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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 III, an electronic edition
Author: Caffyn, Mannington, Mrs.
Publisher: Hutchinson & Co.
Place published: London
Date: 1894
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CHILDREN OF CIRCUMSTANCEVOL. IIIAdvertisement included in the front of Iota's third volume
of Children of Circumstance.CHILDREN OF CIRCUMSTANCEA NovelBy IOTAAuthor of  "A
YELLOW ASTER."IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. IIISECOND EDITIONLondon1894HUTCHINSON AND CO.PATERNOSTER ROWCHILDREN OF CIRCUMSTANCE
CHAPTER XXXVII.DIRECTLY Geoffrey had gone to Ireland, Rica noticed an odd, indefinite change in Beatrice. His going, it was evident, worried her out of all proportion to the occasion; and yet it was a relief. Beatrice relaxed herself thankfully; she fell back into her old prim apathy; she walked more slowly, she talked less; the strange charm of newness vanished from her, even the pretty colour often left her cheeks, and her eyes were no longer invariably brilliant at night.This was, however, only on off days and at odd times. She went everywhere she should go, and then she looked always as she ought to look, and she, in every way, did all she could to make Rica happy. But she greedily seized on every free instant to rest in, and rested in the same steadfast, purposeful way in which she had canvassed for her husband.Rica could in no sort of way make her out. She grew altogether too aggravating. In about a week after Geoffrey's departure she spoke to Colclough about it." I can't understand her at all," she said one evening.They were sitting out a dance. Colclough had wanted to dance it, but Rica didn't think it was good for him, and had insisted on conveying him to a sheltered corner."She's quite too sphinxy. I like her enormously—a lot more than I did even, but she confuses me and makes me vulgar. It is distinctly vulgar to be always trying to get at a person who doesn't want to be got at, and yet I have a frantic sort of notion that it's my absolute duty to go on prodding till I get into her, and find out everything.""Used you to prod into the six brothers also on principle?" Colclough asked despairingly."No, it's only necessary to prod skilfully and scientifically into one man to find clues to all the others. You see, there's an infinite variety in our make, as in all other things about us, otherwise chaos must have come long ago; men would no longer have found surprises in women, and the action of the world must have stopped with a jerk. All the same," she continued, with some disapproval, "women have no business to spring surprises on one another. I want to be prepared for Beatrice.""But what about the slices off one pudding you spoke of?""They're varied by sauces and condiments and a thousand etceteras—things you could never grasp in detail in your single state. You don't surely suppose that a man ever comes to the bed-rock of pudding until after marriage?" She did not want just then to argue this matter out, so she went on serenely, "Look at her. Isn't she fine? Now I don't suppose you have the haziest idea that those shimmering opal clouds in which she's wrapped compose a master-piece and cost a fortune?""No, I have not. But I have a very distinct idea that she's a lot thinner there, just under her ear, than any woman has a right to be.""Yes, her thinness is a horrid puzzle. It's a part of her general sphinxiness. You see, she puts me off in her sweet prim way, just as if I were a foolish man, and had no reasonable excuse for my curiosity. I am so wretchedly healthy myself that symptoms are beyond me." She took a half-irritated survey of him. "Now you, with your experience, might come in so usefully.""It's gratifying to be an authority on any subject," said Colclough. "She's ill, and I oughtn't to have to hint to any one so far advanced in the up-to-date wisdom of serpents as yourself that it's no manner of use prodding into a woman of that temperament. If she's silent, she has a purpose in being so. You'll not surprise her into speech. All the same," he went on, looking at Beatrice, "I have a notion that she'll some day, very soon, surprise you into silence. She's losing control over herself; she wants the presence of Geoffrey to keep her nerves strung up. Poor thing!"He said it with such genuine, unusual feeling that Rica let him off his small gibe at herself."A good breakdown would do her a world of good."Rica involuntarily drew a deep breath."You surely have no experience of these things yourself!" said Colclough; he felt scared at the mere thought."I? Good gracious, no! I'm an absolutely lost soul. I tell you I haven't a solitary yearning in all this big world, and I simply abhor turning myself inside out; it's much better fun doing it to other people, if the fulness of time demands something in that line from one. Do you see that man there sadly scanning the horizon? This is our dance, and he's looking for me. You will notice his fine intellectual brow; moreover, he's a little knock-kneed, and weak on the near fore. By birth he's a baronet, and by nature intense. He belongs to two professions—he's a minor poet and an experimental sinner; he conveys to you in the most dreamy and vague manner the enormity and astonishing novelty of his vices; he battens on remorse, and wails like an Æolian harp over his neuroses; and you have a fine secret conviction all the time that he's somehow too flabby to have a nerve in his body, and that he's too much of a prig even to be wicked with any degree of activity. He's going to propose to me to-night. My robust commonplaceness has been recommended to him as an antidote to his neurotic exaltation, and he has been gradually urging himself up to the point."And you let him? Rather hard lines on the fellow!""I couldn't undertake the appointment permanently," she continued, serenely, watching with much interest her baronet floundering crossly through the crowd, "but I have a sort of sympathy for him; he requires experience, and I can see my way in this coming situation to help him to some. He has taken enormous trouble—for him, you know—to brace himself to this effort. He has discussed the infinite grind of necessity's driving with two men at his club at odd times for a whole week. Brothers are useful things, Mr. Colclough. As a kindly recognition of my obligations to him, I feel it my stern duty just to act for once as a nerve tonic. Couldn't you manage to cough badly—even to sneeze? He's within earshot now. I should like you to see him think first, he'll then tingle visibly.—Ah, Sir Bernard, is this our dance?"The day after the ball Beatrice looked more tired than ever, so Rica insisted, as there was nothing particular on, that she should rest the whole day—just pretend to write letters all the morning, lie down till tea-time, then a nice dowagery drive, and a little dinner all to their two selves in their loosest, most abandoned-looking tea-gowns. After which, they would neither stir out nor allow any one in. It was a delightful little plan, and yet Beatrice seemed more uncomfortable and containedly restless than ever she had done before. And Rica, although she had a most delicious memory of her baronet, and woman as revealed to him by herself, to console her, felt bored to extinction and a little impatient.They had lost a whole day, and for absolutely nothing. She had even missed Frank when she had rushed across to see him while Beatrice rested after lunch. She wanted terribly to see Margaret, but she felt she must first see Frank. When ten o'clock came, she yawned softly and stood up."Perhaps," she thought, "bed will be grateful and comforting, if nothing else is. It's horrid to think, too, that Sir Bernard must now have recovered, and is at this moment having a delightful time, and is already believing that he refused me with cracking heart-strings from the most exalted motives. Possibly he's writing a sonnet, and calling it 'The Renunciation,' and that he'll even make five pounds out of it. Beatrice! Mercy! what is it?"Beatrice had stood up in a half-absent way, when a spasm of pain suddenly twisted across her face, her lips got rigid and bluish, and she half fell back on the sofa. Rica took her softly in her arms to lay her quite down, thinking it was a faint, but she gave a shrill, broken scream of pain. Rica darted to the bell, but an inarticulate, eager cry from the sofa brought her back."Wait," whispered Beatrice; "medicine's in pocket—better—soon."Rica got it out, took a small Venetian glass from a table, and poured the prescribed quantity into it."Don't go," said Beatrice. She swallowed the medicine, and got herself slowly and carefully down on the pillows, holding her breath, and they both waited—Rica in a perplexed whirl of terror, Beatrice hardly breathing, her face drawn with pain. Gradually the tension of her muscles relaxed, the red came slowly back to her lips, and she gave a slow, soft sigh of relief.Rica knew she was better, and began to consider the situation with some degree of coherence."It isn't the first time," she thought fearfully; "she carries the medicine about with her, and she must have been pretty bad to scream like that. I do wish to goodness Geoffrey was back! He has no notion of this, I'm quite certain. This accounts, then, for the thinness—and other things. Sphinxiness is a depressing thing, and eludes one's insight; and, after all, what's any female creature without insight?—no higher than the brute beast. Ah, she's ever so much better!"She watched her anxiously for a few minutes. The pain seemingly had gone, but it had left behind great weakness. Beatrice lay with her eyes closed, breathing softly, hardly perceptibly, indeed, but with a blessed look of relief on her face. At the beginning of the attack, in obedience to a sign from Beatrice, Rica had loosened all her clothes, and now that she had time to take notice she was shocked at the uncompromising saltcellars in her neck, at the almost squalid flatness of her chest. It hurt the girl to see the poor shrivelled breasts. She covered them tenderly."She's all padding," she thought perplexedly, "and only a year or two older than I am. Oh, what is it all about? Good gracious! is it all wifehood and motherhood? It's abominable; the biggest repentant sinner"Yes, I'm all right now, I am indeed. Shall we go to bed?""Yes. I'll ring for your maid."Rica felt some unreasonable disappointment as she went to the bell. Was this all, then? Must she still keep on making miserable snapshots at the truth? She was still grumbling over the matter, she hadn't even begun to undress, when Beatrice's maid came to the door and asked her to go to her mistress. She found her crouching over the fire; she always had a fire at night now that she felt the cold so keenly. Rica knelt down before it gladly. Her own fright had slowed her blood, and she felt cold besides with a vague, nervous fear."Oughtn't you to be in bed—mayn't I help you?""I like so much better to be here, and I want to talk to you. You're not tired, dear, are you? You look white for you. I'm afraid I gave you a horrid shock.""I'm not an atom tired; but won': you wait "Yes, I'm all right now, I am indeed. Shall we go to bed?""Yes. I'll ring for your maid."Rica felt some unreasonable disappointment as she went to the bell. Was this all, then? Must she still keep on making miserable snapshots at the truth? She was still grumbling over the matter, she hadn't even begun to undress, when Beatrice's maid came to the door and asked her to go to her mistress. She found her crouching over the fire; she always had a fire at night now that she felt the cold so keenly. Rica knelt down before it gladly. Her own fright had slowed her blood, and she felt cold besides with a vague, nervous fear."Oughtn't you to be in bed—mayn't I help you?""I like so much better to be here, and I want to talk to you. You're not tired, dear, are you? You look white for you. I'm afraid I gave you a horrid shock.""I'm not an atom tired; but won't you wait till to-morrow, till you are quite strong?" An inexplicable fit of shyness had fallen on Rica; she was dying to know all about it, and yet she felt an uncomfortable inclination to fly."I shall rest talking to you," said Beatrice. "I couldn't sleep just now." She put out her hand softly and laid it on Rica's. "It's nice to have a friend," she said gently. "I am so glad you came to stay with me.""So am I. You're a good woman for a girl to know.""Am I? Not to imitate though," she said, with an odd smile. "However, as your cachet is not imitation that doesn't matter. I surprised you to-night, which wasn't quite fair either to you or to friendship; but it is always so hard for me to speak out. Then I didn't know you well enough when I first was told; besides, it then seemed to be a crude ugly thing, about which one must be silent."Rica was watching, in startled inquiry, Beatrice's quiet face looking into the fire. Suddenly she turned it on the girl and spoke in a hesitating way."I am very ill, Rica. I am so ill, indeed, that I can't live for very much longer now—not more than for a few months.""Beatrice! Beatrice!"Rica caught her in sheer horror, and gave her a little soft shake."What are you saying? What do you mean? Look at me."She looked at the girl with surprised, half-fearful eyes."Rica, dear—I had no idea you would take it like this. I had settled it all with myself long ago. I never meant to shock you. There is nothing to be afraid of in death, in this slow, soft sort of death, that one has time to think about—nothing at all. The thought slips into your life and becomes part of it in a strangely short time. Just at first, of course, you lose courage, think that chaos has come, and that you are being unfairly dealt with, but that soon rights itself. Poor Rica, have I been selfish? I suppose it must seem dreadful to you, a girl, with a whole wide world to explore." She drew Rica's head down on to her lap."You're not two years older than I am," Rica whispered."Yes, but I'm different," she said softly."I was never meant for an explorer, and unless you are in some degree equipped for that rôle, this modern life becomes rather a terror to you; you feel a little lost in it. You somehow can't blend with its products, and though you know it is entirely your own fault, or the fault of your limitations, you feel just a little lonely, a little in the way; and standing outside always makes you tired. I fancy, perhaps, that death and the things that lie beyond it, although we have ourselves clothed these in complications of mysteries, are really more simple than life. I think probably that is the reason I have now grown quite accustomed to the thought of death."Beatrice, are you sure of what you say? What is the matter with you?""There are three things, and all with long names. Two of them are hereditary. Yes, I am quite sure. I have been to the very best doctors; and, besides, I know it myself. Doctors only tell you the name your particular death goes by, and how it comes. I shall only suffer now and again. I am so glad—I have a cowardly fear of pain, and it is such a worry for other people. I may never have to be an invalid at all. Isn't that a good thing? After a certain stage it may come quite quickly."Rica shivered, and took hold of the thin hand that rested on her knee and kissed it."Poor little Rica! nice, dear Rica! it is altogether delightful to have a friend.""Geoffrey," said Rica,—"when will you tell him?""Oh, I wanted to speak of that. Not yet—not till I must. Perhaps I may not have to tell at all, you know;—it might come first.""But," said Rica, sitting up, and looking at her, "that isn't fair to Geoffrey.""But why? His knowing could in no way alter things—ultimate things—for me.""This going out—this living as if you were quite well.""Won't alter anything by one finger's breadth. I do all the doctors tell me. I never hurry for anything, or do any hard physical or mental work. I rest, and eat, and drink, and enjoy myself. Rica, don't you see that Geoffrey has been asleep—in abeyance, so to speak, since—Margaret Dering came? before indeed—since he married me; and now——" She paused and moistened her lips. "Now he has awakened, and is making a fresh start in life. The knowledge of this must only retard, hamper, embarrass him, throw him perhaps quite off the line for ever so long, and he has already delayed too long. Besides"— she leaned eagerly forward,— "oh, Rica! I want to see him fairly on the way to the best he is capable of; we all expect so much from Geoffrey. I want to see him begin to justify our expectations before it comes. If he begins in sheer earnest he will go on, and then I should like to think that I had myself given him one little bit of stimulus forward. Something you and Mr. Colclough once said makes me believe I have been a help."Rica stared at her wondering; she was looking into the fire with quiet serious eyes."It would be nice not to die till I could feel certain, quite certain, that he was going to be his best self—the best outcome of our honourable house. We must not retard him in any way; we must help him, hasten him on, that I may have even one visible evidence of his distinguished future.""But you have it already in lots of little ways, and, above all, it's in your heart, dear," said Rica tenderly. "I'm sure your instinct is prophetic, as it was before about the election."I want it right under my eyes," she said softly. "In this shortness of time one grows greedy and grasping.""Beatrice——""Wait, Rica, I have to tell you something. I overheard you telling Mr. Colclough about Margaret Dering's being alive. I was coming through the curtains into the inner drawing-room, and I simply stood there and heard all. I couldn't speak or move—I had just to listen. It was then, too, that I heard you speaking of me. I am so glad you both think that I have helped Geoffrey.""You knew it all the time!" ejaculated Rica. "I wonder——" She broke off and looked into the fire."You wonder if I was sorry," said Beatrice softly. "I was at first, as stupidly, and selfishly, and unreasonably sorry as a woman well could be. But I got reasonable later on. No one will ever be to him what she will be. No one will help him forward as she can do. Why should I grudge him to her? She told me it was my fault to have let him go—I had him first; and it was quite true. After all," she added softly, propping her chin on her palm, "if it is not she, it will be another, and I can trust HER. Rica, oh! Rica," she whispered, clasping her hands with restrained quiet force, "that is the bitterest thing of all! She has done such a great thing for him, and I so little—nothing definite or tangible, nothing steady and eternal like Margaret's sacrifice, that he can catch on to as to a sheet anchor. All that he will have to think of me by will be so vague and negative, such an elusive, ungraspable essence, that although it has done what it could, and he has felt its presence in a degree, yet it will soon drift away, float off into the shadows and be forgotten.""Neither you nor your influence will ever be forgotten; you are unjust to yourself—and to Geoffrey, and to all of us. Whoever has lived with you would as soon forget your influence as one who has ever seen it would forget the shimmering, shadowy sheen of a pearl. Foolish Beatrice! you know as little of yourself as you do of other people. You have slid into our hearts in your prim little way, and nothing will ever crowd you out—not even Margaret," she added, rubbing her cheek softly against Beatrice's arm.The elder woman gave a soft pleased smile, which in a few minutes died away, and a look of anxious worry troubled her tired face."What new thing has she to say?" Rica thought miserably, pushing up the loose sleeve and touching with her lips the slender, fragile wrist, all little bones and blue veins. Beatrice shrunk a little away from her."Don't!" she said, "it's so sordid-looking; all the nice young flesh gone, nothing left but the sad old bones. That's the wretched part of it, Rica. You don't know how horrid it is to watch all the little outward things, the last touches, that make you pleasant in men's eyes, vanishing away, and leaving you a primitive initial sort of framework, that only depresses them and irritates them a little, makes them think that somehow you have failed in your day's work. In one's morning dresses it doesn't so much matter," she went on sedately; "padding is such a useful thing, and so long as your face keeps plump—mine has stood by me well in that respect—it is easily managed; but it is necks and arms that betray us. It was all right in the country, when I could wear teagowns, and just now they have managed my evening dresses admirably; but when Geoffrey comes back I hardly know what I shall do." She gave a sad little sigh. "He hates to see women's necks and arms muffled up—huddled away out of sight." She raised her proud little head. "And I don't wonder; it has a bourgeois, unassured sort of air that should not belong to us."Rica looked at her troubled half-offended face, and she had to swallow as little foolish sob."Beatrice," she said, "can't you see that in this concealment you are dealing unfairly by Geoffrey? Can't you give up this double life and just rest and wear tea-gowns, and be foolish and hysterical, and cross and irritable, just when you feel inclined, and let us pet you and wait on you? Every new, disagreeable, natural little trait will only make you dearer to each one of us. And, Beatrice, if you must go away from us—not soon, as you say, but in some vague far future, which needn't interfere with our present—why not make the best of this present? Don't thrust Geoffrey out in the cold; let him love you, and think for you every minute in the day; you know how men like taking care of us——""Oh, Rica!" she broke in, with an odd, wan little flicker of humour, "then why do you never give Mr. Colclough the chance? Let him turn the tables on you, just once in a while.""That's altogether different. A man as careless of himself as he is must be looked after. But—I will say it, Beatrice, you are injuring yourself and Geoffrey in this. Lie about on sofas, and let him love you like any commonplace, foolish husband, and be happy, and stop making little of yourself."A small quiet smile hovered about Mrs. Hyde's mouth for a minute."He does love me, dear; he loves me as a cousin, and neither shock nor service could alter the quality of his love, except in his own opinion. You are wise, my Rica, wiser than I should ever be, but there are some little things that I know which you don't." She stooped with a curious look and kissed the girl."Beatrice, you are aggravating to a degree. In one minute you confess to a limited view of things; in the next you persist in taking this view, when it's absolutely unsuited to the Occasion. Can't you be accommodating?""I can't, that's one of my limitations. Rica, it must be just precisely as I say. Geoffrey shall not be hindered by me or by any one else. I mean to see him well on the way—and you must help me as much as ever you can; and, oh, Rica! I have had so many disappointments—I mustn't be disappointed in this; just to see Geoffrey well on his way—that's all I want.""You'll get it all right, dear. He'll start fair, and you'll be there to see. But can't you possibly manage to take things easy, just to drift along in a nice pleasant pagan way?" she said coaxingly. "Throw your conscience overboard; you'd feel it an immense relief, and be as happy again. You could easily, pick it up and put it back in its place, swept and garnished, if you felt an overpowering need of it. A conscience as strained with hard work as yours must be, is of no mortal use to any one. In any case, to feel your conscience is as bad as looking well-dressed; you should be these things, not look them.""But things are so serious to me," said Beatrice. "Don't you think I would be light-minded if only I could? I have longed to be like you and Geoffrey, to give and take, to cease from striving, and drift, as you call it. It is just part of my make, of the stiffness of my mind—I can't.""It isn't your make at all, I believe; it's your grandmother bringing you up to make a fetish of your conscience. She should have left you to nature, and you'd have gone just as straight. However, there's a time for everything, and the time has now arrived for you to shirk conscience and to take to massage, if you want at least to retrieve the character of your neck." Rica was determined she should rest and be taken care of now and again, in spite of herself, and a sudden idea had come to her. "I know a woman, a widow lady, who does massage for her living; she has two little sickly boys to keep. I'll get her to come for two hours every day after lunch, and I'll read to you while she massages, or whatever you call it. Your neck will soon need no muffling up, it can be as aristocratically bare as you like.""Do you really think it will do good?" Beatrice asked, with great interest and a little doubt."I am positively certain it will," Rica pronounced."Then can you get her soon?""I can. I shall wire to her the first thing to-morrow.""And now you must go away to bed, you will be so tired," Beatrice said; but she made no attempt to say good-night; she looked restlessly from the fire to Rica and shivered a little, clasping and unclasping her hands.Rica felt desperately that if she didn't speak soon she herself must go away, the silence of the pause was too horrid. She wanted to walk about her room, to look out into the night, to do anything but watch this poor tired woman. Beatrice roused herself at last and sat up."I must see Margaret Dering," she said."Margaret Dering!""Yes, and tell her. She is so young. And that first minute I saw her singing by the stream, Rica, she made me reel. She would have intoxicated any man. I have often lain awake at night, and been sorry. It was a dreadful thing to dash such happiness away from any girl! I must be the first to tell her. I want her in the future to have a pleasant memory of me—not for ever to think of me as a cold blight. She and Geoffrey must not have diametrically opposed views on any subject. She too must think a little tenderly of me, as of a dear dead cousin."She spoke in a tired faint voice, and frightened Rica, who put on her best protective manner, took bodily possession of her, undressed her, and put her to bed. She watched her until she fell into a deep sleep of tiredness. When she got to her own room, she threw herself on her bed and went through a new experience. She had the first bad breakdown of her life.CHAPTER XXXVIII.ONE afternoon, a few days later, Margaret shut up her piano with an angry exclamation, thrust a book into a drawer, and went and curled herself up miserably in the corner of the sofa. She had tried to read, to practise a new song,—in a sudden spasm of youth she had even gone the length of attempting a German exercise; but she could do nothing at all but get herself into a most demoralised state of nerves.She was all alone. Mrs. Bent was dozing in her own room, and Poll was of course at work. The "parlour" looked bright and dollishly pretty, with fragments of sun's rays breaking through the red blind, and a bee droned soothingly among the palms and ferns. One could easily have loafed and been happy in that room.Margaret, however, had got Frank Weston on her mind, and could not rid it of him, or loaf, or do any sensible thing. He came to see her as he had always done, he often had tea with her and Mrs. Bent, and amused her as he used to do. He was the very best friend in all the world, helping her hourly and daily in all sorts of incidental ways, and he never so much as hinted at his desire to be any other thing—and yet, it was all different.The little broken note made discord and hurt her, which is the one misfortune of having a fine ear. If she only could have done it—but then she couldn't! What was the use of going over old ground? This was a sensible cue; she took it, and veered off on another track, which landed her straightway down by the Derbyshire stream, waiting for Hyde. An Italian boy with an oddly unspoilt voice was singing a little love-song just a few doors up. Margaret forgot Frank and the west central, her depressing handful of remnants, and her own utter incapacity to cope with them; she only remembered her dear foolish youth, and all it meant to herself. She sat straight up from sheer sudden joy in living, and joined her soft full contralto to the tender treble of the Italian, and shut her eyes. The sunbeams, grown stronger, played garishly over the fans, and brought the present up too keenly.When the Italian went round the corner, to begin again before the "pub.," Margaret still sang on softly to herself. Mrs. Bent, roused out of her half-sleep, stole on tiptoe to the door, and watched her, wondering if the Lord had any hand in this strange departure; but she shook her head sadly and returned rather perplexedly to her bed."Would to God it had been a hymn," she though; "or that she could have brought her mind to take that dear young minister, sent along by Providence itself."But the song, and the mystery of some hidden tone in the foreign words, set her too a-dreaming, and she fell to wishing for more amusing things for her young lady than hymns, and after a little gentle revelling among forbidden things even "the dear young minister" fell a trifle flat, and she began to flutter at higher game. Her old inbred peasant reverence for ancestral halls and fine worldly pomps got the better of her. She peered out through her glasses, approving the noble pose of Margaret's head, the unconscious pride of the way that even her hand lay on the sofa.With a sudden revulsion of feeling an intolerable look of disgust spread over Mrs. Bent's face."Oh, and them girls to-night, their fringes and their colours—oh, mercy me! Lord forgive me, and I having resolved to leave it in His hands, and belittling His chosen minister too for worldly pomps; and—oh! there's some one coming!"There was a soft silky rustling at the door, and a rather nervous double knock. Margaret sprang up with a start."It's Mr. Weston, of course!" she called out to Mrs. Bent, who was scurrying into her cap and her best skirt. "Don't hurry, I'll open the door. I would have given any mortal thing he hadn't come to-day," she thought."I hope he won't find out what I've been thinking of, but no doubt he will."The minute after she would have been glad enough if he could only have had the chance of finding out even the last thing in the world she wanted him to know, for, instead of his nice, ugly, re-assuring face confronting her at the door, she found the cold, handsome, fear-inspiring one of Mrs. Hyde.She was too aghast to start back, or to do any other foolish, breathless thing. She stood still and waited, the brightness dropping off her face as she stood. Beatrice saw this, and it made things a little harder for her."Won't you ask me in?" she said, in her quiet, expressionless way."I beg your pardon," Margaret murmured, and, opening the door wide, brought her in, and pulled forward a comfortable chair for her.The woman saw that the girl had grown enormously in finish and completeness. A horror of her own loss, of her squalid saltcellars and the poor shabby arms hidden away under her lovely spring gown, took hold of her, and made it an effort for her to get herself into the chair. The girl saw that the woman had lost some great thing, but that she had gained some other thing that was greater. She was puzzled, and for the minute a little afraid. They couldn't possibly keep on breathing in this silence, Beatrice thought desperately. She leaned forward, and in her gentle, dogged, assured way, stepped right into the heart of the question."We all thought you had died, Miss Dering, some time ago. Your aunts believed it, and sent us the news. But a few weeks ago Mr. Colclough and Rica Weston found out that you were living here in London, and doing a very strange work among poor people. I overheard it all by an accident, and I have wanted to see you ever since. I told Rica about it last night, and I felt to-day as if I must come. Miss Dering, it would be so kind of you if you would sit down. I know it is hard for you—I know quite exactly why you stand. Though," she added, with a pale little smile, "we could neither of us explain in words why it is so. As a matter of fact," she said, with a touch of stiff dignity, "it is more difficult for me to sit and be at ease in your presence than it is for you in mine."Margaret sat down directly, and by some unaccountable impulse drew her chair a little nearer to Beatrice's; but she couldn't speak for the life of her. She felt cold, and shocked, and full of wonder. She glanced once towards Mrs. Bent's room, and wished the old woman would come out, so that she might at least be within touch. She felt so lonely sitting there beside Geoffrey's wife."I am going to tell you just exactly what I want and why I came," said Beatrice.Margaret gave a small sigh of relief; it was at least a comfort that she could keep silent. Beatrice looked straight before her, and went on in a low monotonous voice,—"I robbed you once of a great joy. I fell by no fault of yours or mine as a blight on your life, and it is as such that you will always remember me." Margaret blushed hotly. " I want to change your attitude of mind in this respect by coming to you now with a little message of hope——""What can you—do you—mean?""There is no nice way of putting it," Beatrice said, half to herself. "I am ill," she said, looking quietly at Margaret, "so ill that I can't live more than a few months, and then after a little time it will be quite natural that you and Geoffrey should come to each other." She delivered herself of her little speech with the mechanical desperation of a firm resolve, and just as she had been preparing it for days past.Margaret stood suddenly up, but her shaking knees forced her as suddenly down again. She felt a confused mass of amazement, horror, with just one little dash of shamefaced delight. She wanted to hide her face for ever from the other woman, and yet she had to stare at her with parted lips and wide grey eyes."Can't you understand?" Beatrice asked softly; "are you so young still and so happy—you, who have suffered? Have you no understanding of the gentleness and simplicity of death? I could grasp Rica Weston's horror, I fear my suddenness seemed harsh to her; but you, who have in some measure trodden the same path as I—I cannot understand you.""But," said Margaret in a low voice, you have Geoffrey and your baby——""My baby died, and Geoffrey is my dear—cousin."Margaret looked at her, and she somehow understood the simplicity of death, and its charm. She was overwrought, and Beatrice's white serene face touched her strangely. Some mutinous foolish tears sprang into her eyes and overflowed. Beatrice smiled quietly."Don't, Miss Dering. I never dream of crying for myself, for, in fact, there's nothing to cry about. At the same time, I think I am a little glad to have seen those young tears of yours. I know now that you are not the least advanced, perhaps even one little bit old-fashioned. I am myself shockingly old-fashioned—not in a nice girlish emotional way, of course, but in a limited, rather prejudiced fashion; and when I heard from Rica about those persons you are good to, I was afraid you must be advanced, and altogether sure of yourself and of everything else, quite incapable of tears or any weak emotion—even capable of public speaking," she continued, with some prim severity, and with an involuntary protesting uplifting of one hand. "You don't go to any of those women's meetings, the reports of which I read in the papers, do you, Miss Dering?""I never was at a meeting in my life," said Margaret, laughing nervouslyߞ" except a Plymouth Brothers'.""I am very much relieved to hear it. Geoffrey would so detest that kind of thing. He, too, is a little old-fashioned about women. How young you look!" she went on; "you look, too, like other girls, and you dress well. I am glad to see you have learnt to do that, Geoffrey is so particular; yet—" she lifted her head and knitted her brows—"yet it hurts me to think that you, who will be with Geoffrey, should have been brought into quite close personal contact with such people. Don't you," she said hesitatingly, " don't you find any difference in yourself?—do please forgive me; everything about you is of such consequence to me.Margaret had acquired some capacity for observation while among her "persons"; she had been trying to grasp the character of Geoffrey's wife, but it confused her. She felt a funny sort of wish to kneel down before her, but at the same time a sudden hankering to kiss Geoffrey, and for the minute she was detestable to herself. She started from her pause."I do feel a difference," she said, in a low quick voice. "I may look young on the outside, but I have grown older. Things have got their proper values more than they used to have. It's their nice muddly jumble that helps to make up the delicious inexpressible delight of ignorance. Proportioning things makes one tolerant, no doubt, but tolerance doesn't make one in the least happier; there's disillusion at the bottom of it, and that's depressing. To know there's nothing all good and nothing all bad makes one older; I think perhaps it puts more fun into things, but it takes some joy out. Then the ordinary girl's division of people into two groups, good and bad, sheep and goats, is a big part in their happiness; it makes them feel so aloof from the goats, so nice and superior, giving quite an angelic twist to them as a body. It's humiliating, and a shock, and a good deal of a horror, to find how commonplace and alike we all are, and that we have no business at all on pedestals, looking over the heads of people, but should just step down and look into their hearts, and find ourselves there, ourselves and our little ways—primitive, and in the rough, of course, but us all the same. Oh, yes! it's a horrid shock to find that the line that keeps us apart is no unbending straight one, but very zigzag and flexible, and that, instead of pluming ourselves on our goodness, we should be blessing the shepherds and the nice gentle dogs that keep us in our folds, and take care of the fences for us. Oh yes, I've grown older—there's a big difference in me. Do you mind? are you sorry? do you think less of me?" She stopped with a gasp at having put such questions to this woman."I don't understand," said Beatrice. "To me, life outside the fold, as you call it, seems impossible—or even any fellowship with it. But then I am, of course, limited. Your life has not injured you in any one of the ways I feared it might have done." She paused, and tried to feel altogether glad. "Nor will it hurt or offend Geoffrey—#x2014;"Margaret got up and stood over her, her face flushing painfully."Don't—don't speak like that again! To see you sitting there just as beautiful as you can be—and in that lovely dress—and not much older than I—and talking—as if you were dead—is ghastly. You don't understand me. I understand some part of you still less. You seem to me wonderful and noble, but inhuman, and you make me also seem to myself inhuman. Of course I love Geoffrey—I can't help that any more than I can help breathing; but I don't want you to die that he may love me back," she said excitedly. "It seems like murder—it's a ghoulish, horrid thing!" She broke off shivering.The echo of her old horror at her first experience of the girl's rushing speech swept back on Beatrice. She sighed and stirred in her seat."How young you are!" she said wearily. "If you do not understand, I fear I cannot explain myself. Potent words do not come easily to me. I have thought all this out so quietly, there is to me peace and calm in the contemplation of it. Death is a smoother of puzzles, a friend who arranges all things for us better than ever we could have arranged them for ourselves. Sit down and look natural again, Miss Dering," she said, with gentle command.Margaret sat down, still staring at her."How odd it is that in this strange unnatural life of yours, among such sordid surroundings, you should still keep that—that—wild-bird look is the only term that occurs to me! Ah, well, keep it—it is unjaded and alert, and will see round corners quite easily. Miss Dering, I am going to ask you to let me know you—to let me see you in all phases of your life. I want you to grow used to me, and then some day we may be able to take each other's hands and be friends. Don't you see, I want you and Geoffrey to remember me together. I want to carry myself on into your lives, and be a little everyday part in the lights of it. It is dreadful for me to think that Geoffrey should reach his happiness through the shadows of just an ordinary death. Then indeed my poor memory would be a ghoulish thing. You will let me know you, won't you?""Indeed, you may know me as much as you like, but let us forget death—at least, let us not speak of it, and then we can more easily get near to each other. Just now, you see," she said, nervously frowning, "I am afraid even to touch you. I feel as if I must speak low in your presence; you are an essence, a spirit, and I am used to such earthly people, it makes me feel eerie. If you know me," she went on more cheerfully, "you must know Mrs. Bent. She will be so glad to get any one so much on her side as to keeping within the fold and leaving alone those who have got into the open.""I should like to know her; and—may I come to see those—persons?"You may—but you will hate it.""But I shall be growing a little into your life —making my memory inevitable," she added, smiling gently.Margaret had stood up and was turning to call Mrs. Bent, when Beatrice stopped her with a gesture."First, I must say one more thing. I hardly think you can know Geoffrey altogether. You were so young. You may have seen his sweetness of nature—the inherent truth in him, his charm of manner; I can't think you can have grasped his potential possibilities. Geoffrey has it in him to go far, Miss Dering, but how far he will go will depend on his surroundings. He has been stagnant, so to speak, for a long time. Since you went away he has been shocked—paralysed—has done neither good nor evil, except of course to me—he has always been good to me. He's a gentleman, and could of course be no other. But he has now, I do think, fairly awakened and started on his career. He has entered Parliament, and is considering his future line. I do not understand the intricacies of his mind, Miss Dering, yet I know that his course will be honest and straight. But now, at the outset, he must not be retarded. Therefore, I think it would be better if he did not know of you yet."Margaret flushed miserably, and began to say something. Beatrice stopped her."I trust my husband absolutely, please understand, Miss Dering; and you I also trust. 
It is that he may not be kept back—in any way distracted or hindered. We shall thus be helping him together consciously, and it will be the first real bond between us, won't it? to help him together," she said with an odd wistfulness, "as before we have unconsciously hindered him."Margaret turned away for a minute, then she put her hand timidly on Beatrice's shoulder."I am glad you came," she said; "you are a good woman for a girl to know."Beatrice looked at her a little astonished."How curious! Rica said that too, and yet I seem to know so little in comparison with other girls. I feel beside them quite ignorant, a primitive, almost an obsolete type.""I don't know anything of your 'other' girls, but there's nothing obsolete or primitive in a woman who makes you want to be good. I can't imagine any girl in the house with you ever forgetting to say her prayers."Beatrice smiled softly."Who is Rica?" Margaret asked, taking her hand away gently, and feeling in consequence easier in her mind. It was unnatural to be so familiar with Geoffrey's wife."Rica Weston—a dear friend of mine;she is coming to see you.""Oh, Mr. Weston's niece—I know quite well. I'll call Mrs. Bent."She escaped, and she and Beatrice gave at the same moment a deep gasp of relief.Mrs. Bent was overawed at first; her hands shook a good deal, till it gradually began to dawn on her that here was a woman who, however exalted she might be, had yet understandable instincts, who knew her place, and would as soon think of being "friendly-like" with "them girls" as she would of flying. Mrs. Bent mentally approved her inability and her make, and thanked her stars that Poll was out of the way. At the same time, it was a distracting afternoon; tea-time was upon them—Mrs. Bent already suffered from an inward craving; yet she must sit up straight and "converse." The fire was low, and every minute the milkman might appear with his customary yell. Mrs. Bent looked uncomfortably at the still woman with all that nice, befitting, proper pride about her, and trembled at the consequences. There, sure enough, was the "milk" only a door up; there were men's voices too, and a knock."It's the rent," she thought wretchedly, "and he must come in, and the receipt and all—mercy on us! and her that unaccustomed. I'll go, Miss Margaret," she cried, distractedly hurrying out, ashamed to the marrow of her bones.It was such a blessed relief to find only Mr. Weston and his friend that she beamed on them in so heavenly a fashion that Colclough got quite a start. She then signed frantically to the young man with the cans to contain himself, and whispered, to the blank astonishment of the men,—"Mrs. Hyde is calling on my young lady."We were coming to tea," said Frank. "You'll not want us now."Mrs. Bent straightened herself up. She was not in such a "very small" way as to be unable to receive three visitors."We shall be most pleased, sir, me and my young lady. Like enough you are acquainted with her visitor.""We know her well," said Frank; "and—Mrs. Bent, I'm going for the jug—you mustn't dock that young man of his howl any longer."The three went into the room with mixed sensations, Mrs. Bent with a stiff back and an exaltation of spiritual pride. It did her heart good to welcome a minister of God to company as befitting as this. The very way Mrs. Hyde sat gave the place an air, and wiped out the memory of "them fringes." But it was the faint violety smell about her that especially impressed the old woman, for it was the one thing she scored over Margaret in, and Mrs. Bent resolved to get to the bottom of it. For one audacious moment she thought of making bold to ask the lady herself, but on closer inspection she found the effort beyond her. She then determined to get Frank to dig out the secret. She would take good care that her darling should smell the same. She had the same right as the best of them. Otherwise she considered that Margaret did credit to her "breeding."She suddenly saw Mrs. Hyde's eyes shining softly on the girl as she was speaking to Frank and Colclough, and something in her face made Mrs. Bent speak her thoughts aloud."I think, ma'am, you approve of my young lady—you who knows and lives in your born station, as is but right and proper. I thank you, ma'am, humbly. May I make bold to inquire, ma'am, what you think of the way my young lady spends her time?"Beatrice answered with a frank responsiveness that astonished herself."I don't understand it the least bit, and it frightens me rather. Do you know, I fancy I feel about it a little as you do."There was a helpless little smile about her mouth as she spoke, and Mrs. Bent could have told you her age to a day. Hitherto she had mentally treated her as about the same age as herself."Dear young madam!" she murmured, with all the authority of one who has looked at life for five-and-seventy years.Beatrice stood up to go the minute after."But you'll stay to tea?" said Margaret."Mrs. Bent, haven't you asked her?"Beatrice wondered breathlessly if she could. She ought to see her from all sides; she even ought to break bread with her."I will," she thought; "I shall then be less inhuman to her, and it will be a nice cosy memory for Geoffrey, with no foolish melo-drama about it." "Mrs. Bent hasn't asked me," she said smiling, "but I think she will let me stay." She sank back in her chair, glad to rest again. Her heart just then was hurting her a good deal.Mrs. Bent stood up."Sit down again directly," said Margaret; "you are the hostess, and have to sustain the conversation. I shall get tea.""Mrs. Bent," said Frank, "don't be the least uneasy; we'll help her. Miss Dering, Mrs. Hyde, is an excellent organiser in large concerns, but she fails in the retail line. She has an unfortunate tendency to forget details, such as sugar, butter on the toast, and so on. The last time she got tea she gave us one spoon between three of us and the sugar.""Perhaps you'll leave reminiscences and make some toast," said Colclough from the kitchen door.Talking to the old woman had a healing, tranquillising effect on Mrs. Hyde. When tea came she drank it, and almost forgot her trembling, nervous horror lest it should choke her. What troubled her most at first was the strange stillness in Margaret's fresh young voice, and her paleness. Yet she talked and laughed, and no girl of her age could have behaved better."After all," Beatrice thought, with a stately uplifting of her head, a gesture of unconscious pride that nothing but race can ever bestow upon a woman, "she could look none other than pale, and a stillness must have crept into her voice. She has self-control, and she can take sorrow as he does. He will never any more have to suffer dull, sad, lonely grief, and he will not be hurt by watching it. But will she ever love him as I do? can she or can any one else? Ah well, perhaps quantity has nothing to do with it. I don't understand—perhaps a man does."CHAPTER XXXIX.By the time that Geoffrey was expected home from Ireland, Rica had arranged her daily massage for Beatrice's neck entirely to her own satisfaction. She saw very clearly that the two hours' rest and the cloud of hope that hung around it was a tremendous help to the tired woman. Without saying a word of it to any one, she gave up many small plans of her own to be with Beatrice always at this time, to read to her and amuse her. In revenge, she tyrannised over her in a perfectly audacious way. However, as Beatrice liked it, that mattered not at all.Rica's ideas of the fitness of things got some strong shocks from another quarter about this time. There was no doubt about it, Colclough was growing bumptious, and no longer took screens in the spirit of meekness. Moreover, he refused sheltered corners to sit out in, and insisted on dancing whenever he was disposed that way—but only with her, which she felt was at least to his credit. One day, almost to her amazement, she noticed that he was distinctly fatter and looked quite frivolously young, and that for one whole evening he had not once coughed. He had, besides, twice intercepted her as she had gone, from mere reflex action, to shut a window behind him; the last time with a laugh and a whispered jibe that made her go the length of blushing.When he had gone away that night she felt rather sad and lonely, as if somehow he were slipping out of her hands, more or less, as each of her brothers had done in turn; but then they had always slipped out of her hands into another girl's. She was stooping down to write a postcard when this thought struck her. She paused, with a disagreeable chill down her back, to reconsider it; and when she lifted up her head again, her eyes shone with alertness and a fixed purpose.Meanwhile, she, Beatrice, and Margaret had come to see a good deal of each other, and to understand a little. Beatrice had not yet been able to summon up courage to venture herself among the "persons," and the sudden incursion one day of Poll had been an appalling shock to her—though, indeed, Poll's behaviour had been stiff with decorum, and she had hardly recovered from the experience for a week. She was, indeed, discovered by Mrs. Bent one morning, when she should have been getting herself ready for church, practising Mrs Hyde before the glass, with a strained look of agony on her countenance, and a thick coating of flour on her cheeks."Beatrice," said Rica, the day before they expected Geoffrey, "it was all very well for me to sponge on you while your husband was away, but it will be different now.""But, Rica, I want you; and don't you see there won't be time for us to get tired of each other?""Look here, Beatrice, stop that ghastliness—you know it's forbidden in this well-regulated establishment. But you'll be tied here till August, and I don't mean to be a millstone round the household's neck till then. I'll tell you what I want you to do. I shall live at home, but I want you to keep my dear little room for me here free for me to fly to, as to a city of refuge, whenever my step-mother becomes too monstrous a bore. And I mean always, whether you wish it or not, to be present at each massage, or the widow woman will soften your brain with infant anecdotes. How she can reel them out with such complacency about two such children as hers is beyond me. Is the average mother made without a conscience? or is she blind, or an idiot?""Dear Rica, she thinks they're nice.""Then she would show ever so much more appreciation of her blessings if she provided them with handkerchiefs. Practicality appeals to me more than sentiment where little boys' noses are concerned." She lifted her own with a sniff."You like your children grown up, Rica. The worst of grown-up children," she went on sedately, "is that they will kick over the traces now and again, and sometimes even altogether reverse the rightful order of things."Rica looked at her, and thinking to herself that she was getting too sharp altogether, she went into the conservatory for some roses. When she came back, Beatrice had on her dogged resolution air, and her upper lip had lengthened."Rica," she said, "I think I shall go soon to one of Miss Dering's Evenings. Geoffrey and Mr. Colclough are going on Thursday to that big dinner: shall we go then?"Yes, and get Frank to go with us; and, Beatrice, I can see quite plainly you're making a nightmare of this thing. You must give up this attitude of mind. Margaret wouldn't look as she does if it were altogether so gruesome.""But she is so—human, so many-sided. She thinks of these persons as girls with hearts and souls and bodies like her own, only differently arranged—and ordered; and I "—she shivered and drew her wraps around her with a self-respecting gesture—" I shall not be able to consider their hearts in the least; I shall only be able to think of their fringes and their wild eyes, as Mrs. Bent does, and of themselves as most dreadful sinners.""And your look, as you do so, will have a most chastening influence upon them, and will do them a world of good."Geoffrey was genuinely glad to see his wife again. He had thought of her several times during the night on his way from Holyhead, and wondered, with a half-smile, how her lip would look, and if her eyes would have returned to their monotony.He found her waiting for him by the breakfast table, in a cool grey dress, and with her eyes shining. It struck him forcibly that he had rarely seen a more restful-looking woman. He gave her a longer kiss than he had done since his marriage. He watched her all through breakfast, and found that she had not relapsed into monotony, but was newer than ever; and a certain something in her, hidden away from him, quickened his interest and gave zest to his curiosity."You seem to have done a tremendous lot," he said, helping himself to more ham. "I thought you meant to rest, as you can't get away as early as usual this year?""I rested between whiles. I like going out with Rica.""How's Jim?""He's given up coughing, and he defies draughts and Rica," she said, with a low laugh."Oh! How does she take his new character?""A little restively, I think.""She'll knuckle down in time, and like it. Colclough will have the whip-hand, of course, but you'll find she has too much grit; she's too strong to resist after the first shock. She'd despise a fellow at once if she found herself the better man.""But," Beatrice said, looking puzzled, "I thought it was the strong ones who were crying out for the higher place.""Oh, no, it's the nerveless, strong-lunged ones," he said absently, watching her pouring out his tea."They're both coming to dinner.""Yes. Beatrice, you're growing young, and I fancy a little foolish; I had better make a practice of going now and again to Ireland for a month."Her mouth trembled with a smile; she said nothing, but she stood up, and brought him his tea; then she went back to her seat, and told him about some of her balls, and Rica's baronet. But he liked her best in her silences. The note of striving and pain that had always irritated him had gone from her; she had created round her a new, rare atmosphere, and it was an odd sort of pleasure just to rest in it, and wish to be good."Beatrice," said Rica, when they were in the drawing-room after dinner, "have you found out all about the Irish journey?""No, dear.""I was bursting to ask all through dinner, but I thought it might have some Radical empire-uprooting meaning, unfit for servants' ears and morals. I believe it has too. Geoffrey has such a singularly mild and heavenly expression of countenance; he invariably has when he's bent on earthquakes.""Geoffrey, are you going to tell us all about it?" said Beatrice, in an unhesitating, familiar way that was a shock to both of them."I'll tell you all I know myself, which is at present uncommonly little," said Geoffrey cheerfully. "I went over to look at Ireland if possible from a new point of view and I looked at an infinitesimal part of it—that's all.""All right, go on," said Colclough."Well, you see, since my callowest youth, the astonishing waste of inches in stature and breadth of chest all through England, Ireland, and Scotland has struck me forcibly, and I have pleased myself for many years with imagining what consistent discipline and a martial spirit throughout the land would do for it; and out of my imaginings I have constructed a sort of conscription-scheme, altogether crude and initial, but it could be developed practically. Since I saw you, I have been living about in villages—anyhow. Fortunately all the hens were laying well, and there was bacon, or I should have starved. And I really flatter myself I found out something.""What were the different characters you were known by?" Colclough asked."They varied. The Protestants had one list, the Catholics another. To the former I was a Jesuit priest, an Irish-American dynamitard, a spy paid out of Mr. Gladstone's private purse, a Liverpool agent to buy up cheap Irish properties and pedigrees. One old lady heard I came over to buy up ancestral lace for a London firm. She sent me a royal command to appear before her.""Did you go?" Rica asked."Oh yes, I went. She was a delightful old lady. I did all I could to explain myself, but she had got one idea on her brain—lace—and she kept a firm hold on it. She told me to stick to business, and keep my high-falutin' notions to myself. That was all the good I got by going after counterfeit articles into foreign Papist places, with hundreds of born and bred Irish ladies ready to my hand with whole boxes full of real, yellowing, unmistakable lace to dispose of, that had been in their families for generations.""How much did you buy?" Rica asked, with deep interest."A bag full. The bag was made of red stuff with black pips on it. She was very good. She gave me a present of six fresh eggs in a paper bag, and warned me against drink and the Pope."Beatrice, I daresay," said Rica, "that lace is a big bargain. Such a nice, thoughtful old lady wouldn't cheat.""The extent of the bargain depends on the value of holes. The lace is full of them. But its ancestral state was the avowed feature of that lace. I had to carry the bag and the eggs through a row of servants—who were also ancestral to an alarming extent; and when I got out into the drive I met a yellow chariot with three pretty girls in it. I would have offered them the eggs, but, as soon as they saw the bag, they uplifted their noses haughtily. They had recognised it, and they felt that there was trade in the air.""Beatrice, do send for that bag, and we can look at the lace while Geoffrey tells us the rest.""Vanity, thy name is woman," Colclough muttered. "And the affairs of the three kingdoms at stake!"Geoffrey caught him on the shoulder with the Spectator, and told a footman to fetch the bag."Oh, Geoffrey." said Beatrice, turning an eager face on him, "do go on.""Oh yes, go on," mumbled Rica from the floor, with her mouth full of pins, spreading out Beatrice's skirts to display the lace on them. "It was simply a dispensation of Providence," she remarked, "that you should wear black velvet to-night."Beatrice still looked towards her husband, and wondered a little irritably at Rica's frivolity. It would have astonished her very considerably to be told that old lace appeals more powerfully than any other detail in religion and ethics to the very highest nature of woman. Hyde watched his wife's attitude with a little surprise. It flattered him, but he hadn't a notion why it did so. He had a simple soul, and failed to understand that for a husband to be considered before lace at the fag end of the century is the most superb compliment that has yet been paid to a man.Colclough, however, had got hold of the situation. He gasped slightly, and admired Mrs. Hyde, but he understood better the crick in Geoffrey's neck, and felt a sudden glow of good fellowship as he looked at Rica sitting at Beatrice's feet, with her eyes alight with the joy of her find."Nothing like Nature," he told himself, and turned to listen cynically to Geoffrey."I got over the Protestant prejudices easily enough," he was saying, "but those of the Catholics—natives to the soil—were more of a nuisance. In every part I had to go through the phase of being an emigration agent, an insurance person, and so on. The originality, the power, the ingenuity in the matter and manner of the lies of the Irish peasantry would confer distinction on any nation. No other people touches them in this respect. Of course I speak of the art as practised by the Celt on the Saxon. Among themselves, they just lie rationally and as a matter of course—as we do in other parts. But until you're fully convinced of their past mastership in the art of lying, you'll learn nothing of the Irish or their opinions. You'll not surprise them with the truth either, for they're a wary folk. You'll just have to get behind their veil of romance by hook or by crook.""Well, what did you learn?" said Colclough, in an anxious-for-information voice."I learnt that—which is more than some politicians have learnt in some centuries.""Curiosity-exciting persons, just like women," grumbled Colclough. "We'll never get quit of them in that case, Home Rule or not.""Conscription would break the habit of romance if anything would; requiring, as it does, leisure for its cultivation, and a congenial sod. Prompt obedience to short commands is what the fellows want, with neither time nor opportunity for arguing the matter, or even for remembering the nationality of the man in command. The loyalty and efficiency of Irish regiments is an old story, and there's the making of the finest army in Europe in the country-parts in Ireland. Besides, they're tormented with the martial spirit. At the merest hint of an uprising, see how those big fellows go, night after night, after their day's work, on low diet, to drill, although the drilling field may be miles away. You see the spirit of war in their very walk. Then look at their faction fights; their love for noise, and colour, and display; their delight in posing in the face of the world; and the devotion of the women to any cause that brings their men before the public eye.""Fine scheme," said Colclough, smiling at the warm lighting up of Beatrice's cold face, "most practicable! How would the Irish Leaders regard it?""Fight it tooth and nail.""And the priests?""Do likewise.""Such a scheme must apply equally to the whole kingdom.""Certainly; but I thought that Ireland, being the feminine portion of the kingdom, should be considered first. Besides, my more immediate object would be to assist in putting the extinguisher upon the impossible mania they call 'Home Rule.' You see, Home Rule is so obviously right and moral from an Irish point of view, and so absurdly wrong and immoral from an English, that unless we can hide both these smaller nationalities beneath the greater name 'British,' and bind the two peoples together, if not by a common love for each other, then by a common hatred of outsiders, there is no remedy.""What about the liberty of the subject?" interjected Colclough."There is, or should be, none when the common weal is at stake. But I would render my scheme less obnoxious by making Militia service compulsory, lengthening the term, and making it an unbroken one. Then look for one moment upon the moral influence it would have upon the people. There would be fewer young marriages, far less poverty, and a year or two of firm control would add infinitely to the individual worth of labourer, artizan, and shopman.""You speak of all ranks," put in Rica. "You surely do not mean to include the boudoir young man?""Don't I? The discipline would do wonders for him—put him into condition, keep him out of mischief, and restore him from his lap-dog state of mind.""Rather hard on the sensitive instincts of the mute inglorious poet," said Colclough."Their want of physique would save that crowd," exclaimed Geoffrey, with cheerful brutality, "and the stronger ones among them might grow more virile in their literature by a pleasing round of enforced duty.""But gentlemen's sons!" objected Beatrice, in sympathetic horror."I should be sorry for the minor poets," said Rica; "for after all a man can no more help his mind's poetic tendencies than he can his red hair; but to watch the boudoir young man being put into condition would be a heavenly pastime."What about the interests of morality among the masses?" asked Colclough."How do they stand at present throughout the land? If the evil is in a man, nothing brings it to the surface better than a soldier's training; and surely it is better that it should come to a head at once, and be disciplined out of him, than lie gathering strength in him, to burst forth some day, upon a child, it may be, or on some weak woman. Two years' firm discipline must knock some of the brutality out of a man, whatever else it may do or fail to do.""He'd learn the value of public opinion any way," put in Rica. "That's something.""Yes; and nothing makes a better citizen of a man than to know that he himself is an important and efficient unit in the making of a nation. You can't get that into a man who is a ploughman, or a shopman—and nothing else.""And the picturesqueness it would bring into the spirit of the whole country!" said Rica. "Beatrice, we should be no longer a nation of shop-keepers—now hug that fact to yourself; no longer bourgeois to all the other nations of the earth.""Oh!" said Beatrice, taking a puzzled look round."And think of the good fellowship it would bring about among our classes. You'll find no wholesomer mixture of ranks than in a good regiment. One class leads, the other follows, and they're the best of friends. The one class at once recognises that the other is most capable of organisation, and accepts the position rationally—or it used to do so when our army was our pride. A nation that relies, as ours does now, on the conscripts of hunger, officered by crammer boys, to maintain its rights and its honour, will maintain neither for long.""That's very nice," said Colclough; "but what of the expense to the nation of the other thing?""It would be no great tax on the nation to select its finest young men of all ranks to be trained for a year or two in the Militia, which must of course be officered by men retired from the regular army. The half-pay officers could earn their pay by teaching the Militia. Besides, it will pay any nation in the long run to better the quality of its men, as regular training must do. Another thing, it will help the ordinary young rustic to the pluck that our boys have by inheritance and training. Com-pare the boys at an ordinary school-treat with the fellows at any public school, and see if they don't need the discipline and the hard condition the Board School is too mawkish and too full of flabby sentiment to give them."If you descend to school-treats, of course," said Colclough."They're excellent institutions for taking observation on the young of the classes," said Hyde."Geoffrey," said Beatrice anxiously, "it seems to me that one could make so much more progress, could so much more readily obtain a hearing, on some subject that had already the sanction of the public voice. On, for instance, some long-standing public abuse.""That wouldn't be half the fun.""Fun!" she repeated, opening her eyes."Besides," he asked, "isn't Ireland a longstanding enough abuse for you?""It may be years before you make any progress in such a new way of thinking of Ireland.""It may be years before I know enough of the subject to lift up my voice towards its advancement."Her sudden paleness surprised and rather irritated him."Oh Lord, how her intensity bores one!" he thought. "Can't she attend to the lace? What has she on her mind?——While I'm getting up modified conscription, and making friends with the population," he said, aloud, as a sort of immediate satisfaction to her, "I have another idea on my mind.""Upon my word," said Colclough, "you'll be the biggest bore in the House before you're five years older.""If I am, you may congratulate me, Beatrice. I shall have every hope of getting something through, and will have justified my existence in your sight. My wife has a solid belief in action," he explained to Rica; "and a man who acts to any purpose in Parliament must be a bore. He must be a one-, or at most a two-ideal man, and keep pegging away at his hobbies, in season and out of season, until he has made himself a bye-word in the land.""What's the second idea?" Beatrice asked."The immorality of Public Examinations.""What do you mean?""I mean a good many things. I'll tell you two of them. I mean that exams. are snares and delusions in that they are self-regarding objects, and promote selfishness. They concentrate the energies on doing instead of growing. They foster the intellect at the expense of the emotions. They substitute book-knowledge for knowledge acquired directly through the senses, and tend to impair the senses by disuse. That is, you read about a thing instead of seeing it, you pick it up in two dimensions instead of three, and go through life a dimension short; which means that you can dream, but not, properly speaking, imagine."Beatrice regarded him with intense satisfac-tion. It was delightful to her to know that Geoffrey could excel in seriousness as in other less beautiful things."It would be such a big thing to meddle with," she said solemnly."You see, I'm young and we're a long-lived family. I have ample time in which to make myself a nuisance. One can sometimes set a ball or two rolling in the right direction in a lifetime.""A lifetime!" said Beatrice, with a wan look at him."My dear girl, you couldn't do anything in less. What about the lace?"Beatrice sighed unsatisfiedly, but catching Rica's eyes fixed warningly on her, and hearing from the floor a sepulchral mutter, to the effect that things were all right, and that she had better hang conscience and look at the lace, she brightened herself up and began to examine it with some surprise, while Rica sat where she was, and greedily drank in its excellence."How much did you give for all that lace Geoffrey?" his wife asked."Twenty pounds. Was that right?""It's worth a hundred. Do you know her address?""Yes—why?""I must send her the rest to-morrow.""But," said Colclough, "I thought no woman could pass a bargain.""In this case that would be cheating," she replied, with a prim rebuke in her voice. "Gentlewomen don't cheat."Colclough laughed softly. He was glad to notice that although Rica laughed too, her eyes rested softly on the other woman."One feels rather horrid keeping it at all from those three girls," Beatrice said, examining the quality."Now," said Rica, "that's where Beatrice's nasty spiritual pride comes in. It was nice and dear of her to give the proper amount for the things, but to wish them back to girls who mended them like this—see! It's too much for the carnal mind. Beatrice, be as angelic as you like, but don't be a prig.""Perhaps," said Geoffrey deprecatingly, "an ancestor did that mend—they were awfully pretty girls.""An ancestor!" retorted Rica, with a shrill uplifting of her voice. "Women with lace like this in their family were dainty, delicate creatures, who would as soon have thought of mangling a piece of lace as of drinking a whiskey-and-soda. A generation that can mend lace of so high a quality as villainously as this," she said tragically, holding out a cobble, "has no respect for ancient institutions, and its highest instincts are in abeyance.""That reminds me," said Colclough, "we'll just have time for a game of billiards before you go to this dance. You shouldn't spring higher instincts on us this time of night, Miss Weston; it's a shabby trick."CHAPTER XL.WHEN Margaret got a note from Rica to say that she and Beatrice were coming on the Thursday evening, she was filled with dismay. She passed the note on to Mrs. Bent, who read it with a melancholy head-shaking, and several interjections of woe, which had the effect at last of finding Margaret's tongue for her."Mrs. Bent," she said, half angry, half amused, "you're always a dear, scriptural old person, but this time you've chosen to impersonate a most unpleasant character. You're a Job's comforter, that's what you are. Come back at once into the New Testament, and help me, like a Christian.""Miss Margaret, dear, it's that Caroline. The state of health of that poor young madam ain't fit to cope with such. Poor Poll and the foolish hussies'll disgust her, no doubt, make her that sick—they'll hurt her daintiness. But that young woman, she'll hurt her heart. She's too ill, dear, to be let learn that such as her breathe.""She knows she will be hurt, and yet she is resolved to come; and—Mrs. Bent, I want Caroline to know that such as Mrs. Hyde breathe."Mrs. Bent drew herself up."My darling, she knows you.""That's just it—she knows me. It is because she could never know Mrs. Hyde that I want her to see her. She will be to her like a being from another world who has always lived in some higher, rarer atmosphere. The chill she carries round her from those higher levels, the very look of her—her far-off air—her constitutional unfitness—for—' the touchings of things common,' will arrest Caroline's quick wits. She will have seen absolute crystal purity, quite unable to understand any other state of mind, for the first time. Caroline will remember her and think her over. She'll hate it, but she'll do it all the same.""Dear heart," said Mrs. Bent, tenderly watching her, "you are as pure as any crystal, and yet you nestle homely in our hearts. That is the goodness of Christ, child."Margaret knelt down and put her head in her lap."It's different altogether, Mrs. Bent. Do you know, it's terrible sometimes to see things in other hearts, and to know that in your own there are just the same things, if you gave in to them. I would give anything to be absolutely spotlessly ignorant again—to be lifted up above all knowledge of myself and of evil, and of ugly common things—just to be a beacon set aloft pointing to the light, as Mrs. Hyde is, as all good women should be.""You have chosen the better part, dear," said Mrs. Bent, gently stroking her head. She understood and approved of her more than she had ever done before, but she had no words in which to express herself."I haven't even that consolation—it chose me," came in a melancholy murmur from Mrs. Bent's lap.Margaret still kept her head there. I t was pleasant to be stroked and soothed; the touch of the old hands gave her a nice feeling of extreme youth and irresponsibility. Suddenly Caroline's well-known knock made them both start up. Margaret fled to wash her face; Mrs. Bent smoothed her apron, and with marked grimness admitted her unwelcome guest. Caroline waited for Margaret, taking only the very smallest notice of the old woman or her grimness. When Margaret came in, she glanced with a cynical smile at her eyes.She was in a distinctly nasty humour."I came to tell you that I should come on Thursday," she said."Yes," said Margaret. "I'm very glad." The other laughed."You don't look it. Oh, don't pull yourself up and go back on your attitude."Mrs. Bent felt she could not possibly stand any more of the young woman. She took up her Bible, and involuntarily holding it before her like a breast-plate, she marched protestingly into the kitchen. Caroline laughed again and threw herself into the vacated armchair. She made a point of ousting Mrs. Bent from it whenever she possibly could."Old lady's on her high horse. How sick to death you must get of women—such specimens too! An uninterrupted course of any sort of womankind indeed is a terror to think of. It must weaken the mind, blur the instincts, hopelessly falsify one's values, distort the mental vision, and so on. I suppose women do observe keenly, but what's that if they can't sort the results? You'll have to quit this life.""I shall directly I feel all these things coming on me. I have got to know one woman lately who isn't so complicated in her effects on one—indeed, I don't know any words that express quite neatly what her effect is. You'll understand when you see her. She's coming on Thursday."May we lay claim to this distinguished personality?""No.""Is she to be trotted out, then, for our good—a 'word in season' for her 'fallen sisters'?""No. She would consider that sort of thing exceedingly underbred and interfering. Besides, she couldn't for the life of her understand anything about fallen sisters.""A saint, then, or a fool?""An absolutely good woman, who has never had to strive for her goodness.""God help her husband!""Caroline, the sight of this unknown life will be a shock to Mrs. Hyde, and her shock will hurt me horribly. Will you try to lessen it? Will you be your very nicest self, and talk to her and make it less unnatural for her? You and Mrs. Bent are the only ones I have to depend on.""I and Mrs. Bent! What a coupling!"Will you help me?"If she's craving for the truth, why not let her learn it?""She has no craving for this sort of truth. Didn't I tell you she could in no sort of way understand it? All you could do would be to fill her with vague horrors, half of them unreal, and hurt her in all her tender places. It would be a mean sort of cruelty; no man would be capable of it."Caroline lifted her head angrily. "She is in society, this woman?""Yes.""And is still lifted so high above the truth? Good Lord! What brings her here?""She wants to see me in my life."Caroline flung a keen look at her."All right," she said, rising, after a pause. "I'll be most genteel. Mrs. Bent and I will do the honours, cheek-by-jowl. She, no doubt, will enjoy the connection."She went off wondering a good deal about Mrs. Hyde, and with a fixed resolve to find out her relationship to Margaret.By the time Thursday arrived, the diligent damsel, who had excellent ways and means of finding out most things, once her curiosity was raised to the proper point, had several clues to the position, and only needed a hint or two for its complete elucidation.On the Thursday afternoon Mrs. Bent cloaked and bonneted herself and departed on some mysterious expedition of her own, returning in an hour or so triumphant. Margaret wondered what the mystery meant, but was much too busy with her own arrangements to let it dwell on her mind. When she was changing her linen dress for a pretty crêpon one she often wore in the evening, Mrs. Bent came into her room with a bottle preciously held in both hands."Miss Margaret, dear, I want you to put some of this—not on your handkerchief, dear, but to rub it into your neck."Margaret stared at her in astonishment."It's violets, my dear, the same as the young madam uses, and that's how the ladies applies it, so the young person at the shop told me.""But, you dear, this cost a fortune; and I'm not in society.""Miss Margaret, I don't intend that there young woman, that Caroline, to know that you're in any way behindhand. She's that sharp, she'll smell Mrs. Hyde the minute she comes into the room, and she shall smell you too, dear, the dead moral of the lady. I can't help the poor, homely house, and the poor sticks of furniture, but the little things as touch yourself must be attended to, with quality coming to see you; and besides, it'll help that Caroline to keep her place. It goes to my heart, dear," she said, as she began gently to rub in the scent, "to think as how that purty neck should be hid away. It's its place to be seen, dear. It's a queer thing too," she added reflectively, "that one looks for the sight of the gentlefolks' necks—one expects it of 'em—and yet even an inch of the same exposed to view in one of our own girls makes a body's fingers itch to box the hussy's ears. Dear, must you hide it all up? One little bit of the frock turned in now, and a nice white streak for us to look at."Margaret kissed the nice, anxious old face."It wouldn't do; you know in your heart it wouldn't."Mrs. Bent sighed."No, dear, perhaps not. One little drop on your hair, Miss Margaret! I noticed it on hers."Margaret knelt down while she put it on, then she sprang up."I feel lovely," she said. "I smell like a violet-bed, and I feel—just like a nice, folded-lamb girl, who sees only the delicious outsides of things, and doesn't even know insides exist. I'm going to sing now and keep up the delusion; it's bewilderingly nice. Myself is a miracle to me, and you've worked it, Mrs. Bent. I'll tell you a secret. Do you know, my one ambition is to go to a ball and wear a real low-bodiced dress, and for you to see me in it. My neck and arms are pretty, aren't they? Never mind, you've told me they are scores of times. Now think of me as I sing, all violety, and in a lovely low dress."The entrance of a large handful of her remnants brought her soon back to the insides of things. Presently Caroline arrived, looking prim and sly, and amazingly handsome. She was dressed in a severely plain quakerish gown, with a white lace fichu knotted loosely over her fine bust. Margaret sighed resignedly; she saw that she was beyond her interference—she would do precisely what the devil suggested to her to do. A huge wave of excitement swept over the room when Beatrice, Rica, and Frank appeared in it. The girls bridled and prinked themselves with a lordly disdain of observation. Beatrice at once took refuge beside Mrs. Bent, and the two made vague efforts to forget the nature of the guests.Beatrice's reluctant eyes followed Margaret's every moment, her nervous ears listened for every word she spoke. Presently Rica came up, and to Beatrice's astonishment she looked frightfully alert, and particularly well pleased with herself."Oh," she said, "I like it enormously. It's so curious, so new, to be in the very midst of a type of human beings absolutely unknown to you or you to them. Beatrice, you look a little tragic. Must you? Can't you look at it as I do?""I can't. I just feel all the time that it's shockingly improper, both for you and for me, and Miss Dering and Mrs. Bent.""That's your grandmother again.""Very likely, dear; but I do think that in this case my grandmother was perfectly right."Here Rica caught Caroline's eyes fixed on her with a mocking smile. She held her breath and wondered horrifiedly if by any chance she could have overheard her."She couldn't have," she reflected comfortably; for she went and sat down by Beatrice's side, directly after, and soon the two were talking quietly together.Rica went off content, to watch Margaret, and soon set to imitating her as far as talking to the girls went. But she found, to her disgust, that she made very little way with them, and it began to dawn on her astonished comprehension that they considerably resented her presence among them. She had returned rather discomfited to a corner to watch Frank, and be sorry for his tired face, when Caroline came up to her."You made just now an excessively banal observation," said Miss Brett insolently, "to the effect that you were observing a new species. You have a notion, I imagine, that you know the world. You may, in your little, limited way. But I should advise you to confine your generalisations to your own circle; they're quite inadequate to this. You have not come among a new species, but among girls like yourself, my dear; moreover, with certain personal adornments left out, possibly, each and all made in the image of God. Ask Miss Daintree. It's her frank acceptation of this unfortunate fact that makes her the one ideal of goodness to every one in this room—to all this new type on whom you hoped to whet your appetite for change. Don't try to imitate Miss Daintree; you're too cock-sure, you'll make a bad hand of it. She's never cock-sure. It's her nice, natural young habits that we like—her foolish insecurity in her methods, her lovable way of thinking aloud her crude, struggling thoughts; above all, her anxiety to do right. It's not saintly nor heroic, bless you, but it's flesh and blood. Can't you imitate the other woman—sit apart, pure and shocked? You'll impose on no one, of course, but you'll be amusing. When you grow wiser, you'll know it's better to know nothing, unless you're big enough to know everything. If you must instruct humanity—go and begin on your brother, and tell him to keep his own side of the fence, begin on his own kind, not to worry all round and make bad blood generally."Rica simply gasped as she had this torrent poured out on her in Caroline's low, swift, mocking tones, with rich, full, soft melody in every note of them. She felt snubbed to speechlessness for the first time in her life, and Frank found her, quite five minutes afterwards, still standing motionless, with parted lips and with an almost insignificant air about her."What's up?" he asked."Frank, pinch me, that I may know I'm Rica Weston, with the six of you under my thumb. I have never before been made to feel like a crushed worm.""I thought you'd get it, my dear. That air of taking observations of yours was just the thing to put their backs up, and Caroline is a fine spokeswoman.""Good heavens!" said Rica, "she is. She had a hit at you too.""There was probably a lot of truth in it then. However, we'd better disperse ourselves, or they'll think we're taking notes on morals. Couldn't you look at home a bit? You have a scared, unaccustomed appearance. Look at Miss Dering, there's not a symptom of strenuousness or unusualness about her.""Oh, I couldn't be like her for the life of me. The magnificent person told me so. You must be born to this sort of thing, I perceive, not made.""That's exactly where it is. It'll be a long evening for you, old girl."Frank thrust his hands deep into his pockets and went off, feeling as if another illusion were undergoing burial. Life seemed to have no diversions of any sort for him, just then, but burial services of one sort or another.To Margaret's great relief, Caroline's vagrant fancy seemed still to be arrested by Mrs. Hyde. She hovered about her in a half-sullen, half-interested way, and held brief snatches of talk with her, to Beatrice's inward bewilderment. The girl astonished, repelled, and attracted her all at once. For the marvellous beauty of her face she could find no admiration, nothing but a strange, swelling pity. She had no fear of Caroline, as Margaret had, and the girl hadn't an atom of the power over her that she had over Margaret. On the contrary, Caroline felt dominated and cowed in the presence of this still, cold woman. Possibly the truth was that in Beatrice, who was an incomplete being, there were no depths for Caroline to claim kin with; and the heights of Caroline, if she had any, were on such an entirely different plane from those of Beatrice, that the latter could in no sort of way even conceive of them.Caroline's bodily presence certainly was a relief in this amazing society; her cool, well-bred looks and movements, her leisurely, soft voice, her dainty clothing; above all, her smooth, unpainted skin, and her cloud of soft, dark, unfringed hair, were all pleasant exceptions. One could at least breathe naturally when in her neighbourhood, Beatrice thought, looking with a prim, severe mouth at Margaret in the midst of a chattering crowd of impossible horrors. She turned wearily, to find Mrs. Bent regarding her with solemnity. If she had turned her head the other way, she would have found Caroline laughing down on her oddly."Can you understand it any better, dear Madam? " Mrs. Bent inquired anxiously."I can never come one inch nearer understanding it," said Mrs. Hyde, with a decisive thinning of her lips."The doves among the pots." Mrs. Bent murmured a snatch of her old text deprecatingly."But," said Beatrice, with a slow, backward arch of her neck, "I never could quite understand that text. Why should the doves lie among pots when there were such numbers of other nice, clean places for them to choose? There always seems to me to have been a want of dignity and of proper self-respect in those doves. The text appears to me a dangerous one, capable of unsuitable adaptations."Mrs. Bent thought, with a quick start, that although the words of it came free enough to her lips, the text had always borne very much the same significance to her mind. She was silent, and looked at Margaret with a question of supper in her eyes. Margaret responded to it at once, she arranged Beatrice between Frank and Caroline, and carried Rica off to her end of the table, glad to get away from the group. Frank on her mind was bad enough, but with Beatrice and the volcanic Caroline there too, she felt altogether too heavily laden. Miss Weston was a comfortable person; she would make the most of her while she carved cold pork and tried to relieve her other guests from the depressing influence of high society."Is there nothing I can do?" said Rica meekly. She felt so very second-fiddley."Would you mind helping the beetroot and passing the bread?"She soon began to feel better. I t was a new sensation in the intervals of her labours to watch Margaret's small, delicate, ever-varying face, as she cut pork for her guests' excellent appetites. Her fine, slender hands seemed essentially capable ones. Rica looked curiously to see if the knife were hardening the skin anywhere on them. Margaret laughed."Oh, there were bad blisters at first; they're accustomed to it now, and all right.""You're most overwhelmingly sharp," said Rica— "does nothing escape you?""Not much," she said, with a quiet laugh; "else where should I be?""Oh," said Rica, with a small gasp, "it's altogether beyond me.""So it should be," said Margaret, in a low, quick voice. "Keep where you are—you don't know when you're well off if you don't. This is a bad atmosphere for you—it's choking. You never get a long, free, satisfactory breath. You see even Mr. Weston is weakening in his notions. He knows now that knowledge with a rush is a drowning thing, and leaves you—clammy. Poll, do get some more beer."Rica made a mental comparison between Margaret's words and the nice, girlish looks of her, and wondered which told most of the truth. Then she looked up the table to catch a glimpse of Beatrice. She was saying some subdued, gentle thing to Caroline, and trying to eat."Never again," Rica told herself. "Once will be enough to make a memory for Geoffrey out of. It's fortunate I'm not a creature of senti-ment, or I'd be having fits all the time, between all of them. As it is, I feel upside down. Will they ever, ever, ever have swallowed pork enough? And oh, my poor Beatrice, the noise of their teeth on the crackling! and you with neither sympathy nor imagination to idealise anything!"When Caroline, after supper, signified her willingness to sing, Margaret had a bad five minutes. A revulsion of impishness was coming on the girl, and she had more than half a mind to take it out in some of her own methods. Something in her face, as she turned over a parcel of music, filled Rica with an unpleasant excitement. She caught Margaret as she was passing."Does she ever frighten you? " she whispered."She does.""Have you this minute an atom of power over her?""Not an atom.""What may she do?" Rica asked breathlessly."She may sing something so awful that even Mrs. Hyde will understand.""Or?""She may sing a hymn like an angel."They waited, Rica involuntarily clutching the other's arm. Frank, who had been talking to Mrs. Hyde, caught sight suddenly of Caroline's face. He went over to the piano."Let's bury the hatchet for once," he said, in a pleasant, unobservant sort of way," and will you sing a song of my choosing? You've got it there."She flung a sudden look at him."Yes," she said; "for the sake of variety, we'll square it for an evening, and play at chums. It would be something really nice and new, by the way, to have a duet with a parson." She laughed. "Are you game?" She held out a song."Certainly, if you'll put up with my voice.""Oh," she explained superbly, "when I sing, no one listens to the other voice. Indeed, if a man were ever capable of forgetting himself, he'd not sing at all, but just listen to me. Please keep time; you don't as a rule."Beatrice watched them with cold disapproval till the song began, and then amazement overtook her, and before it was over she had gained a vague, distant idea of the bond that drew Margaret to these women, that made her able to step down from her hereditary pedestal and look into their hearts."Perhaps, after all," Beatrice thought reluctantly, "perhaps that God does wish us to believe that even these are made in His image. I can't," she thought again, pressing her hands together, and looking into her lap. "It makes the whole world as distorted for me as their faces. I will not believe it—or think of it," she said, still looking down on her trembling fingers."Margaret," Rica whispered, "he is a good old thing, isn't he?""He's a good deal more than that," said Margaret, looking penitently in his direction."Never mind, all this has done a lot for him. He was too cock-sure—like the rest of us; it's a family failing."When the song was finished, Caroline turned to Frank with a sudden, soft laugh."Look at the faces of the young persons; after all, it was as good a joke as shocking her.""Can't you be honest?" said Frank. "You couldn't hurt a sick woman for the life of you."She turned an odd, quick look on him."Upon my word, I could even do that," she said slowly. "Joking apart, there's really something rather demoralising in this life of mine."A weak, womanish lump rose in Frank's throat as he went over to Mrs. Hyde. He had received the one outspoken confession of failure of a lifetime.CHAPTER XLI.THE door of Frank Weston's room was open, and at a mirror in a little over-mantel Colclough was looking at himself with a good deal of serene satisfaction. He rolled a cigarette with grave precision, then raised his eyes again to the glass, and passed his hand reflectively over his head. His unfettered reflections came to heel with a jerk, for behind his own image he suddenly caught sight, in the corner of the glass, of Rica's mocking face. He wheeled round on her."I'm so sorry to have disturbed you," she said kindly, sitting down and taking off her jacket."How long were you there?""Five minutes about. I made noise enough, too, coming up the stairs. One of your steps wants oiling or something. You have a delightful faculty of absorption. Couldn't you make it over to Frank in his sermon times? He might be more coherent then. His thoughts have such an awkward habit of getting broken up and detached.""Ah, now you have a theme to work on. May I smoke?""Certainly, if you feel you must. I'm coming to lunch.'"Won't you take off your—the thing you have on your head? It seems to have been born a bonnet, and bred up something else.""It's a toque," she said, taking out her pin."I looked rather an ass, perhaps?" he inquired from a cloud of smoke."No; you looked every inch a man.""Thinking of a girl?""No—of himself.""In connection with a girl.""Don't men ever think seriously except in connection with a girl?""Not often,—unless, it may be, of the Jews or his soul. I have done with the Jews this long time, and I have an accommodating soul—it never preys on my mind. Shall I tell you what I was thinking about?"His look gave her a small start, but she told him to go on."You know," he said, "how ill I was. I thought myself a doomed man, as every one else did, and I find I'm not—quite the contrary. I've cheated the doctors all round."She wished she could laugh, or say a sharp thing, but she felt dumb and stupid."You don't know what an awful bore it is for a man of my age to have to put every bit of himself under restraint; to have to 'walk delicately,' like Agag, all day long; to have to keep your life from meddling with other lives, as if you were a leper, or something equally miserable. It's a limiting process, and a grind, and brings on general morbidness and demoralisation."'You were never morbid," she said limply."Wasn't I—behind doors and in dark places? It's a pleasant sensation, I can tell you, to be able to drop the minor key for good, and get back on the major. Life is too good a thing to slip out of with any degree of enjoyment. That is, of course, when you generally get what you want—as I do. I wanted India, coin, and big game, and I got them. Then I wanted more coin, and home, and I got these. You grow greedy as you go on. I want a big thing now—a very big thing. I want you. And some day," he said, with an amazingly sweet smile, "I shall get you."She jumped up and faced him."It takes two for this sort of an arrangement," she said breathlessly. 'I have never even considered you from that point of view. I only thought of you——""In connection with draughts? Couldn't you forget the draughts?""I couldn't. It would be like—like——""Marrying a resurrection?""I never said such a thing.""No, but you thought it."He suddenly swooped down on her hands and caught them in a firm clasp. She was so startled and arrested by the youth in his face, that she made no attempt to release herself. She just looked at him and waited."Miss Weston," he said, "you've been restless for ever so long now. Wild thoughts of making the most of your youth and your opportunities in these stirring times, of going off the line in some way or another, have been running riot in you frightfully. Look, Rica, there's not the ghost of the fraction of a vocation in you. Give it up, dear, and drop to commonplace matrimony.""How do you know anything of me or of my wants?""I love you, dear, so of course I know most things about you."She looked at him with a retort on her lips, but it suddenly seemed to her that she had known this all along. She pulled her hands away and dropped limply into her chair."It never occurred to me till this minute.""How does it strike you, now that it has?""I think," she said, "I think somehow I have been had.""It would have been more consistent if I had carried out my original intention of dying? I think on the whole I should prefer marrying you.""But it takes two for that," she said sharply."I have thought for the two of us, and it's all right," he said, laughing softly."Is thy servant a dog?""No, but she's a girl."He came and looked down at her with such a great tenderness that she knew, although she would have bitten out her tongue rather than confess it to plan or mortal, that she was ready, then and there, to go with him, if necessary with only a pack on her back, through all time on into eternity. All at once her eyes filled with tears. She laughed, and then the tears brimmed over."When I have succeeded in considering you apart from draughts," she said a little unsteadily," perhaps I may be glad that you're not going to die—and are going to marry me. But I wonder—I wonder very much if I'm quite cut out for this sort of thing.""It's precisely what you are cut out for. You're altogether too much behind the times for anything else. What is a girl nowadays without a fad, or a grievance, or some unlawful occupation? On the face of it, the love of a mere man is her only refuge.""I think," she said, with a little quick drawing in of her breath, "it's beginning to feel nice already—but it's wretchedly commonplace.I might have done ever so much more with my life. I might have experienced a thousand sensations—might, indeed, have been a sensation myself, and have made people gape for a whole week. I might have done a million mischiefs. I have wasted all my opportunities, and done nothing at all but get engaged. How does it happen that, living in the thick of tragedies and complications, I should escape scot-free—not an echo of melodrama about me?""It's early days to despair. It's after marriage that melodrama comes."It struck her that he had the sweetest, honestest eyes she had ever looked into."Jim Colclough," she said, "that sort of melodrama doesn't suit me. It's been vulgarised. The day I march up the church with you or any one else, and promise things, I'll keep them. Jim, I think draughts somehow have made me know you as well as—other things have made you know me. Different things often affect people to the same end.""Rica, do you think you could manage to kiss me?""I'll try. ——Jim, don't get too fiercely strong. I have been accustomed, since I was the height of the table, to take care of people.""When you've got the whole of a man into your hands to take care of, you'll find them quite full enough. You see, you uncomfortable person, a fellow will have to trust you with all or nothing. It's a good deal for one woman.""I fancy it's a sort of burthen my back will bear," said Rica serenely. "It might have caved in under a vocation, or any other necessity of the age. Perhaps the commonplace retrograde feminine back is only fitted to the burthen of a husband. If so, it may be as well not to kick against the pricks, unless one's back has been specially prepared for higher uses.""Just so, dear.""I have been providentially trained in a good school, Jim, as far as your soul's welfare is concerned. A long experience of six brothers makes it an abject waste of any man's time to lie to the sister. All the same," she said, as she flung on him a little flash of delight, "it is nice to think that you couldn't tell a lie to save your life. I hope, however, if you ever did cut down a cherry tree and behave like a horrid little ass, that your father soundly thrashed you.""He never failed to, dear. If a man lies badly to wives or fathers, it's generally their own fault.""Or their make," added Rica."Exactly," said he."Jim, I am just grasping the consciousness that I have really done a very good thing for myself. You're an excellent match. Aunt Gordon often said so, even when we thought such things out of your line. She used to bestow many unshed tears on you, and consider favourably the position and income of your widow. By the way, I should never have got to know you properly except for that cough. Don't you remember all the dances I made you sit out? I believe you were laughing at me half the time.""No, I was crying for you metaphorically more than half the time."She put her cheek down on his hand."You were lonely and wanted me—why didn't you tell me? I believe engagement would have fitted on me as easily then as it seems to do now. It's my normal occupation, I fancy. I have this minute not one desire beyond it. Why didn't you ask me before, Jim?""It's playing it pretty low down on a woman, for a man to ask her to be his widow; and I knew you too well, dear—you'd never have resisted the temptation. Consider—I should have required every second of your time and strength and thoughts. I should have been equal in my own single person to twelve brothers and a parish; and when you lost your occupation, you'd have been absolutely nowhere for an entire year. Your step-mother, with her strong sense of religion, would have insisted on the proper lapse of time. Then I could not stand the vision of you in weeds. I often tried to reconcile myself to it, as you waltzed with the other fellows, while I waited in some corner, with a screen at my back. Rica, have you the smallest idea of how ridiculously and insanely I love you, or what a grind it has been not to have entreated you long ago to become my widow?"She cuddled back in her chair."I could never grasp the insane part of love," she said. "I don't like insanity; it's like yearnings and vocations, and beyond me. I want nothing to disturb this nice, wholesome, serene state of being. Can't we just go on and marry," she said, with a strange depth in her voice, "in a nice matter-of-fact way, with no turnings inside-out, or upheavals, or squalls, or insanities? I like everyday, lawful things. Never, never, never shall I forget the other night, Margaret, and Beatrice, and Frank, and that awful Spook; it was all pain, and sorrow, and suffering, and concealment, nothing simple and straight and to be spoken aloud and laughed over in honest, sane Saxon words. Oh, Jim, I do want a straightforward, natural, above-board life. You must give it to me.""My darling," he said tenderly, "sorrows may come.""God has to do with these," she said. "I'm not a coward particularly, but it's men and women who bring the complications and the miseries one can only whisper of in the darkness—the pain that it's half sin to suffer, the danger in the face of which one mustn't look, but must fly from like a coward, as from a plague. I want wholesomeness, and truth, and sanity."She put out her hand and laid it in his, turning her eager eyes on him." I'd face any honest danger or any honest sorrow with you, good old Jim. I'd even have faced being your widow; but, after all, it wouldn't have been quite straight of you.""No, it would have been a bad beginning—taken the starch out of things generally. Better to wait and get what you want honestly," he added, with a happy laugh."I don't quite see," began Rica, after a minute, with some irrelevance, "why Geoffrey's face never moves me as Beatrice's and Margaret's do. It ought to ever so much more, instead of which, just lately, it's quite invigorated me.""You don't surely expect the fellow to go about the country moaning over his sins! He works hard and keeps straight—what else do you want of him? If you felt enervated in his presence, now, you might have cause to complain. Upon my word, I believe you're afraid he hasn't his own bad times. Don't distress yourself; he has them all right. Men of his sort don't lightly forget the pain and devotion of two good women in any subsequent success or happiness.""It's an unfair division of pain, two women's to one man's.""It's the way of the world; no man ever sinned but at least two women suffered. We're weaker numerically. I suppose it comes in the law of compensation.""Jim, you may be an amateur philosopher, but you're also a cold-blooded reptile.""Amateur philosophers mostly are.""Jim," she said suddenly, "did you ever make a woman suffer? I mean the sort of suffering one must keep for the night."He looked out of the window for a minute, considering, then back at her."I never did, dear. I'm too selfish by a good deal; the thought of her would have bothered me so at odd times.""I knew that, of course, or I wouldn't have asked you," she said, a little surprised and indignant at the slight tone of excusing in his voice.CHAPTER XLII.MARGARET and Mrs. Bent were still sitting up, although it was past eleven o'clock. One of Margaret's restless, restive moods was on her. She was tired of her book, she had a cold and couldn't sing, and Poll's snores from the room behind the kitchen irritated her unreasonably, they sounded so sordid. She had flown once or twice out into the four feet square of a yard to escape them, but the hum of life, and the far-off, chastened sound of a rather pleasant piano-organ, called to her longing eyes visions of dancing and bare-necks, and all manner of delicious young delights.On her return from her latest excursion, she had poked up the fire, and put a bright little brass kettle on it."Mrs. Bent," she said, "I'm going to make tea and buttered toast; it will seem festive, and we can consider that we are making merry. You put wicked thoughts into my head, one day, when you wished for a low bodice for me, and to-night these thoughts have grown rather insane. It's partly the scent of violets, I think. Your fault too, you worldly old woman. I want to dance, and rest in conservatories, and gaze on duchesses and bric-a-brac. Can you manage to eat buttered toast at this time of night without slaying yourself? I t wouldn't be the least festive for me to eat while you contemplated me through your glasses. Could you possibly manage an anchovy on your toast? It would confer an air of distinction upon it, and be a little more carnal-minded than toast pie and simple.""Dear heart," cried Mrs. Bent, nearly jumping off her chair, "it would be the death of me! I'll eat the toast, dear, with just a scrap of butter on it, but them anchovies, my dear, I'd never recover one of 'em; even with your fine young stomach I doubt if it's wise.""I'm not inclined for wisdom to-night—I yearn, and long, and pine, for folly; and anchovies are the only things in the house with a trace of worldly, foolish flavour about them.""Miss Margaret, dear," said Mrs. Bent conscientiously, "you've forgotten Poll."Margaret turned a laughing, amused face on her."Oh, don't! Can't you understand I'm taking refuge in anchovies simply as a corrective to Poll? I want to wipe her and the like of her out of my very existence just for a time. I'd give a lot to know if any real, professional good person ever felt the least bit as I do, who honestly and without making any bones about it wanted to 'know folly.' Oh, Mrs. Bent, don't look tired and puzzled, you dear—you can't answer me, no one could; and you needn't say little silent, contradictory prayers either. I see them struggling together in your eyes. Just let me talk and confess to the air, while I make the toast and grill the anchovies. Their nice little cultured hissing is softening down Poll's untrammelled snores; and just smell them! That can't hurt your digestion anyway. Now I'll make you hot whisky-and-water. I wish I didn't detest it so. It's more worldly than tea, and the lemon has a nice, well-bred air—it suits low-necks, and oysters, and curled hair. Now sit here, with the flowers in the middle of the tray, and me opposite you, all violety, and Poll's snores to keep us from spiritual pride."When Margaret had eaten her anchovies with a healthy disregard for consequences, and Mrs. Bent had swallowed her toast with secret misgivings, surreptitiously scraping off the butter, they took up their candles to go to bed. Margaret stood for a minute silently looking into the dying embers, with a dissatisfied, restless look in her eyes, and Mrs. Bent watched her helplessly."Listen," said Margaret, setting down her candle suddenly, and hurrying to the door; " there's a cab, and it has stopped. Some one's coming.""Take care, dear," cried Mrs. Bent, following her hastily. "Ask who it is first."'It's me—Caroline Davis. Let me in quickly."Margaret opened the door, and Caroline, studiously veiled, swept in magnificently. Mrs. Bent as usual mourned shamefacedly over the narrowness, of her passage. This feeling of shortcoming, which was invariably coincident with Caroline's arrival on the scene, annoyed her a good deal. She felt it neither with Margaret nor, oddly enough, with Mrs. Hyde. It seemed to her a reprehensible exaltation of virtue over vice, unbefitting a professed Christian, who into the bargain had been confidential maid in first families."I want you to come at once to my house," Caroline said. "There has been a fire, and girl got burnt in it, and I think she's dying. I can't manage her. I thought you might do something. She heard you singing one night as she stood outside your door.""Miss Margaret, dear," said Mrs. Bent, with stern decision, "I will come too.""You! No, indeed you won't—out into the damp night with your rheumatism! You must go to bed at once.""Don't put yourself out, Mrs. Bent," Caroline said languidly, turning deliberately on her."You hardly know, I fancy, the sort of girl she is, or the extent of her influence, or you would know that she is as safe with me as she would be with yourself. Don't let the suspicions bred of your age and your small way of life make you quite senseless. Are you ready, Miss Daintree?""Good-bye, dear," Margaret whispered, giving Mrs. Bent a consolatory kiss. "I shall be all right. Never mind her. Shall I call Poll to help you? No? Well, if I'm home to-night I have the key."She went out and got into the cab, wondering why, whenever she felt more than usually quite unfit for anything, she surely had to do it."I wonder if I shall ever be able to idle the least bit!" she thought, with a stifled sigh, and a quaint touch of amusement at Caroline's modestly veiled face, and her own unblushingly bare one."Now tell me," she said, trying not to feel horrid and sleepy. "I don't understand anything yet. What girl is it? Do I know her?""No; she's a wretched little thing I knew once in her better times. She was a lady some centuries ago, and a beauty, and a spoilt child. I met her a fortnight ago, late at night, torn to pieces with a cough, and spitting tons of blood. She couldn't make her living any longer, and she hadn't the pluck of a sick cat ; she couldn't help herself in life, and she couldn't help herself out of it."Margaret glanced sharply at Caroline.There was a little jarring note in her smooth voice."I took her in and gave her an empty room. I had to—there was no choice. More fool I, all the same. Heavens! the time I've had with her! If she wasn't spitting blood she was weeping over her sins or her lovers. Night and day, she never stopped. I suggested you, which landed her sharp in hysterics. She thinks you a sort of an angel, a fine, God-like creature, with your hands full of heavenly fire for sinners' heads. But since she's had a turn in the earthly flames, she's lost her terror of the other sort; she's been whimpering for you these two hours.""But the fire—how did it happen?""Oh, that was the beastly part She really was getting on well, nearly fit to get up, the doctor said; he also said I had missed my line, that nursing was my vocation." She laughed, but something in her laugh frightened Margaret. She looked curiously into her face, and in a flash of light she saw that she had two veils on."Well, just as she was about to do me credit, my idiot of a maid set fire somehow to some rags. The sparks flew everywhere, and it's a wonder we weren't all burnt out. It was by the merest chance we saved her."Margaret looked at her again. She spoke now in her usual lazy, pathetic voice, but there had crept into its tones a muffled-knell suggestion that filled Margaret with uneasiness. She started suddenly."You are burnt and in pain! Caroline, why do you wear those veils?""Modesty, my dear."Margaret caught her arm and tried to look through the veils. Caroline evaded her with a quick backward movement."Don't excite yourself," she said. "I'm just a little scorched, and I have some regard for my complexion. I always protect it from the night air."She thrust out her umbrella and gave the cabman a few directions with it. They soon reached a narrow turning out of Baker Street; down this they struck, turning again into a bright, pleasant street of small villa houses. At one of these Caroline stopped the cab, and they went in. There was a tempered blaze of light in the passage from an amber lamp, a general effect of light and soft colours, with a hideous smell of burning all through the house, and a feeling of grit under the feet.Margaret knew at once that there had been a bad fire, and she was seized with a fear of the face behind those veils. Caroline opened the door of a large room to the right, and brought her in."She's horribly excitable," she said. "I must tell her you are here. I shall be back soon."She was not back soon. Margaret had ample time to take stock of her surroundings. The first thing that struck her in the room was the audacious richness and diversity of the colours in it, and the superb art in their blending. She felt an odd glow of delight amidst the splendour. She felt that here life was lived intensely, imperially, but without any suggestion of enervation, of shrinking degradation. She looked round the cream-panelled walls, with their rich brocade hangings, and with about half a dozen little gems of sketches, all placed in good lights. All the draperies in the room fell in simple antique folds, and through all the stuffs and curtains there was a floating, ethereal scent as of ancient spices, kept sacred in old temples for the uses of gods. The mixture of simplicity and nobility in all the room was strangely pleasant, and there was no over-crowding—on the contrary, indeed, a fine sense of large bareness—about it; there was space and light and air in abundance,—wonderful too, considering that the trail of the villa was over all the exterior."If she's a Spook," Margaret thought "she's the Spook of an empress—there's nothing little or mean about her."She sat down and looked all round again, with a sigh of infinite enjoyment."Oh," she said, half aloud, "if she only would, what a credit she would be to God and to women! I never knew till this minute how awfully much I like her. I wonder if there's one man living big enough or wise enough to take her in his arms and teach her to cry and to rest, then to give her back her birthright! Oh!"A hideous chattering from some hidden place made her drop the book she had taken up and spring to her feet. It was a monkey behind an easel, gloating and jabbering over a basket of nuts. He leered horribly at Margaret when he caught sight of her round the corner."He must surely be human," she thought, shivering, "or a devil! No mere animal could have so evil a look."She looked down at him and shivered again. As she stood shivering, the terror at the foundations of Caroline, and her impossibility, slowly revealed themselves to her. The birthright that she had lost was a divine thing, which, if a woman loses, no man can ever return into her hands. For neither to God nor to man is it given to put back the hand on the clock of Time.Margaret drew a slow, painful breath of horror, and looked round her fearfully. She saw a big hound asleep before the fire; she ran and flopped down on her knees before him, and shook him until he awoke. She must forget that jabbering, awful thing and what she had learned as she stood beside him. She must touch some simple, sinless creature to ease the great pain in her heart. The dog blinked sleepily at her, and finding her young and foolish, after one cynical glance he dropped his head into her lap and went to sleep again.But she felt just a little less desolate, rubbing his soft nose.Presently the monkey stopped chattering, and then in the silence faint, muffled groans were wafted in from some near-lying room, and the sound of a querulous voice rose and fell on the still air.Caroline came in the minute after. When the monkey saw her, he again fell to chattering, and was just going to spring to her, when she waved him back with a fierce shake of her hand. She still wore her hat and veil, and sat down as if she could no longer stand. She chirruped to the disconcerted monkey, who jumped on to her shoulder, muttering discontentedly and trying to see her face through the veils. Suddenly he made an angry grab at the gauze; a smart touch of the little dusky hand brought him to his senses. He cowered down on her neck in abject submission, and whimpered."Bah!" she said, shaking him of "You're too like the creatures you caricature! Go back to your perch. Shall we go to her?" she said tiredly. "The doctor has been since I went out. She's dying and delirious; she'll never regain consciousness, so he says. She's beyond pious exhortations. The line of her delirium will show you how much she needed them, and, with equal accuracy, how much she would have benefited by them.""But you—you must be attended to at once."Margaret caught her by main force and held her down."You shall do anything you like with me," Caroline said wearily, "when you've seen her and suggested anything conducive to her comfort that may occur to you. One feels a natural tendency to apply some salve to a departing soul, no matter what character its body may have borne. Clerical instinct tripping me up again! It's often embarrassing. Come now."She was a tiny creature, so tiny that her body hardly curved the bedclothes. Her face looked weirdly out of a foam of delicate white lace and fine linen. It was a pitiful, small face, with unstable, wild blue eyes, and unbraced lips, that used to be weak and red and sweet, but now nothing was left of all their pretty past but their weakness.When she saw Margaret she turned her head towards her, and began to babble deprecatingly, with a fearful, furtive, evasive look in her eyes, full of little foolish, tawdry lies. In an impulse of sheer fright, lest death might surprise her with such an expression, Margaret caught her in her strong arms and pressed her silly face against her breast and tried to still the poor babblings. The clasp of the strong, compelling arms terrified the creature. She made an excited effort to look into her captor's face, then she set to pouring out a muffled torrent of bits of old prayers, shreds of foolish rhymes, small trivial oaths, fit only for mere toy women, and little simpering calls on her God—a God fitted to the requirements of toys. Then a sudden fear filled her—she broke into thin screams, and turned off suddenly into a tinkling cackle of laughter. She was small all through—small, and shallow, and mean. Caroline took up one of her tiny hands curiously."Look at the size of it," she said, "and the miserable indecision. If you could have heard her before she got delirious. Her tries at praying were funny, but they gave one rather a sick feeling that it's a poor thing to be a woman. Fancy blowing that poor little piece of thistledown into a world like this!"The girl made a convulsive dart at Caroline's hand, and whimpered, in her babyish lisp,—"God bless papa, and mamma, and little brothers and sisters—and, O God, give me a good time once more—just one little once, dear God!"She broke off with a horrid laugh that, on the face of it, must have been copied studiously from some honoured model. The girl lying there never produced it unaided. Margaret moistened the poor lips tenderly."Well, what do you recommend?" said Caroline. "Have you no professional impulse? Have you no experiment to try on this essay in womanhood? She's already been the victim of several. One more wouldn't hurt, and might be amusing."The little girl wrenched herself from Margaret's arms, writhing with pain."It's too cruel," Caroline exclaimed, "not to give her the ghost of a chance, and now to twist her into knots of pain! Why do you look like that? The thing is unreasonable and atrociously unfair. Don't you see?""I don't see," said Margaret. "I feel a perfect fool in the matter. I don't understand it one atom. The one thing I do know is that it isn't unfair. It's only ignorance that's ever unfair. This isn't her only chance. She's been a naughty little child this first trial; she'll grow up, perhaps, in the next, and justify her woman-hood. She's had her whippings, the poor little thing! God doesn't blow thistle-fluff about, or let men do it, for mere child's play. Caroline, you're too clever, you know too much of good and evil—to jibe and jeer at God. That sort of thing comes from ignorance, not knowledge. As long as the stars are swung in the heavens, and the tides ebb and flow, and the flowers blow and the birds sing, and goodness lurks in every human heart—as you and I, who have come down to the very bed-rock of women's hearts, have to know and to acknowledge daily, else we should die—so long as all these miracles come to pass, it is only a fool who will mock at God. Don't think me emotional or hysterical. I am not," she said, soothing the girl, whom she had again lifted a little; "but I'm groping myself for light in a great darkness, and I can only cling on obstinately to my own poor little beliefs.""That's something, in this galére," muttered Caroline.She sat down the minute after, shivering, and her teeth began to chatter. Margaret put the girl down softly, and came to her."I believe I am emotional and hysterical too, or I'd take better care of you. Come; we can do nothing for her. Come!""I'm so cold. Will you ask Sarah to light a fire in my room—a big one—a bonfire?""Do you know if your mistress is much hurt?" Margaret asked eagerly, as soon as she got hold of the girl and set her to work."I know she be." She slowly surveyed Margaret, and added an emphatic "Mum, 'er face is all rawr. I saw 'it.' ""Why didn't you tell the doctor?""Lor' love you, mum, I'd like to catch myself. She's that 'orty, and 'e was too full o' t'other to look at 'er. She went into that room, and the flames a-blazin' sky-'igh. It's a wonder she didn't come out a chip. She bain't no fear o' nothink, she bain't. She went into that there room laffin', if you'll believe me. Lawks, it's the queer one she is!" she remarked, with the irrepressible impulse of her tribe to tell secrets."Do you know where the doctor lives?""Yes, mum.""Will you go for him?"She hesitated."She'll be blazin' wild.""I'll take all the blame.""Well, mum, I'll go, and I 'opes no 'arm will come of it. She's not loud in her tantrums, not 'er, but that 'orty, you'd wish you 'adn't never been born."Margaret put Caroline's bed ready; then she went back and found her still sitting by the girl's bed, shivering."I've sent for the doctor, and I want you to come to your room.""I don't want any doctor; he can do nothing. However, I'll come. Here goes!"She got up, staggered, and fell back into the chair with a little groan. Margaret helped her to her feet and into her room. She crouched greedily near the fire."Give me a screen, please. I must get warm, but I can't stand this blaze.""Let me take off your hat and veils.""Time enough when the doctor comes."Sarah couldn't find the first doctor, but brought another, who looked grim and severe. Sarah had been making hay on the road, and the quality of it had seemingly added dignity to his demeanour. He was a young man, who was as yet more correct than Christian. He was gentle enough with Caroline, however, and it was by no fault of his that, as he was in the midst of unfastening her veils, she fell back unconscious. He and Margaret lifted her to the sofa, and as he went on with his unfastening, he told Margaret to get some brandy."It's just as well she should not recover till I can examine her injuries," he said, "but there ought to be some stimulant at hand."When Margaret got back, all the coverings were off, and the gas full on. She put down the brandy and steadied herself to look at the horrid thing on the sofa. It was hardly like a human face. The hair was singed into a brownish stiff scrub, the skin was torn and discoloured, the mouth was parted in a grin, the full, creamy lids were swollen and distorted; the only things left perfect in her perfect face were the little gleaming white teeth, and they gave the last touch of awfulness to the poor mouth.Margaret's heart stood still, but no lamentations could touch this case."When did it occur?""Four hours ago.""She's been out in the frosty air since?""Yes.""H'm!"Suddenly Sarah caught a full view of the face, and fled, howling. The doctor took a distrustful glance at Margaret, as if he expected another howl."Will she die?" Margaret got the words out painfully, her lips felt so dry and stiff."No, oh no! She'll be disfigured for life of course.""As if that weren't worse than death!" she said sharply.The doctor put ointment on his lint, and gave her an unsatisfied inspection. She was a deal too handsome for this house and this time of night, and her dress fitted her like a glove."Will you lift her head—there—a pin—now the brandy."Caroline came to quickly, and sat up."I must insist on your going to bed directly," the doctor said."I'll go presently. The disfigurement is permanent, I suppose?""I fear so. I t happened in the performance of a noble duty," he
added, with pompous benevolence. "That may help to console you.""Oh yes, that's ample consolation. Under the circumstances you may prefer your fee at once."He was sensibly embarrassed, but he took it with an inward thanksgiving, and went to see the other girl. He told Margaret he would send a nurse to sit with her and "do what was necessary.""I suppose you wouldn't care for a clergyman?""A clergyman!" Margaret looked down on the bed. "Of what earthly use would a clergyman be?""I don't know—the circumstances suggested one.""Oh, you're very kind," she said wearily; "but I don't think a clergyman would in any sort of way affect these circumstances."CHAPTER XLIII."Is he gone?" said Caroline."Yes; and you're to go to bed at once.""That young man would run a Methodist Chapel admirably.""Very likely; but I want you to come at once to bed.""I have a little business of my own to do first. Do give me that mirror."Margaret gave it to her unwillingly. She propped it up with some books in a good light, and sat down before it. Then, one by one, she took the dressings off her face, laid them on the table, supported her head with her hands, and proceeded to examine herself with a horrid, unflinching scrutiny."Eyes, mouth, nose, skin, everything gone!" she said. "I might have been through the fires of hell itself. Miss Daintree, do you think God played me this trick with a view to conversion?"Her raw lips quivered with the pain of the laugh that broke through them."Just look at my mouth, how a smile graces it!"She laughed again, and Margaret's flesh crept on her bones."You saved the girl at your own risk and in your right mind. It is a coward's part to blame God."Suddenly her voice broke."Caroline, my poor Caroline, I am as grieved for your spoilt beauty as if it were my own. And if I, a woman, with her littleness and jealousy, can feel heart-broken for that face of yours, how do you think Christ, in His big Divine pity, feels for you as you sit there in your desolation? But He doesn't undo things. He made you big to begin with, He can't make you shrink into insignificance at the crucial moment of your life. You went into the flames at the bidding of the best part of you. If you hadn't done it, you must have been a slur on yourself, on me, on every living man and woman for ever. That would have been worse even than an exquisite face spoilt."She stopped suddenly, and watched, in a silent intensity of pain, the bloodshot eyes staring at themselves in stony silence. With a half-smothered sob, she bent down and threw one arm round the trembling shoulders of the girl."Is there nothing I can say or do to make things less bitter, poor Caroline? Is it nothing to you to have acted as nobly as the best woman in London could have done? You risked your beauty, counting the cost——""Oh, don't! I couldn't have stood the sound of that creature crackling in the flames. I look at things now from another point of view. There, watch that grin! I wonder if I could do anything in the variety line—La femme qui rit, for instance. You see, it's now a question of ways and means. You appear to forget that one's living must be considered. Oh dear, no! Nothing will change things—not even the consciousness of having acted in the best manner of a British matron of repute.""Oh, Caroline, will you let me help you to bed?"The steady composure of Caroline's voice, the curious, fixed resolve in her motionless eyes, filled Margaret with a nameless dread. She put her arms about her neck. She wanted to hold her, to keep her safe in her warm arms from the cold mist of horror that was falling round her."Have you any idea at all of my strength?" Caroline said, wrenching herself from her clasp, her face quivering under its scars."Let me take off your bodice," Margaret said gently.When her sudden spasm of pain had passed, Caroline seemed to have grown indifferent. Her neck and shoulders had escaped with hardly a speck on them, and Margaret passed her hand softly over the satin skin."Look at your shoulders, and that arm," she said. "I never saw anything half so beautiful. Your beauty isn't gone." She stooped and kissed the gleaming shoulders.Caroline stood up quickly, with a choky noise in her throat. "I'll go to bed," she said abruptly. "Do help me with these rags. Sarah has the ointment."When Margaret returned with the ointment, Caroline was still staring at herself, silent and indifferent. She got her quickly to bed, gave her a warm drink, which she took unresistingly, and lay down, while Margaret built up the fire and made little noiseless preparations for the night."You think, then," said Caroline suddenly, out of her weird mufflings, "that the God of the Christian takes notice of my mutilated face, the chief aim of which hitherto has been the undoing of men?" Caroline gave a low, gurgling laugh, and putting out her uninjured hand touched Margaret's ruffled hair with curious tenderness."Stick to your beliefs, my dear; they're slightly unreasonable, but very nearly as pretty as you are yourself. The notion of God as He is writ and spoke troubling Himself over the burnt skin of the like of me, is funny. At the same time; if He's as human as all that, He'll understand other things. I should object to be looked upon as a coward by any one with so broad a mind as your supposition implies. Ah, I feel like a battered old hulk in search of a harbour!"There was a dead silence. Margaret knew that she had nothing to say that could move or soften this wretched heart. The power to believe comes neither by wishes nor in sudden gushes. God knows what He is about while we babble. But into Margaret's heart, in the pause, there struck like death the awful isolation in which each human creature lives, one heart yearning to another, and between the two a great gulf fixed.Suddenly out of the silence Caroline cried aloud,—"I give it up—I never was good at riddles. If I had been made ugly, and with parish proclivities, I should have walked as virtuously as my sisters. I lived the life I was made for. And after all," she added, in her old languid drawl, "the riddle isn't worth the working out. Don't upset your poor little flower of a face. We mustn't argue, you and I.""No, we'll not. You must sleep now, and when you awake things will be different, and better perhaps.""Yes, I shall sleep, and when I awake things will be different—and better perhaps. Who knows?"She turned from the flickering light, and settled herself to sleep; but sleep wouldn't come to her. She tossed and stirred tiredly; she threw the clothes off her impatiently, and pulled them up again, shivering; then she rested for a few minutes, and Margaret saw that she dozed a little. But after a few minutes she awoke and sat up."The stuff that creature put on my face has nearly taken the pain away," she said. "I feel a lot better. I'm frightfully strong, and rather rampant. I feel as if I should like a new sensation.""Try silence," said Margaret, laughing."I've tried it in my day, and have found it more potent and stimulating than speech. Then I had my face to back it. Silence now would be ineffectual. Shall I take off the rags, and let you see?""Caroline, couldn't you sleep?""Not yet. I'm bursting for a novelty, don't I tell you? Annoying, isn't it, when one has exhausted every known sensation? I think—I think I shall ascend the pulpit, and teach. Every other known species of woman does it now, why not I, and my like? We are as old as death, and as potent. We laugh and triumph while the rest of you whine and entreat, or, may Heaven give you sense—turn school-marm! Before I claim my woman's right and get on my hind legs, however, I want to give you a bit of advice. Go back to your own as soon as you can. You have come face to face with evil. You have knowledge, but with it you have sweetness; you are still tender, you are still humble; you're cock-sure of nothing, you're just a dear, good girl, knowing good and evil, and what constitutes the difference between them. You have no mawkish folly of sentiment, or pretence of ignorance, to handicap you. As a matter of fact, you know what you have to defend yourself and your men against, and your children and your children's children. We have smitten kings, and brought strife to nations, and we will again. And yet," she said softly, with a strange, thrilling sadness in her voice, "you have the remedy in your own hands—in those soft little pink palms of yours; but it's such an old-fashioned, exploded, Biblical remedy. I wouldn't dare to mention it except with a shrouded face—shrouded in oiled rags, certainly, but that's a detail.""What do you mean?" cried Margaret, almost frightened at the girl's voice, it was so infinitely tender."I mean that you and the like of you have driven the art of true love out into the desert, and you are driving your men day by day into the highways and hedges to us—do you hear, you who know what we are, and what mercy you may expect from us? And now that it has suddenly occurred to those among you who think, that it is time to compel men to come back, you stand on barrels, and swear at them and talk high falutin—do the school-marm all round, in fact, to the life. Do you know what the men that are being whipped back to righteousness with these ridiculous little whips do? They come to us, and to women who rank with us, only they don't happen to be found out, and laugh at them—come with one devil, my dear, return with seven. I can't for the life of me understand how you girls are so ignorant of your power. We know ours, thanks be to our God! We foster and make the best of it; no tribunal, however heavenly, can deny that. I'll tell you a secret, Margaret. If you—the tribe of you—braced yourselves up, and went the right road, even in this corrupt age, this decade of moral earthquakes, you'd drive us out of the field.""Oh, Caroline—you know——""I know you're in a wretched transitional state, all of you. You're learning the truth of things, and your new knowledge has brushed your bloom off, and you don't know from Adam what to do with the things you are learning. You're getting preached at, besides, poor things, which is perfectly disastrous to the morals. But you'll emerge in time. And now, hear the last word and testament of one who knows. Give up revoltings and smartness—in that you're mostly only a bad imitation of us! Don't bother about superlatives of any sort, even of cleverness. Eschew the school-marm, forget your selfishnesses——""Caroline!""Hush! Where was I? Oh—your strivings after riches, and go out into the desert, pick up your poor old broken idol, True-Love, dust, and cleanse and repair it, and set it up again in your hearts, and then the old sweetness, and nobleness, and graciousness, that men desire in such as you, will grow up again about you, and they'll learn to reverence themselves for your sakes.""But——" broke in Margaret."Do not interrupt the preacher! Men like goodness—I assure you they do. Look how they cling on to shreds of it in us. It s altogether your own faults that they pass over great wastes of it in you. You make it impossible for them, one way or another. You put it badly, and take the warmth away, converting yourselves into wet blankets. You take the tenderness out, and make yourselves as uncomfortable as a horsehair sofa—you forget the fun, and are as dull as a Mothers' Meeting. Learn your power and use it. Work as hard to show man the beauty of goodness as you've done for generations to get his name and establishment. Make the goodness of girls the pivot of men's dreams. Then, silly fools, you'd rule the world before your hand is on the cradle, as you ought to do. The day of the born fool is past, but the thing is, a girl must learn not to be a born fool before marriage, not after, when she's had all her babies, and made all her mistakes. Shutting the stable door when the horses are gone seems to be the attitude of half the women going. They should start better, equipped, not pick up their armoury as they go along. I feel rather like a traitor giving away my party, but being a moralist amuses me for the minute. I feel really in rather an illuminated mood. I could get emotional in a jiffy, and wring your heart. If I were a man, now, regardless of complexion, I might even turn popular preacher—it's a pity my sex should debar me from that safety-valve. Do please call Sarah—I'm gasping for some whisky and Apollinaris."She drank it and had lain down again to try to sleep, when she looked at Margaret's tired face watching her wistfully, and a sudden compunction seized her."I am demoralised," she thought, grinning under her lint. "I would have let her sit there and watch it all without a qualm. I wonder," she said aloud, "if there is any known hell from which I could, after a lengthened residence, emerge, with any resemblance to your Mrs. Hyde? It would be an interesting experiment on souls, don't you think? I could even forget the pain in observing the transformation. Now look here. I want you to do something. I want you, directly you find I am asleep, to go home. I simply loathe being watched. And please don't come till ten o'clock to-morrow. I shall sleep late and heavy. I feel so funny to-night. I can't help looking on myself as some one else. It's this morality fit that's upset me. I was wondering that minute how I should have struck men as a good woman. I wish rather I had tried. Goodness is a little mawkish, but at the same time I think it's a little lovely and august. Not a word, my dear, you've chosen the better part; for I fancy that even in heaven that poor dear Magdalen must have found many embarrassments! Be sure to send Sarah for a cab; don't walk on any account. Good-night," she said sleepily.She turned away, and, after a few tossings, fell into a quiet sleep. When she was quite sure of her, Margaret went softly into the other room to look at the dead girl; then as soon as number of streets that lay between her and Caroline, and in her impatience they seemed to have lengthened themselves into miles. At last she could stand it no longer; she took to her heels and ran like the wind, up street and down, in and out the fog-folds of the dreary grey dawn. The few early workmen, slouching unwillingly towards the city, stared at her a little, but they were accustomed to erratic goings-on among maidens, and only burred a sleepy "Go it, my girl!" or threw a bet at her as she passed.At last she reached the door, and knocked gently. There wasn't a stir. She knocked again a little louder, then again and again. There wasn't a murmur of sound; it might have been a house of the dead. After giving as loud a knock as she dared to, she looked round in search of any possible open window, and at last, when she had given up all hope of getting in, she found that the window at the other side of the bow was unfastened, and that if she could jump from the step railings to the sill, she could get in.It was a wide stretch, with next to nothing to grasp on to when she landed, and with the alternative of a fourteen-feet drop into the flagged area. In the early morning, dangers get exaggerated to tired nerves. Margaret's heart fell, and she was turning away, when she thought she heard a moan from out the still house, and the desire to get in grew unreasonable in her. She took her hat and cloak off, freed herself well from her skirts, got up on the railings, and took her leap. She caught on to the edge of the window, and stood for a minute trembling on the narrow, slippery ledge. Then she crept carefully round, pulled up the window, and got in.Sarah was heavily asleep on her stretcher. Caroline, too, was asleep, and seemed all right. But there was a curious scent in the room—Margaret opened the windows wider, but still the heavy scent remained. Once or twice she thought she could detect some strange, unaccustomed smell, half smothered under the scent. A vague feeling of uneasiness made her stoop over Caroline, and touch her gently. She moved her head slightly, and murmuring drowsily, "Good-night," she settled herself again to sleep, and gradually the heavy smell got lost in the scent, and Caroline's sleep grew sounder."I wonder what her awakening will bring!" Margaret thought, leaning her head against the bed.Then the usual old devils of doubt, and littleness, and ignorance rose up and beset her, and made goodness small and evil great, and love of no account. Why had God not fashioned this girl to His glory, not to His disgrace? Why should the power to compel men's worship be given into the hands of such as she, and denied to good girls—to the girls who become the mothers of men's children? "She says it's our fault, the fault of the girls and the women of the world. I wonder what is truth—I wonder if I shall ever find it?"She stood up and went into the other room. The inexorableness of death suited her mood. She looked down with an odd, cold longing on the small dead face, that looked pure and sweet and peaceful, in spite of the evil it had wrought. A little ray of warmth stirred Margaret's heart."There is hope," she said aloud; "and God is good. It would have been an atrocious thing to have let her live to old age."Caroline still slept deeply and noiselessly. Margaret, she hardly knew why, felt a little uneasy. She touched her again, and pushed back some singed hair that had got loose and fallen on the dressings. As she stooped she got another whiff of the heavy smell."What is it, I wonder? Shall I call any one? But she must be terribly spent, and naturally would sleep heavily. I'll wait."Gradually the breathing grew deeper and slower. Margaret shook her gently. She only moaned slightly."Perhaps the shock and the pain make her sleep like this," she wondered doubtfully.She took the bottle the doctor had left and smelt it. "Perhaps it's opium, and he means her to sleep heavily."The breathing still deepened—deepened—and one or two little sighs alternated with the breaths. All at once they grew snorting and strange, and a shuddering convulsion shook Caroline's whole frame. Margaret ran, shook up Sarah, and sent her off post-haste for the doctor. The snorting rose and fell; the little soft sighs grew to great gasps. Margaret freed the girl's face from the dressings; the unhurt bits of skin were purple and livid. The mouth had fallen open. Margaret clutched at the bed and swayed, nearly falling, but she remembered that for this sort of thing there was no time. She forced herself back to reasonableness. Then God bent her stiff knees for her. The men who pray, we are told, can do it standing. A woman can't; it's a consolation and a dear delight to her to kneel. He gave her power to speak aloud little foolish words, and, better still, He let her know that He could hear them."You are a just God," she said, over and over again, "and you made her for better uses. And if a woman can love her as I do—and forgive her—forgive her everything—it must be so much easier for You, Who are both God and man."She sprang up at the doctor's knock, and wondered a little wildly if she should have been working instead of praying; but she concluded that, being so ignorant, she might only have done harm."Turn up the light full," the doctor said. He opened the swollen lids, and laid two fingers gently on the moveless eyeballs. "Opium," he said. He did all that he could do, and Margaret helped him. "I must leave you alone," he said at last, looking into her face with a great pity. "This is hopeless, while there is another life, just in the balance, wanting my help——""Go—don't mind me. I know now what to do."Alone she continued the desperate fight; but she could no longer pray. God understood, she thought, and He was a just God. Slower and slower came the breathing; the face grew more livid; the white teeth clenched themselves."O God, you do pity her, you are sorry!" Margaret cried at last. She could no longer bear her mortal pain dumb and alone. She stooped and kissed Caroline's ivory neck, and the feel of it drew icy sweat from every pore of her.The girl writhed and quivered in her last struggle, and when the doctor came in again, breathless, she had awaked, and it was different —" better, perhaps." Who knows?CHAPTER XLIV.JUST three days later, Rica, Colclough, and Frank were together in Frank's room. The two first were bubbling over with an honest, wholesome delight in each other and themselves.Rica was determined to make the very most of her engagement."I wouldn't of course," she said, "if I thought that even forty years together would breed in either of us contempt. I couldn't make memories for myself, just to turn them afterward into uncomfortable contrasts, as no end of people seem to do."As for Colclough, the consciousness of being himself again, and having full possession of Rica, sharpened his wits, and made him feel as a dozen giants refreshed.At first the two had tried, out of loving-kindness for Frank's less fortunate condition, to bury their sensations in their respective breasts when he was about, but he promptly discovered these benevolent intentions, and routed the laughter and content out of their respective sepulchres.For his own part, he held his tongue as to his tribulations, and did his work. But he had been badly hit, and even the hardiest and most breezy of love-making spoilt many a dinner for him."I shall go and see Margaret directly I feel a little less lazy," said Rica from the corner of the sofa. "Looking after Jim wears me out.""Yes; that, and three balls, two teas, and four dinners in a week.""That's nothing to one man.""I hope you'll find her in," said Frank. "Her eyes somehow are all wrong, and there's a subdued, hard sort of excitement about her. I think she'd be the better if she could manage to turn it into hysterics, or some other trick of woman's.""Do you indeed? Somehow, weeping and gnashing of teeth hasn't that salutary effect on the female constitution it used to have when she was a Lucy. A simple tear seemed then to have been sufficient to turn the tide of ' dear Lucy's' sensations, and heal her heart. It's a stiff-necked and perverse generation now, which needs stronger medicine.""It's Nature the girl wants," observed Colclough from the modest retirement of a smoke-cloud. "She's bottled up the sensations incidental to her age and state of being, and has tried to sit on them. The thing wouldn't stand the pressure, that's all. General blow up.""It's not her sensations that have blown her up, it's her work. Such a forlorn-hope sort of business would have blown me up long ago.""It's unnatural," growled Colclough."On the contrary, I think it's natural," said Rica perversely. "It's time, after eighteen-hundred years, that girls should help each other. They can't unless they have an understanding of those who need their help most.""Humph!"He had a vast admiration for Margaret and her efforts, but it would be another thing altogether for Rica—she who had been hitherto so eminently sane."Don't disturb yourself," she said, laughing. Haven't I told you I could never rise to such heights? But I have always admired any one who doesn't turn back anyway till she's got to the end of her furrow. Now I'll go. Jim, you can come to the corner of the street with me. You look to me as if you wanted some Club.""A fellow never gets any credit for benevolence. It was the thought of that girl losing the best years of her life pulling the devil by the tail that struck me for the moment.""Translated into English, that means, I suppose, you're sorry she's losing a good time attacking windmills. I never look at her without nearly lifting up my voice and howling at the thought of her never once having been at a ball. Just to think of her not ever having had a coming-out night!—a blissful memory of that lovely new frock in which she first realises properly what, in spite of all their whining and swears, it is to be a woman, a dear, sweet, foolish, vain woman, who tries to be good, but who knows she's pretty, and that she can make gods, or fools, or devils, of men, just as she chooses. And even if she wouldn't make a fool or a devil of a man for the life of her, it's a delightful thing to know she could. It elevates the mind. Oh, other girls may be horrid, very likely are, but oneself, at certain times in one's life, is a delicious, divine bit of a dream, and I don't wonder she should strike men in the same light. Frank, you have an improve-the-occasion look in your eye altogether unbefitting a sinful man. Jim, what am I going to make of you?""A gibbering idiot, my dear, if you don't get some understanding of silence."Frank yawned."I'm slightly confused by your volley of words, but I'm afraid if you go on advancing yourselves at the rate you're doing, you'll soon be more like conic sections, my good girl, than bits of dreams.""Ah, no advancement will ever quench the little sparks of foolishness in us, any more than the contrary will the little sparks of goodness. Caroline, for instance, marching into a room full of flames, with a face like hers, which, after all, was her sole possession, her one ewe-lamb."She sprang up and put her hat on carefully before the glass."Frank, remember you're to dine at Beatrice's to-morrow. Jim, come here and look at yourself; there's a smut on your right cheek that I should have felt and removed if I had been in my grave. Curious how innocent of intuition men are!""I wonder that girl hasn't gone stark, staring mad," said Rica, as they threaded their way through a mesh of dreary streets. "How does she keep her individuality, eating, drinking, sleeping in this monotony?""Without even the blessed memory of a ball-dress to console her!" put in Colclough."I should turn in a month into the image of that geranium there in that window. Look, another and another, all in broken bottles—the bottles even seem to be all broken at exactly the same place. Look down those mean rows of mean houses, all hideously alike, everything washed in with one cold, slimy grey, and not a person you see standing upright—shadowy, crouching creatures, slouching along to their graves, and with a worm at the root of each of them, just as there is one at the root of every geranium in every bottle. Jim—you smoking furnace!—can't you feel them wriggling? Look at the dull grey leaves of that plant. Don't you long to pick it up, and kill the thing inside it? Jim, do you think it's ever going to be different?"He smoked on for a minute."After all, my dear, everything has its compensations. If we were on the other side of Oxford Street, I couldn't smoke.""Oh, you demon!""It will be different, but not to-day or tomorrow, or the next day—not till the worms have gnawed at the root of generations of your shadowy creatures, every one of whom, all the same, has something in him pulling him up. Cheer up, Rica, the worms haven't all the innings. It might hurt your reputation to have a cigarette in these parts, otherwise one might pull you straight a bit; you're morbid. Go where you will, there are hands stretching out to help these people, and learning wisdom by mistakes. To-morrow we'll do better than we have done to-day. Then your creatures will lift their bowed shoulders, and years hence, when we 'are not,' men will walk erect, and women will learn to laugh, even in the tear-smothered heart of this great city. Meanwhile, all we've got to do is to be jolly and to consider the two points of view, that of the whole work, the completed plan,
"'The other of the minute's work,Man's firstStep to the plan's completeness."'"The men that bother themselves with these matters can do that all right, I suppose, and so they keep sane and jolly, and can take their little daily steps, eating and drinking, and generally making merry, because all the time they can grasp the fine completed plan, and it keeps their balance right. Women have generations of limited horizons and bad educations behind them; they can't take the daily steps of the minute's work with any degree of comfort or content. They've got the far-offness of the completed plan on their mind, and it crushes them, or makes miseries of them. They take themselves so seriously that they are like lead on your hands, else they fuss and cackle.""No doubt it's true, dear. A person of your age and experience can't make mistakes. It seems, all the same, unreasonable of women. Time is an uncourteous beast, and won't hurry up, even for a lady.""He hurries up enough when he wants to put wrinkles into her," Rica said grimly. "By the way, I hope Margaret Dering isn't going to get the 'plan' and its drawbacks on her nerves. Frank's account looks like it.""Oh, she's all right, her fulness of youth will straighten her directly. By the way, I suppose you know nothing at all of the human geraniums you take so much interest in?""Quite enough to haunt me.""I'll tell you something. Tangible facts haunt less than theories. That man slouching towards us reminds me of one disagreeable fact, which is the extraordinary way these people age. Age drops on them in a night, and cuts off youth as completely as if it had never existed. The lining of the face takes some time, of course, but that's a detail. And the queer thing is, they never look back.""I don't see how they could to one blank monotony.""But it isn't blank monotony, to the street Arab. You'll find him one day full of a half-fiendish sort of crackling humour; his wink a work of art. The next day the pall of manhood will have fallen on him; he couldn't wink for the life of him, and as to making sport of his betters, he has enough to do to damn them, unless, of course, he happens to be a 'busman. They still retain some street Arab.""You're as depressing, Jim, as a real consciously good woman, and I'm ashamed of you. Here's the corner. Go and smoke, perhaps drink, and babble a little of the foolishness of women, but, for goodness' sake, whatever you do, come back to dinner a Christian man."Mrs. Bent came to the door, and at sight of Rica she beamed all over. Rica took her breath away now and then, but she had a deep respect and admiration for her, and there was a fine, worldly air about her that did credit to her establishment. Her coming to it, too, seemed natural and "wholesome like," no restless caprice of a sick woman, her veneration for whom was of a very different order, partaking more of the "desire of the moth for the star," and leaving her often with a pain in a rigid back, and a sinful repulsion to Poll. It was the same old thing again; Beatrice's foundations had never got a firm grasp on the earth."Miss Weston, you're kindly welcome! Come in, my dear young lady. Miss Margaret's gone to post a letter; she'll be back soon."Rica wished she would come. The room was gay and bright and clean, but there seemed to her an air of trying to be cheerful about it, that aggravated her. She had never before seen it without Margaret, and her absence made an amazing difference. Mrs. Bent sat down, and poured out, in a gentle, monotonous stream, the deaths of the two women, and the rank impropriety of her young lady's being alone in the house; "and a doctor, too," she added, "who, she supposed, would at least know a lady when he saw her, and know too where her place was, and go about wondering and making remarks, and having no religion mostly, poor critters, with their sciences and things, wouldn't take it as a minister of God might." Mrs. Bent felt each minute better, a ready listener being an infinite consolation.Rica, on the contrary, felt distinctly worse. She wanted to yawn and stretch in this tiny place, and the brilliancy of the walls in their poor little efforts to give the lie to the slimy greyness of this world she had entered made her vindictive. To give her her due, however, unamiable as she felt, she managed to look pleasant enough, and Mrs. Bent was still babbling contentedly when Margaret came in.Directly she saw her, Rica forgot the fans and the slime, and was only conscious of the fact that Margaret wanted something. "But what does she want?" Rica thought; "that's the question." She was herself again in a twinkling; the hankering to "regulate," incidental to the weak flesh when it's the keeper of six brothers, got hold of her and gave her fresh zest for life."She wants—I believe she wants a shaking!"She pounced on her and gave her the foretaste of one. Then she pushed her down into a chair."Margaret Dering, you're radically wrong— you're going straight as a die to the devil. You have the haunted, exasperating, depraved look of a woman with a mission. Look here, you'll have to return without delay to a state of laughter and original sin. I have never never before seen your hair badly done. You have only one soul to lose or save, and time is short, and carelessness as gross as this is unpardonable."Mrs. Bent wiped her spectacles; then she got up and retreated amazedly to the kitchen."See! Your bodice is all buttoned crooked.""Very likely," Margaret said, half laughing, but with a distinct inclination to cry."You poor thing! I could this minute fall to kissing you with the greatest ease, and then we would cry and sniff, and give ourselves headaches and red noses, and generally soften our brains. It's more to the point a great deal for me to do your hair, while you fasten your bodice straight. Come on, child of the desert, and 'clean up.'"When they got up the steep steps, Margaret wondered what was to happen next, if she must reel out the whole hideous story of "that night." Rica soon cut her fears short."Now," she said, "I'm not going to hear a word of it all to-day; you can tell me some other time. There's something I want to tell you instead I had a letter from my uncle on Monday, and it was half full of your aunts; they look lonely and grey, he says, and are shrivelling up into nothing. Don't you think you ought to go and see them, even for a few days?"Margaret started. She had decided long ago that it was best to cut that part of her life off altogether until the time should come when she must renew it. Her aunts, as far as she knew, didn't want her, and her personal memory of them had hardly a bright spot in it. Oddly enough, Rica had never before spoken to her of them; she did so now very sensibly and practically. She spoke of the cold, repressed grief of their quaint, useless journeyings to London, and how weary and aged they looked."I suppose," said Margaret, at last, "I have as a matter of fact been horribly selfish.""I think it's more than probable," said Rica, giving the final twist to a long strand of hair. "But what earthly use would you be it you didn't fall into sin now and then? And we all like to shunt commonplace duties—those sorts of things require dramatic effects to make them palatable. I wonder if you would come down to-morrow? I want rather to see my uncle. He's a dear old thing. He never did a scrap of harm in his life, or much tangible good, but he's a nice, dear, restful man. Can you come to-morrow?""I ought to," she said."You ought."Rica stooped and kissed her, and wished she herself didn't feel so horribly disappointed at the thought of losing a first night, a dinner, and a dance; for now that Jim had taken his health into his own hands, she found that he could dance like an angel, and was untireable."Now take a good look at yourself," she said, smothering a sigh. "Don't you feel considerably more of a child of God and an inheritor of the Kingdom? That shaded hair, guinea gold at the tips, and nut-brown in the depths, is a dream of delight. Now you're clothed and in your right mind, come on. We'll descend, then, on our relations by the twelve o'clock train to-morrow, leaving—I forget where, but we'll find out."When they reached the parlour Rica gave a well-pleased sniff."Buttered toast. And no one's is like Mrs. Bent's; but I know of old, one has to wait for it. Her fine freedom from hurry is Mrs. Bent's best point. Meanwhile, I wish you would enlighten my mind on one point. As you don't want to write a book, or get canonised, or capture a curate, what single personal effect do you find in this life you're leading?"Margaret was silent for a minute; then she gave a sudden brilliant laugh."I think," she said, "the first effect has been a humiliating one. I have had the tables turned upon me. I went out with a vague idea of doing good, and I have been done good to; I went out to sow, and have come back with an armful of gleanings; I went out expecting to find a people altogether unlike ourselves, and I have found a class similar in all but their sin—if you prick them they bleed, if you tickle them they laugh; in short, they are human, and require no new machinery or special institutions for their treatment. Of this I am convinced, that nothing so keeps these girls out of the fold of respectability as the belief that they are out of it.""But," Rica said, a little irritated, "when all this knowledge is gained, when we have everything at our finger-tips, books and women and men, and our own insides, what's it to do for us?""I think it'll make our hearts big. I have a sort of notion that until we feel at least a hankering to be able to love, any way to tolerate, the poorest, meanest woman in God's wide world, there will still be something wanting in our love for God and man.""I haven't a symptom of this hankering anywhere about me; and yet, somehow, I think Jim gets the best I'm capable of.""You're nice and natural. I daresay you have unconsciously all I can't express. Who wants ugly visible striving if one has those things by a sort of birthright?""I know nothing at all of those high-toned things, but a girl has somehow to give the best of herself to a man who couldn't tell a lie if he tried.""Yes," said Margaret, with a curious little smile, "or even if he could——and here's Mrs. Bent and the toast. I should have been helping you make it instead of chattering.""Miss Margaret, dear, if you had done so, I should have been that mortified! You had your manners to attend to, my dear."She put the tray down and folded her hands primly, while Margaret made the tea.CHAPTER XLV.THEY went down to Derbyshire by the mid-day train. For an hour or more after they had steamed out of the station, Rica was so full of longings for Jim and other distractions, that she only produced a dozen or so of stodgy commonplaces; then it suddenly occurred to her that she was a "selfish brute." In a spasm of generosity she had left a whirl of delight to keep ghosts at bay for a neighbour, and here she was, creating toy ones for herself, besides getting each moment farther from her whirl. There was no sense in it. She pulled herself up, insisted on getting out and having tea at the next stopping-place, though it was not yet four o'clock. They could get out again and have coffee at five.
Ten minutes on a hot day's journey should never be wasted as long as there were tea and coffee within reach of dusty throats.When at last they rushed into the little wayside station at Hales, Rica congratulated herself that Margaret was in a wholesome, sturdy frame of mind, ready for dragons, or aunts, or any other emergencies.They left their dressing-cases in the charge of two porters, and decided to walk. It was a lovely evening, and said Margaret,—"There is no hurry."Rica laughed."Look here," she said, "my uncle dines at seven. I'll skulk round your side premises behind the laurels at nine. Could you run out and tell me the result?""It'll keep her from mooning down by that stream, anyway, for long. You can't 'weep gall,' and ' bay the moon,' and that sort of thing, if you have to time yourself," she thought philosophically."I can come out of course," said Margaret, not very joyfully.The moral effect of being timed didn't appeal as pleasantly to her as to her timer."Do you see that stile?" said Rica. "That's where Mr. Bridges and I stood to recover ourselves after our first visit to your aunts, the day you were out. Did the poor little thing ever produce any of his sensations and sentiments with regard to you in words?""No, but in things a thousand times worse—in looks, and blushes, and stutterings; and his knees used to shake, and little splutters of pain used to break out about his lips, and in the wrinkles in his forehead. It often looked so degradingly like stomach-ache! It was an awful effect to have on any man. I used to hate myself when I wasn't ashamed or amused, because I somehow knew that he was a good little fellow, and I felt such a brute only to be able to grin, or to long to hide him under a napkin out of my sight.""It's nice to think that being ridiculous is for ever at an end for him. I t used to hurt him so horribly. It must have been a delightful shock to find himself a person of dignity, with a fine, commanding presence.""How do you know he has one?""I can guess. Heaven wouldn't be heaven to that little creature if he had to shrink and blush whenever a girl looked at him. Now, here we part, and I wish instead of that last groundy coffee you had had a whisky-and-soda, like that fat British matron with the six thin daughters.""I don't think even that would round Aunt Katherine's angles for me.""Remember nine o'clock, and eat your dinner.——Oh, dear, I forgot it's tea," she said to herself. "Think of facing dragons, and ordering your sentiments towards your neighbour's husband, on tea and bread-and-butter! What do men know of the tribulations that beset us? Imagine a man's being called on to resist the devil on tea! If he were, and succeeded, he would announce it from the housetop in hexameters. Yet we do it daily, mentally or physically, and get not so much as a 'thank you.' I'm getting morbid, more shame to me," she thought, looking up among the trees, "with the air full of the ringing of joybells from the hearts of myriads of glad creatures, and that blessed, serene content in the eyes of those home-coming cows—and—and yes, there he is, the dear, lazy old uncle, jogging along with James and the pony, all half-asleep, and all with a nice, quiet conviction of the goodness of God, and the certainty of an excellent dinner."Margaret's sensations, in the meantime, were hardly so agreeable. Directly she came in sight of the house, she began to feel, reasonably enough too, how much more heroic it would have been, on the whole, if she had boldly faced her situation, instead of having flown helter-skelter before it. Then the melancholy fact struck her that if she had wanted windmills to fight she surely had them handy in the woman-kind of her own household.She had opened the gate, but she did not go in; she leant against it, hot, and tired, and dusty, and watched the house through the solemn branches of the yews. Then she looked out across the fields. It was all fresh, and sweet, and lovely; it would have been a delicious evening to be happy in. She sighed. The return of a prodigal with complications, each of which would be subjected to exhaustive researches, and followed by tears, and sniffs, and maledictory prayers, was a horrid prospect, and one-sided. She had, indeed, lived more or less among swine, and eaten husks; but it had been to save herself from sin. Yet there would be no rejoicing, still less fatted calf. She felt, in her miserable discomfort, that she would have been really more satisfactory to her aunts as a fully certificated prodigal. She was an anomalous creature now, with no marketable value, not even that as a shocking example.This would never do. She could no more face her relations in this frame of mind than she could fly. She shut the gate, and turned irresolutely back the road she had come. Then her ears caught the murmuring purl of water, and the tap-tap of a stone-chat; there was only one pair in the whole neighbourhood, and they built in the tree just at the foot of the hill, in the bend of the stream.She faced about, sped up the hill, paused on the crown to listen to the whispering of the beech leaves, and to see if the tiny one in the shade of the biggest still kept its tender, green, baby leaves through the heat as it used to do, and how the sheen of the copper beech appeared to her.When we come back, as a rule, things have grown smaller, and their colours have lost tone; but Margaret didn't find it so. The valley seemed to stretch farther than it had ever done, and the colours in all things had softened and deepened. The stone-chat tapped musically, the river went rushing on its way. Margaret drew in one big breath of beauty, and ran on again down the hill, across the dyke, through the clump of nut-bushes, down to the long grasses by the stream's bank. She threw herself full length among them, her head leaning over the water. The swirl, and plash, and patter confused her. She sat up, took off her hat, made a sponge of a wisp of grass, and bathed the dust off her face. The stone-chat had gone to bed; there wasn't a sound but the monotonous song of the brook, and the occasional splash of a trout in the brown pool just below. Margaret put her elbows on her knees, and her chin into her hands."I'm clean and fresh now," she told herself, "and perhaps I may be able to think straight, not let my thoughts reel as if I were a drunken man."But Caroline's and the other girl's dead faces, and Geoffrey's living one, began to bob up and down before her eyes in the stillness, while her two aunts hovered in the background. Thinking straight under the conditions seemed difficult. She put her head impatiently down among the grasses, and disturbed a lark from his first sleep. He sprang up almost from under her skirts, and in a minute he burst out into a song, wondering a little at this sudden call on him. Margaret turned on her back and watched him. He was hovering nearly motionless above her, getting rid, in the prelude to his song, of the few notes of pain his heart held, then making his sudden spring towards heaven, he began his little song of superb triumph. In the midst of a trill, sudden sleep falling on him, he swooped towards his bed.In the silence that followed, Margaret's ghosts were laid, and a new consciousness gradually awoke within her. She could not have expressed it in words; she just knew that she had not lost her youth with her ignorance, as had always been the dread before which she had cowered in her foolish, bitter times; the youth in her had only become intensified—had been touched by eternity, and would remain in her heart for ever as a witness. She knew that everything had grown better and bigger, and that God Himself had taught that lark. She knew that nothing is purposeless, no skies are all grey, and that complete failure is but the vision of dim-eyed ignorance. The significance of pain towards perfection took vague shape in her, and she was aware that even a lost love has its uses—its tender, sad uses. But above all created things she saw love reigning supreme, from its foundations deep in the earth to its heights higher than heaven, because they touch God. I It was the divine sense of growth that had slid into her soul. It was conversion, only in "etwas andern wörter."When she stood up she found that she was trembling. She shook herself; oddly enough, the treatment steadied her. Then she suddenly remembered that it must be quite half-past six, and that she would be late for tea. It was a pity that there was no one to see her but the nut-bushes and the water, for there was that in her face which makes men think most reverently and tenderly of girlhood, and in her laugh, as she thought of the consequences of her lateness, there was a curious sweetness.She ran, hatless, up hill and down, till she got to the gate; then she straightened herself and put on her hat. She paused for a minute to consider if she could, with any semblance of honesty, assume the appearance of a miserable sinner. She couldn't; she had floundered along a stony path, but she felt in that moment that she had gone out empty and come back full. It was impossible to tell flagrant lies.Hannah backed at sight of her, and dropped, gasping, into a chair. She had grown grimmer and older, and sourer. Margaret stooped and kissed her shyly. I t was a little like kissing a rolling-pin."She had one human weakness; it was buttered toast," Margaret thought. "I fear, from the look of her, she must have lost it.""Are my aunts in the library?""Yes, Miss Margaret."She stood up, but made no move to announce the visitor; she looked her up and down, and groaned respectfully. The dress was grey and quite simple, but it was the build. And as there was the hat still to condemn, and Hannah was a slow-thinking person, Margaret saw it was useless to wait, so she passed her and opened the door herself.Miss Julia was sewing a sponge-bag for a Chinese missionary basket. Miss Dering was reading aloud. They both stood up, staring. Miss Julia trembled; her sister did nothing of the sort. She took three steps in Margaret's direction."Take off your hat," she said.Margaret, who was prepared for anything, did it meekly enough. Miss Julia drew nearer, and, from behind her sister, surveyed the girl, each moment showing signals of distress—an outpouring was at hand. Meanwhile, Miss Katherine raked Margaret from stem to stern, punctuating her disapproval with grunts."Katherine," cried Miss Julia, in an agony, "I think it has pleased the Lord to bring her back to the paths of righteousness. Our precious Lord," she pleaded, throwing a fearful glance, half horror, half longing, at Margaret, "thought well to pardon the unhappy Magdalen. Let us——"Miss Dering turned and looked at her slowly."Are you mad, Sister Julia, or a fool? Is it by you—you—that our honourable house is insulted? Is it you who dare to cast on us nameless aspersions? The girl there, our niece, has sinned grievously, but not in that sort. I must request you to abstain in future from language unbefitting the lips of a woman who is unmarried, and professes to be a Christian."Miss Julia let fall the few tears she had at hand, and felt a vague sense of injury. Truly this. was turning the tables with a vengeance! For months past, Margaret had been prayed and groaned for, night and morning, under the style and title of the unhappy saint who was now tabooed the family councils and an unmarried Christian's lips. She slowly wiped her eyes, and looked perplexedly at Katherine, whose gaze was still fastened fiercely on Margaret. Then her eyes followed her sister's, and she understood hazily that sister's wayward wrath. She came forward timidly and looked up into Margaret's eyes; then she drew her into her poor, shrivelled breast, and kissed her, straining her tight, and altogether astonishing herself.Miss Dering shuddered behind their backs, and sat down cold with a most unpleasing conviction of sin. For, in spite of the girl's hat and her pretty frock, and the subtle, indefinite charm of every bit of her—in spite of all these indications of Satan's wedge, Miss Dering knew that in the prayers and illustrations of many months she had done something uncomfortably like desecrating a shrine—doing violence to a Holy of Holies.When Margaret recovered her person and her wits from Miss Julia's embrace, a mixture of duty and inclination induced her to go and bestow a kiss of peace on Miss Katherine. She stooped over her with her mouth ready budded to a kiss, offering a rare contrast to its grim task. But Miss Katherine started back hurriedly, thrusting out her hand as a defence."Don't!" she whispered hoarsely. "Go, girl, go!"She stood up the next moment and left the room. Margaret felt dejected and forlorn, as if she were back in her drab frock on her road to a prayer-meeting. In the uncomfortable pause, her aunt Julia suggested that she should go to her room, and they went up together. To her amazement, it was ready, swept and garnished, with new rose-pink curtains on the windows, and on the chairs chintz with a little old-fashioned pattern on it of rose-pink flowers. And on the white and rose-trimmed dressing-table there was an old china bowl filled with fresh flowers. Margaret looked round her surprised."What have you done to make it look so pretty? Who are you expecting?""My dear, for a long time we thought you were dead," Miss Julia explained falteringly, "and then, I can hardly tell you how it came to pass, but it seemed as if you still lived, and might one day return to us, and your aunt had the room arranged for you as it now stands. It is always ready, and each day she herself plucks fresh flowers for the table. I should so much like to have helped her," she added, sighing, "but you know your aunt, dear; she prefers herself to do things.""But she thought I had disgraced you both?""Yes, dear, that was a sore tribulation." Miss Julia clutched her handkerchief nervously. "But you were of our own flesh and blood; and, dear Margaret, often, secretly, in my chamber, I thought that perhaps we had not rightly ordered ourselves towards the follies of youth. I have thought at times that your aunt has also felt this," she went on hesitatingly, her cheeks tingling with a faded blush, her head drooping; "but this, as you will know, is but surmise on my part. Katherine is not one to speak aloud of some things, but the Lord knoweth the heart's bitterness.""I should have come long ago. I am a nasty, selfish wretch!" Margaret cried, catching and hugging her aunt. "See!" she said, "you've taught me to cry. I don't do such a thing in a blue moon. I wonder, if I tried hard enough, if I could teach you to laugh."Miss Julia gave a little, fleeting smile, just perceptible."No, dear, it's too late," she said, caressing the girl, her pink-lidded eyes fixed half-fearfully on the radiant brightness of the upturned face. "Many years ago it appeared to me as if it were given to me not to laugh, and, strange now as it may seem to you, Margaret, it was one of my hardest tasks. And now, after my many strivings, there come moments when it is borne in on me that after all I misjudged the Lord's will, and threw away a precious gift. It seems strange, in this earthly dispensation, how frequently consolations resolve themselves into doubts. And now, my niece, prepare for tea. Your aunt, as you will remember, has a strong objection to unpunctuality."When Margaret had tidied herself, she took a flower from the bowl, kissed it, and put it in her dress."The world's going mad altogether," she thought, laughing softly. "Never in my wildest moments could I have imagined kissing a flower because Aunt Katherine's hand had touched it. It's a nice substitute for her bodily hand, anyway, which at least is a consoling consideration."The tea was refreshing and unexpectedly abundant, and the conversation had in no sort of way altered in tone. Miss Julia had retreated into her shell, and Miss Katherine had put on her best robes of righteousness. Hannah's excitement now and again showed itself in insisting grimly on Margaret's acceptance of choice morsels, for which officiousness she received, during the course of the meal, three several snubs from her mistress.When they went back to the library, Margaret sat down near Miss Katherine, and told her simply why she had gone, and what she had done during her absence. Once, in a little rush of forlornness, she put her hand on Miss Katherine's knee, but the knee shrank from her. When she mentioned Poll and her kind, both the women started visibly. As she went on, Miss Dering drew herself up, and into Miss Julia's cheeks there crept her poor, tired old blush. When their niece ceased to speak, they made no audible comment on her story. Miss Dering scowled, Miss Julia wept. Margaret longed for even a word to break the depressing silence, but there wasn't a sign of one. She could hardly breathe in the strangling atmosphere; besides, it suddenly struck her that it must be after nine o'clock."I shall go up the hill," she said. "It's hot to-night.""The same old habits," muttered Miss Dering, as she went out.She stood up, and rang for Hannah to light the lamp. When she had gone, the sisters, in unbroken silence, put on their spectacles, and got hold of their Bibles. Miss Julia tried not to sigh, not to look longingly out of the window, or to think of that hug, or try to recall that old laugh of her own, the sound of which she had almost forgotten."There is a change in her," she said at last."There is another light in her eyes. Perhaps—the Lord is merciful, and varies His means—perhaps she has found grace."Miss Dering looked at her. "Found grace? Sister Julia, you speak as a fool. She has lost a lover."Miss Julia wondered sadly why two such different causes should produce the same effect. Miss Dering flung a keen glance at the Bible on her lap; then she walked round the table and reversed it. Miss Julia had been studying the Lamentations of Jeremiah upside-down.CHAPTER XLVI."Do you know it's twenty minutes after nine?" said Rica, out of a bush, when Margaret came up, softly calling."Is that all?" she said. "I thought it was the Day of Judgment, and I myself among the goats. Let me breathe air for a minute, and feel human.""Stretch," said Rica. "It's an immense help in getting the hang of things.""Come up to the top of the hill. Those yews suck up every breath of air hereabout."They climbed up and sat down under the copper beech. The moon was nearly in the full, and little silver shafts were shooting in and out among the branches, motionless against the starry sky. There wasn't a stir except that made by a little white owl who was young and foolish, and kept mistaking the moon's rays for the sun's, and in his confusion getting himself whirred against the branches.Margaret went through the complications of her reception—everything, down to the rose-pink chintz."Poor Miss Dering!" Rica said. "But still, it was a frosty house to play prodigal to. At the same time, you're nothing like as dejected as I expected. You've no return of that horrid, intense look that you've been suffering from these last days. It's worse than wrinkles or cloven-hoof. Oh! what's that scent?""Woodbine. Don't you see it, white under the moonlight, round that stump?"There fell a silence on the two. Suddenly Rica said,—"Are you meditating on your aunts?""I had forgotten their existence."" I thought, by the look of you, you had. I couldn't imagine any one in such sights, and sounds, and feels, thinking of aunts or devils, or one's soul, or any other flesh-thorns. It's too good an hour for thoughts of anything but folly.""Or Jim.""Traitor!" she said, throwing her arms back against the smooth trunk. "The terms aren't convertible, and you know it. Jim, and the like of him, represent to us, or ought to, the best knowledge, the best joy, the best sweetness of life, just as we represent all those delightful things to him—or ought to, anyway. The world revolves round Jim and his Jill. If it doesn't, it ought to. It did in the beginning, does now, and evermore should do, if things were as they should be.""Haven't Jims and Jills got a good deal complicated with clothes, and incomes, and shortness of cash?""Yes, poor souls, and with worse things than these. We must have our little wants, and in the interests of decency we must cover our nakedness. But it's our elders and betters who really handicap us. They give us libellous aliases—'young persons,' 'minxes,' 'girls of periods'; as if a period could be a period without a girl! They irritate Jim against his most precious inheritance; in fact, what he was chiefly created to inherit. They make us into nasty human paradoxes to terrify him. How dare any one frighten a man of a maid?""Perhaps it's the fools who are frightened.""But—hasn't the oracle said it? And though he's forgotten, his verdict is remembered— 'Men are mostly fools.' What's the result? Look at the crowds of girls, under thirty by courtesy or fact, as the case may be, each with a smile on her lip, or a tear in her eye, for a lost Jim, who might have been a found one, if the She who for the moment possesses the pulpit hadn't turned her into a text. Imagine marrying a text! All the acuteness and joyousness is taken out of any preached-at person or thing. Wise women of a certain age often seem to me such fools too. When the time comes for a woman and the need of propriety to part company, she can have a most audaciously good time of it. Instead of seizing this, she frequently devotes her attention to harrying the young of her neighbours.""Perhaps the young want harrying?""They do badly," Rica admitted, with great magnanimity. "That's where it is. We have given ourselves away, and are eating the bitter fruits thereof. We must fight it out, my dear! Give up—what's the first?—tight-lacing, high-heeled shoes? No, they're gone out. What are the last things we're warned against. Drink, is it? No; it's latchkeys and mothers. I think that last may be awkward—only for them, after all, where should we be?"She sat up and twisted Margaret's astonished face round to catch the moonlight. "I like you better as you are, than if things had gone straight with you," she said. "People would have gone mad for you in your state of nature; now they'll grow sane, which, to my common mind, seems the better part. I distrust madmen; and besides, they're such bores, as a rule.""I'm doomed to have to listen to preaching from strange pulpits. Caroline, and now you!""Caroline?""Oh yes, Caroline!""Margaret, go on."She went on, interrupted by divers interruptions. Rica never, on principle, heard a long speech through; it promoted self-consciousness, she considered."She had a deplorable habit of truth, that girl. What she wanted was points of view," she said. "Hers were various enough, seemingly, but they all emanated from one part or another of herself; she was her own pivot. But, after all, points of view is what we are all suffering from. They're too high, or too low, or too personal, or too something, or we haven't any to speak of. Yet whenever we set out on the racket, exploring for them, we're apt to take ourselves too desperately seriously, or to go to the devil in some other way. Margaret, there's rushing water somewhere. Come and find it."If it had been daylight, Margaret would perhaps have lured her the other way; being moonlight, she led her straight to where the brook was singing in its evening gown of spun silver. Rica might not have reached the water, indeed, by quite so straight a path, but that there was that moment a conscious something in the hearts of those girls that made of the two one flesh. They sat down by the stream, taking deep breaths of the woodbine-scented air."Margaret," said Rica presently, "I can feel your heart throbbing to-night, and you can feel mine. Tell me what has changed you."Margaret looked silently into the water."I don't know," she said at last. "I think it is perhaps that something has gone out of my love for Geoffrey, and some new thing has come into it. At first, and for long after, it seemed to me a shameful thing I had to keep constantly crushing out.""I suppose you were right; a wholesome, well-groomed conscience is an excellent institution.""But now it's quite different. Don't think," she said, "that this is because of that ghastly loophole of escape Mrs. Hyde offers me. I never think of that except with a shudder." She lifted her little head proudly. "My love is the very best little bit of me; it is sweet, and pure, and holy, and would no more do wrong to Geoffrey, or his wife, or myself, than it would do any other mean, shabby thing. I think it's because I know that now I can honour my love, that everything is different. And in spite of the misery of life, and the squalor, and sin, and ugliness—in spite of having seen it all from the inside, I can still laugh and rejoice—like the little hills," she added, with a sweet, low laugh."Was there ever living woman who did not love a man?" said Rica, breaking into the pause. "The rivers, and the brooks, and the little streams are our hearts, babbling, rushing, storming, sweeping, or sneaking; shallow and deep, feeble and strong, but all hurrying to their goal, to the immeasurable sea of love. Some are soaked up by marshes, lost in lakes, sucked up by the thirsty earth, drawn up to heaven; not one drop of them ever reaches the ocean. But they all, each one of them, set out from their springs among the hills with that one intention. Aren't you sorry for the poor arrested drops, turning bitter in their marshes?""Dear old Rica!""Of course, it's bad to reflect on one's kind much, and to turn it or one's self inside out brings wrinkles, and takes the sweetness and glamour from mysteries. But once in a while it seems to me rather invigorating to consider things generally—to pause, for instance, and realise one's preciousness, one's worth in the social scale; it humbles pride, and makes humility sincere. Caroline is perfectly right, my dear; it is we who should be the rightful sovereigns of the world. On the contrary, look at us and our aliases, all of which we richly deserve. The world is led by young men. We should govern the best parts of young men—ergo, lead them! It is as plain as a pikestaff. We should emulate our rivals, then, and dance towards heaven as they do towards hell, drawing Creation in our train."Margaret laughed softly."I do mean it, Margaret, in my heart. Give me your hand. We're links, you and I, in one big chain that encircles the heart of the world. We—you and I—pretty enough of course, but just flesh-and-blood, every-day girls; we—just ourselves, us—are the mothers of mankind, and the mainspring of poetry and literature, and hope, and memory. If we could realise it—but it's so hard to, you see—we should be fearless and good; oh, shouldn't we be good! And then we should work miracles and take our 
place in Nature, making ourselves worthy of our high calling and making men worthy of us. Margaret, think of what it is to be a girl. Think of longing to be a man, when God has made you a girl. It proclaims you at once as a failure; for, after all, the measure of our rights is the measure of our normal capacity. Think of being, as we should be, the best thing in the dreams of a world—not, as we are now, an odd dream in an odd young man's head. Our lives, if we were worthy of our rights, would be a song,—which is, I think, wrongly quoted, but where's the odds? It expresses one's stern convictions; and if you're struggling towards your place in Nature, the brain gets addled. It seems to me that failures from too much marriage, or too little, have got altogether too much of the running. We must edge ourselves back again and get some good out of our knowledge, or we might just as well have remained fools. Get down on your knees, Margaret Dering—I can't myself, I'm on the war-path, exhorting—and thank God for having made you a girl, and ask Him to make you a good one, but never, never to forget to leave the foolishness in you—only 'chastened-like,' you know, as befits knowledge.""Rica, are you crying?""Yes. I think it's at the idiocy of girls. You see, if we could only realise ourselves young, what a time we might have!""It's after ten, dear!""Margaret, did they give you anything for your tea but bread-and-butter and a chapter?""They gave me cold chicken and chops, grilled to a turn. They also planted the Cayenne bottle aggressively under my nose. Cayenne used to be one of the unfulfilled desires of my youthful flesh. I was guarded from it as from all other wiles of Satan. Oddly enough, I only took it to-night to please Aunt Katherine.""In which lies an allegory for British Matrons."CHAPTER XLVII.BEATRICE watched her husband's new keenness of living, and his chuckling appreciation of his own budding powers for harrying men into his way of thinking, with a gentle, breathless delight. His practical, everyday, simple methods in the inception of what seemed to her the most insane of ideas, pleased her enormously. They showed a seriousness, a solidity, that was adorable. But what puzzled her each day more and more was the amusement and gratification that Geoffrey found among the extraordinary people he came across. They were not creatures to be considered apart, in their own place, with a duty to be done to them collectively. They were individuals, who had every one, no matter what his position happened to be, a story worth getting at; and it seemed to Beatrice as if Geoffrey just got at this story to amuse and benefit himself, not in any way with a view to the instruction or advancement of the teller. It was a state of mind out of her reach, but she was pleased and content, and she felt certain that her neck and arms grew plumper. Whether they did or not mattered little. There was that in her face which would have made any man forget the most aggressive pair of salt-cellars yet hollowed. Geoffrey, whenever he looked at his wife, felt truly thankful that he had lived, on the whole, decently, otherwise he could not have endured life in the same house with her. About this time it also occurred to him that he had quite lost the crick in the neck she used invariably to give him.She was the best sister—cousin—friend—that any mortal man ever had, she was so full of dignity, so simple, so faithful. How unfortunate for them both that she should have chosen wifehood, the one state of life in which she was absolutely impossible!He went out with a big, sad heart, full of tender longing for the little dead girl, who had been made to love and to be beloved.Geoffrey continued his pleasant prowls round among the population, expanding his notions daily, while codiciling them with modifications and amendments. He was looking forward with glee to an autumn and winter that, between sport and work, must be unflagging. The work "geist" had now fully got hold of him, and the heart of Beatrice swelled with gladness, and a strange new wistfulness, and a stretching out towards her ebbing life.One day, it struck Geoffrey with some force that he was growing stupid. His head felt like lead; his thoughts halted and hobbled, dragging themselves slowly through his brain. He felt incapable of writing an ordinary letter. The power of coherence had left him; proportion no longer kept the balance steady; the most trivial things were assuming a monstrous significance."I believe it's the beastly muggy weather," he told Beatrice. "Thanks be to Heaven we'll be in the country next week.""Go for a ride," she said."I will. I wish you could come. When do you mean to begin riding again? You're surely going to hunt this season? It isn't possible, at your age, that you've lost your pluck.""I don't think I have," she said, with an odd laugh. "I hope I never may do that. It seems to me such a contemptible thing to permit yourself to do.""We don't do such things, she means," he thought, as he went out. "Poor Beatrice! But, after all, if it's a trifle rigid and limited, 'we do' and 'we do not' are excellent rules of conduct."When Geoffrey came in, he felt still more stupid."I'll be shot if I'm not getting softening of the brain," he said, as he met Colclough, who was just leaving the house. "I feel incapable of the most unskilled labour.""When are you going out of Town?""On Tuesday.""I'd see a doctor, if I were you. You look a trifle wild and unkempt.""A doctor always seems to me the last infirmity of noble minds. I'll try a whisky-and-soda first."Colclough gave a shrug, and went on. There was something about Geoffrey he didn't like; and he felt pretty sure that he would not be able to ward off whatever was coming on him for much longer. He was perfectly right in his surmise. In three days more, Geoffrey's want of coherence was pronounced to be typhoid fever.Beatrice at first failed to grasp the full bearings of the fact. Geoffrey, considered in connection with illness, seemed to her anomalous—out of nature.Her first feeling was one of anger, resentment against the undiscriminating fate that should have thrown this stumbling-block into the very beginnings of a career. For the only time in her life, Beatrice's thoughts in the matter were or herself, for her own poignant grief and disappointment at this irrational, inexcusable retarding of Geoffrey's progress.For the moment these feelings filled her, and swallowed up all others.Of course, his hot, fevered restlessness, his painful weakness, hurt—troubled—surprised her. But what were such things compared to this sudden, incomprehensible check put upon Geoffrey's "making for righteousness"?There was an air of offended majesty about Beatrice during the first few days of her husband's illness that neither Rica nor Colclough could quite understand, and that struck Geoffrey's half-asleep brain oddly whenever his heavy eyes lifted themselves to look at her.And when, after many days, the preliminary note of fear for the man was struck tremulously, it was not in the heart of the man's wife that it first quivered. She was still serene, calm, unsuspecting, while already the hearts of all the others were failing them for fear.In the love of Beatrice for Geoffrey there was something so infinite, so immortal, that, quite unconsciously to herself, she had clothed him in subtle, mystic garments of infinity and immortality. Curiously enough, her husband was to her a god, as well as a man.When the danger, the fear, was explained to her, and the truth dawned slowly on her consciousness, none but God and some rare, solitary, sad soul could in any sort of way grasp the anguish of this silent, lonely woman. She went to her room directly the doctor had told her the truth. When she came down an hour later it seemed to Rica that she was a new Beatrice. She had grown defiant, resolved, aggressive. Her nostrils rose and fell excitedly; her eyes shone with a steady fire; her voice had taken on a fine tone of command; her gentle, passive ways had vanished. She was eager, compelling, full of resources.She took on herself nearly the whole nursing of Geoffrey. In spite of every remonstrance, she refused to leave him night or day. If she slept, she slept in her chair beside his bed.It was a dreadful thing to watch this poor woman at bay in her dumb, breathless fight with Death.And it appeared as if she were about to have her reward. One day, Geoffrey's semi-dormant senses seemed to gather and concentrate themselves on her, clinging, in a sort of half-comprehending eagerness, to her every look and her every movement.To Rica and Jim, who hardly left the house all this time, it looked as if the sick man were drinking in greedily the extraordinary luminous vitality of the metamorphosed woman. He groped out thirstily towards her, and lived by absorbing her life.Beatrice's joy was a strained and silent thing; but into her eyes there would now and again leap a flame of brilliant triumph, turning to tongues of fire the patient prayer in them.One day, Geoffrey began to murmur little soft, sweet words of love. Beatrice stooped over him to listen happily. She put out her hand, and he laid his feebly on it. First it was just little general, short words, and confused snatches of love, with no name; then a tender silence, while he feebly patted her trembling hand.All at once he turned his eyes on her, and searched her face curiously. The pleasure and the peace gradually left his, and his eyes grew grave and troubled. He withdrew them from their baffled inspection, and let them wander far into a sad, vague distance. "Margaret, my own, my love, my sweetest!" he whispered. "Oh, Margaret, Margaret mine——"Beatrice stood rigid and wan, and still he whispered, in the sweet habit of love, soft, senseless things for Margaret's ears, touching lingeringly the hand of the other, now grown stiff and cold. Suddenly he shivered and drew his hand away. The minute after he opened his eyes intelligently and looked at Beatrice shuddering above him. A flash of strange, poignant pain shot into his eyes; they clouded slowly, and with a low, stifled moan, as of a soul bruised, he turned tiredly away from her.Beatrice sat on palely, and in weary anguish she reflected on the truth.When Geoffrey awoke from his restless half-slumber, he was a different person. His eager striving for life had left him. In its place there had fallen on him the pall of apathy. He no longer raised his eyes to follow and rest on Beatrice's movements; they seemed to lie like marble under their lids, while he lay in listless indifference and waited. Ever and anon, a half-wistful, half-mocking smile would move his dry, cracked lips, and burn another little seam into Beatrice's poor tortured heart.The doctor could neither understand nor account for the inexplicable change in the man, and the two he called in to help him were as incapable of solving the riddle.After a long consultation, he told Beatrice of the hopelessness of the trio. She was an agreeable person to break news to, the plane on which she stood was so far exalted above that on which hysterics find a foothold.Nevertheless, he was exceedingly sorry."Mrs. Hyde," he said gently, "you have done wonders, but you can't work miracles."She looked at him in silence, and dismissed him with a gracious, speechless gesture. When he had gone, she put her hand slowly to her forehead. "Love can work miracles," she said aloud, "but it must be the sort of love a man is capable of understanding." She stood up, and went towards the door, but her feet seemed to slip away from her. She faltered and swayed, and the bitter pain caught her in its teeth and tore her. She had just sense enough to get to the sofa and lie down. For some eternal minutes she lay there, and fought doggedly for her life. She knew it was slipping from her fingers, that it would elude her and escape through them if she relaxed for a single second her vigilant grasp on it. She clung on steadily, desperately, with infinite weariness, for her whole soul was swept up in one great longing to let go, once and for ever, and to plunge gladly, joyously, into the rest that awaited her—to taste of that peace that passeth all understanding; for these things were quite true and real to this woman, who believed. But the time was not yet; there still remained a little work for her to do. Long after she had got hold again of her shrinking thread of life, she lay still, and thought; then she arose slowly, rang for her maid, and ordered her carriage.She looked at Geoffrey lying moveless, with dull, deadened, indifferent eyes; asked Rica, who was distinctly astonished at her proceedings, and her failure to explain things, not to leave him, and gave the nurse a few gentle directions; then she went out, telling the coachman—to his hardly concealed amazement—to drive to the house in which Margaret lived. Such a neighbourhood seemed strangely out of harmony with such a mistress as his.Before she reached her destination, Beatrice had gone through a miserable little skirmish with her habitual reticence. When the footman, a kindly young countryman, who spent much of his spare time whimpering unaffectedly for his master,—to whom every soul in his service was devoted—came to open the door, Beatrice said to him, with quiet constraint,—"I am going into this house, and hope to bring home with me a young lady, a dear friend of mine, who lives here merely that she may do good to the poor people about. I think if she will help me nurse your master that it may be of great benefit to him.""They may remember her, and know," she thought, feeling very cold about the heart;
"but she will come to the house as my friend, and they will think of her afterwards as such. Then there will be no loss of dignity to any of the three of us."When Margaret heard and understood, she made one supreme effort to emulate the woman who told her; but she was as yet a little too young for such magnificent serenity. One poor cry of agony broke from her, and she hid her face in her hands.When Mrs. Bent brought in her hat and cape, it was Beatrice who helped her on with them.Poll coming home, half an hour later, found Mrs. Bent crying noiselessly, by the rays of dying embers in the grate, with scanty, difficult tears.She had begun by crying for the sorrows of Margaret and the poor young madam, but now it was herself she thought of—herself in a lonely old age. In past imaginings this had never struck her with any terror or especial uneasiness. She had a competency. No howling wilderness of a workhouse loomed before her. The desolation of loneliness would come, in the usual dull course of events—old age must come to all, and it was always lonely. But the sudden going away of Margaret had fallen as a bolt from the blue, crashing into Mrs. Bent's understanding and breaking, as it were, great gaps into it, through which strange new lights shone.She imparted, in her lonely craving for sympathy, some of her sensations to Poll. The words were inadequate, maimed, but somehow they impressed her more than a multiplicity of adjectives and fine-turned sentences could have done. She, in her turn, flopped down on a chair, and tumbled straightway into inconsolability."I knew it all along," she averred—"sooner or later 'e'd come, and no more of 'er for us after that.""Poll, girl, the poor young man is a-dyin'.""Dyin', bless yer!" said Poll savagely. "Not'e! No sech luck!""Miss Margaret ain't gone for good," Mrs. Bent explained."Maybe not, but 'twon't never be the same no more," she retorted obstinately. "She won't b'long to us never no more, like she did.""Poll, do you think Miss Margaret's heart's the one to grow cold to us? I couldn't ha' believed you were that ignorant.""Ignorant yer granny!" muttered Poll angrily. "I tell yer 'twon't never be the same."The girl's abject, hopeless grief distressed Mrs. Bent; it was uncommonly like her own, except for the rudeness of its quality. It was hard to speak comfort. To stop the inevitable gap, it occurred to her that a word in season might come handy."Poll," she said gently, "we have the Lord."Poll snorted. "No doubt! But," she cried, with a fresh burst of tears, "wot's 'E, to 'er? 'E's too blessed far off, bless yer. We wants sutthin' we can look at, and watch, and that'll keep a nice friendly-like eye on us, an' sort o' cotton to us. I tell yer the Lord ain't a patch on Miss Margaret for that. Wot do the, likes o' 'Im, or you either, know o' bein' bad? Bein' good comes in yer day's work. Y'aven't nothin' else to do, and no wishes agen it. But us—oh, Lor'! it's mortial 'ard to be good, and without 'er, bless yer—I don't want ter be good without 'er a watchin' on me."There was a dull, heavy pain in the round, red face that touched Mrs. Bent to the quick. For the first time since she had known her, she felt a warm glow of tenderness go out towards Poll. The motherliness that had so long waited in vain for Nancy, seemed suddenly to concentrate in her, and to yearn to make of itself a garment wherewith to cover the poor rents of Poll."Poll," she said, in a low, quavering voice, "Miss Margaret ain't the one to give us up, or her work up, ever. She'll come back, child, the same as she have gone—the same as she'll be till her hour o' death. But we can't expect to keep her nigh us allays. Her place is set a vast higher nor our'n, and one day her'll be set in it. I think, girl, you and me had better make shift to take up with one another. From now you'd as well be my daughter, and I'll mother you.""Lor' a mussy, Mrs. Bent!""An', Poll," said Mrs. Bent, with an air of melancholy but fixed resolve, "when Miss Margaret goes from us, we'll keep on gatherin' them critturs, and see what's to be done with 'em. Arter all, neither you nor me is that delicate we can't stomach 'em now and agen."Poll giggled frankly through her tears."You and me! W'y," she ejaculated, "'E'vens!"Mrs. Bent lifted her head stiffly. Now that she had decided to mother the hussy, she felt in conscience bound to put her in the same box as herself, nominally, anyway; but there was no denying it, to the very end of her days the girl would be a sore trial. "Well, belike the Lord may temper the wind," she thought resignedly, observing severely, "Poll, the young minister will countenance us, I make no doubt, and I trust your conduct may be such as to meet his approvin' eye. And I happen to be aware that Miss Margaret have no intentions to desert us."A horrid, furtive look of fear again overspread Poll's face."'Twon't never be the same," she muttered, and broke out into a modulated roar. "'Er understood the bloomin' grind it were to be good, 'er did. The Lord 'E don't, 'E's too 'igh in 'Isself; and, Mrs. Bent—laws, ye'r too old!""Poll, girl, I was young once, and some things came hard. I'll strive to forget my age, girl, and think only o' your foolishness.""Will yer?" said Poll, looking eagerly at her."Will yer now? That's wot 'elps such as us."Beatrice, meanwhile, was watching Margaret's effect on her husband with strange, mixed anguish. Her heart was desolate, shrouded in black loneliness, since she had cast out from it the last dream with which she had deceived it. And yet she was sustained by an exaltation of holy joy, which shone out over her sad face; and her presence, to the loving, pitying eyes who watched her, was as a benediction.Her surmise was quite correct. Love does work miracles, when it is the sort of love a man can understand.The touch of Margaret stirred some deep-lying, deadened nerve-centres in Geoffrey. Slowly, minute by minute, bit by bit, his old striving for life returned to him. Blindly, uncomprehendingly, but unerringly, because the magnet which drew him was as true as God, and immortal, he answered Margaret's every demand on him, roused himself at her call to each fresh effort, groping every moment more surely towards life; always murmuring her name, and waiting on her touch.It seemed to Margaret that no woman ever loved a man as she loved Geoffrey. But as she was cherishing this thought, softly stroking his fingers the while, she chanced to look up and to find Beatrice's unreproaching, gentle eyes watching her out of the shadows.Then, by a sudden flash of insight, she knew that the love of this woman was a hundred-fold more mighty even than hers, for it was Absolute, knit up into years of anguish, with no hope of reward, either in time or in eternity.From that minute a strange wonder came to her. It was the quick welling-up in her heart of a worshipful, tender, thrilling adoration for this woman who had loved so nobly and so vainly; and this simple, newborn love seemed to her a thing even more desirable and sanctified than her love for Geoffrey—the very crown of her existence—the talisman that had revealed to her God in the heart of man.A few days later, Geoffrey's eyes began to clear and grow sane and steady, and the doctors were jubilant over their skill and success. When they had spoken with Beatrice, and gone away, Margaret asked Rica to stay with Geoffrey, and herself went and knocked at the door of Beatrice's room. She had never ventured near it before, and she felt half choked and stifled.Beatrice gave an involuntary little stir of surprise at sight of her."Mrs. Hyde," she said, in a low, hurried voice, "Geoffrey is now quite out of danger. I am going home."Beatrice started."For every possible reason, of course, it's you he must see and recognize—not me. The sight of me, now that he will be able to know and think, would only distract him, and put him back."Beatrice grew paler, but she gave a low sigh of relief. She had, in her great fear, forgotten the possible result of this contingency. There still remained to her one tiny dream-shred in which she could once more wrap her heart, and comfort its exceeding coldness."And——" Margaret began, but she broke off quickly. Speech between these two women was a thing always to ward off, to hold at arm's length, it had been made so impossible for them. And yet the thought that this was the last time they should ever look on one another, those two, whom a great love had so curiously divided and bound, struck them simultaneously.Beatrice stood up. Margaret stopped as she was walking to the door, and turned round, and they looked in each other's eyes as they had done the first day they had met."Beatrice," Margaret said, in an odd, shy way, blushing hotly, "I can't quite tell you how much I love you, or the strange sort of love it is. I wish"—she had to stop to swallow a painful, choking lump of embarrassment—"I wish you'd let me kiss you."Beatrice stretched out her arms silently, and took the girl into them.A few weeks later, Geoffrey was sufficiently convalescent to make it possible for them to go down to the country; and now Rica, who went with them, was a good deal more anxious about Beatrice than she was about him.Beatrice seemed to her to be supported and sustained by some hidden spiritual excitement, so delicate and essential that it never produced any outward effect of hurry or fever; it just gently blew on, and kept alight in her, her little flickering spark of life.There was in these days a liquid brightness in the eyes of Beatrice—an altogether illuminated look about her. Her heart and senses seemed to have leapt out into a new freedom, and to glow with a delicate new glory in the delight of their emancipation. All these things made Geoffrey's wife an eminently sweet and worshipful woman; and his heart was moved strangely towards her.The blessed, dim memories of Margaret that still hung about him like incense, entrancing his senses, he began to connect with the presence of Beatrice, not with that of the dead girl. Beatrice gradually took shape in his mind as the fleeting vision he had watched in his sickness, who had hovered constantly about him gathering up for him the life that was slipping away, then breathing it again into his soul, and with it the fulness of her own life.She had saved him; of that there was no doubt. All through the very darkest hours of his brain, he had known that she meant to save him. And she had succeeded.Yet still there was an odd contradiction somewhere, a disturbing mystery, primed with pain; and whenever he was away from the rest-compelling presence of Beatrice, this mystery irritated and troubled him.One day he came in from a ride, and went, as usual, to the drawing-room; but she was not there. Then he went to her own room, and to his surprise he found her lying on the sofa in an abandoned, effortless way, altogether out of her habit. There was a pathetic suggestion of helplessness in her attitude, as of a vine cut down at the roots, still green and blooming, but waiting in gentle patience until the sun and the winds should accomplish its inevitable end.It was this waiting look about her that frightened him. There was none of that readjustment of herself to new conditions that had of late been so charming, and had impressed him a good deal with the latent suppleness of youth in her—a delicious suggestion, in which, up to these last few weeks, she had been oddly deficient. A disagreeable coldness, a most unaccustomed oppression of silence, fell on Geoffrey.All the radiant sweetness of the day seemed suddenly to be blotted out before him.Beatrice looked up expectant. He generally spoke first. Why should he be silent just this moment, when,—more than she had ever needed it before, she needed the courage that the mere sound of his dear voice always gave her?It was just one more of these incomprehensible, almost priggishly consistent protests of life against straight, simple courses. How happy people might be, she thought wistfully, if this restive, wilful, capricious cynicism didn't spoil everything!"Geoffrey," she said at last, with a short, embarrassed laugh, "I have learnt to lounge, and it's delicious. It has taken me twenty-five years in which to learn this easy lesson. I think, poor old Geoffrey, it would have been better for you if I had learnt it earlier in the day. It's the women to whom lounging comes as natural as their daily bread who make men happy.""Beatrice," he said, sitting down and taking her hand, "what do you mean, love?""Oh, Geoffrey, I'm so tired, I have been tired now for so long, and I'm resting. Do men ever know anything of this great tiredness, I wonder—such tiredness, I mean, to which even the thought of rest is like a breath from Heaven?""Beatrice, dear, what is it? Speak out.""Geoffrey, I'm going to rest now, rest all the day long, and you have got just to take care of me, and to make my rest sweet.""Dear Beatrice, dearest, tell me what you mean.""Ah, poor Geoffrey!" she said, with an odd, consciously-wise look on her face. "I believe you mean it. I believe you think that I really am dearest—darling—dearest—beloved. But I am only your cousin, and if I lived by your side for fifty more years—just think," she cried, with a subdued gasp, "think of the accumulated tiredness at the end of them!—I should still be your cousin, dear, but never, ah! never—dearest! Poor Geoffrey, you think it, else you wouldn't say it, dear, simple cousin mine! But you don't know, you know nothing, poor Geoffrey; but I'm going to tell you."She told him gently, tenderly, nobly, all that there was to tell, while he sat with one hand holding hers, the other supporting his head."Isn't it curious," she said at last, "that a life with no eagerness in it, and little comprehension, just full of disturbing commonplaces, should be so tired, should be so tormented by this absorbing thirst for rest?"Geoffrey lifted his eyes and looked at and past her,—out across the moat,—over the terraces, through the shaded reds and yellows of the autumn leaves,—and on again to the line where the earth and sky met, and still on and on again down the narrowing valley of the years that had been; and as he looked, the scales of selfishness fell from his eyes, and for the first time in his life he saw things as they were, and among them, standing out "larger than human," Margaret, and her pure crystal love for him, and Beatrice crowned upon with her spotless diadem of self-sacrifice. All this was focussed in tears; and as his heart warmed and went out after the one, here, in the presence of the other, his head fell forward. He shuddered, but for his intolerable pain he could not speak. In a dazed, semi-conscious way, he said at last, slowly and stupidly, like a man only half recovered from a blow,—"Is all this inevitable—this illness of yours—our relationship? Are we always to be just cousins only?""Geoffrey, haven't I made myself clear, dear love? The 'always' that remains for us is such a mere speck of time—a few days—at most a few weeks. You can't alter your nature and my fate in that time. You couldn't do it in a whole long lifetime, once the opposing impetus was given. Just ordinary friendliness would never have slaked my great thirst. God only gives to a few men the kind of love I asked for, and to these but one heart-full of it."A sting of sharp pain goaded his dulled, shocked brain into intense keenness of perception. He looked into her face and saw all the bitter loneliness of her past hidden away tenderly behind her quiet eyes. After a pause, heavy with thought, he cried aloud hoarsely,—"My God, Beatrice, what have I done?"She laid her cheek softly on his shaking hand."You have done nothing, Geoffrey, but make a mistake, and I—I have done nothing—but emphasise it. I hadn't somehow the stuff in me to repair it, to give the one little touch— poor Geoffrey, it only wanted just one little, tiniest touch—that would have turned failure to success. Dear, you don't think I blame you? If there's any blame it's mine. I saw that your heart was nice, and big, and lovable, and that it was only waiting for the hand of a woman to gather, and I prayed to God that He would let mine be the hand. My prayer was granted, and it seems you and your heart got into the wrong hands—nerveless, coward hands, too fearful to take a firm hold of their possession, and to guard it.""Why do you spare me, Beatrice? Why don't you speak out the truth—tell me that I have been both blind and brutal?""I have," she broke in, "had three years to think this all out in, you only a few minutes, so that I know more about it than you can possibly do. Before I married you, I never once asked myself if I were in any one way, except by birth and environment, suited to your needs. I only knew that you were very dear, and that it would be altogether sweet to be your wife——""I had as much right to consider suitability.""But how could you?" she said, surprised. "At that time you didn't know what love meant. I wasted my time, and Margaret came; that was all. Ours was a marriage in which there was no grasping of its importance, and the result was a misfit."He tried to say something, but the words were choked in his throat. She laid her wasted hand tenderly on his handsome, sunny head."I believe you are in some way blaming yourself, my Geoffrey. I believe I have been clumsy, and have given you the impression that I am bewailing my lot, and feebly railing against an inexorable fate,—really no fate at all, but the inevitable result of ignorance." She lifted her head in her old proud way. "I assure you I don't admit myself defeated. I go away with no beaten, shameful feelings, but with my reward in my hands. I have done what I meant to do. I have helped you towards being your best self, Geoffrey, and to setting your face towards a worthy goal, and I know that—even for my sake—you will never turn back, however much you may stumble.""Oh, my God!" he muttered brokenly. But the touch of her hand blessed him, though it pierced his soul as with sharp steel."And then, Geoffrey," she went on, with increased earnestness, "is it not a good thing that I have so far killed the littleness in me that I can look forward without an atom of jealousy to your future, and hers—Margaret's?—for Margaret is my friend—and know that in your path, right in front of both of you, there lies radiant happiness and, better still, success."As he lifted his eyes to the transfigured face before him, his heart stood still at the self-abnegation of this woman,—at the utter blindness of his past; and with these there ran a feeling of angry protest against the cruel mismanagement of things earthly. And she,—feeling the current of thought in him,—continued,"No, Geoffrey, God's way with us has not been wrong nor cruel. Had you and Margaret come together without this delay, your life would have been wasted, purposeless, barren. And Margaret—have not the years changed her from simply a beautiful girl into a woman worthy of you? And I—I have had my reward, for I have been helped to help you, and let to love you, and——" She paused; and, putting his arm with exceeding tenderness around her, and gently drawing her to his breast, he finished the sentence for her with,—"'Love is all, and death is naught."'THE END.Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and
Aylesbury.Now, ready at all Libraries.FRANKFORT MOORE'S NEW NOVEL,
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"A GRAY EYE OR SO," "I FORBID THE BANNS,' ETC.,ONE FAIR DAUGHTER.
IN 3 VOLUMES.IN THREE BOOKS:--BOOK I., THE MAIDEN PLANS; 
BOOK II., THE MAN APPEARS; BOOK III., THE 
 WOMAN ACTS.CHAPTER II.DETAILS THE FURTHER PROCESSES BY WHICH A YOUNG WOMAN WORKS OUT HER OWN
FREEDOM.PHILIPPA had been for more than a month the guest of Mrs. Bennet Wyse,
and she could not but acknowledge that her position was a very pleasant
one. She had hated Baymouth because the people in that town had
failed to appreciate her--her talents, her beauty and her knowledge in
the art of dressing. She felt convinced that in London she would
obtain a satisfactory amount of appreciation for all three; and she
had not been disappointed.She had arrived at the house of Mrs. Bennett Wyse at a good time. The
culte of Introspectors had just been started, and
the people were talking about little else. The people in London appeared 

to be divided into two sets; the set who clustered around Mrs. Bennett
Wyse, and the set who were anxious to join that set. The persons who
sneered at her set were those whose anxiety to become amalgamated with
it was greatest; it was when they could not accomplish their object
they tried to sneer down the Introspectors; and by their attempts in
this direction they advertised the existence of the Introspectors in
quarters where their name had never been heard.The season became known afterwards as the Introspectors' Year. It
succeeded the Costermongers' Year; and every one knows that the
Costermonger's Year followed the Skirt-Dancers' Year. In the far-off
past were the Cowboy's Year, the Divorce Court Year, the Submerged
Tenth Year, and the Slumming Year. Society in Mayfair and the
purlieus of that region had been stirred to its depths during each of
these seasons by the topic which had imparted distinction to the
year. Every other topic had been forced into a background so distant
as to be practically beyond the horizon of Mayfair altogether.Who could talk of anything that had not a bearing upon the
costermonger and his domestic habits in the Costermongers' Year? What
interests, political or religious, were thought worthy of
consideration apart from the skirt-dancer in the Skirt-Dancers' Year?
What entertainment possessed an interest for society apart from the
slums in the Slumming Year? and how petty did not the ordinary
matters of life seem compared with the duties of Introspection in the
Introspectors' Year!It was never rightly proved who was respon-

sible for the invention of the scheme of modern Introspection. Some
people said it was a Finn who had written a play, and others said that
it was a woman who had written a novel; but all were agreed upon one
point--namely, that Mrs. Bennett Wyse and a few of her friends had
made Introspection fashionable. They had, in fact, taken up
Introspection and developed it into what some newspapers called a
craze, and others a Great and Living Truth.Until young women read the Finnish Play, and the Introspective novel,
they had no notion what extraordinary beings they were. The majority
of them, if they had ever given a thought to their own souls, had
merely done so through the medium of the Collect for the Day, and the
Offertory at Morning Service. (Of course, no one ever thinks of
fancying that a twenty minutes' sermon applies to oneself.) But now
they began to perceive that their souls were well worth
attention. They had never had justice done to them before.  Why, the
soul of a young woman was the most marvellously complicated piece of machinery
that existed. It amply repaid study; and so they studied it--on the
stage, in book form, and through the agency of the Introspector's
Culte. (The Introspective music-hall entertainment had not been fully
developed when a new idea that had nothing to with Woman's Soul was
sprung upon society, and Introspection became anæmic.)The soul of a young woman was a Problem, we were told, and, so far as
could be gathered, it was not a fitting companion for a young woman;
it usually led her astray just when every one fancied that she was
getting accustomed to it, and

that it was keeping her straight. It was very fascinating to young
women to feel that they had Problem Souls concealed somewhere about
them; and when they read of all the other young women who had
suffered, not through any will of their own, but simply because of
these Problem Souls, they began to think very highly of themselves,
and to sneer at men, who had no Problem Souls, but only those of the
most ordinary construction, that ground out the one old tune until
everybody had become tired of it. The soul of man is a musical-box
of only one tune; while that of woman is one which, when properly
wound up, will commence, it may be, with a jig, and then, without even
giving the "click" that comes from an ordinary musical-box, proceed to
a stately minuet or saraband, then on to a fugue, a revival hymn, a
Polish mazurka, and a funeral march.The Problem Souls were supposed to behave in this way; and as every
young woman fancied that she possessed at least one, there was a good
deal of mixed music in that year.But the young women whose souls were written about seemed entitled to
go astray every now and again, and yet be forgiven by their husbands
or lovers; for it was quite expected that the men would have sense
enough to see how the women were absolutely innocent--how they had
simply been powerless in the grasp of their Problem Souls.But whenever a man chanced to go astray, the women refused him house
room.That is what was meant by Introspection.Now Mrs. Bennett Wyse and a few of her friends had mocked at the
Finnish Drama and the Introspective Novel; but they had the clever-

ness to perceive the fascination which all this talk about Woman's
Soul and man's soul was likely to have for that society whose very
existence depends upon novelty; and they had, accordingly, founded the
Introspectors, and given the world to understand that not to be an
Introspector was not to be in the most interesting society in the
world--the society in the midst of which even the exclusive tastes of
Royalty found gratification.Only one essential to the complete success of the Introspection
movement was wanted--namely, a new face. Mrs. Bennett Wyse and her
friends were clever enough to perceive this. They knew that what
society longs for with the deepest longing is not the woman who has
painted a new picture, or the man who has discovered a new
country,--but a new face. Mrs. Bennett Wyse had granted interview to
the representatives of several illustrated newspapers; she had very
clearly stated what were her opinions on the subject of the great
future that there was for Introspection; and her portrait had been
published in every newspaper. But she was also clever enough to know
that people were beginning to say so soon as they had picked up one of
those papers:"Why, if this isn't another portrait of that Bennett Wyse woman!
Havne't we had about enough of her?" And feeling convinced that they
were saying this--she had actually heard one many say the very words
at a bookstall-she felt very strongly that a new face was needed to
make the movement a success. She knew that the woman who introduces
the new face into society

receives quite as much favour as the possessor of the new face, and
just when she was considering in what direction she should look for
the novelty, she received Philippa's letter.Well, Philippa had arrived at her friend's house in Battenberg
Gardens; and even before she was embraced, she was anxiously led by
her friend to the largest window in her boudoir. Mrs. Bennett Wyse had
arrived at an age to appreciate the blessing of small windows, and she
felt that the friendship of a pink light was the most faithful on
earth.  But when the blind was drawn up a pretty fair amount of
natural light was admitted within a certain area.  She placed Philippa
within that area, and scrutinised her hair with the eyes of the One
Who Knows.Then she gave the girl a kiss."Thank heaven!" she cried fervently, "it is all right.""What? my hair?  Oh, I fear the journey has made it shocking," said
Philippa."Thank heaven!" said Mrs. Bennett Wyse again.  "I thought my memory
did not deceive me. But hair--especially golden hair--the real
coppery golden hair--is such a tricky thing. You may fancy you have
got the exact tone one day and the next it is gone. Every one
suspects golden hair now-a-days; but not such as yours. Take my word
for it, Phil, there'll be nothing talked about in town for the next
month but your hair. It will make the fortune of the Introspectors."And it did.From the first day that Philippa was seen by the side of Mrs. Bennett
Wyse in the Park, the Introspective movement showed an upward
tendency.A newspaper man--the editor of Masks and
Faces--who caught sight of its glory and knew the difference
between the real and the ideal in hair, begged for the privilege of an
exclusive interview for a forthcoming issue of his paper, mentioning
that it would be his privilege to acquaint the world with Miss
Liscomb's ideas on the burning question of Introspection and the
Problem Soul.Mrs. Bennett Wyse, being well acquainted with the resources of the
paper and of the modern art of reproduction, merely stipulated that
the portrait accompanying the interview should be printed in colours
on fine paper and issued as a supplement to the journal, which was the
leading weekly."Such a thing has never been done before," the main explained."But that is the greater reason why it should be done now,"
Mrs. Bennett Wyse remarked sweetly.The editor of Masks and Faces was a man who
studied spiritual movements and other vagaries of the hour, and he
thought he perceived his chance. He agreed to adopt the suggestion of
Mrs. Bennett Wyse; and in a fortnight the finest coloured portrait
that had ever been issued in England appeared as a supplement to the
summer number of the paper. The face of Philippa Liscomb was on every
newspaper stall, and the newspapers wrote leading articles upon the
marvellous progress that had been made within recent years in Art for
the Million. A few years ago, they said, so charming a reproduction
as that of the handsome young lady, whose name would be for ever
associated with the development of Introspection, would have been the
despair of artists in chromolithography; but now,

through the intelligent enterprise of the leading English weekly, it
was an accomplished fact, and it would assuredly help to make more
beautiful many a cottage interior--though for the matter of that, so
artistic was the reproduction, there was no room where it might not be
hung, and constitute a mural embellishment that only required to be
seen to command admiration.Philippa had, within a month of taking up her residence in London,
become quite as well known as Mrs. Bennett Wyse herself.It had come to her--that position in the world which she had long
believed that she was entitled to occupy. She had not overestimated
her beauty or her acquaintance with the art of dressing with
originality, and yet with perfect taste. She had done well to despise
the people of Baymouth, who had not merely failed to appreciate her
powers, but had actually had the insolence to call her "the girl with
the red hair who made herself conspicuous".She wondered what the young women in Baymouth would say when they say
her portrait in the illustrated paper--the exact tint of her hair had
been brought out by laborious printings--and when they read the
leading articles referring to her as fortunate enough to be gifted
with a type of beauty over which the old Venetion painters--no period
was specified--had expended their genius and that consummate knowledge
of colouring which made their school the wonder of Europe.She laughed as she thought of the various dowdy young women of
Baymouth who had professed to be shocked at the originality of some of
her ideas in dress. She laughed as she thought

of some of the men in Baymouth who had asked her to marry them. They
were mostly Methodists and in a fair way of business, with prospects
of seats on the Town Council or the Water Board. She laughed as she
thought of Sir Joshua Haven's declaring that he would leave his son a
beggar if he married her.She had attained within a month int he most interesting society in
London a position which was coveted by thousands of women. She knew
that thousands of women had been scheming all their lives and had
spent fortunes on dinner parties and dances and subscriptions to
charities, in order to obtain a footing in the society into the midst
of which she had simply stepped. She did not know exactly what some
women with whom she had become acquainted would give to have their
portraits reproduced in a weekly paper; but Mrs. Bennett Wyse had no
hesitation in estimating what they were prepared to sacrifice in
exchange for such a distinction,--and Mrs. Bennett Wyse seemed to know
about all such matters. Yet there was her portrait, not in black and
white, but in the loveliest colours, looking the whole world in the
face from the windows of the news-vendors.She had conquered the world. She had had an idea the day that her
father had made her acquainted with his embarrassments that her
opportunity was at hand. That was why she had urged upon him to lend
himself to a scheme which sounded like an account of the "plot" of one
of the wildest flights of the melodramatist. Her opportunity had
come, and she had taken advantage of all that it offered to her.

She had emancipated herself from the life she detested, and
now. . . . . .Well, now she was by the side of Lord Sandycliffe on a seat on the
roof of Tommy Trafford's coach, while the four bays were pawing their
way down Richmond Hill.AT ALL LIBRARIES.FRANKFORT MOORE'S NEW NOVEL,
ONE FAIR DAUGHTER.
IN THREE VOLS.Advertisement included in the back of Iota's third volume of
Children of Circumstance.Advertisement included in the back of Iota's third volume of
Children of Circumstance.