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Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, December 1878

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Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, December 1878

Author: Various


        
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  LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

  OF

  _POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.


  DECEMBER, 1878.


  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878,
  by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the
  Librarian of Congress, at Washington.




DANUBIAN DAYS.


[Illustration: COSTUMES AT PESTH.]


If it were not for the people, the journey by steamer from Belgrade to
Pesth would be rather unromantic. When the Servian capital is reached in
ascending the great stream from Galatz and Rustchuk, the picturesque
cliffs, the mighty forests, the moss-grown ruins overhanging the
rushing waters, are all left behind. Belgrade is not very imposing. It
lies along a low line of hills bordering the Sava and the Danube, and
contains only a few edifices which are worthy even of the epithet
creditable. The white pinnacle from which it takes its name--for the
city grouped around the fort was once called _Beograd_ ("white
city")--now looks grimy and gloomy. The Servians have placed the cannon
which they took from the Turks in the recent war on the ramparts, and
have become so extravagantly vain in view of their exploits that their
conceit is quite painful to contemplate. Yet it is impossible to avoid
sympathizing to some extent with this little people, whose lot has been
so hard and whose final emancipation has been so long in arriving. The
intense affection which the Servian manifests for his native land is
doubtless the result of the struggles and the sacrifices which he has
been compelled to make in order to remain in possession of it. One day
he has been threatened by the Austrian or the jealous and unreasonable
Hungarian: another he has received news that the Turks were marching
across his borders, burning, plundering and devastating. There is
something peculiarly pathetic in the lot of these small Danubian states.
Nearly every one of them has been the cause of combats in which its
inhabitants have shed rivers of blood before they could obtain even a
fragment of such liberty and peace as have long been the possessions of
Switzerland and Belgium. It is not surprising that the small countries
which once formed part of Turkey-in-Europe are anxious to grow larger
and stronger by annexation of territory and consolidation of
populations. They are tired of being feeble: it is not amusing. Servia
once expected that she would be allowed to gain a considerable portion
of Bosnia, her neighbor province, but the Austrians are there, and would
speedily send forces to Belgrade if it were for a moment imagined that
Prince Milan and his counsellors were still greedy for Serapevo and
other fat towns of the beautiful Bosnian lands. Now and then, when a
Servian burgher has had an extra flask of Negotin, he vapors about
meeting the Austrians face to face and driving them into the Sava; but
he never mentions it when he is in a normal condition.

[Illustration: SOPHIA.]

The country which Servia has won from the Turks in the neighborhood of
Nisch, and the quaint old city of Nisch itself, were no meagre prizes,
and ought to content the ambition of the young prince for some time. It
was righteous that the Servians should possess Nisch, and that the Turks
should be driven out by violence. The cruel and vindictive barbarian had
done everything that he could to make himself feared and loathed by the
Servians. To this day, not far from one of the principal gates of the
city, on the Pirot road, stands the "Skull Tower," in the existence of
which, I suppose, an English Tory would refuse to believe, just as he
denied his credence to the story of the atrocities at Batak. The four
sides of this tower are completely covered, as with a barbarous mosaic,
with the skulls of Servians slain by their oppressors in the great
combat of 1809. The Turks placed here but a few of their trophies, for
they slaughtered thousands, while the tower's sides could accommodate
only nine hundred and fifty-two skulls. It is much to the credit of the
Servians that when they took Nisch in 1877 they wreaked no vengeance on
the Mussulman population, but simply compelled them to give up their
arms, and informed them that they could return to their labors. The
presence of the Servians at Nisch has already been productive of good:
decent roads from that point to Sophia are already in process of
construction, and the innumerable brigands who swarmed along the
country-side have been banished or killed. Sophia still lies basking in
the mellow sunlight, lazily refusing to be cleansed or improved. Nowhere
else on the border-line of the Orient is there a town which so admirably
illustrates the reckless and stupid negligence of the Turk. Sophia looks
enchanting from a distance, but when one enters its narrow streets,
choked with rubbish and filled with fetid smells, one is only too glad
to retire hastily. It would take a quarter of a century to make Sophia
clean. All round the city are scattered ancient tumuli filled with the
remains of the former lords of the soil, and they are almost as
attractive as the hovels in which live the people of to-day. What a
desolate waste the Turk has been allowed to make of one of the finest
countries in Europe! He must be thrust out before improvement can come
in. Lamartine, who was one of the keenest observers that ever set foot
in Turkey, truly said "that civilization, which is so fine in its proper
place, would prove a mortal poison to Islamism. Civilization cannot live
where the Turks are: it will wither away and perish more quickly
whenever it is brought near them. With it, if you could acclimate it in
Turkey, you could not make Europeans, you could not make Christians: you
would simply unmake Turks."

[Illustration: BANKS OF THE DANUBE NEAR SEMLIN.]

The enemies of progress and of the "Christian dogs" are receding, and
railways and sanitary improvements will come when they are gone.
Belgrade was a wretched town when the Turks had it: now it is civilized.
Its history is romantic and picturesque, although its buildings are not.
Servia's legends and the actual recitals of the adventurous wars which
have occurred within her limits would fill volumes. The White City has
been famous ever since the Ottoman conquest. Its dominant position at
the junction of two great rivers, at the frontier of Christian Europe,
at a time when turbans were now and then seen in front of the walls of
Vienna, gave it a supreme importance. The Turks exultingly named it "the
Gate of the Holy War." Thence it was that they sallied forth on
incursions through the fertile plains where now the Hungarian shepherd
leads his flock and plays upon his wooden pipe, undisturbed by the
bearded infidel. The citadel was fought over until its walls cracked
beneath the successive blows of Christian and Mussulman. Suleiman the
Lawgiver, the elector of Bavaria, Eugene of Savoy, have trod the
ramparts which frown on the Danube's broad current. The Austrians have
many memories of the old fortress: they received it in 1718 by the
treaty of Passarowitz, but gave it up in 1749, to take it back again in
1789. The treaty of Sistova--an infamy which postponed the liberation
of the suffering peoples in Turkey-in-Europe for nearly a hundred
years--compelled the Austrians once more to yield it, this time to the
Turks. In this century how often has it been fought over--from the time
of the heroic Kara George, the Servian liberator, to the bloody riots in
our days which resulted in driving Mussulmans definitely from the
territory!

[Illustration: VILLAGE NEAR SEMLIN.]

Everywhere along the upper Servian banks of the Danube traces of the old
epoch are disappearing. The national costume, which was graceful, and
often very rich, is yielding before the prosaic--the ugly garments
imported from Jewish tailoring establishments in Vienna and Pesth. The
horseman with his sack-coat, baggy velvet trousers and slouch hat looks
not unlike a rough rider along the shores of the Mississippi River. In
the interior patriarchal costumes and customs are still preserved. On
the Sava river-steamers the people from towns in the shadows of the
primeval forests which still cover a large portion of the country are to
be found, and they are good studies for an artist. The women, with
golden ducats braided in their hair; the priests, with tall brimless
hats and long yellow robes; the men, with round skull-caps, leathern
girdles with knives in them, and waistcoats ornamented with hundreds of
glittering buttons,--are all unconscious of the change which is creeping
in by the Danube, and to which they will presently find themselves
submitting. The railway will take away the lingering bits of romance
from Servia; the lovely and lonely monasteries high among the grand
peaks in the mountain-ranges will be visited by tourists from Paris, who
will scrawl their names upon the very altars; and Belgrade will be rich
in second-class caravanserais kept by Moses and Abraham. After the
Austrians who have gone over into Bosnia will naturally follow a crowd
of adventurers from Croatia and from the neighborhood of Pesth, and it
would not be surprising should many of them find it for their interest
to settle in Servia, although the government would probably endeavor to
keep them out. Should the movement which Lord Beaconsfield is pleased to
call the "Panslavic conspiracy" assume alarming proportions within a
short time, the Servians would be in great danger of losing, for years
at least, their autonomy.

The arrival by night at Belgrade, coming from below, is interesting, and
one has a vivid recollection ever afterward of swarms of barefooted
coal-heavers, clad in coarse sacking, rushing tumultuously up and down a
gang-plank, as negroes do when wooding up on a Southern river; of
shouting and swaggering Austrian customs officials, clad in gorgeous
raiment, but smoking cheap cigars; of Servian gendarmes emulating the
bluster and surpassing the rudeness of the Austrians; of Turks in
transit from the Constantinople boat to the craft plying to Bosnian
river-ports; of Hungarian peasants in white felt jackets embroidered
with scarlet thread, or mayhap even with yellow; and of various Bohemian
beggars, whose swart faces remind one that he is still in the
neighborhood of the East. I had on one occasion, while a steamer was
lying at Belgrade, time to observe the manners of the humbler sort of
folk in a species of cabaret near the river-side and hard by the erratic
structure known as the custom-house. There was a serious air upon the
faces of the men which spoke well for their characters. Each one seemed
independent, and to a certain extent careless, of his neighbor's
opinion. It would have been impossible, without some knowledge of the
history of the country, to have supposed that these people, or even
their ancestors, had ever been oppressed. Gayety did not prevail, nor is
there anywhere among the Danubian Slavs a tendency to the innocent and
spontaneous jollity so common in some sections of Europe. The Servian
takes life seriously. I was amused to see that each one of this numerous
company of swineherds or farmers, who had evidently come in to Belgrade
to market, drank his wine as if it were a duty, and on leaving saluted
as seriously as if he were greeting a distinguished company gathered to
do him honor. That such men are cowards, as the English would have us
believe, is impossible; and in 1877 they showed that the slander was
destitute of even the slightest foundation in fact.

Morals in Belgrade among certain classes perhaps leave something to
desire in the way of strictness; but the Danubian provinces are not
supposed to be the abodes of all the virtues and graces. The Hungarians
could not afford to throw stones at the Servians on the score of
morality, and the Roumanians certainly would not venture to try the
experiment. In the interior of Servia the population is pure, and the
patriarchal manner in which the people live tends to preserve them so.
There is as much difference between the sentiment in Belgrade and that
in the provinces as would be found between Paris and a French rural
district.

But let us drop details concerning Servia, for the brave little country
demands more serious attention than can be given to it in one or two
brief articles. The boat which bears me away from the Servian capital
has come hither from Semlin, the Austrian town on the other side of the
Sava River. It is a jaunty and comfortable craft, as befits such vessels
as afford Servians their only means of communication with the outer
world. If any but Turks had been squatted in Bosnia there would have
been many a smart little steamer running down the Sava and around up the
Danube; but the baleful Mussulman has checked all enterprise wherever he
has had any foothold. We go slowly, cleaving the dull-colored tide,
gazing, as we sit enthroned in easy-chairs on the upper deck, out upon
the few public institutions of Belgrade--the military college and the
handsome road leading to the garden of Topschidere, where the
Lilliputian court has its tiny summer residence. Sombre memories
overhang this "Cannoneer's Valley," this Topschidere, where Michael, the
son and successor of good Milosch as sovereign prince of the nation,
perished by assassination in 1868. In a few minutes we are whisked round
a corner, and a high wooded bluff conceals the White City from our view.

The Servian women--and more especially those belonging to the lower
classes--have a majesty and dignity which are very imposing. One is
inclined at first to believe these are partially due to assumption, but
he speedily discovers that such is not the case. Blanqui, the French
revolutionist, who made a tour through Servia in 1840, has given the
world a curious and interesting account of the conversations which he
held with Servian women on the subject of the oppression from which the
nation was suffering. Everywhere among the common people he found virile
sentiments expressed by the women, and the princess Lionbitza, he said,
was "the prey of a kind of holy fever." M. Blanqui described her as a
woman fifty years old, with a martial, austere yet dreamy physiognomy,
with strongly-marked features, a proud and sombre gaze, and her head
crowned with superb gray hair braided and tied with red ribbon. "Ah!"
said this woman to him, with an accent in her voice which startled him,
"if all these men round about us here were not women, _or if they were
women like me_, we should soon be free from our tormentors!" It was the
fiery words of such women as this which awoke the Servian men from the
lethargy into which they were falling after Kara George had exhausted
himself in heroic efforts, and which sent them forth anew to fight for
their liberties.

[Illustration: THE OXEN OF THE DANUBE.]

At night, when the moon is good enough to shine, the voyage up the
river has charms, and tempts one to remain on deck all night, in spite
of the sharp breezes which sweep across the stream. The harmonious
accents of the gentle Servian tongue echo all round you: the song of
the peasants grouped together, lying in a heap like cattle to keep
warm, comes occasionally to your ears; and if there be anything
disagreeable, it is the loud voices and brawling manners of some
Austrian troopers on transfer. From time to time the boat slows her
speed as she passes through lines or streets of floating mills
anchored securely in the river. Each mill--a small house with sloping
roof, and with so few windows that one wonders how the millers ever
manage to see their grist--is built upon two boats. The musical hum
of its great wheel is heard for a long distance, and warns one of the
approach toward these pacific industries. The miller is usually on the
lookout, and sometimes, when a large steamer is coming up, and he
anticipates trouble from the "swell" which she may create, he may be
seen madly gesticulating and dancing upon his narrow platform in a
frenzy of anxiety for the fruits of his toil. A little village on a
neck of land or beneath a grove shows where the wives and children of
these millers live. The mills are a source of prosperity for thousands
of humble folk, and of provocation to hurricanes of profanity on the
part of the Austrian, Italian and Dalmatian captains who are compelled
to pass them. Stealing through an aquatic town of this kind at
midnight, with the millers all holding out their lanterns, with the
steamer's bell ringing violently, and with rough voices crying out
words of caution in at least four languages, produces a curious if not
a comical effect on him who has the experience for the first time.

[Illustration: FISHERMEN'S HUTS ON THE DANUBE.]

Peaceable as the upper Danube shores look, Arcadian as seems the
simplicity of their populations, the people are torn by contending
passions, and are watched by the lynx-eyed authorities of two or three
governments. The agents of the _Omladina_, the mysterious society which
interests itself in the propagation of Pan-slavism, have numerous
powerful stations in the Austrian towns, and do much to discontent the
Slavic subjects of Francis Joseph with the rule of the Hapsburgs. There
have also been instances of conspiracy against the Obrenovich dynasty,
now in power in Servia, and these have frequently resulted in armed
incursions from the Hungarian side of the stream to the other bank,
where a warm reception was not long awaited. In the humblest hamlet
there are brains hot with ambitious dreams daringly planning some scheme
which is too audacious to be realized.

The traveller can scarcely believe this when, as the boat stops at some
little pier which is half buried under vines and blossoms, he sees the
population indulging in an innocent festival with the aid of red and
white wine, a few glasses of beer, and bread and cheese. Families
mounted in huge yellow chariots drawn by horses ornamented with
gayly-decorated harnesses, come rattling into town and get down before a
weatherbeaten inn, the signboard above which testifies to respect and
love for some emperor of long ago. Youths and maidens wander arm in arm
by the foaming tide or sit in the little arbors crooning songs and
clinking glasses. Officers strut about, calling each other loudly by
their titles or responding to the sallies of those of their comrades who
fill the after-deck of the steamer. The village mayor in a braided
jacket, the wharfmaster in semi-military uniform, and the agent of the
steamboat company, who appears to have a remarkable penchant for gold
lace and buttons, render the throng still more motley. There is also, in
nine cases out of ten, a band of tooting musicians, and as the boat
moves away national Hungarian and Austrian airs are played. He would be
indeed a surly fellow who should not lift his cap on these occasions,
and he would be repaid for his obstinacy by the very blackest of looks.

Carlowitz and Slankamen are two historic spots which an Hungarian, if he
feels kindly disposed toward a stranger, will point out to him. The
former is known to Americans by name only, as a rule, and that because
they have seen it upon bottle-labels announcing excellent wine; but the
town, with its ancient cathedral, its convents, and its "chapel of
peace" built on the site of the structure in which was signed the noted
peace of 1699, deserves a visit. Rumor says that the head-quarters of
the Omladina are very near this town, so that the foreign visitor must
not be astonished if the local police seem uncommonly solicitous for his
welfare while he remains. At Slankamen in 1691 the illustrious margrave
of Baden administered such a thrashing to the Turks that they fled in
the greatest consternation, and it was long before they rallied again.

[Illustration: VIEW OF MOHACZ.]

Thus, threading in and out among the floating mills, pushing through
reedy channels in the midst of which she narrowly escapes crushing the
boats of fishers, and carefully avoiding the moving banks of sand which
render navigation as difficult as on the Mississippi, the boat reaches
Peterwardein, high on a mighty mass of rock, and Neusatz opposite,
connected with its neighbor fortress-town by a bridge of boats. Although
within the limits of the Austria-Hungarian empire, Neusatz is almost
entirely Servian in aspect and population, and Peterwardein, which marks
the military confines of Slavonia, has a large number of Servian
inhabitants. It was the proximity and the earnestness in their cause of
these people which induced the Hungarians to agree to the military
occupation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina. At one time the obstinate
Magyars would have liked to refuse their adhesion to the decisions of
the Berlin Congress, but they soon thought better of that. Peterwardein
is the last really imposing object on the Danube before reaching Pesth.
It is majestic and solemn, with its gloomy castle, its garrison which
contains several thousand soldiers, and its prison of state. The
remembrance that Peter the Hermit there put himself at the head of the
army with which the Crusades were begun adds to the mysterious and
powerful fascination of the place. I fancied that I could see the lean
and fanatical priest preaching before the assembled thousands, hurling
his words down upon them from some lofty pinnacle. No one can blame the
worthy Peter for undertaking his mission if the infidels treated
Christians in the Orient as badly then as they do to-day. Centuries
after Peter slept in consecrated dust the Turks sat down before
Peterwardein to besiege it, but they had only their labor for their
pains, for Prince Eugene drove them away. This was in 1716. It seems
hard to believe that a hostile force of Turks was powerful enough to
wander about Christendom a little more than a century and a half ago.

After passing Peterwardein and Neusatz the boat's course lies through
the vast Hungarian plain, which reminds the American of some of the rich
lands in the Mississippi bottom. Here is life, lusty, crude, seemingly
not of Europe, but rather of the extreme West or East. As far as the eye
can reach on either hand stretch the level acres, dotted with herds of
inquisitive swine, with horses wild and beautiful snorting and
gambolling as they hear the boat's whistle, and peasants in white linen
jackets and trousers and immense black woollen hats. Fishers by hundreds
balance in their little skiffs on the small whirlpool of waves made by
the steamer, and sing gayly. For a stretch of twenty miles the course
may lie near an immense forest, where millions of stout trees stand in
regular rows, where thousands of oaks drop acorns every year to fatten
thousands upon thousands of pigs. Cattle stray in these woods, and
sometimes the peasant-farmer has a veritable hunt before he can find his
own. Afar in the wooded recesses of Slavonia many convents of the Greek
religion are hidden. Their inmates lead lives which have little or no
relation to anything in the nineteenth century. For them wars and rumors
of wars, Russian aggression, Austrian annexation, conspiracies by Kara
Georgewitch, Hungarian domination in the Cabinet at Vienna, and all such
trivial matters, do not exist. The members of these religious
communities are not like the more active members of the clergy of their
Church, who unquestionably have much to do with promoting war and
supporting it when it is in aid of their nationality and their religion.

One of the most remarkable sights in this region is a herd of the noble
"cattle of the steppes," the beasts in which every Hungarian takes so
much pride. These cattle are superb creatures, and as they stand eying
the passers-by one regrets that he has not more time in which to admire
their exquisite white skins, their long symmetrical horns and their
shapely limbs. They appear to be good-tempered, but it would not be wise
to risk one's self on foot in their immediate neighborhood.

As for the fishermen, some of them seem to prefer living on the water
rather than on dry land. Indeed, the marshy borders of the Danube are
not very healthy, and it is not astonishing that men do not care to make
their homes on these low lands. There are several aquatic towns between
Pesth and the point at which the Drava (or Drau), a noble river, empties
its waters into the Danube. Apatin is an assemblage of huts which appear
to spring from the bosom of the current, but as the steamer approaches
one sees that these huts are built upon piles driven firmly into the
river-bed, and between these singular habitations are other piles upon
which nets are stretched. So the fisherman, without going a hundred
yards from his own door, traps the wily denizens of the Danube, prepares
them for market, and at night goes peacefully to sleep in his rough bed,
lulled by the rushing of the strong current beneath him. I am bound to
confess that the fishermen of Apatin impressed me as being rather
rheumatic, but perhaps this was only a fancy.

Besdan, with its low hills garnished with windmills and its shores lined
with silvery willows, is the only other point of interest, save Mohacz,
before reaching Pesth. Hour after hour the traveller sees the same
panorama of steppes covered with swine, cattle and horses, with
occasional farms--their outbuildings protected against brigands and
future wars by stout walls--and with pools made by inundations of the
impetuous Danube. Mohacz is celebrated for two tremendous battles in the
past, and for a fine cathedral, a railway and a coaling-station at
present. Louis II., king of Hungary, was there undone by Suleiman in
1526; and there, a hundred and fifty years later, did the Turks come to
sorrow by the efforts of the forces under Charles IV. of Lorraine.

[Illustration: BRIDGE OF BUDA-PESTH.]

Just as I was beginning to believe that the slow-going steamer on which
I had embarked my fortunes was held back by enchantment--for we were
half a day ascending the stream from Mohacz--we came in sight of a huge
cliff almost inaccessible from one side, and a few minutes later could
discern the towers of Buda and the mansions of Pesth. While nearing the
landing-place and hastening hither and yon to look after various small
bundles and boxes, I had occasion to address an Hungarian gentleman. In
the course of some conversation which followed I remarked that Pesth
seemed a thriving place, and that one would hardly have expected to find
two such flourishing towns as Vienna and Pesth so near each other.

"Oh," said he with a little sneer which his slight foreign accent (he
was speaking French) rendered almost ludicrous, "Vienna is a smart town,
but it is nothing to this!" And he pointed with pride to his native
city.

Although I could not exactly agree with this extravagant estimate of the
extent of Pesth, I could not deny that it was vastly superior to my idea
of it. When one arrives there from the south-east, after many wanderings
among semi-barbaric villages and little cities on the outskirts of
civilization, he finds Pesth very impressive. The Hungarian shepherds
and the boatmen who ply between the capital and tiny forts below fancy
that it is the end of the world. They have vaguely heard of Vienna, but
their patriotism is so intense and their round of life so circumscribed
that they never succeed in forming a definite idea of its proportions or
its location. Communication between the two chief towns of the
Austria-Hungarian empire is also much less frequent than one would
imagine. The Hungarians go but little to Vienna, even the members of the
nobility preferring to consecrate their resources to the support of the
splendors of their own city rather than to contribute them to the
Austrian metropolis. Seven hours' ride in what the Austrians are bold
enough to term an express-train covers the distance between Vienna and
Pesth, yet there seems to be an abyss somewhere on the route which the
inhabitants are afraid of. Pride, a haughty determination not to submit
to centralization, and content with their surroundings make the
Hungarians sparing of intercourse with their Austrian neighbors. "We
send them prime ministers, and now and then we allow them a glimpse of
some of our beauties in one of their palaces, but the latter does not
happen very often," once said an Hungarian friend to me.

An American who should arrive in Pesth fancying that he was about to see
a specimen of the dilapidated towns of "effete and decaying Europe"
would find himself vastly mistaken. The beautiful and costly modern
buildings on every principal street, the noble bridges across the vast
river, the fine railway-stations, the handsome theatres, the palatial
hotels, would explain to him why it is that the citizens of Pesth speak
of their town as the "Chicago of the East." There was a time when it
really seemed as if Pesth would rival, if not exceed, Chicago in the
extent of her commerce, the vivacity and boldness of her enterprises and
the rapid increase of her population. Austria and Hungary were alike the
prey of a feverish agitation which pervaded all classes. In a single day
at Vienna as many as thirty gigantic stock companies were formed;
hundreds of superb structures sprang up monthly; people who had been
beggars but a few months before rode in carriages and bestowed gold by
handfuls on whoever came first. The wind or some mysterious agency which
no one could explain brought this financial pestilence to Pesth, where
it raged until the _Krach_--the Crash, as the Germans very properly call
it--came. After the extraordinary activity which had prevailed there
came gloom and stagnation; but at last, as in America, business in Pesth
and in Hungary generally is gradually assuming solidity and contains
itself within proper bounds. The exciting period had one beneficial
feature: it made Pesth a handsome city. There are no quays in Europe
more substantial and elegant than those along the Danube in the
Hungarian capital, and no hotels, churches and mansions more splendid
than those fronting on these same quays. At eventide, when the whole
population comes out for an airing and loiters by the parapets which
overlook the broad rushing river, when innumerable lights gleam from the
boats anchored on either bank, and when the sound of music and song is
heard from half a hundred windows, no city can boast a spectacle more
animated. At ten o'clock the streets are deserted. Pesth is exceedingly
proper and decorous as soon as the darkness has fallen, although I do
remember to have seen a torchlight procession there during the
Russo-Turkish war. The inhabitants were so enthusiastic over the arrival
of a delegation of Mussulman students from Constantinople that they put
ten thousand torches in line and marched until a late hour, thinking,
perhaps, that the lurid light on the horizon might be seen as far as
Vienna, and might serve as a warning to the Austrian government not to
go too far in its sympathy with Russia.

[Illustration: CITADEL OF BUDA]

Buda-Pesth is the name by which the Hungarians know their capital, and
Buda is by no means the least important portion of the city. It occupies
the majestic and rugged hill directly opposite Pesth--a hill so steep
that a tunnel containing cars propelled upward and downward by machinery
has been arranged to render Buda easy of access. Where the hill slopes
away southward there are various large villages crowded with Servians,
Croatians and Low Hungarians, who huddle together in a rather
uncivilized manner. A fortress where there were many famous fights and
sieges in the times of the Turks occupies a summit a little higher than
Buda, so that in case of insurrection a few hot shot could be dropped
among the inhabitants. Curiously enough, however, there are thousands of
loyal Austrians, German by birth, living in Buda--or Ofen, as the
Teutons call it--whereas in Pesth, out of the two hundred thousand
inhabitants, scarcely three thousand are of Austrian birth. As long as
troops devoted to Francis Joseph hold Buda there is little chance for
the citizens of Pesth to succeed in revolt. Standing on the terrace of
the rare old palace on Buda's height, I looked down on Pesth with the
same range of vision that I should have had in a balloon. Every quarter
of the city would be fully exposed to an artillery fire from these
gigantic hills.

Buda is not rich in the modern improvements which render Pesth so
noticeable. I found no difficulty in some of the nooks and corners of
this quaint town in imagining myself back in the Middle Ages. Tottering
churches, immensely tall houses overhanging yawning and precipitous
alleys, markets set on little shelves in the mountain, hovels protesting
against sliding down into the valley, whither they seemed inevitably
doomed to go, succeeded one another in rapid panorama. Here were
costume, theatrical effect, artistic grouping: it was like Ragusa,
Spalatro and Sebenico. Old and young women sat on the ground in the
markets, as our negroes do in Lynchburg in Virginia: they held up fruit
and vegetables and shrieked out the prices in a dialect which seemed a
compound of Hungarian and German. Austrian soldiers and Hungarian
recruits, the former clad in brown jackets and blue hose, the latter in
buff doublets and red trousers, and wearing feathers in their caps,
marched and countermarched, apparently going nowhere in particular, but
merely keeping up discipline by means of exercise.

The emperor comes often to the fine palace on Buda hill, and sallies
forth from it to hunt with some of the nobles on their immense estates.
The empress is passionately fond of Hungary, and spends no small portion
of her time there. The Hungarians receive this consideration from their
sovereign lady as very natural, and speak of her as a person of great
good sense. The German and Slavic citizens of Austria say that there are
but two failings of which Her Imperial Majesty can be accused--she loves
the Hungarians and she is too fond of horses. Nothing delights the
citizens of Pesth so much as to find that the Slavs are annoyed, for
there is no love lost between Slav and Magyar. A natural antipathy has
been terribly increased by the fear on the part of Hungary that she may
lose her influence in the composite empire one day, owing to the Slavic
regeneration.

[Illustration: MUSEUM AND SEAT OF THE DIET AT PESTH.]

At Pesth they do not speak of the "beautiful blue Danube," because there
the river ceases to be of that color, which Johann Strauss has so
enthusiastically celebrated. But between Vienna and Pesth the blue is
clearly perceptible, and the current is lovely even a few miles from the
islands in the stream near the Hungarian capital. The Margarethen-Insel,
which is but a short distance above Pesth, is a little paradise. It has
been transformed by private munificence into a rich garden full of
charming shaded nooks and rare plants and flowers. In the middle of this
pleasure-ground are extensive bath-houses and mineral springs. Morning,
noon and night gypsy bands make seductive music, and the notes of their
melodies recall the strange lands far away down the stream--Roumania,
the hills and valleys of the Banat and the savage Servian mountains.
Along the river-side there are other resorts in which, in these days,
when business has not yet entirely recovered from the _Krach_, there are
multitudes of loungers. In midsummer no Hungarian need go farther than
these baths of Pesth to secure rest and restore health. The Romans were
so pleased with the baths in the neighborhood that they founded a colony
on the site of Buda-Pesth, although they had no particular strategic
reasons for doing so. As you sit in the pleasant shade you will probably
hear the inspiring notes of the _Rakoczy_, the march of which the
Hungarians are so passionately fond, which recalls the souvenirs of
their revolutions and awakens a kind of holy exaltation in their hearts.
The _Rakoczy_ has been often enough fantastically described: some hear
in it the gallop of horsemen, the clashing of arms, the songs of women
and the cries of wounded men. A clever Frenchman has even written two
columns of analysis of the march, and he found in it nearly as much as
there is in Goethe's _Faust_. These harmless fancies are of little use
in aiding to a veritable understanding of the wonderful march. It
suffices to say that one cannot hear it played, even by a strolling band
of gypsies, without a strange fluttering of the heart, an excitement and
an enthusiasm which are beyond one's control. A nation with such a
_Marseillaise_ as the _Rakoczy_ certainly ought to go far in time of
war.

The Hungarians are a martial people, and are fond of reciting their
exploits. Every old guide in Pesth will tell you, in a variegated
English which will provoke your smiles, all the incidents of the
Hungarian revolution, the events of 1848 and 1849--how the Austrians
were driven across the great bridge over the Danube, etc.--with infinite
gusto. The humblest wharf-laborer takes a vital interest in the welfare
of his country, even if he is not intelligent enough to know from what
quarter hostilities might be expected. There is a flash in an
Hungarian's eye when he speaks of the events of 1848 which is equalled
only by the lightnings evoked from his glance by the magic echoes of the
_Rakoczy_.

The peasantry round about Pesth, and the poor wretches, Slavic and
Hungarian, who work on the streets, seem in sad plight. A friend one day
called my attention to a number of old women, most miserably clad,
barefooted and bent with age and infirmities, carrying stones and
bricks to a new building. The spectacle was enough to make one's heart
bleed, but my friend assured me that the old women were happy, and that
they lived on bread and an occasional onion, with a little water for
drink or sometimes a glass of adulterated white wine. The men working
with them looked even worse fed and more degraded than the women. In the
poor quarters of Pesth, and more especially those inhabited by the Jews,
the tenements are exceedingly filthy, and the aroma is so uninviting
that one hastens away from the streets where these rookeries abound. The
utmost civility, not to say servility, may always be expected of the
lower classes: some of them seize one's hand and kiss it as the Austrian
servants do. Toward strangers Hungarians of all ranks are unfailingly
civil and courteous. A simple letter of introduction will procure one a
host of attentions which he would not have the right to expect in
England or America.

The mound of earth on the bank of the Danube near the quays of Pesth
represents the soil of every Hungarian province; and from that mound the
emperor of Austria, when he was crowned king of Hungary, was forced to
shake his sword against the four quarters of the globe, thus signifying
his intention of defending the country from any attack whatsoever. Thus
far he has succeeded in doing it, and in keeping on good terms with the
legislative bodies of the country, without whose co-operation he cannot
exercise his supreme authority. These bodies are a chamber of peers,
recruited from the prelates, counts and such aristocrats as sit there by
right of birth, and a second chamber, which is composed of four hundred
and thirteen deputies elected from as many districts for the term of
three years, and thirty-four delegates from the autonomous province of
Croatia-Slavonia. The entrance to the diet is guarded by a
frosty-looking servitor in an extravagant Hungarian uniform, jacket and
hose profusely covered with brilliant braids, and varnished jack-boots.
The deputies when in session are quiet, orderly and dignified, save
when the word "Russian" is pronounced. It is a word which arouses all
their hatred.

Buda-Pesth is about to undergo a formidable series of improvements
notwithstanding the illusions which were dispersed by the _Krach_. One
of the most conspicuous and charming municipal displays in the Paris
Exposition is the group of charts and plans sent from Pesth. The patriot
Deak is to have a colossal monument; the quays are to be rendered more
substantial against inundations than they are at present; and many
massive public edifices are to be erected. The Danube is often unruly,
and once nearly destroyed the city of Pesth, also doing much damage
along the slopes of Buda. If an inundation should come within the next
two or three years millions of florins' worth of property might be swept
away in a single night. The opera, the principal halls of assembly and
the hotels of Pesth will challenge comparison with those of any town of
two hundred thousand population in the world; and the Grand Hotel
Hungaria has few equals in cities of the largest size.

[Illustration: SLAV WOMAN IN PESTH.]

The Hungarians are a handsome race, and the people of Pesth and vicinity
have especial claims to attention for their beauty. The men of the
middle and upper classes are tall, slender, graceful, and their features
are exceedingly regular and pleasing. The women are so renowned that a
description of their charms is scarcely necessary. Beautiful as are the
Viennese ladies in their early youth, they cannot rival their
fellow-subjects of Hungary. The Austrian woman grows fat, matronly and
rather coarse as she matures: the Hungarian lady of forty is still as
willowy, graceful and capricious as she was at twenty. The
peasant-women, poor things! are ugly, because they work from morning
till night in the vineyards, toiling until their backs are broken. The
wine which the beauties drink costs their humbler sisters their
life-blood, their grace, their happiness. The sunshine of a thousand
existences is imprisoned in the vintages of Pressburg and Carlowitz.
Poor, homely toilers in the fields! Poor human creatures transformed
into beasts of burden! The Hungarian nation owes it to itself to
emancipate these struggling women and show them the way to better
things.

EDWARD KING.




"FOR PERCIVAL."

CHAPTER XLVIII ENGAGEMENTS--HOSTILE AND OTHERWISE.

[Illustration]


The fairest season of the year, the debatable ground between spring and
summer, had come round once more. There were leaves on the trees and
flowers in the grass. The sunshine was golden and full, not like the
bleak brightness of March. The winds were warm, the showers soft.
Percival, always keenly affected by such influences, felt as if a new
life had come to him with the spring. Now that the evenings had grown
long and light, he could escape into the country, breathe a purer air
and wander in fields and lanes. And as he wandered, musing, it seemed to
him that he had awakened from a dream.

He looked back upon the past year, and he was more than half inclined to
call himself a fool. He had taken up work for which he was not fit. He
could see that now. He knew very well that his life was almost
intolerable, and that it would never be more tolerable unless help came
from without. He could never grow accustomed to his drudgery. He could
work honestly, but he could never put his heart into it. And even if he
could have displayed ten times as much energy, if his aptitude for
business had been ten times as great, if Mr. Ferguson had estimated him
so highly as to take him as articled clerk, if he had passed all his
examinations and been duly admitted, if the brightest possibilities in
such a life as his had become realities and he had attained at last to a
small share in the business,--what would be the end of this most
improbable success? Merely that he would have to spend his whole life in
Brenthill absorbed in law. Now, the law was a weariness to him, and he
loathed Brenthill. Yet he had voluntarily accepted a life which could
offer him no higher prize than such a fate as this, when Godfrey Hammond
or Mrs. Middleton, or even old Hardwicke, would no doubt have helped him
to something better.

Certainly he had been a fool; and yet, while he realized this truth, he
sincerely respected--I might almost say he admired--his own folly. He
had been sick of dependence, and he had gone down at once to the bottom
of everything, taken his stand on firm ground and conquered independence
for himself. He had gained the precious knowledge that he could earn his
own living by the labor of his hands. He might have been a fool to
reject the help that would have opened some higher and less distasteful
career to him, yet if he had accepted it he would never have known the
extent of his own powers. He would have been a hermit-crab still, fitted
with another shell by the kindness of his friends. Had he clearly
understood what he was doing when he went to Brenthill, it was very
likely that he might never have gone. He was almost glad that he had not
understood.

And now, having conquered in the race, could he go back and ask for the
help which he had once refused? Hardly. The life in which we first gain
independence may be stern and ugly, the independence itself--when we
gather in our harvest--may have a rough and bitter taste, yet it will
spoil the palate for all other flavors. They will seem sickly sweet
after its wholesome austerity. Neither did Percival feel any greater
desire for a career of any kind than he had felt a year earlier when he
talked over his future life with Godfrey Hammond. If he were asked what
was his day-dream, his castle in the air, the utmost limit of his
earthly wishes, he would answer now as he would have answered then,
"Brackenhill," dismissing the impossible idea with a smile even as he
uttered it. Asked what would content him--since we can hardly hope to
draw the highest prize in our life's lottery--he would answer now as
then--to have an assured income sufficient to allow him to wander on the
Continent, to see pictures, old towns, Alps, rivers, blue sky;
wandering, to remain a foreigner all his life, so that there might
always be something a little novel and curious about his food and his
manner of living (things which are apt to grow so hideously commonplace
in the land where one is born), to drink the wine of the country, to
read many poems in verse, in prose, in the scenery around; and through
it all, from first to last, to "dream deliciously."

And yet, even while he felt that his desire was unchanged, he knew that
there was a fresh obstacle between him and its fulfilment. Heaven help
him! had there not been enough before? Was it needful that it should
become clear to him that nowhere on earth could he find the warmth and
the sunlight for which he pined while a certain pair of sad eyes grew
ever sadder and sadder looking out on the murky sky, the smoke, the
dust, the busy industry of Brenthill? How could he go away? Even these
quiet walks of his had pain mixed with their pleasure when he thought
that there was no such liberty for Judith Lisle. Not for her the
cowslips in the upland pastures, the hawthorn in the hedges, the
elm-boughs high against the breezy sky, the first dog-roses pink upon
the briers. Percival turned from them to look at the cloud which hung
ever like a dingy smear above Brenthill, and the more he felt their
loveliness the more he felt her loss.

He had no walk on Sunday mornings. A few months earlier Mr. Clifton of
St. Sylvester's would have claimed him as a convert. Now he was equally
devout, but it was the evangelical minister, Mr. Bradbury of Christ
Church, who saw him week after week a regular attendant, undaunted and
sleepless though the sermon should be divided into seven heads. Mr.
Bradbury preached terribly, in a voice which sometimes died mournfully
away or hissed in a melodramatic whisper, and then rose suddenly in a
threatening cry. Miss Macgregor sat in front of a gallery and looked
down on the top of her pastor's head. The double row of little boys who
were marshalled at her side grew drowsy in the hot weather, blinked
feebly as the discourse progressed, and nodded at the congregation. Now
and then Mr. Bradbury, who was only, as it were, at arm's length, turned
a little, looked up and flung a red-hot denunciation into the front
seats of the gallery. The little boys woke up, heard what was most
likely in store for them on the last day, and sat with eyes wide open
dismally surveying the prospect. But presently the next boy fidgeted, or
a spider let himself down from the roof, or a bird flew past the window,
or a slanting ray of sunlight revealed a multitude of dusty dancing
motes, and the little lads forgot Mr. Bradbury, who had forgotten them
and was busy with somebody else. It might be with the pope: Mr. Bradbury
was fond of providing for the pope. Or perhaps he was wasting his energy
on Percival Thorne, who sat with his head thrown back and his upward
glance just missing the preacher, and was quite undisturbed by his
appeals.

Judith Lisle had accepted the offer of a situation at Miss Macgregor's
with the expectation of being worked to death, only hoping, as she told
Mrs. Barton, that the process would be slow. The hope would not have
been at all an unreasonable one if she had undertaken her task in the
days when she had Bertie to work for. She could have lived through much
when she lived for Bertie. But, losing her brother, the mainspring of
her life seemed broken. One would have said that she had leaned on him,
not he on her, she drooped so pitifully now he was gone. Even Miss
Macgregor noticed that Miss Lisle was delicate, and expressed her strong
disapprobation of such a state of affairs. Mrs. Barton thought Judith
looking very far from well, suggested tonics, and began to consider
whether she might ask her to go to them for her summer holidays. But to
Percival's eyes there was a change from week to week, and he watched her
with terror in his heart. Judith had grown curiously younger during the
last few months. There had been something of a mother's tenderness in
her love for Bertie, which made her appear more than her real age and
gave decision and stateliness to her manner. Now that she was alone, she
was only a girl, silent and shrinking, needing all her strength to
suffer and hide her sorrow. Percival knew that each Sunday, as soon as
she had taken her place, she would look downward to the pew where he
always sat to ascertain if he were there. For a moment he would meet
that quiet gaze, lucid, uncomplaining, but very sad. Then her eyes would
be turned to her book or to the little boys who sat near her, or it
might even be to Mr. Bradbury. The long service would begin, go on, come
to an end. But before she left her place her glance would meet his once
more, as if in gentle farewell until another Sunday should come round.
Percival would not for worlds have failed at that trysting-place, but he
cursed his helplessness. Could he do nothing for Judith but cheer her
through Mr. Bradbury's sermons?

About this time he used deliberately to indulge in an impossible fancy.
His imagination dwelt on their two lives, cramped, dwarfed and fettered.
He had lost his freedom, but it seemed to him that Judith, burdened once
with riches, and later with poverty, never had been free. He looked
forward, and saw nothing in the future but a struggle for existence
which might be prolonged through years of labor and sordid care. Why
were they bound to endure this? Why could they not give up all for just
a few days of happiness? Percival longed intensely for a glimpse of
beauty, for a little space of warmth and love, of wealth and liberty.
Let their life thus blossom together into joy, and he would be content
that it should be, like the flowering of the aloe, followed by swift and
inevitable death. Only let the death be shared like the life! It would
be bitter and terrible to be struck down in their gladness, but if they
had truly lived they might be satisfied to die. Percival used to fancy
what they might do in one glorious, golden, sunlit week, brilliant
against a black background of death. How free they would be to spend all
they possessed without a thought for the future! Nothing could pall upon
them, and he pictured to himself how every sense would be quickened, how
passion would gather strength and tenderness, during those brief days,
and rise to its noblest height to meet the end. His imagination revelled
in the minute details of the picture, adding one by one a thousand
touches of beauty and joy till the dream was lifelike in its loveliness.
He could pass in a moment from his commonplace world to this enchanted
life with Judith. Living alone, and half starving himself in the attempt
to pay his debts, he was in a fit state to see visions and dream dreams.
But they only made his present life more distasteful to him, and the
more he dreamed of Judith the more he felt that he had nothing to offer
her.

He was summoned abruptly from his fairyland one night by the arrival of
Mrs. Bryant. She made her appearance rather suddenly, and sat down on a
chair by the door to have a little chat with her lodger. "I came back
this afternoon," she said. "I didn't tell Lydia: where was the use of
bothering about writing to her? Besides, I could just have a look round,
and see how Emma'd done the work while I was away, and how things had
gone on altogether." She nodded her rusty black cap confidentially at
Percival. It was sprinkled with bugles, which caught the light of his
solitary candle.

"I hope you found all right," he said.

"Pretty well," Mrs. Bryant allowed. "It's a mercy when there's no
illness nor anything of that kind, though, if you'll excuse my saying
it, Mr. Thorne, you ain't looking as well yourself as I should have
liked to see you."

"Oh, I am all right, thank you," said Percival.

Mrs. Bryant shook her head. The different movement brought out quite a
different effect of glancing bugles. "Young people should be careful of
their health," was her profound remark.

"I assure you there's nothing the matter with me."

"Well, well! we'll hope not," she answered, "though you certainly do
look altered, Mr. Thorne, through being thinner in the face and darker
under the eyes."

Percival smiled impatiently.

"What was I saying?" Mrs. Bryant continued. "Oh yes--that there was a
many mercies to be thankful for. To find the house all right, and the
times and times I've dreamed of fire and the engines not to be had, and
woke up shaking so as you'd hardly believe it! And I don't really think
that I've gone to bed hardly one night without wondering whether Lydia
had fastened the door and the little window into the yard, which is not
safe if left open. As regular as clockwork, when the time came round,
I'd mention it to my sister."

Percival sighed briefly, probably pitying the sister. "I think Miss
Bryant has been very careful in fastening everything," he said.

"Well, it does seem so, and very thankful I am. And as I always say when
I go out, 'Waste I _must_ expect, and waste I _do_ expect,' but it's a
mercy when there's no thieving."

"Things will hardly go on quite the same when you are not here to look
after them, Mrs. Bryant."

"No: how should they?" the landlady acquiesced. "Young heads ain't like
old ones, as I said one evening to my sister when Smith was by. 'Young
heads ain't like old ones,' said I. 'Why, no,' said Smith: 'they're a
deal prettier.' I told him he ought to have done thinking of such
things. And so he ought--a man of his age! But that's what the young men
mostly think of, ain't it, Mr. Thorne? Though it's the old heads make
the best housekeepers, I think, when there's a lot of lodgers to look
after."

"Very likely," said Percival.

"I dare say you think there'd be fine times for the young men lodgers if
it wasn't for the old heads. And I don't blame you, Mr. Thorne: it's
only natural, and what we must expect in growing old. And if anything
could make one grow old before one's time, and live two years in one, so
to speak, I do think it's letting lodgings."

Percival expressed himself as not surprised to hear it, though very
sorry that lodgers were so injurious to her health.

"There's my drawing-room empty now, and two bedrooms," Mrs. Bryant
continued. "Not but what I've had an offer for it this very afternoon,
since coming back. But it doesn't do to be too hasty. Respectable
parties who pay regular," she nodded a little at Percival as if to point
the compliment, "are the parties for me."

"Of course," he said.

"A queer business that of young Mr. Lisle's, wasn't it?" she went on. "I
should say it was about time that Miss Crawford did shut up, if she
couldn't manage her young ladies better. I sent my Lydia to a
boarding-school once, but it was one of a different kind to that. Pretty
goings on there were at Standon Square, I'll be bound, if we only knew
the truth. But as far as this goes there ain't no great harm done, that
I can see. He hasn't done badly for himself, and I dare say they'll be
very comfortable. She might have picked a worse--I will say that--for he
was always a pleasant-spoken young gentleman, and good-looking too,
though that's not a thing to set much store by. And they do say he had
seen better times."

She paused. Percival murmured something which was quite unintelligible,
but it served to start her off again, apparently under the impression
that she had heard a remark of some kind.

"Yes, I suppose so. And as I was saying to Lydia--The coolness of them
both! banns and all regular! But there now! I'm talking and talking,
forgetting that you were in the thick of it. You knew all about it, I've
no doubt, and finely you and he must have laughed in your sleeves--"

"I knew nothing about it, Mrs. Bryant--nothing."

Mrs. Bryant smiled cunningly and nodded at him again. But it was an
oblique nod this time, and there was a sidelong look to match it.
Percival felt as if he were suffering from an aggravated form of
nightmare.

"No, no: I dare say you didn't. At any rate, you won't let out if you
did: why should you? It's a great thing to hold one's tongue, Mr.
Thorne; and I ought to know, for I've found the advantage of being
naturally a silent woman. And I don't say but what you are wise."

"I knew nothing," he repeated doggedly.

"Well, I don't suppose it was any the worse for anybody who _did_ know,"
said Mrs. Bryant. "And though, of course, Miss Lisle lost her situation
through it, I dare say she finds it quite made up to her."

"Not at all," said Percival shortly. The conversation was becoming
intolerable.

"Oh, you may depend upon it she does," said Mrs. Bryant. "How should a
gentleman like you know all the ins and outs, Mr. Thorne? It makes all
the difference to a young woman having a brother well-to-do in the
world. And very fond of her he always seemed to be, as I was remarking
to Lydia."

Percival felt as if his blood were on fire. He dared not profess too
intimate a knowledge of Judith's feelings and position, and he could not
listen in silence. "I think you are mistaken, Mrs. Bryant," he said, in
a tone which would have betrayed his angry disgust to any more sensitive
ear. Even his landlady perceived that the subject was not a welcome one.

"Well, well!" she said. "It doesn't matter, and I'll only wish you as
good luck as Mr. Lisle; for I'm sure you deserve a young lady with a
little bit of money as well as he did; and no reason why you shouldn't
look to find one, one of these fine days."

"No, Mrs. Bryant, I sha'n't copy Mr. Lisle."

"Ah, you've something else in your eye, I can see, and perhaps one might
make a guess as to a name. Well, people must manage those things their
own way, and interfering mostly does harm, I take it. And I'll wish you
luck, anyhow."

"I don't think there's any occasion for your good wishes," said
Percival. "Thank you all the same."

"Not but what I'm sorry to lose Mr. and Miss Lisle," Mrs. Bryant
continued, as if that were the natural end of her previous sentence,
"for they paid for everything most regular."

"I hope these people who want to come may do the same," said Percival.
Though he knew that he ran the risk of hearing all that Mrs. Bryant
could tell him about their condition and prospects, he felt he could
endure anything that would turn the conversation from the Lisles and
himself.

But there was a different train of ideas in Mrs. Bryant's mind. "And, by
the way," she said, "I think we've some little accounts to settle
together, Mr. Thorne." Then Percival perceived, for the first time, that
she held a folded bit of paper in her hand. The moment that he feared
had come. He rose without a word, went to his desk and unlocked it.
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Mrs. Bryant had approached the
table, had opened the paper and was flattening it out with her hand. He
stooped over his hoard--a meagre little hoard this time--counting what
he had to give her.

Mrs. Bryant began to hunt in her purse for a receipt stamp. "It's a
pleasure to have to do with a gentleman who is always so regular," she
said with an approving smile.

Percival, who was steadying a little pile of coin on the sloping desk,
felt a strong desire to tell her the state of affairs while he stooped
in the shadow with his face turned away. Precisely because he felt this
desire he drew himself up to his full height, walked to the table,
looked straight into her eyes and said, "Not so very regular this time,
Mrs. Bryant."

She stepped back with a perplexed and questioning expression, but she
understood that something was wrong, and the worn face fell suddenly,
deepening a multitude of melancholy wrinkles. He laid the money before
her: "That's just half of what I owe you: I think you'll find I have
counted it all right."

"Half? But where's the other half, Mr. Thorne?"

"Well, I must earn the other half, Mrs. Bryant. You shall have it as
soon as I get it."

She looked up at him. "You've got to earn it?" she repeated. Her tone
would have been more appropriate if Percival had said he must steal it.
There was a pause: Mrs. Bryant's lean hand closed over the money. "I
don't understand this, Mr. Thorne--I don't understand it at all."

"It is very simple," he replied. "According to your wishes, I kept the
rent for you, but during your absence there was a sudden call upon me
for money, and I could not refuse to advance it. I regret it exceedingly
if it puts you to inconvenience. I had hoped to have made it all right
before you returned, but I have not had time. I can only promise you
that you shall be paid all that I can put by each week till I have
cleared off my debt."

"Oh, that's all very fine," said Mrs. Bryant. "But I don't think much of
promises."

"I'm sorry to hear it," he answered gravely.

She looked hard at him, and said: "I did think you were quite the
gentleman, Mr. Thorne. I didn't think you'd have served me so."

"No," said Percival. "I assure you I'm very sorry. If I could explain
the whole affair to you, you would see that I am not to blame. But,
unluckily, I can't."

"Oh, I don't want any explanations: I wouldn't give a thank-you for a
cartload of 'em. Nobody ever is to blame who has the explaining of a
thing, if it's ever so rascally a job."

"I am very sorry," he repeated. "But I can only say that you shall be
paid."

"Oh, I dare say! Look here, Mr. Thorne: I've heard that sort of thing
scores of times. There's always been a sudden call for money; it's
always something that never happened before, and it isn't ever to happen
again; and it's always going to be paid back at once, but there's not
one in a hundred who does pay it. Once you begin that sort of thing--"

"You'll find me that hundredth one," said Percival.

"Oh yes. To hear them talk you'd say each one was one in a thousand, at
least. But I'd like you to know that though I'm a widow woman I'm not to
be robbed and put upon."

"Mrs. Bryant"--Percival's strong voice silenced her querulous tones--"no
one wants to rob you. Please to remember that it was entirely of your
own free-will that you trusted me with the money."

"More fool I!" Mrs. Bryant ejaculated.

"It was to oblige you that I took charge of it."

"And a pretty mess I've made of it! It had better have gone so as to be
some pleasure to my own flesh and blood, instead of your spending it in
some way you're ashamed to own."

"If you had been here to receive it, it would have been ready for you,"
Percival went on, ignoring her last speech. "As it is, it has waited all
these weeks for you. It isn't unreasonable that it should wait a little
longer for me."

She muttered something to the effect that there was justice to be had,
though he didn't seem to think it.

"Oh yes," he said, resting his arm on the chimney-piece, "there's the
county court or something of that kind. By all means go to the county
court if you like. But I see no occasion for discussing the matter any
more beforehand."

His calmness had its effect upon her. She didn't want any
unpleasantness, she said.

"Neither do I," he replied: "I do not see why there need be any. If I
live you will be paid, and that before very long. If I should happen to
die first, I have a friend who will settle my affairs for me, and you
will be no loser."

Mrs. Bryant suggested that it might be pleasanter for all parties if Mr.
Thorne were to apply to his friend at once. She thought very likely
there were little bills about in the town--gentlemen very often had
little bills--and if there were any difficulties--gentlemen so often got
into difficulties--it was so much better to have things settled and make
a fresh start. She had no doubt that Mr. Lisle would be very willing.

"Mr. Lisle!" Percival exclaimed. "Do you suppose for one moment I should
ask Mr. Lisle?"

Startled at his vehemence, Mrs. Bryant begged pardon, and substituted
"the gentleman" for "Mr. Lisle."

"Thank you, no," said Percival. "I prefer to manage my own affairs in my
own way. If I live I will not apply to any one. But if I must go to my
grave owing five or six weeks' rent to one or other of you, I assure you
most solemnly, Mrs. Bryant, that I will owe it to my friend."

The storm had subsided into subdued grumblings. Their purport was,
apparently, that Mrs. Bryant liked lodgers who paid regular, and as for
those who didn't, they would have to leave, and she wished them to know
it.

"Does that mean that you wish me to go?" the young man demanded with the
readiness which was too much for his landlady. "I'll go to-night if you
like. Do you wish it?" There was an air of such promptitude about him as
he spoke that Mrs. Bryant half expected to see him vanish then and
there. She had by no means made up her mind that she did wish to lose a
lodger who had been so entirely satisfactory up to that time. And she
preferred to keep her debtor within reach; so she drew back a little and
qualified what she had said.

"Very well," said Percival, "just as you please."

Mrs. Bryant only hoped it wouldn't occur again. The tempest of her
wrath showed fearful symptoms of dissolving in a shower of tears. "You
don't know what work I have to make both ends meet, Mr. Thorne," she
said, "nor how hard it is to get one's own, let alone keeping it. I do
assure you, Mr. Thorne, me and Lydia might go in silks every day of our
lives, and needn't so much as soil our fingers with the work of the
house, if we had all we rightly should have. But there are folks who
call themselves honest who don't think any harm of taking a widow
woman's rooms and getting behindhand with the rent, running up an
account for milk and vegetables and the like by the week together; and
there's the bell ringing all day, as you may say, with the bills coming
in, and one's almost driven out of one's wits with the worry of it all,
let alone the loss, which is hard to bear. Oh, I do hope, Mr. Thorne,
that it won't occur again!"

"It isn't very likely," said Percival, privately thinking that suicide
would be preferable to an existence in which such interviews with his
landlady should be of frequent occurrence. Pity, irritation, disgust,
pride and humiliation made up a state of feeling which was overshadowed
by a horrible fear that Mrs. Bryant would begin to weep before he could
get rid of her. He watched her with ever-increasing uneasiness while she
attempted to give him a receipt for the money he had paid. She began by
wiping her spectacles, but her hand trembled so much that she let them
fall, and she, Percival and the candle were all on the floor together,
assisting one another in the search for them. The rusty cap was
perilously near the flame more than once, which was a cause of fresh
anxiety on his part. And when she was once more established at the
table, writing a word or two and then wiping her eyes, it was
distracting to discover that the receipt-stamp, which Mrs. Bryant had
brought with her, and which she was certain she had laid on the table,
had mysteriously disappeared. It seemed to Percival that he spent at
least a quarter of an hour hunting for that stamp. In reality about two
minutes elapsed before it was found sticking to Mrs. Bryant's damp
pocket handkerchief. It was removed thence with great care, clinging to
her fingers by the way, after which it showed a not unnatural
disinclination to adhere to the paper. But even that difficulty was at
last overcome: a shaky signature and a date were laboriously penned, and
Percival's heart beat high as he received the completed document.

And then--Mrs. Bryant laid down the pen, took off her spectacles, shook
her pocket handkerchief and deliberately burst into tears.

Percival was in despair. Of course he knew perfectly well that he was
not a heartless brute, but equally of course he felt that he must be a
heartless brute as he stood by while Mrs. Bryant wept copiously. Of
course he begged her to calm herself, and of course a long-drawn sob was
her only answer. All at once there was a knock at the door. "Come in,"
said Percival, feeling that matters could not possibly be worse. It
opened, and Lydia stood on the threshold, staring at the pair in much
surprise.

"Well, I never!" she said; and turning toward Percival she eyed him
suspiciously, as if she thought he might have been knocking the old lady
about. "And pray what may be the meaning of this?"

"Mrs. Bryant isn't quite herself this evening, I am afraid," said
Percival, feeling that his reply was very feeble. "And we have had a
little business to settle which was not quite satisfactory."

At the word "business" Lydia stepped forward, and her surprise gave
place to an expression of half incredulous amusement--Percival would
almost have said of delight.

"What! ain't the money all right?" she said. "You don't say so! Well,
ma, you _have_ been clever this time, haven't you? Oh I suppose you
thought I didn't know what you were after when you were so careful about
not bothering me with the accounts? Lor! I knew fast enough. Don't you
feel proud of yourself for having managed it so well?"

Mrs. Bryant wept. Percival, not having a word to say, preserved a
dignified silence.

"Come along, ma: I dare say Mr. Thorne has had about enough of this,"
Lydia went on, coolly examining the paper which lay on the table. She
arrived at the total. "Oh that's it, is it? Well, I like that, I do!
Some people are so clever, ain't they? So wonderfully sharp they can't
trust their own belongings! I do like that! Come along, ma." And Lydia
seconded her summons with such energetic action that it seemed to
Percival that she absolutely swept the old lady out of the room, and
that the wet handkerchief, the rusty black gown and the bugle-sprinkled
head-dress vanished in a whirlwind, with a sound of shrill laughter on
the stairs.

For a moment his heart leapt with a sudden sense of relief and freedom,
but only for a moment. Then he flung himself into his arm-chair, utterly
dejected and sickened.

Should he be subject to this kind of thing all his life long? If he
should chance to be ill and unable to work, how could he live for any
length of time on his paltry savings? And debt would mean _this_! He
need not even be ill. He remembered how he broke his arm once when he
was a lad. Suppose he broke his arm now--a bit of orange-peel in the
street might do it--or suppose he hurt the hand with which he wrote?

And this was the life which he might ask Judith to share with him! She
might endure Mrs. Bryant's scolding and Lydia's laughter, and pinch and
save as he was forced to do, and grow weary and careworn and sick at
heart. No, God forbid! And yet--and yet--was she not enduring as bad or
worse in that hateful school?

Oh for his dream! One week of life and love, and then swift exit from a
hideous world, where Mrs. Bryant and Miss Macgregor and Lydia and all
his other nightmares might do their worst and fight their hardest in
their ugly struggle for existence!

Percival had achieved something of a victory in his encounter with his
landlady. His manner had been calm and fairly easy, and from first to
last she had been more conscious of his calmness than Percival was
himself. She had been silenced, not coaxed and flattered as she often
was by unfortunate lodgers whose ready money ran short. Indeed, she had
been defied, and when she recovered herself a little she declared that
she had never seen any one so stuck up as Mr. Thorne. This was unkind,
after he had gone down on his knees to look for her spectacles.

But if Percival had conquered, his was but a barren victory. He fancied
that an unwonted tone of deference crept into his voice when he gave his
orders. He was afraid of Mrs. Bryant. He faced Lydia bravely, but he
winced in secret at the recollection of her laughter. He very nearly
starved himself lest mother or daughter should be able to say, "Mr.
Thorne might have remembered his debts before he ordered this or that."
He had paid Lisle's bill at Mr. Robinson's, but he could not forget his
own, and he walked past the house daily with his head high, feeling
himself a miserable coward.

There was a draper's shop close to it, and as he went by one day he saw
a little pony chaise at the door. A girl of twelve or thirteen sat in it
listlessly holding the reins and looking up and down the street. It was
a great field-day for the Brenthill volunteers, and their band came
round a corner not a dozen yards away and suddenly struck up a
triumphant march. The pony, although as quiet a little creature as you
could easily find, was startled. If it had been a wooden rocking-horse
it might not have minded, but any greater sensibility must have received
a shock. The girl uttered a cry of alarm, but there was no cause for it.
Percival, who was close at hand, stepped to the pony's head, a lady
rushed out of the shop, the band went by in a tempest of martial music,
a crowd of boys and girls filled the roadway and disappeared as quickly
as they came. It was all over in a minute. Percival, who was coaxing the
pony as he stood, was warmly thanked.

"There is nothing to thank me for," he said. "That band was enough to
frighten anything, but the pony seems a gentle little thing."

"So it is," the lady replied. "But you see, the driver was very
inexperienced, and we really are very much obliged to you, Mr. Thorne."

He looked at her in blank amazement. Had some one from his former life
suddenly arisen to claim acquaintance with him? He glanced from her to
the girl, but recognized neither. "You know me?" he said.

She smiled: "You don't know me, I dare say. I am Mrs. Barton. I saw you
one day when I was just coming away after calling on Miss Lisle." She
watched the hero of her romance as she spoke. His dark face lighted up
suddenly.

"I have often heard Miss Lisle speak of you and of your kindness," he
said. "Do you ever see her now?"

"Oh yes. She comes to give Janie her music-lesson every Wednesday
afternoon.--We couldn't do without Miss Lisle, could we, Janie?" The
girl was shy and did not speak, but a broad smile overspread her face.

"I had no idea she still came to you. Do you know how she gets on at
Miss Macgregor's?" he asked eagerly. "Is she well? I saw her at church
one day, and I thought she was pale."

"She says she is well," Mrs. Barton replied. "But I am not very fond of
Miss Macgregor myself: no one ever stays there very long." A shopman
came out and put a parcel into the chaise. Mrs. Barton took the reins.
"I shall tell Miss Lisle you asked after her," she said as with a bow
and cordial smile she drove off.

It was Monday, and Percival's mind was speedily made up. He would see
Judith Lisle on Wednesday.

Tuesday was a remarkably long day, but Wednesday came at last, and he
obtained permission to leave the office earlier than usual. He knew the
street in which Mrs. Barton lived, and had taken some trouble to
ascertain the number, so that he could stroll to and fro at a safe
distance, commanding a view of the door.

He had time to study the contents of a milliner's window: it was the
only shop near at hand, and even that pretended not to be a shop, but
rather a private house, where some one had accidentally left a bonnet or
two, a few sprays of artificial flowers and an old lady's cap in the
front room. He had abundant leisure to watch No. 51 taking in a supply
of coals, and No. 63 sending away a piano. He sauntered to and fro so
long, with a careless assumption of unconsciousness how time was
passing, that a stupid young policeman perceived that he was not an
ordinary passer-by. Astonished and delighted at his own penetration, he
began to saunter and watch him, trying to make out which house he
intended to favor with a midnight visit. Percival saw quite a procession
of babies in perambulators being wheeled home by their nurses after
their afternoon airing, and he discovered that the nurse at No. 57 had a
flirtation with a soldier. But at last the door of No. 69 opened, a slim
figure came down the steps, and he started to meet it, leisurely, but
with a sudden decision and purpose in his walk. The young policeman saw
the meeting: the whole affair became clear to him--why, he had done that
sort of thing himself--and he hurried off rather indignantly, feeling
that he had wasted his time, and that the supposed burglar had not
behaved at all handsomely.

And Percival went forward and held out his hand to Judith, but found
that even the most commonplace greeting stuck in his throat somehow. She
looked quickly up at him, but she too was silent, and he walked a few
steps by her side before he said, "I did not know what day you were
going away."

The rest of the conversation followed in a swift interchange of question
and reply, as if to make up for that pause.

"No, but I thought I should be sure to have a chance of saying
good-bye."

"And I was out. I was very sorry when I came home and found that you
were gone. But since we have met again, it doesn't matter now, does it?"
he said with a smile. "How do you get on at Miss Macgregor's?"

"Oh, very well," she answered. "It will do for the present."

"And Miss Crawford?"

"She will not see me nor hear from me. She is ill and low-spirited, and
Mrs. Barton tells me that a niece has come to look after her."

"Isn't that rather a good thing?"

"No: I don't like it. I saw one or two of those nieces--there are seven
of them--great vulgar, managing women. I can't bear to think of my dear
little Miss Crawford being bullied and nursed by Miss Price. She
couldn't endure them, I know, only she was so fond of their mother."

Percival changed the subject: "So you go to Mrs. Barton's still? I
didn't know that till last Monday."

"When you rescued Janie from imminent peril. Oh, I have heard," said
Judith with a smile.

"Please to describe me as risking my own life in the act. It would be a
pity not to make me heroic while you are about it."

"Janie would readily believe it. She measures her danger by her terror,
which was great. But she is a dear, good child, and it is such a
pleasure to me to go there every week!"

"Ah! Then you are not happy at Miss Macgregor's?"

"Well, not very. But it might be much worse. And I am mercenary enough
to think about the money I earn at Mrs. Barton's," said Judith. "I don't
mind telling you now that Bertie left two or three little bills unpaid
when he went away, and I was very anxious about them. But, luckily, they
were small."

"You don't mind telling me now. Are they paid, then?"

"Yes, and I have not heard of any more."

"You paid them out of your earnings?"

"Yes. You understand me, don't you, Mr. Thorne? Bertie and I were
together then, and I could not take Emmeline's money to pay our debts."

"Yes, I understand."

"And I had saved a little. It is all right now, since they are all paid.
I fancied there would be some more to come in, but it seems not, so I
have a pound or two to spare, and I feel quite rich."

It struck Percival that Judith had managed better than he had. "Do you
ever hear from him?" he asked.

"Yes. Mr. Nash has forgiven them."

"Already?"

Judith nodded: "He has, though I thought he never would. Bertie
understood him better."

(The truth was, that she had taken impotent rage for strength of
purpose. Mr. Nash was aware that he had neglected his daughter, and was
anxious to stifle the thought by laying the blame on every one else. And
Bertie was quicker than Judith was in reading character when it was on
his own level.)

"He has forgiven them," Percival repeated with a smile. "Well, Bertie is
a lucky fellow."

"So is my father lucky, if that is luck."

"Your father?"

"Yes. He has written to me and to my aunt Lisle--at Rookleigh, you know.
He has taken another name, and it seems he is getting on and making
money: _he_ wanted to send me some too. And my aunt is angry with me
because I would not go to her. She has given me two months to make up my
mind in."

"And you will not go?"

"I cannot leave Brenthill," said Judith. "She is more than half inclined
to forgive Bertie too. So I am alone; and yet I am right." She uttered
the last words with lingering sadness.

"No doubt," Percival answered. They were walking slowly through a quiet
back street, with a blank wall on one side. "Still, it is hard," he
said.

There was something so simple and tender in his tone that Judith looked
up and met his eyes. She might have read his words in them even if he
had not spoken. "Don't pity me, Mr. Thorne," she said.

"Why not?"

"Oh, because--I hardly know why. I can't stand it when any one is kind
to me, or sorry for me, sometimes at Mrs. Barton's. I don't know how to
bear it. But it does not matter much, for I get braver and braver when
people are hard and cold. I really don't mind that half as much as you
would think, so you see you needn't pity me. In fact, you mustn't."

"Indeed, I think I must," said Percival. "More than before."

"No, no," she answered, hurriedly. "Don't say it, don't look it, don't
even let me think you do it in your heart. Tell me about yourself. You
listen to me, you ask about me, but you say nothing of what you are
doing."

"Working." There was a moment's hesitation. "And dreaming," he added.

"But you have been ill?"

"Not I."

"You have not been ill? Then you are ill. What makes you so pale?"

He laughed: "Am I pale?"

"And you look tired."

"My work is wearisome sometimes."

"More so than it was?" she questioned anxiously. "You used not to look
so tired."

"Don't you think that a wearisome thing must grow more wearisome merely
by going on?"

"But is that all? Isn't there anything else the matter?"

"Perhaps there is," he allowed. "There are little worries of course, but
shall I tell you what is the great thing that is the matter with me?"

"If you will."

"I miss you, Judith."

The color spread over her face like a rosy dawn. Her eyes were fixed on
the pavement, and yet they looked as if they caught a glimpse of Eden.
But Percival could not see that. "You miss me?" she said.

"Yes." He had forgotten his hesitation and despair. He had outstripped
them, had left them far behind, and his words sprang to his lips with a
glad sense of victory and freedom. "Must I miss you always?" he said.
"Will you not come back to me, Judith? My work could never be wearisome
then when I should feel that I was working for you. There would be long
to wait, no doubt, and then a hard life, a poor home. What have I to
offer you? But will you come?"

She looked up at him: "Do you really want me, or is it that you are
sorry for me and want to help me? Are you sure it isn't that? We Lisles
have done you harm enough: I won't do you a worse wrong still."

"You will do me the worst wrong of all if you let such fears and fancies
stand between you and me," said Percival. "Do you not know that I love
you? You must decide as your own heart tells you. But don't doubt me."

She laid her hand lightly on his arm: "Forgive me, Percival."

And so those two passed together into the Eden which she had seen.




CHAPTER XLIX.

HOW THE SUN ROSE IN GLADNESS, AND SET IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF
DEATH.


The Wednesday which was so white a day for Judith and Percival had
dawned brightly at Fordborough. Sissy, opening her eyes on the radiant
beauty of the morning, sprang up with an exclamation of delight. The
preceding day had been gray and uncertain, but this was golden and
cloudless. A light breeze tossed the acacia-boughs and showed flashes of
blue between the quivering sprays. The dew was still hanging on the
clustered white roses which climbed to her open window, and the birds
were singing among the leaves as if they were running races in a
headlong rapture of delight. Sissy did not sing, but she said to
herself, "Oh, how glad the Latimers must be!"

She was right, for at a still earlier hour the Latimer girls had been
flying in and out of their respective rooms in a perfectly aimless,
joyous, childishly happy fashion, like a flock of white pigeons. And the
sum of their conversation was simply this: "Oh, what a day! what a
glorious day!" Yet it sufficed for a Babel of bird-like voices. At last
one more energetic than the rest, in her white dressing-gown and with
her hair hanging loose, flew down the long oak-panelled corridor and
knocked with might and main at her brother's door: "Walter! Walter!
wake up! do! You said it would rain, and it doesn't rain! It is a
_lovely_ morning! Oh, Walter!"

Walter responded briefly to the effect that he had been awake since half
after three, and was aware of the fact.

Henry Hardwicke, who had been to the river for an early swim, stopped to
discuss the weather with a laborer who was plodding across the fields.
The old man looked at the blue sky with an air of unutterable wisdom,
made some profound remarks about the quarter in which the wind was,
added a local saying or two bearing on the case, and summed up to the
effect that it was a fine day.

Captain Fothergill had no particular view from his window, but he
inquired at an early hour what the weather was like.

Ashendale Priory was a fine old ruin belonging to the Latimers, and
about six miles from Latimer's Court. Sissy Langton had said one day
that she often passed it in her rides, but had never been into it.
Walter Latimer was astonished, horrified and delighted all at once, and
vowed that she must see it, and should see it without delay. This
Wednesday had been fixed for an excursion there, but the project was
nearly given up on account of the weather. As late as the previous
afternoon the question was seriously debated at the Court by a council
composed of Walter and three of his sisters. One of the members was sent
to look at the barometer. She reported that it had gone up in the most
extraordinary manner since luncheon.

The announcement was greeted with delight, but it was discovered late
that evening that Miss Latimer had had a happy thought. Fearing that the
barometer would be utterly ruined by the shaking and tapping which it
underwent, she had screwed it up to a height at which her younger
brothers and sisters could not wish to disturb it, had gone into the
village, and had forgotten all about it. There was general dismay and
much laughter.

"It will rain," said Walter: "it will certainly rain. I thought it was
very queer. Well, it is too late to do anything now. We must just wait
and see what happens."

And behold the morrow had come, the clouds were gone, and it was a day
in a thousand, a very queen of days.

The party started for Ashendale, some riding, some driving, waking the
quiet green lanes with a happy tumult of wheels and horse-hoofs and
laughing voices. Captain Fothergill contrived to be near Miss Langton,
and to talk in a fashion which made her look down once or twice when she
had encountered the eagerness of his dark eyes. The words he said might
have been published by the town-crier. But that functionary could not
have reproduced the tone and manner which rendered them significant,
though Sissy hardly knew the precise amount of meaning they were
intended to convey. She was glad when the tower of the priory rose above
the trees. So was Walter Latimer, who had been eying the back of
Fothergill's head or the sharply-cut profile which was turned so
frequently toward Miss Langton, and who was firmly persuaded that the
captain ought to be shot.

Ashendale Priory was built nearly at the bottom of a hill. Part of it,
close by the gateway, was a farmhouse occupied by a tenant of the
Latimers. His wife, a pleasant middle-aged woman, came out to meet them
as they dismounted, and a rosy daughter of sixteen or seventeen lingered
shyly in the little garden, which was full to overflowing of
old-fashioned flowers and humming with multitudes of bees. The hot sweet
fragrance of the crowded borders made Sissy say that it was like the
very heart of summer-time.

"A place to recollect and dream of on a November day," said Fothergill.

"Oh, don't talk of November now! I hate it."

"I don't want November, I assure you," he replied. "Why cannot this last
for ever?"

"The weather?"

"Much more than the weather. Do you suppose I should only remember that
it was a fine day?"

"What, the place too?" said Sissy. "It is beautiful, but I think you
would soon get tired of Ashendale, Captain Fothergill."

"Do you?" he said in a low voice, looking at her with the eyes which
seemed to draw hers to meet them. "Try me and see which will be tired
first." And, without giving her time to answer, he went on: "Couldn't
you be content with Ashendale?"

"For always? I don't think I could--not for all my life."

"Well, then, the perfect place is yet to find," said Fothergill. "And
how charming it must be!"

"If one should ever find it!" said Sissy.

"One?" Fothergill looked at her again. "Not _one_! Won't you hope we may
both find it?"

"Like the people who hunted for the Earthly Paradise," said Sissy
hurriedly. "Look! they are going to the ruins." And she hastened to join
the others.

Latimer noticed that she evidently, and very properly, would not permit
Fothergill to monopolize her, but seemed rather to avoid the fellow. To
his surprise, however, he found that there was no better fortune for
himself. Fothergill had brought a sailor cousin, a boy of nineteen,
curly-haired, sunburnt and merry, with a sailor's delight in flirtation
and fun, and Archibald Carroll fixed his violent though temporary
affections on Sissy the moment he was introduced to her at the priory.
To Latimer's great disgust, Sissy distinctly encouraged him, and the two
went off together during the progress round the ruins. There were some
old fish-ponds to be seen, with swans and reeds and water-lilies, and
when they were tired of scrambling about the gray walls there was a
little copse hard by, the perfection of sylvan scenery on a small scale.
The party speedily dispersed, rambling where their fancy led them, and
were seen no more till the hour which had been fixed for dinner. Mrs.
Latimer meanwhile chose a space of level turf, superintended the
unpacking of hampers, and when the wanderers came dropping in by twos
and threes from all points of the compass, professing unbounded
readiness to help in the preparations, there was nothing left for them
to do. Among the latest were Sissy and her squire, a radiant pair. She
was charmed with her saucy sailor-boy, who had no serious intentions or
hopes, who would most likely be gone on the morrow, and who asked
nothing more than to be happy with her through that happy summer day.
People and things were apt to grow perplexing and sad when they came
into her every-day life, but here was a holiday companion, arrived as
unexpectedly as if he were created for her holiday, with no such thing
as an afterthought about the whole affair.

Latimer sulked, but his rival smiled, when the two young people arrived.
For--thus argued Raymond Fothergill, with a vanity which was so calm, so
clear, so certain that it sounded like reason itself--it was not
possible that Sissy Langton preferred Carroll to himself. Even had it
been Latimer or Hardwicke! But Carroll--no! Therefore she used the one
cousin merely to avoid the other. But why did she wish to avoid him? He
remembered her blushes, her shyness, the eyes that sank before his own,
and he answered promptly that she feared him. He triumphed in the
thought. He had contended against a gentle indifference on Sissy's part,
till, having heard rumors of a bygone love-affair, he had suspected the
existence of an unacknowledged constancy. Then what did this fear mean?
It was obviously the self-distrust of a heart unwilling to yield,
clinging to its old loyalty, yet aware of a new weakness--seeking safety
in flight because unable to resist. Fothergill was conscious of power,
and could wait with patience. (It would have been unreasonable to expect
him to spend an equal amount of time and talent in accounting for Miss
Langton's equally evident avoidance of young Latimer. Besides, that was
a simple matter. He bored her, no doubt.)

When the business of eating and drinking was drawing to a close, little
Edith Latimer, the youngest of the party, began to arrange a lapful of
wild flowers which she had brought back from her ramble. Hardwicke, who
had helped her to collect them, handed them to her one by one.

A green tuft which he held up caught Sissy's eye. "Why, Edie, what have
you got there?" she said. "Is that maiden-hair spleenwort? Where did
you find it?"

"In a crack in the wall: there's a lot more," the child answered; and at
the same moment Hardwicke said, "Shall I get you some?"

"No: I'll get some," exclaimed Archie, who was lying at Sissy's feet.
"Miss Langton would rather I got it for her, I know."

Sissy arched her brows.

"She has so much more confidence in me," Archie explained. "Please give
me a leaf of that stuff, Miss Latimer: I want to see what it's like."

"My confidence is rather misplaced, I'm afraid, if you don't know what
you are going to look for."

"Not a bit misplaced. You know very well I shall have a sort of instinct
which will take me straight to it."

"Dear me! It hasn't any smell, you know," said Sissy with perfect
gravity.

"Oh, how cruel!" said Carroll, "withering up my delicate feelings with
thoughtless sarcasm! Smell? no! My what-d'ye-call-it--sympathy--will
tell me which it is. My heart will beat faster as I approach it. But
I'll have that leaf all the same, please."

"And it might be as well to know where to look for it."

"We found it in the ruins--in the wall of the refectory," said
Hardwicke.

Sissy looked doubtful, but Carroll exclaimed, "Oh, I know! That's where
the old fellows used to dine, isn't it? And had sermons read to them all
the time."

"What a bore!" some one suggested.

"Well, I don't know about that," said Archie. "Sermons always are awful
bores, ain't they? But I don't think I should mind 'em so much if I
might eat my dinner all the time." He stopped with a comical look of
alarm. "I say, we haven't got any parsons here, have we?"

"No," said Fothergill smiling. "We've brought the surgeon, in case of
broken bones, but we've left the chaplain at home. So you may give us
the full benefit of your opinions."

"I thought there wasn't one," Archie remarked, looking up at Sissy,
"because nobody said grace. Or don't you ever say grace at a picnic?"

"I don't think you do," Sissy replied. "Unless it were a very Low Church
picnic perhaps. I don't know, I'm sure."

"Makes a difference being out of doors, I suppose," said Archie,
examining the little frond which Edith had given him. "And this is what
you call maiden-hair?"

"What should you call it?"

"A libel," he answered promptly. "Maiden--hair, indeed! Why, I can see
some a thousand times prettier quite close by. What can you want with
this? _You_ can't see the other, but I'll tell you what it's like. It's
the most beautiful brown, with gold in it, and it grows in little
ripples and waves and curls, and nothing ever was half so fine before,
and it catches just the edge of a ray of sunshine--oh, don't move your
head!--and looks like a golden glory--"

"Dear me!" said Sissy. "Then I'm afraid it's very rough."

"--And the least bit of it is worth a cartload of this green rubbish."

"Ah! But you see it is very much harder to get."

"Of course it is," said Archie. "But exchange is no robbery, they say.
Suppose I go and dig up some of this, don't you think--remembering that
I am a poor sailor-boy, going to be banished from 'England, home and
beauty,' and that I shall most likely be drowned on my next
voyage--don't you think--"

"I think that, on your own showing, you must get me at least a cartload
of the other before you have the face to finish that sentence."

"A cartload! I feel like a prince in a fairy-tale. And what would you do
with it all?"

"Well, I really hardly know what I should do with it."

"There now!" said Archie. "And I could tell you in a moment what I would
do with mine if you gave it me."

"Oh, but I could tell you that."

"Tell me, then."

"You would fold it up carefully in a neat little bit of paper, but you
would not write anything on it, because you would not like it to look
business-like. Besides, you couldn't possibly forget. And a few months
hence you will have lost your heart to some foreign young lady--I don't
know where you are going--and you would find the little packet in your
desk, and wonder who gave it to you."

"Oh, how little you know me!" Archie exclaimed, and sank back on the
turf in a despairing attitude. But a moment later he began to laugh, and
sat up again. "There _was_ a bit once," he said confidentially, "and for
the life of me I couldn't think whose it could be. There were two or
three girls I knew it couldn't possibly belong to, but that didn't help
me very far. That lock of hair quite haunted me. See what it is to have
such susceptible feelings! I used to look at it a dozen times a day, and
I couldn't sleep at night for thinking of it. At last I said to myself,
'I don't care whose it is: she was a nice, dear girl anyhow, and I'm
sure she wouldn't like to think that she bothered me in this way.' So I
consigned it to a watery grave. I felt very melancholy when it went, I
can tell you, and if my own hair had been a reasonable length I'd have
sent a bit of it overboard with hers, just for company's sake. But I'd
had a fever, and I was cropped like a convict, so I couldn't."

"You tell that little story very nicely," said Sissy when he paused. "Do
you always mention it when you ask--"

"Why, no," Archie exclaimed. "I thought _you_ would take it as it was
meant--as the greatest possible compliment to yourself. But I suppose
it's my destiny to be misunderstood. Don't you see that I _couldn't_
tell that to any one unless I were quite sure that she was so much
higher, so altogether apart, that she never, never could get mixed up
with anybody else in my mind?"

"She had better have some very particular sort of curliness in her hair
too," said Sissy. "Don't you think it would be safer?"

"Oh, this is too much!" he exclaimed. "It's sport to you, evidently, but
you don't consider that it's death to me. I say, come away, and we'll
look for this green stuff."

Fothergill smiled, but Latimer's handsome face flushed. He had made a
dozen attempts to supplant Carroll, and had been foiled by the laughing
pair. What was the use of being a good-looking fellow of six-and-twenty,
head of one of the county families and owner of Latimer's Court and
Ashendale, if he were to be set aside by a beggarly sailor-boy? What did
Fothergill mean by bringing his poor relations dragging after him where
they were not wanted? He sprang to his feet, and went away with long
strides to make violent love to the farmer's rosy little daughter. He
knew that he meant nothing at all, and that he was filling the poor
child's head and heart with the vainest of hopes. He knew that he owed
especial respect and consideration to the daughter of his tenant, a man
who had dealt faithfully by him, and whose father and grandfather had
held Ashendale under the Latimers. He felt that he was acting meanly
even while he kissed little Lucy by the red wall where the apricots were
ripening in the sun. And he had no overmastering passion for excuse:
what did he care for little Lucy? He was doing wrong, and he was doing
it _because_ it was wrong. He was in a fiercely antagonistic mood, and,
as he could not fight Fothergill and Carroll, he fought with his own
sense of truth and honor, for want of a better foe. And Lucy, conscious
of her rosy prettiness, stood shyly pulling the lavender-heads in a glad
bewilderment of vanity, wonder and delight, while Latimer's heart was
full of jealous anger. If Sissy Langton could amuse herself, so could
he.

But Sissy was too happily absorbed in her amusement to think of his. She
had avoided him, as she had avoided Captain Fothergill, from a sense of
danger. They were becoming too serious, too much in earnest, and she did
not want to be serious. So she went gayly across the grass, laughing at
Archie because he would look on level ground for her maiden-hair
spleenwort. They came to a small enclosure.

"Here you are!" said Carroll. "This is what somebody said was the
refectory. It makes one feel quite sad and sentimental only to think
what a lot of jolly dinners have been eaten here. And nothing left of it
all!"

"That's your idea of sentiment, Mr. Carroll? It sounds to me as if you
hadn't had enough to eat."

"Oh yes, I had plenty. But we ought to pledge each other in a cup of
sack, or something of the kind. And a place like this ought at least to
smell deliciously of roast and boiled. Instead of which it might as well
be the chapel."

Sissy gazed up at the wall: "There's some maiden-hair! How was it I
never saw it this morning? Surely, we came along the top and looked down
into this place."

"No," said Archie. "That was the chapel we looked into. Didn't I say
they were just alike?"

"Well, I can easily get up there," she said. "And you may stay down here
if you like, and grow sentimental over the ghost of a dinner." And,
laughing, she darted up a steep ascent of turf, slackening her pace when
she came to a rough heap of fallen stones. Carroll was by her side
directly, helping her. "Why, this is prettier than where we went this
morning," she said when they reached the top: "you see the whole place
better. But it's narrower, I think. This is the west wall, isn't it? Oh,
Mr. Carroll, how much the sun has gone down already!"

"I wish I were Moses, or whoever it was, to make it stop," said the boy:
"it would stay up there a good long time."

There was a black belt of shadow at the foot of the wall. Archie looked
down as if to measure its breadth. A little tuft of green caught his
eye, and stooping he pulled it from between the stones.

"Oh, how broken it is here! Doesn't it look as if a giant had taken a
great bite out of it?" Sissy exclaimed, at the same moment that he
called after her, "Is this right, Miss Langton?"

She turned her head, and for a second's space he saw her bright face,
her laughing, parted lips. Then there was a terrible cry, stretched
hands at which he snatched instinctively but in vain, and a stone which
slipped and fell heavily. He stumbled forward, and recovered himself
with an effort. There was blank space before him--and what below?

Archie Carroll half scrambled down by the help of the ivy, half slid,
and reached the ground. Thus, at the risk of his life, he gained half a
minute, and spent it in kneeling on the grass--a yard away from that
which he dared not touch--saying pitifully, "Miss Langton! Oh, won't you
speak to me, Miss Langton?"

He was in the shadow, but looking across the enclosure he faced a broken
doorway in the south-east corner. The ground sloped away a little, and
the arch opened into the stainless blue. A sound of footsteps made
Carroll look up, and through the archway came Raymond Fothergill. He had
heard the cry, he had outrun the rest, and, even in his blank
bewilderment of horror, Archie shrank back scared at his cousin's
aspect. His brows and moustache were black as night against the
unnatural whiteness of his face, which was like bleached wax. His eyes
were terrible. He seemed to reach the spot in an instant. Carroll saw
his hands on the stone which had fallen, and lay on her--O God!--or only
on her dress?

Fothergill's features contracted in sudden agony as he noted the
horribly twisted position in which she lay, but he stooped without a
moment's hesitation, and, lifting her gently, laid her on the turf,
resting her head upon his knee. There was a strange contrast between the
tenderness with which he supported her and the fierce anger of his face.
Others of the party came rushing on the scene in dismay and horror.

"Water!" said Fothergill. "Where's Anderson?" (Anderson was the young
doctor.) "Not here?"

"He went by the fish-ponds with Evelyn," cried Edith suddenly: "I saw
him." Hardwicke darted off.

"Curse him! Playing the fool when he's wanted more than he ever will be
again.--Mrs. Latimer!"

Edith rushed away to find her mother.

Some one brought water, and held it while Fothergill, with his
disengaged hand, sprinkled the white face on his knee.

Walter Latimer hurried round the corner. He held a pink rosebud, on
which his fingers tightened unconsciously as he ran. Coming to the
staring group, he stopped aghast. "Good God!" he panted, "what has
happened?"

Fothergill dashed more water on the shut eyes and bright hair.

Latimer looked from him to the others standing round: "What has
happened?"

A hoarse voice spoke from the background: "She fell." Archie Carroll had
risen from his knees, and, lifting one hand above his head, he pointed
to the wall. Suddenly, he met Fothergill's eyes, and with a
half-smothered cry he flung himself all along upon the grass and hid his
face.

"Fothergill! is she much hurt?" cried Latimer. "Is it serious?"

The other did not look up. "I cannot tell," he said, "but I believe she
is killed."

Latimer uttered a cry: "No! no! For God's sake don't say that! It can't
be!"

Fothergill made no answer.

"It isn't possible!" said Walter. But his glance measured the height of
the wall and rested on the stones scattered thickly below. The words
died on his lips.

"Is Anderson never coming?" said some one else. Another messenger
hurried off. Latimer stood as if rooted to the ground, gazing after him.
All at once he noticed the rose which he still held, and jerked it away
with a movement as of horror.

The last runner returned: "Anderson and Hardwicke will be here directly:
I saw them coming up the path from the fish-ponds. Here is Mrs.
Latimer."

[Illustration: "FOTHERGILL! IS SHE MUCH HURT?"--Page 682.]

Edith ran through the archway first, eager and breathless. "Here is
mamma," she said, going straight to Raymond Fothergill with her tidings,
and speaking softly as if Sissy were asleep. A little nod was his only
answer, and the girl stood gazing with frightened eyes at the drooping
head which he supported. Mrs. Latimer, Hardwicke and Anderson all
arrived together, and the group divided to make way for them. The first
thing to be done was to carry Sissy to the farmhouse, and while they
were arranging this Edith felt two hands pressed lightly on her
shoulders. She turned and confronted Harry Hardwicke.

"Hush!" he said: "do not disturb them now, but when they have taken her
to the house, if you hear anything said, tell them that I have gone for
Dr. Grey, and as soon as I have sent him here I shall go on for Mrs.
Middleton. You understand?" he added, for the child was looking at him
with her scared eyes, and had not spoken.

"Yes," she said, "I will tell them. Oh, Harry! will she die?"

"Not if anything you and I can do will save her--will she, Edith?" and
Hardwicke ran off to the stables for his horse. A man was there who
saddled it for him, and a rough farm-boy stood by and saw how the
gentleman, while he waited, stroked the next one--a lady's horse, a
chestnut--and how presently he turned his face away and laid his cheek
for a moment against the chestnut's neck. The boy thought it was a rum
go, and stood staring vacantly while Hardwicke galloped off on his
terrible errand.

Meanwhile, they were carrying Sissy to the house. Fothergill was
helping, of course. Latimer had stood by irresolutely, half afraid, yet
secretly hoping for a word which would call him. But no one heeded him.
Evelyn and Edith had hurried on to see that there was a bed on which she
could be laid, and the sad little procession followed them at a short
distance. The lookers-on straggled after it, an anxiously-whispering
group, and as the last passed through the ruined doorway Archie Carroll
lifted his head and glanced round. The wall, with its mosses and ivy,
rose darkly above him--too terrible a presence to be faced alone. He
sprang up, hurried out of the black belt of shadow and fled across the
turf. He never looked back till he stood under the arch, but halting
there, within sight of his companions, he clasped a projection with one
hand as if he were giddy, and turning his head gazed intently at the
crest of the wall. Every broken edge, every tuft of feathery grass,
every aspiring ivy-spray, stood sharply out against the sunny blue. The
breeze had gone down, and neither blade nor leaf stirred in the hot
stillness of the air. There was the way by which they had gone up, there
was the ruinous gap which Sissy had said was like a giant's bite.
Archie's grasp tightened on the stone as he looked. He might well feel
stunned and dizzy, gazing thus across the hideous gulf which parted him
from the moment when he stood upon the wall with Sissy Langton laughing
by his side. Not till every detail was cruelly stamped upon his brain
did he leave the spot.

By that time they had carried Sissy in. Little Lucy had been close by,
her rosy face blanched with horror, and had looked appealingly at
Latimer as he went past. She wanted a kind word or glance, but the
innocent confiding look filled him with remorse and disgust. He would
not meet it: he stared straight before him. Lucy was overcome by
conflicting emotions, went off into hysterics, and her mother had to be
called away from the room where she was helping Mrs. Latimer. Walter
felt as if he could have strangled the pretty, foolish child to whom he
had been saying sweet things not half an hour before. The rose that he
had gathered for her was fastened in her dress, and the pink bud that
she had given him lay in its first freshness on the turf in the ruins.

Some of the party waited in the garden. Fothergill stood in the shadow
of the porch, silent and a little apart. Archie Carroll came up the
path, but no one spoke to him, and he went straight to his cousin.
Leaning against the woodwork, he opened his lips to speak, but was
obliged to stop and clear his throat, for the words would not come. "How
is she?" he said at last.

"I don't know."

"Why do you look at me like that?" said the boy desperately.

Fothergill slightly changed his position, and the light fell more
strongly on his face. "I don't ever want to look at you again," he said
with quiet emphasis. "You've done mischief enough to last your lifetime
if you lived a thousand years."

"It wasn't my fault! Ray, it wasn't!"

"Whose, then?" said Fothergill. "Possibly you think it would have
happened if I had been there?"

"They said that wall--" the young fellow began.

"They didn't. No one told you to climb the most ruinous bit of the whole
place. And she didn't even know where the refectory was."

Carroll groaned: "Don't, Ray: I can't bear it! I shall kill myself!"

"No, you won't," said Fothergill. "You'll go safe home to your people at
the rectory. No more of this."

Archie hesitated, and then miserably dragged himself away. Fothergill
retreated a little farther into the porch, and was almost lost in the
shadow. No tidings, good or evil, had come from the inner room where
Sissy lay, but his state of mind was rather despairing than anxious.
From the moment when he ran across the grass and saw her lying, a
senseless heap, at the foot of the wall, he had felt assured that she
was fatally injured. If he hoped at all it was an unconscious hope--a
hope of which he never would be conscious until a cruel certainty killed
it.

His dominant feeling was anger. He had cared for this girl--cared for
her so much that he had been astonished at himself for so caring--and he
felt that this love was the crown of his life. He did not for a moment
doubt that he would have won her. He had triumphed in anticipation, but
Death had stepped between them and baffled him, and now it was all over.
Fothergill was as furious with Death as if it had been a rival who
robbed him. He felt himself the sport of a power to which he could offer
no resistance, and the sense of helplessness was maddening. But his fury
was of the white, intense, close-lipped kind. Though he had flung a
bitter word or two at Archie, his quarrel was with Destiny. No matter
who had decreed this thing, Raymond Fothergill was in fierce revolt.

And yet, through it all, he knew perfectly well that Sissy's death would
hardly make any outward change in him. He was robbed of his best
chance, but he did not pretend to himself that his heart was broken or
that his life was over. Walter Latimer might fancy that kind of thing,
but Fothergill knew that he should be much such a man as he had been
before he met her, only somewhat lower, because he had so nearly been
something higher and missed it. That was all.

Mrs. Latimer came for a few moments out of the hushed mystery of that
inner room. The tidings ran through the expectant groups that Sissy had
moved slightly, and had opened her eyes once, but there was little
hopefulness in the news. She was terribly injured: that much was
certain, but nothing more. Mrs. Latimer wanted her son. "Walter," she
said, "you must go home and take the girls. Indeed you must. They cannot
stay here, and I cannot send them back without you." Latimer refused,
protested, yielded. "Mother," he said, as he turned to go, "you don't
know--" His voice suddenly gave way.

"I do know. Oh, my poor boy!" She passed quickly to where Evelyn stood,
and told her that Walter had gone to order the horses. "I would rather
you were all away before Mrs. Middleton comes," she said: "Henry
Hardwicke has gone for her."

This departure was a signal to the rest. The groups melted away, and
with sad farewells to one another, and awestruck glances at the windows
of the farmhouse, almost all the guests departed. The sound of wheels
and horse-hoofs died away in the lanes, and all was very still. The bees
hummed busily round the white lilies and the lavender, and on the warm
turf of one of the narrow paths lay Archie Carroll.

He had a weight on heart and brain. There had been a moment all blue and
sunny, the last of his happy life, when Sissy's laughing face looked
back at him and he was a light-hearted-boy. Then had come a moment of
horror and incredulous despair, and that black moment had hardened into
eternity. Nightmare is hideous, and Archie's very life had become a
nightmare. Of course he would get over it, like his cousin, though,
unlike his cousin, he did not think so; and their different moods had
their different bitternesses. In days to come Carroll would enjoy his
life once more, would be ready for a joke or an adventure, would dance
the night through, would fall in love. This misery was a swift and
terrible entrance into manhood, for he could never be a boy again. And
the scar would be left, though the wound would assuredly heal. But
Archie, stumbling blindly through that awful pass, never thought that he
should come again to the light of day: it was to him as the blackness of
a hopeless hell.




CHAPTER L.

THROUGH THE NIGHT.


The village-clock struck five. As the last lingering stroke died upon
the air there was the sound of a carriage rapidly approaching. Carroll
raised his head when it stopped at the gate, and saw Hardwicke spring
out and help a lady to alight. She was an old lady, who walked quickly
to the house, looking neither to right nor left, and vanished within the
doorway. Hardwicke stopped, as if to give some order to the driver, and
then hurried after her. Archie stared vaguely, first at them, and then
at the man, who turned his horses and went round to the stables. When
they were out of sight he laid his head down again. The little scene had
been a vivid picture which stamped itself with curious distinctness on
his brain, yet failed to convey any meaning whatever. He had not the
faintest idea of the agony of love and fear in Mrs. Middleton's heart as
she passed him. To Archie, just then, the whole universe was _his_
agony, and there was no room for more.

Ten minutes later came Dr. Grey's brougham. The doctor, as he jumped
out, told his man to wait. He went from the gate to the house more
hurriedly than Mrs. Middleton, and his anxiety was more marked, but he
found time to look round as he went with keen eyes, which rested for an
instant on the young sailor, though he lay half hidden by the bushes.
He too vanished, as the others had vanished.

About an hour later he came out again, and Fothergill followed him. The
doctor started when he encountered his eager eyes. Fothergill demanded
his opinion. He began some of the usual speeches in which men wrap up
the ghastly word "death" in such disguise that it can hardly be
recognized.

The soldier cut him short: "Please to speak plain English, Dr. Grey."

The doctor admitted the very greatest danger.

"Danger--yes," said Fothergill, "but is there any hope? I am not a
fool--I sha'n't go in and scare the women: is there any hope?"

The answer was written on the doctor's face. He had known Sissy Langton
from the time when she came, a tiny child, to Brackenhill. He shook his
head, and murmured something about "even if there were no other injury,
the spine--"

Fothergill caught a glimpse of a hideous possibility, and answered with
an oath. It was not the profanity of the words, so much as the fury with
which they were charged, that horrified the good old doctor. "My dear
sir," he remonstrated gently, "we must remember that this is God's
will."

"God's will! God's will! Are you sure it isn't the devil's?" said
Fothergill. "It seems more like it. If you think it is God's will, you
may persuade yourself it's yours, for aught I know. But I'm not such a
damned hypocrite as to make believe it's mine."

And with a mechanical politeness, curiously at variance with his face
and speech, he lifted his hat to the doctor as he turned back to the
farmhouse.

So Sissy's doom was spoken--to linger a few hours, more or less, in
helpless pain, and then to die. The sun, which had dawned so joyously,
was going down as serenely as it had dawned, but it did not matter much
to Sissy now. She was sensible, she knew Mrs. Middleton. When the old
lady stooped over her she looked up, smiled faintly and said, "I fell."

"Yes, my darling, I know," Aunt Harriet said.

"Can I go home?" Sissy asked after a pause.

"No, dear, you must not think of it: you mustn't ask to go home."

"I thought not," said Sissy.

Mrs. Middleton asked her if she felt much pain.

"I don't know," she said, and closed her eyes.

Later, Henry Hardwicke sent in a message, and the old lady came out to
speak to him. He was standing by an open casement in the passage,
looking out at the sunset through the orchard boughs. "What is it,
Harry?" she said.

He started and turned round: "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Middleton, but I
thought in case you wanted to send any telegrams--if--if--I mean I
thought you might want to send some, and there is not very much time."

She put her hand to her head. "I ought to, oughtn't I?" she said. "Who
should be sent for?"

"Mr. Hammond?" Hardwicke questioned doubtfully.

Something like relief or pleasure lighted her sad eyes: "Yes, yes! send
for Godfrey Hammond. He will come." She was about to leave him, but the
young fellow stepped forward: "Mrs. Middleton"--was it the clear red
light from the window that suddenly flushed his face?--"Mrs. Middleton,
shall I send for Mr. Percival Thorne?"

She stopped, looking strangely at him: something in his voice surprised
her. "For Percival?" she said.

"May I? I think he ought to come." The hot color was burning on his
cheeks. What right had he to betray the secret which he believed he had
discovered? And yet could he stand by and not speak for her when she had
so little time in which to speak for herself?

"Is it for his sake," said Mrs. Middleton, "or is it that you think--?
Well, let it be so: send for Percival. Yes," she added, "perhaps I have
misunderstood. Yes, send at once for Percival."

"I'll go," said Harry, hurrying down the passage. "The message shall be
sent off at once. I'll take it to Fordborough."

"Must you go yourself?" Mrs. Middleton raised her voice a little as he
moved away.

"No: let me go," said Captain Fothergill, turning the farther corner: "I
am going to Fordborough. What is it? I will take it. Mrs. Middleton, you
will let me be your messenger?"

"You are very good," she said.--"Harry, you will write--I can't. Oh, I
must go back." And she vanished, leaving the two men face to face.

"I've no telegraph-forms," said Harry after a pause. "If you would take
the paper to my father, he will send the messages."

Fothergill nodded silently, and went out to make ready for his journey.
Hardwicke followed him, and stood in the porch pencilling on the back of
an old letter. When Fothergill had given his orders he walked up to
Carroll, touched the lad's shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and
stood away. "Come," he said.

Archie raised himself from the ground and stumbled to his feet: "Come?
where?"

"To Fordborough."

The boy started and stepped back. He looked at the farmhouse, he looked
at his cousin. "I'll come afterward," he faltered.

"Nonsense!" said Fothergill. "I'm going now, and of course you go with
me."

Archie shrank away, keeping his eyes fixed, as if in a kind of
fascination, on his cousin's terrible eyes. The idea of going back alone
with Raymond was awful to him. "No, I can't come, Ray--indeed I can't,"
he said. "I'll walk: I'd much rather--I would indeed."

"What for?" said Fothergill. "You are doing no good here. Do you know I
have a message to take? I can't be kept waiting. Don't be a fool," he
said in a lower but not less imperative voice.

Archie glanced despairingly round. Hardwicke came forward with the paper
in his outstretched hand: "Leave him here, Captain Fothergill. I dare
say I shall go to the inn in the village, and he may go with me. He can
take you the earliest news to-morrow morning."

Archie looked breathlessly from one to the other. "As you please," said
Fothergill, and strode off without another word.

The boy tried to say something in the way of thanks. "Oh, it's nothing,"
Hardwicke replied. "You won't care what sort of quarters they may turn
out to be, I know." And he went back to the house with a little shrug of
his shoulders at the idea of having young Carroll tied to him in this
fashion. He did not want the boy, but Hardwicke could never help
sacrificing himself.

So Archie went to the gate and watched his cousin ride away, a slim
black figure on his black horse against the burning sky. Fothergill
never turned his head. Where was the use of looking back? He was intent
only on his errand, and when that piece of paper should have been
delivered into Mr. Hardwicke's hands the last link between Sissy Langton
and himself would be broken. There would be no further service to
render. Fothergill did not know that the message he carried was to
summon his rival, but it would have made no difference in his feelings
if he had. Nothing made any difference now.

Mrs. Middleton sat by Sissy's bedside in the clear evening light. Harry
Hardwicke's words haunted her: why did he think that Sissy wanted
Percival? They had parted a year ago, and she had believed that Sissy
was cured of her liking for him. It was Sissy who had sent him away, and
she had been brighter and gayer of late: indeed, Mrs. Middleton had
fancied that Walter Latimer-- Well, that was over, but if Sissy cared
for Percival--

A pair of widely-opened eyes were fixed on her: "Am I going to die, Aunt
Harriet?"

"I hope not. Oh, my darling, I pray that you may live."

"I think I am going to die. Will it be very soon? Would there be time to
send--"

"We will send for anything or any one you want. Do you feel worse, dear?
Time to send for whom?"

"For Percival."

"Harry Hardwicke has sent for him already. Perhaps he has the message by
now: it is an hour and a half since the messenger went."

"When will he come?"

"To-morrow, darling."

There was a pause. Then the faint voice came again: "What time?"

Mrs. Middleton went to the door and called softly to Hardwicke. He had
been looking in Bradshaw, and she returned directly: "Percival will come
by the express to-night. He will be at Fordborough by the quarter-past
nine train, and Harry will meet him and bring him over at once--by ten
o'clock, he says, or a few minutes later."

Sissy's brows contracted for a moment: she was calculating the time.
"What is it now?" she said.

"Twenty minutes to eight."

Fourteen hours and a half! The whole night between herself and Percival!
The darkness must come and must go, the sun must set and must again be
high in the heavens, before he could stand by her side. It seemed to
Sissy as if she were going down into the blackness of an awful gulf,
where Death was waiting for her. Would she have strength to escape him,
to toil up the farther side, and to reach the far-off to-morrow and
Percival? "Aunt Harriet," she said, "shall I live till then? I want to
speak to him."

"Yes, my darling--indeed you will. Don't talk so: you will break my
heart. Perhaps God will spare you."

"No," said Sissy--"no."

Between eight and nine Hardwicke was summoned again. Mrs. Latimer wanted
some one to go to Latimer's Court, to take the latest news and to say
that it was impossible she could return that night. "You see they went
away before Dr. Grey came," she said. "I have written a little note. Can
you find me a messenger?"

"I will either find one or I will go myself," he replied.

"Oh, I didn't mean to trouble you. And wait a moment, for Mrs. Middleton
wants him to go on to her house. She will come and speak to you when I
go back to the poor girl."

"How is Miss Langton?"

"I hardly know. I think she is wandering a little: she talked just now
about some embroidery she has been doing--asked for it, in fact."

"When Dr. Grey was obliged to go he didn't think there would be any
change before he came back, surely?" said Hardwicke anxiously.

"No. But she can't know what she is saying, can she? Poor girl! she will
never do another stitch." Mrs. Latimer fairly broke down. The unfinished
embroidery which never could be finished brought the truth home to her.
It is hard to realize that a life with its interlacing roots and fibres
is broken off short.

"Oh, Mrs. Latimer, don't! don't!" Harry exclaimed, aghast at her tears.
"For dear Mrs. Middleton's sake!" He rushed away, and returned with
wine. "If you give way what will become of us?"

She was better in a few minutes, and able to go back, while Harry waited
in quiet confidence for Mrs. Middleton. He was not afraid of a burst of
helpless weeping when she came. She was gentle, yielding, delicate, but
there was something of the old squire's obstinacy in her, and in a
supreme emergency it came out as firmness. She looked old and frail as
she stepped into the passage and closed the door after her. Her hand
shook, but her eyes met his bravely and her lips were firm.

"You'll have some wine too," he said, pouring it out as a matter of
course. "You can drink it while you tell me what I am to do."

She took the glass with a slight inclination of her head, and explained
that she wanted an old servant who had been Sissy's nurse when she was a
little child. "Mrs. Latimer is very kind," she said, "but Sissy will
like her own people best. And Sarah would be broken-hearted--" She
paused. "Here is a list of things that I wish her to bring."

"Mrs. Latimer thought Miss Langton was not quite herself," he said
inquiringly.

"Do you mean because she talked of her work? Oh, I don't think so. She
answers quite sensibly--indeed, she speaks quite clearly. That was the
only thing."

"Then is it down in the list, this needlework? Or where is it to be
found?"

"You will bring it?" said Mrs. Middleton. "Well, perhaps--"

"If she should ask again," he said.

"True. Yes, yes, bring it." She told him where to find the little case.
"The fancy may haunt her. How am I to thank you, Harry?"

"Not at all," he said. "Only let me do what I can."

It was nearly eleven before Hardwicke had accomplished his double errand
and returned with Sarah. The stars were out, the ruins of the priory
rose in great black masses against the sky, the farmhouse windows
beneath the overhanging eaves were like bright eyes gazing out into the
night. Dr. Grey had come back in the interval, and had seen his patient.
There was nothing new to say, and nothing to be done, except to make the
path to the grave as little painful as might be. He was taking a nap in
Mr. Greenwell's arm-chair when the young man came in, but woke up clear
and alert in a moment. "Ah, you have come?" he said, recognizing the old
servant. "That's well: you'll save your mistress a little. Only, mind,
we mustn't have any crying. If there is anything of that sort you will
do more harm than good."

Sarah deigned no reply, but passed on. Mrs. Middleton came out to meet
them. Sissy had not spoken. She lay with her eyes shut, and moaned now
and then. "Are you going home, Harry?" said the old lady.

"Only into the village: I've got a room at the Latimer Arms. It isn't
two minutes' walk from here, so I can be fetched directly if I'm
wanted."

"And you will be sure to meet the train?"

"I will: you may depend upon me. But I shall come here first."

"Good-night, then. Go and get some rest."

Hardwicke went off to look for Archie Carroll. He found him in the
square flagged hall, sitting on the corner of a window-seat, with his
head leaning against the frame, among Mrs. Greenwell's geraniums. "Come
along, old fellow," said Harry.

There was only a glimmering candle, and the hall was very dim. Archie
got up submissively and groped his way after his guide. "Where are we
going?" he asked as the door was opened.

"To a little public-house close by. We couldn't ask the Greenwells to
take us in."

As they went out into the road the priory rose up suddenly on the left
and towered awfully above them. Carroll shuddered, drew closer to his
companion and kept his eyes fixed on the ground. "I feel as if I were
the ghost of myself, and those were the ghosts of the ruins," he said as
he hurried past.

The flight of fancy was altogether beyond Hardwicke: "You've been
sitting alone and thinking. There has been nothing for you to do, and I
couldn't help leaving you. Here we are."

They turned into the little sanded parlor of the ale-house. Hardwicke
had looked in previously and given his orders, and supper was laid ready
for them. He sat down and began to help himself, but Archie at first
refused to eat.

"Nonsense!" said Harry. "You have had nothing since the beginning of the
day. We must not break down, any of us." And with a little persuasion he
prevailed, and saw the lad make a tolerable supper and drink some brandy
and water afterward. "Vile brandy!" said Hardwicke as he set his tumbler
down. Archie was leaning with both elbows on the table, gazing at him.
His eyes were heavy and swollen, and there were purple shadows below
them.

"Mr. Hardwicke," he said, "you've been very good to me. Do you think it
was my fault?"

"Do I think what was your fault?"

"_This!_" Archie said--"to-day."

"No--not if I understand it."

"Ray said if he had been there--"

"I wish he had been. But we must not expect old heads on young
shoulders. How did it happen?"

"We climbed up on the wall, and she was saying how narrow and broken it
was, and I picked some of that stuff and called to her, and as she
looked back--"

Hardwicke groaned. "It was madly imprudent," he said. "But I don't blame
you. You didn't think. Poor fellow! I only hope you won't think too much
in future. Come, it's time for bed."

"I don't want to sleep," Archie answered: "I can't sleep."

"Very well," said Hardwicke. "But I must try and get a little rest. They
had only one room for us, so if you can't sleep you'll keep quiet and
let a fellow see what he can do in that line. And you may call me in the
morning if I don't wake. But don't worry yourself, for I shall."

"What time?" said Carroll.

"Oh, from five to six--not later than six."

But in half an hour it was Carroll who lay worn out and sleeping
soundly, and Hardwicke who was counting the slow minutes of that
intolerable night.

Sarah had been indignant that Dr. Grey should tell her not to cry. But
when Sissy looked up with a gentle smile of recognition, and instead of
calling her by her name said "Nurse," as she used to say in old times,
the good woman was very near it indeed, and was obliged to go away to
the window to try to swallow the lump that rose up in her throat and
almost choked her.

Mrs. Middleton sat by her darling's bedside. She had placed the little
work-case in full view, and presently Sissy noticed it and would have it
opened. The half-finished strip of embroidery was laid within easy reach
of hand and eye. She smiled, but was not satisfied. "The case," she
said. Her fingers strayed feebly among the little odds and ends which it
contained, and closed over something which she kept.

Then there was a long silence, unbroken till Sissy was thirsty and
wanted something to drink. "What time?" she said when she had finished.

"Half-past twelve."

"It's very dark."

"We will have another candle," said Aunt Harriet.

"No: the candle only makes me see how dark it is all round."

Again there was silence, but not so long this time. And again Sissy
broke it: "Aunt Harriet, he is coming now."

"Yes, darling, he is coming."

"I feel as if I saw the train, with red lights in front, coming through
the night--always coming, but never any nearer."

"But it _is_ nearer every minute. Percival is nearer now than when you
spoke."

Sissy said "Yes," and was quiet again till between one and two. Then
Mrs. Middleton perceived that her eyes were open. "What is it, dear
child?" she said.

"The night is so long!"

"Sissy," said Aunt Harriet softly, "I want you to listen to me. A year
ago, when Godfrey died and I talked about the money that I hoped to
leave you one day, you told me what you should like me to do with it
instead, because you had enough and you thought it was not fair. I
didn't quite understand then, and I would not promise. Do you remember?"

"Yes."

"Sissy, shall I promise now? I've been thinking about it, and I've no
wish on earth but to make you happy. Will it make you happier if I
promise now that it shall be as you said?"

"Yes," said Sissy with eager eyes.

"Then I do promise: all that is mine to leave he shall have."

Sissy answered with a smile. "Kiss me," she said. And so the promise was
sealed. After that the worst of the night seemed somehow to be over.
Sissy slept a little, and Aunt Harriet nodded once or twice in the
easy-chair. Starting into wakefulness after one of these moments, she
saw the outline of the window faintly defined in gray, and thanked God
that the dawn had come.




CHAPTER LI.

BY THE EXPRESS.


Mr. Hardwicke, not knowing Percival Thorne's precise address, had
telegraphed to Godfrey Hammond, begging him to forward the message
without delay. A couple of days earlier Hammond had suddenly taken it
into his head that he was tired of being in town and would go away
somewhere. In a sort of whimsical amusement at his own mood he decided
that the Land's End ought to suit a misanthrope, and promptly took a
ticket for Penzance as a considerable step in the right direction.

It made no difference to Percival, for Hammond had left full directions
with a trustworthy servant in case any letters should come for Mr.
Thorne, and the man sent the message on to Brenthill at once. But it
made a difference to Hammond himself. When Hardwicke despatched the
telegram to his address in town Godfrey lay on the turf at the Lizard
Head, gazing southward across the sunlit sea, while the seabirds
screamed and the white waves broke on the jagged rocks far below.

But with Percival there was no delay. The message found him in Bellevue
street, though he did not return there immediately after his parting
with Judith. He wanted the open air, the sky overhead, movement and
liberty to calm the joyful tumult in heart and brain. He hastened to the
nearest point whence he could look over trees and fields. The prospect
was not very beautiful. The trees were few--some cropped willows by a
mud-banked rivulet and a group or two of gaunt and melancholy elms. And
the fields had a trodden, suburban aspect, which made it hardly needful
to stick up boards describing them as eligible building-ground. Yet
there was grass, such as it was, and daisies sprinkled here and there,
and soft cloud-shadows gliding over it. Percival's unreal and fantastic
dream had perished suddenly when Judith put her hand in his. Now, as he
walked across these meadows, he saw a new vision, that dream of noble,
simple poverty, which, if it could but be realized, would be the fairest
of all.

When he returned from his walk, and came once more to the well-known
street which he was learning to call "home," he was so much calmer that
he thought he was quite himself again. Not the languid, hopeless self
who had lived there once, but a self young, vigorous, elate, rejoicing
in the present and looking confidently toward the future.

  This I can tell,
  That all will go well,

was the keynote of his mood. He felt as if he trod on air--as if he had
but to walk boldly forward and every obstacle must give way. The door of
No. 13 was open, and a boy who had brought a telegram was turning away
from it. Hurrying in with eager eyes and his face bright with unspoken
joy, Percival nearly ran up against Mrs. Bryant and Emma, whose heads
were close together over the address on the envelope.

"Lor! Mr. Thorne, how you startled me! It's for you," said his landlady.

He went up the stairs two at a time, with his message in his hand. Here
was some good news--not for one moment did he dream it could be other
than good news--come to crown this day, already the whitest of his life.
He tore the paper open and read it by the red sunset light, hotly
reflected from a wilderness of tiles.

He read it twice--thrice--caught at the window-frame to steady himself,
and stood staring vaguely at the smoke which curled upward from a
neighboring chimney. He was stunned. The words seemed to have a meaning
and no meaning. "This is not how people receive news of death, surely?"
he thought. "I suppose I am in my right senses, or is it a dream?"

He made a strong effort to regain his self-command, but all certainties
eluded him. This was not the first time that he had taken up a telegram
and believed that he read the tidings of Sissy's death. He had
misunderstood it now as then. It could not be. But why could he not
wake?

"Ashendale." Yes, he remembered Ashendale. He had ridden past the ruins
the last day he ever rode with Sissy, the day that Horace came home. It
belonged to the Latimers--to Walter Latimer. And Sissy was dying at
Ashendale!

All at once he knew that it was no dream. But the keen edge of pain
awoke him to the thought of what he had to do, and sent him to hunt
among a heap of papers for a time-table. He drew a long breath. The
express started at 10.5, and it was now but twenty minutes past eight.

He caught up his hat and hurried to the office. Mr. Ferguson, who seldom
left much before that time, was on the doorstep. While he was getting
into his dog-cart Percival hastily explained that he had been summoned
on a matter of life and death. "Sorry to hear it," said the lawyer as he
took the reins--"hope you may find things better than you expect. We
shall see you again when you come back." And with a nod he rattled down
the street. Percival stood on the pavement gazing after him, when he
suddenly remembered that he had no money. "I might have asked him to
give me my half week's salary," he reflected. "Not that that would have
paid my fare."

A matter of life and death! Sissy waiting for him at Ashendale, and no
money to pay for a railway-ticket! It would have been absurd if it had
not been horrible. What had he to sell or pawn? By the time he could go
to Bellevue street and return would not the shops be shut? It was a
quarter to nine already. He did not even know where any pawnbroker
lived, nor what he could take to him, and the time was terribly short.
He was hurrying homeward while these thoughts passed through his mind
when Judith's words came back to him: "I have a pound or two to spare,
and I feel quite rich." He took the first turning toward Miss
Macgregor's house.

Outside her door he halted for a moment. If they would not let him see
Judith, how was he to convey his request? He felt in his pocket, found
the telegram and pencilled below the message, "Sissy Langton was once to
have been my wife: we parted, and I have never seen her since. I have
not money enough for my railway-fare: can you help me?" He folded it
and rang the bell.

No, he could not see Miss Lisle. She was particularly engaged. "Very
well," he said: "be so good as to take this note to her, and I will wait
for the answer." His manner impressed the girl so much that, although
she had been carefully trained by Miss Macgregor, she cast but one
hesitating glance at the umbrella-stand before she went on her errand.

Percival waited, eager to be off, yet well assured that it was all right
since it was in Judith's hands. Presently the servant returned and gave
him a little packet. The wax of the seal was still warm. He opened it
where he stood, and by the light of Miss Macgregor's hall-lamp read the
couple of lines it contained:

     "I cannot come, but I send you all the money I have. I pray God you
     may be in time. Yours, JUDITH."

There were two sovereigns and some silver. He told the girl to thank
Miss Lisle, and went out into the dusk as the clocks were striking nine.
Ten minutes brought him to Bellevue street, and rushing up to his room
he began to put a few things into a little travelling-bag. In his haste
he neglected to shut the door, and Mrs. Bryant, whose curiosity had been
excited, came upon him in the midst of this occupation.

"And what may be the meaning of this, Mr. Thorne, if I may make so bold
as to ask?" she said, eying him doubtfully from the doorway.

Percival explained that he had had bad news and was off by the express.

Mrs. Bryant's darkest suspicions were aroused. She said it was a likely
story.

"Why, you gave me the telegram yourself," he answered indifferently
while he caught up a couple of collars. He was too much absorbed to heed
either Mrs. Bryant or his packing.

"And who sent it, I should like to know?"

Percival made no answer, and she began to grumble about people who had
money enough to travel all over the country at a minute's notice if they
liked, and none to pay their debts--people who made promises by the
hour together, and then sneaked off, leaving boxes with nothing inside
them, she'd be bound.

Thus baited, Percival at last turned angrily upon her, but before he
could utter a word another voice interposed: "What are you always
worrying about, ma? Do come down and have your supper, and let Mr.
Thorne finish his packing. He'll pay you every halfpenny he owes you:
don't you know that?" And the door was shut with such decision that it
was a miracle that Mrs. Bryant was not dashed against the opposite wall.
"Come along," said Lydia: "there's toasted cheese."

Percival ran down stairs five minutes later with his bag in his hand. He
turned into his sitting-room, picked up a few papers and thrust them
into his desk. He was in the act of locking it when he heard a step
behind him, and looking round he saw Lydia. She had a cup of tea and
some bread and butter, which she set down before him. "You haven't had a
morsel since the middle of the day," she said. "Just you drink this. Oh,
you must: there's lots of time."

"Miss Bryant, this is very kind of you, but I don't think--"

"Just you drink it," said Lydia, "and eat a bit too, or you'll be good
for nothing." And while Percival hastily obeyed she glanced round the
room: "Nobody'll meddle with your things while you're gone: don't you
trouble yourself."

"Oh, I didn't suspect that any one would," he replied, hardly thinking
whether it was likely or not as he swallowed the bread and butter.

"Well, that was very nice of you, I'm sure, _I_ should have suspected a
lot if I'd been you," said Lydia candidly. "But nobody shall. Now, you
aren't going to leave that tea? Why, it wants twenty minutes to ten, and
not six minutes' walk to the station!"

Percival finished the tea: "Thank you very much, Miss Bryant."

"And I say," Lydia pursued, pulling her curl with less than her usual
consideration for its beauty, "I suppose you _have_ got money enough?
Because if not, I'll lend you a little. Don't you mind what ma says, Mr.
Thorne. I know you're all right."

"You are very good," said Percival. "I didn't expect so much kindness,
and I've been borrowing already, so I needn't trouble you. But thank you
for your confidence in me and for your thoughtfulness." He held out his
hand to Lydia, and thus bade farewell to Bellevue street.

She stood for a moment looking after him. Only a few hours before she
would have rejoiced in any small trouble or difficulty which might have
befallen Mr. Thorne. But when he turned round upon her mother and
herself as they stood at his door, her spite had vanished before the
sorrowful anxiety of his eyes. She had frequently declared that Mr.
Thorne was no gentleman, and that she despised him, but she knew in her
heart that he _was_ a gentleman, and she was ashamed of her mother's
behavior. Lydia was capable of being magnanimous, provided the object of
her magnanimity were a man. I doubt if she could have been magnanimous
to a woman. But Percival Thorne was a young and handsome man, and though
she did not know what his errand might be, she knew that she was not
sending him to Miss Lisle. Standing before his glass, she smoothed back
her hair with both hands, arranged the ribbon at her throat and admired
the blue earrings and a large locket which she wore suspended from a
chain. Even while she thought kindly of Mr. Thorne, and wished him well,
she was examining her complexion and her hands with the eye of a critic.
"I don't believe that last stuff is a mite of good," she said to
herself; "and it's no end of bother. I might as well pitch the bottle
out of the window. It was just as well that he'd borrowed the money of
some one else, but I'm glad I offered it. I wonder when he'll come
back?" And with that Lydia returned to her toasted cheese.

Percival had had a nervous fear of some hinderance on his way to the
station. It was so urgent that he should go by this train that the
necessity oppressed him like a nightmare. An earthquake seemed a not
improbable thing. He was seriously afraid that he might lose his way
during the five minutes' walk through familiar streets. He imagined an
error of half an hour or so in all the Brenthill clocks. He hardly knew
what he expected, but he felt it a relief when he came to the station
and found it standing in its right place, quietly awaiting him. He was
the first to take a ticket, and the moment the train drew up by the
platform his hand was on the door of a carriage, though before getting
in he stopped a porter to inquire if this were the express. The porter
answered "Yes, sir--all right," with the half smile of superior
certainty: what else could it be? Thorne took his place and waited a few
minutes, which seemed an eternity. Then the engine screamed, throbbed,
and with quickening speed rushed out into the night.

A man was asleep in one corner of the carriage, otherwise Percival was
alone. His nervous anxiety subsided, since nothing further depended upon
him till he reached town, and he sat thinking of Sissy and of that brief
engagement which had already receded into a shadowy past. "It was a
mistake," he mused, "and she found it out before it was too late. But I
believe her poor little heart has been aching for me, lest she wounded
me too cruelly that night. It wasn't her fault. She would have hid her
fear of me, poor child! if she had been able. And she was so sorry for
me in my trouble! I don't think she could be content to go on her way
and take her happiness now while my life was spoilt and miserable. Poor
little Sissy! she will be glad to know--"

And then he remembered that it was to a dying Sissy that the tidings
of marriage and hope must be uttered, if uttered at all. And he sat
as it were in a dull dream, trying to realize how the life which
in the depths of his poverty had seemed so beautiful and safe was
suddenly cut short, and how Sissy at that moment lay in the darkness,
waiting--waiting--waiting. The noise of the train took up his thought,
and set it to a monotonous repetition of "Waiting at Ashendale! waiting
at Ashendale!" If only she might live till he could reach her! He seemed
to be hurrying onward, yet no nearer. His overwrought brain caught up
the fancy that Death and he were side by side, racing together through
the dark, at breathless, headlong speed, to Sissy, where she waited for
them both.

Outside, the landscape lay dim and small, dwarfed by the presence of the
night. And with the lights burning on its breast, as Sissy saw them in
her half-waking visions, the express rushed southward across the level
blackness of the land, beneath the arch of midnight sky.




CHAPTER LII.

     Quand on a trouve ce qu'on cherchait, on n'a pas le temps de le
     dire: il faut mourir.--J. JOUBERT.


When the gray of the early morning had changed to golden sunlight, and
the first faint twittering of the birds gave place to fuller melody,
Mrs. Middleton went softly to the window, opened it and fastened it
back. She drew a long breath of the warm air fresh from the beanfields,
and, looking down into the little orchard below, saw Harry Hardwicke,
who stepped forward and looked up at her. She signed to him to wait, and
a couple of minutes later she joined him.

"How is she? How has she passed the night?" he asked eagerly.

"She is no worse. She has lived through it bravely, with one thought.
You were very right to send for Percival."

Hardwicke looked down and colored as he had colored when he spoke of him
before. "I'm glad," he said. "I'm off to fetch him in about an hour and
a half."

"Nothing from Godfrey Hammond?" she asked after a pause.

"No. I'll ask at my father's as I go by. He will either come or we shall
hear, unless he is out."

"Of course," the old lady answered. "Godfrey Hammond would not fail me.
And now good-bye, Harry, till you bring Percival."

She went away as swiftly and lightly as she had come a minute before,
and left Hardwicke standing on the turf under the apple trees gazing up
at the open casement. A June morning, sun shining, soft winds blowing, a
young lover under his lady's window: it should have been a perfect poem.
And the lady within lay crushed and maimed, dying in the very heart of
her June!

Hardwicke let himself out through the little wicket-gate, and went back
to the Latimer Arms. He entered the bedroom without disturbing Archie,
who lay with his sunburnt face on the white pillow, smiling in his
sleep. He could not find it in his heart to arouse him. The boy's lips
parted, he murmured a word or two, and seemed to sink into a yet deeper
slumber. Hardwicke went softly out, gave the landlady directions about
breakfast, and returned, watch in hand. "I suppose I must," he said to
himself.

But he stopped short. Carroll stirred, stretched himself, his eyes were
half open: evidently his waking was a pleasant one. But suddenly the
unfamiliar aspect of the room attracted his attention: he looked eagerly
round, a shadow swept across his face, and he turned and saw Hardwicke.
"It's true!" he said, and flung out his arms in a paroxysm of despair.

Harry walked to the window and leant out. Presently a voice behind him
asked, "Have you been to the farm, Mr. Hardwicke?"

"Yes," said Harry. "But there is no news. She passed a tolerably quiet
night: there is no change."

"I've been asleep," said Archie after a pause. "I never thought I should
sleep." He looked ashamed of having done so.

"It would have been strange if you hadn't: you were worn out."

"My watch has run down," the other continued. "What is the time?"

"Twenty minutes past seven. I want to speak to you, Carroll. I think you
had better go home."

"Home? To Fordborough? To Raymond?"

"No. Really home, to your own people. You can write to your cousin. You
don't want to go back to him?"

Archie shook his head. Then a sudden sense of injustice to Fothergill
prompted him to say, "Ray was never hard on me before."

"You mustn't think about that," Hardwicke replied. "People don't weigh
their words at such times. But, Carroll, you can do nothing here--less
than nothing. You'll be better away. Give me your address, and I'll
write any news there is. Look sharp now, and you can go into Fordborough
with me and catch the up train."

As they drove through the green lanes, along which they had passed the
day before, Archie looked right and left, recalling the incidents of
that earlier drive. Already he was better, possessing his sorrow with
greater keenness and fulness than at first, but not so miserably
possessed by it. Hardly a word was spoken till they stood on the
platform and a far-off puff of white showed the coming train. Then he
said, "I shall never forget your kindness, Mr. Hardwicke. If ever
there's anything I can do--"

"You'll do it," said Harry with a smile.

"That I will! And you'll write?"

Hardwicke answered "Yes." He knew too well _what_ it was he promised to
write to say a word more.

It was a relief to him when Carroll was gone and he could pace the
platform and watch for the London train. He looked through the open
doorway, and saw his dog-cart waiting in the road and the horse tossing
his head impatiently in the sunshine. Through all his anxiety--or rather
side by side with his anxiety--he was conscious of a current of interest
in all manner of trivial things. He thought of the price he had given
for the horse five months before, and of Latimer's opinion of his
bargain. He noticed the station-master in the distance, and remembered
that some one had said he drank. He watched a row of small birds sitting
on the telegraph-wires just outside the station, and all at once the
London train came gliding rapidly and unexpectedly out of the cutting
close by, and was there.

A hurried rush along the line of carriages, with his heart sinking lower
at every step, a despairing glance round, and he perceived the man he
came to meet walking off at the farther end of the platform. He came up
with him as he stopped to speak to a porter.

"Ah! I am in time, then?" said Percival when he looked round in reply to
Hardwicke's hurried greeting.

"Yes, thank God! I promised to drive you over to Ashendale at once."

Percival nodded, and took his place without a word. Not till they were
fairly started on their journey did he turn to his companion. "How did
it happen?" he asked.

Hardwicke gave him a brief account of the accident. He listened eagerly,
and then, just saying "It's very dreadful," he was silent again. But it
was the silence of a man intent on his errand, leaning slightly forward
as if drawn by a powerful attraction, and with eyes fixed on the point
where he would first see the ruins of Ashendale Priory above the trees.
Hardwicke did not venture to speak to him. As the man whom Sissy Langton
loved, Percival Thorne was to him the first of men, but, considered from
Hardwicke's own point of view, he was a fellow with whom he had little
or nothing in common--a man who quoted poetry and saw all manner of
things in pictures and ruins, who went out of his way to think about
politics, and was neither Conservative nor Radical when all was done--a
man who rather disliked dogs and took no interest in horses. Hardwicke
did not want to speak about dogs, horses or politics then, but the
consciousness of their want of sympathy was in his mind.

As they drove through the village they caught a passing glimpse of a
brougham. "Ha! Brackenhill," said Thorne, looking after it. They dashed
round a corner and pulled up in front of the farmhouse. Hardwicke took
no pains to spare the noise of their arrival. He knew very well that the
sound of wheels would be music to Sissy's ears.

A tall, slim figure, which even on that June morning had the air of
being wrapped up, passed and repassed in the hall within. As the two
young men came up the path Horace appeared in the porch. Even at that
moment the change which a year had wrought in him startled Percival. He
was a mere shadow. He had looked ill before, but now he looked as if he
were dying.

[Illustration: "SEE HERE, SISSY," SAID PERCIVAL, "WE ARE FRIENDS."--Page
698.]

"She will not see me," he said to Hardwicke. His voice was that of a
confirmed invalid, a mixture of complaint and helplessness. He ignored
his cousin.

"She will see you now that Percival has come," said Mrs. Middleton,
advancing from the background. "She will see you together."

And she led the way. Horace went in second, and Percival last, yet he
was the first to meet the gaze of those waiting eyes. The young men
stood side by side, looking down at the delicate face on the pillow. It
was pale, and seemed smaller than usual in the midst of the loosened
waves of hair. On one side of the forehead there was a dark mark, half
wound, half bruise--a mere nothing but for its terrible suggestiveness.
But the clear eyes and the gentle little mouth were unchanged. Horace
said "Oh, Sissy!" and Sissy said "Percival." He could not speak, but
stooped and kissed the little hand which lay passively on the coverlet.

"Whisper," said Sissy. He bent over her. "Have you forgiven him?" she
asked.

"Yes." The mere thought of enmity was horrible to him as he looked into
Sissy's eyes with that spectral Horace by his side.

"Are you sure? Quite?"

"Before God and you, Sissy."

"Tell him so, Percival."

He stood up and turned to his cousin. "Horace!" he said, and held out
his hand. The other put a thin hot hand into it.--"See here, Sissy,"
said Percival, "we are friends."

"Yes, we're friends," Horace repeated. "Has it vexed you, Sissy? I
thought you didn't care about me. I'm sorry, dear--I'm very sorry."

Aunt Harriet, standing by, laid her hand on his arm. She had held aloof
for that long year, feeling that he was in the wrong. He had not acted
as a Thorne should, and he could never be the same to her as in old
days. But she had wanted her boy, nevertheless, right or wrong, and
since Percival had pardoned him, and since it was partly Godfrey's
hardness that had driven him into deceit, and since he was so ill, and
since--and since--she loved him, she drew his head down to her and
kissed him. Horace was weak, and he had to turn his face away and wipe
his eyes. But, relinquishing Percival's hand, he held Aunt Harriet's.

Percival stooped again, in obedience to a sign from Sissy. "Ask him to
forgive me," she said.

"He knows nothing, dear."

"Ask him for me."

"Horace," said Percival, "Sissy wants your forgiveness."

"I've nothing to forgive," said Horace. "It is I who ought to ask to be
forgiven. It was hard on me when first you came to Brackenhill, Percy,
but it has been harder on you since. I hardly know what I said or did on
that day: I thought you'd been plotting against me."

"No, no," said Sissy--"not he."

"No, but I did think so.--Since then I've felt that, anyhow, it was not
fair. I suppose I was too proud to say so, or hardly knew how,
especially as the wrong is past mending. But I do ask your pardon now."

"You have it," said Percival. "We didn't understand each other very
well."

"But I never blamed you, Sissy--never, for one moment. I wasn't so bad
as that. I've watched for you now and then in Fordborough streets, just
to get a glimpse as you went by. I thought it was you who would never
forgive me, because of Percival."

"He has forgiven," said Sissy. But her eyes still sought Percival's.

"Look here, Horace," he said. "There was a misunderstanding you knew
nothing of, and Sissy feels that she might have cleared it up. It _was_
cleared up at last, but I think it altered my grandfather's manner to
you for a time. If you wish to know the whole I will tell you. But since
it is all over and done with, and did not really do you any harm, if you
like best"--he looked steadily at Horace--"that we should forgive and
forget on both sides, we will bury the past here to-day."

"Yes, yes," said Horace. "Sissy may have made a mistake, but she never
meant me any harm, I know."

"Don't! don't! Oh, Horace, I did, but I am sorry."

"God knows I forgive you, whatever it was," he said.

"Kiss me, Horace."

He stooped and kissed her, as he had kissed her many a time when she was
his little pet and playmate. She kissed him back again, and smiled:
"Good-bye, Horry!"

Mrs. Middleton interposed. "This will be too much for her," she
said.--"Percival, she wants you, I see: be careful." And she drew Horace
gently away.

Percival sat down by the bedside. Presently Sarah came in and went to
the farther end of the room, waiting in case she should be wanted. Sissy
was going to speak once, but Percival stopped her: "Lie still a little
while, dear: I'm not going away."

She lay still, looking up at this Percival for whom she had watched and
waited through the dreary night, and who had come to her with the
morning. And he, as he sat by her side, was thinking how at that time
the day before he was in the office at Brenthill. He could hardly
believe that less than twenty-four hours had given him the assurance of
Judith's love and brought him to Sissy's deathbed. He was in a strangely
exalted state of mind. His face was calm as if cast in bronze, but a
crowd of thoughts and feelings contended for the mastery beneath it. He
had eaten nothing since the night before, and had not slept, but his
excitement sustained him.

He met Sissy's eyes and smiled tenderly. How was it that he had
frightened her in old days? Could he ever have been cruel to one so
delicate and clinging? Yet he must have been, since he had driven away
her love. She was afraid of him: she had begged to be free. Well, the
past was past, but at least no word nor look of his should frighten or
grieve the poor child now.

After a time she spoke: "You have worked too hard. Isn't it that you
wanted to do something great?"

"That isn't at all likely," said Percival with a melancholy smile. "I'm
all right, Sissy."

"No, you are pale. You wanted to surprise us. Oh, I guessed! Godfrey
Hammond didn't tell me. I should have been glad if I could have waited
to see it."

"Don't talk so," he entreated. "There will be nothing to see."

"You mustn't work too hard--promise," she whispered.

"No, dear, I won't."

"Percival, will you be good to me?"

"If I can I will indeed. What can I do?"

"I want you to have my money. It is my own, and I have nobody." Sissy
remembered the terrible mistake she had once made, and wanted an
assurance from his own lips that her gift was accepted.

Percival hesitated for a moment, and even the moment's hesitation
alarmed her. It was true, as she said, that she had nobody, and her
words opened a golden gateway before Judith and himself. Should he tell
her of that double joy and double gratitude? He believed that she would
be glad, but it seemed selfish and horrible to talk of love and marriage
by that bedside. "I wish you might live to need it all yourself, dear,"
he answered, and laid his hand softly on hers. The strip of embroidery
caught his eye. "What's this?" he said in blank surprise. "And your
thimble! Sissy, you mustn't bother yourself about this work now." He
would have drawn it gently away.

The fingers closed on it suddenly, and the weak voice panted: "No,
Percival. It's mine. That was before we were engaged: you spoilt my
other."

"O God!" he said. In a moment all came back to him. He remembered the
summer day at Brackenhill--Sissy and he upon the terrace--the work-box
upset and the thimble crushed beneath his foot. He remembered her pretty
reproaches and their laughter over her enforced idleness. He remembered
how he rode into Fordborough and bought that little gold thimble--the
first present he ever made her. All his gifts during their brief
engagement had been scrupulously returned, but this, as she had said,
was given before. And she was dying with it in her hand! She had loved
him from first to last.

"Percival, you will take my money?" she pleaded, fearing some
incomprehensible scruple.

"For God's sake, Sissy! I must think a moment." He buried his face in
his hands.

"Oh, you are cruel!" she whispered.

How could he think? Sissy loved him--had always loved him. It was all
plain to him now. He had been blind, and he had come back to find out
the truth the day after he had pledged himself to Judith Lisle!

"Don't be unkind to me, Percival: I can't bear it, dear."

How could he stab her to the heart by a refusal of that which he so
sorely needed? How could he tell her of his engagement? How could he
keep silence, and take her money to spend it with Judith?

"Say 'Yes,' Percival. It is mine. Why not? why not?"

He spoke through his clasped hands: "One moment more."

"I shall never ask you anything again," she whispered. "Oh, Percival, be
good to me!"

He raised his head and looked earnestly at her. He must be true, happen
what might.

"Sissy, God knows I thank you for your goodness. I sha'n't forget it,
living or dying. If only you might be spared--"

"No, no. Say 'Yes,' Percival."

"I will say 'Yes' if, when I have done, you wish it still. But it must
be 'Yes' for some one besides myself. Dear, don't give it to me to make
amends in any way. You have not wronged me, Sissy. Don't give it to me,
dear, unless you give it to Judith Lisle."

As he spoke he looked into her eyes. Their sweet entreaty gave place to
a flash of pained reproach, as if they said "So soon?" Then the light in
them wavered and went out. Percival sprang up. "Help! she has fainted!"

Sarah hurried from her post by the window, and the sound of quick
footsteps brought back Mrs. Middleton. The young man stood aside,
dismayed. "She isn't dead?" he said in a low voice.

Aunt Harriet did not heed him. A horrible moment passed, during which he
felt himself a murderer. Then Sissy moaned and turned her face a little
to the wall.

"Go now: she cannot speak to you," said Mrs. Middleton.

"I can't. Only one more word!"

"What do you mean? What have you done? You may wait outside, and I will
call you. She cannot bear any more now: do you want to kill her
outright?"

He went. There was a wide window-seat in the passage, and he dropped
down upon it, utterly worn out and wretched. "What have I done?" he
asked himself. "What made me do it? She loved me, and I have been a
brute to her. If I had been a devil, could I have tortured her more?"

Presently Mrs. Middleton came to him: "She cannot see you now, but she
is better."

He looked up at her as he sat: "Aunt Harriet, I meant it for the best.
Say what you like: I was a brute, I suppose, but I thought I was doing
right."

"What do you mean?" Her tone was gentler: she detected the misery in
his.

Percival took her hand and laid it on his forehead. "You can't think I
meant to be cruel to our Sissy," he said. "You will let me speak to
her?"

She softly pushed back his hair. After all, he was the man Sissy loved.
"What was it?" she asked: "what did you do?"

He looked down. "I'm going to marry Miss Lisle," he said.

She started away from him: "You told her that? God forgive you,
Percival!"

"I should have been a liar if I hadn't."

"Couldn't you let her die in peace? It is such a little while! Couldn't
you have waited till she was in her grave?"

"Will she see me? Just one word, Aunt Harriet." And yet while he pleaded
he did not know what the one word was that he would say. Only he felt
that he must see her once more.

"Not now," said Mrs. Middleton. "My poor darling shall not be tortured
any more. Later, if she wishes it, but not now. She could not bear it."

"But you will ask her to see me later?" he entreated. "I must see her."

"What is she to you? She is all the world to me, and she shall be left
in peace. It is all that I can do for her now. You have been cruel to
her always--always. She has been breaking her heart for you: she lived
through last night with the hope of your coming. Oh, Percival, God knows
I wish we had never called you away from Miss Lisle!"

"Don't say that."

"Go back to her," said Aunt Harriet, "and leave my darling to me. We
were happy at Brackenhill till you came there."

He sprang to his feet: "Aunt Harriet! have some mercy! You know I would
die if it could make Sissy any happier."

"And Miss Lisle?" she said.

He turned away with a groan, and, leaning against the wall, put his hand
over his eyes. Mrs. Middleton hesitated a moment, but her haste to
return to Sissy triumphed over any relenting feelings, and she left him,
pausing only at the door to make sure of her calmness.

Noon came and passed. Sissy had spoken once to bid them take the
needlework away. "I've done with it," she said. Otherwise she was
silent, and only looked at them with gentle, apathetic eyes when they
spoke to her. Dr. Grey came and went again. On his way out he noticed
Percival, looked keenly at him, but said nothing.

Henry Hardwicke's desire to be useful had prompted him to station
himself on the road a short distance from the farm, at the turning from
the village. There he stopped people coming to inquire, and gave the
latest intelligence. It was weary work, lounging there by the wayside,
but he hoped he was serving Sissy Langton to the last. He could not even
have a cigar to help to pass the time, for he had an idea that Mrs.
Middleton disliked the smell of smoke. He stared at the trees and the
sky, drew letters in the dust with the end of a stick, stirred up a
small ants' nest, examined the structure of a dog-rose or two and some
buttercups, and compared the flavors of different kinds of leaves. He
came forward as Dr. Grey went by. The doctor stopped to tell him that
Miss Langton was certainly weaker. "But she may linger some hours yet,"
he added; and he was going on his way when a thought seemed to strike
him. "Are you staying at the farm?" he asked.

"No: they've enough without me. I'm at the little public-house close
by."

"Going there for some luncheon?"

Hardwicke supposed so.

"Can't you get young Thorne to go with you? He looks utterly exhausted."

Hardwicke went off on his mission, but he could not persuade him to
stir. "All right!" he said at last: "then I shall bring you something to
eat here." Percival agreed to that compromise, and owned afterward that
he felt better for the food he had taken.

The slow hours of the afternoon went wearily by. The rector of
Fordborough came; Dr. Grey came again; Mrs. Latimer passed two or three
times. The sky began to grow red toward the west once more, and the
cawing rooks flew homeward, past the window where Percival sat waiting
vainly for the summons which did not come.

Hardwicke, released from his self-imposed duty, came to see if Percival
would go with him for half an hour or so to the Latimer Arms. "I've got
a kind of tea-dinner," he said--"chops and that sort of thing. You'd
better have some." But it was of no use. So when he came back to the
house the good-natured fellow brought some more provisions, and begged
Lucy Greenwell to make some tea, which he carried up.

"Where are you going to spend the night?" asked Harry, coming up again
when he had taken away the cup and plate.

"Here," said Percival. He sat with his hands clasped behind his head and
one leg drawn up on the seat. His face was sharply defined against the
square of sunset sky.

Hardwicke stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at him. "But
you can't sleep here," he said.

"That doesn't matter much. Sleeping or waking, here I stay."

A sudden hope flashed in his eyes, for the door of Sissy's room opened,
and, closing it behind her, Mrs. Middleton came out and looked up and
down the passage. But she called "Harry" in a low voice, and Percival
leant back again.

Harry went. Mrs. Middleton had moved a little farther away, and stood
with her back toward Percival and one hand pressed against the wall to
steady herself. Her first question was an unexpected one: "Isn't the
wind getting up?" Her eyes were frightened and her voice betrayed her
anxiety.

"I don't know--not much, I think." He was taken by surprise, and
hesitated a little.

"It is: tell me the truth."

"I am--I will," he stammered. "I haven't thought about it. There is a
pleasant little breeze, such as often comes in the evening. I don't
really think there's any more."

"It isn't rising, then?"

"Wait a minute," said Hardwicke, and hurried off. He did not in the
least understand his errand, but it was enough for him that Mrs.
Middleton wanted to know. If she had asked him the depth of water in the
well or the number of trees on the Priory farm, he would have rushed
away with the same eagerness to satisfy her. His voice was heard in the
porch, alternating with deeper and less carefully restrained tones. Then
there was a sound of steps on the gravel-path. Presently he came back.
Mrs. Middleton's attitude was unchanged, except that she had drawn a
little closer to the wall. But though she had never looked over her
shoulder, she was uneasily conscious of the young man half sitting, half
lying in the window-seat behind her.

"Greenwell says it won't be anything," Hardwicke announced. "The glass
has been slowly going up all day yesterday and to-day, and it is rising
still. He believes we have got a real change in the weather, and that it
will keep fine for some time."

"Thank God!" said Mrs. Middleton. "Do you think I'm very mad?"

"Not I," Harry answered in a "theirs-not-to-reason-why" manner.

"A week or two ago," she said, "my poor darling was talking about dying,
as you young folks will talk, and she said she hoped she should not die
in the night, when the wind was howling round the house. A bitter winter
night would be worst of all, she said. It won't be _that_ but I fancied
the wind was getting up, and it frightened me to think how one would
hear it moaning in this old place. It is only a fancy, of course, but
she might have thought of it again lying there."

Hardwicke could not have put it into words, but the fancy came to him
too of Sissy's soul flying out into the windy waste of air.

"Of course it is nothing--it is nonsense," said Mrs. Middleton. "But if
it might be, as she said, when it is warm and light!--if it might be!"
She stopped with a catching in her voice.

Harry, in his matter-of-fact way, offered consolation: "Dear Mrs.
Middleton, the sun will rise by four, and Greenwell says there won't be
any wind."

"Yes, yes! And she may not remember."

"I hope you have been taking some rest," he ventured to say after a
brief silence.

"Yes. I was lying down this afternoon, and Sarah will take part of the
night." She paused, and spoke again in a still lower tone: "Couldn't you
persuade him to go away?"

"Mr. Thorne?"

She nodded: "I will not have her troubled. I asked her if she would see
him again, and she said, 'No.' I wish he would go. What is the use of
his waiting there?"

Hardwicke shrugged his shoulders: "It is useless for me to try and
persuade him. He won't stir for me."

"I would send for him if she wanted him. But she won't."

"I'll speak to him again if you like," said Harry, "though it won't do
any good."

Nor did it when a few minutes later the promised attempt was made. "I
shall stay here," said Percival in a tone which conveyed unconquerable
decision, and Hardwicke was silenced. The Greenwells came later,
regretting that they had not a room to offer Mr. Thorne, but suggesting
the sofa in the parlor or a mattress on the floor somewhere. Percival,
however, declined everything with such courteous resolution that at last
he was left alone.

Again the night came on, with its shadows and its stillness, and the
light burning steadily in the one room. To all outward seeming it was
the same as it had been twenty-four hours earlier, but Mrs. Middleton,
watching by the bedside, was conscious of a difference. Life was at a
lower ebb: there was less eagerness and unrest, less of hope and fear,
more of a drowsy acquiescence. And Percival, who had been longed for so
wearily the night before, seemed to be altogether forgotten.

Meanwhile, he kept his weary watch outside. He said to himself that he
had darkened Sissy's last day: he cursed his cruelty, and yet could he
have done otherwise? He was haunted through the long hours of the night
by the words which had been ever on his lips when he won her--

  If she love me, this believe,
  I will die ere she shall grieve;

and he vowed that never was man so forsworn as he. Yet his one desire
had been to be true. Had he not worshipped Truth? And this was the end
of all.

His cruelty, too, had been worse than useless. He had lost this chance
of an independence, as he had lost Brackenhill. He hated himself for
thinking of money then, yet he could not help thinking of it--could not
help being aware that Sissy's entreaty to him to take her fortune was
worth nothing unless a will were made, and that there had been no
mention of such a thing since she spoke to him that morning. And he was
so miserably poor! Of whom should he borrow the money to take him back
to his drudgery at Brenthill? Well, since Sissy no longer cared for his
future, it was well that he had spoken. Better poverty than treachery.
Let the money go; but, oh, to see her once again and ask her to forgive
him!

As the night crept onward he grew drowsy and slept by snatches, lightly
and uneasily, waking with sudden starts to a consciousness of the window
at his side--a loophole into a ghostly sky where shreds of white cloud
were driven swiftly before the breeze. The wan crescent of the moon
gleamed through them from time to time, showing how thin and
phantom-like they were, and how they hurried on their way across the
heavens. After a time the clouds and moon and midnight sky were mingled
with Percival's dreams, and toward morning he fell fast asleep.

Again Aunt Harriet saw the first gray gleam of dawn. Slowly it stole in,
widening and increasing, till the candle-flame, which had been like a
golden star shining out into the June night, was but a smoky yellow
smear on the saffron morning. She rose and put it out. Turning, she
encountered Sissy's eyes. They looked from her to a window at the foot
of the bed. "Open," said Sissy.

Mrs. Middleton obeyed. The sound of unfastening the casement awoke
Sarah, who was resting in an easy-chair. She sat up and looked round.

The breeze had died away, as Harry had foretold it would, and that day
had dawned as gloriously as the two that had preceded it. A lark was
soaring and singing--a mere point in the dome of blue.

Sissy lay and looked a while. Then she said, "Brackenhill?"

Aunt Harriet considered for a moment before she replied: "A little to
the right, my darling."

The dying eyes were turned a little to the right. Seven miles away, yet
the old gray manor-house rose before Aunt Harriet's eyes, warm on its
southern slope, with its shaven lawns and whispering trees and the long
terrace with its old stone balustrade. Perhaps Sissy saw it too.

"Darling, it is warm and light," the old lady said at last.

Sissy smiled. Her eyes wandered from the window. "Aunt, you promised,"
she whispered.

"Yes, dear--yes, I promised."

There was a pause. Suddenly, Sissy spoke, more strongly and clearly than
she had spoken for hours: "Tell Percival--my love to Miss Lisle."

"Fetch him," said Mrs. Middleton to Sarah, with a quick movement of her
hand toward the door. As the old woman crossed the room Sissy looked
after her. In less than a minute Percival came in. His dark hair was
tumbled over his forehead, and his eyes, though passionately eager, were
heavy with sleep. As he came forward Sissy looked up and repeated
faintly, like an echo, "My love to Miss Lisle, Percival." Her glance met
his and welcomed him. But even as he said "Sissy!" her eyes closed, and
when, after a brief interval, they opened again, he was conscious of a
change. He spoke and took her hand, but she did not heed. "She does not
know me!" he said.

Her lips moved, and Aunt Harriet stooped to catch the faint sound. It
was something about "Horry--coming home from school."

Hardly knowing what she said--only longing for one more look, one smile
of recognition, one word--Aunt Harriet spoke in painfully distinct
tones: "My darling, do you want Horace? Shall we send for Horace?"

No answer. There was a long pause, and then the indistinct murmur
recommenced. It was still "Horry," and "Rover," and presently they
thought she said "Langley Wood."

"Horace used to take her there for a treat," said Mrs. Middleton.--"Oh,
Sissy, don't you know Aunt Harriet?"

Still, from time to time, came the vague murmur of words. It was
dark--the trees--she had lost--

Percival stood in silent anguish. There was to him a bitterness worse
than the bitterness of death in the sound of those faint words. Sissy
was before him, yet she had passed away into the years when she did not
know him. He might cry to her, but she would not hear. There was no word
for him: the Sissy who had loved him and pardoned him was dead. This was
the child Sissy with whom Horace had played at Brackenhill.

The long bright morning seemed an eternity of blue sky, softly rustling
leaves, birds singing and golden chequers of sunlight falling on walls
and floor. Dr. Grey came in and stood near. The end was at hand, and yet
delayed. The sun was high before the faint whispers of "Auntie," and
"Horry," ceased altogether, and even then there was an interval during
which Sissy still breathed, still lingered in the borderland between
living and dying. Eagerly though they watched her, they could not tell
the moment when she left them.

It was late that afternoon. Hardwicke lounged with his back against the
gate of the orchard and his hands in his pockets. When he lifted his
eyes from the turf on which he stood he could see the white blankness of
a closed window through the boughs.

He was sorely perplexed. Not ten minutes earlier Mrs. Latimer had been
there, saying, "Something should be done: why does not Mr. Thorne go to
her? Or could Dr. Grey say anything if he were sent for? I'm sure it
isn't right that she should be left so."

Mrs. Middleton was alone with her dead in that darkened room. She was
perfectly calm and tearless. She only demanded to be left to herself.
Mrs. Latimer would have gone in to cry and sympathize, but she was
repulsed with a decision which was almost fierce. Sarah was not to
disturb her. She wanted nothing. She wanted nobody. She must be by
herself. She was terrible in her lonely misery.

Hardwicke felt that it could not be his place to go. Somewhere in the
priory ruins was Percival Thorne, hiding his sorrow and himself: should
he find him and persuade him to make the attempt? But Harry had an
undefined feeling that Mrs. Middleton did not want Percival.

He stood kicking at a daisy-root in the grass, feeling himself useless,
yet unwilling to desert his post, when a hand was pressed on his
shoulder and he started round. Godfrey Hammond was on the other side of
the gate, looking just as cool and colorless as usual.

"Thank God you're come, Mr. Hammond!" Harry exclaimed, and began to
pour out his story in such haste that it was a couple of minutes before
Godfrey fully understood him. The new-comer listened attentively, asking
a question or two. He brushed some imperceptible dust from his gray
coat-sleeve, and sticking his glass in his eye he surveyed the
farmhouse.

"I think I should like to see Mrs. Middleton at once," he said when
Hardwicke had finished.

Sarah showed him the way, but he preferred to announce himself. He
knocked at the door.

"Who is there?" said the voice within.

"It is I, Godfrey Hammond: I may come in?"

"Yes."

He opened the door and saw her sitting by the bedside, where something
lay white and straight and still. She turned her head as he entered,
then stood up and came a step or two to meet him. "Oh, Godfrey!" she
said in a low voice, "she died this morning."

He put his arm about her. "I would have been here before if I could," he
said.

"I knew it." She trembled so much that he drew her nearer, supporting
her as tenderly as if he were her son, though his face above her was
unmoved as ever.

"She died this morning," Mrs. Middleton repeated. She hid her face
suddenly and burst into a passion of tears. "Oh, Godfrey! she was hurt
so! she was hurt so! Oh my darling!"

"We could not wish her to linger in pain," he said softly.

"No, no. But only this morning, and I feel as if I had been alone for
years!"

Still, through her weeping, she clung to him. His sympathy made a faint
glimmer of light in the darkness, and her sad eyes turned to it.




CHAPTER LIII.

AFTERWARD.


There is little more to write. Four years, with their varying seasons,
their endless procession of events, their multitude of joys and sorrows,
have passed since Sissy died. Her place in the world, which seemed so
blank and strange in its first vacancy, is closed up and lost in the
crowding occupations of our ordinary life. She is not forgotten, but she
has passed out of the light of common day into the quiet world of years
gone by, where there is neither crowd nor haste, but soft shadows and
shadowy sunshine, and time for every tender memory and thought. Even
Aunt Harriet's sorrow is patient and subdued, and she sees her darling's
face, with other long-lost faces, softened as in a gentle dream. She
looks back to the past with no pain of longing. At seventy-eight she
believes that she is nearer to those she loves by going forward yet a
little farther. Nor are these last days sad, for in her loneliness
Godfrey Hammond persuaded her to come to him, and she is happy in her
place by his fireside. He is all that is left to her, and she is wrapped
up in him. Nothing is good enough for Godfrey, and he says, with a
smile, that she would make the planets revolve round him if she could.
It is very possible that if she had her will she might attempt some
little rearrangement of that kind. Her only fear is lest she should ever
be a burden to him. But that will never be. Godfrey likes her delicate,
old-fashioned ways and words, and is glad to see the kind old face which
smiled on him long ago when he was a lad lighted up with gentle pleasure
in his presence now. When he bids her good-night he knows that she will
pray before she lies down, and he feels as if his home and he were the
better for those simple prayers uttered night and morning in an unbroken
sequence of more than seventy years. There is a tranquil happiness in
that house, like the short, golden days of a St. Martin's summer or the
November blooming of a rose.

In the February after Sissy's death Godfrey went to Rookleigh for a day,
to be present at a wedding in the old church where the bridegroom had
once lingered idly in the hot summer-time and pictured his marriage to
another bride. That summer afternoon was not forgotten. Percival,
standing on the uneven pavement above the Shadwells' vault, remembered
his vision of Sissy's frightened eyes even while he uttered the words
that bound him to Judith Lisle. But those words were not the less true
because the thought of Sissy was hidden in his heart for ever.

Since that day Percival has spent almost all his time abroad, leading
such a life as he pictured long ago, only the reality is fairer than the
day-dream, because Judith shares it with him. Together they travel or
linger as the fancy of the moment dictates. Percival does not own a
square yard of the earth's surface, and therefore he is at liberty to
wander over it as he will. He is conscious of a curious loneliness about
Judith and himself. They have no child, no near relations: it seems as
if they were freed from all ordinary ties and responsibilities. His
vague aspirations are even less definite than of old; yet, though his
life follows a wandering and uncertain track, fair flowers of
kindliness, tolerance and courtesy spring up by that wayside. Judith and
he do not so much draw closer day by day as find ever new similarity of
thought and feeling already existing between them. His heart turns to
her as to a haven of peace; all his possibilities of happiness are in
her hands; he rests in the full assurance that neither deed nor word of
hers can ever jar upon him; in his darker moods he thinks of her as
clear, still sunlight, and he has no desire apart from her. Yet when he
looks back he doubts whether his life can hold another moment so supreme
in love and anguish as that moment when he looked into Sissy's eyes for
the last time and knew himself forgiven.




SOME ASPECTS OF CONTEMPORARY ART.


The art of the present day succeeds to the art of past centuries not
immediately nor by an insensible gradation. It is preceded by an
interval of absolute deadness in matters artistic. Sixty years ago art
in almost every branch was a sealed book to the majority of even
well-educated persons, and contentedly contemplated by them as such. All
love for it, with all knowledge of its history and all desire for its
development, was for a generation or two confined to a few professed
followers and a few devoted patrons, the mass of mankind thinking of it
not at all. But slowly a revival came in the main centres of
civilization--not much sooner in one than in another, though somewhat
differently in each. In Germany we see it beginning with the famous
Teutonic colony at Rome, reverent in spirit, cautious in method, severe
in theory, restrained in style--culminating, on the one hand, in the
academic pietism of Overbeck, on the other in the deliberate majesty of
Cornelius. In France the new life begins with the successors of David,
strenuous, impetuous, jealous and innovating, Ingres and outline waging
deadly battle with color and Delacroix. In England architectural
enthusiasm gave the first impulse, the "Gothic Revival" becoming the
basis of all subsequent work.

If, before noting the points of difference between one branch and
another of this modern art, we try to find the characteristics in which
these branches resemble one another, and by which they collectively are
distinguished from earlier developments, we find the most prominent one
to be self-consciousness--not necessarily self-conceit, but the inward
consciousness that they _are_, and the endeavor to realize just what
they are. With these comes, when the art is conscientious, a desire to
discover the noblest goal and to formulate the best methods of reaching
it. Some, casting the horoscope for this struggling art of ours, find
in these facts a great discouragement, believing that the vital germ of
art is spontaneity--believing that there cannot again be a genuine form
of art until there arise a fresh race of artists, unfed by the
mummy-wheat of tradition, unfettered by the cere-cloths of criticism.
Others, more sanguine, believe that spontaneity has done all it can, and
that its place is in the future to be worthily filled by a wide
eclecticism. Let us inquire what testimony as to the value of
spontaneity and the influence of self-consciousness in art may be
gathered from the methods and results of the past, and what from a
contrast between the different contemporary schools in their methods and
their results. Painting, as most prominently before our eyes and minds
just now, will principally concern us.

To the making of every work of art go three things and no more--the
material worked upon, the hand that works, and the intellect or
imagination which guides that hand. When the proportion is perfect
between the three, the work of art is perfect of its kind. But in the
different kinds of art the necessary proportion is not the same. In
music, for example, the medium is at its lowest value, the imagination
at its highest. In architecture, on the other hand, material is most
important. Musicians use the vibration of string and atmosphere,
sculptors use bronze and marble, painters use color and canvas, poets
use rhythm and rhyme, as vehicles to express their ideas. The
architect's ideas are for the sake of his material. He takes his
material as such, and embellishes it with his ideas--creates beauty
merely by disposing its masses and enriching its surface. But in all and
each of these processes, whether mind predominate or matter, there comes
in as a further necessary factor the actual technical manipulation.
Poetic visions and a noble mother-tongue do not constitute a man a poet
if he cannot treat that language nobly according to the technique of his
art. Nor, though Ariel sing in his brain and the everlasting harp of the
atmosphere wait for him, is he a musician if he have not a sensitive
ear and a knowledge of counter-point. More notably yet does the
hand--and in this as a technical term I include the other bodily powers
which go to form technical skill,--more notably yet does the hand come
in play with the painter. Here the material is little, the imagination
mighty indeed, but less overwhelming than with poet and musician; but
the technique, the God-given and labor-trained cunning of retina and
wrist, how all-important! often how all-sufficing!

In all criticism it is necessary first to reflect which of these three
factors--intellectual power, physical endowment or propitious
material--is most imperious. When we find this factor most perfectly
developed, and the others, though subordinate, neither absent nor
stunted, we shall find the art nearest to perfection. And the conditions
of race and climate and society which most helpfully develop that factor
without injuring the others are the conditions which will best further
that art. And the critic who lays most stress on that factor, and is
content to miss, if necessary, though noting the loss, a certain measure
of the other two in order more entirely to gain the one that is
vitalest, is the critic whose words are tonic. And he who, blending the
province of the arts, calling them all with vagueness "art," exalts and
demands the same factor first in all of them, must be detrimental, no
matter how great his sincerity and his knowledge.

Before weighing any contemporary thing in the balance let us mark out in
the past some standards of comparison. For it is useless to speculate
upon theoretical methods if we can discover the actual methods employed
by those whose art, if not ideally perfect, is yet so far beyond our
present power as to be quite perfectly ideal. It needs no discussion to
prove that to find the utmost that has been actually accomplished by
human endeavor we must turn in sculpture and in language to Greece, in
music to Germany, in architecture to Greece or to mediaeval Europe as our
taste may pull, and in painting to the Italians.

The primary conception of art in its productive energy is as a certain
inspiration. How did that inspiration work in those whom we acknowledge
to have received it in fullest measure? If we think a moment we shall
say, "Involuntarily"--by a sort of _possession_ rather than a voluntary
intellectual effort. The sculpture of the Greeks, their tragedies and
their temples, were all wrought simply, without effort, without
conscious travailing, by a natural evolution, not by a potent
egg-hatching process of instructive criticism and morbid self-inspection
and consulting of previous models, native and foreign. Architectural
motives were gathered from Egypt and the East, from Phoenicia and
Anatolia, but they were worked in as material, not copied as patterns;
and the architecture is as original as if no one had ever built before.
Phidias and Praxiteles and the rest shaped and chiselled, aiming at
perfection no doubt, trying to do their best, but without troubling
themselves as to what that best "ought" to be. Criticism was rife in
Athens of all places, but it was a criticism of things existing, not of
things problematically desirable. Statue and temple-front were
criticised, not sculptor and architect--surely not sculpture and
architecture in the abstract. Not sculptors and architects, that is,
when the question was of their works. The men came in for their share of
criticism, but on a different count. Theseus and Athene were judged as
works of art, not as lame though interesting revelations of Phidias's
soul. And be sure no faintest sin of the chisel was excused on the plea
that Phidias meant more than he could express, and so bungled in the
expression. Nor was the plea advanced that such bungling after the
infinite was better than simple perfection in the attainable. An artist
was called upon to be an artist, not a poet nor a philosopher nor a
moralist. When Plato confounded them all in a splendid confusion of
criticism the fruit-time had gone by. There was left but to expatiate on
the hoard which summer had bequeathed, or to speculate, if he chose, on
the possible yield of a future and most problematical year.

In the rich Italian summer one sees the same thing. Men paint because
they must--because put at anything else they come back to art as iron to
the magnet. Not because art is lovely, nor because to be an artist is a
desirable or a noble or a righteous thing, but because they are artists
born, stamped, double-dyed, and, kick as they might, they could 

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