Project Gutenberg's Etext Villa Rubein and Others, by Galsworthy
#7 in our series by John Galsworthy
#4 in our series of The Forsyte Saga [Just a Short Story]


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Title:  Villa Rubein and Other Stories
Contents:
Villa Rubein
A Man of Devon
A Knight
Salvation of a Forsyte
The Silence

Author:  John Galsworthy

March, 2001  [Etext #2639]


Project Gutenberg's Etext Villa Rubein and Others, by Galsworthy
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This etext was prepared by David Widger, < widger@cecomet.net >

[Spelling conforms to the original: "s's" instead of our "z's"; and
"c's" where we would have "s's"; and "...our" as in colour and
flavour; many interesting double consonants; etc.]




THE WORKS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY - VOLUME IV

VILLA RUBEIN AND OTHER STORIES

Contents:
Villa Rubein
A Man of Devon
A Knight
Salvation of a Forsyte
The Silence




PREFACE


Writing not long ago to my oldest literary friend, I expressed in a
moment of heedless sentiment the wish that we might have again one of
our talks of long-past days, over the purposes and methods of our
art.  And my friend, wiser than I, as he has always been, replied
with this doubting phrase "Could we recapture the zest of that old
time?"

I would not like to believe that our faith in the value of
imaginative art has diminished, that we think it less worth while to
struggle for glimpses of truth and for the words which may pass them
on to other eyes; or that we can no longer discern the star we tried
to follow; but I do fear, with him, that half a lifetime of endeavour
has dulled the exuberance which kept one up till morning discussing
the ways and means of aesthetic achievement.  We have discovered,
perhaps with a certain finality, that by no talk can a writer add a
cubit to his stature, or change the temperament which moulds and
colours the vision of life he sets before the few who will pause to
look at it.  And so--the rest is silence, and what of work we may
still do will be done in that dogged muteness which is the lot of
advancing years.

Other times, other men and modes, but not other truth.  Truth, though
essentially relative, like Einstein's theory, will never lose its
ever-new and unique quality-perfect proportion; for Truth, to the
human consciousness at least, is but that vitally just relation of
part to whole which is the very condition of life itself.  And the
task before the imaginative writer, whether at the end of the last
century or all these aeons later, is the presentation of a vision
which to eye and ear and mind has the implicit proportions of Truth.

I confess to have always looked for a certain flavour in the writings
of others, and craved it for my own, believing that all true vision
is so coloured by the temperament of the seer, as to have not only
the just proportions but the essential novelty of a living thing for,
after all, no two living things are alike.  A work of fiction should
carry the hall mark of its author as surely as a Goya, a Daumier, a
Velasquez, and a Mathew Maris, should be the unmistakable creations
of those masters.  This is not to speak of tricks and manners which
lend themselves to that facile elf, the caricaturist, but of a
certain individual way of seeing and feeling.  A young poet once said
of another and more popular poet: "Oh! yes, but be cuts no ice.
"And, when one came to think of it, he did not; a certain flabbiness
of spirit, a lack of temperament, an absence, perhaps, of the ironic,
or passionate, view, insubstantiated his work; it had no edge--just a
felicity which passed for distinction with the crowd.

Let me not be understood to imply that a novel should be a sort of
sandwich, in which the author's mood or philosophy is the slice of
ham.  One's demand is for a far more subtle impregnation of flavour;
just that, for instance, which makes De Maupassant a more poignant
and fascinating writer than his master Flaubert, Dickens and
Thackeray more living and permanent than George Eliot or Trollope.
It once fell to my lot to be the preliminary critic of a book on
painting, designed to prove that the artist's sole function was the
impersonal elucidation of the truths of nature.  I was regretfully
compelled to observe that there were no such things as the truths of
Nature, for the purposes of art, apart from the individual vision of
the artist.  Seer and thing seen, inextricably involved one with the
other, form the texture of any masterpiece; and I, at least, demand
therefrom a distinct impression of temperament.  I never saw, in the
flesh, either De Maupassant or Tchekov--those masters of such
different methods entirely devoid of didacticism--but their work
leaves on me a strangely potent sense of personality.  Such subtle
intermingling of seer with thing seen is the outcome only of long and
intricate brooding, a process not too favoured by modern life, yet
without which we achieve little but a fluent chaos of clever
insignificant impressions, a kind of glorified journalism, holding
much the same relation to the deeply-impregnated work of Turgenev,
Hardy, and Conrad, as a film bears to a play.

Speaking for myself, with the immodesty required of one who hazards
an introduction to his own work, I was writing fiction for five years
before I could master even its primary technique, much less achieve
that union of seer with thing seen, which perhaps begins to show
itself a little in this volume--binding up the scanty harvests of
1899, 1900, and 1901--especially in the tales: "A Knight," and
"Salvation of a Forsyte."  Men, women, trees, and works of fiction--
very tiny are the seeds from which they spring.  I used really to see
the "Knight"--in 1896, was it?--sitting in the "Place" in front of
the Casino at Monte Carlo ; and because his dried-up elegance, his
burnt straw hat, quiet courtesy of attitude, and big dog, used to
fascinate and intrigue me, I began to imagine his life so as to
answer my own questions and to satisfy, I suppose, the mood I was in.
I never spoke to him, I never saw him again.  His real story, no
doubt, was as different from that which I wove around his figure as
night from day.

As for Swithin, wild horses will not drag from me confession of where
and when I first saw the prototype which became enlarged to his bulky
stature.  I owe Swithin much, for he first released the satirist in
me, and is, moreover, the only one of my characters whom I killed
before I gave him life, for it is in "The Man of Property" that
Swithin Forsyte more memorably lives.

Ranging beyond this volume, I cannot recollect writing the first
words of "The Island Pharisees"--but it would be about August, 1901.
Like all the stories in "Villa Rubein," and, indeed, most of my
tales, the book originated in the curiosity, philosophic reflections,
and unphilosophic emotions roused in me by some single figure in real
life.  In this case it was Ferrand, whose real name, of course, was
not Ferrand, and who died in some "sacred institution" many years ago
of a consumption brought on by the conditions of his wandering life.
If not "a beloved," he was a true vagabond, and I first met him in
the Champs Elysees, just as in "The Pigeon" he describes his meeting
with Wellwyn.  Though drawn very much from life, he did not in the
end turn out very like the Ferrand of real life--the, figures of
fiction soon diverge from their prototypes.

The first draft of "The Island Pharisees" was buried in a drawer;
when retrieved the other day, after nineteen years, it disclosed a
picaresque string of anecdotes told by Ferrand in the first person.
These two-thirds of a book were laid to rest by Edward Garnett's
dictum that its author was not sufficiently within Ferrand's skin;
and, struggling heavily with laziness and pride, he started afresh in
the skin of Shelton.  Three times be wrote that novel, and then it
was long in finding the eye of Sydney Pawling, who accepted it for
Heinemann's in 1904.  That was a period of ferment and transition
with me, a kind of long awakening to the home truths of social
existence and national character.  The liquor bubbled too furiously
for clear bottling.  And the book, after all, became but an
introduction to all those following novels which depict--somewhat
satirically--the various sections of English "Society" with a more or
less capital "S."

Looking back on the long-stretched-out body of one's work, it is
interesting to mark the endless duel fought within a man between the
emotional and critical sides of his nature, first one, then the
other, getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result
has the mellowness of full achievement.  One can even tell the nature
of one's readers, by their preference for the work which reveals more
of this side than of that.  My early work was certainly more
emotional than critical.  But from 1901 came nine years when the
critical was, in the main, holding sway.  From 1910 to 1918 the
emotional again struggled for the upper hand; and from that time on
there seems to have been something of a "dead beat."  So the conflict
goes, by what mysterious tides promoted, I know not.

An author must ever wish to discover a hapless member of the Public
who, never yet having read a word of his writing, would submit to the
ordeal of reading him right through from beginning to end.  Probably
the effect could only be judged through an autopsy, but in the remote
case of survival, it would interest one so profoundly to see the
differences, if any, produced in that reader's character or outlook
over life.  This, however, is a consummation which will remain
devoutly to be wished, for there is a limit to human complaisance.
One will never know the exact measure of one's infecting power; or
whether, indeed, one is not just a long soporific.

A writer they say, should not favouritize among his creations; but
then a writer should not do so many things that be does.  This
writer, certainly, confesses to having favourites, and of his novels
so far be likes best: The Forsyte Series; "The Country House";
"Fraternity"; "The Dark Flower"; and "Five Tales"; believing these to
be the works which most fully achieve fusion of seer with thing seen,
most subtly disclose the individuality of their author, and best
reveal such of truth as has been vouchsafed to him.

JOHN GALSWORTHY.




TO

MY SISTER

BLANCHE LILIAN SAUTER




VILLA RUBEIN




I

Walking along the river wall at Botzen, Edmund Dawney said to Alois
Harz: "Would you care to know the family at that pink house, Villa
Rubein?"

Harz answered with a smile:

"Perhaps."

"Come with me then this afternoon."

They had stopped before an old house with a blind, deserted look,
that stood by itself on the wall; Harz pushed the door open.

"Come in, you don't want breakfast yet.  I'm going to paint the river
to-day."

He ran up the bare broad stairs, and Dawney followed leisurely, his
thumbs hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat, and his head thrown
back.

In the attic which filled the whole top story, Harz had pulled a
canvas to the window.  He was a young man of middle height, square
shouldered, active, with an angular face, high cheek-bones, and a
strong, sharp chin.  His eyes were piercing and steel-blue, his
eyebrows very flexible, nose long and thin with a high bridge; and
his dark, unparted hair fitted him like a cap.  His clothes looked as
if he never gave them a second thought.

This room, which served for studio, bedroom, and sitting-room, was
bare and dusty.  Below the window the river in spring flood rushed
down the valley, a stream, of molten bronze.  Harz dodged before the
canvas like a fencer finding his distance; Dawney took his seat on a
packingcase.

"The snows have gone with a rush this year," he drawled.  "The Talfer
comes down brown, the Eisack comes down blue; they flow into the
Etsch and make it green; a parable of the Spring for you, my
painter."

Harz mixed his colours.

"I've no time for parables," he said, "no time for anything.  If I
could be guaranteed to live to ninety-nine, like Titian--he had a
chance.  Look at that poor fellow who was killed the other day!  All
that struggle, and then--just at the turn!"

He spoke English with a foreign accent; his voice was rather harsh,
but his smile very kindly.

Dawney lit a cigarette.

"You painters," he said, "are better off than most of us.  You can
strike out your own line.  Now if I choose to treat a case out of the
ordinary way and the patient dies, I'm ruined."

"My dear Doctor--if I don't paint what the public likes, I starve;
all the same I'm going to paint in my own way; in the end I shall
come out on top."

"It pays to work in the groove, my friend, until you've made your
name; after that--do what you like, they'll lick your boots all the
same."

"Ah, you don't love your work."

Dawney answered slowly: "Never so happy as when my hands are full.
But I want to make money, to get known, to have a good time, good
cigars, good wine.  I hate discomfort.  No, my boy, I must work it on
the usual lines; I don't like it, but I must lump it.  One starts in
life with some notion of the ideal--it's gone by the board with me.
I've got to shove along until I've made my name, and then, my little
man--then--"

"Then you'll be soft!  "You pay dearly for that first period!"

"Take my chance of that; there's no other way."

"Make one!"

"Humph!"

Harz poised his brush, as though it were a spear:

"A man must do the best in him.  If he has to suffer--let him!"

Dawney stretched his large soft body; a calculating look had come
into his eyes.

"You're a tough little man!" he said.

"I've had to be tough."

Dawney rose; tobacco smoke was wreathed round his unruffled hair.

"Touching Villa Rubein," he said, "shall I call for you?  It's a
mixed household, English mostly--very decent people."

"No, thank you.  I shall be painting all day.  Haven't time to know
the sort of people who expect one to change one's clothes."

"As you like; ta-to!"  And, puffing out his chest, Dawney vanished
through a blanket looped across the doorway.

Harz set a pot of coffee on a spirit-lamp, and cut himself some
bread.  Through the window the freshness of the morning came; the
scent of sap and blossom and young leaves; the scent of earth, and
the mountains freed from winter; the new flights and songs of birds;
all the odorous, enchanted, restless Spring.

There suddenly appeared through the doorway a white rough-haired
terrier dog, black-marked about the face, with shaggy tan eyebrows.
He sniffed at Harz, showed the whites round his eyes, and uttered a
sharp bark.  A young voice called:

"Scruff! Thou naughty dog!"  Light footsteps were heard on the
stairs; from the distance a thin, high voice called:

"Greta! You mustn't go up there!"

A little girl of twelve, with long fair hair under a wide-brimmed
hat, slipped in.

Her blue eyes opened wide, her face flushed up.  That face was not
regular; its cheek-bones were rather prominent, the nose was
flattish; there was about it an air, innocent, reflecting, quizzical,
shy.

"Oh!" she said.

Harz smiled: "Good-morning!  This your dog?"

She did not answer, but looked at him with soft bewilderment; then
running to the dog seized him by the collar.

"Scr-ruff! Thou naughty dog-the baddest dog!"  The ends of her hair
fell about him; she looked up at Harz, who said:

"Not at all!  Let me give him some bread."

"Oh no! You must not--I will beat him--and tell him he is bad; then
he shall not do such things again.  Now he is sulky; he looks so
always when he is sulky.  Is this your home?"

"For the present; I am a visitor."

"But I think you are of this country, because you speak like it."

"Certainly, I am a Tyroler."

"I have to talk English this morning, but I do not like it very much-
-because, also I am half Austrian, and I like it best; but my sister,
Christian, is all English.  Here is Miss Naylor; she shall be very
angry with me."

And pointing to the entrance with a rosy-tipped forefinger, she again
looked ruefully at Harz.

There came into the room with a walk like the hopping of a bird an
elderly, small lady, in a grey serge dress, with narrow bands of
claret-coloured velveteen; a large gold cross dangled from a steel
chain on her chest; she nervously twisted her hands, clad in black
kid gloves, rather white about the seams.

Her hair was prematurely grey; her quick eyes brown; her mouth
twisted at one corner; she held her face, kind-looking, but long and
narrow, rather to one side, and wore on it a look of apology.  Her
quick sentences sounded as if she kept them on strings, and wanted to
draw them back as soon as she had let them forth.

"Greta, how can, you do such things?  I don't know what your father
would say!  I am sure I don't know how to--so extraordinary--"

"Please!" said Harz.

"You must come at once--so very sorry--so awkward!"  They were
standing in a ring: Harz with his eyebrows working up and down; the
little lady fidgeting her parasol; Greta, flushed and pouting, her
eyes all dewy, twisting an end of fair hair round her finger.

"Oh, look!"  The coffee had boiled over.  Little brown streams
trickled spluttering from the pan; the dog, with ears laid back and
tail tucked in, went scurrying round the room.  A feeling of
fellowship fell on them at once.

"Along the wall is our favourite walk, and Scruff--so awkward, so
unfortunate--we did not think any one lived here--the shutters are
cracked, the paint is peeling off so dreadfully.  Have you been long
in Botzen?  Two months?  Fancy!  You are not English?  You are
Tyrolese?  But you speak English so well--there for seven years?
Really?  So fortunate!--It is Greta's day for English."

Miss Naylor's eyes darted bewildered glances at the roof where the
crossing of the beams made such deep shadows; at the litter of
brushes, tools, knives, and colours on a table made out of packing-
cases; at the big window, innocent of glass, and flush with the
floor, whence dangled a bit of rusty chain--relic of the time when
the place had been a store-loft; her eyes were hastily averted from
an unfnished figure of the nude.

Greta, with feet crossed, sat on a coloured blanket, dabbling her
fnger in a little pool of coffee, and gazing up at Harz.  And he
thought: 'I should like to paint her like that.  "A forget-me-not."'

He took out his chalks to make a sketch of her.

"Shall you show me?" cried out Greta, scrambling to her feet.

"'Will,' Greta--'will'; how often must I tell you?  I think we should
be going--it is very late--your father--so very kind of you, but I
think we should be going.  Scruff!"   Miss Naylor gave the floor two
taps.  The terrier backed into a plaster cast which came down on his
tail, and sent him flying through the doorway.  Greta followed
swiftly, crying:

"Ach! poor Scrufee!"

Miss Naylor crossed the room; bowing, she murmured an apology, and
also disappeared.

Harz was left alone, his guests were gone; the little girl with the
fair hair and the eyes like forget-me-nots, the little lady with
kindly gestures and bird-like walk, the terrier.  He looked round
him; the room seemed very empty.  Gnawing his moustache, he muttered
at the fallen cast.

Then taking up his brush, stood before his picture, smiling and
frowning.  Soon he had forgotten it all in his work.




II

It was early morning four days later, and Harz was loitering
homewards.  The shadows of the clouds passing across the vines were
vanishing over the jumbled roofs and green-topped spires of the town.
A strong sweet wind was blowing from the mountains, there was a stir
in the branches of the trees, and flakes of the late blossom were
drifting down.  Amongst the soft green pods of a kind of poplar
chafers buzzed, and numbers of their little brown bodies were strewn
on the path.

He passed a bench where a girl sat sketching.  A puff of wind whirled
her drawing to the ground; Harz ran to pick it up.  She took it from
him with a bow; but, as he turned away, she tore the sketch across.

"Ah!" he said; "why did you do that?"

This girl, who stood with a bit of the torn sketch in either hand,
was slight and straight; and her face earnest and serene.  She gazed
at Harz with large, clear, greenish eyes; her lips and chin were
defiant, her forehead tranquil.

"I don't like it."

"Will you let me look at it?  I am a painter."

"It isn't worth looking at, but--if you wish--"

He put the two halves of the sketch together.

"You see!" she said at last; "I told you."

Harz did not answer, still looking at the sketch.  The girl frowned.

Harz asked her suddenly:

"Why do you paint?"

She coloured, and said:

"Show me what is wrong."

"I cannot show you what is wrong, there is nothing wrong--but why do
you paint?"

"I don't understand."

Harz shrugged his shoulders.

"You've no business to do that," said the girl in a hurt voice; "I
want to know."

"Your heart is not in it," said Harz.

She looked at him, startled; her eyes had grown thoughtful.

"I suppose that is it.  There are so many other things--"

"There should be nothing else," said Harz.

She broke in: "I don't want always to be thinking of myself.
Suppose--"

"Ah! When you begin supposing!"

The girl confronted him; she had torn the sketch again.

"You mean that if it does not matter enough, one had better not do it
at all.  I don't know if you are right--I think you are."

There was the sound of a nervous cough, and Harz saw behind him his
three visitors--Miss Naylor offering him her hand; Greta, flushed,
with a bunch of wild flowers, staring intently in his face; and the
terrier, sniffing at his trousers.

Miss Naylor broke an awkward silence.

"We wondered if you would still be here, Christian.  I am sorry to
interrupt you--I was not aware that you knew Mr.Herr--"

"Harz is my name--we were just talking"

"About my sketch.  Oh, Greta, you do tickle!  Will you come and have
breakfast with us to-day, Herr Harz?  It's our turn, you know."

Harz, glancing at his dusty clothes, excused himself.

But Greta in a pleading voice said: "Oh! do come!  Scruff likes you.
It is so dull when there is nobody for breakfast but ourselves."

Miss Naylor's mouth began to twist.  Harz hurriedly broke in:

"Thank you.  I will come with pleasure; you don't mind my being
dirty?"

"Oh no! we do not mind; then we shall none of us wash, and afterwards
I shall show you my rabbits."

Miss Naylor, moving from foot to foot, like a bird on its perch,
exclaimed:

"I hope you won't regret it, not a very good meal--the girls are so
impulsive--such informal invitation; we shall be very glad."

But Greta pulled softly at her sister's sleeve, and Christian,
gathering her things, led the way.

Harz followed in amazement; nothing of this kind had come into his
life before.  He kept shyly glancing at the girls; and, noting the
speculative innocence in Greta's eyes, he smiled.  They soon came to
two great poplar-trees, which stood, like sentinels, one on either
side of an unweeded gravel walk leading through lilac bushes to a
house painted dull pink, with green-shuttered windows, and a roof of
greenish slate.  Over the door in faded crimson letters were written
the words, "Villa Rubein."

"That is to the stables," said Greta, pointing down a path, where
some pigeons were sunning themselves on a wall.  "Uncle Nic keeps his
horses there: Countess and Cuckoo--his horses begin with C, because
of Chris--they are quite beautiful.  He says he could drive them to
Kingdom-Come and they would not turn their hair.  Bow, and say 'Good-
morning' to our house!"

Harz bowed.

"Father said all strangers should, and I think it brings good luck."
>From the doorstep she looked round at Harz, then ran into the house.

A broad, thick-set man, with stiff, brushed-up hair, a short, brown,
bushy beard parted at the chin, a fresh complexion, and blue glasses
across a thick nose, came out, and called in a bluff voice:

"Ha! my good dears, kiss me quick--prrt!  How goes it then this
morning?  A good walk, hein?"  The sound of many loud rapid kisses
followed.

"Ha, Fraulein, good!"  He became aware of Harz's figure standing in
the doorway: "Und der Herr?"

Miss Naylor hurriedly explained.

"Good!  An artist!  Kommen Sie herein, I am delight.  You will
breakfast?  I too--yes, yes, my dears--I too breakfast with you this
morning.  I have the hunter's appetite."

Harz, looking at him keenly, perceived him to be of middle height and
age, stout, dressed in a loose holland jacket, a very white, starched
shirt, and blue silk sash; that he looked particularly clean, had an
air of belonging to Society, and exhaled a really fine aroma of
excellent cigars and the best hairdresser's essences.

The room they entered was long and rather bare; there was a huge map
on the wall, and below it a pair of globes on crooked supports,
resembling two inflated frogs erect on their hind legs.  In one
corner was a cottage piano, close to a writing-table heaped with
books and papers; this nook, sacred to Christian, was foreign to the
rest of the room, which was arranged with supernatural neatness.  A
table was laid for breakfast, and the sun-warmed air came in through
French windows.

The meal went merrily; Herr Paul von Morawitz was never in such
spirits as at table.  Words streamed from him.  Conversing with Harz,
he talked of Art as who should say: "One does not claim to be a
connoisseur--pas si bete--still, one has a little knowledge, que
diable!"  He recommended him a man in the town who sold cigars that
were "not so very bad."  He consumed porridge, ate an omelette; and
bending across to Greta gave her a sounding kiss, muttering: "Kiss me
quick!"--an expression he had picked up in a London music-hall, long
ago, and considered chic.  He asked his daughters' plans, and held
out porridge to the terrier, who refused it with a sniff.

"Well," he said suddenly, looking at Miss Naylor, "here is a
gentleman who has not even heard our names!"

The little lady began her introductions in a breathless voice.

"Good!"  Herr Paul said, puffing out his lips: "Now we know each
other!" and, brushing up the ends of his moustaches, he carried off
Harz into another room, decorated with pipe-racks, prints of dancing-
girls, spittoons, easy-chairs well-seasoned by cigar smoke, French
novels, and newspapers.

The household at Villa Rubein was indeed of a mixed and curious
nature.  Cut on both floors by corridors, the Villa was divided into
four divisions; each of which had its separate inhabitants, an
arrangement which had come about in the following way:

When old Nicholas Treffry died, his estate, on the boundary of
Cornwall, had been sold and divided up among his three surviving
children--Nicholas, who was much the eldest, a partner in the well-
known firm of Forsyte and Treffry, teamen, of the Strand; Constance,
married to a man called Decie; and Margaret, at her father's death
engaged to the curate of the parish, John Devorell, who shortly
afterwards became its rector.  By his marriage with Margaret Treffry
the rector had one child called Christian.  Soon after this he came
into some property, and died, leaving it unfettered to his widow.
Three years went by, and when the child was six years old, Mrs.
Devorell, still young and pretty, came to live in London with her
brother Nicholas.  It was there that she met Paul von Morawitz--the
last of an old Czech family, who had lived for many hundred years on
their estates near Budweiss.  Paul had been left an orphan at the age
of ten, and without a solitary ancestral acre.  Instead of acres, he
inherited the faith that nothing was too good for a von Morawitz.  In
later years his savoir faire enabled him to laugh at faith, but it
stayed quietly with him all the same.  The absence of acres was of no
great consequence, for through his mother, the daughter of a banker
in Vienna, he came into a well-nursed fortune.  It befitted a von
Morawitz that he should go into the Cavalry, but, unshaped for
soldiering, he soon left the Service; some said he had a difference
with his Colonel over the quality of food provided during some
manoeuvres; others that he had retired because his chargers did not
fit his legs, which were, indeed, rather round.

He had an admirable appetite for pleasure; a man-about-town's life
suited him.  He went his genial, unreflecting, costly way in Vienna,
Paris, London.  He loved exclusively those towns, and boasted that he
was as much at home in one as in another.  He combined exuberant
vitality with fastidiousness of palate, and devoted both to the
acquisition of a special taste in women, weeds, and wines; above all
he was blessed with a remarkable digestion.  He was thirty when he
met Mrs. Devorell; and she married him because he was so very
different from anybody she had ever seen.  People more dissimilar
were never mated.  To Paul--accustomed to stage doors--freshness,
serene tranquillity, and obvious purity were the baits; he had run
through more than half his fortune, too, and the fact that she had
money was possibly not overlooked.  Be that as it may, he was fond of
her; his heart was soft, he developed a domestic side.

Greta was born to them after a year of marriage.  The instinct of the
"freeman" was, however, not dead in Paul; he became a gambler.  He
lost the remainder of his fortune without being greatly disturbed.
When he began to lose his wife's fortune too things naturally became
more difficult.  Not too much remained when Nicholas Treffry stepped
in, and caused his sister to settle what was left on her daughters,
after providing a life-interest for herself and Paul.  Losing his
supplies, the good man had given up his cards.  But the instinct of
the "freeman" was still living in his breast; he took to drink.  He
was never grossly drunk, and rarely very sober.  His wife sorrowed
over this new passion; her health, already much enfeebled, soon broke
down.  The doctors sent her to the Tyrol.  She seemed to benefit by
this, and settled down at Botzen.  The following year, when Greta was
just ten, she died.  It was a shock to Paul.  He gave up excessive
drinking; became a constant smoker, and lent full rein to his natural
domesticity.  He was fond of both the girls, but did not at all
understand them; Greta, his own daughter, was his favourite.  Villa
Rubein remained their home; it was cheap and roomy.  Money, since
Paul became housekeeper to himself, was scarce.

About this time Mrs. Decie, his wife's sister, whose husband had died
in the East, returned to England; Paul invited her to come and live
with them.  She had her own rooms, her own servant; the arrangement
suited Paul--it was economically sound, and there was some one always
there to take care of the girls.  In truth he began to feel the
instinct of the "freeman" rising again within him; it was pleasant to
run over to Vienna now and then; to play piquet at a Club in Gries,
of which he was the shining light; in a word, to go "on the tiles" a
little.  One could not always mourn--even if a woman were an angel;
moreover, his digestion was as good as ever.

The fourth quarter of this Villa was occupied by Nicholas Treffry,
whose annual sojourn out of England perpetually surprised himself.
Between him and his young niece, Christian, there existed, however, a
rare sympathy; one of those affections between the young and old,
which, mysteriously born like everything in life, seems the only end
and aim to both, till another feeling comes into the younger heart.

Since a long and dangerous illness, he had been ordered to avoid the
English winter, and at the commencement of each spring he would
appear at Botzen, driving his own horses by easy stages from the
Italian Riviera, where he spent the coldest months.  He always stayed
till June before going back to his London Club, and during all that
time he let no day pass without growling at foreigners, their habits,
food, drink, and raiment, with a kind of big dog's growling that did
nobody any harm.  The illness had broken him very much; he was
seventy, but looked more.  He had a servant, a Luganese, named
Dominique, devoted to him.  Nicholas Treffry had found him overworked
in an hotel, and had engaged him with the caution: "Look--here,
Dominique! I swear!"  To which Dominique, dark of feature, saturnine
and ironical, had only replied: "Tres biens, M'sieur!"




III

Harz and his host sat in leather chairs; Herr Paul's square back was
wedged into a cushion, his round legs crossed.  Both were smoking,
and they eyed each other furtively, as men of different stamp do when
first thrown together.  The young artist found his host extremely new
and disconcerting; in his presence he felt both shy and awkward.
Herr Paul, on the other hand, very much at ease, was thinking
indolently:

'Good-looking young fellow--comes of the people, I expect, not at all
the manner of the world; wonder what he talks about.'

Presently noticing that Harz was looking at a photograph, he said:
"Ah! yes! that was a woman!  They are not to be found in these days.
She could dance, the little Coralie!  Did you ever see such arms?
Confess that she is beautiful, hein?"

"She has individuality," said Harz.  "A fine type!"

Herr Paul blew out a cloud of smoke.

"Yes," he murmured, "she was fine all over!"  He had dropped his
eyeglasses, and his full brown eyes, with little crow's-feet at the
corners, wandered from his visitor to his cigar.

'He'd be like a Satyr if he wasn't too clean,' thought Harz.  'Put
vine leaves in his hair, paint him asleep, with his hands crossed,
so!'

"When I am told a person has individuality," Herr Paul was saying in
a rich and husky voice, "I generally expect boots that bulge, an
umbrella of improper colour; I expect a creature of 'bad form' as
they say in England; who will shave some days and some days will not
shave; who sometimes smells of India-rubber, and sometimes does not
smell, which is discouraging!"

"You do not approve of individuality?" said Harz shortly.

"Not if it means doing, and thinking, as those who know better do not
do, or think."

"And who are those who know better?"

"Ah! my dear, you are asking me a riddle?  Well, then--Society, men
of birth, men of recognised position, men above eccentricity, in a
word, of reputation."

Harz looked at him fixedly.  "Men who haven't the courage of their
own ideas, not even the courage to smell of India-rubber; men who
have no desires, and so can spend all their time making themselves
flat!"

Herr Paul drew out a red silk handkerchief and wiped his beard.  "I
assure you, my dear," he said, "it is easier to be flat; it is more
respectable to be flat.  Himmel! why not, then, be flat?"

"Like any common fellow?"

"Certes; like any common fellow--like me, par exemple!"  Herr Paul
waved his hand.  When he exercised unusual tact, he always made use
of a French expression.

Harz flushed.  Herr Paul followed up his victory.  "Come, come!" he
said.  "Pass me my men of repute! que diable! we are not anarchists."

"Are you sure?" said Harz.

Herr Paul twisted his moustache.  "I beg your pardon," he said
slowly.  But at this moment the door was opened; a rumbling voice
remarked: "Morning, Paul.  Who's your visitor?"  Harz saw a tall,
bulky figure in the doorway.

"Come in,"' called out Herr Paul.  "Let me present to you a new
acquaintance, an artist: Herr Harz--Mr. Nicholas Treffry.  Psumm
bumm! All this introducing is dry work."  And going to the sideboard
he poured out three glasses of a light, foaming beer.

Mr. Treffry waved it from him: "Not for me," he said: "Wish I could!
They won't let me look at it."  And walking over, to the window with
a heavy tread, which trembled like his voice, he sat down.  There was
something in his gait like the movements of an elephant's hind legs.
He was very tall (it was said, with the customary exaggeration of
family tradition, that there never had been a male Treffry under six
feet in height), but now he stooped, and had grown stout.  There was
something at once vast and unobtrusive about his personality.

He wore a loose brown velvet jacket, and waistcoat, cut to show a
soft frilled shirt and narrow black ribbon tie; a thin gold chain was
looped round his neck and fastened to his fob.  His heavy cheeks had
folds in them like those in a bloodhound's face.  He wore big,
drooping, yellow-grey moustaches, which he had a habit of sucking,
and a goatee beard.  He had long loose ears that might almost have
been said to gap.  On his head there was a soft black hat, large in
the brim and low in the crown.  His grey eyes, heavy-lidded, twinkled
under their bushy brows with a queer, kind cynicism.  As a young man
he had sown many a wild oat; but he had also worked and made money in
business; he had, in fact, burned the candle at both ends; but he had
never been unready to do his fellows a good turn.  He had a passion
for driving, and his reckless method of pursuing this art had caused
him to be nicknamed: "The notorious Treffry."

Once, when he was driving tandem down a hill with a loose rein, the
friend beside him had said: "For all the good you're doing with those
reins, Treffry, you might as well throw them on the horses' necks."

"Just so," Treffry had answered.  At the bottom of the hill they had
gone over a wall into a potato patch.  Treffry had broken several
ribs; his friend had gone unharmed.

He was a great sufferer now, but, constitutionally averse to being
pitied, he had a disconcerting way of humming, and this, together
with the shake in his voice, and his frequent use of peculiar
phrases, made the understanding of his speech depend at times on
intuition rather than intelligence.

The clock began to strike eleven.  Harz muttered an excuse, shook
hands with his host, and bowing to his new acquaintance, went away.
He caught a glimpse of Greta's face against the window, and waved his
hand to her.  In the road he came on Dawney, who was turning in
between the poplars, with thumbs as usual hooked in the armholes of
his waistcoat.

"Hallo!" the latter said.

"Doctor!" Harz answered slyly; "the Fates outwitted me, it seems."

"Serve you right," said Dawney, "for your confounded egoism! Wait
here till I come out, I shan't be many minutes."

But Harz went on his way.  A cart drawn by cream-coloured oxen was
passing slowly towards the bridge.  In front of the brushwood piled
on it two peasant girls were sitting with their feet on a mat of
grass--the picture of contentment.

"I'm wasting my time!" he thought.  "I've done next to nothing in two
months.  Better get back to London!  That girl will never make a
painter!"  She would never make a painter, but there was something in
her that he could not dismiss so rapidly.  She was not exactly
beautiful, but she was sympathetic.  The brow was pleasing, with
dark-brown hair softly turned back, and eyes so straight and shining.
The two sisters were very different!  The little one was innocent,
yet mysterious; the elder seemed as clear as crystal!

He had entered the town, where the arcaded streets exuded their
peculiar pungent smell of cows and leather, wood-smoke, wine-casks,
and drains.  The sound of rapid wheels over the stones made him turn
his head.  A carriage drawn by red-roan horses was passing at a great
pace.  People stared at it, standing still, and looking alarmed.  It
swung from side to side and vanished round a corner.  Harz saw Mr.
Nicholas Treffry in a long, whitish dust-coat; his Italian servant,
perched behind, was holding to the seat-rail, with a nervous grin on
his dark face.

'Certainly,' Harz thought, 'there's no getting away from these people
this morning--they are everywhere.'

In his studio he began to sort his sketches, wash his brushes, and
drag out things he had accumulated during his two months' stay.  He
even began to fold his blanket door.  But suddenly he stopped.  Those
two girls!  Why not try?  What a picture!  The two heads, the sky,
and leaves!  Begin to-morrow!  Against that window--no, better at the
Villa!  Call the picture--Spring...!




IV

The wind, stirring among trees and bushes, flung the young leaves
skywards.  The trembling of their silver linings was like the joyful
flutter of a heart at good news.  It was one of those Spring mornings
when everything seems full of a sweet restlessness--soft clouds
chasing fast across the sky; soft scents floating forth and dying;
the notes of birds, now shrill and sweet, now hushed in silences; all
nature striving for something, nothing at peace.

Villa Rubein withstood the influence of the day, and wore its usual
look of rest and isolation.  Harz sent in his card, and asked to see
"der Herr."  The servant, a grey-eyed, clever-looking Swiss with no
hair on his face, came back saying:

"Der Herr, mein Herr, is in the Garden gone."  Harz followed him.

Herr Paul, a small white flannel cap on his head, gloves on his
hands, and glasses on his nose, was watering a rosebush, and humming
the serenade from Faust.

This aspect of the house was very different from the other.  The sun
fell on it, and over a veranda creepers clung and scrambled in long
scrolls.  There was a lawn, with freshly mown grass; flower-beds were
laid out, and at the end of an avenue of young acacias stood an
arbour covered with wisteria.

In the east, mountain peaks--fingers of snow--glittered above the
mist.  A grave simplicity lay on that scene, on the roofs and spires,
the valleys and the dreamy hillsides, with their yellow scars and
purple bloom, and white cascades, like tails of grey horses swishing
in the wind.

Herr Paul held out his hand: "What can we do for you?" he said.

"I have to beg a favour," replied Harz.  "I wish to paint your
daughters.  I will bring the canvas here--they shall have no trouble.
I would paint them in the garden when they have nothing else to do."

Herr Paul looked at him dubiously--ever since the previous day he had
been thinking: 'Queer bird, that painter--thinks himself the devil of
a swell!  Looks a determined fellow too!'  Now--staring in the
painter's face--it seemed to him, on the whole, best if some one else
refused this permission.

"With all the pleasure, my dear sir," he said.  "Come, let us ask
these two young ladies!" and putting down his hose, he led the way
towards the arbour, thinking: 'You'll be disappointed, my young
conqueror, or I'm mistaken.'

Miss Naylor and the girls were sitting in the shade, reading La
Fontaine's fables.  Greta, with one eye on her governess, was
stealthily cutting a pig out of orange peel.

"Ah! my dear dears!" began Herr Paul, who in the presence of Miss
Naylor always paraded his English.  "Here is our friend, who has a
very flattering request to make; he would paint you, yes--both
together, alfresco, in the air, in the sunshine, with the birds, the
little birds!"

Greta, gazing at Harz, gushed deep pink, and furtively showed him her
pig.

Christian said: "Paint us?  Oh no!"

She saw Harz looking at her, and added, slowly: "If you really wish
it, I suppose we could!" then dropped her eyes.

"Ah!" said Herr Paul raising his brows till his glasses fell from his
nose: "And what says Gretchen?  Does she want to be handed up to
posterities a little peacock along with the other little birds?"

Greta, who had continued staring at the painter, said: "Of--course--
I--want--to--be."

"Prrt!" said Herr Paul, looking at Miss Naylor.  The little lady
indeed opened her mouth wide, but all that came forth was a tiny
squeak, as sometimes happens when one is anxious to say something,
and has not arranged beforehand what it shall be.

The affair seemed ended; Harz heaved a sigh of satisfaction.  But
Herr Paul had still a card to play.

"There is your Aunt," he said; "there are things to be considered--
one must certainly inquire--so, we shall see."  Kissing Greta loudly
on both cheeks, he went towards the house.

"What makes you want to paint us?" Christian asked, as soon as he was
gone.

"I think it very wrong," Miss Naylor blurted out.

"Why?" said Harz, frowning.

"Greta is so young--there are lessons--it is such a waste of time!"

His eyebrows twitched: "Ah! You think so!"

"I don't see why it is a waste of time," said Christian quietly;
"there are lots of hours when we sit here and do nothing."

"And it is very dull," put in Greta, with a pout.

"You are rude, Greta," said Miss Naylor in a little rage, pursing her
lips, and taking up her knitting.

"I think it seems always rude to speak the truth," said Greta.  Miss
Naylor looked at her in that concentrated manner with which she was
in the habit of expressing displeasure.

But at this moment a servant came, and said that Mrs. Decie would be
glad to see Herr Harz.  The painter made them a stiff bow, and
followed the servant to the house.  Miss Naylor and the two girls
watched his progress with apprehensive eyes; it was clear that he had
been offended.

Crossing the veranda, and passing through an open window hung with
silk curtains, Hart entered a cool dark room.  This was Mrs. Decie's
sanctum, where she conducted correspondence, received her visitors,
read the latest literature, and sometimes, when she had bad
headaches, lay for hours on the sofa, with a fan, and her eyes
closed.  There was a scent of sandalwood, a suggestion of the East, a
kind of mystery, in here, as if things like chairs and tables were
not really what they seemed, but something much less commonplace.

The visitor looked twice, to be quite sure of anything; there were
many plants, bead curtains, and a deal of silverwork and china.

Mrs. Decie came forward in the slightly rustling silk which--whether
in or out of fashion--always accompanied her.  A tall woman, over
fifty, she moved as if she had been tied together at the knees.  Her
face was long, with broad brows, from which her sandy-grey hair was
severely waved back; she had pale eyes, and a perpetual, pale,
enigmatic smile.  Her complexion had been ruined by long residence in
India, and might unkindly have been called fawn-coloured.  She came
close to Harz, keeping her eyes on his, with her head bent slightly
forward.

"We are so pleased to know you," she said, speaking in a voice which
had lost all ring.  "It is charming to find some one in these parts
who can help us to remember that there is such a thing as Art.  We
had Mr. C--- here last autumn, such a charming fellow.  He was so
interested in the native customs and dresses.  You are a subject
painter, too, I think?  Won't you sit down?"

She went on for some time, introducing painters' names, asking
questions, skating round the edge of what was personal.  And the
young man stood before her with a curious little smile fixed on his
lips.  'She wants to know whether I'm worth powder and shot,' he
thought.

"You wish to paint my nieces?" Mrs. Decie said at last, leaning back
on her settee.

"I wish to have that honour," Harz answered with a bow.

"And what sort of picture did you think of?"

"That," said Harz, "is in the future.  I couldn't tell you."  And he
thought: 'Will she ask me if I get my tints in Paris, like the woman
Tramper told me of?'

The perpetual pale smile on Mrs. Decie's face seemed to invite his
confidence, yet to warn him that his words would be sucked in
somewhere behind those broad fine brows, and carefully sorted.  Mrs.
Decie, indeed, was thinking: 'Interesting young man, regular
Bohemian--no harm in that at his age; something Napoleonic in his
face; probably has no dress clothes.  Yes, should like to see more of
him!'  She had a fine eye for points of celebrity; his name was
unfamiliar, would probably have been scouted by that famous artist
Mr. C---, but she felt her instinct urging her on to know him.  She
was, to do her justice, one of those "lion" finders who seek the
animal for pleasure, not for the glory it brings them; she had the
courage of her instincts--lion-entities were indispensable to her,
but she trusted to divination to secure them; nobody could foist a
"lion" on her.

"It will be very nice.  You will stay and have some lunch?  The
arrangements here are rather odd.  Such a mixed household--but there
is always lunch at two o'clock for any one who likes, and we all dine
at seven.  You would have your sittings in the afternoons, perhaps?
I should so like to see your sketches.  You are using the old house
on the wall for studio; that is so original of you!"

Harz would not stay to lunch, but asked if he might begin work that
afternoon; he left a little suffocated by the sandalwood and sympathy
of this sphinx-like woman.

Walking home along the river wall, with the singing of the larks and
thrushes, the rush of waters, the humming of the chafers in his ears,
he felt that he would make something fine of this subject.  Before
his eyes the faces of the two girls continually started up, framed by
the sky, with young leaves guttering against their cheeks.




V

Three days had passed since Harz began his picture, when early in the
morning, Greta came from Villa Rubein along the river dyke and sat
down on a bench from which the old house on the wall was visible.
She had not been there long before Harz came out.

"I did not knock," said Greta, "because you would not have heard, and
it is so early, so I have been waiting for you a quarter of an hour."

Selecting a rosebud, from some flowers in her hand, she handed it to
him.  "That is my first rosebud this year," she said; "it is for you
because you are painting me.  To-day I am thirteen, Herr Harz; there
is not to be a sitting, because it is my birthday; but, instead, we
are all going to Meran to see the play of Andreas Hofer.  You are to
come too, please; I am here to tell you, and the others shall be here
directly."

Harz bowed: "And who are the others?"

"Christian, and Dr. Edmund, Miss Naylor, and Cousin Teresa.  Her
husband is ill, so she is sad, but to-day she is going to forget
that.  It is not good to be always sad, is it, Herr Harz?"

He laughed: "You could not be."

Greta answered gravely: "Oh yes, I could.  I too am often sad.  You
are making fun.  You are not to make fun to-day, because it is my
birthday.  Do you think growing up is nice, Herr Harz ?"

"No, Fraulein Greta, it is better to have all the time before you."

They walked on side by side.

"I think," said Greta, "you are very much afraid of losing time.
Chris says that time is nothing."

"Time is everything," responded Harz.

"She says that time is nothing, and thought is everything," Greta
murmured, rubbing a rose against her cheek, "but I think you cannot
have a thought unless you have the time to think it in.  There are
the others!  Look!"

A cluster of sunshades on the bridge glowed for a moment and was lost
in shadow.

"Come," said Harz, "let's join them!"

At Meran, under Schloss Tirol, people were streaming across the
meadows into the open theatre.  Here were tall fellows in mountain
dress, with leather breeches, bare knees, and hats with eagles'
feathers; here were fruit-sellers, burghers and their wives,
mountebanks, actors, and every kind of visitor.  The audience, packed
into an enclosure of high boards, sweltered under the burning sun.
Cousin Teresa, tall and thin, with hard, red cheeks, shaded her
pleasant eyes with her hand.

The play began.  It depicted the rising in the Tyrol of 1809: the
village life, dances and yodelling; murmurings and exhortations, the
warning beat of drums; then the gathering, with flintlocks,
pitchforks, knives; the battle and victory; the homecoming, and
festival.  Then the second gathering, the roar of cannon; betrayal,
capture, death.  The impassive figure of the patriot Andreas Hofer
always in front, black-bearded, leathern-girdled, under the blue sky,
against a screen of mountains.

Harz and Christian sat behind the others.  He seemed so intent on the
play that she did not speak, but watched his face, rigid with a kind
of cold excitement; he seemed to be transported by the life passing
before them.  Something of his feeling seized on her; when the play
was over she too was trembling.  In pushing their way out they became
separated from the others.

"There's a short cut to the station here," said Christian; "let's go
this way."

The path rose a little; a narrow stream crept alongside the meadow,
and the hedge was spangled with wild roses.  Christian kept glancing
shyly at the painter.  Since their meeting on the river wall her
thoughts had never been at rest.  This stranger, with his keen face,
insistent eyes, and ceaseless energy, had roused a strange feeling in
her; his words had put shape to something in her not yet expressed.
She stood aside at a stile to make way for some peasant boys, dusty
and rough-haired, who sang and whistled as they went by.

"I was like those boys once," said Harz.

Christian turned to him quickly.  "Ah! that was why you felt the
play, so much."

"It's my country up there.  I was born amongst the mountains.  I
looked after the cows, and slept in hay-cocks, and cut the trees in
winter.  They used to call me a 'black sheep,' a 'loafer' in my
village."

"Why?"

"Ah! why?  I worked as hard as any of them.  But I wanted to get
away.  Do you think I could have stayed there all my life?"

Christian's eyes grew eager.

"If people don't understand what it is you want to do, they always
call you a loafer!" muttered Harz.

"But you did what you meant to do in spite of them," Christian said.

For herself it was so hard to finish or decide.  When in the old days
she told Greta stories, the latter, whose instinct was always for the
definite, would say: "And what came at the end, Chris?  Do finish it
this morning!" but Christian never could.  Her thoughts were deep,
vague, dreamy, invaded by both sides of every question.  Whatever she
did, her needlework, her verse-making, her painting, all had its
charm; but it was not always what it was intended for at the
beginning.  Nicholas Treffry had once said of her: "When Chris starts
out to make a hat, it may turn out an altar-cloth, but you may bet it
won't be a hat."  It was her instinct to look for what things meant;
and this took more than all her time.  She knew herself better than
most girls of nineteen, but it was her reason that had informed her,
not her feelings.  In her sheltered life, her heart had never been
ruffled except by rare fits of passion--"tantrums" old Nicholas
Treffry dubbed them--at what seemed to her mean or unjust.

"If I were a man," she said, "and going to be great, I should have
wanted to begin at the very bottom as you did."

"Yes," said Harz quickly, "one should be able to feel everything."

She did not notice how simply he assumed that he was going to be
great.  He went on, a smile twisting his mouth unpleasantly beneath
its dark moustache

"Not many people think like you! It's a crime not to have been born a
gentleman."

"That's a sneer," said Christian; "I didn't think you would have
sneered!"

"It is true.  What is the use of pretending that it isn't?"

"It may be true, but it is finer not to say it!"

"By Heavens!" said Harz, striking one hand into the other, "if more
truth were spoken there would not be so many shams."

Christian looked down at him from her seat on the stile.

"You are right all the same, Fraulein Christian," he added suddenly;
"that's a very little business.  Work is what matters, and trying to
see the beauty in the world."

Christian's face changed.  She understood, well enough, this craving
after beauty.  Slipping down from the stile, she drew a slow deep
breath.

"Yes!" she said.  Neither spoke for some time, then Harz said shyly:

"If you and Fraulein Greta would ever like to come and see my studio,
I should be so happy.  I would try and clean it up for you!"

"I should like to come.  I could learn something.  I want to learn."

They were both silent till the path joined the road.

"We must be in front of the others; it's nice to be in front--let's
dawdle.  I forgot--you never dawdle, Herr Harz."

"After a big fit of work, I can dawdle against any one; then I get
another fit of work--it's like appetite."

"I'm always dawdling," answered Christian.

By the roadside a peasant woman screwed up her sun-dried face, saying
in a low voice: "Please, gracious lady, help me to lift this basket!"

Christian stooped, but before she could raise it, Harz hoisted it up
on his back.

"All right," he nodded; "this good lady doesn't mind."

The woman, looking very much ashamed, walked along by Christian; she
kept rubbing her brown hands together, and saying; "Gracious lady, I
would not have wished.  It is heavy, but I would not have wished."

"I'm sure he'd rather carry it," said Christian.

They had not gone far along the road, however, before the others
passed them in a carriage, and at the strange sight Miss Naylor could
be seen pursing her lips; Cousin Teresa nodding pleasantly; a smile
on Dawney's face; and beside him Greta, very demure.  Harz began to
laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" asked Christian.

"You English are so funny.  You mustn't do this here, you mustn't do
that there, it's like sitting in a field of nettles.  If I were to
walk with you without my coat, that little lady would fall off her
seat."  His laugh infected Christian; they reached the station
feeling that they knew each other better.

The sun had dipped behind the mountains when the little train steamed
down the valley.  All were subdued, and Greta, with a nodding head,
slept fitfully.  Christian, in her corner, was looking out of the
window, and Harz kept studying her profile.

He tried to see her eyes.  He had remarked indeed that, whatever
their expression, the brows, arched and rather wide apart, gave them
a peculiar look of understanding.  He thought of his picture.  There
was nothing in her face to seize on, it was too sympathetic, too much
like light.  Yet her chin was firm, almost obstinate.

The train stopped with a jerk; she looked round at him.  It was as
though she had said: "You are my friend."

At Villa Rubein, Herr Paul had killed the fatted calf for Greta's
Fest.  When the whole party were assembled, he alone remained
standing; and waving his arm above the cloth, cried: "My dears! Your
happiness!  There are good things here--Come!"  And with a sly look,
the air of a conjurer producing rabbits, he whipped the cover off the
soup tureen:

"Soup-turtle, fat, green fat!"  He smacked his lips.

No servants were allowed, because, as Greta said to Harz:

"It is that we are to be glad this evening."

Geniality radiated from Herr Paul's countenance, mellow as a bowl of
wine.  He toasted everybody, exhorting them to pleasure.

Harz passed a cracker secretly behind Greta's head, and Miss Naylor,
moved by a mysterious impulse, pulled it with a sort of gleeful
horror; it exploded, and Greta sprang off her chair.  Scruff, seeing
this, appeared suddenly on the sideboard with his forelegs in a plate
of soup; without moving them, he turned his head, and appeared to
accuse the company of his false position.  It was the signal for
shrieks of laughter.  Scruff made no attempt to free his forelegs;
but sniffed the soup, and finding that nothing happened, began to lap
it.

"Take him out! Oh! take him out!" wailed Greta, "he shall be ill!"

"Allons! Mon cher!" cried Herr Paul, "c'est magnifique, mais, vous
savez, ce nest guere la guerre!"  Scruff, with a wild spring, leaped
past him to the ground.

"Ah!" cried Miss Naylor, "the carpet!"  Fresh moans of mirth shook
the table; for having tasted the wine of laughter, all wanted as much
more as they could get.  When Scruff and his traces were effaced,
Herr Paul took a ladle in his hand.

"I have a toast," he said, waving it for silence; "a toast we will
drink all together from our hearts; the toast of my little daughter,
who to-day has thirteen years become; and there is also in our
hearts," he continued, putting down the ladle and suddenly becoming
grave, "the thought of one who is not today with us to see this
joyful occasion; to her, too, in this our happiness we turn our
hearts and glasses because it is her joy that we should yet be
joyful.  I drink to my little daughter; may God her shadow bless!"

All stood up, clinking their glasses, and drank: then, in the hush
that followed, Greta, according to custom, began to sing a German
carol; at the end of the fourth line she stopped, abashed.

Heir Paul blew his nose loudly, and, taking up a cap that had fallen
from a cracker, put it on.

Every one followed his example, Miss Naylor attaining the distinction
of a pair of donkey's ears, which she wore, after another glass of
wine, with an air of sacrificing to the public good.

At the end of supper came the moment for the offering of gifts.  Herr
Paul had tied a handkerchief over Greta's eyes, and one by one they
brought her presents.  Greta, under forfeit of a kiss, was bound to
tell the giver by the feel of the gift.  Her swift, supple little
hands explored noiselessly; and in every case she guessed right.

Dawney's present, a kitten, made a scene by clawing at her hair.

"That is Dr. Edmund's," she cried at once.  Christian saw that Harz
had disappeared, but suddenly he came back breathless, and took his
place at the end of the rank of givers.

Advancing on tiptoe, he put his present into Greta's hands.  It was a
small bronze copy of a Donatello statue.

"Oh, Herr Harz!" cried Greta; "I saw it in the studio that day.  It
stood on the table, and it is lovely."

Mrs. Decie, thrusting her pale eyes close to it, murmured:
"Charming!"

Mr. Treffry took it in his forgers.

"Rum little toad!  Cost a pot of money, I expect!"  He eyed Harz
doubtfully.

They went into the next room now, and Herr Paul, taking Greta's
bandage, transferred it to his own eyes.

"Take care--take care, all!" he cried; "I am a devil of a catcher,"
and, feeling the air cautiously, he moved forward like a bear about
to hug.  He caught no one.  Christian and Greta whisked under his
arms and left him grasping at the air.  Mrs. Decie slipped past with
astonishing agility.  Mr. Treffry, smoking his cigar, and barricaded
in a corner, jeered: "Bravo, Paul!  The active beggar!  Can't he run!
Go it, Greta!"

At last Herr Paul caught Cousin Teresa, who, fattened against the
wall, lost her head, and stood uttering tiny shrieks.

Suddenly Mrs. Decie started playing The Blue Danube.  Herr Paul
dropped the handkerchief, twisted his moustache up fiercely, glared
round the room, and seizing Greta by the waist, began dancing
furiously, bobbing up and down like a cork in lumpy water.  Cousin
Teresa followed suit with Miss Naylor, both very solemn, and dancing
quite different steps.  Harz, went up to Christian.

"I can't dance," he said, "that is, I have only danced once, but--if
you would try with me!"

She put her hand on his arm, and they began.  She danced, light as a
feather, eyes shining, feet flying, her body bent a little forward.
It was not a great success at first, but as soon as the time had got
into Harz's feet, they went swinging on when all the rest had
stopped.  Sometimes one couple or another slipped through the window
to dance on the veranda, and came whirling in again.  The lamplight
glowed on the girls' white dresses; on Herr Paul's perspiring face.
He constituted in himself a perfect orgy, and when the music stopped
flung himself, full length, on the sofa gasping out:

"My God!  But, my God!"

Suddenly Christian felt Harz cling to her arm.

Glowing and panting she looked at him.

"Giddy!" he murmured: "I dance so badly; but I'll soon learn."

Greta clapped her hands: "Every evening we will dance, every evening
we will dance."

Harz looked at Christian; the colour had deepened in her face.

"I'll show you how they dance in my village, feet upon the ceiling!"
And running to Dawney, he said:

"Hold me here!  Lift me--so!  Now, on--two," he tried to swing his
feet above his head, but, with an "Ouch!" from Dawney, they
collapsed, and sat abruptly on the floor.  This untimely event
brought the evening to an end.  Dawney left, escorting Cousin Teresa,
and Harz strode home humming The Blue Danube, still feeling
Christian's waist against his arm.

In their room the two girls sat long at the window to cool themselves
before undressing.

"Ah!" sighed Greta, "this is the happiest birthday I have had."

Cristian too thought: 'I have never been so happy in my life as I
have been to-day.  I should like every day to be like this!'  And she
leant out into the night, to let the air cool her cheeks.

"Chris!" said Greta some days after this, "Miss Naylor danced last
evening; I think she shall have a headache to-day.  There is my
French and my history this morning."

"Well, I can take them."

"That is nice; then we can talk.  I am sorry about the headache.  I
shall give her some of my Eau de Cologne."

Miss Naylor's headaches after dancing were things on which to
calculate.  The girls carried their books into the arbour; it was a
showery day, and they had to run for shelter through the raindrops
and sunlight.

"The French first, Chris!"  Greta liked her French, in which she was
not far inferior to Christian; the lesson therefore proceeded in an
admirable fashion.  After one hour exactly by her watch
(Mr. Treffry's birthday present loved and admired at least once every
hour) Greta rose.

"Chris, I have not fed my rabbits."

"Be quick! there's not much time for history."

Greta vanished.  Christian watched the bright water dripping from the
roof; her lips were parted in a smile.  She was thinking of something
Harz had said the night before.  A discussion having been started as
to whether average opinion did, or did not, safeguard Society, Harz,
after sitting silent, had burst out: "I think one man in earnest is
better than twenty half-hearted men who follow tamely; in the end he
does Society most good."

Dawney had answered: "If you had your way there would be no Society."

"I hate Society because it lives upon the weak."

"Bah!" Herr Paul chimed in; "the weak goes to the wall; that is as
certain as that you and I are here."

"Let them fall against the wall," cried Harz; "don't push them
there...."

Greta reappeared, walking pensively in the rain.

"Bino," she said, sighing, "has eaten too much.  I remember now, I
did feed them before.  Must we do the history, Chris?"

"Of course!"

Greta opened her book, and put a finger in the page.  "Herr Harz is
very kind to me," she said.  "Yesterday he brought a bird which had.
come into his studio with a hurt wing; he brought it very gently in
his handkerchief--he is very kind, the bird was not even frightened
of him.  You did not know about that, Chris?"

Chris flushed a little, and said in a hurt voice

"I don't see what it has to--do with me."

"No," assented Greta.

Christian's colour deepened.  "Go on with your history, Greta."

"Only," pursued Greta, "that he always tells you all about things,
Chris."

"He doesn't! How can you say that!"

"I think he does, and it is because you do not make him angry.  It is
very easy to make him angry; you have only to think differently, and
he shall be angry at once."

"You are a little cat!" said Christian; "it isn't true, at all.  He
hates shams, and can't bear meanness; and it is mean to cover up
dislikes and pretend that you agree with people."

"Papa says that he thinks too much about himself."

"Father!" began Christian hotly; biting her lips she stopped, and
turned her wrathful eyes on Greta.

"You do not always show your dislikes, Chris."

"I?  What has that to do with it?  Because one is a coward that
doesn't make it any better, does it?"

"I think that he has a great many dislikes," murmured Greta.

"I wish you would attend to your own faults, and not pry into other
people's," and pushing the book aside, Christian gazed in front of
her.

Some minutes passed, then Greta leaning over, rubbed a cheek against
her shoulder.

"I am very sorry, Chris--I only wanted to be talking.  Shall I read
some history?"

"Yes," said Christian coldly.

"Are you angry with me, Chris?"

There was no answer.  The lingering raindrops pattered down on the
roof.  Greta pulled at her sister's sleeve.

"Look, Chris!" she said.  "There is Herr Harz!"

Christian looked up, dropped her eyes again, and said: "Will you go
on with the history, Greta?"

Greta sighed.

"Yes, I will--but, oh! Chris, there is the luncheon gong!" and she
meekly closed the book.

During the following weeks there was a "sitting" nearly every
afternoon.  Miss Naylor usually attended them; the little lady was,
to a certain extent, carried past objection.  She had begun to take
an interest in the picture, and to watch the process out of the
corner of her eye; in the depths of her dear mind, however, she never
quite got used to the vanity and waste of time; her lips would move
and her knitting-needles click in suppressed remonstrances.

What Harz did fast he did best; if he had leisure he "saw too much,"
loving his work so passionately that he could never tell exactly when
to stop.  He hated to lay things aside, always thinking: "I can get
it better."  Greta was finished, but with Christian, try as he would,
he was not satisfied; from day to day her face seemed to him to
change, as if her soul were growing.

There were things too in her eyes that he could neither read nor
reproduce.

Dawney would often stroll out to them after his daily visit, and
lying on the grass, his arms crossed behind his head, and a big cigar
between his lips, would gently banter everybody.  Tea came at five
o'clock, and then Mrs. Decie appeared armed with a magazine or novel,
for she was proud of her literary knowledge.  The sitting was
suspended; Harz, with a cigarette, would move between the table and
the picture, drinking his tea, putting a touch in here and there; he
never sat down till it was all over for the day.  During these
"rests" there was talk, usually ending in discussion.  Mrs. Decie was
happiest in conversations of a literary order, making frequent use of
such expressions as: "After all, it produces an illusion--does
anything else matter?"  "Rather a poseur, is he not?"  "A question,
that, of temperament," or "A matter of the definition of words"; and
other charming generalities, which sound well, and seem to go far,
and are pleasingly irrefutable.  Sometimes the discussion turned on
Art--on points of colour or technique; whether realism was quite
justified; and should we be pre-Raphaelites?  When these discussions
started, Christian's eyes would grow bigger and clearer, with a sort
of shining reasonableness; as though they were trying to see into the
depths.  And Harz would stare at them.  But the look in those eyes
eluded him, as if they had no more meaning than Mrs. Decie's, which,
with their pale, watchful smile, always seemed saying: "Come, let us
take a little intellectual exercise."

Greta, pulling Scruff's ears, would gaze up at the speakers; when the
talk was over, she always shook herself.  But if no one came to the
"sittings," there would sometimes be very earnest, quick talk,
sometimes long silences.

One day Christian said: "What is your religion?"

Harz finished the touch he was putting on the canvas, before he
answered: "Roman Catholic, I suppose; I was baptised in that Church."

"I didn't mean that.  Do you believe in a future life?"

"Christian," murmured Greta, who was plaiting blades of grass, "shall
always want to know what people think about a future life; that is so
funny!"

"How can I tell?" said Harz; "I've never really thought of it--never
had the time."

"How can you help thinking?" Christian said: "I have to--it seems to
me so awful that we might come to an end."

She closed her book, and it slipped off her lap.  She went on: "There
must be a future life, we're so incomplete.  What's the good of your
work, for instance?  What's the use of developing if you have to
stop?"

"I don't know," answered Harz.  "I don't much care.  All I know is,
I've got to work."

"But why?"

"For happiness--the real happiness is fighting--the rest is nothing.
If you have finished a thing, does it ever satisfy you?  You look
forward to the next thing at once; to wait is wretched!"

Christian clasped her hands behind her neck; sunlight flickered
through the leaves on to the bosom of her dress.

"Ah! Stay like that!" cried Harz.

She let her eyes rest on his face, swinging her foot a little.

"You work because you must; but that's not enough.  Why do you feel
you must?  I want to know what's behind.  When I was travelling with
Aunt Constance the winter before last we often talked--I've heard her
discuss it with her friends.  She says we move in circles till we
reach Nirvana.  But last winter I found I couldn't talk to her; it
seemed as if she never really meant anything.  Then I started
reading--Kant and Hegel--"

"Ah!" put in Harz, "if they would teach me to draw better, or to see
a new colour in a flower, or an expression in a face, I would read
them all."

Christian leaned forward: "It must be right to get as near truth as
possible; every step gained is something.  You believe in truth;
truth is the same as beauty--that was what you said--you try to paint
the truth, you always see the beauty.  But how can we know truth,
unless we know what is at the root of it?"

"I--think," murmured Greta, sotto voce, "you see one way--and he sees
another--because--you are not one person."

"Of course!" said Christian impatiently, "but why--"

A sound of humming interrupted her.

Nicholas Treffry was coming from the house, holding the Times in one
hand, and a huge meerschaum pipe in the other.

"Aha!" he said to Harz: "how goes the picture?" and he lowered
himself into a chair.

"Better to-day, Uncle?" said Christian softly.

Mr. Treffry growled.  "Confounded humbugs, doctors!" he said.  "Your
father used to swear by them; why, his doctor killed him--made him
drink such a lot of stuff!"

"Why then do you have a doctor, Uncle Nic?" asked Greta.

Mr. Treffry looked at her; his eyes twinkled.  "I don't know, my
dear.  If they get half a chance, they won't let go of you!"

There had been a gentle breeze all day, but now it had died away; not
a leaf quivered, not a blade of grass was stirring; from the house
were heard faint sounds as of some one playing on a pipe.  A
blackbird came hopping down the path.

"When you were a boy, did you go after birds' nests, Uncle Nic?"
Greta whispered.

"I believe you, Greta."  The blackbird hopped into the shrubbery.

"You frightened him, Uncle Nic!  Papa says that at Schloss Konig,
where he lived when he was young, he would always be after jackdaws'
nests."

"Gammon, Greta.  Your father never took a jackdaw's nest, his legs
are much too round!"

"Are you fond of birds, Uncle Nic?"

"Ask me another, Greta!  Well, I s'pose so."

"Then why did you go bird-nesting?  I think it is cruel"

Mr. Treffry coughed behind his paper: "There you have me, Greta," he
remarked.

Harz began to gather his brushes: "Thank you," he said, "that's all I
can do to-day."

"Can I look?" Mr. Treffry inquired.

"Certainly!"

Uncle Nic got up slowly, and stood in front of the picture.  "When
it's for sale," he said at last, "I'll buy it."

Harz bowed; but for some reason he felt annoyed, as if he had been
asked to part with something personal.

"I thank you," he said.  A gong sounded.

"You'll stay and have a snack with us?" said Mr. Treffry; "the
doctor's stopping."  Gathering up his paper, he moved off to the
house with his hand on Greta's shoulder, the terrier running in
front.  Harz and Christian were left alone.  He was scraping his
palette, and she was sitting with her elbows resting on her knees;
between them, a gleam of sunlight dyed the path golden.  It was
evening already; the bushes and the flowers, after the day's heat,
were breathing out perfume; the birds had started their evensong.

"Are you tired of sitting for your portrait, Fraulein Christian?"

Christian shook her head.

"I shall get something into it that everybody does not see--something
behind the surface, that will last."

Christian said slowly: "That's like a challenge.  You were right when
you said fighting is happiness--for yourself, but not for me.  I'm a
coward.  I hate to hurt people, I like them to like me.  If you had
to do anything that would make them hate you, you would do it all the
same, if it helped your work; that's fine--it's what I can't do.
It's--it's everything.  Do you like Uncle Nic?"

The young painter looked towards the house, where under the veranda
old Nicholas Treffry was still in sight; a smile came on his lips.

"If I were the finest painter in the world, he wouldn't think
anything of me for it, I'm afraid; but if I could show him handfuls
of big cheques for bad pictures I had painted, he would respect me."

She smiled, and said: "I love him."

"Then I shall like him," Harz answered simply.

She put her hand out, and her fingers met his.  "We shall be late,"
she said, glowing, and catching up her book: "I'm always late!"




VII

There was one other guest at dinner, a well-groomed person with pale,
fattish face, dark eyes, and hair thin on the temples, whose clothes
had a military cut.  He looked like a man fond of ease, who had gone
out of his groove, and collided with life.  Herr Paul introduced him
as Count Mario Sarelli.

Two hanging lamps with crimson shades threw a rosy light over the
table, where, in the centre stood a silver basket, full of irises.
Through the open windows the garden was all clusters of black foliage
in the dying light.  Moths fluttered round the lamps; Greta,
following them with her eyes, gave quite audible sighs of pleasure
when they escaped.  Both girls wore white, and Harz, who sat opposite
Christian, kept looking at her, and wondering why he had not painted
her in that dress.

Mrs. Decie understood the art of dining--the dinner, ordered by Herr
Paul, was admirable; the servants silent as their, shadows; there was
always a hum of conversation.

Sarelli, who sat on her right hand, seemed to partake of little
except olives, which he dipped into a glass of sherry.  He turned his
black, solemn eyes silently from face to face, now and then asking
the meaning of an English word.  After a discussion on modern Rome,
it was debated whether or no a criminal could be told by the
expression of his face.

"Crime," said Mrs. Decie, passing her hand across her brow--"crime is
but the hallmark of strong individuality."

Miss Naylor, gushing rather pink, stammered: "A great crime must show
itself--a murder.  Why, of course!"

"If that were so," said Dawney, "we should only have to look about
us--no more detectives."

Miss Naylor rejoined with slight severity: "I cannot conceive that
such a thing can pass the human face by, leaving no impression!"

Harz said abruptly: "There are worse things than murder."

"Ah! par exemple!" said Sarelli.

There was a slight stir all round the table.

"Verry good," cried out Herr Paul, "a vot' sante, cher."

Miss Naylor shivered, as if some one had put a penny down her back;
and Mrs. Decie, leaning towards Harz, smiled like one who has made a
pet dog do a trick.  Christian alone was motionless, looking
thoughtfully at Harz.

"I saw a man tried for murder once," he said, "a murder for revenge;
I watched the judge, and I thought all the time: 'I'd rather be that
murderer than you; I've never seen a meaner face; you crawl through
life; you're not a criminal, simply because you haven't the
courage.'"

In the dubious silence following the painter's speech, Mr. Treffry
could distinctly be heard humming.  Then Sarelli said: "What do you
say to anarchists, who are not men, but savage beasts, whom I would
tear to pieces!"

"As to that," Harz answered defiantly, "it maybe wise to hang them,
but then there are so many other men that it would be wise to hang."

"How can we tell what they went through; what their lives were?"
murmured Christian.

Miss Naylor, who had been rolling a pellet of bread, concealed it
hastily.  "They are--always given a chance to--repent--I believe,"
she said.

"For what they are about to receive," drawled Dawney.

Mrs. Decie signalled with her fan: "We are trying to express the
inexpressible--shall we go into the garden?"

All rose; Harz stood by the window, and in passing, Christian looked
at him.

He sat down again with a sudden sense of loss.  There was no white
figure opposite now.  Raising his eyes he met Sarelli's.  The Italian
was regarding him with a curious stare.

Herr Paul began retailing apiece of scandal he had heard that
afternoon.

"Shocking affair!" he said; "I could never have believed it of her!
B--- is quite beside himself.  Yesterday there was a row, it seems!"

"There has been one every day for months," muttered Dawney.

"But to leave without a word, and go no one knows where!  B--- is
'viveur' no doubt, mais, mon Dieu, que voulezvous?  She was always a
poor, pale thing.  Why!, when my---" he flourished his cigar; "I was
not always---what I should have been---one lives in a world of flesh
and blood---we are not all angels---que diable!  But this is a very
vulgar business.  She goes off; leaves everything---without a word;
and B---is very fond of her.  These things are not done!" the
starched bosom of his shirt seemed swollen by indignation.

Mr. Treffry, with a heavy hand on the table, eyed him sideways.
Dawney said slowly:

"B--- is a beast; I'm sorry for the poor woman; but what can she do
alone?"

"There is, no doubt, a man," put in Sarelli.

Herr Paul muttered: "Who knows?"

"What is B--- going to do?" said Dawney.

"Ah!" said Herr Paul.  "He is fond of her.  He is a chap of
resolution, he will get her back.  He told me: 'Well, you know, I
shall follow her wherever she goes till she comes back.'  He will do
it, he is a determined chap; he will follow her wherever she goes."

Mr. Treffry drank his wine off at a gulp, and sucked his moustache in
sharply.

"She was a fool to marry him," said Dawney; "they haven't a point in
common; she hates him like poison, and she's the better of the two.
But it doesn't pay a woman to run off like that.  B--- had better
hurry up, though.  What do you think, sir?" he said to Mr. Treffry.

"Eh?" said Mr. Treffry; "how should I know?  Ask Paul there, he's one
of your moral men, or Count Sarelli."

The latter said impassively: "If I cared for her I should very likely
kill her--if not--" he shrugged his shoulders.

Harz, who was watching, was reminded of his other words at dinner,
"wild beasts whom I would tear to pieces."  He looked with interest
at this quiet man who said these extremely ferocious things, and
thought: 'I should like to paint that fellow.'

Herr Paul twirled his wine-glass in his fingers.  "There are family
ties," he said, "there is society, there is decency; a wife should be
with her husband.  B--- will do quite right.  He must go after her;
she will not perhaps come back at first; he will follow her; she will
begin to think, 'I am helpless--I am ridiculous!'  A woman is soon
beaten.  They will return.  She is once more with her husband--
Society will forgive, it will be all right."

"By Jove, Paul," growled Mr. Treffry, "wonderful power of argument!"

"A wife is a wife," pursued Herr Paul; "a man has a right to her
society."

"What do you say to that, sir?" asked Dawney.

Mr. Treffry tugged at his beard: "Make a woman live with you, if she
don't want to?  I call it low."

"But, my dear," exclaimed Herr Paul, "how should you know?  You have
not been married."

"No, thank the Lord!" Mr. Treffry replied.

"But looking at the question broadly, sir," said Dawney; "if a
husband always lets his wife do as she likes, how would the thing
work out?  What becomes of the marriage tie?"

"The marriage tie," growled Mr. Treffry, "is the biggest thing there
is!  But, by Jove, Doctor, I'm a Dutchman if hunting women ever
helped the marriage tie!"

"I am not thinking of myself," Herr Paul cried out, "I think of the
community.  There are rights."

"A decent community never yet asked a man to tread on his self-
respect.  If I get my fingers skinned over my marriage, which I
undertake at my own risk, what's the community to do with it?  D'you
think I'm going to whine to it to put the plaster on?  As to rights,
it'd be a deuced sight better for us all if there wasn't such a fuss
about 'em.  Leave that to women!  I don't give a tinker's damn for
men who talk about their rights in such matters."

Sarelli rose.  "But your honour," he said, "there is your honour!"

Mr. Treffry stared at him.

"Honour!  If huntin' women's your idea of honour, well--it isn't
mine."

"Then you'd forgive her, sir, whatever happened," Dawney said.

"Forgiveness is another thing.  I leave that to your sanctimonious
beggars.  But, hunt a woman!  Hang it, sir, I'm not a cad!" and
bringing his hand down with a rattle, he added: "This is a subject
that don't bear talking of."

Sarelli fell back in his seat, twirling his moustaches fiercely.
Harz, who had risen, looked at Christian's empty place.

'If I were married!' he thought suddenly.

Herr Paul, with a somewhat vinous glare, still muttered, "But your
duty to the family!"

Harz slipped through the window.  The moon was like a wonderful white
lantern in the purple sky; there was but a smoulder of stars.
Beneath the softness of the air was the iciness of the snow; it made
him want to run and leap.  A sleepy beetle dropped on its back; he
turned it over and watched it scurry across the grass.

Someone was playing Schumann's Kinderscenen.  Harz stood still to
listen.  The notes came twining, weaving round his thoughts; the
whole night seemed full of girlish voices, of hopes and fancies,
soaring away to mountain heights--invisible, yet present.  Between
the stems of the acacia-trees he could see the flicker of white
dresses, where Christian and Greta were walking arm in arm.  He went
towards them; the blood flushed up in his face, he felt almost
surfeited by some sweet emotion.  Then, in sudden horror, he stood
still.  He was in love!  With nothing done with everything before
him!  He was going to bow down to a face!  The flicker of the dresses
was no longer visible.  He would not be fettered, he would stamp it
out!  He turned away; but with each step, something seemed to jab at
his heart.

Round the corner of the house, in the shadow of the wall, Dominique,
the Luganese, in embroidered slippers, was smoking a long cherry-wood
pipe, leaning against a tree--Mephistopheles in evening clothes.
Harz went up to him.

"Lend me a pencil, Dominique."

"Bien, M'sieu."

Resting a card against the tree Harz wrote to Mrs. Decie: "Forgive
me, I am obliged to go away.  In a few days I shall hope to return,
and finish the picture of your nieces."

He sent Dominique for his hat.  During the man's absence he was on
the point of tearing up the card and going back into the house.

When the Luganese returned he thrust the card into his hand, and
walked out between the tall poplars, waiting, like ragged ghosts,
silver with moonlight.




VIII

Harz walked away along the road.  A dog was howling.  The sound
seemed too appropriate.  He put his fingers to his ears, but the
lugubrious noise passed those barriers, and made its way into his
heart.  Was there nothing that would put an end to this emotion?  It
was no better in the old house on the wall; he spent the night
tramping up and down.

Just before daybreak he slipped out with a knapsack, taking the road
towards Meran.

He had not quite passed through Gries when he overtook a man walking
in the middle of the road and leaving a trail of cigar smoke behind
him.

"Ah! my friend," the smoker said, "you walk early; are you going my
way?"

It was Count Sarelli.  The raw light had imparted a grey tinge to his
pale face, the growth of his beard showed black already beneath the
skin; his thumbs were hooked in the pockets of a closely buttoned
coat, he gesticulated with his fingers.

"You are making a journey?" he said, nodding at the knapsack.  "You
are early--I am late; our friend has admirable kummel--I have drunk
too much.  You have not been to bed, I think?  If there is no sleep
in one's bed it is no good going to look for it.  You find that?  It
is better to drink kummel...!  Pardon!  You are doing the right
thing: get away!  Get away as fast as possible!  Don't wait, and let
it catch you!"

Harz stared at him amazed.

"Pardon!" Sarelli said again, raising his hat, "that girl--the white
girl--I saw.  You do well to get away!" he swayed a little as he
walked.  "That old fellow--what is his name-Trrreffr-ry!  What ideas
of honour!"  He mumbled: "Honour is an abstraction!  If a man is not
true to an abstraction, he is a low type; but wait a minute!"

He put his hand to his side as though in pain.

The hedges were brightening with a faint pinky glow; there was no
sound on the long, deserted road, but that of their footsteps;
suddenly a bird commenced to chirp, another answered--the world
seemed full of these little voices.

Sarelli stopped.

"That white girl," he said, speaking with rapidity.  "Yes! You do
well! get away!  Don't let it catch you!  I waited, it caught me--
what happened?  Everything horrible--and now--kummel!"  Laughing a
thick laugh, he gave a twirl to his moustache, and swaggered on.

"I was a fine fellow--nothing too big for Mario Sarelli; the regiment
looked to me.  Then she came--with her eyes and her white dress,
always white, like this one; the little mole on her chin, her hands
for ever moving--their touch as warm as sunbeams.  Then, no longer
Sarelli this, and that!  The little house close to the ramparts!  Two
arms, two eyes, and nothing here," he tapped his breast, "but flames
that made ashes quickly--in her, like this ash--!" he flicked the
white flake off his cigar.  "It's droll!  You agree, hein?  Some day
I shall go back and kill her.  In the meantime--kummel!"

He stopped at a house close to the road, and stood still, his teeth
bared in a grin.

"But I bore you," he said.  His cigar, flung down, sputtered forth
its sparks on the road in front of Harz.  "I live here--good-morning!
You are a man for work--your honour is your Art!  I know, and you are
young!  The man who loves flesh better than his honour is a low type-
-I am a low type.  I! Mario Sarelli, a low type! I love flesh better
than my honour!"

He remained swaying at the gate with the grin fixed on his face; then
staggered up the steps, and banged the door.  But before Harz had
walked on, he again appeared, beckoning, in the doorway.  Obeying an
impulse, Harz went in.

"We will make a night of it," said SareIIi; "wine, brandy, kummel?  I
am virtuous--kummel it must be for me!"

He sat down at a piano, and began to touch the keys.  Harz poured out
some wine.  Sarelli nodded.

"You begin with that?  Allegro--piu--presto!

Wine--brandy--kummel!" he quickened the time of the tune: "it is not
too long a passage, and this"--he took his hands off the keys--"comes
after."

Harz smiled.

"Some men do not kill themselves," he said.

Sarelli, who was bending and swaying to the music of a tarantella,
broke off, and letting his eyes rest on the painter, began playing
Schumann's Kinderscenen.  Harz leaped to his feet.

"Stop that!" he cried.

"It pricks you?" said Sarelli suavely; "what do you think of this?"
he played again, crouching over the piano, and making the notes sound
like the crying of a wounded animal.

"For me!" he said, swinging round, and rising.

"Your health!  And so you don't believe in suicide, but in murder?
The custom is the other way; but you don't believe in customs?
Customs are only for Society?"  He drank a glass of kummel.  "You do
not love Society?"

Harz looked at him intently; he did not want to quarrel.

"I am not too fond of other people's thoughts," he said at last; "I
prefer to think my own.

"And is Society never right?  That poor Society!"

"Society!  What is Society--a few men in good coats?  What has it
done for me?"

Sarelli bit the end off a cigar.

"Ah!" he said; "now we are coming to it.  It is good to be an artist,
a fine bantam of an artist; where other men have their dis-ci-pline,
he has his, what shall we say--his mound of roses?"

The painter started to his feet.

"Yes," said Sarelli, with a hiccough, "you are a fine fellow!"

"And you are drunk!" cried Harz.

"A little drunk--not much, not enough to matter!"

Harz broke into laughter.  It was crazy to stay there listening to
this mad fellow.  What had brought him in?  He moved towards the
door.

"Ah!" said Sarelli, "but it is no good going to bed--let us talk.  I
have a lot to say--it is pleasant to talk to anarchists at times."

Full daylight was already coming through the chinks of the shutters.

"You are all anarchists, you painters, you writing fellows.  You live
by playing ball with facts.  Images--nothing solid- hein?  You're all
for new things too, to tickle your nerves.  No discipline!  True
anarchists, every one of you!"

Harz poured out another glass of wine and drank it off.  The man's
feverish excitement was catching.

"Only fools," he replied, "take things for granted.  As for
discipline, what do you aristocrats, or bourgeois know of discipline?
Have you ever been hungry?  Have you ever had your soul down on its
back?"

"Soul on its back?  That is good!"

"A man's no use," cried Harz, "if he's always thinking of what others
think; he must stand on his own legs."

"He must not then consider other people?"

"Not from cowardice anyway."

Sarelli drank.

"What would you do," he said, striking his chest, "if you had a
devil-here?  Would you go to bed?"

A sort of pity seized on Harz.  He wanted to say something that would
be consoling but could find no words; and suddenly he felt disgusted.
What link was there between him and this man; between his love and
this man's love?

"Harz!" muttered Sarelli; "Harz means 'tar,' hein?  Your family is
not an old one?"

Harz glared, and said: "My father is a peasant."

Sarelli lifted the kummel bottle and emptied it into his glass, with
a steady hand.

"You're honest--and we both have devils.  I forgot; I brought you in
to see a picture!"

He threw wide the shutters; the windows were already open, and a rush
of air came in.

"Ah!" he said, sniffing, "smells of the earth, nicht wahr, Herr
Artist?  You should know--it belongs to your father....  Come, here's
my picture; a Correggio!  What do you think of it?"

"It is a copy."

"You think?"

"I know."

"Then you have given me the lie, Signor," and drawing out his
handkerchief SareIIi flicked it in the painter's face.

Harz turned white.

"Duelling is a good custom!" said Sarelli.  "I shall have the honour
to teach you just this one, unless you are afraid.  Here are pistols-
-this room is twenty feet across at least, twenty feet is no bad
distance."

And pulling out a drawer he took two pistols from a case, and put
them on the table.

"The light is good--but perhaps you are afraid."

"Give me one!" shouted the infuriated painter; "and go to the devil
for a fool"

"One moment!" Sarelli murmured: "I will load them, they are more
useful loaded."

Harz leaned out of the window; his head was in a whirl.  'What on
earth is happening?' he thought.  'He's mad--or I am!  Confound him!
I'm not going to be killed!'  He turned and went towards the table.
Sarelli's head was sunk on his arms, he was asleep.  Harz
methodically took up the pistols, and put them back into the drawer.
A sound made him turn his head; there stood a tall, strong young
woman in a loose gown caught together on her chest.  Her grey eyes
glanced from the painter to the bottles, from the bottles to the
pistol-case.  A simple reasoning, which struck Harz as comic.

"It is often like this," she said in the country patois; "der Herr
must not be frightened."

Lifting the motionless Sarelli as if he were a baby, she laid him on
a couch.

"Ah!" she said, sitting down and resting her elbow on the table; "he
will not wake!"

Harz bowed to her; her patient figure, in spite of its youth and
strength, seemed to him pathetic.  Taking up his knapsack, he went
out.

The smoke of cottages rose straight; wisps of mist were wandering
about the valley, and the songs of birds dropping like blessings.
All over the grass the spiders had spun a sea of threads that bent
and quivered to the pressure of the air, like fairy tight-ropes.

All that day he tramped.

Blacksmiths, tall stout men with knotted muscles, sleepy eyes, and
great fair beards, came out of their forges to stretch and wipe their
brows, and stare at him.

Teams of white oxen, waiting to be harnessed, lashed their tails
against their flanks, moving their heads slowly from side to side in
the heat.  Old women at chalet doors blinked and knitted.

The white houses, with gaping caves of storage under the roofs, the
red church spire, the clinking of hammers in the forges, the slow
stamping of oxen-all spoke of sleepy toil, without ideas or ambition.
Harz knew it all too well; like the earth's odour, it belonged to
him, as Sarelli had said.

Towards sunset coming to a copse of larches, he sat down to rest.  It
was very still, but for the tinkle of cowbells, and, from somewhere
in the distance, the sound of dropping logs.

Two barefooted little boys came from the wood, marching earnestly
along, and looking at Harz as if he were a monster.  Once past him,
they began to run.

'At their age,' he thought, 'I should have done the same.'  A hundred
memories rushed into his mind.

He looked down at the village straggling below--white houses with
russet tiles and crowns of smoke, vineyards where the young leaves
were beginning to unfold, the red-capped spire, a thread of bubbling
stream, an old stone cross.  He had been fourteen years struggling up
from all this; and now just as he had breathing space, and the time
to give himself wholly to his work--this weakness was upon him!
Better, a thousand times, to give her up!

In a house or two lights began to wink; the scent of wood smoke
reached him, the distant chimes of bells, the burring of a stream.




IX

Next day his one thought was to get back to work.  He arrived at the
studio in the afternoon, and, laying in provisions, barricaded the
lower door.  For three days he did not go out; on the fourth day he
went to Villa Rubein....

Schloss Runkelstein--grey, blind, strengthless--still keeps the
valley.  The windows which once, like eyes, watched men and horses
creeping through the snow, braved the splutter of guns and the gleam
of torches, are now holes for the birds to nest in.  Tangled creepers
have spread to the very summits of the walls.  In the keep, instead
of grim men in armour, there is a wooden board recording the history
of the castle and instructing visitors on the subject of
refreshments.  Only at night, when the cold moon blanches everything,
the castle stands like the grim ghost of its old self, high above the
river.

After a long morning's sitting the girls had started forth with Harz
and Dawney to spend the afternoon at the ruin; Miss Naylor, kept at
home by headache, watched them depart with words of caution against
sunstroke, stinging nettles, and strange dogs.

Since the painter's return Christian and he had hardly spoken to each
other.  Below the battlement on which they sat, in a railed gallery
with little tables, Dawney and Greta were playing dominoes, two
soldiers drinking beer, and at the top of a flight of stairs the
Custodian's wife sewing at a garment.  Christian said suddenly: "I
thought we were friends."

"Well, Fraulein Christian, aren't we?"

"You went away without a word; friends don't do that."

Harz bit his lips.

"I don't think you care," she went on with a sort of desperate haste,
"whether you hurt people or not.  You have been here all this time
without even going to see your father and mother."

"Do you think they would want to see me?"

Christian looked up.

"It's all been so soft for you," he said bitterly; "you don't
understand."

He turned his head away, and then burst out: "I'm proud to come
straight from the soil--I wouldn't have it otherwise; but they are of
'the people,' everything is narrow with them--they only understand
what they can see and touch."

"I'm sorry I spoke like that," said Christian softly; "you've never
told me about yourself."

There was something just a little cruel in the way the painter looked
at her, then seeming to feel compunction, he said quickly: "I always
hated--the peasant life--I wanted to get away into the world; I had a
feeling in here--I wanted--I don't know what I wanted!  I did run
away at last to a house-painter at Meran.  The priest wrote me a
letter from my father--they threw me off; that's all."

Christian's eyes were very bright, her lips moved, like the lips of a
child listening to a story.

"Go on," she said.

"I stayed at Meran two years, till I'd learnt all I could there, then
a brother of my mother's helped me to get to Vienna; I was lucky
enough to find work with a man who used to decorate churches.  We
went about the country together.  Once when he was ill I painted the
roof of a church entirely by myself; I lay on my back on the scaffold
boards all day for a week--I was proud of that roof."  He paused.

"When did you begin painting pictures?"

"A friend asked me why I didn't try for the Academie.  That started
me going to the night schools; I worked every minute--I had to get my
living as well, of course, so I worked at night.

Then when the examination came, I thought I could do nothing--it was
just as if I had never had a brush or pencil in my hand.  But the
second day a professor in passing me said, 'Good! Quite good!'  That
gave me courage.  I was sure I had failed though; but I was second
out of sixty."

Christian nodded.

"To work in the schools after that I had to give up my business, of
course.  There was only one teacher who ever taught me anything; the
others all seemed fools.  This man would come and rub out what you'd
done with his sleeve.  I used to cry with rage--but I told him I
could only learn from him, and he was so astonished that he got me
into his class."

"But how did you live without money?" asked Christian.

His face burned with a dark flush.  "I don't know how I lived; you
must have been through these things to know, you would never
understand."

"But I want to understand, please."

"What do you want me to tell you?  How I went twice a week to eat
free dinners!  How I took charity!  How I was hungry!  There was a
rich cousin of my mother's--I used to go to him.  I didn't like it.
But if you're starving in the winter"

Christian put out her hand.

"I used to borrow apronsful of coals from other students who were as
poor--but I never went to the rich students."

The flush had died out of his face.

"That sort of thing makes you hate the world!  You work till you
stagger; you're cold and hungry; you see rich people in their
carriages, wrapped in furs, and all the time you want to do something
great.  You pray for a chance, any chance; nothing comes to the poor!
It makes you hate the world."

Christian's eyes filled with tears.  He went on:

"But I wasn't the only one in that condition; we used to meet.
Garin, a Russian with a brown beard and patches of cheek showing
through, and yellow teeth, who always looked hungry.  Paunitz, who
came from sympathy!  He had fat cheeks and little eyes, and a big
gold chain--the swine! And little Misek.  It was in his room we met,
with the paper peeling off the walls, and two doors with cracks in
them, so that there was always a draught.  We used to sit on his bed,
and pull the dirty blankets over us for warmth; and smoke--tobacco
was the last thing we ever went without.  Over the bed was a Virgin
and Child--Misek was a very devout Catholic; but one day when he had
had no dinner and a dealer had kept his picture without paying him,
he took the image and threw it on the floor before our eyes; it
broke, and he trampled on the bits.  Lendorf was another, a heavy
fellow who was always puffing out his white cheeks and smiting
himself, and saying: 'Cursed society!'  And Schonborn, an aristocrat
who had quarrelled with his family.  He was the poorest of us all;
but only he and I would ever have dared to do anything--they all knew
that!"

Christian listened with awe.  "Do you mean?" she said, "do you mean,
that you--?"

"You see! you're afraid of me at once.  It's impossible even for you
to understand.  It only makes you afraid.  A hungry man living on
charity, sick with rage and shame, is a wolf even to you!"

Christian looked straight into his eyes.

"That's not true.  If I can't understand, I can feel.  Would you be
the same now if it were to come again?"

"Yes, it drives me mad even now to think of people fatted with
prosperity, sneering and holding up their hands at poor devils who
have suffered ten times more than the most those soft animals could
bear.  I'm older; I've lived--I know things can't be put right by
violence--nothing will put things right, but that doesn't stop my
feeling."

"Did you do anything?  You must tell me all now."

"We talked--we were always talking."

"No, tell me everything!"

Unconsciously she claimed, and he seemed unconsciously to admit her
right to this knowledge.

"There's not much to tell.  One day we began talking in low voices--
Garin began it; he had been in some affair in Russia.  We took an
oath; after that we never raised our voices.  We had a plan.  It was
all new to me, and I hated the whole thing--but I was always hungry,
or sick from taking charity, and I would have done anything.  They
knew that; they used to look at me and Schonborn; we knew that no one
else had any courage.  He and I were great friends, but we never
talked of that; we tried to keep our minds away from the thought of
it.  If we had a good day and were not so hungry, it seemed
unnatural; but when the day had not been good--then it seemed natural
enough.  I wasn't afraid, but I used to wake up in the night; I hated
the oath we had taken, I hated every one of those fellows; the thing
was not what I was made for, it wasn't my work, it wasn't my nature,
it was forced on me--I hated it, but sometimes I was like a madman."

"Yes, yes," she murmured.

"All this time I was working at the Academie, and learning all I
could....  One evening that we met, Paunitz was not there.  Misek was
telling us how the thing had been arranged.  Schonborn and I looked
at each other--it was warm--perhaps we were not hungry--it was
springtime, too, and in the Spring it's different.  There is
something."

Christian nodded.

"While we were talking there came a knock at the door.  Lendorf put
his eye to the keyhole, and made a sign.  The police were there.
Nobody said anything, but Misek crawled under the bed; we all
followed; and the knocking grew louder and louder.  In the wall at
the back of the bed was a little door into an empty cellar.  We crept
through.  There was a trap-door behind some cases, where they used to
roll barrels in.  We crawled through that into the back street.  We
went different ways."

He paused, and Christian gasped.

"I thought I would get my money, but there was a policeman before my
door.  They had us finely.  It was Paunitz; if I met him even now I
should wring his neck.  I swore I wouldn't be caught, but I had no
idea where to go.  Then I thought of a little Italian barber who used
to shave me when I had money for a shave; I knew he would help.  He
belonged to some Italian Society; he often talked to me, under his
breath, of course.  I went to him.  He was shaving himself before
going to a ball.  I told him what had happened; it was funny to see
him put his back against the door.  He was very frightened,
understanding this sort of thing better than I did--for I was only
twenty then.  He shaved my head and moustache and put me on a fair
wig.  Then he brought me macaroni, and some meat, to eat.  He gave me
a big fair moustache, and a cap, and hid the moustache in the lining.
He brought me a cloak of his own, and four gulden.  All the time he
was extremely frightened, and kept listening, and saying: 'Eat!'

"When I had done, he just said: 'Go away, I refuse to know anything
more of you.'

"I thanked him and went out.  I walked about all that night; for I
couldn't think of anything to do or anywhere to go.  In the morning I
slept on a seat in one of the squares.  Then I thought I would go to
the Gallerien; and I spent the whole day looking at the pictures.
When the Galleries were shut I was very tired, so I went into a cafe,
and had some beer.  When I came out I sat on the same seat in the
Square.  I meant to wait till dark and then walk out of the city and
take the train at some little station, but while I was sitting there
I went to sleep.  A policeman woke me.  He had my wig in his hand.

"'Why do you wear a wig?' he said.

"I answered: 'Because I am bald.'

"'No,' he said, 'you're not bald, you've been shaved.  I can feel the
hair coming.'

"He put his finger on my head.  I felt reckless and laughed.

"'Ah!' he said, 'you'll come with me and explain all this; your nose
and eyes are looked for.'

"I went with him quietly to the police-station...."

Harz seemed carried away by his story.  His quick dark face worked,
his steel-grey eyes stared as though he were again passing through
all these long-past emotions.

The hot sun struck down; Christian drew herself together, sitting
with her hands clasped round her knees.




X

"I didn't care by then what came of it.  I didn't even think what I
was going to say.  He led me down a passage to a room with bars
across the windows and long seats, and maps on the walls.  We sat and
waited.  He kept his eye on me all the time; and I saw no hope.
Presently the Inspector came.  'Bring him in here,' he said; I
remember feeling I could kill him for ordering me about!  We went
into the next room.  It had a large clock, a writing-table, and a
window, without bars, looking on a courtyard.  Long policemen's coats
and caps were hanging from some pegs.  The Inspector told me to take
off my cap.  I took it off, wig and all.  He asked me who I was, but
I refused to answer.  Just then there was a loud sound of voices in
the room we had come from.  The Inspector told the policeman to look
after me, and went to see what it was.  I could hear him talking.  He
called out: 'Come here, Becker!'  I stood very quiet, and Becker went
towards the door.  I heard the Inspector say: 'Go and find Schwartz,
I will see after this fellow.'  The policeman went, and the Inspector
stood with his back to me in the half-open door, and began again to
talk to the man in the other room.  Once or twice he looked round at
me, but I stood quiet all the time.  They began to disagree, and
their voices got angry.  The Inspector moved a little into the other
room.  'Now!' I thought, and slipped off my cloak.  I hooked off a
policeman's coat and cap, and put them on.  My heart beat till I felt
sick.  I went on tiptoe to the window.  There was no one outside, but
at the entrance a man was holding some horses.  I opened the window a
little and held my breath.  I heard the Inspector say: 'I will report
you for impertinence!' and slipped through the window.  The coat came
down nearly to my heels, and the cap over my eyes.  I walked up to
the man with the horses, and said: 'Good-evening.'  One of the horses
had begun to kick, and he only grunted at me.  I got into a passing
tram; it was five minutes to the West Bahnhof; I got out there.
There was a train starting; they were shouting 'Einsteigen!'  I ran.
The collector tried to stop me.  I shouted: 'Business--important!'
He let me by.  I jumped into a carriage.  The train started."

He paused, and Christian heaved a sigh.

Harz went on, twisting a twig of ivy in his hands: "There was another
man in the carriage reading a paper.  Presently I said to him, 'Where
do we stop first?'  'St. Polten.'  Then I knew it was the Munich
express--St. Polten, Amstetten, Linz, and Salzburg--four stops before
the frontier.  The man put down his paper and looked at me; he had a
big fair moustache and rather shabby clothes.  His looking at me
disturbed me, for I thought every minute he would say: 'You're no
policeman!'  And suddenly it came into my mind that if they looked
for me in this train, it would be as a policeman!--they would know,
of course, at the station that a policeman had run past at the last
minute.  I wanted to get rid of the coat and cap, but the man was
there, and I didn't like to move out of the carriage for other people
to notice.  So I sat on.  We came to St. Polten at last.  The man in
my carriage took his bag, got out, and left his paper on the seat.
We started again; I breathed at last, and as soon as I could took the
cap and coat and threw them out into the darkness.  I thought: 'I
shall get across the frontier now.'  I took my own cap out and found
the moustache Luigi gave me; rubbed my clothes as clean as possible;
stuck on the moustache, and with some little ends of chalk in my
pocket made my eyebrows light; then drew some lines in my face to
make it older, and pulled my cap well down above my wig.  I did it
pretty well--I was quite like the man who had got out.  I sat in his
corner, took up his newspaper, and waited for Amstetten.  It seemed a
tremendous time before we got there.  From behind my paper I could
see five or six policemen on the platform, one quite close.  He
opened the door, looked at me, and walked through the carriage into
the corridor.  I took some tobacco and rolled up a cigarette, but it
shook, "Harz lifted the ivy twig, "like this.  In a minute the
conductor and two more policemen came.  'He was here,' said the
conductor, 'with this gentleman.'  One of them looked at me, and
asked: 'Have you seen a policeman travelling on this train?'  'Yes,'
I said.  'Where?'  'He got out at St.  Polten.'  The policeman asked
the conductor: 'Did you see him get out there?'  The conductor shook
his head.  I said: 'He got out as the train was moving.'  'Ah!' said
the policeman, 'what was he like?'  'Rather short, and no moustache.
Why?'  ' Did you notice anything unusual?'  'No,' I said, 'only that
he wore coloured trousers.  What's the matter?'  One policeman said
to the other: 'That's our man!  Send a telegram to St. Polten; he has
more than an hour's start.'  He asked me where I was going.  I told
him: 'Linz.'  'Ah!' he said, 'you'll have to give evidence; your name
and address please?'  'Josef Reinhardt, 17 Donau Strasse.'  He wrote
it down.  The conductor said: 'We are late, can we start?'  They shut
the door.  I heard them say to the conductor: 'Search again at Linz,
and report to the Inspector there.'  They hurried on to the platform,
and we started.  At first I thought I would get out as soon as the
train had left the station.  Then, that I should be too far from the
frontier; better to go on to Linz and take my chance there.  I sat
still and tried not to think.

After a long time, we began to run more slowly.  I put my head out
and could see in the distance a ring of lights hanging in the
blackness.  I loosened the carriage door and waited for the train to
run slower still; I didn't mean to go into Linz like a rat into a
trap.  At last I could wait no longer; I opened the door, jumped and
fell into some bushes.  I was not much hurt, but bruised, and the
breath knocked out of me.  As soon as I could, I crawled out.  It was
very dark.  I felt heavy and sore, and for some time went stumbling
in and out amongst trees.  Presently I came to a clear space; on one
side I could see the town's shape drawn in lighted lamps, and on the
other a dark mass, which I think was forest; in the distance too was
a thin chain of lights.  I thought: 'They must be the lights of a
bridge.'  Just then the moon came out, and I could see the river
shining below.  It was cold and damp, and I walked quickly.  At last
I came out on a road, past houses and barking dogs, down to the river
bank; there I sat against a shed and went to sleep.  I woke very
stiff.  It was darker than before; the moon was gone.  I could just
see the river.  I stumbled on, to get through the town before dawn.
It was all black shapes-houses and sheds, and the smell of the river,
the smell of rotting hay, apples, tar, mud, fish; and here and there
on a wharf a lantern.  I stumbled over casks and ropes and boxes; I
saw I should never get clear--the dawn had begun already on the other
side.  Some men came from a house behind me.  I bent, and crept
behind some barrels.  They passed along the wharf; they seemed to
drop into the river.  I heard one of them say: 'Passau before night.'
I stood up and saw they had walked on board a steamer which was lying
head up-stream, with some barges in tow.  There was a plank laid to
the steamer, and a lantern at the other end.  I could hear the
fellows moving below deck, getting up steam.  I ran across the plank
and crept to the end of the steamer.  I meant to go with them to
Passau!  The rope which towed the barges was nearly taut; and I knew
if I could get on to the barges I should be safe.  I climbed down on
this rope and crawled along.  I was desperate, I knew they'd soon be
coming up, and it was getting light.  I thought I should fall into
the water several times, but I got to the barge at last.  It was
laden with straw.  There was nobody on board.  I was hungry and
thirsty--I looked for something to eat; there was nothing but the
ashes of a fire and a man's coat.  I crept into the straw.  Soon a
boat brought men, one for each barge, and there were sounds of steam.
As soon as we began moving through the water, I fell asleep.  When I
woke we were creeping through a heavy mist.  I made a little hole in
the straw and saw the bargeman.  He was sitting by a fire at the
barge's edge, so that the sparks and smoke blew away over the water.
He ate and drank with both hands, and funny enough he looked in the
mist, like a big bird flapping its wings; there was a good smell of
coffee, and I sneezed.  How the fellow started!  But presently he
took a pitchfork and prodded the straw.  Then I stood up.  I couldn't
help laughing, he was so surprised--a huge, dark man, with a great
black beard.  I pointed to the fire and said 'Give me some, brother!'
He pulled me out of the straw; I was so stiff, I couldn't move.  I
sat by the fire, and ate black bread and turnips, and drank coffee;
while he stood by, watching me and muttering.  I couldn't understand
him well--he spoke a dialect from Hungary.  He asked me: How I got
there--who I was--where I was from?  I looked up in his face, and he
looked down at me, sucking his pipe.  He was a big man, he lived
alone on the river, and I was tired of telling lies, so I told him
the whole thing.  When I had done he just grunted.  I can see him now
standing over me, with the mist hanging in his beard, and his great
naked arms.  He drew me some water, and I washed and showed him my
wig and moustache, and threw them overboard.  All that day we lay out
on the barge in the mist, with our feet to the fire, smoking; now and
then he would spit into the ashes and mutter into his beard.  I shall
never forget that day.  The steamer was like a monster with fiery
nostrils, and the other barges were dumb creatures with eyes, where
the fires were; we couldn't see the bank, but now and then a bluff
and high trees, or a castle, showed in the mist.  If I had only had
paint and canvas that day!"  He sighed.

"It was early Spring, and the river was in flood; they were going to
Regensburg to unload there, take fresh cargo, and back to Linz.  As
soon as the mist began to clear, the bargeman hid me in the straw.
At Passau was the frontier; they lay there for the night, but nothing
happened, and I slept in the straw.  The next day I lay out on the
barge deck; there was no mist, but I was free--the sun shone gold on
the straw and the green sacking; the water seemed to dance, and I
laughed--I laughed all the time, and the barge man laughed with me.
A fine fellow he was!  At Regensburg I helped them to unload; for
more than a week we worked; they nicknamed me baldhead, and when it
was all over I gave the money I earned for the unloading to the big
bargeman.  We kissed each other at parting.  I had still three of the
gulden that Luigi gave me, and I went to a house-painter and got work
with him.  For six months I stayed there to save money; then I wrote
to my mother's cousin in Vienna, and told him I was going to London.
He gave me an introduction to some friends there.  I went to Hamburg,
and from there to London in a cargo steamer, and I've never been back
till now."




XI

After a minute's silence Christian said in a startled voice: "They
could arrest you then!"

Harz laughed.

"If they knew; but it's seven years ago."

"Why did you come here, when it's so dangerous?"

"I had been working too hard, I wanted to see my country--after seven
years, and when it's forbidden!  But I'm ready to go back now."  He
looked down at her, frowning.

"Had you a hard time in London, too?"

"Harder, at first--I couldn't speak the language.  In my profession
it's hard work to get recognised, it's hard work to make a living.
There are too many whose interest it is to keep you down--I shan't
forget them."

"But every one is not like that?"

"No; there are fine fellows, too.  I shan't forget them either.  I
can sell my pictures now; I'm no longer weak, and I promise you I
shan't forget.  If in the future I have power, and I shall have
power--I shan't forget."

A shower of fine gravel came rattling on the wall.  Dawney was
standing below them with an amused expression on his upturned face.

"Are you going to stay there all night?" he asked.  "Greta and I have
bored each other."

"We're coming," called Christian hastily.

On the way back neither spoke a word, but when they reached the
Villa, Harz took her hand, and said: "Fraulein Christian, I can't do
any more with your picture.  I shan't touch it again after this."

She made no answer, but they looked at each other, and both seemed to
ask, to entreat, something more; then her eyes fell.  He dropped her
hand, and saying, "Good-night," ran after Dawney.

In the corridor, Dominique, carrying a dish of fruit, met the
sisters; he informed them that Miss Naylor had retired to bed; that
Herr Paul would not be home to dinner; his master was dining in his
room; dinner would be served for Mrs. Decie and the two young ladies
in a quarter of an hour: "And the fish is good to-night; little
trouts! try them, Signorina!" He moved on quickly, softly, like a
cat, the tails of his dress-coat flapping, and the heels of his white
socks gleaming.

Christian ran upstairs.  She flew about her room, feeling that if she
once stood still it would all crystallise in hard painful thought,
which motion alone kept away.  She washed, changed her dress and
shoes, and ran down to her uncle's room.  Mr. Treffry had just
finished dinner, pushed the little table back, and was sitting in his
chair, with his glasses on his nose, reading the Tines.  Christian
touched his forehead with her lips.

"Glad to see you, Chris.  Your stepfather's out to dinner, and I
can't stand your aunt when she's in one of her talking moods--bit of
a humbug, Chris, between ourselves; eh, isn't she?" His eyes
twinkled.

Christian smiled.  There was a curious happy restlessness in her that
would not let her keep still.

"Picture finished?" Mr. Treffry asked suddenly, taking up the paper
with a crackle.  "Don't go and fall in love with the painter, Chris."

Christian was still enough now.

'Why not?' she thought.  'What should you know about him?  Isn't he
good enough for me?'  A gong sounded.

"There's your dinner," Mr. Treffry remarked.

With sudden contrition she bent and kissed him.

But when she had left the room Mr. Treffry put down the Times and
stared at the door, humming to himself, and thoughtfully fingering
his chin.

Christian could not eat; she sat, indifferent to the hoverings of
Dominique, tormented by uneasy fear and longings.  She answered Mrs.
Decie at random.  Greta kept stealing looks at her from under her
lashes.

"Decided characters are charming, don't you think so, Christian?"
Mrs. Decie said, thrusting her chin a little forward, and modelling
the words.  "That is why I like Mr. Harz so much; such an immense
advantage for a man to know his mind.  You have only to look at that
young man to see that he knows what he wants, and means to have it."

Christian pushed her plate away.  Greta, flushing, said abruptly:
"Doctor Edmund is not a decided character, I think.  This afternoon
he said: 'Shall I have some beer-yes, I shall--no, I shall not'; then
he ordered the beer, so, when it came, he gave it to the soldiers."

Mrs. Decie turned her enigmatic smile from one girl to the other.

When dinner was over they went into her room.  Greta stole at once to
the piano, where her long hair fell almost to the keys; silently she
sat there fingering the notes, smiling to herself, and looking at her
aunt, who was reading Pater's essays.  Christian too had taken up a
book, but soon put it down--of several pages she had not understood a
word.  She went into the garden and wandered about the lawn, clasping
her hands behind her head.  The air was heavy; very distant thunder
trembled among the mountains, flashes of summer lightning played over
the trees; and two great moths were hovering about a rosebush.
Christian watched their soft uncertain rushes.  Going to the little
summer-house she flung herself down on a seat, and pressed her hands
to her heart.

There was a strange and sudden aching there.  Was he going from her?
If so, what would be left?  How little and how narrow seemed the
outlook of her life--with the world waiting for her, the world of
beauty, effort, self-sacrifice, fidelity!  It was as though a flash
of that summer lightning had fled by, singeing her, taking from her
all powers of flight, burning off her wings, as off one of those pale
hovering moths.  Tears started up, and trickled down her face.
'Blind!' she thought; 'how could I have been so blind?'

Some one came down the path.

"Who's there?" she cried.

Harz stood in the doorway.

"Why did you come out?" he said.  "Ah! why did you come out?"  He
caught her hand; Christian tried to draw it from him, and to turn her
eyes away, but she could not.  He flung himself down on his knees,
and cried: "I love you!"

In a rapture of soft terror Christian bent her forehead down to his
hand.

"What are you doing?" she heard him say.  "Is it possible that you
love me?" and she felt his kisses on her hair.

"My sweet! it will be so hard for you; you are so little, so little,
and so weak."  Clasping his hand closer to her face, she murmured: "I
don't care."

There was a long, soft silence, that seemed to last for ever.
Suddenly she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him.

"Whatever comes!" she whispered, and gathering her dress, escaped
from him into the darkness.




XII

Christian woke next morning with a smile.  In her attitudes, her
voice, her eyes, there was a happy and sweet seriousness, as if she
were hugging some holy thought.  After breakfast she took a book and
sat in the open window, whence she could see the poplar-trees
guarding the entrance.  There was a breeze; the roses close by kept
nodding to her; the cathedral bells were in full chime; bees hummed
above the lavender; and in the sky soft clouds were floating like
huge, white birds.

The sounds of Miss Naylor's staccato dictation travelled across the
room, and Greta's sighs as she took it down, one eye on her paper,
one eye on Scruff, who lay with a black ear flapped across his paw,
and his tan eyebrows quivering.  He was in disgrace, for Dominique,
coming on him unawares, had seen him "say his prayers" before a
pudding, and take the pudding for reward.

Christian put her book down gently, and slipped through the window.
Harz was coming in from the road.  "I am all yours!" she whispered.
His fingers closed on hers, and he went into the house.

She slipped back, took up her book, and waited.  It seemed long
before he came out, but when he did he waved her back, and hurried
on; she had a glimpse of his face, white to the lips.  Feeling faint
and sick, she flew to her stepfather's room.

Herr Paul was standing in a corner with the utterly disturbed
appearance of an easy-going man, visited by the unexpected.  His fine
shirt-front was crumpled as if his breast had heaved too suddenly
under strong emotion; his smoked eyeglasses dangled down his back;
his fingers were embedded in his beard.  He was fixing his eye on a
spot in the floor as though he expected it to explode and blow them
to fragments.  In another corner Mrs. Decie, with half-closed eyes,
was running her finger-tips across her brow.

"What have you said to him?" cried Christian.

Herr Paul regarded her with glassy eyes.

"Mein Gott!" he said.  "Your aunt and I!"

"What have you said to him?" repeated Christian.

"The impudence!  An anarchist!.  A beggar!"

"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie.

"The outlaw!  The fellow!"  Herr Paul began to stride about the room.

Quivering from head to foot, Christian cried: "How dared you?" and
ran from the room, pushing aside Miss Naylor and Greta, who stood
blanched and frightened in the doorway.

Herr Paul stopped in his tramp, and, still with his eyes fixed on the
floor, growled:

"A fine thing-hein?  What's coming?  Will you please tell me?  An
anarchist--a beggar!"

"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie.

"Paul!  Paul!  And you!" he pointed to Miss Naylor--"Two women with
eyes!--hein!"

"There is nothing to be gained by violence," Mrs. Decie murmured,
passing her handkerchief across her lips.  Miss Naylor, whose thin
brown cheeks had flushed, advanced towards him.

"I hope you do not--"she said; "I am sure there was nothing that I
could have prevented--I should be glad if that were understood."
And, turning with some dignity, the little lady went away, closing
the door behind her.

"You hear!" Herr Paul said, violently sarcastic: "nothing she could
have prevented!  Enfin,! Will you please tell me what I am to do?"

"Men of the world"--whose philosophy is a creature of circumstance
and accepted things--find any deviation from the path of their
convictions dangerous, shocking, and an intolerable bore.  Herr Paul
had spent his life laughing at convictions; the matter had but to
touch him personally, and the tap of laughter was turned off.  That
any one to whom he was the lawful guardian should marry other than a
well-groomed man, properly endowed with goods, properly selected, was
beyond expression horrid.  From his point of view he had great excuse
for horror; and he was naturally unable to judge whether he had
excuse for horror from other points of view.  His amazement had in it
a spice of the pathetic; he was like a child in the presence of a
thing that he absolutely could not understand.  The interview had
left him with a sense of insecurity which he felt to be particularly
unfair.

The door was again opened, and Greta flew in, her cheeks flushed, her
hair floating behind her, and tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Papa!" she cried, "you have been cruel to Chris.  The door is
locked; I can hear her crying--why have you been cruel?"  Without
waiting to be answered, she flew out again.

Herr Paul seized his hair with both his hands: "Good!  Very good!  My
own child, please!  What next then?"

Mrs. Decie rose from her chair languidly.  "My head is very bad," she
said, shading her eyes and speaking in low tones: "It is no use
making a fuss--nothing can come of this--he has not a penny.
Christian will have nothing till you die, which will not be for a
long time yet, if you can but avoid an apoplectic fit!"

At these last words Herr Paul gave a start of real disgust.  "Hum!"
he muttered; it was as if the world were bent on being brutal to him.
Mrs. Decie continued:

"If I know anything of this young man, he will not come here again,
after the words you have spoken.  As for Christian--you had better
talk to Nicholas.  I am going to lie down."

Herr Paul nervously fingered the shirt-collar round his stout, short
neck.

"Nicholas!  Certainly--a good idea.  Quelle diable d'afaire!"

'French!' thought Mrs. Decie; 'we shall soon have peace.  Poor
Christian!  I'm sorry!  After all, these things are a matter of time
and opportunity.'  This consoled her a good deal.

But for Christian the hours were a long nightmare of grief and shame,
fear and anger.  Would he forgive?  Would he be true to her?  Or
would he go away without a word?  Since yesterday it was as if she
had stepped into another world, and lost it again.  In place of that
new feeling, intoxicating as wine, what was coming?  What bitter;
dreadful ending?

A rude entrance this into the life of facts, and primitive emotions!

She let Greta into her room after a time, for the child had begun
sobbing; but she would not talk, and sat hour after hour at the
window with the air fanning her face, and the pain in her eyes turned
to the sky and trees.  After one or two attempts at consolation,
Greta sank on the floor, and remained there, humbly gazing at her
sister in a silence only broken when Christian cleared her throat of
tears, and by the song of birds in the garden.  In the afternoon she
slipped away and did not come back again.

After his interview with Mr. Treffry, Herr Paul took a bath, perfumed
himself with precision, and caused it to be clearly understood that,
under circumstances such as these, a man's house was not suited for a
pig to live in.  He shortly afterwards went out to the Kurbaus, and
had not returned by dinner-time.

Christian came down for dinner.  There were crimson spots in her
cheeks, dark circles round her eyes; she behaved, however, as though
nothing had happened.  Miss Naylor, affected by the kindness of her
heart and the shock her system had sustained, rolled a number of
bread pills, looking at each as it came, with an air of surprise, and
concealing it with difficulty.  Mr. Treffry was coughing, and when he
talked his voice seemed to rumble even more than usual.  Greta was
dumb, trying to catch Christian's eye; Mrs. Decie alone seemed at
ease.  After dinner Mr. Treffry went off to his room, leaning heavily
on Christian's shoulder.  As he sank into his chair, he said to her:

"Pull yourself together, my dear!" Christian did not answer him.

Outside his room Greta caught her by the sleeve.

"Look!" she whispered, thrusting a piece of paper into Christian's
hand.  "It is to me from Dr. Edmund, but you must read it."

Christian opened the note, which ran as follows:


"MY PHILOSOPHER AND FRIEND,--I received your note, and went to our
friend's studio; he was not in, but half an hour ago I stumbled on
him in the Platz.  He is not quite himself; has had a touch of the
sun--nothing serious: I took him to my hotel, where he is in bed.  If
he will stay there he will be all right in a day or two.  In any case
he shall not elude my clutches for the present.

"My warm respects to Mistress Christian.--Yours in friendship and
philosophy,

EDMUND DAWNEY."


Christian read and re-read this note, then turned to Greta.

"What did you say to Dr. Dawney?"

Greta took back the piece of paper, and replied: " I said:

"'DEAR DR. EDMUND,--We are anxious about Herr Harz.  We think he is
perhaps not very well to-day.  We (I and Christian) should like to
know.  You can tell us.  Please shall you?  GRETA.'

"That is what I said."

Christian dropped her eyes.  "What made you write?"

Greta gazed at her mournfully: "I thought--O Chris! come into the
garden.  I am so hot, and it is so dull without you!"

Christian bent her head forward and rubbed her cheek against Greta's,
then without another word ran upstairs and locked herself into her
room.  The child stood listening; hearing the key turn in the lock,
she sank down on the bottom step and took Scruff in her arms.

Half an hour later Miss Naylor, carrying a candle, found her there
fast asleep, with her head resting on the terrier's back, and tear
stains on her cheeks....

Mrs. Decie presently came out, also carrying a candle, and went to
her brother's room.  She stood before his chair, with folded hands.

"Nicholas, what is to be done?"

Mr. Treffry was pouring whisky into a glass.

"Damn it, Con!" he answered; "how should I know?"

"There's something in Christian that makes interference dangerous.  I
know very well that I've no influence with her at all."

"You're right there, Con," Mr. Treffry replied.

Mrs. Decie's pale eyes, fastened on his face, forced him to look up.

"I wish you would leave off drinking whisky and attend to me.  Paul
is an element--"

"Paul," Mr. Treffry growled, "is an ass!"

"Paul," pursued Mrs. Decie, "is an element of danger in the
situation; any ill-timed opposition of his might drive her to I don't
know what.  Christian is gentle, she is 'sympathetic' as they say;
but thwart her, and she is as obstinate as....

"You or I!  Leave her alone!"

"I understand her character, but I confess that I am at a loss what
to do."

"Do nothing!"  He drank again.

Mrs. Decie took up the candle.

"Men!" she said with a mysterious intonation; shrugging her
shoulders, she walked out.

Mr. Treffry put down his glass.

'Understand?' he thought; 'no, you don't, and I don't.  Who
understands a young girl?  Vapourings, dreams, moonshine I....  What
does she see in this painter fellow?  I wonder!'  He breathed
heavily.  'By heavens! I wouldn't have had this happen for a hundred
thousand pounds!'




XIII

For many hours after Dawney had taken him to his hotel, Harz was
prostrate with stunning pains in the head and neck.  He had been all
day without food, exposed to burning sun, suffering violent emotion.
Movement of any sort caused him such agony that he could only lie in
stupor, counting the spots dancing before, his eyes.  Dawney did
everything for him, and Harz resented in a listless way the intent
scrutiny of the doctor's calm, black eyes.

Towards the end of the second day he was able to get up; Dawney found
him sitting on the bed in shirt and trousers.

"My son," he said, "you had better tell me what the trouble is--it
will do your stubborn carcase good."

"I must go back to work," said Harz.

"Work!" said Dawney deliberately: "you couldn't, if you tried."

"I must."

"My dear fellow, you couldn't tell one colour from another."

"I must be doing something; I can't sit here and think."

Dawney hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat: "You won't see the sun
for three days yet, if I can help it."

Harz got up.

"I'm going to my studio to-morrow," he said.  "I promise not to go
out.  I must be where I can see my work.  If I can't paint, I can
draw; I can feel my brushes, move my things about.  I shall go mad if
I do nothing."

Dawney took his arm, and walked him up and down.

"I'll let you go," he said, "but give me a chance!  It's as much to
me to put you straight as it is to you to paint a decent picture.
Now go to bed; I'll have a carriage for you to-morrow morning."

Harz sat down on the bed again, and for a long time stayed without
moving, his eyes fixed on the floor.  The sight of him, so desperate
and miserable, hurt the young doctor.

"Can you get to bed by yourself?" he asked at last.

Harz nodded.

"Then, good-night, old chap!" and Dawney left the room.

He took his hat and turned towards the Villa.  Between the poplars he
stopped to think.  The farther trees were fret-worked black against
the lingering gold of the sunset; a huge moth, attracted by the tip
of his cigar, came fluttering in his face.  The music of a concertina
rose and fell, like the sighing of some disillusioned spirit.  Dawney
stood for several minutes staring at the house.

He was shown to Mrs. Decie's room.  She was holding a magazine before
her eyes, and received him with as much relief as philosophy
permitted.

"You are the very person I wanted to see," she said.

He noticed that the magazine she held was uncut.

"You are a young man," pursued Mrs. Decie, "but as my doctor I have a
right to your discretion."

Dawney smiled; the features of his broad, clean-shaven face looked
ridiculously small on such occasions, but his eyes retained their air
of calculation.

"That is so," he answered.

"It is about this unfortunate affair.  I understand that Mr. Harz is
with you.  I want you to use your influence to dissuade him from
attempting to see my niece."

"Influence!" said Dawney; "you know Harz!"

Mrs. Decie's voice hardened.

"Everybody," she said, "has his weak points.  This young man is open
to approach from at least two quarters--his pride is one, his work an
other.  I am seldom wrong in gauging character; these are his vital
spots, and they are of the essence of this matter.  I'm sorry for
him, of course--but at his age, and living a man's life, these
things--"  Her smile was extra pale.  "I wish you could give me
something for my head.  It's foolish to worry.  Nerves of course!
But I can't help it!  You know my opinion, Dr. Dawney.  That young
man will go far if he remains unfettered; he will make a name.  You
will be doing him a great service if you could show him the affair as
it really is--a drag on him, and quite unworthy of his pride!  Do
help me!  You are just the man to do it!"

Dawney threw up his head as if to shake off this impeachment; the
curve of his chin thus displayed was imposing in its fulness;
altogether he was imposing, having an air of capability.

She struck him, indeed, as really scared; it was as if her mask of
smile had become awry, and failed to cover her emotion; and he was
puzzled, thinking, 'I wouldn't have believed she had it in her....'
"It's not an easy business," he said; "I'll think it over."

"Thank you!" murmured Mrs. Decie.  "You are most kind."

Passing the schoolroom, he looked in through the open door.
Christian was sitting there.  The sight of her face shocked him, it
was so white, so resolutely dumb.  A book lay on her knees; she was
not reading, but staring before her.  He thought suddenly: 'Poor
thing!  If I don't say something to her, I shall be a brute!'

"Miss Devorell," he said: "You can reckon on him."

Christian tried to speak, but her lips trembled so that nothing came
forth.

"Good-night," said Dawney, and walked out....

Three days later Harz was sitting in the window of his studio.  It
was the first day he had found it possible to work, and now, tired
out, he stared through the dusk at the slowly lengthening shadows of
the rafters.  A solitary mosquito hummed, and two house sparrows, who
had built beneath the roof, chirruped sleepily.  Swallows darted by
the window, dipping their blue wings towards the quiet water; a hush
had stolen over everything.  He fell asleep.

He woke, with a dim impression of some near presence.  In the pale
glimmer from innumerable stars, the room was full of shadowy shapes.
He lit his lantern.  The flame darted forth, bickered, then slowly
lit up the great room.

"Who's there?"

A rustling seemed to answer.  He peered about, went to the doorway,
and drew the curtain.  A woman's cloaked figure shrank against the
wall.  Her face was buried in her hands; her arms, from which the
cloak fell back, were alone visible.

"Christian?"

She ran past him, and when he had put the lantern down, was standing
at the window.  She turned quickly to him.  "Take me away from here!
Let me come with you!"

"Do you mean it?"

"You said you wouldn't give me up!"

"You know what you are doing?"

She made a motion of assent.

"But you don't grasp what this means.  Things to bear that you know
nothing of--hunger perhaps!  Think, even hunger!  And your people
won't forgive--you'll lose everything."

She shook her head.

"I must choose--it's one thing or the other.  I can't give you up!
I should be afraid!"

"But, dear; how can you come with me?  We can't be married here."

"I am giving my life to you."

"You are too good for me," said Harz.  "The life you're going into--
may be dark, like that!" he pointed to the window.

A sound of footsteps broke the hush.  They could see a figure on the
path below.  It stopped, seemed to consider, vanished.  They heard
the sounds of groping hands, of a creaking door, of uncertain feet on
the stairs.

Harz seized her hand.

"Quick!" he whispered; "behind this canvas!"

Christian was trembling violently.  She drew her hood across her
face.  The heavy breathing and ejaculations of the visitor were now
plainly audible.

"He's there!  Quick!  Hide!"

She shook her head.

With a thrill at his heart, Harz kissed her, then walked towards the
entrance.  The curtain was pulled aside.

It was Herr Paul, holding a cigar in one hand, his hat in the other,
and breathing hard.

"Pardon!" he said huskily, "your stairs are steep, and dark! mais en,
fin! nous voila!  I have ventured to come for a talk."  His glance
fell on the cloaked figure in the shadow.

"Pardon! A thousand pardons!  I had no idea!  I beg you to forgive
this indiscretion!  I may take it you resign pretensions then?  You
have a lady here--I have nothing more to say; I only beg a million
pardons for intruding.  A thousand times forgive me!  Good-night!"

He bowed and turned to go.  Christian stepped forward, and let the
hood fall from her head.

"It's I!"

Herr Paul pirouetted.

"Good God!" he stammered, dropping cigar and hat.  "Good God!"

The lantern flared suddenly, revealing his crimson, shaking cheeks.

"You came here, at night!  You, the daughter of my wife!"  His eyes
wandered with a dull glare round the room.

"Take care!" cried Harz: "If you say a word against her---"

The two men stared at each other's eyes.  And without warning, the
lantern flickered and went out.  Christian drew the cloak round her
again.  Herr Paul's voice broke the silence; he had recovered his
self-possession.

"Ah! ah!" he said: "Darkness! Tant mieux!  The right thing for what
we have to say.  Since we do not esteem each other, it is well not to
see too much."

"Just so," said Harz.

Christian had come close to them.  Her pale face and great shining
eyes could just be seen through the gloom.

Herr Paul waved his arm; the gesture was impressive, annihilating.

"This is a matter, I believe, between two men," he said, addressing
Harz.  "Let us come to the point.  I will do you the credit to
suppose that you have a marriage in view.  You know, perhaps, that
Miss Devorell has no money till I die?"

"Yes."

"And I am passably young! You have money, then?"

"No."

"In that case, you would propose to live on air?"

"No, to work; it has been done before."

"It is calculated to increase hunger!  You are prepared to take Miss
Devorell, a young lady accustomed to luxury, into places like--this!"
he peered about him, "into places that smell of paint, into the
milieu of 'the people,' into the society of Bohemians--who knows? of
anarchists, perhaps?"

Harz clenched his hands: "I will answer no more questions."

"In that event, we reach the ultimatum," said Herr Paul.  "Listen,
Herr Outlaw!  If you have not left the country by noon to-morrow, you
shall be introduced to the police!"

Christian uttered a cry.  For a minute in the gloom the only sound
heard was the short, hard breathing of the two men.

Suddenly Harz cried: "You coward, I defy you!"

"Coward!" Herr Paul repeated.  "That is indeed the last word.  Look
to yourself, my friend!"

Stooping and fumbling on the floor, he picked up his hat.  Christian
had already vanished; the sound of her hurrying footsteps was
distinctly audible at the top of the dark stairs.  Herr Paul stood
still a minute.

"Look to yourself, my dear friend!" he said in a thick voice, groping
for the wall.  Planting his hat askew on his head, he began slowly to
descend the stairs.




XV

Nicholas Treffry sat reading the paper in his room by the light of a
lamp with a green shade; on his sound foot the terrier Scruff was
asleep and snoring lightly--the dog habitually came down when Greta
was in bed, and remained till Mr. Treffry, always the latest member
of the household, retired to rest.

Through the long window a little river of light shone out on the
veranda tiles, and, flowing past, cut the garden in two.

There was the sound of hurried footsteps, a rustling of draperies;
Christian, running through the window, stood before him.

Mr. Treffry dropped his paper, such a fury of passion and alarm shone
in the girl's eyes.

"Chris! What is it?"

"Hateful!"

"Chris!"

"Oh! Uncle!  He's insulted, threatened!  And I love his little finger
more than all the, world!"

Her passionate voice trembled, her eyes were shining.

Mr. Treffry's profound discomfort found vent in the gruff words: "Sit
down!"

"I'll never speak to Father again!  Oh! Uncle! I love him!"

Quiet in the extremity of his disturbance, Mr. Treffry leaned forward
in his chair, rested his big hands on its arms, and stared at her.

Chris!  Here was a woman he did not know!  His lips moved under the
heavy droop of his moustache.  The girl's face had suddenly grown
white.  She sank down on her knees, and laid her cheek against his
hand.  He felt it wet; and a lump rose in his throat.  Drawing his
hand away, he stared at it, and wiped it with his sleeve.

"Don't cry!" he said.

She seized it again and clung to it; that clutch seemed to fill him
with sudden rage.

"What's the matter?  How the devil can I do anything if you don't
tell me?"

She looked up at him.  The distress of the last days, the passion and
fear of the last hour, the tide of that new life of the spirit and
the flesh, stirring within her, flowed out in a stream of words.

When she had finished, there was so dead a silence that the
fluttering of a moth round the lamp could be heard plainly.

Mr. Treffry raised himself, crossed the room, and touched the bell.
"Tell the groom," he said to Dominique, "to put the horses to, and
have 'em round at once; bring my old boots; we drive all night...."

His bent figure looked huge, body and legs outlined by light, head
and shoulders towering into shadow.  "He shall have a run for his
money!" he said.  His eyes stared down sombrely at his niece.  "It's
more than he deserves!--it's more than you deserve, Chris.  Sit down
there and write to him; tell him to put himself entirely in my
hands."  He turned his back on her, and went into his bedroom.

Christian rose, and sat down at the writing-table.  A whisper
startled her.  It came from Dominique, who was holding out a pair of
boots.

"M'mselle Chris, what is this?--to run about all night?"  But
Christian did not answer.

"M'mselle Chris, are you ill?"  Then seeing her face, he slipped away
again.

She finished her letter and went out to the carriage.  Mr. Treffry
was seated under the hood.

"Shan't want you," he called out to the groom, "Get up, Dominique."

Christian thrust her letter into his hand.  "Give him that," she
said, clinging to his arm with sudden terror.  "Oh! Uncle! do take
care!"

"Chris, if I do this for you--"  They looked wistfully at one
another.  Then, shaking his head, Mr. Treffry gathered up the reins.

"Don't fret, my dear, don't fret!  Whoa, mare!"

The carriage with a jerk plunged forward into darkness, curved with a
crunch of wheels, and vanished, swinging between the black
treepillars at the entrance....

Christian stood, straining to catch the failing sound of the hoofs.

Down the passage came a flutter of white garments; soft limbs were
twined about her, some ends of hair fell on her face.

"What is it, Chris?  Where have you been?  Where is Uncle Nic going?
Tell me!"

Christian tore herself away.  "I don't know," she cried, "I know
nothing!"

Greta stroked her face.  "Poor Chris!" she murmured.  Her bare feet
gleamed, her hair shone gold against her nightdress.  "Come to bed,
poor Chris!"

Christian laughed.  "You little white moth!  Feel how hot I am!
You'll burn your wings!"

Harz had lain down, fully dressed.  He was no longer angry, but felt
that he would rather die than yield.  Presently he heard footsteps
coming up the stairs.

"M'sieu!"

It was the voice of Dominique, whose face, illumined by a match, wore
an expression of ironical disgust.

"My master," he said, "makes you his compliments; he says there is no
time to waste.  You are to please come and drive with him!"

"Your master is very kind.  Tell him I'm in bed."

"Ah, M'sieu," said Dominique, grimacing, "I must not go back with
such an answer.  If you would not come, I was to give you this."

Harz broke the seal and read Christian's letter.

"I will come," he said.

A clock was striking as they went out through the gate.  From within
the dark cave of the phaeton hood Mr. Treffry said gruffly: "Come
along, sir!"

Harz flung his knapsack in, and followed.

His companion's figure swayed, the whiplash slid softly along the
flank of the off horse, and, as the carriage rattled forward, Mr.
Treffry called out, as if by afterthought: "Hallo, Dominique!"
Dominque's voice, shaken and ironical, answered from behind: "M'
v'la, M'sieu!"

In the long street of silent houses, men sitting in the lighted cafes
turned with glasses at their lips to stare after the carriage.  The
narrow river of the sky spread suddenly to a vast, limpid ocean
tremulous with stars.  They had turned into the road for Italy.

Mr. Treffry took a pull at his horses.  "Whoa, mare! Dogged does it!"
and the near horse, throwing up her head, whinnied; a fleck of foam
drifted into Harz's face.

The painter had come on impulse; because Christian had told him to,
not of his own free will.  He was angry with himself, wounded in
self-esteem, for having allowed any one to render him this service.
The smooth swift movement through velvet blackness splashed on either
hand with the flying lamp-light; the strong sweet air blowing in his
face-air that had kissed the tops of mountains and stolen their
spirit; the snort and snuffle of the horses, and crisp rattling of
their hoofs--all this soon roused in him another feeling.  He looked
at Mr. Treffry's profile, with its tufted chin; at the grey road
adventuring in darkness; at the purple mass of mountains piled above
it.  All seemed utterly unreal.

As if suddenly aware that he had a neighbour, Mr. Treffry turned his
head.  "We shall do better than this presently," he said, "bit of a
slope coming.  Haven't had 'em out for three days.  Whoa-mare!
Steady!"

"Why are you taking this trouble for me?" asked Harz.

"I'm an old chap, Mr. Harz, and an old chap may do a stupid thing
once in a while!"

"You are very good," said Harz, "but I want no favours."

Mr. Treffry stared at him.

"Just so," he said drily, "but you see there's my niece to be thought
of.  Look here!  We're not at the frontier yet, Mr. Harz, by forty
miles; it's long odds we don't get there--so, don't spoil sport!"  He
pointed to the left.

Harz caught the glint of steel.  They were already crossing the
railway.  The sigh of the telegraph wires fluttered above them.

"Hear 'em," said Mr. Treffry, "but if we get away up the mountains,
we'll do yet!"  They had begun to rise, the speed slackened.  Mr.
Treffry rummaged out a flask.

"Not bad stuff, Mr. Harz--try it.  You won't?  Mother's milk!  Fine
night, eh?"  Below them the valley was lit by webs of milky mist like
the glimmer of dew on grass.

These two men sitting side by side--unlike in face, age, stature,
thought, and life--began to feel drawn towards each other, as if, in
the rolling of the wheels, the snorting of the horses, the huge dark
space, the huge uncertainty, they had found something they could
enjoy in common.  The, steam from the horses' flanks and nostrils
enveloped them with an odour as of glue.

"You smoke, Mr. Harz?"

Harz took the proffered weed, and lighted it from the glowing tip of
Mr. Treffry's cigar, by light of which his head and hat looked like
some giant mushroom.  Suddenly the wheels jolted on a rubble of loose
stones; the carriage was swung sideways.  The scared horses,
straining asunder, leaped forward, and sped downwards, in the
darkness.

Past rocks, trees, dwellings, past a lighted house that gleamed and
vanished.  With a clink and clatter, a flirt of dust and pebbles, and
the side lamps throwing out a frisky orange blink, the carriage
dashed down, sinking and rising like a boat crossing billows.  The
world seemed to rock and sway; to dance up, and be flung flat again.
Only the stars stood still.

Mr. Treffry, putting on the brake, muttered apologetically: "A little
out o'hand!"

Suddenly with a headlong dive, the carriage swayed as if it would fly
in pieces, slithered along, and with a jerk steadied itself.  Harz
lifted his voice in a shout of pure excitement.  Mr. Treffry let out
a short shaky howl, and from behind there rose a wail.  But the hill
was over and the startled horses were cantering with a free, smooth
motion.  Mr. Treffry and Harz looked at each other.




XVII

Mr. Treffry said with a sort of laugh: "Near go, eh?  You drive?  No?
That's a pity!  Broken most of my bones at the game--nothing like
it!"  Each felt a kind of admiration for the other that he had not
felt before.  Presently Mr. Treffry began: "Look here, Mr. Harz, my
niece is a slip of a thing, with all a young girl's notions!  What
have you got to give her, eh?  Yourself?  That's surely not enough;
mind this--six months after marriage we all turn out much the same--a
selfish lot!  Not to mention this anarchist affair!

You're not of her blood, nor of her way of life, nor anything--it's
taking chances--and--" his hand came down on the young man's knee,
"I'm fond of her, you see."

"If you were in my place," said Harz, "would you give her up?"

Mr. Treffry groaned.  "Lord knows!"

"Men have made themselves before now.  For those who don't believe in
failure, there's no such thing.  Suppose she does suffer a little?
Will it do her any harm?  Fair weather love is no good."

Mr. Treffry sighed.

"Brave words, sir!  You'll pardon me if I'm too old to understand 'em
when they're used about my niece."

He pulled the horses up, and peered into the darkness.  "We're going
through this bit quietly; if they lose track of us here so much the
better.  Dominique! put out the lamps.  Soho, my beauties!"  The
horses paced forward at a walk the muffled beat of their hoofs in the
dust hardly broke the hush.  Mr. Treffry pointed to the left: "It'll
be another thirty-five miles to the frontier."

They passed the whitewashed houses, and village church with its
sentinel cypress-trees.  A frog was croaking in a runlet; there was a
faint spicy scent of lemons.  But nothing stirred.

It was wood now on either side, the high pines, breathing their
fragrance out into the darkness, and, like ghosts amongst them, the
silver stems of birch-trees.

Mr. Treffry said gruffly: "You won't give her up?  Her happiness
means a lot to me."

"To you!" said Harz: "to him!  And I am nothing!  Do you think I
don't care for her happiness?  Is it a crime for me to love her?"

"Almost, Mr. Harz--considering...."

"Considering that I've no money!  Always money!"

To this sneer Mr. Treffry made no answer, clucking to his horses.

"My niece was born and bred a lady," he said at last.  "I ask you
plainly What position have you got to give her?"

"If she marries me," said Harz, "she comes into my world.  You think
that I'm a common...."

Mr. Treffry shook his head: "Answer my question, young man."

But the painter did not answer it, and silence fell.

A light breeze had sprung up; the whispering in the trees, the
rolling of the wheels in this night progress, the pine-drugged air,
sent Harz to sleep.  When he woke it was to the same tune, varied by
Mr. Treffry's uneasy snoring; the reins were hanging loose, and,
peering out, he saw Dominique shuffling along at the horses' heads.
He joined him, and, one on each side, they plodded up and up.  A haze
had begun to bathe the trees, the stars burnt dim, the air was
colder.  Mr. Treffry woke coughing.  It was like some long nightmare,
this interminable experience of muffled sounds and shapes, of
perpetual motion, conceived, and carried out in darkness.  But
suddenly the day broke.  Heralded by the snuffle of the horses, light
began glimmering over a chaos of lines and shadows, pale as mother-
o'-pearl.  The stars faded, and in a smouldering zigzag the dawn fled
along the mountain tops, flinging out little isles of cloud.  From a
lake, curled in a hollow like a patch of smoke, came the cry of a
water-bird.  A cuckoo started a soft mocking; and close to the
carriage a lark flew up.  Beasts and men alike stood still, drinking
in the air-sweet with snows and dew, and vibrating faintly with the
running of the water and the rustling of the leaves.

The night had played sad tricks with Mr. Nicholas Treffry; his hat
was grey with dust; his cheeks brownish-purple, there were heavy
pouches beneath his eyes, which stared painfully.

"We'll call a halt," he said, "and give the gees their grub, poor
things.  Can you find some water, Mr. Harz?  There's a rubber bucket
in behind.

Can't get about myself this morning; make that lazy fellow of mine
stir his stumps."

Harz saw that he had drawn off one of his boots, and stretched the
foot out on a cushion.

"You're not fit to go farther," he said; "you're ill."

"Ill!" replied Mr. Treffry; "not a bit of it!"

Harz looked at him, then catching up the bucket, made off in search
of water.  When he came back the horses were feeding from an india-
rubber trough slung to the pole; they stretched their heads towards
the bucket, pushing aside each other's noses.

The flame in the east had died, but the tops of the larches were
bathed in a gentle radiance; and the peaks ahead were like amber.
Everywhere were threads of water, threads of snow, and little threads
of dewy green, glistening like gossamer.

Mr. Treffry called out: "Give me your arm, Mr. Harz; I'd like to
shake the reefs out of me.  When one comes to stand over at the
knees, it's no such easy matter, eh?"  He groaned as he put his foot
down, and gripped the young man's shoulder as in a vise.  Presently
he lowered himself on to a stone.

"'All over now!' as Chris would say when she was little; nasty temper
she had too--kick and scream on the floor!  Never lasted long
though....  'Kiss her! take her up! show her the pictures!'  Amazing
fond of pictures Chris was!"  He looked dubiously at Harz; then took
a long pull at his flask.  "What would the doctor say?  Whisky at
four in the morning!  Well!  Thank the Lord Doctors aren't always
with us."  Sitting on the stone, with one hand pressed against his
side, and the other tilting up the flask, he was grey from head to
foot.

Harz had dropped on to another stone.  He, too, was worn out by the
excitement and fatigue, coming so soon after his illness.  His head
was whirling, and the next thing he remembered was a tree walking at
him, turning round, yellow from the roots up; everything seemed
yellow, even his own feet.  Somebody opposite to him was jumping up
and down, a grey bear--with a hat--Mr. Treffry!  He cried: "Ha-
alloo!"  And the figure seemed to fall and disappear....

When Harz came to himself a hand was pouring liquor into his mouth,
and a wet cloth was muffled round his brows; a noise of humming and
hoofs seemed familiar.  Mr. Treffry loomed up alongside, smoking a
cigar; he was muttering: "A low trick, Paul--bit of my mind!"  Then,
as if a curtain had been snatched aside, the vision before Harz
cleared again.  The carriage was winding between uneven, black-eaved
houses, past doorways from which goats and cows were coming out, with
bells on their necks.  Black-eyed boys, and here and there a drowsy
man with a long, cherry-stemmed pipe betwen his teeth, stood aside to
stare.

Mr. Treffry seemed to have taken a new lease of strength; like an
angry old dog, he stared from side to side.  "My bone!" he seemed to
say: "let's see who's going to touch it!"

The last house vanished, glowing in the early sunshine, and the
carriage with its trail of dust became entombed once more in the
gloom of tall trees, along a road that cleft a wilderness of
mossgrown rocks, and dewy stems, through which the sun had not yet
driven paths.

Dominique came round to them, bearing appearance of one who has seen
better days, and a pot of coffee brewed on a spirit lamp.  Breakfast
--he said--was served!

The ears of the horses were twitching with fatigue.  Mr. Treffry said
sadly: "If I can see this through, you can.  Get on, my beauties!"

As soon as the sun struck through the trees, Mr. Treffry's strength
ebbed again.  He seemed to suffer greatly; but did not complain.
They had reached the pass at last, and the unchecked sunlight was
streaming down with a blinding glare.

"Jump up!" Mr. Treffry cried out.  "We'll make a finish of it!" and
he gave the reins a jerk.  The horses flung up their heads, and the
bleak pass with its circling crown of jagged peaks soon slipped away.

Between the houses on the very top, they passed at a slow trot; and
soon began slanting down the other side.  Mr. Treffry brought them to
a halt where a mule track joined the road.

"That's all I can do for you; you'd better leave me here," he said.
"Keep this track down to the river--go south--you'll be in Italy in a
couple of hours.  Get rail at Feltre.  Money?  Yes?  Well!"  He held
out his hand; Harz gripped it.

"Give her up, eh?"

Harz shook his head.

"No?  Then it's 'pull devil, pull baker,' between us.  Good-bye, and
good luck to you!"  And mustering his strength for a last attempt at
dignity, Mr. Treffry gathered up the reins.

Harz watched his figure huddled again beneath the hood.  The carriage
moved slowly away.




XVIII

At Villa Rubein people went about, avoiding each other as if detected
in conspiracy.  Miss Naylor, who for an inscrutable reason had put on
her best frock, a purple, relieved at the chest with bird's-eye blue,
conveyed an impression of trying to count a chicken which ran about
too fast.  When Greta asked what she had lost she was heard to
mutter: "Mr.--Needlecase.

Christian, with big circles round her eyes, sat silent at her little
table.  She had had no sleep.  Herr Paul coming into the room about
noon gave her a furtive look and went out again; after this he went
to his bedroom, took off all his clothes, flung them passionately one
by one into a footbath, and got into bed.

"I might be a criminal!" he muttered to himself, while the buttons of
his garments rattled on the bath.

"Am I her father?  Have I authority?  Do I know the world?  Bssss!  I
might be a frog!"

Mrs. Decie, having caused herself to be announced, found him smoking
a cigar, and counting the flies on the ceiling.

"If you have really done this, Paul," she said in a restrained voice,
"you have done a very unkind thing, and what is worse, you have made
us all ridiculous.  But perhaps you have not done it?"

"I have done it," cried Herr Paul, staring dreadfully: "I have done
it, I tell you, I have done it--"

"Very well, you have done it--and why, pray?  What conceivable good
was there in it?  I suppose you know that Nicholas has driven him to
the frontier?  Nicholas is probably more dead than alive by this
time; you know his state of health."

Herr Paul's fingers ploughed up his beard.

"Nicholas is mad--and the girl is mad!  Leave me alone!  I will not
be made angry; do you understand?  I will not be worried--I am not
fit for it."  His prominent brown eyes stared round the room, as if
looking for a way of escape.

"If I may prophesy, you will be worried a good deal," said Mrs. Decie
coldly, "before you have finished with this affair."

The anxious, uncertain glance which Herr Paul gave her at these words
roused an unwilling feeling of compunction in her.

"You are not made for the outraged father of the family," she said.
"You had better give up the attitude, Paul; it does not suit you."

Herr Paul groaned.

"I suppose it is not your fault," she added.

Just then the door was opened, and Fritz, with an air of saying the
right thing, announced:

"A gentleman of the police to see you, sir."

Herr Paul bounded.

"Keep him out!" he cried.

Mrs. Decie, covering her lips, disappeared with a rustling of silk;
in her place stood a stiff man in blue....

Thus the morning dragged itself away without any one being able to
settle to anything, except Herr Paul, who was settled in bed.  As was
fitting in a house that had lost its soul, meals were neglected, even
by the dog.

About three o'clock a telegram came for Christian, containing these
words: "All right; self returns to-morrow.  Treffry."  After reading
it she put on her hat and went out, followed closely by Greta, who,
when she thought that she would not be sent away, ran up from behind
and pulled her by the sleeve.

"Let me come, Chris--I shall not talk."

The two girls walked on together.  When they had gone some distance
Christian said:

"I'm going to get his pictures, and take charge of them!"

"Oh!" said Greta timidly.

"If you are afraid," said Christian, "you had better go back home."

"I am not afraid, Chris," said Greta meekly.

Neither girl spoke again till they had taken the path along the wall.
Over the tops of the vines the heat was dancing.

"The sun-fairies are on the vines!" murmured Greta to herself.

At the old house they stopped, and Christian, breathing quickly,
pushed the door; it was immovable.

"Look!" said Greta, "they have screwed it!"  She pointed out three
screws with a rosy-tipped forefinger.

Christian stamped her foot.

"We mustn't stand here," she said; "let's sit on that bench and
think."

"Yes," murmured Greta, "let us think."  Dangling an end of hair, she
regarded Christian with her wide blue eyes.

"I can't make any plan," Christian cried at last, "while you stare at
me like that."

"I was thinking," said Greta humbly, "if they have screwed it up,
perhaps we shall screw it down again; there is the big screw-driver
of Fritz."

"It would take a long time; people are always passing."

"People do not pass in the evening," murmured Greta, "because the
gate at our end is always shut."

Christian rose.

"We will come this evening, just before the gate is shut."

"But, Chris, how shall we get back again?"

"I don't know; I mean to have the pictures."

"It is not a high gate," murmured Greta.

After dinner the girls went to their room, Greta bearing with her the
big screw-driver of Fritz.  At dusk they slipped downstairs and out.

They arrived at the old house, and stood, listening, in the shadow of
the doorway.  The only sounds were those of distant barking dogs, and
of the bugles at the barracks.

"Quick!" whispered Christian; and Greta, with all the strength of her
small hands, began to turn the screws.  It was some time before they
yielded; the third was very obstinate, till Christian took the screw-
driver and passionately gave the screw a starting twist.

"It is like a pig--that one," said Greta, rubbing her wrists
mournfully.

The opened door revealed the gloom of the dank rooms and twisting
staircase, then fell to behind them with a clatter.

Greta gave a little scream, and caught her sister's dress.

"It is dark," she gasped; "O Chris! it is dark!"

Christian groped for the bottom stair, and Greta felt her arm
shaking.

"Suppose there is a man to keep guard!  O Chris! suppose there are
bats!"

"You are a baby!" Christian answered in a trembling voice.  "You had
better go home!"

Greta choked a little in the dark.

"I am--not--going home, but I'm afraid of bats.  O Chris! aren't you
afraid?"

"Yes," said Christian, "but I'm going to have the pictures."

Her cheeks were burning; she was trembling all over.  Having found
the bottom step she began to mount with Greta clinging to her skirts.

The haze above inspired a little courage in the child, who, of all
things, hated darkness.  The blanket across the doorway of the loft
had been taken down, there was nothing to veil the empty room.

"Nobody here, you see," said Christian.

"No-o," whispered Greta, running to the window, and clinging to the
wall, like one of the bats she dreaded.

"But they have been here!" cried Christian angrily.  "They have
broken this."  She pointed to the fragments of a plaster cast that
had been thrown down.

Out of the corner she began to pull the canvases set in rough, wooden
frames, dragging them with all her strength.

"Help me!" she cried; "it will be dark directly."

They collected a heap of sketches and three large pictures, piling
them before the window, and peering at them in the failing light.

Greta said ruefully:

"O Chris! they are heavy ones; we shall never carry them, and the
gate is shut now!"

Christian took a pointed knife from the table.

"I shall cut them out of the frames," she said.  "Listen!  What's
that?"

It was the sound of whistling, which stopped beneath the window.  The
girls, clasping each other's hands, dropped on their knees.

"Hallo!" cried a voice.

Greta crept to the window, and, placing her face level with the
floor, peered over.

"It is only Dr. Edmund; he doesn't know, then," she whispered; "I
shall call him; he is going away!" cried Christian catching her
sister's

"Don't!" cried Christian catching her sister's dress.

"He would help us," Greta said reproachfully, "and it would not be so
dark if he were here."

Christian's cheeks were burning.

"I don't choose," she said, and began handling the pictures, feeling
their edges with her knife.

"Chris!  Suppose anybody came?"

"The door is screwed," Christian answered absently.

"O Chris!  We screwed it unscrewed; anybody who wishes shall come!"

Christian, leaning her chin in her hands, gazed at her thoughtfully.

"It will take a long time to cut these pictures out carefully; or,
perhaps I can get them out without cutting.  You must screw me up and
go home.  In the morning you must come early, when the gate is open,
unscrew me again, and help carry the pictures."

Greta did not answer at once.  At last she shook her head violently.

"I am afraid," she gasped.

"We can't both stay here all night," said Christian; "if any one
comes to our room there will be nobody to answer.  We can't lift
these pictures over the gate.  One of us must go back; you can climb
over the gate--there is nothing to be afraid of"

Greta pressed her hands together.

"Do you want the pictures badly, Chris?"

Christian nodded.

"Very badly?"

"Yes--yes--yes!"

Greta remained sitting where she was, shivering violently, as a
little animal shivers when it scents danger.  At last she rose.

"I am going," she said in a despairing voice.  At the doorway she
turned.

"If Miss Naylor shall ask me where you are, Chris, I shall be telling
her a story."

Christian started.

"I forgot that -O Greta, I am sorry! I will go instead."

Greta took another step--a quick one.

"I shall die if I stay here alone," she said; "I can tell her that
you are in bed; you must go to bed here, Chris, so it shall be true
after all."

Christian threw her arms about her.

"I am so sorry, darling; I wish I could go instead.  But if you have
to tell a lie, I would tell a straight one."

"Would you?" said Greta doubtfully.

"Yes."

"I think," said Greta to herself, beginning to descend the stairs, "I
think I will tell it in my way."  She shuddered and went on groping
in the darkness.

Christian listened for the sound of the screws.  It came slowly,
threatening her with danger and solitude.

Sinking on her knees she began to work at freeing the canvas of a
picture.  Her heart throbbed distressfully; at the stir of wind-
breath or any distant note of clamour she stopped, and held her
breathing.  No sounds came near.  She toiled on, trying only to think
that she was at the very spot where last night his arms had been
round her.  How long ago it seemed!  She was full of vague terror,
overmastered by the darkness, dreadfully alone.  The new glow of
resolution seemed suddenly to have died down in her heart, and left
her cold.

She would never be fit to be his wife, if at the first test her
courage failed! She set her teeth; and suddenly she felt a kind of
exultation, as if she too were entering into life, were knowing
something within herself that she had never known before.  Her
fingers hurt, and the pain even gave pleasure; her cheeks were
burning; her breath came fast.  They could not stop her now!  This
feverish task in darkness was her baptism into life.  She finished;
and rolling the pictures very carefully, tied them with cord.  She
had done something for him!  Nobody could take that from her!  She
had a part of him!  This night had made him hers!  They might do
their worst!  She lay down on his mattress and soon fell asleep....

She was awakened by Scruff's tongue against her face.  Greta was
standing by her side.

"Wake up, Chris!  The gate is open!"

In the cold early light the child seemed to glow with warmth and
colour; her eyes were dancing.

"I am not afraid now; Scruff and I sat up all night, to catch the
morning--I--think it was fun; and O Chris!" she ended with a rueful
gleam in her eyes, "I told it."

Christian hugged her.

"Come--quick! There is nobody about.  Are those the pictures?"

Each supporting an end, the girls carried the bundle downstairs, and
set out with their corpse-like burden along the wall-path between the
river and the vines.




XIX

Hidden by the shade of rose-bushes Greta lay stretched at length,
cheek on arm, sleeping the sleep of the unrighteous.  Through the
flowers the sun flicked her parted lips with kisses, and spilled the
withered petals on her.  In a denser islet of shade, Scruff lay
snapping at a fly.  His head lolled drowsily in the middle of a snap,
and snapped in the middle of a loll.

At three o'clock Miss Naylor too came out, carrying a basket and pair
of scissors.  Lifting her skirts to avoid the lakes of water left by
the garden hose, she stopped in front of a rose-bush, and began to
snip off the shrivelled flowers.  The little lady's silvered head and
thin, brown face sustained the shower of sunlight unprotected, and
had a gentle dignity in their freedom.

Presently, as the scissors flittered in and out of the leaves, she,
began talking to herself.

"If girls were more like what they used to be, this would not have
happened.  Perhaps we don't understand; it's very easy to forget."
Burying her nose and lips in a rose, she sniffed.  "Poor dear girl!
It's such a pity his father is--a--"

"A farmer," said a sleepy voice behind the rosebush.

Miss Naylor leaped.  "Greta! How you startled me!  A farmer--that is-
-an--an agriculturalist!"

"A farmer with vineyards--he told us, and he is not ashamed.  Why is
it a pity, Miss Naylor?"

Miss Naylor's lips looked very thin.

"For many reasons, of which you know nothing."

"That is what you always say," pursued the sleepy voice; "and that is
why, when I am to be married, there shall also be a pity."

"Greta!" Miss Naylor cried, "it is not proper for a girl of your age
to talk like that."

"Why?" said Greta.  "Because it is the truth?"

Miss Naylor made no reply to this, but vexedly cut off a sound rose,
which she hastily picked up and regarded with contrition.  Greta
spoke again:

"Chris said: 'I have got the pictures, I shall tell her'; but I shall
tell you instead, because it was I that told the story."

Miss Naylor stared, wrinkling her nose, and holding the scissors wide
apart....

"Last night," said Greta slowly, "I and Chris went to his studio and
took his pictures, and so, because the gate was shut, I came back to
tell it; and when you asked me where Chris was, I told it; because
she was in the studio all night, and I and Scruff sat up all night,
and in the morning we brought the pictures, and hid them under our
beds, and that is why--we--are--so--sleepy."

Over the rose-bush Miss Naylor peered down at her; and though she was
obliged to stand on tiptoe this did not altogether destroy her
dignity.

"I am surprised at you, Greta; I am surprised at Christian, more
surprised at Christian.  The world seems upside down."

Greta, a sunbeam entangled in her hair, regarded her with
inscrutable, innocent eyes.

"When you were a girl, I think you would be sure to be in love," she
murmured drowsily.

Miss Naylor, flushing deeply, snipped off a particularly healthy bud.

"And so, because you are not married, I think--"

The scissors hissed.

Greta nestled down again.  "I think it is wicked to cut off all the
good buds," she said, and shut her eyes.

Miss Naylor continued to peer across the rosebush; but her thin face,
close to the glistening leaves, had become oddly soft, pink, and
girlish.  At a deeper breath from Greta, the little lady put down her
basket, and began to pace the lawn, followed dubiously by Scruff.  It
was thus that Christian came on them.

Miss Naylor slipped her arm into the girl's and though she made no
sound, her lips kept opening and shutting, like the beak of a bird
contemplating a worm.

Christian spoke first:

"Miss Naylor, I want to tell you please--"

"Oh, my dear!  I know; Greta has been in the confessional before
you."  She gave the girl's arm a squeeze.  "Isn't it a lovely day?
Did you ever see 'Five Fingers' look so beautiful?"  And she pointed
to the great peaks of the Funffingerspitze glittering in the sun like
giant crystals.

"I like them better with clouds about them."

"Well," agreed Miss Naylor nervously, "they certainly are nicer with
clouds about them.  They look almost hot and greasy, don't they....
My dear!" she went on, giving Christian's arm a dozen little
squeezes, "we all of us--that is, we all of us--"

Christian turned her eyes away.

"My dear," Miss Naylor tried again, "I am far--that is, I mean, to
all of us at some time or another--and then you see--well--it is
hard!"

Christian kissed the gloved hand resting on her arm.  Miss Naylor
bobbed her head; a tear trickled off her nose.

"Do let us wind your skein of woof!" she said with resounding gaiety.

Some half-hour later Mrs. Decie called Christian to her room.

"My dear!" she said; "come here a minute; I have a message for you."

Christian went with an odd, set look about her mouth.

Her aunt was sitting, back to the light, tapping a bowl of goldfish
with the tip of a polished finger-nail; the room was very cool.  She
held a letter out.  "Your uncle is not coming back tonight."

Christian took the letter.  It was curtly worded, in a thin, toppling
hand:

"DEAR CON--Can't get back to-night.  Sending Dominique for things.
Tell Christian to come over with him for night if possible.--Yr.
aff. brother,       NICLS. TREFFRY."

"Dominique has a carriage here," said Mrs. Decie.  "You will have
nice time to catch the train.  Give my love to your uncle.  You must
take Barbi with you, I insist on that."  She rose from her chair and
held Christian's hand: "My dear!  You look very tired--very!  Almost
ill.  I don't like to see you look like that.  Come!"  She thrust her
pale lips forward, and kissed the girl's paler cheek.

Then as Christian left the room she sank back in her chair, with
creases in her forehead, and began languidly to cut a magazine.
'Poor Christian!' she thought, 'how hardly she does take it! I am
sorry for her; but perhaps it's just as well, as things are turning
out.  Psychologically it is interesting!'

Christian found her things packed, and the two servants waiting.  In
a few minutes they were driving to the station.  She made Dominique
take the seat opposite.

"Well?" she asked him.

Dominique's eyebrows twitched, he smiled deprecatingly.

"M'mselle, Mr. Treffry told me to hold my tongue."

"But you can tell me, Dominique; Barbi can't understand."

"To you, then, M'mselle," said Dominique, as one who accepts his
fate; "to you, then, who will doubtless forget all that I shall tell
you--my master is not well; he has terrible pain here; he has a
cough; he is not well at all; not well at all."

A feeling of dismay seized on the girl.

"We were a caravan for all that night," Dominique resumed.  "In the
morning by noon we ceased to be a caravan; Signor Harz took a mule
path; he will be in Italy--certainly in Italy.  As for us, we stayed
at San Martino, and my master went to bed.  It was time; I had much
trouble with his clothes, his legs were swollen.  In the afternoon
came a signor of police, on horseback, red and hot; I persuaded him
that we were at Paneveggio, but as we were not, he came back angry--
Mon Die! as angry as a cat.  It was not good to meet him--when he was
with my master I was outside.  There was much noise.  I do not know
what passed, but at last the signor came out through the door, and
went away in a hurry."  Dominique's features were fixed in a sardonic
grin; he rubbed the palm of one hand with the finger of the other.
"Mr. Treffry made me give him whisky afterwards, and he had no money
to pay the bill--that I know because I paid it.  Well, M'mselle, to-
day he would be dressed and very slowly we came as far as Auer; there
he could do no more, so went to bed.  He is not well at all."

Christian was overwhelmed by forebodings; the rest of the journey was
made in silence, except when Barbi, a country girl, filled with the
delirium of railway travel, sighed: "Ach! gnadige Friiulein!" looking
at Christian with pleasant eyes.

At once, on arriving at the little hostel, Christian went to see her
uncle.  His room was darkened, and smelt of beeswax.

"Ah! Chris," he said, "glad to see you."

In a blue flannel gown, with a rug over his feet, he was lying on a
couch lengthened artificially by chairs; the arm he reached out
issued many inches from its sleeve, and showed the corded veins of
the wrist.  Christian, settling his pillows, looked anxiously into
his eyes.

"I'm not quite the thing, Chris," said Mr. Treffry.  "Somehow, not
quite the thing.  I'll come back with you to-morrow."

"Let me send for Dr. Dawney, Uncle?"

"No--no!  Plenty of him when I get home.  Very good young fellow, as
doctors go, but I can't stand his puddin's--slops and puddin's, and
all that trumpery medicine on the top.  Send me Dominique, my dear--
I'll put myself to rights a bit!"  He fingered his unshaven cheek,
and clutched the gown together on his chest.  "Got this from the
landlord.  When you come back we'll have a little talk!"

He was asleep when she came into the room an hour later.  Watching
his uneasy breathing, she wondered what it was that he was going to
say.

He looked ill!  And suddenly she realised that her thoughts were not
of him....  When she was little he would take her on his back; he had
built cocked hats for her and paper boats; had taught her to ride;
slid her between his knees; given her things without number; and
taken his payment in kisses.  And now he was ill, and she was not
thinking of him!  He had been all that was most dear to her, yet
before her eyes would only come the vision of another.

Mr. Treffry woke suddenly.  "Not been asleep, have I?  The beds here
are infernal hard."

"Uncle Nic, won't you give me news of him?"

Mr. Treffry looked at her, and Christian could not bear that look.

"He's safe into Italy; they aren't very keen after him, it's so long
ago; I squared 'em pretty easily.  Now, look here, Chris!"

Christian came close; he took her hand.

"I'd like to see you pull yourself together.  'Tisn't so much the
position; 'tisn't so much the money; because after all there's always
mine--"  Christian shook her head.  "But," he went on with shaky
emphasis, "there's the difference of blood, and that's a serious
thing; and there's this anarch--this political affair; and there's
the sort of life, an' that's a serious thing; but--what I'm coming to
is this, Chris--there's the man!"

Christian drew away her hand.  Mr. Treffry went on:

"Ah! yes.  I'm an old chap and fond of you, but I must speak out what
I think.  He's got pluck, he's strong, he's in earnest; but he's got
a damned hot temper, he's an egotist, and--he's not the man for you.
If you marry him, as sure as I lie here, you'll be sorry for it.
You're not your father's child for nothing; nice fellow as ever
lived, but soft as butter.  If you take this chap, it'll be like
mixing earth and ironstone, and they don't blend!"  He dropped his
head back on the pillows, and stretching out his hand, repeated
wistfully: "Take my word for it, my dear, he's not the man for you."

Christian, staring at the wall beyond, said quietly: "I can't take
any one's word for that."

"Ah!" muttered Mr. Treffry, "you're obstinate enough, but obstinacy
isn't strength.

You'll give up everything to him, you'll lick his shoes; and you'll
never play anything but second fiddle in his life.  He'll always be
first with himself, he and his work, or whatever he calls painting
pictures; and some day you'll find that out.  You won't like it, and
I don't like it for you, Chris, and that's flat."

He wiped his brow where the perspiration stood in beads.

Christian said: "You don't understand; you don't believe in him; you
don't see!  If I do come after his work--if I do give him everything,
and he can't give all back--I don't care!  He'll give what he can; I
don't want any more.  If you're afraid of the life for me, uncle, if
you think it'll be too hard--"

Mr. Treffry bowed his head.  "I do, Chris."

"Well, then, I hate to be wrapped in cotton wool; I want to breathe.
If I come to grief, it's my own affair; nobody need mind."

Mr. Treffry's fngers sought his beard.  "Ah! yes.  Just so!"

Christian sank on her knees.

"Oh! Uncle! I'm a selfish beast!"

Mr. Treffry laid his hand against her cheek.  "I think I could do
with a nap," he said.

Swallowing a lump in her throat, she stole out of the room.

By a stroke of Fate Mr. Treffry's return to Villa Rubein befell at
the psychological moment when Herr Paul, in a suit of rather too
bright blue, was starting for Vienna.

As soon as he saw the carriage appear between the poplars he became
as pensive as a boy caught in the act of stealing cherries.  Pitching
his hatbox to Fritz, he recovered himself, however, in time to
whistle while Mr. Treffry was being assisted into the house.  Having
forgotten his anger, he was only anxious now to smooth out its after
effects; in the glances he cast at Christian and his brother-in-law
there was a kind of shamed entreaty which seemed to say: "For
goodness' sake, don't worry me about that business again! Nothing's
come of it, you see!"

He came forward: "Ah! Mon cher!  So you return; I put off my
departure, then.  Vienna must wait for me--that poor Vienna!"

But noticing the extreme feebleness of Mr. Treffry's advance, he
exclaimed with genuine concern:

"What is it?  You're ill?  My God!"  After disappearing for five
minutes, he came back with a whitish liquid in a glass.

"There!" he said, "good for the gout--for a cough--for everything!"

Mr. Treffry sniffed, drained the glass, and sucked his moustache.

"Ah!" he said.  "No doubt!  But it's uncommonly like gin, Paul."
Then turning to Christian, he said: "Shake hands, you two!"

Christian looked from one to the other, and at last held out her hand
to Herr Paul, who brushed it with his moustache, gazing after her as
she left the room with a queer expression.

"My dear!" he began, "you support her in this execrable matter?  You
forget my position, you make me ridiculous.  I have been obliged to
go to bed in my own house, absolutely to go to bed, because I was in
danger of becoming funny."

"Look here, Paul!" Mr. Treffry said gruffly, "if any one's to bully
Chris, it's I."

"In that case," returned Herr Paul sarcastically, "I will go to
Vienna."

"You may go to the devil!" said Mr. Treffry; "and I'll tell you what-
-in my opinion it was low to set the police on that young chap; a
low, dirty trick."

Herr Paul divided his beard carefully in two, took his seat on the
very edge of an arm-chair, and placing his hands on his parted knees,
said:

"I have regretted it since--mais, que diable!  He called me a coward-
-it is very hot weather!--there were drinks at the Kurhaus--I am her
guardian--the affair is a very beastly one--there were more drinks--I
was a little enfin!"  He shrugged his shoulders.  "Adieu, my dear; I
shall be some time in Vienna; I need rest!"  He rose and went to the
door; then he turned, and waved his cigar.  "Adieu! Be good; get
well!  I will buy you some cigars up there."  And going out, he shut
the door on any possibility of answer.

Mr. Treffry lay back amongst his cushions.  The clock ticked; pigeons
cooed on the veranda; a door opened in the distance, and for a moment
a treble voice was heard.  Mr. Treffry's head drooped forward; across
his face, gloomy and rugged, fell a thin line of sunlight.

The clock suddenly stopped ticking, and outside, in mysterious
accord, the pigeons rose with a great fluttering of wings, and flew
off'.  Mr. Treffry made a startled, heavy movement.  He tried to get
on to his feet and reach the bell, but could not, and sat on the side
of the couch with drops of sweat rolling off his forehead, and his
hands clawing his chest.  There was no sound at all throughout the
house.  He looked about him, and tried to call, but again could not.
He tried once more to reach the bell, and, failing, sat still, with a
thought that made him cold.

"I'm done for," he muttered.  "By George! I believe I'm done for this
time!"  A voice behind him said:

"Can we have a look at you, sir?"

"Ah! Doctor, bear a hand, there's a good fellow."

Dawney propped him against the cushions, and loosened his shirt.
Receiving no answer to his questions, he stepped alarmed towards the
bell.  Mr. Treffry stopped him with a sign.

"Let's hear what you make of me," he said.

When Dawney had examined him, he asked:

"Well?"

"Well," answered Dawney slowly, "there's trouble, of course."

Mr. Treffry broke out with a husky whisper: "Out with it, Doctor;
don't humbug me."

Dawney bent down, and took his wrist.

"I don't know how you've got into this state, sir," he said with the
brusqueness of emotion.  "You're in a bad way.  It's the old trouble;
and you know what that means as well as I.  All I can tell you is,
I'm going to have a big fight with it.  It shan't be my fault,
there's my hand on that."

Mr. Treffry lay with his eyes fixed on the ceiling; at last he said:

"I want to live."

"Yes--yes."

"I feel better now; don't make a fuss about it.  It'll be very
awkward if I die just now.  Patch me up, for the sake of my niece."

Dawney nodded.  "One minute, there are a few things I want," and he
went out.

A moment later Greta stole in on tiptoe.  She bent over till her hair
touched Mr. Treffry's face.

"Uncle Nic!" she whispered.  He opened his eyes.

"Hallo, Greta!"

"I have come to bring you my love, Uncle Nic, and to say good-bye.
Papa says that I and Scruff and Miss Naylor are going to Vienna with
him; we have had to pack in half an hour; in five minutes we are
going to Vienna, and it is my first visit there, Uncle Nic."

"To Vienna!" Mr. Treffry repeated slowly.  "Don't have a guide,
Greta; they're humbugs."

"No, Uncle Nic," said Greta solemnly.

"Draw the curtains, old girl, let's have a look at you.  Why, you're
as smart as ninepence!"

"Yes," said Greta with a sigh, touching the buttons of her cape,
"because I am going to Vienna; but I am sorry to leave you, Uncle
Nic."

"Are you, Greta?"

"But you will have Chris, and you are fonder of Chris than of me,
Uncle Nic."

"I've known her longer."

"Perhaps when you've known me as long as Chris, you shall be as fond
of me."

"When I've known you as long--may be."

"While I am gone, Uncle Nic, you are to get well, you are not very
well, you know."

"What put that into your head?"

"If you were well you would be smoking a cigar--it is just three
o'clock.  This kiss is for myself, this is for Scruff, and this is
for Miss Naylor."

She stood upright again; a tremulous, joyful gravity was in her eyes
and on her lips.

"Good-bye, my dear; take care of yourselves; and don't you have a
guide, they're humbugs."

"No, Uncle Nic.  There is the carriage!  To Vienna, Uncle Nic!"  The
dead gold of her hair gleamed in the doorway.  Mr. Treffry raised
himself upon his elbow.

"Give us one more, for luck!"

Greta ran back.

"I love you very much!" she said, and kissing him, backed slowly,
then, turning, flew out like a bird.

Mr. Treffry fixed his eyes on the shut door.





XXI

After many days of hot, still weather, the wind had come, and whirled
the dust along the parched roads.  The leaves were all astir, like
tiny wings.  Round Villa Rubein the pigeons cooed uneasily, all the
other birds were silent.  Late in the afternoon Christian came out on
the veranda, reading a letter:

"DEAR CHRIS,--We are here now six days, and it is a very large place
with many churches.  In the first place then we have been to a great
many, but the nicest of them is not St. Stephan's Kirche, it is
another, but I do not remember the name.  Papa is out nearly all the
night; he says he is resting here, so he is not able to come to the
churches with us, but I do not think he rests very much.  The day
before yesterday we, that is, Papa, I, and Miss Naylor, went to an
exhibition of pictures.  It was quite beautiful and interesting (Miss
Naylor says it is not right to say 'quite' beautiful, but I do not
know what other word could mean 'quite' except the word 'quite,'
because it is not exceedingly and not extremely.  And O Chris! there
was one picture painted by him; it was about a ship without masts--
Miss Naylor says it is a barge, but I do not know what a barge is--on
fire, and, floating down a river in a fog.  I think it is extremely
beautiful.  Miss Naylor says it is very impressionistick--what is
that?  and Papa said 'Puh!' but he did not know it was painted by
Herr Harz, so I did not tell him.

"There has also been staying at our hotel that Count Sarelli who came
one evening to dinner at our house, but he is gone away now.  He sat
all day in the winter garden reading, and at night he went out with
Papa.  Miss Naylor says he is unhappy, but I think he does not take
enough exercise; and O Chris! one day he said to me, 'That is your
sister, Mademoiselle, that young lady in the white dress?  Does she
always wear white dresses?' and I said to him: 'It is not always a
white dress; in the picture, it is green, because the picture is
called "Spring.'"  But I did not tell him the colours of all your
dresses because he looked so tired.  Then he said to me: 'She is very
charming.'  So I tell you this, Chris, because I think you shall like
to know.  Scruff' has a sore toe; it is because he has eaten too much
meat.

"It is not nice without you, Chris, and Miss Naylor says I am
improving my mind here, but I do not think it shall improve very
much, because at night I like it always best, when the shops are
lighted and the carriages are driving past; then I am wanting to
dance.  The first night Papa said he would take me to the theatre,
but yesterday he said it was not good for me; perhaps to-morrow he
shall think it good for me again.

"Yesterday we have been in the Prater, and saw many people, and some
that Papa knew; and then came the most interesting part of all,
sitting under the trees in the rain for two hours because we could
not get a carriage (very exciting).

"There is one young lady here, only she is not any longer very young,
who knew Papa when he was a boy.  I like her very much; she shall
soon know me quite to the bottom and is very kind.

"The ill husband of Cousin Teresa who went with us to Meran and lost
her umbrella and Dr. Edmund was so sorry about it, has been very much
worse, so she is not here but in Baden.  I wrote to her but have no
news, so I do not know whether he is still living or not, at any rate
he can't get well again so soon (and I don't think he ever shall).  I
think as the weather is very warm you and Uncle Nic are sitting much
out of doors.  I am sending presents to you all in a wooden box and
screwed very firm, so you shall have to use again the big screw-
driver of Fritz.  For Aunt Constance, photographs; for Uncle Nic, a
green bird on a stand with a hole in the back of the bird to put his
ashes in; it is a good green and not expensif please tell him,
because he does not like expensif presents (Miss Naylor says the bird
has an inquiring eye--it is a parrat); for you, a little brooch of
turquoise because I like them best; for Dr. Edmund a machine to weigh
medicines in because he said he could not get a good one in Botzen;
this is a very good one, the shopman told me so, and is the most
expensif of all the presents--so that is all my money, except two
gulden.  If Papa shall give me some more, I shall buy for Miss Naylor
a parasol, because it is useful and the handle of hers is 'wobbley'
(that is one of Dr. Edmund's words and I like it).

"Good-bye for this time.  Greta sends you her kiss.

"PS.--Miss Naylor has read all this letter (except about the parasol)
and there are several things she did not want me to put, so I have
copied it without the things, but at the last I have kept that copy
myself, so that is why this is smudgy and several words are not spelt
well, but all the things are here."

Christian read, smiling, but to finish it was like dropping a
talisman, and her face clouded.  A sudden draught blew her hair
about, and from within, Mr. Treffry's cough mingled with the soughing
of the wind; the sky was fast blackening.  She went indoors, took a
pen and began to write:


"MY FRIEND,--Why haven't you written to me?  It is so, long to wait.
Uncle says you are in Italy--it is dreadful not to know for certain.
I feel you would have written if you could; and I can't help thinking
of all the things that may have happened.  I am unhappy.  Uncle Nic
is ill; he will not confess it, that is his way; but he is very ill.
Though perhaps you will never see this, I must write down all my
thoughts.  Sometimes I feel that I am brutal to be always thinking
about you, scheming how to be with you again, when he is lying there
so ill.  How good he has always been to me; it is terrible that love
should pull one apart so.  Surely love should be beautiful, and
peaceful, instead of filling me with bitter, wicked thoughts.  I love
you--and I love him; I feel as if I were torn in two.  Why should it
be so?  Why should the beginning of one life mean the ending of
another, one love the destruction of another?  I don't understand.
The same spirit makes me love you and him, the same sympathy, the
same trust--yet it sometimes seems as if I were a criminal in loving
you.  You know what he thinks--he is too honest not to have shown
you.  He has talked to me; he likes you in a way, but you are a
foreigner--he says-your life is not my life.  'He is not the man for
you!'  Those were his words.  And now he doesn't talk to me, but when
I am in the room he looks at me--that's worse--a thousand times; when
he talks it rouses me to fight--when it's his eyes only, I'm a coward
at once; I feel I would do anything, anything, only not to hurt him.
Why can't he see?  Is it because he's old and we are young?  He may
consent, but he will never, never see; it will always hurt him.

"I want to tell you everything; I have had worse thoughts than these-
-sometimes I have thought that I should never have the courage to
face the struggle which you have to face.  Then I feel quite broken;
it is like something giving way in me.  Then I think of you, and it
is over; but it has been there, and I am ashamed--I told you I was a
coward.  It's like the feeling one would have going out into a storm
on a dark night, away from a warm fire--only of the spirit not the
body--which makes it worse.  I had to tell you this; you mustn't
think of it again, I mean to fight it away and forget that it has
ever been there.  But Uncle Nic--what am I to do?  I hate myself
because I am young, and he is old and weak--sometimes I seem even to
hate him.  I have all sorts of thoughts, and always at the end of
them, like a dark hole at the end of a passage, the thought that I
ought to give you up.  Ought I?  Tell me.  I want to know, I want to
do what is right; I still want to do that, though sometimes I think I
am all made of evil.

"Do you remember once when we were talking, you said: 'Nature always
has an answer for every question; you cannot get an answer from laws,
conventions, theories, words, only from Nature.'  What do you say to
me now; do you tell me it is Nature to come to you in spite of
everything, and so, that it must be right?  I think you would; but
can it be Nature to do something which will hurt terribly one whom I
love and who loves me?  If it is--Nature is cruel.  Is that one of
the 'lessons of life'?  Is that what Aunt Constance means when she
says: 'If life were not a paradox, we could not get on at all'?  I am
beginning to see that everything has its dark side; I never believed
that before.

"Uncle Nic dreads the life for me; he doesn't understand (how should
he?--he has always had money) how life can be tolerable without money
--it is horrible that the accident of money should make such
difference in our lives.  I am sometimes afraid myself, and I can't
outface that fear in him; he sees the shadow of his fear in me--his
eyes seem to see everything that is in me now; the eyes of old people
are the saddest things in the world.  I am writing like a wretched
coward, but you will never see this letter I suppose, and so it
doesn't matter; but if you do, and I pray that you may--well, if I am
only worth taking at my best, I am not worth taking at all.  I want
you to know the worst of me--you, and no one else.

"With Uncle Nic it is not as with my stepfather; his opposition only
makes me angry, mad, ready to do anything, but with Uncle Nic I feel
so bruised--so sore.  He said: 'It is not so much the money, because
there is always mine.'  I could never do a thing he cannot bear, and
take his money, and you would never let me.  One knows very little of
anything in the world till trouble comes.  You know how it is with
flowers and trees; in the early spring they look so quiet and self-
contained; then all in a moment they change--I think it must be like
that with the heart.  I used to think I knew a great deal, understood
why and how things came about; I thought self-possession and reason
so easy; now I know nothing.  And nothing in the world matters but to
see you and hide away from that look in Uncle Nic's eyes.  Three
months ago I did not know you, now I write like this.  Whatever I
look at, I try to see as you would see; I feel, now you are away even
more than when you were with me, what your thoughts would be, how you
would feel about this or that.  Some things you have said seem always
in my mind like lights--"

A slanting drift of rain was striking the veranda tiles with a cold,
ceaseless hissing.  Christian shut the window, and went into her
uncle's room.

He was lying with closed eyes, growling at Dominique, who moved about
noiselessly, putting the room ready for the night.  When he had
finished, and with a compassionate bow had left the room, Mr. Treffry
opened his eyes, and said:

"This is beastly stuff of the doctor's, Chris, it puts my monkey up;
I can't help swearing after I've taken it; it's as beastly as a
vulgar woman's laugh, and I don't know anything beastlier than that!"

"I have a letter from Greta, Uncle Nic; shall I read it?"

He nodded, and Christian read the letter, leaving out the mention of
Harz, and for some undefined reason the part about Sarelli.

"Ay!" said Mr. Treffry with a feeble laugh, "Greta and her money!
Send her some more, Chris.  Wish I were a youngster again; that's a
beast of a proverb about a dog and his day.  I'd like to go fishing
again in the West Country!  A fine time we had when we were
youngsters.  You don't get such times these days.  'Twasn't often the
fishing-smacks went out without us.  We'd watch their lights from our
bedroom window; when they were swung aboard we were out and down to
the quay before you could say 'knife.'  They always waited for us;
but your Uncle Dan was the favourite, he was the chap for luck.  When
I get on my legs, we might go down there, you and I?  For a bit, just
to see?  What d'you say, old girl?"

Their eyes met.

"I'd like to look at the smack lights going to sea on a dark night;
pity you're such a duffer in a boat--we might go out with them.  Do
you a power of good!  You're not looking the thing, my dear."

His voice died wistfully, and his glance, sweeping her face, rested
on her hands, which held and twisted Greta's letter.  After a minute
or two of silence he boomed out again with sudden energy:

"Your aunt'll want to come and sit with me, after dinner; don't let
her, Chris, I can't stand it.  Tell her I'm asleep--the doctor'll be
here directly; ask him to make up some humbug for you--it's his
business."

He was seized by a violent fit of pain which seemed to stab his
breath away, and when it was over signed that he would be left alone.
Christian went back to her letter in the other room, and had written
these words, when the gong summoned her to dinner:

'I'm like a leaf in the wind, I put out my hand to one thing, and
it's seized and twisted and flung aside.  I want you--I want you; if
I could see you I think I should know what to do--"




XXII

The rain drove with increasing fury.  The night was very black.
Nicholas Treffry slept heavily.  By the side of his bed the night-
lamp cast on to the opposite wall a bright disc festooned by the
hanging shadow of the ceiling.  Christian was leaning over him.  For
the moment he filled all her heart, lying there, so helpless. Fearful
of waking him she slipped into the sitting-room.  Outside the window
stood a man with his face pressed to the pane.  Her heart thumped;
she went up and unlatched the window.  It was Harz, with the rain
dripping off him.  He let fall his hat and cape.

"You!" she said, touching his sleeve.  "You!  You!"

He was sodden with wet, his face drawn and tired; a dark growth of
beard covered his cheeks and chin.

"Where is your uncle?" he said; "I want to see him."

She put her hand up to his lips, but he caught it and covered it with
kisses.

"He's asleep--ill--speak gently!"

"I came to him first," he muttered.

Christian lit the lamp; and he looked at her hungrily without a word.

"It's not possible to go on like this; I came to tell your uncle so.
He is a man.  As for the other, I want to have nothing to do with
him!  I came back on foot across the mountains.  It's not possible to
go on like this, Christian."

She handed him her letter.  He held it to the light, clearing his
brow of raindrops.  When he had read to the last word he gave it her
back, and whispered: "Come!"

Her lips moved, but she did not speak.

"While this goes on I can't work; I can do nothing.  I can't--I won't
bargain with my work; if it's to be that, we had better end it.  What
are we waiting for?  Sooner or later we must come to this.  I'm sorry
that he's ill, God knows!  But that changes nothing.  To wait is
tying me hand and foot--it's making me afraid!  Fear kills!  It will
kill you!  It kills work, and I must work, I can't waste time--I
won't!  I will sooner give you up."  He put his hands on her
shoulders.  "I love you!  I want you!  Look in my eyes and see if you
dare hold back!"

Christian stood with the grip of his strong hands on her shoulders,
without a movement or sign.  Her face was very white.  And suddenly
he began to kiss that pale, still face, to kiss its eyes and lips, to
kiss it from its chin up to its hair; and it stayed pale, as a white
flower, beneath those kisses--as a white flower, whose stalk the
fingers bend back a little.

There was a sound of knocking on the wall; Mr. Treffry called feebly.
Christian broke away from Harz.

"To-morrow!" he whispered, and picking up his hat and cloak, went out
again into the rain.




XXIII

It was not till morning that Christian fell into a troubled sleep.
She dreamed that a voice was calling her, and she was filled with a
helpless, dumb dream terror.

When she woke the light was streaming in; it was Sunday, and the
cathedral bells were chiming.  Her first thought was of Harz.  One
step, one moment of courage!  Why had she not told her uncle?  If he
had only asked!  But why--why should she tell him?  When it was over
and she was gone, he would see that all was for the best.

Her eyes fell on Greta's empty bed.  She sprang up, and bending over,
kissed the pillow.  'She will mind at first; but she's so young!
Nobody will really miss me, except Uncle Nic!'  She stood along while
in the window without moving.  When she was dressed she called out to
her maid:

"Bring me some milk, Barbi; I'm going to church."

"Ach! gnadiges Frdulein, will you no breakfast have?"

"No thank you, Barbi."

"Liebes Fraulein, what a beautiful morning after the rain it has
become!  How cool!  It is for you good--for the colour in your
cheeks; now they will bloom again!" and Barbi stroked her own well-
coloured cheeks.

Dominique, sunning himself outside with a cloth across his arm, bowed
as she passed, and smiled affectionately:

"He is better this morning, M'mselle.  We march--we are getting on.
Good news will put the heart into you."

Christian thought: 'How sweet every one is to-day!'

Even the Villa seemed to greet her, with the sun aslant on it; and
the trees, trembling and weeping golden tears.  At the cathedral she
was early for the service, but here and there were figures on their
knees; the faint, sickly odour of long-burnt incense clung in the
air; a priest moved silently at the far end.  She knelt, and when at
last she rose the service had begun.  With the sound of the intoning
a sense of peace came to her--the peace of resolution.  For good or
bad she felt that she had faced her fate.

She went out with a look of quiet serenity and walked home along the
dyke.  Close to Harz's studio she sat down.  Now--it was her own; all
that had belonged to him, that had ever had a part in him.

An old beggar, who had been watching her, came gently from behind.
"Gracious lady!" he said, peering at her eyes, "this is the lucky day
for you.  I have lost my luck."

Christian opened her purse, there was only one coin in it, a gold
piece; the beggar's eyes sparkled.

She thought suddenly: 'It's no longer mine; I must begin to be
careful,' but she felt ashamed when she looked at the old man.

"I am sorry," she said; "yesterday I would have given you this, but--
but now it's already given."

He seemed so old and poor--what could she give him?  She unhooked a
little silver brooch at her throat.  "You will get something for
that," she said; "it's better than nothing.  I am very sorry you are
so old and poor."

The beggar crossed himself.  "Gracious lady," he muttered, "may you
never want!"

Christian hurried on; the rustling of leaves soon carried the words
away.  She did not feel inclined to go in, and crossing the bridge
began to climb the hill.  There was a gentle breeze, drifting the
clouds across the sun; lizards darted out over the walls, looked at
her, and whisked away.

The sunshine, dappling through the tops of trees, gashed down on a
torrent.  The earth smelt sweet, the vineyards round the white farms
glistened; everything seemed to leap and dance with sap and life; it
was a moment of Spring in midsummer.  Christian walked on, wondering
at her own happiness.

'Am I heartless?' she thought.  'I am going to leave him--I am going
into life; I shall have to fight now, there'll be no looking back.'

The path broke away and wound down to the level of the torrent; on
the other side it rose again, and was lost among trees.  The woods
were dank; she hastened home.

In her room she began to pack, sorting and tearing up old letters.
'Only one thing matters,' she thought; 'singleness of heart; to see
your way, and keep to it with all your might.'

She looked up and saw Barbi standing before her with towels in her
hands, and a scared face.

"Are you going a journey, gnadiges Fraulein?"

"I am going away to be married, Barbi," said Christian at last;
"don't speak of it to any one, please."

Barbi leant a little forward with the towels clasped to the blue
cotton bosom of her dress.

"No, no!  I will not speak.  But, dear Fraulein, that is a big
matter; have you well thought?"

"Thought, Barbi?  Have I not!"

"But, dear FrauIein, will you be rich?"

"No! I shall be as poor as you."

"Ach! dear God! that is terrible.  Katrina, my sister, she is
married; she tells me all her life; she tells me it is very hard, and
but for the money in her stocking it would be harder.  Dear Fraulein,
think again!  And is he good?  Sometimes they are not good."

"He is good," said Christian, rising; "it is all settled!" and she
kissed Barbi on the cheek.

"You are crying, liebes Fraulein!  Think yet again, perhaps it is not
quite all settled; it is not possible that a maiden should not a way
out leave?"

Christian smiled.  "I don't do things that way, Barbi."

Barbi hung the towels on the horse, and crossed herself.

Mr. Treffry's gaze was fixed on a tortoise-shell butterfly fluttering
round the ceiling.  The insect seemed to fascinate him, as things
which move quickly always fascinate the helpless.  Christian came
softly in.

"Couldn't stay in bed, Chris," he called out with an air of guilt.
"The heat was something awful.  The doctor piped off in a huff, just
because o' this."  He motioned towards a jug of claret-cup and a pipe
on the table by his elbow.  "I was only looking at 'em."

Christian, sitting down beside him, took up a fan.

"If I could get out of this heat--" he said, and closed his eyes.

'I must tell him,' she thought; 'I can't slink away.'

"Pour me out some of that stuff, Chris."

She reached for the jug.  Yes! She must tell him! Her heart sank.

Mr. Treffry took a lengthy draught.  "Broken my promise; don't
matter--won't hurt any one but me."  He took up the pipe and pressed
tobacco into it.  "I've been lying here with this pain going right
through me, and never a smoke!  D'you tell me anything the parsons
say can do me half the good of this pipe?"  He leaned back, steeped
in a luxury of satisfaction.  He went on, pursuing a private train of
thought: "Things have changed a lot since my young days.  When I was
a youngster, a young fellow had to look out for peck and perch--he
put the future in his pocket.  He did well or not, according as he
had stuff in him.  Now he's not content with that, it seems--trades
on his own opinion of himself; thinks he is what he says he's going
to be."

"You are unjust," said Christian.

Mr. Treffry grunted.  "Ah, well! I like to know where I am.  If I
lend money to a man, I like to know whether he's going to pay it
back; I may not care whether he does or not, but I like to know.  The
same with other things.  I don't care what a man has--though, mind
you, Chris, it's not a bad rule that measures men by the balance at
their banks; but when it comes to marriage, there's a very simple
rule, What's not enough for one is not enough for two.  You can't
talk black white, or bread into your mouth.  I don't care to speak
about myself, as you know, Chris, but I tell you this--when I came to
London I wanted to marry--I hadn't any money, and I had to want.
When I had the money--but that's neither here nor there!"  He
frowned, fingering his pipe.

"I didn't ask her, Chris; I didn't think it the square thing; it
seems that's out of fashion!"

Christian's cheeks were burning.

"I think a lot while I lie here," Mr. Treffry went on; "nothing much
else to do.  What I ask myself is this: What do you know about what's
best for you?  What do you know of life?  Take it or leave it, life's
not all you think; it's give and get all the way, a fair start is
everything."

Christian thought: 'Will he never see?'

Mr. Treffry went on:

"I get better every day, but I can't last for ever.  It's not
pleasant to lie here and know that when I'm gone there'll be no one
to keep a hand on the check string!"

"Don't talk like that, dear!" Christian murmured.

"It's no use blinking facts, Chris.  I've lived a long time in the
world; I've seen things pretty well as they are; and now there's not
much left for me to think about but you."

"But, Uncle, if you loved him, as I do, you couldn't tell me to be
afraid!  It's cowardly and mean to be afraid.  You must have
forgotten!"

Mr. Treffry closed his eyes.

"Yes," he said; "I'm old."

The fan had dropped into Christian's lap; it rested on her white
frock like a large crimson leaf; her eyes were fixed on it.

Mr. Treffry looked at her.  "Have you heard from him?" he asked with
sudden intuition.

"Last night, in that room, when you thought I was talking to
Dominique--"

The pipe fell from his hand.

"What!" he stammered: "Back?"

Christian, without looking up, said:

"Yes, he's back; he wants me--I must go to him, Uncle."

There was a long silence.

"You must go to him?" he repeated.

She longed to fling herself down at his knees, but he was so still,
that to move seemed impossible; she remained silent, with folded
hands.

Mr. Treffry spoke:

"You'll let me know--before--you--go.  Goodnight!"

Christian stole out into the passage.  A bead curtain rustled in the
draught; voices reached her.

"My honour is involved, or I would give the case up."

"He is very trying, poor Nicholas!  He always had that peculiar
quality of opposition; it has brought him to grief a hundred times.
There is opposition in our blood; my family all have it.  My eldest
brother died of it; with my poor sister, who was as gentle as a lamb,
it took the form of doing the right thing in the wrong place.  It is
a matter of temperament, you see.  You must have patience."

"Patience," repeated Dawney's voice, "is one thing; patience where
there is responsibility is another.  I've not had a wink of sleep
these last two nights."

There was a faint, shrill swish of silk.

"Is he so very ill?"

Christian held her breath.  The answer came at last.

"Has he made his will?  With this trouble in the side again, I tell
you plainly, Mrs. Decie, there's little or no chance."

Christian put her hands up to her ears, and ran out into the air.
What was she about to do, then--to leave him dying!

On the following day Harz was summoned to the Villa.  Mr. Treffry had
just risen, and was garbed in a dressing-suit, old and worn, which
had a certain air of magnificence.  His seamed cheeks were newly
shaved.

"I hope I see you well," he said majestically.

Thinking of the drive and their last parting, Harz felt sorry and
ashamed.  Suddenly Christian came into the room; she stood for a
moment looking at him; then sat down.

"Chris!" said Mr. Treffry reproachfully.  She shook her head, and did
not move; mournful and intent, her eyes seemed full of secret
knowledge.

Mr. Treffry spoke:

"I've no right to blame you, Mr. Harz, and Chris tells me you came to
see me first, which is what I would have expected of you; but you
shouldn't have come back."

"I came back, sir, because I found I was obliged.  I must speak out."

"I ask nothing better," Mr. Treffry replied.

Harz looked again at Christian; but she made no sign, sitting with
her chin resting on her hands.

"I have come for her," he said; "I can make my living--enough for
both of us.  But I can't wait."

"Why?"

Harz made no answer.

Mr. Treffry boomed out again: " Why?  Isn't she worth waiting for?
Isn't she worth serving for?"

"I can't expect you to understand me," the painter said.  "My art is
my life to me.  Do you suppose that if it wasn't I should ever have
left my village; or gone through all that I've gone through, to get
as far even as I am?  You tell me to wait.  If my thoughts and my
will aren't free, how can I work?  I shan't be worth my salt.  You
tell me to go back to England--knowing she is here, amongst you who
hate me, a thousand miles away.  I shall know that there's a death
fight going on in her and outside her against me--you think that I
can go on working under these conditions.  Others may be able, I am
not.  That's the plain truth.  If I loved her less--"

There was a silence, then Mr. Treffry said:

"It isn't fair to come here and ask what you're asking.  You don't
know what's in the future for you, you don't know that you can keep a
wife.  It isn't pleasant, either, to think you can't hold up your
head in your own country."

Harz turned white.

"Ah! you bring that up again!" he broke out.  "Seven years ago I was
a boy and starving; if you had been in my place you would have done
what I did.  My country is as much to me as your country is to you.
I've been an exile seven years, I suppose I shall always be I've had
punishment enough; but if you think I am a rascal, I'll go and give
myself up."  He turned on his heel.

"Stop!  I beg your pardon!  I never meant to hurt you.  It isn't easy
for me to eat my words," Mr. Treffry said wistfully, "let that count
for something."  He held out his hand.

Harz came quickly back and took it.  Christian's gaze was never for a
moment withdrawn; she seemed trying to store up the sight of him
within her.  The light darting through the half-closed shutters gave
her eyes a strange, bright intensity, and shone in the folds of her
white dress like the sheen of birds' wings.

Mr. Treffry glanced uneasily about him.  "God knows I don't want
anything but her happiness," he said.  "What is it to me if you'd
murdered your mother?  It's her I'm thinking of."

"How can you tell what is happiness to her?  You have your own ideas
of happiness--not hers, not mine.  You can't dare to stop us, sir!"

"Dare?" said Mr. Treffry.  "Her father gave her over to me when she
was a mite of a little thing; I've known her all her life.  I've--
I've loved her--and you come here with your 'dare'!  " His hand
dragged at his beard, and shook as though palsied.

A look of terror came into Christian's face.

"All right, Chris! I don't ask for quarter, and I don't give it!"

Harz made a gesture of despair.

"I've acted squarely by you, sir," Mr. Treffry went on, "I ask the
same of you.  I ask you to wait, and come like an honest man, when
you can say, 'I see my way--here's this and that for her.'  What
makes this art you talk of different from any other call in life?  It
doesn't alter facts, or give you what other men have no right to
expect.  It doesn't put grit into you, or keep your hands clean, or
prove that two and two make five."

Harz answered bitterly:

"You know as much of art as I know of money.  If we live a thousand
years we shall never understand each other.  I am doing what I feel
is best for both of us."

Mr. Treffry took hold of the painter's sleeve.

"I make you an offer," he said.  "Your word not to see or write to
her for a year!  Then, position or not, money or no money, if she'll
have you, I'll make it right for you."

"I could not take your money."

A kind of despair seemed suddenly to seize on Mr. Nicholas Treffry.
He rose, and stood towering over them.

"All my life--" he said; but something seemed to click deep down in
his throat, and he sank back in his seat.

"Go!" whispered Christian, "go!" But Mr. Treffry found his voice
again: "It's for the child to say.  Well, Chris!"

Christian did not speak.

It was Harz who broke the silence.  He pointed to Mr. Treffry.

"You know I can't tell you to come with--that, there.  Why did you
send for me?"  And, turning, he went out.

Christian sank on her knees, burying her face in her hands.  Mr.
Treffry pressed his handkerchief with a stealthy movement to his
mouth.  It was dyed crimson with the price of his victory.




XXVI

A telegram had summoned Herr Paul from Vienna.  He had started
forthwith, leaving several unpaid accounts to a more joyful
opportunity, amongst them a chemist's bill, for a wonderful quack
medicine of which he brought six bottles.

He came from Mr. Treffry's room with tears rolling down his cheeks,
saying:

"Poor Nicholas!  Poor Nicholas!  Il n'a pas de chance!"

It was difficult to find any one to listen; the women were scared and
silent, waiting for the orders that were now and then whispered
through the door.  Herr Paul could not bear this silence, and talked
to his servant for half an hour, till Fritz also vanished to fetch
something from the town.  Then in despair Herr Paul went to his room.

It was hard not to be allowed to help--it was hard to wait!  When the
heart was suffering, it was frightful!  He turned and, looking
furtively about him, lighted a cigar.  Yes, it came to every one--at
some time or other; and what was it, that death they talked of?  Was
it any worse than life?  That frightful jumble people made for
themselves!  Poor Nicholas!  After all, it was he that had the luck!

His eyes filled with tears, and drawing a penknife from his pocket,
he began to stab it into the stuffing of his chair.  Scruff, who sat
watching the chink of light under the door, turned his head, blinked
at him, and began feebly tapping with a claw.

It was intolerable, this uncertainty--to be near, and yet so far, was
not endurable!

Herr Paul stepped across the room.  The dog, following, threw his
black-marked muzzle upwards with a gruff noise, and went back to the
door.  His master was holding in his hand a bottle of champagne.

Poor Nicholas!  He had chosen it.  Herr Paul drained a glass.

Poor Nicholas!  The prince of fellows, and of what use was one?  They
kept him away from Nicholas!

Herr Paul's eyes fell on the terrier.  "Ach! my dear," he said, "you
and I, we alone are kept away!"

He drained a second glass.

What was it?  This life!  Froth-like that! He tossed off a third
glass.  Forget!  If one could not help, it was better to forget!

He put on his hat.  Yes.  There was no room for him there!  He was
not wanted!

He finished the bottle, and went out into the passage.  Scruff ran
and lay down at Mr. Treffry's door.  Herr Paul looked at him.  "Ach!"
he said, tapping his chest, "ungrateful hound!"  And opening the
front door he went out on tiptoe....

Late that afternoon Greta stole hatless through the lilac bushes; she
looked tired after her night journey, and sat idly on a chair in the
speckled shadow of a lime-tree.

'It is not like home,' she thought; 'I am unhappy.  Even the birds
are silent, but perhaps that is because it is so hot.  I have never
been sad like this--for it is not fancy that I am sad this time, as
it is sometimes.  It is in my heart like the sound the wind makes
through a wood, it feels quite empty in my heart.  If it is always
like this to be unhappy, then I am sorry for all the unhappy things
in the world; I am sorrier than I ever was before.'

A shadow fell on the grass, she raised her eyes, and saw Dawney.

"Dr. Edmund!" she whispered.

Dawney turned to her; a heavy furrow showed between his brows.  His
eyes, always rather close together, stared painfully.

"Dr. Edmund," Greta whispered, "is it true?"

He took her hand, and spread his own palm over it.

"Perhaps," he said; "perhaps not.  We must hope."

Greta looked up, awed.

"They say he is dying."

"We have sent for the best man in Vienna."

Greta shook her head.

"But you are clever, Dr. Edmund; and you are afraid."

"He is brave," said Dawney; "we must all be brave, you know.  You
too!"

"Brave?" repeated Greta; "what is it to be brave?  If it is not to
cry and make a fuss--that I can do.  But if it is not to be sad in
here," she touched her breast, "that I cannot do, and it shall not be
any good for me to try."

"To be brave is to hope; don't give up hope, dear."

"No," said Greta, tracing the pattern of the sunlight on her skirt.
"But I think that when we hope, we are not brave, because we are
expecting something for ourselves.  Chris says that hope is prayer,
and if it is prayer, then all the time we are hoping, we are asking
for something, and it is not brave to ask for things."

A smile curved Dawney's mouth.

"Go on, Philosopher!" he said.  "Be brave in your own way, it will be
just as good as anybody else's."

"What are you going to do to be brave, Dr. Edmund?"

"I?  Fight!  If only we had five years off his life!"

Greta watched him as he walked away.

"I shall never be brave," she mourned; "I shall always be wanting to
be happy."  And, kneeling down, she began to disentangle a fly,
imprisoned in a cobweb.  A plant of hemlock had sprung up in the long
grass by her feet.  Greta thought, dismayed: 'There are weeds!'

It seemed but another sign of the death of joy.

'But it's very beautiful,' she thought, 'the blossoms are like stars.
I am not going to pull it up.  I will leave it; perhaps it will
spread all through the garden; and if it does I do not care, for now
things are not like they used to be and I do not, think they ever
shall be again.'




XXVII

The days went by; those long, hot days, when the heat haze swims up
about ten of the forenoon, and, as the sun sinks level with the
mountains, melts into golden ether which sets the world quivering
with sparkles.

At the lighting of the stars those sparkles die, vanishing one by one
off the hillsides; evening comes flying down the valleys, and life
rests under her cool wings.  The night falls; and the hundred little
voices of the night arise.

It was near grape-gathering, and in the heat the fight for Nicholas
Treffry's life went on, day in, day out, with gleams of hope and
moments of despair.  Doctors came, but after the first he refused to
see them.

"No," he said to Dawney-- "throwing away money.  If I pull through it
won't be because of them."

For days together he would allow no one but Dawney, Dominique, and
the paid nurse in the room.

"I can stand it better," he said to Christian, "when I don't see any
of you; keep away, old girl, and let me get on with it!"

To have been able to help would have eased the tension of her nerves,
and the aching of her heart.  At his own request they had moved his
bed into a corner so that he might face the wall.  There he would lie
for hours together, not speaking a word, except to ask for drink.

Sometimes Christian crept in unnoticed, and sat watching, with her
arms tightly folded across her breast.  At night, after Greta was
asleep, she would toss from side to side, muttering feverish prayers.
She spent hours at her little table in the schoolroom, writing
letters to Harz that were never sent.  Once she wrote these words: "I
am the most wicked of all creatures--I have even wished that he may
die!"  A few minutes afterwards Miss Naylor found her with her head
buried on her arms.  Christian sprang up; tears were streaming down
her cheeks.  "Don't touch me!" she cried, and rushed away.  Later,
she stole into her uncle's room, and sank down on the floor beside
the bed.  She sat there silently, unnoticed all the evening.  When
night came she could hardly be persuaded to leave the room.

One day Mr. Treffry expressed a wish to see Herr Paul; it was a long
while before the latter could summon courage to go in.

"There's a few dozen of the Gordon sherry at my Chambers, in London,
Paul," Mr. Treffry said; "I'd be glad to think you had 'em.  And my
man, Dominique, I've made him all right in my will, but keep your eye
on him; he's a good sort for a foreigner, and no chicken, but sooner
or later, the women'll get hold of him.  That's all I had to say.
Send Chris to me."

Herr Paul stood by the bedside speechless.  Suddenly he blurted out.

"Ah! my dear!  Courage!  We are all mortal.  You will get well!"  All
the morning he walked about quite inconsolable.  "It was frightful to
see him, you know, frightful!  An iron man could not have borne it."

When Christian came to him, Mr. Treffry raised himself and looked at
her a long while.

His wistful face was like an accusation.  But that very afternoon the
news came from the sickroom that he was better, having had no pain
for several hours.

Every one went about with smiles lurking in their eyes, and ready to
break forth at a word.  In the kitchen Barbi burst out crying, and,
forgetting to toss the pan, spoiled a Kaiser-Schmarn she was making.
Dominique was observed draining a glass of Chianti, and solemnly
casting forth the last drops in libation.  An order was given for tea
to be taken out under the acacias, where it was always cool; it was
felt that something in the nature of high festival was being held.
Even Herr Paul was present; but Christian did not come.  Nobody spoke
of illness; to mention it might break the spell.

Miss Naylor, who had gone into the house, came back, saying:

"There is a strange man standing over there by the corner of the
house."

"Really!" asked Mrs. Decie; "what does he want?"

Miss Naylor reddened.  "I did not ask him.  I--don't--know--whether
he is quite respectable.  His coat is buttoned very close, and he--
doesn't seem--to have a--collar."

"Go and see what he wants, dear child," Mrs. Decie said to Greta.

"I don't know--I really do not know--" began Miss Naylor; "he has
very--high--boots," but Greta was already on her way, with hands
clasped behind her, and demure eyes taking in the stranger's figure.

"Please?" she said, when she was close to him.

The stranger took his cap off with a jerk.

"This house has no bells," he said in a nasal voice; "it has a
tendency to discourage one."

"Yes," said Greta gravely, "there is a bell, but it does not ring
now, because my uncle is so ill."

"I am very sorry to hear that.  I don't know the people here, but I
am very sorry to hear that.

I would be glad to speak a few words to your sister, if it is your
sister that I want."

And the stranger's face grew very red.

"Is it," said Greta, "that you are a friend of Herr Harz?  If you are
a friend of his, you will please come and have some tea, and while
you are having tea I will look for Chris."

Perspiration bedewed the stranger's forehead.

"Tea?  Excuse me!  I don't drink tea."

"There is also coffee," Greta said.

The stranger's progress towards the arbour was so slow that Greta
arrived considerably before him.

"It is a friend of Herr Harz," she whispered; "he will drink coffee.
I am going to find Chris."

"Greta!" gasped Miss Naylor.

Mrs. Decie put up her hand.

"Ah!" she said, "if it is so, we must be very nice to him for
Christian's sake."

Miss Naylor's face grew soft.      -

"Ah, yes!" she said; "of course."

"Bah!" muttered Herr Paul, "that recommences.'

"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie, "you lack the elements of wisdom."

Herr Paul glared at the approaching stranger.

Mrs. Decie had risen, and smilingly held out her hand.

"We are so glad to know you; you are an artist too, perhaps?  I take
a great interest in art, and especially in that school which Mr. Harz
represents."

The stranger smiled.

"He is the genuine article, ma'am," he said.  "He represents no
school, he is one of that kind whose corpses make schools."

"Ah!" murmured Mrs. Decie, "you are an American.  That is so nice.
Do sit down!  My niece will soon be here."

Greta came running back.

"Will you come, please?" she said.  "Chris is ready."

Gulping down his coffee, the stranger included them all in a single
bow, and followed her.

"Ach!" said Herr Paul, "garcon tres chic, celui-la!"

Christian was standing by her little table.  The stranger began.

"I am sending Mr. Harz's things to England; there are some pictures
here.  He would be glad to have them."

A flood of crimson swept over her face.

"I am sending them to London," the stranger repeated; "perhaps you
could give them to me to-day."

"They are ready; my sister will show you."

Her eyes seemed to dart into his soul, and try to drag something from
it.  The words rushed from her lips

"Is there any message for me?"

The stranger regarded her curiously.

"No," he stammered, "no! I guess not.  He is well....  I wish...." He
stopped; her white face seemed to flash scorn, despair, and entreaty
on him all at once.  And turning, she left him standing there.




XXVII

When Christian went that evening to her uncle's room he was sitting
up in bed, and at once began to talk.  "Chris," he said, "I can't
stand this dying by inches.  I'm going to try what a journey'll do
for me.  I want to get back to the old country.  The doctor's
promised.  There's a shot in the locker yet!  I believe in that young
chap; he's stuck to me like a man....  It'll be your birthday, on
Tuesday, old girl, and you'll be twenty.  Seventeen years since your
father died.  You've been a lot to me....  A parson came here today.
That's a bad sign.  Thought it his duty!  Very civil of him!
I wouldn't see him, though.  If there's anything in what they tell
you, I'm not going to sneak in at this time o' day.  There's one
thing that's rather badly on my mind.  I took advantage of Mr. Harz
with this damned pitifulness of mine.  You've a right to look at me
as I've seen you sometimes when you thought I was asleep.  If I
hadn't been ill he'd never have left you.  I don't blame you, Chris--
not I!  You love me?  I know that, my dear.  But one's alone when it
comes to the run-in.  Don't cry!  Our minds aren't Sunday-school
books; you're finding it out, that's all!"  He sighed and turned
away.

The noise of sun-blinds being raised vibrated through the house.  A
feeling of terror seized on the girl; he lay so still, and yet the
drawing of each breath was a fight.  If she could only suffer in his
place!  She went close, and bent over him.

"It's air we want, both you and I!" he muttered.  Christian beckoned
to the nurse, and stole out through the window.

A regiment was passing in the road; she stood half-hidden amongst the
lilac bushes watching.  The poplar leaves drooped lifeless and almost
black above her head, the dust raised by the soldiers' feet hung in
the air; it seemed as if in all the world no freshness and no life
were stirring.  The tramp of feet died away.  Suddenly within arm's
length of her a man appeared, his stick shouldered like a sword.  He
raised his hat.

"Good-evening!  You do not remember me?  Sarelli.  Pardon! You looked
like a ghost standing there.  How badly those fellows marched!  We
hang, you see, on the skirts of our profession and criticise; it is
all we are fit for."  His black eyes, restless and malevolent like a
swan's, seemed to stab her face.  "A fine evening!  Too hot.  The
storm is wanted; you feel that?  It is weary waiting for the storm;
but after the storm, my dear young lady, comes peace."  He smiled,
gently, this time, and baring his head again, was lost to view in the
shadow of the trees.

His figure had seemed to Christian like the sudden vision of a
threatening, hidden force.  She thrust out her hands, as though to
keep it off.

No use; it was within her, nothing could keep it away!  She went to
Mrs. Decie's room, where her aunt and Miss Naylor were conversing in
low tones.  To hear their voices brought back the touch of this world
of everyday which had no part or lot in the terrifying powers within
her.

Dawney slept at the Villa now.  In the dead of night he was awakened
by a light flashed in his eyes.  Christian was standing there, her
face pale and wild with terror, her hair falling in dark masses on
her shoulders.

"Save him!  Save him!" she cried.  "Quick! The bleeding!"

He saw her muffle her face in her white sleeves, and seizing the
candle, leaped out of bed and rushed away.

The internal haemorrhage had come again, and Nicholas Treffry wavered
between life and death.  When it had ceased, he sank into a sort of
stupor.  About six o'clock he came back to consciousness; watching
his eyes, they could see a mental struggle taking place within him.
At last he singled Christian out from the others by a sign.

"I'm beat, Chris," he whispered.  "Let him know, I want to see him."

His voice grew a little stronger.  "I thought that I could see it
through--but here's the end."  He lifted his hand ever so little, and
let it fall again.  When told a little later that a telegram had been
sent to Harz his eyes expressed satisfaction.

Herr Paul came down in ignorance of the night's events.  He stopped
in front of the barometer and tapped it, remarking to Miss Naylor:
"The glass has gone downstairs; we shall have cool weather--it will
still go well with him!"

When, with her brown face twisted by pity and concern, she told him
that it was a question of hours, Herr Paul turned first purple, then
pale, and sitting down, trembled violently.  "I cannot believe it,"
he exclaimed almost angrily.  "Yesterday he was so well!  I cannot
believe it!  Poor Nicholas!  Yesterday he spoke to me!"  Taking Miss
Naylor's hand, he clutched it in his own.  "Ah!" he cried, letting it
go suddenly, and striking at his forehead, "it is too terrible; only
yesterday he spoke to me of sherry.  Is there nobody, then, who can
do good?"

"There is only God," replied Miss Naylor softly.

"God?" said Herr Paul in a scared voice.

"We--can--all--pray to Him," Miss Naylor murmured; little spots of
colour came into her cheeks.  "I am going to do it now."

Herr Paul raised her hand and kissed it.

"Are you?" he said; "good! I too."  He passed through his study door,
closed it carefully behind him, then for some unknown reason set his
back against it.  Ugh! Death! It came to all! Some day it would come
to him.  It might come tomorrow!  One must pray!

The day dragged to its end.  In the sky clouds had mustered, and,
crowding close on one another, clung round the sun, soft, thick,
greywhite, like the feathers on a pigeon's breast.  Towards evening
faint tremblings were felt at intervals, as from the shock of
immensely distant earthquakes.

Nobody went to bed that night, but in the morning the report was the
same: "Unconscious--a question of hours."  Once only did he recover
consciousness, and then asked for Harz.  A telegram had come from
him, he was on the way.  Towards seven of the evening the long-
expected storm broke in a sky like ink.  Into the valleys and over
the crests of mountains it seemed as though an unseen hand were
spilling goblets of pale wine, darting a sword-blade zigzag over
trees, roofs, spires, peaks, into the very firmament, which answered
every thrust with great bursts of groaning.  Just beyond the veranda
Greta saw a glowworm shining, as it might be a tiny bead of the
fallen lightning.  Soon the rain covered everything.  Sometimes a jet
of light brought the hilltops, towering, dark, and hard, over the
house, to disappear again behind the raindrops and shaken leaves.
Each breath drawn by the storm was like the clash of a thousand
cymbals; and in his room Mr. Treffry lay unconscious of its fury.

Greta had crept in unobserved; and sat curled in a corner, with
Scruff in her arms, rocking slightly to and fro.  When Christian
passed, she caught her skirt, and whispered: "It is your birthday,
Chris!"

Mr. Treffry stirred.

"What's that?  Thunder?--it's cooler.  Where am I?  Chris!"

Dawney signed for her to take his place.

"Chris!" Mr. Treffry said.  "It's near now."  She bent across him,
and her tears fell on his forehead.

"Forgive!" she whispered; "love me!"

He raised his finger, and touched her cheek.

For an hour or more he did not speak, though once or twice he moaned,
and faintly tightened his pressure on her fingers.  The storm had
died away, but very far off the thunder was still muttering.

His eyes opened once more, rested on her, and passed beyond, into
that abyss dividing youth from age, conviction from conviction, life
from death.

At the foot of the bed Dawney stood covering his face; behind him
Dominique knelt with hands held upwards; the sound of Greta's
breathing, soft in sleep, rose and fell in the stillness.




XXIX

One afternoon in March, more than three years after Mr. Treffry's
death, Christian was sitting at the window of a studio in St. John's
Wood.  The sky was covered with soft, high clouds, through which
shone little gleams of blue.  Now and then a bright shower fell,
sprinkling the trees, where every twig was curling upwards as if
waiting for the gift of its new leaves.  And it seemed to her that
the boughs thickened and budded under her very eyes; a great
concourse of sparrows had gathered on those boughs, and kept raising
a shrill chatter.  Over at the far side of the room Harz was working
at a picture.

On Christian's face was the quiet smile of one who knows that she has
only to turn her eyes to see what she wishes to see; of one whose
possessions are safe under her hand.  She looked at Harz with that
possessive smile.  But as into the brain of one turning in his bed
grim fancies will suddenly leap up out of warm nothingness, so there
leaped into her mind the memory of that long ago dawn, when he had
found her kneeling by Mr. Treffry's body.  She seemed to see again
the dead face, so gravely quiet, and furrowless.  She seemed to see
her lover and herself setting forth silently along the river wall
where they had first met; sitting down, still silent, beneath the
poplar-tree where the little bodies of the chafers had lain strewn in
the Spring.  To see the trees changing from black to grey, from grey
to green, and in the dark sky long white lines of cloud, lighting to
the south like birds; and, very far away, rosy peaks watching the
awakening of the earth.  And now once again, after all that time,
she felt her spirit shrink away from his; as it had shrunk in that
hour, when she had seemed hateful to herself.  She remembered the
words she had spoken: "I have no heart left.  You've torn it in two
between you.  Love is all self--I wanted him to die."  She remembered
too the raindrops on the vines like a million tiny lamps, and the
throstle that began singing.  Then, as dreams die out into warm
nothingness, recollection vanished, and the smile came back to her
lips.

She took out a letter.

"....O Chris!  We are really coming; I seem to be always telling it
to myself, and I have told Scruff many times, but he does not care,
because he is getting old.  Miss Naylor says we shall arrive for
breakfast, and that we shall be hungry, but perhaps she will not be
very hungry, if it is rough.  Papa said to me: 'Je serai
inconsolable, mais inconsolable!'  But I think he will not be,
because he is going to Vienna.  When we are come, there will be
nobody at Villa Rubein; Aunt Constance has gone a fortnight ago to
Florence.  There is a young man at her hotel; she says he will be one
of the greatest playwriters in England, and she sent me a play of his
to read; it was only a little about love, I did not like it very
much....  O Chris! I think I shall cry when I see you.  As I am quite
grown up, Miss Naylor is not to come back with me; sometimes she is
sad, but she will be glad to see you, Chris.  She seems always sadder
when it is Spring.  Today I walked along the wall; the little green
balls of wool are growing on the poplars already, and I saw one
chafer; it will not be long before the cherry blossom comes; and I
felt so funny, sad and happy together, and once I thought that I had
wings and could fly away up the valley to Meran--but I had none, so I
sat on the bench where we sat the day we took the pictures, and I
thought and thought; there was nothing came to me in my thoughts, but
all was sweet and a little noisy, and rather sad; it was like the
buzzing of the chafer, in my head; and now I feel so tired and all my
blood is running up and down me.  I do not mind, because I know it is
the Spring.

"Dominique came to see us the other day; he is very well, and is half
the proprietor of the Adler Hotel, at Meran; he is not at all
different, and he asked about you and about Alois--do you know,
Chris, to myself I call him Herr Harz, but when I have seen him this
time I shall call him Alois in my heart also.

"I have a letter from Dr. Edmund; he is in London, so perhaps you
have seen him, only he has a great many patients and some that he has
'hopes of killing soon'! especially one old lady, because she is
always wanting him to do things for her, and he is never saying 'No,'
so he does not like her.  He says that he is getting old.  When I
have finished this letter I am going to write and tell him that
perhaps he shall see me soon, and then I think he will be very sad.
Now that the Spring is come there are more flowers to take to Uncle
Nic's grave, and every day, when I am gone, Barbi is to take them so
that he shall not miss you, Chris, because all the flowers I put
there are for you.

"I am buying some toys without paint on for my niece."

"O Chris! this will be the first baby that I have known."

"I am only to stay three weeks with you, but I think when I am once
there I shall be staying longer.  I send a kiss for my niece, and to
Herr Harz, my love--that is the last time I shall call him Herr Harz;
and to you, Chris, all the joy that is in my heart.--Your loving

"GRETA."


Christian rose, and, turning very softly, stood, leaning her elbows
on the back of a high seat, looking at her husband.

In her eyes there was a slow, clear, faintly smiling, yet yearning
look, as though this strenuous figure bent on its task were seen for
a moment as something apart, and not all the world to her.

"Tired?" asked Harz, putting his lips to her hand.

"No, it's only--what Greta says about the Spring; it makes one want
more than one has got.

Slipping her hand away, she went back to the window.  Harz stood,
looking after her; then, taking up his palette, again began painting.

In the world, outside, the high soft clouds flew by; the trees seemed
thickening and budding.

And Christian thought:

'Can we never have quite enough?'


December l890.







TO

MY FATHER




A MAN OF DEVON


I

"MOOR, 20th July .

.......It is quiet here, sleepy, rather--a farm is never quiet; the
sea, too, is only a quarter of a mile away, and when it's windy, the
sound of it travels up the combe; for distraction, you must go four
miles to Brixham or five to Kingswear, and you won't find much then.
The farm lies in a sheltered spot, scooped, so to speak, high up the
combe side--behind is a rise of fields, and beyond, a sweep of down.
You have the feeling of being able to see quite far, which is
misleading, as you soon find out if you walk.  It is true Devon
country-hills, hollows, hedge-banks, lanes dipping down into the
earth or going up like the sides of houses, coppices, cornfields, and
little streams wherever there's a place for one; but the downs along
the cliff, all gorse and ferns, are wild.  The combe ends in a sandy
cove with black rock on one side, pinkish cliffs away to the headland
on the other, and a coastguard station.  Just now, with the harvest
coming on, everything looks its richest, the apples ripening, the
trees almost too green.  It's very hot, still weather; the country
and the sea seem to sleep in the sun.  In front of the farm are half-
a-dozen pines that look as if they had stepped out of another land,
but all round the back is orchard as lush, and gnarled, and orthodox
as any one could wish.  The house, a long, white building with three
levels of roof, and splashes of brown all over it, looks as if it
might be growing down into the earth.  It was freshly thatched two
years ago--and that's all the newness there is about it; they say the
front door, oak, with iron knobs, is three hundred years old at
least.  You can touch the ceilings with your hand.  The windows
certainly might be larger--a heavenly old place, though, with a
flavour of apples, smoke, sweetbriar, bacon, honeysuckle, and age,
all over it.

The owner is a man called John Ford, about seventy, and seventeen
stone in weight--very big, on long legs, with a grey, stubbly beard,
grey, watery eyes, short neck and purplish complexion; he is
asthmatic, and has a very courteous, autocratic manner.  His clothes
are made of Harris tweed--except on Sundays, when he puts on black--a
seal ring, and a thick gold cable chain.  There's nothing mean or
small about John Ford; I suspect him of a warm heart, but he doesn't
let you know much about him.  He's a north-country man by birth, and
has been out in New Zealand all his life.  This little Devonshire
farm is all he has now.  He had a large "station" in the North
Island, and was much looked up to, kept open house, did everything,
as one would guess, in a narrow-minded, large-handed way.  He came to
grief suddenly; I don't quite know how.  I believe his only son lost
money on the turf, and then, unable to face his father, shot himself;
if you had seen John Ford, you could imagine that.  His wife died,
too, that year.  He paid up to the last penny, and came home, to live
on this farm.  He told me the other night that he had only one
relation in the world, his granddaughter, who lives here with him.
Pasiance Voisey--old spelling for Patience, but they pronounce, it
Pash-yence--is sitting out here with me at this moment on a sort of
rustic loggia that opens into the orchard.  Her sleeves are rolled
up, and she's stripping currants, ready for black currant tea.  Now
and then she rests her elbows on the table, eats a berry, pouts her
lips, and, begins again.  She has a round, little face; a long,
slender body; cheeks like poppies; a bushy mass of black-brown hair,
and dark-brown, almost black, eyes; her nose is snub; her lips quick,
red, rather full; all her motions quick and soft.  She loves bright
colours.  She's rather like a little cat; sometimes she seems all
sympathy, then in a moment as hard as tortoise-shell.  She's all
impulse; yet she doesn't like to show her feelings; I sometimes
wonder whether she has any.  She plays the violin.

It's queer to see these two together, queer and rather sad.  The old
man has a fierce tenderness for her that strikes into the very roots
of him.  I see him torn between it, and his cold north-country horror
of his feelings; his life with her is an unconscious torture to him.
She's a restless, chafing thing, demure enough one moment, then
flashing out into mocking speeches or hard little laughs.  Yet she's
fond of him in her fashion; I saw her kiss him once when he was
asleep.  She obeys him generally--in a way as if she couldn't breathe
while she was doing it.  She's had a queer sort of education--
history, geography, elementary mathematics, and nothing else; never
been to school; had a few lessons on the violin, but has taught
herself most of what she knows.  She is well up in the lore of birds,
flowers, and insects; has three cats, who follow her about; and is
full of pranks.  The other day she called out to me, "I've something
for you.  Hold out your hand and shut your eyes!"  It was a large,
black slug!  She's the child of the old fellow's only daughter, who
was sent home for schooling at Torquay, and made a runaway match with
one Richard Voisey, a yeoman farmer, whom she met in the hunting-
field.  John Ford was furious--his ancestors, it appears, used to
lead ruffians on the Cumberland side of the Border--he looked on
"Squire" Rick Voisey as a cut below him.  He was called "Squire," as
far as I can make out, because he used to play cards every evening
with a parson in the neighbourhood who went by the name of "Devil"
Hawkins.  Not that the Voisey stock is to be despised.  They have had
this farm since it was granted to one Richard Voysey by copy dated
8th September, 13 Henry VIII.  Mrs. Hopgood, the wife of the bailiff-
-a dear, quaint, serene old soul with cheeks like a rosy, withered
apple, and an unbounded love of Pasiance--showed me the very
document.

"I kape it," she said.  "Mr. Ford be tu proud--but other folks be
proud tu.  'Tis a pra-aper old fam'ly: all the women is Margery,
Pasiance, or Mary; all the men's Richards an' Johns an' Rogers; old
as they apple-trees."

Rick Voisey was a rackety, hunting fellow, and "dipped" the old farm
up to its thatched roof.  John Ford took his revenge by buying up the
mortgages, foreclosing, and commanding his daughter and Voisey to go
on living here rent free; this they dutifully did until they were
both killed in a dog-cart accident, eight years ago.  Old Ford's
financial smash came a year later, and since then he's lived here
with Pasiance.  I fancy it's the cross in her blood that makes her so
restless, and irresponsible: if she had been all a native she'd have
been happy enough here, or all a stranger like John Ford himself, but
the two strains struggling for mastery seem to give her no rest.
You'll think this a far-fetched theory, but I believe it to be the
true one.  She'll stand with lips pressed together, her arms folded
tight across her narrow chest, staring as if she could see beyond the
things round her; then something catches her attention, her eyes will
grow laughing, soft, or scornful all in a minute! She's eighteen,
perfectly fearless in a boat, but you can't get her to mount a horse-
-a sore subject with her grandfather, who spends most of his day on a
lean, half-bred pony, that carries him like a feather, for all his
weight.

They put me up here as a favour to Dan Treffry; there's an
arrangement of L. s. d. with Mrs. Hopgood in the background.  They
aren't at all well off; this is the largest farm about, but it
doesn't bring them in much.  To look at John Ford, it seems
incredible he should be short of money--he's too large.

We have family prayers at eight, then, breakfast--after that freedom
for writing or anything else till supper and evening prayers.  At
midday one forages for oneself.  On Sundays, two miles to church
twice, or you get into John Ford's black books....  Dan Treffry
himself is staying at Kingswear.  He says he's made his pile; it
suits him down here--like a sleep after years of being too wide-
awake; he had a rough time in New Zealand, until that mine made his
fortune.  You'd hardly remember him; he reminds me of his uncle, old
Nicholas Treffry; the same slow way of speaking, with a hesitation,
and a trick of repeating your name with everything he says; left-
handed too, and the same slow twinkle in his eyes.  He has a dark,
short beard, and red-brown cheeks; is a little bald on the temples,
and a bit grey, but hard as iron.  He rides over nearly every day,
attended by a black spaniel with a wonderful nose and a horror of
petticoats.  He has told me lots of good stories of John Ford in the
early squatter's times; his feats with horses live to this day; and
he was through the Maori wars; as Dan says, "a man after Uncle Nic's
own heart."

They are very good friends, and respect each other; Dan has a great
admiration for the old man, but the attraction is Pasiance.  He talks
very little when she's in the room, but looks at her in a sidelong,
wistful sort of way.  Pasiance's conduct to him would be cruel in any
one else, but in her, one takes it with a pinch of salt.  Dan goes
off, but turns up again as quiet and dogged as you please.

Last night, for instance, we were sitting in the loggia after supper.
Pasiance was fingering the strings of her violin, and suddenly Dan (a
bold thing for him) asked her to play.

"What!" she said, "before men?  No, thank you!"

"Why not?"

"Because I hate them."

Down came John Ford's hand on the wicker table: "You forget yourself!
Go to bed!"

She gave Dan a look, and went; we could hear her playing in her
bedroom; it sounded like a dance of spirits; and just when one
thought she had finished, out it would break again like a burst of
laughter.  Presently, John Ford begged our pardons ceremoniously, and
stumped off indoors.  The violin ceased; we heard his voice growling
at her; down he came again.  Just as he was settled in his chair
there was a soft swish, and something dark came falling through the
apple boughs.  The violin!  You should have seen his face!  Dan would
have picked the violin up, but the old man stopped him.  Later, from
my bedroom window, I saw John Ford come out and stand looking at the
violin.  He raised his foot as if to stamp on it.  At last he picked
it up, wiped it carefully, and took it in....

My room is next to hers.  I kept hearing her laugh, a noise too as if
she were dragging things about the room.  Then I fell asleep, but
woke with a start, and went to the window for a breath of fresh air.
Such a black, breathless night!  Nothing to be seen but the twisted,
blacker branches; not the faintest stir of leaves, no sound but
muffled grunting from the cowhouse, and now and then a faint sigh.  I
had the queerest feeling of unrest and fear, the last thing to expect
on such a night.  There is something here that's disturbing; a sort
of suppressed struggle.  I've never in my life seen anything so
irresponsible as this girl, or so uncompromising as the old man; I
keep thinking of the way he wiped that violin.  It's just as if a
spark would set everything in a blaze.  There's a menace of tragedy--
or--perhaps it's only the heat, and too much of Mother Hopgood's
crame....




II

"Tuesday .

......I've made a new acquaintance.  I was lying in the orchard, and
presently, not seeing me, he came along--a man of middle height, with
a singularly good balance, and no lumber--rather old blue clothes, a
flannel shirt, a dull red necktie, brown shoes, a cap with a leather
peak pushed up on the forehead.  Face long and narrow, bronzed with a
kind of pale burnt-in brownness; a good forehead.  A brown moustache,
beard rather pointed, blackening about the cheeks; his chin not
visible, but from the beard's growth must be big; mouth I should
judge sensuous.  Nose straight and blunt; eyes grey, with an upward
look, not exactly frank, because defiant; two parallel furrows down
each cheek, one from the inner corner of the eye, one from the
nostril; age perhaps thirty-five.  About the face, attitude,
movements, something immensely vital, adaptable, daring, and
unprincipled.

He stood in front of the loggia, biting his fingers, a kind of
nineteenth-century buccaneer, and I wondered what he was doing in
this galley. They say you can tell a man of Kent or a Somersetshire
man; certainly you can tell a Yorkshire man, and this fellow could
only have been a man of Devon, one of the two main types found in
this county.  He whistled; and out came Pasiance in a geranium-
coloured dress, looking like some tall poppy--you know the slight
droop of a poppy's head, and the way the wind sways its stem.... She
is a human poppy, her fuzzy dark hair is like a poppy's lustreless
black heart, she has a poppy's tantalising attraction and repulsion,
something fatal, or rather fateful.  She came walking up to my new
friend, then caught sight of me, and stopped dead.

"That," she said to me, "is Zachary Pearse.  This," she said to him,
"is our lodger."  She said it with a wonderful soft malice.  She
wanted to scratch me, and she scratched.  Half an hour later I was in
the yard, when up came this fellow Pearse.

"Glad to know you," he said, looking thoughtfully at the pigs.

"You're a writer, aren't you?"

"A sort of one," I said.

"If by any chance," he said suddenly, "you're looking for a job, I
could put something in your way.  Walk down to the beach with me, and
I'll tell you; my boat's at anchor, smartest little craft in these
parts."

It was very hot, and I had no desire whatever to go down to the
beach--I went, all the same.  We had not gone far when John Ford and
Dan Treffry came into the lane.  Our friend seemed a little
disconcerted, but soon recovered himself.  We met in the middle of
the lane, where there was hardly room to pass.  John Ford, who looked
very haughty, put on his pince-nez and stared at Pearse.

"Good-day!" said Pearse; "fine weather!  I've been up to ask Pasiance
to come for a sail.  Wednesday we thought, weather permitting; this
gentleman's coming.  Perhaps you'll come too, Mr. Treffry.  You've
never seen my place.  I'll give you lunch, and show you my father.
He's worth a couple of hours' sail any day."  It was said in such an
odd way that one couldn't resent his impudence.  John Ford was seized
with a fit of wheezing, and seemed on the eve of an explosion; he
glanced at me, and checked himself.

"You're very good," he said icily; "my granddaughter has other things
to do.  You, gentlemen, will please yourselves"; and, with a very
slight bow, he went stumping on to the house.  Dan looked at me, and
I looked at him.

"You'll come?" said Pearse, rather wistfully.  Dan stammered: "Thank
you, Mr. Pearse; I'm a better man on a horse than in a boat, but--
thank you."  Cornered in this way, he's a shy, soft-hearted being.
Pearse smiled his thanks.  "Wednesday, then, at ten o'clock; you
shan't regret it."

"Pertinacious beggar!" I heard Dan mutter in his beard; and found
myself marching down the lane again by Pearse's side.  I asked him
what he was good enough to mean by saying I was coming, without
having asked me.  He answered, unabashed:

"You see, I'm not friends with the old man; but I knew he'd not be
impolite to you, so I took the liberty."

He has certainly a knack of turning one's anger to curiosity.  We
were down in the combe now; the tide was running out, and the sand
all little, wet, shining ridges.  About a quarter of a mile out lay a
cutter, with her tan sail half down, swinging to the swell.  The
sunlight was making the pink cliffs glow in the most wonderful way;
and shifting in bright patches over the sea like moving shoals of
goldfish.  Pearse perched himself on his dinghy, and looked out under
his hand.  He seemed lost in admiration.

"If we could only net some of those spangles," he said, "an' make
gold of 'em!  No more work then."

"It's a big job I've got on," he said presently; "I'll tell you about
it on Wednesday. I want a journalist."

"But I don't write for the papers," I said; "I do other sort of work.
My game is archaeology."

"It doesn't matter," he said, "the more imagination the better.  It'd
be a thundering good thing for you."

His assurance was amazing, but it was past supper-time, and hunger
getting the better of my curiosity, I bade him good-night. When I
looked back, he was still there, on the edge of his boat, gazing at
the sea.  A queer sort of bird altogether, but attractive somehow.

Nobody mentioned him that evening; but once old Ford, after staring a
long time at Pasiance, muttered a propos of nothing, "Undutiful
children!"  She was softer than usual; listening quietly to our talk,
and smiling when spoken to.  At bedtime she went up to her grand-
father, without waiting for the usual command, "Come and kiss me,
child."

Dan did not stay to supper, and he has not been here since.  This
morning I asked Mother Hopgood who Zachary Pearse was.  She's a true
Devonian; if there's anything she hates, it is to be committed to a
definite statement.  She ambled round her answer, and at last told me
that he was "son of old Cap'en Jan Pearse to Black Mill.  'Tes an old
family to Dartymouth an' Plymouth," she went on in a communicative
outburst.  "They du say Francis Drake tuke five o' they Pearses with
'en to fight the Spaniards.  At least that's what I've heard Mr.
Zachary zay; but Ha-apgood can tell yu."  Poor Hopgood, the amount of
information she saddles him with in the course of the day!  Having
given me thus to understand that she had run dry, she at once went
on:

"Cap'en Jan Pearse made a dale of ventures.  He's old now--they du
say nigh an 'undred.  Ha-apgood can tell yu."

"But the son, Mrs. Hopgood?"

Her eyes twinkled with sudden shrewdness: She hugged herself
placidly.

"An' what would yu take for dinner to-day?  There's duck; or yu might
like 'toad in the hole,' with an apple tart; or then, there's--Well!
we'll see what we can du like."  And off she went, without waiting
for my answer.

To-morrow is Wednesday.  I shan't be sorry to get another look at
this fellow Pearse....





III

"Friday, 29th July.

.......Why do you ask me so many questions, and egg me on to write
about these people instead of minding my business?  If you really
want to hear, I'll tell you of Wednesday's doings.

It was a splendid morning; and Dan turned up, to my surprise--though
I might have known that when he says a thing, he does it.  John Ford
came out to shake hands with him, then, remembering why he had come,
breathed loudly, said nothing, and went in again.  Nothing was to be
seen of Pasiance, and we went down to the beach together.

"I don't like this fellow Pearse, George," Dan said to me on the way;
"I was fool enough to say I'd go, and so I must, but what's he after?
Not the man to do things without a reason, mind you.

I remarked that we should soon know.

"I'm not so sure--queer beggar; I never look at him without thinking
of a pirate."

The cutter lay in the cove as if she had never moved.  There too was
Zachary Pearse seated on the edge of his dinghy.

"A five-knot breeze," he said, "I'll run you down in a couple of
hours."  He made no inquiry about Pasiance, but put us into his
cockleshell and pulled for the cutter.  A lantern-Jawed fellow, named
Prawle, with a spiky, prominent beard, long, clean-shaven upper lip,
and tanned complexion--a regular hard-weather bird--received us.

The cutter was beautifully clean; built for a Brixham trawler, she
still had her number--DH 113--uneffaced.  We dived into a sort of
cabin, airy, but dark, fitted with two bunks and a small table, on
which stood some bottles of stout; there were lockers, too, and pegs
for clothes.  Prawle, who showed us round, seemed very proud of a
steam contrivance for hoisting sails.  It was some minutes before we
came on deck again; and there, in the dinghy, being pulled towards
the cutter, sat Pasiance.

"If I'd known this," stammered Dan, getting red, "I wouldn't have
come."  She had outwitted us, and there was nothing to be done.

It was a very pleasant sail.  The breeze was light from the south-
east, the sun warm, the air soft.  Presently Pasiance began singing:

"Columbus is dead and laid in his grave,
Oh! heigh-ho! and laid in his grave;
Over his head the apple-trees wave
Oh! heigh-ho! the apple-trees wave....

The apples are ripe and ready to fall,
Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall;
There came an old woman and gathered them all,
Oh! heigh-ho! and gathered them all....

The apples are gathered, and laid on the shelf,
Oh! heigh-ho! and laid on the shelf;
If you want any more, you must sing for yourself,
Oh! heigh-ho! and sing for yourself."


Her small, high voice came to us in trills and spurts, as the wind
let it, like the singing of a skylark lost in the sky.  Pearse went
up to her and whispered something.  I caught a glimpse of her face
like a startled wild creature's; shrinking, tossing her hair,
laughing, all in the same breath.  She wouldn't sing again, but
crouched in the bows with her chin on her hands, and the sun
falling on one cheek, round, velvety, red as a peach....

We passed Dartmouth, and half an hour later put into a little wooded
bay.  On a low reddish cliff was a house hedged round by pine-trees.
A bit of broken jetty ran out from the bottom of the cliff.  We
hooked on to this, and landed.  An ancient, fish-like man came
slouching down and took charge of the cutter.  Pearse led us towards
the house, Pasiance following mortally shy all of a sudden.

The house had a dark, overhanging thatch of the rush reeds that grow
in the marshes hereabouts; I remember nothing else remarkable.  It
was neither old, nor new; neither beautiful, nor exactly ugly;
neither clean, nor entirely squalid; it perched there with all its
windows over the sea, turning its back contemptuously on the land.

Seated in a kind of porch, beside an immense telescope, was a very
old man in a panama hat, with a rattan cane.  His pure-white beard
and moustache, and almost black eyebrows, gave a very singular,
piercing look to his little, restless, dark-grey eyes; all over his
mahogany cheeks and neck was a network of fine wrinkles.  He sat
quite upright, in the full sun, hardly blinking.

"Dad!" said Zachary, "this is Pasiance Voisey."  The old man turned
his eyes on her and muttered, "How do you do, ma'am?" then took no
further notice.  And Pasiance, who seemed to resent this, soon
slipped away and went wandering about amongst the pines.  An old
woman brought some plates and bottles and laid them casually on a
table; and we sat round the figure of old Captain Pearse without a
word, as if we were all under a spell.

Before lunch there was a little scene between Zachary Pearse and Dan,
as to which of them should summon Pasiance.  It ended in both going,
and coming back without her.  She did not want any lunch, would stay
where she was amongst the pines.

For lunch we had chops, wood-pigeons, mushrooms, and mulberry
preserve, and drank wonderful Madeira out of common wine-glasses.  I
asked the old man where he got it; he gave me a queer look, and
answered with a little bow:

"Stood me in tu shillin' the bottle, an' the country got nothing out
of it, sir.  In the early Thirties; tu shillin' the bottle; there's
no such wine nowadays and," he added, looking at Zachary, "no such
men."

Zachary smiled and said: "You did nothing so big, dad, as what I'm
after, now!"

The old man's eyes had a sort of disdain in them.

"You're going far, then, in the Pied Witch, Zack?"

"I am," said Zachary.

"And where might yu be goin' in that old trampin' smut factory?"

"Morocco."

"Heu!" said the old man, "there's nothing there; I know that coast,
as I know the back o' my hand."  He stretched out a hand covered with
veins and hair.

Zachary began suddenly to pour out a flood of words:

"Below Mogador--a fellow there--friend of mine--two years ago now.
Concessions--trade-gunpowder--cruisers--feuds--money--chiefs--Gatling
guns--Sultan--rifles--rebellion--gold."  He detailed a reckless,
sordid, bold scheme, which, on the pivot of a trading venture, was
intended to spin a whole wheel of political convulsions.

"They'll never let you get there," said old Pearse.

"Won't they?" returned Zachary.  "Oh yes, they will, an' when I
leave, there'll be another dynasty, and I'll be a rich man."

"Yu'll never leave," answered the old man.

Zachary took out a sheet of paper covered with figures.  He had
worked the whole thing out.  So much--equipment, so much--trade, so
much--concessions, so much--emergencies.  "My last mag!" he ended, "a
thousand short; the ship's ready, and if I'm not there within a month
my chance is as good as gone."

This was the pith of his confidences--an appeal for money, and we all
looked as men will when that crops up.

"Mad!"  muttered the old man, looking at the sea.

"No," said Zachary.  That one word was more eloquent than all the
rest of his words put together.  This fellow is no visionary.  His
scheme may be daring, and unprincipled, but--he knows very well what
he's about.

"Well!" said old Pearse, "you shall have five 'undred of my money, if
it's only to learn what yu're made of.  Wheel me in!"  Zachary
wheeled him into the house, but soon came back.

"The old man's cheque for five hundred pounds!" he said, holding it
up.  "Mr. Treffry, give me another, and you shall have a third of the
profits."

I expected Dan to give a point-blank refusal.  But he only asked:

"Would that clear you for starting?"

"With that," said Zachary, "I can get to sea in a fortnight."

"Good!" Dan said slowly.  "Give me a written promise!  To sea in
fourteen days and my fair share on the five hundred pounds--no more--
no less."

Again I thought Pearse would have jumped at this, but he leaned his
chin on his hand, and looked at Dan, and Dan looked at him.  While
they were staring at each other like this, Pasiance came up with a
kitten.

"See!" she said, "isn't it a darling?"  The kitten crawled and clawed
its way up behind her neck.  I saw both men's eyes as they looked at
Pasiance, and suddenly understood what they were at.  The kitten
rubbed itself against Pasiance's cheek, overbalanced, and fell,
clawing, down her dress.  She caught it up and walked away.  Some
one, I don't know which of us, sighed, and Pearse cried "Done!"

The bargain had been driven.

"Good-bye, Mr. Pearse," said Dan; " I guess that's all I'm wanted
for.  I'll find my pony waiting in the village.  George, you'll see
Pasiance home?"

We heard the hoofs of his pony galloping down the road; Pearse
suddenly excused himself, and disappeared.

This venture of his may sound romantic and absurd, but it's matter-
of-fact enough.  He's after L. s. d.!  Shades of Drake, Raleigh,
Hawkins, Oxenham!  The worm of suspicion gnaws at the rose of
romance.  What if those fellows, too, were only after L. s. d....?

I strolled into the pine-wood.  The earth there was covered like a
bee's body with black and gold stripes; there was the blue sea below,
and white, sleepy clouds, and bumble-bees booming above the heather;
it was all softness, a summer's day in Devon.  Suddenly I came on
Pearse standing at the edge of the cliff with Pasiance sitting in a
little hollow below, looking up at him.  I heard him say:

"Pasiance--Pasiance!" The sound of his voice, and the sight of her
soft, wondering face made me furious.  What business has she with
love, at her age?  What business have they with each other?

He told me presently that she had started off for home, and drove me
to the ferry, behind an old grey pony.  On the way he came back to
his offer of the other day.

"Come with me," he said.  "It doesn't do to neglect the Press; you
can see the possibilities.  It's one of the few countries left.  If I
once get this business started you don't know where it's going to
stop.  You'd have free passage everywhere, and whatever you like in
reason."

I answered as rudely as I could--but by no means as rudely as I
wanted--that his scheme was mad.  As a matter of fact, it's much too
sane for me; for, whatever the body of a scheme, its soul is the
fibre of the schemer.

"Think of it," he urged, as if he could see into me.  "You can make
what you like of it.  Press paragraphs, of course.  But that's
mechanical; why, even I could do it, if I had time.  As for the rest,
you'll be as free--as free as a man."

There, in five words of one syllable, is the kernel of this fellow
Pearse--"As free as a man!"  No rule, no law, not even the mysterious
shackles that bind men to their own self-respects!  "As free as a
man!"  No ideals; no principles; no fixed star for his worship; no
coil he can't slide out of!  But the fellow has the tenacity of one
of the old Devon mastiffs, too.  He wouldn't take "No" for an answer.

"Think of it," he said; "any day will do--I've got a fortnight....
Look! there she is!  "I thought that he meant Pasiance; but it was an
old steamer, sluggish and black in the blazing sun of mid-stream,
with a yellow-and-white funnel, and no sign of life on her decks.

"That's her--the Pied Witcb! Do her twelve knots; you wouldn't think
it!  Well! good-evening!  You'd better come.  A word to me at any
time.  I'm going aboard now."

As I was being ferried across I saw him lolling in the stern-sheets
of a little boat, the sun crowning his straw hat with glory.

I came on Pasiance, about a mile up the road, sitting in the hedge.
We walked on together between the banks--Devonshire banks, as high as
houses, thick with ivy and ferns, bramble and hazel boughs, and
honeysuckle.

"Do you believe in a God?" she said suddenly.

"Grandfather's God is simply awful.  When I'm playing the fiddle, I
can feel God; but grandfather's is such a stuffy God--you know what I
mean: the sea, the wind, the trees, colours too--they make one feel.
But I don't believe that life was meant to 'be good' in.  Isn't there
anything better than being good?  When I'm 'good,' I simply feel
wicked."  She reached up, caught a flower from the hedge, and slowly
tore its petals.

"What would you do," she muttered, "if you wanted a thing, but were
afraid of it?  But I suppose you're never afraid!" she added, mocking
me.  I admitted that I was sometimes afraid, and often afraid of
being afraid.

"That's nice!  I'm not afraid of illness, nor of grandfather, nor of
his God; but--I want to be free.  If you want a thing badly, you're
afraid about it."

I thought of Zachary Pearse's words, "free as a man."

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she said.

I stammered: "What do you mean by freedom?"

"Do you know what I shall do to-night?" she answered.  "Get out of my
window by the apple-tree, and go to the woods, and play!"

We were going down a steep lane, along the side of a wood, where
there's always a smell of sappy leaves, and the breath of the cows
that come close to the hedge to get the shade.

There was a cottage in the bottom, and a small boy sat outside
playing with a heap of dust.

"Hallo, Johnny!" said Pasiance.  "Hold your leg out and show this man
your bad place!"  The small boy undid a bandage round his bare and
dirty little leg, and proudly revealed a sore.

"Isn't it nasty?" cried Pasiance ruefully, tying up the bandage
again; "poor little feller!  Johnny, see what I've brought you!"  She
produced from her pocket a stick of chocolate, the semblance of a
soldier made of sealing-wax and worsted, and a crooked sixpence.

It was a new glimpse of her.  All the way home she was telling me the
story of little Johnny's family; when she came to his mother's death,
she burst out: "A beastly shame, wasn't it, and they're so poor; it
might just as well have been somebody else.  I like poor people, but
I hate rich ones--stuck-up beasts."

Mrs. Hopgood was looking over the gate, with her cap on one side, and
one of Pasiance's cats rubbing itself against her skirts.  At the
sight of us she hugged herself.

"Where's grandfather?" asked Pasiance.  The old lady shook her head.

"Is it a row?"  Mrs. Hopgood wriggled, and wriggled, and out came:

"Did you get yure tay, my pretty?  No?  Well, that's a pity; yu'll be
falin' low-like."

Pasiance tossed her head, snatched up the cat, and ran indoors.  I
remained staring at Mrs. Hopgood.

"Dear-dear," she clucked," poor lamb.  So to spake it's--" and she
blurted out suddenly, "chuckin' full of wra-ath, he is.  Well,
there!"

My courage failed that evening.  I spent it at the coastguard
station, where they gave me bread and cheese and some awful cider.  I
passed the kitchen as I came back.  A fire was still burning there,
and two figures, misty in the darkness, flitted about with stealthy
laughter like spirits afraid of being detected in a carnal-meal.
They were Pasiance and Mrs. Hopgood; and so charming was the smell of
eggs and bacon, and they had such an air of tender enjoyment of this
dark revel, that I stifled many pangs, as I crept hungry up to bed.

In the middle of the night I woke and heard what I thought was
screaming; then it sounded like wind in trees, then like the distant
shaking of a tambourine, with the high singing of a human voice.
Suddenly it stopped--two long notes came wailing out like sobs--then
utter stillness; and though I listened for an hour or more there was
no other sound ....




IV

"4th August .

......For three days after I wrote last, nothing at all happened
here.  I spent the mornings on the cliff reading, and watching the
sun-sparks raining on the sea.  It's grand up there with the gorse
all round, the gulls basking on the rocks, the partridges calling in
the corn, and now and then a young hawk overhead.  The afternoons I
spent out in the orchard.  The usual routine goes on at the farm all
the time--cow-milking, bread-baking, John Ford riding in and out,
Pasiance in her garden stripping lavender, talking to the farm hands;
and the smell of clover, and cows and hay; the sound of hens and pigs
and pigeons, the soft drawl of voices, the dull thud of the farm
carts; and day by day the apples getting redder.  Then, last Monday,
Pasiance was away from sunrise till sunset--nobody saw her go--nobody
knew where she had gone.  It was a wonderful, strange day, a sky of
silver-grey and blue, with a drift of wind-clouds, all the trees
sighing a little, the sea heaving in a long, low swell, the animals
restless, the birds silent, except the gulls with their old man's
laughter and kitten's mewing.

A something wild was in the air; it seemed to sweep across the downs
and combe, into the very house, like a passionate tune that comes
drifting to your ears when you're sleepy.  But who would have thought
the absence of that girl for a few hours could have wrought such
havoc!  We were like uneasy spirits; Mrs. Hopgood's apple cheeks
seemed positively to wither before one's eyes.  I came across a
dairymaid and farm hand discussing it stolidly with very downcast
faces.  Even Hopgood, a hard-bitten fellow with immense shoulders,
forgot his imperturbability so far as to harness his horse, and
depart on what he assured me was "just a wild-guse chaace."  It was
long before John Ford gave signs of noticing that anything was wrong,
but late in the afternoon I found him sitting with his hands on his
knees, staring straight before him.  He rose heavily when he saw me,
and stalked out.  In the evening, as I was starting for the
coastguard station to ask for help to search the cliff, Pasiance
appeared, walking as if she could hardly drag one leg after the
other.  Her cheeks were crimson; she was biting her lips to keep
tears of sheer fatigue out of her eyes.  She passed me in the doorway
without a word.  The anxiety he had gone through seemed to forbid the
old man from speaking.  He just came forward, took her face in his
hands, gave it a great kiss, and walked away.  Pasiance dropped on
the floor in the dark passage, and buried her face on her arms.
"Leave me alone!" was all she would say.  After a bit she dragged
herself upstairs.  Presently Mrs. Hopgood came to me.

"Not a word out of her--an' not a bite will she ate, an' I had a pie
all ready--scrumptious.  The good Lord knows the truth--she asked for
brandy; have you any brandy, sir?  Ha-apgood'e don't drink it, an'
Mister Ford 'e don't allaow for anything but caowslip wine."

I had whisky.

The good soul seized the flask, and went off hugging it.  She
returned it to me half empty.

"Lapped it like a kitten laps milk.  I misdaoubt it's straong, poor
lamb, it lusened 'er tongue praaperly.  'I've a-done it,' she says to
me, 'Mums-I've a-done it,' an' she laughed like a mad thing; and
then, sir, she cried, an' kissed me, an' pusshed me thru the door.
Gude Lard! What is 't she's a-done...?"

It rained all the next day and the day after.  About five o'clock
yesterday the rain ceased; I started off to Kingswear on Hopgood's
nag to see Dan Treffry.  Every tree, bramble, and fern in the lanes
was dripping water; and every bird singing from the bottom of his
heart.  I thought of Pasiance all the time.  Her absence that day was
still a mystery; one never ceased asking oneself what she had done.
There are people who never grow up--they have no right to do things.
Actions have consequences--and children have no business with
consequences.

Dan was out.  I had supper at the hotel, and rode slowly home.  In
the twilight stretches of the road, where I could touch either bank
of the lane with my whip, I thought of nothing but Pasiance and her
grandfather; there was something in the half light suited to wonder
and uncertainty.  It had fallen dark before I rode into the straw-
yard.  Two young bullocks snuffled at me, a sleepy hen got up and ran
off with a tremendous shrieking.  I stabled the horse, and walked
round to the back.  It was pitch black under the apple-trees, and the
windows were all darkened.  I stood there a little, everything
smelled so delicious after the rain; suddenly I had the uncomfortable
feeling that I was being watched.  Have you ever felt like that on a
dark night?  I called out at last: "Is any one there?"  Not a sound!
I walked to the gate-nothing!  The trees still dripped with tiny,
soft, hissing sounds, but that was all.  I slipped round to the
front, went in, barricaded the door, and groped up to bed.  But I
couldn't sleep.  I lay awake a long while; dozed at last, and woke
with a jump.  A stealthy murmur of smothered voices was going on
quite close somewhere.  It stopped.  A minute passed; suddenly came
the soft thud as of something falling.  I sprang out of bed and
rushed to the window.  Nothing--but in the distance something that
sounded like footsteps.  An owl hooted; then clear as crystal, but
quite low, I heard Pasiance singing in her room:

"The apples are ripe and ready to fall.
Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall."

I ran to her door and knocked.

"What is it?" she cried.

"Is anything the matter?"

"Matter?"

"Is anything the matter?"

"Ha-ha-ha-ha!  Good-night!" then quite low, I heard her catch her
breath, hard, sharply.  No other answer, no other sound.

I went to bed and lay awake for hours....

This evening Dan came; during supper he handed Pasiance a roll of
music; he had got it in Torquay.  The shopman, he said, had told him
that it was a "corker."

It was Bach's "Chaconne."  You should have seen her eyes shine, her
fingers actually tremble while she turned over the pages.  Seems odd
to think of her worshipping at the shrine of Bach as odd as to think
of a wild colt running of its free will into the shafts; but that's
just it with her you can never tell.  "Heavenly!" she kept saying.

John Ford put down his knife and fork.

"Heathenish stuff!" he muttered, and suddenly thundered out,
"Pasiance!"

She looked up with a start, threw the music from her, and resumed her
place.

During evening prayers, which follow every night immediately on food,
her face was a study of mutiny.  She went to bed early.  It was
rather late when we broke up--for once old Ford had been talking of
his squatter's life.  As we came out, Dan held up his hand.  A dog
was barking.  "It's Lass," he said.  "She'll wake Pasiance."

The spaniel yelped furiously.  Dan ran out to stop her.  He was soon
back.

"Somebody's been in the orchard, and gone off down to the cove."  He
ran on down the path.  I, too, ran, horribly uneasy.  In front,
through the darkness, came the spaniel's bark; the lights of the
coastguard station faintly showed.  I was first on the beach; the dog
came to me at once, her tail almost in her mouth from apology.  There
was the sound of oars working in rowlocks; nothing visible but the
feathery edges of the waves.  Dan said behind, "No use!  He's gone."
His voice sounded hoarse, like that of a man choking with passion.

"George," he stammered, "it's that blackguard.  I wish I'd put a
bullet in him."  Suddenly a light burned up in the darkness on the
sea, seemed to swing gently, and vanished.  Without another word we
went back up the hill.  John Ford stood at the gate motionless,
indifferent--nothing had dawned on him as yet.  I whispered to Dan,
"Let it alone!"

"No," he said, "I'm going to show you."  He struck a match, and
slowly hunted the footsteps in the wet grass of the orchard.  "Look--
here!"

He stopped under Pasiance's window and swayed the match over the
ground.  Clear as daylight were the marks of some one who had jumped
or fallen.  Dan held the match over his head.

"And look there!" he said.  The bough of an apple-tree below the
window was broken.  He blew the match out.

I could see the whites of his eyes, like an angry animal's.

"Drop it, Dan!" I said.

He turned on his heel suddenly, and stammered out, "You're right."

But he had turned into John Ford's arms.

The old man stood there like some great force, darker than the
darkness, staring up at the window, as though stupefied.  We had not
a word to say.  He seemed unconscious of our presence.  He turned
round, and left us standing there.

"Follow him!" said Dan.  "Follow him--by God! it's not safe."

We followed.  Bending, and treading heavily, he went upstairs.  He
struck a blow on Pasiance's door.  "Let me in!" he said.  I drew Dan
into my bedroom.  The key was slowly turned, her door was flung open,
and there she stood in her dressing-gown, a candle in her hand, her
face crimson, and oh! so young, with its short, crisp hair and round
cheeks.  The old man--like a giant in front of her--raised his hands,
and laid them on her shoulders.

"What's this?  You--you've had a man in your room?"

Her eyes did not drop.

"Yes," she said.  Dan gave a groan.

"Who?"

"Zachary Pearse," she answered in a voice like a bell.

He gave her one awful shake, dropped his hands, then raised them as
though to strike her.  She looked him in the eyes; his hands dropped,
and he too groaned.  As far as I could see, her face never moved.

"I'm married to him," she said, "d' you hear?  Married to him.  Go
out of my room!"  She dropped the candle on the floor at his feet,
and slammed the door in his face.  The old man stood for a minute as
though stunned, then groped his way downstairs.

"Dan," I said, "is it true?"

"Ah!" he answered, "it's true; didn't you hear her?"

I was glad I couldn't see his face.

"That ends it," he said at last; "there's the old man to think of."

"What will he do?"

"Go to the fellow this very night."  He seemed to have no doubt.
Trust one man of action to know another.

I muttered something about being an outsider--wondered if there was
anything I could do to help.

"Well," he said slowly, "I don't know that I'm anything but an
outsider now; but I'll go along with him, if he'll have me."

He went downstairs.  A few minutes later they rode out from the
straw-yard.  I watched them past the line of hayricks, into the
blacker shadows of the pines, then the tramp of hoofs began to fail
in the darkness, and at last died away.

I've been sitting here in my bedroom writing to you ever since, till
my candle's almost gone.  I keep thinking what the end of it is to
be; and reproaching myself for doing nothing.  And yet, what could I
have done?  I'm sorry for her--sorrier than I can say.  The night is
so quiet--I haven't heard a sound; is she asleep, awake, crying,
triumphant?

It's four o'clock; I've been asleep.

They're back.  Dan is lying on my bed.  I'll try and tell you his
story as near as I can, in his own words.

"We rode," he said, "round the upper way, keeping out of the lanes,
and got to Kingswear by half-past eleven.  The horse-ferry had
stopped running, and we had a job to find any one to put us over.  We
hired the fellow to wait for us, and took a carriage at the 'Castle.'
Before we got to Black Mill it was nearly one, pitch-dark.  With the
breeze from the southeast, I made out he should have been in an hour
or more.  The old man had never spoken to me once: and before we got
there I had begun to hope we shouldn't find the fellow after all.  We
made the driver pull up in the road, and walked round and round,
trying to find the door.  Then some one cried, 'Who are you ?'

"'John Ford.'

"'What do you want?' It was old Pearse.

"'To see Zachary Pearse.'

"The long window out of the porch where we sat the other day was
open, and in we went.  There was a door at the end of the room, and a
light coming through.  John Ford went towards it; I stayed out in the
dark.

"'Who's that with you?'

"'Mr. Treffry.'

"'Let him come in!' I went in.  The old fellow was in bed, quite
still on his pillows, a candle by his side; to look at him you'd
think nothing of him but his eyes were alive.  It was queer being
there with those two old men!"

Dan paused, seemed to listen, then went on doggedly.

"'Sit down, gentleman,' said old Pearse.  'What may you want to see
my son for?'  John Ford begged his pardon, he had something to say,
he said, that wouldn't wait.

"They were very polite to one another," muttered Dan ....

"'Will you leave your message with me?' said Pearse.

"'What I have to say to your son is private.'

"'I'm his father.'

"'I'm my girl's grandfather; and her only stand-by.'

"'Ah!' muttered old Pearse, 'Rick Voisey's daughter?'

"'I mean to see your son.'

"Old Pearse smiled.  Queer smile he's got, sort of sneering sweet.

"'You can never tell where Zack may be,' he said.  'You think I want
to shield him.  You're wrong; Zack can take care of himself.'

"'Your son's here!' said John Ford.  'I know.'  Old Pearse gave us a
very queer look.

"'You come into my house like thieves in the night,' he said, 'and
give me the lie, do you?'

"'Your son came to my child's room like a thief in the night; it's
for that I want to see him,' and then," said Dan, "there was a long
silence.  At last Pearse said:

"'I don't understand; has he played the blackguard?'

"John Ford answered, 'He's married her, or, before God, I'd kill
him.'

"Old Pearse seemed to think this over, never moving on his pillows.
'You don't know Zack,' he said; 'I'm sorry for you, and I'm sorry for
Rick Voisey's daughter; but you don't know Zack.'

'Sorry!' groaned out John Ford; 'he's stolen my child, and I'll
punish him.'

"'Punish!' cried old Pearse, 'we don't take punishment, not in my
family.'

"'Captain Jan Pearse, as sure as I stand here, you and your breed
will get your punishment of God.'  Old Pearse smiled.

"'Mr. John Ford, that's as may be; but sure as I lie here we won't
take it of you.  You can't punish unless you make to feel, and that
you can't du.'"

And that is truth!

Dan went on again:

"'You won't tell me where your son is!' but old Pearse never blinked.

"'I won't,' he said, 'and now you may get out.  I lie here an old man
alone, with no use to my legs, night on night, an' the house open;
any rapscallion could get in; d' ye think I'm afraid of you?'

"We were beat; and walked out without a word.  But that old man; I've
thought of him a lot--ninety-two, and lying there.  Whatever he's
been, and they tell you rum things of him, whatever his son may be,
he's a man.  It's not what he said, nor that there was anything to be
afraid of just then, but somehow it's the idea of the old chap lying
there.  I don't ever wish to see a better plucked one...."

We sat silent after that; out of doors the light began to stir among
the leaves.  There were all kinds of rustling sounds, as if the world
were turning over in bed.

Suddenly Dan said:

"He's cheated me.  I paid him to clear out and leave her alone.
D' you think she's asleep?"  He's made no appeal for sympathy, he'd
take pity for an insult; but he feels it badly.

"I'm tired as a cat," he said at last, and went to sleep on my bed.

It's broad daylight now; I too am tired as a cat....




V

"Saturday, 6tb August .

.......I take up my tale where I left off yesterday....  Dan and I
started as soon as we could get Mrs. Hopgood to give us coffee.  The
old lady was more tentative, more undecided, more pouncing, than I
had ever seen her.  She was manifestly uneasy: Ha-apgood--who "don't
slape "don't he, if snores are any criterion--had called out in the
night, "Hark to th' 'arses' 'oofs!"  Had we heard them?  And where
might we be going then?  'Twas very earrly to start, an' no
breakfast.  Haapgood had said it was goin' to shaowerr.  Miss
Pasiance was not to 'er violin yet, an' Mister Ford 'e kept 'is room.
Was it?--would there be--?  "Well, an' therr's an 'arvest bug; 'tis
some earrly for they!"  Wonderful how she pounces on all such
creatures, when I can't even see them.  She pressed it absently
between finger and thumb, and began manoeuvring round another way.
Long before she had reached her point, we had gulped down our coffee,
and departed.  But as we rode out she came at a run, holding her
skirts high with either hand, raised her old eyes bright and anxious
in their setting of fine wrinkles, and said:

"'Tidden sorrow for her?"

A shrug of the shoulders was all the answer she got.  We rode by the
lanes; through sloping farmyards, all mud and pigs, and dirty straw,
and farmers with clean-shaven upper lips and whiskers under the chin;
past fields of corn, where larks were singing.  Up or down, we didn't
draw rein till we came to Dan's hotel.

There was the river gleaming before us under a rainbow mist that
hallowed every shape.  There seemed affinity between the earth and
the sky.  I've never seen that particular soft unity out of Devon.
And every ship, however black or modern, on those pale waters, had
the look of a dream ship.  The tall green woods, the red earth, the
white houses, were all melted into one opal haze.  It was raining,
but the sun was shining behind.  Gulls swooped by us--ghosts of the
old greedy wanderers of the sea.

We had told our two boatmen to pull us out to the Pied Witcb!  They
started with great resolution, then rested on their oars.

"The Pied Witch, zurr?" asked one politely; "an' which may her be?"

That's the West countryman all over!  Never say you "nay," never lose
an opportunity, never own he doesn't know, or can't do anything--
independence, amiability, and an eye to the main chance.  We
mentioned Pearse's name.

"Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse!"  They exchanged a look half-amused, half-
admiring.

"The Zunflaower, yu mane.  That's her.  Zunflaower, ahoy!"  As we
mounted the steamer's black side I heard one say:

"Pied Witch!  A pra-aper name that--a dandy name for her!"  They
laughed as they made fast.

The mate of the Sunflower, or Pied Witcb, or whatever she was called,
met us--a tall young fellow in his shirtsleeves, tanned to the roots
of his hair, with sinewy, tattooed arms, and grey eyes, charred round
the rims from staring at weather.

"The skipper is on board," he said.  "We're rather busy, as you see.
Get on with that, you sea-cooks," he bawled at two fellows who were
doing nothing.  All over the ship, men were hauling, splicing, and
stowing cargo.

"To-day's Friday: we're off on Wednesday with any luck.  Will you
come this way?"  He led us down the companion to a dark hole which he
called the saloon.  "Names?  What! are you Mr. Treffry?  Then we're
partners!"  A schoolboy's glee came on his face.

"Look here!" he said; "I can show you something," and he unlocked the
door of a cabin.  There appeared to be nothing in it but a huge piece
of tarpaulin, which depended, bulging, from the topmost bunk.  He
pulled it up.  The lower bunk had been removed, and in its place was
the ugly body of a dismounted Gatling gun.

"Got six of them," he whispered, with unholy mystery, through which
his native frankness gaped out.  "Worth their weight in gold out
there just now, the skipper says.  Got a heap of rifles, too, and
lots of ammunition.  He's given me a share.  This is better than the
P. and O., and playing deck cricket with the passengers.  I'd made up
my mind already to chuck that, and go in for plantin' sugar, when I
ran across the skipper.  Wonderful chap, the skipper!  I'll go and
tell him.  He's been out all night; only came aboard at four bells;
having a nap now, but he won't mind that for you."

Off he went.  I wondered what there was in Zachary Pearse to attract
a youngster of this sort; one of the customary twelve children of
some country parson, no doubt-burning to shoot a few niggers, and for
ever frank and youthful.

He came back with his hands full of bottles.

"What'll you drink?  The skipper'll be here in a jiffy.  Excuse my
goin' on deck.  We're so busy."

And in five minutes Zachary Pearse did come.  He made no attempt to
shake hands, for which I respected him.  His face looked worn, and
more defiant than usual.

"Well, gentlemen?" he said.

"We've come to ask what you're going to do?" said Dan.

"I don't know," answered Pearse, "that that's any of your business."

Dan's little eyes were like the eyes of an angry pig.

"You've got five hundred pounds of mine," he said; "why do you think
I gave it you?"

Zachary bit his fingers.

"That's no concern of mine," he said.  "I sail on Wednesday.  Your
money's safe."

"Do you know what I think of you?" said Dan.

"No, and you'd better not tell me!"  Then, with one of his peculiar
changes, he smiled: "As you like, though."

Dan's face grew very dark.  "Give me a plain answer," he said: "What
are you going to do about her?"

Zachary looked up at him from under his brows.

"Nothing."

"Are you cur enough to deny that you've married her?"

Zachary looked at him coolly.  "Not at all," he said.

"What in God's name did you do it for?"

"You've no monopoly in the post of husband, Mr.  Treffry."

"To put a child in that positionD!  Haven't you the heart of a man?
What d' ye come sneaking in at night for?  By Gad!  Don't you know
you've done a beastly thing?"

Zachary's face darkened, he clenched his fists.  Then he seemed to
shut his anger into himself.

"You wanted me to leave her to you," he sneered.  "I gave her my
promise that I'd take her out there, and we'd have gone off on
Wednesday quietly enough, if you hadn't come and nosed the whole
thing out with your infernal dog.  The fat's in the fire!  There's no
reason why I should take her now.  I'll come back to her a rich man,
or not at all."

"And in the meantime?" I slipped in.

He turned to me, in an ingratiating way.

"I would have taken her to save the fuss--I really would--it's not my
fault the thing's come out.  I'm on a risky job.  To have her with me
might ruin the whole thing; it would affect my nerve.  It isn't safe
for her."

"And what's her position to be," I said, "while you're away?  Do you
think she'd have married you if she'd known you were going to leave
her like this?  You ought to give up this business.

You stole her.  Her life's in your hands; she's only a child!"

A quiver passed over his face; it showed that he was suffering.

"Give it up!" I urged.

"My last farthing's in it," he sighed; "the chance of a lifetime."

He looked at me doubtfully, appealingly, as if for the first time in
his life he had been given a glimpse of that dilemma of consequences
which his nature never recognises.  I thought he was going to give
in.  Suddenly, to my horror, Dan growled, "Play the man!"

Pearse turned his head.  "I don't want your advice anyway," he said;
"I'll not be dictated to."

"To your last day," said Dan, "you shall answer to me for the way you
treat her."

Zachary smiled.

"Do you see that fly?" he said.  "Wel--I care for you as little as
this," and he flicked the fly off his white trousers.  "Good-
morning...!"

The noble mariners who manned our boat pulled lustily for the shore,
but we had hardly shoved off' when a storm of rain burst over the
ship, and she seemed to vanish, leaving a picture on my eyes of the
mate waving his cap above the rail, with his tanned young face bent
down at us, smiling, keen, and friendly.

...... We reached the shore drenched, angry with ourselves, and with
each other; I started sulkily for home.

As I rode past an orchard, an apple, loosened by the rainstorm, came
down with a thud.

"The apples were ripe and ready to fall,
Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall."

I made up my mind to pack, and go away.  But there's a strangeness, a
sort of haunting fascination in it all.  To you, who don't know the
people, it may only seem a piece of rather sordid folly.  But it
isn't the good, the obvious, the useful that puts a spell on us in
life.  It's the bizarre, the dimly seen, the mysterious for good or
evil.

The sun was out again when I rode up to the farm; its yellow thatch
shone through the trees as if sheltering a store of gladness and good
news.  John Ford himself opened the door to me.

He began with an apology, which made me feel more than ever an
intruder; then he said:

"I have not spoken to my granddaughter--I waited to see Dan Treffry."

He was stern and sad-eyed, like a man with a great weight of grief on
his shoulders.  He looked as if he had not slept; his dress was out
of order, he had not taken his clothes off, I think.  He isn't a man
whom you can pity.  I felt I had taken a liberty in knowing of the
matter at all.  When I told him where we had been, he said:

"It was good of you to take this trouble.  That you should have had
to!  But since such things have come to pass--" He made a gesture
full of horror.  He gave one the impression of a man whose pride was
struggling against a mortal hurt.  Presently he asked:

"You saw him, you say?  He admitted this marriage?  Did he give an
explanation?"

I tried to make Pearse's point of view clear.  Before this old man,
with his inflexible will and sense of duty, I felt as if I held a
brief for Zachary, and must try to do him justice.

"Let me understand," he said at last.  "He stole her, you say, to
make sure; and deserts her within a fortnight."

"He says he meant to take her--"

"Do you believe that?"

Before I could answer, I saw Pasiance standing at the window.  How
long she had been there I don't know.

"Is it true that he is going to leave me behind?" she cried out.

I could only nod.

"Did you hear him your own self?"

"Yes."

She stamped her foot.

"But he promised! He promised!"

John Ford went towards her.

"Don't touch me, grandfather!  I hate every one!  Let him do what he
likes, I don't care."

John Ford's face turned quite grey.

"Pasiance," he said, "did you want to leave me so much?"

She looked straight at us, and said sharply:

"What's the good of telling stories.  I can't help its hurting you."

"What did you think you would find away from here?"

She laughed.

"Find?  I don't know--nothing; I wouldn't be stifled anyway.  Now I
suppose you'll shut me up because I'm a weak girl, not strong like
men!"

"Silence!" said John Ford; "I will make him take you."

"You shan't!" she cried; "I won't let you.  He's free to do as he
likes.  He's free--I tell you all, everybody--free!"

She ran through the window, and vanished.

John Ford made a movement as if the bottom had dropped out of his
world.  I left him there.

I went to the kitchen, where Hopgood was sitting at the table, eating
bread and cheese.  He got up on seeing me, and very kindly brought me
some cold bacon and a pint of ale.

"I thart I shude be seeing yu, zurr," he said between his bites;
"Therr's no thart to 'atin' 'bout the 'ouse to-day.  The old wumman's
puzzivantin' over Miss Pasiance.  Young girls are skeery critters"--
he brushed his sleeve over his broad, hard jaws, and filled a pipe
"specially when it's in the blood of 'em.  Squire Rick Voisey werr a
dandy; an' Mistress Voisey--well, she werr a nice lady tu, but"--
rolling the stem of his pipe from corner to corner of his mouth--"she
werr a pra-aper vixen."

Hopgood's a good fellow, and I believe as soft as he looks hard, but
he's not quite the sort with whom one chooses to talk over a matter
like this.  I went upstairs, and began to pack, but after a bit
dropped it for a book, and somehow or other fell asleep.

I woke, and looked at my watch; it was five o'clock.  I had been
asleep four hours.  A single sunbeam was slanting across from one of
my windows to the other, and there was the cool sound of milk
dropping into pails; then, all at once, a stir as of alarm, and heavy
footsteps.

I opened my door.  Hopgood and a coast-guardsman were carrying
Pasiance slowly up the stairs.  She lay in their arms without moving,
her face whiter than her dress, a scratch across the forehead, and
two or three drops there of dried blood.  Her hands were clasped, and
she slowly crooked and stiffened out her fingers.  When they turned
with her at the stair top, she opened her lips, and gasped, "All
right, don't put me down.  I can bear it."  They passed, and, with a
half-smile in her eyes, she said something to me that I couldn't
catch; the door was shut, and the excited whispering began again
below.  I waited for the men to come out, and caught hold of Hopgood.
He wiped the sweat off his forehead.

"Poor young thing!" he said.  "She fell--down the cliffs--'tis her
back--coastguard saw her 'twerr they fetched her in.  The Lord 'elp
her mebbe she's not broken up much!  An' Mister Ford don't know!  I'm
gwine for the doctor."

There was an hour or more to wait before he came; a young fellow;
almost a boy.  He looked very grave, when he came out of her room.

"The old woman there fond of her?  nurse her well...?  Fond as a
dog!--good!  Don't know--can't tell for certain!  Afraid it's the
spine, must have another opinion!  What a plucky girl!  Tell Mr. Ford
to have the best man he can get in Torquay--there's C---.  I'll be
round the first thing in the morning.  Keep her dead quiet.  I've
left a sleeping draught; she'll have fever tonight."

John Ford came in at last.  Poor old man!  What it must have cost him
not to go to her for fear of the excitement!  How many times in the
next few hours didn't I hear him come to the bottom of the stairs;
his heavy wheezing, and sighing; and the forlorn tread of his feet
going back!  About eleven, just as I was going to bed, Mrs. Hopgood
came to my door.

"Will yu come, sir," she said; "she's asking for yu.  Naowt I can zay
but what she will see yu; zeems crazy, don't it?"  A tear trickled
down the old lady's cheek.  "Du 'ee come; 'twill du 'err 'arm mebbe,
but I dunno--she'll fret else."

I slipped into the room.  Lying back on her pillows, she was
breathing quickly with half-closed eyes.  There was nothing to show
that she had wanted me, or even knew that I was there.  The wick of
the candle, set by the bedside, had been snuffed too short, and gave
but a faint light; both window and door stood open, still there was
no draught, and the feeble little flame burned quite still, casting a
faint yellow stain on the ceiling like the refection from a buttercup
held beneath a chin.  These ceilings are far too low!  Across the
wide, squat window the apple branches fell in black stripes which
never stirred.  It was too dark to see things clearly.  At the foot
of the bed was a chest, and there Mrs. Hopgood had sat down, moving
her lips as if in speech.  Mingled with the half-musty smell of age;
there were other scents, of mignonette, apples, and some sweet-
smelling soap.  The floor had no carpet, and there was not one single
dark object except the violin, hanging from a nail over the bed.  A
little, round clock ticked solemnly.

"Why won't you give me that stuff, Mums?" Pasiance said in a faint,
sharp voice.  "I want to sleep."

"Have you much pain?" I asked.

"Of course I have; it's everywhere."

She turned her face towards me.

"You thought I did it on purpose, but you're wrong.  If I had, I'd
have done it better than this.  I wouldn't have this brutal pain."
She put her fingers over her eyes.  "It's horrible to complain!  Only
it's so bad!  But I won't again--promise.

She took the sleeping draught gratefully, making a face, like a child
after a powder.

"How long do you think it'll be before I can play again?  Oh! I
forgot--there are other things to think about."  She held out her
hand to me.  "Look at my ring.  Married--isn't it funny?  Ha, ha!
Nobody will ever understand--that's funny too!  Poor Gran!  You see,
there wasn't any reason--only me.  That's the only reason I'm telling
you now; Mums is there--but she doesn't count; why don't you count,
Mums?"

The fever was fighting against the draught; she had tossed the
clothes back from her throat, and now and then raised one thin arm a
little, as if it eased her; her eyes had grown large, and innocent
like a child's; the candle, too, had flared, and was burning clearly.

"Nobody is to tell him--nobody at all; promise...!  If I hadn't
slipped, it would have been different.  What would have happened
then?  You can't tell; and I can't--that's funny!  Do you think I
loved him?  Nobody marries without love, do they?  Not quite without
love, I mean.  But you see I wanted to be free, he said he'd take me;
and now he's left me after all!  I won't be left, I can't!  When I
came to the cliff--that bit where the ivy grows right down--there was
just the sea there, underneath; so I thought I would throw myself
over and it would be all quiet; and I climbed on a ledge, it looked
easier from there, but it was so high, I wanted to get back; and then
my foot slipped; and now it's all pain.  You can't think much, when
you're in pain."

>From her eyes I saw that she was dropping off.

"Nobody can take you away from-yourself.  He's not to be told--not
even--I don't--want you--to go away, because--"But her eyes closed,
and she dropped off to sleep.

They don't seem to know this morning whether she is better or
worse....




VI

"Tuesday, 9th August.

It seems more like three weeks than three days since I wrote.  The
time passes slowly in a sickhouse...!  The doctors were here this
morning, they give her forty hours.  Not a word of complaint has
passed her lips since she knew.  To see her you would hardly think
her ill; her cheeks have not had time to waste or lose their colour.
There is not much pain, but a slow, creeping numbness....  It was
John Ford's wish that she should be told.  She just turned her head
to the wall and sighed; then to poor old Mrs. Hopgood, who was crying
her heart out: "Don't cry, Mums, I don't care."

When they had gone, she asked for her violin.  She made them hold it
for her, and drew the bow across the strings; but the notes that came
out were so trembling and uncertain that she dropped the bow and
broke into a passion of sobbing.  Since then, no complaint or moan of
any kind....

But to go back.  On Sunday, the day after I wrote, as I was coming
from a walk, I met a little boy making mournful sounds on a tin
whistle.

"Coom ahn!" he said, "the Miss wahnts t' zee yu."

I went to her room.  In the morning she had seemed better, but now
looked utterly exhausted.  She had a letter in her hand.

"It's this," she said.  "I don't seem to understand it.  He wants me
to do something--but I can't think, and my eyes feel funny.  Read it
to me, please."

The letter was from Zachary.  I read it to her in a low voice, for
Mrs. Hopgood was in the room, her eyes always fixed on Pasiance above
her knitting.  When I'd finished, she made me read it again, and yet
again.  At first she seemed pleased, almost excited, then came a
weary, scornful look, and before I'd finished the third time she was
asleep.  It was a remarkable letter, that seemed to bring the man
right before one's eyes.  I slipped it under her fingers on the bed-
clothes, and went out.  Fancy took me to the cliff where she had
fallen.  I found the point of rock where the cascade of ivy flows
down the cliff; the ledge on which she had climbed was a little to my
right--a mad place.  It showed plainly what wild emotions must have
been driving her!  Behind was a half-cut cornfield with a fringe of
poppies, and swarms of harvest insects creeping and flying; in the
uncut corn a landrail kept up a continual charring.  The sky was blue
to the very horizon, and the sea wonderful, under that black wild
cliff stained here and there with red.  Over the dips and hollows of
the fields great white clouds hung low down above the land.  There
are no brassy, east-coast skies here; but always sleepy, soft-shaped
clouds, full of subtle stir and change.  Passages of Zachary's
Pearse's letter kept rising to my lips.  After all he's the man that
his native place, and life, and blood have made him.  It is useless
to expect idealists where the air is soft and things good to look on
(the idealist grows where he must create beauty or comfort for
himself); useless to expect a man of law and order, in one whose
fathers have stared at the sea day and night for a thousand years--
the sea, full of its promises of unknown things, never quite the
same, a slave to its own impulses.  Man is an imitative animal....

"Life's hard enough," he wrote, "without tying yourself down.  Don't
think too hardly of me!  Shall I make you happier by taking you into
danger?  If I succeed you'll be a rich woman; but I shall fail if
you're with me.  To look at you makes me soft.  At sea a man dreams
of all the good things on land, he'll dream of the heather, and
honey--you're like that; and he'll dream of the apple-trees, and the
grass of the orchards--you're like that; sometimes he only lies on
his back and wishes--and you're like that, most of all like that...."

When I was reading those words I remember a strange, soft, half-
scornful look came over Pasiance's face; and once she said, "But
that's all nonsense, isn't it...?"

Then followed a long passage about what he would gain if he
succeeded, about all that he was risking, the impossibility of
failure, if he kept his wits about him.  "It's only a matter of two
months or so," he went on; "stay where you are, dear, or go to my
Dad.  He'll be glad to have you.  There's my mother's room.  There's
no one to say 'No' to your fiddle there; you can play it by the sea;
and on dark nights you'll have the stars dancing to you over the
water as thick as bees.  I've looked at them often, thinking of
you...."

Pasiance had whispered to me, "Don't read that bit," and afterwards I
left it out....  Then the sensuous side of him shows up: "When I've
brought this off, there's the whole world before us.  There are
places I can take you to.  There's one I know, not too warm and not
too cold, where you can sit all day in the shade and watch the
creepers, and the cocoa-palms, still as still; nothing to do or care
about; all the fruits you can think of; no noise but the parrots and
the streams, and a splash when a nigger dives into a water-hole.
Pasiance, we'll go there!  With an eighty-ton craft there's no sea we
couldn't know.  The world's a fine place for those who go out to take
it; there's lots of unknown stuff' in it yet.  I'll fill your lap, my
pretty, so full of treasures that you shan't know yourself.  A man
wasn't meant to sit at home...."

Throughout this letter--for all its real passion--one could feel how
the man was holding to his purpose--the rather sordid purpose of this
venture.  He's unconscious of it; for he is in love with her; but he
must be furthering his own ends.  He is vital--horribly vital!  I
wonder less now that she should have yielded.

What visions hasn't he dangled before her.  There was physical
attraction, too--I haven't forgotten the look I saw on her face at
Black Mill.  But when all's said and done, she married him, because
she's Pasiance Voisey, who does things and wants "to get back."  And
she lies there dying; not he nor any other man will ever take her
away.  It's pitiful to think of him tingling with passion, writing
that letter to this doomed girl in that dark hole of a saloon.  "I've
wanted money," he wrote, "ever since I was a little chap sitting in
the fields among the cows....  I want it for you now, and I mean to
have it.  I've studied the thing two years; I know what I know....

The moment this is in the post I leave for London.  There are a
hundred things to look after still; I can't trust myself within reach
of you again till the anchor's weighed.  When I re-christened her the
Pied Witch, I thought of you--you witch to me...."

There followed a solemn entreaty to her to be on the path leading to
the cove at seven o'clock on Wednesday evening (that is, to-morrow)
when he would come ashore and bid her good-bye.  It was signed, "Your
loving husband, Zachary Pearse...."

I lay at the edge of that cornfield a long time; it was very
peaceful.  The church bells had begun to ring.  The long shadows came
stealing out from the sheaves; woodpigeons rose one by one, and
flapped off to roost; the western sky was streaked with red, and all
the downs and combe bathed in the last sunlight.  Perfect harvest
weather; but oppressively still, the stillness of suspense....

Life at the farm goes on as usual.  We have morning and evening
prayers.  John Ford reads them fiercely, as though he were on the eve
of a revolt against his God.  Morning and evening he visits her,
comes out wheezing heavily, and goes to his own room; I believe, to
pray.  Since this morning I haven't dared meet him.  He is a strong
old man--but this will break him up....




VII

"KINGSWEAR, Saturday, i3tb August.

It's over--I leave here to-morrow, and go abroad.

A quiet afternoon--not a breath up in the churchyard!  I was there
quite half an hour before they came.  Some red cows had strayed into
the adjoining orchard, and were rubbing their heads against the
railing.  While I stood there an old woman came and drove them away;
afterwards, she stooped and picked up the apples that had fallen
before their time.

"The apples are ripe and ready to fall,
Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall;
There came an old woman and gathered them all,
Oh! heigh-ho! and gathered them all."

......They brought Pasiance very simply--no hideous funeral
trappings, thank God--the farm hands carried her, and there was no
one there but John Ford, the Hopgoods, myself, and that young doctor.
They read the service over her grave.  I can hear John Ford's "Amen!"
now.  When it was over he walked away bareheaded in the sun, without
a word.  I went up there again this evening, and wandered amongst the
tombstones.  "Richard Voisey," "John, the son of Richard and
Constance Voisey," "Margery Voisey," so many generations of them in
that corner; then "Richard Voisey and Agnes his wife," and next to it
that new mound on which a sparrow was strutting and the shadows of
the apple-trees already hovering.

I will tell you the little left to tell....

On Wednesday afternoon she asked for me again.

"It's only till seven," she whispered.  "He's certain to come then.
But if I--were to die first--then tell him--I'm sorry for him.  They
keep saying: 'Don't talk--don't talk!' Isn't it stupid?  As if I
should have any other chance!  There'll be no more talking after to-
night!  Make everybody come, please--I want to see them all.  When
you're dying you're freer than any other time--nobody wants you to do
things, nobody cares what you say....  He promised me I should do
what I liked if I married him--I never believed that really--but now
I can do what I like; and say all the things I want to."  She lay
back silent; she could not after all speak the inmost thoughts that
are in each of us, so sacred that they melt away at the approach of
words.

I shall remember her like that--with the gleam of a smile in her
half-closed eyes, her red lips parted--such a quaint look of mockery,
pleasure, regret, on her little round, upturned face; the room white,
and fresh with flowers, the breeze guttering the apple-leaves against
the window.  In the night they had unhooked the violin and taken it
away; she had not missed it....  When Dan came, I gave up my place to
him.  He took her hand gently in his great paw, without speaking.

"How small my hand looks there," she said, "too small."  Dan put it
softly back on the bedclothes and wiped his forehead.  Pasiance cried
in a sharp whisper: "Is it so hot in here?  I didn't know."  Dan bent
down, put his lips to her fingers and left the room.

The afternoon was long, the longest I've ever spent.  Sometimes she
seemed to sleep, sometimes whispered to herself about her mother, her
grandfather, the garden, or her cats--all sorts of inconsequent,
trivial, even ludicrous memories seemed to throng her mind--never
once, I think, did she speak of Zachary, but, now and then, she asked
the time....  Each hour she grew visibly weaker.  John Ford sat by
her without moving, his heavy breathing was often the only sound;
sometimes she rubbed her fingers on his hand, without speaking.  It
was a summary of their lives together.  Once he prayed aloud for her
in a hoarse voice; then her pitiful, impatient eyes signed to me.

"Quick," she whispered, "I want him; it's all so--cold."

I went out and ran down the path towards the cove.

Leaning on a gate stood Zachary, an hour before his time; dressed in
the same old blue clothes and leather-peaked cap as on the day when I
saw him first.  He knew nothing of what had happened.  But at a
quarter of the truth, I'm sure he divined the whole, though he would
not admit it to himself.  He kept saying, "It can't be.  She'll be
well in a few days--a sprain! D' you think the sea-voyage....  Is she
strong enough to be moved now at once?"

It was painful to see his face, so twisted by the struggle between
his instinct and his vitality.  The sweat poured down his forehead.
He turned round as we walked up the path, and pointed out to sea.
There was his steamer.  "I could get her on board in no time.
Impossible!  What is it, then?  Spine?  Good God!  The doctors....
Sometimes they'll do wonders!"  It was pitiful to see his efforts to
blind himself to the reality.

"It can't be, she's too young.  We're walking very slow."  I told him
she was dying.

For a second I thought he was going to run away.  Then he jerked up
his head, and rushed on towards the house.  At the foot of the
staircase he gripped me by the shoulder.

"It's not true!" he said; "she'll get better now I'm here.  I'll
stay.  Let everything go.  I'll stay."

"Now's the time," I said, "to show you loved her.  Pull yourself
together, man!"  He shook all over.

"Yes!" was all he answered.  We went into her room.  It seemed
impossible she was going to die; the colour was bright in her cheeks,
her lips trembling and pouted as if she had just been kissed, her
eyes gleaming, her hair so dark and crisp, her face so young....

Half an hour later I stole to the open door of her room.  She was
still and white as the sheets of her bed.  John Ford stood at the
foot; and, bowed to the level of the pillows, his head on his
clenched fists, sat Zachary.  It was utterly quiet.  The guttering of
the leaves had ceased.  When things have come to a crisis, how little
one feels--no fear, no pity, no sorrow, rather the sense, as when a
play is over, of anxiety to get away!

Suddenly Zachary rose, brushed past me without seeing, and ran
downstairs.

Some hours later I went out on the path leading to the cove.  It was
pitch-black; the riding light of the Pied Witch was still there,
looking no bigger than a firefly.  Then from in front I heard
sobbing--a man's sobs; no sound is quite so dreadful.  Zachary Pearse
got up out of the bank not ten paces off.

I had no heart to go after him, and sat down in the hedge.  There was
something subtly akin to her in the fresh darkness of the young
night; the soft bank, the scent of honeysuckle, the touch of the
ferns and brambles.  Death comes to all of us, and when it's over
it's over; but this blind business--of those left behind

A little later the ship whistled twice; her starboard light gleamed
faintly--and that was all....




VIII

"TORQUAY, 30th October .

....Do you remember the letters I wrote you from Moor Farm nearly
three years ago?  To-day I rode over there.  I stopped at Brixham on
the way for lunch, and walked down to the quay.  There had been a
shower--but the sun was out again, shining on the sea, the brown-red
sails, and the rampart of slate roofs.

A trawler was lying there, which had evidently been in a collision.
The spiky-bearded, thin-lipped fellow in torn blue jersey and sea-
boots who was superintending the repairs, said to me a little
proudly:

"Bane in collision, zurr; like to zee over her?"  Then suddenly
screwing up his little blue eyes, he added:

"Why, I remembers yu.  Steered yu along o' the young lady in this yer
very craft."

It was Prawle, Zachary Pearse's henchman.

"Yes," he went on, "that's the cutter."

"And Captain Pearse?"

He leant his back against the quay, and spat.  "He was a pra-aper
man; I never zane none like 'en."

"Did you do any good out there?"

Prawle gave me a sharp glance.

"Gude?  No, t'was arrm we done, vrom ztart to finish--had trouble all
the time.  What a man cude du, the skipper did.  When yu caan't du
right, zome calls it 'Providence'!  'Tis all my eye an' Betty Martin!
What I zay es, 'tis these times, there's such a dale o' folk, a dale
of puzzivantin' fellers; the world's to small."

With these words there flashed across me a vision of Drake crushed
into our modern life by the shrinkage of the world; Drake caught in
the meshes of red tape, electric wires, and all the lofty appliances
of our civilization.  Does a type survive its age; live on into times
that have no room for it?  The blood is there--and sometimes there's
a throw-back....  All fancy!  Eh?

"So," I said, "you failed?"

Prawle wriggled.

"I wudden' goo for to zay that, zurr--'tis an ugly word.  Da-am!" he
added, staring at his boots, "'twas thru me tu.  We were along among
the haythen, and I mus' nades goo for to break me leg.  The capt'n he
wudden' lave me.  'One Devon man,' he says to me, 'don' lave
anotherr.'  We werr six days where we shuld ha' been tu; when we got
back to the ship a cruiser had got her for gun-runnin'."

"And what has become of Captain Pearse?"

Prawle answered, "Zurr, I belave 'e went to China, 'tis onsartin."

"He's not dead?"

Prawle looked at me with a kind of uneasy anger.

"Yu cudden' kell 'en!  'Tis true, mun 'll die zome day.  But therr's
not a one that'll show better zport than Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse."

I believe that; he will be hard to kill.  The vision of him comes up,
with his perfect balance, defiant eyes, and sweetish smile; the way
the hair of his beard crisped a little, and got blacker on the
cheeks; the sort of desperate feeling he gave, that one would never
get the better of him, that he would never get the better of himself.

I took leave of Prawle and half a crown.  Before I was off the quay I
heard him saying to a lady, "Bane in collision, marm!  Like to zee
over her?"

After lunch I rode on to Moor.  The old place looked much the same;
but the apple-trees were stripped of fruit, and their leaves
beginning to go yellow and fall.  One of Pasiance's cats passed me in
the orchard hunting a bird, still with a ribbon round its neck.  John
Ford showed me all his latest improvements, but never by word or sign
alluded to the past.  He inquired after Dan, back in New Zealand now,
without much interest; his stubbly beard and hair have whitened; he
has grown very stout, and I noticed that his legs are not well under
control; he often stops to lean on his stick.  He was very ill last
winter; and sometimes, they say, will go straight off to sleep in the
middle of a sentence.

I managed to get a few minutes with the Hopgoods.  We talked of
Pasiance sitting in the kitchen under a row of plates, with that
clinging smell of wood-smoke, bacon, and age bringing up memories, as
nothing but scents can.  The dear old lady's hair, drawn so nicely
down her forehead on each side from the centre of her cap, has a few
thin silver lines; and her face is a thought more wrinkled.  The
tears still come into her eyes when she talks of her "lamb."

Of Zachary I heard nothing, but she told me of old Pearse's death.

"Therr they found 'en, zo to spake, dead--in th' sun; but Ha-apgood
can tell yu," and Hopgood, ever rolling his pipe, muttered something,
and smiled his wooden smile.

He came to see me off from the straw-yard.  "'Tis like death to the
varrm, zurr," he said, putting all the play of his vast shoulders
into the buckling of my girths.  "Mister Ford--well!  And not one of
th' old stock to take it when 'e's garn....  Ah! it werr cruel; my
old woman's never been hersel' since.  Tell 'ee what 'tis--don't du
t' think to much."

I went out of my way to pass the churchyard.  There were flowers,
quite fresh, chrysanthemums, and asters; above them the white stone,
already stained:

        "PASIANCE

        WIFE OF ZACHARY PEARSE

        'The Lord hatb given, and the Lord hatb taken away."'

The red cows were there too; the sky full of great white clouds, some
birds whistling a little mournfully, and in the air the scent of
fallen leaves....

May, 1900.






A KNIGHT



TO

MY MOTHER




A KNIGHT




I

At Monte Carlo, in the spring of the year 189-, I used to notice an
old fellow in a grey suit and sunburnt straw hat with a black ribbon.
Every morning at eleven o'clock, he would come down to the Place,
followed by a brindled German boarhound, walk once or twice round it,
and seat himself on a bench facing the casino.  There he would remain
in the sun, with his straw hat tilted forward, his thin legs apart,
his brown hands crossed between them, and the dog's nose resting on
his knee.  After an hour or more he would get up, and, stooping a
little from the waist, walk slowly round the Place and return up
hill.  Just before three, he would come down again in the same
clothes and go into the casino, leaving the dog outside.

One afternoon, moved by curiosity, I followed him.  He passed through
the hall without looking at the gambling-rooms, and went into the
concert.  It became my habit after that to watch for him.  When he
sat in the Place I could see him from the window of my room.  The
chief puzzle to me was the matter of his nationality.

His lean, short face had a skin so burnt that it looked like leather;
his jaw was long and prominent, his chin pointed, and he had hollows
in his cheeks.  There were wrinkles across his forehead; his eyes
were brown; and little white moustaches were brushed up from the
corners of his lips.  The back of his head bulged out above the lines
of his lean neck and high, sharp shoulders; his grey hair was cropped
quite close.  In the Marseilles buffet, on the journey out, I had met
an Englishman, almost his counterpart in features--but somehow very
different!  This old fellow had nothing of the other's alert,
autocratic self-sufficiency.  He was quiet and undemonstrative,
without looking, as it were, insulated against shocks and foreign
substances.  He was certainly no Frenchman.  His eyes, indeed, were
brown, but hazel-brown, and gentle--not the red-brown sensual eye of
the Frenchman.  An American?  But was ever an American so passive?  A
German?  His moustache was certainly brushed up, but in a modest,
almost pathetic way, not in the least Teutonic.  Nothing seemed to
fit him.  I gave him up, and named him "the Cosmopolitan."

Leaving at the end of April, I forgot him altogether.  In the same
month, however, of the following year I was again at Monte Carlo, and
going one day to the concert found myself seated next this same old
fellow.  The orchestra was playing Meyerbeer's "Prophete," and my
neighbour was asleep, snoring softly.  He was dressed in the same
grey suit, with the same straw hat (or one exactly like it) on his
knees, and his hands crossed above it.  Sleep had not disfigured
him -his little white moustache was still brushed up, his lips
closed; a very good and gentle expression hovered on his face.  A
curved mark showed on his right temple, the scar of a cut on the side
of his neck, and his left hand was covered by an old glove, the
little forger of which was empty.  He woke up when the march was over
and brisked up his moustache.

The next thing on the programme was a little thing by Poise from Le
joli Gilles, played by Mons. Corsanego on the violin.  Happening to
glance at my old neighbour, I saw a tear caught in the hollow of his
cheek, and another just leaving the corner of his eye; there was a
faint smile on his lips.  Then came an interval; and while orchestra
and audience were resting, I asked him if he were fond of music.  He
looked up without distrust, bowed, and answered in a thin, gentle
voice: "Certainly.  I know nothing about it, play no instrument,
could never sing a note; but fond of it!  Who would not be?"  His
English was correct enough, but with an emphasis not quite American
nor quite foreign.  I ventured to remark that he did not care for
Meyerbeer.  He smiled.

"Ah!" he said, "I was asleep?  Too bad of me.  He is a little noisy--
I know so little about music.  There is Bach, for instance.  Would
you believe it, he gives me no pleasure?  A great misfortune to be no
musician!"  He shook his head.

I murmured, "Bach is too elevating for you perhaps."

"To me," he answered, "any music I like is elevating.  People say
some music has a bad effect on them.  I never found any music that
gave me a bad thought--no--no--quite the opposite; only sometimes, as
you see, I go to sleep.  But what a lovely instrument the violin!"
A faint flush came on his parched cheeks.  "The human soul that has
left the body.  A curious thing, distant bugles at night have given
me the same feeling."  The orchestra was now coming back, and,
folding his hands, my neighbour turned his eyes towards them.  When
the concert was over we came out together.  Waiting at the entrance
was his dog.

"You have a beautiful dog!"

"Ah! yes.  Freda.  mia cara, da su mano!"  The dog squatted on her
haunches, and lifted her paw in the vague, bored way of big dogs when
requested to perform civilities.  She was a lovely creature--the
purest brindle, without a speck of white, and free from the
unbalanced look of most dogs of her breed.

"Basta! basta!"  He turned to me apologetically.  "We have agreed to
speak Italian; in that way I keep up the language; astonishing the
number of things that dog will understand!"  I was about to take my
leave, when he asked if I would walk a little way with him--"If you
are free, that is."  We went up the street with Freda on the far side
of her master.

"Do you never 'play' here?" I asked him.

"Play?  No.  It must be very interesting; most exciting, but as a
matter of fact, I can't afford it.  If one has very little, one is
too nervous."

He had stopped in front of a small hairdresser's shop.  "I live
here," he said, raising his hat again.  "Au revoir!--unless I can
offer you a glass of tea.  It's all ready.  Come! I've brought you
out of your way; give me the pleasure!"

I have never met a man so free from all self-consciousness, and yet
so delicate and diffident the combination is a rare one.  We went up
a steep staircase to a room on the second floor.  My companion threw
the shutters open, setting all the flies buzzing.  The top of a
plane-tree was on a level with the window, and all its little brown
balls were dancing, quite close, in the wind.  As he had promised, an
urn was hissing on a table; there was also a small brown teapot, some
sugar, slices of lemon, and glasses.  A bed, washstand, cupboard, tin
trunk, two chairs, and a small rug were all the furniture.  Above the
bed a sword in a leather sheath was suspended from two nails.  The
photograph of a girl stood on the closed stove.  My host went to the
cupboard and produced a bottle, a glass, and a second spoon.  When
the cork was drawn, the scent of rum escaped into the air.  He
sniffed at it and dropped a teaspoonful into both glasses.

"This is a trick I learned from the Russians after Plevna; they had
my little finger, so I deserved something in exchange."  He looked
round; his eyes, his whole face, seemed to twinkle.  "I assure you it
was worth it--makes all the difference.  Try!"  He poured off the
tea.

"Had you a sympathy with the Turks?"

"The weaker side--"  He paused abruptly, then added: "But it was not
that."  Over his face innumerable crow's-feet had suddenly appeared,
his eyes twitched; he went on hurriedly, "I had to find something to
do just then--it was necessary."  He stared into his glass; and it
was some time before I ventured to ask if he had seen much fighting.

"Yes," he replied gravely, "nearly twenty years altogether; I was one
of Garibaldi's Mille in '60."

"Surely you are not Italian?"

He leaned forward with his hands on his knees.  "I was in Genoa at
that time learning banking; Garibaldi was a wonderful man!  One could
not help it."  He spoke quite simply.  "You might say it was like
seeing a little man stand up to a ring of great hulking fellows; I
went, just as you would have gone, if you'd been there.  I was not
long with them--our war began; I had to go back home."  He said this
as if there had been but one war since the world began.  "In '60," he
mused, "till '65.  Just think of it!  The poor country.  Why, in my
State, South Carolina--I was through it all--nobody could be spared
there--we were one to three."

"I suppose you have a love of fighting?"

"H'm!" he said, as if considering the idea for the first time.
"Sometimes I fought for a living, and sometimes--because I was
obliged; one must try to be a gentleman.  But won't you have some
more?"

I refused more tea and took my leave, carrying away with me a picture
of the old fellow looking down from the top of the steep staircase,
one hand pressed to his back, the other twisting up those little
white moustaches, and murmuring, "Take care, my dear sir, there's a
step there at the corner."

"To be a gentleman!"  I repeated in the street, causing an old French
lady to drop her parasol, so that for about two minutes we stood
bowing and smiling to each other, then separated full of the best
feeling.




II

A week later I found myself again seated next him at a concert.  In
the meantime I had seen him now and then, but only in passing.  He
seemed depressed.  The corners of his lips were tightened, his tanned
cheeks had a greyish tinge, his eyes were restless; and, between two
numbers of the programme, he murmured, tapping his fingers on his
hat, "Do you ever have bad days?  Yes?  Not pleasant, are they?"

Then something occurred from which all that I have to tell you
followed.  There came into the concert-hall the heroine of one of
those romances, crimes, follies, or irregularities, call it what you
will, which had just attracted the "world's" stare.  She passed us
with her partner, and sat down in a chair a few rows to our right.
She kept turning her head round, and at every turn I caught the gleam
of her uneasy eyes.  Some one behind us said: "The brazen baggage!"

My companion turned full round, and glared at whoever it was who had
spoken.  The change in him was quite remarkable.  His lips were drawn
back from his teeth; he frowned; the scar on his temple had reddened.

"Ah!" he said to me.  "The hue and cry!  Contemptible!  How I hate
it!  But you wouldn't understand--! "he broke off, and slowly
regained his usual air of self-obliteration; he even seemed ashamed,
and began trying to brush his moustaches higher than ever, as if
aware that his heat had robbed them of neatness.

"I'm not myself, when I speak of such matters," he said suddenly; and
began reading his programme, holding it upside down.  A minute later,
however, he said in a peculiar voice: "There are people to be found
who object to vivisecting animals; but the vivisection of a woman,
who minds that?  Will you tell me it's right, that because of some
tragedy like this--believe me, it is always a tragedy--we should hunt
down a woman?  That her fellow-women should make an outcast of her?
That we, who are men, should make a prey of her?  If I thought
that...."  Again he broke off, staring very hard in front of him.
"It is we who make them what they are; and even if that is not so--
why! if I thought there was a woman in the world I could not take my
hat off to--I--I--couldn't sleep at night."  He got up from his seat,
put on his old straw hat with trembling fingers, and, without a
glance back, went out, stumbling over the chair-legs.

I sat there, horribly disturbed; the words, "One must try to be a
gentleman!" haunting me.  When I came out, he was standing by the
entrance with one hand on his hip and the other on his dog.  In that
attitude of waiting he was such a patient figure; the sun glared down
and showed the threadbare nature of his clothes and the thinness of
his brown hands, with their long forgers and nails yellow from
tobacco.  Seeing me he came up the steps again, and raised his hat.

"I am glad to have caught you; please forget all that."  I asked if
he would do me the honour of dining at my hotel.

"Dine?" he repeated with the sort of smile a child gives if you offer
him a box of soldiers; "with the greatest pleasure.  I seldom dine
out, but I think I can muster up a coat.  Yes--yes--and at what time
shall I come?  At half-past seven, and your hotel is--?  Good! I
shall be there.  Freda, mia cara, you will be alone this evening.
You do not smoke caporal, I fear.  I find it fairly good; though it
has too much bite."  He walked off with Freda, puffing at his thin
roll of caporal.

Once or twice he stopped, as if bewildered or beset by some sudden
doubt or memory; and every time he stopped, Freda licked his hand.
They disappeared round the corner of the street, and I went to my
hotel to see about dinner.  On the way I met Jules le Ferrier, and
asked him to come too.

"My faith, yes!" he said, with the rosy pessimism characteristic of
the French editor.  "Man must dine!"

At half-past six we assembled.  My "Cosmopolitan" was in an old
frock-coat braided round the edges, buttoned high and tight, defining
more than ever the sharp lines of his shoulders and the slight kink
of his back; he had brought with him, too, a dark-peaked cap of
military shape, which he had evidently selected as more fitting to
the coat than a straw hat.  He smelled slightly of some herb.

We sat down to dinner, and did not rise for two hours.  He was a
charming guest, praised everything he ate--not with commonplaces, but
in words that made you feel it had given him real pleasure.  At
first, whenever Jules made one of his caustic remarks, he looked
quite pained, but suddenly seemed to make up his mind that it was
bark, not bite; and then at each of them he would turn to me and say,
"Aha! that's good--isn't it?"  With every glass of wine he became
more gentle and more genial, sitting very upright, and tightly
buttoned-in; while the little white wings of his moustache seemed
about to leave him for a better world.

In spite of the most leading questions, however, we could not get him
to talk about himself, for even Jules, most cynical of men, had
recognised that he was a hero of romance.  He would answer gently and
precisely, and then sit twisting his moustaches, perfectly
unconscious that we wanted more.  Presently, as the wine went a
little to his head, his thin, high voice grew thinner, his cheeks
became flushed, his eyes brighter; at the end of dinner he said: "I
hope I have not been noisy."

We assured him that he had not been noisy enough.  "You're laughing
at me," he answered.  "Surely I've been talking all the time!"

"Mon Dieu!" said Jules, "we have been looking for some fables of your
wars; but nothing--nothing, not enough to feed a frog!"

The old fellow looked troubled.

"To be sure!" he mused.  "Let me think! there is that about Colhoun
at Gettysburg; and there's the story of Garibaldi and the Miller."
He plunged into a tale, not at all about himself, which would have
been extremely dull, but for the conviction in his eyes, and the way
he stopped and commented.  "So you see," he ended, "that's the sort
of man Garibaldi was!  I could tell you another tale of him."
Catching an introspective look in Jules's eye, however, I proposed
taking our cigars over to the cafe opposite.

"Delightful!" the old fellow said: "We shall have a band and the
fresh air, and clear consciences for our cigars.  I cannot like this
smoking in a room where there are ladies dining."

He walked out in front of us, smoking with an air of great enjoyment.
Jules, glowing above his candid shirt and waistcoat, whispered to me,
"Mon cher Georges, how he is good!" then sighed, and added darkly:
"The poor man!"

We sat down at a little table.  Close by, the branches of a plane-
tree rustled faintly; their leaves hung lifeless, speckled like the
breasts of birds, or black against the sky; then, caught by the
breeze, fluttered suddenly.

The old fellow sat, with head thrown back, a smile on his face,
coming now and then out of his enchanted dreams to drink coffee,
answer our questions, or hum the tune that the band was playing.  The
ash of his cigar grew very long.  One of those bizarre figures in
Oriental garb, who, night after night, offer their doubtful wares at
a great price, appeared in the white glare of a lamp, looked with a
furtive smile at his face, and glided back, discomfited by its
unconsciousness.  It was a night for dreams!  A faint, half-eastern
scent in the air, of black tobacco and spice; few people as yet at
the little tables, the waiters leisurely, the band soft!  What was he
dreaming of, that old fellow, whose cigar-ash grew so long?  Of
youth, of his battles, of those things that must be done by those who
try to be gentlemen; perhaps only of his dinner; anyway of something
gilded in vague fashion as the light was gilding the branches of the
plane-tree.

Jules pulled my sleeve: "He sleeps."  He had smilingly dropped off;
the cigar-ash--that feathery tower of his dreams--had broken and
fallen on his sleeve.  He awoke, and fell to dusting it.

The little tables round us began to fill.  One of the bandsmen played
a czardas on the czymbal.  Two young Frenchmen, talking loudly, sat
down at the adjoining table.  They were discussing the lady who had
been at the concert that afternoon.

"It's a bet," said one of them, "but there's the present man.  I take
three weeks, that's enough elle est declassee; ce n'est que le
premier pas--'

My old friend's cigar fell on the table.  "Monsieur," he stammered,
"you speak of a lady so, in a public place?"

The young man stared at him.  "Who is this person?" he said to his
companion.

My guest took up Jules's glove that lay on the table; before either
of us could raise a finger, he had swung it in the speaker's face.
"Enough!" he said, and, dropping the glove, walked away.

We all jumped to our feet.  I left Jules and hurried after him.  His
face was grim, his eyes those of a creature who has been struck on a
raw place.  He made a movement of his fingers which said plainly.
"Leave me, if you please!"

I went back to the cafe.  The two young men had disappeared, so had
Jules, but everything else was going on just as before; the bandsman
still twanging out his czardas; the waiters serving drinks; the
orientals trying to sell their carpets.  I paid the bill, sought out
the manager, and apologised.  He shrugged his shoulders, smiled and
said: "An eccentric, your friend, nicht wahr?"  Could he tell me
where M. Le Ferrier was?  He could not.  I left to look for Jules;
could not find him, and returned to my hotel disgusted.  I was sorry
for my old guest, but vexed with him too; what business had he to
carry his Quixotism to such an unpleasant length?  I tried to read.
Eleven o'clock struck; the casino disgorged a stream of people; the
Place seemed fuller of life than ever; then slowly it grew empty and
quite dark.  The whim seized me to go out.  It was a still night,
very warm, very black.  On one of the seats a man and woman sat
embraced, on another a girl was sobbing, on a third--strange sight--a
priest dozed.  I became aware of some one at my side; it was my old
guest.

"If you are not too tired," he said, "can you give me ten minutes?"

"Certainly; will you come in?"

"No, no; let us go down to the Terrace.  I shan't keep you long."

He did not speak again till we reached a seat above the pigeon-
shooting grounds; there, in a darkness denser for the string of
lights still burning in the town, we sat down.

"I owe you an apology," he said; "first in the afternoon, then again
this evening--your guest--your friend's glove!  I have behaved as no
gentleman should."  He was leaning forward with his hands on the
handle of a stick.  His voice sounded broken and disturbed.

"Oh!" I muttered.  "It's nothing!"'

"You are very good," he sighed; "but I feel that I must explain.  I
consider I owe this to you, but I must tell you I should not have the
courage if it were not for another reason.  You see I have no
friend."  He looked at me with an uncertain smile.  I bowed, and a
minute or two later he began....




III

"You will excuse me if I go back rather far.  It was in '74, when I
had been ill with Cuban fever.  To keep me alive they had put me on
board a ship at Santiago, and at the end of the voyage I found myself
in London.  I had very little money; I knew nobody.  I tell you, sir,
there are times when it's hard for a fighting man to get anything to
do.  People would say to me: 'Afraid we've nothing for a man like you
in our business.'  I tried people of all sorts; but it was true--I
had been fighting here and there since '60, I wasn't fit for
anything--"  He shook his head.  "In the South, before the war, they
had a saying, I remember, about a dog and a soldier having the same
value.  But all this has nothing to do with what I have to tell you."
He sighed again and went on, moistening his lips: "I was walking
along the Strand one day, very disheartened, when I heard my name
called.  It's a queer thing, that, in a strange street.  By the way,"
he put in with dry ceremony, "you don't know my name, I think: it is
Brune--Roger Brune.  At first I did not recognise the person who
called me.  He had just got off an omnibus--a square-shouldered man
with heavy moustaches, and round spectacles.  But when he shook my
hand I knew him at once.  He was a man called Dalton, who was taken
prisoner at Gettysburg; one of you Englishmen who came to fight with
us--a major in the regiment where I was captain.  We were comrades
during two campaigns.  If I had been his brother he couldn't have
seemed more pleased to see me.  He took me into a bar for the sake of
old times.  The drink went to my head, and by the time we reached
Trafalgar Square I was quite unable to walk.  He made me sit down on
a bench. I was in fact--drunk.  It's disgraceful to be drunk, but
there was some excuse.  Now I tell you, sir" (all through his story
he was always making use of that expression, it seemed to infuse
fresh spirit into him, to help his memory in obscure places, to give
him the mastery of his emotions; it was like the piece of paper a
nervous man holds in his hand to help him through a speech), "there
never was a man with a finer soul than my friend Dalton.  He was not
clever, though he had read much; and sometimes perhaps he was too
fond of talking.  But he was a gentleman; he listened to me as if I
had been a child; he was not ashamed of me--and it takes a gentleman
not to be ashamed of a drunken man in the streets of London; God
knows what things I said to him while we were sitting there!  He took
me to his home and put me to bed himself; for I was down again with
fever."  He stopped, turned slightly from me, and put his hand up to
his brow.  " Well, then it was, sir, that I first saw her.  I am not
a poet and I cannot tell you what she seemed to me.  I was delirious,
but I always knew when she was there.  I had dreams of sunshine and
cornfields, of dancing waves at sea, young trees--never the same
dreams, never anything for long together; and when I had my senses I
was afraid to say so for fear she would go away.  She'd be in the
corner of the room, with her hair hanging about her neck, a bright
gold colour; she never worked and never read, but sat and talked to
herself in a whisper, or looked at me for a long time together out of
her blue eyes, a little frown between them, and her upper lip closed
firm on her lower lip, where she had an uneven tooth.  When her
father came, she'd jump up and hang on to his neck until he groaned,
then run away, but presently come stealing back on tiptoe.  I used to
listen for her footsteps on the stairs, then the knock, the door
flung back or opened quietly--you never could tell which; and her
voice, with a little lisp, 'Are you better today, Mr. Brune?  What
funny things you say when you're delirious!  Father says you've been
in heaps of battles!"'

He got up, paced restlessly to and fro, and sat down again.  "I
remember every word as if it were yesterday, all the things she said,
and did; I've had a long time to think them over, you see.  Well, I
must tell you, the first morning that I was able to get up, I missed
her.  Dalton came in her place, and I asked him where she was.  'My
dear fellow,' he answered, 'I've sent Eilie away to her old nurse's
inn down on the river; she's better there at this time of year.'  We
looked at each other, and I saw that he had sent her away because he
didn't trust me.  I was hurt by this.  Illness spoils one.  He was
right, he was quite right, for all he knew about me was that I could
fight and had got drunk; but I am very quick-tempered.  I made up my
mind at once to leave him.  But I was too weak--he had to put me to
bed again.  The very next morning he came and proposed that I should
go into partnership with him.  He kept a fencing-school and pistol-
gallery.  It seemed like the finger of God; and perhaps it was--who
knows?"  He fell into a reverie, and taking out his caporal, rolled
himself a cigarette; having lighted it, he went on suddenly: "There,
in the room above the school, we used to sit in the evenings, one on
each side of the grate.  The room was on the second floor,
I remember, with two windows, and a view of nothing but the houses
opposite.  The furniture was covered up with chintz.  The things on
the bookshelf were never disturbed, they were Eilie's--half-broken
cases with butterflies, a dead frog in a bottle, a horse-shoe covered
with tinfoil, some shells too, and a cardboard box with three
speckled eggs in it, and these words written on the lid: 'Missel-
thrush from Lucy's tree--second family, only one blown.'"  He smoked
fiercely, with puffs that were like sharp sighs.

"Dalton was wrapped up in her.  He was never tired of talking to me
about her, and I was never tired of hearing.  We had a number of
pupils; but in the evening when we sat there, smoking--our talk would
sooner or later--come round to her.  Her bedroom opened out of that
sitting--room; he took me in once and showed me a narrow little room
the width of a passage, fresh and white, with a photograph of her
mother above the bed, and an empty basket for a dog or cat."  He
broke off with a vexed air, and resumed sternly, as if trying to bind
himself to the narration of his more important facts: "She was then
fifteen--her mother had been dead twelve years--a beautiful, face,
her mother's; it had been her death that sent Dalton to fight with
us.  Well, sir, one day in August, very hot weather, he proposed a
run into the country, and who should meet us on the platform when we
arrived but Eilie, in a blue sun-bonnet and frock-flax blue, her
favourite colour.  I was angry with Dalton for not telling me that we
should see her; my clothes were not quite--my hair wanted cutting.
It was black then, sir," he added, tracing a pattern in the darkness
with his stick.  "She had a little donkey-cart; she drove, and, while
we walked one on each side, she kept looking at me from under her
sunbonnet.  I must tell you that she never laughed--her eyes danced,
her cheeks would go pink, and her hair shake about on her neck, but
she never laughed. Her old nurse, Lucy, a very broad, good woman, had
married the proprietor of the inn in the village there.  I have never
seen anything like that inn: sweetbriar up to the roof!  And the
scent--I am very susceptible to scents!"  His head drooped, and the
cigarette fell from his hand. A train passing beneath sent up a
shower of sparks.  He started, and went on: "We had our lunch in the
parlour--I remember that room very well, for I spent the happiest
days of my life afterwards in that inn....  We went into a meadow
after lunch, and my friend Dalton fell asleep.  A wonderful thing
happened then.  Eilie whispered to me, 'Let's have a jolly time.'
She took me for the most glorious walk.  The river was close by.
A lovely stream, your river Thames, so calm and broad; it is like the
spirit of your people.  I was bewitched; I forgot my friend, I
thought of nothing but how to keep her to myself.  It was such a day!
There are days that are the devil's, but that was truly one of God's.
She took me to a little pond under an elm-tree, and we dragged it, we
two, an hour, for a kind of tiny red worm to feed some creature that
she had.  We found them in the mud, and while she was bending over,
the curls got in her eyes.  If you could have seen her then, I think,
sir, you would have said she was like the first sight of spring....
We had tea afterwards, all together, in the long grass under some
fruit-trees.  If I had the knack of words, there are things that I
could say."  He bent, as though in deference to those unspoken
memories.  "Twilight came on while we were sitting there. A wonderful
thing is twilight in the country!  It became time for us to go.
There was an avenue of trees close by--like a church with a window at
the end, where golden light came through.  I walked up and down it
with her.  'Will you come again?' she whispered, and suddenly she
lifted up her face to be kissed. I kissed her as if she were a little
child.  And when we said good-bye, her eyes were looking at me across
her father's shoulder, with surprise and sorrow in them.  'Why do you
go away?' they seemed to say....  But I must tell you," he went on
hurriedly, "of a thing that happened before we had gone a hundred
yards.  We were smoking our pipes, and I, thinking of her--when out
she sprang from the hedge and stood in front of us.  Dalton cried
out, 'What are you here for again, you mad girl?'  She rushed up to
him and hugged him; but when she looked at me, her face was quite
different--careless, defiant, as one might say--it hurt me.  I
couldn't understand it, and what one doesn't understand frightens
one.




IV

"Time went on.  There was no swordsman, or pistol-shot like me in
London, they said.  We had as many pupils as we liked--it was the
only part of my life when I have been able to save money.  I had no
chance to spend it.  We gave lessons all day, and in the evening were
too tired to go out.  That year I had the misfortune to lose my dear
mother.  I became a rich man--yes, sir, at that time I must have had
not less than six hundred a year.

"It was a long time before I saw Eilie again.  She went abroad to
Dresden with her father's sister to learn French and German.  It was
in the autumn of 1875 when she came back to us.  She was seventeen
then--a beautiful young creature."  He paused, as if to gather his
forces for description, and went on.

"Tall, as a young tree, with eyes like the sky.  I would not say she
was perfect, but her imperfections were beautiful to me.  What is it
makes you love--ah! sir, that is very hidden and mysterious.  She had
never lost the trick of closing her lips tightly when she remembered
her uneven tooth.  You may say that was vanity, but in a young girl--
and which of us is not vain, eh?  'Old men and maidens, young men and
children!'

"As I said, she came back to London to her little room, and in the
evenings was always ready with our tea.  You mustn't suppose she was
housewifely; there is something in me that never admired
housewifeliness--a fine quality, no doubt, still--" He sighed.

"No," he resumed, "Eilie was not like that, for she was never quite
the same two days together.  I told you her eyes were like the sky--
that was true of all of her.  In one thing, however, at that time,
she always seemed the same--in love for her father.  For me!  I don't
know what I should have expected; but my presence seemed to have the
effect of making her dumb; I would catch her looking at me with a
frown, and then, as if to make up to her own nature--and a more
loving nature never came into this world, that I shall maintain to my
dying day--she would go to her father and kiss him.  When I talked
with him she pretended not to notice, but I could see her face grow
cold and stubborn.  I am not quick; and it was a long time before I
understood that she was jealous, she wanted him all to herself.  I've
often wondered how she could be his daughter, for he was the very
soul of justice and a slow man too--and she was as quick as a bird.
For a long time after I saw her dislike of me, I refused to believe
it--if one does not want to believe a thing there are always reasons
why it should not seem true, at least so it is with me, and I suppose
with all selfish men.

"I spent evening after evening there, when, if I had not thought only
of myself, I should have kept away.  But one day I could no longer be
blind.

"It was a Sunday in February.  I always had an invitation on Sundays
to dine with them in the middle of the day.  There was no one in the
sitting-room; but the door of Eilie's bedroom was open.  I heard her
voice: 'That man, always that man!'  It was enough for me, I went
down again without coming in, and walked about all day.

"For three weeks I kept away.  To the school of course I came as
usual, but not upstairs.  I don't know what I told Dalton--it did not
signify what you told him, he always had a theory of his own, and was
persuaded of its truth--a very single-minded man, sir.

"But now I come to the most wonderful days of my life.  It was an
early spring that year.  I had fallen away already from my
resolution, and used to slink up--seldom, it's true--and spend the
evening with them as before.  One afternoon I came up to the sitting-
room; the light was failing--it was warm, and the windows were open.
In the air was that feeling which comes to you once a year, in the
spring, no matter where you may be, in a crowded street, or alone in
a forest; only once--a feeling like--but I cannot describe it.

"Eilie was sitting there.  If you don't know, sir, I can't tell you
what it means to be near the woman one loves.  She was leaning on the
windowsill, staring down into the street.  It was as though she might
be looking out for some one.  I stood, hardly breathing.  She turned
her head, and saw me.  Her eyes were strange.  They seemed to ask me
a question.  But I couldn't have spoken for the world.  I can't tell
you what I felt--I dared not speak, or think, or hope.  I have been
in nineteen battles--several times in positions of some danger, when
the lifting of a finger perhaps meant death; but I have never felt
what I was feeling at that moment.  I knew something was coming; and
I was paralysed with terror lest it should not come!"  He drew a long
breath.

"The servant came in with a light and broke the spell.  All that
night I lay awake and thought of how she had looked at me, with the
colour coming slowly up in her cheeks

"It was three days before I plucked up courage to go again; and then
I felt her eyes on me at once--she was making a 'cat's cradle' with a
bit of string, but I could see them stealing up from her hands to my
face.  And she went wandering about the room, fingering at
everything.  When her father called out: 'What's the matter with you,
Elie?' she stared at him like a child caught doing wrong.  I looked
straight at her then, she tried to look at me, but she couldn't; and
a minute later she went out of the room.  God knows what sort of
nonsense I talked--I was too happy.

"Then began our love.  I can't tell you of that time.  Often and
often Dalton said to me: 'What's come to the child?  Nothing I can do
pleases her.'  All the love she had given him was now for me; but he
was too simple and straight to see what was going on.  How many times
haven't I felt criminal towards him!  But when you're happy, with the
tide in your favour, you become a coward at once....




V

"Well, sir," he went on, "we were married on her eighteenth birthday.
It was a long time before Dalton became aware of our love.  But one
day he said to me with a very grave look:

"'Eilie has told me, Brune; I forbid it.  She's too young, and
you're--too old!' I was then forty-five, my hair as black and thick
as a rook's feathers, and I was strong and active.  I answered him:
'We shall be married within a month!'  We parted in anger.  It was a
May night, and I walked out far into the country.  There's no remedy
for anger, or, indeed, for anything, so fine as walking.  Once I
stopped--it was on a common, without a house or light, and the stars
shining like jewels.  I was hot from walking, I could feel the blood
boiling in my veins--I said to myself 'Old, are you?' And I laughed
like a fool.  It was the thought of losing her--I wished to believe
myself angry, but really I was afraid; fear and anger in me are very
much the same.  A friend of mine, a bit of a poet, sir, once called
them 'the two black wings of self.'  And so they are, so they are...!
The next morning I went to Dalton again, and somehow I made him
yield.  I'm not a philosopher, but it has often seemed to me that no
benefit can come to us in this life without an equal loss somewhere,
but does that stop us?  No, sir, not often....

"We were married on the 3oth of June 1876, in the parish church.  The
only people present were Dalton, Lucy, and Lucy's husband--a big,
red-faced fellow, with blue eyes and a golden beard parted in two.
It had been arranged that we should spend the honeymoon down at their
inn on the river.  My wife, Dalton and I, went to a restaurant for
lunch.  She was dressed in grey, the colour of a pigeon's feathers."
He paused, leaning forward over the crutch handle of his stick;
trying to conjure up, no doubt, that long-ago image of his young
bride in her dress "the colour of a pigeon's feathers," with her blue
eyes and yellow hair, the little frown between her brows, the firmly
shut red lips, opening to speak the words, "For better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health."

"At that time, sir," he went on suddenly, "I was a bit of a dandy.  I
wore, I remember, a blue frock-coat, with white trousers, and a grey
top hat.  Even now I should always prefer to be well dressed....

"We had an excellent lunch, and drank Veuve Clicquot, a wine that you
cannot get in these days!  Dalton came with us to the railway
station.  I can't bear partings; and yet, they must come.

"That evening we walked out in the cool under the aspen-trees.  What
should I remember in all my life if not that night--the young
bullocks snuffling in the gateways--the campion flowers all lighted
up along the hedges--the moon with a halo-bats, too, in and out among
the stems, and the shadows of the cottages as black and soft as that
sea down there.  For a long time we stood on the river-bank beneath a
lime-tree.  The scent of the lime flowers!  A man can only endure
about half his joy; about half his sorrow.  Lucy and her husband," he
went on, presently, "his name was Frank Tor--a man like an old
Viking, who ate nothing but milk, bread, and fruit--were very good to
us!  It was like Paradise in that inn--though the commissariat, I am
bound to say, was limited.  The sweetbriar grew round our bedroom
windows; when the breeze blew the leaves across the opening--it was
like a bath of perfume.  Eilie grew as brown as a gipsy while we were
there.  I don't think any man could have loved her more than I did.
But there were times when my heart stood still; it didn't seem as if
she understood how much I loved her.  One day, I remember, she coaxed
me to take her camping.  We drifted down-stream all the afternoon,
and in the evening pulled into the reeds under the willow-boughs and
lit a fire for her to cook by--though, as a matter of fact, our
provisions were cooked already--but you know how it is; all the
romance was in having a real fire.  'We won't pretend,' she kept
saying.  While we were eating our supper a hare came to our clearing-
-a big fellow--how surprised he looked!  'The tall hare,' Eilie
called him.  After that we sat by the ashes and watched the shadows,
till at last she roamed away from me.  The time went very slowly; I
got up to look for her.  It was past sundown.  I called and called.
It was a long time before I found her--and she was like a wild thing,
hot and flushed, her pretty frock torn, her hands and face scratched,
her hair down, like some beautiful creature of the woods.  If one
loves, a little thing will scare one.  I didn't think she had noticed
my fright; but when we got back to the boat she threw her arms round
my neck, and said, 'I won't ever leave you again!'

"Once in the night I woke--a water-hen was crying, and in the
moonlight a kingfisher flew across.  The wonder on the river--the
wonder of the moon and trees, the soft bright mist, the stillness! It
was like another world, peaceful, enchanted, far holier than ours.
It seemed like a vision of the thoughts that come to one--how seldom!
and go if one tries to grasp them.  Magic--poetry-sacred!"  He was
silent a minute, then went on in a wistful voice: "I looked at her,
sleeping like a child, with her hair loose, and her lips apart, and I
thought: 'God do so to me, if ever I bring her pain!'  How was I to
understand her? the mystery and innocence of her soul!  The river has
had all my light and all my darkness, the happiest days, and the
hours when I've despaired; and I like to think of it, for, you know,
in time bitter memories fade, only the good remain....  Yet the good
have their own pain, a different kind of aching, for we shall never
get them back.  Sir," he said, turning to me with a faint smile,
"it's no use crying over spilt milk....  In the neighbourhood of
Lucy's inn, the Rose and Maybush--Can you imagine a prettier name?  I
have been all over the world, and nowhere found names so pretty as in
the English country.  There, too, every blade of grass; and flower,
has a kind of pride about it; knows it will be cared for; and all the
roads, trees, and cottages, seem to be certain that they will live
for ever....  But I was going to tell you: Half a mile from the inn
was a quiet old house which we used to call the 'Convent'--though I
believe it was a farm.  We spent many afternoons there, trespassing
in the orchard--Eilie was fond of trespassing; if there were a long
way round across somebody else's property, she would always take it.
We spent our last afternoon in that orchard, lying in the long grass.
I was reading Childe Harold for the first time--a wonderful, a
memorable poem!  I was at that passage--the bull-fight--you remember:

"'Thrice sounds the clarion; lo! the signal falls,
The din expands, and expectation mute'--

when suddenly Eilie said: 'Suppose I were to leave off loving you?'
It was as if some one had struck me in the face.  I jumped up, and
tried to take her in my arms, but she slipped away; then she turned,
and began laughing softly.  I laughed too.  I don't know why....




VI

"We went back to London the next day; we lived quite close to the
school, and about five days a week Dalton came to dine with us.  He
would have come every day, if he had not been the sort of man who
refuses to consult his own pleasure.  We had more pupils than ever.
In my leisure I taught my wife to fence.  I have never seen any one
so lithe and quick; or so beautiful as she looked in her fencing
dress, with embroidered shoes.

"I was completely happy.  When a man has obtained his desire he
becomes careless and self-satisfied; I was watchful, however, for I
knew that I was naturally a selfish man.  I studied to arrange my
time and save my money, to give her as much pleasure as I could.
What she loved best in the world just then was riding.  I bought a
horse for her, and in the evenings of the spring and summer we rode
together; but when it was too dark to go out late, she would ride
alone, great distances, sometimes spend the whole day in the saddle,
and come back so tired she could hardly walk upstairs--I can't say
that I liked that.  It made me nervous, she was so headlong--but I
didn't think it right to interfere with her.  I had a good deal of
anxiety about money, for though I worked hard and made more than
ever, there never seemed enough.  I was anxious to save--I hoped, of
course--but we had no child, and this was a trouble to me.  She grew
more beautiful than ever, and I think was happy.  Has it ever struck
you that each one of us lives on the edge of a volcano?  There is, I
imagine, no one who has not some affection or interest so strong that
he counts the rest for nothing, beside it.  No doubt a man may live
his life through without discovering that.  But some of us--!  I am
not complaining; what is--is."  He pulled the cap lower over his
eyes, and clutched his hands firmly on the top of his stick.  He was
like a man who rushes his horse at some hopeless fence, unwilling to
give himself time, for fear of craning at the last moment.  "In the
spring of '78, a new pupil came to me, a young man of twenty-one who
was destined for the army.  I took a fancy to him, and did my best to
turn him into a good swordsman; but there was a kind of perverse
recklessness in him; for a few minutes one would make a great
impression, then he would grow utterly careless.  'Francis,' I would
say, 'if I were you I should be ashamed.'  'Mr. Brune,' he would
answer, 'why should I be ashamed?  I didn't make myself.'  God knows,
I wish to do him justice, he had a heart--one day he drove up in a
cab, and brought in his poor dog, who had been run over, and was
dying: For half an hour he shut himself up with its body, we could
hear him sobbing like a child; he came out with his eyes all red, and
cried: 'I know where to find the brute who drove over him,' and off
he rushed.  He had beautiful Italian eyes; a slight figure, not very
tall; dark hair, a little dark moustache; and his lips were always a
trifle parted--it was that, and his walk, and the way he drooped his
eyelids, which gave him a peculiar, soft, proud look.  I used to tell
him that he'd never make a soldier!  'Oh!' he'd answer, 'that'll be
all right when the time comes!  He believed in a kind of luck that
was to do everything for him, when the time came.  One day he came in
as I was giving Eilie her lesson.  This was the first time they saw
each other.  After that he came more often, and sometimes stayed to
dinner with us.  I won't deny, sir, that I was glad to welcome him; I
thought it good for Eilie.  Can there be anything more odious," he
burst out, "than such a self-complacent blindness?  There are people
who say, 'Poor man, he had such faith!'  Faith, sir!  Conceit!  I was
a fool--in this world one pays for folly....

"The summer came; and one Saturday in early June, Eilie, I, and
Francis--I won't tell you his other name--went riding.  The night had
been wet; there was no dust, and presently the sun came out--a
glorious day!  We rode a long way.  About seven o'clock we started
back-slowly, for it was still hot, and there was all the cool of
night before us.  It was nine o'clock when we came to Richmond Park.
A grand place, Richmond Park; and in that half-light wonderful, the
deer moving so softly, you might have thought they were spirits.  We
were silent too--great trees have that effect on me....

"Who can say when changes come?  Like a shift of the wind, the old
passes, the new is on you.  I am telling you now of a change like
that.  Without a sign of warning, Eilie put her horse into a gallop.
'What are you doing?' I shouted.  She looked back with a smile, then
he dashed past me too.  A hornet might have stung them both: they
galloped over fallen trees, under low hanging branches, up hill and
down.  I had to watch that madness!  My horse was not so fast.  I
rode like a demon; but fell far behind.  I am not a man who takes
things quietly.  When I came up with them at last, I could not speak
for rage.  They were riding side by side, the reins on the horses'
necks, looking in each other's faces.  'You should take care,' I
said.  'Care!' she cried; 'life is not all taking care!'  My anger
left me.  I dropped behind, as grooms ride behind their mistresses...
Jealousy!  No torture is so ceaseless or so black....  In those
minutes a hundred things came up in me--a hundred memories, true,
untrue, what do I know?  My soul was poisoned.  I tried to reason
with myself.  It was absurd to think such things!  It was unmanly....
Even if it were true, one should try to be a gentleman!  But I found
myself laughing; yes, sir, laughing at that word."  He spoke faster,
as if pouring his heart out not to a live listener, but to the night.
"I could not sleep that night.  To lie near her with those thoughts
in my brain was impossible!  I made an excuse, and sat up with some
papers.  The hardest thing in life is to see a thing coming and be
able to do nothing to prevent it.  What could I do?  Have you noticed
how people may become utter strangers without a word?  It only needs
a thought....  The very next day she said: 'I want to go to Lucy's.'
'Alone?'  'Yes.'  I had made up my mind by then that she must do just
as she wished.  Perhaps I acted wrongly; I do not know what one ought
to do in such a case; but before she went I said to her: 'Eilie, what
is it?'  'I don't know,' she answered; and I kissed her--that was
all....  A month passed; I wrote to her nearly every day, and I had
short letters from her, telling me very little of herself.  Dalton
was a torture to me, for I could not tell him; he had a conviction
that she was going to become a mother.  'Ah, Brune!' he said, 'my
poor wife was just like that.'  Life, sir, is a somewhat ironical
affair...!  He--I find it hard to speak his name--came to the school
two or three times a week.  I used to think I saw a change, a purpose
growing up through his recklessness; there seemed a violence in him
as if he chafed against my blade.  I had a kind of joy in feeling I
had the mastery, and could toss the iron out of his hand any minute
like a straw.  I was ashamed, and yet I gloried in it.  Jealousy is a
low thing, sir--a low, base thing!  When he asked me where my wife
was, I told him; I was too proud to hide it.  Soon after that he came
no more to the school.

"One morning, when I could bear it no longer, I wrote, and said I was
coming down.  I would not force myself on her, but I asked her to
meet me in the orchard of the old house we called the Convent.  I
asked her to be there at four o'clock.  It has always been my, belief
that a man must neither beg anything of a woman, nor force anything
from her.  Women are generous--they will give you what they can.  I
sealed my letter, and posted it myself.  All the way down I kept on
saying to myself, 'She must come--surely she will come!'




VII

"I was in high spirits, but the next moment trembled like a man with
ague.  I reached the orchard before my time.  She was not there.  You
know what it is like to wait?  I stood still and listened; I went to
the point whence I could see farthest; I said to myself, 'A watched
pot never boils; if I don't look for her she will come.'  I walked up
and down with my eyes on the ground.  The sickness of it!  A hundred
times I took out my watch.... Perhaps it was fast, perhaps hers was
slow--I can't tell you a thousandth part of my hopes and fears.
There was a spring of water, in one corner.  I sat beside it, and
thought of the last time I had been there--and something seemed to
burst in me.  It was five o'clock before I lost all hope; there comes
a time when you're glad that hope is dead, it means rest.  'That's
over,' you say, 'now I can act.'  But what was I to do?  I lay down
with my face to the ground; when one's in trouble, it's the only
thing that helps--something to press against and cling to that can't
give way.  I lay there for two hours, knowing all the time that I
should play the coward.  At seven o'clock I left the orchard and went
towards the inn; I had broken my word, but I felt happy.... I should
see her--and, sir, nothing--nothing seemed to matter beside that.
Tor was in the garden snipping at his roses.  He came up, and I could
see that he couldn't look me in the face.  'Where's my wife?' I said.
He answered, 'Let's get Lucy.'  I ran indoors.  Lucy met me with two
letters; the first--my own--unopened; and the second, this:

"'I have left you.  You were good to me, but now--it is no use.
          EILIE.'"

"She told me that a boy had brought a letter for my wife the day
before, from a young gentleman in a boat.  When Lucy delivered it she
asked, 'Who is he, Miss Eilie?  What will Mr. Brune say?'  My wife
looked at her angrily, but gave her no answer--and all that day she
never spoke.  In the evening she was gone, leaving this note on the
bed....  Lucy cried as if her heart would break.  I took her by the
shoulders and put her from the room; I couldn't bear the noise.  I
sat down and tried to think.  While I was sitting there Tor came in
with a letter.  It was written on the notepaper of an inn twelve
miles up the river: these were the words.

"'Eilie is mine.  I am ready to meet you where you like.'"

He went on with a painful evenness of speech.  "When I read those
words, I had only one thought--to reach them; I ran down to the
river, and chose out the lightest boat.  Just as I was starting, Tor
came running.  'You dropped this letter, sir,' be said.  'Two pair of
arms are better than one.'  He came into the boat.  I took the sculls
and I pulled out into the stream.  I pulled like a madman; and that
great man, with his bare arms crossed, was like a huge, tawny bull
sitting there opposite me.  Presently he took my place, and I took
the rudder lines.  I could see his chest, covered with hair, heaving
up and down, it gave me a sort of comfort--it meant that we were
getting nearer.  Then it grew dark, there was no moon, I could barely
see the bank; there's something in the dark which drives one into
oneself.  People tell you there comes a moment when your nature is
decided--'saved' or 'lost' as they call it--for good or evil.  That
is not true, your self is always with you, and cannot be altered;
but, sir, I believe that in a time of agony one finds out what are
the things one can do, and what are those one cannot.  You get to
know yourself, that's all.  And so it was with me.  Every thought and
memory and passion was so clear and strong!  I wanted to kill him.  I
wanted to kill myself.  But her--no!  We are taught that we possess
our wives, body and soul, we are brought up in that faith, we are
commanded to believe it--but when I was face to face with it, those
words had no meaning; that belief, those commands, they were without
meaning to me, they were--vile.  Oh yes, I wanted to find comfort in
them, I wanted to hold on to them--but I couldn't.  You may force a
body; how can you force a soul?  No, no--cowardly!  But I wanted to--
I wanted to kill him and force her to come back to me!  And then,
suddenly, I felt as if I were pressing right on the most secret nerve
of my heart.  I seemed to see her face, white and quivering, as if
I'd stamped my heel on it.  They say this world is ruled by force; it
may be true--I know I have a weak spot in me....  I couldn't bear it.
At last I Jumped to my feet and shouted out, 'Turn the boat round!'
Tor looked up at me as if I had gone mad.  And I had gone mad.  I
seized the boat-hook and threatened him; I called him fearful names.
'Sir,' he said, 'I don't take such names from any one!'  'You'll take
them from me,' I shouted; 'turn the boat round, you idiot, you hound,
you fish!...'  I have a terrible temper, a perfect curse to me.  He
seemed amazed, even frightened; he sat down again suddenly and pulled
the boat round.  I fell on the seat, and hid my face.  I believe the
moon came up; there must have been a mist too, for I was cold as
death.  In this life, sir, we cannot hide our faces--but by degrees
the pain of wounds grows less.  Some will have it that such blows are
mortal; it is not so.  Time is merciful.

"In the early morning I went back to London.  I had fever on me--and
was delirious.  I dare say I should have killed myself if I had not
been so used to weapons--they and I were too old friends, I suppose--
I can't explain.  It was a long while before I was up and about.
Dalton nursed me through it; his great heavy moustache had grown
quite white.  We never mentioned her; what was the good?  There were
things to settle of course, the lawyer--this was unspeakably
distasteful to me.  I told him it was to be as she wished, but the
fellow would come to me, with his--there, I don't want to be unkind.
I wished him to say it was my fault, but he said--I remember his
smile now--he said, that was impossible, would be seen through,
talked of collusion--I don't understand these things, and what's
more, I can't bear them, they are--dirty.

"Two years later, when I had come back to London, after the Russo-
Turkish war, I received a letter from her.  I have it here."  He took
an old, yellow sheet of paper out of a leathern pocketbook, spread it
in his fingers, and sat staring at it.  For some minutes he did not
speak.

"In the autumn of that same year she died in childbirth.  He had
deserted her.  Fortunately for him, he was killed on the Indian
frontier, that very year.  If she had lived she would have been
thirty-two next June; not a great age....  I know I am what they call
a crank; doctors will tell you that you can't be cured of a bad
illness, and be the same man again.  If you are bent, to force
yourself straight must leave you weak in another place.  I must and
will think well of women--everything done, and everything said
against them is a stone on her dead body.  Could you sit, and listen
to it?"  As though driven by his own question, he rose, and paced up
and down.  He came back to the seat at last.

"That, sir, is the reason of my behaviour this afternoon, and again
this evening.  You have been so kind, I wanted!--wanted to tell you.
She had a little daughter--Lucy has her now.  My friend Dalton is
dead; there would have been no difficulty about money, but, I am
sorry to say, that he was swindled--disgracefully.  It fell to me to
administer his affairs--he never knew it, but he died penniless; he
had trusted some wretched fellows--had an idea they would make his
fortune.  As I very soon found, they had ruined him.  It was
impossible to let Lucy--such a dear woman--bear that burden.  I have
tried to make provision; but, you see," he took hold of my sleeve,
"I, too, have not been fortunate; in fact, it's difficult to save a
great deal out of L 190 a year; but the capital is perfectly safe--
and I get L 47, 10s. a quarter, paid on the nail.  I have often been
tempted to reinvest at a greater rate of interest, but I've never
dared.  Anyway, there are no debts--I've been obliged to make a rule
not to buy what I couldn't pay for on the spot....  Now I am really
plaguing you--but I wanted to tell you--in case-anything should
happen to me."  He seemed to take a sudden scare, stiffened, twisted
his moustache, and muttering, "Your great kindness! Shall never
forget!" turned hurriedly away.

He vanished; his footsteps, and the tap of his stick grew fainter and
fainter.  They died out.  He was gone.  Suddenly I got up and
hastened after him.  I soon stopped--what was there to say?




VIII

The following day I was obliged to go to Nice, and did not return
till midnight.  The porter told me that Jules le Ferrier had been to
see me.  The next morning, while I was still in bed, the door was
opened, and Jules appeared.  His face was very pale; and the moment
he stood still drops of perspiration began coursing down his cheeks.

"Georges!" he said, "he is dead.  There, there!  How stupid you look!
My man is packing.  I have half an hour before the train; my evidence
shall come from Italy.  I have done my part, the rest is for you.
Why did you have that dinner?  The Don Quixote!  The idiot!  The poor
man!  Don't move!  Have you a cigar?  Listen!  When you followed him,
I followed the other two.  My infernal curiosity!  Can you conceive a
greater folly?  How fast they walked, those two! feeling their
cheeks, as if he had struck them both, you know; it was funny.  They
soon saw me, for their eyes were all round about their heads; they
had the mark of a glove on their cheeks."  The colour began to come
back, into Jules's face; he gesticulated with his cigar and became
more and more dramatic.  "They waited for me.  'Tiens!' said one,
'this gentleman was with him.  My friend's name is M. Le Baron de---.
The man who struck him was an odd-looking person; kindly inform me
whether it is possible for my friend to meet him?'  Eh!" commented
Jules, "he was offensive!  Was it for me to give our dignity away?
'Perfectly, monsieur!'  I answered.  'In that case,' he said, 'please
give me his name and ad dress....  I could not remember his name, and
as for the address, I never knew it...!  I reflected. 'That,' I said,
'I am unable to do, for special reasons.'  'Aha!' he said, 'reasons
that will prevent our fighting him, I suppose?  'On the contrary,' I
said.  'I will convey your request to him; I may mention that I have
heard he is the best swordsman and pistol-shot in Europe.  Good-
night!'  I wished to give them something to dream of, you
understand....  Patience, my dear!  Patience!  I was, coming to you,
but I thought I would let them sleep on it--there was plenty of time!
But yesterday morning I came into the Place, and there he was on the
bench, with a big dog.  I declare to you he blushed like a young
girl.  'Sir,' he said, 'I was hoping to meet you; last evening I made
a great disturbance.  I took an unpardonable liberty'--and he put in
my hand an envelope.  My friend, what do you suppose it contained--a
pair of gloves!  Senor Don Punctilioso, hein?  He was the devil, this
friend of yours; he fascinated me with his gentle eyes and his white
moustachettes, his humility, his flames--poor man...!  I told him I
had been asked to take him a challenge.  'If anything comes of it,' I
said, 'make use of me!'  'Is that so?' he said.  'I am most grateful
for your kind offer.  Let me see--it is so long since I fought a
duel.  The sooner it's over the better.  Could you arrange to-morrow
morning?  Weapons?  Yes; let them choose.'  You see, my friend, there
was no hanging back here; nous voila en train."

Jules took out his watch.  "I have sixteen minutes.  It is lucky for
you that you were away yesterday, or you would be in my shoes now.  I
fixed the place, right hand of the road to Roquebrune, just by the
railway cutting, and the time--five-thirty of the morning.  It was
arranged that I should call for him.  Disgusting hour; I have not
been up so early since I fought Jacques Tirbaut in '85.  At five
o'clock I found him ready and drinking tea with rum in it--singular
man! he made me have some too, brrr!  He was shaved, and dressed in
that old frock-coat.  His great dog jumped into the carriage, but he
bade her get out, took her paws on his shoulders, and whispered in
her ear some Italian words; a charm, hein! and back she went, the
tail between the legs.  We drove slowly, so as not to shake his arm.
He was more gay than I.  All the way he talked to me of you: how kind
you were! how good you had been to him!  'You do not speak of
yourself!' I said.  'Have you no friends, nothing to say?  Sometimes
an accident will happen!'  'Oh!' he answered, 'there is no danger;
but if by any chance--well, there is a letter in my pocket.'  'And if
you should kill him?' I said.  'But I shall not,' he answered slyly:
'do you think I am going to fire at him?  No, no; he is too young.'
'But,' I said, 'I-- 'I am not going to stand that!'  'Yes,' he
replied, 'I owe him a shot; but there is no danger--not the least
danger.'  We had arrived; already they were there.  Ah bah!  You know
the preliminaries, the politeness--this duelling, you know, it is
absurd, after all.  We placed them at twenty paces.  It is not a bad
place.  There are pine-trees round, and rocks; at that hour it was
cool and grey as a church.  I handed him the pistol.  How can I
describe him to you, standing there, smoothing the barrel with his
fingers!  'What a beautiful thing a good pistol!' he said.  'Only a
fool or a madman throws away his life,' I said.  'Certainly,' he
replied, 'certainly; but there is no danger,' and he regarded me,
raising his moustachette.

"There they stood then, back to back, with the mouths of their
pistols to the sky.  ' Un!' I cried, 'deux! tirez!' They turned, I
saw the smoke of his shot go straight up like a prayer; his pistol
dropped.  I ran to him.  He looked surprised, put out his hand, and
fell into my arms.  He was dead.  Those fools came running up.  'What
is it?' cried one.  I made him a bow.  'As you see,' I said; 'you
have made a pretty shot.  My friend fired in the air.  Messieurs, you
had better breakfast in Italy.'  We carried him to the carriage, and
covered him with a rug; the others drove for the frontier.  I brought
him to his room.  Here is his letter."  Jules stopped; tears were
running down his face.  "He is dead; I have closed his eyes.  Look
here, you know, we are all of us cads--it is the rule; but this--
this, perhaps, was the exception."  And without another word he
rushed away....

Outside the old fellow's lodging a dismounted cocher was standing
disconsolate in the sun. "How was I to know they were going to fight
a duel?" he burst out on seeing me.  "He had white hair--I call you
to witness he had white hair.  This is bad for me: they will ravish
my licence.  Aha! you will see--this is bad for me!"  I gave him the
slip and found my way upstairs.  The old fellow was alone, lying on
the bed, his feet covered with a rug as if he might feel cold; his
eyes were closed, but in this sleep of death, he still had that air
of faint surprise.  At full length, watching the bed intently, Freda
lay, as she lay nightly when he was really asleep.  The shutters were
half open; the room still smelt slightly of rum.  I stood for a long
time looking at the face: the little white fans of moustache brushed
upwards even in death, the hollows in his cheeks, the quiet of his
figure; he was like some old knight....  The dog broke the spell.
She sat up, and resting her paws on the bed, licked his face.  I went
downstairs--I couldn't bear to hear her howl.  This was his letter to
me, written in a pointed handwriting:

"MY DEAR SIR,--Should you read this, I shall be gone.  I am ashamed
to trouble you--a man should surely manage so as not to give trouble;
and yet I believe you will not consider me importunate.  If, then,
you will pick up the pieces of an old fellow, I ask you to have my
sword, the letter enclosed in this, and the photograph that stands on
the stove buried with me.  My will and the acknowledgments of my
property are between the leaves of the Byron in my tin chest; they
should go to Lucy Tor--address thereon.  Perhaps you will do me the
honour to retain for yourself any of my books that may give you
pleasure.  In the Pilgrim's Progress you will find some excellent
recipes for Turkish coffee, Italian and Spanish dishes, and washing
wounds.  The landlady's daughter speaks Italian, and she would, I
know, like to have Freda; the poor dog will miss me.  I have read of
old Indian warriors taking their horses and dogs with them to the
happy hunting-grounds.  Freda would come--noble animals are dogs! She
eats once a day--a good large meal--and requires much salt.  If you
have animals of your own, sir, don't forget--all animals require
salt.  I have no debts, thank God!  The money in my pockets would
bury me decently--not that there is any danger.  And I am ashamed to
weary you with details--the least a man can do is not to make a fuss-
-and yet he must be found ready.--Sir, with profound gratitude, your
servant,

"ROGER BRUNE."


Everything was as he had said.  The photograph on the stove was that
of a young girl of nineteen or twenty, dressed in an old-fashioned
style, with hair gathered backward in a knot.  The eyes gazed at you
with a little frown, the lips were tightly closed; the expression of
the face was eager, quick, wilful, and, above all, young.

The tin trunk was scented with dry fragments of some herb, the
history of which in that trunk man knoweth not....  There were a few
clothes, but very few, all older than those he usually wore.  Besides
the Byron and Pilgrim's Progress were Scott's Quentin Durward,
Captain Marryat's Midshipman Easy, a pocket Testament, and a long and
frightfully stiff book on the art of fortifying towns, much thumbed,
and bearing date 1863.  By far the most interesting thing I found,
however, was a diary, kept down to the preceding Christmas.  It was a
pathetic document, full of calculations of the price of meals;
resolutions to be careful over this or that; doubts whether he must
not give up smoking; sentences of fear that Freda had not enough to
eat.  It appeared that he had tried to live on ninety pounds a year,
and send the other hundred pounds home to Lucy for the child; in this
struggle he was always failing, having to send less than the amount-
the entries showed that this was a nightmare to him.  The last words,
written on Christmas Day, were these "What is the use of writing
this, since it records nothing but failure!"

The landlady's daughter and myself were at the funeral.  The same
afternoon I went into the concert-room, where I had spoken to him
first.  When I came out Freda was lying at the entrance, looking into
the faces of every one that passed, and sniffing idly at their heels.
Close by the landlady's daughter hovered, a biscuit in her hand, and
a puzzled, sorry look on her face.

September 1900.






TO

MY BROTHER

HUBERT GALSWORTHY




SALVATION OF A FORSYTE




I

Swithin Forsyte lay in bed.  The corners of his mouth under his white
moustache drooped towards his double chin.  He panted:

"My doctor says I'm in a bad way, James."

His twin-brother placed his hand behind his ear.  "I can't hear you.
They tell me I ought to take a cure.  There's always a cure wanted
for something.  Emily had a cure."

Swithin replied: "You mumble so.  I hear my man, Adolph.  I trained
him....  You ought to have an ear-trumpet.  You're getting very
shaky, James."

There was silence; then James Forsyte, as if galvanised, remarked: "I
s'pose you've made your will.  I s'pose you've left your money to the
family; you've nobody else to leave it to.  There was Danson died the
other day, and left his money to a hospital"

The hairs of Swithin's white moustache bristled.  "My fool of a
doctor told me to make my will," he said, "I hate a fellow who tells
you to make your will.  My appetite's good; I ate a partridge last
night.  I'm all the better for eating.  He told me to leave off
champagne!  I eat a good breakfast.  I'm not eighty.  You're the same
age, James.  You look very shaky."

James Forsyte said: "You ought to have another opinion.  Have Blank;
he's the first man now.  I had him for Emily; cost me two hundred
guineas.  He sent her to Homburg; that's the first place now.  The
Prince was there--everybody goes there."

Swithin Forsyte answered: "I don't get any sleep at night, now I
can't get out; and I've bought a new carriage--gave a pot of money
for it.  D' you ever have bronchitis?  They tell me champagne's
dangerous; it's my belief I couldn't take a better thing."

James Forsyte rose.

"You ought to have another opinion.  Emily sent her love; she would
have come in, but she had to go to Niagara.  Everybody goes there;
it's the place now.  Rachel goes every morning: she overdoes it--
she'll be laid up one of these days.  There's a fancy ball there to-
night; the Duke gives the prizes."

Swithin Forsyte said angrily: "I can't get things properly cooked
here; at the club I get spinach decently done."  The bed-clothes
jerked at the tremor of his legs.

James Forsyte replied: "You must have done well with Tintos; you must
have made a lot of money by them.  Your ground-rents must be falling
in, too.  You must have any amount you don't know what to do with."
He mouthed the words, as if his lips were watering.

Swithin Forsyte glared.  "Money!" he said; "my doctor's bill's
enormous."

James Forsyte stretched out a cold, damp hand "Goodbye! You ought to
have another opinion.  I can't keep the horses waiting: they're a new
pair--stood me in three hundred.  You ought to take care of yourself.
I shall speak to Blank about you.  You ought to have him--everybody
says he's the first man.  Good-bye!"

Swithin Forsyte continued to stare at the ceiling.  He thought: 'A
poor thing, James! a selfish beggar!  Must be worth a couple of
hundred thousand!'  He wheezed, meditating on life....

He was ill and lonely.  For many years he had been lonely, and for
two years ill; but as he had smoked his first cigar, so he would live
his life-stoutly, to its predestined end.  Every day he was driven to
the club; sitting forward on the spring cushions of a single
brougham, his hands on his knees, swaying a little, strangely solemn.
He ascended the steps into that marble hall--the folds of his chin
wedged into the aperture of his collar--walking squarely with a
stick.  Later he would dine, eating majestically, and savouring his
food, behind a bottle of champagne set in an ice-pail--his waistcoat
defended by a napkin, his eyes rolling a little or glued in a stare
on the waiter.  Never did he suffer his head or back to droop, for it
was not distinguished so to do.

Because he was old and deaf, he spoke to no one; and no one spoke to
him.  The club gossip, an Irishman, said to each newcomer: "Old
Forsyte!  Look at 'um!  Must ha' had something in his life to sour
'um!"  But Swithin had had nothing in his life to sour him.

For many days now he had lain in bed in a room exuding silver,
crimson, and electric light, smelling of opopanax and of cigars.  The
curtains were drawn, the firelight gleamed; on a table by his bed
were a jug of barley-water and the Times.  He made an attempt to
read, failed, and fell again to thinking.  His face with its square
chin, looked like a block of pale leather bedded in the pillow.  It
was lonely!  A woman in the room would have made all the difference!
Why had he never married?  He breathed hard, staring froglike at the
ceiling; a memory had come into his mind.  It was a long time ago--
forty odd years--but it seemed like yesterday....

It happened when he was thirty-eight, for the first and only time in
his life travelling on the Continent, with his twin-brother James and
a man named Traquair.  On the way from Germany to Venice, he had
found himself at the Hotel Goldene Alp at Salzburg.  It was late
August, and weather for the gods: sunshine on the walls and the
shadows of the vine-leaves, and at night, the moonlight, and again on
the walls the shadows of the vine-leaves.  Averse to the suggestions
of other people, Swithin had refused to visit the Citadel; he had
spent the day alone in the window of his bedroom, smoking a
succession of cigars, and disparaging the appearance of the passers-
by.  After dinner he was driven by boredom into the streets.  His
chest puffed out like a pigeon's, and with something of a pigeon's
cold and inquiring eye, he strutted, annoyed at the frequency of
uniforms, which seemed to him both needless and offensive.  His
spleen rose at this crowd of foreigners, who spoke an unintelligible
language, wore hair on their faces, and smoked bad tobacco.  'A queer
lot!' he thought.  The sound of music from a cafe attracted him; he
walked in, vaguely moved by a wish for the distinction of adventure,
without the trouble which adventure usually brought with it; spurred
too, perhaps, by an after-dinner demon.  The cafe was the bier-halle
of the 'Fifties, with a door at either end, and lighted by a large
wooden lantern.  On a small dais three musicians were fiddling.
Solitary men, or groups, sat at some dozen tables, and the waiters
hurried about replenishing glasses; the air was thick with smoke.
Swithin sat down.  "Wine!" he said sternly.  The astonished waiter
brought him wine.  Swithin pointed to a beer glass on the table.
"Here!" he said, with the same ferocity.  The waiter poured out the
wine.  'Ah!' thought Swithin, 'they can understand if they like.'  A
group of officers close by were laughing; Swithin stared at them
uneasily.  A hollow cough sounded almost in his ear.  To his left a
man sat reading, with his elbows on the corners of a journal, and his
gaunt shoulders raised almost to his eyes.  He had a thin, long nose,
broadening suddenly at the nostrils; a black-brown beard, spread in a
savage fan over his chest; what was visible of the face was the
colour of old parchment.  A strange, wild, haughty-looking creature!
Swithin observed his clothes with some displeasure--they were the
clothes of a journalist or strolling actor.  And yet he was
impressed.  This was singular.  How could he be impressed by a fellow
in such clothes!  The man reached out a hand, covered with black
hairs, and took up a tumbler that contained a dark-coloured fluid.
'Brandy!' thought Swithin.  The crash of a falling chair startled
him--his neighbour had risen.  He was of immense height, and very
thin; his great beard seemed to splash away from his mouth; he was
glaring at the group of officers, and speaking.  Swithin made out two
words: "Hunde! Deutsche Hunde!" 'Hounds! Dutch hounds!' he thought:
'Rather strong!'  One of the officers had jumped up, and now drew his
sword.  The tall man swung his chair up, and brought it down with a
thud.  Everybody round started up and closed on him.  The tall man
cried out, "To me, Magyars!"

Swithin grinned.  The tall man fighting such odds excited his
unwilling admiration; he had a momentary impulse to go to his
assistance.  'Only get a broken nose!' he thought, and looked for a
safe corner.  But at that moment a thrown lemon struck him on the
jaw.  He jumped out of his chair and rushed at the officers.  The
Hungarian, swinging his chair, threw him a look of gratitude--Swithin
glowed with momentary admiration of himself.  A sword blade grazed
his--arm; he felt a sudden dislike of the Hungarian.  'This is too
much,' he thought, and, catching up a chair, flung it at the wooden
lantern.  There was a crash--faces and swords vanished.  He struck a
match, and by the light of it bolted for the door.  A second later he
was in the street.




II

A voice said in English, "God bless you, brother!"

Swithin looked round, and saw the tall Hungarian holding out his
hand.  He took it, thinking, 'What a fool I've been!'  There was
something in the Hungarian's gesture which said, "You are worthy of
me!'

It was annoying, but rather impressive.  The man seemed even taller
than before; there was a cut on his cheek, the blood from which was
trickling down his beard.  "You English!" he said.  "I saw you stone
Haynau--I saw you cheer Kossuth.  The free blood of your people cries
out to us."  He looked at Swithin.  "You are a big man, you have a
big soul--and strong, how you flung them down! Ha!"  Swithin had an
impulse to take to his heels.  "My name," said the Hungarian, "is
Boleskey.  You are my friend."  His English was good.

'Bulsh-kai-ee, Burlsh-kai-ee,' thought Swithin; 'what a devil of a
name!'  "Mine," he said sulkily, "is Forsyte."

The Hungarian repeated it.

"You've had a nasty jab on the cheek," said Swithin; the sight of the
matted beard was making him feel sick.  The Hungarian put his fingers
to his cheek, brought them away wet, stared at them, then with an
indifferent air gathered a wisp of his beard and crammed it against
the cut.

"Ugh!" said Swithin.  "Here! Take my handkerchief!"

The Hungarian bowed.  "Thank you!" he said; "I couldn't think of it!
Thank you a thousand times!"

"Take it!" growled Swithin; it seemed to him suddenly of the first
importance.  He thrust the handkerchief into the Hungarian's hand,
and felt a pain in his arm.  'There!' he thought, 'I've strained a
muscle.'

The Hungarian kept muttering, regardless of passers-by, "Swine! How
you threw them over!  Two or three cracked heads, anyway--the
cowardly swine!"

"Look here!" said Swithin suddenly; "which is my way to the Goldene
Alp?"

The Hungarian replied, "But you are coming with me, for a glass of
wine?"

Swithin looked at the ground.  'Not if I know it!' he thought.

"Ah!" said the Hungarian with dignity, "you do not wish for my
friendship!"

'Touchy beggar!' thought Swithin.  "Of course," he stammered, "if you
put it in that way--"

The Hungarian bowed, murmuring, "Forgive me!"

They had not gone a dozen steps before a youth, with a beardless face
and hollow cheeks, accosted them.  "For the love of Christ,
gentlemen," he said, "help me!"

"Are you a German?" asked Boleskey.

"Yes," said the youth.

"Then you may rot!"

"Master, look here!" Tearing open his coat, the youth displayed his
skin, and a leather belt drawn tight round it.  Again Swithin felt
that desire to take to his heels.  He was filled with horrid
forebodings--a sense of perpending intimacy with things such as no
gentleman had dealings with.

The Hungarian crossed himself.  "Brother," he said to the youth,
"come you in!"

Swithin looked at them askance, and followed.  By a dim light they
groped their way up some stairs into a large room, into which the
moon was shining through a window bulging over the street.  A lamp
burned low; there was a smell of spirits and tobacco, with a faint,
peculiar scent, as of rose leaves.  In one corner stood a czymbal, in
another a great pile of newspapers.  On the wall hung some old-
fashioned pistols, and a rosary of yellow beads.  Everything was
tidily arranged, but dusty.  Near an open fireplace was a table with
the remains of a meal.  The ceiling, floor, and walls were all of
dark wood.  In spite of the strange disharmony, the room had a sort
of refinement.  The Hungarian took a bottle out of a cupboard and,
filling some glasses, handed one to Swithin.  Swithin put it gingerly
to his nose.  'You never know your luck! Come!' he thought, tilting
it slowly into his mouth.  It was thick, too sweet, but of a fine
flavour.

"Brothers!" said the Hungarian, refilling, "your healths!"

The youth tossed off his wine.  And Swithin this time did the same;
he pitied this poor devil of a youth now.  "Come round to-morrow!" he
said, "I'll give you a shirt or two."  When the youth was gone,
however, he remembered with relief that he had not given his address.

'Better so,' he reflected.  'A humbug, no doubt.'

"What was that you said to him?" he asked of the Hungarian.

"I said," answered BoLeskey, "'You have eaten and drunk; and now you
are my enemy!'"

"Quite right!" said Swithin, "quite right! A beggar is every man's
enemy."

"You do not understand," the Hungarian replied politely.  "While he
was a beggar--I, too, have had to beg" (Swithin thought, 'Good God!
this is awful!'), "but now that he is no longer hungry, what is he
but a German?  No Austrian dog soils my floors!"

His nostrils, as it seemed to Swithin, had distended in an unpleasant
fashion; and a wholly unnecessary raucousness invaded his voice.  "I
am an exile--all of my blood are exiles.  Those Godless dogs!"
Swithin hurriedly assented.

As he spoke, a face peeped in at the door.

"Rozsi!" said the Hungarian.  A young girl came in.  She was rather
short, with a deliciously round figure and a thick plait of hair.
She smiled, and showed her even teeth; her little, bright, wide-set
grey eyes glanced from one man to the other.  Her face was round,
too, high in the cheekbones, the colour of wild roses, with brows
that had a twist-up at the corners.  With a gesture of alarm, she put
her hand to her cheek, and called, "Margit!"  An older girl appeared,
taller, with fine shoulders, large eyes, a pretty mouth, and what
Swithin described to himself afterwards as a "pudding" nose.  Both
girls, with little cooing sounds, began attending to their father's
face.

Swithin turned his back to them.  His arm pained him.

'This is what comes of interfering,' he thought sulkily; 'I might
have had my neck broken!' Suddenly a soft palm was placed in his, two
eyes, half-fascinated, half-shy, looked at him; then a voice called,
"Rozsi!" the door was slammed, he was alone again with the Hungarian,
harassed by a sense of soft disturbance.

"Your daughter's name is Rosy?" he said; "we have it in England--from
rose, a flower."

"Rozsi (Rozgi)," the Hungarian replied; "your English is a hard
tongue, harder than French, German, or Czechish, harder than Russian,
or Roumanian--I know no more."

"What?" said Swithin, "six languages?"  Privately he thought, 'He
knows how to lie, anyway.'

"If you lived in a country like mine," muttered the Hungarian, "with
all men's hands against you!  A free people--dying--but not dead!"

Swithin could not imagine what he was talking of.  This man's face,
with its linen bandage, gloomy eyes, and great black wisps of beard,
his fierce mutterings, and hollow cough, were all most unpleasant.
He seemed to be suffering from some kind of mental dog-bite.  His
emotion indeed appeared so indecent, so uncontrolled and open, that
its obvious sincerity produced a sort of awe in Swithin.  It was like
being forced to look into a furnace.  Boleskey stopped roaming up and
down.  "You think it's over?" he said; "I tell you, in the breast of
each one of us Magyars there is a hell.  What is sweeter than life?
What is more sacred than each breath we draw?  Ah! my country!"
These words were uttered so slowly, with such intense mournfulness,
that Swithin's jaw relaxed; he converted the movement to a yawn.

"Tell me," said Boleskey, "what would you do if the French conquered
you?"

Swithin smiled.  Then suddenly, as though something had hurt him, he
grunted, "The 'Froggies'?  Let 'em try!"

"Drink!" said Boleskey--"there is nothing like it"; he filled
Swithin's glass.  "I will tell you my story."

Swithin rose hurriedly.  "It's late," he said.  "This is good stuff,
though; have you much of it?"

"It is the last bottle."

"What?" said Swithin; "and you gave it to a beggar?"

"My name is Boleskey--Stefan," the Hungarian said, raising his head;
"of the Komorn Boleskeys."  The simplicity of this phrase--as who
shall say: What need of further description?--made an impression on
Swithin; he stopped to listen.  Boleskey's story went on and on.
"There were many abuses," boomed his deep voice, "much wrong done--
much cowardice.  I could see clouds gathering--rolling over our
plains.  The Austrian wished to strangle the breath of our mouths--to
take from us the shadow of our liberty--the shadow--all we had.  Two
years ago--the year of '48, when every man and boy answered the great
voice--brother, a dog's life!--to use a pen when all of your blood
are fighting, but it was decreed for me!  My son was killed; my
brothers taken--and myself was thrown out like a dog--I had written
out my heart, I had written out all the blood that was in my body!"
He seemed to tower, a gaunt shadow of a man, with gloomy, flickering
eyes staring at the wall.

Swithin rose, and stammered, "Much obliged--very interesting."
Boleskey made no effort to detain him, but continued staring at the
wall.  "Good-night!" said Swithin, and stamped heavily downstairs.




III

When at last Swithin reached the Goldene Alp, he found his brother
and friend standing uneasily at the door.  Traquair, a prematurely
dried-up man, with whiskers and a Scotch accent, remarked, "Ye're
airly, man!"  Swithin growled something unintelligible, and swung up
to bed.  He discovered a slight cut on his arm.  He was in a savage
temper--the elements had conspired to show him things he did not want
to see; yet now and then a memory of Rozsi, of her soft palm in his,
a sense of having been stroked and flattered, came over him.  During
breakfast next morning his brother and Traquair announced their
intention of moving on.  James Forsyte, indeed, remarked that it was
no place for a "collector," since all the "old" shops were in the
hands of Jews or very grasping persons--he had discovered this at
once.  Swithin pushed his cup aside.  "You may do what you like," he
said, "I'm staying here."

James Forsyte replied, tumbling over his own words: "Why! what do you
want to stay here for?  There's nothing for you to do here--there's
nothing to see here, unless you go up the Citadel, an' you won't do
that."

Swithin growled, "Who says so?"  Having gratified his perversity, he
felt in a better temper.  He had slung his arm in a silk sash, and
accounted for it by saying he had slipped.  Later he went out and
walked on to the bridge.  In the brilliant sunshine spires were
glistening against the pearly background of the hills; the town had a
clean, joyous air.  Swithin glanced at the Citadel and thought,
'Looks a strong place! Shouldn't wonder if it were impregnable!'  And
this for some occult reason gave him pleasure.  It occurred to him
suddenly to go and look for the Hungarian's house.

About noon, after a hunt of two hours, he was gazing about him
blankly, pale with heat, but more obstinate than ever, when a voice
above him called, "Mister!" He looked up and saw Rozsi.  She was
leaning her round chin on her round hand, gazing down at him with her
deepset, clever eyes.  When Swithin removed his hat, she clapped her
hands.  Again he had the sense of being admired, caressed.  With a
careless air, that sat grotesquely on his tall square person, he
walked up to the door; both girls stood in the passage.  Swithin felt
a confused desire to speak in some foreign tongue.  "Maam'selles," he
began, "er--bong jour-er, your father--pare, comment?"

"We also speak English," said the elder girl; "will you come in,
please?"

Swithin swallowed a misgiving, and entered.  The room had a worn
appearance by daylight, as if it had always been the nest of tragic
or vivid lives.  He sat down, and his eyes said: "I am a stranger,
but don't try to get the better of me, please--that is impossible."
The girls looked at him in silence.  Rozsi wore a rather short skirt
of black stuff, a white shirt, and across her shoulders an
embroidered yoke; her sister was dressed in dark green, with a coral
necklace; both girls had their hair in plaits.  After a minute Rozsi
touched the sleeve of his hurt arm.

"It's nothing!" muttered Swithin.

"Father fought with a chair, but you had no chair," she said in a
wondering voice.

He doubled the fist of his sound arm and struck a blow at space.  To
his amazement she began to laugh.  Nettled at this, he put his hand
beneath the heavy table and lifted it.  Rozsi clapped her hands.  "Ah
I now I see--how strong you are!"  She made him a curtsey and whisked
round to the window.  He found the quick intelligence of her eyes
confusing; sometimes they seemed to look beyond him at something
invisible--this, too, confused him.  From Margit he learned that they
had been two years in England, where their father had made his living
by teaching languages; they had now been a year in Salzburg.

"We wait," suddenly said.  Rozsi; and Margit, with a solemn face,
repeated, "We wait."

Swithin's eyes swelled a little with his desire to see what they were
waiting for.  How queer they were, with their eyes that gazed beyond
him!  He looked at their figures.  'She would pay for dressing,' he
thought, and he tried to imagine Rozsi in a skirt with proper
flounces, a thin waist, and hair drawn back over her ears.  She would
pay for dressing, with that supple figure, fluffy hair, and little
hands!  And instantly his own hands, face, and clothes disturbed him.
He got up, examined the pistols on the wall, and felt resentment at
the faded, dusty room.  'Smells like a pot-house!' he thought.  He
sat down again close to Rozsi.

"Do you love to dance?" she asked; "to dance is to live.  First you
hear the music--how your feet itch!  It is wonderful!  You begin
slow, quick--quicker; you fly--you know nothing--your feet are in the
air.  It is wonderful!"

A slow flush had mounted into Swithin's face.

"Ah!" continued Rozsi, her eyes fixed on him, "when I am dancing--out
there I see the plains--your feet go one--two--three--quick, quick,
quick, quicker--you fly."

She stretched herself, a shiver seemed to pass all down her.
"Margit! dance!" and, to Swithin's consternation, the two girls--
their hands on each other's shoulders--began shuffling their feet and
swaying to and fro.  Their heads were thrown back, their eyes half-
closed; suddenly the step quickened, they swung to one side, then to
the other, and began whirling round in front of him.  The sudden
fragrance of rose leaves enveloped him.  Round they flew again.
While they were still dancing, Boleskey came into the room.  He
caught Swithin by both hands.

"Brother, welcome! Ah! your arm is hurt! I do not forget."  His
yellow face and deep-set eyes expressed a dignified gratitude.  "Let
me introduce to you my friend Baron Kasteliz."

Swithin bowed to a man with a small forehead, who had appeared
softly, and stood with his gloved hands touching his waist.  Swithin
conceived a sudden aversion for this catlike man.  About Boleskey
there was that which made contempt impossible--the sense of
comradeship begotten in the fight; the man's height; something lofty
and savage in his face; and an obscure instinct that it would not pay
to show distaste; but this Kasteliz, with his neat jaw, low brow, and
velvety, volcanic look, excited his proper English animosity.  "Your
friends are mine," murmured Kasteliz.  He spoke with suavity, and
hissed his s's.  A long, vibrating twang quavered through the room.
Swithin turned and saw Rozsi sitting at the czymbal; the notes rang
under the little hammers in her hands, incessant, metallic, rising
and falling with that strange melody.  Kasteliz had fixed his glowing
eyes on her; Boleskey, nodding his head, was staring at the floor;
Margit, with a pale face, stood like a statue.

'What can they see in it?' thought Swithin; 'it's not a tune.'  He
took up his hat.  Rozsi saw him and stopped; her lips had parted with
a faintly dismayed expression.  His sense of personal injury
diminished; he even felt a little sorry for her.  She jumped up from
her seat and twirled round with a pout.  An inspiration seized on
Swithin.  "Come and dine with me," he said to Boleskey, "to-morrow--
the Goldene Alp--bring your friend."  He felt the eyes of the whole
room on him--the Hungarian's fine eyes; Margit's wide glance; the
narrow, hot gaze of Kasteliz; and lastly--Rozsi's.  A glow of
satisfaction ran down his spine.  When he emerged into the street
he thought gloomily, 'Now I've done it!' And not for some paces did
he look round; then, with a forced smile, turned and removed his hat
to the faces at the window.

Notwithstanding this moment of gloom, however, he was in an exalted
state all day, and at dinner kept looking at his brother and Traquair
enigmatically.  'What do they know of life?' he thought; 'they might
be here a year and get no farther.'  He made jokes, and pinned the
menu to the waiter's coat-tails.  "I like this place," he said, "I
shall spend three weeks here."  James, whose lips were on the point
of taking in a plum, looked at him uneasily.




IV

On the day of the dinner Swithin suffered a good deal.  He reflected
gloomily on Boleskey's clothes.  He had fixed an early hour--there
would be fewer people to see them.  When the time approached he
attired himself with a certain neat splendour, and though his arm was
still sore, left off the sling....

Nearly three hours afterwards he left the Goldene Alp between his
guests.  It was sunset, and along the riverbank the houses stood out,
unsoftened by the dusk; the streets were full of people hurrying
home.  Swithin had a hazy vision of empty bottles, of the ground
before his feet, and the accessibility of all the world.  Dim
recollections of the good things he had said, of his brother and
Traquair seated in the background eating ordinary meals with
inquiring, acid visages, caused perpetual smiles to break out on his
face, and he steered himself stubbornly, to prove that he was a
better man than either' of his guests.  He knew, vaguely, that he was
going somewhere with an object; Rozsi's face kept dancing before him,
like a promise.  Once or twice he gave Kasteliz a glassy stare.
Towards Boleskey, on the other hand, he felt quite warm, and recalled
with admiration the way he had set his glass down empty, time after
time.  'I like to see him take his liquor,' he thought; 'the fellow's
a gentleman, after all.'  Boleskey strode on, savagely inattentive to
everything; and Kasteliz had become more like a cat than ever.  It
was nearly dark when they reached a narrow street close to the
cathedral.  They stopped at a door held open by an old woman.  The
change from the fresh air to a heated corridor, the noise of the door
closed behind him, the old woman's anxious glances, sobered Swithin.

"I tell her," said Boleskey, "that I reply for you as for my son."

Swithin was angry.  What business had this man to reply for him!

They passed into a large room, crowded with men all women; Swithin
noticed that they all looked fit him.  He stared at them in turn--
they seemed of all classes, some in black coats or silk dresses,
others in the clothes of work-people; one man, a cobbler, still wore
his leather apron, as if he had rushed there straight from his work.
Laying his hand on Swithin's arm, Boleskey evidently began explaining
who he was; hands were extended, people beyond reach bowed to him.
Swithin acknowledged the greetings with a stiff motion of his head;
then seeing other people dropping into seats, he, too, sat down.
Some one whispered his name--Margit and Rozsi were just behind him.

"Welcome!" said Margit; but Swithin was looking at Rozsi.  Her face
was so alive and quivering!  'What's the excitement all about?' he
thought.  'How pretty she looks!'  She blushed, drew in her hands
with a quick tense movement, and gazed again beyond him into the
room.  'What is it?' thought Swithin; he had a longing to lean back
and kiss her lips.  He tried angrily to see what she was seeing in
those faces turned all one way.

Boleskey rose to speak.  No one moved; not a sound could be heard but
the tone of his deep voice.  On and on he went, fierce and solemn,
and with the rise of his voice, all those faces-fair or swarthy--
seemed to be glowing with one and the same feeling.  Swithin felt the
white heat in those faces--it was not decent!  In that whole speech
he only understood the one word--"Magyar" which came again and again.
He almost dozed off at last.  The twang of a czymbal woke him.
'What?' he thought, 'more of that infernal music!' Margit, leaning
over him, whispered: "Listen! Racoczy! It is forbidden!" Swithin saw
that Rozsi was no longer in her seat; it was she who was striking
those forbidden notes.  He looked round--everywhere the same unmoving
faces, the same entrancement, and fierce stillness.  The music
sounded muffled, as if it, too, were bursting its heart in silence.
Swithin felt within him a touch of panic.  Was this a den of tigers?
The way these people listened, the ferocity of their stillness, was
frightful...!  He gripped his chair and broke into a perspiration;
was there no chance to get away?  'When it stops,' he thought,
'there'll be a rush!'  But there was only a greater silence.  It
flashed across him that any hostile person coming in then would be
torn to pieces.  A woman sobbed.  The whole thing was beyond words
unpleasant.  He rose, and edged his way furtively towards the
doorway.  There was a cry of "Police!"  The whole crowd came pressing
after him.  Swithin would soon have been out, but a little behind he
caught sight of Rozsi swept off her feet.  Her frightened eyes
angered him.  'She doesn't deserve it,' he thought sulkily; 'letting
all this loose!' and forced his way back to her.  She clung to him,
and a fever went stealing through his veins; he butted forward at the
crowd, holding her tight.  When they were outside he let her go.

"I was afraid," she said.

"Afraid!" muttered Swithin; "I should think so."  No longer touching
her, he felt his grievance revive.

"But you are so strong," she murmured.

"This is no place for you," growled Swithin, "I'm going to see you
home."

"Oh!" cried Rozsi; "but papa and--Margit!"

"That's their look-out!" and he hurried her away.

She slid her hand under his arm; the soft curves of her form brushed
him gently, each touch only augmented his ill-humour.  He burned with
a perverse rage, as if all the passions in him were simmering and
ready to boil over; it was as if a poison were trying to work its way
out of him, through the layers of his stolid flesh.  He maintained a
dogged silence; Rozsi, too, said nothing, but when they reached the
door, she drew her hand away.

"You are angry!" she said.

"Angry," muttered Swithin; "no! How d'you make that out?"  He had a
torturing desire to kiss her.

"Yes, you are angry," she repeated; " I wait here for papa and
Margit."

Swithin also waited, wedged against the wall.  Once or twice, for his
sight was sharp, he saw her steal a look at him, a beseeching look,
and hardened his heart with a kind of pleasure.  After five minutes
Boleskey, Margit, and Kasteliz appeared.  Seeing Rozsi they broke
into exclamations of relief, and Kasteliz, with a glance at Swithin,
put his lips to her hand.  Rozsi's look said, "Wouldn't you like to
do that?"  Swithin turned short on his heel, and walked away.




V

All night he hardly slept, suffering from fever, for the first time
in his life.  Once he jumped out of bed, lighted a candle, and going
to the glass, scrutinised himself long and anxiously.  After this he
fell asleep, but had frightful dreams.  His first thought when he
woke was, 'My liver's out of order!' and, thrusting his head into
cold water, he dressed hastily and went out.  He soon left the house
behind.  Dew covered everything; blackbirds whistled in the bushes;
the air was fresh and sweet.  He had not been up so early since he
was a boy.  Why was he walking through a damp wood at this hour of
the morning?  Something intolerable and unfamiliar must have sent him
out.  No fellow in his senses would do such a thing!  He came to a
dead stop, and began unsteadily to walk back.  Regaining the hotel,
he went to bed again, and dreamed that in some wild country he was
living in a room full of insects, where a housemaid--Rozsi--holding a
broom, looked at him with mournful eyes.  There seemed an unexplained
need for immediate departure; he begged her to forward his things;
and shake them out carefully before she put them into the trunk.  He
understood that the charge for sending would be twenty-two shillings,
thought it a great deal, and had the horrors of indecision.  "No," he
muttered, "pack, and take them myself."  The housemaid turned
suddenly into a lean creature; and he awoke with a sore feeling in
his heart.

His eye fell on his wet boots.  The whole thing was scaring, and
jumping up, he began to throw his clothes into his trunks.  It was
twelve o'clock before he went down, and found his brother and
Traquair still at the table arranging an itinerary; he surprised them
by saying that he too was coming; and without further explanation set
to work to eat.  James had heard that there were salt-mines in the
neighbourhood--his proposal was to start, and halt an hour or so on
the road for their inspection; he said: "Everybody'll ask you if
you've seen the salt-mines: I shouldn't like to say I hadn't seen the
salt-mines.  What's the good, they'd say, of your going there if you
haven't seen the salt-mines?"  He wondered, too, if they need fee the
second waiter--an idle chap!

A discussion followed; but Swithin ate on glumly, conscious that his
mind was set on larger affairs.  Suddenly on the far side of the
street Rozsi and her sister passed, with little baskets on their
arms.  He started up, and at that moment Rozsi looked round--her face
was the incarnation of enticement, the chin tilted, the lower lip
thrust a little forward, her round neck curving back over her
shoulder.  Swithin muttered, "Make your own arrangements--leave me
out!" and hurried from the room, leaving James beside himself with
interest and alarm.

When he reached the street, however, the girls had disappeared.  He
hailed a carriage.  "Drive!" he called to the man, with a flourish of
his stick, and as soon as the wheels had begun to clatter on the
stones he leaned back, looking sharply to right and left.  He soon
had to give up thought of finding them, but made the coachman turn
round and round again.  All day he drove about, far into the country,
and kept urging the driver to use greater speed.  He was in a strange
state of hurry and elation.  Finally, he dined at a little country
inn; and this gave the measure of his disturbance--the dinner was
atrocious.

Returning late in the evening he found a note written by Traquair.
"Are you in your senses, man?" it asked; "we have no more time to
waste idling about here.  If you want to rejoin us, come on to
Danielli's Hotel, Venice."  Swithin chuckled when he read it, and
feeling frightfully tired, went to bed and slept like a log.




VI

Three weeks later he was still in Salzburg, no longer at the Goldene
Alp, but in rooms over a shop near the Boleskeys'.  He had spent a
small fortune in the purchase of flowers.  Margit would croon over
them, but Rozsi, with a sober "Many tanks!" as if they were her
right, would look long at herself in the glass, and pin one into her
hair.  Swithin ceased to wonder; he ceased to wonder at anything they
did.  One evening he found Boleskey deep in conversation with a pale,
dishevelled-looking person.

"Our friend Mr. Forsyte--Count D....," said Boleskey.

Swithin experienced a faint, unavoidable emotion; but looking at the
Count's trousers, he thought: 'Doesn't look much like one!'  And with
an ironic bow to the silent girls, he turned, and took his hat.  But
when he had reached the bottom of the dark stairs he heard footsteps.
Rozsi came running down, looked out at the door, and put her hands up
to her breast as if disappointed; suddenly with a quick glance round
she saw him.  Swithin caught her arm.  She slipped away, and her face
seemed to bubble with defiance or laughter; she ran up three steps,
stopped, looked at him across her shoulder, and fled on up the
stairs.  Swithin went out bewildered and annoyed.

'What was she going to say to me?' he kept thinking.  During these
three weeks he had asked himself all sorts of questions: whether he
were being made a fool of; whether she were in love with him; what he
was doing there, and sometimes at night, with all his candles burning
as if he wanted light, the breeze blowing on him through the window,
his cigar, half-smoked, in his hand, he sat, an hour or more, staring
at the wall.  'Enough of this!' he thought every morning.  Twice he
packed fully--once he ordered his travelling carriage, but
countermanded it the following day.  What definitely he hoped,
intended, resolved, he could not have said.  He was always thinking
of Rozsi, he could not read the riddle in her face--she held him in a
vice, notwithstanding that everything about her threatened the very
fetishes of his existence.  And Boleskey!  Whenever he looked at him
he thought, 'If he were only clean?' and mechanically fingered his
own well-tied cravatte.  To talk with the fellow, too, was like being
forced to look at things which had no place in the light of day.
Freedom, equality, self-sacrifice!

'Why can't he settle down at some business,' he thought, 'instead of
all this talk?' Boleskey's sudden diffidences, self-depreciation,
fits of despair, irritated him.  "Morbid beggar!" he would mutter;
"thank God I haven't a thin skin."  And proud too!  Extraordinary!
An impecunious fellow like that!  One evening, moreover, Boleskey had
returned home drunk.  Swithin had hustled him away into his bedroom,
helped him to undress, and stayed until he was asleep.  'Too much of
a good thing!' he thought, 'before his own daughters, too!'  It was
after this that he ordered his travelling carriage.  The other
occasion on which he packed was one evening, when not only Boleskey,
but Rozsi herself had picked chicken bones with her fingers.

Often in the mornings he would go to the Mirabell Garden to smoke his
cigar; there, in stolid contemplation of the statues--rows of half-
heroic men carrying off half-distressful females--he would spend an
hour pleasantly, his hat tilted to keep the sun off his nose.  The
day after Rozsi had fled from him on the stairs, he came there as
usual.  It was a morning of blue sky and sunlight glowing on the old
prim garden, on its yew-trees, and serio-comic statues, and walls
covered with apricots and plums.  When Swithin approached his usual
seat, who should be sitting there but Rozsi

"Good-morning," he stammered; "you knew this was my seat then?"

Rozsi looked at the ground.  "Yes," she answered.

Swithin felt bewildered.  "Do you know," he said, "you treat me very
funnily?"

To his surprise Rozsi put her little soft hand down and touched his;
then, without a word, sprang up and rushed away.  It took him a
minute to recover.  There were people present; he did not like to
run, but overtook her on the bridge, and slipped her hand beneath his
arm.

"You shouldn't have done that," he said; "you shouldn't have run away
from me, you know."

Rozsi laughed.  Swithin withdrew his arm; a desire to shake her
seized him.  He walked some way before he said, "Will you have the
goodness to tell me what you came to that seat for?"

Rozsi flashed a look at him.  "To-morrow is the fete," she answered.

Swithin muttered, "Is that all?"

"If you do not take us, we cannot go."

"Suppose I refuse," he said sullenly, "there are plenty of others."

Rozsi bent her head, scurrying along.  "No," she murmured, "if you do
not go--I do not wish."

Swithin drew her hand back within his arm.  How round and soft it
was!  He tried to see her face.  When she was nearly home he said
goodbye, not wishing, for some dark reason, to be seen with her.  He
watched till she had disappeared; then slowly retraced his steps to
the Mirabell Garden.  When he came to where she had been sitting, he
slowly lighted his cigar, and for a long time after it was smoked out
remained there in the silent presence of the statues.




VII

A crowd of people wandered round the booths, and Swithin found
himself obliged to give the girls his arms.  'Like a little Cockney
clerk!' he thought.  His indignation passed unnoticed; they talked,
they laughed, each sight and sound in all the hurly-burly seemed to
go straight into their hearts.  He eyed them ironically--their eager
voices, and little coos of sympathy seemed to him vulgar.  In the
thick of the crowd he slipped his arm out of Margit's, but, just as
he thought that he was free, the unwelcome hand slid up again.  He
tried again, but again Margit reappeared, serene, and full of
pleasant humour; and his failure this time appeared to him in a comic
light.  But when Rozsi leaned across him, the glow of her round
cheek, her curving lip, the inscrutable grey gleam of her eyes, sent
a thrill of longing through him.  He was obliged to stand by while
they parleyed with a gipsy, whose matted locks and skinny hands
inspired him with a not unwarranted disgust.  "Folly!" he muttered,
as Rozsi held out her palm.  The old woman mumbled, and shot a
malignant look at him.  Rozsi drew back her hand, and crossed
herself.  ' Folly!' Swithin thought again; and seizing the girls'
arms, he hurried them away.

"What did the old hag say?" he asked.

Rozsi shook her head.

"You don't mean that you believe?"

Her eyes were full of tears.  "The gipsies are wise," she murmured.

"Come, what did she tell you?"

This time Rozsi looked hurriedly round, and slipped away into the
crowd.  After a hunt they found her, and Swithin, who was scared,
growled: "You shouldn't do such things--it's not respectable."

On higher ground, in the centre of a clear space, a military band was
playing.  For the privilege of entering this charmed circle Swithin
paid three kronen, choosing naturally the best seats.  He ordered
wine, too, watching Rozsi out of the corner of his eye as he poured
it out.  The protecting tenderness of yesterday was all lost in this
medley.  It was every man for himself, after all!  The colour had
deepened again in her cheeks, she laughed, pouting her lips.
Suddenly she put her glass aside.  "Thank you, very much," she said,
"it is enough!"

Margit, whose pretty mouth was all smiles, cried, "Lieber Gott! is it
not good-life?"  It was not a question Swithin could undertake to
answer.  The band began to play a waltz.  "Now they will dance.
Lieber Gott! and are the lights not wonderful?"  Lamps were
flickering beneath the trees like a swarm of fireflies.  There was a
hum as from a gigantic beehive.  Passers-by lifted their faces, then
vanished into the crowd; Rozsi stood gazing at them spellbound, as if
their very going and coming were a delight.

The space was soon full of whirling couples.  Rozsi's head began to
beat time.  "O Margit!" she whispered.

Swithin's face had assumed a solemn, uneasy expression.  A man
raising his hat, offered his arm to Margit.  She glanced back across
her shoulder to reassure Swithin.  "It is a friend," she said.

Swithin looked at Rozsi--her eyes were bright, her lips tremulous.
He slipped his hand along the table and touched her fingers.  Then
she flashed a look at him--appeal, reproach, tenderness, all were
expressed in it.  Was she expecting him to dance?  Did she want to
mix with the rift-raff there; wish him to make an exhibition of
himself in this hurly-burly?  A voice said, "Good-evening!"  Before
them stood Kasteliz, in a dark coat tightly buttoned at the waist.

"You are not dancing, Rozsi Kozsanony?" (Miss Rozsi).  "Let me, then,
have the pleasure."  He held out his arm.  Swithin stared in front of
him.  In the very act of going she gave him a look that said as plain
as words: "Will you not?"  But for answer he turned his eyes away,
and when he looked again she was gone.  He paid the score and made
his way into the crowd.  But as he went she danced by close to him,
all flushed and panting.  She hung back as if to stop him, and he
caught the glistening of tears.  Then he lost sight of her again.  To
be deserted the first minute he was alone with her, and for that
jackanapes with the small head and the volcanic glances!  It was too
much!  And suddenly it occurred to him that she was alone with
Kasteliz--alone at night, and far from home.  ' Well,' he thought,
'what do I care?' and shouldered his way on through the crowd.  It
served him right for mixing with such people here.  He left the fair,
but the further he went, the more he nursed his rage, the more
heinous seemed her offence, the sharper grew his jealousy.  "A
beggarly baron!" was his thought.

A figure came alongside--it was Boleskey.  One look showed Swithin
his condition.  Drunk again!  This was the last straw!

Unfortunately Boleskey had recognised him.  He seemed violently
excited.  "Where--where are my daughters?" he began.

Swithin brushed past, but Boleskey caught his arm.  "Listen--
brother!" he said; "news of my country!  After to-morrow...."

"Keep it to yourself!" growled Swithin, wrenching his arm free.  He
went straight to his lodgings, and, lying on the hard sofa of his
unlighted sitting-room, gave himself up to bitter thoughts.  But in
spite of all his anger, Rozsi's supply-moving figure, with its
pouting lips, and roguish appealing eyes, still haunted him.




VIII

Next morning there was not a carriage to be had, and Swithin was
compelled to put off his departure till the morrow.  The day was grey
and misty; he wandered about with the strained, inquiring look of a
lost dog in his eyes.

Late in the afternoon he went back to his lodgings.  In a corner of
the sitting-room stood Rozsi.  The thrill of triumph, the sense of
appeasement, the emotion, that seized on him, crept through to his
lips in a faint smile.  Rozsi made no sound, her face was hidden by
her hands.  And this silence of hers weighed on Swithin.  She was
forcing him to break it.  What was behind her hands?  His own face
was visible!  Why didn't she speak?  Why was she here?  Alone?  That
was not right surely.

Suddenly Rozsi dropped her hands; her flushed face was quivering--it
seemed as though a word, a sign, even, might bring a burst of tears.

He walked over to the window.  'I must give her time!' he thought;
then seized by unreasoning terror at this silence, spun round, and
caught her by the arms.  Rozsi held back from him, swayed forward and
buried her face on his breast....

Half an hour later Swithin was pacing up and down his room.  The
scent of rose leaves had not yet died away.  A glove lay on the
floor; he picked it up, and for a long time stood weighing it in his
hand.  All sorts of confused thoughts and feelings haunted him.  It
was the purest and least selfish moment of his life, this moment
after she had yielded.  But that pure gratitude at her fiery, simple
abnegation did not last; it was followed by a petty sense of triumph,
and by uneasiness.  He was still weighing the little glove in his
hand, when he had another visitor.  It was Kasteliz.

"What can I do for you?" Swithin asked ironically.

The Hungarian seemed suffering from excitement.  Why had Swithin left
his charges the night before?  What excuse had he to make?  What sort
of conduct did he call this?

Swithin, very like a bull-dog at that moment, answered: What business
was it of his?

The business of a gentleman!  What right had the Englishman to pursue
a young girl?

"Pursue?" said Swithin; "you've been spying, then?"

"Spying--I--Kasteliz--Maurus Johann--an insult!"

"Insult!" sneered Swithin; d'you mean to tell me you weren't in the
street just now?"

Kasteliz answered with a hiss, "If you do not leave the city I will
make you, with my sword--do you understand?"

"And if you do not leave my room I will throw you out of the window!"

For some minutes Kasteliz spoke in pure Hungarian while Swithin
waited, with a forced smile and a fixed look in his eye.  He did not
understand Hungarian.

"If you are still in the city to-morrow evening," said Kasteliz at
last in English, " I will spit you in the street."

Swithin turned to the window and watched his visitor's retiring back
with a queer mixture of amusement, stubbornness, and anxiety.
'Well,' he thought, 'I suppose he'll run me through!'  The thought
was unpleasant; and it kept recurring, but it only served to harden
his determination.  His head was busy with plans for seeing Rozsi;
his blood on fire with the kisses she had given him.




IX

Swithin was long in deciding to go forth next day.  He had made up
his mind not to go to Rozsi till five o'clock.  'Mustn't make myself
too cheap,' he thought.  It was a little past that hour when he at
last sallied out, and with a beating heart walked towards Boleskey's.
He looked up at the window, more than half expecting to see Rozsi
there; but she was not, and he noticed with faint surprise that the
window was not open; the plants, too, outside, looked singularly
arid.  He knocked.  No one came.  He beat a fierce tatto.  At last
the door was opened by a man with a reddish beard, and one of those
sardonic faces only to be seen on shoemakers of Teutonic origin.

"What do you want, making all this noise?" he asked in German.

Swithin pointed up the stairs.  The man grinned, and shook his head.

"I want to go up," said Swithin.

The cobbler shrugged his shoulders, and Swithin rushed upstairs.  The
rooms were empty.  The furniture remained, but all signs of life were
gone.  One of his own bouquets, faded, stood in a glass; the ashes of
a fire were barely cold; little scraps of paper strewed the hearth;
already the room smelt musty.  He went into the bedrooms, and with a
feeling of stupefaction stood staring at the girls' beds, side by
side against the wall.  A bit of ribbon caught his eye; he picked it
up and put it in his pocket--it was a piece of evidence that she had
once existed.  By the mirror some pins were dropped about; a little
powder had been spilled.  He looked at his own disquiet face and
thought, 'I've been cheated!'

The shoemaker's voice aroused him.  "Tausend Teufel!  Eilen Sie, nur!
Zeit is Geld!  Kann nich' Langer warten!"  Slowly he descended.

"Where have they gone?" asked Swithin painfully.  "A pound for every
English word you speak.  A pound!" and he made an O with his fingers.

The corners of the shoemaker's lips curled.  "Geld! Mf!  Eilen Sie,
nur!"

But in Swithin a sullen anger had begun to burn.  "If you don't tell
me," he said, "it'll be the worse for you."

"Sind ein komischer Kerl!" remarked the shoemaker.  "Hier ist meine
Frau!"

A battered-looking woman came hurrying down the passage, calling out
in German, "Don't let him go!"

With a snarling sound the shoemaker turned his back, and shambled
off.

The woman furtively thrust a letter into Swithin's hand, and
furtively waited.

The letter was from Rozsi.

"Forgive me"--it ran--"that I leave you and do not say goodbye.  To-
day our father had the call from our dear Father-town so long
awaited.  In two hours we are ready.  I pray to the Virgin to keep
you ever safe, and that you do not quite forget me.--Your
unforgetting good friend,  ROZSI

When Swithin read it his first sensation was that of a man sinking in
a bog; then his obstinacy stiffened.  'I won't be done,' he thought.
Taking out a sovereign he tried to make the woman comprehend that she
could earn it, by telling him where they had gone.  He got her
finally to write the words out in his pocket-book, gave her the
sovereign, and hurried to the Goldene Alp, where there was a waiter
who spoke English.  The translation given him was this:

"At three o'clock they start in a carriage on the road to Linz--they
have bad horses--the Herr also rides a white horse."

Swithin at once hailed a carriage and started at full gallop on the
road to Linz.  Outside the Mirabell Garden he caught sight of
Kasteliz and grinned at him.  'I've sold him anyway,' he thought;
'for all their talk, they're no good, these foreigners!'

His spirits rose, but soon fell again.  What chance had he of
catching them?  They had three hours' start!  Still, the roads were
heavy from the rain of the last two nights--they had luggage and bad
horses; his own were good, his driver bribed--he might overtake them
by ten o'clock! But did he want to?  What a fool he had been not to
bring his luggage; he would then have had a respectable position.
What a brute he would look without a change of shirt, or anything to
shave with!  He saw himself with horror, all bristly, and in soiled
linen.  People would think him mad.  'I've given myself away,'
flashed across him, 'what the devil can I say to them?' and he stared
sullenly at the driver's back.  He read Rozsi's letter again; it had
a scent of her.  And in the growing darkness, jolted by the swinging
of the carriage, he suffered tortures from his prudence, tortures
from his passion.

It grew colder and dark.  He turned the collar of his coat up to his
ears.  He had visions of Piccadilly.  This wild-goose chase appeared
suddenly a dangerous, unfathomable business.  Lights, fellowship,
security!  'Never again!' he brooded; 'why won't they let me alone?'
But it was not clear whether by 'they' he meant the conventions, the
Boleskeys, his passions, or those haunting memories of Rozsi.  If he
had only had a bag with him!  What was he going to say?  What was he
going to get by this?  He received no answer to these questions.  The
darkness itself was less obscure than his sensations.  From time to
time he took out his watch.  At each village the driver made
inquiries.  It was past ten when he stopped the carriage with a jerk.
The stars were bright as steel, and by the side of the road a reedy
lake showed in the moonlight.  Swithin shivered.  A man on a horse
had halted in the centre of the road.  "Drive on!" called Swithin,
with a stolid face.  It turned out to be Boleskey, who, on a gaunt
white horse, looked like some winged creature.  He stood where he
could bar the progress of the carriage, holding out a pistol.

'Theatrical beggar!' thought Swithin, with a nervous smile.  He made
no sign of recognition.  Slowly Boleskey brought his lean horse up to
the carriage.  When he saw who was within he showed astonishment and
joy.

"You?" he cried, slapping his hand on his attenuated thigh, and
leaning over till his beard touched Swithin.  "You have come?  You
followed us?"

"It seems so," Swithin grunted out.

"You throw in your lot with us.  Is it possible?  You--you are a
knight-errant then!"

"Good God!" said Swithin.  Boleskey, flogging his dejected steed,
cantered forward in the moonlight.  He came back, bringing an old
cloak, which he insisted on wrapping round Swithin's shoulders.  He
handed him, too, a capacious flask.

"How cold you look!" he said.  "Wonderful! Wonderful! you English!"
His grateful eyes never left Swithin for a moment.  They had come up
to the heels of the other carriage now, but Swithin, hunched in the
cloak, did not try to see what was in front of him.  To the bottom of
his soul he resented the Hungarian's gratitude.  He remarked at last,
with wasted irony:

"You're in a hurry, it seems!"

"If we had wings," Boleskey answered, "we would use them."

"Wings!" muttered Swithin thickly; "legs are good enough for me."




X

Arrived at the inn where they were to pass the night, Swithin waited,
hoping to get into the house without a "scene," but when at last he
alighted the girls were in the doorway, and Margit greeted him with
an admiring murmur, in which, however, he seemed to detect irony.
Rozsi, pale and tremulous, with a half-scared look, gave him her
hand, and, quickly withdrawing it, shrank behind her sister.  When
they had gone up to their room Swithin sought Boleskey.  His spirits
had risen remarkably.  "Tell the landlord to get us supper," he said;
"we'll crack a bottle to our luck."  He hurried on the landlord's
preparations.  The window of the, room faced a wood, so near that he
could almost touch the trees.  The scent from the pines blew in on
him.  He turned away from that scented darkness, and began to draw
the corks of winebottles.  The sound seemed to conjure up Boleskey.
He came in, splashed all over, smelling slightly of stables; soon
after, Margit appeared, fresh and serene, but Rozsi did not come.

"Where is your sister?" Swithin said.  Rozsi, it seemed, was tired.
"It will do her good to eat," said Swithin.  And Boleskey, murmuring,
"She must drink to our country," went out to summon her, Margit
followed him, while Swithin cut up a chicken.  They came back without
her.  She had "a megrim of the spirit."

Swithin's face fell.  "Look here!" he said, "I'll go and try.  Don't
wait for me."

"Yes," answered Boleskey, sinking mournfully into a chair; "try,
brother, try-by all means, try."

Swithin walked down the corridor with an odd, sweet, sinking
sensation in his chest; and tapped on Rozsi's door.  In a minute, she
peeped forth, with her hair loose, and wondering eyes.

"Rozsi," he stammered, "what makes you afraid of me, now?"

She stared at him, but did not answer.

"Why won't you come?"

Still she did not speak, but suddenly stretched out to him her bare
arm.  Swithin pressed his face to it.  With a shiver, she whispered
above him, "I will come," and gently shut the door.

Swithin stealthily retraced his steps, and paused a minute outside
the sitting-room to regain his self-control.

The sight of Boleskey with a bottle in his hand steadied him.

"She is coming," he said.  And very soon she did come, her thick hair
roughly twisted in a plait.

Swithin sat between the girls; but did not talk, for he was really
hungry.  Boleskey too was silent, plunged in gloom; Rozsi was dumb;
Margit alone chattered.

"You will come to our Father-town?  We shall have things to show you.
Rozsi, what things we will show him!"  Rozsi, with a little appealing
movement of her hands, repeated, "What things we will show you!"  She
seemed suddenly to find her voice, and with glowing cheeks, mouths
full, and eyes bright as squirrels', they chattered reminiscences of
the "dear Father-town," of "dear friends," of the "dear home."

'A poor place!' Swithin could not help thinking.  This enthusiasm
seemed to him common; but he was careful to assume a look of
interest, feeding on the glances flashed at him from Rozsi's restless
eyes.

As the wine waned Boleskey grew more and more gloomy, but now and
then a sort of gleaming flicker passed over his face.  He rose to his
feet at last.

"Let us not forget," he said, "that we go perhaps to ruin, to death;
in the face of all this we go, because our country needs--in this
there is no credit, neither to me nor to you, my daughters; but for
this noble Englishman, what shall we say?  Give thanks to God for a
great heart.  He comes--not for country, not for fame, not for money,
but to help the weak and the oppressed.  Let us drink, then, to him;
let us drink again and again to heroic Forsyte!"  In the midst of the
dead silence, Swithin caught the look of suppliant mockery in Rozsi's
eyes.  He glanced at the Hungarian.  Was he laughing at him?  But
Boleskey, after drinking up his wine, had sunk again into his seat;
and there suddenly, to the surprise of all, he began to snore.
Margit rose and, bending over him like a mother, murmured: "He is
tired--it is the ride!"  She raised him in her strong arms, and
leaning on her shoulder Boleskey staggered from the room.  Swithin
and Rozsi were left alone.  He slid his hand towards her hand that
lay so close, on the rough table-cloth.  It seemed to await his
touch.  Something gave way in him, and words came welling up; for the
moment he forgot himself, forgot everything but that he was near her.
Her head dropped on his shoulder, he breathed the perfume of her
hair.  "Good-night!" she whispered, and the whisper was like a kiss;
yet before he could stop her she was gone.  Her footsteps died away
in the passage, but Swithin sat gazing intently at a single bright
drop of spilt wine quivering on the table's edge.  In that moment
she, in her helplessness and emotion, was all in all to him--his life
nothing; all the real things--his conventions, convictions, training,
and himself--all seemed remote, behind a mist of passion and strange
chivalry.  Carefully with a bit of bread he soaked up the bright
drop; and suddenly he thought: 'This is tremendous!'  For a long time
he stood there in the window, close to the dark pine-trees.





XI

In the early morning he awoke, full of the discomfort of this strange
place and the medley of his dreams.  Lying, with his nose peeping
over the quilt, he was visited by a horrible suspicion.  When he
could bear it no longer, he started up in bed.  What if it were all a
plot to get him to marry her?  The thought was treacherous, and
inspired in him a faint disgust.  Still, she might be ignorant of it!
But was she so innocent?  What innocent girl would have come to his
room like that?  What innocent girl?  Her father, who pretended to be
caring only for his country?  It was not probable that any man was
such a fool; it was all part of the game-a scheming rascal!
Kasteliz, too--his threats!  They intended him to marry her!  And the
horrid idea was strengthened by his reverence for marriage.  It was
the proper, the respectable condition; he was genuinely afraid of
this other sort of liaison--it was somehow too primitive!  And yet
the thought of that marriage made his blood run cold.  Considering
that she had already yielded, it would be all the more monstrous!
With the cold, fatal clearness of the morning light he now for the
first time saw his position in its full bearings.  And, like a fish
pulled out of water, he gasped at what was disclosed.  Sullen
resentment against this attempt to force him settled deep into his
soul.

He seated himself on the bed, holding his head in his hands, solemnly
thinking out what such marriage meant.  In the first place it meant
ridicule, in the next place ridicule, in the last place ridicule.
She would eat chicken bones with her fingers--those fingers his lips
still burned to kiss.  She would dance wildly with other men.  She
would talk of her "dear Father-town," and all the time her eyes would
look beyond him, some where or other into some d--d place he knew
nothing of.  He sprang up and paced the room, and for a moment
thought he would go mad.

They meant him to marry her!  Even she--she meant him to marry her!
Her tantalising inscrutability; her sudden little tendernesses; her
quick laughter; her swift, burning kisses; even the movements of her
hands; her tears--all were evidence against her.  Not one of these
things that Nature made her do counted on her side, but how they
fanned his longing, his desire, and distress!  He went to the glass
and tried to part his hair with his fingers, but being rather fine,
it fell into lank streaks.  There was no comfort to be got from it.
He drew his muddy boots on.  Suddenly he thought: 'If I could see her
alone, I could arrive at some arrangement!'  Then, with a sense of
stupefaction, he made the discovery that no arrangement could
possibly be made that would not be dangerous, even desperate.  He
seized his hat, and, like a rabbit that has been fired at, bolted
from the room.  He plodded along amongst the damp woods with his head
down, and resentment and dismay in his heart.  But, as the sun rose,
and the air grew sweet with pine scent, he slowly regained a sort of
equability.  After all, she had already yielded; it was not as if...!
And the tramp of his own footsteps lulled him into feeling that it
would all come right.

'Look at the thing practically,' he thought.  The faster he walked
the firmer became his conviction that he could still see it through.
He took out his watch--it was past seven--he began to hasten back.
In the yard of the inn his driver was harnessing the horses; Swithin
went up to him.

"Who told you to put them in?" he asked.

The driver answered, "Der Herr."

Swithin turned away.  'In ten minutes,' he thought, 'I shall be in
that carriage again, with this going on in my head!  Driving away
from England, from all I'm used to-driving to-what?'  Could he face
it?  Could he face all that he had been through that morning; face it
day after day, night after night?  Looking up, he saw Rozsi at her
open window gazing down at him; never had she looked sweeter, more
roguish.  An inexplicable terror seized on him; he ran across the
yard and jumped into his carriage.  "To Salzburg!" he cried; "drive
on!"  And rattling out of the yard without a look behind, he flung a
sovereign at the hostler.  Flying back along the road faster even
than he had come, with pale face, and eyes blank and staring like a
pug-dog's, Swithin spoke no single word; nor, till he had reached the
door of his lodgings, did he suffer the driver to draw rein.




XII

Towards evening, five days later, Swithin, yellow and travel-worn,
was ferried in a gondola to Danielli's Hotel.  His brother, who was
on the steps, looked at him with an apprehensive curiosity.

"Why, it's you!" he mumbled.  "So you've got here safe?"

"Safe?" growled Swithin.

James replied, "I thought you wouldn't leave your friends!"  Then,
with a jerk of suspicion, "You haven't brought your friends?"

"What friends?" growled Swithin.

James changed the subject.  "You don't look the thing," he said.

"Really!" muttered Swithin; "what's that to you?"

He appeared at dinner that night, but fell asleep over his coffee.
Neither Traquair nor James asked him any further question, nor did
they allude to Salzburg; and during the four days which concluded the
stay in Venice Swithin went about with his head up, but his eyes
half-closed like a dazed man.  Only after they had taken ship at
Genoa did he show signs of any healthy interest in life, when,
finding that a man on board was perpetually strumming, he locked the
piano up and pitched the key into the sea.

That winter in London he behaved much as usual, but fits of
moroseness would seize on him, during which he was not pleasant to
approach.

One evening when he was walking with a friend in Piccadilly, a girl
coming from a side-street accosted him in German.  Swithin, after
staring at her in silence for some seconds, handed her a five-pound
note, to the great amazement of his friend; nor could he himself have
explained the meaning of this freak of generosity.

Of Rozsi he never heard again....

This, then, was the substance of what he remembered as he lay ill in
bed.  Stretching out his hand he pressed the bell.  His valet
appeared, crossing the room like a cat; a Swede, who had been with
Swithin many years; a little man with a dried face and fierce
moustache, morbidly sharp nerves, and a queer devotion to his master.

Swithin made a feeble gesture.  "Adolf," he said, "I'm very bad."

"Yes, sir!"

"Why do you stand there like a cow?" asked Swithin; "can't you see
I'm very bad?"

"Yes, sir!"  The valet's face twitched as though it masked the dance
of obscure emotions.

"I shall feel better after dinner.  What time is it?"

"Five o'clock."

"I thought it was more.  The afternoons are very long."

"Yes, sir!"Swithin sighed, as though he had expected the consolation
of denial.

"Very likely I shall have a nap.  Bring up hot water at half-past six
and shave me before dinner."

The valet moved towards the door.  Swithin raised himself.

"What did Mr. James say to you?"

"He said you ought to have another doctor; two doctors, he said,
better than one.  He said, also, he would look in again on his way
'home.'"

Swithin grunted, "Umph! What else did he say?"

"He said you didn't take care of yourself."

Swithin glared.

"Has anybody else been to see me?"

The valet turned away his eyes.  "Mrs. Thomas Forsyte came last
Monday fortnight."

"How long have I been ill?"

"Five weeks on Saturday."

"Do you think I'm very bad?"

Adolf's face was covered suddenly with crow's-feet.  "You have no
business to ask me question like that!  I am not paid, sir, to answer
question like that."

Swithin said faintly: "You're a peppery fool!  Open a bottle of
champagne!"

Adolf took a bottle of champagne--from a cupboard and held nippers to
it.  He fixed his eyes on Swithin.  "The doctor said--"

"Open the bottle!"

"It is not--"

"Open the bottle--or I give you warning."

Adolf removed the cork.  He wiped a glass elaborately, filled it, and
bore it scrupulously to the bedside.  Suddenly twirling his
moustaches, he wrung his hands, and burst out: "It is poison."

Swithin grinned faintly.  "You foreign fool!" he said.  "Get out!"

The valet vanished.

'He forgot himself!' thought Swithin.  Slowly he raised the glass,
slowly put it back, and sank gasping on his pillows.  Almost at once
he fell asleep.

He dreamed that he was at his club, sitting after dinner in the
crowded smoking-room, with its bright walls and trefoils of light.
It was there that he sat every evening, patient, solemn, lonely, and
sometimes fell asleep, his square, pale old face nodding to one side.
He dreamed that he was gazing at the picture over the fireplace, of
an old statesman with a high collar, supremely finished face, and
sceptical eyebrows--the picture, smooth, and reticent as sealing-wax,
of one who seemed for ever exhaling the narrow wisdom of final
judgments.  All round him, his fellow members were chattering.  Only
he himself, the old sick member, was silent.  If fellows only knew
what it was like to sit by yourself and feel ill all the time!  What
they were saying he had heard a hundred times.  They were talking of
investments, of cigars, horses, actresses, machinery.  What was that?
A foreign patent for cleaning boilers?  There was no such thing;
boilers couldn't be cleaned, any fool knew that!  If an Englishman
couldn't clean a boiler, no foreigner could clean one.  He appealed
to the old statesman's eyes.  But for once those eyes seemed
hesitating, blurred, wanting in finality.  They vanished.  In their
place were Rozsi's little deep-set eyes, with their wide and far-off
look; and as he gazed they seemed to grow bright as steel, and to
speak to him.  Slowly the whole face grew to be there, floating on
the dark background of the picture; it was pink, aloof, unfathomable,
enticing, with its fluffy hair and quick lips, just as he had last
seen it.  "Are you looking for something?" she seemed to say: "I
could show you."

"I have everything safe enough," answered Swithin, and in his sleep
he groaned.

He felt the touch of fingers on his forehead.  'I'm dreaming,' he
thought in his dream.

She had vanished; and far away, from behind the picture, came a sound
of footsteps.

Aloud, in his sleep, Swithin muttered: "I've missed it."

Again he heard the rustling of those light footsteps, and close in
his ear a sound, like a sob.  He awoke; the sob was his own.  Great
drops of perspiration stood on his forehead.  'What is it?' he
thought; 'what have I lost?'  Slowly his mind travelled over his
investments; he could not think of any single one that was unsafe.
What was it, then, that he had lost?  Struggling on his pillows, he
clutched the wine-glass.  His lips touched the wine.  'This isn't the
"Heidseck"!' he thought angrily, and before the reality of that
displeasure all the dim vision passed away.  But as he bent to drink,
something snapped, and, with a sigh, Swithin Forsyte died above the
bubbles....

When James Forsyte came in again on his way home, the valet,
trembling took his hat and stick.

"How's your master?"

"My master is dead, sir!"

"Dead! He can't be!  I left him safe an hour ago.

On the bed Swithin's body was doubled like a sack; his hand still
grasped the glass.

James Forsyte paused.  "Swithin!" he said, and with his hand to his
ear he waited for an answer; but none came, and slowly in the glass a
last bubble rose and burst.

December 1900.







To

MY SISTER

MABEL EDITH REYNOLDS





THE SILENCE

I

In a car of the Naples express a mining expert was diving into a bag
for papers.  The strong sunlight showed the fine wrinkles on his
brown face and the shabbiness of his short, rough beard.  A newspaper
cutting slipped from his fingers; he picked it up, thinking: 'How the
dickens did that get in here?'  It was from a colonial print of three
years back; and he sat staring, as if in that forlorn slip of yellow
paper he had encountered some ghost from his past.

These were the words he read: "We hope that the setback to
civilisation, the check to commerce and development, in this
promising centre of our colony may be but temporary; and that capital
may again come to the rescue.  Where one man was successful, others
should surely not fail?  We are convinced that it only needs...."
And the last words: "For what can be sadder than to see the forest
spreading its lengthening shadows, like symbols of defeat, over the
untenanted dwellings of men; and where was once the merry chatter of
human voices, to pass by in the silence...."

On an afternoon, thirteen years before, he had been in the city of
London, at one of those emporiums where mining experts perch, before
fresh flights, like sea-gulls on some favourite rock.  A clerk said
to him: "Mr. Scorrier, they are asking for you downstairs--Mr.
Hemmings of the New Colliery Company."

Scorrier took up the speaking tube.  "Is that you, Mr. Scorrier?  I
hope you are very well, sir, I am--Hemmings--I am--coming up."

In two minutes he appeared, Christopher Hemmings, secretary of the
New Colliery Company, known in the City-behind his back--as "Down-by-
the-starn" Hemmings.  He grasped Scorrier's hand--the gesture was
deferential, yet distinguished.  Too handsome, too capable, too
important, his figure, the cut of his iron-grey beard, and his
intrusively fine eyes, conveyed a continual courteous invitation to
inspect their infallibilities.  He stood, like a City "Atlas," with
his legs apart, his coat-tails gathered in his hands, a whole globe
of financial matters deftly balanced on his nose.  "Look at me!" he
seemed to say.  "It's heavy, but how easily I carry it.  Not the man
to let it down, Sir !"

"I hope I see you well, Mr. Scorrier," he began.  "I have come round
about our mine.  There is a question of a fresh field being opened
up--between ourselves, not before it's wanted.  I find it difficult
to get my Board to take a comprehensive view.  In short, the question
is: Are you prepared to go out for us, and report on it?  The fees
will be all right."  His left eye closed.  "Things have been very--
er--dicky; we are going to change our superintendent.  I have got
little Pippin--you know little Pippin?"

Scorrier murmured, with a feeling of vague resentment: "Oh yes.  He's
not a mining man!"

Hemmings replied: "We think that he will do."  'Do you?' thought
Scorrier; 'that's good of you!'

He had not altogether shaken off a worship he had felt for Pippin--
"King" Pippin he was always called, when they had been boys at the
Camborne Grammar-school.  "King" Pippin! the boy with the bright
colour, very bright hair, bright, subtle, elusive eyes, broad
shoulders, little stoop in the neck, and a way of moving it quickly
like a bird; the boy who was always at the top of everything, and
held his head as if looking for something further to be the top of.
He remembered how one day "King" Pippin had said to him in his soft
way, "Young Scorrie, I'll do your sums for you"; and in answer to his
dubious, "Is that all right?" had replied, "Of course--I don't want
you to get behind that beast Blake, he's not a Cornishman" (the beast
Blake was an Irishman not yet twelve).  He remembered, too, an
occasion when "King" Pippin with two other boys fought six louts and
got a licking, and how Pippin sat for half an hour afterwards, all
bloody, his head in his hands, rocking to and fro, and weeping tears
of mortification; and how the next day he had sneaked off by himself,
and, attacking the same gang, got frightfully mauled a second time.

Thinking of these things he answered curtly: "When shall I start?"

"Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings replied with a sort of fearful
sprightliness: "There's a good fellow!  I will send instructions; so
glad to see you well."  Conferring on Scorrier a look--fine to the
verge of vulgarity--he withdrew.  Scorrier remained, seated; heavy
with insignificance and vague oppression, as if he had drunk a
tumbler of sweet port.

A week later, in company with Pippin, he was on board a liner.

The "King" Pippin of his school-days was now a man of forty-four.  He
awakened in Scorrier the uncertain wonder with which men look
backward at their uncomplicated teens; and staggering up and down the
decks in the long Atlantic roll, he would steal glances at his
companion, as if he expected to find out from them something about
himself.  Pippin had still "King" Pippin's bright, fine hair, and
dazzling streaks in his short beard; he had still a bright colour and
suave voice, and what there were of wrinkles suggested only
subtleties of humour and ironic sympathy.  From the first, and
apparently without negotiation, he had his seat at the captain's
table, to which on the second day Scorrier too found himself
translated, and had to sit, as he expressed it ruefully, "among the
big-wigs."

During the voyage only one incident impressed itself on Scorrier's
memory, and that for a disconcerting reason.  In the forecastle were
the usual complement of emigrants.  One evening, leaning across the
rail to watch them, he felt a touch on his arm; and, looking round,
saw Pippin's face and beard quivering in the lamplight.  "Poor
people!" he said.  The idea flashed on Scorrier that he was like some
fine wire sound-recording instrument.

'Suppose he were to snap!' he thought.  Impelled to justify this
fancy, he blurted out: "You're a nervous chap.  The way you look at
those poor devils!"

Pippin hustled him along the deck.  "Come, come, you took me off my
guard," he murmured, with a sly, gentle smile, "that's not fair."

He found it a continual source of wonder that Pippin, at his age,
should cut himself adrift from the associations and security of
London life to begin a new career in a new country with dubious
prospect of success.  'I always heard he was doing well all round,'
he thought; 'thinks he'll better himself, perhaps.  He's a true
Cornishman.'

The morning of arrival at the mines was grey and cheerless; a cloud
of smoke, beaten down by drizzle, clung above the forest; the wooden
houses straggled dismally in the unkempt semblance of a street,
against a background of endless, silent woods.  An air of blank
discouragement brooded over everything; cranes jutted idly over empty
trucks; the long jetty oozed black slime; miners with listless faces
stood in the rain; dogs fought under their very legs.  On the way to
the hotel they met no one busy or serene except a Chinee who was
polishing a dish-cover.

The late superintendent, a cowed man, regaled them at lunch with his
forebodings; his attitude toward the situation was like the food,
which was greasy and uninspiring.  Alone together once more, the two
newcomers eyed each other sadly.

"Oh dear!" sighed Pippin.  "We must change all this, Scorrier; it
will never do to go back beaten.  I shall not go back beaten; you
will have to carry me on my shield;" and slyly: "Too heavy, eh?  Poor
fellow!"  Then for a long time he was silent, moving his lips as if
adding up the cost.  Suddenly he sighed, and grasping Scorrier's arm,
said: "Dull, aren't I?  What will you do?  Put me in your report,
'New Superintendent--sad, dull dog--not a word to throw at a cat!'"
And as if the new task were too much for him, he sank back in
thought.  The last words he said to Scorrier that night were: "Very
silent here.  It's hard to believe one's here for life.  But I feel I
am.  Mustn't be a coward, though!" and brushing his forehead, as
though to clear from it a cobweb of faint thoughts, he hurried off.

Scorrier stayed on the veranda smoking.  The rain had ceased, a few
stars were burning dimly; even above the squalor of the township the
scent of the forests, the interminable forests, brooded.  There
sprang into his mind the memory of a picture from one of his
children's fairy books--the picture of a little bearded man on
tiptoe, with poised head and a great sword, slashing at the castle of
a giant.  It reminded him of Pippin.  And suddenly, even to Scorrier-
-whose existence was one long encounter with strange places--the
unseen presence of those woods, their heavy, healthy scent, the
little sounds, like squeaks from tiny toys, issuing out of the gloomy
silence, seemed intolerable, to be shunned, from the mere instinct of
self-preservation.  He thought of the evening he had spent in the
bosom of "Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings' family, receiving his last
instructions--the security of that suburban villa, its discouraging
gentility; the superior acidity of the Miss Hemmings; the noble names
of large contractors, of company promoters, of a peer, dragged with
the lightness of gun-carriages across the conversation; the autocracy
of Hemmings, rasped up here and there, by some domestic
contradiction.  It was all so nice and safe--as if the whole thing
had been fastened to an anchor sunk beneath the pink cabbages of the
drawing-room carpet!  Hemmings, seeing him off the premises, had said
with secrecy: "Little Pippin will have a good thing.  We shall make
his salary L----.  He'll be a great man-quite a king.  Ha-ha!"

Scorrier shook the ashes from his pipe.  'Salary!' he thought,
straining his ears; 'I wouldn't take the place for five thousand
pounds a year.  And yet it's a fine country,' and with ironic
violence he repeated, 'a dashed fine country!'

Ten days later, having finished his report on the new mine, he stood
on the jetty waiting to go abroad the steamer for home.

"God bless you!" said Pippin.  "Tell them they needn't be afraid; and
sometimes when you're at home think of me, eh?"

Scorrier, scrambling on board, had a confused memory of tears in his
eyes, and a convulsive handshake.




II

It was eight years before the wheels of life carried Scorrier back to
that disenchanted spot, and this time not on the business of the New
Colliery Company.  He went for another company with a mine some
thirty miles away.  Before starting, however, he visited Hemmings.
The secretary was surrounded by pigeon-holes and finer than ever;
Scorrier blinked in the full radiance of his courtesy.  A little man
with eyebrows full of questions, and a grizzled beard, was seated in
an arm-chair by the fire.

"You know Mr. Booker," said Hemmings--"one of my directors.  This is
Mr. Scorrier, sir--who went out for us."

These sentences were murmured in a way suggestive of their uncommon
value.  The director uncrossed his legs, and bowed.  Scorrier also
bowed, and Hemmings, leaning back, slowly developed the full
resources of his waistcoat.

"So you are going out again, Scorrier, for the other side?  I tell
Mr. Scorrier, sir, that he is going out for the enemy.  Don't find
them a mine as good as you found us, there's a good man."

The little director asked explosively: "See our last dividend?
Twenty per cent; eh, what?"

Hemmings moved a finger, as if reproving his director.  "I will not
disguise from you," he murmured, "that there is friction between us
and--the enemy; you know our position too well--just a little too
well, eh?  'A nod's as good as a wink.'"

His diplomatic eyes flattered Scorrier, who passed a hand over his
brow--and said: "Of course."

"Pippin doesn't hit it off with them.  Between ourselves, he's a
leetle too big for his boots.  You know what it is when a man in his
position gets a sudden rise!"

Scorrier caught himself searching on the floor for a sight of
Hemmings' boots; he raised his eyes guiltily.  The secretary
continued: "We don't hear from him quite as often as we should like,
in fact."

To his own surprise Scorrier murmured: "It's a silent place!"

The secretary smiled.  "Very good!  Mr. Scorrier says, sir, it's a
silent place; ha-ha! I call that very good!"  But suddenly a secret
irritation seemed to bubble in him; he burst forth almost violently:
"He's no business to let it affect him; now, has he?  I put it to
you, Mr. Scorrier, I put it to you, sir!"

But Scorrier made no reply, and soon after took his leave: he had
been asked to convey a friendly hint to Pippin that more frequent
letters would be welcomed.  Standing in the shadow of the Royal
Exchange, waiting to thread his way across, he thought: 'So you must
have noise, must you--you've got some here, and to spare....'

On his arrival in the new world he wired to Pippin asking if he might
stay with him on the way up country, and received the answer: "Be
sure and come."

A week later he arrived (there was now a railway) and found Pippin
waiting for him in a phaeton.  Scorrier would not have known the
place again; there was a glitter over everything, as if some one had
touched it with a wand.  The tracks had given place to roads, running
firm, straight, and black between the trees under brilliant sunshine;
the wooden houses were all painted; out in the gleaming harbour
amongst the green of islands lay three steamers, each with a fleet of
busy boats; and here and there a tiny yacht floated, like a sea-bird
on the water.  Pippin drove his long-tailed horses furiously; his
eyes brimmed with subtle kindness, as if according Scorrier a
continual welcome.  During the two days of his stay Scorrier never
lost that sense of glamour.  He had every opportunity for observing
the grip Pippin had over everything.  The wooden doors and walls of
his bungalow kept out no sounds.  He listened to interviews between
his host and all kinds and conditions of men.  The voices of the
visitors would rise at first--angry, discontented, matter-of-fact,
with nasal twang, or guttural drawl; then would come the soft patter
of the superintendent's feet crossing and recrossing the room.  Then
a pause, the sound of hard breathing, and quick questions--the
visitor's voice again, again the patter, and Pippin's ingratiating
but decisive murmurs.  Presently out would come the visitor with an
expression on his face which Scorrier soon began to know by heart, a
kind of pleased, puzzled, helpless look, which seemed to say, "I've
been done, I know--I'll give it to myself when I'm round the corner."

Pippin was full of wistful questions about "home."  He wanted to talk
of music, pictures, plays, of how London looked, what new streets
there were, and, above all, whether Scorrier had been lately in the
West Country.  He talked of getting leave next winter, asked whether
Scorrier thought they would "put up with him at home"; then, with the
agitation which had alarmed Scorrier before, he added: "Ah! but I'm
not fit for home now.  One gets spoiled; it's big and silent here.
What should I go back to?  I don't seem to realise."

Scorrier thought of Hemmings.  "'Tis a bit cramped there, certainly,"
he muttered.

Pippin went on as if divining his thoughts.  "I suppose our friend
Hemmings would call me foolish; he's above the little weaknesses of
imagination, eh?  Yes; it's silent here.  Sometimes in the evening I
would give my head for somebody to talk to--Hemmings would never give
his head for anything, I think.  But all the same, I couldn't face
them at home.  Spoiled!"  And slyly he murmured: "What would the
Board say if they could hear that?"

Scorrier blurted out: "To tell you the truth, they complain a little
of not hearing from you."

Pippin put out a hand, as if to push something away.  "Let them try
the life here!" he broke out; "it's like sitting on a live volcano--
what with our friends, 'the enemy,' over there; the men; the American
competition.  I keep it going, Scorrier, but at what a cost--at what
a cost!"

"But surely--letters?"

Pippin only answered: " I try--I try!"

Scorrier felt with remorse and wonder that he had spoken the truth.
The following day he left for his inspection, and while in the camp
of "the enemy" much was the talk he heard of Pippin.

"Why!" said his host, the superintendent, a little man with a face
somewhat like an owl's, "d'you know the name they've given him down
in the capital--'the King'--good, eh?  He's made them 'sit up' all
along this coast.  I like him well enough--good--hearted man,
shocking nervous; but my people down there can't stand him at any
price.  Sir, he runs this colony.  You'd think butter wouldn't melt
in that mouth of his; but he always gets his way; that's what riles
'em so; that and the success he's making of his mine.  It puzzles me;
you'd think he'd only be too glad of a quiet life, a man with his
nerves.  But no, he's never happy unless he's fighting, something
where he's got a chance to score a victory.  I won't say he likes it,
but, by Jove, it seems he's got to do it.  Now that's funny!  I'll
tell you one thing, though shouldn't be a bit surprised if he broke
down some day; and I'll tell you another," he added darkly, "he's
sailing very near the wind, with those large contracts that he makes.
I wouldn't care to take his risks.  Just let them have a strike, or
something that shuts them down for a spell--and mark my words, sir--
it'll be all up with them.  But," he concluded confidentially, "I
wish I had his hold on the men; it's a great thing in this country.
Not like home, where you can go round a corner and get another gang.
You have to make the best you can out of the lot you have; you won't,
get another man for love or money without you ship him a few hundred
miles."  And with a frown he waved his arm over the forests to
indicate the barrenness of the land.

Scorrier finished his inspection and went on a shooting trip into the
forest.  His host met him on his return.  "Just look at this!" he
said, holding out a telegram.  "Awful, isn't it?" His face expressed
a profound commiseration, almost ludicrously mixed with the ashamed
contentment that men experience at the misfortunes of an enemy.

The telegram, dated the day before, ran thus "Frightful explosion New
Colliery this morning, great loss of life feared."

Scorrier had the bewildered thought: 'Pippin will want me now.'

He took leave of his host, who called after him: "You'd better wait
for a steamer!  It's a beastly drive!"

Scorrier shook his head.  All night, jolting along a rough track cut
through the forest, he thought of Pippin.  The other miseries of this
calamity at present left him cold; he barely thought of the smothered
men; but Pippin's struggle, his lonely struggle with this hydra-
headed monster, touched him very nearly.  He fell asleep and dreamed
of watching Pippin slowly strangled by a snake; the agonised, kindly,
ironic face peeping out between two gleaming coils was so horribly
real, that he awoke.  It was the moment before dawn: pitch-black
branches barred the sky; with every jolt of the wheels the gleams
from the lamps danced, fantastic and intrusive, round ferns and tree-
stems, into the cold heart of the forest.  For an hour or more
Scorrier tried to feign sleep, and hide from the stillness, and
overmastering gloom of these great woods.  Then softly a whisper of
noises stole forth, a stir of light, and the whole slow radiance of
the morning glory.  But it brought no warmth; and Scorrier wrapped
himself closer in his cloak, feeling as though old age had touched
him.

Close on noon he reached the township.  Glamour seemed still to hover
over it.  He drove on to the mine.  The winding-engine was turning,
the pulley at the top of the head-gear whizzing round; nothing looked
unusual.  'Some mistake!' he thought.  He drove to the mine
buildings, alighted, and climbed to the shaft head.  Instead of the
usual rumbling of the trolleys, the rattle of coal discharged over
the screens, there was silence.  Close by, Pippin himself was
standing, smirched with dirt.  The cage, coming swift and silent from
below, shot open its doors with a sharp rattle.  Scorrier bent
forward to look.  There lay a dead man, with a smile on his face.

"How many?" he whispered.

Pippin answered: "Eighty-four brought up--forty-seven still below,"
and entered the man's name in a pocket-book.

An older man was taken out next; he too was smiling--there had been
vouchsafed to him, it seemed, a taste of more than earthly joy.  The
sight of those strange smiles affected Scorrier more than all the
anguish or despair he had seen scored on the faces of other dead men.
He asked an old miner how long Pippin had been at work.

"Thirty hours.  Yesterday he wer' below; we had to nigh carry mun up
at last.  He's for goin' down again, but the chaps won't lower mun;"
the old man gave a sigh.  "I'm waiting for my boy to come up, I am."

Scorrier waited too--there was fascination about those dead, smiling
faces.  The rescuing of these men who would never again breathe went
on and on.  Scorrier grew sleepy in the sun.  The old miner woke him,
saying: "Rummy stuff this here chokedamp; see, they all dies drunk!"
The very next to be brought up was the chief engineer.  Scorrier had
known him quite well, one of those Scotsmen who are born at the age
of forty and remain so all their lives.  His face--the only one that
wore no smile--seemed grieving that duty had deprived it of that last
luxury.  With wide eyes and drawn lips he had died protesting.

Late in the afternoon the old miner touched Scorrier's arm, and said:
"There he is--there's my boy!"  And he departed slowly, wheeling the
body on a trolley.

As the sun set, the gang below came up.  No further search was
possible till the fumes had cleared.  Scorrier heard one man say:
"There's some we'll never get; they've had sure burial"

Another answered him: "'Tis a gude enough bag for me!"  They passed
him, the whites of their eyes gleaming out of faces black as ink.

Pippin drove him home at a furious pace, not uttering a single word.
As they turned into the main street, a young woman starting out
before the horses obliged Pippin to pull up.  The glance he bent on
Scorrier was ludicrously prescient of suffering.  The woman asked for
her husband.  Several times they were stopped thus by women asking
for their husbands or sons.  "This is what I have to go through,"
Pippin whispered.

When they had eaten, he said to Scorrier: "It was kind of you to come
and stand by me!  They take me for a god, poor creature that I am.
But shall I ever get the men down again?  Their nerve's shaken.  I
wish I were one of those poor lads, to die with a smile like that!"

Scorrier felt the futility of his presence.  On Pippin alone must be
the heat and burden.  Would he stand under it, or would the whole
thing come crashing to the ground?  He urged him again and again to
rest, but Pippin only gave him one of his queer smiles.  "You don't
know how strong I am!" he said.




IV

He himself slept heavily; and, waking at dawn, went down.  Pippin was
still at his desk; his pen had dropped; he was asleep.  The ink was
wet; Scorrier's eye caught the opening words:

"GENTLEMEN,--Since this happened I have not slept...."

He stole away again with a sense of indignation that no one could be
dragged in to share that fight.  The London Board-room rose before
his mind.  He imagined the portentous gravity of Hemmings; his face
and voice and manner conveying the impression that he alone could
save the situation; the six directors, all men of commonsense and
certainly humane, seated behind large turret-shaped inkpots; the
concern and irritation in their voices, asking how it could have
happened; their comments: "An awful thing!"  "I suppose Pippin is
doing the best he can!"  "Wire him on no account to leave the mine
idle!"  "Poor devils!"  "A fund?  Of course, what ought we to give?"
He had a strong conviction that nothing of all this would disturb the
commonsense with which they would go home and eat their mutton.  A
good thing too; the less it was taken to heart the better!  But
Scorrier felt angry.  The fight was so unfair!  A fellow all nerves--
with not a soul to help him!  Well, it was his own lookout!  He had
chosen to centre it all in himself, to make himself its very soul.
If he gave way now, the ship must go down!  By a thin thread,
Scorrier's hero-worship still held.  'Man against nature,' he
thought, 'I back the man.'  The struggle in which he was so powerless
to give aid, became intensely personal to him, as if he had engaged
his own good faith therein.

The next day they went down again to the pit-head; and Scorrier
himself descended.  The fumes had almost cleared, but there were some
places which would never be reached.  At the end of the day all but
four bodies had been recovered.  "In the day o' judgment," a miner
said, "they four'll come out of here."  Those unclaimed bodies
haunted Scorrier.  He came on sentences of writing, where men waiting
to be suffocated had written down their feelings.  In one place, the
hour, the word "Sleepy," and a signature.  In another, "A. F.--done
for."  When he came up at last Pippin was still waiting, pocket-book
in hand; they again departed at a furious pace.

Two days later Scorrier, visiting the shaft, found its neighbourhood
deserted--not a living thing of any sort was there except one
Chinaman poking his stick into the rubbish.  Pippin was away down the
coast engaging an engineer; and on his return, Scorrier had not the
heart to tell him of the desertion.  He was spared the effort, for
Pippin said: "Don't be afraid--you've got bad news?  The men have
gone on strike."

Scorrier sighed.  "Lock, stock, and barrel"

"I thought so--see what I have here!" He put before Scorrier a
telegram:

"At all costs keep working--fatal to stop--manage this somehow.--
HEMMINGS."

Breathing quickly, he added: "As if I didn't know! 'Manage this
somehow'--a little hard!"

"What's to be done?" asked Scorrier.

"You see I am commanded!" Pippin answered bitterly.  "And they're
quite right; we must keep working--our contracts!  Now I'm down--not
a soul will spare me!"

The miners' meeting was held the following day on the outskirts of
the town.  Pippin had cleared the place to make a public recreation-
ground--a sort of feather in the company's cap; it was now to be the
spot whereon should be decided the question of the company's life or
death.

The sky to the west was crossed by a single line of cloud like a bar
of beaten gold; tree shadows crept towards the groups of men; the
evening savour, that strong fragrance of the forest, sweetened the
air.  The miners stood all round amongst the burnt tree-stumps, cowed
and sullen.  They looked incapable of movement or expression.  It was
this dumb paralysis that frightened Scorrier.  He watched Pippin
speaking from his phaeton, the butt of all those sullen, restless
eyes.  Would he last out?  Would the wires hold?  It was like the
finish of a race.  He caught a baffled look on Pippin's face, as if
he despaired of piercing that terrible paralysis.  The men's eyes had
begun to wander.  'He's lost his hold,' thought Scorrier; 'it's all
up!'

A miner close beside him muttered: "Look out!"

Pippin was leaning forward, his voice had risen, the words fell like
a whiplash on the faces of the crowd: "You shan't throw me over; do
you think I'll give up all I've done for you?  I'll make you the
first power in the colony!  Are you turning tail at the first shot?
You're a set of cowards, my lads!"

Each man round Scorrier was listening with a different motion of the
hands--one rubbed them, one clenched them, another moved his closed
fist, as if stabbing some one in the back.  A grisly-bearded, beetle-
browed, twinkling-eyed old Cornishman muttered: "A'hm not troublin'
about that."  It seemed almost as if Pippin's object was to get the
men to kill him; they had gathered closer, crouching for a rush.
Suddenly Pippin's voice dropped to a whisper: "I'm disgraced
Men, are you going back on me?"

The old miner next Scorrier called out suddenly: "Anny that's
Cornishmen here to stand by the superintendent?"  A group drew
together, and with murmurs and gesticulation the meeting broke up.

In the evening a deputation came to visit Pippin; and all night long
their voices and the superintendent's footsteps could be heard.  In
the morning, Pippin went early to the mine.  Before supper the
deputation came again; and again Scorrier had to listen hour after
hour to the sound of voices and footsteps till he fell asleep.  Just
before dawn he was awakened by a light.  Pippin stood at his bedside.
"The men go down to-morrow," he said: "What did I tell you?  Carry me
home on my shield, eh?"

In a week the mine was in full work.




V

Two years later, Scorrier heard once more of Pippin.  A note from
Hemmings reached him asking if he could make it convenient to attend
their Board meeting the following Thursday.  He arrived rather before
the appointed time.  The secretary received him, and, in answer to
inquiry, said: "Thank you, we are doing well--between ourselves, we
are doing very well."

"And Pippin?"

The secretary frowned.  "Ah, Pippin! We asked you to come on his
account.  Pippin is giving us a lot of trouble.  We have not had a
single line from him for just two years!"  He spoke with such a sense
of personal grievance that Scorrier felt quite sorry for him.  "Not a
single line," said Hemmings, "since that explosion--you were there at
the time, I remember!  It makes it very awkward; I call it personal
to me."

"But how--" Scorrier began.

"We get--telegrams.  He writes to no one, not even to his family.
And why?  Just tell me why?  We hear of him; he's a great nob out
there.  Nothing's done in the colony without his finger being in the
pie.  He turned out the last Government because they wouldn't grant
us an extension for our railway--shows he can't be a fool.  Besides,
look at our balance-sheet!"

It turned out that the question on which Scorrier's opinion was
desired was, whether Hemmings should be sent out to see what was the
matter with the superintendent.  During the discussion which.
ensued, he was an unwilling listener to strictures on Pippin's
silence.  "The explosion," he muttered at last, "a very trying time!"

Mr. Booker pounced on him.  "A very trying time!  So it was--to all
of us.  But what excuse is that--now, Mr. Scorrier, what excuse is
that?"

Scorrier was obliged to admit that it was none.

"Business is business--eh, what?"

Scorrier, gazing round that neat Board-room, nodded.  A deaf
director, who had not spoken for some months, said with sudden
fierceness: "It's disgraceful!"  He was obviously letting off the
fume of long-unuttered disapprovals.  One perfectly neat, benevolent
old fellow, however, who had kept his hat on, and had a single vice--
that of coming to the Board-room with a brown paper parcel tied up
with string--murmured: "We must make all allowances," and started an
anecdote about his youth.  He was gently called to order by his
secretary.  Scorrier was asked for his opinion.  He looked at
Hemmings.  "My importance is concerned," was written all over the
secretary's face.  Moved by an impulse of loyalty to Pippin, Scorrier
answered, as if it were all settled: " Well, let me know when you are
starting, Hemmings--I should like the trip myself."

As he was going out, the chairman, old Jolyon Forsyte, with a grave,
twinkling look at Hemmings, took him aside.  "Glad to hear you say
that about going too, Mr. Scorrier; we must be careful--Pippin's such
a good fellow, and so sensitive; and our friend there--a bit heavy in
the hand, um?"

Scorrier did in fact go out with Hemmings.  The secretary was sea-
sick, and his prostration, dignified but noisy, remained a memory for
ever; it was sonorous and fine--the prostration of superiority; and
the way in which he spoke of it, taking casual acquaintances into the
caves of his experience, was truly interesting.

Pippin came down to the capital to escort them, provided for their
comforts as if they had been royalty, and had a special train to take
them to the mines.

He was a little stouter, brighter of colour, greyer of beard, more
nervous perhaps in voice and breathing.  His manner to Hemmings was
full of flattering courtesy; but his sly, ironical glances played on
the secretary's armour like a fountain on a hippopotamus.  To
Scorrier, however, he could not show enough affection:

The first evening, when Hemmings had gone to his room, he jumped up
like a boy out of school.  "So I'm going to get a wigging," he said;
"I suppose I deserve it; but if you knew--if you only knew...! Out
here they've nicknamed me 'the King'--they say I rule the colony.
It's myself that I can't rule"; and with a sudden burst of passion
such as Scorrier had never seen in him: "Why did they send this man
here?  What can he know about the things that I've been through?"  In
a moment he calmed down again.  "There! this is very stupid; worrying
you like this!" and with a long, kind look into Scorrier's face, he
hustled him off to bed.

Pippin did not break out again, though fire seemed to smoulder behind
the bars of his courteous irony.  Intuition of danger had evidently
smitten Hemmings, for he made no allusion to the object of his visit.
There were moments when Scorrier's common-sense sided with Hemmings--
these were moments when the secretary was not present.

'After all,' he told himself, 'it's a little thing to ask--one letter
a month.  I never heard of such a case.'  It was wonderful indeed how
they stood it!  It showed how much they valued Pippin!  What was the
matter with him?  What was the nature of his trouble?  One glimpse
Scorrier had when even Hemmings, as he phrased it, received "quite a
turn."  It was during a drive back from the most outlying of the
company's trial mines, eight miles through the forest.  The track led
through a belt of trees blackened by a forest fire.  Pippin was
driving.  The secretary seated beside him wore an expression of faint
alarm, such as Pippin's driving was warranted to evoke from almost
any face.  The sky had darkened strangely, but pale streaks of light,
coming from one knew not where, filtered through the trees.  No
breath was stirring; the wheels and horses' hoofs made no sound on
the deep fern mould.  All around, the burnt tree-trunks, leafless and
jagged, rose like withered giants, the passages between them were
black, the sky black, and black the silence.  No one spoke, and
literally the only sound was Pippin's breathing.  What was it that
was so terrifying?  Scorrier had a feeling of entombment; that nobody
could help him; the feeling of being face to face with Nature; a
sensation as if all the comfort and security of words and rules had
dropped away from him.  And-nothing happened.  They reached home and
dined.

During dinner he had again that old remembrance of a little man
chopping at a castle with his sword.  It came at a moment when Pippin
had raised his hand with the carving-knife grasped in it to answer
some remark of Hemmings' about the future of the company.  The
optimism in his uplifted chin, the strenuous energy in his whispering
voice, gave Scorrier a more vivid glimpse of Pippin's nature than he
had perhaps ever had before.  This new country, where nothing but
himself could help a man--that was the castle!  No wonder Pippin was
impatient of control, no wonder he was out of hand, no wonder he was
silent--chopping away at that!  And suddenly he thought: 'Yes, and
all the time one knows, Nature must beat him in the end!'

That very evening Hemmings delivered himself of his reproof.  He had
sat unusually silent; Scorrier, indeed, had thought him a little
drunk, so portentous was his gravity; suddenly, however he rose.  It
was hard on a man, he said, in his position, with a Board (he spoke
as of a family of small children), to be kept so short of
information.  He was actually compelled to use his imagination to
answer the shareholders' questions.  This was painful and
humiliating; he had never heard of any secretary having to use his
imagination!  He went further--it was insulting!  He had grown grey
in the service of the company.  Mr. Scorrier would bear him out when
he said he had a position to maintain--his name in the City was a
high one; and, by George! he was going to keep it a high one; he
would allow nobody to drag it in the dust--that ought clearly to be
understood.  His directors felt they were being treated like
children; however that might be, it was absurd to suppose that he
(Hemmings) could be treated like a child...!  The secretary paused;
his eyes seemed to bully the room.

"If there were no London office," murmured Pippin, "the shareholders
would get the same dividends."

Hemmings gasped.  "Come!" he said, "this is monstrous!"

"What help did I get from London when I first came here?  What help
have I ever had?"

Hemmings swayed, recovered, and with a forced smile replied that, if
this were true, he had been standing on his head for years; he did
not believe the attitude possible for such a length of time;
personally he would have thought that he too had had a little
something to say to the company's position, but no matter...!  His
irony was crushing....  It was possible that Mr. Pippin hoped to
reverse the existing laws of the universe with regard to limited
companies; he would merely say that he must not begin with a company
of which he (Hemmings) happened to be secretary.  Mr. Scorrier had
hinted at excuses; for his part, with the best intentions in the
world, he had great difficulty in seeing them.  He would go further--
he did not see them!  The explosion...!  Pippin shrank so visibly
that Hemmings seemed troubled by a suspicion that he had gone too
far.

"We know," he said, "that it was trying for you...."

"Trying!" "burst out Pippin.

"No one can say," Hemmings resumed soothingly, "that we have not
dealt liberally."  Pippin made a motion of the head.  "We think we
have a good superintendent; I go further, an excellent
superintendent.  What I say is: Let's be pleasant!  I am not making
an unreasonable request!"  He ended on a fitting note of jocularity;
and, as if by consent, all three withdrew, each to his own room,
without another word.

In the course of the next day Pippin said to Scorrier: "It seems I
have been very wicked.  I must try to do better"; and with a touch of
bitter humour, "They are kind enough to think me a good
superintendent, you see!  After that I must try hard."

Scorrier broke in: "No man could have done so much for them;" and,
carried away by an impulse to put things absolutely straight, went on
"But, after all, a letter now and then--what does it amount to?"

Pippin besieged him with a subtle glance.  "You too?" he said--
"I must indeed have been a wicked man!" and turned away.

Scorrier felt as if he had been guilty of brutality; sorry for
Pippin, angry with himself; angry with Pippin, sorry for himself.  He
earnestly desired to see the back of Hemmings.  The secretary
gratified the wish a few days later, departing by steamer with
ponderous expressions of regard and the assurance of his goodwill.

Pippin gave vent to no outburst of relief, maintaining a courteous
silence, making only one allusion to his late guest, in answer to a
remark of Scorrier:

"Ah! don't tempt me! mustn't speak behind his back."

A month passed, and Scorrier still--remained Pippin's guest.  As each
mail-day approached he experienced a queer suppressed excitement.  On
one of these occasions Pippin had withdrawn to his room; and when
Scorrier went to fetch him to dinner he found him with his head
leaning on his hands, amid a perfect fitter of torn paper.  He looked
up at Scorrier.

"I can't do it," he said, "I feel such a hypocrite; I can't put
myself into leading-strings again.  Why should I ask these people,
when I've settled everything already?  If it were a vital matter they
wouldn't want to hear--they'd simply wire, 'Manage this somehow!'"

Scorrier said nothing, but thought privately 'This is a mad
business!'  What was a letter?  Why make a fuss about a letter?  The
approach of mail-day seemed like a nightmare to the superintendent;
he became feverishly nervous like a man under a spell; and, when the
mail had gone, behaved like a respited criminal.  And this had been
going on two years!  Ever since that explosion.  Why, it was
monomania!

One day, a month after Hemmings' departure, Pippin rose early from
dinner; his face was flushed, he had been drinking wine.  "I won't be
beaten this time," he said, as he passed Scorrier.  The latter could
hear him writing in the next room, and looked in presently to say
that he was going for a walk.  Pippin gave him a kindly nod.

It was a cool, still evening: innumerable stars swarmed in clusters
over the forests, forming bright hieroglyphics in the middle heavens,
showering over the dark harbour into the sea.  Scorrier walked
slowly.  A weight seemed lifted from his mind, so entangled had he
become in that uncanny silence.  At last Pippin had broken through
the spell.  To get that, letter sent would be the laying of a
phantom, the rehabilitation of commonsense.  Now that this silence
was in the throes of being broken, he felt curiously tender towards
Pippin, without the hero-worship of old days, but with a queer
protective feeling.  After all, he was different from other men.  In
spite of his feverish, tenacious energy, in spite of his ironic
humour, there was something of the woman in him!  And as for this
silence, this horror of control--all geniuses had "bees in their
bonnets," and Pippin was a genius in his way!

He looked back at the town.  Brilliantly lighted it had a thriving
air-difficult to believe of the place he remembered ten years back;
the sounds of drinking, gambling, laughter, and dancing floated to
his ears.  'Quite a city!' he thought.

With this queer elation on him he walked slowly back along the
street, forgetting that he was simply an oldish mining expert, with a
look of shabbiness, such as clings to men who are always travelling,
as if their "nap" were for ever being rubbed off.  And he thought of
Pippin, creator of this glory.

He had passed the boundaries of the town, and had entered the forest.
A feeling of discouragement instantly beset him.  The scents and
silence, after the festive cries and odours of the town, were
undefinably oppressive.  Notwithstanding, he walked a long time,
saying to himself that he would give the letter every chance.  At
last, when he thought that Pippin must have finished, he went back to
the house.

Pippin had finished.  His forehead rested on the table, his arms hung
at his sides; he was stone-dead!  His face wore a smile, and by his
side lay an empty laudanum bottle.

The letter, closely, beautifully written, lay before him.  It was a
fine document, clear, masterly, detailed, nothing slurred, nothing
concealed, nothing omitted; a complete review of the company's
position; it ended with the words: "Your humble servant, RICHARD
PIPPIN."

Scorrier took possession of it.  He dimly understood that with those
last words a wire had snapped.  The border-line had been overpassed;
the point reached where that sense of proportion, which alone makes
life possible, is lost.  He was certain that at the moment of his
death Pippin could have discussed bimetallism, or any intellectual
problem, except the one problem of his own heart; that, for some
mysterious reason, had been too much for him.  His death had been the
work of a moment of supreme revolt--a single instant of madness on a
single subject!  He found on the blotting-paper, scrawled across the
impress of the signature, "Can't stand it!"  The completion of that
letter had been to him a struggle ungraspable by Scorrier.  Slavery?
Defeat?  A violation of Nature?  The death of justice?  It were
better not to think of it!  Pippin could have told--but he would
never speak again.  Nature, at whom, unaided, he had dealt so many
blows, had taken her revenge...!

In the night Scorrier stole down, and, with an ashamed face, cut off
a lock of the fine grey hair.  'His daughter might like it!' he
thought....

He waited till Pippin was buried, then, with the letter in his
pocket, started for England.

He arrived at Liverpool on a Thursday morning, and travelling to
town, drove straight to the office of the company.  The Board were
sitting.  Pippin's successor was already being interviewed.  He
passed out as Scorrier came in, a middle-aged man with a large, red
beard, and a foxy, compromising face.  He also was a Cornishman.
Scorrier wished him luck with a very heavy heart.

As an unsentimental man, who had a proper horror of emotion, whose
living depended on his good sense, to look back on that interview
with the Board was painful.  It had excited in him a rage of which he
was now heartily ashamed.  Old Jolyon Forsyte, the chairman, was not
there for once, guessing perhaps that the Board's view of this death
would be too small for him; and little Mr. Booker sat in his place.
Every one had risen, shaken hands with Scorrier, and expressed
themselves indebted for his coming.  Scorrier placed Pippin's letter
on the table, and gravely the secretary read out to his Board the
last words of their superintendent.  When he had finished, a director
said, "That's not the letter of a madman!"  Another answered: "Mad as
a hatter; nobody but a madman would have thrown up such a post."
Scorrier suddenly withdrew.  He heard Hemmings calling after him.
"Aren't you well, Mr. Scorrier?  aren't you well, sir?"

He shouted back: "Quite sane, I thank you....

The Naples "express" rolled round the outskirts of the town.
Vesuvius shone in the sun, uncrowned by smoke.  But even as Scorrier
looked, a white puff went soaring up.  It was the footnote to his
memories.

February 1901.





End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of VILLA RUBEIN AND OTHER STORIES
by John Galsworthy.