he had actually come forward as a private individual and had taken over the mortgage himself, distinctly stating that he could not hold it for more than a year, but expressing a hope that the debtor might in that time retrieve himself. if this really happened, he earned the man's eternal gratitude; if not, he foreclosed indeed, but the loser never forgot that by del fence's kindness he had been offered a last chance at a desperate moment. it could not be said to be del ferice's fault that the second case was the more frequent one, nor that the result to himself was profit in either event. in his dealings with his constituency he showed a noble desire for the public welfare, for he was never known to refuse anything in reason to the electors who applied to him. it is true that in the case of certain applications, he consumed so much time in preliminary enquiries and subsequent formalities that the applicants sometimes died and sometimes emigrated to the argentine republic before the matter could be settled; but they bore with them to south america--or to the grave--the belief that the onorevole del ferice was on their side, and the instances of his prompt, decisive and successful action were many. he represented a small town in the neapolitan province, and the benefits and advantages he had obtained for it were numberless. the provincial high road had been made to pass through it; all express trains stopped at its station, though the passengers who made use of the inestimable privilege did not average twenty in the month; it possessed a piazza vittorio emmanuela, a corso garibaldi, a via cavour, a public garden of at least a quarter of an acre, planted with no less than twenty-five acacias and adorned by a fountain representing a desperate-looking character in the act of firing a finely executed revolver at an imaginary oppressor. pigs were not allowed within the limits of the town, and the uniforms of the municipal brass band were perfectly new. could civilisation do more? the bank of which del ferice was a director bought the octroi duties of the town at the periodical auction, and farmed them skilfully, together with those of many other towns in the same province. so del ferice was a very successful man, and it need scarcely be said that he was now not only independent of his wife's help but very much richer than she had ever been. they lived in a highly decorated, detached modern house in the new part of the city. the gilded gate before the little plot of garden, bore their intertwined initials, surmounted by a modest count's coronet. donna tullia would have preferred a coat of arms, or even a crest, but ugo was sensitive to ridicule, and he was aware that a count's coronet in rome means nothing at all, whereas a coat of arms means vastly more than in most cities. within, the dwelling was somewhat unpleasantly gorgeous. donna tullia had always loved red, both for itself and because it made her own complexion seem less florid by contrast, and accordingly red satin predominated in the drawing-rooms, red velvet in the dining-room, red damask in the hall and red carpets on the stairs. some fine specimens of gilding were also to be seen, and del ferice had been one of the first to use electric light. everything was new, expensive and polished to its extreme capacity for reflection. the servants wore vivid liveries and on formal occasions the butler appeared in short-clothes and black silk stockings. donna tullia's equipage was visible at a great distance, but del fence's own coachman and groom wore dark green with, black epaulettes. on the morning which orsino and madame d'aragona had spent in gouache's studio the countess del ferice entered her husband's study in order to consult him upon a rather delicate matter. he was alone, but busy as usual. his attention was divided between an important bank operation and a petition for his help in obtaining a decoration for the mayor of the town he represented. the claim to this distinction seemed to rest chiefly on the petitioner's unasked evidence in regard to his own moral rectitude, yet del ferice was really exercising all his ingenuity to discover some suitable reason for asking the favour. he laid the papers down with a sigh as donna tullia came in. "good morning, my angel," he said suavely, as he pointed to a chair at his side--the one usually occupied at this hour by seekers for financial support. "have you rested well?" he never failed to ask the question. "not badly, not badly, thank heaven!" answered donna tullia. "i have a dreadful cold, of course, and a headache--my head is really splitting." "rest--rest is what you need, my dear--" "oh, it is nothing. this durakoff is a great man. if he had not made me go to carlsbad--i really do not know. but i have something to say to you. i want your help, ugo. please listen to me." ugo's fat white face already expressed anxious attention. to accentuate the expression of his readiness to listen, he now put all his papers into a drawer and turned towards his wife. "i must go to the jubilee," said donna tullia, coming to the point. "of course you must go--" "and i must have my seat among the roman ladies" "of course you must," repeated del ferice with a little less alacrity. "ah! you see. it is not so easy. you know it is not. yet i have as good a right to my seat as any one--better perhaps." "hardly that," observed ugo with a smile. "when you married me, my angel, you relinquished your claims to a seat at the vatican functions." "i did nothing of the kind. i never said so, i am sure." "perhaps if you could make that clear to the majorduomo--" "absurd, ugo. you know it is. besides, i will not beg. you must get me the seat. you can do anything with your influence." "you could easily get into one of the diplomatic tribunes," observed ugo. "i will not go there. i mean to assert myself. i am a roman lady and i will have my seat, and you must get it for me." "i will do my best. but i do not quite see where i am to begin. it will need time and consideration and much tact." "it seems to me very simple. go to one of the clerical deputies and say that you want the ticket for your wife--" "and then?" "give him to understand that you will vote for his next measure. nothing could be simpler, i am sure." del ferice smiled blandly at his wife's ideas of parliamentary diplomacy. "there are no clerical deputies in the parliament of the nation. if there were the thing might be possible, and it would be very interesting to all the clericals to read an account of the transaction in the osservatore romano. in any case, i am not sure that it will be much to our advantage that the wife of the onorevole del ferice should be seen seated in the midst of the black ladies. it will produce an unfavourable impression." "if you are going to talk of impressions--" donna tullia shrugged her massive shoulders. "no, my dear. you mistake me. i am not going to talk of them, because, as i at once told you, it is quite right that you should go to this affair. if you go, you must go in the proper way. no doubt there will be people who will have invitations but will not use them. we can perhaps procure you the use of such a ticket." "i do not care what name is on the paper, provided i can sit in the right place." "very well," answered del ferice. "i will do my best." "i expect it of you, ugo. it is not often that i ask anything of you, is it? it is the least you can do. the idea of getting a card that is not to be used is good; of course they will all get them, and some of them are sure to be ill." donna tullia went away satisfied that what she wanted would be forthcoming at the right moment. what she had said was true. she rarely asked anything of her husband. but when she did, she gave him to understand that she would have it at any price. it was her way of asserting herself from time to time. on the present occasion she had no especial interest at stake and any other woman might have been satisfied with a seat in the diplomatic tribune, which could probably have been obtained without great difficulty. but she had heard that the seats there were to be very high and she did not really wish to be placed in too prominent a position. the light might be unfavourable, and she knew that she was subject to growing very red in places where it was hot. she had once been a handsome woman and a very vain one, but even her vanity could not survive the daily shock of the looking-glass torture. to sit for four or five hours in a high light, facing fifty thousand people, was more than she could bear with equanimity. del ferice, being left to himself, returned to the question of the mayor's decoration which was of vastly greater importance to him than his wife's position at the approaching function. if he failed to get the man what he wanted, the fellow would doubtless apply to some one of the opposite party, would receive the coveted honour and would take the whole voting population of the town with him at the next general election, to the total discomfiture of del ferice. it was necessary to find some valid reason for proposing him for the distinction. ugo could not decide what to do just then, but he ultimately hit upon a successful plan. he advised his correspondent to write a pamphlet upon the rapid improvement of agricultural interests in his district under the existing ministry, and he even went so far as to enclose with his letter some notes on the subject. these notes proved to be so voluminous and complete that when the mayor had copied them he could not find a pretext for adding a single word or correction. they were printed upon excellent paper, with ornamental margins, under the title of "onward, parthenope!" of course every one knows that parthenope means naples, the neapolitans and the neapolitan province, a siren of that name having come to final grief somewhere between the chiatamone and posilippo. the mayor got his decoration, and del ferice was re-elected; but no one has inquired into the truth of the statements made in the pamphlet upon agriculture. it is clear that a man who was capable of taking so much trouble for so small a matter would not disappoint his wife when she had set her heart upon such a trifle as a ticket for the jubilee. within three days he had the promise of what he wanted. a certain lonely lady of high position lay very ill just then, and it need scarcely be explained that her confidential servant fell upon the invitation as soon as it arrived and sold it for a round sum to the first applicant, who happened to be count del ferice's valet. so the matter was arranged, privately and without scandal. all rome was alive with expectation. the date fixed was the first of january, and as the day approached the curious foreigner mustered in his thousands and tens of thousands and took the city by storm. the hotels were thronged. the billiard tables were let as furnished rooms, people slept in the lifts, on the landings, in the porters' lodges. the thrifty romans retreated to roofs and cellars and let their small dwellings. people reaching the city on the last night slept in the cabs they had hired to take them to st. peter's before dawn. even the supplies of food ran low and the hungry fed on what they could get, while the delicate of taste very often did not feed at all. there was of course the usual scare about a revolutionary demonstration, to which the natives paid very little attention, but which delighted the foreigners. not more than half of those who hoped to witness the ceremony saw anything of it, though the basilica will hold some eighty thousand people at a pinch, and the crowd on that occasion was far greater than at the opening of the oecumenical council in 1869. madame d'aragona had also determined to be present, and she expressed her desire to gouache. she had spoken the strict truth when she had said that she knew no one in rome, and so far as general accuracy is concerned it was equally true that she had not fixed the length of her stay. she had not come with any settled purpose beyond a vague idea of having her portrait painted by the french artist, and unless she took the trouble to make acquaintances, there was nothing attractive enough about the capital to keep her. she allowed herself to be driven about the town, on pretence of seeing churches and galleries, but in reality she saw very little of either. she was preoccupied with her own thoughts and subject to fits of abstraction. most things seemed to her intensely dull, and the unhappy guide who had been selected to accompany her on her excursions, wasted his learning upon her on the first morning, and subsequently exhausted the magnificent catalogue of impossibilities which he had concocted for the especial benefit of the uncultivated foreigner, without eliciting so much as a look of interest or an expression of surprise. he was a young and fascinating guide, wearing a white satin tie, and on the third day he recited some verses of stecchetti and was about to risk a declaration of worship in ornate prose, when he was suddenly rather badly scared by the lady's yellow eyes, and ran on nervously with a string of deceased popes and their dates. "get me a card for the jubilee," she said abruptly. "an entrance is very easily procured," answered the guide. "in fact i have one in my pocket, as it happens. i bought it for twenty francs this morning, thinking that one of my foreigners would perhaps take it of me. i do not even gain a franc--my word of honour." madame d'aragona glanced at the slip of paper. "not that," she answered. "do you imagine that i will stand? i want a seat in one of the tribunes." the guide lost himself in apologies, but explained that he could not get what she desired. "what are you for?" she inquired. she was an indolent woman, but when by any chance she wanted anything, donna tullia herself was not more restless. she drove at once to gouache's studio. he was alone and she told him what she needed. "the jubilee, madame? is it possible that you have been forgotten?" "since they have never heard of me! i have not the slightest claim to a place." "it is you who say that. but your place is already secured. fear nothing. you will be with the roman ladies." "i do not understand--" "it is simple. i was thinking of it yesterday. young saracinesca comes in and begins to talk about you. there is madame d'aragona who has no seat, he says. one must arrange that. so it is arranged." "by don orsino?" "you would not accept? no. a young man, and you have only met once. but tell me what you think of him. do you like him?" "one does not like people so easily as that," said madame d'aragona, "how have you arranged about the seat?" "it is very simple. there are to be two days, you know. my wife has her cards for both, of course. she will only go once. if you will accept the one for the first day, she will be very happy." "you are angelic, my dear friend! then i go as your wife?" she laughed. "precisely. you will be faustina gouache instead of madame d'aragona." "how delightful! by the bye, do not call me madame d'aragona. it is not my name. i might as well call you monsieur de paris, because you are a parisian." "i do not put anastase gouache de paris on my cards," answered gouache with a laugh. "what may i call you? donna maria?" "my name is maria consuelo d'aranjuez." "an ancient spanish name," said gouache. "my husband was an italian." "ah! of spanish descent, originally of aragona. of course." "exactly. since i am here, shall i sit for you? you might almost finish to-day." "not so soon as that. it is don orsino's hour, but as he has not come, and since you are so kind--by all means." "ah! is he punctual?" "he is probably running after those abominable dogs in pursuit of the feeble fox--what they call the noble sport." gouache's face expressed considerable disgust." "poor fellow!" said maria consuelo. "he has nothing else to do." "he will get used to it. they all do. besides, it is really the natural condition of man. total idleness is his element. if providence meant man to work, it should have given him two heads, one for his profession and one for himself. a man needs one entire and undivided intelligence for the study of his own individuality." "what an idea!" "do not men of great genius notoriously forget themselves, forget to eat and drink and dress themselves like christians? that is because they have not two heads. providence expects a man to do two things at once--an air from an opera and invent the steam-engine at the same moment. nature rebels. then providence and nature do not agree. what becomes of religion? it is all a mystery. believe me, madame, art is easier than, nature, and painting is simpler than theology." maria consuelo listened to gouache's extraordinary remarks with a smile. "you are either paradoxical, or irreligious, or both," she said. "irreligious? i, who carried a rifle at mentana? no, madame, i am a good catholic." "what does that mean?" "i believe in god, and i love my wife. i leave it to the church to define my other articles of belief. i have only one head, as you see." gouache smiled, but there was a note of sincerity in the odd statement which did not escape his hearer. "you are not of the type which belongs to the end of the century," she said. "that type was not invented when i was forming myself." "perhaps you belong rather to the coming age--the age of simplification." "as distinguished from the age of mystification--religious, political, scientific and artistic," suggested gouache. "the people of that day will guess the sphynx's riddle." "mine? you were comparing me to a sphynx the other day." "yours, perhaps, madame. who knows? are you the typical woman of the ending century?" "why not?" asked maria consuelo with a sleepy look. chapter v. there is something grand in any great assembly of animals belonging to the same race. the very idea of an immense number of living creatures conveys an impression not suggested by anything else. a compact herd of fifty or sixty thousand lions would be an appalling vision, beside which a like multitude of human beings would sink into insignificance. a drove of wild cattle is, i think, a finer sight than a regiment of cavalry in motion, for the cavalry is composite, half man and half horse, whereas the cattle have the advantage of unity. but we can never see so many animals of any species driven together into one limited space as to be equal to a vast throng of men and women, and we conclude naturally enough that a crowd consisting solely of our own kind is the most imposing one conceivable. it was scarcely light on the morning of new year's day when the princess sant' ilario found herself seated in one of the low tribunes on the north side of the high altar in saint peter's. her husband and her eldest son had accompanied her, and having placed her in a position from which they judged she could easily escape at the end of the ceremony, they remained standing in the narrow, winding passage between improvised barriers which led from the tribune to the door of the sacristy, and which had been so arranged as to prevent confusion. here they waited, greeting their acquaintances when they could recognise them in the dim twilight of the church, and watching the ever-increasing crowd that surged slowly backward and forward outside the barrier. the old prince was entitled by an hereditary office to a place in the great procession of the day, and was not now with them. orsino felt as though the whole world were assembled about him within the huge cathedral, as though its heart were beating audibly and its muffled breathing rising and falling in his hearing. the unceasing sound that went up from the compact mass of living beings was soft in quality, but enormous in volume and sustained in tone, a great whispering which, might have been heard a mile away. one hears in mammoth musical festivals the extraordinary effect of four or five thousand voices singing very softly; it is not to be compared to the unceasing whisper of fifty thousand men. the young fellow was conscious of a strange, irregular thrill of enthusiasm which ran through him from time to time and startled his imagination into life. it was only the instinct of a strong vitality unconsciously longing to be the central point of the vitalities around it. but he could not understand that. it seemed to him like a great opportunity brought "within reach but slipping by untaken, not to return again. he felt a strange, almost uncontrollable longing to spring upon one of the tribunes, to raise his voice, to speak to the great multitude, to fire all those men to break out and carry everything before them. he laughed audibly at himself. sant' ilario looked at his son with some curiosity. "what amuses you?" he asked. "a dream," answered orsino, still smiling. "who knows?" he exclaimed after a pause. "what would happen, if at the right moment the right man could stir such a crowd as this?" "strange things," replied sant' ilario gravely. "a crowd is a terrible weapon." "then my dream was not so foolish after all. one might make history to-day." sant' ilario made a gesture expressive of indifference. "what is history?" he asked. "a comedy in which the actors have no written parts, but improvise their speeches and actions as best they can. that is the reason why history is so dull and so full of mistakes." "and of surprises," suggested orsino. "the surprises in history are always disagreeable, my boy," answered sant' ilario. orsino felt the coldness in the answer and felt even more his father's readiness to damp any expression of enthusiasm. of late he had encountered this chilling indifference at almost every turn, whenever he gave vent to his admiration for any sort of activity. it was not that giovanni saracinesca had any intention of repressing his son's energetic instincts, and he assuredly had no idea of the effect his words often produced. he sometimes wondered at the sudden silence which came over the young man after such conversations, but he did not understand it and on the whole paid little attention to it. he remembered that he himself had been different, and had been wont to argue hotly and not unfrequently to quarrel with his father about trifles. he himself had been headstrong, passionate, often intractable in his early youth, and his father had been no better at sixty and was little improved in that respect even at his present great age. but orsino did not argue. he suggested, and if any one disagreed with him he became silent. he seemed to possess energy in action, and a number of rather fantastic aspirations, but in conversation he was easily silenced and in outward manner he would have seemed too yielding if he had not often seemed too cold. giovanni did not see that orsino was most like his mother in character, while the contact with a new generation had given him something unfamiliar to the old, an affectation at first, but one which habit was amalgamating with the real nature beneath. no doubt, it was wise and right to discourage ideas which would tend in any way to revolution. giovanni had seen revolutions and had been the loser by them. it was not wise and was certainly not necessary to throw cold water on the young fellow's harmless aspirations. but giovanni had lived for many years in his own way, rich, respected and supremely happy, and he believed that his way was good enough for orsino. he had, in his youth, tried most things for himself, and had found them failures so far as happiness was concerned. orsino might make the series of experiments in his turn if he pleased, but there was no adequate reason for such an expenditure of energy. the sooner the boy loved some girl who would make him a good wife, and the sooner he married her, the sooner he would find that calm, satisfactory existence which had not finally come to giovanni until after thirty years of age. as for the question of fortune, it was true that there were four sons, but there was giovanni's mother's fortune, there was corona's fortune, and there was the great saracinesca estate behind both. they were all so extremely rich that the deluge must be very distant. orsino understood none of these things. he only realised that his father had the faculty and apparently the intention of freezing any originality he chanced to show, and he inwardly resented the coldness, quietly, if foolishly, resolving to astonish those who misunderstood him by seizing the first opportunity of doing something out of the common way. for some time he stood in silence watching the people who came by and glancing from time to time at the dense crowd outside the barrier. he was suddenly aware that his father was observing intently a lady who advanced along the open, way. "there is tullia del ferice!" exclaimed sant' ilario in surprise. "i do not know her, except by sight," observed orsino indifferently. the countess was very imposing in her black veil and draperies. her red face seemed to lose its colour in the dim church and she affected a slow and stately manner more becoming to her weight than was her natural restless vivacity. she had got what she desired and she swept proudly along to take her old place among the ladies of rome. no one knew whose card she had delivered up at the entrance to the sacristy, and she enjoyed the triumph of showing that the wife of the revolutionary, the banker, the member of parliament, had not lost caste after all. she looked giovanni full in the face with her disagreeable blue eyes as she came up, apparently not meaning to recognise him. then, just as she passed him, she deigned to make a very slight inclination of the head, just enough to compel sant' ilario to return the salutation. it was very well done. orsino did not know all the details of the past events, but he knew that his father had once wounded del ferice in a duel and he looked at del fence's wife with some curiosity. he had seldom had an opportunity of being so near to her. "it was certainly not about her that they fought," he reflected. "it must have been about some other woman, if there was a woman in the question at all." a moment later he was aware that a pair of tawny eyes was fixed on him. maria consuelo was following donna tullia at a distance of a dozen yards. orsino came forward and his new acquaintance held out her hand. they had not met since they had first seen each other. "it was so kind of you," she said. "what, madame?" "to suggest this to gouache. i should have had no ticket--where shall i sit?" orsino did not understand, for though he had mentioned the subject, gouache had not told him what he meant to do. but there was no time to be lost in conversation. orsino led her to the nearest opening in the tribune and pointed to a seat. "i called," he said quickly. "you did not receive--" "come again, i will be at home," she answered in a low voice, as she passed him. she sat down in a vacant place beside donna tullia, and orsino noticed that his mother was just behind them both. corona had been watching him unconsciously, as she often did, and was somewhat surprised to see him conducting a lady whom she did not know. a glance told her that the lady was a foreigner; as such, if she were present at all, she should have been in the diplomatic tribune. there was nothing to think of, and corona tried to solve the small social problem that presented itself. orsino strolled back to his father's side. "who is she?" inquired sant' ilario with some curiosity. "the lady who wanted the tiger's skin--aranjuez--i told you of her." "the portrait you gave me was not flattering. she is handsome, if not beautiful." "did i say she was not?" asked orsino with a visible irritation most unlike him. "i thought so. you said she had yellow eyes, red hair and a squint." sant' ilario laughed. "perhaps i did. but the effect seems to be harmonious." "decidedly so. you might have introduced me." to this orsino said nothing, but relapsed into a moody silence. he would have liked nothing better than to bring about the acquaintance, but he had only met maria consuelo once, though that interview had been a long one, and he remembered her rather short answer to his offer of service in the way of making acquaintances. maria consuelo on her part was quite unconscious that she was sitting in front of the princess sant' ilario, but she had seen the lady by her side bow to orsino's companion in passing, and she guessed from a certain resemblance that the dark, middle-aged man might be young saracinesca's father. donna tullia had seen corona well enough, but as they had not spoken for nearly twenty years she decided not to risk a nod where she could not command an acknowledgment of it. so she pretended to be quite unconscious of her old enemy's presence. donna tullia, however, had noticed as she turned her head in sitting down that orsino was piloting a strange lady to the tribune, and when the latter sat down beside her, she determined to make her acquaintance, no matter upon what pretext. the time was approaching at which the procession was to make its appearance, and donna. tullia looked about for something upon which to open the conversation, glancing from time to time at her neighbour. it was easy to see that the place and the surroundings were equally unfamiliar to the newcomer, who looked with evident interest at the twisted columns of the high altar, at the vast mosaics in the dome, at the red damask hangings of the nave, at the swiss guards, the chamberlains in court dress and at all the mediã¦val-looking, motley figures that moved about within the space kept open for the coming function. "it is a wonderful sight," said donna tullia in trench, very softly, and almost as though speaking to herself. "wonderful indeed," answered maria consuelo, "especially to a stranger." "madame is a stranger, then," observed donna tullia with an agreeable smile. she looked into her neighbour's face and for the first time realised that she was a striking person. "quite," replied the latter, briefly, and as though not wishing to press the conversation. "i fancied so," said donna tullia, "though on seeing you in these seats, among us romans--" "i received a card through the kindness of a friend." there was a short pause, during which donna tullia concluded that the friend must have been orsino. but the next remark threw her off the scent. "it was his wife's ticket, i believe," said maria consuelo. "she could not come. i am here on false pretences." she smiled carelessly. donna tullia lost herself in speculation, but failed to solve the problem. "you have chosen a most favourable moment for your first visit to rome," she remarked at last. "yes. i am always fortunate. i believe i have seen everything worth seeing ever since i was a little girl." "she is somebody," thought donna tullia. "probably the wife of a diplomatist, though. those people see everything, and talk of nothing but what they have seen." "this is historic," she said aloud. "you will have a chance of contemplating the romans in their glory. colonna and orsini marching side by side, and old saracinesca in all his magnificence. he is eighty-two year old." "saracinesca?" repeated maria consuelo, turning her tawny eyes upon her neighbour. "yes. the father of sant' ilario--grandfather of that young fellow who showed you to your seat." "don orsino? yes, i know him slightly." corona, sitting immediately behind them heard her son's name. as the two ladies turned towards each other in conversation she heard distinctly what they said. donna tullia was of course aware of this. "do you?" she asked. "his father is a most estimable man--just a little too estimable, if you understand! as for the boy--" donna tullia moved, her broad shoulders expressively. it was a habit of which even the irreproachable del ferice could not cure her. corona's face darkened. "you can hardly call him a boy," observed maria consuelo with a smile. "ah well--i might have been his mother," donna tullia answered with a contempt for the affectation of youth which she rarely showed. but corona began to understand that the conversation was meant for her ears, and grew angry by degrees. donna tullia had indeed been near to marrying giovanni, and in that sense, too, she might have been orsino's mother. "i fancied you spoke rather disparagingly," said maria consuelo with a certain degree of interest. "i? no indeed. on the contrary, don orsino is a very fine fellow--but thrown away, positively thrown away in his present surroundings. of what use is all this english education--but you are a stranger, madame, you cannot understand our roman point of view." "if you could explain it to me, i might, perhaps," suggested the other. "ah yes--if i could explain it! but i am far too ignorant myself--no, ignorant is not the word--too prejudiced, perhaps, to make you see it quite as it is. perhaps i am a little too liberal, and the saracinesca are certainly far too conservative. they mistake education for progress. poor don orsino, i am sorry for him." donna tullia found no other escape from the difficulty into which she had thrown herself. "i did not know that he was to be pitied," said maria consuelo. "oh, not he in particular, perhaps," answered the stout countess, growing more and more vague. "they are all to be pitied, you know. what is to become of young men brought up in that way? the club, the turf, the card-table--to drink, to gamble, to bet, it is not an existence!" "do you mean that don orsino leads that sort of life?" inquired maria consuelo indifferently. again donna tullia's heavy shoulders moved contemptuously. "what else is there for him to do?" "and his father? did he not do likewise in his youth?" "his father? ah, he was different--before he married--full of life, activity, originality!" "and since his marriage?" "he has become estimable, most estimable." the smile with which donna tullia accompanied the statement was intended to be fine, but was only spiteful. maria consuelo, who saw everything with her sleepy glance, noticed the fact. corona was disgusted, and leaned back in her seat, as far as possible, in order not to hear more. she could not help wondering who the strange lady might be to whom donna tullia was so freely expressing her opinions concerning the saracinesca, and she determined to ask orsino after the ceremony. but she wished to hear as little more as she could. "when a married man becomes what you call estimable," said donna tullia's companion, "he either adores his wife or hates her." "what a charming idea!" laughed the countess. it was tolerably evident that the remark was beyond her. "she is stupid," thought maria consuelo. "i fancied so from the first. i will ask don orsino about her. he will say something amusing. it will be a subject of conversation at all events, in place of that endless tiger i invented the other day. i wonder whether this woman expects me to tell her who i am? that will amount to an acquaintance. she is certainly somebody, or she would not be here. on the other hand, she seems to dislike the only man i know besides gouache. that may lead to complications. let us talk of gouache first, and be guided by circumstances." "do you know monsieur gouache?" she inquired, abruptly. "the painter? yes--i have known him a long time. is he perhaps painting your portrait?" "exactly. it is really for that purpose that i am in rome. what a charming man!" "do you think so? perhaps he is. he painted me some time ago. i was not very well satisfied. but he has talent." donna tullia had never forgiven the artist for not putting enough soul into the picture he had painted of her when she was a very young widow. "he has a great reputation," said maria consuelo, "and i think he will succeed very well with me. besides, i am grateful to him. he and his painting have been a pleasant episode in my short stay here." "really, i should hardly have thought you could find it worth your while to come all the way to rome to be painted by gouache," observed donna tullia. "but of course, as i say, he has talent." "this woman is rich," she said to herself. "the wives of diplomatists do not allow themselves such caprices, as a rule. i wonder who she is?" "great talent," assented maria consuelo. "and great charm, i think." "ah well--of course--i daresay. we romans cannot help thinking that for an artist he is a little too much occupied in being a gentleman--and for a gentleman he is quite too much an artist." the remark was not original with donna tullia, but had been reported to her as spicca's, and spicca had really said something similar about somebody else. "i had not got that impression," said maria consuelo, quietly. "she hates him, too," she thought. "she seems to hate everybody. that either means that she knows everybody, or is not received in society." "but of course you know him better than i do," she added aloud, after a little pause. at that moment a strain of music broke out above the great, soft, muffled whispering that filled the basilica. some thirty chosen voices of the choir of saint peter's had begun the hymn "tu es petrus," as the procession began to defile from the south aisle into the nave, close by the great door, to traverse the whole distance thence to the high altar. the pope's own choir, consisting solely of the singers of the sixtine chapel, waited silently behind the lattice under the statue of saint veronica. the song rang out louder and louder, simple and grand. those who have heard italian singers at their best know that thirty young roman throats can emit a volume of sound equal to that which a hundred men of any other nation could produce. the stillness around them increased, too, as the procession lengthened. the great, dark crowd stood shoulder to shoulder, breathless with expectation, each man and woman feeling for a few short moments that thrill of mysterious anxiety and impatience which orsino had felt. no one who was there can ever forget what followed. more than forty cardinals filed out in front from the chapel of the pietã . then the hereditary assistants of the holy see, the heads of the colonna and the orsini houses, entered the nave, side by side for the first time, i believe, in history. immediately after them, high above all the procession and the crowd, appeared the great chair of state, the huge white feathered fans moving slowly on each side, and upon the throne, the central figure of that vast display, sat the pope, leo the thirteenth. then, without warning and without hesitation, a shout went up such as has never been heard before in that dim cathedral, nor will, perhaps, be heard again. "_viva il papa-rã¨!_ long life to the pope-king!" at the same instant, as though at a preconcerted signal--utterly impossible in such a throng--in the twinkling of an eye, the dark crowd was as white as snow. in every hand a white handkerchief was raised, fluttering and waving above every head. and the shout once taken up, drowned the strong voices of the singers as long-drawn thunder drowns the pattering of the raindrops and the sighing of the wind. the wonderful face, that seemed to be carved out of transparent alabaster, smiled and slowly turned from side to side as it passed by. the thin, fragile hand moved unceasingly, blessing the people. orsino saracinesca saw and heard, and his young face turned pale while his lips set themselves. by his side, a head shorter than he, stood his father, lost in thought as he gazed at the mighty spectacle of what had been, and of what might still have been, but for one day of history's surprises. orsino said nothing, but he glanced at sant' ilario's face as though to remind his father of what he had said half an hour earlier; and the elder man knew that there had been truth in the boy's words. there were soldiers in the church, and they were not italian soldiers--some thousands of them in all, perhaps. they were armed, and there were at the very least computation thirty thousand strong, grown men in the crowd. and the crowd was on fire. had there been a hundred, nay a score, of desperate, devoted leaders there, who knows what bloody work might not have been done in the city before the sun went down? who knows what new surprises history might have found for her play? the thought must have crossed many minds at that moment. but no one stirred; the religious ceremony remained a religious ceremony and nothing more; holy peace reigned within the walls, and the hour of peril glided away undisturbed to take its place among memories of good. "the world is worn out!" thought orsino. "the days of great deeds are over. let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die--they are right in teaching me their philosophy." a gloomy, sullen melancholy took hold of the boy's young nature, a passing mood, perhaps, but one which left its mark upon him. for he was at that age when a very little thing will turn the balance of a character, when an older man's thoughtless words may direct half a lifetime in a good or evil channel, being recalled and repeated for a score of years. who is it that does not remember that day when an impatient "i will," or a defiant "i will not," turned the whole current of his existence in the one direction or the other, towards good or evil, or towards success or failure? who, that has fought his way against odds into the front rank, has forgotten the woman's look that gave him courage, or the man's sneer that braced nerve and muscle to strike the first of many hard blows? the depression which fell upon orsino was lasting, for that morning at least. the stupendous pageant went on before him, the choirs sang, the sweet boys' voices answered back, like an angel's song, out of the lofty dome, the incense rose in columns through the streaming sunlight as the high mass proceeded. again the pope was raised upon the chair and borne out into the nave, whence in the solemn silence the thin, clear, aged voice intoned the benediction three times, slowly rising and falling, pausing and beginning again. once more the enormous shout broke out, louder and deeper than ever, as the procession moved away. then all was over. orsino saw and heard, but the first impression was gone, and the thrill did not come back. "it was a fine sight," he said to his father, as the shout died away. "a fine sight? have you no stronger expression than that?" "no," answered orsino, "i have not." the ladies were already coming out of the tribunes, and orsino saw his father give his arm to corona to lead her through the crowd. naturally enough, maria consuelo and donna tullia came out together very soon after her. orsino offered to pilot the former through the confusion, and she accepted gratefully. donna tullia walked beside them. "you do not know me, don orsino," said she with a gracious smile. "i beg your pardon--you are the countess del ferice--i have not been back from england long, and have not had an opportunity of being presented." whatever might be orsino's weaknesses, shyness was certainly not one of them, and as he made the civil answer he calmly looked at donna tullia as though to inquire what in the world she wished to accomplish in making his acquaintance. he had been so situated during the ceremony as not to see that the two ladies had fallen into conversation. "will you introduce me?" said maria consuelo. "we have been talking together." she spoke in a low voice, but the words could hardly have escaped donna tullia. orsino was very much surprised and not by any means pleased, for he saw that the elder woman had forced the introduction by a rather vulgar trick. nevertheless, he could not escape. "since you have been good enough to recognise me," he said rather stiffly to donna tullia, "permit me to make you acquainted with madame d'aranjuez d'aragona." both ladies nodded and smiled the smile of the newly introduced. donna tullia at once began to wonder how it was that a person with such a name should have but a plain "madame" to put before it. but her curiosity was not satisfied on this occasion. "how absurd society is!" she exclaimed. "madame d'aranjuez and i have been talking all the morning, quite like old friends--and now we need an introduction!" maria consuelo glanced at orsino as though, expecting him to make some remark. but he said nothing. "what should we do without conventions!" she said, for the sake of saying something. by this time they were threading the endless passages of the sacristy building, on their way to the piazza santa, marta. sant' ilario and corona were not far in front of them. at a turn in the corridor corona looked back. "there is orsino talking to tullia del ferice!" she exclaimed in great surprise. "and he has given his arm to that other lady who was next to her in the tribune." "what does it matter?" asked sant' ilario indifferently. "by the bye, the other lady is that madame d'aranjuez he talks about." "is she any relation of your mother's family, giovanni?" "not that i am aware of. she may have married some younger son of whom i never heard." "you do not seem to care whom orsino knows," said corona rather reproachfully. "orsino is grown up, dear. you must not forget that." "yes--i suppose he is," corona answered with a little sigh. "but surely you will not encourage him to cultivate the del ferice!" "i fancy it would take a deal of encouragement to drive him to that," said sant' ilario with a laugh. "he has better taste." there was some confusion outside. people were waiting for their carriages, and as most of them knew each other intimately every one was talking at once. donna tullia nodded here and there, but maria consuelo noticed that her salutations were coldly returned. orsino and his two companions stood a little aloof from the crowd. just then the saracinesca carriage drove up. "who is that magnificent woman?" asked maria consuelo, as corona got in. "my mother," said orsino. "my father is getting in now." "there comes my carriage! please help me." a modest hired brougham made its appearance. orsino hoped that madame d'aranjuez would offer him a seat. but he was mistaken. "i am afraid mine is miles away," said donna tullia. "good-bye, i shall be so glad if you will come and see me." she held out her hand. "may i not take you home?" asked maria consuelo. "there is just room--it will be better than waiting here." donna tullia hesitated a moment, and then accepted, to orsino's great annoyance. he helped the two ladies to get in, and shut the door. "come soon," said maria consuelo, giving him her hand out of the window. he was inclined to be angry, but the look that accompanied the invitation did its work satisfactorily. "he is very young," thought maria consuelo, as she drove away. "she can be very amusing. it is worth while," said orsino to himself as he passed in front of the next carriage, and walked out upon the small square. he had not gone far, hindered as he was at every step, when some one touched his arm. it was spicca, looking more cadaverous and exhausted than usual. "are you going home in a cab?" he asked. "then let us go together." they got out of the square, scarcely knowing how they had accomplished the feat. spicca seemed nervous as well as tired, and he leaned on orsino's arm. "there was a chance lost this morning," said the latter when they were under the colonnade. he felt sure of a bitter answer from the keen old man. "why did you not seize it then?" asked spicca. "do you expect old men like me to stand up and yell for a republic, or a restoration, or a monarchy, or whichever of the other seven plagues of egypt you desire? i have not voice enough left to call a cab, much less to howl down a kingdom." "i wonder what would have happened, if i, or some one else, had tried." "you would have spent the night in prison with a few kindred spirits. after all, that would have been better than making love to old donna tullia and her young friend." orsino laughed. "you have good eyes," he said. "so have you, orsino. use them. you will see something odd if you look where you were looking this morning. do you know what sort of a place this world is?" "it is a dull place. i have found that out already." "you are mistaken. it is hell. do you mind calling that cab?" orsino stared a moment at his companion, and then hailed the passing conveyance. chapter vi. orsino had shown less anxiety to see madame d'aranjuez than might perhaps have been expected. in the ten days which had elapsed between the sitting at gouache's studio and the first of january he had only once made an attempt to find her at home, and that attempt had failed. he had not even seen her passing in the street, and he had not been conscious of any uncontrollable desire to catch a glimpse of her at any price. but he had not forgotten her existence as he would certainly have forgotten that of a wholly indifferent person in the same time. on the contrary, he had thought of her frequently and had indulged in many speculations concerning her, wondering among other matters why he did not take more trouble to see her since she occupied his thoughts so much. he did not know that he was in reality hesitating, for he would not have acknowledged to himself that he could be in danger of falling seriously in love. he was too young to admit such a possibility, and the character which he admired and meant to assume was altogether too cold and superior to such weaknesses. to do him justice, he was really not of the sort to fall in love at first sight. persons capable of a self-imposed dualism rarely are, for the second nature they build up on the foundation of their own is never wholly artificial. the disposition to certain modes of thought and habits of bearing is really present, as is sufficiently proved by their admiration of both. very shy persons, for instance, invariably admire very self-possessed ones, and in trying to imitate them occasionally exhibit a cold-blooded arrogance which is amazing. timothy titmouse secretly looks up to don juan as his ideal, and after half a lifetime of failure outdoes his model, to the horror of his friends. dionysus masks as hercules, and the fox is sometimes not unsuccessful in his saint's disguise. those who have been intimate with a great actor know that the characters he plays best are not all assumed; there is a little of each in his own nature. there is a touch of the real othello in salvini--there is perhaps a strain of the melancholy scandinavian in english irving. to be short, orsino saracinesca was too enthusiastic to be wholly cold, and too thoughtful to be thoroughly enthusiastic. he saw things differently according to his moods, and being dissatisfied, he tried to make one mood prevail constantly over the other. in a mean nature the double view often makes an untruthful individual; in one possessing honourable instincts it frequently leads to unhappiness. affectation then becomes aspiration and the man's failure to impose on others is forgotten in his misery at failing to impose upon himself. the few words orsino had exchanged with maria consuelo on the morning of the great ceremony recalled vividly the pleasant hour he had spent with her ten days earlier, and he determined to see her as soon as possible. he was out of conceit with himself and consequently with all those who knew him, and he looked forward with pleasure to the conversation of an attractive woman who could have no preconceived opinion of him, and who could take him at his own estimate. he was curious, too, to find out something more definite in regard to her. she was mysterious, and the mystery pleased him. she had admitted that her deceased husband had spoken of being connected with the saracinesca, but he could not discover where the relationship lay. spicca's very odd remark, too, seemed to point to her, in some way which orsino could not understand, and he remembered her having said that she had heard of spicca. her husband had doubtless been an italian of spanish descent, but she had given no clue to her own nationality, and she did not look spanish, in spite of her name, maria consuelo. as no one in rome knew her it was impossible to get any information whatever. it was all very interesting. accordingly, late on the afternoon of the second of january, orsino called and was led to the door of a small sitting-room on the second floor of the hotel. the servant shut the door behind him and orsino found himself alone. a lamp with a pretty shade was burning on the table and beside it an ugly blue glass vase contained a few flowers, common roses, but fresh and fragrant. two or three new books in yellow paper covers lay scattered upon the hideous velvet table cloth, and beside one of them orsino noticed a magnificent paper cutter of chiselled silver, bearing a large monogram done in brilliants and rubies. the thing contrasted oddly with its surroundings and attracted the light. an easy chair was drawn up to the table, an abominable object covered with perfectly new yellow satin. a small red morocco cushion, of the kind used in travelling, was balanced on the back, and there was a depression in it, as though some one's head had lately rested there. orsino noticed all these details as he stood waiting for madame d'aranjuez to appear, and they were not without interest to him, for each one told a story, and the stories were contradictory. the room was not encumbered with those numberless objects which most women scatter about them within an hour after reaching a hotel. yet madame d'aranjuez must have been at least a month in rome. the room smelt neither of perfume nor of cigarettes, but of the roses, which was better, and a little of the lamp, which was much worse. the lady's only possessions seemed to be three books, a travelling cushion and a somewhat too gorgeous paper cutter; and these few objects were perfectly new. he glanced at the books; they were of the latest, and only one had been cut. the cushion might have been bought that morning. not a breath had tarnished the polished blade of the silver knife. a door opened softly and orsino drew himself up as some one pushed in the heavy, vivid curtains. but it was not madame d'aranjuez. a small dark woman of middle age, with downcast eyes and exceedingly black hair, came forward a step. "the signora will come presently," she said in italian, in a very low voice, as though she were almost afraid of hearing herself speak. she was gone in a moment, as noiselessly as she had come. this was evidently the silent maid of whom gouache had spoken. the few words she had spoken had revealed to orsino the fact that she was an italian from the north, for she had the unmistakable accent of the piedmontese, whose own language is comprehensible only by themselves. orsino prepared to wait some time, supposing that the message could hardly have been sent without an object. but another minute had not elapsed before maria consuelo herself appeared. in the soft lamplight her clear white skin looked very pale and her auburn hair almost red. she wore one of those nondescript garments which we have elected to call tea-gowns, and orsino, who had learned to criticise dress as he had learned latin grammar, saw that the tea-gown was good and the lace real. the colours produced no impression upon him whatever. as a matter of fact they were dark, being combined in various shades of olive. maria consuelo looked at her visitor and held out her hand, but said nothing. she did not even smile, and orsino began to fancy that he had chosen an unfortunate moment for his visit. "it was very good of you to let me come," he said, waiting for her to sit down. still she said nothing. she placed the red morocco cushion carefully in the particular position which would be most comfortable, turned the shade of the lamp a little, which, of course, produced no change whatever in the direction of the light, pushed one of the books half across the table and at last sat down in the easy chair. orsino sat down near her, holding his hat upon his knee. he wondered whether she had heard him speak, or whether she might not be one of those people who are painfully shy when there is no third person present. "i think it was very good of you to come," she said at last, when she was comfortably settled. "i wish goodness were always so easy," answered orsino with alacrity. "is it your ambition to be good?" asked maria consuelo with a smile. "it should be. but it is not a career." "then you do not believe in saints?" "not until they are canonised and made articles of belief--unless you are one, madame." "i have thought of trying it," answered maria consuelo, calmly. "saintship is a career, even in society, whatever you may say to the contrary. it has attractions, after all." "not equal to those of the other side. every one admits that. the majority is evidently in favour of sin, and if we are to believe in modern institutions, we must believe that majorities are right." "then the hero is always wrong, for he is the enthusiastic individual who is always for facing odds, and if no one disagrees with him he is very unhappy. yet there are heroes--" "where?" asked orsino. "the heroes people talk of ride bronze horses on inaccessible pedestals. when the bell rings for a revolution they are all knocked down and new ones are set up in their places--also executed by the best artists--and the old ones are cast into cannon to knock to pieces the ideas they invented. that is called history." "you take a cheerful and encouraging view of the world's history, don orsino." "the world is made for us, and we must accept it. but we may criticise it. there is nothing to the contrary in the contract." "in the social contract? are you going to talk to me about jean-jacques?" "have you read him, madame?" "'no woman who respects herself--'" began maria consuelo, quoting the famous preface. "i see that you have," said orsino, with a laugh. "i have not." "nor i." to orsino's surprise, madame d'aranjuez blushed. he could not have told why he was pleased, nor why her change of colour seemed so unexpected. "speaking of history," he said, after a very slight pause, "why did you thank me yesterday for having got you a card?" "did you not speak to gouache about it?" "i said something--i forget what. did he manage it?" "of course. i had his wife's place. she could not go. do you dislike being thanked for your good offices? are you so modest as that?" "not in the least, but i hate misunderstandings, though i will get all the credit i can for what i have not done, like other people. when i saw that you knew the del ferice, i thought that perhaps she had been exerting herself." "why do you hate her so?" asked maria consuelo. "i do not hate her. she does not exist--that is all." "why does she not exist, as you call it? she is a very good-natured woman. tell me the truth. everybody hates her--i saw that by the way they bowed to her while we were waiting--why? there must be a reason. is she a--an incorrect person?" orsino laughed. "no. that is the point at which existence is more likely to begin than to end." "how cynical you are! i do not like that. tell me about madame del ferice." "very well. to begin with, she is a relation of mine." "seriously?" "seriously. of course that gives me a right to handle the whole dictionary of abuse against her." "of course. are you going to do that?" "no. you would call me cynical. i do not like you to call me by bad names, madame." "i had an idea that men liked it," observed maria consuelo gravely. "one does not like to hear disagreeable truths." "then it is the truth? go on. you have forgotten what we were talking about." "not at all donna tullia, my second, third or fourth cousin, was married once upon a time to a certain mayer." "and left him. how interesting!" "no, madame. he left her--very suddenly, i believe--for another world. better or worse? who can say? considering his past life, worse, i suppose; but considering that he was not obliged to take donna tullia with him, decidedly better." "you certainly hate her. then she married del ferice." "then she married del ferice--before i was born. she is fabulously old. mayer left her very rich, and without conditions. del ferice was an impossible person. my father nearly killed him in a duel once--also before i was born. i never knew what it was about. del ferice was a spy, in the old days when spies got a living in a rome--" "ah! i see it all now!" exclaimed maria consuelo. "del ferice is white, and you are black. of course you hate each other. you need not tell me any more." "how you take that for granted!" "is it not perfectly clear? do not talk to me of like and dislike when your dreadful parties have anything to do with either! besides, if i had any sympathy with either side it would be for the whites. but the whole thing is absurd, complicated, mediaeval, feudal--anything you like except sensible. your intolerance is--intolerable." "true tolerance should tolerate even intolerance," observed orsino smartly. "that sounds like one of the puzzles of pronunciation like 'in un piatto poco cupo poco pepe pisto cape,'" laughed maria consuelo. "tolerably tolerable tolerance tolerates tolerable tolerance intolerably--" "you speak italian?" asked orsino, surprised by her glib enunciation of the difficult sentence she had quoted. "why are we talking a foreign language?" "i cannot really speak italian. i have an italian maid, who speaks french. but she taught me that puzzle." "it is odd--your maid is a piedmontese and you have a good accent." "have i? i am very glad. but tell me, is it not absurd that you should hate these people as you do--you cannot deny it--merely because they are whites?" "everything in life is absurd if you take the opposite point of view. lunatics find endless amusement in watching sane people." "and of course, you are the sane people," observed maria consuelo. "of course." "what becomes of me? i suppose i do not exist? you would not be rude enough to class me with the lunatics." "certainly not. you will of course choose to be a black." "in order to be discontented, as you are?" "discontented?" "yes. are you not utterly out of sympathy with your surroundings? are you not hampered at every step by a network of traditions which have no meaning to your intelligence, but which are laid on you like a harness upon a horse, and in which you are driven your daily little round of tiresome amusement--or dissipation? do you not hate the corso as an omnibus horse hates it? do you not really hate the very faces of all those people who effectually prevent you from using your own intelligence, your own strength--your own heart? one sees it in your face. you are too young to be tired of life. no, i am not going to call you a boy, though i am older than you, don orsino. you will find people enough in your own surroundings to call you a boy--because you are not yet so utterly tamed and wearied as they are, and for no other reason. you are a man. i do not know your age, but you do not talk as boys do. you are a man--then be a man altogether, be independent--use your hands for something better than throwing mud at other people's houses merely because they are new!" orsino looked at her in astonishment. this was certainly not the sort of conversation he had anticipated when he had entered the room. "you are surprised because i speak like this," she said after a short pause. "you are a saracinesca and i am--a stranger, here to-day and gone to-morrow, whom you will probably never see again. it is amusing, is it not? why do you not laugh?" maria consuelo smiled and as usual her strong red lips closed as soon as she had finished speaking, a habit which lent the smile something unusual, half-mysterious, and self-contained. "i see nothing to laugh at," answered orsino. "did the mythological personage whose name i have forgotten laugh when the sphynx proposed the riddle to him?" "that is the third time within the last few days that i have been compared to a sphynx by you or gouache. it lacks originality in the end." "i was not thinking of being original. i was too much interested. your riddle is the problem of my life." "the resemblance ceases there. i cannot eat you up if you do not guess the answer--or if you do not take my advice. i am not prepared to go so far as that." "was it advice? it sounded more like a question." "i would not ask one when i am sure of getting no answer. besides, i do not like being laughed at." "what has that to do with the matter? why imagine anything so impossible?" "after all--perhaps it is more foolish to say, 'i advise you to do so and so,' than to ask, 'why do you not do so and so?' advice is always disagreeable and the adviser is always more or less ridiculous. advice brings its own punishment." "is that not cynical?" asked orsino. "no. why? what is the worst thing you can do to your social enemy? prevail upon him to give you his counsel, act upon it--it will of course turn out badly--then say, "i feared this would happen, but as you advised me i did not like--" and so on! that is simple and always effectual. try it." "not for worlds!" "i did not mean with me," answered maria consuelo with a laugh. "no. i am afraid there are other reasons which will prevent me from making a career for myself," said orsino thoughtfully. maria consuelo saw by his face that the subject was a serious one with him, as she had already guessed that it must be, and one which would always interest him. she therefore let it drop, keeping it in reserve in case the conversation flagged. "i am going to see madame del ferice to-morrow," she observed, changing the subject. "do you think that is necessary?" "since i wish it! i have not your reasons for avoiding her." "i offended you the other day, madame, did i not? you remember--when i offered my services in a social way." "no--you amused me," answered maria consuelo coolly, and watching to see how he would take the rebuke. but, young as orsino was, he was a match for her in self-possession. "i am very glad," he answered without a trace of annoyance. "i feared you were displeased." maria consuelo smiled again, and her momentary coldness vanished. the answer delighted her, and did more to interest her in orsino than fifty clever sayings could have done. she resolved to push the question a little further. "i will be frank," she said. "it is always best," answered orsino, beginning to suspect that something very tortuous was coming. his disbelief in phrases of the kind, though originally artificial, was becoming profound. "yes, i will be quite frank," she repeated. "you do not wish me to know the del ferice and their set, and you do wish me to know the people you like." "evidently." "why should i not do as i please?" she was clearly trying to entrap him into a foolish answer, and he grew more and more wary. "it would be very strange if you did not," answered orsino without hesitation. "why, again?" "because you are absolutely free to make your own choice." "and if my choice does not meet with your approval?" she asked. "what can i say, madame? i and my friends will be the losers, not you." orsino had kept his temper admirably, and he did not suffer a hasty word to escape his lips nor a shadow of irritation to appear in his face. yet she had pressed him in a way which was little short of rude. she was silent for a few seconds, during which orsino watched her face as she turned it slightly away from him and from the lamp. in reality he was wondering why she was not more communicative about herself, and speculating as to whether her silence in that quarter proceeded from the consciousness of a perfectly assured position in the world, or from the fact that she had something to conceal; and this idea led him to congratulate himself upon not having been obliged to act immediately upon his first proposal by bringing about an acquaintance between madame d'aranjuez and his mother. this uncertainty lent a spice of interest to the acquaintance. he knew enough of the world already to be sure that maria consuelo was born and bred in that state of life to which it has pleased providence to call the social elect. but the peculiar people sometimes do strange things and afterwards establish themselves in foreign cities where their doings are not likely to be known for some time. not that orsino cared what this particular stranger's past might have been. but he knew that his mother would care very much indeed, if orsino wished her to know the mysterious lady, and would sift the matter very thoroughly before asking her to the palazzo saracinesca. donna tullia, on the other hand, had committed herself to the acquaintance on her own responsibility, evidently taking it for granted that if orsino knew madame d'aranjuez, the latter must be socially irreproachable. it amused orsino to imagine the fat countess's rage if she turned out to have made a mistake. "i shall be the loser too," said maria consuelo, in a different tone, "if i make a bad choice. but i cannot draw back. i took her to her house in my carriage. she seemed to take a fancy to me--" she laughed a little. orsino smiled as though to imply that the circumstance did not surprise him. "and she said she would come to see me. as a stranger i could not do less than insist upon making the first visit, and i named the day--or rather she did. i am going to-morrow." "to-morrow? tuesday is her day. you will meet all her friends." "do you mean to say that people still have days in rome?" maria consuelo did not look pleased. "some people do--very few. most people prefer to be at home one evening in the week." "what sort of people are madame del ferice's friends?" "excellent people." "why are you so cautious?" "because you are about to be one of them, madame." "am i? no, i will not begin another catechism! you are too clever--i shall never get a direct answer from you." "not in that way," answered orsino with a frankness that made his companion smile. "how then?" "i think you would know how," he replied gravely, and he fixed his young black eyes on her with an expression that made her half close her own. "i should think you would make a good actor," she said softly. "provided that i might be allowed to be sincere between the acts." "that sounds well. a little ambiguous perhaps. your sincerity might or might not take the same direction as the part you had been acting." "that would depend entirely upon yourself, madame." this time maria consuelo opened her eyes instead of closing them. "you do not lack--what shall i say? a certain assurance--you do not waste time!" she laughed merrily, and orsino laughed with her. "we are between the acts now," he said. "the curtain goes up to-morrow, and you join the enemy." "come with me, then." "in your carriage? i shall be enchanted." "no. you know i do not mean that. come with me to the enemy's camp. it will be very amusing." orsino shook his head. "i would rather die--if possible at your feet, madame." "are you afraid to call upon madame del ferice?" "more than of death itself." "how can you say that?" "the conditions of the life to come are doubtful--there might be a chance for me. there is no doubt at all as to what would happen if i went to see madame del ferice." "is your father so severe with you?" asked maria consuelo with a little scorn. "alas, madame, i am not sensitive to ridicule," answered orsino, quite unmoved. "i grant that there is something wanting in my character." maria consuelo had hoped to find a weak point, and had failed, though indeed there were many in the young man's armour. she was a little annoyed, both at her own lack of judgment and because it would have amused her to see orsino in an element so unfamiliar to him as that in which donna tullia lived. "and there is nothing which would induce you to go there?" she asked. "at present--nothing," orsino answered coldly. "at present--but in the future of all possible possibilities?" "i shall undoubtedly go there. it is only the unforeseen which invariably happens." "i think so too." "of course. i will illustrate the proverb by bidding you good evening," said orsino, laughing as he rose. "by this time the conviction must have formed itself in your mind that i was never going. the unforeseen happens. i go." maria consuelo would have been glad if he had stayed even longer, for he amused her and interested her, and she did not look forward with pleasure to the lonely evening she was to spend in the hotel. "i am generally at home at this hour," she said, giving him her hand. "then, if you will allow me? thanks. good evening, madame." their eyes met for a moment, and then orsino left the room. as he lit his cigarette in the porch of the hotel, he said to himself that he had not wasted his hour, and he was pleasantly conscious of tha inward and spiritual satisfaction which every very young man feels when he is aware of having appeared at his best in the society of a woman alone. youth without vanity is only premature old age after all. "she is certainly more than pretty," he said to himself, affecting to be critical when he was indeed convinced. "her mouth is fabulous, but it is well shaped and the rest is perfect--no, the nose is insignificant, and one of those yellow eyes wanders a little. these are not perfections. but what does it matter? the whole is charming, whatever the parts may be. i wish she would not go to that horrible fat woman's tea to-morrow." such were the observations which orsino thought fit to make to himself, but which by no means represented all that he felt, for they took no notice whatever of that extreme satisfaction at having talked well with maria consuelo, which in reality dominated every other sensation just then. he was well enough accustomed to consideration, though his only taste of society had been enjoyed during the winter vacations of the last two years. he was not the greatest match in the roman matrimonial market for nothing, and he was perfectly well aware of his advantages in this respect. he possessed that keen, business-like appreciation of his value as a marriageable man which seems to characterise the young generation of to-day, and he was not mistaken in his estimate. it was made sufficiently clear to him at every turn that he had but to ask in order to receive. but he had not the slightest intention of marrying at one and twenty as several of his old school-fellows were doing, and he was sensible enough to foresee that his position as a desirable son-in-law would soon cause him more annoyance than amusement. madame d'aranjuez was doubtless aware that she could not marry him if she wished to do so. she was several years older than he--he admitted the fact rather reluctantly--she was a widow, and she seemed to have no particular social position. these were excellent reasons against matrimony, but they were also equally excellent reasons for being pleased with himself at having produced a favourable impression on her. he walked rapidly along the crowded street, glancing carelessly at the people who passed and at the brilliantly lighted windows of the shops. he passed the door of the club, where he was already becoming known for rather reckless play, and he quite forgot that a number of men were probably spending an hour at the tables before dinner, a fact which would hardly have escaped his memory if he had not been more than usually occupied with pleasant thoughts. he did not need the excitement of baccarat nor the stimulus of brandy and soda, for his brain was already both excited and stimulated, though he was not at once aware of it. but it became clear to him when he suddenly found himself standing before the steps of the capitol in the gloomy square of the ara coeli, wondering what in the world had brought him so far out of his way. "what a fool i am!" he exclaimed impatiently, as he turned back and walked in the direction of his home. "and yet she told me that i would make a good actor. they say that an actor should never be carried away by his part." at dinner that evening he was alternately talkative and very silent. "where have you been to-day, orsino?" asked his father, looking at him curiously. "i spent half an hour with madame d'aranjuez, and then went for a walk," answered orsino with sudden indifference. "what is she like?" asked corona. "clever--at least in rome." there was an odd, nervous sharpness about the answer. old saracinesca raised his keen eyes without lifting his head and looked hard at his grandson. he was a little bent in his great old age. "the boy is in love!" he exclaimed abruptly, and a laugh that was still deep and ringing followed the words. orsino recovered his self-possession and smiled carelessly. corona was thoughtful during the remainder of the meal. chapter vii. the princess sant' ilario's early life had been deeply stirred by the great makers of human character, sorrow and happiness. she had suffered profoundly, she had borne her trials with a rare courage, and her reward, if one may call it so, had been very great. she had seen the world and known it well, and the knowledge had not been forgotten in the peaceful prosperity of later years. gifted with a beauty not equalled, perhaps, in those times, endowed with a strong and passionate nature under a singularly cold and calm outward manner, she had been saved from many dangers by the rarest of commonplace qualities, common sense. she had never passed for an intellectual person, she had never been very brilliant in conversation, she had even been thought old-fashioned in her prejudices concerning the books she read. but her judgment had rarely failed her at critical moments. once only, she remembered having committed a great mistake, of which the sudden and unexpected consequences had almost wrecked her life. but in that case she had suffered her heart to lead her, an innocent girl's good name had been at stake, and she had rashly taken a responsibility too heavy for love itself to bear. those days were long past now; twenty years separated corona, the mother of four tall sons, from the corona who had risked all to save poor little faustina montevarchi. but even she knew that a state of such perpetual and unclouded happiness could hardly last a lifetime, and she had forced herself, almost laughing at the thought, to look forward to the day when orsino must cease to be a boy and must face the world of strong loves and hates through which most men have to pass, and which all men must have known in order to be men indeed. the people whose lives are full of the most romantic incidents, are not generally, i think, people of romantic disposition. romance, like power, will come uncalled for, and those who seek it most, are often those who find it least. and the reason is simple enough. the man of heart is not perpetually burrowing in his surroundings for affections upon which his heart may feed, any more than the very strong man is naturally impelled to lift every weight he sees or to fight with every man he meets. the persons whom others call romantic are rarely conscious of being so. they are generally far too much occupied with the one great thought which make their strongest, bravest and meanest actions seem perfectly commonplace to themselves. corona del carmine, who had heroically sacrificed herself in her earliest girlhood to save her father from ruin and who a few years later had risked a priceless happiness to shield a foolish girl, had not in her whole life been conscious of a single romantic instinct. brave, devoted, but unimaginative by nature, she had followed her heart's direction in most worldly matters. she was amazed to find that she was becoming romantic now, in her dreams for orsino's future. all sorts of ideas which she would have laughed at in her own youth flitted through her brain from morning till night. her fancy built up a life for her eldest son, which she knew to be far from the possibility of realisation, but which had for her a new and strange attraction. she planned for him the most unimaginable happiness, of a kind which would perhaps have hardly satisfied his more modern instincts. she saw a maiden of indescribable beauty, brought up in unapproachable perfections, guarded by the all but insuperable jealousy of an ideal home. orsino was to love this vision, and none other, from the first meeting to the term of his natural life, and was to win her in the face or difficulties such as would have made even giovanni, the incomparable, look grave. this radiant creature was also to love orsino, as a matter of course, with a love vastly more angelic than human, but not hastily nor thoughtlessly, lest orsino should get her too easily and not value her as he ought. then she saw the two betrothed, side by side on shady lawns and moonlit terraces, in a perfectly beautiful intimacy such as they would certainly never enjoy in the existing conditions of their own society. but that mattered little. the wooing, the winning and the marrying of the exquisite girl were to make up orsino's life, and fifty or sixty years of idyllic happiness were to be the reward of their mutual devotion. had she not spent twenty such years herself? then why should not all the rest be possible? the dreams came and went and she was too sensible not to laugh at them. that was not the youth of giovanni, her husband, nor of men who even faintly resembled him in her estimation. giovanni had wandered far, had seen much, and had undoubtedly indulged more than one passing affection, before he had been thirty years of age and had loved corona. giovanni would laugh too, if she told him of her vision of two young and beautiful married saints. and his laugh would be more sincere than her own. nevertheless, her dreams haunted her, as they have haunted many a loving mother, ever since althaea plucked from the flame the burning brand that measured meleager's life, and smothered the sparks upon it and hid it away among her treasures. such things seem foolish, no doubt, in the measure of fact, in the glaring light of our day. the thought is none the less noble. the dream of an untainted love, the vision of unspotted youth and pure maiden, the glory of unbroken faith kept whole by man and wife in holy wedlock, the pride of stainless name and stainless race--these things are not less high because there is a sublimity in the strength of a great sin which may lie the closer to our sympathy, as the sinning is the nearer to our weakness. when old saracinesca looked up from under his bushy brows and laughed and said that his grandson was in love, he thought no more of what he said than if he had remarked that orsino's beard was growing or that giovanni's was turning grey. but corona's pretty fancies received a shock from which they never recovered again, and though she did her best to call them back they lost all their reality from that hour. the plain fact that at one and twenty years the boy is a man, though a very young one, was made suddenly clear to her, and she was faced by another fact still more destructive of her ideals, namely, that a man is not to be kept from falling in love, when and where he is so inclined, by any personal influence whatsoever. she knew that well enough, and the supposition that his first young passion might be for madame d'aranjuez was by no means comforting. corona immediately felt an interest in that lady which she had not felt before and which was not altogether friendly. it seemed to her necessary in the first place to find out something definite concerning maria consuelo, and this was no easy matter. she communicated her wish to her husband when they were alone that evening. "i know nothing about her," answered giovanni. "and i do not know any one who does. after all it is of very little importance." "what if he falls seriously in love with this woman?" "we will send him round the world. at his age that will cure anything. when he comes back madame d'aranjuez will have retired to the chaos of the unknown out of which orsino has evolved her." "she does not look the kind of woman to disappear at the right moment," observed corona doubtfully. giovanni was at that moment supremely comfortable, both in mind and body. it was late. the old prince had gone to his own quarters, the boys were in bed, and orsino was presumably at a party or at the club. sant' ilario was enjoying the delight of spending an hour alone in his wife's society. they were in corona's old boudoir, a place full of associations for them both. he did not want to be mentally disturbed. he said nothing in answer to his wife's remark. she repeated it in a different form. "women like her do not disappear when one does not want them," she said. "what makes you think so?" inquired giovanni with a man's irritating indolence when he does not mean to grasp a disagreeable idea. "i know it," corona answered, resting her chin upon her hand and staring at the fire. giovanni surrendered unconditionally. "you are probably right, dear. you always are about people." "well--then you must see the importance of what i say," said corona pushing her victory. "of course, of course," answered giovanni, squinting at the flames with one eye between his outstretched fingers. "i wish you would wake up!" exclaimed corona, taking the hand in hers and drawing it to her. "orsino is probably making love to madame d'aranjuez at this very moment." "then i will imitate him, and make love to you, my dear. i could not be better occupied, and you know it. you used to say i did it very well." corona laughed in her deep, soft voice. "orsino is like you. that is what frightens me. he will make love too well. be serious, giovanni. think of what i am saying." "let us dismiss the question then, for the simple reason that there is absolutely nothing to be done. we cannot turn this good woman out of rome, and we cannot lock orsino up in his room. to tell a boy not to bestow his affections in a certain quarter is like ramming a charge into a gun and then expecting that it will not come out by the same way. the harder you ram it down the more noise it makes--that is all. encourage him and he may possibly tire of it. hinder him and he will become inconveniently heroic." "i suppose that is true," said corona. "then at least find out who the woman is," she added, after a pause. "i will try," giovanni answered. "i will even go to the length of spending an hour a day at the club, if that will do any good--and you know how i detest clubs. but if anything whatever is known of her, it will be known there." giovanni kept his word and expended more energy in attempting to find out something about madame d'aranjuez during the next few days than he had devoted to anything connected with society for a long time. nearly a week elapsed before his efforts met with any success. he was in the club one afternoon at an early hour, reading the papers, and not more than three or four other men were present. among them were frangipani and montevarchi, who was formerly known as ascanio bellegra. there was also a certain young foreigner, a diplomatist, who, like sant' ilario, was reading a paper, most probably in search of an idea for the next visit on his list. giovanni suddenly came upon a description of a dinner and reception given by del ferice and his wife. the paragraph was written in the usual florid style with a fine generosity in the distribution of titles to unknown persons. "the centre of all attraction," said the reporter, "was a most beautiful spanish princess, donna maria consuelo d'a----z d'a----a, in whose mysterious eyes are reflected the divine fires of a thousand triumphs, and who was gracefully attired in olive green brocade--" "oh! is that it?" said sant' ilario aloud, and in the peculiar tone always used by a man who makes a discovery in a daily paper. "what is it?" inquired frangipani and montevarchi in the same breath. the young diplomatist looked up with an air of interrogation. sant' ilario read the paragraph aloud. all three listened as though the fate of empires depended on the facts reported. "just like the newspapers!" exclaimed frangipani. "there probably is no such person. is there, ascanio?" montevarchi had always been a weak fellow, and was reported to be at present very deep in the building speculations of the day. but there was one point upon which he justly prided himself. he was a superior authority on genealogy. it was his passion and no one ever disputed his knowledge or decision. he stroked his fair beard, looked out of the window, winked his pale blue eyes once or twice and then gave his verdict. "there is no such person," he said gravely. "i beg your pardon, prince," said the young diplomatist, "i have met her. she exists." "my dear friend," answered montevarchi, "i do not doubt the existence of the woman, as such, and i would certainly not think of disagreeing with you, even if i had the slightest ground for doing so, which, i hasten to say, i have not. nor, of course, if she is a friend of yours, would i like to say more on the subject. but i have taken some little interest in genealogy and i have a modest library--about two thousand volumes, only--consisting solely of works on the subject, all of which i have read and many of which i have carefully annotated. i need not say that they are all at your disposal if you should desire to make any researches." montevarchi had much of his murdered father's manner, without the old man's strength. the young secretary of embassy was rather startled at the idea of searching through two thousand volumes in pursuit of madame d'aranjuez's identity. sant' ilario laughed. "i only mean that i have met the lady," said the young man. "of course you are right. i have no idea who she may really be. i have heard odd stories about her." "oh--have you?" asked sant' ilario with renewed interest. "yes, very odd." he paused and looked round the room to assure himself that no one else was present. "there are two distinct stories about her. the first is this. they say that she is a south american prima donna, who sang only a few months, at rio de janeiro and then at buenos ayres. an italian who had gone out there and made a fortune married her from the stage. in coming to europe, he unfortunately fell overboard and she inherited all his money. people say that she was the only person who witnessed the accident. the man's name was aragno. she twisted it once and made aranjuez of it, and she turned it again and discovered that it spelled aragona. that is the first story. it sounds well at all events." "very," said sant' ilario, with a laugh. "a profoundly interesting page in genealogy, if she happens to marry somebody," observed montevarchi, mentally noting all the facts. "what is the other story?" asked frangipani. "the other story is much less concise and detailed. according to this version, she is the daughter of a certain royal personage and of a polish countess. there is always a polish countess in those stories! she was never married. the royal personage has had her educated in a convent and has sent her out into the wide world with a pretty fancy name of his own invention, plentifully supplied with money and regular documents referring to her union with the imaginary aranjuez, and protected by a sort of body-guard of mutes and duennas who never appear in public. she is of course to make a great match for herself, and has come to rome to do it. that is also a pretty tale." "more interesting than the other," said montevarchi. "these side lights of genealogy, these stray rivulets of royal races, if i may so poetically call them, possess an absorbing interest for the student. i will make a note of it." "of course, i do not vouch for the truth of a single word in either story," observed the young man. "of the two the first is the less improbable. i have met her and talked to her and she is certainly not less than five and twenty years old. she may be more. in any case she is too old to have been just let out of a convent." "perhaps she has been loose for some years," observed sant' ilario, speaking of her as though she were a dangerous wild animal. "we should have heard of her," objected the other. "she has the sort of personality which is noticed anywhere and which makes itself felt." "then you incline to the belief that she dropped the signor aragno quietly overboard in the neighbourhood of the equator?" "the real story may be quite different from either of those i have told you." "and she is a friend of poor old donna tullia!" exclaimed montevarchi regretfully. "i am sorry for that. for the sake of her history i could almost have gone to the length of making her acquaintance." "how the del ferice would rave if she could hear you call her poor old donna tullia," observed frangipani. "i remember how she danced at the ball when i came of age!" "that was a long time ago, filippo," said montevarchi thoughtfully, "a very long time ago. we were all young once, filippo--but donna tullia is really only fit to fill a glass case in a museum of natural history now." the remark was not original, and had been in circulation some time. but the three men laughed a little and montevarchi was much pleased by their appreciation. he and frangipani began to talk together, and sant' ilario took up his paper again. when the young diplomatist laid his own aside and went out, giovanni followed him, and they left the club together. "have you any reason to believe that there is anything irregular about this madame d'aranjuez?" asked sant' ilario. "no. stories of that kind are generally inventions. she has not been presented at court--but that means nothing here. and there is a doubt about her nationality--but no one has asked her directly about it." "may i ask who told you the stories?" the young man's face immediately lost all expression. "really--i have quite forgotten," he said. "people have been talking about her." sant' ilario justly concluded that his companion's informant was a lady, and probably one in whom the diplomatist was interested. discretion is so rare that it can easily be traced to its causes. giovanni left the young man and walked away in the opposite direction, inwardly meditating a piece of diplomacy quite foreign to his nature. he said to himself that he would watch the man in the world and that it would be easy to guess who the lady in question was. it would have been clear to any one but himself that he was not likely to learn anything worth knowing, by his present mode of procedure. "gouache," he said, entering the artist's studio a quarter of an hour later, "do you know anything about madame d'aranjuez?" "that is all i know," gouache answered, pointing to maria consuelo's portrait which stood finished upon an easel before him, set in an old frame. he had been touching it when giovanni entered. "that is all i know, and i do not know that thoroughly. i wish i did. she is a wonderful subject." sant' ilario gazed at the picture in silence. "are her eyes really like these?" he asked at length. "much finer." "and her mouth?" "much larger," answered gouache with a smile. "she is bad," said giovanni with conviction, and he thought of the signor aragno. "women are never bad," observed gouache with a thoughtful air. "some are less angelic than others. you need only tell them all so to assure yourself of the fact." "i daresay. what is this person? french, spanish--south american?" "i have not the least idea. she is not french, at all events." "excuse me--does your wife know her?" gouache glanced quickly at his visitor's face. "no." gouache was a singularly kind man, and he did his best perhaps for reasons of his own, to convey nothing by the monosyllable beyond the simple negation of a fact. but the effort was not altogether successful. there was an almost imperceptible shade of surprise in the tone which did not escape giovanni. on the other hand it was perfectly clear to gouache that sant' ilario's interest in the matter was connected with orsino. "i cannot find any one who knows anything definite," said giovanni after a pause. "have you tried spicca?" asked the artist, examining his work critically. "no. why spicca?" "he always knows everything," answered gouache vaguely. "by the way, saracinesca, do you not think there might be a little more light just over the left eye?" "how should i know?" "you ought to know. what is the use of having been brought up under the very noses of original portraits, all painted by the best masters and doubtless ordered by your ancestors at a very considerable expense--if you do not know?" giovanni laughed. "my dear old friend," he said good-humouredly, "have you known us nearly five and twenty years without discovering that it is our peculiar privilege to be ignorant without reproach?" gouache laughed in his turn. "you do not often make sharp remarks--but when you do!" giovanni left the studio very soon, and went in search of spicca. it was no easy matter to find the peripatetic cynic on a winter's afternoon, but gouache's remark had seemed to mean something, and sant' ilario saw a faint glimmer of hope in the distance. he knew spicca's habits very well, and was aware that when the sun was low he would certainly turn into one of the many houses where he was intimate, and spend an hour over a cup of tea. the difficulty lay in ascertaining which particular fireside he would select on that afternoon. giovanni hastily sketched a route for himself and asked the porter at each of his friends' houses if spicca had entered. fortune favoured him at last. spicca was drinking his tea with the marchesa di san giacinto. giovanni paused a moment before the gateway of the palace in which san giacinto had inhabited a large hired apartment for many years. he did not see much of his cousin, now, on account of differences in political opinion, and he had no reason whatever for calling on flavia, especially as formal new year's visits had lately been exchanged. however, as san giacinto was now a leading authority on questions of landed property in the city, it struck him that he could pretend a desire to see flavia's husband, and make that an excuse for staying a long time, if necessary, in order to wait for him. he found flavia and spicca alone together, with a small tea-table between them. the air was heavy with the smoke of cigarettes, which clung to the oriental curtains and hung in clouds about the rare palms and plants. everything in the san giacinto house was large, comfortable and unostentatious. there was not a chair to be seen which might not have held the giant's frame. san giacinto was a wonderful judge of what was good. if he paid twice as much as montevarchi for a horse, the horse turned out to be capable of four times the work. if he bought a picture at a sale, it was discovered to be by some good master and other people wondered why they had lost courage in the bidding for a trifle of a hundred francs. nothing ever turned out badly with him, but no success had the power to shake his solid prudence. no one knew how rich he was, but those who had watched him understood that he would never let the world guess at half his fortune. he was a giant in all ways and he had shown what he could do when he had dominated flavia during the first year of their marriage. she had at first been proud of him, but about the time when she would have wearied of another man, she discovered that she feared him in a way she certainly did not fear the devil. yet lie had never spoken a harsh, word to her in his life. but there was something positively appalling to her in his enormous strength, rarely exhibited and never without good reason, but always quietly present, as the outline of a vast mountain reflected in a placid lake. then she discovered to her great surprise that he really loved her, which she had not expected, and at the end of three years he became aware that she loved him, which was still more astonishing. as usual, his investment had turned out well. at the time of which i am speaking flavia was a slight, graceful woman of forty years or thereabouts, retaining much of the brilliant prettiness which served her for beauty, and conspicuous always for her extremely bright eyes. she was of the type of women who live to a great age. she had not expected to see sant' ilario, and as she gave her hand, she looked up at him with an air of inquiry. it would have been like him to say that he had come to see her husband and not herself, for he had no tact with persons whom he did not especially like. there are such people in the world. "will you give me a cup of tea, flavia?" he asked, as he sat down, after shaking hands with spicca. "have you at last heard that your cousin's tea is good?" inquired the latter, who was surprised by giovanni's coming. "i am afraid it is cold," said flavia, looking into the teapot, as though she could discover the temperature by inspection. "it is no matter," answered giovanni absently. he was wondering how he could lead the conversation to the discussion of madame d'aranjuez. "you belong to the swallowers," observed spicca, lighting a fresh cigarette. "you swallow something, no matter what, and you are satisfied." "it is the simplest way--one is never disappointed." "it is a pity one cannot swallow people in the same way," said flavia with a laugh. "most people do," answered spicca viciously. "were you at the jubilee on the first day?" asked giovanni, addressing flavia. "of course i was--and you spoke to me." "that is true. by the bye, i saw that excellent donna tullia there. i wonder whose ticket she had." "she had the princess befana's," answered spicca, who knew everything. "the old lady happened to be dying--she always dies at the beginning of the season--it used to be for economy, but it has become a habit--and so del ferice bought her card of her servant for his wife." "who was the lady who sat with her?" asked giovanni, delighted with his own skill. "you ought to know!" exclaimed flavia. "we all saw orsino take her out. that is the famous, the incomparable madame d'aranjuez--the most beautiful of spanish princesses according to to-day's paper. i daresay you have seen the account of the del ferice party. she is no more spanish than alexander the great. is she, spicca?" "no, she is not spanish," answered the latter. "then what in the world is she?" asked giovanni impatiently. "how should i know? of course it is very disagreeable for you." it was flavia who spoke. "disagreeable? how?" "why, about orsino of course. everybody says he is devoted to her." "i wish everybody would mind his and her business," said giovanni sharply. "because a boy makes the acquaintance of a stranger at a studio--" "oh--it was at a studio? i did not know that." "yes, at gouache's--i fancied your sister might have told you that," said giovanni, growing more and more irritable, and yet not daring to change the subject, lest he should lose some valuable information. "because orsino makes her acquaintance accidentally, every one must say that he is in love with her." flavia laughed. "my dear giovanni," she answered. "let us be frank. i used never to tell the truth under any circumstances, when i was a girl, but giovanni--my giovanni--did not like that. do you know what he did? he used to cut off a hundred francs of my allowance for every fib i told--laughing at me all the time. at the end of the first quarter i positively had not a pair of shoes, and all my gloves had been cleaned twice. he used to keep all the fines in a special pocket-book--if you knew how hard i tried to steal it! but i could not. then, of course, i reformed. there was nothing else to be done--that or rags--fancy! and do you know? i have grown quite used to being truthful. besides, it is so original, that i pose with it." flavia paused, laughed a little, and puffed at her cigarette. "you do not often come to see me, giovanni," she said, "and since you are here i am going to tell you the truth about your visit. you are beside yourself with rage at orsino's new fancy, and you want to find out all about this madame d'aranjuez. so you came here, because we are whites and you saw that she had been at the del ferice party, and you know that we know them--and the rest is sung by the organ, as we say when high mass is over. is that the truth, or not?" "approximately," said giovanni, smiling in spite of himself. "does corona cut your allowance when you tell fibs?" asked flavia. "no? then why say that it is only approximately true?" "i have my reasons. and you can tell me nothing?" "nothing. i believe spicca knows all about her. but he will not tell what he knows." spicca made no answer to this, and giovanni determined to outstay him, or rather, to stay until he rose to go and then go with him. it was tedious work for he was not a man who could talk against time on all occasions. but he struggled bravely and spicca at last got up from his deep chair. they went out together, and stopped as though by common consent upon the brilliantly lighted landing of the first floor. "seriously, spicca," said giovanni, "i am afraid orsino is falling in love with this pretty stranger. if you can tell me anything about her, please do so." spicca stared at the wall, hesitated a moment, and then looked straight into his companion's eyes. "have you any reason to suppose that i, and i especially, know anything about this lady?" he asked. "no--except that you know everything." "that is a fable." spicca turned from him and began to descend the stairs. giovanni followed and laid a hand upon his arm. "you will not do me this service?" he asked earnestly. again spicca stopped and looked at him. "you and i are very old friends, giovanni," he said slowly. "i am older than you, but we have stood by each other very often--in places more slippery than these marble steps. do not let us quarrel now, old friend. when i tell you that my omniscience exists only in the vivid imaginations of people whose tea i like, believe me, and if you wish to do me a kindness--for the sake of old times--do not help to spread the idea that i know everything." the melancholy spicca had never been given to talking about friendship or its mutual obligations. indeed, giovanni could not remember having ever heard him speak as he had just spoken. it was perfectly clear that he knew something very definite about maria consuelo, and he probably had no intention of deceiving giovanni in that respect. but spicca also knew his man, and he knew that his appeal for giovanni's silence would not be vain. "very well," said sant' ilario. they exchanged a few indifferent words before parting, and then giovanni walked slowly homeward, pondering on the things he had heard that day. chapter viii. while giovanni was exerting himself to little purpose in attempting to gain information concerning maria consuelo, she had launched herself upon the society of which the countess del ferice was an important and influential member. chance, and probably chance alone, had guided her in the matter of this acquaintance, for it could certainly not be said that she had forced herself upon donna tullia, nor even shown any uncommon readiness to meet the latter's advances. the offer of a seat in her carriage had seemed natural enough, under the circumstances, and donna tullia had been perfectly free to refuse it if she had chosen to do so. though possessing but the very slightest grounds for believing herself to be a born diplomatist, the countess had always delighted in petty plotting and scheming. she now saw a possibility of annoying all orsino's relations by attracting the object of orsino's devotion to her own house. she had no especial reason for supposing that the young man was really very much in love with madame d'aranjuez, but her woman's instinct, which far surpassed her diplomatic talents in acuteness, told her that orsino was certainly not indifferent to the interesting stranger. she argued, primitively enough, that to annoy orsino must be equivalent to annoying his people, and she supposed that she could do nothing more disagreeable to the young man's wishes than to induce madame d'aranjuez to join that part of society from which all the saracinesca were separated by an insuperable barrier. and orsino indeed resented the proceeding, as she had expected; but his family were at first more inclined to look upon donna tullia as a good angel who had carried off the tempter at the right moment to an unapproachable distance. it was not to be believed that orsino could do anything so monstrous as to enter del ferice's house or ask a place in del ferice's circle, and it was accordingly a relief to find that madame d'aranjuez had definitely chosen to do so, and had appeared in olive-green brocade at the del ferice's last party. the olive-green brocade would now assuredly not figure in the gatherings of the saracinesca's intimate friends. like every one else, orsino read the daily chronicle of roman life in the papers, and until he saw maria consuelo's name among the del ferice's guests, he refused to believe that she had taken the irrevocable step he so much feared. he had still entertained vague notions of bringing about a meeting between her and his mother, and he saw at a glance that such a meeting was now quite out of the question. this was the first severe shock his vanity had ever received and he was surprised at the depth of his own annoyance. maria consuelo might indeed have been seen once with donna tullia, and might have gone once to the latter's day. that was bad enough, but might be remedied by tact and decision in her subsequent conduct. but there was no salvation possible after a person had been advertised in the daily paper as madame d'aranjuez had been. orsino was very angry. he had been once to see her since his first visit, and she had said nothing about this invitation, though donna tullia's name had been mentioned. he was offended with her for not telling him that she was going to the dinner, as though he had any right to be made acquainted with her intentions. he had no sooner made the discovery than he determined to visit his anger upon her, and throwing the paper aside went straight to the hotel where she was stopping. maria consuelo was at home and he was ushered into the little sitting-room without delay. to his inexpressible disgust he found del ferice himself installed upon the chair near the table, engaged in animated conversation with madame d'aranjuez. the situation was awkward in the extreme. orsino hoped that del ferice would go at once, and thus avoid the necessity of an introduction. but ugo did nothing of the kind. he rose, indeed, but did not take his hat from the table, and stood smiling pleasantly while orsino shook hands with maria consuelo. "let me make you acquainted," she said with exasperating calmness, and she named the two men to each other. ugo put out his hand quietly and orsino was obliged to take it, which he did coldly enough. ugo had more than his share of tact, and he never made a disagreeable impression upon any one if he could help it. maria consuelo seemed to take everything for granted, and orsino's appearance did not disconcert her in the slightest degree. both men sat down and looked at her as though expecting that she would choose a subject of conversation for them. "we were talking of the change in rome," she said. "monsieur del ferice takes a great interest in all that is doing, and he was explaining to me some of the difficulties with which he has to contend." "don orsino knows what they are, as well as i, though we might perhaps differ as to the way of dealing with them," said del ferice. "yes," answered orsino, more coldly than was necessary. "you play the active part, and we the passive." "in a certain sense, yes," returned the other, quite unruffled. "you have exactly defined the situation, and ours is by far the more disagreeable and thankless part to play. oh--i am not going to defend all we have done! i only defend what we mean to do. change of any sort is execrable to the man of taste, unless it is brought about by time--and that is a beautifier which we have not at our disposal. we are half vandals and half americans, and we are in a terrible hurry." maria consuelo laughed, and orsino's face became a shade less gloomy. he had expected to find del ferice the arrogant, self-satisfied apostle of the modern, which he was represented to be. "could you not have taken a little more time?" asked orsino. "i cannot see how. besides it is our time which takes us with it. so long as rome was the capital of an idea there was no need of haste in doing anything. but when it became the capital of a modern kingdom, it fell a victim to modern facts--which are not beautiful. the most we can hope to do is to direct the current, clumsily enough, i daresay. we cannot stop it. nothing short of oriental despotism could. we cannot prevent people from flocking to the centre, and where there is a population it must be housed." "evidently," said madame d'aranjuez. "it seems to me that, without disturbing the old city, a new one might have been built beside it," observed orsino. "no doubt. and that is practically what we have done. i say 'we,' because you say 'you.' but i think you will admit that, as far as personal activity is concerned, the romans of rome are taking as active a share in building ugly houses as any of the italian romans. the destruction of the villa ludovisi, for instance, was forced upon the owner not by the national government but by an insane municipality, and those who have taken over the building lots are largely roman princes of the old stock." the argument was unanswerable, and orsino knew it, a fact which did not improve his temper. it was disagreeable enough to be forced into a conversation with del ferice, and it was still worse to be obliged to agree with him. orsino frowned and said nothing, hoping that the subject would drop. but del ferice had only produced an unpleasant impression in order to remove it and thereby improve the whole situation, which was one of the most difficult in which he had found himself for some time. "i repeat," he said, with a pleasant smile, "that it is hopeless to defend all of what is actually done in our day in rome. some of your friends and many of mine are building houses which even age and ruin will never beautify. the only defensible part of the affair is the political change which has brought about the necessity of building at all, and upon that point i think that we may agree to differ. do you not think so, don orsino?" "by all means," answered the young man, conscious that the proposal was both just and fitting. "and for the rest, both your friends and mine--for all i know, your own family and certainly i myself--have enormous interests at stake. we may at least agree to hope that none of us may be ruined." "certainly--though we have had nothing to do with the matter. neither my father nor my grandfather have entered into any such speculation." "it is a pity," said del ferice thoughtfully. "why a pity?" "on the one hand my instincts are basely commercial," del ferice answered with a frank laugh. "no matter how great a fortune may be, it may be doubled and trebled. you must remember that i am a banker in fact if not exactly in designation, and the opportunity is excellent. but the greater pity is that such men as you, don orsino, who could exercise as much influence as it might please you to use, leave it to men--very unlike you, i fancy--to murder the architecture of rome and prepare the triumph of the hideous." orsino did not answer the remark, although he was not altogether displeased with the idea it conveyed. maria consuelo looked at him. "why do you stand aloof and let things go from bad to worse when you might really do good by joining in the affairs of the day?" she asked. "i could not join in them, if i would," answered orsino. "why not?" "because i have not command of a hundred francs in the world, madame. that is the simplest and best of all reasons." del ferice laughed incredulously. "the eldest son of casa saracinesca would not find that a practical obstacle," he said, taking his hat and rising to go. "besides, what is needed in these transactions is not so much ready money as courage, decision and judgment. there is a rich firm of contractors now doing a large business, who began with three thousand francs as their whole capital--what you might lose at cards in an evening without missing it, though you say that you have no money at your command." "is that possible?" asked orsino with some interest. "it is a fact. there were three men, a tobacconist, a carpenter and a mason, and they each had a thousand francs of savings. they took over a contract last week for a million and a half, on which they will clear twenty per cent. but they had the qualities--the daring and the prudence combined. they succeeded." "and if they had failed, what would have happened?" "they would have lost their three thousand francs. they had nothing else to lose, and there was nothing in the least irregular about their transactions. good evening, madame--i have a private meeting of directors at my house. good evening, don orsino." he went out, leaving behind him an impression which was not by any means disagreeable. his appearance was against him, orsino thought. his fat white face and dull eyes were not pleasant to look at. but he had shown tact in a difficult situation, and there was a quiet energy about him, a settled purpose which could not fail to please a young man who hated his own idleness. orsino found that his mood had changed. he was less angry than he had meant to be, and he saw extenuating circumstances where he had at first only seen a wilful mistake. he sat down again. "confess that he is not the impossible creature you supposed," said maria consuelo with a laugh. "no, he is not. i had imagined something very different. nevertheless, i wish--one never has the least right to wish what one wishes--" he stopped in the middle of the sentence. "that i had not gone to his wife's party, you would say? but my dear don orsino, why should i refuse pleasant things when they come into my life?" "was it so pleasant?" "of course it was. a beautiful dinner--half a dozen clever men, all interested in the affairs of the day, and all anxious to explain them to me because i was a stranger. a hundred people or so in the evening, who all seemed to enjoy themselves as much as i did. why should i refuse all that? because my first acquaintance in rome--who was gouache--is so 'indifferent,' and because you--my second--are a pronounced clerical? that is not reasonable." "i do not pretend to be reasonable," said orsino. "to be reasonable is the boast of people who feel nothing." "then you are a man of heart?" maria consuelo seemed amused. "i make no pretence to being a man of head, madame." "you are not easily caught." "nor del ferice either." "why do you talk of him?" "the opportunity is good, madame. as he is just gone, we know that he is not coming." "you can be very sarcastic, when you like," said maria consuelo. "but i do not believe that you are as bitter as you make yourself out to be. i do not even believe that you found del ferice so very disagreeable as you pretend. you were certainly interested in what he said." "interest is not always agreeable. the guillotine, for instance, possesses the most lively interest for the condemned man at an execution." "your illustrations are startling. i once saw an execution, quite by accident, and i would rather not think of it. but you can hardly compare del ferice to the guillotine." "he is as noiseless, as keen and as sure," said orsino smartly. "there is such a thing as being too clever," answered maria consuelo, without a smile. "is del ferice a case of that?" "no. you are. you say cutting things merely because they come into your head, though i am sure that you do not always mean them. it is a bad habit." "because it makes enemies, madame?" orsino was annoyed by the rebuke. "that is the least good of good reasons." "another, then?" "it will prevent people from loving you," said maria consuelo gravely. "i never heard that--" "no? it is true, nevertheless." "in that case i will reform at once," said orsino, trying to meet her eyes. but she looked away from him. "you think that i am preaching to you," she answered. "i have not the right to do that, and if i had, i would certainly not use it. but i have seen something of the world. women rarely love a man who is bitter against any one but himself. if he says cruel things of other women, the one to whom he says them believes that he will say much worse of her to the next he meets; if he abuses the men she knows, she likes it even less--it is an attack on her judgment, on her taste and perhaps upon a half-developed sympathy for the man attacked. one should never be witty at another person's expense, except with one's own sex." she laughed a little. "what a terrible conclusion!" "is it? it is the true one." "then the way to win a woman's love is to praise her acquaintances? that is original." "i never said that." "no? i misunderstood. what is the best way?" "oh--it is very simple," laughed maria consuelo. "tell her you love her, and tell her so again and again--you will certainly please her in the end." "madame--" orsino stopped, and folded his hands with an air of devout supplication. "what?" "oh, nothing! i was about to begin. it seemed so simple, as you say." they both laughed and their eyes met for a moment. "del ferice interests me very much," said maria consuelo, abruptly returning to the original subject of conversation. "he is one of those men who will be held responsible for much that is now doing. is it not true? he has great influence." "i have always heard so." orsino was not pleased at being driven to talk of del ferice again. "do you think what he said about you so altogether absurd?" "absurd, no--impracticable, perhaps. you mean his suggestion that i should try a little speculation? frankly, i had no idea that such things could be begun with so little capital. it seems incredible. i fancy that del ferice was exaggerating. you know how carelessly bankers talk of a few thousands, more or less. nothing short of a million has much meaning for them. three thousand or thirty thousand--it is much the same in their estimation." "i daresay. after all, why should you risk anything? i suppose it is simpler to play cards, though i should think it less amusing. i was only thinking how easy it would be for you to find a serious occupation if you chose." orsino was silent for a moment, and seemed to be thinking over the matter. "would you advise me to enter upon such a business without my father's knowledge?" he asked presently. "how can i advise you? besides, your father would let you do as you please. there is nothing dishonourable in such things. the prejudice against business is old-fashioned, and if you do not break through it your children will." orsino looked thoughtfully at maria consuelo. she sometimes found an oddly masculine bluntness with which to express her meaning, and which produced a singular impression on the young man. it made him feel what he supposed to be a sort of weakness, of which he ought to be ashamed. "there is nothing dishonourable in the theory," he answered, "and the practice depends on the individual." maria consuelo laughed. "you see--you can be a moralist when you please," she said. there was a wonderful attraction in her yellow eyes just at that moment. "to please you, madame, i could do something much worse--or much better." he was not quite in earnest, but he was not jesting, and his face was more serious than his voice. maria consuelo's hand was lying on the table beside the silver paper-cutter. the white, pointed fingers were very tempting and he would willingly have touched them. he put out his hand. if she did not draw hers away he would lay his own upon it. if she did, he would take up the paper-cutter. as it turned out, he had to content himself with the latter. she did not draw her hand away as though she understood what he was going to do, but quietly raised it and turned the shade of the lamp a few inches. "i would rather not be responsible for your choice," she said quietly. "and yet you have left me none," he answered with, sudden boldness. "no? how so?" he held up the silver knife and smiled. "i do not understand," she said, affecting a look of surprise. "i was going to ask your permission to take your hand." "indeed? why? there it is." she held it out frankly. he took the beautiful fingers in his and looked at them for a moment. then he quietly raised them to his lips. "that was not included in the permission," she said, with a little laugh and drawing back. "now you ought to go away at once." "why?" "because that little ceremony can belong only to the beginning or the end of a visit." "i have only just come." "ah? how long the time has seemed! i fancied you had been here half an hour." "to me it has seemed but a minute," answered orsino promptly. "and you will not go?" there was nothing of the nature of a peremptory dismissal in the look which accompanied the words. "no--at the most, i will practise leave-taking." "i think not," said maria consuelo with sudden coldness. "you are a little too--what shall i say?--too enterprising, prince. you had better make use of the gift where it will be a recommendation--in business, for instance." "you are very severe, madame," answered orsino, deeming it wiser to affect humility, though a dozen sharp answers suggested themselves to his ready wit. maria consuelo was silent for a few seconds. her head was resting upon the little red morocco cushion, which heightened the dazzling whiteness of her skin and lent a deeper colour to her auburn hair. she was gazing at the hangings above the door. orsino watched her in quiet admiration. she was beautiful as he saw her there at that moment, for the irregularities of her features were forgotten in the brilliancy of her colouring and in the grace of the attitude. her face was serious at first. gradually a smile stole over it, beginning, as it seemed, from the deeply set eyes and concentrating itself at last in the full, red mouth. then she spoke, still looking upwards and away from him. "what would you think if i were not a little severe?" she asked. "i am a woman living--travelling, i should say--quite alone, a stranger here, and little less than a stranger to you. what would you think if i were not a little severe, i say? what conclusion would you come to, if i let you take my hand as often as you pleased, and say whatever suggested itself to your imagination--your very active imagination?" "i should think you the most adorable of women--" "but it is not my ambition to be thought the most adorable of women by you, prince orsino." "no--of course not. people never care for what they get without an effort." "you are absolutely irrepressible!" exclaimed maria consuelo, laughing in spite of herself. "and you do not like that! i will be meekness itself--a lamb, if you please." "too playful--it would not suit your style." "a stone--" "i detest geology." "a lap-dog, then. make your choice, madame. the menagerie of the universe is at your disposal. when adam gave names to the animals, he could have called a lion a lap-dog--to reassure the africans. but he lacked imagination--he called a cat, a cat." "that had the merit of simplicity, at all events." "since you admire his system, you may call me either cain or abel," suggested orsino. "am i humble enough? can submission go farther?" "either would be flattery--for abel was good and cain was interesting." "and i am neither--you give me another opportunity of exhibiting my deep humility. i thank you sincerely. you are becoming more gracious than i had hoped." "you are very like a woman, don orsino. you always try to have the last word." "i always hope that the last word may be the best. but i accept the criticism--or the reproach, with my usual gratitude. i only beg you to observe that to let you have the last word would be for me to end the conversation, after which i should be obliged to go away. and i do not wish to go, as i have already said." "you suggest the means of making you go," answered maria consuelo, with a smile. "i can be silent--if you will not." "it will be useless. if you do not interrupt me, i shall become eloquent--" "how terrible! pray do not!" "you see! i have you in my power. you cannot get rid of me." "i would appeal to your generosity, then." "that is another matter, madame," said orsino, taking his hat. "i only said that i would--" maria consuelo made a gesture to stop him. but he was wise enough to see that the conversation had reached its natural end, and his instinct told him that he should not outstay his welcome. he pretended not to see the motion of her hand, and rose to take his leave. "you do not know me," he said. "to point out to me a possible generous action, is to ensure my performing it without hesitation. when may i be so fortunate as to see you again, madame?" "you need not be so intensely ceremonious. you know that i am always at home at this hour." orsino was very much struck by this answer. there was a shade of irritation in the tone, which he had certainly not expected, and which flattered him exceedingly. she turned her face away as she gave him her hand and moved a book on the table with the other as though she meant to begin reading almost before he should be out of the room. he had not felt by any means sure that she really liked his society, and he had not expected that she would so far forget herself as to show her inclination by her impatience. he had judged, rightly or wrongly, that she was a woman who weighed every word and gesture beforehand, and who would be incapable of such an oversight as an unpremeditated manifestation of feeling. very young men are nowadays apt to imagine complications of character where they do not exist, often overlooking them altogether where they play a real part. the passion for analysis discovers what it takes for new simple elements in humanity's motives, and often ends by feeding on itself in the effort to decompose what is not composite. the greatest analysers are perhaps the young and the old, who, being respectively before and behind the times, are not so intimate with them as those who are actually making history, political or social, ethical or scandalous, dramatic or comic. it is very much the custom among those who write fiction in the english language to efface their own individuality behind the majestic but rather meaningless plural, "we," or to let the characters created express the author's view of mankind. the great french novelists are more frank, for they say boldly "i," and have the courage of their opinions. their merit is the greater, since those opinions seem to be rarely complimentary to the human race in general, or to their readers in particular. without introducing any comparison between the fiction of the two languages, it may be said that the tendency of the method is identical in both cases and is the consequence of an extreme preference for analysis, to the detriment of the romantic and very often of the dramatic element in the modern novel. the result may or may not be a volume of modern social history for the instruction of the present and the future generation. if it is not, it loses one of the chief merits which it claims; if it is, then we must admit the rather strange deduction, that the political history of our times has absorbed into itself all the romance and the tragedy at the disposal of destiny, leaving next to none at all in the private lives of the actors and their numerous relations. whatever the truth may be, it is certain that this love of minute dissection is exercising an enormous influence in our time; and as no one will pretend that a majority of the young persons in society who analyse the motives of their contemporaries and elders are successful moral anatomists, we are forced to the conclusion that they are frequently indebted to their imaginations for the results they obtain and not seldom for the material upon which they work. a real chemistry may some day grow out of the failures of this fanciful alchemy, but the present generation will hardly live to discover the philosopher's stone, though the search for it yield gold, indirectly, by the writing of many novels. if fiction is to be counted among the arts at all, it is not yet time to forget the saying of a very great man: "it is the mission of all art to create and foster agreeable illusions." orsino saracinesca was no further removed from the action of the analytical bacillus than other men of his age. he believed and desired his own character to be more complicated than it was, and he had no sooner made the acquaintance of maria consuelo than he began to attribute to her minutest actions such a tortuous web of motives as would have annihilated all action if it had really existed in her brain. the possible simplicity of a strong and much tried character, good or bad, altogether escaped him, and even an occasional unrestrained word or gesture failed to convince him that he was on the wrong track. to tell the truth, he was as yet very inexperienced. his visits to maria consuelo passed in making light conversation. he tried to amuse her, and succeeded fairly well, while at the same time he indulged in endless and fruitless speculations as to her former life, her present intentions and her sentiments with regard to himself. he would have liked to lead her into talking of herself, but he did not know where to begin. it was not a part of his system to believe in mysteries concerning people, but when he reflected upon the matter he was amazed at the impenetrability of the barrier which cut him off from all knowledge of her life. he soon heard the tales about her which were carelessly circulated at the club, and he listened to them without much interest, though he took the trouble to deny their truth on his own responsibility, which surprised the men who knew him and gave rise to the story that he was in love with madame d'aranjuez. the most annoying consequence of the rumour was that every woman to whom he spoke in society overwhelmed him with questions which he could not answer except in the vaguest terms. in his ignorance he did his best to evolve a satisfactory history for maria consuelo out of his imagination, but the result was not satisfactory. he continued his visits to her, resolving before each meeting that he would risk offending her by putting some question which she must either answer directly or refuse to answer altogether. but he had not counted upon his own inherent hatred of rudeness, nor upon the growth of an attachment which he had not foreseen when he had coldly made up his mind that it would be worth while to make love to her, as gouache had laughingly suggested. yet he was pleased with what he deemed his own coldness. he assuredly did not love her, but he knew already that he would not like to give up the half hours he spent with her. to offend her seriously would be to forfeit a portion of his daily amusement which he could not spare. from time to time he risked a careless, half-jesting declaration such as many a woman might have taken seriously. but maria consuelo turned such advances with a laugh or by an answer that was admirably tempered with quiet dignity and friendly rebuke. "if she is not good," he said to himself at last, "she must be enormously clever. she must be one or the other." chapter ix. orsino's twenty-first birthday fell in the latter part of january, when the roman season was at its height, but as the young man's majority did not bring him any of those sudden changes in position which make epochs in the lives of fatherless sons, the event was considered as a family matter and no great social celebration of it was contemplated. it chanced, too, that the day of the week was the one appropriated by the montevarchi for their weekly dance, with which it would have been a mistake to interfere. the old prince saracinesca, however, insisted that a score of old friends should be asked to dinner, to drink the health of his eldest grandson, and this was accordingly done. orsino always looked back to that banquet as one of the dullest at which he ever assisted. the friends were literally old, and their conversation was not brilliant. each one on arriving addressed to him a few congratulatory and moral sentiments, clothed in rounded periods and twanging of cicero in his most sermonising mood. each drank his especial health at the end of the dinner in a teaspoonful of old "vin santo," and each made a stiff compliment to corona on her youthful appearance. the men were almost all grandees of spain of the first class and wore their ribbons by common consent, which lent the assembly an imposing appearance; but several of them were of a somnolent disposition and nodded after dinner, which did not contribute to prolong the effect produced. orsino thought their stories and anecdotes very long-winded and pointless, and even the old prince himself seemed oppressed by the solemnity of the affair, and rarely laughed. corona, with serene good humour did her best to make conversation, and a shade of animation occasionally appeared at her end of the table; but sant' ilario was bored to the verge of extinction and talked of nothing but archaeology and the trial of the cenci, wondering inwardly why he chose such exceedingly dry subjects. as for orsino, the two old princesses between whom he was placed paid very little attention to him, and talked across him about the merits of their respective confessors and directors. he frivolously asked them whether they ever went to the theatre, to which they replied very coldly that they went to their boxes when the piece was not on the index and when there was no ballet. orsino understood why he never saw them at the opera, and relapsed into silence. the butler, a son of the legendary pasquale of earlier days, did his best to cheer the youngest of his masters with a great variety of wines; but orsino would not be comforted either by very dry champagne or very mellow claret. but he vowed a bitter revenge and swore to dance till three in the morning at the montevarchi's and finish the night with a rousing baccarat at the club, which projects he began to put into execution as soon as was practicable. in due time the guests departed, solemnly renewing their expressions of good wishes, and the saracinesca household was left to itself. the old prince stood before the fire in the state drawing-room, rubbing his hands and shaking his head. giovanni and corona sat on opposite sides of the fireplace, looking at each other and somewhat inclined to laugh. orsino was intently studying a piece of historical tapestry which had never interested him before. the silence lasted some time. then old saracinesca raised his head and gave vent to his feelings, with all his old energy. "what a museum!" he exclaimed. "i would not have believed that i should live to dine in my own house with a party of stranded figure-heads, set up in rows around my table! the paint is all worn off and the brains are all worn out and there is nothing left but a cracked old block of wood with a ribbon around its neck. you will be just like them, giovanni, in a few years, for you will be just like me--we all turn into the same shape at seventy, and if we live a dozen years longer it is because providence designs to make us an awful example to the young." "i hope you do not call yourself a figure-head," said giovanni. "they are calling me by worse names at this very minute as they drive home. 'that old methuselah of a saracinesca, how has he the face to go on living?' that is the way they talk. 'people ought to die decently when other people have had enough of them, instead of sitting up at the table like death's-heads to grin at their grandchildren and great-grandchildren!' they talk like that, giovanni. i have known some of those old monuments for sixty years and more--since they were babies and i was of orsino's age. do you suppose i do not know how they talk? you always take me for a good, confiding old fellow, giovanni. but then, you never understood human nature." giovanni laughed and corona smiled. orsino turned round to enjoy the rare delight of seeing the old gentleman rouse himself in a fit of temper. "if you were ever confiding it was because you were too good," said giovanni affectionately. "yes--good and confiding--that is it! you always did agree with me as to my own faults. is it not true, corona? can you not take my part against that graceless husband of yours? he is always abusing me--as though i were his property, or his guest. orsino, my boy, go away--we are all quarrelling here like a pack of wolves, and you ought to respect your elders. here is your father calling me by bad names--" "i said you were too good," observed giovanni. "yes--good and confiding! if you can find anything worse to say, say it--and may you live to hear that good-for-nothing orsino call you good and confiding when you are eighty-two years old. and corona is laughing at me. it is insufferable. you used to be a good girl, corona--but you are so proud of having four sons that there is no possibility of talking to you any longer. it is a pity that you have not brought them up better. look at orsino. he is laughing too." "certainly not at you, grandfather," the young man hastened to say. "then you must be laughing at your father or your mother, or both, since there is no one else here to laugh at. you are concocting sharp speeches for your abominable tongue. i know it. i can see it in your eyes. that is the way you have brought up your children, giovanni. i congratulate you. upon my word, i congratulate you with all my heart! not that i ever expected anything better. you addled your own brains with curious foreign ideas on your travels--the greater fool i for letting you run about the world when you were young. i ought to have locked you up in saracinesca, on bread and water, until you understood the world well enough to profit by it. i wish i had." none of the three could help laughing at this extraordinary speech. orsino recovered his gravity first, by the help of the historical tapestry. the old gentleman noticed the fact. "come here, orsino, my boy," he said. "i want to talk to you." orsino came forward. the old prince laid a hand on his shoulder and looked up into his face. "you are twenty-one years old to-day," he said, "and we are all quarrelling in honour of the event. you ought to be flattered that we should take so much trouble to make the evening pass pleasantly for you, but you probably have not the discrimination to see what your amusement costs us." his grey beard shook a little, his rugged features twitched, and then a broad good-humoured smile lit up the old face. "we are quarrelsome people," he continued in his most cheerful and hearty tone. "when giovanni and i were young--we were young together, you know--we quarrelled every day as regularly as we ate and drank. i believe it was very good for us. we generally made it up before night--for the sake of beginning again with a clear conscience. anything served us--the weather, the soup, the colour of a horse." "you must have led an extremely lively life," observed orsino, considerably amused. "it was very well for us, orsino. but it will not do for you. you are not so much like your father, as he was like me at your age. we fought with the same weapons, but you two would not, if you fought at all. we fenced for our own amusement and we kept the buttons on the foils. you have neither my really angelic temper nor your father's stony coolness--he is laughing again--no matter, he knows it is true. you have a diabolical tongue. do not quarrel with your father for amusement, orsino. his calmness will exasperate you as it does me, but you will not laugh at the right moment as i have done all my life. you will bear malice and grow sullen and permanently disagreeable. and do not say all the cutting things you think of, because with your disposition you will get into serious trouble. if you have really good cause for being angry, it is better to strike than to speak, and in such cases i strongly advise you to strike first. now go and amuse yourself, for you must have had enough of our company. i do not think of any other advice to give you on your coming of age." thereupon he laughed again and pushed his grandson away, evidently delighted with the lecture he had given him. orsino was quick to profit by the permission and was soon in the montevarchi ballroom, doing his best to forget the lugubrious feast in his own honour at which he had lately assisted. he was not altogether successful, however. he had looked forward to the day for many months as one of rejoicing as well as of emancipation, and he had been grievously disappointed. there was something of ill augury, he thought, in the appalling dulness of the guests, for they had congratulated him upon his entry into a life exactly similar to their own. indeed, the more precisely similar it proved to be, the more he would be respected when he reached their advanced age. the future unfolded to him was not gay. he was to live forty, fifty or even sixty years in the same round of traditions and hampered by the same net of prejudices. he might have his romance, as his father had had before him, but there was nothing beyond that. his father seemed perfectly satisfied with his own unruffled existence and far from desirous of any change. the feudalism of it all was still real in fact, though abolished in theory, and the old prince was as much a great feudal lord as ever, whose interests were almost tribal in their narrowness, almost sordid in their detail, and altogether uninteresting to his presumptive heir in the third generation. what was the peasant of aquaviva, for instance, to orsino? yet sant' ilario and old saracinesca took a lively interest in his doings and in the doings of four or five hundred of his kind, whom they knew by name and spoke of as belongings, much as they would have spoken of books in the library. to collect rents from peasants and to ascertain in person whether their houses needed repair was not a career. orsino thought enviously of san giacinto's two sons, leading what seemed to him a life of comparative activity and excitement in the italian army, and having the prospect of distinction by their own merits. he thought of san giacinto himself, of his ceaseless energy and of the great position he was building up. san giacinto was a saracinesca as well as orsino, bearing the same name and perhaps not less respected than the rest by the world at large, though he had sullied his hands with finance. even del ferice's position would have been above criticism, but for certain passages in his earlier life not immediately connected with his present occupation. and as if such instances were not enough there were, to orsino's certain knowledge, half a dozen men of his father's rank even now deeply engaged in the speculations of the day. montevarchi was one of them, and neither he nor the others made any secret of their doings. "surely," thought orsino, "i have as good a head as any of them, except, perhaps, san giacinto." and he grew more and more discontented with his lot, and more and more angry at himself for submitting to be bound hand and foot and sacrificed upon the altar of feudalism. everything had disappointed and irritated him on that day, the weariness of the dinner, the sight of his parents' placid felicity, the advice his grandfather had given him--good of its kind, but lamentably insufficient, to say the least of it. he was rapidly approaching that state of mind in which young men do the most unexpected things for the mere pleasure of surprising their relations. he grew tired of the ball, because madame d'aranjuez was not there. he longed to dance with her and he wished that he were at liberty to frequent the houses la which she was asked. but as yet she saw only the whites and had not made the acquaintance of a single grey family, in spite of his entreaties. he could not tell whether she had any fixed reason in making her choice, or whether as yet it had been the result of chance, but he discovered that he was bored wherever he went because she was not present. at supper-time on this particular evening, he entered into a conspiracy with certain choice spirits to leave the party and adjourn to the club and cards. the sight of the tables revived him and he drew a long breath as he sat down with a cigarette in his mouth and a glass at his elbow. it seemed as though the day were beginning at last. orsino was no more a born gambler than he was disposed to be a hard drinker. he loved excitement in any shape, and being so constituted as to bear it better than most men, he took it greedily in whatever form it was offered to him. he neither played nor drank every day, but when he did either he was inclined to play more than other people and to consume more strong liquor. yet his judgment was not remarkable, nor his head much stronger than the heads of his companions. great gamblers do not drink, and great drinkers are not good players, though they are sometimes amazingly lucky when in their cups. it is of no use to deny the enormous influence of brandy and games of chance on the men of the present day, but there is little profit in describing such scenes as take place nightly in many clubs all over europe. something might be gained, indeed, if we could trace the causes which have made gambling especially the vice of our generation, for that discovery might show us some means of influencing the next. but i do not believe that this is possible. the times have undoubtedly grown more dull, as civilisation has made them more alike, but there is, i think, no truth in the common statement that vice is bred of idleness. the really idle man is a poor creature, incapable of strong sins. it is far more often the man of superior gifts, with faculties overwrought and nerves strained above concert pitch by excessive mental exertion, who turns to vicious excitement for the sake of rest, as a duller man falls asleep. men whose lives are spent amidst the vicissitudes, surprises and disappointments of the money market are assuredly less idle than country gentlemen; the busy lawyer has less time to spare than the equally gifted fellow of a college; the skilled mechanic works infinitely harder, taking the average of the whole year, than the agricultural labourer; the life of a sailor on an ordinary merchant ship is one of rest, ease and safety compared with that of the collier. yet there can hardly be a doubt as to which individual in each example is the one to seek relaxation in excitement, innocent or the reverse, instead of in sleep. the operator in the stock market, the barrister, the mechanic, the miner, in every case the men whose faculties are the more severely strained, are those who seek strong emotions in their daily leisure, and who are the more inclined to extend that leisure at the expense of bodily rest. it may be objected that the worst vice is found in the highest grades of society, that is to say, among men who have no settled occupation. i answer that, in the first place, this is not a known fact, but a matter of speculation, and that the conclusion is principally drawn from the circumstance that the evil deeds of such persons, when they become known, are very severely criticised by those whose criticism has the most weight, namely by the equals of the sinners in question--as well as by writers of fiction whose opinions may or may not be worth considering. for one zola, historian of the rougon-macquart family, there are a hundred would-be zolas, censors of a higher class, less unpleasantly fond of accurate detail, perhaps, but as merciless in intention. but even if the case against society be proved, which is possible, i do not think that society can truly be called idle, because many of those who compose it have no settled occupation. the social day is a long one. society would not accept the eight hours' system demanded by the labour unions. society not uncommonly works at a high pressure for twelve, fourteen and even sixteen hours at a stretch. the mental strain, though, not of the most intellectual order, is incomparably more severe than that required for success in many lucrative professions or crafts. the general absence of a distinct aim sharpens the faculties in the keen pursuit of details, and lends an importance to trifles which overburdens at every turn the responsibility borne by the nerves. lazy people are not favourites in drawing-rooms, and still less at the dinner-table. consider also that the average man of the world, and many women, daily sustain an amount of bodily fatigue equal perhaps to that borne by many mechanics and craftsmen and much greater than that required in the liberal professions, and that, too, under far less favourable conditions. recapitulate all these points. add together the physical effort, the mental activity, the nervous strain. take the sum and compare it with that got by a similar process from other conditions of existence. i think there can be little doubt of the verdict. the force exerted is wasted, if you please, but it is enormously great, and more than sufficient to prove that those who daily exert it are by no means idle. besides, none of the inevitable outward and visible results of idleness are apparent in the ordinary society man or woman. on the contrary, most of them exhibit the peculiar and unmistakable signs of physical exhaustion, chief of which is cerebral anã¦mia. they are overtrained and overworked. in the language of training they are "stale." men like orsino saracinesca are not vicious at his age, though they may become so. vice begins when the excitement ceases to be a matter of taste and turns into a necessity. orsino gambled because it amused him when no other amusement was obtainable, and he drank while he played because it made the amusement seem more amusing. he was far too young and healthy and strong to feel an irresistible longing for anything not natural. on the present occasion he cared very little, at first, whether he won or lost, and as often happens to a man in that mood he won a considerable sum during the first hour. the sight of the notes before him strengthened an idea which had crossed his mind more than once of late, and the stimulants he drank suddenly fixed it into a purpose. it was true that he did not command any sum of money which could be dignified by the name of capital, but he generally had enough in his pocket to play with, and to-night he had rather more than usual. it struck him that if he could win a few thousands by a run of luck, he would have more than enough to try his fortune in the building speculations of which del ferice had talked. the scheme took shape and at once lent a passionate interest to his play. orsino had no system and generally left everything to chance, but he had no sooner determined that he must win than he improvised a method, and began to play carefully. of course he lost, and as he saw his heap of notes diminishing, he filled his glass more and more often. by two o'clock he had but five hundred francs left, his face was deadly pale, the lights dazzled him and his hands moved uncertainly. he held the bank and he knew that if he lost on the card he must borrow money, which he did not wish to do. he dealt himself a five of spades, and glanced at the stakes. they were considerable. a last sensation of caution prevented him from taking another card. the table turned up a six and he lost. "lend me some money, filippo," he said to the man nearest him, who immediately counted out a number of notes. orsino paid with the money and the bank passed. he emptied his glass and lit a cigarette. at each succeeding deal he staked a small sum and lost it, till the bank came to him again. once more he held a five. the other men saw that he was losing and put up all they could. orsino hesitated. some one observed justly that he probably held a five again. the lights swam indistinctly before him and he drew another card. it was a four. orsino laughed nervously as he gathered the notes and paid back what he had borrowed. he did not remember clearly what happened afterwards. the faces of the cards grew less distinct and the lights more dazzling. he played blindly and won almost without interruption until the other men dropped off one by one, having lost as much as they cared to part with at one sitting. at four o'clock in the morning orsino went home in a cab, having about fifteen thousand francs in his pockets. the men he had played with were mostly young fellows like himself, having a limited allowance of pocket money, and orsino's winnings were very large under the circumstances. the night air cooled his head and he laughed gaily to himself as he drove through the deserted streets. his hand was steady enough now, and the gas lamps did not move disagreeably before his eyes. but he had reached the stage of excitement in which a fixed idea takes hold of the brain, and if it had been possible he would undoubtedly have gone as he was, in evening dress, with his winnings in his pocket, to rouse del ferice, or san giacinto, or any one else who could put him in the way of risking his money on a building lot. he reluctantly resigned himself to the necessity of going to bed, and slept as one sleeps at twenty-one until nearly eleven o'clock on the following morning. while he dressed he recalled the circumstances of the previous night and was surprised to find that his idea was as fixed as ever. he counted the money. there was five times as much as the del ferice's carpenter, tobacconist and mason had been able to scrape together amongst them. he had therefore, according to his simple calculation, just five times as good a chance of succeeding as they. and they had been successful. his plan fascinated him, and he looked forward to the constant interest and occupation with a delight which was creditable to his character. he would be busy and the magic word "business" rang in his ears. it was speculation, no doubt, but he did not look upon it as a form of gambling; if he had done so, he would not have cared for it on two consecutive days. it was something much better in his eyes. it was to do something, to be some one, to strike out of the everlastingly dull road which lay before him and which ended in the vanishing point of an insignificant old age. he had not the very faintest conception of what that business was with which he aspired to occupy himself. he was totally ignorant of the methods of dealing with money, and he no more knew what a draft at three months meant than he could have explained the construction of the watch he carried in his pocket. of the first principles of building he knew, if possible, even less and he did not know whether land in the city were worth a franc or a thousand francs by the square foot. but he said to himself that those things were mere details, and that he could learn all he needed of them in a fortnight. courage and judgment, del ferice had said, were the chief requisites for success. courage he possessed, and he believed himself cool. he would avail himself of the judgment of others until he could judge for himself. he knew very well what his father would think of the whole plan, but he had no intention of concealing his project. since yesterday, he was of age and was therefore his own master to the extent of his own small resources. his father had not the power to keep him from entering upon any honourable undertaking, though he might justly refuse to be responsible for the consequences. at the worst, thought orsino, those consequences might be the loss of the money he had in hand. since he had nothing else to risk, he had nothing else to lose. that is the light in which most inexperienced people regard speculation. orsino therefore went to his father and unfolded his scheme, without mentioning del ferice. sant' ilario listened rather impatiently and laughed when orsino had finished. he did not mean to be unkind, and if he had dreamed of the effect his manner would produce, he would have been more careful. but he did not understand his son, as he himself had been understood by his own father. "this is all nonsense, my boy," he answered. "it is a mere passing fancy. what do you know of business or architecture, or of a dozen other matters which you ought to understand thoroughly before attempting anything like what you propose?" orsino was silent, and looked out of the window, though he was evidently listening. "you say you want an occupation. this is not one. banking is an occupation, and architecture is a career, but what we call affairs in rome are neither one nor the other. if you want to be a banker you must go into a bank and do clerk's work for years. if you mean to follow architecture as a profession you must spend four or five years in study at the very least." "san giacinto has not done that," observed orsino coldly. "san giacinto has a very much better head on his shoulders than you, or i, or almost any other man in rome. he has known how to make use of other men's talents, and he had a rather more practical education than i would have cared to give you. if he were not one of the most honest men alive he would certainly have turned out one of the greatest scoundrels." "i do not see what that has to do with it," said orsino. "not much, i confess. but his early life made him understand men as you and i cannot understand them, and need not, for that matter." "then you object to my trying this?" "i do nothing of the kind. when i object to the doing of anything i prevent it, by fair words or by force. i am not inclined for a pitched battle with you, orsino, and i might not get the better of you after all. i will be perfectly neutral. i will have nothing to do with this business. if i believed in it, i would give you all the capital you could need, but i shall not diminish your allowance in order to hinder you from throwing it away. if you want more money for your amusements or luxuries, say so. i am not fond of counting small expenses, and i have not brought you up to count them either. do not gamble at cards any more than you can help, but if you lose and must borrow, borrow of me. when i think you are going too far, i will tell you so. but do not count upon me for any help in this scheme of yours. you will not get it. if you find yourself in a commercial scrape, find your own way out of it. if you want better advice than mine, go to san giacinto. he will give you a practical man's view of the case." "you are frank, at all events," said orsino, turning from the window and facing his father. "most of us are in this house," answered sant' ilario. "that will make it all the harder for you to deal with the scoundrels who call themselves men of business." "i mean to try this, father," said the young man. "i will go and see san giacinto, as you suggest, and i will ask his opinion. but if he discourages me i will try my luck all the same. i cannot lead this life any longer. i want an occupation and i will make one for myself." "it is not an occupation that you want, orsino. it is another excitement. that is all. if you want an occupation, study, learn something, find out what work means. or go to saracinesca and build houses for the peasants--you will do no harm there, at all events. go and drain that land in lombardy--i can do nothing with it and would sell it if i could. but that is not what you want. you want an excitement for the hours of the morning. very well. you will probably find more of it than you like. try it, that is all i have to say." like many very just men giovanni could state a case with alarming unfairness when thoroughly convinced that he was right. orsino stood still for a moment and then walked towards the door without another word. his father called him back. "what is it?" asked orsino coldly. sant' ilario held out his hand with a kindly look in his eyes. "i do not want you to think that i am angry, my boy. there is to be no ill feeling between us about this." "none whatever," said the young man, though without much alacrity, as he shook hands with his father. "i see you are not angry. you do not understand me, that is all." he went out, more disappointed with the result of the interview than he had expected, though he had not looked forward to receiving any encouragement. he had known very well what his father's views were but he had not foreseen that he would be so much irritated by the expression of them. his determination hardened and he resolved that nothing should hinder him. but he was both willing and ready to consult san giacinto, and went to the latter's house immediately on leaving sant' ilario's study. as for giovanni, he was dimly conscious that he had made a mistake, though he did not care to acknowledge it. he was a good horseman and he was aware that he would have used a very different method with a restive colt. but few men are wise enough to see that there is only one universal principle to follow in the exertion of strength, moral or physical; and instead of seeking analogies out of actions familiar to them as a means of accomplishing the unfamiliar, they try to discover new theories of motion at every turn and are led farther and farther from the right line by their own desire to reach the end quickly. "at all events," thought sant' ilario, "the boy's new hobby will take him to places where he is not likely to meet that woman." and with this discourteous reflection upon madame d'aranjuez he consoled himself. he did not think it necessary to tell corona of orsino's intentions, simply because he did not believe that they would lead to anything serious, and there was no use in disturbing her unnecessarily with visions of future annoyance. if orsino chose to speak of it to her, he was at liberty to do so. chapter x. orsino went directly to san giacinto's house, and found him in the room which he used for working and in which he received the many persons whom he was often obliged to see on business. the giant was alone and was seated behind a broad polished table, occupied in writing. orsino was struck by the extremely orderly arrangement of everything he saw. papers were tied together in bundles of exactly like shape, which lay in two lines of mathematical precision. the big inkstand was just in the middle of the rows and a paper-cutter, a pen-rack and an erasing knife lay side by side in front of it. the walls were lined with low book-cases of a heavy and severe type, filled principally with documents neatly filed in volumes and marked on the back in san giacinto's clear handwriting. the only object of beauty in the room was a full-length portrait of flavia by a great artist, which hung above the fireplace. the rigid symmetry of everything was made imposing by the size of the objects--the table was larger than ordinary tables, the easy-chairs were deeper, broader and lower than common, the inkstand was bigger, even the penholder in san giacinto's fingers was longer and thicker than any orsino had ever seen. and yet the latter felt that there was no affectation about all this. the man to whom these things belonged and who used them daily was himself created on a scale larger than other men. though he was older than sant' ilario and was, in fact, not far from sixty years of age san giacinto might easily have passed for less than fifty. there was hardly a grey thread in his short, thick, black hair, and he was still as lean and strong, and almost as active, as he had been thirty years earlier. the large features were perhaps a little more bony and the eyes somewhat deeper than they had been, but these changes lent an air of dignity rather than of age to the face. he rose to meet orsino and then made him sit down beside the table. the young man suddenly felt an unaccountable sense of inferiority and hesitated as to how he should begin. "i suppose you want to consult me about something," said san giacinto quietly. "yes. i want to ask your advice, if you will give it to me--about a matter of business." "willingly. what is it?" orsino was silent for a moment and stared at the wall. he was conscious that the very small sum of which he could dispose must seem even smaller in the eyes of such a man, but this did not disturb him. he was oppressed by san giacinto's personality and prepared himself to speak as though he had been a student undergoing oral examination. he stated his case plainly, when he at last spoke. he was of age and he looked forward with dread to an idle life. all careers were closed to him. he had fifteen thousand francs in his pocket. could san giacinto help him to occupy himself by investing the sum in a building speculation? was the sum sufficient as a beginning? those were the questions. san giacinto did not laugh as sant' ilario had done. he listened very attentively to the end and then deliberately offered orsino a cigar and lit one himself, before he delivered his answer. "you are asking the same question which is put to me very often," he said at last. "i wish i could give you any encouragement. i cannot." orsino's face fell, for the reply was categorical. he drew back a little in his chair, but said nothing. "that is my answer," continued san giacinto thoughtfully, "but when one says 'no' to another the subject is not necessarily exhausted. on the contrary, in such a case as this i cannot let you go without giving you my reasons. i do not care to give my views to the public, but such as they are, you are welcome to them. the time is past. that is why i advise you to have nothing to do with any speculation of this kind. that is the best of all reasons." "but you yourself are still engaged in this business," objected orsino. "not so deeply as you fancy. i have sold almost everything which i do not consider a certainty, and am selling what little i still have as fast as i can. in speculation there are only two important moments--the moment to buy and the moment to sell. in my opinion, this is the time to sell, and i do not think that the time for buying will come again without a crisis." "but everything is in such a flourishing state--" "no doubt it is--to-day. but no one can tell what state business will be in next week, nor even to-morrow." "there is del ferice--" "no doubt, and a score like him," answered san giacinto, looking quietly at orsino. "del ferice is a banker, and i am a speculator, as you wish to be. his position is different from ours. it is better to leave him out of the question. let us look at the matter logically. you wish to speculate--" "excuse me," said orsino, interrupting him. "i want to try what i can do in business." "you wish to risk money, in one way or another. you therefore wish one or more of three things--money for its own sake, excitement or occupation. i can hardly suppose that you want money. eliminate that. excitement is not a legitimate aim, and you can get it more safely in other ways. therefore you want occupation." "that is precisely what i said at the beginning," observed orsino with a shade of irritation. "yes. but i like to reach my conclusions in my own way. you are then a young man in search of an occupation. speculation, and what you propose is nothing else, is no more an occupation than playing at the public lottery and much less one than playing at baccarat. there at least you are responsible for your own mistakes and in decent society you are safe from the machinations of dishonest people. that would matter less if the chances were in your favour, as they might have been a year ago and as they were in mine from the beginning. they are against you now, because it is too late, and they are against me. i would as soon buy a piece of land on credit at the present moment, as give the whole sum in cash to the first man i met in the street." "yet there is montevarchi who still buys--" "montevarchi is not worth the paper on which he signs his name," said san giacinto calmly. orsino uttered an exclamation of surprise and incredulity. "you may tell him so, if you please," answered the giant with perfect indifference. "if you tell any one what i have said, please to tell him first, that is all. he will not believe you. but in six months he will know it, i fancy, as well as i know it now. he might have doubled his fortune, but he was and is totally ignorant of business. he thought it enough to invest all he could lay hands on and that the returns would be sure. he has invested forty millions and owns property which he believes to be worth sixty, but which will not bring ten in six months, and those remaining ten millions he owes on all manner of paper, on mortgages on his original property, in a dozen ways which he has forgotten himself." "i do not see how that is possible!" exclaimed orsino. "i am a plain man, orsino, and i am your cousin. you may take it for granted that i am right. do not forget that i was brought up in a hand-to-hand struggle for fortune such as you cannot dream of. when i was your age i was a practical man of business, and i had taught myself, and it was all on such a small scale that a mistake of a hundred francs made the difference between profit and loss. i dislike details, but i have been a man of detail all my life, by force of circumstances. successful business implies the comprehension of details. it is tedious work, and if you mean to try it you must begin at the beginning. you ought to do so. there is an enormous business before you, with considerable capabilities in it. if i were in your place, i would take what fell naturally to my lot." "what is that?" "farming. they call it agriculture in parliament, because they do not know what farming means. the men who think that italy can live without farmers are fools. we are not a manufacturing people any more than we are a business people. the best dictator for us would be a practical farmer, a ploughman like cincinnatus. nobody who has not tried to raise wheat on an italian mountain-side knows the great difficulties or the great possibilities of our country. do you know that bad as our farming is, and absurd as is our system of land taxation, we are food exporters, to a small extent? the beginning is there. take my advice, be a farmer. manage one of the big estates you have amongst you for five or six years. you will not do much good to the land in that time, but you will learn what land really means. then go into parliament and tell people facts. that is an occupation and a career as well, which cannot be said of speculation in building lots, large or small. if you have any ready money keep it in government bonds until you have a chance of buying something worth keeping." orsino went away disappointed and annoyed. san giacinto's talk about farming seemed very dull to him. to bury himself for half a dozen years in the country in order to learn the rotation of crops and the principles of land draining did not present itself as an attractive career. if san giacinto thought farming the great profession of the future, why did he not try it himself? orsino dismissed the idea rather indignantly, and his determination to try his luck became stronger by the opposition it met. moreover he had expected very different language from san giacinto, whose sober view jarred on orsino's enthusiastic impulse. but he now found himself in considerable difficulty. he was ignorant even of the first steps to be taken, and knew no one to whom he could apply for information. there was prince montevarchi indeed, who though he was san giacinto's brother-in-law, seemed by the latter's account to have got into trouble. he did not understand how san giacinto could allow his wife's brother to ruin himself without lending him a helping hand, but san giacinto was not the kind of man of whom people ask indiscreet questions, and orsino had heard that the two men were not on the best of terms. possibly good advice had been offered and refused. such affairs generally end in a breach of friendship. however that might be, orsino would not go to montevarchi. he wandered aimlessly about the streets, and the money seemed to burn in his pocket, though he had carefully deposited it in a place of safety at home. again and again del ferice's story of the carpenter and his two companions recurred to his mind. he wondered how they had set about beginning, and he wished he could ask del ferice himself. he could not go to the man's house, but he might possibly meet him at maria consuelo's. he was surprised to find that he had almost forgotten her in his anxiety to become a man of business. it was too early to call yet, and in order to kill the time he went home, got a horse from the stables and rode out into the country for a couple of hours. at half-past five o'clock he entered the familiar little sitting-room in the hotel. madame d'aranjuez was alone, cutting a new book with the jewelled knife which continued to be the only object of the kind visible in the room. she smiled as orsino entered, and she laid aside the volume as he sat down in his accustomed place. "i thought you were not coming," she said. "why?" "you always come at five. it is half-past to-day." orsino looked at his watch. "do you notice whether i come or not?" he asked. maria consuelo glanced at his face, and laughed. "what have you been doing to-day?" she asked. "that is much more interesting." "is it? i am afraid not. i have been listening to those disagreeable things which are called truths by the people who say them. i have listened to two lectures delivered by two very intelligent men for my especial benefit. it seems to me that as soon as i make a good resolution it becomes the duty of sensible people to demonstrate that i am a fool." "you are not in a good humour. tell me all about it." "and weary you with my grievances? no. is del ferice coming this afternoon?" "how can i tell? he does not come often." "i thought he came almost every day," said orsino gloomily. he was disappointed, but maria consuelo did not understand what was the matter. she leaned forward in her low seat, her chin resting upon one hand, and her tawny eyes fixed on orsino's. "tell me, my friend--are you unhappy? can i do anything? will you tell me?" it was not easy to resist the appeal. though the two had grown intimate of late, there had hitherto always been something cold and reserved behind her outwardly friendly manner. to-day she seemed suddenly willing to be different. her easy, graceful attitude, her soft voice full of promised sympathy, above all the look in her strange eyes revealed a side of her character which orsino had not suspected and which affected him in a way he could not have described. without hesitation he told her his story, from beginning to end, simply, without comment and without any of the cutting phrases which came so readily to his tongue on most occasions. she listened very thoughtfully to the end. "those things are not misfortunes," she said. "but they may be the beginnings of unhappiness. to be unhappy is worse than any misfortune. what right has your father to laugh at you? because he never needed to do anything for himself, he thinks it absurd that his son should dislike the lazy life that is prepared for him. it is not reasonable--it is not kind!" "yet he means to be both, i suppose," said orsino bitterly. "oh, of course! people always mean to be the soul of logic and the paragon of charity! especially where their own children are concerned." maria consuelo added the last words with more feeling than seemed justified by her sympathy for orsino's woes. the moment was perhaps favourable for asking a leading question about herself, and her answer might have thrown light on her problematic past. but orsino was too busy with his own troubles to think of that, and the opportunity slipped by and was lost. "you know now why i want to see del ferice," he said. "i cannot go to his house. my only chance of talking to him lies here." "and that is what brings you? you are very flattering!" "do not be unjust! we all look forward to meeting our friends in heaven." "very pretty. i forgive you. but i am afraid that you will not meet del ferice. i do not think he has left the chambers yet. there was to be a debate this afternoon in which he had to speak." "does he make speeches?" "very good ones. i have heard him." "i have never been inside the chambers," observed orsino. "you are not very patriotic. you might go there and ask for del ferice. you could see him without going to his house--without compromising your dignity." "why do you laugh?" "because it all seems to me so absurd. you know that you are perfectly free to go and see him when and where you will. there is nothing to prevent you. he is the one man of all others whose advice you need. he has an unexceptional position in the world--no doubt he has done strange things, but so have dozens of people whom you know--his present reputation is excellent, i say. and yet, because some twenty years ago, when you were a child, he held one opinion and your father held another, you are interdicted from crossing his threshold! if you can shake hands with him here, you can take his hand in his own house. is not that true?" "theoretically, i daresay, but not in practice. you see it yourself. you have chosen one side from the first, and all the people on the other side know it. as a foreigner, you are not bound to either, and you can know everybody in time, if you please. society is not so prejudiced as to object to that. but because you begin with the del ferice in a very uncompromising way, it would take a long time for you to know the montevarchi, for instance." "who told you that i was a foreigner?" asked maria consuelo, rather abruptly. "you yourself--" "that is good authority!" she laughed. "i do not remember--ah! because i do not speak italian? you mean that? one may forget one's own language, or for that matter one may never have learned it." "are you italian, then, madame?" asked orsino, surprised that she should lead the conversation so directly to a point which he had supposed must be reached by a series of tactful approaches. "who knows? i am sure i do not. my father was italian. does that constitute nationality?" "yes. but the woman takes the nationality of her husband, i believe," said orsino, anxious to hear more. "ah yes--poor aranjuez!" maria consuelo's voice suddenly took that sleepy tone which orsino had heard more than once. her eyelids drooped a little and she lazily opened and shut her hand, and spread out the fingers and looked at them. but orsino was not satisfied to let the conversation drop at this point, and after a moment's pause he put a decisive question. "and was monsieur d'aranjuez also italian?" he asked. "what does it matter?" she asked in the same indolent tone. "yes, since you ask me, he was italian, poor man." orsino was more and more puzzled. that the name did not exist in italy he was almost convinced. he thought of the story of the signor aragno, who had fallen overboard in the south seas, and then he was suddenly aware that he could not believe in anything of the sort. maria consuelo did not betray a shade of emotion, either, at the mention of her deceased husband. she seemed absorbed in the contemplation of her hands. orsino had not been rebuked for his curiosity and would have asked another question if he had known how to frame it. an awkward silence followed. maria consuelo raised her eyes slowly and looked thoughtfully into orsino's face. "i see," she said at last. "you are curious. i do not know whether you have any right to be--have you?" "i wish i had!" exclaimed orsino thoughtlessly. again she looked at him in silence for some moments. "i have not known you long enough," she said. "and if i had known you longer, perhaps it would not be different. are other people curious, too? do they talk about me?" "the people i know do--but they do not know you. they see your name in the papers, as a beautiful spanish princess. yet everybody is aware that there is no spanish nobleman of your name. of course they are curious. they invent stories about you, which i deny. if i knew more, it would be easier." "why do you take the trouble to deny such things?" she asked the question with a change of manner. once more she leaned forward and her face softened wonderfully as she looked at him. "can you not guess?" he asked. he was conscious of a very unusual emotion, not at all in harmony with the imaginary character he had chosen for himself, and which he generally maintained with considerable success. maria consuelo was one person when she leaned back in her chair, laughing or idly listening to his talk, or repulsing the insignificant declarations of devotion which were not even meant to be taken altogether in earnest. she was pretty then, attractive, graceful, feminine, a little artificial, perhaps, and orsino felt that he was free to like her or not, as he pleased, but that he pleased to like her for the present. she was quite another woman to-day, as she bent forward, her tawny eyes growing darker and more mysterious every moment, her auburn hair casting wonderful shadows upon her broad pale forehead, her lips not closed as usual, but slightly parted, her fragrant breath just stirring the quiet air orsino breathed. her features might be irregular. it did not matter. she was beautiful for the moment with a kind of beauty orsino had never seen, and which produced a sudden and overwhelming effect upon him. "do you not know?" he asked again, and his voice trembled unexpectedly. "thank you," she said softly and she touched his hand almost caressingly. but when he would have taken it, she drew back instantly and was once more the woman whom he saw every day, careless, indifferent, pretty. "why do you change so quickly?" he asked in a low voice, bending towards her. "why do you snatch your hand away? are you afraid of me?" "why should i be afraid? are you dangerous?" "you are. you may be fatal, for all i know." "how foolish!" she exclaimed, with a quick glance. "you are madame d'aranjuez, now," he answered. "we had better change the subject." "what do you mean?" "a moment ago you were consuelo," he said boldly. "have i given you any right to say that?" "a little." "i am sorry. i will be more careful. i am sure i cannot imagine why you should think of me at all, unless when you are talking to me, and then i do not wish to be called by my christian name. i assure you, you are never anything in my thoughts but his excellency prince orsino saracinesca--with as many titles after that as may belong to you." "i have none," said orsino. her speech irritated him strongly, and the illusion which had been so powerful a few moments earlier all but disappeared. "then you advise me to go and find del ferice at monte citorio," he observed. "if you like." she laughed. "there is no mistaking your intention when you mean to change the subject," she added. "you made it sufficiently clear that the other was disagreeable to you." "i did not mean to do so." "then in heaven's name, what do you mean, madame?" he asked, suddenly losing his head in his extreme annoyance. maria consuelo raised her eyebrows in surprise. "why are you so angry?" she asked. "do you know that it is very rude to speak like that?" "i cannot help it. what have i done to-day that you should torment me as you do?" "i? i torment you? my dear friend, you are quite mad." "i know i am. you make me so." "will you tell me how? what have i done? what have i said? you romans are certainly the most extraordinary people. it is impossible to please you. if one laughs, you become tragic. if one is serious, you grow gay! i wish i understood you better." "you will end by making it impossible for me to understand myself," said orsino. "you say that i am changeable. then what are you?" "very much the same to-day as yesterday," said maria consuelo calmly. "and i do not suppose that i shall be very different to-morrow." "at least i will take my chance of finding that you are mistaken," said orsino, rising suddenly, and standing before her. "are you going?" she asked, as though she were surprised. "since i cannot please you." "since you will not." "i do not know how." "be yourself--the same that you always are. you are affecting to be some one else, to-day." "i fancy it is the other way," answered orsino, with more truth than he really owned to himself. "then i prefer the affectation to the reality." "as you will, madame. good evening." he crossed the room to go out. she called him back. "don orsino!" he turned sharply round. "madame?" seeing that he did not move, she rose and went to him. he looked down into her face and saw that it was changed again. "are you really angry?" she asked. there was something girlish in the way she asked the question, and, for a moment, in her whole manner. orsino could not help smiling. but he said nothing. "no, you are not," she continued. "i can see it. do you know? i am very glad. it was foolish of me to tease you. you will forgive me? this once?" "if you will give me warning the next time." he found that he was looking into her eyes. "what is the use of warning?" she asked. they were very close together, and there was a moment's silence. suddenly orsino forgot everything and bent down, clasping her in his arms and kissing her again and again. it was brutal, rough, senseless, but he could not help it. maria consuelo uttered a short, sharp cry, more of surprise, perhaps, than of horror. to orsino's amazement and confusion her voice was immediately answered by another, which was that of the dark and usually silent maid, whom he had seen once or twice. the woman ran into the room, terrified by the cry she had heard. "madame felt faint in crossing the room, and was falling when i caught her," said orsino, with a coolness that did him credit. and, in fact, maria consuelo closed her eyes as he let her sink into the nearest chair. the maid fell on her knees beside her mistress and began chafing her hands. "the poor signora!" she exclaimed. "she should never be left alone! she has not been herself since the poor signore died. you had better leave us, sir--i will put her to bed when she revives. it often happens--pray do not be anxious!" orsino picked up his hat and left the room. "oh--it often happens, does it?" he said to himself as he closed the door softly behind him and walked down the corridor of the hotel. he was more amazed at his own boldness than he cared to own. he had not supposed that scenes of this description produced themselves so very unexpectedly, and, as it were, without any fixed intention on the part of the chief actor. he remembered that he had been very angry with madame d'aranjuez, that she had spoken half a dozen words, and that he had felt an irresistible impulse to kiss her. he had done so, and he thought with considerable trepidation of their next meeting. she had screamed, which showed that she was outraged by his boldness. it was doubtful whether she would receive him again. the best thing to be done, he thought, was to write her a very humble letter of apology, explaining his conduct as best he could. this did not accord very well with his principles, but he had already transgressed them in being so excessively hasty. her eyes had certainly been provoking in the extreme, and it had been impossible to resist the expression on her lips. but at all events, he should have begun by kissing her hand, which she would certainly not have withdrawn again--then he might have put his arm round her and drawn her head to his shoulder. these were preliminaries in the matter of kissing which it was undoubtedly right to observe, and he had culpably neglected them. he had been abominably brutal, and he ought to apologise. nevertheless, he would not have forfeited the recollection of that moment for all the other recollections of his life, and he knew it. as he walked along the street he felt a wild exhilaration such as he had never known before. he owned gladly to himself that he loved maria consuelo, and resolutely thrust away the idea that his boyish vanity was pleased by the snatching of a kiss. whatever the real nature of his delight might be it was for the time so sincere that he even forgot to light a cigarette in order to think over the circumstances. walking rapidly up the corso he came to the piazza colonna, and the glare of the electric light somehow recalled him to himself. "great speech of the honourable del ferice!" yelled a newsboy in his ear. "ministerial crisis! horrible murder of a grocer!" orsino mechanically turned to the right in the direction of the chambers. del ferice had probably gone home, since his speech was already in print. but fate had ordained otherwise. del ferice had corrected his proofs on the spot and had lingered to talk with his friends before going home. not that it mattered much, for orsino could have found him as well on the following day. his brougham was standing in front of the great entrance and he himself was shaking hands with a tall man under the light of the lamps. orsino went up to him. "could you spare me a quarter of an hour?" asked the young man in a voice constrained by excitement. he felt that he was embarked at last upon his great enterprise. del ferice looked up in some astonishment. he had reason to dread the quarrelsome disposition of the saracinesca as a family, and he wondered what orsino wanted. "certainly, certainly, don orsino," he answered, with a particularly bland smile. "shall we drive, or at least sit in my carriage? i am a little fatigued with my exertions to-day." the tall man bowed and strolled away, biting the end of an unlit cigar. "it is a matter of business," said orsino, before entering the carriage. "can you help me to try my luck--in a very small way--in one of the building enterprises you manage?" "of course i can, and will," answered del ferice, more and more astonished. "after you, my dear don orsino, after you," he repeated, pushing the young man into the brougham. "quiet streets--till i stop you," he said to the footman, as he himself got in. chapter xi. del ferice was surprised beyond measure at orsino's request, and was not guilty of any profoundly nefarious intention when he so readily acceded to it. his own character made him choose as a rule to refuse nothing that was asked of him, though his promises were not always fulfilled afterwards. to express his own willingness to help those who asked, was of course not the same as asserting his power to give assistance when the time should come. in the present case he did not even make up his mind which of two courses he would ultimately pursue. orsino came to him with a small sum of ready money in his hand. del ferice had it in his power to make him lose that sum, and a great deal more besides, thereby causing the boy endless trouble with his family; or else the banker could, if he pleased, help him to a very considerable success. his really superior talent for diplomacy inclined him to choose the latter plan, but he was far too cautious to make any hasty decision. the brougham rolled on through quiet and ill-lighted streets, and del ferice leaned back in his corner, not listening at all to orsino's talk, though he occasionally uttered a polite though utterly unintelligible syllable or two which might mean anything agreeable to his companion's views. the situation was easy enough to understand, and he had grasped it in a moment. what orsino might say was of no importance whatever, but the consequences of any action on del ferice's part might be serious and lasting. orsino stated his many reasons for wishing to engage in business, as he had stated them more than once already during the day and during the past weeks, and when he had finished he repeated his first question. "can you help me to try my luck?" he asked. del ferice awoke from his reverie with characteristic readiness and realised that he must say something. his voice had never been strong and he leaned out of his corner of the carriage in order to speak near orsino's ear. "i am delighted with all you say," he began, "and i scarcely need repeat that my services are altogether at your disposal. the only question is, how are we to begin? the sum you mention is certainly not large, but that does not matter. you would have little difficulty in raising as many hundreds of thousands as you have thousands, if money were necessary. but in business of this kind the only ready money needed is for stamp duty and for the wages of workmen, and the banks advance what is necessary for the latter purpose, in small sums on notes of hand guaranteed by a general mortgage. when you have paid the stamp duties, you may go to the club and lose the balance of your capital at baccarat if you please. the loss in that direction will not affect your credit as a contractor. all that is very simple. you wish to succeed, however, not at cards, but at business. that is the difficulty." del ferice paused. "that is not very clear to me," observed orsino. "no--no," answered del ferice thoughtfully. "no--i daresay it is not so very clear. i wish i could make it clearer. speculation means gambling only when the speculator is a gambler. of course there are successful gamblers in the world, but there are not many of them. i read somewhere the other day that business was the art of handling other people's-money. the remark is not particularly true. business is the art of creating a value where none has yet existed. that is what you wish to do. i do not think that a saracinesca would take pleasure in turning over money not belonging to him." "certainly not!" exclaimed orsino. "that is usury." "not exactly, but it is banking; and banking, it is quite true, is usury within legal bounds. there is no question of that here. the operation is simple in the extreme. i sell you a piece of land on the understanding that you will build upon it, and instead of payment you give me a mortgage. i lend you money from month to month in small sums at a small interest, to pay for material and labour. you are only responsible upon one point. the money is to be used for the purpose stated. when the building is finished you sell it. if you sell it for cash, you pay off the mortgage, and receive the difference. if you sell it with the mortgage, the buyer becomes the mortgager and only pays you the difference, which remains yours, out and out. that is the whole process from beginning to end." "how wonderfully simple!" "it is almost primitive in its simplicity," answered del ferice gravely. "but in every case two difficulties present themselves, and i am bound to tell you that they are serious ones." "what are they?" "you must know how to buy in the right part of the city and you must have a competent assistant. the two conditions are indispensable." "what sort of an assistant?" asked orsino. "a practical man. if possible, an architect, who will then have a share of the profits instead of being paid for his work." "is it very hard to find such a person?" "it is not easy." "do you think you could help me?" "i do not know. i am assuming a great responsibility in doing so. you do not seem to realise that, don orsino." del ferice laughed a little in his quiet way, but orsino was silent. it was the first time that the banker had reminded him of the vast difference in their social and political positions. "i do not think it would be very wise of me to help you into such a business as this," said del ferice cautiously. "i speak quite selfishly and for my own sake. success is never certain, and it would be a great injury to me if you failed." he was beginning to make up his mind. "why?" asked orsino. his own instincts of generosity were aroused. he would certainly not do del ferice an injury if he could help it, nor allow him to incur the risk of one. "if you fail," answered the other, "all rome will say that i have intentionally brought about your failure. you know how people talk. thousands will become millions and i shall be accused of having plotted the destruction of your family, because your father once wounded me in a duel, nearly five and twenty years ago." "how absurd!" "no, no. it is not absurd. i am afraid i have the reputation of being vindictive. well, well--it is in bad taste to talk of oneself. i am good at hating, perhaps, but i have always felt that i preferred peace to war, and now i am growing old. i am not what i once was, don orsino, and i do not like quarrelling. but i would not allow people to say impertinent things about me, and if you failed and lost money, i should be abused by your friends, and perhaps censured by my own. do you see? yes, i am selfish. i admit it. you must forgive that weakness in me. i like peace." "it is very natural," said orsino, "and i have no right to put you in danger of the slightest inconvenience. but, after all, why need i appear before the public?" del ferice smiled in the dark. "true," he answered. "you could establish an anonymous firm, so to say, and the documents would be a secret between you and me and the notary. of course there are many ways of managing such an affair quietly." he did not add that the secret could only be kept so long as orsino was successful. it seemed a pity to damp so much good enthusiasm. "we will do that, then, if you will show me how. my ambition is not to see my name on a door-plate, but to be really occupied." "i understand, i understand," said del ferice thoughtfully. "i must ask you to give me until to-morrow to consider the matter. it needs a little thought." "where can i find you, to hear your decision?" del ferice was silent for a moment. "i think i once met you late in the afternoon at madame d'aranjuez's. we might manage to meet there to-morrow and come away together. shall we name an hour? would it suit you?" "perfectly," answered orsino with alacrity. the idea of meeting maria consuelo alone was very disturbing in his present state of mind. he felt that he had lost his balance in his relations with her, and that in order to regain it he must see her in the presence of a third person, if only for a quarter of an hour. it would be easier, then, to resume the former intercourse and to say whatever he should determine upon saying. if she were offended, she would at least not show it in any marked way before del ferice. orsino's existence, he thought, was becoming complicated for the first time, and though he enjoyed the vague sensation of impending difficulty, he wanted as many opportunities as possible of reviewing the situation and of meditating upon each new move. he got out of del ferice's carriage at no great distance from his own home, and after a few words of very sincere thanks walked slowly away. he found it very hard to arrange his thoughts in any consecutive order, though he tried several methods of self-analysis, and repeated to himself that he had experienced a great happiness and was probably on the threshold of a great success. these two reflections did not help him much. the happiness had been of the explosive kind, and the success in the business matter was more than problematic, as well as certainly distant in the future. he was very restless and craved the immediate excitement of further emotions, so that he would certainly have gone to the club that night, had not the fear of losing his small and precious capital deterred him. he thought of all that was coming and he determined to be careful, even sordid if necessary, rather than lose his chance of making the great attempt. besides, he would cut a poor figure on the morrow if he were obliged to admit to del ferice that he had lost his fifteen thousand francs and was momentarily penniless. he accordingly shut himself up in his own room at an early hour, and smoked in solitude until he was sleepy, reviewing the various events of the day, or trying to do so, though his mind reverted constantly to the one chief event of all, to the unaccountable outburst of passion by which he had perhaps offended maria consuelo beyond forgiveness. with all his affectation of cynicism he had not learned that sin is easy only because it meets with such very general encouragement. even if he had been aware of that undeniable fact, the knowledge might not have helped him very materially. the hours passed very slowly during the next day, and even when the appointed time had come, orsino allowed another quarter of an hour to go by before he entered the hotel and ascended to the little sitting-room in which maria consuelo received. he meant to be sure that del ferice was there before entering, but he was too proud to watch for the latter's coming, or to inquire of the porter whether maria consuelo were alone or not. it seemed simpler in every way to appear a little late. but del ferice was a busy man and not always punctual, so that to orsino's considerable confusion, he found maria consuelo alone, in spite of his precaution. he was so much surprised as to become awkward, for the first time in his life, and he felt the blood rising in his face, dark as he was. "will you forgive me?" he asked, almost timidly, as he held out his hand. maria consuelo's tawny eyes looked curiously at him. then she smiled suddenly. "my dear child," she said, "you should not do such things! it is very foolish, you know." the answer was so unexpected and so exceedingly humiliating, as orsino thought at first, that he grew pale and drew back a little. but maria consuelo took no notice of his behaviour, and settled herself in her accustomed chair. "did you find del ferice last night?" she asked, changing the subject without the least hesitation. "yes," answered orsino. almost before the word was spoken there was a knock at the door and del ferice appeared. orsino's face cleared, as though something pleasant had happened, and maria consuelo observed the fact. she concluded, naturally enough, that the two men had agreed to meet in her sitting-room, and she resented the punctuality which she supposed they had displayed in coming almost together, especially after what had happened on the preceding day. she noted the cordiality with which they greeted each other and she felt sure that she was right. on the other hand she could not afford to show the least coldness to del ferice, lest he should suppose that she was annoyed at being disturbed in her conversation with orsino. the situation was irritating to her, but she made the best of it and began to talk to del ferice about the speech he had made on the previous evening. he had spoken well, and she found it easy to be just and flattering at the same time. "it must be an immense satisfaction to speak as you do," said orsino, wishing to say something at least agreeable. del ferice acknowledged the compliment by a deprecatory gesture. "to speak as some of my colleagues can--yes--it must be a great satisfaction. but madame d'aranjuez exaggerates. and, besides, i only make speeches when i am called upon to do so. speeches are wasted in nine cases out of ten, too. they are, if i may say so, the music at the political ball. sometimes the guests will dance, and sometimes they will not, but the musicians must try and suit the taste of the great invited. the dancing itself is the thing." "deeds not words," suggested maria consuelo, glancing at orsino, who chanced to be looking at her. "that is a good motto enough," he said gloomily. "deeds may need explanation, _post facto_," remarked del ferice, unconsciously making such a direct allusion to recent events that orsino looked sharply at him, and maria consuelo smiled. "that is true," she said. "and when you need any one to help you, it is necessary to explain your purpose beforehand," observed del ferice. "that is what happens so often in politics, and in other affairs of life as well. if a man takes money from me without my consent, he steals, but if i agree to his taking it, the transaction becomes a gift or a loan. a despotic government steals, a constitutional one borrows or receives free offerings. the fact that the despot pays interest on a part of what he steals raises him to the position of the magnanimous brigand who leaves his victims just enough money to carry them to the nearest town. possibly it is after all a quibble of definitions, and the difference may not be so great as it seems at first sight. but then, all morality is but the shadow cast on one side or the other of a definition." "surely that is not your political creed!" said maria consuelo. "certainly not, madame, certainly not," answered del ferice in gentle protest. "it is not a creed at all, but only a very poor explanation of the way in which most experienced people look upon the events of their day. the idea in which we believe is very different from the results it has brought about, and very much higher, and very much better. but the results are not all bad either. unfortunately the bad ones are on the surface, and the good ones, which are enduring, must be sought in places where the honest sunshine has not yet dispelled the early shadows." maria consuelo smiled faintly, and the slight cast in her eyes was more than usually apparent, as though her attention were wandering. orsino said nothing, and wondered why del ferice continued to talk. the latter, indeed, was allowing himself to run on because neither of his hearers seemed inclined to make a remark which might serve to turn the conversation, and he began to suspect that something had occurred before his coming which had disturbed their equanimity. he presently began to talk of people instead of ideas, for he had no intention of being thought a bore by madame d'aranjuez, and the man who is foolish enough to talk of anything but his neighbours, when he has more than one hearer, is in danger of being numbered with the tormentors. half an hour passed quickly enough after the common chord had been struck, and del ferice and orsino exchanged glances of intelligence, meaning to go away together as had been agreed. del ferice rose first, and orsino took up his hat. to his surprise and consternation maria consuelo made a quick and imperative sign to him to remain. del ferice's dull blue eyes saw most things that happened within the range of their vision, and neither the gesture nor the look that accompanied it escaped him. orsino's position was extremely awkward. he had put del ferice to some inconvenience on the understanding that they were to go away together and did not wish to offend him by not keeping his engagement. on the other hand it was next to impossible to disobey maria consuelo, and to explain his difficulty to del ferice was wholly out of the question. he almost wished that the latter might have seen and understood the signal. but del ferice made no sign and took maria consuelo's offered hand, in the act of leavetaking. orsino grew desperate and stood beside the two, holding his hat. del ferice turned to shake hands with him also. "but perhaps you are going too," he said, with a distinct interrogation. orsino glanced at maria consuelo as though imploring her permission to take his leave, but her face was impenetrable, calm and indifferent. del ferice understood perfectly what was taking place, but he found a moment while orsino hesitated. if the latter had known how completely he was in del ferice's power throughout the little scene, he would have then and there thrown over his financial schemes in favour of maria consuelo. but del ferice's quiet, friendly manner did not suggest despotism, and he did not suffer orsino's embarrassment to last more than five seconds. "i have a little proposition to make," said the fat count, turning again to maria consuelo. "my wife and i are alone this evening. will you not come and dine with us, madame? and you, don orsino, will you not come too? we shall just make a party of four, if you will both come." "i shall be enchanted!" exclaimed maria consuelo without hesitation. "i shall be delighted!" answered orsino with an alacrity which surprised himself. "at eight then," said del ferice, shaking hands with him again, and in a moment he was gone. orsino was too much confused, and too much delighted at having escaped so easily from his difficulty to realise the importance of the step he was taking in going to del fence's house, or to ask himself why the latter had so opportunely extended the invitation. he sat down in his place with a sigh of relief. "you have compromised yourself for ever," said maria consuelo with a scornful laugh. "you, the blackest of the black, are to be numbered henceforth with the acquaintances of count del ferice and donna tullia." "what difference does it make? besides, i could not have done otherwise." "you might have refused the dinner." "i could not possibly have done that. to accept was the only way out of a great difficulty." "what difficulty?" asked maria consuelo relentlessly. orsino was silent, wondering how he could explain, as explain he must, without offending her. "you should not do such things," she said suddenly. "i will not always forgive you." a gleam of light which, indeed, promised little forgiveness, flashed in her eyes. "what things?" asked orsino. "do not pretend that you think me so simple," she said, in a tone of irritation. "you and del ferice come here almost at the same moment. when he goes, you show the utmost anxiety to go too. of course you have agreed to meet here. it is evident. you might have chosen the steps of the hotel for your place of meeting instead of my sitting-room." the colour rose slowly in her cheeks. she was handsome when she was angry. "if i had imagined that you could be displeased--" "is it so surprising? have you forgotten what happened yesterday? you should be on your knees, asking my forgiveness for that--and instead, you make a convenience of your visit to-day in order to meet a man of business. you have very strange ideas of what is due to a woman." "del fence suggested it," said orsino, "and i accepted the suggestion." "what is del ferice to me, that i should be made the victim of his suggestions, as you call them? besides, he does not know anything of your folly of yesterday, and he has no right to suspect it." "i cannot tell you how sorry i am." "and yet you ought to tell me, if you expect that i will forget all this. you cannot? then be so good as to do the only other sensible thing in your power, and leave me as soon as possible." "forgive me, this once!" orsino entreated in great distress, but not finding any words to express his sense of humiliation. "you are not eloquent," she said scornfully. "you had better go. do not come to the dinner this evening, either. i would rather not see you. you can easily make an excuse." orsino recovered himself suddenly. "i will not go away now, and i will not give up the dinner to-night," he said quietly. "i cannot make you do either--but i can leave you," said maria consuelo, with a movement as though she were about to rise from her chair. "you will not do that," orsino answered. she raised her eyebrows in real or affected surprise at his persistence. "you seem very sure of yourself," she said. "do not be so sure of me." "i am sure that i love you. nothing else matters." he leaned forward and took her hand, so quickly that she had not time to prevent him. she tried to draw it away, but he held it fast. "let me go!" she cried. "i will call, if you do not!" "call all rome if you will, to see me ask your forgiveness. consuelo--do not be so hard and cruel--if you only knew how i love you, you would be sorry for me, you would see how i hate myself, how i despise myself for all this--" "you might show a little more feeling," she said, making a final effort to disengage her hand, and then relinquishing the struggle. orsino wondered whether he were really in love with her or not. somehow, the words he sought did not rise to his lips, and he was conscious that his speech was not of the same temperature, so to say, as his actions. there was something in maria consuelo's manner which disturbed him disagreeably, like a cold draught blowing unexpectedly through a warm room. still he held her hand and endeavoured to rise to the occasion. "consuelo!" he cried in a beseeching tone. "do not send me away--see how i am suffering--it is so easy for you to say that you forgive!" she looked at him a moment, and her eyelids drooped suddenly. "will you let me go, if i forgive you?" she asked in a low voice. "yes." "i forgive you then. well? do you still hold my hand?" "yes." he leaned forward and tried to draw her toward him, looking into her eyes. she yielded a little, and their faces came a little nearer to each other, and still a little nearer. all at once a deep blush rose in her cheeks, she turned her head away and drew back quickly. "not for all the world!" she exclaimed, in a tone that was new to orsino's ear. he tried to take her hand again, but she would not give it. "no, no! go--you are not to be trusted!" she cried, avoiding him. "why are you so unkind?" he asked, almost passionately. "i have been kind enough for this day," she answered. "pray go--do not stay any longer--i may regret it." "my staying?" "no--my kindness. and do not come again for the present. i would rather see you at del ferice's than here." orsino was quite unable to understand her behaviour, and an older and more experienced man might have been almost as much puzzled as he. a long silence followed, during which he sat quite still and she looked steadily at the cover of a book which lay on the table. "please go," she said at last, in a voice which was not unkind. orsino rose from his seat and prepared to obey her, reluctantly enough and feeling that he was out of tune with himself and with everything. "will you not even tell me why you send me away?" he asked. "because i wish to be alone," she answered. "good-bye." she did not look up as he left the room, and when he was gone she did not move from her place, but sat as she had sat before, staring at the yellow cover of the novel on the table. orsino went home in a very unsettled frame of mind, and was surprised to find that the lighted streets looked less bright and cheerful than on the previous evening, and his own immediate prospects far less pleasing. he was angry with himself for having been so foolish as to make his visit to maria consuelo a mere appointment with del ferice, and he was surprised beyond measure to find himself suddenly engaged in a social acquaintance with the latter, when he had only meant to enter into relations of business with him. yet it did not occur to him that del ferice had in any way entrapped him into accepting the invitation. del ferice had saved him from a very awkward situation. why? because del ferice had seen the gesture maria consuelo had made, and had understood it, and wished to give orsino another opportunity of discussing his project. but if del ferice had seen the quick sign, he had probably interpreted it in a way compromising to madame d'aranjuez. this was serious, though it was assuredly not orsino's fault if she compromised herself. she might have let him go without question, and since an explanation of some sort was necessary she might have waited until the next day to demand it of him. he resented what she had done, and yet within the last quarter of an hour, he had been making a declaration of love to her. he was further conscious that the said declaration had been wholly lacking in spirit, in passion and even in eloquence. he probably did not love her after all, and with an attempt at his favourite indifference he tried to laugh at himself. but the effort was not successful, and he felt something approaching to pain as he realised that there was nothing to laugh at. he remembered her eyes and her face and the tones of her voice, and he imagined that if he could turn back now and see her again, he could say in one breath such things as would move a statue to kisses. the very phrases rose to his lips and he repeated them to himself as he walked along. most unaccountable of all had been maria consuelo's own behaviour. her chief preoccupation seemed to have been to get rid of him as soon as possible. she had been very seriously offended with him to-day, much more deeply, indeed, than yesterday, though, the cause appeared to his inexperience to be a far less adequate one. it was evident, he thought, that she had not really pardoned his want of tact, but had yielded to the necessity of giving a reluctant forgiveness, merely because she did not wish to break off her acquaintance with him. on the other hand, she had allowed him to say again and again that he loved her, and she had not forbidden him to call her by her name. he had always heard that it was hard to understand women, and he began to believe it. there was one hypothesis which he had not considered. it was faintly possible that she loved him already, though he was slow to believe that, his vanity lying in another direction. but even if she did, matters were not clearer. the supposition could not account for her sending him away so abruptly and with such evident intention. if she loved him, she would naturally, he supposed, wish him to stay as long as possible. she had only wished to keep him long enough to tell him how angry she was. he resented that again, for he was in the humour to resent most things. it was all extremely complicated, and orsino began to think that he might find the complication less interesting than he had expected a few hours earlier. he had little time for reflection either, since he was to meet both maria consuelo and del ferice at dinner. he felt as though the coming evening were in a measure to decide his future existence, and it was indeed destined to exercise a great influence upon his life, as any person not disturbed by the anxieties which beset him might easily have foreseen. before leaving the house he made an excuse to his mother, saying that he had unexpectedly been asked to dine with friends, and at the appointed hour he rang at del ferice's door. chapter xii. orsino looked about him with some curiosity as he entered del fence's abode. he had never expected to find himself the guest of donna tullia and her husband and when he took the robust countess's hand he was inclined to wish that the whole affair might turn out to be a dream. in vain he repeated to himself that he was no longer a boy, but a grown man, of age in the eyes of the law to be responsible for his own actions, and old enough in fact to take what steps he pleased for the accomplishment of his own ends. he found no solace in the reflection, and he could not rid himself of the idea that he had got himself into a very boyish scrape. it would indeed have been very easy to refuse del ferice's invitation and to write him a note within the hour explaining vaguely that circumstances beyond his control obliged him to ask another interview for the discussion of business matters. but it was too late now. he was exchanging indifferent remarks with donna tullia, while del ferice looked on benignantly, and all three waited for madame d'aranjuez. five minutes had not elapsed before she came, and her appearance momentarily dispelled orsino's annoyance at his own rashness. he had never before seen her dressed for the evening, and he had not realised how much to her advantage the change from the ordinary costume, or the inevitable "tea-garment," to a dinner gown would be. she was assuredly not over-dressed, for she wore black without colours and her only ornament was a single string of beautiful pearls which donna tullia believed to be false, but which orsino accepted as real. possibly he knew even more about pearls than the countess, for his mother had many and wore them often, whereas donna tullia preferred diamonds and rubies. but his eyes did not linger on the necklace, for maria consuelo's whole presence affected him strangely. there was something light-giving and even dazzling about her which he had not expected, and he understood for the first time that the language of the newspaper paragraphs was not so grossly flattering as he had supposed. in spite of the great artistic defects of feature, which could not long escape an observer of ordinary taste, it was clear that maria consuelo must always be a striking and central figure in any social assembly, great or small. there had been moments in orsino's acquaintance with her, when he had thought her really beautiful; as she now appeared, one of those moments seemed to have become permanent. he thought of what he had dared on the preceding day, his vanity was pleased and his equanimity restored. with a sense of pride which was very far from being delicate and was by no means well founded, he watched her as she walked in to dinner before him, leaning on del ferice's arm. "beautiful--eh? i see you think so," whispered donna tullia in his ear. the countess treated him at once as an old acquaintance, which put him at his ease, while it annoyed his conscience. "very beautiful," he answered, with a grave nod. "and so mysterious," whispered the countess again, just as they reached the door of the dining-room. "she is very fascinating--take care!" she tapped his arm familiarly with her fan and laughed, as he left her at her seat. "what are you two laughing at?" asked del ferice, smiling pleasantly as he surveyed the six oysters he found upon his plate, and considered which should be left until the last as the crowning tit-bit. he was fond of good eating, and especially fond of oysters as an introduction to the feast. "what we were laughing at? how indiscreet you are, ugo! you always want to find out all my little secrets. consuelo, my dear, do you like oysters, or do you not? that is the question. you do, i know--a little lemon and a very little red pepper--i love red, even to adoring cayenne!" orsino glanced at madame d'aranjuez, for he was surprised to hear donna tullia call her by her first name. he had not known that the two women had reached the first halting place of intimacy. maria consuelo smiled rather vaguely as she took the advice in the shape of lemon juice and pepper. del ferice could not interrupt his enjoyment of the oysters by words, and orsino waited for an opportunity of saying something witty. "i have lately formed the highest opinion of the ancient romans," said donna tullia, addressing him. "do you know why?" orsino professed his ignorance. "ugo tells me that in a recent excavation twenty cartloads of oyster shells were discovered behind one house. think of that! twenty cartloads to a single house! what a family must have lived there--indeed the romans were a great people!" orsino thought that donna tullia herself might pass for a heroine in future ages, provided that the shells of her victims were deposited together in a safe place. he laughed politely and hoped that the conversation might not turn upon archaeology, which was not his strong point. "i wonder how long it will be before modern rome is excavated and the foreigner of the future pays a franc to visit the ruins of the modern house of parliament," suggested maria consuelo, who had said nothing as yet. "at the present rate of progress, i should think about two years would be enough," answered donna tullia. "but ugo says we are a great nation. ask him." "ah, my angel, you do not understand those things," said del ferice. "how shall i explain? there is no development without decay of the useless parts. the snake casts its old skin before it appears with a new one. and there can be no business without an occasional crisis. unbroken fair weather ends in a dead calm. why do you take such a gloomy view, madame?" "one should never talk of things--only people are amusing," said donna tullia, before madame d'aranjuez could answer. "whom have you seen to-day, consuelo? and you, don orsino? and you, ugo? are we to talk for ever of oysters, and business and snakes? come, tell me, all of you, what everybody has told you. there must be something new. of course that poor carantoni is going to be married again, and the princess befana is dying, as usual, and the same dear old people have run away with each other, and all that. of course. i wish things were not always just going to happen. one would like to hear what is said on the day after the events which never come off. it would be a novelty." donna tullia loved talk and noise, and gossip above all things, and she was not quite at her ease. the news that orsino was to come to dinner had taken her breath away. ugo had advised her to be natural, and she was doing her best to follow his advice. "as for me," he said, "i have been tormented all day, and have spent but one pleasant half hour. i was so fortunate as to find madame d'aranjuez at home, but that was enough to indemnify me for many sacrifices." "i cannot do better than say the same," observed orsino, though with far less truth. "i believe i have read through a new novel, but i do not remember the title and i have forgotten the story." "how satisfactory!" exclaimed maria consuelo, with a little scorn. "it is the only way to read novels," answered orsino, "for it leaves them always new to you, and the same one may be made to last several weeks." "i have heard it said that one should fear the man of one book," observed maria consuelo, looking at him. "for my part, i am more inclined to fear the woman of many." "do you read much, my dear consuelo?" asked donna tullia, laughing. "perpetually." "and is don orsino afraid of you?" "mortally," answered orsino. "madame d'aranjuez knows everything." "is she blue, then?" asked donna tullia. "what shall i say, madame?" inquired orsino, turning to maria consuelo. "is it a compliment to compare you to the sky of italy?" "for blueness?" "no--for brightness and serenity." "thanks. that is pretty. i accept." "and have you nothing for me?" asked donna tullia, with an engaging smile. the other two looked at orsino, wondering what he would say in answer to such a point-blank demand for flattery. "juno is still minerva's ally," he said, falling back upon mythology, though it struck him that del ferice would make a poor jupiter, with his fat white face and dull eyes. "very good!" laughed donna tullia. "a little classic, but i pressed you hard. you are not easily caught. talking of clever men," she added with another meaning glance at orsino, "i met your friend to-day, consuelo." "my friend? who is he?" "spicca, of course. whom did you think i meant? we always laugh at her," she said, turning to orsino, "because she hates him so. she does not know him, and has never spoken to him. it is his cadaverous face that frightens her. one can understand that--we of old rome, have been used to him since the deluge. but a stranger is horrified at the first sight of him. consuelo positively dreads to meet him in the street. she says that he makes her dream of all sorts of horrors." "it is quite true," said maria consuelo, with a slight movement of her beautiful shoulders. "there are people one would rather not see, merely because they are not good to look at. he is one of them and if i see him coming i turn away." "i know, i told him so to-day," continued donna tullia cheerfully. "we are old friends, but we do not often meet nowadays. just fancy! it was in that little antiquary's shop in the monte brianzo--the first on the left as you go, he has good things--and i saw a bit of embroidery in the window that took my fancy, so i stopped the carriage and went in. who should be there but spicca, hat and all, looking like old father time. he was bargaining for something--a wretched old bit of brass--bargaining, my dear! for a few sous! one may be poor, but one has no right to be mean--i thought he would have got the miserable antiquary's skin." "antiquaries can generally take care of themselves," observed orsino incredulously. "oh, i daresay--but it looks so badly, you know. that is all i mean. when he saw me he stopped wrangling and we talked a little, while i had the embroidery wrapped up. i will show it to you after dinner. it is sixteenth century, ugo says--a piece of a chasuble--exquisite flowers on claret-coloured satin, a perfect gem, so rare now that everything is imitated. however, that is not the point. it was spicca. i was forgetting my story. he said the usual things, you know--that he had heard that i was very gay this year, but that it seemed to agree with me, and so on. and i asked him why he never came to see me, and as an inducement i told him of our great beauty here--that is you, consuelo, so please look delighted instead of frowning--and i told him that she ought to hear him talk, because his face had frightened her so that she ran away when she saw him coming towards her in the street. you see, if one flatters his cleverness he does not mind being called ugly--or at least i thought not, until to-day. but to my consternation he seemed angry, and he asked me almost savagely if it were true that the countess d'aranjuez--that is what he called you, my dear--really tried to avoid him in the street. then i laughed and said i was only joking, and he began to bargain again for the little brass frame and i went away. when i last heard his voice he was insisting upon seventy-five centimes, and the antiquary was jeering at him and asking a franc and a half. i wonder which got the better of the fight in the end. i will ask him the next time i see him." del ferice supported his wife with a laugh at her story, but it was not very genuine. he had unpleasant recollections of spicca in earlier days, and his name recalled events which ugo would willingly have forgotten. orsino smiled politely, but resented the way in which donna tullia spoke of his father's old friend. as for maria consuelo, she was a little pale, and looked tired. but the countess was irrepressible, for she feared lest orsino should go away and think her dull. "of course we all really like spicca," she said. "every one does." "i do, for my part," said orsino gravely. "i have a great respect for him, for his own sake, and he is one of my father's oldest friends." maria consuelo looked at him very suddenly, as though she were surprised by what he said. she did not remember to have heard him mention the melancholy old duellist. she seemed about to say something, but changed her mind. "yes," said ugo, turning the subject, "he is one of the old tribe that is dying out. what types there were in those days, and how those who are alive have changed! do you remember, tullia? but of course you cannot, my angel, it was far before your time." one of ugo's favourite methods of pleasing his wife was to assert that she was too young to remember people who had indeed played a part as lately as after the death of her first husband. it always soothed her. "i remember them all," he continued. "old montevarchi, and frangipani, and poor casalverde--and a score of others." he had been on the point of mentioning old astrardente, too, but checked himself. "then there were the young ones, who are in middle age now," he went on, "such as valdarno and the montevarchi whom you know, as different from their former selves as you can well imagine. society was different too." del ferice spoke thoughtfully and slowly, as though wishing that some one would interrupt him or take up the subject, for he felt that his wife's long story about spicca and the antiquary had not been a success, and his instinct told him that spicca had better not be mentioned again, since he was a friend of orsino's and since his name seemed to exert a depressing influence on maria consuelo. orsino came to the rescue and began to talk of current social topics in a way which showed that he was not so profoundly prejudiced by traditional ideas as del ferice had expected. the momentary chill wore off quickly enough, and when the dinner ended donna tullia was sure that it had been a success. they all returned to the drawing-room and then del ferice, without any remark, led orsino away to smoke with him in a distant apartment. "we can smoke again, when we go back," he said. "my wife does not mind and madame d'aranjuez likes it. but it is an excuse to be alone together for a little while, and besides, my doctor makes me lie down for a quarter of an hour after dinner. you will excuse me?" del ferice extended himself upon a leathern lounge, and orsino sat down in a deep easy-chair. "i was so sorry not to be able to come away with you to-day," said orsino. "the truth is, madame d'aranjuez wanted some information and i was just going to explain that i would stay a little longer, when you asked us both to dinner. you must have thought me very forgetful." "not at all, not at all," answered del ferice. "indeed, i quite supposed that you were coming with me, when it struck me that this would be a much more pleasant place for talking. i cannot imagine why i had not thought of it before--but i have so many details to think of." not much could be said for the veracity of either of the statements which the two men were pleased to make to each other, but orsino had the small advantage of being nearer to the letter, if not to the spirit of the truth. each, however, was satisfied with the other's tact. "and so, don orsino," continued del ferice after a short pause, "you wish to try a little operation in business. yes. very good. you have, as we said yesterday, a sum of money ample for a beginning. you have the necessary courage and intelligence. you need a practical assistant, however, and it is indispensable that the point selected for the first venture should be one promising speedy profit. is that it?" "precisely." "very good, very good. i think i can offer you both the land and the partner, and almost guarantee your success, if you will be guided by me." "i have come to you for advice," said orsino. "i will follow it gratefully. as for the success of the undertaking, i will assume the responsibility." "yes. that is better. after all, everything is uncertain in such matters, and you would not like to feel that you were under an obligation to me. on the other hand, as i told you, i am selfish and cautious. i would rather not appear in the transaction." if any doubt as to del ferice's honesty of purpose crossed orsino's mind at that moment, it was fully compensated by the fact that he himself distinctly preferred not to be openly associated with the banker. "i quite agree with you," he said. "very well. now for business. do you know that it is sometimes more profitable to take over a half-finished building, than to begin a new one? often, i assure you, for the returns are quicker and you get a great deal at half price. now, the man whom i recommend to you is a practical architect, and was employed by a certain baker to build a tenement building in one of the new quarters. the baker dies, the house is unfinished, the heirs wish to sell it as it is--there are at least a dozen of them--and meanwhile the work is stopped. my advice is this. buy this house, go into partnership with the unemployed architect, agreeing to give him a share of the profits, finish the building and sell it as soon as it is habitable. in six months you will get a handsome return." "that sounds very tempting," answered orsino, "but it would need more capital than i have." "not at all, not at all. it is a mere question of taking over a mortgage and paying stamp duty." "and how about the difference in ready money, which ought to go to the present owners?" "i see that you are already beginning to understand the principles of business," said del ferice, with an encouraging smile. "but in this case the owners are glad to get rid of the house on any terms by which they lose nothing, for they are in mortal fear of being ruined by it, as they probably will be if they hold on to it." "then why should i not lose, if i take it?" "that is just the difference. the heirs are a number of incapable persons of the lower class, who do not understand these matters. if they attempted to go on they would soon find themselves entangled in the greatest difficulties. they would sink where you will almost certainly swim." orsino was silent for a moment. there was something despicable, to his thinking, in profiting by the loss of a wretched baker's heirs. "it seems to me," he said presently, "that if i succeed in this, i ought to give a share of the profits to the present owners." not a muscle of del ferice's face moved, but his dull eyes looked curiously at orsino's young face. "that sort of thing is not commonly done in business," he said quietly, after a short pause. "as a rule, men who busy themselves with affairs do so in the hope of growing rich, but i can quite understand that where business is a mere pastime, as it is to be in your case, a man of generous instincts may devote the proceeds to charity." "it looks more like justice than charity to me," observed orsino. "call it what you will, but succeed first and consider the uses of your success afterwards. that is not my affair. the baker's heirs are not especially deserving people, i believe. in fact they are said to have hastened his death in the hope of inheriting his wealth and are disappointed to find that they have got nothing. if you wish to be philanthropic you might wait until you have cleared a large sum and then give it to a school or a hospital." "that is true," said orsino. "in the meantime it is important to begin." "we can begin to-morrow, if you please. you will find me at the bank at mid-day. i will send for the architect and the notary and we can manage everything in forty-eight hours. before the week is out you can be at work." "so soon as that?" "certainly. sooner, by hurrying matters a little." "as soon as possible then. and i will go to the bank at twelve o'clock to-morrow. a thousand thanks for all your good offices, my dear count." "it is a pleasure, i assure you." orsino was so much pleased with del ferice's quick and business-like way of arranging matters that he began to look upon him as a model to imitate, so far as executive ability was concerned. it was odd enough that any one of his name should feel anything like admiration for ugo, but friendship and hatred are only the opposite points at which the social pendulum pauses before it swings backward, and they who live long may see many oscillations. the two men went back to the drawing-room where donna tullia and maria consuelo were discussing the complicated views of the almighty dressmaker. orsino knew that there was little chance of his speaking a word alone with madame d'aranjuez and resigned himself to the effort of helping the general conversation. fortunately the time to be got over in this way was not long, as all four had engagements in the evening. maria consuelo rose at half-past ten, but orsino determined to wait five minutes longer, or at least to make a show of meaning to do so. but donna tullia put out her hand as though she expected him to take his leave at the same time. she was going to a ball and wanted at least an hour in which to screw her magnificence up to the dancing pitch. the consequence was that orsino found himself helping maria consuelo into the modest hired conveyance which awaited her at the gate. he hoped that she would offer him a seat for a short distance, but he was disappointed. "may i come to-morrow?" he asked, as he closed the door of the carriage. the night was not cold and the window was down. "please tell the coachman to take me to the via nazionale," she said quickly. "what number?" "never mind--he knows--i have forgotten. good-night." she tried to draw up the window, but orsino held his hand on it. "may i come to-morrow?" he asked again. "no." "are you angry with me still?" "no." "then why--" "let me shut the window. take your hand away." her voice was very imperative in the dark. orsino relinquished his hold on the frame, and the pane ran up suddenly into its place with a rattling noise. there was obviously nothing more to be said. "via nazionale. the signora says you know the house," he called to the driver. the man looked surprised, shrugged his shoulders after the manner of livery stable coachmen and drove slowly off in the direction indicated. orsino stood looking after the carriage and a few seconds later he saw that the man drew rein and bent down to the front window as though asking for orders. orsino thought he heard maria consuelo's voice, answering the question, but he could not distinguish what she said, and the brougham drove on at once without taking a new direction. he was curious to know whither she was going, and the idea of following her suggested itself but he instantly dismissed it, partly because it seemed unworthy and partly, perhaps, because he was on foot, and no cab was passing within hail. orsino was very much puzzled. during the dinner she had behaved with her usual cordiality but as soon as they were alone she spoke and acted as she had done in the afternoon. orsino turned away and walked across the deserted square. he was greatly disturbed, for he felt a sense of humiliation and disappointment quite new to him. young as he was, he had been accustomed already to a degree of consideration very different from that which maria consuelo thought fit to bestow, and it was certainly the first time in his life that a door--even the door of a carriage--had been shut in his face without ceremony. what would have been an unpardonable insult, coming from a man, was at least an indignity when it came from a woman. as orsino walked along, his wrath rose, and he wondered why he had not been angry at once. "very well," he said to himself. "she says she does not want me. i will take her at her word and i will not go to see her any more. we shall see what happens. she will find out that i am not a child, as she was good enough to call me to-day, and that i am not in the habit of having windows put up in my face. i have much more serious business on hand than making love to madame d'aranjuez." the more he reflected upon the situation, the more angry he grew, and when he reached the door of the club he was in a humour to quarrel with everything and everybody. fortunately, at that early hour, the place was in the sole possession of half a dozen old gentlemen whose conversation diverted his thoughts though it was the very reverse of edifying. between the stories they told and the considerable number of cigarettes he smoked while listening to them he was almost restored to his normal frame of mind by midnight, when four or five of his usual companions straggled in and proposed baccarat. after his recent successes he could not well refuse to play, so he sat down rather reluctantly with the rest. oddly enough he did not lose, though he won but little. "lucky at play, unlucky in love," laughed one of the men carelessly. "what do you mean?" asked orsino, turning sharply upon the speaker. "mean? nothing," answered the latter in great surprise. "what is the matter with you, orsino? cannot one quote a common proverb?" "oh--if you meant nothing, let us go on," orsino answered gloomily. as he took up the cards again, he heard a sigh behind him and turning round saw that spicca was standing at his shoulder. he was shocked by the melancholy count's face, though he was used to meeting him almost every day. the haggard and cadaverous features, the sunken and careworn eyes, contrasted almost horribly with the freshness and gaiety of orsino's companions, and the brilliant light in the room threw the man's deadly pallor into strong relief. "will you play, count?" asked orsino, making room for him. "thanks--no. i never play nowadays," answered spicca quietly. he turned and left the room. with all his apparent weakness his step was not unsteady, though it was slower than in the old days. "he sighed in that way because we did not quarrel," said the man whose quoted proverb had annoyed orsino. "i am ready and anxious to quarrel with everybody to-night," answered orsino. "let us play baccarat--that is much better." spicca left the club alone and walked slowly homewards to his small lodging in the via della croce. a few dying embers smouldered in the little fireplace which warmed his sitting-room. he stirred them slowly, took a stick of wood from the wicker basket, hesitated a moment, and then put it back again instead of burning it. the night was not cold and wood was very dear. he sat down under the light of the old lamp which stood upon the mantelpiece, and drew a long breath. but presently, putting his hand into the pocket of his overcoat in search of his cigarette case, he drew out something else which he had almost forgotten, a small something wrapped in coarse paper. he undid it and looked at the little frame of chiselled brass which donna tullia had found him buying in the afternoon, turning it over and over, absently, as though thinking of something else. then he fumbled in his pockets again and found a photograph which he had also bought in the course of the day--the photograph of gouache's latest portrait, obtained in a contraband fashion and with some difficulty from the photographer. without hesitation spicca took a pocket-knife and began to cut the head out, with that extraordinary neatness and precision which characterised him when he used any sharp instrument. the head just fitted the frame. he fastened it in with drops of sealing-wax and carefully burned the rest of the picture in the embers. the face of maria consuelo smiled at him in the lamplight, as he turned it in different ways so as to find the best aspect of it. then he hung it on a nail above the mantelpiece just under a pair of crossed foils. "that man gouache is a very clever fellow," he said aloud. "between them, he and nature have made a good likeness." he sat down again and it was a long time before he made up his mind to take away the lamp and go to bed. chapter xiii. del ferice kept his word and arranged matters for orsino with a speed and skill which excited the latter's admiration. the affair was not indeed very complicated though it involved a deed of sale, the transfer of a mortgage and a deed of partnership between orsino saracinesca and andrea contini, architect, under the style "andrea contini and company," besides a contract between this firm of the one party and the bank in which del ferice was a director, of the other, the partners agreeing to continue the building of the half-finished house, and the bank binding itself to advance small sums up to a certain amount for current expenses of material and workmen's wages. orsino signed everything required of him after reading the documents, and andrea contini followed his example. the architect was a tall man with bright brown eyes, a dark and somewhat ragged beard, close cropped hair, a prominent, bony forehead and large, coarsely shaped, thin ears oddly set upon his head. he habitually wore a dark overcoat, of which the collar was generally turned up on one side and not on the other. judging from the appearance of his strong shoes he had always been walking a long distance over bad roads, and when it had rained within the week his trousers were generally bespattered with mud to a considerable height above the heel. he habitually carried an extinguished cigar between his teeth of which he chewed the thin black end uneasily. orsino fancied that he might be about eight and twenty years old, and was not altogether displeased with his appearance. he was not at all like the majority of his kind, who, in rome at least, usually affect a scrupulous dandyism of attire and an uncommon refinement of manner. whatever contini's faults might prove to be, orsino did not believe that they would turn out to be those of idleness or vanity. how far he was right in his judgment will appear before long, but he conceived his partner to be gifted, frank, enthusiastic and careless of outward forms. as for the architect himself, he surveyed orsino with a sort of sympathetic curiosity which the latter would have thought unpleasantly familiar if he had understood it. contini had never spoken before with any more exalted personage than del ferice, and he studied the young aristocrat as though he were a being from another world. he hesitated some time as to the proper mode of addressing him and at last decided to call him "signor principe." orsino seemed quite satisfied with this, and the architect was inwardly pleased when the young man said "signor contini" instead of contini alone. it was quite clear that del ferice had already acquainted him with all the details of the situation, for he seemed to understand all the documents at a glance, picking out and examining the important clauses with unfailing acuteness, and pointing with his finger to the place where orsino was to sign his name. at the end of the interview orsino shook hands with del ferice and thanked him warmly for his kindness, after which, he and his partner went out together. they stood side by side upon the pavement for a few seconds, each wondering what the other was going to say. "perhaps we had better go and look at the house, signor principe," observed contini, in the midst of an ineffectual effort to light the stump of his cigar. "i think so, too," answered orsino, realising that since he had acquired the property it would be as well to know how it looked. "you see i have trusted my adviser entirely in the matter, and i am ashamed to say i do not know where the house is." andrea contini looked at him curiously. "this is the first time that you have had anything to do with business of this kind, signor principe," he observed. "you have fallen into good hands." "yours?" inquired orsino, a little stiffly. "no. i mean that count del ferice is a good adviser in this matter." "i hope so." "i am sure of it," said contini with conviction. "it would be a great surprise to me if we failed to make a handsome profit by this contract." "there is luck and ill-luck in everything," answered orsino, signalling to a passing cab. the two men exchanged few words as they drove up to the new quarter in the direction indicated to the driver by contini. the cab entered a sort of broad lane, the sketch of a future street, rough with the unrolled metalling of broken stones, the space set apart for the pavement being an uneven path of trodden brown earth. here and there tall detached houses rose out of the wilderness, mostly covered by scaffoldings and swarming with workmen, but hideous where so far finished as to be visible in all the isolation of their six-storied nakedness. a strong smell of lime, wet earth and damp masonry was blown into orsino's nostrils by the scirocco wind. contini stopped the cab before an unpromising and deserted erection of poles, boards and tattered matting. "this is our house," he said, getting out and immediately making another attempt to light his cigar. "may i offer you a cigarette?" asked orsino, holding out his case. contini touched his hat, bowed a little awkwardly and took one of the cigarettes, which he immediately transferred to his coat pocket. "if you will allow me i will smoke it by and by," he said. "i have not finished my cigar." orsino stood on the slippery ground beside the stones and contemplated his purchase. all at once his heart sank and he felt a profound disgust for everything within the range of his vision. he was suddenly aware of his own total and hopeless ignorance of everything connected with building, theoretical or practical. the sight of the stiff, angular scaffoldings, draped with torn straw mattings that flapped fantastically in the south-east wind, the apparent absence of anything like a real house behind them, the blades of grass sprouting abundantly about the foot of each pole and covering the heaps of brown pozzolana earth prepared for making mortar, even the detail of a broken wooden hod before the boarded entrance--all these things contributed at once to increase his dismay and to fill him with a bitter sense of inevitable failure. he found nothing to say, as he stood with his hands in his pockets staring at the general desolation, but he understood for the first time why women cry for disappointment. and moreover, this desolation was his own peculiar property, by deed of purchase, and he could not get rid of it. meanwhile andrea contini stood beside him, examining the scaffoldings with his bright brown eyes, in no way disconcerted by the prospect. "shall we go in?" he asked at last. "do unfinished houses always look like this?" inquired orsino, in a hopeless tone, without noticing his companion's proposition. "not always," answered contini cheerfully. "it depends upon the amount of work that has been done, and upon other things. sometimes the foundations sink and the buildings collapse." "are you sure nothing of the kind has happened here?" asked orsino with increasing anxiety. "i have been several times to look at it since the baker died and i have not noticed any cracks yet," answered the architect, whose coolness seemed almost exasperating. "i suppose you understand these things, signor contini?" contini laughed, and felt in his pockets for a crumpled paper box of wax-lights. "it is my profession," he answered. "and then, i built this house from the foundations. if you will come in, signor principe, i will show you how solidly the work is done." he took a key from his pocket and thrust it into a hole in the boarding, which latter proved to be a rough door and opened noisily upon rusty hinges. orsino followed him in silence. to the young man's inexperienced eye the interior of the building was even more depressing than the outside. it smelt like a vault, and a dim grey light entered the square apertures from the curtained scaffoldings without, just sufficient to help one to find a way through the heaps of rubbish that covered the unpaved floors. contini explained rapidly and concisely the arrangement of the rooms, calling one cave familiarly a dining-room and another a "conjugal bedroom," as he expressed it, and expatiating upon the facilities of communication which he himself had carefully planned. orsino listened in silence and followed his guide patiently from place to place, in and out of dark passages and up flights of stairs as yet unguarded by any rail, until they emerged upon a sort of flat terrace intersected by low walls, which was indeed another floor and above which another story and a garret were yet to be built to complete the house. orsino looked gloomily about him, lighted a cigarette and sat down upon a bit of masonry. "to me, it looks very like failure," he remarked. "but i suppose there is something in it." "it will not look like failure next month," said contini carelessly. "another story is soon built, and then the attic, and then, if you like, a gothic roof and a turret at one corner. that always attracts buyers first and respectable lodgers afterwards." "let us have a turret, by all means," answered orsino, as though his tailor had proposed to put an extra button on the cuff of his coat. "but how in the world are you going to begin? everything looks to me as though it were falling to pieces." "leave all that to me, signor principe. we will begin to-morrow. i have a good overseer and there are plenty of workmen to be had. we have material for a week at least, and paid for, excepting a few cartloads of lime. come again in ten days and you will see something worth looking at." "in ten days? and what am i to do in the meantime?" asked orsino, who fancied that he had found an occupation. andrea contini looked at him in some surprise, not understanding in the least what he meant. "i mean, am i to have nothing to do with the work?" asked orsino. "oh--as far as that goes, you will come every day, signor principe, if it amuses you, though as you are not a practical architect, your assistance is not needed until questions of taste have to be considered, such as the gothic roof for instance. but there are the accounts to be kept, of course, and there is the business with the bank from week to week, office work of various kinds. that becomes naturally your department, as the practical superintendence of the building is mine, but you will of course leave it to the steward of the signor principe di sant' ilario, who is a man of affairs." "i will do nothing of the kind!" exclaimed orsino. "i will do it myself. i will learn how it is done. i want occupation." "what an extraordinary wish!" andrea contini opened his eyes in real astonishment. "is it? you work. why should not i?" "i must, and you need not, signor principe," observed the architect. "but if you insist, then you had better get a clerk to explain the details to you at first." "do you not understand them? can you not teach me?" asked orsino, displeased with the idea of employing a third person. "oh yes--i have been a clerk myself. i should be too much honoured but--the fact is, my spare time--" he hesitated and seemed reluctant to explain. "what do you do with your spare time?" asked orsino, suspecting some love affair. "the fact is--i play a second violin at one of the theatres--and i give lessons on the mandolin, and sometimes i do copying work for my uncle who is a clerk in the treasury. you see, he is old, and his eyes are not as good as they were." orsino began to think that his partner was a very odd person. he could not help smiling at the enumeration of his architect's secondary occupations. "you are very fond of music, then?" he asked. "eh--yes--as one can be, without talent--a little by necessity. to be an architect one must have houses to build. you see the baker died unexpectedly. one must live somehow." "and could you not--how shall i say? would you not be willing to give me lessons in book-keeping instead of teaching some one else to play the mandolin?" "you would not care to learn the mandolin yourself, signor principe? it is a very pretty instrument, especially for country parties, as well as for serenading." orsino laughed. he did not see himself in the character of a mandolinist. "i have not the slightest ear for music," he answered. "i would much rather learn something about business." "it is less amusing," said andrea contini regretfully. "but i am at your service. i will come to the office when work is over and we will do the accounts together. you will learn in that way very quickly." "thank you. i suppose we must have an office. it is necessary, is it not?" "indispensable--a room, a garret--anything. a habitation, a legal domicile, so to say." "where do you live, signor contini? would not your lodging do?" "i am afraid not, signor principe. at least not for the present. i am not very well lodged and the stairs are badly lighted." "why not here, then?" asked orsino, suddenly growing desperately practical, for he felt unaccountably reluctant to hire an office in the city. "we should pay no rent," said contini. "it is an idea. but the walls are dry downstairs, and we only need a pavement, and plastering, and doors and windows, and papering and some furniture to make one of the rooms quite habitable. it is an idea, undoubtedly. besides, it would give the house an air of being inhabited, which is valuable." "how long will all that take? a month or two?" "about a week. it will be a little fresh, but if you are not rheumatic, signor principe, we can try it." "i am not rheumatic," laughed orsino, who was pleased with the idea of having his office on the spot, and apparently in the midst of a wilderness. "and i suppose you really do understand architecture, signor contini, though you do play the fiddle." in this exceedingly sketchy way was the firm of andrea contini and company established and lodged, being at the time in a very shadowy state, theoretically and practically, though it was destined to play a more prominent part in affairs than either of the young partners anticipated. orsino discovered before long that his partner was a man of skill and energy, and his spirits rose by degrees as the work began to advance. contini was restless, untiring and gifted, such a character as orsino had not yet met in his limited experience of the world. the man seemed to understand his business to the smallest details and could show the workmen how to mix mortar in the right proportions, or how to strengthen a scaffolding at the weak point much better than the overseer or the master builder. at the books he seemed to be infallible, and he possessed, moreover, such a power of stating things clearly and neatly that orsino actually learnt from him in a few weeks what he would have needed six months to learn anywhere else. as soon as the first dread of failure wore off, orsino discovered that he was happier than he had ever been in the course of his life before. what he did was not, indeed, of much use in the progress of the office work and rather hindered than helped contini, who was obliged to do everything slowly and sometimes twice over in order to make his pupil understand; but orsino had a clear and practical mind, and did not forget what he had learned once. an odd sort of friendship sprang up between the two men, who under ordinary circumstances would never have met, or known each other by sight. the one had expected to find in his partner an overbearing, ignorant patrician; the other had supposed that his companion would turn out a vulgar, sordid, half-educated builder. both were equally surprised when each discovered the truth about the other. though orsino was reticent by nature, he took no especial pains to conceal his goings and comings, but as his occupation took him out of the ordinary beat followed by his idle friends, it was a long time before any of them discovered that he was engaged in practical business. in his own home he was not questioned, and he said nothing. the saracinesca were considered eccentric, but no one interfered with them nor ventured to offer them suggestions. if they chose to allow their heir absolute liberty of action, merely because he had passed his twenty-first birthday, it was their own concern, and his ruin would be upon their own heads. no one cared to risk a savage retort from the aged prince, or a cutting answer from sant' ilario for the questionable satisfaction of telling either that orsino was going to the bad. the only person who really knew what orsino was about, and who could have claimed the right to speak to his family of his doings was san giacinto, and he held his peace, having plenty of important affairs of his own to occupy him and being blessed with an especial gift for leaving other people to themselves. sant' ilario never spied upon his son, as many of his contemporaries would have done in his place. he preferred to trust him to his own devices so long as these led to no great mischief. he saw that orsino was less restless than formerly, that he was less at the club, and that he was stirring earlier in the morning than had been his wont, and he was well satisfied. it was not to be expected, however, that orsino should take maria consuelo literally at her word, and cease from visiting her all at once. if not really in love with her, he was at least so much interested in her that he sorely missed the daily half hour or more which he had been used to spend in her society. three several times he went to her hotel at the accustomed hour, and each time he was told by the porter that she was at home; but on each occasion, also, when he sent up his card, the hotel servant returned with a message from the maid to the effect that madame d'aranjuez was tired and did not receive. orsino's pride rebelled equally against making a further attempt and against writing a letter requesting an explanation. once only, when he was walking alone she passed him in a carriage, and she acknowledged his bow quietly and naturally, as though nothing had happened. he fancied she was paler than usual, and that there were shadows under her eyes which he had not formerly noticed. possibly, he thought, she was really not in good health, and the excuses made through her maid were not wholly invented. he was conscious that his heart beat a little faster as he watched the back of the brougham disappearing in the distance, but he did not feel an irresistible longing to make another and more serious attempt to see her. he tried to analyse his own sensations, and it seemed to him that he rather dreaded a meeting than desired it, and that he felt a certain humiliation for which he could not account. in the midst of his analysis, his cigarette went out and he sighed. he was startled by such an expression of feeling, and tried to remember whether he had ever sighed before in his life, but if he had, he could not recall the circumstances. he tried to console himself with the absurd supposition that he was sleepy and that the long-drawn breath had been only a suppressed yawn. then he walked on, gazing before him into the purple haze that filled the deep street just as the sun was setting, and a vague sadness and longing touched him which had no place in his catalogue of permissible emotions and which were as far removed from the cold cynicism which he admired in others and affected in himself as they were beyond the sphere of his analysis. there is an age, not always to be fixed exactly, at which the really masculine nature craves the society of womankind, in one shape or another, as a necessity of existence, and by the society of womankind no one means merely the daily and hourly social intercourse which consists in exchanging the same set of remarks half a dozen times a day with as many beings of gentle sex who, to the careless eye of ordinary man, differ from each other in dress rather than in face or thought. there are eminently manly men, that is to say men fearless, strong, honourable and active, to whom the common five o'clock tea presents as much distraction and offers as much womanly sympathy as they need; who choose their intimate friends among men, rather than among women, and who die at an advanced age without ever having been more than comfortably in love--and of such is the kingdom of heaven. the masculine man may be as brave, as strong and as scrupulously just in all his dealings, but on the other hand he may be weak, cowardly and a cheat, and he is apt to inherit the portion of sinners, whatever his moral characteristics may be, good or bad. orsino was certainly not unmanly, but he was also eminently masculine and he began to suffer from the loss of maria consuelo's conversation in a way that surprised himself. his acquaintance with her, to give it a mild name, had been the first of the kind which he had enjoyed, and it contrasted too strongly with the crude experiences of his untried youth not to be highly valued by him and deeply regretted. he might pretend to laugh at it, and repeat to himself that his egeria had been but a very superficial person, fervent in the reading of the daily novel and possibly not even worldly wise; he did not miss her any the less for that. a little sympathy and much patience in listening will go far to make a woman of small gifts indispensable even to a man of superior talent, especially when he thinks himself misunderstood in his ordinary surroundings. the sympathy passes for intelligence and the patience for assent and encouragement--a touch of the hand, and there is friendship, a tear, a sigh, and devotion stands upon the stage, bearing in her arms an infant love who learns to walk his part at the first suspicion of a kiss. orsino did not imagine that he had exhausted the world's capabilities of happiness. the age of byronism, as it used to be called, is over. possibly tragedies are more real and frequent in our day than when the century was young; at all events those which take place seem to draw a new element of horror from those undefinable, mechanical, prosaic, psuedo-scientific conditions which make our lives so different from those of our fathers. everything is terribly sudden nowadays, and alarmingly quick. lovers make love across europe by telegraph, and poetic justice arrives in less than forty-eight hours by the oriental express. divorce is our weapon of precision, and every pack of cards at the gaming table can distil a poison more destructive than that of the borgia. the unities of time and place are preserved by wire and rail in a way which would have delighted the hearts of the old french tragics. perhaps men seek dramatic situations in their own lives less readily since they have found out means of making the concluding act more swift, sudden and inevitable. at all events we all like tragedy less and comedy more than our fathers did, which, i think, shows that we are sadder and possibly wiser men than they. however this may be, orsino was no more inclined to fancy himself unhappy than any of his familiar companions, though he was quite willing to believe that he understood most of life's problems, and especially the heart of woman. he continued to go into the world, for it was new to him and if he did not find exactly the sort of sympathy he secretly craved, he found at least a great deal of consideration, some flattery and a certain amount of amusement. but when he was not actually being amused, or really engaged in the work which he had undertaken with so much enthusiasm, he felt lonely and missed maria consuelo more than ever. by this time she had taken a position in society from which there could be no drawing back, and he gave up for ever the hope of seeing her in his own circle. she seemed to avoid even the grey houses where they might have met on neutral ground, and orsino saw that his only chance of finding her in the world lay in going frequently and openly to del ferice's house. he had called on donna tullia after the dinner, of course, but he was not prepared to do more, and del ferice did not seem to expect it. three or four weeks after he had entered into partnership with andrea contini, orsino found himself alone with his mother in the evening. corona was seated near the fire in her favourite boudoir, with a book in her hand, and orsino stood warming himself on one side of the chimney-piece, staring into the flames and occasionally glancing at his mother's calm, dark face. he was debating whether he should stay at home or not. corona became conscious that he looked at her from time to time and dropped her novel upon her knee. "are you going out, orsino?" she asked. "i hardly know," he answered. "there is nothing particular to do, and it is too late for the theatre." "then stay with me. let us talk." she looked at him affectionately and pointed to a low chair near her. he drew it up until he could see her face as she spoke, and then sat down. "what shall we talk about, mother?" he asked, with a smile. "about yourself, if you like, my dear. that is, if you have anything that you know i would like to hear. i am not curious, am i, orsino? i never ask you questions about yourself." "no, indeed. you never tease me with questions--nor does my father either, for that matter. would you really like to know what i am doing?" "if you will tell me." "i am building a house," said orsino, looking at her to see the effect of the announcement. "a house?" repeated corona in surprise. "where? does your father know about it?" "he said he did not care what i did." orsino spoke rather bitterly. "that does not sound like him, my dear. tell me all about it. have you quarrelled with him, or had words together?" orsino told his story quickly, concisely and with a frankness he would perhaps not have shown to any one else in the world, for he did not even conceal his connection with del ferice. corona listened intently, and her deep eyes told him plainly enough that she was interested. on his part he found an unexpected pleasure in telling her the tale, and he wondered why it had never struck him that his mother might sympathise with his plans and aspirations. when he had finished, he waited for her first word almost as anxiously as he would have waited for an expression of opinion from maria consuelo. corona did not speak at once. she looked into his eyes, smiled, patted his lean brown hand lovingly and smiled again before she spoke. "i like it," she said at last. "i like you to be independent and determined. you might perhaps have chosen a better man than del ferice for your adviser. he did something once--well, never mind! it was long ago and it did us no harm." "what did he do, mother? i know my father wounded him in a duel before you were married--" "it was not that. i would rather not tell you about it--it can do no good, and after all, it has nothing to do with the present affair. he would not be so foolish as to do you an injury now. i know him very well. he is far too clever for that." "he is certainly clever," said orsino. he knew that it would be quite useless to question his mother further after what she had said. "i am glad that you do not think i have made a mistake in going into this business." "no. i do not think you have made a mistake, and i do not believe that your father will think so either when he knows all about it." "he need not have been so icily discouraging," observed orsino. "he is a man, my dear, and i am a woman. that is the difference. was san giacinto more encouraging than he? no. they think alike, and san giacinto has an immense experience besides. and yet they are both wrong. you may succeed, or you may fail--i hope you will succeed--but i do not care much for the result. it is the principle i like, the idea, the independence of the thing. as i grow old, i think more than i used to do when i was young." "how can you talk of growing old!" exclaimed orsino indignantly. "i think more," said corona again, not heeding him. "one of my thoughts is that our old restricted life was a mistake for us, and that to keep it up would be a sin for you. the world used to stand still in those days, and we stood at the head of it, or thought we did. but it is moving now and you must move with it or you will not only have to give up your place, but you will be left behind altogether." "i had no idea that you were so modern, dearest mother," laughed orsino. he felt suddenly very happy and in the best of humours with himself. "modern--no, i do not think that either your father or i could ever be that. if you had lived our lives you would see how impossible it is. the most i can hope to do is to understand you and your brothers as you grow up to be men. but i hate interference and i hate curiosity--the one breeds opposition and the other dishonesty--and if the other boys turn out to be as reticent as you, orsino, i shall not always know when they want me. you do not realise how much you have been away from me since you were a boy, nor how silent you have grown when you are at home." "am i, mother? i never meant to be." "i know it, dear, and i do not want you to be always confiding in me. it is not a good thing for a young man. you are strong and the more you rely upon yourself, the stronger you will grow. but when you want sympathy, if you ever do, remember that i have my whole heart full of it for you. for that, at least, come to me. no one can give you what i can give you, dear son." orsino was touched and pressed her hand, kissing it more than once. he did not know whether in her last words she had meant any allusion to maria consuelo, or whether, indeed, she had been aware of his intimacy with the latter. but he did not ask the question of her nor of himself. for the moment he felt that a want in his nature had been satisfied, and he wondered again why he had never thought of confiding in his mother. they talked of his plans until it was late, and from that time they were more often together than before, each growing daily more proud of the other, though perhaps orsino had better reasons for his pride than corona could have found, for the love of mother for son is more comprehensive and not less blind than the passion of woman for man. chapter xiv. the short roman season was advancing rapidly to its premature fall, which is on ash wednesday, after which it struggles to hold up its head against the overwhelming odds of a severely observed lent, to revive only spasmodically after easter and to die a natural death on the first warm day. in that year, too, the fatal day fell on the fifteenth of february, and progressive spirits talked of the possibility of fixing the movable feasts and fasts of the church in a more convenient part of the calendar. easter might be made to fall in june, for instance, and society need not be informed of its inevitable and impending return to dust and ashes until it had enjoyed a good three months, or even four, of what an eminent american defines as "brass, sass, lies and sin." rome was very gay that year, to compensate for the shortness of its playtime. everything was successful, and every one was rich. people talked of millions less soberly than they had talked of thousands a few years earlier, and with less respect than they mentioned hundreds twelve months later. like the vanity-struck frog, the franc blew itself up to the bursting point, in the hope of being taken for the louis, and momentarily succeeded, even beyond its own expectations. no one walked, though horse-flesh was enormously dear and a good coachman's wages amounted to just twice the salary of a government clerk. men who, six months earlier, had climbed ladders with loads of brick or mortar, were now transformed into flourishing sub-contractors, and drove about in smart pony-carts, looking the picture of italian prosperity, rejoicing in the most flashy of ties and smoking the blackest and longest of long black cigars. during twenty hours out of the twenty-four the gates of the city roared with traffic. from all parts of the country labourers poured in, bundle in hand and tools on shoulder to join in the enormous work and earn their share of the pay that was distributed so liberally. a certain man who believed in himself stood up and said that rome was becoming one of the greatest of cities, and he smacked his lips and said that he had done it, and that the triple alliance was a goose which would lay many golden eggs. the believing bulls roared everything away before them, opposition, objections, financial experience, and the vanquished bears hibernated in secret places, sucking their paws and wondering what, in the name of ursa major and ursa minor, would happen next. distinguished men wrote pamphlets in the most distinguished language to prove that wealth was a baby capable of being hatched artificially and brought up by hand. every unmarried swain who could find a bride, married her forthwith; those who could not followed the advice of an illustrious poet and, being over-anxious to take wives, took those of others. everybody was decorated. it positively rained decorations and hailed grand crosses and enough commanders' ribbons were reeled out to have hanged half the population. the periodical attempt to revive the defunct carnival in the corso was made, and the yet unburied corpse of ancient gaiety was taken out and painted, and gorgeously arrayed, and propped up in its seat to be a posthumous terror to its enemies, like the dead cid. society danced frantically and did all those things which it ought not to have done--and added a few more, unconsciously imitating pico della mirandola. even those comparatively few families who, like the saracinesca, had scornfully declined to dabble in the whirlpool of affairs, did not by any means refuse to dance to the music of success which filled the city with, such enchanting strains. the princess befana rose from her deathbed with more than usual vivacity and went to the length of opening her palace on two evenings in two successive weeks, to the intense delight of her gay and youthful heirs, who earnestly hoped that the excitement might kill her at last, and kill her beyond resurrection this time. but they were disappointed. she still dies periodically in winter and blooms out again in spring with the poppies, affording a perpetual and edifying illustration of the changes of the year, or, as some say, of the doctrine of immortality. on one of those memorable occasions she walked through a quadrille with the aged prince saracinesca, whereupon sant' ilario slipped his arm round corona's waist and waltzed with her down the whole length of the ballroom and back again amidst the applause of his contemporaries and their children. if orsino had had a wife he would have followed their example. as it was, he looked rather gloomily in the direction of a silent and high-born damsel with whom he was condemned to dance the cotillon at a later hour. so all went gaily on until ash wednesday extinguished the social flame, suddenly and beyond relighting. and still orsino did not meet maria consuelo, and still he hesitated to make another attempt to find her at home. he began to wonder whether he should ever see her again, and as the days went by he almost wished that donna tullia would send him a card for her lenten evenings, at which maria consuelo regularly assisted as he learned from the papers. after that first invitation to dinner, he had expected that del ferice's wife would make an attempt to draw him into her circle; and, indeed, she would probably have done so had she followed her own instinct instead of submitting to the higher policy dictated by her husband. orsino waited in vain, not knowing whether to be annoyed at the lack of consideration bestowed upon him, or to admire the tact which assumed that he would never wish to enter the del ferice circle. it is presumably clear that orsino was not in love with madame d'aranjuez, and he himself appreciated the fact with a sense of disappointment. he was amazed at his own coldness and at the indifference with which he had submitted to what amounted to a most abrupt dismissal. he even went so far as to believe that maria consuelo had repulsed him designedly in the hope of kindling a more sincere passion. in that case she had been egregiously mistaken, he thought. he felt a curiosity to see her again before she left rome, but it was nothing more than that. a new and absorbing interest had taken possession of him which at first left little room in his nature for anything else. his days were spent in the laborious study of figures and plans, broken only by occasional short but amusing conversations with andrea contini. his evenings were generally passed among a set of people who did not know maria consuelo except by sight and who had long ceased to ask him questions about her. of late, too, he had missed his daily visits to her less and less, until he hardly regretted them at all, nor so much as thought of the possibility of renewing them. he laughed at the idea that his mother should have taken the place of a woman whom he had begun to love, and yet he was conscious that it was so, though he asked himself how long such a condition of things could last. corona was far too wise to discuss his affairs with his father. he was too like herself for her to misunderstand him, and if she regarded the whole matter as perfectly harmless and as a legitimate subject for general conversation, she yet understood perfectly that having been once rebuffed by sant' ilario, orsino must wish to be fully successful in his attempt before mentioning it again to the latter. and she felt so strongly in sympathy with her son that his work gradually acquired an intense interest for her, and she would have sacrificed much rather than see it fail. she did not on that account blame giovanni for his discouraging view when orsino had consulted him. giovanni was the passion of her life and was not fallible in his impulses, though his judgment might sometimes be at fault in technical matters for which he cared nothing. but her love for her son was as great and sincere in its own way, and her pride in him was such as to make his success a condition of her future happiness. one of the greatest novelists of this age begins one of his greatest novels with the remark that "all happy families resemble each other, but that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own especial way." generalities are dangerous in proportion as they are witty or striking, or both, and it may be asked whether the great tolstoi has not fallen a victim to his own extraordinary power of striking and witty generalisations. does the greatest of all his generalisations, the wide disclaimer of his early opinions expressed in the postscript subsequently attached by him to his _kreutzer sonata_, include also the words i have quoted, and which were set up, so to say, as the theme of his _anna karjenina_? one may almost hope so. i am no critic, but those words somehow seem to me to mean that only unhappiness can be interesting. it is not pleasant to think of the consequences to which the acceptance of such a statement might lead. there are no statistics to tell us whether the majority of living men and women are to be considered as happy or unhappy. but it does seem true that whereas a single circumstance can cause very great and lasting unhappiness, felicity is always dependent upon more than one condition and often upon so many as to make the explanation of it a highly difficult and complicated matter. corona had assuredly little reason to complain of her lot during the past twenty years, but unruffled and perfect as it had seemed to her she began to see that there were sources of sorrow and satisfaction before her which had not yet poured their bitter or sweet streams into the stately river of her mature life. the new interest which orsino had created for her became more and more absorbing, and she watched it and tended it, and longed to see it grow to greater proportions. the situation was strange in one way at least. orsino was working and his mother was helping him to work in the hope of a financial success which neither of them wanted or cared for. possibly the certainty that failure could entail no serious consequences made the game a more amusing if a less exciting one to play. "if i lose," said orsino to her, "i can only lose the few thousands i invested. if i win, i will give you a string of pearls as a keepsake." "if you lose, dear boy," answered corona, "it must be because you had not enough to begin with. i will give you as much as you need, and we will try again." they laughed happily together. whatever chanced, things must turn out well. orsino worked very hard, and corona was very rich in her own right and could afford to help to any extent she thought necessary. she could, indeed, have taken the part of the bank and advanced him all the money he needed, but it seemed useless to interfere with the existing arrangements. in lent the house had reached an important point in its existence. andrea contini had completed the gothic roof and the turret which appeared to him in the first vision of his dream, but to which the defunct baker had made objections on the score of expense. the masons were almost all gone and another set of workmen were busy with finer tools moulding cornices and laying on the snow-white stucco. within, the joiners and carpenters kept up a ceaseless hammering. one day andrea contini walked into the office after a tour of inspection, with a whole cigar, unlighted and intact, between his teeth. orsino was well aware from this circumstance that something unusually fortunate had happened or was about to happen, and he rose from his books, as soon as he recognised the fair-weather signal. "we can sell the house whenever we like," said the architect, his bright brown eyes sparkling with satisfaction. "already!" exclaimed orsino who, though equally delighted at the prospect of such speedy success, regretted in his heart the damp walls and the constant stir of work which he had learned to like so well. "already--yes. one needs luck like ours! the count has sent a man up in a cab to say that an acquaintance of his will come and look at the building to-day between twelve and one with a view to buying. the sooner we look out for some fresh undertaking, the better. what do you say, don orsino?" "it is all your doing, contini. without you i should still be standing outside and watching the mattings flapping in the wind, as i did on that never-to-be-forgotten first day." "i conceive that a house cannot be built without an architect," answered contini, laughing, "and it has always been plain to me that there can be no architects without houses to build. but as for any especial credit to me, i refute the charge indignantly. i except the matter of the turret, which is evidently what has attracted the buyer. i always thought it would. you would never have thought of a turret, would you, don orsino?" "certainly not, nor of many other things," answered orsino, laughing. "but i am sorry to leave the place. i have grown into liking it." "what can one do? it is the way of the world--'lieto ricordo d'un amor che fã¹,'" sang contini in the thin but expressive falsetto which seems to be the natural inheritance of men who play upon stringed instruments. he broke off in the middle of a bar and laughed, out of sheer delight at his own good fortune. in due time the purchaser came, saw and actually bought. he was a problematic personage with a disquieting nose, who spoke few words but examined everything with an air of superior comprehension. he looked keenly at orsino but seemed to have no idea who he was and put all his questions to contini. after agreeing to the purchase he inquired whether andrea contini and company had any other houses of the same description building and if so where they were situated, adding that he liked the firm's way of doing things. he stipulated for one or two slight improvements, made an appointment for a meeting with the notaries on the following day and went off with a rather unceremonious nod to the partners. the name he left was that of a well-known capitalist from the south, and contini was inclined to think he had seen him before, but was not certain. within a week the business was concluded, the buyer took over the mortgage as orsino and contini had done and paid the difference in cash into the bank, which deducted the amounts due on notes of hand before handing the remainder to the two young men. the buyer also kept back a small part of the purchase money to be paid on taking possession, when the house was to be entirely finished. andrea contini and company had realised a considerable sum of money. "the question is, what to do next," said orsino thoughtfully. "we had better look about us for something promising," said his partner. "a corner lot in this same quarter. corner houses are more interesting to build and people like them to live in because they can see two or three ways at once. besides, a corner is always a good place for a turret. let us take a walk--smoking and strolling, we shall find something." "a year ago, no doubt," answered orsino, who was becoming worldly wise. "a year ago that would have been well enough. but listen to me. that house opposite to ours has been finished some time, yet nobody has bought it. what is the reason?" "it faces north and not south, as ours does, and it has not a gothic roof." "my dear contini, i do not mean to say that the gothic roof has not helped us very much, but it cannot have helped us alone. how about those two houses together at the end of the next block. balconies, travertine columns, superior doors and windows, spaces for hydraulic lifts and all the rest of it. yet no one buys. dry, too, and almost ready to live in, and all the joinery of pitch pine. there is a reason for their ill luck." "what do you think it is?" asked contini, opening his eyes. "the land on which they are built was not in the hands of del ferice's bank, and the money that built them was not advanced by del ferice's bank, and del ferice's bank has no interest in selling the houses themselves. therefore they are not sold." "but surely there are other banks in rome, and private individuals--" "no, i do not believe that there are," said orsino with conviction. "my cousin of san giacinto thinks that the selling days are over, and i fancy he is right, except about del ferice, who is cleverer than any of us. we had better not deceive ourselves, contini. del ferice sold our house for us, and unless we keep with him we shall not sell another so easily. his bank has a lot of half-finished houses on its hands secured by mortgages which are worthless until the houses are habitable. del ferice wants us to finish those houses for him, in order to recover their value. if we do it, we shall make a profit. if we attempt anything on our own account we shall fail. am i right or not?" "what can i say? at all events you are on the safe side. but why has not the count given all this work to some old established firm of his acquaintance?" "because he cannot trust any one as he can trust us, and he knows it." "of course i owe the count a great deal for his kindness in introducing me to you. he knew all about me before the baker died, and afterwards i waited for him outside the chambers one evening and asked him if he could find anything for me to do, but he did not give me much encouragement. i saw you speak to him and get into his carriage--was it not you?" "yes--it was i," answered orsino, remembering the tall man in an overcoat who had disappeared in the dusk on the evening when he himself had first sought del ferice. "yes, and you see we are both under a sort of obligation to him which is another reason for taking his advice." "obligations are humiliating!" exclaimed contini impatiently. "we have succeeded in increasing our capital--your capital, don orsino--let us strike out for ourselves." "i think my reasons are good," said orsino quietly. "and as for obligations, let us remember that we are men of business." it appears from this that the low-born andrea contini and the high and mighty don orsino saracinesca were not very far from exchanging places so far as prejudice was concerned. contini noticed the fact and smiled. "after all," he said, "if you can accept the situation, i ought to accept it, too." "it is a matter of business," said orsino, returning to his argument. "there is no such thing as obligation where money is borrowed on good security and a large interest is regularly paid." it was clear that orsino was developing commercial instincts. his grandfather would have died of rage on the spot if he could have listened to the young fellow's cool utterances. but contini was not pleased and would not abandon his position so easily. "it is very well for you, don orsino," he said, vainly attempting to light his cigar. "you do not need the money as i do. you take it from del ferice because it amuses you to do so, not because you are obliged to accept it. that is the difference. the count knows it too, and knows that he is not conferring a favour but receiving one. you do him an honour in borrowing his money. he lays me under an obligation in lending it." "we must get money somewhere," answered orsino with indifference. "if not from del ferice, then from some other bank. and as for obligations, as you call them, he is not the bank himself, and the bank does not lend its money in order to amuse me or to humiliate you, my friend. but if you insist, i shall say that the convenience is not on one side only. if del ferice supports us it is because we serve his interests. if he has done us a good turn, it is a reason why we should do him one, and build his houses rather than those of other people. you talk about my conferring a favour upon him. where will he find another andrea contini and company to make worthless property valuable for him? in that sense you and i are earning his gratitude, by the simple process of being scrupulously honest. i do not feel in the least humiliated, i assure you." "i cannot help it," replied contini, biting his cigar savagely. "i have a heart, and it beats with good blood. do you know that there is blood of cola di rienzo in my veins?" "no. you never told me," answered orsino, one of whose forefathers had been concerned in the murder of the tribune, a fact to which he thought it best not to refer at the present moment. "and the blood of cola di rienzo burns under the shame of an obligation!" cried contini, with a heat hardly warranted by the circumstances. "it is humiliating, it is base, to submit to be the tool of a del ferice--we all know who and what del ferice was, and how he came by his title of count, and how he got his fortune--a spy, an intriguer! in a good cause? perhaps. i was not born then, nor you either, signor principe, and we do not know what the world was like, when it was quite another world. that is not a reason for serving a spy!" "calm yourself, my friend. we are not in del ferice's service." "better to die than that! better to kill him at once and go to the galleys for a few years! better to play the fiddle, or pick rags, or beg in the streets than that, signor principe. one must respect oneself. you see it yourself. one must be a man, and feel as a man. one must feel those things here, signor principe, here in the heart!" contini struck his breast with his clenched fist and bit the end of his cigar quite through in his anger. then he suddenly seized his hat and rushed out of the room. orsino was less surprised at the outburst than might have been expected, and did not attach any great weight to his partner's dramatic rage. but he lit a cigarette and carefully thought over the situation, trying to find out whether there were really any ground for contini's first remarks. he was perfectly well aware that as orsino saracinesca he would cut his own throat with enthusiasm rather than borrow a louis of ugo del ferice. but as andrea contini and company he was another person, and so del ferice was not count del ferice, nor the onorevole del ferice, but simply a director in a bank with which he had business. if the interests of andrea contini and company were identical with those of the bank, there was no reason whatever for interrupting relations both amicable and profitable, merely because one member of the firm claimed to be descended from cola di bienzo, a defunct personage in whom orsino felt no interest whatever. andrea contini, considering his social relations, might be on terms of friendship with his hatter, for instance, or might have personal reasons for disliking him. in neither case could the buying of a hat from that individual be looked upon as an obligation conferred or received by either party. this was quite clear, and orsino was satisfied. "business is business," he said to himself, "and people who introduce personal considerations into a financial transaction will get the worst of the bargain." andrea contini was apparently of the same opinion, for when he entered the room again at the end of an hour his excitement had quite disappeared. "if we take another contract from the count," he said, "is there any reason why we should not take a larger one, if it is to be had? we could manage three or four buildings now that you have become such a good bookkeeper." "i am quite of your opinion," orsino answered, deciding at once to make no reference to what had gone before. "the only question is, whether we have capital enough for a margin." "leave that to me." orsino determined to consult his mother, in whose judgment he felt a confidence which he could not explain but which was not misplaced. the fact was simple enough. corona understood him thoroughly, though her comprehension of his business was more than limited, and she did nothing in reality but encourage his own sober opinion when it happened to be at variance with some enthusiastic inclination which momentarily deluded him. that quiet pushing of a man's own better reason against his half considered but often headstrong impulses, is after all one of the best and most loving services which a wise woman can render to a man whom she loves, be he husband, son or brother. many women have no other secret, and indeed there are few more valuable ones, if well used and well kept. but let not graceless man discover that it is used upon him. he will resent being led by his own reason far more than being made the senseless slave of a foolish woman's wildest caprice. to select the best of himself for his own use is to trample upon his free will. to send him barefoot to jericho in search of a dried flower is to appeal to his heart. man is a reasoning animal. corona, as was to be expected, was triumphant in orsino's first success, and spent as much time in talking over the past and the future with him as she could command during his own hours of liberty. he needed no urging to continue in the same course, but he enjoyed her happiness and delighted in her encouragement. "contini wishes to take a large contract," he said to her, after the interview last described. "i agree with him, in a way. we could certainly manage a larger business." "no doubt," corona answered thoughtfully, for she saw that there was some objection to the scheme in his own mind. "i have learned a great deal," he continued, "and we have much more capital than we had. besides, i suppose you would lend me a few thousands if we needed them, would you not, mother?" "certainly, my dear. you shall not be hampered by want of money." "and then, it is possible that we might make something like a fortune in a short time. it would be a great satisfaction. but then, too--" he stopped. "what then?" asked corona, smiling. "things may turn out differently. though i have been successful this time, i am much more inclined to believe that san giacinto was right than i was before i began. all this movement does not rest on a solid basis." a financier of thirty years' standing could not have made the statement more impressively, and orsino was conscious that he was assuming an elderly tone. he laughed the next moment. "that is a stock phrase, mother," he continued. "but it means something. everything is not what it should be. if the demand were as great as people say it is, there would not be half a dozen houses--better houses than ours--unsold in our street. that is why i am afraid of a big contract. i might lose all my money and some of yours." "it would not be of much consequence if you did," answered corona. "but of course you will be guided by your own judgment, which, is much better than mine. one must risk something, of course, but there is no use in going into danger." "nevertheless, i should enjoy a big venture immensely." "there is no reason why you should not try one, when the moment comes, my dear. i suppose that a few months will decide whether there is to be a crisis or not. in the meantime you might take something moderate, neither so small as the last, nor so large as you would like. you will get more experience, risk less and be better prepared for a crash if it comes, or to take advantage of anything favourable if business grows safer." orsino was silent for a moment. "you are very wise, mother," he said. "i will take your advice." corona had indeed acted as wisely as she could. the only flaw in her reasoning was her assertion that a few months would decide the fate of roman affairs. if it were possible to predict a crisis even within a few months, speculation would be a less precarious business than it is. orsino and his mother might have talked longer and perhaps to better purpose, but they were interrupted by the entrance of a servant, bearing a note. corona instinctively put out her hand to receive it. "for don orsino," said the man, stopping before him. orsino took the letter, looked at it and turned it over. "i think it is from madame d'aranjuez," he remarked, without emotion. "may i read it?" "there is no answer, eccellenza," said the servant, whose curiosity was satisfied. "read it, of course," said corona, looking at him. she was surprised that madame d'aranjuez should write to him, but she was still more astonished to see the indifference with which he opened the missive. she had imagined that he was more or less in love with maria consuelo. "i fancy it is the other way," she thought. "the woman wants to marry him. i might have suspected it." orsino read the note, and tossed it into the fire without volunteering any information. "i will take your advice, mother," he said, continuing the former conversation, as though nothing had happened. but the subject seemed to be exhausted, and before long orsino made an excuse to his mother and went out. chapter xv. there was nothing in the note burnt by orsino which he might not have shown to his mother, since he had already told her the name of the writer. it contained the simple statement that maria consuelo was about to leave rome, and expressed the hope that she might see orsino before her departure as she had a small request to make of him, in the nature of a commission. she hoped he would forgive her for putting him to so much inconvenience. though he betrayed no emotion in reading the few lines, he was in reality annoyed by them, and he wished that he might be prevented from obeying the summons. maria consuelo had virtually dropped the acquaintance, and had refused repeatedly and in a marked way to receive him. and now, at the last moment, when she needed something of him, she chose to recall him by a direct invitation. there was nothing to be done but to yield, and it was characteristic of orsino that, having submitted to necessity, he did not put off the inevitable moment, but went to her at once. the days were longer now than they had been during the time when he had visited her every day, and the lamp was not yet on the table when orsino entered the small sitting-room. maria consuelo was standing by the window, looking out into the street, and her right hand rested against the pane while her fingers tapped it softly but impatiently. she turned quickly as he entered, but the light was behind her and he could hardly see her face. she came towards him and held out her hand. "it is very kind of you to have come so soon," she said, as she took her old accustomed place by the table. nothing was changed, excepting that the two or three new books at her elbow were not the same ones which had been there two months earlier. in one of them was thrust the silver paper-cutter with the jewelled handle, which orsino had never missed. he wondered whether there were any reason for the unvarying sameness of these details. "of course i came," he said. "and as there was time to-day, i came at once." he spoke rather coldly, still resenting her former behaviour and expecting that she would immediately say what she wanted of him. he would promise to execute the commission, whatever it might be, and after ten minutes of conversation he would take his leave. there was a short pause, during which he looked at her. she did not seem well. her face was pale and her eyes were deep with shadows. even her auburn hair had lost something of its gloss. yet she did not look older than before, a fact which proved her to be even younger than orsino had imagined. saving the look of fatigue and suffering in her face, maria consuelo had changed less than orsino during the winter, and she realised the fact at a glance. a determined purpose, hard work, the constant exertion of energy and will, and possibly, too, the giving up to a great extent of gambling and strong drinks, had told in orsino's face and manner as a course of training tells upon a lazy athlete. the bold black eyes had a more quiet glance, the well-marked features had acquired strength and repose, the lean jaw was firmer and seemed more square. even physically, orsino had improved, though the change was undefinable. young as he was, something of the power of mature manhood was already coming over his youth. "you must have thought me very--rude," said maria consuelo, breaking the silence and speaking with a slight hesitation which orsino had never noticed before. "it is not for me to complain, madame," he answered. "you had every right--" he stopped short, for he was reluctant to admit that she had been justified in her behaviour towards him. "thanks," she said, with an attempt to laugh. "it is pleasant to find magnanimous people now and then. i do not want you to think that i was capricious. that is all." "i certainly do not think that. you were most consistent. i called three times and always got the same answer." he fancied that he heard her sigh, but she tried to laugh again. "i am not imaginative," she answered. "i daresay you found that out long go. you have much more imagination than i." "it is possible, madame--but you have not cared to develop it." "what do you mean?" "what does it matter? do you remember what you said when i bade you good-night at the window of your carriage after del ferice's dinner? you said that you were not angry with me. i was foolish enough to imagine that you were in earnest. i came again and again, but you would not see me. you did not encourage my illusion." "because i would not receive you? how do you know what happened to me? how can you judge of my life? by your own? there is a vast difference." "yes, indeed!" exclaimed orsino almost impatiently. "i know what you are going to say. it will be flattering to me of course. the unattached young man is dangerous to the reputation. the foreign lady is travelling alone. there is the foundation of a vaudeville in that!" "if you must be unjust, at least do not be brutal," said maria consuelo in a low voice, and she turned her face away from him. "i am evidently placed in the world to offend you, madame. will you believe that i am sorry for it, though i only dimly comprehend my fault? what did i say? that you were wise in breaking off my visits, because you are alone here, and because i am young, unmarried and unfortunately a little conspicuous in my native city. is it brutal to suggest that a young and beautiful woman has a right not to be compromised? can we not talk freely for half an hour, as we used to talk, and then say good-bye and part good friends until you come to rome again?" "i wish we could!" there was an accent of sincerity in the tone which pleased orsino. "then begin by forgiving me all my sins, and put them down to ignorance, want of tact, the inexperience of youth or a naturally weak understanding. but do not call me brutal on such slight provocation." "we shall never agree for a long time," answered maria consuelo thoughtfully. "why not?" "because, as i told you, there is too great a difference between our lives. do not answer me as you did before, for i am right. i began by admitting that i was rude. if that is not enough i will say more--i will even ask you to forgive me--can i do more?" she spoke so earnestly that orsino was surprised and almost touched. her manner now was even less comprehensible than her repeated refusals to see him had been. "you have done far too much already," he said gravely. "it is mine to ask your forgiveness for much that i have done and said. i only wish that i understood you better." "i am glad you do not," replied maria consuelo, with a sigh which this time was not to be mistaken. "there is a sadness which it is better not to understand," she added softly. "unless one can help to drive it away." he, too, spoke gently, his voice being attracted to the pitch and tone of hers. "you cannot do that--and if you could, you would not." "who can tell?" the charm which he had formerly felt so keenly in her presence but which he had of late so completely forgotten, was beginning to return and he submitted to it with a sense of satisfaction which he had not anticipated. though the twilight was coming on, his eyes had become accustomed to the dimness in the room and he saw every change in her pale, expressive face. she leaned back in her chair with eyes half closed. "i like to think that you would, if you knew how," she said presently. "do you not know that i would?" she glanced quickly at him, and then, instead of answering, rose from her seat and called to her maid through one of the doors, telling her to bring the lamp. she sat down again, but being conscious that they were liable to interruption, neither of the two spoke. maria consuelo's fingers played with the silver knife, drawing it out of the book in which it lay and pushing it back again. at last she took it up and looked closely at the jewelled monogram on the handle. the maid entered, set the shaded lamp upon the table and glanced sharply at orsino. he could not help noticing the look. in a moment she was gone, and the door closed behind her. maria consuelo looked over her shoulder to see that it had not been left ajar. "she is a very extraordinary person, that elderly maid of mine," she said. "so i should imagine from her face." "yes. she looked at you as she passed and i saw that you noticed it. she is my protector. i never have travelled without her and she watches over me--as a cat watches a mouse." the little laugh that accompanied the words was not one of satisfaction, and the shade of annoyance did not escape orsino. "i suppose she is one of those people to whose ways one submits because one cannot live without them," he observed. "yes. that is it. that is exactly it," repeated maria consuelo. "and she is very strongly attached to me," she added after an instant's hesitation. "i do not think she will ever leave me. in fact we are attached to each other." she laughed again as though amused by her own way of stating the relation, and drew the paper-cutter through her hand two or three times. orsino's eyes were oddly fascinated by the flash of the jewels. "i would like to know the history of that knife," he said, almost thoughtlessly. maria consuelo started and looked at him, paler even than before. the question seemed to be a very unexpected one. "why?" she asked quickly. "i always see it on the table or in your hand," answered orsino. "it is associated with you--i think of it when i think of you. i always fancy that it has a story." "you are right. it was given to me by a person who loved me." "i see--i was indiscreet." "no--you do not see, my friend. if you did you--you would understand many things, and perhaps it is better that you should not know them." "your sadness? should i understand that, too?" "no. not that." a slight colour rose in her face, and she stretched out her hand to arrange the shade of the lamp, with a gesture long familiar to him. "we shall end by misunderstanding each other," she continued in a harder tone. "perhaps it will be my fault. i wish you knew much more about me than you do, but without the necessity of telling you the story. but that is impossible. this paper-cutter--for instance, could tell the tale better than i, for it made people see things which i did not see." "after it was yours?" "yes. after it was mine." "it pleases you to be very mysterious," said orsino with a smile. "oh no! it does not please me at all," she answered, turning her face away again. "and least of all with you--my friend." "why least with me?" "because you are the first to misunderstand. you cannot help it. i do not blame you." "if you would let me be your friend, as you call me, it would be better for us both." he spoke as he had assuredly not meant to speak when he had entered the room, and with a feeling that surprised himself far more than his hearer. maria consuelo turned sharply upon him. "have you acted like a friend towards me?" she asked. "i have tried to," he answered, with more presence of mind than truth. her tawny eyes suddenly lightened. "that is not true. be truthful! how have you acted, how have you spoken with me? are you ashamed to answer?" orsino raised his head rather haughtily, and met her glance, wondering whether any man had ever been forced into such a strange position before. but though her eyes were bright, their look was neither cold nor defiant. "you know the answer," he said. "i spoke and acted as though i loved you, madame, but since you dismissed me so very summarily, i do not see why you wish me to say so." "and you, don orsino, have you ever been loved--loved in earnest--by any woman?" "that is a very strange question, madame." "i am discreet. you may answer it safely." "i have no doubt of that." "but you will not? no--that is your right. but it would be kind of you--i should be grateful if you would tell me--has any woman ever loved you dearly?" orsino laughed, almost in spite of himself. he had little false pride. "it is humiliating, madame. but since you ask the question and require a categorical answer, i will make my confession. i have never been loved. but you will observe, as an extenuating circumstance, that i am young. i do not give up all hope." "no--you need not," said maria consuelo in a low voice, and again she moved the shade of the lamp. though orsino was by no means fatuous, he must have been blind if he had not seen by this time that madame d'aranjuez was doing her best to make him speak as he had formerly spoken to her, and to force him into a declaration of love. he saw it, indeed, and wondered; but although he felt her charm upon him, from time to time, he resolved that nothing should induce him to relax even so far as he had done already more than once during the interview. she had placed him in a foolish position once before, and he would not expose himself to being made ridiculous again, in her eyes or his. he could not discover what intention she had in trying to lead him back to her, but he attributed it to her vanity. she regretted, perhaps, having rebuked him so soon, or perhaps she had imagined that he would have made further and more determined efforts to see her. possibly, too, she really wished to ask a service of him, and wished to assure herself that she could depend upon him by previously extracting an avowal of his devotion. it was clear that one of the two had mistaken the other's character or mood, though it was impossible to say which was the one deceived. the silence which followed lasted some time, and threatened to become awkward. maria consuelo could not or would not speak and orsino did not know what to say. he thought of inquiring what the commission might be with which, according to her note, she had wished to entrust him. but an instant's reflection told him that the question would be tactless. if she had invented the idea as an excuse for seeing him, to mention it would be to force her hand, as card-players say, and he had no intention of doing that. even if she really had something to ask of him, he had no right to change the subject so suddenly. he bethought him of a better question. "you wrote me that you were going away," he said quietly. "but you will come back next winter, will you not, madame?" "i do not know," she answered, vaguely. then she started a little, as though understanding his words. "what am i saying!" she exclaimed. "of course i shall come back." "have you been drinking from the trevi fountain by moonlight, like those mad english?" he asked, with a smile. "it is not necessary. i know that i shall come back--if i am alive." "how you say that! you are as strong as i--" "stronger, perhaps. but then--who knows! the weak ones sometimes last the longest." orsino thought she was growing very sentimental, though as he looked at her he was struck again by the look of suffering in her eyes. whatever weakness she felt was visible there, there was nothing in the full, firm little hand, in the strong and easy pose of the head, in the softly coloured ear half hidden by her hair, that could suggest a coming danger to her splendid health. "let us take it for granted that you will come back to us," said orsino cheerfully. "very well, we will take it for granted. what then?" the question was so sudden and direct that orsino fancied there ought to be an evident answer to it. "what then?" he repeated, after a moment's hesitation. "i suppose you will live in these same rooms again, and with your permission, a certain orsino saracinesca will visit you from time to time, and be rude, and be sent away into exile for his sins. and madame d'aranjuez will go a great deal to madame del ferice's and to other ultra-white houses, which will prevent the said orsino from meeting her in society. she will also be more beautiful than ever, and the daily papers will describe a certain number of gowns which she will bring with her from paris, or vienna, or london, or whatever great capital is the chosen official residence of her great dressmaker. and the world will not otherwise change very materially in the course of eight months." orsino laughed lightly, not at his own speech, which he had constructed rather clumsily under the spur of necessity, but in the hope that she would laugh, too, and begin to talk more carelessly. but maria consuelo was evidently not inclined for anything but the most serious view of the world, past, present and future. "yes," she answered gravely. "i daresay you are right. one comes, one shows one's clothes, and one goes away again--and that is all. it would be very much the same if one did not come. it is a great mistake to think oneself necessary to any one. only things are necessary--food, money and something to talk about." "you might add friends to the list," said orsino, who was afraid of being called brutal again if he did not make some mild remonstrance to such a sweeping assertion. "friends are included under the head of 'something to talk about,'" answered maria consuelo. "that is an encouraging view." "like all views one gets by experience." "you grow more and more bitter." "does the world grow sweeter as one grows older?" "neither you nor i have lived long enough to know," answered orsino. "facts make life long--not years." "so long as they leave no sign of age, what does it matter?" "i do not care for that sort of flattery." "because it is not flattery at all. you know the truth too well. i am not ingenious enough to flatter you, madame. perfection is not flattered when it is called perfect." "it is at all events impossible to exaggerate better than you can," answered maria consuelo, laughing at last at the overwhelming compliment. "where did you learn that?" "at your feet, madame. the contemplation of great masterpieces enlarges the intelligence and deepens the power of expression." "and i am a masterpiece--of what? of art? of caprice? of consistency?" "of nature," answered orsino promptly. again maria consuelo laughed a little, at the mere quickness of the answer. orsino was delighted with himself, for he fancied he was leading her rapidly away from the dangerous ground upon which she had been trying to force him. but her next words showed him that he had not yet succeeded. "who will make me laugh during all these months!" she exclaimed with a little sadness. orsino thought she was strangely obstinate, and wondered what she would say next. "dear me, madame," he said, "if you are so kind as to laugh at my poor wit, you will not have to seek far to find some one to amuse you better!" he knew how to put on an expression of perfect simplicity when he pleased, and maria consuelo looked at him, trying to be sure whether he were in earnest or not. but his face baffled her. "you are too modest," she said. "do you think it is a defect? shall i cultivate a little more assurance of manner?" he asked, very innocently. "not to-day. your first attempt might lead you into extremes." "there is not the slightest fear of that, madame," he answered with some emphasis. she coloured a little and her closed lips smiled in a way he had often noticed before. he congratulated himself upon these signs of approaching ill-temper, which promised an escape from his difficulty. to take leave of her suddenly was to abandon the field, and that he would not do. she had determined to force him into a confession of devotion, and he was equally determined not to satisfy her. he had tried to lead her off her track with frivolous talk and had failed. he would try and irritate her instead, but without incurring the charge of rudeness. why she was making such an attack upon him, was beyond his understanding, but he resented it, and made up his mind neither to fly nor yield. if he had been a hundredth part as cynical as he liked to fancy himself, he would have acted very differently. but he was young enough to have been wounded by his former dismissal, though he hardly knew it, and to seek almost instinctively to revenge his wrongs. he did not find it easy. he would not have believed that such a woman as maria consuelo could so far forget her pride as to go begging for a declaration of love. "i suppose you will take gouache's portrait away with you," he observed, changing the subject with a directness which he fancied would increase her annoyance. "what makes you think so?" she asked, rather drily. "i thought it a natural question." "i cannot imagine what i should do with it. i shall leave it with him." "you will let him send it to the salon in paris, of course?" "if he likes. you seem interested in the fate of the picture." "a little. i wondered why you did not have it here, as it has been finished so long." "instead of that hideous mirror, you mean? there would be less variety. i should always see myself in the same dress." "no--on the opposite wall. you might compare truth with fiction in that way." "to the advantage of gouache's fiction, you would say. you were more complimentary a little while ago." "you imagine more rudeness than even i am capable of inventing." "that is saying much. why did you change the subject just now?" "because i saw that you were annoyed at something. besides, we were talking about myself, if i remember rightly." "have you never heard that a man should always talk to a woman about himself or herself?" "no. i never heard that. shall we talk of you, then, madame?" "do you care to talk of me?" asked maria consuelo. another direct attack, orsino thought. "i would rather hear you talk of yourself," he answered without the least hesitation. "if i were to tell you my thoughts about myself at the present moment, they would surprise you very much." "agreeably or disagreeably?" "i do not know. are you vain?" "as a peacock!" replied orsino quickly. "ah--then what i am thinking would not interest you." "why not?" "because if it is not flattering it would wound you, and if it is flattering it would disappoint you--by falling short of your ideal of yourself." "yet i confess that i would like to know what you think of me, though i would much rather hear what you think of yourself." "on one condition, i will tell you." "what is that?" "that you will give me your word to give me your own opinion of me afterwards." "the adjectives are ready, madame, i give you my word." "you give it so easily! how can i believe you?" "it is so easy to give in such a case, when one has nothing disagreeable to say." "then you think me agreeable?" "eminently!" "and charming?" "perfectly!" "and beautiful?" "how can you doubt it?" "and in all other respects exactly like all the women in society to whom you repeat the same commonplaces every day of your life?" the feint had been dexterous and the thrust was sudden, straight and unexpected. "madame!" exclaimed orsino in the deprecatory tone of a man taken by surprise. "you see--you have nothing to say!" she laughed a little bitterly. "you take too much for granted," he said, recovering himself. "you suppose that because i agree with you upon one point after another, i agree with you in the conclusion. you do not even wait to hear my answer, and you tell me that i am checkmated when i have a dozen moves from which to choose. besides, you have directly infringed the conditions. you have fired before the signal and an arbitration would go against you. you have done fifty things contrary to agreement, and you accuse me of being dumb in my own defence. there is not much justice in that. you promise to tell me a certain secret on condition that i will tell you another. then, without saying a word on your own part you stone me with quick questions and cry victory because i protest. you begin before i have had so much as--" "for heaven's sake stop!" cried maria consuelo, interrupting a speech which threatened to go on for twenty minutes. "you talk of chess, duelling and stoning to death, in one sentence--i am utterly confused! you upset all my ideas!" "considering how you have disturbed mine, it is a fair revenge. and since we both admit that we have disturbed that balance upon which alone depends all possibility of conversation, i think that i can do nothing more graceful--pardon me, nothing less ungraceful--than wish you a pleasant journey, which i do with all my heart, madame." thereupon orsino rose and took his hat. "sit down. do not go yet," said maria consuelo, growing a shade paler, and speaking with an evident effort. "ah--true!" exclaimed orsino. "we were forgetting the little commission you spoke of in your note. i am entirely at your service." maria consuelo looked at him quickly and her lips trembled. "never mind that," she said unsteadily. "i will not trouble you. but i do not want you to go away as--as you were going. i feel as though we had been quarrelling. perhaps we have. but let us say we are good friends--if we only say it." orsino was touched and disturbed. her face was very white and her hand trembled visibly as she held it out. he took it in his own without hesitation. "if you care for my friendship, you shall have no better friend in the world than i," he said, simply and naturally. "thank you--good-bye. i shall leave to-morrow." the words were almost broken, as though she were losing control of her voice. as he closed the door behind him, the sound of a wild and passionate sob came to him through the panel. he stood still, listening and hesitating. the truth which would have long been clear to an older or a vainer man, flashed upon him suddenly. she loved him very much, and he no longer cared for her. that was the reason why she had behaved so strangely, throwing her pride and dignity to the winds in her desperate attempt to get from him a single kind and affectionate word--from him, who had poured into her ear so many words of love but two months earlier, and from whom to draw a bare admission of friendship to-day she had almost shed tears. to go back into the room would be madness; since he did not love her, it would almost be an insult. he bent his head and walked slowly down the corridor. he had not gone far, when he was confronted by a small dark figure that stopped the way. he recognised maria consuelo's elderly maid. "i beg your pardon, signore principe," said the little black-eyed woman. "you will allow me to say a few words? i thank you, eccellenza. it is about my signora, in there, of whom i have charge." "of whom, you have charge?" repeated orsino, not understanding her. "yes--precisely. of course, i am only her maid. you understand that. but i have charge of her though she does not know it. the poor signora has had terrible trouble during the last few years, and at times--you understand? she is a little--yes--here." she tapped her forehead. "she is better now. but in my position i sometimes think it wiser to warn some friend of hers--in strict confidence. it sometimes saves some little unnecessary complication, and i was ordered to do so by the doctors we last consulted in paris. you will forgive me, eccellenza, i am sure." orsino stared at the woman for some seconds in blank astonishment. she smiled in a placid, self-confident way. "you mean that madame d'aranjuez is--mentally deranged, and that you are her keeper? it is a little hard to believe, i confess." "would you like to see my certificates, signor principe? or the written directions of the doctors? i am sure you are discreet." "i have no right to see anything of the kind," answered orsino coldly. "of course, if you are acting under instructions it is no concern of mine." he would have gone forward, but she suddenly produced a small bit of note-paper, neatly folded, and offered it to him. "i thought you might like to know where we are until we return," she said, continuing to speak in a very low voice. "it is the address." orsino made an impatient gesture. he was on the point of refusing the information which he had not taken the trouble to ask of maria consuelo herself. but he changed his mind and felt in his pocket for something to give the woman. it seemed the easiest and simplest way of getting rid of her. the only note he had, chanced to be one of greater value than necessary. "a thousand thanks, eccellenza!" whispered the maid, overcome by what she took for an intentional piece of generosity. orsino left the hotel as quickly as he could. "for improbable situations, commend me to the nineteenth century and the society in which we live!" he said to himself as he emerged into the street. chapter xvi. it was long before orsino saw maria consuelo again, but the circumstances of his last meeting with her constantly recurred to his mind during the following months. it is one of the chief characteristics of rome that it seems to be one of the most central cities in europe during the winter, whereas in the summer months it appears to be immensely remote from the rest of the civilised world. from having been the prey of the inexpressible foreigner in his shooting season, it suddenly becomes, and remains during about five months, the happy hunting ground of the silent flea, the buzzing fly and the insinuating mosquito. the streets are, indeed, still full of people, and long lines of carriages may be seen towards sunset in the villa borghesa and in the narrow corso. rome and the romans are not easily parted as london and london society, for instance. may comes--the queen of the months in the south. june follows. southern blood rejoices in the first strong sunshine. july trudges in at the gates, sweating under the cloudless sky, heavy, slow of foot, oppressed by the breath of the coming dog-star. still the nights are cool. still, towards sunset, the refreshing breeze sweeps up from the sea and fills the streets. then behind closely fastened blinds, the glass windows are opened and the weary hand drops the fan at last. then men and women array themselves in the garments of civilisation and sally forth, in carriages, on foot, and in trams, according to the degrees of social importance which provide that in old countries the middle term shall be made to suffer for the priceless treasure of a respectability which is a little higher than the tram and financially not quite equal to the cab. then, at that magic touch of the west wind the house-fly retires to his own peculiar inferno, wherever that may be, the mosquito and the gnat pause in their work of darkness and blood to concert fresh and more bloodthirsty deeds, and even the joyous and wicked flea tires of the war dance and lays down his weary head to snatch a hard-earned nap. july drags on, and terrible august treads the burning streets bleaching the very dust up on the pavement, scourging the broad campagna with fiery lashes of heat. then the white-hot sky reddens in the evening when it cools, as the white iron does when it is taken from the forge. then at last, all those who can escape from the condemned city flee for their lives to the hills, while those who must face the torment of the sun and the poison of the air turn pale in their sufferings, feebly curse their fate and then grow listless, weak and irresponsible as over-driven galley slaves, indifferent to everything, work, rest, blows, food, sleep and the hope of release. the sky darkens suddenly. there is a sort of horror in the stifling air. people do not talk much, and if they do are apt to quarrel and sometimes to kill one another without warning. the plash of the fountains has a dull sound like the pouring out of molten lead. the horses' hoofs strike visible sparks out of the grey stones in broad daylight. many houses are shut, and one fancies that there must be a dead man in each whom no one will bury. a few great drops of rain make ink-stains on the pavement at noon, and there is an exasperating, half-sulphurous smell abroad. late in the afternoon they fall again. an evil wind comes in hot blasts from all quarters at once--then a low roar like an earthquake and presently a crash that jars upon the overwrought nerves--great and plashing drops again, a sharp short flash--then crash upon crash, deluge upon deluge, and the worst is over. summer has received its first mortal wound. but its death is more fatal than its life. the noontide heat is fierce and drinks up the moisture of the rain and the fetid dust with it. the fever-wraith rises in the damp, cool night, far out in the campagna, and steals up to the walls of the city, and over them and under them and into the houses. if there are any yet left in rome who can by any possibility take themselves out of it, they are not long in going. till that moment, there has been only suffering to be borne; now, there is danger of something worse. now, indeed, the city becomes a desert inhabited by white-faced ghosts. now, if it be a year of cholera, the dead carts rattle through the streets all night on their way to the gate of saint lawrence, and the workmen count their numbers when they meet at dawn. but the bad days are not many, if only there be rain enough, for a little is worse than none. the nights lengthen and the september gales sweep away the poison-mists with kindly strength. body and soul revive, as the ripe grapes appear in their vine-covered baskets at the street corners. rich october is coming, the month in which the small citizens of rome take their wives and the children to the near towns, to marino, to froscati, to albano and aricia, to eat late fruits and drink new must, with songs and laughter, and small miseries and great delights such as are remembered a whole year. the first clear breeze out of the north shakes down the dying leaves and brightens the blue air. the brown campagna turns green again, and the heart of the poor lame cab-horse is lifted up. the huge porter of the palace lays aside his linen coat and his pipe, and opens wide the great gates; for the masters are coming back, from their castles and country places, from the sea and from the mountains, from north and south, from the magic shore of sorrento, and from distant french bathing places, some with brides or husbands, some with rosy roman babies making their first trumphal entrance into rome--and some, again, returning companionless to the home they had left in companionship. the great and complicated machinery of social life is set in order and repaired for the winter; the lost or damaged pieces in the engine are carefully replaced with new ones which will do as well or better, the joints and bearings are lubricated, the whistle of the first invitation is heard, there is some puffing and a little creaking at first, and then the big wheels begin to go slowly round, solemnly and regularly as ever, while all the little wheels run as fast as they can and set fire to their axles in the attempt to keep up the speed, and are finally jammed and caught up and smashed, as little wheels are sure to be when they try to act like big ones. but unless something happens to one of the very biggest the machine does not stop until the end of the season, when it is taken to pieces again for repairs. that is the brief history of a roman year, of which the main points are very much like those of its predecessor and successor. the framework is the same, but the decorations change, slowly, surely and not, perhaps, advantageously, as the younger generation crowds into the place of the older--as young acquaintances take the place of old friends, as faces strange to us hide faces we have loved. orsino saracinesca, in his new character as a contractor and a man of business, knew that he must either spend the greater part of the summer in town, or leave his affairs in the hands of andrea contini. the latter course was repugnant to him, partly because he still felt a beginner's interest in his first success, and partly because he had a shrewd suspicion that contini, if left to himself in the hot weather, might be tempted to devote more time to music than to architecture. the business, too, was now on a much larger scale than before, though orsino had taken his mother's advice in not at once going so far as he might have gone. it needed all his own restless energy, all contini's practical talents, and perhaps more of del ferice's influence than either of them suspected, to keep it going on the road to success. in july orsino's people made ready to go up to saracinesca. the old prince, to every one's surprise, declared his intention of going to england, and roughly refused to be accompanied by any one of the family. he wanted to find out some old friends, he said, and desired the satisfaction of spending a couple of months in peace, which was quite impossible at home, owing to giovanni's outrageous temper and orsino's craze for business. he thereupon embraced them all affectionately, indulged in a hearty laugh and departed in a special carriage with his own servants. giovanni objected to orsino's staying in rome during the great heat. though orsino had not as yet entered into any explanation with his father, but the latter understood well enough that the business had turned out better than had been expected and began to feel an interest in its further success, for his son's sake. he saw the boy developing into a man by a process which he would naturally have supposed to be the worst possible one, judging from his own point of view. but he could not find fault with the result. there was no disputing the mental superiority of the orsino of july over the orsino of the preceding january. whatever the sensation which giovanni experienced as he contemplated the growing change, it was not one of anxiety nor of disappointment. but he had a roman's well-founded prejudice against spending august and september in town. his objections gave rise to some discussion, in which corona joined. orsino enlarged upon the necessity of attending in person to the execution of his contracts. giovanni suggested that he should find some trustworthy person to take his place. corona was in favour of a compromise. it would be easy, she said, for orsino to spend two or three days of every week in rome and the remainder in the country with his father and mother. they were all three quite right according to their own views, and they all three knew it. moreover they were all three very obstinate people. the consequence was that orsino, who was in possession, so to say, since the other two were trying to make him change his mind, got the best of the argument, and won his first pitched battle. not that there was any apparent hostility, or that any of the three spoke hotly or loudly. they were none of them like old saracinesca, whose feats of argumentation were vehement, eccentric and fiery as his own nature. they talked with apparent calm through a long summer's afternoon, and the vanquished retired with a fairly good grace, leaving orsino master of the field. but on that occasion giovanni saracinesca first formed the opinion that his son was a match for him, and that it would be wise in future to ascertain the chances of success before incurring the risk of a humiliating defeat. giovanni and his wife went out together and talked over the matter as their carriage swept round the great avenues of villa borghesa. "there is no question of the fact that orsino is growing up--is grown up already," said sant' ilario, glancing at corona's calm, dark face. she smiled with a certain pride, as she heard the words. "yes," she answered, "he is a man. it is a mistake to treat him as a boy any longer." "do you think it is this sudden interest in business that has changed him so?" "of course--what else?" "madame d'aranjuez, for instance," giovanni suggested. "i do not believe she ever had the least influence over him. the flirtation seems to have died a natural death. i confess, i hoped it might end in that way, and i am glad if it has. and i am very glad that orsino is succeeding so well. do you know, dear? i am glad, because you did not believe it possible that he should." "no, i did not. and now that i begin to understand it, he does not like to talk to me about his affairs. i suppose that is only natural. tell me--has he really made money? or have you been giving him money to lose, in order that he may buy experience." "he has succeeded alone," said corona proudly. "i would give him whatever he needed, but he needs nothing. he is immensely clever and immensely energetic. how could he fail?" "you seem to admire our firstborn, my dear," observed giovanni with a smile. "to tell the truth, i do. i have no doubt that he does all sorts of things which he ought not to do, and of which i know nothing. you did the same at his age, and i shall be quite satisfied if he turns out like you. i would not like to have a lady-like son with white hands and delicate sensibilities, and hypocritical affectations of exaggerated morality. i think i should be capable of trying to make such a boy bad, if it only made him manly--though i daresay that would be very wrong." "no doubt," said giovanni. "but we shall not be placed in any such position by orsino, my dear. you remember that little affair last year, in england? it was very nearly a scandal. but then--the english are easily led into temptation and very easily scandalised afterwards. orsino will not err in the direction of hypocritical morality. but that is not the question. i wish to know, from you since he does not confide in me, how far he is really succeeding." corona gave her husband a remarkably clear statement of orsino's affairs, without exaggeration so far as the facts were concerned, but not without highly favourable comment. she did not attempt to conceal her triumph, now that success had been in a measure attained, and she did not hesitate to tell giovanni that he ought to have encouraged and supported the boy from the first. giovanni listened with very great interest, and bore her affectionate reproaches with equanimity. he felt in his heart that he had done right, and he somehow still believed that things were not in reality all that they seemed to be. there was something in orsino's immediate success against odds apparently heavy, which disturbed his judgment. he had not, it was true, any personal experience of the building speculations in the city, nor of financial transactions in general, as at present understood, and he had recently heard of cases in which individuals had succeeded beyond their own wildest expectations. there was, perhaps, no reason why orsino should not do as well as other people, or even better, in spite of his extreme youth. andrea contini was probably a man of superior talent, well able to have directed the whole affair alone, if other circumstances had been favourable to him, and there was on the whole nothing to prove that the two young men had received more than their fair share of assistance or accommodation from the bank. but giovanni knew well enough that del ferice was the most influential personage in the bank in question, and the mere suggestion of his name lent to the whole affair a suspicious quality which disturbed orsino's father. in spite of all reasonable reflexions there was an air of unnatural good fortune in the case which he did not like, and he had enough experience of del ferice's tortuous character to distrust his intentions. he would have preferred to see his son lose money through ugo rather than that orsino should owe the latter the smallest thanks. the fact that he had not spoken with the man for over twenty years did not increase the confidence he felt in him. in that time del ferice had developed into a very important personage, having much greater power to do harm than he had possessed in former days, and it was not to be supposed that he had forgotten old wounds or given up all hope of avenging them. del ferice was not very subject to that sort of forgetfulness. when corona had finished speaking, giovanni was silent for a few moments. "is it not splendid?" corona asked enthusiastically. "why do you not say anything? one would think that you were not pleased." "on the contrary, as far as orsino is concerned, i am delighted. but i do not trust del ferice." "del ferice is far too clever a man to ruin orsino," answered corona. "exactly. that is the trouble. that is what makes me feel that though orsino has worked hard and shown extraordinary intelligence--and deserves credit for that--yet he would not have succeeded in the same way if he had dealt with any other bank. del ferice has helped him. possibly orsino knows that, as well as we do, but he certainly does not know what part del ferice played in our lives, corona. if he did, he would not accept his help." in her turn corona was silent and a look of disappointment came into her face. she remembered a certain afternoon in the mountains when she had entreated giovanni to let del ferice escape, and giovanni had yielded reluctantly and had given the fugitive a guide to take him to the frontier. she wondered whether the generous impulse of that day was to bear evil fruit at last. "orsino knows nothing about it at all," she said at last. "we kept the secret of del ferice's escape very carefully--for there were good reasons to be careful in those days. orsino only knows that you once fought a duel with the man and wounded him." "i think it is time that he knew more." "of what use can it be to tell him those old stories?" asked corona. "and after all, i do not believe that del ferice has done so much. if you could have followed orsino's work, day by day and week by week, as i have, you would see how much is really due to his energy. any other banker would have done as much as he. besides, it is in del ferice's own interest--" "that is the trouble," interrupted giovanni. "it is bad enough that he should help orsino. it is much worse that he should help him in order to make use of him. if, as you say, any other bank would do as much, then let him go to another bank. if he owes del ferice money at the present moment, we will pay it for him." "you forget that he has bought the buildings he is now finishing, from del ferice, on a mortgage." giovanni laughed a little. "how you have learned to talk about mortgages and deeds and all sorts of business!" he exclaimed. "but what you say is not an objection. we can pay off these mortgages, i suppose, and take the risk ourselves." "of course we could do that," corona answered, thoughtfully. "but i really think you exaggerate the whole affair. for the time being, del ferice is not a man, but a banker. his personal character and former doings do not enter into the matter." "i think they do," said giovanni, still unconvinced. "at all events, do not make trouble now, dear," said corona in earnest tones. "let the present contract be executed and finished, and then speak to orsino before he makes another. whatever del ferice may have done, you can see for yourself that orsino is developing in a way we had not expected, and is becoming a serious, energetic man. do not step in now, and check the growth of what is good. you will regret it as much as i shall. when he has finished these buildings he will have enough experience to make a new departure." "i hate the idea of receiving a favour from del ferice, or of laying him under an obligation. i think i will go to him myself." "to del ferice?" corona started and looked round at giovanni as she sat. she had a sudden vision of new trouble. "yes. why not? i will go to him and tell him that i would rather wind up my son's business with him, as our former relations were not of a nature to make transactions of mutual profit either fitting or even permissible between any of our family and ugo del ferice." "for heaven's sake, giovanni, do not do that." "and why not?" he was surprised at her evident distress. "for my sake, then--do not quarrel with del ferice--it was different then, in the old days. i could not bear it now--" she stopped, and her lower lip trembled a little. "do you love me better than you did then, corona?" "so much better--i cannot tell you." she touched his hand with hers and her dark eyes were a little veiled as they met his. both were silent for a moment. "i have no intention of quarrelling with del ferice, dear," said giovanni, gently. his face had grown a shade paler as she spoke. the power of her hand and voice to move him, had not diminished in all the years of peaceful happiness that had passed so quickly. "i do not mean any such thing," he said again. "but i mean this. i will not have it said that del ferice has made a fortune for orsino, nor that orsino has helped del ferice's interests. i see no way but to interfere myself. i can do it without the suspicion of a quarrel." "it will be a great mistake, giovanni. wait till there is a new contract." "i will think of it, before doing anything definite." corona well knew that she should get no greater concession than this. the point of honour had been touched in giovanni's sensibilities and his character was stubborn and determined where his old prejudices were concerned. she loved him very dearly, and this very obstinacy of his pleased her. but she fancied that trouble of some sort was imminent. she understood her son's nature, too, and dreaded lest he should be forced into opposing his father. it struck her that she might herself act as intermediary. she could certainly obtain concessions from orsino which giovanni could not hope to extract by force or stratagem. but the wisdom of her own proposal in the matter seemed unassailable. the business now in hand should be allowed to run its natural course before anything was done to break off the relations between orsino and del ferice. in the evening she found an opportunity of speaking with orsino in private. she repeated to him the details of her conversation with giovanni during the drive in the afternoon. "my dear mother," answered orsino, "i do not trust del ferice any more than you and my father trust him. you talk of things which he did years ago, but you do not tell me what those things were. so far as i understand, it all happened before you were married. my father and he quarrelled about something, and i suppose there was a lady concerned in the matter. unless you were the lady in question, and unless what he did was in the nature of an insult to you, i cannot see how the matter concerns me. they fought and it ended there, as affairs of honour do. if it touched you, then tell me so, and i will break with del ferice to-morrow morning." corona was silent, for orsino's speech was very plain, and if she answered it all, the answer must be the truth. there could be no escape from that. and the truth would be very hard to tell. at that time she had been still the wife of old astrardente, and del ferice's offence had been that he had purposely concealed himself in the conservatory of the frangipan's palace in order to overhear what giovanni saracinesca was about to say to another man's wife. the fact that on that memorable night she had bravely resisted a very great temptation did not affect the difficulty of the present case in any way. she asked herself rather whether del ferice's eavesdropping would appear to orsino to be in the nature of an insult to her, to use his own words, and she had no doubt but that it would seem so. at the same time she would find hard to explain to her son why del ferice suspected that there was to be anything said to her worth overhearing, seeing that she bore at that time the name of another man then still living. how could orsino understand all that had gone before? even now, though she knew that she had acted well, she humbly believed that she might have done much better. how would her son judge her? she was silent, waiting for him to speak again. "that would be the only conceivable reason for my breaking with del ferice," said orsino. "we only have business relations, and i do not go to his house. i went once. i saw no reason for telling you so at the time, and i have not been there again. it was at the beginning of the whole affair. outside of the bank, we are the merest acquaintances. but i repeat what i said. if he ever did anything which makes it dishonourable for me to accept even ordinary business services from him, let me know it. i have some right to hear the truth." corona hesitated, and laid the case again before her own conscience, and tried to imagine herself in her son's position. it was hard to reach a conclusion. there was no doubt but that when she had learned the truth, long after the event, she had felt that she had been insulted and justly avenged. if she said nothing now, orsino would suspect something and would assuredly go to his father, from whom he would get a view of the case not conspicuous for its moderation. and giovanni would undoubtedly tell his son the details of what had followed, how del ferice had attempted to hinder the marriage when it was at last possible, and all the rest of the story. at the same time, she felt that so far as her personal sensibilities were concerned, she had not the least objection to the continuance of a mere business relation between orsino and del ferice. she was more forgiving than giovanni. "i will tell you this much, my dear boy," she said, at last. "that old quarrel did concern me and no one else. your father feels more strongly about it than i do, because he fought for me and not for himself. you trust me, orsino. you know that i would rather see you dead than doing anything dishonourable. very well. do not ask any more questions, and do not go to your father about it. del ferice has only advanced you money, in a business way, on good security and at a high interest. so far as i can judge of the point of honour involved, what happened long ago need not prevent your doing what you are doing now. possibly, when you have finished the present contract, you may think it wiser to apply to some other bank, or to work on your own account with my money." corona believed that she had found the best way out of the difficulty, and orsino seemed satisfied, for he nodded thoughtfully and said nothing. the day had been filled with argument and discussion about his determination to stay in town, and he was weary of the perpetual question and answer. he knew his mother well, and was willing to take her advice for the present. she, on her part, told giovanni what she had done, and he consented to consider the matter a little longer before interfering. he disliked even the idea of a business relation extremely, but he feared that there was more behind the appearances of commercial fairness than either he or orsino himself could understand. the better orsino succeeded, the less his father was pleased, and his suspicions were not unfounded. he knew from san giacinto that success was becoming uncommon, and he knew that all orsino's industry and energy could not have sufficed to counterbalance his inexperience. andrea contini, too, had been recommended by del ferice, and was presumably del ferice's man. on the following day giovanni and corona with the three younger boys went up to saracinesca leaving orsino alone in the great palace, to his own considerable satisfaction. he was well pleased with himself and especially at having carried his point. at his age, and with his constitution, the heat was a matter of supreme indifference to him, and he looked forward with delight to a summer of uninterrupted work in the not uncongenial society of andrea contini. as for the work itself, it was beginning to have a sort of fascination for him as he understood it better. the love of building, the passion for stone and brick and mortar, is inherent in some natures, and is capable of growing into a mania little short of actual insanity. orsino began to ask himself seriously whether it were too late to study architecture as a profession and in the meanwhile he learned more of it in practice from contini than he could have acquired in twice the time at any polytechnic school in europe. he liked contini himself more and more as the days went by. hitherto he had been much inclined to judge his own countrymen from his own class. he was beginning to see that he had understood little or nothing of the real italian nature when uninfluenced by foreign blood. the study interested and pleased him. only one unpleasant memory occasionally disturbed his peace of mind. when he thought of his last meeting with maria consuelo he hated himself for the part he had played, though he was quite unable to account logically, upon his assumed principles, for the severity of his self-condemnation. chapter xvii. orsino necessarily led a monotonous life, though, his occupation was an absorbing one. very early in the morning he was with contini where the building was going on. he then passed the hot hours of the day in the office, which, as before, had been established in one of the unfinished houses. towards evening, he went down into the city to his home, refreshed himself after his long day's work, and then walked or drove until half past eight, when he went to dinner in the garden of a great restaurant in the corso. here he met a few acquaintances who, like himself, had reasons for staying in town after their families had left. he always sat at the same small table, at which there was barely room for two persons, for he preferred to be alone, and he rarely asked a passing friend to sit down with him. on a certain hot evening in the beginning of august he had just taken his seat, and was trying to make up his mind whether he were hungry enough to eat anything or whether it would not be less trouble to drink a glass of iced coffee and go away, when he was aware of a lank shadow cast across the white cloth by the glaring electric light. he looked up and saw spicca standing there, apparently uncertain where to sit down for the place was fuller than usual. he liked the melancholy old man and spoke to him, offering to share his table. spicca hesitated a moment and then accepted the invitation. he deposited his hat upon a chair beside him and leaned back, evidently exhausted either in mind or body, if not in both. "i am very much obliged to you, my dear orsino," he said. "there is an abominable crowd here, which means an unusual number of people to avoid--just as many as i know, in fact, excepting yourself." "i am glad you do not wish to avoid me, too," observed orsino, by way of saying something. "you are a less evil--so i choose you in preference to the greater," spicca answered. but there was a not unkindly look in his sunken eyes as he spoke. he tipped the great flask of chianti that hung in its swinging plated cradle in the middle of the table, and filled two glasses. "since all that is good has been abolished, let us drink to the least of evils," he said, "in other words, to each other." "to the absence of friends," answered orsino, touching the wine with his lips. spicca emptied his glass slowly and then looked at him. "i like that toast," he said. "to the absence of friends. i daresay you have heard of adam and eve in the garden of eden. do they still teach the dear old tale in these modern schools? no. but you have heard it--very well. you will remember that if they had not allowed the serpent to scrape acquaintance with them, on pretence of a friendly interest in their intellectual development, adam and eve would still be inventing names for the angelic little wild beasts who were too well-behaved to eat them. they would still be in paradise. moreover orsino saracinesca and john nepomucene spicca would not be in daily danger of poisoning in this vile cookshop. summary ejection from eden was the first consequence of friendship, and its results are similar to this day. what nauseous mess are we to swallow to-night? have you looked at the card?" orsino laughed a little. he foresaw that spicca would not be dull company on this particular evening. something unusually disagreeable had probably happened to him during the day. after long and melancholy hesitation he ordered something which he believed he could eat, and orsino followed his example. "are all your people out of town?" spicca asked, after a pause. "yes. i am alone." "and what in the world is the attraction here? why do you stay? i do not wish to be indiscreet, and i was never afflicted with curiosity. but cases of mental alienation grow more common every day, and as an old friend of your father's i cannot overlook symptoms of madness in you. a really sane person avoids rome in august." "it strikes me that i might say the same to you," answered orsino. "i am kept here by business. you have not even that excuse." "how do you know?" asked spicca, sharply. "business has two main elements--credit and debit. the one means the absence of the other. i leave it to your lively intelligence to decide which of the two means rome in august, and which means trouville or st. moritz." "i had not thought of it in that light." "no? i daresay not. i constantly think of it." "there are other places, nearer than st. moritz," suggested orsino. "why not go to sorrento?" "there was such a place once--but my friends have found it out. nevertheless, i might go there. it is better to suffer friendship in the spirit than fever in the body. but i have a reason for staying here just at present--a very good one." "without indiscretion--?" "no, certainly not without considerable indiscretion. take some more wine. when intoxication is bliss it is folly to be sober, as the proverb says. i cannot get tipsy, but you may, and that will be almost as amusing. the main object of drinking wine is that one person should make confidences for the other to laugh at--the one enjoys it quite as much as the other." "i would rather be the other," said orsino with a laugh. "in all cases in life it is better to be the other person," observed spicca, thoughtfully, though the remark lacked precision. "you mean the patient and not the agent, i suppose?" "no. i mean the spectator. the spectator is a well fed, indifferent personage who laughs at the play and goes home to supper--perdition upon him and his kind! he is the abomination of desolation in a front stall, looking on while better men cut one another's throats. he is a fat man with a pink complexion and small eyes, and when he has watched other people's troubles long enough, he retires to his comfortable vault in the family chapel in the campo varano, which is decorated with coloured tiles, embellished with a modern altar piece and adorned with a bust of himself by a good sculptor. even in death, he is still the spectator, grinning through the window of his sanctuary at the rows of nameless graves outside. he is happy and self-satisfied still--even in marble. it is worth living to be such a man." "it is not an exciting life," remarked orsino. "no. that is the beauty of it. look at me. i have never succeeded in imitating that well-to-do, thoroughly worthy villain. i began too late. take warning, orsino. you are young. grow fat and look on--then you will die happy. all the philosophy of life is there. farinaceous food, money and a wife. that is the recipe. since you have money you can purchase the gruel and the affections. waste no time in making the investment." "i never heard you advocate marriage before. you seem to have changed your mind, of late." "not in the least. i distinguish between being married and taking a wife, that is all." "rather a fine distinction." "the only difference between a prisoner and his gaoler is that they are on opposite sides of the same wall. take some more wine. we will drink to the man on the outside." "may you never be inside," said orsino. spicca emptied his glass and looked at him, as he set it down again. "may you never know what it is to have been inside," he said. "you speak as though you had some experience." "yes, i have--through an acquaintance of mine." "that is the most agreeable way of gaining experience." "yes," answered spicca with a ghastly smile. "perhaps i may tell you the story some day. you may profit by it. it ended rather dramatically--so far as it can be said to have ended at all. but we will not speak of it just now. here is another dish of poison--do you call that thing a fish, checco? ah--yes. i perceive that you are right. the fact is apparent at a great distance. take it away. we are all mortal, checco, but we do not like to be reminded of it so very forcibly. give me a tomato and some vinegar." "and the birds, signore? do you not want them any more?" "the birds--yes, i had forgotten. and another flask of wine, checco." "it is not empty yet, signore," observed the waiter lifting the rush-covered bottle and shaking it a little. spicca silently poured out two glasses and handed him the empty flask. he seemed to be very thirsty. presently he got his birds. they proved eatable, for quails are to be had all through the summer in italy, and he began to eat in silence. orsino watched him with some curiosity wondering whether the quantity of wine he drank would not ultimately produce some effect. as yet, however, none was visible; his cadaverous face was as pale and quiet as ever, and his sunken eyes had their usual expression. "and how does your business go on, orsino?" he asked, after a long silence. orsino answered him willingly enough and gave him some account of his doings. he grew somewhat enthusiastic as he compared his present busy life with his former idleness. "i like the way you did it, in spite of everybody's advice," said spicca, kindly. "a man who can jump through the paper ring of roman prejudice without stumbling must be nimble and have good legs. so nobody gave you a word of encouragement?" "only one person, at first. i think you know her--madame d'aranjuez. i used to see her often just at that time." "madame d'aranjuez?" spicca looked up sharply, pausing with his glass in his hand. "you know her?" "very well indeed," answered the old man, before he drank. "tell me, orsino," he continued, when he had finished the draught, "are you in love with that lady?" orsino was surprised by the directness of the question, but he did not show it. "not in the least," he answered, coolly. "then why did you act as though you were?" asked spicca looking him through and through. "do you mean to say that you were watching me all winter?" inquired orsino, bending his black eyebrows rather angrily. "circumstances made it inevitable that i should know of your visits. there was a time when you saw her every day." "i do not know what the circumstances, as you call them, were," answered orsino. "but i do not like to be watched--even by my father's old friends." "keep your temper, orsino," said spicca quietly. "quarrelling is always ridiculous unless somebody is killed, and then it is inconvenient. if you understood the nature of my acquaintance with maria consuelo--with madame d'aranjuez, you would see that while not meaning to spy upon you in the least, i could not be ignorant of your movements." "your acquaintance must be a very close one," observed orsino, far from pacified. "so close that it has justified me in doing very odd things on her account. you will not accuse me of taking a needless and officious interest in the affairs of others, i think. my own are quite enough for me. it chances that they are intimately connected with the doings of madame d'aranjuez, and have been so for a number of years. the fact that i do not desire the connexion to be known does not make it easier for me to act, when i am obliged to act at all. i did not ask an idle question when i asked you if you loved her." "i confess that i do not at all understand the situation," said orsino. "no. it is not easy to understand, unless i give you the key to it. and yet you know more already than any one in rome. i shall be obliged if you will not repeat what you know." "you may trust me," answered orsino, who saw from spicca's manner that the matter was very serious. "thank you. i see that you are cured of the idea that i have been frivolously spying upon you for my own amusement." orsino was silent. he thought of what had happened after he had taken leave of maria consuelo. the mysterious maid who called herself maria consuelo's nurse, or keeper, had perhaps spoken the truth. it was possible that spicca was one of the guardians responsible to an unknown person for the insane lady's safety, and that he was consequently daily informed by the maid of the coming and going of visitors, and of other minor events. on the other hand it seemed odd that maria consuelo should be at liberty to go whithersoever she pleased. she could not reasonably be supposed to have a guardian in every city of europe. the more he thought of this improbability the less he understood the truth. "i suppose i cannot hope that you will tell me more," he said. "i do not see why i should," answered spicca, drinking again. "i asked you an indiscreet question and i have given you an explanation which you are kind enough to accept. let us say no more about it. it is better to avoid unpleasant subjects." "i should not call madame d'aranjuez an unpleasant subject," observed orsino. "then why did you suddenly cease to visit her?" asked spicca. "for the best of all reasons. because she repeatedly refused to receive me." he was less inclined to take offence now than five minutes earlier. "i see that your information was not complete." "no. i was not aware of that. she must have had a good reason for not seeing you." "possibly." "but you cannot guess what the reason was?" "yes--and no. it depends upon her character, which i do not pretend to understand." "i understand it well enough. i can guess at the fact. you made love to her, and one fine day, when she saw that you were losing your head, she quietly told her servant to say that she was not at home when you called. is that it?" "possibly. you say you know her well--then you know whether she would act in that way or not." "i ought to know. i think she would. she is not like other women--she has not the same blood." "who is she?" asked orsino, with a sudden hope that he might learn the truth. "a woman--rather better than the rest--a widow, too, the widow of a man who never was her husband--thank god!" spicca slowly refilled and emptied his goblet for the tenth time. "the rest is a secret," he added, when he had finished drinking. the dark, sunken eyes gazed into orsino's with an expression so strange and full of a sort of inexplicable horror, as to make the young man think that the deep potations were beginning to produce an effect upon the strong old head. spicca sat quite still for several minutes after he had spoken, and then leaned back in his cane chair with a deep sigh. orsino sighed too, in a sort of unconscious sympathy, for even allowing for spicca's natural melancholy the secret was evidently an unpleasant one. orsino tried to turn the conversation, not, however, without a hope of bringing it back unawares to the question which interested him. "and so you really mean to stay here all summer," he remarked, lighting a cigarette and looking at the people seated at a table behind spicca. spicca did not answer at first, and when he did his reply had nothing to do with orsino's interrogatory observation. "we never get rid of the things we have done in our lives," he said, dreamily. "when a man sows seed in a ploughed field some of the grains are picked out by birds, and some never sprout. we are much more perfectly organised than the earth. the actions we sow in our souls all take root, inevitably and fatally--and they all grow to maturity sooner or later." orsino stared at him for a moment. "you are in a philosophising mood this evening," he said. "we are only logic's pawns," continued spicca without heeding the remark. "or, if you like it better, we are the devil's chess pieces in his match against god. we are made to move each in our own way. the one by short irregular steps in every direction, the other in long straight lines between starting point and goal--the one stands still, like the king-piece, and never moves unless he is driven to it, the other jumps unevenly like the knight. it makes no difference. we take a certain number of other pieces, and then we are taken ourselves--always by the adversary--and tossed aside out of the game. but then, it is easy to carry out the simile, because the game itself was founded on the facts of life, by the people who invented it." "no doubt," said orsino, who was not very much interested. "yes. you have only to give the pieces the names of men and women you know, and to call the pawns society--you will see how very like real life chess can be. the king and queen on each side are a married couple. of course, the object of each queen is to get the other king, and all her friends help her--knights, bishops, rooks and her set of society pawns. very like real life, is it not? wait till you are married." spicca smiled grimly and took more wine. "there at least you have no personal experience," objected orsino. but spicca only smiled again, and vouchsafed no answer. "is madame d'aranjuez coming back next winter?" asked the young man. "madame d'aranjuez will probably come back, since she is free to consult her own tastes," answered spicca gravely. "i hope she may be out of danger by that time," said orsino quietly. he had resolved upon a bolder attack than he had hitherto made. "what danger is she in now?" asked spicca quietly. "surely, you must know." "i do not understand you. please speak plainly if you are in earnest." "before she went away i called once more. when i was coming away her maid met me in the corridor of the hotel and told me that madame d'aranjuez was not quite sane, and that she, the maid, was in reality her keeper, or nurse--or whatever you please to call her." spicca laughed harshly. no one could remember to have heard him laugh many times. "oh--she said that, did she?" he seemed very much amused. "yes," he added presently, "i think madame d'aranjuez will be quite out of danger before christmas." orsino was more puzzled than ever. he was almost sure that spicca did not look upon the maid's assertion as serious, and in that case, if his interest in maria consuelo was friendly, it was incredible that he should seem amused at what was at least a very dangerous piece of spite on the part of a trusted servant. "then is there no truth in that woman's statement?" asked orsino. "madame d'aranjuez seemed perfectly sane when i last saw her," answered spicca indifferently. "then what possible interest had the maid in inventing the lie?" "ah--what interest? that is quite another matter, as you say. it may not have been her own interest." "you think that madame d'aranjuez had instructed her?" "not necessarily. some one else may have suggested the idea, subject to the lady's own consent." "and she would have consented? i do not believe that." "my dear orsino, the world is full of such apparently improbable things that it is always rash to disbelieve anything on the first hearing. it is really much less trouble to accept all that one is told without question." "of course, if you tell me positively that she wishes to be thought mad--" "i never say anything positively, especially about a woman--and least of all about the lady in question, who is undoubtedly eccentric." instead of being annoyed, orsino felt his curiosity growing, and made a rash vow to find out the truth at any price. it was inconceivable, he thought, that spicca should still have perfect control of his faculties, considering the extent of his potations. the second flask was growing light, and orsino himself had not taken more than two or three glasses. now a chianti flask never holds less than two quarts. moreover spicca was generally a very moderate man. he would assuredly not resist the confusing effects of the wine much longer and he would probably become confidential. but orsino had mistaken his man. spicca's nerves, overwrought by some unknown disturbance in his affairs, were in that state in which far stronger stimulants than tuscan wine have little or no effect upon the brain. orsino looked at him and wondered, as many had wondered already, what sort of life the man had led, outside and beyond the social existence which every one could see. few men had been dreaded like the famous duellist, who had played with the best swordsmen in europe as a cat plays with a mouse. and yet he had been respected, as well as feared. there had been that sort of fatality in his quarrels which had saved him from the imputation of having sought them. he had never been a gambler, as reputed duellists often are. he had never refused to stand second for another man out of personal dislike or prejudice. no one had ever asked his help in vain, high or low, rich or poor, in a reasonably good cause. his acts of kindness came to light accidentally after many years. yet most people fancied that he hated mankind, with that sort of generous detestation which never stoops to take a mean advantage. in his duels he had always shown the utmost consideration for his adversary and the utmost indifference to his own interest when conditions had to be made. above all, he had never killed a man by accident. that is a crime which society does not forgive. but he had not failed, either, when he had meant to kill. his speech was often bitter, but never spiteful, and, having nothing to fear, he was a very truthful man. he was also reticent, however, and no one could boast of knowing the story which every one agreed in saying had so deeply influenced his life. he had often been absent from rome for long periods, and had been heard of as residing in more than one european capital. he had always been supposed to be rich, but during the last three years it had become clear to his friends that he was poor. that is all, roughly speaking, which was known of john nepomucene, count spicca, by the society in which he had spent more than half his life. orsino, watching the pale and melancholy face, compared himself with his companion, and wondered whether any imaginable series of events could turn him into such a man at the same age. yet he admired spicca, besides respecting him. boy-like, he envied the great duellist his reputation, his unerring skill, his unfaltering nerve; he even envied him the fear he inspired in those whom he did not like. he thought less highly of his sayings now, perhaps, than when he had first been old enough to understand them. the youthful affectation of cynicism had agreed well with the old man's genuine bitterness, but the pride of growing manhood was inclined to put away childish things and had not yet suffered so as to understand real suffering. six months had wrought a change in orsino, and so far the change was for the better. he had been fortunate in finding success at the first attempt, and his passing passion for maria consuelo had left little trace beyond a certain wondering regret that it had not been greater, and beyond the recollection of her sad face at their parting and of the sobs he had overheard. though he could only give those tears one meaning, he realised less and less as the months passed that they had been shed for him. that maria consuelo should often be in his thoughts was no proof that he still loved her in the smallest degree. there had been enough odd circumstances about their acquaintance to rouse any ordinary man's interest, and just at present spicca's strange hints and half confidences had excited an almost unbearable curiosity in his hearer. but spicca did not seem inclined to satisfy it any further. one or two points, at least, were made clear. maria consuelo was not insane, as the maid had pretended. her marriage with the deceased aranjuez had been a marriage only in name, if it had even amounted to that. finally, it was evident that she stood in some very near relation to spicca and that neither she nor he wished the fact to be known. to all appearance they had carefully avoided meeting during the preceding winter, and no one in society was aware that they were even acquainted. orsino recalled more than one occasion when each had been mentioned in the presence of the other. he had a good memory and he remembered that a scarcely perceptible change had taken place in the manner or conversation of the one who heard the other's name. it even seemed to him that at such moments maria consuelo had shown an infinitesimal resentment, whereas spicca had faintly exhibited something more like impatience. if this were true, it argued that spicca was more friendly to maria consuelo than she was to him. yet on this particular evening spicca had spoken somewhat bitterly of her--but then, spicca was always bitter. his last remark was to the effect that she was eccentric. after a long silence, during which orsino hoped that his friend would say something more, he took up the point. "i wish i knew what you meant by eccentric," he said. "i had the advantage of seeing madame d'aranjuez frequently, and i did not notice any eccentricity about her." "ah--perhaps you are not observant. or perhaps, as you say, we do not mean the same thing." "that is why i would like to hear your definition," observed orsino. "the world is mad on the subject of definitions," answered spicca. "it is more blessed to define than to be defined. it is a pleasant thing to say to one's enemy, 'sir, you are a scoundrel.' but when your enemy says the same thing to you, you kill him without hesitation or regret--which proves, i suppose, that you are not pleased with his definition of you. you see definition, after all, is a matter of taste. so, as our tastes might not agree, i would rather not define anything this evening. i believe i have finished that flask. let us take our coffee. we can define that beforehand, for we know by daily experience how diabolically bad it is." orsino saw that spicca meant to lead the conversation away in another direction. "may i ask you one serious question?" he inquired, leaning forward. "with a little ingenuity you may even ask me a dozen, all equally serious, my dear orsino. but i cannot promise to answer all or any particular one. i am not omniscient, you know." "my question is this. i have no sort of right to ask it. i know that. are you nearly related to madame d'aranjuez?" spicca looked curiously at him. "would the information be of any use to you?" he asked. "should i be doing you a service in telling you that we are, or are not related?" "frankly, no," answered orsino, meeting the steady glance without wavering. "then i do not see any reason whatever for telling you the truth," returned spicca quietly. "but i will give you a piece of general information. if harm comes to that lady through any man whomsoever, i will certainly kill him, even if i have to be carried upon the ground." there was no mistaking the tone in which the threat was uttered. spicca meant what he said, though not one syllable was spoken louder than another. in his mouth the words had a terrific force, and told orsino more of the man's true nature than he had learnt in years. orsino was not easily impressed, and was certainly not timid, morally or physically; moreover he was in the prime of youth and not less skilful than other men in the use of weapons. but he felt at that moment that he would infinitely rather attack a regiment of artillery single-handed than be called upon to measure swords with the cadaverous old invalid who sat on the other side of the table. "it is not in my power to do any harm to madame d'aranjuez," he answered proudly enough, "and you ought to know that if it were, it could not possibly be in my intention. therefore your threat is not intended for me." "very good, orsino. your father would have answered like that, and you mean what you say. if i were young i think that you and i should be friends. fortunately for you there is a matter of forty years' difference between our ages, so that you escape the infliction of such a nuisance as my friendship. you must find it bad enough to have to put up with my company." "do not talk like that," answered orsino. "the world is not all vinegar." "well, well--you will find out what the world is in time. and perhaps you will find out many other things which you want to know. i must be going, for i have letters to write. checco! my bill." five minutes later they parted. chapter xviii. although orsino's character was developing quickly in the new circumstances which he had created for himself, he was not of an age to be continually on his guard against passing impressions; still less could it be expected that he should be hardened against them by experience, as many men are by nature. his conversation with spicca, and spicca's own behaviour while it lasted, produced a decided effect upon the current of his thoughts, and he was surprised to find himself thinking more often and more seriously of maria consuelo than during the months which had succeeded her departure from rome. spicca's words had acted indirectly upon his mind. much that the old man had said was calculated to rouse orsino's curiosity, but orsino was not naturally curious and though he felt that it would be very interesting to know maria consuelo's story, the chief result of the count's half confidential utterances was to recall the lady herself very vividly to his recollection. at first his memory merely brought back the endless details of his acquaintance with her, which had formed the central feature of the first season he had spent without interruption in rome and in society. he was surprised at the extreme precision of the pictures evoked, and took pleasure in calling them up when he was alone and unoccupied. the events themselves had not, perhaps, been all agreeable, yet there was not one which it did not give him some pleasant sensation to remember. there was a little sadness in some of them, and more than once the sadness was mingled with something of humiliation. yet even this last was bearable. though he did not realise it, he was quite unable to think of maria consuelo without feeling some passing touch of happiness at the thought, for happiness can live with sadness when it is the greater of the two. he had no desire to analyse these sensations. indeed the idea did not enter his mind that they were worth analysing. his intelligence was better employed with his work, and his reflexions concerning maria consuelo chiefly occupied his hours of rest. the days passed quickly at first and then, as september came they seemed longer, instead of shorter. he was beginning to wish that the winter would come, that he might again see the woman of whom he was continually thinking. more than once he thought of writing to her, for he had the address which the maid had given him--an address in paris which said nothing, a mere number with the name of a street. he wondered whether she would answer him, and when he had reached the self-satisfying conviction that she would, he at last wrote a letter, such as any person might write to another. he told her of the weather, of the dulness of rome, of his hope that she would return early in the season, and of his own daily occupations. it was a simply expressed, natural and not at all emotional epistle, not at all like that of a man in the least degree in love with his correspondent, but orsino felt an odd sensation of pleasure in writing it and was surprised by a little thrill of happiness as he posted it with his own hand. he did not forget the letter when he had sent it, either, as one forgets the uninteresting letters one is obliged to write out of civility. he hoped for an answer. even if she were in paris, maria consuelo might not, and probably would not, reply by return of post. and it was not probable that she would be in town at the beginning of september. orsino calculated the time necessary to forward the letter from paris to the most distant part of frequented europe, allowed her three days for answering and three days more for her letter to reach him. the interval elapsed, but nothing came. then he was irritated, and at last he became anxious. either something had happened to maria consuelo, or he had somehow unconsciously offended her by what he had written. he had no copy of the letter and could not recall a single phrase which could have displeased her, but he feared lest something might have crept into it which she might misinterpret. but this idea was too absurd to be tenable for long, and the conviction grew upon him that she must be ill or in some great trouble. he was amazed at his own anxiety. three weeks had gone by since he had written, and yet no word of reply had reached him. then he sought out spicca and asked him boldly whether anything had happened to maria consuelo, explaining that he had written to her and had got no answer. spicca looked at him curiously for a moment. "nothing has happened to her, as far as i am aware," he said, almost immediately. "i saw her this morning." "this morning?" orsino was surprised almost out of words. "yes. she is here, looking for an apartment in which to spend the winter." "where is she?" spicca named the hotel, adding that orsino would probably find her at home during the hot hours of the afternoon. "has she been here long?" asked the young man. "three days." "i will go and see her at once. i may be useful to her in finding an apartment." "that would be very kind of you," observed spicca, glancing at him rather thoughtfully. on the following afternoon, orsino presented himself at the hotel and asked for madame d'aranjuez. she received him in a room not very different from the one of which she had had made her sitting-room during the winter. as always, one or two new books and the mysterious silver paper cutter were the only objects of her own which were visible. orsino hardly noticed the fact, however, for she was already in the room when he entered, and his eyes met hers at once. he fancied that she looked less strong than formerly, but the heat was great and might easily account for her pallor. her eyes were deeper, and their tawny colour seemed darker. her hand was cold. she smiled faintly as she met orsino, but said nothing and sat down at a distance from the windows. "i only heard last night that you were in rome," he said. "and you came at once to see me. thanks. how did you find it out?" "spicca told me. i had asked him for news of you." "why him?" inquired maria consuelo with some curiosity. "because i fancied he might know," answered orsino passing lightly over the question. he did not wish even maria consuelo to guess that spicca had spoken of her to him. "the reason why i was anxious about you was that i had written you a letter. i wrote some weeks ago to your address in paris and got no answer." "you wrote?" maria consuelo seemed surprised. "i have not been in paris. who gave you the address? what was it?" orsino named the street and the number. "i once lived there a short time, two years ago. who gave you the address? not count spicca?" "no." orsino hesitated to say more. he did not like to admit that he had received the address from maria consuelo's maid, and it might seem incredible that the woman should have given the information unasked. at the same time the fact that the address was to all intents and purposes a false one tallied with the maid's spontaneous statement in regard to her mistress's mental alienation. "why will you not tell me?" asked maria consuelo. "the answer involves a question which does not concern me. the address was evidently intended to deceive me. the person who gave it attempted to deceive me about a far graver matter, too. let us say no more about it. of course you never got the letter?" "of course not." a short silence followed which orsino felt to be rather awkward. maria consuelo looked at him suddenly. "did my maid tell you?" she asked. "yes--since you ask me. she met me in the corridor after my last visit and thrust the address upon me." "i thought so," said maria consuelo. "you have suspected her before?" "what was the other deception?" "that is a more serious matter. the woman is your trusted servant. at least you must have trusted her when you took her--" "that does not follow. what did she try to make you believe?" "it is hard to tell you. for all i know, she may have been instructed--you may have instructed her yourself. one stumbles upon odd things in life, sometimes." "you called yourself my friend once, don orsino." "if you will let me, i will call myself so still." "then, in the name of friendship, tell me what the woman said!" maria consuelo spoke with sudden energy, touching his arm quickly with an unconscious gesture. "will you believe me?" "are you accustomed to being doubted, that you ask?" "no. but this thing is very strange." "do not keep me waiting--it hurts me!" "the woman stopped me as i was going away. i had never spoken to her. she knew my name. she told me that you were--how shall i say?--mentally deranged." maria consuelo started and turned very pale. "she told you that i was mad?" her voice sank to a whisper. "that is what she said." orsino watched her narrowly. she evidently believed him. then she sank back in her chair with a stifled cry of horror, covering her eyes with her hands. "and you might have believed it!" she exclaimed. "you might really have believed it--you!" the cry came from her heart and would have shown orsino what weight she still attached to his opinion had he not himself been too suddenly and deeply interested in the principal question to pay attention to details. "she made the statement very clearly," he said. "what could have been her object in the lie?" "what object? ah--if i knew that--" maria consuelo rose and paced the room, her head bent and her hands nervously clasping and unclasping. orsino stood by the empty fireplace, watching her. "you will send the woman away of course?" he said, in a questioning tone. but she shook her head and her anxiety seemed to increase. "is it possible that you will submit to such a thing from a servant?" he asked in astonishment. "i have submitted to much," she answered in a low voice. "the inevitable, of course. but to keep a maid whom you can turn away at any moment--" "yes--but can i?" she stopped and looked at him. "oh, if i only could--if you knew how i hate the woman--" "but then--" "yes?" "do you mean to tell me that you are in some way in her power, so that you are bound to keep her always?" maria consuelo hesitated a moment. "are you in her power?" asked orsino a second time. he did not like the idea and his black brows bent themselves rather angrily. "no--not directly. she is imposed upon me." "by circumstances?" "no, again. by a person who has the power to impose much upon me--but this! oh this is almost too much! to be called mad!" "then do not submit to it." orsino spoke decisively, with a kind of authority which surprised himself. he was amazed and righteously angry at the situation so suddenly revealed to him, undefined as it was. he saw that he was touching a great trouble and his natural energy bid him lay violent hands on it and root it out if possible. for some minutes maria consuelo did not speak, but continued to pace the room, evidently in great anxiety. then she stopped before him. "it is easy for you to say, 'do not submit,' when you do not understand," she said. "if you knew what my life is, you would look at this in another way. i must submit--i cannot do otherwise." "if you would tell me something more, i might help you," answered orsino. "you?" she paused. "i believe you would, if you could," she added, thoughtfully. "you know that i would. perhaps i can, as it is, in ignorance, if you will direct me." a sudden light gleamed in maria consuelo's eyes and then died away as quickly as it had come. "after all, what could you do?" she asked with a change of tone, as though she were somehow disappointed. "what could you do that others would not do as well, if they could, and with a better right?" "unless you will tell me, how can i know?" "yes--if i could tell you." she went and sat down in her former seat and orsino took a chair beside her. he had expected to renew the acquaintance in a very different way, and that he should spend half an hour with maria consuelo in talking about apartments, about the heat and about the places she had visited. instead, circumstances had made the conversation an intimate one full of an absorbing interest to both. orsino found that he had forgotten much which pleased him strangely now that it was again brought before him. he had forgotten most of all, it seemed, that an unexplained sympathy attracted him to her, and her to him. he wondered at the strength of it, and found it hard to understand that last meeting with her in the spring. "is there any way of helping you, without knowing your secret?" he asked in a low voice. "no. but i thank you for the wish." "are you sure there is no way? quite sure?" "quite sure." "may i say something that strikes me?" "say anything you choose." "there is a plot against you. you seem to know it. have you never thought of plotting on your side?" "i have no one to help me." "you have me, if you will take my help. and you have spicca. you might do better, but you might do worse. between us we might accomplish something." maria consuelo had started at spicca's name. she seemed very nervous that day. "do you know what you are saying?" she asked after a moment's thought. "nothing that should offend you, at least." "no. but you are proposing that i should ally myself with the man of all others whom i have reason to hate." "you hate spicca?" orsino was passing from one surprise to another. "whether i hate him or not, is another matter. i ought to." "at all events he does not hate you." "i know he does not. that makes it no easier for me. i could not accept his help." "all this is so mysterious that i do not know what to say," said orsino, thoughtfully. "the fact remains, and it is bad enough. you need help urgently. you are in the power of a servant who tells your friends that you are insane and thrusts false addresses upon them, for purposes which i cannot explain." "nor i either, though i may guess." "it is worse and worse. you cannot even be sure of the motives of this woman, though you know the person or persons by whom she is forced upon you. you cannot get rid of her yourself and you will not let any one else help you." "not count spicca." "and yet i am sure that he would do much for you. can you not even tell me why you hate him, or ought to hate him?" maria consuelo hesitated and looked into orsino's eyes for a moment. "can i trust you?" she asked. "implicitly." "he killed my husband." orsino uttered a low exclamation of horror. in the deep silence which followed he heard maria consuelo draw her breath once or twice sharply through her closed teeth, as though she were in great pain. "i do not wish it known," she said presently, in a changed voice. "i do not know why i told you." "you can trust me." "i must--since i have spoken." in the surprise caused by the startling confidence, orsino suddenly felt that his capacity for sympathy had grown to great dimensions. if he had been a woman, the tears would have stood in his eyes. being what he was, he felt them in his heart. it was clear that she had loved the dead man very dearly. in the light of this evident fact, it was hard to explain her conduct towards orsino during the winter and especially at their last meeting. for a long time neither spoke again. orsino, indeed, had nothing to say at first, for nothing he could say could reasonably be supposed to be of any use. he had learned the existence of something like a tragedy in maria consuelo's life, and he seemed to be learning the first lesson of friendship, which teaches sympathy. it was not an occasion for making insignificant phrases expressing his regret at her loss, and the language he needed in order to say what he meant was unfamiliar to his lips. he was silent, therefore, but his young face was grave and thoughtful, and his eyes sought hers from time to time as though trying to discover and forestall her wishes. at last she glanced at him quickly, then looked down, and at last spoke to him. "you will not make me regret having told you this--will you?" she asked. "no. i promise you that." so far as orsino could understand the words meant very little. he was not very communicative, as a rule, and would certainly not tell what he had heard, so that the promise was easily given and easy to keep. if he did not break it, he did not see that she could have any further cause for regretting her confidence in him. nevertheless, by way of reassuring her, he thought it best to repeat what he had said in different words. "you may be quite sure that whatever you choose to tell me is in safe keeping," he said. "and you may be sure, too, that if it is in my power to do you a service of any kind, you will find me ready, and more than ready, to help you." "thank you," she answered, looking earnestly at him. "whether the matter be small or great," he added, meeting her eyes. perhaps she expected to find more curiosity on his part, and fancied that he would ask some further question. he did not understand the meaning of her look. "i believe you," she said at last. "i am too much in need of a friend to doubt you." "you have found one." "i do not know. i am not sure. there are other things--" she stopped suddenly and looked away. "what other things?" but maria consuelo did not answer. orsino knew that she was thinking of all that had once passed between them. he wondered whether, if he led the way, she would press him as she had done at their last meeting. if she did, he wondered what he should say. he had been very cold then, far colder than he was now. he now felt drawn to her, as in the first days of their acquaintance. he felt always that he was on the point of understanding her, and yet that he was waiting, for something which should help him to pass that point. "what other things?" he asked, repeating his question. "do you mean that there are reasons which may prevent me from being a good friend of yours?" "i am afraid there are. i do not know." "i think you are mistaken, madame. will you name some of those reasons--or even one?" maria consuelo did not answer at once. she glanced at him, looked down, and then her eyes met his again. "do you think that you are the kind of man a woman chooses for her friend?" she asked at length, with a faint smile. "i have not thought of the matter--" "but you should--before offering your friendship." "why? if i feel a sincere sympathy for your trouble, if i am--" he hesitated, weighing his words--"if i am personally attached to you, why can i not help you? i am honest, and in earnest. may i say as much as that of myself?" "i believe you are." "then i cannot see that i am not the sort of man whom a woman might take for a friend when a better is not at hand." "and do you believe in friendship, don orsino?" asked maria consuelo quietly. "i have heard it said that it is not wise to disbelieve anything nowadays," answered orsino. "true--and the word 'friend' has such a pretty sound!" she laughed, for the first time since he had entered the room. "then it is you who are the unbeliever, madame. is not that a sign that you need no friend at all, and that your questions are not seriously meant?" "perhaps. who knows?" "do you know, yourself?" "no." again she laughed a little, and then grew suddenly grave. "i never knew a woman who needed a friend more urgently than you do," said orsino. "i do not in the least understand your position. the little you have told me makes it clear enough that there have been and still are unusual circumstances in your life. one thing i see. that woman whom you call your maid is forced upon you against your will, to watch you, and is privileged to tell lies about you which may do you a great injury. i do not ask why you are obliged to suffer her presence, but i see that you must, and i guess that you hate it. would it be an act of friendship to free you from her or not?" "at present it would not be an act of friendship," answered maria consuelo, thoughtfully. "that is very strange. do you mean to say that you submit voluntarily--" "the woman is a condition imposed upon me. i cannot tell you more." "and no friend, no friendly help can change the condition, i suppose." "i did not say that. but such help is beyond your power, don orsino," she added turning towards him rather suddenly. "let us not talk of this any more. believe me, nothing can be done. you have sometimes acted strangely with me, but i really think you would help me if you could. let that be the state of our acquaintance. you are willing, and i believe that you are. nothing more. let that be our compact. but you can perhaps help me in another way--a smaller way. i want a habitation of some kind for the winter, for i am tired of camping out in hotels. you who know your own city so well can name some person who will undertake the matter." "i know the very man," said orsino promptly. "will you write out the address for me?" "it is not necessary. i mean myself." "i could not let you take so much trouble," protested maria consuelo. but she accepted, nevertheless, after a little hesitation. for some time they discussed the relative advantages of the various habitable quarters of the city, both glad, perhaps, to find an almost indifferent subject of conversation, and both relatively happy merely in being together. the talk made one of those restful interludes which are so necessary, and often so hard to produce, between two people whose thoughts run upon a strong common interest, and who find it difficult to exchange half a dozen words without being led back to the absorbing topic. what had been said had produced a decided effect upon orsino. he had come expecting to take up the acquaintance on a new footing, but ten minutes had not elapsed before he had found himself as much interested as ever in maria consuelo's personality, and far more interested in her life than he had ever been before. while talking with more or less indifference about the chances of securing a suitable apartment for the winter, orsino listened with an odd sensation of pleasure to every tone of his companion's voice and watched every changing expression of the striking face. he wondered whether he were not perhaps destined to love her sincerely as he had already loved her in a boyish, capricious fashion which would no longer be natural to him now. but for the present he was sure that he did not love her, and that he desired nothing but her sympathy for himself, and to feel sympathy for her. those were the words he used, and he did not explain them to his own intelligence in any very definite way. he was conscious, indeed, that they meant more than formerly, but the same was true of almost everything that came into his life, and he did not therefore attach any especial importance to the fact. he was altogether much more in earnest than when he had first met maria consuelo; he was capable of deeper feeling, of stronger determination and of more decided action in all matters, and though he did not say so to himself he was none the less aware of the change. "shall we make an appointment for to-morrow?" he asked, after they had been talking some time. "yes--but there is one thing i wanted to ask you--" "what is that?" inquired orsino, seeing that she hesitated. the faint colour rose in her cheeks, but she looked straight into his eyes, with a kind of fearless expression, as though she were facing a danger. "tell me," she said, "in rome, where everything is known and every one talks so much, will it not be thought strange that you and i should be driving about together, looking for a house for me? tell me the truth." "what can people say?" asked orsino. "many things. will they say them?" "if they do, i can make them stop talking." "that means that they will talk, does it not? would you like that?" there was a sudden change in her face, with a look of doubt and anxious perplexity. orsino saw it and felt that she was putting him upon his honour, and that whatever the doubt might be it had nothing to do with her trust in him. six months earlier he would not have hesitated to demonstrate that her fears were empty--but he felt that six months earlier she might not have yielded to his reasoning. it was instinctive, but his instinct was not mistaken. "i think you are right," he said slowly. "we should not do it. i will send my architect with you." there was enough regret in the tone to show that he was making a considerable sacrifice. a little delicacy means more when it comes from a strong man, than when it is the natural expression of an over-refined and somewhat effeminate character. and orsino was rapidly developing a strength of which other people were conscious. maria consuelo was pleased, though she, too, was perhaps sorry to give up the projected plan. "after all," she said, thoughtlessly, "you can come and see me here, if--" she stopped and blushed again, more deeply this time; but she turned her face away and in the half light the change of colour was hardly noticeable. "you were going to say 'if you care to see me,'" said orsino. "i am glad you did not say it. it would not have been kind." "yes--i was going to say that," she answered quietly. "but i will not." "thank you." "why do you thank me?" "for not hurting me." "do you think that i would hurt you willingly, in any way?" "i would rather not think so. you did once." the words slipped from his lips almost before he had time to realise what they meant. he was thinking of the night when she had drawn up the carriage window, leaving him standing on the pavement, and of her repeated refusals to see him afterwards. it seemed long ago, and the hurt had not really been so sharp as he now fancied that it must have been, judging from what he now felt. she looked at him quickly as though wondering what he would say next. "i never meant to be unkind," she said. "i have often asked myself whether you could say as much." it was orsino's turn to change colour. he was young enough for that, and the blood rose slowly in his dark cheeks. he thought again of their last meeting, and of what he had heard as he shut the door after him on that day. perhaps he would have spoken, but maria consuelo was sorry for what she had said, and a little ashamed of her weakness, as indeed she had some cause to be, and she immediately turned back to a former point of the conversation, not too far removed from what had last been said. "you see," said she, "i was right to ask you whether people would talk. and i am grateful to you for telling me the truth. it is a first proof of friendship--of something better than our old relations. will you send me your architect to-morrow, since you are so kind as to offer his help?" after arranging for the hour of meeting orsino rose to take his leave. "may i come to-morrow?" he asked. "people will not talk about that," he added with a smile. "you can ask for me. i may be out. if i am at home, i shall be glad to see you." she spoke coldly, and orsino saw that she was looking over his shoulder. he turned instinctively and saw that the door was open and spicca was standing just outside, looking in and apparently waiting for a word from maria consuelo before entering. chapter xix. as orsino had no reason whatever for avoiding spicca he naturally waited a moment instead of leaving the room immediately. he looked at the old man with a new interest as the latter came forward. he had never seen and probably would never see again a man taking the hand of a woman whose husband he had destroyed. he stood a little back and spicca passed him as he met maria consuelo. orsino watched the faces of both. madame d'aranjuez put out her hand mechanically and with evident reluctance, and orsino guessed that but for his own presence she would not have given it. the expression in her face changed rapidly from that which had been there when they had been alone, hardening very quickly until it reminded orsino of a certain mask of the medusa which had once made an impression upon his imagination. her eyes were fixed and the pupils grew small while the singular golden yellow colour of the iris flashed disagreeably. she did not bend her head as she silently gave her hand. spicca, too, seemed momentarily changed. he was as pale and thin as ever, but his face softened oddly; certain lines which contributed to his usually bitter and sceptical expression disappeared, while others became visible which changed his look completely. he bowed with more deference than he affected with other women, and orsino fancied that he would have held maria consuelo's hand a moment longer, if she had not withdrawn it as soon as it had touched his. if orsino had not already known that spicca often saw her, he would have been amazed at the count's visit, considering what she had said of the man. as it was, he wondered what power spicca had over her to oblige her to receive him, and he wondered in vain. the conclusion which forced itself before him was that spicca was the person who imposed the serving woman upon maria consuelo. but her behaviour towards him, on the other hand, was not that of a person obliged by circumstances to submit to the caprices and dictation of another. judging by the appearance of the two, it seemed more probable that the power was on the other side, and might be used mercilessly on occasion. "i hope i am not disturbing your plans," said spicca, in a tone which was almost humble, and very unlike his usual voice. "were you going out together?" he shook hands with orsino, avoiding his glance, as the young man thought. "no," answered maria consuelo briefly. "i was not going out." "i am just going away," said orsino by way of explanation, and he made as though he would take his leave. "do not go yet," said maria consuelo. her look made the words imperative. spicca glanced from one to the other with a sort of submissive protest, and then all three sat down. orsino wondered what part he was expected to play in the trio, and wished himself away in spite of the interest he felt in the situation. maria consuelo began to talk in a careless tone which reminded him of his first meeting with her in gouache's studio. she told spicca that orsino had promised her his architect as a guide in her search for a lodging. "what sort of person is he?" inquired spicca, evidently for the sake of making conversation. "contini is a man of business," orsino answered. "an odd fellow, full of talent, and a musical genius. one would not expect very much of him at first, but he will do all that madame d'aranjuez needs." "otherwise you would not have recommended him, i suppose," said spicca. "certainly not," replied orsino, looking at him. "you must know, madame," said spicca, "that don orsino is an excellent judge of men." he emphasised the last word in a way that seemed unnecessary. maria consuelo had recovered all her equanimity and laughed carelessly. "how you say that!" she exclaimed. "is it a warning?" "against what?" asked orsino. "probably against you," she said. "count spicca likes to throw out vague hints--but i will do him the credit to say that they generally mean something." she added the last words rather scornfully. an expression of pain passed over the old man's face. but he said nothing, though it was not like him to pass by a challenge of the kind. without in the least understanding the reason of the sensation, orsino felt sorry for him. "among men, count spicca's opinion is worth having," he said quietly. maria consuelo looked at him in some surprise. the phrase sounded like a rebuke, and her eyes betrayed her annoyance. "how delightful it is to hear one man defend another!" she laughed. "i fancy count spicca does not stand much in need of defence," replied orsino, without changing his tone. "he himself is the best judge of that." spicca raised his weary eyes to hers and looked at her for a moment, before he answered. "yes," he said. "i think i am the best judge. but i am not accustomed to being defended, least of all against you, madame. the sensation is a new one." orsino felt himself out of place. he was more warmly attached to spicca than he knew, and though he was at that time not far removed from loving maria consuelo, her tone in speaking to the old man, which said far more than her words, jarred upon him, and he could not help taking his friend's part. on the other hand the ugly truth that spicca had caused the death of aranjuez more than justified maria consuelo in her hatred. behind all, there was evidently some good reason why spicca came to see her, and there was some bond between the two which made it impossible for her to refuse his visits. it was clear too, that though she hated him he felt some kind of strong affection for her. in her presence he was very unlike his daily self. again orsino moved and looked at her, as though asking her permission to go away. but she refused it with an imperative gesture and a look of annoyance. she evidently did not wish to be left alone with the old man. without paying any further attention to the latter she began to talk to orsino. she took no trouble to conceal what she felt and the impression grew upon orsino that spicca would have gone away after a quarter of an hour, if he had not either possessed a sort of right to stay or if he had not had some important object in view in remaining. "i suppose there is nothing to do in rome at this time of year," she said. orsino told her that there was absolutely nothing to do. not a theatre was open, not a friend was in town. rome was a wilderness. rome was an amphitheatre on a day when there was no performance, when the lions were asleep, the gladiators drinking, and the martyrs unoccupied. he tried to say something amusing and found it hard. spicca was very patient, but evidently determined to outstay orsino. from time to time he made a remark, to which maria consuelo paid very little attention if she took any notice of it at all. orsino could not make up his mind whether to stay or to go. the latter course would evidently displease maria consuelo, whereas by remaining he was clearly annoying spicca and was perhaps causing him pain. it was a nice question, and while trying to make conversation he weighed the arguments in his mind. strange to say he decided in favour of spicca. the decision was to some extent an index of the state of his feelings towards madame d'aranjuez. if he had been quite in love with her, he would have stayed. if he had wished to make her love him, he would have stayed also. as it was, his friendship for the old count went before other considerations. at the same time he hoped to manage matters so as not to incur maria consuelo's displeasure. he found it harder than he had expected. after he had made up his mind, he continued to talk during three or four minutes and then made his excuse. "i must be going," he said quietly. "i have a number of things to do before night, and i must see contini in order to give him time to make a list of apartments for you to see to-morrow." he took his hat and rose. he was not prepared for maria consuelo's answer. "i asked you to stay," she said, coldly and very distinctly. spicca did not allow his expression to change. orsino stared at her. "i am very sorry, madame, but there are many reasons which oblige me to disobey you." maria consuelo bit her lip and her eyes gleamed angrily. she glanced at spicca as though hoping that he would go away with orsino. but he did not move. it was more and more clear that he had a right to stay if he pleased. orsino was already bowing before her. instead of giving her hand she rose quickly and led him towards the door. he opened it and they stood together on the threshold. "is this the way you help me?" she asked, almost fiercely, though in a whisper. "why do you receive him at all?" he inquired, instead of answering. "because i cannot refuse." "but you might send him away?" she hesitated, and looked into his eyes. "shall i?" "if you wish to be alone--and if you can. it is no affair of mine." she turned swiftly, leaving orsino standing in the door and went to spicca's side. he had risen when she rose and was standing at the other side of the room, watching. "i have a bad headache," she said coldly. "you will forgive me if i ask you to go with don orsino." "a lady's invitation to leave her house, madame, is the only one which a man cannot refuse," said spicca gravely. he bowed and followed orsino out of the room, closing the door behind him. the scene had produced a very disagreeable impression upon orsino. had he not known the worst part of the secret and consequently understood what good cause maria consuelo had for not wishing to be alone with spicca, he would have been utterly revolted and for ever repelled by her brutality. no other word could express adequately her conduct towards the count. even knowing what he did, he wished that she had controlled her temper better and he was more than ever sorry for spicca. it did not even cross his mind that the latter might have intentionally provoked aranjuez and killed him purposely. he felt somehow that spicca was in a measure the injured party and must have been in that position from the beginning, whatever the strange story might be. as the two descended the steps together orsino glanced at his companion's pale, drawn features and was sure that the man was to be pitied. it was almost a womanly instinct, far too delicate for such a hardy nature, and dependent perhaps upon that sudden opening of his sympathies which resulted from meeting maria consuelo. i think that, on the whole, in such cases, though the woman's character may be formed by intimacy with man's, with apparent results, the impression upon the man is momentarily deeper, as the woman's gentler instincts are in a way reflected in his heart. spicca recovered himself quickly, however. he took out his case and offered orsino a cigarette. "so you have renewed your acquaintance," he said quietly. "yes--under rather odd circumstances," answered orsino. "i feel as though i owed you an apology, count, and yet i do not see what there is to apologise for. i tried to go away more than once." "you cannot possibly make excuses to me for madame d'aranjuez's peculiarities, my friend. besides, i admit that she has a right to treat me as she pleases. that does not prevent me from going to see her every day." "you must have strong reasons for bearing such treatment." "i have," answered spicca thoughtfully and sadly. "very strong reasons. i will tell you one of those which brought me to-day. i wished to see you two together." orsino stopped in his walk, after the manner of italians, and he looked at spicca. he was hot tempered when provoked, and he might have resented the speech if it had come from any other man. but he spoke quietly. "why do you wish to see us together?" he asked. "because i am foolish enough to think sometimes that you suit one another, and might love one another." probably nothing which spicca could have said could have surprised orsino more than such a plain statement. he grew suspicious at once, but spicca's look was that of a man in earnest. "i do not think i understand you," answered orsino. "but i think you are touching a subject which is better left alone." "i think not," returned spicca unmoved. "then let us agree to differ," said orsino a little more warmly. "we cannot do that. i am in a position to make you agree with me, and i will. i am responsible for that lady's happiness. i am responsible before god and man." something in the words made a deep impression upon orsino. he had never heard spicca use anything approaching to solemn language before. he knew at least one part of the meaning which showed spicca's remorse for having killed aranjuez, and he knew that the old man meant what he said, and meant it from his heart. "do you understand me now?" asked spicca, slowly inhaling the smoke of his cigarette. "not altogether. if you desire the happiness of madame d'aranjuez why do you wish us to fall in love with each other? it strikes me that--" he stopped. "because i wish you would marry her." "marry her!" orsino had not thought of that, and his words expressed a surprise which was not calculated to please spicca. the old man's weary eyes suddenly grew keen and fierce and orsino could hardly meet their look. spicca's nervous fingers seized the young man's tough arm and closed upon it with surprising force. "i would advise you to think of that possibility before making any more visits," he said, his weak voice suddenly clearing. "we were talking together a few weeks ago. do you remember what i said i would do to any man by whom harm comes to her? yes, you remember well enough. i know what you answered, and i daresay you meant it. but i was in earnest, too." "i think you are threatening me, count spicca," said orsino, flushing slowly but meeting the other's look with unflinching coolness. "no. i am not. and i will not let you quarrel with me, either, orsino. i have a right to say this to you where she is concerned--a right you do not dream of. you cannot quarrel about that." orsino did not answer at once. he saw that spicca was very much in earnest, and was surprised that his manner now should be less calm and collected than on the occasion of their previous conversation, when the count had taken enough wine to turn the heads of most men. he did not doubt in the least the statement spicca made. it agreed exactly with what maria consuelo herself had said of him. and the statement certainly changed the face of the situation. orsino admitted to himself that he had never before thought of marrying madame d'aranjuez. he had not even taken into consideration the consequences of loving her and of being loved by her in return. the moment he thought of a possible marriage as the result of such a mutual attachment, he realised the enormous difficulties which stood in the way of such a union, and his first impulse was to give up visiting her altogether. what spicca said was at once reasonable and unreasonable. maria consuelo's husband was dead, and she doubtless expected to marry again. orsino had no right to stand in the way of others who might present themselves as suitors. but it was beyond belief that spicca should expect orsino to marry her himself, knowing rome and the romans as he did. the two had been standing still in the shade. orsino began to walk forward again before he spoke. something in his own reflexions shocked him. he did not like to think that an impassable social barrier existed between maria consuelo and himself. yet, in his total ignorance of her origin and previous life the stories which had been circulated about her recalled themselves with unpleasant distinctness. nothing that spicca had said when they had dined together had made the matter any clearer, though the assurance that the deceased aranjuez had come to his end by spicca's instrumentality sufficiently contradicted the worst, if also the least credible, point in the tales which had been repeated by the gossips early in the previous winter. all the rest belonged entirely to the category of the unknown. yet spicca spoke seriously of a possible marriage and had gone to the length of wishing that it might be brought about. at last orsino spoke. "you say that you have a right to say what you have said," he began. "in that case i think i have a right to ask a question which you ought to answer. you talk of my marrying madame d'aranjuez. you ought to tell me whether that is possible." "possible?" cried spicca almost angrily. "what do you mean?" "i mean this. you know us all, as you know me. you know the enormous prejudices in which we are brought up. you know perfectly well that although i am ready to laugh at some of them, there are others at which i do not laugh. yet you refused to tell me who madame d'aranjuez was, when i asked you, the other day. i do not even know her father's name, much less her mother's--" "no," answered spicca. "that is quite true, and i see no necessity for telling you either. but, as you say, you have some right to ask. i will tell you this much. there is nothing in the circumstances of her birth which could hinder her marriage into any honourable family. does that satisfy you?" orsino saw that whether he were satisfied or not he was to get no further information for the present. he might believe spicca's statement or not, as he pleased, but he knew that whatever the peculiarities of the melancholy old duellist's character might be, he never took the trouble to invent a falsehood and was as ready as ever to support his words. on this occasion no one could have doubted him, for there was an unusual ring of sincere feeling in what he said. orsino could not help wondering what the tie between him and madame d'aranjuez could be, for it evidently had the power to make spicca submit without complaint to something worse than ordinary unkindness and to make him defend on all occasions the name and character of the woman who treated him so harshly. it must be a very close bond, orsino thought. spicca acted very much like a man who loves very sincerely and quite hopelessly. there was something very sad in the idea that he perhaps loved maria consuelo, at his age, broken down as he was, and old before his time. the contrast between them was so great that it must have been grotesque if it had not been pathetic. little more passed between the two men on that day, before they separated. to spicca, orsino seemed indifferent, and the older man's reticence after his sudden outburst did not tend to prolong the meeting. orsino went in search of contini and explained what was needed of him. he was to make a brief list of desirable apartments to let and was to accompany madame d'aranjuez on the following morning in order to see them. contini was delighted and set out about the work at once. perhaps he secretly hoped that the lady might be induced to take a part of one of the new houses, but the idea had nothing to do with his satisfaction. he was to spend several hours in the sole society of a lady, of a genuine lady who was, moreover, young and beautiful. he read the little morning paper too assiduously not to have noticed the name and pondered over the descriptions of madame d'aranjuez on the many occasions when she had been mentioned by the reporters during the previous year. he was too young and too thoroughly italian not to appreciate the good fortune which now fell into his way, and he promised himself a morning of uninterrupted enjoyment. he wondered whether the lady could be induced, by excessive fatigue and thirst to accept a water ice at nazzari's, and he planned his list of apartments in such a way as to bring her to the neighbourhood of the piazza di spagna at an hour when the proposition, might seem most agreeable and natural. orsino stayed in the office during the hot september morning, busying himself with the endless details of which he was now master, and thinking from time to time of maria consuelo. he intended to go and see her in the afternoon, and he, like contini, planned what he should do and say. but his plans were all unsatisfactory, and once he found himself staring at the blank wall opposite his table in a state of idle abstraction long unfamiliar to him. soon after twelve o'clock, contini came back, hot and radiant. maria consuelo had refused the water ice, but the charm of her manner had repaid the architect for the disappointment. orsino asked whether she had decided upon any dwelling. "she has taken the apartment in the palazzo barberini," answered contini. "i suppose she will bring her family in the autumn." "her family? she has none. she is alone." "alone in that place! how rich she must be!" contini found the remains of a cigar somewhere and lighted it thoughtfully. "i do not know whether she is rich or not," said orsino. "i never thought about it." he began to work at his books again, while contini sat down and fanned himself with a bundle of papers. "she admires you very much, don orsino," said the latter, after a pause. orsino looked up sharply. "what do you mean by that?" he asked. "i mean that she talked of nothing but you, and in the most flattering way." in the oddly close intimacy which had grown up between the two men it did not seem strange that orsino should smile at speeches which he would not have liked if they had come from any one but the poor architect. "what did she say?" he asked with idle curiosity. "she said it was wonderful to think what you had done. that of all the roman princes you were the only one who had energy and character enough to throw over the old prejudices and take an occupation. that it was all the more creditable because you had done it from moral reasons and not out of necessity or love of money. and she said a great many other things of the same kind." "oh!" ejaculated orsino, looking at the wall opposite. "it is a pity she is a widow," observed contini. "why?" "she would make such a beautiful princess." "you must be mad, contini!" exclaimed orsino, half-pleased and half-irritated. "do not talk of such follies." "all well! forgive me," answered the architect a little humbly. "i am not you, you know, and my head is not yours--nor my name--nor my heart either." contini sighed, puffed at his cigar and took up some papers. he was already a little in love with maria consuelo, and the idea that any man might marry her if he pleased, but would not, was incomprehensible to him. the day wore on. orsino finished his work as thoroughly as though he had been a paid clerk, put everything in order and went away. late in the afternoon he went to see maria consuelo. he knew that she would usually be already out at that hour, and he fancied that he was leaving something to chance in the matter of finding her, though an unacknowledged instinct told him that she would stay at home after the fatigue of the morning. "we shall not be interrupted by count spicca to-day," she said, as he sat down beside her. in spite of what he knew, the hard tone of her voice roused again in orsino that feeling of pity for the old man which he had felt on the previous day. "does it not seem to you," he asked, "that if you receive him at all, you might at least conceal something of your hatred for him?" "why should i? have you forgotten what i told you yesterday?" "it would be hard to forget that, though you told me no details. but it is not easy to imagine how you can see him at all if he killed your husband deliberately in a duel." "it is impossible to put the case more plainly!" exclaimed maria consuelo. "do i offend you?" "no. not exactly." "forgive me, if i do. if spicca, as i suppose, was the unwilling cause of your great loss, he is much to be pitied. i am not sure that he does not deserve almost as much pity as you do." "how can you say that--even if the rest were true?" "think of what he must suffer. he is devotedly attached to you." "i know he is. you have told me that before, and i have given you the same answer. i want neither his attachment nor his devotion." "then refuse to see him." "i cannot." "we come back to the same point again," said orsino. "we always shall, if you talk about this. there is no other issue. things are what they are and i cannot change them." "do you know," said orsino, "that all this mystery is a very serious hindrance to friendship?" maria consuelo was silent for a moment. "is it?" she asked presently. "have you always thought so?" the question was a hard one to answer. "you have always seemed mysterious to me," answered orsino. "perhaps that is a great attraction. but instead of learning the truth about you, i am finding out that there are more and more secrets in your life which i must not know." "why should you know them?" "because--" orsino checked himself, almost with a start. he was annoyed at the words which had been so near his lips, for he had been on the point of saying "because i love you"--and he was intimately convinced that he did not love her. he could not in the least understand why the phrase was so ready to be spoken. could it be, he asked himself, that maria consuelo was trying to make him say the words, and that her will, with her question, acted directly on his mind? he scouted the thought as soon as it presented itself, not only for its absurdity, but because it shocked some inner sensibility. "what were you going to say?" asked madame d'aranjuez almost carelessly. "something that is best not said," he answered. "then i am glad you did not say it." she spoke quietly and unaffectedly. it needed little divination on her part to guess what the words might have been. even if she wished them spoken, she would not have them spoken too lightly, for she had heard his love speeches before, when they had meant very little. orsino suddenly turned the subject, as though he felt unsure of himself. he asked her about the result of her search, in the morning. she answered that she had determined to take the apartment in the palazzo barberini. "i believe it is a very large place," observed orsino, indifferently. "yes," she answered in the same tone. "i mean to receive this winter. but it will be a tiresome affair to furnish such a wilderness." "i suppose you mean to establish yourself in rome for several years." his face expressed a satisfaction of which he was hardly conscious himself. maria consuelo noticed it. "you seem pleased," she said. "how could i possibly not be?" he asked. then he was silent. all his own words seemed to him to mean too much or too little. he wished she would choose some subject of conversation and talk that he might listen. but she also was unusually silent. he cut his visit short, very suddenly, and left her, saying that he hoped to find her at home as a general rule at that hour, quite forgetting that she would naturally be always out at the cool time towards evening. he walked slowly homewards in the dusk, and did not remember to go to his solitary dinner until nearly nine o'clock. he was not pleased with himself, but he was involuntarily pleased by something he felt and would not have been insensible to if he had been given the choice. his old interest in maria consuelo was reviving, and yet was turning into something very different from what it had been. he now boldly denied to himself that he was in love and forced himself to speculate concerning the possibilities of friendship. in his young system, it was absurd to suppose that a man could fall in love a second time with the same woman. he scoffed at himself, at the idea and at his own folly, having all the time a consciousness amounting to certainty, of something very real and serious, by no means to be laughed at, overlooked nor despised. chapter xx. it was to be foreseen that orsino and maria consuelo would see each other more often and more intimately now than ever before. apart from the strong mutual attraction which drew them nearer and nearer together, there were many new circumstances which rendered orsino's help almost indispensable to his friend. the details of her installation in the apartment she had chosen were many, there was much to be thought of and there were enormous numbers of things to be bought, almost each needing judgment and discrimination in the choice. had the two needed reasonable excuses for meeting very often they had them ready to their hand. but neither of them were under any illusion, and neither cared to affect that peculiar form of self-forgiveness which finds good reasons always for doing what is always pleasant. orsino, indeed, never pressed his services and was careful not to be seen too often in public with maria consuelo by the few acquaintances who were in town. nor did madame d'aranjuez actually ask his help at every turn, any more than she made any difficulty about accepting it. there was a tacit understanding between them which did away with all necessity for inventing excuses on the one hand, or for the affectation of fearing to inconvenience orsino on the other. during some time, however, the subjects which both knew to be dangerous were avoided, with an unspoken mutual consent for which maria consuelo was more grateful than for all the trouble orsino was giving himself on her account. she fancied, perhaps, that he had at last accepted the situation, and his society gave her too much happiness to allow of her asking whether his discretion would or could last long. it was an anomalous relation which bound them together, as is often the case at some period during the development of a passion, and most often when the absence of obstacles makes the growth of affection slow and regular. it was a period during which a new kind of intimacy began to exist, as far removed from the half-serious, half-jesting intercourse of earlier days as it was from the ultimate happiness to which all those who love look forward with equal trust, although few ever come near it and fewer still can ever reach it quite. it was outwardly a sort of frank comradeship which took a vast deal for granted on both sides for the mere sake of escaping analysis, a condition in which each understood all that the other said, while neither quite knew what was in the other's heart, a state in which both were pleased to dwell for a time, as though preferring to prolong a sure if imperfect happiness rather than risk one moment of it for the hope of winning a life-long joy. it was a time during which mere friendship reached an artificially perfect beauty, like a summer fruit grown under glass in winter, which in thoroughly unnatural conditions attains a development almost impossible even where unhelped nature is most kind. both knew, perhaps, that it could not last, but neither wished it checked, and neither liked to think of the moment when it must either begin to wither by degrees, or be suddenly absorbed into a greater and more dangerous growth. at that time they were able to talk fluently upon the nature of the human heart and the durability of great affections. they propounded the problems of the world and discussed them between the selection of a carpet and the purchase of a table. they were ready at any moment to turn from the deepest conversation to the consideration of the merest detail, conscious that they could instantly take up the thread of their talk. they could separate the major proposition from the minor, and the deduction from both, by a lively argument concerning the durability of a stuff or the fitness of a piece of furniture, and they came back each time with renewed and refreshed interest to the consideration of matters little less grave than the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. that their conclusions were not always logical nor even very sensible has little to do with the matter. on the contrary, the discovery of a flaw in their own reasoning was itself a reason for opening the question again at their next meeting. at first their conversation was of general things, including the desirability of glory for its own sake, the immortality of the soul and the principles of architecture. orsino was often amazed to find himself talking, and, as he fancied, talking well, upon subjects of which he had hitherto supposed with some justice that he knew nothing. by and by they fell upon literature and dissected the modern novel with the keen zest of young people who seek to learn the future secrets of their own lives from vivid descriptions of the lives of others. their knowledge of the modern novel was not so limited as their acquaintance with many other things less amusing, if more profitable, and they worked the vein with lively energy and mutual satisfaction. then, as always, came the important move. they began to talk of love. the interest ceased to be objective or in any way vicarious and was transferred directly to themselves. these steps are not, i think, to be ever thought of as stages in the development of character in man or woman. they are phases in the intercourse of man and woman. clever people know them well and know how to produce them at will. the end may or may not be love, but an end of some sort is inevitable. according to the persons concerned, according to circumstances, according to the amount of available time, the progression from general subjects to the discussion of love, with self-application of the conclusions, more or less sincere, may occupy an hour, a month or a year. love is the one subject which ultimately attracts those not too old to talk about it, and those who consider that they have reached such an age are few. in the case of orsino and maria consuelo, neither of the two was making any effort to lead up to a certain definite result, for both felt a real dread of reaching that point which is ever afterwards remembered as the last moment of hardly sustained friendship and the first of something stronger and too often less happy. orsino was inexperienced, but maria consuelo was quite conscious of the tendency in a fixed direction. whether she had made up her mind, or not, she tried as skilfully as she could to retard the movement, for she was very happy in the present and probably feared the first stirring of her own ardently passionate nature. as for orsino, indeed, his inexperience was relative. he was anxious to believe that he was only her friend, and pretended to his own conscience that he could not explain the frequency with which the words "i love you" presented themselves. the desire to speak them was neither a permanent impulse of which he was always conscious nor a sudden strong emotion like a temptation, giving warning of itself by a few heart-beats before it reached its strength. the words came to his lips so naturally and unexpectedly that he often wondered how he saved himself from pronouncing them. it was impossible for him to foresee when they would crave utterance. at last he began to fancy that they rang in his mind without a reason and without a wish on his part to speak them, as a perfectly indifferent tune will ring in the ear for days so that one cannot get rid of it. maria consuelo had not intended to spend september and october altogether in rome. she had supposed that it would be enough to choose her apartment and give orders to some person about the furnishing of it to her taste, and that after that she might go to the seaside until the heat should be over, coming up to the city from time to time as occasion required. but she seemed to have changed her mind. she did not even suggest the possibility of going away. she generally saw orsino in the afternoon. he found no difficulty in making time to see her, whenever he could be useful, but his own business naturally occupied all the earlier part of the day. as a rule, therefore, he called between half-past four and five, and so soon as it was cool enough they went together to the palazzo barberini to see what progress the upholsterers were making and to consider matters of taste. the great half-furnished rooms with the big windows overlooking the little garden before the palace were pleasant to sit in and wander in during the hot september afternoons. the pair were not often quite alone, even for a quarter of an hour, the place being full of workmen who came and went, passed and repassed, as their occupations required, often asking for orders and probably needing more supervision than maria consuelo bestowed upon them. on a certain evening late in september the two were together in the large drawing-room. maria consuelo was tired and was leaning back in a deep seat, her hands folded upon her knee, watching orsino as he slowly paced the carpet, crossing and recrossing in his short walk, his face constantly turned towards her. it was excessively hot. the air was sultry with thunder, and though it was past five o'clock the windows were still closely shut to keep out the heat. a clear, soft light filled the room, not reflected from a burning pavement, but from grass and plashing water. they had been talking of a chimneypiece which maria consuelo wished to have placed in the hall. the style of what she wanted suggested the sixteenth century, henry second of france, diana of poitiers and the durability of the affections. the transition from fireplaces to true love had been accomplished with comparative ease, the result of daily practice and experience. it is worth noting, for the benefit of the young, that furniture is an excellent subject for conversation for that very reason, nothing being simpler than to go in three minutes from a table to an epoch, from an epoch to an historical person and from that person to his or her love story. a young man would do well to associate the life of some famous lover or celebrated and unhappy beauty with each style of woodwork and upholstery. it is always convenient. but if he has not the necessary preliminary knowledge he may resort to a stratagem. "what a comfortable chair!" says he, as he deposits his hat on the floor and sits down. "do you like comfortable chairs?" "of course. fancy what life was in the days of stiff wooden seats, when you had to carry a cushion about with you. you know that sort of thing--twelfth century, francesca da rimini and all that." "poor francesca!" if she does not say "poor francesca!" as she probably will, you can say it yourself, very feelingly and in a different tone, after a short pause. the one kiss which cost two lives makes the story particularly useful. and then the ice is broken. if paolo and francesca had not been murdered, would they have loved each other for ever? as nobody knows what they would have done, you can assert that they would have been faithful or not, according to your taste, humour or personal intentions. then you can talk about the husband, whose very hasty conduct contributed so materially to the shortness of the story. if you wish to be thought jealous, you say he was quite right; if you desire to seem generous, you say with equal conviction that he was quite wrong. and so forth. get to generalities as soon as possible in order to apply them to your own case. orsino and maria consuelo were the guileless victims of furniture, neither of them being acquainted with the method just set forth for the instruction of the innocent. they fell into their own trap and wondered how they had got from mantelpieces to hearts in such an incredibly short time. "it is quite possible to love twice," orsino was saying. "that depends upon what you mean by love," answered maria consuelo, watching him with half-closed eyes. orsino laughed. "what i mean by love? i suppose i mean very much what other people mean by it--or a little more," he added, and the slight change in his voice pleased her. "do you think that any two understand the same thing when they speak of love?" she asked. "we two might," he answered, resuming his indifferent tone. "after all, we have talked so much together during the last month that we ought to understand each other." "yes," said maria consuelo. "and i think we do," she added thoughtfully. "then why should we think differently about the same thing? but i am not going to try and define love. it is not easily defined, and i am not clever enough." he laughed again. "there are many illnesses which i cannot define--but i know that one may have them twice." "there are others which one can only have once--dangerous ones, too." "i know it. but that has nothing to do with the argument." "i think it has--if this is an argument at all." "no. love is not enough like an illness--it is quite the contrary. it is a recovery from an unnatural state--that of not loving. one may fall into that state and recover from it more than once." "what a sophism!" "why do you say that? do you think that not to love is the normal condition of mankind?" maria consuelo was silent, still watching him. "you have nothing to say," he continued, stopping and standing before her. "there is nothing to be said. a man or woman who does not love is in an abnormal state. when he or she falls in love it is a recovery. one may recover so long as the heart has enough vitality. admit it--for you must. it proves that any properly constituted person may love twice, at least." "there is an idea of faithlessness in it, nevertheless," said maria consuelo, thoughtfully. "or if it is not faithless, it is fickle. it is not the same to oneself to love twice. one respects oneself less." "i cannot believe that." "we all ought to believe it. take a case as an instance. a woman loves a man with all her heart, to the point of sacrificing very much for him. he loves her in the same way. in spite of the strongest opposition, they agree to be married. on the very day of the marriage he is taken from her--for ever--loving her as he has always loved her, and as he would always have loved her had he lived. what would such a woman feel, if she found herself forgetting such a love as that after two or three years, for another man? do you think she would respect herself more or less? do you think she would have the right to call herself a faithful woman?" orsino was silent for a moment, seeing that she meant herself by the example. she, indeed, had only told him that her husband had been killed, but spicca had once said of her that she had been married to a man who had never been her husband. "a memory is one thing--real life is quite another," said orsino at last, resuming his walk. "and to be faithful cannot possibly mean to be faithless," answered maria consuelo in a low voice. she rose and went to one of the windows. she must have wished to hide her face, for the outer blinds and the glass casement were both shut and she could see nothing but the green light that struck the painted wood. orsino went to her side. "shall i open the window?" he asked in a constrained voice. "no--not yet. i thought i could see out." still she stood where she was, her face almost touching the pane, one small white hand resting upon the glass, the fingers moving restlessly. "you meant yourself, just now," said orsino softly. she neither spoke nor moved, but her face grew pale. then he fancied that there was a hardly perceptible movement of her head, the merest shade of an inclination. he leaned a little towards her, resting against the marble sill of the window. "and you meant something more--" he began to say. then he stopped short. his heart was beating hard and the hot blood throbbed in his temples, his lips closed tightly and his breathing was audible. maria consuelo turned her head, glanced at him quickly and instantly looked back at the smooth glass before her and at the green light on the shutters without. he was scarcely conscious that she had moved. in love, as in a storm at sea, matters grow very grave in a few moments. "you meant that you might still--" again he stopped. the words would not come. he fancied that she would not speak. she could not, any more than she could have left his side at that moment. the air was very sultry even in the cool, closed room. the green light on the shutters darkened suddenly. then a far distant peal of thunder rolled its echoes slowly over the city. still neither moved from the window. "if you could--" orsino's voice was low and soft, but there was something strangely overwrought in the nervous quality of it. it was not hesitation any longer that made him stop. "could you love me?" he asked. he thought he spoke aloud. when he had spoken, he knew that he had whispered the words. his face was colourless. he heard a short, sharp breath, drawn like a gasp. the small white hand fell from the window and gripped his own with sudden, violent strength. neither spoke. another peal of thunder, nearer and louder, shook the air. then orsino heard the quick-drawn breath again, and the white hand went nervously to the fastening of the window. orsino opened the casement and thrust back the blinds. there was a vivid flash, more thunder, and a gust of stifling wind. maria consuelo leaned far out, looking up, and a few great drops of rain, began to fall. the storm burst and the cold rain poured down furiously, wetting the two white faces at the window. maria consuelo drew back a little, and orsino leaned against the open casement, watching her. it was as though the single pressure of their hands had crushed out the power of speech for a time. for weeks they had talked daily together during many hours. they could not foresee that at the great moment there would be nothing left for them to say. the rain fell in torrents and the gusty wind rose and buffeted the face of the great palace with roaring strength, to sink very suddenly an instant later in the steadily rushing noise of the water, springing up again without warning, rising and falling, falling and rising, like a great sobbing breath. the wind and the rain seemed to be speaking for the two who listened to it. orsino watched maria consuelo's face, not scrutinising it, nor realising very much whether it were beautiful or not, nor trying to read the thoughts that were half expressed in it--not thinking at all, indeed, but only loving it wholly and in every part for the sake of the woman herself, as he had never dreamed of loving any one or anything. at last maria consuelo turned very slowly and looked into his eyes. the passionate sadness faded out of the features, the faint colour rose again, the full lips relaxed, the smile that came was full of a happiness that seemed almost divine. "i cannot help it," she said. "can i?" "truly?" her hand was lying on the marble ledge. orsino laid his own upon it, and both trembled a little. she understood more than any word could have told her. "for how long?" she asked. "for all our lives now, and for all our life hereafter." he raised her hand to his lips, bending his head, and then he drew her from the window, and they walked slowly up and down the great room. "it is very strange," she said presently, in a low voice. "that i should love you?" "yes. where were we an hour ago? what is become of that old time--that was an hour ago?" "i have forgotten, dear--that was in the other life." "the other life! yes--how unhappy i was--there, by that window, a hundred years ago!" she laughed softly, and orsino smiled as he looked down at her. "are you happy now?" "do not ask me--how could i tell you?" "say it to yourself, love--i shall see it in your dear face." "am i not saying it?" then they were silent again, walking side by side, their arms locked and pressing one another. it began to dawn upon orsino that a great change had come into his life, and he thought of the consequences of what he was doing. he had not said that he was happy, but in the first moment he had felt it more than she. the future, however, would not be like the present, and could not be a perpetual continuation of it. orsino was not at all of a romantic disposition, and the practical side of things was always sure to present itself to his mind very early in any affair. it was a part of his nature and by no means hindered him from feeling deeply and loving sincerely. but it shortened his moments of happiness. "do you know what this means to you and me?" he asked, after a time. maria consuelo started very slightly and looked up at him. "let us think of to-morrow--to-morrow," she said. her voice trembled a little. "is it so hard to think of?" asked orsino, fearing lest he had displeased her. "very hard," she answered, in a low voice. "not for me. why should it be? if anything can make to-day more complete, it is to think that to-morrow will be more perfect, and the next day still more, and so on, each day better than the one before it." maria consuelo shook her head. "do not speak of it," she said. "will you not love me to-morrow?" orsino asked. the light in his face told how little earnestly he asked the question, but she turned upon him quickly. "do you doubt yourself, that you should doubt me?" there was a ring of terror in the words that startled him as he heard them. "beloved--no--how can you think i meant it?" "then do not say it." she shivered a little, and bent down her head. "no--i will not. but--dear--do you know where we are?" "where we are?" she repeated, not understanding. "yes--where we are. this was to have been your home this year." "was to have been?" a frightened look came into her face. "it will not be, now. your home is not in this house." again she shook her head, turning her face away. "it must be," she said. orsino was surprised beyond expression by the answer. "either you do not know what you are saying, or you do not mean it, dear," he said. "or else you will not understand me." "i understand you too well." orsino made her stop and took both her hands, looking down into her eyes. "you will marry me," he said. "i cannot marry you," she answered. her face grew even paler than it had been when they had stood at the window, and so full of pain and sadness that it hurt orsino to look at it. but the words she spoke, in her clear, distinct tones, struck him like a blow unawares. he knew that she loved him, for her love was in every look and gesture, without attempt at concealment. he believed her to be a good woman. he was certain that her husband was dead. he could not understand, and he grew suddenly angry. an older man would have done worse, or a man less in earnest. "you must have a reason to give me--and a good one," he said gravely. "i have." she turned slowly away and began to walk alone. he followed her. "you must tell it," he said. "tell it? yes, i will tell it to you. it is a solemn promise before god, given to a man who died in my arms--to my husband. would you have me break such a vow?" "yes." orsino drew a long breath. the objection seemed insignificant enough compared with the pain it had cost him before it had been explained. "such promises are not binding," he continued, after a moment's pause. "such a promise is made hastily, rashly, without a thought of the consequences. you have no right to keep it." "no right? orsino, what are you saying! is not an oath an oath, however it is taken? is not a vow made ten times more sacred when the one for whom it was taken is gone? is there any difference between my promise and that made before the altar by a woman who gives up the world? should i be any better, if i broke mine, than the nun who broke hers?" "you cannot be in earnest?" exclaimed orsino in a low voice. maria consuelo did not answer. she went towards the window and looked at the splashing rain. orsino stood where he was, watching her. suddenly she came back and stood before him. "we must undo this," she said. "what do you mean?" he understood well enough. "you know. we must not love each other. we must undo to-day and forget it." "if you can talk so lightly of forgetting, you have little to remember," answered orsino almost roughly. "you have no right to say that." "i have the right of a man who loves you." "the right to be unjust?" "i am not unjust." his tone softened again. "i know what it means, to say that i love you--it is my life, this love. i have known it a long time. it has been on my lips to say it for weeks, and since it has been said, it cannot be unsaid. a moment ago you told me not to doubt you. i do not. and now you say that we must not love each other, as though we had a choice to make--and why? because you once made a rash promise--" "hush!" interrupted maria consuelo. "you must not--" "i must and will. you made a promise, as though you had a right at such a moment to dispose of all your life--i do not speak of mine--as though you could know what the world held for you, and could renounce it all beforehand. i tell you you had no right to make such an oath, and a vow taken without the right to take it is no vow at all--" "it is--it is! i cannot break it!" "if you love me you will. but you say we are to forget. forget! it is so easy to say. how shall we do it?" "i will go away--" "if you have the heart to go away, then go. but i will follow you. the world is very small, they say--it will not be hard for me to find you, wherever you are." "if i beg you--if i ask it as the only kindness, the only act of friendship, the only proof of your love--you will not come--you will not do that--" "i will, if it costs your soul and mine." "orsino! you do not mean it--you see how unhappy i am, how i am trying to do right, how hard it is!" "i see that you are trying to ruin both our lives. i will not let you. besides, you do not mean it." maria consuelo looked into his eyes and her own grew deep and dark. then as though she felt herself yielding, she turned away and sat down in a chair that stood apart from the rest. orsino followed her, and tried to take her hand, bending down to meet her downcast glance. "you do not mean it, consuelo," he said earnestly. "you do not mean one hundredth part of what you say." she drew her fingers from his, and turned her head sideways against the back of the chair so that she could not see him. he still bent over her, whispering into her ear. "you cannot go," he said. "you will not try to forget--for neither you nor i can--nor ought, cost what it might. you will not destroy what is so much to us--you would not, if you could. look at me, love--do not turn away. let me see it all in your eyes, all the truth of it and of every word i say." still she turned her face from him. but she breathed quickly with parted lips and the colour rose slowly in her pale cheeks. "it must be sweet to be loved as i love you, dear," he said, bending still lower and closer to her. "it must be some happiness to know that you are so loved. is there so much joy in your life that you can despise this? there is none in mine, without you, nor ever can be unless we are always together--always, dear, always, always." she moved a little, and the drooping lids lifted almost imperceptibly. "do not tempt me, dear one," she said in a faint voice. "let me go--let me go." orsino's dark face was close to hers now, and she could see his bright eyes. once she tried to look away, and could not. again she tried, lifting her head from the cushioned chair. but his arm went round her neck and her cheek rested upon his shoulder. "go, love," he said softly, pressing her more closely. "go--let us not love each other. it is so easy not to love." she looked up into his eyes again with a sudden shiver, and they both grew very pale. for ten seconds neither spoke nor moved. then their lips met. chapter xxi. when orsino was alone that night, he asked himself more than one question which he did not find it easy to answer. he could define, indeed, the relation in which he now stood to maria consuelo, for though she had ultimately refused to speak the words of a promise, he no longer doubted that she meant to be his wife and that her scruples were overcome for ever. this was, undeniably, the most important point in the whole affair, so far as his own satisfaction was concerned, but there were others of the gravest import to be considered and elucidated before he could even weigh the probabilities of future happiness. he had not lost his head on the present occasion, as he had formerly done when his passion had been anything but sincere. he was perfectly conscious that maria consuelo was now the principal person concerned in his life and that the moment would inevitably have come, sooner or later, in which he must have told her so as he had done on this day. he had not yielded to a sudden impulse, but to a steady and growing pressure from which there had been no means of escape, and which he had not sought to elude. he was not in one of those moods of half-senseless, exuberant spirits, such as had come upon him more than once during the winter after he had been an hour in her society and had said or done something more than usually rash. on the contrary, he was inclined to look the whole situation soberly in the face, and to doubt whether the love which dominated him might not prove a source of unhappiness to maria consuelo as well as to himself. at the same time he knew that it would be useless to fight against that domination, for he knew that he was now absolutely sincere. but the difficulties to be met and overcome were many and great. he might have betrothed himself to almost any woman in society, widow or spinster, without anticipating one hundredth part of the opposition which he must now certainly encounter. he was not even angry beforehand with the prejudice which would animate his father and mother, for he admitted that it was hardly a prejudice at all, and certainly not one peculiar to them, or to their class. it would be hard to find a family, anywhere, of any respectability, no matter how modest, that would accept without question such a choice as he had made. maria consuelo was one of those persons about whom the world is ready to speak in disparagement, knowing that it will not be easy to find defenders for them. the world indeed, loves its own and treats them with consideration, especially in the matter of passing follies, and after it had been plain to society that orsino had fallen under maria consuelo's charm, he had heard no more disagreeable remarks about her origin nor the circumstances of her widowhood. but he remembered what had been said before that, when he himself had listened indifferently enough, and he guessed that ill-natured people called her an adventuress or little better. if anything could have increased the suffering which this intuitive knowledge caused him, it was the fact that he possessed no proof of her right to rank with the best, except his own implicit faith in her, and the few words spicca had chosen to let fall. spicca was still thought so dangerous that people hesitated to contradict him openly, but his mere assertion, orsino thought, though it might be accepted in appearance, was not of enough weight to carry inward conviction with it in the minds of people who had no interest in being convinced. it was only too plain that, unless maria consuelo, or spicca, or both, were willing to tell the strange story in its integrity, there were not proof enough to convince the most willing person of her right to the social position she occupied after that had once been called into question. to orsino's mind the very fact that it had been questioned at all demonstrated sufficiently a carelessness on her own part which could only proceed from the certainty of possessing that right beyond dispute. it would doubtless have been possible for her to provide herself from the first with something in the nature of a guarantee for her identity. she could surely have had the means, through some friend of her own elsewhere, of making the acquaintance of some one in society, who would have vouched for her and silenced the carelessly spiteful talk concerning her which had gone the rounds when she first appeared. but she had seemed to be quite indifferent. she had refused orsino's pressing offer to bring her into relations with his mother, whose influence would have been enough to straighten a reputation far more doubtful than maria consuelo's, and she had almost wilfully thrown herself into a sort of intimacy with the countess del ferice. but orsino, as he thought of these matters, saw how futile such arguments must seem to his own people, and how absurdly inadequate they were to better his own state of mind, since he needed no conviction himself but sought the means of convincing others. one point alone gave him some hope. under the existing laws the inevitable legal marriage would require the production of documents which would clear the whole story at once. on the other hand, that fact could make orsino's position no easier with his father and mother until the papers were actually produced. people cannot easily be married secretly in rome, where the law requires the publication of banns by posting them upon the doors of the capitol, and the name of orsino saracinesca would not be easily overlooked. orsino was aware of course that he was not in need of his parents' consent for his marriage, but he had not been brought up in a way to look upon their acquiescence as unnecessary. he was deeply attached to them both, but especially to his mother who had been his staunch friend in his efforts to do something for himself, and to whom he naturally looked for sympathy if not for actual help. however certain he might be of the ultimate result of his marriage, the idea of being married in direct opposition to her wishes was so repugnant to him as to be almost an insurmountable barrier. he might, indeed, and probably would, conceal his engagement for some time, but solely with the intention of so preparing the evidence in favour of it as to make it immediately acceptable to his father and mother when announced. it seemed possible that, if he could bring maria consuelo to see the matter as he saw it, she might at once throw aside her reticence and furnish him with the information he so greatly needed. but it would be a delicate matter to bring her to that point of view, unconscious as she must be of her equivocal position. he could not go to her and tell her that in order to announce their engagement he must be able to tell the world who and what she really was. the most he could do would be to tell her exactly what papers were necessary for her marriage and to prevail upon her to procure them as soon as possible, or to hand them to him at once if they were already in her possession. but in order to require even this much of her, it was necessary to push matters farther than they had yet gone. he had certainly pledged himself to her, and he firmly believed that she considered herself bound to him. but beyond that, nothing definite had passed. they had been interrupted by the entrance of workmen asking for orders, and he had thought that maria consuelo had seemed anxious to detain the men as long as possible. that such a scene could not be immediately renewed where it had been broken off was clear enough, but orsino fancied that she had not wished even to attempt a renewal of it. he had taken her home in the dusk, and she had refused to let him enter the hotel with her. she said that she wished to be alone, and he had been fain to be satisfied with the pressure of her hand and the look in her eyes, which both said much while not saying half of what he longed to hear and know. he would see her, of course, at the usual hour on the following day, and he determined to speak plainly and strongly. she could not ask him to prolong such a state of uncertainty. considering how gradual the steps had been which had led up to what had taken place on that rainy afternoon it was not conceivable, he thought, that she would still ask for time to make up her mind. she would at least consent to some preliminary agreement upon a line of conduct for both to follow. but impossible as the other case seemed, orsino did not neglect it. his mind was developing with his character and was acquiring the habit of foreseeing difficulties in order to forestall them. if maria consuelo returned suddenly to her original point of view maintaining that the promise given to her dying husband was still binding, orsino determined that he would go to spicca in a last resort. whatever the bond which united them, it was clear that spicca possessed some kind of power over maria consuelo, and that he was so far acquainted with all the circumstances of her previous life as to be eminently capable of giving orsino advice for the future. he went to his office on the following morning with little inclination for work. it would be more just, perhaps, to say that he felt the desire to pursue his usual occupation while conscious that his mind was too much disturbed by the events of the previous afternoon to concentrate itself upon the details of accounts and plans. he found himself committing all sorts of errors of oversight quite unusual with him. figures seemed to have lost their value and plans their meaning. with the utmost determination he held himself to his task, not willing to believe that his judgment and nerve could be so disturbed as to render him unfit for any serious business. but the result was contemptible as compared with the effort. andrea contini, too, was inclined to take a gloomy view of things, contrary to his usual habit. a report was spreading to the effect that a certain big contractor was on the verge of bankruptcy, a man who had hitherto been considered beyond the danger of heavy loss. there had been more than one small failure of late, but no one had paid much attention to such accidents which were generally attributed to personal causes rather than to an approaching turn in the tide of speculation. but contini chose to believe that a crisis was not far off. he possessed in a high degree that sort of caution which is valuable rather in an assistant than in a chief. orsino was little inclined to share his architect's despondency for the present. "you need a change of air," he said, pushing a heap of papers away from him and lighting a cigarette. "you ought to go down to porto d'anzio for a few days. you have been too long in the heat." "no longer than you, don orsino," answered contini, from his own table. "you are depressed and gloomy. you have worked harder than i. you should really go out of town for a day or two." "i do not feel the need of it." contini bent over his table again and a short silence followed. orsino's mind instantly reverted to maria consuelo. he felt a violent desire to leave the office and go to her at once. there was no reason why he should not visit her in the morning if he pleased. at the worst, she might refuse to receive him. he was thinking how she would look, and wondering whether she would smile or meet him with earnest half regretful eyes, when contini's voice broke into his meditations again. "you think i am despondent because i have been working too long in the heat," said the young man, rising and beginning to pace the floor before orsino. "no. i am not that kind of man. i am never tired. i can go on for ever. but affairs in rome will not go on for ever. i tell you that, don orsino. there is trouble in the air. i wish we had sold everything and could wait. it would be much better." "all this is very vague, contini." "it is very clear to me. matters are going from bad to worse. there is no doubt that ronco has failed." "well, and if he has? we are not ronco. he was involved in all sorts of other speculations. if he had stuck to land and building he would be as sound as ever." "for another month, perhaps. do you know why he is ruined?" "by his own fault, as people always are. he was rash." "no rasher than we are. i believe that the game is played out. ronco is bankrupt because the bank with which he deals cannot discount any more bills this week." "and why not?" "because the foreign banks will not take any more of all this paper that is flying about. those small failures in the summer have produced their effect. some of the paper was in paris and some in vienna. it turned out worthless, and the foreigners have taken fright. it is all a fraud, at best--or something very like it." "what do you mean?" "tell me the truth, don orsino--have you seen a centime of all these millions which every one is dealing with? do you believe they really exist? no. it is all paper, paper, and more paper. there is no cash in the business." "but there is land and there are houses, which represent the millions substantially." "substantially! yes--as long as the inflation lasts. after that they will represent nothing." "you are talking nonsense, contini. prices may fall, and some people will lose, but you cannot destroy real estate permanently." "its value may be destroyed for ten or twenty years, which is practically the same thing when people have no other property. take this block we are building. it represents a large sum. say that in the next six months there are half a dozen failures like ronco's and that a panic sets in. we could then neither sell the houses nor let them. what would they represent to us? nothing. failure--like the failure of everybody else. do you know where the millions really are? you ought to know better than most people. they are in casa saracinesca and in a few other great houses which have not dabbled in all this business, and perhaps they are in the pockets of a few clever men who have got out of it all in time. they are certainly not in the firm of andrea contini and company, which will assuredly be bankrupt before the winter is out." contini bit his cigar savagely, thrust his hands into his pockets and looked out of the window, turning his back on orsino. the latter watched his companion in surprise, not understanding why his dismal forebodings should find such sudden and strong expression. "i think you exaggerate very much," said orsino. "there is always risk in such business as this. but it strikes me that the risk was greater when we had less capital." "capital!" exclaimed the architect contemptuously and without turning round. "can we draw a cheque--a plain unadorned cheque and not a draft--for a hundred thousand francs to-day? or shall we be able to draw it to-morrow? capital! we have a lot of brick and mortar in our possession, put together more or less symmetrically according to our taste, and practically unpaid for. if we manage to sell it in time we shall get the difference between what is paid and what we owe. that is our capital. it is problematical, to say the least of it. if we realise less than we owe we are bankrupt." he came back suddenly to orsino's table as he ceased speaking and his face showed that he was really disturbed. orsino looked at him steadily for a few seconds. "it is not only ronco's failure that frightens you, contini. there must be something else." "more of the same kind. there is enough to frighten any one." "no, there is something else. you have been talking with somebody." "with del ferice's confidential clerk. yes--it is quite true. i was with him last night." "and what did he say? what you have been telling me, i suppose." "something much more disagreeable--something you would rather not hear." "i wish to hear it." "you should, as a matter of fact." "go on." "we are completely in del ferice's hands." "we are in the hands of his bank." "what is the difference? to all intents and purposes he is our bank. the proof is that but for him we should have failed already." orsino looked up sharply. "be clear, contini. tell me what you mean." "i mean this. for a month past the bank could not have discounted a hundred francs' worth of our paper. del ferice has taken it all and advanced the money out of his private account." "are you sure of what you are telling me?" orsino asked the question in a low voice, and his brow contracted. "one can hardly have better authority than the clerk's own statement." "and he distinctly told you this, did he?" "most distinctly." "he must have had an object in betraying such a confidence," said orsino. "it is not likely that such a man would carelessly tell you or me a secret which is evidently meant to be kept." he spoke quietly enough, but the tone of his voice was changed and betrayed how greatly he was moved by the news. contini began to walk up and down again, but did not make any answer to the remark. "how much do we owe the bank?" orsino asked suddenly. "roughly, about six hundred thousand." "how much of that paper do you think del ferice has taken up himself?" "about a quarter, i fancy, from what the clerk told me." a long silence followed, during which orsino tried to review the situation in all its various aspects. it was clear that del ferice did not wish andrea contini and company to fail and was putting himself to serious inconvenience in order to avert the catastrophe. whether he wished, in so doing, to keep orsino in his power, or whether he merely desired to escape the charge of having ruined his old enemy's son out of spite, it was hard to decide. orsino passed over that question quickly enough. so far as any sense of humiliation was concerned he knew very well that his mother would be ready and able to pay off all his liabilities at the shortest notice. what orsino felt most deeply was profound disappointment and utter disgust at his own folly. it seemed to him that he had been played with and flattered into the belief that he was a serious man of business, while all along he had been pushed and helped by unseen hands. there was nothing to prove that del ferice had not thus deceived him from the first; and, indeed, when he thought of his small beginnings early in the year and realised the dimensions which the business had now assumed, he could not help believing that del ferice had been at the bottom of all his apparent success and that his own earnest and ceaseless efforts had really had but little to do with the development of his affairs. his vanity suffered terribly under the first shock. he was bitterly disappointed. during the preceding months he had begun to feel himself independent and able to stand alone, and he had looked forward in the near future to telling his father that he had made a fortune for himself without any man's help. he had remembered every word of cold discouragement to which he had been forced to listen at the very beginning, and he had felt sure of having a success to set against each one of those words. he knew that he had not been idle and he had fancied that every hour of work had produced its permanent result, and left him with something more to show. he had seen his mother's pride in him growing day by day in his apparent success, and he had been confident of proving to her that she was not half proud enough. all that was gone in a moment. he saw, or fancied that he saw, nothing but a series of failures which had been bolstered up and inflated into seeming triumphs by a man whom his father despised and hated and whom, as a man, he himself did not respect. the disillusionment was complete. at first it seemed to him that there was nothing to be done but to go directly to saracinesca and tell the truth to his father and mother. financially, when the wealth of the family was taken into consideration there was nothing very alarming in the situation. he would borrow of his father enough to clear him with del ferice and would sell the unfinished buildings for what they would bring. he might even induce his father to help him in finishing the work. there would be no trouble about the business question. as for contini, he should not lose by the transaction and permanent occupation could doubtless be found for him on one of the estates if he chose to accept it. he thought of the interview and his vanity dreaded it. another plan suggested itself to him. on the whole, it seemed easier to bear his dependence on del ferice than to confess himself beaten. there was nothing dishonourable, nothing which could be called so at least, in accepting financial accommodation from a man whose business it was to lend money on security. if del ferice chose to advance sums which his bank would not advance, he did it for good reasons of his own and certainly not in the intention of losing by it in the end. in case of failure del ferice would take the buildings for the debt and would certainly in that case get them for much less than they were worth. orsino would be no worse off than when he had begun, he would frankly confess that though he had lost nothing he had not made a fortune, and the matter would be at an end. that would be very much easier to bear than the humiliation of confessing at the present moment that he was in del ferice's power and would be bankrupt but for del ferice's personal help. and again he repeated to himself that del ferice was not a man to throw money away without hope of recovery with interest. it was inconceivable, too, that ugo should have pushed him so far merely to flatter a young man's vanity. he meant to make use of him, or to make money out of his failure. in either case orsino would be his dupe and would not be under any obligation to him. compared with the necessity of acknowledging the present state of his affairs to his father, the prospect of being made a tool of by del ferice was bearable, not to say attractive. "what had we better do, contini?" he asked at length. "there is nothing to be done but to go on, i suppose, until we are ruined," replied the architect. "even if we had the money, we should gain nothing by taking off all our bills as they fall due, instead of renewing them." "but if the bank will not discount any more--" "del ferice will, in the bank's name. when he is ready for the failure, we shall fail and he will profit by our loss." "do you think that is what he means to do?" contini looked at orsino in surprise. "of course. what did you expect? you do not suppose that he means to make us a present of that paper, or to hold it indefinitely until we can make a good sale." "and he will ultimately get possession of all the paper himself." "naturally. as the old bills fall due we shall renew them with him, practically, and not with the bank. he knows what he is about. he probably has some scheme for selling the whole block to the government, or to some institution, and is sure of his profit beforehand. our failure will give him a profit of twenty-five or thirty per cent." orsino was strangely reassured by his partner's gloomy view. to him every word proved that he was free from any personal obligation to del ferice and might accept the latter's assistance without the least compunction. he did not like to remember that a man of ugo's subtle intelligence might have something more important in view than a profit of a few hundred thousand francs, if indeed the sum should amount to that. orsino's brow cleared and his expression changed. "you seem to like the idea," observed contini rather irritably. "i would rather be ruined by del ferice than helped by him." "ruin means so little to you, don orsino. it means the inheritance of an enormous fortune, a princess for a wife and the choice of two or three palaces to live in." "that is one way of putting it," answered orsino, almost laughing. "as for yourself, my friend, i do not see that your prospects are so very bad. do you suppose that i shall abandon you after having led you into this scrape, and after having learned to like you and understand your talent? you are very much mistaken. we have tried this together and failed, but as you rightly say i shall not be in the least ruined by the failure. do you know what will happen? my father will tell me that since i have gained some experience i should go and manage one of the estates and improve the buildings. then you and i will go together." contini smiled suddenly and his bright eyes sparkled. he was profoundly attached to orsino, and thought perhaps as much of the loss of his companionship as of the destruction of his material hopes in the event of a liquidation. "if that could be, i should not care what became of the business," he said simply. "how long do you think we shall last?" asked orsino after a short pause. "if business grows worse, as i think it will, we shall last until the first bill that falls due after the doors and windows are put in." "that is precise, at least." "it will probably take us into january, or perhaps february." "but suppose that del ferice himself gets into trouble between now and then. if he cannot discount any more, what will happen?" "we shall fail a little sooner. but you need not be afraid of that. del ferice knows what he is about better than we do, better than his confidential clerk, much better than most men of business in rome. if he fails, he will fail intentionally and at the right moment." "and do you not think that there is even a remote possibility of an improvement in business, so that nobody will fail at all?" "no," answered contini thoughtfully. "i do not think so. it is a paper system and it will go to pieces." "why have you not said the same thing before? you must have had this opinion a long time." "i did not believe that ronco could fail. an accident opens the eyes." orsino had almost decided to let matters go on but he found some difficulty in actually making up his mind. in spite of contini's assurances he could not get rid of the idea that he was under an obligation to del ferice. once, at least, he thought of going directly to ugo and asking for a clear explanation of the whole affair. but ugo was not in town, as he knew, and the impossibility of going at once made it improbable that orsino would go at all. it would not have been a very wise move, for del ferice could easily deny the story, seeing that the paper was all in the bank's name, and he would probably have visited the indiscretion upon the unfortunate clerk. in the long silence which followed, orsino relapsed into his former despondency. after all, whether he confessed his failure or not, he had undeniably failed and been played upon from the first, and he admitted it to himself without attempting to spare his vanity, and his self-contempt was great and painful. the fact that he had grown from a boy to a man during his experience did not make it easier to bear such wounds, which are felt more keenly by the strong than by the weak when they are real. as the day wore on the longing to see maria consuelo grew upon him until he felt that he had never before wished to be with her as he wished it now. he had no intention of telling her his trouble but he needed the assurance of an ever ready sympathy which he so often saw in her eyes, and which was always there for him when he asked it. when there is love there is reliance, whether expressed or not, and where there is reliance, be it ever so slender, there is comfort for many ills of body, mind and soul. chapter xxii. orsino felt suddenly relieved when he had left his office in the afternoon. contini's gloomy mood was contagious, and so long as orsino was with him it was impossible not to share the architect's view of affairs. alone, however, things did not seem so bad. as a matter of fact it was almost impossible for the young man to give up all his illusions concerning his own success in one moment, and to believe himself the dupe of his own blind vanity instead of regarding himself as the winner in the fight for independence of thought and action. he could not deny the facts contini alleged. he had to admit that he was apparently in del ferice's power, unless he appealed to his own people for assistance. he was driven to acknowledge that he had made a great mistake. but he could not altogether distrust himself and he fancied that after all, with a fair share of luck, he might prove a match for ugo on the financier's own ground. he had learned to have confidence in his own powers and judgment, and as he walked away from the office every moment strengthened his determination to struggle on with such resources as he might be able to command, so long as there should be a possibility of action of any sort. he felt, too, that more depended upon his success than the mere satisfaction of his vanity. if he failed, he might lose maria consuelo as well as his self-respect: he had that sensation, familiar enough to many young men when extremely in love, that in order to be loved in return one must succeed, and that a single failure endangers the stability of a passion which, if it be honest, has nothing to do with failure or success. at orsino's age, and with his temper, it is hard to believe that pity is more closely akin to love than admiration. gradually the conviction reasserted itself that he could fight his way through unaided, and his spirits rose as he approached the more crowded quarters of the city on his way to the hotel where maria consuelo was stopping. not even the yells of the newsboys affected him, as they announced the failure of the great contractor ronco and offered, in a second edition, a complete account of the bankruptcy. it struck him indeed that before long the same brazen voices might be screaming out the news that andrea contini and company had come to grief. but the idea lent a sense of danger to the situation which orsino did not find unpleasant. the greater the difficulty the greater the merit in overcoming it, and the greater therefore the admiration he should get from the woman he loved. his position was certainly an odd one, and many men would not have felt the excitement which he experienced. the financial side of the question was strangely indifferent to him, who knew himself backed by the great fortune of his family, and believed that his ultimate loss could only be the small sum with which he had begun his operations. but the moral risk seemed enormous and grew in importance as he thought of it. he found maria consuelo looking pale and weary. she evidently had no intention of going out that day, for she wore a morning gown and was established upon a lounge with books and flowers beside her as though she did not mean to move. she was not reading, however. orsino was startled by the sadness in her face. she looked fixedly into his eyes as she gave him her hand, and he sat down beside her. "i am glad you are come," she said at last, in a low voice. "i have been hoping all day that you would come early." "i would have come this morning if i had dared," answered orsino. she looked at him again, and smiled faintly. "i have a great deal to say to you," she began. then she hesitated as though uncertain where to begin. "and i--" orsino tried to take her hand, but she withdrew it. "yes, but do not say it. at least, not now." "why not, dear one? may i not tell you how i love you? what is it, love? you are so sad to-day. has anything happened?" his voice grew soft and tender as he spoke, bending to her ear. she pushed him gently back. "you know what has happened," she answered. "it is no wonder that i am sad." "i do not understand you, dear. tell me what it is." "i told you too much yesterday--" "too much?" "far too much." "are you going to unsay it?" "how can i?" she turned her face away and her fingers played nervously with her laces. "no--indeed, neither of us can unsay such words," said orsino. "but i do not understand you yet, darling. you must tell me what you mean to-day." "you know it all. it is because you will not understand--" orsino's face changed and his voice took another tone when he spoke. "are you playing with me, consuelo?" he asked gravely. she started slightly and grew paler than before. "you are not kind," she said. "i am suffering very much. do not make it harder." "i am suffering, too. you mean me to understand that you regret what happened yesterday and that you wish to take back your words, that whether you love me or not, you mean to act and appear as though you did not, and that i am to behave as though nothing had happened. do you think that would be easy? and do you think i do not suffer at the mere idea of it?" "since it must be--" "there is no must," answered orsino with energy. "you would ruin your life and mine for the mere shadow of a memory which you choose to take for a binding promise. i will not let you do it." "you will not?" she looked at him quickly with an expression of resistance. "no--i will not," he repeated. "we have too much at stake. you shall not lose all for both of us." "you are wrong, dear one," she said, with sudden softness. "if you love me, you should believe me and trust me. i can give you nothing but unhappiness--" "you have given me the only happiness i ever knew--and you ask me to believe that you could make me unhappy in any way except by not loving me! consuelo--my darling--are you out of your senses?" "no. i am too much in them. i wish i were not. if i were mad i should--" "what?" "never mind. i will not even say it. no--do not try to take my hand, for i will not give it to you. listen, orsino--be reasonable, listen to me--" "i will try and listen." but maria consuelo did not speak at once. possibly she was trying to collect her thoughts. "what have you to say, dearest?" asked orsino at length. "i will try to understand." "you must understand. i will make it all clear to you and then you will see it as i do." "and then--what?" "and then we must part," she said in a low voice. orsino said nothing, but shook his head incredulously. "yes," repeated maria consuelo, "we must not see each other any more after this. it has been all my fault. i shall leave rome and not come back again. it will be best for you and i will make it best for me." "you talk very easily of parting." "do i? every word is a wound. do i look as though i were indifferent?" orsino glanced at her pale face and tearful eyes. "no, dear," he said softly. "then do not call me heartless. i have more heart than you think--and it is breaking. and do not say that i do not love you. i love you better than you know--better than you will be loved again when you are older--and happier, perhaps. yes, i know what you want to say. well, dear--you love me, too. yes, i know it. let there be no unkind words and no doubts between us to-day. i think it is our last day together." "for god's sake, consuelo--" "we shall see. now let me speak--if i can. there are three reasons why you and i should not marry. i have thought of them through all last night and all to-day, and i know them. the first is my solemn vow to the dying man who loved me so well and who asked nothing but that--whose wife i never was, but whose name i bear. think me mad, superstitious--what you will--i cannot break that promise. it was almost an oath not to love, and if it was i have broken it. but the rest i can keep, and will. the next reason is that i am older than you. i might forget that, i have forgotten it more than once, but the time will come soon when you will remember it." orsino made an angry gesture and would have spoken, but she checked him. "pass that over, since we are both young. the third reason is harder to tell and no power on earth can explain it away. i am no match for you in birth, orsino--" the young man interrupted her now, and fiercely. "do you dare to think that i care what your birth may be?" he asked. "there are those who do care, even if you do not, dear one," she answered quietly. "and what is their caring to you or me?" "it is not so small a matter as you think. i am not talking of a mere difference in rank. it is worse than that. i do not really know who i am. do you understand? i do not know who my mother was nor whether she is alive or dead, and before i was married i did not bear my father's name." "but you know your father--you know his name at least?" "yes." "who is he?" orsino could hardly pronounce the words of the question. "count spicca." maria consuelo spoke quietly, but her fingers trembled nervously and she watched orsino's face in evident distress and anxiety. as for orsino, he was almost dumb with amazement. "spicca! spicca your father!" he repeated indistinctly. in all his many speculations as to the tie which existed between maria consuelo and the old duellist, he had never thought of this one. "then you never suspected it?" asked maria consuelo. "how should i? and your own father killed your husband--good heavens! what a story!" "you know now. you see for yourself how impossible it is that i should marry you." in his excitement orsino had risen and was pacing the room. he scarcely heard her last words, and did not say anything in reply. maria consuelo lay quite still upon the lounge, her hands clasped tightly together and straining upon each other. "you see it all now," she said again. this time his attention was arrested and he stopped before her. "yes. i see what you mean. but i do not see it as you see it. i do not see that any of these things you have told me need hinder our marriage." maria consuelo did not move, but her expression changed. the light stole slowly into her face and lingered there, not driving away the sadness but illuminating it. "and would you have the courage, in spite of your family and of society, to marry me, a woman practically nameless, older than yourself--" "i not only would, but i will," answered orsino. "you cannot--but i thank you, dear," said maria consuelo. he was standing close beside her. she took his hand and tenderly touched it with her lips. he started and drew it back, for no woman had ever kissed his hand. "you must not do that!" he exclaimed, instinctively. "and why not, if i please?" she asked, raising her eyebrows with a little affectionate laugh. "i am not good enough to kiss your hand, darling--still less to let you kiss mine. never mind--we were talking--where were we?" "you were saying--" but he interrupted her. "what does it matter, when i love you so, and you love me?" he asked passionately. he knelt beside her as she lay on the lounge and took her hands, holding them and drawing her towards him. she resisted and turned her face away. "no--no! it matters too much--let me go, it only makes it worse!" "makes what worse?" "parting--" "we will not part. i will not let you go!" but still she struggled with her hands and he, fearing to hurt them in his grasp, let them slip away with a lingering touch. "get up," she said. "sit here, beside me--a little further--there. we can talk better so." "i cannot talk at all--" "without holding my hands?" "why should i not?" "because i ask you. please, dear--" she drew back on the lounge, raised herself a little and turned her face to him. again, as his eyes met hers, he leaned forward quickly, as though he would leave his seat. but she checked him, by an imperative glance and a gesture. he was unreasonable and had no right to be annoyed, but something in her manner chilled him and pained him in a way he could not have explained. when he spoke there was a shade of change in the tone of his voice. "the things you have told me do not influence me in the least," he said with more calmness than he had yet shown. "what you believe to be the most important reason is no reason at all to me. you are count spicca's daughter. he is an old friend of my father--not that it matters very materially, but it may make everything easier. i will go to him to-day and tell him that i wish to marry you--" "you will not do that!" exclaimed maria consuelo in a tone of alarm. "yes, i will. why not? do you know what he once said to me? he told me he wished we might take a fancy to each other, because, as he expressed it, we should be so well matched." "did he say that?" asked maria consuelo gravely. "that or something to the same effect. are you surprised? what surprises me is that i should never have guessed the relation between you. now your father is a very honourable man. what he said meant something, and when he said it he meant that our marriage would seem natural to him and to everybody. i will go and talk to him. so much for your great reason. as for the second you gave, it is absurd. we are of the same age, to all intents and purposes." "i am not twenty-three years old." "and i am not quite two and twenty. is that a difference? so much for that. take the third, which you put first. seriously, do you think that any intelligent being would consider you bound by such a promise? do you mean to say that a young girl--you were nothing more--has a right to throw away her life out of sentiment by making a promise of that kind? and to whom? to a man who is not her husband, and never can be, because he is dying. to a man just not indifferent to her, to a man--" maria consuelo raised herself and looked full at orsino. her face was extremely pale and her eyes were suddenly dark and gleamed. "don orsino, you have no right to talk to me in that way. i loved him--no one knows how i loved him!" there was no mistaking the tone and the look. orsino felt again and more strongly, the chill and the pain he had felt before. he was silent for a moment. maria consuelo looked at him a second longer, and then let her head fall back upon the cushion. but the expression which had come into her face did not change at once. "forgive me," said orsino after a pause. "i had not quite understood. the only imaginable reason which could make our marriage impossible would be that. if you loved him so well--if you loved him in such a way as to prevent you from loving me as i love you--why then, you may be right after all." in the silence which followed, he turned his face away and gazed at the window. he had spoken quietly enough and his expression, strange to say, was calm and thoughtful. it is not always easy for a woman to understand a man, for men soon learn to conceal what hurts them but take little trouble to hide their happiness, if they are honest. a man more often betrays himself by a look of pleasure than by an expression of disappointment. it was thought manly to bear pain in silence long before it became fashionable to seem indifferent to joy. orsino's manner displeased maria consuelo. it was too quiet and cold and she thought he cared less than he really did. "you say nothing," he said at last. "what shall i say? you speak of something preventing me from loving you as you love me. how can i tell how much you love me?" "do you not see it? do you not feel it?" orsino's tone warmed again as he turned towards her, but he was conscious of an effort. deeply as he loved her, it was not natural for him to speak passionately just at that moment, but he knew she expected it and he did his best. she was disappointed. "not always," she answered with a little sigh. "you do not always believe that i love you?" "i did not say that. i am not always sure that you love me as much as you think you do--you imagine a great deal." "i did not know it." "yes--sometimes. i am sure it is so." "and how am i to prove that you are wrong and i am right?" "how should i know? perhaps time will show." "time is too slow for me. there must be some other way." "find it then," said maria consuelo, smiling rather sadly. "i will." he meant what he said, but the difficulty of the problem perplexed him and there was not enough conviction in his voice. he was thinking rather of the matter itself than of what he said. maria consuelo fanned herself slowly and stared at the wall. "if you doubt so much," said orsino at last, "i have the right to doubt a little too. if you loved me well enough you would promise to marry me. you do not." there was a short pause. at last maria consuelo closed her fan, looked at it and spoke. "you say my reason is not good. must i go all over it again? it seems a good one to me. is it incredible to you that a woman should love twice? such things have happened before. is it incredible to you that, loving one person, a woman should respect the memory of another and a solemn promise given to that other? i should respect myself less if i did not. that it is all my fault i will admit, if you like--that i should never have received you as i did--i grant it all--that i was weak yesterday, that i am weak to-day, that i should be weak to-morrow if i let this go on. i am sorry. you can take a little of the blame if you are generous enough, or vain enough. you have tried hard to make me love you and you have succeeded, for i love you very much. so much the worse for me. it must end now." "you do not think of me, when you say that." "perhaps i think more of you than you know--or will understand. i am older than you--do not interrupt me! i am older, for a woman is always older than a man in some things. i know what will happen, what will certainly happen in time if we do not part. you will grow jealous of a shadow and i shall never be able to tell you that this same shadow is not dear to me. you will come to hate what i have loved and love still, though it does not prevent me from loving you too--" "but less well," said orsino rather harshly. "you would believe that, at least, and the thought would always be between us." "if you loved me as much, you would not hesitate. you would marry me living, as you married him dead." "if there were no other reason against it--" she stopped. "there is no other reason," said orsino insisting. maria consuelo shook her head but said nothing and a long silence followed. orsino sat still, watching her and wondering what was passing in her mind. it seemed to him, and perhaps rightly, that if she were really in earnest and loved him with all her heart, the reasons she gave for a separation were far from sufficient. he had not even much faith in her present obstinacy and he did not believe that she would really go away. it was incredible that any woman could be so capricious as she chose to be. her calmness, or what appeared to him her calmness, made it even less probable, he thought, that she meant to part from him. but the thought alone was enough to disturb him seriously. he had suffered a severe shock with outward composure but not without inward suffering, followed naturally enough by something like angry resentment. as he viewed the situation, maria consuelo had alternately drawn him on and disappointed him from the very beginning; she had taken delight in forcing him to speak out his love, only to chill him the next moment, or the next day, with the certainty that she did not love him sincerely. just then he would have preferred not to put into words the thoughts of her that crossed his mind. they would have expressed a disbelief in her character which he did not really feel and an opinion of his own judgment which he would rather not have accepted. he even went so far, in his anger, as to imagine what would happen if he suddenly rose to go. she would put on that sad look of hers and give him her hand coldly. then just as he reached the door she would call him back, only to send him away again. he would find on the following day that she had not left town after all, or, at most, that she had gone to florence for a day or two, while the workmen completed the furnishing of her apartment. then she would come back and would meet him just as though there had never been anything between them. the anticipation was so painful to him that he wished to have it realised and over as soon as possible, and he looked at her again before rising from his seat. he could hardly believe that she was the same woman who had stood with him, watching the thunderstorm, on the previous afternoon. he saw that she was pale, but she was not facing the light and the expression of her face was not distinctly visible. on the whole, he fancied that her look was one of indifference. her hands lay idly upon her fan and by the drooping of her lids she seemed to be looking at them. the full, curved lips were closed, but not drawn in as though in pain, nor pouting as though in displeasure. she appeared to be singularly calm. after hesitating another moment orsino rose to his feet. he had made up his mind what to say, for it was little enough, but his voice trembled a little. "good-bye, madame." maria consuelo started slightly and looked up, as though to see whether he really meant to go at that moment. she had no idea that he really thought of taking her at her word and parting then and there. she did not realise how true it was that she was much older than he and she had never believed him to be as impulsive as he sometimes seemed. "do not go yet," she said, instinctively. "since you say that we must part--" he stopped, as though leaving her to finish the sentence in imagination. a frightened look passed quickly over maria consuelo's face. she made as though she would have taken his hand, then drew back her own and bit her lip, not angrily but as though she were controlling something. "since you insist upon our parting," orsino said, after a short, strained silence, "it is better that it should be got over at once." in spite of himself his voice was still unsteady. "i did not--no--yes, it is better so." "then good-bye, madame." it was impossible for her to understand all that had passed in his mind while he had sat beside her, after the previous conversation had ended. his abruptness and coldness were incomprehensible to her. "good-bye, then--orsino." for a moment her eyes rested on his. it was the sad look he had anticipated, and she put out her hand now. surely, he thought, if she loved him she would not let him go so easily. he took her fingers and would have raised them to his lips when they suddenly closed on his, not with the passionate, loving pressure of yesterday, but firmly and quietly, as though they would not be disobeyed, guiding him again to his seat close beside her. he sat down. "good-bye, then, orsino," she repeated, not yet relinquishing her hold. "good-bye, dear, since it must be good-bye--but not good-bye as you said it. you shall not go until you can say it differently." she let him go now and changed her own position. her feet slipped to the ground and she leaned with her elbow upon the head of the lounge, resting her cheek against her hand. she was nearer to him now than before and their eyes met as they faced each other. she had certainly not chosen her attitude with any second thought of her own appearance, but as orsino looked into her face he saw again clearly all the beauties that he had so long admired, the passionate eyes, the full, firm mouth, the broad brow, the luminous white skin--all beauties in themselves though not, together, making real beauty in her case. and beyond these he saw and felt over them all and through them all the charm that fascinated him, appealing as it were to him in particular of all men as it could not appeal to another. he was still angry, disturbed out of his natural self and almost out of his passion, but he felt none the less that maria consuelo could hold him if she pleased, as long as a shadow of affection for her remained in him, and perhaps longer. when she spoke, he knew what she meant, and he did not interrupt her nor attempt to answer. "i have meant all i have said to-day," she continued. "do not think it is easy for me to say more. i would give all i have to give to take back yesterday, for yesterday was my great mistake. i am only a woman and you will forgive me. i do what i am doing now, for your sake--god knows it is not for mine. god knows how hard it is for me to part from you. i am in earnest, you see. you believe me now." her voice was steady but the tears were already welling over. "yes, dear, i believe you," orsino answered softly. women's tears are a great solvent of man's ill temper. "as for this being right and best, this parting, you will see it as i do sooner or later. but you do believe that i love you, dearly, tenderly, very--well, no matter how--you believe it?" "i believe it--" "then say 'good-bye, consuelo'--and kiss me once--for what might have been." orsino half rose, bent down and kissed her cheek. "good-bye, consuelo," he said, almost whispering the words into her ear. in his heart he did not think she meant it. he still expected that she would call him back. "it is good-bye, dear--believe it--remember it!" her voice shook a little now. "good-bye, consuelo," he repeated. with a loving look that meant no good-bye he drew back and went to the door. he laid his hand on the handle and paused. she did not speak. then he looked at her again. her head had fallen back against a cushion and her eyes were half closed. he waited a second and a keen pain shot through him. perhaps she was in earnest after all. in an instant he had recrossed the room and was on his knees beside her trying to take her hands. "consuelo--darling--you do not really mean it! you cannot, you will not--" he covered her hands with kisses and pressed them to his heart. for a few moments she made no movement, but her eyelids quivered. then she sprang to her feet, pushing him back violently as he rose with her, and turning her face from him. "go--go!" she cried wildly. "go--let me never see you again--never, never!" before he could stop her, she had passed him with a rush like a swallow on the wing and was gone from the room. chapter xxiii. orsino was not in an enviable frame of mind when he left the hotel. it is easier to bear suffering when one clearly understands all its causes, and distinguishes just how great a part of it is inevitable and how great a part may be avoided or mitigated. in the present case there was much in the situation which it passed his power to analyse or comprehend. he still possessed the taste for discovering motives in the actions of others as well as in his own, but many months of a busy life had dulled the edge of the artificial logic in which he had formerly delighted, while greatly sharpening his practical wit. artificial analysis supplies from the imagination the details lacking in facts, but common sense needs something more tangible upon which to work. orsino felt that the chief circumstance which had determined maria consuelo's conduct had escaped him, and he sought in vain to detect it. he rejected the supposition that she was acting upon a caprice, that she had yesterday believed it possible to marry him, while a change of humour made marriage seem out of the question to-day. she was as capricious as most women, perhaps, but not enough so for that. besides, she had been really consistent. not even yesterday had she been shaken for a moment in her resolution not to be orsino's wife. to-day had confirmed yesterday therefore. however orsino might have still doubted her intention when he had gone to her side for the last time, her behaviour then and her final words had been unmistakable. she meant to leave rome at once. yet the reasons she had given him for her conduct were not sufficient in his eyes. the difference of age was so small that it could safely be disregarded. her promise to the dying aranjuez was an engagement, he thought, by which no person of sense should expect her to abide. as for the question of her birth, he relied on that speech of spicca's which he so well remembered. spicca might have spoken the words thoughtlessly, it was true, and believing that orsino would never, under any circumstances whatever, think seriously of marrying maria consuelo. but spicca was not a man who often spoke carelessly, and what he said generally meant at least as much as it appeared to mean. it was doubtless true that maria consuelo was ignorant of her mother's name. nevertheless, it was quite possible that her mother had been spicca's wife. spicca's life was said to be full of strange events not generally known. but though his daughter might, and doubtless did believe herself a nameless child, and, as such, no match for the heir of the saracinesca, orsino could not see why she should have insisted upon a parting so sudden, so painful and so premature. she knew as much yesterday and had known it all along. why, if she possessed such strength of character, had she allowed matters to go so far when she could easily have interrupted the course of events at an earlier period? he did not admit that she perhaps loved him so much as to have been carried away by her passion until she found herself on the point of doing him an injury by marrying him, and that her love was strong enough to induce her to sacrifice herself at the critical moment. though he loved her much he did not believe her to be heroic in any way. on the contrary, he said to himself that if she were sincere, and if her love were at all like his own, she would let no obstacle stand in the way of it. to him, the test of love must be its utter recklessness. he could not believe that a still better test may be, and is, the constant forethought for the object of love, and the determination to protect that object from all danger in the present and from all suffering in the future, no matter at what cost. perhaps it is not easy to believe that recklessness is a manifestation of the second degree of passion, while the highest shows itself in painful sacrifice. yet the most daring act of chivalry never called for half the bravery shown by many a martyr at the stake, and if courage be a measure of true passion, the passion which will face life-long suffering to save its object from unhappiness or degradation is greater than the passion which, for the sake of possessing its object, drags it into danger and the risk of ruin. it may be that all this is untrue, and that the action of these two imaginary individuals, the one sacrificing himself, the other endangering the loved one, is dependent upon the balance of the animal, intellectual and moral elements in each. we do not know much about the causes of what we feel, in spite of modern analysis; but the heart rarely deceives us, when we can see the truth for ourselves, into bestowing the more praise upon the less brave of two deeds. but we do not often see the truth as it is. we know little of the lives of others, but we are apt to think that other people understand our own very well, including our good deeds if we have done any, and we expect full measure of credit for these, and the utmost allowance of charity for our sins. in other words we desire our neighbour to combine a power of forgiveness almost divine with a capacity for flattery more than parasitic. that is why we are not easily satisfied with our acquaintances and that is why our friends do not always turn out to be truthful persons. we ask too much for the low price we offer, and if we insist we get the imitation. orsino loved maria consuelo with all his heart, as much as a young man of little more than one and twenty can love the first woman to whom he is seriously attached. there was nothing heroic in the passion, perhaps, nothing which could ultimately lead to great results. but it was a strong love, nevertheless, with much, of devotion in it and some latent violence. if he did not marry maria consuelo, it was not likely that he would ever love again in exactly the same way. his next love would be either far better or far worse, far nobler or far baser--perhaps a little less human in either case. he walked slowly away from the hotel, unconscious of the people in the street and not thinking of the direction he took. his brain was in a whirl and his thoughts seemed to revolve round some central point upon which they could not concentrate themselves even for a second. the only thing of which he was sure was that maria consuelo had taken herself from him suddenly and altogether, leaving him with a sense of loneliness which he had not known before. he had gone to her in considerable distress about his affairs, with the certainty of finding sympathy and perhaps advice. he came away, as some men have returned from a grave accident, apparently unscathed it may be, but temporarily deprived of some one sense, of sight, or hearing, or touch. he was not sure that he was awake, and his troubled reflexions came back by the same unvarying round to the point he had reached the first time--if maria consuelo really loved him, she would not let such obstacles as she spoke of hinder her union with him. for a time orsino was not conscious of any impulse to act. gradually, however, his real nature asserted itself, and he remembered how he had told her not long ago that if she went away he would follow her, and how he had said that the world was small and that he would soon find her again. it would undoubtedly be a simple matter to accompany her, if she left rome. he could easily ascertain the hour of her intended departure and that alone would tell him the direction she had chosen. when she found that she had not escaped him she would very probably give up the attempt and come back, her humour would change and his own eloquence would do the rest. he stopped in his walk, looked at his watch and glanced about him. he was at some distance from the hotel and it was growing dusk, for the days were already short. if maria consuelo really meant to leave rome precipitately, she might go by the evening train to paris and in that case the people of the hotel would have been informed of her intended departure. orsino only admitted the possibility of her actually going away while believing in his heart that she would remain. he slowly retraced his steps, and it was seven o'clock before he asked the hotel porter by what train madame d'aranjuez was leaving. the porter did not know whether the lady was going north or south, but he called another man, who went in search of a third, who disappeared for some time. "is it sure that madame d'aranjuez goes to-night?" asked orsino trying to look indifferent. "quite sure. her rooms will be free to-morrow." orsino turned away and slowly paced up and down the marble pavement between the tall plants, waiting for the messenger to come back. "madame d'aranjuez leaves at nine forty-five," said the man, suddenly reappearing. orsino hesitated a moment, and then made up his mind. "ask madame if she will receive me for a moment," he said, producing a card. the servant went away and again orsino walked backwards and forwards, pale now and very nervous. she was really going, and was going north--probably to paris. "madame regrets infinitely that she is not able to receive the signor prince," said the man in black at orsino's elbow. "she is making her preparations for the journey." "show me where i can write a note," said orsino, who had expected the answer. he was shown into the reading-room and writing materials were set before him. he hurriedly wrote a few words to maria consuelo, without form of address and without signature. "i will not let you go without me. if you will not see me, i will be in the train, and i will not leave you, wherever you go. i am in earnest." he looked at the sheet of note-paper and wondered that he should find nothing more to say. but he had said all he meant, and sealing the little note he sent it up to maria consuelo with a request for an immediate answer. just then the dinner bell of the hotel was rung. the reading-room was deserted. he waited five minutes, then ten, nervously turning over the newspapers and reviews on the long table, but quite unable to read even the printed titles. he rang and asked if there had been no answer to his note. the man was the same whom he had sent before. he said the note had been received at the door by the maid who had said that madame d'aranjuez would ring when her answer was ready. orsino dismissed the servant and waited again. it crossed his mind that the maid might have pocketed the note and said nothing about it, for reasons of her own. he had almost determined to go upstairs and boldly enter the sitting-room, when the door opposite to him opened and maria consuelo herself appeared. she was dressed in a dark close-fitting travelling costume, but she wore no hat. her face was quite colourless and looked if possible even more unnaturally pale by contrast with her bright auburn hair. she shut the door behind her and stood still, facing orsino in the glare of the electric lights. "i did not mean to see you again," she said, slowly. "you have forced me to it." orsino made a step forward and tried to take her hand, but she drew back. the slight uncertainty often visible in the direction of her glance had altogether disappeared and her eyes met orsino's directly and fearlessly. "yes," he answered. "i have forced you to it. i know it, and you cannot reproach me if i have. i will not leave you. i am going with you wherever you go." he spoke calmly, considering the great emotion he felt, and there was a quiet determination in his words and tone which told how much he was in earnest. maria consuelo half believed that she could dominate him by sheer force of will, and she would not give up the idea, even now. "you will not go with me, you will not even attempt it," she said. it would have been difficult to guess from her face at that moment that she loved him. her face was pale and the expression was almost hard. she held her head high as though she were looking down at him, though he towered above her from his shoulders. "you do not understand me," he answered, quietly. "when i say that i will go with you, i mean that i will go." "is this a trial of strength?" she asked after a moment's pause. "if it is, i am not conscious of it. it costs me no effort to go--it would cost me much to stay behind--too much." he stood quite still before her, looking steadily into her eyes. there was a short silence, and then she suddenly looked down, moved and turned away, beginning to walk slowly about. the room was large, and he paced the floor beside her, looking down at her bent head. "will you stay if i ask you to?" the question came in a lower and softer tone than she had used before. "i will go with you," answered orsino as firmly as ever. "will you do nothing for my asking?" "i will do anything but that." "but that is all i ask." "you are asking the impossible." "there are many reasons why you should not come with me. have you thought of them all?" "no." "you should. you ought to know, without being told by me, that you would be doing me a great injustice and a great injury in following me. you ought to know what the world will say of it. remember that i am alone." "i will marry you." "i have told you that it is impossible--no, do not answer me! i will not go over all that again. i am going away to-night. that is the principal thing--the only thing that concerns you. of course, if you choose, you can get into the same train and pursue me to the end of the world. i cannot prevent you. i thought i could, but i was mistaken. i am alone. remember that, orsino. you know as well as i what will be said--and the fact is sure to be known." "people will say that i am following you--" "they will say that we are gone together, for every one will have reason to say it. do you suppose that nobody is aware of our--our intimacy during the last month?" "why not say our love?" "because i hope no one knows of that--well, if they do--orsino, be kind! let me go alone--as a man of honour, do not injure me by leaving rome with me, nor by following me when i am gone!" she stopped and looked up into his face with an imploring glance. to tell the truth, orsino had not foreseen that she might appeal to his honour, alleging the danger to her reputation. he bit his lip and avoided her eyes. it was hard to yield, and to yield so quickly, as it seemed to him. "how long will you stay away?" he asked in a constrained voice. "i shall not come back at all." he wondered at the firmness of her tone and manner. whatever the real ground of her resolution might be, the resolution itself had gained strength since they had parted little more than an hour earlier. the belief suddenly grew upon him again that she did not love him. "why are you going at all?" he asked abruptly. "if you loved me at all, you would stay." she drew a sharp breath and clasped her hands nervously together. "i should stay if i loved you less. but i have told you--i will not go over it all again. this must end--this saying good-bye! it is easier to end it at once." "easier for you--" "you do not know what you are saying. you will know some day. if you can bear this, i cannot." "then stay--if you love me, as you say you do." "as i say i do!" her eyes grew very grave and sad as she stopped and looked at him again. then she held out both her hands. "i am going, now. good-bye." the blood came back to orsino's face. it seemed to him that he had reached the crisis of his life and his instinct was to struggle hard against his fate. with a quick movement he caught her in his arms, lifting her from her feet and pressing her close to him. "you shall not go!" he kissed her passionately again and again, while she fought to be free, straining at his arms with her small white hands and trying to turn her face from him. "why do you struggle? it is of no use." he spoke in very soft deep tones, close to her ear. she shook her head desperately and still did her best to slip from him, though she might as well have tried to break iron clamps with her fingers. "it is of no use," he repeated, pressing her still more closely to him. "let me go!" she cried, making a violent effort, as fruitless as the last. "no!" then she was quite still, realising that she had no chance with him. "is it manly to be brutal because you are strong?" she asked. "you hurt me." orsino's arms relaxed, and he let her go. she drew a long breath and moved a step backward and towards the door. "good-bye," she said again. but this time she did not hold out her hand, though she looked long and fixedly into his face. orsino made a movement as though he would have caught her again. she started and put out her hand behind her towards the latch. but he did not touch her. she softly opened the door, looked at him once more and went out. when he realised that she was gone he sprang after her, calling her by name. "consuelo!" there were a few people walking in the broad passage. they stared at orsino, but he did not heed them as he passed by. maria consuelo was not there, and he understood in a moment that it would be useless to seek her further. he stood still a moment, entered the reading-room again, got his hat and left the hotel without looking behind him. all sorts of wild ideas and schemes flashed through his brain, each more absurd and impracticable than the last. he thought of going back and finding maria consuelo's maid--he might bribe her to prevent her mistress's departure. he thought of offering the driver of the train an enormous sum to do some injury to his engine before reaching the first station out of rome. he thought of stopping maria consuelo's carriage on her way to the tram and taking her by main force to his father's house. if she were compromised in such a way, she would be almost obliged to marry him. he afterwards wondered at the stupidity of his own inventions on that evening, but at the time nothing looked impossible. he bethought him of spicca. perhaps the old man possessed some power over his daughter after all and could prevent her flight if he chose. there were yet nearly two hours left before the train started. if worst came to worst, orsino could still get to the station at the last minute and leave rome with her. he took a passing cab and drove to spicca's lodgings. the count was at home, writing a letter by the light of a small lamp. he looked up in surprise as orsino entered, then rose and offered him a chair. "what has happened, my friend?" he asked, glancing curiously at the young man's face. "everything," answered orsino. "i love madame d'aranjuez, she loves me, she absolutely refuses to marry me and she is going to paris at a quarter to ten. i know she is your daughter and i want you to prevent her from leaving. that is all, i believe." spicca's cadaverous face did not change, but the hollow eyes grew bright and fixed their glance on an imaginary point at an immense distance, and the thin hand that lay on the edge of the table closed slowly upon the projecting wood. for a few moments he said nothing, but when he spoke he seemed quite calm. "if she has told you that she is my daughter," he said, "i presume that she has told you the rest. is that true?" orsino was impatient for spicca to take some immediate action, but he understood that the count had a right to ask the question. "she has told me that she does not know her mother's name, and that you killed her husband." "both these statements are perfectly true at all events. is that all you know?" "all? yes--all of importance. but there is no time to be lost. no one but you can prevent her from leaving rome to-night. you must help me quickly." spicca looked gravely at orsino and shook his head. the light that had shone in his eyes for a moment was gone, and he was again his habitual, melancholy, indifferent self. "i cannot stop her," he said, almost listlessly. "but you can--you will, you must!" cried orsino laying a hand on the old man's thin arm. "she must not go--" "better that she should, after all. of what use is it for her to stay? she is quite right. you cannot marry her." "cannot marry her? why not? it is not long since you told me very plainly that you wished i would marry her. you have changed your mind very suddenly, it seems to me, and i would like to know why. do you remember all you said to me?" "yes, and i was in earnest, as i am now. and i was wrong in telling you what i thought at the time." "at the time! how can matters have changed so suddenly?" "i do not say that matters have changed. i have. that is the important thing. i remember the occasion of our conversation very well. madame d'aranjuez had been rather abrupt with, me, and you and i went away together. i forgave her easily enough, for i saw that she was unhappy--then i thought how different her life might be if she were married to you. i also wished to convey to you a warning, and it did not strike me that you would ever seriously contemplate such a marriage." "i think you are in a certain way responsible for the present situation," answered orsino. "that is the reason why i come to you for help." spicca turned upon the young man rather suddenly. "there you go too far," he said. "do you mean to tell me that you have asked that lady to marry you because i suggested it?" "no, but--" "then i am not responsible at all. besides, you might have consulted me again, if you had chosen. i have not been out of town. i sincerely wish that it were possible--yes, that is quite another matter. but it is not. if madame d'aranjuez thinks it is not, from her point of view there are a thousand reasons why i should consider it far more completely out of the question. as for preventing her from leaving rome i could not do that even were i willing to try." "then i will go with her," said orsino, angrily. spicca looked at him in silence for a few moments. orsino rose to his feet and prepared to go. "you leave me no choice," he said, as though spicca had protested. "because i cannot and will not stop her? is that any reason why you should compromise her reputation as you propose to do?" "it is the best of reasons. she will marry me then, out of necessity." spicca rose also, with more alacrity than generally characterised his movements. he stood before the empty fireplace, watching the young man narrowly. "it is not a good reason," he said, presently, in quiet tones. "you are not the man to do that sort of thing. you are too honourable." "i do not see anything dishonourable in following the woman i love." "that depends on the way in which you follow her. if you go quietly home to-night and write to your father that you have decided to go to paris for a few days and will leave to-morrow, if you make your arrangements like a sensible being and go away like a sane man, i have nothing to say in the matter--" "i presume not--" interrupted orsino, facing the old man somewhat fiercely. "very well. we will not quarrel yet. we will reserve that pleasure for the moment when you cease to understand me. that way of following her would be bad enough, but no one would have any right to stop you." "no one has any right to stop me, as it is." "i beg your pardon. the present circumstances are different. in the first instance the world would say that you were in love with madame d'aranjuez and were pursuing her to press your suit--of whatever nature that might be. in the second case the world will assert that you and she, not meaning to be married, have adopted the simple plan of going away together. that implies her consent, and you have no right to let any one imply that. i say, it is not honourable to let people think that a lady is risking her reputation for you and perhaps sacrificing it altogether, when she is in reality trying to escape from you. am i right, or not?" "you are ingenious, at all events. you talk as though the whole world were to know in half an hour that i have gone to paris in the same train with madame d'aranjuez. that is absurd!" "is it? i think not. half an hour is little, perhaps, but half a day is enough. you are not an insignificant son of an unknown roman citizen, nor is madame d'aranjuez a person who passes unnoticed. reporters watch people like you for items of news, and you are perfectly well known by sight. apart from that, do you think that your servants will not tell your friends' servants of your sudden departure, or that madame d'aranjuez' going will not be observed? you ought to know rome better than that. i ask you again, am i right or wrong?" "what difference will it make, if we are married immediately?" "she will never marry you. i am convinced of that." "how can you know? has she spoken to you about it?" "i am the last person to whom she would come." "her own father--" "with limitations. besides, i had the misfortune to deprive her of the chosen companion of her life, and at a critical moment. she has not forgotten that." "no she has not," answered orsino gloomily. the memory of aranjuez was a sore point. "why did you kill him?" he asked, suddenly. "because he was an adventurer, a liar and a thief--three excellent reasons for killing any man, if one can. moreover he struck her once--with that silver paper cutter which she insists on using--and i saw it from a distance. then i killed him. unluckily i was very angry and made a little mistake, so that he lived twelve hours, and she had time to get a priest and marry him. she always pretends that he struck her in play, by accident, as he was showing her something about fencing. i was in the next room and the door was open--it did not look like play. and she still thinks that he was the paragon of all virtues. he was a handsome devil--something like you, but shorter, with a bad eye. i am glad i killed him." spicca had looked steadily at orsino while speaking. when he ceased, he began to walk about the small room with something of his old energy. orsino roused himself. he had almost begun to forget his own position in the interest of listening to the count's short story. "so much for aranjuez," said spicca. "let us hear no more of him. as for this mad plan of yours, you are convinced, i suppose, and you will give it up. go home and decide in the morning. for my part, i tell you it is useless. she will not marry you. therefore leave her alone and do nothing which can injure her." "i am not convinced," answered orsino doggedly. "then you are not your father's son. no saracinesca that i ever knew would do what you mean to do--would wantonly tarnish the good name of a woman--of a woman who loves him too--and whose only fault is that she cannot marry him." "that she will not." "that she cannot." "do you give me your word that she cannot?" "she is legally free to marry whom she pleases, with or without my consent." "that is all i want to know. the rest is nothing to me--" "the rest is a great deal. i beg you to consider all i have said, and i am sure that you will, quite sure. there are very good reasons for not telling you or any one else all the details i know in this story--so good that i would rather go to the length of a quarrel with you than give them all. i am an old man, orsino, and what is left of life does not mean much to me. i will sacrifice it to prevent your opening this door unless you tell me that you give up the idea of leaving rome to-night." as he spoke he placed himself before the closed door and faced the young man. he was old, emaciated, physically broken down, and his hands were empty. orsino was in his first youth, tall, lean, active and very strong, and no coward. he was moreover in an ugly humour and inclined to be violent on much smaller provocation than he had received. but spicca imposed upon him, nevertheless, for he saw that he was in earnest. orsino was never afterwards able to recall exactly what passed through his mind at that moment. he was physically able to thrust spicca aside and to open the door, without so much as hurting him. he did not believe that, even in that case, the old man would have insisted upon the satisfaction of arms, nor would he have been afraid to meet him if a duel had been required. he knew that what withheld him from an act of violence was neither fear nor respect for his adversary's weakness and age. yet he was quite unable to define the influence which at last broke down his resolution. it was in all probability only the resultant of the argument spicca had brought to bear and which maria consuelo had herself used in the first instance, and of spicca's calm, undaunted personality. the crisis did not last long. the two men faced each other for ten seconds and then orsino turned away with an impatient movement of the shoulders. "very well," he said. "i will not go with her." "it is best so," answered spicca, leaving the door and returning to his seat. "i suppose that she will let you know where she is, will she not?" asked orsino. "yes. she will write to me." "good-night, then." "good-night." without shaking hands, and almost without a glance at the old man, orsino left the room. chapter xxiv. orsino walked slowly homeward, trying to collect his thoughts and to reach some distinct determination with regard to the future. he was oppressed by the sense of failure and disappointment and felt inclined to despise himself for his weakness in yielding so easily. to all intents and purposes he had lost maria consuelo, and if he had not lost her through his own fault, he had at least tamely abandoned what had seemed like a last chance of winning her back. as he thought of all that had happened he tried to fix some point in the past, at which he might have acted differently, and from which another act of consequence might have begun. but that was not easy. events had followed each other with a certain inevitable logic, which only looked unreasonable because he suspected the existence of facts beyond his certain knowledge. his great mistake had been in going to spicca, but nothing could have been more natural, under the circumstances, than his appeal to maria consuelo's father, nothing more unexpected than the latter's determined refusal to help him. that there was weight in the argument used by both spicca and maria consuelo herself, he could not deny; but he failed to see why the marriage was so utterly impossible as they both declared it to be. there must be much more behind the visible circumstances than he could guess. he tried to comfort himself with the assurance that he could leave rome on the following day, and that spicca would not refuse to give him maria consuelo's address in paris. but the consolation he derived from the idea was small. he found himself wondering at the recklessness shown by the woman he loved in escaping from him. his practical italian mind could hardly understand how she could have changed all her plans in a moment, abandoning her half-furnished apartment without a word of notice even to the workmen, throwing over her intention of spending the winter in rome as though she had not already spent many thousands in preparing her dwelling, and going away, probably, without as much as leaving a representative to wind up her accounts. it may seem strange that a man as much in love as orsino was should think of such details at such a moment. perhaps he looked upon them rather as proofs that she meant to come back after all; in any case he thought of them seriously, and even calculated roughly the sum she would be sacrificing if she stayed away. beyond all he felt the dismal loneliness which a man can only feel when he is suddenly and effectually parted from the woman he dearly loves, and which is not like any other sensation of which the human heart is capable. more than once, up to the last possible moment, he was tempted to drive to the station and leave with maria consuelo after all, but he would not break the promise he had given spicca, no matter how weak he had been in giving it. on reaching his home he was informed, to his great surprise, that san giacinto was waiting to see him. he could not remember that his cousin had ever before honoured him with a visit and he wondered what could have brought him now and induced him to wait, just at the hour when most people were at dinner. the giant was reading the evening paper, with the help of a particularly strong cigar. "i am glad you have come home," he said, rising and taking the young man's outstretched hand. "i should have waited until you did." "has anything happened?" asked orsino nervously. it struck him that san giacinto might be the bearer of some bad news about his people, and the grave expression on the strongly marked face helped the idea. "a great deal is happening. the crash has begun. you must get out of your business in less than three days if you can." orsino drew a breath of relief at first, and then grew grave in his turn, realising that unless matters were very serious such a man as san giacinto would not put himself to the inconvenience of coming. san giacinto was little given to offering advice unasked, still less to interfering in the affairs of others. "i understand," said orsino. "you think that everything is going to pieces. i see." the big man looked at his young cousin with something like pity. "if i only suspected, or thought--as you put it--that there was to be a collapse of business, i should not have taken the trouble to warn you. the crash has actually begun. if you can save yourself, do so at once." "i think i can," answered the young man, bravely. but he did not at all see how his salvation was to be accomplished. "can you tell me a little more definitely what is the matter? have there been any more failures to-day?" "my brother-in-law montevarchi is on the point of stopping payment," said san giacinto calmly. "montevarchi!" orsino did not conceal his astonishment. "yes. do not speak of it. and he is in precisely the same position, so far as i can judge of your affairs, as you yourself, though of course he has dealt with sums ten times as great. he will make enormous sacrifices and will pay, i suppose, after all. but he will be quite ruined. he also has worked with del fence's bank." "and the bank refuses to discount any more of his paper?" "precisely. since this afternoon." "then it will refuse to discount mine to-morrow." "have you acceptances due to-morrow?" "yes--not much, but enough to make the trouble. it will be saturday, too, and we must have money for the workmen." "have you not even enough in reserve for that?" "perhaps. i cannot tell. besides, if the bank refuses to renew i cannot draw a cheque." "i am sorry for you. if i had known yesterday how near the end was, i would have warned you." "thanks. i am grateful as it is. can you give me any advice?" orsino had a vague idea that his rich cousin would generously propose to help him out of his difficulties. he was not quite sure whether he could bring himself to accept such assistance, but he more than half expected that it would be offered. in this, however, he was completely mistaken. san giacinto had not the smallest intention of offering anything more substantial than his opinion. considering that his wife's brother's liabilities amounted to something like five and twenty millions, this was not surprising. the giant bit his cigar and folded his long arms over his enormous chest, leaning back in the easy chair which creaked under his weight. "you have tried yourself in business by this time, orsino," he said, "and you know as well as i what there is to be done. you have three modes of action open to you. you can fail. it is a simple affair enough. the bank will take your buildings for what they will be worth a few months hence, on the day of liquidation. there will be a big deficit, which your father will pay for you and deduct from your share of the division at his death. that is one plan, and seems to me the best. it is perfectly honourable, and you lose by it. secondly, you can go to your father to-morrow and ask him to lend you money to meet your acceptances and to continue the work until the houses are finished and can be sold. they will ultimately go for a quarter of their value, if you can sell them at all within the year, and you will be in your father's debt, exactly as in the other case. you would avoid the publicity of a failure, but it would cost you more, because the houses will not be worth much more when they are finished than they are now." "and the third plan--what is it?" inquired orsino. "the third way is this. you can go to del ferice, and if you are a diplomatist you may persuade him that it is in his interest not to let you fail. i do not think you will succeed, but you can try. if he agrees it will be because he counts on your father to pay in the end, but it is questionable whether del ferice's bank can afford to let out any more cash at the present moment. money is going to be very tight, as they say." orsino smoked in silence, pondering over the situation. san giacinto rose. "you are warned, at all events," he said. "you will find a great change for the worse in the general aspect of things to-morrow." "i am much obliged for the warning," answered orsino. "i suppose i can always find you if i need your advice--and you will advise me?" "you are welcome to my advice, such as it is, my dear boy. but as for me, i am going towards naples to-night on business, and i may not be back again for a day or two. if you get into serious trouble before i am here again, you should go to your father at once. he knows nothing of business, and has been sensible enough to keep out of it. the consequence is that he is as rich as ever, and he would sacrifice a great deal rather than see your name dragged into the publicity of a failure. good-night, and good luck to you." thereupon the titan shook orsino's hand in his mighty grip and went away. as a matter of fact he was going down to look over one of montevarchi's biggest estates with a view to buying it in the coming cataclysm, but it would not have been like him to communicate the smallest of his intentions to orsino, or to any one, not excepting his wife and his lawyer. orsino was left to his own devices and meditations. a servant came in and inquired whether he wished to dine at home, and he ordered strong coffee by way of a meal. he was at the age when a man expects to find a way out of his difficulties in an artificial excitement of the nerves. indeed, he had enough to disturb him, for it seemed as though all possible misfortunes had fallen upon him at once. he had suffered on the same day the greatest shock to his heart, and the greatest blow to his vanity which he could conceive possible. maria consuelo was gone and the failure of his business was apparently inevitable. when he tried to review the three plans which san giacinto had suggested, he found himself suddenly thinking of the woman he loved and making schemes for following her; but so soon as he had transported himself in imagination to her side and was beginning to hope that he might win her back, he was torn away and plunged again into the whirlpool of business at home, struggling with unheard of difficulties and sinking deeper at every stroke. a hundred times he rose from his chair and paced the floor impatiently, and a hundred times he threw himself down again, overcome by the hopelessness of the situation. occasionally he found a little comfort in the reflexion that the night could not last for ever. when the day came he would be driven to act, in one way or another, and he would be obliged to consult his partner, contini. then at last his mind would be able to follow one connected train of thought for a time, and he would get rest of some kind. little by little, however, and long before the day dawned, the dominating influence asserted itself above the secondary one and he was thinking only of maria consuelo. throughout all that night she was travelling, as she would perhaps travel throughout all the next day and the second night succeeding that. for she was strong and having once determined upon the journey would very probably go to the end of it without stopping to rest. he wondered whether she too were waking through all those long hours, thinking of what she had left behind, or whether she had closed her eyes and found the peace of sleep for which he longed in vain. he thought of her face, softly lighted by the dim lamp of the railway carriage, and fancied he could actually see it with the delicate shadows, the subdued richness of colour, the settled look of sadness. when the picture grew dim, he recalled it by a strong effort, though he knew that each time it rose before his eyes he must feel the same sharp thrust of pain, followed by the same dull wave of hopeless misery which had ebbed and flowed again so many times since he had parted from her. at last he roused himself, looked about him as though he were in a strange place, lighted a candle and betook himself to his own quarters. it was very late, and he was more tired than he knew, for in spite of all his troubles he fell asleep and did not awake till the sun was streaming into the room. some one knocked at the door, and a servant announced that signor contini was waiting to see don orsino. the man's face expressed a sort of servile surprise when he saw that orsino had not undressed for the night and had been sleeping on the divan. he began to busy himself with the toilet things as though expecting orsino to take some thought for his appearance. but the latter was anxious to see contini at once, and sent for him. the architect was evidently very much disturbed. he was as pale as though he had just recovered from a long illness and he seemed to have grown suddenly emaciated during the night. he spoke in a low, excited tone. in substance he told orsino what san giacinto had said on the previous evening. things looked very black indeed, and del ferice's bank had refused to discount any more of prince montevarchi's paper. "and we must have money to-day," contini concluded. when he had finished speaking his excitement disappeared and he relapsed into the utmost dejection. orsino remained silent for some time and then lit a cigarette. "you need not be so down-hearted, contini," he said at last. "i shall not have any difficulty in getting money--you know that. what i feel most is the moral failure." "what is the moral failure to me?" asked contini gloomily. "it is all very well to talk of getting money. the bank will shut its tills like a steel trap and to-day is saturday, and there are the workmen and others to be paid, and several bills due into the bargain. of course your family can give you millions--in time. but we need cash to-day. that is the trouble." "i suppose the state telegraph is not destroyed because prince montevarchi cannot meet his acceptances," observed orsino. "and i imagine that our steward here in the house has enough cash for our needs, and will not hesitate to hand it to me if he receives a telegram from my father ordering him to do so. whether he has enough to take up the bills or not, i do not know; but as to-day is saturday we have all day to-morrow to make arrangements. i could even go out to saracinesca and be back on monday morning when the bank opens." "you seem to take a hopeful view." "i have not the least hope of saving the business. but the question of ready money does not of itself disturb me." this was undoubtedly true, but it was also undeniable that orsino now looked upon the prospect of failure with more equanimity than on the previous evening. on the other hand he felt even more keenly than before all the pain of his sudden separation from maria consuelo. when a man is assailed, by several misfortunes at once, twenty-four hours are generally enough to sift the small from the great and to show him plainly which is the greatest of all. "what shall we do this morning?" inquired contini. "you ask the question as though you were going to propose a picnic," answered orsino. "i do not see why this morning need be so different from other mornings." "we must stop the works instantly--" "why? at all events we will change nothing until we find out the real state of business. the first thing to be done is to go to the bank as usual on saturdays. we shall then know exactly what to do." contini shook his head gloomily and went away to wait in another room while orsino dressed. an hour later they were at the bank. contini grew paler than ever. the head clerk would of course inform them that no more bills would be discounted, and that they must meet those already out when they fell due. he would also tell them that the credit balance of their account current would not be at their disposal until their acceptances were met. orsino would probably at last believe that the situation was serious, though he now looked so supremely and scornfully indifferent to events. they waited some time. several men were engaged in earnest conversation, and their faces told plainly enough that they were in trouble. the head clerk was standing with them, and made a sign to orsino, signifying that they would soon go. orsino watched him. from time to time he shook his head and made gestures which indicated his utter inability to do anything for them. contini's courage sank lower and lower. "i will ask for del ferice at once," said orsino. he accordingly sought out one of the men who wore the bank's livery and told him to take his card to the count. "the signor commendatore is not coming this morning," answered the man mysteriously. orsino went back to the head clerk, interrupting his conversation with the others. he inquired if it were true that del ferice were not coming. "it is not probable," answered the clerk with a grave face. "they say that the signora contessa is not likely to live through the day." "is donna tullia ill?" asked orsino in considerable astonishment. "she returned from naples yesterday morning, and was taken ill in the afternoon--it is said to be apoplexy," he added in a low voice. "if you will have patience signor principe, i will be at your disposal in five minutes." orsino was obliged to be satisfied and sat down again by contini. he told him the news of del ferice's wife. "that will make matters worse," said contini. "it will not improve them," answered orsino indifferently. "considering the state of affairs i would like to see del ferice before speaking with any of the others." "those men are all involved with prince montevarchi," observed contini, watching the group of which the head clerk was the central figure. "you can see by their faces what they think of the business. the short, grey haired man is the steward--the big man is the architect. the others are contractors. they say it is not less than thirty millions." orsino said nothing. he was thinking of maria consuelo and wishing that he could get away from rome that night, while admitting that there was no possibility of such a thing. meanwhile the head clerk's gestures to his interlocutors expressed more and more helplessness. at last they went out in a body. "and now i am at your service, signor principe," said the grave man of business coming up to orsino and contini. "the usual accommodation, i suppose? we will just look over the bills and make out the new ones. it will not take ten minutes. the usual cash, i suppose, signor principe? yes, to-day is saturday and you have your men to pay. quite as usual, quite as usual. will you come into my office?" orsino looked at contini, and contini looked at orsino, grasping the back of a chair to steady himself. "then there is no difficulty about discounting?" stammered contini, turning his face, now suddenly flushed, towards the clerk. "none whatever," answered the latter with an air of real or affected surprise. "i have received the usual instructions to let andrea contini and company have all the money they need." he turned and led the way to his private office. contini walked unsteadily. orsino showed no astonishment, but his black eyes grew a little brighter than usual as he anticipated his next interview with san giacinto. he readily attributed his good fortune to the supposed well-known prosperity of the firm, and he rose in his own estimation. he quite forgot that contini, who had now lost his head, had but yesterday clearly foreseen the future when he had said that del ferice would not let the two partners fail until they had fitted the last door and the last window in the last of their houses. the conclusion had struck him as just at the time. contini was the first to recall it. "it will turn out, as i said," he began, when they were driving to their office in a cab after leaving the bank. "he will let us live until we are worth eating." "we will arrange matters on a firmer basis before that," answered orsino confidently. "poor old donna tullia! who would have thought that she could die! i will stop and ask for news as we pass." he stopped the cab before the gilded gate of the detached house. glancing up, he saw that the shutters were closed. the porter came to the bars but did not show any intention of opening. "the signora contessa is dead," he said solemnly, in answer to orsino's inquiry. "this morning?" "two hours ago." orsino's face grew grave as he left his card of condolence and turned away. he could hardly have named a person more indifferent to him than poor donna tullia, but he could not help feeling an odd regret at the thought that she was gone at last with all her noisy vanity, her restless meddlesomeness and her perpetual chatter. she had not been old either, though he called her so, and there had seemed to be still a superabundance of life in her. there had been yet many years of rattling, useless, social life before her. to-morrow she would have taken her last drive through rome--out through the gate of saint lawrence to the campo varano, there to wait many years perhaps for the pale and half sickly ugo, of whom every one had said for years that he could not live through another twelve month with the disease of the heart which threatened him. of late, people had even begun to joke about donna tullia's third husband. poor donna tullia! orsino went to his office with contini and forced himself through the usual round of work. occasionally he was assailed by a mad desire to leave rome at once, but he opposed it and would not yield. though his affairs had gone well beyond his expectation the present crisis made it impossible to abandon his business, unless he could get rid of it altogether. and this he seriously contemplated. he knew however, or thought he knew, that contini would be ruined without him. his own name was the one which gave the paper its value and decided del ferice to continue the advances of money. the time was past when contini would gladly have accepted his partner's share of the undertaking, and would even have tried to raise funds to purchase it. to retire now would be possible only if he could provide for the final liquidation of the whole, and this he could only do by applying to his father or mother, in other words by acknowledging himself completely beaten in his struggle for independence. the day ended at last and was succeeded by the idleness of sunday. a sort of listless indifference came over orsino, the reaction, no doubt, after all the excitement through which he had passed. it seemed to him that maria consuelo had never loved him, and that it was better after all that she should be gone. he longed for the old days, indeed, but as she now appeared to him in his meditations he did not wish her back. he had no desire to renew the uncertain struggle for a love which she denied in the end; and this mood showed, no doubt, that his own passion was less violent than he had himself believed. when a man loves with his whole nature, undividedly, he is not apt to submit to separations without making a strong effort to reunite himself, by force, persuasion or stratagem, with the woman who is trying to escape from him. orsino was conscious of having at first felt the inclination to make such an attempt even more strongly than he had shown it, but he was conscious also that the interval of two days had been enough to reduce the wish to follow maria consuelo in such a way that he could hardly understand having ever entertained it. unsatisfied passion wears itself out very soon. the higher part of love may and often does survive in such cases, and the passionate impulses may surge up after long quiescence as fierce and dangerous as ever. but it is rarely indeed that two unsatisfied lovers who have parted by the will of the one or of both can meet again without the consciousness that the experimental separation has chilled feelings once familiar and destroyed illusions once more than dear. in older times, perhaps, men and women loved differently. there was more solitude in those days than now, for what is called society was not invented, and people generally were more inclined to sadness from living much alone. melancholy is a great strengthener of faithfulness in love. moreover at that time the modern fight for life had not begun, men as a rule had few interests besides love and war, and women no interests at all beyond love. we moderns should go mad if we were suddenly forced to lead the lives led by knights and ladies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. the monotonous round of such an existence in time of peace would make idiots of us, the horrors of that old warfare would make many of us maniacs. but it is possible that youths and maidens would love more faithfully and wait longer for each other than they will or can to-day. it is questionable whether bayard would have understood a single page of a modern love story, tancred would certainly not have done so; but caesar would have comprehended our lives and our interests without effort, and catullus could have described us as we are, for one great civilization is very like another where the same races are concerned. in the days which followed maria consuelo's departure, orsino came to a state of indifference which surprised himself. he remembered that when she had gone away in the spring he had scarcely missed her, and that he had not thought his own coldness strange, since he was sure that he had not loved her then. but that he had loved her now, during her last stay in rome, he was sure, and he would have despised himself if he had not been able to believe that he loved her still. yet, if he was not glad that she had quitted him, he was at least strangely satisfied at being left alone, and the old fancy for analysis made him try to understand himself. the attempt was fruitless, of course, but it occupied his thoughts. he met spicca in the street, and avoided him. he imagined that the old man must despise him for not having resisted and followed maria consuelo after all. the hypothesis was absurd and the conclusion vain, but he could not escape the idea, and it annoyed him. he was probably ashamed of not having acted recklessly, as a man should who is dominated by a master passion, and yet he was inwardly glad that he had not been allowed to yield to the first impulse. the days succeeded each other and a week passed away, bringing saturday again and the necessity for a visit to the bank. business had been in a very bad state since it had been known that montevarchi was ruined. so far, he had not stopped payment and although the bank refused discount he had managed to find money with which to meet his engagements. probably, as san giacinto had foretold, he would pay everything and remain a very poor man indeed. but, although many persons knew this, confidence was not restored. del ferice declared that he believed montevarchi solvent, as he believed every one with whom his bank dealt to be solvent to the uttermost centime, but that he could lend no more money to any one on any condition whatsoever, because neither he nor the bank had any to lend. every one, he said, had behaved honestly, and he proposed to eclipse the honesty of every one by the frank acknowledgment of his own lack of cash. he was distressed, he said, overcome by the sufferings of his friends and clients, ready to sell his house, his jewelry and his very boots, in the roman phrase, to accommodate every one; but he was conscious that the demand far exceeded any supply which he could furnish, no matter at what personal sacrifice, and as it was therefore impossible to help everybody, it would be unjust to help a few where all were equally deserving. in the meanwhile he proved the will of his deceased wife, leaving him about four and a half millions of francs unconditionally, and half a million more to be devoted to some public charity at ugo's discretion, for the repose of donna tullia's unquiet spirit. it is needless to say that the sorrowing husband determined to spend the legacy magnificently in the improvement of the town represented by him in parliament. a part of the improvement would consist in a statue of del ferice himself--representing him, perhaps, as he had escaped from rome, in the garb of a capuchin friar, but with the addition of an army revolver to show that he had fought for italian unity, though when or where no man could tell. but it is worth noting that while he protested his total inability to discount any one's bills, andrea contini and company regularly renewed their acceptances when due and signed new ones for any amount of cash they required. the accommodation was accompanied with a request that it should not be mentioned. orsino took the money indifferently enough, conscious that he had three fortunes at his back in case of trouble, but contini grew more nervous as time went on and the sums on paper increased in magnitude, while the chances of disposing of the buildings seemed reduced to nothing in the stagnation which had already set in. chapter xxv. at this time count spicca received a letter from maria consuelo, written from nice and bearing a postmark more recent than the date which headed the page, a fact which proved that the writer had either taken an unusually long time in the composition or had withheld the missive several days before finally despatching it. "my father--i write to inform you of certain things which have recently taken place and which it is important that you should know, and of which i should have the right to require an explanation if i chose to ask it. having been the author of my life, you have made yourself also the author of all my unhappiness and of all my trouble. i have never understood the cause of your intense hatred for me, but i have felt its consequences, even at a great distance from you, and you know well enough that i return it with all my heart. moreover i have made up my mind that i will not be made to suffer by you any longer. i tell you so quite frankly. this is a declaration of war, and i will act upon it immediately. "you are no doubt aware that don orsino saracinesca has for a long time been among my intimate friends. i will not discuss the question, whether i did well to admit him to my intimacy or not. that, at least, does not concern you. even admitting your power to exercise the most complete tyranny over me in other ways, i am and have always been free to choose my own acquaintances, and i am able to defend myself better than most women, and as well as any. i will be just, too. i do not mean to reproach you with the consequences of what i do. but i will not spare you where the results of your action towards me are concerned. "don orsino made love to me last spring. i loved him from the first. i can hear your cruel laugh and see your contemptuous face as i write. but the information is necessary, and i can bear your scorn because this is the last opportunity for such diversion which i shall afford you, and because i mean that you shall pay dearly for it. i loved don orsino, and i love him still. you, of course, have never loved. you have hated, however, and perhaps one passion may be the measure of another. it is in my case, i can assure you, for the better i love, the better i learn to hate you. "last thursday don orsino asked me to be his wife. i had known for some time that he loved me and i knew that he would speak of it before long. the day was sultry at first and then there was a thunderstorm. my nerves were unstrung and i lost my head. i told him that i loved him. that does not concern you. i told him, also, however, that i had given a solemn promise to my dying husband, and i had still the strength to say that i would not marry again. i meant to gain time, i longed to be alone, i knew that i should yield, but i would not yield blindly. thank god, i was strong. i am like you in that, though happily not in any other way. you ask me why i should even think of yielding. i answer that i love don orsino better than i loved the man you murdered. there is nothing humiliating in that, and i make the confession without reserve. i love him better, and therefore, being human, i would have broken my promise and married him, had marriage been possible. but it is not, as you know. it is one thing to turn to the priest as he stands by a dying man and to say, pronounce us man and wife, and give us a blessing, for the sake of this man's rest. the priest knew that we were both free, and took the responsibility upon himself, knowing also that the act could have no consequences in fact, whatever it might prove to be in theory. it is quite another matter to be legally married to don orsino saracinesca, in the face of a strong opposition. but i went home that evening, believing that it could be done and that the opposition would vanish. i believed because i loved. i love still, but what i learned that night has killed my belief in an impossible happiness. "i need not tell you all that passed between me and lucrezia ferris. how she knew of what had happened i cannot tell. she must have followed us to the apartment i was furnishing, and she must have overheard what we said, or seen enough to convince her. she is a spy. i suppose that is the reason why she is imposed upon me, and always has been, since i can remember--since i was born, she says. i found her waiting to dress me as usual, and as usual i did not speak to her. she spoke first. 'you will not marry don orsino saracinesca,' she said, facing me with her bad eyes. i could have struck her, but i would not. i asked her what she meant. she told me that she knew what i was doing, and asked me whether i was aware that i needed documents in order to be married to a beggar in rome, and whether i supposed that the saracinesca would be inclined to overlook the absence of such papers, or could pass a law of their own abolishing the necessity for them, or, finally, whether they would accept such certificates of my origin as she could produce. she showed me a package. she had nothing better to offer me, she said, but such as she had, she heartily placed at my disposal. i took the papers. i was prepared for a shock, but not for the blow i received. "you know what i read. the certificate of my birth as the daughter of lucrezia ferris, unmarried, by count spicca who acknowledged the child as his--and the certificate of your marriage with lucrezia ferris, dated--strangely enough a fortnight after my birth--and further a document legitimizing me as the lawful daughter of you two. all these documents are from monte carlo. you will understand why i am in nice. yes--they are all genuine, every one of them, as i have had no difficulty in ascertaining. so i am the daughter of lucrezia ferris, born out of wedlock and subsequently whitewashed into a sort of legitimacy. and lucrezia ferris is lawfully the countess spicca. lucrezia ferris, the cowardly spy-woman who more than half controls my life, the lying, thieving servant--she robs me at every turn--the common, half educated italian creature,--she is my mother, she is that radiant being of whom you sometimes speak with tears in your eyes, she is that angel of whom i remind you, she is that sweet influence that softened and brightened your lonely life for a brief space some three and twenty years ago! she has changed since then. "and this is the mystery of my birth which you have concealed from me, and which it was at any moment in the power of my vile mother to reveal. you cannot deny the fact, i suppose, especially since i have taken the trouble to search the registers and verify each separate document. "i gave them all back to her, for i shall never need them. the woman--i mean my mother--was quite right. i shall not marry don orsino saracinesca. you have lied to me throughout my life. you have always told me that my mother was dead, and that i need not be ashamed of my birth, though you wished it kept a secret. so far, i have obeyed you. in that respect, and only in that, i will continue to act according to your wishes. i am not called upon to proclaim to the world and my acquaintance that i am the daughter of my own servant, and that you were kind enough to marry your estimable mistress after my birth in order to confer upon me what you dignify by the name of legitimacy. no. that is not necessary. if it could hurt you to proclaim it i would do so in the most public way i could find. but it is folly to suppose that you could be made to suffer by so simple a process. "are you aware, my father, that you have ruined all my life from the first? being so bad, you must be intelligent and you must realise what you have done, even if you have done it out of pure love of evil. you pretended to be kind to me, until i was old enough to feel all the pain you had in store for me. but even then, after you had taken the trouble to marry my mother, why did you give me another name? was that necessary? i suppose it was. i did not understand then why my older companions looked askance at me in the convent, nor why the nuns sometimes whispered together and looked at me. they knew perhaps that no such name as mine existed. since i was your daughter why did i not bear your name when i was a little girl? you were ashamed to let it be known that you were married, seeing what sort of wife you had taken, and you found yourself in a dilemma. if you had acknowledged me as your daughter in austria, your friends in rome would soon have found out my existence--and the existence of your wife. you were very cautious in those days, but you seem to have grown careless of late, or you would not have left those papers in the care of the countess spicca, my maid--and my mother. i have heard that very bad men soon reach their second childhood and act foolishly. it is quite true. "then, later, when you saw that i loved, and was loved, and was to be happy, you came between my love and me. you appeared in your own character as a liar, a slanderer and a traitor. i loved a man who was brave, honourable, faithful--reckless, perhaps, and wild as such men are--but devoted and true. you came between us. you told me that he was false, cowardly, an adventurer of the worst kind. because i would not believe you, and would have married him in spite of you, you killed him. was it cowardly of him to face the first swordsman in europe? they told me that he was not afraid of you, the men who saw it, and that he fought you like a lion, as he was. and the provocation, too! he never struck me. he was showing me what he meant by a term in fencing--the silver knife he held grazed my cheek because i was startled and moved. but you meant to kill him, and you chose to say that he had struck me. did you ever hear a harsh word from his lips during those months of waiting? when you had done your work you fled--like the murderer you were and are. but i escaped from the woman who says she is my mother--and is--and i went to him and found him living and married him. you used to tell me that he was an adventurer and little better than a beggar. yet he left me a large fortune. it is as well that he provided for me, since you have succeeded in losing most of your own money at play--doubtless to insure my not profiting by it at your death. not that you will die--men of your kind outlive their victims, because they kill them. "and now, when you saw--for you did see it--when you saw and knew that orsino saracinesca and i loved each other, you have broken my life a second time. you might so easily have gone to him, or have come to me, at the first, with the truth. you know that i should never forgive you for what you had done already. a little more could have made matters no worse then. you knew that don orsino would have thanked you as a friend for the warning. instead--i refuse to believe you in your dotage after all--you make that woman spy upon me until the great moment is come, you give her the weapons and you bid her strike when the blow will be most excruciating. you are not a man. you are satan. i parted twice from the man i love. he would not let me go, and he came back and tried to keep me--i do not know how i escaped. god helped me. he is so brave and noble that if he had held those accursed papers in his hands and known all the truth he would not have given me up. he would have brought a stain on his great name, and shame upon his great house for my sake. he is not like you. i parted from him twice, i know all that i can suffer, and i hate you for each individual suffering, great and small. "i have dismissed my mother from my service. how that would sound in rome! i have given her as much money as she can expect and i have got rid of her. she said that she would not go, that she would write to you, and many other things. i told her that if she attempted to stay i would go to the authorities, prove that she was my mother, provide for her, if the law required it and have her forcibly turned out of my house by the aid of the same law. i am of age, married, independent, and i cannot be obliged to entertain my mother either in the character of a servant, or as a visitor. i suppose she has a right to a lodging under your roof. i hope she will take advantage of it, as i advised her. she took the money and went away, cursing me. i think that if she had ever, in all my life, shown the smallest affection for me--even at the last, when she declared herself my mother, if she had shown a spark of motherly feeling, of tenderness, of anything human, i could have accepted her and tolerated her, half peasant woman as she is, spy as she has been, and cheat and thief. but she stood before me with the most perfect indifference, watching my surprise with those bad eyes of hers. i wonder why i have borne her presence so long. i suppose it had never struck me that i could get rid of her, in spite of you, if i chose. by the bye, i sent for a notary when i paid her, and i got a legal receipt signed with her legal name, lucrezia spicca, _ta ferris_. the document formally releases me from all further claims. i hope you will understand that you have no power whatsoever to impose her upon me again, though i confess that i am expecting your next move with interest. i suppose that you have not done with me yet, and have some new means of torment in reserve. satan is rarely idle long. "and now i have done. if you were not the villain you are, i should expect you to go to the man whose happiness i have endangered, if not destroyed. i should expect you to tell don orsino saracinesca enough of the truth to make him understand my action. but i know you far too well to imagine that you would willingly take from my life one thorn of the many you have planted in it. i will write to don orsino myself. i think you need not fear him--i am sorry that you need not. but i shall not tell him more than is necessary. you will remember, i hope, that such discretion as i may show, is not shown out of consideration for you, but out of forethought for my own welfare. i have unfortunately no means of preventing you from writing to me, but you may be sure that your letters will never be read, so that you will do as well to spare yourself the trouble of composing them. "maria consuelo d'aranjuez." spicca received this letter early in the morning, and at mid-day he still sat in his chair, holding it in his hand. his face was very white, his head hung forward upon his breast, his thin fingers were stiffened upon the thin paper. only the hardly perceptible rise and fall of the chest showed that he still breathed. the clocks had already struck twelve when his old servant entered the room, a being thin, wizened, grey and noiseless as the ghost of a greyhound. he stood still a moment before his master, expecting that he would look up, then bent anxiously over him and felt his hands. spicca slowly raised his sunken eyes. "it will pass, santi--it will pass," he said feebly. then he began to fold up the sheets slowly and with difficulty, but very neatly, as men of extraordinary skill with their hands do everything. santi looked at him doubtfully and then got a glass and a bottle of cordial from a small carved press in the corner. spicca drank the liqueur slowly and set the glass steadily upon the table. "bad news, signor conte?" asked the servant anxiously, and in a way which betrayed at once the kindly relations existing between the two. "very bad news," spicca answered sadly and shaking his head. santi sighed, restored the cordial to the press and took up the glass, as though he were about to leave the room. but he still lingered near the table, glancing uneasily at his master as though he had something to say, but was hesitating to begin. "what is it, santi?" asked the count. "i beg your pardon, signor conte--you have had bad news--if you will allow me to speak, there are several small economies which could still be managed without too much inconveniencing you. pardon the liberty, signor conte." "i know, i know. but it is not money this time. i wish it were." santi's expression immediately lost much of its anxiety. he had shared his master's fallen fortunes and knew better than he what he meant by a few more small economies, as he called them. "god be praised, signor conte," he said solemnly. "may i serve the breakfast?" "i have no appetite, santi. go and eat yourself." "a little something?" santi spoke in a coaxing way. "i have prepared a little mixed fry, with toast, as you like it, signor conte, and the salad is good to-day--ham and figs are also in the house. let me lay the cloth--when you see, you will eat--and just one egg beaten up with a glass of red wine to begin--that will dispose the stomach." spicca shook his head again, but santi paid no attention to the refusal and went about preparing the meal. when it was ready the old man suffered himself to be persuaded and ate a little. he was in reality stronger than he looked, and an extraordinary nervous energy still lurked beneath the appearance of a feebleness almost amounting to decrepitude. the little nourishment he took sufficed to restore the balance, and when he rose from the table, he was outwardly almost himself again. when a man has suffered great moral pain for years, he bears a new shock, even the worst, better than one who is hard hit in the midst of a placid and long habitual happiness. the soul can be taught to bear trouble as the great self mortifiers of an earlier time taught their bodies to bear scourging. the process is painful but hardening. "i feel better, santi," said spicca. "your breakfast has done me good. you are an excellent doctor." he turned away and took out his pocket-book--not over well garnished. he found a ten franc note. then he looked round and spoke in a gentle, kindly tone. "santi--this trouble has nothing to do with money. you need a new pair of shoes, i am sure. do you think that ten francs is enough?" santi bowed respectfully and took the money. "a thousand thanks, signor conte," he said. santi was a strange man, from the heart of the abruzzi. he pocketed the note, but that night, when he had undressed his master and was arranging the things on the dressing table, the ten francs found their way back into the black pocket-book. spicca never counted, and never knew. he did not write to maria consuelo, for he was well aware that in her present state of mind she would undoubtedly burn his letter unopened, as she had said she would. late in the day he went out, walked for an hour, entered the club and read the papers, and at last betook himself to the restaurant where orsino dined when his people were out of town. in due time, orsino appeared, looking pale and ill tempered. he caught sight of spicca and went at once to the table where he sat. "i have had a letter," said the young man. "i must speak to you. if you do not object, we will dine together." "by all means. there is nothing like a thoroughly bad dinner to promote ill-feeling." orsino glanced at the old man in momentary surprise. but he knew his ways tolerably well, and was familiar with the chronic acidity of his speech. "you probably guess who has written to me," orsino resumed. "it was natural, perhaps, that she should have something to say, but what she actually says, is more than i was prepared to hear." spicca's eyes grew less dull and he turned an inquiring glance on his companion. "when i tell you that in this letter, madame d'aranjuez has confided to me the true story of her origin, i have probably said enough," continued the young man. "you have said too much or too little," spicca answered in an almost indifferent tone. "how so?" "unless you tell me just what she has told you, or show me the letter, i cannot possibly judge of the truth of the tale." orsino raised his head angrily. "do you mean me to doubt that madame d'aranjuez speaks the truth?" he asked. "calm yourself. whatever madame d'aranjuez has written to you, she believes to be true. but she may have been herself deceived." "in spite of documents--public registers--" "ah! then she has told you about those certificates?" "that--and a great deal more which concerns you." "precisely. a great deal more. i know all about the registers, as you may easily suppose, seeing that they concern two somewhat important acts in my own life and that i was very careful to have those acts properly recorded, beyond the possibility of denial--beyond the possibility of denial," he repeated very slowly and emphatically. "do you understand that?" "it would not enter the mind of a sane person to doubt such evidence," answered orsino rather scornfully. "no, i suppose not. as you do not therefore come to me for confirmation of what is already undeniable, i cannot understand why you come to me at all in this matter, unless you do so on account of other things which madame d'aranjuez has written you, and of which you have so far kept me in ignorance." spicca spoke with a formal manner and in cold tones, drawing up his bent figure a little. a waiter came to the table and both men ordered their dinner. the interruption rather favoured the development of a hostile feeling between them, than otherwise. "i will explain my reasons for coming to find you here," said orsino when they were again alone. "so far as i am concerned, no explanation is necessary. i am content not to understand. moreover, this is a public place, in which we have accidentally met and dined together before." "i did not come here by accident," answered orsino. "and i did not come in order to give explanations but to ask for one." "ah?" spicca eyed him coolly. "yes. i wish to know why you have hated your daughter all her life, why you persecute her in every way, why you--" "will you kindly stop?" the old man's voice grew suddenly clear and incisive, and orsino broke off in the middle of his sentence. a moment's pause followed. "i requested you to stop speaking," spicca resumed, "because you were unconsciously making statements which have no foundation whatever in fact. observe that i say, unconsciously. you are completely mistaken. i do not hate madame d'aranjuez. i love her with all my heart and soul. i do not persecute her in every way, nor in any way. on the contrary, her happiness is the only object of such life as i still have to live, and i have little but that life left to give her. i am in earnest, orsino." "i see you are. that makes what you say all the more surprising." "no doubt it does. madame d'aranjuez has just written to you, and you have her letter in your pocket. she has told you in that letter a number of facts in her own life, as she sees them, and you look at them as she does. it is natural. to her and to you, i appear to be a monster of evil, a hideous incarnation of cruelty, a devil in short. did she call me a devil in her letter?" "she did." "precisely. she has also written to me, informing me that i am satan. there is a directness in the statement and a general disregard of probability which is not without charm. nevertheless, i am spicca, and not beelzebub, her assurances to the contrary notwithstanding. you see how views may differ. you know much of her life, but you know nothing of mine, nor is it my intention to tell you anything about myself. but i will tell you this much. if i could do anything to mend matters, i would. if i could make it possible for you to marry madame d'aranjuez--being what you are, and fenced in as you are, i would. if i could tell you all the rest of the truth, which she does not know, nor dream of, i would. i am bound by a very solemn promise of secrecy--by something more than a promise in fact. yet, if i could do good to her by breaking oaths, betraying confidence and trampling on the deepest obligations which can bind a man, i would. but that good cannot be done any more. that is all i can tell you." "it is little enough. you could, and you can, tell the whole truth, as you call it, to madame d'aranjuez. i would advise you to do so, instead of embittering her life at every turn." "i have not asked for your advice, orsino. that she is unhappy, i know. that she hates me, is clear. she would not be the happier for hating me less, since nothing else would be changed. she need not think of me, if the subject is disagreeable. in all other respects she is perfectly free. she is young, rich, and at liberty to go where she pleases and to do what she likes. so long as i am alive, i shall watch over her--" "and destroy every chance of happiness which presents itself," interrupted orsino. "i gave you some idea, the other night, of the happiness she might have enjoyed with the deceased aranjuez. if i made a mistake in regard to what i saw him do--i admit the possibility of an error--i was nevertheless quite right in ridding her of the man. i have atoned for the mistake, if we call it so, in a way of which you do not dream, nor she either. the good remains, for aranjuez is buried." "you speak of secret atonement--i was not aware that you ever suffered from remorse." "nor i," answered spicca drily. "then what do you mean?" "you are questioning me, and i have warned you that i will tell you nothing about myself. you will confer a great favour upon me by not insisting." "are you threatening me again?" "i am not doing anything of the kind. i never threaten any one. i could kill you as easily as i killed aranjuez, old and decrepit as i look, and i should be perfectly indifferent to the opprobrium of killing so young a man--though i think that, looking at us two, many people might suppose the advantage to be on your side rather than on mine. but young men nowadays do not learn to handle arms. short of laying violent hands upon me, you will find it quite impossible to provoke me. i am almost old enough to be your grandfather, and i understand you very well. you love madame d'aranjuez. she knows that to marry you would be to bring about such a quarrel with your family as might ruin half your life, and she has the rare courage to tell you so and to refuse your offer. you think that i can do something to help you and you are incensed because i am powerless, and furious because i object to your leaving rome in the same train with her, against her will. you are more furious still to-day because you have adopted her belief that i am a monster of iniquity. observe--that, apart from hindering you from a great piece of folly the other day, i have never interfered. i do not interfere now. as i said then, follow her if you please, persuade her to marry you if you can, quarrel with all your family if you like. it is nothing to me. publish the banns of your marriage on the doors of the capitol and declare to the whole world that madame d'aranjuez, the future princess saracinesca, is the daughter of count spicca and lucrezia ferris, his lawful wife. there will be a little talk, but it will not hurt me. people have kept their marriages a secret for a whole lifetime before now. i do not care what you do, nor what the whole tribe of the saracinesca may do, provided that none of you do harm to maria consuelo, nor bring useless suffering upon her. if any of you do that, i will kill you. that at least is a threat, if you like. good-night." thereupon spicca rose suddenly from his seat, leaving his dinner unfinished, and went out. chapter xxvi. orsino did not leave rome after all. he was not in reality prevented from doing so by the necessity of attending to his business, for he might assuredly have absented himself for a week or two at almost any time before the new year, without incurring any especial danger. from time to time, at ever increasing intervals, he felt strongly impelled to rejoin maria consuelo in paris where she had ultimately determined to spend the autumn and winter, but the impulse always lacked just the measure of strength which would have made it a resolution. when he thought of his many hesitations he did not understand himself and he fell in his own estimation, so that he became by degrees more silent and melancholy of disposition than had originally been natural with him. he had much time for reflection and he constantly brooded over the situation in which he found himself. the question seemed to be, whether he loved maria consuelo or not, since he was able to display such apparent indifference to her absence. in reality he also doubted whether he was loved by her, and the one uncertainty was fully as great as the other. he went over all that had passed. the position had never been an easy one, and the letter which maria consuelo had written to him after her departure had not made it easier. it had contained the revelations concerning her birth, together with many references to spicca's continued cruelty, plentifully supported by statements of facts. she had then distinctly told orsino that she would never marry him, under any circumstances whatever, declaring that if he followed her she would not even see him. she would not ruin his life and plunge him into a life long quarrel with his family, she said, and she added that she would certainly not expose herself to such treatment as she would undoubtedly receive at the hands of the saracinesca if she married orsino without his parents' consent. a man does not easily believe that he is deprived of what he most desires exclusively for his own good and welfare, and the last sentence quoted wounded orsino deeply. he believed himself ready to incur the displeasure of all his people for maria consuelo's sake, and he said in his heart that if she loved him she should be ready to bear as much as he. the language in which she expressed herself, too, was cold and almost incisive. unlike spicca orsino answered this letter, writing in an argumentative strain, bringing the best reasons he could find to bear against those she alleged, and at last reproaching her with not being willing to suffer for his sake a tenth part of what he would endure for her. but he announced his intention of joining her before long, and expressed the certainty that she would receive him. to this maria consuelo made no reply for some time. when she wrote at last, it was to say that she had carefully considered her decision and saw no good cause for changing it. to orsino her tone seemed colder and more distant than ever. the fact that the pages were blotted here and there and that the handwriting was unsteady, was probably to be referred to her carelessness. he brooded over his misfortune, thought more than once of making a desperate effort to win back her love, and remained in rome. after a long interval he wrote to her again. this time he produced an epistle which, under the circumstances, might have seemed almost ridiculous. it was full of indifferent gossip about society, it contained a few sarcastic remarks about his own approaching failure, with some rather youthfully cynical observations on the instability of things in general and the hollowness of all aspirations whatsoever. he received no answer, and duly repented the flippant tone he had taken. he would have been greatly surprised could he have learned that this last letter was destined to produce a greater effect upon his life than all he had written before it. in the meanwhile his father, who had heard of the increasing troubles in the world of business, wrote him in a constant strain of warning, to which he paid little attention. his mother's letters, too, betrayed her anxiety, but expressed what his father's did not, to wit the most boundless confidence in his power to extricate himself honourably from all difficulties, together with the assurance that if worst came to worst she was always ready to help him. suddenly and without warning old saracinesca returned from his wanderings. he had taken the trouble to keep the family informed of his movements by his secretary during two or three months and had then temporarily allowed them to lose sight of him, thereby causing them considerable anxiety, though an occasional paragraph in a newspaper reassured them from time to time. then, on a certain afternoon in november, he appeared, alone and in a cab, as though he had been out for a stroll. "well, my boy, are you ruined yet?" he inquired, entering orsino's room without ceremony. the young man started from his seat and took the old gentleman's rough hand, with an exclamation of surprise. "yes--you may well look at me," laughed the prince. "i have grown ten years younger. and you?" he pushed his grandson into the light and scrutinised his face fiercely. "and you are ten years older," he concluded, in a discontented tone. "i did not know it," answered orsino with an attempt at a laugh. "you have been at some mischief. i know it. i can see it." he dropped the young fellow's arm, shook his head and began to move about the room. then he came back all at once and looked up into orsino's face from beneath his bushy eyebrows. "out with it, i mean to know!" he said, roughly but not unkindly. "have you lost money? are you ill? are you in love?" orsino would certainly have resented the first and the last questions, if not all three, had they been put to him by his father. there was something in the old prince's nature, something warmer and more human, which appealed to his own. sant' ilario was, and always had been, outwardly cold, somewhat measured in his speech, undemonstrative, a man not easily moved to much expression or to real sympathy except by love, but capable, under that influence, of going to great lengths. and orsino, though in some respects resembling his mother rather than his father, was not unlike the latter, with a larger measure of ambition and less real pride. it was probably the latter characteristic which made him feel the need of sympathy in a way his father had never felt it and could never understand it, and he was thereby drawn more closely to his mother and to his grandfather than to sant' ilario. old saracinesca evidently meant to be answered, as he stood there gazing into orsino's eyes. "a great deal has happened since you went away," said orsino, half wishing that he could tell everything. "in the first place, business is in a very bad state, and i am anxious." "dirty work, business," grumbled saracinesca. "i always told you so. then you have lost money, you young idiot! i thought so. did you think you were any better than montevarchi? i hope you have kept your name out of the market, at all events. what in the name of heaven made you put your hand to such filth! come--how much do you want? we will whitewash you and you shall start to-morrow and go round the world." "but i am not in actual need of money at all--" "then what the devil are you in need of?" "an improvement in business, and the assurance that i shall not ultimately be bankrupt." "if money is not an assurance that you will not be bankrupt, i would like to learn what is. all this is nonsense. tell me the truth, my boy--you are in love. that is the trouble." orsino shrugged his shoulders. "i have been in love some time," he answered. "young? old? marriageable? married? out with it, i say!" "i would rather talk about business. i think it is all over now." "just like your father--always full of secrets! as if i did not know all about it. you are in love with that madame d'aranjuez." orsino turned a little pale. "please do not call her 'that' madame d'aranjuez," he said, gravely. "eh? what? are you so sensitive about her?" "yes." "you are? very well--i like that. what about her?" "what a question!" "i mean--is she indifferent, cold, in love with some one else?" "not that i am aware. she has refused to marry me and has left rome, that is all." "refused to marry you!" cried old saracinesca in boundless astonishment. "my dear boy, you must be out of your mind! the thing is impossible. you are the best match in rome. madame d'aranjuez refuse you--absolutely incredible, not to be believed for a moment. you are dreaming. a widow--without much fortune--the relict of some curious adventurer--a woman looking for a fortune, a woman--" "stop!" cried orsino, savagely. "oh yes--i forgot. you are sensitive. well, well, i meant nothing against her, except that she must be insane if what you tell me is true. but i am glad of it, my boy, very glad. she is no match for you, orsino. i confess, i wish you would marry at once. i would like to see my great grandchildren--but not madame d'aranjuez. a widow, too." "my father married a widow." "when you find a widow like your mother, and ten years younger than yourself, marry her if you can. but not madame d'aranjuez--older than you by several years." "a few years." "is that all? it is too much, though. and who is madame d'aranjuez? everybody was asking the question last winter. i suppose she had a name before she married, and since you have been trying to make her your wife, you must know all about her. who was she?" orsino hesitated. "you see!" cried, the old prince. "it is not all right. there is a secret--there is something wrong about her family, or about her entrance into the world. she knows perfectly well that we would never receive her and has concealed it all from you--" "she has not concealed it. she has told me the exact truth. but i shall not repeat it to you." "all the stronger proof that everything is not right. you are well out of it, my boy, exceedingly well out of it. i congratulate you." "i would rather not be congratulated." "as you please. i am sorry for you, if you are unhappy. try and forget all about it. how is your mother?" at any other time orsino would have laughed at the characteristic abruptness. "perfectly well, i believe. i have not seen her all summer," he answered gravely. "not been to saracinesca all summer! no wonder you look ill. telegraph to them that i have come back and let us get the family together as soon as possible. do you think i mean to spend six months alone in your company, especially when you are away all day at that wretched office of yours? be quick about it--telegraph at once." "very well. but please do not repeat anything of what i have told you to my father or my mother. that is the only thing i have to ask." "am i a parrot? i never talk to them of your affairs." "thanks. i am grateful." "to heaven because your grandfather is not a parakeet! no doubt. you have good cause. and look here, orsino--" the old man took orsino's arm and held it firmly, speaking in a lower tone. "do not make an ass of yourself, my boy--especially in business. but if you do--and you probably will, you know--just come to me, without speaking to any one else. i will see what can be done without noise. there--take that, and forget all about your troubles and get a little more colour into your face." "you are too good to me," said orsino, grasping the old prince's hand. for once, he was really moved. "nonsense--go and send that telegram at once. i do not want to be kept waiting a week for a sight of my family." with a deep, good humoured laugh he pushed orsino out of the door in front of him and went off to his own quarters. in due time the family returned from saracinesca and the gloomy old palace waked to life again. corona and her husband were both struck by the change in orsino's appearance, which indeed contrasted strongly with their own, refreshed and strengthened as they were by the keen mountain air, the endless out-of-door life, the manifold occupations of people deeply interested in the welfare of those around them and supremely conscious of their own power to produce good results in their own way. when they all came back, orsino himself felt how jaded and worn he was as compared with them. before twelve hours had gone by, he found himself alone with his mother. strange to say he had not looked forward to the interview with pleasure. the bond of sympathy which had so closely united the two during the spring seemed weakened, and orsino would, if possible, have put off the renewal of intimate converse which he knew to be inevitable. but that could not be done. it would not be hard to find reasons for his wishing to avoid his mother. formerly his daily tale had been one of success, of hope, of ever increasing confidence. now he had nothing to tell of but danger and anxiety for the future, and he was not without a suspicion that she would strongly disapprove of his allowing himself to be kept afloat by del ferice's personal influence, and perhaps by his personal aid. it was hard to begin daily intercourse on a basis of things so different from that which had seemed solid and safe when they had last talked together. he had learned to bear his own troubles bravely, too, and there was something which he associated with weakness in the idea of asking sympathy for them now. he would rather have been left alone. deep down, too, was the consciousness of all that had happened between himself and maria consuelo since his mother's departure. another suffering, another and distinctly different misfortune, to be borne better in silence than under question even of the most affectionate kind. his grandfather had indeed guessed at both truths and had taxed him with them at once, but that was quite another matter. he knew that the old gentleman would never refer again to what he had learned, and he appreciated the generous offer of help, of which he would never avail himself, in a way in which he could not appreciate an assistance even more lovingly proffered, perhaps, but which must be asked for by a confession of his own failure. on the other hand, he was incapable of distorting the facts in any way so as to make his mother believe him more successful than he actually was. there was nothing dishonest, perhaps, in pretending to be hopeful when he really had little hope, but he could not have represented the condition of the business otherwise than as it really stood. the interview was a long one, and corona's dark face grew grave if not despondent as he explained to her one point after another, taking especial care to elucidate all that bore upon his relations with del ferice. it was most important that his mother should understand how he was placed, and how del ferice's continued advances of money were not to be regarded in the light of a personal favour, but as a speculation in which ugo would probably get the best of the bargain. orsino knew how sensitive his mother would be on such a point, and dreaded the moment when she should begin to think that he was laying himself under obligations beyond the strict limits of business. corona leaned back in her low seat and covered her eyes with one hand for a moment, in deep thought. orsino waited anxiously for her to speak. "my dear," she said at last, "you make it very clear, and i understand you perfectly. nevertheless, it seems to me that your position is not very dignified, considering who you are, and what del ferice is. do you not think so yourself?" orsino flushed a little. she had not put the point as he had expected, and her words told upon him. "when i entered business, i put my dignity in my pocket," he answered, with a forced laugh. "there cannot be much of it in business, at the best." his mother's black eyes seemed to grow blacker, and the delicate nostril quivered a little. "if that is true, i wish you had never meddled in these affairs," she said, proudly. "but you talked differently last spring, and you made me see it all in another way. you made me feel, on the contrary that in doing something for yourself, in showing that you were able to accomplish something, in asserting your independence, you were making yourself more worthy of respect--and i have respected you accordingly." "exactly," answered orsino, catching at the old argument. "that is just what i wished to do. what i said a moment since was in the way of a generality. business means a struggle for money, i suppose, and that, in itself, is not dignified. but it is not dishonourable. after all, the means may justify the end." "i hate that saying!" exclaimed corona hotly. "i wish you were free of the whole affair." "so do i, with all my heart!" a short silence followed. "if i had known all this three months ago," corona resumed, "i would have taken the money and given it to you, to clear yourself. i thought you were succeeding and i have used all the funds i could gather to buy the montevarchi's property between us and affile and in planting eucalyptus trees in that low land of mine where the people have suffered so much from fever. i have nothing at my disposal unless i borrow. why did you not tell me the truth in the summer, orsino? why have you let me imagine that you were prospering all along, when you have been and are at the point of failure? it is too bad--" she broke off suddenly and clasped her hands together on her knee. "it is only lately that business has gone so badly," said orsino. "it was all wrong from the beginning! i should never have encouraged you. your father was right, as he always is--and now you must tell him so." but orsino refused to go to his father, except in the last extremity. he represented that it was better, and more dignified, since corona insisted upon the point of dignity, to fight the battle alone so long as there was a chance of winning. his mother, on the other hand, maintained that he should free himself at once and at any cost. a few months earlier he could easily have persuaded her that he was right; but she seemed changed since he had parted from her, and he fancied that his father's influence had been at work with her. this he resented bitterly. it must be remembered, too, that he had begun the interview with a preconceived prejudice, expecting it to turn out badly, so that he was the more ready to allow matters to take an unfavourable turn. the result was not a decided break in his relations with his mother, but a state of things more irritating than any open difference could have been. from that time corona discouraged him, and never ceased to advise him to go to his father and ask frankly for enough money to clear him outright. orsino, on his part, obstinately refused to apply to any one for help, as long as del ferice continued to advance him money. in those months which followed there were few indeed who did not suffer in the almost universal financial cataclysm. all that contini and others, older and wiser than he, had predicted, took place, and more also. the banks refused discount, even upon the best paper, saying with justice that they were obliged to hold their funds in reserve at such a time. the works stopped almost everywhere. it was impossible to raise money. thousands upon thousands of workmen who had come from great distances during the past two or three years were suddenly thrown out of work, penniless in the streets and many of them burdened with wives and children. there were one or two small riots and there was much demonstration, but, on the whole, the poor masons behaved very well. the government and the municipality did what they could--what governments and municipalities can do when hampered at every turn by the most complicated and ill-considered machinery of administration ever invented in any country. the starving workmen were by slow degrees got out of the city and sent back to starve out of sight in their native places. the emigration was enormous in all directions. the dismal ruins of that new city which was to have been built and which never reached completion are visible everywhere. houses seven stories high, abandoned within a month of completion rise uninhabited and uninhabitable out of a rank growth of weeds, amidst heaps of rubbish, staring down at the broad, desolate streets where the vigorous grass pushes its way up through the loose stones of the unrolled metalling. amidst heavy low walls which were to have been the ground stories of palaces, a few ragged children play in the sun, a lean donkey crops the thistles, or if near to a few occupied dwellings, a wine seller makes a booth of straw and chestnut boughs and dispenses a poisonous, sour drink to those who will buy. but that is only in the warm months. the winter winds blow the wretched booth to pieces and increase the desolation. further on, tall faã§ades rise suddenly up, the blue sky gleaming through their windows, the green moss already growing upon their naked stones and bricks. the barbarini of the future, if any should arise, will not need to despoil the colosseum to quarry material for their palaces. if, as the old pasquinade had it the barbarini did what the barbarians did not, how much worse than barbarians have these modern civilizers done! the distress was very great in the early months of 1889. the satisfaction which many of the new men would have felt at the ruin of great old families was effectually neutralized by their own financial destruction. princes, bankers, contractors and master masons went down together in the general bankruptcy. ugo del ferice survived and with him andrea contini and company, and doubtless other small firms which he protected for his own ends. san giacinto, calm, far-seeing, and keen as an eagle, surveyed the chaos from the height of his magnificent fortune, unmoved and immovable, awaiting the lowest ebb of the tide. the saracinesca looked on, hampered a little by the sudden fall in rents and other sources of their income, but still superior to events, though secretly anxious about orsino's affairs, and daily expecting that he must fail. and orsino himself had changed, as was natural enough. he was learning to seem what he was not, and those who have learned that lesson know how it influences the real man whom no one can judge but himself. so long as there had been one person in his life with whom he could live in perfect sympathy he had given himself little trouble about his outward behaviour. so long as he had felt that, come what might, his mother was on his side, he had not thought it worth his while not to be natural with every one, according to his humour. he was wrong, no doubt, in fancying that corona had deserted him. but he had already suffered a loss, in maria consuelo, which had at the time seemed the greatest conceivable, and the pain he had suffered then, together with, the deep though, unacknowledged wound to his vanity, had predisposed him to believe that he was destined to be friendless. the consequence was that a very slight break in the perfect understanding which had so long existed between him and his mother had produced serious results. he now felt that he was completely alone, and like most lonely men of sound character he acquired the habit of keeping his troubles entirely to himself, while affecting an almost unnaturally quiet and equable manner with those around him. on the whole, he found that his life was easier when he lived it on this principle. he found that he was more careful in his actions since he had a part to sustain, and that his opinion carried more weight since he expressed it more cautiously and seemed less liable to fluctuations of mood and temper. the change in his character was more apparent than real, perhaps, as changes of character generally are when not in the way of logical development; but the constant thought of appearances reacts upon the inner nature in the end, and much which at first is only put on, becomes a habit next, and ends by taking the place of an impulse. orsino was aware that his chief preoccupation was identical with that which absorbed his mother's thoughts. he wished to free himself from the business in which he was so deeply involved, and which still prospered so strangely in spite of the general ruin. but here the community of ideas ended. he wished to free himself in his own way, without humiliating himself by going to his father for help. meanwhile, too, sant' ilario himself had his doubts concerning his own judgment. it was inconceivable to him that del ferice could be losing money to oblige orsino, and if he had desired to ruin him he could have done so with ease a hundred times in the past months. it might be, he said to himself, that orsino had after all, a surprising genius for affairs and had weathered the storm in the face of tremendous difficulties. orsino saw the belief growing in his father's mind, and the certainty that it was there did not dispose him to throw up the fight and acknowledge himself beaten. the saracinesca were one of the very few roman families in which there is a tradition in favour of non-interference with the action of children already of age. the consequence was that although the old prince, giovanni and his wife, all three felt considerable anxiety, they did nothing to hamper orsino's action, beyond an occasionally repeated warning to be careful. that his occupation was distasteful to them, they did not conceal, but he met their expressions of opinion with perfect equanimity and outward good humour, even when his mother, once his staunch ally, openly advised him to give up business and travel for a year. their prejudice was certainly not unnatural, and had been strengthened by the perusal of the unsavoury details published by the papers at each new bankruptcy during the year. but they found orsino now always the same, always quiet, good-humoured and firm in his projects. andrea contini had not been very exact in his calculation of the date at which the last door and the last window would be placed in the last of the houses which he and orsino had undertaken to build. the disturbance in business might account for the delay. at all events it was late in april of the following year before the work was completed. then orsino went to del ferice. "of course," he said, maintaining the appearance of calm which had now become habitual with him, "i cannot expect to pay what i owe the bank, unless i can effect a sale of these buildings. you have known that, all along, as well as i. the question is, can they be sold?" "you have no applicant, then?" del ferice looked grave and somewhat surprised. "no. we have received no offer." "you owe the bank a very large sum on these buildings, don orsino." "secured by mortgages on them," answered the young man quietly, but preparing for trouble. "just so. secured by mortgages. but if the bank should foreclose within the next few months, and if the buildings do not realize the amount secured, contini and company are liable for the difference." "i know that." "and the market is very bad, don orsino, and shows no signs of improvement." "on the other hand the houses are finished, habitable, and can be let immediately." "they are certainly finished. you must be aware that the bank has continued to advance the sums necessary for two reasons. firstly, because an expensive but habitable dwelling is better than a cheap one with no roof. secondly, because in doing business with andrea contini and company we have been dealing with the only really honest and economical firm in rome." orsino smiled vaguely, but said nothing. he had not much faith in del ferice's flattery. "but that," continued the latter, "does not dispense us from the necessity of realising what is owing to us--i mean the bank--either in money, or in an equivalent--or in an equivalent," he repeated, thoughtfully rolling a big silver pencil case backward and forward upon the table under his fat white hand. "evidently," assented orsino. "unfortunately, at the present time, there seems to be no equivalent for ready money." "no--no--perhaps not," said ugo, apparently becoming more and more absorbed in his own thoughts. "and yet," he added, after a little pause, "an arrangement may be possible. the houses certainly possess advantages over much of this wretched property which is thrown upon the market. the position is good and the work is good. your work is very good, don orsino. you know that better than i. yes--the houses have advantages, i admit. the bank has a great deal of waste masonry on its hands, don orsino--more than i like to think of." "unfortunately, again, the time for improving such property is gone by." "it is never too late to mend, says the proverb," retorted del ferice with a smile. "i have a proposition to make. i will state it clearly. if it is not to our mutual advantage, i think neither of us will lose so much by it as we should lose in other ways. it is simply this. we will cry quits. you have a small account current with the bank, and you must sacrifice the credit balance--it is not much, i find--about thirty-five thousand." "that was chiefly the profit on the first contract," observed orsino. "precisely. it will help to cover the bank's loss on this. it will help, because when i say we will cry quits, i mean that you shall receive an equivalent for your houses--a nominal equivalent of course, which the bank nominally takes back as payment of the mortgages." "that is not very clear," said orsino. "i do not understand you." "no," laughed del ferice. "i admit that it is not. it represented rather my own view of the transaction than the practical side. but i will explain myself beyond the possibility of mistake. the bank takes the houses and your cash balance and cancels the mortgages. you are then released from all debt and all obligation upon the old contract. but the bank makes one condition which, is important. you must buy from the bank, on mortgage of course, certain unfinished buildings which it now owns, and you--andrea contini and company--must take a contract to complete them within a given time, the bank advancing you money as before upon notes of hand, secured by subsequent and successive mortgages." orsino was silent. he saw that if he accepted, del ferice was receiving the work of a whole year and more without allowing the smallest profit to the workers, besides absorbing the profits of a previous successfully executed contract, and besides taking it for granted that the existing mortgages only just covered the value of the buildings. if, as was probable, del ferice had means of either selling or letting the houses, he stood to make an enormous profit. he saw, too, that if he accepted now, he must in all likelihood be driven to accept similar conditions on a future occasion, and that he would be binding andrea contini and himself to work, and to work hard, for nothing and perhaps during years. but he saw also that the only alternative was an appeal to his father, or bankruptcy which ultimately meant the same thing. del ferice spoke again. "whether you agree, or whether you prefer a foreclosure, we shall both lose. but we should lose more by the latter course. in the interests of the bank i trust that you will accept. you see how frankly i speak about it. in the interests of the bank. but then, i need not remind you that it would hardly be fair to let us lose heavily when you can make the loss relatively a slight one--considering how the bank has behaved to you, and to you alone, throughout this fatal year." "i will give you an answer to-morrow," said orsino. he thought of poor contini who would find that he had worked for nothing during a whole year. but then, it would be easy for orsino to give contini a sum of money out of his private resources. anything was better than giving up the struggle and applying to his father. chapter xxvii. orsino was to all intents and purposes without a friend. how far circumstances had contributed to this result and how far he himself was to blame for his lonely state, those may judge who have followed his history to this point. his grandfather had indeed offered him help and in a way to make it acceptable if he had felt that he could accept it at all. but the old prince did not in the least understand the business nor the situation. moreover a young fellow of two or three and twenty does not look for a friend in the person of a man sixty years older than himself. while maintaining the most uniformly good relations in his home, orsino felt himself estranged from his father and mother. his brothers were too young, and were generally away from home at school and college, and he had no sisters. beyond the walls of the palazzo saracinesca, san giacinto was the only man whom he would willingly have consulted; but san giacinto was of all men the one least inclined to intimacy with his neighbours, and, after all, as orsino reflected, he would probably repeat the advice he had already given, if he vouchsafed counsel of any kind. he thought of all his acquaintance and came to the conclusion that he was in reality in terms more closely approaching to friendship with andrea contini than with any man of his own class. yet he would have hesitated to call the architect his friend, as he would have found it impossible to confide in him concerning any detail of his own private life. at a time when most young men are making friends, orsino had been hindered, from the formation of such ties by the two great interests which had absorbed his existence, his attachment and subsequent love for maria consuelo, and the business at which he had worked so steadily. he had lost maria consuelo, in whom he would have confided as he had often done before, and at the present important juncture he stood quite alone. he felt that he was no match for del ferice. the keen banker was making use of him for his own purposes in a way which neither orsino nor contini had ever suspected. it could not be supposed that ugo had foreseen from the first the advantage he might reap from the firm he had created and which was so wholly dependent on him. orsino might have turned out ignorant and incapable. contini might have proved idle and even dishonest. but, instead of this, the experiment had succeeded admirably and ugo found himself possessed of an instrument, as it were, precisely adapted to his end, which was to make worthless property valuable at the smallest possible expense, in fact, at the lowest cost price. he had secured a first-rate architect and a first-rate accountant, both men of spotless integrity, both young, energetic and unusually industrious. he paid nothing for their services and he entirely controlled their expenditure. it was clear that he would do his utmost to maintain an arrangement so immensely profitable to himself. if orsino had realised exactly how profitable it was, he might have forced del ferice to share the gain with him, and would have done so for the sake of contini, if not for his own. he suspected, indeed, that ugo was certain beforehand, in each case, of selling or letting the houses, but he had no proof of the fact. ugo did not leave everything to his confidential clerk, and the secrets he kept to himself were well kept. orsino consulted contini, as a matter of necessity, before accepting del ferice's last offer. the architect went into a tragic-comic rage, bit his cigar through several times, ground his teeth, drank several glasses of cold water, talked of the blood of cola di rienzo, vowed vengeance on del ferice and finally submitted. the signing of the new contract determined the course of orsino's life for another year. it is surprising to see, in the existence of others, how periods of monotonous calm succeed seasons of storm and danger. in our own they do not astonish us so much, if at all. orsino continued to work hard, to live regularly and to do all those things which, under the circumstances he ought to have done and earned the reputation of being a model young man, a fact which surprised him on one or two occasions when it came to his ears. yet when he reflected upon it, he saw that he was in reality not like other young men, and that his conduct was undoubtedly abnormally good as viewed by those around him. his grandfather began to look upon him as something almost unnatural, and more than once hinted to giovanni that the boy, as he still called him, ought to behave like other boys. "he is more like san giacinto than any of us," said giovanni, thoughtfully. "he has taken after that branch." "if that is the case, he might have done worse," answered the old man. "i like san giacinto. but you always judge superficially, giovanni--you always did. and the worst of it is, you are always perfectly well satisfied with your own judgments." "possibly. i have certainly not accepted those of others." "and the result is that you are turning into an oyster--and orsino has begun to turn into an oyster, too, and the other boys will follow his example--a perfect oyster-bed! go and take orsino by the throat and shake him--" "i regret to say that i am physically not equal to that feat," said giovanni with a laugh. "i should be!" exclaimed the aged prince, doubling his hard hand and bringing it down on the table, while his bright eyes gleamed. "go and shake him, and tell him to give up this dirty building business--make him give it up, buy him out of it, put plenty of money into his pockets and send him off to amuse himself! you and corona have made a prig of him, and business is making an oyster of him, and he will be a hopeless idiot before you realise it! stir him, shake him, make him move! i hate your furniture-man--who is always in the right place and always ready to be sat upon!" "if you can persuade him to give up affairs i have no objection." "persuade him! i never knew a man worth speaking to who could be persuaded to anything he did not like. make him--that is the way." "but since he is behaving himself and is occupied--that is better than the lives all these young fellows are leading." "do not argue with me, giovanni, i hate it. besides, your reason is worth nothing at all. did i spend my youth over accounts, in the society of an architect? did i put water in my wine and sit up like a model little boy at my papa's table and spend my evenings in carrying my mamma's fan? nonsense! and yet all that was expected in my day, in a way it is not expected now. look at yourself. you are bad enough--dull enough, i mean. did you waste the best years of your life in counting bricks and measuring mortar?" "you say that you hate argument, and yet you are arguing. but orsino shall please himself, as i did, and in his own way. i will certainly not interfere." "because you know you can do nothing with him!" retorted old saracinesca contemptuously. giovanni laughed. twenty years earlier he would have lost his temper to no purpose. but twenty years of unruffled existence had changed him. "you are not the man you were," grumbled his father. "no. i have been too happy, far too long, to be much like what i was at thirty." "and do you mean to say i am not happy, and have not been happy, and do not mean to be happy, and do not wish everybody to be happy, so long as this old machine hangs together? what nonsense you talk, my boy. go and make love to your wife. that is all you are fit for!" discussions of this kind were not unfrequent but of course led to nothing. as a matter of fact sant' ilario was quite right in believing interference useless. it would have been impossible. he was no more able to change orsino's determination than he was physically capable of shaking him. not that sant' ilario was weak, physically or morally, nor ever had been. but his son had grown up to be stronger than he. twelve months passed away. during that time the young man worked, as he had worked before, regularly and untiringly. but his object now was to free himself, and he no longer hoped to make a fortune or to do any thing beyond the strict execution of the contract he had in hand, determined if possible to avoid taking another. with a coolness and self-denial beyond his years, he systematically hoarded the allowance he received from his father, in order to put together a sum of money for poor contini. he made economies everywhere, refused to go into society and spent his evenings in reading. his acquired manner stood him in good stead, but he could not bear more than a limited amount of the daily talk in the family. being witty, rather than gay, if he could be said to be either, he found himself inclined rather to be bitter than amusing when he was wearied by the monotonous conversation of others. he knew this to be a mistake and controlled himself, taking refuge in solitude and books when he could control himself no longer. whether he loved maria consuelo still, or not, it was clear that he was not inclined to love any one else for the present. the tolerably harmless dissipation and wildness of the two or three years he had spent in england could not account for such a period of coldness as followed his separation from maria consuelo. he had by no means exhausted the pleasures of life and his capacity for enjoyment could not even be said to have reached its height. but he avoided the society of women even more consistently than he shunned the club and the card table. more than a year had gone by since he had heard from maria consuelo. he met spicca from time to time, looking now as though he had not a day to live, but neither of them mentioned past events. the romans had talked a little of her sudden change of plans, for it had been known that she had begun to furnish a large apartment for the winter of the previous year, and had then very unaccountably changed her mind and left the place in the hands of an agent to be sub-let. people said she had lost her fortune. then she had been forgotten in the general disaster that followed, and no one had taken the trouble to remember her since then. even gouache, who had once been so enthusiastic over her portrait, did not seem to know or care what had become of her. once only, and quite accidentally, orsino had authentic information of her whereabouts. he took up an english society journal one evening and glanced idly over the paragraphs. maria consuelo's name arrested his attention. a certain very high and mighty old lady of royal lineage was about to travel in egypt during the winter. "her royal highness," said the paper, "will be accompanied by the countess d'aranjuez d'aragona." orsino's hand shook a little as he laid the sheet aside, and he was pale when he rose a few moments later and went off to his own room. he could not help wondering why maria consuelo was styled by a title to which she certainly had a legal right, but which she had never before used, and he wondered still more why she travelled in egypt with an old princess who was generally said to be anything but an agreeable companion, and was reported to be quite deaf. but on the whole he thought little of the information itself. it was the sight of maria consuelo's name which had moved him, and he was not altogether himself for several days. the impression wore off before long, and he followed the round of his monotonous life as before. early in the month of march in the year 1890, he was seated alone in his room one evening before dinner. the great contract he had undertaken was almost finished, and he knew that within two months he would be placed in the same difficult position from which he had formerly so signally failed to extricate himself. that he and contini had executed the terms of the contract with scrupulous and conscientious nicety did not better the position. that they had made the most strenuous efforts to find purchasers for the property, as they had a right to do if they could, and had failed, made the position hopeless or almost as bad as that. whether they liked it or not, del ferice had so arranged that the great mass of their acceptances should fall due about the time when the work would be finished. to mortgage on the same terms or anything approaching the same terms with any other bank was out of the question, so that they had no hope of holding the property for the purpose of leasing it. even if orsino could have contemplated for a moment such an act of bad faith as wilfully retarding the work in order to gain a renewal of the bills, such a course could have led to no actual improvement in the situation. the property was unsaleable and del ferice knew it, and had no intention of selling it. he meant to keep it for himself and let it, as a permanent source of income. it would not have cost him in the end one half of its actual value, and was exceptionally good property. orsino saw how hopeless it was to attempt resistance, unless he would resign himself to voting an appeal to his own people, and this, as of old, he was resolved not to do. he was reflecting upon his life of bondage when a servant brought him a letter. he tossed it aside without looking at it, but it chanced to slip from the polished table and fall to the ground. as he picked it up his attention was arrested by the handwriting and by the stamp. the stamp was egyptian and the writing was that of maria consuelo. he started, tore open the envelope and took out a letter of many pages, written on thin paper. at first he found it hard to follow the characters, and his heart beat at a rate which annoyed him. he rose, walked the length of the room and back again, sat down in another seat close to the lamp and read the letter steadily from beginning to end. "my dear friend--you may, perhaps, be surprised at hearing from me after so long a time. i received your last letter. how long ago was that? twelve, fourteen, fifteen months? i do not know. it is as well to forget, since i at least would rather not remember what you wrote. and i write now--why? simply because i have the impulse to do so. that is the best of all reasons. i wish to hear from you, which is selfish; and i wish to hear about you, which is not. are you still working at that business in which you were so much interested? or have you given it up and gone back to the life you used to hate so thoroughly? i would like to know. do you remember how angry i was long ago, because you agreed to meet del ferice in my drawing-room? i was very wrong, for the meeting led to many good results. i like to think that you are not quite like all the young men of your set, who do nothing--and cannot even do that gracefully. i think you used those very words about yourself, once upon a time. but you proved that you could live a very different life if you chose. i hope you are living it still. "and so poor donna tullia is dead--has been dead a year and a half! i wrote del ferice a long letter when i got the news. he answered me. he is not as bad as you used to think, for he was terribly pained by his loss--i could see that well enough in what he wrote though there was nothing exaggerated or desperate in the phrases. in fact there were no phrases at all. i wish i had kept the letter to send to you, but i never keep letters. poor donna tullia! i cannot imagine rome without her. it would certainly not be the same place to me, for she was uniformly kind and thoughtful where i was concerned, whatever she may have been to others. "echoes reach me from time to time in different parts of the world, as i travel, and rome seems to be changed in many ways. they say the ruin was dreadful when the crash came. i suppose you gave up business then, as was natural, since they say there is no more business to do. but i would be glad to know that nothing disagreeable happened to you in the financial storm. i confess to having felt an unaccountable anxiety about you of late. perhaps that is why i write and why i hope for an answer at once. i have always looked upon presentiments and forewarnings and all such intimations as utterly false and absurd, and i do not really believe that anything has happened or is happening to distress you. but it is our woman's privilege to be inconsistent, and we should be still more inconsistent if we did not use it. besides i have felt the same vague disquietude about you more than once before and have not written. perhaps i should not write even now unless i had a great deal more time at my disposal than i know what to do with. who knows? if you are busy, write a word on a post-card, just to say that nothing is the matter. here in egypt we do not realise what time means, and certainly not that it can ever mean money. "it is an idle life, less idle for me perhaps than for some of those about me, but even for me not over-full of occupations. the climate occupies all the time not actually spent in eating, sleeping and visiting ruins. it is fair, i suppose, to tell you something of myself since i ask for news of you. i will tell you what i can. "i am travelling with an old lady, as her companion--not exactly out of inclination and yet not exactly out of duty. is that too mysterious? do you see me as companion and general amuser to an old lady--over seventy years of age? no. i presume not. and i am not with her by necessity either, for i have not suffered any losses. on the contrary, since i dismissed a certain person--an attendant, we will call her--from my service, it seems to me that my income is doubled. the attendant, by the bye, has opened a hotel on the lake of como. perhaps you, who are so good a man of business, may see some connexion between these simple facts. i was never good at managing money, nor at understanding what it meant. it seems that i have not inherited all the family talents. "but i return to egypt, to the nile, to this dahabiyah, on board of which it has pleased the fates to dispose my existence for the present. i am not called a companion, but a lady in waiting, which would be only another term for the same thing, if i were not really very much attached to the princess, old and deaf as she is. and that is saying a great deal. no one knows what deafness means who has not read aloud to a deaf person, which is what i do every day. i do not think i ever told you about her. i have known her all my life, ever since i was a little girl in the convent in vienna. she used to come and see me and bring me good things--and books of prayers--i remember especially a box of candied fruits which she told me came from kiew. i have never eaten any like them since. i wonder how many sincere affections between young and old people owe their existence originally to a confectioner! "when i left rome, i met her again in nice. she was there with the prince, who was in wretched health and who died soon afterwards. he never was so fond of me as she was. after his death, she asked me to stay with her as long as i would. i do not think i shall leave her again so long as she lives. she treats me like her own child--or rather, her grandchild--and besides, the life suits me very well. i am, really, perfectly independent, and yet i am perfectly protected. i shall not repeat the experiment of living alone for three years, until i am much older. "it is a rather strange friendship. my princess knows all about me--all that you know. i told her one day and she did not seem at all surprised. i thought i owed her the truth about myself, since i was to live with her, and since she had always been so kind to me. she says i remind her of her daughter, the poor young princess marie, who died nearly thirty years ago. in nice, too, like her father, poor girl. she was only just nineteen, and very beautiful they say. i suppose the dear good old lady fancies she sees some resemblance even now, though i am so much older than her daughter was when she died. there is the origin of our friendship--the trivial and the tragic--confectionery and death--a box of candied fruits and an irreparable loss! if there were no contrasts what would the world be? all one or the other, i suppose. all death, or all kiew sweetmeats. "i suppose you know what life in egypt is like. if you have not tried it yourself, your friends have and can describe it to you. i will certainly not inflict my impressions upon your friendship. it would be rather a severe test--perhaps yours would not bear it, and then i should be sorry. "do you know? i like to think that i have a friend in you. i like to remember the time when you used to talk to me of all your plans--the dear old time! i would rather remember that than much which came afterwards. you have forgiven me for all i did, and are glad, now, that i did it. yes, i can fancy your smile. you do not see yourself, prince saracinesca, prince sant' ilario, duke of whatever-it-may-be, lord of ever so many what-are-their-names, prince of the holy roman empire, grandee of spain of the first class, knight of malta and hereditary something to the holy see--in short the tremendous personage you will one day be--you do not exactly see yourself as the son-in-law of the signora lucrezia ferris, proprietor of a tourist's hotel on the lake of como! confess that the idea was an absurdity! as for me, i will confess that i did very wrong. had i known all the truth on that afternoon--do you remember the thunderstorm? i would have saved you much, and i should have saved myself--well--something. but we have better things to do than to run after shadows. perhaps it is as well not even to think of them. it is all over now. whatever you may think of it all, forgive your old friend, maria consuelo d'a." orsino read the long letter to the end, and sat a while thinking over the contents. two points in it struck him especially. in the first place it was not the letter of a woman who wished to call back a man she had dismissed. there was no sentiment in it, or next to none. she professed herself contented in her life, if not happy, and in one sentence she brought before him the enormous absurdity of the marriage he had once contemplated. he had more than once been ashamed of not making some further direct effort to win her again. he was now suddenly conscious of the great influence which her first letter, containing the statement of her parentage, had really exercised over him. strangely enough, what she now wrote reconciled him, as it were, with himself. it had turned out best, after all. that he loved her still, he felt sure, as he held in his hand the pages she had written and felt the old thrill he knew so well in his fingers, and the old, quick beating of the heart. but he acknowledged gladly--too gladly, perhaps--that he had done well to let her go. then came the second impression. "i like to remember the time when you used to talk to me of all your plans." the words rang in his ears and called up delicious visions of the past, soft hours spent by her side while she listened with something warmer than patience to the outpouring of his young hopes and aspirations. she, at least, had understood him, and encouraged him, and strengthened him with her sympathy. and why not now, if then? why should she not understand him now, when he most needed a friend, and give him sympathy now, when he stood most in need of it? she was in egypt and he in rome, it was true. but what of that? if she could write to him, he could write to her, and she could answer him again. no one had ever felt with him as she had. he did not hesitate long. on that same evening, after dinner, he went back to his own room and wrote to her. it was a little hard at first, but, as the ink flowed, he expressed himself better and more clearly. with an odd sort of caution, which had grown upon him of late, he tried to make his letter take a form as similar to hers as possible. "my dear friend" (he wrote)--"if people always yielded to their impulses as you have done in writing to me, there would be more good fellowship and less loneliness in the world. it would not be easy for me to tell you how great a pleasure you have given me. perhaps, hereafter, i may compare it to your own memory of the kiew candied fruits! for the present i do not find a worthy comparison to my hand. "you ask many questions. i propose to answer them all. will you have the patience to read what i write? i hope so, for the sake of the time when i used to talk to you of all my plans--and which you say you like to remember. for another reason, too. i have never felt so lonely in my life as i feel now, nor so much in need of a friend--not a helping friend, but one to whom i can speak a little freely. i am very much alone. a sort of estrangement has grown up between my mother and me, and she no longer takes my side in all i want to do, as she did once. "i will be quite plain. i will tell you all my troubles, because there is not another person in the world to whom i could tell them--and because i know that they will not trouble you. you will feel a little friendly sympathy, and that will be enough. but you will feel no pain. after all, i daresay that i exaggerate, and that there is nothing so very painful in the matter, as it will strike you. but the case is serious, as you will see. it involves my life, perhaps for many years to come. "i am completely in del ferice's power. a year ago i had the possibility of freeing myself. what do you think that chance was? i could have gone to my grandfather and asked him to lay down a sum of money sufficient to liberate me, or i could have refused del ferice's new offer and allowed myself to be declared bankrupt. my abominable vanity stood in the way of my following either of those plans. in less than two months i shall be placed in the same position again. but the circumstances are changed. the sum of money is so considerable that i would not like to ask all my family, with their three fortunes, to contribute it. the business is enormous. i have an establishment like a bank and contini--you remember contini?--has several assistant architects. moreover we stand alone. there is no other firm of the kind left, and our failure would be a very disagreeable affair. but so long as i remain del ferice's slave, we shall not fail. do you know that this great and successful firm is carried on systematically without a centime of profit to the partners, and with the constant threat of a disgraceful failure, used to force me on? do you think that if i chose the alternative, any one would believe, or that my tyrant would let any one believe, that orsino saracinesca had served ugo del ferice for years--two years and a half before long--as a sort of bondsman? i am in a very unenviable position. i am sure that del ferice made use of me at first for his own ends--that is, to make money for him. the magnitude of the sums which pass through my hands makes me sure that he is now backed by a powerful syndicate, probably of foreign bankers who lost money in the roman crash, and who see a chance of getting it back through del ferice's management. it is a question of millions. you do not understand? will you try to read my explanation?" and here orsino summed up his position towards del ferice in a clear and succinct statement, which it is not necessary to reproduce here. it needed no talent for business on maria consuelo's part to understand that he was bound hand and foot. "one of three things must happen" (orsino continued). "i must cripple, if not ruin, the fortune of my family, or i must go through a scandalous bankruptcy, or i must continue to be ugo del ferice's servant during the best years of my life. my only consolation is that i am unpaid. i do not speak of poor contini. he is making a reputation, it is true, and del ferice gives him something which i increase as much as i can. considering our positions, he is the more completely sacrificed of the two, poor fellow--and through my fault. if i had only had the courage to put my vanity out of the way eighteen months ago, i might have saved him as well as myself. i believed myself a match for del ferice--and i neither was nor ever shall be. i am a little desperate. "that is my life, my dear friend. since you have not quite forgotten me, write me a word of that good old sympathy on which i lived so long. it may soon be all i have to live on. if del ferice should have the bad taste to follow donna tullia to saint lawrence's, nothing could save me. i should no longer have the alternative of remaining his slave in exchange for safety from bankruptcy to myself and ruin--or something like it--to my father. "but let us talk no more about it all. but for your kindly letter, no one would ever have known all this, except contini. in your calm egyptian life--thank god, dear, that your life is calm!--my story must sound like a fragment from an unpleasant dream. one thing you do not tell me. are you happy, as well as peaceful? i would like to know. i am not. "pray write again, when you have time--and inclination. if there is anything to be done for you in rome--any little thing, or great thing either--command your old friend, "orsino saracinesca." chapter xxviii. orsino posted his letter with an odd sensation of relief. he felt that he was once more in communication with humanity, since he had been able to speak out and tell some one of the troubles that oppressed him. he had assuredly no reason for being more hopeful than before, and matters were in reality growing more serious every day; but his heart was lighter and he took a more cheerful view of the future, almost against his own better judgment. he had not expected to receive an answer from maria consuelo for some time and was surprised when one came in less than ten days from the date of his writing. this letter was short, hurriedly written and carelessly worded, but there was a ring of anxiety for him in every line of it which he could not misinterpret. not only did she express the deepest sympathy for him and assure him that all he did still had the liveliest interest for her, but she also insisted upon being informed of the state of his affairs as often as possible. he had spoken of three possibilities, she said. was there not a fourth somewhere? there might often be an issue from the most desperate situation, of which no one dreamed. could she not help him to discover where it lay in this case? could they not write to each other and find it out together? orsino looked uneasily at the lines, and the blood rose to his temples. did she mean what she said, or more, or less? he was overwrought and over-sensitive, and she had written thoughtlessly, as though not weighing her words, but only following an impulse for which she had no time to find the proper expression. she could not imagine that he would accept substantial help from her--still less that he would consent to marry her for the sake of the fortune which might save him. he grew very angry, then turned cold again, and then, reading the words again, saw that he had no right to attach any such meaning to them. then it struck him that even if, by any possibility, she had meant to convey such an idea, he would have no right at all to resent it. women, he reflected, did not look upon such matters as men did. she had refused to marry him when he was prosperous. if she meant that she would marry him now, to save him from ruin, he could not but acknowledge that she was carrying devotion near to its farthest limit. but the words themselves would not bear such an interpretation. he was straining language too far in suggesting it. "and yet she means something," he said to himself. "something which i cannot understand." he wrote again, maintaining the tone of his first letter more carefully than she had done on her part, though not sparing the warmest expressions of heartfelt thanks for the sympathy she had so readily given. but there was no fourth way, he said. one of those three things which he had explained to her must happen. there was no hope, and he was resigned to continue his existence of slavery until del ferice's death brought about the great crisis of his life. not that del ferice was in any danger of dying, he added, in spite of the general gossip about his bad health. such men often outlasted stronger people, as ugo had outlived donna tullia. not that his death would improve matters, either, as they stood at present. that he had explained before. if the count died now, there were ninety-nine chances out of a hundred that orsino would be ruined. for the present, nothing would happen. in little more than a month--in six weeks at the utmost--a new arrangement would be forced upon him, binding him perhaps for years to come. del ferice had already spoken to him of a great public undertaking, at least half of the contract for which could easily be secured or controlled by his bank. he had added that this might be a favourable occasion for andrea contini and company to act in concert with the bank. orsino knew what that meant. indeed, there was no possibility of mistaking the meaning, which was clear enough. the fourth plan could only lie in finding beforehand a purchaser for buildings which could not be so disposed of, because they were built for a particular purpose, and could only be bought by those who had ordered them, namely persons whom del ferice so controlled that he could postpone their appearance if he chose and drive orsino into a failure at any moment after the completion of the work. for instance, one of those buildings was evidently intended for a factory, and probably for a match factory. del ferice, in requiring that contini and company should erect what he had already arranged to dispose of, had vaguely remarked that there were no match factories in rome and that perhaps some one would like to buy one. if orsino had been less desperate he would willingly have risked much to resent the suave insolence. as it was, he had laughed in his tyrant's face, and bitterly enough; a form of insult, however, to which ugo was supremely indifferent. these and many other details orsino wrote to maria consuelo, pouring out his confidence with the assurance of a man who asks nothing but sympathy and is sure of receiving that in overflowing measure. he no longer waited for her answers, as the crucial moment approached, but wrote freely from day to day, as he felt inclined. there was little which he did not tell her in the dozen or fifteen letters he penned in the course of the month. like many reticent men who have never taken up a pen except for ordinary correspondence or for the routine work of a business requiring accuracy, and who all at once begin to write the history of their daily lives for the perusal of one trusted person, orsino felt as though he had found a new means of expression and abandoned himself willingly to the comparative pleasure of complete confidence. like all such men, too, he unconsciously exhibited the chief fault of his character in his long, diary-like letters. that fault was his vanity. had he been describing a great success he could and would have concealed it better; in writing of his own successive errors and disappointments he showed by the excessive blame he cast upon himself, how deeply that vanity of his was wounded. it is possible that maria consuelo discovered this. but she made no profession of analysis, and while appearing outwardly far colder than orsino, she seemed much more disposed than he to yield to unexpected impulses when she felt their influence. and orsino was quite unconscious that he might be exhibiting the defects of his moral nature to eyes keener than his own. he wrote constantly therefore, with the utmost freedom, and in the moments while he was writing he enjoyed a faint illusion of increased safety, as though he were retarding the events of the future by describing minutely those of the past. more than once again maria consuelo answered him, and always in the same strain, doing her best, apparently, to give him hope and to reconcile him with himself. however much he might condemn his own lack of foresight, she said, no man who did his best according to his best judgment, and who acted honourably, was to be blamed for the result, though it might involve the ruin of thousands. that was her chief argument and it comforted him, and seemed to relieve him from a small part of the responsibility which weighed so heavily upon his shoulders, a burden now grown so heavy that the least lightening of it made him feel comparatively free until called upon to face facts again and fight with realities. but events would not be retarded, and orsino's own good qualities tended to hasten them, as they had to a great extent been the cause of his embarrassment ever since the success of his first attempt, in making him valuable as a slave to be kept from escaping at all risks. the system upon which the business was conducted was admirable. it had been good from the beginning and orsino had improved it to a degree very uncommon in rome. he had mastered the science of book-keeping in a short time, and had forced himself to an accuracy of detail and a promptness of ready reference which would have surprised many an old professional clerk. it must be remembered that from the first he had found little else to do. the technical work had always been in contini's hands, and del ferice's forethought had relieved them both from the necessity of entering upon financial negotiations requiring time, diplomatic tact and skill of a higher order. the consequence was that orsino had devoted the whole of his great energy and native talent for order to the keeping of the books, with the result that when a contract had been executed there was hardly any accountant's work to be done. nominally, too, andrea contini and company were not responsible to any one for their book-keeping; but in practice, and under pretence of rendering valuable service, del ferice sent an auditor from time to time to look into the state of affairs, a proceeding which contini bitterly resented while orsino expressed himself perfectly indifferent to the interference, on the ground that there was nothing to conceal. had the books been badly kept, the final winding up of each contract would have been retarded for one or more weeks. but the more deeply orsino became involved, the more keenly he felt the value and, at last, the vital importance, of the most minute accuracy. if worse came to worst and he should be obliged to fail, through del ferice's sudden death or from any other cause, his reputation as an honourable man might depend upon this very accuracy of detail, by which he would be able to prove that in the midst of great undertakings, and while very large sums of money were passing daily through his hands, he had never received even the very smallest share of the profits absorbed by the bank. he even kept a private account of his own expenditure on the allowance he received from his father, in order that, if called upon, he might be able to prove how large a part of that allowance he regularly paid to poor contini as compensation for the unhappy position in which the latter found himself. if bankruptcy awaited him, his failure would, if the facts were properly made known, reckon as one of the most honourable on record, though he was pleased to look upon such a contingency as a certain source of scandal and more than possible disgrace. unconsciously his own determined industry in book-keeping gave him a little more confidence. in his great anxiety he was spared the terrible uncertainty felt by a man who does not precisely know his own financial position at a given critical moment. his studiously acquired outward calm also stood him in good stead. even san giacinto who knew the financial world as few men knew it watched his youthful cousin with curiosity and not without a certain sympathy and a very little admiration. the young man's face was growing stern and thoughtful like his own, lean, grave and strong. san giacinto remembered that night a year and a half earlier when he had warned orsino of the coming danger, and he was almost displeased with himself now for having taken a step which seemed to have been unnecessary. it was san giacinto's principle never to do anything unnecessary, because a useless action meant a loss of time and therefore a loss of advantage over the adversary of the moment. san giacinto, in different circumstances, would have made a good general--possibly a great one; his strange life had made him a financier of a type singular and wholly different from that of the men with whom he had to deal. he never sought to gain an advantage by a deception, but he won everything by superior foresight, imperturbable coolness, matchless rapidity of action and undaunted courage under all circumstances. it needs higher qualities to be a good man, but no others are needed to make a successful one. orsino possessed something of the same rapidity and much of a similar coolness and courage, but he lacked the foresight. it was vanity, of the most pardonable kind, indeed, but vanity nevertheless which had led him to embark upon his dangerous enterprise--not in the determination to accomplish for the sake of accomplishing, still less in the direct desire for wealth as an ultimate object, but in the almost boyish longing to show to his own people that there was more in him than they suspected. the gift of foresight is generally weakened by the presence of vanity, but when vanity takes its place the result is as likely to be failure as not, and depends almost directly upon chance alone. the crisis in orsino's life was at hand, and what has here been finally said of his position at that time seemed necessary, as summing up the consequences to him of more than two years' unremitting labour, during which he had become involved in affairs of enormous consequence at an age when most young men are spending their time, more profitably perhaps and certainly more agreeably, in such pleasures and pursuits as mother society provides for her half-fledged nestlings. on the day before his final interview with del ferice orsino wrote a lengthy letter to maria consuelo. as she did not receive it until long afterwards it is quite unnecessary to give any account of its contents. some time had passed since he had heard from her and he was not sure whether or not she were still in egypt. but he wrote to her, nevertheless, drawing much fictitious comfort and little real advantage from the last clear statement of his difficulties. by this time, writing to her had become a habit and he resorted to it naturally when over wearied by work and anxiety. on this same day also he had spent several hours in talking over the situation with contini. the architect, strange to say, was more reconciled with his position than he had formerly been. he, at least, received a certain substantial remuneration. he, at least, loved his profession and rejoiced in the handling of great masses of brick and stone. he, too, was rapidly making a reputation and a name for himself, and, if business improved, was not prevented from entering into other enterprises besides the one in which he found himself so deeply interested. as a member of the firm, he could not free himself. as an architect, he could have an architect's office of his own and build for any one who chose to employ him. for his own part, he said, he might perhaps be more profitably employed upon less important work; but then, he might not, for business was very bad. the great works in which del ferice kept him engaged had the incalculable advantage of bringing him constantly before the public as an architect and of keeping his name, which was the name of the firm, continually in the notice of all men of business. he was deeply indebted to orsino for the generous help given when the realities of profit were so greatly at variance with the appearances of prosperity. he would always regard repayment of the money so advanced to him as a debt of honour and he hoped to live long enough to extinguish it. he sympathised with orsino in his desire to be freer and more independent, but reminded him that when the day of liberation came, he would not regret the comparatively short apprenticeship during which he had acquired so great a mastery of business. business, he said, had been orsino's ambition from the beginning, and business he had, in plenty, if not with profit. for his own part, he was satisfied. orsino felt that his partner could not be blamed, and he felt, too, that he would be doing contini a great injury in involving him in a failure. but he regretted the time when their interests had coincided and they had cursed del ferice in common and with a good will. there was nothing to be done but to submit. he knew well enough what awaited him. on the following morning, by appointment, he went with a heavy heart to meet del ferice at the bank. the latter had always preferred to see orsino without contini when a new contract was to be discussed. as a personal acquaintance he treated with orsino on a footing of social equality, and the balance of outwardly agreeable relations would have been disturbed by the presence of a social inferior. moreover, del ferice knew the saracinesca people tolerably well, and though not so timid as many people supposed, he somewhat dreaded a sudden outbreak of the hereditary temper; if such a manifestation really took place, it would be more agreeable that there should be no witnesses of it. orsino was surprised to find that ugo was out of town. having made an appointment, he ought at least to have sent word to the palazzo saracinesca of his departure. he had indeed left a message for orsino, which was correctly delivered, to the effect that he would return in twenty-four hours, and requesting him to postpone the interview until the following afternoon. in orsino's humour this was not altogether pleasant. the young man felt little suspense indeed, for he knew how matters must turn out, and that he should be saddled with another contract. but he found it hard to wait with equanimity, now that he had made up his mind to the worst, and he resented del ferice's rudeness in not giving a civil warning of his intended journey. the day passed somehow, at last, and towards evening orsino received a telegram from ugo, full of excuses, but begging to put off the meeting two days longer. the dispatch was from naples whither del ferice often went on business. it was almost unbearable and yet it must be borne. orsino spent his time in roaming about the less frequented parts of the city, trying to make new plans for the future which was already planned for him, doing his best to follow out a distinct line of thought, if only to distract his own attention. he could not even write to maria consuelo, for he felt that he had said all there was to be said, in his last long letter. on the morning of the fourth day he went to the bank again. del ferice was there and greeted him warmly, interweaving his phrases with excuses for his absence. "you will forgive me, i am sure," he said, "though i have put you to very great inconvenience. the case was urgent and i could not leave it in the hands of others. of course you could have settled the business with another of the directors, but i think--indeed, i know--that you prefer only to see me in these matters. we have worked together so long now, that we understand each other with half a word. really, i am very sorry to have kept you waiting so long!" "it is of no importance," answered orsino coolly. "pray do not speak of it." "of importance--no--perhaps not. that is, as you could not lose by it, it was not of financial importance. but when i have made an engagement, i like to keep it. in business, so much depends upon keeping small engagements--and they may mean quite as much in the relations of society. however, as you are so kind, we will not speak of it again. i have made my excuses and you have accepted them. let that end the matter. to business, now, don orsino--to business!" orsino fancied that del ferice's manner was not quite natural. he was generally more quiet. his rather watery blue eyes did not usually look so wide awake, his fat white hands were not commonly so active in their gestures. altogether he seemed more nervous, and at the same time better pleased with himself and with life than usual. orsino wondered what had happened. he had perhaps made some very successful stroke in his affairs during the three days he had spent in naples. "so let us now have a look into your contracts, don orsino," he said. "or rather, look into the state of the account yourself if you wish to do so, for i have already examined it." "i am familiar enough with the details," answered the young man. "i do not need to look over everything. the books have been audited as you see. the only thing left to be done is to hand over the work to you, since it is executed according to the contract. you doubtless remember that verbal part of the agreement. you receive the buildings as they now stand and our credit cash if there is any, in full discharge of all the obligations of andrea contini and company to the bank--acceptances coming due, balance of account if in debit, and mortgages on land and houses--and we are quits again, my firm being discharged of all obligation." del ferice's expression changed a little and became more grave. "doubtless," he answered, "there was a tacit understanding to that effect. yes--yes--i remember. indeed it was not altogether tacit. a word was said about it, and a word is as good as a contract. very well, don orsino--very well. since you desire it, we will cry quits again. this kind of business is not very profitable to the bank--not very--but it is not actual loss." "it is not profitable to us," observed orsino. "if you do not wish any more of it, we do not." "really?" del ferice looked at him rather curiously as though wishing that he would say more. orsino met his glance steadily, expecting to be informed of the nature of the next contract to be forced upon him. "so you really prefer to discontinue these operations--if i may call them so," said del ferice thoughtfully. "it is strange that you should, i confess. i remember that you much desired to take a part in affairs, to be an actor in the interesting doings of the day, to be a financial personage, in short. you have had your wish, don orsino. your firm plays an important part in rome. do you remember our first interview on the steps of monte citorio? you asked me whether i could and would help you to enter business. i promised that i would, and i have kept my word. the sums mentioned in those papers, here, show that i have done all i promised. you told me that you had fifteen thousand francs at your disposal. from that small beginning i have shown you how to deal with millions. but you do not seem to care for business, after all, don orsino. you really do not seem to care for it, though i must confess that you have a remarkable talent. it is very strange." "is it?" asked orsino with a shade of contempt. "you may remember that my business has not been profitable, in spite of what you call my talent, and in spite of what i know to have been hard work." del ferice smiled softly. "that is quite another matter," he answered. "if you had asked me whether you could make a fortune at this time, i would have told you that it was quite impossible without enormous capital. quite impossible. understand that, if you please. but, negatively, you have profited, because others have failed--hundreds of firms and contractors--while you have lost but the paltry fifteen thousand or so with which you began. and you have acquired great knowledge and experience. therefore, on the whole, you have been the gainer. in balancing an account one takes but the sordid debit and credit and compares them--but in estimating the value of a firm one should consider its reputation and the goodwill it has created. the name of andrea contini and company is a power in rome. that is the result of your work, and it is not a loss." orsino said nothing, but leaned back in his chair, gloomily staring at the wall. he wondered when del ferice would come to the point, and begin to talk about the new contract. "you do not seem to agree with me," observed ugo in an injured tone. "not altogether, i confess," replied the young man with a contemptuous laugh. "well, well--it is no matter--it is of no importance--of no consequence whatever," said del fence, who seemed inclined to repeat himself and to lengthen, his phrases as though he wished to gain time. "only this, don orsino. i would remind you that you have just executed a piece of work successfully, which no other firm in rome could have carried out without failure, under the present depression. it seems to me that you have every reason to congratulate yourself. of course, it was impossible for me to understand that you really cared for a large profit--for actual money--" "and i do not," interrupted orsino with more warmth than he had hitherto shown. "but, in that case, you ought to be more than satisfied," objected ugo suavely. orsino grew impatient at last and spoke out frankly. "i cannot be satisfied with a position of absolute dependence, from which i cannot escape except by bankruptcy. you know that i am completely in your power. you know very well that while you are talking to me now you contemplate making your usual condition before crying quits, as you express it. you intend to impose another and probably a larger piece of work on me, which i shall be obliged to undertake on the same terms as before, because if i do not accept it, it is in your power to ruin me at once. and this state of things may go on for years. that is the enviable position of andrea contini and company." del ferice assumed an air of injured dignity. "if you think anything of this kind you greatly misjudge me," he said. "i do not see why i should judge otherwise," retorted orsino. "that is exactly what took place on the last occasion, and what will take place now--" "i think not," said del ferice very quietly, and watching him. orsino was somewhat startled by the words, but his face betrayed nothing. it was clear to him that ugo had something new to propose, and it was not easy to guess the nature of the coming proposition. "will you kindly explain yourself?" he asked. "my dear don orsino, there is nothing to explain," replied del ferice again becoming very bland. "i do not understand." "no? it is very simple. you have finished the buildings. the bank will take them over and consider the account closed. you stated the position yourself in the most precise terms. i do not see why you should suppose that the bank wishes to impose anything upon you which you are not inclined to accept. i really do not see why you should think anything of the kind." in the dead silence which followed orsino could hear his own heart beating loudly. he wondered whether he had heard aright. he wondered whether this were not some new manoeuvre on del ferice's part by which he must ultimately fall still more completely under the banker's domination. ugo doubtless meant to qualify what he had just said by adding a clause. orsino waited for what was to follow. "am i to understand that this does not suit your wishes?" inquired ugo, presently. "on the contrary, it would suit me perfectly," answered orsino controlling his voice with some difficulty. "in that case, there is nothing more to be said," observed del ferice. "the bank will give you a formal release--indeed, i think the notary is at this moment here. i am very glad to be able to meet your views, don orsino. very glad, i am sure. it is always pleasant to find that amicable relations have been preserved after a long and somewhat complicated business connexion. the bank owes it to you, i am sure--" "i am quite willing to owe that to the bank," answered orsino with a ready smile. he was almost beside himself with joy. "you are very good, i assure you," said del ferice, with much politeness. he touched a bell and his confidential clerk appeared. "cancel these drafts," he said, giving the man a small bundle of bills. "direct the notary to prepare a deed of sale, transferring all this property, as was done before--" he hesitated. "i will see him myself in ten minutes," he added. "it will be simpler. the account of andrea contini is balanced and closed. make out a preliminary receipt for all dues whatsoever and bring it to me." the clerk stared for one moment as though he believed that del ferice were mad. then he went out. "i am sorry to lose you, don orsino," said del ferice, thoughtfully rolling his big silver pencil case on the table. "all the legal papers will be ready to-morrow afternoon." "pray express to the directors my best thanks for so speedily winding up the business," answered orsino. "i think that, after all, i have no great talent for affairs." "on the contrary, on the contrary," protested ugo. "i have a great deal to say against that statement." and he eulogised orsino's gifts almost without pausing for breath until the clerk returned with the preliminary receipt. del ferice signed it and handed it to orsino with a smile. "this was unnecessary," said the young man. "i could have waited until to-morrow." "a matter of conscience, dear don orsino--nothing more." chapter xxix. orsino was free at last. the whole matter was incomprehensible to him, and almost mysterious, so that after he had at last received his legal release he spent his time in trying to discover the motives of del ferice's conduct. the simplest explanation seemed to be that ugo had not derived as much profit from the last contract as he had hoped for, though it had been enough to justify him in keeping his informal engagement with contini and company, and that he feared a new and unfavourable change in business which made any further speculations of the kind dangerous. for some time orsino believed this to have been the case, but events proved that he was mistaken. he dissolved his partnership with contini, but andrea contini and company still continued to exist. the new partner was no less a personage than del ferice himself, who was constantly represented in the firm by the confidential clerk who has been more than once mentioned in this history, and who was a friend of contini's. what terms contini made for himself, orsino never knew, but it is certain that the architect prospered from that time and is still prosperous. late in the spring of that year 1890 roman society was considerably surprised by the news of a most unexpected marriage. the engagement had been carefully kept a secret, the banns had been published in palermo, the civil and religious ceremonies had taken place there, and the happy couple had already reached paris before either of them thought of informing their friends and before any notice of the event appeared in the papers. even then, society felt itself aggrieved by the laconic form in which the information was communicated. the statement, indeed, left nothing to be desired on the score of plainness or conciseness of style. count del ferice had married maria consuelo d'aranjuez d'aragona. two persons only received the intelligence a few days before it was generally made known. one was orsino and the other was spicca. the letters were characteristic and may be worth reproducing. "my father" (maria consuelo wrote)--"i am married to count del ferice, with whom i think that you are acquainted. there is no reason why i should enter into any explanation of my reasons for taking this step. there are plenty which everybody can see. my husband's present position and great wealth make him what the world calls a good match, and my fortune places me above the suspicion of having married him for his money. if his birth was not originally of the highest, it was at least as good as mine, and society will say that the marriage was appropriate in all its circumstances. you are aware that i could not be married without informing my husband and the municipal authorities of my parentage, by presenting copies of the registers in nice. count del ferice was good enough to overlook some little peculiarity in the relation between the dates of my birth and your marriage. we will therefore say no more about the matter. the object of this letter is to let you know that those facts have been communicated to several persons, as a matter of necessity. i do not expect you to congratulate me. i congratulate myself, however, with all my heart. within two years i have freed myself from my worthy mother, i have placed myself beyond your power to injure me, and i have escaped ruining a man i loved by marrying him. i have laid the foundations of peace if not of happiness. "the princess is very ill but hopes to reach normandy before the summer begins. my husband will be obliged to be often in rome but will come to me from time to time, as i cannot leave the princess at present. she is trying, however, to select among her acquaintance another lady in waiting--the more willingly as she is not pleased with my marriage. is that a satisfaction to you? i expect to spend the winter in rome. "maria consuelo del ferice." this was the letter by which maria consuelo announced her marriage to the father whom she so sincerely hated. for cruelty of language and expression it was not to be compared with the one she had written to him after parting with orsino. but had she known how the news she now conveyed would affect the old man who was to learn it, her heart might have softened a little towards him, even after all she had suffered. very different were the lines orsino received from her at the same time. "my dear friend--when you read this letter, which i write on the eve of my marriage, but shall not send till some days have passed, you must think of me as the wife of ugo del ferice. to-night, i am still maria consuelo. i have something to say to you, and you must read it patiently, for i shall never say it again--and after all, it will not be much. is it right of me to say it? i do not know. until to-morrow i have still time to refuse to be married. therefore i am still a free agent, and entitled to think freely. after to-morrow it will be different. "i wish, dear, that i could tell you all the truth. perhaps you would not be ashamed of having loved the daughter of lucrezia ferris. but i cannot tell you all. there are reasons why you had better never know it. but i will tell you this, for i must say it once. i love you very dearly. i loved you long ago, i loved you when i left you in rome, i have loved you ever since, and i am afraid that i shall love you until i die. "it is not foolish of me to write the words, though it may be wrong. if i love you, it is because i know you. we shall meet before long, and then meet, perhaps, hundreds of times, and more, for i am to live in rome. i know that you will be all you should be, or i would not speak now as i never spoke before, at the moment when i am raising an impassable barrier between us by my own free will. if you ever loved me--and you did--you will respect that barrier in deed and word, and even in thought. you will remember only that i loved you with all my heart on the day before my marriage. you will forget even to think that i may love you still to-morrow, and think tenderly of you on the day after that. "you are free now, dear, and can begin your real life. how do i know it? del ferice has told me that he has released you--for we sometimes speak of you. he has even shown me a copy of the legal act of release, which he chanced to find among the papers he had brought. an accident, perhaps. or, perhaps he knows that i loved you. i do not care--i had a right to, then. "so you are quite free. i like to think that you have come out of all your troubles quite unscathed, young, your name untarnished, your hands clean. i am glad that you answered the letter i wrote to you from egypt and told me all, and wrote so often afterwards. i could not do much beyond give you my sympathy, and i gave it all--to the uttermost. you will not need any more of it. you are free now, thank god! "if you think of me, wish me peace, dear--i do not ask for anything nearer to happiness than that. but i wish you many things, the least of which should make you happy. most of all, i wish that you may some day love well and truly, and win the reality of which you once thought you held the shadow. can i say more than that? no loving woman can. "and so, good-bye--good-bye, love of all my life, good-bye dear, dear orsino--i think this is the hardest good-bye of all--when we are to meet so soon. i cannot write any more. once again, the last--the very last time, for ever--i love you. "maria consuelo." a strange sensation came over orsino as he read this letter. he was not able at first to realise much beyond the fact that maria consuelo was actually married to del ferice--a match than which none imaginable could have been more unexpected. but he felt that there was more behind the facts than he was able to grasp, almost more than he dared to guess at. a mysterious horror filled his mind as he read and reread the lines. there was no doubting the sincerity of what she said. he doubted the survival of his own love much more. she could have no reason whatever for writing as she did, on the eve of her marriage, no reason beyond the irresistible desire to speak out all her heart once only and for the last time. again and again he went over the passages which struck him as most strange. then the truth flashed upon him. maria consuelo had sold herself to free him from his difficulties, to save him from the terrible alternatives of either wasting his life as del ferice's slave or of ruining his family. with a smothered exclamation, between an oath and a groan of pain, orsino threw himself upon the divan and buried his face in his hands. it is kinder to leave him there for a time, alone. poor spicca broke down under this last blow. in vain old santi got out the cordial from the press in the corner, and did his best to bring his master back to his natural self. in vain spicca roused himself, forced himself to eat, went out, walked his hour, dragging his feet after him, and attempted to exchange a word with his friends at the club. he seemed to have got his death wound. his head sank lower on his breast, his long emaciated frame stooped more and more, the thin hands grew daily more colourless, and the deathly face daily more deathly pale. days passed away, and weeks, and it was early june. he no longer tried to go out. santi tried to prevail upon him to take a little air in a cab, on the via appia. it would be money well spent, he said, apologising for suggesting such extravagance. spicca shook his head, and kept to his chair by the open window. then, on a certain morning, he was worse and had not the strength to rise from his bed. on that very morning a telegram came. he looked at it as though hardly understanding what he should do, as santi held it before him. then he opened it. his fingers did not tremble even now. the iron nerve of the great swordsman survived still. "ventnor--rome. count spicca. the princess is dead. i know the truth at last. god forgive me and bless you. i come to you at once.--maria consuelo." spicca read the few words printed on the white strip that was pasted to the yellow paper. then his hands sank to his sides and he closed his eyes. santi thought it was the end, and burst into tears as he fell to his knees by the bed. half an hour passed. then spicca raised his head, and made a gesture with his hand. "do not be a fool, santi, i am not dead yet," he said, with kindly impatience. "get up and send for don orsino saracinesca, if he is still in rome." santi left the room, drying his eyes and uttering incoherent exclamations of astonishment mingled with a singular cross fire of praise and prayer directed to the saints and of imprecations upon himself for his own stupidity. before noon orsino appeared. he was gaunt and pale, and more like san giacinto than ever. there was a settled hardness in his face which was never again to disappear permanently. but he was horror-struck by spicca's appearance. he had no idea that a man already so cadaverous could still change as the old man had changed. spicca seemed little more than a grey shadow barely resting upon the white bed. he put the telegram into orsino's hands. the young man read it twice and his face expressed his astonishment. spicca smiled faintly, as he watched him. "what does it mean?" asked orsino. "of what truth does she speak? she hated you, and now, all at once, she loves you. i do not understand." "how should you?" the old man spoke in a clear, thin voice, very unlike his own. "you could not understand. but before i die, i will tell you." "do not talk of dying--" "no. it is not necessary. i realise it enough, and you need not realise it at all. i have not much to tell you, but a little truth will sometimes destroy many falsehoods. you remember the story about lucrezia ferris? maria consuelo wrote it to you." "remember it! could i forget it?" "you may as well. there is not a word of truth in it. lucrezia ferris is not her mother." "not her mother!" "no. i only wonder how you could ever have believed that a piedmontese nurse could be the mother of maria consuelo. nor am i maria consuelo's father. perhaps that will not surprise you so much. she does not resemble me, thank heaven!" "what is she then? who is she?" asked orsino impatiently. "to tell you that i must tell you the story. when i was young--very long before you were born--i travelled much, and i was well received. i was rich and of good family. at a certain court in europe--i was at one time in the diplomacy--i loved a lady whom i could not have married, even had she been free. her station was far above mine. she was also considerably older than i, and she paid very little attention to me, i confess. but i loved her. she is just dead. she was that princess mentioned in this telegram. do you understand? do you hear me? my voice is weak." "perfectly. pray go on." "maria consuelo is her grandchild--the granddaughter of the only woman i ever loved. understand that, too. it happened in this way. my princess had but one daughter, the princess marie, a mere child when i first saw her--not more than fourteen years old. we were all in nice, one winter thirty years ago--some four years after i had first met the princess. i travelled in order to see her, and she was always kind to me, though she did not love me. perhaps i was useful, too, before that. people were always afraid of me, because i could handle the foils. it was thirty years ago, and the princess marie was eighteen. poor child!" spicca paused a moment, and passed his transparent hand over his eyes. "i think i understand," said orsino. "no you do not," answered spicca, with unexpected sharpness. "you will not understand, until i have told you everything. the princess marie fell ill, or pretended to fall ill while we were at nice. but she could not conceal the truth long--at least not from her mother. she had already taken into her confidence a little piedmontese maid, scarcely older than herself--a certain lucrezia ferris--and she allowed no other woman to come near her. then she told her mother the truth. she loved a man of her own rank and not much older--not yet of age, in fact. unfortunately, as happens with such people, a marriage was diplomatically impossible. he was not of her nationality and the relations were strained. but she had married him nevertheless, secretly and, as it turned out, without any legal formalities. it is questionable whether the marriage, even then, could have been proved to be valid, for she was a catholic and he was not, and a catholic priest had married them without proper authorisation or dispensation. but they were both in earnest, both young and both foolish. the husband--his name is of no importance--was very far away at the time we were in nice, and was quite unable to come to her. she was about to be a mother and she turned to her own mother in her extremity, with a full confession of the truth." "i see," said orsino. "and you adopted--" "you do not see yet. the princess came to me for advice. the situation was an extremely delicate one from all points of view. to declare the marriage at that moment might have produced extraordinary complications, for the countries to which, the two young people belonged were on the verge of a war which was only retarded by the extraordinary genius of one man. to conceal it seemed equally dangerous, if not more so. the princess marie's reputation was at stake--the reputation of a young girl, as people supposed her to be, remember that. various schemes suggested themselves. i cannot tell what would have been done, for fate decided the matter--tragically, as fate does. the young husband was killed while on a shooting expedition--at least so it was stated. i always believed that he shot himself. it was all very mysterious. we could not keep the news from the princess marie. that night maria consuelo was born. on the next day, her mother died. the shock had killed her. the secret was now known to the old princess, to me, to lucrezia ferris and to the french doctor--a man of great skill and discretion. maria consuelo was the nameless orphan child of an unacknowledged marriage--of a marriage which was certainly not legal, and which the church must hesitate to ratify. again we saw that the complications, diplomatic and of other kinds, which would arise if the truth were published, would be enormous. the prince himself was not yet in nice and was quite ignorant of the true cause of his daughter's sudden death. but he would arrive in forty-eight hours, and it was necessary to decide upon some course. we could rely upon the doctor and upon our two selves--the princess and i. lucrezia ferris seemed to be a sensible, quiet girl, and she certainly proved to be discreet for a long time. the princess was distracted with grief and beside herself with anxiety. remember that i loved her--that explains what i did. i proposed the plan which was carried out and with which you are acquainted. i took the child, declared it to be mine, and married lucrezia. the only legal documents in existence concerning maria consuelo prove her to be my daughter. the priest who had married the poor princess marie could never be found. terrified, perhaps, at what he had done, he disappeared--probably as a monk in an austrian monastery. i hunted him for years. lucrezia ferris was discreet for two reasons. she received a large sum of money, and a large allowance afterwards, and later on it appears that she further enriched herself at maria consuelo's expense. avarice was her chief fault, and by it we held her. secondly, however, she was well aware, and knows to-day, that no one would believe her story if she told the truth. the proofs are all positive and legal for maria consuelo's supposed parentage, and there is not a trace of evidence in favour of the truth. you know the story now. i am glad i have been able to tell it to you. i will rest now, for i am very tired. if i am alive to-morrow, come and see me--good-bye, in case you should not find me." orsino pressed the wasted hand and went out silently, more affected than he owned by the dying man's words and looks. it was a painful story of well-meant mistakes, he thought, and it explained many things which he had not understood. linking it with all he knew besides, he had the whole history of spicca's mysterious, broken life, together with the explanation of some points in his own which had never been clear to him. the old cynic of a duellist had been a man of heart, after all, and had sacrificed his whole existence to keep a secret for a woman whom he loved but who did not care for him. that was all. she was dead and he was dying. the secret was already half buried in the past. if it were told now, no one would believe it. orsino returned on the following day. he had sent for news several times, and was told that spicca still lingered. he saw him again but the old man seemed very weak and only spoke a few words during the hour orsino spent with him. the doctor had said that he might possibly live, but that there was not much hope. and again on the next day orsino came back. he started as he entered the room. an old franciscan, a minorite, was by the bedside, speaking in low tones. orsino made as though he would withdraw, but spicca feebly beckoned to him to stay, and the monk rose. "good-bye," whispered spicca, following him with his sunken eyes. orsino led the franciscan out. at the outer door the latter turned to orsino with a strange look and laid a hand upon his arm. "who are you, my son?" he asked. "orsino saracinesca." "a friend of his?" "yes." "he has done terrible things in his long life. but he has done noble things, too, and has suffered much, and in silence. he has earned his rest, and god will forgive him." the monk bowed his head and went out. orsino re-entered the room and took the vacant chair beside the bed. he touched spicca's hand almost affectionately, but the latter withdrew it with an effort. he had never liked sympathy, and liked it least when another would have needed it most. for a considerable time neither spoke. the pale hand lay peacefully upon the pillows, the long, shadowy frame was wrapped in a gown of dark woollen material. "do you think she will come to-day?" asked the old man at length. "she may come to-day--i hope so," orsino answered. a long pause followed. "i hope so, too," spicca whispered. "i have not much strength left. i cannot wait much longer." again there was silence. orsino knew that there was nothing to be said, nothing at least which he could say, to cheer the last hours of the lonely life. but spicca seemed contented that he should sit there. "give me that photograph," he said, suddenly, a quarter of an hour later. orsino looked about him but could not see what spicca wanted. "hers," said the feeble voice, "in the next room." it was the photograph in the little chiselled frame--the same frame which had once excited donna tullia's scorn. orsino brought it quickly from its place over the chimney-piece, and held it before his friend's eyes. spicca gazed at it a long time in silence. "take it away," he said, at last. "it is not like her." orsino put it aside and sat down again. presently spicca turned a little on the pillow and looked at him. "do you remember that i once said i wished you might marry her?" he asked. "yes." "it was quite true. you understand now? i could not tell you then." "yes. i understand everything now." "but i am sorry i said it." "why?" "perhaps it influenced you and has hurt your life. i am sorry. you must forgive me." "for heaven's sake, do not distress yourself about such trifles," said orsino, earnestly. "there is nothing to forgive." "thank you." orsino looked at him, pondering on the peaceful ending of the strange life, and wondering what manner of heart and soul the man had really lived with. with the intuition which sometimes comes to dying persons, spicca understood, though it was long before he spoke again. there was a faint touch of his old manner in his words. "i am an awful example, orsino," he said, with the ghost of a smile. "do not imitate me. do not sacrifice your life for the love of any woman. try and appreciate sacrifices in others." the smile died away again. "and yet i am glad i did it," he added, a moment later. "perhaps it was all a mistake--but i did my best." "you did indeed," orsino answered gravely. he meant what he said, though he felt that it had indeed been all a mistake, as spicca suggested. the young face was very thoughtful. spicca little knew how hard his last cynicism hit the man beside him, for whose freedom and safety the woman of whom spicca was thinking had sacrificed so very much. he would die without knowing that. the door opened softly and a woman's light footstep was on the threshold. maria consuelo came silently and swiftly forward with outstretched hands that had clasped the dying man's almost before orsino realised that it was she herself. she fell on her knees beside the bed and pressed the powerless cold fingers to her forehead. spicca started and for one moment raised his head from the pillow. it fell back almost instantly. a look of supreme happiness flashed over the deathly features, followed by an expression of pain. "why did you marry him?" he asked in tones so loud that orsino started, and maria consuelo looked up with streaming eyes. she did not answer, but tried to soothe him, rising and caressing his hand, and smoothing his pillows. "tell me why you married him!" he cried again. "i am dying--i must know!" she bent down very low and whispered into his ear. he shook his head impatiently. "louder! i cannot hear! louder!" again she whispered, more distinctly this time, and casting an imploring glance at orsino, who was too much disturbed to understand. "louder!" gasped the dying man, struggling to sit up. "louder! o my god! i shall die without hearing you--without knowing--" it would have been inhuman to torture the departing soul any longer. then maria consuelo made her last sacrifice. she spoke in calm, clear tones. "i married to save the man i loved." spicca's expression changed. for fully twenty seconds his sunken eyes remained fixed, gazing into hers. then the light began to flash in them for the last time, keen as the lightning. "god have mercy on you! god reward you!" he cried. the shadowy figure quivered throughout its length, was still, then quivered again, then sprang up suddenly with a leap, and spicca was standing on the floor, clasping maria consuelo in his arms. all at once there was colour in his face and the fire grew bright in his glance. "oh, my darling, i have loved you so!" he cried. he almost lifted her from the ground as he pressed his lips passionately upon her forehead. his long thin hands relaxed suddenly, and the light broke in his eyes as when a mirror is shivered by a blow. for an instant that seemed an age, he stood upright, dead already, and then fell back all his length across the bed with wide extended arms. there was a short, sharp sob, and then a sound of passionate weeping filled the silent room. strongly and tenderly orsino laid his dead friend upon the couch as he had lain alive but two minutes earlier. he crossed the hands upon the breast and gently closed the staring eyes. he could not have had maria consuelo see him as he had fallen, when she next looked up. a little later they stood side by side, gazing at the calm dead face, in a long silence. how long they stood, they never knew, for their hearts were very full. the sun was going down and the evening light filled the room. "did he tell you, before he died--about me?" asked maria consuelo in a low voice. "yes. he told me everything." maria consuelo went forward and bent over the face and kissed the white forehead, and made the sign of the cross upon it. then she turned and took orsino's hand in hers. "i could not help your hearing what i said, orsino. he was dying, you see. you know all, now." orsino's fingers pressed hers desperately. for a moment he could not speak. then the agonised words came with a great effort, harshly but ringing from the heart. "and i can give you nothing!" he covered his face and turned away. "give me your friendship, dear--i never had your love," she said. it was long before they talked together again. this is what i know of young orsino saracinesca's life up to the present time. maria consuelo, countess del ferice, was right. she never had his love as he had hers. perhaps the power of loving so is not in him. he is, after all, more like san giacinto than any other member of the family, cold, perhaps, and hard by nature. but these things which i have described have made a man of him at an age when many men are but boys, and he has learnt what many never learn at all--that there is more true devotion to be found in the world than most people will acknowledge. he may some day be heard of. he may some day fall under the great passion. or he may never love at all and may never distinguish himself any more than his father has done. one or the other may happen, but not both, in all probability. the very greatest passion is rarely compatible with the very greatest success except in extraordinary good or bad natures. and orsino saracinesca is not extraordinary in any way. his character has been formed by the unusual circumstances in which he was placed when very young, rather than by anything like the self-development which we hear of in the lives of great men. from a somewhat foolish and affectedly cynical youth he has grown into a decidedly hard and cool-headed man. he is very much seen in society but talks little on the whole. if, hereafter, there should be anything in his life worth recording, another hand than mine may write it down for future readers. if any one cares to ask why i have thought it worth the trouble to describe his early years so minutely, i answer that the young man of the transition period interests me. perhaps i am singular in that. orsino saracinesca is a fair type, i think, of his class at his age. i have done my best to be just to him. the end. 