DUKE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
The Glenn Negley Collection
of Utopian Literature
* •
^^Z" //-= ^^.
TWELVE TALES
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
AN AFRICAN MILLIONAIRE.
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R0S8LYN LODGE,
Ay^gUAftY MILITARY H©»PITAL,
TWELVE TALES
WITH A HEADPIECE, A TAILPIECE,
AND AN INTERMEZZO:
BEING SELECT STORIES
BY GRANT ALLEN
Chosen and Arranged by the Author
I
LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS
HENRIETTA STREET
1899
Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
INTRODUCTION
The existence of this volume is due, not to my oivn initiative, hit
to that of my enterprising kinsman and publisher, Mr. Grant
Richards. He it was who first suggested to me the idea that it
might be ivorth while to collect in one volume such of my scattered
shoH stories as I Judged to possess most permanent value. In
order for tis to carry out his plan, however, it became necessary
to obtain the friendly co-operation of Messrs. Chatto and
Windus, to whom belong the copyrights of my three previous
volumes of Collected Tales, published respectively under the titles
of Strange Stories, The Beckoning Hand, and Ivan Great's
Masterpiece, soine pieces from each of which series I desired to
incbide in the present selection. Fortunately, Messrs. Chatto
and Windus fell in with our scheme with that kindness which
I have learned to expect from them in all their dealings ; and an
arrangement was thus effected by which I am enabled to present
, here certain stories from their three vohimes. Together with
these I have arranged an equal number of tales from other sources
—most of which have hitherto appeared in periodicals only, while
one is entirely new, never having been before printed.
I may perhaps be permitted, without blame, to seize the
occasion of this selected edition in order to offer a few biblio-
graphical remarks on the origin and inception of my short stories.
For many years after I took to the trade of author, I confined my
writings to scientific or quasi-scieiitific subjects, having indeed
little or no idea that I possessed in the germ the faculty of story-
telling. But on one occasion, about the year 1880 {f I recollect
a2 V
INTRODUCTION
aright), wishing to contribute an article to Belgravia on the im-
probability of a man's being able to recognise a ghost as such,
even if he saw one, and the impossibility of his being able to apply
any test of credibility to an apparitions statements, I ventured for
the better development of my subject to throw the argumeiit into
the form of a narrative. I did 7iot regard this narrative as a
story : I looked upon it merely as a convenient method of dis-
playijig a scientific truth. However, the gods and Mr. Chatto
thought otherwise. For, a month or two later, Mr. Chatto wrote
to ask me if I could supply Belgravia with ' another story.' Not
a little surprised at this request, I sat dotvn, like an obedient
workman, and tried to write one at my employer's bidding. I dis-
trusted my oivn ability to do so, it is true : but Mr. Chatto, /
thought, being a dealer in the article, must kfio?v better than I ;
and I was far too poor a craftsman at that time to refuse any
reasonable offer of employment. So I did my best, crassa
Minerva. To my great astonishment, my second story was
accepted and printed like my first : the C7irious in such matters
{if there be any) will find them both in the volume entitled
Strange Stories (published by Messrs. Chatto and Windus)
under the headings of ' Our Scientific Observations on a Ghost,'
and ' My New Year's Eve among the Mummies.'
From that day forward for sotne years I continued at Mr.
Chatto's request to supply short stories from time to time to
Belgravia, a magazine ivhich he then edited. But I did not
regard these my tentative tales in any serious light : and, fearing
that they might stand in the way of such little scientific reputation
as I possessed, I published them all tmder the prudent pseudonym
of J. Arbuthnot Wilson. / do not know that I should have
got much further on the downward path which leads to fiction,
had it not beeyi for the interventiofi of my good friend the late
Mr. James Payn. When he undertook the editorship of the
Cornhill, he detennined at first to turn it into a magazine of
stories only, and began to look about him for fresh blood to press
into the service. Among the writers he theti secured (/ seem
vi
INTRODUCTION
to recollect) were Dr. Conan Doyle and Mr. Stanley Weyman.
Now, under Mr. Leslie Stephen's editorship, I had been
accustomed to contribute to the Cornhill occasional papers on
scientific subjects : and one morning, by an odd coincidence,
I received two notes simultaneously from the new editor. The
Jirst of them was addressed to me by my real name ; in it, Mr.
Payn courteously but briefly informed me that he returned one
such scientific article which I had sent for his consideration, as he
had determined in future to exclude everything but fiction from
the viagazine — a decision which he afterwards saw reason to
rescind. The second letter, forwarded through Messrs. Chatto
and Windus, tvas addressed to me under my assumed name of
J. Arbuthnot Wilson, and begged that unknotv7i person to
submit to Mr. Payn a few stories ' like your admirable Mr.
Chung.' Now, this Mr. Chung was a tale of a Chinese
attache 171 England, who fell in love with an English girl: I had
first printed it, like the others of that date, in the pages of
Belgravia. (hater on, it 7vas included ?h the volume of Strange
Stories, where any hypothetical explorer may still find it.) Till
that moment, I had 7iever regarded my excursio7is i7ito fictio7i m
a7iy serious light, setting dorv7i Mr. Chatto's liking for the7n to
that ge7itle7nans amiability, or else to his 7vell-k7i07vn scientific
penchant. But 7vhe7i a 7iovelist like Mr. James Payn spoke
well of my woi'k — nay, more ; desired to secure it for his practi-
cally 7ieiv 7nagazine — / began to think there 7night reallij be some-
thi7ig 171 my stories tvorthfollo7ving 7ip by a 7nore serious effort.
Thus e7icouraged, I lau7iched out 2ipo7i /vhat I vetdure to think
was the Jirst voyage ever 7nade in our tune into the Romance of
the Clash of Races — si7ice so 7nuch exploited. 1 7vrote two short
stories, ' The Revere7id Joh7i Creedy ' and ' The Curate of
Chur/iside,' both of which I se7it to Mr. Payn, i7i response to his
invitation. He ?vas ki7id enough to like them, a7id they were duly
published in the Cornhill. At the time, their reception was
disappointi7ig : but gradually, si7ice the7i, I have lear7ied fro7n
incide7ital re7narks that many people read the7n and re7ne7nbered
vii
INTRODUCTION
them ; indeed, I have reason to think that these first serious
ejforts of mine at telling a story rvere among my most successful
attempts at the art of fiction. Once launched as a professional
story-teller by this fortuitous combination of circumstances, I
cojitinued at the trade, and wrote a number of tales for the
Cornhill and other magazines, up till the year 1884, when I
collected a few of them into a volume of Strange Stories, tinder
my own name, for the first time casting off the veil of a7i07iymity
or the cloak of a pseudonym. In the same year I also began
my career as a novelist properly so called, by produciTig my first
long 7iovel, Philistia.
From that dale forward, I have gone on writing a great many
stories, long and short, whose name is Legion. Out of the whole
number of shorter ones, I now select the present set, as illustrating
best in different keys the vaiioiis types of tale to ivhich I have
devoted myself
Four of these pieces have already appeared as reprints in the
volume entitled Strange Stories — namely, ^ The Reverend John
Greedy,' from the Cornhill ; ' The Child of the Phalanstery,' from
Belgravia ; and ' The Curate of Churnside ' and ' The Back-
slider,' both from the Cornhill. One, ' John Cann's Treasure,'
also from the Cornhill, has been reprinted in the volume called
The Beckoning Hand. Two more have been included in the
collection entitled Ivan Greet's Masterpiece : namely, ' Ivan
Greet' s Masterpiece ' itself, originally issued as a Christmas
number of the Graphic; and ' The Abbe's Repcjitance,' which
first saw the light in the Contemporary Review. The remainder
have never appeared before, except in periodicals. The Head-
piece, ' A Coifidential Communication,' came out in the Sketch.
So did ' Frasine's First Communion.' ' Wolverden Tower'
formed a Christmas number of the Illustrated London News.
' Janet's Nemesis ' tvas contributed to the Pall Mall Magazine.
The Interviezzo, ' Langalula,' is from the Speaker, a* is also
the Tailpiece, 'A Matter of Standpoint.' ' Cecca's Lover'
made his original bofv in Longman's Magazine. Finally, ' The
viii
INTRODUCTION
Churchwarden s Brother' is entirely new, never having appeared
in public before on this or any other stage. I have to thank the
editors and proprietors of the various periodicals above enu-
merated for their courteous permission to present afresh the
contributioTts to their respective pages.
I set forth this little Collection of Tales in all humility, and
with no small diffidence, hi an age so prolific in high genius as
our 07vn, I know how hard it is for mere modest industry to catch
the ear of a too pampered public. I shall be amply content if
our masters permit me to pick up the crumbs that fall from the
table of the Hardy s, the Kiplings, the Merediths, and the Wellses.
G.A.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION,
HEADPIECE : a confidential communication,
I, THE REVEREND JOHN CREEDY,
II. frasine's first communion,
III. the child of the phalanstery
IV. THE abba's repentance,
V. WOLVERDEN TOWER,
VI. Janet's nemesis,
INTERMEZZO : langalula, .
VII. THE curate op CHURNSIDE,
VIII. cecca's lover, .
IX. THE BACKSLIDER,
X. JOHN CANn's TREASURE,
XI. IVAN GREET 's MASTERPIECE,
XII. THE churchwarden's BROTHER,
TAILPIECE : a matter op standpoint,
PAGE
V
3
11
33
45
67
91
129
153
161
197
215
245
285
327
347
HEADPIECE
A CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
A CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
Ah, he was a mean-spirited beggar, that fellow Sibthorpe !
As mean-spirited a beggar as ever / come across. Yes,
that's who I mean ; that 's him ; the fellow as was murdered.
I s'pose you 'd call it murdered, now I come to think of it.
But, Lord, he was such a mean-spirited chap, he wouldn't be
enough to ang a dog for !
' Charitable,' eh .? 'A distinguished philanthropist ! '
Well, I can't say as / ever thought much of his philanthropy.
He was always down on them as tries to earn a honest livin'
tramping about the country. Know how he was murdered }
Well, yes, I should think I did! I'm just about the fust
livin' authority in England on that there subjeck.
Well, come to that, I don't mind if I do tell you. You 're
a straight sort of chap, you are. You're one of these 'ere
politicals. I ain't afraid o' trustin' you. You 're not one of
them as 'ud peach on a pal to 'andle a reward o' fifty
guineas. And it 's a rum story too. But mind, I tell you
what I tell you in confidence. There's not another chap
in all this prison I 'd tell as much to.
I'd always knowed 'im, since I was no bigger nor that.
Old fool he was too ; down on public-'ouses an' races an'
such, an' always ready to subscribe to anything for the
elevation of the people. People don't want to be elevated,
says I ; silly pack o' modern new-fangled rubbish. I sticks
to the public-'ouses.
3
A CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
Well, we was dead-beat that day. Liz an' me had
tramped along all the way from Aldershot. Last we come
to the black lane by the pine-trees after you 've crossed the
heath. Loneliest spot just there that I know in England.
The Gibbet Til's to the right, where the men was hung in
chains ; and the copse is to the left, where we 'ad that little
brush one time with the keepers. Liz sat down on the
heather — she was dead-beat, she was — behind a clump o' fuzz.
An' I lay down beside 'er.
She was a good 'un, Liz. She followed me down through
thick and thin like a good 'un. No bloomin' nonsense about
Liz, I can tell you. I always liked 'er. And though I did
get into a row with her that mornin' afore she died, and
kick 'er about the ribs a bit — but, there, I 'm a-digressin', as
the parson put it ; and the jury brought it in ' Death by
misadventure.' That was a narrow squeak that time. I
didn't think I 'd swing for 'ei', 'cause she 'it me fust ;
but I did think they 'd 'a' brought it in somethin' like
manslaughter.
However, as I say, I 'm a-digressin' from the story. It
was like this with old Sibthorpe. We was a-lyin' under the
gorse bushes, wonderin' to ourselves 'ow we 'd raise the wind
for a drink — for we was both of us just about as dry as they
make 'em — when suddenly round the corner, with his 'at in
his 'and, and his white 'air a-blowin' round his 'ead, like an
old fool as he was, who should come but the doctor. Liz
looks at me, and I looks at Liz.
'It's that bloomin' old idjit. Dr. Sibthorpe,' says she.
' He give me a week once.'
I 'ad my knife in my 'and. I looks at it, like this : then
I looks up at Liz. She laughs and nods at me. 'E couldn't
see neither of us behind the bush of fuzz. ' Arst 'im fust,'
says Liz, low; 'an' then, if he don't fork out ' She
drawed her finger so, right across her throat, an' smiles. Oh,
she tvas a good 'un !
4
A CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
Well, up I goes an' begins, reglar asker's style. 'You
ain't got a copper about you, sir/ says I, whinin' like, ' as you
could give a pore man as has tramped, without a bit or a
sup, all the way from Aldershot ? '
'E looks at me an' smiles — the mean old hypocrite ! ' I
never give to tramps,' says 'e. Then 'e looks at me agin.
' I know you,' says 'e. 'You've been up afore me often.'
' An' I knows you,' says I, drawin' the knife ; ' an' I knows
where you keeps your money. An' I ain't a-goin' to be up
afore you agin, not if / knows it.' An', with that, I rushes
up, an' just goes at him blind with it.
Well, he fought like a good 'un for his life, that he did.
You wouldn't 'a' thought the old fool had so much fight left
in him. But Liz stuck to me like a brick, an' we got him
down at last, an' I gave him one or two about the 'ead as
quieted him. It was mostly kickin' — no blood to speak of.
Then we dragged him aside among the heather, and covered
him up a little bit, an' made all tidy on the road where
we 'd stuck him.
' Take his watch, Liz,' says I.
Well, would you believe it ? He was a magistrate for the
county, and lived in the 'All, an' was 'eld the richest gentle-
man for ten mile about ; but when Liz fished out his watch,
what sort do you think it was } I give you my word for it, a
common Waterbury !
' You put that back, Liz,' says I. ' Put that back in the
old fool's pocket. Don't go carryin' it about to incriminate
yourself, free, gratis, for nothin',' says I; 'it ain't worth
sixpence.'
' 'Ave you his purse .'' ' says she.
'Yes, I 'ave,' says I. 'An' when we gets round the
corner, we'll see what's in it.'
Well, so we did ; an', would you believe it, agin, when we
come to look, there was two ha'penny stamps and a lock
of a child's 'air ; and, s'elp me taters, that 's all that was in it !
5
A CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
' It ain't right,' says I, ' for people to go about takin' in
other people with regard to their wealth,' says I. ^'Ere's
this blooniin' old fool 'as misled us into s'posing he was the
richest man in all the county, and not a penny in his purse !
It's downright dishonest.'
Liz snatches it from me, an' turns it inside out. But it
worn't no good. Not another thing in it !
Well, she looks at me, an' I looks at her. ' You fool,' says
she, ' to get us both into a blindfold scrape like this, without
knowin' whether or not he 'd got the money about him ! I
guess we '11 both swing for it.'
' You told me to,' says I.
'^ That's a lie,' says she. Liz was always free-spoken.
I took her by the throat. 'Young woman,' says I, 'you
keep a civil tongue in your 'ead,' says I, 'or, by George,
you '11 follow him ! '
Then we looks at one another agin ; and the humour of it
comes over us — I was always one as 'ad a sense of humour —
an' we busts out laughin'.
' Sold ! ' says I.
' Sold ! ' says Liz, half cry in'.
An' we both sat down, an' looked agin at one another
like a pair of born idjits.
Then it come over us gradually what a pack o' fools that
there man had made of us. The longer I thought of it, the
angrier it made me. The mean-spirited old blackguard !
To be walking around the roads without a penny upon
him !
' You go back, Liz,' says I, ' an' put that purse where we
found it, in his weskit pocket.' ^
Liz looked at me an' crouched. ' I daren't,' says she,
cowerin'. She was beginning to get frightened.
I took her by the 'air. ' By George ! ' says I, ' if you
don't ' An' she saw I meant it.
Well, back she crawled, rather than walked, all shiverin' ;
6
A CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
an', as for me, I set there on the heather an' watched her.
By an' by, she crawled round again. ' Done it ? ' says I.
An' Liz, lookin' white as a sheet, says, ' Yes^ I done it.'
' I wasn't goin' to carry that about with me,' says I, ' for
the coppers to cop me. Now they '11 put it in the papers :
" Deceased's watch and purse were found on him untouched,
so that robbery was clearly not the motive of the crime."
Git up, Liz, you fool, an' come along on with me.'
Up she got, an' come along. We crept down the valley,
all tired as we was, without a sup to drink ; an' we reached
the high-road, all in among the bracken, an' we walked
together as far as Godalming. That was all. The p'lice
set it down to revenge, an' suspected the farmers. But,
ever since then, every time I remember it, it makes me 'ot
with rage to think a man o' property like him should go
walking the roads, takin' other people in, without a farden
in his pocket. It was the biggest disappointment ever /
had in my life. To think I might 'a' swung for an old fool
like that ! A great philanthropist, indeed ! Why, he 'd
ought to 'a' been ashamed o' himself. Not one blessed
farden ! I tell you, it always makes me 'ot to think o' it.
I
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
'On Sunday next, the 14th inst., the Reverend John Creedy,
B.A., of Magdalen College, Oxford, will preach in Walton
Magna Church on behalf of the Gold Coast Mission.' Not
a very startling announcement that ; and yet, simple as it
looks, it stirred Ethel Berry's soul to its inmost depths.
For Ethel had been brought up by her Aunt Emily to look
upon foreign missions as the one thing on earth worth living
for and thinking about ; and the Reverend John Creedy, B. A.,
had a missionary history of his own, strange enough even in
these strange days of queer juxtapositions between utter
savagery and advanced civilisation.
' Only think,' she said to her aunt, as they read the
placard on the schoolhouse board, '^ he 's a real African
negro, the vicar says, taken from a slaver on the Gold
Coast when he was a child, and brought to England to be
educated. He 's been to Oxford and got a degree ; and
now he's going out again to Africa to convert his own
people. And he 's coming down to the vicar's to stay on
Wednesday.'
'It's my behef,' said old Uncle James, Aunt Emily's
brother, the superannuated skipper, ' that he 'd much better
stop in England for ever. I 've been a good bit on the
Coast myself in my time, after palm oil and such, and my
opinion is that a nigger's a nigger anywhere, but he 's a sight
11
THE REVEREND JOHN CREEDY
'less of a nigger in England than out yonder in Africa.
Take him to England^ and you make a gentleman of hira :
send him home again, and the nigger comes out at once in
spite of you.'
'Oh, James/ Aunt Emily put in, 'how can you talk such
unchristianlike talk, setting yourself up against missions,
when we know that all the nations of the earth are made of
one blood .'' '
' I 've always lived a Christian life myself, Emily,' answered
Uncle James^ ' though I have cruised a good bit on the
Coast, too, which is against it, certainly ; but I take it a
nigger's a nigger w^hatever you do with him. The Ethiopian
cannot change his skin, the Scripture says, nor the leopard
his spots, and a nigger he '11 be to the end of his days ; you
mark my words, Emily.'
On Wednesday, in due course, the Reverend John Creedy
arrived at the vicarage, and much curiosity there was
throughout the village of Walton Magna that week to see
this curious new thing — a coal-black parson. Next day,
Thursday, an almost equally unusual event occurred to Ethel
Berry; for, to her great surprise, she got a little note in the
morning inviting her up to a tennis-party at the vicarage
the same afternoon. Now, though the vicar called on Aunt
Emily often enough, and accepted her help readily for
school feasts and other village festivities of the milder sort,
the Berrys were hardly up to that level of society which is
commonly invited to the parson's lawn tennis parties. And
the reason why Ethel was asked on this pai'ticular Thursday
must be traced to a certain pious conspiracy between the
vicar and the secretary of the Gold Coast Evangelistic
Society. When those two eminent missionary advocates
had met a fortnight before at Exeter Hall, the secretary
had represented to the vicar the desirability of young John
Creedy's taking to himself an English wife before his de-
parture. ' It will steady him, and keep him right on the
12
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
Coast/ he said, 'and it will give him importance in the eyes
of the natives as well.' Whereto the vicar responded that
he knew exactly the right girl to suit the place in his own
parish, and that by a providential conjunction she already
took a deep interest in foreign missions. So these two
good men conspired in all innocence of heart to sell poor
Ethel into African slavery ; and the vicar had asked John
Creedy down to Walton Magna on purpose to meet hei*.
That afternoon Ethel put on her pretty sateen and her
witching little white hat, with two natural dog-roses pinned
on one side, and went pleased and proud up to the vicarage.
The Reverend John Creedy was there, not in full clerical
costume, but arrayed in tennis flannels, with only a loose
white tie beneath his flap collar to mark his newly acquired
spiritual dignity. He was a comely-looking negro enough,
full-blooded, but not too broad-faced nor painfully African
in type ; and when he was playing tennis his athletic quick
limbs and his really handsome build took away greatly from
the general impression of an inferior race. His voice was of
the ordinary Oxford type, open, pleasant, and refined, with a
certain easy-going air of natural gentility, hai'dly marred by
just the faintest tinge of the thick negro blur in the broad
vowels. When he talked to Ethel — and the vicar's wife
took good care that they should talk together a great deal —
his conversation was of a sort that she seldom heard at Wal-
ton Magna. It was full of London and Oxford ; of boat-races
at Mey and cricket matches at Lord's ; of people and books
whose very names Ethel had never heard — one of them was
a Mr. Mill, she thought, and another a Mr. Aristotle, — but
which she felt vaguely to be one step higher in the intel-
lectual scale than her own level. Then his friends, to whom
he alluded casually, not like one who airs his grand acquaint-
ances, were such very distinguished people. There was a
real live lord, apparently, at the same college with him, and
he spoke of a young baronet whose estate lay close by as
13
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
plain ' Harrington of Christchurch/ without any ' Sir Arthur '
— a thing which even the vicar himself would hardly have
ventured to do. She knew that he was learned too ; as a
matter of fact, he had taken a fair second class in Greats at
Oxford ; and he could talk delightfully of poetry and novels.
To say the truth, John Creedy, in spite of his black face,
dazzled poor Ethel, for he was more of a scholar and a gentle-
man than anybody with whom she had ever before had the
chance of conversing on equal terms.
When Ethel turned the course of talk to Africa, the young
parson was equally eloquent and fascinating. He didn't
care about leaving England for many reasons, but he would
be glad to do something for his poor brethren. He was
enthusiastic about missions ; that was a common interest ;
and he was so anxious to raise and improve the condition of
his fellow-negroes, that Ethel couldn't help feeling what a
noble thing it was of him thus to sacrifice himself, cultivated
gentleman as he was, in an African jungle, for his heathen
countrymen. Altogether, she went home from the tennis-
court that afternoon thoroughly overcome by John Creedy's
personality. She didn't for a moment think of falling in
love with him — a certain indescribable race-instinct set up
an impassable barrier against that — but she admired him and
was interested in him in a way that she had never yet felt
with any other man.
As for John Creedy, he was naturally charmed with Ethel.
In the first place, he would have been charmed with any
English girl who took so much interest in himself and his
plans ; for, like all negroes, he was frankly egotistical, and
delighted to find a white lady who seemed to treat him as a
superior being. But, in the second place, Ethel was really a
charming, simple English village lassie, with sweet little
manners and a delicious blush, who might have impressed a
far less susceptible man than the young negro parson. So,
whatever Ethel felt, John Creedy felt himself truly in love.
14
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
Andj after all, John Greedy was in all essentials an educated
English gentleman^ with the same chivalrous feelings towards
a pretty and attractive girl that every English gentleman
ought to have.
On Sunday morning Aunt Emily and Ethel went to the
parish church, and the Reverend John Greedy preached the
expected sermon. It was almost his first — sounded like a
trial trip, Uncle James muttered, — but it was undoubtedly
what connoisseurs describe as an admirable discourse. John
Greedy was free from any tinge of nervousness — negroes
never know what that word means, — and he spoke fervently,
eloquently, and with much power of manner about the
necessity for a Gold Goast Mission. Perhaps there was
really nothing very original or striking in what he said, but
his way of saying it was impressive and vigorous. The
negro, like many other lower races, has the faculty of speech
largely developed, and John Greedy had been noted as one
of the readiest and most fluent talkers at the Oxford Union
debates. When he enlarged upon the need for woi'kers,
the need for help, the need for succour and sympathy in the
great task of evangelisation, Aunt Emily and Ethel forgot
his black hands, stretched out open-palmed towards the
people, and felt only their hearts stirred within them by the
eloquence and enthusiasm of that appealing gesture.
The end of it all was, that instead of a week John Greedy
stopped for two months at Walton Magna, and during all
that time he saw a great deal of Ethel. Before the end of
the first fortnight he walked out one afternoon along the
river-bank with her, and talked earnestly of his expected
mission.
' Miss Berry,' he said, as they sat to rest awhile on the
parapet of the little bridge by the weeping willows, ' I don't
mind going to Africa, but I can't bear going all alone. I
am to have a station entirely by myself up the Ancobra
river, where I shall see no other Ghristian face from year's
15
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
end to year's end. I wish I could have had some one to
accompany me.'
' You will be very lonely/ Ethel answered. ' I wish
indeed you could have some companionship.'
'Do you really.^' John Creedy went on. ' It is not good
for man to live alone ; he wants a helpmate. Oh, Miss
Ethel, may I venture to hope that perhaps, if I can try to
deserve you, you will be mine ? '
Ethel started in dismay. Mr. Creedy had been very
attentive, very kind, and she had liked to hear him talk, and
had encouraged his coming, but she was hardly prepared
for this. The nameless something in our blood recoiled at
it. The proposal stunned her, and she said nothing but
' Oh, Mr. Creedy, how can you say such a thing ? '
John Creedy saw the shadow on her face, the uninten-
tional dilatation of her delicate nostrils, the faint puckering
at the corner of her lips, and knew with a negro's quick
instinct of face-reading what it all meant. 'Oh, Miss
Ethel,' he said, with a touch of genuine bitterness in his
tone, ' don't you, too, despise us. I won't ask you for any
answer now ; I don't want an answer. But I want you
to think it over. Do think it over, and consider whether
you can ever love me. I won't press the matter on you ;
I won't insult you by importunity ; but I will tell you just
this once, and once for all, what I feel, I love you, and I
shall always love you, whatever you answer me now. I
know it would cost you a wrench to take me, a greater
wrench than to take the least and the unworthiest of your
own people. But if you can only get over that first wrench,
I can promise earnestly and faithfully to love you as well as
ever woman yet was loved. Don't say anything now,' he
went on, as he saw she was going to open her mouth again :
'wait and think it over; pray it over; and if you can't see
your way straight before you when I ask you this day fort-
night "Yes or No," answer me "No," and I give you my word
16
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
of honour as a gentleman I will never speak to you of the
matter again. But I shall carry your picture written on my
heart to my grave.'
And Ethel knew that he was speaking from his very
soul.
When she went home^ she took Aunt Emily up into her
little bedroom, over the porch where the dog-roses grew,
and told her all about it. Aunt Emily cried and sobbed as
if her heart would break, but she saw only one answer from
the first. ' It is a gate opened to you, my darling,' she said :
' I shall break my heart over it, Ethel, but it is a gate
opened.' And though she felt that all the light would be
gone out of her life if Ethel went, she worked with her
might from that moment forth to induce Ethel to marry
John Creedy and go to Africa. Poor soul ! she acted faith-
fully up to her lights.
As for Uncle James, he looked at the matter very differ-
ently. ' Her instinct is against it,' he said stoutly, ' and
our instincts wasn't put in our hearts for nothing. They 're
meant to be a guide and a light to us in these dark ques-
tions. No white girl ought to marry a black man, even if
he is a parson. It ain't natural : our instinct is again it. A
white man may marry a black woman if he likes : I don't
say anything again him, though I don't say I 'd do it myself,
not for any money. But a white woman to marry a black
man, why, it makes our blood rise, you know, 'specially if
you've happened to have cruised worth speaking of along
the Coast.'
But the vicar and the vicar's wife were charmed with the
prospect of success, and spoke seriously to Ethel about it.
It was a call, they thought, and Ethel oughtn't to disregard
it. They had argued themselves out of those wholesome
race instincts that Uncle James so rightly valued, and they
were eager to argue Ethel out of them too. What could
the poor girl do ? Her aunt and the vicar on the one hand,
B 17
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
and John Creedy on the other, were too much between
them for her native feelings. At the end of the fortnight
John Creedy asked her his simple question 'Yes or No/ and
half against her will she answered '^ Yes.' John Creedy took
her hand delicately in his and fervidly kissed the very tips
of her fingers ; something within him told him he must not
kiss her lips. She started at the kiss, but she said nothing.
John Creedy noticed the start, and said within himself, ' I
shall so love and cherish her that I will make her love me
in spite of my black skin.' For with all the faults of his
negro nature, John Creedy was at heart an earnest and
affectionate man after his kind.
And Ethel really did, to some extent, love him already.
It was such a strange mixture of feeling. From one point
of view he was a gentleman by position, a clergyman, a man
of learning and of piety ; and from this point of view Ethel
was not only satisfied, but even proud of him. For the rest,
she took him as some good Catholics take the veil — from a
sense of the call. And so, before the two months were out,
Ethel Berry had married John Creedy, and both started
together at once for Southampton, on their way to Axim.
Aunt Emily cried, and hoped they might be blessed in their
new work, but Uncle James never lost his misgivings about
the effect of Africa upon a born African. ' Instincts is a
great thing,' he said, with a shake of his head, as he saw
the West Coast mail steam slowly down Southampton Water,
'and when he gets among his own people his instincts will
surely get the better of him, as safe as my name is James
Berry.'
II
The little mission bungalow at Butabue, a wooden shed
neatly thatched with fan palms, had been built and gar-
18
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
nished by the native catechist from Axim and his wife
before the arrival of the missionaries, so that Ethel found
a habitable dwelling ready for her at the end of her long
boat journey up the rapid stream of the Ancobra. There
the strangely matched pair settled down quietly enough to
their work of teaching and catechising, for the mission had
already been started by the native evangelist, and many of
the people were fairly ready to hear and accept the new
religion. For the first ten or twelve months Ethel's letters
home were full of praise and love for dear John. Now that
she had come to know him well, she wondered she had ever
feared to marry him. No husband was ever so tender, so
gentle, so considerate. He nursed her in all her little
ailments like a woman ; she leaned on him as a wife leans
on the strong arm of her husband. And then he was so
clever, so wise, so learned. Her only grief was that she
feared she was not and would never be good enough for
him. Yet it was well for her that they were living so
entirely away from all white society at Butabue, for there
she had nobody with whom to contrast John but the half-
clad savages around them. Judged by the light of that
startling contrast, good John Greedy, with his cultivated
ways and gentle manners, seemed like an Englishman
indeed.
John Greedy, for his part, thought no less well of his
Ethel. He was tenderly respectful to her; more distant,
perhaps, than is usual between husband and wife, even in
the first months of marriage, but that was due to his innate
delicacy of feeling, which made him half unconsciously
recognise the depth of the gulf that still divided them. He
cherished her like some saintly thing, too sacred for the
common world. Yet Ethel was his helper in all his work,
so cheerful under the necessary privations of their life, so
ready to put up with bananas and cassava balls, so apt at
kneading plantain paste, so willing to learn from the negro
19
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
women all the mysteries of mixing agadey, cankey, and
koko pudding. No tropical heat seemed to put her out of
temper ; even the horrible country fever itself she bore
with such gentle resignation, John Creedy felt in his heart
of hearts that he would willingly give up his life for her,
and that it would be but a small sacrifice for so sweet a
creature.
One day, shortly after their arrival at Butabue, John
Creedy began talking in English to the catechist about the
best way of setting to work to learn the native language.
He had left the country when he was nine years old, he
said, and had forgotten all about it. The catechist an-
swered him quickly in a Fantee phrase. John Creedy looked
amazed and started.
'What does he say.^' asked Ethel.
' He says that I shall soon learn if only I listen ; but the
curious thing is, Ethie, that I understand him.'
'It has come back to you, John, that's all. You are
so quick at languages, and now you hear it again you
remember it.'
'Perhaps so,' said the missionary slowly, 'but I have
never recalled a word of it for all these years. I wonder if
it will all come back to me.'
'Of course it will, dear,' said Ethel; 'you know, things
come to you so easily in that way. You almost learned
Portuguese while we were coming out from hearing those
Benguela people.'
And so it did come back, sure enough. Before John
Creedy had been six weeks at Butabue, he could talk Fantee
as fluently as any of the natives around him. After all,
he was nine years old when he was taken to England,
and it was no great wonder that he should recollect the
language he had heard in his childhood till that age. Still,
he himself noticed rather uneasily that every phrase and
word, down to the very heathen charms and prayers of his
20
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
infancy, came back to him now with startling vividness and
without an effort.
Four months after their arrival John saw one day a tall
and ugly negro woman, in the scanty native dress, standing
near the rude market-place, where the Butabue butchers
killed and sold their reeking goat-meat. Ethel saw him
start again ; and with a terrible foreboding in her heart, she
could not help asking him why he started. 'I can't tell
you, Ethie,' he said piteously ; 'for heaven's sake, don't
press me. I want to spare you.' But Ethel would hear.
' Is it your mother, John ? ' she asked hoarsely.
' No, thank Heaven, not my mother, Ethie,' he answered
her, with something like pallor on his dark cheek, ' not my
mother ; but I remember the woman.'
' A relative ? '
'Oh, Ethie, don't press me. Yes, my mother's sister.
I remember her years ago. Let us say no more about it.'
And Ethel, looking at that gaunt and squalid savage woman,
shuddered in her heart and said no more.
Slowly, as time went on, however, Ethel began to notice
a strange shade of change coming over John's ideas and
remarks about the negroes. At first he had been shocked
and distressed at their heathendom and savagery ; but the
more he saw of it, the more he seemed to find it natural
enough in their position, and even in a sort of way to
sympathise with it or apologise for it. One morning,
a month or two later, he spoke to her voluntarily of his
father. He had never done so in England. ' I can re-
member,' he said, ' he was a chief, a great chief. He had
many wives, and my mother was one. He was beaten
in war by Kola, and I was taken prisoner. But he had a
fine palace at Kwantah, and many fan-bearers.' Ethel
observed with a faint terror that he seemed to speak with
pride and complacency of his father's chieftaincy. She
shuddered again and wondered. Was the West African
21
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
instinct getting the upper hand in him over the Christian
gentleman ?
When the dries were over, and the koko-harvest gathered,
the negroes held a grand feast. John had preached in the
open air to some of the market-people in the morning, and
in the evening he was sitting in the hut with Ethel, waiting
till the catechist and his wife should come in to prayers,
for they carried out their accustomed ceremony decorously,
even there, every night and morning. Suddenly they
heard the din of savage music out of doors, and the noise of
a great crowd laughing and shouting down the street. John
listened, and listened with deepening attention. ' Don't
you hear it, Ethie?' he cried. 'It's the tom-toms. I
know what it means. It's the harvest battle-feast !'
' How hideous ! ' said Ethel, shrinking back.
'Don't be afraid, dearest,' John said, smiling at her.
' It means no harm. It 's only the people amusing them-
selves.' And he began to keep time to the tom-toms
rapidly with the palms of his hands.
The din drew nearer, and John grew more evidently
excited at every step. ' Don't you hear, Ethie ? ' he said
again. ' It 's the Salonga. What inspii-iting music ! It 's
like a drum and fife band ; it 's like the bagpipes ; it 's like a
military march. By Jove, it compels one to dance ! ' And
he got up as he spoke, in English clerical dress (for he
wore clerical dress even at Butabue), and began capering
in a sort of hornpipe round the tiny room.
'Oh, John, don't!' cried Ethel. 'Suppose the catechist
were to come in !'
But John's blood was up. ' Look here,' he said ex-
citedly, ' it goes like this. Here you hold your matchlock
out ; here you fire ; here you charge with cutlasses ; here
you hack them down before you ; here you hold up your
enemy's head in your hands, and here you kick it off
among the women. Oh, it 's grand ! ' There was a terrible
22
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
light in his black eyes as he spoke, and a terrible trem-
bling in his clenched black hands.
'John,' ci'ied Ethel, in an agony of horror, 'it isn't
Christian, it isn't human, it isn't worthy of you. I can
never, never love you if you do such a thing again.'
In a moment John's face changed and his hand fell as
if she had stabbed him. ' Ethie,' he said in a low voice,
creeping back to her like a whipped spaniel,—' Ethie, my
darling, my own soul, my beloved ; what have I done .'' Oh,
heavens, I will never listen to the accursed thing again !
Oh, Ethie, for heaven's sake, for mercy's sake, forgive
me ! '
Ethel laid her hand, trembling, on his head. John sank
upon his knees before her, and bowed himself down with his
head between his arms, like one staggered and penitent.
Ethel lifted him gently, and at that moment the catechist
and his wife came in. John stood up firmly, took down his
Bible and Prayer Book, and read through evening prayer at
once in his usual impressive tone. In one moment he had
changed back again from the Fantee savage to the decorous
Oxford clergyman.
It was only a week later that Ethel, hunting about in the
little storeroom, happened to notice a stout wooden box
carefully covered up. She opened the lid with some diffi-
culty, for it was fastened down with a native lock, and to her
horror she found inside it a surreptitious keg of raw negro
rum. She took the keg out, put it conspicuously in the
midst of the storeroom, and said nothing. That night she
heard John in the jungle behind the yard, and looking out,
she saw dimly that he was hacking the keg to pieces
vehemently with an axe. After that he was even kinder
and tenderer to her than usual for the next week ; but Ethel
vaguely remembered that once or twice before he had
seemed a little odd in his manner, and that it was on those
days that she had seen gleams of the savage nature peeping
23
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
through. Perhaps, she thought, with a shiver, his civilisation
was only a veneer, and a glass of raw rum or so was enough
to wash it off.
Twelve months after their first arrival, Ethel came home
very fevei-ish one evening from her girls' school, and found
John gone from the hut. Searching about in the room for
the quinine bottle, she came once more upon a rum-keg,
and this time it was empty. A nameless terror drove her
into the little bedroom. There, on the bed, torn into a
hundred shreds, lay John Greedy 's black coat and European
clothing. The room whirled around her ; and though she
had never heard of such a thing before, the terrible truth
flashed across her bewildered mind like a hideous dream.
She went out, alone, at night, as she had never done before
since she came to Africa, into the broad lane between the
huts which constituted the chief street of Butabue. So far
away from home, so utterly solitary among all those black
faces, so sick at heart with that burning and devouring
horror ! She reeled and staggered down the street, not
knowing how or where she went, till at the end, beneath
the two tall date-palms, she saw lights flashing and heard the
noise of shouts and laughter. A group of natives, men and
women together, were dancing and howling round a dancing
and howling negro. The central figure was dressed in the
native fashion, with arms and legs bare, and he was shouting
a loud song at the top of his voice in the Fantee language,
while he shook a tom-tom. There was a huskiness as of
drink in his throat, and his steps were unsteady and doubtful.
Great heavens ! could that reeling, shrieking black savage
be John Greedy ?
Yes, instinct had gained the day over civilisation ; the
savage in John Greedy had broken out ; he had torn up his
English clothes and, in West African parlance, 'had gone
Fantee.' Ethel gazed at him, white with horror — stood still
and gazed, and never cried nor fainted, nor said a word.
24
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
The crowd of negroes divided to right and left, and John
Creedy saw his wife standing there like a marble figure.
With one awful cry he came to himself again, and rushed to
her side. She did not repel him, as he expected ; she did
not speak ; she was mute and cold like a corpse, not like a
living woman. He took her up in his strong arms, laid her
head on his shoulder, and carried her home through the long
line of thatched huts, erect and steady as when he first
walked up the aisle of Walton Magna church. Then he
laid her down gently on the bed, and called the wife of the
catechist. ' She has the fever,' he said in Fantee. ' Sit by
her.'
The catechist's wife looked at her, and said, 'Yes; the
yellow fever.'
And so she had. Even before she saw John the fever
had been upon her, and that awful revelation had brought
it out suddenly in full force. She lay unconscious upon the
bed, her eyes open, staring ghastlily, but not a trace of
colour in her cheek nor a sign of life upon her face.
John Creedy wrote a few words upon a piece of paper,
which he folded in his hand, gave a few directions in Fantee
to the woman at the bedside, and then hurried out like one
on fire into the darkness outside.
HI
It was thirty miles through the jungle by a native track-
way to the nearest mission station at EfFuenta. There were
two Methodist missionaries stationed there, John Creedy
knew, for he had gone round by boat more than once to see
them. When he first came to Africa he could no more have
found his way across the neck of the river fork by that tangled
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
jungle track than he could have flown bodily over the top
of the cocoa palms ; but now, half naked, barefooted, and
inspired with an overpowering emotion, he threaded his
path through the darkness among the creepers and lianas of
the forest in true African fashion. Stooping here, creeping
on all fours there, running in the open at full speed anon, he
never once stopped to draw breath till he had covered the
whole thirty miles, and knocked in the early dawn at the
door of the mission hut at EfFuenta.
One of the missionaries opened the barred door cautiously.
* What do you want .'' ' he asked in Fantee of the bare-legged
savage, who stood crouching by the threshold.
' I bring a message from Missionary John Creedy,' the
bare-legged savage answered, also in Fantee. ' He wants
European clothes.'
' Has he sent a letter .'' ' asked the missionary.
John Creedy took the folded piece of paper from his
palm. The missionary read it. It told him in a few words
how the Butabue people had pillaged John's hut at night
and stolen his clothing, and how he could not go outside his
door till he got some European dress again.
* This is strange,' said the missionary. ' Brother Felton
died three days ago of the fever. You can take his clothes
to Brother Creedy, if you will.'
The bare-limbed savage nodded acquiescence. The
missionary looked hard at him, and fancied he had seen
his face before, but he never even for a moment suspected
that he was speaking to John Creedy himself.
A bundle was soon made of dead Brother Felton's clothes,
and the bare-limbed man took it in his arms and prepared to
run back again the whole way to Butabue.
' You have had nothing to eat,' said the lonely missionary.
'Won't you take something to help you on your way .-^ '
' Give me some plantain paste,' answered John Creedy. ' I
can eat it as I go.' And when they gave it him he forgot
26
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
himself for the moment, and answered 'Thank you' in
Enghsh. The missionary stared, but thought it was only
a single phrase that he had picked up at Butabue, and
that he was anxious, negro-fashion, to air his know-
ledge.
Back through the jungle, with the bundle in his arms,
John Creedy wormed his way once more, like a snake or a
tiger, never pausing or halting on the road till he found
himself again in the open space outside the village of Buta-
bue. There he stayed a while, and behind a clump of wild
ginger he opened the bundle and arrayed himself once more
from head to foot in English clerical dress. That done, too
proud to slink, he walked bold and erect down the main
alley, and quietly entered his own hut. It was high noon,
the baking high noon of Africa, as he did so.
Ethel lay unconscious still upon the bed. The negro
woman crouched, half asleep after her night's watching, at
the foot. John Creedy looked at his watch, which stood
hard by on the little wooden table. ' Sixty miles in fourteen
hours,' he said aloud. 'Better time by a great deal than
when we walked from Oxford to the White Horse eighteen
months since.' And then he sat down silently by Ethel's
bedside.
' Has she moved her eyes ? ' he asked the negress.
' Never, John Creedy,' answered the woman. Till last
night she had always called him ' Master.'
He watched the lifeless face for an hour or two. There
was no change in it till about four o'clock ; then Ethel's eyes
began to alter their expression. He saw the dilated pupils
contract a little, and knew that consciousness was gradually
returning.
In a moment more she looked round at him and gave a
little cry. ' John,' she exclaimed, with a sort of awakening
hopefulness in her voice, ' where on earth did you get those
clothes ? '
27
THE REVEREND JOHN CREEDY
* These clothes ? ' he answered softly. ' Why, you must be
wandering in your mind, Ethie deai-est, to ask such a ques-
tion now. At Standen's, in the High at Oxford,, my darling.'
And he passed his black hand gently across her loose hair.
Ethel gave a great cry of joy. 'Then it was a dream, a
horrid dream, John, or a terrible mistake .'' Oh, John, say
it was a dream ! '
John drew his hand across his forehead slowly. ' Ethie
darling,' he said, ' you are wandering, I 'm afraid. You have
a bad fever. I don't know what you mean.'
'Then you didn't tear them up, and wear a Fantee dress,
and dance with a tom-tom down the street ? Oh, John ! '
' Oh, Ethel ! No. What a terrible delirium you must
have had ! '
' It is all well,' she said. ' I don't mind if I die now.*
And she sank back exhausted into a sort of feverish sleep.
* John Creedy,' said the black catechist's wife solemnly,
in Fantee, ' you will have to answer for that lie to a dying
woman with your soul ! '
' My soul ! ' cried John Creedy passionately, smiting both
breasts with his clenched fists. 'Mjy soul ! Do you think,
you negro wench, I wouldn't give ?/ii/ poor, miserable, black
soul to eternal torments a thousand times over, if only I
could give her little white heart one moment's forgetfulness
before she dies? '
For five days longer Ethel lingered in the burning fever,
sometimes conscious for a minute or two, but for the most
part delii'ious or drowsy all the time. She never said another
word to John about her terrible dream, and John never said
another word to her. But he sat by her side and tended her
like a woman, doing everything that was possible for her
in the bare little hut, and devouring his full heart with a
horrible gnawing remorse too deep for pen or tongue to
probe and fathom. For civilisation with John Creedy was
really at bottom far more than a mere veneer ; though the
THE REVEREND JOHN GREEDY
savage instincts might break out with him now and again,
such outbursts no more affected his adult and acquired nature
than a single bump-supper or wine-party at college affects
the nature of many a gentle-minded English lad. The truest
John Creedy of all was the gentle, tender, English clergyman.
As he sat by her bedside sleepless and agonised, night
and day, for five days together, one prayer only rose to his
lips time after time, "^ Heaven grant she may die!' He
had depth enough in the civilised side of his soul to feel
that that was the only way to save her from a lifelong shame.
' If she gets well,' he said to himself, trembling, ' I will leave
this accursed Africa at once. I will work my way back to
England as a common sailor, and send her home by the mail
with my remaining money. 1 will never inflict my presence
upon her again, for she cannot be persuaded, if once she
I'ecovers, that she did not see me, as she did see me, a bare-
limbed heathen Fantee brandishing a devilish tom-tom. But
I shall get work in England — not a parson's ; that I can
never be again — but clerk's work, labourer's work, navvy's
work, anything ! Look at my arms : I rowed five in the
Magdalen eight: I could hold a spade as well as any man.
I will toil, and slave, and save, and keep her still like a lady,
if I starve for it myself: but she shall never see my face
again if once she recovers. Even then it will be a living
death for her, poor angel ! There is only one hope — Heaven
grant she may die ! '
On the fifth day she opened her eyes once. John saw
that his prayer was about to be fulfilled. ' John,' she said
feebly — ' John, tell me, on your honour, it was only my
delirium.'
And John, raising his hand to heaven, splendide mendax,
answered in a firm voice, ' I swear it.'
Ethel smiled and shut her eyes. It was for the last
time.
Next morning, John Creedy — tearless, but parched and dry
29
THE REVEREND JOHN CREEDY
in the mouth, like one stunned and unmanned — took a pick-
axe and hewed out a rude grave in the loose soil near the
river. Then he fashioned a rough coffin from twisted canes
with his own hands, and in it he reverently placed the sacred
body. He allowed no one to help him or come near him —
not even his fellow-Christians, the catechist and his wife :
Ethel was too holy a thing for their African hands to touch.
Next he put on his white surplice, and for the first and only
time in his life he read, without a quaver in his voice, the
Church of England Burial Service over the open grave. And
when he had finished he went back to his desolate hut, and
cried with a loud voice of utter despair, ' The one thing that
bound me to civilisation is gone. Henceforth I shall never
speak another word of English. I go to my own people.'
So saying, he solemnly tore up his European clothes once
more, bound a cotton loin-cloth round his waist, covered his
head with dirt, and sat fasting and wailing piteously, like a
broken-hearted child, in his cabin.
Nowadays, the old half-caste Portuguese rum-dealer at
Butabue can point out to any English pioneer who comes up
the river which one, among a crowd of dilapidated negroes
who lie basking in the soft dust outside his hut, was once
the Reverend John Creedy, B.A., of Magdalen College,
Oxford.
30
II
FRASINE'S FIRST COMMUNION
FRASINKS FIRST COMMUNION
Zelie was our cook. She came back to us each winter when
we returned to the Riviera, and went away again in spring
to Aix-les-Bains, where she always made her summer season
with a German family. A thorough-going Proven^ale was
Zelie^ olive-skinned, black-haired, thick-lipped, pleasant-
featured, with flashing dark eyes and a merry mouth, well
shaped to make a mock at you. Nobody would have called
Zelie exactly pretty : but she was comely and buxom, and
good-humoured withal ; while, as for pot-au-feu, she had not
her equal in the whole Department. She said qoux for
choux, and qapeaii for chapeau ; but her smile was infectious,
and her kindness of heart was as undoubted as her
omelettes.
One April afternoon, Ruth went out into the kitchen. She
didn't often penetrate into such regions at the villa ; for
Zelie, on that point, was strictly conservative. ' If Madame
desires to see me,' she used to say, ' I receive at half-past
nine in the morning, when I come home from marketing.
At all other hours, I am happy to return Madame's call in
the salon.' Zelie was too good a servant to make it worth
while for us to risk her displeasure ; and the consequence
was that Ruth seldom ventured into Zelie's keep except at
the hour of her cook's reception.
On this particular day, however, Ruth veas surprised to
c 33
FRASINKS FIRST COMMUNION
see Zelie seated at the table, stitching away at what appeared
to be a bridal garment. Such white muslin and white tulle
gave her a turn for a moment. ' Why, Zelie ! ' she cried,
putting one hand to her heai't, ' you 're not going to
be married .'' ' For cooks like Zelie are rare on the
Littoral.
' Ma foi! no, Madame,' Zelie answered, laughing. 'I
confection a robe for Frasine, who makes her first Com-
munion.'
' Frasine ! ' Ruth exclaimed. ' And who may Frasine be }
Your sister, I suppose, Zelie .'' '
Zelie smoothed out a flounce with one capable brown
hand. ' No, Madame,' she said demurely ; ' Frasine is my
daughter.'
' Your daughter ! ' Ruth cried, staring at her. ' But, Zelie,
I never even knew you were married ! '
Zelie smoothed still more vigorously at the edge of the
flounce. ' Mais no7i, Madame,' she continued, in her most
matter-of-fact voice. ' It arrived so, you see. Hector's
family were against it, and thus it never happened.'
Ruth gazed at her, much shaken. ' But, Zelie,' she
murmured, seizing her hand in dismay, ' do you mean to
tell me ? '
Zelie nodded her head sagely. ' Yes, yes, Madame,' she
answered. ' These things come so to us other poor people.
It is not like that, I know, ches voiis. But hei'e in France,
let us allow, the law is so difficult.'
' Tell me all about it,' Ruth cried, sinking down on to one
of the kitchen chairs, and looking up at her appealingly.
' What age has your daughter ? '
' Frasine is twelve years old,' Zelie answered, still going
on with her work, 'and a pretty girl, too, though 'tis the
word of a mother. You see, Madame, it came about like
this. The good Hector was in love with me ; but he was in
a better position than my parents for his part, for his father
34
FRASINE^S FIRST COMMUNION
was proprietor, while mine was workman. They owned a
beautiful property up in our hills near Vence — oh, a beauti-
ful property ! They harvested I could not tell you how many
hectolitres of olives. Their little blue wine was renowned
in the country. Well, Hector loved me, and I loved Hector.
Que voulez-vous? We were thrown, in our work, very much
together.' She paused, and glanced shyly askance at Ruth
with those expressive eyes of hers.
' And he didn't marry you } ' Ruth asked, faltering.
' He meant to, Madame : I assure you, he meant to,' Zelie
answered hastily. ' He was a kind soul. Hector ; he began
it all at first for the good motive. But, meanwhile, you
understand, in waiting for the priest ' Zelie lifted her
flounce close up to her face and stitched away at it
nervously.
' And that was all ? ' Ruth put in, with her scared white
face — I could hear and see it all through the door from my
study.
'That was all, Madame,' Zelie answered, very low. '\
m'a dit, " Veux-tu .^ " Je lui ai dit, "Je veux bien." Et
tout d'un coup, nous voila pere et mere presque sans le
savoir.'
There was a pause for a moment, during which you could
hear Zelie's needle go stitch, stitch, stitch, through the stiff
starched muslin. Then Ruth spoke again : ' And, after that,
he left you } '
Zelie's stoicism began to give way a little. There were
tears in her eyes, but still she stitched on, to hide her con-
fusion. ' He never meant any harm, my poor boy ! ' she
answered, bending over. 'He really loved me, and he
always hoped, in the end, to marry me. So, when he knew
Frasine was beginning to be, he said to me, one fine day,
" Zelie, I will go up to Vence, and arrange your affair with
my father and the cure." And he went up to Vence, and
asked his father's consent to our marriage; for, chez nous, you
35
FRASINE'S FIRST COMMUNION
know, one is not permitted to marry without the consent of
one's family. But Hector's father was very angry at the
news, and refused his consent, because he was proprietor,
and I was but a servant. And about that time it was
Hector's year to serve, and they put him into a regiment
that was stationed a long way off — oh ! a very long way off
— quite far from my country, in the direction of Orleans.
And without his father's consent, of course, he could never
marry me, for that 's our law hei-e in France, to us others.
So he served his time, and at the end of it all — well, he
married another woman, and settled in Paris.'
' He married another woman,' Ruth repeated slowly, ' and
left you with Frasine.'
' Parfaitement, Madame,' Zelie answered with a gulp.
Then, all at once, her stoicism broke down completely ; she
laid aside her sewing, and burst into tears with perfect
frankness.
Ruth bent over her tenderly and stroked her brown hand.
' Dear Zelie ! ' she said ; '^he treated you cruelly.'
' No, no, Madame ! ' Zelie answered through her tears, still
loyal to her lover. ' You do not understand. He could not
help it. He was a brave boy, Hector. He meant to do
well, it was all for the good motive ; but his family opposed ;
and with us, when your family oppose, mon Dieu! it is
finished. But still, he was good ; he did what he could for
me. He acknowledged his child, and entered it at the
Mairie as his own and mine, which alters, of course, its etat
civil — Frasine has right, at his death, to a share of his pro-
perty. My poor, good Hector ! it was all he could do for
me.'
Ruth burst away at once, and came in to me, crying.
This was all so new to her, and we were both of us so
genuinely attached to Zelie. ' Oh, Hugh ! ' she began,
'Zelie's been telling me such a dreadful, dreadful story. Do
you know she has '
3Q
FRASINE'S FIRST COMMUNION
'My child,' I said, 'you may save yourself the trouble of
repeating it all to me ; I 've heard through the door every
blessed word you two have been saying.'
Ruth stood by my side, all tearful. ' But isn't it sad,
Hugh ? ' she said ; ' and she seemed so resigned to it.'
' Very sad, dear,' I answered. ' But, do you know, little
Ruthie, I 'm afraid such stories are by no means uncommon
— abroad, I mean, dear.'
' Hugh,' Ruth cried, seizing my arm, ' we must see this
little girl of hers.' She rushed out into the kitchen again.
' Zelie,' she said, ' where is Frasine .'' '
Zelie had taken up her sewing once more by this time,
and answered with a little sob, ' In our mountains, Madame,
near Vence ; in effect, she lives with my parents.'
' And do you see her often ? ' Ruth asked.
' Once in fifteen days she comes to Mass in the town,'
Zelie answered with a sigh; 'and then, when Madame's
convenience permits, I usually see her. And when I have
made my winter season, I go up for eight days with her, to
stop with my people, before I leave for Aix-les-Bains ; and
when I return again in autumn, before Madame arrives, I
have eight days more. Ce sont Id mes vacances.'
' And where will she make her first Communion .'' ' Ruth
asked.
'Why, naturally, in the town,' Zelie answered, 'with the
other young people. The Bishop of Frejus comes over,
from here a fortnight.'
' Bring her down here,' Ruth said in her imperious little
way. ' Let her stop with us till the time. Monsieur and I
desire to see hex*.'
So Frasine came down, and very proud indeed Zelie was
of her daughter. Barring the irregularity of her first
appearance in this wicked world, Zelie had cause to be
proud of her. She was tall and well grown and as modest
as a rosiere. She had dove-like eyes and peach bloom on
37
FRASINE^S FIRST COMMUNION
her cheeks ; and when Ruth and Zelie had arranged her, all
blushing, in her pretty white dress and her long tulle veil,
she looked a perfect model for Jules Breton's young
Christians. Zelie kissed her as she stood there with a
mother's fervour; and Ruth kissed her, I declare, just as
fervently as Zelie. They couldn't have made more fuss
about that slip of a girl if Frasine's father had kept
his promise and the child had been born in lawful
wedlock.
After a day or two Ruth began to talk about something
that was troubling her. It was a very serious thing, she
said, this first Communion. It was an epoch in a girl's life,
a family occasion. Every member of the family ought to be
apprised of it beforehand. Hector might be married to
another horrid woman in Paris, but, after all, Frasine was
his daughter, acknowledged as such in due form at the
Mairie. I 'm bound to say that, though Ruth is a stickler
for the strictest morality on our side of the Channel, she
didn't take much account of that woman in Paris. I ven-
tured to suggest that to invite the good Hector to the first
Communion might be to endanger the peace of a deserving
family. Madame Hector de jure might be unaware of the
existence of her predecessor de facto, and might regard little
Frasine, as an unauthorised interloper, with no friendly feel-
ing. But Ruth was inexorable. You know her imperious,
delicious little way when she once gets a fixed idea into that
dear glossy head of hers. She insisted on maintaining the
untenable position that a man is somehow really and truly
related to his own children, no matter who may be their
mother. As an English barrister, I humbly endeavoured to
point out to her the fact that recognition of this pernicious
principle would involve the downfall of law and order. Still,
Ruth was impervious to my sound argument on the subject,
and refused to listen to the voice of Blackstone. So the
end of it all was that she persuaded Zelie to write to Hector,
38
FRASINE'S FIRST COMMUNION
informing him of this important forthcoming epoch in their
daughter's history.
Of course, I had a week of it. To search for Hector in
Paris^ after nine years' silence, would be to search for a
needle in a bottle of hay, as I pointed out at once to those
two fatuous women. My own opinion was that Hector was
to be found (as we say facetiously) in the twenty-first
arro7idissement-,-the point of which is that there are but
twenty. But I rushed up to Vence all the same, to pro-
secute inquii'ies as to what had become of the former owner
of that belle propriete which loomed so large in Zelie's
imagination. With infinite difficulty, and after many trials,
I had reason to believe, at last, that the novnne Hector
Canivet, ancient proprietor, was to be found at a certain
number in a certain street in the Montmartre Quax-tier.
Hither, therefore, we despatched our letter of invitation,
dexterously concocted in our very best French by Ruth,
Zelie, and myself in council assembled. It informed
Monsieur Hector Canivet, without note or comment, that
Mdlle. Euphrasyne Canivet, now aged twelve years, would
make her first Communion in our parish church on Wednes-
day the 22nd, and that Mdlle. Zelie Duhamel invited his
presence on this auspicious occasion. As an English
barrister, I insisted upon the point that consideration for
the feelings of Madame Canivet in Paris should make us
leave it open for M. Hector Canivet to treat Mdlle. Euphra-
syne, if he were so minded, as a distant cousin. So much
of masculine guile have I still left in me. Ruth was
disposed to protest ; but Zelie, more French, acquiesced in
ray view of the case, and over-persuaded her.
Three days later I was sitting in my study, intent on the
twenty-fourth chapter of my ' History of the Rise of the
Republic of San Marino,' when suddenly the door opened,
and Euth burst in upon me with the most radiant expression
of perfect happiness I ever saw even on that dimpled face
39
FRASINKS FIRST COMMUNION
of hers. She held a letter in her hand, which she thrust
forward to me eagerly.
' What 's up ? ' I asked. ' Has that brute of a husband
of Amelia's been kind enough to drink himself to death at
last } '
' No ; read it, read it ! ' Ruth exclaimed, brimming over.
' Zelie and Frasine are dissolved in tears in the kitchen over
the news. I knew I was doing right ! I was sure we ought
to tell him ! '
I took the letter up in a maze. It was involved and long-
winded, full of the usual inflated rhetoric of the Provencal
peasant. But there was no doubt at all about the human
feeling of it. Monsieur Hector Canivet wrote with the pro-
foundest emotion. He had always loved and remembered
his dear Zelie. She was still his dream to him. He had
mari'ied and settled because his parents wished it ; but now,
his parents were dead, and he had sold his property, and
was doing very well at his metier in Paris. The late Madame
Canivet — on whose soul might the blessed saints have mercy !
— had died two years ago. Ever since that event he had
had it in his mind to return to his country, and look up
Zelie and his dear daughter ; but pride, and uncertainty as
to her feelings, had prevented him. It was so long ago, and
he knew not her feelings. He took this intimation, however,
as a proof that Zelie had not yet entirely forgotten him ; and
if the devotion of a lifetime, and a comfortable fortune (for
a hourgeois) in Paris, would atone to Zelie for his neglect in
the past, he proposed not only to be present at Frasine's
first Communion, but also to superadd to it another Sacra-
ment of the Church which he was only too conscious should
have preceded her baptism. In short, if Zelie was still of
the same mind as of old, he desired to return, in order to
marry her.
' That 's well,' I said. ' He will legitimatise his daughter.'
' You don't mean to say,' Ruth cried, ' he can make it
40
FRASINE'S FIRST COMMUNION
just the same as if he 'd married Zelie all right to begin
with ? '
' Why, certainly ! ' I answered ; ' in France, the law is
sometimes quite human.'
Ruth rushed into my arms. And the brave Hector was
as good as his word.
But we shall never get another cook like Zelie !
41
Ill
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
' Poor little thing,' said my strong-minded friend compassion-
aiehj. ' Just look at her ! Clubfoot ed. What a misery to her-
self and others I In a well-organised state of society, you know,
such poor wee cripples as that would be quietly pid oid of their
misery while they were still babies.'
' Let me think,' said I, ' ho7V that would work out in actual
practice. I 'm not so sure, after all, that we shoidd be altogether
the better or the happier for it.'
They sat together in a corner of the beautiful phalanstery
garden, Olive and Clarence, on the marble seat that overhung
the mossy dell where the streamlet danced and bickered
among its pebbly stickles ; they sat there, hand in hand, in
lovers' guise, and felt their two bosoms beating and thrilling
in some strange, sweet fashion, just like two foolish unregen-
erate young people of the old antisocial prephalansteric days.
Perhaps it was the leaven of their unenlightened ancestors
still leavening by heredity the whole lump; perhaps it was
the inspiration of the calm soft August evening and the deli-
cate afterglow of the setting sun ; perhaps it was the deep
heart of man and woman vibrating still as of yore in human
sympathy, and stirred to its innermost recesses by the un-
45
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
utterable bi'eath of human emotion. But at any rate there
they sat, the beautiful strong man in his shapely chiton, and
the dainty fair girl in her long white robe with the dark
green embroidered border, looking far into the fathomless
depths of one another's eyes, in silence sweeter and more
eloquent than many words. It was Olive's tenth day holiday
from her share in the maidens' household duty of the com-
munity ; and Clarence, by arrangement with his friend
Germain, had made exchange from his own decade (which
fell on Plato) to this quiet Milton evening, that he might
wander through the park and gardens with his chosen love,
and speak his full mind to her now without reserve.
' If only the phalanstery will give its consent, Clarence,'
Olive said at last with a little sigh, releasing her hand from
his, and gathering up the folds of her stole from the marble
flooring of the seat ; — ' if only the phalanstery will give its
consent ! but I have my doubts about it. Is it quite right ?
Have we chosen quite wisely .'' Will the hierarch and the
elder brothers think I am strong enough and fit enough for
the duties of the task ? It is no light matter, we know, to
enter into bonds with one another for the responsibilities of
fatherhood and motherhood. I sometimes feel — forgive me,
Clarence — but I sometimes feel as if I were allowing my own
heart and my own wishes to guide me too exclusively in this
solemn question : thinking too much about you and me,
about ourselves (which is only an enlarged form of selfish-
ness, after all), and too little about the future good of the
community and — and — ' blushing a little, for women will be
women even in a phalansteiy — ' and of the precious lives we
may be the means of adding to it. You remember, Clarence,
what the hierarch said, that we ought to think least and last
of our own feelings, first and foremost of the progressive
evolution of universal humanity.'
' I remember, darling,' Clai-ence answered, leaning over
towards her tenderly ; ' I remember well, and in my own
46
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
way, so far as a man can (for we men haven't the moral
earnestness of you women, I 'm afraid, Olive), I try to act up
to it. But, dearest, I think your fears are greater than they
need be : you must recollect that humanity requires for its
higher development tenderness, and truth, and love, and all
the softer qualities, as well as strength and manliness ; and
if you are a trifle less strong than most of our sisters here,
you seem to me at least (and I really believe to the hierarch
and to the elder brothers too) to make up for it, and more
than make up for it, in your sweet and lovable inner nature.
The men of the future mustn't all be cast in one unvarying
stereotyped mould ; we must have a little of all good types
combined, in order to make a perfect phalanstery.'
Olive sighed again. ' I don't know,' she said pensively.
' I don't feel sure. I hope I am doing right. In my aspira-
tions every evening I have desired light on this matter, and
have earnestly hoped that I was not being misled by my own
feelings ; for, oh, Clarence, I do love you so dearly, so truly,
so absorbingly, that I half fear my love may be taking me
unwittingly astray. I try to curb it ; I try to think of it all
as the hierarch tells us we ought to ; but in my own heart I
sometimes almost fear that I may be lapsing into the idola-
trous love of the old days, when people married and were
given in marriage, and thought only of the gratification of
their own personal emotions and affections, and nothing of
the ultimate good of humanity. Oh, Clarence, don't hate
me and despise me for it ; don't turn upon me and scold me ;
but I love you, I love you, I love you ; oh, I 'm afraid I love
you almost idolatrously ! '
Clarence lifted her small white hand slowly to his lips,
with that natural air of chivalrous respect which came so
easily to the young men of the phalanstery, and kissed it twice
over fervidly with quiet reverence. ' Let us go into the
music-room, Olive dearest,' he said as he rose ; ' you are too
sad to-night. You shall play me that sweet piece of
47
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
Marian's that you love so much ; and that will quiet you,
darling, from thinking too earnestly about this serious
matter.'
II
Next day, when Clarence had finished his daily spell of
work in the fruit-garden (he was third under-gardener to the
community), he went up to his own study, and wrote out a
little notice in due form to be posted at dinner-time on the
refectory door : ' Clarence and Olive ask leave of the phal-
anstery to enter with one another into free contract of holy
matrimony.' His pen trembled a little in his hand as he
framed that familiar set form of words (strange that he had
read it so often with so little emotion, and wrote it now with
so much : we men are so selfish !) ; but he fixed it boldly with
four small brass nails on the regulation notice-board, and
waited, not without a certain quiet confidence, for the final
result of the communal council.
' Aha ! ' said the hierarch to himself with a kindly smile, as
he passed into the refectory at dinner-time that day, ' has it
come to that, then .'' Well, well, I thought as much ; I felt
sure it would. A good girl, Olive : a true, earnest, lovable
girl : and she has chosen wisely, too ; for Clarence is the
very man to balance her own character as man's and wife's
should do. Whether Clarence has done well in selecting her
is another matter. For my own part, I had rather hoped
she would have joined the celibate sisters, and have taken
nurse-duty for the sick and the children. It's her natural
function in life, the work she 's best fitted for ; and I should
have liked to see her take to it. But, after all, the business of
the phalanstery is not to decide vicariously for its individual
members — not to thwart their natural harmless inclinations
48
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
and wishes ; on the contrary, we ought to allow evei*y man
and girl the fullest liberty to follow their own personal taste
and judgment in every possible matter. Our power of inter-
ference as a community, I've always felt and said, should
only extend to the prevention of obviously wrong and im-
moral acts, such as marriage with a person in ill-health, or
of inferior mental power, or with a distinctly bad or insubor-
dinate temper. Things of that sort, of course, are as clearly
wicked as idling in work-hours, or marriage with a first
cousin. Olive's health, however, isn't really bad, nothing
more than a very slight feebleness of constitution, as con-
stitutions go with us ; and Eustace, who has attended her
medically from her babyhood (what a dear crowing little
thing she used to be in the nursery, to be sure !), tells me she 's
perfectly fitted for the duties of her proposed situation. Ah
well, ah well ; I 've no doubt they '11 be perfectly happy ;
and the wishes of the whole phalanstery will go with them
in any case, that 's certain.'
Everybody knew that whatever the hierarch said or
thought was pretty sure to be approved by the unanimous
voice of the entire community. Not that he was at all a
dictatorial or dogmatic old man ; quite the contrary ; but
his gentle kindly way had its full weight with the brothers ;
and his intimate acquaintance, through the exercise of his
spiritual functions, with the inmost thoughts and ideas of
every individual member, man or woman, made him a safe
guide in all difficult or delicate questions, as to what the
decision of the council ought to be. So when, on the first
Cosmos, the elder brothers assembled to transact phalan-
steric business, and the hierarch put in Clarence's request
with the simple phrase, ' In my opinion, there is no reason-
able objection,' the community at once gave in its adhesion,
and formal notice was posted an hour later on the refectory
door, ' The phalanstery approves the proposition of Clarence
and Olive, and wishes all happiness to them and to humanity
D 49
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
from the sacred union they now contemplate.' ' You see,
dearest/ Clarence said, kissing her lips for the first time (as
unwritten law demanded), now that the seal of the com-
munity had been placed upon their choice, ' you see, there
can't be any harm in our contract, for the elder brothers
all approve it.'
Olive smiled and sighed from the very bottom of her full
heart, and clung to her lover as the ivy clings to a strong
supporting oak-tree. ' Darling,' she murmured in his ear,
' if I have you to comfort me, I shall not be afraid, and we
will try our best to work together for the advancement and
the good of divine humanity.'
Four decades later, on a bright Cosmos morning in Sep-
tember, those two stood up beside one another before the
altar of humanity, and heard with a thrill the voice of the
hierarch uttering that solemn declaration, ' In the name of
the Past, and of the Present, and of the Future, I hereby
admit you, Clarence and Olive, into the holy society of
Fathers and Mothers, of the United Avondale Phalanstery,
in trust for humanity, whose stewards you are. May you
so use and enhance the good gifts you have received from
your ancestors that you may hand them on, untarnished
and increased, to the bodies and minds of your furthest de-
scendants.' And Clarence and Olive answered humbly
and reverently, ' If grace be given us, we will.'
Ill
Brother Eustace, physiologist to the phalanstery, looked
very grave and sad indeed as he passed from the Mothers'
Room into the Conversazione in search of the hierarch. ' A
child is born into the phalanstery,' he said gloomily ; but
50
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
his face conveyed at once a far deeper and more pregnant
meaning than his mere words could carry to the ear.
The hierarch rose hastily and glanced into his dark keen
eyes with an inquiring look. 'Not something amiss .-^ ' he
said eagerly, with an infinite tenderness in his fatherly voice.
' Don't tell me that, Eustace. Not. . . oh, not a child that
the phalanstery must not for its own sake permit to live !
Oh, Eustace, not, I hope, idiotic ! And I gave my consent
too ; I gave my consent for pretty gentle little Olive's sake !
Heaven grant I was not too much moved by her prettiness
and her delicacy ; for I love her, Eustace, I love her like
a daughter.'
' So we all love the children of the phalanstery, Cyriac, we
who are elder brothers,' said the physiologist gravely, half
smiling to himself nevertheless at this quaint expression of
old-world feeling on the part even of the very hierarch,
whose bounden duty it was to advise and persuade a higher
rule of conduct and thought than such antique phraseology
implied. ' No, not idiotic ; not quite so bad as that, Cyriac ;
not absolutely a hopeless case, but still, very serious and
distressing for all that. The dear little baby has its feet
turned inward. She '11 be a cripple for life, I fear, and no
help for it.'
Tears rose unchecked into the hierarch's soft grey eyes.
' Its feet turned inward,' he muttered sadly, half to himself.
' Feet turned inward ! Oh, how terrible ! This will be a
frightful blow to Clarence and to Olive. Poor young things !
their first-born, too. Oh, Eustace, what an awful thought
that, with all the care and precaution we take to keep all
causes of misery away from the precincts of the phalanstery,
such trials as this must needs come upon us by the blind
workings of the unconscious Cosmos ! It is terrible, too
terrible ! '
'And yet it isn't all loss,' the physiologist answered
earnestly. ' It isn't all loss, Cyriac, heart-rending as the
51
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
necessity seems to us. I sometimes think that if we hadn't
these occasional distressful objects on which to expend our
sympatliy and our sorrow, we in our happy little communities
might grow too smug, and comfortable, and material, and
earthly. But things like this bring tears into our eyes, and
we are the better for them in the end, depend upon it, we
are the better for them. They try our fortitude, our devo-
tion to principle, our obedience to the highest and the
hardest law. Every time some poor little waif like this is
born into our midst, we feel the strain of old prephalansteric
emotions and fallacies of feeling dragging us steadily and
cruelly down. Our first impulse is to pity the poor mother,
to pity the poor child, and in our mistaken kindness to let
an unhappy life go on indefinitely to its own misery and the
preventible distress of all around it. We have to make an
effort, a struggle, before the higher and more abstract pity
conquers the lower and more concrete one. But in the end
we are all the better for it : and each such struggle and each
such victory, Cyriac, paves the way for that final and truest
morality when we shall do right instinctively and naturally,
without any impulse on any side to do wrong in any way at all.'
' You speak wisely, Eustace,' the hierarch answered with
a sad shake of his head, ' and I wish I could feel like you. I
ought to, but I can't. Your functions make you able to
look more dispassionately upon these things than I can.
I'm afraid there's a great deal of the old Adam lingering
wrongfully in me yet. And I 'm still more afraid there 's a
great deal of the old Eve lingering even more strongly in all
our mothers. It'll be a long time, I doubt me, before
they'll ever consent without a struggle to the painless
extinction of necessarily unhappy and imperfect lives. A
long time : a very long time. Does Clarence know of this
yet.?'
■^Yes, I have told him. His grief is tei-rible. You had
better go and console him as best you can.'
52
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
' I will, I will. And poor Olive ! Poor Olive ! It wrings
my heart to think of her. Of course she won't be told of it,
if you can help, for the probationary four decades ? '
'No, not if we can help it: but I don't know how it can
ever be kept from her. She will see Clarence, and Clarence
will certainly tell her,'
The hierarch whistled gently to himself. 'It's a sad
case,' he said ruefully ,^ 'a. very sad case ; and yet I don't see
how we can possibly prevent it.'
He walked slowly and deliberately into the anteroom
where Clarence was seated on a sofa, his head between his
hands, rocking himself to and fro in his mute misery, or
stopping to groan now and then in a faint feeble inarticulate
fashion. Rhoda, one of the elder sistei's, held the uncon-
scious baby sleeping in her arms, and the hierarch took it
from her like a man accustomed to infants, and looked
ruefully at the poor distorted little feet. Yes, Eustace was
evidently quite right. There could be no hope of ever
putting those wee twisted ankles back straight and firm
into their proper place again like other people's.
He sat down beside Clarence on the sofa, and with a
commiserating gesture removed the young man's hands
from his pale white face. ' My dear, dear friend,' he said
softly, 'what comfort or consolation can we try to give you
that is not a cruel mockery } None, none, none. We can
only sympathise with you and Olive : and perhaps, after all,
the truest sympathy is silence.'
Clarence answered nothing for a moment, but buried his
face once more in his hands and burst into tears. The men
of the phalanstery were less careful to conceal their emotions
than we old-time folks in these early centuries. ' Oh, dear
hierarch,' he said, after a long sob, ' it is too hard a sacrifice,
too hard, too terrible ! I don't feel it for the baby's sake :
for her 'tis better so : she will be freed from a life of misery
and dependence; but for my own sake, and oh, above all,
53
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
for dear Olive's ! It will kill her, hierarch ; I feel sure it
will kill her ! '
The elder brother passed his hand with a troubled gesture
across his forehead. ' But what else can we do, dear
Clarence ? ' he asked pathetically. ' What else can we
do } Would you have us bring up the dear child to lead
a lingering life of misfortune, to distress the eyes of all
around her, to feel herself a useless incumbrance in the
midst of so many mutually helpful and serviceable and
happy people .'' How keenly she would realise her own
isolation in the joyous, busy, labouring community of our
phalansteries ! How terribly she would brood over her own
misfortune when surrounded by such a world of hearty,
healthy, sound-limbed, useful persons ! Would it not be a
wicked and a cruel act to bring her up to an old age of un-
happiness and imperfection .'' You have been in Australia,
my boy, when we sent you on that plant-hunting expedition,
and you have seen cripples with your own eyes, no doubt,
which I have never done — thank Heaven ! — I who have
never gone beyond the limits of the most highly civilised
Euramerican countries. You have seen cripples, in those
semi-civilised old colonial societies, which have lagged after
us so slowly in the path of progress ; and would you like
your own daughter to grow up to such a life as that,
Clarence } would you like her, I ask you, to grow up to such
a life as that ? '
Clarence clenched his right hand tightly over his left arm,
and answered with a groan, ' No, hierarch ; not even for
Olive's sake could I wish for such an act of irrational in-
justice. You have trained us up to know the good from
the evil, and for no personal gratification of our deepest
emotions, I hope and trust, shall we ever betray your teach-
ing or depart from your principles. I know what it is : I
saw just such a cripple once, at a great town in the heart of
Central Australia — a child of eight years old, limping along
54
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
lamely on her heels by her mother's side ; a sickening sight :
to think of it even now turns the blood in one's arteries ;
and I could never wish Olive's baby to live and grow up to
be a thing like that. But, oh, I wish to heaven it might
have been otherwise : I wish to heaven this trial might have
been spared us both. Oh, hierarch, dear hierarch, the
sacrifice is one that no good man or woman would wish
selfishly to forgo ; yet for all that, our hearts, our hearts
are human still ; and though we may reason and may act up
to our reasoning, the human feeling in us — relic of the idol-
atrous days, or whatever you like to call it — it will not choose
to be so put down and stifled : it will out, hierarch, it will
out for all that, in real hot, human tears. Oh, dear, dear
kind father and brother, it will kill Olive : I know it will
kill her ! '
' Olive is a good girl,' the hierarch answered slowly. ' A
good girl, well brought up, and with sound principles. She
will not flinch from doing her duty, I know, Clarence ; but
her emotional nature is a very delicate one, and we have
reason indeed to fear the shock to her nervous system. That
she will do right bravely, I don't doubt : the only danger is
lest the effort to do right should cost her too dear. What-
ever can be done to spare her shall be done, Clarence. It
is a sad misfortune for the whole phalanstery, such a child
being born to us as this : and we all sympathise with
you : we sympathise with you more deeply than words
can say.'
The young man only rocked up and down drearily as
before, and murmured to himself, ' It will kill her, it will
kill her ! My Olive, my Olive, I know it will kill her.'
55
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
IV
They didn't keep the secret of the baby's crippled con-
dition from Olive till the four decades were over, nor any-
thing like it. The moment she saw Clarence, she guessed
at once with a woman's instinct that something serious had
happened ; and she didn't rest till she had found out from
him all about it. Rhoda brought her the poor wee mite,
carefully wrapped, after the phalansteric fashion, in a long
strip of fine flannel, and Olive unrolled the piece until she came
at last upon the small crippled feet, that looked so soft and
tender and dainty and waxen in their very deformity. The
young mother leant over the child a moment in speechless
misery. 'Spirit of Humanity,' she whispered at length
feebly, 'oh, give me strength to bear this terrible, unutterable
trial ! It will break my heart. But I will try to bear it.'
There was something so touching in her attempted resig-
nation that Rhoda, for the first time in her life, felt almost
tempted to wish she had been born in the old wicked pre-
phalansteric days, when they would have let the poor baby
grow up to womanhood as a matter of course, and bear its
own burden through life as best it might. Presently, Olive
raised her head again from the crimson silken pillow.
' Clarence,' she said, in a trembling voice, pressing the
sleeping baby hard against her breast, ' when will it be .''
How long } Is there no hope, no chance of respite ? '
'Not for a long time yet, dearest Olive,' Clarence
answered through his tears. ' The phalanstery will be
very gentle and patient with us, we know ; and brother
Eustace will do everything that lies in his power, though
he's afraid he can give us very little hope indeed. In any
case, Olive darling, the community waits for four decades
before deciding anything : it waits to see whether there is
any chance for physiological or surgical relief, it decides
56
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
nothing hastily or thoughtlessly : it waits for every possible
improvement, hoping against hope till hope itself is hope-
less. And then, if at the end of the quartet, as I fear will
be the case — for we must face the worst, darling, we must
face the worst — if at the end of the quartet it seems clear
to brother Eustace, and the three assessor physiologists from
the neighbouring phalansteries, that the dear child would be
a cripple for life, we 're still allowed four decades more to
prepare ourselves in : four whole decades more, Olive, to
take our leave of the darling baby. You '11 have your baby
with you for eighty days. And we must wean ourselves
from her in that time, darling. We must try to wean our-
selves. But oh Olive, oh Rhoda, it 's very hard : very, very,
very hard.'
Olive answered not a word, but lay silently weeping and
pressing the baby against her breast, with her large brown
eyes fixed vacantly upon the fretted woodwork of the
panelled ceiling.
'You mustn't do like that, Olive dear,' sister Rhoda said in
a half-frightened voice. ' You must cry right out, and sob,
and not restrain yourself, darling, or else you '11 break your
heart with silence and repression. Do cry aloud, there 's a
dear girl : do cry aloud and relieve yourself. A good cry
would be the best thing on earth for you. And think, dear,
how much happier it will really be for the sweet baby to
sink asleep so peacefully than to live a long life of conscious
inferiority and felt imperfection ! What a blessing it is to
think you were born in a phalansteric land, where the dear
child will be happily and painlessly rid of its poor little un-
conscious existence, before it has reached the age when it
might begin to know its own incurable and inevitable mis-
fortune ! Oh, Olive, what a blessing that is, and how thank-
ful we ought all to be that we live in a world where the
sweet pet will be saved so much humiliation, and mortifica-
tion, and misery ! '
57
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
At that moment, Olive, looking within into her own
wicked, rebelUous heart, was conscious, with a mingled
glow, half shame, half indignation, that so far from appreciat-
ing the priceless blessings of her own situation, she would
gladly have changed places then and there with any bar-
baric woman of the old semi-civilised prephalansteric days.
We can so little appreciate our own mercies. It was very
wrong and anti-cosmic, she knew ; very wrong indeed, and
the hierarch would have told her so at once ; but in her
own woman's soul she felt she would rather be a miserable
naked savage in a wattled hut, like those one saw in old
books about Africa before the illumination, if only she could
keep that one little angel of a crippled baby, than dwell
among all the enlightenment, and knowledge, and art, and
perfected social arrangements of phalansteric England with-
out her child — her dear, helpless, beautiful baby. How
truly the Founder himself had said, ' Think you there will
be no more tragedies and dramas in the world when we
have reformed it, nothing but one dreary dead level of mono-
tonous content .'' Ay, indeed, there will ; for that, fear not ;
while the heart of man remains, there will be tragedy
enough on earth and to spare for a hundred poets to take
for their saddest epics.'
Olive looked up at Rhoda wistfully. ' Sister Rhoda,' she
said in a timid tone, ' it may be very wicked — I feel sure it
is — but do you know, I 've read somewhere in old stories of
the unenlightened days that a mother always loved the
most afflicted of her children the best. And I can under-
stand it now, sister Rhoda ; I can feel it here,' and she put
her hand upon her poor still heart. ' If only I could keep
this one dear crippled baby, I could give up all the world
beside — except you, Clarence.'
' Oh, hush, darling ! ' Rhoda cried in an awed voice,
stooping down half alarmed to kiss her pale forehead.
'You mustn't talk like that, Olive dearest. It's wicked;
58
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
it 's undutiful. I know how hard it is not to repine and to
rebel ; but you mustn't, OHve, you mustn't. We must each
strive to bear our own burdens (with the help of the com-
munity), and not to put any of them off upon a poor, help-
less, crippled little baby.'
' But our natures,' Clarence said, wiping his eyes dreamily ;
' our natures are only half attuned as yet to the necessities
of the higher social existence. Of course it 's very wrong
and very sad, but we can't help feeling it, sister Rhoda,
though we try our hardest. Remember, it's not so many
generations since our fathers would have reared the child
without a thought that they were doing anything wicked —
nay, rather, would even have held (so powerful is custom)
that it was positively wrong to save it by preventive means
from a certain life of predestined misery. Our conscience
in this matter isn't yet fully formed. We feel that it's
right, of course ; oh yes, we know the phalanstery has
ordered everything for the best ; but we can't help grieving
over it ; the human heart within us is too unregenerate still
to acquiesce without a struggle in the dictates of right and
reason.'
Olive again said nothing, but fixed her eyes silently upon
the grave, earnest portrait of the Founder over the carved
oak mantelpiece, and let the hot tears stream their own way
over her cold, white, pallid, bloodless cheek without reproof
for many minutes. Her heart was too full for either speech
or comfort.
Eight decades passed away slowly in the Avondale Phal-
anstery ; and day after day seemed more and more terrible
to poor, weak, disconsolate Olive. The quiet refinement
and delicate surroundings of their placid life seemed to
59
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
make her poignant misery and long anxious term of waiting
only the more intense in its sorrow and its awesomeness.
Every day the younger sisters turned as of old to their
allotted round of pleasant housework ; every day the elder
sisters^ who had earned their leisure, brought in their dainty
embroidery, or their drawing materials, or their other occu-
pations, and tried to console her, or rather to condole with her,
in her great sorrow. She couldn't complain of any unkind-
ness ; on the contrary, all the brothers and sisters were
sympathy itself; while Clarence, though he tried hard not
to be loo idolatrous to her (which is wrong and antisocial, of
course), was still overflowing with tenderness and considera-
tion for her in their common grief. But all that seemed
merely to make things worse. If only somebody would
have been cruel to her ; if only the hierarch would have
scolded her, or the elder sisters have shown any distant
coldness, or the other girls have been wanting in sisterly
sympathy, she might have got angry or brooded over her
wrongs ; whereas, now, she could do nothing save cry
passively with a vain attempt at resignation. It was
nobody' s fault ; there was nobody to be angry with, there
was nothing to blame except the great impersonal laws and
circumstances of the Cosmos, which it would be rank im-
piety and wickedness to question or to gainsay. So she
endured in silence, loving only to sit with Clarence's hand
in hers, and the dear doomed baby lying peacefully upon
the stole in her lap. It was inevitable, and there was no use
repining ; for so profoundly had the phalanstery schooled
the minds and natures of those two unhappy young parents
(and all their compeers), that grieve as they might, they
never for one moment dreamt of attempting to relax or set
aside the fundamental principles of phalansteric society in
these matters.
By the kindly rule of the phalanstery, every mother had
complete freedom from household duties for two years after
60
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
the birth of her child ; and Clarence, though he would not
willingly have given up his own particular work in the
grounds and garden, spent all the time he could spare from
his short daily task (every one worked five hours every
lawful day, and few worked longer, save on special emer-
gencies) by Olive's side. At last, the eight decades passed
slowly away, and the fatal day for the removal of little
Rosebud arrived. Olive called her Rosebud because, she
said, she was a sweet bud that could never be opened into
a full-blown rose. All the community felt the solemnity
of the painful occasion ; and by common consent the day
(Darwin, December 20) was held as an intra-phalansteric
fast by the whole body of brothers and sisters.
On that terrible morning Olive rose early, and dressed
herself carefully in a long white stole with a broad black
border of Greek key pattern. But she had not the heart
to put any black upon dear little Rosebud ; and so she put
on her fine flannel wrapper, and decorated it instead with
the pretty coloured things that Veronica and Philomela
had worked for her, to make her baby as beautiful as
possible on this its last day in a world of happiness. The
other girls helped her and tried to sustain her, crying all
together at the sad event. ' She 's a sweet little thing,' they
said to one another as they held her up to see how she
looked. ' If only it could have been her reception to-day
instead of her removal ! ' But Olive moved through them
all with stoical resignation — dry-eyed and parched in the
throat, yet saying not a word save for necessary instructions
and directions to the nursing sisters. The iron of her creed
had entered into her very soul.
After breakfast, brother Eustace and the hierarch came
sadly in their official robes into the lesser infirmary. Olive
was there already, pale and trembling, with little Rosebud
sleeping peacefully in the hollow of her lap. What a
picture she looked, the wee dear thing, with the hothouse
61
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
flowers from the conservatory that Clarence had brought to
adorn her fastened neatly on to her fine flannel robe ! The
physiologist took out a little phial from his pocket, and began
to open a sort of inhaler of white muslin. At the same
moment, the grave, kind old hierarch stretched out his
hands to take the sleeping baby from its mother's arms.
Olive shrank back in terror, and clasped the child softly to
her heart. 'No, no, let me hold her myself, dear hierarch/
she said, without flinching. * Grant me this one last favour.
Let me hold her myself.' It was contrary to all fixed rules ;
but neither the hierarch nor any one else there present had
the heart to refuse that beseeching voice on so supreme and
spirit-rending an occasion.
Brother Eustace poured the chloroform solemnly and
quietly on to the muslin inhaler. ' By resolution of the
phalanstery/ he said, in a voice husky with emotion, 'I
release you, Rosebud, from a life for which you are naturally
unfitted. In pity for your hard fate, we save you from the
misfortune you have never known, and will never now
experience.' As he spoke he held the inhaler to the baby's
face, and watched its breathing grow fainter and fainter, till
at last, after a few minutes, it faded gradually and entirely
away. The little one had slept from life into death, pain-
lessly and happily, even as they looked.
Clarence, tearful but silent, felt the baby's pulse for
a moment, and then, with a burst of tears, shook his head
bitterly. ' It is all over,' he cried with a loud cry. ' It is
all over ; and we hope and trust it is better so.'
But Olive still said nothing.
The physiologist turned to her with an anxious gaze.
Her eyes were open, but they looked blank and staring
into vacant space. He took her hand, and it felt limp and
powerless. ' Great heaven ! ' he cried, in evident alarm,
' what is this > Olive, Olive, our dear Olive, why don't you
speak ? '
62
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
Clarence sprang up from the ground, where he had knelt
to try the dead baby's pulse, and took her unresisting wx-ist
anxiously in his. ' Oh, brother Eustace,' he cried passion-
ately, 'help us, save us; what's the matter with Olive?
she 's fainting, she 's fainting ! I can't feel her heart beat,
no, not ever so little.'
Brother Eustace let the pale white hand drop listlessly
from his grasp upon the pale white stole beneath, and
answered slowly and distinctly : ' She isn't fainting, Clarence ;
not fainting, my dear brother. The shock and the fumes of
chloroform together have been too much for the action of
the heart. She 's dead too, Clarence ; our dear, dear sister;
she 's dead too.'
Clarence flung his arms wildly round Olive's neck, and
listened eagerly with his ear against her bosom to hear her
heart beat. But no sound came from the folds of the simple
black-bordered stole; no sound from anywhere save the
suppressed sobs of the frightened women who huddled
closely together in the corner, and gazed horror-stricken
upon the two warm fresh corpses.
' She was a brave girl,' brother Eustace said at last, wiping
his eyes and composing her hands reverently. ' Olive was a
brave girl, and she died doing her duty, without one
murmur against the sad necessity that fate had unhappily
placed upon her. No sister on earth could wish to
die more nobly than by thus sacrificing her own life
and her own weak human affections on the altar of
humanity for the sake of her child and of the world at
large.'
'And yet, I sometimes almost fancy,' the hierarch mur-
mured, with a violent effort to control his emotions, ' when I
see a scene like this, that even the unenlightened practices
of the old era may not have been quite so bad as we usually
think them, for all that. Surely an end such as Olive's is a
sad and a terrible end to have forced upon us as the final
Q3
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY
outcome and natural close of all our modern phalansteric
civilisation.'
' The ways of the Cosmos are wonderful,' said brother
Eustace solemnly ; ' and we, who are no more than atoms
and mites upon the surface of its meanest satellite, cannot
hope so to order all things after our own fashion that all
its minutest turns and chances may approve themselves to
us as right in our own eyes.'
The sisters all made instinctively the reverential genu-
flexion. ' The Cosmos is infinite/ they said together, in the
fixed formula of their cherished religion. 'The Cosmos is
infinite, and man is but a parasite upon the face of the least
among its satellite members. May we so act as to further
all that is best within us, and to fulfil our own small
place in the system of the Cosmos with all becoming rever-
ence and humility ! In the name of universal Humanity.
So be it.'
64
IV
THE ABBE'S REPENTANCE
THE ABBJ^^S REPENTANCE
Ivy Stanbury had never been in the South before. So
everything burst full upon her with all the charm of novelty.
As they reached Antibes Station, the sun was setting. A
pink glow from his blood-red orb lit up the snowy ridge of
the Maritime Alps with fairy splendour. It was a dream of
delight to those eager young eyes, fresh from the fog and
frost and brooding gloom of London. In front, the deep
blue port, the long white mole, the picturesque lighthouse,
the arcaded breakwater, the sea just flecked with russet
lateen sails, the coasting craft that lay idle by the quays in
the harbour. Further on, the mouldering grey town, en-
closed in its mediaeval walls, and topped by its two tall
towers: the square bastions and angles of Vauban's great
fort : the laughing coast towards Nice, dotted over with
white villages perched high among dark hills : and beyond
all, soaring up into the cloudless sky, the phantom peaks
of those sun-smitten mountains. No lovelier sight can eye
behold round the enchanted Mediterranean : what wonder
Ivy Stanbury gazed at it that first night of her sojourn in the
South with unfeigned admiration ?
' It 's beautiful,' she broke forth, drawing a deep breath as
she spoke, and gazing up at the clear-cut outlines of the
Cime de Mercantourn. ' More beautiful than anything I
could have imagined, almost.'
But Aunt Emma was busy looking after the luggage,
registered through from London. ' Quatre colis, all told, and
67
THE abb:^^s repentance
then the rugs and the hold-all ! Maria should have fastened
those straps more securely. And \vhei*e 's the black bag ?
And the thing with the etna ? And mind you take care of
my canary. Ivy.'
Ivy stood still and gazed. So like a vision did those
dainty pink summits, all pencilled with dark glens, hang
mystic in the air. To think about luggage at such a moment
as this was, to her, sheer desecration. And how wine-
colom*ed was the dark sea in the evening light : and how
antique the grey Greek town : and how delicious the sun-
set ! The snowiest peaks of all stood out now in the very
hue of the pinky nacre that lines a shell : the shadows of
the gorges that scored their smooth sides showed up in
delicate tints of pale green and dark purple. Ivy drew a
deep breath again, and clutched the bird-cage silently.
The long drive to the hotel across the olive-clad promon-
tory, between bay and bay, was one continuous joy to her.
Here and there rocky inlets opened out for a moment
to right or left, hemmed in by tiny crags, where the blue
sea broke in milky foam upon weather-beaten skerries.
Coquettish white villas gleamed rosy in the setting sun
among tangled gardens of strange shrubs, whose very names
Ivy knew not — date-palms, and fan-palms, and eucalyptus,
and mimosa, and green Mediterranean pine, and tall flowering
agave. At last, the tired horses broke into a final canter,
and drew up before the broad stairs of the hotel on the
headland. A vista through the avenue revealed to Ivy's
eyes a wide strip of sea, and beyond it again the jagged
outline of the Esterel, most exquisitely shaped of earthly
mountains, silhouetted in deep blue against the fiery red
of a sky just fading from the afterglow into profound dark-
ness.
She could hardly dress for dinner, for looking out of the
window. Even in that dim evening light, the view across
the bay was too exquisite to be neglected.
68
THE ABBA'S REPENTANCE
However, by dint of frequent admonitions from Aunt
Emmjij through the partition door, she managed at last to
rummage out her little white evening dress — a soft nun's-
cloth, made full in the bodice— and scrambled through in
the nick of time, as the dinner-bell was ringing.
Table d'hote was fairly full. Most of the guests were
ladies. But to Ivy's surprise, and perhaps even dismay, she
found herself seated next a tall young man in the long
black cassock of a Catholic priest, with a delicate pale face,
very austere and clear-cut. This was disconcerting to Ivy,
for, in the English way, she had a vague feeling in her mind
that priests, after all, were not quite human.
The tall young man, however, turned to her after a
minute's pause with a frank and pleasant smile, which
seemed all at once to bespeak her sympathy. He had an
even row of white teeth, Ivy observed, and thin, thoughtful
lips, and a cultivated air, and the mien of a gentleman.
Cardinal Manning must surely have looked like that when
he was an Anglican curate. So austere was the young man's
face, yet so gentle, so engaging.
' Mademoiselle has just arrived to-day ? ' he said
interrogatively, in the pure, sweet French of the Fau-
bourg Saint-Germain. Ivy could see at a glance he felt she
was shy of him, and was trying to reassure her. ' What
a beautiful sunset we 've had ! What light ! What
colour ! '
His voice rang so soft that Ivy plucked up heart of
grace to answer him boldly in her own pretty variation of
the Ollendorffian dialect, 'Yes, it was splendid, splendid.
This is the first time I visit the Mediterranean, and
coming from the cold North, its beauty takes my breath
away.'
' Mademoiselle is French, then ? ' the young priest asked,
with the courtly flattery that sits so naturally on his
countrymen. ' No, English ? Really ! And nevertheless
Q9
THE ABBA'S REPENTANCE
you speak with a charming accent. But all English ladies
speak French to-day. Yes, this place is lovely : nothing
lovelier on the coast. I went up this evening to the
hill that forms the centre of our little promontory '
'The hill with the lighthouse that we passed on our
way ? ' Ivy asked, proud at heart that she could remember
the word pkare off-hand, without reference to the dictionary.
The Abbe bowed. ' Yes, the hill with the lighthouse,'
he answered, hardly venturing to correct her by making
pkare masculine. ' There is there a sanctuary of Our Lady
— Notre-Dame de la Garoupe,— and I mounted up to it by
the Chemin de la Croix, to make my devotions. And after
spending a little half-hour all alone in the oratory, I went
out upon the platform, and sat at the foot of the cross, and
looked before me upon the view. Oh, mademoiselle, how
shall I say .'' it was divine ! it was beautiful ! The light from
the setting sun touched up those spotless temples of the
eternal snow with the rosy radiance of an angel's wing. It
was a prayer in marble. One would think the white and
common daylight, streaming through some dim cathedral
window, made rich with figures, was falling in crimson
palpitations on the clasped hands of some alabaster saint —
so glorious was it, so beautiful ! '
Ivy smiled at his enthusiasm : it was so like her own —
and yet, oh, so different ! But she admired the young Abbe,
all the same, for not being ashamed of his faith. What
English curate would have dared to board a stranger like
that — -with such a winning confidence that the stranger
would share his own point of view of things .'' And then
the touch of poetry that he threw into it all was so deli-
cately mediaeval. Ivy looked at him and smiled again.
The priest had certainly begun by ci'eating a favourable
impression.
All through dinner, her new acquaintance talked to her
uninterruptedly. Ivy was quite charmed to see how far her
70
THE ABBA'S REPENTANCE
meagre French would carry her. And her neighbour was
so polite, so grave, so attentive. He never seemed to notice
her mistakes of gender, her little errors of tense or mood or
syntax; he caught rapidly at what she meant when she
paused for a word : he finished her sentences for her better
than she could have done them herself: he never suggested,
he never corrected, he never faltered, but he helped her
out, as it were, unconsciously, without ever seeming to help
her. In a word, he had the manners of a born gentleman,
with the polish and the grace of good French society. And
then, whatever he said was so interesting and so well put.
A tinge of Celtic imagination lighted up all his talk. He was
well read in his own literature, and in English and German
too. Nothing could have been more unlike Ivy's pre-
conceived idea of the French Catholic priest — the rotund
and rubicund village cure. The man was tall, slim,
pathetic, poetical-looking, with piercing black eyes, and
features of striking and statuesque beauty. But above all.
Ivy felt now that he was earnest, and human — intensely
human.
Once only, when conversation rose loud across the table,
the Abbe ventured to ask, with bated breath, in a candid
tone of inquiry, ' Mademoiselle is Catholic ? '
Ivy looked down at her plate as she answered in a timid
voice, ' No, monsieur, Anglican.' Then she added, half
apologetically, with a deprecating smile, ' 'Tis the religion
of my country, you know.' For she feared she shocked
him.
' Perfectly,' the Abbe answered, with a sweet smile of
resigned regret ; and he murmured something half to
himself in the Latin tongue, which Ivy didn't understand.
It was a verse from the Vulgate, ' Other sheep have I
which are not of this fold : them also will I bring in.' For
he was a tolerant man, though devout, that Abbe, and
Mademoiselle was charming. Had not even the Church
71
THE abb:^'s repentance
itself held that Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, I know not how
many more — and then, Mademoiselle no doubt erred through
ignorance of the Faith, and the teaching of her parents !
After dinner they strolled out into the great entrance-
hall. The Abbe, with a courtly bow, went off, half reluctant,
in another direction. On a table close by, the letters that
came by the evening post lay displayed in long rows for
visitors to claim their own. With true feminine curiosity,
Ivy glanced over the names of her fellow-guests. One
struck her at once — ' M. lAbbe de Kermadec' 'That
must be our priest, Aunt Emma,' she said, looking close at
it. And the English barrister with the loud voice, who
sat opposite her at table, made answer, somewhat bluffly,
' Yes, that 's the priest, M. Guy de Kermadec. You can see
with half an eye he 's above the common ruck of 'em. Be-
longs to a very distinguished Breton family, so I 'm told.
Of late years, you know, there 's been a reaction in France
in favour of piety. It 's the mode to be devot. The Royalists
think religion goes hand in hand with legitimacy. So several
noble families send a younger son into the Church now
again, as before the Revolution — make a decorative Abbe of
him. It 's quite the thing, as times go. The eldest son of
the Kermadecs is a marquis, I believe — one of their trumpexy
marquee's — has a chateau in Morbihan — the second son 's in
a cavalry regiment, and serves La France ; the third 's in the
Church, and saves the souls of the family. That 's the way
they do now. Division of labour, don't you see ! Number
one plays, number two fights, number three prays. Land,
army, piety.'
' Oh, indeed,' Ivy answered, shrinking into her shell at
once. She didn't know why, but it jarred upon her some-
how to hear the English barrister with the loud bluff voice
speak like that about her neighbour. M. Guy de Kermadec
was of gentler mould, she felt sure, than the barrister's coarse
red hands should handle.
72
THE ABBE'S REPENTANCE
They stayed there some weeks. Aunt Emma's lungs
were endowed with a cavity. So Aunt Emma did little but
sun herself on the terrace, and chirp to the canary, and look
across at the Esterel. But Ivy was strong, her limbs were
a tomboy's, and she wandered about by herself to her heart's
content over that rocky peninsula. On her first morning at
the Cape, indeed, she strolled out alone, following a footpath
that led through a green strip of pine-wood, fragrant on
either side with lentisk scrub and rosemary. It brought
her out upon the sea, near the very end of the promontory,
at a spot where white rocks, deeply honeycombed by the
ceaseless spray of centuries, lay tossed in wild confusion,
stack upon stack, rent and fissured. Low bushes, planed
level by the wind, sloped gradually upward. A douanier's
trail threaded the rugged maze. Ivy turned to the left
and followed it on, well pleased, past huge tors and deep
gullies. Here and there, taking advantage of the tilt
of the strata, the sea had worn itself great caves and
blow-holes. A slight breeze was rolling breakers up these
miniature gorges. Ivy stood and watched them tumble
in, the deep peacock blue of the outer sea changing at
once into white foam as they curled over and shattered
themselves on the green slimy reefs that blocked their
progress.
By and by she reached a spot where a clump of tall aloes,
with prickly points, grew close to the edge of the rocks
in true African luxuriance. Just beyond them, on the brink,
a man sat bareheaded, his legs dangling over a steep under-
mined cliff. The limestone was tilted up there at such an
acute angle that the crag overhung the sea by a yard or two,
and waves dashed themselves below into a thick rain of
spray without wetting the top. Ivy had clambered half out
to the edge before she saw who the man was. Then he
turned his head at the sound of her footfall, and sprang to
his feet hastily.
73
THE ABB^^S REPENTANCE
' Take care, mademoiselle/ he said, holding his round hat
in his left hand, and stretching out his right to steady her.
' Such spots as these are hardly meant for skirts like yours —
or mine. One false step, and over you go. I 'm a pretty
strong swimmer myself — our Breton sea did so much for me ;
but no swimmer on earth could live against the force of
those crushing breakers. They 'd catch a man on their
crestSj and pound him to a jelly on the jagged needles of
rock. They 'd hurl him on to the crumbling pinnacles, and
then drag him back with their undertow, and crush him at
last, as in a gigantic mortar, till every trait, every feature,
was indistinguishable.'
' Thank you,' Ivy answered, taking his proffered hand as
innocently as she would have taken her father's curate's.
'It's just beautiful out here, isn't it.''' She seated herself
on the ledge near the spot where he had been sitting. ' How
grandly the waves roll in ! ' she cried, eyeing them with
girlish delight. ' Do you come here often, M. I'Abbe .'' '
The Abbe gazed at her, astonished. How strange are
the ways of these English ! He was a priest, to be sure, a
celibate by profession; but he was young, he was handsome
— he knew he was good-looking ; and mademoiselle was
unmarried ! This chance meeting embarrassed him, to say
the truth, far more than it did Ivy — though Ivy too was shy,
and a little conscious blush that just tinged her soft cheek,
made her look, the Abbe noted, even prettier than ever.
But still, if he was a priest, he was also a gentleman. So,
after a moment's demur, he sat down, a little way off —
further off, indeed, than the curate would have thought it
necessary to sit from her — and answered very gravely in
that soft low voice of his, ' Yes, I come here often, very
often. It 's my favourite seat. On these rocks one seems
to lose sight of the world and the work of man's hand, and
to stand face to face with the eternal and the infinite.'
He waved his arm, as he spoke, towards the horizon, vaguely.
74
THE abb:^'s repentance
' I like it for its wildness/ Ivy said simply. * These crags
are so beautiful.'
' Yes/ the young priest answered, looking across at them
pensively, ' I like to think, for my part, that for thousands
of years the waves have been dashing against them, day
and night, night and day, in a ceaseless rhythm, since the
morning of the creation. I like to think that before ever
a Phocsean galley steered its virgin trip into the harbour of
Antipolis, this honeycombing had begun ; that when the Holy
Maries of the Sea passed by our Cape on their miraculous
voyage to the mouths of the Rhone, they saw this headland,
precisely as we see it to-day, on their starboard bow, all
weather-eaten and weather-beaten.'
Ivy lounged with her feet dangling over the edge, as the
Abbe had done before. The Abbe sat and looked at her in
fear and trembling. If mademoiselle were to slip, now.
His heart came up in his mouth at the thought. He was
a priest, to be sure ; but at seven-and-twenty, mark you
well, even priests are human. They, too, have hearts.
Anatomically they resemble the rest of their kind ; it is
only the cassock that makes the outer difference.
But Ivy sat talking in her imperfect French, with very
little sense of how much trouble she was causing him.
She didn't know that the Abbe, too, trembled on the very
brink of a precipice. But his was a moral one. By and by
she rose. The Abbe stretched out his hand, and lent it to
her politely. He could do no less; yet the touch of her
ungloved fingers thrilled him. What a pity so fair a lamb
should stray so far from the true fold ! Had Our Lady
brought him this chance .'' Was it his duty to lead her, to
guide her, to save her ?
' Which is the way to the lighthouse hill .-* ' Ivy asked
him carelessly.
The words seemed to his full heart like a sacred omen.
For on the lighthouse hill, as on all high places in Provence,
75
THE ABBESS REPENTANCE
stood also a lighthouse of the soul, a sanctuary of Our Lady,
that Noti*e-Dame de la Garoupe whereof he had told her
yesterday. And of her own accord she had asked the way
now to Our Lady's shrine. He would guide her like a
beacon. This was the finger of Providence. Sure, Our
Lady herself had put the thought into the heart of her.
'I go that way myself/ he said, rejoicing. 'If made-
moiselle will allow me, I will show her the path. Every day
I go up thei'e to make my devotions.'
As they walked by the seaward trail, and climbed the
craggy little hill, the Abbe discoursed very pleasantly about
many things. Not religion alone ; he was a priest, but no
bigot. An enthusiast for the sea, as becomes a Morbihan
man, he loved it from every point of view, as swimmer,
yachtsman, rower, landscape artist. His talk was of dangers
confronted on stormy nights along the Ligurian coast ; of
voyages to Corsica, to the Channel Islands, to Bilbao ; of
great swims about Sark ; of climbs among the bare summits
over yonder by Turbia. And he was wide-minded too ; for
he spoke with real affection of a certain neighbour of theirs
in Morbihan ; he was proud of the great writer's pure Breton
blood, though he deprecated his opinions — ' But he 's so
kind and good after all, that dear big Renan ! ' Ivy started
with surprise ; not so had she heard the noblest living master
of French prose discussed and described in their Warwick-
shire rectory. But every moment she saw yet clearer that
anything more unlike her preconceived idea of a Catholic
priest than this ardent young Celt could hardly be imagined.
Fervent and fervid, he led the conversation like one who
spoke with tongues. For herself she said little by the way ;
her French halted sadly ; but she listened with real pleasure
to the full flowing stream of the young man's discourse.
After all, she knew now, he was a young man at least — not
human alone, but vivid and virile as well, in spite of his
petticoats.
76
THE ABBESS REPENTANCE
People forget too often that putting on a soutane doesn't
necessarily make a strong nature feminine.
At the top of the lighthouse hill Ivy paused, delighted
Worlds opened before her. To right and left, in rival beauty,
spread a glorious panorama. She stood and gazed at it
entranced. She had plenty of time indeed to drink in to
the full those two blue bays, with their contrasted mountain
barriers — snowy Alps to the east, purple Esterel to westward
— for the Abbe had gone into the rustic chapel to make his
devotions. When he came out again, curiosity tempted Ivy
for a moment into that bare little whitewashed barn. It
was a Proven9al fisher shrine of the rudest antique type ; its
gaudy Madonna, tricked out with paper flowers, stood under
a crude blue canopy, set with tinsel-gilt stars ; the rough
walls hung thick with ex-voto's of coarse and naive execu-
tion. Here, sailors in peril emerged from a watery grave by
the visible appearance of Our Lady issuing in palpable wood
from a very solid cloud of golden glory ; there, a gig going
down hill was stopped forcibly from above with hands laid
on the reins by Our Lady in person; and yonder, again, a
bursting gun did nobody any harm, for had not Our Lady
caught the fragments in her own stiff fingers ? Ivy gazed
with a certain hushed awe at these nascent eiforts of art ;
such a gulf seemed to yawn between that tawdry little
oratory and the Abbe's own rich and cultivated nature. Yet
he went to pray there !
For the next three weeks Ivy saw much of M. Guy de
Kermadec. She taught him lawn-tennis, which he learned,
indeed, with ease. At first, to be sure, the English in the
hotel rather derided the idea of lawn-tennis in a cassock.
But the Abbe was an adept at the jeu de paiime, which had
already educated his hand and eye, and he dropped into the
new game so quickly, in spite of the soutaiie, which sadly im-
peded his running, that even the Cambridge undergraduate
with the budding moustache was forced to acknowledge ' the
77
THE ABBlfi'S REPENTANCE
Frenchy ' a formidable competitor. And then Ivy met him
often in his strolls round the coast. He used to sit and
sketch among the rocks, perched high on the most inacces-
sible pinnacles ; and Ivy, it must be admitted, though she
hardly knew why herself — so innocent is youth, so too dan-
gerously innocent — ^went oftenest by the paths where she
was likeliest to meet him. There she would watch the pro-
gress of his sketch, and criticise and admire ; and in the end,
when she rose to go, native politeness made it impossible for
the Abbe to let her walk home unprotected, so he accom-
panied her back by the coast path to the hotel garden. Ivy
hardly noticed that as he reached it he almost invariably
lifted his round hat at once and dismissed her, unofficially as
it were, to the society of her compatriots. But the Abbe,
more used to the ways of the world and of France, knew
well how unwise it was of him — a man of the Church — to
walk with a young girl alone so often in the country. A
priest should be circumspect.
Day after day, slowly, very slowly, the truth began to
dawn by degrees upon the Abbe de Kerraadec that he was
in love with Ivy. At first, he fought the idea tooth and
nail, like an evil vision. He belonged to the Church, the
Bride of Heaven : what had such as he to do with mere
carnal desires and earthly longings ? But day by day, as Ivy
met him, and talked with him more confidingly, her French
growing more fluent by leaps and bounds under that able
tutor Love, whose face as yet she recognised not — nature
began to prove too strong for the Abbe's resolution. He
found her company sweet. The position was so strange,
and to him so incomprehensible. If Ivy had been a French
girl, of course he could never have seen so much of her : her
mother or her maid would have mounted guard over her
night and day. Only with a married woman could he have
involved himself so deeply in France : and then, the sinful-
ness of their intercourse would have been clear from the
78
THE ABBA'S REPENTANCE
very outset to both alike of them. But what charmed and
attracted him most in Ivy was just her Enghsh innocence.
She was so gentle, so guileless. This pure creature of God's
never seemed to be aware she was doing grievously wrong.
The man who had voluntarily resigned all hope or chance of
chaste love was now irresistibly led on by the very force of
the spell he had renounced for ever.
And yet — how hard it is for us to throw ourselves com-
pletely into somebody else's attitude ! So French was he, so
Catholic, that he couldn't quite understand the full depth of
Ivy's innocence. This girl who could walk and talk so freely
with a priest — surely she must be aware of what thing she
was doing. She must know she was leading him and her-
self into a dangerous love, a love that could end in none but
a guilty conclusion.
So thinking, and praying, and fighting against it, and
despising himself, the young Abbe yet persisted half un-
awares on the path of destruction. His hot Celtic imagina-
tion proved too much for his self-control. All night long
he lay awake, tossing and turning on his bed, alternately
muttering fervent prayers to Our Lady, and building up for
himself warm visions of his next meeting with Ivy. In the
morning, he would rise up early, and go afoot to the shrine
of Notre-Dame de la Garoupe, and cry aloud with fiery zeal
for help, that he might be delivered from temptation : — and
then he would turn along the coast, towards his accustomed
seat, looking out eagerly for the rustle of Ivy's dress among
the cistus-bushes. When at last he met her, a great wave
passed over him like a blush. He thrilled from head to foot.
He grew cold. He trembled inwardly.
Not for nothing had he lived near the monastery of St.
Gildas de Rhuys. For such a Heloise as that, what priest
would not gladly become a second Abelard .^
One morning, he met her by his overhanging ledge. The
sea was rough. The waves broke grandly.
79
THE ABBA'S REPENTANCE
Ivy came up to him, with that conscious bhish of hers just
manthng her fair cheek. She Hked him very much. But
she was only eighteen. At eighteen a girl hardly knows
when she 's in love. But she vaguely suspects it.
The Abbe held out his hand. Ivy took it with a frank
smile. ' Bonjour, M. de Kermadec ! ' she said lightly. She
always addressed him so — not as M. FAbbe, now. Was
that intentional, he wondered .'' He took it to mean that
she tried to forget his ecclesiastical position. ' La tante
Emma ' should guard her treasure in an eai'then vessel more
carefully. Why do these Protestants tempt us priests with
their innocent girls ? He led her to a seat, and gazed at her
like a lover, his heart beating hard, and his knees trembling
violently. He jnust speak to her to-day. Though 7v/iaf, he
knew not.
He meant her no harm. He was too passionate, too pure,
too earnest for that. But he meant her no good either.
He meant nothing, nothing. Before her face he was a bark
driven rudderless by the breeze. He only knew he loved
her : she must be his. His passion hallowed his act. And
she too, she loved him.
Leaning one hand on the rock, he talked to her for a while,
he hardly knew what. He saw she was tremulous. She
looked down and blushed often. That intangible, incom-
prehensible, invisible something that makes lovers subtly
conscious of one another's mood had told her how he felt
towards her. She tingled to the finger-tips. It was sweet
to be there— oh, how sweet, yet how hopeless !
Romance to her : to him, sin, death, infamy.
At last he leaned across to her. She had answered him
back once more about some trifle, ' Mais, oui, M. de Kerma-
dec' ' Why this " monsieur " .^ ' the priest asked boldly,
gazing deep into her startled eyes. ' Je m'appelle Guy,
mademoiselle. Why not Guy then — Ivy ? '
At the word her heart gave a bound. He had said it !
80
THE ABB^^S REPENTANCE
He had said it ! He loved her ; oh, how delicious ! She
could have cried for joy at that implied avowal.
But she drew herself up for all that^ like a pure-minded
English girl that she was, and answered with a red flush,
' Because — it would be wrong, monsieur. You know very
well, as things are, I cannot.'
What a flush ! what a halo ! Madonna and vows were all
forgotten now. The Abbe flung himself forward in one wild
burst of passion. He gazed in her eyes, and all was lost.
His hot Celtic soul poured itself forth in full flood. He
loved her : he adored her : she should be his and his only.
He had fought against it. But love — love had conquered.
'Oh, Ivy,' he cried passionately, 'you will not refuse me!
You will be mine and mine only. You will love me as I love
you ! '
Ivy's heart broke forth too. She looked at him and
melted. ' Guy,' she answered, first framing the truth to
herself in that frank confession, ' I love you in return. I
have loved you since the very first moment I saw you.'
The Abbe seized her hand, and raised it rapturously to
his lips. ' My beloved,' he cried, rosy red, ' you are mine,
you are mine — and I am yours for ever.'
Ivy drew back a little, somewhat abashed and alarmed
by his evident ardour. ' I wonder if I 'm doing wrong ? '
she cried, with the piteous uncertainty of early youth.
' Your vows, you know ! your vows ! How will you ever get
rid of them .'' '
The Abbe gazed at her astonished. What could this
angel mean .'' She wondered if she was doing wrong ! Get
rid of his vows ! He, a priest, to make love ! What naivete !
What innocence !
But he was too hot to repent. 'My vows!' he cried, fling-
ing them from him with both hands into the sea. ' Ivy, let
them go ! Let the waves bear them off" ! What are they to
me now ? I renounce them ! I have done with them ! '
F 81
THE ABBKS REPENTANCE
Ivy looked at him, breathing deep. Why, he loved her
indeed. For she knew how devoted he was, how earnest,
how Catholic. 'Then you'll join our Church,' she said
simply, ' and give up your orders and marry me ! '
If a thunderbolt had fallen at the young priest's feet, its
effect could not have been more crushing, more instan-
taneous, more extraordinary. In a moment, he had come
to himself again, cooled, astonished, horrified. Oh, what
had he said .'' What had he done ? What vile sin had he
committed .'' Not against Heaven, now, or the saints, for of
that and his own soul he thought just then but little : but
against that pure young girl whom he loved, that sweet
creature of innocence ! And how could he ever explain to
her .'' How retract .'' How excuse himself.'' Even to at-
tempt an explanation would be sheer treason to her purity.
The thought in his mind was too unholy for her to hear.
To tell her what he meant would be a crime, a sin, a
bassesse !
He saw it in an instant, how the matter would envisage
itself to her un-Catholic mind. She could never understand
that to him, a single fall, a temporary backsliding, was but a
subject for repentance, confession, absolution, pardon : while
to renounce his orders, renounce his Church, contract a
marriage that in his eyes would be no marriage at all, but a
living lie, was to continue in open sin, to degrade and dis-
honour her. For her own sake, even, if saints and Madonna
were not, Guy de Kermadec could never consent so to taint
and to sully her. That pure soul was too dear to him. He
had dreamed for a moment, indeed, of foul wrong, in the
white heat of passion : all men may be misled for a moment
of impulse by the strong demon within them : but to per-
severe in such wrong, to go on sinning openly, flagrantly,
shamelessly — Guy de Kermadec drew back from the bare
idea with disdain. As priest and as gentleman alike, he
looked down upon it and contemned it.
82
THE ABBjfi S REPENTANCE
The reaction was profound. For a minute or two he
gazed into Ivy's face like one spellbound. He paused and
hesitated. What way out of this maze .'' How on earth
could he undeceive her ? Then suddenly, with a loud cry,
he sprang to his feet like one shot, and stood up by the edge
of the rocks in his long black soulane. He held out his hands
to raise her. ' Mademoiselle,' he groaned aloud from his
heart, in a very broken tone, ' I have done wrong — ginevous
wrong : I have sinned — against Heaven and against you, and
am no more worthy to be called a priest.' He raised his
voice solemnly. It was the voice of a bi'uised and wounded
creature. ' Go back ! ' he cried once more, waving her away
from him as from one polluted. ' You can never forgive
me. But at least, go back. I should have cut out my
tongue rather than have spoken so to you. I am a leper
— a wild beast. Ten thousand times over, I crave your
pardon.'
Ivy gazed at him, thunderstruck. In her innocence, she
hardly knew what the man even meant. But she saw her
romance had toppled over to its base, and shattered itself to
nothing. Slowly she rose, and took his hand across the
rocks to steady her. They reached the track in silence.
As they gained it, the Abbe raised his hat for the last time,
and turned away bitterly. He took the path to the right.
Obedient to his gesture, Ivy went to the left. Back to the
hotel she went, lingering, with a heart like a stone, locked
herself up in her own room, and cried long and silently.
But as for Guy de Kermadec, all on fire with his remorse,
he walked fast along the sea-shore, over the jagged rock path,
toward the town of Antibes.
Through the narrow streets of the old city he made his
way, like a blind man, to the house of a priest whom he
knew. His heart was seething now with regret and shame
and horror. What vile thing was this wherewith he, a priest
of God, had ventured to affront the pure innocence of a
THE ABBE'S REPENTANCE
maiden ? What unchastity had he forced on the chaste eyes
of girlhood ? Ivy had struck him dumb by her very freedom
from all guile. And it was she, the heretic, for whose soul
he had wrestled in prayer with Our Lady, who had brought
him back with a bound to the consciousness of sin, and the
knowledge of purity, from the very brink of a precipice.
He knocked at the door of his friend's house like a moral
leper.
His brother-priest received him kindly. Guy de Kerma-
dec was pale, but his manner was wild, like one mad with
frenzy. ' Mon pere,' he said straight out, ' I have come to
confess, i?i articido mortis. I feel I shall die to-night. I have
a warning from Our Lady. I ask you for absolution, a bless-
ing, the holy sacrament, extreme unction. If you refuse
them, I die. Give me God at your peril.'
The elder priest hesitated. How could he give the host
otherwise than to a person fasting } How administer ex-
treme unction save to a dying man .'' But Guy de Kermadec,
in his fiery haste, overbore all scrupulous ecclesiastical objec-
tions. He was a dying man, he cried : Our Lady's own
warning was surely more certain than the guess or conjecture
of a mere earthly doctor. The viaticum he demanded, and
the viaticum he must have. He was to die that night. He
knew it. He was sure of it.
He knelt down and confessed. He would brook no re-
fusal. The country priest, all amazed, sat and listened to
him, breathless. Once or twice he drew his sleek hand over
his full fat face doubtfully. The strange things this hot
Breton said to him were beyond his comprehension. They
spoke different languages. How could he, good easy soul,
with his cut-and-dried theology, fathom the fiery depths of
that volcanic bosom .'* He nursed his chin in suspense, and
marvelled. Other priests had gone astray. Why this wild
fever of repentance .'' Other women had been tempted.
Why this passionate tenderness for the sensibilities of a mere
84
THE abb:^'s repentance
English heretic ? Other girls had sinned outright. Why
this horror at the harm done to her in intention only ?
But to Guy de Kermadec himself it was a crime of Icse-
majesle against a young girl's purity. A crime whose very
nature it would be criminal to explain to her. A crime that
he could only atone with his life. Apology was impossible.
Explanation was treason. Nothing remained for it now but
the one resource of silence.
In an orgy of penitence^ the young priest confessed, and
received absolution : he took the viaticum, trembling ; he
obtained extreme unction. Then, with a terrible light in
his eyes, he went into a stationer's shop, and in tremulous
lines wrote a note, which he posted to Ivy.
' Tres chere dame,' it said simply, ' you will see me no
more. This morning, I offered, half unawares, a very great
wrong to you. Your own words, and Our Lady's interven-
tion, brought me back to myself. Thank Heaven, it was in
time. I might have wronged you more. My last prayers
are for your pure soul. Pray for mine and forgive me.
Adieu ! Guy de Kermadec'
After that, he strode out to the Cape once more. It was
growing dark by that time, for he was long at Antibes. He
walked with fiery eagerness to the edge of the cliiF, where
he had sat with joy that morning — where he had sat before
so often. The brink of the rocks was wet with salt spray,
very smooth and slippery. The Abbe stood up, and looked
over at the black water. The Church makes suicide a sin,
and he would obey the Church. But no canon prevents one
from leaning over the edge of a cliff, to admire the dark
waves. They rolled in with a thud, and broke in sheets of
white spray against the honeycombed base of the rock, in-
visible beneath him.
' Si dextra tua tibi offenderit,' they said, in their long slow
85
THE ABBA'S REPENTANCE
chant — 'si dextra tua tibi offenderit.' If thy right hand
offend thee, cut it off. And Ivy was dearer to him than his
own right hand. Yet not for that, oh Mary, Star of the Sea,
not for that ; nor yet for his own salvation ; — let him burn, if
need were, in nethermost hell, to atone this error — but for
that pure maid's sake, and for the cruel wrong he had put
upon her. ' Oh, Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows,' he cried,
wringing his hands in his agony, ' who wert a Virgin thyself,
help and succour this virgin in her own great sorrow. Thou
knowest her innocence, her guilelessness, her simplicity, and
the harm beyond healing that I wrought her unawares. Oh,
blot it out of her pure white soul and bless her. Thou
knowest that for her sake alone, and to undo this sin to her,
I stand here to-night, on the brink of the precipice. Queen
of the Waves, Our Lady of the Look-out, if the sacrifice
please thee, take me thus to thine own bosom. Let thy
billows rise up and blot out my black sin. Oh, Mary, hear
me ! Stella maris adesto ! '
He stood there for hours, growing colder and stiffen It
was quite dark now, and the sea was rising. Yet still he
prayed on, and still the spray dashed upward. At last, as
he prayed in the dim night, erect, with bare head, a great
wave broke higher than ever over the rocks below him.
With a fierce joy, Guy de Kermadec felt it thrill through
the thickness of the cliff: then it rose in a head, and burst
upon him with a roar like the noise of thunder. He lost his
footing, and fell, clutching at the jagged pinnacles for sup-
port, into the deep trough below. There, the billows caught
him up, and pounded him on the sharp crags. Thank
Heaven for that mercy ! Our Lady had heard his last
prayer. Mary, full of grace, had been pleased to succour
him. With a penance of blood, from torn hands and feet,
was he expiating his sin against Heaven and against Ivy.
Next morning, the douanier, pacing the shore alone, saw a
dead body entangled among the sharp rocks by the precipice.
80"
THE abb:^^s repentance
Climbing down on hands and knees, he fished it out with
difficulty, and ran to fetch a gendarme. The face was beaten
to a jelly, past all recognition, and the body was mangled in
a hideous fashion. But it wore a rent soutane, all in ribbons
on the I'ocks ; and the left third finger bore a signet-ring
with a coat of arms and the motto, ' Foy d'un Kermadec'
Ivy is still unwed. No eye but hers has ever seen Guy de
Kermadec's last letter.
87
V
WOLVERDEN TOWER
WOLVERDEN TOWER
Maisie Llewelyn had never been asked to Wolverden
before ; therefore, she was not a little elated at Mrs. West's
invitation. For Wolverden Hall, one of the loveliest
Elizabethan manor-houses in the Weald of Kent, had been
bought and fitted up in appropriate style (the phrase is the
upholsterer's) by Colonel West, the famous millionaire from
South Australia. The Colonel had lavished upon it untold
wealth, fleeced from the backs of ten thousand sheep and
an equal number of his fellow-countrymen ; and Wolverden
was now, if not the most beautiful, at least the most
opulent country-house within easy reach of London.
Mrs. West was waiting at the station to meet Maisie.
The house was full of Christmas guests already, it is true ;
but Mrs, West was a model of stately, old-fashioned
courtesy : she would not have omitted meeting one among
the number on any less excuse than a royal command to
appear at Windsor. She kissed Maisie on both cheeks — she
had always been fond of Maisie — and, leaving two haughty
young aristocrats (in powdered hair and blue-and-gold
livery) to hunt up her luggage by the light of nature,
sailed forth with her through the door to the obsequious
carriage.
The drive up the avenue to Wolverden Hall Maisie found
quite delicious. Even in their leafless winter condition the
91
WOLVERDEN TOWER
great limes looked so noble ; and the ivy-covered hall at
the end, with its mullioned windows, its Inigo Jones porch,
and its creeper-clad gables, was as picturesque a building
as the ideals one sees in Mr. Abbey's sketches. If only
Arthur Hume had been one of the party now, Maisie's joy
would have been complete. But what was the use of
thinking so much about Arthur Hume, when she didn't
even know whether Arthur Hume cared for her?
A tall, slim girl, Maisie Llewelyn, with rich black hair,
and ethereal features, as became a descendant of Llewelyn
ap lorwerth — the sort of girl we none of us would have
called anything more than 'interesting' till Rossetti and
Burne-Jones found eyes for us to see that the type is
beautiful with a deeper beauty than that of your obvious
pink-and-white prettiness. Her eyes, in particular, had
a lustrous depth that was almost superhuman, and her
fingers and nails were strangely transparent in their waxen
softness.
'You won't mind my having put you in a ground-floor
room in the new wing, my dear, will you .'' ' Mrs West
inquired, as she led Maisie personally to the quarters chosen
for her, ' You see, we 're so unusually full, because of these
tableaux ! '
Maisie gazed round the ground-floor room in the new
wing with eyes of mute wondei*. If this was the kind of
lodging for which Mrs. West thought it necessary to
apologise, Maisie wondered of what sort were those better
rooms which she gave to the guests she delighted to honour.
It was a large and exquisitely decorated chamber, with the
softest and deepest Oriental carpet Maisie's feet had ever
felt, and the daintiest curtains her eyes had ever lighted
upon. True, it opened by French windows on to what was
nominally the ground in front ; but as the Italian terrace,
with its formal balustrade and its great stone balls, was
raised several feet above the level of the sloping garden
92
WOLVERDEN TOWER
below, the room was really on the first floor for all practical
purposes. Indeed, Maisie rather liked the unwonted sense
of space and freedom which was given by this easy access
to the world without ; and, as the windows were secured
by great shutters and fasteners, she had no counterbalancing
fear lest a nightly burglar should attempt to carry off her
little pearl necklet or her amethyst brooch, instead of
directing his whole attention to Mrs. West's famous dia-
mond tiara.
She moved natui*ally to the window. She was fond of
nature. The view it disclosed over the Weald at her feet
was wide and varied. Misty range lay behind misty range,
in a faint December haze, receding and receding, till away
to the south, half hidden by vapour, the Sussex downs
loomed vague in the distance. The village church, as
happens so often in the case of old lordly manors, stood
within the grounds of the Hall, and close by the house. It
had been built, her hostess said, in the days of the Edwards,
but had portions of an older Saxon edifice still enclosed in
the chancel. The one eyesore in the view was its new
white tower, recently restored (or rather, rebuilt), which
contrasted most painfully with the mellow grey stone and
mouldering corbels of the nave and transept.
'What a pity it's been so spoiled!' Maisie exclaimed,
looking across at the tower. Coming straight as she did
from a Merioneth rectory, she took an ancestral interest in
all that concerned churches.
'^ Oh, my dear!' Mrs. West cried, 'please don't say that,
I beg of you, to the Colonel. If you were to murmur
"spoiled" to him you 'd wreck his digestion. He 's spent
ever so much money over securing the foundations and
reproducing the sculpture on the old tower we took down,
and it breaks his dear heart when anybody disapproves of
it. For some people, you know, are so absurdly opposed to
reasonable restoration.'
9S
WOLVERDEN TOWER
' Oh, but this isn't even restoration, you know,' Maisie
said, with the frankness of twenty, and the specialist
interest of an antiquary's daughter. ' This is pure recon-
struction.'
' Perhaps so,' Mrs. West answered. ' But if you think so,
my dear, don't breathe it at Wolverden.'
A fire, of ostentatiously wealthy dimensions, and of the
best glowing coal, burned bright on the hearth ; but the
day was mild, and hardly more than autumnal. Maisie
found the room quite unpleasantly hot. She opened the
windows and stepped out on the terrace. Mrs. West
followed her. They paced up and down the broad gravelled
platform for a while — Maisie had not yet taken off her
travelling-cloak and hat — and then strolled half uncon-
sciously towards the gate of the church. The churchyard,
to hide the tombstones of which the parapet had been
erected, was full of quaint old monuments, with broken-
nosed cherubs, some of them dating from a comparatively
early period. The porch, with its sculptured niches deprived
of their saints by puritan hands, was still rich and beautiful
in its carved detail. On the seat inside an old Avoman was
sitting. She did not rise as the lady of the manor ap-
proached, but went on mumbling and muttering inarticu-
lately to herself in a sulky undertone. Still, Maisie was
aware, none the less, that the moment she came near a
strange light gleamed suddenly in the old woman's eyes,
and that her glance was fixed upon her. A faint thrill of
recognition seemed to pass like a flash through her palsied
body. Maisie knew not why, but she was dimly afraid of
the old woman's gaze upon her.
' It 's a lovely old church ! ' Maisie said, looking up at the
trefoil finials on the porch — '^all, except the tower.'
'We had to reconstruct it,' Mrs. West answered apologeti-
cally — Mrs. West's general attitude in life was apologetic,
as though she felt she had no right to so much more money
94
AVOLVERDEN TOWER
than her fellow-creatures. ' It would have fallen if we
hadn't done something to buttress it up. It was really in a
most dangerous and critical condition.'
' Lies ! lies ! lies ! ' the old woman burst out suddenly,
though in a strange, low tone, as if speaking to herself ' It
would not have fallen — they knew it would not. It could
not have fallen. It would never have fallen if they had
not destroyed it. And even then — I was there when they
pulled it down — each stone clung to each, with arms and
legs and hands and claws, till they burst them asunder by
main force with their new-fangled stuff — I don't know what
they call it — dynamite, or something. It was all of it done
for one man's vainglory ! '
'Come away, dear,' Mrs. West whispered. But Maisie
loitered.
'Wolverden Tower was fasted thrice,' the old woman
continued, in a sing-song quaver. ' It was fasted thrice
with souls of maids against every assault of man or devil.
It was fasted at the foundation against earthquake and ruin.
It was fasted at the top against thunder and lightning. It
was fasted in the middle against storm and battle. And
there it would have stood for a thousand years if a wicked
man had not raised a vainglorious hand against it. For
that 's what the rhyme says —
' Fasted thrice with souls of men.
Stands the tower of Wolverden ;
Fasted thrice with maidens' blood,
A thousand years of fire and flood
Shall see it stand as erst it stood.'
She paused a moment, then, raising one skinny hand
towards the bi*and-new stone, she went on in the same voice,
but with malignant fervour —
' A thousand years the tower shall stand
Till ill assailed by evil hand ;
95
WOLVERDEN TOWER
By evil hand in evil hour,
Fasted tlirice with warlock's power,
Shall fall the staiies of Wulf here's tower. '
She tottered off as she ended, and took her seat on the
edge of a depressed vault in the churchyard close by, still
eyeing Maisie Llewelyn with a weird and curious glance,
almost like the look Avhich a famishing man casts upon the
food in a shop-window.
' Who is she ? ' Maisie asked, shrinking away in undefined
terror.
' Oh, old Bessie,' Mrs. West answered, looking more
apologetic (for the parish) than ever. ' She 's always
hanging about here. She has nothing else to do, and she 's
an outdoor pauper. You see, that 's the worst of having the
church in one's grounds, which is otherwise picturesque and
romantic and baronial ; the road to it 's public ; you must
admit all the world ; and old Bessie will come here. The
servants are afraid of her. They say she s a witch. She
has the evil eye, and she drives girls to suicide. But they
cross her hand with silver all the same, and she tells them
their fortunes — gives them each a butler. She 's full of
dreadful stories about Wolverden Church — stories to make
your blood run cold, my dear, compact with old supersti-
tions and murders, and so forth. And they 're true, too,
that 's the worst of them. She 's quite a character. Mr,
Blaydes, the antiquary, is really attached to her ; he says
she 's now the sole living repository of the traditional folk-
lore and history of the parish. But I don't care for it
myself. It "gars one greet," as we say in Scotland. Too
much burying alive in it, don't you know, my dear, to quite
suit my fancy.'
They turned back as she spoke towards the carved
wooden lych-gate, one of the oldest and most exquisite of
its class in England. When they reached the vault by
9Q
WOLVERDEN TOWER
whose doors old Bessie was seated, Maisie turned once more
to gaze at the pointed lancet windows of the Early English
choir, and the still more ancient dog-tooth ornament of the
ruined Norman Lady Chapel.
' How solidly it 's built ! ' she exclaimed, looking up
at the arches which alone survived the fury of the Puritan.
' It really looks as if it would last for ever.'
Old Bessie had bent her head, and seemed to be whisper-
ing something at the door of the vault. But at the sound
she raised her eyes, and, turning her wizened face towards
the lady of the manor, mumbled through her few remaining
fang-like teeth an old local saying, ' Bradbury for length,
Wolverden for strength, and Church Hatton for beauty I
* Three brothers builded churches three ;
And fasted thrice each church shall be :
Fasted thrice with maidens' blood.
To make them safe from fire and flood ;
Fasted thrice with souls of men,
Hatton, Bradbury, Wolverden ! '
' Come away,' Maisie said, shuddering. ' I 'm afraid of
that woman. Why was she whispering at the doors of the
vault down there ? I don't like the look of her.'
' My dear,' Mrs. West answered, in no less terrified a tone,
' I will confess I don't like the look of her myself. I wish
she 'd leave the place. I 've tried to make her. The
Colonel offered her fifty pounds down and a nice cottage in
Surrey if only she 'd go — she frightens me so much ; but
she wouldn't hear of it. She said she must stop by the
bodies of her dead — that 's her style, don't you see : a sort
of modern ghoul, a degenerate vampire — and from the
bodies of her dead in Wolverden Church no living soul
should ever move her.'
97
WOLVERDEN TOWER
II
For dinner Maisie wore her white satin Empire dress, high-
waisted, low-necked, and cut in the bodice with a certain
baby-like simplicity of style which exactly suited her strange
and uncanny type of beauty. She was very much admired.
She felt it, and it pleased her. The young man who took
her in, a subaltern of engineers, had no eyes for any one
else ; while old Admiral Wade, who sat opposite her with a
plain and skinny dowager, made her positively uncomfort-
able by the persistent way in which he stared at her simple
pearl necklet.
After dinner, the tableaux. They had been designed and
managed by a famous Royal Academician, and were mostly
got up by the members of the house-party. But tAvo or
three actresses from London had been specially invited to
help in a few of the more mythological scenes ; for, indeed,
Mrs. West had prepared the entii-e entertainment with that
topsy-turvy conscientiousness and scrupulous sense of re-
sponsibility to society which pervaded her view of million-
aire morality. Having once decided to offer the county a
set of tableaux, she felt that millionaire morality absolutely
demanded of her the sacrifice of three weeks' time and
several hundred pounds money in order to discharge her
obligations to the county with becoming magnificence.
The first tableau, Maisie learned from the gorgeous
programme, was '^Jephthah's Daughter.' The subject was
represented at the pathetic moment Avhen the doomed
virgin goes forth from her father's house with her attendant
maidens to bewail her virginity for two months upon the
mountains, before the fulfilment of the awful vow which
bound her father to offer her up for a burnt offering. Maisie
thought it too solemn and tragic a scene for a festive occa-
98
WOLVERDEN TOWER
sion. But the famous R.A. had a taste for such themes, and
his grouping was certainly most effectively dramatic.
' A perfect symphony in white and grey/ said Mr. Wills,
the art critic.
' How awfully affecting ! ' said most of the young girls.
' Reminds me a little too much, my dear, of old Bessie's
stories,' Mrs. West whispered low, leaning from her seat
across two rows to Maisie.
A piano stood a little on one side of the platform, just in
front of the curtain. The intervals between the pieces
were filled up with songs, which, however, had been
evidently arranged in keeping with the solemn and half-
mystical tone of the tableaux. It is the habit of amateurs
to take a long time in getting their scenes in order, so the
interposition of the music was a happy thought as far as its
prime intention went. But Maisie wondered they could
not have chosen some livelier song for Christmas Eve than
' Oh, Mary, go and call the cattle home, and call the cattle
home, and call the cattle home, across the sands of Dee.'
Her own name was Maxy when she signed it officially, and
the sad lilt of the last line, ' But never home came she,'
rang unpleasantly in her ear through the rest of the
evening.
The second tableau was the ' Sacrifice of Iphigenia.' It
was admirably rendered. The cold and dignified father,
standing, apparently unmoved, by the pyre ; the cruel faces
of the attendant priests ; the shrinking form of the immo-
lated princess ; the mere blank curiosity and inquiring
interest of the helmeted heroes looking on, to whom this
slaughter of a virgin victim was but an ordinary incident of
the Achaean religion — all these had been arranged by the
Academical director with consummate skill and pictorial
cleverness. But the group that attracted Maisie most
among the components of the scene was that of the
attendant maidens, more conspicuous here in their flowing
99
WOLVERDEN TOWER
white chitons than even they had been when posed as
companions of the beautiful and ill-fated Hebrew victim.
Two in particular excited her close attention — two very
graceful and spiritual-looking girls, in long white robes of
no pai'ticular age or country, who stood at the very end
near the right edge of the picture. ' How lovely they are,
the two last on the right ! ' Maisie whispered to her neigh-
bour — an Oxford undei'graduate with a budding moustache.
' I do so admire them ! '
' Do you ? ' he answered, fondling the moustache with
one dubious finger. ' Well, now, do you know, I don't
think I do. They're rather coarse-looking. And besides,
T don't quite like the way they 've got their hair done up
in bunches ; too fashionable, isn't it .'' — too much of the
present day } I don't care to see a girl in a Greek costume,
with her coiffure so evidently turned out by Truentt's ! '
' Oh, I don't mean those two,' Maisie answered, a little
shocked he should think she had picked out such mere-
tricious faces ; ' I mean the two beyond them again — the
two with their hair so simply and sweetly done — the
ethereal-looking dark girls.'
The undergraduate opened his mouth, and stared at her
in blank amazement for a moment. 'Well, I don't see '
he began, and broke off suddenly. Something in Maisie's
eye seemed to give him pause. He fondled his moustache,
hesitated, and was silent.
' How nice to have read the Greek and know what it all
means ! ' Maisie went on, after a minute. ' It 's a human
saci'ifice, of course ; but, please, what is the story .'' '
The undergraduate hummed and hawed. ' Well, it 's in
Euripides, you know,' he said, trying to look impressive,
'and — er — and I haven't taken up Euripides for my next
examination. But I tlmik it's like this. Iphigenia was a
daughter of Agamemnon's, don't you know, and he had
offended Artemis or somebody — some other goddess ; and
100
WOLVERDEN TOWER
he vowed to offer up to her the most beautiful thing that
should be born that year, by way of reparation— just like
Jephthah. Well, Iphigenia was considered the most beauti-
ful product of the particular twelvemonth— don't look at
me like that, please ! you— you make me nervous —and so,
when the young woman grew up— well, I don't quite
recollect the ins and outs of the details, but it 's a human
sacrifice business, don't you see ; and they 're just going to
kill her, though I believe a hind was finally substituted for
the girl, like the ram for Isaac ; but I must confess I 've a
very vague recollection of it.' He rose from his seat
uneasily. 'I'm afraid,' he went on, shuffling about for
an excuse to move, ' these chairs are too close. I seem to
be incommoding you.'
He moved away with a furtive air. At the end of the
tableau one or two of the characters who were not needed
in succeeding pieces came down from the stage and joined
the body of spectators, as they often do, in their character-
dresses— a good opportunity, in point of fact, for retaining
through the evening the advantages conferred by theatrical
costume, rouge, and pearl-powder. Among them the two
girls Maisie had admired so much glided quietly toward her
and took the two vacant seats on either side, one of which
had just been quitted by the awkward undergraduate. They
were not only beautiful in face and figure, on a closer view,
but Maisie found them from the first extremely sympathetic.
They burst into talk with her, frankly and at once, with
charming ease and grace of manner. They were ladies in
the grain, in instinct and breeding. The taller of the two,
whom the other addressed as Yolande, seemed particularly
pleasing. The very name charmed Maisie. She was friends
with them at once. They both possessed a certain nameless
attraction that constitutes in itself the best possible intro-
duction. Maisie hesitated to ask them whence they came, but
it was clear from their talk they knew Wolverden intimately.
101
WOLVERDEN TOWER
After a minute the piano struck up once more. A
famous Scotch vocaHst^ in a diamond necklet and a dress
to match, took her place on the stage, just in front of the
footlights. As chance would have it, she began singing the
song Maisie most of all hated. It was Scott's ballad of
' Proud Maisie,' set to music by Carlo Ludovici —
' Proud Maisie is in the wood.
Walking so early ;
Sweet Robin sits on the bush.
Singing so rarely.
" Tell me, thou bonny bird.
When shall I marry me?"
" When six braw gentlemen
Kirkward shall carry ye."
" Who makes the bridal bed,
Birdie, say truly .'' "
''The grey-headed sexton
That delves the grave duly.
"The glow-worm o'er grave and stone
Shall light thee steady ;
The owl from the steeple sing,
' Welcome, proud lady.'
Maisie listened to the song with grave discomfort. She
had never liked it, and to-night it appalled her. She did
not know that just at that moment Mrs. West was whisper-
ing in a perfect fever of apology to a lady by her side, ' Oh
dear ! oh dear ! what a dreadful thing of me ever to have
permitted that song to be sung here to-night ! It was
horribly thoughtless ! Why, now I remember, Miss
Llewelyn's name, you know, is Maisie ! — and there she is
listening to it with a face like a sheet ! I shall never
forgive myself! '
The tall, dark girl by Maisie' s side, whom the other
called Yolande, leaned across to her sympathetically. ' You
102
WOLVERDEN TOWER
don't like that song? ' she said, with just a tinge of reproach
in her voice as she said it.
' I hate it ! ' Maisie answered, trying hard to compose
herself.
'Why so?' the tall, dark girl asked, in a tone of calm
and singular sweetness. 'It is sad, perhaps; but it's lovely
— and natural ! '
'My own name is Maisie,' her new friend replied, with
an ill-repressed shudder. ' And somehow that song pursues
me through life. I seem always to hear the horrid ring
of the words, "When six braw gentlemen kirkward shall
carry ye." I wish to Heaven my people had never called
me Maisie ! '
' And yet why ? ' the tall, dark girl asked again, with a
sad, mysterious air. ' Why this clinging to life — this terror
of death — this inexplicable attachment to a world of misery ?
And with such eyes as yours, too ! Your eyes are like mine '
— Avhich was a compliment, certainly, for the dark girl's
own pair were strangely deep and lustrous. ' People with
eyes such as those, that can look into futurity, ought not
surely to shrink from a mere gate like death ! For death
is but a gate — the gate of life in its fullest beauty. It
is written over the door, " Mors janua vitae." '
' What door ? ' Maisie asked — for she remembered having
read those selfsame words, and tried in vain to translate
them, that very day, though the meaning was now clear
to her.
The answer electrified her: 'The gate of the vault in
Wolverden churchyard.'
She said it very low, but with pregnant expression.
' Oh, how dreadful ! ' Maisie exclaimed, drawing back.
The tall, dark girl half frightened her.
' Not at all,' the girl answered. ' This life is so short, so
vain, so transitory ! And beyond it is peace — eternal peace
— the calm of rest — the joy of the spirit.'
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WOLVERDEN TOWER
'You come to anchor at last,' her companion added.
' But if — one has somebody one would not Avish to leave
behind ? ' Maisie suggested timidly.
' He will follow before long/ the dark girl replied
with quiet decision, interpreting rightly the sex of the
indefinite substantive. 'Time passes so quickly. And
if time passes quickly in time, how much more, then, in
eternity ! '
' Hush, Yolande,' the other dark girl put in, with a
warning glance ; ' there 's a new tableau coming. Let
me see, is this " The Death of Ophelia " .'' No, that 's
number four; this is number three, "The Martyrdom of
St. Ag-nes." '
HI
' My dear,' Mrs. West said, positively oozing apology, when
she met Maisie in the supper-room, ' I 'm afraid you 've been
left in a corner by yourself almost all the evening ! '
' Oh dear, no,' Maisie answered with a quiet smile. ' I
had that Oxford undergraduate at my elbow at first ; and
afterwards those two nice girls^ with the flowing Avhite
dresses and the beautiful eyes, came and sat beside me.
What's their name, I wonder?'
' Which girls .'' ' Mrs. West asked, with a little surprise in
her tone, for her impression was rather that Maisie had been
sitting between two empty chairs for the greater part of the
evening, muttering at times to herself in the most uncanny
way, but not talking to anybody.
Maisie glanced round the room in search of her new
friends, and for some time could not see them. At last,
she observed them in a remote alcove, drinking red wine
by themselves out of Venetian-glass beakers. ' Those two,'
she said, pointing towards them. ' They 're such charming
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girls ! Can you tell me who they are ? I 've quite taken a
fancy to them.'
Mrs. West gazed at them for a second — or rather, at the
recess toAvards which Maisie pointed — and then turned
to Maisie with much the same oddly embarrassed look and
manner as the undergraduate's. ' Oh, those ! ' she said
slowly, peering through and through her, Maisie thought.
'Those — must be some of the professionals from London.
At any rate — I 'm not sure which you mean — over there by
the curtain, in the Moorish nook, you say — well, I can't tell
you their names ! So they imist be pi'ofessionals.'
She went off with a singularly frightened manner. Maisie
noticed it and wondered at it. But it made no great or
lasting impression.
When the party broke up, about midnight or a little
later, Maisie went along the corridor to her own bedroom.
At the end, by the door, the two other girls happened to be
standing, apparently gossiping.
' Oh, you 've not gone home yet .'' ' Maisie said, as she
passed, to Yolande.
' No, we 're stopping here,' the dark girl with the speak-
ing eyes answered.
Maisie paused for a second. Then an impulse burst over
her. ' Will you come and see my room } ' she asked, a little
timidly.
' Shall we go, Hedda ? ' Yolande said, with an inquiring
glance at her companion.
Her friend nodded assent, Maisie opened the door, and
ushered them into her bedroom.
The ostentatiously opulent fire was still burning brightly,
the electric light flooded the room with its brilliancy, the
curtains were drawn, and the shutters fastened. For a while
the three girls sat together by the hearth and gossiped
quietly. Maisie liked her new friends — their voices were
so gentle, soft, and sympathetic, while for face and figure
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they might have sat as models to Burne-Jones or BotticelU.
Their dresses, too, took her delicate Welsh fancy; they
were so dainty, yet so simple. The soft silk fell in natural
folds and dimples. The only ornaments they wore were
two curious brooches of very antique workmanship — as
Maisie supposed — somewhat Celtic in design, and enamelled
in blood-red on a gold background. Each carried a flower
laid loosely in her bosom. Yolande's was an orchid with
long, floating streamers, in colour and shape recalling some
Southern lizard ; dark purple spots dappled its lip and
petals. Hedda's was a flower of a sort Maisie had never
before seen — the stem spotted like a viper's skin, green
flecked with russet-brown, and uncanny to look upon ; on
either side, great twisted spirals of red-and-blue blossoms,
each curled after the fashion of a scorpion's tail, very strange
and lurid. Something weird and witch-like about flowers
and dresses rather attracted Maisie ; they affected her with
the half-repellent fascination of a snake for a bird ; she felt
such blossoms were fit for incantations and sorceries. But
a lily-of-the-valley in Yolande's dark hair gave a sense of
purity which assoi'ted better with the girl's exquisitely calm
and nun-like beauty.
After a while Hedda rose. ' This air is close,' she said.
' It ought to be warm outside to-night, if one may judge by
the sunset. May I open the window ? '
' Oh, certainly, if you like,' Maisie answered, a vague
foreboding now struggling within her against innate
politeness.
Hedda drew back the curtains and unfastened the
shutters. It was a moonlit evening. The breeze hardly
stirred the bare boughs of the silver birches. A sprinkling
of soft snow on the terrace and the hills just whitened the
ground. The moon lighted it up, falling full upon the
Hall ; the church and tower below stood silhouetted in
dark against a cloudless expanse of starry sky in the back-
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ground. Hedda opened the window. Cool, fresh air blew
in, very soft and genial, in spite of the snow and the late-
ness of the season. ' What a glorious night ! ' she said,
looking up at Orion overhead. 'Shall we stroll out for a
while in it .'' '
If the suggestion had not thus been thrust upon her from
outside, it would never have occurred to Maisie to walk
abroad in a strange place, in evening dress, on a winter's
night, with snow Avhitening the ground ; but Hedda's voice
sounded so SAveetly persuasive, and the idea itself seemed so
natural now she had once proposed it, that Maisie followed
her two new friends on to the moonlit terrace without a
moment's hesitation.
They paced once or twice up and down the gravelled
walks. Strange to say, though a sprinkling of dry snow
powdered the ground under foot, the air itself was soft and
balmy. Stranger still, Maisie noticed, almost without
noticing it, that though they walked three abreast, only one
pair of footprints — her own — lay impressed on the snow in a
long trail when they turned at either end and re-paced the
platform. Yolande and Hedda must step lightly indeed ;
or pei'haps her own feet might be warmer or thinner shod,
so as to melt the light layer of snow more I'eadily.
The girls slipped their arms through hers. A little thrill
coursed through her. Then, after three or four turns up
and down the terrace, Yolande led the way quietly down
the broad flight of steps in the direction of the church on
the lower level. In that bright, broad moonlight Maisie
went with them undeterred ; the Hall was still alive with
the glare of electric lights in bedroom windows ; and the
presence of the other girls, both wholly free from any signs
of fear, took off all sense of terror or loneliness. They
strolled on into the churchyard. Maisie's eyes were now
fixed on the new white tower, which merged in the silhouette
against the starry sky into much the same grey and indefinite
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hue as the older parts of the building. Before she quite
knew where she was, she found herself at the head of the
worn stone steps which led into the vault by whose doors
she had seen old Bessie sitting. In the pallid moonlight,
with the aid of the greenish reflection from the snow, she
could just read the words inscribed over the portal, the
words that Yolande had repeated in the drawing-room,
' Mors janua vitae.'
Yolande moved down one step. Maisie drew back for
the first time with a faint access of alarm. ' You 're —
you 're not going down there ! ' she exclaimed, catching her
breath for a second.
' Yes, I am,' her new friend answered in a calmly quiet
voice. ' Why not .'* We live here.'
* You live here ? ' Maisie echoed, freeing her arms by a
sudden movement and standing away from her mysterious
friends with a tremulous shudder.
' Yes, we live here,' Hedda broke in, without the slightest
emotion. She said it in a voice of perfect calm, as one
might say it of any house in a street in London.
Maisie was far less terrified than she might have imagined
beforehand would be the case under such unexpected condi-
tions. The two girls were so simple, so natural, so strangely
like herself, that she could not say she was really afi-aid of
them. She shrank, it is true, from the nature of the door
at which they stood, but she received the unearthly announce-
ment that they lived there with scarcely more than a slight
tremor of surprise and astonishment,
'You will come in with us.''' Hedda said in a gently
enticing tone. ' We went into your bedroom.'
Maisie hardly liked to say no. They seemed so anxious
to show her their home. With trembling feet she moved
down the first step, and then the second. Yolande kept
ever one pace in front of her. As Maisie reached the third
step, the two girls, as if moved by one design, took her
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wrists in their hands, not unkindly, but coaxingly. They
reached the actual doors of the vault itself — two heavy
bronze valves, meeting in the centre. Each bore a ring for
a handle, pierced through a Gorgon's head embossed upon
the surface. Yolande pushed them with her hand. They
yielded instantly to her light touch, and opened inward.
Yolande, still in front, passed from the glow of the moon to
the gloom of the vault, which a ray of moonlight just de-
scended obliquely. As she passed, for a second, a weird
sight met Maisie's eyes. Her face and hands and dress
became momentarily self-luminous; but through them, as
they glowed, she could descry within every bone and joint
of her living skeleton, dimly shadowed in dark through the
luminous haze that marked her body.
Maisie drew back once more, terrified. Yet her terror
was not quite what one could describe as fear : it was rather
a vague sense of the profoundly mystical. ' I can't ! I can't!'
she cried, with an appealing glance. ' Hedda ! Yolande ! I
cannot go with you.'
Hedda held her hand tight, and almost seemed to force
her. But Yolande, in front, like a mother with her child,
turned round with a grave smile. ' No, no,' she said reprov-
ingly. ' Let her come if she will, Hedda, of her own
accord, not otherwise. The tower demands a willing
victim.'
Her hand on Maisie's wrist was strong but persuasive. It
drew her without exercising the faintest compulsion. ' Will
you come with us, dear ? ' she said, in that winning silvery
tone which had captivated Maisie's fancy from the very first
moment they spoke together. Maisie gazed into her eyes.
They were deep and tender. A strange resolution seemed
to nerve her for the effort. ' Yes, yes — I — will — come — with
you,' she answered slowly.
Hedda on one side, Yolande on the other, now went
before her, holding her wrists in their grasp, but rather
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enticing than drawing her. As each reached the gloom, the
same luminous appearance which Maisie had noticed before
spread over their bodies, and the same weird skeleton shape
showed faintly through their limbs in darker shadow.
Maisie crossed the threshold with a convulsive gasp. As
she crossed it she looked down at her own dress and body.
They were semi-transparent, like the others', though not
quite so self-luminous ; the framework of her limbs appeared
within in less certain outline, yet quite dark and distinguish-
able.
The doors swung to of themselves behind her. Those
three stood alone in the vault of Wolverden.
Alone, for a minute or two ; and then, as her eyes grew
accustomed to the grey dusk of the interior, Maisie began
to perceive that the vault opened out into a large and
beautiful hall or crypt, dimly lighted at first, but becoming
each moment more vaguely clear and more dreamily definite.
Gradually she could make out great rock-hewn pillars,
Romanesque in their outline or dimly Oriental, like the
sculptured columns in the caves of Ellora, supporting a roof
of vague and uncertain dimensions, more or less strangely
dome-shaped. The effect on the whole was like that of the
second impression produced by some dim cathedral, such as
Chartres or Milan, after the eyes have grown accustomed to
the mellow light from the stained-glass windows, and have
recovered from the blinding glare of the outer sunlight.
But the architecture, if one may call it so, was more mosque-
like and magical. She turned to her companions. Yolande
and Hedda stood still by her side ; their bodies were now
self-luminous to a greater degree than even at the threshold;
but the terrible transparency had disappeared altogether ;
they were once more but beautiful though strangely trans-
figured and more than mortal women.
Then Maisie understood in her own soul, dimly, the mean-
ing of those mystic words written over the portal — ' Mors
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janua vitae ' — Death is the gate of life ; and also the interpre-
tation of that awful vision of death dwelling within them as
they crossed the threshold ; for through that gate they had
passed to this underground palace.
Her two guides still held her hands, one on either side.
But they seemed rather to lead her on now, seductively and
resistlessly, than to draw or compel her. As she moved in
through the hall, with its endless vistas of shadowy pillars,
seen now behind, now in dim perspective, she was gradually
aware that many other people crowded its aisles and corridors.
Slowly they took shape as forms more or less clad, mysterious,
varied, and of many ages. Some of them wore flowing robes,
half mediaeval in shape, like the two friends who had brought
her there. They looked like the saints on a stained-glass
window. Others were girt merely with a light and floating
Coan sash ; while some stood dimly nude in the darker
recesses of the temple or palace. All leaned eagerly forward
with one mind as she approached, and regarded her with
deep and sympathetic interest. A few of them murmured
words — mere cabalistic sounds which at fii'st she could not
understand ; but as she moved further into the hall, and saw
at each step more clearly into the gloom, they began to
have a meaning for her. Before long, she was aware that
she understood the mute tumult of voices at once by some
internal instinct. The Shades addressed her ; she answered
them. She knew by intuition what tongue they spoke ; it
was the Language of the Dead ; and, by passing that portal
with her two companions, she had herself become enabled
both to speak and understand it.
A soft and flowing tongue, this speech of the Nether
World — all vowels it seemed, without distinguishable con-
sonants ; yet dimly recalling every other tongue, and com
pounded, as it were, of what was common to all of them.
It flowed from those shadowy lips as clouds issue inchoate
from a mountain valley ; it was formless, uncertain, vague,
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but yet beautiful. She hardly knew, indeed, as it fell upon
her senses^ if it were sound or perfume.
Through this tenuous world Maisie moved as in a dream,
her two companions still cheering and guiding her. When
they reached an inner shrine or chantry of the temple she
was dimly conscious of more terrible forms pervading the
background than any of those that had yet appeared to her.
This was a more austere and antique apartment than the
rest ; a shadowy cloister, prehistoric in its severity ; it
recalled to her mind something indefinitely intermediate
between the huge unwrought trilithons of Stonehenge and
the massive granite pillars of Philse and Luxor. At the
fui*ther end of the sanctuary a sort of Sphinx looked down on
her, smiling mysteriously. At its base, on a rude megalithic
throne, in solitary state, a High Priest was seated. He bore
in his hand a wand or sceptre. All round, a strange court
of half-unseen acolytes and shadowy hierophants stood
attentive. They were girt, as she fancied, in what looked
like leopards' skins, or in the fells of some earlier prehistoric
lion. These wore sabre-shaped teeth suspended by a string
round their dusky necks ; others had ornaments of uncut
amber, or hatchets of jade threaded as collars on a cord of
sinew. A few, more barbaric than savage in type, flaunted
torques of gold as armlets and necklets.
The High Priest rose slowly and held out his two hands,
just level with his head, the palms turned outward. 'You
have brought a willing victim as Guardian of the Tower ? '
he asked, in that mystic tongue, of Yolande and Hedda.
'We have brought a willing victim,' the two girls answered.
The High Priest gazed at her. His glance was piercing.
Maisie trembled less with fear than with a sense of strange-
ness, such as a neophyte might feel on being first presented
at some courtly pageant. ' You come of your own accord ? '
the Priest inquired of her in solemn accents.
' I come of my own accord,' Maisie answered, with an
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inner consciousness that she was bearing her part in some
immemorial ritual. Ancestral memories seemed to stir
within her.
* It is well/ the Priest murmured. Then he turned to her
guides. ' She is of royal lineage .'' ' he inquired^ taking his
wand in his hand again.
' She is a Llewelyn,' Yolande answered, ' of royal lineage,
and of the race that, after your own, earliest bore sway in
this land of Britain. She has in her veins the blood of
Arthur, of Ambrosius, and of Vortigern.'
' It is well,' the Priest said again. 'I know these princes.'
Then he turned to Maisie. ' This is the ritual of those who
build,' he said, in a very deep voice. ' It has been the
ritual of those who build from the days of the builders of
Lokmariaker and Avebury. Every building man makes
shall have its human soul, the soul of a virgin to guard and
protect it. Three souls it requires as a living talisman
against chance and change. One soul is the soul of the
human victim slain beneath the foundation-stone ; she is the
guardian spirit against earthquake and ruin. One soul is
the soul of the human victim slain when the building is half
built up ; she is the guardian spirit against battle and
tempest. One soul is the soul of the human victim who
flings herself of her own free will off tower or gable when
the building is complete ; she is the guardian spirit against
thunder and lightning. Unless [ a building be duly fasted
with these three, how can it hope to stand against the
hostile powers of fire and flood and storm and earthquake .'' '
An assessor at his side, unnoticed till then, took up the
parable. He had a stern Roman face, and bore a shadowy
suit of Roman armour. ' In times of old,' he said, Avith iron
austerity, ' all men knew well these rules of building. They
built in solid stone to endure for ever : the works they
erected have lasted to this day, in this land and others. So
built we the amphitheatres of Rome and Verona; so built
H 113
WOLVERDEN TOWER
we the walls of Lincoln, York, and London. In the blood
of a king's son laid we the foundation-stone : in the blood
of a king's son laid we the coping-stone : in the blood of
a maiden of royal line fasted we the bastions against fire
and lightning. But in these latter days, since faith grows
dim, men build with burnt brick and rubble of plaster ; no
foundation spirit or guardian soul do they give to their
bridges, their walls, or their towei'S : so bridges break, and
walls fall in, and towers crumble, and the art and mystery
of building aright have perished from among you.'
He ceased. The High Priest held out his wand and
spoke again. ' We are the Assembly of Dead Builders and
Dead Victims,' he said, ' for this mark of Wolverden ; all of
whom have built or been built upon in this holy site of
immemorial sanctity. We are the stones of a living fabric.
Before this place was a Christian church, it was a temple of
Woden. And before it was a temple of Woden, it was a
shrine of Hercules. And before it was a shrine of Hercules,
it was a grove of Nodens. And before it was a grove of
Nodens, it was a Stone Circle of the Host of Heaven. And
before it was a Stone Circle of the Host of Heaven, it was
the grave and tumulus and underground palace of Me, who
am the earliest builder of all in this place ; and my name in
my ancient tongue is Wolf, and I laid and hallowed it. And
after me. Wolf, and my namesake Wulfhere, was this barrow
called Ad Lupum and Wolverden. And all these that are
here with me have built and been built upon in this holy site
for all generations. And i/on are the last who come to
join us.'
Maisie felt a cold thrill course down her spine as he spoke
these words ; but courage did not fail her. She was dimly
aware that those who offer themselves as victims for service
must offer themselves willingly; for the gods demand a
voluntary victim ; no beast can be slain unless it nod assent ;
and none can be made a guardian spirit who takes not the
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post upon him of his own free will. She turned meekly to
Hedda. 'Who are you ?' she asked, trembling.
' I am Hedda/ the girl answered^ in the same soft sweet
voice and winning tone as before ; ' Hedda, the daughter of
Gorm, the chief of the Northmen who settled in East
Anglia. And I was a worshipper of Thor and Odin. And
when my father, Gorm, fought against Alfred, King of
Wessex, was I taken prisoner. And Wulfhere, the Renting,
was then building the first church and tower of Wolverden.
And they baptized me, and shrived me, and I consented of
my own free will to be built under the foundation-stone.
And there my body lies built up to this day ; and / am the
guardian spirit against earthquake and ruin.'
'And who are you.^' Maisie asked, turning again to
Yolande.
' I am Yolande Fitz-Aylwin,' the tall dark girl answered ;
' a royal maiden too, sprung from the blood of Henry Plan-
tagenet. And when Roland Fitz-Stephen was building anew
the choir and chancel of Wulfhere's minster, I chose to be
immured in the fabric of the wall, for love of the Church
and all holy saints ; and there my body lies built up to
this day ; and / am the guardian against battle and
tempest.'
Maisie held her friend's hand tight. Her voice hardly
trembled. 'And I ? ' she asked once more. 'What fate for
me ? Tell me ! '
' Your task is easier far,' Yolande answered gently. ' For
1/ou shall be the guardian of the new tower against thunder
and lightning. Now, those who guard against earthquake
and battle are buried alive under the foundation-stone or
in the wall of the building ; there they die a slow death of
starvation and choking. But those who guard against
thunder and lightning cast themselves alive of their own
free will from the battlements of the tower, and die in the
air before they reach the ground ; so their fate is the easiest
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WOLVERDEN TOWER
and the lightest of all who would serve mankind ; and
thencefoi-th they live with us here in our palace.'
Maisie clung to her hand still tighter. ' Must I do it } '
she asked, pleading.
' It is not must,' Yolande replied in the same caressing
tone, yet with a calmness as of one in whom earthly desires
and earthly passions are quenched for ever. ' It is as you
choose yourself. None but a willing victim may be a
guardian spirit. This glorious privilege comes but to the
purest and best amongst us. Yet what better end can you
ask for your soul than to dwell here in our midst as our
comrade for ever, where all is peace, and to preserve the
tower whose guardian you are from evil assaults of lightning
and thunderbolt.'*'
Maisie flung her arms round her friend's neck. ' But — I
am afraid/ she murmured. Why she should even wish to
consent she knew not, yet the strange serene peace in these
strange girls' eyes made her mysteriously in love with them
and with the fate they offered her. They seemed to move
like the stars in their orbits. ' How shall I leap from the
top .'' ' she cried. ' How shall I have coui'age to mount
the stairs alone, and fling myself off from the lonely
battlement .'' '
Yolande unwound her arms with a gentle forbearance.
She coaxed her as one coaxes an unwilling child. ' You
will not be alone,' she said, with a tender pressure. 'We
will all go with you. We will help you and encourage you.
We will sing our sweet songs of life-in-death to you. Why
should you draw back } All we have faced it in ten
thousand ages, and we tell you with one voice, you need
not fear it. 'Tis life you should fear — life, with its dangers,
its toils, its heartbreakings. Here we dwell for ever in
unbroken peace. Come, come, and join us ! '
She held out her arms with an enticing gesture. Maisie
sprang into them, sobbing. ' Yes, I will come,' she cried in
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WOLVERDEN TOWER
an access of hysterical fervour. ' These are the arms of
Death — I embrace them. These are the Hps of Death — I
kiss them. Yolande, Yolande, I will do as you ask me ! '
The tall dark girl in the luminous white robe stooped
down and kissed her twice on the forehead in return.
Then she looked at the High Priest. ' We are ready,' she
murmured in a low, grave voice. ' The Victim consents.
The Virgin will die. Lead on to the tower. We are ready !
We are ready ! '
IV
From the recesses of the temple — if temple it were — from
the inmost shrines of the shrouded cavern, unearthly music
began to sound of itself, with wild modulation, on strange
reeds and tabors. It swept through the aisles like a rushing
wind on an ^Eolian harp ; at times it wailed with a voice
like a woman's ; at times it rose loud in an organ-note of
triumph ; at times it sank low into a pensive and melancholy
flute-like symphony. It waxed and waned ; it swelled and
died away again ; but no man saw how or whence it pro-
ceeded. Wizard echoes issued from the crannies and vents
in the invisible walls ; they sighed from the ghostly inter-
spaces of the pillars ; they keened and moaned from the
vast overhanging dome of the palace. Gradually the song
shaped itself by weird stages into a processional measure.
At its sound the High Priest rose slowly from his immemo-
rial seat on the mighty cromlech which formed his throne.
The Shades in leopards' skins ranged themselves in bodiless
rows on either hand ; the ghostly wearers of the sabre-
toothed lions' fangs followed like ministrants in the foot-
steps of their hierarch.
Hedda and Yolande took their places in the procession.
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WOLVERDEN TOWER
Maisie stood between the two, with hair floatins^ on the air ;
she looked like a novice who goes up to take the veil,
accompanied and cheered by two elder sisters.
The ghostly pageant began to move. Unseen music
followed it with fitful gusts of melody. They passed down
the main corridor^ between shadowy Doric or Ionic pillars
which grew dimmer and ever dimmer again in the distance
as they approached, with slow steps, the earthward portal.
At the gate, the High Priest pushed against the valves
with his hand. They opened outward.
He passed into the moonlight. The attendants thronged
after him. As each wild figure crossed the threshold the
same strange sight as before met Maisie's eyes. For a
second of time each ghostly body became self-luminous, as
with some curious phosphorescence ; and through each, at
the moment of passing the portal, the dim outline of a
skeleton loomed briefly visible. Next instant it had clothed
itself as with earthly members,
Maisie reached the outer air. As she did so, she gasped.
For a second, its chilliness and freshness almost choked her.
She was conscious now that the atmosphere of the vault,
though pleasant in its way, and warm and dry, had been
loaded with fumes as of burning incense, and with somnolent
vapours of poppy and mandragora. Its drowsy ether had
cast her into a lethargy. But after the first minute in the
outer world, the keen night air revived her. Snow lay still
on the ground a little deeper than when she first came out,
and the moon rode lower ; otherwise, all was as before, save
that only one or two lights still burned here and there in
the great house on the terrace. Among them she could
recognise her own room, on the ground floor in the new
wing, by its open window.
The procession made its way across the churchyard
towards the tower. As it wound among the graves an
owl hooted. All at once Maisie remembered the lines
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WOLVERDEN TOWER
that had so chilled her a few short hours before in the
drawing-room —
' The glow-worm o'er grave and stone
Shall light thee steady ;
The owl from the steeple sing,
"Welcome, proud lady !"'
But, marvellous to relate, they no longer alarmed her. She
felt rather that a friend was welcoming her home ; she clung
to Yolande's hand with a gentle pressure.
As they passed in front of the porch, with its ancient
yew-tree, a stealthy figure glided out like a ghost from the
darkling shadow. It was a woman, bent and bowed, with
quivering limbs that shook half palsied. Maisie recognised
old Bessie. ' I knew she would come ! ' the old hag
muttered between her toothless jaws. ' I knew Wolverden
Tower would yet be duly fasted ! '
She put herself, as of right, at the head of the procession.
They moved on to the tower, rather gliding than walking.
Old Bessie drew a rusty key from her pocket, and fitted it
with a twist into the brand-new lock. ' What turned the
old will turn the new,' she murmured, looking round and
grinning. Maisie shrank from her as she shrank from not
one of the Dead ; but she followed on still into the ringers'
room at the base of the tower.
Thence a staircase in the corner led up to the summit.
The High Priest mounted the stair, chanting a mystic
refrain, whose runic sounds were no longer intelligible to
Maisie. As she reached the outer air, the Tongue of the
Dead seemed to have become a mere blank of mingled
odours and murmurs to her. It was like a summer breeze,
sighing through warm and resinous pinewoods. But Yolande
and Hedda spoke to her yet, to cheer her, in the language
of the living. She recognised that as revenants they were
still in touch with the upper air and the world of the
embodied.
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WOLVERDEN TOWER
They tempted her up the stair with encouraging fingers.
Maisie followed them like a child, in implicit confidence.
The steps wound round and round, spirally, and the stair-
case was dim ; but a supernatural light seemed to fill the
tower, diffused from the bodies or souls of its occupants.
At the head of all, the High Priest still chanted as he went
his unearthly litany ; magic sounds of chimes seemed to
swim in unison with his tune as they mounted. Were those
floating notes material or spiritual ? They passed the belfry ;
no tongue of metal wagged ; but the rims of the great bells
resounded and reverberated to the ghostly symphony with
sympathetic music. Still they passed on and on, upward
and upward. They reached the ladder that alone gave
access to the final story. Dust and cobwebs already clung
to it. Once more Maisie drew back. It was dark overhead,
and the luminous haze began to fail them. Her friends
held her hands with the same kindly persuasive touch as
ever. ' I cannot ! ' she cried, shrinking away from the tall,
steep ladder. ' Oh, Yolande, I cannot ! '
' Yes, dear,' Yolande whispered in a soothing voice. ' You
can. It is but ten steps, and I will hold your hand tight.
Be brave and mount them ! '
The sweet voice encouraged her. It was like heavenly
music. She knew not why she should submit, or, rather,
consent ; but none the less she consented. Some spell
seemed cast over her. With tremulous feet, scarcely realis-
ing what she did, she mounted the ladder and went up four
steps of it.
Then she turned and looked down again. Old Bessie's
wrinkled face met her frightened eyes. It was smiling
horribly. She shrank back once more, terrified. ' I can't
do it,' she cried, ' if that woman comes up ! I 'm not afraid
of you, dear' — she pressed Yolande's hand — 'but she, she is
too terrible ! '
Hedda looked back and raised a warning finger. ' Let
120
WOLVERDEN TOWER
the woman stop below/ she said ; ' she savours too much of
the evil world. We must do nothing to frighten the willing
victim.'
The High Priest by this time, with his ghostly fingers,
had opened the trap-door that gave access to the summit.
A ray of moonlight slanted through the aperture. The
breeze blew down with it. Once more Maisie felt the
stimulating and reviving effect of the open air. Vivified
by its freshness, she struggled up to the top, passed out
through the trap, and found herself standing on the open
platform at the summit of the tower.
The moon had not yet quite set. The light on the snow
shone pale green and mysterious. For miles and miles
ai'ound she could just make out, by its aid, the dim contour
of the downs, with their thin white mantle, in the solemn
silence. Range behind range rose faintly shimmering.
The chant had now ceased ; the High Priest and his
acolytes were mingling strange herbs in a mazar-bowl or
chalice. Stray perfumes of myrrh and of cardamoms
were wafted towards her. The men in leopards' skins
burnt smouldering sticks of spikenard. Then Yolande led
the postulant forward again, and placed her close up to
the new white parapet. Stone heads of virgins smiled on
her from the angles. ' She must front the east,' Hedda
said in a tone of authority : and Yolande turned her face
towards the rising sun accordingly. Then she opened
her lips and spoke in a very solemn voice. ' From this
new-built tower you fling yourself,' she said, or rather
intoned, ' that you may serve mankind, and all the powers
that be, as its guardian spirit against thunder and lightning.
Judged a virgin, pure and unsullied in deed and word and
thought, of royal race and ancient lineage — a Cymry of the
Cymry — you are found worthy to be intrusted with this
chai-ge and this honour. Take care that never shall dart
or thunderbolt assault this tower, as She that is below you
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WOLVERDEN TOWER
takes care to preserve it from eai'thquake and ruin, and She
that is midway takes care to preserve it from battle and
tempest. This is your charge. See well that you keep it,'
She took her by both hands. ' Mary Llewelyn/ she said,
' you willing victim, step on to the battlement.'
Maisie knew not why, but with very little shrinking she
stepped as she was told, by the aid of a wooden footstool,
on to the eastward-looking parapet. There, in her loose
white robe, with her arms spread abroad, and her hair flying
free, she poised herself for a second, as if about to shake out
some unseen wings and throw herself on the air like a swift
or a swallow.
' Mary Llewelyn,' Yolande said once more, in a still
deeper tone, with ineffable earnestness, ' cast yourself down,
a willing sacrifice, for the service of man, and the security
of this tower against thunderbolt and lightning.'
Maisie stretched her ai'ms wider, and leaned forward in
act to leap, fi'om the edge of the parapet, on to the snow-
clad churchyard.
One second more and the sacrifice would have been com-
plete. But before she could launch herself from the tower,
she felt suddenly a hand laid upon her shoulder from behind
to restrain her. Even in her existing state of nervous exalt-
ation she was aware at once that it was the hand of a living
and solid mortal, not that of a soul or guardian spirit. It
lay heavier upon her than Hedda's or Yolande's. It seemed
to clog and burden her. With a violent effort she strove to
shake herself free, and carry out her now fixed intention of
self-immolation, for the safety of the tower. But the hand
was too strong for her. She could not shake it off. It
gripped and held her.
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WOLVERDEN TOWER
She yielded, and, reeling, fell back with a gasp on to the
platform of the tower. At the selfsame moment a strange
terror and commotion seemed to seize all at once on the
assembled spirits. A weird cry rang voiceless through the
shadowy company. Maisie heard it as in a dream, very dim
and distant. It was thin as a bat's note ; almost inaudible
to the ear, yet perceived by the brain or at least by the
spirit. It was a cry of alarm, of fright, of warning. With
one accord, all the host of phantoms rushed hurriedly
forward to the battlements and pinnacles. The ghostly
High Priest went first, with his wand held downward ; the
men in leopards' skins and other assistants followed in
confusion. Theirs was a reckless rout. They flung them-
selves from the top, like fugitives from a cliff, and floated
fast through the air on invisible pinions. Hedda and
Yolande, ambassadresses and intermediaries with the upper
air, were the last to fly from the living presence. They
clasped her hand silently, and looked deep into her eyes.
There was something in that calm yet regretful look that
seemed to say, ' Farewell ! We have tried in vain to save
you, sister, from the terrors of living.'
The horde of spirits floated away on the air, as in a
witches' Sabbath, to the vault whence it issued. The
doors swung on their rusty hinges, and closed behind them.
Maisie stood alone with the hand that grasped her on the
tower.
The shock of the grasp, and the sudden departure of the
ghostly band in such wild dismay, threw Maisie for a while
into a state of semi-unconsciousness. Her head reeled
round ; her brain swam faintly. She clutched for support
at the parapet of the tower. But the hand that held her
sustained her still. She felt herself gently drawn down
with quiet mastery, and laid on the stone floor close by the
trap-door that led to the ladder.
The next thing of which she could feel sure was the voice
123
WOLVERDEN TOWER
of the Oxford undergraduate. He was distinctly frightened
and not a little tremulous. ' I think,' he said very softly,
laying her head on his lap, ' you had better rest a while.
Miss Llewelyn, before you try to get down again. I hope I
didn't catch you and disturb you too hastily. But one step
more, and you would have been over the edge. I really
couldn't help it.'
' Let me go,' Maisie moaned, trying to raise herself again,
but feeling too faint and ill to make the necessary effort to
recover the power of motion. ' I want to go with them ! I
want to join them ! '
' Some of the others will be up before long,' the under-
graduate said, supporting her head in his hands ; 'and they '11
help me to get you down again. Mr. Yates is in the belfry.
Meanwhile, if I were you, I 'd lie quite still, and take a drop
or two of this brandy.'
He held it to her lips. Maisie drank a mouthful, hardly
knowing what she did. Then she lay quiet where he placed
her for some minutes. How they lifted her down and con-
veyed her to her bed she scarcely knew. She was dazed
and terrified. She could only remember afterward that
thi'ee or four gentlemen in roughly huddled clothes had
carried or handed her down the ladder between them.
The spiral stair and all the rest were a blank to her.
VI
When she next awoke she was lying in her bed in the same
room at the Hall, with Mrs. West by her side, leaning over
her tenderly.
Maisie looked up through her closed eyes and just saw
the motherly face and grey hair bending above her. Then
voices came to her from the mist, vaguely : ' Yesterday was
124
WOLVERDEN TOWER
so hot for the thue of year, you see ! ' ' Very unusual
weather^ of course, for Christmas.' ' But a thunderstorm !
So strange ! I put it down to that. The electrical dis-
turbance must have affected the poor child's head.' Then
it dawned upon her that the conversation she heard was
passing between Mrs. West and a doctor.
She raised herself suddenly and wildly on her arms. The
bed faced the windows. She looked out and beheld — the
tower of Wolverden church, rent from top to bottom
with a mighty rent, while half its height lay tossed in
fragments on the ground in the churchyard.
' What is it ? ' she cried wildly, with a flush as of shame.
'Hush, hush!' the doctor said. 'Don't trouble! Don't
look at it ! '
' Was it — after I came down } ' Maisie moaned in vague
terror.
The doctor nodded. ' An hour after you were brought
down,' he said, ' a thunderstorm broke over it. The light-
ning struck and shattered the tower. They had not yet put
up the lightning-conductor. It was to have been done on
Boxing Day.'
A weird remorse possessed Maisie's soul. ' My fault ! '
she cried, starting up. ' My fault, my fault ! I have
neglected my duty I '
' Don't talk,' the doctor answered, looking hard at her.
' It is always dangerous to be too suddenly aroused from
these curious overwrought sleeps and trances.'
' And old Bessie .'' ' Maisie exclaimed, trembling with an
eei'ie presentiment.
The doctor glanced at Mrs. West. ' How did she know .'' '
he whispered. Then he turned to Maisie. ' You may as
well be told the truth as suspect it,' he said slowly. ' Old
Bessie must have been watching there. She was crushed
and half buried beneath the falling tower.'
'One more question, Mrs. West,' Maisie murmured, grow-
125
WOLVERDEN TOWER
ing faint with an access of supematui'al feai*. 'Those two
nice girls who sat on the chairs at each side of me through
the tableaux — are they hui't ? Were they in it ? '
Mrs. West soothed her hand. ' My dear child,' she said
gravely, with quiet emphasis, ' there were iio other girls.
This is mere hallucination. You sat alone by yourself
through the whole of the evening.'
126
VI
JANET'S NEMESIS
JANET'S NEMESIS
[Yoji will say atjirst, ^ A very old story I' Nay, not so. A
psychological study of what would really happen, if a familiar
incident of early fiction were to occur in our century. ^^
' Under no circumstances/ said the surgeon, in a very
decided voice, ' will it be possible for Lady Remenham to
take charge of her own infant.'
' In that case,' the Earl answered, somewhat downcast, ' I
suppose we shall have to look out for a wet-nurse.'
' Of course,' the surgeon replied. ' You can't expect the
baby to live upon nothing, can you .'' '
Lord Remenham was annoyed. In the first place, he did
not like to hear his son and heir — then two hours old —
cavalierly described in quite ordinary language as ' the baby.'
To be sure, the infant viscount exactly resembled most
other babies of those tender years — or rather minutes. He
was red and mottled and extremely pulpy-looking; and
his appearance in no way suggested his exalted station.
On the contrary, his face was marked by that comparative
absence of any particular nose and that unnecessary promin-
ence of two watery big eyes, which suggest our consanguinity
with the negro and the monkey. But more than that. Lord
Remenham was annoyed at this failure, on Gwendoline's
part, to perform the full duties of complete maternity which
her husband expected of her. Remenham was only thirty,
but he was austere and doctrinaire to a degree that would
not have done dishonour to half a century. He had taken a
I 129
JANET'S NEMESIS
first class in law and modern history. He was strong on the
necessity for keeping up the physical standard of the race
in general, and our old nobility in particular, through the
medium of its mothers. With this laudable end in view,
being a Balliol man himself, he had married a lawn-tennis-
playing, cross-country-riding, good-looking young woman
Gwendoline Blake by name, the daughter of a neighbouring
squire ; and he looked to her to raise him up a family of
sons and daughters of fine and sturdy old English vigour.
That Gwendoline should thus break down at the first demand
made upon her annoyed and surprised him. The race must
be going to the dogs indeed, if even girls like Gwendoline
couldn't be relied upon for the performance of the simplest
and most obvious maternal functions.
' Have you anybody you could suggest as a nurse for Lord
Hurley ? ' Remenham inquired, in his chilliest voice. He
wished to let the local doctor see he resented the imputation
that the new viscount was a mere baby.
'Most fortunate coincidence!' the doctor answered. 'I
had a case last night. The very thing. She didn't con-
template it ; but I believe the poor girl would be glad of
the extra money. Very destitute indeed, with nothing to
depend upon.'
' Married, I hope ? ' Remenham observed, raising his
eyebrows slightly.
The doctor pursed his lips. ' We can't have everything in
this world,' he answered, after a brief pause. ' Wet-nurses,
as your unaided perspicacity must have observed, spring
chiefly from the class who become mothers before they
become wives.'
Remenham gazed at him doubtfully. He had always a
suspicion that the doctor was chaffing him. ' Can she come
here at once ? ' he asked, with increased stiffness of manner.
' Come here at once .'' ' the doctor echoed. ' Why, it was
only last night she was confined, my lord. You don't expect
130
JANETS NEMESIS
Englishwomen to rival North American squaws, do you ?
No, no, she can't come. The baby must go to her.'
' For how long .'' ' Remenham faltered.
' A month, I suppose. We are most of us human. At
the end of that time the young woman, no doubt, can take
up her abode here.'
' What sort of cottage ? ' Remenham asked. He disliked
this arrangement.
' Very clean and nice. The child could be brought round
at frequent intervals to see Lady Remenham. There is no
time to be lost. We had better see her and arrange with
her immediately.'
Remenham gave way. He gave way under protest ; but
still he gave way. Thingumbob's food and Swiss milk
seemed to him greater evils than this proposed arrangement.
Gwendoline ought to have been able to take care of the
child herself; but seeing she wasn't — well, he must needs
fall back upon an efficient substitute.
He accompanied the doctor to the young woman's cottage.
He was an honest man, who acted up to his convictions ;
and where anybody so important as Viscount Hurley was
concerned, he would not trust to the services of any inter-
mediary. He saw the young woman himself — Janet Wells
by name ; a very good-looking young person, strong, tall,
and vigorous ; just the sort of girl whom, on any but moral
grounds, one would desire to intrust with the keeping of
one's children. He asked her a question or two, with
rfoc/n»a»-e stiffness, and was astonished to find she resented
some of them. However, though she was at first most
averse to giving up her own baby, to which she attached an
enormous importance — ' and very properly too,' Remenham
thought, ' for the instinct of maternity lies at the root of
race preservation ' — she was at last bribed over by promises
of money into accepting the charge of the infant viscount.
It was further arranged that the noble baby should be
131
JANET'S NEMESIS
brought to her, well wrapped up, at once, and that her own
plebeian infant, for better security of the high-born child,
should be conveyed away forthwith, to be brought up by
hand at a married sister's, lest the mother should be tempted
to share with it the natural sustenance duly bought and paid
for on account of Lord Hurley.
As soon as they were gone, however, Janet turned to her
mother. ' Mother,' she said firmly, ' I won't send my baby
away — no, not for any one's.'
' What will you do, then } ' her mother asked. * They 're
sure to ax what's become o' it.'
Janet reflected a minute or two. Then she said in a
tentative way, ' We could borrow Sarah Marlowe's baby, and
keep it in the house till they fetch the lady's. Then we
could send it away by their men to Lucy's, and tell them to
watch, if they liked, whether any other baby ever came
back again. Sarah Marlowe could fetch her own from Lucy's
to-morrow.
' If I was you,' the mother said, ' I wouldn't cast no doubts
upon it.'
'That's true,' Janet answered feebly. 'Just send Sarah's
baby away to Lucy's without saying nothing about it.' And
she dropped back on her pillow in a listless way, adding
nothing further.
So it came to pass that when little Lord Hurley arrived,
squat nose, mottled arms, red face, and all, there were three
babies in the cottage instead of two ; and Avhen the third,
which was Sarah Marlowe's, was sent away under charge of
Lord Remenham himself to the married sister's, Janet's and
the lordling remained in possession, to fight it out between
themselves as best they might as to their natural sustenance.
That evening, Janet submitted to have her own baby fed
upon Somebody's food, while she nursed the interloper as if
it were her own. But all the time she felt like a murderess.
How dare she deprive that child she had borne of its divinely-
132
JANET'S NEMESIS
sent nourishment ! Her heart — a mother's heart — turned
sick within her. Come what mighty she would nurse her
own baby, she vowed internally, not the Countess's. She
revolted against this unnatural and cruel diversion.
In the dead of night, therefore, when all in the house
were asleep, she arose tottering from her bed, and approached
the two cradles. Babies are much alike; her own and the
lordling looked so precisely similar that even she herself,
but for the clothes, could hardly have discriminated them.
Hastily and with trembling fingers she tore off the sleeping
young aristocrat's finery — he wore a trifle less of it at night
than by day — and also undressed her own red little bantling.
In two minutes' time the momentous transformation was
fully complete. The Countess herself could not have told
her own child, as it lay there and slept, from the cottager's
infant.
Once done, the substitution cost no trouble of any sort.
Next morning Janet saw the baby — her baby, in its borrowed
finery — washed and dressed and duly taken care of; while
she took little heed of the lordly changeling in its poorer
garb, as her mother fed it in a perfunctory way out of the
bottle. Somewhat later in the day, indeed, she looked at
her mother queerly. ' After all, mother,' she said, blinking,
' there 's something in blood. I think the little lord looks
more of a baby nor mine does somehow.' And she smiled
at her own child, in his stolen plumes, contentedly.
' He's a pi-oper baby, that he is,' her mother admitted,
not suspecting the substitution.
' I was thinking,' Janet put in, ' that perhaps it isn't safe
to keep my baby in the house now at all. They might make
a fuss if they were to find it out. Since this one 's come,
and I 've begun nursing him, he seems to belong to me,
almost. Suppose we was to send my own to Lucy's, to be
brought up by hand. It 'ud be kind of safer like.'
The mother acquiesced, not sorry to see that unwelcome
133
JANET'S NEMESIS
intruder, as she thought it, stowed safely out of the way.
So that very night, the real little Lord Hurley w^as ignomi-
niously despatched by private messenger to the married
sister's; while the false Lord Hurley, just as red and as
mottled, stopped on with his mother in his appropriated
feathers.
For ten months, at home and at the castle, Janet nursed
her own baby honestly and sedulously. She wasted upon it
the whole of a mother's affection. Gradually, when she
began to realise what she had done, it occurred to her that
perhaps she had not acted for herself with the supremest
wisdom. At first, her one idea had been the purely instinc-
tive and natural one that she wanted to nurse and tend her
own baby — not another woman's. But, joined with this
prime instinct, there had also been present more or less to
her mind another feeling — the feeling that her baby had as
good a right in the nature of things to wealth and honour,
and uncomfortably belaced and beflounced baby-linen, as
any other woman's baby. The pressure of these two ideas,
acting unequally together, had led her in a moment of
hysterical impulse to exchange the two children. Now the
exchange was once made it satisfied her very well — while
she could keep her own baby. The question was, Hoav
would things stand when the time came for her to part with
it.?
In due course it came about that the two infants were
christened. Lord and Lady Remenham had Janet's child
admitted into the fold of the Church with the aid of a bishop,
and a considerable admixture of those pomps and vanities of
this wicked world which they simultaneously and verbally
abjured for it. Janet herself, as by office entitled, brought
the baby to the font, where a Countess held it, while a
Marchioness assisted her in promising on its behalf a large
number of things, which nobody very seriously intended to
perform for it. The child was enrolled as an infantile Chris-
134.
JANETS NEMESIS
tian under the sonorous names of Hugh Seymour Planta-
genet, which in themselves might be regarded as slight
guarantees that the pomps and vanities aforesaid would be
duly avoided. As to the Countess's son, he was baptized at
the parish church of the village by the curate. Sister Lucy
held him at the font^ and abjured for him, with far greater
sincerity and probability, all participation in the sins of the
great world, from which Janet's action had effectually cut
him off. As for a name, Plantagenets being out of the
question, he was cheaply and economically baptized as
William,
Thus those two began their way through the world : the
cottager's unwelcome baby as the heir of an Earl ; and the
Countess's son as the illegitimate child of a discredited
housemaid.
While the ten months lasted Janet was happy enough.
She had her child with her, and she had assured its future.
But as the period of wet-nursing drew towards a close, and
there was talk of weaning, a terrible longing began to come
over her. Must she send away her baby, her own dear baby,
now she was just getting to love it far better than ever.'' —
now it 'took notice ' so sweetly, and returned her smile, and
looked up into her eyes with those big, black eyes, that
recalled its father ? It was too, too cruel. The neighbours
had noted that, while Janet was nursing the little lord, as
they thought, she had taken small note of her own neglected
baby, sent away to be brought up by hand at her sister
Lucy's. ' 'Tis that way always with love-children,' they
said ; ' partic'larly when the mother hires herself out
a-wetnursing. She don't want none of her own. Her heart
is all set on the baby she 's suckling.' Janet heard them as in
a di'eam, and smiled to herself with a strange, sad smile, half
superior knowledge, half regret and remoi-se ; not indeed for
her act, but for its coming consequence. ' She knows the
baby 's a lord,' the neighbours said, ' and she don't want none
135
JANETS NEMESIS
of her own love-child after it.' Not want none of her own,
indeed ! It was because it was her own that she couldn't
bear to part with it^ though she knew it was for the child's
best : she had secured its future. But what was its future
to her — if it must be taken away from her and made into a
lord, never to know its own mother ?
Nevertheless, fight against it and shrink from it as she
might, the time came at last when her baby must needs be
taken from her; or rather, when she must leave it, for from
the end of the first month she had lived at the castle, well
cared for and waited upon, and treated in everything as such
an important person as Lord Hurley's wet-nurse deserves
to be treated. But now Lady Remenham's orders were
absolute — that woman who was stealing her baby from her,
under pretence of its being her own : the child must be
weaned within a fortnight, and Janet must leave the castle
for ever.
The dark day came. With a horrible sinking Janet pre-
pared to go. The baby clung to her, as if it knew what was
happening. She tore herself away, more dead than alive. Lady
Remenham admitted she was very fond of the child. ' Fond
of the child, Gwendoline ! ' Lord Remenham exclaimed,
with greater truth : ' her conduct has been most exemplary.
We owe her a debt of the deepest gratitude. My only
feeling is that I 've sometimes had qualms of conscience,
when I saw how completely we had perverted — or shall I
say diverted .'' — her natural instincts. I 've felt at moments
she was centring upon Hugh affections which should have
been centred upon her own poor wronged and neglected baby.'
' You're always so absurdly conscientious,' Lady Remenham
replied, with her flippant air. ' We 've paid the girl well for it.'
' Her } Yes, her. But not her child,' Remenham
answered, with his deeper sense of equity. ^ Her child,
from whom we 've bribed her against her will by our offer
of money. And the more she has grown to love our baby —
136
JANETS NEMESIS
which she has undoubtedly done, Gwen — the more have I
felt my indebtedness to her infant. I shall provide for that
child.' And Remenham, who was a man with a conscience,
did provide for him decently. The Countess laughed .at
him. She did not know she was laughing at him for making
due provision for their own baby.
Remenham had his way, however. He was a quiet, forc-
ible man. He provided Janet with a lump sum down, in
ready money, which he placed at a bank for her ; and he
took a lodging-house for her in a Thames valley town,
neither too near nor too remote — near enough for her to
keep touch with her parents C Which is essential,' he said,
' to keeping straight with women of her class ') ; yet far
enough away for her to call herself ' Mrs. Wells,' without
much fear of contradiction by her neighbours. ' You have
now a chance, my girl,' he said, with his superior and con-
descending kindliness, ' of retrieving your position. Behave
well, and some good young man of your own class may still
make honourable love to you.'
But Janet was so overwhelmed with distress at leaving her
child — the child for whose future she had provided so fatally
— that she cared little just at present for the good young
man, or the honourable love he was still to offer her. Her
whole being for the moment was summed up in wounded
affection for the child of the worthless creature who had got
her into this trouble, and then basely enlisted in order to
desert her. And the sense that she had brought this second
bereaval upon herself by her foolish action only made her
grief more poignant. She felt no particular remorse for her
betrayal of Lord Remenham and his countess — most young
women of her class are not built for such remorse, — but she
suffered agonies of distress at the loss of her baby.
'You'll have your own little one back again now,' her
mother said to her, the first evening, while preparations for
the move were being made in the cottage.
137
JANETS NEMESIS
Her own little one ! Janet's heart gave a start. She had
hardly even thought of that other baby — the Countess's
baby — the baby at Lucy's. She supposed she must have hira
back.
'Oh, I '11 get him in a day or two,' she answered listlessly.
* But he '11 never be the same to me as — as the dear little
thing I 've been nursing for my lady.'
Her mother gazed hard at her.
' 'Tis strange,' she said ; ' 'tis always so with foster-mothers.
It seems as if love went out of one with the mother's milk.
If you nurse another woman's baby you get fonder of it, they
say, nor you would of your own. 'Tis no use denying it.
The good Lord has made us so.'
Janet rose from her chair and took refuge in her own bed-
room. There, sobbing low to herself, as one must do in a
cottage, lest one's sobs should be heard through the thin
partitions, she rolled and cried, hugging herself wildly at the
deadly irony of it. Love any other child better than her own
dear baby ! Why, she hated the very thought of having that
other one back. How could she endure to bring it up }
And, then, to think of the long years through which she must
go on pretending to love it !
However, for fear's sake and the neighbours', there was
nothing for her to do but to take back the child that had
been christened William, and to make believe to her mother
that she took some care of it. So she brought it away from
Lucy's, and carried it home to the cottage, while prepara-
tions still went on for the move to the lodging-house. Her
first thoughts of it were almost murderous. Bring up that
brat — that puling child of Lady Remenham's — that boy that
had dispossessed her of her own dear pet ! — no, no, she
could not do it. For a week or two she would pretend to
take care of it, for form's sake ; ' but there 's plenty of ways,'
she thought, ' you can get rid of babies a long way short of
strangling them. There always comes turns when you can
138
JANET'S NEMESIS
hardly nurse 'em through, Avith the best care you can give
'em. Neglect 'em then, and you 're soon enough free from
'em.'
However, the first night baby Willie came home, she
undressed him and tended him as she had tended Hugh
Seymour Plantagenet, her own lordly babe — tended that
Countess's brat who had hitherto been accustomed to the
tender mei'cies of Lucy's bringing up by hand, in the pre-
carious intervals of her dairy work and her charge of her own
five half-starved little ones. Baby Willie took to the new
nurse instantly. In her heart Janet despised the unclassed
little lordling. Accustomed as she was to her own noble
Hugh, with his exquisite baby-linen, his beautiful cradle,
and his embroidered coronet, she thought small things in-
deed of the poor wee changeling, who had been brought up
by hand in a labourer's cottage and swathed in such clothes
as she had provided beforehand for her own unwelcome, un-
classed infant. Nevertheless, she had acquired at the castle
a certain fastidious way of taking care of a baby ; and,
mechanically at first, by the mere routine habits of the Eng-
lish housemaid, she went on taking care of the Countess's
brat with the same solicitude she had been accustomed to
lavish upon Hugh Seymour Plantagenet.
Little by little a curious feeling began to come over her.
Every night and every morning she looked after baby Willie,
and did for him all the things she had been accustomed to
do in the night-nursery at the Earl's, for the reputed Lord
Hurley. And even as she did them she was dimly aware
that they afforded her a certain curious consolation and
comfort in her bereavement. Having lost her own baby,
for all practical purposes (by her own act, yet unwillingly),
it pleased her at least to have some other child upon whom
she might continue to expend those motherly cares which
were at first an instinct, and had now come to be a habit
with her. Even so, people who have lost a child of their
139
JANETS NEMESIS
own often wish to adopt one of corresponding age, not to
break continuity in the current of their feehngs. When
Janet first had to give up her own baby, it is true, she hated
the very thought of being compelled to tend that child
of the Countess's. But after a week or two of the other
woman's baby, she found the comfort of having still a child
to think about so great and so consoling, that not for worlds
would she have relinquished the pleasure of tending it.
Meanwhile, the move to the neighbouring town had been
made, and Janet had taken up her new position in life as
mistress of a lodging-house. Before her baby was born she
would have thought that position a very ' grand ' one, and
would have felt afraid of actually ordering about a servant
of her own ; but ten months at the castle had wrought a
vast difference in her point of view : she was accustomed
there to be petted and waited upon ; a footman in silk
stockings had brought up her meals to the day-nursery, for
she had received in every way the amount of consideration
that should naturally be paid to Lord Hurley's foster-mother.
So she found it ' rather a come-down in life,' as she said,
than otherwise, to go straight from being waited upon by
lordly flunkeys to receiving orders for dinner from casual
lodgers. However, being a tall young woman of some grace
and dignity, she gave a certain importance to her new posi-
tion, and was treated as a rule with considerable respect by
the better class of her visitors. Her plain black dress, her
slight affectation of widowhood, and her undeniable care and
attention for her baby, impressed them with the idea that
Mrs. Wells, as they called her, was ' a most superior young
woman for her station.' And in point of fact Janet had
been well grounded in fundamentals at the village school,
and made ' a lodging-house lady ' as good as the best of
them.
Her rooms, for the most part, were full in summer with
waterside visitors, though half empty in winter, when the
140
JANETS NEMESIS
season was dull ; but with what she made by them, and what
Lord Remenham allowed her, she managed to live in a style
which her new class considered extremely comfortable.
Meanwhile Willie grew on, and, to her own great surprise at
first, Janet found herself constantly more and more attached
to him. The child was with her all day ; she taught it to walk,
to talk, to dress itself ; if it had been her very own, it could
hardly have been much nearer to her. Gradually she felt it
was filling the place in her heart that her own dear baby had
once better filled ; and though she shrank from the recognition
of that fact, far more than she had shrunk from the first sub-
stitution, it forced itself upon her, whether she would or not,
from month to month, with increasing distinctness.
Three times a year ' Mrs. Wells ' returned by permission
to the castle, to visit once more her own lost darling. Lord
Remenham was touched by her constant attachment to
' Hughie,' and even the Countess admitted in her cold way
that ' Wells had behaved throughout in the most exemplary
manner ' ; there was no denying the reality of her attach-
ment to her foster-son. But as little Lord Hurley reached
seven and eight, Janet was aware of a painful element, which
grew more and more marked in these occasional visits. It
was clear each time that Hugh cared less and less to see her.
To say the truth, these four-monthly outbursts of spasmodic
affection on the part of a stranger distinctly bored the child.
He didn't care twopence himself about Mrs. Wells, whom he
was told by his father he ought to love ' because she was his
foster-mother ' — a phrase which conveyed to him about as
much information as if he had been told that Janet was his
residuary legatee or his feudal suzerain. At first he merely
felt the stated visits a vague nuisance ; they interfered with
his playing : but as time went on, he learned to hate them,
and to shrink from being ' slobbered over,' as he expressed
it, by a woman for whom he had not any feeling on earth
save one of mild though growing aversion. At last, he
141
JANETS NEMESIS
flatly refused to see Mrs. Wells at all ; and when Lord
Remenham interfered, and insisted, in his honest, stiff-
necked way, that Hugh must 'show some gratitude to the
woman who had saved his life,' the boy showed it by
receiving her with marked ungraciousness, and audibly
exclaiming, in a voice of relief, 'Well, thank goodness,
that 's over ! ' as she left his presence.
Had this happened when he was two years old, or even
three, it would have broken Janet's heart by its cruel irony.
But happening when he was ten, it affected her far less
poignantly than she could herself have anticipated. She
had grown meanwhile to be fonder and fonder of Willie —
' My own dear boy,' as she now called him to herself; she
took less and less notice, thought less and less meanwhile, of
the arrogant young aristocrat whom she had brought into
the world to be the Countess's plaything. Willie was so
sweet and good, and so deeply attached to her ; while Hugh
had rapidly developed what she could not but consider the
haughtiness of his class, and seemed to think his real mother
' like the dirt beneath his feet,' as she said to herself bitterly.
Moreover, she had another cause of grievance against the
sturdy little viscount. He was strong and vigoi-ous, with
the robust constitution inherited from a peasant father and
mother ; while Willie, her own dear Willie, was weak and
ailing, and often required her most tender nursing. Wlien
he was only two years old, indeed, he had a terrible attack
of croup, which nearly carried him off; and as Janet sat up
all night, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, watching
by the couch of the other woman's son, it came home to her
all at once that to lose Willie now would be ten thousand
times worse for her than to lose her own boy, the false
Lord Hurley.
So things went on for several years : though after the
little episode of ' Thank goodness, that 's over ! ' Janet went
back no more on her formal visits to the castle. She wrote
142
JANETS NEMESIS
Lord Remenham a most dignified and sensible letter upon
the subject — just a trifle marred by her housemaidenly
handwriting. ' I could not help seeing, my lord,' she said,
with simple eloquence, ' on my last visit to the castle, that
my dear foster-child no longer regards me with any affection.
As that is so, much as it grieves me, I think I had better
discontinue my visits. I love him as deeply and as dearly
as ever ; but I love him too well to desire to hurt him, by
inflicting myself upon him when he doesn't want me.'
Remenham read the letter aloud as a penance to Hugh ;
who responded with eff"usion, ' Well, that 's one good thing,
anyhow !' He was deaf to his father's expressions of regret
that he should have so alienated the feelings of a good
woman, who loved him. ' What right had she to call me
"my Hughie"?'he asked, with warmth. 'Why, Charlie
says she's nothing at all but a common lodging-house
woman.' Charlie was Hugh's friend, a boy-groom at the
stables.
Remenham felt this conduct on Hurley's part so bitterly,
that he actually went across to the neighbouring town to
call upon Janet, and apologise to her for his son's coldness.
But he chanced on a day when Willie was ill and kept home
from school. The boy's delicacy struck him. ' Is he often
so } ' he asked, with a heart-pang.
' Well, he 's never been strong, my lord,' Janet answered
truthfully ; ' having been brought up by hand, you know —
it never does suit them.' And as she spoke a sudden
dagger went through her heart all at once, to think she
should have starved that dear boy of the nourishment his
father the Earl had bought and paid for — in order to feed
that strong and healthy and ungrateful young aristocrat,
her boy, Hugh Seymour Plantagenet, Viscount Hurley.
The Earl recounted it all at length to his wife that night.
' Gwen,' he said seriously, ' we had no right to do it. I
must provide better for that boy. I shall allow his mother
143
JANETS NEMESIS
a hundred a year for his education. He 's a most intelligent
child, with excellent faculties ; and I 'm sure he 'd do credit
to any pains bestowed upon him.'
' My dear/ the Countess answered, ' you shall do nothing
so quixotic'
The natural result of which was that the Earl did it, and
said no more about it.
This princely allowance for her boy's education stirred up
in Janet's mind a fresh ambition. Like all dwellers in the
Thames valley, she knew well the name and the fame of
Oxford. It loomed large in her eyes, as the metropolis of
the river. 'Twas not so much as a great university, however,
that Oxford appealed to her, but as a place where men lived
and learned to be gentlemen — real waterside gentlemen, in
white sweaters and red blazers and straw hats with banded
ribbons. Oxford men came often to her lodgings in the
summer with the cardinal's hat or the red cross embroidered
on their jerseys, — and she recognised the fact that there was
a Something about them. Why should not her boy, her
own dear Willie, be sent to Oxford, and there manufactured
into a real gentleman? Manufactured.^ Why, he was a
o-entleman born — and a nobleman too, if it came to that,
and the real Lord Hurley ! If she sent him to Oxford, she
mio-ht undo some part of the terrible wrong she had done
him long since in depriving him of his birthright — a wrong
which, brought home to her now she loved him, was be-
ginning to weigh upon her soul not a little ; for with our
peasant class, incapable of any broad abstract ideas, you must
have a personal substratum of emotional feeling to work
upon in every case, before there can be any real recognition
of right and wrong in their wider aspects. It was a wild
ambition, perhaps, for a lodging-house keeper to entertain ;
but there was a good grammar-school in the town, where
the boys wore square college caps ; and with Lord Remen-
ham's hundred a year, a great deal was possible. She would
144
JANETS NEMESIS
begin saving it up, for it was to be paid to her quarterly
at once ; and by the time her boy was of an age to go to
Oxford, she would have enough to send him there — and
to live herself in such a way as not to disgrace him.
Thenceforth she saved with the petty, penurious, argus-
eyed saving of the lesser bourgeoisie. Not so far as Willie
was concerned, however. For him, she spent all she could
afford, to keep him neat and well dressed, and to let him
associate with other boys who were fit companions for a
destined Oxford man. Nay, more : hard as it was for her to
refuse them, she took no more big schoolboys or Oxford men
as lodgers in summer : no undergraduate henceforth should
ever be able to say, 'I know that man — I lodged with his
mother a couple of years ago.' Year after year she saved up,
and sent Willie to the grammar-school, and dressed him well,
and took every fond care of him. And year after year she
loved him more and more, with the ardent love one lavishes
on those for whom one has worked and endured and suffered.
Yet ever amidst it all came the gnawing thought, ' All I can
do for him is as nothing now, compared to what I have taken
from him. I deprived him of an earldom ; and I can educate
him, perhaps, to be a curate or a schoolmaster.'
As for Willie, he loved and admired his mother — as he
naturally called her. He was fond of her and proud of her ;
for she was tall and handsome ; she 'held her head up ' ;
and he could see how hard she worked to keep the family
' respectable.' He honoured her for that wish ; for he had
inherited the Earl's conscientious, conventional, honest,
doctrinaire nature. He was prouder of her by far than he
would have been of the Countess. When he was getting to
be seventeen, it began to strike Janet that her occasional
lapses in grammar, though more and more infrequent as she
got on in the world, were a source of pain or humiliation to
her boy ; and she said to him frankly, ' Correct me, WiUie,
and explain whi/ to me.' He corrected and explained ; and
K 145
JANET'S NEMESIS
Janet, who was naturally clear-headed, sensible, and logical,
understood and grasped the principles he expounded to her.
She took pains with her English. As he got on at school-
he was head of his class always, and took all the prizes,
especially in classics — she felt still more of a desire not to
shame her boy when he should go to Oxford ; and with this
intent she made him read her books, and read them herself
— Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, the current novelists — so
that she might at least avoid putting her foot in it when
she heard them talked of. And being a woman of remark-
able mother-wit and quickness, she found very soon, to her
immense surprise, that she could talk of many such things a
great deal better than some silly ' real ladies.'
It was a glorious day when, soon after Willie was nineteen,
her boy returned from a week's visit to that marvellous
Oxford one day, with the incredibly great news that he had
won a junior studentship at Christ Church. (That is the
name at ' the House ' for what anywhere else would be called
a scholarship.) It was worth eighty pounds a year, and,
with Lord Remenham's allowance, it would enable him to
live like a gentleman at Oxford. Janet made a rapid
calculation in her own mind. Yes, yes; she could allow
him seventy pounds more herself, which would give him an
income of £250 ; and yet, by expending all her little savings
in one wild burst, she would be able to live at Oxford
herself, in quiet lodgings, for three years, like a lady, so as
not to disgrace him !
One thing alone poisoned her happiness in this hour of
triumph. Willie added at last, with a touch of not unnatural
pleasure, ' And I beat some fellows from the biggest schools
— from Eton and Harrow ; amongst others, Lord Hurley.'
A stab went straight through the mother's heart, or rather,
the foster-mother's — for it was not Hugh she was thinking
of. 'Will he go to Christ Church with you.''' she asked,
trembling.
146
JANET S NEMESIS
'Yes, mother dear, but without a studentship.'
Strange thoughts coursed quickly through Janet's head.
That young aristocrat, her own son, might be rude to her
dear boy. How much did he know ? How much did he
remember.^ It was fortunate she had left off going to see
him at the castle when he was ten years old. Perhaps the
whole episode might have faded from his memory. But
the Earl would know. And the Earl might tell him.
At that moment, if she didn't hate Hugh, at least she
feared him. And such fear as hers was not far from
hatred.
October term came. It was the hour of freshmen. And
when Lord Hurley set out from the castle, his father (or rather
his reputed father) said to him as his last word, ' You know
your foster-mother's boy, young Wells, gained that junior
studentship that you missed, Hurley. Be sure, my boy, for
our sake, that you are kind to him.'
'All right, father,' Hurley answered, as he jumped into
the dogcart which was to take him to the station. But
he added to himself, with a smile, ' Just like my father !
Wants to make me polite to every deserving young cad
who happens to interest him.'
Three days later Janet was walking down the High, with
her boy in cap and gown, proud and delighted as she had
never been before in that strange varied life of hers. It
was a moment of pure triumph. All at once, from a window
overhead, she heard a murmur of voices. They came from
a first-floor window of a club of undergraduates, which was
gay even then with flowers in boxes.
'Why, that's the woman we lodged with three or four
years ago when we stopped by the river!' — one voice
exclaimed — the voice of an Oriel commoner. ' How awfully
odd ! And she 's walking with a 'Varsity man ! '
' Yes,' a second voice drawled. ' Devilish odd, isn't it .''
That 's my old fostei'-mother, Mrs, Wells ; and she 's walking
147
JANET'S NEMESIS
with her son. He's a protege of my fathei's ; and he's got
a junior studentship at the House. Rum combination,
ain't it .'' '
Janet glanced at Willie. He had not a mother's ears,
like hers ; and the had not heard them. He walked on
smiling, unaware of this calamity.
Janet Wells went home to her lodgings that night in an
agony of misery. The Nemesis of her wrong-doing had
come home to her indeed. She was paying her penalty.
To think there was a day when she fancied she would like
to strangle her Willie, because he had taken Hugh from
her ! Why, she hated Hugh now ! Hated him even more
profoundly and fiercely, by far, than she had ever loved him.
That baseborn son of a drunken soldier to scorn her own
boy — her good, gentle Willie !
The drunken soldier's son had deprived her Willie of his
birthright and his earldom ! And, worse than all, she had
helped him to do it !
She did not undress that night. She lay upon her bed in
her clothes, and tossed and turned, and moaned and suffered.
It was irrevocable now — quite, quite irrevocable. If she
went to Lord Remenham and told him her tale to-morrow,
how cotdd he believe her ? it was all too stale, too strange,
too romantic — and hackneyed romantic at that — for any one
to accept it. People would say she had been reading the
Family Herald tales ; or that her head was full of Lady
Clare and Lord Ronald. What on earth could be more im-
probable, at our own time of day, than a tale of a changeling .''
and who on earth would swallow it on her unaided evidence .''
She had dispossessed her boy, and, more terrible than all,
she had laid him open to Lord Hurley's cruel condescensions
— the cruel condescensions of the soldier's bastard.
Early next morning she rose, dressed her tumbled hair
carefuUv, made herself as neat as she could with a flower
in her bodice, and despatched a hurried note to Willie at
148
JANET'S NEMESIS
Christ Church. 'Come at once/ it said, 'to your heart-
broken mother.'
Willie rushed rounds wondering. Then, pale of face and
haggard of eye, Janet began to confess to him. She did
not even sob : it was far beyond sobbing. She told him
first what she had heard Lord Hurley say at the window
the night before. Then she made a dramatic pause : ' And
that boy,' she added, ' is my own son, Willie.'
For a second Willie thought she was mad. Then he
looked in her face, her white, bloodless face, and saw she
was speaking the truth under strong emotion.
'How do you mean, mother.^' he gasped.
Janet told him the whole tale, simply, in a few strong
Avords, with peasant brevity and peasant absence of self-
justification. She had done it, that was all — for ample
reason at the time ; and now she was paying for it.
When she had finished she looked him in the face.
'You don't believe it.''' she cried defiantly.
He took her hands in his.
' Dear mother,' he said, ' I believe it. I believe you
always. You never deceived me. I believe it ; and I am
sorry — for one thing only. If I am not your son, you take
from me a thing I valued most of all — for I was proud to be
the son of such a mother.'
Those words repaid her for years of anguish. She strained
him to her bosom. ' My boy, my boy,' she cried, ' I have
robbed you of your inheritance ! '
'The inheritance of your blood,' Willie answered, 'yes.
The other, I don't care about.'
She clasped him again. At least she would die happy.
' What can we do ? ' she cried. ' Can I confess to Loi'd
Remenham ? '
He shook his head.
' Oh no,' he answered. ' It would do no good. We
should both be regarded as absurd impostors. Nobody
149
JANET'S NEMESIS
would believe it — except myself. All the rest would think
it was a foolish lie — and I had egged you on to tell it.'
She held him tight against her breast.
' Don't be afraid,' she said. ' I will hold my tongue. I
will not again destroy your prospects.'
They sat together in her rooms all that day, for the most
part in silence, holding one another's hands in mute sym-
pathy. On the stroke of midnight he left her, as he must,
to return to college.
' Good-night, dearest ! ' he said, with a strange foreboding.
' Remember, I do not blame you in anything. I understand
all ; and a French proverb says, " To understand all is to
pardon all." '
She kissed him hysterically and let him go at once, with-
out one word of leave-taking.
By the first post next morning he received two notes from
her. One was formal, and intended only for the inspection
of the coronei'. It spoke of nothing but sleeplessness,
depression, narcotics. The other ran thus : —
' Mv OWN, OWN Darling,
' I do not wish to murder the son I bore. But if I remain
alive I feel I must rush upon Hurley, wherever I meet him, and
stab him. I am not even sure it is because he is my own child that
I want to spare him — is it not rather because I do not wish people
to say your mother was a murderess ? So, good-bye for ever.
Willie, my Willie, I have wronged you deeply ; I will wrong you
no more. They will think it was merely an overdose of morphia.
' Your loving
' Mother.'
The jury returned it ' Death by Misadventure.'
150
INTERMEZZO
LANGALULA
LANGALULA
Langalula was a great chief. The people he ruled were
numerous and warlike : his assegais were ten thousand : his
tribe had many cattle. So the Missionary at his kraal was
glad indeed when he felt he had touched Langalula's heart ;
for it meant the conversion of a whole heathen nation.
When the king goes over^ the people soon follow him.
Langalula said, * I am convinced ; baptize me.'
But the ways of white men, are they not incomprehensible?
Though the Missionary had been preaching that very thing
for months, yet when Langalula gave in he answered, ' Con-
viction alone is not enough. You must wait a while till I
feel that your life shows forth works meet for repentance.'
Langalula grumbled. He was little accustomed to such
contradiction. But he knew it was hard arguing with these
priestly white men, who will baptize a starving slave every
bit as soon as a great chief; so he held his peace, and,
though he chafed at it, waited the Missionary's pleasure.
By and by, one day, the Missionary came to him.
' Langalula,' he said condescendingly, * I have watched you
close for many weeks now, and I think I can baptize you.'
"^Then all my sins will be forgiven .> ' asked Langalula.
' All your sins will be forgiven,' the Missionary answered.
' But I must put away my wives ? ' Langalula asked once
more.
' All save one,' answered the Missionary. It was a point
of doctrine, or at least of discipline.
153
LANGALULA
' Then I think,' Langalula said, ' I will wait for a week —
so as to make up ray mind which one of them is dearest
to me.'
But he said this deceitfully, knowing in his own heart
that all his sins were going to be forgiven, and determining
in the interval to marry another wife, whom he would keep
as his companion when he put away the others. For there
was a young girl coming on, black but comely, the daughter
of Khamsua, a neighbouring chief, whom Langalula had seen,
and whom he wished to purchase. And since the last love
is always (for the moment) the greatest, the chief cared very
little whether he must put away all his other wives or not,
if only he could keep Malali. She had driven out the rest
of them. He had watched the girl growing up at Khamsua's
for years, and had said to himself always, ' Whenever Malali
is of marriageable age, see if I do not buy her and marry
her.'
In pursuance of this plan, as soon as the Missionary was
gone, Langalula rose up, and took the fighting men of his
tribe with him (that there might be no dispute), and
marched into the country of Malali's father, whose name, as
I said, was Khamsua. When Khamsua heard Langalula was
on his way to his land with five thousand assegais, not to
speak of Winchester rifles, he went out to meet him with a
great retinue.
Khamsua cringed. Langalula said to him, ' I am come to
ask for Malali.'
The moment Khamsua heard that saying, he was un-
speakably terrified, and flung himself down on his face, and
clasped Langalula's knees. For Khamsua was only a small
chief in the country compared with Langalula.
' O my king,' Khamsua said, ' O lion of the people, how
could I know so great a monarch as you had set his eyes on
Malali ? and before you asked — woe, woe ! — Montelo's people
came, and offered oxen on Montelo's behalf for Malali.
154
LANGALULA
And I sold her to them, because I was afraid of Montelo,
and could not have believed so great a chief as you had ever
looked upon her.'
Langalula smiled at that. ' Oh, as for Montelo,' he said,
' I can easily take her from him ; and then I can get the
Missionary to marry us.'
Khamsua, however, answered like a fool. ' It cannot be.
The Christians are so strait-laced. Montelo is a Christian
now ; he was baptized a week ago ; and Malali was married
to him in Christian fashion. Even if you were to kill
Montelo and take her to your kraal, I don't believe the
Missionary would marry you.'
Langalula turned to his men. ' Kill him,' he said simply.
And they killed him with an assegai.
As soon as that was finished, Langalula marched on into
Montelo's country. When he arrived there, Montelo crept
out to meet him and tried to parley with him. But Langalula
would not parley with the man who had deprived him of
Malali. ' We will fight for it,' he said angrily. And they
fought for it, then and there. The upshot of it all was that
Langalula's men conquered in the battle, and drove
Montelo's men (who had no Winchesters) back to their
king's kraal; and then they killed Montelo himself, and
carried his head on an assegai.
By the very same evening they occupied the kraal that
had once been Montelo's, and Langalula's men brought
out Malali to their own leader. Langalula looked hard at
her. She was a glossy-black girl, very smooth-skinned and
lithe, and clean of limb. The great chief stared long at
her. Malali hung her head and drooped her arms before
him. 'Why did you go with Montelo,' he asked at last,
' when Langalula would have taken you ? '
The girl trembled with fear. 'Twas no fault of hers.
How could she help it? A woman, there, is no free
agent. ' My father sold me,' she answered, whimpering ;
155
LANGALULA
' Montelo paid him a great many oxen. I had no choice
but to go. O King, O mighty lion, I did not know you
wanted me.'
With that she flung hei-self at his feet in terror, and held
his knees, imploring him.
'Take her to the hut that was once Montelo' s/ said the
great chief, smiling ; ' I will follow her there.'
They seized her arms and dragged her to the hut, crying
and shrieking as she went. They dragged her roughly.
Langalula remained behind, superintending the slaughter
of Montelo's warriors. As soon as he was tired he returned
to the hut that had once been Montelo's ; for he wished
to see Malali, whether she was really as beautiful as he
believed, even though the Missionary would never marry
him to her.
Malali, when she saw him, outside the hut, thought all
was well, and that Langalula loved her. So she left off
crying, and tried every art a woman knows to please and
charm him. But Langalula was a very great king, and his
anger was aroused. A king's anger is terrible. He smiled
to himself to see with what simple tricks the woman thought
she could appease a mighty warrior.
' Go into my hut ! ' he said. And he followed her.
The next morning came, and the great king cried to
himself with annoyance and vexation that Montelo and
Khamsua — and the Missionary as well — should have done
him, between them, out of so beautiful a woman. If the
Missionary had been a black man, Langalula would have
compelled him to baptize him outright, and then to marry
him properly to Malali, with book and ring, in the Christian
fashion. But he knew by experience it is no use threatening
these white men with .tortures ; for, threaten how you may,
they will not obey you ; and, besides, the Governor would
send up troops from Cape Town ; and 'tis ill fighting with
the men of the Governor. So he arose from his bed in the
156
LANGALULA
morning in a white heat of passion. ' Malali,' he said,
gazing at her with an ugly smile, ' I like you better than
any woman I ever yet saw. You please me in everything.
But you went off with Montelo, and the Missionary will not
marry me to you now I have speared him. I have also
speared your father, Khamsua, because he sold you for oxen
to Montelo. I want a real queen, who shall be married to
me white-fashion. I am becoming a Christian now, and
can have only one wife. But it must not be you, because
you were sold to Montelo, whom I have slain in the battle,
and they will not marry us. So I will keep my own first
wife, the earliest married, though she is old and lean, and
discard the other ones. Come out of the hut, Malali, and
stand in front of my warriors.'
Malali was afraid at that, and would have skulked in
the corner if she dared; but she dared not, because she
was frightened of Langalula. So out she came as he bid
her, trembling in all her limbs, and crouching with
terror ; her knees hardly bore her. Langalula turned to
his men ; he looked at her with regret. She was sleek and
beautiful.
' Pin her through the body to the ground with an assegai,'
he said, pointing at her.
And they pinned her through with an assegai.
' Pin her arms and her legs,' said the great chief.
And his followers pinned them. The woman fainted.
' Now leave her to die in the sun,' said Langalula.
So they left her to die there.
After that, Langalula marched back grimly with his men
to his own country. As soon as he reached his kraal he went
to see the Missionary. He was very submissive.
' I repent of all my sins,' he said. ' I have come to be
baptized. Teacher, I will put away all my wives save
one ; and even for that one I will retain the earliest.'
And that is how Langalula became a Christian.
157
VII
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
Walter Dene, deacon, in his faultless Oxford clerical coat
and broad felt hat, strolled along slowly, sunning himself
as he went, after his wont, down the pretty central lane
of West Churnside. It was just the idyllic village best
suited to the taste of such an idyllic young curate as Walter
Dene. There were cottages with low-thatched roofs,
thickly overgrown with yellow stonecrop and pink house-
leek ; there were trellis-work porches up which the scented
dog-rose and the fainter honeysuckle clambered together
in sisterly rivalry ; there were pargeted gable-ends of
Elizabethan farmhouses, quaintly varied with black oak
joists and moulded plaster panels. At the end of all,
between an avenue of ancient elm-trees, the heavy square
tower of the old church closed in the little vista — a church
with a round Norman doorway and dog-tooth arches,
melting into Early English lancets in the aisle, and finishing
up with a great decorated east window by the broken cross
and yew-tree. Not a trace of Perpendicularity about it
anywhere, thank goodness : ' for if it were Perpendicular,'
said Walter Dene to himself often, ' I really think, in
spite of my uncle, I should have to look out for another
curacy.'
Yes, it was a charming village, and a charming country ;
but, above all, it was rendered habitable and pleasurable
for a man of taste by the informing presence of Christina
Eliot. ' I don't think I shall propose to Christina this week
after all,' thought Walter Dene as he strolled along lazily.
L 161
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
' The most delightful part of love-making is certainly its
first beginning. The little tremor of hope and expectation ;
the half-needless doubt you feel as to whether she really
loves you; the pains you take to piei-ce the thin veil of
maidenly reserve ; the triumph of detecting her at a blush
or a flutter when she sees you coming — all these are
delicate little morsels to be rolled daintily on the critical
palate, and not to be swallowed down coarsely at one vulgar
gulp. Poor child, she is on tenter-hooks of hesitation and
expectancy all the time, I know ; for I 'm sure she loves me
now, I 'm sure she loves me ; but I must wait a week yet :
she will be grateful to me for it hereafter. We mustn't
kill the goose that lays the golden eggs ; we mustn't eat up
all our capital at one extravagant feast, and then lament
the want of our interest ever afterward. Let us live another
week in our first fool's paradise before we enter on the safer
but less tremulous pleasures of sure possession. We can
enjoy first love but once in a lifetime ; let us enjoy it now
while we can, and not fling away the chance prematurely
by mere childish haste and girlish precipitancy.' Thinking
which thing, Walter Dene halted a moment by the church-
yard wall, picked a long spray of scented wild thyme from
a mossy cranny, and gazed into the blue sky above at the
graceful swifts who nested in the old tower, as they curved
and circled through the yielding air on their evenly poised
and powerful pinions.
Just at that moment old Mary Long came out of her
cottage to speak with the young parson. ' If ye plaze,
Maister Dene,' she said in her native west-country dialect,
' our Nully would like to zee 'ee. She's main ill to-day, zur,
and she be like to die a'most, I 'm thinking.'
'Poor child, poor child,' said Walter Dene tenderly.
' She 's a dear little thing, Mrs. Long, is your Nellie, and I
hope she may yet be spared to you. I '11 come and see her
at once, and try if I can do anything to ease her.'
162
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
He crossed the road compassionately with the tottering
old grandmother^ giving her his helping hand over the
kerbstone, and following her with bated breath into the
close little sickroom. Then he flung open the tiny case-
ment with its diamond-leaded panes, so as to let in the fresh
summer air, and picked a few sprigs of sweetbriar from the
porch, which he joined with the geranium from his own
button-hole to make a tiny nosegay for the bare bedside.
After that, he sat and talked awhile gently in an undertone
to pale, pretty little Nellie herself, and went away at last
promising to send her some jelly and some soup immediately
from the vicarage kitchen.
'She's a sweet little child,' he said to himself musingly,
'though I'm afraid she's not long for this world now; and
the poor like these small attentions dearly. They get them
seldom, and value them for the sake of the thoughtful-
ness they imply, rather than for the sake of the mere things
themselves. I can order a bottle of calf's-foot at the
grocer's, and Carter can set it in a mould without any
trouble ; while as for the soup, some tinned mock turtle and
a little fresh stock makes a really capital mixture for this
sort of thing. It costs so little to give these poor souls
pleasure, and it is a great luxury to oneself undeniably.
But, after all, what a funny trade it is to set an educated
man to do ! They send us up to Oxford or Cambridge, give
us a distinct taste for ^schylus and Catullus, Dante and
Milton, Mendelssohn and Chopin, good clai-et and olives farcies ,
and then bring us down to a country village, to look after
the bodily and spiritual ailments of rheumatic old washer-
women ! If it were not for poetry, flowers, and Christina,
I really think I should succumb entirely under the infliction.'
' He s a dear, good man, that he is, is young passon,'
murmured old Mary Long as Walter disappeared between
the elm-trees ; ' and he do love the poor and the zick,
the same as if he was their own brother. God bless his
163
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
zoul, the dear, good vulla, vor all his kindness to our
Nully.'
Halfway down the main lane Walter came across Christina
Eliot. As she saw him she smiled and coloured a little, and
held out her small gloved hand prettily. Walter took it
with a certain courtly and graceful chivalry. ' An exquisite
day. Miss Eliot/ he said ; ' such a depth of sapphire in the
sky, such a faint undertone of green on the clouds by the
horizon, such a lovely humming of bees over the flickering hot
meadows ! On days like this, one feels that Schopenhauer is
wrong after all, and that life is sometimes really worth living.'
' It seems to me often worth living,' Christina answered ;
' if not for oneself, at least for others. But you pretend to
be more of a pessimist than you really are, I fancy, Mr. Dene.
Any one who finds so much beauty in the world as you do
can hardly think life poor or meagre. You seem to catch
the loveliest points in everything you look at, and to throw
a little literary or artistic reflection over them which makes
them even lovelier than they are in themselves.'
' Well, no doubt one can increase one's possibilities of
enjoyment by carefully cultivating one's own faculties of
admiration and appreciation,' said the curate thoughtfully ;
' but, after all, life has only a few chapters that are thoroughly
interesting and enthralling in all its history. We oughtn't
to hurry over them too lightly. Miss Eliot ; we ought to
linger on them lovingly, and make the most of their poten-
tialities ; we ought to dwell upon them like " linked sweet-
ness long drawn out." It is the mistake of the world at
large to hurry too rapidly over the pleasantest episodes, just
as children pick all the plums at once out of the pudding.
I often think that, from the purely selfish and temporal
point of view, the real value of a life to its subject may be
measured by the space of time over which he has managed
to spread the enjoyment of its greatest pleasures. Look, for
example, at poetry, now.'
164
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
A faint shade of disappointment passed across Christina's
face as he turned from what seemed another groove into that
indifferent subject ; but she answered at once, ' Yes, of course
one feels that with the higher pleasures at least ; but there
are others in which the interest of plot is greater, and then
one looks naturally rather to the end. When you begin a
good novel, you can't help hurrying through it in order to
find out what becomes of everybody at last.'
' Ah, but the highest artistic interest goes beyond mere
plot interest. I like rather to read for the pleasure of read-
ing, and to loiter over the passages that please me, quite
irrespective of what goes before or what comes after ; just as
you, for your part, like to sketch a beautiful scene for its
own worth to you, irrespective of what may happen to the
leaves in autumn, or to the cottage roof in twenty years from
this. By the way, have you finished that little water-colour
of the mill yet .'' It 's the prettiest thing of yours I 've ever
seen, and I want to look how you 've managed the light on
your foreground.'
' Come in and see it,' said Christina. ' It 's finished now, and,
to tell you the truth, I 'm very well pleased with it myself.'
' Then I know it must be good,' the curate answered ; ' for
you are always your own harshest critic' And he turned in
at the little gate with her, and entered the village doctor's
tiny drawing-room.
Christina placed the sketch on an easel near the window
— a low window opening to the ground, with long lithe
festoons of faint-scented jasmine encroaching on it from
outside — and let the light fall on it aslant in the right
direction. It was a pretty and a clever sketch certainly,
with more than a mere amateur's sense of form and colour ;
and Walter Dene, who had a true eye for pictures, could
conscientiously praise it for its artistic depth and fulness.
Indeed, on that head at least, Walter Dene's veracity was
unimpeachable, however lax in other matters ; nothing on
165
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
earth would have induced him to praise as good a picture or
a sculpture in which he saw no real merit. He sat a little
Avhile criticising and discussing it, suggesting an improve-
ment here or an alteration there, and then he rose hurriedly,
remembering all at once his forgotten promise to little
Nellie. 'Dear me,' he said, 'your daughter's picture has
almost made me overlook my proper duties, Mrs. Eliot. I
promised to send some jelly and things at once to poor little
Nellie Long at her grandmother's. How very wrong of me
to let my natural inclinations keep me loitering here, when
I ought to have been thinking of the poor of my parish ! '
And he went out with just a gentle pressure on Christina's
hand, and a look from his eyes that her heart knew how to
I'ead aright at the first glance of it.
' Do you know, Christie,' said her father, ' I sometimes
fancy when I hear that new parson fellow talk about his
artistic feelings, and so on, that he s just a trifle selfish, or
at least self-centred. He always dwells so much on his own
enjoyment of things, you know.'
' Oh no, papa,' cried Christina warmly, ' He 's anything
but selfish, I 'm sure. Look how kind he is to all the poor
in the village, and how much he thinks about their comfort
and welfare. And whenever he's talking with one, he
seems so anxious to make you feel happy and contented with
yourself He has a sort of little subtle flattery of manner
about him that 's all pure kindliness ; and he 's always
thinking what he can say or do to please you, and to help
you onward. What you say about his dwelling on enjoy-
ment so much is really only his artistic sensibility. He
feels things so keenly, and enjoys beauty so deeply, that he
can't help talking enthusiastically about it even a little out
of season. He has more feelings to display than most men,
and I'm sure that's the reason why he displays them so
much. A ploughboy could only talk enthusiastically about
roast beef and dumplings ; Mr. Dene can talk about every-
166
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
thin^ that 's beautiful and sublime on earth or in
heaven.'
Meanwhile, Walter Dene was walking quickly with his
measured tread — the even, regular tread of a cultivated
gentleman — down the lane toward the village grocer's,
saying to himself as he went, ' There was never such a girl
in all the world as my Christina. She may be only a country
surgeon's daughter — a rosebud on a hedgerow bush — but she
has the soul and the eye of a queen among women for all
that. Every lover has deceived himself with the same sweet
dream, to be sure — how over-analytic we have become now-
adays, when I must needs half argue myself out of the sweets
of first love ! — but then they hadn't so much to go upon as I
have. She has a wonderful touch in music, she has an
exquisite eye in painting, she has an Italian charm in manner
and conversation. I 'm something of a connoisseur, after all,
and no more likely to be deceived in a woman than I am in
a wine or a picture. And next week I shall really propose
formally to Christina, though I know by this time it will be
nothing more than the merest formality. Her eyes are too
eloquent not to have told me that long ago. It will be a
delightful pleasure to live for her, and in order to make her
happy. I frankly recognise that I am naturally a little
selfish — not coarsely and vulgarly selfish ; from that disgusting
and piggish vice I may conscientiously congratulate myself
that I 'm fairly free ; but still selfish in a refined and culti-
vated manner. Now, living with Christina and for Christina
will correct this defect in my nature, will tend to bring me
nearer to a true standard of perfection. When I am by her
side, and then only, I feel that I am thinking entirely of
her, and not at all of myself. To her I show my best side ;
with her, that best side would be always uppermost. The
companionship of such a woman makes life something purer,
and higher, and better worth having. The one thing that
stands in our way is this horrid practical question of what
167
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
to live upon. I don't suppose Uncle Arthur will be inclined
to allow me anything, and I can't marry on my own paltry
income and my curacy only. Yet I can't bear to keep
Christina waiting indefinitely till some thick-headed squire
or other chooses to take it into his opaque brain to give me
a decent living.'
From the grocer's the curate walked on, carrying the two
tins in his hand, as far as the vicarage. He went into the
library, sat down by his own desk, and rang the bell. ' Will
you be kind enough to give those things to Carter, John .'' '
he said in his bland voice ; ' and tell her to put the jelly in a
mould, and let it set. The soup must be warmed with a
little fresh stock, and seasoned. Then take them both, with
my compliments, to old Mary Long the washerwoman, for
her grandchild. Is my uncle in .'' '
' No, Master Walter,' answered the man — he was always
Master Walter ' to the old servants at his uncle's — ' the
vicar have gone over by train to Churminster. He told me
to tell you he wouldn't be back till evening, after dinner.'
' Did you see him off, John .'' '
' Yes, Master Walter. I took his portmantew to the
station.'
' This will be a good chance, then,' thought Walter Dene
to himself. ' Very well, John,' he went on aloud : ' I shall
write my sermon now. Don't let anybody come to disturb
me.'
John nodded and withdrew. Walter Dene locked the
door after him carefully, as he often did when writing ser-
mons, and then lit a cigar, which was also a not infrequent
concomitant of his exegetical labours. After that he walked
once or twice up and down the room, paused a moment to
look at his parchment-covered Rabelais and Villon on the
bookshelf, peered out of the dulled glass windows with the
crest in their centre, and finally drew a cui-ious bent iron
instrument out of his waistcoat pocket. With it in his hands,
168
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
he went up quietly to his uncle's desk, and began fumbling
at the lock in an experienced manner. As a matter of fact,
it was not his first trial of skill in lockpicking ; for Walter
Dene was a painstaking and methodical man, and having
made up his mind that he would get at and read his uncle's
will, he took good care to begin by fastening all the drawers
in his own bedroom, and trying his prentice hand at
unfastening them again in the solitude of his chamber.
After half a minute's twisting and turning, the wards gave
way gently to his dexterous pressure, and the lid of the desk
lay open before him. Walter Dene took out the different
papers one by one — there was no need for hurry, and he was
not a nervous person — till he came to a roll of parchment,
which he recognised at once as the expected will. He
unrolled it carefully and quietly, without any womanish
trembling or excitement — ' Thank Heaven,' he said to himself,
* I 'm above such nonsense as that ' — and sat down leisurely
to read it in the big, low, velvet-covered study chair. As he
did so, he did not forget to lay a notched foot-rest for his
feet, and to put the little Japanese dish on the tiny table by
his side to hold his cigar ash. ' And now,' he said, 'for the
important question whether Uncle Arthur has left his money
to me, or to Arthur, or to both of us equally. He ought, of
course, to leave at least half to me, seeing I have become
a curate on purpose to please him, instead of following my
natural vocation to the Bar ; but I shouldn't be a bit sur-
prised if he had left it all to Arthur. He 's a pig-headed
and illogical old man, the vicar ; and he can never forgive
me, I believe, because, being the eldest son, I wasn't called
after him by my father and mother. As if that was my
fault ! Some people's ideas of personal responsibility are so
ridiculously muddled.'
He composed himself quietly in the armchair, and glanced
rapidly at the will through the meaningless preliminaries till
he came to the significant clauses. These he read more
169
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
carefully. ' All my estate in the county of Dorset, and the
messuage or tenement known as Redlands, in the parish of
Lode, in the county of Devon, to my dear nephew, Arthur
Dene,' he said to himself slowly : ' Oh, this will never do.'
' And I give and bequeath to my said nephew, Arthur Dene,
the sum of ten thousand pounds, three per cent, consolidated
annuities, now standing in my name' — ' Oh, this is atrocious,
quite atrocious ! What 's this ? ' ' And I give and bequeath
to my dear nephew, Walter Dene, the residue of my
personal estate' — 'and so forth. Oh no. That's quite
sufficient. This must be rectified. The residuary legatee
would only come in for a few hundreds or so. It's quite
preposterous. The vicar was always an ill-tempered,
cantankerous, unaccountable person, but I wonder he has
the face to sit opposite me at dinner after that.'
He hummed an air from Schubert, and sat a moment
looking thoughtfully at the will. Then he said to himself
quietly, ' The simplest thing to do would be merely to scrape
out or take out with chemicals the name Arthur, substituting
the name Walter, and vice versa. That 's a very small matter ;
a man who draws as well as I do ought to be able easily to
imitate a copying clerk's engrossing hand. But it would be
madness to attempt it now and here ; I want a little practice
first. At the same time, I mustn't keep the will out a
moment longer than is necessary ; my uncle may return by
some accident before I expect him ; and the true philosophy
of life consists in invariably minimising the adverse chances.
This will was evidently drawn up by Watson and Blenkiron,
of Chancery Lane. I '11 write to-morrow and get them to
draw up a will for me, leaving all I possess to Arthur. The
same clerk is pretty sure to engross it, and that '11 give me a
model for the two names on which I can do a little prelim-
inary practice. Besides, I can try the stuff Wharton told me
about, for making ink fade, on the same parchment. That
will be killing two birds with one stone, certainly. And
170
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
now if I don't make haste I shan't have time to write my
sermon.'
He replaced the will calmly in the desk, fastened the lock
again with a delicate twirl of the pick, and sat down in his
armchair to compose his discourse for to-morrow's evensong.
' It 's not a bad bit of rhetoric/ he said to himself as he read
it over for correction, 'but I'm not sure that I haven't
plagiarised a little too freely from Montaigne and dear old
Burton. What a pity it must be thrown away upon a Churn-
side congregation ! Not a soul in the whole place will
appreciate a word of it, except Christina. Well, well, that
alone is enough reward for any man.' And he knocked off
his ash pensively into the Japanese ashpan.
During the course of the next week Walter practised
diligently the art of imitating handwriting. He got his will
drawn up and engrossed at Watson and Blenkiron's (without
signing it, hien entendu) ; and he spent many solitary hours
in writing the two names 'Walter' and 'Arthur' on the
spare end of parchment, after the manner of the engrossing
clerk. He also tested the stuff for making the ink fade to
his own perfect satisfaction. And on the next occasion
when his uncle was safely off the premises for three hours,
he took the will once more deliberately from the desk,
removed the obnoxious letters with scrupulous care, and wrote
in his own name in place of Arthur's, so that even the en-
grossing clerk himself would hardly have known the differ-
ence. ' There,' he said to himself approvingly, as he took
down quiet old George Herbert from the shelf and sat down
to enjoy an hour's smoke after the business was over, 'that's
one good deed well done, anyhow. I have the calm satis-
faction of a clear conscience. The vicar's proposed arrange-
ment was really most unfair ; I have substituted for it what
Aristotle would rightly have 'called true distributive justice.
For though I 've left all the property to myself, by the un-
fortunate necessity of the case, of course I won't take it all.
171
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
I'll be juster than the vicar. Arthur shall have his fair
share, which is more, I believe, than he 'd have done for me ;
but I hate squalid money-grubbing. If brothers can't be
generous and brotherly to one another, what a wretched,
sordid little life this of ours would really be ! '
Next Sunday morning the vicar preached, and Walter
sat looking up at him reflectively from his place in the
chance). A beautiful clear-cut face, the curate's, and seen
to great advantage from the doctor's i^ew, set off by the
white surplice, and upturned in quiet meditation towards
the elder priest in the pulpit. Walter was revolving many
things in his mind, and most of all one adverse chance
which he could not just then see his way to minimise. Any
day his uncle might take it into his head to read over the
will and discover the — ah, well, the rectification. W^alter was
a man of too much delicacy of feeling even to think of it to
himself as a fraud or a forgery. Then, again, the vicar was
not a very old man after all ; he might live for an indefinite
period, and Christina and himself might lose all the best
years of their life waiting for a useless person's natural
removal. What a pity that threescore was not the utmost
limit of human life ! For his own part, like the Psalmist,
Walter had no desire to outlive his own highest tastes and
powers of enjoyment. Ah, well, well, man's prerogative is
to better and improve upon nature. If people do not die
when they ought, then it becomes clearly necessary for
philosophically-minded juniors to help them on their way
artificially.
It was an ugly necessity, certainly ; Walter frankly recog-
nised that fact from the very beginning, and he shrank
even from contemplating it ; but there was no other way
out of the difficulty. The old man had always been a
selfish bachelor, with no love for anybody or anything on
earth except his books, his coins, his garden, and his dinner ;
he was growing tired of all except the last; would it not be
172
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
better for the world at large^ on strict utilitarian principles,
that he should go at once ? True, such steps are usually
to be deprecated ; but the wise man is a law unto himself,
and instead of laying down the wooden, hard-and-fast lines
that make conventional morality so much a rule of thumb,
he judges every individual case on its own particular merits.
Here was Christina's happiness and his own on the one
hand, with many collateral advantages to other people, set
in the scale against the feeble remnant of a selfish old man's
days on the other. Walter Dean had a constitutional horror
of taking life in any form, and especially of shedding blood ;
but he flattered himself that if anything of the sort became
clearly necessary, he was not the man to shrink from taking
the needful measures to ensure it, at any sacrifice of personal
comfort.
All through the next week Walter turned over the subject
in his own mind ; and the more he thought about it, the
more the plan gained in definiteness and consistency as
detail after detail suggested itself to him. First he thought
of poison. That was the cleanest and neatest way of
managing the thing, he considered; and it involved the
least unpleasant consequences. To stick a knife or shoot a
bullet into any sentient creature was a horrid and revolting
act ; to put a little tasteless powder into a cup of coffee and
let a man sleep off his life quietly was really nothing more
than helping him involuntarily to a delightful euthanasia.
' I wish any one would do as much for me at his age,
without telling me about it,' Walter said to himself seriously.
But then the chances of detection would be much increased
by using poison, and Walter felt it an imperative duty to
do nothing which would expose Christina to the shock of
a discovery. She would not see the matter in the same
practical light as he did ; women never do ; their morality
is purely conventional, and a wise man will do nothing on
earth to shake it. You cannot buy poison without the risk
173
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
of exciting question. There remained, then, only shooting
or stabbing. But shooting makes an awkward noise, and
attracts attention at the moment ; so the one thing possible
was a knife, unpleasant as that conclusion seemed to all his
more delicate feelings.
Having thus decided, Walter Dene proceeded to lay his
plans with deliberate caution. He had no intention what-
soever of being detected, though his method of action was
simplicity itself. It was only bunglers and clumsy fools
who got caught ; he knew that a man of his intelligence
and ability would not make such an idiot of himself as —
well, as common ruffians always do. He took his old
American bowie-knife, bought years ago as a curiosity, out
of the drawer where it had lain so long. It was very rusty,
but it would be safer to sharpen it privately on his own
hone and strop than to go asking for a new knife at a shop
for the express purpose of enabling the shopman afterwards
to identify him. He sharpened it for safety's sake during
sermon-hour in the library, with the door locked as usual.
It took a long time to get off all the rust, and his arm got
quickly tired. One morning as he was polishing away at it,
he was stopped for a moment by a butterfly which flapped
and fluttered against the dulled window-panes. 'Poor
thing!' he said to himself, '^it will beat its feathery wings
to pieces in its struggles ' ; and he put a vase of Venetian
glass on top of it, lifted the sash carefully, and let the
creature fly away outside in the broad sunshine. At the
same moment the vicar, who was strolling with his King
Charlie on the lawn, came up and looked in at the window.
He could not have seen in before, because of the dulled and
painted diamonds.
' That 's a murderous-looking weapon, VVally,' he said, with
a smile, as his glance fell upon the bowie and hone. ' What
do you use it for ? '
' Oh, it 's an American bowie,' Walter answered carelessly.
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THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
' I bought it long ago for a curiosity, and now I 'm sharpen-
ing it up to help me in carving that block of walnut wood.'
And he ran his finger lightly along the edge of the blade
to test its keenness. What alucky thing that it was the vicar
himself, and not the gardener ! If he had been caught by
anybody else the fact would have been fatal evidence after
all was over. ' Mefiez-vous des papillons/ he hummed to
himself, after Beranger, as he shut down the window.
' One more butterfly, and I must give up the game as
useless.'
Meanwhile, as Walter meant to make a clean job of it —
hacking and hewing clumsily was repulsive to all his finer
feelings — he began also to study carefully the anatomy
of the human back. He took down all the books on the
subject in the library, and by their aid discovered exactly
under which ribs the heart lay. A little observation of
the vicar, compai-ed with the plates in Quain's Aimtomy,
showed him precisely at what point in his clerical coat the
most vulnerable interstice was situated. ' It 's a horrid
thing to have to do,' he thought over and over again as
he planned it, ' but it 's the only way to secure Christina's
happiness.' And so, by a certain bright Friday evening
in August, Walter Dene had fully completed all his pre-
parations.
That afternoon, as on all bright afternoons in summer,
the vicar went for a walk in the grounds, attended only by
little King Charlie. He was squire and parson at once in
Churnside, and he loved to make the round of his own
estate. At a certain gate by Selbury Copse the vicar
always halted to rest awhile, leaning on the bar and looking
at the view across the valley. It was a safe and lonely spot.
Walter remained at home (he was to take the regular
Friday evensong) and went into the study by himself.
After a while he took his hat, not without trembling,
strolled across the garden, and then made the short cut
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THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
through the copse, so as to meet the vicar by the gate. On
his way he heard the noise of the Dennings in the farm
opposite, out rabbit-shooting with their guns and ferrets
in the warren. His very soul shrank within him at the
sound of that brutal sport. ' Great heavens ! ' he said to
himself, with a shudder ; ' to think how I loathe and shrink
from the necessity of almost painlessly killing this one
selfish old man for an obviously good reason, and those
creatures there will go out massacring innocent animals
with the aid of a hideous beast of prey, not only without
remorse, but actually by way of amusement ! I thank
Heaven I am not even as they are.' Near the gate he
came upon his uncle quietly and naturally, though it
would be absurd to deny that at that supreme moment
even Walter Dene's equable heart throbbed hard, and his
breath went and came tremulously. 'Alone,' he thought
to himself, 'and nobody near ; this is quite providential,'
using even then, in thought, the familiar phraseology of his
profession.
' A lovely afternoon. Uncle Arthur,' he said as composedly
as he could, accurately measuring the spot on the vicar's
coat with his eye meanwhile. ' The valley looks beautiful
in this light.'
' Yes, a lovely afternoon, Wally, my boy, and an exquisite
glimpse down yonder into the churchyard.'
As he spoke, Walter half leaned upon the gate beside
him, and adjusted the knife behind the vicar's back scienti-
fically. Then, without a word more, in spite of a natural
shrinking, he drove it home up to the haft, with a terrible
effort of will, at the exact spot on the back that the books
had pointed out to him. It was a painful thing to do, but
he did it carefully and well. The effect of Walter Dene's
scientific provision was even more instantaneous than he
had anticipated. Without a single cry, without a sob or a
contortion, the vicar's lifeless body fell over heavily by the
176
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THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
side of the gate. It rolled down like a log into the dry
ditch beneath. Walter knelt trembling on the ground
close by, felt the pulse for a moment to assure himself that
his uncle was really dead, and having fully satisfied himself
on this all-important point, proceeded to draw the knife
neatly out of the wound. He had let it fall in the body,
in order to extricate it more easily afterward, and not risk
pulling it out carelessly so as to get himself covered need-
lessly by tell-tale drops of blood, like ordinary clumsy
assassins. But he had forgotten to reckon with little King
Charlie. The dog jumped piteously upon the body of his
master, licked the wound with his tongue, and refused to
allow Walter to withdraw the knife. It would be unsafe to
leave it there, for it might be recognised. ' Minimise the
adverse chances,' he muttered still ; but there was no
inducing King Charlie to move. A struggle might result
in getting drops of blood upon his coat, and then, great
heavens, what a terrible awakening for Christina ! ' Oh,
Christina, Christina, Christina,' he said to himself piteously,
' it is for you only that I could ever have ventured to do this
hideous thing.' The blood was still oozing out of the
narrow slit, and saturating the black coat, and Walter
Dene with his delicate nerves could hardly bear to look
upon it.
At last he summoned up resolution to draw out the knife
from the ugly wound, in spite of King Charlie ; and as he
did so, oh, horror ! the little dog jumped at it, and cut his
left fore-leg against the sharp edge deep to the bone.
Here was a pretty accident indeed ! If Walter Dene had
been a common heartless murderer he would have snatched
up the knife immediately, left the poor lame dog to watch
and bleed beside his dead master, and skulked off hurriedly
from the mute witness to his accomplished crime. But
Walter was made of very different mould from that;
he could not find it in his heart to leave a poor dumb animal
M 177
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
wounded and bleeding for hours together, alone and un-
tended. Just at first, indeed, he tried sophistically to
persuade himself his duty to Christina demanded that he
should go away at once, and never mind the sufferings of a
mere spaniel ; but his better nature told him the next
moment that such sophisms were indefensible, and his
humane instincts overcame even the profound instinct of
self-preservation. He sat down quietly beside the warm
corpse. ' Thank goodness,' he said, with a slight shiver of
disgust, ' I 'm not one of those weak-minded people who are
troubled by remorse. They would be so overcome by terror
at what they had done that they would want to run away
from the body immediately, at any price. But I don't think
I could feel remorse. It is an incident of lower natures —
natures that are capable of doing actions under one set of
impulses, which they regret when another set comes upper-
most in turn. That implies a want of balance, an imperfect
co-oi-dination of parts and passions. The perfect character
is consistent with itself; shame and repentance are con-
fessions of weakness. For my part, I never do anything
without having first deliberately decided that it is the best
or the only thing to do ; and having so done it, I do not
draw back like a girl from the necessary consequences of my
own act. No fluttering or running away for me. Still, I
must admit that all that blood does look very ghastly.
Poor old gentleman ! I believe he really died almost with-
out knowing it, and that is certainly a great comfort to one
under the circumstances.'
He took King Charlie tenderly in his hands, without
touching the wounded leg, and drew his pocket hand-
kerchief softly from his pocket. ' Poor beastie,' he said
aloud, holding out the cut limb before him, 'you are badly
hurt, I 'm afraid ; but it wasn't my fault. We must see
what we can do for you.' Then he wrapped the hand-
kerchief deftly around it, without letting any blood show
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THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
through, pressed the dog close against his breast, and picked
up the knife gingerly by the reeking handle. ' A fool of a
fellow would throw it into the river,' he thought, with a curl
of his graceful lip. ' They always dredge the river after
these incidents. I shall just stick it down a hole in the
hedge a hundred yards off. The police have no invention,
dull donkeys ; they never dredge the hedges.' And he thrust
it well down a disused rabbit burrow, filling in the top neatly
with loose mould.
Walter Dene meant to have gone home quietly and said
evensong, leaving the discovery of the body to be made at
haphazard by others, but this unfortunate accident to King
Charlie compelled him against his will to give the first
alarm. It was absolutely necessary to take the dog to the
veterinary at once, or the poor little fellow might bleed to
death incontinently. ' One's best efforts,' he thought, ' are
always liable to these unfortunate contretemps. I meant
merely to remove a superfluous person from an uncongenial
environment ; yet I can't manage it without at the same
time seriously injuring a harmless little creature that 1
really love.' And with one last glance at the lifeless
thing behind him, he took his way regretfully along the
ordinary path back towards the peaceful village of Churn-
side.
Halfway down the lane, at the entrance to the village,
he met one of his parishioners. ' Tom,' he said boldly,
' have you seen anything of the vicar .'' I 'm afraid he 's got
hurt somehow. Here 's poor little King Charlie come limping
back with his leg cut.'
' He went down the road, zur, 'arf an hour zince, and I
arn't zeen him afterwards.'
'^Tell the servants at the vicarage to look around the
grounds, then ; I 'm afraid he has fallen and hurt himself.
I must take the dog at once to Perkins's, or else I shall be
late for evensong.'
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THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
The man went off straight towards the vicarage, and
Walter Dene turned immediately with the dog in his arms
into the village veterinary's.
II
The servants from the vicarage were not the first persons
to hit upon the dead body of the vicar. Joe Harley, the
poacher, was out reconnoitring that afternoon in the vicar's
preserves ; and five minutes after Walter Dene had passed
down the far side of the hedge, Joe Harley skulked noise-
lessly from the orchard up to the gate of the covert by
Selbury Copse. He crept through the open end by the post
(for it was against Joe's principles under any circumstances
to climb over an obstacle of any sort, and so needlessly
expose himself), and he was just going to slink off along
the other hedge, having wires and traps in his pocket,
when his boot struck violently against a soft object in the
ditch underfoot. It struck so violently that it crushed in
the object with the force of the impact; and when Joe came
to look at what the object might be, he found to his horror
that it was the bruised and livid face of the old parson.
Joe had had a brush with keepers more than once, and had
spent several months of seclusion in Dorchester Gaol ; but,
in spite of his familiarity with minor forms of lawlessness,
he was moved enough in all conscience by this awful and
unexpected discovery. He turned the body over clumsily
with his hands, and saw that it had been stabbed in the
back once only. In doing so he trod in a little blood, and
got a drop or two on his sleeve and trousers ; for the pool
was bigger now, and Joe was not so handy or dainty with
his fingers as the idyllic curate.
It was an awful dilemma, indeed, for a confirmed and
convicted poacher. Should he give the alarm then and
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THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
there, boldly, trusting to his innocence for vindication, and
helping the police to discover the murderer? Why, that
would be sheer suicide, no doubt ; ' for who but would
believe,' he thought, ''twas me as done it?' Or should he
slink away quietly and say nothing, leaving others to find
the body as best they might ? That was dangerous enough
in its way if anybody saw him, but not so dangerous as the
other course. In an evil hour for his own chances Joe
Harley chose that worse counsel, and slank off in his
familiar crouching fashion towards the opposite corner of
the copse.
On the way he heard John's voice holloaing for his master,
and kept close to the hedge till he had quite turned the
corner. But John had caught a glimpse of him too, and
John did not forget it when, a few minutes later, he came
upon the horrid sight beside the gate of Selbury Copse.
Meanwhile Walter had taken King Charlie to the
veterinary 's, and had his leg bound and bandaged securely.
He had also gone down to the church, got out his surplice,
and begun to put it on in the vestry for evensong, when
a messenger came at hot haste from the vicarage, with news
that Master Walter must come up at once, for the vicar was
murdered.
' Murdered ! ' Walter Dene said to himself slowly half
aloud ; ' nmrdered ! how horrible ! Murdered ! ' It was an
ugly word, and he turned it over with a genuine thrill of
horror. That was what they would say of him if ever
the thing came to be discovered ! What an inappropriate
classification !
He threw aside the surplice, and rushed up hurriedly to
the vicarage. Already the servants had brought in the
body, and laid it out in the clothes it wore, on the vicar's
own bed. Walter Dene went in, shuddering, to look at it.
To his utter amazement, the face was battered in horribly
and almost unrecognisably by a blow or kick ! What could
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THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
that hideous mutilation mean ? He could not imagine. It
was an awful mystery. Great heavens ! just fancy if any one
were to take it into his head that he, Walter Dene, had done
that — had kicked a defenceless old gentleman brutally about
the face like a common London ruffian ! The idea was
too horrible to be borne for a moment. It unmanned him
utterly, and he hid his face between his two hands and
sobbed aloud like one broken-hearted. 'This day's work
has been too much for my nerves,' he thought to himself
between the sobs ; ' but perhaps it is just as well I should
give way now completely.'
That night was mainly taken up with the formalities of
all such cases ; and when at last Walter Dene went off,
tired and nerve-worn, to bed, about midnight, he could not
sleep much for thinking of the mystery. The murder
itself didn't trouble him greatly ; that was over and past
now, and he felt sure his precautions had been amply
sufficient to protect him even from the barest suspicion ;
but he couldn't fathom the mystery of that battered and
mutilated face ! Somebody must have seen the corpse
between the time of the murder and the discovery ! Who
could that somebody have been ? and what possible motive
could he have had for such a horrible piece of purposeless
brutality ?
As for the servants, in solemn conclave in the hall, they
had unanimously but one theory to account for all the facts :
some poacher or other, for choice Joe Harley, had come
across the vicar in the copse, with gun and traps in hand.
The wretch had seen he was discovered, had felled the
poor old vicar by a blow in the face with the butt-end of
his rifle, and after he fell, fainting, had stabbed him for
greater security in the back. That was such an obvious
solution of the difficulty, that nobody in the servants' hall
had a moment's hesitation in accepting it.'
When Walter heard next morning early that Joe Harley
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THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
had been arrested overnight, on John's information, his
horror and surprise at the news were wholly unaffected.
Here was another new difficulty, indeed. ' When I did the
thing,' he said to himself, ' I never thought of that possi-
bility. I took it for granted it would be a mystery, a
problem for the local police (who, of course, could no more
solve it than they could solve the po7is asinorum), but it
never struck me they would arrest an innocent person on
the charge instead of me. This is horrible. It's so easy to
make out a case against a poacher, and hang him for it,
on suspicion. One's whole sense of justice revolts against
the thing. After all, there 's a great deal to be said in
favour of the ordinary commonplace morality : it prevents
complications. A man of delicate sensibilities oughtn't to
kill anybody ; he lets himself in for all kinds of unexpected
contingencies, without knowing it.'
At the coroner's inquest things looked veiy black indeed
for Joe Harley. Walter gave his evidence first, showing
how he had found King Charlie wounded in the lane ; and
then the others gave theirs, as to the search for and finding
of the body. John in particular swore to having seen a
man's back and head slinking away by the hedge while they
were looking for the vicar ; and that back and head he felt
sure were Joe Harley's. To Walter's infinite horror and
disgust, the coroner's jury I'eturned a verdict of wilful
murder against the poor poacher. What other verdict
could they possibly have given in accordance with such
evidence .''
The trial of Joe Harley for the wilful murder of the
Reverend Arthur Dene was fixed for the next Dorchester
Assizes. In the interval, Walter Dene, for the first time in
his placid life, knew what it was to undergo a mental
struggle. Whatever happened, he could not let Joe Harley
be hanged for this murder. His whole soul rose up within
him in loathing for such an act of hideous injustice. For
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THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
though Walter Dene's code of morality was certainly not
the conventional one, as he so often boasted to himself, he
was not by any means without a code of morals of any
sort. He could commit a murder where he thought it
necessary, but he could not let an innocent man suffer in
his stead. His ethical judgment on that point was just as
clear and categorical as the judgment which told him he
was in duty bound to murder his uncle. For Walter did not
argue with himself on moral questions : he perceived the
right and necessary thing intuitively ; he was a law to him-
self, and he obeyed his own law implicitly, for good or for
evil. Such men are capable of horrible and diabolically
deliberate crimes ; but they are capable of great and genuine
self-sacrifices also.
Walter made no secret in the village of his disinclination
to believe in Joe Harley's guilt. Joe was a rough fellow,
he said, certainly, and he had no objection to taking a
pheasant or two, and even to having a free fight with the
keepers ; but, after all, our game-laws were an outrageous
piece of class legislation, and he could easily understand how
the poor, whose sense of justice they outraged, should be so
set against them. He could not think Joe Harley was cap-
able of a detestable crime. Besides, he had seen him himself
within a few minutes before and after the murder. Every-
body thought it such a proof of the young parson's generous
and kindly disposition ; he had certainly the charity which
thinketh no evil. Even though his own uncle had been
brutally murdered on his own estate, he checked his natural
feelings of resentment, and refused to believe that one of his
own parishioners could have been guilty of the crime. Nay,
more, so anxious was he that substantial justice should be
done the accused, and so confident was he of his innocence,
that he promised to provide counsel for him at his own
expense ; and he provided two of the ablest barristers on
the Western circuit.
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THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
Before the trial, Walter Dene had come, after a terrible
internal struggle, to an awful resolution. He would do
everything he could for Joe Harley ; but if the verdict went
against him, he was resolved, then and there, in open court,
to confess, before judge and jury, the whole truth. It would
be a horrible thing for Christina ; he knew that : but he
could not love Christina so much, ' loved he not honour
more ' ; and honour, after his own fashion, he certainly loved
dearly. Though he might be false to all that all the world
thought right, it was ingrained in the very fibre of his soul
to be true to his own inner nature at least. Night after
night he lay awake, tossing on his bed, and picturing to his
mind's-eye every detail of that terrible disclosure. The jury
would bring in a verdict of guilty : then, before the judge
put on his black cap, he, Walter, would stand up, and tell
them that he could not let another man hang for his crime ;
he would have the whole truth out before them ; and then
he would die, for he would have taken a little bottle of
poison at the first sound of the verdict. As for Christina —
oh, Christina ! — Walter Dene could not dare to let himself
think upon that. It was horrible ; it was unendui'able ; it
was torture a thousand times worse than dying : but still,
he must and would face it. For in certain phases, Walter
Dene, forger and murderer as he was, could be positively
heroic.
The day of the trial came, and Walter Dene, pale and
haggard with much vigil, walked in a dream and faintly
from his hotel to the court-house. Everybody pi-esent
noticed what a deep effect the shock of his uncle's death had
had upon him. He was thinner and more bloodless than
usual, and his dulled eyes looked black and sunken in their
sockets. Indeed, he seemed to have suffered far more in-
tensely than the prisoner himself, who walked in firmer and
more erect, and took his seat doggedly in the familiar dock.
He had been there more than once before, to say the truth,
185
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
though never before on such an errand. Yet mere habit,
when he got there^ made him at once assume the hang-dog
look of the consciously guilty.
Walter sat and watched and listened, still in a dream, but
without once betraying in his face the real depth of his
innermost feelings. In the body of the court he saw Joe's
wife, weeping profusely and ostentatiously, after the fashion
considered to be con-ect by her class ; and though he pitied
her from the bottom of his heart, he could only think by
contrast of Christina. What were that good woman's fears
and sorrows by the side of the grief and shame and unspeak-
able horror he might have to bring upon his Christina .'' Pray
Heaven the shock, if it came, might kill her outright ; that
would at least be better than that she should live long years
to remember. More than judge, or jury, or prisoner, Walter
Dene saw everywhere, behind the visible shadows that
thronged the court, that one persistent prospective picture
of heart-broken Christina.
The evidence for the prosecution told with damning force
against the prisoner. He was a notorious poacher ; the vicar
was a game-preserver. He had poached more than once on
the ground of the vicarage. He was shown by numerous
witnesses to have had an animus against the vicar. He had
been seen, not in the face, to be sure, but still seen and re-
cognised, slinking away, immediately after the fact, from the
scene of the murder. And the prosecution had found stains
of blood, believed by scientific experts to be human, on the
clothing he had worn when he was arrested. Walter Dene
listened now with terrible, unabated earnestness, for he
knew that in reality it was he himself who was upon his trial.
He himself, and Christina's happiness ; for if the poacher
were found guilty, he was firmly resolved, beyond hope of
respite, to tell all, and face the unspeakable.
The defence seemed indeed a weak and feeble theory.
Somebody unknown had committed the murder, and this
186
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
somebody, seen from behind, had been mistaken by John for
Joe Harley. The blood-stains need not be human, as the
cross-examination went to show, but were only known by
counter-experts to be mammalian — perhaps a rabbit's.
Every poacher — and it was admited that Joe was a poacher
— was liable to get his clothes blood-stained. Grant they
were human, Joe, it appeared, had himself once shot off his
little finger. All these points came out from the examina-
tion of the earlier witnesses. At last, counsel put the curate
himself into the box, and proceeded to examine him briefly
as a witness for the defence.
Walter Dene stepped, pale and haggard still, into the
witness-box. He had made up his mind to make one final
effort 'for Christina's happiness.' He fumbled nervously all
the time at a small glass phial in his pocket, but he an-
swered all questions without a moment's hesitation, and he
kept down his emotions with a wonderful composure which
excited the admii-ation of everybody present. There was a
general hush to hear him. Did he see the prisoner, Joseph
Harley, on the day of the murder ? Yes, three times.
When was the first occasion ? From the library window,
just before the vicar left the house. What was Joseph Harley
then doing .'' Walking in the opposite direction from the
copse. Did Joseph Harley recognise him .'' Yes, he touched
his hat to him. When was the second occasion ? About
ten minutes later, when he, Walter, was leaving the vicarage
for a stroll. Did Joseph Harley then recognise him ? Yes,
he touched his hat again, and the curate said, ' Good
morning, Joe ; a fine day for walking.' When was the third
time ? Ten minutes later again, when he was returning
from the lane, carrying wounded little King Charlie. Would
it have been physically possible for the prisoner to go from
the vicarage to the spot where the murder was committed,
and back again, in the interval between the first two occa-
sions .'' It would not. Would it have been physically
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THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
possible for the prisoner to do so in the interval between the
second and third occasions ? It would not.
' Then in your opinion, Mr. Dene, it is physically im-
possible that Joseph Harley can have committed this
murder ? '
' In my opinion, it is physically impossible.'
While Walter Dene solemnly swore amid dead silence to
this treble lie, he did not dare to look Joe Harley once in
the face ; and while Joe Harley listened in amazement to
this unexpected assistance to his case — for counsel, sus-
pecting a mistaken identity, had not questioned him too
closely on the subject — he had presence of mind enough
not to let his astonishment show upon his stolid features.
But when Walter had finished his evidence in chief, he stole
a glance at Joe ; and for a moment their eyes met. Then
Walter's fell in utter self-humiliation ; and he said to him-
self fiercely, ' I would not so have debased and degraded
myself before any man to save my own life — what is my
life worth to me, after all ? — but to save Christina, to save
Christina, to save Christina ! I have brought all this upon
myself for Christina's sake.'
Meanwhile, Joe Harley was asking himself curiously what
could be the meaning of this new move on parson's part.
It was delibei'ate perjury, Joe felt sure, for parson could not
have mistaken another person for him three times over ;
but what good end for himself could parson hope to gain by
it .'' If it was he who had murdered the vicar (as Joe strongly
suspected), why did he not try to press the charge home
against the first person who happened to be accused, instead
of committing a distinct perjury on purpose to compass his
acquittal .'' Joe Harley, with his simple everyday criminal
mind, could not be expected to unravel the intricacies of so
complex a personality as Walter Dene's. But even there,
on trial for his life, he could not help wondering what
on earth young parson could be driving at in this business.
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THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
The judge summed up with the usual luminously obvious
alternate platitudes. If the jury thought that John had
really seen Joe Harley, and that the curate was mistaken in
the person whom he thrice saw, or was mistaken once only
out of the thrice, or had miscalculated the time between
each occurrence, or the time necessary to cover the ground
to the gate, then they would find the prisoner guilty of
wilful murder. If, on the other hand, they believed John
had judged hastily, and that the curate had really seen the
prisoner three separate times, and that he had rightly
calculated all the intervals, then they would find the
prisoner not guilty. The prisoner's case rested entirely
upon the alibi. Supposing they thought there was a doubt
in the matter, they should give the prisoner the benefit of
the doubt. Walter noticed that the judge said in every
other case, ' If you believe the witness So-and-so,' but that
in his case he made no such discourteous reservation. As a
matter of fact, the one person whose conduct nobody for
a moment dreamt of calling in question was the real
murderer.
The jury retired for more than an hour. During all that
time two men stood there in mortal suspense, intent and
haggard, both upon their trial, but not both equally. The
prisoner in the dock fixed his arms in a dogged and sullen
attitude, the colour half gone from his brown cheek, and his
eyes straining with excitement, but showing no outward
sign of any emotion except the craven fear of death.
Walter Dene stood almost fainting in the body of the court,
his bloodless fingers still fumbling nei-vously at the little
phial, and his face deadly pale with the awful pallor of a
devouring horror. His heart scarcely beat at all, but at
each long slow pulsation he could feel it throb distinctly
within his bosom. He saw or heard nothing before him,
but kept his aching eyes fixed steadily on the door by which
the jury were to enter. Junior counsel nudged one another
189
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
to notice his agitation, and whispered that that poor young
curate had evidently never seen a man tried for his Hfe before.
At last the jury entei*ed. Joe and Walter waited, each in
his own manner, breathless for the verdict. ' Do you find
the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty of wilful murder .'' '
Walter took the little phial from his pocket, and held
it carefully between his finger and thumb. The awful
moment had come ; the next word would decide the fate of
himself and Christina. The foreman of the jury looked up
solemnly, and answered with slow distinctness, ' Not guilty.'
The prisoner leaned back vacantly, and wiped his forehead ;
but there was an awful cry of relief from one mouth in the
body of the court, and Walter Dene sank back into the arms
of the bystanders, exhausted with suspense and overcome
by the reaction. The crowd remarked among themselves
that young Parson Dene was too tender-hearted a man to
come into court at a criminal trial. He would break his
heart to see even a dog hanged, let alone his fellow-Christians.
As for Joe Harley, it was universally admitted that he had
had a narrow squeak of it, and that he had got off better
than he deserved. The jury gave him the benefit of the
doubt.
As soon as all the persons concerned had returned to
Churnside, Walter sent at once for Joe Harley. The
poacher came to see him in the vicarage library. He was
elated and coarsely exultant with his victoiy, as a relief
from the strain he had suifered, after the manner of all
vulgar natures.
'Joe,' said the clergyman slowly, motioning him into a
chair at the other side of the desk, ' I know that after this
trial Churnside will not be a pleasant place to hold you.
All your neighbours believe, in spite of the verdict, that you
killed the vicar. I feel sure, however, that you did not
commit this murder. Therefore, as some compensation for
the suffering of mind to which you have been put, I think
190
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
it well to send you and your wife and family to Australia or
Canada, whichever you like best. I propose also to make
you a present of a hundred pounds, to set you up in your
new home.'
' Make it five hundi-ed, passon,' Joe said, looking at him
significantly.
Walter smiled quietly, and did not flinch in any way. ' I
said a hundred/ he continued calmly, ' and I will make it
only a hundred. I should have had no objection to making
it five, except for the manner in which you ask it. But you
evidently mistake the motive of my gift. I give it out of
pure compassion for you, and not out of any other feeling
whatsoever.'
' Very well, passon,' said Joe sullenly, ' I accept it.'
' You mistake again,' Walter went on blandly, for he was
himself again now. ' You are not to accept it as terms ;
you are to thank me for it as a pure present. I see we two
partially understand each other; but it is important you
should understand me exactly as I mean it. Joe Harley,
listen to me seriously. I have saved your life. If I had
been a man of a coarse and vulgar nature, if I had been like
you in a similar predicament, I would have pressed the case
against you for obvious personal reasons, and you would have
been hanged for it. But I did not press it, because I felt
convinced of your innocence, and my sense of justice rose
irresistibly against it. I did the best I could to save you ;
I risked my own reputation to save you ; and I have no
hesitation now in telling you that to the best of my belief,
if the verdict had gone against you, the person who really
killed the vicar, accidentally or intentionally, meant to have
given himself up to the police, rather than let an innocent
man suffer.'
' Passon,' said Joe Harley, looking at him intently, ' I
believe as you 're tellin' me the truth. I zeen as much in
that person's face afore the verdict.'
191
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
There was a solemn pause for a moment ; and then
Walter Dene said slowly, ' Now that you have withdrawn
your claim as a claim, I will stretch a point and make it
five hundred. It is little enough for what you have
suffered. But I, too, have suffered terribly, terribly.'
' Thank you, passon,' Joe answered. ' I zeen as you were
turble anxious.'
There was again a moment's pause. Then Walter Dene
asked quietly, ' How did the vicar's face come to be so
bruised and battered } '
' I stumbled up agin 'im accidental like, and didn't know
I 'd kicked 'un till I 'd done it. Must 'a been just a few
minutes after you 'd 'a left 'un.'
' Joe,' said the curate in his calmest tone, ' you had better
go ; the money will be sent to you shortly. But if you ever
see my face again, or speak or write a word of this to me,
you shall not have a penny of it, but shall be prosecuted for
intimidation. A hundred before you leave, four hundred in
Australia. Now go.'
' Very well, passon,' Joe answered ; and he went.
' Pah ! ' said the curate with a face of disgust, shutting
the door after him, and lighting a perfumed pastille in his
little Chinese porcelain incense-burner, as if to fumigate
the room from the poacher's offensive presence. ' Pah !
to think that these affairs should compel one to humiliate
and abase oneself before a vulgar clod like that ! To
think that all his life long that fellow will virtually know
— and misinterpret — my secret. He is incapable of under-
standing that I did it as a duty to Christina. Well, he
will never dare to tell it, that 's certain, for nobody would
believe him if he did ; and he may congratulate himself
heartily that he's got well out of this difficulty. It will
be the luckiest thing in the end that ever happened to
him. And now I hope this little episode is finally over.'
When the Churnside public learned that Walter Dene
192
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
meant to carry his belief in Joe Harley's innocence so far
as to send him and his family at his own expense out to
Australia, they held that the young parson's charity and
guilelessness was really, as the doctor said, almost Quixotic.
And when, in his anxiety to detect and punish the real
murderer, he offered a reward of five hundred pounds from
his own pocket for any information leading to the arrest and
conviction of the criminal, the Churnside people laughed
quietly at his extraordinaiy childlike simplicity of heart.
The real murderer had been caught and tried at Dorchester
Assizes, they said, and had only got off by the skin of his
teeth because Walter himself had come forward and sworn
to a quite improbable and inconclusive alibi. There was
plenty of time for Joe to have got to the gate by the
short cut, and that he did so everybody at Churnside felt
morally certain. Indeed, a few years later a blood-stained
bowie-knife was found in the hedge not far from the
scene of the murder, and the gamekeeper ' could almost 'a
took his Bible oath he 'd zeen just such a knife along o'
Joe Harley.'
That was not the end of Walter Dene's Quixotisms,
however. When the will was read, it turned out that
almost eveiything was left to the young parson ; and who
could deserve it better, or spend it more charitably .'' But
Walter, though he would not for the world seem to cast
any slight or disrespect upon his dear uncle's memory, did
not approve of customs of primogeniture, and felt bound to
share the estate equally with his brother Arthur. ' Strange,'
said the head of the firm of Watson and Blenkiron to him-
self, when he read the little paragraph about this generous
conduct in the paper ; ' I thought the instructions were to
leave it to his nephew Arthur, not to his nephew Walter ;
but there, one forgets and confuses names of people that
one does not know so easily.' ' Gracious goodness ! ' thought
the engrossing clerk ; ' surely it was the other way on. I
N 193
THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE
wonder if I can have gone and copied the wrong names in
the wrong places ? ' But in a big London business, nobody
notes these things as they would have been noted in
Churnside ; the vicar was always a changeable, pernickety,
huffy old fellow, and very likely he had had a reverse will
drawn up afterwards by his country lawyer. All the world
only thought that Walter Dene's generosity was really
almost ridiculous, even in a parson. When he was married
to Christina, six months afterwards, everybody said so
charming a girl was well mated with so excellent and admir-
able a husband.
And he really did make a very tender and loving husband
and father. Christina believed in him always, for he did
his best to foster and keep alive her faith. He would have
given up active clerical duty if he could, never having liked
it (for he was above hypocrisy), but Christina was against
the project, and his bishop would not hear of it. The
Church could ill afford to lose such a man as Mr. Dene, the
bishop said, in these troubled times ; and he begged him
as a personal favour to accept the living of Churnside, which
was in his gift. But Walter did not like the place, and
asked for another living instead, which, being of less value
— ' so like Mr. Dene to think nothing of the temporalities,'
— the bishop even more graciously granted. He has since
published a small volume of dainty little poems on uncut
paper, considered by some critics as rather pagan in tone
for a clergyman, but universally allowed to be extremely
graceful, the perfection of poetical form with much deli-
cate mastery of poetical matter. And everybody knows
that the author is almost certain to be offered the first
vacant canonry in his own cathedral. As for the little
episode, he himself has almost forgotten all about it; for
those who think a murderer must feel remorse his whole
life long, are trying to read their own emotional nature into
the wholly dispassionate character of Walter Dene.
194.
VIII
CECCA'S LOVER
CECCA^S LOVER
They're a queer lot^ these Italians. After twenty years
spent among them I don't yet understand them. Italy
itself I love — every artist must. I love the very dirt. I
love the squalid towns. I love the crumbling walls ; I love
every stone of them. When I came to the country first, I
dropped into it like one to the manner born. I said on the
mere threshold, by the slope of the Alps, stretching out my
hands to the soil of Italy, ' Ecco la mia patria ! ' But the
Italians! — ah, there! — that's quite another question. I
like them, understand well ; I don't say a word against
them ; but comprehend them .'' — no, no ; they 're at once
too simple and too complex, by far, for our Northern
intelligence.
There was Cecca's case, for example ; what a very queer
history ! You must have noticed Cecca — that black-haired,
flashing-eyed Neapolitan maid of ours, who goes out with my
little ones. Have I never told you the story about Cecca's
strange courtship .'' Well, well ; sit down here under the
shade of the stone-pine, and light your cigarette while I tell
you all about it. Be careful of your match, though ; don't
throw it away lighted in the midst of the rosemary bushes ;
the myrtles and lentisks on these dry hillsides flare up like
tinder ; the white heath crackles and fizzes in a second ;
before you know where you are, the flame runs up the
junipers and pine-trees, corkscrew-wise; and hi, presto! in
rather less time than it takes to say so, the forest 's ablaze
from Santa Croce to the Roya.
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CECCA'S LOVER
It was before we settled down here at Bordighera that
the thing began ; indeed^ it was Cecca, indirectly speaking,
that brought us to the coast here. We were living at
Naples then, or, rather, near Castellamare. Cecca was our
housemaid. Her full name 's Francesca. She 's handsome
still, but she was beautiful then ; the prettiest fisher-girl
from Sorrento to Pozzuoli. Fanny took her from her
parents when she was twelve years old, and trained her
up in the house like an English servant. But the hot Nea-
politan nature burnt strong in her, all the same ; nobody
could ever tame Cecca.
Well, she had a lover, of course ; every girl has a lover —
especially in Italy. He was a fisherman, like her own
people ; for the fishermen are a caste, and no well-bred
fisher-girl ever dreams of marrying any man outside it.
The fellow's name was Giuseppe. Our children loved him.
He used to bring them dried sea-horses with long curled
tails, and queer shells with wings to them, and creepy great
octopuses with staring goggle eyes, that they loved to see
and yet shrank from in terror. He was a mighty hunter
of sea-eggs and cuttle-fish. Cecca pretended not to care
for him, Neapolitan fashion — for they are a crooked folk ; but
we could see very well she was madly in love with him for
all that. If we sent her on the hills to take the children
for a walk, we always found, in the end, she 'd gone on the
beach instead, if Giuseppe was hauling the seine, or mend-
ing his nets, or tarring and towing the gaping chinks in the
hull of the Sant' Elmo.
One morning I was sitting under the shadow of a boat,
on the shingle by the sea, doing a little water-colour ; the
children were close by, playing with stranded jelly-fish ;
and Cecca was there to look after them, basking in the sun
like a lizard. Presently, on the shore, Giuseppe's boat
drove in, and he hauled her up close by, with the aid of
his brown-legged mates, never noticing us so near him.
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CECCA'S LOVER
Cecca noted him stealthily, glancing askance at me to keep
silence. The young man began sorting his fish — you know
the kind of thing — strange frutti di mare that they make
frittura of. All's fish that comes to their net — mussels,
squids, or sea-spiders. As he was doing it, another pretty
fisher-girl strolled up that way, brown-skinned like himself,
and with a bright red handkerchief twisted carelessly round
that glossy black head of hers. Cecca crept closer, under
shelter of the boat, her eyes like coals of fire, and listened
to the talk of them. I heard it all, too ; frank fisher-folk
chaff, with frank fisher-folk words, in the frank fisher- folk
dialect. A good part of it, don't you see, would be totally
unfit for publication in English.
' Hey, my Lady, what a catch ! ' says the girl, holding her
head on one side, and looking down at the boat-load.
'Crabs, sardines, and sea-wolf! You've fifty lire's worth
there if you've got ten soldi. You'll be making your
fortune soon, Giuseppe ! '
Giuseppe glanced up at her as she stood there so saucy,
with one hand on her hip, and one, coquettish, by the corner
of her rich red mouth, and he shrugged his shoulders.
' Pretty well,' he says, opening his hands, just so, in
front of him — you know their way. ' A fair catch for the
season ! '
The girl sidled nearer. Her name was Bianca (though
she was brown as a berry), and I knew her well by sight.
' You '11 be marrying Cecca before long,' she said. ' You '11
need it all — then ! She 'II want red shoes and silk stockings,
your Cecca will.'
' Who said I was going to marry Cecca .'' ' Giuseppe
answers, quite short, out of pure contrariety. That 's the
Neapolitan way. Talking to one pretty girl, in the heat of
the moment, he couldn't bear she should think he cared for
another one. Your Neapolitan would like to make love to
them all at once, or rather each in turn, and pretend to
199
CECCA'S LOVER
every one of them he didn't care a pin for any of the
others.
Wellj there they fell straight into an Italian chaffing-
mateh, half fun, half earnest ; Bianca pretending Giuseppe
was head over ears in love with Cecca, to her certain know-
ledge ; while Giuseppe pretended he never cared for the
mincing thing at all, and was immensely devoted to no one
but Bianca. It was pure Neapolitan devilry on his part, of
course ; he couldn't help saying sweet things to whatever
pretty girl with a pair of black eyes was nearest him at the
moment, and depreciating by comparison every other she
spoke of.
But Cecca sat hard by, her hand curved round her ear,
shell-wise, so, to listen, and her brow like thunder. I dared
not say a word lest she should rise and rush at him.
'And you've chosen so well, too!' says Bianca, half
satirically, don't you see .'' ' She 's so sweet ! so pretty !
Such lips for a kiss ! Such fine eyes to flirt with ! Not a
girl on the beach with eyes like Cecca's ! '
' Eyes ! ' Giuseppe answers, coming closer and ogling her.
' You call her eyes fine } Why, / say she squints with
them.'
' Not squints,' says Bianca condescendingly. ' Just a very
slight cast.'
And indeed, as you may have noticed, though Cecca's so
handsome, they 're not quite straight in her head, when you
come to look hard at them.
' Yoti may call it a cast,' Giuseppe continues, counting
over his dories ; ' but / call it squinting. Whereas your
eyes, Bianca '
Bianca pouted her lips at him.
'That's the way of you men,' she says, mighty pleased all
the same. ' Always flattering us to our faces ; while behind
our backs '
' And then, her temper ! ' says Giuseppe.
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CECCA'S LOVER
' Well, she has a temper, I admit,' Bianca goes on with
angelic candour. And so for twenty minutes such a game
between them, pulling poor Cecca to pieces, turn about, till,
morally and physically, she hadn't the ghost of a leg left to
stand upon.
But Cecca ! you should have seen her meanwhile. There
she sat, under the boat, drinking in every word, herself
unseen, with the eye and the face of a tigress just ready to
spring, straining forward to listen. It was awful to look at
her ; she seemed one whirlwind of suppressed passion.
Little fists clenched hard, neck stretched out to the utmost,
frowning brow, puckered eyes, nostrils wide and quivering.
I 'd have given anything to paint her as she sat there that
minute. I tried it from memory afterwards — you remember
the piece, my 'Italian Idyll,' in the '84 Academy.
By and by she rose and faced them. Then came the tug
of war. If it was tragedy to see Cecca with her heart on
fire, like the pinewoods in summer, it was comedy to see
those two disappear into their shoes when Cecca fronted
them. The Three Furies wei'e nothing to it. Bianca
dodged and vanished. Giuseppe stood sheepish, jaw
dropped and eye staring, anxious at first to find out
whether she'd heard them or not; then pretending he'd
known all the time she was there, and just did it to tease
her ; lastly, throwing himself on her mercy, and setting it
all down, as was really the case, to the time-pleasing, fickle
Neapolitan temperament that was common to both of them.
'You'd have done it yourself, Cecca,' he said, 'with any
other man, you know, if he 'd begun to chaif you about
your fellow, Giuseppe.'
Cecca knew she would in her heart, I dare say, but she
wouldn't acknowledge it ; having heard it all, you see, made
all the difference. It 's the way of men, Giuseppe told her,
craning eagerly forward, to disparage even the girl they love
best, when they want to make themselves momentarily
201
CECCA^S LOVER
agreeable to another one. It's the way of men, all the
world over, I 'm afraid ; but, as far as I 've observed, the
woman they love never lets them off one penny the easier
on account of its universality.
Well, they parted bad friends ; Giuseppe went off in a
huff, and Cecca, proud and cold, with the mien of a duchess,
stalked home by the children's side in silence. For a day
or two we heard nothing more at all about the matter.
Giuseppe didn't come round in the evenings, as usual, to
the villa gate ; and Cecca's eyes in the morning were red
with crying. Not that she minded a bit, she told Fanny,
with a toss of her pretty head ; for her own part, indeed,
she was rather glad than otherwise it was off altogether, for
Giuseppe, she always knew, wasn't half good enough for
her. In a moment of weakness she had encouraged his suit
— a mere common fisherman's, when the head waiter at the
Victoria, that distinguished-looking gentleman in a swallow-
tail coat and a spotless white tie, was dying of love for her.
For Cecca had been raised one degree in the social scale by
taking service in a foreign family, and, whenever she wanted
to give herself airs, used to pretend that nowadays she looked
down upon mere fishermen.
Towards the end of the week, however, old Catarina, our
cook, brought in evil tidings. She had no business to tell
it, of course, but, being a Neapolitan, she told it on purpose,
in order to stir up a little domestic tragedy between Cecca
and her lover. Giuseppe was paying his court to Bianca !
They had been seen walking out in the evening together !
He had given her a lace scarf, and it was even said — and so
forth, and so forth ! Well, we knew very well, Fanny and I,
what Giuseppe was driving at. He only wanted to make
Cecca as jealous as an owl, and so bring her back to him.
I don't pretend to understand Italians, as I told you ; but
this much I know, that they always go to work the crooked
way, if they can, to attain their ends, by a sort of racial
202
CECCA^S LOVER
instinct. So I wasn't astonished when Catarina told us this.
But Cecca — she was furious. She went straight out of the
house like a wild eat on the prowl, and crept along the shore
in the direction of Naples.
At ten o'clock she came back. I never saw her look so
proud or so beautiful before. There was a disdainful smile
upon her thin curled lips. Her eyes were terrible. She
had a knife in her hand. ' Well, I 've done it ! ' she cried
to Fanny, flinging the knife on the ground, so that it stuck
by its point in the floor and quivered. ' I 've done it at
last ! I 've finished the thing ! I 've stabbed him ! '
Fanny was so aghast she hardly knew what to do. ' Not
Giuseppe ! ' she cried, all horror-struck. ' Oh, Cecca, don't
say so.'
' Yes, I do say so,' says Cecca, flinging herself down in a
chair. And with that, what does she do but bury her face
in her hands, and rock herself up and down, like a creature
distraught, and burst into floods of tears, and moan through
her sobs, ' Oh, I loved him so ! I loved him ! '
Queer sort of way of showing you love a man, to go
sticking a knife into him ! but that 's the manner of these
Italians. Fanny and I had got used to them, you see, so we
didn't make much of it. Fanny tried to comfort the poor
child, for we were really fond of her. ' Perhaps he won't
die,' she said, bending over her; 'you mayn't have stabbed
him badly.'
' Oh yes, he will,' Cecca sobbed out, her eyes flashing
fire. 'He'll die, I'm sure of it. I drove the knife home
well, so that he shouldn't recover and let that nasty Bianca
have him,'
' Go out and see about it, Tom,' says my wife, turning
round to me, quite frightened ; ' for if Giuseppe dies of it,
then, of course, it'll be murder.'
Well, out I went, and soon heard all the news from the
people at the corner. Giuseppe had been found, lying
203
CECCA'S LOVER
stabbed upon the road, and been carried at once to the
civic hospital. Nobody seemed to think very much of the
stabbing ; some woman, no doubt, or else a quarrel about
a woman with some fisherman of his acquaintance. But
they considered it very probable Giuseppe would die. He
was stabbed twice badly in two dangerous places.
There was no time to be lost. Fanny and I made up our
minds at once. We were Italianate enough ourselves to
think a great deal less of the crime than of poor Cecca's
danger. You know the proverb, Inglese Ilalianalo c diavolo
tTicarnato. I hope it's not quite true, but, at any rate,
Fanny 's Italianate, and she was determined poor Cecca's
head shouldn't fall off her neck if she could prevent it.
Fanny had always a conscientious objection to the guillotine.
So we saw at a glance Cecca must disappear — disappear
mysteriously. Before she began to be suspected she must
be smuggled out of the way, of course without our seeming
to know anything about it.
No sooner thought than done. 'Twas the moment for
action. We called up Cecca, and held a council of war
over her. Just at first the poor child absolutely refused to
leave Naples on any account while Giuseppe was in such
danger; why, he might die, she said, any moment — crying
over him, you must know, as if it was somebody else, not
herself, who had stabbed him. That dear man might die —
the blessed Madonna save him !— and she not there to com-
fort him in his last hour, or to burn a candle for the
repose of his soul after he 'd gone to purgatory. No, not
till Giuseppe was healed or dead : she should stop at
Castellamare !
But after a time Fanny talked her over. Fanny's so
rational. Everything would be done at the hospital for
Giuseppe, she said ; and, supposing he died, why, we 'd
promise to waste our substance riotously in hiring a reckless
profusion of priests to sing masses for his soul, if only
204
CECCA'S LOVER
Cecca'd take our advice and save herself. The end of it
all was, Cecca consented at last. She even volunteered a
suggestion on her own account. There was a Bordighera
coasting-vessel in the port that night, she said, whose
skipper, Paolo Bolognini, was a very good man and a friend
of her father's. The vessel was bound out to-morrow
morning for Bordighera direct, with a cargo of white
Capri and country figs. If Cecca could only go on board
to-night, disguised as a boy, she might get clear away
beyond sea undetected. She seemed to think, poor soul,
that if that once happened there could be no more question
of arresting her at all ; she was too childish to be aware
that the law of Italy runs even as far from her native
Naples as this unknown coast here.
Well, it's no use being seriously angry and taking the high
moral standpoint with a naughty girl like that. You might
as well preach the Decalogue at a three-year-old baby. So
we cut all Cecca's hair short — she cried over its loss quite as
bitterly at the time as she had cried over Giuseppe — and we
dressed her up in a suit of her brother's clothes ; and a very
pretty fisher-boy she made, after all, with a red cap on her
head and a crimson sash round her waist for girdle. She
laughed for three good minutes when she saw herself in the
glass. Then we started her off, alone, for the Bordighera
sloop, along the dim, dark shore, while Fanny and I stole
after, at a discreet distance, to observe what happened.
At the. very last moment, to be sure, Fanny had qualms
of conscience about letting a pretty girl like Cecca go alone
on board a ship among all those noisy Italian sailors. The
British matron within her still wondered whether the girl
ought to be allowed to go off without a chaperon. But I
soon put a stopper on all that — revolutions and rosewater
— you can't stick at trifles when you 're escaping from an
impending charge of murder ; and besides, Cecca could take
care of herself {with a knife, if necessary) among a hundred
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CECCA^S LOVER
sailors. A boatman of our acquaintance rowed her out to
the sloop, which was anchored in the bay. She went on
board at once, and signified to us, by a preconcerted signal
with a light, that she was well received and would be taken
to Bordighera.
As soon as she was gone we expected every hour the
police would come up and make full inquiries. If they did
come (having lost all moral sense by this time), I was pre-
pared to aid them in searching the house through, with the
most innocent face, for that missing Cecca. But they never
came at all. We learned why afterwards. Giuseppe had
been staunch ; true as steel to the girl. In his bed at the
hospital, half dead with the wound, he never said for a
moment it was Cecca who had done it. That was partly his
pride, I believe ; he didn't like to confess he 'd been stabbed
by a woman ; and partly his desire to avenge himself
personally. He even concocted a cock-and-bull story about
a mysterious-looking fellow in a brigand-like cloak and a
slouch hat who attacked him unawares on the high road,
without the slightest provocation. The police didn't believe
that, of course, but they never suspected Cecca. They set it
down to a quarrel with some other man over a girl, and
thought he refused out of motives of honour to beti*ay his
opponent.
For a week the poor fellow hovered between life and
death. We waited eagerly for news of him, which old
Catarina brought us. Of course we were afraid to inquire
ourselves, lest suspicion should fall upon us ; but Fanny had
promised Cecca that a letter should be awaiting her when
she reached Bordighera with a full, true, and particular
account of how the patient was progressing. The letter
contained a couple of hundred francs as well ; for Fanny was
wild about that girl, and really talked as if stabbing one's
lover was the most natural thing in the world — an accident
that might happen to any lady any day. That's the sort
206
CECCA'S LOVER
of feeling that comes of living too long at a stretch in
Italy.
By and by, to everybody's immense astonishment, in spite
of his wounds, Giuseppe began to mend. It was really
quite a miracle. If you doubt it you can look at the ex voto
in the chapel on the hill over yonder, where you may see
Giuseppe with a dagger through his heart, and a very wooden
Madonna with a simpering smile descending in a halo of
golden light, from most material clouds, to pluck the thing
out for him. He prayed hard that he might live — to stick a
knife into Cecca — and our Lady heard him. At any rate,
miracle or no miracle, the man recovered. Meanwhile, we
had heard from Cecca of her safe arrival at Bordighera.
But that was not all ; the girl was foolish enough to write to
her people as well ; who confided the fact to their dearest
friend ; who told it under the utmost pledge of secrecy to a
dozen of her cronies ; who retailed it to the marketwomen ;
who noised it abroad with similar precautions to all Castella-
mare. In a week it was known to all and sundry (except
the pohce) that Giuseppe had really been stabbed by Cecca,
who had fled for her life to a place beyond sea called
Bordighera.
Presently old Catarina brought us worse news still.
Giuseppe was up and out, breathing forth fire and slaughter
against the girl who stabbed him. He meant to follow her
to the world's end, he said, and return blow for blow, exact
vengeance for vengeance. The next thing we heard was
that he had sailed in a ship bound for Genoa direct, and we
doubted not he knew now Cecca was at Bordighera.
Well, nothing would satisfy poor Fanny after that but off
we must all pack, bag and baggage, to the north, to look
after Cecca. Not that she put it on that ground, of course ;
British matronhood forbid ! It was getting too hot for the
neighbourhood of Naples, she said, and time for our annual
villeggiatura in the'mountains. We could take Bordighera on
207
CECCA'S LOVER
the way to the Lakes, and carry Cecea with us to Lugano or
Cadenabbia. For now that Giuseppe hadn't died after all,
there was no murder in the case, and we might proceed
more openly.
So off we started, children, nursemaid, and all, and came
round here by rail, post haste to Bordighera. We settled in
for a few days at the Belvedere while we looked about us.
Fanny hunted up Cecca at once in her lodgings in the town,
and took her back as head nurse. ' How do you know,' I
said, ' she won't stick a knife one day into one of the
children ? ' But Fanny treated my remark with deserved
contempt, and observed with asperity that we men had no
feeling. Italianate, you see ! completely Italianate !
We hadn't been in Bordighera but a week and day, as the
old song says, and I was walking along the Strada Romana
one morning, looking out on the blue sea through the
branches of the olives, when who should I perceive coming
gaily towards me but my friend Giuseppe. He had a red
sash round his waist, with a knife stuck in it ostentatiously.
He was fingering the haft as he went. When he saw me he
smiled and showed all his white teeth. But 'twas an ugly
smile ; I didn't like the look of it.
' Buon giorno, Giuseppe,' says I, trying to look uncon-
cerned, as if I 'd expected to meet him. ' Glad to see you so
well again.'
' Buon giorno, signore,' he answered in his politest tone.
Then he tapped his knife gaily : ' I 've come to look for
Cecca ! '
I hurried home in hot haste, as fast as my legs would
carry me. At the Belvedere I saw Fanny sitting out sunning
herself near the stunted palm-tree in the front garden.
* Fanny, Fanny,' I cried, ' where 's Cecca ? Keep her out
of the way, for Heaven's sake ! Here 's Giuseppe at Bor-
dighera, with a knife at his side, going about like a roaring
lion to devour her.'
208
CECCA'S LOVER
Fanny clapped her hands to her ears.
' Oh, Tom,' she cried, 'what shall we do ? She 's down on
the beach somewhere, playing with the children.'
Of course this was serious. If Giuseppe came upon her
unwarned, I didn't doubt for a moment he'd carry out in
real earnest his threat of stabbing her. So off I sent the
porter to find her, if possible, and set her on her guard,
telling him to bring her home, if he could, by the back way
over the hillside. Then Fanny and I sat out, under the
Japanese medlar on the terrace, where we could command a
good view of the road either way, and watch if the girl was
coming. Meanwhile, Giuseppe kept prowling under the
olives on the plain, and bandying chaff now and again with
the Bordighera cabmen.
Presently, to our horror, Cecca hove suddenly in sight,
round the corner by the Angst, with the children beside
her. She was carrying a great bunch of anemones and
asphodel. Evidently the porter had failed to warn and find
her. My heart stood still within me with suspense. I
rushed to the edge of the terrace. But quicker than I could
rush, Cecca had seen Giuseppe, and Giuseppe Cecca. With
a wild cry of joy, she flung down the flowers and darted
upon him like a maniac. She threw her arms around him in
a transport of delight. She covered him with kisses. I
never saw a woman give any man such a welcome. One
would think they were lovers on the eve of marriage. And
not three weeks before, mind you, she had tried her level
best with a knife in his breast to murder him at Naples !
* Giuseppe ! ' she cried, ' Giuseppe ! Oh, carissimo ! How
I love you ! '
Giuseppe shook her off and glared at her angrily. He
drew the dagger from his belt, and held it, irresolute, in his
hand for a moment.
But Cecca laughed when she saw it. She laughed a
merry laugh of amusement and astonishment. ' No, no,
o 209
CECCA'S LOVER
caro mio/ she cried, seizing his arm, quite unconcerned,
with her pretty fingers. ' Not now, when I rejoice to see
you again, my own, are you going to stab me ! ' She
wrenched the knife from his grasp and flung it, all glittering,
far away among the olive groves. It gleamed in the air and
fell. Giuseppe watched her do it, and followed its flight
with his eyes. Then he stood there, sheepish. He didn't
know what to do next. He just stared and looked glum, in
spite of all her endearments.
Cecca was more than a match for him, however. It was
a picture to see her. She began with her blandishments,
making such heartfelt love to him that no man in England,
let alone in Italy, could possibly have resisted her. In just
about two minutes by the watch he gave way. ' But
what did you stab me for, little one } ' he asked rather
sullenly.
Cecca stood back a pace and looked at him in amazement.
She surveyed him from head to foot like some strange wild
animal. ' What did I stab you for ! ' she repeated. ' And
he asks me that ! Oh, Giuseppe, because I loved you ! I
loved you ! I loved you ! I loved you so much I couldn't
bear you out of my sight. And you to go and walk with
that Thing Bianca ! '
' I won't do it again,' Giuseppe answered, all penitence.
Cecca fell upon him once more, kisses, tears, and tender-
ness. ' Oh, Giuseppe,' she cried, ' you can't think what I 've
suffered all these days without you ! I was longing for you
to come. I was praying to our I.ady every hour of the
night ; and, now you 're here, that horrid Bianca shall never
again get hold of you.'
We left them alone for half an hour, with half a flask of
Chianti to compose their minds upon. At the end of that
time Cecca came back to us smiling, and Giuseppe, looking
more sheepish than ever, beside her.
' Well, signora,' she said, overjoyed, ' it 's all arranged now.
210
CECCA^S LOVER
As soon as we can get the announcement published, Giuseppe
and I are going to get married.'
That settled our fate. Willy-nilly, we were tied to
Bordighera. Cecca declared she would never go back to
Naples again, to let that horrid Bianca practise her wiles and
her evil eye on Giuseppe. Fanny declared she could
never get on without Cecca for the children. Giuseppe
declared he would never leave us. I shrugged my shoulders.
The upshot of it all was that we took our present villa, on
the slope of the Cima, and Giuseppe forswore the sea,
turned gardener on the spot, and married Cecca. Married
her, fair and square, at church, and before the Sindaco. He
lives in our cottage. That 's him you see down yonder
there, uncovering the artichokes. And now I daresay you '11
perceive what I mean when I say I never can understand
these Italians.
But the worst of it is, they make us in the end almost as
bad as they are. Have another cigarette .'' And be careful
with your match, please.
211
IX
THE BACKSLIDER
THE BACKSLIDER
There was much stir and commotion on the night of
Thursday, January the 14th, 1874, in the Gideonite
Apostolic Church, number 47, Walworth Lane, Peckham,
S.E. Anybody could see at a glance that some important
business was mider consideration ; for the Apostle was
there himself, in his chair of presidency, and the twelve
Episcops were there, and the forty-eight Presbyters, and
a large and earnest gathering of the Gideonite laity. It
was only a small bare schoolroom, fitted with wooden
benches, was that headquarters station of the young
Church ; but you could not look around it once without
seeing that its occupants were of the sort by whom great
religious revolutions may be made or marred. For the
Gideonites were one of those strange enthusiastic hole-
and-corner sects that spring up naturally in the outlying
suburbs of great thinking centres. They gather around
the marked personality of some one ardent, vigorous, half-
educated visionary; and they consist for the most part of
intelligent, half-reasoning people, who are bold enough to
cast overboard the dogmatic beliefs of their fathers, but
not so bold as to exercise their logical faculty upon the
fundamental basis on which the dogmas originally rested.
The Gideonites had thus collected around the fixed centre
of their Apostle, a retired attorney, Murgess by name,
whose teaching commended itself to their groping reason
as the pure outcome of faithful Biblical research ; and
215
THE BACKSLIDER
they had chosen their name because, though they were
but three hundred in number, they had full confidence
that when the time came they would blow their trumpets,
and all the host of Midian would be scattered before them.
In fact, they divided the world generally into Gideonite
and Midianite, for they knew that he that was not with
them was against them. And no wonder, for the people
of Peckham did not love the struggling Church. Its chief
doctrine was one of absolute celibacy, like the Shakers of
America ; and to this doctrine the Church had testified in
the Old Kent Road and elsewhere after a vigorous practical
fashion that roused the spirit of South-eastern London
into the fiercest opposition. The young men and maidens,
said the Apostle, must no longer marry or be given in
marriage ; the wives and husbands must dwell asunder ;
and the earth must be made as an image of heaven. These
were heterodox opinions, indeed, which South-eastern
London could only receive with a strenuous counterblast of
orthodox brickbats and sound Anglican road metal.
The fleece of wool was duly laid upon the floor ; the
trumpet and the lamji were placed upon the bare wooden
reading-desk ; and the Apostle, rising slowly from his seat,
began to address the assembled Gideonites.
' Friends,' he said, in a low, clear, impressive voice, with a
musical ring tempering its slow distinctness, ' we have met
together to-night to take counsel with one another upon a
high matter. It is plain to all of us that the work of the
Church in the world does not prosper as it might prosper
were the charge of it in worthier hands. We have to
contend against great difficulties. We are not among the
rich or the mighty of the earth ; and the poor whom we
have always with us do not listen to us. It is expedient,
therefore, that we should set some one among us aside to be
instructed thoi'oughly in those things that are most com-
monly taught among the Midianites at Oxford or Cambridge.
216
THE BACKSLIDER
To some of you it may seem, as it seemed at first to me, tliat
such a course would involve going back upon the very
principles of our constitution. We are not to overcome
Midian by our own hand, nor by the strength of two and
thirty thousand, but by the trumpet, and the pitcher, and
the cake of barley bread. Yet, when I searched and
inquired after this matter, it seemed to me that we might
also err by overmuch confidence on the other side. For
Moses, who led the people out of Egypt, was made ready
for the task by being learned in all the learning of the
Egyptians. Daniel, who testified in the captivity, was
cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and
instructed in the wisdom and tongue of the Chaldeans.
Paul, who was the apostle of the Gentiles, had not only sat
at the feet of Gamaliel, but was also able from their own
poets and philosophers to confute the sophisms and subtleties
of the Grecians themselves. These things show us that we
should not too lightly despise even worldly learning and
worldly science. Perhaps we have gone wrong in thinking
too little of such dross, and being puffed up with spiritual
pride. The world might listen to us more readily if we had
one who could speak the word for us in the tongues under-
standed of the world.'
As he paused, a hum of acquiescence went round the room.
' It has seemed to me, then,' the Apostle went on, ' that
we ought to choose some one among our younger brethren,
upon whose shoulders the cares and duties of the Apostolate
might hereafter fall. We are a poor people, but by sub-
scription among ourselves we might raise a sufficient sum to
send the chosen person first to a good school here in London,
and afterwards to the University of Oxford. It may seem a
doubtful and a hazardous thing thus to stake our future upon
any one young man ; but then we must remember that the
choice will not be wholly or even mainly ours ; we will be
guided and directed as we ever are in the laying on of hands.
217
THE BACKSLIDER
To me, considei'ing this matter thus, it has seemed that
there is one youth in our body who is specially pointed out
for this work. Only one child has ever been born into the
Church : he, as you know, is the son of brother John Owen
and sister Margaret Owen, who were received into the fold
just six days before his birth. Paul Owen's very name
seems to many of us, who take nothing for chance but all
things for divinely ordered, to mark him out at once as a
foreordained Apostle. Is it your wish, then, Presbyter John
Owen, to dedicate your only son to this ministry ? '
Presbyter John Owen i-ose from the row of seats assigned
to the forty-eight, and moved hesitatingly towards the
platform. He was an intelligent-looking, honest-faced,
sunburnt working man, a mason by trade, who had come
into the Church from the Baptist society ; and he was
awkwardly dressed in his Sunday clothes, with the scrupulous
clumsy neatness of a respectable artisan who expects to take
part in an important ceremony. He spoke nervously and
with hesitation, but with all the transparent earnestness of
a simple, enthusiastic nature.
' Apostle and friends,' he said, ' it ain't very easy for me
to disentangle my feelins on this subjec' from one another.
I hope I ain't moved by any worldly feelin', an' yet I hardly
know how to keep such considerations out, for there 's no
denyin' that it would be a great pleasure to me and to his
mother to see our Paul becomin' a teacher in Israel, and
receivin' an education such as you, Apostle, has pinted out.
But we hope, too, we ain't insensible to the good of the
Chui'ch and the advantage that it might derive from our
Paul's support and preachin'. We can't help seein' om-selves
that the lad has got abilities ; and we 've tried to train him
up from his youth upward, like Timothy, for the furtherance
of the right doctrine. If the Church thinks he 's fit for the
work laid upon him, his mother and me '11 be glad to
dedicate him to the service.'
218
THE BACKSLIDER
He sat clown awkwardly, and the Church again hummed
its approbation in a suppressed murmur. The Apostle rose
once more, and briefly called on Paul Owen to stand forward.
In answer to the call, a tall, handsome, earnest-eyed boy
advanced timidly to the platform. It was no wonder that
those enthusiastic Gideonite visionaries should have seen in
his face the visible stamp of the Apostleship. Paul Owen
had a rich crop of dark-brown glossy and curly hair, cut
something after the Florentine Cinque-cento fashion — not
because his parents wished him to look artistic, but because
that was the way in which they had seen the hair dressed in
all the sacred pictures that they knew ; and Margaret Owen,
the daughter of some Wesleyan Spitalfields weaver folk,
with the imaginative Huguenot blood still strong in her
veins, had made up her mind ever since she became Con-
vinced of the Truth (as their phrase ran) that her Paul was
called from his cradle to a great work. His features were
delicately chiselled, and showed rather natural culture, like
his mother's, than rough honesty, like John Owen's, or
strong individuality, like the masterful Apostle's. His eyes
were peculiarly deep and luminous, with a far-away look
which might have reminded an artist of the central boyish
figure in Holman Hunt's picture of the Doctors in the
Temple. And yet Paul Owen had a healthy colour in his
cheek and a general sturdiness of limb and muscle which
showed that he was none of your nervous, bloodless, sickly
idealists, but a wholesome English peasant-boy of native
refinement and delicate sensibilities. He moved forward
with some natural hesitation before the eyes of so many
people — ay, and what was more terrible, of the entire
Church upon earth ; but he was not awkward and con-
strained in his action like his father. One could see that he
was sustained in the prominent part he took that morning
by the consciousness of a duty he had to perform and a
mission laid upon him which he must not reject.
219
THE BACKSLIDER
'Are you willing, my son Paul/ asked the Apostle,
gravely, 'to take upon yourself the task that the Church
proposes ? '
' I am willing,' answered the boy in a low voice, ' grace
preventing me.'
'Does all the Church unanimously approve the election
of our brother Paul to this office ? ' the Apostle asked
formally ; for it was a rule with the Gideonites that nothing
should be done except by the unanimous and spontaneous
action of the whole body, acting under direct and immediate
inspiration ; and all important matters were accordingly
arranged beforehand by the Apostle in private interviews
with every member of the Church individually, so that
everything that took place in public assembly had the
appearance of being wholly unquestioned. They took
counsel first with one another, and consulted the Scripture
together ; and when all private doubts were satisfied, they
met as a Church to ratify in solemn conclave their separate
conclusions. It was not often that the Apostle did not have
, his own way. Not only had he the most mai-ked personality
and the strongest will, but he alone also had Greek and
Hebrew enough to appeal always to the original word ; and
that mysterious amount of learning, slight as it really was,
sufficed almost invariably to settle the scruples of his wholly
ignorant and pliant disciples. Reverence for the literal
Scripture in its primitive language was the corner-stone of
the Gideonite Church ; and for all practical purposes, its one
depositary and exponent for them was the Apostle himself.
Even the Rev. Albert Barnes's Commentary was held to
possess an inferior authority.
' The Church approves,' was the unanimous answer.
'Then, Episcops, Presbyters, and brethren,' said the
Apostle, taking up a roll of names, ' I have to ask that you
will each mark down on this paper opposite your own names
how much a year you can spare of your substance for six
220
THE BACKSLIDER
years to come, as a guarantee fund for this great work. You
must remember that the ministry of this Church has cost
you nothing ; freely I have received and freely given ; do
you now bear your part in equipping a new aspirant for the
succession to the Apostolate.'
The two senior Episcops took two rolls from his hand,
and went round the benches with a stylographic pen (so
strangely do the ages mingle — Ajiostles and stylographs)
silently asking each to put down his voluntary subscription.
Meanwhile the Apostle read slowly and reverently a few
appropriate sentences of Scripture. Some of the richer
members — well-to-do small tradesmen of Peckham — put
down a pound or even two pounds apiece ; the poorer
brethren wrote themselves down for ten shillings or even
five. In the end the guarantee list amounted to £19-^ a
year. The Apostle reckoned it up rapidly to himself^ and
then announced the result to the assembly, with a gentle
smile relaxing his austere countenance. He was well
pleased, for the sum was quite sufficient to keep Paul Owen
two years at school in London, and then send him com-
fortably if not splendidly to Oxford. The boy had already
had a fair education in Latin and some Greek, at the
Birkbeck Schools ; and with two years' further study he
might even gain a scholarship (for he was a bright lad),
which would materially lessen the expense to the young
Church. Unlike many prophets and enthusiasts, the Apostle
was a good man of business ; and he had taken pains to
learn all about these favourable chances before embarking
his people on so doubtful a speculation.
The Assembly was just about to close, when one of the
Presbyters rose unexpectedly to put a question which,
contrary to the usual practice, had not already been sub-
mitted for approbation to the Apostle. He was a hard-
headed, thickset, vulgar-looking man, a greengrocer at
Denmark Hill, and the Apostle always looked upon him as
221
THE BACKSLIDER
a thorn in his side, promoted by inscrutable wisdom to the
Pi-esbytery for the special purpose of keeping down the
Apostle's spiritual pride.
' One more pint. Apostle,' he said abruptly, ' afore we
close. It seems to me that even in the Church's work we'd
ought to be business-like. Now, it ain't business-like to let
this young man, Brother Paul, get his eddication out of us,
if I may so speak afore the Church, on spec. It 's all very
well our sayin' he 's to be eddicated and take on the
Apostleship, but how do we know but what when he 's had
his eddication he may fall away and become a backslider,
like Demas, and like others among ourselves that we could
mention .'' He may go to Oxford among a lot of Midianites,
and them of the great an' mighty of the earth too, and how
do we know but what he may round upon the Church, and
go back upon us after we 've paid for his eddication ? So
what I want to ask is just this, can't we bind him down in a
bond that if he don't take the Apostleship with the consent
of the Church when it falls vacant, he '11 pay us back our
money, so as we can eddicate up another as '11 be more
worthy .'' '
The Apostle moved uneasily in his chair ; but before he
could speak, Paul Owen's indignation found voice, and he
said out his say boldly before the whole assembly, blushing
crimson with mingled shame and excitement as he did so.
' If Brother Grimshaw and all the brethren think so ill of
me that they cannot trust ray honesty and honour,' he said,
' they need not be at the pains of educating me. I will
sign no bond and enter into no compact. But if you suppose
that I will be a backslider, you do not know me, and I will
confer no more with you upon the subject.'
' My son Paul is right,' the Apostle said, flushing up in
turn at the boy's audacity ; ' we will not make the affairs
of the Spirit a matter for bonds and earthly arrangements.
If the Church thinks as I do, you will all rise up.'
222
THE BACKSLIDER
All rose except Presbyter Grimshaw. For a moment
there was some hesitation, for the rule of the Church in
favour of unanimity was absolute ; but the Apostle fixed his
piercing eyes on Job Grimshaw^ and after a minute or so
Job Grimshaw too rose slowly^ like one compelled by an
unseen power, and cast in his vote grudgingly with the
rest. There was nothing more said about signing an
agreement.
II
Meenie Bolton had counted a great deal upon her visit
to Oxford, and she found it quite as delightful as she had
anticipated. Her brother knew such a nice set of men,
especially Mr. Owen, of Christ Church. Meenie had never
been so near falling in love with anybody in her life as she
was with Paul Owen. He was so handsome and so clever,
and then there was something so romantic about this
strange Church they said he belonged to. Meenie's father
was a country parson, and the way in which Paul shrank
from talking about the Rector, as if his office were some-
thing wicked or uncanny, piqued and amused her. There
was a heretical tinge about him which made him doubly
interesting to the Rector's daughter. The afternoon water
party that eventful Thursday, down to Nuneham, she looked
forward to with the deepest interest. For her aunt, the
Professor's wife, who was to take charge of them, was
certainly the most delightful and most sensible of chaperons.
' Is it really true, Mr. Owen,' she said, as they sat to-
gether for ten minutes alone after their picnic luncheon,
by the side of the weir under the shadow of the Nuneham
beeches — ' is it really true that this Church of yours doesn't
allow people to marry ? '
Paul coloured up to his eyes as he answered, 'Well, Miss
223
THE BACKSLIDER
Bolton, I don't know that you should identify me too
absolutely with my Church. I was very young when they
selected me to go to Oxford, and my opinions have
decidedly wavered a good deal lately. But the Church
certainly does forbid marriage. I have always been brought
up to look upon it as sinful.'
Meenie laughed aloud ; and Paul, to whom the question
was no laughing matter, but a serious point of conscientious
scruple, could hardly help laughing with her, so infectious
was that pleasant ripple. He checked himself with an
effort, and tried to look serious. ' Do you know,' he said,
'when I first came to Christ Church, I doubted even
whether I ought to make your brother's acquaintance
because he was a clergyman's son. I was taught to describe
clergymen always as priests of Midian.' He never talked
about his Church to anybody at Oxford, and it was a sort
of relief to him to speak on the subject to Meenie, in spite
of her laughing eyes and undisguised amusement. The
other men would have laughed at him too, but their
laughter would have been less sympathetic.
' And do you think them priests of Midian still ? ' asked
Meenie.
' Miss Bolton,' said Paul suddenly, as one who relieves his
overburdened mind by a great effort, ' I am almost moved to
make a confidante of you.'
' There is nothing I love better than confidences,' Meenie
answered; and she might truthfully have added, 'par-
ticulai'ly from you.'
' Well, I have been passing lately through a great many
doubts and difficulties. I was brought up by my Church
to become its next Apostle, and I have been educated at
their expense both in London and here. You know,' Paul
added with his innate love of telling out the whole truth,
' I am not a gentleman ; I am the son of poor working
people in London,'
224
THE BACKSLIDER
' Tom told me Avho your parents were/ Meenie answered
simply ; ' but he told me, too, you were none the less a
true gentleman born for that ; and I see myself he told
me right.'
Paul flushed again — he had a most unmanly trick of
flushing up — and bowed a little timid bow. ' Thank you/
he said quietly. ' Well, while I was in London I lived
entirely among my own people, and never heard anything
talked about except our own doctrines. I thought our
Apostle the most learned, the wisest, and the greatest of
men. I had not a doubt about the absolute infallibility of
our own opinions. But ever since I came to Oxford I have
slowly begun to hesitate and to falter. When I came up
first, the men laughed at me a good deal in a good-humoured
way, because I wouldn't do as they did. Then I thought
myself persecuted for the truth's sake, and was glad. But
the men were really very kind and forbearing to me ; they
never argued with me or bullied me ; they respected my
scruples, and said nothing more about it as soon as they
found out what they really were. That was my first
stumbling-block. If they had fought me and debated with
me, I might have stuck to my own opinions by force of
opposition. But they turned me in upon myself completely
by their silence, and mastered me by their kindly foi-bear-
ance. Point by point I began to give in, till now I hardly
know where I am standing.'
' You wouldn't join the cricket club at first, Tom
says.'
' No, I wouldn't. I thought it wrong to walk in the ways
of Midian. But gradually I began to argue myself out of
my scruples, and now I positively pull six in the boat, and
wear a Christ Church ribbon on my hat. I have given up
protesting against having my letters addressed to me as
Esquire (though I have really no right to the title), and
I nearly went the other day to have some cards engraved
P 225
THE BACKSLIDER
with my name as " Mr. Paul Owen." I am afraid I 'm back-
sliding terribly.'
Meenie laughed again. ' If that is all you have to burden
your conscience with/ she said, ' I don't think you need
spend many sleepless nights.'
' Quite so,' Paul answered, smiling ; ' I think so myself.
But that is not all. I have begun to have serious doubts
about the Apostle himself and the whole Church altogether.
I have been three years at Oxford now ; and while I was
reading for Mods, I don't think I was so unsettled in my
mind. But since I have begun reading philosophy for my
Greats, I have had to go into all sorts of deep books — Mill,
and Spencer, and Bain, and all kinds of fellows who really
think about things, you know, down to the very bottom —
and an awful truth begins to dawn upon me, that our
Apostle is after all only a very third-rate type of thinker.
Now that, you know, is really terrible.'
' I don't see why,' Meenie answered demurely. She was
beginning to get genuinely interested.
' That is because you have never had to call in question a
cherished and almost ingrown faith. You have never
realised any similar circumstances. Here am I, brought
up by these good, honest, earnest people, with their own
hard-earned money, as a pillar of their belief. I have been
taught to look upon myself as the chosen advocate of their
creed, and on the Apostle as an almost divinely inspired
man. My whole life has been bound up in it ; I have
worked and read night and day in order to pass high and
do honour to the Church ; and now what do I begin to find
the Church really is } A petty group of poor, devoted,
enthusiastic, ignorant people, led blindly by a decently
instructed but narrow-minded teacher, who has mixed up
his own headstrong self-conceit and self-importance with
his own peculiar ideas of abstract religion.' Paul paused,
half surprised at himself, for, though he had doubted
226
THE BACKSLIDER
before, he had never ventured till that day to formulate his
doubts, even to himself, in such plain and straightforward
language.
' I see/ said Meenie gravely ; ' you have come into a
wider world ; you have mixed with wider ideas ; and the
wider world has converted you instead of your converting
the world. Well, that is only natural. Others beside you
have had to change their opinions.'
'Yes, yes; but for me it is harder — oh! so much
harder.'
'^Because you have looked forward to being an Apostle .'' '
'Miss Bolton, you do me injustice — not in what you
say, but in the tone you say it in. No, it is not the giving
up of the Apostleship that troubles me, though I did
hope that I might help in my way to make the world a new
earth ; but it is the shock ^and downfall of their hopes to
all those good earnest people, and especially — oh ! espe-
cially. Miss Bolton, to my own dear father and mother.' His
eyes filled with tears as he spoke.
' I can understand,' said Meenie, sympathetically, her
eyes dimming a little in response. 'They have set their
hearts all their lives long on your accomplishing this work,
and it will be to them the disappointment of a cherished
romance.'
They looked at one another a few minutes in silence.
' How long have you begun to have your doubts ? ' Meenie
asked after the pause.
' A long time, but most of all since I saw you. It has
made me — it has made me hesitate more about the fun-
damental article of our faith. Even now, I am not sure
whether it is not wrong of me to be talking so with you
about such matters.'
' I see,' said Meenie, a little more archly ; ' it comes
perilously near ' and she broke off, for she felt she had
gone a step too far.
227
THE BACKSLIDER
' Perilously near falling in love,' Paul continued boldly,
turning his big eyes full upon her. ' Yes, perilously near.'
Their eyes met ; Meenie's fell ; and they said no more.
But they both felt they understood one another. Just at
that moment the Professor's wife came up to interrupt the
tete-a-tete; 'for that young Owen,' she said to herself, 'is
really getting quite too confidential with dear Meenie.'
That same evening Paul paced up and down his rooms in
Peckwater with all his soul strangely upheaved within him
and tossed and racked by a dozen conflicting doubts and
passions. Had he gone too far } Had he yielded like Adam
to the woman who beguiled him .'' Had he given way like
Samson to the snares of Delilah ? For the old Scripture
phraseology and imagery, so long burned into his very nature,
clung to him still in spite of all his faltering changes of
opinion. Had he said more than he thought and felt about
the Apostle ? Even if he was going to revise his views, was
it right, was it candid, was it loyal to the truth, that he
should revise them under the biassing influence of Meenie's
eyes ? If only he could have separated the two questions —
the Apostle's mission, and the something which he felt
growing up within him ! But he could not — and, as he sus-
pected, for a most excellent reason, because the two were
intimately bound up in the very warp and woof of his exist-
ence. Nature was asserting herself against the religious
asceticism of the Apostle ; it could not be so wrong for him
to feel those feelings that had thrilled every heart in all his
ancestors for innumerable generations.
He was in love with Meenie : he knew that clearly now.
And this love was after all not such a wicked and terrible
feeling ; on the contrary, he felt all the better and the purer
for it already. But then that might merely be the horrible
seductiveness of the thing. Was it not always typified by
the cup of Circe, by the song of the Sirens, by all that A\as
alluring and beautiful and hollow ? He paced up and down
228
THE BACKSLIDER
for half an hour, and then (he had sported his oak long ago)
he lit his little reading-lamp and sat down in the big chair by
the bay window. Running his eyes over his bookshelf, he
took out, half by chance, Spencer's Sociology. Then, from
sheer weariness, he read on for a while, hardly heeding what
he read. At last he got interested, and finished a chapter.
When he had finished it, he put the book down, and felt
that the struggle was over. Strange that side by side in the
same world, in the same London, there should exist two such
utterly different types of man as Herbert Spencer and the
Gideonite Apostle. The last seemed to belong to the six-
teenth century, the first to some new and hitherto uncreated
social world. In an age which produced thinkers like that,
how could he ever have mistaken the poor, bigoted, narrow,
half-instructed Apostle for a divinely inspired teacher ! So
far as Paul Owen was concerned, the Gideonite Church
and all that belonged to it had melted utterly into thin
air.
Three days later, after the Eights in the early evening,
Paul found an opportunity of speaking again alone with
Meenie. He had taken their party on to the Christ Church
barge to see the race, and he was strolling with them after-
wards round the meadow walk by the bank of the Cherwell.
Paul managed to get a little in front with Meenie, and
entered at once upon the subject of his late embarrassments.
' I have thought it all over since. Miss Bolton/ he said
— he half hesitated whether he should say ' Meenie ' or not,
and she was half disappointed that he didn't, for they were
both very young, and very young people fall in love so un-
affectedly — ' I have thought it all over, and I have come to
the conclusion that there is no help for it : I must break
openly with the Church.'
' Of course,' said Meenie, simply. 'That I understood.'
He smiled at her ingenuousness. Such a very forward
young person ! And yet he liked it. ' Well, the next thing
229
THE BACKSLIDER
is, what to do about it. You see, I have really been obtain-
ing my education, so to speak, under false pretences. I can't
continue taking these good people's money after I have
ceased to believe in their doctrines. I ought to have faced
the question sooner. It was wrong of me to wait until —
until it was forced upon me by other considerations.'
This time it was Meenie who blushed. ' But you don't
mean to leave Oxford without taking your degree .'' ' she
asked quickly.
' No, I think it will be better not. To stop here and try
for a fellowship is my best chance of repaying these poor
people the money which I have taken from them for no
purpose.'
' I never thought of that,' said Meenie. ' You are bound
in honour to pay them back, of course.'
Paul liked the instantaneous honesty of that ' of course.'
It marked the naturally honourable character ; for, ' of
course,' too, they must wait to marry (young people jump so)
till all that money was paid off. ' Fortunately,' he said, ' I
have lived economically, and have not spent nearly as much
as they guaranteed. I got scholarships up to a hundred a
year of my own, and I only took a hundred a year of theirs.
They offered me two hundred. But there 's five years at a
hundred, that makes five hundred pounds — a big debt to
begin life with.'
' Never mind,' said Meenie. ' You will get a fellowship,
and in a few years you can pay it off.'
' Yes,' said Paul, ^ I can pay it off. But I can never pay
off the hopes and aspirations I have blighted. I must be-
came a schoolmaster, or a barrister, or something of that sort,
and never repay them for their self-sacrifice and devotion in
making me whatever I shall become. They may get back
their money, but they will have lost their cherished Apostle
for ever.'
' Mr. Owen,' Meenie answered solemnly, ' the seal of the
230
THE BACKSLIDER
Apostolate lies far deeper than that. It was born in you^
and no act of yours can shake it off.'
' Meenie/ he said, looking at her gently, with a changed
expression — ' Meenie, we shall have to wait many years.'
' Never mind, Paul,' she replied, as naturally as if he had
been Paul to her all her life long, ' I can wait if you can.
But what will you do for the immediate present .'' '
' I have my scholarship/ he said ; ' I can get on partly
upon that ; and then I can take pupils ; and I have only one
year more of it.'
So before they parted that night it was all well understood
between them that Paul was to declare his defection from
the Church at tlie earliest opportunity ; that he was to live
as best he might till he could take his degree ; that he was
then to pay off all the back debt ; and that after all these
things he and Meenie might get comfortably married when-
ever they were able. As to the Rector and his wife, or any
other parental authorities, they both left them out in the
cold as wholly as young people always do leave their elders
out on all similar occasions.
' Maria's a born fool ! ' said the Rector to his wife a week
after Meenie's return ; ' I always knew she was a fool, but I
never knew she was quite such a fool as to permit a thing
like this. So far as I can get it out of Edie, and so far as
Edie can get it out of Meenie, I understand that she has
allowed Meenie to go and get herself engaged to some Dis-
senter fellow, a Shaker, or a Mormon, or a Communist, or
something of the sort, who is the son of a common labourer,
and has been sent up to Oxford, Tom tells me, by his own
sect, to be made into a gentleman, so as to give some sort
or colour of respectability to their absurd doctrines. I shall
send the girl to town at once to Emily's, and she shall stop
there all next season, to see if she can't manage to get
engaged to some young man in decent society at any rate.'
231
THE BACKSLIDER
III
When Paul Owen returned to Peckham for the long
vacation, it was with a heavy heart that he ventured back
slowly to his father's cottage. Margaret Owen had put
everything straight and neat in the little living room, as she
always did, to welcome home her son who had grown into a
gentleman ; and honest John stood at the threshold beaming
with pleasure to wring Paul's hand in his firm grip, just back
unwashed from his day's labour. After the first kissings
and greetings were over, John Owen said rather solemnly,
'I have bad news for you, Paul. The Apostle is sick, even
unto death.'
When Paul heard that, he was sorely tempted to put off
the disclosure for the present ; but he felt he must not. So
that same night, as they sat together in the dusk near the
window where the geraniums stood, he began to unburden
his whole mind, gently and tentatively, so as to spare their
feelings as much as possible, to his father and mother. He
told them how, since he went to Oxford, he had learned to
think somewhat differently about many things ; how his ideas
had gradually deepened and broadened ; how he had begun
to inquire into fundamentals for himself; how he had feared
that the Gideonites took too much for granted, and reposed
too implicitly on the supposed critical learning of their
Apostle. As he spoke his mother listened in tearful silence ;
but his father murmured from time to time, ' I was afeard of
this already, Paul ; I seen it coming, now and again, long
ago.' There was pity and regret in his tone, but not a shade
of reproachfulness.
At last, however, Paul came to speak, timidly and re-
servedly, of Meenie. Then his father's eye began to flash a
little, and his breath came deeper and harder. When Paul
232
THE BACKSLIDER
told him briefly that he was engaged to her, the strong man
could stand it no longer. He rose up in righteous wrath,
and thrust his son at arm's-length from him. 'What! ' he
cried fiercely, ' you don't mean to tell me you have fallen into
sin and looked upon the daughters of Midian ! It was no
Scriptural doubts that druv you on, then, but the desire of
the flesh and the lust of the eyes that has lost you ! You
dare to stand up there, Paul Owen, and tell me that you
throw over the Church and the Apostle for the sake of a
girl, like a poor miserable Samson ! You are no son of
mine, and I have nothin' more to say to you.'
But Margaret Owen put her hand on his shoulder and
said softly, ' John, let us hear him out.' And John, recalled
by that gentle touch, listened once more. Then Paul
pleaded his case powerfully again. He quoted Scripture to
them ; he argued with them, after their own fashion, and
down to their own comprehension, text by text ; he pitted
his own critical and exegetical faculty against the Apostle's.
Last of all, he turned to his mother, who, tearful still and
heartbroken with disappointment, yet looked admiringly
upon her learned, eloquent boy, and said to her tenderly,
' Remember, mother, you yourself were once in love. You
yourself once stood, night after night, leaning on the gate,
waiting with your heart beating for a footstep that you knew
so well. You yourself once counted the days and the hours
and the minutes till the next meeting came.' And Margaret
Owen, touched to the heart by that simple appeal, kissed
him fervently a dozen times over, the hot tears dropping on
his cheek meanwhile ; and then, contrary to all the rules of
their austere Church, she flung her arms round her husband
too, and kissed him passionately the first time for twenty
years, with all the fervour of a floodgate loosed. Paul
Owen's apostolate had surely borne its first fruit.
The father stood for a moment in doubt and terror, like
one stunned or dazed, and then, in a moment of sudden
233
THE BACKSLIDER
remembrance, stepped forward and returned the kiss. The
spell was broken, and the Apostle's power was no more.
What else passed in the cottage that night, when John
Owen fell upon his knees and wrestled in spirit, was too
wholly internal to the man's own soul for telling here.
Next day John and Margaret Owen felt the dream of their
lives was gone; but the mother in her heart rejoiced to
think her boy might know the depths of love, and might
bring home a real lady for his wife.
On Sunday it was rumoured that the Apostle's ailment was
very serious ; but young Brother Paul Owen would address
the Chui'ch. He did so, though not exactly in the way the
Church expected. He told them simply and plainly how he
had changed his views about certain matters ; how he thanked
them from his heart for the loan of their money (he was care-
ful to emphasise the word /or7«), which had helped him to carry
on his education at Oxford ; and how he would repay them
the principal and interest, though he could never repay them
the kindness, at the earliest possible opportunity. He was
so grave, so earnest, so transparently true, that, in spite of
the downfall of their dearest hopes, he carried the whole
meeting with him, all save one man. That man was Job
Grimshaw. Job rose from his place with a look of undis-
guised triumph as soon as Paul had finished, and, mounting
the platform quietly, said his say.
' I knew, Episcops, Presbyters, and Brethren,' he began,
' how this 'ere young man would finish. I saw it the day
he was appinted. He 's flushing up now the same as he
flushed up then when I spoke to him ; and it ain't sperritual,
it 's worldly pride and headstrongness, that 's what it is.
He 's had our money, and he 's had his eddication, and now
he's going to round on us, just as I said he would. It 's all
very well talking about paying us back : how 's a young
man like him to get five hunderd pounds, I should like to
know. And if he did even, what sort o' repayment would
234
THE BACKSLIDER
that be to many of the brethren, who 've saved and scraped
for five year to let him live like a gentleman among the
great and the mighty o' Midian ? He 's got his eddication out
of us^ and he can keep that whatever happens^ and make a
living out of it, too ; and now he 's going back on us, same
as I said he would, and, having got all he can out of the
Church, he s going to chuck it away like a sucked orange.
I detest such backsliding and such ungratefulness.'
Paul's cup of humiliation was fidl, but he bit his lip till
the blood almost came, and made no answer.
' He boasted in his own strength,' Job went on merci-
lessly, ' that he wasn't going to be a backslider, and he
wasn't going to sign no bond, and he wasn't going to confer
with us, but we must trust his honour and honesty, and such
like. I 've got his very words written down in my notebook
'ere ; for I made a note of 'em, foreseeing this. If we 'd 'a'
bound him down, as I proposed, he wouldn't 'a' dared to go
backsliding and rounding on us, and making up to the
daughters of Midian, as I don't doubt but what he 's been
doing.' Paul's tell-tale face showed him at once that he had
struck by accident on the right choi'd. ' But if he ever goes
bringing a daughter of Midian here to Peckham,' Job con-
tinued, ' we '11 show her these very notes, and ask her what
she thinks of such dishonourable conduct. The Apostle 's
dying, that 's clear ; and before he dies I warrant he shall
know this treachery.'
Paul could not stand that last threat. Though he had
lost faith in the Apostle as an Apostle, he could never forget
the allegiance he had once borne him as a father, or the
spell which his powerful individuality had once thrown
around him as a teacher. To have embittered that man 's
dying bed with the shadow of a terrible disappointment
would be to Paul a lifelong subject of deep remorse. 'I
did not intend to open my mouth in answer to you, Mr.
Grimshaw,' he said (for the first time breaking through the
235
THE BACKSLIDER
customary address of Brother)^ ' but I pray you, I entreat
you, I beseech you, not to harass the Apostle in his last
moments with such a subject.'
' Oh yes, I suppose so,' Job Grimshaw answered maliciousl}',
all the ingrained coarseness of the man breaking out in the
wrinkles of his face. 'No wonder you don't want him
enlightened about your goings on with the daughters of
Midian, when you must know as well as I do that his life
ain't worth a day 's purchase, and that he 's a man of in-
dependent means, and has left you every penny he 's got
in his will, because he believes you 're a fit successor to
the Apostolate. I know it, for I signed as a witness, and I
read it through, being a short one, while the other witness
was signing. And you must know it as well as I do. I
suppose you don't think he '11 make another will now; but
there's time enough to burn that one anyhow.'
Paul Owen stood aghast at the vulgar baseness of which
this lewd fellow supposed him 'capable. He had never
thought of it before ; and yet it flashed across his mind in a
moment how obvious it was now. Of course the Apostle
would leave him his money. He was being educated for
the Apostolate, and the Apostolate could not be carried on
without the sinews of war. But that Job Grimshaw should
think him guilty of angling for the Apostle's money, and
then throwing the Church overboard — the bare notion of it
was so horrible to him that he could not even hold up his
head to answer the taunt. He sat down and buried his
crimson face in his hands ; and Job Grimshaw, taking up his
hat sturdily, with the air of a man who has to perform an
unpleasant duty, left the meeting-room abruptly without
another word.
There was a gloomy Sunday dinner that morning in the
mason's cottage, and nobody seemed much inclined to speak
in any way. But as they were in the midst of their solemn
meal, a neighbour who was also a Gideonite came in hurriedly.
236
THE BACKSLIDER
'It's all over/ he said, breathless — 'all over with us and
with the Church. The Apostle is dead. He died this
morning.'
Margaret Owen found voice to ask, ' Before Job Grimshaw
saw him ? '
The neighbour nodded, 'Yes.'
' Thank Heaven for that ! ' cried Paul. ' Then he did not
die misunderstanding me ! '
' And you '11 get his money,' added the neighbour, ' for I
was the other witness.'
Paul drew a long breath. ' I wish Meenie was here,' he
said. ' I must see her about this.'
IV
A few days later the Apostle was buried, and his will was
read over before the assembled Church. By earnest per-
suasion of his father, Paul consented to be present, though
he feared another humiliation from Job Grimshaw. But two
days before he had taken the law into his own hands, by
writing to Meenie, at her aunt's in Eaton Place ; and that
very indiscreet young lady, in response, had actually con-
sented to meet him in Kensington Gardens alone the next
afternoon. There he sat with her on one of the benches by
the Serpentine, and talked the whole matter over with her
to his heart's content.
' If the money is really left to me,' he said, ' I must in
honour refuse it. It was left to me to carry on the Aposto-
late, and I can't take it on any other ground. But what
ought I to do with it ? I can't give it over to the Church,
for in three days there will be no Church left to give it to.
What shall I do with it ? '
' Why,' said Meenie, thoughtfully, ' if I were you, I should
do this. First, pay back everybody who contributed towards
237
THE BACKSLIDER
your support in full, principal and interest ; then borrow
from the remainder as much as you require to complete your
Oxford course ; and finally, pay back all that and the other
money to the fund when you are able, and hand it over for
the purpose of doing some good work in Peckham itself,
where your Church was originally founded. If the ideal
can't be fulfilled, let the money do something good for the
actual.'
' You are quite right, Meenie,' said Paul, ' except in one
particular. I will not borrow from the fund for my own
support. I will not touch a penny of it, temporarily or per-
manently, for myself in any way. If it comes to me, I shall
make it over to trustees at once for some good object, as you
suggest, and shall borrow from them five hundred pounds to
repay my own poor people, giving the trustees my bond to
re})ay the fund hereafter. I shall fight my own battle
henceforth unaided.'
' You will do as you ought to do, Paul, and I am proud
of it.'
So next morning, when the meeting took place, Paul felt
somewhat happier in his own mind as to the course he should
pursue with reference to Job Grimshaw.
The Senior Episcop opened and read the last will and
testament of Arthur Murgess, attorney-at-law. It provided,
in a few words, that all his estate, real and personal, should
pass unreservedly to his friend, Paul Owen, of Christ Church,
Oxford. It w^as whispered about that, besides the house and
grounds, the personalty might be sworn at eight thousand
pounds, a vast sura to those simple people.
When the reading was finished, Paul rose and addressed
the assembly. He told them briefly the plan he had formed,
and insisted on his determination that not a penny of the
money should be put to his own uses. He would face the
world for himself, and thanks to their kindness he could face
it easily enough. He would still earn and pay back all that
238
THE BACKSLIDER
he owed them. He would use the fund, first for the good
of those who had been members of the Church, and after-
wards for the good of the people of Peckham generally.
And he thanked them from the bottom of his heart for the
kmdness they had shown him.
Even Job Grimshaw could only mutter to himself that
this was not sperritual grace, but mere worldly pride and
stubbornness, lest the lad should betray his evil designs,
which had thus availed him nothing. ' He has lost his own
soul and wrecked the Church for the sake of the money,' Job
said, ' and now he dassn't touch a fai'den of it.'
Next John Owen rose and said slowly, ' Friends, it seems
to me we may as well all confess that this Church has gone
to pieces. I can't stop in it myself any longer, for I see it 's
clear agin nature, and what's agin nature can't be true.'
And though the assembly said nothing, it was plain that there
were many waverers in the little body whom the affairs of
the last week had shaken sadly in their simple faith. In-
deed, as a matter of fact, before the end of the month the
Gideonite Church had melted away, member by member,
till nobody at all was left of the whole assembly but Job
Grimshaw.
' My dear,' said the Rector to his wife a few weeks latei',
laying down his Ilhtstrated, 'this is really a very curious
thing. That young fellow Owen, of Christ Church, that
Meenie fancied herself eno-aged to, has just come into a
little landed property and eight or nine thousand pounds on
his own account. He must be better connected than Tom
imagines. Perhaps we might make inquiries about him
after all.'
The Rector did make inquiries in the course of the week,
and with such results that he returned to the i-ectory in
blank amazement. 'That fellow's mad, Amelia,' he said,
' stark mad, if ever anybody was. The leader of his Little
Bethel, or Ebenezer, or whatever it may be, has left him all
239
THE BACKSLIDER
his property absolutely, without conditions ; and the idiot
of a boy declares he won't touch a penny of it, because he 's
ceased to believe in their particular shibboleth, and he thinks
the leader wanted him to succeed him. Very right and
proper of him, of course, to leave the sect if he can't recon-
cile it with his conscience, but perfectly Quixotic of him to
give up the money and beggar himself outright. Even if his
connection was otherwise desirable (which it is far from
being), it would be absurd to think of letting Meenie many
such a ridiculous hare-brained fellow.'
Paul and Meenie, however, went their own way, as young
people often will, in spite of the Rector. Paul returned
next term to Oxford, penniless, but full of resolution, and by
dint of taking pupils managed to eke out his scholarship for
the next year. At the end of that time he took his first in
Greats, and shortly after gained a fellowship. From the
very first day he began saving money to pay off that dead
weight of five hundred pounds. The kindly ex-Gideonites
had mostly protested against his repaying them at all, but in
vain : Paul would not make his entry into life, he said, under
false pretences. It was a hard pull, but he did it. He took
pupils, he lectured, he wrote well and vigorously for the
press, he worked late and early with volcanic energy ; and
by the end of three years he had not only saved the whole
of the sura advanced by the Gideonites, but had also begun
to put away a little nest-egg against his marriage with
Meenie. And when the editor of a great morning paper in
London offered him a permanent place upon the staff, at a
large salary, he actually went down to Worcestershire, saw
the formidable Rector himself in his own parish, and
demanded Meenie outright in marriage. And the Rector
observed to his wife that this young Owen seemed a well-
behaved and amiable young man ; that after all one needn't
know anything about his relations if one didn't like ; and
that as Meenie had quite made up her mind, and was as
240
THE BACKSLIDER
headstrong as a mule, there was no use trying to oppose her
any longer.
Down in Peckham, where Paul Owen lives, and is loved
by half the poor of the district, no one has forgotten who
was the real founder of the Murgess Institute, which does so
much good in encouraging thrift, and is so admirably man-
aged by the founder and his wife. He would take a house
nowhere but at Peckham, he said. To the Peckham people
he owed his education, and for the Peckham people he would
watch the working of his little Institute. There is no better
work being done anywhere in that great squalid desert, the
east and south-east of London ; there is no influence more
magnetic than the founder's. John and Margaret Owen
have recovered their hopes for their boy, only they run now
in another and more feasible direction ; and those who wit-
ness the good that is being done by the Institute among the
poor of Peckham, or who have read that remarkable and
brilliant economical work lately published on ' The Future
of Co-operation in the East End, by P. O.,' venture to be-
lieve that Meenie was right after all, and that even the great
social world itself has not yet heard the last of young Paul
Owen's lay apostolate.
241
X
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
Cecil Mitford sat at a desk in the Record Office with a
stained and tattered sheet of dark dirty-brown antique
paper spread before him in triumph, and with an eager air
of anxious inquiry speaking forth from every line in his
white face and every convulsive twitch at the irrepressible
corners of his firm pallid mouth. Yes, there was no doubt
at all about it ; the piece of torn and greasy paper which he
had at last discovered was nothing more or less than John
Cann's missing letter. For two years Cecil Mitford had
given up all his spare time, day and night, to the search for
that lost fragment of ci-abbed seventeenth-century hand-
writing ; and now at length, after so many disappointments
and so much fruitless anxious hunting, the clue to the
secret of John Cann's treasure was lying there positively
before him. The young man's hand trembled violently as
he held the paper fast, unopened in his feverish grasp, and
read upon its back the autograph endorsement of Charles
the Second's Secretary of State — ' Letter in cypher from lo.
Cann, the noted Buccaneer, to his brother Will*",, inter-
cepted at Port Royal by his Ma*'**^ command, and despatched
by General Ed. D'Oyley, his Ma"''^ Captain-Gen^ and
Governor-in-Chief of the Island of Jamaica, to me,
H. Nicholas.' That was it, beyond the shadow of a doubt ;
and though Cecil Mitford had still to apply to the cypher
John Cann's own written key, and to find out the precise
import of the directions it contained, he felt at that moment
245
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
that the secret was now at last virtually discovered, and
that John Cann's untold thousands of buried wealth were
potentially his very own already.
He was only a clerk in the Colonial Office, was Cecil
Mitford, on a beggarly income of a hundred and eighty a
year — how small it seemed now, when John Cann's money
was actually floating before his mind's-eye ; but he had
brains and industry and enterprise after a fitful adventurous
fashion of his own ; and he had made up his mind years
before that he would find out the secret of John Cann's
buried treasure, if he had to spend half a lifetime on the
almost hopeless quest. As a boy, Cecil Mitford had been
brought up at his father' rectory on the slopes of Dartmoor,
and there he had played from his babyhood upward among
the rugged gi'anite boulders of John Cann's rocks, and had
heard from the farm labourers and the other children
around the romantic but perfectly historical legend of John
Cann's treasure. Unknown and incredible sums in Mexican
doubloons and Spanish dollars lay guarded by a strong
oaken chest in a cavern on the hilltop, long since filled up
with flints and mould from the neighbouring summits. To
that secure hiding-place the great buccaneer had committed
the hoard gathered in his numberless piratical expeditions,
burying all together under the shadow of a petty porphyritic
tor that overhangs the green valley of Bovey Tracy. Beside
the bare rocks that mark the site, a perfectly distinct
pathway is worn by footsteps into the granite platform
underfoot ; and that path, little Cecil Mitford had heard
with childish awe and wonder, was cut out by the pacing
up and down of old John Cann himself, mounting guard
in the darkness and solitude over the countless treasure
that he had hidden away in the recesses of the pixies' hole
beneath.
As young Mitford grew up to man's estate, this story of
John Cann's treasure haunted his quick imagination for
246
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
many years with wonderful vividness. When he first came
up to London, after his father's death, and took his paltry
clerkship in the Colonial Office — how he hated the place,
with its monotonous drudgery, while John Cann's wealth
was only waiting for him to take it and floating visibly
before his prophetic eyes ! — the story began for a while to
fade out under the disillusioning realities of respectable
poverty and a petty Government post. But before he had
been many months in the West India department (he had
a small room on the third floor, overlooking Downing Street)
a casual discovery made in overhauling the archives of the
office suddenly revived the boyish dream with all the added
realism and cool intensity of maturer years. He came
across a letter from John Cann himself to the Protector
Oliver, detailing the particulars of a fierce irregular engage-
ment with a Spanish privateer, in which the Spaniard had
been captured with much booty, and his vessel duly sold
to the highest bidder in Port Royal harbour. This curious
coincidence gave a great shock of surprise to young Mitford.
John Cann, then, was no mythical prehistoric hero, no fairy-
king or pixy or barrow-haunter of the popular fancy, but an
actual genuine historical figure, who corresponded about
his daring exploits with no less a personage than Oliver
himself! From that moment forth, Cecil Mitford gave
himself up almost entirely to tracing out the forgotten
history of the old buccaneer. He allowed no peace to the
learned person who took care of the State Papers of the
Commonwealth at the Record Office, and he established
private relations, by letter, with two or three clerks in the
Colonial Secretary's Office at Kingston, Jamaica, whom he
induced to help him in reconstructing the lost story of John
Cann's life.
Bit by bit Cecil Mitford had slowly pieced together a
wonderful mass of information, buried under piles of ragged
manuscript and weary reams of dusty documents, about the
247
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
days and doings of that ancient terror of the Spanish Main.
John Cann was a Devonshire lad, of the rolHcking, roving
seventeenth century, born and bred at Bovey Tracy, on the
flanks of Dartmooi-, the last survivor of those sea-dogs of
Devon who had sallied forth to conquer and explore a new
Continent under the guidance of Drake, and Raleigh, and
Frobisher, and Hawkins. As a boy, he had sailed with his
father in a ship that bore the Queen's letters of marque and
reprisal against the Spanish galleons ; in his middle life, he
had lived a strange roaming existence — half pirate and half
privateer, intent upon securing the Protestant religion and
punishing the King's enemies by robbing wealthy Spanish
skippers and cutting off the recusant noses of vile Papistical
Cuban slave-traders ; in his latter days, the fierce, half-
savage old mariner had relapsed into sheer robbery, and
had been hunted down as a public enemy by the Lord
Protector's servants, or later still by the Captains-General
and Governors-in-Chief of his Most Sacred Majesty's
Dominions in the West Indies. For what was legitimate
warfare in the spacious days of great Elizabeth, had come
to be regai'ded in the degenerate reign of Charles H. as
rank piracy.
One other thing Cecil Mitford had discovered, with
absolute certainty ; and that was that in the summer of
1660, 'the year of his Ma'^i®* most happy restoration,' as
John Cann himself phrased it, the persecuted and much
misunderstood old buccaneer had paid a secret visit to
England, and had brought with him the whole hoard which
he had accumulated during sixty years of lawful or unlawful
piracy in the West Indies and the Spanish Main. Concern-
ing this hoard, which he had concealed somewhere in
Devonshire, he kept up a brisk vernacular correspondence
in cypher with his brother William, at Tavistock ; and the
key to that cypher, marked outside ' A clew to my Bro.
lohn's secret writing,' Cecil Mitford had been fortunate
248
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
enough to unearth among the undigested masses of the
Record Office. But one letter, the last and most important of
the whole series, containing as he believed the actual state-
ment of the hiding-place, had long evaded all his research :
and that was the letter which, now at last, after months and
months of patient inquiry, lay unfolded before his dazzled
eyes on the little desk in his accustomed corner. It had
somehow been folded up by mistake in the papers relating
to the charge against Cyriack Skinner, of complicity in the
Rye House Plot. How it got there nobody knows, and
probably nobody but Cecil Mitford himself could ever have
succeeded in solving the mystery.
As he gazed, trembling, at the precious piece of dusty
much-creased paper, scribbled over in the unlettei*ed school-
boy hand of the wild old sea-dog, Cecil Mitford could hardly
restrain himself for a moment from uttering a cry. Untold
wealth swam before his eyes : he could marry Ethel now,
and let her drive in her own carriage ! Ah, what he would
give if he might only shout in his triumph. He couldn't
even read the words, he was so excited. But after a
minute or two, he recovered his composure sufficiently to
begin deciphering the crabbed writing, which constant
practice and familiai-ity with the system enabled him to do
immediately, without even referring to the key. And this
was what, with a few minutes' inspection, Cecil Mitford
slowly spelled out of the dirty manuscript : —
'From Jamaica. This 23rd day of Jariy,
in the Yeure of our Lord 1663.
' My deare Bro., — I did not think to have written you
againe, after the scurvie Trick you have played me in dis-
closing my Affairs to that meddlesome Knight that calls
himself the King's Secretary : but in truth your last Letter
hath so moved me by your Vileness that I must needs reply
thereto with all Expedicion. These are to assure you, then,
249
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
that let you pray how you may, or gloze over your base
treatment with fine cozening Words and fair Promises,
you shall have neither lot nor scot in my Threasure, which
is indeed as you surmise hidden away in England, but the
Secret whereof I shall impart neither to you nor to no
man. I have give commands, therefore, that the Paper
whereunto I have committed the jilace of its hiding shall
be buried with my own Body (when God please) in the
grave-yarde at Port Royal in this Island : so that you shall
never be bettered one Penny by your most Damnable
Treachery and Double-facedness, For I know you, my
deare Bro., in very truth for a prating Coxcomb, a scurvie
cowardlie Knave, and a lying Thief of other Men's Reputa-
tions. Therefore, no more herewith from your very
humble Ser^* and Loving Bro., Iohn Cann, Capf* '
Cecil Mitford laid the paper down as he finished reading
it with a face even whiter and paler than before, and with
the muscles of his mouth trembling violently with sup-
pressed emotion. At the exact second when he felt sure
he had discovered the momentous secret, it had slipped
mysteriously through his very fingers, and seemed now to
float away into the remote distance, almost as far from his
eager grasp as ever. Even there, in the musty Record
Office, before all the clerks and scholars who were sitting
about working carelessly at their desks at mere dilettante
historical problems — the stupid prigs, how he hated them !
— he could hardly restrain the expression of his pent-up
feelings at that bitter disappointment in the very hour of
his fancied triumph. Jamaica ! How absolutely distant
and unapproachable it sounded ! How hopeless the at-
tempt to follow up the clue ! How utterly his day-dream
had been dashed to the ground in those three minutes of
silent deciphering ! He felt as if the solid earth was
reeling beneath him, and he would have given the whole
250
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
world if he could have put his face between his two hands
on the desk and cried like a woman before the whole
Record Office.
For half an hour by the clock he sat there dazed and
motionless, gazing in a blank disappointed fashion at the
sheet of coffee-coloui'ed paper in front of him. It was
late, and workers were dropping away one after another
from the scantily peopled desks. But Cecil Mitford took
no notice of them : he merely sat with his arms folded,
and gazed abstractedly at that disappointing, disheart-
ening, irretrievable piece of crabbed writing. At last an
assistant came up and gently touched his arm. ' We 're
going to close now, sir,' he said in his unfeeling official
tone — ^just as if it were a mere bit of historical inquiry
he was after — ' and I shall be obliged if you '11 put back
the manuscripts you've been consulting into F. 27.' Cecil
Mitford rose mechanically and sorted out the Cyriack
Skinner papers into their proper places. Then he laid
them quietly on the shelf, and walked out into the streets
of London, for the moment a broken-hearted man.
But as he walked home alone that clear warm summer
evening, and felt the cool breeze blowing against his fore-
head, he began to reflect to himself that, after all, all was
not lost ; that in fact things really stood better with him
now than they had stood that very morning, before he
lighted upon John Cann's last letter. He had not dis-
covered the actual hiding-place of the hoard, to be sure,
but he now knew on John Cann's own indisputable
authority, first, that there really was a hidden treasure ;
second, that the hiding-place was really in England ; and
thirds that full particulars as to the spot where it was
buried might be found in John Cann's own coffin at Port
Royal, Jamaica. It was a risky and difficult thing to open
H coffin, no doubt ; but it was not impossible. No, not
impossible. On the whole, putting one thing with another,
251
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
in spite of his terrible galling disappointment, he was
really nearer to the recovery of the treasure now than he
had ever been in his life before. Till to-day, the final
clue was missing ; to-day, it had been found. It was a
difficult and dangerous clue to follow, but still it had been
found.
And yet, setting aside the question of desecrating a
grave, how all but impossible it was for him to get to
Jamaica ! His small funds had long ago been exhausted
in prosecuting the research, and he had nothing on earth
to live upon now but his wretched salary. Even if he
could get three or six months' leave from the Colonial
Office, which M'as highly improbable, how could he ever
raise the necessary money for his passage out and home,
as well as for the delicate and doubtful operation of
searching for documents in John Cann's coffin? It was
tantalising, it was horrible, it was unendurable ; but
here, with the secret actually luring him on to discover it,
he was to be foiled and baffled at the last moment by a
mere paltry, petty, foolish consideration of two hundred
pounds I Two hundred pounds ! How utterly ludicrous !
Why, John Cann's treasure would make him a man of
fabulous wealth for a whole lifetime, and he was to be
prevented from realising it by a wretched matter of two
hundred pounds ! He would do anything to get it — for
a loan, a mere loan ; to be repaid with cent, per cent,
interest; but where in the world, where in the world, was
he ever to get it from .''
And then, quick as lightning, the true solution of the
whole difficulty flashed at once across his excited brain.
He could borrow all the money if he chose from Ethel !
Poor little Ethel ; she hadn't much of her own ; but she
had just enough to live very quietly upon with her Aunt
Emily ; and, thank Heaven, it wasn't tied up with any of
those bothering, meddling three-per-cent. -loving trustees !
252
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
She had her little all at her own disposal, and he could
surely get two or three hundred pounds from her to
secure for them both the boundless buried wealth of John
Cann's treasure.
Should he make her a confidante outright, and tell her
what it was that he wanted the money for ? No, that
would be impossible ; for though she had heard all about
John Cann over and over again, she had not faith enough
in the treasure — women are so unpractical — to hazard her
little scrap of money on it ; of that he felt certain. She
would go and ask old Mr. Cartwright's opinion ; and old
Mr. Cartwright was one of those penny-wise, purblind,
unimaginative old gentlemen who will never believe in
anything until they 've seen it. Yet here was John Cann's
money going a-begging, so to speak, and only waiting for
him and Ethel to come and enjoy it. Cecil had no patience
with those stupid, stick-in-the-mud, timid people who can
see no further than their own noses. For Ethel's own
sake he would borrow two or three hundred pounds from
her, one way or another, and she would easily forgive him
the harmless little deception when he paid her back a
hundredfold out of John Cann's boundless treasure.
II
That very evening, without a minute's delay, Cecil
determined to go round and have a talk with Ethel
Sutherland. ' Strike while the iron 's hot,' he said to
himself. ' There isn't a minute to be lost ; for who
knows but somebody else may find John Cann's treasure
before I do .'' '
Ethel opened the door to him herself; theirs was an old
engagement of long standing, after the usual Government
clerk's fashion ; and Aunt Emily didn't stand out so stiffly
253
JOHN CANNS TREASURE
as many old maids do for the regular proprieties. Very
pretty Ethel looked with her pale face and the red ribbon
in her hair ; very pretty, but Cecil feared, as he looked
into her dark hazel eyes, a little wearied and worn-out,
for it was her music-lesson day, as he well remembered.
Her music-lesson day ! Ethel Sutherland to give music-
lessons to some wretched squealing children at the West-
End, when all John Cann's wealth was lying there, un-
counted, only waiting for him and her to take it and
enjoy it ! The bare thought was a perfect purgatory to
him. He must get that two hundred pounds to-night, or
give up the enterpinse altogether.
' Well, Ethel darling,' he said tenderly, taking her pretty
little hand in his ; ' you look tired, dearest. Those horrid
children have been bothering you again. How I wish we
were married, and you were well out of it ! '
Ethel smiled a quiet smile of resignation. ' They are
rather trying, Cecil,' she said gently, ' especially on days
when one has got a headache ; but, after all, I 'm very glad
to have the work to do ; it helps such a lot to eke out our
little income. We have so very little, you know, even for
two lonely women to live upon in simple little lodgings like
these, that I 'm thankful I can do something to help dear
Aunt Emily, who 's really goodness itself. You see, after
all, I get very well paid indeed for the lessons.'
' Ethel,' Cecil Mitford said suddenly, thinking it better to
dash at once into the midst of business ; ' I 've come round
this evening to talk with you about a means by which you
can add a great deal with perfect safety to your little
income. Not by lessons, Ethel darling ; not by lessons.
I can't bear to see you working away the pretty tips off
those dear little fingers of yours with strumming scales on
the piano for a lot of stupid, gawky schoolgirls; it's by a
much simpler way than that ; I know of a perfectly safe
investment for that three hundred that you 've got in New
234.
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
Zealand Four per Cents. Can you not have heard that New
Zealand securities are in a very shaky way just at present ? '
' Very shaky, Cecil ? ' Ethel answered in surprise. ' Why,
Mr. Cartwright told me only a week ago they were as safe
as the Bank of England ! '
'Mr. Cartwright 's an ignorant old martinet/ Cecil replied
vigorously. ' He thinks because the stock 's inscribed and
the dividends are payable in Threadneedle Street, that the
colony of New Zealand 's perfectly solvent. Now, I 'm in
the Colonial Office, and I know a great deal better than
that. New Zealand has over-borrowed, I assure you ; quite
over-borrowed ; and a serious fall is certain to come sooner
or later. Mark my words, Ethel darling ; if you don't sell
out those New Zealand Fours, you '11 find your three hundred
has sunk to a hundred and fifty in rather less than half no
time ! '
Ethel hesitated, and looked at him in astonishment.
' That 's very queer,' she said, ' for Mr. Cartwright wants me
to sell out my little bit of Midland and put it all into the
same New Zealands. He says they 're so safe and pay so well.'
' Mr. Cartwright indeed ! ' Cecil cried contemptuously.
' What means on earth has he of knowing } Didn't he
advise you to buy nothing but three per cents., and then
let you get some Portuguese Threes at fifty, which are
really sixes, and exceedingly doubtful securities } What 's
the use of trusting a man like that, I should like to know ?
No, Ethel, if you '11 be guided by me — and I have special
opportunities of knowing about these things at the Colonial
Office — you'll sell out your New Zealands, and put them
into a much better investment that I can tell you about.
And if I were you, I 'd say nothing about it to Mr.
Cartwright.'
' But, Cecil, I never did anything in business before
without consulting him ! I should be afraid of going quite
wrong.'
255
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
Cecil took her hand in his with real tenderness. Though
he was trying to deceive her — for her own good — he loved
her dearly in his heart of hearts, and hated himself for the
deception he was remorsefully practising upon her. Yet,
for her sake, he would go through with it. ' You must get
accustomed to trusting 7uc instead of him, darling,' he said
softly. ' When you are mine for ever, as I hope you will be
soon, you will take my advice, of course, in all such matters,
won't you .'' And you may as well begin by taking it now.
I have great hopes, Ethel, that before very long my circum-
stances will be so much improved that I shall be able to
marry you — I hardly know how quickly ; perhaps even
before next Christmas. But meanwhile, darling, I have
something to break to you that I dare say will grieve you
a little for the moment, though it 's for your ultimate good,
birdie — for your ultimate good. The Colonial Office people
have selected me to go to Jamaica on some confidential
Government business, which may keep me there for three
months or so. It 's a dreadful thing to be away from you so
long, Ethel ; but if I manage the business successfully — and
I shall, I know — I shall get promoted when I come back,
well promoted, perhaps to the chief clerkship in the Depart-
ment ; and then we could marry comfortably almost at
once.'
' To Jamaica ! Oh, Cecil ! How awfully far ! And
suppose you were to get yellow fever or something.'
' But I won't, Ethel ; I promise you I won't, and I '11
guarantee it with a kiss, birdie; so now, that's settled.
And then, consider the promotion ! Only three months,
probably, and when I come back, we can be actually
married. It's a wonderful stroke of luck, and I only
heard of it this morning. I couldn't rest till I came and
told you.'
Ethel wiped a tear away silently, and only answered,
' If you 're glad, Cecil dearest, I 'm glad too.'
256
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
' Well now, Ethel/ Cecil Mitford went on as gaily as he
could, ' that brings me up to the second point. I want you
to sell out these wretched New Zealands, so as to take the
money with me to invest on good mortgages in Jamaica.
My expei'ience in West Indian matters— after three years
in the Department — will enable me to lay it out for you at
nine per cent. — nine per cent., observe, Ethel — on absolute
security of landed property. Planters want money to
improve their estates, and can't get it at less than that
rate. Your three hundred would bring you in twenty-seven
pounds^ Ethel ; twenty-seven pounds is a lot of money ! '
What could poor Ethel do ? In his plausible, affectionate
manner — and all for her own good, too — Cecil talked her
over quickly between love and business experience, coaxing
kisses and nine per cent, interest, endearing names and
knowledge of West Indian affairs, till helpless little Ethel
willingly promised to give up her poor little three hundred,
and even arranged to meet Cecil secretly on Thursday at
the Bank of England, about Colonial Office dinner-hour,
to effect the transfer on her own account, without saying
a single word about it to Aunt Emily or Mr. Cartwright.
Cecil's conscience — for he had a conscience, though he did
his best to stifle it — gave him a bitter twinge every now and
then, as one question after another drove him time after
time into a fresh bit of deceit ; but he tried to smile and
smile and be a villain as unconcernedly and lightly as possible.
Once only towards the end of the evening, when everything
was settled, and Cecil had talked about his passage, and the
important business with which he was intrusted, at full
length, a gleam of suspicion seemed to flash for a single
second across poor Ethel's deluded little brains, Jamaica
— promotion — three hundred pounds — it was all so sudden
and so connected ; could Cecil himself be trying to
deceive her, and using her money for his wild treasure hunt?
The doubt was horrible, degrading, unworthy of her or him ;
R 257
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
and yet somehow for a single moment she could not help
half-unconsciously entertaining it.
'Cecil/ she said, hesitating, and looking into the very
depths of his truthful blue eyes ; ' you 're not concealing
anything from me, are you? It's not some journey con-
nected with John Cann ? '
Cecil coughed and cleared his thi-oat uneasily, but by a
great effort he kept his truthful blue eyes still fixed steadily
on hers. (He would have given the world if he might have
turned them away, but that would have been to throw up
the game incontinently.) ' My darling Ethel,' he said
evasively, ' how on earth could the Colonial Office have
anything to do with John Cann ?'
'Answer me Yes or No, Cecil. Do please answer me
Yes or No.'
Cecil kept his eyes still fixed immovably on hers, and
without a moment's hesitation answered quickly ' No.' It
was an awful wrench, and his lips could hardly frame the
horrid falsehood, but for Ethel's sake he answered ' No.'
' Then I know I can trust you, Cecil,' she said, laying her
head for forgiveness on his shoulder. ' Oh, how wrong it
was of me to doubt you for a second ! '
Cecil sighed uneasily, and kissed her white forehead
without a single word.
' After all,' he thought to himself, as he walked back to
his lonely lodgings late that evening, ' I need never tell her
anything about it. I can pretend, when I 've actually got
John Cann's treasure, that I came across the clue accidentally
while I was in Jamaica ; and I can lay out three hundred of
it there in mortgages : and she need never know a single
word about my innocent little deception. But indeed in the
pride and delight of so much money, all our own, she '11
probably never think at all of her poor little paltry three
hundred.'
258
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
III
It was an awfully long time, that eighteen days at sea, on
the Royal Mail Steamship Don, bound for Kingston, Jamaica,
with John Cann's secret for ever on one's mind, and nothing
to do all day, by way of outlet for one's burning energy, but
to look, hour after hour, at the monotonous face of the
seething water. But at last the journey was over ; and
before Cecil Mitford had been twenty-four hours at Date
Tree Hall, the chief hotel in Kingston, he had already hired
a boat and sailed across the baking hot harbour to Port
Royal, to look in the dreary, sandy cemetery for any sign or
token of John Cann's grave.
An old grey-haired negro, digging at a fresh grave, had
charge of the cemetery, and to him Cecil Mitford at once
addressed himself, to find out whether any tombstone about
the place bore the name of John Cann. The old man
turned the name over carefully in his stolid brains, and
then shook his heavy grey head with a decided negative.
' Massa John Cann, sah,' he said dubiously, ' Massa John
Cann ; it don't nobody buried here by de name ob Massa
John Cann. I sartin, sah, becase I 's sexton in dis here
cemetry dese fifty year, an' I know de grabe ob ebbery
buckra gentleman dat ebber buried here since I fuss
came.'
Cecil Mitford tossed his head angrily. 'Since you first
came, my good man,' he said with deep contempt. ' Since
you first came ! Why, John Cann was buried here ages
and ages before you yourself were ever born or thought of.'
The old negro looked up at him inquiringly. There is
nothing a negro hates like contempt ; and he answered
back with a disdainful tone, ' Den I can find out if him
ebber was buried here at all, as well as you, sah. We has
259
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
register here ; we don't ignorant heathen. I has register in
de church ob every pusson dat ebber buried in dis cemetry
from de beiTy beginnin — from de year ob de great earth-
quake itself. What year dis Massa John Cann him die,
now .'' What year him die ? '
Cecil pricked up his ears at the mention of the register,
and answered eagerly, ' In the year I669.'
The old negro sat down quietly on a flat tomb, and
answered with a smile of malicious triumph, ' Den you is
ignorant know-nuffin pusson for a buckra gentleman, for
true, sah, if you tink you will find him grabe in dis here
cemetry. Don't you nebber read your history book, dat
all Port Royal drowned in de great earthquake ob de year
1692 } We has register here for ebbery year, from de year
1692 downward; but de grabes, and de cemetery, and de
register, from de year I692 upward, him all swallowed up
entirely in de great earthquake, bress de Lord ! '
Cecil Mitford felt the earth shivering beneath him at that
moment, as verily as the Port Royal folk had felt it shiver in
1692. He clutched at the headstone to keep him from
falling, and sat down hazily on the flat tomb, beside the
grey-headed old negro, like one unmanned and utterly dis-
heartened. It was all only too true. W^ith his intimate
knowledge of John Cann's life, and of West Indian affairs
generally, how on earth could he ever have overlooked it .''
John Cann's grave lay burled five fathoms deep, no doubt,
under the blue waters of the Caribbean. And it was for
this that he had madly thrown up his Colonial Office appoint-
ment, for this that he had wasted Ethel's money, for this
that he had burdened his conscience with a world of lies ;
all to find in the end that John Cann's secret was
hidden under five fathoms of tropical lagoon, among the
scattered and water-logged ruins of Old Port Royal. His
fortitude forsook him for a single moment, and burying his
face in his two hands, there, under the sweltering mid-day
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JOHN CANNES TREASURE
heat of that deadly sandbank, he broke down utterly, and
sobbed like a child before the very eyes of the now softened
old negro sexton.
IV
It was not for long, however. Cecil Mitford had at least
one strong quality — indomitable energy and perseverance.
All was not yet lost : if need were, he would hunt for John
Cann's tomb in the very submerged ruins of Old Port Royal.
He looked up once more at the puzzled negro, and tried to
bear this bitter downfall of all his hopes with manful
resignation.
At that very moment, a tall and commanding-looking man,
of about sixty, with white ^ hair but erect figure, walked
slowly from the cocoa-nut grove on the sand-spit into the
dense and tangled precincts of the cemetery. He was a
brown man, a mulatto apparently, but] his look and bearing
showed him at once to be a person of education and dis-
tinction in his own fashion. The old sexton rose up respect-
fully as the stranger approached, and said to him in a very
different tone from that in which he had addressed Cecil
Mitford, ' Marnin, sah ; marnin, Mr. Barclay. Dis here
buckra gentleman from Englan', him come 'quiring in de
cemetry after de grabe of pusson dat dead before de great
earthquake. What for him come here like-a-dat on fool's
errand, eh, sah .'' What for him not larn before him come
dat Port Royal all gone drowned in de year I692 .'' '
The new-comer raised his hat slightly to Cecil Mitford,
and spoke at once in the grave gentle voice of an educated
and cultivated mulatto. ' You wanted some antiquarian
information about the island, sir ; some facts about some one
who died before the Port Royal earthquake .'' You have
luckily stumbled across the right man ' to help you ; for I
261
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
think if anything can be recovered about anybody in Jamaica,
I can aid you in recovering it. Whose grave did you want
to see ? '
Cecil hardly waited to thank the polite stranger, but
blurted out at once, 'The grave of John Cann, who died
in 1669.'
The stranger smiled quietly. ' What ! John Cann, the
famous buccaneer .'' ' he said, with evident delight. ' Are
you interested in John Cann ? '
' I am,' Cecil answered hastily. ' Do you know anything
about him ? '
' I know all about him,' the tall mulatto replied, ' All
about him in every way. He was not buried at Port
Royal at all. He intended to be, and gave orders to that
effect ; but his servants had him buried quietly elsewhere,
on account of some dispute with the Governor of the time
being, about some paper which he desired to have placed
in his coffin.'
'Where, where?' Cecil Mitford gasped out eagerly,
clutching at this fresh straw with all the anxiety of a
drowning man.
' At Spanish Town,' the stranger answered calmly. ' I
know his grave there well to the present day. If you
are interested in Jamaican antiquities, and would like to
come over and see it, I shall be happy to show you the
tomb. That is my name.' And he handed Cecil Mitford
his card, with all the courteous dignity of a born gentle-
man.
Cecil took the card and read the name on it : ' The
Hon. Charles Barclay, Leigh Caymanas, Spanish Town.'
How his heart bounded again that minute ! Proof was
accumulating on proof, and luck on luck ! After all, he
had tracked down John Cann's grave ; and the paper was
really there, buried in his coffin. He took the handker-
chief from his pocket and wiped his damp brow with a
262
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
feeling of unspeakable relief. Ethel was saved, and they
might still enjoy John Cann's treasure.
Mr. Barclay sat down beside him on the stone slab, and
began talking over all he knew about John Cann's life and
actions. Cecil affected to be interested in all he said,
though really he could think of one thing only : the trea-
sure, the treasure, the treasure. But he managed also to
let Mr. Barclay see how much he too knew about the old
buccaneer; and Mr. Barclay, who was a simple-minded
learned enthusiast for all that concerned the antiquities
of his native island, was so won over by this display of
local knowledge on the part of a stranger and an English-
man, that he ended by inviting Cecil over to his house
at Spanish Town, to stop as long as he was able. Cecil
gladly accepted the invitation, and that very afternoon,
with a beating heart, he took his place in the lumbering
train that carried him over to the final goal of his Jamaican
expedition.
V
In a corner of the Cathedral graveyard at Spanish Town,
overhung by a big spreading mango tree, and thickly covered
by prickly scrub of agave and cactus, the white-haired old
mulatto gentleman led Cecil Mitford up to a water-worn
and weathered stone, on which a few crumbling letters
alone were still visible. Cecil kneeled down on the bare
ground, regardless of the sharp cactus spines that stung and
tore his flesh, and began clearing the moss and lichen away
from the neglected monument. Yes, his host was right !
right, right, right, indubitably. The first two letters were
lo, then a blank where others were obliterated, and then
came ann. That stood clearly for Iohn Cann. And below
he could slowly make out the words, ' Born at . . . vey
263
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
Tra . . . Devon . . ,' with an illegible date, ' Died at
P . . . Royal, May 12, 1669.' Oh, great heavens, yes.
John Cann's grave ! John Cann's grave ! John Cann's
grave ! Beyond any shadow or suspicion of mistake, John
Cann and his precious secret lay buried below that moulder-
ing tombstone.
That very evening Cecil Mitford sought out and found
the Spanish Town gravedigger. He was a solemn-looking
middle-aged black man, with a keen smart face, not the
wrong sort of man, Cecil Mitford felt sure, for such a job
as the one he contemplated. Cecil didn't beat about the
bush or temporise with him in any way. He went straight
to the point, and asked the man outright whether he would
undertake to open John Cann's grave, and find a paper that
was hidden in the coffin. The gravedigger stared at him,
and answered slowly, ' I don't like de job, sah ; I don't like
de job. Perhaps Massa John Cann's ghost, him come and
trouble me for dat : I don't going to do it. What you gib
me, sah ; how much you gib me ? '
Cecil opened his purse and took out of it ten gold
sovereigns. ' I will give you that,' he said, ' if you can get
me the paper out of John Cann's coffin.'
The negro's eyes glistened, but he answered carelessly,
' I don't tink I can do it. I don't want to open grabe by
night, and if I open him by day, de magistrates dem will
hab me up for desecration ob interment. But I can do dis
for you, sah. If you like to wait till some buckra gentleman
die — John Cann grabe among de white man side in de
grabeyard — -I will dig grabe alongside ob John Cann one
day, so let you come yourself in de night and take what
you like out ob him coffin. I don't go meddle with coffin
myself, to make de John Cann duppy trouble me, and
magistrate send me off about me business.'
It was a risky thing to do, certainly, but Cecil Mitford
closed with it, and promised the man ten pounds if ever he
264
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
could recover John Cann's paper. And then he settled down
quietly at Leigh Caymanas with his friendly host, waiting
with eager, anxious expectation — till some white pei'son
should die at Spanish Town.
What an endless aimless time it seemed to wait before
anybody could be comfortably buried ! Black people died
by the score, of course : there was a smallpox epidemic on,
and they went to wakes over one another's dead bodies in
wretched hovels among the back alleys, and caught the
infection and sickened and died as fast as the wildest
imagination could wish them ; but then, they were buried
apart by themselves in the pauper part of the Cathedral
cemetery. Still, no white man caught the smallpox, and
few raulattoes : they had all been vaccinated, and nobody
got ill except the poorest negroes. Cecil Mitford waited
with almost fiendish eagerness to hear that some prominent
white man was dead or dying.
A month, six weeks, two months, went slowly past, and
still nobody of consequence in all Spanish Town fell ill or
sickened. Talk about tropical diseases ! why, the place was
abominably, atrociously, outrageously healthy. Cecil Mit-
ford fretted and fumed and worried by himself, wondering
whether he would be kept there for ever and ever, waiting
till some useless nobody chose to die. The worst of it all
was, he could tell nobody his troubles : he had to pretend
to look unconcerned and interested, and listen to all old
Mr. Barclay's stories about Maroons and buccaneers as if
he really enjoyed them.
At last, after Cecil had been two full months at Spanish
Town, he heard one morning with grim satisfaction that
yellow fever had broken out at Port Antonio. Now, yellow
fever, as he knew full well, attacks only white men, or men
of white blood : and Cecil felt sure that before long there
would be somebody white dead in Spanish Town. Not that
he was really wicked or malevolent or even unfeeling at
265
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
heart ; but his wild desire to discover John Canii's treasure
had now overridden every better instinct of his nature^, and
had enslaved him, body and soul, till he could think of
nothing in any light save that of its bearing on his one
mad imagination. So he waited a little longer, still more
eagerly than before, till yellow fever should come to Spanish
Town.
Sure enough the fever did come in good time, and the
very first person who sickened with it was Cecil Mitford.
That was a contingency he had never dreamt of, and for the
time being it drove John Cann's treasure almost out of his
fevered memory. Yet not entirely, even so, for in his de-
lirium he i-aved of John Cann and his doubloons till good
old Mr. Barclay, nursing at his bedside like a woman, as a
tender-hearted mulatto always will nurse any casual young
white man, shook his head to himself and muttered gloomily
that poor Mr. Mitford had overworked his brain sadly in his
minute historical investigations.
For ten days Cecil Mitford hovered fitfully between life
and death, and for ten days good old Mi*. Barclay waited on
him, morning, noon, and night, as devotedly as any mother
could wait upon her first-born. At the end of that time he
began to mend slowly ; and as soon as the crisis was over he
forgot forthwith all about his illness, and thought once more
of nothing on earth save only John Cann's treasure. Was
anybody else ill of the fever in Spanish Town? Yes, two,
but not dangerously. Cecil's face fell at that saving clause,
and in his heart he almost ventured to wish it had been
otherwise. He was no murderer, even in thought ; but John
Cann's treasure ! John Cann's treasure ! John Cann's trea-
sure ! What would not a man venture to do or pray, in
order that he might become the possessor of John Cann's
treasure ?
As Cecil began to mend, a curious thing happened at
Leigh Caymanas, contrary to almost all the previous medical
266
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
experience of the whole Island. Mr. Barclay, though a full
mulatto, of half-black blood, suddenly sickened with the
yellow fever. He had worn himself out with nursing Cecil,
and the virus seemed to have got into his blood in a way
that it would never have done under other circumstances.
And when the doctor came to see him, he declared at once
that the symptoms were very serious. Cecil hated and
loathed himself for the thought ; and yet, in a horrid, inde-
finite way he gloated over the possibility of his kind and
hospitable friend's dying. Mr. Barclay had tended him so
carefully that he almost loved him ; and yet, with John
Cann's treasure before his very eyes, in a dim, uncertain,
awful fashion, he almost looked forward to his dying. But
where would he be buried ? that was the question. Not,
surely, among the poor black people in the pauper corner.
A man of his host's distinction and position would certainly
deserve a place among the most exalted white graves —
near the body of Governor Modyford, and not far from the
tomb of John Cann himself.
Day after day Mr. Barclay sank slowly but surely, and
Cecil, weak and hardly convalescent himself, sat watching
by his bedside, and nursing him as tenderly as the good
brown man had nursed Cecil himself in his turn a week
earlier. The young clerk was no hard-hearted wretch who
could see a kind entertainer die without a single passing
pang ; he felt for the grey old mulatto as deeply as he could
have felt for his own brother, if he had had one. Every
time there was a sign of suffering or feebleness, it went to
Cecil's heart like a knife — the very knowledge that on one
side of his nature he wished the man to die made him all the
more anxious and careful on the other side to do everything
he could to save him, if possible, or at least to alleviate his
sufferings. Poor old man ! it was horrible to see him lying
there, parched with fever and dying by inches ; but then
John Cann's treasure ! John Cann's treasure ! John Cann's
267
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
treasure ! every shade that passed over the good mulatto's
face brought Cecil Mitford a single step nearer to the final
enjoyment of John Cann's treasure.
VI
On the evening when the Hon. Charles Barclay died,
Cecil Mitford went out, for the first time after his terrible
illness, to speak a few words in private with the negro sexton.
He found the man lounging in the soft dust outside his hut,
and ready enough to find a place for the corpse (which would
be buried next morning, with the ordinary tropical haste)
close beside the spot actually occupied by John Cann's
coffin. All the rest, the sexton said with a horrid grin, he
would leave to Cecil.
At twelve o'clock of a dark moonless night, Cecil Mitford,
still weak and ill, but trembling only from the remains of
his fever, set out stealthily from the dead man's low bunga-
low in the outskirts of Spanish Town, and walked on alone
through the unlighted, unpaved streets of the sleeping city
to the Cathedral precinct. Not a soul met or passed him on
the way through the lonely alleys ; not a solitary candle
burned anywhere in a single window. He carried only a
little dark lantern in his hand, and a very small pick that he
had borrowed that same afternoon from the negro sexton.
Stumbling along through the unfamiliar lanes, he saw at last
the great black mass of the gaunt ungainly Cathedral, stand-
ing out dimly against the hardly less black abyss of night
that formed the solemn background. But Cecil Mitford was
not awed by place or season ; he could think only of one
subject, John Cann's treasure. He groped his way easily
through scrub and monuments to the far corner of the
churchyard ; and there, close by a fresh and open grave, he
268
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
saw the well-remembered, half-effaced letters that marked
the mouldering upright slab as John Cann's gravestone.
Without a moment's delay, without a touch of hesitation,
without a single tinge of womanish weakness, he jumped
down boldly into the open grave and turned the light side
of his little lantern in the direction of John Cann's unde-
secrated coffin.
A few strokes of the pick soon loosened the intervening
earth sufficiently to let him get at a wooden plank on the
nearer side of the coffin. It had mouldered away with damp
and age till it was all quite soft and pliable ; and he broke
through it with his hand alone, and saw lying within a heap
of huddled bones, which he knew at once for John Cann's
skeleton. Under any other circumstances, such a sight, seen
in the dead of night, with all the awesome accessories of
time and place, would have chilled and appalled Cecil Mit-
ford's nervous blood ; but he thought nothing of it all now ;
his whole soul was entirely concentrated on a single idea —
the search for the missing paper. Leaning over toward the
breach he had made into John Cann's grave, he began
groping about with his right hand on the floor of the coffin.
After a moment's search his fingers came across a small rusty
metal object, clasped, apparently, in the bony hand of the
skeleton. He drew it eagerly out; it was a steel snuff-box.
Prising open the corroded hinge with his pocket-knife, he
found inside a small scrap of dry paper. His fingers trem-
bled as he held it to the dark lantern ; oh heavens, success !
success ! it was, it was — the missing document !
He knew it in a moment by the handwriting and the
cypher ! He couldn't wait to read it till he went home to
the dead man's house ; so he curled himself up cautiously in
Charles Barclay's open grave, and proceeded to decipher the
crabbed manuscript as well as he was able by the lurid light
of the lantern. Yes, yes, it was all right : it told him with
minute and unmistakable detail the exact spot in the valley
269
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
of the Bovey where John Cann's treasure lay securely hidden.
Not at John Cann's rocks on the hilltop, as the local legend
untruly affirmed — John Cann had not been such an unguarded
fool as to whisper to the idle gossips of Bovey the spot where
he had really buried his precious doubloons — but down in
the valley by a bend of the river, at a point that Cecil Mit-
ford had known well from his childhood upward. Hurrah !
hurrah ! the secret was unearthed at last, and he had nothing
more to do than to go home to England and proceed to dig
up John Cann's treasure !
So he cautiously replaced the loose earth on the side of
the grave, and walked back, this time bold and erect, with
his dark lantern openly displayed (for it mattered little now
who watched or followed him), to dead Charles Barclay's
lonely bungalow. The black servants were crooning and
wailing over their master's body, and nobody took much
notice of the white visitor. If they had, Cecil Mitford would
have cared but little, so long as he carried John Cann's last
dying directions safely folded in his leather pocket-book.
Next day, Cecil Mitford stood once more as a chief
mourner beside the grave he had sat in that night so
strangely by himself: and before the week was over, he
had taken his passage for England in the Royal Mail Steamer
Tagiis, and was leaving the cocoa-nut groves of Port Royal
well behind him on the port side. Before him lay the open
sea, and beyond it, England, Ethel, and John Cann's
treasure.
VII
It had been a long job after all to arrange fully the needful
preliminaries for the actual search after John ('ann's buried
doubloons. First of all, there was Ethel's interest to pay,
and a horrid story for Cecil to concoct — all false, of course,
270
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
worse luck to it — about how he had managed to invest her
poor three hundred to the best advantage. Then there was
another story to make good about three months' extra leave
from the Colonial Office. Next came the question of buying
the land where John Cann's treasure lay hidden, and this
was really a matter of very exceptional and peculiar difficulty.
The owner — pig-headed fellow ! — didn't want to sell, no
matter how much he was offered, because the corner con-
tained a clump of trees that made a specially pretty element
in the view from his dining-room windows. His dining-room
windows, forsooth ! What on earth could it matter, when
John Cann's treasure was at stake, whether anything at all
was visible or otherwise from his miserable dining-room
windows .'' Cecil was positively appalled at the obstinacy
and narrow-mindedness of the poor squireen, who could
think of nothing at all in the whole world but his own
ridiculous antiquated windows. However, in the end, by
making his bid high enough, he was able to induce this
obstructive old curmudgeon to part with his triangular little
corner of land in the bend of the rivei*. Even so, there was
the question of payment : absurd as it seemed, with all John
Cann's money almost in his hands, Cecil was obliged to worry
and bother and lie and intrigue for weeks together in order
to get that paltry little sum in hard cash for the matter of
payment. Still, he raised it in the end ; raised it by inducing
Ethel to sell out the remainder of her poor small fortune,
and cajoling Aunt Emily into putting her name to a bill of
sale for her few worthless bits of old-fashioned furniture.
At last, after many delays and vexatious troubles, Cecil
found himself the actual possessor of the corner of land
wherein lay buried John Cann's treasure.
The very first day that Cecil Mitford could call that
coveted piece of ground his own, he could not restrain his
eagerness (though he knew it was imprudent in a land where
the unjust law of treasure-trove prevails), but he must then
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JOHN CANN S TREASURE
and there begin covertly digging under the shadow of the
three big willow trees in the bend of the river. He had
eyed and measured the bearings so carefully already that he
knew the very spot to a nail's-breadth where John Cann's
treasure was actually hidden. He set to work digging with
a little pick as confidently as if he had already seen the
doubloons lying there in the strong box that he knew
enclosed them. Four feet deep he dug^ as John Cann's
instructions told him ; and then, true to the inch, his pick
struck against a solid oaken box, well secured with clamps of
iron. Cecil cleared all the dirt away from the top, carefully,
not hurriedly, and tried with all his might to lift the box
out, but all in vain. It was far too heavy, of course, for one
man's arms to raise : all that weight of gold and silver must
be ever so much more than a single pair of hands could
possibly manage. He must try to open the lid alone, so as
to take the gold out, a bit at a time, and carry it away with
him now and again, as he was able, covering the place up
carefully in between, for fear of the Treasury and the Lord
of the Manor. How abominably unjust it seemed to him at
that moment — the legal claim of those two indolent hostile
powers ! to think that after he, Cecil Mitford, had borne the
brunt of the labour in adventurously hunting up the whole
trail of John Cann's secret, two idle irresponsible par-
ticipators should come in at the end, if they could, to profit
entirely by his ingenuity and his exertions !
At last, by a great effort, he forced the rusty lock open,
and looked eagerly into the strong oak chest. How his
heart beat with slow, deep throbs at that supreme moment,
not with suspense, for he kyiew he should find the money,
but with the final realisation of a great hope long deferred !
Yes, there it lay, in very truth, all before him — great shining
coins of old Spanish gold — gold, gold, gold, arranged in long
rows, one coin after another, over the whole surface of the
broad oak box. He had found it, he had found it, he had
272
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
really found it ! After so much toilsome hunting, after so
much vain endeavour, after so many heart-breaking dis-
appointments, John Cann's treasure in very truth lay open
there actually before him !
For a few minutes, eager and frightened as he was, Cecil
Mitford did not dare even to touch the precious pieces. In
the greatness of his joy, in the fierce rush of his overpowering
emotions, he had no time to think of mere base everyday
gold and silver. It was the future and the ideal that he
beheld, not the piled-up heaps of filthy lucre. Ethel was
his, wealth was his, honour was his ! He would be a rich
man and a great man now and henceforth for ever ! Oh,
how he hugged himself in his heart on the wise successful
fraud by which he had induced Ethel to advance him the
few wretched hundreds he needed for his ever-memorable
Jamaican journey ! How he praised to himself his own
courage, and ingenuity, and determination, and inexhaustible
patience ! How he laughed down that foolish conscience of
his that would fain have dissuaded him from his master-
stroke of genius. He deserved it all, he deserved it all !
Other men would have flinched before the risk and expense
of the voyage to Jamaica, would have given up the scent for
a fool's errand in the cemetery at Port Royal, would have
shrunk from ransacking John Cann's grave at dead of night
in the Cathedral precincts at Spanish Town, would have
feared to buy the high-priced corner of land at Bovey Tracy
on a pure imaginative speculation. But he, Cecil Mitford, had
had the boldness and the cleverness to do it every bit, and
now, wisdom was justified of all her children. He sat for
five minutes in profound meditation on the edge of the little
pit he had dug, gloating dreamily over the broad gold pieces,
and inwardly admiring his own bravery and foresight and
indomitable resolution. What a magnificent man he really
was — a worthy successor of those great freebooting, buc-
caneering, filibustering Devonians of the grand Elizabethan
s 273
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
era ! To think that the worky-day modern world should
ever have tried to doom him, Cecil Mitford, with his
splendid enterprise and glorious potentialities, to a hundred
and eighty a year and a routine clerkship at the Colonial
Office!
After a while, however, mere numerical cupidity began to
get the better of this heroic mood, and Cecil Mitford turned
somewhat languidly to the vulgar task of counting the rows of
doubloons. He counted up the foremost row carefully, and
then for the first time perceived, to his intense surprise, that
the row behind was not gold, but mere silver Mexican pistoles.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again, but the fact was un-
mistakable ; there was only one row of yellow gold in the top
layer, and all the rest was merely bright and glittering
silver. Strange that John Cann should have put coins of
such small value near the top of his box : the rest of the
gold must certainly be in successive layers down further.
He lifted up the big gold doubloons in the first row, and
then, to his blank horror and amazement, came to — not more
gold, not more silver, but — but — but — ay, incredible as it
seemed, appalling, horrifying — a wooden bottom !
Had John Cann, in his care and anxiety, put a layer of solid
oak between each layer of gold and silver ? Hardly that, the
oak was too thick. In a moment Cecil Mitford had taken
out all the coins of the first tier, and laid bare the oaken
bottom. A few blows of the pick loosened the earth
around, and then, oh horror, oh ghastly disappointment, oh
unspeakable heart-sickening revelation, the whole box came
out entire. It was only two inches deep altogether, including
the cover — it was, in fact, a mere shallow tray or saucer,
something like the sort of thin wooden boxes in which sets
of dessert-knives or fish-knives are usually sold for wedding
presents !
For the space of three seconds Cecil Mitford could not
believe his eyes, and then, with a sudden flash of awful
274
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
vividness^ the whole terrible truth flashed at once across his
staggering brain. He had found John Cann's treasure in-
deed — the John Cann's treasure of base actual reality ; but
the John Cann's treasure of his fervid imagination, the John
Cann's treasure he had dreamt of from his boyhood upward,
the John Cann's treasure he had risked all to find and to win,
did not exist, could not exist, and never had existed at all
anywhere ! It was all a horrible, incredible, unthinkable
delusion ! The hideous fictions he had told would every
one be now discovered ; Ethel would be ruined ; Aunt Emily
would be ruined ; and they would both know him, not only
for a fool, a dreamer, and a visionary, but also for a gambler,
a thief, and a liar.
In his black despair he jumped down into the shallow
hole once more, and began a second time to count slowly
over the accursed dollars. The whole miserable sum — the
untold wealth of John Cann's treasure — would amount
altogether to about two hundred and twenty pounds of
modern sterling English money. Cecil Mitford tore his hair
as he counted it in impotent self-punishment ; two hundred
and twenty pounds, and he had expected at least as many
thousands ! He saw it all in a moment. His wild fancy
had mistaken the poor outcast hunted-down pirate for a sort
of ideal criminal millionaire ; he had erected the ignorant,
persecuted John Cann of real life, who fled from the king's
justice to a nest of chartered outlaws in Jamaica, into a
great successful naval commander, like the Drake or
Hawkins of actual history. The whole truth about the
wretched solitary old robber burst in upon him now with
startling vividness ; he saw him hugging his paltry two
hundred pounds to his miserly old bosom, crossing the sea
with it stealthily from Jamaica, burying it secretly in a hole
in the ground at Bovey, quarrelling about it with his peasant
relations in England, as the poor will often quarrel about
mere trifles of money, and dying at last with the secret of
275
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
that wretched sum hidden in the snuff-box that he clutched
with fierce energy even in his lifeless skeleton fingers. It
was all clear, horribly, irretrievably, unmistakably clear to
him now ; and the John Cann that he had once followed
through so many chances and changes had faded away at
once into absolute nothingness, now and for ever !
If Cecil Mitford had known a little less about John Cann's
life and exploits, he might still perhaps have buoyed himself
up with the vain hope that all the treasure was not yet
unearthed — that there were more boxes still buried in the
ground, more doubloons still hidden further down in the
unexplored bosom of the little three-cornered field. But
the words of John Cann's own dying directions were too
explicit and clear to admit of any such gloss or false inter-
pretation. ' In a strong oaken chest, bound round with
iron, and buried at four feet of depth in the south-western
angle of the Home Croft, at Bovey,' said the document,
plainly : there was no possibility of making two out of it in
any way. Indeed, in that single minute, Cecil Mitford's
mind had undergone a total revolution, and he saw the John
Cann myth for the first time in his life now in its true
colours. The bubble had burst, the halo had vanished, the
phantom had faded away, and the miserable squalid miserly
reality stood before him with all its vulgar nakedness in
their place. The whole panorama of John Cann's life, as
he knew it intimately in all its details, passed before his
mind's-eye like a vivid picture, no longer in the brilliant
hues of boyish romance, but in the dingy sordid tones of
sober fact. He had given up all that was worth having in
this world for the sake of a poor gipsy pirate's penny-saving
hoard.
A weaker man would have swallowed the disappointment
or kept the delusion still to his dying day. Cecil Mitford
was made of stronger mould. The ideal John Cann's
treasure had taken possession of him, body and soul ; and
276
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
now that John Cann's treasure had faded into utter nonentity
— a paltry two hundred pounds — the whole solid earth had
failed beneath his feet, and nothing was left before him but
a mighty blank. A mighty blank. Blank, blank, blank.
Cecil Mitford sat there on the edge of the pit, with his legs
dangling over into the hollow where John Cann's treasure
had never been, gazing blankly out into a blank sky, with
staring blank eyeballs that looked straight ahead into infinite
space and saw utterly nothing.
How long he sat there no one knows ; but late at night,
when the people at the Red Lion began to miss their guest,
and turned out in a body to hunt for him in the corner field,
they found him sitting still on the edge of the pit he had
dug for the grave of his own hopes, and gazing still with
listless eyes into blank vacancy. A box of loose coin lay
idly scattered on the ground beside him. The poor gentle-
man had been struck crazy, they whispered to one another ;
and so indeed he had : not raving mad with acute insanity,
but blankly, hopelessly, and helplessly imbecile. With the
loss of John Cann's treasure the whole universe had faded
out for him into abject nihilism. They carried him home
to the inn between them on their arms, and put him to bed
carefully in the old bedroom, as one might put a new-born
baby.
The Lord of the Manor, when he came to hear the whole
pitiful story, would have nothing to do with the wretched
doubloons; the curse of blood was upon them, he said, and
worse than that ; so the Treasury, which has no sentiments
and no conscience, came in at the end for what little there
was of John Cann's unholy treasure.
277
JOHN CANN S TREASURE
VIII
In the County Pauper Lunatic Asylum for Devon there
was one quiet impassive patient, who was always pointed out
to horror-loving visitors, because he had once been a gentle-
man, and had a strange romance hanging to him still, even
in that dreary refuge of the destitute insane. The lady
whom he had loved and robbed — all for her own good — had
followed him down from London to Devonshire; and she
and her aunt kept a small school, after some struggling
fashion, in the town close by, where many kind-hearted
squires of the neighbourhood sent their little girls, while
they were still very little, for the sake of charity, and for
pity of the sad, sad story. One day a week there was a
whole holiday — Wednesday it was — for that was visiting-
day at the County Asylum ; and then Ethel Sutherland,
dressed in deep mourning, walked round with her aunt to
the gloomy gateway at ten o'clock, and sat as long as she
was allowed with the faded image of Cecil Mitford, holding
his listless hand clasped hard in her pale white fingers, and
looking with sad, eager anxious eyes for any gleam of passing
recognition in his. Alas ! the gleam never came (perhaps it
was better so) ; Cecil Mitford looked always straight before
him at the blank whitewashed walls, and saw nothing, heard
nothing, thought of nothing, from week's end to week's
end.
Ethel had forgiven him all ; what will not a loving woman
forgive .'' Nay, more, had found excuses and palliations for
him which quite glossed over his crime and his folly. He
must have been losing his reason long before he ever went
to Jamaica, she said ; for in his right mind he would never
have tried to deceive her or himself in the way he had done.
278
JOHN CANN'S TREASURE
Did he not fancy he was sent out by the Colonial Office,
when he had really gone without leave or mission ? And
did he not persuade her to give up her money to him for
investment, and after all never invest it ? What greater
proofs of insanity could you have than those ? And then that
dreadful fever at Spanish Town, and the shock of losing his
kind entertainer, worn out with nursing him, had quite com-
pleted the downfall of his reason. So Ethel Sutherland,
in her pure beautiful woman's soul, went on believing, as
steadfastly as ever, in the faith and the goodness of that
Cecil Mitford that had never been. His ideal had faded out
before the first touch of disillusioning fact ; hers persisted
still, in spite of all the rudest assaults that the plainest facts
could make upon it. Thank Heaven for that wonderful
idealising power of a good woman, which enables her to
walk unsullied through this sordid world, unknowing and
unseeing.
At last one night, one terrible windy night in December,
Ethel Sutherland was wakened from her sleep in the quiet
little schoolhouse by a fearful glare falling fiercely upon her
bedroom window. She jumped up hastily and rushed to the
little casement to look out towards the place whence the
glare came. One thought alone rose instinctively in her
white little mind — Could it be at Cecil's Asylum? Oh^
horror, yes ; the whole building was in flames, and if Cecil
were taken — even poor mad imbecile Cecil — what, what on
earth would then be left her ?
Huddling on a few things hastily, anyhow, Ethel rushed
out wildly into the street, and ran with incredible speed
where all the crowd of the town was running together,
towards the blazing Asylum. The mob knew her at once,
and recognised her sad claim ; they made a little lane down
the surging mass for her to pass through, till she stood be-
side the very firemen at the base of the gateway. It was an
awful sight — poor mad wretches raving and imploring at the
279
JOHN CANNES TREASURE
windows, while the firemen pHed their hose and brought
their escapes to bear as best they were able on one menaced
tier after another. But Ethel saw or heard nothing, save in
one third-floor window of the right wing, where Cecil Mit-
ford stood, no longer speechless and imbecile, but calling
loudly for help, and flinging his eager arms wildly about him.
The shock had brought him back his reason, for the moment
at least : oh, thank God, thank God, he saw her, he saw her!
With a sudden wild cry Ethel burst from the firemen who
tried to hold her back, leaped into the burning building and
tore up the blazing stairs, blinded and scorched, but by some
miracle not quite suffocated, till she reached the stone land-
ing on the third story. Turning along the well-known
corridor, now filled with black wreaths of stifling smoke, she
reached at last Cecil's ward, and flung herself madly, wildly
into his circling arms. For a moment they both forgot the
awful death that girt them round on every side, and Cecil,
rising one second superior to himself, cried only, ' Ethel,
Ethel, Ethel, I love you ; forgive me ! ' Ethel pressed his
hand in hers gently, and answered in an agony of joy, ' There
is nothing to forgive, Cecil ; I can die happy now, now that
I have once more heard you say you love me, you love me.'
Hand in hand they turned back towards the blazing stair-
case, and reached the window at the end where the firemen
were now bringing their escape-ladder to bear on the third
story. The men below beckoned them to come near and
climb out on to the ladder, but just at that moment some-
thing behind seemed incomprehensibly to fascinate and delay
Cecil, so that he would not move a step nearer, though Ethel
led him on with all her might. She looked back to see what
could be the reason, and beheld the floor behind them rent
by the flames, and a great gap spreading downward to the
treasurer's room. On the tiled floor a few dozen pence and
shillings and other coins lay, white with heat, among the
glowing rubbish ; and the whole mass, glittering like gold in
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JOHN CANNES TREASURE
the fierce glare, seemed some fiery cave filled to the brim
with fabulous wealth. Cecil's eye was riveted upon the
yawning gap, and the corners of his mouth twitched horribly
as he gazed with intense interest upon the red cinders and
white-hot coin beneath him. Instinctively Ethel felt at once
that all was lost, and that the old mania was once more upon
him. Clasping her arm tight round his waist, while the
firemen below shouted to her to leave him and come down
as she valued her life, she made one desperate effort to drag
him by main force to the head of the ladder. But Cecil,
strong man that he was, threw her weak little arm impetu-
ously away, as he might have thrown a two-year-old baby's,
and cried to her in a voice trembling with excitement, ' See,
see, Ethel, at last, at last; there it is, there it is in good
earnest. John Cann's Treasure ! '
Ethel seized his arm imploringly once more. ' This Avay,
darling,' she cried, in a voice choked by sobs and half stifled
with the smoke. 'This way to the ladder.'
But Cecil broke from her fiercely, with a wild light in his
big blue eyes, and shouting aloud, ' The treasure, the trea-
sure ! ' leaped with awful energy into the very centre of the
seething fiery abyss. Ethel fell, fainting with terror and
choked by the flames, on to the burning floor of the third
story. The firemen, watching from below, declared next
day that that crazy madman must have died stifled before he
touched the heap of white-hot ruins in the central shell, and
the poor lady was insensible or dead with asphyxia full ten
minuted before the flames swept past the spot where her
lifeless body was lying immovable.
281
XI
IVAN GREETS MASTERPIECE
IVAN GREETS MASTERPIECE
'TwAs at supper at Charlie Powell's ; every one there
admitted Charlie was in splendid form. His audacity
broke the record. He romanced away with even more
than his usual brilliant recklessness. Truth and fiction
blended well in his animated account of his day's adven-
tures. He had lunched that morning with the newly-
appointed editor of a high-class journal for the home circle
— circulation exceeding half a million, — and had returned
all agog with the glorious prospect of untold wealth opening
fresh before him. So he discounted his success by inviting
a dozen friends to champagne and lobster-salad at his rooms
in St. James's, and held forth to them, after his wont, in a
rambling monologue.
' When I got to the house,' he said airily, poising a
champagne-glass halfway up in his hand, ' with the modest
expectation of a chop and a pint of porter in the domestic
ring — imagine my surprise at finding myself forthwith
standing before the gates of an Oriental palace — small,
undeniably small, a bijou in its way, but still, without doubt,
a veritable palace. I touched the electric bell. Hi, presto !
at my touch the door flew open as if by magic, and disclosed
— a Circassian slave, in a becoming costume a la Liberty in
Regent Street, and smiling like the advertisement of a
patent dentifrice ! I gasped out '
285
IVAN GREETS MASTERPIECE
' But how did ye know she was a Circassian ? ' Paddy
O'Connor inquired, interrupting him brusquely. (His
name was really Francis Xavier O'Connor, but they
called him 'Paddy' for short, just to mark his Celtic
origin.)
Charlie Powell smiled a contemptuously condescending
smile. He was then on the boom, as chief literary lion.
' How do I know ye 're an Oirishman, Paddy ? ' he answered,
hardly heeding the interruption. ' By her accent, my dear
boy ; her pure, unadulterated Circassian accent ! '•' Is Mr.
Morrison at home ? " I gasped out to the Vision of Beauty.
The Vision of Beauty smiled and nodded — her English
being chiefly confined to smiles, with a Circassian flavour ;
and led me on by degrees into the great man's presence.
I mounted a stair, with a stained-glass window all yellows
and browns, very fine and Burne-Jonesey ; I passed through
a drawing-room in the Stamboul style — couches, rugs, and
draperies ; and after various corridors — Byzantine, Persian,
Moorish — I reached at last a sort of arcaded alcove at the
further end, where two men lay reclining on an Eastern
divan — one, a fez on his head, pulling hard at a chibouque ;
the other, bare-headed, burbling smoke through a hookah.
The bare-headed oiae rose : " Mr. Powell," says he, waving
his hand to present me, " My friend, Macpherson Pasha ! "
I bowed, and looked unconcerned. I wanted them to think
I 'd lived all my life hobnobbing with Pashas. Well,
we talked for a while about the weather and the crops,
and the murder at Mile End, and the state of Islam ;
when, presently, of a sudden, Morrison claps his hands
— so — and another Circassian slave, still more beautiful,
enters.
'"Lunch, houri," says Morrison.
'"The effendi is served," says the Circassian.
' And down we went to the dining-room. Bombay black-
wood, every inch of it, inlaid with ivory. Venetian glass on
286
IVAN GREET'S MASTERPIECE
the table; solid silver on the sideboard. Only us three, if
you please, to lunch ; but everything as spick and span as if
the Prince was of the company. The three Circassian
slaves, in Liberty caps, stood behind our chairs one
goddess apiece — and looked after us royally. Chops and
porter, indeed ! It was a banquet for a poet ; Ivan Greet
should have been there ; he 'd have mugged up an ode about
it. Clear turtle and Chablis — the very best brand; then
smelts and sweetbreads ; next lamb and mint sauce ; ortolans
on toast ; ice-pudding ; fresh strawberries. A guinea each,
strawberries, I give you my word, just now at Covent
Garden. Oh, mamma ! what a lunch, boys ! The Hebes
poured champagne from a golden flagon ; that is to say, at
any rate ' — for Paddy's eye was upon him — ' the neck of the
bottle was wrapped in gilt tinfoil. And all the time
Morrison talked — great guns, how he talked! I never
heard anything in my life to equal it. The man's been
everywhere, from Peru to Siberia. The man 's been every-
thing, from a cowboy to a communard. My hair stood on
end with half the things he said to me ; and I haven't got
hair so easily raised as some people's. Was I prepared to
sell my soul for Saxon gold at the magnificent rate of five
guineas a column.? Was I prepared to jump out of my
skin ! I choked with delight. Hadn't I sold it all along
to the enemies of Wales for a miserable pittance of thirty
shillings } What did he want me to do .=■ Why, contribute
third leaders — you know the kind of thing — tootles on the
penny-trumpet about irrelevant items of non-political news
— the wit and humour of the fair, best domestic style,
informed throughout with wide general culture. An allu-
sion to Aristophanes; a passing hint at Rabelais; what
Lucian would have said to his friends on this theme ; how
the row at the School Board would have affected Sam
Johnson.
' " But you must remember, Mr. Powell," says Morrison,
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IVAN GREETS MASTERPIECE
with an unctuous smile, " the gx-eater part of our i-eaders
are — well, not to put it too fine — country squires and con-
servative Dissenters. Your articles mustn't hurt their
feelings or prejudices. Go warily, warily ! You must stick
to the general policy of the paper, and be tenderly respect-
ful to John Wesley's memory."
' " Sir," said I, smacking his hand, " for five guineas
a column I 'd be tenderly respectful to King Ahab himself,
if you cared to insist upon it. You may count on my
writing whatever rubbish you desire for the nursery
mind." And I passed from his dining-room into the en-
chanted alcove.
' But before I left, my dear Ivan, I 'd heard such things
as I never heard before, and been promised such pay as
seemed to me this morning beyond the dreams of avarice.
And oh, what a character ! " When I was a slave at
Khartoum," the man said ; or " When I was a schoolmaster
in Texas " ; " When I lived as a student up five floors at
Heidelberg" ; or " When I ran away with Felix Pyat from
the Versaillais " ; till I began to think 'twas the Wandering
Jew himself come to life again in Knightsbridge. At last,
after coffee and cigarettes on a Cairo tray — with remini-
scences of Paraguay — I emerged on the street, and saw
erect before my eyes a great round Colosseum. I seemed
somehow to recognise it. " This is not Bagdad, then," I
said to myself, rubbing my eyes very hard — for I thought I
must have been wafted some centuries off, on an enchanted
carpet. Then I looked once more. Yes, sure enough, it
was the Albert Hall. And there was the Memorial with its
golden image. I rubbed my eyes a second time, and hailed
a hansom — for there were hansoms about, and policemen,
and babies. "Thank Heaven!" I cried aloud; "after all,
this is London ! " '
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IVAN GREETS MASTERPIECE
II
'It's a most regrettable incident!' Ivan Greet said
solemnly.
The rest turned and looked. Ivan Greet was their poet.
He was tall and thin, with strange, wistful eyes, somewhat
furtive in tone, and a keen, sharp face, and lank, long hair
that fell loose on his shoulders. It was a point with this
hair to be always abnormally damp and moist, with a sort
of unnatural and impalpable moisture. The little coterie
of authors and artists to which Ivan belonged regarded him
indeed with no small respect, as a great man 7nanquc.
Nature, they knew, had designed him for an immortal bard ;
circumstances had turned him into an occasional journalist.
But to them, he represented Art for Art's sake. So when
Ivan said solemnly, ' It 's a most regrettable incident,' every
eye in the room turned and stared at him in concert.
'Why so, me dear fellow.''' Paddy O'Connor asked, open-
eyed. ' I call it magnificent ! '
But Ivan Greet answered warmly, ' Because it '11 take him
still further away than ever from his work in life, which you
and I know is science and philosophy.'
' And yer own grand epic .'' ' Paddy suggested, with a
smart smile, pouncing down like a hawk upon him.
Ivan Greet coloured — positively coloured — ' blushed
visibly to the naked eye,' as Paddy observed afterwards,
in recounting the incident to his familiar friend at the
United Bohemians. But he stood his ground like a man
and a poet for all that. ' My own epic isn't written yet —
probably never will be written,' he answered, after a pause,
with quiet firmness. ' I give up to the Daily Telephone what
was meant for mankind : I acknowledge it freely. Still,
I 'm sorry when I see any other good man — and most of all
T 289
IVAN GREETS MASTERPIECE
Charlie Powell — compelled to lose his own soul the same
way I myself have done.' He paused and looked round.
' Boys/ he said, addressing the table, ' in these days, if any
man has anything out of the common to say, he must be
rich and his own master, or he won't be allowed to say it.
If he 's poor, he has first to earn his living ; and to earn his
living he 's compelled to do work he doesn't want to do —
work that stifles the things which burn and struggle for
utterance within him. The editor is the man who rules
the situation ; and what the editor asks is good paying
matter. Good paying matter Charlie can give him, of
course : Charlie can give him, thank Heaven, whatever he
asks for. But this hack-work will draw him further and
further afield from the work in life for which God made
him — the philosophical reconstitution of the world and the
universe for the twentieth century. And that 's why I say
— and I say it again — a most regrettable incident ! '
Charlie Powell set down his glass of champagne untasted.
Ivan Greet was regai'ded by his narrow little circle of
journalistic associates as something of a prophet ; and his
words, solemnly uttered, sobered Charlie for a while —
recalled him with a bound to his better personality.
' Ivan 's right,' he said slowly, nodding his head once or
twice. ' He 's right, as usual. We 're all of us wasting on
weekly middles the talents God gave us for a higher
purpose. We know it, every man Jack of us. But
Heaven help us, I say, Ivan : for how can we help our-
selves ? We live by bread. We must eat bread first, or
how can we write epics or philosophies afterwards } This
age demands of us the sacrifice of our individualities. It
will be better some day, perhaps, when Bellamy and
William Morris have remodelled the world : life will be
simpler, and bare living easier. For the present I resign
myself to inevitable fate. I '11 write middles for Morrison,
and eat and drink ; and I '11 wait for my philosophy till I m
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IVAN GREETS MASTERPIECE
rich and bald, and have leisure to write it in my own hired
house in Fitzjohn's Avenue.'
Ivan Greet gazed across at him with a serious look in
those furtive eyes. ' That 's all very well for you ! ' he
cried half angrily, in a sudden flaring forth of long-
suppressed emotion. ' Philosophy can wait till a man 's
rich and bald; it gains by waiting; it's the better for
maturity. But poetry ! — ah, there, I hate to talk about it !
Who can begin to set about his divine work when he 's
turned sixty and worn out by forty years of uncongenial
leaders .'' The thing 's preposterous. A poet must write
when he 's young and passionate, or not at all. He may go
on writing in age, of course, as his blood grows cool, if he 's
kept up the habit, like Wordsworth and Tennyson : he may
even let it lie by or rust for a time, like Milton or Goethe,
and resume it later, if he throws himself meanwhile, heart
and soul, into some other occupation that carries him away
with it resistlessly for the moment ; but spend half his life
in degrading his style and debasing his genius by working
for hire at the beck and call of an editor — lose his birthright
like that, and then turn at last with the bald head you speak
about to pour forth at sixty his frigid lyrics — I tell you,
Charlie, the thing 's impossible ! The poet must work, the
poet must acquire his habits of thought and style and
expression in the volcanic period ; if he waits till he 's
crusted over and encysted with age, he may hammer out
I'hetoric, he may string fresh rhymes, but he '11 never, never
give us one line of real poetry.'
Ill
He spoke with fiery zeal. It was seldom Ivan Greet had
an outbreak like this. For the most part he acquiesced, like
all the rest of us, in the supreme dictatorship of Supply and
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IVAN GREErS MASTERPIECE
Demand — those economic gods of the modern book-market.
But now and agam rebellious fits came over him, and he
kicked against the pricks with all the angry impetuosity of
a born poet. For the rest of that night he sat moody and
silent. Black bile consumed him. Paddy O'Connor rose
and sang with his usual verve the last new Irish comic song
from the music-halls ; Fred Mowbray, from Jamaica, told
good stories in negro dialect with his wonted exuberance ;
Charlie Powell bubbled over with spirits and epigrams.
But Ivan Greet sat a little apart, with scarcely a smile on his
wistful face ; he sat and ruminated. He was angry at heart ;
the poetic temperament is a temperament of moods ; and
each mood, once roused, takes possession for the time of a
man's whole nature. So Ivan remained angry, with a re-
morseful anger ; he was ashamed of his own life, ashamed
of falling short of his own cherished ideals. Yet how could
he help himself.'' Man, as he truly said, must live by bread,
though not by bread alone; a sufficiency of food is still a
condition-precedent of artistic creation. You can't earn
your livelihood nowadays by stringing together rhymes,
string you never so deftly ; and Ivan had nothing but his
pen to earn it with. He had prostituted that pen to write
harmless little essays on social subjects in the monthly
magazines ; his better nature recoiled with horror to-night
from the thought of that hateful, that wicked profanation.
'Twas a noisy party. They broke up late. Fred Mow-
bray walked home along Piccadilly with Ivan. It was one
of those dull, wet nights in the streets of London when
everything glistens wiih a dreary reflection from the pallid
gas-lamps. Pah ! what weather ! To Fred, West-Indian
born, it was utterly hideous. He talked as they went
along of the warmth, the sunshine, the breadth of space,
the ease of living, in his native islands. What a contrast
between those sloppy pavements, thick with yellow mud,
and the sun-smitten hillsides, clad in changeless green,
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IVAN GREETS MASTERPIECE
where the happy nigger lay basking and sprawling all day
long on his back in the midst of his plantain-patches,
while the bountiful sun did the hard work of life for him
by ripening his coconuts and mellowing his bananas, unasked
and untended !
Ivan Greet drank it in. As Fred spoke, an idea rose up
vague and formless in the poet's soul. There were countries,
then, where earth was still kindly, and human wants still
few ; where Nature, as in the Georgics, supplied even now
the primary needs of man's life unbidden ! Surely, in such
a land as that a poet yet might live ; tilling his own small
plot and eating the fruits of his own slight toil, he might
find leisure to mould without let or hindrance the thought
that was in him into exquisite melody. The bare fancy
fired him. A year or two spent in those delicious climates
might enable a man to turn out what was truest and best
in him. He might drink of the spring and be fed from the
plantain-patch, like those wiser negroes, but he would carry
with him still all the inherited wealth of European culture,
and speak like a Greek god under the tropic shade of
Jamaican cotton-ti'ees.
To the average ratepayer such a scheme would appear the
veriest midsummer madness. But Ivan Greet was a poet.
Now, a poet is a man who acts on impulse. And to Ivan
the impulse itself was absolutely sacred. He paused on
the slippery pavement, and faced his companion suddenly.
^ How much land does it take there for a man to live upon ? '
he asked, with hurried energy.
Fred Mowbray reflected. ' Well, two acres at most, I
should say, down in plantain and yam,' he answered, ' would
support a family.'
^ And you can buy it ? ' Ivan went on, with surprising
eagerness. ' I mean, there 's lots to be had — it 's always in
the market .'' '
' Lots to be had } Why, yes ! No difficulty there ! Half
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IVAN GREETS MASTERPIECE
Jamaica 's for sale, on the mountains especially. The island's
under-peopled ; our pop 's half a million ; it 'd hold quite
three. Land goes for a mere song ; you can buy where you
will, quite easily.'
Ivan Greet's lip trembled with intense excitement. A
vision of freedom floated dimly before him. Palms, tree-
ferns, bamboos, waving clumps of tropic foliage ; a hillside
hut ; dusky faces, red handkerchiefs ; and leisure, leisure,
leisure to do the work he liked in ! Oh soul, what a
dream ! You shall say what you will there ! To Ivan
that was religion — all the religion he had perhaps ; for his
was, above all things, an artistic nature.
' How much would it cost, do you think ? ' he inquired, all
tremulous.
And Fred answered airily, ' Well, I fancy not more than a
pound or two an acre.'
A pound or two an acre ! Just a column in the Globe.
The gates of Paradise stood open before him !
They walked on a hundred yards or so again in silence.
Ivan Greet was turning over in his seething soul a strange
scheme to free himself from Egyptian bondage. At last he
asked once more, ' How much would it cost me to go out by
the steerage, if there is such a thing on the steamers to
Jamaica ? '
Fred Mowbray paused a moment. ' Well, I should think,'
he said at last, pursing his lips to look wise, ' you ought to
do it for about a tenner.'
Ivan's mind was made up. Those woi'ds decided him.
While his mother lived he had felt bound to support her ;
and the necessity for doing so had ' kept him straight,' his
friends said — or, as he himself would have phrased it, had
tied him firmly down to unwilling servitude. But now he
had nobody on earth save himself to consult, for Ethel had
married well, and Stephen, dull lad, was comfortably en-
sconced in a City office. He went home all on fire with his
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new idea. That night he hardly slept ; coconuts waved
their long leaves in the breeze before him ; dusky hands
beckoned him with strange signs and enticements to come
over to a land of sunlight and freedom. But he was prac-
tical too ; he worked it all out in his head arithmetically.
So much coming in from this or that magazine ; so much
cash in hand ; so much per contra for petty debts at home ;
so much for outfit, passage-money, purchase. With two
acres of his own he could live like a lord on his yams and
plantains. What sort of food-stuff, indeed, your yam might
be he hadn't, to say the truth, the very faintest conception.
But who cares for such detail? It was freedom he wanted,
not the flesh-pots of Egypt. And freedom he would have
to work out his own nature.
IV
There was commotion on the hillside at St. Thomas-in-
the-Vale one brilliant blazing noontide a few weeks later.
Clemmy burst upon the group that sat lounging on the
ground outside the hut-door with most unwonted tidings.
' You hear dem sell dat piece o' land nex' bit to Tammas ? '
she cried, all agog with excitement ; ' you hear dem sell
it?'
Old Rachel looked up, yawning. ' What de gal a-talk-
ing about ? ' she answered testily, for old Rachel was tooth-
less. ' Folk all know dat — him hear tell long ago. Sell
dem two acre las' week, Peter say, to 'tranger down a'
Kingston.'
' Yes, an' de 'tranger come up,' Clemmy burst out, hardly
able to contain herself at so astounding an incident, ' an'
what you tink him is ? Him doan't nagur at all ! Him
reel buckra gentleman ! '
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IVAN GREET'S MASTERPIECE
A shrill whistle of surprise and subdued unbelief ran
sharply round the little cluster of squatting negroes. ' Him
buckra ? ' Peter Foddergill repeated to himself, half in-
credulous. Peter was Clemmy's stepfather; for Cleramy
was a brown girl, and old Rachel, her mother, was a full-
blooded negress. Her paternity was lost in the dim past of
the island.
' Yes, him buckra,' Clemmy repeated in a very firm voice.
' Him reel white buckra. Him come up to take de land, an'
him gwine to lib dere.'
' It doan't can true ! ' old Rachel cried, rousing herself.
' It doan't can possible. Buckra gentleman doan't can
come an' lib on two-acre plot alongside o' black nagur.
Him gwine to sell it again ; dat what it is ; or else him
gwine to gib it to some nagur leeady. White buckra
doan't can lib all alone in St. Tammas.'
But Clemmy was positive. ' No, no,' she cried, unmoved,
shaking her comely brown head, with its crimson bandanna
— for she was a pretty girl of her sort was Clemmy. ' Him
gwine to lib dere. Him tell me so himself. Him gwine to
build hut on it, an' plant it down in plantain. Him berry
pretty gentleman, wit' long hair on him shoulder ; him hab
eyes quick and sharp all same like weasel ; and when him
smile, him look kinder nor anyting. But him say him come
out from England for good becos him lub better to lib in
Jamaica ; an' him gwine to build him hut here, and lib same
like nagur.'
In a moment the little cluster of negro hovels was all
a-buzz with conjecture, and hubbub, and wonderment.
Only the small black babies were left sprawling in the
dust, with the small black pigs, beside their mothers'
doors, so that you could hardly tell at a glance which
was which, as they basked thei-e ; all the rest of the
population, men, women, and children, with that trifling
exception, made a general stampede with one accord for
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IVAN GREET'S MASTERPIECE
the plot next to Tammas's. A buckra come to live on the
hillside in their midst ! A buckra going to build a little
hut like their own ! A buckra going to cultivate a two-
acre plot with yam and plantain ! They were aghast with
surprise. It was wonderful, wonderful ! For Jamaica
negroes don't keep abreast of the Movement, and they
didn't yet know the ways of our latter-day prophets.
As for Ivan Greet himself, he was fairly surprised in turn,
as he stood there in his shirt-sleeves surveying his estate,
at this sudden eruption of good-humoured barbarians. How
they grinned and chattered ! What teeth ! what animation !
He had bought his two acres with the eye of faith at King-
ston from their lawful proprietor, knowing nothing but
their place on the plan set before him. That morning he
had come over by train to Spanish Town, and tramped
through the wondrous defile of the Bog Walk to Linstead,
and asked his way thence by devious bridle-paths to his own
new propei'ty on the hillside at St. Thomas. Conveyancing
in Jamaica is but an artless art ; having acquired his plot by
cash payment on the nail, Ivan was left to his own devices
to identify and demarcate it. But Tammas's acre was
marked on the map in conspicuous blue, and defined in real
life by a most warlike boundary fence of prickly aloes ;
while a dozen friendly negroes, all amazement at the sight,
were ready to assist him at once in finding and measuring
off the adjacent piece duly outlined in red on the duplicate
plan he had got with his title-deed.
It was a very nice plot, with a very fine view, in a very
sweet site, on a very green hillside. But Ivan Greet,
though young and strong with the wiry strength of the tall
thin Cornishman, was weary and hot after a long morning's
tramp under a tropical sun, and somewhat taken aback (as
well he might be, indeed) at the strangeness and squalor of
his new surroundings. He had pulled off his coat and laid
it down upon the ground ; and now he sat on it in his shirt-
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IVAN GREET'S MASTERPIECE
sleeves for airiness and coolness. His heart sank for a
moment as he gazed in dismay at the thick and spiky
jungle of tropical scrub he would have to stub up before he
could begin to plant his first yam or banana. That was a
point, to say the truth, which had hardly entered into his
calculations beforehand in England. He had figured to
himself the pine-apples and plantains as a going concern ;
the coconuts dropping down their ready-made crops ; the
breadfruits eternally ripe at all times and seasons. It was
a shock to him to find mother-earth so encumbered with an
alien growth ; he must tickle her with a hoe ere she smiled
with a harvest. Tickle her with a hoe indeed ! It was a
cutlass he would need to hack down that matted mass of
bristling underbrush.
And how was he to live meanwhile? That was now the
question. His money was all spent save a couple of pounds,
for his estimates had erred, as is the way of estimates,
rather on the side of deficiency than of excess ; and he was
now left half stranded. But his doubts on this subject were
quickly dispelled by the unexpected good-nature of his
negro neighbours. As soon as those simple folk began to
realise, by dint of question and answer, that the buckra
meant actually to settle down in their midst, and live his
life as they did, their kindliness and their offers of help
knew no stint or moderation. The novelty of the idea
fairly took them by storm. They chuckled and guffawed
at it. A buckra from England — a gentleman in dress and
accent and manner (for negroes know what's what, and can
judge these things as well as you or I can) come of his own
free-will to build a hut like their own, and live on the tilth
of two acres of plantain ! It was splendid ! it was wonder-
ful ! They entered into the spirit of the thing with true
negro zest. ' Hey, massy, dat good now ! ' They would
have done anything for Ivan — anything, that is to say, that
involved no more than the average amount of negro exertion.
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IVAN GREETS MASTERPIECE
As for the buckra himself, thus finding himself suddenly
in the midst of new friends, all eager to hear of his plans
and intentions, he came out in his best colours under stress
of their welcome, and showed himself for what he was — a
great-hearted gentleman. Sympathy always begets sym-
pathy. Ivan accepted their proffered services with a kindly
smile of recognition and gratitude, which to those good-
natured folk seemed most condescending and generous in
a real live white man. The news spread like wildfire. A
buckra had come who loved the nagur. Before three hours
were over every man in the hamlet had formed a high
opinion of Mistah Greet's moral qualities. ' Doan't nebber
see buckra like a' dis one afore,' old Peter murmured mu-
singly to his cronies on the hillside. ' Him doan't got no
pride, 'cep de pride ob a gentleman. Him talk to you and
me same as if he tink us buckra like him. Hey, massy,
massa, him good man fe' true ! Wonder what make him
want to come lib at St. Tammas ? '
That very first day, before the green and gold of tropical
sunset had faded into the solemn grey of twilight, Ivan
Greet had decided on the site of his new hut, and begun
to lay the foundations of a rude wooden shanty with the
willing aid of his new black associates. Half the men of
the community buckled to at the work, and all the women :
for the women felt at once a novel glow of sympathy and
unspoken compassion towards the unknown white man with
the wistful eyes, who had come across the great sea to cast
in his lot with theirs under the waving palm-trees. Now,
your average negress can do as much hard labour as an
English navvy ; and as the men found the timber and the
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IVAN GREET'S MASTERPIECE
posts for the corners without money or price, it came to
pass that by evening that day a fair framework for a wattled
hut of true African pattern stood already 
