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This text has been proofread but is not guaranteed to be free from errors. Corrections to the original text have been left in place.
Title: Children of Circumstance, volume I, an electronic edition
Author: Caffyn, Mannington, Mrs.
Publisher: Hutchinson & Co.
Place published: London
Date: 1894
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CHILDREN OF CIRCUMSTANCEVOL. ICHILDREN OF CIRCUMSTANCEA NovelBy IOTAAuthor of "A
YELLOW ASTER."IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. ISECOND EDITIONLondon1894HUTCHINSON AND CO.PATERNOSTER ROWTO MY WIFECHILDREN OF CIRCUMSTANCE.CHAPTER I."SHAKESPERE!" said Miss Julia in an awed whisper, touching the little red book timidly."Shakespere!" repeated her sister, neither with awe, however, nor in a whisper."How did she get the book?" said Miss Julia, half to herself, still fingering it with vague unrest."That I don't know. I only know that, in spite of all our care, in spite of our prayers in season and out of season, in spite of our years of striving with the Lord on her behalf, our unhappy niece has deceived us, has chosen to forsake the paths of righteousness and to dwell in the tents of the Philistines."She looked grimly out through the window and tightened her grey lips in a long stony silence.The two women who sat in that room were careworn, sorrowful, dull-eyed creatures,—a poor pair of types chosen by Fate in a captious mood wherewith to play tricks, thereby impishly to spite Nature.Nature had bestowed on them certain alleviations common to their kind, that she meant should grow in them and multiply, thus leavening the mass; whereupon the imp Fate went cheerily to work, caught and coerced those pleasing instincts, nipped them with frost, scorched them with heat, forced them into strange channels, there to work woe. It was an unequal contest, and Fate, coupled with temperament, won, hands down.As soon as the elder woman arrived at a consciousness of these matters, she found there was that in her which would shut her out always from her rightful heritage. She had not lost her kingdom—she had never so much as entered into it; nor could she hug to her breast the poor consolation of railing against opportunity, which her kind so frequently and so patiently clings to. Opportunity had in no sort of way treated her scurvily. It was she herself who had been to blame, she had been her own flaming sword, shutting herself out of Paradise.Oddly enough, she knew, by some mysterious inner prompting, that it was Paradise from which she was shut out.From her girlhood she had wondered and wondered what this Paradise was like, and as she wondered, its vague glories had become intensified.She was now six-and-fifty, and in the silence and the darkness of the night watches she still wondered.In the years, that wonder had grown less vague, and had clothed itself with words. What was it to be admired, hoped for, waited—watched for? What was it, what did it feel like, to make one human heart beat faster at your approach, one human soul feel better in your presence? She would put out her withered hand on the white quilt, and sigh over its swollen veins,—the joints that gout had touched,—and wish she could recall, ay, or even feebly comprehend, the touch of some other hand, the soft warm shock of some kiss.Night after night, year in, year out, the woman wondered, envying young hearts their foolish dreaming, aye! even their bitter sorrows; for were not the dreams and the sorrows both learned within the gates of Paradise? whereas she still stood at the other side, cold, and hard, and pitiless, with this great, wondering longing.Miss Julia had been more fortunate, for once in the old lean past, before she became "converted," and when the fleeting joy of being young had lent a brief charm to her colourless face, her heart had been moved and stirred by a young man. He was, as a matter of fact, considerably less than a mere curate, and he forsook her directly he found a larger fortune, (and features promising better wear,) ready to yield to his pulpit oratory; but being to Julia the embodiment of all good, he served a good purpose.He gave her one little glimpse into the heart of life, and so helped to save her soul alive.On both these women, unhelped of illusions with Miss Julia's one small clerical exception, the petty cares of life weighed sadly. They could not, like completer natures, march boldly past and over them, burying them as they went; they lingered with them, carving their faces with cruel crow's feet.The room they sat in, their favourite in all the big Queen Anne's house, was suggestive of their modes of thought. Although the furnishing was good, and the carpet and curtains rich and heavy, there was no ornament in that room worth the name, no cat, or dog, or litter of paper, or any other symptoms of human weakness.If an ordinary mortal, with original sin still thick upon him, were to enter it, his eyes would grow heavy and his breath would come quickly, and before he had been in the place five minutes he would feel as he had felt on the verge of his last flogging, that awful silent moment allowed for grace before meat.And so those two joyless persons, units of a joyless creed—they were Plymouth Brethren, of that closer connection which with commendable humility styles itself "The Bretren—sat together this sweet May day, and discussed two sinners—William Shakespere, dead, and Margaret Dering, quick.Miss Dering had just made a painful discovery. She had been cruising round the premises, in search of domestic faults of omission and commission—a favourite occupation of hers, when not engaged in pursuits even more intimately connected with religion. She had found her niece Margaret's room rather worse than usual, and as she had pounced on an end of string hanging slatternly from a drawer, she jerked the drawer out with it, and exposed to view a hopeless muddle, and on the top, glaring out in all its brazen godlessness, a red morocco Shakespere.She stood aghast: the sight of a play-acting book, pronounced accursed by her school, filled her with unnamable terrors. Her knees shook and her back fell together; and this, with as iron-spined a person as Miss Dering, was a considerable concession of muscle to emotion.When the power for action had returned, she threw herself forward on her knees, and abased herself before her fetish, deprecating his wrath from falling too heavily on the young sinner's head; at the same time bewailing, in no measured terms, the judgment that this same fetish had—rather unreasonably—seen fit to impose on her mature and irreproachable years, in the person of the said sinner.Then she rose, composed her features, straightened herself, and, descending to the library, laid the book before Miss Julia, who gazed at it in silence to the dropping of tears."Perhaps," she said at last, "perhaps she has not read the book."Miss Dering whipped open the pages, and displayed the margins scribbled over with notes in Margaret's handwriting."Not only has she read it, but, seemingly, she has read it with understanding."This was depressing testimony, but it had not an altogether silencing effect on Miss Julia. A little whiff of the daffodil-laden air, full of spring hankerings, had crept in, and was freshening up the old love in Miss Julia's heart. She would—she would stand by the young creature; but oh! if her fears did not so beset her!Suddenly a happy idea came to her."Katherine," said she, in a low, meek voice, "suppose"—she gasped almost inaudibly; she had pushed the old ring up against the middle joint of her finger, and the thought of the big chalky lump (for gout had also touched her) struck her like pain—"suppose we read together a portion from the volume before we finally condemn our niece? Our foundations of faith are fixed and sure, and, at our age, we are no longer likely to be led away by the lusts of the flesh.'She choked down a little sigh as she said this, and a fresh tear ran down the little red furrow by the side of her long, melancholy nose. She looked a mere withered, bent old maid, and rather ridiculous; but there was a drop of burning bitterness in the confession that made her akin with us all, but that none of us will quite understand or pity until the day shall come when her confession will also be ours.Dear God! how cruel-sweet they are, these lusts of the flesh, and in what curious corners they lurk!Miss Julia's motion was carried; the sisters agreed to judge for themselves as to how far their school was justified in pronouncing this book accursed. They would, at the same time, arrive at some idea as to the amount of taint incurred by the unhappy Margaret; possibly also, guided by faith, they might gather some suggestions as to her more effectual cleansing.Miss Julia murmured some sentiments to this effect in half tones; most of her chosen organs containing tongues of fire and solemn rebuke for sinners, she could not entirely disabuse her mind of hope.Possibly it was a phase of flesh weakness to sanction the proceedings. Miss Dering felt a twinge as she buckled up her reins to judgment; but though strong in anathema and all other religious exercises, she was, after all, a daughter of Eve, and tarred with Eve's tarbrush.They opened—oh irony of Fate!—they opened on Romeo and Juliet!"You had better read," said Miss Dering, as she settled herself bolt upright on a chair, her silk skirts rustling snappishly.Miss Julia polished her glasses, and, with a sort of gentle, suppressed excitement, glanced nervously heavenward, with a half-apologetic prayer for a blessing on the word.The movement, in connection with a presumably impious book, being without precedent, Miss Dering, who considered her privilege of taking the initiative as interfered with, refused her sanction to the measure by withholding the Amen, which it was her usual custom on such occasions to pronounce, with an air of encouragement that must have seemed strange to her Maker.Miss Julia felt crushed by the implied snub; consequently her rendering of her subject was at first plaintive and bleating in the extreme; but as she read on, in spite of herself she grew interested; a ring of pleasure came into her jaded voice, an echo of freshness into her worn face, a flicker of morning light into her twilit eyes.What she read was so different, so strangely and alluringly different, from the sanctioned tracts and books of devotion she dwelt amongst, and absorbed with a patience that was divine.But her sister, whose astuter intelligence scented the cloven hoof afar off, grew restless; threw up her hands once or twice, and widened her nostrils, to catch the first absolutely tangible whiff of the devil. She was a just woman, and scrupled to judge him in advance.As the story grew, and the light conduct and slipshod sentiments of Romeo and the company he kept became quite glaringly apparent, while all the time Miss Julia read on with a most extraordinary air of refreshment and consolation, her sister began to think that the danger was even closer home than she had suspected; she snorted, and cast a withering glance at Julia, who took not the slightest notice, but pattered on in an absorbment of mild delight.Miss Dering rose up and paced the room, keeping herself in subjection until all her weapons were to hand—taking care, meanwhile, to lose no word of this man's invention. Satan's spokesman or not, she had her duty to consider.But when at last Romeo and the young woman set to making shameless, unmistakable love—more shameless even for her awful envy of it—under the disreputable light of the moon, and when a faded old blush flitted from out some musty store-closet up into Miss Julia's thin cheek, then Miss Dering's wrath burst its bonds.She bore down on the other woman, seized the book, and having administered to her a faithful and strongly-worded rebuke, she fell to sum up the character and achievements of our dearest William in a style that would have astonished, while solemnly enlightening, a Shakespere Society. Now and again, in her freedom from conventional taste, and in her lofty disregard of the opinion of an imbecile majority, Miss Dering rose to something like sublimity.Having got Shakespere off her mind, and feeling a satisfactory sense of having done her duty by the dead sinner, she proceeded to consider that to the living.As she cast about in her mind how she might best combine pain with repentance, she lost her fleeting touch of sublimity and grew commonplace and spiteful. To give her her due, however, she had wrestled very frequently with the Lord over her niece Margaret, and seemingly but to little purpose; so perhaps it was small wonder that, all unconfessed to herself, the exercise had grown to pall, and that she found herself impelled to abandon, in this instance, the idea of heavenly interposition, and to resort to direct dealing with the individual.When she sat herself down to consider, the ready tears gathered in Miss Julia's eyes, for she had caught sight in her sister's of a gleam she knew well, and she shook in her shoes as she watched her.Presently she relapsed into a carnal reverie, called up to her simple soul by the words she had been reading, and that she would have given more than she had words to express to be able to dismiss with the prompt impartiality of her elder.While she thought, Miss Dering acted. She had put a light to the fire, laid ready for lighting, and she had just cast into it the little red book, and was now standing above it with a half smile on her lips, when Miss Julia came to herself in a rush. Strengthened by her brief revelation of a bliss outside of the spirit, she felt ready even to face Katherine, and she had already broken forth into a protest, when the words were caught in her throat, and she stood paralysed, listening in a sort of dumb, scared terror to the rush of a pair of swift, impatient feet up the steps.CHAPTER II.WHEN, a few minutes later, Margaret Dering came into the library to announce the fact that tea was getting stone-cold in the drawing-room, her aunts, grown used to her though they were, were positively startled at the ridiculous, abandoned, incomprehensible happiness of her face.This look of, so to speak, Pagan happiness was the girl's most notable feature. It arrested and interested every one who caught stray glimpses of her in the village and the lanes, or in church—whenever she could escape the gruesome dulness of her aunts' meetinghouse,—a conventicle they had themselves built and endowed.It also amazed and astonished those who knew her surroundings, which were not even of late growth; they had encompassed her ever since she had come, a seven-years-old child, to live with her aunts. Since then, she had been nursed, fed, and taught by The Brethren, and had been given mostly stones for bread. Yet in spite of everything, even of the clothes they put her into, she had the air of a personage, and retained it under the most sordid conditions.This look about her cut both her aunts to the quick, and formed frequently the mainstay of their prayers; they described it as partaking of the devil—they really meant the flesh, but that was a word they rarely permitted themselves to use, considering it highly indelicate.There were alleviations in Margaret's lot. She enjoyed, at odd times, a most extraordinary amount of liberty. She spent quite half her days in the open air, while her keepers prayed; and it was then that she drank in happiness with all other natural things—the sunlight, the birds, the beasts and fishes, the flowers, the flowing waters, the shimmering dews.Happiness such as hers was rare as it was terrible in its loneliness, its uncompromising selfishness, its absolute aloofness from all human interest.There was, however, a new element in it this day, that irritated the elder woman, and frightened both of them, for it revealed to them the presence of a mystery, yet gave them no clue to its understanding.To their dying day neither of them forgot that new look, or ceased to be hurt by their incapacity to understand it.One glance at her aunt's face told Margaret clearly enough that a quite exceptionally severe tempest was about to break over her. A vile smell of burnt leather gave her an insight into the situation. She darted to the fireplace, and recognised her most treasured possession, her shrivelling, smouldering Shakespere. She seized Miss Dering's best silver-handled pen from the table, and poked her book out of the smoky flames with it, and then she faced her aunts, stiff with wrath, and with her eyes blazing, holding her Shakespere at arm's length dangling on the pen.She had borne considerably worse things than this in her time with a sort of mocking patience, knowing that there was no escape from her toils until her majority should sever them. Under ordinary circumstances she would have cast a look of supreme scorn on Miss Julia, and of unutterable aloof indifference on Miss Dering, and have marched off with her smouldering volume with that air of radiant victory in the face of defeat which always drove Miss Dering to praying, else she could not possibly have kept her hands off the girl.But to-day she was no longer an insolent young victim of Fate, singing out her life in spite of it. She was a girl, feeling in her the budding of womanhood; she was a mass of throbbing nerve-centres, with a whole host of new sensations running riot in her. She was experiencing strange things, and was drunken with the glamour of them.Under the circumstances it was hardly to be wondered at that her stiffness soon left her, and her dumb wrath gave place to audible raging. When she had expended herself somewhat, she grew calmer, and in the sweetest, softest gutturals had time to be nasty."Upon my word," she said, M I did my best to like you both; and when that was quite out of the question I tried very hard to—to respect you. Of course I can no longer do either. How any well-born, well-bred woman could pry into one's drawers and burn one's property, in the interests of morality, is absolutely beyond me!" She paused and contemplated the weeping Julia. "For goodness' sake, don't cry," she continued, "it's so very wearying to watch you. You can't help it," she said consolingly, "you're weak, you poor thing! and," she added as an after thought, lifting her eyebrows, "a fool. Why, if you feel it so keenly, why on earth don't you pluck up spirit and resist her?"She looked from her height of five feet seven inches down on Miss Julia with much contempt and a little lordly pity. Somehow she felt, just that instant, so infinitely more complete than either of the two women, and of so very much more account. She was astonished at her attitude towards them. She could not place the position in the least. She had not an idea that she had just reached the crest of her womanhood, and that, on the contrary, they, before ever they had reached theirs, had fallen back, tired of hoping, into the trough of failures, and were still struggling coldly in the dull waters.Possibly, if she had had one little glimmer of the truth, she might not have been so cruel; however, it is hard to say. Sweet eighteen has often a vixen's heart, except where a man is concerned."Have you never felt any love for any one, or the need of any for yourself?" Margaret demanded, with a certain inconsequence, glaring at her elder aunt, who, to her amazement, held her tongue and trembled visibly, dropping her eyes to hide their poor secret.She no need for love, nor desire for it! "O God!" Miss Dering moaned with cracking heart. Then she crushed her secret into its nest, raised her eyes, and proceeded to shrieking vituperation. When at last she fell short of matter, she lifted her hands, shook her fingers with a half-prayerful, half-maledictory motion, and rasped out,—"Go from my sight! Go—and may God help you!""I hope to goodness He will, there seems so little chance of any one else's doing it!" A sudden, odd, earnest look leaped into her eyes, and turned them from grey to black. She wheeled round and looked at Miss Dering. "I think," she said, "you're after all a coward! You shirk your responsibilities. I was given into your hands that you might love and help me. You do neither. You throw me at God, and tell Him to do your work. I see you're arranging yourself in a praying pose; but you're not going to pray. Do you know what you're going to do?—just to do your best to poison God's mind against me. It's curious you should know so little about yourself or about me.""Blasphemous—deceitful—abandoned,—the Lord's wrath!" broke from Miss Dering in random, half-audible gasps.Margaret stopped as she was walking off, and, according to a curious custom of hers, turned and examined her aunts in an impersonal sort of way. After a minute's pause she observed musingly to herself,—"I wonder what on earth the Lord—the real One I mean, not the one of your own making—must think of you, or even why He made you? Why could He not have been content with an evil instrument to work evil, without producing a presumably good one? Aunt Julia, too—she was probably designed for a mute, only that her sex came in the way. The world seems studded with square pegs in round holes."Miss Dering had meanwhile dropped on her knees, but, catching sight of her niece hanging round the door with an absent air of interest, she shook her fist at her, and, averting her eyes, begged the Lord for strength to stand it all; and Margaret, when she had locked up the remains of her book, went to the drawing-room, poured out some tea, and helped herself to cake."What in the world made me break out in this manner?" she wondered with a qualm. She knew they were safe in the library for a good half-hour. "It's insane to fly in the face of one's relations, and one's fate, and Providence all at once; and, after all, one can be happy, in spite of them. But, oh! my poor book, my comfort and consolation! I wonder if he'll give me another?" she murmured, and such an enchanting little smile broke out round her mouth that one would have sworn that only a most tender heart could have produced it. "If he doesn't, what shall I do? There are none in the village and if I write to town they'll discover me. It really does seem hard on a truth-loving person to have to act lies, and hide her possessions; but must I choke and gasp and die of hunger and thirst because they're blind themselves, or so empty? If only they had the merest glimmering notion of the lovely, delicious, unutterable things I know, of the friends I live among—of——" She flushed scarlet. "Oh, all the wretches possessed of devils in all the Bibles in the world rolled into one would be a fool to me!"Her words were violent enough, but she felt in so soft and faltering a mood that she wondered rather if it could be a headache coming on—never having had one, she couldn't argue from experience. The feeling somehow enlarged her sympathies. She tasted her tea."It's perfectly cold," she said; "I'll get Hannah to make some fresh, and to insist on their leaving prayer and drinking it."Half an hour later she was down at the trout stream, singing a low gurgling tune of delight, and wondering if he would come.CHAPTER III.UNDER the circumstances, it would have been extremely desirable if he had not come, either then or at any other time. For by nature and occupation he was an honest man—and married.But he was also twenty-four, and he had played his hand of life very nearly as badly as a man can play it. He had married before he knew anything of love, life, women,—least of all, of himself.When he had come from Eton to Oxford, a wholesome, active-bodied, active-minded boy, he had given way to his natural and hereditary tendencies, and plunged into sport of all descriptions, troubling his head very little about any other worlds. He was supposed to be a man who could do anything that he set his mind to do, so out of sheer good-heartedness to his betters he did now and then put his shoulder to the wheel, in order that their opinion of him might be justified; for if there was one thing he hated more than another it was making other men appear ridiculous. The amount of "swatting" necessary to avert this catastrophe helped to keep him straight, as dons count straightness.The year he left Oxford, he managed one day nearly to put an end to himself in the hunting field, and he was nursed back to life by a cousin—a fine, prim, cold abstraction, who, nevertheless, was human and under twenty; and while he was weak from loss of blood, and she from watching, they stumbled, so to speak, into a kiss, and somehow, in the sentimentality and intellectual feebleness of convalescence, a proposal followed hard on its heels.When Hyde married, he was an honest, pleasant, kindly-tempered lad, but, in spite of his good degree, singularly ignorant of many-things in heaven and on earth, and more especially so of the complicated nature of a kiss.An activity from which there was no escape, which would have kept him, body, soul, and spirit, always on tiptoe, was essential to the man's well-being. If he had been poor and unmarried, he would have drifted to the New Journalism and the regeneration of the world. Being rich and married, with no stomach for politics with an Ireland inextricably mixed into them, he drifted into mischief.Unfortunately for himself, perhaps for both of them, his wife was quite over-weighted with the wisdom and knowledge which that hapless kiss had revealed to her. The two things she knew nothing about were, how to give out her love and how to compel his.It was that palpitating, provoking, absolutely unreasonable joyousness of Margaret Dering's, and her astonishing air of distinction, considering the cut of her clothes, that had brought a singular alteration into Geoffrey Hyde's points of view, and was even changing for him his sense of colour, and his perception of sound.Surely never before had the pink in the spots of a trout, or the yellow of the great king-cups by the stream's bank, or the blue of the forget-me-nots, half hidden under it, made his heart to swell with the delight of them. Surely this spring was the first time that he had listened with any sort of comprehending pleasure to the voices of birds, the whisper of insects, the rustle of leaves.And with his awakened senses there came on him, as in a flood, a secure and pleasant consciousness of the dearness and nearness of God.But he found that he was as colour-blind as ever, as hard of hearing with understanding, as he had been in his tenth year, when he proceeded to consider these things apart from Margaret Dering.The yellow of the king-cups was only beautiful it matched the little curly ends of her brown hair; the blue of the forget-me-nots because sometimes there came blue lights into her grey eyes; the pink in the trouts' spots because it was exactly the tint of the inner lining of her little ears; and in the songs of the birds, and the whispers of the insects, and the rustle of the leaves, there were tones that matched hers,—therefore they were beautiful.And God was good because He had made her. Qualms came upon him indeed when she was away from him, and then he made resolutions, meaning to keep them—till he saw her again, when he had an excellent excuse for himself always at hand; men mostly have, under all conditions."She was a mere chit of a child," he would think, with glib insistency. Being a little off balance, and impervious to humour, it did not occur to him how odd it was that so very young a child should have created in him a whole philosophy with regard to one kiss—no given kiss, or even clearly-grasped conception of one, but a vague, rosy, floating vision of a lovely meeting of lips, whereby the whole world should be made better, and himself, in one and the same moment, should be cast kneeling in the dust, and exalted high among the gods.Meanwhile, Margaret was sitting with her back to a rock and her face to the stream, softly singing, in a mist of happy inarticulate wonder, which is a young girl's substitute for thought, until sorrow, or necessity, has opened the doors of her understanding.Presently she fancied she heard a rustle. She sat up alert, but doubtful. It came from the wrong place, it was too soft and quiet,—there was a subtle suggestion of evil in it; then, to her amazement, she saw a little slender gloved hand push aside a briar, and a minute afterwards a woman, a wonderful white creature, in a dress that took her breath away, stood before her, and looked at her, as if she could then and there have turned her inside out, had she not been far too proud and self-contained to think of taking such a liberty.Margaret said a long "Oh!" and stood up. Her doing so was an involuntary "stoop of the spirit" to the majesty of the woman, and the build of her gown.They stood and judged each other for a moment; then the elder one spoke, in a voice that under no circumstances could ever sound hot, much less angry; so extreme and fine-drawn was its culture that it sent a cold shiver down Margaret's back."I came," she said,—"I came to speak to you.""Oh!" again said Margaret. She was just sufficiently recovered to say a short word without any visible quake. "How did you know where to find me?" She wanted to ask who her visitor was, but she did not feel equal to it, a look in the woman's eyes made her so cold and dumb."I knew quite well, I have often seen you. You were about to ask me who I was?" Margaret winced. "I am afraid," she went on very slowly,—"I am afraid you will not be pleased when you know. I am Mrs. Hyde, the wife of Geoffrey Hyde, whom you are now waiting for."Margaret looked at her dazedly with knitted brows. What did she mean?"The wife of Geoffrey Hyde!" she repeated. "I don't understand.""Possibly not. It is, nevertheless, a fact."The steely, low voice cut through the mists that enveloped Margaret's senses; she was fully awake now, and her first impulse was to pull herself together and to stand at bay in the face of a host of inexplicable dangers; then suddenly a choking, death-like feeling of helplessness, of inevitableness, slowed her blood. For the first time in her life the girl lost courage, and was conscious of the fact; and in her consternation at the loss she turned her eyes, full of defiant entreaty, on the other woman, who understood and had mercy—in her own fashion. She turned her face away and was silent. The little motion was like a blow in the face to Margaret; somehow, it put her in the wrong."She despises me," she thought. "How dare she! how dare she!"She was dumb from the pain of her abasement. Then her insolent, hurt, unmellowed youth came to her aid; it poured into her heart the full consciousness, the significance, of loving and being beloved; it told her that the race was to her, the strong, the swift; that she was the greater of the two; that she had all that the other lacked, and should claim her rights. For the minute she felt that she could face earth and defy Heaven, and she was absolutely pitiless."You are Mrs. Hyde—Geoffrey Hyde's wife—and he loves me. He never told me so—you told me by coming here. And—I love him—I love him! You told me that, too, by coming. Surely you have told me a great deal in a few minutes.""Can you not understand—can you not see? Have you no shame? He is my husband. I only have the right——""But you have lost your right," said Margaret. "He was yours, yours altogether. You let him go from you. How dare you speak of shame to me! It is only you who should be ashamed. Why did you let him come to me,—why? Look at us together—we two! I am nothing—nothing at all compared to you; and yet he is no longer yours now, he is mine."Mrs. Hyde's horror-stricken eyes fixed on her, showed her a new point of view. A spark of the truth flashed into her, and she got her first taste of the tree; she was all at once ashamed—hateful to herself, and a sudden, baffled, reproachful anger against the woman who had opened her eyes and brought to her the knowledge of shame took hold of her and shook her."You should never have let him come to me," she whispered, with bowed head; "you should have made all this impossible. Now it is too late," she went on, with slow incision. The new sound in her own voice struck her with sharp pain, and she gave a short, dry sob. "Now it is too late—it has all been taken out of our hands: I love him and he loves me."She looked at the other woman curiously."This is sin, then," she said; "but if it is, I think it is your sin, not ours. Why didn't you love him? How could you possibly have helped loving him—seeing him, speaking to him, touching him, every hour of the day? And he kissed you, too, perhaps,—he never kissed me."For a second a curious sense of reverence for her rival, a sense of her own crudeness, even of the hideousness of her frock, humbled her; her youth was swamped in her woman-hood. She looked at Mrs. Hyde half yearningly, half admiringly."You had everything to help you, to increase your beauty, and you couldn't even love him, or make him love you. It's pride that makes you claim him now, not love, of course! There he is, see—through those trees! And you couldn't even love that man?" She broke into a bitter laugh. "Were you—were you mad?" she demanded.Mrs. Hyde looked at the girl in a cold horror; her passionate out-speaking of her love, the reasonless wild reproaches hurled against herself, her capacity for compelling overwhelming adoration, even her little burst of humility, were a revelation to her. They repelled and repulsed her, but that they would have a quite contrary effect on her husband, she knew for a certainty. This girl had all she wanted—this girl!But what mattered her personality, she thought wearily, her motive power? what mattered it who she was or how she looked? She had known from the first that such a day as this must come, and she had been waiting for it; she was prepared, and yet—yet—the blow fell as heavily as if she had not been."This, then," she thought, unable to keep herself from comparison, "this is the type of woman he can love—this immature, wayward, unfinished creature—unfinished, half-made," she repeated to herself, "with nothing but possibilities about her. That's it—it's possibilities, palpable possibilities, that men love! They like themselves to give the finishing touches. And have I no possibilities? I—O my God! And could he not find them because I look prim? I cannot blush—my voice is calm—therefore I am passionless! Ah, blind Geoffrey—blind and so cruel! Ah well, he may love her, because he must; but he shall not soil his honour, or the honour of my child."It was this that had driven her here; had forced her from her habitual self-repression, her fine hereditary reticence, her mask of indifference; she would save him in spite of himself; she would brave his anger, his lasting hatred, but she would save him, him and his child. They came of an honourable stock, and it must be kept up, no matter who went under.She had been brought up by her grand-mother, and she had Puritan blood in her; she was a high-minded, proud woman, abhorring smartness as she did the devil; and anything to do with the breaking of marriage vows was sin to her,—good, old-fashioned, seventh-commandment sin, with an unpleasant flavour of Jezebel and dogs about it. At any cost she would save him—her own—her pride, her torture, her terror,—but her own.She had, however, brought herself to her present course only by a supreme effort, and her heart felt like breaking as she had walked down the hill to the stream; and little as she suspected it, at that moment she came very near to being a heroine, for she had cut self out of all her instincts, and hope out of her heart, for honour's sake. In any case, she knew that this must be the end; that now her last chance of his loving her was gone.And then to stand and listen to this girl's taunts, in those soft, rushing, maddeningly enchanting gutturals! She sighed; she was very tired, and her eyes followed Margaret's and watched the man who came towards them, whistling for lightness of heart.And as she looked she forgot everything but him, and that first foolish kiss, and the baby under her heart; and her face was flooded with tenderness, terrible in its strong, calm, desolate pathos. Margaret turned suddenly and saw her; she shuddered, and hid her face in her hands."You love him!" she whispered in a low shocked voice. "We both love him! This is awful."When she lifted her face from her hands she was no longer a happy Pagan—she had grown up.Although they could see Hyde, a clump of nut-bushes hid them from him. As he came close, and the meeting was upon them, the women looked in each other's faces, and suddenly they were sorry for one another; the bond of their common sex, their common helplessness, touched some hidden chord in them seldom struck—our own sex so rarely appeals to us with any intensity. Involuntarily they bent towards each other, and waited, with strangled breath.CHAPTER IV.AT the first shock on sight of the two girls Hyde felt inclined to turn tail and fly; but his breeding kept him steady, and took off his hat for him. Then with a hazy notion, born of inherited experience, that under all circumstances women, if they are given their heads, will talk, he waited silently, and during the pause the pains of hell, very properly, gat hold of him.Involuntarily Margaret looked to her who owned him to speak, and to her amazement she had frozen to an impassive, bloodless, prim ghost of a woman, on whom love had never so much as laid a finger. She spoke at last, looking straight out before her, in cold level tones."We have always been an honourable race," she said, "and I should be sorry if you were the first to tarnish our record; and now I have also others to consider——" She moved a little nearer to him, and said a few words in a tone only audible to him, and there came a curious violet-pinky tinge into her cheek.Margaret had an odd sense of being thrust aside; she seemed to herself all at once insignificant, trivial, a mere onlooker in a great tragedy; then in one blinding flash of comprehension the double anguish of the elder woman, this man's rightful possessor, was made known to her, and she herself was thrust out of their path, forlorn. What right had she, compared to the divine right of the other? She shuddered, and a little choking groan, that she tried to stop in her throat, escaped, and broke through her lips.The sound brought Hyde to his senses. What right had he to hold his tongue and to force his wife, the mother of his child, to justify her presence, and the poor wronged girl to listen to her?Thrusting his own part in the business aside for future consideration, his one thought now was for the suffering, sensitive creatures, both in his power. It was no time to whimper over the past. What could he do to help them in the present."Beatrice," he said gently, "there is no need to speak of tarnished honour. I hardly know just this minute how far or in what way I have sinned. As to her, she has not sinned in any way.""Even if she had," said his wife, in the same freezing tones, "it would hardly have been knowingly. I am, you see, deluded by no jealousy or other chimeras born of love. She loves you and you love her—that is the one patent fact. She asked me just now why I had let this happen. Possibly she had a right to ask. I have failed in my duty.""Good God! does she think that?" he thought. "As if it wasn't her accursed sense of duty that had done the mischief! When duty lays hold of a woman's heart she's done for, and so is her husband.""My dear, you never failed in your duty,' he said; and the involuntary emphasis was one little stab more for her.Margaret had grown white, and looked painfully young, with her trembling parted lips."Sit down," said Hyde, turning to her, and mechanically stretching out his hand to help her, his wife watching him, with whirling brain.She moved quickly out of his reach. "I shall stand," she said coldly.He looked at her; there seemed nothing to say. He waited, wondering, with a far-away, impersonal interest, which of the two would speak next. The conviction of his absolute impotence was numbing his senses. He had forced himself into action for the women's sakes, and had only made matters worse. The only action that could, it seemed to him, in any sort of way help would be to carry Margaret off bodily in his arms; and this, under the cold stare of his wife, was obviously out of the question. What had Margaret to say for herself, he wondered, with an odd, grotesque interest; but she was silent, breathing hard. She cowered trembling and speechless before the terrors that beset her. It was Beatrice who spoke. She knew her position too well, she was by this time too much accustomed to life, either to cower or to tremble at what it brought her."Yes," she said slowly, looking away past them, "you two love each other; and yet we two, who do not love each other, must go home and pretend to do so." Her voice softened and shook slightly as she told her half lie. Margaret looked at her sharply. "Why does she do it, why?" she thought. "Is marriage, then, a terrible thing?" "We must go home," Beatrice repeated with a low, mocking laugh, "and live in the same house, and talk, and amuse our guests, and lie to our servants continually, so that we may be enabled to keep together the honour of our house; and you—you,"—she turned her eyes on Margaret;—"who really are the only one amongst us quite guiltless, why, you must go into the outer darkness,—anywhere; but, wherever it is, I suppose it will seem darkness to you.""What can she know about it?" Hyde thought, wondering at her look."But," cried out Margaret, "we're all so young, and the world is so beautiful, and happiness is so near, and none of us—not one of us—has really sinned at all; it is absurd that we should all be made to suffer. God is unjust, God is cruel!""Poor little thing! God has had nothing to do with it. Don't you see that it's all been done by a man? I have simply behaved to you both as a cad and a blackguard."A sudden ghastly sense of the humour of the situation, the hideous, charnel-house humour, occurred to him. He laughed aloud. He shuddered as he heard himself. His wife drew in her breath sharply, and Margaret shut her eyes. That laugh made the hideous nakedness of sin manifest to all three of them. It seemed to Hyde as if the devil were in their midst. He recovered himself quickly. There was an indecency in the thing; the women, whose souls he held in the palms of his hands, must be spared any further display of it.For one minute man's power in nature grew loathsome to him; for the first time in all creation a man almost wished he had been made a mere woman.Mrs. Hyde had grown meanwhile as white as one would have thought any human flesh or blood could be; but her husband's laugh turned her one shade whiter, and she tottered.When a man's sin overtakes him he generally forgets everything and fights for dear life. Just one little thing arrests him, however,—his pro-tective instincts. One can imagine Othello, if the night on which he slew Desdemona were frosty, tucking the blankets round her; or if it were hot, flicking the flies off her face.And Hyde saw that the first thing he must now think of was to get his wife to her carriage before things should go any farther. Feeling himself on the horns of a dilemma, he glanced at Margaret, and the general muddle of things brought an unspoken "damn" to his lips. Something in his look of indecision irritated Margaret oddly; she drew herself up with a new air of stateliness."Take Mrs. Hyde home, please," she said; "please take her home," she repeated impatiently.She stood as straight and stiff as a ramrod, and watched them out of sight; then she fell on the earth and hid her hot face among the cool daisies.Hyde and his wife walked with white faces and hearts like stone towards the carriage, which stood in a bend of the road. The path was so narrow that their very clothes touched, but between them there lay a wide reach of country. When they came near the road Hyde pulled up suddenly and faced her."Will you deal altogether with me in this matter? I need not speak of her again. You know her innocence.""I do know—you appear to choose your victims carefully." For a minute she lost control of herself. "Did you imagine," she said, in a low sharp tone, "that I came here to triumph over her, or for revenge?—I? As if revenge or triumph could touch me! I have done what I thought to be my duty. I have, I suppose, degraded myself in your eyes, as in my own. The whole thing has been inexpressibly revolting to me. But the girl knows now, and has the option to retain her own honour and to save that of our house—or—God in heaven! to think it should rest in such young, foolish hands! But it would have been in vain to appeal to you."She walked past him and leant for a minute against a jutting branch, and looked at him. He looked young and frank, through all his haggard shame and perplexity. Something in him touched Beatrice, and side by side with the bitterness of her wrongs there grew up again in her that obstinate, persistent old love of hers, which had nothing to fatten itself on but her own heart's blood; and then, and for ever after, it silenced every reproach.She sighed heavily, and went on towards the carriage. She stumbled once or twice, and seeing that she went blindly, he helped her, almost lifting her into the carriage; wondering, meanwhile, at women and their ways. Of course if she had loved him it would have been different; but seeing that she didn't care a hang, any more than he did, it was absolutely beyond him.CHAPTER V.WHEN Hyde took his wife to her carriage he had not the very smallest intention of going home with her. Circumstances, however, took him in tow, and forced him to his duty. She was absolutely unfit to be left, and the footman's eyes were on him.When they got home he heard that his lawyer had just arrived from London on a matter of pressing business, that had to be there and then dealt with.Beatrice went to her room directly, and when her tea was brought to her she drank it thankfully. Then she sat by the window, and went over and over again the scene she had just lived through, till Margaret's face made little burning pictures in her brain, and the triumph of that laugh of hers made mocking songs there—till at last it occurred to her that if she let herself go on in this fashion she would become hysterical and insane, and bed would be her only refuge, which was about the very last thing she desired."It had to come," she said, looking tiredly out of the window, "sooner or later, and it has only come sooner. If this girl hadn't awakened him, some other girl would have done it. I have lost my chance—which, after all, is nothing new. Life seems to be one long losing of chances. I had counted, certainly, a good deal on this little coming one, this baby,—even that hope is gone now. It's small in a way, but it seems somehow a big thing to lose at a minute's notice. I can't understand—I shall never understand—how I walked deliberately down that hill to stem Fate. He is born to love and be loved—in his own way. Nothing in heaven or on earth will save him when the time comes. I think I was mad when I did it, yet I was driven; I thought it my one duty. I am a millstone hung round his neck, and one day I shall drown him, and honour, and myself. I should have made it impossible for him to love her, she said, and she spoke the truth. If only I could make myself do it—I could even this minute silence her voice in his heart, and blot out her face from his brain! I could transform him, and myself, and the whole world. Love strong as mine can do anything—anything at all "—she drew a quick sharp breath—"but express itself to suit a man. And now I must dress."She rang, and when her maid came she told her to get out a new gown she had meant to have kept for her first getting up after the baby came, it was so exceptionally lovely and soft."And you can do anything you like to make my face look right," she said, with a very severe conscience pain. "I have walked too far—I cannot go down looking like this."Her face, when she went down, looked quite right, considerably astonishing her husband, who was an innocent man in his way, and knew nothing of the cleverness and the resources of first-family maids.Then the two fell to playing to each other, and to an appreciative audience, with such marked skill that the footman began to have doubts as to the evidence of his own senses, and winked his disappointment to the butler. And the lawyer, after his sherry, began to feel quite heavy-fatherly towards the young people, and ventured on some family anecdotes of a genial nature.Mr. and Mrs. Hyde could hardly be said to have grown nearer to one another during the course of that grim repast, but they admired each other enormously by the end of it, and as the train of his wife's tea-gown swept out of his sight Hyde felt quite a glow of conjugal virtue going through him. Possibly it was because her eyes went away with the tea-gown, and his blood could flow again at its ease.When Hyde had persuaded Mr. Henlen to feel quite overpoweringly sleepy, and express a longing for bed, though it was only ten o'clock, he changed his coat for a smoking-jacket and got himself into the open air, his blood going at racing speed. By the time he had reached the first gates he had shed conjugal virtue and all other pretences, and was a mere maniacal young man, flotsam and jetsam on the throes of a first passion.Being a passion under undesirable circumstances, it would be uninstructive and unedifying to attempt any record of his resulting sensations; suffice it to say, they led him first to the plot of daisies where Margaret's face had lain, and then took him for a ten-mile tramp, during which the spring night—a hot unwholesome night, full of budding and unrest—and all manner of uncommendable young man's fancies got into him, giving the domestic virtues their finishing stroke, and laying by for his hereafter many rods in pickle.As for Margaret, Fate's poor little shuttle-cock, she went home, sick with her first dose of womanhood and her opened eyes.She had looked out for one brilliant instant on the world and all its glory, and then the lid had been shut in her face, and she was left out in the cold, with nothing but memory and a crude handful of knowledge to torture and torment her.She sat for a time doggedly, while her aunts discussed theology and the shortcomings of the clergy; and then she went to her room, crouched down on her bed, and tried to think. But the time for that had not come; she could only suffer, the bitter unreasonable suffering of the young.She crouched, cowering and trembling, and wondered what it was that had stripped the courage from her, and made her feel such an atom, such a mere forgotten, drifting fluff in a boundless space. It was life that frightened her, but she could not be expected to know that.At last it struck her that she must sleep. She undressed and shuddered down into her bedclothes, but no sleep came. She could not grasp this at all, she must be mad or the world was, or the crack of doom was upon her.To be unable to sleep is the worst terror of a first sorrow; it is a presage of old age, of death, of the grave. It is not the peace of death that we dread—for this all life is a striving; it is the vague doubt that in the grave there is unrest. After our first night of sleeplessness we are never quite young again, never quite fresh and careless. We have begun to throw Hope overboard.When Margaret came down in the morning her aunts experienced a shock. It took them differently. Miss Julia's mouth trembled as she kissed her niece, and she ate no breakfast. Miss Dering rebuked her niece for being late, and ate an excellent one, and directly it was over she mixed a nauseous draught and stood over Margaret while she swallowed it. And no doubt it was the best possible treatment.CHAPTER VI.At the very time that her youth was being kicked into the limbo of dead gods, Margaret was forming the subject of a discussion at the neighbouring Rectory that would have considerably interested her.The Rector's niece had lately swooped down on him, to set the world to rights generally, and had got Margaret, of whom she had caught stray sights, badly on her mind.She was a wholesome young woman of an active mind, and with opinions. The one most on the surface at the present time was that Margaret was more or less of a new variety and that the fact of her not having been discovered long ago proved all concerned to be but of feeble intellect. She had arranged herself so as to be able conveniently to poke her uncle, in case he thought of dropping off, and was at present occupied in flourishing her sentiments."Curious that none of you should have eyes in your heads. Why, I didn't see any one to come near her last season, or the bit I've seen of this, and there's a whole fresh batch of them up, ready to spring on their prey in the strength of their lusty youth. She's too young to be handsome, but she's astonishing, and—goodness! that drab dress and the crepe dabs on the sleeve set against the sublime way she walks down the aisle. Are you in physical terror of Miss Dering, or is it her height, or her teeth, or her bony fist, or has she an evil eye? It can't be the other pink-eyed rag of a woman. Wake up, Uncle Phil, you're nodding again!""My dear, I am awake, you give me no chance to be otherwise. Stay your tongue till you meet Miss Dering face to face. In physical terror?—I should think I was! I feel black and blue all over after an interview with her."Rica went off again on her other tack."To think of letting a girl like that slide, when one considers the miserably unsatisfactory state of the whole tribe of us just now!""My dear, my dear!""Keep your moralities, uncle dear, till the curate comes. We must consider weaker brethren. Surely I know more of girls than you do. I ought to at least, for I only get at the bottom of them at night, when they're half-undressed. Take my word for it, the unfledged young person, adorned for sacrifice, secure in her good looks and her virtue, is often a distinct puzzle, and a little bit of a humbug. She looks so sweet, yet she's sometimes rather mean, and as cruel as she knows how, and confused as to which are her causes and which her effects. I'm a good deal worried about her; I have indeed known her once or twice to keep me awake. Don't interrupt, dear, I'm just about to hedge. The little things often turn suddenly on to a quite new track, and break out into all sorts of lovableness, and develop all at once souls and hearts and things, unless, indeed, they begin to batten on their own insides, or go to the devil in the shape of a neighbour's husband.""My dear, you're twenty-one, aren't you?""Yes, that, and a few months; but consider my experiences! I'm ninety if I'm a day. Haven't I six brothers and a father? I don't care what you say, the girl has been shamefully neglected!"The Rector muttered humbly he had said nothing."Shamefully neglected!" Rica repeated."My dear, you go too fast," said Mr. Weston, with proper professional pride. "Both Mr. Bridges and myself have paid very frequent visits to her aunts, and have done all in our power to induce them to allow of her confirmation.""Well, of course you had to see to that, it was part of your business. Don't you think, all the same, that if you had succeeded it would have been altogether too funny to listen to a girl out of that sepulchre of a place offering to renounce 'pomps and vanities, when by every law of common-sense she must be longing for them all day long? But none of you followed up the aunts, irrespective of theology, and forced them to yield up the girl to her kind. She's a lady, isn't she?""Oh dear, yes, of a very good family, a grand old race in fact, Cheshire people, and, I believe, the last of the direct line. The property has gone into the hands of a collateral branch; but her aunts have, I hear, quite drifted from their own sphere, and now consort with cobblers and tailors of their chosen faith.""What, in the name of mercy, is their chosen faith?""Plymouth Brethren," said the Rector, wishing devoutly the tea would appear."I thought all those people were dead and buried long ago.""Oh, my dear, they're not!""Ah, you wish they were! If I say it for you, it won't matter.""On the contrary, they're still very much alive. Curious thing, too, that if a fellow in either of the Services feels especially seriously disposed, he very often drifts over to the Brethren,—why, God alone knows! Then, too, he acquires a most lamentable habit of writing interminable letters to his still unregenerate neighbours—all outside The Brethren, as far as I can gather, are placed in that category."The Rector sighed."Ah, I see you have suffered, poor dear!""Yes, I have, suffered more severely indeed than I think I deserve. But there are, no doubt, most intelligent and excellent persons among them,—in fact, I know there are; and you mustn't run off with the idea that Miss Dering's eccentricities are the result of her religion; they come of a most eccentric stock. The girl's father, General Dering, was rather a remarkable man,—more or less unbalanced, I imagine, but coming very near to being a genius. I myself prefer, as a father of a family, a man with more balance and less genius. Moderation, my dear, in all things, is a fine rule of life.""Yes, and singularly convenient.""However, I have work to do. Can you give me any idea when you will have ceased talking?""I have scarcely begun! Have you never felt the 'strong pain of pent knowledge'? I thought the clergy were continually,tormented by it. This is the first afternoon, since I came, that I have had the chance of a talk with you, and now you want to cut it short. However, if you had waited a minute longer, Fate would have served your turn and saved you the appearance of bad manners. There's Mr. Bridges in the distance, a faint speck on the top of the fence. Does he always scale that precipice? As his spiritual superior, you might put a ladder there for his use.""Bridges," replied the Rector, "is a good fellow, and not responsible for his small personal defects.""No doubt," said Rica. "But it's somehow hard to get undiluted goodness to appeal to the natural woman, especially when it looks like a white mouse, and hides its hands, and squirms if it gets so much as a naked eye on it. I'm used to big, common-sense men, who keep their insides in their proper places. I can't altogether fathom a little woman-man, that carries its nerves outside it.""Rica, dear!""Dear, dearest! I know. I like him all the same; he's a poor pitiful atom, that it does one's heart good to take care of. Besides, I have a profound conviction that somewhere about him there is a spine, and a little heart of gold. The question is, does he strike the generality of people in this double light? Isn't he to some minds altogether ridiculous? If I, for instance, were a rector—however, here he comes, with a trace of moisture on his brow, and draggled beyond description.""Well, Mr. Bridges," said the Rector kindly, "just in time for tea; and I will say for my niece, she knows how to make it."He spoke in an expansive way, as if he were stretching after being in a cramped position. He objected to being bothered, he disliked mote-hunting, he had a boundless capacity for always shutting his eyes in the nick of time, and he adored the person of his niece, but the activity of her mind he abhorred.She had just poured the hot water into the teapot when her eyes fell on the curate's feet; his boots were soaked, and the ends of his trousers dripping."Now, uncle," she said, "you can wait a moment for your tea, and the pot can get hot in peace. I must see to Mr. Bridges. Just look at his feet! they're dripping. You slipped when getting over that fence in the down pasture, didn't you?""I did, Miss Weston. But pray don't trouble about me—I am used to wet feet.""No doubt you are, and that accounts for your awful cough. Come with me." She had been overhauling a deep basket, and had just emerged with a pair of socks that would have held Bridges bodily. "They're huge," she said, apologetically, "but they're dry."She led the way to a small room near the study, and shut Bridges up with the socks. In a minute she put in her head again."Throw out your boots and socks," said she—" the boy will see to them; and could you manage with this pair of boots until yours are dry? Uncle Phil can't be blamed, I suppose, but the size of his feet is a reflection on his family."When he was sure she really had gone, Bridges flopped bewilderedly on a chair and mopped his face; then he scrambled hurriedly out of his little socks into the big ones. He was frightened to death, but he wished in a vague way that he had a sister."Mr. Bridges," said Rica, as soon as she had settled him down to his tea, "shall you be very busy to-morrow? If not, I want you to do something for me.""Yes—no——" hesitated Bridges.As a matter of fact, he had a little business of his own to attend to on that very afternoon. Rica was not the only person who felt an interest in Miss Dering's niece. The little curate felt a very decided interest, and had worked double time to get two free hours to call next day at the "Yews," and his heart was even now throbbing and burning with the desire of merely looking from afar at the girl.Miss Western's request damped him considerably. He longed for a minute to be able just to tell one little lie and slip over the difficulty; but he had a fatal incapacity in that direction."No, I have nothing at all urgent to do," he said sadly. He wished greatly he could show a little more alacrity, after all her loving-kindness to his extremities."I want to call on Miss Dernig." He started and pricked up his ears. "I am going to know their niece. I am rather a failure with most girls, but I fancy she and I could pull together. She looks so delightfully, wickedly, inconsequently happy. I should like to know her before she has the chance to fall in love. At the first plunge into that maelstrom she would of course lose her individuality and become a type, and be spoilt for a time as a subject for investigation—except for one person, of course, probably a fool. There is that in her which will attract fools, and which may also cause her to be attracted by one, until she finds out. I suppose she has hitherto set eyes on no one but you and my uncle?"Bridges winced. A cold sweat had already broken out on him, and he could hardly hold his tea-cup steadily. Rica went to give her uncle some cake, and the curate blessed the temporary abstraction of her keen eyes. He was writhing in agony lest they should discover him, but he managed to reduce himself to order, and was looking much as usual when she came over to examine into the state of his cup."If I survive the first shock of battle, may I ask the niece to dinner on Thursday, uncle? Do you think she has any clothes, Mr. Bridges? Does she wear that drab always? Has she an evening dress? Who, in the name of all that's awful, makes her things?""Really, Miss Weston, I fear that in this matter I am powerless to aid you," he gasped, looking at her in undisguised terror.The Rector burst into a laugh."My dear," he said, "don't put yourself out about the gowns. You'll not get her to dinner. You haven't yet encountered Miss Dering. And now, dear, go,—Mr. Bridges and I have some business to talk over."CHAPTER VII."Now, Mr. Bridges," said Rica,—it was the day following, and they were turning in at the "Yews" gates,—"wish success to my maiden sword. I suppose by this time you can face Miss Dering with a stout heart?""Oh, no, no!" he blurted miserably. "I confess I can make but little way with her, earnestly as I desire to do so." And truly he did, for more reasons than he would have cared to mention."Perhaps she's out.""I fear not—I fear not; she never is."Rica swallowed a chuckle, for the grim Hannah was upon them. Miss Dering was at home, and she ushered them into a drawing-room that made Rica think somehow of the stomach-aches of her youth; while Bridges sat waiting, and hoping,—his simple soul alive only to one set of impressions at a time,—quite impervious to the fact that an antimacassar had fallen from its proper position and was draping his back.The sisters came in directly. The elder, as soon as she had shot her greetings at her guests as if she had been a gun, turned on Bridges, leaving Rica to extract monosyllables from Miss Julia, who had grown quite incapable of carrying on any sustained conversation on worldly matters."Mr. Bridges," said Miss Dering, after a few preliminary snaps at him, "you have, I presume, heard of that vile man Dawkins' atheistic lecture?" She folded her hands and stonily fixed him."I am naturally aware of the circumstance," he said, with some dignity, "as it has been given in the parish I serve. Both the Rector and myself feel the matter keenly. We are, however, of opinion that the man is hardly responsible for his actions; he is of an excitable organisation, and has not been quite himself since the unhealthy excitement that Wiggins, the cobbler, introduced into the parish, has been rife."Miss Dering grunted scornfully."I have investigated the matter, root and branch; I may therefore be allowed to have a voice in the matter. Dawkins is as sane as you are, Mr. Bridges; and Wiggins is a man of God. If it be by the Lord's dispensation that he has been born a cobbler, it is not for us worms to cavil." She stiffened her back with an appearance of pride only befitting a worm quite of one mind with its Maker."Sister," broke in Miss Julia, in a quavering voice, weakly hoping to cut short the strife, "Miss Weston is anxious to meet our niece.""Will you be good enough to ring the bell, Mr. Bridges?"He blessed her almost audibly, and nearly fell over the fire-irons in his zeal. Rica sud-denly sighted the antimacassar on his back, and as she came forward to secure it, a sudden ray of sunlight fell on her, throwing out into bold relief her hardy, off-hand, wholesome beauty, and the touches of mauve in her exquisite costume. Miss Dering felt that the devil was in the wind, and wished that the bell had not been rung."The country must seem dull to you, Miss Weston," she said sourly, "after the dissipations of town." She lifted her eyes a little higher to reflect with sad misgiving on Rica's hat."On the contrary, it seems delightful. Perhaps it wouldn't if I hadn't already had my fill of the dissipations—they began so absurdly early this year." Then she took her courage in both hands and plunged in. She knew that unless she did so now she never would. She felt as if she were forming lime already under that Gorgon glare."Miss Dering, my uncle expects some people to dinner on Thursday. We want to know if your niece will give us the pleasure of seeing her amongst us?"For a full minute Miss Dering felt an inability to find words."Thank you, No!" she said at last. "While our niece remains beneath our roof, we will, as far as in us lies, guard her from contact with the world and the devil.Rica laughed in her corner."But we're really not so bad as all that! I'm quite good myself sometimes. As to my uncle, he's always a real good old man.""I judge neither man nor woman—I leave that to the Lord; but worldly gatherings we eschew, and shall continue to do so, God helping us, so long as Margaret is given into our hands. Afterwards—we can but pray——"This was final. Her lips snapped together; she turned her eyes on her sister."I am so sorry," said Rica; "I hoped she might come. I wanted to know her." This she said aloud—to herself she put it stronger.Miss Dering glanced round on the girl. She offended her every instinct, repelled her, terrified her, yet a shameful wish to be able just for a minute to feel—to comprehend—that cool, careless, pleasant assurance that distinguished these worldlings got hold of her, and made her a little giddy. She thrust it behind her in a scurry, and filled herself to the brim with a vague but salutary jumble of carnal sins, scarlet women, brimstone, and Potiphar's wife. Just then Hannah came in, and informed them that Miss Margaret had gone for a long walk, and would not be back until six o'clock.Miss Dering blessed God.Rica was on the point of rising to go when her eyes fell on Bridges, whose face of unutterable disappointment revealed his secret. She flopped weakly down again."Goodness gracious, that's it, is it? That!" She longed to shake him, to choke him, to sweep him, somehow or another, out of her path. What business on earth had he to stick in his embarrassing little oar, as if an ogre and a chronic fountain weren't, enough, without him! When she recovered herself, there was no chance of getting away. Miss Dering had again fallen on Bridges."You are a young man," she was saying," a very young man,"—she rarely failed to touch him up on this point—" and your experience with regard to this world, as also the world to come, is limited." A sigh escaped Bridges, for he felt that here she had got him. "I have your interest at heart, although you hardly appear to realise the fact." She sighed, as did also Bridges, and murmured a faint denial, but she hitched her glasses higher on her nose and continued unbelievingly:" There are certain subjects requiring more wisdom and circumspection than are usually to be found in very young persons. This matter of Dawkins is, in my humble opinion, a case in point."A sudden gush of courage came to the curate; the lyre-bird in the natural man rose in him; he would show that he too could prance as well as another, in a mild and seemly, strictly clerical way."I must remind you, Miss Dering, that I have my Rector always at hand. His age can surely be no reproach to him.""With the age of Mr. Weston I have nothing to do," Miss Dering said grandly. "I am merely aware that he is either blind or—ahem!—lacking in wisdom, to have allowed the proceedings in the Church for which he is accountable to have reached the pass they have done, and to give occasion for a man such as Dawkins to cast a stone.""What proceedings, Miss Dering? what do you mean?" He felt so ashamed of himself for speaking breathlessly that he made matters worse by blushing."Your light-minded tendency, Mr. Bridges, towards the adornment of your person, to mention one."If Mr. Weston chose to fall short in his duty, she had no notion of sinning on the same lines."Miss Dering—pray—you astonish me!""Your person," she repeated. "I am informed that last Sunday you appeared in the pulpit in bracelets.""Your informant misled you. She alluded, doubtless, to——""Ribbons fastened round your wrists—embroidered ribbons, young man, with Popish crosses on them, and gold fringes dangling over the Word of God. These you may call what you will. I call them bracelets, and a mockery!"A rush of words was coming to Bridges. She saw them in her mind's eye, and stood up. She would nip the young man in the bud."I have promised to preside at a prayer-meeting," she observed. "I have spoken plain words, which I trust you will receive in the spirit in which they are spoken. I shall now wash my hands of this matter, leaving it in the Lord's."He knew how hollow was her promise. She was even now off on the war-path to spread strife and dissension among his flock. He heaved a heavy sigh and gave it up.When they had got themselves out of the house, Rica turned on him with a laugh."I'll never speak to you as long as you live, never, if you tell my uncle of our defeat! Oh, yes, we're retreating shamefully, ignominiously, like a couple of whipped hounds!"An uprising of decent clerical instincts nearly choked Bridges, but he knew that what she said was gospel truth, and so he swallowed his sensations."No matter," she continued, "I mean to know that niece.""Miss Weston, if Miss Dering can prevent it, you never will.""You don't suppose I shall let that old viper frustrate me!""She is a powerful woman, and hard to baffle.""So it seems," she laughed.Bridges felt wretched. He knew that between disappointment and dismay he was moist all over, and he had a profound conviction that she too knew it. He would have given much to sit on that smooth pleasant stone by the ditch and mop himself while he meditated, but Rica knew what was good for him; she carried him off to tea, and insisted on his warming his shaking toes while she fed him.CHAPTER VIII.Two days later, Mr. Weston was sitting in his armchair, with a helpless perturbed look on his face. His spectacles were pushed up on his forehead, and the Times had fallen down between his knees. Geoffrey Hyde was standing before him leaning against the chimney-piece."But," said the Rector wearily, "half-an-hour ago Bridges was here, in an almost incoherent condition, to inform me that you and Miss Dering had gone away together. Now you are here, and of Miss Dering's whereabouts you tell me you know nothing. I confess to feeling rather mystified."Hyde laughed queerly."I don't wonder, the whole affair is a most infernal mess! I hardly think I quite under-stand it myself, although I have seen it through. You see, I don't mean to excuse myself to you, or to make confession with a sneaking view to getting a veneer of forgiveness. I don't believe in that sort of thing in a case like mine. It's complicated, you see. One carries one's own hell in one's pocket—and in other people's. Therefore I don't come to you as to a parson, but because you, being the head of this community, can best stop gossip, and put things straight generally. I can't, as you may guess; naturally, no one would believe me. As to Bridges, poor little chap, although he's an old friend, he's too cut up to be of any use. I had no idea he was in it—awfully sorry for that. That's another score against me, I suppose. I'll tell you everything then, from beginning to end, and perhaps it will come clearer."He stood up and walked to the window. He looked old, and haggard, and defeated. Mr. Weston could hardly believe him to be the same man with whom he had dined a few nights before, and who had sent him home feeling an optimist and twenty-five. Hyde always had that effect upon men; he somehow put the fulness of life into them."I wonder if you would mind Miss Weston's coming in?" he said, turning suddenly from the window. "We see a great deal of her at Lady Duffs, you know. Frank and I being together at Christchurch made us all pretty intimate. Wasn't it curious? the night before Margaret left she did all she knew to go and see her. She didn't tell her aunts, of course, but they got a notion of there being something or other in the wind, and they locked her up in her room, once they got her safe there. She hadn't a friend in the world, you see, and she got a hankering for Miss Weston. I don't wonder; Miss Weston's a fine creature, with wholesome, manly instincts. I wish to God Margaret had gone to her, the poor little girl!""Indeed," said the Rector severely, "so do I. But do you not think it would be pleasanter if you and I had this out together?""Certainly, much pleasanter; but that's not the question. This wretched story is in every one's mouth. I should prefer Miss Weston to hear it direct from mine.""Well, as you like."The Rector had his qualms. Just now Rica was rather too much for him. Every one wanted her, it seemed. He objected to too much womanhood poking about the affairs of the Church. And there was Bridges, only an hour before, pouring himself out to her on the same subject in that flaccid way of his, till Mr. Weston had seriously meditated on the possibility of making some provision at the next Church Congress whereby rickets could be excluded permanently from the church.However, she was generally helpful, if one gave her her head. He rang.When Rica came in, and saw who was there, she kept her hands very palpably to herself."Don't wonder," Hyde said, with a nervous laugh. "Wouldn't shake hands with myself for something. All the same, I want you to hear the whole story from beginning to end. Will you listen?""Yes, I shall listen," she said unwillingly. She had heard enough of it; her brain was swinging, her heart quivering with it."And to think of that fellow, that nice, big, intelligent fellow——"But when she looked at his face she was a little sorry."Sit down," she said, "and tell me all you want to."He was fortunate in having a simple, pleasant sort of manner that did a lot for him."Thank you, awfully."He took a chair, shifted it a little to the side of her, and plunged in."You see, she was a quite new little thing, so amazingly happy. It seemed next to uncanny to find such happiness this end of the century. At first it hardly occurred to me that she came of Christian stock at all; she seemed rather to belong to the woods and the streams, to have come of elfish people. It was dazzling, that happiness! It took hold of one somehow, you were off your feet before you could look round. I'm not making excuses, but I have to explain a bit, it's such a miserable muddle. You know her queer bringing up, the extraordinary share of liberty she was given. Well, we saw a lot of each other for weeks and weeks on end, and—well, I held my tongue—I told her nothing—and just made the best of the good times. Then by some means my wife got to know. She's a good woman, Miss Weston, and as brave as they make them. She came down herself one day to the stream, and she told the other poor little girl all about it. There's not a woman I know who would have done as much, and in the same fine way. It wasn't for my sake, of course, or from any woman's motive—jealousy—that sort of thing, you know—she did it; that's not her line. She's a great woman for ideals, honour, race—prejudice—these things are the breath of her nostrils. It was to save these she did it, Miss Weston."Feeling that Rica was very much the better man of the two, he addressed himself altogether to her, with an occasional glance towards the Rector."Well, the next day, I had toned up my conscience, and my wife's white face kept it up to the mark. It's a shabby thing, you see, to keep on hurting your womankind. I went down to that stream feeling equal to anything, able to do everything, both for Margaret and for myself. I hoped so much from her youth and her enormous capacity for happiness. But I found the events of the day before had swamped both. It was horrid to see the change in her, Miss Weston." He stopped for a minute. "It's a thing, you see, adjectives can't touch. Anyway, it would be next door to an insult to tell another woman how the poor little thing looked. Queer, isn't it, how easily a man can do a thing, the very telling of which seems like a sin against all women? And, you see, there were other things. It wasn't only me—she's not a sentimental fool of that order, but she's so young, and it was new to her to have a comrade. She hasn't a friend in the world. I wish to God she had come to you, you know; she wanted to that last night, and they stopped her.""Did she?"Rica found that her eyes were hot with tears; and having a horror of this womanly weakness, she felt a little as if the mighty had fallen."Yes, but they locked her up, and prayed at her with their doors open. The amount of swearing that woman—the elder one—managed to get through in her theological jargon was startling. She had a life of it, poor little thing! Only for her sense of fun she'd have caved in long ago. Of course that went with the other things: it seems a thing always rather easily mislaid in women. I suppose that's what bowls them over sooner than us. Well, instead of keeping her on her feet, and holding her up, I persuaded her to come away with me. She was as weak and ill as anything; she hadn't slept a wink; and her aunt, in addition to the prayers, had given her an enormous dose of quinine or something, that set her ears singing, and put her altogether off balance. She had no friends, you know, nor any home to speak of.—Yes, I know I'm a blackguard, and no end of other things, but you needn't emphasise it with your eyes.""I was only thinking," said Rica, "I should probably have done precisely the same.""My dear niece——""Of course she wouldn't, Mr. Weston; she's enough of a man already for us to know that under no possible circumstances could she behave like a blackguard. But it's good of her to say it, all the same. You've no idea what an ass a man feels, reeling off his sins to a womanand a parson. It's an unpleasant situation, take it as you will, and a little encouragement comes home to a fellow. Thank you, Miss Weston; I knew you were a nice, manly girl. I wish Margaret had known you. I wish——" He broke short off."You like men best," Rica said. She wanted to give him time."Yes, as a rule. I'm rather too much of an ass, yet, for women; they get on one's nerves. Men seem nearer the worms, you know—of a more simple make. Women are all twists; one gets lost in them. One requires age, and the wisdom of serpents, to cope with women. Well, I must get on. It's an awful bore for you having to sit it out, but I can't let you off. I feel like the Ancient Mariner,—I must get it off my mind. When we got to London we went straight to the 'Métropole. 'It's a howling wilderness of a place; one's only a number there and feels safe from observation. I made her lie down and rest. I had to go out and arrange about money and things; you see, I came off in such a hurry. I was away two or three hours—banker out, and other delays. When I got back again, she wasn't a little, broken, tired girl in my hands any longer. She was a woman—a good, strong, sane woman. She had been having it out with herself in the interval. She looked grey, and there were nearly black half-moons under her eyes. Of course I wanted to kiss her—that's a man's first idea, you know; but she put me back and began to talk of it all."He stopped for a minute, and changed his position, leaning nearer to Rica. He had altogether forgotten the Rector by this time."It was extraordinary how deep down she had got. She gave names to things, and simply walked all round me. I needn't tell you all she said; she didn't, of course, in any sort of way convince me; I was wild to have my own way. But she didn't give me so much as one chance. If you'll believe me, she had been out already, had wired in my name to my wife, saying that I had been called suddenly away, and should be home by the late train. She had also written to her, and had sent the letter. She didn't leave me a loophole; and she looked so ridiculously young. Have you ever noticed the funny, little-baby look about her chin, Miss Weston?"There's not a mean spot in my wife, as you know. She gave me that letter this morning without turning a hair. She doesn't care a rap for me, of course, but—it was hideous for her. Such a letter, too; the gentle, reassuring, matter-of-fact way Margaret had put it. It was amazing in a girl of her years and experience; her growth in these few hours was ghastly. Of course she put it all right for me; one would have sworn she was the tempter and I the poor little victim.""What was she going to do with herself?""She had arranged her own plans in the most business-like way. She had decided to go and live with her nurse, a soldier's widow, of whom she is very fond, who had brought her from India; a good creature, well enough off, and a lot above her class. She wouldn't give me the address, not if I went on my knees for it; and her aunts, it seems, haven't a notion where the woman lives. She promised on her honour to let you know—she was always hankering after you—if she was ever in trouble.""Those miserable aunts! To think they had so little hold on her after all these years.""Yes; she declared it was no self-sacrifice to cut herself off from them, but a relief.""But a girl such as she is can't be cut off, as you call it. People
in her position don't get lost nowadays.""No; it's my clumsy way of putting it,—I feel a good deal of an ass to-day. She's only going away for a time to forget, she says; as a matter of fact, she thinks it's the only thing to bring me to my senses. A good woman is a wonderful thing, Miss Weston; it's an awful pity so many of them keep their goodness so close. If they'd let it out, the world would be a better place to live in."She will, it seems, have quite a large fortune when she comes of age, and she is by no means foolish as to the advantages that will result from it. Meanwhile, she says she can't have a worse time for dulness and want of society than she had at her aunts'. Besides, even if I hadn't to be thought of, she would not dare to return to them; she would rather face anything than their prayers.""Well?""Then she told me what I was to do. Of course I made the usual protests, swore the usual things; but she merely looked at me out of her big eyes, and made me feel rather more of a blackguard than I did before. She laughed once or twice—think of her having grown old enough in that time to be able to laugh in the midst of her first earthquake! She arranged it all. I was to go home, grin and bear it do the very best I could for my wife, and live it down.""And are you going to—" asked Rica, gently,—"to do the best, I mean?""There's nothing else left to do. Besides, you know, I promised her," he said simply."But, but," put in the Rector at last, "what about present funds?""Oh, that's all right. She was very sensible. She has £2000 in the bank altogether in her own power. She asked me for a draft on my bank for that amount, and gave me an order on hers. That, you see, further prevented any chance of my tracing her. She thought of everything. The end of it was, that when she had got me to promise not to try to follow her, and to do all she asked, she sent me out on some pretext. When I came back she was gone just leaving a letter. She hasn't much confidence in me, poor little thing!""Oughtn't her aunts to know just how it is?" said Rica."Oh, they know. That seemed the first thing to be done. I was there this morning.""You mean to say you have been there?""Yes, for over an hour, I think."Rica sat up and looked at him; and the Rector, who had put the professional twist on his mouth very early in the narrative, permitted it to relax secularly."Yes, it was a bore. I felt very bad all the time. The old one enjoyed herself enormously. It was, in fact, some sort of a compensation for the occasion. Well, I must get home. Will you come and see my wife soon, Miss Weston?""If I were you, Hyde," said the Rector, "I would go in for something, some work or another; it's a pity to let as good a degree as yours slide altogether.""So it is, sir; doing nothing gets to be an awful fag after a course of it. Yes, I'll sit on the County Council, or turn poor-rate collector, or go in for a scheme. When a man has made a grand success in muddling his own affairs, he feels his proper sphere must be the management of the universe. Thank you both, most awfully. I feel I did the right thing in coming to you, Miss Weston. I wish she had come!" he said, so that only Rica could hear him. "Oh, going to shake hands with me, are you? That's good of you, that's very good of you!""You dear old darling!" said Rica, as soon as he was off the premises. "You kept the parson under in a most astonishing way!""My dear," said the Rector, with a faint smile, "directly he came in he took the bull by the horns, so to speak, and gave me distinctly to understand that he would have nothing in the shape of a parson brought to bear on him. Besides, as a matter of fact, he delivered himself to you, not to me.""You have one consolation, he's having as bad a time of it as any self-respecting rector could desire—he's a wreck, the ghost of a man.""I wonder what of the poor wife?" Mr. Weston said, making his mouth, by one turn, an object-lesson in propriety."Yes, we haven't flung a thought to her; and yet I have never seen, or spoken to, or thought of her, without feeling in my bones that there was only a thin crust between her and destruction. Sphinxes don't appeal to men of that order. Those two were insane to marry.""Possibly. I wish to God, however, that having done so they had contrived to live together decently.""Or had kept the indecency away from one's own parish? I know it's horrid for you, you dear! I felt it all the time."The Rector wished to goodness that she had not got into that way of hitting the right nail on the head. It was an unlovely thing in woman. Certainly, taking it all round, the Romish Church was wise in its generation."By the way," she said, "when one comes to think of it, there's been a quite engaging air of youth about the whole transaction. Imagine Geoffrey Hyde's feelings when he returned to find her flown, and the waiter's and the booking-clerk's reflections, and Margaret in that hideous dress, and with the middle seam of her jacket all cut crooked. She did her duty nobly, but she needn't have made him so abjectly ridiculous. I wonder if he swore much, and if the waiter and the chambermaid heard him through the key-hole. It's embarrassing to be as young as that, but it's delicious. I feel such a weight of age on me this minute, it's like a thunderstorm on my head. I wish I could go to a ball and dance it off!"The Rector looked at her anxiously, and a vague memory of his dead wife and smelling salts hovered before him; then another of a rather red nose and treble squeals, nicely modulated. No! smelling salts evidently didn't meet the case; besides, they gave red noses. He was getting incoherent himself, from want of rest."To think that Miss Dering's niece should be the centre of a village scandal! May I go and bring whatever fragments of Mr. Bridges still remain back to dinner?""By all means; a drive will do you good."He felt it would also do him good; he was beginning to feel battered, disreputable, immoral, under this tempest of emotions. If he had been an ordinary, vulgar, faithless shepherd, with the Bishop considering his case with prayer, he could not have felt worse.CHAPTER IX.REPENTANCE, even when it happens to be a chosen dispensation, and conducted under the most dramatic and favourable circumstances,—to the sound of martial music, so to speak,—is an unpleasant exercise. When it is compulsory, and has a ridiculous aspect, it grinds small. Only God and those who have endured it have any notion of how ghastly it may then become.When Hyde reached home after delivering himself to Rica, he washed, dressed, and fell to meditation. But what he produced was poor stuff. He was feverish, restless, unstrung. He had not slept a wink for two nights, and had been travelling the best part of the third. Thought, desire, regret, duty, above all the ridiculousness of the situation, and the infinitesimal smallness of the show he himself had made in it,—all put together, made an ugly whole. An unsuccessful sinner is such a miserable animal! inevitable repentance is so mawkish! there didn't seem to be a wholesome drop in the whole disagreeable cup.Even common decent living had become diseased. To live decently with one woman, with your whole soul, and spirit, and body strained with longing for another, was a horrid business; to do it, too, because the woman you longed for had trapped you into doing it—had sacrificed herself to ensure the carrying out of the farce. It was a hellish joke, a comedy of virtue for the benefit of devils. It was all too incongruous, too crudely ludicrous, to draw to itself human interest.He had kept all this turmoil well under during his talk with Rica; it was meant for a man to digest, not for a woman to reflect on. But it came harder on him for the repression.It occurred to him, after a week or so wasted in enervating reflections of all descriptions, that there was one clean straw that might be caught on to; it was that held out by the supine and rather flabby Rector in his suggestion that he should engage in some work. He sat up briskly."Yes, work, that's the thing, the one sensible word he spoke,—to live it down and to work."The thought acted like a talisman. The starch drifted back gradually into his body; as he considered further he felt still better; the divine afflatus of self-esteem returned by degrees into his soul; he felt taut, trim, ready for anything; he could walk straight and look forward and throw ridicule—even that of the clubs—to the dogs.Having been hitherto idle, there was a refreshing newness in the idea that made it singularly stimulating. Yes, work was the one thing. It would meet every side of the case, fulfil every requirement.One day, on his return from an aimless ride—having to remain in the country the best part of the season seemed just now a distinct bore—he sat down to his desk and began a letter to a friend.The friend was a man of energy, a ferocious worker, and the editor of a leading journal, who had badgered him more than once to strike out and shed his sloth. He had only got as far as "Dear old—"when a footman entered, and announced sepulchrally that Mrs. Hyde was very ill, and the doctor had been sent for.This stripped the gilt off the gingerbread in a twinkling; he must be up and doing, but the quality of the work was what he had hardly bargained for.She was very ill; the first time he saw her, he wondered what power it could be that kept her alive. It was certainly neither breath nor blood. The sight of her was a shock; it brought his sins home to him from a new point of view, and he was convinced that he could see the full knowledge of the whole batch of them in the doctor's eyes. But he held on doggedly, and did what he could, which was exceedingly little, waiting and watching, being of absolutely no account in the house, and feeling all the time more or less of a malefactor, and ever so much of an ass. The baby too,—who, when it came—was a poor premature weakling, and heir to two big estates, provided him with a variety of eminently unpleasant sensations.All these things, mixed up with thoughts of Margaret,—her loving and losing,—made for him a very pretty medley of things human.As soon as life struggled back into Beatrice, and went halting on its way, Geoffrey was frequently invited into the room, to watch her lying half conscious, with the small sick baby at her side, and to wish to God he could get out again. It choked him to be there, and as soon as she began to notice his presence he saw very clearly that it also choked her. It was a refinement of cruelty, carried on apparently for the benefit of the nurse.One night the nurse fell ill, and then arose chaos in the establishment. There was scarlet fever in the village, which put a local nurse out of the question, so that they had to wait until one arrived from town. Even then there was some mistake; it was two days and a night before she came. In the interval, Hyde took the bit between his teeth, and settled into the collar.He watched her, keeping himself well out of sight. He. noticed every change in her, every look; he insisted—vicariously—on every morsel of nourishment being swallowed; and once on his own intuition he insisted on sending for the doctor, who came, and only just in time.Two or three times she found him out, and made a faint weary protest. This struck him with a vague pain, as of an inward hurt. Surely it was her right, she had forfeited nothing; and no less surely was it his duty.Duty and penance had become convertible terms, and the better duty was done the more like penance it became,—a fruitless penance, that brought one no nearer any known heaven.When he was tired, watching near her door one night—fearing the nurse snoozed when it was her duty to keep herself specially alert—and his brain generally being in a muddle, it occurred to him all at once how delightful it would be to be a Catholic, and faithful, able to watch one's sins rolling off one like flakes to the chink of coin of the realm; then duty might have a rest, and so might he. It was evident that he, as well as his cousin, had got some drops of Puritan blood playing about somewhere in his economy.His two days' and a night's nursing had turned the scale, the doctor said, and saved her life.When the new nurse came, Hyde stretched himself violently, and rode over to see Rica. She stimulated him, threw a broader light on things, and she had a renovating laugh. Besides, he knew as well as if she had told him that the one spot of romance in her prosaic heart was Margaret Dering;—that she had enshrined her in its wholesome depths, and meant to keep her there and love her.CHAPTER X.DANBY ROW was one of those unhappy places that had once seen better days. In the middle of the last century it had been inhabited by stout burghers and well-to-do professional men; but as the neighbourhood thickened those genteel persons retired, and the backs of their houses had been pulled down to make way for other buildings, and only the fronts remained; so that, though each house contained but few rooms, they were, for the vicinity, large and convenient.In the front parlour of one of these houses an old woman was entertaining a district visitor—suffering her, would possibly be the more correct expression.The room was clean, and cosy, and pink-chintzy—that peculiar cherry pink of the chintz of a past generation. The old woman looked alert, and the tints of her face were unusually clear and pure for her time of life. Scouring, and cleaning, and polishing formed part of her creed, and she had somehow managed to keep her heart as clean as her fire-irons.She had just sniffed and planted her hands firmly on her knees. She was a thoroughly respectable woman, and had had a good "bringing-up," but "some things is too much for any sinful being," and Miss Dow, the new district visitor, in her zeal for the decencies, was one of those things."Really, Mrs. Bent, I meant no offence. It is our duty to seek and to save the—ahem!—fallen.""Indeed, ma'am, I don't deny you. I have nothing to say against it; but it might be as well to seek 'em where they may be found. There be none o' that quality here, and here I have lived these ten years, come Easter.""Will you be good enough to request this young person to remain in on Thursday, when I hope to be round again?"She was about to put a little book on the table, but she paused in the act, for Mrs. Bent had risen, and assumed a belligerent and highly unbecoming attitude of mind and body. She was as stiff as a poker, and her old eyes, with the pathetic white line in them, were dancing with rage."Am I to ask Miss Margaret, my young lady, to remain in on Thursday, ma'am, if so be it is quite convenient to her? Is that what you wish me to do, ma'am?""I was not aware you had any young lady staying with you, Mrs. Bent." She made a vain but futile attempt to keep down her voice. "I am only saying that every neighbour in the place is talking of this matter. It is not to be supposed that such a person would take refuge here without her reasons. Her dress is unbecoming to the last degree.""Indeed, ma'am, I have lived all my life in good families, and in my poor opinion my young lady has uncommon good taste.""And—she was seen with a baby in her arms the other day; that also, no doubt, is in uncommonly good taste!"She spoke fast and spluttered, as she usually did when her sense of virtue was outraged more than usual."Very like indeed, ma'am. Miss Margaret have a rare fancy for babbies.""You take it strangely, Mrs. Bent. Every neighbour in the place is talking of her.""The neighbours would do well to hold their tongues on some matters, ma'am, more especially rings and babbies; and it behoves not you, ma'am, who comes to help and teach us, to hearken to such ridiculous slanders."A horrid suspicion that possibly she had made a mistake, and that the Vicar might hear of it, inspired Miss Dow with a sudden inclination to get away. She said a frigid "Good afternoon," and departed, slamming the door behind her."The poor soured body!" thought Mrs. Bent. "Neither rings nor babbies have ever come in her way, I'll be bound. But I wish I had opened the door for her—it seemed disrespeckful like."Miss Dow was new to her work, and a fool. She was, besides, a prim, well-dried person, with a parochial nose.When Margaret had arrived at Danby Row, had told her story, and had been taken straight to the old woman's heart, she had been buoyed up by the consciousness of her victory, of her sacrifice, of her escape from a great danger. She would hide herself and rest, and try to grasp hold of life again. She thought she would here, in this wilderness of houses, have a free field to do it in. She imagined that among these poor people, and in the general laxness of law, she would be forgotten, passed over; that no one would want to find out anything about her.But she was altogether mistaken. Poor and rich alike have points in common. They are both curious, and both sparing of their charity; and if a mystery, who won't allow herself to be got at, takes up her burthen of life in the midst of a community of either class, she will find but a cool reception.If, into the bargain, she has astonishing eyes, and the pride of race in every movement, so much the worse for her. Moreover, the poor are local in their sympathies; moral laws may be as slender as you please among the neighbours, or their immediate relations, but they do not relish imported persons from the higher ranks, with unfathomable doubts attached to them. Margaret found she was poaching on other people's preserves. There was quite enough home-grown doubtfulness in this neighbourhood without contributions from alien quarters.Besides, her manners did not take. She had but one weapon in her small armoury to oppose to their suspicions and their flood of blood-curdling questions. This was silence. Before she had been there a fortnight, she had got the name of "an 'orty 'ussy." Her attitude, indeed, galled them frightfully, and, being so absolutely opposed to their own methods, it struck them as next to indecent. They heartily detested her, but unluckily their distaste didn't keep them off her. They infested the house, and made Mrs. Bent's soul sick within her, for, being a peaceful body, she didn't like to show them the door. Even had she done so, they might possibly not have taken it, being much interested in working out their problem.Broadly speaking, you may lose yourself to all eternity in London, but it's a moral impossibility to do it in a Row. The Rowites will get to the bottom of you, or of their rendering of it, or they'll know the reason why.After a few face-to-face experiences with them, Margaret always contrived to fly up to her room on the first landing, where she would listen to them at her leisure. For the representatives of the Row's public opinion had all-piercing tongues, and delivered their sentiments in plain terms.This was bad enough, but Miss Dow was the worst. She was presumably good, and had some education; and it requires a certain smattering of education to be properly nasty. Indeed, it had been Miss Dow, in her zeal, who had first cast the doubt, and tickled the ears of the Rowites.All these things, then, being against her, Margaret's faint spurt of virtuous exaltation slipped off her, and left her soul to its leanness—her heart to its forlornness."God help the child!" said Mrs. Bent to herself, after a long musing, in which two or three stitches had been dropped; "God help her, for He alone can! What's come to that milkman, I'd like to know! Here's five o'clock, and not a drop for tea."She went to the door and looked anxiously up and down the street. It was a narrow street, mean and dull, one end opening into a broader, more ambitious road, where many of the houses had venetians to all the front windows. The other end opened into a labyrinth of tiny alleys, and lanes, and dark passages.To the left, the neighbourhood was bad from an ethical point of view, but it might have been worse. Of the neighbourhood to the right the less said the better. It was an unholy vicinity, and was eschewed by those who had a reputation to keep up, or who "let on" they had.Danby Row was a short cut West-Endwards, and was thronged as night fell by the crowd that seek their bread or their pleasure in the dark hours. Then God-fearing folk mostly drew their blinds and shut their doors and their ears, if they had any respect for them, waiting in patience till the hordes had swept past.The Row had the usual "trimmings,"—the pub. at the corner, and the due proportion of mongrel curs and broken crockery, babies and oyster shells.Presently Mrs. Bent perceived Margaret and the milkman coming down the street at the same moment, and she went in to make the tea.Margaret's dress was a marked success. She had naturally excellent taste, and she had been fortunate in the shop she had gone to. There was a marked simplicity about the girl, and the frock emphasised it.When she saw herself in it for the first time she had gasped, and, for a minute, she was perfectly happy. She was so new to herself, such a delicious surprise. She had also gasped when she saw the bill, and concluded that in London the cost of a dress is in exact pro-portion to its simplicity,—in which, no doubt, she was about right.Then there gradually grew up in her the need for a hat and boots and gloves to match the frock, so that as she walked into Mrs. Bent's front room she was an absolutely, consciously, well-dressed young woman.It was fortunate for her that she had thus early in the day discovered a good dressmaker. If she had set forth to tread this vale of tears in her drab gown she would infallibly have dropped by the way possibly into a decline. She might even have written a novel.Instead of which, she had, so far, kept her health and preserved her self-respect.CHAPTER XI."Miss Dow was here," said Margaret, as she drank her tea; "I saw her, and dodged her down a lane.""Yes, dear, she was here.""Did she say anything about my being out?""She said a good deal, poor crittur,—more words than sense.""She's a detestable person, and her voice is worse than Aunt Katherine's. She's built a perfect charnel-house of sins up round me; all she comes for is to sniff out a fresh stone to add to her structure.""Take no heed of her, dear. When you've lived as long as me you'll know something of what women as disappointments have turned bitter can be.""But what is she disappointed in?" said Margaret, wondering vaguely if it had anything to do with her nose."Old maids, my dear, is standing failures, and they knows it.""But perhaps they prefer being old maids?""We'll hope they do, Miss Margaret, some on 'em. I doubt if Miss Dow's state is from preference. It's agen natur', dear, mostly, as much as agen inclination. It's a dispensation of the Lord's, dear, and no doubt meant for good, but I never see an old maid that I don't ask the Lord to have mercy and deal gently with her little ways, as it's by His own hand she's been afflicted."Margaret thought her theology was a little mixed, but she said nothing."The Lord's hand lies heavy on women," Mrs. Bent went on. She often had a little musing fit after tea. "Married or single. If we're married, there's a husband to put up with; if we're not, there's the want of one. It's contrariness and leanness of soul either ways." She looked up presently and noticed Margaret's clouded face. "Don't think of the words of that person, Miss Margaret; God knows you deserve none of them!""I wasn't thinking of her, Mrs. Bent. I suppose God does know," she said, after a minute or two; "but, after all, what He knows isn't altogether to my credit. All the people here believe that I'm an active sinner of some sort or another. Passive sin never enters into their calculations. It's not tangible enough; besides, it seems the normal condition of so many of them; you see it simmering in their eyes. Even for Miss Dow, who is a peg above them, I would lose half my interest if she knew I had really stopped short at breaking a moral law. But God knows better; He knows that at this present moment I long for sin—which means, I suppose, Geoffrey Hyde; that I hate and detest being good—which means keeping out of his way. She was there to-day, and there was a little white baby in the carriage beside her, such a tiny white mite; and her husband came up two or three times and spoke to her, looking all the time as if he were sorry. I think she was the prettiest woman in the crowd, and her turn-out was the best. I wonder—I wonder very much if he hates being good as much as I do, or if the baby's a consolation. Do men ever find consolations in such very small things? I myself think it must be rather improving to the mind to have a baby. I can't imagine any one's hankering for forbidden things with a small white creature like that staring one out of countenance. I have a sort of notion that that baby will blot out me. I should be glad and rejoice, shouldn't I? Yet I don't like it the least bit. It's abominably horrid to be forgotten, although I know I made rather a fine speech to him on that very subject. How one's moods change!""Miss Margaret, dear, don't!""Let me babble; it means nothing, and it's been a horrid day somehow. I was just thinking that women are altogether different from God, here at least among the guileless poor. They only see things in spots, just a mere fraction of one side of a question, and all they can't see they consider must be evil. And as they only see one atom of me, they think the rest as evil as they have imagination for. But what on earth does it all matter?"Mrs. Bent was a tender soul, and she began to cry a little—besides, she was shocked. Margaret, as a rule, was so very silent on these matters, she could not understand her feverish, restless rush of words.Margaret heard her small, patient sobs, and thought what a pleasant thing it would be to be able to join her;—her own eyes felt so hot and dry. She supposed that with the weight of years on one, and with life lived, and skies grey, one could cry at will. It seemed rather nice.Then she wished vaguely she had never found that scrap of Morning Post from which she had learnt that Mr. and Mrs. Hyde, baby, and suite, had come up to town, that had driven her to go out to watch for them in the park day after day—every day, however, from a different coign of vantage, for she had found out, from men's eyes, new facts about herself that had made her wary.Mrs. Bent cried on for a little, and wished that the world wasn't so exceedingly puzzling a place, or the ways of God so mysterious. Then it suddenly struck her that she herself was no better than an idle slattern. She got up briskly, washed her cups and saucers, "tidied up" her room, and took a turn round the premises. When she returned it was dusk. Margaret was still there, and her hat was still on. Mrs. Bent looked at her for a minute, and perceived that this betokened an immoral attitude of mind."Miss Margaret, my dear," said she, "will you go and get your brush? and I'll do your hair."Margaret went mechanically. Brushing as a means of grace was a strong belief of Mrs. Bent's.She brushed out the shaded shining masses of hair for a few minutes; then she began, in a nice monotonous old voice,—"I mind me of a little village in Surrey, dearie, nigh on to the common, where be wild birds, and heather, pink and white and purple, and little white wax flowers with green lines in 'em, that glistened like frost. I went down there years since, afore my John spoke up. He was ready to speak, and should ha' done so, but—there was a hussy—girls do make sich fools o' theirselves for soldiers' sakes! But I was high in myself, and I left him and the hussy to settle it between 'em, and went down to an old aunt. There wasn't a sound sharper nor a church bell, and the milking cry o' the cows; and of evenings, when the bees had gone home, one could hear the grass talkin' like silver bells. It seemed sum-mow to quieten one down. I needed quietin' in them old days. I was wild and fierce. I used to sit out among the little purple bushes and drink in the air, and smell the blossoms, thinking betimes of my John, and rating the hussy as she deserved. My hands were idle, but I think I learnt more'n if they had worked."She dropped the brush suddenly, and clapped her hands, and a funny young light shone out in her eyes, blurring the white lines in them, as she sat again among the heather and thought of John; but something—the hussy possibly—called her suddenly back, and the light in her eyes went out. She sighed, and continued her brushing."Will you come down to the little village with me, Miss Margaret dear? I went by the coach then, and it took half the day. But the train goes now, and an hour brings you."Margaret looked up. It seemed just what she wanted—the quiet, the hush, the droning bees; the fever in her blood might cool there, the maddening whirl in her head stop. It sounded delicious. She dropped her head and let Mrs. Bent go on with her brushing, then she suddenly lifted it."It would be altogether perfect," she said, "except for—things—which I think would make the quiet and the hush rather horrid. It's for me you want it, you old dear, not yourself, isn't it? You're not disappointed?""I! No, dear. I have no mind for gadding, and the place would seem altered, and it's that distractin' to learn where things in a new place be. I thought belike it might do you good.""But you do me more good than any heather would. You have made my headache vanish now with your brushing. How odd your eyes look! Look at me again—they seem as if they had seen everlasting things and had found peace. Peace must be a pleasant sort of thing to find, I fancy.""You'll find joy as well as peace, my lamb. The old have left the joy before they have found -the peace, and joy is the best, dear. One feels sad and lonesome the day one finds the joy is gone. But one has the looking forward. Of that the young knows naught. The joy and the peace both will come to you, dear, in His good time.""His good time!" Margaret gave a little laugh. His good time somehow sounded funny in this dull street."Listen to that church clock—doesn't it sound horrid, as if some one had died miserably? We must go to bed, you're tired to death."She prepared unwillingly to go to her room, which was the one opposite the parlour. She was beset by nameless fears. From the time that she had first seen the two in the park she had never slept more than an hour together. She used to lie in her white sheets on the big feather bed—the pride of Mrs. Bent's soul—and toss in the dreadful silence, longing for the day. She grew old in the night, and hope fled from her.The old woman watched her patiently, and her weary eyes grew dim."Dear," she said, "I would to God you could pray!"Margaret laughed and shivered."Perhaps I shall when little things like blobs and sparks stop bobbing up and down before my eyes. I think they're devils. They were awful last night. They drove prayers or anything in the shape of sleep to the other end of the world."Mrs. Bent reflected sadly on her, then she kissed her, and as she prepared herself for bed—she had a complication of observances to work through before she got there—for the first time in her life she got God and the devil inextricably mixed up in her brain.The injustice of allowing the young to lie awake in the night watches seemed to her to show altogether too great an ignorance of the requirements of young people to be the work of an All-knowing Jehovah.CHAPTER XII.THE little bobbing devils, the mention of which had so severely shocked Mrs. Bent, were really kindly creatures, the brain's little errand boys, sent out to say it wanted a doctor.When Margaret went next day to keep her foolish vigil in the park, she felt a sudden panic in the midst of a throng of carriages, near the Marble Arch, and she barely escaped being run over. She had again lost courage, she thought, as she sat shivering in the sun, and waiting till "they" should come.She and the baby came first; then he rode up, and told her something with a laugh, and she gave a little, pleased, unaccustomed smile, and her eyes melted as she turned them on the baby in the nurse's arms. Margaret wondered vaguely if he had noticed their sudden loveliness; then a frantic notion seized her that it was her bounden duty to go and then and there draw his attention to the fact Then she stood up half-dazed. It seemed to her to be already dark, and after a long time—minutes—years—centuries—she got to an omnibus and drove up and down, round and round, for a few centuries more, and then Bedlam broke loose, and the noise of the whole world clattered about her ears. She had to lift herself up to fly, but there was no place to fly to—it was all noise and whirl, stress, and the empty howling of fiends. At that point a whirlwind caught her, and she knew nothing more.She was huddled up against a wall, unconscious, in a little lane off Tottenham Court Road, where the old bookstall stood, and a girl was apostrophising her inanimate form with much interest and more curiosity."She ain't drunk, neither!" she was remarking. "She don't look it, and there ain't no smell o' liquor Blest if I know wot to do with 'er! The p'lice would be the best, no doubt, but she don't look the sort summow for them t' andle. She ain't one of us, for certain.—My, but she's pretty!—Wake up, will yer!"She shook her, but without the slightest effect. "Mercy! be she a-goin' to lie here all night, and me with no end to do before work begins," she muttered enigmatically.She was a big, full-breasted, handsome girl, with large, frank, not to say bold, eyes; a fresh, thoughtless mouth, and bright pink cheeks. She wore an astonishing fringe, and was plentifully befrilled and bedizened. The powder-puff had been handled freely, but seemingly by a 'prentice hand. The powder had got into her black brows and on to the ends of her fringe; but for all that, and for all the signs and tokens of her calling, she was pleasant to look upon. The ugliness of vice had, as yet, had no time to deface her. She was young, and she enjoyed her life. The lawlessness and the strangeness of it pleased her simple soul. She was a young animal, with her small speck of a soul in its babyhood.She bent her ruddy warm face down to the cold one."She's a real lady, too, a tip-topper, although her clo'es ain't up to much." She caught up a handful of the dress and sampled it with some natural scorn. "Serge! And not a morsel o' silk on it, not as much as a dab o' braid. Suthin' queer 'ere! I wonder wot might it be. The fit is good, and the figger—lawks! Wake up, my dear!"She set to chafing her hands with vigour."I wonder 'ave 'er young man been and cleared! Like enuff! Bill served me that way with slight enuff cause." She heaved an ample sigh and regarded the situation with interest, and with some sentiment in the turn of her head. "She's 'ansomer nor me, darned if she's not!"Her resulting sigh was one of mortification, and she thought she would call the police. On second thoughts she decided not to do so, for in that case she would never get to the bottom of it at all."Open yer eyes, miss,—lor! them lashes, longer nor mine! Ain't I a fool, a-coddlin' of a young woman as '11 like enuff shake the touch o' me off 'er as soon as she starts to come to! She's a-stirrin'—there, dear! let me 'elp yer. Ton my word, I thought as you'd never chirp up. May I make bold to inquire wot yer name may be, and where y' may live?"She was torn with curiosity, and thought she would steal a march, and gain her information before any doubt as to her calling should dawn on the young woman. Perhaps then it might be a sermon instead. There was terror in the thought. She had suffered in her time."Where may you live, miss?"Margaret looked at her with an enquiring, wondering gaze. It discomposed her, and made her shift her position a little."One don't care to be pried into by womenfolk!" the girl reflected. But she pressed her question nevertheless."Your name, miss? and where may you live?""Oh, my name—Margaret Dering; I live at Mrs. Bent's—Danby Row."Her voice was hardly audible, but at the name of the Row her listener ejaculated a smothered "I never!" She knew the place, and it seemed to her, more than ever, that there must be something under it all. This she doggedly resolved to find out. When one has the whole day on one's hands as she would have to-morrow—one cannot sleep for ever—a mystery to scent out is a god-send.The enquiring eyes recalled her."Oh—I—I'm a milliner—goin' West after a late order. My, but yer weak!" The white upturned face touched her queerly. "I ain't in no partickler 'urry, and I 'ave a shillin or two about me. I'll see yer 'ome."With quick decision, she set to shout lustily to a passing cab, and from some vague sense of decency she refrained from any play of repartee with the cabman, who happened to be an old friend of hers. Indeed, she felt quite haughty and resentful at his easy wink as she half-pushed, half-lifted Margaret into the cab."Thanks be to goodness, she couldn't see that!" she thought; then she wrapped her rabbit-lined cloak round Margaret with clumsy good nature.The drive in the fresh evening air revived Margaret, and she turned gratefully to her companion."You're most awfully good! But don't give me all your cloak. Come, take half for yourself.""Thanks, no, miss, I'm orful 'ot.""Lor! if she knew," she thought with a nervous giggle, "she mightn't be so friendly-like." She huddled into her corner, and tilted her brilliant toque as far forward as it would go, furtively watching her find, who seemed so startlingly out of place in these parts. "This time o' night too, and the streets full of us. I wonder if she knows a thing. It's amazin' ow they get that look, and 'ow they keep it moreover. Oh Lord!"She sighed hugely, for no earthly reason that she knew of, and by the time they reached the Row her rollicking face had grown paler and solemn. She looked like a dejected poppy, and felt a disposition to sigh again.When the cab pulled up, Margaret was caught in Mrs. Bent's shaking arms, and hurried into the front room. Then Poll—that was her christened name, she had dropped her other some time since—stepped over to the driver and snubbed him scornfully as she handed him his fare. She then turned nervously to the open door, more than half-inclined to make off and leave her cloak,—a fine deep red it was, too, with gilt clasps.But Margaret was looking eagerly out for her from the sofa. The girl went to her mechanically."Them eyes draw like snakes," she observed parenthetically to herself, as she slouched up awkwardly.She attempted a little mock curtsey to Mrs. Bent as she passed her, and made a feeble feint of tossing her head, but all the same she winced painfully under the old woman's swift, shocked scrutiny."Oh, I'm done for now!" she thought. "The old 'un 'll blab!" and she wished to mercy she was back in the street."She has been most awfully good to me," Margaret explained hurriedly, to stave off the tempest which she perceived was imminent from Mrs. Bent's hard set face. Though why it should be so, she had not a notion; she was as yet not very learned in these matters. "I don't know what I should have done but for her help. I got dizzy, and got into an omnibus. It was the first thing that came by. The noise made me worse, and I got out to get a cab, I think, and I remember nothing more. You must have carried me bodily into that cab we came in." She caught hold of Poll's hand, bursting through its brown kid. "Thank you ever so much. Please tell me your name, and where you live; and you'll come and see me again, won't you?""My name is Poll Smith, and I live in Broad Street, Number 15," said the girl, with mendacious alacrity.The inhabitants of Number 15 were godly folk, who wouldn't have touched her with a pair of tongs; but she had a "down" on the family for some reason of her own, and always made free with their address."Lor! won't they be proud and pleased, with their chapel-goin' imperince!" she had thought as the joke had first struck her."But you'll never find it, miss," she continued, with a twinge of compunction. Somehow, she didn't feel like making a fool of this unusual acquaintance." Maybe I'll look in of an evening. Y' seem bad, to be sure. I'd as well clear."With an odd impulse, she caught Margaret's hand in both hers and gave it a jerky squeeze; then she put it carefully back on the pillow and made for the door."My cloak—oh! thanks, miss, I was a-forgettin' of it.""Here's the fare, young woman, as you were kind enough to pay for my young lady," said Mrs. Bent stiffly, waylaying her.Margaret sprang up, but had to sink back again, and she felt too choked and dizzy to say a word. The girl crimsoned violently and threw up her head."I don't want yer money, if I am the dirt under yer feet. I have a right to spend my money as I like. Ye can keep yer own fur them as wants it—or fur yerself; it might keep ye a day or two longer off the Parish." She slammed the door in her face. "Oh, the old varmint!" she muttered, adding as an axiom in her philosophy, "I 'ates women, I does, like p'isin."She turned into the corner pub. to refresh herself, arrange her flaming face before the glass, and put her toque in its proper place—as far back as possible, hanging on to one hair or so."Mrs. Bent, how could you?" said Margaret angrily. "I didn't think it was in you to treat any one in such a way.""Miss Margaret, dear," she cried, with a choking in her voice, "I couldn't bear you should take such ill-gotten gains as that young woman's."She shuddered and looked very old. She had memories. She had been all these years in this dingy street with the faint hope that some day there might come back, and find her always waiting here, her youngest, the only one she had saved out of seven."And to see you—you—child—in such company—it gave me a turn! Child, take your tea. You know so little, dear.""I think I know so much," said Margaret wearily. "The world seems nothing but sorrow and sin—and tiredness. My head is simply awful. I'll go to bed. Mrs. Bent," she began again, when the old woman had helped her into bed, "do you think she'll come back?""I hope to the Lord she won't!"There was a sort of cry in her voice. She turned sharply away, and went into the kitchen to prepare something for Margaret."Sorrow and sin—sorrow and sin!" she murmured, as she moved brokenly about.Perhaps, dear, I was hard," she said, as she brought the little white-covered tray. "But none but the Lord Himself knows the heart's bitterness. It was through the like of her that I lost my youngest and my best. Child, what is it?"She put her tray on the table and laid her hand on Margaret's head."Nothing," she said, with chattering teeth, "only I'm cold—deadly cold. I'll be all right when I get hot again."But Mrs. Bent knew better. As soon as the shivering had turned to burning heat, and she had fallen at last, tired out, into a restless sleep, Mrs. Bent put on her things and went for the doctor."It had to come," she told herself, as she made her way nervously through the streets, "with a fierce young heart full of trouble, and naught to bring comfort. I wonder why the Lord sees fit to tarry!"CHAPTER XIII.Her adventure with the young woman with lashes that beat her own made a deep impression on Poll. She thought of her in spurts Haymarketwards, and, more or less, all that night and the next day. She couldn't "chuck 'er off nohow."In the evening she took a long round, so that she might pass the little house and give "a squint in." But she saw more than she bargained for. Just as she came up a doctor was disappearing inside the door.With a pang that made Poll wonder "wot had come to her wotever," she slipped up to the window, which was wide open, planted her face against a pane, and listened with might and main.She heard everything, and through a flaw in the blind she saw Margaret's burning face tossing on the pillow, and her dry lips muttering. She also saw the doctor's grave face, and the fear on Mrs. Bent's as she watched him.Poll uttered one of her windy sighs, and went up the street. As she turned the corner, she bethought her of a drop of "comfort," and wavered, but she went on again."'Twill only make me 'otter, and it's a steamin' night. Bah! I don't want no money. I'm flush enuff. I'm dog-tired, moreover."Night after night, on the road West, she took her stand near the little house, hanging round till she saw the doctor approaching; then she would make for the window and listen, slinking off before he came out.But one night she waited till after he had gone, for she had heard him say something about "death," and that was a word that always made her "afeard of 'erself," and reckless as to anything else. She walked restlessly about the street, hovered round the house, and stood, minutes long, listening at the door. At last, egged on by that hideous word, she tapped softly, then made as if to run away. But she came back and waited a long time—hours it seemed to her—while Mrs. Bent rose from her tired knees and wiped her eyes.At last the door was opened. When she saw who it was, Mrs. Bent half-closed it again, but paused, and was about to say some hard thing with a hard voice when a sudden memory caught and silenced her. She threw the door open, and said huskily,—"What may you want, young woman?""Be 'er a-goin' to die?" blurted out Poll."None but God can tell. She's sick unto death, the doctor says. How do you come to know of it, girl?" she demanded, sternly.Poll made no answer. She gulped some-thing down, and turned to go, but with one foot on the threshold she turned round again, and back into the passage."Might I stop, ma'am?" she said, half fiercely, half bashfully. "I'll not touch nothink, that ain't my line. I might wash up the dishes, or run arrants, or fetch the doctor, or such."Mrs. Bent looked at her in amazement and dubious silence, and was on the point of sending her about her business when a moan from Margaret fetched her hastily into her room.When she came back, Poll was standing where she had left her, with her head bent and her hands clasped tightly, as a sort of dumb protest that she neither pried nor prigged. There was an impudent air of supplication in every line of her.Mrs. Bent raked her from stem to stern, and a big struggle began in her mind. At first it went dead against Poll's chances, but bitterness and disgust gave place at last to patient, mournful, hopeless pity."Take off yer cloak, girl, and bide." This was her verdict. "It makes little matter to her now who goes or stays," she muttered, as she went back to the bed-side, leaving Poll to her reflections.Those reflections, to judge by her cast of countenance, were anything but agreeable. The silent room, with its subdued light, the feeble flickering fire, with ever and anon a weary moan to wake the echoes, or a shred of murmured prayer, were awful in the extreme to the girl, and brought back to her a deal she would gladly have forgotten.They brought to her mind her mother as she lay dying in her cottage in Hampshire, telling her between her racking fits of coughing "to be good," and to "take care of herself;" and she wished in a foggy way that she had taken her advice. Then she set to meditate on less wholesome matters,—on her father, and the woman he had brought in to live with him, and she with a husband of her own too, before her mother was cold in her grave. Then there arose a faint vision of "Bill," with his big red face, and his two little eyes looking out of their hills of fat; but they were honest little eyes, and used to beam on her cheerily. Then another pair of eyes, that used just to eat her up, and which finally ousted "Bill." She left him among his ridges, and wandered up to London with her shame upon her and the neighbours jeering. She soon "chucked that off anyhow," she thought, with a touch of defiance, bred of memories best known to herself. A merrier life soon set in. She could laugh and grow fat at her ease, and wear "clo'es that would have made their hair curl."Here a moan, a long-drawn moan of horror and fear, shut Poll's reflections up."I wish I 'adn't been such a bloomin' ass as to come 'ere!" she muttered, casting her restless eyes fearfully into the corners. "I ain't wanted—I'll clear."She half rose to go, but something took hold of her and pulled her down again into her chair. There was another moan. A coal in the fire suddenly flared up and spat out at her, as if it had been a devil, a long, thin, blue tongue of flame, and in the lurid light, for the first time in her thoughtless existence, she caught a glimpse of her calling as it looks to other people's eyes.An impotent restlessness stirred her. She twisted on her chair and craned her neck, so that she could see the bed and the wide vacant eyes staring at the ceiling, and the uneasy hands picking jerkily at the bed-clothes, and Mrs. Bent down on her knees trembling with suppressed sobbing.Margaret threw up her arms wildly and shrieked; her passive state had give place to ungovernable delirium. She grew each moment as strong as iron. Poll soon saw that Mrs. Bent was no match for her. She stood up, longing and fearing, but truly thankful for any distraction. The old woman struggled stoutly, to keep her away; but her wrists were feeble, she could hold out no longer."Come and help me, girl!" she cried desperately at last.Poll went with a sort of skip. She was, at first, as awkward as a bear, and gave Margaret a bruise or two. Mrs. Bent said nothing, but wished her well out of the way. Her one consolation was that she "was no rougher than a neighbour would have been," and that, in her case, she needn't worry about politeness.In the beginning Poll was far too excited to be the least aware of her roughness, but once, in holding down Margaret's arm, she gave it a wrench, and made her cry out like a little child "crying in the night."Poll started back. The sound woke up some dead old pain that made her cold, and the shock forced a tenderness into the big coarse hands never born or bred in them. Before the night was over she had succeeded in gaining a word of half-grudged approval from Mrs. Bent.Night after night she came, and sat patiently waiting until there should be need of her. She could not tell herself why she came. She would occasionally observe to herself apologetically "that she were druv." She was often tired, and always awfully bored, but she never "let on" to Mrs. Bent. She wouldn't give her that "satisfaction." And, indeed, Mrs. Bent took precious little notice of her in any of her moods, for it was only her own unfortunate want of strength that ever made her and her morals, even for the minute, supportable. Otherwise, she was a mere irritating eyesore, and a reproach.For whenever Margaret was quiet for any length of time, the woman's religious instincts would bristle up and prick her laxness. Here was a brand blazing up right under her nose, as though demanding to be snatched, and she never felt equal to putting forth a finger in its direction. She was so tired, and the brand looked so cheerful—so absolutely irresponsible.After a whole day's thought, when there was no more hope, Mrs. Bent wrote to Miss Dering—a long letter, full of details. She told her not only of the present, but of the future—what she would do "after," in case they should not come in time; and she sent Poll to post it.Poll had a little business of her own on at the same time, and did not post it till she had got to Piccadilly.The letter was a weight off Mrs. Bent's mind; she felt she had done her duty, and given "them as owned her" their chance, even though they little deserved it.One night Poll did not come, and Mrs. Bent discovered, for the first time, how invaluable to her she had been. This set her musing concerning the girl generally, and she found she had done worse than miss a "holy chance." She had let the young hearty thing work hard, night after night, without giving her so much as a bite or sup, or even a "thank-you." She felt down-stricken to think she hadn't even thrown her a prayer. The forgetfulness about the food, however, touched her more keenly. She was a clear-headed old woman often,—that is, when she could get loose from hereditary instincts,—and she was well aware that snatching brands was, on occasion, a most invigorating and pleasant pastime—for the snatchers; it gave them such a delightful prominence; it was, in fact, frequently a fine showy form of spiritual pride.When Margaret was quiet for a few minutes, Mrs. Bent went into her own room and drew out an old box-bed. She shook up the flock mattress and took the feather pillow from her own bed, leaving there a flock one, and laid clean sheets and blankets on the bed. She went to the drawer where lay her Sergeant's coat, with the stripes and his medals, and drew out a patchwork quilt, which Nancy had made, and which she never could bear to look at. She laid it with trembling hands on the little bed; and this was her penance.The next night Poll came in, shamefaced and jaunty, with a tendency to head-tossing, and in her hands a costly bunch of orchids. She thrust them under Mrs. Bent's nose, and explained with a nervous grin that she got them for "'er.""Put them on the table; set down, and take your tea."Poll was astonished to find a tray prepared for her, as clean as if it had been "for t'other one, and a sight fuller, thanks be to God.""Lor!" she remarked, and stared at Mrs. Bent.Then she fell to with a will. She had hardly had a morsel all day; she had put the best part of her coin into the orchids."Look here, girl," said Mrs. Bent, when she had finished, "I have made you up a bed in my room. And you can put your things in them drawers. I missed you sore yesternight.""I'll stay," said Poll, after a dazed pause, "till hers——""And them flowers—are they fit-gotten posies to give to such as her?"Poll took them—a whole guinea's worth—and put them behind the fire. The next minute she felt she "could pull the old 'un's nose." But by this time the flowers were shrivelled and black.Mrs. Bent went back to Margaret, while Poll still watched her flowers with surly regret, and wondered if she "was goin' rantin' ragin' mad."CHAPTER XIV.ONE morning, when Hyde came in to breakfast, he noticed that there was rather a strange look about his wife. Probably she had had enough of racketing, and had better go down to the country. There wasn't anything to do there yet, certainly; but as far as he was concerned, a change of any sort would be a relief."When would you like to go down?" he asked, in a dutiful voice, as he chipped his egg."Whenever you like—I am quite ready any time. It's getting very hot here."She spoke absently and rather faintly. He concluded it had something to do with the baby; she had probably been up with it after she had come home last night. He wished, in rather a bored, listless way, that she wouldn't worry quite so much about the poor little chap. He took up the paper, slightly frowning. Not a word of interest in two columns—everything was a bore. He read on, his eyes straying once or twice, and he wondered vaguely when he should again begin to take any intelligent interest in any mortal subject. This vegetable living was as degrading as it was unexciting. He had had enough of it.When his wife stood up to leave the room, he did not notice her until she was just at the door; then he jumped up hurriedly to apologise and hold it open for her. He was as punctilious in all the little things as a schoolboy on his good behaviour."Will you read this?" she said, in her even tones, giving him a letter.Then she went away down the hall with her eyes on the ground. He watched her curiously—she was ghastly white this morning; or was it only a reflection of the general colourlessness of all things? This time he was quite certain that her voice was faint."Good Lord, what a grind it all is!" he muttered, as he unfolded the letter. "And what on earth is this?"When he found out, he no longer felt in the least like a vegetable. He was now quite alive; life of a most unpleasant order was surging, throbbing, rushing through his veins. It was a letter from Miss Dering to Beatrice, informing her, in that lady's own scriptural language, and with characteristic comments, that Margaret Dering was dead.He read the letter twice, leant for a minute shivering against the door, then took up his hat and went out.He often wondered afterwards how he put that day through, and if, at any moment of it, he had made a visible fool of himself. But he felt pretty sure he really had not looked an atom more bored than the half-dozen men he had come across in the course of his walk to the club. Why he went there he could not imagine, certainly with no intention of going in. He dined at a little club down the river, and when he came home it was late.As he was passing his wife's dressing-room, he thought he heard a sound. He wondered vaguely if the child were ill, and knocked; but as no answer came, he opened the door softly and looked in. He saw a sight that staggered him. His wife was kneeling by the sofa, her long, dark hair tumbling about her, and she was sobbing in a low, tired way, as if she had been at it for ever so long. He had never seen her cry, or known her to do so; he hadn't a notion she even knew how to. He stopped, holding his breath. She stirred slightly, and he began to catch little whispers of—"Geoffrey, poor Geoffrey! poor boy! Oh, it's dreadful!—dreadful for every one of us!"He heard the words distinctly; there was no mistaking them. Without a sound he drew back, went down again, and, seizing his hat, he made for the street."Good Lord! what are women made of? If she cared for me I might understand,—they forgive everything, so I'm told; but when she doesn't care a hang, it's most—most embarrassing!"He stopped to light a cigar, then he turned into a little quiet square, where there was a seat outside the railings, erected by a benevolent gentleman, near a fountain. He sat down, puffing savagely, and grimly reflecting on the situation. He had been absolutely unstrung and irrational all that day; his thoughts had been a mere insane jumble. But gradually the spirit of death and night brought him a gentler mood, and he ordered himself, and treated his manhood more reverently, and things cleared up a little—to his own mind at least.He had never quite known, until he had read that letter, how strong his love for Margaret Dering had grown, or how intimate a part of himself it had become. Her death seemed to alter nothing; it only seemed to strengthen his love, to make it more enduring, unalterable, inexorable. It had been at first, now that he dared to think of it dissectingly, a mere sensuous exaltation of feeling, an extraordinary, delicious excitement. But now he seemed to himself to love the best part of her with the best part of himself, and that he must love her like this as long as his body held breath. It was a state of things, it seemed to him, that no law of God or man could alter. It was the working of God's own leaven in a man's soul. If it was a sin, then it must be sinned, that was all. It was at least—of this he was as certain as that the water was splashing monotonously behind him—no longer a vulgar, silly sin, as his running away with her had been. He did that before he had known what love was. He had fallen to his senses then, not to love. If this was sin it was, at the same time, in some mys-terious way, a holy thing, because it was true, and the best part of himself.When his wife came into the order of his meditations, it struck him that she would make an excellent friend, she was so staunch, so broad in her freedom from all mean womanlinesses. He gave a short laugh and shivered as he thought of her funny irritating conventionalities and little racial limits, and then—that set of her lips."But I've got to," he said. "Margaret distinctly said, I had to, and this makes it more than ever necessary. It's too beastly shabby to go back on a promise as things now stand, as bad as breaking a promise to a dead mother."It struck him, as he unwillingly wondered how the friendship would fare, that the grief of Beatrice for him in his loss was a wonderful thing, and that no man could quite grasp its significance,—it was so many-sided; so he resolved therefore not to try to understand it, but to allow that, blindly, in her own prim way, Beatrice was a great woman. And after all, her grief showed infinitely more nobility than if she had loved him, and a singular insight too, more indeed than he had any notion that she possessed, considering that personally she could know nothing either of love or of anguish."Margaret, my own, my dear little own! my love for you is the one thing I have to hold on to," he said to himself, standing up and leaning over the railings. "And I'll try—I'll try, dear, all I know, never to do anything to shame it. Ah well! Beatrice is a good woman,—she deserves a better fate!" he said, as he turned at last to go home.It was near midnight when he got there. He listened as he passed Beatrice's door and stopped."Shall I go in or not?" he said. "I'll go in," he decided. "She must be lonely there thinking things over, and I've done her an awful wrong, take it as you will. And that baby—the poor little chap is a lot too small to fill a woman's heart. If it had been a natural, proper-sized little beast, it might have been of more use in that way."All traces of tears had vanished from Beatrice's face, her hair was done to a turn, and she was sitting straight up in a high-backed chair; she was never one of those comfortable women, whose instincts lead them naturally to pleasant seats; thanks to her grandmother, she always bore about her the echo of a backboard, physically, morally, and mentally. In no part of her being could she ever enjoy the delicious bliss of a lounge, so stiff was she from head to heel with principles.She looked particularly prim and cold, but Geoffrey hardly noticed it; he only saw the weariness of her face and the subdued look of pain in it."How fagged you look!" he said. "You should rest on your off nights. They're rare enough, Heaven knows. Do you think you will be ready to go home this week?""Quite ready." She was painfully conscious that her lips trembled and that her face got hot. He had never called the old place home since the first month after their marriage. "I shall say good-night; I am tired, I think," she said, and standing up she gave him a courteous little nod of dismissal."Beatrice, I saw you this evening," he said hurriedly. "It was good of you to be sorry in such a case. In fact, I think it was really great of you. You are singularly loyal. I have done you a great injury. It was through no fault of mine that it wasn't the greatest that a man can do his wife. But I'm inclined to think I did you even a greater the day I married you. That cousinly love is a snare, and entrapped us both. We took it for the other thing."She looked at him and listened to his gentle deprecations in silent wonder, and for a minute she was possessed by a sort of interested admiration for herself. Was she really so skilled an actress—had he never once had any idea of the truth? She knit her brows sharply and took a quick glance at him.Had the other love given him no clue? Was the love that throbbed like fire in her heart in no way akin to that which was buried in the other girl's? Was it a world that divided them, or an idea?She drew a quick breath, and a maddening impulse beset her to tell him the truth; the minute after, she knew that such truths were never told in words."Yes," she said,"cousinly love is a snare.""But it does not prevent friendship. I have been thinking to-night that you are the stuff of which men make friends. Will you be my friend? A fellow is better for the friendship of a good woman."Her eyes dilated on him. She wondered why any woman should fear death or any other thing when she has to face life and live with men. Well, marriage steadies the nerves if it does nothing else. She gave a short, low laugh, which mystified him in his turn."Yes," she said, "I will be your friend.""And Friday we will go home?""And Friday we will go home," she repeated mechanically. "Good-night, Geoffrey."Her heart seemed to be moving about in her in a strange way; it had never done so before, and the room seemed to be floating away from her. She was getting foolish—insane, perhaps—and a horrid notion was seizing her that the dead girl was blocking the door."Can't he jump over her," she thought," and leave me? If he can't, I shall die.
Can't he jump over her, and go——"She stood where he had left her for a full minute after he had shut the door, struggling feebly against the queer rigid pain, the dizziness, the foolish rush of pictures before her eyes. A curious horror of falling made her grope her way back into her chair; and it was quite half-an-hour before she was able to sit straight again and think rationally.CHAPTER XV.ONE day, the little white baby died. Beatrice neither cried nor strove, but she knew that a good deal of the best part of her had gone with it.Hyde was infinitely gentle and pitiful—in an unspoken fashion, of course. He was wise enough to hold his tongue. When he watched her looking dry-eyed on the dead child, he understood quite clearly for the first time that cousinly love was not her only speciality, and he wished vaguely that she had married a man who could have aroused the capacity for any other sort of love she might have about her, and have given it some sort of a show. If she would only cry or moan, or be the smallest atom foolish or disagreeable,—if even she would get a headache; but to go about the house just as usual, and never even to mention the infant. It certainly was embarrassing.This friendship of theirs wasn't up to much, he felt, whenever he looked at her in those days.Dunstone Manor was a sombre, magnificent mass of stone buildings, set in a quadrangle and half surrounded with a moat, the waters of which, regardless of sanitary principles, came right up to the east walls.Beatrice had always had a strange affection for the sheet of dark waters, flecked with lilies, but it was hardly the place to revive a woman's spirits when she was brooding over a dead baby—and other things. Her husband often shivered as he watched her walking beside the waters.For decency's sake they gave up their visits, but when Geoffrey proposed that the September shooting parties should also be given up, she said distinctly, No, and took her part in organising more extensive preparations than usual for them.She was a serene, prim, magnificent hostess to his friends. Not a man among them but felt better for being near her, even though the air about her was rarefied and chill, with a tendency at times to cause a slight chokiness. And more than one among the wiser hearts ached in silence for the fine, white, courageous creature.As for the women, they had very little patience with her, and objected to have their sympathies returned on their hands in that gentle, grateful, well-bred way of hers, that had the effect of at once taking the wind out of their sails. Never once did she speak of her baby, though it had not been in its grave six weeks, and although several of her guests were well up in such afflictions, and felt perfectly competent to deal with them. It was an insolent neglect of skilled labour, and small wonder they resented it.When the house was empty again Beatrice returned to her daily drives and her moat, and Hyde plunged into his landowner's duties. They were an immense relief to both of them, and no doubt of some benefit to the tenantry.Hyde had a simple theory, and he stuck to it. He worked up from drains to morals, instead of contrariwise, and he expected little in the way of progress. His course of duty was not, therefore, cut short in its callow youth by disappointed sentiment. He had, besides, an experimental turn. It became a bore to him to gaze, day after day, on the round, fatuous, half-awake faces of his cottagers, which neither drains, clubs, reading-rooms, nor lectures seemed to any large extent to influence. So it occurred to him to try what new blood would do. This he imported from the slums, in the shape of convalescents, which he sowed broadcast over the neighbourhood, until the song of the coster, in all its native purity, was heard in the land; and Geoffrey awaited results.They came in due time in the thinning of hen-roosts, and in the fact that now the Arcadian, besides thumping his own wife, was known on occasion to make love to his neighbour's. Into the bargain a few fresh oaths, of a more sanguinary and lurid hue than those in ordinary circulation, got abroad in the parish, and a few feeble tries were made at setting afloat a sort of bastard atheism there. The new blood, in fact, disseminated its smaller sins freely, but left nothing behind of its eager wide-awake keenness of living—on other people,—whenever possible.Geoffrey also tried silos, and at times felt an overpowering desire to pot villagers in them. Truly life was a huge bore, and doing one's duty was rather more demoralising, while being less agreeable, than going to the devil.To Beatrice—who had no sense of humour—her husband as a model landlord and an upholder of the traditions of their house was a solemn joy, and he had besides now so little time to wonder what she was thinking about.She had decided not to hunt that season; and as spring came on he thought once or twice that she was whiter than usual, and getting thin. She herself was sure of it.CHAPTER XVI."Either what woman, having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it?"The words had just been read out from a pulpit in an old, staid, solid, and most hideous church in the west-central of London, and the man who read them was big, broad, and awkward-looking, with good eyes, and a fine uncompromising look about his mouth. He had a curious, sudden, little hook to his nose that accentuated his eager eyes. His hands were capable and sinewy, but he made little show with them, and he was altogether too much in earnest to pay attention to his attitudes.When he had read the text, he put down the Bible and took stock of his congregation. It was made up mostly of respectable, pious-minded folk, as a rule neither hot nor cold, well-satisfied and well-fed—chiefly with solids and a large proportion of fat. They were people who, to an alarming extent, fried their meat. They lived in the sedate squares and "genteel places" all about the neighbourhood. They prided themselves on the thickness of their walls and their chimney-pieces. It was hardly a gathering of souls to touch with living fire.The preacher involuntarily shook his head and smiled before he began."Here we have a woman—a careless creature, who has lost a piece of silver. If she was careless, however, she at least knew the greatness of her loss, and she meant at any rate to get her treasure back again. She might have set to work to do this in many ways. She might have dropped comfortably into a chair to weep and lament. She might have called in the neighbours to talk it over; to chorus her lamentations."This woman of old Syria did none of these things. Through her own fault she had lost her silver piece, and she meant to find it. She had no time to sit still, or to talk with her neighbours, or to revile her household. There was her silver piece waiting to be found. Her silver piece, I said; but it was not hers in very truth. It was but given her in charge by the good man of the house, to restore to him when he demanded it of her, undefiled and undefaced. So she lit her candle, not daring to trust to her own dim vision; she swept the house carefully, that no spot might remain unsearched, and she sought diligently till she found it."You may remark that she never doubted for one minute that ultimately she would find it, and she determined that no one but herself should be the finder. She knew that it was somewhere about, merely fallen or misplaced, but in substance and value unchanged. No matter how thick might be the layer of dust that hid it from sight, how ingrained the filth, how foul the rust,—for was it not a silver piece, stamped with the image of the king?"There is another careless woman, who has lost many silver pieces, and is every day losing more. That woman is the Church of God, and her lost pieces are the souls of men and women. Many are only mislaid, and she will find them again, but some of them are lost out of her hands for ever. Some have rolled into dark corners, under cumbrous rubbish heaps. Some have fallen into pits, or rolled into dens. Some are trodden under foot, and are forgotten. Some again have lain so long in the darkness and mire that they are fearful, and tremble in the face of the light."And what is this careless woman, this mother of men, doing to find her lost pieces? Is she lighting her candle humbly—not daring to trust to her own dim vision? Is she sweeping, lowlily, faithfully, hopefully—sweeping in mire and muck, in den and pit, with faith removing mountains? My dear friends, to a very large extent she is talking and drinking tea and sitting on committees."The congregation were getting very shaky about this man's soundness; his unvarnished manner of speech and his quiet voice, which, as it was singularly clear, he rarely found it necessary to raise above its ordinary level, pleased them even less than his sentiments. They were used to flowers of rhetoric, and they had got them inextricably mixed into the plan of salvation as it struck them. They felt convinced that this plain uneventful discourse indicated a screw loose somewhere, most probably in a loose mind.However, he had set their critical faculty agog, and that at least was something."Yes, my friends, she is talking, she has indeed been talking for many centuries—with what result? She has filled her churches—or some of them—mostly with women and children; some not even with these. Many of these people, too, who flock to church take their weekly worry of prayer and praise as they do the other bores of life, with passing decorum,—unless, indeed, they make some use of the time, and arrange in it their work for the coming week. Many snooze—not, indeed, as comfortably as they used to do; the make of the new pews unhappily forbids that. Some are on the war-path—mote-hunting.
"'We eat and drink,And fume and plot,And go to church on Sunday;And many are afraid of God,And more of Mrs. Grundy.'
Many even flock weekly or monthly to the Supper of the Lord, and yet some of these people have never for one hour been with Christ."Many of these pieces who shine here tonight, and in the other churches, shine with a false glitter, and there's not a trace of the King's face to be seen, for in theirs it is lost under the gloss and the glitter. Are these pieces, I ask you, less lost than if they lay an inch thick under the dust?"Friends, we have done wrong, all of us, and none more than we, the lowly servants of the great Church. . . . Brethren, there are men out there now in the streets, rogues, vagabonds, murderers, whoremongers, liars; they are all silver pieces—gone astray. And we are, each and all of us, more or less responsible for their loss—and for their finding. Our means for doing this have indeed mostly been weighed in the balance, and found wanting; but we must only work on as well as we know, and improve our machinery."Sisters, there are women walking out there in the streets, not just now, but a little later, whom you will pass swiftly, and feign not to see. When one of these women approaches, the man at your side—your husband, your brother, your lover—will carefully draw your attention away, lest you should see and understand. And yet every one of these women, my friends, is a silver piece, stamped with the image of the King."And you, my dear men, who are, and quite rightly too, so careful to guard your own women-kind, when all is said that can be said, how many of us in London to-day, if the Bible is to be taken at its word at all, hasn't at one or other moment of his existence stood on a hardly higher level than these poor lost pieces? The words of the text are plain enough—read for yourselves St. Matthew, the fifth chapter, twenty-eighth verse. What adult man can sit under the searching light of that text and feel absolutely unashamed?"Here he stopped. The congregation thought it was high time, and wished the Vicar could have heard him. You never could tell what those borrowed curates were about to say. One matron, having in the meantime looked up the text, prayed for him that evening after a late meat tea."Oh, Miss Margaret, God bless 'im!" said Poll, snatching spasmodically at Margaret's jacket, and giving it a twitch."Poll, don't roar! You should take example by his voice, if you like him so much. We'll talk about it when we get home."The two had come out together at the call of the bells, Margaret because, although everything went wrong, it was, nevertheless, good to be back in the midst of life again; and Poll came because Margaret did. They had strayed into this church.When they got home, Margaret went to her room, and Poll, baulked for the minute of her talk, comforted herself by pouring into Mrs. Bent's scandalised ears a rapid epitome of the discourse, freely interlarded with choice adjectives and figures of speech, entirely her own."And the passon 'e said, said 'e—'e said as we—us—wor silver pieces, every bloomin' bit as good as them as sits and prays all the Sundays of the year. They ain't much to boast of, neither, for all their gloss and imperince. We're all the dead spit o' t'other, bar the dust and the muck as 'ave got on us. Lor! now, an' 'e a passon!""Go and take your things off, Poll, you addle my brain; mayhap Miss Margaret will make it clear to me, but your words and the minister's have got so mixed together in my head that I'm all dazed like, mor'n as if I heard tell of a wild play-acting thing than of a gospel sermon.""Lor, Mrs. Bent!" began Poll, in eager deprecation."Poll, the supper's been waiting for half-an-hour. And, girl, brush that fringe flat—it's all on end again.""'Twon't stick nohow. Goodness gracious! wot a piece of work for a few 'airs. Old women is so mortal crabby!" she muttered, as she pretended to herself to straighten the tousled locks.When the sermon was duly recounted to Mrs. Bent, she pushed her plate sadly away and looked at Margaret. She considered it a most improper sermon, she said, and the young man ought to be ashamed of himself. Whatever would his poor mother say, if she could only hear him? she would very much like to know.CHAPTER XVII."Mrs. Bent," said Margaret, one evening, suddenly plumping down into a chair opposite her, "if I don't get something to do I shall—explode."She had been walking about the room for such an unconscionable time that it had begun to strike Mrs. Bent she never intended to be still again; and she was wondering if, in the meantime, she should herself be driven frantic by this constant movement."But, mercy on us, child! you have your lessons,—your music, and your singing, and landwidges. What more do you want?""I want something to fill up the crowds of idle hours. I can't play and sing and do languages always."Mrs. Bent dropped a stitch and gave a little sigh."I wish, my lamb, I wish you were set in your right place, where your birth have placed you.""Circumstances have got the better of birth just for the present, as far as position goes, you see. As to my right place, it's with you, you dear, and, no matter what happens or doesn't happen, with -you my right place will be always. Say your dear old verse—say it directly, and don't look like that.""' Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge,'" said Mrs. Bent obediently, softly folding her hands, as her mother had taught her to do always when she spoke Bible words."It should be the other way about, shouldn't it? It is I, the younger, who should say it to you, the elder. However, it's just as well; I couldn't honestly finish the text. I'm just now in too much of an insane muddle. Of course," she began again, "we both know that when I am twenty-one I must reconsider things all round. I am not so foolish as to be ignorant of the advantages of being rich; nor am I sufficiently silly not to be quite aware that it is unnecessary for me to remain hidden, so to speak, for any very long period. We, Geoffrey and I, had to get time to think things out separately and sensibly, that was all; and I shall never regret coming to you, Mrs. Bent, even though complications, which you won't like at all, have grown up about my coming here.""My dear, what do you mean?""I'll tell you directly. I have to put square and straighten up things first, just to let our minds know how we stand. You see, although you told my aunts I was next door to dead, they never came near me, even with prayer and warning. Under the circumstances, I should have thought Aunt Katherine would have swooped down at once, like a raven on a carcase. However, they have washed their hands of me and have left me to the Lord with a vengeance. So even if I wanted to go back to them I couldn't—at any rate, I am hardly wise enough to return just yet; so that I want you to keep me till I am twenty-one. And then we'll go away for a time to nice, cosy, warm lands, where you will grow young again. But when I go to rough, cold places I shall leave you to mind my house. We shall have very nice times, I assure you—with exceptions, you know."Mrs. Bent looked at her, and wished she would say at once what it was. It was something dreadful, she felt positive; she was already cold at the bare thought of it."I have been thinking a great deal about things lately, and it's quite clear to me I must do some definite thing to get rid of time. You don't understand the simmering that's going on in me, and that will certainly boil over unless it's seen to. Rest is pleasant to you, because you have earned your rest. I haven't begun to earn mine. I have never done a thing to tire myself yet, and I can't, then, in conscience, sit down to rest. You see, thinking is such a wretched bother, so very unsatisfactory, and perhaps a little wrong. I must keep my thoughts in order and in their proper place—that is, not revolving altogether round myself and Geoffrey. Then I seem to myself to have a lot of empty holes to fill up, and if I get accustomed to emptiness, you see, I will soon be no better than an animal half paralysed, with just enough life left in it to eat and ache. Languages somehow don't meet the case, neither does singing. I should have liked to do something for the neighbours, although, at the same time, I should have considered myself rather impertinent for interfering; but it seems the right thing to work for the poor; the testimony of hosts of books goes to prove it, and also to prove the delights of the resulting sensations to yourself and to them. But you see that our particular poor, unless I turn myself inside out for their information, will have none of me. If I wore a uniform, of course, or came over once a week from some unknown quarter westward, it would be different; but in Danby Row, and living with you, it won't do. That woman with the sick baby simply turned me out; she also called me a 4 limb.' I'm ' an 'orty 'ussy ' to the rest, and if they know nothing of me—well, they think a lot, as you quite well know.' Being then scorned by the respectable, Mrs. Bent, I think I must do something for the unrespectable. I want to help some of those silver pieces." She carefully kept her eyes from seeing Mrs. Bent's face."My child, my child, you must leave 'em to the Lord! It's all that sermon, that shocking, improper discourse, befitting a little Bethel, or such low place, a main sight better than a respectable house of God."Mrs. Bent put down her knitting and began to stroke Margaret's hair with shaking hands. She felt that some new horror was to be let loose on her, and if she knitted she would drop all her stitches, and give herself an evening's taking-up."Will you come away from here?" Margaret asked, softly,—"only a little way! Just a few streets nearer the thoroughfares where my face isn't known."She lifted her eyes half-fearfully, and understood vaguely the pain in the old woman's face as far as it regarded herself. What she did not understand was the horror of the old and ignorant of a new start in life, of a fresh plunge into unexplored regions, which is one of the most important factors in the revolt of the aged poor against the poor-house, often indeed against what seem to outsiders the undeniable comforts of small alms-houses.Margaret's heart smote her for the part of the pain she could understand, the part of which she herself was the cause. She pulled the old woman's face down and kissed it, but she repeated her request with soft insistence.Mrs. Bent's hands shook a little more, but they still stroked her. A miserable certainty, from some indescribable change in Margaret's face, even in the tone of her voice, that she meant all she said, and meant, moreover, to carry out her intentions, was coming upon Mrs. Bent; the feebleness of her own age, of her untaught understanding, pressed sore on her, for she knew, she felt, there was some force driving the young creature, which she was absolutely incompetent to deal with, or even to contend against. Almost involuntarily her hands fell together, and she murmured,—"' Whither thou goest I will go.' But, O Lord, grant this thing may not come to pass!" she added almost inaudibly.Margaret rubbed her cheek against the shaking old hands, and Mrs. Bent prayed on, vaguely entreating the Lord to avert this disaster."They pass here every night," went on Margaret, "cursing and yelling often, and half of them look like children; and in the morning, as I am dressing, they often pass the window, coming home, I suppose; then they look tired, and faded, and old, and somehow as if God had forgotten them altogether. They are often drunk, too, and stagger. We must help them, you and I and Poll.""Poll, Miss Margaret?""Yes, dear, Poll. I've heard you say all manner of nice things about Mary Magdalen, and if this minute she were to appear in the flesh you would dust your best chair, and if your Protestantism didn't hold you back, I am inclined to think you'd go very near kneeling to her. And yet here's Poll, who did likewise, and is now repenting up to her lights, just as Mary did up to hers, and yet——""Child, it's altogether different——""Of course it is. Mary Magdalen was a great nature, and she fell from a great height. A little stumble brought Poll down, having no height to speak of to fall from, and yet she too deserves some credit for picking herself up. Then Mary didn't wear a fringe or tight lace, Poll's two leading abominations,—it wasn't the fashion then; besides, I don't suppose Mary wanted any improvement, whereas Poll does. Also, Mary looked like an angel through all her sin. On the contrary, Poll does not, though Mary, of course, must have been ten times the greater sinner of the two, everything else about her being so much greater. Then the method of her repentance was so picturesque, with nothing ridiculous about it. Look at her there, in that picture, repenting in a most divine attitude in the desert, with her angel face. As a matter of fact, Poll repenting ungrammatically, and with flaming cheeks and a fringe, in the very teeth of temptation, is quite as praiseworthy a feat; at any rate, it deserves just the least little bit of trust and hope, if the other is now a saint with churches called after her.""Miss Margaret, my dear, did you give me that picture with an object?" demanded Mrs. Bent a little stiffly."No, I didn't. I bought it originally for an object for myself—to put my mind in order, and to raise my ideal of the girls I want to help. They are so fearfully unlike Mary Magdalen as far as looks go. I wanted to get her image set firmly in my mind, in order to keep down my disgust at theirs; so I'm raving on more to convince myself than you. Don't you know you're my one safety-valve? You're not thinking of resigning your office, are you? If you do, the consequences will be terrible.""My dear, my dear, I'm that confused!""So am I," said Margaret. "I'm groping in a dark, cold, howling wilderness, with no guide. Do you know, Mrs. Bent, that numbers of those girls have borne babies, little white, soft, innocent creatures, born branded, to suffer all their lives; and if they in their turn bear children they too will suffer, and so right on to the end of time? The wages of sin is death, that is right and just; but that the wages of sin should be birth, that is awful, it is unjust. That perhaps for the moment's foolishness or madness of a girl, which she perhaps repents all her life, a little child should be born into shame and suffering,—it is atrocious! Let the girl suffer if you like, but the little baby! It is a horrid thing to realise, but directly one has done so one feels as if one must go straight off to do something to prevent such things happening."Mrs. Bent watched her in dumb pain, wishing for words and knowledge fitter to the occasion; but having the wretched consciousness of possessing neither, she held her peace."And now I'm going to be altogether selfish, poor clear! I 'm going to make you pull up all your roots, and plant them in another place, just to help me on with a project that I feel certain you think will land me somehow in destruction. Those girls, with their lives and their poor ruined babies, haunt me; and those others—those young ones, who have as yet done no wrong, those who have lately left school, and are completing their education at the street corners—these haunt me ever so much more. I thought at first only of these; it seems so much pleasanter to come near girls who are still good,—that is, not actually bad; but I don't see how one could manage it here. They're all so mixed up together, and if one begins by questions and ' prying,' as Poll calls it, she says that they'll just laugh and march off. So you see I've tried to be quite respectable, and sift. Mrs. Bent, I sometimes wonder that women don't often fall down and die from sheer fear of their womanhood and its dreadful powers. Perhaps the happier ones don't realise them—I hope they don't."Mrs. Bent uttered something between a prayer and a protest in rather a wild way."Oh dear! Let me rave on, and then we'll have some more tea and go to bed. It appears there are sets among all classes. Poll says there are ' tip-toppers,' as she calls them—that is, the girls who live in fine houses and wear fine clothes and turn aside from her and her life just as the godly do. The girls I want to do a little bit of something for—I think I hardly know what—are not the ' tip-toppers.' They are often poor, half-starved creatures, who sin because it seems to come as the first natural step in their grown-up life; it's their coming-out, so to speak. It's in their blood, or they're hungry. Poll was hungry at first, that's how she began; and a number of them hanker for something besides the ugliness of their lives. Oh, it's all sordid and altogether horrible! And then they just loathe the asylums, so Poll says and I don't wonder. Fancy being shut between four walls, to repent by the piece, as the washing is done, and all necessary modern apparatus supplied gratis—chaplain and prayers and hymn-books and good women and words in season all thrown in upon you pell-mell. A bad girl must surely feel about such things as a good one does. And the instruments of grace, Aunt Katherine would call them—Poll speaks of them as ' bosses'—all look too good, or else they're old maids ' as knows nothin' and is always a-pokin' their hignorance at you,' she also says. It seems to me that 'silver pieces' make an astonishing number of remarks about their regenerators; but as I am only a girl perhaps they won't be so censorious. At any rate, I mean to see."She stopped from sheer want of breath. Mrs. Bent was rocking herself to and fro and sighing in a gaspy fashion, quite foreign to her gentle ways."Miss Margaret, darling," she said at last, "you've been questioning Poll. I wish to the Lord she had never darkened these doors. You, as I tried to keep from the knowledge of what goes on under the very eyes of us all, God help me!—now you know more than I do myself. Thanks be to God, I have kept my eyes shut as far as in me lay. Child, child! if you could only come right away into the country, where the folks have some respect to themselves—outwardly leastways," she added, with a sigh of reservation."I can't go to the country, Mrs. Bent. And why, if the girls lead such lives, should it be your one trouble that I know that they do so? It is the fact that is horrible, not my knowing it. It seems to me every girl should know such things, so that she may be thankful that she herself is good and not take it as a matter of course. And it is natural, after all, that the young should wish at least to help the young. I hope it is right. At any rate, I feel as if I simply had to. Very likely I shall fail from my utter ignorance of most things. But I'll have one little try.""My dear, my dear!" murmured Mrs. Bent. She could say no more. She must let the child speak on till the night came, when she would tell the Lord of her trouble, and see on whose side He was in this strange matter."We must have a house with one big back room, Mrs. Bent. We have plenty of money.""But, child, how 'll you ever gather the creatures?""I'm going with Poll to see some of them. We'll just ' drop in friendly-like,' and I am going to have suppers and things. They are often horribly hungry, and—ignorance may be dark, but oh! the first glimmer of knowledge is a good deal darker! However, perhaps there are chinks in the darkness through which little shreds of light may filter in. I'll try, anyway."She sat thinking for a few minutes. There was a curious new sweetness about her mouth; the restless look of discontent, that had been taking up its abode in her eyes for some little time past, softened, and she looked as if a wandering ray of light had broken by chance into her own darkness.As for Mrs. Bent, she was speechless, perplexed beyond words; things had gone altogether too far for her.Whilst the two sat silent, the one catching stray sunbeams, the other groping among dim shadows, the door opened and Poll appeared."Hello!" she remarked genially, staring open-mouthed at Margaret. Then she made her way to the back of Mrs. Bent's chair. "Wot's up?" she demanded in an enormous whisper, ''wot's up with 'er?"Mrs. Bent came back from her shadows with great speed, and fell on Poll, who certainly was an irritating object, with her red cloak flopping awkwardly about her heels, and her hat held on crookedly with a long skewer, as she had unfortunately mislaid her pin."Poll, girl, don't gape! it isn't manners, as I have many times told you." Then she stooped with quite another face, and looked at Margaret as a mother might on her boy whose ship is to sail on the morrow into strange seas, with sufficient faith in the Lord, but with a secret feeling that she would be a good deal better satisfied if only she knew a little of the geography of those unexplored depths; then she returned to Poll."Poll, I thought you minded to get that cloak dipped black," said Mrs. Bent.If her young lady had slipped out of her hands, Poll hadn't, and the sooner the fact was made clear to her the better. And that cloak was a stigma cast on her honourable household—an abiding eyesore. It seemed as if it were the will of the Lord that she should suffer the girl—but the cloak! That was another matter altogether."That cloak, girl, is a scandal.""Eavens!" observed Poll to herself, "wot a kettle of fish!"Margaret had roused herself, and she saw how things were going."Poll," she said, "you know yourself that the cloak is frightful. Do take it to-morrow to the French dyers, and you can wear that long brown jacket of mine till it's done. And now for tea. I'm thirsty, and hungry, and a general wreck, and so is Mrs. Bent, and she shall have hot whiskey and water, and lemon, and cloves,—no, cloves go into something else, don't they?"CHAPTER XVIII.HYDE and his wife came up to town early in the spring. Directly she saw her husband off the premises, the day after they arrived, Beatrice went out, and did not return till after the luncheon hour. She found then, to her infinite relief, that Geoffrey had not come in. Concluding that he meant to lunch at his club she escaped to her room, threw off her hat and jacket, and was just preparing for a quiet hour with herself, when her maid came to say that Mr. Hyde had arrived, bringing a friend with him, and that he was asking for her. She looked longingly at the fire and her soft wrapper; then she silently put her gown on again and went down."You've been out, haven't you?" Hyde asked; "and you're tired. I shouldn't have bothered you to come down, only that I want you to know Mr. Colclough. I daresay you have often heard me speak of him."She looked up at a tall, gaunt, yellow creature, cadaverous to a degree, with a pleasant mocking look in his eyes that she rather liked, feeling, at the same time, that they were eyes under which one must be on one's guard. She wished for a minute that she were taller and could look into them, instead of being looked down upon by them. While they were waiting for luncheon, Rica Weston came in and invited herself to remain for it."If I don't see you now, I may not have the chance for days. Mrs. Hyde, how tired you look! I shall go the instant luncheon is over, and leave you in peace.""I'm not at all tired, and I hope you will not go," Beatrice said, at the same time wishing that Rica had not come if she had meant to take observations."Mr. Hyde, that country air of yours isn't up to much—she looks anything but countryish." Rica looked from Beatrice to Colclough with a benevolent motherly air of solicitude."Mrs. Hyde," said Colclough, watching both the women in a slow, lazy, interested way, "couldn't we escape anywhere? She has her eye on both of us, and it means beef-tea. It's an awful thing to be the daughter of the Lord Bountiful of a Manor, and to be connected with a curate.""Come along into luncheon, Miss Weston," said Geoffrey; "we'll give them soup instead of beef-tea. My experience of curates is that they'd benefit vastly, and so would their congregations, if they'd drink their beef-tea themselves instead of emptying it into the bottomless stomach of the poor.""You speak of a curate as if he were a type, not a man. There are certain differences, even in curates. I could, I assure you, pick one out of a heap and distinguish him from his fellows even with the naked eye.""But then you're quite abnormally sharp, Miss Weston," Colclough put in."But I almost think that even you could. One's first impulse, with many curates, I quite agree with you, is to administer nourishment—fluid for preference. But imagine for a moment plying Frank, for instance, with broth.""I shouldn't like to imagine it if he is as good a bruiser as he was at Christ's.""How does he get on with the preaching?" asked Hyde."Ask his Vicar," said Rica grimly."Or me," said Colclough. "I heard him last Sunday.""Well, go on.""Upon my word, I won't; Mrs. Hyde might turn me out, and this game pie is excellent. By the way, Mrs. Hyde, what do you think of Geoffrey's idea?""What idea?" she said a little vaguely. Her head was whirling, and she knew that Rica's sharp eyes were still searching her.She liked Rica, sometimes she went near to loving her, but she kept aloof from her from a sort of half-shy pride, for some instinct told her that Rica kept the memory of the other girl shut up in the best shrine in her heart, and it came between them."They're legion, then, are they? Oh, this latest, I mean, this standing for the county."Beatrice gave a perceptible start, and looked at her husband. Colclough noticed the sudden spring of eagerness into her indifferent eyes."I didn't bother you, Beatrice; I didn't think it would interest you in any sort of way," her husband said."Oh!" she said, taking some cream."I find anything in the way of politics fetches women," said Colclough. "The mysterious ambiguity of party principles finds an answering chord in their hearts, which, not being homogeneous like other people's, but made up of a fine mosaic of exquisitely fitting pieces, take kindly to puzzles.""Mrs. Hyde, can you tell me what he is,—from a political point of view, that is? He hasn't a notion himself.""Surely a Radical," she said, with a contained seriousness peculiarly her own. Opinions were to her matters of quite enormous importance, having been brought up in that way of thinking. It had taken her so long a time to get accustomed to the sight of a Radical about the house, and to reconcile the toleration of it to her conscience and her hereditary instincts, that now to have a sudden doubt cast on the fact gave her a positive shock."So I was," said Geoffrey cheerfully, "a rabid one. It was a phase; you must get these things over young, you see, and I've made good use of my time."Beatrice looked puzzled and unsatisfied."What are you now, really, Geoffrey?""My dear, I'm a transition, but into what future state, or if into any, I can't really tell you. We are all transitions just now, you see; but then other people have the pull over me in having more imagination and happier knacks of inventing names for their different creeds."Her face froze a little. Politics were weighty matters, and she never had been able to understand light-mindedness. The white, prim, restrained woman interested Colclough strangely; he had had so little experience of her like in India, where he had lived since he had left Oxford. He felt inclined really to know her."Would you like a political career for your husband, Mrs. Hyde?""I would like nothing better," she said quickly."I shouldn't have thought that sort of thing ever entered your head, Beatrice," said Geoffrey, with some half-indifferent surprise."I wonder if he knows anything at all about what does enter her head?" Colclough thought. "I doubt it.""It seems the natural thing to go into Parliament," she said, in her little conventional way; "but I don't quite understand your change from radicalism. Will you not have to be more sure of your opinions before you begin to canvass?" Her eyes watched him with sedate uneasiness."I shall probably be less sure by that time, considering the general muddle of things. My first care will be to record my vote against Home Rule,—-as the strangely inadequate phrase is now understood—merely to justify my existence; then I shall look round. You see radicalism, at close quarters, unless you're born to it, or are a professional philanthropist, or an advanced atheist, or have a nonconformist conscience, palls after the early twenties—the modern article, that is. It's too mawkishly sentimental, has altogether too unnecessary a tendency to tears and wailing, for the natural adult man. Then that extraordinary craze for glorifying the coloured races—whether by dirt or nationality, it doesn't matter which to the true Radical—puts one off a bit. After all, even a white man who washes has his feelings. Then the fellows have such an enormous way of looking at a question—their side of it, of course—that it ends in their going in for any form of crudity—but truth. Besides, they talk a deal too much to think soundly. Life's too short for both.""Conservatism, just now, isn't particularly silent," said Colclough."Conservatism's just the same—with a difference, it seems to me. This hateful Irish question has robbed it of a good deal of its magnificent silence, which was its cachet to a great extent. Have one of these apples, Jim. It's as cold as winter Miss Weston, have some Chartreuse. Beatrice, won't you? Why didn't you drive this morning?""I wanted a walk."Rica wondered what made her so pale. Beatrice was a constant worry to her; she wanted so much to know her, she made such frantic sustained efforts to do so; and yet it seemed impossible."But," persisted Beatrice, in her gentle, frosty tones, "on what interest will you try to get in, Geoffrey?""I shall pledge myself to neither party. I shall be an alternate blister on the side of both.""Will you tell that to your constituents?" Colclough asked."Yes. It's only how you put it.""I should get in on drains and Christian young men," said Rica,—"no, they're not Christian, they're convalescent, aren't they? I knew there was a C somewhere. Well, on these, and the new cottages, and the Mothers' Meetings and things. Don't you know he's a philanthropist, Mr. Colclough? And his estate is the best managed anywhere."Beatrice gave her a swift, furtive look of half-suspicious approval. Hyde laughed."You've been keeping company with Radicals, Miss Weston. I wonder if the Christian young men and the other things would back your opinion.""Of course they wouldn't. The human mind, especially if it's Arcadian, revolts against improvement and instruction. But facts speak truth, even if men lie.""Facts are many-sided," said Colclough. "They don't strike us equally. If Geoffrey has the manners to ask me down, I shall consider the facts myself, and see if we agree.""We probably shall not—all the same, facts are stubborn.""Depends on the mind that observes them. With you they would be, no doubt. I have, I assure you, at times found them exceedingly flaccid.""That was when you wanted beef-tea and wouldn't take it, and were, in consequence, incapable of grasping the facts. Facts themselves are all right, it's the minds that are not.""I wonder, if you were to give Radicals a sufficient quantity of beef tea, would it increase their capacity for the refinements of truth?" said Hyde."I think it might" said Rica, "if you were judicious in your choice of distributers. I think I should like to be one of the instruments chosen. When you are Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition, will you nominate me?""Certainly, I'll make you our first whip.""Talking of truth, Miss Weston, which variety of truth do you prefer," said Colclough, "crude or mellow?""Mellow, certainly, crude being so much better for me. Why is it that what's best for you always tries your constitution, like the draughts that were to make us worse before we were better, as the nurse invariably assured us?""Frank's sermons have that effect. Their first tendency is to make one swear——""And their last?" asked Rica laughing."Possibly to make one think—that, however, depends on beef-tea and the mind. Some minds, to judge by the faces last Sunday, would be driven to pray—for the preacher. However, on the whole, the result's wholesome enough. The first and last influence of most sermons is to make one swear.""Swearing is a nice cheerful way of throwing it off the mind. There's nothing left for women under these circumstances but to wish they were dead.""Or that the preacher was.""That's murder, and it's rather degrading and retrograde to get into the Ten Commandments so late on in the century."Hyde turned to his wife in his friendly way."When the time comes, will you canvass for me?" he asked. "If Sturt retires now, it will be directly.""Oh yes, I shall canvass for you. Perhaps when the time really comes you will have got some opinions."She looked at him as if she wanted to say something more, and her lips moved, but she changed her mind. At the same moment she caught Rica's eyes fixed on her thinning hands, and she hid them in her lap."Possibly, or will have convinced you of the advantages of having none," said Hyde.She wondered if they would ever cease talking; if she would ever get away into silence again. Involuntarily she let her hand hover for an instant near her side; she withdrew it hastily, but Colclough saw her, and it struck him it was time they went."Geoffrey and I are going horse-dealing this afternoon, Mrs. Hyde," he said. "Will you let us off now, or we may miss our man? You've got to see the other fellow first, Geoffrey. Meanwhile, if Miss Weston will allow me, I'll see her home, and catch you up at the club."He had no notion of leaving Rica behind; he was determined the poor white thing should get rid of them altogether. Even the best women are sometimes dense as to what's good for their own kind."It's cold," said Colclough, when they got outside, "but it's nothing to the atmosphere of that house. What's wrong with that poor woman?""I only found out to-day, she's in love with her own husband, and she's simply dying of his mere friendliness, and I think she's ill as well.""Mind diseased, most likely. It's as thinning as ague.""I hope that's all.""Hope, do you? Why, I thought that smallpox was a fool to mind, with women of that order and that make.""But when the two, diseased body and mind, come together, it surely makes matters considerably worse?""Humph! And so he runs his estates properly, and I hear lives a sane enough life, and is friendly, as you call it, with his wife. Things might be worse. All the same, he's not the fellow he was. He had the makings of a lot in him.""If he had," said Rica sharply, "it will come out. Margaret Dering, if that's what you mean, never quenched any of his ' makings, whatever they may have been. You would alter your tone if you had ever once seen her.""Hullo! Aren't those unfeminine sentiments? If they are, even if in the main they're all right, I make it a rule myself never to go with them. It's best to keep with nature. Another thing, if you do happen to agree with a woman when she goes contrary to her sex, she'll generally round on you in the end.""I imagine your acquaintances among women must be rather appallingly feminine?""They certainly are, as a rule. But in this present case, isn't it only the other woman who is to be considered now that the poor girl is dead?""Of course if you do the right thing; but you can't be always considering that, when you've known the other girl.""Oh, when women go the length of idealising one of themselves, reason's out of it.""It seems to me far more utterly unreasonable for one of us to idealise one of you; the results are so glaringly contrary to nature; only of course if we didn't women's devotion would be at an end, and the world would fall to pieces. Man, unadorned and plain, without woman's imagination to supplement him, would hardly retain his place in nature.""Miss Weston, beware of flippancy! It's the pitfall of the modern young of both sexes. And now I suppose I shall have to say good-bye, as that horse must be bought this afternoon.""Yes—and besides, I was getting ever so much the better of you. Good-bye!"As soon as they had gone, Beatrice went to her room, threw off her dress, and huddled down into a deep chair. She could grasp nothing quite clearly but extreme physical dis-comfort, and a vague memory of something she had heard that morning. She was cold to the bone, and her heart ached miserably. When she grew warm at last, and the pain subsided, she sat up, gathered her shawl round her, and crept closer to the fire. But she was restless, and some fascination drew her to the glass. She let her shawl fall off, and looked at her fast thinning arms, at the slender bones visible in her neck, which only a few months ago had been so absolutely perfect. She sat down trembling, and rested her face on the table. She lifted it up directly and looked again at herself, wondering how it was that she never could look just as she felt; and as she watched herself, still wondering, her mouth softened, her cheeks flushed, little dimples dotted them, her eyes lighted up. They almost danced in the joy of their own newness, and the tender-ness in them was an altogether lovely thing. She was so young—so delicious, so astonishingly pretty, that after one long look of surprise at herself she burst out crying."Oh, if he could only see me now!" she said, "only just this once—this one little once!" She threw out her arms yearningly into space, still wondering at herself. "If he only could see me," she cried softly, "I think he would know just how my heart feels!"A sudden little cry of bitter pain tore through her lips; it hurt her so that she put up her handkerchief to see if any blood came, but she recognised her foolishness in a minute and laughed; then she struggled tiredly back to her chair."I had the cards in my hands," she thought, crouching nearer the fire, "and I played my game of life badly, and lost. He was ripe and ready for love, if some one had shown him the way—given him the lead." She laughed a tired little laugh. "She came, and had no difficulty; and now she is dead, and hope is dead, and I have just to stand about—till I die. O God! if only I can stand. I feel sometimes as if I must drop meanly out of the ranks, and die in a hole, like any sick beast. I would do so gladly, and escape the pain and the horror of his cousinliness, but it's so mean to shirk Fate; and I do not intend, whatever happens, to become an invalid,—an irritating, hampering bore,—to make my husband desire my death. I shall just stand as long as I am able to; and after—well, after—must take care of itself!"She lay back and rested for a long time; then suddenly she leaned forward and thrust her hands out before her graspingly."But if he knew—knew the uninevitableness of it——" She dropped her face in her hands to hide a burning vision. "Oh, Geoffrey! my own, my dear——" She slowly lifted her face from her hands and looked at the fire, and the hopelessness slid back into her eyes."No," she slowly resolved; "what my love and myself couldn't win, I couldn't take for pity's sake. When I can't stand any longer—his knowing won't matter. I must have several things done—my gowns padded, and that sort of thing, and Louise can have excellent practice on my face. She will be invaluable to her future mistress. What a fortunate thing it is that gaiety is not demanded of me—impassiveness is an admirable rôle, after all. If I had to be brilliant, I would surely make a fool of myself, and annoy Geoffrey. And now a dinner and three different houses to go to—then bed—a good many hours' standing! How unlucky it should be so early in the season! And then the canvassing? I wonder how I shall get on? Oh, Louise, I shall wear that violet velvet, rather high in the neck, and it wants altering. Do see to it while I have my tea. I shall dress early and lie down. My head aches."CHAPTER XIX.Meanwhile, in his small lodgings in Derbyshire, the curate Bridges was waiting till death should "deliver him." He had been failing for months, working feverishly, and now and again taking little sudden trips to London, the object of which mystified his Rector a good deal. From these he would return sad and heavy-eyed, to plunge more vehemently than ever into his work.He was constantly tormented by a cough, which, if one were to judge of the man only by the size of him, must have torn him to shreds long ago. But the soul has sometimes better staying powers than its frail tenement. One day, however, he went to bed, never to leave it again, except to be carried to the sofa.The Rector was in despair. It was only when he had lost the work of the staunch heart and the willing feet of his ridiculous little curate that he at all realised the extent of the loss that had befallen him. The first thing he did was to write to Rica; it seemed the natural and proper thing to do in the circumstances, although he expected nothing very definite to come of his news.But some definite thing did come this time, and very quickly too—nothing less indeed than Rica herself. A miserable certainty of the poor little creature's loneliness had taken possession of her, and produced in her so abiding a sensation of extreme discomfort that in sheer self-defence she had to come, although everything in the whole wide world seemed to be going on just at the time.Directly she arrived she installed herself as Bridges' head nurse, and when she had sat down calmly before him, and insisted on his then and there looking her in the face and once and for all giving up his habit of being afraid of her, they got on admirably."Mr. Bridges," she said one day—she had just been out for a little walk, and on coming softly into the room she had seen him from the doorway lifting himself with both hands from the sofa and looking out at the distant hills with eyes full of sorrow and subdued longing—"there you are again doing precisely what I don't want you to do. Can't you let yourself rest, and stop that wretched, uncanny, and most unnecessary thinking? Now aren't you more comfortable? Do you happen to have on a hair shirt, by the way?""Dear, Miss Rica, no!""I thought you might, perhaps, you're so irritating. People who keep pricking themselves, whether with shirts or anything else, on account of their sins, always are irritating, and you have the air of a man who is repenting all the time as hard as ever he can. Now that is rude to me, for it makes me feel as if I too should be doing something of the same sort. Besides, as far as regards yourself, it's irrational, and wasted energy, and will make your bills for medicine simply awful. For I am absolutely convinced you never committed a sin worth mentioning in all your life."He thought for a few minutes."No, Miss Rica, no, perhaps I didn't. You see, the sins that strong men sin never came, so to speak, within my sphere, which was a limited, insignificant one. I was a woman, without her nobility or her strength made perfect in weakness. My sins were passive ones, little trivial sins of omission, and still more trivial little vanities.""You are morbid. I shall be forced to give you one of the very nastiest of all the draughts—though it isn't due yet for two hours. But the doctor told me to use my discretion, which, indeed, was a quite unnecessary injunction, for I invariably do.""Miss Rica, don't give me the medicine just yet; let me talk to you instead. I never before, except in the course of my parochial duty, have had a lady all to myself to talk to and to make of me a first consideration. Now and again, indeed, at odd moments, a young lady may have talked to me, but it has been only when she herself was waiting for another man, and if not waiting, then at least hoping. I have never before been to any girl more than a stop-gap. Will you not then permit me to make my little confessions?""You shall make as many as ever you like. But before you begin, my discretion insists on your taking this brandy. It will benefit you in more ways than one—it will jog your inventive powers, and make the confessions more interesting."He looked at her with a faint, half-puzzled smile."Miss Rica," he said, in a quaint trustful way that touched her strongly, "I could not, I think, make you quite understand the pain and the torture my insignificant body and that unpleasant squeak in my voice have always caused me. The smothered laugh of a schoolgirl has kept me quivering and hot for hours; and at Oxford among men it was, I think, a little worse. How trivial even to myself this now seems! but it has seemed very great,—perhaps no one but God knows quite how great! But it was only after I entered the Church that the knowledge of my insignificance, my inefficiency, physical and mental, really became a burthen to me, and I think kept me from God. We have grown so particular as regards our decorations. We bring our best in art and music into our churches; we would pause before we devoted to God's service an ugly vessel, or one with a flaw in it; and yet we seem to have no diffidence whatever in offering to Him our imperfect persons, our insignificant brains and stunted bodies. Let me go on, please," he pleaded.He looked so white and full of pain that Rica was terrified, and wanted to stop him."Let me go on; there is so little time, and, as you know, dear Miss Rica, I am long-winded. Awkwardness, shyness, above all anything ludicrous in a man," he continued, in a small, quavering, preachy voice—"an unfortunate squeak, for instance, is a dreadful thing in a priest of God. Any one of such defects will help to undermine his influence with women, more perhaps than a positive fault of character; and in their hands, as we all well know, rests the great proportion of the world's religion" ("Or churchiness," murmured Rica). "And women, Miss Rica," he said hesitating, "are not always pitiful."He paused, and a small, mixed smile touched the corners of his mouth."Go on," she said, with a little laugh; "don't apologise.""Or, if his influence is not undermined, it is perhaps turned into undesirable channels. Insignificant men, dear Miss Rica, have unsatisfied cravings that strong men know nothing about. Sympathy, that form of sympathy which only a woman can give, is everything to poor, vain, fearful natures; but it is the birthright of the big and strong; the weak pick up but shreds and tatters of the beautiful thing. They who need it so sorely rarely or ever obtain it in its highest form. They are sometimes led to seek something akin to it in less natural sources. Some, we are told, seek their natural affinities,—old maids—sad, subdued, unsatisfied ones, who have also lost in life's battle. This temptation, I need not tell you, did not befall me, Miss Rica, the circumstances not being propitious," he added, with a low, flickering laugh. "Others again fall into misconceptions, and think that their heart's desire is for them, not for the strong and the beautiful. You must often have thought my presumption with regard to Miss Dering ridiculous, Miss Rica; now it seems madness. But then—ah, then!"He broke off to rest a little. Rica said nothing; the silence seemed best for him. He began after a pause, in a strained voice, which increased the poor squeak."There is one of Robert Browning's poems that I understand, and the only one. It is called 'Misconceptions.' Have you ever read it, Miss Rica?""I have often, and I never thought you either presumptuous or ridiculous. You wouldn't have been a man if you hadn't loved her."This view of the case soothed him, as Rica meant it should. He brightened visibly."Ah well, it's over now, and past. Miss Rica, you look upon her as dead, do you not?""Of course I do. What do you mean?""Because I think it very doubtful. Her aunts had indeed a letter saying that she was dying, that there was absolutely no hope. But there was no address given. The two poor ladies went up to London, and searched for her with breaking hearts, but without result. Then they returned, and were, it seems, vouchsafed a dream from the Lord assuring them of her death. Taking that and the letter received as conclusive, they decided that she was dead, and announced the fact, firmly believing it, and giving no details. You know how little is really known about them; no one dreamed of asking for details. But one day Miss Julia told me all about it; she had herself no doubts at all, and I of course kept mine to myself. But I always meant that before I went you should know. I have told no one else. Miss Rica, do you know that these women carry broken hearts in their poor tired bodies?"He somehow expected her to be touched, and to say so, and paused to hear her."Oh, the old wretches!" she said; "they richly deserve them. Tell me more—all you know."Her hardness of heart was a little disappointment, but he continued obediently,—"I myself went up whenever the Rector could spare me, and indeed, altogether through my own carelessness in forgetting to take an overcoat, I caught this final cold one wet night on the embankment. I thought with that little trout-stream in her heart she would most likely seek the river."He broke off with a gurgling sound, and for some minutes Rica was breathless. But he recovered, and lay silent till the night came.The next day he looked up in her face as she bent over him."It seems most strange to see. you serving me in this beautiful way," he said,—"you, at sight of whom I once would have gladly exchanged places with any snail that had a shell.""At sight of me!" she nearly screamed." Yes, your eyes were so critical, and so exceedingly alarming, and your dress was so very wonderful. You had a most complicated, puzzling, unexpected appearance. It seemed to me that sudden things must always come to pass when you were near, and I have always had a foolish fear of any sudden sensation. It is, I fancy, a constitutional defect.""Good gracious! It's you who are sudden. What astonishing effects! One looks at oneself in a new light altogether. But go on. You wouldn't like to be a snail in a shell now to avoid me, would you?""No, dear Miss Rica, I should exceedingly regret it. Even if 1 could do so, I would not rob you of one jot of your most useful faculty of"—he paused—"looking through one. Your critical faculty, perhaps, would be the better term. It is a great gift; I have myself frequently suffered from the lack of it. It would, I am of opinion, if rightly directed, be most efficacious in grasping the fundamental causes of certain faults in the organisation of our Holy Church. The faculty of women for seeing truly, as it were, might help us. I used to think differently. I used to look upon our priestly arrangements as requiring no alter-ation, as being supremely good; and accessories were to me mighty things, as, indeed, now and then, your uncle has found to his cost. Everything seems so changed—things, mere things, have grown so trivial, and the whole so infinitely great, that it but accentuates the littlenesses that go to its making. I can see development in all things, and the good and the evil are coming into harmony. Did you give me opium in that draught, Miss Rica? Is my imagination expanded by drugs? or is this death?""You have had no opium," she said gently.He began again after a few minutes, and she let him. It seemed the only thing to do."A constant feeling of inadequacy, Miss Rica, is a most unpleasant companion. All this strange stir in men's minds, this clatter of progress, this rush and stress, and, more than all, the mocking indifference of the many, have exceedingly perplexed me, and have emphasised my own incapacity. Knowledge and strength are terrible things to lack; ignorance is a hard task-master."He gasped out the last words in painful jerks, and Rica was surprised at herself for letting him run down so badly. But she had been wondering at the effect of death on the poor little curate, with his halting speech and his timid reticence. Who would dare now to laugh at him? she had been thinking, as he struggled to give voice to the little vagrant thoughts that were crowding into his soul. She put him back among his pillows, and ordered him peremptorily not to speak for ten minutes.Then she turned to the fire, and began to think of herself and her curious mixed feelings, hankering every free moment for her lost dances. With a nameless terror of death, yet waiting for it there all by herself; and watching with undisguised interest its stripping off of the little absurdities that had hidden a tiny heart of gold, which life had only chevied still farther back into its wrappings."He's not dying at all," she told herself, looking at him; "he is only making ready—gathering up his poor little strength for a spring into life; that fuller life of Presently."When the ten minutes came to an end he began again."That inadequacy, you see, haunted me. How could I explain what was to me incomprehensible? How could I fathom depths to which my shred of rope could not reach? When, from time to time, stricken hearts have revealed themselves to me, I—ignorant, without strength, confused, and helpless—would only cry vaguely to God to help me. Confessions that only anguish could wring into expression I met in dumb despair." He shivered. "No soul was ever robbed of its bitterness by help of mine. That God gave the help I never doubted; but I knew not of it. I have miserably failed.""Lie down there properly, and listen to a little common-sense. You haven't failed; those things that were incomprehensible to you would very likely have also been incomprehensible to Pascal, or even to S. John. They wouldn't, therefore, to them, have been reprehensible, any more than they have been to you; they wouldn't have frantically abused what they didn't happen to understand, nor have you done so."He looked at her open-eyed; he was indeed being considered in a new light, being thrust into very delightful company. "S. John! Pascal!" he gasped softly."Very pure unstained souls can receive what are to them truths like children; they filter in and are at once absorbed and assimilated; they haven't to struggle through a whole jungle of perplexities and opinions, mostly collected from your neighbours or books; they just go straight home, and are pondered on by pure eyes looking inward, that can see even if the light is dim. They become a state of mind; you can't explain a state of mind or give it out in words. The words to explain some things aren't forged yet, they must come straight from Nature's anvil. There never, I'm quite convinced, came a soul to you but went away warmed and lightened of its load,—not from your words, but from your—well, your state of mind."" You are very good to me. I wish I could think——""Look here, I'll tell you something. You remember young Hull and his atrocious mother, and the whole hideous muddle? Well, he went to you one evening and told you things. You didn't say much; you stammered and got red like a girl, and the tears came into your eyes; and then you knelt down and you prayed like a little child speaking to its mother. These were the very words he said one day before he died. You know my uncle asked me to go and see him in London.""I thought I had fallen very far short of my duty, and allowed that poor soul to sink."" I don't know anything much about such things, but I don't think that soul sank, and I know quite well it never forgot you. I was going out a lot at that time, and only just wrote a scrap of a note to my uncle. I really meant to write to you, but—well, I forgot. It was beastly selfish of me.""Dear Miss Rica, no!""It's gospel truth; don't let your Christianity lead you astray. It's better to be truthful than Christian, isn't it? And now go to sleep, or at any rate be quiet. And be quite convinced that on the whole you have made a very complete day's work of your life. Don't let your conscience make away with your reason."END OF VOL. I.Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and
Aylesbury.